Mac Danzig and Joe Rogan discuss MMA’s evolution, from brutal sparring to technique-focused training under Niall Ciparelli, warning about brain damage risks like Riddick Bowe’s decline. Mac criticizes steroid reliance (60-90% of fighters use them) and Pride-era complicity, while defending his vegan diet—adopted in 2004 after dairy allergies—rooted in animal compassion, not moral superiority. They contrast modern subcultures’ literalism with authentic expression, like Brian Holtzman’s comedy, and end by praising Mac’s ethical consistency as a blueprint for overcoming adversity. [Automatically generated summary]
So, if you can't remember that, because I can't remember that, he's already told me twice, go to Desquad.
Desquad.tv.
You got it?
Alright, you fucking freaks.
Onnit.com is our other sponsor that's...
And periodically, ladies and gentlemen, let me just say one thing.
We've had a few other sponsors, some corporate sponsors, people like Audible.com, people like Ting.com.
Alienware.
The reason why, if we're in business with any company, it's because they got something good for you.
We have turned down stuff that's like high-profile sponsors that I don't agree with, I don't like what they're selling, I don't want to say what they want me to say.
I'm not interested in that.
What I'm interested in, I think there's plenty of people out there like Ting, the mobile company that has...
Dang!
No cell phone contracts and excellent phones.
I really love this Samsung Galaxy S3. It's fucking gorgeous.
I'm really going to have a hard time going back to the iPhone.
Ting, they weren't even supposed to be sponsored on this podcast today, but we're bringing them up just because that's our entire approach to advertising on this podcast.
Anything that we're involved with.
It's something that we believe is a great product.
With Alienware, the thing that I really love about Alienware is how much love they give to up-and-coming MMA fighters.
Everywhere I look, on Strikeforce, on Bellator, on UFC, there's constantly dudes with that Alienware logo.
That means to me that a company is putting their money behind sport And when a company is like Alienware that's owned by Dell, this huge computer company, that to me is a bold chance by them and I think bold moves like that should be supported.
And that's why we use Alienware computers.
Onnit.com is another sponsor.
It's the only one that I have a financial investment in.
Again, the only reason why I would do that is because I wholeheartedly believe in the way the company operates and in what they're selling.
The big one, the big product that I'm always pushing is AlphaBrain.
And you don't need AlphaBrain.
I've said this a million times before, but I always have to say in case this is the first time someone has ever tuned into this podcast.
If you eat healthy and you're in fit, you probably don't need it.
It's not a necessary part of your life.
But...
They are nutrients that have been shown to enhance your brain's ability to produce neurotransmitters, to fire thoughts off.
And from a person that knows the difference between the way I feel when I'm eating healthy, when I'm eating nutritious food, and when I'm supplementing my diet, and when I'm not doing that, there's a difference.
I feel a tangible difference.
I feel a difference in my performances, the way I'm able to form sentences.
Dennis Hopper, for sure, has seen some real-life insanity.
There's no way he could be that...
intense about some shit unless he's i know he's seen something man yeah you ain't pulling that out of your ass that shit was too real that blue velvet huffing character yeah man that's that was that was one of the greatest scenes ever man yeah lynch had just done such such bizarre stuff but that's how it would make you feel like almost creepy yeah Yeah, yeah.
If you watch, I have a DVD that has some of, I think it's called The Lost Films of David Lynch, and it has some of the things that he was doing when he was in college, when he was coming up, like his first, like some animation stuff, and some of it's pretty disturbing, and then some of it is like, wow, like this is...
You know, like, borderline genius stuff, at least, you know, from a creative standpoint.
I often think back and almost wish that Tarantino would have followed through with his script and done Natural Born Killers himself because I really would have loved to see what his take on it was.
It was just like a silly comedy where he was like a cop, like an undercover cop or something like that.
It was just one of those things that Like, actors, they gotta work and everything, and I understand that.
And so that was just one of the things where it's like, well, like, you're kind of starting to take a path in a, you know, kind of corny direction.
You know what I mean?
Like, I watch guys do that all the time who are great actors, and they were able to repair it by picking and choosing the projects that they want to work on, and then they redeem themselves every time.
But he...
I think that was when I was starting to kind of look at him funny.
I think that's what it's called, knowyourmeme.com, and it's like this site that documents Pretty thoroughly, all these different internet memes from Techno Viking to that Jessie Slaughter girl.
Do you remember her?
Jessie Slaughter.
It's sad in a way.
It's fucked up.
I mean, she's like some 11 or 13 year old girl who got all into gossip and some little scene or subculture of music.
No, this is some girl where what happened was she became so popular in this little subculture and everybody just jumped on her and was ridiculing her and all this stuff because she was going around saying that she was sleeping with all these dumb emo artists and everything in some rock band.
And, you know, she's like a little kid.
And she's doing all these webcam things.
You know how it's popular now with YouTube where everybody just sits in front of their computer with their clothes hanging from the doorknob in the background.
They're like, you know, talking about whatever, giving a review on a movie or talking about whatever.
And she was doing all that stuff and getting really scandalous with it.
To me, it was strange being aware of it and thinking about it just for a second and thinking this is like the reality of most people's lives that are on radio.
Everybody's under the gun.
You've got to be real careful what the fuck you say.
I mean, maybe Robert Drysdale has that same type of ability, but Robert's also way bigger than me.
Fernando was just amazing.
And I remember one of the things, you know, he had already kind of given up on fighting and everything.
And he told me before I left, he's like, just remember, just do this to win.
You're there to win.
You're not there to goof off.
And like, you know, you can do whatever you want, but the goal is to win the show so that you can...
Have a career and, you know, better yourself and keep moving forward.
And I was on there.
As soon as I got in, there was all these guys, half of them were like deer caught in the headlights.
They were just like, oh man, like I'm actually on the show and what's going to happen?
Are they going to surprise us or, you know, what's going to go on?
And then the other half of the guys were just there to be goofballs, hoping that they get enough exposure to put some pictures up on their MySpace page or get laid or whatever they wanted to do.
And that's why everybody's like, oh, you're so grumpy and you're so angry and everything.
Yeah, I mean, my whole thing is, the whole reason why I'm doing this, and maybe I didn't know it when I first got into it, but now after looking back of years of a career, like over 10 years I've been doing this, And reflecting.
It's like, I picked this because, one, it's artistic.
Two, it's fighting, and I just like the fight.
And three, it's honesty.
It's about being authentic.
And that's from the beginning to the end for me.
The marketing of the fight, the preparation of the fight, and the actual act.
The art of doing it live in a spontaneous way.
I do it because it's about being honest with yourself.
Once you get in there, there's no script.
There's no faking it.
That's what's going to happen.
And I love that.
I love putting myself out there.
It's the ultimate sacrifice.
It's the ultimate commitment.
And so, when you start to, like, fake beefs with other fighters, you start to, like, you know, play up all this stuff, in my opinion, you're playing a game with your authenticity.
You know what I mean?
And that's a heavy load to bear.
Take someone like Chael Sonnen.
I like Chael a lot.
I like his shtick.
I like him as a person.
I like him as a fighter.
But that's a heavy load to bear.
To say all this stuff.
And he's great at it.
He's a great talker.
He's got amazing...
All sorts of funny things.
I laughed my ass off listening to him.
And he's really good at it.
He's the best at it.
But it's like...
Do you really want to do that when...
You have to step in there and be 100% real in that moment, and you have to back up all this stuff that you said.
If he can come to terms with it, then he can, and that's up to him.
But my whole thing was I want to...
To be the person that I am inside and outside of the ring.
When I was on the show, I was mad.
I was angry that there was all these guys who weren't serious.
They were screwing around.
They were drinking every night.
And then there were some guys that were serious, but they were too scared.
The whole situation just scared them.
They were just shutting down.
Especially guys on my team.
I watched their morale break down, especially with the way Matt Hughes was training these guys.
And they just broke.
And I was like, man, what's with these guys being nice to my face and then being all silly behind my back?
I would never choose to live with you, ever, in any other circumstance.
And now, not only do I have no contact to or from the outside world, but I'm stuck in a situation where I can't even take a walk in the neighborhood to get away from you guys.
And they're talking all kinds of shit on me and they don't like me and they're drawing little cartoons of me in this juvenile way.
I'm trying to win this thing.
