Bert Kreischer and Joe Rogan revisit their March 2020 quarantine debut, where Kreischer’s drive-in comedy shows thrived amid pandemic chaos. They critique inconsistent COVID guidelines—like masks—while debating ivermectin’s role in Rogan’s recovery, contrasting it with ventilator risks. Kreischer’s fitness journey, from bench pressing 235 lbs to post-surgery running, mirrors Rogan’s praise for disciplined athletes like Brian Ortega and Jiu-Jitsu "nerd assassins." Cold exposure experiments, including 20-minute ice baths, tie into broader pandemic resilience discussions, culminating in Kreischer’s admiration for Rogan’s balanced, respectful approach to comedy and controversy. [Automatically generated summary]
Ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy How long has it been?
But what was great is you get done the show, you get in the back of a golf cart with a cocktail, Tito's and Soda's, shirt off.
I'd stand where the golf bags sit.
And I just drive through the line while they wait in traffic and go, thanks for coming.
Do my meet and greet that way.
And it was the funnest way to spend a pandemic summer in a bubble, on a bus, and people were, like, I think people admit, not the best comedy show they've ever seen in their life.
The way you're passionate about so many different things, but when you find something, you just immerse yourself in it.
Dave was like that with barbecue.
He got into it, and now whenever we tour, the top barbecue in the area, this whole summer, would drop off huge trays for us, because they know Dave's into barbecue.
So this was like when testing wasn't super available.
So we would test in LA and then all get on the bus and then that remained our bubble the entire tour.
So we would have zero contact with everyone and then We really stepped it up because the first time we came in and then we all quarantined in the bus for like five days at my new house.
That way we know we're clean and then drive into LA. And then we get tested in Salt Lake City or wherever it was there.
We get tested and drive in.
And it was the best summer, it was the best experience I've ever had, comedy-wise.
Until Red Rocks, but but it was like it was just awesome was fun and people were appreciative and Then and then couple that with the fact that I'm business partners with one of the most fucking brilliant men in the world Tom Segura And we start doing our live gigs those two bears live.
Yeah, yeah, and it was like I'd come home I do a live gig with him get blackout drunk tether our dicks together with electrodes shock each other's dicks guys did that Joe So we go to a dominatrix for one of our live gigs, right?
But when I went back, I was like, Jesus Christ, the traffic, and everyone feels like they're a prisoner.
People have anxiety.
Everyone has anxiety in L.A. You don't realize it until you get out of there.
I just think that there's a thing that happens when you're around large groups of people.
There's a lot of excitement, like when you visit New York City.
It's great if New York City's popping like three years ago.
It was great.
But now it's sketching, right?
So there's a certain amount of energy, because there's a lot of people, but there's a certain amount of anxiety that comes with just being overwhelmed by population, by just large numbers.
That goes away out here.
The thing about living here, there's a million people in the city.
When I built that apocalypse truck, that land cruiser that I got, I built it because I was telling my wife, I was like, if some shit goes down, we gotta be able to get the fuck out of here, like legitimately.
Like I need a big tank of gas and we gotta have money and we gotta have guns.
And she was like, this is such a ridiculous idea.
Then the pandemic hit.
And she saw the lines in front of gun stores, and she saw people freaking out, and then everyone was hoarding food and toilet paper.
And I was like, yeah, this is what I'm telling you.
I saw this.
I didn't see this, but I saw if shit goes south, no one's ready.
No one's ready.
And this is not a good place to be because there's no resources here.
There's no food.
There's no real water.
The water's in the ocean or reservoirs, and they'll dry up.
It doesn't mean that you have to think that everybody's evil.
It doesn't mean you can't be kind and friendly.
You could be all those things, but be ready.
But you also have to be charitable.
Like one of the biggest resources When shit goes south is other people.
People hoard, right?
They want to hoard, they want it all for themselves.
The problem with that is the same problem with, we all know certain people that when they become successful, they're very lonely.
Because they don't want anyone else to be successful.
They want it all about them.
Those people, they get real lonely.
Because they have no peers.
And so the only time they have friendships are these superficial friendships like they have to go to like red carpet events and weird events where there's other celebrities and they interact with those people in these real superficial ways and those are literally like some of their only social interactions with people.
