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Oct. 22, 2018 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:03:25
Joe Rogan Experience #1185 - Kelly Slater
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j
joe rogan
42:46
k
kelly slater
01:17:33
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j
jamie vernon
00:18
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
4, 3, 2, 1. Kelly Slater, we've been talking about doing this for how long?
kelly slater
A couple years.
joe rogan
It's been a while, man.
kelly slater
Thanks for having me.
joe rogan
Thanks for being here.
I'm glad we finally got a chance to do it.
What are you in California for?
I know you broke your foot, right?
kelly slater
I broke my foot real bad.
joe rogan
How'd you do that?
kelly slater
Well, my girlfriend's from San Clemente.
And her family lives there, and so we kind of live here.
We're not moving around too much.
So I'm just kind of here right now.
I'm not competing.
I broke my foot.
I was surfing in South Africa about 15 months ago, and I was just on a wave that I wouldn't consider a very big wave.
Nobody would really consider dangerous.
And it all kind of closed out, which is, you know, when it all breaks at once, I just pulled in the thing because I was going to sort of wash in on the rocks right where that was and change boards.
And I was practicing.
I had to compete in about two hours from then.
So I was just testing out different boards.
For some reason, I wasn't riding the board.
I was planning on riding competition.
So I was going to come in and change and switch to my normal board.
And I just pulled this wave and just...
Kind of hesitated.
Like, you either ride those out and stay on your board or you jump off.
And I was kind of between the two.
And I kind of lifted my front foot off my back foot.
My leg was straight because I was kind of going to, I think I was going to jump off.
And as my foot got, my leg got locked back straight, the board flipped in against the toes.
And it just broke the top of my foot in half.
unidentified
Oh!
kelly slater
Like, immediate.
joe rogan
Oh my god!
We're looking at a photograph of the x-ray right now, and it's like every bone is snapped.
kelly slater
Well, what you can't see...
Are you aware of the Liz Frank joint?
joe rogan
No.
kelly slater
That's where the first big metatarsal comes together, so that first big joint on top of the foot there.
joe rogan
Why is it called the Liz Frank joint?
kelly slater
Liz Frank was a doctor, I think.
We could look this up.
I think that was the person that did the original surgery, which when you used to break your foot in a stirrup back a hundred years ago, they used to cut your foot off.
joe rogan
Oh, God damn it!
kelly slater
Yeah, so that was kind of how this sort of joint got famous.
But normally what happens is those toes...
Those two bones right there, the first and second metatarsal, can either spread or converge one way or the other, and that's usually what a Liz Frank fracture is.
I had the best of the three, which is I had a crack.
You can just see on the right side of, yeah, if you go down with the cursor right there, just a little lower, there's a little crack right there.
Right there on that corner.
And then the next one broke across.
You can just see right there.
It's cracked across.
So it kind of went in a line up and across the foot.
joe rogan
And then the other two are just destroyed.
kelly slater
Yeah, the third one displaced.
The fourth one shattered into about eight pieces.
The doctor said he lost count putting them back together.
You know, you would know from injuries, the problem with when there's shatters of bone, they're not getting the blood flow.
So it's not like a four or five week repair job.
It's like, that was like nine months before that thing was back together properly.
joe rogan
So when they do that, how do they piece that shattered one back together again?
kelly slater
Delicately.
And they put like a mesh over.
So I got to kind of like figure out how to...
Well, I had a plate on the Liz Frank and then I had a kind of a bridge across the third and fourth.
And so they kind of meshed it all together.
And then I think I had 16 screws combined in all that.
joe rogan
God damn, man.
kelly slater
It was brutal.
The problem with it was I did it in South Africa where I wasn't going to get surgery.
So I had to wait for the swelling to go down for about six days before I could fly.
joe rogan
Oh god damn.
kelly slater
Because they thought the foot was going to swell too much because it was already swollen from the event so I iced the shit out of my foot.
For like, you know, five days and sat there and watched.
Unfortunately, the waves were perfect.
So I was sitting on the beach just watching perfect waves.
You know, it's like, that's like as painful as the injury to a surfer, you know?
It's like watching a bunch of elk walk by in front of you and not scared of you, right?
unidentified
Right.
kelly slater
So I sat there, because the whole time prior to me being injured while I was there for like two weeks, the waves weren't very good.
So I broke my foot and the waves got great.
So I had to watch it.
So that's painful for us.
So then I waited for this one to go down, and then it's two red eyes to get back.
joe rogan
Was there no way you could get it fixed in South Africa?
kelly slater
I maybe could have.
But then I was probably looking at staying in Africa for a month or more.
And also I didn't know the quality, sort of level of quality of a doctor I was going to get there.
And I got a doctor I work with here and I called him straight away.
I said, look, it's my fourth broken foot, but I've never broken it like this.
Usually it's like, let it heal for four weeks and you're surfing.
joe rogan
And it's all from surfing?
kelly slater
Yeah.
And all from the same wave.
joe rogan
Oh, really?
kelly slater
Pretty much the board going back against the foot.
Fuck.
And usually it happens when I'm...
I don't know how well-versed you are in surfing, but when I'm tube riding, and usually with my back to the wave, which has happened two or three times, so I'm in the wave, the lip pitches over and lands, but when that lands, it sends a shock back into the wave.
Like, you know, when the lip hits flat water, that lip, some of the energy goes down and some disperses out and up.
And some comes back into the tube.
So if it does that and you're in the wrong spot, the board will flip into your feet.
But normally what we do is when you're backside barrel ride, a lot of times you're grabbing the rail.
So you kind of have both your feet and your hand on it so you can handle that shock.
But if you're just going no hand backside...
It's usually a pretty big, intense barrel, and so that lip has a lot of energy, and it shoots a ton of force back towards you.
And if it hits your board just wrong, it can flip into your foot and break it.
joe rogan
Do you know anybody else has broken their foot like you, like that?
kelly slater
Not this bad.
One guy on tour broke his foot pretty bad, requiring surgery this year.
joe rogan
That looks horrible, man.
How long was it before you can walk?
You're walking totally normal now.
So how long has it been since the surgery?
kelly slater
Yeah, so I had surgery in the end of July last year.
And then walking normal wasn't until...
Maybe December, January.
Wow!
Well, December I competed again, but I probably shouldn't have.
But we're at Pipeline in Hawaii, which is, you're not doing maneuvers.
It's not a small wave kind of competition.
If the waves are small, I wouldn't have surfed.
Since it's bigger, it's a little easier because you take off and kind of trim a straight line.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly slater
So you're kind of going straight, you know, even though you're riding the barrel, you're kind of going straight.
joe rogan
But are you conscious of your foot being compromised?
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
Wow.
kelly slater
I don't know.
That's my favorite event in the world, so I just didn't want to miss it.
joe rogan
But fuck, if you broke your foot again?
kelly slater
Yeah.
But then, you know, the bones were pretty good back together then, and I could walk somewhat without pain.
And if I put myself in a real vulnerable position on a wave, I would kind of maybe jump off.
You know, I wouldn't really push it.
It's not worth winning a contest to break my foot again.
Yeah, I'm sure.
But to be able to surf Pipeline with no one out is kind of worth a little risk.
joe rogan
Now when you are healing, is there anything they give you that can accelerate bone healing?
Or is there any supplements?
kelly slater
A lot of it is kind of, I mean, it's the furthest place from your heart, right?
And it's down at the bottom of your body.
So you've got to kind of get that foot up.
Like a lot of times I'll sit against a wall and elevate my foot and let it completely flush out.
You know when you're a kid and you kind of hold your hand and somebody pushes all the blood out of your hand?
You ever do that one?
joe rogan
No.
kelly slater
Oh, it's like this trick where somebody holds your wrist, your arteries, so no blood's going in.
You push all the blood out and then you let it go and it's like a little spider web.
If somebody goes like that, it would feel like a spider web.
joe rogan
Oh yeah, you know, I think I did do that when I was a kid.
kelly slater
I just kind of imagined that's what I was doing with my foot up and like, oh yeah, all the blood's getting out of my foot now.
joe rogan
But did you research whether there's something that accelerates bone healing?
kelly slater
You can use magnets.
Magnets?
Some people believe magnets help increase the circulation and thus, especially a rotating magnet because it kind of creates a force field around your foot.
joe rogan
Really?
kelly slater
Yeah, supposedly.
I mean around the magnets.
joe rogan
But is this like, are these legit people?
kelly slater
These are like theories.
joe rogan
Healers.
I'm a healer.
An energy healer.
kelly slater
Well I'm just saying what I've heard people believe.
So the first time I broke my foot, a chiropractor guy I had gone to, he's like, when you go to sleep it's not going to hurt you, just put it on your foot.
And I was actually competing five weeks after I broke that foot.
So I don't know if it helped or not, but I just sleep and it was near my foot and maybe it helped.
unidentified
I don't know.
joe rogan
It takes six weeks for a bone to heal, right?
Doesn't it?
When you're young in particular.
kelly slater
It takes four weeks and then it takes two more weeks for the calcium to properly fill in.
So if you take an x-ray after four weeks, it'll still look like there's a hole, like a break there.
But apparently the bone has sutured itself back.
But the calcium has not filled in to make it totally strong.
That's what I was told by my doctor on this last one, because I asked every question possible.
Why does it still look broken?
And he was telling me, you know, it's not until you get enough blood flow, and then it's healed.
And then once there's the proper blood flow in the bone, then you get the calcium coming back in.
joe rogan
The only thing that I've heard that really is supposed to accelerate healing is the hyperbaric chamber.
Did you try that at all?
kelly slater
Yeah, which I didn't do.
I had one sort of at hand in Hawaii I could have gone to, but I didn't.
joe rogan
Oh, it's supposed to...
I know that Uriah Faber used that a lot after he fought Jose Aldo.
Aldo kicked the shit out of his leg, and his leg was really badly swollen.
It was horrible.
kelly slater
Did he break the bone?
joe rogan
No, it didn't break the bone, but it was so bad.
It was like his left leg was literally twice the size and purple.
kelly slater
I've seen the fight and heard you talking.
joe rogan
There it is right there.
There's a photo of it.
kelly slater
Yeah, and in the fight you're talking about, look at the color on his leg.
joe rogan
It was so nasty.
That was Aldo when he was in his prime.
kelly slater
And you didn't see those kicks.
You couldn't see his kicks coming.
joe rogan
He was so fast.
kelly slater
He doesn't even load up.
It's just there.
joe rogan
God, that's probably right afterwards.
kelly slater
It must have felt broken.
joe rogan
It feels fucking horrible just to get hit once, man.
I mean Uriah is so tough to just take that over and over and over again like he did.
kelly slater
Can you check those?
I mean, can you turn into them a little?
joe rogan
The problem is when you get hit, just getting hit once by a guy who's really good, like a Peter Ertz or someone who's like a really good leg kicker, they hit you once and you're not even gonna lift your leg upright.
kelly slater
Well, think of a charley horse a guy gives you in school when you're a kid.
How bad that is?
It's probably ten times that.
joe rogan
It's way worse than ten times bad.
Yeah, whatever it is.
Ernesto Hoost is probably one of the greatest, not probably, definitely one of the greatest leg kickers of all time.
And there's a video called The Perfect Leg Kick by Ernesto Hoost, and it just shows you like a compilation of him landing leg kicks on people.
And you just see like, they're like, ah!
You see their leg buckle, and he would...
With him, he would whip it down.
Like, he had this...
kelly slater
Angled it.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's a long, tall guy, and his technique was just perfect.
kelly slater
Oh, no.
joe rogan
There's video of him.
He was so good.
Watch this left kick, or left kick, and then left hook, rather, and then the right leg kick.
The way he would do it.
kelly slater
Yeah, because you're covering up top, and you don't maybe even see it, huh?
joe rogan
Look at this, though.
Bing!
Wow!
Just the whip into it.
He was so good, man.
He was so fucking good.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
And he would always do it left hook to the body and then right leg kick afterwards.
kelly slater
Ricardo Arona is a buddy of mine.
joe rogan
Oh, you know Ricardo?
kelly slater
I know Ricardo pretty well.
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
Is he a surfer?
kelly slater
Yeah, he surfs.
joe rogan
A lot of Brazilians surf.
kelly slater
Most of these guys surf, man.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
But who did he kick?
Rampage or somebody in the lower leg, like, I think, or Vonderlay, I don't know, back in the Pride days.
And I think he broke someone's lower leg or something.
joe rogan
Oh, sure.
He was the victim of the worst slam I've ever seen in my life.
kelly slater
Well, he told me, he's like, I don't know why I didn't grab the leg.
Yeah.
And...
The thing I didn't realize, because I had watched the fight before, and I didn't pick this up, I wasn't very well versed at that time in watching fights, but he goes, Kelly, you know the thing was, I put him to sleep in the fight before that, and I let him go, and I told the ref, he's sleeping, he's sleeping, and he goes, and then he woke back up, and the ref kind of, when you go watch it, and the ref touched him and goes, okay, keep fighting.
joe rogan
Yeah, what did he catch him with, a triangle or something like that earlier?
kelly slater
He caught him with some kind of a triangle, yeah.
joe rogan
I don't remember.
kelly slater
No, it wasn't a triangle, it was a...
joe rogan
Guillotine or something?
kelly slater
Might have been a guillotine.
They were on the ground.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Or maybe knocked him out.
kelly slater
No, I thought he put him to sleep or something.
I don't know if it was.
Anyways.
joe rogan
Yeah, but then Rampage woke up.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
And then kept fighting.
kelly slater
And the ref's like, oh, go ahead.
joe rogan
Yeah, well, Pride was crazy.
They would have let you fight to the death.
kelly slater
I went to, was it a K-1?
I watched Kitty Yamamoto and Hoyler fight.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
kelly slater
And, you know, I had run into Hoist the night before.
I just saw him at a bar, and he's like, what's up?
And I'm like, oh, I'm leaving.
I'm going to fly out tomorrow.
He goes, no, you've got to come to my brother's fight.
So I went to the fight, and then Hoyler got knocked out, man.
It was hard to watch.
joe rogan
Who did he fight?
Kid.
Kid, yeah.
Oh, that's right.
That's when Hoyler was trying.
2005. Yeah, he was getting involved in MMA, and he really didn't have any striking.
kelly slater
Yeah, he was out cold for a couple minutes.
I was like...
joe rogan
Did they just offer him a shitload of money?
Like, why did he decide to take that?
kelly slater
I don't know.
I had never met Hoyler at the time.
joe rogan
He fought a bunch of people.
He fought Sakuraba, which is really crazy.
And Sakuraba had him in a Kimura with his arm way behind his back, and they stopped the fight rather than let him get his arm broken.
kelly slater
Yeah, because he wasn't tapping.
joe rogan
Yeah, but he was like, I'm really flexible.
Like, I wasn't going to tap.
Like, I can do that.
kelly slater
Yeah, I see some of these yogis.
I follow this guy, this yogi guy, and I think, this guy named Goku Lakhandra or something, and he puts these poses up, and I think if this guy did jujitsu, there's no way somebody could tap him out, because he...
He's doing these craziest...
I don't know how you put your...
I've never seen somebody put their body in these contortionist positions, and you just wonder if somebody who's a real, true contortionist, if they knew jujitsu and how to escape things, if they could ever really get tapped with, like, arms.
I'm sure necks or guillotines or whatever.
joe rogan
What do you got here, Jamie?
Oh, there was a guy...
I thought you were showing us something.
There's a guy named Ray who was...
Oh, Jesus.
kelly slater
This guy, yeah.
joe rogan
Look at this guy.
unidentified
Wow, that's insane!
kelly slater
Did you follow this guy?
unidentified
No, I just found him.
joe rogan
Oh my god, that's insane!
kelly slater
Well, he does these poses where he's balancing on his elbow, and then the rest of his body is in these poses.
It's insane.
These hand poses and stuff.
joe rogan
Look at that one.
Go above that, right there on the far right.
Jamie, yeah, that one.
When he's on one hand.
kelly slater
It's amazing.
joe rogan
That's fucking nuts, man.
kelly slater
Yeah, this kind of stuff.
And the strength, and the amount of time you gotta take to learn these things.
It's like...
I mean, that's sort of a martial art in itself.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
Well, there's a guy who's a famous jiu-jitsu guy who once said that yoga is a martial art that you do against yourself.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's a great quote.
My friend Ray, he was a lead singer of a band, Ray Capo.
He was a lead singer of some punk band and then became a yogi.
Yeah, and we used to call him Yoga Ray, and he would come to 10th Planet, and he would just...
He could move in ways.
