All Episodes Plain Text
March 7, 2023 - Flagrant - Andrew Schulz & Akaash Singh
02:31:58
Chael Sonnen on Jon Jones, Trash Talk & Lebron's Steroid Use

Chael Sonnen and Akaash Singh dissect Chael's "heel" persona, recounting a 2005 carrot incident and a 2012 $8.8 million earnings exaggeration against Anderson Silva. They critique UFC matchmaking failures like the Ngannou-Miocic bout while debating Tyson Fury's unbeatable reach versus Mike Tyson's mental fragility. The conversation exposes financial myths surrounding Floyd Mayweather, revealing his 2005 actual payout was $4 million rather than $100 million. Sonnen details how Lance Armstrong evaded detection using IV fluids to flush EPO and testosterone, a tactic he also employed during his own bank robbery probation. Finally, they reveal Joe Rogan's secret marriage to his wife while on federal probation for robbing 11 banks between 2002 and 2008, illustrating how personal scandals often mask behind public success. [Automatically generated summary]

Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|

Time Text
Robbing Banks and Performance 00:14:40
Oh, I used to rob banks.
I thought you knew that.
No.
Oh, I used to rob banks, by the way.
I thought you knew that.
How do you rob a bank?
That's what got complicated.
Jail time?
No, no joke.
No jail, $10,000 fine.
But they got some performance dense answers.
It was like, if the world understood what LeBron did, we have the same drug guy, if you will.
I know exactly what he's doing, Paul.
Please tell.
Isn't Netflix to thank, though?
Why didn't Netflix single-handedly save comedy?
You mentioned $100 million for Floyd.
First off, he's never gotten $100 million for a flight.
I know it is.
They're claiming he was doing $100 million in a fight, and I'm claiming for you, he and his whole career has made about $100 million.
Come on.
Teams Island.
Did you enjoy your time there?
That's not a gotcha.
I'm just genuinely curious.
I would have gone.
Not to be a starter.
We ended right there.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to Flagrant.
And today we are joined by, I think, the greatest trash talker in fight sport history.
I do believe that we are joined by Chill Salmon.
What's up, Jill?
I love that.
I think talking trash is like a little bit, it almost belittles what you are doing because you have a master plan and then you executed it to perfection.
I appreciate that.
Unbelievable.
It's impressive.
And I start doing a little research into this, and it looks like you have this understanding of how to build a fight that is a little bit different than other people who have built fights brilliantly.
I think there are people who build fights, right?
Because whatever happened in their life, they developed this defense mechanism that made them a heel or a face.
It just is what it is.
That's who they are.
And you strike me as someone who kind of analyzed what a heel is, what a face is, and then worked out what you have to do to execute both of these things.
Is that true?
Yes.
Yes.
I call it the art of the bad guy.
Okay.
When does this begin?
This is in the book.
Yeah.
When does this begin?
How old are you that you start realizing?
Even as a kid, I would watch these fights with my dad and Sugar Ray Leonard was real big back then.
That's my favorite fighter ever.
But just to talk to, you know, like an era.
And then we came through the Mike Tyson era, of course, and you read about the Muhammad Ali era.
But it was just one of these things when my dad and I would sit around and we would talk about the fighters that we wanted to see.
And, you know, it wasn't just the guy with the good cross or the powerful jab.
It wasn't like that.
It was a guy that could entertain.
It was a guy that could tell a story that would bring us along a journey.
Not just you had to be undefeated.
And that was a real big thing in boxing.
They didn't know how to make a star if they couldn't control the script.
Yeah, it was one of those really tough things.
And Vince McMahon himself said that.
He said, you cannot create a star if you can't control the outcome.
And Vince was looking to even purchase the UFC at one point, and he passed on it for that very reason.
But I remember that quote.
I remember when Shane McMahon said that that's what his dad said.
And I only share that with you because, you know, I just think there's a story there.
I remember being in the third grade, and Mrs. Stanford tells our whole classroom to tell a story, you have to have five W's.
Who, what, when, why, and where?
And a great promoter is just a great storyteller.
A great fight is, it's nothing more than it has a great story.
It never has to do with this guy's a champion or this guy's undefeated.
No big fight has ever been based on that.
It's a good story.
And I just noticed that a lot of guys don't know the five W's when they tell a story.
Okay, so every fight that you're going into, every fight that you want, you start pointing out the five W's.
That's right.
Who, what, when, why, and where?
And a really important one is why.
And that's a real tough one.
A lot of guys are fighting.
You know, it used to be really important that you had a good fighter.
I mean, your village or your tribe.
I mean, they would come, they your women, steal your stuff, take your land.
It used to be actually important to have somebody that could fight amongst you.
And it becomes less important.
And what happens now if you lose a fight?
A little prestige, a little money.
So somebody throws a belt out there.
One day about 100 years ago, some guy throws a belt out there and he sells a bunch of tickets to Madison Square Guard.
Now they're fighting over this belt.
You have to be fighting over something.
It's the reason I give you that history.
It has to be for something.
And sometimes these guys are fighting and there's no purpose on it.
There's no contendership.
There's no ranking.
There's no ego.
There's no pride.
And they don't understand it's their job to tell the story.
It's up to you to build the person.
And you have these guys in the fake tough guy business.
I've never been around a bigger bunch of fake tough guys than in an MMA locker room.
Oh, yeah, when that microphone's going, oh, they're so tough, and they'll do this and that.
You know, you get a guy like Dana White or Scott Cook goes in the back and tries to get a contract signed, and they won't do it.
They got to talk about talk and meet with my managers, and I need more money.
It's just one of these really bizarre things.
Then you only get three fights a year.
By the way, I mean, I've taken on three guys in one day.
These punks want three fights in a year, and you can't get them to show up to it.
It's a very bizarre time.
And what are you fighting for?
I think that that's the most important thing that you got to tell the audience.
And so many people, they don't want to be booed.
They're a bunch of bad guys, largely.
I mean, bad people go into cage fighting.
You take your shirt off, you can beat a guy up in a steel cage for some money in the applause of a drunken audience.
You're probably not a really good person to start with.
I wanted to think that they're this educated, this smart guy.
And I just never understood the concept, man.
You're a dirty, rotten cage fighter, just like me.
Yeah.
But one of us will admit it, and one of us won't.
And these guys can't take the hits, man.
They can't take the booze.
And the booze could be in the form of a tweet that comes out is against them.
That would be a boo.
They can't take it.
Now, the ones that can take it make a lot of money.
That's really damn.
Now, when do you realize that that's where the money is?
Very early on.
Like high school?
Yes.
Okay.
Additionally, sorry, when did you realize you can take it?
Because that's a rare thing.
It's like it is.
Really?
Yeah.
Well, and the world changed.
You know, what you can take in the hallways at high school is a little bit, you know, when your hometown paper is writing, but once the internet comes out and people can take these shots, it's a very different thing.
Yeah.
How you want to manipulate that?
How you want to manufacture it.
And they all want, they can't take the booze.
And it has just always surprised me that they pretend that this is a nice thing.
A guy says, I can't wait to fight you.
You know, it's such an honor.
Why would you beat somebody up that you have honor for?
Why would you beat somebody up that you sex?
It's just a really weird concept to try to tell the audience.
You know, I just like him so much.
I can't wait to take my fist and drive it into his head.
I mean, I've heard people say that actual quote, then smile.
And it's like, man, just turn this guy off.
Let me just let me find anybody else other than this.
It's a boring guy.
There was that Connor Poirier fight.
Sure.
Where I think it was two, where Connor was really nice and he was like, and you know, I'm going to donate to your, you know, what is it, YMCA, and I'm going to help you with the hot sauce and do these things.
And it was like, there was part of you who was like, okay, this is new and kind of novel for Connor, but at the same time, it's like the stakes aren't that high for this fight.
And then three, of course, where he's going absolutely crazy, you know, your wife's in my DN.
He's like, sure.
That was a wild time.
I agree with you.
Yeah, he had some fun with it, but there was a reason to tune in.
I remember when he was doing that nice guy stuff, I'm going to donate.
What do you think that was about?
Well, I like it if he was doing it to be condescending.
If he's doing it like, I've got so much money, I can even help you that I'm into the whole thing.
But if you're doing it because, you know, you got put in the paper for getting caught, you know, beating up a girl and snorting Coke.
And so you're trying to repair your image.
It's like, man, don't be a punk.
Sometimes just be who you are.
That's all that I'm suggesting.
The audience is going to see through a fake.
So if you're, you know, you want to be that nice guy, but the audience can tell you're acting, you're beat.
Okay, were you surprised when you tried to play up the heel and then the audience started to love the heel?
Yes.
So you were ready for the onslaught of criticism and hate.
And then for whatever fucking reason, they love you.
It did become a problem.
It did become a problem where it was anti-what I was doing.
I went and did a show called The Ultimate Fighter in Brazil, but they wanted to kill me in Brazil at that time.
This is fantastic.
Yeah, they really wanted me dead, though.
I had a six-man armed security everywhere I went, wearing bulletproof cars.
This was very real.
The Noguera.
Yeah, it was after that.
It was after self-defense.
It makes sense.
Try to justify.
Play this video.
This is my favorite piece of trash talk in fight sports.
There's nothing better.
I was in Las Vegas when the Nogara brothers first touched down in America.
There was a bus that pulled, this is a true story.
There was a bus that pulled up to a red light and little Nog tried to feed it a carrot while Big Nog was petting it.
He thought it was a horse.
This really happened.
Do you believe me to that?
Not really.
He tried to feed a bus a carrot.
And now you're telling me that country has computers?
I didn't know that.
I did not know that.
Do you remember when I said he fed the bus a carrot?
Were you even listening?
Is this thing on?
Is this on?
And then the other one was petting the bus, saying, whoa, big fellow.
He thought it was a horse.
And now you're telling me they have computers in Brazil?
That's crazy to me.
What was your question?
It makes sense.
It makes sense.
I appreciate that.
I appreciate you giving me homage to this stuff and tell me that you enjoyed it.
I don't know that anybody has ever told me.
No, I mean, the whole thing was scripted.
The whole thing was planned in my own mind, but that had never been done before.
Like, Erro doesn't know how to respond.
I mean, that is very normal today.
When that piece was done, that was done in Las Vegas.
The executive director at the time tried to pull my license.
When he found out that I did that in Nevada, he decided he had jurisdiction over that.
He tried to pull my license.
And I was in the room when he told Lorenzo Fertida and Dana White.
He said, kids are going to look up to this guy.
And this is not what I want kids to be like.
I use no profanity.
I made no threats.
I've never used a four-letter word.
I've been called the greatest SHA T-Talker in all of sport, but I've never used profanity.
This guy was going to pull my license because he marked out for the gimmick so much.
He thought I was such a bad guy and I was doing such bad things.
And I claimed this guy didn't know the difference between a horse and a bus.
And, you know, he's got kids.
And what can he think of that?
Yeah, he tried to pull my license.
That was bad, but you guys getting in the ring and almost killing one another, that's not true.
He's a government official that oversees fist fighting in a steel cage.
And yes.
And he did pull me.
By the way, he didn't get my license because that would have required a hearing, but they did stop me from the opportunity.
Wow.
And I had a really hard time getting through to this guy because he, I mean, he just fell for it so much.
I would come to his weigh-ins.
I would come to this.
He'd be disgusted with me.
Now, now, was there a little part of you when you saw him that pissed off?
Yes.
Did you go, oh, this fight's good?
100%.
100%.
No, I knew what I was trying to get, but this was the part that was the problem where you asked me sometimes when I was being a heel, but then they ended up cheering for me.
When I wouldn't get the response that I was looking for, it would throw me off.
I'd look around and go, what are you guys doing?
Like, how far can I go?
I don't know what else to do within my own code.
You know, I had a code too.
I wasn't going to threaten a guy.
That's very family or something.
He has a heel.
That's right.
What is the code of the heel?
I think that you have to establish to the audience if you're an anti-hero what your code is, but then you must fiercely adhere to that code, whether you're right or wrong, whether it's within the rules or even within laws.
If it's your code and you will back your own code.
And my whole thing, I would say whatever I wanted about a guy, but no matter what, any guy, any weight class, and any night, I would show up.
It would not matter how sick I was.
I would leave that locker room on time every time.
I have never missed a competition.
I've been doing this since I was nine years old.
But that was part of the code.
If you said it, you've got to go answer for it.
If you've got a code, no profanity in town.
No profanity.
Part of the code.
Specific reason for that?
No, I just didn't like it.
I just didn't think it was.
I thought there wasn't a creativeness to it.
I thought it felt more creative.
You're a bad guy, yeah, when you're not.
I don't know if that's accurate or not, but this is calling someone a fucking asshole isn't as bad as saying he tried to feed a bus a cat.
Yes, I would agree with that.
Yes, where one is said I petted a bus.
One is a very clear negativity.
Another one is bringing a negative energy without the negativity.
You know, it gets a little bit more complex.
Now, do you find out that people love humor so much that it doesn't matter how mean you are as long as you make them laugh, they'll love you?
That was a lot of truth.
That was a lot of truth.
As long as they would have fun.
And I did find out through the process that this is a journey.
You know, I used to think you had to be undefeated.
You had to be the world champion and the Olympic champion, but you don't if you can get people to come along.
If for whatever reason, that just changes the story and it shifts over here.
And so I would have those planned.
I would have speeches planned in my head that I was going to say to Joe Rogan after I won, but I'd have pleaches that if I lost too.
I'd know exactly what I was going to say.
So, sorry, to Andrew's question.
Hold on, hold on.
One second to that.
So you planned a losing speech for fights.
Yeah.
Every time.
Even if you knew you were favorite, even you knew you're going to wax this guy.
You maybe fought him once before, you sparred him, you know you're going to beat this guy.
You still plan.
Every time.
Do you think that messes with you psychologically?
Does it invite negativity into the fight where you're like, oh, I'm going to lose?
I've read about that.
I've heard people say that, that you have to have confidence.
You must believe in it.
I never had confidence any night.
I never knew, but I also thought that's only what bullies did.
I thought only a bully's going to fight a guy that he knows he can beat.
I don't know if I can beat any of these guys.
I thought that was part of the honor.
And I've heard people say I was 100%.
I knew.
And I was like, man, I've never, in my life, I've never been 100%.
Except for my wife.
I knew that was the right girl for me.
But that is truly the only thing in my life that I knew for sure.
The rest of it was all a gamble.
Yeah.
Now, to Andrew's earlier quick, you planned all this out.
Can you walk us through when you were like, oh, I can make more money being the heel than the face, and I have what it takes to get booed and be okay with it.
I just knew that there's only, there's only two characters, right?
From the beginning of Hollywood, you've got a good guy and you've got a bad guy.
There isn't 500 flavors.
There aren't 30 other ways that you could.
You got a good guy and you got a bad guy.
And so you got to, you know, you got to monitor what he's doing.
And then you've got to come over the top.
And all the guys want to be the good guy.
I mean, I've fought some really bad guys before and made them look like good guys and they loved it.
They couldn't believe it.
Oh, this guy's being the jerk and it's not me.
But one was authentic and one wasn't.
I don't think that there was anything wrong.
If you're going to go fight a guy, why are you bowing to him?
Why are you talking about this is about honor and respect?
Why are you wearing your bathrobes and talking about your belts and pretending you can break bricks and stuff?
I just thought it was weird.
I don't know why these guys did this in martial arts.
I think one of the great helps to our sport that never gets credit is actually Tag Abbott.
Tag Abbott is one of the first people that came along and said, man, this isn't martial arts.
And it's not.
It's a cage fight.
That's what it really is.
These are cage fighters.
I thought there was an honor in that.
I thought there was honor in telling the truth.
Is there anybody you saw or you've seen since do it at your level?
Yeah.
Oh, gosh.
I mean, I love the work of McGregor.
You want to know who's very good on the microphone and never got his credit was Rampage Jackson.
No, Rampage is hilarious.
He was great, though.
I mean, I remember being at living rooms and we would shoot each and turn it up and make the room go quiet after his fights, whether he won or whether he lost.
We all wanted to hear what Rampage said.
And that's never happened to me before.
Not even in Mike Tyson fights or Sugar Ray Letter.
Nobody have I been in living rooms where we've should people so we can hear what this guy has to say, except for Rampage.
The Honor of Truth in Fighting 00:15:19
And why do you think?
I don't know.
He was charismatic.
He was funny, but he also had a story.
He had somewhere he was going to go with.
He had absolutely no filter.
That's right.
Yeah.
He could say something that would destroy his career.
Yes.
Almost every time when he six up the mic, he was capable of saying something that would destroy his career.
He had courage.
He had the courage to say something.
Even if it might ruin his career.
But he was also a chess player.
You know, so many guys, it's just about tonight only.
And Rampage was like, no, tonight's going to lead me here.
I always felt like that with Rampage.
When his fights ended, before we faded a black and rolled the credits, we knew what was coming next.
I always thought that was very smart.
You were similar, Ace, huh?
I tried to do that.
I tried to get that audience while they're here and harlay them to what comes next.
It almost feels now like that's part of the fight, like the call out.
You know, they're almost being like prompted afterwards.
And who would you like to call out?
And what's the call out next?
That didn't happen back in the day.
You won the fight.
You thanked God.
You thanked your trainers.
You thanked your family.
You can't wait to see your wife.
You're going to vacation.
It was over.
The call out, which is brilliant because that's when the most eyeballs are on you.
You get to set up the next fight.
Who do you think, who starts the call out?
Well, the colleague.
I'm going to give credit to that too.
To whoever started, boy, that's a good one.
And I would love the answer.
You know, if we did like a real history lesson, we could probably, we could probably find that.
But I always did think it was a miss within boxing.
I mean, it's very, very rare.
It's the belts.
That's the thing that's so interesting about MMA is that you can find these like great fights, right?
That there's so much intrigue for that have no fucking belt.
The belt is an illusion of curiosity in shadowways, right?
And I think you actually kind of expose that.
Fucking Nate exposed it.
Anytime Nate fights, we're watching.
Sure.
Nate can fight anybody.
Yep.
I agree.
And we're going to watch.
Yep.
If it's the baddest motherfucker belt or not.
If there's no belt.
If he just wants to fight in Stockton outside of a grocery store, we're going to watch.
So maybe the belt becomes this illusion, but you need, so here's my question.
The heel is what you need to sell the fight.
The person with the belt ends up making the money.
They're the face, et cetera.
But do they deserve more than the heel?
Sure.
If the heel is the one selling the fucking tickets.
No, I agree with you.
Whoever gets the loudest reception, there's your answer.
That's who you're star.
Whoever comes through and gets the loudest roar, that's the star of the show.
I mean, it's not overly complex.
I've seen, I've seen Dana White do that math in his head before, been at a weigh-in and who he thinks his stars are.
And somebody else comes through the curtain and the crowd goes crazy and boom, that guy's getting the bonus.
I mean, I've seen that.
Yeah, I mean, it's a very simple, it's a pretty obvious focus group when you have a live arena, whoever's loudest.
But I mean, it is just one of those things.
I've watched guys come from undercards writing to Ko-Main in main event spots just because of a reception that they got at a press conference.
Like an O'Malley.
Yeah.
Where the UFC didn't know they were stars.
That wasn't the guy.
And the crowd's like, let us let you know.
This is the go.
People will decide.
Boom, gotcha.
And they'll move him right up because of that.
I've seen other guys that are stars and undefeated in their high rankings.
You know, you can't, nobody cheers.
Nobody cheers when they come through and you got to just find a place to stick them.
I've been a little critical of the bullet lately.
And I do it.
I really do do it as a way of trying to help the bullet.
I've never met her.
I think I'm being helpful to her.
But the crowd is not a little bit of a double-eyed.
I don't know who the bullet is to people who don't know, which is the problem that you're talking about.
She is quite possibly the greatest talent I've ever seen in unarmed combat.
She is fantastic.
Her skills seem to be equal on the ground as to standing up.
She can finish fights anywhere.
She can deal with adversity.
She can push the pace.
She's actually weaponized pace.
I mean, much like Dan Gable did way back in 1972.
She is flat impressive.
She's also a co-main event.
You can't make a dollar with the girl.
