Josh Barnett—former UFC fighter, cult-adjacent provocateur, and Hollywood resident—debunks soccer’s "flops" as performative nonsense while defending rugby’s raw aggression. He ties societal hypocrisy (like dismissing homeless adults but pitying children) to "human entropy," where insecurity fuels ideologies from SJW grievances to Nazi occult obsession, despite his own disdain for fringe theories. Suspended by USADA over a tainted supplement he didn’t ingest, Barnett mocks bureaucratic overreach while praising personal effort in innovation, from muscle cars to MMA. Rogan’s playful mispronunciation ("War Machine Chronicles") underscores Barnett’s chaotic charm: a man who thrives on defiance, autonomy, and unfiltered truth, even if it means starting his own podcast. [Automatically generated summary]
Well, and see, it's easy to do that because to look at the situation on a far more complex level, you know, looking for what all the issues that can write into this.
I mean, a majority of these people are probably mental health, you know, issues.
And there are some people there that maybe they are just total fucking down and outers that they just gave up on life in one way or another or got hooked on something or hooked on something else.
But I mean, at the end of the day...
It's much easier for people to just look at it as, like, these guys are losers, there's losers of the system, and I'm some sort of a winner.
But, I mean, in a way, some of these people were born losers then, I guess, because they didn't get to choose to be born with schizophrenia or any of these other sort of things.
It's always harder to take a fighter with a bunch of bad habits and try to cure them of that or re-establish new good habits than it is to just start off teaching them something correct from the fucking get-go.
Yeah, you always see that for whatever reason with kicking technique.
Kicking technique, like a lot of guys that come from like bad backgrounds, they have a really hard time, like maybe karate to Muay Thai, real hard time transitioning over.
And like I would see it even in Taekwondo, guys who came from a karate background didn't understand the importance of raising the knee up above the hip.
It's like when things got weird, they couldn't pick their knee up for certain kicks.
I don't know where that really came about necessarily, but yeah, you can kick him full on in the face, knee him in the face, things like that, but don't throw a punch to the face.
Yeah, it's interesting because I always feel like for little kids especially, what's really good about Taekwondo is the same thing that's really good about gymnastics and even like cheerleading.
Yes, body control and flexibility and yeah, there's all kinds of great...
Right.
I think Taekwondo can be really great for that as well.
I think a lot of, if you're going to do Taekwondo, or really a lot of these traditional martial arts, it really depends on that teacher.
That makes it or breaks it.
I mean, you could have some old...
Take you on like gnarly old Korean dude who is going to teach you how to punch the face and throw people and all kinds of stuff but maybe gear your competition training towards the rule set that's allowable but or you could just have some dude that just wants you to flip around and scream to get your points which is the most ridiculous it's almost up there with like flopping and soccer Dude flopping in soccer has hit some new levels lately.
What is it that, how does one graduate to that level?
I'm out here, I'm playing a sport at, let's say, the highest level, and I'm competing against other incredible athletes, and we train our asses off, and we develop all these skill sets, and we get so good at handling a ball with our feet, and not even for foot fetish stuff, but just to play this game.
I'm going to now concede and completely destroy all the toughness, all the grit, all the things that I've developed mentally to be able to run and kick and do all this stuff and build up all these wind sprints.
And then I'm just going to see a guy swat his hand at me and then I'm going to fling myself from the ground and scream bloody murder.
I mean, I don't know if they really are, because it probably takes away from their stature as an athlete, but getting in these videos where you're just getting shown all over the internet again and again and again...
When these dudes from Scotland and Argentina and all over who would play all their AAA leagues and stuff, I'm out there playing defense, and I could hustle, I had quick feet, and I wasn't movable, so that was kind of good.
But at one point, my team kept trying to get an opportunity for me to score on goal, and I'm like...
No, no, quit.
You know, I got good enough to dribble and pass it away a little bit.
Don't fucking ask me to kick this thing.
It's never gonna go where I want it to.
And, you know, it's just careening off everywhere.
And plus, this dude from Argentina was just all over me every single time.
I'm like, everyone else is like, oh, it'd be funny if he could be great if he could get a shot.
They can get these helmets that are going to take the impact and reduce it and all that.
But I just...
Once you're a 300-pound dude running a 4.7, smashing into another 300-pound dude, I just don't...
You know, it's just like...
I would get in the arguments with the...
Like, these kids at the University of Montana rugby team are like, hey, you should come out and play rugby.
You should play rugby.
I'm like, no.
I want to fight.
And, you know, rugby seems fun and all that.
Oh, did you play football?
Yeah, I played football.
Oh, this is way tougher.
I go, uh, hold on.
The pool you're drawing from?
I'm sure there's some good athletes.
The pool we were drawn from, when I'm going to University of Washington football camp, when I'm playing against nationally ranked teams like O'Day, this is different.
Who they're drawn from is a much, much bigger pool.
The stakes for them are much, much bigger than you and your college team floating around and then drinking beers after your games.
Yeah, especially someone that has a potential NFL career and they're super focused.
If you look at some of the super athletes that you get that enter the NFL today, just the sheer size and speed that these guys have, it's only so much of that can be genetics.
You've got some serious training involved and dedication.
Boom, this tackle happens and they're going to try and shuttle the ball back to their other teammate and shove the ball down the line again and keep it moving until they can finally break through.
Whereas watching the other one, to me, it slows down way too much.
So I don't really enjoy it.
Which, you know, that's kind of the argument with American football is that it slows down.
And to me, I'm like, American football is like watching two armies go at it.
You set...
You have your skirmish, you regroup, you skirmish again, you regroup, you skirmish again, and by the end of all these skirmishes, the war is either won or lost by this team.
But this guy was apparently just massive and I mean I would have loved to like seen that with my own eyes like what it looks like to be like a direct lineage of warrior culture like if that guy was living in the 1800s like he is directly from The original Native Americans that came here from Siberia, you know, whatever, thousands and thousands of years ago.
Yeah, well, and the thing is, one of my arguments with the rugby kids is like, dude, you don't get hit as hard as you do in American football as you're doing here in rugby.
You just, you're not.
Right.
Plus, the athletes are smaller, and, you know, go do a kickoff, guys.
But what do you think would happen if, like, what if, by some crazy reason, people decided, hey, look, we're gonna no longer do American football, we're gonna do rugby.
If we're talking that everybody would switch over to rugby, that means all these rugby teams in the league and all that would then be the ones with all the big merchandise deals and the TV deals and all the money would funnel into it.
And therefore, the potential prosperity of it would drive the interest for people to try and apply their wares of being not only a part of that hero myth that would come with being a champion football team player, you know,
or rugby team player, but also with the Hero myth of just being a part of that within your normal society, you're of this elite, exceptional status, this thing that stands alone, that it seems a bit foreign to your normal person,
but also the money and the success that comes from that kind of notoriety and the doors that it opens in terms of, to use an overused word, the privilege of being at that level, within that inner circle of Exceptional or seen as exceptional people anyways.
I do believe that they were able to account for a number of fights too and weigh that against that metric and see how that may influence things.
But seven years was this magic number, like six, seven years.
And once you start going over seven years, your percentage of success started just crumbling.
Like it was dramatic about how a guy would be like 13 and 3 and he'd get to seven years and all of a sudden it's like 13 and 6, 13 and 7, 13. He just starts losing just about everything.