So they don't have any real moments where they have, like, real friends where they could tell about their failures or their anxieties or their fears or their insecurities.
And when the shit goes south, like, if there's any kind of a pandemic or anything, the best thing you can have is a good crew of humans that you can count on.
You can count on them.
They can count on you.
Where, you know...
If you have five people and they all know how to get food and maybe someone's got chickens or someone has a fucking well at their house, you can help each other.
You can help each other.
That's what a tribe's all about.
These motherfuckers that...
They're only thinking about themselves.
When it goes bad, it goes real bad for them.
And those are the ones that you're seeing on Twitter that are freaking the fuck out all the time and yelling at people about random shit and just shaming people and calling people out.
They just don't have any discipline or self-control or any sort of introspective understanding.
They don't have an understanding of how they interact with other people.
They're just doing it because they're scared.
And this pandemic brought so much of that out.
Because there's so many people out there that haven't experienced any sort of real adversity in their life.
You know they've had like...
Difficulties in their career and trying to get ahead but like real fucking hardcore adversity.
They've run away from that and they've sought comfort.
So whenever anything goes south, those people are the first ones to yell.
They're the first ones to try to find some enemy or try to find some scapegoat or some reason for why they're so scared or someone who's not following the rules or doing what they want you to do and wear two masks and all those motherfuckers.
Like, right at the beginning of the pandemic, we're walking the dogs, me and the girls, and I just assumed if you're outside, you don't have to wear a mask.
Obviously, it's no one's fault that they don't know what to do.
Like, I remember the mask, no mask thing at the very beginning.
And they're like, masks aren't helpful.
Okay, masks are helpful.
I understand the whole, you gotta figure out what you're doing.
We're not gonna know until five years from now what we did right and what we did wrong.
But I'm just...
It bums me out.
Because, you know, I look at my daughters, and I know you probably look at your daughters, and my daughters spent junior and freshman year not in school.
Like, what we really need to do is figure out how to test.
And test quickly and safely.
There was a test that they were talking about.
And I don't know what ever came of this, but it was a saliva-based test that they were going to have where you just lick something and you would get a result within 30 seconds.
I remember someone telling me about this.
I can't remember who told me about this, but it was a person who understands and knows.
And I don't know if it wasn't effective, I don't know what the reason why we didn't get that, but that would have been the shit.
Like, so you get on a plane, everybody licks this fucking thing, you find out if you have it, and then everybody who has it, you get sent home, and everybody who doesn't have it gets on the plane.
Instead, what are we doing?
We're sitting right next to each other pretending that this little paper thing or a bandana is protecting you from the air that we're all breathing?
Who the fuck got kicked off a plane where they went into the cockpit and they filmed the pilot and the pilot didn't have a mask on?
But I was under the impression, and I don't have kids that young anymore, but I was under the impression that there was like an age where you didn't have to wear a mask.
Him having kids, him and Christina having kids, is really like a science project.
Like, what is it like with parents who love fucking with each other and fucking with everybody else and laughing about anything, including people getting badly injured?
Two human beings that I've loved for a very long time who used to come to me when they were so broke, they would come to my house to eat because they didn't have money.
And I was headlining for like $2,000 a week, maybe hitting bonuses.
And they'd come over all the time and eat.
And they knew my kids intimately.
They knew my kids very, very, very well.
Uncle Buns and Push.
And they knew my family intimately.
And I said to Leanne, I was like, hey, I'm flying down to Austin every week in October.
And I said, you gotta come down.
You gotta meet these fucking kids.
And I was like, they know our kids so well.
So well.
I mean, my daughters still call them buns.
And I go, you gotta meet his kids.
It's like, it sucks that he's down here and that we won't be a part of his family the way we were.
I mean, because when Tommy fell and hurt himself, It was like, it was a no-brainer.
I called Leanne, I said, hey, they need us.
And we just went, and we went to his house that night, stayed until like one in the morning after the fall.
Yeah, I tell people about that and they don't believe it.
I go, you know, we all tried to do 220, 225 is the two plates.
That's like a man's bench.