You can't put her against any opponent.
She's fighting this weekend.
I don't know who her opponent is, and I'm not attempting to be funny.
I simply don't.
You could give me multiple choice.
I want to know.
But that's her fault.
You know, I watched her on Ariel yesterday and she's sitting there, you know, they call it crisscross applesauce.
And she's telling some story.
She's trying to tell it, like, we're five-year-olds and like she's the kindergarten teacher.
It's like, girl, strip your clothes off.
You got tattoos.
Supposedly you speak seven languages.
I'm not even sure you've mastered English, which you're speaking to us now.
You're not overly impressive and you're a co-main event above everything else.
What do I give a goddamn what you have to say or how many world championships you have?
You can't even close out the night.
You got a guy named Surreal Gone who's one and one in his last two and he's walking out after you.
There's a miss there.
And I don't say that to put her down.
She's wildly successful.
But why she keeps trying to pretend that she's a sweet Sally homemaker when she's not?
What should she be?
What would you do with her?
I think in real life, she's a heel.
I don't know her.
I haven't met her personally, but I think she's a heel.
I've seen her interviews.
I've seen her come to the aid and to the defense of some very unsavory characters.
And I just thought to myself, you seem like a bad girl.
When John Jones went down for every steroid in the world and street drugs and cocaine and he ran his car in his, she was the first to come and defend him, which was very sweet.
She has the courage to come out and defend.
It was very sweet.
But it also isn't what your kindergarten teacher that she'd like you to think that she is would do.
And I look at her and go, you're a heel.
Just be yourself.
Is there another reason why she might have defended him?
Of course.
What do you think?
I don't know.
What do you think?
And then you got Holly Hall.
I mean, you have such a great story.
If they had the courage to come in.
They had to tell them.
Isn't that an interesting thing?
But this isn't.
I'm just speaking out of school.
There's divorces in place.
There's breakups.
I mean, all of these things can be Google.
You just have to connect the dots.
And if you did connect the Dosh, you could make some money and sell some tickets, but they don't have the courage to connect the DOS.
They got to just leave it lingering while I'm not even lingering.
Trying to get somebody to watch a girl at a co-man event.
You could make her money right now.
You just said what you were feeling.
Right now.
You think that there might be a story.
She would still add an arena to fight Holly Holmes if they would just tell the story.
And what's the story?
What's the story?
What would the story be?
What would the story bell?
You got Holly over here.
You got Valentina here and you got John over here.
No, I'm not connected.
But these are your three.
What would the story possibly be?
Legally, maybe John Jones was like in an intimate relationship, perhaps with Hollywood.
That would be very interesting.
Let's just make it up.
The bullet Shevchenko came in and stole John Jones from that if that happened.
So Holly would fight the bullet and Holly would want to get revenge on the girl that stole her man.
That'd be crazy.
And the bullet who lives over here got assigned to the March 4th card, which John Jones is headlined, and they're all the same hotel right now.
Oh, no.
Wow.
It looks like the wrong fight.
It's not like a co-main event.
I don't know.
I don't know.
That's an incredible tale that you're.
That'd be crazy if that happened.
Yeah.
But imagine that that happened and they came out and they told the world instead of hiding behind it.
Imagine the interest that you could possibly have.
One is the world champion who's won more world championship.
The other's not.
Do you understand that?
We have a world title fight that is not the main event on a card.
We have a non-world title fight that's headlining a card.
That's a problem for them.
Yeah.
For them, that's a problem that could be changed, but it would take courage to tell a story.
Does it have anything to do with their genitals?
I don't know.
I mean, I don't know.
I think you're talking about the men traditionally do better.
I mean, we saw UFC, was it 200, Misha Tate and Amanda Nunes?
So we have seen the woman go later before, but it is a hard fact of a policy that a championship match closes out the night.
I'm saying that there needs to be a story.
I agree with you.
I don't even know what the story is.
But they're breaking John Jones.
Why do you understand that?
She is such a bad draw that they are breaking.
There is a belt has to headline.
The belt has to headline.
Well, it is headlining.
I think John Jones and Cyril are going to fighting for the belt.
But neither one of them is champion.
That's the difference.
Ah, you're saying the champion always has to headline.
And that is a policy that they have never broken.
And she does such a bad job that they have to break their own policy because they can't walk her out like that.
You want her to say, I stole your man.
I want her to come out and knock you out afterwards.
Yeah, I don't want her to come out and do this pretending she speaks seven languages.
I don't want her to come out and pretend that she's trained in the military.
I don't want her to come out and act.
She's got a sister in the business.
Her mother was a world champion.
She grew up in a very rough household, and she is an incredible story, an incredible product of a very difficult upbringing.
She is not a kindergarten teacher.
She is not a nice girl.
She has tattoos on her body.
She gets in a cage and she tries to hurt other people that she was trained and designed to do.
There's nothing wrong with telling that story, but when she tries to fool the audience, you have a comment.
Would you consider being like a consultant for a league?
Because it feels like you can sell a storyline in the way like Eric Bischoff, who did WWE.
Sure, I remember Eric.
And DZE.
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like you could do a very similar thing.
I'm sure you're making a lot of money now.
Your podcast is 12 times bigger than ours.
Very sweet of you.
But I think you can make a lot of money doing that.
I appreciate that.
And I just think there's a story.
And I have to say this, Andrew, because it's important to me because I didn't come here to give the bullet a hard time or to give an outer dirty laundry.
Like, I think that she's a really interesting gal.
I had a dream and I worked really hard and I fell short.
I didn't get to as good as she was or as talented or as many wins and as many gold belts.
If you had dirty laundry, would Holly Holm clean it?
And there'd be more.
Does that happen in the past?
Like, that would be a really incredible reason for them to fight.
It really would.
I mean, you have two people that just can't draw flies.
And I don't say it to pick on her.
I say it because there's a difference.
If you're going to come out, you're going to do the interview anyway.
Yeah.
One, you can sit criss-cross applesauce and speak to the audience like you're a sport.
Or the other one, you can come on to Ariel's show, talk about the world championship, the next girl you're going to beat up.
And by the way, I'm going to stop by this guy's room in the meantime.
Damn.
His legs, his knees might be weak by the time he walks in the main event because of me the night before.
There's a way to tell a story.
Damn.
And they're true.
Just come out and tell the story.
So, what makes a better fight?
Two heels or a heel in a face?
Well, there's nothing more monetizable than a cool heel.
Now, a cool heel is hard to come by.
A cool heel.
Stone cold.
Yeah.
The rock.
We're cool heels.
If you throw me in there, that was very sweet of you.
But Connor would go into that category too.
Connor didn't come out to get cheered.
He came out to get booed, but then he kind of looked cool doing it.
And he had the bow tie and he had the accent.
And, you know, he got a good little build on him.
All of a sudden, he wins world championships.
He's headlined Madison Square Guard.
I mean, some of that stuff just happens.
The other part you can manufacture.
I just suggest if you have a story to tell your story, that would be my only advice.
If you have a story, tell your story.
If you try to lie to the audience, like Shevchenko, you're going to end up a co-main event.
If you're happy in your career, talk about the time that you won fights in a co-main event spot.
Do it your way.
So it's better to have two heels, but if they're cool heels, that's even better.
I think it's just better to tell the story the way that it happened.
If you got a reason to fight this person, tell what it is.
If you have, you don't even know who this person is and Dana White drew the name out of a hat and you got a phone call one day, tell that.
If that really is the story, then go out and tell that.
Because that's also being a heel.
I don't know who this girl is.
Sure.
Dana White picked a name out of a hat.
I have no fucking clue who she is, but I'm going to get paid money to go there and beat her ass.
Yeah, and it's low level.
That's condescending.
It's like the new boyfriend has to act like he doesn't know the old boyfriend's name.
You know, he's not James Jack and calling John.
I mean, there's some stuff that's bigger than all of us.
I would just store for you if you're telling a story and you have a really good one to tell it, tell it.
I mean, I just gave you one on Shevchenko.
Give us one more point.
John Jones and Surreal Gone.
Okay, well, you got to understand: here's the problem: John Jones is like my arch nemesis.
So I got to look at this from a negative standpoint, but I'll come out and tell the story the way that it is.
In the top 25 ranked heavyweights, there's only one who's never had a wrestling match.
His name is Surreal Gone.
There's only one heavyweight in the top 25 that doesn't have a black belt in jiu-jitsu.
His name is Surreal Gone.
Surreal Gone is one in one in his last two.
He sucks.
And the most conversation I ever had with Surreal Gone in family.
Yeah.
The most conversation I've ever had on this guy in my life is with John Anik, where we're arguing over the correct enunciation of the guy's last name, which happens to be gone.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now, I don't say that because I have heat with Surreal.
I want to take away from what the glorious moment that John's about to have.
I'm an evil person, and I want to get in front of them.
I will burn Surreal Gone just to take away from John.
Now, John, meanwhile, doesn't have a license in this weight class, sat out after failing more drug tests than me, which is hard to do.
And thumb up his ass for three years.
Thumb up his ass for three years, all because Dominic Reyes should have got the jump on him.
And I'm like, these are the two guys for the world championship.
John Jones goes from the youngest champion of all time to the oldest contender in the company's history.
Come on.
Do you resent John a little bit because he's kind of a real-life heel who gets to be kind of a face?
Yes.
And you are.
Whoa.
Yeah, because I've heard.
I knew when I walked in here, I resent him.
I thought that that was jealousy and possibly even envy, but I like how you said it.
That might be a better one.
You are.
And you're proud of the fact I don't.
Plus, you love your wife a lot.
She dresses up.
That's a hot woman.
You ever seen my wife, Miss Brittany?
Yeah, dude.
This is face behavior.
Yeah, dude.
It's a real-life face, but when the cameras are on, you go heel.
And then John Jones is almost the opposite, and he gets the adulation.
And I know you say booze are like cheers for a heel, but it's still got a sting a little bit.
Yes.
That you're such a good guy and you don't get the cheers.
You get the booze.
There's some truth to that.
I mean, I can't deny what you just said.
Nobody's ever said it back to me, but that sounds right.
You spent your whole career trying to be hated and people just love you.
Yeah.
Well, maybe.
I mean, you guys are being a little overly nice to me.
I've got to tell you, but I do want to at least tell the story.
What I got to hear from Dana.
I was like, I wasn't going to hate on you in the beginning.
He just wouldn't do it.
I told you fucking Canadian.
I thought maybe you were going somewhere with this.
This guy's the ultimate patriot.
I'm like, I'm going to call him Canadian.
I didn't know.
I didn't know where we were going with that.
But I said, I got to hear from Dana White, right?
I did an interview last night.
I got to hear from Dana.
Why are you burying my main event?
It's like, well, let me tell you why I'm burying your main event.
It purely comes from envy.
It comes from envy.
My envy that I have for John.
I tried to fight John.
I couldn't beat John.
John was better than me.
And instead of having to admit that, I still got to be a man, so I got to come out and bury him.
But that's the real truth.
The other side of it is he's your youngest champion.
He's now your oldest contender, and he's fighting a guy that's one and one in his last two.
Oh, and by the way, Chev Chenko, who's the queen of the sport, is a co-main event.
I'm not saying that's not true.
But there's a way to tell the truth and make it interesting.
Okay, talk to me.
Well, I feel like I'm doing that now.
I feel like I just laid the truth out for you, but I made it interesting.
I feel like I did that.
But what is the desire?
Like, I feel like the desire to see John Jones fight has nothing to do with Cyril Gaunt.
It's like, does he still have it after three years?
Is he the greatest of all time?
Can he move up and do it?
But it has nothing to do with this fight.
So you're basically limiting yourself by 50% of the promotion.
There's no interest.
Like, I don't need to see him beat Cyril Gaunt.
Sure.
And I'm not like in love with Cyril Gaunt enough to see him beat John Jones.
I don't even know if they've spoken at all in the promo for this fight.
Sure.
They had like back to like, what is it?
I'm going to not face off, but like if they, you know, on ESPN hopped on, talked some shit about one of them.
Not that I've seen.
Not that I've seen.
It's tough.
The single greatest storyline in heavyweight history was Francis and Gono versus Surreal Gaunt, finding out that they were teammates, that the coach had to make a split, the manager made a split, they moved away.
Those guys, and it was projected to do 1.2 million, just to share for you.
It did just over 300,000.
It was the biggest flop of last year.
And it was a stunning thing to watch.
It flopped because those guys refused to tell a story.
Neither one of them wanted to meet.
They were focused.
They were telling their whatever it was.
We barely sell out the arena.
Nobody watches on pay-per-view.
And then Francis wants to turn the gun on the company and act like I'm going to walk away and go fight Tyson Furious.
What difference does it make if you do?
Nobody's tuning in to watch you fight.
Tyson Fury's Mental Game 00:15:05
I don't know if Dana will ever have a better story for Francis than he had with Surreal.
I just, those don't come along very often.
But he's supposed to turn it into a bigger fight.
I mean, of course you, of course, you let the guy walk.
I mean, I think the story with Francis is just being the most destructive human being on the planet.
And I don't know how much more you need after that.
For sure.
You know, like even the early Tyson days, it's like this guy's going to just devour somebody.
And I think that's what we started seeing with Francis.
And his backstory is cool, too.
Oh, his backstory is great and it's sweet.
But I hear what you're saying.
It's like, nobody wants a sweet backstory.
They want to see the blood boil a little bit.
So how do you make the blood boil?
Yeah.
And we can say it's sweet and great.
We can do those things to be nice.
It did 300,000 on a projected 1.2.
Like, you don't have to pretend to be nice to Francis.
He sucks as a draw.
That's the truth.
Well, because he's a face.
But is that why they let him go?
Yeah.
I mean, at some point, what are you going to do?
I'm never going to get this.
They're going to cut the fucking check.
Absolutely.
They'll cut it for Connor.
100%.
100%.
I mean, I'm just sharing for you.
Like, we needed to sit back and be nice because here's what your numbers are.
Here is the opportunity you had with the single greatest storyline in history.
And here's what your numbers were.
Here's also how many times you went on ESPN, how many times you went on Roanhares, how many times you sat down with Andrew.
There's ways to look at what you did to create that number.
And he and Surreal took their ball and went home.
That's just the truth.
I don't know why Surreal at one and one is getting put back in a main event when you can't count on him anyway.
What are you going to do if Surreal becomes your champion?
You already had that problem.
You're going to stop selling tickets in the heavyweight division?
Who would you put there?
Well, that's why they're in a tough spot right now.
I would have liked to have seen Stipe.
I don't think his time's done, but I know that clock's ticking.
I know he's close to 40.
I think he's over it.
And I know that clock's ticking.
I'd like to see Francis get back in there.
That would be my prediction.
What happens with Francis next?
My prediction is that he comes back home.
I think that Francis versus John is something really special.
And other than that, I mean, the heavyweight's got some work to do.
Why is that special?
What's the storyline?
He feels it right.
Francis being as big as he was.
Francis barely making the limit.
We don't have a lot of big guys in boxing either until the clinch goes came along.
Or now Tyson Fury.
We really never had anybody that was a really big guy.
Size was always a disadvantage.
So did you bring a gun?
Lennox was big.
Lennox was six.
Lennox was a big man.
6'6, something like that.
For sure.
I'm not saying it has big.
Foreman was massive, but I hear what you're saying.
Ali was probably 212 pounds or something like that.
198, the night he won the heavyweight championship.
Mike Tyson, you need to talk about a reach advantage and a size advantage.
Mike Tyson never had the longer arm and he never weighed more than a single opponent.
I just think that's interesting because it's really not an advantage to have a longer arm.
It's really not an advantage to weigh more.
But we continually call it one.
So I only bring that to you because it is something interesting about Francis.
Okay, he's got this destruction.
Okay, just on size alone.
We know size matters.
He hits something.
He can destroy it.
All of those.
Then he takes on John Jones, who was a national collegiate wrestling champion.
John Jones seems to be one takedown away from taking everything from Francis.
But can he take him down?
It's an interesting one because according to John, no.
According to John himself, I'm not big enough.
According to John, I will not get in there.
I will not even try until I get to a certain weight, which took him three years to do.
And I think just that denial and refusal to fight Francis until he got big enough that he was comfortable fighting Francis makes for a mystique of can he beat Francis.
And you also have the pound for pound great.
Would you call Francis the pound for pound?
Oh, no.
No, he was the best at heavyweight, but no, I don't think he was very well.
Okay, the most destructive person on the planet.
There you go.
Sure.
Versus the greatest of all time at MA.
Sure.
Everybody wants to see that.
Pretty much.
There's a good story there.
And you can, I mean, I don't know if he wants it, but you could make John Jones a heel against, because there's no more bigger face than Francis.
Sure.
It's based on his story.
So even the failure with the Cyril Gon fight, as somebody who's admittedly big novice at the UFC, I would say, isn't that on the heel to carry that fight?
Because this guy's the face.
You beat the heel if you're gone.
Now you got to fucking, now you're cooking.
I love what you're saying.
I don't disagree with any of that.
And Francis is, you know, you guys comment that you know his story.
Boy, that almost brings a tear to your eye.
When you hear what he went through to get here, like that, that is such a lovable story.
And I don't know why he didn't embrace telling that more.
I don't know why he let that go.
I don't know why he, you know.
I feel like he shared it.
For Francis to fight Tyson Fury is not a draw.
Just like McGregor to fight Mayweather is not a draw.
I disagree.
That's a draw.
The sitting.
That's crazy.
Well, I'll tell you this way.
Disagree with me if I make this claim, though.
McGregor did not get paid to fight Mayweather.
The simultaneous two-division UFC champion with Dana White in his corner got paid to fight Mayweather.
I'm with you on that.
I think Francis is more valuable to that Tyson fight if he is the current heavyweight champion.
According to Tyson, Tyson said, I will box the UFC champion.
Well, now he's got a guy that's not the champion.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And if you ever want to see that get spoiled, Dana White grabs a microphone one time and says, Tyson, if you really want to do this, here's John Jones and I'll let you fight him.
Dana says that one time Francis, well, in France, no one will ever say Francis' name again.
And that's just the truth.
Yeah, but Tyson's going to absolutely obliterate John.
And John's not going to do it.
And Dana's not going to do it.
I get the play there.
I'm just sharing, you know, this was a very risky.
There is value.
I think we're undermining the value of the UFC in France's promotion, especially since he might not be the greatest at promoting himself outside of the sport.
Sure.
Hmm.
That's interesting.
So the longer he's outside of the UFC, the more the stock kind of goes down.
It would seem.
And then the less interested Tyson is in the fight.
It would seem.
You guys are counting.
Like, I still think Francis has a chance against Tyson.
To beat Tyson?
Yeah.
Four ounce of gloves is something you guys have brought up.
Okay, with the four ounce gloves, maybe he connects, but you're talking about, I think, and I'm a boxing fan.
I think there isn't a heavyweight in history that could beat Tyson Fury.
I agree.
Yeah.
Sadly.
It's crazy to say it, isn't it?
And it's sad too, because it takes a nostalgia away.
I grew up in the Mike Tyson era.
But Mike is 5'10.
He's got to beat Tyson.
I know.
And it's one of those things where it's like, it's hard to even formulate the sentence where you go, Tyson Fear is the greatest heavyweight boxer in history.
But I think he is.
But you just said size and reach doesn't make a, doesn't give you an advantage.
At 6'9?
Yeah, 6'9 versus 5'10.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a tipping point for sure.
But that's beautiful what you're saying.
I mean, if more people thought that.
It's also from what I understand, Tyson's footwork is amazing.
Like Shaq, just for his size.
And that size to have feet like that is crazy.
I think that's similar about Tyson Facebook.
It's just hard.
Sure.
Yeah.
I'm just...
But anyway, I would watch it.
But yeah, we'd love to see UFC versus boxing because I think that we naturally have this curiosity about who are the most destructive people.
And boxing has this legacy, right?
And a huge advantage within their own discipline.
When the MMA guys come in and they fight the boxers, they often lose.
When the MMA guys come in and they fight the boxers, they often lose.
Why do you think that is?
You've done both?
Do you think it's a distance thing?
Do you think it's just not as much experience?
It has surprised me how much the boxers lock up when they're uncomfortable.
