Train by day, Joe Rogan, podcast by night, all day.
Yeah, yeah, they said, fuck you, old man.
He choked him to sleep.
I would pay for this.
How did you meet Judo Gene LaBelle?
I met him first on Men in Black 2.
He was a stunt man.
Oh.
Stunt.
And the stunt people would line up outside his trailer so he would choke them out.
And he would give you that little – he would give you a patch afterwards.
You've been choked out by Judo Gene LaBelle.
Oh, God.
He had all those cartoonish patches.
He gave you a bunch of those.
He's a character, man.
One guy, I saw one, the stuntman, right before Gene choked him out, he goes, one second.
This Irish dude.
And he turned around and he slapped Gene in the face.
And Gene's like.
And then after Gene choked him, they were standing up.
Gene just dropped him straight to the ground for slapping him.
You can get hurt like that.
Yeah, well, that's what you get for slapping Gene LaBelle.
Slap him.
Give him a kiss.
Kiss him on the cheek before he chokes you out.
Don't slap him.
He had one of the very first ever mixed martial arts fights.
Oh, yeah.
It was that he fought.
Milo Savage.
Yes.
And did Milo Savage grease himself up beforehand?
Oh, yeah.
But also, Gene was wearing a gi, which kind of negates most of the grease.
Yeah.
Because you're wearing this very frictiony gi.
So he grabbed him.
And where it was, I guess the rumor was Milo Savage's gloves were loaded?
I don't know.
I would do that, though, if I was Milo Savage.
Oh, yeah.
I would have some kind of weapon against Gene LaBelle.
Well, most people that have never grappled a guy like that, you don't have any idea how helpless you actually are until you think, I'll be able to push him away from me.
I'll be able to push him away and get some punches off.
You really don't know until that guy grabs you, and it's like being grabbed by an orangutan.
Yeah, because his mom ran the Grand Olympic Auditorium, right?
And he grew up training with all the disciplines of fighters that came through there.
Well, he definitely knew pretty much everything.
He knew a lot, but, you know, obviously he's a judo specialist.
But he's the guy who taught Bruce Lee about the importance of grappling.
Yeah, because he worked with him on the Green Hornet.
Yeah, I think he worked with him on that.
But when he locked up with Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee was like, oh, okay, I'm helpless.
Like, apparently the story was that Gene picked him up and carried him around over his shoulder.
And then Bruce Lee was like, okay, fuck this.
Because Gene was a light, I think he was a light, heavyweight judo champion.
So, I mean, he's probably at least 190 pounds.
And, you know, Bruce Lee was a pretty small guy.
Yeah.
And Gene just grabbed him.
His face just looked like a catcher's mitt.
It was just looking at that guy's face.
Yeah, he was a classic.
And always check out a guy's ears before you talk shit with them.
If they have that, you know.
Cauliflower.
Cauliflower ear, just buy him a drink or give him a hug.
Does Steve-O have that?
Didn't he get it from like, didn't he have John Jones fuck his ears up?
He tried to get it.
I don't know if it happened.
You know, we tried to do, I tried to do that to the director, Jeff Tremaine, on Jackass Number Two.
Every time someone would walk past him, they would grab his ear and twist.
And we were just hoping it would cauliflower up by the end of the film, but it didn't.
You got to earn that.
Yeah.
There's a lot of guys who fake it, though.
I know a lot of jiu-jitsu guys who fake it.
They have guys fuck their ears up on purpose.
They want to look cool.
It's kind of weak.
Yeah, that's – you got to earn it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's like Robert De Niro in that movie where he wouldn't take Viagra.
Remember?
A hard-on should be earned.
It should be had legitimately or not at all.
The old-fashioned way with eye contact.
Wasn't that some weird movie where he was going, he was a mob boss, but he was going to a shrink and he couldn't get it up.
Oh.
Remember that movie?
Yeah.
Was it Billy Crystal was the shrink?
I don't remember the name of it, but yeah, I know what you're talking about.
Dude, you've had a wild ride in life.
You know what I mean?
You've done a lot of crazy shit, not just with Jackass, but you became a movie star.
And you're like, what has this been like for you?
Sometimes it feels like you're living someone else's life.
Imposter syndrome?
Yeah, a little.
And I'm extremely grateful, especially for a guy with my limited education.
I get the joke what I would be doing if I didn't fall into what I'm doing.
So, yeah, it's pretty surreal.
I just keep trying to move forward.
How did you guys get started with Jackass?
How did all that come to bear?
Well, the short answer is my then-girlfriend got pregnant and I had a daughter on the way.
And I moved to LA to act, but I wasn't doing anything, man.
I was drinking a lot.
And then I'm like, oh, shit, I have to support a daughter.
I need to do something quick.
So I was living next door to Antoine Fouqua in this duplex, the director.
And he set me up with a casting director who got me a commercial agent.
My friend John Lenson set me up writing articles for this magazine because he knew I wanted to write.
And one of the articles turned into me testing self-defense equipment on myself.
And a lot of different magazines wanted the article, but they didn't want anything to do with it because I was going to shoot myself in the chest with a bulletproof vest as the last thing.
It's like stun gun, taser gun, pepper spray.
And Jeff Tremaine, who now directs Jackass, he was the editor of Big Brother magazine, a skateboarding magazine owned by Larry Flint.
And he goes, you can write it for us and I'll help you buy a couple of the things and the stun gun and the taser gun.
And I took the money my mom gave me for Christmas and bought the cheapest bulletproof vest they had for the last thing.
You don't want to skimp on a bulletproof vest.
That's all I could afford.
It was either no stun gun or taser gun.
So anyway, Jeff says, hey, why don't you film that article that you're writing?
We'll put it in our skateboard video.
And it kind of snowballed from there.
Oh, so that was the genesis of it.
Yeah.
Wow.
Isn't it weird how like desperation or like the recognition that like, oh, you have responsibilities?
Like, you got to get going.
Just lights a fire under your ass.
You become like a totally different person.
It was like, I deal with a certain amount of overcoming fear or whatever when doing the stunts, but there was never any fear like you have a daughter on the way and you have to figure out how to support her.
Yeah.
I was, I had to do something quick, and that was my best guess.
Yeah, it's the mother of invention, man.
Yeah.
That necessity, understanding, like being a dad and having to take care of people, it just changes everything.
Yeah, like, what am I doing?
You know what I'm doing?
I'm doing fucking nothing, and I need to do something.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a primal feeling, right?
Yeah.
It changed everything.
But when you do this, like, first of all, what round, what caliber of revolver did you get shot with?
Well, the vest was the cheapest one, so it could take a 38, and I got a 38.
I borrowed it from my neighbor's wife.
Jesus Christ.
There wasn't a lot of pre-production on this show.
How far away were you when you got shot?
Well, my buddy was supposed to shoot me, but we just drove out the 14 because we didn't have a location.
And I'm like, pull off here.
And then we pull off this exit.
And I'm like, okay, make a right.
And we ended up on the fire road.
So we get out there.
My friend's like, I'm not going to shoot you, man.
I can't do it.
I'm like, so I'm like, all right, well, give me the gun.
And I got the gun to my chest, and a car pulls up behind me.
And it's a bunch of tweakers.
They're driving down the fire road.
They're like, how do we get to the freeway?
And I got the gun behind my back.
I'm like, hey, you just go down here, make a right, then a left.
And they drove away.
And so I went back to shooting myself.
It was sketchy.
It looked like a snuff film.
Because my friends are, the photographer on it saw his buddy die because he jumped off a hotel trying to hit a swimming pool and didn't hit that swimming pool.
And so he was really scared, right?
He was like, stop, don't do this.
Don't do this.
Stop.
I wasn't getting a lot of positive reinforcement, Joe.
Yeah, it doesn't seem like it.
And I had a bunch of, because since it was Flint magazine, I had a bunch of hustlers under the bulletproof S to help absorb the impact.
And at one point, they all fall out and I bend over to pick them up and I'm pointing the gun right at my friends as I pick them up.
I don't realize this, but it was sketchy.
And that was the first.
Yeah, we put that in the Big Brother video.
Have you ever done anything like self-harming, any dangerous type activities before you started Jackass?
Before you started doing all this kind of shit?
No, no.
I didn't even know it self.
I mean, you can argue my drinking didn't help my liver, but it's like you guys, like what you did was kind of fucking crazy.
But when you, I guess if you stop to, I don't know, like it just becomes something you're doing.
It was all normal to me.
And I can't speak for them.
It's just, that's what we're doing today.
And so that was the first one.
And then how many times have you done a stunt where you're like, I could die?
A few.
Like, you've done, like, the bull one when you're blindfolded.
I was like, don't do that.
I was watching.
I was like, this is crazy.
Yeah, that was, yeah, that was, anytime you're working with a bull, I think that they hate you.
And really, they hate movement.
And they want to make you stop moving forever.
But I've had, you know, I mean, like in the Jackass No. 2 when the rocket exploded, those were foot-long metal rods, and there was 12 of them.
One blew out right next to my ribs, which would have been pitcher wrap on me.
