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Aug. 12, 2015 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:39:01
Joe Rogan Experience #682 - Mark & Chris Bell
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Main voices
c
chris bell
01:11:15
j
joe rogan
57:35
m
mark bell
28:32
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Clips
j
jamie vernon
00:05
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
Alright, we're live, gentlemen.
What's up?
mark bell
Hey now.
joe rogan
Thanks for doing this.
Appreciate it.
chris bell
Thank you.
joe rogan
Bigger, Stronger, Faster was a documentary that I could not...
There were so many people that were talking about it.
You couldn't avoid having a conversation about it, especially in the UFC, because so many fighters have been accused of taking performance-enhancing drugs, and there's so many conversations about that.
So I always wanted to talk to you guys.
And I watched it again.
I watched the first half of it when it first came out, and then I watched it all again this morning.
Check it out.
chris bell
Did it bore you the first time, or why didn't you watch it all the way through?
joe rogan
I don't remember.
I think I was on a plane, and I think the plane probably landed, and I shut my laptop, and I never picked it up again.
It was one of those things.
mark bell
What did you think of it?
joe rogan
It's great.
Great documentary, and interesting and honest.
It was really hilarious when you're going over the people that, like, what's the number one reason to go to the hospital, and then they, like, ask Aspirin, fucking vitamin C, and then below that was steroids.
mark bell
And steroids was way down, I think.
joe rogan
The amount of deaths, it's like steroid deaths are like slightly above water, drinking water.
chris bell
Yeah, there's no real proof to link anything scientifically.
You know, you can have...
Anecdotal evidence on a lot of things, but nothing scientifically links steroids to these deaths.
joe rogan
This is a real problem with some people.
They don't want to hear that.
And they don't want to hear it because they don't...
There's a narrative that we're being taught in this country or that we're being told to embrace.
That narrative is steroids are for cheaters and cheaters are losers and losers are un-American.
But as you highlighted in your movie...
Over and over and over again, all these examples of different athletes that were caught with performance-enhancing drugs.
Whether it's the guy from the Tour de France, whether it was Carl Lewis.
The Carl Lewis thing was fucking hilarious.
Because a lot of people don't know, when Ben Johnson got tested positive for steroids, they stripped him of his metal.
Carl Lewis tested positive for amphetamines.
chris bell
Yeah, he wasn't even supposed to run.
joe rogan
Yeah, the whole thing's crazy.
I mean, they're all doped up.
chris bell
But like you said about the narrative that they want you to believe, the narrative doesn't come from health problems.
The narrative comes from, you know, nobody's concerned about the health of the athlete.
We say that, but nobody really is concerned about the health of the athlete.
They're concerned about an unfair advantage.
joe rogan
Yeah, they're concerned about someone being able to do what we suspected the Russians were doing back in the 50s.
And that was really enlightening, too, when you were talking to that guy that was saying that they had found out about it from the Russians doing it in the 1950s.
And from then on, they were doping.
chris bell
Yeah, over shots of vodka.
They were actually hanging out with the Russian strength coach, and he was, you know, a little loose, loosey-goosey, and he sort of slipped up and was like, yeah, we're giving our guys testosterone.
So as soon as that got out of the bag, Dr. Ziegler raced home and he created Dianabol, which was even a stronger steroid than was currently available on the market.
And they started testing guys with like five milligrams of dianabol.
And of course they found other ways to get it through the testing facility or however they were getting their hands on it once it was manufactured.
And that's when it became, you know, the Wild West basically.
It was like people started taking 20 milligrams and getting way stronger.
mark bell
It's kind of crazy because if you want to get better at something, people don't have a problem with people using certain means or people don't have a problem with someone going to a supplement store and purchasing something that doesn't work.
But as soon as you take something that's powerful, people are like, well, wait a second, we don't want you doing that good.
joe rogan
I was always telling people that the strongest shit I ever took, they made illegal, but you used to be able to buy it at GNC. It was called Mag10.
Do you remember that stuff?
mark bell
Oh, yeah.
chris bell
Totally, yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
That stuff.
I took that shit for, like, whatever it was, like, six weeks.
I gained, like, ten pounds.
I was jacked up all the time.
It was like a bunch of pills.
You had to take, like, ten pills.
And after it was over, my dick died like it got hit with a meteor.
mark bell
My dick was useless.
chris bell
It was useless.
joe rogan
It took me for my testosterone to come back.
I was like, oh, this is steroids.
Like, real steroids.
You could buy a GNC until they made it illegal.
chris bell
Those drugs are more dangerous than the actual real testosterone.
mark bell
They'll bloat you and all kinds of stuff, too.
joe rogan
I don't know what the fuck was in it either.
I just bought it because it was legal.
mark bell
Probably a lot of salt.
unidentified
A lot.
chris bell
A lot of those pills, what they do is they'll give you a huge surge of estrogen as well.
joe rogan
Yeah, bad for the tits.
chris bell
Did your tits grow too?
joe rogan
No, they didn't.
I got lucky.
But, you know, that's what one of the guys was on the U.S. powerlifting team with Bruce Jenner thinks happened to Jenner.
He believes that, well, first of all, he said he knows that they had Jenner pumped full of steroids.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
He said, we were all on steroids.
He goes, Jenner was absolutely pumped full of steroids.
And he said that is what started his transition to want to be alone.
mark bell
Wait a second.
Is this where I'm heading?
joe rogan
Well, maybe if you drop off a little bit.
Just stay on, dude.
mark bell
Relax.
unidentified
Fuck.
Yeah, yeah.
chris bell
You know, that's interesting, but Mark and I had this talk the other day, and I think that this whole, like, gender issue and transgender and all these different things, like, I don't know how much that's linked to testosterone levels or not.
Like, I don't know if there's that many definitive studies on, like, whether your testosterone, like, if you have a high estrogen level, are you going to be trained and they don't have testosterone levels?
joe rogan
Yeah, there's a lot of people that are gay that have very high testosterone levels.
mark bell
And a lot of people can kick ass, too.
They're gay.
joe rogan
They're gay.
But those are gay.
They don't identify as female.
There is a difference there.
chris bell
I don't know how that actually correlates.
I haven't read the studies on that stuff.
joe rogan
I think it's probably as difficult for us to understand as to understand what it's like to be a woman.
It's like, you don't get it.
They probably don't get what it's like to not want to be a woman.
You're like, I'm good.
You're like, are you sure you don't want to be a woman?
I'm good.
mark bell
I'm good.
joe rogan
For me, it's everything.
Alright, well, good luck.
chris bell
In the powerlifting world, in the world of powerlifting, it's been sort of turned on its ear by a guy named Matt Kroc.
Is that his name?
mark bell
Yeah, Krocoletsky.
chris bell
Marks can tell you a little bit more about him.
mark bell
I've been friends with him for about a decade.
I've known about his issue for about six or seven years now, and he's actually going to be on my show coming up soon.
Yeah.
You know, he's transgender, and he's, you know, it's ruined relationships for him many times over.
He's got three kids.
He's a good father.
He's a good person.
He's a good dude.
Or female.
joe rogan
He's a good woman now.
mark bell
Yeah, he's a good woman.
But, you know, the issue is really interesting, and that's why I want to, like, you know, talk to him and try to help people just better understand it, because people get so mad.
That's the thing that I don't get is...
I do understand voicing your opinion and saying, fuck, man, that's weird.
Like, that makes sense to me.
But people actually getting mad and committing hate crimes and stuff, to me, it's just disgusting.
I'm not on board with that.
joe rogan
Yeah, it is disgusting.
And I just, I gotta think that it comes from their family, from the way they're raised, that their parents are ignorant.
It's the only thing that makes any sense.
I just think that we're moving past that.
I think there's more awareness and more acceptance for those sort of issues that people have than ever before.
mark bell
Yeah, this country worries about some fucked up shit.
chris bell
There's a lot worse things going on.
joe rogan
What about the lion?
What about Cecil?
mark bell
You're on steroids.
Who cares?
chris bell
Cecil the lion on steroids.
Every day another cop's shooting somebody and we're worried about, you know, we concern ourselves so much more with the tabloid media than we do with what's really going on in this country.
joe rogan
Well, the cop shooting part is a horrible thing, but cops on steroids is something that people don't talk about too much.
It's kind of hilarious when you see cops busting people for steroids, because we all know, anybody who knows people that take steroids knows that cops are on steroids.
chris bell
Absolutely.
joe rogan
A giant chunk of them.
mark bell
Cops busted their brother with steroids.
joe rogan
And they were probably on it when they were busting them.
mark bell
They confiscated it.
chris bell
And then every cop in Poughkeepsie where we're from got huge.
They took like a thousand pills of Dianabol from him, and next thing you know, the cops are walking around all jacked.
joe rogan
Well, I had talked to a guy who's a cop I used to work out with, and he had a rational explanation.
He's like, look, man, he goes, it's fucking gross out there.
He goes, it's dangerous as fuck, and you've got to be on top of your game, and you want to have an edge.
Meanwhile, dude was 570, he weighed 250. I'm like, you've got a couple of edges here.
You got edges all over your body, dude.
chris bell
It's just so fucking jacked.
mark bell
That's great.
chris bell
How do you even move like that?
joe rogan
Not very well.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, something we have to do is get a hold of them and hang on.
All you got to do with a guy like that is ride the bull.
He's got about 30 seconds in him.
chris bell
Look, if you taught those guys what you know in jujitsu, they'd be much more effective than taking steroids, but that's probably the easier route, right?
joe rogan
That would help, but the reality is you're dealing with guns and knives and shit like that.
chris bell
Yeah, so no matter how big you are, it doesn't even really matter, right?
joe rogan
No.
Well, you definitely should know how to defend yourself physically.
100%.
Every cop should be a black belt in something.
You should know what it's like to be in a wild melee with another person who's trying to kill you with their hands.
But that's not going to protect you from guns and knives and all that gun defense stuff.
That's an art in and of itself.
There's some guys who are experts in taking guns away from people and shit, but...
Good luck with all that.
mark bell
What do you think the major difference is between UFC and Pride?
Pride, I don't think they really had rules, right?
joe rogan
They definitely had rules because they had no elbows.
mark bell
No, I just meant testing-wise.
joe rogan
Oh, testing-wise.
Yeah, no, they didn't have rules at all.
In fact, they specifically said on their contracts that there was no testing for steroids.
Ensign Inouye, who's one of the fighters from Pride, great guy, fought in the UFC as well.
He did this whole thing about it, where he came on the podcast and explained the verbatim contract.
It said, we are not going to test you for steroids.
mark bell
Yeah, meaning like, go ahead and do your thing.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, they encouraged it.
I had a buddy of mine who would fight in America at 170, and they wanted him to fight in Japan.
He went over there and had some meetings, like, you're 185. And he's like, but I don't weigh 185. I, like, weigh 180 right now.
unidentified
And he's like, no.
joe rogan
They were, like, really sold on him being 185. They wanted big Americans.
They wanted everyone to look like Mark Kerr.
Remember Mark Kerr?
chris bell
He was amazing, yeah.
mark bell
The Smashing Machine.
chris bell
Smashing Machine, as a documentary filmmaker, that was my favorite documentary, I think it still is, probably ever.
joe rogan
It's an amazing documentary, and for folks who don't know what it's about, it's about Mark Kerr, who was, at the time, one of the most dangerous MMA fighters in the world.
A guy who you would look at and you'd say, well, that is what an MMA fighter should look like.
260 pounds, fucking jacked to the tits, just giant, and smashing people.
But they caught him, there he is right there at his prime.
What a fucking garage.
mark bell
Shit, man.
Yeah, that's a good picture.
joe rogan
They caught him right when he slid.
They literally caught him on top before he'd slipped and then went into this mad fucking painkiller slide.
chris bell
Absolutely.
It happens to everybody.
I mean, that's what happened in the world of pro wrestling, which we're, like, really closely associated with all these guys.
You know, you hear about the wrestlers dying and everything.
It's not necessarily the steroids.
It's a deadly cocktail that they're all doing, you know.
joe rogan
The steroids are a big part of it, but the steroids, it's tiny in comparison to the head injuries they're taking.
mark bell
It is important to point out that they're not safe.
I think sometimes people that take them are like, fuck yeah, man, take steroids.
They definitely have their drawbacks, and it's a drug, and it's an illegal drug.
joe rogan
It's dependent upon dosage as well.
There's people that are going to take a little bit and be fine, or there's people that are going to go off the rails.
There was a dude that we knew that was Vitor Belfort's trainer.
In the 90s and he died real young.
He died like 32 or 33. We used to call him garden hoses.
chris bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because he would work out, he would be purple and his fucking arms, his veins.
chris bell
Yeah, Curtis Loeffler.
mark bell
Oh, yeah, yeah.
chris bell
Big purple.
They called him Barney at the gym.
They'd call him Barney because he was so purple.
joe rogan
He was on so much.
chris bell
Nicest guy.
joe rogan
The greatest guy.
chris bell
Really great guy.
And Vitor at the time was jacked.
He was training at Gold's Venice.
mark bell
He almost got too jacked.
Remember, he came in and smoked everybody, and then all of a sudden he got too big.
joe rogan
When he fought Randy, he was too big.
He was like 240 when he fought Randy.
And he had no gas tank.
He was a specimen when he was younger, when he was 19. Well, when he was 200 pounds, he was like the perfect size.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because Vito has like a size 8 foot.
He's not a big guy.
Like, his hands are fairly small, too.
But he's just a spectacular athlete.
mark bell
Yeah.
It's amazing he's done it for so long.
It's unbelievable.
joe rogan
I know, it is.
And he's an interesting point, because Vitor, for the last year and a half, was on testosterone replacement, last like two years, and had the most spectacular results of his career.
It was really crazy to see a guy who'd been fighting since 1997 in the UFC, and he's knocking out Michael Bisping, he's knocking out Luke Rockhold, he's knocking out Dan Henderson, he's wheel-kicking people in the head, and the way he was It was just fucking crazy to watch.
He head kicked three of the best fighters in the world and did it with muscles grown out of his fucking teeth.
I mean, just jacked.
chris bell
Was that legal in the UFC? It was legal.
It's a therapeutic use?
joe rogan
Then.
chris bell
Yeah.
But now it's not.
joe rogan
Nevada came in and went, whoa, hold the fuck up.
What's going on here?
First of all, they had guys.
There were guys that were in their 20s that had been prescribed it.
Yeah.
And they're like, well, what happened?
Why do you have a low test?
And most of them, it's because of steroid use.
And we all know that there's a way of manipulating those tests, too.
unidentified
Right.
mark bell
And maybe some are overtrained, not sleeping well on top of...
joe rogan
100% overtrained.
chris bell
And if you don't think those tests get manipulated by what you need to do, in Bigger, Stronger, Faster, I show you how to get human growth hormone and basically go to your doctor and do this and that.
And the way that you take the test...
You had to pee in this bag basically all day long, and then you take a sample of that urine.
But the way that I did it was I only took the urine from two samples that were taken at night when your growth hormone is the lowest.
So my growth hormone looked like it came from a guy who's 125 years old.
They're like, oh my god, you have no growth hormone.
Well, if you took it in the morning, And balance it out during the day, it would have been normal.
But it was really low, so I just wanted the doctor to give me growth hormone to see if they would do it for the movie.
joe rogan
Right.
Well, they also, they say if you eat a very large, fatty meal, like cheeseburgers and fries and shit, like a big burger, like right before you take the test, like within an hour of the test, your shit just plummets.
Your test plummets, your growth plummets, everything just goes, oh.
chris bell
There's ways to beat all these tests, even the guys that are beating the test to compete.
Lance Armstrong, all these guys.
mark bell
The Armstrong Lie is a good documentary, too.
unidentified
Amazing.
mark bell
If you saw that, it was fucking incredible.
joe rogan
Amazing.
Well, Jeff Nowitzki, the guy who busted Lance Armstrong, is going to be on my podcast next week.
chris bell
Oh, cool.
joe rogan
I fucking can't wait.
unidentified
That's awesome.
joe rogan
I had a great conversation.
The UFC hired him to try to clean up the sport.
I don't know.
It's like going to a hoarder's house.
mark bell
No, you need to hire the other guy.
joe rogan
You need to be able to eat off this floor.
mark bell
Yeah.
At this point, the Ferrari guy, the guy that was Lance Armstrong's coach.
Oh, the guy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
mark bell
Because that was the guy that was trying to beat everybody.
chris bell
No matter what you do, the cheaters will always be ahead of the guys that are trying to catch them.
It's just a cat-and-mouse game.
It's been going on forever.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, they're kind of ahead now.
What they're doing now is they're, you know, the way they make testosterone, apparently they do something with yams.
That's how they make it.
Do you know the process?
chris bell
Yeah, Mexican wild yams.
joe rogan
They don't do that anymore.
mark bell
That's where it's, like, derived from or something.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, now they've figured out how to do it with animals.
And they've made a bio-identical testosterone that you can't differentiate.
chris bell
There you go.
We just spoke about stem cells.
Now, stem cells aren't going to make you superhuman, but stem cells are going to allow you a Vitor Belfort, right?
Now that he can't do the testosterone replacement, he gets stem cells done to all of his existing injuries.
You know, he's basically, you know, got a clean slate and he's back to normal without all these injuries that you built over time.
You know, a baseball pitcher could pitch 10 more years.
How is that going to affect...
The future of sports with the records and all these things, like who can hit the most home runs and who can, you know, play the longest and all.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's like there's a word that's a banned word.
Steroids is like, you know, it's a negative word.
And that word will never be polished up.
mark bell
You know what I mean?
joe rogan
It's like the Barry Bonds shit with Mark McGuire all over Congress.
By the way, that was one of my favorite parts of the documentary, was watching those dummies in Congress.
mark bell
That was amazing, wasn't it?
joe rogan
Seeing Joe Biden talk about it, man, when I was a good athlete, I thought, what the fuck you were?
The fuck you were good at anything.
You were never a good athlete.
I would like to see some evidence of that, sir.
They took it away from me.
It wasn't by God-given talent.
Like, what?
chris bell
He's a third-string baseball player at community college.
joe rogan
Yeah, whatever he was.
mark bell
Save it, buddy.
joe rogan
Whatever he was.
Just shut your mouth.
chris bell
Yeah, exactly.
That's the thing was like they bring up these baseball players and string them up before Congress.
It becomes this like huge media circus.
Everybody, you know, loves to see that.
Oh, look at their, you know, they're pointing out all these guys and they're the bad guys.
And you have guys like Mark McGuire up there looking like, Mark McGuire said steroids is bad.
It's a bad message.
Don't do them.
It's like, this is people, these are these heroes to these kids up there that are, you know, completely looking like idiots.
And there's a better way to handle it, you know?
joe rogan
Well, it just seemed really frivolous that they were in front of Congress.
They're getting too good at hitting the ball with the stick.
We need to bring in all our leaders.
It doesn't even seem real.
It seems like a plot in a movie.
mark bell
Even in swimming, they made suits a few years ago.
They got rid of them right away.
It's a speedo company that made a suit that makes you swim faster.
And as soon as they did that, they were like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
We don't want you swimming that fast.
So they got rid of them.
joe rogan
So it was like a bodysuit?
Like you would put it in your whole body?
mark bell
Yeah, it's just a bodysuit.
joe rogan
So like a wetsuit?
chris bell
Yeah.
mark bell
I think it helped increase buoyancy a little bit and just helped you kind of glide through the pool faster.
joe rogan
That's pretty dope.
Where do I get one of those?
mark bell
Well, I guess the issue with it was it's expensive, and so they were like, oh, it might price some people out of it or whatever.
I was just like, I don't even understand what that means.
joe rogan
Yeah.
mark bell
Because all these sports end up being pretty expensive.
joe rogan
Come on, man.
The amount of money that's involved in training for the Olympics for swimming.
chris bell
The things that are going on now with training are insane.
You know, I did my second film.
I did a movie called Trophy Kids, and it's about parents that push their kids in sports, and that was on HBO. And the thing that is so crazy now is the way that parents have access to all these things we didn't have.
Like you'll go to a, you know, a baseball camp and they have like this, Nike makes this hand-eye coordination thing that you wouldn't believe how it tells you like what position your kid should play.
It tells you, you know, and parents are actually going and getting genetic testing on their kid.
They swab the inside of their kid's cheek and they send it off to this company and it'll tell the parent what sports the kid will be good at.
This is when they're like a An infant.
So there's some crazy stuff going on where technology is far exceeding what we've been able to do before.
joe rogan
That's fucking madness.
Swabbing your kid's cheek to find out what sport they should do.
chris bell
Well, there's a California cryobank.
It's like a sperm bank.
And it's at UCLA. Don't get that confused with getting frozen.
unidentified
Jerk off in this cup.
joe rogan
Is this part of the therapy?
I have arthritis.
mark bell
Wow, I feel great.
That Joe Rogan was fucking right.
chris bell
Shit tastes great.
Anyway, you can get...