I mean, it has flat stunned me.
Mike Tyson lost a fight, and it was the one that he lost to Holyfield, which really shook the world.
And Tyson, after the fight, you know, he fell apart, he broke mentally.
But afterwards, when he was talking about why he fell apart, he broke mentally, he was talking about the headbutting.
And he was being headbutted.
Every time they clinch, even it was a bump, but it was breaking him.
And it just surprised me.
I go, wait a minute, he hit you five times harder than he barely bumped you.
He did more damage hitting you in the liver than he ever did brushing your head.
This was a soft blow, but it was a blow that he wasn't supposed to do.
And that broke him.
And I just remember that night.
I remember where I was in college.
And then I remember where I was when I watched that fight.
And I heard Mike Tyson say that.
And it stuck with me to this day.
And I've had people take me out of my game doing the same thing.
I fell apart in a fight one time with Anderson Silva.
And he did a few things that were illegal, but one of them is he reached down and grabbed my shorts and he held me in place.
He grabbed my shorts and turned them.
And he's like, whoa, and I slipped out of the way.
I didn't hit.
But mentally, he just, that's the third thing he's done.
My shorts didn't hurt me.
He didn't damage me at all.
He didn't tire me out.
He did nothing, but he wasn't supposed to do it.
So I was not ready for it.
I was not mentally ready for it.
Does the referee not see what's happening?
How could this be going on?
And there was two or three of those.
And you do start to, it starts to change you.
Yeah.
That's, you're saying what happens to the MMA guys when they're fighting against boxers.
Well, the other way around, where the boxers who can take a lot bigger shot, but they don't take it.
You know, if they get hit with an elbow, even if that elbow didn't hurt as much as the upper because the box, I watched them fall apart.
They get clinched.
They fall apart.
You're weak in the spots.
You don't train to prepare for it.
But when they're fighting in boxing, like Jake really exposed it, I think, a lot of times, where it's like he was fighting guys who were strikers, who had a lot of success striking MMA, and then he would be able to beat them up in a boxing ring.
Yep.
But maybe it goes to the same thing.
Maybe those MMA guys aren't used to getting hit with certain shots.
Sure.
It could be.
I mean, that would be an interesting thing.
You know, and Jake just had power and Jake was better.
Yeah.
You know, if anybody ever finds themselves in a fight that's harder than they thought it was going to be, that's where upsets come.
That's when a guy breaks.
That's when a guy, things unravel very quick in any competition.
If the competition is harder than you thought it was going to be, it's very hard to fix it that night.
And I think that Jake did surprise a couple people.
I think that, you know, Jake was a legitimate tough guy.
Do you ever wonder why you got into this?
I think you're a smart guy.
I could have done a lot of things.
You could have done a lot of different things.
You have opportunities.
I appreciate that.
No, this is what I wanted to do.
Yeah, I was a wrestler.
I wanted to be a wrestler, but combat was, I mean, at my house, me and my dad, like, that's what we watched.
That's what we talked about.
So, okay, there's an interesting one.
How much of this I grew up watching boxing with my pops.
My dad used to actually cover boxing back in the day.
So he would like go to Ali's camp and shit like that.
Like really kind of cool, great stories.
And he really glorified and romanticized boxing.
And I just loved it.
Is he still around?
He is, he is.
Okay, good for you.
Yeah.
And then, so when I was in college, I was like, you know, let me train and I'll try to do this and I'll do like a smoker.
And I realized in that moment, I'm like, I'm really doing this because I admire this man so much.
And I think it probably is something that he would admire if I took on this sport.
And I really enjoyed it and I thought it was really cool.
But I think a lot of the stuff that motivates us as sons specifically are the affection and like validation of our parents, especially our fathers.
For sure.
And I wonder, like, would you have found this without your dad's interests?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Probably not.
And was he super proud to watch you?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was.
Was that?
Yeah, yeah.
He had a good time with that.
But the sport, my dad, we lost him in 2002.
And the sport was very different back then.
Like, we had some of our heroes that were doing it.
I was in Oregon and Randy Couture and Dan Henderson, Matt Lynn.
They've gone on and had some success.
It was kind of a thing.
The Northwest was a real hot bed for it.
But, you know, where it is now, it went on Fox and it was on ESPN.
And that wasn't anybody's vision.
Nobody thought that Dana could do with it what he did do with it.
When you fought in the UFC in 2005, 2006, were you a heel then?
Were you focused on being a heel?
I was trying to be.
Okay.
I couldn't get him to cover me.
The first MMA reporter that ever called me was a girl.
She's now a good friend of mine.
Her name is Loretta Hunt, but she worked for a company called SureDog.
And SureDog.com was the number one website at that time.
They had a forum board and you could go make fights on there.
Just call somebody out.
You can make it all the way to the UFC by getting something going on on this internet site.
So she interviewed me and she stops the interview.
And I was going heel.
I was calling out Chuck Liddell and I was making fun of a grown man with a mohawk and tattoos on his skull.
And I was doing this whole thing on Chuck Liddell.
Yeah, right.
I mean, very simple stuff, but nobody talked about anybody that way, particularly Chuck Liddell.
And she stopped the interview and she said, I'm turning the recorder off.
She said, you're not who I thought you were.
I never would have called you.
I was recommended to you by Randy Couture.
And I can see that he's made a mistake and I've wasted my time.
Wow.
And I stayed in character the whole way.
I told you, you're right, you called the wrong person.
You're right.
Blah, blah, blah.
And I thought she would run it.
That was the goods.
And she did not.
That was in 2005.
That interview never saw the light of day.
But I had a number of people.
My college coach, Chuck Kearney, pulled me off of interviews.
We didn't have the internet back then, but we had local hometown papers.
And this would just be for a dual meet for wrestling matches.
And I would be cutting these promos and the reporter would be right.
And then he would go back and tell the head coach.
The head coach would stop it.
It would never see print.
So I had about 10 years of trying to get over and trying to help a sport and trying to get interest that I had people stopping me because they didn't understand it.
So you trained your whole life to be the whole time I was there.
And that's why I was wondering.
I was wondering when people, you said when people cheer for you, you got uncomfortable, but you also said the cool heel is the greatest thing.
You became the cool heel and didn't know how to handle it probably because you trained your whole life to be booed.
Sure.
And then the second you achieved the max status, you're like, what the fuck is this?
This is not, this is not what I signed up for.
Perhaps, perhaps.
I mean, I'm listening to you right now because no one's ever psychoanalyzed me, but I'm hearing what you're saying and I don't disagree with it.
I actually really like this.
But yeah, Andrew, they pulled me from interviews.
They stopped running it.
Loretta never went through.
There was a promo you cut that worked.
Yes.
It was, I was fighting a guy in the WEC named Paulo Philo, and Paulo was ranked number one.
At that time, Anderson was number two.
Paulo was number one.
He came through Pride.
He was 16-0 and he was undefeated.
And it was a very simple line.
And I said, I told the media this.
I said, I've got a picture of Paulo Philo.
I put it in my shoes.
So every time I take a step, I'm walking right on his face.
And that was so salacious.
That was so dirty that he responded to it.
He was sitting there, you know, and somebody reads it to him.
They give an interpreter, then he gives his response.
And you can see in his eyes, it genuinely hurt his feelings.
It genuinely affected.
It was a very sad moment.
He couldn't believe that I said that.
And he made him re-say it.
And he said at 13, you know, because he thought he was hearing it wrong.
And as simple as that line is, by today's standard, back then in 2007, nobody talked that way.
That was like the dirtiest line that had ever been spoken.
Did you ever reach out to him and say, Hey, man, Deshaun America?
No, I thought maybe he got it over time.
I always hoped that he did.
You know, a few of those guys, I think there's still, you know, maybe some band-aids that need to be put on.
There's a great actual video of Minotaro responding to somebody in the audience.
I saw it.
Did you really feel bust a cat?
He's in front of this huge audience.
And he just laughs and goes, I hate that shit.
I hate that shit.
He goes, I have horses on my wrench.
Every time I saw a picture of the horses, they always ask me if I'm seeing a cat.
And I saw where he responded.
I know the exact piece you're talking about.
It was a QA.
And he handled it so cool.
He said it like such a Google as a joke.
So that's in front of behind the scenes.
He's one of the coldest guys to me.
He will not say hello when I see him in person.
He frowns.
I was even visiting with Bamba, a Brazilian friend of mine.
He comes up to Bomba.
We're at a restaurant.
We get separate.
He comes up to Bamba and says, Why are you hanging out with this guy?
He's no good.
Bamba's like, No, man, this is all an act.
Yeah.
Of everybody that I've ever dealt with, Noguera, who's been nothing but polite publicly, is one guy behind the scenes that never got it.
Both those guys are dicks to me.
Both those Nogueras are rude to me when I say that.
Sure.
I got him in the back of the bottom.
Post-Fight Apologies and Respect 00:15:02
Do I say hello when I die?
I'll do these, you know, hello.
And they never got it.
What can I do?
Well, they get it.
Yeah.
But I don't know what to do.
It also makes me feel like they fed a fucking bust of cat.
What if you live right by Adam?
What if you look at a picture of their farm?
It's just hundreds of buses.
Hundreds of people's people.
It's just buses everywhere.
There's a supercut of you saying that same story in multiple interviews.
And it's the consistency with which you tell that story is so impressive.
It's the first time he said it every time.
It's when Rogan goes, did everyone really feel this?
And then you go, you go, yeah, that's what the tip is.
Timing.
And getting to Rogan to laugh isn't easy, by the way.
I mean, he's good.
Rogan's good.
I'm curious, have you ever said anything that you felt like crossed the line, even in hindsight?
Now that you're kind of out of the game, are you looking back being like, damn, maybe I got in the moment, shouldn't have said that one thing?
Probably.
Probably had some more time to think about it.
But I do remember Paulo Philo's response when he was told that he, you know, I've got a picture of him, I put my shoe and I step on his face.
I just looked at it from a different perspective when he had to be told it three times and I saw his eyes change and his face change.
I thought, well, you know, even if he's undefeated and he's ranked number one, he's the world champion, he's still a guest.
He's coming from Brazil.
Like, I know all these people.
We're in my hometown.
We got my aunt and uncle here.
We got my, he doesn't know anyone.
You know, maybe, maybe, maybe that was a mean thing to say to him.
I was just trying to get some interest.
Nobody had ever talked to him that way.
Everybody was scared of him.
So on one hand, I achieved what, you know, with my own code of rules, you step up to people in front of you only.
You don't step down.
At the same time, he was a guest and I hurt his feelings.
And I thought it was kind of rude.
Yeah.
I'd rather not hurt a guy's feelings.
Okay, what about the Tito?
Piss him off is one thing.
Hurt his feelings.
I don't want to hurt his feelings.
What about the Tito with the Jenna Jameson?
Yeah.
Yeah, that was a good one.
That was a good one.
Do you remember the line?
Oh, yeah.
What is Tito goes?
This guy only makes money.
What is it?
Yeah, he's, oh, this guy's not a world champion.
This guy just makes money running his mouth.
Yeah, yeah.
He said, the only person to make money using their mouth is your ex-wife.
That was all that I said.
I just made that.
And then it turns out, like, on a technicality, that Tito impregnated her, but he never actually married her.
He actually corrected the statement.
He wanted that known.
We have kids together, but I never married her.
It was the weirdest man.
I was.
We lived in sin, goddamn it.
I did not marry her.
Where did you get that from?
You got to be more accurate with the roast, dude.
That's on you.
Yeah.
I'm sure he tried to get alimony from her and it didn't work out.
He found out that he wasn't actually married.
No, I never apologized.
I figured that the people would get it.
In fact, Tito's another one.
After our fight, I congratulated him.
Good job.
And it was our second time meeting.
I beat him in college.
Now he beat me here.
And it was this terribly embarrassing thing.
He really is a very bad fighter.
So to lose to Tito, it's very embarrassing.
You don't want to be the guy that lost to Tito.
I become the guy who loses Tito.
So, but I congratulate him.
I was cordial.
I saw him in the back after our locker room was right by each other.
I told him.
And he told me, if you want me to accept that apology, you will do it publicly at the press conference.
And I was just standing there like, it's like, Tito, I am humiliated right now.
I'm not getting a bonus check.
I'm going to walk out there.
I lost to you and you sucked.
I'm standing there looking at him and I'm just nodding.
I'm dumbfounded that he tells me if he wants to accept, I've known him for 21 years.
If you'll accept, I have to do it publicly.
So we get to the press conference and the whole thing's over.
Scott Coger tells everybody, thank you for coming.
And Tito stops.
Hold on.
Jail, do you have something you would like to say?
He actually wanted this apology.
I just thought for a winner to do that to the loser after the fact.
It was a very underhanded thing.
I said, no, I never gave him the apology.
Yeah, he's acting like she was his wife.
Yeah, it was a really weird thing to do.
It's been weird between Tito and I ever since because of that.
Because he demanded a public apology.
Is there anybody who's like, Tito, we just sold this arena out, you snowbag.
Yeah.
And I lost to you.
Yeah.
Not to mention you're choke, but not to mention I threw the fight to start with.
You could give me a thank you, right?
I mean, you could give me, but it was just a weird thing.
Then he wants an apology on top of that.
Did you often break character to tell people like, yo, we're trying to sell tickets right now?
Because you, well, you said you had a story about when I think Vanderlay was his name when he came up to you in Ultimate Fighter.
I think they stopped production and you had to talk to him.
Yes.
You want to tell that story?
I thought it was a good idea.
That is a very true story.
So I get to Brazil and they wanted to kill me at this time.
But you know, that's a funny thing you say now.
But no, this was real.
Like they really wanted to kill me.
And MMA is the number two sport in Brazil, only behind soccer.
So as popular as it is in America, in Brazil, everyone knows who you are.
Every taxi driver, everywhere, I mean, everybody knows who you are.
They really made it a mainstay.
So I get brought out there to be the evil villain.
And Vandalay is going to come in and set me straight.
But I am alone.
I don't have anybody.
I got my coach with me that used to be a male man and everybody else we're meeting.
And some people are a little bilingual and they're not.
But that actual atmosphere is important because when Vandalay decides to attack me, he's got 20 guys with him and I'm by myself.
So I'm trying to explain to him, Vandalay, I'm the bad guy.
I got brought here to be the bad guy.
You get to be the shiny knight.
But if you attack me, it makes me vulnerable.
It makes me the victim, which is going to endear me to the audience.
And I don't know if Brazil and America, I don't know, but I can tell you the most powerful thing in America right now is the victim.
But more power than the astronaut, than the doctor, than the millionaire.
The victim is the power.
And I was trying to explain that to him about our culture.
Don't, don't victimize me.
Don't bully me.
Don't come up to me 20 on one.
Do it one-on-one.
Make me the bad guy.
That's why we're here.
And he never really got that concept.
He never fully understood that concept.
And I was pleading with him at this point because they're going to stop filming.
He's threatening he's going to walk off if I don't apologize to Brazil.
And it's like, oh, God, it's day one, Vandalay.
There's 31 days.
Imagine that I apologize.
What do we do now?
Why are we here?
Why is this show happening?
It was a tough concept to get him to.
Is there anybody that got it and then thanked you afterwards?
Yes.
Vandalay.
Wait a minute, really?
Yeah, Vandalay got he actually thanked me yesterday.
It actually came out yesterday in a release.
And my coach Fabiano sent it to me and it meant a lot.
And Vandalay, he said, you know what?
He played that.
He was talking about me.
He said he played that character so good, I believed it.
He said, I thought he was a scumbag.
I thought he hated our country.
I thought he hated me.
He said, I didn't know it was an act.
And then he came out and he said, I really respect what he did.
And this was just yesterday.
That was a nice compliment.
Because he earned money off of it or because it built up the fight.
It built up his status.
Yeah, that's right.
He understanded what you did for me.
He finally understood.
And you helped them buy soap and shampoo, which is hopeful.
Brushes and two pieces I don't have.
I can't believe they have computers.
Yeah, which is an old, by the way, which is an old Andy Kaufman bit.
I don't know if you ever saw it.
It's called One Night in Hollywood.
But if you ever want to understand how a heel works on a face and building characters, Andy Kaufman was a genius.
He really was.
And he really never quite got the praise, but he did a pro wrestling match.
Andy Kaufman sold out an arena three times.
He finally does the match, by the way, which consists of a guy picks him up and drops him.
They do nothing else.
They sold out an arena to watch this.
Andy Kaufman gets one hold of his choice.
He gets one move to start the match.
Now, he could kick the guy in the nuts.
He could hit him with a steel folding chair.
He could give the macho man elbow drop off the top rope.
He could do any move he wants.
He chooses a standing side headlock.
Now, a standing side headlock is what I would put you in before I gave you a noogie.
Okay.
It is the most innocent thing that you could possibly do.
He gives him a standing side headlock.
Lawler picks him up, drops him, never moves again.
Now, they sold $200,000, and this is in the 70s, worth of tickets to watch this thing.
So they put him on a stretcher and they got to carry him out, and his neck is broken.
And he never, not one single wrestling move aside.
Wow.
Just standing side.
And that is a genius, gentleman.
Is that your biggest heel influence?
Who else did you learn about being a heel from?
The Andy Kaufman story, yes, is one that I turn to a lot.
When I try to teach it or explain to somebody else, I will encourage them.
Go back and watch this.
But I mean, that's just what I just said.
He went and did a pro wrestling match.
He never learned how to wrestle.
He sold a building three times.
He sold it three times before he actually went to the ring and finally got in.
I mean, this was a 40-minute production.
He refused to get in the ring.
The referee's calling him in.
He gets onto their fur head and he lets go and he walks around.
And he starts doing the chicken act.
You know, you got people there sitting there screaming.
They're furious.
He needs to get in.
He refused to get in.
Think how much everyone hates you.
Yeah.
So now the main wrestler is in the ring and he's doing this whole thing.
He literally nothing more than a standing side headlock.
And they sold out an area three times for this move.
I just think there's a genius at play there.
I thought it was very good.
He's broken.
Who cuts the best promos?
Even WWE, all that shit.
Well, you know, Stone Cold was very good because he went into business for himself.
The Rock is hard to beat.
The Rock is just a very talented guy in that regard.
I thought Stone Cold's work was better, but that is a fine line of best promo.
I think what McGregor does is great because McGregor is true to the gimmick.
You know, the fact that when he did the Your Wife Was In Me DMs, I mean, he's broken in half.
He's on the canvas.
Joe Rogan's down on a knee to interview him.
And people say, well, that's a real jerk and a real scumbag.
It's like, or, or that's a performer that until the freaking ship went down stayed with the character.
I mean, I thought people should have given him, you know, hard that you'd be in shock.
Your body's in shock.
You got a compound fracture and he stayed with the gimmick till the end.
There's the there's that moment Akash was showing me before that it was it was I think DC after DC beats Silva.
Okay.
And I think he's getting booed after beating Silva.
Yep.
And I think he started to maybe like explain to the crowd or say, listen, give it up for Silva or something like that.
And you gave extreme pushback on that.
Yep.
You never explain anything.
Yep.
You lean into the energy.
What would you have done?
He said, yeah.
You would have said, fuck you to all of them.
Oh, yeah.
Well, there was a night they were going to give me the world championship.
I fought John Jones.
And John was pounding me.
He was pounding me with his elbow.
If you're underneath John Jones, when you get up, whether the referee brings you up or you get up, you're now a different person.
I will tell you that right now.
It is a, when he gets on top of you one time, he was hitting me so hard that he dug his feet in so hard that his toe, his bone, popped through his skin.
It's a compound.
So his bone is now sticking out.
And we go to our corner in between and they saw it and they would have stopped it.
They would have stopped it and given me the win.
He couldn't continue like that.
The doctor saw it the whole bit.
And John goes into shock when he looks down and sees it.
He goes into shock.
He gets control of himself and he finishes it.
But just to your point, Andrew, so this was the setup and they asked me what I would have done.
And I said I would not have apologized.
I would have held the belt up.
I would have reminded everybody of the golden rule, the one with the gold rules, and I'd have walked out.
But that's what I would have done.
But nobody else would have.
They would have apologized.
They would have given it back.
