Chael Sonnen and Joe Rogan debate UFC controversies, from Jon Jones’s estrogen blocker positives (pharmaceutical, not natural supplements) and suspected 2016 drug test evasion to Vandele Silva’s flawed suspension. They question USADA’s credibility, Frank Mir’s kangaroo meat theory, and athletic commissions’ abrupt TRT policies, arguing for better health safeguards. Sonnen’s Submission Underground event (July 17th) contrasts with other promotions by enforcing no-draw EBI rules, while Rogan ties gun control to mental health, criticizing the NRA’s stance and comparing Putin’s intimidation tactics to U.S. political corruption, ultimately framing modern issues as needing updated constitutional interpretations. [Automatically generated summary]
It's stronger than sugar, so don't put it in like you would do sugar, but it's completely natural, available everywhere, all sorts of health food stores and Whole Foods carries it.
It's just a plant-based sweetener.
Not sugar.
Not bad for you.
Doesn't give you the diabetes.
Doesn't fuck with you like aspartame does.
Some people don't like the taste of it, but I like it.
And the fact that I can get away with it, or I can drink it, and I know there's no sugar at all, I like it a lot.
I'll call him at 1 o'clock in the morning, and he just got off the phone.
And he's doing deals, and he's making things happen.
And he's obsessed with it.
I mean, that guy really does love the business of putting together fights.
We'll talk randomly, just in the middle of nowhere, about fights for hours.
He just loves to talk fights.
He really is a big fan and obsessed and not burnt out yet, which is amazing.
Because the amount of hours that guy puts in, and obviously he's making a shitload of fucking money, but it's still, the amount of hours that he puts in, you would think he would be cooked by now.
There's a name for this, and it's very common in Brazil, but we were going in traffic, and a guy cut in front of us, and then what they like to do is cut in front of you, slow down, and then you get boxed in, and they jump out and rob you.
So when the guy swerved over, we were in three lanes traffic, there was nobody else on the road, so when the guy cut in front of us, security knew what was going on, they pulled their gun out.
My wife was in the back, And she was sleeping.
She was laying down.
She had her feet across me.
And I woke her up.
And I said, he got his gun.
And there was an exit right up.
And the guy swerved over as quick as he cut in front of us, took the exit and was gone.
Nothing happened at all.
But in that moment, you find out when the guns come out, whatever macho-ness you think you're going to have in that situation, you don't have.
But your appearance on The Ultimate Fighter in Brazil with Vanderlei, too, it sort of changed.
Vanderlei's public opinion right now is very high.
People like him again.
And one of the reasons why they like him is because he got fucked over by the Nevada State Athletic Commission.
Hardcore.
They ban him for life from missing a drug test, which I just think is fucking tyranny.
I think that's straight bullshit.
I think that that is a fucking horrible miscarriage of justice.
If you think the guy was doing something, then you fine him and you ban him for the amount of time that you need to based on if he was guilty.
That's it.
You don't get to do life.
That's fucking crazy.
To be so callous, to show that you are a governing body and that you are taking care of the future of these athletes and supposedly protecting them from other athletes that are cheating or from whatever other nonsense, whatever other illegal activity might be going on, and to take that position of power and to Flagrantly abuse it in that way where you're openly showing them that you don't give a fuck about them.
You don't care about their career.
You don't care that it's the only way they have to make a living.
You're just going to ban them for life because they missed a drug test.
Look, I understand now, and I think a lot more of us do, too, that you have to get naked and do this.
You've got all these weird things going on.
At that time though, that's a weird thing.
Now we're in the back of the MGM Grand in a dirty closet and I'm presenting to a stranger who refuses, not only doesn't offer ID, refused to give ID, and I tried to take a picture of the son of a bitch and he told me I could not do that.
Why I backed down and didn't take...
I don't know.
I just accepted his authority, but in hindsight...
This had never been done before, and I'm kind of just going along, but I am caught off guard by this.
He then wants to stick a needle into your vein and draw blood.
I'm in a back, unsanitary room.
Anything I've ever learned in school, you don't do things with intravedous needles, you don't take...
This guy has no idea.
He's not in a lab coat, doesn't look the part at all.
So now I presented myself naked to him, and now he's got a needle in my vein, and I'm signing paperwork that I haven't had time to read.
So when he goes, now understand I speak English.
We at least speak the same language.
Also take into consideration the kind of guy, in fairness, the perfectly nice guy trying to feed his family, but in fairness, what kind of person says, I want to go around and collect people's pee?
It's It's an interesting kind of guy.
So I'm with an interesting character to start with.
Now I'm naked.
Now he's poking me with needles in a dirty backroom at the MGM Grand.
He leaves there and goes to test Vandalay.
Well, when you take everything I said into consideration, nobody knew about random testing.
Nobody knew about Assad.
Nobody knew anything about this at a competition.
So for Vandalay to go, hey, I don't know who you are.
You're not presenting ID. I don't fully understand you.
That's fair.
Yeah.
And Vandeley talked to him and said, you want me to sign a contract, get my attorney on the phone, show me what this thing says.
You know, he's kind of going through the – and the way the story was told is that Vandeley just turned and ran.
Well, that wasn't true.
He stood his ground and talked to this guy for a while.
He said, get on the phone with an attorney, prove to me who you are.
He did all of these things.
And then finally said, look, I've got to get to a press conference.
I'm leaving.
Got in his car and drove right to the MGM for the press conference.
I didn't have this backstory at the press conference, but that's what Vandele did.
So when the story came out that he turned and bolted out the back, that's not true.
He stood and talked to the guy.
He tried to reason with him.
Vandele's never told calmly his side of the story, and that's his side.
And that makes a lot of sense.
Even in today's standards, that makes sense.
But back then, when no one knew that drug testers could be showing up, and once they showed up that you needed to present yourself naked, that you needed to accept, you know, that they were going to draw blood, Yeah, man.
Vandley had the right to say, no, call my attorney.
We do know, but we don't know that some crazy internet troll can't pretend he's a USADA guy, show up, drag you into a bathroom, and take a picture of your dick.
I mean, if you're gonna have a mixed martial arts hall of fame and you don't include Vandele Silva, you got a bullshit mixed martial arts hall of fame.