I see them and I'm like, dude, don't talk to me like I'm your friend.
Yeah, so what ended up happening was when I got on there, I took the confidence that I had from all that experience, and I just turned it into...
I've always been very respectful, but when there are people who disrespect the sport and disrespect this...
I mean, I understand it's a show, and they pick goofballs like Richie Hightower and stuff like that, but when you take a bunch of guys who are disrespecting this thing that I've dedicated my life to, I'm like, fuck you guys.
I'm winning this thing, and I took my experience, and I turned that into alpha male type of attitude.
I was like, fuck this.
Who's going to beat me?
I'm taking out all you guys.
That's the way I operated, and that's what won the show for me.
I mean, I think the information is there, but I feel like...
I don't know.
I personally look at some of the young people that are like in their early 20s and I see a lot of the same like passive aggressive ways of handling social situations that were sort of the norm with kids when I was 16 or 17. I don't know.
I mean, I guess it goes both ways, but there's definitely a huge access, a much bigger access to information now, especially because of the internet and everything, and I think there's more open-minded people, and I hope that's the way that we're going.
Yeah, the idea that kids are more street smart or more worldly in the days gone past, the reason why that makes sense to me is that you don't just let your kids wander on the street anymore.
Like people used to just open the door when they were young, you know, when they had 10 year olds and the 10 year olds just go out in the street.
Nobody fucking does that today.
Everybody keeps an eye on their kids because, you know, you can't do that.
You can't do that anymore.
So, guys of a younger generation, just a little while ago, I mean, when I was a kid, that wasn't like a really highly discussed topic of child molesting.
Right.
Because it wasn't like you went out into the street and you thought there was child molesters everywhere.
Looking back at it, when I was a teenager, I kind of started harboring resentments because I was like, man, when I was five and six and seven years old, I'd have these nightmares about getting kidnapped and stuff.
But man, she wouldn't go into detail, but she'd be like, hey, look, if somebody approaches you, you know what I mean?
You don't know them.
You know what I mean?
You've got to be careful.
And she educated me on all that.
That actually saved me one time.
Man, it was the craziest experience, because when I was, I think I was 10, and I lived in this sort of old-fashioned suburban neighborhood, which is very near all this stuff that was once rural farmland and had now become industrial parks.
And I would cut through these industrial parks to get to my one friend's house.
and I went over to his house to try to find him and he wasn't there and I had a scooter or something like that.
I was trying to go back and I had to cut through these woods to get to this Holiday Inn parking lot and then cut through the parking lot to get back over to my neighborhood.
And these woods were just a really small stretch of woods, like very small, just a little wooded area.
It was probably like maybe 100 yards or something and no one's ever there.
You know, it's just a little path in between the parking lot and this cul-de-sac.
And I get up there and I start walking my scooter because I'm on a dirt path.
And all of a sudden there's this guy standing there.
And he's like, I remember him.
He had like a button-up t-shirt but no tie.
And he had like reddish hair, like a little light red beard.
And he was like, He's like, hey, hey, how you doing?
And I stopped at my tracks and I was just like, oh shit.
I was like, this is what she was talking about.
And I was like, hey.
And I went to go past him.
He's like, hey, come on up.
There's a lot of other kids playing up here.
Go ahead up.
And I was like...
Oh, wow.
And I hurried up and I was just like, I didn't even say anything.
I was just frozen.
And I turned around and I took off.
And then it was so crazy.
It was like there was kids that had been abducted.
That this guy was kidnapping kids, and I don't even know what he was doing or whatever, but he was there at that Holiday Inn, and they were following him throughout western Pennsylvania, and I think they actually found him, but that was the guy, and I was like, wow!
What the fuck?
You know what I mean?
If it wasn't for my...
So it was like all those nightmares and all that shit was probably worth it.
Because sometimes fear is an important thing to have, just instinctively.
Somebody can let you know that, hey, it's probably not going to happen.
I think I was seven, and I was at the library, and some guy came over and showed me these...
I was looking at these monster books.
I was into Frankenstein, The Wolfman, and the guy goes, I have a lot of monster books in my car.
And I go, oh yeah, oh you do?
And he goes, yeah, do you want to come see?
And I go, okay.
So I was just, I was really young and I just left with him and I'm walking out the door with him and the librarian sees him and she yells, she knew my name, she goes, Joseph, you get away from that man, you get away from that man.
you know and the guy started running the guy started running oh and then I realized oh gosh so I started crying I was crying like crazy and then um she uh the librarian said that he just got out of jail that's a serious close encounter yeah yeah if that librarian didn't see what was going on But isn't that a horrifying job for the librarian, too?
I mean, she did it, and thanks to her, I might be dead.
I might not have ever survived.
I don't know what he went to jail for.
I don't know what he's willing to do to not go to jail again.
I don't fucking know.
But the librarian has to think that.
While all these kids are walking around her library reading books, it's just to think that someone can come in, snatch him, and fuck him.
I know, and it's a shame because it's like we need to be in touch with the earth.
We need to be in touch with, you know, like, just experiencing society and experiencing...
Other people, and man, it's like we've got to shelter our kids to a certain extent.
My daughter's only, she's going to be four, but she's the most important thing in the world to me.
It was McKenna that said this.
He was saying that he struggles with this as a parent.
He's like, what will it be?
Cynical intellect who's like sheltered or slack-jawed consumer half-wit of the horseshit handed on from down high.
In our case of what we're talking about now, it's like even worse possibly, you know, like something bad happening because your kid gets in a situation that they shouldn't be in.
And a lot of people, when they hear that, you know, they're stuck in the same modality and the same way of thinking as everyone else.
And they're like, well, what do you mean you're going to homeschool?
How is she going to be adjusted socially?
It's like, well, adjusted to what?
You know what I mean?
There's plenty of other experiences that you can have socially with people and get to know yourself and get to know how to interact with people without going to the institution of public schooling.
I mean, public school pretty much ruined me.
And when I try to tell people about that, they're like, I don't say ruin me, but it definitely sent me off onto a spiraling into a different path.
And it helped me become the person that I am and everything.
My rebellion against that, but it's like I didn't have to...
I don't want to put my kid through that.
And I don't think it was an isolated incident either with the public schools that I had to deal with.
You know, I was already in public school from, like, first to fourth grade, and it was, like, this strange...
School where you had half of the kids, or more than half, were these rich, yuppie kids.
And the teachers really favored them.
So I guess it was kind of like a social experiment in a way.
The teachers were very favorable to these kids.
And then there was all the kids from where I was from, which was kind of like the poor area.
And a lot of them were misbehaving, white trash type of kids.
But they were...
They were just kids, and I was sort of stuck in the middle.
I was from the poor area, and we just got treated like crap.
We got treated like second-class citizens.
It was almost like being a minority in this situation.
I thought that was really weird, and almost all the teachers there would just hand out worksheets, stay in your desk, that whole thing.
I came from Montessori in kindergarten, which is a completely different structure of learning, and we understood So mathematical stuff, like multiplication, just through physical work.
Like, they have these beads that you count on, almost like an abacus, instead of writing things down and doing, like, the worksheet type of work.
And so I understood all of that.
Like, even going into first grade, I just wasn't able to articulate it in the same way, like this memorization way, where it's like, two plus twos for...
You know what I mean?
That type of stuff.
It was all just...
You know, like hands-on.
And so I was just like, what is with...
You could choose what you wanted to do in Montessori.
In public schools, it was just like, you know, they try to keep everybody in line and control and understand why they have to do that.
But the classrooms were big.
There was no individualized attention.
And then when I was...
From 5th grade to 8th grade, we had moved to Virginia.
And then all of a sudden, I became the minority.
Which is fine, but it was very interesting to experience that.
The neighborhood I lived in was 50-50, but the school that we went to was...
I think it was like 88% black or something like that.
And I just watched...
I mean, nobody cared about the students.
There were fights pretty much every day.
It was kind of...
It reminded me of the footage that I see of prisons.
The way fights would just break out and all of a sudden it was just this crazy thing.
And I was always this small little kid, you know what I mean?
And I was just like...
You know, I was like interested in these fights and everything, and I thought they were pretty cool, but at the same time, I was like, I couldn't get involved with that.
I mean, I was like four foot something, you know what I mean?