You're like, what the fuck are you doing, man?
His body was so...
He had so much dexterity and flexibility, it was impossible to hold him in positions.
He just could move so well.
kelly slater
You're like, wait, you're two belts below me, but I can't...
Pino?
joe rogan
Well, he was actually a very high-ranking guy, too.
He was really good at jiu-jitsu.
Well, that's scary, too, right?
And on top of that, he had this crazy...
And he also had amazing breath work.
Like, he never got tired.
Like, his cardio was incredible.
But it was all because of his breathing techniques.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
Hickson would work on a lot of breathing stuff.
Yeah.
I've known Hickson quite a long time, and he always talks about that.
You know, when you breathe through your nose and how you calm your heart.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Yeah, panic breathing through your mouth is what they would call it.
You know, when you panic breathe.
You know, most people when they're tired, you're like, ah, ah, ah.
But he was always about control, controlling your breath.
kelly slater
Yeah, and he was like, you know, prior to Wim doing his thing and becoming sort of well-known, you know, Hickson would go sit in ice-cold streams and just breathe real calm through the nose and control the, you know.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's in that movie Choke.
He's in a glacial Yeah.
And he's just sitting neck deep.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
And everybody else just dips their foot and then like, fuck this!
And he's in there, freezing cold water, just loving it.
Yeah, he's a fascinating guy.
And he's really the first guy that sort of introduced martial artists to the power of yoga.
Because he was the best.
kelly slater
That stomach work he can do, you know?
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
And it's like...
It's freaky.
joe rogan
It's crazy.
Have you watched those videos?
Yeah, we've played that.
It's from the movie Choke.
kelly slater
Yeah, that's right.
joe rogan
What is that called?
Fire breathing or something?
Breath of Fire?
There's like a word for that kind of breathing.
kelly slater
It's probably more specific because sometimes you'll go to a class and they'll go, okay, Breath of Fire...
joe rogan
Right, that's just like that.
But yeah, he could pull his stomach in and move it side to side in some weird way.
kelly slater
Yeah, he said like he could use every muscle in his body individually.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
Like move it independent of other muscles.
That's a weird one.
joe rogan
You also love surfing.
kelly slater
Love surfing.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
I've given boards to Hickson for a long time.
joe rogan
Really?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, that's so cool.
Yeah, it's amazing how many jujitsu guys love surfing.
kelly slater
Yeah, there's endless.
joe rogan
Is it just because of Rio and Rio and it's like...
kelly slater
They're on the beach, you know?
joe rogan
It's such a surf place.
kelly slater
Yeah, it's like they all sort of did jujitsu and sort of played soccer and surf.
They're all on the beach, so they're kind of doing these things and some volleyball with their feet, whatever you call that thing.
joe rogan
Right, right, right.
What is that?
kelly slater
I don't know.
But the slams are sick.
joe rogan
It's crazy.
I posted a video of these guys in Thailand that were doing that.
They were playing, like, volleyball, a version of volleyball with their feet.
And it's fucking wild, man.
kelly slater
It's like the ultimate hacky sack.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's the craziest shit.
Like, the dexterity they have with their feet, where they're whacking the ball over, and then the other guy on the other side is whacking it back, and it's like they're catching it with their foot.
Oh, look at this.
unidentified
Whoa!
kelly slater
Look at the angles they get.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, the flexibility, too.
And these guys are really close to each other, too.
kelly slater
Yeah.
There must be some good fails, like kicks in the face.
joe rogan
Oh, I'm sure.
I'm sure there's a lot of that.
kelly slater
What's it called?
joe rogan
This is Koreans.
kelly slater
Boom.
joe rogan
Look at that kick!
Oh my god, that's insane!
And then you have to fall on your hands, and I hope you don't break your wrists.
kelly slater
I wonder if they got kind of a padded floor, like a mat on Dojo.
joe rogan
This is pretty impressive stuff, but Jamie, see if you find that video that I posted on my Instagram page, I reposted somebody else posting it, and it's fucking bananas, because these guys are using this little shitty ball in the jungle, and just the ability that they have with their feet is just out of this world.
kelly slater
You ever hear of a guy named Sir Donald Brad...
Gosh, I'm going to forget his name.
Bradman, I believe it was.
He's the best cricket player of all time.
joe rogan
No.
kelly slater
Best cricketer of all time.
So he grew up in Australia, kind of an outback, and he...
I guess, from what I heard, there wasn't many people around.
And he used to play...
He would take a stick, just a random stick, and he would hit a ball against a corrugated, curved wall.
Corrugated aluminum, you know, one of those kind of bended walls.
And they used for roofing.
And so the ball would just bounce off at all these different angles.
And his hand-eye coordination became like, you know, as good as you could possibly ever have.
Because it was like his fun thing to do.
joe rogan
Check these guys out.
Look at this crazy shit.
kelly slater
I saw you post this, yeah.
joe rogan
Look at this.
Off the head.
And it looks like these perfect shots, but they keep firing it back at each other.
Look at that.
kelly slater
Off the head.
unidentified
Fucking madness.
kelly slater
And it sounds hard.
It sounds like a coconut or something, you know?
joe rogan
Right.
It sounds like they made it out of like a rock and some fucking duct tape.
kelly slater
Oh, how was that one?
How was that kick?
That was a straight up martial arts kick.
unidentified
Insane.
kelly slater
It was like a push kick.
joe rogan
A push kick, but a roundhouse kick at the same time.
Like a push crescent kick.
kelly slater
This guy...
joe rogan
I mean...
kelly slater
And the block.
joe rogan
If you can get good at doing that, I guess it is Thai, because those are Thai writing, but if you could get good at that, man, I mean, there's certain guys that just, when you see them in Muay Thai, they have, oh, that's what it's called?
kelly slater
Burmese.
joe rogan
Sipak Takra.
It's Burmese.
Oh, okay.
Soccer and volleyball put together.
Yeah, those guys would be awesome fighters.
There's certain guys that have just insane leg dexterity that you see in martial arts.
Like, do you know who Sanchai is?
You ever see Sanchai fight?
Yeah.
kelly slater
His leg kicks would be...
joe rogan
Insane.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, he's everything.
There's a famous highlight reel of him where he throws this, like, fake knee off the right and then jumping roundhouse kicks this guy in the face and KOs him with his left.
And it's just the ability that he has to place his foot like anywhere he wants.
His dexterity is just out of this world.
kelly slater
His range would just be otherworldly, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
Well, that's...
I mean, there's just...
There he is.
kelly slater
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, that's not Senshi.
kelly slater
No, that's a younger guy.
Senshi was talking about, they were asking about Conor, fighting Conor.
You ever see that thing?
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
He's like, no, I'd kill this guy.
joe rogan
He'd fuck him up.
He'd fuck him up so bad.
kelly slater
Like, he'd probably let it go.
Okay, kick me a few times and let's trade.
Let's trade a couple.
joe rogan
Well, he's so hard to hit, too.
Senshi is just so elusive.
kelly slater
Why wouldn't someone like him end up in a UFC fight?
joe rogan
Because he doesn't know how to fight on the ground.
I mean, that's all it is.
kelly slater
Wouldn't they just pin him with another stand-up guy?
joe rogan
If they were smart, yeah, that would be the smart thing to do, but...
kelly slater
I mean, you're not gonna put CM Punk against another ground guy, are you?
joe rogan
Right.
Well, CM Punk, yeah, that would be a disaster.
CM Punk, that whole thing was...
Everybody's like, I can do it!
You know, you watch CM Punk, you're like, fuck, I'll fucking fight!
They won't give you those fights.
kelly slater
CM Punk's probably a lot tougher than the average guy, anyway.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know fighting, but, you know...
joe rogan
Not than the average fighter.
kelly slater
No, not the average fighter, but maybe the average guy in a bar, right?
joe rogan
CM Punk is a real nice guy, and I don't want to say anything bad about him, because, I mean, the guy gave it his all.
He really did.
kelly slater
Totally, totally dedicated.
And he ate some humble pie, and he was totally cool about it.
joe rogan
He was, and he was cool about it the first time, and he was cool about it the second time.
He's a real good guy, but he doesn't have...
What I would call talent.
kelly slater
Yeah, the skill.
joe rogan
He just moves wrong.
kelly slater
Yeah.
You can see him against Mickey Gall.
He came in and just went, you know, over the top.
And he was probably so nervous, too, never being in that situation of a real fight.
I mean, he's been in front of the crowds, but...
joe rogan
That was a nightmare.
That Mickey Gall fight was so ridiculous.
Mickey Gall's fucking good.
kelly slater
He's really good.
joe rogan
He's fucking good.
unidentified
He's dangerous.
joe rogan
And to have a guy like CM Punk that doesn't have a back...
It's not like Brock Lesnar.
Like, Brock Lesnar came to the UFC. He was a national champion as a wrestler.
He's a fucking gorilla as a human being.
Just a freak athlete.
CM Punk is a regular guy.
Like, he's not...
There's nothing freaky about him.
He doesn't have crazy power or weird speed.
kelly slater
You don't see him and go, that guy looks super scary.
Right, right.
For a guy his size, I think.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
There's guys that don't look, like Sanchai himself does not look like a freak.
kelly slater
That guy is freaky.
joe rogan
Yeah, he's so freaky.
But when you see him, he looks like an athlete, but he doesn't look like, you know, it's not like Roy Jones Jr. in his prime or something.
When you see him, you just go, Jesus, look at this fucking guy.
He was just, I mean, he's just so good.
But a guy like CM Punk...
He didn't have a background, and he tried martial arts when he was like 36. So he had no background?
Not really.
kelly slater
In the even wrestling background?
joe rogan
No, he didn't even wrestle.
It was all theatrical wrestling.
It was all entertainment, you know?
kelly slater
You would think though that those guys would, even the theatrical wrestling, they would go and Work on the skill day in, day out.
That's all you have to be as a wrestler, right?
joe rogan
There's such a difference between working on the skill day in, day out, and then working on the skill when someone doesn't want you to do it to them.
That's the thing.
And then when they're trying to do things to you, like just fucking you up, and there's nothing you can do about it.
kelly slater
And your mouth breathing.
joe rogan
Yeah, everything's wrong.
But, I mean, I'm sure he made a ton of money, and he tested himself.
The guy, I mean, give the guy some credit.
He really did test himself.
kelly slater
Yeah, I think it was a good thing for Dana and everyone to see, too.
Like, oh, okay, we're not going to do that.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly slater
Let's not put someone in that position.
Let's not put ourselves in that position.
joe rogan
But they were talking about, like, Logan Paul.
Like, Logan Paul fighting the UFC. And he was like, Logan Paul get killed.
Logan Paul is fucking way better.
Way better than CM Punk.
Logan Paul, like, actually knows how to fight.
He had a boxing match with that other YouTube guy.
But I was watching him throw punches in that fight.
I'm like, this is a guy who actually knows how to punch.
Like, his punches look good.
He gassed out.
He got a little tired.
First real fight like that.
But he has a background in wrestling.
And he actually can punch.
Like, I was watching him punch this guy.
I was like, that's a guy who actually knows how to throw punches.
He knows distance and timing.
He knows how to connect.
And he doesn't...
Look like Canelo Alvarez or anything crazy, but he looks like a guy who can actually punch.
kelly slater
Well, you can give him a break on that.
joe rogan
But Dana's like, you know, have him fight in the UFC, he would get killed.
unidentified
Like, you had a fucking CM Punk fight!
joe rogan
This guy's way better than him!
He really has a background in fighting.
kelly slater
How does that dynamic work with you and Dana?
Where, you know, with something like that, that could be seen, if somebody's a little triggered or a little sensitive, they might get a little bit angry at you saying something like that.
joe rogan
Dana's the easiest going guy ever with that kind of shit.
He doesn't give a fuck.
Look, me and him have been friends for, like, Almost 20 years.
We've been friends for a long time.
And I've been working for the UFC. I mean, I started working for the old company in 97. I started working for that long ago.
Yeah.
And then the new company, I started working for them in 2002. And I was friends with Dana before that.
It's just, he knows my heart's in the right place.
But he also knows that if I wasn't honest, nobody would listen to me.
kelly slater
Yeah, that's the thing I enjoy watching the fights and listening to.
You're critical in a fair way with people, I think.
joe rogan
I try to be.
kelly slater
Yeah, when you critique what somebody's doing, it's like if they listen the right way, it's probably going to help them.
joe rogan
Well, I definitely don't say things that...
I don't know what I'm talking about and I don't say things that I don't mean.
But if I see something and I've watched...
I mean, I've called at least a thousand fights.
I don't know how many fights I've called.
kelly slater
Probably more.
joe rogan
Probably more, yeah.
And I've seen...
Some of the greatest fights of all time, up live, in close, right next to the cage, you know?
I've seen a lot of shit.
So if I'm saying something, it's probably because it's right, or I mean it.
But if I don't know what I'm talking about, it's one of the good things about having Daniel Cormier there, or Dominic Cruz.
If there's some aspect of fighting that maybe I'm not exactly sure about, I can defer to them.
And I could say, like, what's so important about getting the underhook here?
You know, and then Cormier could go off about, like, why this?
And then you go, oh, okay, I get that.
Okay, I see.
That was a big thing in the fight with Stipe Miocic and Daniel Cormier.
Dominic Cruz was explaining how important it was that Cormier kept pummeling.
He kept shifting positions and pummeling for underhooks, and that was one of the reasons why he was able to land that big right hand, because he was never static.
kelly slater
He also had to wear some to get in there, too, didn't he?
I mean, he was right in Stipe's face, and Stipe was like, I mean, that was such a great match, even though, obviously, it didn't last very long.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
I mean, he took a few on the chin real hard to get in there.
joe rogan
For Stipe that's got to drive him fucking crazy.
He's been tweeting a lot.
kelly slater
Why wouldn't he get a straight rematch straight away?
I mean, there is even supposedly talk of McGregor getting a rematch when he got pretty much handled everywhere.
joe rogan
I don't think there's real talk of McGregor getting a rematch.
I think the real smart money is on Tony Ferguson fighting Khabib next.
kelly slater
I hope that happens.
joe rogan
Dana's been saying that.
I 100% believe that Tony Ferguson...
I don't think Tony Ferguson should have ever been stripped.
I think he should still be the interim champion.
I mean, the guy fell while he was doing press and tore his knee apart.
Six months later, comes back and destroys Anthony Pettis in a spectacular performance.
kelly slater
What a fight.
But Pettis was great, too.
joe rogan
Fuck yeah, he was.
He clipped him.
kelly slater
Tony's just a warrior.
I mean, his cardio never runs out.
He throws weird stuff with everything you can throw.
joe rogan
He apparently got upset that we called him a weirdo.
I guess he's sensitive.
He apparently got upset.
I said he was a brilliant weirdo when he was on his way to the cage, but I meant that 100% complimentary.
The guy wears ankle weights at the weigh-ins.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, I don't even know what...
I mean, he uses a Wing Chun dummy.
He sets up all of his camp, like his training equipment, he sets it up himself.
He puts the mats down.
He builds his own, like, heavy bag hangers.
He puts up, like, chin-up bars, all that shit.
He does it himself.
kelly slater
I think Weirdo sounds like it's unfamiliar to the average training regimen.
joe rogan
Yes.
That's what I meant.
I meant it complimentary.
I'm a huge fan of that guy.
kelly slater
I am, too.
I think he's awesome.
joe rogan
I also think that he is the toughest test for Khabib because of his cardio and because of his versatility because he could fight really well off his back.
I mean, he submitted Kevin Lee off his back to win the title.
He's got a fantastic Darce choke and his ability to hold guys in his guard and recover if he gets clipped.
I mean, he's the most dangerous guy at lightweight for Khabib, I think, in my opinion.
He just never gets fucking tired.
It doesn't even make sense.
And Eddie, you know, Eddie trains him.
He's one of Eddie's students.
Eddie says he's never seen anything like it.
He said, this guy workouts six hours a day, full clip.
Everybody else is exhausted.
He keeps going.
They're doing sprints up the hill.
Tony laps everybody and keeps going.
His cardio is off the charts.
kelly slater
Yeah, it's freaky.
joe rogan
I wonder if that's a Mexican thing, too.
I think there's a lot of Mexicans that have amazing cardio.
kelly slater
I really do.
The Mayans, right?
joe rogan
I don't know what it is, man.
I mean, if it's a running thing, for sure.
But, I mean, if you go back to Julio Cesar Chavez.
kelly slater
He eats tons of maca.