It actually shows a guy on HBO Real Sports.
He goes in, and basically, like, they custom order their kid, and it's like this fat...
mark bell
What the hell?
chris bell
It's like this fat Mexican guy.
He goes in, and he says, I want a kid just like me.
Blue eyes, blonde hair, and big calves.
And it's like, he looks nothing like the guy.
unidentified
Exactly.
joe rogan
So it's not his sperm.
chris bell
He's using someone else's sperm.
He's using a sperm donor because he couldn't get his wife pregnant.
And they decide, well, we want our kid to be...
The father's like, you know, similar to me.
You know, like athletic and outgoing.
So they picked a 6'2", blonde-haired, blue-eyed kid with...
And it actually says on the application, huge caps.
joe rogan
Huge calves on the application.
chris bell
What the fuck?
So the California Cryobank goes out and they recruit players.
I went to USC, so I know it goes on at USC. They go out and recruit players to make extra money.
You can make $900 a month or something jerking off in a cup and basically selling it to parents.
It's a good deal.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's not a bad deal.
If you have to rent, you know, you gotta pay it somehow.
mark bell
My sperm might be tainted.
joe rogan
Probably.
Yeah, they don't need to know that.
unidentified
No.
chris bell
No, but it's amazing.
It's an amazing phenomenon to see parents now getting into, like, how am I gonna help my kid cheat?
joe rogan
Well, it's getting to the point also where they're, within a few years, have you heard of CRISPR? Do you know what CRISPR is?
chris bell
No.
joe rogan
There's a Radiolab documentary that they did on it, or a Radiolab episode, rather.
It's all about this new tool that they have for engineering genetics and for splicing genes and for adding traits or subtracting traits.
chris bell
Sure.
joe rogan
And, you know, you showed on the documentary the myostatin inhibitors that they're doing with these cows that make these cows grow enormous amounts of muscle.
Well, they're going, first of all, they can do it now to pigs, and they're going to be able to do it to people.
It's just a matter of when.
unidentified
Jesus Christ.
joe rogan
Is it going to be in a year?
Is it going to be in a decade?
It's going to happen.
If we live another 100 years, if human beings survive 100 years, and asteroids don't blow us up, or we don't get hit by a fucking nuke, we're going to have myostatin-inhibited people that look like the Hulk.
mark bell
That's fucking craziness.
joe rogan
It's going to be nuts, and they're going to live longer.
That's what's even more fucked up.
mark bell
What do you think about steroids in the UFC? What's your take on it?
Do you think they should be illegal, or monitored, or...
joe rogan
Well, I think it's going to be a moot point once you get to genetic engineering.
And I think ultimately what steroids are is it's a form of engineering.
It's a form of biological engineering.
You're taking these substances and you're adding them to people.
But as you pointed out in your documentary, look at the guy who was the Tour de France guy that had this oxygen tent, these hyperbaric or these altitude chambers.
Hyperbaric chambers.
What I do all the time, the cryogenic freeze tanks.
All that shit is cheating.
I mean, if you really want to look at it, I take TRT, I take human growth hormone.
If I was competing in someone that wouldn't let me take that, that would be considered cheating.
But for life, I'm like, if you're 48 years old and you're not taking testosterone, what do you do?
You hate life?
You hate having energy?
chris bell
Sort of throwing it away.
joe rogan
You like your immune system sucking?
mark bell
Yeah, you want to feel better, look better.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Your body works better.
It's that simple.
chris bell
It's all about optimizing what you already are.
And I think when people go beyond that, that's when it becomes like, okay, well then it's cheating.
I don't know why people think that, but that's what it is.
It's like, you know, if you say, well, I'm on TRT, nobody really cares, you know?
And the same commercials for TRT, I don't know if you noticed, but during the World Series, the same sport that they condemn for steroids, during the commercial break, the first commercial, do you have low T? You know?
That's the very first commercial that comes on.
joe rogan
I think that the issue with steroids also for a lot of people is they believe that it's going to get kids into them and that the kids are going to get sick or they're going to get hurt or they're going to commit suicide like the guy in the documentary had.
He was convinced that his kid who he had on Lexapro, who was a teenager, you know what I mean?
He was convinced it was steroids that made this kid commit suicide.
And steroids very well may have played a factor.
Abuse of anything is bad, whether it's abuse of alcohol.
There's a lot of different drugs, painkillers that you can abuse that'll make you suicidal.
Abuse of anything is bad.
So to blame it on one thing, that guy had this blanket thought in his mind.
He's just gonna throw a blanket over the problem with steroids.
chris bell
I don't even think you can blame it on the Lexapro.
There's a deeper issue going on with the child that takes his own life.
joe rogan
He certainly had some issues, and he also didn't want to communicate with his parents these issues too much.
chris bell
There's a lot more going on with that story that I put in the movie, and that was to protect...
The kid's gone, yeah.
Somebody loses a child, I don't want to go into their family history and all these other things that we found out.
But yeah, it's definitely hard.
joe rogan
Good for you for doing that.
chris bell
And they gave his father a million dollars to go in front to continue this education, to continue lying to people, basically.
joe rogan
Well, that makes sense, because that's why he had this thought in his head.
Like, he wouldn't even consider the fact that his kid's on psychoactive drugs.
And those had nothing to do with the fact that his brain was fucked up.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
Like, come on, man.
You don't know.
chris bell
Those drugs are dangerous to anybody.
They can be.
There's a hundred million people walking around on psych meds, and there's really no proof that they actually work.
There's really no scientific proof that they improve any sort of problem.
joe rogan
Is that true though?
Because they definitely do help some people.
chris bell
I think they definitely help some people, but there's actually nothing.
You can look at, like I said, anecdotal evidence for anything.
I took this and I got bigger.
I took this and I got stronger.
Scientific proof?
No, because there's no real markers in the brain.
There's no test I can give you to see if you feel better.
joe rogan
Right, there's no depression test.
mark bell
Exactly, yeah.
joe rogan
I think, yeah, that's the issue.
But there's a lot of evidence that SSRIs help improve mood, right?
And they do.
chris bell
Yeah, yeah, but there's also, you know, while they improve mood in some people, a lot of people commit suicide on them because they are so low down.
Like, you'll see a person that's, like, severely, severely depressed.
They can't even get out of bed to kill themselves, and then they put them on SSRIs, and now they have just enough energy to, like, say, fuck it, you know?
joe rogan
Jesus Christ!
That's so crazy.
mark bell
Also with steroids though, that kid, he just stopped cold turkey.
He stopped the steroids right away and then went on those other drugs.
But stopping him, as you mentioned earlier, like if you're 48 years old, you want to get the energy boost from him.
Just like coming off him actually puts you at a lower state than you ever were before.
So with that kid coming off him, his testosterone levels were probably low, his estrogen levels probably came up.
He's probably just insanely depressed.
joe rogan
That does get you depressed and that's a big issue with fighters and football players and people that have had a lot of head injuries.
Dr. Mark Gordon, who was in your documentary for a brief amount of time, I saw his face in there, he works with a lot of traumatic brain injury people and one of the things that he finds with them, they almost all have low testosterone.
And something about getting the pituitary gland rattled, whether it's through an IED or football collisions or head kicks, whatever the fuck it is, almost all those guys have low testosterone.
They're just like super...
mark bell
It's almost like you're getting kicked in the balls.
chris bell
You ever pose the question to this, like, you know, Nevada State Athletic Commission, you know, all these guys are getting pounded in the head in the UFC. They get punched a lot, they get kicked a lot.
Head trauma is an on-the-job injury, but you're not allowed to treat an on-the-job injury with something that works like human growth hormone.
You'll talk to Mark Gordon.
He'll tell you one of the best things they can do to treat these concussions and traumatic brain injuries is to supplement with human growth hormone.
So you can't treat those injuries.
You can get them, and if you're a normal everyday person, you can be treated, but you can't be treated if you're a fighter or if you're an athlete.
joe rogan
And there's a thing with fighters.
As well now, they're not allowing them to use IVs to rehydrate.
And the reason why is because IVs and use of IVs can mask some of the signs of steroids.
So something that was ultimately very beneficial, now you can't use because people can use it to cheat.
So even though it's just to rehydrate you, and even though they can prove that it's just rehydrating you, you can't use it because it could be something that you're doing because you're trying to cover up.
chris bell
Probably healthier for the fighter like a day before to have all those electrolytes in them and everything in them, right?
I mean rather than fight, fight depleted.
joe rogan
Since they're cutting weight, yeah, that's the argument.
But there's some arguments, some people, I don't know, I haven't researched it, but there's some people that say that it's actually more effective to rehydrate orally.
I've heard that's bullshit.
I've heard that's true.
I don't know what's right.
I'd have to talk to an expert about that.
So do a Google article.
mark bell
It's hard to be way on top of all that, though.
These fighters, they travel.
In powerlifting, we do the same thing.
We use IV bags to rehydrate, and guys will do 30-pound weight cuts and stuff like that.
joe rogan
So you do 30-pound weight cuts so that you compete at a lower level to powerlift?
mark bell
Yeah, lighter weight class.
joe rogan
At least you're not getting hit in the head, though.
mark bell
Right, right, right.
joe rogan
The rehydration orally, if it's not effective, is if you fight in a dehydrated state and you get rattled, your brain bleeds.
mark bell
Right.
joe rogan
They say that almost all the deaths in pro boxing, almost all of them were in the lighter weight divisions.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Even though the heavyweights hit hardest, they didn't cut weight.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
So they didn't have all the same problems.
unidentified
Right.
mark bell
Is there any rules in UFC about cutting weight?
How much percentage you can cut?
unidentified
Right, right, right.
joe rogan
There should be.
If you can make the weight, you can fight.
You just have to make the weight 4 o'clock on Friday and then Saturday, you know, whenever your fight is, the fights don't start until 4. Do you think this IV thing will change the game?
I hope it does.
I also think the UFC probably is going to have to add more weight classes eventually because there's not enough weight classes.
There's some big gaps between like 185 and 205. That's a 20-pound weight class.
That's a giant gap.
mark bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, I think that for fighters that are like tweeners, you know, there's guys that are like a little bit too big for this weight, but a little bit too small for that weight, they could use a 195. I think every 10 pounds would be pretty reasonable.
chris bell
Seems like it would be an advantage to actual, you know, to the fans and everything.
More champions.
More championship fights, more of everything.
joe rogan
And then also there could be some reasonable like champion versus champion, like 195 versus 205 is pretty reasonable.
Whereas like 185 versus 205, like man, that's a big fucking jump for those guys.
chris bell
Absolutely, yeah.
joe rogan
I think to answer your question about steroids in the UFC, I think the real problem is what we said earlier, that the word steroid is tainted.
It's a dirty word.
But if it's as far as supplements, should supplements be legal?
Everybody says supplements are legal.
Fuck, we have Muscle Farm that sponsors the UFC. They sell a ton of shit that's supposed to help you recover and protein powders and all this jazz.
Think about creatine, absolutely clinically proven to enhance performance.
There's a lot of stuff that you can get that's legal.
mark bell
Even caffeine.
joe rogan
Yeah, absolutely.
chris bell
It's all stuff that gives you a very slight bump, a very slight edge.
And then taken all together synergistically, it will supplement, like it says, your diet.
So if you have a diet where you're not getting enough stuff in it...
I was just reading this.
I posted something on Facebook the other day, and people went crazy because I posted this thing about fish oil and the effectiveness of fish oil not being really scientifically...
Proven.
It's like, if you eat fish twice a week, then you don't need it.
And everybody goes crazy.
No, I need it.
People are convinced.
The supplement industry is a $24 billion...
mark bell
No, I need to burp up fish oil.
I'm convinced of that.
I need to have 20 pills a day.
chris bell
It's a $24 billion industry, and people are convinced that they need these things.
joe rogan
There is some science behind fish oil and krill oil, though, especially the anti-inflammatory properties of it.
chris bell
The anti-inflammatory at a high dose, yes.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's what I do.
I take a lot of fish oil.
chris bell
It makes sense for that.
If you're trying to prevent heart disease and all these things like that, they're saying that the link isn't there, and if you eat fatty fish, you probably get enough in your diet.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, really good fish like salmon that's high in those healthy fats, everybody should eat that once or twice a week.
mark bell
Have some fucking sushi.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris bell
I mean, I believe, you know, I'll read all this shit about supplements, right?
All this stuff.
I'll read, like, okay, this doesn't work, this barely works, and whatever.
And the next thing I do, I go open up my cabinet, and I take 20 pills.
Because, like, because it doesn't fucking work, I don't know.
I mean, it's like that placebo effect is really, really strong, and, you know, certain things I take, because I, oh, I heard this works for, you know, alpha lipoic acid, when you eat carbs, it'll help shuttle it in your muscles.
Well, do I know that that even works?
Like, I don't know.
joe rogan
Alpha-lipoic acid is supposed to be clinically proven, isn't it?
I think there's studies on alpha-lipoic acid.
chris bell
Yeah, I'm sure.
There's studies on everything.
mark bell
Then you get into the whole thing.
Oh, it's an antioxidant.
And then you're like, well, wait a second.
What the fuck's an antioxidant?
Why do I need it?
You forget even why you need it to a certain point.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Well, berries are like the best antioxidant, aren't they?
Blueberries and boysenberries.
chris bell
And then they find out, there's studies that say that eating antioxidants in your diet doesn't really matter.
It doesn't translate into antioxidants in the bloodstream and all this stuff like that.
So you've got to look at it like, they say you need certain precursors to be able to digest these things.
joe rogan
It's too goddamn complicated.
mark bell
You need to be your only ice cream.
joe rogan
It's too fucking complicated.
chris bell
You need to be your own doctor.
You need to do your own research.
joe rogan
I find I get big benefits when I eat a lot of vegetables.
chris bell
Absolutely.
joe rogan
I feel a big benefit when I drink like these kale shakes.
chris bell
Oh no.
Get the man a kale salad.
I thought you were tough.
joe rogan
Dude, it's good stuff for you.
It's healthy.
chris bell
No, he just makes fun of kale all the time.
mark bell
I was making fun of one of my friends, because he's like, I went over here and had a kale salad, and he's super skinny.
I'm like, dude, a kale salad?
Come on, just make up a lie.
Say that you had a fucking 20-ounce ribeye.
joe rogan
Well, you can have both.
chris bell
I just think, in general, that's the best way to go.
Like, you know, we need vitamins and minerals, and we need all these things in our diet.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris bell
And so, vegetables are probably the most abundant source of great nutrients.
Vegetables and fruits and things like that.
So, like, why wouldn't you eat them?
Like, it seems to make sense.
joe rogan
All I know is I feel different when I eat them.
When I have one of those kale shakes with giant clumps of fucking ginger in it and four cloves of garlic and an apple and celery.
chris bell
It's amazing.
joe rogan
Cucumber.
mark bell
You feel like fucking Superman.
joe rogan
You gotta choke it down.
It tastes like shit.
But when you're choking it down, once you get it in, you're like, whoo!
You feel like you had a double shot of espresso, but you don't feel like jittery.
You just feel like, ah, fucking yeah.
chris bell
I remember talking to you about, it was kind of amazing, and it was kind of a good example for me, talking to you about, you were talking about going on the road and traveling, and you said, oh man, I need to find a Whole Foods.
I don't eat that processed shit.
To me, that was a real eye-opener to find that somebody as busy as yourself goes out of their way to find good, healthy food.
It's important.
Yeah.
mark bell
Well, it's probably more important almost for him because he's on a plane or in a car or some shit all the time.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You can only go so many.
I always bring vitamin packs.
I have those pure athlete packs I bring with me to supplement when I'm on the road.
I always make sure I eat a lot of salads.
I get salads before every meal.
Whatever I'm eating, I eat salads first.
But it's hard to find, you know, food that's not just full of garbage and bullshit.
chris bell
Contaminated now it is, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, like, you go to Subway.
I mean, yeah, you get bread and there's meat in there and it kind of can fill you up.
But, like, you know, all the different preservatives and nonsense and processed bullshit.
mark bell
Fucking kills your stomach.
joe rogan
All the gluten.
mark bell
Chris's girlfriend eats tons of vegetables and she's super hot.
joe rogan
Maybe that's the formula.
We can all be super hot chicks.
If Bruce Jenner had only known about this.
chris bell
The key, like you said, is good nutrition.
Good solid things in your diet.
joe rogan
I think when you're dealing with things like UFC fighters, you're dealing with a level of performance that they're requiring of their body that's so extreme.
Because even boxers, like, the average boxer, they do their boxing workout, they'll spar a couple of times a week depending upon the philosophy of the camp, and in the morning they usually run.
Like, maybe they'll have a strength and conditioning session instead of a run, but they're doing two workouts a day and one of them is pretty mild.
It's not that big a deal.
So, they're, you know, they can get through a six to eight week camp, and most likely, they never pull out of fights.
It's very rare that a championship fight, like, Manny Pacquiao almost pulled out of Floyd Mayweather fight because he apparently tore his labrum, but he wound up fighting, and now there's a lawsuit because he pushed through the injury.
You hear about all that?
mark bell
No, I didn't hear anything.
joe rogan
Five different people are suing him because they bet a lot of money on him.
They didn't know that his right shoulder was fucked up.
He had surgery right after the fight.
mark bell
Wow.
joe rogan
But...
For the UFC, fucking 20% of the fights fall apart, at least.
And guys fight injured all the time.
Even Conor McGregor, when he fought against Chad Mendes after Aldo pulled out of the fight, McGregor had been getting stem cell shots in his knee.
He was fucked.
He didn't wrestle the entire camp, because he was thinking there's no way.
He was like, I can't.
It'll fall apart.
mark bell
It was a good fight.
chris bell
Great fight.
It's got to be the toughest sport.
I mean, I say that.
joe rogan
I think so.
chris bell
People go like, oh, basketball players are the best athletes, or these guys are the best athletes.
I just think that...
The amount of, maybe genetically basketball, you know, but the amount of effort it takes to step into the octagon, the amount of mental focus, it's like, to me that's amazing.
It's like truly baffled by it.
joe rogan
Basketball, I think, has the best six foot six athletes.
chris bell
Yeah.
mark bell
Well, fighting is not made up.
It's something that is like part of us.
Everything else is made up.
Football, basketball, baseball.
Made up sports, you know?
chris bell
When it came along, we were like, this is the only sport to me that makes sense.
You know, like, it really makes sense.
joe rogan
But the movements and the art are all made up.
unidentified
Yeah, of course.
joe rogan
So we had to figure out what's the most effective way of striking and moving and grappling.
mark bell
Yeah, how do I fuck someone up the fastest?
joe rogan
Yeah.
I mean, all of that is where the sport lies.
But I think you're right about the level of athlete.
When you see the guys that play for the NFL, I mean, those are fucking super freaks.
mark bell
Yeah, well, those motherfuckers will be coming to the UFC soon, I'm sure.
joe rogan
Well, if the money becomes right...
chris bell
Well, that's Jon Jones.
Jon Jones could have probably opted to go and play in the NFL. 100%.
joe rogan
100%.
His brothers both do.
He could have.
What's crazy is he's not even the toughest one in his family.
Both his brothers say they kick his ass.
His younger brother and his older brother.
chris bell
That's crazy.
unidentified
Fucked.
joe rogan
What kind of a fucking family is that?
mark bell
One of the guys got drafted.
One of his brothers got drafted.
I saw them all jumping on each other and shit.
They're all kicking the shit out of each other.
I was like, Jesus Christ, a lot of shit must have got broken in that house.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
I think that's why it happened.
And that's why he came out so badass.
I'm not afraid of anything.
chris bell
Talk about genetics.
I mean, like that family, the Manning family, like there's these families are just incredible.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris bell
Genetics, and that goes a long way.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, 100%.
chris bell
In everything we're talking about.
joe rogan
You know Matt Hughes, former UFC and Baltimore champion?
His brother's a twin.
Looks exactly like him.
Their entire lives, they beat the fuck out of each other.
So, of course, he gets to the UFC with his fucking steely-eyed gaze.
He's used to facing himself, literally.
Like a mirror version of him beating the fuck out of him his whole life.
They're just smashing each other, running through walls like Juggernaut.
mark bell
The ultimate sparring partner.
chris bell
That's why he used to pick people up and slam them.
joe rogan
Yeah, his brother's bigger.
Wow, his brother's 265. Jesus Christ.
His brother's talking all kinds of shit that he would kick his brother's ass.
chris bell
Well, I think John Jones could probably get up to that weight, right?
I mean, he's probably fighting his whole life, so...
joe rogan
Well, Chandler, I think, is a bigger guy.
He's one inch taller.
mark bell
He has two brothers in the NFL, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, Arthur, too.
His brother Arthur's even bigger than Chandler.
His brother Arthur's more than 300 pounds.
That's a super athlete family.
His dad's a big dude, too.
His dad is just naturally very gifted.
mark bell
It's taken a long time for the sport to evolve to where it is.
