Like I was saying, my son, when he watched it, and just flipping out, like talking to me, like on the side, like I was saying, like literally, just going, Dad, Dad, he's got your mannerisms. He's got your speech manner. But you imagine, like, I'm picturing my son. He's in New York when he watched it. And so I'm picturing him in the corner of the lobby of the theater talking with his back to everybody going, oh my God, Dad, like, it's like a doppelganger. He's got all of it, you know, like full-blown.

And in fact, in Pride, when Ensign was on the podcast, he told me that in large letters it said, We do not test for stealing. Oh my God. They're like, so they would literally. They would do this. They would hand you a cup and go, urine. And you go, who's clean? You just look around and you just, you just hand the cup off going, can you piss from here? And you literally walk back to the medical and go, here's the fee. Yeah, here. And I mean, that's the, but that's the era it was.

So Benny from the beginning said the only way we're going to be able to do this is have that authenticity to the point where I sent them watches, rings, necklaces, posters, everything I could find, picture-wise, everything to their props in production. Oh, wow. And they reproduced everything. Oh, wow. So, Joe, I mean, like when I went up to Vancouver, like and walked into some of these sets, like literally going, holy fucking shit. Did he flashback? Oh, my God. Like, like you'd walk into a room and there'd be from one corner all the way to the other on the wall just pictures of me and my house and my this and this outfit and this and these in my house and this and and then production saying, okay, was this accurate? How did this, it was this, it was this unbelievable, painstaking, they rebuilt my life 25 years ago.

He's, he's, you know how many rounds he trained prior to fighting Tyson Fury? No. 600. Jesus. With three different training partners. So every dude came in every third round.

He made the 1980 Olympic team that was boycotted, won the 1981 world championships, voted best technician in the world, and then retires and then decides he's going to make the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. So he's at 37 years old, he wins a bronze medal that year in Barcelona. 37. That's pretty impressive for amateur wrestling. Oh my God. That's, I think still to this day, he's the oldest Olympic medalist.

You know, part of it was, you know, I wanted to change the narrative of like when you looked at the early UFCs, it looked like some guys were just scraped off a barstool and thrown into the octagon, right? And so when I came there, I was like, okay, I want to be considered professional, right? I want to carry myself as a professional. I'm going to be articulate. I'm going to dress as a professional. Because I wanted to up the ante. I wanted to like raise the standard, right? And especially when I went to Japan, it's like, you know, press conference, everybody's in sweatsuits. I'm in a, you know, I couldn't afford it, but I was in a $1,000 Calvin Klein suit that I had to put on a charge card, right? But I wanted to change the narrative. I wanted to be, I wanted to be a professional. Because if I was a professional and treated like a professional, I could ask for pay like a professional. Not like some dude that was just scraped off a barstool and thrown into a ring.

I meet with a guy named Mr. Ishiaka, who his real name is Kim Duk Su. He's a Korean guy. And Mr. Ishi, who owned K1. Wait a minute, a Korean dude was pretending to be Japanese? You had to have a Japanese name. Whoa. You couldn't do business in Japan without a Japanese name.

Nerves. Nerves. It gets to a point where it's like that morning, I know, like fight morning, I have a small little window where I could digest food or I could take food in. It's not like I could sit and eat all day. And then just nerves start kicking. Yeah. It just starts kicking in like my, like, like literally, and it's controlled focus, right? Because it's like, I can't have all my nerves running everywhere, but it's controlled focus. But that control focus, my body goes, I don't need digestion. Fuck, I'm about to fight. What the fuck do I need to digest food for?

So that last scene against Fujita isn't as 100% hypoglycemic crash laying there. Can't move my body. And if you watch a documentary, what I'm saying on the way back is, I need sugar. I need sugar. I need sugar. That's all I could think about. It was like, I need sugar. I need sugar. I need sugar. Because my blood sugar levels had just crashed to this. Like, I can't fucking move.

He's going to, the only way that he's going to be able to get a championship back is somebody else needs to beat Murab. Yeah, Murab.

That's the fight that changed everything. Changed the game.

The dominance of elite wrestling and how elite wrestling, it surpasses all martial arts. It's the number one most, and an elite wrestler can lure jiu-jitsu. Okay, an elite grappler can, you could easily teach them how to do head and arm chokes, triangles, all that. That's not, you're already used to manipulating. So part of my participation in ADCC was to represent wrestling. Right? Yeah. Because the first year when I got approached to go over there, I'm like, what is that? Like, submission grappling? Like, like Giles grappling or Giles Jiu-Jitsu. Right. They're like, hey, listen, here's what we're going to do. We're going to give you X, you know, come over. And it wasn't a ton. It was like $15,000 to go over. And I was like, okay. I was like, all right. He's like, fuck it. I don't know. But while you were fighting. Yeah, while I was fighting. And so I'm like, okay, I just go. Just as a sort of surprise, it was one of those where I was like, okay, now that it's explained to me, I go, well, wrestlers need to be represented there. Right? Yes. And so I go over there and it was one of those things where it was like, well, I can actually show everybody here in this world that thinks their shit's dominant. Like, no, this is a skill set you need. You need elite wrestling skills, right? You can have jiu-jitsu black belt and all this stuff, but if you're missing this piece component to it, you're fucked.