I was like a little kid, and a lot of these guys had already gotten their man size by the time they were in seventh or eighth grade, and I was just like, shit, and I was just watching it happen.
So I would resort to, you know, like my way of getting along in that situation...
Was resorting to class clownism or whatever.
Because I couldn't beat anybody up at that age.
You know what I mean?
Or stand my ground that way.
But I could at least win their favor by telling the teachers to fuck off or whatever.
And they thought that that was really funny.
And I was screwing myself up the whole time.
And then it was like, okay, well, these people...
The kids there really didn't like me.
Most of the black kids didn't like the white kids.
It was just the way it was.
And so...
At the very best case scenario, you'd be in a situation where you were ignored.
At the worst case scenario, you'd be fucked with all the time and picked on.
So the best thing to hope for is being ignored.
It's like, where do you look for your role models?
In that situation.
And as a kid, people would always tell me, like, well, you need role models and male role models.
And I was just like, what are you talking about?
Like, I don't need that stuff.
And looking back on it now, it's like they were right.
You know, you do look for role models and you look for people to set an example of what to do to become a man or to, you know, to just move forward and grow up and become mature.
And so I started looking at it.
I was like, well, what about these guys?
And there is always a little group of Heavy metal guys and Metallica shirts and long hair and everything.
And they were just smoking cigarettes all day long, skipping school.
And I felt, I just was like, okay.
And I started falling into that.
And then it was just like a downward spiral from there.
And then once I moved back up to Pennsylvania and there was all these rich white kids who thought they were gangsters, I was like, wow, you guys are really fake.
And they hated me because I was skateboarding and stuff.
And so I was like, you know what?
I was like, I'm done with this.
I don't want to be forced into this situation.
I want to hang out with the people that I understand.
And I hung out with older kids all the time who were already out of high school.
And I was done with it.
And I was pretty bright.
I abandoned the possibilities of moving forward with academics.
And I've struggled with that for years and years and thought to myself, well...
You know, what if I, you know, I was regretful.
I was like, what if I, you know, would have kept going to school and I could have gotten the degree in science that I wanted to or maybe become a biologist or like, you know, done something in one of these fields that I'm really interested in.
But as I've gotten older, that regret has started to fade because I'm like, you know what?
I think I did pretty damn good for myself.
I think I did one of the things that really spoke to me, which is fighting.
You can just fucking read book after book after book after book.
And if you really pay attention to what you're reading, you can get a fucking fantastic education without actually having to go somewhere and have somebody write it on paper.
I was just, for a while, somewhat regretful because of the hypothetical idea of, well, if I did that, that could have been even better.
I might have been really enjoying my life.
'cause I would like to travel and be one of those people who just lives in the rainforest for weeks on end, gets stung up by mosquitoes and just documents insects and knows every single tree frog and finds new species.
That is really interesting to me.
unidentified
That's like-- - That could have been you in another life. - Sure, sure.
Yeah, you moved out to Vegas to try to further your MMA career, but like a lot of people, you found Vegas to be a very scary, hollow, freakish fucking town of depression.
If you're, if you're into that, but like, I don't know.
I mean, yeah.
I had just won the show.
I was presented with this contract, knowing how fickle the sport is and how easily you can get forgotten.
And how easy it is to get dropped from your contract.
I was like, well, listen.
There's nothing in LA. There's no great MMA teams in LA. There's no one here to train with.
I've got to take this for all it's worth.
I'd already been going to Vegas for a while.
Before every fight, I would always go out and stay with Gray.
I'd been doing that since the Zion's days, even before Couture ever opened up a gym.
And so I knew all those guys, Forrest and Pyle and Jay Haran and Martin Kamen and Gray.
And so I was like, I'm going to move out there with them and I'm going to train at Couture's.
And Tyson Griffin's there now and it's a really good situation.
I'm going to have the best training partners and I'm going to work my ass off every day and I'm going to give this the best shot that I have.
And what happened was I went out there and I realized that it was just so competitive.
There was no...
There was no nurturing the athlete.
There was nobody saying, hey, if you pay me, you know, percentage of your purse, I will be there for you every day.
I will monitor your training.
I will help you out.
We will study your opponent.
It was none of that.
It was like you go in, you spar.
You're in a war every day, whether it's a grappling day or the stand-up day.
It's a physical war and these guys are very competitive.
They've all got the alpha male type of personality and all the fun got taken out of it.
I mean, I would go there and those guys would go there too.
Everyone hated it.
I don't care what those guys say.
They're my friends.
Everyone hated it.
Gray was one of the top dogs in the room.
Nobody could touch him like, you know, once he got to a certain level.
For a while he was just a wrestler and you could catch him in submissions because he didn't know any better and his stand-up wasn't that great.
And then he turned the corner real quick.
And Gray got really good real fast.
It was right around the time that he beat Frankie Edgar the first time they fought.
And right around that time he had gotten really good.
No one could touch him and it seemed like he was just on top of the world and he was hating it the whole time too.
And he was just putting up with it.
And all these other guys, I know they feel the same way.
And we'd beat the crap out of each other.
We'd We have so much pressure on us.
Everyone has a ton of pressure for every fight.
That's just the way the sport is.
You go and fight.
Win or lose.
It's time to come back.
Do you want to come back to the gym and see the inside of that place again?
I know I didn't.
And then I would just immerse myself in going to remote places and doing photography.
Like really experiencing nature, which is what I loved and it spoke to my soul.
And so I really like doing that.
And when I would do that, instead of, like I was saying before in the podcast that got lost, instead of feeling refreshed, like, oh, I spent a week and a half, you know, in the desert and I experienced this timeless beauty and all this stuff, I was like...
Man, I want to just go back out there again and I don't want to go back to the gym.
It became a job.
It no longer became the creative, fun thing that I love doing.
We were all friends and we were all cool with each other.
Some more than others.
But there was always this underlying thing of...
Especially if you're in the same weight class, well, I might have to fight you one day, so fuck you.
You know what I mean?
Even though we were cool and we were cordial with each other, and I'd watch other fighters come to the gym, like good fighters would come to that gym all the time because it was a hub, you know?
You're in Vegas maybe cornering another fighter.
And so you're going to hop into extreme couture because that's where everybody goes and that's where all the good guys are.
And you're going to train or guys would come out for a couple weeks and Jay Haran and Mike Pyle would just run a fucking clinic on those guys and be mean about it.
You know what I mean?
They weren't like really...
It wasn't like they were angry, but man, they would put it on these guys and it was this real alpha male competitive thing.
This is competition, and that's one way to look at it.
A lot of people might think, well, that's how you have to be.
You have to be like that, but I don't think so.
If you look at the way that both Gray and I are training now, and I respect the hell out of Gray because he's been training at a high level since he was 12 with wrestling, you know?
Even before that, he's always been wrestling since he was five or something, but he's been training at a high level, like hard, high-level workouts, and he knows the difference now.
He's training smart, and that's what I'm doing now.
I mean, I still spar and stuff, but I'm not in there getting hit.
Getting the shit beat out of me, beating the shit out of other people, just to try to put myself through the fire to simulate the idea of what a tough fight might be.
I've been in plenty of tough fights.
I know how to get through them.
I know how to deal with my mind.
I don't need to prove to anybody that I'm tough.
I don't need to prove to myself that I'm tough by getting the crap kicked out of me every day.
What I need to do is love the sport again, love the technique, love the art, And, man, just go out there and learn again.
Learn the techniques again.
And then apply them.
Apply the techniques that work.
That's why with my trainer, Niall Ciparelli, the guy's like a genius, man.
And I do not use that word, you know what I mean, with anybody.
The guy's a genius in that respect.
And he's giving me, he's like teaching me a whole new language as far as body mechanics and wrestling and grappling and just the fight game in general.
He understands it on a whole different level.
And he's giving me this whole new language to work with.
And I can, there are some words that I'm gonna use and put into my vocabulary and some that I'm not, but that's when your personality comes out.
I think we were talking about that before.
That's why it's so interesting to watch the art of mixed martial arts because you watch people's personalities manifest in the way they fight.
Yeah, which brings up what you talked about earlier with Chael, how difficult it is to put on a persona and then go into the octagon and compete and have it be real.
Muhammad Ali would have fucking hated it if he had a bout rigged with Chael Sonnen.
