Chael Sonnen joins Joe Rogan to debate MMA supplements, slamming marketing hype while endorsing Usana’s high-potency vitamins like 4,000mg vitamin D, comparing them to banned but effective substances like Mag-10 and Kratom. They critique UFC regulations—Sonnen defends Overeem’s flawed T/E suspension, while Rogan questions bans on health-boosting PEDs—and dissect combat psychology, from Sonnen’s hypnosis-assisted comeback to Mir’s technical dominance and Hardy’s controversial tap. Sonnen’s wild stories (like Chris Lieben’s E. coli hospital stint) contrast with Rogan’s skepticism about Bigfoot, yet both agree governments overreach, mocking Congress’ meddling in sports while praising self-regulating markets. Sonnen’s "statesman" insights—from education failures to absurd military punishments—culminate in a joke about Brian Stan as a potential president, underscoring their shared view: politics and bureaucracy often miss what truly strengthens society. [Automatically generated summary]
That's O-N-N-I-T, makers of AlphaBrain, the cognitive enhancing supplement that I will be giving Chael Sonnen at the end of this interview, because I suspect he will enjoy it.
If you are interested in nootropics, I suggest just Google it.
Go to Google and type in the word nootropic, N-O-O-Tropic.
And what they are essentially is nutrients that enhance brain function.
And there's a lot of interesting studies on them, and there's a lot of controversy on them, so make up your own mind about it.
But if you're interested...
Please, do your homework first.
Then, once you've done that, if you're interested in AlphaBrain, the way we have it set up, I want to make sure that nobody ever feels ripped off.
If you order the first 30 pills and you don't like it, you don't even have to send it back.
You just say, this stuff sucks and you get a 100% money back guarantee.
That's because I want to...
It's much more important to me that people don't feel ripped off than it is to make money.
And all this shit is stuff that I've used before I ever endorsed it.
And it's all stuff that I've...
I've been using nootropics for a long time now.
And I'm a firm believer in vitamins and minerals.
And you can read up all about the various ingredients that are in AlphaBrain on Onnit.
That's O-N-N-I-T dot com.
And go check that out.
Enter in the code name ROGAN. Save yourself 10% off any and all orders.
Well, I think if you have a product and you believe in it, you would want people to buy it more than once, especially if it's something like a vitamin supplement.
You know, that's something they tried to get going years back.
They tried to label vitamins as nutraceuticals and then they were going to have it so that you needed a prescription.
To get vitamins, which gets a little weird.
I would appreciate a little regulation so we know exactly what the fuck is in everything, because right now it's a little wild west when it comes to things like supplements.
But I just think that having to go to a doctor to get some vitamin D, I don't want that.
But that comes back to my point that it's, you know, 10% effective, 90% marketing.
You know, how many things at GNC are made in the same lab, but they're packaged different, and whoever can get the word out more.
And I can tell you, you know, I've tried everything at GNC on the off chance that something might work.
I begged my dad to take me there when I was 12 years old and whoever the most muscled up guy or whoever the most handsome guy, whatever it was that attracts you when you're vulnerable at that age, that's who I'm begging my dad to put 40 bucks down and buy me the protein drink for.
So essentially they discovered something that the government hadn't had it yet and had it banned and they got it.
That's going on.
There's a drug out there right now.
I shouldn't call it a drug because it's not, but it's a natural product known as Kratom.
I don't know if you've heard about this, but it is absolutely an opiate.
It's absolutely a painkiller.
You know those drive-thru espresso places that they've got?
We've got a place like that in Oregon, and the guy sells Kratom, and he makes $150,000 a year, and it's completely legal.
The government has not caught on that this is a painkiller.
I mean, you get a high, you get a low, you got a crash.
I got a buddy that's coming off Of painkillers.
He got addicted to the Vicodin.
And what he's doing is he's going and buying this kratom for $10 a pill.
He buys five.
It costs him $50.
He goes every Sunday.
And when he shows up at 10 a.m., Joe, there's a line waiting for this stuff.
It's a drug, but it hasn't been found illegal yet.
And I'm saying that because the story you just told about being able to buy a steroid over-the-counter, people are going to think that's not believable.
Well, I wouldn't know, but from what I'm told, and I read about this stuff all the time, is that if you simply get yourself a good chemist, he goes in, he changes one molecule, one element, and all of a sudden the strand is something else.
You got your banned list, you change one molecule, it doesn't fall into that category.
They're looking for things in that category, and they pass.
It's Olympic year, and we see this every Games where an entire country comes out looking different than every other athlete.
The whole country looks different.
You're like, okay, guys.
You all look that way.
This whole team has gotten this much stronger and more shredded and times have picked up and everything from track to pole vault to swim.
Everybody's better from your country.
What are you doing?
And ten years later you find out and it gets added to the banned list.
And what about when a guy gets caught, and so then instead of just going, yeah, listen, I've got to take my medicine, he's got to bring everybody else down.
He becomes the tattletale.
Come on, what's happening here?
That's not the way it works.
You got brought down, you got caught, you've got to take your medicine.
Well, when we start seeing guys like Mark McGuire shrink down right after he's done playing, and then admit that he was on steroids, or you see Barry Bonds and how big he got, it's almost like, man, how much regulation do we really need of the human body?
What the fuck is wrong with what Barry Bonds did?
He took something that made him stronger.
Shouldn't we be interested in stuff that makes you stronger and makes you healthier?
When you look at a guy like Barry Bonds, he looks like he was 30 years old.
He got better when he was older.
As a professional baseball player, that's amazing.
Shouldn't that be something that we would look into and say, that's a good thing?
Don't you want Roger Clemens to keep throwing fucking heat deep into his 40s?
I mean, of course we love medicine and advancements, and that's wonderful.
But if you're talking about rules within a sport and you want to just keep it out for whatever reason, but if that is the decision that we're going to keep it out, well, then the guy can't bring it in and cheat and lie about it.
I think that was the debate.
But I hear what you're saying.
I mean, if it is making people healthier and better, then good for them, and by all means, we should advance knowledge and technology in that area.
What did That they would allow a disclosure process.
Here, let me talk about myself because, you know, I was such an expert on this because I had to go through it.
I go out, I tell them I'm on testosterone.
I say, can I compete in your state while on testosterone?
That's what you got to do.
You got to get permission.
Yes, go ahead.
So I do it.
I take my test.
They come back and they say, hey, you're on testosterone.
Well, guys, you didn't need a urine test.
I told you that well in advance in writing, and you told me I could be on testosterone.
They go, well, we don't like this.
But you made the rules, and you told me I could do it.
So it just ended up in this really weird area where they said, okay, but you didn't disclose it properly.
And they started changing the argument.
It just got really weird to where we could never narrow them down.
So they finally have come to some resolution within their own body.
And, you know, in the state of California, I don't want to turn on and throw stones at them.