I'm interested to see what will happen with the female division.
Rhonda's just killing everybody, and she's obviously amazing, but I don't think the girls have caught up to where the guys are at.
joe rogan
No, not yet, but have you seen Joanna Jacek, the strawweight champion?
Dude.
You think Ronda's impressive?
This bitch is ruthless.
She's from Poland.
What does she weigh?
115. Six-time world Muay Thai champion.
That was a fight companion one, right?
We watched that girl get busted up.
Jessica Panay.
chris bell
Oh my god, dude.
joe rogan
She's the ugliest...
Female fight I've ever seen in my life.
This girl's nose was smashed, a giant gash across her nose, and this Joanna chick from Poland was just beating the fuck out of her, literally.
To the point where you're watching and saying, please stop this fight.
This fight is a terrible mismatch.
That chick is lethal.
Because when Rhonda beats chicks up, she knocked out Betch with one punch, and most of the time she flips chicks on their back and armbars them in the first round.
This bitch beats the fuck out of chicks for like four rounds.
chris bell
That's gotta be cool calling that stuff because I saw your excitement and it was like so genuine.
You know, you're so pumped to call that fight.
joe rogan
Oh, the Ronda fight?
chris bell
Yeah, you're like pumped.
joe rogan
You can feel it though when you watch it.
It was a piece of history, I felt.
It felt like...
I feel like where she's at right now, it's just so strange and rare.
It's like, it's not just calling a fight.
It's like, I feel like I'm calling a piece of, like, human history.
mark bell
Yeah, it's like that modern-day Mike Tyson.
joe rogan
Yeah, she's like a real Charlie's Angels character.
mark bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, there's never been, like, a hot chick that actually can fuck up a lot of dudes.
chris bell
Yeah, it's like there's been fake in a movie.
Okay, here's Wonder Woman.
unidentified
Ching-ching!
chris bell
You know, it's like...
joe rogan
Yeah, like if someone was pounding on your door at like 2 o'clock in the morning, you're like, what the fuck?
And you open up the door and it was Ronda Rousey angry, you'd be like, oh shit.
Your heart would drop.
You're like, this bitch is gonna beat my ass right now.
mark bell
Yeah, I was like farting in my sleep or something.
joe rogan
If she was outside, she could, you know, and she'd break in your house, she could kick your ass.
Like, that's real.
chris bell
Man, her confidence is through the roof.
I just saw something today where she's like, can you beat Floyd Mayweather in a fight or whatever?
She's like, yeah, in a no-rules fight, I could beat anybody.
joe rogan
Well, she said, I'm not in a boxing match.
She's like, he's a boxer.
I'm sure he would beat me in a boxing match.
But I don't have matches.
I have fights.
And she's just letting him know.
chris bell
She's a badass, man.
joe rogan
She got a hold of him.
He's going flying.
That's for sure.
There's no way he's gonna be able to understand what she's doing.
chris bell
No.
joe rogan
If he tied up with her, he'd have so much to think about.
mark bell
I'm sure she trains with guys all the time.
joe rogan
A hundred percent.
I've seen her.
I've been there in the gym with her flipping guys.
I've seen her tap guys.
I've seen it with my own eyes.
Tap good guys.
Get them in arm bars.
There's a video of her with Luke Rockwell.
mark bell
They're like, oh, I wasn't trying.
joe rogan
No, they're fucking trying.
There's a video with her with Luke Rockhold, and, you know, Luke lets her get into a position, but she finishes him.
You know, Luke Rockhold's a fucking giant dude.
mark bell
Yeah, he's big.
joe rogan
He fights at 185, cuts a lot of weight to get down there, and he's a stud.
unidentified
He's two-something, yeah.
mark bell
He's strong.
joe rogan
He's a stud, and she finished him with an arm bar.
I'm like, whoa.
mark bell
It's not even embarrassing.
She's the fucking best.
joe rogan
She's pretty goddamn wicked.
But there's going to be more girls like her.
chris bell
What about steroids in that division?
joe rogan
That's the issue.
chris bell
You know, they talk about Cyborg.
mark bell
Yeah, that's the issue.
chris bell
You know, you got guys, like, I know you talk about it a lot in your podcast, you get into steroids here and there.
And, you know, a lot of guys don't even look like they're doing it.
Like Gilbert Melendez or Hoist Gracie.
You know, it's like you can't tell anymore.
joe rogan
Well, Hoist actually did look like he was doing it when he got popped.
When he got popped, we were there for that fight, and I was there with my friend Eddie, Eddie Bravo, and Eddie was like, dude, when was the last time you saw Hoist with traps?
Like, he had traps!
Like, he was pretty jacked, and he was way heavier than normal.
He was like, he usually was around 170-something.
He was well over 200 pounds.
chris bell
But I think because the benefit of steroids isn't just with weightlifting.
It's like overall recovery, overall energy and health that a lot of people just take.
mark bell
Probably a little growth hormone, a little test, a little EPO. Yes, 100%.
chris bell
I think the EPO is a big thing, too.
joe rogan
The vibrancy, just the having energy, just having enthusiasm.
chris bell
They don't test for EPO, do they?
joe rogan
Oh, yes, they do.
chris bell
They do now?
joe rogan
Ali Bagutinov got popped for it when he fought against Mighty Mouse Johnson for the flyweight title, and he's still suspended because of that.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Yeah, but there's guys who fought on it.
chris bell
Because I know that EPO test is pretty, it's a little wishy-washy.
When we did Bigger, Stronger, Faster, we looked heavily into the EPO test, and there's a guy that came up with a definitive EPO test.
Definitive like just either you're on it or you're not Synthetically and the he got a letter from the Olympic Committee saying from the US Olympic USOC saying we can't use your test because we'll be at an unfair You know will be it'll be unfair to the Americans because the other foreign countries are Relying on a loosey-goosey test.
joe rogan
Yeah, exactly That's hilarious.
So what they're saying is we're going to have to allow a certain amount of cheating to win.
chris bell
Exactly.
joe rogan
That's really what they're saying.
chris bell
Well, we have to be able to cheat just as much as the rest of them.
If you look at the, you know when they do these testosterone ratios, like 99.9% of human beings should be at a 1 to 1 ratio, epitestosterone to testosterone kind of thing.
And they allow it to be like 4 to 1 or 6 to 1. They used to allow 6. Now they allow 4. Yeah, now they allow 4, right?
So you can take a little bit and be under the radar.
joe rogan
We've had guys pop at like 50 to 1. Yeah.
chris bell
I remember when I was doing...
joe rogan
That's awesome.
That's hilarious.
They're like gorillas.
mark bell
I want to see a non-tested UFC and have the guys weigh like over 300 pounds.
They go one minute on and five minutes off.
chris bell
Yeah, there you go.
mark bell
And just let them just kill each other.
Just let him just fucking slug it out.
joe rogan
I like the one minute on, five minutes on.
mark bell
And also, you can't train.
That's the other thing.
You can't train for fighting, because that's an unfair advantage, too.
Then you know how to fight, and it ruins the fun.
joe rogan
Well, the other person's training, too, so it's not an unfair advantage.
mark bell
Well, you can lift weights.
That's about it.
joe rogan
That's it.
unidentified
Just lifting.
joe rogan
I think that there's a benefit to being a certain weight, but there's a negative effect when you get over a certain weight.
And I think 240 is around the right weight.
mark bell
I think how lean you are is probably a big thing, too.
I think once you get under 10%, I think is when you start to get in trouble, unless you're used to that, unless your body's always under 10%, then you could probably operate at that body, being that lean for a while, you know?
joe rogan
I just think if guys have good defensive skills and they can avoid the bum rush for the first couple rounds, guys who are like over 240, they have a real hard time getting into the third, fourth, and fifth rounds.
It's just too much mass to carry around.
The bones and the muscle and all the blood.
chris bell
It hurts being that big.
joe rogan
Yeah, the oxygen requirements.
So I think a guy like Cain Velasquez is always about 240. He's known for his spectacular cardio.
Fabricio Verdum, same thing.
Somewhere in the 230s.
That seems to be the right way.
chris bell
Yeah, that was a shocking fight, huh?
mark bell
Yeah, it was crazy.
joe rogan
Kane fucked up.
I mean, Kane is known for his cardio, so I think he just got a little cocky and decided not to go to Mexico City.
But Mexico City is so...
I can't believe how high it is.
7,000 plus feet above altitude.
chris bell
Did you have trouble breathing now?
unidentified
I did.
joe rogan
I worked out in the gym with a fucking elliptical machine that was breathing heavy.
unidentified
That's awesome.
joe rogan
I was like, I can't believe these guys are going to fight.
But Fabrizio was real smart.
He moved to a place that's 1,000 feet above that for like a month and a half.
And Kane was only there for two weeks.
chris bell
And he's improved.
Fabricio, I see him all the time at Gold's Gym.
He's improved vastly every step of the way, which is nice to see, too.
joe rogan
Well, he was such a high-level jiu-jitsu guy.
He was one of the best jiu-jitsu fighters in the world.
And to get that good at jiu-jitsu, you have to have an intense mind for learning.
And so he just took that and applied it to boxing and kickboxing.
Once he figured that out, everybody was fucked.
mark bell
Yeah.
Yeah, he's dangerous.
joe rogan
You don't want to go to the ground with that dude.
mark bell
Yeah, he's beat some awesome fighters.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris bell
He beat Fedor Mayenko, the first guy, right?
joe rogan
He's the first guy to submit Fedor, the first guy to submit Kane.
You know, that's a pretty goddamn spectacular resume.
All he has to do is beat a few more guys, and he is arguably one of the greatest heavyweights, if not the greatest of all time.
unidentified
Sure.
mark bell
It's interesting you bring up those two fighters.
It makes me kind of think like maybe there's a upper weight limit of muscle mass that you can carry around because like neither one of those guys is real lean.
So maybe around a 200 pound mark is probably almost like the cutoff.
If you start being more jacked than that, maybe you can't sustain it for three rounds.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think it's a matter of durability.
Like, you want to be big enough so that you can take shots, but you can't be too big because you just can't carry it.
Especially a guy like Kane.
mark bell
Although Coleman and Kerr were kind of the exception, I guess.
joe rogan
Yeah, but they were on everything.
mark bell
They were on bathtubs full of shit.
chris bell
Brock Lesnar.
Animal.
Just an animal.
joe rogan
He's such a freak of nature.
I still maintain to this day that if somebody got a hold of Brock Lesnar early on and said, listen to me, and you can be the best heavyweight fighter ever, like a Firas Zahabi or a Matt Hume, like someone who's a real expert in MMA, who Brock listened to, And just said, look, this is what we're going to do.
The first thing we're going to do is we're going to do nothing but striking for like a couple of years.
And you're not going to get hit.
I don't want you to develop any bad habits.
You're not hitting anybody either.
All you're going to do is you're going to do movement with people.
You're going to do pad work.
You're going to do technique work.
And we're going to have that shit built into your neurons.
And we're going to have all these movements.
They're going to be a part of your natural movement.
And if you're willing to do that, you're going to develop a base.
And that base will translate into success.
But otherwise, you're going to be scared of getting hit.
And that's what his problem always was.
He would always get tagged by someone like Shane Carwin or Alistair Overeem.
And you could see, he didn't have enough time in there.
chris bell
He doesn't like it either.
joe rogan
You've got to spar with guys who barely touch you.
They're not hurting you.
And you don't hurt them.
And in the beginning, that's the most critical thing.
Because otherwise, you're going to miss giant chunks of the development.
Because you just get a fucking swing.
chris bell
It was amazing that he was able to get to where he did during all those years of WWE first.
What a fucking mutant.
What if he had just, like you said, gone straight in?
joe rogan
Oh, he would have been the best ever.
mark bell
But he's still a heavyweight champion in the fucking world.
joe rogan
He still knocked out Randy Couture.
He's a stud.
Beat the shit out of Frank Mir.
He's a stud.
Yeah, I love watching him.
I was kind of bummed but happy when he decided to quit MMA. Recently, he had a moment where he was trying to figure out whether he was going to keep going with the WWE or give one more shot at the UFC. And I know he talked to Dana.
He talked to the UFC. He was really thinking about it.
But ultimately, he decided for himself.
chris bell
You don't want to see him go down a bad path of being the guy that gets...
joe rogan
Concussions, too.
I think that was a big one.
He was worried about post-concussion syndrome.
Like Joseph Valtellini, who's the glory welterweight champion, he just stepped down and relinquished his title because of concussions.
Concussions in MMA are a big fucking issue.
You don't hear about it.
chris bell
How do you feel about, like, I watch a lot of fights where, you know, you want to see them go on.
You just want to see these, you know, some guys will get pounded.
mark bell
Yeah, don't stop it, don't stop it.
chris bell
Some guys will get pounded.
joe rogan
And come back.
chris bell
And they come right back, and it's like, oh, well, good thing they didn't call it, you know?
Great job, Herb Dean, or whoever the ref is.
And then other times, guys get pounded, and they get pounded ten times in a row, and then they're out.
And then it's like, well, did they need the ten shots to be out, you know?
You know, it's...
joe rogan
Why the fight is actually happening, I always root for the guy to come back.
But after the fight's over, like, if I'm analyzing it from, like, a rational standpoint, I'm always like, oh, stop it.
chris bell
He's in trouble, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's not good.
mark bell
Yeah, you're ringside.
I mean, it must be a little scary at times when people are getting blasted, right?
joe rogan
Some of the knockouts.
There's been some knockouts.
mark bell
And you probably see the eyes and everything, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris bell
How did you get into that?
Like, were you fighting before?
joe rogan
Way before.
chris bell
You were fighting way before you had a really big interest in it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, I had stopped competing in, like, 1988. That's when I got into comedy.
And maybe 89 was probably, like, my last kickboxing fights.
And then I went into stand-up, and then I just trained recreationally.
Until, like, around 93, the UFC came around.
I think I saw the first tape.
I saw a tape of it at 94. Yeah.
And then I was like, holy shit, what is this jiu-jitsu stuff?
mark bell
Yeah, we were there from day one, too.
Fuck.
unidentified
We fucking loved it.
chris bell
I watched that first pay-per-view live.
I remember that.
It was, like, crazy to watch.
joe rogan
Yeah, I didn't get a chance.
I saw it on tape.
Someone talked about it at the gym, and I was like, what is going on?
mark bell
We couldn't believe it.
We saw the commercial for it.
chris bell
We saw the commercial for it.
I'm like, oh, my God.
joe rogan
I was crazy back in the day.
And remember, it used to be in the Faces of Death section at the Video Star?
mark bell
Yeah, yeah.
unidentified
All the crazy shit.
chris bell
But it got banned for like a long time.
It went completely away.
joe rogan
Well, that's when I came in.
I came in while I was banned.
I started working in 97. So I started doing the post-fight interviews in 97 while I was on the sitcom, news radio.
I would go on the weekends, fly off to fucking bumfuck Alabama.
chris bell
There's a great book, Blood in the Cage, that outlines all that stuff.
And it outlines how Dana got into it, and they went to an event, and he was like, this just sucks.
They don't even sell t-shirts.
What's going on?
We need to take this over.
That kind of thing.
It's really cool.
joe rogan
Yeah, they bought it in 2001, I think.
And I came in in 2002 and started doing the commentary.
chris bell
And remember, when I got in trouble before The Ultimate Fighter, I actually worked for WWE. And Vince McMahon...
I remember being in limbo with Vince McMahon being like, dude, it's like they're trying to sell it.
You should buy it.
And he was like, I don't know.
Then years later, they tried to unsuccessfully start some sort of MMA thing.
Vince McMahon did?
Yeah, they tried to.
They never got off the ground.
joe rogan
Oh, they were planning on it?
chris bell
Yeah, what happened, though, was Vince, and he had a legitimate concern.
He's like, I don't want...
It'll take the legitimacy out of it, you know, like if he owned something like that.
mark bell
They might think it's fixed.
chris bell
They'll think it's fake.
joe rogan
Well, they didn't think that about the XFL. I guess not, yeah.
I think the real problem is the talent pool.
There's just not that many good fighters.
The UFC owns the contracts for 500 fighters, and they're all the best fighters.
There's not one fighter in any weight class outside the UFC that you can make a rational argument that's the best fighter in that weight class.
So once they have that, It's like, boy, it's hard to sell a league when you know the UFC. Like, this is our 170-pound world champion.
Like, well, is that really?
Because everybody knows Robbie Lawler is the fucking world champion.
chris bell
It's hard for me to watch any sort of competition.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris bell
It's hard for me, you know.
I get it.
joe rogan
Well, there's real good fights in other organizations.
World Series of Fighting has some good fights.
Bellator has some good fights.
But it's just going to be real hard for them to build stars.
Because everybody, like a kid coming up, wants to be the best.
If he wants to be the best, 135 pounder, he wants to fight TJ Dillashaw.
He doesn't want to fight Marty McFuckface from Mike's Hardcore Fighting Championship.
You know what I mean?
You just want to be the best.
So they're always going to recruit the best guys.
They're ahead of the game.
It's not a lockdown game.
Especially if Bellator signs Fedor and maybe somebody gets Gina Carano.
Shit can get weird.
chris bell
Yeah, I feel like it's all the same with wrestling, though.
If you look at WWE, they've had a monopoly for a while.
Then WCW came along and they started getting popular.
But now the other league, TNA, it's so lame.
Nobody really gives a fuck about it at all.
And that's the thing, in the end, UFC will be around forever.
joe rogan
It's like the NFL. Unless they sell it.
They could get to a point where they're like, look, let's just get the fuck out of here.
This is too much work.
mark bell
Killing us.
joe rogan
Because Dana works all day long, every day.
He's constantly flying all over the world, and Lorenzo's doing the same thing.
It's a lot of work.
It's not easy doing what those guys are doing.
And when they're gone, everybody's going to miss them.
People complain about the UFC, but when they're gone, you realize the alternative...
They've created an industry.
chris bell
People are mad about stupid uniforms.
I mean, that's the last thing to get mad about.
joe rogan
Well, they have some points.
I'm on the fighter side when it comes to that.
chris bell
With the sponsorships?
joe rogan
Yeah.
They lose too much money.
mark bell
I was lucky enough to get in on the last thing before Reebok took over with...
With one of the fighters, and it was pretty cool.
It's cool to see the logo up there and all that stuff.
It was nice.
joe rogan
Well, that's a big part of what the fighters get, is what you would say, like, ego sponsorships.
mark bell
Right.
joe rogan
Like, Dynamic Fastener is on, like, so many...
I don't even know what that is.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
But it's on so many different t-shirts.
chris bell
How do you...
Now, Reebok said that there...
I guess it seems like over the...
Spread over all the fighters, they'll make more money.
The younger fighters, or...
Is that just not true?
joe rogan
I don't think it's true.
chris bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
No, I don't think it's true.
I think maybe if the deal changes or they start to make more money and, you know, it becomes something bigger than what it is right now.
But if you look at it right now, Tim Kennedy said it best recently.
He said on one Strikeforce card he made more money in sponsorships than the Reebok paid out for the entire last UFC card from Brazil.
chris bell
Yeah, gotcha.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
So all those people are wearing Reebok gear.
He made more money from one fight in Strikeforce!
unidentified
Yeah.
mark bell
Yeah, it looked like Reebok got a pretty good deal, from what I heard.
joe rogan
I don't think it's a good deal.
mark bell
No, I mean for Reebok.
joe rogan
No, I don't think it's a good deal for Reebok, is what I'm saying.
unidentified
Oh, okay.
joe rogan
Because I think it gives them a bad name, in some ways.
mark bell
Yeah, yeah, I understand.
joe rogan
All these people complaining about it.
mark bell
Yeah, where is Tap Out?
joe rogan
Well, no, no, no, it's not Tap Out.
But all these people are complaining, like Tim Kennedy complaining, Stitch Duran complaining, he gets fired, all these fighters are complaining, lots of fighters are complaining, Brendan Shaw complaining, all these different guys complained.
That's all negative press towards their brand.
I mean, they're not a person, right?
They're a brand.
If you associate that brand, you can't fire the head guy and change the brand.
The brand's still the brand.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
You know, and everybody's gonna associate that brand with it.
Is it a big-name brand?
Yeah.
Is it good to see a big-name brand attached to a sport like the UFC? Absolutely!
I feel like whenever you're in a situation where the fighters are going to lose money, that's always the number one concern that people have.
Everybody knows the window of opportunity for a fighter is extremely small.
Should have a few years to make some money.
So when you take some of that money away from them, in favor of prestige, the prestige, which is inarguable, Reebok's a huge brand.
It's great to be in business with a big brand.
But if it costs fighters money, boy...
That's going to be hot.
You can't not see that.
It's not like you're going to put blinders on and ignore that.
You have to address that.
mark bell
And social media is a huge thing, so the fighters are going to be heard.
joe rogan
The hugest.