We would have to isolate a lot of different factors to figure out any one particular thing, but there's so many elements that go into being a professional fighter and being successful at that.
Let's say we'll take BJ. Maybe it is physicality.
Maybe he's lost a little bit of a step.
His reactions are a little slower, uh, through any number of reasons why, uh, maybe his, his strength has diminished maybe slightly or his flexibility, maybe certain physical elements, regardless of injury or not have diminished enough that, uh, at where they used to be, it was an edge regardless of injury or not have diminished enough that, uh, at where they used to be, it was an edge where it is now is, is evened out or is, or is below what is Maybe it could be beyond physical deterioration.
Maybe it's just mental motivation.
Yeah, exactly.
So maybe he's just not as motivated to push in the same ways that he was.
Or maybe he's not able to...
I don't know recognize things that he was five years ago six years ago and seeing those opportunities and being able to react on them quicker There's a number of things and especially when it comes to mental now now you're getting into such a subjective area that You know go pull that apart.
You know the only only the person that's competing knows we really never have any idea how what's going on inside a person's head I mean for me I decided to take a break after my Arlovsky fight and that was somewhat physically based but most of it was mental I I just didn't I had no interest to go into any kind of training camp to put myself through all that again to Then to fight again,
you know, it's just for one when you start off fighting and what those goals are to As you get further in and further in and further in and you know getting it 20 years of being a professional fighter and being a top 10 heavyweight and arguably in top five most of the time for Shit, 16 of them?
Yeah, just heavyweight champion instead of the youngest ever UFC champion.
But it's...
It got to a point where it's just like, well, you know, my reasons for fighting are essentially still the same, but I don't have the same motivation to go out there and be like, oh, I'm going to conquer the whole world.
I can beat that guy.
I know I can beat guys.
Like, it doesn't...
I'm not trying to prove it to myself anymore.
But that fire that wants to fight still exists.
I'm just like, well, you know what?
what, I'm going to take some time to work on some of the other stuff that is going to be more of my life after this, because fighting is going to end sooner than this stuff is.
I just figure that if I'm being honest with myself and self-aware that I'll know when that time has come, when that, that moment is getting to that edge where...
Yeah, and then Hiran Gracie was a big feather in your cap, too, because Hiran is one of the most respected young Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt guys out there.
All those guys, like Hiran, Halleck, Henner, they were all very successful when they were competitors.
Yeah.
A super high-level guy.
Yeah, they were kicking butt.
In fact, Henner tapped Jeff Munson back in the day.
I think it was with a triangle.
So when Hiram was the only guy that Hallett could get to step up and wrestle me, that was the option.
There was all these heavyweights and all these dudes, and I'm like, I found a bunch of guys that had recently competed and won belts and stuff, or won one tournament.
I'm like, hey, pick, what about that guy?
Alex's like, he won't do it.
That guy won't do it.
That guy won't do it.
A whole bunch of them would be like, well, they won't do it without the gi.
And I'm like, okay, well, you know that's not an option, so why even bring it up?
Well, that's one of the things that people like about you, is that you, most of the time, you're going old school.
I mean, you're doing catch wrestling stuff.
I mean, you're doing, like, the shit that Carl Gotch and all those dudes from those old school wrestling, catch wrestling books, like a lot of those submissions.
And, you know, I understand completely some of the incredulousness about looking at that and being like, that doesn't fucking work, because you'd think, well, if it did, it would be everywhere.
But, for one, there's just not enough people teaching it, so that's...
Really diminishes the ability to expand it, although like myself and All the people from the Japanese shoot wrestling side that that has come from like Sakuraba and Maeda and Fujiwara I mean there's guys out there.
Carl Gotch was brought over there by Antonio Inoki to create the New Japan Pro Wrestling Dojo and teach all of his students, all of the wrestlers, how to be catch wrestlers.
And to give them a foundation in basically shooting, which is real fighting, so then they could go out there and work these matches, but keep the intensity, the realism.
It's like the difference between, you know, I know you're not the biggest fan of professional wrestling.
But, you know, I also understand some of the gripe with looking at, like, the way wrestling has been for quite a while now, it's like, oh, so it got outed, right?
So everybody knows it's worked.
So people operate on this premise that it's fake, so whatever, like, why bother make it real anymore?
Let's just fake it up all the way.
And then people would open up skills, and it would be like if all magicians were just like, hey, look, all of our tricks...
They're not real.
They're not real magic.
Here's how you do them all.
And now I'm going to open up schools and just teach everyone.
You know, just pay me 500 bucks for three months and now you too can be a magician.
And it's just like, well, uh...
Oh, man, that would ruin going to magic shows.
It would just make it so shitty.
But that's how a lot of these guys get into wrestling now that would never be wrestlers.
To be a wrestler back even in, say, the 70s, early 80s, you had to be a fucking tough guy.
Dusty Rhodes, you look at him, you're like, that guy's not tough.
You're like, no, actually, he was recruited by the fucking Miami Dolphins.
And he was like, I think I can make more money being a wrestler than I can being a football player back then.
Or Ric Flair was an all-American or big-time college football player, and he went and trained under Vern Gagne and Billy Robinson at this barn out in Minnesota somewhere, and they would have to run miles and lift weights and do squats and wrestle each other for real.
And it's just like all these dudes that you think it's like, oh yeah, woo, and all that.
These motherfuckers had to go through some real shit, and they had to prove themselves to be legitimately tough enough to be even a professional wrestler to work matches.
And they used to do things like hold tryouts.
People would come down, they'd pay in their money, and these wrestlers would just run them into the ground, and then, alright, whoever's left, whoever could get through the endurance part of this, okay, now you're going to get in the ring with some dude, and then they would just get the shit tortured out of them, just totally ripped apart, and then like, alright, cool, bye, you didn't make it.
It's the diminishing element of critical thinking.
It's not just about...
The reduction of critical thinking in today's society.
It is the effort that it takes to be a critical thinker.
And I would classify this under this concept I have that I've been working with called human entropy.
So entropy is the, in physics, it's things returning, simply put, it's things going to their lowest state of energy.
And human beings, human entropy will go to their lowest state of energy given an opportunity.
And to the point where you see WALL-E, if you've seen that movie and all the big, you know, fat out, just gnarly people just floating around on hover beds, being fed and taken care of and having zero strife in their life.
that we will do that if given the opportunity.
And so not having to think critically, finding a group identity of some sort, even as crazy as a cult, which I would argue that there's a lot of ideologies around nowadays that are just as cult-like as Scientology or Heaven's Gate, stuff like that.
But to belong in one of these groups, to be a part of that identity means that you no longer have to take as much responsibility for your own actions because this group has decided your value system, how you're going to operate, your ethics.
Also, I mean, there's...
Some philosophical arguments that part of that also ultimately stems from...
I think it's from Ernest Becker.
It stems from fear of death and having to mitigate the anxiety and nihilism that could come with confronting and accepting the fact that you're going to die and everything that you did is going to die with you, essentially.
Your lack of existence is coming around the corner.
Well, it operates on the same principles, you know, whether it be religion.
And you can tell people, of course, to me, religion is kind of one of the ultimate ones because the Everything we do is measured against a wager.
If we talk from games, what's at stake increases the importance of the game itself.
Fighting increases that So much higher because the more greater potential for death or pain whatever right you're fighting somebody and as you go down the lines but you know poker is is popular because the raised stakes the money and that as at play and the reward that could come with it and the potential that you could lose from it so everything has this This measure against what you're potentially giving up and what's at hazard.