I want to be pretty diplomatic with them.
But look, they are not transparent.
And for you and I, two experts and authorities in this sport, to still not be completely clear on what their ruling was, I think speaks to their lack of transparency.
And if they don't want people to keep stubbing their toe and breaking rules, just make it clear so that we know what the rules are.
It's a pretty thankless job to be the head of an athletic commission, and there's very few guys that do it and do it really well.
But, you know, it's not an easy job trying to figure out what's fair, trying to figure out what the playing field is, especially as science and medicine advances.
I like the idea of a guy like Roger Clemens being able to play baseball because he's taking human growth hormone and doing testosterone.
It doesn't bother me.
It really sucks that he can't actually just say that.
He can't just do that.
Especially in a sport like baseball where, I mean, how is it going to hurt somebody?
Even if he is enhanced, he's not going to hurt somebody.
That's where it gets weird like in MMA. The real question in MMA is if you really have something in your body that makes you hyperhuman, you have hyperhuman levels, which people can do if they use testosterone replacement or something else unethically.
You know, I'll tell you, Joe, one thing I admire about you, you are oddly comfortable in your own skin.
You know, you have no problem admitting anything and being a real open book.
And so I think that's one reason why you can't relate to Roger Clemens is because, you know, you're like, look, this is who I am and this is what I do.
But that's a very rare trait.
You possess that, but not a lot of people do.
Everybody's got their secrets, not necessarily on this topic, but in other things of their life where they keep it private.
But, you know, I mean, the caffeine is just one that I'm mentioning, but there's a number of performance enhancing things.
And if a guy takes the time and gets surrounded with the right people that look into that, because often it's overlooked, but, you know, supplements, diet, vitamins, as we talked about earlier, these are, there's a very important element.
And if a guy inundates himself and finds where his level should be and he's legal, then he's legal.
Good for him.
And so many people want to point a finger and say there's something wrong about it, but there's not.
And the science continually change continually.
It's junk science.
You can't get, you bring five doctors in here, Joe, you get five different opinions.
All it is, is Mike Tyson goes out, he's got a microphone, he tells stories of his life, and they've got a production.
So if he says, you know, Don King in a story, boom, Don King's face pops up behind him on a big movie screen.
So he's telling this story, and he brings up the Robin Givens era, where, you know, where he's beating Robin Givens, and he's doing these horrible things, and he's going, listen...
The one thing Robin never told anyone is that I was seeing her the whole time.
You know, the whole time we were still seeing each other.
Now, he didn't use the word seeing.
I'm sure you can fill in the blank, but he's seeing her the whole time.
So he says, you know, one morning at 1 a.m., I drive over to Robin Givens' house.
My mansion that I bought her that I'm not allowed to go to and I'm ringing the doorbell and this isn't all that uncommon because I do this a lot except today she doesn't come to the door.
So he says I'm walking around the house I'm looking in the windows about 15 minutes later I see her pulling up the driveway in a Bentley that I bought her that I'm not allowed to drive.
So she's driving my car she's coming to my mansion it's 1 in the morning she gets out of the car she brought someone home with her.
So she brought a guy home to see her into my mansion in my car that I'm not allowed to be at.
And when the guy gets out of the car, do you want to know who it is?
And on the screen, up pops Brad Pitt.
He was a waiter and she picked him up that night.
It's before he ever made it into the movies.
So Brad Pitt's sitting there going, hey man, hey buddy, I don't really know much about this.
And he's got this sketch they're doing about Kim Kardashian and Chris Humphries.
He said, why would you care?
You know, he said something there on the air, like, why would you care in a few years from now?
No one's going to care about you anymore anyway.
Yeah, and everybody clapped and we laughed and I cried, you know, fake for TV. But for real life, I look at it and I go, well, man, could you imagine saying that to your friend?
What a cunt move that would be to say to your friend.
If my friend said that to me, I'd be like, bitch, what the fuck am I doing hanging around with you?
I would cut that guy out of my life instantly.
Because I'm not capable of saying something like that to a friend.
I think it's just fun because the guy who's the coach, especially this one right now that's going on with Uriah and Dominic Cruz, what I like about it is they're constantly talking shit to each other, and it's just another way to try to win.
It's another way to try to win with a team.
And people love to be a part of teams, man.
They like to pick team windows.
I'm on team Apple, and people love that.
I only get droids.
I like the droid platform.
People love to be on teams.
You say soccer, but I hear that ice cream sandwich is the shit.
Actually, I saw, have you seen the, what is that, the note?
They say within like a hundred or something years, there'll be no more wild fish in the ocean.
I mean, it's incredible.
So we're sucking all this...
And then we're throwing all our trash in there.
So there's this gigantic...
Like, island of floating plastic as big as Texas in the middle of the Pacific.
And it gets bigger every day.
I mean, we're crazy.
If you look at us from, like, if you were an alien species and you were observing Earth, you'd be like, look at this one thing just fucking everything up.
If you want to go all the way with that, and most topics that you get passionate about, a guy that's willing to chain himself to a tree to stop construction, gets pretty wacko.
It's like, make sure what you recognize, you're turning on us.
Yeah, well, you know, my issue that I've always had with people who are not just vegetarians and vegans, but are really kind of aggressive about it in the way they fuck with you.
I got a chapter in my book on this very topic about cutting down trees, and it's like, listen, the older and bigger the tree, the better with me if you're going to cut it down.
You know, let it go, let it make some sunlight, and let a couple of new trees pop up.
That's the way that it works, and we use those trees, and we build our houses and paper, and it's an absolute necessity, but those are here for us, not the other way around.
And, you know, you hear these eco-frecos, you know, of course, they only come out when CNN or some local camera crew is there.
It's often about them, not about the environment, and that's where real frustration comes in.
But, no, I hear what you're saying, you know, in fact, we were talking about Kardashian a minute ago.
Somebody just recently threw flour or something on her over in England.
They listen to your argument and you have made that animal's death really kind of worthless now because they're going to have to throw this coat away because you spray painted it like a fucking asshole.
But the kid lived, and there was another video of a guy, and it's another helmet cam, same thing, and another one where a guy on a motorcycle hits a deer, but he loses the bike, and he was wearing full leathers with pads, like racing shit, where they have those really hard plates in the body, and he got up and he was fine, and he was telling people, look, this is the reason why you need to wear all this shit, because something like this can happen, and this just saved my life.
I took my safety lessons, and I was ready to get a bike, and I saw one accident, and two friends saw two other accidents in the course of three days involving a bike.
You know, and I was really looking forward to him against Alistair.
Alistair and him would have been a very interesting fight, man.
Because Alistair is such a pure stand-up guy.
And Alistair is so good at incorporating leg kicks and knees.
He's got a real tight guard, especially now that he's so big.
He kind of like punches everything over, protects himself well.