I've seen people take the belt off and give it, or the interim belt.
This isn't even a championship.
And I've seen them throw it down.
It's just these really weird things.
It's like, why are you apologizing?
Why are you giving anybody that?
Why are you giving an inch, man?
There's no need to compromise.
Take it all.
They just want to be loved, huh?
Just want to be loved.
Did you go back to John Jones and the toad situation?
This is how they let him continue fighting.
So they didn't.
The fight was over.
Oh, they did stop it.
The ref stops it.
And there was only a few seconds left in the round.
So then he goes and he's having his celebrator moment and they look down and see it.
So now the doctor's in the ring.
They see it.
He literally goes into shock.
Yes.
He literally goes into shock.
And then this is one, I've always had a respect for John.
The press conference, because this fight was in New Jersey, the press conference like 1.30 in the morning.
And he should have been in an ambulance and off.
And he refused to go.
He wrapped it himself and walks into the press conference just to tell it.
He just wanted to tell the media, you know, thanks for coming.
And I beat this guy.
And he wanted to have his mom.
Did you want to be building up the fight?
Yes, he did.
John.
Did you reach out personally about that?
Yes.
And has there ever been somebody that reached out before the fight was signed and said, listen, I want you to do your thing.
Go for it.
Don't talk about my daughter.
Or I want you to do your thing.
Go for it.
Here are the rules.
Would you respect that if somebody did that?
I would have abided by it.
I don't know if I would have respected it.
I would have honored it, though.
If they were like, hey, man, this is a stick.
My daughter's going through something hard.
I'm really worried that you're going to do this.
Can you just not?
I would not have done it.
I would have.
Because it is an emotional advantage that you can build.
I think it's something.
This is something I think Jake does really well.
And I think he handles two things.
He handles the onslaught of criticism.
It is nonstop criticism.
Like you said, most people want to be loved.
They're into the performance art, if you will.
I know it's cage fighting, but you're still performing and there's adulation attached to it.
He's willing to be fucking despised and hated.
And that's painful.
That's an emotional burden you got to carry.
Yeah.
And then he bestows an emotional burden on the opponent, right?
Which is what you are doing.
It's like, once the fight is announced, the next six weeks or eight weeks, it's going to be fucking tough for that guy.
Every single day they're going to ask you, well, what do you have to say?
Taylor just said this about you.
And that's the goal, right?
Yep.
It's to make him furious.
Yeah.
Every day.
And I appreciate what you're saying about Jake.
I mean, that's another guy I don't think gets credit.
And I would give that to his brother too, but those are legit tough guys.
I mean, they legitimately work hard.
Even his brother is over doing the wrestling thing.
He claims he doesn't train.
He's incredible.
He's coming off the top rope, but the whole time, not only is he doing the techniques, he's working the psychology of the room.
He's listening to them.
He's making facial reactions.
He knows where the camera is.
He knows where his beat is when he's speaking.
It's unbelievable what a good job he's doing.
It's Hall of Fame quality, and he's been at this thing.
Yeah.
Did you consider that?
20 days, all in, all in, it's probably 20 days worth of matches.
Did McMahon hit you up and be like, hey, let's do WWE.
You do the thing.
You don't have to take all the damage.
Yeah, I don't understand why you wouldn't just get into the game.
One time, but it was, I reached out to them, and I was 33 years old, and they said, you're too old.
They said, we were sure you could do it, but we're looking for guys that are 19 and 20.
They said it would take about six months for you to learn how to wrestle, but it would take two years for you to learn the psychology.
They never told me what that meant.
But I felt like I was a master of psychology.
I felt like I was the one writing the thing.
Yeah, I can, trust me.
I've got it right now.
Give me a microphone.
I can get this moving right now.
And I was about to fight Anderson Silva in a title fight.
And they said, if you come on Monday night, if you beat Anderson and you come on Monday Night Raw with Dana's belt, we'll give you a million bucks.
And he said, no contracts.
We will take your word and we will send it to you.
And they said it just to stick it up Dana's ass.
And to this day, I don't know how Dana would mind.
To this day, I don't know.
I think he'd like it.
Yeah.
I'd have the foil for the UFC.
On a Monday, he would love it.
Yeah, yeah.
I said, yes.
Of course I said yes, but I was thinking the whole time like I'm gonna be Dana's gonna think this is great.
Yeah, I to this day don't know how that sticks it in Dana Vince would do the same if somebody did something on UFC to promote he'd love it.
He would love it.
I'm surprised.
I'm surprised Vince would think that that's sticking in Dana's ass unless he had you humiliated and you lost when you went in there.
But even if you lost because somebody like smashed a chair on your head when you weren't looking it's totally fine as long as there's an excuse for the loss.
I agree.
Yeah, I don't know how you could possibly make it a negative.
And in my mind, I just walked onto the ramp.
Promoting Fights Like a Heel 00:15:22
Nobody actually told me.
That's what I pictured.
I walk on the ramp and I got the belt and I got a million dollars.
I mean, this is what I pictured.
Yeah.
To this day, I don't know how it sticks at Dana's ass, but that was the exact phone call.
How much did you make fighting?
The most I ever made was 8.8 in one night.
Oh, what?
Made 8.8 million the second time I fought Anderson.
Wow.
And I know, I know.
I know I just became a scumbag to the audience.
I didn't mean to, but they used to post this publicly.
They love you.
And I think that's what I'm saying.
This is huge money.
I told that story one time to a guy named Brian, and Brian was a good friend of mine.
And Brian told me that that didn't happen.
And then he broke down the math.
He goes, here's what the gate was, and here's what the pay-per-view was.
And they just couldn't have done that.
And I said, yeah, just like that.
I just, I backtracked and just took it back.
Yep.
I had a friend and front row Brian was his name.
He was even a media personality.
And I told him I did 8.8 million and here's how we did it.
And he told me it wasn't so.
And I just said, yep, I just let it go.
Hold on.
This is wild.
Okay.
So sorry, I'm going to piss my face.
Go, 8.8.
Wow.
Now that's a stunning gate for a UFC fight now.
Not even gate.
That's a stunning payoff for a UFC fighter now.
Yes.
This is how long ago?
This was in 2012.
And I will tell you, those numbers are...
11 years ago.
The numbers are bigger than people.
What did Silva get?
I've always wondered that.
He had to get more.
No.
He had to.
Maybe you're getting paid as the heel.
Maybe.
Because they know that Silva can't promote it like you're going to promote it.
And where did you guys fight?
And I heard rumors, though, that he was like 3.2 million or 3.1 million.
And I've tried to confirm that.
But then he also told me a number that he thought we did in pay-per-views wasn't the number that we did in pay-per-views.
So I didn't know where this whole thing sat.
And so, I mean, it was just like when I was dealing with Brian, like there was just a time that I just stopped.
You got your money, that's all.
Yeah, it's like, yeah, you're right.
Okay, so 8.8.
So you did really well.
And what about when you were doing like, when you were basically running around fighting all like the stars?
Like, what about when you did your Bellatour run?
Yeah, well, Bellator was another great one.
It was a little bit different model because they didn't have the pay-per-view.
And one of the great things, I mean, it's like any great performer.
You watch this hand, so you don't see what this hand's doing.
And from day one, MMA has done a great job of coming out and saying, here's what the live gate was, and here's what the pay-per-view was.
Here's what the live gate and here's what the pay-per-view game.
Here's what the live gate.
And what they did over a period of time is they convinced the audience without even asking that they're in the live gate and pay-per-view business.
So now you get people that think they're smart to the business.
Oh, I know what it is.
And you've got two revenue streams.
But then a pandemic hits the world and all of a sudden you can't have a live gate.
But the one sport that kept going was MMA with absolutely no gates.
Zero sponsors.
$200.
There you go.
And it was thriving on top of that.
All of a sudden, you know, pay-per-view changed.
The pay-per-view model doesn't even exist today as it did in 2012 at all.
But the business and the doors stay open.
The sponsorships come in.
Well, the way the pay-per-view used to be in 2012, it was called pay-per-view, but you could go on DirecTV.
That's what it was called.
You can't push a button.
But it's very different now.
It's largely streamed now.
It's largely digital.
It's just a completely different business.
It's just not structured the same.
It's not even the same technology, the way that it comes through digitally.
So here, I'll give you a great example.
But John Jones set out because he was unhappy with his contract.
So John Jones comes back, he signs a new contract, and he has a guy named Richard Schaefer do it.
Now, John doesn't know this yet.
Schaefer from the Mayweather promotions?
Well, Golden Boy.
He formed Golden Boy.
That's right.
Yes, Oscar took the credit, but Schaefer did.
Schaefer was there.
I bumped it.
Very accomplished man.
Yeah, yeah.
He is a very accomplished man.
He's a sharp guy.
So he stepped in to help John Jones, and Dana respected him.
The problem is the deal that Schaefer did for Jones would have been a very good deal back in the pay-per-view model that Schaefer understood.
It's completely different now.
Or even the one that John walked away from three years ago.
The business has changed so much.
And these two knuckleheads put the, and I just watched this whole thing happen.
And I'm a nemesis of John, but I watched this happen.
And my evil side, God damn, how do you not know what you're doing?
And how do you bring in a guy from a generation and a technology and a business ago who's never done an MMA contract and he got a yes on his first day?
That should have been a clue to him.
The greatest sharks in the world gave you a yes on your first day, you dumb son of a, but here they are.
But here they are.
So do you know the details of the contract?
No, it was basically, so it comes with thresholds.
If you're, if you're in on the pay-per-view, it just comes with what's called thresholds.
And a standard of the industry would be 200,000 with this story that that's where we break even, which of course, but this is the story and it's consistent and it transcends times.
But then at 500,000, you bump to this number and 800,000, you bump to this, and a million you bump to this, and nobody ever bumps to all the way to that high except, you know, Lesnar and McGregor.
And basically that was it.
John just wanted a little bit more and he wanted the thresholds to be a little bit less.
But it's a completely different model now, even from three years ago when he walked away.
But John couldn't sit here and tell us what the MMA model is right now.
You couldn't sit him.
It's like Deontay Wilder and Francis and Gano out there running them out there about free agents.
Let's just sit them down and find out the economics of the fight game.
They could not tell you step number one.
Well, you're going to sell some tickets.
Okay, but the video is only so big.
What happens when the tickets are gone?
Well, then we're going to go.
They don't know it.
So when you're sitting there and you're trying to negotiate, you don't even know what it is you're talking about.
It's one of these, it's just one of these situations in life, right?
And there's a reason it's called a business and some of it's none of yours.
You got to do the work on your own.
You got to find out what you're doing.
But I will tell you, John sitting out because he wasn't happy with his pay and then signing a deal with Richard Schaefer that doesn't know the industry now really was something to watch.
It really was something to watch.
I just sit there and go, oh my God, three years of your life, you wasted the best in the world.
The best dude in the world could have had three fights a year.
You could have nine fights behind you.
You could have $50 million sit in the bank.
And now you're walking out to a deal that would have been good when you left three years ago.
Now, would you say...
And by the way, John, why do you think Richard Schaefer would know what he's doing in the world of MMA?
Well, he started Golden Boy.
Yeah, but let me ask you, but why would he know what he's doing in the world of MMA?
Yeah.
Well, he started Golden Boy.
Yeah.
Fair enough.
Maybe he was thinking he knows what he's doing in the world of promoting fights sports.
Yeah.
Schaefer's impressive.
That's all true.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, I guess a lot of agents rep NFL, NBA, MLB athletes.
Yeah.
To your point, the model changed.
And the Golden Boy model was interesting.
I think I remember the Golden Boy model being that it was, they were basically taking every dollar grossed from everything.
It was sponsorship, livegate, whatever, went into one bucket.
I'm pretty sure.
And like they were making even employees buy their own tickets.
Like nobody was getting free tickets.
And then actually, yeah, that's right.
This was the cash out deals that some people say have kind of like hurt boxing because there was very little money that was left for the promotion.
I remember Mayweather doing pretty much all the PR.
They would do the live events.
He would do those little like, you know, they would do the little tour when they were announcing the fight.
Do you remember they would do those little press tours?
Of course it was the PR.
They weren't spending that much on like advertising or anything because Mayweather was just promoting the fights and it kind of killed the boxing model in a way because these fighters started going, oh yeah, I'm just getting 90% of gross.
It's like, well, you're not Mayweather.
You can't promote a fight.
That's right.
You need to take 20% of that and dump it into fucking ads because they're boring.
Yes.
Yeah.
So the model was good if you could talk and it was horrible for you if you couldn't.
That's right.
Which isn't a big surprise.
I mean, it sounds like the way that it should be.
I mean, I'll just share with you that that is a really interesting thing.
You've got Deontay Wilder and Francis Agon.
Both these guys are mad at me.
Both of you guys have said these terrible things about me in the media lately, but it's because I give them a hard time.
I'm not giving a hard time to make fun of them.
I'm giving them a hard time.
So they ask themselves these very, I really am coming from a position of trying to help them.
Like, Deontay, Francis, what?
How do you make money and fight?
They just want somebody to hand me a check.
I mean, that's it.
Somebody hand me a chance, give me money.
It's like, back up.
Where does that guy get the money?
How does that money?
Like, let's just start in step number one.
You've been doing this for 20 years, goddammit.
How do you make a dollar in this business besides somebody giving you a check?
They don't know.
They both sit there quiet.
They have the foggiest idea.
It's like, but what did it behoove you to look into that just a little bit?
If you know the rules of the game, you can then manipulate the rules of the game.
And it's a weird step.
You got Deontay.
He's out there.
He's running his mouth on TV over the weekend that he wants to fight Francis.
You haven't had.
If I came on your show right now, Andrew, and I made an announcement that I was going to fight somebody, I would have Scott Coker already backing me.
Dana White and I already would have spoken.
He knew I was coming here.
He's going to write the check.
He's going to set the venue.
These guys have nothing.
And they think that that's a cool thing.
They think it's cool to say I'm a free agent, man.
You're the ugly girl sitting out that nobody asked.
That's who you are.
Nobody's looking at you thinking, oh, you're great.
You don't have a loyalty to anybody.
I don't sit in the business and see that you just burned your last guy and think, oh, I want to get in bed with you.
I say, you're a snake.
Look what you did to him.
He's my enemy, but look at what you did to him.
Beat it.
Is there anybody so undeniable that they don't have to have a loyalty?
Is there anybody that's bigger than the business?
Yeah, Nada, McGregor, Floyd.
No, but I get your point.
Floyd could do just about anything he wanted.
Floyd making this whole exhibition thing work.
Come on.
Good job.
Dude, I don't even understand it, but he keeps on getting checks to fight guys that aren't going to hurt him.
Yes.
And I'm not mad at it.
Did you see him do the 360 over the weekend with his Chamber's kid, if I'm saying that right?
They fought in England.
I had a friend that was there who was sending me photos.
I mean, the building was, it was pretty light.
It was a pretty light day of business.
But Charles connects with him and Floyd hits the 360 and does like a, it was cool.
I was entertained.
I found it to be entertaining.
He sits on the rope in the corner.
Like, yeah, it's perfect.
But if you would have told me five years ago, hey, Floyd's going to go to exhibitions and he's going to make money.
I'd say, no, he's not.
He's a fool.
Nobody's going to pay to see that.
But he's made it work.
You know, there's something there.
I don't think anyone's profiting from it, but I mean, he is.
Yeah, as long as he can keep changing promoters and there keeps on being a guy willing to lose money.
That's what keeps boxing open.
I mean, I came from the wrestling background.
I'd be the first to tell you, but we don't survive unless we got a guy willing to lose money.
Once that guy gets tired of it, we got to move to somebody else.
You know, wrestling events.
I was saying that wrestling, which I came from, amateur wrestling, but also boxing, only survives on a guy willing to lose money.
You get some guy that loves this or believes it's for the greater good or wants to be associated with a tough guy business, and he goes and puts some money until it goes dry and then somebody else comes along.
But as amateur wrestling, nobody turns a profit.
But the same thing goes with boxing.
Like, you know, we're told all these numbers of what McGregor and Mayweather did.
And those guys wanted a rematch.
They wanted to rematch right away.
They wanted a rematch to this day.
The promoter said, I'll never, they got their asses kicked.
Those promoters crushed on that fight.
Why?
Because the guarantees to Mayweather and McGregor were so hard.
They screwed up.
They screwed up.
Interesting.
I had heard the term fake news.
In fact, Donald Trump, as he was running for presidency, coined this phrase, fake news.
Why is he saying that?
What does that even mean?
You can trust the news.
There's no such thing as fake news.
I'm working for ESPN.
We're broadcasting the Mayweather-McGregor fight live.
And to this day, they will tell you that's a record.
That's the biggest fight ever.
That thing was sold out.
That place was, people were dressed up as empty seats, and I mean thousands of people.
No, I bought my mother's ticket that day.
That day, my mother decides that she wants to go to the fight.
So I'm in there and I'm telling the world that this place is sold out because that's what's on the screen.
It's not even close.
This isn't like, oh, it's pretty much.
This isn't, there's thousands of empty seats.
That was the first time that in my own life, I ever just, wow, fake news is real.
Wow.
And then Mayweather and McGregor, they wanted a rematch.
They were begging.
They were doing more media trying to get a rematch than they did leading into the first match.
And the guys that wrote the checks.
But why didn't it sell?
I mean, it's such two big draws.
They promote it so well.
All the money he's talking about.
Yeah, there's still a number.
Yeah.
I mean, no matter how big a draw is, there's still a number.
If this guy got $100 million, this guy got $100 million, then you got to advertise it, promote it.
Which the guarantees don't kill everything.
If they were just getting percentages, then obviously everybody was.
You're saying the seats were empty.
I can understand it not making the money, but the seats being empty seems peculiar.
Yeah.
And there's nothing in the world where you have a pay-per-view hit that didn't have a live audience hit.
Like if your live audience is your first focus group, isn't sold out, you didn't do pay-per-view numbers.
Sure.
But boxing will still claim that to this day.
They still to this day claim that that's number one.
And if you want to be the biggest pay-per-view in boxing history, all you have to do is claim it.
There is nobody from DirecTV, Time Warner, Fox.
There is nobody that has ever backed those numbers.
No executive has ever come out and said these numbers are true.
Whoever writes the press release that claims this was the number gets the record.
So you're saying that that's not the highest grossing.
That's right.
That's right.
But it sat as number one until or in reverse order, but you did a Pacquiao versus Mayweather that went number one.
And this one, it's just a press release.
Whoever puts that press release and sends it out, never has a company that's publicly traded had an executive back those numbers.
They're all lies.
Wow.
Now, how do we know if this is the truth or you're just running games?
Well, I guess you could Google it.
I don't know what the incentive would be.
I'm more just trying to seriously.
We're going to see the claim.
That's interesting.
Yeah, you'll see the claim.
It's the fake news.
You'll see the fake news.
You can't trust the news.
I'll tell you one thing you won't see, though.
You will not see, and I mean, there's FEC rules on it.
You can't be an executive of a public leadership company and lie.
You can't do that publicly.
You can't even tweet about it.
Elon Musk found that out the hard way.
But you won't find anybody to back.
If the second biggest fight, or technically the first biggest, is Mayweather, and maybe the third or fourth biggest is McGregor.
Why would the two of them together not be the first?
Well, I think that they did a really good night.
I'm just sharing with you that the promoters that put that on had an opportunity to rematch it.
They had both the fighters, which generally is the hardest thing that you've got, right?
We'd have John Jones and Francis against each other if we could have got the fighters to do it.
We had both the fighters, the McGregor and the Mayweather.
We begging to do a rematch.
And that was when we found out that Connor could go with him, right?
People thought going to that first one, Connor was going to get wiped out, myself included.
He ended up being very competitive.
So we had more evidence.
Sequels have always, or at least traditionally done better than the original.
And they still wouldn't sign off and rematch it.
Those guys, those guys did not do the business that they tell you they did.
And they made a bunch of money.
They made a bunch of money.
But to your point, Andrew, the guarantees were too high.
They made a mistake.
They weren't willing to make it together.
Well, because Floyd's not entering the ring for less than 100.
Yep.
So you got to clear that.
I get it.
