Josh Barnett, UFC’s youngest heavyweight champ, plans a 2025 return after wrestling commentary with Jim Ross and debates muscle cars vs. modern tech, dismissing electric vehicles as soulless. His clash with USADA—proving accidental osterine contamination in supplements—exposed the agency’s punitive bias over science, despite winning arbitration with no suspension. Comparing cases like John Jones’ tainted supplements and Brock Lesnar’s weight struggles, Barnett argues athletes shouldn’t face harsh penalties for uncontrollable factors. Philosophically, he champions Nietzsche’s "eternal recurrence," framing suffering as essential for growth, while critiquing ideological extremism’s role in modern violence, from Durham’s attacks on Jordan Peterson to Iran’s crackdowns on free expression. Both agree: real strength comes from facing challenges, not performative social media signals or arbitrary systems. [Automatically generated summary]
There'll be some grappling stuff this year, but I'm figuring by the start of next year, I'll get back into the MMA circuits, mainly because it's just going to take some time to set up camps, managers, the structure of everything to have proper sparring partners and all that.
Every Friday night at 8, you can see me sit down and run my mouth about wrestling.
But we just did the live show up at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, which they've been having sporadic wrestling events there, but it was a big draw in that building in the 60s and 70s, I guess.
Yeah, I think that there's a certain audience of a certain age gap, our age group that has come into flourishing into the internet and other ways to which to go ahead and bring wrestling back up there and show that wrestling, whether it's the biggest company like the WWE, all the way to, say, number two would be New Japan.
And then there's all these independent companies all over the place that some of them have quite a decent following as well.
I can't speak about the rest of it, but NWA was, I guess still.
It's a legendary sanctioning body.
And so it wasn't any one particular company, but it was a sanctioning body that would then oversee certain titles.
And so if you're going to be on this show at this time, you're going to defend the NWA championship, the NWA Commission would get involved, and they had their specifications as to how the title matches would be run and whether or not you could lose by disqualification or not, or if you could go over the top rope would be a DQ and little stuff like that.
Yeah, they've got the Colemans, those old, or the The ones that start with the W, the Weber grills, there's just nothing to it other than oh, those kettle grills?
So you have like the main chamber, and then you got a little wood box on the side where the wood's heating up, and then the air goes through and it smokes from this.
Not to mention they would, they started trying to incorporate smog elements to try and reduce the amount of smog of these things, but they were just highly inefficient the way they were going about it with the AIR stuff and different processes that were like things connected to the heads.
But he, all right, so I got this jacket, and I've always wanted one ever since I was a kid.
And I went to this store in New York because there was no, there wasn't a location locally where I could just try the jackets on.
And I didn't want to buy an expensive jacket and have to send it back, all this stuff.
So I was in New York, went to the store, found the jacket that fit me, loved it, bought it, been wearing living crap out of it, taking it all kinds of places.
It's been in nasty black metal mosh pits with it on.
I've been all around the world with it.
I've been in Far Eastern Russia.
A leather jacket is made to tell a story eventually at the end of its life.
But people will go, oh, you know, do you ride a bike?
I'm like, no, the reason why I have this jacket is because of Mad Max and the Road Warrior.
Because when I saw that as a kid, those jackets look badass.
And, you know, here's the bronze, the MFP running around and their falcons just tearing ass and blowing shit up, wearing these jackets.
I'm like, I want a jacket like that.
But I started to notice that this jacket was everywhere, everywhere.
Everybody, everybody was making a version of this jacket somehow or some way, this biker style jacket.
Guys are wearing it everywhere.
Chicks are wearing it everywhere.
And then I'm like, oh, that's a weird fashion trend.
I didn't really see that coming.
And then as I started to think about it more and more and more, it seems like there is a attempt within society to try and present the image of toughness, right?
So from haircuts to jackets to all these different kinds of things, everyone's trying to appear to be tough and badass all the time without, but people aren't going out there and necessarily risking it like they used to.
they're not in generally taking on these jobs that are dangerous or even just, if people wanna have muscle cars, but they don't wanna work on them.
They don't wanna, it's like by having the item, it somehow implies some sort of- Yeah, some sort of toughness, some sort of rugged element to yourself.
And you'll see all the like the 30-year-old Hollywood-y type dudes with the manicured beards and all that on their Harleys that have all been turned into choppers and like, okay.
It's like a big show of toughness without, because people aren't going out there and living tough lives anymore.
And even though a woman that's appearing to be tough, I mean, you would call it a masculine trait, even though that doesn't mean that they're being a man.
A chick that wears like a leather jacket and rides a bike, she's putting out a signal like, you better be a bad motherfucker if you want this, bitch, or I mean a girl's.
It's totally anecdotal, but it just seems like people are attempting to try and, it's like things, I always tell people about looking at human history, I go, the issues that we deal with, the things that affect us are not new.
Just in a lot of ways, they're just more magnified.
Especially with social media.
Social media, I believe, picks and preys on certain elements of our way of being, our process, and it heightens our responses to certain things, but it also heightens what we see from these responses.
Because when somebody is, let's say, massively insecure.
So social media can really, pray, play hell on that and make you feel more insecure, especially if you're putting, depending on where you're putting value on what you see or what is said about you or how you are necessarily, if you're comparing yourself to others.
Also, when you respond to that in some way through your own social media, be it by trying to take more grandiose photos or, I don't know, whatever sort of signaling of how to make up for that, it shines even that much more to everybody else.
So what you do gets seen as much as you see what everybody else does and then you're given an option on how do you react to that.
Well, if you're not – I mean these are the sort of – you can go back into old books on philosophy and old historical texts.
Insecurity is not going anywhere.
We're not all that much more different from 1,000 years or 2,000 years or 3,000 years in the way we react and respond to things than we are now.
It's just that all these things are amplified under the elements of technology that are around us and how they can affect us and how much easier it is for those things to get to us.