So with religion, what's at hazard?
Your eternal soul.
Something that is so high value that you can't, oh fuck, I can't risk that.
So fuck, I guess I better, you know?
I mean, that's why it's so powerful.
But also it is a panacea for death.
Because, like, Nietzsche will talk about the concept of true world values.
This is not the true world.
This other thing is the true world.
So all this suffering and strife and difficulty and any, like, bullshit that happens to me, all of this, in the end, it really isn't going to matter because eventually I'm going to go to this true world and this is the real world and this is my payoff for all of the shit I had to go through down here.
And so, for a lot of people, the concept of having meaning for their difficulty, for their struggle, is absolutely important.
Because otherwise, why am I doing this?
You know, to take your own existence, your own being in the world, and take it onto yourself, and have all your own accountability, and look at it as, I'm here living the best life I can because I need to live the best life I can because it's the only life I will ever live.
And the anxiety of people dealing with that, trying to really take that on, face on, with death, and their lack of permanence in this world, the argument is that's where nihilism can come from.
And then with nihilism, it's like, well, nothing matters.
So if nothing matters, then you're not able to operate anymore.
And it's just like, he looks like he's going to walk away, whatever.
I'm saying, all right, you know, okay, do your own thing.
He's like, he's just getting even more worked up and finally points his finger out and I'm laughing at him.
And the girl who, uh, who was, uh, does jujitsu and was a fighter.
She reaches out and grabs ahold of this guy's wrist and pulls his hand out.
She's like, don't, you don't want to do that.
And then he looks at her, and he looks at me, and I'm just smiling, and he pulls his hand back, and I go, I know what must have gone through his head, is just like, this girl's grip is serious.
But other times there have been like, you know, I'm not impervious to getting in a mood.
And so sometimes I've been out and about and someone's been a dickhead and I see it and it's like, okay, this guy, he's clearly trying to egg something on somehow.
And so maybe I, you know, add a little something to that, seeing if he'll bite and just won't happen.
You know, or I've had some people go, oh, yeah, of course no one's going to fight you.
Putting themselves into situations where they have upped the ante for them not to follow through is going to bring about a huge internal conflict with them.
They're going to know that they raised the stakes and then they had to back down, which I think is really...
Hard for just about anybody to deal with to get yourself to a point where you're like, yeah You know, I'm in the right and then to dial that back I mean people don't even want to really apologize for anything Let alone have to admit that they took something too far It got to a point where they weren't willing to go any further and they realized they fucked up and then to fucking tuck tuck tail and leave again and back down and There's a lot of insecurity involved in that.
There was a lot of insecurity probably to get to that point in the first place, which is why people that really know how to fight don't have to go out there and try to prove to somebody else that they are capable or that, hey everybody, look at how badass I am.
For me, I don't start fights.
Barring that, maybe that occasional moment where someone I thought was being an asshole.
I thought they were being a shitty person.
The reason they were being a shitty person is because they thought that no one would call them on it.
And for me to call them on it is more about...
There doesn't need to be any conflict here tonight, but you want to create it because you're an insecure little prick.
So I'll be your Huckleberry.
All right.
Now that you see that somebody was willing, now how much is it worth to you?
And of course, it's almost never worth it to them.
And even people that have been all fucking fired up and, of course, they're operating off of anger and emotion and of upping something to a point where they don't feel that they can back down.
Because if you give someone an out, especially in these kind of things, 90% of the time they take it.
But sometimes you turn to somebody and you go, you don't know anybody that knows anybody that knows anybody that knows anybody that knows anybody that can kick my ass.
So I don't know what you're going to do right now or who you're going to call, but it ain't going to fucking work.
Or it's just, you know, turn to somebody and be like, how many friends you got with you?
That ain't enough.
You know?
Go get more.
Because I don't know which one of you guys want to get involved, but the first one that I can get my hands onto, I'ma fucking cripple you.
I'ma fuck you up.
I'ma fuck you up.
I don't know if you guys can take me, but I want to know how many of you I'm going to take with me first.
Or my favorite is, people nowadays don't really...
So, everything is a reduction to violence, essentially.
What I'm saying is that, so we create laws, we create social norms, we create all the customs and things to, honestly, to avoid things getting to violence.
But even your simplest law is essentially rooted in the element of violence.
So, okay, you will use some law, right?
Like a ticket of some sort.
And it's like, well, I'm going to fine you for this thing.
I'm not going to pay it.
Okay, well, then we're going to fine you some more.
I'm not going to pay that.
We're going to do this.
I'm not going to do that.
Well, okay, then if you're not going to pay the thing, you're not going to do this, and you're not going to let, you're not going to, oh, well, then what we're going to do is we're going to arrest you.
No, you're not.
At some point it reduces down to violence So we're using violence all the time to or at least the con the for a lot of things For pretty much everything, you know in terms of social controls Eventually if someone doesn't want to adhere to those controls in some way Violence is the final solution.
It's what it's what it boils down to it is the basis for for all of our police and military and even honestly It still exists within all of us on a social level.
It's just that we have managed to take that concept and put it onto something else.
The law, right?
Police, something like that.
But the reality is that if some guy just at some point says, you know, I don't really give a fuck and you were an asshole and I'm just going to wreck you.
Okay.
You can sue them.
You can do this.
You can call the cops on them.
You can whatever.
But violence is going to happen whether you want it to or not.
Whether this person was in the right.
Because that's another thing.
Violence in and of itself, even if you're the winner.
I don't remember what the philosopher was.
Winning the duel doesn't mean that you were correct.
So, all these things are, you know, customs, norms.
A lot of this stuff is to avoid anything breaking down to violence because, you know, you bump into someone, you spill their drink, and they turn you in and go, hey, man, well, that was fucked up.
And you turn to them and you go, you know what?
It was.
I'm sorry.
Or you could turn to me like, you know what?
Fuck you.
Fuck me.
You spilled my drink.
I'm taking offense to this.
I now don't have my drink.
Who's gonna make this right?
I don't really give a shit.
Huh.
Everything starts to escalate and as soon as one person takes a stand and if that other person rises to that We're good to go.
Pull yourself entirely out of that situation, which a lot of people aren't necessarily...
If it really, really, really got to that point, they're not willing to do.
Well, and there's other complex things, like if it was males, there's social hierarchy stuff.
If it was females, there's social hierarchy stuff between that.
If it's male and female, it could be...
Well, there's always this societal...
If you're really super concerned about what other people think or how you're going to be perceived by others in a group setting, that could also play into a factor, which happens out and about on the town or whatever.
Your buddies always see you in this situation, or other people, everyone, okay, you got their attention, now what are you going to do?
And so if they see you completely retreat, everyone's like, uh-huh, alright, well that guy really wasn't what he said he was.
Let me play armchair psychologist, because I'm good at this.
What I would think is that a gal like that, first of all, she probably enjoys having a certain amount of physical power over people, and when shit escalates, she wants that violence to be real.
She wants it to be a real threat coming from her, which is why she probably started fighting in the first place.
Now when she's fighting, when she's arguing with you, All of a sudden, she's in this fucked up situation where what she's worked for her whole life is to become this scary girl.
A girl who could fuck people up.
A girl who's like literally a threat physically.