He's a dangerous guy to anybody that has to enforce a stand-up strategy.
If you want to just go and box with that guy, he's got so many other tools other than just boxing.
And he's so technical with his attacks.
It's just, it sucks that he, you know, whatever his issue was, you know, he's saying I think that he got some medication that, you know, some doctor gave him that had testosterone and he didn't realize it and it fucked up his testosterone, the epitestosterone.
I don't know what happened.
I don't know the story behind it, but I guess he's suspended for like nine months now.
Yeah, let's jump off that topic as quick as we can.
But one thing about that, he took a substance test.
He took four.
Two of them were surprise tests.
No substance was ever found.
And he came forward later and kind of volunteered, hey, it looks like I might have taken some testosterone.
But that wasn't what the test showed.
The test didn't show anything.
It just said, hey, there's something with your TD ratio.
Let's try to figure out why this happened.
The media really got that wrong.
Well, here's what you've got to understand, Joe.
And I'm really glad you asked this.
Here's your T and E. Okay, here's your T and here's your E. So they're very close to epitestosterone.
And they're very close.
You know, they're usually even, one-to-one.
Some commissions allow a four-to-one or even a six-to-one difference.
But the reality is most are one-to-one.
Now, if your testosterone went up or if it went down...
That gap is your ratio.
With the same set, if your epi testosterone went up or went down, that gap is your ratio.
That's why it's a very disingenuous test.
So when a guy has a T to E that's elevated, the media immediately assumed that he took T. His T could have been in the gutter, his epi was at the norm, and he could have been unhealthily low.
Yeah, it throws off your T to E. Well, his T could have been up, his T could have been down.
His E could have been down.
But listen, a guy has every right to manipulate his testosterone.
Every right.
The question is, how did he manipulate it?
Did he use a legal substance or an illegal substance?
And Alliser's test, four of them, two that were surprised, showed no substance was found.
Now, I understand if you and I's format right here, we're just two guys talking.
We can share our opinion.
But if you're a media member, if you sit behind a desk, you wear the suit, you collect a paycheck at the end of the night, you're branded an analyst by your affiliated network, you can't come out and say that he took testosterone when the test didn't show that.
He was never even accused of that.
And, you know, from Mark Cuban's tax write-off that nobody watches, those guys couldn't have missed the boat anymore.
They took pleasure in coming out and outing him for something that the commission never accused him of.
ESPN missed the boat.
Everybody got this wrong, and they were quick to say that, oh, he's taking testosterone.
I've done commentary before for friends, and they didn't like what I said, you know, and they got mad at me.
And I would go, listen, man, I have to say what I see.
And if I see you're doing something, and then you get caught doing that, it's because I have to say it.
I have to tell people what to look for.
That's what commentary is.
I can't pretend that something different is happening so that you feel better about it when you listen to it, but then the million people who hear it are not getting an accurate account of what's going on.
For the folks who don't know anything about the UFC or jiu-jitsu and you're just listening to this podcast, Paul Harris is one of the weirdest specialists in all of the UFC because his number one thing is ripping guys' knees apart.
No improvement in technique, no improvement in conditioning, just to try to catch up.
How long, like, does it take to develop the win for a five-round fight?
To, like, for a real, like, your rematch with Anderson Silva that you're training for, how long are you in, like, Peak, ridiculous, hard training to gear up for a five-round fight.
I worked so hard until I was 23 and finished wrestling to go six minutes.
And it was so difficult to go six minutes at that pace of a wrestling match.
You know, now 15 minutes.
Oh my goodness, it's so hard.
When you start to break into those 25 minutes, I don't know if the human being is meant to do that.
You know, St. Pierre keeps taking a lot of criticism.
Well, the reality is you're asking him to do a monumental task, which is to go hard for 25 minutes.
It's an impossible task to ask somebody.
And there's a saying in boxing that if you go for the knockout, you will not win a decision.
And you need to make your choice now.
If I go for the kill, you know, Dan Henderson style, and you don't get it, and then you realize that Shogun's still alive and you've got to hang out for 25 minutes, it's not going to be a pretty 25 minutes.
What a crazy fight that was.
Yeah, you've got to pace, and a lot of people go, well, Dan Henderson's not in shape.
Well, that's not the case.
Dan Henderson's a human being.
And human beings get very tired when they go for the kill.
So you've got to plan it right.
And George does plan it right.
Now if you want to see an exciting fight, shorten the rounds.
So as a fan, I mean, taking yourself out of the equation, just objectively with all the knowledge that you have, what would you think would be the better format?
I don't know if you've ever bet on a UFC fight, but I don't know if you haven't, then you wouldn't know this.
But the way it works, you know, in a lot of gambling halls, you would imagine, well, if I show up, it's four to one odds, and I put 50 grand down, I got 50 grand at four to one.
It doesn't work that way.
If you go to bet at a sportsbook in Vegas on a UFC, this isn't the same for everything, but for UFC, because there's not enough money coming in, you can only bet X amount at a time.
Then they reset the line, and then you've got to bet it again.
On the spot like that, the best line you could have ever written.
You can't write anything creepier than that.
Why would I hold him down when I could just stare him down?
A guy has to think like that.
In order to have that thought in his head, in order to be able to say that verbally, I mean, if you're going to be a writer and you're going to come up with that, it might take you six hours alone doing cocaine and drinking coffee to pretend you're the type of guy that would think that way, to have that line come out of your character's mouth.
And those guys, they almost all come from wrestling.
The guys like that Henderson stock, there's guys that can push through pain and then there's wrestlers.
There's another level of mental strength, of the ability to endure.
And what you were talking about going through when you were a kid, like being malnourished and fucking traveling on buses and wherever the hell you're going to these different wrestlers.
Not getting enough sleep.
Not getting enough sleep.
And you have to do schoolwork as well.
Sure.
And how difficult all that is.
The mental toughness that wrestlers develop from that ridiculous...
First of all, from fucking cutting weight all the time.
Just to be able to...
People like to feel good when they compete.
They like to feel great and charged up and confident.
I had so many friends when I was wrestling that would be like...
There was this kid named Mark Collins who was a really good wrestler.
Really, really good.
But he would cut down to like 118 pounds.
He was a little guy anyway, but he would cut down like, maybe I'm exaggerating, maybe it was like 120 something.
He would always just have this dour look on his face.
Life sucked.
He was just walking around, just always hungry.
It stunted my friend Steve's growth.
My friend Steve, all of his brothers are like 6'2", 6'1", 6'3", big fucking guys.
He's 5'6".
Because all throughout high school, just fucking dieting.
Going through regular wrestling and then going off to camps and never allowed to actually eat full meals for a normal long period of time and grow like a normal man.
You know, you talk about how hard the weight cut is, and for us, for our sport of MMA, it's a 24-hour weigh-in.
I mean, you weigh in, the show starts 24 hours later.
