Jim Miller, UFC veteran and wrestling prodigy, recounts his chaotic transition from amateur grappling to pro MMA, including a 2005 fight against Frankie Edgar just weeks after starting jiu-jitsu training. He criticizes IFL’s gimmicky team-based format and unethical local promotions forcing fighters into exclusive contracts with poor pay structures, while debating MMA’s controversial judges’ bonuses—like Matt Brown’s $10K loss in a near-unanimous decision—versus finish incentives. Miller’s durability stems from resilience, a disproportionately large head, and strategic diet shifts during Lyme disease battles, including six months of doxycycline and gut-healing probiotics like kimchi. Now avoiding influencer culture, he launches The Fighter’s Cookbook (April 16) to promote real food over lab-grown alternatives, while Rogan and Miller clash with modern parenting trends, like New Jersey’s sex-ed curriculum, and mock Twitter’s alleged child pornography loopholes. Their conversation blends combat sports realism with skepticism of cultural shifts, leaving UFC 300 as a future benchmark for MMA’s evolution. [Automatically generated summary]
Your brother Dan has the nastiest guillotine finish I've ever seen in all my years of watching MMA. The one in the IFL where he had that dude pinned up against the cage.
It looks like his head...
It's gone.
It looks like it's disappeared.
Like his head is, it's like, the way it bends over, it's like, folks, it's like an elbow.
I think other couple promotions have tried to do something similar, and it just doesn't seem to work in MMA. I don't like what the PFL does either, where they have point systems, and you get more points for finishes, and more points for this, and so you're ahead.
If anybody saw you and you said, like, this guy has some of the most fights in the history of the sport, like, in the history of the UFC, like, who fucking has more fights than you?
Well, you're very smart defensively as, at the same time, you're hyper-aggressive, which is very interesting.
You know, it's a good combination of two things.
Yeah.
Well, you're also very good off your back, too.
It's like, the combination of all those things is like, you know, you can, there's not a place where you fight where I'm like, ooh, this is not his best.
Like, there's some guys that get taken down and you're like, he's kind of fucked here.
Like, you don't have, like, a spot like that, where you're in a bad position.
So, yeah, we have to, you know, find your strength and try to fight to your strength.
And I think that's an issue that sometimes fighters get away from is they, you know, they learn new things and then they don't fight to their strengths that, like, got them there.
Yeah, my first six fights, I started out at a place called Planet Jiu-Jitsu.
Tiny...
A little bit bigger than this studio here, this room of the studio.
And yeah, I was taking like cardio kickboxing classes because I had never thrown a punch before and it was helping me, you know, but the ball had already started rolling so it was like, fuck it, like we're just gonna go.
And then one of my uncles was a two-time national champion for Lehigh.
He was actually an Olympic qualifier in 1980 when we boycotted Mike Frick.
Yeah.
So, like, his wrestling career was done before I was born, but his younger brother, Jim, who's also my mom's younger brother, he wrestled at Lehigh as well.
Never quite made it to All-American status.
One of my first memories is watching him wrestling at Lehigh.
You know, I think I was like three or something like that.
And I remember it because he ended up breaking his ankle that match.
Oh.
Yeah, as soon as I could walk, I was pretty much on the mats.
I wish I would have been a better wrestler, but I was a late bloomer physically and in the sport of wrestling too, I think.
You know, like I said, it was an experience wrestling in a room full of, you know, multiple-time state champs and stuff like that.
And, you know, it taught me a lot about kind of surrounding myself with people that support me because I didn't quite have that in the coaching staff.
And, yeah, I wrestled for a year, was pissed off because I didn't like, you know, the program and...
Came back, was working a little bit, and my brother and I, Dan, were messing around at work, working with our father, and finally decided to start training jiu-jitsu.
We walked into the first gym that we trained at in May of 2005. Came in, and we had been, like, fucking around, so we ended up, like, submitting some guys on the first day, and we told the coach, like, hey, like, we want to fight.
And he's like, alright, give me, like, two or three years.
And six months later, we were stepping into a ring for our first professional fight, because there was no amateur at the time.
It fucks your development up, because if you can get a fight in every two months, man, you'll get more comfortable with fighting.
You get more relaxed, because you do it a lot.
And when you do it a lot, it alleviates a lot of the tension and the pressure, because you could fight more to your potential.
And the more you fight to your potential, the more confidence you get, the more you make gains in training, you start adapting and growing and learning how to compete.
Have you ever with a company that's fucking you over in some shit?
I've met some great guys that run some small organizations, but I've met some guys that just think they're big time, and it's a real problem.
Yeah, and then one of the new ones, well, new, I mean, probably a few years old now, the idea is that they make these fighters have ticket quotas and stuff like that.
So, like, they'll have a, you know, 40-ticket minimum or whatever that they have to hit in order to get their full pay.
And then for everyone below that, they're docked, you know, from their win bonus or their show money.
That's a, yeah, it's a bullshit fucking move.
You kind of understand it, but it's like, hey, you're the promotion.
Your job is to promote the fight.
You're the one with the marketing knowledge and then this and then that and the dollars to put down for ads and flyers and shit like that.
If a fighter has the opportunity to sell a couple tickets and make a couple extra bucks, maybe, all right, great.
But, like, what happens, and this happened to a bunch of my training partners, and this has, like, kind of led to my, one of the things that led to me opening my gym a few years ago was we had seven guys on a local card, and all of a sudden there's a ticket quota.