I mean, you're talking about a guy who was the pride champion for a long time, you know, had incredible fights, legendary fights, and he's beloved.
My point was, when you and him went at it on The Ultimate Fighter, his fucking popularity crashed.
Because you made him look foolish.
He looked silly.
He wanted to start a fight with you.
He was trying to intimidate you and it wasn't working.
You were like, please don't touch me.
Please don't touch me.
And then finally you wind up taking him down.
And just like, Jesus Christ, what the fuck are we doing here?
Well, you approach this in a very calculated way, which is very rare for people when they're doing promotion for fights.
You know, there's shit talking, there's, you know, people say I'm the best ever, they brag, they do all sorts of different things, but it's very rare that they purposely put themselves in one position, and you did it on purpose, and you were the only guy that really had a vision.
You're like, look, everybody out here is doing it one way, but there's a way to do it completely over the top, You obviously had skills to back it up as well, but you were completely over the top, and you cherished the role.
When you took the microphone and went, Anderson Silva, you absolutely suck!
The whole place starts cheering.
It's like, he's going straight pro wrestling here.
But there's an odd psychology that goes along with fighting.
And one of the things that happens to people when they're preparing for a fight, and you could speak to this, is that there's sort of a compulsion or a feeling that you would like to avoid thinking about the fight as much as possible.
There's a natural sort of attraction to just putting it aside.
It's like, let's just not think about this.
Let's not think about this at all.
Let's only...
Focus on the task at hand, and when the task at hand is over, then we're going to take a break.
And when a fight is over and the relief has hit a guy, like to shift gears and go straight into promo mode, sometimes guys have done it And they've done it, and it comes off artificial, and it comes off clunky, and it actually hurts them more than it helps them.
Like, it seems like it takes a very specific type of personality to be able to pull that off correctly.
You then have Jon Jones, who is a real-life heel that wants to be loved, and for some reason the crowd used to be against him, and now they find out who he is, they love it.
And because of that, because of that, people are on his side.
Because people love winners.
They just do.
They love Mike Tyson when he was in his prime, and even when he came out of jail for alleged rape, he claims he never did it.
I don't know what happened, obviously.
But when he came out of jail, they were still rooting for him.
I mean, here's a guy who, if you have daughters, I have daughters, you know, if you have a girl and you hope, boy, the worst case scenario is my daughter finds herself in a position where a man wants to physically do something to her that she doesn't want.
People don't give a fuck.
They were like, Mike Tyson's back!
He's back, and he's looking angry, and he's ripped now.
He's been doing prison workouts.
There's something about a guy who's just a bad motherfucker that people love.
And there's a thing where they know that Daniel feels that.
There's a thing where they know that Daniel knows that John is the guy who won the first fight, That Jon is the legitimate linear champion, that Jon is the undefeated fighter, and literally the only undefeated fighter at that level.
He has one loss to Matt Hamill, which is a bullshit disqualification from a dumb fucking rule that shouldn't even be there.
But Jon Jones has that aura of invincibility about him.
Now, if he fought Rumble Johnson, Rumble Johnson head-kicked him into oblivion, and we see Jon with his toes curled, you know, lying on his back snoring, which absolutely can happen to any human, then the whole thing would change.
And I think the walls would come cumbling down, and if Jon did a press conference and said he was 30 days sober, they would start booing him.
I mean, the whole thing is fucked up in that that hasn't happened.
Because he's in real danger with Glover.
Like, that air of invincibility was taken away from him by Daniel.
Daniel beat him, and he broke him.
Daniel beat him down, took his back, choked him.
And you could see Rumble just having a real hard time with what was going on in that fight.
He had given his all in that first round.
He had hit Daniel with a bomb.
Like, literally took him off of his feet, sent him flying across the octagon.
But Daniel was tough as fuck.
He survived, he gutted it out, and then he imposed his superior wrestling and wound up winning.
So we lost a lot there because that fight was supposed to be Jon Jones and Rumble Johnson.
And then Jon Jones and Rumble Johnson would have been fucking epic.
And that would have been really interesting to see what happens when a guy who hits like Rumble connects with a guy like Jon.
And especially back then when we didn't know...
We knew that Josh Koscheck had beaten him, that he had a real hard time in the later rounds when he was competing at 170. But we also knew that there's no fucking way he should have been at 170. Even when he fought Vitor at 185, it was kind of the same thing.
He came out like a bat out of hell and then faded.
And then we assumed that he also missed 185 against Vitor.
And, you know, when you bring up Rumble, Rashad, who trained with both Jon Jones and Rumble, says Rumble beats him.
Now, Rumble only does have one problem.
He is a frontrunner, and he does fade a little bit, but that's a big storm that he brings.
RDA fights that way.
Amanda Nunes fights that way.
Her own teammates were saying, look, if she gets in the second, third round, I don't know about this, but she's going to bring a storm in that first round, and I don't think Misha can survive it.
I talked to Dustin Poirier.
He trains with Amanda, and he said that.
He goes, well, if he gets in the later round, her percentage goes down.
He said, but I think she's going to come out, she's going to put her foot on the gas, empty the tank in the first.
I went to that press conference, and there was a couple of takeaways.
And this is all speculative, but this doesn't make John innocent at all.
Well, John's guilty.
They've got the sample that's guilty, but his actions were not that of a guilty man.
Historically, guilty guys go bury their head in the sand.
They try to outrun this thing.
They get with their legal teams.
They show up at the hearing.
They hope for the best.
They get the worst and they deal with it.
John faced the music 12 hours later.
He came through the hotel.
His whole life's pulling apart right now.
I imagine he didn't even sleep that night.
He comes to the hotel with the fans.
He comes into the media.
PR101 says you read a script that was written for you and you exit the stage.
Instead, he read no script.
He took every question asked of him.
And that's just not what a guilty guy does.
Now, I understand that he's guilty in terms of USADA, but what we care about is intent.
Was he trying to get over on somebody?
Was he trying to hide something?
His actions would represent that he didn't.
But here was the problem with the press conference, Joe.
When you hold a press conference...
You have one goal in mind, which is to win over the media and that they say nice things about you before you do go home and bury your head in the sand.
Secondly, you want to break something.
You want to get something out there to get ahead of the story.