I mean, look, if it was a boxing match, he would have balked Chael Sonnen's ears off.
But if it was a shit-talking match, I say that I would take Chael Sonnen over Muhammad Ali in a fucking heartbeat.
You know why?
Because Chael would sit in front of his computer like a fucking maniac for ten hours, coming up with the right shit to say, whereas Muhammad Ali would try to act on the fly.
You know, Roberto Duran, even when he fought at 147, he was just going up there to fight Sugary Leonard and stayed up there and then went as high as 60 and 68. When he fought Iran Barkley.
Like, boxing historians and people that fancy themselves as boxing experts that, like, know about the old times, they have some sort of nostalgia or some personal, like, nostalgic connection to these old fighters, and that's great.
And these old fighters were great, and they did...
Like acts of human endurance over time span of 20, 30 years sometimes that are amazing and had so many fights and beat the shit out of themselves just for the, you know, to continue on their career and to make the public happy and they really destroyed themselves watching what happened to all these guys like Joe Lewis and LaMotta and You know,
like Archie Moore and all these great people, but the actual skill, I mean, we're at a higher level right now, and I hate it when people don't want to accept that, and they don't want to talk about that.
They're just like, oh no, you've got to...
I give credit where credit's due, but you can't compare the best old fighters to the best...
I hate heavyweight boxing now, I don't really watch it, but even with the heavyweight division being as dismal as it is, it shouldn't take away from how excellent these Klitschko guys are.
Yeah, they are excellent, but I'll be tuning into whatever's playing them, whether it's Showtime or whoever, and I'm like, who the fuck is this guy fighting?
I mean, well, I mean, I'm not giving him credit like as if that was awesome that you did that.
But the combination was it was brilliant.
They were standing there face to face and Riddick Bowe just dipped down, I think, through like a left hand.
hook and just cracked him right on the chin and there's like if you watch it in slow motion there's a second where Larry Donald's chin just snaps and he's still like standing there like like dumbfounded and then Bo comes down and like dips and hits him with an overhand right what were they arguing about It was just the same tired boxing thing where two guys...
And we were talking about that before last week, about how it's scary because there's no science that can really tell you what's going on with your brain.
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I had so much on my mind.
Not to make excuses, but that's just the way it was.
And it's a shame because I struggle with the idea of that possibility myself as well and I think a lot of the prevention of that can happen in the gym.
And I've spent years Being the type of fighter that was like, oh, well I've got to spar because it's the only thing that would hold my attention because I was so down on myself about the sport.
I was like, you know, not interested in drilling or learning technique.
I was like, let's just get in and get out as fast as we can and beat the crap out of each other and I'll be able to wake up in the morning knowing that I have to do that and then I'll go and my timing will get better and everything but that is not the way to have longevity and so now I'm loving myself again,
loving the sport again, and I'm realizing that the less shots I take in practice, the less likely my chin is going to become glass as I get older.
And the better I'll be able to have a functioning brain as I get older.
Yeah, the thing about taking punishment in the gym is a very real thing, and people think that's the only way to do it.
I completely agree with your idea that you've had plenty of tough fights, and you know what a tough fight is like, and what you need to do is just work on your skill and work on your conditioning, and then execute come fight day.
The battery that guys take inside the gym needs to be managed.
It really, really needs to be managed, and it's a real problem in this sport That there's so many different ways to do it.
Nobody really knows the exact correct way to do it yet.
And we're slowly watching what's happening because, like I said, some guys, they don't even show symptoms until way later, way after they retire.
Once you get older and other organs stop being as efficient, then all that is brought out.
I mean, you're scrambling your brain literally.
And the messed up thing about football is like what we were talking about before.
They're using their heads.
I mean, because the helmet protects your skin, it protects your skull.
Your skull won't crack with the helmet.
That's what it's designed to do it, in my opinion.
And if you look at it from like a physical standpoint, It centralizes the percussion of the impact.
And so, yeah, sure, you can ram your head into a steel post or someone else's helmet or someone's body, and you can rush at them with all the power that you've trained to do and use your head as a weapon.
And every time you do that, you're...
Creating a concussion.
You're causing your brain to bounce around in the skull, literally.
And it's like, they don't even feel that lots of times.
You know what I mean?
You get a flash of unconsciousness, or you feel like you get rocked, and they've got these big traps and everything, and they work on their next strength to help displace the impact for the rest of their body.
But it's like, Man, you're screwing yourself up every single time, and they don't even think about it.
Whereas with fighting, it's like we've got these small gloves, so when you get hit, you know it.
And then there's a time when you've got to stop and check yourself.
Like, oh, I got hurt.
And you know when you're taking punishment.
Whereas with football, you can just go through the whole game, go through a whole career doing that.
If there's great, great trainers out there that understand that and understand all the technical aspects, the mental and emotional aspects and the health aspects, I don't know of them.
Wow.
That's crazy.
People are going to take offense because we've got all these highly publicized trainers, especially in MMA right now, but I've worked with a lot of people and I know a lot of the fighters that work with a lot of these other guys that I haven't worked directly with.
And I don't see anybody really being an amazing trainer as far as monitoring the overall health.
I mean, there can be.
I don't want to say that there isn't for sure.
But if there is anyone, they're up and coming.
I can tell you that much.
and the sport's still in its infancy to the point where I think it's going to take my generation of fighters retiring and the few that are able to understand fighting and understand the right smart ways to train.
It's just the only thing is I don't really know how to segue into that as far as the financial aspect goes because I feel like if I just all of a sudden say, hey, I'm training fighters now.
Hey, I will need at least one or two star people who are making decent money to not only publicize the fact that I'm doing this but to create an amount of revenue to make it worthwhile.
Because if I'm training a fighter and they're at a high level...
I want to be there for them all the time.
I'm going to have to monitor every single thing they do throughout their entire training camp and be a monitor of them in the downtime as well and just be there for the fighter.
It's going to be an interesting thing to see if I can somehow segue into that.
I would love to, but I don't know that it's necessarily readily available for me, but time will tell.
Well, it seems like you could probably join up with someone who has good intentions but isn't doing it, you know, what you think would be correctly or, you know, or doesn't bring to the table what you think you would bring.
I mean, if you count the fights on the show, too, I think I have like 35 or something like that.
Some of them aren't on SureDog and stuff, but I think...
I think I'm like like officially like 32 but then yeah something I don't know over 30 that's a wealth of experience yeah yeah and and a lot of and I've taken especially in the latter years taking a lot of break like long break time in between fights just due to injuries and just taking time off to reflect and things like that I I was able to work with gray a lot and me and gray have a really good relationship gray Maynard we're actually really good friends so Last fight when he was getting ready for Clay
Guida, I went out of my way because of the situation that he's in right now.
He kind of needs somebody to do that.
I went out of my way to try to help him in a trainer type aspect, but the same thing applies.
I live in LA, he lives in Santa Cruz, and I just don't have the time or resources to be there with him every day.
But I did watch tape of his opponent.
I fought his opponent, so I knew his opponent really well.
I studied a lot.
We took notes.
And I helped monitor his training, and I cornered him.
And I think that could be something that I want to do in the future.
It's just whether or not I have the facility or the resources to...
For the folks who don't know, Rico Ciapparelli was one of the original trainers of RAW, which was real American wrestling, which was Henderson and Couture, Vladimir Matyshenko, all these big-name guys from back in the day.
And Rico Ciapparelli was always known as this really brilliant, super analytical guy who was wicked on the ground.
Yeah, he was one of those people who understood body mechanics and Combat so well that it was so quick.
His transition from being a high-level freestyle wrestler in college and on the world stage and then transitioning to being in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, someone who understood submissions and everything was just...
So quick.
He only had to be taught a few things.
He figured out the rest himself.
Maybe not in every aspect of life, but in that particular aspect of understanding grappling, wrestling, body mechanics, and combat in general, mentally, emotionally, and physically, he's a genius.
Yeah, he was working with, I was there with Couture and Henderson and Erickson.
Erickson had already left on good terms, and Couture and Henderson, you know, were doing their own thing.
And when I got there, it was me and Vladimir Matyshenko and Frank Trigg, and then a few other guys like Fernando Vasconcelos, who I had talked about before, and some other fighters were always coming through.
In the social situation of the gym, then it became too dramatic for him.