It's bigger than anything, because if you bitch about something on Twitter and someone says, holy shit, Chris Bell just went off about that, and then some newspaper gets a hold of it, and then boom, it goes viral on Facebook, and people repost it and tweet it.
We live in a different world.
And so anytime someone like Stitch gets fired because he said something about, hey, Reebok, this deal kind of sucks for me because now I'm not making as much money, so they fire him, and then all of a sudden, boom, that becomes a way bigger issue than it was just with him saying that.
If he just said that and that was it, it would have been a small issue.
But him saying that and then getting fired for it, it compounds the issue.
mark bell
People react quickly, too.
Social media makes everything go a lot faster.
joe rogan
Yeah, they start wearing Nikes.
unidentified
They start wearing Nikes.
joe rogan
I mean, I'm not a business person.
If I was running the UFC, it would have been bankrupt a long fucking time ago.
But I think it's real dangerous looking at the bright side of deals like this.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Like, let's look at the bright side.
Let's look at the worst case scenario.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
What's the worst case scenario?
Everybody's going to hate Reebok.
That's the worst case scenario.
People are going to be mad at the UFC and mad at Reebok.
So I go, ooh, I don't know, man.
mark bell
Yeah, I was able to sponsor Joseph Benavidez, and that was pretty cool.
Which company?
joe rogan
What is your company?
mark bell
Slingshot.
The Slingshot that I had you throw on earlier.
Banged out some push-ups in.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's got this cool device that you slide.
It's like this heavy-duty rubber thing that you slide up to your biceps.
It actually gives you a bit of an assistance when doing push-ups or bench press or something like that.
It feels good, man.
I like it.
Where can people get this when they want to get this?
mark bell
Howmuchyoubench.net?
joe rogan
Howmuchyoubench, yo.
mark bell
There's the fucking plug.
joe rogan
Howmuchyoubench.net.
Don't you bench some retarded number, like 700 pounds?
mark bell
My best bench press in competition, this is with a bench shirt, which is much more heavy duty than something like the Slingshot.
It's this supportive device that's crazy looking.
It looks like a straight jacket, but I did an 854 pound bench press in a 275 pound weight class.
And then without a bench shirt, my best bench press is 560 pounds in competition.
joe rogan
That's like a Harley Davidson, right?
How much do those weigh?
Those weigh like 800 pounds.
chris bell
Fuck.
That's crazy.
joe rogan
That's a lot of goddamn weight, dude.
mark bell
Yeah, I've been at it for a long time.
I started when I was 12. Two older brothers that are dicks that forced me to lift weights even though I was a pussy and I didn't fucking want to.
joe rogan
Now what are those bench shirts, those vests?
mark bell
What do those things do?
chris bell
It's like wearing a denim jacket backwards is what it's like.
mark bell
Originally it was designed just to be protective and then people were like wait a second not only is it protective but I can lift more Wait with it.
And so then they started making them more and more extreme.
They used to be like one layer, then they started making two layers, and they started making them out of a pair of fucking jeans, and they started making them out of a canvas, and all kinds of weird different material.
chris bell
And it got to the point where people revolted against that, and now everybody lifts raw.
mark bell
Everybody lifts without the bench shirt.
chris bell
A lot of people lift raw because you could say, oh, how much do you bench?
unidentified
Oh, five...
mark bell
And raw would just be with just wrist wraps on.
unidentified
What did you do?
chris bell
What did you do raw?
Five...
mark bell
Five sixty.
chris bell
Five sixty.
joe rogan
That's crazy that you can do 300 pounds more with one of those shirts on it.
mark bell
Yeah, isn't that nuts?
joe rogan
That is nuts.
chris bell
And a squat, too.
A squat was like 1,000 pounds.
mark bell
Did a 1,080 squat and fell pretty bad with 1,085.
joe rogan
You fell?
mark bell
I fucking fell.
Well, what happened was, is there was a girl...
That was trained in her gym, and she's running the squat rack.
The squat rack is called a monolift, and when you release this lever so that I don't have to walk the weight backwards, you understand that?
I don't have to walk the weight backwards, the lever moves out of the way, and I pick the weight up and go.
The problem is, the girl's hot, and she's in a sundress.
And I'm trying to I'm trying to fucking concentrate on a lift here and so a midway down on the squat one knee shoots out to left the other knee shoots out the other way and Next thing I know is on the fucking ground.
joe rogan
So was it on your back or in front of you?
mark bell
Well, luckily I got kind of unloaded from the weight quickly it it fell back behind me and I fell forward I was fucked up for months from that.
That was a that was a pretty bad.
joe rogan
How'd you fuck like what what kind of injury?
mark bell
Oh You know what?
I never went to the doctor.
I'm not a fan.
I'm going to the doctor.
So I just rubbed some fucking dirt on it and just lived with pain for a while.
chris bell
My ankle was like black and blue, right?
mark bell
My ankle was fucked up.
My knees were fucked up.
But, you know, I did go to, I went to a friend of mine.
He's like, what are they going to compare x-rays and MRIs and stuff to?
He's like, you already know you're all fucked up anyway.
joe rogan
Are you all fucked up from lifting?
mark bell
No, I'm not that bad.
I'm pretty much okay.
joe rogan
So why wouldn't the MRI reveal damage?
mark bell
Well, he was just saying, like, your knees are probably, there's probably slight tears here and there, you know, because I've had knee pain and all kinds of different things for years.
So he was just saying, like, yeah, they're going to tell you that you're fucked up.
He's like, what are you going to do about it?
joe rogan
Well, shoulders are a big one for guys who bench that much, right?
mark bell
The shoulders, pecs.
Yeah, people blow off their pecs.
That's how I invented the slingshot was I tore my pec three times.
I injured myself.
joe rogan
Three times?
mark bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
So did you get it stitched back in?
mark bell
No, no.
joe rogan
You didn't?
mark bell
No, I don't like going to the doctor.
joe rogan
So you tore it and you just dealt with it?
mark bell
Just dealt with it.
Yeah, I never had a rupture.
I never tore it.
joe rogan
All the way through.
mark bell
Yeah, I never tore it all the way through to where it was like bleeding down to the bicep and all that nasty shit that can happen with a torn pec.
chris bell
I did it with my tricep and it's brutal.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've seen a lot of people that get the bicep where it curls up like a golf ball.
It looks crazy.
mark bell
You know, like there's some fighters that like getting punched in the face.
I kind of like pain.
So for me, it's kind of just part of the territory with training.
joe rogan
Yeah, the pain guys, those are weird people.
You're a weird person.
Yeah.
mark bell
No, I'm weird.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I don't mind it.
I don't mind it.
joe rogan
Well, the thing about soreness, it's like it lets you know, like, yeah, I fucking really got a workout.
chris bell
There's a difference between soreness, though, and not being able to get up, you know, out of bed in the morning and stuff like that.
That stuff's, you know, brutal.
joe rogan
Joint pain especially, right?
Muscle pain and joint pain are two different animals.
Joint pain's rough.
unidentified
Yeah.
mark bell
Back and back.
You know, you get some little shit that for some reason you just can't handle.
It's like the little tiny things that just gnaw away at you.
You're like, motherfucker, why is my elbow hurt so bad?
joe rogan
Goddamn hangnails.
mark bell
It's the littlest thing.
chris bell
Just from lifting in general.
Pretty much everybody we know has some sort of injury.
Everybody's hurt somewhere.
joe rogan
Or you're not working out hard.
It's one of two things.
chris bell
People look at...
Certain forms of exercise, like CrossFit, saying, like, oh, everybody gets hurt in that.
I'm like, everybody gets hurt in powerlifting.
Everybody I know that's a bodybuilder gets hurt.
Like, everybody gets hurt doing this.
And that's what we talked about.
We were talking about on the way up here is just slowing down in your workouts, just taking time to actually think about what you're doing all the time.
joe rogan
There's 1,036 pounds and 1,085 pounds.
mark bell
Oh, yeah.
I actually make this one.
But see the sundress?
joe rogan
Why does it say tumble?
Oh, that's the tumble?
mark bell
There we go.
joe rogan
That's the girl in the sundress?
She fucked you up.
Yep, look at that.
chris bell
Look how big his face is.
mark bell
Yeah, I'm about 320 pounds in this video, or 310 pounds.
joe rogan
Damn, dude.
That's a wide-ass stance, too.
You always squat that wide.
mark bell
In a squat suit, I'd squat a little bit wider.
It creates some tightness around the hips and kind of gives you some support through your hips.
joe rogan
That guy's pretty hot, too.
chris bell
Isn't that the trainer UFC guy?
mark bell
Oh, yeah, that's Amadeo Novella, who is a trainer of some UFC fighters, Chad Mendes and Joseph Benavidez and a bunch of other small dudes that can fuck people up.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's funny that they have a whole camp full of those dudes, isn't it?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Is this you giving out?
Oh, Jesus, dude.
God damn, that's a lot of weight.
mark bell
Yeah, and so when it happened, when I fell, it didn't hurt that bad initially.
But then as time wore on, it got worse and worse and worse.
The swelling just started getting fucking crazy.
I stayed at the competition, and I'm a coach for all the athletes that are in that video, basically.
And I stayed the whole time and helped everybody, just like I normally do.
And then the next day, when I woke up, by the time I got home, I couldn't even...
Couldn't even get upstairs to go to bed.
I just fucking sat on the couch or sat on the chair and just slept in the chair for the night and slept right there for the next, like, two or three days.
joe rogan
You know, one of the interesting aspects of your film was Louis Simmons.
chris bell
Amazing, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, Greg, I have one of his reverse hypers in the back.
mark bell
Things are awesome.
joe rogan
It's an incredible machine for...
For decompressing your lower back and pumping blood into it and everything.
Oh, that thing's amazing.
But he's a refreshing character, too.
chris bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know, it was funny when, you know, you were saying that you were going to get off steroids.
He's like, he'll be back.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
mark bell
Of course.
joe rogan
But that's the attitude that all those guys have.
It's like, look, you just have to accept the fact that you are now a steroid dude.
chris bell
Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, making a good documentary, I think, it's a lot about casting.
It's about who you pick.
You know, it's just like any other movie.
Who you pick to be in the movie.
And Louis Simmons was somebody that inspired me to do things differently, to think differently, use chains and bands.
I used to go into Gold's Gym, you know.
mark bell
He's the pioneer of that, by the way.
Bands and chains and all that type of training.
chris bell
Using chains on the bar to accommodate resistance.
unidentified
What's the benefit?
chris bell
So the band will...
Oh, you can tell them.
joe rogan
It gets harder as you get higher.
chris bell
Yeah.
mark bell
It's called accommodating resistance.
It basically makes you drive into the bar faster.
So if you can picture a bunch of chains on the bar, there's...
Let's say 40 pounds of chains on the bar.
As you lower those weights, there'll be less and less weight on the bar.
And as you go to pick it back up, there'll be more and more weight on the bar.
So you have to actually physically move faster.
A way that I try to explain it to people is if you were to try to hop up on this podcast table, you can't do it slowly.
So when you train with bands and chains, it's a similar thing.
You have to do it quickly.
You have to try to get a lot of acceleration into it.
joe rogan
That makes sense.
So that would probably aid in explosive shit like football or punching people.
mark bell
And then also a huge benefit of it is that the weight is lighter at the bottom.
Same thing kind of happens with the slingshot.
But with the weight being lighter at the bottom, it creates a safer environment because the bottom of a squat and the bottom of a bench press are kind of somewhat dangerous positions to be in.
joe rogan
How much does a chain weigh normally?
mark bell
They usually weigh about 20 pounds, the ones that we use.
Oh, that's interesting.
They're pretty goddamn thick.
joe rogan
Yeah, like big-ass motorcycle chains from the 70s.
mark bell
Like a boating type of thing.
chris bell
The thing is, I would read a magazine called Powerlifting USA. We didn't have the internet.
mark bell
Oh, I thought you were going to say inches.
chris bell
Oh, yeah, inches too, yeah.
Hey, don't tell them about that.
joe rogan
And foot action.
unidentified
Yeah.
chris bell
So we used to look at that magazine.
It was the only information on strength training in the entire world that a kid, 15 years old, growing up in Poughkeepsie, New York, could get his hands on.
So I would read that, and I'd go to the gym, and I'd try out all these weird things, and people were like, what the fuck are you doing?
And when I was a kid, I was squatting 500 for sets of eight reps, and people were like, what?
mark bell
He squatted 675 pounds in high school.
chris bell
He was a fucking bull, man.
joe rogan
That's insane.
chris bell
What the fuck are you on, right?
And I'm like, I'm not on anything.
I'm on Louie Simmons, you know?
And so when I started training Mark to just be, you know, an animal, it was...
mark bell
He had a lifting belt that said, Royds suck.
chris bell
Yeah.
Really?
mark bell
The director of Bigger, Stronger, Faster, ladies and gentlemen.
unidentified
Yeah.
chris bell
And it said, Royds suck, and I would go to the gym, and all these guys were all juiced up.
Like, Poughkeepsie, New York, it's like, I don't know what is in the water there, but everybody was on something.
And I just always wanted to sort of deny that, go against that.
Like, I'm not doing this.
And that was a whole...
The whole genesis for that movie was the fact that I always had this weird, moral thing against it.
I can't do that.
That's just fucking cheating.
joe rogan
Jamie, can you get some of those caveman, give me some of those nitro cans?
mark bell
Those fuckers are good.
joe rogan
Yeah, bring a few of those out.
chris bell
Big China kills?
joe rogan
No, this is the good shit, man.
We're at a regular coffee.
What was it that pushed you over the edge and made you want to try steroids then?
chris bell
Society.
unidentified
Society.
chris bell
You know, I went to USC and there's hot chicks everywhere and I wasn't...
joe rogan
But you were a gorilla.
You were fucking squatting 600 pounds.
chris bell
But I wasn't really in good shape.
I didn't look good.
joe rogan
But all you had to do was, like, clean up your diet.
mark bell
He's always had kind of a conflict with his, like, build.
He's always been trying to get in better shape, and so I think that steroids is a quicker and easier route, in some cases, to get in a little bit better shape, you know?
joe rogan
I totally understand that, but, I mean, you were...
It sounds like...
Would you say you squat 675, as you said?
chris bell
Yeah, when I was younger, yeah.
joe rogan
That's a lot of fucking weight.
I mean, you had to be a big fucker to do that.
chris bell
Yeah, I was a little bit fatter than I am now.
Right now I weigh about 210. I was about 240 maybe.
joe rogan
So it was just a matter of you just didn't like the way you looked.
chris bell
Yeah, I didn't like the way I looked and everybody else was in good shape.
I was training at Gold's Venice.
I'd be in Gold's Gym Venice and the Hulkster would be in there and Macho Man Randy Savage.
joe rogan
What you gonna do when a black guy date your daughter?
chris bell
Yeah, right.
The Hulkster, yeah.
joe rogan
That was depressing shit, wasn't it?
mark bell
That's amazing.
chris bell
You know what?
He'll be back.
joe rogan
From an N-word rant?
chris bell
He said some bad things.
I think with wrestling, the most inexcusable things have been excused, and I think that they'll figure out a way to...
Did they fire him from the WWE? They erased him from their website completely, as if he never existed.
joe rogan
You can't do that to the Hulkster?
Damn.
chris bell
Yeah, I mean, it's just like, hey, still pinning Iron Sheik.
joe rogan
I was there.
I saw it.
chris bell
That'd be amazing if you were there.
joe rogan
Physically?
No.
mark bell
I've never been to one of those things.
chris bell
You're not into wrestling, are you?
joe rogan
No, I'm not.
chris bell
No, because it's fake.
mark bell
We were just into all that shit.
We were into wrestling.
chris bell
You were into martial arts since you were a little kid, too, right?
joe rogan
Well, I was into it in high school.
In high school, I loved Jimmy Superfly Snuka and Bob Backlund and all that shit.
mark bell
I wrestled Jimmy Snuka.
chris bell
Did you?
Listen to where your career goes in wrestling.
He pinned Jimmy Superfly Snuka at an Indian casino for like 50 bucks.
mark bell
Yeah, in front of about 40 people.
chris bell
It's awesome.
joe rogan
Where was this?
mark bell
Time of my life.
I don't know where the fuck I was.
chris bell
Where was I? Somewhere in California, somewhere.
joe rogan
Goddamn.
50 bucks.
mark bell
50 bucks, yeah.
joe rogan
Goddamn.
What does Smucker look like these days?
mark bell
He looked like a transvestite.
unidentified
Really?
mark bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Really?
mark bell
He was hot.
unidentified
Wow.
chris bell
Actually, Rowdy Roddy Piper just passed away.
That was the nemesis.
They're actually having, next week, next Monday, at the Comedy Store, there's a tribute to Rowdy Roddy Piper and all the people that knew him are going to come in and talk about him.
joe rogan
I never got a chance to meet that guy.
It always bummed me out.
mark bell
He was great.
joe rogan
He was awesome.
That's all I heard.
I heard he was such a great guy.
chris bell
That's what we loved about wrestling.
We just loved the personalities.
If UFC was around when we were little kids, we probably went into that route.
Our older brother was always beating somebody up.
He went into pro wrestling because that's all existed at the time.
If MMA existed at the time, you would have went that way.
joe rogan
The thing when you did with Jimmy Snuka, how old was he at the time?
He's got to be in his 60s, right?
mark bell
This was probably about 15 years ago.
joe rogan
Might have been in his 60s then.
mark bell
But yeah, he was definitely old, definitely out of shape, yeah.
It wasn't pretty.
Was it weird?
joe rogan
Did it feel weird?
mark bell
Oh, it was fucking really weird, yeah.
joe rogan
And the poor guy, like, what does he do for a living now?
mark bell
Pro wrestling in general is weird.
Like, wrestling another dude in, like, tights and stuff.
It's really strange.
chris bell
I mean, like, we used to run this small wrestling federation with a guy named Rick Bassman, who's a good friend of ours.
And it was called UPW, Ultimate Pro Wrestling.
And we put, like, 30 guys into WWE. So a lot of times, like, these young guys had to work with the older guys.
Like, John Cena would be working with Greg DeHam or Valentine.
Yeah.
Like, hey kid, I'm not going to bump for anyone.
You know, bump means bump around the ring.
I'm never going to hit the mat.
You're just going to beat the shit out of you.
So it's like, that's part of that whole thing.
joe rogan
What does that mean, bump?
What are you saying?
mark bell
Just hit the mat.
Basically, you know, just like fall for the other guy.
Meaning, like, the older guys don't want to do any of the work.
You're going to work around them and make them look good, but they're not actually going to do anything.
joe rogan
Oh, so they don't fall down anymore because they're all banged out.
unidentified
They're too old.
joe rogan
That makes sense.
mark bell
They're like, fuck you, I'm not falling down.
joe rogan
Did Superfly have that kind of a conversation with you?
mark bell
A little bit, yeah.
joe rogan
How does it go down?
mark bell
Well, he basically just told me the different moves he wanted to do, and I was like, all right, well, it just sounds like I'm not really getting in too many moves.
chris bell
Yeah, but what happened was, he did the superfly move, right?
mark bell
Yeah.
chris bell
And then you flipped him over and pinned him, so you ended up winning.
mark bell
Right.
joe rogan
He still does the superfly at his range?
unidentified
Yeah.
Yeah.
chris bell
It's amazing.
mark bell
He wanted me to, like, sit way up, though, you know, like, to catch him, and I did, and it fucking, it hurt like a motherfucker.
joe rogan
I'm sure.
chris bell
Yeah, these old guys will stiff you.
mark bell
You ever have another man jump off the top rope on you?
joe rogan
No, I have not.
Did you ever see the one where Brock Lesnar does the shooting star and lands on his head?
unidentified
Holy shit.
chris bell
Yeah, I was actually there.
mark bell
And he's done that move like hundreds of times when he was younger in a different federation before he got to WWE. That really sucked.
chris bell
I worked at that Wrestlemania.
I was up in the skybox.
I'm watching.
I'm like, oh my god, he's dead.
He's dead.
joe rogan
Meanwhile, he still completes the pin.
chris bell
Yeah, he just messed up his stiff neck for a week or something.
He was messed up a little bit, but he wasn't that bad compared to what he should have been.
joe rogan
He's such a freak.
He really is like one of the biggest freak athletes.
mark bell
I think he said in an interview, there's like two years that he just doesn't remember.
chris bell
Because of that?
mark bell
No, because of drugs.
joe rogan
Oh, what was he on?
mark bell
I'm not sure.
Probably Oxycontin.
joe rogan
Well, those guys, they do.
That was the other thing that was in this article about Rowdy Roddy Piper.
There was an article about Rowdy Roddy Piper where they're talking about the drugs that they do.
Here it is right here.
mark bell
Oh, shit.
joe rogan
Look at this.
Oh my god, dude.
A normal person would be dead.
mark bell
And he's 290 right there.
chris bell
That's WrestleMania in Seattle.
mark bell
Look how jacked he is.
joe rogan
Yeah, he was giant.