And one flew back 300 yards and split two of our art guys right between them.
We've had some really close ones.
I tried to do the Buster Keaton thing in number two where the facade falls and it falls right.
The window falls over my head.
That was the plan.
And the guy's like, okay, when it's, because it was the close, right, of the movie.
And the guy's like, this is a 20-foot steel wall.
Like, you hit your mark, do not move.
I'm like, got it.
They said, action.
And then, so I take two steps, and they're like, oh, no, no, cut, cut.
So I just like, oh, okay, I'm going to walk over here.
And they had already released the wall.
Yeah.
And if you watch the footage, it crushes me to the ground, but my head just makes it through the window.
Otherwise, that would have been, I would have been done.
Oh, geez.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
That was a close one.
God.
Yeah.
How heavy was that fucking thing?
I don't, it was a 20-foot steel wall.
It was, it was incredibly.
How bad did you get fucked up from that?
Nothing.
Nothing.
I'm like, I was very lucky.
I'm also hyper limber, so it just, I kind of accordion when on impact.
Just dumb luck.
Dumb story of my life.
How many, all told, how many stunts have you done like that?
Oh, I haven't.
Oh, almost, almost could put, I don't know.
Like, there's at least six or seven, like, close calls, and then any number of stunts that can go wrong, you know?
I don't know.
I don't really, I just look forward.
Was there ever a time when you're doing this and going, what the fuck have I got myself into?
Like, because you have to keep up one-upping yourself, right?
Well, that was a problem for me after we did the first movie.
I didn't want to do a second movie because I didn't know how to top the first one, which now looks very tame compared to the others.
And finally, Tremaine said, we don't have to top it.
We just have to be funny.
And I'm like, okay, that made me free.
It took away all my anxiety.
And I thought, okay, if that's the case.
And a couple months later, he told me he was lying.
We did have to top it.
But by that time, I was already off and running.
Jesus, dude.
Yeah.
Your show would really give me anxiety.
It gives the guys they get really anxious because I know 98.5% of what's happening on the set.
Like, Jeff and I each, we keep a little from each other.
So if we want to smoke one another.
So, but the guys don't have any idea what's happening.
So by the second week, you can just literally go up and put your finger on someone's shoulder.
And they're like, Jesus.
They're so, so nervous.
And I, and I, I don't blame them.
And like when you film one of those movies, like, how long is a shoot?
Like, how, how many months do you film for?
Well, that depends.
On jackass number two, usually about we go two weeks on, two weeks off over four, five months.
But I think jackass number two, it was eight or nine months.
And finally, they had to have an intervention with me to stop shooting.
They hey, like, come down to the office tomorrow.
We're going to finalize the edit or do something in the edit.
I'm like, all right.
And I get there, and it's Spike, Jeff, a few of the cast, and they're like, We're not here to talk about the edit.
I'm like, okay, like, we have to stop shooting.
We're like so far over.
And then it was also about, I was going to do the ski jump, you know, the Olympic ski jump.
And it was, they're like, you, we have too much footage.
You can't, let's just not, you've already put yourself on the line so much you can't.
And then it became like, well, I'm not, I didn't, I've decided not to because I felt like this big intervention, they had, it was like doomed.
The stunt was doomed in my mind then that something negative was going to happen.
So I ended up not doing the ski jump, but I did negotiate two more weeks of shooting out of them.
How far were you supposed to jump?
It's until I went kaboom.
I don't know.
It was going to be the Olympic ski jump.
Like when they fly?
Yeah.
Do you know how to ski?
Not at all.
I don't want to be good at the stunt.
Nobody wants to see that.
Well, I mean, you'd have to train for years to be good at it.
But I mean, I was just.
I had about 20 minutes.
Oh.
So that didn't happen.
But I don't even know how we got on this.
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Oh, well.
But so are you done with all that stuff, or would you consider doing it again?
Well, I can't do any stunt where I would get a concussion now because I've had too many.
The last one was really gnarly.
I kind of went offline for a while.
What one was that?
At the end of Jackass Forever, I dressed up as a magician and I got obsessed with the idea of pranking an animal.
I just wanted the thought of seeing the animal's reaction after the prank.
And that kind of morphed into me dressing as a magician in a bull ring, doing the pouring the milk in the hat trick to get the bull's reaction.
And apparently, the bull didn't think much of my trick because it, well, first of all, usually when you're working with a bull in a ring, there's a lot of soft dirt around, you know.
And I got there that morning and it was just dirt, but no salt.
It was like concrete.
And I thought to myself, well, that's a problem.
And but we're there.
We need, I'm shooting.
So anyway, long story short, the ball, the bull hits me, and I, you usually, when a bull hits you, well, always they drop their head, right?
So I always try to jump a split second before it hits me so I get above the bull as opposed to below the bull, which is never any fun.
So, but I mistime my jump.
I jumped too early, so I jumped and then I start coming back down.
Then the bull hits me and it flips me like I do like a one and a half flip, and the only thing that stops me is the back of the head, my back of my head hitting the concrete ground.
And I got a concussion with the brain hemorrhage, a broken rib, and a broken wrist out of the deal.
And that was it.
And yeah, it was so.
And this is after you let Butterbean KO you, too.
Lucky punch.
That fucking dude hit so hard.
I watched that.
I was like, don't let that happen.
Don't do that.
Like, everyone's like, boy, that knockout punch must have hurt.
I'm like, I didn't even feel it.
Like, the punches before really hurt, but the knockout punch, you don't, you've been knocked out before.
You don't feel it.
That one was a pretty bad concussion, too.
I had vertigo for six to eight weeks after that.
Just driving around a curve, everything starts spinning.
Did you go to a hospital and get checked out?
Well, I went to see my doctor, Dr. Kipper, and he had to sew up my head because I fell back onto the hard ground of the swap meet.
I think I hit my head on the corner of a display counter as well.
I don't know.
Fuck, dude.
Should have gone to college.
Do you ever feel any responsibility for how many people you inspire to do similar things?
Well, I hope to just entertain them and not inspire them, but I can't, I don't have any control over that except for when I do things like this.
Like, just watch, don't do.
I don't want anyone to get hurt.
I, you know, me, I'm another story.
It's kind of amazing that you're okay, you know, other than the bad concussions.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I'm pretty okay with how it turned out.
What's the worst injury that anybody ever suffered during Jackass filming?
Wow.
There's been many concussions, breaks, uh, I don't know.
Just arm breaks, back breaks.
Do you have any long-term problems because of it?
My lower back is pretty blown out.
And who knows about how the concussions will rectify themselves?
Hopefully I'm okay.
Do you feel any lingering effects?
Well, my lower back's blown out.
So I just had an intracept procedure on my back about in early December.
They go, the nerve and the vertebra, they go in and somehow use radio frequency heat to basically burn the nerve so it can't send the signal to your brain that it's hurt.
Oh, so you just walk around hurt, but you don't feel like it.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I'm fine with that.
Is it doing continual damage or is it just pain?
I think it it seems to be, and that's an excellent question that I did not ask, nor did I care about, but thank you for bringing it up.
I think to me, it's just pain.
So I, you know.
Jesus.
Have you done anything else for it?
Like, there's a bunch of different, is it a herniated disc?
Is it a yeah, but the lower two discs are herniated.
And I had shots in the facet joints of my lower back is like they put some kind of steroid in there and it didn't give the result that I wanted.
Have you ever heard of a machine called a reverse hyper?
No.
There's a machine that a guy named Louis Simmons, he was this legendary powerlifter guy.
He developed because he had fucked his discs up powerlifting and the doctors told him that he needed to fuse his disc because they were compressed and he's like, well, can't we decompress him?
And they're like, no, there's no way.
He's like, well, there's got to be a way.
So he developed a machine that decompresses the spine while also strengthening the muscles around it.
It's a piece of exercise.
That's Louie.
He developed this machine.
It looks like something that happened to Ving Graemes in Pulp Fiction.
What does the machine do?
It strengthens and on the way up, when she's lifting with her legs, it's strengthening her back.
And on the downswing, it's actively decompressing your back.
So it pulls the discs apart and creates space.
I love this machine.
I have one at home.
I have one here at the studio.
I use it all the time.
It's really an important piece of equipment for anybody that has a lower back injury or who wants to prevent lower back injuries.
And just for overall strength, because it's a very odd movement to be able to recreate.
Oh, great.
I'm going to look into that.
Yeah, I'll show it to you.
You'll have it in the gym afterwards.
I'll show it to you after the podcast.
Oh, sweet.
You should get one.
It'll help you.
Yeah.
And there's another thing called a teeter.
You know, those things you hang by your ankles?
Yeah.
Where you like decompress?
They developed one called the Dex where you hinge from your waist.
So you like get in this thing, you strap your legs in and you lean forward and it's like you're hanging from like that.
So you're hanging from your hips, like all your weight is being like set on your thighs and your back carries all the weight and it just slowly like pop, pop, pop, it decompresses.
It feels great.
That thing fucking rules.
I always tell everybody, if you have a back injury, you have back problems, that thing will help you a lot.