In wrestling, it's a one-hour weigh-in.
And not only that, Joe, the national tournament, the whole reason you wrestle, is a three-day tournament with three weigh-ins.
So you weigh in, you do two matches, you cut weight that night, you weigh in again, you do two matches, you cut weight that night, you come back for the championship.
God.
Yeah, so you're talking guys that aren't sleeping.
They're cut, wait, non-stop, boom, time to wrestle.
I mean, how do you do it?
And it really is where the rubber meets the road.
Sometimes the best wrestler that had the best season, 35-0, will not even place at the national tournament because where he used to weigh in, have 24 hours, get on the mat, he'd win a dual meet.
Tournament style, one hour weighing, you're on the mat.
And so is that indicative of a style of competing?
Some guys, like Frankie Edgar, don't cut any weight at all.
Other guys, is that the case in wrestling as well?
Some guys would try to cut the most amount of weight, but other guys would think that the best way to do it was be entirely healthy and just be natural and deal with a guy who's larger.
For folks who don't know, you were allowed to kick with, you know, you had these boots on that had shin pads on them, but you weren't allowed to punch to the face.
Instead, you could slap people.
Full blast!
And Boss Rutten figured out a way how to pull his hand back.
Way far.
And when he would throw, I don't know, I can't even bend my hand back the way he would do it.
And he would essentially be punching you with his palms.
He got in candid because they thought he was throwing a fight.
But what he was doing was he was letting people into the psyche of an athlete who's breaking.
He's breaking, and it's an ugly, deep secret, and we've all done it as athletes, whether it's in practice or in the ring, and we're greatly shameful of it.
So what he did is he just let people in and go, look, this is what happened.
I broke down mentally.
The commissioner comes out and suspends him for it.
He's like, well, commissioner, obviously you've never competed.
The real issue of people regulating athleticism where they don't understand the psychology behind being an athlete, especially a combat athlete.
There was an issue that I had, and we don't want to name any names here, but it was when someone had questioned you about you fake tapping against Paul Ophelia.
My take on that is for you to ask a man what he's thinking right then in the middle of an incredibly emotional situation where he's losing a fight, he knows it's over, he got locked up in it, and he's thinking there's got to be a fucking way out of this.
There's got to be a way.
You want to win so bad, you say something that you're ashamed of later.
But to say that...
That thing that you were ashamed of that you did represents your character or your sensibilities or your honesty, I think is a bit disingenuous.
When you have competed at a high level for a number of years like you have, it's almost like you could be considered almost like a slightly crazy person.
Like your fanaticism for victory, your need to compete and excel.
The only way to get really fucking good is you've got to be a little crazy.
I had a person, again, let's make sure we keep him on name, but he wanted a response to that.
I'm going, geez, you know, if I'm to be candid with you...
If I get tapped out in front of a sold-out audience that was aired on live, worldwide television, and I then lie about doing it, the only person I'm lying to is myself.
That's it.
If I'm trying to fool someone, if I'm in denial, and me, I could be anybody.
I could be Chael, or I could be Fighter X. But if he's doing that, if a person, look, the only person you're lying to is yourself.
Did the guy file a complaint with the commission?
Well, that's within the rules.
You know, what did the guy do?
If he's forcing you to make a ruling, go ahead.
But, you know, like you said, and let's also not forget.
When you file a complaint, how much of that is gamesmanship because you're trying to get a rematch anyway and the whole game is about making more money?
Especially if you're considering that part of you as an athlete to be sort of performance art.
You're actually, you have an act.
I mean, and that act enhances your overall brand.
I mean, when you go out there and you talk a bunch of crazy shit, whether or not you believe in it, and people start talking about you, it becomes monetarily advantageous to do that.
But even if he doesn't, if he wants to take it to the grave, let's not forget the guy doesn't owe you anything.
He's not under a subpoena.
He owes you nothing, including the truth, if that's his choice.
So for a government official, because that's how this started.
You were talking about a government...
For a government official to get involved and act as though he's going to suspend or uphold somebody's license because he didn't like something that he said in the media is inappropriate.
I'm always fascinated when you hear about a guy, well, yeah, he was a blue belt, and then something happened, and he went to a few seminars, and before you know it, he's fucking killing everybody at the Mundiales.
You went from, was it UFC 60 that you fought Jeremy Horn?
He was ranked number two in the world, and I was just one of those guys that was kind of looked at as a top ten.
That was right before I fought Nate Morka, and it gave me a lot of confidence.
But here's what happened, Joe.
I have never lost a round of fighting.
And when I say that sometimes, a guy will laugh, you know, because I've lost some fights.
But I've never lost a round.
I've never had a fight where a judge ever scored a round against me until my last match with Bisping.
So at the point of your story, though, I sit down one day and I'm looking at it.
I'm at SureDog.com.
I bring myself up.
I'm looking at my record.
I've won every round I've ever fought.
I've never been in a tough fight.
I've never had stitches.
I've never broken it.
I've dominated everybody.
And I've lost eight fights.
And I lost all of them by submission.
And I lost all of them in the second round.
And I'm staring at that on the computer.
I'm staring at these numbers like a CEO would his spreadsheet.
And I'm saying, there's something going on here, and it's not physical.
There's something going on that I can dominate eight minutes of a fight, seven minutes of a fight, nine minutes of a fight, and find a way out time after time after time in the same round with the same move.
And so I went and got help.
I went and got professional help.
And I sought out a doctor, Ed Versteg.
I hate talking about this because this was a real turning point for me is when I went in, worked on sports psychology, got hypnotized.
I was never the same.
I was never the same in practice.
My attitude was different.
Controlling my diet, being disciplined, falling asleep, the way I approached battle, the way I approached the second round.
Everything changed.
And it changed to the point where I hate to say what I just said and now it's too late.
Because I felt like it was my secret.
I discovered something.
And I don't want other people to know.
I'll write about it someday in a book.
I'll talk about it when I'm retired.
But I'm not going to tell anybody because it's competitive edge.
And when I started seeing a sports psychologist, when I finally came clean, it was like being an alcoholic.
Before you can get help, you've got to admit you have a problem.
And when I finally admitted I got a problem, when I finally said it, when I finally could acknowledge and look somebody and tell them, this is what's going on.
Are you ever allowed to give a shout-on in the show?
Like, do you ever say hi to anybody?
Like, if I was to say, hi, Brittany, because my girlfriend just texted me since she's watching the show, and I mention the name Brittany to earn myself special points, is that going to tick you off?
Not at all.
I'm not even going to say Brittany if it's going to be like a cheap plug and you're going to get mad.
I knew there must have been something on the mental side.
Because, you know, I remember, as you do, that the Yushin Okami fight was an excellent performance.
And I remember being real impressed with that, but even more so impressed with the Nate Marquardt fight.