And then even amongst that, it's like, well, I mean, to a degree, if it's your social media and you are the prime element within it, of course, it would be a bit self-absorbed.
But I think there's more nuance to it than that.
And it's not just to pick on, say, the gals that are taking all the sexy selfies and all that kind of stuff.
There's the dudes that do essentially the same equivalent.
And it's all in, you know, often it could be in a response to drive attention towards themselves.
But what do you, why do you want that attention in the first place?
And then, of course, that's something that you can't know until you know the person exactly.
Which is weirder that this person with this fantastic, monumental, epic-level ass is out there taking photos of it and putting it out there for people to see, or that people not only continue to look at it, but more flock to this religious icon of an ass, apparently.
I can't say that I have a reason why it makes sense.
Hey, maybe it's simply because we view it as something that, or we see women do it more, and so we think that a man is somehow doing something womanly?
I mean, look, your personality is at least as important as the way you look.
And if your personality is such that you need to shoot plastic in your face in order to feel good about yourself, you know, I've got to go, ooh, like, what's happening there below the surface?
It could be an indicator of something more serious that no matter how much filler or how nice it could look, maybe there's still going to be an issue per se.
I have been told, though, I've had some girls go, man, you're actually a way better kisser than I expected because you have almost, it seems like you have no lips.
But that's why it looks weird with girls when they have big fake lips because of the golden ratio.
Your face doesn't, it just doesn't work.
Like, go back to that article on the golden ratio of the face, please.
And you'll see like they have a, there's a whole mathematical sort of algorithm that they can use to sort of explain what is and is not normal in the shape of your face.
Like look at, what the fuck's the name?
Angelina Jaoli.
Do you remember that song?
There was a fucking song that someone...
There was a song...
God damn it.
This is like 2002.
It was a song was Angelina Jali got some big ass titties.
So, and if someone else is, you know, God in war, if they take one of your teammates and then cut them to pieces and send them back to you, then all of a sudden you're going to do the same thing or then some reprisal.
I mean, I didn't think that in a lot of ways we would end up to where we are at this point in so many of the social and cultural elements and that didn't even just specifically stay within the U.S., but seem to be bleeding throughout all of Western society and civilization at large.
This is like the thing you see some doofus with those frog skin things on his glasses to keep him from falling off while he's wandering around in the, you know.
I can at least say as an athlete, that maybe they've got the slides on because they're going to take those slides off and put their basketball shoes right on.
So for them, it's like, I'm, I'm out of uniform at the moment.
But I'm ready to go to combat basketball-wise at any moment.
I don't know.
But in general, as far as a fashion trend, fuck that noise.
Well, you know, I guess you don't need a real shoe if you throw on, you walk out with your socks on, you throw on your sliders and get on your hoverboard or fucking your electric scooter.
But, you know, here's, I got one of my beefs, not with Teslas per se in any way, but I would say talking about cars with somebody out and about.
And they'll have some conversation and I'll bring up some car or talking about something like the Dodge.
No, it wasn't the demon when the Hellcat came out.
And so like, oh yeah, those Hellcats, I've heard amazing things about how not only is it obviously incredibly powerful and fast, but that they're massively comfortable.
It's a GT car.
You could grand tour it all over the U.S. and be comfy the whole time.
I'm also a little weirded out by the over-electronic element of modern life.
I realize the usefulness of it, but I always think about, you know, when some shit goes south, like I can't just fix it and we keep going.
Or if something goes bad, it could go bad in a lot of different ways.
And there's a chain of command of bad that it's all linked to that it could go to as well.
And so I'm just like, it just doesn't.
Plus, when you talk about engines, all right, you start up, you're Porsche.
You start up, you know, a vet.
You start up an LS motor, and then you start it up next to a big block Pontiac.
You start it up next to a big block Ford, and everything has a different feel, a different cam that's in it makes it sound different, makes it operate different.
The exhaust that's on, everything changes based on all kinds of different elements.
And so the car, even of itself, not just the exterior of it, but the internals make it seem like a different vehicle.
People wanting to sort of live at parents' house for the rest of their life, except then it goes from being mom and dad to them being a state of some sort that does all your work for you because you don't want to have to take the responsibility of either winning or of losing that confrontation, maybe.
I mean, and there is no, it's possible to have animals that are able to live a more natural way of life than it is to jam them into a cage and force feed them into.
Well, I talked about it with Chris Bell first, who's been on it for, I think he's been on it for at least six months or so, and he's having radical improvements.
And one of the reasons that he's having improvements, and then Jordan's having tremendous results, and Jordan's daughter as well, is arthritis.
The only part of a mosquito's life I enjoy or think is interesting is when they're larvae and they're these fucking vicious little things with these giant hooked teeth that will can even eat little fish and all that kind of stuff in the ponds.
Dude, when I first moved to California, I rented this house in Encino and nobody lived in it for like a year and a half, two years, something like that.
And they had a pool in the backyard that was just sitting there with no chemicals in it.
It wasn't just green.
There was schools of mosquito larva swimming around like fish.
I went out into the yard.
I was like, what the fuck is that?
And the guy was like, oh, we'll take care of that.
Well, you know, being a vegetarian or a vegan is a very, it's a very first world option.
The reason why people got to this point is because we figured out a way to survive eating all the animals around us, just like they figured out a way to survive, eating the animals around them.
Yeah, but one of the reasons why they believed they had this interesting relationship with cattle, but not with lamb, was because cattle shit would grow magic mushrooms on it.
This is because soma is a big part of ancient Hindu folklore and their religion and their ancient texts.
They talk about soma.
And soma was some sort of a psychedelic mixture.
And they don't know exactly what it was, but they know that Hindus, like a lot of the ancient Hindu text, they deal with some sacraments.
And they know that they were into hash.
And like a lot of the yogis, the sadhus, they're into chilams.
They smoke chilams of hash.
So they knew they were into hash, but they think that their aversion to eating cows may have had something to do with the fact that these cows would shit and then the mushrooms would grow out of cow shit and then they would eat these mushrooms and have these profound experiences.