Just do that for a few minutes every day and eventually, you know, slowly over time, it creates space and it alleviates some of the pinching and problems that people have, depending, of course, on the severity of your injury.
But I love that thing.
All right.
Might be getting a couple pieces of equipment.
Yeah, man.
You gotta prevent.
So how the fuck did they talk you into hosting Fear Factor?
How'd that happen?
I met with Sharon Levy, who runs Endemon.
Hello, Sharon.
Shout out to Sharon Levy.
She's awesome.
And I was like, I'm on the fence.
And I sat down with her and I liked her so much because she seems like, how did a woman like you that is like awesome get a job as the head of you know?
Right.
She seems very rebellious.
Right.
And I just thought, yeah, I'm in.
So it happened over lunch.
Really?
Yeah, I really liked her.
One of the problems that we had with Fear Factors, we did 148 episodes initially, and then we came back for a brief amount of time, but they wanted to really ramp it up.
Like it was like these stunts are going to be bigger and crazier than ever.
And I was relieved when it got canceled because I was like, we're going to fuck somebody up.
Yeah, you felt what kind of, well, you have a couple of examples or.
Well, there was a bunch in the early days.
Like, first of all, the first one that we ever did where I was like, don't do this, was bull riding.
We made people bull ride.
And this one lady was like, she probably weighed like 98 pounds.
Right.
And she got on the back of the bull.
I'm like, she's not going to be able to hang on at all.
She's going to go flying.
It was hilarious.
Stunt guys are some of the most savage, fucking psychotic, zero fear at all for their safety.
Like they get so hardened by it over time.
Yeah.
Just not normal people.
And this guy, Perry, I was like, dude, you're going to make them ride a bull.
He's like, don't worry about it.
Boo, these are stunt bulls.
I go, that's what he said.
I go, is that bull know he's a stunt bull?
They got the sand card.
I bet he has no fucking idea.
I bet he just thinks he's a bull.
So they're in the cage before they do it.
The bull's fucking bucking.
Yeah.
And he's just all fucking tang.
Yeah.
And I'm just going, don't.
I told the people, I'm like, don't do it.
Don't do it.
Just quit, man.
Just don't do it.
It was like one of the only things where I was, I was like, I wouldn't do it.
I'm telling you right now, I would never do this.
Were the bulls, were they the bulls that were because certain bulls, they get upset if you ride them, but after you fall off, they don't try to hook you.
Did these bulls try to hook them after they got they get.
They had handlers that steered the bull away from the people and they did a good job with that.
But I mean, who fucking knows, they don't want you on them.
They weigh 2,000 pounds, they're all muscle.
Like the thing was so powerful, like you could feel it when it was in the cage where it was just fucking moving around like don't do this.
And they're smart, like bulls are very smart.
That's why unfortunately uh, you know, in Spanish bullfighting they kill the bull, which i'm i'm i'm not on board with, but because they learn your movements.
You can't make the same movement right twice in a row with a bull because they're gonna go, oh okay, i'm gonna be, you're gonna do that and i'm gonna be right here waiting on you.
It's unfair and you can't have anyone move behind the fence when it's on, because bulls can easily jump over the fence that a lot of them just don't know they can.
So if you frighten them or provoke them, they're just gonna jump over the fence and then they have like 35 people they can smoke.
Yeah it's it's, it's when we work with bulls, it the, the set is different.
The set is different, the, the guy, Gary Lefew, who supplies our bulls.
He was world champion in 1970 and when we first started working with him and it stuck with us the whole time.
He's like, when we have bulls on the set I don't want anyone any kind of negativity going around the set.
It's already hard enough with the bull.
If there's anyone Negative or any negativity, that person's off the set.
Negativity, like in what way?
Just if there's any like saying negative things or they've had a fight with someone right before, any kind of negative vibes, no negative vibes.
The bull senses negative vibes?
Just, well, the whole, the whole everyone on the set senses negative vibes, and everyone has to be completely present and positive for this.
Is this voodoo or is this like real science?
No, I think it makes total sense, especially when you're doing stunts.
When you're doing a stunt that can forever alter you, I don't like any negativity either.
And also, if you're doing something that can forever alter you, you have to want to be there and want to be doing it.
You can't halfway go into it because then you're really going to get fucked up.
So this is just some.
This is knowledge you've acquired over time.
Yeah.
No, that's true.
If you like half commit in something that can forever, you're going to get, yeah, it's bad.
It's going to be bad anyway, but you need to want to be there.
What a bizarre life skill.
Yeah, yeah.
You know what I mean?
What a bizarre skill.
I know how to survive doing something you really shouldn't do that could alter you forever.
Stay positive.
Well, that's that.
It doesn't, it's not a guarantee, Joe, but it does, I think it does help.
We did a bunch of other stuff that was not bulls, like with cars and trucks and stuff where I was like, ooh.
Like we had a close call once with this lady who was strapped to the front of a truck and she was supposed to go through some sort of an obstacle course, but like they blew through some boxes and the box got on the windshield of the other car and the other car almost slammed into her legs.
Yeah.
And she was screaming because she thought it hit her and it was like, we're like, what the fuck are we doing?
Was that when you guys came back for the second round?
Yeah, that was the second round.
Yeah, the second round was sketchy.
You know, we had people like getting, they were attached to a tree and they had to figure out which key to unlock them while a bungee cord was attached to them and a helicopter.
And so once they got the thing unlocked, they would fucking rock it off of this tree.
Up through the limbs.
No, no, no.
There was luckily, luckily it wasn't that.
There was no branches that could have got them.
But that would have been funnier.
It would have been funnier, like through the branches and shit.
So they rocket over a fucking giant canyon.
Like we're on the top of this canyon.
And they just went flying while they were being bungee jumped on the bottom of this fucking helicopter.
It was terrifying.
They were so high.
If anything went wrong, they were dead as fuck.
100% dead.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
That's sketchy.
Oh, there was so much sketchy stuff.
And then it ultimately got canceled because they had to drink cum.
Did you ever see that episode?
No, no.
Yeah, that's what sunk us.
So there was only two times.
What year was what kind of Donkey Cum.
Oh.
Yeah.
That'll do it every time, Joe.
Yeah.
And they got Donkey Cum because it's the cheapest cum.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Boars.
Boars ejaculate 15 ounces at a time.
Whoa.
So.
A wild boar, like a pig?
Yeah.
Really?
15 ounces.
That's a lot.
Yeah.
That's a fucking beer stein.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this is it.
So these guys, that guy's drinking Donkey Cum and his brother's drinking Donkey Piss.
I'd offer the piss.
That guy chugged it.
He chugged Donkey Cum.
I'll get, I'm starting to drive.
That's a lot.
That was a lot of cum.
A black and tan kind of with the piss and the semen wouldn't have been a terrible idea.
It was so nasty.
Who were the girls there?
Well, they were all twins.
It was three sets of twins.
And they had to play horseshoes.
Like, her mascara's like.
She had to drink the semen, too.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And the thing is, three sets of people, three twins, three groups of twins did it.
And only one won the money.
Oh.
So two people drank Donkey Cum and two people drank Donkey Piss for nothing.
You know what the worst part of that is?
Semen burps later.
Yeah.
Just the just that bleachy smell that the ladies, like between the two of them, were fighting over who drank the piss.
They wanted to drink, they didn't want to drink the piss.
They were happy to drink the cum, which I guess tracks.
You know, like, been there, done that, not in that kind of volume, but what's the worst that could happen?
Whereas the guys were like really trying not to drink the cum, you know?
I don't know what they did to decide because they had to decide like one of them was going to drink cum, one of them's going to drink piss.
So that was one of two times, two times where I was hosting this show where I said to the producers, don't do this.
Don't do this.
I'm like, you're going to, the show's going to get canceled.
They're like, no, we're fine.
NBC approved it.
They did.
Like, they're the bellwethers of good.
There's a fucking guy on set who was like the NBC standards guy, the standards and practices guy.
And I'm like, you're okay with this?
Like, this is okay.
And they're like, yeah, the network's fine with it.
I'm like, this is so fucking.
You guys are too close to this.
I'm like, you guys are too close to this.
You don't understand how the general public's going to react.
And then I think what happened, I think it was TMZ, but someone leaked the footage online.
Someone leaked like images of people drinking cum, like Fear Factor crosses the line.
And then the outrage was palpable.
Like it was like some serious outrage.
And then that show never aired in America, but it aired overseas.
I think it aired in like maybe the Netherlands or something like that.
Right.
Which Germany.
Which is where Fear Factor actually came from.
Fear Factor was actually a show in the Netherlands called Now or Neverland.
And then they brought it over to America when End of All purchased it and then they changed it to, I think they came up with the name Fear Factor after that.
That was like why not was already on board.
Yeah.
Wow.
I didn't know that.
Yeah.
There was no, there was virtually no blowback after Pontius drank horse cum in jackass number two.
Never heard about it.
Well, it wasn't on TV, at least.
There's something about television.
You know, censored, you know, federal communications approved Fear Factor.