And so I go over there and it was one of those things where it was like, well, I can actually show everybody here in this world that thinks their shit's dominant. Like, no, this is a skill set you need. You need elite wrestling skills, right? You can have jiu-jitsu black belt and all this stuff, but if you're missing this piece component to it, you're fucked. You're fucked. You're fucked. And so it was all about control.

Yeah, that's, you know, and again, this is one of these things where fundamentally also wrestling gives you a cardio base that you can build off of. Not only because that's the other missing component, right? It's like this because at an elite level, it's fucking intense. It is really intense.

It's investing in what your product is. And your product is elite athletes, elite athletes. In order to get elite athletes, they need funding. They need tools. The only way they can get tools is through money. You know, better coaches, better recovery facilities.

If a young kid, like 16, 17 year old kid, even 18, 19, 20 year old kid, I go, you need submission grappling because you can participate in those at a competitive level that teaches you how to compete. It teaches you how to prepare to compete, right? And it teaches you without the impact of striking and punching and all of this. So that's like the first foundational piece. And this is just my opinion, right? Foundationally is like if you have to have a mechanism out there which allows you to compete without having the physical impact that fighting does. So that would be the first thing, like submission grappling, ADCC stuff, you know, all of that really teaches you how to compete, to train, to compete. And it starts building that base. And then you start adding pieces in, going, okay, I understand this. Let's add the striking components into it now. And let's do these little like PFLs or let's do this. Let's do that. And it just allows you to build out something where you're not just throwing into the fire because that shit doesn't work. I mean, the fighters have become so good now that you can't just throw somebody in there because it fuck. You get fucked up. It might fuck your confidence up. And I just, I'm done. I ain't ever doing this.

He literally locked himself away for 11 weeks Weeks up in Vancouver and didn't bring his family up, which I guess he normally does, and just went through his training camp.

It was one where that was the biggest deal for Benny is to be able to shoot these scenes without a stunt double. Going how because it just detracts from what he's trying to do as a filmmaker.

Yeah, Tokyo Dome.

It's a mental thing. I mean, all of it is, right? I mean, just like you're saying, like the outliers, it's a mental thing that they have a level or a gear they can get to that everybody else just can't. It has to be, or there's got to be something, something they're doing that's so different. And everybody's trying to figure it out. Like, what is he doing? Yeah. And it seems to boil down to almost always dedication. It's like, how dedicated are you to it? And are you so dedicated that you're really willing to objectively look at what you do good and what you're not so good and change that and fix it and really tighten down your diet and really get religious with yourself? That's the ability to be able to be, just have the self-perspective, right? This in-depth honesty.

You know, so it's foundationally, it's, it's, yeah, gias are, it's a different sport.

I knew, I knew when I first drank, first had a drink that I drank until I was drunk. Like, cause that was this taste of Jack Daniels. And it was like, oh, this feels good. It was like not a normal reaction. Looking back on it going, oh, so I've always had a propensity towards it.

Listening to Joe Dispenza, some of his stuff, it changed my whole – it's changed some of my perspective of how – like, just having – we're energy, right? We're energy. And your emotional energy is transferred to me.

It's like why I was addicted to Dawn. Because of that exchange of negative energy, right? Yeah. Back and forth. It's like being an addict. Right. I'm addicted to the drama.

Meaning that if somebody watches this and sees your struggles that you've gone through and sees the hope that you have in that in your recovery, it gives them hope or gives them, because what keeps you addicted is shame.

And so my sobriety date is September 4th. And so my son asked me that day, September 3rd, he's like, dad, I know you need to drink today because your mom died, but would you stop tomorrow? And at the time, I thought it was just another empty promise of like, yeah, yeah, I'll stop. I'll stop. And next day I got up and there's just something a little different or whatever it was that day. And I stopped asking the questions why because it's irrelevant, right? And from that day till today, I'm sober.

And it's one of those where it's like harmonics and vibrations and frequencies, you know, and understanding like, man, we know so little, but realistically, all this stuff through like all the different stuff they discovered in Egypt with the sound chambers and all the different things. I mean, it's a whole different thing where we just ignored.

It's very fucking vulnerable to fight because there's, it's just, it's just very, like the loneliest place, two loneliest places in the world is walking into the ring and after the fight's over. The two loneliest places I've ever been in my entire life are those two places.

I mean, it's just this, it's the, it's the, you know, madness and brilliance, you know, are almost of the same vein, right?

Yeah, October 3rd. Yeah.