She could probably knock a lot of dudes out, right?
But she's confronted with a giant former UFC heavyweight champion and she's like, God damn it.
Well, I do think that that psychology can absolutely hold true.
For this one particular girl, for her, I think it was a matter of Not being able to, you know, having this frustration about not being able to get the outcome that they wanted.
And having what they would feel is no recourse to get me to come to their terms and their way.
For one, this girl, I was with her for a long time.
This one was a long time ago.
My most recent one, on the other hand, that one I've actually seen use violence before.
And it's just like...
To me, it's just like, even with arguing, we would get into these arguments, and someone would make statement A, and I'd say, okay, well, I don't think statement A holds true because of these reasons.
And then we'd start going, and then all of a sudden, statement A gets straw-manned into something else, and then, no, no, no, you can't leave statement A because you're basing your arguments on that.
We're not talking about statement B. That's a whole different scenario altogether.
This argument is going nowhere now.
Now it's getting circular, and you keep taking me away from the original argument to begin with.
But nonetheless, it wasn't something that I ever saw, especially to begin with.
It didn't seem like that was what I was in store for until one day...
I look over and I'm like, huh, das Kapital.
Well, yeah, I think reading Marx is interesting and I think it's worthwhile to understand some of his arguments.
And I think he's got some interesting critiques of capitalism, especially back in its day with this industrialism, industrial society at that time.
But he doesn't understand people at all.
His solutions are fucking hackneyed.
And, you know, he's coming from a very interesting position because he doesn't even...
He, as a person, doesn't even stick to his own shit, you know?
But anyways...
So we're having these arguments, and then it would turn to a pejorative.
And I'm like, well, okay.
Why are you attacking me?
I'm not attacking you.
I'm not even being angry about your statement.
I just...
You made statement A, so I don't believe in it.
I don't think that that's correct.
So we're having a discussion.
But now it became...
A personal attack.
Once it even gets to that, let alone someone even back in the day talking about, oh, it really upsets me that no matter how angry, no matter whatever, if I hit you or did this, it wouldn't matter because you're you.
It's like, well, both of these statements come from the same...
Both of those scenarios come from the same place.
It's like, now you're attacking me, the individual, because if you're going to do that...
You aren't thinking about me as the person that, no, no, no, I got your back through heaven and hell.
I will kick the gates of hell down and kill everyone there if I got to.
They want to devalue me, the person, because they feel attacked in some way.
They feel like they're so attached to their statement, to whatever that may be, which has some attachment to maybe what they feel is their existence.
That to change that is dangerous.
To call it outright wrong would be an even bigger problem.
And I mean, you know, it's just like this stuff would start showing up at the house.
And so I'm like, all right, I'm going to start doing research on marks and angles and all this different stuff.
And then as I would go further and further and further down the rabbit hole, I come back and I go, oh, okay, so this argument stems from this and this and this and this and this.
Well, for one, it's this idea of equity, like this sameness.
Nobody is being left behind and no one is becoming greater than anybody else.
It's also the idea, I like to think of it, I think a lot of these young people look at it as Mom's house, mom and dad's house.
So when you're at mom and dad's house, someone does your laundry, someone cooks your food, you know, you always just show up, you got a place to live, you know, the TV turns on and there's your cable.
Well, that's the other thing, the back of someone else is an interesting thing, too.
It's like, if someone agrees to do a job, if their skill set is limited in such a way that they are capable of doing this job at this moment, Now, of course, if you're asking me, they have a potential to do more than that as long as they're willing to invest back in themselves and find another skill or expand that skill.
There's always possibility for growth within a human being, within their lot in life, whatever that is.
And that could be transferred into work, could be transferred into personal goals.
I mean, it's all about how you value things also.
Yeah, of course.
This person gets into this job working, making widgets for this guy who invented this widget.
This guy invented the widget.
The argument that, okay, the worker deserves just as much as the guy that invented it, it's like, well, hold on.
Without the guy that invented the widget, you have no job.
All of these people that are working underneath them would have nothing.
They would have zero.
There would be no widget to build.
And...
The guy that made the widget also has the most responsibility because he had to come up with the money to produce the widget, to be able to hire the people to make the widget, to then market the widget, to do all these things to the widget, to get it out there, to make it successful enough to then support more people.
And that doesn't necessarily mean it's on the back of that other person because you could also say, well...
Is everything on the back of the guy that made the widget?
I mean, his idea can't belong to him because he created it.
We should take it for us, even though we did not come up with it.
The people that didn't create it and didn't invent it are the ones who want to define how much this guy should get for inventing it versus how much they get.
My ex-girlfriend is a professional fighter and she fights in Bellator.
However, the idea of the meritocracy of being a fighter seems...
I don't think it's lost on her.
I just think that she doesn't like the way it's worked out for her.
And that makes her upset.
Whereas, for me...
I found success as being a fighter.
And sometimes it would appear that she would be upset at me for what I was able to do and somehow think that maybe I was less deserving or somehow it's an exception.
Who knows what?
But the reality is, I can sit back and go, oh, Mark Hunt just made $800,000.
Her thought might be more, let's say, I'm making this up.
Either that or just like, well, I deserve more than this.
And my argument would always be when she was upset about what she may be getting paid here or there.
And some of this I'd go, well, look, you know, for this...
For what we're trying to accomplish and for what is available in these markets, that's not a bad payday.
Well, that sucks.
No, I agree with you.
You should make more money, but we can't.
It's not available, so we have to deal with what we have.
For me, and then I would look at something like Mark Hunt and be like, well, I beat Mark Hunt, but so what?
I'm more glad that Mark Hunt was able to create an opportunity to make $800,000, so therefore, if he can make $800,000, now the potential for me to do that exists as well.
And it's just similar to like the old Gina Carano thing where everyone got on the train about wanting to beat Gina Carano.
Fuck Gina Carano.
She's not even that good and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
All this hate at Gina Carano.
When the reality is like, okay, well, even if you beat Gina Carano, you're not going to get what Gina Carano gets.
You're not going to get, people aren't going to like you just as much or more.
It's really not about any of that.
The only thing you can control is yourself.
At the end of the day, you can only control yourself.
Only you can work to try and determine your value in terms of what you're trying to sell.
A lot of people thought Holly Holm should have won that fight.
It was a very close fight and Durandami definitely hit her twice after the bell.
Once really significant and should have been a penalization.
So why the fuck isn't Holly fighting?
I know she just fought Betch Cohea, but as soon as Megan Anderson dropped off, if Holly could take it, I mean she didn't have, she's not injured, maybe she is, who knows, she might be.
That's the thing about boxing and the Connor and Mayweather fight.
It's the specialization of a boxer versus the MMA person.
I would say the MMA fighter is the superior fighter.
When you start, to me, the most open and the most even playing field is the one that has the least rules.
But...
By funneling that down to those specific skill sets with boxing, you create a specialized athlete.
While there are skills within boxing that will transfer to MMA, even just in terms of boxing, the timing and the footwork that you might use in boxing isn't necessarily what you would use in MMA and vice versa.
And I feel like if, but look, man, it's still, you know, I had a conversation with a buddy of mine who's a really good jujitsu black belt and he was going to fight in MMA and he had very little sparring in terms of like MMA sparring or very little kickboxing sparring, almost no striking.
And I said, you know how you can do things to people on the ground where you get some guy who doesn't know what he's doing, you can just do whatever the fuck you want to him?