If you're listening to this for political reasons and you've never bench pressed, then you need to know that two plates, clink clink, is a man's bench.
If you do that, then you're a man.
And so me, Tom and Ari, it was right after Sober October ended.
And we were like, let's see if I can always throw up 225. In my head, I can.
And I got pinned hard.
Ari got under, got pinned worse than any of us.
Tom got it off his chest and was trembling, but Tom lifts weights, but he had a hard time.
And then you go in and you throw up a pro football combine record of like 15, 17, 18. I remember telling someone that and they're like, Joe Rogan punches 220. I go, Joe Rogan works out for...
I remember all of us are like, all right, Joe, come on, let's go to dinner, man.
See, that's what I find really fascinating is when I see people, like you said, shitting on people online, trolling people, and talking shit, waiting for them to slip up to fuck with them.
I go, don't you have anyone in your life that you're not like, But you love, like, David Goggins, Cam Haynes, Jocko, fucking Nick Diaz, Nate Diaz, fucking Robbie Lawler, all these dudes, I don't know anything about them.
Like, I met a fucking Cowboys Roni.
Like, these guys, I'm a fan of them.
I follow them on Instagram, they post shit, and it makes me smile.
You're very, you know, especially being around as early as I got to be on this podcast, to see the growth this podcast has had and the people that you've surrounded yourself with and brought in, it's like really cool to be a part of this community and know that those guys are like, like Cam Haines will, I don't know if this is real or not, sometimes I just drink and talk.
We were talking about this today, and me and you kind of talked about it a little bit.
Back in the day when we started this business, there was such cattiness.
Such like, I'm going to go up in front of that guy, I'm going to blow him off stage.
And now to sit here and think, you know, people that I met, like guys like Ari have introduced you to like Shane Gillis or Mark Normand and Chris DiStefano, Giannis Pappas, and all these great fucking dudes that are all blowing up huge right now.
Come on my podcast, on Tom's podcast, your podcast.
No, the business is, well, you know, I don't know why.
I mean, I know why.
The business used to be everyone was competing for us a small number of spots Like if you wanted to do young comedian special there was only five comedians or whatever it is You know HBO if you want to get an HBO special like you kind of had to be somebody and You know either you had to be on one of those Rodney specials or you had to be on something else like someone had to Get you into something and Rodney was a giant influence of me because he Found comics that he loved and he boosted them up and he helped them out and I always said I wanted
to do a Rodney type special with comics that I know that are really funny That aren't getting the love you know and do something like that whether I'd be willing to do that right now Whether it's on Netflix or Amazon or even maybe I'll put it together myself and do it on YouTube but that kind of thing is like I always remember thinking, like, how cool is Rodney Dangerfield?
That he let the world know about Bill Hicks and Dom Herrera and Sam Kinison and Lenny Clark and all these comics that I deeply admire.
And, you know, I just always felt like that's the guy I want to be.
I want to be the guy that, like, helps other comics and boosts them up.
But everybody was, like, competing for this small number of spots.
And the thing that happened with me...
Was I got insanely lucky.
I got insanely lucky.
Like, I mean, I did good on stage and everything, but there was people that were better than me.
I got lucky.
I got on MTV like fucking five years in a comedy or four years in a comedy.
It wasn't that long.
And then I got a deal and then all of a sudden I was on a sitcom.
So, I didn't have to work that hard.
Like, in a weird way.
I did road gigs, and I bombed, and I did colleges, and I traveled the country like everybody else, but it wasn't that long.
I was on TV six years in a comedy.
I was on news radio with Phil Hartman and Dave Foley and Andy Dick and Maura Tierney and Vicki Lewis and Candy Alexander.
It was wild!
And Steven Root, who's like one of the greatest actors of all time.
It was madness!
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Like, the idea that I was that lucky to be in this spot, You got like a master's degree in comedy.
And I gotta be very honest, is that I think I was in a very unique situation in that...
It was a good stand-up.
I got on Travel Channel for eight, nine years, whatever it was.
And then I was doing this podcast with you.
I would hop on the podcast and I did my podcast and And I started my podcast, and I'd do Joey's and Ari's, but at the same time, I had also failed as a comic.