What were we just talking about?
mark bell
You were talking about Piper.
You heard of the interview?
joe rogan
Oh, they were talking about the amount of time that they spend on the road wrestling.
And that like any other sport, you get like time off.
unidentified
A break.
joe rogan
Like these guys are wrestling 300 nights a year, which is crazy.
Like you can't recover.
You just can't recover.
So they all get hooked on pain pills.
chris bell
I just did a movie called The Resurrection of Jake the Snake.
It's about Jake the Snake Roberts, who was an 80s wrestler, you know, and he was a crack addict.
So, another wrestler, Diamond Dallas Page, helps him get sober.
We just showed that movie at Slamdance.
It'll be out pretty soon, but it really shows what these guys go through.
You know afterwards it shows it's it's a documentary.
That's just like the movie the wrestler It's a real you know real life darker darker though.
Yeah pretty much.
mark bell
It's fucking dark.
joe rogan
Jake the snake Dallas diamond page is doing wrestling or doing yoga now.
Yes big yoga yoga He's fucking crazy fit for an old dude Superman push-ups You know, on his fingertips, he's doing push-ups.
mark bell
He takes his ankle and puts it up by his fucking face and shit.
chris bell
I went to his house when we were doing the documentary.
I was an executive producer on the documentary, which I do all the Hollywood stuff.
I help get it sold.
I help get it to festivals.
All that kind of stuff.
And I just really believed in it.
And I believed in it from the beginning.
I knew they were making it.
And they asked me to get behind it really early.
So when I went down to their house to work on the movie...
He's like, I'm going to take you through this yoga thing.
And I'm like, okay, what is this bullshit?
Within 10 minutes, he had a heart rate monitoring.
My heart rate was up to 155. And he's like, okay, we got to slow you down to keep you at like 145. So this is like this constant cardio, flexing, moving, awesome yoga thing.
That somebody like me needs for mobility.
I think it's actually a really cool thing that he's doing.
joe rogan
Well, yoga is great for mobility.
It's really hard to do.
It's one of those things where you look at it, you're like, ah, a bunch of fucking soccer moms.
mark bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
But then you get in there, you're like, holy shit, this is fucking hard.
chris bell
This is a little bit more digestible for someone like me, because it's a lot based, he sort of bases it around...
joe rogan
Wrestling.
chris bell
Wrestling.
unidentified
Yeah.
chris bell
And then you flex like this, and you hold it, and it's kind of fun, you know?
joe rogan
Yeah, I get it.
It's kind of, there's no namastes.
chris bell
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Now, you had a double hip replacement?
chris bell
Yeah, actually right towards the end of doing bigger, stronger, faster.
When we were doing the movie, I was just worn down all the time.
I'm like, I don't know what's going on.
I can barely walk.
I just kept having all these problems with my hips and went and got it checked out.
The doctor just said, okay, walk across the room.
I walked across the room.
He said, you need two fake, you need two new hips.
I'm like, what?
Like, what are you talking about?
He's like, you need two new hips.
joe rogan
Was this a doctor that sells hips?
chris bell
He was an orthopedic surgeon, you know?
Jesus Christ.
joe rogan
And what did the MRI reveal?
I'm sure they did MRIs on that.
chris bell
Basically, bone on bone.
And my bone was completely smashed on both sides.
So they were like smashed into the...
You know, into your hip socket.
mark bell
And he was in a lot of pain all the time.
He could only, I mean, like three or four hours at a time was what you could give to the film usually, and then you were just...
chris bell
From your hips.
You had to sit down a lot.
joe rogan
And you said this is a genetic issue?
chris bell
Yeah, my dad has the same thing.
My dad has two fake hips now, but he didn't get them until way later.
So what happened was, you know, who knows if wearing down to the hips, squatting all that much and whatever, I don't really blame it on powerlifting because I don't think that that's...
Really the cause because there's a million power lifters out there and I'm the one with two fake hips, you know, so It's not like all this happens every power lifter, you know, it doesn't you think it has must have some effect I think everything has everything has an effect, you know, it's like they played football you wrestled shit like that.
I mean, yeah, but he's he's He doesn't have two fake hips and he's the same genetics, you know, as you know, you know as me So I got it from my dad, you know, my dad has the same.
joe rogan
What do they call what are they classified as?
chris bell
What are they classified as?
Just osteoarthritis?
joe rogan
It's just so...
But you only get it in your hips?
chris bell
No, I have it in my ankles and my knees.
Both my knees need to be replaced, but I'm just sort of...
joe rogan
Whoa, Jesus Christ.
chris bell
I'm just sort of like putting that off, because like you said, we have new therapies that...
mark bell
You had your knees done when you were a kid, too, right?
chris bell
Yeah, when I was 17 years old, I had double knee surgery, so...
joe rogan
What'd you have done?
chris bell
I just had arthroscopic bone chips removed and stuff like that.
unidentified
Bone chips?
chris bell
Yeah, but you know, the thing is...
I've been in pain my whole life, you know, and there was a certain point when I got the hip surgery that I wasn't able to handle it anymore.
And they started feeding me pills, you know, like crazy.
And I got into that really hardcore because that was something that, you know, at first you do it because it helps the pain, and then after a while you do it because it's fun.
joe rogan
So this is post Bigger Stronger Faster.
chris bell
Yeah, right after Bigger Stronger Faster.
joe rogan
So after Bigger Stronger Faster, you get your double hip replacements, and then you have the pill problem.
chris bell
Yeah, you get hooked on drugs.
It's like, you know, you never aspire to become a drug addict, but it happens.
And a lot happened to a lot of my friends.
It happened to a lot of people.
joe rogan
It's happened to a lot of people I know.
mark bell
Do you think a little bit of that had to do with, like, the recovery?
Because you had both of them done rather than just, like, one of them done at a time?
chris bell
Yeah, I would always suggest to anybody that has to have double hip replacement surgery, get one done at a time because at least you have one side that's good and the other side that heals.
mark bell
He literally couldn't really move at all.
chris bell
I was sort of like in a point in my life where I'm like, you know what, just do it.
Who cares, let's go.
And didn't really think it through that.
joe rogan
How old were you?
chris bell
33 at the time.
joe rogan
And, whew, Jesus Christ, double hip replacement at 33. And if you don't know what a double hip replacement means, they cut off the top of the bone, and they literally have this long screw that they drive into the meat of the bone where the marrow is, and it locks in place this new fake hip.
mark bell
Right.
joe rogan
It's fucking gnarly shit.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
My friend Graham Hancock had it done.
He was here six weeks later.
He wasn't even walking with a limp.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
I was like, this is crazy.
You had a hip replacement?
mark bell
Yeah.
chris bell
Yeah, they had complications with mine.
So on one of the sides, they had complications getting it in, because they're like, oh, all this muscle from squatting, your ass is like a rock.
So they're trying to, they had to pound it in with a hammer.
It looked like, I saw the surgery, part of the surgery back on camera, and it looked like an auto body shop.
It looked like they were fixing a car.
joe rogan
Yeah, there's a video of Tito Ortiz getting his disc replaced in his neck.
He got his disc fused.
I'm not sure if it was a spacer or disc replaced, but they're fucking hammering on his neck like clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink.
chris bell
I gotta get it in there.
joe rogan
Like, what the fuck?
That's his neck, man.
mark bell
That is insane.
joe rogan
So, what does it feel like now?
chris bell
Now, actually, the hips feel okay if I lift heavy.
I still, like, I'll still squat and deadlift.
I just can't go as heavy as I used to.
You know, I've deadlifted up to 550 with two fake hips.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ!
chris bell
You know, not a very good deadlift in Mark's world, but, you know, for having the surgery and everything, it's okay.
And they're fine.
Like, it doesn't...
joe rogan
And they're built...
Did you tell the doctor, like, give me some fucking serious heavy-duty ones?
chris bell
They're titanium anyway.
joe rogan
Give me some off-road shocks.
chris bell
They're titanium.
You know, and a lot of people say, well, why do you have to lift like that?
Why do you, you know, like, you know, people always want to concern themselves what you're doing.
They go like, why do you feel the need you have to lift like that?
It's just something that's ingrained in you.
You just like doing it.
If you had surgery and somebody told you why you have to fight still, why you have to go, because you have to.
mark bell
Did you ask the doctor for a bigger dick?
joe rogan
That's an option.
mark bell
Oh.
joe rogan
Now, when they cut you open, where do they cut you?
chris bell
Right on the side of your ass cheek, kind of.
joe rogan
Is it a giant scar?
chris bell
It's like that big, like three or four inches.
joe rogan
Wow, that's amazing.
You do all that work with three or four inches.
chris bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, I have a buddy who was on the U.S. ski team.
chris bell
I know.
joe rogan
I have a buddy who was on the U.S. ski team and he's had, no bullshit, I think 28 knee surgeries.
chris bell
Wow.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's got, I'll show you the surface of his knees.
mark bell
Skiing is not good for your knees.
joe rogan
No, he's had his knees resurfaced.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah, it's fucking gnarly.
Let me find this picture real quick and I'll show it to you because it's one of those where I show people and they go, what am I looking at?
He but anyway his scars on his knee it looks like like like you're gutting a fish Yeah, like they go all the way down the side of the knee and they opened it up and this was just in the 80s My dad has that my dad has you know fake knees also and he's got those big scars Man your dad's got it rough.
chris bell
He's a warrior Frankenstein.
joe rogan
That's a lot of fucking surgery, a lot of shit to get done on your body.
mark bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Fake knees and fake hips.
So you think that you're going to eventually have to do that too?
chris bell
The knees?
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris bell
I'm going to try to hold it off as long as possible and I think that the best way to go is trying new therapies like stem cells, other things that are coming out.
I know that certain, there's actually a gel that they can put into your knee to replace cartilage.
John Cena had it done.
It's a very advanced technique that You know, they're just basically, they use very sparingly.
joe rogan
Well, I know that they're doing, they have this new meniscus surgery that they're doing where they are taking this, like a scaffolding, and they implant it inside where your meniscus used to be with these proteins in it.
And somehow or another, your body grows meniscus in this scaffolding.
chris bell
Seems to make sense.
joe rogan
It's nuts, man.
mark bell
It's crazy.
joe rogan
The shit that they're able to do now is just amazing.
Let me show you.
This is my buddy's knee.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's the same guy that was on the U.S. ski team.
Wow.
They cut him.
Steve Graham, what's up, brother?
They cut him open like a fish.
mark bell
It looks like steak and like two wedding rings.
Yeah, that's fucking gnarly looking.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's pretty hardcore.
I'll send this to you, Jamie, so you can put it up on the...
mark bell
It looks great.
chris bell
Injuries are no joke, you know?
joe rogan
Yeah, no, they're no joke.
Well, this guy, too, he's fucking crazy.
He's in his 60s.
He still spars MMA on a regular basis.
He's an animal.
He's a doctor.
He's an ophthalmologist.
Doesn't give a fuck.
He's always been crazy.
He's just...
I've known this guy forever.
He's the guy who talked me into doing stand-up.
This guy's always been an animal.
It's just hard to imagine that that's the inside of his legs.
mark bell
I saw you do stand up in Sacramento about two years ago, maybe.
joe rogan
Oh, where was it at?
mark bell
Maybe three years ago.
I don't know.
It's called a comedy store or some shit like that.
joe rogan
Oh, that cool little upstairs comedy club?
mark bell
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
That's a good spot.
They have the Punchline, right?
mark bell
Yeah, there you go.
joe rogan
Do you live up there?
I do.
mark bell
Sacramento?
Yeah, I'm in Sacramento.
joe rogan
Do you go to Team Alpha Male and watch those...
mark bell
You know, I'm friends with those guys.
I haven't been over there a whole lot, but I see Uriah around, and I see those guys around a little bit here and there.
chris bell
He's got a huge, his own gym.
Huge gym.
joe rogan
Okay, give it a plug.
What's the name of the gym?
mark bell
The Super Training Gym, just in West Sacramento.
chris bell
But it doesn't matter because it's free.
mark bell
Yeah, it's kind of weird.
joe rogan
It's free?
mark bell
The gym is free.
joe rogan
How's that work?
mark bell
It doesn't.
joe rogan
Why do you have a free gym?
mark bell
It's not the smartest business model.
It's not my brightest idea.
The gym is free.
It's a way for me to give back to powerlifting.
It's predominantly a powerlifting facility.
And I think that if other people had the ability to make their gym free, they probably would do it.
Really?
I'm in a position to make it for free, so I did.
joe rogan
Wow, that's crazy.
That's a beautiful thing, man.
You never hear that.
You usually hear the exact opposite.
chris bell
Well, you know what?
Everybody asks for him, hey, can you train me?
Can you train me?
He's like, I don't train people.
mark bell
I even do seminars and stuff a lot for free.
I just did one at a Deuces gym in Venice.
And a lot of times I'll do some down in downtown LA at Barbell Brigade.
But just if I'm in town somewhere, I'll just email the owner of the gym and just say, hey, I'd love to come in and Teach your people how to squat or deadlift, and they're like, okay, well, what does it cost?
I'm like, it doesn't cost anything.
joe rogan
That's so crazy.
mark bell
Just coming in to fucking do some work.
joe rogan
What makes you such a generous guy?
mark bell
I just kind of have a passion for inspiring people and not so much just instructing them, because I think that the main message is to get people moving, get people doing shit, rather than just...
Saying, oh, here's how you squat.
chris bell
A lot of this comes from people that we looked up to.
Louie Simmons, you know.
Pat Miletic has a free gym, you know.
I don't know if he still has it, but he had a free gym to help people do what you couldn't do when you were younger, you know.
joe rogan
It's great for young folks.
There's the fucking knee and it's all school.
mark bell
And you know what, too, is what ends up happening is people...
I'll put up a post on Instagram.
It could be of, like, me eating food or some shit.
And somebody would say, oh, I got your slingshot.
I got your wraps.
I got your this.
I got your that.
So it's like people are giving back to me anyway.
So it's just another way for me to give back to community.
And for, like you said, Reebok is a brand.
My company is not.
My company is me.
And so the brand is growing, and sometimes people don't know that I'm associated with it.
But nine times out of ten, they do know I'm associated with it.
joe rogan
That's awesome, man.
That's a beautiful way of looking at things.
I love it.
chris bell
And because of that, we were just actually at the coffee bean next door, and these two guys wanted to take a picture with him.
People know who he is.
mark bell
I got SI on YouTube.
chris bell
Yeah, and it's funny.
mark bell
Tons of free videos.
YouTube.com backslash supertraining06.
Thousands of free videos on there on how to squat, deadlift, bench, that kind of shit.
joe rogan
Nice.
Now, your new documentary is Prescription Thugs.
chris bell
Absolutely, yeah.
joe rogan
And this is based on your experience in getting hooked on pain pills after you had your double hip replacement?
chris bell
Yeah, sort of based on a lot of people's experience.
You know, after Bigger, Stronger, Faster, our older brother passed away about eight months after making that movie.
And he had a really bad struggle with prescription drugs, mainly painkillers.
And then it went to, you know, Oxycontin when you used to be able to crush it up and inject it and all that stuff like that.
And he was getting into that kind of stuff.
I don't know if he was injecting it, but he was definitely snorting it and different things like that.
mark bell
He loved it all.
chris bell
Yeah, my parents found out about it and they were obviously heartbroken and helped him get clean for a while.
And then, you know, then you go back to it and back and forth and back and forth.
And it's just crazy because he, after he got off all the pills, sort of switched to alcohol, you know.
And it was like alcohol and a little bit of everything else.
A lot of weed, a lot of alcohol, this and that.
You know, just things that when you're not in the right state of mind or you're depressed, they're not the best things for you, you know.
joe rogan
That's what he seemed like from the doctor.
chris bell
Yeah, he ended up going down like a really bad...
Just a bad spiral.
He was on some psych meds too for depression and different things like that.
He died in a sober living house with no real explanation of how he died.
We still don't really know exactly what happened.
There was really no drugs found in his system and a toxicology report and stuff like that.
So it was just like to me something where You know, this is an epidemic that hit home with me.
After I saw my brother die, I was like, I will never go down that path.
And there I am on the floor scrambling, looking for, like, another Vicodin, you know, going, I must have dropped one somewhere.
And just knowing a lot of other people that went through it, I decided to pick up and make a movie about it.
joe rogan
Now, your brother in your Bigger, Stronger, Faster seemed like a very troubled guy.
chris bell
Yeah, Mad Dog, yeah.
mark bell
He struggled with himself more so than anything else.
He was bipolar.
joe rogan
And so all this stuff sort of just compounded that.
Did he get a prescription?
I'm sorry to interrupt you, but did he get a prescription for an injury?
chris bell
Yeah, he was wrestling with WWE. He was sort of doing the rounds.
mark bell
I don't know if he got a prescription, but he got drugs.
chris bell
Yeah, and they all got drugs.
joe rogan
So when did he start wrestling for the WWE? Back in, like, 1990...
chris bell
Like, early 90s.
And he wrestled forever.
mark bell
Like, he was always on TV. 1992 or so?
1993?
chris bell
Yeah, he was always on TV. And then he wrestled all the way through.
Kind of up until he died.
Like, he had still some matches.
Not really with WWE, but with other, like, smaller federations and stuff like that.
So he kind of wrestled for a real long time, but he never really made it.
And that was a really big problem for him.
You know, it wasn't good enough to be a good coach.
Or a good teacher.
He wanted to make it.
He wanted to be a big superstar.
mark bell
I also don't know if he knew exactly what he was chasing.
So even if he obtained some of that success, I don't think he would have even recognized it.
joe rogan
That's a really good point.
It's a really good point.
mark bell
I think a lot of people, yeah, it's hard to get satisfied with certain things.
He was troubled.
The quote that's on the wall in my gym is from the film.
It says, I'd rather be dead than average.
And that was...
Something that he couldn't live without being whatever his ideal for success was.
joe rogan
And the problem, I think, that you really just nailed, though, is that they don't know what that is.
What's that goal?
What is that?
And if they don't ever reach it, they never feel satisfied.
chris bell
And the thing is that he, despite all that, he's like the nicest, like, coolest guy in the world and would have our backs, you know, on everything.
joe rogan
Did he have good friends?
mark bell
He's crazy emotional.
chris bell
Here's what everybody has, right?
They have good friends, and then they get into drugs, and then they don't have good friends, you know?
So you have a lot of enabling people, a lot of people that will allow you to keep doing what you're doing, a lot of people that will put up with your bullshit.
My father wasn't one of them.
My father was somebody who put his foot down and was helping him get clean.
mark bell
Weren't able to catch it in time, you know, and so people are listening to this I think it's really important to talk about these issues It's just you know people want to always try to push these issues under the rug So if you know someone who's struggling try to your best to reach out to them and just see if you can get to the bottom of the problem I know it's the worst fucking thing in the world to try to approach somebody about it But see if you know whatever you think is a good way of going about doing it and try to reach out to the person because You don't know how much longer will be here for It's just so hard to get people to listen to you, though, isn't it?
It's brutal.
chris bell
It is.
Yeah, but you know when you've been through it, it becomes different.
joe rogan
Right.
chris bell
It completely becomes different.
For you.
So I went through it.
I ended up, it's kind of crazy, halfway through this film that I was making, relapsing, and started popping Xanax and all sorts of other stuff.
joe rogan
Halfway through the film on prescription drugs, you start relapsing.
chris bell
Yes.
unidentified
Wow.
mark bell
Yeah, what the fuck, right?
chris bell
How the fuck did that happen?
joe rogan
When did you do this film?
How long ago?
chris bell
We finished it for Tribeca Film Festival, so that was like in May.
joe rogan
So you relapsed like a year ago.
chris bell
A year and sober.
Five months ago.
unidentified
Fuck.
chris bell
And I was popping Xanax and stuff like that.
Because, you know, it's like filmmaking is not an easy business.
You know, like if you didn't have all this other stuff going on and you were just a comic and you were trying to make it, it's brutal.
You know, the ups and downs.
Oh, I have an audition for something.
mark bell
Yeah, I've seen other people be successful, can really beat you down.
chris bell
I've seen other people fly by you that were like way behind you.
You know, all these different things that go on in your head.
joe rogan
So you feel like that about the documentary world?
There's like people that were making some documentaries that would do really well and you get bummed out?
chris bell
I wouldn't really get bummed out so much about other people.
I try to always stay in my own lane and think about myself, but I get more bummed out putting the pressure on myself.
joe rogan
Right.
So you see someone do real well, and you go, God damn it, why am I not doing really well?
chris bell
I could have done that.
Or somebody makes a documentary, and then they're off to the races doing all these big movies.
You're like, why didn't somebody pick me for that?
My documentary did way better than that documentary.
Those kind of things in your eyes.
But just the film world in general, Hollywood in general...
It gave me this feeling of inadequacy.
It gave me a feeling like I wasn't good enough.
Like, everything I did, I wasn't making it.
And people go, well, you did this hit movie.
It was really big.