I go, there's guys that can do that to you standing up.
Like, you've got to be careful.
Like, you can't get this in your head that you're awesome at something, so you're awesome at everything.
Because the type of mentality that a person has to become Whether it's a championship level MMA fighter or boxers, that focus, that intense focus.
Sometimes guys get twisted and they think that because I'm a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu champion, I could be a kickboxing champion.
People forget all that they went through to acquire such a set of skills to get there in the first place.
And I understand that a highly specialized jujitsu or wrestler can go out there and experience success in MMA right away.
However, like you said, they might come across that guy who is so good on their feet that they can do whatever they want to to that guy and just leave them clueless.
Create striking that helps mitigate other people's striking so that he can get his best game off.
So that's still a type of stand-up work that he's working on that has been specialized for MMA as he fights in the UFC. Do you agree, though, that a guy like Conor McGregor would have way more...
The idea that Conor's just gonna step in and just clang Floyd with a straight left is almost as ridiculous as the idea that Floyd's gonna step into an MMA fight and catch Conor with a big punch and knock him out, Ray Mercer, Tim...
Well, that was one of the crazy things when James Toney fought Randy Couture.
There's all these people speculating how much James Toney's been training MMA, and you get to see him do some stuff with an MMA trainer, and you're like, oh, okay, he's not barely doing this.
But if you had a guy like a James Toney on the ground who came in from professional boxing, no MMA fights, would you have it in your mind that you need to prove a point?
Or would you have it in your mind, just finish him when you can?
I asked you just partly to see your response because I knew that you were going to get worked up about it and you were thinking about smashing them and what you would do.
I could see it in your eyes thinking about taking them down.
I love, that's part of the reason why by leaving fighting I know is going to be tough not competing because I love going out there and in some way it is, I was explaining this, I was actually at a philosophical lecture the other night.
Well, this lecture was a 16-part series on America.
And it was this last one.
This friend of mine hit me up.
She goes, hey, this thing's going down at this school.
So, hey, why don't we go check it out?
All right, cool.
And so it had something to do with...
Futurism, and I forget what else.
But as the lecture was going on, people would chime in and say stuff.
And so at one point, I'm listening to some of these arguments, and I'm just going, you just don't really...
You don't understand people that way.
I mean, a lot of these arguments always come from some idea of a base motivation from somebody, like the idea that all capitalism is theft.
It's like, well, you know, you don't have to be a horrible person to operate successfully within a capitalist system just as much as just because you create a communist system doesn't necessarily make you benevolent because, as you will look, you know, in the Soviet Union and as you've had...
Jordan Peterson on here, and he'll tell you all of the elements of the brutality of communist systems.
And then, of course, I remember being in the 80s and even seeing slides from one of my teachers who was over in the Soviet Union and sneaking photos out of the USSR because they didn't want any photos of Of living conditions and all these sort of things, breadlines, all that stuff, brought back to the Western world because they felt it would make them look bad.
Of course, because it did.
And people were entrenched in these systems and abusing these systems to their benefit, just like politicians abuse our system to their benefit, just like all human beings will abuse a system to its benefit when given the chance to do so, either out of selfishness to the point of maliciousness or even just direct maliciousness.
So...
The human element is the key process in all systems.
They're pretty much the cause of all systems failing, and they always will be.
But when you try to create some other roundabout idea, you try to assign these other crazy concepts as to why, or you create these micro-group ideologies, and you distill and distill and distill, and you constantly or you create these micro-group ideologies, and you distill and distill and distill, and you constantly create—like So there's always has to be some sort of oppressor, there always has to be a conflict, you know, a lot of human beings aren't out there trying to oppress people, they're just trying to get theirs.
Or creating their little tribes and creating what they, to use an overused word, safe space for themselves in which they understand this area.
They understand these demarcations about this group and these people and this thing and even this area of land at which you live in.
I know I'm going off on a tangent here from our original discussion, but the idea of personal property and you have your fence lying around, let's say, a piece of property.
I was walking through Joshua Tree and looking at all this stuff and pondering some things and That property line isn't just about me owning this and keeping other people out and looking at it.
Someone wants to say, oh, you just want to be selfish and own and be greedy and dominate something.
Well, actually, think about it this way.
That line is the same as an extension from my own personal space.
I know you, so...
You know, you can get right in my personal space and I don't care because we've already vetted each other.
We've already had a relationship.
I have a good understanding of who you are as Joe Rogan and your being in the world and you understand me to a degree as well as Josh Barnett.
Versus some guy, something, anything that you don't know.
So you have this fence line.
What you're doing is you're creating this space that is just an extension of your own personal bubble, of your own personal safe space.
And so within that, you feel like you've vetted it.
You know these rocks.
You know these plants.
You understand the pluses and minuses of this area that exists.
And so within this place of existence, you can be your most authentic self without any concern of the rest of the world.
Now, if somebody something was to come and want to cross that that line, you'd want to say, well, I don't know what it is yet.
So I want to vet that source and then say, OK, yeah, it's OK.
I'll allow you into my into my space, into my area.
And so now you, too, can also be open to the vulnerability that I'm giving you.
Because that's what it is.
You know, our personal space is about our vulnerability, about the ability for someone else to, you know, interact with us physically as well as emotionally.
And so, even just having your little cabin with your little fence.
They're all pretty much neo-Marxists from the, as Peterson and other people have described, from the Frankfurt schools permeating into academia and going after the superstructure instead of the base.
I think there's an undeniable aspect that you talked about before where, with your ex-girlfriend at least, or with some people like that, we don't even have to single out her, that people that are not successful in the competition of life seek to diminish the success of those around them.
The people that not only do they not think they can't compete, they don't want anyone to be successful because they don't think they're ever going to be successful.
And every day, throughout social media, people are seeing manufactured, manicured interpretations of life and thinking and weighing themselves against that.
So that's just one example of how you are...
Using these external forces to determine your value systems or putting value on things that are beyond your control or putting value in areas that are unnecessary, that are actually harmful to you.
And so, people...
If I had to just walk away from everything, like my muscle cars and all that stuff...
I know.
I know it's a horrible thought.
I have some projects that are going to be to completion here soon that I'm just so looking forward to.
But I'm replacing it with a 75 Formula Firebird with a 455 that I punched out the 470, automatic overdrive trans, and Hotchkiss suspension, and Wilwood brakes all the way around on it.
And that's the thing, is that these things wouldn't exist if people weren't driven to express their will to power and grow, to want to be their greatest version of themselves, to create a greater thing than the last thing, to push that envelope.
While it's not always going to be successful, it's the idea of creating something greater and greater and greater.
Now, I mean, there's the argument with science that there's always a, you know, is it...
Shoulda or coulda, you know, of course.
Of course.
There is an element of ethics that has to play into that, I think, that you need to be aware of.
Well, and I think that a lot of these new, like, champagne socialist type folks, they enjoy.
That's a great expression.
They enjoy the new laptops and the new iPhones and all that stuff.
They love all the modern conveniences of the capitalist country that we live in.
And if someone wanted to sit down and talk to me about the elements of our society, of our capitalist economy, and how the issues within it now, totally.
I get it.
No, our system is fucked up in a lot of ways.
Don't get me wrong.
But by replacing it with...
You know, some sort of a Marxist system.
Now you're just asking for...