You know, like I had kind of let comedy fall into the side.
I'm saying this because it's going to sound like you guys are being shitty to me, but you weren't.
I walked in the back of the comedy store one time and you guys were both talking about it and you said, hey man, I remember I said something and both of you guys were like, hey man, your Travel Channel show sucks.
We love you.
You're just a better comic.
And you gotta focus on podcasting and focus on your stand-up.
I felt you were gonna become like one of those guys.
Well, and also I knew from my own personal experience, right?
Like I hosted Fear Factor for six years.
I know what that feels like to be stuck in this gig that's doing really well.
I say stuck in this gig.
That's a terrible thing to say because it was one of the best things that ever happened to me, Fear Factor.
Because it gave me fuck you money.
And fuck you money gave me this thing where I could be like, okay, I can relax.
I like nice things, but I don't need them.
You know what I need?
I need food and shelter.
And I have that now, literally for the rest of my life.
I just put some money away, and then I'm like, now I just want to live the way I want to live.
I want to do what I want to do.
And so when I saw you doing that Travel Channel shit, I was like, Burt Kreischer is too funny for this.
You're too funny to be constricted.
You're funny when you're wild.
You're funny when you get off stage, you take your fucking shirt off and you're hammered and you're free.
You can't be restricted and also be free.
It's literally not possible.
So you could live a tortured life where you make a good living, but you're not doing what you could have done.
And then all of a sudden one day you're 60. And you're looking back on your life and you're like, shit.
That could happen.
It could happen to any one of us.
It could happen to me.
It could happen to anyone, man.
You get stuck.
And sometimes you can't do anything about being stuck and you just gotta do what you gotta do in the moment and make a plan and bide your time and figure out a way to do what you're truly passionate about.
But people have obligations.
They have families.
They have bills.
They have people to take care of that they love.
I understand that.
You gotta do what you gotta do.
But I knew that for you, There was a way out.
And the way out was podcasting and stand-up.
And I knew that.
I knew that.
And I remember talking to you on the phone that day.
You know, you're not a G, you're an R. And I'm like, this R is getting wasted on a G. I remember telling them, I said, they were like, what do you want to do with the rest of your, you know, for Travel Channel next?
And I said, I would love to do, you know, what Anthony Bourdain does.
And I felt like going, everyone's, you gotta let everyone take their shot.
And then, luckily, I got fired.
And thank God.
And I know...
What's interesting is that, you know, when I got that award and I got on stage, my daughters were there, and they were like, you know, they give you the award and then they say, you gotta say a list of thank yous.
And I go through all my thank yous and they're all very heartfelt, sincere.
Everyone on my team, from top to bottom, UTA and EverLevity, all of them, I love them.
They've done everything for me.
But I got to a moment where I said, you know, I think I got very fucking lucky and I surrounded myself by comics that were way better than me.
And I named you guys.
I named all of you guys.
Tom, Joey, Burr, you, Ari, Dunk.
All these guys were just...
And there's a much bigger list.
I know I'm leaving people off, but like, I go, they were brutally honest with me, and they were my friends.
And that didn't happen 10 years ago.
No, 10 years ago, they'd go, quit that Travel Channel show, and it would mean, because it's good, and we don't want the competition.
You guys were saying it like, hey man, you got more talent than this.
And then because of that, the next day we're in the woods, I do my fall and I hurt my arm because I'm focused on my leg.
And I start thinking, I literally think I went on the wrong path.
I went the wrong direction.
And then my wife says, I don't know, maybe if you hadn't injured your arm, you wouldn't have done that promo video of you going under anesthesia, calling out Red Rocks for your surgery.
Maybe you wouldn't have sold the tickets.
And then you start going, oh, fuck.
And Tom goes, I think of this every fucking day.
Had I not injured myself, maybe I'd be a different person.
Maybe I wouldn't be as empathetic.
And then I think about Amanda Knox.
And we were just talking about this.
She spends four years in prison.
Possibly, and I listen to a lot of your episodes, possibly the most eloquent, well-spoken, interesting human beings I've ever heard on this show.
And you go, I hate to say this this way, but...
Did you need your path to get you to be this great person you are today?