That's the whole reason you show up at these things.
The only card that he had to play is, what did you test positive for?
That was the only thing we didn't know.
And they refused to reveal it.
So that was a little bit weird.
And where I was sitting Because I've been in John's spot, and here was the thing that happened with me.
We're talking about John, this whole thing's going on with John, based on a test that took place on June 16th.
The reason that was relevant, when I went through my thing, I was, you know, he tested positive for some estrogen blockers.
Those don't really have anything to do with anything.
Turns out it's not like the old 1-800-requested test that costs $99, okay?
There's a reason this test is $40-plus grand.
But the thing that I'm wondering, does John have another test out there?
And if he does, it doesn't mean it's going to come back.
But that was the same spot I was in.
There was a shoe that could drop.
For me, it did.
For him, is there another test out there?
And if there's not, then USADA's got some explaining to do.
If you're telling me a guy that's got a track record that tested positive for cocaine, going to fight in the biggest fight of his career, and the last time you tested him was one month before the bout, then USADA's got some explaining to do.
But there's more to the story.
Now, do we hear it?
Does he pass?
Does he end up in the spot?
I don't know, but that's the piece that's still missing.
Well, there's one aspect to his test, his positive test, that people are saying could possibly play a factor, and it's supplements.
That he could possibly have been taking something that, like, this is what happened to Tim Means, this is what happened to Yoel Romero, where they get a supplement and it says it has a bunch of stuff on it.
It says you look through the ingredients, okay, creatine, B12, we're good, we're good.
But then, when you run it through a lab, it turns out there's a bunch of other stuff in there, too.
And that's why it's so effective, and that's why it sells.
So it is possible that that could be the case.
We don't know yet.
Because then, if that's the case, then John has to give them all the supplements that he was taking, and then they have to go to a store, buy them independently, test them, and verify that these ingredients were in not just the batch that he hands them, but also in other batches.
So it's not like he doctored it, threw some stuff in there.
I tested positive for an estrogen blocker, and it was that exact same thing.
They banned testosterone.
I went on something called HCG, which you'll return your testes back on.
And then you have to take clomiphene, which is, by definition, an estrogen blocker for that same thing, but it can also help...
Get your body going back on testosterone.
So they're banned.
John's got a problem.
Again, this comes back to the press conference.
He said, I have not taken anything new that I have not taken my entire career.
So somebody gave him a follow-up question.
He quickly realized what he just said.
And he goes, I do have a new supplement company.
I have taken some new supplements.
So he realized he put himself in one pool.
He needed to get out of it.
The supplement company then, who dropped him immediately, came out with a press release and said, do not put this on us.
We don't have anything to do with that, and we'll turn over any samples you want.
So that's the downside to holding a press conference, is if there's anything the commission hates...
It's when somebody isn't honest with them.
Well, if there's anything USADA hates, and it's what Lance Armstrong found out, it's when you deny the scientific accuracy of their test.
That's the risk with holding a press conference.
That's why most legal teams will tell you, go home, be quiet, write to remain silent, execute that, show up at your hearing date, get sworn in, say your piece, and then go on about your life.
How does John not have someone who realizes that you don't just have like a High-level athlete you have arguably the greatest light heavyweight of all time who has not in my opinion reached his potential yet I think John has Massive potential outside of what he's actually shown because when he moved to Albuquerque and we saw that he was training all the time and we saw the most recent footage before he fought Ovin St. Preux where he's powerlifting,
he looks fucking huge, he's dedicated, he's eating clean, he's making these Instagram videos of all this healthy food he's eating.
We're assuming he's getting the proper rest and all these other things.
We're assuming, okay, the wild man days are gone.
He's still got the wild man's mind, but now he's gonna approach this like a real competitive athlete.
Here's my question to you.
When someone is wild and talented and impulsive, just a wild motherfucker like Jon Jones is, is it even smart to reign that guy in?
Can it affect him?
I mean, is it a positive thing to reign him in?
Or is part of what he is and why he's so good and why he's willing to open with a flying knee on Shogun, their first fight, I mean, the first fight for a title at, what was he, 23?
Yeah, 24. He opens up with a flying knee on, you know, one of the legends of MMA, former Pride Champion or Pride Grand Prix Champion and UFC Champion as well.
You look at a guy like John and the way he competes and the way he's so creative and wild in there and impulsive.
I fully agree, and historically I could bring up athletes where that is true, where they go sober, where they go straight and narrow, when they find God, whatever these things are, and they change something, that, yeah, the dominoes start to fall.
The problem is when you've got a wild man like John...
He's in a box, and it's a loose box, and he's having some fun.
But usually that continues to escalate.
So he kind of needs to keep himself right in that framework.
And the bad news is, it usually just keeps pushing.
I think your assessment there is fair, and I think his stock went up that night.
But when I'm watching John, I'm going, okay, this is a rusty John.
This is slower.
The output's a little bit down.
The bottom line is, on a bad day, he left with a world championship.
That's how good he is.
The other side of John, you know, when you're talking about the car wrecks or when we're talking about the cocaine or what he's going through now, and again, this was my takeaway from the press conference, the biggest takeaway was John won't own anything.
And it's like, John, at some point, you can't do the routine about, I don't know why God put me in this spot.
I don't know why God put me in the spot.
Everything happens for a reason.
I'm going to come out better on the other side.
It's like, John, you're acting like you got diagnosed with diabetes or cancer or something, you know, and that you're the victim.
You were in a hit and run.
You did the hitting and you did the running.
That was your fault.
On the cocaine thing, you didn't say somebody slipped me a mickey.
You said I was at a party in Brazil.
I rolled up 100 and went down to the table.
That was your fault.
Now you're in a jam here for two banned substances, and you're still not taking a response, and you think God's put you in this spot.
It's like John said, you put yourself in this spot, and at some point, if you're the baddest dude in the world, and you are, you've got to man up on these things.
You've got to man up and go, hey, I'm guilty, and how exactly it happened, I'm going to try to figure that out.
This online because someone told me about it this weekend and I never got a chance to look at it.
Someone said that there are certain things in supplements that, you know, could have been sold by a company that would allow you to test positive for these very things.
See if you can find that in relationship to Jon Jones' test.