They're not making money, but MTCs just seem crazy.
Yeah, the MTCs is wild.
Well, and not to mention that could be proven, right?
You just take the camera.
You don't have to tell the audience it's sold out.
Just take the camera and show us if it's sold out.
I mean, it's as simple as doing that.
Can I tell you one that's interesting?
Floyd Mayweather, just before he came Floyd, he was pretty boy Floyd, in fact, at the time.
The year was 2005, Portland, my hometown, and he fought Sean Bay Mitchell, who's a former world champion.
So they fought.
Yep, that's exactly right.
Good memory, by the way.
Gooseman promoted that, and it was on HBO.
And I worked with the Oregon Athletic Commission.
Floyd Mayweather's Money Claims 00:06:36
So I got assigned to Floyd's locker room.
So by the time he wraps his hands, he cannot leave my site, including if he has to go to the bathroom.
You're an official on the bottom.
Yeah, that's right.
I got the official, I got the badge, which is a directive of the Oregon State Police.
So I'm in the official capacity and I'm a fighter.
I'm an aspiring fighter.
This is a big honor for me.
And I get Floyd's locker room.
And he cannot leave my, once he wraps his hands and I initial it, even if he wants to go to the bathroom.
I either have to cut those off and re-put them on or I go with him.
Did you go watch him pee?
I'm curious.
He didn't actually do it.
Yeah, he didn't actually do it.
He sat there the entire time and Guzman's son kept coming to the back and he was giving countdowns.
Hey, it's 6.40.
You leave the locker room at 6.52.
We go live at 7 o'clock.
You leave the curtain at 7.03.
He was giving him these cues and Floyd would not move.
And he had a room full of kids.
The oldest person in this room was 14 years old.
They had a ghetto blaster back then.
And Floyd's telling him, put this disc in, put it on this track.
And he's like singing along.
And he was telling these kids how great he was for like an hour.
Casa 2, Casa Zu beat him two twice.
He said that and he actually only beat him once.
But he said Casa Zu beat him two twice.
He's talking about De La Hoyo.
He was about all these things.
He finally stood up and he puts his hands out and his uncle Roger pulls his trunks up and then they warm up, which consisted of Roger really hitting Floyd.
I never really saw Floyd do anything.
And then he took a breath after about 40 seconds and did it again.
Roger hits him again and leaves the locker room, stops Sean Bay Mitchell in the fifth round, comes back, gets a check for $4 million, stands up on a little bench in the locker room.
And all these four, he holds this checkup like this and all the kids are clapping.
And Floyd tells him, clap it up, y'all.
And he's got a teammate that's going to go on in a dark match after Floyd's match.
And he's leaving the locker room and all the guys, the cornermen just stayed with Floyd and clapped it up.
And they had to like run out and try to catch him.
But it was this incredible moment where I saw Floyd, because I heard a Floyd and $100 million.
Like, man, let me tell you for sure.
He fought Sean Bay Bitchell for $4 million.
I was there when he got the paycheck.
These numbers you're hearing just aren't true.
They're just not true.
Wow.
Wait, you don't think that Floyd got the 100?
No.
It's simply not true.
Everything has a different.
I didn't think.
The Sean Bay fight is such a small fight.
For sure.
For sure.
It didn't even sell out.
Yeah.
Roy Jones came to it himself, made like an appearance, but yeah, it didn't even sell out.
De La Hoya was one, again, fight casual, was when I was interested the first time in a fight, Floyd and De La Hoya.
That was after Sean Bay.
And that's when it seemed like he came out.
I remember he came out wearing a sombrero and the Mexican flag.
Like he, then he became the heel.
And then I can see exactly like happened with you, the money goes up.
And Floyd is the greatest boxer ever, according to my friend who knows boxing.
So I can see how he starts making crazy money after the fight.
I'm not disputing your story.
But I can see the money getting crazy ass.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Like you'll see reports.
You mentioned $100 million for Floyd.
The reports are 130.
First off, he's never gotten 100 million for a flight.
Not even remotely close, but there's reports of 130.
There's reports online that Floyd's a billionaire.
There's reports that he was the highest paid athlete in this year and this year over Christian Ronaldo.
You think it's bullshit?
I know it is.
And there's public companies they do business with.
HBO would be one of them.
Find an executive to back the claim.
It's never happened and it won't be.
And how do you know it's makes very good money?
Because I know the fight business.
I've been in the fight business my whole life.
I'm a promoter right now.
I worked with the commissioner.
I've been on every single side of this.
But there's a lot of people that know the fight business.
Why aren't other people discussing it?
You sound like your friend right now.
No, no, no.
I don't think that's.
You sound like your friend right now.
What is it?
Floyd, Ryan?
He's like, nah, I calculated everything.
You can only make this much.
And Floyd's like, huh, but you don't know.
Yeah, well, there you go with that.
But yeah, if you sit and you looked at it, I think that you come to that conclusion pretty fast.
And you did say something I want to take issue with.
You said a lot of people know the fight business.
I don't think you know five people that know the fight business.
No, I don't.
Very respectfully, but I don't think, yeah, there's no one you went to school with.
There's no one that you were buddies with.
Teacher asked your class, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Nobody said I want to be in the fight business.
That's true.
There's probably five men alive.
So if you had to guess, what do you think's the most Floyd ever made in a fight?
I think that Floyd's, he's probably made about 60 million before in one night, which is, which is crazy numbers.
Mike Tyson, to put in perspective, when he fought Michael Spinks, that was the biggest fight of all time when that fight happened.
And one got 30 million and one got 29.
And that was backed publicly.
And Diet Pepsi sponsored that fight.
And I mean, some of those numbers were very public, but no, 100 million, 130 million.
It just didn't happen.
Are they all lying?
Like all the top guys?
I don't know.
I don't know what they're claiming, but I know that Floyd is still getting in there as recently as this weekend because he needed the money.
And I know they're not.
I think Floyd's fighting because he needs the money.
Yeah.
Really?
Why?
He think he blew through all of his money?
What the fuck?
Well, he blew through a lot of it, but what I'm sharing for you, it wasn't what you thought it was.
He wasn't through it and wasn't making as much as they're claiming he was doing $100 million a fight.
And I'm claiming for you, he in his whole career has made about $100 million.
There's a very low.
He made 8.8 in one night.
And you're a great fighter, but I'm looking at Floyd and I'm like, you know, Floyd had this long career.
I could imagine him making more than 100 million.
Floyd is a household name.
Yeah.
I know people say that.
I understand that.
Floyd was not Mike Tyler.
Floyd Lee.
Floyd wasn't Mike Tyson.
Like 8.8 in one night.
I'm like, I think Floyd could do a bunch of those.
I got it.
I got it.
I know.
People think he made $130 in a night.
I'm sharing with you, he didn't.
And no boxer has.
No boxer has ever made $130 million in one night.
This is silly.
I think they even claim more than that.
Yeah.
I think they claim when Floyd fought, what was the biggest one?
Was it Pacquiao?
Now, Canelo wasn't that big yet because Canelo is younger, but maybe it was Pacquiao.
He whipped Canelo, by the way.
Remember that?
I was at that fight.
Yes.
Canelo was supposed to be too young, and then it was, oh, he's too young.
Floyd is too good.
Yeah, I know.
Again, I don't know much Bakken, but that was the most impressive fight I've ever seen was Floyd in that match.
He probably won 10 rounds.
I mean, again, I guess this is to your point, a Google search from Sports Keita or whatever is saying that $250 million against Manny Pacquiao.
Oh, if you haven't said it, no fighter in history of the world of Kent.
I mean, it's a comical number to say.
That's a comical number.
A quarter billion dollars to go and box?
Yeah.
From where would he possibly have gotten that money?
I mean, it's just pay-per-view buys, right?
If you do 3 million pay-per-view buys, that's $60 to buy.
$275 million according to Forbes, is Forbes not, I'm actually asking, is Forbes not reputable?
Forbes is not reputable on this.
Yeah.
The Urgency Behind the Fight 00:10:41
Not on this.
No, no, no.
They'd have no way to know.
That's what I'm sharing for you.
I'm sharing for you that they wouldn't have a way to know.
Yeah.
And there's no fact-checking body that covers what the publicists are saying.
And that's more what my point is to you right now is not only is Forbes not reputable, Forbes is going on the information that they have, but there's nobody that would back those claims.
Nobody.
There's no exec anywhere that is backing these claims.
Okay, I believe you.
I believe you.
Do you ever miss fucking somebody up?
No, but I miss the training for it.
I miss the preparation.
I miss the guys.
I miss the structure and that camaraderie.
Do you still, I mean, you still train and stuff, right?
I exercise a little bit.
Training is where you eat, breathe, and sleep.
And no, I'll never train again.
But I exercise and try to work out a little bit.
Did you spar a little bit?
Exhibition?
Not really.
Some grappling, some wrestling around, but not with gloves on.
Do you worry about CTE at all?
No, but I also don't deny it.
I used to be a denier.
I didn't think it was real.
Like when I watched the movie, the Will Smith movie and all that, I didn't think this was real.
Probably just his terrible accent that made you.
You know, I had a girlfriend, a girl, comma friend that used to date Junior Sayow.
And then, you know, Junior tried suicide and then finally got it right.
And bless you.
But, you know, I kind of read that one and that ended.
Finally got it right.
Yeah, I think it was his second time.
Yeah, he wrecked a car and then the second time he got it.
And so we're lost Junior now.
And I kind of paid attention when that started happening.
Yeah.
Because I knew him, because I knew Nikki or something.
Something along the way.
You knew the girl.
Did she induce that in any way?
No, she was a perfectly normal gal.
No, she was just a Jersey chaser.
She was going to marry somebody that was famous in sports and did.
She's married to some guy that is the head coach of a team somewhere.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I want to say basketball in Utah.
I know you're happily married and stuff, but did you have girls just going fucking berserk?
I don't know about that.
Like, I don't know that fighting has as many.
What do they call those?
They call those the rats or something, the mat rats.
Like, there's buckle bunnies and whatnot in rodeo.
Shuffle fuckers for comedy.
Okay, yeah.
Are those real?
Nope.
Yeah, they're not real in the MMA either.
Yeah.
They don't come to who?
Who are these?
No.
What is it?
It's just, what is it?
A bunch of chicks look like Vanderlay just kind of showing up.
I guess.
I haven't even seen them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, the ones that would get thrown over.
Yeah.
No, it wasn't like that.
No, no, it really was not.
But now for the superstars, like a guy, you know, I'm trying to think, like a guy who's who's transcended the game, Izzy.
Sure.
Like, he's got to have tons of groupies.
If he wanted to have them for sure, like, he could.
There's CodeSpeak that the cool guys send out all the time.
There's CodeSpeak on Twitter.
They're going to a new town.
They'll send out a tweet for the whole world to say, but it's a message to get DMs.
There's a way to go about this.
Can't wait to see Miami.
Any restaurants in Tucson?
Yeah.
There you go.
Falling all throats.
Here's what a virgin I am.
I used to do that and really want to know the restaurants.
Some girls trying to suck your dick.
You're like, whoa, this is a barbecue.
What are we doing?
So what happens with the Izzy Padeta fight?
What do you think about that?
Well, I mean, that's another confusing one.
Like these guys didn't ask to fight.
They did not.
There was nothing in this rematch that is a commonality with other rematches.
These guys are not trying to fight.
And in fact, the closest they got is Pierre got asked by Ariel and Pierre said, I don't want to fight him.
I came here to beat him.
I came here to stop him.
I came here to show the world, but I've done those things.
Give me a moment.
I'll leave the division.
He can then take back over me.
He did the reverse of trying to fight him and then said, but he did do me this favor and I will return it.
If he wants to fight me, I'll fight him.
But that was a demotion.
And Izzy never stepped forward and said he wanted to fight.
And all of a sudden, one day it gets announced.
And, you know, if you're in my spot, you are kind of shaking your head.
Go, what are we doing here?
Izzy was always saying he wants it back.
I think he came here and said, I get the point that I get the point that we're going to give Izzy a chance to be.
But what if Izzy does?
That we got to give him another rematch.
That'll make the fifth time these guys have fought.
Like at some point, this is getting weird if they're not asking to fight.
I've never seen Izzy do that.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I've seen him be a man when somebody's asking him about it.
Of course, I'd like that rematch.
He never demanded a spot on the show and said, before we get going, I want a rematch.
I've never seen him do that.
He came on.
He got pressured into this.
He wants it.
Okay.
He came right after the fight.
But you seem to note that I'm Ford.
I'm just suggesting for you, there's not a lot of common allies to other rematches.
And moreover, what do we do if Izzy wins?
If Izzy beats him, I don't want to do that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, okay, okay.
I mean, at some point, these guys have got to say to hell, this was Volkanovsky's problem.
Yeah.
Volkanovsky didn't burn his boats, right?
He didn't burn his shit.
He stayed champion at 145.
He knew I can go back.
If this doesn't go well, I can return.
And if Volganovsky would have said, no, take the belt.
I'm done and I'm not going back.
This is where I'm going.
I'm burning my boats.
No way home.
He would have beaten Islam.
And it's the same problem that Izzy had when he went to 205.
He didn't let the belt go.
So he knew he could return home.
And I just share that for you.
If we're going to just keep matching Pierre and Izzy, there's no point to it.
They both need to come out and Dana.
All three of them need to come out and make it perfectly clear to the world.
This is for Keeps.
This is for Keeps.
I don't care if you've beaten him four times, five times, knocked him out twice.
I don't care if it's 100 apiece.
This is the one.
April 14th, all the more.
I will never book this fight again.
Do you understand me?
He has to do that.
Oh, wow.
What are we doing here?
Interesting.
You need the stakes.
You need scarce.
I just don't know why.
What do we do if Izzy beats him?
Yeah.
You can't not have the third match.
And if you have a third match, God damn, nobody asked for the second match.
Yeah.
Well, I think they just did it.
Because I think the fight you had Izzy winning the fight.
For sure.
You know, I think that that was easy, clear victory, and then he gets caught.
For sure.
And that's what heavy-handed people do.
They catch people.
But still.
It's the second time, though.
That's right.
I mean, that he got caught.
Yeah.
To some guys, there's an urgency, right?
Yeah, the urgency turned on in that fifth.
Yeah.
Which appears to, it appears now that he's done it two times in a row, three times altogether, it appears for Piera that he operates best when the barn's in sight, when he has an urgency.
You know, it's very scary to see him turn to go over to Shara and do the math.
Hey, this is the fifth round.
I'm down by four, right?
Okay, I must knock him out.
That was a very chilling thing.
I've gone into fifth rounds before, and I mean, I'm so exhausted.
I could never have a conversation.
If my coach was talking to me, I wouldn't have been able to hear you.
I mean, you are so tired out there.
And then he walked him down.
And this wasn't like a Michael Moore and George Foreman situation.
I mean, he walked him down.
Boom, boom, boom, and found these shots.
It was scary, but it just lends more to my point that he had an urgency.
He knew this was it.
It's the second time.
It's the way that he works.
And Izzy now needs to have that same urgency.
And Dana needs to step in and help this.
This is it.
I don't care if they've gone five times.
I don't care what the score is.
This is it.
Until you have that, you're just going to have Volkanovsky and Islam again, where you got a guy that goes out and he overperforms, but he can go back home anyway, which he planned to do from the time that he signed this contract.
There's no urgency.
That's just human nature.
You ever been afraid of somebody?
Yes.
Who?
Afraid of somebody?
Well, I mean, I have my pride.
I don't know if being afraid of somebody would have ever stopped me from going through with it, but there's been some times when I've left the locker room and known I was a lamb and a golden slaughter.
Can you name who?
I did not think I was going to be John Jones the night that I fought John.
And you accepted the fight anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that was just a hard one.
I just watched him and go, man, that guy's good.
And it was okay to look up to John.
It was okay to admire John because I was in a different weight class.
I was an 85-pounder.
He was a 205-pounder.
I'm 32 years old.
He's 19.
I'm never going to see this guy.
So to sit and admire and see him catch legs and spin to elbows, see him come to uppercuts into flying knees and then go and try to copy and emulate that stuff.
I was safe because I'm never going to have to deal with him.
All of a sudden, I'm a 205 pounder.
They got me in a world title fight here.
We're on the ultimate fighter.
Now I'm walking out to fight John.
So, I mean, it just, it is one of those spots.
I fought Fedor one time and, you know, my confidence was a little bit lower.
And then what does that, yeah, what does that feel like?
You're going to this fight that you think you may lose.
You're leaning into that loss.
Oh, yeah.
Or you, you know, whether it's the loss or not, you know for sure there's going to be a painful experience, right?
You're thinking about the actual pain.
Yeah.
No matter who gets their hand raised, this is going to be a painful experience.
This is going to be a long, painful experience.
Let's get this started.
How do you get your things?
They never would have been a reason for me not to do it.
Failure.
Whatever it was in life.
I never would not do it for fearing that I was going to fail.
I told you, I never win anything with very much confidence, but I can't really think of very many things in life like that.
I really can't.
I think that's a bully's mentality.
To only do something that you know you can conquer or fight people that you know you can beat up or I've never understood that.
That's part of the draw for me.
Some people that would turn off failure or you're going to get beat up.
That would turn me on.
I would be more attracted to try it then.
And was there anybody that you went in thinking that same feeling, right?
You're like, this is going to be a tough night.
I don't know if I'm going to win this one.
And then you got in there and you pulled it off.
Yes.
And who was that?
Yes.
The night I wanted to leave a locker room the least was we were in Houston, Texas, and it was against Brian Stan.
And he was in the ring waiting for me.
He was in the ring.
He just come off knocking out three guys.
I just come off a suspension for a plethora of banned substances.
And I remember when they pull the curtain, that camera is going to be, and it's got, I got to go.
And I just remember, please don't, please don't.
You're having fantasies that somebody pulls the fire alarm and the whole building gets clowned or somebody calls in a bomb threat.
Like you're having these really weird and they pull that curtain, your music hits, and you got to put that face on and go.
But I remember thinking that in that moment, if I can get through that, I'm frozen in place.
I do not, if I can get through this, I can get through any moment.
I can make any walk ever.
If I can get through tonight.
First time clean?
Oh, I wasn't clean.
Oh, heaven's sakes.
So you just did the suspension.
Oh, yeah.
They tricked me.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, they tricked me.
It used to be an IQ test.
You used to know when the test was going to be.
Then they come out with something called out of competition testing.
Peptides and Banned Substances 00:04:12
They just showed me, what is this?
This isn't within the rules.
This is not within the protocol.
I'm trying to cheat within the rules.
That's right.
I was trying to cheat within the rules.
That's right.
It's vulnerable.
Vulnerable.
Well, performance enhancing, those are positive terms.
Then they call it drug at the end to make a name.
It's medicine, right?
This is legal and appropriate medicine that does make you better.
All medicine makes you better or it's not medicine.
Like, I would never go to a doctor and go, Doc, I feel great.
Can you bring me down a notch?
Of course it's to make you better.
And they said that to me.
I was in a commission hearing and they said, did you know this could give you an advantage?
I said, guys, I wanted to take it.
I didn't think it would give me an advantage.
And they sat there.
They were dumbfounded.
They couldn't believe this response.
Like, well, I can't believe your questions.
Of course it's meant to make you better.
How good is it?
Oh, it's great.
Like, what is it?
Because a lot of people, I think, look at this and they go, okay, and maybe it makes you stronger.
But it's not going to make your chin last longer.
And it's not going to make your punches sharper.
And it's not going to make you learn jujitsu.
True.
So, yes, it gives you an advantage, but can you explain the type of advantage?
Well, strength is huge, but the training for that sport is so difficult.
I used to wake up every single day.
Yeah.
That's what it is.
I mean, I would literally wake up depressed knowing what I have to do today before I can get back into bed.
It was the most defeated feeling.
I would go to bed some nights where I could barely get into bed.
I'd wake up the next morning.
That was a distant memory.
Yeah, the recovery was incredible.
And then guys try to do that as a badge of honor.
Well, I only took it so I could train harder, which then you're complimenting yourself because I was just such a hard worker.
Well, there is a little bit of a truth to that, but yeah, bigger, stronger, faster in that order.