And I'm like, yeah, but it didn't really make money at the box office.
Like, it did really...
mark bell
Which is not your original intent.
Like, when you made the film, you said, I want a lot of people to see the movie.
joe rogan
What's interesting is your language, when you say it gave you this feeling of inadequacy, but isn't that maybe the way you approached it yourself?
I mean, it seems like it's not giving you anything, right?
mark bell
Yeah, make that up in its own head.
chris bell
Yeah, make it up in your own head.
You feel inadequate.
You feel like, oh man, you know, and as many people tell you that you do good, You're still looking for like you said you're still searching for that thing so for me it was all about finding balance so when I Relapsed and realized I need help.
That's I reached out I didn't really reach out like but once I once I knew I needed help and everybody sort of figured me out my girlfriend Helped me a lot with it.
She sort of found me really fucked up one day Drunk and on on Xanax in the middle of the night and She called me.
mark bell
I don't really answer my phone a whole lot.
I don't respond to it a ton.
It rings a lot, and I get a lot of messages and shit, so I'm not really on my phone that much for that kind of stuff.
But I noticed the number was odd, and it was probably about midnight, so I was like...
That just seems kind of weird.
That's not like a telemarketer, you know, like calling at like 7 p.m.
or something.
This is something different.
And for whatever reason, I didn't have her number in my phone.
But it was from like Pennsylvania or something, I think, where she's originally from.
And it was Lauren.
And she said, you know, your brother is blah, blah, blah.
And I couldn't understand what she was saying because she was very, very sad and crying and stuff.
And so I asked her to kind of calm down and...
Kind of assess the situation a little bit.
She said, I think your brother's in his apartment.
I think he's passed out.
I said, well, you're the only one there.
You got to kind of go in and, you know, see what's, you know, she's like, I don't know how I'm going to find him.
And I was kind of like, whoa, like, what do you mean you don't know how you're going to find him?
Because I didn't know how bad the situation was or how serious it was.
I did know his friend.
His friend called me a few times and said, hey, man, you know, your brother's, you know, he's fucking up with some pills and doing this and that here and there.
Then I would communicate with that person again, and I'd find out that he's doing a little bit better, and then he'd be doing a little bit worse.
So it kind of went back and forth, and having my other brother die from it, I was like, fuck, man, I don't have the energy to fucking go down that road again.
I want to reach out to him.
I want to talk to him.
I do love him.
He's a hero and an idol to me in a lot of ways.
And I really did want to reach out to him, but I just didn't know how to fucking bring it up.
You know, he was really suffering and I didn't really realize how bad it was until she called.
And then I got off the phone with her.
I just said, you know, take his keys away.
Make sure he's okay.
Talk to my wife.
My wife's fucking awesome.
She's super supportive about all this kind of stuff.
And she said, we need to fly him here tomorrow.
You know and I said well, let's fly Lauren here to make sure he gets on the fucking flight that he's not Drinking or taking pills or doing something crazy and he misses his flight So we flew both of them up real but able to get him some treatment where he was able to Work on starting to recover It's a nasty path, you know You know, it's...
joe rogan
Did you document this in the film?
chris bell
I didn't document all the stuff that went down leading up to it, but yeah, it's in the film.
We talk about it for sure.
But like I said, it's a nasty path that was like a snowball effect.
You know what I mean?
And looking at it now, it's like...
I mean, it's not funny ever, but it's like laughable.
Like, what the fuck was I thinking?
You know, I can see it now from a different point of view.
joe rogan
So, you said you relapsed on Xanax.
So, was it just you were having anxiety?
chris bell
No.
I mean, you don't have anxiety.
It's just...
Whatever.
You just like to take it because you can't sleep.
My mind is always racing.
There's always another idea in the head.
I can't go to sleep.
I've tried the float chambers.
I've tried stuff like that.
I can't even get my mind to stop racing.
Thinking a lot of times, or so I thought.
So I always thought that I needed something, whether it was alcohol, whether it was pills, and I realized through the whole journey that all I really needed was to believe in myself again, to believe in who I really was and what I started doing when I started out trying to make films in the first place and tell the truth and be honest.
The problem was I couldn't be honest with myself.
I had a real hard time being honest with myself, and that's what recovery has brought to me.
It's amazing to be able to say...
mark bell
I don't know how much he's allowed to talk about the film, but I'll talk about it a little bit.
Yeah, he basically interviewed somebody for the film that ended up helping him.
He interviewed this guy, Richard Tate, who owns a treatment center in Malibu.
For his film, he researched it and they had like a 95% success rate with people that were there, I think for over 60 days or something like that, correct?
90 days.
90 days.
And he was like, what the fuck?
95% success rate?
That's crazy.
chris bell
The whole time I'm interviewing the guy, I'm like, I wish I could come here.
I wish I could come here.
Because I knew that I still had a problem with alcohol.
And I wasn't really doing Xanax at the time.
mark bell
He researched it for himself.
He's trying to tell himself he's researching it for the film.
But he's researching it for himself.
chris bell
It's a weird thing, man.
joe rogan
Did you go to this place?
chris bell
Yeah, I ended up going to Cliffside Malibu for 90 days.
joe rogan
So what do they do that's so successful?
chris bell
They just change your life about everything.
mark bell
Well, Richard Tate was a wild man himself, and he came from that background.
chris bell
Yeah, here's the thing.
So when you have a guy tell you, listen, 14 years ago, I was on my couch smoking crack with a hooker on each side.
I was oiled up for some reason, smoking cigars, smoking crack, you know, and...
joe rogan
Sounds like a good time.
chris bell
Yeah, yeah, and he said, you know, and he tells you...
Eight of his friends come and knock on his door and try to get him sober, and he slams the door in his face.
And then he's like, you know what?
That was rude.
He goes back and opens the door.
He goes, what day is it?
And they said, it's Friday.
He goes, come back on a Monday.
He slams the door.
They come back on Monday.
He was at that point just done doing drugs and alcohol, and they took him to treatment.
I'm like, man, if this guy can get better.
I wasn't that bad.
I didn't have hookers.
At least I didn't have hookers.
joe rogan
What did they do for you, specifically?
What is the process of getting someone to get 95% of people staying clean?
chris bell
The first part is separation from the problem.
Just being away from drugs and alcohol.
I think AA is a great thing, but for me, if I would have went to an AA meeting, I would have went home and drank that night.
For me, I needed to be in a place where I couldn't get drugs or alcohol.
I needed to be isolated from it for like a little while to get away from it.
The main thing was therapy.
It's all therapeutic.
It's all like group therapy.
You go sit in a group with people that are fucked up and you talk about your problems.
And in a good facility, they had such good counselors there that these people, it was more about being loved again, feeling part of your...
And I was on my own.
I moved to LA when I was 19 years old from New York.
My whole family was back east.
My brother moved out here eventually.
My older brother moved out here eventually.
And eventually my parents moved out here.
mark bell
And we do have a close family, too.
chris bell
We have a really close family.
So to be away from your family and this whole time and not feel like any love from the world is a tough thing.
A lot of people don't really express that.
It might sound kind of wimpy or something like that, but it's true.
There was no feeling of comfort or safety or security in anything that I did.
So regaining that through being around people with like-minded experiences.
And there's just some counselors there that will break you.
There's people that go there, hardcore heroin addicts, that will sit there in group therapy and not want to be Analyzed you know and these guys will break them down until they're you know punching pillows and shit saying this is my father and that you fucking piece of shit, you know That's how it goes.
joe rogan
It's like it's a really intense Therapeutic thing that allows you To see yourself in a different way and it's a very humbling the number one thing is I The number one thing that I had on my side was a desperation to get better It was one of the fucked-up parts of the film bigger stronger faster was your dad saying they knew that your older brother was gonna die that way and To go through that and then to have your brother die that way and then for you to get hooked on pills yourself That
chris bell
that had to been a helpless feeling well, that's why I felt like I couldn't tell anybody So I went to my parents and I was doing an interview with them and I really wanted to tell them But I was like, you know, I don't know if I can tell them so early on in the movie Before I before I had relapsed I said hey listen, I had a problem with this My mom cries and she's like well, why didn't you tell me?
I'm like how am I supposed to tell you you just lost a son?
joe rogan
I'm gonna tell you like I'm gonna go you know next or you're gonna worry about me Because I'm not there, you know what is if you can Try to describe what is the feeling like when you want to take that shit when you want to take a pain pill like what what is There's no feeling.
chris bell
It's not the addict's fault.
You might have friends or people that you know that, why don't they just wake up and stop drinking?
Well, you can't.
It's not your fault anymore.
It's a pathway, a neurological pathway.
You just talked about before Brock Lesnar, somebody got a hold of him and built those punches and kicks into his system, right?
It becomes ingrained and built in your system.
It becomes a neurological pathway in your brain, and you tend to habituate the things that make you feel good.
You know, so that's just something that an addict will do more so than other people.
joe rogan
You're saying that like this is a very distinct black and white thing that it's not the addict's fault, but the addict has to be sober first before they can get fucked up, right?
So you're sober.
unidentified
Sure.
joe rogan
So if you're sober, you have a conscious mind, you're aware of your actions, and you decide to take a pain pill.
How is that not the addict's fault?
chris bell
If you're already addicted, it's an automatic thing.
Your body feels like it needs it.
joe rogan
Okay, but you weren't addicted, right?
mark bell
Maybe because you never got actual treatment.
chris bell
How do you get addicted in the first place?
joe rogan
No, but you weren't, because you were off of it for a long time, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
So it wasn't like you had this mad need, like your bones were aching, you had to get that...
mark bell
I think you switched to alcohol, I think is kind of the part that you're...
chris bell
Yeah, I switched to alcohol, like instead of having pills.
So I always had something.
joe rogan
So you get the double hip replacement surgery.
So you did your documentary, Bigger, Stronger, Faster, it was 2008?
unidentified
Yeah.
mark bell
Right.
joe rogan
So, right after that, 2009?
When are you talking about getting your hip replaced?
Yeah, 2009. Okay, six years ago.
And then, you get off the shit.
chris bell
2007, I actually got it replaced.
I got it done before we finished the movie.
joe rogan
Okay, okay.
Oh, you did?
chris bell
2007. But then, I didn't mention this.
So then, I had my hip.
I said they had complications.
They had to redo my hip.
So, two years later, they redid it in 2009. They redid my right hip.
They completely took it out and put it back together.
Oh my god.
joe rogan
They unscrew it?
chris bell
Well, there was some messed up parts in there.
joe rogan
Did they have to unscrew that thing that digs into the bone?
chris bell
I think they left that.
I think that was fine.
I think it's the other part that was messed up.
And then a month after I had that hip surgery, my brother died.
It's just tough.
You can power through that stuff if you have the tools, but I didn't have any tools to stay sober.
joe rogan
Let me ask you this.
You get the hip replacement surgery the first time, then you get hooked on pills, then you get off pills, but two years later, they want to reopen you up.
Do you take pills again?
chris bell
Yeah, I got back on pills.
For how long?
About another two years.
And then what happened was...
joe rogan
Two fucking years?
chris bell
Yeah.
So then I went back to try to get off the pills.
I knew I needed to get off the pills.
joe rogan
How long were you on them for the first time?
The first time when you had the first problem?
chris bell
I was on them for like a year, and then I got off of them.
joe rogan
For how long?
chris bell
But I only got off them for a couple months, and I had the second surgery again.
So you had just gotten off of them.
Yeah, it's a really up and down thing.
So there's a drug called Suboxone, and Suboxone sort of mimics the way that a painkiller will feel in your body, but it doesn't get you high.
It'll just basically make you not feel sick.
So that's the biggest problem is withdrawals.
You feel so bad.
It's like the flu times 100. So the thing is that when you're coming off them and you want to get on Suboxone, so my insurance would cover all the pills.
So there was 10 bucks a pop, you know, 10 bucks for like 180 pills of Percocet or Vicodin or whatever the drug I was taking.
When I wanted to get off of them, I had to consult with a doctor every month for $250 and I had to pay about $225 to $250 for the drug and insurance doesn't cover any of that.
They don't cover you getting better.
They only cover you doing the dangerous drugs.
So that's another brutal thing on top of it, you know, and then suboxone.
joe rogan
What do you think that is?
Do you think that's built into the system to make sure that they sell more drugs?
chris bell
It's built into the system so that you don't...
joe rogan
That's a scary thought if that's true.
chris bell
Yeah.
I mean, like, if you look at it, if you want to, it's like, you know, like, yes, if you take painkillers, it's your fault for getting addicted, kind of.
But if you actually look at the history of Oxycontin, that drug was designed to hook people on drugs.
What's basically very similar to heroin.
The drug company that made it, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, they lied.
They made $8 billion on this drug.
$8 billion.
And then they had to pay a fine of $2 billion.
So look at the profits.
Still $6 billion.
They call it the price of doing business.
So they lied and said that you will not get addicted using this drug.
Well, they got the whole country addicted to this drug.
You know?
Those people should all be in prison.
They got the whole country addicted to a drug that's made for, like, severe cancer patients, you know?
And that kind of stuff is just criminal.
And people go like, oh, well, you should have known.
It's like, most people don't know.
That's why we're making a movie, to have awareness for these things.
joe rogan
So this is really fresh for you.
This is not something that you have overcome a long time ago.
chris bell
No.
I still go to meetings and I still stay up on it.
I think every day you need to remind yourself that you can go back there.
joe rogan
So you're 100% sober now.
You don't fuck with anything.
chris bell
No, nothing.
unidentified
Nothing.
joe rogan
So, the feeling that you get, like, when you have this relapse with Xanax, the feeling that you get, is it just, do you just feel helpless?
Like, do you feel just pulled to it?
Like, what's pulling you from?
chris bell
Yeah, like, for example, so Xanax was a drug that would help me.
I would drink a lot, you know, like I wasn't because I was an addict.
mark bell
He'd kind of drink to the point where, you know, it was compromising the next day type of thing, and then also you ended up in the hospital a couple times from drinking.
I ended up with some serious bouts of drinking, but it wasn't like...
chris bell
Nobody really knows this, but I went to the urgent care or emergency room, I think 10 times within a matter of like 20 days.
joe rogan
What?
chris bell
Yeah, because I'd go to urgent care and I'd go get Xanax because I had hangovers so bad because I would drink so much, you know, and it was continuous like every day.
So for me, it became a labor.
It became like every day I was like, you know, this cat chasing his tail like I would never get better or feel better.
mark bell
At first you weren't drinking that often though, right?
It was like every three days or every seven days.
chris bell
We talked about it, powerlifting and everything like that.
We were sports guys.
We were never into drinking.
We were never into drugs.
That wasn't something even on my radar when I did Bigger, Stronger, Faster.
I would drink here and there, but I should have known back then because when I did drink, it was like binge drinking, and that's when you know That you'll probably have a problem somewhere down the road.
If you're the guy that drinks once a month, but you get completely hammered, you know that you might have a problem.
I wasn't the guy that could ever put it down.
joe rogan
So what does it feel like to make a documentary about prescription drugs while you're hooked on prescription drugs?
chris bell
Guilty.
Yeah, really guilty the whole time.
I had raised the money to do it.
I was moving forward with it.
I had a bunch of people involved, so I'm like, who the fuck do I tell?
You know, you're in this weird situation where you're like, I'm a hypocrite, but I can't stop.
Would I just stop doing this and pull the plug?
And I have people working for me, people editing the film.
My partner, Greg Young, was there since the very beginning.
And he was, you know, he knew what was going on, but he didn't know.
What is he going to do?
Like pull the plug on his own job?
And like he didn't, he cared about me and wanted to help me, but he didn't know how to help me.
joe rogan
So how much of a part of the film does this become?
chris bell
It's sort of towards the end.
It's sort of like in the third act of the film.
We sort of discuss it and go into it.
We didn't go into a whole lot about recovery because the movie isn't really about that.
But by the end of the movie, you know I'm okay.
joe rogan
But it took you a whole quarter.
A whole quarter of a year.
You know, that's crazy.
They take you away from society for a quarter.
Very few people can afford to do that.
chris bell
No, it's crazy, man.
What happened was, I feel this.
I feel almost everybody.
If they could unplug from their life for like 30 days, even like 10 days.
Like, you know, people go on vacation.
They still bring their phone.
There's not a lot of people around them that they know.
And it's just to be in that environment of solitude is just like an amazing feeling.
mark bell
Go dark.
chris bell
Yeah, yeah, going dark.
What happened to me was in the third, so you asked how they helped me, and I could tell you that I think part of it, a big, huge part of it, they talk about like AA and all these other programs and everything, everybody talks about a spiritual awakening.
So like the third day that I was in rehab, I went and took a shower, and it was like, I don't know, four o'clock in the morning or something.
I couldn't even, couldn't sleep or anything, and I went in the shower and I just cried for like three hours.
The fuck am I doing?
I went to USC film school.
I did all the right things.
I trained my whole life.
I did everything the right way and I'm fucking blowing it.
And that's what got to me.
It was myself that got to me.
mark bell
It wasn't it wasn't anybody else really, you know another thing that happened to him in treatment was Cliffside Malibu is beautiful multi-million dollar facility.
It's a It's really nice.
It's in fucking Malibu, California, which is beautiful But I think once you were there for like two weeks they took you away from there and threw in some shithole, right?
chris bell
Yeah, what happened was so I was there for I personally think it's all part of the plan, but yeah, I was there for ten days and and after ten days I was being helped by the facility.
They were funding it.
They were helping me.
So since they were helping me out because I was part of this movie and the guy just had compassion for me, Richard Tate, and wanted to see me get better.
mark bell
The guy was suspicious that you had a problem when you came there the first time to interview him anyway, right?
chris bell
Exactly.
And so he said to me, we can't afford to keep you here anymore.
It's 60 grand a month to go to that place.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
chris bell
A lot of insurance covers it, you know, and different things like that.
mark bell
What?
joe rogan
Insurance covers that?
chris bell
Yep.
Depends on your insurance.
joe rogan
It's a double scam.
So it's the fucking insurance covers that.
They make a little...
Yeah.
chris bell
It's all part of the system.
It's all part of the system.
joe rogan
What do you mean suboxone?
Oh, I don't have any money for that.
unidentified
Yeah.
chris bell
Sorry, bro.
joe rogan
It's hard to come up with that money.
I don't have any money for that.
unidentified
Sorry.
chris bell
Yeah, but they have the money for the treatment and everything.
joe rogan
So they throw you in this place that's not so good?
chris bell
So what happened was I went to a place called Claire Foundation.
It's in Santa Monica and it's like very industrial.
It's a...
It's a government-run rehab facility.
I mean, I walked in there and saw this guy with no teeth, and he's like scratching his nuts, and he's like, you're not gonna like it in here!
The pillows are really tough!
And I walk in, and I'm like, where the fuck do you sleep in here?
And I'm looking, and there's all these bunk beds.
I'm like, well, where's my room?
And I'm like, no, there is no room.
It's one big room with 40 bunk beds and 40 grown men and 39 of them just got out of jail and you're the only one that's normal.
Kind of.
You know, it was sort of a facility like that where it was just something out of like one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
And when they put me in there, that was like...
Fuck this, man.
I know a lot of addicts will say, I'm not like that.
This was something that was so far-fetched from where I would ever find myself in my life.
So far down that I was like, fuck this.
I'm getting out of here and this is it.
I'm never going to drink or do a drug again.
Hopefully you can stick to that.
But I don't have any urges to anymore.
But it was that facility that...
That really cemented it.
joe rogan
So that's only 10 days.
chris bell
I was in that facility for 19 days.
joe rogan
But 10 days in?
10 days in, and then 19 days there.
chris bell
And then when they had room for me back at Cliffside, I ended up going back to Malibu and living out the rest of it in Malibu.
And what was really nice about that was I was still able to work.
So I was going to treatment every day for three hours in the morning, and then I would drive to, like, LA, and I would work on the movie the rest of the time.
It's pretty twisted, but it all worked out.
joe rogan
But you pretty much feel like you were done after you went to that shithole, right?
chris bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
But you just felt like you needed more treatment to cement it?
What's the thought process?
chris bell
It's hard to explain to people that haven't been through it.
People have been through it.
They know what it's like.
But addiction is one of the most powerful forces in this universe.
It's something that...
Drives people every day to do bad shit, you know, and continued support, right?
Yeah, you basically just need yeah, you know basically like a lot of it's set off by trauma like things that happened in your life a lot of it's You know, but I didn't really have that like one main trauma That like set it off people go.
Oh your brother died.
I think well that was it wasn't as traumatic as it sounds like of course it's Traumatic, but but I was I was doing stuff before that so what was before that?
I don't even know maybe the hip surgery didn't seem to me I think a big part of it for me Was having the hip surgery took away something that I really loved which was like lifting You know something that like if you couldn't fight anymore you'd fucking hate it You know you'd be like bummed grumpy because it was a part of you just in your everyday life and now it was gone and Yeah, and it might sound stupid, but it's part of it's something that you do, you know?
joe rogan
Right.
chris bell
If I said, hey, Joe, you know what?