Because I remember someone talking about it and I said, I gotta remember to look this up.
Those two chemicals, they only exist in a pharmaceutical world, right?
If that guy, that massive mountain of muscle is not on steroids, send me that shit.
Send it to me.
Box it up.
I'll fucking, I'll promote it for a month for free.
If you can get that guy to look like that and test positive or test negative, like that guy's not on Anadrol 50 and fucking test sip-inate and every other fucking thing in the book and Gorilla Cum and whatever the fuck he's on.
They're confused on Frank Mir's because his metabolites were so low where they're going, well, look, you passed here, you passed here, but you didn't hear for your metabolites to be this low.
You would have had to have taken it six weeks before, but we tested you there.
They're even confused on their science there.
They've admitted that.
They've gone, well, this shows up.
We've got to do something with it, but...
We don't understand how you had this reading.
And Frank's like, I'll tell you everything I did.
I'll tell you everything I ate.
I don't know how this works.
You give me the answer.
And they're even confused, themselves, going, this shouldn't be.
And he has also a career of being straight-up to start being deceptive now over something that doesn't really necessarily make sense.
You know, after losing to Mark Hunt like that, it just doesn't make sense.
It doesn't make sense.
The testosterone thing...
That is another thing that I feel like was medically very irresponsible, the way they handled it, and also that they didn't allow guys to take something like an estrogen block or something that, HCG, or something that restarts your endocrine system, but yet they allowed these guys to fight and schedule fights just a couple of months after getting off testosterone therapy.
So you put these athletes in a very precarious situation where you're dangling this gigantic financial carrot in front of them.
You know, you're saying, hey, man, we got a fight.
So now you have to deal with not just your 37-year-old endocrine system, which is, you know, fine, but a 37-year-old endocrine system that needs to be restarted.
And I would be curious if this was ever tested in a court, because they put him in an interesting spot where a guy gets advice from his doctor, which you're supposed to listen to, and he has to cross-reference that advice.
So everybody likes to go back to that and go, this doesn't help my performance.
It's not a performance test.
It's not a steroids test.
It's not a drugs test.
It's a banned substance test.
And that's where they go way out of bounds sometimes.
I think back to the Chinese gymnast where they stripped her medal in 2004 and kicked her out of the Olympics forever because she had a billionth of a trace of ibuprofen, which has a street name of aspirin.
This is silly.
You know, this is silly.
Well, it's an anti-inflammatory and that would help performance.
That's a good thing.
To take a legal thing that you've found that can help your performance.
Why would you take anything that could hurt you?
That was another thing that John came out.
He was so adamant that I took nothing to help my performance.
I'm going, John, I don't know why that's the high canon of bad things you don't want to be associated with.
You took coke, which is a felony, and can kill you, but now you're standing on the moral high ground that you didn't take anything that could help you.
But what I'm saying, if you're trying to fall under the scope of a medicine, like an estrogen block or testosterone, those are classified as medicine, and the media can call it drugs all they want.
That's medicine under the FDA. You can't become a medicine unless you can reasonably prove that it's going to help a patient.
You can't be a doctor, give somebody something that brings them down and makes them worse.
That is true, but I just think that's a ridiculous one, too.
Now, you'd have to be tested, your body, all these different things, but they say that two cups of coffee in a 15-minute period will make you test hot.
Now, you'll only test hot for about 15 minutes because caffeine wears off so fast, but yes, if somebody was to come in right now, I've got three different coffees in front of me, I could be above the limit on that, and I'm sitting here going, I'm getting jazzed up to do a podcast.
I'm not sure that that...
I'm not sure that that relates, but the rules are the rules.
When he fought Bisping and Rock Hole, he's wheel kicking people.
TRT Vitor was fucking terrifying.
But Vitor, when he fought Weidman, I remember feeling when he went into the octagon and I saw him bouncing around and his loose skin was moving all over his body.
I was like, wow, this guy's fucked.
Like, his body's fucked.
This is not a regular 37-year-old guy who's in shape, who hasn't taken anything.
No, this is a fucking world championship caliber pro athlete whose body's been just compromised.
And certainly the beating that he took could affect him long term.
And the beating...
There's a big factor of having incredibly low testosterone.
He had very low testosterone when he went into that fight.
There would be a possibility...
Actually, see, that's not true.
I should recant that.
Because Weidman got in his face at the weigh-in and was saying, because he tested it 1,200, and Weidman tested it 3. And he was like, what the fuck is going on?
How do you have four times as much testosterone as me?
I talked to Nowitzki about it.
I was like, please explain to a moron like me what the fuck is going on.
And they were saying, well, it's dependent.
It's time dependent.
It's how much available testosterone.
When did they test him?
Was he recovering from sleep?
Was he at his peak?
Had he done explosive athletics like squats or deadlifts very recently and then recovered his testosterone, ramped back up?
Did they catch Weidman after Weidman had a grueling workout and his testosterone was Down, right.
There's a lot of factors, apparently, that play into that.
And Weidman had even said himself, he said, look, I kind of have low testosterone while TRT was legal.
Well, when he fought Henderson, the third Henderson fight in Brazil, he looked like he was gaining his muscle mass back.
He looked a little bit better.
But he just does not look like TRT Vitor.
Physically, he's the guy that's had the biggest difference.
And I just I feel like if you're gonna to just say you have to be off of it I think is ridiculous I think I mean he wanted that title shot and is really important to him but I feel like that medically they had a responsibility to give the guy a break like to say we're gonna give you six months of Restorative therapy,
you know allow your body to come back into a normal testosterone range and then re-enter into the drug testing And we'll test you during that time to make sure that you're not taking anything else on top of that.
But to not allow the guy any sort of medicine that can restart his endocrine system seems very irresponsible when it's such a primary factor in performance.
You're not talking about, like, fucking volleyball.
You're talking about head kicks, you know?
And the difference between getting beat up and not getting beat up, between getting brain damage and not getting brain damage, that could play a huge factor in that.
They were still pretty light on him, though, for three substances and a guy that still was resisting the test and coming in with a story and refusing to talk to him.
And it was really weird, because they came in with two things.
First off, can you ban him for life?
And second, did you have jurisdiction over him?