And they drank cum.
So that got us canceled.
That was it.
That was like 200, I guess, 11 or something like that.
12.
How many seasons do you do?
I think we did six or seven initially, and then we did another, yeah, and then we did another six episodes, one of them that never aired.
Did you help write creative?
No, You didn't want any part of that?
I had zero.
No, what I would do is I'd show up at work.
I'd get in my trailer.
I'd take an edible, and then I would go to the set.
And I'd be like, what do we got?
I did the first two, the first four episodes I did sober.
Then I was like, this is so boring.
I need to get high.
I would take pot lollipops and pot gummies and just get fucking lit and then enjoy it because then it was like, this is an adventure.
What a great crazy.
Oh, it was a fun gig.
Yeah.
I had so much fun too.
All I do is like, all I did was talk.
Yeah.
You know?
Oh, it's easy.
I ate a lot of shit.
I ate a lot of things to try to encourage people.
You know, like, because after a while, you got so much.
So you would do the things with them.
I'd be like, you could do it.
Look, I'll do it.
I'll do it for you.
Like, yeah.
And some of the times when I did it to just try to help people, I'm like, look, I'm going to show you.
I'm going to do it and then you're going to do it.
Yeah.
And then we didn't even air me doing it because I was like, because they didn't want to make it seem like it was, because I could do it easily.
Because I was so used to disgusting stuff.
I could just take a roach and just throw it down or take a worm and throw it down.
I'm like, just do it.
It's not that hard.
It's all in your fucking head.
Because I was trying to like, you know, I get it.
Like, coach people through it.
I, when I took the job, I'm like, I, this, I'm just going to like give people hell, you know, the whole time, you know, and make their fears worse.
But then I get to set and I, there's a human in front of you.
And I'm like, I don't know.
These are regular people and they really have fears.
So I'm going to try it.
I ended up like you trying to help them do it.
But I was, I never wanted to do what they were doing for the fact that I never wanted that footage to be seen.
Like I'm trying to, you know, like you were just like you had confidence that they wouldn't show that.
And I'm like, ah.
They showed a few things.
They showed me eating like spiders.
They showed me eating a roach.
But I ate a lot of stuff that they never saw.
Right.
Or I did some things that they, because I just wanted these people to get it.
No, I get it.
Like, you can do it.
It's in your head.
I'm like, you just got to decide, like, your mind has to decide, I'm just going to do this.
Just do it.
Just go ahead and do it.
Don't think about it, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm doing it.
Just fucking do it.
Chew, swallow, chew, swallow.
I would just talk them through it.
Yeah.
And I became like a fucking motivational coach or something like that.
It was weird.
Yeah, that's real because after there was on the first, there was one girl that quit.
She's like, I'm not continuing this bit, this stunt.
What was it?
Can you say?
It was something with snakes, right?
And it was a big fear.
And after that, I got the cast together and I'm like, at least always try to do what we're doing.
Don't let the fear stop you, right?
Just always try.
And after that, like everyone, even if they're horrified, they made an effort.
And I felt good about that.
And I think they did too.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, some people, but it's sometimes good that someone quits.
So you realize, like, this is real.
Like, some people really like, especially snakes.
Snakes, there's something about aphidiophobia that I think is primal.
I think it's in your DNA.
I think either your ancestors were either bitten by a snake and barely survived, or someone saw someone die from a snake.
And that information is encoded in your DNA because the fear that people have of snakes is fucking wild.
Like when they have legitimate aphidiophobia, it is a fucking crazy fear to watch.
It's like their whole body locks up.
They start shaking.
Like, it's not a normal fear.
It's like an ancient caveman fear that's locked into their DNA.
Like someone thousands of years ago survived something like this.
And that's the only reason why you're here.
And every fiber of your being wants to fucking run away from snakes.
It's wonderful.
It has to be when someone has that and they want like bam terrified of snakes.
Oh, really?
Terrified.
And of course, we use that to our advantage.
Of course.
Yeah.
Well, we would make people fill out a questionnaire when they would sign up for Fear Factor.
Like, what are your fears?
Bites, snakes, spiders.
Well, you're getting heights, snakes, and spiders.
I would write tequila, whiskey, blowjobs.
I hate back massages.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was fascinating because, like, you know, I had a background in martial arts and teaching.
And one of the things that I did when I was younger was I took a lot of people to tournaments.
And I coached a lot of people in Taekwondo No tournaments and they'd be fucking terrified.
And I would learned how to lock in with them and how to get them into a certain mindset, you know, as a coach.
And I'd be like, look, you're going to get past this, and this is going to be like one of the highlights of your life because you're absolutely terrified.
And this fear on the other side will be a completely different feeling.
You'll have a feeling of accomplishment.
You'll have a feeling of an understanding, of knowing that you can overcome very terrifying situations and you can triumph and you can do this.
Like you have skills.
You just have to be able to go out there and perform and you can do it.
And I'd get in their head.
I carried that over to Fear Factor sometimes because there were people that just needed help.
Like they didn't, they had never experienced anything that really freaked them out before.
They'd never experienced the kind of pressure of not just a competition, but a competition where they're doing something kind of dangerous.
Something that really fucking freaked them out.
They have to hold their breath underwater for like two minutes while they swim through a fucking thing.
And we have rescue divers under there to rescue them and there's panic.
And it was like, that was one thing that was really satisfying was being able to like take a person who was ready to fucking quit and then they went on and won the whole thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's that does make you feel good to push someone to the other side.
And the survivor's euphoria waiting for you.
Well, I heard that, I read about that term.
Survivor's euphoria.
And I realized I'd experienced it.
Multiple times.
Yeah, yeah.
There's a you ever heard of Colonel John Paul Stapp?
No.
He was a doctor, a biophysicist, flight surgeon, and he worked with Chuck Yeager and all that out at Edwards.
It was, it's now Edwards Air Force Base.
And they were conducting experiments on what happens to a pilot when they eject at high altitude.
And Colonel John Paul Stapp, because these experiments were gnarly.
They were on deceleration.
They built this huge sled out in the desert, and he would strap himself in because the thinking at the time was if you're going to do something, a very dangerous experiment, a lot of times people back then would put themselves at the center because they didn't want to.
Of course, they had other people doing it, and he did it most, though.
So they would go hundreds of miles per hour, yes.
Whoa.
Hundreds of miles per hour and stop within eight feet.
And at the time, I think they thought you could only experience maybe 18 Gs of deceleration.
He at one time experienced 49 Gs of deceleration.
I think it's the most ever that any human is.
And he went blind for a little bit.
And he knew that was going to happen because he'd had that happen before in these experiments.
And the night before, the one where he got 49 G's, experienced 49 Gs, he went around his house with his eyes closed and just trying to do things like cook.
And if he did go blind forever, he's one of the most, he would, he, at one time, he was known as the fastest man alive on that sled.
He went faster than anyone at the time.
He and he's the reason we have seat belts in cars.
He's one of the most brilliant men of the 20th century.
He was on the cover of Time magazine.
No one knows who he is today.
Wow.
But he talked about survivor's euphoria, and that's where I learned about it.
What did he say about it?
Just the endorphins that get released after going through something like that, and that you did survive.
And it's just fills you up.
And so he knew he was going to go blind, and he did it anyway.
He knew that there was a high probability of going blind.
And a possibility of being blind forever.
Yes.
And he was blind for like a couple days before it started getting sensing light again.
Yeah.
He's an amazing, amazing person.
I did a flight with the Blue Angels once.
How was that?
It was amazing.
First of all, you don't think of that being a physical thing, that those guys have to be physically fit.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you go to, when we went to the base, before you, you know, do the whole safety thing, they explain everything, what you're going to have to do.
You see that these guys are all fucking jacked.
They're all like superheroes.
Yeah.
It's because they're not the bigot.
They're short like me.
And they're all like thick.
They're all like fucking jacked dudes.
And they were like, well, first of all, you don't want to be tall because it's all about how much time it takes for the blood to get from your heart to your brain.
And the shorter distance it has to travel, the better off you are.
And you have to be physically strong because you do it.
Have you ever done it?
You ever done a flight in a fighter jet?
No, but we did the vomit comet in Russia.
Okay.
But Steve O went up in a MIG.
They do a thing called hooking.
So what it is, is like you hold on to the joystick or you, there's straps that strap your legs down as well.
You know, like you're really harnessed in.
You hold on to your straps.
You go like this.
And what you're literally doing is forcing blood into your brain because you feel consciousness closing like an elevator door.
It's like you feel the pressure, like you're going black.
You literally see it.
You see the darkness on the side of the floor.
And you're just trying to keep the blood in your brain.
We went seven and a half G's, but the guy in front of me, while we're doing this, so you're taking this fucking heart.
You're like flying through these canyons.
Like he was going for it.
Like he really took me on a ride.
It wasn't a safe ride.
It was wild.
We were like a couple hundred feet off the ground, maybe, and whipping through these canyons, taking these fucking hard turns.
And I heard him going, hoot, hoot, hoot.