And he really doesn't like drama.
He doesn't like being surrounded by the scene of a gym.
All these things, they become scenes.
And then there's politics, and people are talking about this and that, and there's all this silly stuff going on.
And it's no longer just about...
Learning and training and competing, it becomes this whole other thing.
And he got fed up with that.
His way of coping with it may have not been the best way, but he had to distance himself from it.
And now I'm just...
I couldn't be happier.
I'm just honored to be a part of what he's doing.
That's what he told me.
He said, I would love to...
Try to make one fighter great instead of just having some big facility where a bunch of, you know, fair weather people come through when they want to and show up.
It was like all of a sudden, this subculture has these guys wearing these strange shirts where things are made to look like they're torn with little holes and little worn spots and things stitched all oddly across them.
Well, I think sagging is particularly ridiculous now because especially with the hipster type of culture and then hipster hip-hop culture now is tight jeans...
But sag them.
And that's the worst style ever.
Because it's like, if you've got some big jeans, you can sag them.
Because they're big jeans.
And I might not be into that, but it's like, you rock a little bit of a sag because you're wearing size 38 jeans with a 30 waist.
I get it.
But when you have these...
These jeans that are made out of denim, but they're made to fit the way that spandex do.
And then you pull them down so that you can see your boxer shorts in the back.
It's really hard to walk around.
They're wearing shoes with no support these days.
And just like...
Glasses that aren't prescription.
It's the oddest thing in the world.
I don't understand style.
I don't understand how these things get popular.
Why everybody sheeps together and conforms to these absurd styles.
All it takes is one person who is an icon or You know, the hero worship mentality that we have nowadays, the cult of personality thing.
Yeah, I was wondering, when is that going to get popular, where people are taking a hammer and banging little holes, or cars start being sold with rust spots already?
I mean, I thought, like, the faux hawk especially...
And I was just talking to this girl that I'm friends with the other day.
It's like...
Okay, when you're a little kid, I think I was actually in this situation.
You're a little kid, and you're like, I want a mohawk.
I want a mohawk like they have in the cartoons and stuff, like a punk mohawk, like a tough guy mohawk.
No, you're not having that.
I'm not going to let you shave the sides of your head and have a mohawk.
Well, fine.
And then, you know, you take your mom's hairspray, you lock yourself in the bathroom, and you try to smoosh up, like, your hair into, like, a mohawk.
It's like, I think I actually did that once, and then I saw what happened.
This was, like, the faux hawk circa 1987 or 86, and I smooshed my hair up, and I was like, that's not good enough.
That's not going to cut it.
And I put it back down, and I gave up on it, and I didn't think about it until years later, and all of a sudden, I moved to L.A., And there's people smushing their hair up into this little point.
I mean, if that's the joke, look, what is the funny thing about it?
It's two dudes.
Dudes blowing each other, eating a salad.
That's what was funny in my head.
I would have had to say that about myself, about anything that I enjoy.
If that's what's funny, that's why I get crazy when this Tracy Morgan type shit happens, when Tracy Morgan gets in trouble for saying that if his son was gay, I stabbed him.
He's not really saying that.
He's trying to say something totally outrageous that's just the funniest thing to say at that moment.
Even though I'm monitoring it, that it might come out long after I retire, which is what happens to some people.
If that happens, I sincerely hope that doesn't happen, but if it does, it's because the damage has already been done and there's nothing that I can do about it from this point forward.
All I can do is train smart.
If you look at the way that I'm training now, if you look at the way that Grey Maynard is training now, we are no longer Like killing ourselves for this sport and hating every moment of it just so that we can try to win and bask in like the the wonderful glory of winning on that one night.
It's like you should enjoy every day and yeah it's like you know bad days are gonna happen but you should enjoy every moment of it and you shouldn't be physically hurting yourself.
Obviously you don't want to blow out your knee you don't want to hurt your back when you're training Why would you want to hurt your brain?
You know what I mean?
This is something that we have to think about.
You have to train smart and you have to figure out ways to keep your speed and your timing and your reactions on point and at the same time not go in there and hurt each other.
And you can't be hurting your partners either.
I used to beat the crap out of my training partners to the point where I had like...
Taking their morale down to a peg to the point where they would never give me a good spar because they were just worried about me beating the shit out of them all the time.
And that's no way to train.
It didn't better me.
It was just me being so fed up with my spot in the sport that sparring was the only thing that would hold my attention.
And then I just became a bully.
Even these people were my friends and I don't have a bully personality, but it would just be like, okay, Well, we're sparring today and I'm gonna win this sparring session and then like that's what I'm trying to do and I'm trying to beat you up and like I would do it and these guys you know like they were afraid and like I would watch the anxiety just like billow off of them like smoke before every fucking training session they'd be like Oh man, like I gotta go in there and spar with him now.
I just did a ridiculous amount of cardio and weight training this morning.
It's 116, 17 degrees outside.
I've got to go back in.
Once I go in, I'm going to warm up.
Nobody's really going to talk to each other.
Nobody's going to discuss anything.
We're all going to try...
To hit each other while not getting hit.
And day in and day out, I started to loathe competition.
Just the idea of competition bothered me.
When I'd come home, I would not want to play chess with somebody.
You know what I mean?
The idea of trying to beat somebody or best someone in a contest Overdone.
It made me feel sick.
And that's why it sucked so bad because then I would fight and win or lose, after the fight I'd be like, I don't want to have anything to do with fighting.
And then people would be like, hey, did you see the fights?
I don't want to think about fighting.
And then I became all disgruntled and negative about it.
I don't watch that shit.
You know what I mean?
That's who I was.
And it was like, well, there's this ironic thing.
You've got this professional fighter and he doesn't even watch it and he doesn't like it and everything.
And it was just me trying to deal with my personal life and my career at the same time.
Even the fighters that I don't like, personally, that are marquee fighters that make a lot of money in the sport, I'm always happy to see anyone making money in the sport.
Well, this guy came from pro wrestling.
He was already making millions of dollars.
But you've got to expect that, especially with the heavyweights.
You've got to expect guys like that to just come in every now and then.
And I think that we're going to see a lot less of it as the sport progresses and as it becomes this deal where new guys are coming up.
People are becoming amazing fighters at the age of 16, 17 now.
By the time they're in their 20s, they're ready to go.
We're seeing less and less of that sort of thing.
So it was like, you know what?
Let him eat his cake and if it makes him sick, then so be it.
I feel like he's one of those guys that epitomizes that old joke about the young bull seeing the cows saying, hey, let's run down there and fuck a cow.
And the bull says, let's walk down there and fuck them all.
When you got a guy, you know, he needed someone who would listen to him and say, listen, man, we do this right, and you're the greatest of all time.
You know, if you really want to do this, you really want to do this, because if you don't really want to do this, you just want to get paid, you can just jump in there and see what you can do right now.
But you look at a guy like that, you're like, obviously that guy has some freak physical abilities.
You ever see a video of him walking around in his hands?
Yeah, but when he fought Alistair, and he fought Alistair Overeem after having stomach surgery, he had 12 inches removed from his colon, and then he fought one of the scariest fucking strikers to ever compete in MMA, and got kicked repeatedly in the body.
And he probably thought he could beat all those guys.
He needed someone to look at him and say, just listen, man, you need to watch some Alistair Overeem kickboxing bouts and understand what the fuck is going on here.
Because this isn't as simple as you throw a punch and then he throws a punch.
Every time you're punching, he's stepping, he's measuring you, he's going to step twice and then kick your fucking legs out.
And by the way, if he hits you once, your leg's not the same ever again.
I'm tired of this bullshit, naive act that these fighters pull.
Well, I was taking this supplement, and this doctor told me to tell this supplement, or it was an over-the-counter supplement.
It's like, no, shut up.
Just fucking admit that you're doing steroids.
But the track record is that a lot of these guys have learned to just deny, deny, deny it, and then if they deny it...
I mean, I've watched guys.
I'm not going to name any names, but there are guys that I train with That would be like, I've never done steroids before, ever.
I don't know what they're talking about.
There was one guy in particular, and everyone knows that he's on steroids.
He's a great guy, but everyone knows he's on steroids.
The mother of my child, who I was with at the time, is a massage therapist for athletes.