And so they thought of these cows as conduits to God.
But then there's, you know, also they probably drank the milk.
You know, they probably used them to plow the fields, to grow their food.
So it's real, it's interesting because when a culture has an aversion to eating a very specific animal and that specific animal also is the main source of psychedelic mushrooms, to ignore that connection seems a little bit weird.
Yeah, and then it was also a major element within all this Huxley's Brave New World, which I think that was based on that.
Probably so.
I'm firmly of a belief that what we're living in is not an Orwellian potential dystopic future.
We're living in a Huxley version because Huxley and Orwell saw it from two different ways.
And Orwell was more of the there would be force and violence and direct suppression of individuals and groups and retraining.
Now, there is thought policing, and even though they call them equity, diversity, whatever departments, I mean, there are people that are there to, you know, they have these cabals that try to force everybody to be in line, but it's, you know, they're not necessarily gassing folks or beating on them or what have your shock therapy.
However, Huxley's version of how this would all go badly was that everybody would be so comfortable that there would be so much luxury and pleasure and that you would just not fight back.
Anything that they would try to impart upon you, the way they would get you to do it, is just make your life even softer and even easier.
The mayor of Durham apparently said something about Jordan Peterson: that Jordan Peterson is not welcome in Durham, North Carolina, because of his transphobic and racist views.
State-compelled speech, meaning that there was a bunch of different words that they were forcing people to use that were these new gender pronouns.
And they were compelling.
And they have human rights councils in Canada, and he is, I mean, he's a clinical psychologist, and he's very well read, and he understands Marxism and all the pitfalls.
Postmodernism and neo-Marxism and its evolution from classical Marxism and how it's been influenced, the difference between emphasizing the superstructure over the base.
But the way I came across Jordan Peterson was that as a big fan of Nietzsche and his philosophical writings, so I'd go on YouTube to see if I could find lectures on Nietzsche.
And in his Maps of Meaning lectures, and this is before any of the issues with BLC-16, really, I didn't know about any of that.
I was just listening to Jordan Peterson lectures because of him referencing and talking about Nietzsche.
And then from Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and all this.
And he then started to talk a lot about Marxism and communism and postmodernism in reference to each other in other ways.
Because most of the source material, the creation of these sort of ideological viewpoints are from postmodernist neo-Marxism.
And it's all based on the concept of conflict theory.
So there's always going to be an oppressor and an oppressed.
So if what you are doing is trying to argue with or even just make your case to someone who's an oppressor, well, it would be weaponized because as far as you're concerned, everything they do is weaponized against you.
So you've already chosen a confrontational position.
Well, also, like, whether it's someone who's a postmodernist or someone who's a staunch conservative, people go into any discussion with a presupposed, or they have a preordained or pre, they have a collected group of ideas that they have attached themselves to.
And very difficult for people to just, someone to lay out their position and someone else to lay out their position and two people to cordially discuss the merits of each position with an open mind.
It happens so rarely.
And it's something I try so hard to do.
And it's something that it took me years to cultivate the mindset to not have these preexisting conditions, pre-existing ideas, or if I do have them, don't attach myself to them and be ready to abandon them at any moment, under new evidence.
And I used to, you know, I'd have these conversations and this person used to, that I was living with, I would say, they're like, well, you just always have to be right.
I go, no, no, no.
I don't have to be right.
But if you're going to make a claim, you're going to have to defend your argument, and I'll defend mine.
But ultimately, I don't care if I'm wrong, because being wrong only means that I can then perhaps work towards a way of having the most understanding that I can have.
We, as human beings, are wrong so much more than we're ever right, but by being wrong, by making mistakes.
It's like through martial arts, by being on the mats.
And, you know, I'm going to get this guy's ankle right now.
Oh, fuck that up.
Ah, fuck that up.
Oh, I got caught.
Oh, fuck that up.
You can't get to the point to where you're like, oh, this is how you set it up.
This is the way that you can, I wasn't securing the knee well enough, so it was always sliding out of position.
I couldn't keep the leg framed in such a position where when I applied my hold, the pressure went to the joint that I needed it to.
None of that happens until you make mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake.
And there's nothing wrong with before making a moving forward on something to sit back and to study a little bit and to try and understand somewhat of the landscape.
But eventually the only thing you can do is you just got to go, right?
You know, paralysis through analysis isn't going to help you either.
It's terrible for you because you don't grow and then you have to live in denial and then you have to always tell yourself that you were right and they were wrong.
Even if you get out debated or even if you're faced with new evidence, you try to ignore that new evidence.
And just human history, even in ways which it's not directly related to, say, Marxism, but just to look at patterns and trends and ways of people of operating and to see how, okay, well, given a different circumstance, how would that process work within this one or in this one or in this one or in this one?
And then even if you wanted to say, well, if you're like, well, I don't think Marxism will work.
You can't say that until you actually study what Marxism is and what its principles are.
Because if you don't understand the argument, and this is like Jon Stuart Mill, you can't just defend your side without knowledge of the other.
You have really no position to, your position isn't any better than theirs.
No matter what you're looking at, like whatever you're trying to defend, look at even if it's something horrible, even if it's like a racist position, find out why these people support this.
So it's also the one of the things about societies that we really have to take into consideration is the momentum of the past.
Like there's this country has a unique freedom to it because it was literally created by people who decided to get on a boat and risk traveling across the ocean to some new land.
It's a country filled with savages, like crazy people that took wild chances and did wild things because of it.
And if you look at the history of this country, that's clearly established by, look at the art, look at the music, look at the things that have come out, the comedy, all the things that have been created, the cars, all the different things that have come out of this one place.
And this one place just happens to be the most recent place with the least amount of historical baggage.
But then you look at the places that have the most amount of historical baggage, like Africa or some parts of Russia.
These are places where they have the hardest time breaking out of the weight of the cultural momentum of the past.