So I'm going, oh, fuck, he's blacking out too.
I'm like, we're going hundreds of miles an hour, just like 100 feet off the ground, whipping through these canyons.
This guy's about to fucking black out too.
That's not what you want to hear.
It was terrifying, but also like super educational.
Like, you know, you just see people flying around.
You're like, oh, it's probably like driving a car.
No, it's unbelievably physically demanding.
And the Blue Angels, they don't use gravity suits.
Or at least they didn't.
No, no, what?
They don't use decompression suits?
No, no, it's just a regular flight suit.
Well, did they not go up to a certain what altitude were they?
Well, this is a form.
It's a jet.
It's not like you have to, like, you're not in a spaceship, right?
So the whole thing is just about being able to stay conscious.
And the thing about the gravity suit is, I guess, somehow or another, it aids your ability to absorb all those G's.
I'm not really educated about it, but I just do know that he said there's ways that you wear suits that make this easier, but they don't wear the suits.
Yeah, I think if you go up to a certain altitude, you have to have the dude.
This wasn't an altitude thing.
Right, right.
This was just a G-Force thing.
It was just the hard turns.
It was like the wicked turns at hundreds of miles an hour.
And also just thinking about the tolerances of the aircraft itself and the pressure that's on the hull.
Because the feeling of being in a jet, going 100 miles an hour, hundreds of miles an hour, and then hitting a hard turn.
It's just your whole body just like fuck.
Yeah.
And you're just along for the ride.
I mean, they're so skilled to be able to overcome the forces.
He let me do some stuff.
Like I got to make the jet do a loop.
Wow.
I got to get it to roll over, to get it to go upside down and go back over.
Yeah, he showed me how to do that.
Wow.
You were in control of it?
Well, I mean, he's there too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's really fucking stupid.
I'm sure he has ultimate control, but I have a joystick too.
He's allowed to do some stuff.
Do you think, I mean, they could give you a joystick and it not be connected to anything too and make you just say you could.
But it was connected.
You could clearly tell while you're moving it.
Right.
Oh, man.
That's pretty scary.
It made you want to get one of those things.
Like, how dope would it be to have one of those?
Get one of those jets?
Because you can get one of those.
If you're like a super rich guy.
Well, yeah, you can get one, but you got to, you know.
I mean, how much is a, because we looked this up one day.
You could buy like decommissioned fighter jets.
You know, they don't have any machine guns on them or anything crazy, but you can get a decommissioned fighter jet.
If you're like some fucking psychotic billionaire and you got your own landing strip, you could get a fucking fighter jet.
Oh, yeah.
Which is gnarly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, if you go to Russia, you could probably get one fully loaded.
$1,500, dog.
$1,500.
$1.5 million.
A million.
It's a million five.
Well, shit.
Look at this one.
$395,000.
You get one.
What's like a really dope one?
It's like, go look, make it price.
Okay, 5-4.
What is that one?
For $5 million, what do you get?
A $1992 McDonnell Douglas Skyhawk.
Ooh.
I mean, for that price, you should get a couple of rockets with it.
Come on.
Well, I bet you could go to Russia and they'll give you some rockets.
Oh, man.
Yeah, we shot in Russia and you can literally do anything you want in Russia.
They let me get on a military base and shoot missiles out of a cannon.
They took Steve-O up in a MIG.
This is back when we were friendly with Russia.
Yeah.
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Yeah, it's like 2005.
Wow.
And it was wild.
Russia, we had so much fun.
Do you ever look back on how surreal your life has been and all these experiences?
I feel it a lot.
Like, for example, in Russia, because growing up, like you would do those disaster drills in school in case Russia dropped the bomb and run out behind your locker and put your head between your legs.
Like that would help if a bomb was dropped.
But they were such the bad guy.
And then it was 2005 and now I'm on it, been in movies and I'm over there.
And that felt very surreal to be in Russia and think about what's happened to my life.
There are moments like that.
Well, it was weird too because you got out of it and became a movie star, but then you were doing it again.
Like you were right back in.
And it kind of started in Russia, actually.
We were doing a bit.
We'd done a few things over in Russia, and we were doing something with the Russian Special Forces where we were on through this, what do you call it?
When there's dogs and obstacle course?
Yeah, we're on an obstacle course.
And they had all these things set up.
I'm like, all right, well, I was like, Jeff, why don't you have their attack dog attack me and then shoot me with the rubber bullets and then have the guy kick me in the face when I get to the end.
And we shot that and the dog attacked me and the Russian guy, the special forces guy said, I'm not going to kick you in the face.
But he did deliver a nice blow to my solar plexus.
I had to beg him to do it three times to like, no, you got to do it as hard as you can.
But Jeff pulled me aside and goes, look, this was just for a while, the TV show Wild Boys.
I would travel with them sometimes.
He goes, if you're going to go this hard for basic cable, why don't we do another movie?
And I was like, all right.
How many movies have you guys done?
We've done four.
And we just announced we're going to do, I just announced we're going to do another, it was going to be out June 26th.
Have you filmed it already?
No, we're about to film it in February.
Oh, late February.
So start then.
Yeah.
Do you feel apprehension?
Do you feel like, you know?
No.
Like...
But you can't get a concussion.
No, I can't get any concussions, but I mean, I don't care if I break my arm or leg.
No one cares about that.
You don't care about breaking your arm or your leg?
No.
Really?
No.
Really?
No.
So this is something.
This is like a feeling.
You've developed this.
I don't care.
You didn't have that when you first started doing it.
Well, if you went back to the point, there was probably some self-worth issues when I began.
It didn't come from a healthy place, Joe.
But it's not just that.
It's like you don't have a fear of being radically injured.
Because you blow your knee out or you blow your leg out.
You're limping for the rest of your life.
I don't.
It doesn't.
That doesn't bother me.
No.
God, I'm so averse to that shit.
It's like the producer side of me overrides the performer side.
It's like, hey, but we're going to get footage.
And it's about as simple as that.
So you'll still do dangerous shit.
You just don't want to do anything that you can do.
I can't get any concussions.
I don't care about.
Yeah.
But if you're going to be in a violent situation where you could break an arm or a leg, you easily could get a concussion as well.
Well, you got to assess, Joe.
Risk assessment.
What the fuck does your waivers look like?
Yeah, I don't know.
It was, you know, on the first movie, the insurance companies insured it per bit.
They didn't insure the whole movie.
They just insured it per bit.
Yeah, that's how they did it with Fear Factor as well.
So some bits costs were, the insurance was going to be more than the whole first movie.
So can't do those.
But after that, we find a shady insurance company and they take care of us.
Once you started acting, though, and doing big movies, wasn't there any part of you who was like, okay, I'm done with this?
No.
It's so fun.
It's something that I created with my friends.
Right?
Right, right, right.
And then there's probably my wires got crossed somehow, and then I learned to like it.
I would love it, you know.
I guess it's like a comedian learning to love bombing, right?
No one learns to love bombing.
Really?
I've talked to a couple comedians, and they're like, you got to learn to love it and basically not fear it.
Yeah.
And I kind of did that with stunts, I guess.
I like learned to, I just, I just liked it.
Wow.
You ever talk to a shrink about that?
Well, while I was doing, I have to, I know, I have a therapist, and I'm like, okay, we can talk about everything in my life, but not the part of me that does stunts.
Really?
Yeah.
Because I didn't want to unwind that, even though it went sideways quite a few times.
That's a wild statement.
I didn't want to unwind that.
Yeah.
So I've looked into it a little now that I can't get any more concussions.
Don't crush my career.
What is, yeah, right?
What a crazy job for the therapist.
Yeah.
Like the one area where you really probably should address.
You know what I mean?
You have this like overall, what is Johnny Knoxville?
What's going on in his head?
And there's this one door.
Yeah, you can't go in that room.
Yeah, we can't.
The biggest problem we can address.
It's kind of a crazy thing.
Yeah.
Well, again, I should have went to college.
Do you get annoyed having to answer all these questions all the time about that kind of shit?
Because after a while, I would imagine that is the most common thing that people would want to talk to you about.
Like, how many times have you been hurt?
What happened?
What is it like?
No, I don't.
I mean, I, again, I get the joke, what I would be doing if I wasn't doing this.
So I'm grateful.
And so if somebody wants to talk about it, let's talk.
Well, you're obviously a smart guy.
I don't buy that.
You could do anything.
Well, when I started down this road, this was my best guess.
So, you know, it just became something I'm doing.
And, yeah, I guess I did want to write, but I incorporate that into the movies.
It was a very strange life, Johnny.
Yeah, I guess, yeah.
For sure.
Yeah, I kind of created the environment that I grew up in with my father.
He owned a tire company, and he had all these crazy characters working for him, like people like Big George, Ass Kicking Robert, this guy SDs named Super Dick.
One guy named W.W. Woodrow Wilson Boxcar Johnson Jr.
He was the tire groover who was always getting arrested for one thing or another.
And he was always pranking these people at work, his people that work for him.
He would stage gunfights at Christmas parties.
What?
He did this twice.