Now, if you read the statute, you don't have to be a lawyer.
The statute is very small, and it's extremely clear they did not have jurisdiction over him.
At the same time, they can do anything they want, so they could ban him for life.
You get in front of the judge, the judge ruled just the opposite.
You can't ban him for life, that's too extreme, which is not true, per the statute.
They can do that.
Historically, they haven't, but they can.
They did not have the right to test him, though, because he was not licensed yet in Nevada, and the statute clearly says to the licensee of which he was not.
Kaiser, who was in at the time, said, listen, the fight's been announced in my state, he's in my state, that gives me the right.
Well, the judge agreed with him.
The judge got it just backwards, but when the judge then did not rule on how long the suspension would be, he sent him back to Nevada.
He still hasn't got that result.
So for every day that they kick the can down the road, they win.
He's still suspended.
So he got his release from the UFC. He can go fight in any other state he wants right now.
I heard a rumor that he would get to that eventually, but Vandalay's got some kind of wrestling thing lined up for like a tag team wrestling match is how he's going to ease his way back into a pool.
But I like the UFC when they make the matches that people want to see.
And that's an interesting match.
It is.
If you think Bisping's going to just go in and beat him, or you look at Dan's record, you think that Bisping doesn't go to bed at night remembering what that was like.
The teasing, the highlight reel, all the people, everybody telling him about making fun of him.
I stayed at Dan Henderson's house for a month, helping him train for Vitor, and when you turn Dan's TV off at night, the remote control says, lights out, and it's him hitting Bisping.
That's what lights up on his remote control.
I mean, if you think Dan doesn't have confidence going into this, sure he has confidence.
He knows he can beat him.
He already did.
And if you think Bisping's not going, man, I really don't want to be in there with that guy again.
He's going to say, oh, I want that one back.
He's going to say all those things and try to convince himself.
And Hector's one of those guys, regardless of what happens to him, and Hector stubbed his toe a few times, you want to see Hector fight.
Hector's got the whole thing.
He's going to do the promos beforehand, he's going to mean it, he's going to hate that opponent, it's real, he's going to look like a million bucks, and he's going to come out fighting.
Whatever happens after that happens, but he's coming to fight.
It's not like he called him out right after he just got knocked out in the first round by Vitor.
No, he called him out after he just destroyed Hector Lombard.
And, like, that was one of the greatest knockouts in the fucking history of the sport.
I mean, when that happened, because when you consider all that was at stake, when you consider that Dan was 45 years old, that people thought he was in the twilight of his career, that he's stepping in there to fight Hector Lombard was just a fucking monster in his prime.
I had an erroneous memory of Jacare winning the decision, and I don't know why.
Maybe it's because of him testing positive, but it was a very close fight, too.
I remember not knowing after it was over.
I mean, I remember Yoel blasted him and had him really badly hurt, but I felt like Jacare came back a bit, and it was a very close fight towards the end.
I mugged a hooker down in New Jersey and set her wig on fire.
Okay, there's two moving parts here.
First off, I don't know how that answers my question.
But now I need to know the story here.
So he ties it all together with, he went on something, something he got an appearance.
He told the story of mugging a hooker in New Jersey and setting her wig on fire.
And all of a sudden, he blew up overnight, and he goes, yeah, I realize people like those stories.
I never knew that I had stories.
From the part of the country I'm in and the neighborhood I grew up in, I thought everybody had these stories.
He's like, chill, son, and I thought I'd tell you I mug a hooker and light a wig on fire.
You go, yeah, well, I mug 10 hookers and light 10 wigs on fire.
He's like, I didn't know I had stories.
And then it just goes from there.
And he starts telling me about...
So he ends up doing two years or 18 months.
And I said, well, what kind of jam did you get in there?
And he said, well, I was actually, I was doing the cops job for him.
You know, the cops don't want drugs on the streets.
I went and took two kilos off the streets for him.
This is how he presents it to me.
He goes, yeah, you know, the two kilos wasn't as big of a deal.
Oh, I robbed two kilos.
He goes, and you know what else, Chael Sonnen?
I just happen to have a machine gun.
And I go, well, I can see where that happened.
He goes, yeah, sometimes you just back into a machine gun.
I had a machine gun with me.
And he goes, but it's funny.
I wasn't in trouble for the gun.
I really wasn't in that much trouble for the drugs.
What they were upset about was the kidnapping.
I'm going, okay, what happened?
This is my intro to the gun.
I'm like, what in the hell is this story?
You probably know the story, but I didn't.
So he tells me the whole story and he says, yeah, but you know, kidnapping's kind of a weird charge because when you and Vandalay got in that scuffle in The Ultimate Fighter, if I come and grab you and I take you into the next room just to cool you down, taking you into a room against your, that's kidnapping.
So I think like they got him on a technicality jam like what they're doing with Frank Mir or some of these guys we're talking about.
And I say, oh, okay, is that what happened?
And he goes, no, I duct taped the guy.
He was in my trunk, and then I held him in the house for a week before I let him go.
I'm like, well, then why did you tell me?
Why did you bring up the initial example of taking me next door and cooling me down?
That's what he says, but he's trying to say the women's room's cleaner, he's been using them since he's five years old, and he said, and I have dealt with the consequences, which I knew!
I want the answer to what those were, it's just, it's like, there's too many other things to talk to this guy about.
I gotta get back to the hooker with the wig that he mugged.
Well, to qualify, so he tells this story about robbing this guy with a machine gun that he just happened to have, taking the two kilos off the street, doing the cop's job for him, but then having the guy in his trunk duct taped before he moved him to the house, before he let him go.
It might have been as recently as yesterday, but it was a two-part.
The first part said, this country has a mental health problem disguised as a gun problem, and this country has a tyranny problem disguised as a security problem.
And it went crazy.
Twitter lit it up, and when I'm reading that, I'm going, okay, Joe's dipping in something here.
Joe doesn't usually dip in, but But he's right.
There is no way to say that that statement's not right.
And it wasn't meant to be funny.
That was a very true, and I thought a powerful statement by you.
There's no way you can't call what happened in Orlando a mental health problem.
There's plenty of guns.
There are more guns than there are human beings in this country.