It's very difficult for people to radically change an established system that has existed for a thousand years.
And if you were to say, think about communism and the Soviet states in the length of what constitutes human history has only been gone for, it was around for a short time and it's only been gone for an even shorter time.
And while I have, you know, people will often get into a conversation about this and they'll bring up, well, what about the Crusades?
Or what about this?
I go, hold on.
These are all relevant things too.
And while the Crusades are not nearly as cut and dry as you think they are, in fact, which to it ended in like the Fourth Crusade, two groups went down there and then end up fighting each other.
It's like, you're both you thinking.
But then you had things like the Inquisition, you have, you've had all kinds of stuff.
And it's like, yeah, no, you just, that doesn't erase this.
And that doesn't, they don't balance each other out.
They still have patterns.
And it's because it's one religion and not the other doesn't make it the motivations are the same.
It kind of comes, it comes from the same concept, even if it's not technically the same religion.
Well, imagine, okay, you had Christian zealotry, and let's say Islam and Christianity had swapped.
And Islam had all kinds of reformations and different sects break off from it and all this.
And it become more like Christianity is in this modern era, but Christianity stayed in a more less developed sense and had a more rigorous, fervent zealotry in terms of adherence to doctrines or at least or even interpretations of doctrines and certain things.
So, but within this context of the modern era, so now you have the internet.
So, any, let's say, you know, you only got like a million people in the world that feel this way, but these million can all connect with each other via social media, via different electronic ways.
They can create weapon, they can weaponize things much easier.
They can coordinate.
It's not like the crusades where you had to get money from a king and other monarchs, get together all these troops, get together all these supplies, march them all down into the Middle East to where you've got the Turks waiting for you that they've done the same thing, and then you guys all meet up on these different points of battle.
You could literally be at war all over the world all day, every day, all at the same time, because of the modern advances of technology.
And not to mention you have firearms, you have explosives and chemicals and things that you can use to your disposal.
You didn't have six-ton trucks to drive into a crowd.
That's just technology.
It helps, it makes our lives better, but in other ways, it can also create calamity for us.
And it's really, they're tools.
You know, social media is a tool.
I think that social media is, if you were to track the mass shootings that have happened, the rise of social media, and I think the rise of mass shootings would be on a parallel.
I really think that it's social media that's increasing the amount that you see with the school shootings and things like that.
They get fame, or you're able to antagonize someone and they can't get away from you much more easily.
The résentement, using a Nietzschean term in terms of the resentment, the resentfulness from seeing other people having what you think you deserve or thinking that they somehow are having more of what you think you want that as well.
Why do they get to have it and I don't?
Or any number of reasons why you could be incredibly potently resentful.
And now you have this thing that's just in your life pumping all this kind of stuff at you all the time.
And I think that it can affect people in some really pathologically bad ways.
And now you have technology to also enact it.
And if it's not, and you can also easily make the argument if it's not a firearm, it could be something else.
And that doesn't make it any better.
But I think that the rise of social media has been, is a direct correlator.
It's directly responsible for the rise in these school shootings.
Now, imagine all that with the technology of social media able to heighten some of the effects of some of these things or to create.
So someone that feels alienated, imagine now not only do you feel alienated in the real world, but then when you're on social media, you, one, it's not a real, you know, your body knows it's not the real world, but you could be alienated out there too.
And that which alienates you there could still penetrate and get to you while you're out while you're away from it.
If people are fucking with you at school or what have you, and then you're at home, you're feeling alienated there, and then this is continuing to fuck with you through social media, or other people are fucking with you on social media.
Let's say you're playing your video games and people are talking shit because you keep getting shot in Battlefield V or whatever.
And while no one knows, I mean, I'm sure you wouldn't necessarily know that if I say, oh, you know, fuck you, Noob or something on some video game, that this person is essentially in real life being told, fuck you, every day, all day, feeling like the whole world thinks, fuck you.
How would you know that?
But it could be.
Then that person snaps.
Or that person has a, they have a psychological issue that they're not.
First of all, there's the ability to kill large groups of people, which is unprecedented, right?
The ability to use assault rifles and just fucking semi-automatic guns and go in and kill large groups of people.
The knowledge that if you do do that, it'll make a huge splash and giant headlines, and you'll be infamous.
The fact that a lot of these people are on disassociatives, a lot of these people are on serious psych medications that we really have only been studying the effects on human beings for the past couple decades.
There's not a whole lot of data on long-term use of these SSRIs over 20, 30, 40 years.
So you've got varying peoples with varying mental illnesses, varying psychological pressures and stresses, and lives that are just beyond fucked.
And then they have access to guns and they want people to hurt the way they're hurting.
Well, and you know, even if they illegally acquire the guns, I mean, they still, I mean, it doesn't matter in this case, what the tool is per se, but well, you know what?
People don't, they overlook the historical significance of the population growths, the population density that has been gathering as we get into these high-density civilized areas like cities, these big cities, and it changes everything.
Like if you live in a town of 150 people, you probably know 150 people.
If you live in a city of 5 million people, you probably know 10 people.
You know, you know, people you work with.
You might know a couple friends.
You know, unless you're like a really social person, you probably have a way more limited number of people that you actually know than people that have a tight-knit, small town and small community.
But, you know, those people are obviously in your business.
That's one thing.
If you have a fucking what I know friends that live in small towns, fuck man.
We started this podcast talking about what we had talked about your situation with Brendan Chaub and I had talked about your situation where you were you tested positive from a tainted supplement, like legitimately tested positive from a tainted supplement.
You were cleared, but this whole process was a goat rope.
And they, and the supplement itself, as it turns out, was contaminated with a SARM called osterine.
But when I say contaminated, I mean like it had such trace amounts that the people that did the lab testing on it said, well, it's clearly just contamination because this wouldn't help you.
And then, you know, one day, well, like, for one, when I'm out there in Europe and I let them know, like, hey, I'm going fucking where the wind takes me in Europe.