I mean, we already have enough trouble with people in power being unseatable, in a sense.
Like, us having a very ineffective way of really affecting our political system and creating change within it and having things, you know, taken away, new laws created, altered.
Like, it's so impossible, right?
But it's like, it's a system that works...
Outside of us, even though we're supposedly the ones that can control it.
But you create a communist system, right?
You create a full state-secured system.
You really have no ability to affect that without some sort of violent revolution, which doesn't...
Not probably in your best interest with the way technology and military and all that stuff.
The thing about all this stuff is that if you give people the most opportunity to be free, you're also given the most opportunity to be shitty.
And you have to accept that.
You just have to accept that some people are just going to be fucking assholes, some people are going to be shitty, some people are going to try and create a system that you're not going to like, that's going to reward others for things that you don't think it should.
We didn't really understand what a racket it was at the time, so I totally feel for her there.
So then she goes and she gets a different job doing something else, but made her great money, but she hated it, didn't like it, didn't want to be in that.
All right, so then chose to fight and do personal trainer stuff, and then would always gripe about how she didn't make enough money, and it's like, well...
You could do, okay, well then how about this?
You charge X amount per hour normally.
Well, how about you set a limit to where you get to X amount of people and then once you go over that, now you double the fee because it's not really worth it to you anymore, is it?
So you create an increase and you see what your minimum is and then over that...
And if people are willing to pay it, then they pay it.
Well, I couldn't do that.
That would be unethical to charge these people, double what I'm charging these people or whatever.
It's like, well, okay then.
How about you create a class schedule set up and you iron out some time here.
Instead of teaching one person, you teach five people, but then you charge them two-thirds what you charge.
It's just like, well, okay.
At the end of the day, we have to do what we need to do to pay our bills and do these things and do whatever, but we also have to determine how we acquire those bills, what our expenses are going to be, and if we can't create a system that supports that, then we have to reevaluate and if we can't create a system that supports that, then we have to reevaluate The one thing we can't do is just be upset.
Being truly free, let's just say in an existential sense, means that you have to take responsibility for all these actions, but it's also all on you to find your own success.
And that means you're going to fail.
That means you're going to struggle.
That means all these difficulties are going to happen.
But I personally believe that through struggle and these difficulties, that's where growth comes as well.
I got completely betrayed and cheated on for months in the end of it.
So it's just like, oh, well, I put all this investment into trying to help this other person and create a life with them only to get completely screwed over in the end.
The big factor in not getting their shit together is not coming to terms with their own Inefficiency, failures, or inability to accomplish a certain task.
And looking outside of that for a reason versus looking internally to see, like, I didn't have enough skill to do X, Y, to do this thing.
Or I didn't put in enough time to acquire the skill to do that.
Or I made a mistake here that cost this.
When it comes to relationships, you know, it's where it lies.
The difficulty lies there.
It can be specific to different emotional elements versus your work, versus how you even find time to make the most out of your leisure time.
Every situation has its own subjectivity to it based on these other external factors that change from each situation.
But ultimately, everything's stemming from you anyways.
So your way of approaching these things and dealing with these problems and how you let them affect you.
And I'm not just talking about being a complete stoic and being just cold and unaffected and unfeeling.
It's just about...
Having these things happen and then what do you do about it?
Also, how do you measure that metric?
If you have the greatest year of life and then you have an hour that's super shitty in traffic, did that really stuck with you and someone hit your car and my challenger's got a dent in it?
Did I really have the worst day ever?
Or did I just have an hour of an aggravation that sucked, but ultimately, if I allow that to take away from everything that happened up to that point, then I just assigned all this value into this one moment.
Because whoever I take under my wing, I don't just train people to train them.
I don't...
Them being fighters is one piece of their life.
One element.
Honestly, eventually it'll be a small element, but it has a lot of impact and meaning.
I mentor people when I work with them.
I'm trying to help them visualize and achieve their greatest state of being from what they can get.
Now, fighting may be a vehicle to help try to achieve that, but ultimately...
They're living their life and they have something that they're trying to accomplish with that.
And so for me, I'm trying to help them realize what that is.
And that's going to be different for other people just as much as you can't coach everyone the same way.
Everybody needs something a little different in terms of what they're trying to achieve and people want to achieve different things.
Of course, they have this element of fighting and success within fighting that is a bond that is a similarity amongst the rest of them and even amongst me.
But beyond that, that changes from there on out.
So, you know, just recently I've been working with Travis Brown.
You know, people are like, holy fuck, you guys are your homies?
What the hell happened?
And it's just, the thing was is that Travis had tried to get in touch with me through Marina before.
Like, hey, he really wants to talk to you.
And I'm just like, okay, I wonder what he wants to talk about.
And this is like, Over a year ago, I think.
But for one reason or the other, we weren't able to ever cross paths.
But through that time, it would keep coming back.
He really wants to see you.
Not just text you.
Not just chat with you on the phone, but actually see you.
Okay.
That already says something to me.
That already has a lot more meaning.
And so, sure enough, I meet up with him this one time at a coffee shop.
And he just wanted to sit down.
Man to man, eye to eye, and just go over any of the beef that we had had and make his statements and any apologies and anything that I might have to say and any apologies.
And I was like, holy fuck.
I use man.
I'm not trying to be specific.
But any person that is willing to sit down and be accountable...
And hear somebody else's side and just show up and be like, look, man, I'm not looking for something from you, but I'm trying to be open and deal with whatever this is out here.
He's got great quickness, and he's got great reach, good power.
Hell, I should know.
The thing is, he just didn't feel that he was getting what he best needed, so he made a change.
And even still, for fighting someone like Alexi, he felt that, oh, well, having a guy that was a good grappler and also good at that head and arm position, which Alexi likes...
To have someone come in here and work with him in these very specific areas.
But for me, it's like, well, if you want me to be here, I'll be here and I'll help you in any way I can.
And so I would work with him while we're sparring.
We would do situational stuff.
And he was just like a sponge and watching him get better every day and having some other guys around to help and be bodies too.
And it ended up being great.
It also was great for Shohei because I was able to put him in a very...
Isolated environment and keep his focus so razor sharp and he went and knocked his guy out in 22 seconds who was undefeated.
I just need to be in there, in the trenches with these guys, putting our heads together, and helping Travis be the best he can be as a fighter.
And even then, through these training sessions, you're teaching somebody about getting out of a move, you're teaching somebody about doing a move, but wrapped in that whole bubble is, okay, you're having a hard time right now, yeah?
Yeah.
Okay.
That's okay because you're still moving forward.
Don't worry about how difficult it is.
Sometimes this is going to be hard as shit.
Other times things will work just like that.
It doesn't matter.
The matter is you got to keep going.
You got to keep moving forward.
You got to keep fighting.
You got to keep working.
And then from one position, it's like, well, you can't afford to be here at all.
So no matter how hard it is, you got to get out.
But you can rest over here.
Or it's like, you know, this training session was super fucking hard.
That's great.
If you're not pushing yourself into your absolute exhaustion now, how do you think you're going to perform when it's at its utmost?
I'm just throwing out examples, but it's just about working with him on a mental level too and getting his mind in that best state to then best use those physical capabilities because ultimately, in my opinion, mental is the most important aspect when it comes to fighting.
How you approach these things, your mentality towards...
Each individual skirmish within that fight that eventually leads to either your success or your failure.
That's always the thing.