One year at the Christmas party, he gave a couple of the guys, his employees, guns and said, okay, I want you guys to get an argument, and I want to culminate with you pulling out a gun and firing, and you pulling out your gun.
They were blank guns.
And everyone just, it was in a pretty gnarly part of town, too, but everyone just ran out into the streets.
Dad was ecstatic.
So the next year, so the next year there are two new employees, and he's like, hey, hey, Merle, come over here.
Are you guys, you're going to get in a fight?
And you're going to start yelling and you're going to pull out the guns.
And it's the same gag.
So they did it, and they were very excited.
And they pulled out the gun, started firing, but dad had given everyone else in the party blank guns.
So they started firing back at those goose.
Those dudes take off running down the street.
So, yeah, it's just kind of imitating what my father did, I guess.
Does your father feel any responsibility?
Dad loved jackass, but hated the parts where I would do stunts.
My whole family did.
Of course.
And, but they, you know, I just doing what I saw growing up, he would send letters to his friends from the VD clinic, rubber stamped on the envelope, saying you have to list your last 10 partners because you've contracted a venereal disease, signed Dr. Harlan C. Titmore.
But people would get these letters, or worse, the guy's wife would get the letter.
And the thing about something like that, people become angry and emotional, and then they believe everything.
That's the great thing about pranks.
If you can get someone so wound up that they're really emotional, they'll believe anything.
And so this guy would come home from work, and then the mother, like his wife would be there.
The wife's mother would be there.
He had a gun pulled on him over that once.
A real gun.
Oh, yeah, real guns.
Your dad sounds like a fucking maniac.
He would send letters out from the IRS telling people they're going to be audited.
He got visited by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation over that.
He didn't do that anymore.
Well, that makes more sense now.
Okay, so you grew up in a very unusual environment.
Yeah, very unusual.
How did your dad get started doing shit like that?
I don't know.
He just had that personality.
He was such a shit starter.
He should have been in show business is what should have been, but he used him not.
Did you ever think about using him?
Uh...
He was in one episode when we were doing the TV show.
My mom and him were in the episode.
But he wrote a couple of bits for Jack.
He was like, hey, I want you to do this.
And we filmed a couple.
See, he loved that.
So, yeah, he, I don't know.
He didn't know how to go about being in show business.
Neither did I either.
But it seems like he was doing his own, almost like a local play.
He was doing his own version of it for himself.
Yeah.
Oh, for sure.
Just to entertain himself.
I guess you could do that when you're the boss.
Yeah.
He, like I in high school.
He's a crazy guy to work for.
I'd be laying on the couch.
I took a nap.
You know, it was like a junior, senior, or whatever.
And I felt something go through my lips.
And he had went and got a hot dog and microwaved it until it was lukewarm and drugged the hot dog through my lips.
And then when I woke up, he acted like he was zipping his pants.
He thought just him laughing at his own joke just made everything.
He thought it was the funniest thing.
And then, like, you're on board too.
Yeah.
He was a character.
Well, that makes more sense now.
Yeah.
Because I'm like, how does a normal guy dive into something like Jackass?
That makes more sense.
Yeah.
You were sort of indoctrinated at an early age.
Very early.
Some of the shit that made me the most uncomfortable was the wild boy stuff.
Like Steve-O showed me a video of him when he climbed a tree and the lions came up the tree and took his hat.
Which is disrespectful if you think about it.
Just take his hat?
Fortunate because if they didn't have the hat, they might have just grabbed his whole head and just dragged him off.
You know?
I mean, those were actual lions.
Yeah, no, they weren't pet lions.
You're entering into a situation that's unpredictable and kind of hoping for the best is what you're doing.
And they didn't have any backup plan.
I mean, when you're in a tree and the lions go up the tree to get you, there's nothing really anybody could do to help you.
By the time, if it gets a hold of you, you're dead.
There's nothing anyway.
Like, here's an example of the backup plans we have.
Steve-O's filming a bit with an alligator on Jackass, and our safety guy, Manny Puig, who dives in swamps at night with the miners light to pull alligators up to the surface in crocodiles.
He's Tarzan.
He's Tarzan.
He was our safety guy.
And it's like, okay, if this goes south, what do we do?
Manny goes, okay, we're going to be doing this stunt with the alligator.
And if the alligator grabs a hold of Steve-O and bites him, hopefully he will let go.
And that was it.
That was the whole plan.
There's no like pokemon in the eyes.
There's no like.
If the gator doesn't want to let go, he's not going to let go.
So.
Fuck, dude.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The wild animals ones are the nutty.
One of the ones where you guys are playing keep away with hyenas.
They have the strong, like one of the strongest jaw, the bite in the animal kingdom.
Maybe like third or fourth.
Yeah.
What are you going to do?
There's nothing you can do.
Just hope for the best.
Yeah, and they have instincts.
Like if you twist your ankle and they see you limping.
Oh, yeah.
I was doing a thing with we were in Argentina at this zoo and we were like, hey, can I get in with the lions?
Because there was a couple of keepers in there with it.
And they're like, yeah, come on in.
And they're like, but whatever you do, don't trip and fall.
I'm like, oh, shit.
And so I got on a bike and started riding around the pen.
And they're like, if we give you a signal, you got to.
And so I'm riding around the pen.
They're like, no, Get down.
Get off.
Get up.
Because the lion locked in on me and was about to attack me.
And they hurried me out of the pen.
And afterwards, they're like, yeah, that was the first time anyone, asides from us, has been in the pen with them.
And it's also mating season, so he's very aggressive.
Like, well, I wish he'd have told me that before I got in there.
Well, I still would have gone in there, but it was a real half-ass type of situation.
It's just like, you guys just have avoided death over and over and over again.
Yeah, we've been lucky.
But like, that's a fucked-up way to go through life.
I guess, but relaxing philosophically.
I don't know, man.
It just went to the bottom.
And for sure, you entertain the fuck out of millions and millions of people who laughed their asses off and had a great fucking time watching.
I get, I don't know why, but I get anxiety.
I have a really hard time watching those things.
Yeah.
I avoid them.
Like a lot of my friends, like, we're going to see Jackass.
I'm like, I don't, I can't.
I get freaked out.
I don't want anybody to get hurt.
It's weird.
Yeah, I feel that way when one of the guys is doing something like pretty gnarly.
I'm not ecstatic over watching something that could have a forever consequence.
But with me, I don't know.
I'm just like, let's go.
I just, it's, I just, it's fun.
I know, but even after you have a family and even after, you know, you have kids that are watching the dad get fucked up.
Well, that's the thing.
I wouldn't, I didn't want my kids to see that, you know.
But they had to see.
At a certain age, like, I didn't let my oldest daughter, she could watch things with We Man or this or that, and but I didn't let her come to a movie until she was 14.
I made her sit right next to me.
And I said, Madison, there's sometimes you have to close your eyes, sometimes cover your ears, and sometimes both.
And I had the list of bits.
And so it was, I censored it even then.
But now it's the internet.
It's a fucking free-for-all.
Yeah.
So I guess my younger kids, I think, you know, they saw it a little earlier.
I get with, I only showed my son like a year ago in my daughter's six months ago.
It's a good reaction that he was on board.
My youngest daughter, she thought a lot of things were funny, but I don't know.
I guess I don't know how she felt because they only, my youngest only saw the first jackass movie, which is pretty tame compared to the others.
Looking back, it's pretty innocent, even though Ryan Dunn shoved a car up his ass to get an x-ray little toy car.
Did you see that bitch?
Yes.
Yeah, that one worked.
Do you worry that they're going to follow in your footsteps?
No.
No.
Well, I have daughters, and they're just naturally more bright.
And my son, like, he would joke about it, like, to his mom, that he's going to, but he's not going to.
He's bright, too.
They have options.
I didn't see a lot of options for myself.
It's weird that you said that, like, your daughters are bright, because girls are definitely more risk-averse and like ridiculous situations like that.
Think things through.
I have a way harder time watching girls get hurt.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't, I don't.
We had a girl on the show.
She like broke her lower back.
She was doing a thing.
We're doing a just an it was a pretty tame stunt compared to the ones we do.
She was going down like a, it was grass, but it was like a big hill on a, like a some kind of rubber raft.
And she had her lav mic at the lower, on her lower back.
And she came off, and that was the impact area.
And for the longest, and it really was a bummer for everybody, you know, and I'm like, I don't, I didn't have, we didn't have a female cast member for a long time.
What was the extensive extensive?
It was, it was, she was in the hospital for a little bit.
She's fine now.
I just saw her at the Jackass Art Show in November and she's fine, but it sucks.
You had a jackass art show?
Yeah, yeah.
Because it was our 25th anniversary last year, and I'm like, let's have an art show and have, we have some cast members and crew members who are good artists.
And I'm like, let's reach out to some big artists to see if they'll do it.
And we did.
It's the first time I ever curated an art show.
And I was like, fuck, I'm going to reach out to Damien Hearst to see if he'll do it.
And he ended up doing 10 pieces of art for it.
I was like, wow.