But they got some performance enhancers.
Like if the world understood what LeBron did, like other basketball players will hear what LeBron does and go, well, yeah, but that doesn't matter, right?
It's like a baseball player and you're hitting a stick out of the way.
It doesn't matter.
It's like, no, no, no.
If you knew what these performance enhancers did, then you would know why it does matter.
You know what I'm saying?
There's only one, we have the same drug guy, if you will.
I know exactly what he's doing, but there's only one golfer.
Please tell.
There's only one golfer.
I'm not going to, but there's only one golfer that follows the big three.
The big three is EPO, growth hormone, testosterone.
That's the Lance Armstrong diet.
There's one golfer, but it's Tiger Woods.
Like, yes, it does matter.
People will say it all the time.
It doesn't matter.
John Daly won it.
It's like it matters.
Trust me that it matters.
EPO matters.
It's the reason LeBron takes it.
It matters.
And if other basketballs understood what it did, EPO increases your red blood cells, which gives you endurance so you can play all game long.
You can shoot the fourth cells.
Just like you shot yourself.
Okay, I got you.
It's the king of performance enhancers.
So you would prefer that, especially in a fight sport, to anything else.
EPO is king.
Give you the stamina.
Yes, that's.
Oh, that's why bicycles, that's why psyches do it, that's why Tour De France is so that fifth round energy is.
The human body is not made to do the Tour De France.
I mean, the people that set that up are inhumane.
So of course you have to go.
Of course it's supernatural people that you you're, they're forcing them to take now that you're not going to take pets, are you still on?
Yeah yeah yeah, uh.
Well, so testosterone, it's all around testosterone, so you can just take straight testosterone.
I'm currently taking something called hcg, which is human uh, chlorionic gynotropin, but it just ups your natural.
It's all about testosterone.
Is that a peptide?
No no no, you're gonna start peptide, i'm gonna start.
I've been leading about those.
I don't know, I will get into them.
I mean, i'm into learning about.
That's what I hear.
The Hollywood guys are all me saying i'm gonna do the same.
Peptides yeah, yeah.
Well, i'm hearing about them.
Yeah, i'm hearing about them.
I just don't know if they're as good as the, as the regular stuff.
Like, why take a peptide if you could just get growth hormone?
Or if you could just go to the source?
Yeah, if you could just get testosterone?
I'm a little confused on that.
And do you worry about affecting your nuts at all?
No well, and so again, you're talking about use versus abuse like um, I never heard a doctor and that's an open statement.
You can go to the the the same Forbes that's telling you that Floyd made 250 million.
Come on man, you're not that foolish, are you?
Come on 250, it's just i'm being serious, it's just a number after a certain.
Yeah, you know what I mean.
Yeah, I hear you, but who's putting that on?
I mean, who is the guy that put, if he made 250, what did this guy put on that brought the whole thing together?
Come on man, this is insane.
Here's what I would share with you though, and i've completely forgot what you're talking about the same Forbes would talk about.
Tournament Structure and Betting 00:05:30
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much because this is a challenge.
I'm gonna make a big challenge here, but i've never seen a doctor.
Any doctor you go to the internet will tell you that steroids are bad or that performance enhancers are bad.
It's abuse, abuse.
We're having a totally different conversation.
I would be an advocate for testosterone use, but testosterone abuse, and that's the problem with human nature here.
You're supposed to have two.
Well, if I should have two, four is better.
I'll take nine.
That's the problem.
You send somebody home with it, which is why most of the the these hormone labs you've got to come in every week, i'll give you the shot myself.
I can't trust you if I give it to you.
Yeah, that's right.
I can't trust you to go home and and take this appropriately.
Um listen we, you know, we know that you're a busy man.
You got to fly, we got to talk about Bellator 291.
Oh man, what do you think about that?
Can I set this up?
Yeah, I think you set this up.
That's your camera.
Well, but but for you guys.
So here's one thing they don't do in our sport and I, I did and i'm gonna, i'm gonna name drop, but Layla Ali.
Yeah, I got to interview Layla one time.
I did the celebrity printis with her.
Yeah, she comes to the hotel and I get an interview.
I got to talk about Ronda a little bit, but that was a big deal at the time.
But one thing that Layla said is she said I wish I would have done the Olympics and the reason she had is she was a multiple time world champion and she retired at like 28.
And oh, i'm making numbers up, but it's something like this.
And she said, but in my heart I never felt it.
I knew what my promoter was doing.
I knew that I was training my ass off and they were grabbing a girl from the bar or a girl from a local club, that they were building her up.
Yeah, I knew that I was training the way that my father had taught me to do and this girl had only sparred once in her life and so i'm knocking these girls out.
She said if I would have gone through the Olympics, That would have set an architecture where I would know I was the best.
And that's one thing we don't have in this sport of MMA and boxing.
We don't have a competitive architecture in place.
So Scott Coker is the only promoter really with the guts to hold a tournament.
It's not about the fight that he thinks the biggest or who's going to run their mouth or who can get the most meat or who can politic.
You all, you eight guys say that you're the best.
So I'm going to put you eight in a tournament.
We'll start in the quarterfinal straight line bracket.
Winner gets the belt.
Winner gets the main event.
Winner gets a million dollars.
And the eight baddest dudes step forward.
He got four guys that are former world champions to step forward.
One guy just got pulled out of a tournament named Sidney Outlaw.
They put Brent Primus in, who's a former world champion.
So now they got five world champions, not to mention the favorite.
So they got five world champions.
None of them are the favorite.
They're supposed to win it.
McKee's supposed to win the whole thing, but we're going to start this off.
We got Usman versus Benson Henderson, the UFC champion.
Usman is Khabib's cousin, undefeated 16-0 reigning champion.
I know I'm jumping around, but there's a lot of moving parts here.
And I think for any promoter, Scott Coker is the one in this case that has the courage to put a straight line bracket and bring an actual architecture.
It's not about who talks the best.
It's not who's got the fanciest promoter behind the scenes.
You eight guys start in the quarterfinals, play this thing through till we're done.
And one of you gets the belt and a million bucks.
And they're going to start on March 10th.
And look, guys, if you're betting on this weekend's Bellator fights, or if you're betting on absolutely everything, you know that you're using betonline.ag.
You already know if you're watching this podcast, you listen to this podcast, that's the one that we rock with.
It's plain and simple.
And I'm going to tell you exactly why.
Because they're going to match 50% of your initial deposit bonus up to $1,000.
That means you put up into a G in there.
If you put the G, you're getting $500 extra to gamble with.
Why would you not do that?
If you're already gambling, why don't you take free money to gamble?
This is an absolute no-brainer.
Betonline.ag.
Make sure if you're throwing down while you're watching some dudes throw down, it's with betonline.ag.
And make sure you use that promo code Flagrant to get that extra free cash.
Now let's get back to the show.
So the story is the million bucks.
Story is the million bucks and the title.
Title.
The million watch.
That's exciting, right?
That's the why.
I'm just trying to understand what we're going by.
There's just something so authentic.
It was just something so sincere, so sincere about the way you're face.
So the story is the million.
I'm just trying to put it through the chail son and face heel story arc here.
The why.
The why.
Yeah, because I'm trying to, and it makes sense because I think that, was it the PFL did like a million dollar tournament thing?
I paid attention.
Sure.
I'm like, wait, there's a million dollars on the line.
And for me, the million dollars changes someone's life.
For sure.
That's what a million does, right?
It's like, okay, there are these guys that they are struggling.
They're fighting for how much money.
Who fucking knows?
And ideally, they don't play up how rich they are because the more rich they seem in the promo towards the million, the more useless the millions are.
For sure.
But if all these guys are working at Home Depot and then come out afterwards and they can barely make their car payments and all of a sudden a million dollars, I mean, you see what happens in the UFC when they give them the $50,000 bonuses and the people starting to cry, I can move my family to where I live.
It's beautiful.
So the million I love, but how do we get people to be into each one of those characters?
How do you do it?
Yeah.
Well, that's an interesting thing.
I mean, you bring up a really good point, but one thing to look forward to is just that, you know, it really is chestnut checkers.
So when one guy gets done in the quarterfinals, he knows who's next.
And if he doesn't, he at least knows what fight.
So now he's got a rough idea of also when, of when this fight's going to be.
I'm going to be sitting in the front row and where this is going to go.
And I got to be part of a tournament.
I will tell you, it is very different from a competitor standpoint.
When you know who you've got.
Wait, it's not the same day.
No, it's not the same day.
I've done those, though.
I mean, way back.
That's crazy.
They used to do eight man in one day.
It's fucking absurd.
By the time I came along, it was four man.
IV Fluids and League Rules 00:06:20
And then, you know, it went down to the bottom.
I mean, at the end, aren't your hands just destroyed?
So sore, so tired.
I've only got, I've had two four-man tournaments, so two guys in one day.
And I would say, yes, the next day was just amongst the, when you feel it the most, amongst your, and now I couldn't even imagine.
I couldn't even, that was normal back then.
I mean, my mother and father took me to the airport and like, you know, put me on the plane with a kiss on the cheek.
And, you know, I'm calling them from a payphone and telling them how I did.
I couldn't even imagine agreeing to fight two men in one night or like Hoyce Gracie did with three.
But anyway, that's the point of the term.
That's the whole point of the Grand Prix is it's a straight line bracket.
There's no politics.
Coker's got eight guys that claim they're the best.
Well, they're all going to get the same chance.
Who do you think you got?
Uzman has never lost, or rather, Namogametov has never lost.
I think you have to look at that.
But I mean, to count on AJ McKee, I watched AJ McKee beat Darren Caldwell in less than a minute.
So, you know.
And those aren't even, you know, Britt Primus is my own teammate.
And so, you know, I mean, there's a few guys.
I guess I got to watch my tongue a little bit, but it's, I mean, it's stacked, man.
I'll be the last guy to count Vincent Henderson now.
It's world champion.
He's going to be in the Hall of Fame someday.
Of course.
Now, do you think that the Dagestanis are juicing?
No, no.
What do you make of the Islam IV situation?
That's a sticky rule.
I mean, it would be a lot to answer that question.
That is a sticky rule with USA, and Islam had the legal right to use an IV.
The question is...
What went in the IV?
That's right.
That's right.
And how many milligrams he used?
And yeah.
Because they would have tested for what went in.
Yeah.
And that would have showed up.
Yeah.
But they can't test for how much water was ingested.
Right.
Yeah.
It gets a little bit more complex in terms of the assay and the science on that.
I think that Islam's stance right now is to not even comment saying he did IV.
I don't think he's wrong to do that.
He did IV.
And I don't add him to talk mindset.
But, you know, you're fighting with your clothes off and we can take photos and zoom in on that.
He did IV, but I'll just share with the world that that doesn't mean it was a violation.
Even if it was a violation, whoever this nurse is that spoke up, I mean, shame on her.
What a big mouth.
If you do that in America, they take your license away.
I mean, you've got HIPAA and all sorts of other stuff.
This girl goes to his hotel.
She juices him and then she goes and tells the other camp when he flies out of town.
That was a scumbag move.
I mean, she's acting like she is the hero of this story and the whistleblower.
She's a scumbag.
Well, she hasn't come forward, right?
She's not acting like anything because she's kind of, she's.
But she shared information.
She came forward to share information.
What is that?
That's HIP.
There's a HIPAA law that's going to be.
There's HIPAA in America.
They did this over in Perth.
I have the foggiest idea what the rules are.
But in America, yeah, she would have violated his rights.
Definitely would have.
And he might have disclosed it to Asana.
We also don't have information that he didn't do that.
And on top of that, and then it's the milligram.
I mean, there's a lot that goes into this.
And the only reason I say that is there's not going to be an investigation.
There's no smoke here.
This isn't an ongoing story.
If he wants to make this dramatic by saying he didn't do it and having other people zoom in and see the main and see that he did, then more power to him, but he's not a violation of anything.
And if you want to know who's the skunk of this story, it's the woman that went to the room, took the money, and out of him the next day.
Kind of a little message.
I mean, how dumb would you have to be to be on Islam's team and do something illegal in a foreign country with some random nerds?
And wear a short-sleeved shirt the next day.
Yeah, like, I don't know.
It just seems so in the home country of the guy you're fighting.
Yeah, it seems, it almost seems as if like either they didn't know they couldn't add liquid up to X amount or they did it up to the league.
Right.
Because it's so blatant.
It's so blatant.
Yeah.
And it so easily discredits not only you, but like now you go into Khabib's legacy.
I mean, there is a dominance from the Dagestanis, and people are looking for a reason why.
They're asking the question I asked you immediately, which is, are they on steroids?
Why are they so good?
What's so different about these guys?
They're looking for cheating.
It seems like they have an internal honor that I can't imagine they'd want to disrupt that for the team.
It just seems like a very loose situation.
Take your own IV person.
If he was overhydrated, how much has that changed the outcome of the match?
How much did that have to do with him winning?
In my opinion, as a guy that's tried every performance and hit not much.
I mean, IV doesn't do much.
Lance Armstrong, when he beat all the tests, and don't forget, Lance never failed a test.
He just confessed to Oprah, right?
He just bitched out and said that he did it.
He never actually failed a test.
But the way Lance would beat those tests is he would IV.
So you IV it out of your system.
And it'll flush it fast.
I'm talking about a few hours.
It will be flushed and you will pass any test.
You can get a call that day and be like, no problem.
Oh, so they caught him for the IV, not the test?
They never caught Lance.
He added that he did EPO, they did a growth, that he did testosterone.
But he still hasn't told the world how he did it.
I can tell you how he did it, but he hasn't told the world.
But he told the world how he didn't get caught and he didn't get caught because he would flush it with an IV.
So Usada comes out.
They're worried that people know this.
People didn't know it.
That's a mistake that people actually didn't know.
Usada smartened us of how to beat them.
But then they tried to claim that they could test plastic particles and we'll know if you IV'd over this cement and that part.
They're bluffing.
Can you get people?
No, they can't.
No, if you say, yes, I used an IV.
Well, you can only use up to 30 milligrams.
Great, then I use 29.
No, they don't know if you put in 60.
They don't know if you put in 200.
They don't know what you put.
They claim that they know, but they don't.
So basically, any fighter can beat a drug test.
Yes.
Well, any athlete.
Any athlete.
It's a little bit more complicated, but yes, there's some big problems with the IV.
Not to mention, let's use IV and I'm making numbers up, but 30.
You can have 30 ml.
Well, I can do 30 ml, take it out and put 30 ml in this arm.
I can go back and put another 30 in this arm.
The way that the rule is written, I can only have 30 at a time.
What's a time?
A minute?
A day?
A session?
Oh, wow.
Every time this nurse comes in my room, what is a time?
And that's never been challenged, but it hasn't been challenged, and they haven't collected the language because Usada doesn't know what to do.
They don't know what to do because they can't catch you.
So, yes, they told the world how to beat them.
And do you think most pro athletes are doing this, even outside of the UFC?
Not fight sports.
Not most pro-athletes.
Like, if you go into an NFL locker room, yes.
Yes.
I mean, they look ridiculous.
But no, I don't think most pro athletes know very few in basketball.
I mean, it's why I bring LeBron up.
Like, there's very few in basketball.
There's only one that I know of in golf.
But it works was my only point.
It wasn't to embarrass LeBron.
If you didn't fight, great question.
Political Mudslinging in Sports 00:07:11
Could you be successful in politics?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, almost definitely.
Yes.
I'm going to run for governor.
Yeah.
I'm going to run for governor in Oregon eventually.
Sooner rather than later.
I would have already ran by now.
I got politics.
I got cut up.
Yeah.
You got your little situation.
Yeah.
My situation.
Yeah.
So, so I rob banks in case.
Is that where we're avoiding saying that?
No, I used to rob banks.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
It was pretty good at it.
Really?
It was pretty good.
How much money?
I did 15.8.
8.8.
8.8.
Allegedly.
I mean, that's what they alleged.
That's what Forbes said.
Yeah.
According to Forbes.
Anyway, I got distracted there, but yes, I would like politics.
Yeah.
Yeah, I enjoy politics.
You would be terrifying in politics.
Thank you.
You'd also be like a great handler in politics.
Go on.
Like you could take a guy who's kind of an empty vessel and you can fill him rhetoric.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You could chess piece.
Because I think that's what I'm learning.
Like the kind of older I get, and maybe the more this is going to sound crude, but it's not meant to be like that.
But like the more money I get, I talk to people who have like real money.
And the way they talk about politicians is like, they're just pawns.
Sure.
And I don't see you as someone who wants to be kind of moved around a chessboard for a few billionaires.
Sure.
I don't seem that it doesn't seem like that's what you would aspire to be.
Yeah.
Politically.
Yeah.
And they're right.
They are.
I mean, I know what you mean.
I write those same checks every election cycle, but it's for access.
And I've needed it plenty of times and I've made plenty of phone calls.
Okay, so there are certain guys, they're just the empty vessel, and they can communicate really well.
You just give them the words and they get it out there and it works.
Have you ever thought about grabbing up one of those?
Not really.
Oh, sorry about that.
No, I like to participate.
I go when those fundraisers come to Kevin McCarthy was just down just by example.
So I have fun.
I like that world, but most people don't.
They find it boring.
But I think politics are interesting.
I've never seen a football game.
I've never seen a basketball game.
My uncle won an Olympic championship for this country in basketball and two NBA championships.
And I've never seen a basketball game and it drives him crazy.
Who's your uncle?
Mel Counts.
Olympics in 64 in Tokyo.
One for the Celtics in 65 and in 67.
I've never seen it, but I've seen every political debate there is.
I've seen every presidential debate, primary debates.
Who's the best?
Senator debates.
It would come down.
I mean, if you wanted to have a real face-off between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, that would be something very special.
But Trump can go head-to-head with any of them.
Oh, I think Trump washes all of them on the mudslinging.
Yeah.
The question is, what are they going to do with the mudslinging?
How do you neutralize the mudslinging?
I saw Clinton do something once.
It was really impressive.
He had like some people that were boycotting his, it was a speech or something like that.
Just some people like ran into a room, started boycotting, and he was trying to answer what they were saying.
And he said one line.
He was like, those who don't listen are afraid of the truth.
And they just shut up.
Wow.
And I was like, ooh, that was a bar.
That's good.
He was fucking good.
So remove politics.
Democrat Republican, I don't give a fuck who you are.
If you're just looking at like the fight game, if you're looking at the character they're all playing.
Oh, yeah.
And he was fucking good.
Obama was special.
Obama was good, though.
He was special.
But Trump has the, Trump has the nuke, right?
He is like, he is the overhand right now.
That's what he is.
It's like, he might not have the skills.
He might not have to do actually the political thing.
But if he's on the stage with you.
He ruined Jeb Bush's political career by telling him you have low energy.
Yes.
I've never seen that.
And then when he tried to pick up the energy, it was embarrassing.
Oh, it was embarrassing.
It was unbelievable.
No, that was a different way.
And I remember Jeb coming out and telling people, and it was his pocketed response because I heard him give it eight different networks.
And he says, you cannot insult your way to the presidency.
And I'm like, you dumb son of a bitch.
You sure can.
He's about to.
He's in first place, Jeb.
You're in eighth place.
And you were the frontrunner.
Yes, you can.
Were you watching that like you watch fighters start to press?
And how early on did you see the momentum?
When he came down those escalators.
Wait, really?
When he came down the escalators and he's...
You knew him from The Apprentice.
Well, I knew of him.
I was cronies more with Junior than I was of the old man.
I'd only met the old man once and it was in passing.
I was in a mob of people and I yelled.
And I said, big fan.
And he shook my hand.
He goes, thank you.
But there was a hundred other people doing that.
I'm grabbing for what he, I'm doing whatever you call it, you know, name-dropping.
But here, here was the thing with him.
He came down those escalators and he took to the microphone and Mitt Romney had just gotten beat.
Mitt Romney got beat because he was a phony.
Mitt was very rich, but he wanted to pretend he was a man of the people.
He eats KFC and he watches NASCAR.
I mean, he really ran from the money and Obama used it against him.
He's like, I don't have anything.
I'm just like all of you.
I went to community college.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's like, well, that's weird.
You know, it should always be something you should aspire to.