And if there was a gun problem the way a lot of people like to pretend there's a gun problem, or the way they like to, I shouldn't say pretend, because obviously there's an issue, the way they like to categorize it, there would be people shooting people en masse all day long, every day.
It would be impossible to go out of the house without looking for gunfire.
That's not the case.
When you think about how many people there are and how many guns there are, And how statistically rare it is that these things happen.
It shows you, and then you factor in how many of these people are on anti-depressants, how many of these people are being weaned off of anti-depressants, those numbers are terrifying.
Because when you look at the correlation, you know, correlation does not equal causation, there's a weird argument, but it's an undeniable factor that has to be at least debated and discussed.
There are so many fucking people in this country on disassociating meds, on things that allow you to get away with...
You can justify and do and act in horrific ways and not exactly know what the fuck you're doing.
That is one of the problems that's associated with certain antidepressants.
And to not connect those two is crazy.
And even if they're not medicated, forget about the medication, because the medication is one issue.
The type of person that can go into a fucking school and shoot a bunch of kids, if you don't think that's a mental illness issue, oh, it's only a gun issue.
That's fucking crazy.
It's not a gun issue.
That's like calling 9-11 a plane issue.
It's not.
It's not a gun issue.
The gun factor is real.
There is a problem if psycho people and people with criminal records or people that are mentally disturbed can buy guns.
Yes, that's a problem.
You know what else is a problem?
The fact that I can get a fucking...
I can get a gun and I don't even know how to use it.
That's a problem.
You have to have a license to drive a car.
Someone has to sit with you.
You have to take these turns.
You have to turn right here.
You have to fully stop at the stop sign.
You have to do all these things and if you don't do it, you don't get your driver's license.
All you have to do is not be a criminal, and you get a gun.
Well, don't you also think that living in a place like the country where everybody does have guns, that is a very different environment than living in a city.
If everybody had guns in the city, you have so much more tension going on.
It's so much different.
The environment's different.
I don't necessarily think it would be great if New York City had as many guns per capita as Oregon did.
What the NRA does is they take a hard stance on the side of promoting guns, and they don't move.
Not only do they not budge, they almost are unreasonable in their position.
But I feel like that is because the left is so unreasonable.
When anything goes on, they immediately want to ban guns and take guns away.
It's not feasible.
At this stage, people are like, whoa, look what they did in Australia.
Australia's 20 million people.
It's the size of the continental United States.
To equate Australia with the United States is insane.
There's just way too many people here.
It's a completely different...
And by the way, they didn't ban guns in Australia.
People hunt with guns.
You can get guns.
You can register guns.
You get them.
You belong to part of hunting clubs like they do in Europe.
You keep them stored in lockers.
It's not a full-on ban on firearms.
It's just much more restrictive.
The NRA is trying to stop restrictions.
And the reason why they're trying to stop restrictions is because when anything goes on television, it's very disingenuous.
For someone to go on television after some sort of a massacre and not bring up all the factors, not bring up psych meds, not bring up mental health, not talk about the correlation between raising kids in abusive households and having children grow up with these horrible lives and then they go on and become fucking psychopaths.
Yeah, and I think they just do it at the wrong time.
You know, they get emotions involved.
JFK made a statement back when he was president, never let a good crisis go to waste.
So it is believed by politicians when you have a crisis, that's when you go on the attack, but that's when emotions are the highest.
I disagree with this statement.
It's a good time to get your agenda out there, but you're just pissing people off and you're entrenching them in their own views.
A great time to bring up the gun argument.
I'm pro-gun, but I do understand.
Look, there's some room to give here.
I love what you said about a license.
You relate that to driving a car.
It makes perfect sense.
Bring it when emotions are a little bit less.
Come forward and go, hey, listen, let's make sure we do this.
And if you're worried about your safety, kind of get a little bit proactive here.
Start the process so you can have a gun if that's what you want to do.
But...
I think that they're wrong following JFK's model that he said in 1964. I think here in 2016, let emotions die down a little bit.
Let people not be pissed on one side or the other, worried about protecting themselves and their family or worried that something's going to happen to themselves and their family.
You get good people with really different views here.
I think that they're misplacing JFK's philosophy, in my opinion, in 2016. Let things die down a little bit and then bring it up.
Yeah, and there's also this weird adherence, concrete adherence to the Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment.
I mean, yeah, I think that people should...
Look, I don't think...
If there's only three of us in this world, all right?
You, me, and Jamie.
We're the only ones.
If Jamie came along and said, nobody could have guns, I think we would get together and go, fuck that guy.
Who's this guy to tell us what we can and can't do?
That same thought process could be applied to 300 million people.
I don't agree that a grown human being should be able to tell another grown human being what they can and can't do.
As long as it's not...
Like, if you say, hey Joe, I'm thinking about starting a fucking nuclear power plant in your backyard, and I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing, but if I don't, we're gonna have to move to the middle of the ocean.
You say, well, you know, if you're a fucking gun nut and you like to shoot guns off in your backyard and, you know, you might ricochet one and fucking shoot my dog or something, then it becomes a safety issue and a health issue, but...
It's hard to justify using the words of people that lived in the fucking 1700s when it comes to today, with the kind of guns that we have, with the kind of society that we have, with the kind of...
Across the board, our legal system, our system of government, representative government, all that stuff is fucking bananas in the world of 2016. Representative government has no place in a world where everyone has social media, where everyone can be represented instantaneously.
You don't have to get on a fucking horse and take a parchment across the country to hand it to some dude in a powdered wig.
That's old.
We don't need that anymore.
So when you start talking about things that are in the Bill of Rights, It's the things that are in the Constitution.
Gee, you think it's time to update that fucking ancient piece of shit?
This experiment of self-government that the United States of America was founded on is a fantastic invention, and it's one of the reasons why so much art and creativity and innovation and freedom come from this part of the world.
But to rely on the exact words written with a fucking feather Back when people were taking wooden boats across the ocean hoping they wouldn't get eaten by Indians when they landed here.
Yeah, and the thing about the Bill of Rights, the reason why they cling to that Second Amendment is because it does state that you have the right to bear arms.
It has outgrown itself in the United States of America in 2016, but if the shit hits the fan, and it absolutely could.
We are one natural disaster away from chaos at all times, and that is something that has happened all throughout human history.