Are these paths that you go through, the bad shit you go through, is that what you need to have to turn you into the person that you're gonna be?
But it's an incredible challenge, and sometimes incredible challenges break people.
So it's like, why does it break some people, and why does it turn some people into an Amanda Knox, who's one of the most intelligent people I've ever talked to, and the most empathetic, non-judgmental, even to the guy who was the prosecutor, who was essentially trying to frame her for something she absolutely didn't commit.
If you look at the evidence, there's no fucking way that guy rationally, if he was given a set of circumstances, if he was given all the evidence that they knew eventually, in the beginning, There's no way he would have thought that Amanda Knox was guilty.
He decided early on that she was guilty and then was trying to confirm his initial suspicions.
So he was confirmation bias and he was essentially framing an innocent girl who was 20 years old.
You know, they were trying to pretend that she was this evil Satanist, and she was a fucking kid, man.
She was a 20-year-old kid.
She didn't know.
I mean, think about who you were when you were 20. You're a knucklehead.
You know, you don't know anything.
And all of a sudden, she's in fucking Italy for the first time, and this guy breaks into the house that she was living in when she wasn't there and kills her roommate.
And they concocted some crazy fake story.
Meanwhile, this girl does four years in jail.
The whole thing, the ordeal takes like eight years until she's completely exonerated.
And then after she's completely exonerated, she's one of the most fascinating, interesting people I've ever talked to because of the ordeal and because she came out of the other side like...
She's tempered.
She's like a fucking samurai sword, where you'd taken that sword and put it in the flames and hammered it over and over and folded it and put it through all this stress, dunked it in water and hammered it.
I told him, you know me, I told him a bunch of stories about me.
And he was like...
I go, hey, Adam, you want to hear a great story?
He's like, ah, sure, sure.
And I was like, so anyway, when you were in college, when I was in college, I was at Florida State, and you came and formed, and he's just like, I don't know where this is going.
And I go, you came to Florida State?
And this girl I was dating was like, ended up hanging up with you, and then they ended up smoking pot with you and Alan Covert, and then I didn't go, and that was me, though.
There's a delay, and Whitney and I have a tape measure, so we're six feet apart because it's COVID, and I'm swinging in like a boom mic, coming in going, hey, Adam, Adam, oh, this is so bad.
And when you realize how good Brian Ortega is, and what he's in right now, he's in a mount, but he's also got his legs crossed underneath, which is like the most ruthless mount.
Because a regular mount, you're on top of a guy, and the guy can kind of buck.
But Ortega's got his legs crossed.
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So that kind of guillotine with a guy like that is death!
Well, I got into a deep dive about him, and I do a thing called Open Tabs, where I keep all the tabs open in my Safari browser, and then I do a podcast about telling you about all the shit I learned over the weekend.
And I had a big Brian Ortega one, but I took it out because sometimes with cage fighters, maybe what I say isn't what they hear, and I don't want to piss any of them off.
Yeah, what that means is there's like some basic, and the word basic gets offensive to some people because I think they misinterpret.
That's why I use the word fundamentals instead of basic.
But what I mean by basic is there's just like some amazing moves in Jiu Jitsu that are standard.
Like the arm bar is standard.
Arm bar from the guard is a standard move.
A guillotine choke is a standard move.
A rear naked choke is a standard move.
A Darce choke, we're getting a little more new school-y because there's a guy, Joe Darce, that came up with that name.
But there's a bra bow choke that's kind of similar that's in Jiu Jitsu with the Gi.
And there's a lot of techniques like Gi techniques that are very fundamental.
Like Ezekiel chokes and clock chokes.
They're basically kind of fundamental.
And then you get into this new school, like Eddie Bravo style, where he's got some of these students that are just doing this wild shit.
There's this kid, Ben Eddie.
Who teaches out of Portland.
I think he's in Portland.
And Ben Eddy's like super flexible with his wild guard.
And I was just looking at this new move that he was doing where he's got like this rubber guard, new choke.
And I was analyzing this.
I was like, whoa!
And I'm like, how many people can move their legs like that?
Like how flexible is he?
How much dexterity does he have in his legs?
The way he's applying pressure.