Well, it was before they signed, but they didn't know that it was there.
So you had, like, a group of, you know, seven fighters.
So a gym, like, okay.
Like, one guy could have handled the quota.
Two guys, but, like, seven?
Like, then you're, like, trying to make sure that, you know, the training partners buy from this guy because he hasn't sold a bunch.
Right.
And yeah, it was a bullshit move that got put in there, but I don't think any of them...
Really hit it.
You know, they all got fucking docked a bit.
So it's like, you know, you're looking at a couple hundred tickets between the seven of them that they got to sell, you know, so that everybody can make the money that they were promised to make.
Like, that's what I'm trying to do in the fight, you know, no matter what.
But, like, as a fan, I want to see aggressive fighters, not guys that are just trying to, you know, game the clock, win a couple points, and, you know, get the W because they – granted, they used effective octagon control, but, they used effective octagon control, but, like – I want to see finishes.
Frankie was training with Team Rhino at the time, which was huge.
They had, like...
60 fighters, something like that.
And I had, like, two 16-year-old blue belts and, like, a purple belt and another purple belt who was 305 and, like, I had Dan to train with for, like, Two weeks, he had cracked a rib, and then the first sparring session, I just hooked him to the body, and I was like, ah, fuck!
So he was out, so it was a shitty camp.
Great fight.
Frankie and I fucking, I've never seen the fight, but I had people coming up to me for years after that one, like, dude, that fight with Frankie was crazy.
Because I... Kind of what happened in that fight with Gray is that like I expect him to throw overhands and like looping punches and he came out and he just fed me straight rights and it was like you know I had been working with a boxing coach for a couple weeks and next thing you know I'm trying to like slip and move and it's like that's not me but I've been doing it for a couple weeks so I kind of picked it up and yeah he broke my nose pretty early in the fight and then continued to hit it and Yeah,
And then there's definitely a portion of that that is, like, skill set.
Like, I... I try to not get hit.
If you keep your hand up, if I throw a left and my right is glued to my face, I'm probably losing a little bit of power than if I loop that left over and drop my right hand.
But then if my opponent throws a counter, I'm more protected.
And that's what I'm trying to do.
Like, I'm trying to land good shots and hit people hard, but be protected at the same time because I also consider myself a bit of a counterpuncher.
So, like, I'm looking for somebody to throw something at me so that I can, you know, snap something at them.
Like, there was guys at a certain point in time where I'd see that they were on the card and I would just, like, raise my eyebrows and take a deep breath.
I think in that position as the coach, it's your responsibility to have that conversation with somebody.
And they might not take it well.
But coaches have a very important job.
And that is to protect their athlete.
You're not only trying to make somebody better, but you're trying to protect them.
And like...
Unfortunately, in this sport and the way that it is, it's like sometimes a coach has fucking 30 athletes, you know, and a lot of times they're, hey, they're all here on sparring day.
So it's like...
It's hard to pick out, like, who's having a bad day?
Like, who's not on today that maybe we should just, you know, go hit the bag today.
We'll do a conditioning workout, something like that.
But no, it's hard sparring day, so that's what we're geared up for.
That's what everybody's, you know, they got a stiffy on hard sparring day because it's the fun day.
And it was going to get to that point where in order to get it at least back to where it was, I would have had to be there teaching classes all the time and stuff like that.
And I was like, you know what?
I'm going to fight as hard as I can for as long as I can.
I put it out in the air that I want to fight at USC 300.
And I think the best way to get to that point is to just focus on fighting and not be teaching classes.
My brother and I were training at AMA Fight Club in New Jersey, and there was some bullshit.
We had a great group of guys, and that's kind of why I opened the place.
It was like, do I open my own place or do I go to ATT or something like that?
And, honestly, I feel like having my own spot, it saved me.
If I was in one of those big gyms, like, late 2015, early 2016, when I was sick with Lyme, I don't think I would have fucking made it, honestly.
How come?
Like, the attitude is different, right?
When you've got a big group of fighters, there's definitely ego, and it's not gonna...
That doesn't go away, right?
But...
There are plenty of sessions where it was like...
I was kind of...
I literally defend myself sometimes.
Some of our sparring days were fucking insane.
Like I said, a fantastic group of guys.
My brother and I and Charlie Brenneman.
We had...
Jamie Varner came for a bit.
Brian McLaughlin.
Rafael Olvera, Tractor, fought in the UFC for a bit.
Like, the best.
Like, the best fucking group of good fighters, but also good people that were looking out for each other.
I mean, we pushed each other, but we were looking out.
You know, injuries happen and, you know, like, you push the shit out of each other and it's gonna happen, but when it's like, next thing you know you've got some, you know, some Russian or something like that that doesn't speak a lick of English and you're, like, trying to...
Tell them, hey, I'm fighting in a main event next week.
Don't stomp my knee, please.
And then it happens.
And then it happens again.
And then it happens again.
It gets stressful.
And I've heard some of the other fighters that have left some of the big gyms talk about some of the same stuff where it's like, you know, because obviously the gym is looking for as many people as they can because it's a revolving door.
But you have to realize where the specific athletes are.
Like I said, good day or bad day.
And that's one of the things that I've realized over the years is it's like, man, as a 26-year-old, shit, there were fucking no bad days, really.
It's like one a year where I felt kind of sluggish.
Where now it's like, okay, I listen to myself a bit more.
Where you have to have a coach that can do that, too.