Maybe.
joe rogan
I think I mean Gilbert Melinda said that once too that it's a Mexican thing is cardio because Gilbert's always been known for his crazy cardio I really wonder if there's like certain ethnicities that have an advantage or at least a Better starting point and then it's all hard work from there.
kelly slater
Yeah, the most maybe there's some Jeanette thing You can prove from the way the blood holds oxygen.
joe rogan
Diego Sanchez.
He's another one you go insane cardio Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
I mean it's uh It's a fun thing to think about.
You go back to boxing in particular.
How many great boxers had fantastic cardio from Mexico?
Chavez in particular.
Julio Cesar Chavez would just wear guys down.
The volume of his punching would just never stop.
Just constantly on you.
Constantly moving forward.
Bobbing and weaving and throwing shots.
kelly slater
Sometimes as an athlete, like if you're a boxer, even if you didn't have that, you'd have to dig deep and pretend Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Because that starts wearing on the other guy.
Like, this guy's never going to fucking stop.
Yeah.
Like, I had a situation once.
I was super winded.
I was really tired in a heat surfing against a guy in Tahiti.
And this heat ended up sort of being like a world title heat for me.
And I was losing with like two minutes to go, and I ended up in this paddle battle against a guy.
And he's a good paddler and pretty fit guy.
And we're like head-to-head.
And what happens?
Whoever gets back out first, deemed by the judges, gets priority over the next wave.
They can have whatever wave they want.
And with two minutes, three minutes left in a heat surfing, that's not a lot of time to get a wave.
If the wave comes, you've got to be the guy that has priority for it.
And we're paddling, and I could feel him just for half a second kind of let up on his paddle, like, okay, I'm getting ahead on this guy.
And as soon as he did, I paddled harder.
And I was like, you know, to show him, like, I got more.
And he gave up.
And I got it.
And then I got, then I needed, like, a, you know, we scored a 10 points, and I needed, like, a 9. I got, like, a 9.4 with 30 seconds to go or something.
unidentified
Wow.
kelly slater
It was just, but it was, I didn't have that in me.
Like, physically, I was like, I want to quit, too, you know?
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
But I was like, I gotta poker face this guy and make him think I got more, you know?
And I really didn't.
It was just that choice.
Like, I don't care.
I'm gonna get out there with the lungs burning and I'll feel bad for 30 seconds.
Whatever.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
You know?
But sometimes you...
I would imagine boxers try...
or MMA guys...
For sure.
Sometimes you can't bluff that, but...
joe rogan
Right.
Sometimes you can't bluff it, but yeah, for sure it does come up where there's an edge one way or the other.
That's a big thing with Ferguson, that pressure that he puts on guys.
kelly slater
Yeah, he just never gets slow.
You know, if you watch the Gustafsson-John Jones fight, too...
John late in that fight, you know, there could have been some doubt in some people who's winning that fight or whatever.
It was a close fight.
But it looked like John just started pouring it.
He was dug in.
It was three to one strikes in the last couple rounds.
joe rogan
Yeah.
The last rounds won him that fight.
And by all accounts, John wasn't in shape.
By all accounts, John really didn't train for that fight and didn't take Gustafson seriously and kind of half-assed his training camp and still pulled it off in the championship rounds.
kelly slater
That guy is unbelievable.
joe rogan
And they're going to rematch.
kelly slater
They are, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
January?
joe rogan
Yep.
The December card, it's January, New Year's Eve.
You know, basically, I think it's the...
kelly slater
December 29th, I think.
joe rogan
29th, is that what it is?
Fantastic fight.
And because I think Gustafson's way better now.
You see, when Gustafson knocked out Glover Teixeira, I mean, he just looked like...
It was like a video game combination.
unidentified
It was brutal.
joe rogan
Yeah.
So I think that fight is...
That's going to be one for the ages.
And for John to be his comeback fight, and for Gustafson to be the rematch he's asking for forever, and it will be for the light heavyweight title.
They're going to strip Cormier.
kelly slater
Are they?
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
Well, because he's going to fight heavyweight, isn't he?
joe rogan
Yeah.
I mean, he's fighting Derek Lewis in December.
kelly slater
Isn't that a weird fight?
joe rogan
Well, he's number two.
kelly slater
I'm a fan.
joe rogan
He's number two.
kelly slater
Obviously.
joe rogan
I mean, if you look at the rankings, it's not.
If you look at...
Derek Lewis is obviously unorthodox.
kelly slater
But he was just getting mauled in that last fight.
joe rogan
It doesn't matter when you win.
kelly slater
I guess it doesn't matter when you get that last punch in.
unidentified
Well, the power that he has can change the course of every fight.
kelly slater
That guy would murder me with his finger, you know?
Why am I even talking about this?
Well, he's the number two contender.
joe rogan
I mean, he really was the number two contender headed into that fight and then wins.
I think that guy was the dark horse of the division.
And so for him to knock out Alexander like that, I mean, that was a giant knockout.
And to get his ass kicked for three rounds...
kelly slater
Respect to Alexander, though, for staying in the pocket, fighting out with 30 seconds to go when he's clearly winning that fight.
joe rogan
Well, he got hurt.
He got hurt a couple times in that fight.
kelly slater
Did he just...
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
There was one time where he lost his mouthpiece and he tried to give it to Derek.
kelly slater
Yeah, that's right.
joe rogan
I think he was on Queer Street.
I don't think he knew what the fuck was going on.
Because Derek hits so hard.
unidentified
He does.
joe rogan
Even if you don't get knocked out, you're probably like, oh, Jesus.
kelly slater
Even a glancing blow, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, you're probably like, what in the fuck?
I mean, think about the way he knocked out Travis Brown, the way he knocked out Gonzaga.
And Derek would be even better if he didn't have a bad back.
Derek's got a fucked up back.
kelly slater
That's three fights in six months?
What was the last fight with Ngannou?
joe rogan
Well, he fought Ngannou, and that was the fight where I was just like, what the fuck?
That was barely a fight.
It was like five punches thrown in the entire fight.
unidentified
It's weird, though.
kelly slater
As a fan watching it, I felt like...
joe rogan
You see one against Ngannou.
kelly slater
July.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
As a fan, did you feel like that was more on Ngannou than it was on Derek?
unidentified
Yes.
kelly slater
I don't know.
I felt that way.
joe rogan
Well, Ngannou didn't do anything.
And Derek won.
He didn't win by much, but he was basically waiting for Ngannou.
You know, you gotta be careful with Ngannou, because Ngannou punches so fucking hard.
But Stipe fucked that dude's head up.
He really did.
Stipe just fucked his head up.
kelly slater
Yeah.
That was...
joe rogan
Nobody's even talking about Ngannou anymore.
That's what's weird.
Ngannou, before the Stipe fight, everybody's like, this is the second coming.
kelly slater
I was so excited for that thing.
joe rogan
Oh my god!
When he knocked Alistair Overeem into another dimension, everybody was like, holy shit!
kelly slater
Yeah, that looked like a career-ending punch.
unidentified
It did.
kelly slater
That was like, I'll break your neck with this thing.
joe rogan
Meanwhile, Overeem's ready to fight again.
Didn't he fight again after that against Curtis Blades?
I feel like he did.
I feel like he fought Curtis Blades after that and lost.
And got stopped in that fight, too.
Yeah, I mean, look, Ngannou hits fucking hard.
Like, harder than anybody has ever fought.
kelly slater
But not when he's mouth-breathing in the fifth round, right?
joe rogan
It didn't matter because he gassed himself out in the first and he really wasn't prepared for a full game.
kelly slater
He really didn't think it was going to go to the ground from what I heard.
He thought, you know, catch this guy and whatever.
That's what I think he thought.
joe rogan
I think he thought he hit so hard that Stipe was going to be in front of him, he was going to hit Stipe, he was going to be the heavyweight champ.
kelly slater
I was going to ask you, do you have your absolute dream job I mean, you do a few things, but you get to talk UFC. You're a black belt under Eddie, right?
Yeah.
So you've kind of found the perfect job for yourself.
joe rogan
It's a great job.
kelly slater
Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
I can tell when you talk about it, you just love it so much.
I love surfing.
I live, eat, and breathe surf.
Every day I wake up and the first thing I do is look at, where's the waves in the world?
joe rogan
Do you think when you retire you'll do commentary?
kelly slater
No.
Maybe a little bit, yeah.
Maybe a little bit.
But I don't really want a job.
Look, I've been on a pro tour pretty much since I was 19. I'm 46. I took about three years off, but I would still compete a little bit those years.
joe rogan
What's the high end of the age limit in terms of when a guy can really compete right now?
kelly slater
No one's ever been my age on tour.
unidentified
Really?
kelly slater
Yeah.
I think the next oldest guy on tour is 38 and he's retiring this year.
unidentified
Wow.
kelly slater
When I got on tour, the oldest guy was 28 years old.
joe rogan
Holy shit.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
I would say in the 80s, it didn't look like you could make some money.
And if you were a top five guy, but it didn't look like you could have like this crazy career.
So guys weren't thinking longevity.
They're like, let's go have a freaking good time.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly slater
Travel around the world and get paid for it for a few years, and then we'll figure out a job after.
Or maybe we'll have enough money to kind of live real humbly.
joe rogan
What is the difference between how you prepare and other guys?
Is it your diet, strength and conditioning?
Like, what is it?
kelly slater
I don't overexert myself very much.
So my training, aside from surfing, isn't a lot.
I feel like I retain enough strength to be good at what I need to.
joe rogan
You don't burn yourself out.
kelly slater
I don't burn myself out.
The oldest people in the world weren't athletes.
They're kind of people who didn't burn themselves out too much.
My theory on longevity is don't overdo it.
I don't need to necessarily be overtrained for what I do.
A lot of the winning that I do competitively is from a skill.
It's not so much from being super strong, having crazy cardio.
It's making a choice about which wave, how I'm going to approach and ride that wave, and I have to get two scores every 30 minutes when I compete.
So it's like I got this 30 minute window I need to be ready for.
I don't need to be like in crazy, crazy shape.
joe rogan
So what is it that held other guys back in the past?
kelly slater
I think there's a number of factors I think you have to naturally be really competitive like in your when you were born in your home somehow you had to maybe you needed something to prove you know I I was kind of like Growing up, I sort of looked back at it and kind of laughed.
Maybe I couldn't get the girl I liked because she liked an older guy.
We didn't really have any money in my family, so I wanted to make some money.
I had an older brother who kind of picked on me, but I hung out with him and played football with his friends that were all three years older than me, so I had to be tough and fast.
I had to be smart.
joe rogan
That's the case with a lot of guys, older brothers.
Older brothers that they couldn't really compete with and like, this motherfucker.
And so every night they would just eat away at them.
kelly slater
Yeah, I think it did.
And there was always that, you know, my brother and I, I think we have a pretty good relationship now.
And I don't think he would disagree with me that we kind of didn't get along for 20 years or more.
We sort of hate each other.
joe rogan
That's a long time.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
But, you know, from the time we were teenagers, we kind of grew apart.
You know, I sort of started doing real well competing on the world stage, and he sort of stagnated.
And we just, you know, people and families have different dynamics.
You know, each child has a different dynamic, whether they're the first.
I'm in the middle of three, all boys.
Our younger brother was six years younger than me, so he was kind of out of the loop.
When we were teenagers, he's still a little kid.
So we weren't really competing with him.
But he saw us competing against each other in maybe a few ways.
And it kind of turned him off to surfing.
So he didn't start surfing until he was a teenager.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
kelly slater
And when he did, he rode longboards.
And we're both shortboarders, like, you know, more competition kind of guys.
And he loved kind of the old throwback, the 60s and 70s surfers on longboards or on single fins, which is like not a modern board at all.
joe rogan
Why would someone choose one or the other?
kelly slater
Longboards or shortboards?
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
It's a real different skill.
Longboards are kind of easier to just get up and ride a wave, but the skill you have on a longboard is more ballet than it is gym.
It's not like big maneuvers.
It's more like gliding on the wave, looking like you're not trying hard.
It's more of a dance, if you will, than it is like a...
Some kind of athletic skill.
And, you know, shortboarding is just, you know, you're going for aerials and lots of different sort of fast maneuvers, really riding in the pocket of the wave.
Whereas longboarding, you're looking for a different kind of, you ride a different kind of wave altogether.
You really don't, most of the waves we ride for modern shortboarding and competition aren't waves you would ride on a longboard because they're too hollow, they're too quick and fast, and you can't fit a longboard in the same way.
joe rogan
So your brother just kind of took it up more for the fun of it and the aesthetic of it?
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
He literally was at the beach one day.
His story, he was about 14 or 15, and we always tried to get him to surf.
And when he was about 8 or 10, I took him surfing one day at our local break at Sebastian in Florida.
And I pushed him on this wave, and he ate it and was underwater a long time.
It kind of freaked him out.
Not a long time.
I mean, long time for an eight-year-old, like maybe 10 seconds or eight seconds, you know, when you're out of breath.
A little freaky, like you don't know which way is up.
And he kind of quit surfing.
And then when he was like 14 or 15, he's at the beach.
And this guy, he really respected this kind of older guy.
He's like, hey, I'm going to run somewhere.
We watch my board.
He had a long board.
And he said, will you watch my board?
And Stephen said, oh, yeah, I'll watch it.
And the guy said, you can go use it if you want.
And he paddled out and caught a few waves.
And he just sort of fell in love with that minute with surfing.
and it was something unique for him because we didn't longboard so it was like it was that beach life and thing we love but it was different you know right he got his own thing yeah yeah and then me and my brother we you know I got more and more into competition and getting sponsored and stuff and and he sort of he he just kind of started fading out of doing competition full-time and stuff and and And then when I was a teenager,
when I was a freshman in high school, this guy moved into town, this kid named Drew, and he had sort of got kicked out of a couple schools elsewhere and got himself in some trouble.
And when he came over to the beach, he was kind of in these inland schools.
But he was good at football, good at baseball.
He was kind of a really good athlete.
He became the quarterback on our football team.
He was a baseball player, all this kind of stuff.
So he was a total jock, not a surfer at all.
And somehow he and I became best buddies.
And, you know, I liked all the sports.
I grew up playing football, basketball, baseball, a little bit of tennis.
And he and I, ultimately where we got to was he sort of became my big brother competitively.
And we used to battle, and it didn't matter whose feelings got hurt.
We competed at absolutely everything from horseshoes to bowling to pool.
On my birthday, every year on my birthday, we made it a pact where we'd go play every kind of game we could possibly, and we'd keep a tally of who won what.
It was putt-putt golf.
It was go-karts.
It was basketball.
It was shuffleboard.
It was literally everything.
Everything we could think of.
And we just keep a tally.
And we used to bet in the millions of dollars.
unidentified
Really?
kelly slater
Yeah.
Well, yeah, of course.
So, you know, at some point, somebody owed somebody hundreds of millions of dollars.
joe rogan
But you never paid?
kelly slater
No, of course.
When it came down to actual money, then it was like five bucks.
At one point, he got really into horseshoes and he called me out one day and he's like, you meet me at the beach, we're going to play some horseshoes.
I'm like, alright.
I'm like, but I'm not playing you unless we're betting some money, like some real money.
He's like, alright, bring some money.
And at the end of the day, he ended up owing me about $160.
And he's like, you fucking tell my wife I owe you?
I'll fucking kill you and I'll never pay you.
He's like, I don't have the money.
I can't pay you that.
He's like, so I'll pay you like $20 here and there as we go.
But Drew, he beat me at everything.
He was better than me at basically everything.
And so it was like that.
At Ping Pong, too, on my 18th birthday...
I like to call it the night of upsets because it was the night that Mike Tyson lost to Buster Douglas.
And it was the night of February 10th.
My birthday's on the 11th, but they were in Tokyo.
So they were on the 11th fighting.
Tyson lost.
Drew shows up in my house with a ping pong table.
And he says, it was like my birthday gift.
All my friends bought me this ping pong table.
My mom, my three buddies.
And Drew beat me 17 straight games in a row.
And I started crying.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
And I think he ended up letting me finally win the last game so we could go to bed.
It was like 2 in the morning.
And man, I've never been, I've really honestly never been so frustrated and just outright beaten by somebody at anything.
And he just owned, I just knew he owned me.
And he would just tell me where he's going to hit the ball on the table and beat me.
joe rogan
Ping pong is a serious skill.
The people that are really good at it...
kelly slater
Oh, follow...
You should go on Pongfinity on Instagram and watch these things these guys do.
It's out of hand.
joe rogan
I'm scared.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
Ping pong is one of those games where I was like, if I ever got into that, I think it would eat your life.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
It seems like there's so many levels to it.
kelly slater
Yeah, we used to stay up all night.