I'm like, can my fat ass do that?
I'm looking at how he's doing it.
I'm like, can I do that?
Or is this like out of my league?
Is this like one of them, there's some crazy flexibility moves that you have to be like a pretzel to use?
So he's doing this shit.
Ben Eddy's got amazing jujitsu.
And one of the things I love about him, He's a long-haired hippie, and he's not like a brute at all, but he's a goddamn assassin when it comes to jiu-jitsu.
Those are my favorite guys who you would think would be like kind of nerds, but they are.
They're like nerd assassins.
That's how Eddie always calls them.
He calls them like nerd assassins.
Intelligent people that are playing a complicated game.
They could have been playing chess, but they instead became a jiu-jitsu person.
They could have been a person who's like a champion video game person, but instead it's the same thing.
It's like whatever makes you good at golf would also make you good at tennis.
There's athletic limitations to some things.
To be a really good runner, you have to be fast.
There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
But there's certain things that when a person gets really fucking good at something, what that is, I think you can apply to anything with passion.
See, this guy's got wild shit.
There's another dude named Jeremiah Vance, and he might be one of the most impressive.
He moves so fast off his back.
His back...
It's terrifying.
When he's on the bottom, which is usually a difficult position to attack from, it's way easier to attack on top because you have gravity on your side.
So if you're on top of a person and you're smooshing them, you have gravity on your side.
That's an advantage.
You have more pressure on them They don't have any pressure on you.
So you have to figure out a way to attack someone without any pressure.
Goddamn, look at that.
Yeah, dude, he's a master off his back.
He caught this dude in a fly trap, and he might have been one of the first guys to ever pull this off on a high-level competition.
Dude, I'm telling you, Jeremiah Vance is an assassin off his back.
But it's like, this is not fundamental jujitsu.
This stuff that he's doing right here, this is not the basics.
This is some wild variations that these really creative assassins are coming up with.
What you see when you see Brian Ortega, I'm sure Brian could do all that shit if you show him.
I'm sure he could.
I'm sure he already knows it too, but what you see from him is all of the fundamentals, the triangle, the rear naked, the arm bar at razor sharp, razor sharp precision.
That's what's amazing.
It's not just that he got a mounted guillotine on a world champion, it's the smoothness.
Like, watch that.
Can you play Brian Ortega's submission attempt on Volkanovski?
We can't find it?
I think it's on the UFC page.
I know Ariel Helwani tweeted it.
He tweeted a video.
And he said, how?
He said, how do you get out?
How does someone get out of this?
And it's a really good question.
Because if you know how good Brian Ortega's jujitsu is, you go, this is insane.
This should be checkmate.
There's another guy, like Krohn Gracie, who's Hicks and Gracie's son.
Krohn Gracie got a guillotine on Cub Swanson.
And Cub Swanson is a legitimate fucking murderer.
He's a killer.
He's really good.
He's good all around.
He can knock dudes outstanding.
He's a black belt in jujitsu.
He's a bad motherfucker.
He's been around forever.
He's a veteran, just as tough as they come.
And Krohn Gracie caught his neck like a crocodile.
It was like a crocodile snatching a wildebeest by the side of a waterhole.
When people say that he shouldn't have fought, he was doing really well.
He was off for six years, and he was doing really well against a world-class, straight-up killer in Robbie Lawler, who used to be the UFC welterweight champion.
And Robbie Lawler, you could make an argument he's not in his prime, but he's damn close.
He's right there.
He's still capable of beating...
A lot of fucking people in the UFC. He's like a top 10 guy for sure.
Robbie Lawler's a kid.
Like, what is Robbie Lawler ranked in the UFC's welterweight division?
He could beat anybody.
All he has to do is, like, you can't look at him by, like, some of the fights that didn't go so good, because, like, you're a professional athlete in a sport that's brutal on your body.
But if you look at him, what is he still capable of doing?
Like, it's not like he's physically incapacitated.
It's not like he's really slowed down that much.
It's like, what is he capable of doing?
What is he capable of doing this?
Beating the fuck out of people.
I think the level of competition, he's gotten a little older, but the level of competition has also gotten better.
They keep getting better and better and better and better.