Because as a fighter, I feel like if I'm asked of something, I'm gonna do it, you know?
And there are times where, like, my coach is gonna be like, nah, nah, we're good.
Like, we only do the extra round, the extra two rounds.
I have a lot of admiration for some of the coaches at those big gyms, but I feel like what MMA is and how the teams are is kind of one of our detriments at the same time.
I think there's way too many like...
Like, you know, gym wars.
I think that they've toned that shit down.
You know, talking to other fighters and stuff like that, I feel like it doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to.
But it's still...
You got two alphas, you know...
Banging heads and like if you look at boxing and the model they have, it's usually just a small, you know, couple coaches and you pull professional sparring partners in and stuff like that.
So it's like it's focused around the fighter.
Now granted, the pace, the pay is completely different and there's so much, there's so much So many differences between MMA and boxing, but I feel like that small, tight-knit group is good.
There's obviously a benefit to having all sorts of bodies and styles and all that stuff, but...
It's not a small gym, but it's not, like, known as being a place where people move there and train there specifically because of that.
Oliveira.
Yeah.
Charles Oliveira's gym is not known as being a hotbed gym.
There's two schools of thought, right?
There's a school of thought where you're better off in this giant ocean filled with sharks, and then the other school of thought is you're better off with specialized individual attention that's on you and your skill set.
Look at Demetrius Johnson and GSP. GSP wasn't going to fucking...
Open mat at henzo's like he's doing specific training for a specific opponent and same thing with Dimitri shot like he's not going with just every Everybody or like the new the next killer, but those two examples are examples of like elite coaches Yeah, yeah for us a hobby and Matt Hume, you know those those two guys are like hugely respected.
It's been a long road, Well, most guys like you that are super successful over long periods of time do have a steady relationship because it takes that factor out of the equation.
I think for fighting, it's very important.
I mean, you look at all these fighters that are elite and have done really well for long periods of time.
A lot of them are married.
A lot of them have families.
Because that's a stable home life.
Gives them comfort and security, like relaxes them.
The guys that are out chasing tail all night long, like...
And dealing with 50 different DMs that you're juggling back and forth.
But it's like guys who drink a lot, who also train, and then they get to a point where you're partying a couple of days before the fight, and you still pull it off.
Yeah, you're pulling it off, but you're not hitting your full potential.
There's no fucking way.
And if you fight somebody like you, the thing is, it's like, if you're an elite fighter, and you can drink, and you can party, and you can still win, what if you fight someone like you, who's not drinking, not partying, sleeping well, getting all their recovery in, and is doing all the disciplined things that you need to be at, they're gonna edge you.
Or they might knock you out.
They might catch you.
They might catch you, because even though you're a bad motherfucker, there's a lot of bad motherfuckers.
I was sparring Mickey Golf when he was like 22, 21, and he threw like a hook and I just clinched a body lock and my head hit his chest.
And it just tweaked to my left.
And I felt it.
I have it on video.
And it's like, I shrugged my shoulders, moved my head around.
It was the last round of the day.
I was like, alright, this is going to hurt later, but we're going to get through it.
I only got to that fight because of a chiropractor and his magic fingers and some Graston.
But...
So, like, a lot of the symptoms that I was getting from the Lyme, I attributed to being a fighter.
Like, my knees hurt.
Well, of course they fucking hurt.
Like, you know, I mean, to the point where I'd be 45 minutes into a training session and have to get up like an old man, push on my knees and stuff like that.
It's getting, you know, numbness and tingling.
I was getting, like, brain fog.
And it was pretty good.
I'd kind of, like, go into a room sometimes and, like, go to, like, clean up and just kind of get lost.
So...
Before my fight at 196, it got so bad that I was contemplating retirement at UFC 200. I was like, I'm gonna get through 196, I'm gonna ask the fight on 200 to retire.
And you did not know you had Lyme?
Did not know I had Lyme disease.
Like I said, Nervous system was kind of shot.
Joints were swollen.
I'd get some twitching in my eye was mostly where I'd get it just for like days on end.
Very occasionally I would say the wrong word while I was speaking and not even anything close like just the complete wrong word would come out.
And you'd notice and you're like, what the fuck did I just say?
I hope they didn't notice.
So I was telling my doctor about this before my pre-fight physical, or during my pre-fight physical for 196, and he's like, you know, he's like, honestly, I think you have Lyme disease.
And I was like, all right.
So we ran some tests, tested me for Lyme.
To this day, I still don't test positive.
It's about 50% of the people that have Lyme test positive for it.
So he's like, if it's Lyme disease, and he's like, we ran some other tests.
There's some antibody that I had that showed an infection that they associate sometimes with Lyme.
So he's like, we're gonna put you on doxy, and he's like, if you do have Lyme disease, within a week, 10 days, he's like, you're gonna feel different.
What is it called, doxine?
Doxycycline.
Doxycycline.
So, like, I fight, uh, fight Diego, and that was the first time, like, I was, I was kind of out of it.
I could barely train for that fight.
Um, like, I would, I would miss training sessions, like, live grappling sessions, or sparring sessions, and, like, because I could barely get out of bed, or, like, uh, so I was, I, I would, I would get in maybe six sessions a week, um, you know, and kind of just focused on, like, alright, well, I'll just be in shape, you know, like, I could run on the treadmill, that's, The easiest thing for me to do at that point was to run on the treadmill, which is weird.
It's different than what most people experience.