I don't have a whereabouts to fill in because I could be on a train moving here, moving there, whatever.
And they know that, and yet then they go ahead and sent someone to my fucking house to try and test me while I'm in Europe.
And I'm just going, okay.
So don't they, isn't there like an app where you fill out, but I find you have, you can fill out where you're supposed to be ahead of time for the most part.
So on Tuesday, the 16th, I'm going to be at this place from this time to this time.
And then, and then, but what is your home base?
So if we don't go to these places, then we'll just meet you at your home at some time or whatever.
My manager literally told Nowitzki and the UFC, he's not going to be home for almost a month, and he's fucking practically backpacking all through Europe, going from place to place to place.
But even if you are not fighting, like say if you're running out the door and you have a business appointment, how long does it take for them to test you?
And the fucking, the very last test I took right before retiring.
Oh, you're flagged.
I'm like, you got to be fucking kidding me.
Really, really.
All these tests over all these years, me being the first person to do complete out-of-competition or in-competition, random urine and blood testing when I worked with WATA and the Nevada State Athletic Commission when I fought Travis Brown.
So no one had ever done actual random testing before, and there was no USADA involved in the UFC yet.
And then with California, you know, I had an issue with a contaminant, what I believe ultimately to be a contamination, but I didn't take all the steps that I had this time.
And once that whole process was such a motherfuck, I'm like, this is never going to happen again.
So every supplement lot that I took, I would always keep bits of it behind for until I felt there was enough time it expired.
I can get rid of it because no one's going to come back and test me.
But I know that with this brand of tribulus I'd taken, I'd taken three or four different other supplements from the same company and all passed no problem on their tests.
So then we're in contact with USATA throughout the entirety of this.
So we don't ever break contact with USADA.
We have a specific guy.
I'm not going to throw his name out there or anything, but we have a guy that we spoke to directly the whole time through my manager speaking with him.
And I've seen the emails.
And so we're talking about how we know this is a contamination.
And when we get done with all this, why don't we even try to put together something, some promotional stuff, anything that we can do to try and keep athletes from ending up in the same issues?
And we'd like to do whatever we could to help you guys out with this.
We're not against you.
We don't mind being a part of the system, and we understand why you're here.
And I'm not against them wanting to do drug testing or whatever and try to keep a clean and fair playing field.
I get the point of it.
So we get the supplements tested.
They test the secondary batch.
They have all their information.
It's like, all right, this should fucking rock and roll.
If someone tests positive for something that's a tainted supplement and it's a third-party supplement and where it's not, or it's not third-party verified, rather.
And I've done, I did an interview with the guy that we were dealing with through Skype.
We've been in touch.
It's just like at some point, everything turned and changed.
Their tone changed.
Even the original penalties they were looking to levy increased.
New shit gets brought in.
It's like they became a completely different animal as soon as there was the evidence of contamination and that I wasn't willing to take punishment for it.
I think that they, and this is just my opinion, I think the way USATA looks at it, and it's an easy way to go about it, is that the more people they ding, the more effective they appear.
Their efficacy is based on punishments doled out, not on lack of punishments at all.
There is some outlined elements of protocol, but there is no, it is always this or it is always that.
Right.
And, you know, I didn't begrudge them for a period of ineligibility while you're going through the process of finding out whether this is contamination or what have you, doing any testing.
And that makes sense to me.
That's fine.
I understand that.
If this guy supposedly has something in his system, well, let's figure out what it is.
And once we have a better idea, then we can decide about whether you can go back into the pool or do this or do that or if you're going to lever any punishments.
Makes sense to me.
But in addition to that, then tacking on more shit in terms of my case, I was like, that's not acceptable.
So we go, well, I guess the only thing left to us is to go to arbitration.
And so my manager spoke with, Was working through them to arbitration, and we said, okay, well, well, what is that going to take?
Well, that's going to cost more money out of my pocket.
You know, the arbitration process is these are guys that they're paid by USADA to do their arbitration.
Like they work for them in a way, or they're not, they don't work under them directly, but they do get paid to be arbitrators.
And so that was like, I don't necessarily feel the most comfortable with that, but I can also understand how it's not, there's probably not an easier way to go about it.
But okay, I got it.
Then when we get notice back from USADA that we have to limit the scope of our argument, we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what?
You're going to tell us what we can and can't argue in arbitration.
I don't remember what the definitions were exactly, but it was like, you can't, you know, you have to keep it within this boundary and this realm and this.
And I'm like, well, you can't fucking try to say, levy this against me and then use stuff from my past and then tell me I can't argue my full case.
And then so we get to the point, it's like, well, fuck.
Well, this doesn't even look like a very, you know, this might not even be a useful way of trying to approach this thing.
And it got down to the wire to where, and we kept pushing it back and pushing it back and saying, like, you know, can we get an extension and to try and figure out how the hell do we approach this?
And also, like, how could we approach it without having to spend money on having lawyers get involved?
I mean, that's the last thing you want to do is get to litigation or, you know, even arbitration.
So your position is that if you are accidentally taking a tainted supplement and also trace amounts that have absolutely zero effect on performance, there's nothing that you're doing by accidentally taking that that in any way would help you.
And you don't need to say, oh, well, if it took seven months to get the information that you needed, the data, right, to then clarify, okay, well, you're not at fault.
To then say, oh, well, we'll suspend you for six months.
But since that six months has already passed, it's like we didn't suspend you at all.
It's like, no, motherfucker.
When you look at the data, when you go and look at this case, it says suspended, which means you punished me, which means I was guilty in some way.
You said I'm guilty because that's how you got to punish me.
So, is it possible that USADA's lawyers were trying to.
Here's the thing I found about lawyers.
Like, yeah, for sure, they're necessary, and that's all well and good, and you need them.
But there's a reality, and this is something that I had to deal with recently in doing something with a friend through lawyers where they attached a bunch of shit to this deal that wasn't supposed to be in there, and he didn't even know it was in there.