And she went over to his house and she came back and she's like, how come he has in his house in the fridge all these vials and syringes and these bottles that have pictures of horses on it and stuff?
And I'm like, why do you think?
And he's like, yeah, but he said that he never did that before.
It's like, these guys would lie to their own mother about it.
They would lie on their deathbed about it.
I don't know.
It's just like this...
Shutting off the brain thing.
It's like, just admit that you did it.
You know what I mean?
That goes back to what I was talking about before, about this being an honest, authentic event.
This is why I do it.
You can't make anything up.
This is not a movie where you had 50 takes to get the scene right.
This is a one-time thing.
You're being honest with yourself.
All the training, everything you do culminates into this.
Why do you want to, like, be a fake and a liar outside in other ways?
And if you do, then that's your prerogative.
But it's like, man, like, I could never live with myself, like, going around telling people, like...
That I didn't do something like that.
It's like, you guys know what doctors are giving you.
What percentage of guys do you think are using performance enhancing stuff that's illegal?
Because for sure there have been a bunch, I mean, just one thing to clarify, there have been a bunch of companies who have been busted.
For putting stuff into their supplements, just regular shit that you buy at GNC, that contains illegal compounds and stuff that will test you positive for steroids.
And that's how they get results.
What they're doing, they're getting results by essentially selling you steroids, just not telling you in the list of ingredients that it's a steroid.
People take it, it works.
I mean, there's been a series of different things that have been pulled from the shelves and have proved.
That Victor Conte guy has talked pretty extensively about that.
About as big of an expert on the subject as you can get.
He's a former head of BALCO, which is a company that created a designer steroid to mask from the test.
So in his opinion, there's a lot of those false positives.
But outside of that, what percentage of guys are using?
They take it and then they know How long it's going to take for it to get out of their body.
And when I said that 60% and 90% thing that I just thought of in my head, which is my estimation, I'm also talking about HGH, human growth hormone, which isn't something that is tested for right now just because it's hard to test for it and it's very expensive to test for it and the commission is not going to pay that kind of money.
And it's still very random, you know what I mean?
I wish they would just test everybody.
Instead of doing this random thing where, hey, you might get picked, and you may have to do the piss test.
Make it a requirement for...
We all have to submit physicals and blood work before every fight.
Before every fight, we have to do that.
Once a year we have to do ophthalmological exams, eye exams, dilated eye exams.
So why don't we have, instead of just HIV and hepatitis, why don't we have anabolic steroids?
Why don't we do tests for the levels and all that stuff every time?
Why?
It's because it's too expensive and people are pinching pennies.
And that's what the commission's doing.
That's the way I look at it.
And it's like, test everybody, and then we will have, you can either sink or swim.
You can keep taking the stuff, and it can be a mental crutch for you, and you can feel like, oh, I can't perform anymore because I don't have my steroids.
It's been helping me win forever.
Or, you know, you can learn to live without it, like I do and like a few people do, and it's just like, train without it.
You don't need it.
I don't want to look back on my career and be like, well, I did some great stuff, but I did that great stuff when I was taking all these steroids.
And, you know, while I was taking the steroids, then...
That's what helped me, and it wasn't really all me.
I don't want anyone's help.
This is about the individual, the martial artist.
This is about their journey, trying to better themselves in the art with their technique and their training, and it's a journey.
Even though he knows that it would make him a faster athlete, it would make him better, it would make him stronger, he doesn't ever want to think that there's no way he could have made it without this stuff.
That's why I'm not working for a corporation in a cubicle or something like that.
When I had those types of jobs, I felt horrible about myself and about my life.
And when I finally decided to try to take MMA... For what it was and dive myself into it 100% and dedicate myself to it, I was like, I had nothing to lose.
And I'm like, this is a perfect path because I'm either going to make it or I'm going to break myself doing it.
I mean, I don't know what goes through these guys' minds.
The idea of winning is too enticing.
The idea of having an edge.
And I watch guys, and I know people who became so addicted to that stuff that when they don't have it, then they have this insecurity in the back of their mind, in their subconscious, and they don't think that they can actually pull off what they did when they were on...
While it was happening, I was just in limbo because I was trying to work my way up in the lightweight division and small shows where there's all these scumbag promoters that are just trying to screw you over.
And I was like, you know, seeing the lightweight division be completely dissolved for a few years.
And I was just like, wow, like the closest guy to my weight that's fighting in any kind of show that's getting paid more than $10,000 ever is like, you know, is like High and Gracie versus that Ichigawa or whatever.
I'm like looking at guys that walk around at like 190 pounds and like that's You know, so it just, it's, I guess what I'm saying is it seems so otherworldly to me that, I mean, it was MMA and I was interested in it, but it was just like, it didn't apply to me.
I was just like, well, that will never be me.
Even if I did, like, throw my principles out the window and just decide to take a bunch of steroids, it'd still be lightweight in frame.
You know what I mean?
Like, that would be silly.
Like, I would look like that.
Remember that guy, Jimmy Ambrys?
You ever heard of him?
Yeah, yeah.
It looked like that.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's the only way I could get up to heavyweight.
And huge lats, and he could never put his elbows in.
I'm learning a lot about technique, and it's funny.
A lot of people scoff at this because they're like, oh, you've been doing this for 10 years, and you're learning now?
Good for you.
It's kind of weird that you're learning.
You can never master all of this, but I'm really understanding that Elbows in and bringing everything into the core and almost like 99% of all the techniques you do is very important.
And that guy literally could not do it because he's in constant bench press mode.
I mean, this is a guy whose only vegetable experience is like corn on a plate or maybe like peas or something like that once a year or something like that.
The one good thing, even though with all the negatives about being there and the no contact to or from the outside world and no freedom, the one good thing that they have is you can, food-wise, you can order pretty much whatever you want.
You can tell them whatever you want.
As long as it's at Whole Foods or at the regular grocery store, they'll go and get it for you as long as it's within reason.
So guys were even ordering the most expensive stuff they could get.
They want flounder from the deli and filet mignon and all this shit.
Yeah, I was able to keep my diet on point.
And that was one of the things I established from the beginning.
I was worried about the idea of guys being jokesters and messing with somebody's food.
And from the very beginning, I just gave these guys that look.
When I look at them, like...
You're not going to fuck around with me.
I'm not going to be like the butt of your jokes.
You aren't going to like, you know what I mean, pee in my bed.
No, but one of those seasons, the season that Ryan Bader and, what's that kid, Felipe Nover, the season that they were on, we had two different weight classes, and someone peed in Ryan Bader and Felipe Nover's fruit or something like that.
They peed all in it.
And those guys just ate it, and they were cool with it, and they didn't even think anything of it.
And then when they heard that it had...
had been peed all over it then they started feeling sick and were like trying to force themselves to throw up and stuff but yeah nobody messed with my stuff the only thing that happened was guys on my team like guys that I was supposed to be friends with were like eating my food and it was like look you guys can eat whatever you want you can order the same stuff that I order or you But my diet is very specialized, so don't take my stuff like it's public domain.
So I started writing my name.
They didn't show it on the show, but me and this other guy named Billy that was on my team grabbed this small refrigerator that was in the back.
You know, near the grill outside on an outlet and like brought it into the room and it was like my personal like dorm refrigerator.
And I kept all my food in there.
And so yeah, nobody messed with it or did anything with it.
When I was like 16 or 17, I was kind of like, I'm done with red meat and pork.
I just, like, for health reasons and just, I don't know, like my own half-assed Moral ethical reasons.
I was like, I just don't want to mess with red meat and pork.
It's bad for you.
I don't agree with it right now.
So I stopped that.
And then when I was about 19 or so, I realized that all these ear infections and sinus infections that I've been having for years and years Like, seriously bad ear infections.
Like, I would get them at least twice a year to the point where there would be so much pressure that my eardrum would inevitably puncture.
And it was the worst pain.
The worst pain that you could think of.
I mean, I've broken my femur before.
I've had all kinds of, like, bad physical pain.
Nothing is as bad as a few of those ear infections.
And those ear infections...
The pressure on the brain, too, you can almost feel it, too.
It's incredible, and it's very sensitive in there.
And then I would get vertigo for months afterwards.
And I don't know if you know what vertigo is like, but it's absolutely miserable.
Everything is spinning all the time.
And you try to focus on different spots in the room, like the corner of a door or anything.