It's like whether I could teach someone to throw a kick this way or kick that way.
There's always a way to make something work.
Maybe there are some techniques that are more low percentage than others, but there will always be a guy that can make it work.
However, Your mental, the way you approach a fight mentally is the fucking thing that is the hardest thing to hone.
The hardest thing to change over.
The hardest realizations to create is all in terms of how you mentally approach a fight.
Yeah, give them tools to fall back on if they're in a certain situation.
This is something you can call on.
This is something you can think about if you find yourself stuck.
This is the mindset.
Instead of just swimming out there, freaking out and treading water and trying to figure out how long you can do it for, have a very specific mindset that you adopt or that you take on when you're in a bad spot.
And a lot of drills and things that I'll create for fighters are based on creating comforts.
And familiarity to where things get to a point where you're not thinking about it anymore, but you're so comfortable and in that moment, in that space, that you can react and act as most easily as possible.
And also, once you end up in a...
Position that is negative to you, that is detrimental, how to then work your way through it and still do so with comfort.
Like, I loved watching Liz Carmouche on Rhonda's back because Rhonda stayed so, so calm that that's how she was able to work her way through it, fight that arm off her head, keep in good position, and eventually work her way out of it instead of seizing up and possibly You know, locking in place and then Liz being able to finish that face lock or that choke.
And you know, I'm also of the sort that sees guys that are getting hit in the four-point position, turtle position, you know, guys are swinging on them, and they've got their arms up and they're covered.
Often, a lot of times, they're like, just keep letting it go.
You're not getting through, but reps will see, like, oh, it looks bad, we're stopping it.
Beyond that, he wouldn't put that kind of effort into it, unless he's just completely losing his shit and being like, oh, fuck it!
And he's not thinking about it, which could come back to haunt him.
Like, I've seen a lot of times, old, old, old, old school fights, guys even in mount just unload on a guy, and the guy survives it, reverses it, and eventually he gets his...
But I think in that situation, there's no argument for stopping the fight.
Because it's not like strikes.
There could be an argument where Brock Lesnar is on the bottom and he's not moving enough and maybe some people who are a little bit more cautious might have stopped that fight.
It's a mistake that the referee fucked up for sure.
He stopped the fight, but he stopped the fight based on a, and this is where I'm going to go against myself, a very advantageous position that was as close to finalizing and finishing as you can discern, where a guy's no longer defending with his hands.
He's hanging in there.
I mean, I think Mario fucked up because he didn't let it get to 10, but he let it get to 9. It got to 9. Yeah.
Well, when you look back at your initial fights in MMA, like in Superbrawl, and then entering into the UFC, which is like, when was your first fight in the UFC? What year?
It's just like seeing him over all the years, training at his gym in Brazil when I was down there.
He came and picked me up, picked up me and my ex, and we went out there, trained with this guy, Master Letao, who is one of the Was this before or after your second fight?
Yeah, we were down there, me and my ex, and we're down there to help corner Shayna in her last fight in the UFC. It was in Brazil against Nunes.
And while we're down there, it's like, hey, I still want to get in training, and I want to train with all the lute de libre, like, catch-derived guys that I can.
And so, yeah, we trained with Master Leitao for a while, and Pedro just let us use his gym.
And we would sit there and talk, and I go, you know, one of the things about Pedro, I go...
He taught me how to throw the counter right hand even better than I'd ever known, and that pivot step, and they hit it from the other angle, because he knocked me the fuck out with it.
And it was so beautiful in the replay, I'm like, I need to learn that.
So, it's me and Mirko and Eric Paulson, and we're training in Vegas.
I think...
I don't know if I was doing commentary on that show or if I was fighting Pavel Natsulo.
Either way.
We're training at this gym in Vegas, and Mirko came out, so we're rolling around and training together and having a good time.
And I think I was fighting.
And so Paulson's holding pads for me.
And Miracle's like, ah, do this with your left hook and said.
Alright, how about, nah, that's not it.
Nah, nah, nah, nah.
Here, let me show you.
Here, you hold the pad.
So Paulson's got this full-on tie pad.
Leather tie pad.
And he's holding it for Mirko's right hook, since we're talking lead hook, essentially.
So Mirko's like, no, I want you to do this.
You're doing it like X, so I need you to do it like this.
So watch.
And he hits this, he right hooks this pad, this tie pad.
It goes, it tears the straps off of Paulson's arm, and it goes flying across the room and hits the wall and bounces off the wall and falls on the fucking ground.
And everyone's just like...
And Paulson's just...
His hand is still like this, and he looks at me, and he looks at Mirko, and Mirko's just like, meh.
And I just...
Everybody's just...
It's just silence.
Wham!
Flap!
Bam!
I just went...
See, I took that.
That's what I was getting hit with, and I still managed to stay on my feet, because I'm an idiot.
His middle and his low kick were the most dangerous because I felt like you could more read the high kick, but if you read the high kick, or if you were too...
You know, and the thing is, people that were, by having Pride, it opened up I would always say, like, having another company with a different flavor, maybe it'll draw in other fans that wouldn't maybe necessarily be a fan of UFC, but they like the way that Pride did it.
And so that would get them interested in MMA, and therefore, then they might also...
Okay, well, maybe I will give this UFC stuff a try.
Maybe, well, I like this one fighter, so I'll watch when he's on.
So a guy like Fedor, when you see him at this stage of his life and you see him getting KO'd again, what are your thoughts on that when you watch that?
When I was in Romania, I don't know the truth on this stuff.
I haven't done the research, so up to your listeners to go follow up.
The Romanians have said that they have found texts and archaeological findings that would show...
A language that was not a Romance language that still possessed words that existed in modern-day Romanian and that the idea that perhaps the Romanian language was older than Latin.
But they also went to the Palace of Vlad the Impaler in the middle of Bucharest, which was awesome.
For people who don't know who Vlad the Impaler was, he was a guy who literally would put people on sticks and then eat in front of them.
He would stick sticks through their assholes, put them on spikes, out their mouth, and then have them all lined up around him while he sat down and ate.
He also took the merchants or these guys that he felt had been cheating and scamming the Wallachian area that he was in, in Romania, Wallachia, the people, and really getting super rich off their backs in a way that they...
Didn't have an option.
And so he went and grabbed them and their kids and would have them build.
They were building the steps up to this castle or whatever.
And if the dad died, they would just take the kid and put him in his place.
And it's like, until this is completely done, your debt still exists.
We're just saying that it's just like moving into...
I had all these things that I was trying to accomplish, and so it's just like, alright, well, since I'm not putting energies in these areas, then I'm going to take that energy and put it somewhere else.
I hate to say it, but Fox really dropped the ball big time on it, and the people that were working on the podcast just completely shit the bed.
To the point of, like, I had Renato and Scotty Epstein on, and we're sitting there...
15 minutes before we're going to go on just chatting, whatever.
And then it's like, all right, guys, where we're going to go, we're going to film now, all right?
One, three, two, all right, boom, do our thing.
Nobody even pays attention to look at the front of the footage and cut it from what's not supposed to be aired, and then they just throw it up there raw.
So Rahsaan, Hanato, is being Rahsaan, and we're all doing our stuff, and then I get this email, and Rahsaan I'm like, yo, what the fuck, dude?
And there was stuff like, hey, I know you're going to be on vacation, but I'm going to do an on-location interview with this band Godor.