And then my lawyer's like, What the fuck is this?
And so, I contact him, What the fuck is this?
And he's like, What the fuck is that?
So, he contacts his lawyers, what the fuck is this?
I don't think you necessarily want that, but we're looking out for your best interests.
And so now you have a good negotiation point.
If you just go in with what you want, then they're going to ask for more than that, and then you're not in a strong position because you can't ask for more after you've already established your initial position.
Well, it's just taking a certain element and then trying to use slippery slope arguments and moving the goalposts on things.
He's just doing anything he can to use rhetoric instead of logos at this point because, you know, they're lawyers and they're trying to make their case and trying to find impassioned rights.
Okay, so it's like trying to say that, you know, find ways at which to move the goalpost in terms of, so what, like I said to you earlier, I keep batches of all the supplements that I take, especially when I'm in this program, and especially after dealing with the cluster fuck that was California.
And it's like, well, I didn't have anything that I could bring to you that I could fuck.
So I'm like, this is never happening again.
So I keep everything.
They go and they test stuff and they find it.
And I kept notes, I kept this.
And it's like, what more could I have done for you guys?
Even if it doesn't matter if there's, let's say they were all third-party tested as well.
Well, it's just simply, it's just, they kept trying to say that I didn't do a good enough job.
That did you use the, did you see this thing on supplement 411?
It's like, that came out after the fact.
And yes, I have seen that.
In fact, I use all the resources that you provided, your GloboDro, your other supplement 411, to check against ingredient lists, supplement names, company names to make sure none of this shit is on the list so that I don't make that mistake.
So I use the resources that you give me.
I keep batches of my supplements so they can be tested if need be.
I do what's available to keep from any issues.
And yet they just kept moving the goalpost on that and trying to say that, well, but you didn't, you didn't hire a psychic.
It's just that kind of shit.
I'm like, well, how could this have been any better?
So USADA ultimately, even though they knew that you took a tainted supplement that had no effect whatsoever on your performance, they still wanted to punish you for two years.
That seems stupid.
That just seems stupid.
Now, let me read Jeff Nowitzki because Nowitzki texted me because I told him this was going to go down.
And his take is a little bit different than yours.
He said he'll complain about the amount of time that went by with USADA process, but he notified us of retirement right after the positive sample was collected before positive was announced.
So he was off in the wind for many months and not communicating with USADA.
Big reason the case took so long to resolve.
Two, his positive was from a tainted supplement, but he didn't do the number one thing.
We advised UFC athletes on UFC athletes on supplements.
He didn't choose a supplement that was third-party certified as a banned substance-free, like on its supplements are.
There are literally hundreds of certified supplements out there and virtually ensures no issues for an athlete if they stick with those.
One other point for Barnett: when he was unresponsive to case, he missed all of his deadlines to file for arbitration.
He came to the table later and said he wanted to go to arbitration.
USADA made an exclusion and let him, which ultimately led to his favorable ruling by arbitrator.
Their reasoning was that they wanted to rule in favor of fairness to athlete.
Rules say they didn't have to after time to file expired.
Well, but they're saying you it ruled favorably towards you, ultimately, at the end of the day.
And he said he couldn't see any way that I could have done hardly a better job, that I was meticulous with my record keeping, that I did essentially anything I could within the means of a normal person to do.
And this is so what's kind of funny is Nowitzki is such a public face on this kind of thing, but when it comes to actually dealing with USADA, he's all he's hands up.
I mean, he'll come and he'll make sure to put something out there in any of the sphere, but in reality, he ain't got a fucking thing to do with any of it.
I mean, what they're concentrating on now, Thank you for Jeff and his behalf that I think they're concentrating more on encouraging fighters to train and fortify their body with nutrition correctly and giving them education on how to do this.
And that Jeff is at the forefront of that stuff and showing them how to avoid accidentally taking something and definitely having to do it.
And also, when people get, do you remember when Nick Diaz was being interviewed by all these people, and there was that mean lady who works the Nevada State Athletic Commission, and she was grilling him.
And I'm like, we're talking about pot here, you crazy lady.
I don't know where John Jones stands, but it's been pretty well established that at the very least, what the numbers, if you look at the numbers, when he was tested, and you know, I know a lot of people like to say that he's a cheater.
There's a lot of this going on right now.
Look, real clear, the first test was proven that he took tainted dick pills.
Well, it was actually, so that got brought up to my attention as part of all this because, you know, USADA found it relevant.
The difference between that first one, let's say, and I don't know about the second shit with John Jones.
I don't really follow close on this, but this came across my plate because he was taking a liquid Cialis, and it was from a company that sells SARMs and peptides and all that shit.
So it was a company that also sells banned substances.
Right.
And so their argument was that, dude, you're buying or using shit from a place full of illegal shit that you're not supposed to take.
And you could also just get a goddamn prescription for Cialis, right?
You don't need to take this funky shit.
I imagine you could.
The second one, what he took had such a minuscule trace amount that he tested negative, then he tested positive, then he tested negative again.
And this is something that's supposed to stay in your system for months.
So this is indicative of someone who's not taking something to get a performance-enhancing benefit from it, but rather someone who had something that was tainted.
Like the guy who saw the results from the first little batch of supplements we gave him, he had seen everything and then some under the sun and all different levels.
And this guy knew what constituted contamination and what wasn't.
Look, if you're taking trace amounts of anything, it's not going to do a damn thing to your body in terms of performance enhancing, but it is going to show up in these tests because these tests are incredibly thorough.
Hey, Jamie, Google what's going on with John Jones' case because particularly after this weekend, it's very, very irrelevant.
You know, I mean, with Brock Lesnar getting in there with DC, DC becoming the first light, heavyweight to consecutively hold the light, heavyweight championship and the heavyweight championship, you know, and a spectacular fight by DC, but John Jones is always going to be there.