You get the Tyron Woodleys, and then Kamaru Usman comes along and takes it to another level.
Dude, when he fought Nate Diaz, I mean, like, Jorge Masvidal, I saw a fight on YouTube videos when I was at a fucking Des Moines funny bone, and I texted Tommy, I was like, you gotta check this kid out.
It's fucking fascinating when you hear these guys talk about what goes, especially, I think Brandon's, I don't mean this out of disrespect to anyone else, but I think he's a little bit more insightful about the things that maybe I would feel if I walked into the ring, you know?
People don't like him because he's, first of all, whether you judge his comedy or judge his podcast or judge whether, you also have to judge how he looks and he's a beautiful man and it's a real problem for people.
Crow Cop is legitimately one of the best strikers to ever fight in MMA. And granted, it was Crow Cop later in his life.
Granted, it was Crow Cop after he had these wars in pride and then came over to the UFC. And he had...
It's just being a human.
Getting hit a bunch of times.
You lose something somewhere along the way.
So I don't think that was the Crow Cop that fought Fedor the first time, but it was still motherfucking Crow Cop.
And Brandon Schaub KO'd him.
So it's like...
He had it at one time.
But you can see when fighters don't have it anymore when it becomes a job.
Like Joseph Benavidez just retired and one of the things that he said was that he realized he was not going to get a chance to fight for the world title again and he didn't want MMA to be just a job.
And it's a brilliant thing to say because it's brutally honest.
It's brutally honest.
And it takes a sensitive, intelligent person like him.
He goes, I don't want this to be a job.
I wanted to be the best in the world.
He was very close to being the best in the world.
He was most certainly number two for quite a long time.
Maybe even was number one, but he didn't get a shot.
It was like, you got a window as an athlete.
To be at your best before the tissue, just the RPMs and the fucking trauma of just, even just regular training, even if you're just not even getting hit, just regular training, just hitting the bag, just fucking doing CrossFit, just doing those kind of like kettlebell exercises and plyos and jump and box jumps, your tissue is getting stressed.
He is a uniquely confident, wild motherfucker who's super creative, and he's fucking...
Look, man, he's...
He's insanely good.
He's still getting better too, man.
That's the wild thing about that dude.
Thomas Almeida, that dude he just fucked up, you have to understand who Thomas Almeida is.
Before Cody Garbrandt knocked out Thomas Almeida, Thomas Almeida was one of the best Like, shots to be a world champion.
Like, you looked at him when he was coming up, when he was dominating people, when he'd get caught and hurt and still come back and knock guys out.
He was a gladiator.
Thomas Almeida was, like, he was someone to watch.
And then Cody Garbrandt put the fucking knuckles to him.
In an insane way with this sidestep footwork beautiful boxing hit about a perfect place right hand and knocked him out I mean Cody Garbrandt just fucked him up.
It was wild to see because Garbrandt and Thomas Almeida at that time were both thought to be kind of on that same level like guys who are rising to the title and Thomas Almeida Was fucking dangerous man for Cody to fuck him up that way was really super impressive.
Yeah, so when you see Sean O'Malley fight Thomas Almeida and just pitch a shutout.
Just a wild shutout.
And the pace is insane.
And KO him really kind of twice.
I could have stopped him at one point in time, and the referee let him go on, and then he literally says to him, like, he puts his hands up, he goes, okay, and then he knocks him out when he's on the ground.
So those guys that come in, and I mean this respectfully, Balls are blazing.
Sean O'Malley, Patty Pimblinton, Conor McGregor.
These guys that just show up with so much confidence.
How much confidence is walking into the ring, how much success is walking into the ring with that much confidence, that much balls, that much like Nick Diaz on his back giving the birds, or on his back going like, come on, get me, get me.
I followed him as another guy in open tabs I didn't talk about because I was like, I don't know how these guys received that, but I just fucking watched every video about the guy.
You know, he fought that last fight with a torn ACL. He should not have fought.
Yeah, he should have got surgery on his knee.
But if you look at him, he didn't look nearly as impressive as he generally does.
You know, he's a really fucking dangerous striker.
Darren Till's beaten Cowboy Cerrone in his UFC, like, his real breakout fight.