Most people experience difficulty doing aerobic exercise and they can do anaerobic stuff.
I couldn't do anaerobic stuff.
If I lifted or did sprints, I'd be banged up for fucking days.
So, and that fight, like, I remember, like, when I fight, and I think it has to do something with the lights, too.
Like, I don't see the cage, like, beyond the cage.
I don't see anybody in the stands.
I don't...
I barely hear my fucking corner, for crying out loud.
So...
That fight, during the whole fight, I could see throughout in the stands.
I was so unfocused that it was a weird experience.
It's the only time this ever happened to me.
But I get out of the fight and get on some doxycycline the following week, and it was within a week or so, just like my doctor said, I started feeling way fucking better.
It took me a few years to figure out when exactly I got bit.
I had assumed that it was probably early 2015, and then after learning about the early symptoms of Lyme disease and pulling my head out of my ass and remembering the experience that I had in 2013, I'm pretty much 100% confident that I was bit in late May, early June of 2013. What makes you think that?
I had a period of time where I was like...
I basically had morning sickness.
I was extremely nauseous in the morning.
And like early Lyme, it's like flu-like symptoms and migraines and stuff like that.
So I had really bad nausea.
Like if I picked up my coffee cup and I... Was like breathing in, and I got a big whiff of my coffee, it would make me gag.
Or like brushing my teeth, the taste of the toothpaste would make me gag.
I had two kids in diapers at the time.
Every time bringing the friggin' garbage out, oh man, I'd be dry heaving the whole way down the driveway for like two weeks.
And I was like, my kids are in daycare.
I think my niece had, like, rotavirus or something at the time.
I was like, I got a stomach bug, like, whatever.
And then I got a series of migraines.
Like, right kind of as the nausea was dying down.
I got, I don't know, I think it was like seven migraines in ten days or something like that.
So...
I went to a neurologist and ENT, ran a bunch of tests.
They tested me for Lyme, tested negative.
They couldn't find anything.
So they're like, hey, we're going to kick the ball down the road a little bit, see if it comes back and figure out what we can do.
So I kind of forgot about that.
And after, you know, kind of educating myself on Lyme after I, you know, was diagnosed, I was like, maybe, you know, maybe that's when it was.
But it took a while to get over it because it was You know, just about three years that it had untreated.
You know, and the bacteria is a sneaky little bitch.
They call it the great imitator because it can give everybody completely different symptoms.
And it can pass the blood brain barrier and all this other shit, you know.
It also has a like a toxin in the cell wall of it.
So if you kill too much of it at one time or in a short period of time, you experience what's called like the Herxheimer reaction, which is basically you're being like poisoned by the death of the Lyme bacteria.
Yeah, it's a shitty...
It makes you, it's a fucking amazing thing because it's like, here's this little thing that, this little bacteria that when it dies, it makes you change what you're doing.
So that you don't like, it's a, getting over Lyme is especially like, like untreated for a while is a marathon.
And I'm not good at that shit.
Um, So, like, I was on doxycycline for six months.
So I was on it for six months, and I felt way better, you know, that was whatever it was, September, than I did in March.
So I was like, hey, Doc, do you think we can get off of the antibiotics?
And he's like, yeah, let's give it a try.
And it was about seven weeks, and then I started to feel like my symptoms were coming back.
And then me being an asshole, I'm like, no, no, they're not.
It's not the Lyme again.
So I kind of waited.
By the end of the year, it fucking kicked my ass.
Like, leading up into, what was that, 208, when I fought Dustin.
Like, that was the hardest couple weeks before a fight that I've ever had.
Like, I... Because I was trying to get back on the doxycycline.
I was trying to supplement even way better.
You're not supposed to take it within two hours before, two hours after supplements and stuff like that.
I don't like working out with food in my stomach.
And I can't take the doxy on an empty stomach because it makes my stomach upset.
Uh, so I was, like, trying to figure out, like, the best way to get back on it, and it just kept kicking my butt and kicking my butt.
Um, finally, like, I don't know, maybe two weeks before the fight, I started to kind of get it, get it dialed in.
Uh, and then, unfortunately, I was, like, fight week.
I was, uh, I was having a Herx, uh, reaction, and, and, uh, it was a really weird experience getting, uh, I was having, like, muscle tremors when I was cutting weight.
My vision was a little messed up, and I don't know if it was the lights or whatever, but, like, when I fought Dustin that night, like, to me, like, everything kind of had, like, a...
A yellow hue to it.
It was weird.
And I don't know if that was just my eyes being weird or what.
Yeah, because I finally kind of figured it out right before that fight.
So then, 2017, I was still dealing with it.
It was difficult.
The first half of the year was pretty difficult.
And then through the summer, it started to get a lot better for me.
I changed my diet.
I started eating a lot better food.
When I first found out I had Lyme, we were trying to...
I kind of adhere to the Lyme diet.
The Lyme diet is basically a paleo.
It's an inflammatory disease, so avoiding alcohol, sugar, gluten, dairy, stuff like that.
But I also had a bunch of little kids, and it's like, well, if I'm making my food and trying to make their food so they're not eating mac and cheese, hot dogs, and chicken fingers every day, this is going to be really fucking hard.
I've never adhered to that diet specifically, but Totally eat a ton more whole foods and vegetables and shit like that now.
So it was, well, like, it took a while for it to start kicking my butt, you know?
Like I had that first instance in 2013 when I first got bit.