What happens, one of the things that I've talked about when it comes to police officers is that when you have police officers and you have people that are trying to arrest, it becomes a game.
And I don't mean a game in terms of it's bullshit.
I mean it's a game in terms of one person is trying to win and they're trying to get people and arrest them.
And this is why people plant guns and plant drugs.
This comes back to what we were talking about earlier when it comes to arguments and discussions that people oftentimes are not really searching for the truth.
Yes, and I've had this argument about bureaucracies in general, right?
And this goes to, this isn't just about, you know, not USADA and their bureaucratic elements.
I mean, like the government, there are other things.
So you come and you say, oh, you fucked up.
And then the bureaucracies go, oh, shit, we didn't fuck up.
And they're going to say we didn't fuck up to the very, they'll take that to the very longest lever until either A, they'll scapegoat someone, or B, they can figure out a way that they didn't.
Because looking, making a mistake on a bureaucratic level makes it seem like, okay, well, fuck.
And here's the thing.
If USADA says, oh, you know, you're not, you didn't, you're not going to get punished.
Then Tim Means and Yoel Romero go, why did I get punished?
Or if USA would say, oh, well, you know, that was a mistake.
Well, if that was a mistake, well, then, hey, I got fucked on that mistake.
And then their highlight on this is, and you know, we gave them a suspension, but the time has already lapsed, so they won't actually have to serve any time.
It's like, but you just fucking suspended them nonetheless.
Okay, right now he remains in a provisional suspension awaiting the outcome of his situation with USADA after testing positive for steroids last July, following the knockout win over Cormier.
It was just, and I had no problem with the system.
And then this, the way it unfolded to me was just like, this is, I don't need to be fighting multiple fronts when I'm just trying to do everything I can to stay in this as an athlete.
Going into the Nevada State Athletic Commission, previous to that, before Zufa bought the UFC, the idea of having giant fights in Vegas was fucking a win.
If you're looking for a place to hit the heavy bag and work out and take some martial arts classes, they often have cages and mats and all that.
And so we use those facilities.
They've been really great to us.
And yeah, with these kids that I work with, and they are pretty much kids.
It's just about trying to help people achieve, you know, work towards the things that they want as an athlete, but also they're good people that I want to see them make the most out of their life.
So I'm trying to be a person that can be a positive influence in terms of bringing philosophy and ethics to their life and helping them be good people and to pass that kind of shit on.
Be the ripple in the water, the drop in the water that sends the ripples out that makes a positive effect on other folks.
They show their butt and then they have like something about, you know, don't let negativity into your life because the ripples of that negativity can affect the people around you and you don't want that.
They also, at least the one in La Marada, has like a whole little section that has astroturf down and all that with ladders that have been painted into it so you can do foot drills.
I wouldn't mind having my own gym, but it's just such a burden isn't the right word, but there's just a lot of responsibility that comes with it, you know, the overhead of having a place and creating a program and having people manage and run those programs.
Yeah.
And with me being as busy as I am, I wouldn't want to do anything half-ass.
And I also don't want to commit to something and then not be able to put into it what I think is necessary.
I like, for me, it was such a big thing in my life.
The people, not just in terms of athletics, but the people that mentored me and helped to mold and shape me and help give me the tools and sometimes a kick in the ass is needed to move me along in life to get me to where I am today.
To get me, not just in terms of what you would argue for as successful or not, but just to be the person that I am.
And while far from perfect, I can't think about exchanging bad moments for different moments in my life for the fear of that I wouldn't be who I am today.
You know, Nietzsche talks about eternal recurrence, and one of the idea of that is that in your loneliest of loneliness, if a demon showed up and it said, you're going to live your life in every way as you ever have in every single aspect of it.
It's like, well, you have to, you have to be okay with that.
You have to live a life that's reasonable, that you would be fine with doing it all over again, doing it all over again.
If you're going to become, if you're going to be Sisyphus, you better push on a rock up a hill.
There's many concepts, but one of them is one of the most haunting for some people is that you will live your life over again exactly the same way until you get it right.
I actually heard Ilio Gracie talk about this once.
That everything in your life, every mistake, every choice you make, if you do not do the correct thing, he believed that you would have to come back again and do it all over again exactly the same way.
And this is his philosophy, the way he lived his life.
That's terrifying for people.
This idea that somehow or another you're going almost like you're going to repeat high school.
Well, the idea that there would be nothing that you could do to make any effect to it.
I mean, even still, I couldn't, me personally, I couldn't think of something in terms of like, I want to do something as a mental idea, as a mind game, that if I live my life in a way that I could be okay with doing it all over again, just exactly the same way.
And here's the other thing.
Would you know that it's going to happen like that?
Well, there was a God, I wish I could remember who it was.
There was this philosopher who was saying that if you were given the ability to absolutely and utterly control your dreams in all aspects and elements of it.
And so at first, most people would go to sleep and they would turn it into every fucking wonderful thing they've ever wanted.
They would just be the ultimate winner at everything all the time, always.
And then they would get tired of that.
And then they would create chaos and catastrophe and probably make everything as horrible for themselves as they could possibly do.
And as they're going through these cycles, ultimately the one thing that you're going to end up wanting in the end is that you just don't know what's going to happen at all.
By knowing everything prior to it occurring, it takes the want to experience it away.
Cormac McCarthy wrote, how many people, if they knew the path of their lives, would still choose to live it?
Well, isn't that ultimately expressed by fighting?
Like, fighting is the ultimate expression of that because when you step into that cage, if it's just you and you're looking across the ring at another guy who's a legitimate top-flight mixed martial artist, and you really don't know.
I have a theory about fighting and that fighting is actually a, not the only, but a great conduit into what I think of as the highest point of being as a human being.
That you can enter into this state that it's not a place that you can exist at all the time.
Like it's just not possible.
But when you reach it, it's as if you are so alive and you're the peak of being at that moment.
And even though it is brought on through being in the intensity and the stress of combat, it's as if every aspect of your being is charged and electric and living and being.