And, you know, we sucked.
And we thought we were pretty good.
You know, we'd use soap and water to make our paddles a little stickier.
You know, we thought we had all this spin and stuff.
joe rogan
What the fuck?
Look at these guys are playing three-way.
That is crazy.
kelly slater
I mean, that's not the kind of three-way you like.
It's a strange sport.
And they're just smashing the ball.
joe rogan
This is crazy.
Oh, whoa!
Behind the back!
And is there money in ping pong?
kelly slater
I don't know.
I think there are in China or something.
I don't think in the States there really is.
joe rogan
That's the same thing with pool now.
kelly slater
But I don't know.
I don't see some white guy going to China and beating all those guys.
These guys are masters.
They don't move.
Their wrist moves.
There's no dancing.
joe rogan
Yeah, it seems like one of those sports where there's a whole world out there that you're not aware of, of elite killer ping pong players.
Most people aren't even thinking about it.
It's funny.
kelly slater
We could talk about ping pong and it's like everyone can kind of join in.
Like if I ever talk about fighting, people are, shut your ass, man.
You stay in your lane.
But, you know, it's like I'm a fan of ping pong, too.
I'll talk about ping pong.
joe rogan
That's a funny thing, that stay in your lane thing.
Like you're not allowed to have an opinion on things.
kelly slater
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then why can we vote, you know, about somebody who's going to handle everything?
You know, why are we allowed to...
Can we only just vote about something that has to do with surfing or fighting?
joe rogan
Well, fighting is a weird one.
Like, people want...
You have...
For some people, like, you have to know how to fight to be able to talk about fighting.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, they get real serious about that.
Like, you hear that about journalists.
Like, look at this fucking guy.
Probably never trained a day in his life.
You know, they look at a guy, and he's fat or tiny or whatever, and they just don't want to listen to anything that they say.
But meanwhile, they could be an expert.
Yeah.
kelly slater
Yeah.
I mean, fight Roy Nelson.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
Go have fun.
Have fun with that one.
unidentified
When I was a kid, I trained with Don the Dragon Wilson.
joe rogan
Oh, did you really?
kelly slater
Yeah, I did for about a year.
joe rogan
I got a chance to spar him once.
kelly slater
Did you?
joe rogan
It was awesome.
To me, I'm such a fan of that guy.
kelly slater
He was totally ambidextrous, wasn't he?
joe rogan
Oh yeah, he could fight any style.
He also had that weird sideways stance, where he had kickboxing skills, boxing skills, Muay Thai skills, but he also had a traditional karate and kung fu background, so he'd stand sideways on you.
kelly slater
And you didn't know what was coming at you then, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
No, he was awesome.
And I remember when he fought Dennis Alexio.
Dennis Alexio was like a monster.
kelly slater
He moved to the west side of Wahoo, and that was like all the news back in the 90s, 80s or 90s.
joe rogan
Oh really?
Yeah, and he fucked Alexio up with leg kicks.
He was like one of the first guys that punished Alexio with leg kicks.
kelly slater
He did a thing on YouTube about self-defense for women, and they were saying like...
joe rogan
Don Wilson did?
kelly slater
Yeah, he was part of this group, and they talked about like, you know, if you're gonna teach a woman something, kick the leg, because that's the biggest target, you know?
joe rogan
It's not bad advice.
Before jujitsu, people...
kelly slater
Kick the balls.
joe rogan
Yeah.
But your legs carry you around.
I mean, that's the thing about a woman.
If a woman weighs 135 pounds, she's walking around with 135 pounds carrying it.
How long could you walk in your hands?
I mean, I heard that Brock Lesnar can walk in his hands like a mile, which is kind of crazy.
kelly slater
Brock Lesnar?
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
Really?
joe rogan
He's a freak.
Like a legitimate freak.
He walks in his hands all around the gym.
Yeah.
kelly slater
He should do a video, like walking up the stairs.
I had a buddy, a surf buddy from Santa Cruz.
He unfortunately passed away.
A guy named Barney, a good friend of all of ours.
And he used to do these surf video clips and he would walk downstairs.
joe rogan
Whoa.
kelly slater
And then walk upstairs and he could literally just walk anywhere on his hands.
It was so cool to see.
joe rogan
Well, I mean, I guess you would build it, it's all about how often you use it, right?
You use your legs constantly, you don't use your arms constantly, but if you did, and you built up over years of time, I would imagine, I mean, obviously there's gymnasts.
kelly slater
And it can happen quick, too, you know?
I mean, I started doing hand, actually, right before I broke my foot, I started, when I was a kid, I used to be able to Pretty much walk endless on my hands.
joe rogan
So were you walking on your hands while your foot was broken?
kelly slater
No, but that week I was like, you know what?
When I was a kid I could walk for minutes at a time on my hands.
I'm going to get back into that.
So I started training that week.
I just started doing handstands every day with my friend's daughter.
joe rogan
Before you broke your foot?
kelly slater
Right, the week I broke my foot.
Wow.
And I started, like, quickly I could feel the skill coming back, you know?
I mean, I probably should have kept with it because then I could have walked around for a while and kept my foot high.
Right.
No, but I mean, my point is that, like, pretty quickly your body starts to attune to that thing.
Like, I used to do push-ups on the back of my wrists.
This buddy of mine who was into some martial arts, he's like, do wrist push-ups.
joe rogan
What's the benefit of that?
kelly slater
He was just saying to strengthen your wrists.
I don't know, he used to do it.
But the first time I did it, it really hurt my wrists.
And then after about a week of doing it, it didn't hurt my wrists anymore.
Your body just kind of adjusts quickly.
But I don't know.
I think I'm going to start doing handstands and doing that Burmese volleyball thing.
joe rogan
How long did it take?
I mean, were you on crutches or you in a wheelchair?
How long did it take before you could actually walk after you broke your foot?
kelly slater
Well, I was walking a little too soon.
joe rogan
Oh, were you?
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
How long?
kelly slater
I didn't displace the bones at any, but I mean, I actually rode a couple of waves like six weeks later.
unidentified
No!
kelly slater
Yeah, I probably shouldn't.
joe rogan
Why would you do that?
kelly slater
Well, because we built this wave up in Fresno.
We built a man-made wave.
joe rogan
Are those a good way to learn?
kelly slater
Yeah, well, yeah, they can be.
I mean, it depends on how long the wave lasts and what size wave and how fast and all that kind of thing, but our wave's pretty easy to learn on.
But our wave lasts, on the low speed for a beginner, it lasts like over a minute long.
joe rogan
That would seem to me that that would be a great way to, like, just get your feet wet.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
No pun intended.
kelly slater
You should come up.
joe rogan
Is that it right there?
kelly slater
Yeah, but that's not the low setting.
joe rogan
Kelly's Wave.
kelly slater
That's like the...
joe rogan
That's the high setting?
kelly slater
Yeah, this was...
And this was actually...
joe rogan
Where is that?
Like, is that a...
kelly slater
It's like 40 minutes south of Fresno.
joe rogan
Outside area?
kelly slater
Yeah, it's a big...
It used to be a ski lake, so it's long, narrow lake.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
That is crazy.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's all man-made.
kelly slater
This is man-made.
joe rogan
That's so weird.
kelly slater
This isn't the newest version of it.
If you were to Google...
If you were to search, like...
There was a contest called...
We had a couple contests.
We had one called the Surf Ranch Pro about six weeks ago.
And that's...
We changed the wave since then.
And we remodeled it.
We had to rebuild it.
But...
Anyways, the reason I surfed was because we were having the first competition at this wave, and I wanted to ride the first wave.
I wasn't going to compete.
Symbolically, I wanted to ride the wave at the thing.
joe rogan
So, how does this work?
What's making that wave?
kelly slater
This is a foil, a wave foil.
In the back, it looks...
Sometimes you'll see in the back behind the wave, not there, but to the left side more, you would see this thing.
It's basically a super inefficient boat hull, and it pushes through the water, and so it's pushing water instead of planing on the water like you would want a boat to.
So it's pushing all the water sideways, and it's just this foil shape.
It's almost like the shape of a fin or a wing.
Straight up and down in the water.
It's that blue thing in the back, and it rides.
It's like a roller coaster.
And it gets pulled on a pulley system with a 4,000 horsepower engine.
There's two of them, actually.
unidentified
Wow.
kelly slater
One to go either direction.
So you see, now they've got their back to the wave when they're riding.
But the first few ways they showed...
This is Stephanie Gilmore.
She's like six-time world champ.
This is...
That's me, obviously.
This was just about six weeks ago in September.
And so, yeah, I mean, I designed the technology with a scientist and then designed the actual reef bottom or concrete bottom that makes the wave break.
joe rogan
Yeah, because this seems way more advanced than the ones that I've seen.
kelly slater
Yeah, it's a really advanced wave.
It's actually longer than it needs to be also because at a fast speed, the wave's still like 45 seconds and your legs are fried.
This is Felipe Toledo, who's number two in the world right now.
He's unbelievable.
joe rogan
That's crazy.
kelly slater
Super fast, great surfer.
joe rogan
Where's he from?
kelly slater
Brazil.
joe rogan
A lot of surfers come from Brazil?
kelly slater
All the new good guys are from Brazil.
It's like the fight game, you know?
unidentified
Wow.
kelly slater
This is Gabriel Medina.
joe rogan
That guy's incredible.
kelly slater
He's unbelievable.
Whoa!
joe rogan
What a fucking balance!
That's crazy!
kelly slater
That's called a shove it, yeah.
And I think that was a corrupt flip he did.
Super high-tech moves, but...
Gabriel Medina is one-time world champ from a few years ago, but I thought he was just going to win year after year after year after his first title.
I don't know if he got complacent or what happened.
He and I aren't super close.
joe rogan
How do they judge?
kelly slater
It's subjective.
That's probably the tough thing for our sport, but gymnastics is subjective.
Ice skating, that kind of thing.
It's not too dissimilar to that.
You know, the judges are all good surfers, relatively good surfers, maybe not ex-pros, but, you know, guys who know what is possible on a wave.
And it's pretty easy for them to compare apples to oranges, a different person's skills over the other one.
But it would be interesting in UFC, you know, if you had judges subjectively judging.
Not necessarily like, who won the round or looking at strike counts, but like, whose style did I like?
How fast and how much power did he have?
How did he link his, you know, strikes together?
joe rogan
There's definitely a subjective element to it, but unfortunately, unlike surfing, the UFC is not, the judges, it's not comprised of former fighters or people that really know a lot about martial arts.
kelly slater
Which is...
Wrong.
unidentified
It's awful.
kelly slater
Totally wrong.
joe rogan
It's awful.
kelly slater
I mean, some surfers really believe that the judges should just be ex-pros that were tour-level guys that make those calls.
joe rogan
Seems like there's enough of those guys out there.
kelly slater
There are.
There may be.
But, you know, getting back to why, that kind of leads me back to, like, you asked why guys didn't have the longevity.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
Like, people get married, have kids, have a life back home, all that kind of stuff.
So, you know, I was sort of, I went not quite the traditional route with all that stuff.
So I had a lot more time, focus, dedication into what I was doing.
And I wanted to do it for a long time because I just love surfing.
I mean, if I had my druthers every day, I'm going to wake up and go ride waves.
joe rogan
Now, is there a point system that they score on?
unidentified
Yep, out of 10. Out of 10. So it's like boxing.
kelly slater
Not everybody gets a 9 if they lose that battle, you know.
joe rogan
10 is the max.
kelly slater
10 is max, but I mean more average you're seeing 3s and 4s than you are 8s and 9s.
Because, you know, it's just a certain wave and a certain skill set gets you up to that excellent category.
So we consider 8 and up excellent.
And, you know, sort of 6-5 to 8 is like really good.
joe rogan
And is there a lot of debate about whether or not a 9 is accurate for someone's ride?
kelly slater
Yeah.
Yeah, there is.
Well, if it's early, there's a lot to it.
You know, like if it's early in a heat...
And a guy gets a 9 or a girl gets a 9 and then you think that there's a lot more that could have been done either on that day in those types of waves or on that wave specifically.
Like occasionally you see somebody get a 10. Perfect ride as good as you can possibly do.
It's the ultimate you should remember that wave forever kind of thing, you know?
It's like the perfect knockout.
But then they'll kick off the wave when there's more to ride or they'll fall and they still get a 10. So sometimes you'll see somebody get a really good score and you know a lot more could have been done.
They could have been deeper in that tube.
They could have been higher in that air.
They could have rotated more in the air.
They could have ridden out smoother.
They could have linked a couple different, more difficult turns together.
Added more variety.
So you have to kind of like, if anything, scale down, I think, as a judge, as opposed to scale up.
Because then you, if you're surfing in really great waves, which makes it easier to get a good score, so like Chopu and Tahiti.
If you pull up Tahiti, Chopu, T-E-A-H-U-P-O-O, contest 2014. So we had really unbelievable waves in this contest.
Almost every wave looked like it could be a 10. Then it comes down to, like, how late did you drop in?
How critical was it?
How deep were you?
How did you maximize your time in there by slowing your speed?
How much risk did you take?
So even though the wave only lasts about five seconds, there's a whole lot that can be condensed into that five seconds.
And did you wait for one of the biggest waves?
Or did you take a smaller wave and go, you know, a little bit easier?
joe rogan
What is it like when one of those giant tubes crashes down on top of you?
kelly slater
Yeah, so this is Gabe Medina.
He ended up winning the contest.
It's not super fun when you eat it.
joe rogan
Yeah, I could imagine.
It's horrific.
kelly slater
I mean, you've probably talked to Shane.
That's me, actually.
joe rogan
Yeah, I've talked to Shane about it.
kelly slater
Yeah, and I mean, look, Shane, no one's more of an authority than Shane is.
Maybe not in this super hollow crazy stuff.
I mean, whatever.
Shane rides everything.
But the biggest waves in the world, Shane's the authority.
Like, he's had wipeouts that...
He came close to dying.
He probably talked about the vest he created because of that.
He almost drowned.
He created a vest that you pull a CO2 cartridge and it blasts, you know, this big bladder and lifts you to the surface.
Even if you get knocked out or taken in water, somebody's going to find you and probably save you.
But yeah, this is...
That's me there.
So I didn't make that, but...
That wasn't even a big one.
For that day, that was a small wave.
joe rogan
It's fucking huge, though.
When that's coming down on you.
kelly slater
But see where I'm at?
I'm kind of in blue water.
So I was able to dive and kind of get under it and not get sucked back over.
So there's a little bit of a skill that goes with wiping out.
So you understand that energy.
It's like a tornado or a hurricane.
The eye wall is the worst, but if you're in the center, you're fine.
I've always wondered, could you follow a hurricane inside the center of the eye?
Could you just stay with it and be okay?
joe rogan
I bet you could if you moved at a really slow speed, right?
They don't move that fast.
kelly slater
They only move about 10 to 20 miles an hour.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly slater
Sometimes less.
joe rogan
Can a plane go that slow?
kelly slater
No, but maybe you could stay in your car and kind of like, you know, find a road.
unidentified
If you had a really good GPS system, do not go right.
kelly slater
Do not go left.
No, no, no.
Don't go northwest.
Go northeast.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Okay, you're going to have to go off-road, or you'll die.
kelly slater
But so that energy, all that energy is in where the lip...
If you're in the center of that, you're pretty safe.
But as soon as you get sucked right into the wall of that, and you get pitched in the lip, that's when the lip spreads the water that it hits, and it sends you right down to the reef.
Especially in a place like this, where it's...
When you see a wave that's real hollow, it's generally a lot shallower than it is high.
So the wave will be 15 feet and the water might only be 5 or 6 feet deep.
So think of all that energy.
Most of it's going to hit the reef at some point.
You want to try to kind of fall where that lip's landing and then escape under it into blue water.
joe rogan
What do you do if you know you're going to hit a reef?
kelly slater
You kind of just brace.
You don't want to hit your head.
For the most part, you can tell up and down.
I mean, sometimes you lose your equilibrium a little bit underwater, but for the most part, you can tell what is up and down, so you can feel it coming.
I mean, I'm going to put my arms there before I take it on my head.
joe rogan
Right, of course.
kelly slater
And so I'm trying to be like a cat.
When I hit, I want to be able to...
I'll break my hands or feet or whatever.
You know, I'm not worried about that.
I don't want to get knocked out.
unidentified
Right, right, right.
kelly slater
So I think everyone's default is to try to cover your head.
You know, if you hit anywhere else, you're kind of okay.