There have been gigantic Asteroidal impacts there have been super volcanoes there have been tidal waves There's been a lot of shit that happens then all sudden chaos I mean we saw what happened with Katrina Katrina hit and there was looting and rioting and chaos and People have the right to defend themselves and protect themselves in in that kind of situation when people go crazy Then you you factor in the possibility of government Going crazy.
Yeah, I think there is an argument that when people have ultimate power, they also have massive potential for corruption.
We see that today with the Clinton campaign, this nonsense with the fucking emails and the classified data that she had inadvertently or purposely sent through email.
And then the difference between her take on it and what the FBI's take on it was, like, there's clearly lying going on.
There's clearly corruption going on.
There's clearly people protecting her.
And that kind of corruption, where it wouldn't apply to you, and it wouldn't apply to me, we would go to jail.
Martha Stewart went to jail just for lying to the FBI. You know, now Hillary's in that same jam.
The FBI's saying they didn't look into it.
That whole thing is very fugazi.
That whole thing is very corrupt.
And I think that Comey at the FBI is a reasonable guy, or however I tend to believe him.
But this was never a fair shake.
Obama stays out of the whole thing.
Then he finally comes in.
Loretta Lynch finally comes in and says, well, we're going to honor whatever the FBI says.
And then four days later, the FBI drops the news.
It's like, guys, this has been going on for a year.
I'll tell you something else, Joe.
You know who looks weak in the whole thing is the FBI. Yeah.
These guys are supposed to be great.
We put 40 people on the Hillary Clinton case.
To put that in perspective for the listeners, four people were assigned to Al Capone.
Ten times the amount, and it took them one year of having the evidence to make a ruling.
I mean, come on, that's weak.
The same thing is going on with ISIS. We're supposed to have this great military, and no offense to the people that serve, but offense to the people that are handcuffing our military.
ISIS, when I first heard about them, For the very first time, was 200 members strong.
Now they are 4,000 strong, and we still can't stop these guys, and we're supposed to be the best?
Look, of course we could.
We just don't.
But it makes us look weak.
That would not happen in Russia.
Nobody attacks the Russians.
If you attack Putin, you will be fighting Putin right now.
No permission, no Congress, no BS. You want to go, you're going to go with Russia.
And this is not the kind of corruption that we need to be absolutely terrified of, like they're going to come and steal our children and take all our money away and fucking shoot anybody who talks back.
That's not that level of corruption, but it's a slippery slope.
With any corruption, if the laws don't apply to you because your name is Hillary Clinton, but the law applies to Chael Sonnen or Joe Rogan, that's nonsense.
That's not the world that we want.
That's a real problem when someone is outside of the law, or the law respects them in a different way than it respects you.
That's not good.
And that's why the Second Amendment exists.
The Second Amendment exists to stop fuckery.
Because people are crazy.
And when people say, whoa, it's about muskets.
It's not.
It's not.
Whoa, it's for a militia.
It's only the guns are for...
No.
No, no.
It's to prevent this kind of shit from getting completely out of hand.
It's to prevent the government from taking over and allow people to form a resistance.
This Donald Trump thing, which is interesting to me, is that what he's done is he's gotten the media to work for him because he found a weakness in what they do.
What they like to do is they like to talk shit.
What the media likes to do is they like to find something that they feel like is going to be embarrassing or something that they can focus on and really drone on and on about it.
But with him, he owns it.
And it's similar to what you were talking about with promoting yourself and promoting yourself as a fighter.
He's promoting himself in a lot of the ways, the same way kind of that you would do.
I mean, what he's doing is he's not apologizing, he's saying provocative things, and because of that, he gets way more air time!
Than anybody else.
By far!
I mean, it's not even close.
All the other guys in the Republican candidates, they were all playing second fiddle.
And he said, and frankly, I haven't gotten a very good return.
I'm funding this myself so everybody knows I'm not bought and sold, that I haven't made deals, that I'm going to go in there and actually represent the people.
I'm going to take a pay cut.
I'm going to go do a job I don't want to do because it's a job I think I need to do.
That message didn't get out.
And he said, look, I'm losing in the polls to somebody who is bought and paid for because she's got more money than me.
You people don't seem to understand this message of me going in there not owing anybody anything.
I haven't got an investment on my return, and I'm thinking about taking it back and opening it up to donations.
Well, it's a weird situation for the Democrats because if Hillary did get indicted and if Hillary did wind up getting convicted or they punished her in any way, it's over.
A lot of people think she's picking up Elizabeth Warren.
I don't think so.
I think she's cognizant enough to know that America does not want to look sexist, but it in fact is.
That America's going to have a hard time putting a female as the commander-in-chief of the military, who doesn't come out and endorse anybody, but if you talk to them privately, they do not want to be led by a woman.
That's a reality.
I think she's smart enough to know they damn sure don't want to be led by two, but of course would never say that publicly, right?
We don't want to look sexist as a country, even though we are.
If Hillary wants to put the nail in the coffin of this campaign, she puts Bill as her VP. She does not have an ego that would allow her to do such, and I think she might make the air of putting Elizabeth Warren in.
The real campaign begins once it is absolutely Hillary and absolutely him.
And it gets boiled down.
Like, right now we're in July.
When it gets to be August and then September, that's when shit's gonna really start flying.
You know, it's gonna be interesting to see what he uses to try to attack her and what she used to try to attack him and How both they're gonna they're both gonna get damaged in the process and our system is gonna be damaged in the process and that's something that I think Everybody is kind of cognizant of when you destroy someone who is on their way to become the commander-in-chief You kind of weaken the whole nation because that person becomes the like look if Hillary One,
say if the elections were tomorrow, and the FBI thing happened today, and then she wins tomorrow, and everybody's going to be like, eugh.
We know she did something that we would have been punished for.
It weakens the position.
And it weakens it in the eyes of the world, too, I'm sure.
See, that's another one, though, Joe, if you don't mind me interrupting.
If he would have just told the truth back then, just used the truth on his side, it would have all been done.
If he would have just said, man, I'll sleep with anything in the world except her.
If he would have just done that, it'd be all over and said he started getting crazy.
If he would have hit him with that line.
You know, it's the same thing with Trump right now.