But then, like, I couldn't really tell anything, you know, But if you had gotten on antibiotics right then, you probably could have killed it.
Yeah.
Three to four weeks is usually what doctors will prescribe.
And if you catch it early, you usually fare pretty well with it.
But like, yeah, it was, I mean, 2017, I didn't feel like I could start really like, excuse me, like pushing myself and sprinting and lifting again until like maybe April of 2018. Wow.
And then I was still on Doxy through that period of time, so I basically took it for about two years.
So I had a six-month period, like eight weeks off, well, a little more than eight weeks off, but a couple months off, and then basically two years.
And what made me completely stop, I kind of had figured it like...
Figured out how to, you know, the diet and all that stuff, right?
With the meds and supplements.
And I ended up getting, the stomach bug was going around, so the last time that I took doxycycline was New Year's Eve 2018. I rung in the New Year, puking my brains out, and I was like, I can't do this anymore.
Morgellons is a disease that they don't even know if it's real.
And I had to interview these people once at a Morgellons conference, and it's very strange because they feel like they have fiber growing out of their body, and they start itching themselves, and they hallucinate.
But one of the people that I talked to was a doctor, and he also has Morgellons, and he said, but one thing that we all have in common is, he goes, most of these people also have Lyme disease.
In that when you say Lyme disease, like if a tick carries Lyme, the way he was describing it to me, it's not as if it's like you can isolate a compound and that compound is Lyme.
He said, depending on the tick, it could have a host of different toxins along with this one that we consider Lyme.
It's not one thing.
And he said the Lyme disease itself, like when people have Lyme, one of the symptoms is this neurotoxicity.
And that in neurotoxicity, he believes that it can trigger hallucinations.
So he was seeing things moving across his eyes.
He would look at himself in the mirror and he thought he saw a worm moving across his eyelids.
So these people, they start scratching themselves and they itch like little holes in their skin.
And then you get carpet fibers or dog hair or something on it, and you think you're growing hairs out of these fibers, and part of it is because you're kind of hallucinating.
This is very controversial.
I'm not sure if this is right or wrong, but it made sense when he was saying it that everybody who he knows who has it are a large percentage of them.
Of course, in your situation, you didn't even test positive for Lyme, but he was saying a lot of these people also have Lyme disease.
My dad still is today, just in a different way, but growing up he was a cartoon character.
Like, I was looking through some pictures and I posted one a couple weeks ago.
He looks like fucking Mr. Incredible from the cartoon movie, you know, the Pixar stuff.
Like, his head is just fucking this giant block and, like, the one picture, I mean, he's got...
The 80s shirt, and it's like a v-neck or something, and it's just this big plume of fucking black chest hair coming out.
And it's like, dude, like, he was, yeah, he was 6'4", 240, like, just, it's towered above everybody.
And everybody always thought he was...
Everybody thought he was, like, bigger than that.
Like, it's okay.
You know, I've met plenty of people who are bigger than he was, but he had this, like, presence that he was, like, seven foot tall and, you know, 500 pounds.
Like, but yeah, he used to carry just stupid shit.
So, used to do, like, residential framing, you know, the, like, skeleton of the house.
And this one builder that he used to work for, a guy was a little tiny Italian guy, was a bit of an asshole.
He wouldn't, like, backfill the houses to the foundation.
So, it was...
You had, like...
One spot to maybe bring lumber in to the foundation.
When we're doing the beams in the basement, you'd have this 40-foot beam that weighs 800 pounds, and you really don't have a good way to get it across the fucking To the other side.
So that motherfucker would cinch his tool belt tight, tall enough, his shoulder just fit right where the middle of the beam was, and he would pick that fucking shit up and walk across the stone, you know, three-quarter gravel stone basement, get to the other end, lean back a little bit, lift it up, and put it on the side.
It was the biggest piece of shit, but it saved us so much time getting stuff up to the second floor and all that shit.
It got to a point where it would just constantly stall.
It had zero breaks.
He's lifting this wall.
And, uh, or going to lift this wall in, like, kind of position, and so we had it laid out.
So you got these 2x6s, and there's, like, the king stud, which runs up where the header is, you know, the big piece that, like, over the windows and fireplace, um, and, uh, and then, like, liners.
So it was, like, I think it was three.
I think it was three 2x6s.
Um, so he's driving.
It's got this tiny little cage, like, over top of it.
And it stalls, so the machine starts rolling backwards, and these two-by-sixes get caught on the back of the cage.
And, like, it's winding back, and my brothers and I are up on the second floor, and we start fucking screaming at them, because you see it just, like, winding up.
So he looks and he sees it and he throws his head down as hard as he can as the 2x6 slides off.
And it was like a Sammy Sosa 450-yard bomb.
Like, crack!
And it's like, I'm jumping off the second floor.
You know, my brothers are sliding down the studs to get down to the floor.
And he rolls out.
He rolls out and he, like, gets up.
The machine rolls into the woods.
And he's like, fuck it.
You know, he starts swearing.
He's like, Yosemite Sam, you know, bumps anything.
He starts swearing like a sailor.
And it's like...
You're standing up.
Like, what the fuck?
Like, you should be dead.
Like, you should literally...
Your brain should be, like, 20 feet that way.
Wow.
Yeah, so he ended up, you know, the back of his head ended up swelling up pretty good, but he was okay, you know?
Marvin Hagler, who's one of the greatest boxers of all time, one of my favorite all-time boxers, Marvin had muscle on the outside of his head like headgear.