But it's not a place that you could be at all the time.
You would just be a maniac.
It's not a place that human beings can exist in for more than maybe short periods of time.
The only thing that really is elevated past that is war.
And one of the things that you find about war, and Sebastian Younger wrote about this in his book, Tribe, is that the people that experience it have an incredibly difficult time adjusting to regular life.
I think that when you are faced with death, that that is a conduit to bringing you towards that highest point of being.
And yeah, I suppose it's like that once you get past that point of there is no fear at that level either.
It is just a way, it's just an existence.
You don't consider, you don't think, you don't think something isn't this or that.
It just is.
And it's a place that you can't be forever.
It doesn't work that way.
But when you've been there and you're just out here dealing with petty fucking internet trolls and dumb shit and people doing stuff that cut their nose to spite their face and undermining this and the fabric of our relationships for no good reason,
it's tough to sit and exist in this and go, fuck, you know, how do you get back to that other thing, this state of purity, this existence of where none of those things matter anymore?
I mean, you might have, I mean, look, we have a certain amount of time on this planet in this life, right?
You have 100 years if everything goes great.
You can't really expect to just live in that perfect state of both chaos and chaos.
And I guess being in the moment, there's something about something that's dangerous and intense and overwhelmingly filled with anticipation beforehand and the preparation is all consuming.
There's very few things in life that are like these big moments, like a person stepping into a cage for a fight.
And the consequences are so grave.
It's just for your emotions, for your physical health.
There's really nothing like it.
To expect that you would find something else similar in life and to be able to achieve a similar state outside of that, I don't think you ever will because I feel like part of what makes what you do and what all fighters do so intense and so incredibly enjoyable to watch is that we all know how much is on the line.
Because, yeah, they're thinking in an altruistic fashion of doing what they can, I suppose, to help this person that they care so much about continue to find joy in their life because of their realization that what joy they may be able to derive from them specifically is always on a thin line of not being there anymore.
No thrills, no challenge, no growth, no knowledge, no learning, just this stagnant, bullshit life that is so prevalent in our society.
I think it's one of the main problems with our world is that we have set up these really safe cities and safe societies and cultures, which is wonderful.
It's great.
But also, we haven't given people the discipline or the structure or the framework for living a life that's going to satisfy your needs in terms of your biological needs, your psychological needs.
Well, there's lots of things that people, obviously, they couldn't know about me.
Because it's not the kind of thing that is just who I am, right?
And I don't need someone to know whether or not I'm smart or whether or not I know this or whether or not I can do that.
It's like, I'll do it when I need to do it.
And I have to try and look to see that my own inner peace is based on my own self-knowledge and knowledge also that I am lacking, that I can be better.
And if I want to, I can choose to.
In those days that I don't, it was a choice not to be better.
It wasn't that I couldn't, because even going and failing, like we talked about before, is a worthwhile endeavor because it'll move you towards either A, eventually getting there, or B, that it's not something that's going to be yours, but you know what it is and you know what it takes to get there.
And that's a different perspective altogether.
And that is where I feel like that's where I can be okay in this world and deal in there's all kinds of things that can draw your focus and really eat at you and bother you and you're giving weight to these things and allowing them to have an effect on you.
And that's natural.
That's a normal thing and it's easy to fall into.
But if you can be okay with, all right, if all I'm left with is just me and what I have, if I no longer have anything, no more luxuries, no more this, no more that, can you be okay with that?
You know, what kind of life would you make of this?
And I like to think the same one I have now.
You can pick me up here, take all my shit away, throw me some other part of the world, a third world country, and it will be jarring.
It will be difficult.
There will be some lament, of course, but I will continue to be who I am.
I will see what is necessary to communicate with others and to continue to propagate this that I'm trying to create in me.
Yeah, I think we're all trying to navigate this really incredibly difficult thing, which is just your life, the emotions, your goals, your tasks, your relationships, your dreams and aspirations.
All these things are just so complicated.
And the whole idea of not knowing what the future holds is stressful, but it's also incredibly rewarding when things work out well.
And even when they don't work out well, what's rewarding about that is you get the gift of knowing that you're fucked up.
And you get the gift of the feeling of fucking up and the horrible, just the feeling of failure and to understand that that's fuel for you to regroup, repackage your fucking thoughts and now move forward with the knowledge of the mistakes that you've made and you're going to be a better person for that.
And it's not a life I can really imagine that anyone can really be truly fulfilled living.
And, you know, things are ultimately incredibly soft on us.
I mean, we have pressures in other ways, but ultimately, most of us are living quite comfortable lives with no immediate dangers and no real impetus to put stress on ourselves where it doesn't exist at times.
Because let's just say you want to learn a new language.
That's agitation in terms of forcing you to have to endure something.
There's some suffering in that.
And, you know, I believe in the Nietzschean concept of, you know, suffering creates growth.
You know, life is suffering.
Suffering doesn't have to be catastrophic.
It doesn't have to be the sort of thing that is going to debilitate you, but that suffering is needed for you to continue to become better.
I've always said to friends of mine, the first time they have a big blowout with something, they call me up and, oh, fuck, you know, so-and-so said this, and I don't know how their dick ended up there, and all this stuff.
I'm just like, look, ultimately, yeah, no one wants to get into a row with someone, especially someone that you really care about.
But if this is an important relationship, the only way it becomes a relationship that has that deeper lasting meaning and that really has any real depth to it at all is what you do when you guys are faced with adversity.
That shows you what a relationship you have.
Because when things are fun and easy, anybody can be a part of it.
We're all just humping and drinking and going out.
Woo!
That's great.
Fucking wonderful.
That sounds, yeah, it's pretty, it's not bad.
As a single guy, I'm constantly looking for that opportunity.
It is the stresses of having to deal with a problem and how you handle that problem because there will never be any shortage of problems, of difficulties from great to small.
And your way of mitigating those problems and dealing with them is so important.