I knew that Yushin was a grappler, and I wasn't surprised that you were a stronger grappler than him, but I was surprised that Nate Marquardt just couldn't stop you from taking him down.
He just could not stop you.
And the way you were doing it, you were ragdolling him to the point where you were like, Jesus, this guy's a fucking nightmare for a lot of dudes, man.
You know, it's a very weird experience if you've ever been, and I know you practice it, so you have been, but it's a very weird experience, you know, when you're actually going to sleep, but you're trying to stay within reality.
And I remember having a dream thinking, well, if I tap, I could get out of this.
So aside from being choked, don't forget I've got fatigue issues.
I've got blood and Vaseline in my eyes.
I've got exhaustion.
I've got anxiety.
I'm a normal human being.
I feel every emotion.
So many people say to me, you're never scared.
Come on, I'm a human.
Fill it all.
So I lose the fight.
We go in the back and they bring me the fight of the night check.
They pay you immediately if you get a bonus.
Boom, here's your check.
And I remember thinking, you gave me that out of sympathy because that was such a boring fight.
Nothing happened.
You gave me that out of sympathy.
I'll take it.
I'm fighting back the tears.
I'm just devastated.
I'm absolutely devastated by this defeat.
And later the fight gets named not only Fight of the Night, it was called Fight of the Year.
We won the award from Fighters Only Magazine, which puts on the award show for Fight of the Year.
So it ended up being a really good fight, but my point that I'm trying to get at is that's how out of touch I was with what was happening in the ring.
You know, at one point my corner man told me it's round four when it was round five or he told me it was round four when it was round three.
Whatever it was, the corner had the rounds off.
You know, the instruction I was getting was a little bit off.
And I just didn't fully know what was going on.
And in this next fight I'd like to, you know, as I visualize and plan for it, that's one of the things I'd like to be a little more aware and a little more in touch with what's happening.
It's like when, you know, an executive director comes at you and wants to know, like we were talking about earlier, hey, why'd you do this?
And you're kind of going, you know, I don't really know how to put it into words, and I don't mean this condescendingly, but obviously you've never been in that spot.
Because it's one of those indescribable feelings.
And when you have victory...
That's also an indescribable feeling.
When you make that walk in front of 17,000 people screaming, cheering, booing, whatever it is, that's also an indescribable feeling.
So it's a very unique sport, and people will always ask me on game day, are you ready?
Are you excited?
And are you scared?
You'll get these questions, and the answer is no.
But I can't tell you what I am either.
For all the human emotions that have definitions, I don't know how to describe what it's like on fight day.
It's a combination of many things.
And if we're going to be truthful, most of them are unpleasant.
It's a very stressful situation.
You know, you're walking into battle.
You've prepared for this and it's all on the line and it's on the line in front of everybody.
You know, you bring up Chris Lieben, if I can jump in here real fast.
I don't know if I'm interrupting something, but I threw an event.
I threw an event.
It was like an after-party with Chael.
And it was a colossal failure.
Nobody shows up.
We've got 18 people.
We've got this whole bar to ourselves.
We've got drinks.
We've got a DJ. It's a massive failure.
So we ended up turning the radio off, and we all just ended up sitting down and talking.
And by the end of the night, it couldn't have gone any better.
I know everybody.
Okay, this guy's on his...
You know, his honeymoon.
This guy's wife bought him presents.
These guys, it's their anniversary.
I know everybody in the room.
I know them by name.
I know what city they're from.
We spent about three hours talking.
And I'm telling them stories.
I'm telling them stories of UFC, behind-the-scenes stuff, you know.
And I'm running out of stories.
They're like, tell us another story.
And I'm like, you know who has great stories?
It's Chris Lieben.
The problem is he never answers his phone.
So they're like, call Chris, you know.
So I'm getting peer pressured here.
So I'm calling Chris on speaker.
I call him.
He answers his phone.
I go, Lieben, it's jail.
I'm at an after party.
You're on speaker.
I got about 20 people here.
They can all hear you.
I've been telling stories and I'm out.
I need you to tell one.
And he's like...
You want to tell them a story?
Why don't you tell them about the time that my mom hit a deer, load it in the back of her hatchback, forgot about it for two weeks, then her and my uncle come over, throw it on the kitchen table, cut it up with chainsaws.
I've been in my room.
I've been punished because I got sent home from school in a detention, so they make me sample the meat to make sure it's not rancid, and I end up in the hospital for three weeks with E. coli.
So he goes out on, what do you call it, jet skiing or whatever.
Whatever you do on the water skiing.
And he's out with his uncle, and his uncle is drinking.
And they T-bone a boat.
And his aunt, the uncle's wife, is back on the shore sunbathing.
She doesn't go out with him.
They T-bone a boat, and they hurt the people.
So the people, the wife goes over, and they're helping.
The wife of the other boat is going over.
So they get the husband and the wife on the boat.
And, you know, she's not that bad, but she fell over, and her boat doesn't run anymore.
So the uncles tell him, listen, listen, I've been drinking.
I don't have insurance, but I really will make this up right with you if you just don't call the police.
So as a matter of fact, here's my name.
Here's my number.
Please call me and let's settle this.
Yeah, anything.
Just get us to shore.
I got to get to the hospital, have my leg looked at.
They pull up to the shore.
The aunt stands up because she sees there's some woman on the boat.
She wants to know what the hell's going on.
So she gets a little bit closer and she sees this woman is holding Chris's uncle's, a piece of paper with his name and number on it.
She has no idea she's been T-boned.
She has no idea they've rescued him, taken him to the hospital and it's her husband's fault.
And she sees the number with his name on it and says, that's my husband, bitch, and slaps the woman who's on her way to the hospital because she She got T-boned by the uncle.
So this is Chris's childhood.
So, you know, you like the Chris Lieben story.
I could go on and on and on.
As a matter of fact, I bought for $100, I bought a bunch of Chris Lieben stories, but they backfired.
Yeah, but then he started telling people that these were his stories.
It's like, Chris, that's not your story.
That's my story.
That didn't happen with your uncle.
My uncle did that.
And I got the idea from a Seinfeld where Kramer bought a bunch of Peterman stories.
So I paid Chris and everything.
He took the money.
And then he still was trying to claim this stuff happened to him.
So we get there, and we've got our own security detail, and it's tight.
I mean, these are some bad-looking dudes.
And I'm surrounded with tough-looking guys all the time.
This was a whole other level, man.
These guys got the scars.
These guys got the bullet holes.
These guys got the stitching and the whole bit.
Anyway, we got this bad team.
Now, I've never been on a helicopter, but I love carnivals.
I love rides.
So we go everywhere by helicopter, which apparently is extremely common in Brazil.
It's like the number one Heliport country in the world.
So these are good helicopters with pilots.
They're very reputable.
And next thing I know, we're up in the air.
So this is the ultimate carnival ride.