They said the size of the muscle outside of his head was far larger than a normal person, like unusually large, to the point where it's literally like he had a cushion on the side of his head.
I got to like 26 before I experienced any allergies, and then I broke my nose and my septums mushed to the side, so now I have like a constant post-nasal drip, and it's like I experience a little bit of allergies.
I forget who was fighting, but a chunk fell off that was the size of a fucking silver dollar.
It was this giant chunk of this dude's ear fell off, and there was a photo of it on the canvas, and it was missing from his ear, and there was blood pouring out of the side of his head, because it's basically a rock.
Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's like, I don't wear anything like when I'm pheasant hunting.
And sometimes you shoot a decent amount of times, but the shotgun is not as bad.
Sometimes when I'm shooting, if I have to shoot, or I decide not have to shoot, I haven't had to shoot my rifle or one of my rifles or the handguns, but they're a little sharper sounding.
Now that you're 38 and you're thinking of the future and you put out this cookbook, what do you see yourself doing when you transition out of your MMA career?
Uh, I'm not totally, like, like, I'm not committed to anything just yet, you know?
It's like, it's one of those things that I feel like, I feel like athletes in general, uh, fighters included, um, we need to look at the opportunity that we have.
Like, when you make it to the UFC or, like, a guy that's, you know, playing in the NFL, like, dude, like, you have to look like, look at it like, Tomorrow could be your last day, so we need to maximize this opportunity as much as you can.
And I feel like that's kind of something that I failed at, you know, when I was younger.
I do remember asking, you know, former management, like, hey, you know, like, I just made a bonus.
I want to do something.
I want to diversify.
I want to get into something else.
And it's like, nah, just focus on fighting right now.
It's like, well, fighting might not be here, you know, in a few months.
I could walk outside, step into a pothole and blow my knee out and, like, who the hell knows?
Or be training and, you know, get clipped with a knee in the head or something.
Like, plenty of my peers, their careers have gone from awesome to off, you know?
Like that.
So...
Yeah, so I've been trying to figure out exactly what it is.
The problem is that I've lived my entire adult life as a professional athlete, so I'm super fucking spoiled.
Now, while I would have liked to have made more money over the years and stuff like that, but that's neither here nor there, but I have freedom.
I have time.
So I'm trying to figure out what's going to give me At least some of the freedom that I have now to be able to make my schedule so I can spend time with my family, so I can do the things that I want to do.
The cookbook is that first step, I think.
I always knew that food was going to be a part of my life.
Because it's always been a family thing.
As a kid, no matter if we had football practice, wrestling practice, baseball, we always ate dinner together.
So I try to do that with my kids.
I love sharing.
I love sharing fucking food or any of the stupid booze that I make, the homebrew.
So it's like, how can I do that?
And I think the cookbook is the...
Well, I know the cookbook is that first step.
I sure as shit don't want to work in a kitchen, but I think like...
With this, the Fighters Cookbook, hopefully get people into realizing that they need to take a little control of their food, because I think it's been such a big thing in my ability to still be fighting today, and my getting over Lyme disease has been my diet.
sacrifice a lot for the convenience that we get, you know, living in America and, and it's easy as easy as pulling out your phone and going on Uber Eats and stuff like this or, you know, pulling into the drive through.
Um, but it's like, we don't, we don't pay for that convenience necessarily with our dollars.
Like we pay for it with our health.
Um, cause while, while there's a lot that goes into like the food science and all that bullshit and I'm not a fucking expert with it.
Um, I know what real food is and I know that I feel better when I'm eating real food, when I'm eating, you know, a deer or a bear or pheasant that I shot.
and some vegetables that I grew in my garden.
I just feel better.
I perform better.
But...
Yeah, so hopefully the book can kind of create a little bit of an environment and we can go from there.
I don't know.
You know, it's...
I sure as shit would like to shoot my bow and my, you know, my rifle for a living, but who the hell knows?
I've also, you know, I've spoken to Dudley and I've dipped my toe into, you know, I made a pilot for an outdoor show.
Man, I'm not a huge fan of, like, at least where it was on TV. You know, I know that there are athletes that go that direction.
It's just, like, it's who I am, and I'm not gonna change who I am.
Like, I'm not, like, in the world of jiu-jitsu and martial arts, like, loyalty is this thing that gets thrown out all the time, right?
I'm not loyal to people.
I'm loyal to principles, right?
Like, if you and I are similar, and we believe in the same things, and you're a good fucking person, and you treat people well, hey, man, we're gonna get along.
Like, but as soon as, like, Shady shit starts happening like I've I've walked away from Probably a lot of money, but a plenty of people Because they treated people like shit or they you know, but you know what you get out of that You get something that's so valuable.
Yeah, I get peace of mind is everything Yeah, if you're involved in like imagine if you're involved with like you're you're do you're running like you have some sort of a business And you and your partner in your office, you know that he's, like, doing something illegal.
Like, imagine being, like, Bernie Madoff's kid.
Like, they all worked with him, right?
One of them wound up committing suicide.
I mean, that's not an accident.
It's not a coincidence that that happened together.
Like, imagine being involved with someone who you know is not the way to do it.
Because you get to live with that.
You go to bed at night and you think...
To be able to go to bed with peace of mind, knowing I'm doing my best, I'm doing the right thing, I'm being ethical, I'm being a good person.
That's everything, man.
People can't do that.
They live in hell.