And Trump, as part of his opening day, said, I'm not going to take any money.
I'm going to fund it myself.
I'm really rich.
I will tell you that.
But I remember when he did that.
I remember when he claimed, I'm really rich.
It's exactly what buried the Republican that came before him.
He was rich and couldn't admit it.
And Trump went right for it.
I'm going to call it out right now.
I am really rich.
I will tell you that.
Yes, he was even accused of embellishing his wealth.
I mean, he went for it so hard.
He would still everything.
That's so funny.
Instead of saying, here's this rich guy, he can't relate to you.
People started going, well, he's not that rich.
He's not even that rich.
Show your tax returns.
Whoa.
You're not even that rich.
It was the exact opposite.
And I saw the scene of his wealth.
And they tried to reduce it by questioning it instead of ostracizing him for being just one of the rich elites.
Interesting.
Which coming on the heels of Mitt Romney, which a lot of people want to know, but I follow politics.
It was just, it was so different.
I was like, oh my gosh, he gets it and he's going to win.
Jesse Ventura when he ran, you know, Jesse, Jesse Ventura is nothing short of a kook.
And he ran out in Minnesota.
But he's nothing short of a kook.
I mean, he raised against this guy.
Yeah, he's a free political debate.
But I would steal a lot of what Jesse Ventura did.
I mean, on opening day out in Minnesota, I mean, he won and he comes out and he says, he says, yeah, I've used cocaine, I've gotten prostitutes, and I'm running for governor.
Who's got the first question?
And I remember sitting there going, son of a bitch, that was amazing.
And it did.
It was an eight mile.
That's the MNMA.
But I would see myself as that same regard.
I'm going to come out just like Ventura, just like Trump.
I'm going to come right with it.
And they even asked Ventura, and this was another great thing that he did.
They asked him, because don't forget, a politician can only do two things.
They can regulate and tax.
Like, you'll see politicians say, I'm going to create jobs.
Like, you can only regulate and tax.
It's the only two functions you have.
And neither regulation nor taxation is good for job growth.
So it's just a really dumb thing to say you're going to create jobs.
But they do make the claim, and I will share for you.
They asked Ventura, what are you going to do?
And they were in a law library, which is just stacked with books.
And nobody knows what's even in all those books.
And Ventura said, Don't you think we have enough rules?
He said, I'm going to take a few of those books off the shelf and I'm going to burn them.
I'm going to get, we need less laws around here.
And he didn't go in.
He didn't reduce any laws or red.
He didn't do anything that he said he was going to do.
But it was a great point.
We do have enough damn rules.
We really don't need anybody going to the state or the and telling us more things that we have to do.
Yeah.
That really is true.
We do need to lighten it up.
How high up would you aspire to go?
As high as you could go, or you'd be happy being a senator, a governor.
Yeah, maybe a diplomat to Brazil.
Bitcoin Laundering Scandals 00:10:37
I was going to run for the presidency.
Right.
Yeah, as a diplomat to Brazil.
That's funny.
I was going to run for the president.
Like when I was growing up on the first day of class, they would make you write your name and you write, and then you have to say what you want to be when you grow up.
And I would always write president of the United States.
Wow, wow.
I wrote that since like third grade.
I remember writing that my senior year in Mr. Derry's class.
Every year I wrote President of the United States.
You know what fascinates is that?
Oh, I do not know at this point.
I mean, you know, life came at me.
Let's say you become a big fan of politics.
It'd be tough as a Canadian.
She has to go through it too.
Also, the Canadian thing.
But yeah, she has to go through it.
It's going to be hard, technically.
That'd be great.
You've been born over there.
How would you eight-mile yourself?
Like, what would you say?
What's all the things you would say?
Oh, well, I mean, mainly stuff that we've already talked about here today.
I mean, yeah, I watched his likes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know what I mean?
That's what it would be.
I mean, I would let people, I would remind people that I was, you know, half of Robin Hood.
Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor, and I stole from the rich and then I kept it.
And they call him a hero, and they didn't say that about me, which I think is wait.
Why were you Robin Hood?
Well, he's half Robin Hood.
Oh, I used to rob banks.
I thought you knew that.
Oh, I used to rob banks, by the way.
When I was young, I was 26.
But I used to rob banks.
Yeah.
Wait, literally?
I thought you knew that.
You didn't know this?
Thank you.
Wait, you guys thought he was bullshitting?
Yeah.
No.
No, no, I was a very famous banker.
He's an info.
Got it.
Got it.
How do you rob a bank?
Yeah.
That's what got complicated.
Like, that was really hard for them to know.
And then how much, yeah, like that's where things got really tough.
And so a deal was made with Jail and the government.
A deal was made, and Shale quit robbing banks in exchange for information.
Well, but it was only on myself.
Yes, it was only information on myself.
Though I know who D.B. Cooper is, and I tried to barter with him.
They weren't interested.
How did you meet D.B. Cooper?
My sister's godfather.
My parents grew up with him.
Wow.
He's dead.
He passed away.
But his wife is back in town.
Where did he go?
This is all true.
I thought you knew these things.
I'm sorry.
I thought this is why you knew.
I thought you knew all these things.
Where did D.B. Cooper go?
You didn't know I'm a famous gangster.
You didn't know that?
They call me the American gangster.
Bank robbing is very complicated.
I mean, if you put a mask in it, you're going with a gun like some schmuck.
I did this with a pen.
I never even stepped foot in the back.
Took millions of dollars.
These are very bad people, by the way.
These are terrible people.
Terrible people.
Yeah.
They took my grandmother's property and tried to say that she refinanced and she owed it and blah, blah, blah.
They got her to sign.
She was at a diminished capacity at best.
She was 86 years old.
She was a little widow.
They were providing her company.
Some guy brings her papers because they're signed.
They try to take her farm away.
Whoa.
And they said that.
They told that to my family.
When you say she's 86 years old, she never even took the money.
Wow.
My grandfather had the deed on this long before he died, which was before I was even born.
I said, well, she signed for it.
She said, oh, that's the game we're playing.
So then you get her to sign.
I got pretty good at getting them to sign.
Oh, I got it all back.
She died in that.
She died in that farm.
Not only did she die in that farm, she had a Cadillac in the garage.
That was because of her grandson.
Damn.
You are gangster.
I am.
Robin Hood, like I said.
Yeah.
I was half of a Robin Hood.
Yeah.
You're half of a Robin.
I still don't know.
That's how they sign.
I mean, that's why I don't know what's going on.
No, no, no, this is real.
I read it in Forbes.
Yeah.
Wow, man.
Okay.
Interesting guy you got here today.
Governor Chair.
Pretty interesting for a Canadian.
Yeah, dude.
You connucks, man.
This is wild.
Just a book of secrets.
Well, listen, Chill, I'm definitely going to watch you on the way out.
I was on probation.
I met my wife.
My wife is freaking hot.
You should see this girl.
Oh, this is a bomber.
Let me see.
This is just this is.
I'm telling you, life is way out of my class.
So I meet my wife.
And I never girlfriend.
We're going through this man's text.
That's Brittany Hottie.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is she in the phone?
Yeah.
Did she text me?
Yeah.
Is that your phone or his phone?
Oh, is that my phone?
Yeah, it's your phone.
There's probably nothing in her phone.
I was looking at my own phone.
With Brittany Hotty?
Was it Brittany Hotty?
We named her this in.
Coincidence.
So that was, oh my God.
They feel like people missed that.
That was fire.
I meet this girl.
This is like my girlfriend.
She thinks I'm a cool guy.
She thinks like I'm this.
And I don't know why she thinks I'm this cool, but I never really had a girlfriend.
I didn't really know much about women.
So things are going very well.
It's time to meet the parents.
So she says this thing of I'm going to meet her parents.
And they live in Vancouver.
I live in Oregon, but there's just a bridge.
There's a little bridge that separates these two states.
Canadian?
Yeah, yeah, not that Vancouver.
Vancouver, Washington.
Oh, okay.
And I'm in Oregon, but there's a bridge.
Well, I'm on probation for robbing the banks.
So I can't leave the state.
I can't go across this bridge without written permission.
And this is set up for a Sunday.
So the federal office is closed.
I can't go get this.
So I can't go meet her parents.
So I'm explaining to her, wait a minute, I'm good for the launch.
I want to meet, but they got to come here.
She's like, no, they've already got it set up and we're going over here.
And my family goes around.
I said, no, no, no, no, you've got to come over.
You have to come over here.
Did you have like the ankle?
No, I didn't have that, but I had everything short of that.
I mean, a guy that would come over to the house and knock on the door and check, make sure you don't have any guns, you don't have any blow, like stuff like this, see who was in the house.
And so, but you don't cuss, huh?
Quite.
Man, I had to tell her, and I always said, well, I can't go.
That's why I finally had to come close.
Well, you know, I'm on the probation for the bank thing.
So she calls her dad and she goes, Hey, you got to come here.
And the dad must have said, Why?
And she goes, He's on probation.
And so the dad must have said, And I can't hear it.
I'm just standing there in front of him.
And she goes, What'd you do?
And I said, Rob Banks.
She goes, Robbing banks.
She just repeated all.
She was like so young and innocent that she didn't really know what I was saying.
And we all went to the lunch.
He came anyway.
He came anyway.
Did he have any questions?
No, he was fine with it.
No questions.
I swear to goodness.
He actually said to her, Cool.
Hey, if there's one felony, it's the coolest crime.
That's the coolest.
It's the coolest crime.
It's robbing the people that we already feel like were being robbed by.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They really were.
And the people that robbed him first.
Yeah.
You just getting a get back.
Yeah.
I'm pretty sure this is just a plot of Heller High Water, but yeah.
No, I like that.
I like a lot like that.
Yeah, Was that?
I didn't know that she didn't know.
Didn't know that she didn't understand what prohibition that she didn't even know these words that she was repeating.
Wasn't that refreshing?
Yeah.
Oh, it was.
Like, you're so innocent.
You don't know.
You haven't been with bad guys.
She didn't even know.
And her dad literally paused and goes, cool.
And they came over and we went and can you travel internationally?
I can now.
At the time, I had to have a fun, and I was supposed to fight Anderson in Brazil, but it's called Once in a Lifetime Opportunity.
So you can petition the courts.
And I did.
And my probation officer, this evil witch named Eileen, said no.
She said no.
I had to go over her head to a federal judge who said yes.
Good luck.
And then you went over there.
Well, they ended up moving the fight to Las Vegas, but it was supposed to be in Rio, in Rio de Janeiro.
Yeah, we were going to go over there.
I had a judge.
The probation officer said no.
Chill, I have no fucking clue if you're telling me the truth.
No, you got to go back to her right.
She was forcing you out to a life of crime.
You didn't go in with the ski mask or anything like that.
You like found that's poor man's work.
Yeah.
What did you do?
They called it money laundering.
I don't actually know what that means.
If I'm to be fair with you, I don't actually know what money laundering means.
Okay.
But apparently I did it.
And I did lots of it.
Were you doing it for a group, the mafia per se?
No, but I got tied to that.
They accused me.
They accused me of such things.
They accused me of terrible things.
They were accusing me of a bank.
And then it was four banks.
What did you do?
And it was seven banks.
Wow.
It turned out to be 11 banks.
They started at 1.8 million.
They moved it to 2.6 million.
They went to 9,700.
They settled in at 15.2 million.
Like it got very complicated.
Then cryptocurrency came into it and they didn't know who had what.
And then they started checking passports.
And I had been in a bunch of different countries.
And it just got really complicated.
So then we made a deal.
Let's just stop.
Everybody stops.
Whatever you've done in exchange for whatever you have in motion stops and you go home.
Jail time?
No, no jail time.
No jail time.
$10,000 fine.
$15.2 million for a $10,000 fine.
But did you have to get back to it?
Because of the Robin Hood.
No, a $10,000 fine.
That you paid with the money you laundered.
With the very money I stole.
And no one served jail time.
No accomplices.
Yeah.
No one's lost.
You didn't slit on anybody.
How old are you?
Sorry.
No, I have a guy.
There was a guy that there were several people that did time.
And one guy had told someone in the group that I had rolled on, but I never did.
How old are you?
Never rolled anybody.
At the time, I was 26.
And now you are.
45.
And you were fighting while you were robbing these banks?
Yeah.
And they had cryptocurrency in 2002?
2003?
2008.
Okay.
The math is.
And you didn't.
The math is not math right now.
Because you have to make it 31 in 2015.
No, I'm telling the story.
I know where you're math at.
I see the problem with what I'm saying.
Well, no, I didn't say that this is what happened.
I said this is what they were accusing me of.
I didn't have my mic though.
No, I see that on my mic.
No, you're good.
You're good.
You know what?
I had a grappling match.
Hey, you want to?
I think this is a grappling match.
Back to this whole combo.
Back to the guy Brian I was telling you.
The guy that Brian, I had a grappling match.
Brian makes friends with this guy in the bar, and the guy ends up hanging out with us the entire night.
And he tries to get us hooked.
And this is in 2000.
Is this the usual suspects?
Like, are you just making the whole thing up?
Yes.
It's all true.
That's all true.
And there were some palm trees.
Yes.
And this guy tries to get us hooked up on something called Bitcoin.
And it was $146.
And we were like, oh, what can you do on Bitcoin?
And he's like, oh, there's this website.
You can go to it.
And there's certain coffee shops.
And we told him, we sat there and told him basically what a fool he was.
What a fool you are.
It was $146 per Bitcoin.
He was online.
He was showing us about it.
Yes, 2011.
Wow.
For Bitcoin.
And what does he have now?
Is he doing all right?
Oh, that guy probably is.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah, if he held on to those.
That'd be hard, though.
You know, there was a bunch of people that said that.
Sell it 10 grand.
That's exactly 15.
Like, imagine bought 100% of the time.
Those guys were 100%.
Yeah.
You're going to sell on the way up.
If you double up, you'd say.
It's 100x.
You're like, that's pretty good.
Those guys were liars that said they bought it for 40 cents and sold it 20,000 in the height of November of 2017.
It's like, you did not.
You bought it for 40 cents.
What did you do?
This was called Money Laundering.
Voting for Bob Dole 00:13:33
Well, it was just...
You need to get the money to launder it.
Yes.
So how are you getting the money?
I mean, I made a deal.
And my deal was, I say, I robbed the bank.
They let me go home.
So you can't.
If anybody asks me, did you launder the money?
Even though in truth, I don't even know what laundry laundering means.
I say I did.
I have to say I did.
And they let me go.
They did their end of it.
They let it go.
So you got to hold up the deal.
I moved on with my life, got my hot ass Brittany, kept all their money.
I mean, really.
I don't let a 26-year-old go and take all your money.
You just let him go home.
He just goes on and has a great life.
He's all fighting for world championships and talking about the Bellatory Grand Prix.
I mean, I really feel like somebody must have been asleep over there, but that's the deal we made.
You asked me if I laundered money.
I tell you I did.
Wow.
Chill.
Evil laughs are awesome.
Son.
This is all interesting.
And the D.B. Cooper story was true, by the way.
I mean, I like throw that in on the back of telling you a bunch of other wild and crazy stories, but like that.
Those are all of the interesting things of my whole life, but all of those things happened in my life.
No, who's D.B. Cooper?
D.B. Cooper is the most famous hijacker of all time.
He hijacked a plane that left Portland, headed for Seattle, and he handcuffed himself to a flight attendant.
Then he opened his briefcase before he had metal detectors and stuff to get on airplanes.
And it was what he led her to believe was a bomb.
So he had him set the plane down, bring $200,000 in cash and two parachutes.
So they took the plane off.
He took the money, put one of the parachutes on and jumped.
Oh, and they never found him.
Never found him.
Never got found.
You met him?
Yeah, no, he's my sister's godfather.
Yeah.
Yeah, just regular guy.
Not your godfather, too?
No, just hers.
But your parents know him.
Yeah.
He's dead now.
He's dead now.
But yeah, yeah, it was a big deal.
It was a big deal at the time.
Then like every 10 years, somebody comes out with a new story.
Netflix just came out with one.
They never have any new information.
They never have any new information.
It's the same information that you get a new producer that comes along.
Well, there was a couple of things, which is the flight attendant said that he was Hispanic.
And she told that from day one.
And the FBI was putting out composite drawings and they always had him as a Caucasian.
And she would tell anyone that would listen, which wasn't very many people.
You know, there was no internet.
There was no Facebook back when this happened.
She had a hard time getting an audience.
But anybody that would listen, she said, I don't think he's Caucasian.
I think he's Hispanic.
And he was Indian.
So, I mean, she was very close on her at this point.
So he had some of the dark features.
You know, I think he had on like a fake mustache or something.
Yeah.
So, but, but that was one of them.
And then a big thing when they never found him and they never found the money is they tried to say, well, he would have died.
He jumped into this forest and between the wolves and the bears and the fall itself, he would have died.
But what they didn't understand is, and it relates back to his ethnicity of being Indian, is that was all government land, tens of thousands of acres that backed to native land.
So he jumped into his own backyard.
He jumped into where he camped every, so he knew exactly where he was.
And the FBI spec, when they never found him, they tried to sell it on the world.
He might not have even made it out.
And I think he, I think he had a motorcycle.
That part is me making that up because he used to race motorcycles.
I didn't get a motorcycle down and drove right home.
It's only a three-hour drive.
Did you speak to him since the...
I spoke to him many times.
Yeah, I wasn't even born until 27 years after this happened.
He was my sister's godfather.
Yeah.
And how was it disclosed to you that he was D.B. Cooper?
Well, my aunt told me, my aunt told me that he was D.B. Cooper, and my aunt asked him.
They're from a really small hometown.
I mean, maybe I jumped in a little late on the story.
They're from a very small hometown.
Like, for example, there was 13 people that graduated in their class.
They played five-man football.
It was a really small hometown.
Most of them had never been on an airplane.
A lot of them had never even seen an airplane.
This guy was taking skydiving lessons.
Like, you had mentioned that to the group.
This would be the hottest thing from this town.
You're jumping out of an airplane.
And he didn't tell anyone.
Saying these very private lessons.
And so they found out.
They found a photo and then they had to ask him.
And he finally copped that he was.
And it was just the whole thing was weird.
I was like, why wouldn't you tell us that?
And then the whole D.B. Cooper thing happens.
They come up with a composite picture and it looks just like him.
I mean, all the dots start connecting.
And my aunt said to him, are you D.B. Cooper?
They were having dinner, Lee's kitchen at Twelveton, Oregon.
And he said, no.
He said no, but everything got weird.
The whole table got really weird.
It was my mom and dad, my aunt and Uncle He and his wife.
So a couple of days later, he went over to my uncle's house and he said, hey, about what she asked me.
And he said, she's not the only one that's put this together.
The FBI's already been in my house.
So he went into hiding, which just all he did is went to Arizona.
But it was a very different time back then, right?
You could rob a bank and move two towns away back then and live the rest of your life.
You put a bed, you know, a little handkerchief.
You'd never get caught.
So he went to Arizona for about seven and a half years and he came back.
He ended up passing away about four years ago.
Did he live?
Was he like pretty rich?
No.
No, that was another thing is he had a minimum wage job.
He was a night watchman is what he did.
But then he came into, they were into shotguns.
He came into these over-under shotguns that were expensive and some four-wheelers and a motorhome.
They just started being these toys all of a sudden that popped up.
And my parents had no one like, hey, where is this coming from?
And he told them that he got Indian money.
He said, because I'm native every year, I get money, which is true.
He had enough Native blood that he was getting, but then that came out too.
And that was $1,200 a year.
So they just didn't cover the spread.
And they're like, D.B. Cooper.
And the FBI visited him, but never could pin him.
They went and knocked on his door.
Yeah, yeah.
They searched the house the whole bit.
They never pinned it on him.
No.
Wow.
No.
Where is Jimmy Hoffa buried?
Isn't that an interesting one?
What do you think about that?
Do you follow the Hoffa thing?
No, but I'm assuming you are family.
Yeah, you were involved with it.
No, I don't know, but I watched that.
What was it called?
The Irishman?
Is that what it was called?
You know, I thought it was good.
I thought the Hoffa story was a good one.