Now we're there on a gorgeous day in Rio, which is a gorgeous city, and we've got it from a bird's eye view.
I mean, I would take that whole trip, all the risk, all the danger, everything that I had to go through for that 15 minute helicopter ride.
I'm a Catholic.
I went over this church that's like one of the wonders of the world.
It's not quite as, you know, eighth wonder of the world like the pyramids, but it's close, where you look at it and go, how in the heck did you build that hundreds of years ago up on this cliff?
Well, there's a lot of speculation about the history of Brazil that's come into light recently.
I think there's some Roman artifacts they found, some really ancient stuff, and there's some dispute about they found some offshore wreckage or something like that.
So they're now thinking that maybe the Romans had even visited Brazil even before the Portuguese.
Pretty amazing country when you stop and think about the history of it.
And, you know, the way I like to tell it is that it was a scene, man.
We were down in the trenches over there, but...
You know, the reality, I really liked it there.
And it's interesting.
Everybody knows who we are there.
You know, if I want to be famous in America, Joe, I got to go to a fight.
If I go to a fight, I'm a big deal.
If I'm not at a fight, I'm not.
I'm just a regular guy, which is just fine.
But I mean, you know, sometimes people lose sight of that.
And in Brazil, they all knew who we were.
You know, they definitely knew Dana, and they all knew who I was, and I mean all of them, from the bus drivers to the people, to the people working the desk, to the cops, everybody, the people at the airports.
And here's how Dana described it to me.
He goes, chill.
Everybody watches a playoff game for the NFL in America, right?
Everybody watches.
I go, yeah, everybody watches a playoff.
He goes, okay, that everybody is 15 million Americans.
He said in Brazil, 80 million Brazilians tuned in when Anderson and Vitor fought.
So those are the kind of numbers.
That's how inundated people are with this sport.
And that's prior to us bringing them this new Ultimate Fighter with Vandalay and Vitor that's airing.
So what I'm getting at is this sport's huge over there.
And until you're there, you don't realize it.
So at any rate, you know, I'm getting recognized left and right.
And that's fun.
That's fun for my ego.
I'm having a good time.
You know, I'm somebody and they want to talk to me.
They want an autograph.
They're all very nice.
Now, I didn't really have time to exhale and enjoy this because I've got so many death threats that are very legitimate.
You know, guys not only tell me they're going to kill me, they're telling me how.
They're telling me when.
They're telling me the lake they're going to drag my body into.
I've got this security team because the UFC's been warned.
So I'm on edge constantly, and I see some kid.
Is that the kid?
Is this the guy?
I'm constantly looking around.
I'm only human.
This is how my mind's working.
So by the time we left, the experience was great looking back.
At the time I was there, you're on edge.
You know, you're looking around.
Who's the guy?
Who's the guy?
You know, my dad had a real basic rule when you thought you were in trouble.
Don't let anybody within arm's reach.
If the guy comes within arm's reach, hit him.
Don't wait for this first punch crap.
If you feel you're in danger and he gets within arm's reach, you strike first and get out of there.
Everybody's on you like this.
So I'm going against the most basic rule my own father taught me when I'm seven years old, and that's let people in close when you're scared.
So I've got my back up against the wall.
I'm following his second rule, but the first one's completely broken, but we had a good time.
The fight was supposed to take place, for people who don't know, the rematch between Chael and folks who aren't following MMA. A lot of people that listen to this podcast aren't even MMA fans.
After the Anderson Silva fight, you said a bunch of crazy shit about Brazil, about You insulted them quite a bit.
And then they were going to have the rematch in an 80,000-seat soccer arena in Brazil.
But unfortunately, because the UN is having a visit there two days before, there was no hotels.
It was logistically almost impossible to bring that many people into an 80,000-seat arena.
You can't really discount the amount of a boost the hometown fighter would get from a crowd like that or the amount of shock the opponent would get from 80,000 people booing you.
I would prefer people not boo because it's kind of cunty and it's disrespectful for someone who is doing what is essentially the most difficult sport known to man and doing it for your amusement.
And just because it doesn't go the way of the fighter that you like, you're going to boo and hiss and say stupid shit.
That shows a massive level of immaturity that I don't necessarily think we need in this world.
I think it's 2012 and you stupid asses need to catch up.
I mean, I was on Jim Rome earlier today, and it's like, you know, Jim, how many times have you had to sit here and interview a golfer or a tennis player or a NASCAR guy?
Could you imagine being a NASCAR?
You push your foot down, and you make left turns all afternoon long, and somehow that's some meaningful event to society.
And I'm scratching my head going, you know, I wish that I was one of those guys that enjoyed this, but I don't get you're making left turns all Sunday afternoon.
And a lot of times over the past few years, somebody will be on their deathbed.
You know, this just happened about four years ago.
A guy's on his deathbed, and he comes out and says, I'm D.B. Cooper.
And he tells his whole family, and they go to the media.
And the media jumps behind and says, well, it must be true, because why else would you want to go down as a criminal on your deathbed?
And I'm sitting there, and I told everybody that would listen, when they look into these facts that this guy's putting out, I assure you, that won't be D.B. I told everybody, but I never told them why.
I never told them how I was so confident.
It's my big, big worldwide news.
D.B. Cooper case, finally saw.
And then they unraveled it, and sure enough, it wasn't.
But I told everybody that wasn't him.
Well, the reason I knew it wasn't him is I know who D.B. Cooper is.
My whole family knew, and it was a secret, and my father passed away.
So now my oath to keep it a secret has also passed away.
I don't feel that I can't reveal this story.
He's alive and well.
I know exactly who he is, so I tell the story in my book.
And, you know, there's a lot of things that happen in the D.B. Cooper case, and so I need to really make this short or I could take up your whole show with this.
And I'm telling my publisher, going, hey, I don't think you know who D.B. Cooper is.
I think you should Google him.
There's movies made on him.
Prison Break just had a character pretending to be D.B. Cooper.
Folklore has been made out of this guy.
Well, where this guy jumped was government land, but that land backed up to Indian land, and this gentleman was part Indian, and he grew up in this forest.
This is where he spent his summers.
Months after months, they would go out and camp in there, you know, in between school breaks.
From the time he was a little kid all the way on, he knew right where he was jumping, and if anybody could have made it, It was this guy.
Now, my dad grew up with this guy.
He was a family friend.
And back then, parachuting, well, much like now, is very uncommon.
If somebody does it, you go tell all your friends, ah, I found this parachuting class, and I'm going to do it.
And they take pictures, and they show it up.
This guy was taking parachuting lessons.
He didn't tell anybody.
And he started taking motorcycle classes and stuff.
He wasn't telling anybody.
He was racing these bikes.
And that's what my dad personally believes, though he never got the story, that he parachuted, had a hidden motorcycle, and rolled it out.
That's my dad's personal theory.