Even if they're making a shitload of money, even if their business is running well, if they're fucking people over, I don't know how they do it.
And that's, like, New Jersey's, it's like mini California, you know?
It's close.
Now granted, I'm a firm believer on, like, you know, turn off the fucking TV, don't listen to the bullshit, and, you know, go talk to your neighbor, right?
Where I live, you know, I'm 20 minutes from Pennsylvania-ish, you know, maybe 30 from New York.
So I'm, like, in the northwest corner of the state.
And I live in this tiny little town that it's fucking awesome.
We bought a place right before, like, the pandemic hit and stuff like that, end of 2019. And it was, like...
Okay, if we're going to spend a little more time here until I'm done fighting, this is where we want to do it.
Surrounded by state land, it's great.
But yeah, you deal with all the bullshit, the cost of living, the bullshit politics.
I had to sign my kids up for private school because public school has to follow by some bullshit.
Stuff that our governor is pushing down the pipeline that mimics some of the bullshit that California has to deal with.
Like, there's a lot of things that I don't want my kids to have to learn at school.
The thing about these conversations in school is who's having them?
Are we talking about a sex ed teacher that has a degree in this and understands, has been educated in how to communicate sexuality and talk to kids?
Or are we talking about a history teacher?
That for some reason wants to talk about queer theory and wants to talk about sex and gay sex and all these different things.
I'm not opposed to people being whatever they want to be.
But I think there's many people that are teaching children all kinds of things that probably that's not their field of study.
And they might not be qualified to teach it.
And I don't necessarily want them to be the person that introduces my kid to the idea of, you know, whatever, fill in the blank about whatever sexual proclivity.
A lot of parents are very sensitive about people teaching their children about these things.
And there's a lot of teachers that feel like they're saving the child because they are allowing the child to explore subjects that the parents don't explore at home.
And they feel like maybe there's a lot of queer kids or a lot of gay kids or trans kids.
That don't have these conversations with their parents and then the teacher could step in and help and that would be like a way where they could have like a safe discussion about these issues.
But they're worried about parents complaining about stuff.
Well, you know, parents have a right to know what their children are being taught.
Because, listen, we all know that some teachers suck.
100%.
We've experienced it.
I've had teachers that sucked.
You've had teachers that suck.
If you have a teacher that sucks and they're teaching you history...
The consequences are not grave.
If you have a teacher that sucks, and they're teaching you various things about alternative sexuality, alternative sexual practices, are you encouraging the children to try this?
Are you encouraging the kids to do this?
Are you encouraging the kids to have sex with each other?
What are you doing?
How is this conversation being handled?
I don't know.
And that's where parents are very right to be concerned.
Because a lot of these people...
They're not qualified to have these conversations, and maybe the way they have these conversations are against your values as a parent.
You would not have that same kind of conversation in that way with your kid, and they think it's their right to do this, and it's not your right to know what they're teaching your kid.
Well, it depends on what the subject is.
If you're saying, do I have the right to tell you how to teach math if I'm not good at math?
No, I don't.
But when you're talking about things that aren't even your field of study...
If you want to talk to children, very young children, about sexuality, that seems like that should be something that you go to school specifically for, and then this curriculum is carefully analyzed with psychologists and sociologists and people who are experts in sexual reproduction.
They should have informed conversations of how to have these conversations.
If you're going to have a conversation like that, but you're just like a fucking...
A history teacher, and you want to talk about your husband, and you're a gay man, this is how me and my husband have sex with each other, and you're talking to a seven-year-old, like, hey, maybe this isn't the place for that.
It's not the place for you to talk about how you fucked your wife, either.
And I've seen some of those fucking parent meetings where the Karens get up and start screaming at the board members and fucking ruin it for everybody.
I get it.
I get it.
If you're a teacher and some crazy person who believes in QAnon and thinks there's fucking kids tied up in the basement somewhere of a pizza place, You know, I get it.
You don't want to talk to that person.
That person maybe shouldn't have the influence on how the school curriculum is run.
I get it, but you can't lump everybody into that thing.
And when there's something that makes people very uncomfortable, like all of a sudden a public school stepping in and dictating how sexual orientation and sex preferences and all that should be handled and discussed amongst seven-year-olds, I think I'm right to go, wait, wait, wait.
Who are you?
It's not like whether or not this subject should ever be breached with kids.
It's like, who's doing this?
And how good are you at this?
And I'm not supposed to know what you're teaching my kids?
And then they come home and go, mommy, what's a rim job?
It's weird, because it's like, you know, people are like, hey, get rid of it so that we can save money on gas, and it's like, you know, but PA has pretty fucking high, like, their gas tax is high, so the gas is kind of similar.
They would save money, like we would save money, um...
You know, if we got rid of it, but there are a lot of people that live in New Jersey that are like, I won't pump my own gas.
I remember Growing up, there were pumps that were, there would be stations that were like, the ones closest are full, the ones everything else is self.
There was a guy the other day that he was so dirty, and he had this bucket of water that I'm sure was as dirty as him, and he was trying to wash people's windshields.
Didn't get a shot at it because it was still in the oak brush.
But...
I really want my kids to hear that.
Like, I want to be able to be somewhere where, like, okay, since, you know, elk season's in September, you're still going to have to be in school, but, like, we can go on the weekends.
They're buying up land, and they're reintroducing...
All sorts of bison, pronghorn, all sorts of...
And they're trying to make an enormous national park-type deal, but they're also opening it up.