No more fighting, bro.
You're done.
joe rogan
So you just felt like just a giant loss.
You just felt like something was missing from your life, and that's what led you to just start getting fucked up.
chris bell
Yeah, fill it in with other stuff, you know?
joe rogan
Wow.
And you didn't think about maybe, like, trying something healthy and trying to, like, engineer your life in some sort of a way where you do something positive?
chris bell
Okay, so when you take away working out, what's healthy?
joe rogan
Well, you couldn't do any working out?
chris bell
Not, I mean, not a whole lot.
Not like I used to.
For how long?
I mean, just for like years, I just felt shitty.
You know, I just didn't feel good.
joe rogan
Because of the hips?
chris bell
Yeah.
mark bell
I think he also felt lonely, too.
I mean, you know, he didn't have her until kind of more recently.
And even though our family is in California, you know, I have two children.
So our parents moved to this side.
They were from New York originally.
They moved to California, but we all live in Northern California.
And when it came to, like, holidays and some different things, I mean, we'd call him and communicate with him a little bit here and there, but, you know, he kind of just seemed like he didn't give a fuck.
joe rogan
Are you still in upstate New York?
unidentified
No, he's in L.A. Yeah, he's in L.A., yeah.
mark bell
Yeah, so he was only in L.A., and we were in Sacramento, but it wasn't, you know, not that far.
It's a one-hour flight or whatever, but we'd communicate with him here and there and just, you know, even, like, on his birthday or something, call him or whatever the case might be, and then he'd come up to Sacramento or I'd come down here and We'd meet up with each other here or there, but we just didn't really realize how severe the situation was in terms of just his, like, mental health, you know?
It's just, like, not a dude thing to do.
Like, hey, man, how you doing?
Somebody doesn't just, like, pour out their fucking feelings.
They're like, oh, I'm doing good, you know?
And they just leave it at that, and you kind of move on to the next thing.
chris bell
I have people that are in my film that have relapsed.
You know since the film and I have people that I have a guy who I had to get a release for the film like somehow somebody slipped up and didn't didn't get a release for the film and Just like this is like two days ago.
I have a guy who who relapsed and he's all fucked up We're trying to get a release of the film.
We can't even get in touch with him So I did send somebody to his house and then we found out that he's Relapsed and he's a mess and he needs treatment, too.
So it's like this it's a dangerous powerful And part of the whole program is helping other people.
And I think it's beautiful.
It's like the thing now is like, how do I help other people?
How do I help?
People will listen to this show and they will hit me up on Facebook and they'll say, listen, man, I'm an alcoholic.
I'm a drug addict.
What do I do?
And the beauty is I don't have to do it for them.
I can just lead them in the right direction and help guide them to treatment and be there for them.
joe rogan
The people that run these treatment centers must feel like they're combating vampires or something.
It's like everyone is just getting bitten and sick.
It's incredible that there's numbers.
mark bell
Sick is a good way of putting it.
When somebody has something like that, you kind of feel like they have cancer or something and you don't know how to help them.
A lot of people just think, like, oh, I can help him.
Like, hey, if we go, like, work out together, if we hang out together, if we go eat together, like, that shit will be fun and, like, take his mind off it.
But it doesn't work that way.
chris bell
As soon as you get back home, you turn back into the vampire.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, and looking at it, people go, oh, it's not a sickness.
It's your own fucking fault.
It's your own personal...
Take all that away.
Well, what's going on?
Someone's got some shit in their veins that they need to keep pumping into their body.
It's like sick.
It is like sick.
unidentified
Yeah.
chris bell
You know what?
All those same people that say it's not a sickness, a lot of those people will fall into it, too.
joe rogan
Well, that's what's fucked up about it, how many people fall into it.
I've had a lot of friends get hooked on pills.
chris bell
Chris Lieben's in my movie.
joe rogan
Is he?
chris bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's had some issues.
chris bell
And he's had some issues recently.
I just spoke to him a couple days ago, and he's back on the Suboxone again.
And it's hard to get off of that shit.
Like, it's really hard to get off.
And it's like, Suboxone is a maintenance drug to keep him going back from doing the oxys.
But it's just something that he's going to have to battle and fight every day to get off.
joe rogan
What are the numbers?
Like, how many people in this country are addicted to pain pills?
chris bell
I think it's like 2 point something million.
unidentified
Jesus.
mark bell
Holy shit.
chris bell
Yeah.
mark bell
Well, and then just how many people are just on pills, period?
I mean, I know some people, obviously some of the pharmaceutical drugs can be beneficial.
chris bell
You want a number?
joe rogan
Hold on, that's a real number?
chris bell
You want a number?
joe rogan
Two million people are hooked on pain pills?
chris bell
Yeah.
mark bell
Fucking people walking around like zombies.
chris bell
Say you had an idea to help people.
joe rogan
Holy shit.
I'm just freaking out.
Give me a second here.
I can't believe that's real.
Two million people are hooked on that shit?
chris bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's like a national epidemic.
chris bell
Yeah, absolutely.
joe rogan
That's almost 1% of the population of the country.
chris bell
So last year, I think...
unidentified
What's the country?
joe rogan
300 million people?
mark bell
I think so, yeah.
joe rogan
That's...
God damn it.
2 million fucking people.
3 million people is 1%.
chris bell
I think it's in 2012, like...
That's crazy.
254 million prescriptions were written for Vicodin.
So that's enough to medicate 254 million prescriptions for Vicodin were written in like last year or the year before.
And that's enough drugs, that's enough painkillers to medicate every male or every adult person in America for a month.
What?
Yeah, 254 million.
Here's another step for you.
joe rogan
Hold on, 254 million prescriptions were filled?
Is that the idea?
chris bell
Yeah, for painkillers.
joe rogan
How does that even make sense?
Is that in a whole year?
chris bell
In a whole year because people get several.
joe rogan
Right, so they get like 90 pills or 100 pills.
chris bell
A lot of times it's like once a month.
mark bell
A lot of times with stuff like that you only get like 10 at a time though too.
chris bell
Well, here's another step for you.
If you wanted to do something about it, and you're a congressman, right?
And you're like, you know what?
Fuck it.
I'm going to do something about this epidemic.
And then there's $445,000 sitting on your table.
I can either take that money from lobbyists, because on average, that's how much money the lobbyists will take.
On average, there's a certain number of people in Congress and a certain amount of money that's spent.
So if you average it out, it comes out to over $400,000 per congressman that they use for their campaigns and everything else.
So you can either take that money and just say, you know what?
Everything's cool.
Or you can take that money and try to fight them and risk losing that money out of your campaign.
So all these special interests and all these different things that people talk about all the time.
Pharmaceuticals is one of the biggest ones.
They're one of the biggest contributors To these campaigns, so people don't really have a vested interest to stop it.
joe rogan
They have no interest, right?
I mean, that's an epidemic.
mark bell
And if they were trying to fight it, if they fought it with that little amount of money, it wouldn't even fucking work.
joe rogan
Well, what amount of money would be effective?
mark bell
Yeah, billions.
joe rogan
It seems like it's so intense.
What's really fucked up is this shit didn't even exist 50 years ago.
mark bell
Right.
joe rogan
That's what's really fucked up.
chris bell
It didn't really exist 20 years ago.
joe rogan
How nuts is that?
20 years ago, they did have Quaaludes.
That's the big Bill Cosby drug, right?
Isn't that his thing, Quaaludes?
Are they as addictive?
chris bell
They were a completely different thing from what I understand.
joe rogan
This is just a total new level of addictive properties, right?
chris bell
Yeah, so if you look at...
Drugs like morphine, right?
Morphine and heroin are like really closely related.
You can make one out of the other, right?
But on the other side, they now make them synthetically.
So this shit doesn't even require...
It's just chemical upon chemical upon chemical.
It doesn't require any sort of base.
You don't need opium to make it.
You need opium to make morphine, but you don't need it to make Oxycontin.
So they figured out a way to make these things synthetically so that they can just...
joe rogan
I don't understand that.
How does that work?
chris bell
I don't understand either.
joe rogan
Where are they getting the raw properties?
chris bell
They make it in a lab, but I don't know what the fuck they make it from, but they can't make something out of nothing.
mark bell
It's impossible, right?
joe rogan
That's why I always did understand.
Everyone said, well, yeah, Afghanistan produces 90-whatever percent of the world's opium and heroin.
But what about pills?
If it's synthetic opium or synthetic heroin, are they getting it from...
Afghanistan?
unidentified
Is that what they're doing?
I don't know.
chris bell
They figured out ways, special ways to make it out of other things that are like normal bases and change the chemical makeups of them somehow.
unidentified
We're too stupid for this conversation, aren't we?
chris bell
There's opiates.
People go, oh yeah, he's on opiates.
But that's not really true unless he's on morphine.
They're on opioids, which are synthetic.
mark bell
Kind of like steroids.
chris bell
Steroids, opioids, see all the bad oids?
joe rogan
All about the oids.
mark bell
Hemorrhoids.
joe rogan
How strange, man, that we live in a world where 200 million prescriptions for super highly addictive pain pills get prescribed in a year.
mark bell
And we're supposed to be like an educated country and stuff too.
chris bell
And you think that like that's an epidemic and you look at what we're prescribing to the kids.
We're giving kids, you know, Adderall, Ritalin, and that's, you know, five million prescriptions written for that for kids every year, you know.
It just keeps going up and up and up.
joe rogan
It seems so easy to get shit, too.
chris bell
I had a mom.
I have a mom in my film, and she has a daughter that has ADHD, and so she brings her to the, you know, psychiatrist or whatever, and they prescribe her ADHD pills, you know, Adderall, and the mom starts taking it.
And then the mom convinces the daughter she doesn't have ADHD and she shouldn't take it.
So then the mom starts taking the other kids.
There's three other kids.
She took all her kids to the doctor and got like four prescriptions every month and was taking like tons of Adderall.
She would take like ten a day.
joe rogan
I bet that bitch got a lot done.
chris bell
Yeah.
House is clean.
joe rogan
2010, every American adult, every four hours for one month.
jamie vernon
It says every prescription painkiller were prescribed to medicate every American adult for every four hours.
joe rogan
What do you mean?
What does that mean?
unidentified
You can't see that line.
joe rogan
Well, why don't you make it so I can see it?
unidentified
Oh, it's like, there's a text of it.
joe rogan
Okay, in 2010, enough prescription painkillers were prescribed to medicate every American adult every four hours for a month.
chris bell
I wasn't lying.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
Nine million people.
mark bell
So, abusers.
joe rogan
That's abusers.
That's 2010. Now, has it gotten better or worse in five years?
chris bell
Either way, that number's insane.
You know, when I talked about Purdue Pharmaceuticals and OxyContin and how that invaded America and all that stuff like that, if you look at it, the government at some certain point...
Got fed up with it and they said, listen, people are dying, right?
So it's cool that you guys are selling all these drugs and everything.
We'll take your lobby money, but people are dying.
So you can't take this drug.
You got to make a way that you can't take it and crush it up anymore and inject it or snort it or do other things with it recreationally.
So now if you crush Oxycontin, it turns into a gel.
It turns into like a mush.
So what they did, what happened After they figured out how you couldn't crush it and snort it anymore, once they did that, the sales dropped 80%.
mark bell
Holy fuck.
chris bell
So what does that tell you?
joe rogan
80%?
mark bell
It just shows you anything is possible with money, though.
How the fuck did they figure out a way that if you crush it up, it turns into a gel?
chris bell
I don't know.
mark bell
The fuck does that even mean?
joe rogan
It's amazing that someone talked them into doing that, and then they dropped 80% of their profits, and they stuck with it.
chris bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
They're probably fucking scrambling for studies to show that that gel is less effective.
chris bell
They find other...
joe rogan
We need to go back to the pills.
There's no other way.
chris bell
Here's the problem with a study, right?
So everybody wants to think that they read the studies and the studies are good and the studies are valid.
What happens is you need two studies that prove that your pill is more effective than a placebo.
Not more effective than anything that's on the market.
Just more effective than a placebo to get your drug passed.
So it costs a lot of money and a lot of money through the FDA and a lot of testing and all these things, but it's still not very hard to get a drug passed.
They just passed one called Zyhydro, and it's more powerful than OxyContin.
So now there's another drug on the market that's more powerful.
joe rogan
Who are these fucking monsters?
mark bell
How do we get some of that shit?
joe rogan
Who are these monsters that are making this stuff?
Does anybody need something stronger than OxyContin?
Is this some fucking rallying cry?
Stronger pain pills?
chris bell
You talk about medical marijuana.
I talked to a senator about medical marijuana.
He's like, medical marijuana is not killing anybody.
And I'm like, exactly.
So is that something that's good or bad?
And we look at it and go, man, it's crazy what we could do with a plant.
Compared to what's happening with these pills.
I know maybe one or two people that have ruined their life with pot just because they're fucking lazy.
But beyond that, beyond the scope of that, it seems to be very helpful for so many people.
joe rogan
Yeah, my point of view has always been that if you, pot ruins your life just because pot got there first.
Yeah, exactly.
Cheeseburgers or scratch tickets or fucking Jehovah's Witnesses, whoever gets to your house first.
chris bell
Look man, alcohol is the fucking worst.
Alcohol's the devil if you indulge in it.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Or, you know, you don't have the gene for it, or whatever it is, and it's not the worst.
You just have a drink, and then you don't want to have a drink anymore.
Like, I've never had the urge to drink.
I like a drink every now and then, but I've never had the urge.
chris bell
Yeah, he's the same way.
joe rogan
But I have friends who have it, and I see it.
It hits them, and it's like a blanket goes over their eyelids.
It's like they vanish.
It's like they're not there anymore.
And then some new person's there.
chris bell
And those are the people that you know are gonna eventually have a problem if they don't already.
joe rogan
If they don't already.
Yeah, I definitely have known a lot of alcoholics, and I know a lot of people, like more than half a dozen people whose lives have been wrecked by pills.
chris bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Usually a back injury, something along those lines, and then they take something, and the next thing you know, they can't get off it.
chris bell
It's very innocent.
It's not something that's...
But it turns somebody who can be a great person...
Into somebody who lies, cheats, and steals.
And that's what's wrong with it.
You know, the pills...
I always just used to think, like, well, if I could just be on these forever, because I still have a lot of pain in my back and my hips, and, like, not in the hips necessarily, but, like, in the lower back because of the hips were messed up and because my knees are messed up and still have a lot of pain.
But I know that what happens with the pain pills are it's diminishing returns.
Like, after a while, I'll need...
You know, for a while, I had to take 12...
Percocets a day.
joe rogan
What?
chris bell
Just to maintain the pain level that I used to.
joe rogan
How many hours do you awake?
chris bell
Yeah, like, well, you know what's the other thing?
Keeps you awake all day.
joe rogan
Percocets keep you awake?
unidentified
Yeah.
chris bell
Some people will go to sleep and some people stay awake all day.
I would stay awake all day.
But after a while, I got up to taking like 20, right?
joe rogan
20 a day?
chris bell
Okay, so I thought that was bad.
It's a PR. Yeah, it's a PR. My friend in the movie, I say to him, he was in the WWE, he's a wrestler, Luther Reigns.
I said, how many were you taking a day?
He goes, 90. And he would say, I'd get up in the morning, my girlfriend would lay them all out.
It'd be like, you know, 10 Vicodin, 10 Soma.
You know, so he was taking muscle relaxers, painkillers.
He said, I even take Viagra and Cialis every morning with my vitamins.
I'm like, what do you take that for?
He said, just to be ready.
You know, is this because...
joe rogan
Well, it sounds like an asshole.
chris bell
Well, we're...
He's the coolest fucking guy ever.
He's amazing.
mark bell
He's got some great stories.
joe rogan
Game pilled up with a giant hard dick.
unidentified
A vampire with a boner.
chris bell
At the time he lived in Phoenix.
And in Phoenix they have cameras, you know, on the freeway.
And he was on, you know, Soma makes you go to sleep.
It's a muscle relaxer, makes you go to sleep.
So he said he gets a ticket in the mail.
He's like, what the fuck is this ticket?
I never got a ticket.
joe rogan
Driving asleep?
chris bell
He opens up the ticket and there's a plane of his day.
He's fucking passed out.
And he's driving in his Corvette going, you know, 95 in a 65. Asleep.
Asleep.
He got the ticket.
joe rogan
Jesus fucking Christ!
mark bell
I wonder if he'd get a ticket for being asleep, dude.
joe rogan
Oh my God!
What's going on with him now?
chris bell
He had a massive, massive stroke.
He had a cardiac arrhythmia.
I don't know what you call that.
He had something wrong with his heart to begin with.
All the pills and sort of living the tough life because he did a lot of illegal drugs too.
He had a stroke.
Illegal drugs?
Like what?
He did like coke and everything else on top of it.
But what happens is he was getting them on the black market.
He used to get them a thousand at a time.
Big bottles.
A thousand?
joe rogan
Oh my god.
chris bell
He told me he had a customer that was buying them at $28,000 like a week.
unidentified
Wow.
chris bell
So he had to get massive, massive amounts.
So he was like dealing them and selling them.
joe rogan
$28,000 worth of pills in a week?
mark bell
You need a fucking forklift for that shit.
chris bell
Selling them to guys in the NFL. You know, selling them to the Phoenix Cardinals.
joe rogan
God, that's insane.
Wasn't Rush Limbaugh taking like 90 a day?
mark bell
Yeah, I think so, yeah.
chris bell
I was taking a lot.
Well, anyway, so my friend, Luther Raines, he ended up, he had a massive stroke.
And now he's actually, somehow, so when you have withdrawals from painkillers, it feels like you're gonna die.
And so when he had this stroke, they said, get his mother here.
He's not gonna make it through this and we can't pump him full of enough drugs for him to get through this.
He's probably not gonna make it.
Somehow, miraculously, the part of the Like 30% of his brain got killed during the stroke.
Part of the brain that got killed was the part that was responsible for feeling withdrawals.
So somehow he fucking dodged a bullet.
We call him the bulletproof bad boy.
Somehow he dodged a bullet.
He's alive.
joe rogan
He has no more hangovers.
chris bell
He's completely sober.
And he goes around and talks to kids and churches and things like that.
So he's doing great work.
joe rogan
So he lost 30% of his brain.
chris bell
Yeah, but somehow he's still cognitive.
He's still there.
He's jacked.
joe rogan
So he's on steroids.
chris bell
Yeah.
joe rogan
Jesus fucking Christ.
chris bell
I don't know.
joe rogan
Maybe.
chris bell
He might be.
mark bell
He's got to be on something, yeah.
joe rogan
So he's off the pain pills, on steroids, and helping out kids.
chris bell
Yeah, there you go.
joe rogan
What the fuck kind of a world we live in.
mark bell
I love that one day we were eating with him.
We were grabbing a burger or something.
He's got this fanny pack on.
He's, like, pulling stuff out.
He's trying to find his, like, money, you know?
He's like, I'll pay for it, bro.
And he's, like, moving in slow motion.
He's fucking drooling.
I'm like, this guy's amazing.
What is going on with this guy?
He's putting all these, like, different bottles of pills, like, on the table.
He's got, like, Viagra and a bunch of other shit.
joe rogan
He carries a bottle with him?
mark bell
Yeah, and then he put, like...
chris bell
In his fanny pack.
mark bell
Yeah, well, there's Bob Tulls, the many bottles.
And then he puts down, like, a little bag, like a clear bag of something, and he's, like...
He looks at it, and he grabs his money clip, and he puts his money on the table, and he looks at the clear bag, and he's like, whoops.
And he puts that bag...
Whatever the fuck that was.
That was, like...
That wasn't okay for him to put on the table...
Everything else was fine for some reason.
joe rogan
He's like, whoops.
mark bell
This big old stack of cash.
joe rogan
That's so crazy.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
mark bell
I was like, dude, what if you get your pills mixed up?
You're just running a ton of fucking Viagra and shit.
Maybe when he was passed out in the car, maybe he was driving with his dick.
joe rogan
Yeah, maybe his dick was so hard there was no blood in his brain.
chris bell
It's amazing now, though, because he was dating a porn star for a long time.
mark bell
He brought porn stars to your fucking movie premiere.
It was amazing.
chris bell
Bigger, stronger, faster.
He brought two porn stars.
mark bell
There was two chicks making out right behind my parents.
That was the weirdest thing I've ever seen in my life.
joe rogan
What a good guy.
mark bell
Oh, he's awesome.
He's a lot of fun.
chris bell
So then he'll be going, now that he's a born-again Christian, he'll be like telling me, look, bro, now that you're sober, now you need God.
And he'll be like, look at this chick's tits that just texted me.
It's like, he's such a walking contradiction.
He's hilarious.
joe rogan
So what, if anything, can be done about this crazy prescription drug crisis?
Because it seems like when you're talking about millions of people that are on it, what's the number?