Just to force your brain to remind your body that you're not actually spinning, but you can't stop your eyes from doing that.
If I were to spin around and around in a circle, you know how your eyes go like this and dart back and forth to try to catch up?
It's just like an involuntary reaction?
Well, your eyes are doing that.
I would even close my eyes and try to put my fingers on my eyes and they'd just be darting back and forth because your equilibrium is so messed up.
It is okay.
You try to go walking around, you still feel like you're in an episode of Cops, like everything's sort of bouncing around.
You completely feel detached.
It feels awful.
And so I dealt with all that, and what I'm getting to with that is that And this is a personal thing.
This is a personal allergy.
Not everybody has this.
Not everybody has to quit dairy because of this.
But dairy directly affects a lot of people in the sinuses, the ear, nose, and throat.
That's why if you drink a glass of milk, there's a lot of phlegm.
Well, I developed a severe allergy to it.
It was probably due to the fact that I was drinking milk constantly growing up.
My mom thought that she believed the bullshit...
Like, you know, grow big with milk, you know, like osteoporosis, strong bones, and all this crap.
And I was drinking a ton of milk growing up, and I think that contributed to my allergy, possibly.
But anyway, I tried all sorts of stuff, and I finally came to the realization after reading some stuff from Andrew Weil, who's the dude with the beard, not homeopathic necessarily, but like holistic medicine guy.
And he was like, if you have problems with your sinuses or ear infections, eliminate milk and all dairy products.
I did, and I haven't had a single problem with ear infections since then.
So that was when I was about 19. So I spent 10 minutes off on a tangent.
You asked me what my diet was like before 2004 when I went vegan.
The only thing that separated me from having a vegan diet...
I was chicken and fish and the reason why I was eating and maybe turkey you know like poultry and fish and the reason why I was eating that stuff is because I believed what everybody had said beforehand that you need some some type of animal protein in your diet and also like out I like chicken you know I mean I like the salty greasy stuff I like the flavor you know I mean it's it was it was cool even like regular grilled chicken breast or whatever you put seasoning on it I was like well this is what I'm supposed to eat and so I would eat that stuff and I I was,
you know, thought to myself, okay, one day when I'm done trying to be an athlete and when I don't need this animal protein that everybody says I need, I will stop eating that and I'll have a vegan diet.
And what I told myself was I will not call it vegan.
I will just live like that.
I will not wear it on my sleeve.
I won't.
Become part of some cult.
I will just do it because I feel that it's the right thing to do as a consumer in this day and age and I want to I want to address that too it's I Don't think I think we're made we're omnivores.
We're made to be able to either eat meat or Or vegetables, you know, and plants, nuts, and everything, or a combination of both.
And, you know, depending on where people lived and, like, what part of the world they lived and what they had access to and what they could hunt or not be able to hunt for, they would eat a combination of both or just one or the other.
And this is...
And we have the ability to do either.
We live in a day and age now, though, where...
We're not the hunter-gatherer anymore.
If I lived back in the day, or whatever, some hypothetical situation hundreds and hundreds or thousands of years ago, if that's what I had to eat, that's what I would eat.
I have compassion for animals and all living things, so I would feel bad about it, but I would respect what I killed, much like I feel my soul tells me, much like the way that a lot of Native American tribes did, They, like, revered the animal.
They killed it.
They ate it.
They used everything.
They didn't waste it.
And they respected what they did.
And it wasn't like, yes, like, I want to hurt this thing.
It was like, this is our food.
We have to kill it for food.
That's different than this day and age where you have...
Mass amounts of suffering even in like lots of people are vegetarians that eat milk and eggs and things like that it's like the the if you care about the animals at all the moral issue is still the same these animals are living in horrible situations and they're suffering like whether or not you like animals or think that they have like the same you know abilities to reason or you know have any emotions or anything like that the one thing is is true and They feel pain.
And they can feel pain and they live in the worst, most fucked up situation.
So I was just like, look, I'm a consumer.
I don't want to be.
If I could live exactly how I'd be, I'd be like living off the land somewhere.
But that's just like a pipe dream.
I'm a consumer.
I buy stuff.
If I'm going to buy stuff and I'm going to contribute directly to things that I buy, I don't want to contribute to this industry.
It's just wrong for me.
And I don't want to tell other people what to do or force it down their throats.
I battle with that a lot because a lot of the people who follow me through social media, I'm not on Facebook, by the way, but I'm on Twitter, but a lot of people that follow me and that are fans of mine and hold me in high regard, they're part of that I don't dismiss that scene, but like any scene, it tends to push people away.
A lot of these people are really passionate about what they believe, and they believe in animal rights, which I believe is a noble cause, and it's something that should be treated seriously, but they get so frustrated, and then they turn it into a them-against-us type of attitude, and they want to force it down people's throats, and they want to You know, it turns into like a religious type of thing and this type of thing where you're either with us or you're not.
And we're going to criticize people that don't.
It's like a lot of people aren't vegans because they just aren't educated.
They don't understand what's going on.
You end up putting more people under the defensive and pushing them away from the cause than you do educating people when you're like...
Oh, I'm part of some exclusive club and we've all got a name for it and you have to follow these exact rules.
And if you deviate from that, then you're disgusting.
And oh my god, meat is disgusting and everything.
It's like that whole thing.
It's like almost all of my friends eat meat.
You know what I mean?
I'm watching more and more people, but I never ever...
I want to make somebody feel defensive about what they do.
If they have questions, I answer them.
You know what I mean?
And I tell them why I'm doing it.
And a few of my close friends, after years and years, have just recently done the vegan thing and they're like, dude, how come you didn't like...
Like, kind of tell me about this more earlier.
And I'm like, because, like, you're either going to do it or you're not.
I don't want to, like, be the guy that forces people to do things or tries to, like, tell them, oh, you're wrong because you're doing that.
Most people are just victims of consumerism and they're victims of misinformation, like we all are in so many ways.
And the nutrition thing and, like, what's going on in the world with diet is no different.
And so it's like, why, you know...
Don't force people away with your cultish ways.
Educate people.
And if they don't come around, then they don't come around.
That's fine.
We're not trying to, like, change the world and create an army.
I feel bad about criticizing it because a lot of these people that are involved with this are really good people and they're noble people that have taken that choice because they feel it's the right thing to do.
And I'm with them on that 100%.
But what's hurting it more than helping it is the attitude of it being It turns into this scene.
And when you create that divide, the line becomes very...
Like, hard to cross again.
And people already stereotype me.
They're like, oh, as soon as they hear the word vegan attached to my name, they're like, oh, great.
Like, here's this douchebag, and he's just going to be talking about his diet all the time and telling me that I need to repent for my sins and everything.
I ate chicken and fish and meat products all through growing up and everything.
I'm just like everyone else.
I just said to myself, I feel that this is wrong.
I don't want to contribute directly to this anymore.
People love to argue about stuff.
They want to pull up hypocrisies.
You know, like, well, you know, I guess I probably, like, hit some bugs on the way here in my petroleum-powered car, and, like, you know, like, I've got, like a, you know, like, whatever.
I've bought strawberries that were organic from Chile the other day, and, like, all the, you know, like the economic issues that, or not economic, sorry, environmental issues that come up.
And it's like, yes, you can point out I live by the set of rules that I've picked because I feel that it's right.
I don't feel that I should be contributing as a consumer directly to these industries that cause nothing but suffering.
And that's my thing.
If somebody doesn't want to do it, they don't have to.
And we're still...
On the same ground, and I'm never going to shove it down anyone's throat.
And it's one of those things where what you're showing is what I said earlier about you, about your unwillingness to take performance-enhancing drugs or to be a part of it.
You're doing it because of your principles.
Right, right.
Look, it would be a way better world if we all lived by a real set of principles.
And that, I think, is one of the underlooked things that martial arts, true martial arts, provide.
And I think that we should emphasize that.
As much as we emphasize competition success, we should emphasize the ability to enhance your development as a human being.
Because that's really what martial arts are spectacular for.
If you never get into a fight in your whole life, you develop skills through difficult work and through building your character and responding to pressure and stress.
And it makes you better at everything that you do.
We don't need to get on the steroid thing again, but I just want to say this is one thing that I want to touch on.
I've never done them, but the one time that I actually considered it, there was a point in my life that I actually was like, well, I just didn't know anyone.