You just don't want to hit your head.
joe rogan
And when the waves come crashing down on you, do you lose your sense of up and down?
kelly slater
You can, yeah.
But...
You know, you also have your board connected from the leash, and that's usually, that's generally going to pull up.
So you kind of know.
If you don't feel your board pulling, you're kind of worried, like, shit, my board might hit me, might spear me underwater, you know?
unidentified
Right.
kelly slater
You can occasionally get speared in the face with your board or fin or something.
That's kind of spooky.
I was surfing with a guy who's like a big brother to me.
I used to travel with Tom Carroll.
He's a two-time world champion.
We were surfing Tahiti one time together.
And he used to wear a helmet.
Most people don't wear a helmet, but Tom used to wear a helmet.
He was really used to it.
But having something, you know, an extra, say, inch around your head or half inch, it's like it changes your judgment a little, so you've got to be used to it.
I always felt like it was weird.
joe rogan
It's weird for sparring, too.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
It fucks with your peripheral vision.
kelly slater
Yeah.
Yeah, so it would mess with me when I tried to wear them.
And that extra weight and, like, when we're trying to, on a critical wave, we're trying to pull in the barrel, we are dealing with, you know, percentages of inches, like, just tucking your head under that lip.
And so you've got to kind of be really aware of your range and your ability to, like, tuck your head at certain places.
And I was never comfortable with it, but I was surfing with Tom, and he wiped out, and his board speared him in the ear.
And it broke the helmet and broke his eardrum.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
kelly slater
So we were just wondering, like, what the hell would have happened if he didn't have his helmet on?
You know, like, probably would have killed him.
You know, would have definitely knocked him out.
And we didn't have a jet ski with us that day or anything.
We were, you know, 500 yards or more off the beach, a half mile off the beach somewhere.
At this wreath.
joe rogan
When you blow out your eardrum like that, do you have to get it surgically repaired?
kelly slater
No, I don't think so.
I think I've never busted my eardrum.
I almost busted my eardrum like six weeks ago in Hawaii just free diving.
I felt it like a pinhole.
I could feel it like going and I kind of got dizzy and I just came up and stopped diving.
But there was a guy...
I got a buddy named Greg Long.
He has drowned and he's been attacked by a shark.
Not too many people can say those things.
unidentified
Wow.
kelly slater
And he's alive.
unidentified
How did he get saved when he drowned?
kelly slater
That's a really crazy story, but I'll talk about it in one sec.
But he did break his eardrum at Mavericks up in Northern California.
And he just, you just flounder.
You don't know, you think you're swimming one direction, it's like you have...
joe rogan
The equilibrium's fucked.
kelly slater
Yeah, it's like your boat's turning and you don't know which, there's no rudder, you know?
And you don't know what's up and down, and you think you're swimming up and you're going sideways, and it's really dangerous.
There was a guy in Hawaii a couple years ago that drowned surfing an outer reef.
He and a friend of mine caught a wave and this guy wiped out.
He didn't have, all he had on was surf trunks.
And generally we'll wear like even a wetsuit, which is just thin but it keeps you warm.
And even that's enough flotation to where if you got knocked out you'd probably come to the surface.
So this guy wiped out, his leash broke.
So he lost his board.
And then we think, you know, the guys who were out there think that he popped his eardrum because they said they saw him hit the surface and start, like, his feet were coming up and his hand was coming up.
And, you know, he was kind of just floundering around.
And then the next wave hit and they never saw him again.
But he was only in surf trunk, so they didn't ever find the body because he didn't float up.
But if he just had even just a wetsuit, just some neoprene.
joe rogan
They never found the body.
kelly slater
Didn't find him.
The waves were huge.
It was, you know, it was like 40, 50 foot, whatever.
But it was really unfortunate.
It was a real...
Those things are really, like, sobering in the surf community because we all know each other.
And, you know, ultimately you're doing this for fun.
And, you know, it's a heavy thing.
joe rogan
It's crazy that your eardrum affects you that much.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, I've seen people that have inner ear infections, and they'll get dizzy walking, and they just don't know what they're doing.
While they're one foot in front of the other, they want to fall sideways.
It's very strange.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
Well, so Greg Long, he drowned actually at a place called Cortez Bank, which is about 120 miles off the coast of Dana Point.
It's basically the top of a mountain on an island that never hit the surface.
And it was discovered when I think it was a nuclear ship actually grounded itself on that reef back, I don't know, 30 years ago or something and caused tens of millions of dollars of damage to the Navy ship.
And yeah, I don't know if they had sounded the bottom by then.
They must not have known it was there.
But anyways, this wave breaks when it's really big.
And Shane's been out there.
Shane was actually, I think Shane was out there this day.
Not positive, but I'm pretty sure Shane was out during this session.
There's about 15 guys out, a dozen guys out, and Greg took off on a wave, and somebody was in front of him on the wave, which kind of changed his angle a little bit.
I don't think he would have made the wave anyhow, but it just put him in a little bit of a precarious situation.
And he ate it and was down a long time.
This wave has just so much energy in it because there's nothing between where the wave started and this break.
Like, it's thousands and thousands of feet deep that, you know, over the whole Pacific.
So there's no continental shelf to slow the wave down.
You know, if you can imagine the East Coast, We have small waves.
A big part of that is because most of the storms go west to east and they don't come towards us.
But even on a hurricane, our surf's not that big because we have a continental shelf that goes...
You can go out 20 miles and it's 70 feet deep some places.
So the swells just drag.
In the Pacific, they don't drag.
There's just nothing to get in the way.
So these swells are going 35 miles an hour when they hit.
So it's a lot faster than a normal wave.
So there's all this energy in the wave.
And so when Greg went down on this wave, it was probably a 40-foot face or whatever, 50-foot face.
He was underwater, and he's really calm.
He's probably as ready for anybody in big surf.
He's totally prepared.
He's done all the CPR and breathing courses and everything.
And he was real calm, and he said he pulled his vest, and it didn't work.
And then he pulled another one and it didn't work.
And he pulled it a third time and it didn't work.
And so he was like, oh, fuck.
I'm screwed.
You know, that kind of thing.
But at that point, when you start to pull it, you're already in a little bit of a...
Some guys pull it right away just to be safe on a big wave.
But some guys kind of wait and go, I'll see if I'm able to pull this one off and I'll save my little canister.
Because you only have, like...
Some of the vests have two canisters.
Some have four.
So you don't want to have to go change your canisters over.
So if you think you're going to make that, you're going to get back to the surface, or you're okay, you can handle it, and you've got a good breath, you're like, I'll just, I won't pull it.
But he pulled three times, and then he blacked out.
And luckily they had a really good water safety crew.
I don't know that it was his brother that saved him, but a couple of guys went and grabbed, dove in and pulled him up by the leash.
Luckily, he was to the leash because he wasn't floating because he didn't have the CO2. He had taken a lot of water.
They had to airlift him off the boat in big seas that night after dark and got him back to the mainland.
joe rogan
So did they do CPR on him?
kelly slater
They did CPR, yeah.
joe rogan
And then did he come back to consciousness?
kelly slater
Came back to consciousness.
And then they airlifted him.
joe rogan
So he was awake while they airlifted him, but he was fucked up.
kelly slater
Yeah, but guys can have secondary drowning where you still have water in the lungs and you're not aware of the symptoms or whatever.
How do you get it out?
joe rogan
Do they pump it out?
You can't just hang by your ankles or anything?
kelly slater
Yeah, I think they pump it out.
I was with a buddy in Australia a year and a half ago and he almost drowned and got knocked out.
His board hit him in the chin and knocked him out cold.
I was sitting out the back waiting for a wave and I heard another friend screaming.
Luckily the waves kind of stopped and they were able to get to him, pull him up on a jet ski.
And he had taken in some water and he's puking and coughing and all this stuff.
And I came up from behind and I didn't see his neck.
And I heard one of the guys say, oh, his board hit him in the neck and in the throat.
And so I was expecting this artery to be cut or the throat to be open.
I was like, okay, I don't want to look yet.
Because I was behind him.
I didn't want to go around him and try to look.
I'm like, okay, let's get him into the beach.
Luckily, we had a jet ski because we were about a mile offshore.
And I just, I held on the jet ski and kind of, I just squeezed on, we have a sled on the back of the jet ski, like a body, big giant body board with handles.
So I just kind of straddled him.
My other friend rode the ski all the way up on the beach.
And then I thought, okay, when we get to the beach, I'm going to have to see, this is going to be gory.
But luckily he wasn't opened up.
He just had a huge hematoma here on his neck and he, it didn't slice him.
It just like contusion, like a blunt force.
joe rogan
That's very lucky.
kelly slater
Yeah, but he spent two or three days in the hospital because they were worried about secondary drowning, which I don't exactly know what secondary drowning means, but I guess when you have water, salt water in your lungs, it can, I don't know, maybe from the way you lay down or, I don't know.
I should probably be super schooled in this stuff.
joe rogan
That's your living, right?
kelly slater
But, I mean, yeah.
joe rogan
You must see a lot of crazy shit in the water.
kelly slater
I've seen some crazy stuff, yeah.
joe rogan
Wildlife.
I mean, you must see an amazing amount of fish.
kelly slater
The shark topic's super...
It never ends, you know?
I mean, anyone in the world I meet is like, oh, I'm scared of sharks.
Tell me about sharks.
And then that story doesn't ever end.
That story, like, it's a primal fear.
Like, getting eaten by a monster, you know?
joe rogan
Well, you feel so vulnerable in the water.
I mean, maybe you feel less vulnerable because you're so comfortable with it and you have a board and you move so quick with the board.
kelly slater
No, you are totally vulnerable if a great white wants you.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
kelly slater
Completely.
If a shark over...
I mean, even if a six-foot shark wants you.
But that's the misconception.
Everyone thinks, oh, shark!
Death.
You know, Jaws just fucked everybody up.
You know, I was seven or something when Jaws...
I was six, I think, when Jaws came out.
And I watched it.
You know, I watched freaking Poltergeist when I was like 10. You know, my parents let me watch everything.
joe rogan
Mine too.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
Maybe that's why I always thought there was some boogeyman in the closet, you know, or whatever.
Keeps you safe.
Yeah, and keeps you prepared.
Maybe that's why I started training with the dragon, you know.
So, Jaws, I wouldn't even go in the deep end of a pool.
I was so freaked out that I was like, there's going to be a shark at the deep end somewhere.
And, you know, I would only stay in the shallow end for a couple of years when I was like five or six, you know?
But, yeah, so anyway, so Greg got to the hospital.
He was all right.
But there's about a year and a half ago, a friend of ours, who's a great big wave guy, like, this guy's completely, totally fearless.
He drowned in Fiji.
And Greg, who I talked about at Cortez, Greg actually did CPR and brought him back.
joe rogan
Wow.
kelly slater
And, you know, the big wave guys are a tight, it's a tight bond of camaraderie with these guys because, I mean, yeah, everyone wants that big wave.
They want that biggest wave.
They want something they've never had, but they want to, they're all really close friends.
Like, they know that there's life and death having each other's backs.
unidentified
Does pretty much everyone know CPR? Yeah, most everybody does.
kelly slater
There's courses that the Big Wave guys run every year.
They put these courses together a couple times a year, specifically to train for the situations that we could be in.
And yeah, so it's really great because they bring in a lot of, you know, breath-hold, deep, free-diving people and the best CPR and lifeguard guys in the world.
A lot of the best lifeguard guys in the world are already surfers anyway, on the North Shore, around Oahu and Maui.
I mean, those are the guys you want to have your back when they're in the surf zone.
Some guy in the Coast Guard is probably not going to be able to do the same.
Like, they might help your boat, but they're not...
And I'm not trying to put Coast Guard guys down at all in any way.
I'm just saying, like, these guys train specifically in the whitewater, in big surf.
You know, they train the SEAL Team 6 guys in Hawaii every year.
So, you know, for heavy situations.
joe rogan
So how often do you actually see sharks?
kelly slater
It depends where you're at.
In Florida, I see sharks almost daily.
Really?
Yeah.
joe rogan
Do you live in Florida?
kelly slater
I'm from Florida.
I still go back there.
And most days you surf, in certain places, you'll see a lot of sharks.
joe rogan
Do you live in Hawaii?
kelly slater
I live here.
I live in Hawaii.
I live in Australia.
joe rogan
Oh, damn, you're intercontinental.
kelly slater
I'm a nomad.
I'm like a modern nomad, you know?
joe rogan
Do you keep apartments in different places?
kelly slater
Yeah.
So when I first started making money, I thought it would be cool to have a little place in each place I go that I kind of base out of so I can be feeling like home.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly slater
On the roads, that's another thing.
I wanted to make the world my home when I was a kid.
I just loved traveling.
I loved meeting people everywhere.
I loved having these sort of...
Household feeling, you know, families everywhere and stuff.
So in Australia, I bought a place in Sydney when I was 20 with a friend.
You know, I just bought this real humble two-bedroom, tiny little two-bedroom on the beach, like just back from the beach.
My old roommate and I talk about it now.
We're like, why didn't we buy that whole freaking apartment block, you know?
Because it was so cheap back then.
It was like $150,000 per apartment.
Australian, which was like $100,000 U.S. at the time.
So I bought, I owned half of that for about 15 years and then I sold that and I bought another place up near on the Gold Coast in Australia.
joe rogan
Well, Australia has a lot of dangerous shit, right?
kelly slater
They have every dangerous shit, you know.
joe rogan
Saltwater crocodiles, box jellyfish.
kelly slater
Yeah, they box jellyfish, saltwater crocs, lots of great whites.
joe rogan
Do you see saltwater crocs while you're surfing?
kelly slater
No.
Well, I have.
Yeah, I have in Costa Rica.
Dude, that's just scary.
joe rogan
Fuck those things.
kelly slater
You know, people talk about sharks.
Sharks don't hunt you.
They might bite you if they see you, you know?
But a saltwater croc, that thing is watching you.
It can feel you walking, and it knows from that vibration how close you are to the water's edge.
It knows exactly.
It can pinpoint.
It can pinpoint to the water's edge where you're at.
Yeah, that noise.
joe rogan
My friend Adam Greentree lives in Australia, and They're not all over Australia.
They're everywhere.
kelly slater
No, no.
joe rogan
They're under your house.
unidentified
No, no.
joe rogan
They're waiting for you at the supermarket.
kelly slater
But they do keep track.
I know that the closest one to the Gold Coast, where I'm from, is still like 300 miles north or something, like 200, whatever.
joe rogan
The closest saltwater croc?
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
kelly slater
They keep a track.
They're pretty vigilant about where they are, what rivers they would be.
unidentified
You have to.
kelly slater
Because they've got to warn people, like, don't swim here.
Some people don't listen, they're stupid, and they die.
But a croc's not going to give you an exploratory bite like a great white might and leave you.
joe rogan
No, they're going to snatch you.
kelly slater
And they're not going to get the surfboard in the way from the underbite.
joe rogan
There was a horrible story that I read.
I think it was in National Geographic about these two people that were kayaking in a river in Africa.
kelly slater
The third guy went with him.
This might be a different story.
joe rogan
I don't know.
What story did you hear?
kelly slater
This one was like, these two guys were going to do a first descent down this thing, and they were contacting another guy who had done that river, an American guy.
And the American guy was like, I can't miss this descent.
I got to do this.
I got to do that whole river.
And then the three of them got into this zone where there was just crocks everywhere, and the river was real slow and wide.
And as soon as they got there, all the crocs came off the riverbank, and they were like, oh shit, there's like tons of them.
And this guy's theory was to take his helmet and throw it off to the side so it would be like movement and distract them, and they'd attack that and he'd paddle up to the shore.
And all three of them got together, and the American guy was on the right side, and the other two guys were together, and they were so close, the guy in the middle couldn't really paddle.
He was just kind of like, you know, trying to move along with them.
And so they figured the bigger we are, the bigger we look and more intimidating, like maybe we'll be okay.
15, 18 foot croc comes up, grabs the guy, takes him out of his, pulls him out of his kayak, disappears, they never see him again.
His backpack floats up.
And then as stuff's floating downstream, the other two guys get out of the water, and I think I'm telling this story pretty good because I read it like five times online, too.
And they got out of the water, and then there was a little village just down, and there was a little bridge over, and there were some boats, and the boats were all dry docked.
And they went down, and in broken English, there was one person that could talk to him or whatever, and they said, you know, our boats are not in the water because there's too many crocs here.
Like, we know not to go in the water.
Because they were like, we need a boat.
We've got to find his body.