So, you know, all this stuff comes down, and many years later, the statute of limitations is up, and all of a sudden, this guy starts collecting a pretty good assortment of toys, from shotguns to four-wheelers to motorhomes.
My dad's known him his whole life.
He knows what the guy does for a living.
He knows what his wife does, and he, what the heck's going on here?
You know, where are you getting all this money?
And the guy says, well, you know, I'm an Indian, and And when you reach a certain age, you get some Indian money.
And there's some truth to that.
There is Indian money that's given out if you're a native living in America.
But you're talking about like $1,800 a year.
And when you get older, about $3,000 a year.
This guy came into a wide assortment of money.
Well, the sketches came out of D.B. Cooper, and it's a spitting image of the guy.
Well, there was different ones of him in the disguise with the mustache and the whole bit.
But they're going, hey, wait a minute.
This looks just like you.
So, you know, one night my aunt asks them.
They're at dinner.
They're all family friends.
My parents are there.
My aunt and uncle are there.
This guy and his wife are there.
My aunt looks across the table and flat out says, are you D.B. Cooper?
And he said no.
But the way that he said no told everybody there that he was, and they never brought it up again, ever.
Now, as it came out, and my uncle asked him a little bit in private, hey, well, you know, that other night we were having some Chinese food, and you...
Well...
My parents and uncles weren't the only one that thought he was.
The government did too.
So the FBI had visited this guy, and he even moved away for a while, went to Arizona, and then slowly came back.
But he was talked to by the FBI. They thought he was D.B. Cooper as well.
So when my dad was on his deathbed, he and I had a...
You ask me whatever you want, I'll ask you, and I'll tell you how the story really happened.
It's a bit of a fun moment between father and son.
Everybody leaves the room and says, hey, what really happened that night when you came in at 2 a.m.
smelling like bourbon?
What really happened that day the principal called and claimed that you and your friends were...
So we kind of go back and forth, and I ask him flat out, is blah, blah, blah D.B. Cooper?
And my dad said, well...
All the evidence is saying that he is.
Your uncle believes it, your aunt believes it, and your mom believes it.
Yeah, but, you know, the Bigfoot makes it sound like you're some conspiracy theorist.
I believe they're a Sasquatch, and I believe this because people that I believe and trust, including a doctor, has said, look, I know where they are.
He knows where they are.
Yeah, he says it's very hard to get to, and he's got this plan.
He's got this big grand plan.
He's a survivalist.
He's got this whole plan lined up about how we can get to him, and his personal belief, and, you know, it's just a theory, but he lives in that part because Bigfoot's supposed to be from the Northwest.
You know, they talk about the bodies, but the truth is, what bodies do you ever find?
You know, bears are out there, coyotes are out there.
Do you ever walk through the forest and find bear carcasses or coyotes?
You know, you sure don't.
To your point, there's a number of hoaxes.
There's a number of guys dressed up in a stupid outfit that you could buy any Halloween, run through while his buddy records it, and they stick it on the internet.
I get that there's hoaxes, but there is some pretty good footage.
You said there was none.
There's some very good footage.
As a matter of fact, I've done a lot of work in the movie business and stunts and stuff.
And this topic comes up on Hollywood sets.
And these are the best guys on earth for designing things to look like humans.
And they've said that there is one video where as he moves, the muscles and the body part move.
And stunt coordinators and makeup and costume people in Hollywood say there is no costume created to do that.
And one of the reasons why is because the area where most Sasquatch sightings are is right at the end of the Bering Strait.
And between Alaska and the northern coast of the United States, or excuse me, the northwestern coast of the United States, that's where all of the Sasquatch sightings, a huge majority of them, were for a long time.
They started spreading out all throughout the country, and who knows how many of them are bullshit.
I mean, the number is weird, but...
The American Indians had over 200 different names for Sasquatch.
Or 20. Something with the two.
A bunch of them.
And they don't have a lot of mythical animals.
This was a real thing that they thought lived amongst people.
And it's a real animal that used to actually live, if you follow the Bering Strait, in Asia.
Now, I want to tie this school of thought that I said, yeah, I think there's a Sasquatch.
And then we both agreed on this video.
We have differing opinions of the video.
However, if we prove the video one way in my favor or your favor, it doesn't prove the answer to our original thesis, which is, is there a Bigfoot?
And you see this flaw, this pitfall, as we like to call it, in human thinking when it comes to alien encounter.
How many times have we seen somebody that says, hey, guess what?
I was abducted by aliens and I was given a special power.
In fact, to prove it, I'm going to go ahead and make that light turn off by sitting in my chair and not touching it.
And that will prove to you that I was abducted by aliens and given this power.
So now I sit here, I make that light turn off.
Okay, I've got a power to turn that light off.
But having that power does not prove that I was given that power by being abducted by aliens.
But there's a pitfall in human thinking.
And oftentimes if you can get people to believe one thing one way or the other, they can then connect that to a completely isolated and separate incident.
Which is what I don't want to happen with the video because I'm realizing right now I'm looking like a real doofus after looking at that video.
I'm going to need to get my evidence together and come back.
If you fly over the Pacific Northwest and you see how dense that part of the world is, I don't think a lot of people really truly understand the amount of acreage of really almost impassable rainforest you deal with in the Pacific Northwest.
When you fly over these areas where these people are talking about sightings, and they don't just have sightings, by the way, they also have real sound effects, these sounds that are some sort of primate that's screaming out, and they've sent these things to experts, you know, people who are trying to detect hoaxes, you know, and these people that have been on camping and hunting trips have recorded these things, and these are primate noises.
They don't know what the fuck it is, but it's a primate noise.
And one of the guys that I think is a real credible guy that has had an encounter is Les Stroud.
Well, and then when you talk about the theory of evolution, so you're talking about a Sasquatch, you're talking about a derivative of a human, so you've got to assume that they're a little bit more intelligent than, say, a coyote.
If it's hard to find a coyote, it's going to be very hard to find a Sasquatch.
If it's true, I mean, I'm just fueling the fire again.
I don't want to come up with the guy.
I believe it because the guy I happen to trust just says, look, I think it's true, and so I'm choosing to believe him more than I believe the evidence.
Except recently they found newer versions of the Mayan calendar that they had never discovered before that were more complete that go far past December 21st, 2012. 10 more years of money making.
Yeah, things might get tough, but how spoiled are we anyway?
You know, I always hear these debates on education.
It's like, well, look, when my father went to school, and that wasn't all that long ago, not my great-grandfather, my father, just my dad, when he went to school in high school, if you went for four years, you graduated.
That was it.
There were not standards that you must pass this class, you've got to have algebra, and you've got to have geometry, and you've got...
If you show up for four years, you get a degree.
And, you know, back in the olden day, there was no first grade, second grade, third grade.
They all went to school together.