You know, I was really blown away by the good vibes that we got from everyone over it.
Yeah, because you guys didn't just create a show.
You created like a chapter in modern pop culture history.
Really?
Because it became one of the most entertaining things ever and one of the most ridiculous things ever.
Wow.
Yeah, that's tough to I never really walked down those roads.
Yeah, I don't, I don't know.
I appreciate you saying that, though, but it's it's it's odd, you know, to entertain that thought.
Especially if you see me and Tremaine sitting around writing ideas, you're like, these two idiots did that.
Like, if you could see how we shoot, it's just you, it's amazing we get any footage at all, Joe.
Jeff Ross came out with this on Jackass Number Two.
We're doing some bit and some prank with me and Spike as old people.
And me and Spike would like hit bus stops and anywhere where there was people.
And we would jump out and start doing pranks before the cameras even arrived.
And it was driving Jeff insane.
He's like, you guys shoot a movie like it's a pickup basketball game.
And he just roasted us for about five minutes straight.
And it was all accurate.
It's like, it's amazing we get any footage.
Yeah, but like that's the spirit of it is that you're doing it for fun.
So you would be doing it if the cameras were on or not.
You're doing it for yourselves as much as you're doing it for the camera.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
Which is why it's so good.
I don't know how to make other people laugh, right?
If I'm writing a bit, I don't.
That would freeze me.
But I know how to make my friends laugh.
And if they're laughing, I think, we may have something.
And that's the only bellwether.
Like, if you do something, like in the magic trick with the bull, we did that twice.
Cause the first time, the first bull just came and didn't really knock me up in the air.
He just got me on the ground and just started plowing me, stomping me.
And I got up, and everyone was looking at me like, yeah.
I'm like, all right.
And I looked at Jeff and he's like, I'm like, all right, bring the other bull in.
That sucks.
Take two with bulls always sucks.
You're hoping you get that first one.
Oh, God.
The things with the animals are the ones I think that freaked me out the most.
So Wild Boys was the hardest one for me to watch.
I've really struggled with that show.
Yeah.
The one that Jeff and I got in a half argument over, I was in Arkansas shooting the riot control test.
Me, Bam, and Dunn were standing in front of the riot control.
Shoots like 10,000 hard rubber beads at you.
We were shooting that.
And they were in New Orleans about to go out and put a hook through Steve-O's jaw, chum up the waters, and cast him out to the water with sharks.
I'm like, what are we doing, Jeff?
What's the best possible outcome here?
He's like, oh, no, no, it's fine.
It's fine.
And I'm like, we're going to get his foot bit off?
It's fine.
And it ended up being fine, but I was questioning the bit.
And it's a great bit.
The shark goes to bite his foot, and Steve-O kicks him at the last second and scares the shark away.
Oh.
Yeah, it was just dumb luck.
And he had a hook through his mouth?
Yeah, I never saw it.
It was like a bit of Jamie.
Oh, you're not going to look at that.
Oh, my God.
It took him like 15 minutes to get that hook through his mouth.
And the thing about it, they shot it the day before and it didn't go good.
So there's a hole on the other side of his jaw, too.
You just can't see it.
This is so fucking stupid.
Yeah, yeah, thank you.
Oh, my God, dude.
Yeah, see, he's in.
Oh, yeah, it was going for him, and then he kicks it and got him back in.
That would have been bad.
That'd have been forever bad.
Old peg leg Steve-O.
And he's like mentoring young guys that are doing it too.
Like last time he was on, he was showing, yeah, let me show you this one guy that I'm hanging out with.
Yeah, dude.
He's got this guy running through barbed wire.
I'm like, what the fuck?
This guy's radical.
He's covering himself with firecrackers.
I'm like, no.
Oh, I know.
That's Zach.
We got him in the cast.
Yeah, he's pretty up for it.
How bad is he fucked up?
Yeah, I mean, if you've seen, he was doing some trick on a skateboard, and he was a rather Rubin-esque young fellow, and he just compound fractured his ankle.
I don't think he would like that one at all.
He didn't pop through the skin the whole deal.
I'm not sure it popped through the skin, but it was doing things that ankles shouldn't do.
What a weird life you've lived, dude.
Yeah.
Very strange.
It's been okay.
Yeah.
No, I mean, look, you're fine.
No, it's odd.
I get it.
I get it.
What are you laughing at, Jamie?
I just saw the injury here.
Let me see.
Okay, here he goes.
And.
Oh!
I guess that was more his shin.
Oh, that's his tibia and his fibromyalgia.
Oh, yeah.
Dib fib.
Yeah, that's the Conor McGregor right there.
Yeah, look at the cast on Instagram.
I'm not sure.
Joe Dieseman.
Yeah, that's the Anderson Silva.
I've seen a few of those.
Those are the most painful things I've ever seen in UFC fights.
The things that really bother me are the leg breaks.
When someone throws a kick and the kick gets checked and you see their leg wrap around the shin.
The Anderson Silva one was very disturbing.
Oh, that was horrible.
It's crazy.
Like, it's only happened four times in the history of MMA or in the history of the UFC, and two of them involve Chris Weideman.
One, Chris Wideman, did it to Anderson Silva, where Anderson Silva broke his leg, and then Chris Wideman broke his leg in the exact same way against Uriah Hall.
Oh, I don't know if I saw the one against Uriah Hall.
So loud because what he did was, it was the first kick he threw.
It was the first round of the fight.
He threw a full power low kick, and Uriah checked it.
Oh.
And you hear it just snap.
Do the headphones work?
Can we hear it?
They're still fucked?
Good.
Good.
You don't need to hear it.
But here it is.
Full power.
Correct.
Wow.
Whoa, whoa.
And then he puts his foot down.
That doesn't, oh, that doesn't look real.
Yeah, he was never the same again.
Yeah, you can't come back from that, right?
No, he, I mean, guys, they don't really come back.
You know, Connor McGregor hasn't fought again since, I mean, he's thrown kicks with it.
I've seen him spar with it.
I don't, I mean, there's a one guy who is a heavyweight in the PFL that apparently came back and continued his career after he shot.
So you can find who that guy is.
There's a heavyweight guy who was in the PFL that snapped his shin like that and then came back and kept fighting.
Wideman's have some fights since then, and he's actually even thrown that kick since then.
Yeah, but I don't think you're the same.
Yeah, that would mentally get to you.
Well, one leg now weighs more, right?
Right.
Even if it's titanium, there's more, there's screws, there's a bunch of shit in there.
And then I've got to think that it feels different.
There's no way.
And then there's the psychological thing.
Like, you've already been through.
I mean, I think Chris had to go through some insane amount of surgeries, multiple surgeries, to try to correct it and to fix it because it didn't take right the first time.
You're hoping the bones grow back together.
You got a rod and then screws, and then you're hoping the bone fuses all around it.
And in some circumstances, they have to make a decision whether or not they go back in another time and take all the supporting stuff out and just have your bone exist normally.
Yeah.
And you don't want, and then it's like the risk of infection.
Oh, yeah.
It's fucking gnarly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have the hardest time.
But I have a harder time watching women get fucked up than I do men.
You know, maybe this is the sexist in me or whatever it is.
The UFC fights with women, they go for it.
I mean, the men go for it, but it just seems like the women are just extra aggressive.
Well, it just seems crazier when they're doing it, when they're beating the fuck out of each other for whatever reason.
Like, there's a fight that happened at the UFC Sphere when they did it at the sphere in Vegas.
We had one event there.
And there's this lady, Irene Aldana, who's a beast.
And she got a cut in her forehead that I can't believe the referee didn't stop the fight because it looked like someone hit her in the face with an axe.
Like her entire forehead was split wide open.
Blood was pouring out of her face.
And she's just, that's it right there.
Look at that.
Oh, my goodness.
And she's marching forward, throwing bombs where blood is like splattering, like blood splattering with every punch that lands on her face.
And she's moving forward throwing bombs.
It was fucking crazy.
Yeah, she's a warrior.
Oh, my God.
I mean, that's the beginning of the cut.
The cut got even worse than that.
It was horrible at the end.
I mean, it was fucking massive.
It had to be like a six-inch cut on her forehead.
That's insane.
Well, you could see the whole skull.
Yeah.
Like, when I was interviewing her, when I was talking to her after the fight, you could see her whole skull was like exposed.
Yeah, I, you know, when we're talking about the last doing jackass forever, we're talking about getting new cast members and talking about bringing on some females.
Look how crazy that is.
And I was a little-that's insane.
Insane.
That's insane.
And I was a little hesitant.
And then my assistant, Megan, and I'm talking to other people.
They're like, look, guys do it.
It's like women can do it.
And I was and I was forced to address it and let go of it.
And I'm like, all right.
Who was saying guys do it?
Women can do it.
Was it a guy or a girl?
No, my assistant, Megan.
She was.
And a couple of other friends, women.
And then they're just like, you got to stop looking at it that way.
And I said, all right.
And I just moved forward and we got Rachel Wolfson, and she was fantastic.
I love Rachel.
She's at the club all the time.
She's the best.
She's fun.