We've got to try and save him, you know?
And then they went to this bridge and watched this stuff, like, float by.
joe rogan
That's the same story.
kelly slater
Yeah.
And the guy wasn't supposed to be on the trip.
joe rogan
And it was about the kayak flipping and then pulling his body out under the kayak.
kelly slater
Yeah.
Brutal.
joe rogan
They're monsters.
There's a show called Uncharted.
They really are.
There's a show called Uncharted.
You've seen that show?
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
My friend Jim Shockey is...
kelly slater
Florida.
joe rogan
Yeah, that's a 15-foot fucking alligator they found in Florida strolling across the golf course.
And the next day they found a giant snake, a giant rattlesnake strolling across the golf course.
Look at the size of that thing.
kelly slater
I fed, you know, I was friends with Steve Irwin, so I used to go to...
joe rogan
God, look at the size of that thing!
kelly slater
It's massive.
joe rogan
It's on a golf course!
kelly slater
Here's the thing.
I think there's a misconception about the Crocs, and they actually talked about this, because I used to be friends with Steve Irwin before he passed away.
He actually had me hand feed a 13-foot croc.
Scariest thing I've ever done in my life.
joe rogan
Why?
kelly slater
Terrified.
joe rogan
Why would you do that?
kelly slater
I don't know.
He told me, you know, you gotta feed a croc.
joe rogan
Fuck that.
kelly slater
He's like, Kelly, you're ready, mate.
You gotta feed a croc.
You gotta feed aggro.
So, for two nights...
joe rogan
Australia's so crazy.
kelly slater
For two nights, I had nightmares.
joe rogan
What's this guy doing?
What's this guy doing?
I told you I saw this a few weeks ago.
kelly slater
What's this guy doing?
joe rogan
He's feeding them?
kelly slater
Why is he doing that?
joe rogan
Look at the heads of these things!
Look at their heads!
Good lord!
And these are wild crocs.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
Well, they look pretty tame.
Like, they know this guy's gonna feed them something.
They know something's in that bag.
joe rogan
What the fuck ever!
Man, look at the heads on these things!
kelly slater
But see, this is like the conception, the concept we have about these animals, right?
We just think that they're just killers and whatever.
Do you ever see the guy in Limon, Costa Rica, who had a pet 15-foot croc?
joe rogan
Yeah, I did see that.
That guy's an asshole.
unidentified
This is crazy.
joe rogan
It's a crazy animal, man.
kelly slater
Yeah.
Crocs freak me out.
But I kind of mess...
When I'm playing golf, I play a lot of golf.
When I'm in Florida, I always mess with the gators.
I'll grab them by the tail.
unidentified
What?
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
Why?
kelly slater
It's kind of...
I don't know.
It's just like...
joe rogan
It's fun until you get your arm bit off, too.
kelly slater
Yeah, I guess.
But...
This guy's not even worried.
He doesn't even need to backstep, you know?
joe rogan
Well, those are smaller.
kelly slater
Yeah, but that thing's still going to rip your arm off if it death rolls.
joe rogan
But that's so small in comparison to those other ones.
kelly slater
I was fishing in Australia in this freshwater river, but it goes down to the ocean, so saltwater crocs come up it.
To a certain point, there's like this dam and they don't go past that.
So you know down here, up here is all the fresh water, down here is fresh and salt water.
And we saw a few 15-foot crocs this day.
And we're in a boat that was six feet wide and about 18 feet long, 15, 18 feet long.
And, you know, the guy taking us, he said, you know, we don't have a problem in this boat.
But, you know, if you fell out of the boat, there's a fucking problem.
But he was telling us a story one day how he's fishing with these guys.
And this one guy standing up in the boat fishing.
He falls out of it.
And the guy was about 250 pounds or something.
Like a big dude.
Like maybe 300 pounds.
He was like a big overweight guy.
And he fell out of the boat.
And the guy said the guy was in the water for about two minutes.
And he was just like, any second, this guy is dead.
He's like, there's nothing I can do.
And he said it was all they could do to get them from the front of the boat.
He was trying to come up the side, and he couldn't, and he was panicking.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
You know when people go into panic mode, like when people are drowning and they're panicking, they say, you've got to punch him in the face and try to knock him out and call him down.
And they couldn't punch this guy.
They were trying to get him to calm down, and they had to get him all the way to the back of the boat because they had to get him up the transom.
And they said from there they could get leverage and lift him, and it wouldn't flip the boat or whatever.
But he said, this guy was in the water for a couple minutes, and he's like, at any time, there's a crock that's big enough to eat you within sight of us here at all times.
But this guy said that, he said that the biggest, you know, I said, what's the biggest one you've ever seen?
Because we've seen 15-foot Crocs like every 20 minutes, every half an hour.
What the fuck?
Yeah, no.
Giant freaking Crocs.
unidentified
Really?
kelly slater
Yeah, and we're fishing.
joe rogan
Oh my God.
kelly slater
And we're fishing for Barramundi.
joe rogan
That's a crazy fish.
kelly slater
Yeah.
And so we're fishing for a bear on Monday, and I keep thinking, like, I don't know, when you got one in line, it's like a shark, will it bite that thing or whatever?
And anyways, we start asking the guy, what's the biggest one you ever saw?
And he said, Mike, the biggest one I ever saw was about 28 feet.
joe rogan
28 feet.
kelly slater
Yeah, 29 feet maybe.
And he said he's only seen it once and he saw it from about a kilometer away and they estimated the size.
And he said these guys in a helicopter saw it once.
And it doesn't stay in the river.
It stays out in the ocean.
And he said it's so smart.
It knows it's in silty water where nothing can see it.
There's nothing as big as it.
It owns its territory, you know.
unidentified
28 feet.
kelly slater
Yeah, and he said that the back, we're in the six foot boat, and he said if this thing, he goes, I'll tell you this how big they are.
He goes, this one would be.
He said if it was under our boat, it would be sticking out about four to six feet on either side across its back sideways, and we're in a six foot wide boat.
So he said it'd be like 15 foot across its back.
unidentified
What the fuck?
kelly slater
So think of the girth of something that big.
joe rogan
15 feet across the back?
kelly slater
Yeah, that's what this guy told me.
I don't know.
We didn't see it.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
kelly slater
But I mean, we're seeing, you know, 15 footers that are like, it's girth close to that.
You know, like a great white, when you see a 15 foot great white, it's girth is 15 feet, pretty much.
joe rogan
They're so fat.
kelly slater
Yeah, once they get like 10 feet, then they start getting fat and their girth gets about the length of them.
So if you see a 15 or 20 foot, 18 foot great white, and you measure their girth, it's pretty much their length.
joe rogan
How big do crocs get?
kelly slater
What's the biggest croc?
I don't know.
This guy's claiming it must be the biggest croc in the world.
But there was one they called Gus or something in Africa.
I used to late night just YouTube this stuff.
And they were saying this is one that had eaten.
They think it's eaten over 100 or 200 people in these villages.
unidentified
Oh, Jesus.
kelly slater
And they think it's like 23 feet long or something.
joe rogan
Well, this Jim Shockey show that I was talking to you about, Uncharted, they hired him.
unidentified
Gustavo.
Gustavo.
joe rogan
Look at that fucking thing.
The Savannah King.
Is that a perspective shot, though?
Look how far back those guys are.
kelly slater
I know, you wonder.
You wonder.
joe rogan
Yeah, but people do that with pigs.
kelly slater
I do that with my fish.
When I catch a fish, I put it right by the lens.
joe rogan
It says 28 feet 4 inches.
So that makes sense.
Like...
What's that?
That's a replica of how big it was?
Fuck that thing.
Fuck that thing and everything that was alive before it that made it.
kelly slater
Dinosaurs too, you know?
joe rogan
Go back to that picture, Jamie, that replica, make that larger, the replica, just make that larger.
Look at the size of that fucking thing.
What is the largest confirmed one?
Because if that one is 28 feet 4 inches, the thing about that when they said 28 feet 4 inches, that's like back when people were full of shit.
kelly slater
Yeah, I mean this guy who told me, this Aussie guy might have been trying to freak me out too.
Puerto Rico, look at that one right there.
That thing's 20 feet, and it's not 20 feet across its back or 12 feet, you know what I mean?
joe rogan
Yeah, but another 8 foot long is a lot bigger and wider.
kelly slater
Well, you see, when you see like a 5 foot alligator, and then you see a 10 foot, the girth relative to the length changes at that point.
jamie vernon
He's talking about the ratio and the size.
joe rogan
It's like one point.
Right.
What does it say, number one candidate?
jamie vernon
This is a list of the top ten.
joe rogan
Of largest crocodiles?
Cambodia crocodile, seven meters.
Now, is this just the species they're talking about?
jamie vernon
Yeah, this is just the five largest crocodiles ever recorded on this.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
Cambodia.
Show the picture of the Cambodia one, 23 feet.
unidentified
That doesn't have a picture.
Oh, it doesn't?
kelly slater
This was the only one that had a picture.
joe rogan
Why would you not take a picture of a 23-foot-long crocodile?
Trust me, bro.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Shit was big.
Yeah, I mean, I would imagine that there's probably bigger ones out there.
I know there was a super killer croc that went extinct that far dwarfed those things.
kelly slater
That were 60 feet or whatever.
joe rogan
Just giant, enormous.
Pull up that extinct giant crocodile.
Okay.
kelly slater
I had a friend who was a commercial fisherman in South Africa, and he told me, he's like, bro, the biggest sharks are way bigger than you think.
joe rogan
Really?
kelly slater
Yeah, and I go, I want to see a picture or something.
He said, I'll tell you this.
I was on a 60-foot boat with 10 guys fishing.
Almost, he said like everybody in the boat saw the shark.
He said it came up next to their boat.
They were 20 miles off of Port Elizabeth where there's this reef they fish.
And he's claiming the thing was more than half the length of their 60-foot boat.
joe rogan
What?
kelly slater
Yeah, he's like, it was 35 feet.
That's what he tells me.
joe rogan
What is the biggest great white?
Like 20. But he's saying it's bigger than that.
kelly slater
Jaco Stoke supposedly filmed one in Cape Verde that they didn't have anything.
They couldn't tell the size because they didn't have something next to it.
He said it was close to 10 meters, which is 30 feet.
But this guy's telling me.
He goes, no.
I've seen the shark twice out there, is what he told me.
But I don't know.
joe rogan
They're out there every day.
That's the thing.
How many people are out there?
kelly slater
Yeah, I don't know.
joe rogan
You know, it's like people...
kelly slater
Where are the biggest ones?
The biggest ones are smart, you know?
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
Like, I don't...
I rarely see a big shark.
Rarely.
I'll see...
Like, I've seen a couple of great whites in South Africa jump.
joe rogan
Look at that thing.
That is a replica of something that used to exist.
kelly slater
Twelve animals, you're glad.
joe rogan
Look at the fucking skull.
This guy's basically standing inside the skull of this crocodile.
kelly slater
It's so freaky.
joe rogan
Fuck that, man.
Well, that's the premise of that stupid movie, The Meg.
kelly slater
The Megalodon movie.
Yeah, I won't even watch it.
joe rogan
Come on.
kelly slater
How come?
I don't know.
Do you remember that movie, The Deep Blue?
Is that what it's called?
There was a shark.
There were sharks that were training.
unidentified
They were like GMO sharks or something.
kelly slater
These genetically cloned sharks.
And they were supposedly training them.
And then they got too smart and they started eating everyone.
And then there's the hot girl in the bikini.
And she has to take off her wetsuit because it's rubber.
I don't know.
There's...
You see these movies, and the artistic license on these things is so bizarre.
There's no truth to it.
jamie vernon
Is this it?
kelly slater
There we go.
And he starts talking about it.
He goes, you know what?
You know what?
It's dangerous.
Water's not dangerous.
Ice is dangerous.
unidentified
We're not going to fight anymore.
We're going to pull together, and we're going to find a way to get out of here.
First, we're going to see alive.
kelly slater
Good movie.
joe rogan
Didn't see that coming at all.
kelly slater
I wouldn't go in the water for seconds after that if I saw that movie.
I actually was with Samuel L. Jackson like three weeks ago in Paris.
We were playing golf together.
I wanted to ask him about that, but I didn't have the balls.
joe rogan
I mean, how big do you think they could be and people don't know?
I mean, 30 feet sounds reasonable.
If they think they're 25 feet, there could be one that's 30 feet.
kelly slater
Maybe, yeah.
I mean, I think it's reasonable to go.
But that's a lot more years in eating, and no one saw it during that time.
I mean, it's kind of like UFOs.
I've got to see one.
joe rogan
Yeah, I guess, but you've seen sharks, and we know they get big.
How many people are out there looking for them?
That's the thing.
kelly slater
The ocean's massive.
They filmed one they called Big Blue last year, I think, in Guadalupe Island, I think it was.
And it was 21 or 22 feet.
Yeah, the video's online.
And you know how big they look, right?
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
This thing's face and nose look small because its body's so huge.
It must have been a pregnant female or something.
But its body looks like...
Even bigger around than the length, and they said it was 20. Yeah, look at this thing.
See, like, its face almost looks, like, small compared to its body.
What the fuck?
joe rogan
Oh, my God!
kelly slater
But see the girth?
The girth is so freaky.
joe rogan
World's largest shark, 7 meters, so that's 21. So 22 feet, 23 feet.
unidentified
What the fuck, man?
kelly slater
This guy touches it, too.
That guy comes out of the cage and touches it.
joe rogan
Look at the size of this thing.
kelly slater
That's another thing.
The shark feeding freaks me out.
This guy touched it.
unidentified
Watch.
kelly slater
He just comes out and he's like, I gotta touch this creature.
unidentified
That guy's an asshole.
kelly slater
I got to.
joe rogan
Get out of there, bitch.
kelly slater
But see, like, his face almost looks small compared to how...
joe rogan
Right.
It's so creepy.
It's so massive.
kelly slater
It's so scary.
joe rogan
That is so big.
It looks like a whale.
unidentified
It literally looks like a whale.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
And to think that there's something out there that's 10 feet bigger than that.
kelly slater
Well, a killer whale could eat that thing's liver without thinking about it.
joe rogan
Snap it in half.
kelly slater
And a killer whale's just a dolphin.
It's so weird to think that that thing has dominance over that thing.
joe rogan
It is, but there's just so much smarter.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's not even close.
There's so much more agile, so much smarter.
400 years old.
unidentified
What?
kelly slater
This is a seven-gill, what do they call it?
A greenland shark.
joe rogan
A greenland shark, yeah.
They think, wasn't that one of the speculations of what the Loch Ness monster was?
I think that it was some sort of a landlocked green, or not landlocked.
kelly slater
Yeah, but it wouldn't have been in the loch.
joe rogan
No, they think it was in the loch because it was trapped, because the loch used to be connected to...
kelly slater
I think that was a twig.
joe rogan
Could be.
kelly slater
That was a fucking driftwood, man.
joe rogan
Or it could be like a sturgeon or some shit like that.
Like, there was one of those...
It was Lake Champlain or one of those lakes.
kelly slater
Yeah, the sturgeons are huge.
joe rogan
Yeah, sturgeons are crazy looking.
Freaky, yeah.
That's another dinosaur.
kelly slater
An alligator gar.
You seen those things?
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, man.
My friends went fishing for them.
Those are freaky.
They have them in Texas.
You can catch them in Texas.
Those things are bizarre.
kelly slater
I don't think you're noodling for those things.
joe rogan
No.
That's another thing that's hundreds of millions of years old, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
I mean, that would be...
I'd love to go take my friends and just go noodling sometimes.
Sounds kind of creepy.
Your girlfriend would be like, what?
Noodling?
joe rogan
Oh, for catfish?
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
But you accidentally get turtles sometimes.
kelly slater
Those snapping turtles would bite your arm off, wouldn't it?
That's one of the scariest things.
That looks like it would just break your arm in half.
joe rogan
Probably fuck you up.
I mean, I'm sure dudes have probably lost fingers.
kelly slater
Snapping turtles.
joe rogan
What's that?
jamie vernon
Yeah, I accidentally googled that and the snapping turtle incidents popped up.
joe rogan
Oh, guys losing their hands?
kelly slater
No, see, that's just not cool.
joe rogan
Oh, don't show me this.
kelly slater
Because that's like two razors.
They're like two razors.
joe rogan
Yeah, like garden shears.
unidentified
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Taking your fucking arm off.
I mean, how often have you encountered orcas?
kelly slater
I've never seen an orca.
joe rogan
Really?
kelly slater
No, I mean, not other than SeaWorld's kidnapping of them.
joe rogan
Fuck SeaWorld.
kelly slater
Yeah, I'm with you.