American Prairie Foundation, that's it.
Yeah, that's it.
And so they're buying up enormous chunks of land, but they're also going to have it open for hunting.
So this is not going to be like Yellowstone, where you have all these animals and they live in this very bizarre, protected sort of park area.
They're trying to sort of bring back this enormous swath of land and reintroduce all the kind of animals that live here probably at the turn of the 19th century.
And the problem is when people agree to bring the wolves in, they generally agree that there's a number that those wolves will get to.
This is what happened with Yellowstone.
They agree there's a number that those wolves can get to that's a sustainable population, and they'll open them up to management.
And what management means is hunting.
People will kill some of those wolves to keep the populations in check.
hit that number, then they move the goalposts, and they fight against that.
And the environmentalists, a lot of these animal rights groups, they have—they call themselves environmentalists, they're really animal rights activists.
They have lawsuits against these proposed hunting seasons, and they do that all the time.
That's a giant issue.
I think if they recognize— That needs to be taken into consideration whenever they make this sort of agreement to reintroduce wolves.
They have to look at what happened when they reintroduced the wolves into Yellowstone.
How many lawsuits were...
How many people fought against this idea of the hunting of the wolves?
Because I know they've had problems with them in other states.
Montana, they have wolf seasons in some places, and they never reach their quotas.
That's the thing they need to understand.
If someone says, We're going to release 100 wolf tags.
Like, that section of northwestern New Jersey, because it was only three counties had black bears, like, legitimately had black bears in New Jersey, and then it was New York, Pennsylvania, right in the tri-state corner.
And like, I started hunting them right when it opened.
I never saw a fucking bear during season because it was always during six day firearm, which is the second week of December.
The first year that they opened it up, we got a decent amount.
And then they started to spread out.
And now they're in every county in the state.
And like me, I've got trail cam pictures of a sow with five cubs.
And what people don't get, the only reason a sow has five cubs is because her body feels like she can support them.
Because she's got plenty of fucking brows to eat.
You know, these...
The bears don't want to eat garbage and get into, you know, human shit, but they will.
And, like, a lot of the issues you have, too, is that people are like, oh, well, you know, we can just scare them off, shoot them with a rubber buckshot, you know, and that's what, like, the cops try to do when they come to a bear call.
And it's like, this bear doesn't have millions of acres to go, like a bear in Montana.
He can go 1,500 yards, if that.
And then he's in the next town over, or the next person's yard, or whatever.
And the reason that they're coming into people's Like, get busted into garages and stuff like that is because they're not the big bear.
Like, the big bear never does that shit.
The big bear eats whatever the fuck the big bear wants to eat, which is the blueberries and the raspberries and all sorts of- And cubs.
Yeah, and cubs.
And eats whatever the hell they want, and it's the little ones that come into, you know, where humans are and create- All the trouble.
And the thing is, is they know that that bear, the big bear, will kill them.
They don't necessarily know that we're gonna kill them.
So they're more willing to deal with us than they are with the big fucker that scared them away.
Yeah, like beefy, a little more irony than beef, but I've prepared them.
I made some sous vide for Thanksgiving the one year, so I cooked them in the water bath for a while at like 135 or whatever, and then took them out because trichinosis...
It dies at whatever the hell it is.
I think we got 137, and that's where I got it to, and left it there.
And then just hit them on the grill real quick, and you couldn't tell that they weren't beef.
It says, 160 is more than ample temperature to kill all forms of trichinosis.
That's instant.
Right.
It says, while freezing for at least 20 plus days is known to kill most forms of trichinosis, I cannot recommend this method as there are strains that are resistant to freezing.
That's what the lawsuit says, and let's see what the actual case said.
You're going to have to hold your urine in for three more minutes here.
It says the teen, who's now 17, lives in Florida, identified only as John Doe, was between 13 and 14 years old when sex traffickers posing as a 16-year-old female classmate started chatting with him.
Okay.
Doe, acting under duress, initially complied and sent videos of himself performing sex acts and was also told to include another child in his videos, which he did.
The suit claims eventually...
Doe blocked the traffickers and stopped harassing him, but at some point in 2019, the video surfaced on Twitter under two accounts that were known to share child sexual abuse material.
Over the next month, the videos were reported to Twitter at least three times.
First on December 25th, 2019, but the tech giant failed to do anything about it until a federal law enforcement officer got involved.
The suit states, Doe became aware of the tweets in January 2020 because they'd been viewed widely by his classmates.
Holy shit.
Which subjected him to teasing harassment, vicious bullying, and led him to become suicidal.
court records show while those parents contacted the school and made police reports he followed a complaint with Twitter saying there were two tweets depicting child pornography of himself and they needed to be removed because they were illegal harmful and were in violation of the site's policies a support agent followed up and asked for a copy of Doe's ID so they could prove it was him and after the team complied there was no response for a week the
Around the same time, Doe's mother filed two complaints to Twitter reporting the same material, and for a week, she also received no response.
Finally, on January 28th, Twitter replied to Doe and said they wouldn't be taking down the material, which had already racked up over 187,000 views and 2,223 retweets.
His armbar would have been better if his foot wasn't caught.
It would have been tighter.
He ended up finishing the armbar, but they're like, oh, you know, we use it.
I was like, no, he didn't use it.
Like, it was just fucking happenstance, and you fucking dumbasses are, you're on here because it's so toxic, and you're just fighting with me, a subject matter expert.