I'm going to get it all.
I'll just send it to you.
Can someone edit it?
Oh, I'm off on vacation.
I can't help.
There's fucking nobody there.
There's zero.
There's no one.
So then I had to go and reach out to another friend and be like, hey, man, you have some time to fucking chop this up for me and just make a few edits?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can do that.
And then, you know, put that up and then it was...
Another thing, like, okay, well, hey, guys, if I'm going to do this podcast, I want to have music in it.
I want to have bands that I know and love and whatever.
And then there was another dude that was a producer of sorts, who I got along with great, but when it came to getting it all done, obviously fucking it didn't work.
But the guy that was above him was unable to take blame for anything.
And...
And own up to any, like, fuck-ups.
And so it wasn't like I was asking for much from them.
I'm just like, well, tell me what we're dealing with here so I can know how to appropriately, you know, react.
And then, you know, getting this whole okay about music.
So, all right.
So I go and I do all the legwork, get everybody to agree, have my guest on.
We play some music to start it off.
We play music, you know, while they're there, while he's there.
And I'm being an asshole, moshing around the room, having fun, joking around.
And then I watch the video of it, and it's like silence.
The fuck?
I'm just stomping around a room to silence.
What the hell is going on?
Oh yeah, legal wouldn't clear the music.
Why the fuck are we dealing with this now when I asked you before we even did podcast one?
Before we even did the first episode.
Why did we not get that out of the way?
Because you told me we didn't need it.
And it's just like shit like that.
And so we're now like, look, we're not even doing it for money right now.
See, they thought that they were doing something, and then now they've completely changed their tune.
They've decided to, the only people that they're investing their time in now are people that they have exclusive relationships with.
their thoughts about the fighter and the kid were, and Brendan shared them with me, some article that they were talking about him in, where the fighter and the kid, they feel like rode on the Fox name and then became really popular and then made it.
What happened is there's an entertaining show and two guys are really good and then another entertaining show like mine has them on and then millions of people find out about it and then they go on other entertaining shows like whether it is fucking Jason Ellis or whether it's...
That's part of how they get a lot of attention and popularity.
But I think he puts out funny stuff too, man.
He did some funny things where he...
He's done a bunch of funny sketches where he goes undercover as different people.
He has this communist French character that he goes undercover as.
No, no, no.
Crowder does.
Crowder does a lot of funny shit.
People get mad at me for saying that he's funny.
I think he's funny.
I think he does some funny shit.
He's done some really hilarious social justice warrior things where he showed up at some...
Well, he definitely dressed as a trans person for a while, was trying to push the boundaries of when can you decide that you're transitioning?
How do you know whether or not someone has decided that they're transitioning or whether or not they're hoaxing you?
Who are you to say that I'm not really trans?
So he went to one of those all-women's gyms and said that he was trans, and then they let him in at first, and then after a while they're like, what the fuck?
And they kicked him out.
I don't think he was an all-woman's gym.
In fact, I think he just went to a gym that said that they accept trans people.
And then when he went in, he wanted to shower in the women's room, but he had a fucking five o'clock shadow.
It's creating power for a person to affect that against someone else.
It's also creating moral high ground so you can feel as if you're in the right to say this or that and because you are supported by all these other people around you.
I'm like, Well, culturally, it's just like, well, this argument we'll listen to, but not this one.
Of course.
But at the end of the day, what really sucks is that when it came to...
I had gotten so into politics because of my living situation.
As I'm looking at all this stuff, trying to understand the currents of what's going on, I'd find I'd have to go...
Read, like, the most crazy leftist stuff, and then I'd have to go find some gnarly alt-right garbage and have to go there and read all these preposterous arguments, racist, shitty arguments on both sides, just ridiculous stuff to them.
Because even amongst some crazy racist or some crazy, you know, communists, either way, there's going to be some truth there that they figure is useful to their argument.
that may be different from the other, but it still doesn't change it from being true.
It's like, uh, uh, you can't, the truth doesn't, doesn't change from place to place.
You can't, you can't change it anymore.
And you can salt salt, uh, said by Cormac McCarthy.
And it's like, well, I have to now go outside of this because I can't find any one news source is going to be completely honest with me.
So then I have to look at all these places and try to piece this whole story together based on what truth I can find.
And honestly, it got to be so tiring.
And reading just crazy shit on each side and having to...
It's like, well, some of this stuff is just so fucking fucked up.
And it's not like I needed a trigger warning or something like that.
But it just gets tiring.
And I also think like people coming up with like racial IQ things, trying to create some idea there.
And I'm like, fuck, man.
People believe this.
It's like trying to navigate flat earth shit and stuff like that and go, come on.
The first time I read it, I'm like, okay, yeah, whatever.
You just don't get it.
But then when I see that there's even some small amount of traction, it's just fucking disappointing.
We're too busy thinking about what we don't have or what we should have or how we deserve more than this person or that person.
If you want to argue about the difficulty it is to buy a home nowadays, I'm totally willing to listen.
If you want to argue about the shady aspects of banks, I'm there with you.
You know what I mean?
But if you just want to start trying to cut me down into some specific class to minimize me and then devalue my opinion or who I am, it's just like, I'm not going to...
I understand the biological potential for tribalism and the fear of the thing that is the unknown being maybe too much of a risk.
So if you look at wild animals, they don't really get into fights all that much if they can help it.
Because the risk of being injured, maimed, or dead, potentially, is just too much.
So most of the time they get into their little scraps and they disperse.
And if you're a full-on alpha, you normally don't get into any fucking fights whatsoever.
It's the betas always trying to peck their way up and maybe eventually find an alpha that they might perceive having a weakness.
But once they finally get to that point that they're going to really fucking full-on fight, it means everything because everything is at risk.
Well, you look at some cave people, it's probably the same way.
The first time one group sees someone that looks completely different from them, they're like, oh, what the fuck is that?
Can I risk it?
Is it going to destroy my community?
Is it going to be damaging to...
You know, it's like caveman shit because they don't understand until somebody creates an understanding.
But to me, I'm like, okay, I can understand that on that base element, but we have the ability to overcome that, to be greater than that, to be better than that, to not sit there and value people on all these surface-level shit.
I mean, you can stereotype things all you want and be like, oh, well, this looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and this looks like a goose and honks like a goose, whatever, fine.
But If you try to continue to keep people in these places...
You're diminishing who they are.
You're creating this element of prejudice.
You're creating those barriers for that interaction to not happen.
You're the one that's helping create that tribalistic element.
And so as you continue to whittle these people down to more and more groups, but now when you couch that in with this neo-Marxist elements, it's like, well, now the more tinier the group you get, the more you get to be oppressed.
To my understanding, what my management is saying is that USADA, to I'm completely satisfied with understanding that the supplement that I took was tainted.
And they even went out, and after they tested the one that I gave them, they went out and bought a whole brand new bottle, unopened, tested that one, again, laced with the same shit.
And they had already, you know, they had tested me, not even that much in between.
Or they had tested me in between, or there was barely any time in between tests anyways.
So, my manager's telling me that the guy at the lab is going, well, this is such a negligible amount that it looks like you've been, whatever you took was tainted in the first place.
So, because there's no reason why a guy your size would even bother to have such a negligible amount of whatever this shit is in your system.
Especially since, to explain that, between the last test and this test, it would be such a small amount that there's no way that you were on something and you cycled off.