If he would have just said, look, I think that America should have a long leash, but attack to that leash is a big old bomb, and this is how we're going to do it, and we'll light the thing if we have to.
It's hard to deal with.
It's really hard to deal with.
I got all of this philosophy from you giving me your take on how Michael Richards should have handed the comedy store.
When you said he should have come out, he should have said, here's my problems.
I'm not a funny comic.
I was self-conscious.
You guys made me feel bad.
I wanted to hurt your feelings.
It had nothing to do with race.
I tried to hurt your feelings.
And you're right.
It all would have gone away because we go, well, that is what happened.
So he went to these things, coked up, thinking he was just going to power through it with charisma, and people were booing, and he's like, hey, I got your money.
I already got your money, which is fucking crazy to yell out at people that have bought your tickets.
But then he adjusted, he got smart, and he brought guys like Russell Peters in to sit down with him and interview him, and they actually worked out a routine, and it actually became an entertaining show towards the last leg of the tour.
But his ability to step up and say, hey, I like coke.
I like to smoke coke.
I get together, I get a bunch of girls, I pay them money, I fuck them, and then they leave.
Well, this current thing that he's on right now, I wonder if he can do that with this.
I wonder if he knows what it was that he took.
I just don't know.
I'm confused by this one, because I don't know how many different options there could have been where these are the two things that he tested positive for.
I don't know how many options there could have been, other than him taking that because he was getting off steroids, but that doesn't even seem to make sense because he had been tested much more recently, or before that, close to that, and he didn't have that in his system, and he didn't have steroids in his system.
But, to Victor Conte's credit, Victor Conte did question John Jones's testosterone levels and epitestosterone levels.
I didn't know if you had to do it, so I don't mean to go back to it, but...
The point that this test that we're all talking about is June 16th, and there's got to be another shoe that's getting ready to drop.
Now, whether that comes back hot or whether it comes back clean, we don't know, but there's no way that Usada's last time testing a guy for a fight that was supposed to take place this last Saturday was June 16th.
There's just no way.
They've got to be at least another test out there, and possibly two.
Brock Lesnar, they test him every other day for a while.
Because those tests take a while to get the results back, because they're very, very thorough.
And if he tested June 16th, you've got to assume big, high-profile UFC 200, and a guy who's already tested positive for something before, so they're going to be sneaking around trying to catch him.
So Haney's in against Vinny, and then the biggest one, the absolute biggest one that wasn't meant to be, but this is the one that's got my phone ringing, Rico Rodriguez is coming back.
And then the question with Rico, Joe, you know, Grappling is a gateway into MMA. So now that Rico's all of a sudden back in grappling, that's everybody's big question.
Is he coming back to MMA? And he's one of those guys that left the sport on his own.
There wasn't that a promoter wouldn't sign him or Dana didn't want him or Pride wouldn't put him under contract.
He had those personal, he did whatever, but he left on his own.
It's kind of the way Sean Shirk left.
Sean just one day wasn't fighting anymore, but it took like two years until the announcement came.
After it goes to the eight minute time difference, and there's a draw, what happens is you put guys in bad positions.
So just like in wrestling, one guy will start on the bottom.
In jiu-jitsu, what they're doing with Eddie Bravo rules is one guy will start on your back, Or he'll start in a position called spiderweb, which means you're defending, you get the guy on the bottom is defending against an arm bar, the guy on the top is inside control with the arm hooked and controlling the leg.
So it's a bad spot to be in if you're on the bottom, and it's a bad spot if a guy obviously has your back.
So by putting guys in those situations, you allow the fighter to try to work from a really bad spot to try to get a tap, and then you switch places.
So if you start on my back and you tap me, then I have at least an opportunity to try to tap you.
And if you escape, then you wind up winning the whole thing.
But it could be that you escape and I escape and you escape and I escape.
And we see a lot of those matches where it's like down to the wire.
And if that's the case, then you count up the amount of time spent in control.
So if it takes you 10 seconds to escape, but it takes me 30 seconds to escape, you would win because you escape quicker.
I talked to Eddie before we went into this, and I said, hey, listen, what are you doing?
We're going to fall on the same dates.
How do you want to do this?
Let's not get in a battle with each other.
He goes, no, no, just the opposite.
He said, I want these guys to have somewhere to wrestle.
He said, but Chael, do this.
Take my rules.
Call it EBI. That puts me up.
He goes, but do it.
And he had a great...
That's my point, Joe, and here's what his point was.
He said, you know, everybody that has a grappling event wants to make up their own rules.
He said, but as an industry, for the gym owners, for the guys that are going into the gym and they're training every day, they need to be able to train the same way.
The coach needs to be able to have a stopwatch just like he does MMA. Five-minute rounds, you do three of them.
If you're in a main event or title fight, you do five of them.
You go to a basketball court, you go volleyball.
It's the same universal rules.
He said, for an industry, we need to be All teammates, all no-gi jiu-jitsu, they need to be able to train the same way so the coach can run a practice.
And he doesn't have to go, you guys training for Abu Dhabi over here, and you guys training for the IBJJF over here.
So I thought, Eddie, you're right.
If us promoters can all get together and unify some rules, like the unified rules of MMA, as an industry, the trickle-down, which is the gyms, We can get this thing figured out and then we can start to have a hybrid.
And Eddie's rules really are quite perfect.
You know, he calls them the most gangster rules out there, but he's right.
I talked to Vinny.
I talked to some other guys that I ever talked to.
I talked to Salo Ribeiro.
They're going, look, it's EBI. That's how you find it.
If you want to know who the best is, you've got to go EBI rules.
Yeah, that is a giant issue with everybody else's rule set.
I just think that if you look at submission grappling, and especially people that have a problem with the quote-unquote violence of MMA, the submission aspect of it is beautiful to watch.
It's exciting.
It's dynamic.
You watch someone get choked out.
It's crazy.
I mean, it's really interesting.
It's fun.
It's an exciting part of martial arts.
And it's something that guys can do when they retire from fighting.
It's something that a lot of people that don't want to get involved in MMA, but guys like the Mendez brothers or Gary Tonin, he's actually probably going to do MMA eventually, but all these super talented grapplers, it gives them an opportunity to show their stuff.