Everyone in the neighborhood showed up to the same school and the teacher taught them all.
And those are the same people that have now built our bridges and our churches and brought us technology and evolved into Steve Jobs and Apple and Microsoft and Bill Gates and these wonderful things.
So apparently the education system It doesn't necessarily need this great revamping.
I mean, before we even had textbooks and computers, people were learning and people were doing great things in this country.
So, you know, we've gotten so spoiled and we've turned weak.
You know, we've become feminized and our masculinity's gone in a lot of things, such as having grit and digging deep.
And if the economy sucks and you've got to find a better way and you've got to cut back, then that's what you've got to do.
but grin and bear you know you don't go build a a hole in a cave somewhere and wait for the end of the world man up well one of the issues with you know trying to get by in today's society and bringing your kids into schools is that there's a lot of fucking people out there that have done a real shitty job of raising kids a real shitty job and when you put your kids around them your kids are in danger and you
There's liabilities and there's all kinds of bullying and stupid shit that goes on and crime.
And if you can't figure out a way to get your kids out of those situations, they never even have a chance to let the system work on them.
A big part of what school is is sending your kid to some sort of an awkward fucking prison that they're stuck at for many hours a day, especially if you lived in any sort of economically compromised situation, any sort of place where there's a lot of poor people, any place where there's a lot of people that are down and out, and there's a lot of fucking shitty parents, and you got to go to school and deal with gangbangers and all kinds of other craziness while just trying to stay alive, trying to stay healthy.
Fuck learning.
Good luck.
Half this country, good fucking luck trying to learn something in public school.
And how much energy are our politicians putting on that?
How much has anybody changed budgets where they're enhancing school budgets and paying teachers much more?
Try to make it commensurate for what it's worth.
Make it commensurate, rather, for what it's worth.
Like a doctor.
Like having a good teacher is just as important as having a good doctor.
You're having someone that develops the way you fucking think about life.
Not just shows you information that you need to memorize for some stupid fucking test that you're not going to absorb anything out of.
They show you how to think.
They show you how to live your life.
They show you good examples of people who have lived quality lives and they get you to think and pattern your thoughts in a certain direction.
And most kids aren't even getting that today.
Most kids are getting a shit-fucking experience in public school.
That's what the problem is.
Sure, people need to man up.
Absolutely, fucking for sure.
But it also comes with having kids and raising your fucking kids.
And being a man in the first place.
Raising your kids properly and correctly.
Well, how many people are doing that, man?
It's a small percentage.
It may be 30%.
Let's put a number on it.
Let's go crazy and say it's 30%.
That means you're dealing with 70% possible fuck-ups.
And not every kid that comes from a fucked-up household becomes an asshole, but goddamn, a lot of them do.
How many times did you have to deal with kids in high school and in college even that were just a fucking mess all the time?
And it was always because of the way they grew up.
It was always because their brother fucked them over, their parents fucked them over, nobody paid attention to them, and that poor asshole just gets jutted into the school system and has to fucking figure out his own way to the surface of the water.
That's the problem.
It is partly because people are weak and sissified in this country, but it's also because the system is run by cunts.
The system is run by a bunch of greedy cunts that don't pay attention to the most important resource this country has.
It's children.
The most important resource.
You want to have a great, powerful country?
You've got to have a smaller percentage of losers.
And how do you have a smaller percentage of losers?
Well, you have to go into the fucking places where there's the most losers economically and help those fucking kids.
I'm much more of a libertarian than I am a liberal.
I believe in a certain amount of social Darwinism.
But I don't think it should ever apply to children.
I think if you want to be a fucking loser and you want to go out in your life and fuck it up, that's one thing.
But I think a tribe protects its children.
And if we are anything in America, I think we're a tribe.
We're a community.
We're one gigantic fucking tribe.
And if we have any kids that are out there that aren't getting taken care of, then we're failing.
We're failing.
So that's our foundation.
So it doesn't matter what the fuck we do at the very top of the apex with, you know, traveling to the fucking moon and working on the Star Wars program.
That doesn't matter if our foundation is full of shit.
So the very way our society is constructed, it's to let you know that the people running it are fools.
And every politician in the country, from the state level to the federal level, have all, in the last four years, which is two cycles if you're in the House, have all ran on the same thing.
Every one of them, unanimously, in the country, all 50 states, jobs in the economy.
They gotta quit.
No politician has ever created a job.
Ever.
Unless it's a state job.
And don't bring up state jobs where you're taking from doers and giving to non-doers.
Where you're taking tax dollars from hard workers and giving it to people in a state job.
And I'm not saying those aren't important.
But don't count that as creating a job.
Look, if you're a lawmaker, Joe, you can do two things.
And two things only.
Tax and regulate.
And neither taxation nor regulation is good for job growth.
The market will dictate where that silly sport is.
And it's a self-regulating sport, too.
They choose to agree on what is in the contract.
There's a reason why the NBA doesn't test for marijuana.
It's because everybody would be tested positive.
Those dudes are blazed to the gills.
So it's not like, well, we're going to eliminate all illegal aspects of any basketball game.
No, they have shit they agree on and shit they don't agree on.
And they put things in contracts just to make sure that they can...
You know, each side enforces their point, but a lot of it is ridiculous.
Completely ridiculous.
And congressional here.
Congress?
You're going to sit down with the people that are involved at the highest level of our government, and you're going to debate the hit-the-ball-with-the-stick game.
Now, while we're waiting for the video, I'm going to play the one-up game.
And I don't one-up you.
I'm going to come in second here, but I want to relate.
I had a friend that had to do two years in a military prison because when he was in Iraq during the war of 92, way back, but he was in my neighborhood, he shot a camel with a law.
And, you know, as the rumor goes, they're quite coveted over there.
I don't say this to be disingenuous or denigrating.
But I'm told you, you can even marry one over there.
Whether that's true or not, I don't know.
But it's that serious.
He shot it with a rocket launcher.
Now, I don't want that poor camel to have to die, but I do want to see that.
If there was a video or a footage and my buddy had to do it, a guy in my neighborhood has to go to military prison for two years, I at least need to see what happens when a rocket meets a camel in the desert.
I was in trouble because I talked about the people on the streets of Manus in Brazil eating monkey.
Well, it's true.
They do.
And it's like, listen, now, before you think I'm making fun of you, you might want to know what we put in hot dogs right here at Yankee Stadium here in America.
We eat some pretty weird stuff, too.
But it happens to be a true story that they do eat monkey in Brazil.
But the point that I'm getting at is they eat weird stuff around the world, man.
If you can get a hold of Russian caviar, especially back with the USSR before the breakup of the Soviet Union, it was almost impossible to get Russian caviar.
I happen to like it because now they've eased us into it because they roll all of our local sushi rolls in a type of caviar, real cheap, that yellowy stuff.
But, you know, I've learned to like it as I've gotten older.