I read a book years ago where a guy said they aced him out and then buried him under the Meadowlands, under the 20-yard of the old Giant Stadium.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's like the one.
It could be.
I mean, they'll tell you people aren't above the law.
Oh, yes, they are.
There's a lot of people above the law for sure.
I mean, but Jimmy Hoffa was one of them or whoever took down Jimmy Hoffa.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's a lot of people.
I mean, you got this Giselle, whatever her name is, and, you know, the Epstein Island and that whole thing.
And they're not looking at the list.
And there's people that are above the law.
Oh, Galen.
There you go.
But that would be a great example.
Like, whatever she knows and whoever she knows, you know, well above the law.
People in your town that you grew up with, or anyone in your family that was connected to like organized crime back in the day?
No.
Was your dad pissed when he found out that you were robbing the banks?
No, no.
He, you know, he told me, don't ever rob anything small.
You know, it's the same crime.
It's going to be the same punishment.
If it's 5,000, whatever, it's the same punishment.
But he passed away.
He didn't know.
Oh, really?
Oh, so that was before.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Would you have done it when he was alive?
No.
A lot of admiration for your pops, huh?
Yeah.
But I was in his spot.
It was his mom.
It was my grandma.
It was his mom.
I had to do it because he wasn't here to do it.
Yeah.
If the banks would have taken from her what they would have done the same shit.
Well, he'd have done something.
Yeah.
But he wasn't here, so I did it.
What about a movie, Jail?
What are you thinking?
I don't know.
You got an interesting story.
You know?
I don't know.
Maybe someday, huh?
Maybe someday.
I thought they made it.
It's called Catch Me If You Can.
Yeah, he got a lot of it.
It's a great one.
It is a good movie.
Yeah.
It's a great one.
Yes.
Yeah, they stole a lot of your life.
It's pretty good.
He tells you how he's going to tell the story, and then he tells you the story.
It still works.
It's true.
Yeah, I know, cash me if you can.
Yeah, trying to think if I could tell the story, but yeah, please do.
Wait a minute, what do you mean?
Well, I can't tell.
All right, let me be a real scumbag.
Let me be a jerk and then I go, but I can't tell you.
Bad guy.
A president of the United States in their absolute inner circle had a phony.
And I knew the phony.
And I knew the phony because the phony had come after me and it got all the way to the chief legal officer of the Ultimate Fighting Championship that had to put a notice at every venue that we went to to ban this person who was stalking me.
And that person was on the inner circle of a president of the United States.
So I have to reach to the president, of which I don't know, to let them know that this human being is not who they're claiming they are.
And they're getting ready to set you up.
Not to mention you're going to look like a fool when it comes out that this person is not named, does not have the title, and did not go to the school that you're running around Hannity and Combs and telling them that they are.
And I did.
I got it to the president who removed this person.
And then on Christmas day.
Remove.
Who's her?
She was going to the name and she was a Harvard graduate, law school.
How is she stalking you?
And she was a continual guest on Hannity and O'Reilly.
It was O'Reilly at the time.
That was not her name.
She did not have a law degree.
She did not go to Harvard.
And so I got to notify that you got her in your inner circle on your jumbo jet, which only has six people.
And you got her.
That's not her name.
She's, yeah, it was the whole thing.
How is she stalking you?
Then she comes in on Christmas Day.
They make, you know what?
You should probably just do the investigation from there.
I think on Christmas Day, it comes out that she had been inflicted.
I know, I know.
It's so good.
She had been impregnated, but they dropped this on Christmas Day.
So it's Christmas morning when this comes out.
But she had been impregnated by the who was going to be the speaker, who had already been given the job to be speaker because Christmas Day, you know, this doesn't kick in until it was like January 19th or 20th.
Speaker of the house.
No, speaker, like a press secretary.
That's what I'm trying to say.
Yeah.
No, it was a mess, man.
The whole thing was a mess.
Did she have a brother named George Santos?
That's an interesting one.
What do you think they should do with him?
I don't know, really.
Nothing.
Why?
What's the difference on what he did?
And what you're doing right now?
You mean from telling stories?
Do you know who George Santos is?
Yeah.
But this is the guy in New York that like lied his way and got elected.
You're lying your way to the best podcast you've ever had.
I'm not trying to.
I'm trying to tell interesting stories, but you know what?
I don't understand.
I want him to be interesting.
I want to tell you the lie about it.
They're interesting.
Yeah, I wasn't trying to lie about him, but Santos, and he even made that.
Santos made that claim.
Santos comes out and he said, What does Santos say?
He said, What's the difference?
Yeah, he says, What's the difference in me lying?
Joe Biden has lied to you many times.
And it stuck everybody.
Everybody kind of subscribed to this.
And what I think is kind of interesting, though, is it shows like a shift in politics.
Instead of lying about what he's going to do for people, he's lying about who he is.
And what he did, which shows what people value now in terms of voting.
You didn't want to vote for the guy who was a trans lesbian gay guy who cured a dog with leukemia instead of the guy who's going to get you that job that you always want or fix your local economy.
Lies I can tolerate.
Yeah, interesting.
An interesting lie as opposed to one that gives me hope and takes.
Well, he also did both, right?
Yeah, he did do both.
He's saying what he's done.
I don't know.
I hope he runs again, though.
And I hope, well, because I want him to run again, but I want him to run on this.
I want him to say that.
Yeah, I fooled you all once.
I'm going to fool you.
How are you guys not paying better attention?
You pay such little attention.
I'm the only one in our district that pays attention.
I'm even willing to go and do the job and you're going to pay me to do it, but you're not paying attention anyway, which is why you elected me in the first place.
If I could find it.
I mean, what is wrong with them in New York that they would do?
Honest to God, in my hometown, you could not win.
If you weren't the soccer.
We don't care about politics.
Yeah, if you weren't the principal at the local school, if you weren't a police officer, I mean, our community's going to know you.
Yeah, yeah.
Our community has to know you.
You have no chance in an election.
This guy's too big of a city.
Yeah.
It doesn't know us.
Your.
Oh, I'm in New York.
We're in New York.
That's why you're bringing up Stan.
Oh, this is you guys.
You guys sent this guy.
Okay.
I know where I was.
Now I get the point.
I don't really vote.
I feel like that's pretty cucky.
Sure.
But yeah, I think New York, you just don't know anyone.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Voting.
It's just the term cuck.
Are you trying to say cocky?
No, no.
No, it's like, it's like what a cuck would do.
You know the guy that likes to see his wife with someone else.
That guy's probably filling out a ballot as his wife is getting fucked.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
How do you get to the why is a voter a cuck?
It just seems like the thing a cuck would do, like while your wife is getting fucked, you're reading about like the policies of the politician in our area.
Different notes.
Do you vote in every election?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, God.
I've never missed.
Nice.
Yeah, so they became eligible.
I don't understand.
I'm not trying to do a bit over here.
I am.
My first time was Bob Dole.
Oh, you voted for Bob Dole.
Bob Dole came.
Oh, you voted for Bob.
My first time to vote.
No, I had to drive home.
I was off to college.
I was going to do my Democratic responses.
I had to drive all the way up to a voting place to vote for a guy that I would not vote for.
Right.
Now, but yeah, Bob Dole.
Bob Dole was running against Bill Clinton.
Yeah, I remember that.
Yeah.
With the arm.
With the pen.
The pen.
Infamous pen.
What a funny strategy that was.
Yeah.
Hey, Venezuela, make it seem like you're doing something with your paralyzed arm.
So stick a pen in it the wrong way down.
Yeah.
Wrong way up.
Picking them right like that.
Oh, geez.
Yeah.
Bob.
Secret Service Reaction to Shooting 00:02:23
Do you have any fun stories about Elvis Presley?
No, Elvis died the year that I was born.
That was my mother's favorite, though.
Elvis Presley, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've had comparisons to Elvin Presley.
Oh, only because, you know, he used to go on stage and he would like jiggle his hips, but that was really profane.
That was really dirty.
Yeah.
And it reminds me of that commissioner I was telling you about that wouldn't license me because I was too dirty.
Kids are trying to follow him.
It's like, man, I didn't even use a four-letter word.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What about like JFK?
How do you think he died?
I went there.
I went to Dallas.
So the only thing we have, it's really sad.
I'll tell you a frozen story.
Oh, well, then you know.
They have a right there.
It's still there.
The grassy hills.
Yeah, so they've frozen it.
Do you know this?
No.
Yeah, you can go do a tour.
You went there right now.
Where he got shot.
It's still an active street.
That's right.
There's cars just going down it.
There's a guy there that's dressed like they dressed back, and he's selling the newspaper from that day.
So he's selling newspaper.
They tried to freeze that scene for all tourists that go there.
But apparently, you can't go to the book depository anymore.
But you can see it.
Right.
You used to be able to go up to it and look out the window.
See if you can make a show.
And then they stopped it after a while after more and more people were like, you can't make this fucking shit.
That's right.
You can turn and look, and I think it was on the eighth floor.
You can turn and look, and yeah, it just doesn't work.
And then where the car is coming, and there were a number of things that the Secret Service did that the Secret Service can't do.
Like they brought the car to a complete stop for what I say.
The car could never go under 15 miles an hour, but whatever it is, that includes taking turns.
There's actual rules.
And if you have any, any even scent of danger, you get the president out of there.
And, you know, the Secret Service driver stopped when he was shot.
Then he came to a complete stop, made sure his head was blown off, and then went away, which could have just been reaction.
Like, nobody actually knows.
Might be traumatized.
But I'll just share with you: if you go back right there today, they relive that day every day.
You can see the prison where he was at, where the shot was taking place, and you will come to a conclusion very quick.
You don't know who shot JFK, but it wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald.
Do you agree?
I don't know much.
One guy that I respect is very big on the fact that it was Lee Harvey Oswald.
And then if you, he'll like bring conspiracy theorists on and argue with them.
And then typically they run out of reasons.
Now he could just be better at arguing.
Sure.
Oh, those are fun.
I love those kinds of debates.
And yeah, who would know if he shot him?
You know what I said about the Secret Service?
Like, well, I can show he stopped the car and it wasn't supposed to stop the car, but does that mean he stopped because he was part of it?
Maybe he just did his job wrong.
Iconic Netflix Comedy Specials 00:04:11
Right.
We do that all the time.
Yeah.
I wasn't supposed to stop the car, but I did.
So what?
So maybe CIA, maybe?
Yeah.
Okay, listen, before we get out of here.
The pyramids.
Who do you think built the pyramids?
I'm into that.
Rogan's into that right now.
Love.
Who do you think built those?
I mean, if you were to, what would you say?
Because Rogan just had a guy on.
Rogan's a big driving force of the pyramids in this last 12 months, and he just had a guy on that shed some real light on it.
And I listened to it like three times, and I didn't understand what the guy was saying.
Yes.
I didn't get it.
Yeah.
So who do you think did it?
Ancient civilization.
You do think so.
Okay.
That then got wiped from the world.
Okay.
I'm actually not subscribing necessarily to the ancient civilization theory.
It could be the same one as us, but they did have access to technology that no longer exists.
So it could be the same people, but there was some cool shit that they had that for whatever reason, maybe it's the flood, maybe it's war, maybe it's just famine.
Who knows what happens?
But over a few thousand years, some shit goes away.
And then it wasn't redeveloped.
But definitely some sort of ancient technology.
We need to get these guys on, man.
100%.
That has to happen.
Yeah.
I'm fascinated by this.
He told me.
I am too.
And I'm fascinated by this.
Any good Rogan stories from back in the day?
No, no, I don't think so.
Rogan was an interesting one.
He appreciated your stuff, right?
He got it immediately, no?
But he worked super hard.
I mean, he really, he was doing the UFC for free.
Yeah.
You know, they couldn't pay and Danny, but told him that he was coming along.
And Rogan helped a lot.
Like, the man show was a big deal.
He'd wear sweatshirts on, but that was a huge deal.
That was all the media you could possibly get was Joe Rogan wearing a sweatshirt that said UFC on it.
Yeah.
Yeah, he earned that.
And then when he would even come to town to do those shows, you know, that was a whole week into the production.
People don't understand that.
And he would do a live show on two different nights.
I mean, that dude went on three and four hours sleep for years.
Yeah.
He's, I mean, obviously we're huge fans here.
You know, I love Joe, but it's really interesting, his batting average.
In the things that he's been passionate about, he hasn't missed.
Sure.
So it's like stand-up comedy, podcasting, UFC.
Even like interest in jujitsu.
Now this is like, I have like my friend's kids are doing jiu-jitsu as children.
Nobody ever did jiu-jitsu as a kid.
You know, you did fucking karate or something like that.
Like if you wanted to do martial arts.
So he's opening this comedy club in Austin.
And it's, he just sent me like some videos.
I think it opens like next week.
I'm pretty sure maybe next week or like March or something like that.
And my initial thought of like, you know, making Austin like a comedy hub, I was like, they just don't have the population density.
Like you need a fucking city like New York to fill up comedy clubs.
And then comedy has become like their sport.
Wow.
It's just, they don't have a professional protein.
They got comedy that's fucking sport.
And I mean, it's just crazy.
He's going to do it again.
Like, it's just, if he wants to do something, it becomes the biggest thing.
Isn't Netflix to thank, though?
I mean, didn't Netflix single-handedly save comedy?
I felt like it did.
Without being in the business, just as an observer of the business, there was nobody to aspire to or to be rich or to be fair until Netflix came to Austin.
Yeah, the HBO specials.
Sorry to interrupt.
The HBO specials did, to your point, seem like it had lost its luster.
I remember watching as an up-and-coming comedian being like, these don't feel the same as they used to when I was a fan.
Yeah, I agree with you on that.
Like in that when these Netflix specials came out, they were just so accessible and they absolutely blew people the front.
Allie Wong, I remember her entire life changed when the Netflix special dropped.
Segura too had like an iconic one.
There's like a bunch of guys that had these.
I mean, Joe, right?
Like, there's just a bunch of dudes that just had just breakthrough at Netflix specials.
It seemed like a risk, though, that Netflix was willing to like, can you make money in comedy?
Nobody ever has.
Nobody's ever tried to.
I felt like Netflix wouldn't really.
I mean, there's a lot of people that are running Netflix that should be in federal prisons right now, but that's one thing that they did take a risk and did very well.
Yeah.
It seems.
Seems.
I was just wondering if you guys felt that way.
Yeah, I think we kind of feel like it doesn't mean as much as it used to, but early on, it really changed.
And maybe now, if you knock it out of the park, it still changes.
I don't know as firsthand.
But yeah, when we saw what happened with Ali Wong back then, Bill Burr, same.
Compliments and Relationship Dynamics 00:03:41
Oh, yeah, Burr.
Like some iconic fucking stuff.
Yeah, it just changes things.
Yeah.
Anyway, listen, Joe, we know you have to catch a flight, and we're very grateful for your time.
I can just compliment you before we leave.
We're surrounded our whole lives with entertainers, people who need to be admired at all times.
We have this void, and it is really impressive to see somebody who can build a career off of saying, I don't need you to like me.
And I think it takes a lot of self-belief and confidence that I really admire.
That was beautiful.
Thank you.
I thank you.
I appreciate that.
Thank you guys.
All right, what do we do now?
What do we do now?
We just say goodbye.
That's it?
Say goodbye.
Don't compliment anymore until you just crumble.
No, you guys are right.
I have a lot of fun.
I'm headed home.
I'm catching a plane.
I'm going home as long as the weather keeps up to that point.
I appreciate it.
Oh, that's a fine woman right now.
Yeah.
That's right.
She's out of the thing.
We never see him again.
Was that your first?
Did you lose your virginity to your wife?
Oh, yes.
Oh, yes.
Heavens, yes.
Oh, same thing.
There were two other guys on the pod that did that.
But he doesn't dab me up when I say it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He makes fun of me.
Calls me first.
Did you ever tell people that?
Not really.
This is the first time I've ever been.
I really don't want to go any further with it because I am embarrassed, but good for you.
When I told him, he said, I'm so happy you're not gay.
That was really cool.
Because he saw the whole thing happening before.
And then when I finally told him, I finally had sex, he was like, thank God you're not gay.
Oh, I'm so happy.
I would have loved him if he was gay, too.
Sure.
Yeah.
I would too.
Yeah.
Not that.
Hey, thanks, man.
Yeah, for sure, though.
Yeah.
But I think fidelity monogamy is something that can be aspirational for a lot of people.
I think it's cool to have people that are doing it.
And so I don't think there's anything to be embarrassed about.
Yeah.
Oh, no, I cracked me.
It's just an embarrassing topic.
No, it was a thing, though.
I was at a fight gym.
It came up a lot at the jail.
Oh, yeah.
It came up a lot.
Look at the stresses.
Well, the guys would bring it up.
The guys would bring it up.
But it's one of these things where, but yes.
What do you mean the guys would bring it up?
The guys would bring it up.
I was known for that.
It was a known thing.
But you were saving yourself.
It was a known thing.
Really?
Yeah.
I didn't have a whole lot of things to be like, but that was one of the things.
And then I never tasted alcohol.
This was another thing.
So I was kind of tried alcohol.
So I was kind of a unique guy in that space.
It was kind of a unique gauntlet.
And the meanwhile, I was taking steroids and robbing banks.
So I mean, that makes no sense.
Yeah.
And I really had some people guessing.
But those things are just.
I'm the same sexually, and I would rob banks.
Why wouldn't you not rob the bank?
Why would you not rob banks?
That's where the money's at.
Here's a coat.
Why did I rob the bank?
Because they had the money.
They had the money.
Why'd you take the pads?
Because it was going to enhance me, you fool.
People come up with these questions.
Yeah.
Oh, I'm not curious in terms of why you would do those things.
I think that's brilliant.
For sure.
Yeah.
You just knew when you saw Brittany.
Oh, yeah.
Because that's what's interesting to me.
It's not like me or Alex sees a beautiful woman and you're like, oh, my God, I need to go talk to that woman.
You're going, oh, my God, I need to go marry that woman off a look.
Oh, yeah.
What a compliment to your wife.
Yes.
Does she realize the compliment that you bestowed upon her?
No, no, no, no.
She figured I was a typical dirtbag because, see, when I was in the middle of the day, like I'm getting her to, you know, like, I'm inviting her to stay the night really early in our relationship.
But what she doesn't know is I can't go to her house because I'm on probation and I can't leave the state.
But it turns out I've been robbing banks.
I got a nice little nest egg and I got a pretty nice house over here that I bought with the government's money.
Like the whole thing's gonna come together.
You just give me a little bit of time.
I can explain this.
But it's gonna be more than a first date.
Were you wearing your glasses at the time?
No, no, I didn't even know.
These are readers.
He got those later in life.
That's true.
That's a true story.
He's a pretty big prescription, I thought.
Yeah, 3.0.
Yeah.
Which is terrifying because they only go to like five.
The Million Dollar Bank Robbery 00:01:27
Yeah.
So you only got a little room left.
Well, and I've gone up one each year.
Yeah, I only started on these at 40.
I'm 45.
So I've gone up five times, but I'm like, yeah, it's terrifying.
So you can't see any of us right now.
I can see you all, but yeah, it's hard.
Yeah, it's hard.
Most people, whenever I say, how many fingers are hungry?
Yeah.
Yeah.
We've got a whole black guy here.
Did you know he was black the whole time?
He's got badass glasses.
Yeah, yeah.
Not me.
Plus, he gave me a hug, which was very cool.
There's not enough huggers out there these days.
Huggers.
Double G-E-R and make it a compliment.
That's rare.
He's not used to that.
Listen, Chill, listen.
You've been trying to get rid of me.
You've been trying to end this.
Would you just wrap it?
I'm ready to go.
We got the Bellator.
We got the Grand Prix coming up.
So the Coker's giving out a million dollars.
And DeMargo Meta versus Benzie Henderson.
What else can we do here, guys?
Nothing.
You gotta go.
This is just amazing.
You gotta go.
Cut Steams Island.
So what are your thoughts on...
Did you enjoy your time there?
That's not a gotcha.
I'm just genuinely curious.
I would have gone.
I don't know.
We ended right there.
That did not.
Thank you guys so much.
Go check out everything Chill does.
Peace.
Export Selection