He had a couple of fights in the UFC before that.
But he knocked out...
He beat Kelvin Gastelum.
Damn, I forgot about that one.
Lost to Robert Whittaker.
I mean, he's a really good fighter.
The big one was the Woodley fight, because he had beaten Cerrone by KO. That was his big breakout fight.
And then he beat Wonderboy Thompson, who's one of the best strikers in the UFC. And then he fought Woodley, but Woodley beat him.
And then he realized that he was too small, and Woodley beat him pretty handily.
He knocked him down and strangled him.
And then he realized he had to go up to 185, because he was a big dude.
I remember the first time I saw him, I was standing next to him in the hallway.
I was like, how the fuck does that guy make 170?
He was so big.
But there's a lot of those dudes just, They just dehydrate the shit out of themselves, weaken themselves, and then try to recover as much as possible in 24 hours.
Think I don't think it was very many weeks out like maybe two weeks or so out he tore his ACL in training and They were gonna pull out of the fight, but he said let me see what I can do with my ACL all fucked up Not making excuses for the dude.
You can't make a sharp, quick move when you're talking shit with a world champion fighter.
He's not going to let you hit him.
The thing about sucker punches, and this is something that people have to realize in any encounter.
I'm not encouraging trained killers to go out and beat on people in bars.
But what I'm saying is, the problem with sucker punching, you're gonna see it right here, like Joe just tried to walk by him, he doesn't say anything, and the guy says something and Joe turns around, and he does that.
Where he bows on him and Joe just hits him with like four punches while he's like falling.
It's like you can't just bow up on people because the problem with sucker punches is if a guy can punch, and it could be some random person, there's a lot of random people out there.
They might not be trained strikers, they might not be world champion kickboxers, but they know how to throw a punch.
It's like a lot of kids know how to throw a baseball.
If your uncle taught you to throw a punch, you could throw a good right hand.
If you just sucker punch someone out of nowhere, just throw a punch at them, they don't realize you're punching them until it's too late.
Because reaction time is way slower than action time.
It's a flaw in the human neurosystem.
If I go to slap you, you don't realize I'm slapping you until it's too late.
You have instincts that people build in that enhance that reaction time, but the reality of a sucker punch is if you're close enough to someone and they say something to you and you don't expect it, there's some rudeness and they throw a punch You can get knocked the fuck out.
Anybody can get knocked the fuck out.
Anybody can.
Anybody can.
Joe has lost by knockout in crazy fights.
You've got to think of all the people.
Anderson Silva's lost by knockouts.
A lot of people.
Fedor lost by knockouts.
Human beings can get knocked out.
Some of the best ever can get knocked out.
And if some guy just flexes on you, you don't know what he's going to do next.
Well, I don't know how much time he had to prepare and why they agreed to do a fight on short notice.
Because I think it was only like six weeks notice, which I think...
It's fine if you're Michael Chandler, if you're in peak form right now and you're ready to go and someone gives you six weeks, I bet you can get ready for a fight.
But if you're a guy who's been off for that long, you're going to need more time, I think.
I'm just guessing.
I don't know how much time it took him.
My point was, he didn't do that bad for a guy that was out six months.
You know, Robbie Lawler was pressuring him, and he was putting it on him, and he was definitely getting the better of the exchanges.
But it's not like Nick Diaz didn't have his moments, and he definitely did.
He would just have to have really, like, way more time to prepare.
And he would have to really be, like, ready to go.
Like the old Nick Diaz.
Like the Nick Diaz that fought Anderson Silva.
Like the Nick Diaz that fought George St. Pierre.
Like the Nick Diaz that fought Paul Daly in Strikeforce.
If your body hasn't been used to this stuff and you haven't been training as much as you were when you were in your prime, if you still want to do it again, like legitimately, physically, you probably can.
But it's like, you know, you've run a marathon.
When you start out and you run a mile and you're dead, and you're like, I can't believe anybody can run 26 of those.
But if you do it over and over and over again, you build up.
I don't think Nick Diaz had a chance to build back up after being off for that much time.
I think you get back to where he was Nick Diaz in his best, he's gotta have some time.