I was like, well, at the time, I was like, if I had access to it, I might, I might go ahead and do something like that, just because I just need to like make money.
And that was me responding to the lowest point of my life.
That was the lowest point of my life, like, like, as far as depression goes in the sport and everything.
And I was almost willing to like, go ahead and entertain the idea.
And And I came to that through weakness.
And so all I'm saying is maybe, you know, if people are as great as they say they are, you don't need it.
And I really don't care if the other guys are doing it.
I don't care if the guy that I'm fighting is doing it, and he thinks it gives him an edge, and it may be giving him an edge.
I'm doing this for me.
I'm not doing it for my opponent, and I'm not doing it for the sport.
What do you think about the future of performance-enhancing trucks?
Because the real issue to me is not...
It's not just about things that you introduce to your body but rather what you do to change the way your body behaves and reacts when you talk about like gene therapy and when you talk about the improvements in our understanding of genetics and certain switches and different mechanisms inside the body that trigger Muscular development, recuperation, and all that stuff is going to eventually be manipulated.
What happens to mixed martial arts when that happens?
And so whatever is established as the moral norm We'll be okay.
Right now, we're in a situation where everybody's mad.
Like, oh, Mark McGuire and mad at Barry Bonds and mad at these players for doing all this stuff.
stuff but if somehow they're able to legitimize a different type of of uh of performance enhancing uh you know scenario like like what you're talking about like gene therapy or or whatever like if if they're able to legitimize that socially like like on an ethical way then as long as the public thinks it's okay then everybody will start doing it i think you know what i mean it all depends on
And right now, the public, for the most part, seems like they feel like it's wrong and To go ahead and agree to not take steroids and then lie about it and then go and do it.
And I think that's a good way of thinking about it.
To me, it's a weird thing because this is a mere blip in human development.
I mean, if you go back just a hundred years ago, there was nothing.
There was nothing.
There was nothing you could do.
You ate good food and that's it.
One hundred years is the tiniest amount of time you can even measure when you start talking about the universe.
One hundred years is a joke.
As far as change and the radical change in what we've been able to do and manipulate the human body, When you watch Ray Kurzweil, do you know his movie about the singularity?
What is Ray Kurzweil?
Transcendent Man.
And it's all about the technological singularity that avoided whether or not you want to avoid it.
There's people that are like, you know what?
I just read books.
I don't go on the internet.
I don't even have an email.
That's all good, but you're not going to stop it.
It's swarming around you, whether you accept it or not.
And I kind of have the feeling that that applies to all aspects of technology improvement and innovation, including the manipulation of the human body.
And it's going to be really strange when they start...
Figuring out a way to turn virtually every person you see into a Vitaly Klitschko, into a giant super athlete.
I mean, we're going to be able to do very strange things and manipulate the body in very weird ways in the future.
As we know it, if the organic body ceases to become finite, if the organic body is a renewable thing that you can constantly replace limbs on and constantly fix organs, and literally we change the whole idea about having a lifespan.
I mean, it's not as simple as cheating in MMA. It's as simple as, like, we're going to transcend the boundaries of our biological nature.
And that's something where MMA is sort of caught up in the periphery of that, like the improvements that we've been able to do to sport science.
And, you know, I love that term, sport science.
I mean, it's basically just the body, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Science, biological science.
The improvements that we've made just in understanding diet, nutrition, supplementation, and training, all that is pretty substantial.
But it's nothing compared to what they're going to do once they introduce genetics, and all of a sudden you're a lion, you know?
Yeah, that's interesting too, because evolution has happened a lot, I think, if I'm correct, through mutations that happen on a hormone level or a cellular level within people.
And if that mutation happens to be advantageous to have in the current environment, then that moves on.
Rather than the person adapting to the environment.
It's like, here's a chance.
Here's a mutation.
This is a little bit different.
And so we're at the point where we're actually able to manipulate that manually.
It's a strange situation that we're in now with all this technology.
It's like...
How many people actually know how to engineer the iPhone?
Really, all these things that we're using, the knowledge of it is so specific that we don't know.
And that's why the software guy knows nothing about what the hardware guy knows and vice versa.
And lots of times, neither one of those guys can change a tire.
And they sure as hell can't identify what plants are poisonous and what plants are edible in the wild.
So it's like...
We're on a very strange path, and I don't want to necessarily judge it or criticize it as being completely negative and evil or wonderful and beautiful.
It just is what it is, and people are doing what they're doing.
I personally feel like more people should get in touch with the actual earth, which is, you know, we're products of the earth.
This is our cradle, you know what I mean?
This is like where we're born into, and I feel like people should get in touch with the essence of the earth more and just understand the earth.
It would be great if people understood I mean, look at it this way.
We're supposed to be these amazingly evolved people, and we're superior than everything else on the Earth.
Okay, well, why is it that every single other species living on the planet, unless it's in a completely alien environment, like a penguin in the desert...
Most of the time, you set it out in the wild.
You take a deer and you set it out in the wild.
It's going to be alright unless it gets hit by a car or killed by a person.
It knows what plants to eat, what plants not to eat.
It knows where to go to get water.
It knows how to go after water.
We don't know anything.
You take a person that is an outdoorsman and put them in the wild and there's a chance that they're not going to survive.
But yeah, it's like, if you are in the wilderness, how are you going to survive?
Are you going to be able to make a run for the wilderness?
I think most people would just end up staying in an urban environment, even if it's all rubble, and just trying to get together and make something happen in that way, because I don't think that people are going to be able to live in the wild.
You can't combine that with the format that we're living in now.
You'd have to take a step away from that.
Maybe it's just a romantic idea to me.
Maybe it's naive to think this way.
But I would like to...
Step off of the grid at some point in my life and live my life that way for the remainder of my years.
I don't know if it'll ever happen.
It might be just a pure fantasy.
But if I'm able to, I think that that would...
I think I would learn a whole lot more about myself and about the earth than I would in any other way.
And I would learn a lot more about the essence of being a human being rather than just waking up and doing the same thing every day that we do in society nowadays.
It's like there's not that much time where people get a chance to sit down and get to know you.
know you, but I think you're an admirable example for young men as far as sticking to your principles, as far as having a code that you live your life by, which I think is something that's really absent in a lot of people in this life.
You're another example of a guy who's gone through a lot of adverse situations and developed great character and resolve because of that, man.
I appreciate it, man.
I think people are going to enjoy this too.
They're going to get a different sense of who you are.
We all need to hear these kind of stories about turning your life around, about developing your character.
These are all really important stories for people to hear.
They're empowering, and I think they allow us to learn things without having to go through your experience.
We can learn from your interpretations of your experience, and if we're presented with similar problems or similar scenarios in our life, we can learn.
We can learn from what you learned and what the people before you who expressed themselves that you learned from their experiences as well.
And if people want to get in touch with Mac, you can get him on Twitter.
It's MacDanzigMMA.
Whoever you are, you dirty bitch that has MacDanzig, give it up to the man.
You know that's his name.
Why are you playing games, man?
What are you doing?
Your name ain't MacDanzig, son.
There's a few real live Joe Rogans out there.
It's not that...
Unusual.
And I'm sorry if you have to take a lot of shit because of me.
It's not my fault.
But MacDanzigMMA on Twitter.
Tonight at the Ice House Comedy Club, again, it is a crazy fucking stupid packed show with Joey Diaz, Greg Fitzsimmons, Duncan Trussell, Ari Shafir, Brian Redband, Doug Benson.
And we're going to take a little break, and then we're going to be back with Billy Corbin.
Billy Corbin is the director of Cocaine Cowboys, and he will be joined by Mad Flava Cocksucker, who's going to lay it down and let you know what the fuck was really going on in Miami in the 70s, Joe Rogan.
The 70s.
Very intense conversation I had with him about this yesterday.
Thanks to Onnit.com.
Go to Onnit.com and get yourself some alpha brain, you dirty bitch.
Go to Onnit.com, use the code name ROGAN, save yourself 10% off any supplements, and go to Desquad.
Get yourself some delicious Desquad stickers, some yummy Desquad t-shirts, and by the way, it supports the Desquad Podcast Network, which is the only place to hear the Ice House Chronicles, which is the one that we do from the Ice House with all these badass comedians.