That's just so gross.
I just don't understand.
I mean, I guess I understand because I was a kid once and I went there, but I don't understand how a rational, logical thinking adult could take their kids to SeaWorld after all the information that's out there about the social behaviors, about how smart these animals are.
joe rogan
It hasn't gotten to a lot of people, unfortunately.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I agree with you if you did get the information, but...
A lot of people just don't know.
They think, oh, they're fed, they're healthy, they have a nice...
kelly slater
Yeah, I got in this battle with...
And look, I'm no scientist.
I debate people all the time, but I'm no scientist, obviously.
I just...
I think I have a pretty good heart, and I feel bad for animals that are locked up that need to travel 100 miles a day in their social packs.
And they need to have interaction with other animals.
And they need a certain amount of space.
I mean, imagine...
You think about solitary confinement for a prisoner who's in a room that's no wider than they are tall and maybe twice as long as they are tall.
And there's no interaction with other people.
They go crazy.
Most people come out of prisons and jails worse than they went in because of this kind of...
Think of being in there for 30 years just wondering, God, is there another whale on the other side of that wall?
Can I get some fish?
I mean, you go nuts.
And you see these videos of the trainer that was killed.
And one trainer, luckily the guy was a great freediver, and he lived through basically an attack by an orca.
And the thing knew he wanted to get over to that wall.
And he went, nope, I'm going to play with you.
And I'm just going to keep pulling you down and pulling you down.
And the guy was a good enough free diver to be able to know, okay, I've got to conserve my energy.
I've got to bring my heart rate down.
I'm going to have to hold my breath against my will when I don't know what's going to happen.
joe rogan
A friend of mine used to work at Marine Land in Canada, my friend Phil, Phil Demers, and he was an ORCA trainer, and he's trying to get Marine Land closed down.
There's this big lawsuit with them, and he's been involved in a lawsuit with them for over five years now.
I was just hanging out with him in Toronto.
And he was a walrus trainer.
And there's this walrus that he was taking care of.
It's the only one that's left there that survived.
And Marineland is like slowly going bankrupt.
The guy who was the original owner is now dead.
kelly slater
Too bad they don't quickly go bankrupt.
joe rogan
It's so dark, man.
The whole business is so dark because, you know, a lot of them say, oh, we won't take any, you know, orcas or dolphins from captivity.
But they'll get them from people that stole them from the wild.
kelly slater
And they breed, you know, I think there's no more breeding allowed in America.
joe rogan
Yeah, but they'll get them from someone that bred them in Canada, or Russia, rather, or China, or someplace where there's not as many rules.
You know, John Lilly, who was the guy who actually invented the isolation tank, he was a pioneer in interspecies communication.
Which is, it's a weird field.
He was a scientist that was also, he took, like, extreme liberties with his scientific research.
Took a lot of acid, gave acid to dolphins.
kelly slater
Wow.
joe rogan
Did a lot of dolphin research in the flotation tank.
Did a lot of really, really wacky shit.
kelly slater
It's pretty out there.
joe rogan
He believed that one day dolphins were going to have a seat in the United Nations.
He believed we were going to be able to communicate with dolphins and that dolphins were going to be recognized as water people.
He thought they were going to be literally, he thought they were as smart as human beings.
kelly slater
That's amazing.
joe rogan
And that if we could figure out how to communicate with them, they would have the same rights as human beings.
Yeah, and that was a genius.
Yeah, I mean just he and I I agree with him.
I think there's just a level of communication There's a way that they have of communicating that we don't understand but it's super complex their own dialects They have they they have this crazy social code.
I mean they they have something like incredibly dynamic about their their environment and their They're, you know, they're social groups.
kelly slater
To be able to speak a language, you need to know like 150 words.
There was a dolphin that knew like 700 words or 300 words.
I don't know, like hundreds of words.
joe rogan
Like commands, 300 human words?
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
You know how many dolphin words we know?
Zero.
kelly slater
Yeah, zero.
joe rogan
We don't have a fucking clue.
kelly slater
Yeah, we have no idea.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
We don't know what the fuck they're saying, but they know what they're saying.
kelly slater
They're just saying, why are you so goddamn stupid?
joe rogan
Yeah, you fucking dummy.
Stop giving me macro and let me loose.
kelly slater
They're like, they don't know we're making fun of them for hundreds of years.
joe rogan
I don't think they know what to do with them.
Well, one of the things that Phil was working with was...
There's a group, what was that group where they're trying to, they're going to create a boundary out in the ocean and slowly release these dolphins and orcas out into this boundary and then, you know, and keep feeding them, but then slowly release them out to the real world.
kelly slater
Yeah, open ocean pens.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
Yeah, they're talking about doing that, possibly.
And that would be a way for people to actually experience it.
Because the idea is that...
And I had a debate with this trainer.
I watched Blackfish, and it just freaked me out.
And of course, there's probably a lot of confirmation bias.
There's probably some information in there that is not totally unbiased, right?
Obviously.
They're trying to make a point.
But this woman talked to all the different trainers and stuff.
A guy got in contact with me that was a trainer, and he said, Kelly, the whole movie is BS. I believe this guy was actually in the movie.
He said, it was all BS. Orcas live longer in captivity than they do in the wild.
He told me that.
Orcas haven't been in captivity as long as they live yet.
So we don't know that.
So that's completely a lie.
He has no idea if that's true.
He said they're more healthy.
He told me all these things.
And I just finally went, this guy's just full of shit.
I don't know.
I can't buy what he's telling me.
But he said, I'm a trainer.
I've been a trainer.
I looked him up.
joe rogan
He's biased because that's why he makes his living.
kelly slater
Exactly, and I know some dolphin trainers, and I actually went to SeaWorld a few times in Australia.
I used to know a few of the trainers back in the late 90s, and I went there a few times swimming with the dolphins.
The first day I was there, one of the things I asked them was, like, will these guys ever get set free?
And right then I could feel a little pullback, you know, like straightaway.
I could feel like, uh, maybe.
joe rogan
Why would I release my slaves?
kelly slater
Yeah, I felt a little uncomfortable to keep asking questions because it is their livelihood and I had a respect for that.
I know that all these trainers love these animals.
They really, truly probably love them more than they love most people.
But that doesn't make it right at all.
And there are probably some animals that can handle being in a zoo or they're happy there.
joe rogan
Giraffes.
kelly slater
Giraffes, maybe.
joe rogan
I used to have a bit about that.
unidentified
They're just walking around going, another day with no lions.
kelly slater
Yeah, kangaroos.
They get fed well.
They don't really need to migrate very far.
joe rogan
They don't have anything that's a predator that's going after them.
I mean, they let babies feed giraffes at the zoo.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because they're so calm and relaxed.
kelly slater
My friend has a giraffe in Malibu.
joe rogan
Really?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Your friend has a giraffe?
kelly slater
Has a giraffe.
joe rogan
How baller is your friend?
kelly slater
It's fucking awesome.
joe rogan
When bitches come over your house, you got a giraffe.
kelly slater
They bought it for like 30 grand or something.
unidentified
20 grand.
kelly slater
That's a penny dropper.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Here's my Ferrari.
kelly slater
Oh yeah, that?
joe rogan
That's my giraffe.
kelly slater
They got some emus.
joe rogan
Come on inside.
Our chef will be cooking for you.
And then we'll fly to Jamaica on my private jet.
Motherfucker's got a giraffe.
You can't be poor and have a giraffe.
kelly slater
They got a winery.
They got a giraffe.
joe rogan
Oh, Jesus.
He's got his own winery.
kelly slater
Yeah, their family has all this acres.
But anyways, this giraffe's super cool.
He can come up and eat out of your hand.
joe rogan
This is in Malibu?
kelly slater
Malibu, yeah.
It's called Malibu Winery or something.
joe rogan
Man, wake up with a mountain lion eating that giraffe.
kelly slater
I know.
They got to watch out.
joe rogan
There's a mountain lion that killed like 11 alpacas up there.
kelly slater
My friend lives in Topanga Canyon, and he came home.
One night, a mountain lion got into his pig pen or goat pen or something.
It's kind of ugly.
joe rogan
There's a lot of them.
We were talking about that before.
kelly slater
And it had to figure out, like, he had this, the way he had his thing, it couldn't climb up the fencing or break under it.
It had tried, apparently.
The thing knew to climb up this tree and drop from, like, 12 feet or 15 feet down into the pen.
joe rogan
What?
kelly slater
Yeah.
Yeah.
It had to climb this tree.
He has cameras and stuff.
joe rogan
So it figured it out.
kelly slater
Yeah, it figured it out.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Fuck those things, man.
kelly slater
Those creepy cats.
I went to Muscle Bay in South Africa.
I was always interested to do one of those shark dive feeding tours.
I thought, I'll go check it out.
Got there, get on the boat, and you go out, and you don't want to, I didn't want to bring my own wetsuit, because I didn't want all this fish slime all over it, you know what I mean?
It's like, I want to go back surfing the next day at some, back at Jeffrey's Bay and smelling like fish, yeah.
And, uh, so, um, Get on the boat, go out there, and where they feed them, there's like these couple of little rock islands that stick up right there, and they just park the boat.
As soon as they park the boat, boom, the sharks are on you.
Sharks are pretty inquisitive anyways.
Even when I've been on boats out in the ocean, fishing or diving.
I was in Papua New Guinea one time, and we pulled up, and everywhere we anchored, immediately there'd be three to five, maybe more sharks on the boat.
They just come up from the deep, check you out, what is that?
Boom, and then they kind of disappear.
Then they're probably watching, because they know what's going on.
But the Great Whites pop up.
I think that day we saw about eight or ten Great Whites, different size and ages and whatever.
But about 500 yards away, there were guys surfing.
And I was like, this is fucking weird, man.
Like, there's no way I'd be surfing.
And these guys surf there every day.
And then there's a couple other spots, a couple friends of mine, like, grew up in that area, and they surf these reefs that are, like, right back where we came a mile from there in the boat, just on the outside of this harbor.
And There's kind of two ways of thinking.
Number one, the thing that bothers me with it is that sharks know where they got a meal.
Sharks, they tag sharks.
They know they come back to a hunting place where they got a seal the year before or whatever.
And they're there at the same time.
They're there the same month or whatever.
unidentified
Whoa.
kelly slater
So, like, September, October, they're, like, here on the coast of California.
joe rogan
So they have some sort of internal clock.
kelly slater
Yeah, and then they go down to Guadalupe Island, and then they go out about 1,000 miles off the coast, and they believe they breed out there.
And then a lot of the females will go to Hawaii, and the males will come back and kind of do that route back up the coast.
But the craziest thing about these animals, they know how to just free swim.
Like...
Even if I'm swimming on the surface, I gotta like put my head up and go, okay, where's the beach?
You know, which direction am I going?
Imagine, like, they can just swim out in the ocean and find each other a thousand miles from shore and breed out in the middle of nowhere.
How do they do that?
They all know to get to this place.
joe rogan
They smell all shark pussy.
kelly slater
Yeah, they smell it.
joe rogan
Can you imagine, like, fish smell?
Imagine how bad shark pussy smells.
Probably like real distinct.
kelly slater
I don't know.
joe rogan
I mean, animals have crazy smells for each other when they're breeding.
kelly slater
An orca knows that there's a liver in that great white and he's going to smash it and eat the liver out of that and leave the shark.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
How they smell that.
joe rogan
Well, that's what all alpha males, like in the wolf packs, when they kill a thing, the alpha male always eats the liver.
kelly slater
Wow.
joe rogan
It's the most nutrient-dense organ.
kelly slater
Yeah.
So what I don't like is that sharks, I believe, are equating, okay, I see a boat, I see a person, whatever that thing is, and he's got food.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly slater
I just don't like that equation.
That sucks.
Yeah, it sucks.
unidentified
I'm not a fan.
kelly slater
And so, like, all these shark weeks and stuff, they're all filming off of Cape Town, and they're...
Educating the sharks.
I think they're educating the sharks.
Like, you see a human, it's not fear.
It's food.
joe rogan
Right.
kelly slater
And it's not necessarily the person's food, but they have food, and if they don't give it...
It's like a spear fisherman shooting a fish.
If you don't give up your fish, a shark will bite you sometimes.
joe rogan
Well, you know, that's the case in Kodiak Island with grizzly bears.
They said the grizzly bears have gotten so used to the sound of a gunshot, meaning a deer's dead, that they'll run towards the sound of a gunshot.
kelly slater
Yeah, there's no fear.
joe rogan
So they hear a gunshot.
If someone shot a moose or someone shot a deer, that means that's the dinner bell.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
So they run towards gunshot sounds.
unidentified
Yeah.
kelly slater
It's freaky.
There's an island up in the Aleutians that has a bunch of caribou on it.
You know about that?
unidentified
Mm-hmm.
kelly slater
And no bears.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
Yeah.
I was going to go hunt that.
joe rogan
My friend Adam, Adam Greentree, that we were just talking about, who shot that water buffalo above my head, just shot a giant moose and a grizzly bear stole it.
kelly slater
No.
joe rogan
In the Yukon last week.
kelly slater
Wow.
joe rogan
Not even last week.
Three days ago.
It might be still in his Instagram story, but they took some of the meat.
kelly slater
The bear is still eating that thing right now.
joe rogan
Well, the bear buried it.
kelly slater
Buried it.
joe rogan
Buried a giant fucking moose.
Well, it's an enormous bear.
It's a bear in the Yukon.
kelly slater
So you're talking about a bear.
joe rogan
Yeah, easily.
11-foot bear.
So this bear buried his entire moose.
And it's a fucking huge moose.
Like an 1800-pound moose.
kelly slater
Just try moving that moose one foot.
joe rogan
Yeah, this bear just dug...
kelly slater
I picked it up and dug it.
joe rogan
Yeah, like a front loader or one of those cranes that just digs foundations for houses and shit.
kelly slater
So what, they just like the meat to rot and then they grind it?
joe rogan
Well, they also want to cover it so that birds don't find it and that nothing else can see it.
So they dig a giant hole, they'll cover the moose, and he just decided it was his.
And so they were terrified when they got there.
They found that the moose was covered.
They knew it was a grizzly that did it because it was so big.
So they just took some of the meat and ran.
kelly slater
Bears are so primal.
joe rogan
Because they could only pack out so much at a time.
kelly slater
But why would you even take any?
I'd just get the fuck out of there.
I mean, nothing comes back or smells you.
joe rogan
Look, that's the moose that he shot.
Look at the size of that fucking thing.
I mean, that is a massive moose.
kelly slater
A friend of mine got a moose last year in Alaska.
joe rogan
But he's got photos.
Go to the photo of what he got out of the moose from the bear.
He got a bag.
A small bag.
This one might be that.
Mmm, what does it say?
jamie vernon
It's just not my kill anymore.
joe rogan
Yeah.
unidentified
Oh my gosh.
joe rogan
See, click on that.
You can see the video.
Like, play that.
unidentified
Buried the whole moose.
kelly slater
Come on.
joe rogan
Look at this.
unidentified
The whole moose is buried.
kelly slater
Oh my gosh.
unidentified
Yeah, that's my moose under there.
kelly slater
You sure it wasn't a skunk ape that did that?
joe rogan
No, look at that.
Look, look, look.
kelly slater
That's so freaky.
unidentified
Okay, I don't like this.
joe rogan
Okay, I don't like this.
kelly slater
I would just hightail.
joe rogan
Plus, they're bow hunting.
They don't even have guns.
No guns!
kelly slater
You ever hear that story of the kid who was getting attacked by the bear, the grizzly, running down a hill and his dad was looking up with a bow?
You ever hear this story?
joe rogan
No.
kelly slater
You've got to find this story.
It's so sick.
joe rogan
The dad was looking up?
kelly slater
The guy decides to go up this ridge, this kid.
He's like a 25-year-old kid or whatever.
And he's going up the ridge and he sees a couple bear cubs or whatever.
And then, oh no, there's mom.
The thing comes after him, just charging.
He comes running back down the hill, but he's straight in line with the bear.
The dad is, like, looking at him, pulled back, ready to let an arrow fly, and the kid's exactly in line with the bear.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
kelly slater
And as the bear is, like, getting to him, the kid kind of sidesteps, and the dad lets it fly, and it hits the bear in the heart, and the bear falls on the kid and starts ripping at him and dies.
unidentified
Whoa.
Whoa.
joe rogan
Whoa!
Outdoor Life, September 25, 2008. Oh, so he was 37, so yeah.