8 million people abuse it every year?
8 million people, what is that?
Is that like 3% of the population of the country somewhere around there?
chris bell
That's pretty big.
What's the country?
joe rogan
300 million people, right?
So 9 would be 3%, right?
Jesus Christ!
8.76 million in 2010. So what is it?
mark bell
Oh, I wonder what percentage of people are adults.
joe rogan
It might literally be 3% of the population of the whole country is fucked up on prescription pain pills.
chris bell
Well, here's the deal, too.
We only represent 5% of the entire world's population.
We consume 75 to 85% of the world's prescription drugs.
That's a lot of drugs.
joe rogan
Well, that's because we're America and we do it big.
mark bell
Everything we do...
America.
chris bell
Yeah, so if you want to see what can be done about it, first of all, just ban advertising on TV for drugs because that just creates an environment where people go into the doctor and tell them what they have.
A doctor is a fucking doctor.
A doctor went to school.
All you did was watch a commercial that's advertised.
Do you have toenail fungus or...
All these stupid things.
So that creates a drug culture, an idea that there's a pill for everything.
I think that that idea is an idea that needs to just go away.
There is a pill for everything, but let's not think that way.
mark bell
Are you tired?
Are you sad?
chris bell
Yeah.
mark bell
Yeah, that's talking about me.
chris bell
That's one thing, but I think also education is the most important thing that we can have for anything, whether it's steroids, whether it's prescription drugs.
joe rogan
Yeah, but you say that.
You say that, but yet you were educated.
You knew all the pitfalls.
You had a brother who died of it.
You had been hooked on it yourself.
You've been doing a documentary about all the different components of addiction, of selling these pills, and yet you still got sucked into the web.
chris bell
Yeah, exactly.
That's how powerful it is.
joe rogan
That's so crazy, but you are about as educated about it as a person can be.
chris bell
I think now I am.
joe rogan
But back then when you were making the documentary, don't you think you were way more educated than the average person?
chris bell
Yeah, I was way more educated.
I was already susceptible to it.
I had already been in, you know what I mean?
So that's a tough thing.
It's like if you can get somebody before they ever experience it, that's definitely a good thing.
mark bell
Are there other warning signs maybe before you get to that point of reaching for a pill?
chris bell
What do you mean other warning sounds like?
mark bell
Like something that happens before you actually start to take pills or do drugs.
You know what I mean?
chris bell
Yeah, there's always sort of gateways, drinking and other things that make it...
joe rogan
Mark, what is it like for you to have two brothers that have these poles, but you don't?
mark bell
My family's fucked up.
joe rogan
But you, you know, I mean, you obviously like steroids, but...
mark bell
I love them, yeah.
They're great.
joe rogan
But you don't have, like, this self-destructive thing going on.
Like, you seem like a real generous guy.
mark bell
Right.
joe rogan
But you are a real generous guy.
Just the fact that you have this free gym and these free seminars, and I saw in the documentary that you really love working with kids and helping them out.
Like, what is it...
mark bell
Yeah, I think seeing my older brother, like, he just, like, his life was really hard, and he had to, like, evade stuff and lie and, like, go through all these crazy things all the time.
joe rogan
Because of the pills.
mark bell
Yeah, because of the pills, and it also put a lot of heartache and stuff on a lot of other people, so it sort of made me go the other direction.
You know, like, sometimes people have...
A parent that's an alcoholic or a parent that abuses them and it makes that person go the complete opposite way and then other times you have someone who has a parent that's an alcoholic and they end up becoming the same thing.
I think for me it just made me steer clear of that.
I just remember like seeing my brother like hide alcohol like in bushes and shit like that from my parents and lie to my parents and my parents are About as awesome of parents as you can have.
So I was always just like, man, that just seems like a lot of extra work to go through.
Even if you told them that you were having a drink, they probably wouldn't care.
Not like they would be like, hey, go for it, man.
They're not going to be like your buddy and have a drink with you.
But at the same time, I don't think our parents would really care, especially if they were in the house.
They'd probably be like, fuck it, man.
I'd rather have you doing it here safe.
I know you're not driving and causing a lot of other problems.
So I just saw a lot of baggage that came with all that shit.
joe rogan
And you didn't see that?
chris bell
I saw it.
I completely saw it.
Like I said, getting the hip replacement thing and getting hooked on pills in a way that seemed to me to be Organic.
My brother started taking pills because he got hurt in wrestling.
I don't know if he ever got a prescription for it.
They were just passed around.
They were passed around so much in wrestling that it was such a huge problem.
So for me, I was like, well, I'm taking them legitimately.
And it just was a snowball effect.
joe rogan
Legitimately, because the doctor tells you it's okay.
chris bell
Yeah, it was a real snowball effect.
joe rogan
What about you when you got hurt from the squat?
When you fucked up your ankle and your knee, when you dropped that weight?
mark bell
Yeah, I had to take a little bit of stuff, just because it was just unreasonable not to.
Like, I just physically could not get up off the couch.
joe rogan
You were just in agony.
mark bell
And then I just talked to one of my buddies at the gym.
I'm like, dude, like, I was like, I need some stuff so I can fucking move around.
joe rogan
So you're just getting it from the gym.
mark bell
Yeah, I'm in a lot of, that's where everything comes from.
joe rogan
That's so crazy.
You guys don't ever go to doctors.
chris bell
Well, I gotta say, like, when I talk about the hip surgery, I mean, it felt like my right side that they botched.
For two years, it felt like it was on fire, you know?
So, I mean, if you're on fire, you gotta put that out, right?
And then by the time you're ready to get off of it, you're just so addicted.
mark bell
I also told my friend, too, I was like, dude, I'm gonna come back to you for more.
Don't give me any more.
So give me an amount that you think is reasonable.
So what did you take?
I don't even know.
I don't even remember exactly what it was.
Whatever it was, it worked pretty good, though.
joe rogan
You just don't know.
Take two, or how many did you tell?
Ah, whatever.
mark bell
Yeah, just take some for a few.
Oh my God.
What also steered me clear of a lot of stuff, at least as I got a little bit older, is I met my wife.
We've been married for almost 15 years now, and been together for about 17 years.
And I have children, and I got a lot of responsibilities.
So even if I wanted to get fucked up, I don't have time to go do it, really.
joe rogan
Right.
mark bell
I got a lot of obligations.
joe rogan
Your brother didn't have any kids.
chris bell
No, he was married.
mark bell
He didn't have any kids.
joe rogan
You don't have any kids?
chris bell
Not our kids.
joe rogan
I wonder if that's it.
I wonder if it's the responsibility of having children.
mark bell
Yeah, it's having somebody else in my life that cares about me, somebody else that's supportive, and she's as much as part of the company's success as I am, so all that definitely plays into it.
joe rogan
That's such a scary number of the 8.76 million people that are abusing it and that being 2010 and not knowing what it is in 2015. That's terrifying to me.
That's crazy.
The idea that we could be in that state and it's sort of like something that flies under the radar for the most part unless you know somebody and then you think of that person as an isolated incident.
chris bell
You think that person's crazy or that person's doing it, like you said, doing it to themselves.
There is definitely personal responsibility in all of this, whatever it is.
But at a certain point, when things are so addictive that people don't really know about it or the doctors are just handing them out like crazy, for a while, a couple years ago, and they shut these all down, there were pill mills.
So they called them pill mills.
People would come from West Virginia, drive all the way down to Florida just to get pills.
So my friend that we were talking about before, Luther, he just said he'd have seven prescriptions.
And he's like, my whole day would be driving around a different...
Different pharmacies picking up different prescriptions.
Now they have this drug database that if you get a prescription from Walgreens, you can't go to Costco and get that prescription.
However, nobody really uses it.
So we have to get...
That's another way to get...
joe rogan
Nobody uses it.
chris bell
Yeah, like they have...
Plus, you know, the DEA regulates how many of these drugs are made.
And there's way more drugs made than are actually needed.
So a lot of those fall off the truck and, you know, different things happen where they're obtained.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Is that sort of built into the system?
chris bell
This is a massive, massive, massive money-making system and everybody's on the take.
unidentified
What the fuck?
mark bell
A lot of money being made.
joe rogan
And it's killing people, like vampires.
chris bell
Yeah, but we have a war on drugs.
mark bell
Are there really vampires?
joe rogan
That's a vampire to me.
chris bell
That's what I say in the movie, I say in the film, is there really a war on drugs?
mark bell
Like, no.
joe rogan
There's a war on some drugs.
That's what there's always been.
mark bell
Right.
chris bell
Yeah, while we had Nancy Reagan, you know, up there saying, you know, just say no, her husband's lifting the bans on big business that allowed the pharmaceutical companies to grow so big.
joe rogan
Wow, so this documentary, the newest one, what takes place in it that you found was shocking?
Going through this journey of putting together this documentary, was there anything that shocked you?
chris bell
Yeah, a lot of the numbers, but also I interviewed this woman, Gwen Olson.
Gwen Olson used to be a pharmaceutical sales rep that quit when her daughter killed herself on psych meds.
And her story's just insane.
And just meeting somebody who actually worked through the system to know that people in the pharmaceutical companies get pumped up when they have a new drug coming out that can actually fix the side effects of another drug they already have on the market.
And they're so excited because they know how much money they're going to make off of this.
It's just like sickening.
The whole thing is disgusting and sickening.
And it's not about health.
And that's what I really learned.
mark bell
Her story is terrifying.
That was fucking crazy.
joe rogan
How does that ever get stopped?
How is it such a machine that's making so many billions of dollars?
How do you stop it and how do you level it out?
chris bell
You know, I think people that stop taking money from pharmaceutical companies, that's a big thing, you know.
We have Donald Trump running and half the people are like, oh god, Donald Trump, but you know.
That's something that's not going to play into his decision making.
So if people like that, I'm not saying him specifically, but people like that to say, you know what, I'm not going to take their money.
I don't care what they say.
I'm not going to take...
You know, it's the same thing with oil or any of these other problems.
We...
The way we fix problems is not to bribe congressmen.
I think that that's a huge thing, and a huge thing is for regular, average, everyday citizens to say no to what's going on and stop and write to their congressmen and make us think.
People wanted medical marijuana.
Medical marijuana didn't come about because...
Some congressman said, you know what, I'm going to make this a long time.
It took a long time.
It took a massive movement of a massive amount of people to say, we want this.
And, you know, if you look at food, for example, everything's sort of going organic.
It's easier to find, as hard as it is sometimes to find good food, it's also a lot easier than it used to be.
So that's like Costco.
Costco is like all going organic now because people want it.
So if people want, you know, a drug free society, a society where their kids aren't dying and killing each other over drugs, a society where people can live in peace and harmony and not have their families ruined by these problems, they can they can basically start that front, you know, just like they did with all these other things.
It's a groundswell, you know, it's like something that has to start.
joe rogan
I just don't know how you would ever stop that amount of money.
It seems like the amount of money is so fucking terrifying and that these companies can just live with themselves.
It's so bizarre that they can justify the production of these fucking pills when they know that 9 million people, or whatever the number is, are abusing them just in this country alone.
chris bell
A massive amount of the drugs on the market, pharmaceuticals, they don't even work.
You know, they're not proven effective.
The psych meds that we put our kids on were never tested on kids.
So if it's not tested on a kid, don't give it to my kid.
That's what people need to start saying.
But people say, you know what?
It's easier for me to...
I put my kid on...
Everybody wants to make the exception.
Every parent I talk to says, yeah, yeah, but my kid's different because I put him on Adderall and now he's fine rather than to search out all the other options.
mark bell
I think people want to try to solve stuff with money or with a pill rather than with their time.
You know, that's a big issue.
If your child has trouble in school, maybe your kid just has trouble in school.
I fucking sucked in school.
Each person is going to have their own different thing.
They're going to be good and bad at it.
You don't necessarily need a pill to try to solve that problem all the time.
joe rogan
Yeah, and school is fucking gross.
The idea of sitting in a classroom, especially with some fucking teacher that's unmotivated.
You sit there and you're just supposed to absorb these numbers.
mark bell
For just fucking hours on end, day after day.
joe rogan
There's a lot of people that's just, they're not designed for that, yet they would thrive doing something in life.
They just have to figure out what that something is.
They can absolutely contribute and just not care about geometry or not care about history or not care about whatever it is that's uninspired.
Sometimes it's the teacher.
Some teachers get you excited about anything.
They're fun to be around.
chris bell
Yeah, creativity is more important than knowledge.
It's like Albert Einstein, right?
And that's like with him, you know, he always had trouble in school, learning disabled, diagnosed with all these learning disables, put in a class with the kids that eat glue and all that stuff.
Like, the typical case of that, you know, and he's become, you know, very successful off of passion.
joe rogan
If you just find what it is you're really good at.
People have different personalities and there's different occupations.
You just got to figure out what works for you.
All that aside, the sheer numbers of the drugs is what's freaking me out in this conversation.
This almost seems like some crazy plague that no one's talking about.
Like a disease.
A disease is just spreading across the country, and we're all kind of silent about it until it's too late, and there's no vaccine.
There's just nothing to fix it.
mark bell
Yeah, that's why he was so excited to come on the show, you know, to be able to talk about it and get more information out there.
And then when does your film come out, too?
chris bell
My film will come out in the fall.
We haven't announced a release date yet, but Samuel Goldwyn's the one that's putting it out, Samuel Goldwyn Company.
So it'll get a theatrical release and it'll get a big digital release, so we're excited about that.
joe rogan
Well, let me know when that happens and I'd be happy to tweet about it and let everybody know about it and put it up on Facebook and whatnot.
chris bell
Yeah, absolutely.
joe rogan
Whew, god damn.
So do you do these yourself?
Is this like your own project?
Do you storyboard them out?
chris bell
Yeah, it's a little crazy.
So I did Bigger Stronger.
I went to USC film school when I was trying to make films for years.
And we all struggle trying to...
You know, make it, you know, in these different endeavors, whether it be acting or filmmaking or anything.
So I was struggling for years, writing a bunch of scripts, getting really close.
You know how it is.
You're really close to getting something made.
And, you know, finally, after a while, like nothing was happening.
And I said, if anything in life is going to happen for me, I need to make it happen.
I can't be sitting here waiting for somebody to go, you know, I really like your script.
I'm going to make it or blah, blah, blah, blah.
So long story short, Bigger, Stronger, Faster was...
The brainchild of me and my partners Alex Buono and Tamsin Buono, they were a couple that had experience with documentaries and stuff like that.
And just through conversations with them, we're like, fuck it, let's go make this on our own.
So we raised all the money, we went out and we made it on our own.
The second film I did was called Trophy Kids.
I did that with Peter Berg, who was the executive producer of that.
And that was a film that, because of Bigger, Stronger, Faster, Pete's like, hey, I want to work with you.
So we did a movie about crazy sports parents that ended up on HBO. And that'll actually be available on demand November 17th.
It'll be coming out.
Go, you can watch Trophy Kids.
It's called Trophy Kids.
The extended version is the one we actually did.
Pete Berg used it as a part of his show called State of Play.
So it ended up serving two purposes.
We got distribution for a movie we thought was really cool, and he got a pilot for his TV show.
joe rogan
So that's available on HBO Go now?
Yeah.
chris bell
Trophy Kids is basically, it's so fucking weird.
We just came here and we have this tennis mom that's in Trophy Kids.
And she's like this really godly, you know, Jesus freak.
And we just saw her at the restaurant.
We just ate that before when we came here.
Haven't seen her in like two years since we did the movie.
But yeah, that film's really interesting because parents nowadays are really putting the pressure on their kids to succeed.
joe rogan
Well, I think they always have, but now there's so much money involved in sports.
chris bell
It's getting scary.
joe rogan
You look at kids like investments.
chris bell
And the kids aren't any good.
Bottom line is if a kid's good, they're going to make it.
No amount of investing in their quarterback skills is going to help some kids get maybe over that hump.
joe rogan
They're not going to beat Jon Jones.
chris bell
Yeah, in reality, Jon Jones is going to be Jon Jones coming out of the womb, you know, killing you.
joe rogan
Yeah, the thing about the trophy kids or the thing about parents that are really into that that's always disturbing is it seems like they're trying to live their lives, their failures, through the kid.
Like they want to sort of reimagine their own life and have some success through the kid's work.
chris bell
I have a basketball dad who's like, you know, he'll say, I say, do you think you're living vicariously through your son?
He's like, not vicariously, man, directly.
I'm in every shot, in each move, in each go, and that's why the referees make me want to pull my hair out, or in my case, make me pull their hair out.
It's like, you're listening to this going, you're fucking crazy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
chris bell
You're out of your mind.
And it's just normal behavior to these people.
It's just everyday behavior.
I said, how much did you spend on your son's basketball career?
And he goes, I'd say two Lamborghinis easy.
And who measures their wealth in Lamborghinis, first of all?
joe rogan
Yeah, that's fucking weird.
Did you see this story on Todd Marinovich?
chris bell
Yeah, absolutely.
joe rogan
Mark and Tom Mernovich, which is another similar story, but to the extreme.
chris bell
It's a great movie that ESPN did as part of 30 for 30, which I actually pitched them that.
I pitched them that before they did it, so that somebody else had pitched it, I guess, right around the same time, and they did a great job with it.
I thought it was awesome.
joe rogan
Yeah, and it's a very disturbing story, but it really highlights the problem because here you've got a guy who's an all-time great NFL strength and conditioning coach, understands the science of strength and conditioning and preparing someone for a sport almost better than anybody, and he has a kid.
And he says, you know what?
Listen, I've got a fucking project now.
I turned this kid in, and it worked.
But meanwhile, the kid didn't want to do it.
chris bell
And he became a heroin addict.
joe rogan
Yeah, he became an artist.
He's like, I don't want to do it!
And I think that's what happens when you push kids too much.
Like, a kid kind of has to find their own thing.
chris bell
You know how talented Todd Murnovich is?
I've spoken with him several times.
He's actually a really super cool guy.
He told me he went and played an arena football league game.
And he was withdrawing from heroin so bad that he had shit his pants.
And he had thrown 10 touchdown passes with shit in his pants.
That's how fucking good he is.
He's just like, it was just so easy for me.
He's like, football's easy, man.
It's just like numbers.
He was unbelievable.
mark bell
He won the Heisman Trophy, didn't he?
chris bell
No, he was not up for it, I think.
joe rogan
His dad is a fucking freak, man.
His dad did an amazing job with BJ Penn, too.
chris bell
Yeah, and his dad's a freak, man.
I think they've made amends with all that and stuff.
It's just hard to do it to your own kid.
You could do it to somebody else's kid, make him a fucking machine, but you're not the parent.
mark bell
You also don't know what your kid wants.
At a young age, I think Todd Marinovich said, I want to be in the NFL, but what kid doesn't say that, you know?
joe rogan
Right.
Well, not only that, what kid doesn't change his mind when he becomes 16 or 18?
chris bell
There's a certain side of it, too, though.
Look at the dad.
I was influenced heavily by my older brother.
I wanted to be in theater, drama.
I wanted to do these other things to consider, like, oh, you're a pansy.
What are you?
And so those things, through the culture I grew up in, was like, you're not tough if you do those things.
mark bell
Everything we did when we were kids was considered to be gay.
chris bell
Yeah, it was considered gay.
mark bell
Soccer's gay.
chris bell
Yeah, that's gay.
Soccer's gay.
When I had a passion to make films and do that stuff, it was sort of hard to tell everybody, like, hey man, I don't really care that much about lifting anymore, I want to go this way, or whatever.
That stuff's weird, you know?
joe rogan
Well, Bigger Stronger Faster is available.
It's been available for a long time.
Trophy Kid's available right now on HBO Go.
And when is this new one coming out?
chris bell
It should be out in the late fall.
We don't have a release date yet.
joe rogan
Late fall.
Prescription thugs.
I'll help you promote it.
I'll talk about it on Twitter.
And you can get a hold of Mark.
Mark Smelly Bell.
mark bell
On Instagram and Twitter.
joe rogan
On Twitter and Instagram.
And Big Strong Fast is Chris's handle.
Do you have an Instagram too?
chris bell
Yeah, I have Big Strong Fast.
joe rogan
Big Strong Fast on Instagram as well?
chris bell
Even though I'm not none of them anymore.
joe rogan
You're not big, strong, or fast.
mark bell
I shaved my balls for this interview, so I appreciate it.
joe rogan
I'm glad you do, though.
I shaved mine last night.
unidentified
Oh, good.
chris bell
Awesome.
joe rogan
It's a nice feeling.
All right.
I know that someone else in the room shares my shorn ball.
unidentified
All right.
joe rogan
Well, thank you, guys.
It was a fun conversation.
chris bell
I really appreciate it.
joe rogan
It's been very enlightening and terrifying in a lot of ways, too.
chris bell
Sure.
joe rogan
Thank you.
mark bell
Thank you.
joe rogan
See you guys tomorrow.
unidentified
Bye-bye.
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