Wow.
kelly slater
Elk hunting.
Fuck.
Wyoming.
Yeah, it got him and started tearing at him and died on him.
joe rogan
Jesus Christ.
kelly slater
I passed my dad and I saw an arrow fly by my leg about two feet away.
joe rogan
Dad kept it together.
Tell you what, there's some fucking serious target panic there.
kelly slater
Yeah, you better be sure.
joe rogan
11 foot chrisley's charging at you and your son's in front of you.
Oh my god.
Dude, I hate to wrap this up, but I gotta get out of here.
It's already 6.30.
kelly slater
I had a question for you.
Please.
I was talking about this with a couple friends of mine that you are exposed to probably more information and people and all that and more walks of life than maybe anybody in the world.
You realize that?
You ever think about that?
Because you get such a diverse group of people to come talk to you, from politicians to chemists and scientists and athletes, and you just know so much information about so many topics.
joe rogan
I know like little scattering little things that I can pull up.
kelly slater
Well, you know a little bit about everything, sort of.
joe rogan
Sometimes.
Sometimes I don't remember anything.
kelly slater
Yeah, you're being humble.
But I mean, I think it's cool because you're just in this place where now that information is so readily available to you firsthand.
Yeah.
joe rogan
Well, I definitely learned a lot, but what's interesting is that this was never the plan.
This is all just complete happenstance and good fortune.
I mean, this whole thing just started out talking shit with comedian friends.
And then slowly but surely, someone was like, I want to go on.
I'm like, okay, come on on.
And then, you know, I got, like, Anthony Bourdain was one of the first guests that was like a guest guest.
kelly slater
Were you buddies with him?
Did you become friends with him?
joe rogan
Yeah, I was friends with him.
It's fucking beyond sad.
kelly slater
So your experience now is like your flow state.
It's just happening.
Do you enjoy it?
joe rogan
I love it.
Yeah, no, I love it.
I always look forward to it.
I look forward to meeting interesting people and meeting people like you and people like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Graham Hancock.
There's so many different people that can come on and talk about so many different fascinating things that maybe a lot of people just weren't exposed to the information before that.
kelly slater
Just to wrap up that foot thing because I didn't and it'll be super short.
I got a second surgery in February.
Put me out for about six weeks.
I surf about six weeks and I started getting good again.
And then I tore because my foot was so tight.
I did like a turf toe tear on the bottom and I ripped that plantar fasciitis or whatever.
So I've been fighting that.
But I'm right back now.
I'm going to start competing in December again.
joe rogan
Nice.
kelly slater
So yeah.
joe rogan
I want to go to one of those live.
Is there anyone live around here?
Any competition that I could see?
kelly slater
Not really around here.
joe rogan
Where would I have to go?
Hawaii?
Yeah, come to Hawaii.
kelly slater
December.
Second week of December.
joe rogan
Second week?
kelly slater
Yeah.
It's in between UFCs.
Which island?
There's actually a Bellator that week.
joe rogan
Really?
kelly slater
In Hawaii?
In Honolulu.
joe rogan
Oh, that's right.
Who's on that card?
kelly slater
I forget the card.
My friend Dustin Barker is fighting on it though.
joe rogan
Man, I was planning on seeing Fedor versus Ryan Bader.
It was going to be at the Forum.
kelly slater
Fedor, Bader.
Is that happening?
joe rogan
Yeah, on the 26th.
But now, what is it?
November?
No, not December 26th.
Well, whatever the date is, there's a UFC now.
kelly slater
Bummer.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
Maybe it's November.
joe rogan
I wanted to see him live.
kelly slater
Yeah, but there's a Bellator.
I mean, I don't know if you're...
Are you contractually obligated to not go to those things?
joe rogan
No, no.
I can go.
Yeah, I can go.
kelly slater
So there's one that week, and we have a serve contest at Pipeline.
joe rogan
Who's on that Bellator card?
Is it Michael Chandler?
jamie vernon
The main is Valerie Letourneau versus...
unidentified
I can't say her name.
I'll pull it up for you.
McFarlane.
kelly slater
No, you can say it.
Go ahead.
joe rogan
I don't know how to pronounce that.
unidentified
Elama or...
joe rogan
Elimale McFarlane.
Elimale McFarlane.
She must be Hawaiian.
kelly slater
Well, we should probably be on the local card.
unidentified
Yeah.
Lyota Machida.
joe rogan
There it is.
kelly slater
Oh, Machida's on there.
joe rogan
I can't figure out this website.
kelly slater
Man, Liotta was great.
God, when he was undefeated, no one could figure him out.
joe rogan
And Rafael Covalho was a bad motherfucker.
That's a good fight.
Neiman Gracie and Ed Ruth.
Ooh, that's a good fight.
kelly slater
King Moe.
joe rogan
King Moe and Liam McGeary.
That's a good fight, too.
kelly slater
Kona.
He's a friend of mine, Kona Oliveira.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
kelly slater
He's a surfer guy.
joe rogan
What a weird...
Bellator's got a very strange...
Yeah, it's hard to use.
...website.
unidentified
They have prelims, also.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Hmm.
jamie vernon
December 15th is this one.
joe rogan
So that's the same week.
And what island is this surf contest on?
kelly slater
Oahu, same as Honolulu.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
kelly slater
So it's on the North Shore.
I'll send you some surf forecast.
I'll tell you what day it is running.
joe rogan
Okay.
I'm going to try.
If I can, I will try.
I really want to see one live.
I think it would be cool.
kelly slater
Shane will be there.
He probably won't compete, but he'll probably do commentary for it.
joe rogan
Shane's gonna be here real soon.
He's here the day of Sober October, the November 5th show.
kelly slater
You got me in, man.
joe rogan
He's gonna be here early.
kelly slater
You got me in.
I don't drink much, but I was in Paris the week October started.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
And I'm just going to my friend's restaurant every night and having a drink or two.
It's stupid, you know?
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
And so I just feel so much better not having even a beer, you know?
unidentified
It's just...
joe rogan
It's a good...
Look, I enjoyed it last year.
Last year we did 15 days of hot yoga.
We had to do 15 hot yoga classes, 90-minute classes.
That was kind of a pain in the ass.
This year's way more of a pain in the ass.
This year we're doing this crazy fitness competition where we're wearing this MyZone heart rate monitor and you get a certain amount of points for every minute you're in, you know, like 80% of your max heart rate, 70% of your max heart rate is less.
kelly slater
So just every day you're just...
joe rogan
Dude, I worked out for five and a half hours today.
kelly slater
Uh-huh.
joe rogan
Five and a half hours.
I'm trying to kill my friends.
kelly slater
I surfed for five hours yesterday and I was dead.
I just haven't surfed much lately.
joe rogan
I'm not bullshitting.
I worked out for five people.
Yeah, you're exaggerating.
No, it's documented.
I did five and a half hours, 913 points.
They're all shitting their pants right now.
I'm saying it's 929 before I quit.
kelly slater
Do you know how many minutes today you were at 80% heart rate or whatever?
joe rogan
Hours.
Look, all those yellow...
kelly slater
That's hours this month?
joe rogan
Yes.
No, today.
Today I was at hours at 80% of my heart rate.
kelly slater
A couple hours.
joe rogan
More like three.
kelly slater
Wow.
joe rogan
Three hours at 80% of my max heart rate.
It had to be, because 913, you get 240 points per minute.
unidentified
What's the endgame?
joe rogan
The endgame is I win.
kelly slater
No, but I mean, do you go do a triathlon after or something?
unidentified
No, I don't know.
joe rogan
I'm in fucking crazy shape right now, I'll tell you that.
kelly slater
Yeah, you are.
I mean, I walk in, I'm like, Jesus, this guy's freaking ripped.
joe rogan
But I mean, I've literally never been in better cardiovascular shape in my life.
I worked out for five and a half fucking hours today.
kelly slater
Do you do anything with that besides just feel good?
joe rogan
I'm just trying to get my belt.
We have a championship belt, like a WWE belt at the end of this.
It says Intergalactic Champion, Sober October.
And I'm just trying, right now, I'm trying to literally kill my friends that are trying to compete with me.
I want them to regret getting into this competition with me.
Because I don't think they totally understood how fucking crazy I am until this thing started heating up and I told them I'm going to do 929 points every day.
Jesus.
1,600 points ahead of the second place.
kelly slater
Do you ever fast?
joe rogan
Have you fasted?
No.
No, I've done intermittent fasting where I fast like 16 hours a night.
kelly slater
But never like a master cleanse for 10 days or something?
joe rogan
No, I like food too much.
But I do enjoy intermittent fasting.
I like to do 16 hours.
kelly slater
I've done like nine, ten day fasts.
Master Cleanse.
But dude, I recommend it.
Just because you get all the stuff out of your colon that looks like your colon.
It's like old poop and it's kind of gross.
joe rogan
Is that real?
kelly slater
I swear to God, it came out of my body.
I thought I pooped out my colon.
joe rogan
It's crazy.
So when you haven't eaten in like two days, how much are you shitting?
kelly slater
You still shitting?
No, you poop every day a little bit.
unidentified
Really?
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
Wow.
kelly slater
It's crazy.
joe rogan
That's gotta be weird.
kelly slater
But then this stuff comes out of your gut.
They call mucoid plaque.
You can Google that.
And it is like 20, 30, 40 years of stuff built up from the mucus.
Your body creates when it doesn't like what you're eating, and that goes down and it gets stuck on the walls of your intestines, and it's like tire rubber, and you poop it out.
It looks exactly like the shape of your intestine.
I thought it was my intestine.
joe rogan
So you thought you shit out part of your body?
kelly slater
I did.
It was freaky.
joe rogan
And how good do you feel when this is over?
kelly slater
You look like...
unidentified
Let me see.
joe rogan
Pull it up.
kelly slater
Pull it up.
Look at his face.
I didn't believe it was real and I got it out.
joe rogan
It's like weird stuff starts...
unidentified
Mucoid plaque.
Whoa!
joe rogan
That is nuts!
kelly slater
Yeah, I got something out of my body.
joe rogan
Look at that stuff.
That does look like intestine.
kelly slater
Yeah, it looks like intestine, dude.
It's gross.
joe rogan
So that's what comes out after you're done.
kelly slater
Your nutrients have to go through that to get it.
joe rogan
How long...
Well, maybe I'll do that right after I'm done with Sober October.
kelly slater
But Google the Master Cleanse.
unidentified
How many days?
kelly slater
Because you're drinking a tea of like maple syrup, lemon, and cayenne pepper.
joe rogan
For how many days?
kelly slater
I kind of like it.
I did it for 10 days.
joe rogan
10 days?
No food, just that?
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
Whoa.
kelly slater
Yeah.
But I got that stuff coming out after about five days because I was really aggressive with the...
You do a saltwater flush every day, every morning.
joe rogan
Yeah?
kelly slater
And then you take this smooth move tea that makes you kind of like go to the bathroom.
joe rogan
Well, I'll tell you one thing that I have been doing because I've been sweating so much.
I videotaped one day the sweat puddles that I left in the gym.
It's fucking insane.
kelly slater
I watched that.
joe rogan
And then I set off my alarm, my fire alarm in my gym from my sweat.
And today it was so bad.
kelly slater
That was when you lapped the field of your friends.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Today was so bad, because today I did the longest that I've ever worked out.
kelly slater
I know your nutrition's good, too, but you've got to be thinking about what's going out and what you've got to put back in.
joe rogan
Well, that's one of the things.
I've been drinking water with electrolytes, and I'm adding salt.
I'm adding Himalayan salt to the water, but I maybe added too much.
And when I talk about just...
Forget diarrhea.
It's not really diarrhea.
It's basically...
Basically, that water coming out of my ass.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
Because it's, I mean, it would be like, I would feel it.
kelly slater
You don't pee it out.
joe rogan
Uh-oh.
unidentified
Boom!
joe rogan
It was like opening floodgates and gallons of water would come out of my asshole.
kelly slater
Most people should do that like once or twice a month.
Two teaspoons of salt in one liter of water or a quart of water.
Bang.
And your body sees it as food, not as pee.
joe rogan
Right.
And it just cleans you out.
kelly slater
In a half an hour.
joe rogan
That's what I did.
kelly slater
You better stay home for that one.
joe rogan
I wasn't staying home.
I would just jump off the treadmill for five minutes, take a volumous shit of water.
It was basically water coming out of my asshole, but it probably cleans up a lot, right?
kelly slater
It cleans it out.
joe rogan
There was a lot of weird stuff floating around in there.
I didn't know what that was.
kelly slater
Your body uses so much energy for digestion.
joe rogan
Yeah.
kelly slater
But I got these guys I follow online that do water fasts like every month, and they're doing a five to ten day water fast coming up this week.
I don't think I'm participating in that one, but I want to do a fast soon.
joe rogan
So how much did you look forward to that drink, the tea with the lemon?
I mean, if you're not having any calories.
kelly slater
Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
joe rogan
Did you lose a lot of weight?
kelly slater
I lost...
Yeah, I didn't weigh myself, but I think I lost 10 to 12 pounds.
joe rogan
That's a lot.
kelly slater
Yeah.
I looked really emaciated.
I was pretty shredded, but I was thin too, you know?
But then you build back at that first date I ate afterwards, you know, it was like the best food I ever had in my life.
You know, just like you've never eaten.
joe rogan
So you did 10 whole days of just the tea.
kelly slater
Yeah.
joe rogan
Wow.
kelly slater
And a saltwater flush every day.
And the Smooth Move tea, which I was doubling up on, because I didn't have the full 14 days, so I'm like, I've got to go fast.
But I was getting stomach cramps because I was drinking too much of that tea.
joe rogan
I'll try that.
I'll give that a shot.
kelly slater
At least Google it and look.
But when you can abstain from food, it's like you could quit heroin or something.
People are so addicted to food.
Look at people.
joe rogan
They're so addicted to food.
Well, that's one thing because of this.
The amount of calories that I'm consuming, like, let me tell you how much I burned today, because it's so goddamn insane.
kelly slater
That's amazing.
joe rogan
Today I burned, I mean, this doesn't even, it doesn't even seem real, but I burned 4,217 calories during this workout.
Yeah, that's...
kelly slater
Are you just circuiting the whole time?
joe rogan
Well, I ran the hills, I ran two miles with my dog in the hills, which, believe it or not, you don't get that many fucking points for it, because this thing sucks.
It's way harder than the other things that I'm doing, because it's basically straight up.
But I'm just trying to...
Two-year-old golden retriever and he's got so much goddamn energy.
He's the best, but I got to wear his ass out.
Otherwise, he annoys everybody and jumps up on people.
He just needs attention.
But when I run with him, he's just chill.
So I'll do two miles in the...
What do you got here?
kelly slater
I'm going to plug my buddy Sun Life.
joe rogan
I love this stuff.
What is this one?
kelly slater
That's a Dawn Patrol.
It's like cold brew coffee, coconut cream, coconut sugar.
Anyways, you go into my buddy's shop sometime.
joe rogan
I do.
I go in there all the time.
They have great acai.
They have great everything.
kelly slater
That place is awesome.
I go live there.
Sometimes I'll spend half the day there and get two of my meals.
joe rogan
He's got bone broth, too.
kelly slater
Bone broth.
joe rogan
I love the bone broth.
It's like his Khalil special.
kelly slater
Khalil style, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, with the cayenne pepper, and that's fucking sensational.
What was I saying?
Oh, but that's not good for that many points.
The system sucks.
kelly slater
The output is not gauging.
Going uphill, it's like...
joe rogan
It's more grinding.
It's like if you get to 80% of your max heart rate and just grind.
kelly slater
You guys got money on this thing?
joe rogan
No, just the belt.
kelly slater
Just the belt, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, and bragging rights.
kelly slater
Yeah, you'll be like Khabib.
You'll be like, where's my belt?
Give me my belt.
That's all I want.
This is number one bullshit.
joe rogan
Send me a location.
Send me a location.
Kelly, I'm glad we finally did this, brother.
kelly slater
Me too, man.
Thanks a lot.
Appreciate it, man.
joe rogan
Thanks for being here, man.
kelly slater
Thanks, Joe.
joe rogan
It's awesome.
kelly slater
Thanks, you guys.
joe rogan
All right, we'll be back tomorrow, folks.
We got two.
Two tomorrow.
kelly slater
And my round-earth shirt.
Thank you.
joe rogan
Yeah, round-earth shill.
Marcus Brownlee will be here at 10, and Kyle Kalinske will be here at 1. So, see you tomorrow.
unidentified
Bye!
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