Yeah.
She's a cool chick.
Yeah, she's great.
Is there a photo of a Rainy Aldana's face now?
See what it looks like when it's all healed up?
It bothers me, man.
Did she, how many?
That's not real.
That's a filter.
That's an Instagram filter, dog.
There's no way.
That's an avatar.
That's what she looks like now after the scar?
Is that possible?
That's an avatar.
Right.
Well, it's not possible that that went away.
See, Google or run a search of Rainy Aldana after the surgery.
That's like two weeks ago.
Yeah, but that's all.
Well, there's makeup.
I don't know.
Makeup and filter.
That's like, that's what she's doing.
Okay, there you go.
There you go.
You can see.
Go back there.
Said it again.
You can kind of see.
Yeah, yeah, when the light hits it.
Yeah.
there you go.
You see it right there.
Yeah.
Wow.
It looks pretty good.
I mean, you can see it, but it gives her character.
Well, for a man, for a man, that's pretty dope, right?
I don't know.
It looks like she's pretty okay with everything.
She's a beast.
Yeah.
You know, it's an unusual woman that is not just willing to do that and get her face cut open like that, but also like march forward in a mask of blood, like a fucking horror movie, throwing bombs.
And she was cut over her eye.
Her nose was split open, giant cash on her forehead, and just marching forward.
So they did, and she was fighting.
Who is she fighting?
And did they have a rematch?
Because I assume the judge, the referee, called it afterwards.
No.
No, it went the decision.
Yeah, she lost the decision.
The doctor, they go over to the doctor.
He looks at it.
He's like, ah, you'll never notice on the galloping horse.
Get back in there.
I don't know.
I don't know what the referee was thinking because referees have stopped fights for less injuries.
Oh, yeah.
It's very subjective.
Usually when it goes from your eyebrow to the top of your skull.
It's very subjective.
Like one referee or one doctor will say, let it go.
And then another doctor will go, it's over.
And if the doctor says it's over, it's over.
But a referee inspected it when it went and split up her head.
Oh, yeah.
They wiped it down.
They allowed her to continue.
Yeah, she got cut.
Who is that referee who looked at it and said, yeah, you're fine.
Get back in there, kid.
See if you can find video of it.
Look at her nose.
The nose will stop the fight.
Noses destroyed.
Forehead's destroyed.
I don't remember what she got hit with.
It was most likely an elbow that did that.
Who is she fighting?
Norma Dumont.
Norma Dumont.
Norma Dumont's a beast, too.
And who won?
Norma did.
Normal one.
But what did she – like, see if you can find a video of it.
The video of it is gnarly.
And we're freaking out because we're doing the commentary.
I'm like, oh, my God, this lady is a savage.
What round did that happen in?
That's a good question.
I want to say it was the second round, but I don't totally remember.
Oh, God.
It was a video game.
What did you just have?
You just had it.
It's a video game.
Oh, it's a video game.
The video games are so good.
You can't tell the difference now.
That's the problem.
You're gonna fight in the video game.
Yeah, it's uh but again, it's I don't know why.
It's like when a woman gets knocked out, it bugs me way more.
Yeah.
I'm so used to guys getting knocked out.
Yeah.
When a guy gets knocked out, I'm like, I hope he's okay.
But when a woman gets knocked out, it's like my stomach turns.
I'm like, you're sitting there in your commentary chair.
You're just like, oh, fuck, man.
When someone gets shinned in the head, just bang.
And you see them stiffen up.
It's like, there's something about a woman getting knocked out that I don't know why.
Yeah.
It's part of my brain.
It's like, no.
Yeah.
I'm so used to men getting knocked out.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it looks like, I mean, you've seen a lot of fights.
I've probably seen more people get the fuck beaten out of them than anybody who's ever lived.
Yeah.
In person?
Like, in person, watching elite fighters smash each other.
I've probably seen more people get pummeled than anybody.
Yeah, I wonder the number of knockouts you've seen.
Oh, it has to be in the thousands.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know how many fights I've called.
I've started doing commentary.
Well, I started doing post-fight interviews in 1997.
Wow.
Yeah.
So that was the first.
I worked at UFC 12 in 1997.
Now we're at like UFC 324.
So, and I've been there for a large percentage of them.
I hate to pivot, but what do you think of Fedor?
I love him.
I love him.
He's one of the all-time greats.
He was one of my favorite fighters of all time.
He's the great, the great tragedy is Fedor never fought in the UFC against Cain Velasquez because they were both in their prime at the exact same time.
And they could have made that happen.
I love Fedor.
He was a man.
He was pride fights.
Tremaine and I would, we'd all get, every time the pride fights were on, we'd always watch Fedor.
And dude, he was stoic.
I mean, stoic.
Like, dead face, no matter what was going on.
It could be the most chaotic, insane fight, getting blasted in the face, never changed his expression like a fucking robot.
Before the fight, all the fighters are jumping up and down, looking around.
And he looks like he's about to fall asleep.
Yeah.
Oh, he was amazing.
His mindset was fucking impenetrable.
You remember when Kevin Randleman suplexed him?
Oh, yeah.
And I've never seen someone get suplexed on their head and not only push through it, but he submitted him pretty soon afterwards, right?
Yeah, he got him in an arm bar.
Like very shortly after that.
That still doesn't make any sense to me.
Oh, he was a freak.
He was a freak, man.
Look at his face.
Look how calm he looks.
Yeah.
Here it is.
So he gets slapped.
Oh, my goodness.
And just rolls.
Just rolls right into it.
I mean, that was that could have knocked most people completely unconscious, could have separated your vertebra.
And look, he's still, look how strong.
And he reversed the position like seconds later.
And Randleman was good on the ground.
Oh, fuck yeah.
Randleman was a world-class wrestler.
But look at that.
But Fedora was special, man.
He was special.
And this is like Randallman's wearing wrestling shoes, too.
He was allowed to wear wrestling shoes.
Pride had a lot of crazy rules.
That left of Fedor's.
Oh, everything, man.
Everything.
He was the most complete.
So he pins down the arm and he eventually catches him.
I think he caught him in a Kimura.
A Kimura or a straight arm lock.
It might have been.
Yeah, here it is.
He caught him in a Kimura.
Here it is.
I mean, that's insane.
Insane.
Within a minute, he turned it around.
Well, he was the most complete out of all those guys because he was a guy that could fight you standing up at an elite level, but also in any kind of wild scramble.
He would catch an arm bar off of his back.
He would submit you on the ground.
He could throw you.
He could do everything.
He was the most complete out of all the heavyweights of his era.
Yeah, I remember when he was fighting Noguera, I was like, oh no, this is, it could go south for Fedor.
You thought so?
I was worried.
Yeah.
You know, because I love, you know, you like, you look up to a fighter and you're like, he can't lose.
I don't want him to lose.
And I was worried about Noguera, but he beat him twice, right?
Yeah, and they were brutal.
The ground and pounds were fucking brutal.
When he was on top of Noguera, just bombing on him.
Yeah, I'm like, Fedor, don't go to the ground with Noguera because I'm just worried.
Unlike his aunt or something.
But no problem.
No, he was awesome.
But there's a time where a fighter can operate under that peak form, and it's a short window.
And I always say when you're looking at the greatest of all time, you have to look at them in that peak window.
You can't look at them when they're fighting in their late 30s and they probably shouldn't be fighting anymore.
You got to judge them based on who they were in their prime because every combat sport athlete has a limited amount of time where they can operate in their prime.
And Fedor in his prime was about as good as anybody who ever lived.
I love hearing you say that.
Because I really am amazing.
Fucking amazing.
But it's like when we had Kane in the UFC, Kane Velasquez, who was another superhuman freak, also super stoic, would just go and had cardio like no heavyweight ever.
Like freakish, God-given cardio.
Yeah.
And they'd call him cardio Kane because he would just put a pace on guys.
Well, you'd see the look on their face.
And it was like the second round.
They're like, I can't do this.
Yeah.
And he's just ready to go.
Just not even out of breath, just smashing you over and over and over again, picking you up, slamming you down.
Like what he did to Brock Lesnar.
Brock Lesnar was fucking terrifying.
He was a 300-pound man who was built like a Viking.
Like he just hopped off of a fucking ship with a battle axe.
And Kane beat the fuck out of him.
I know that that was an amazing fight.
And I watched Brock Lesnar body slam We-Man through a table at a restaurant one night.
It was one of the best things.
Was that a jackass?
No, no, we were there to do.
I was going to do WrestleMania.
I believe it was WrestleMania against that low down and dirty Sami Zayn.
And we're at the restaurant.
I think we're at a four seasons in their restaurant.
And we all had a couple of drinks.
And Brock just comes by.
He's leaving.
He comes by to say goodbye, you know.
And We-Man gets a little chatty.
We-Man got a mouth on him.
So Brock just scoops him up like a baby.
He goes, you're going through that table and just lifts him up over his head and bam right through the table.
It was one of the best things I've ever seen.
Just it looked like one of those tables in an old West bar fight.
Yeah, this is it.
He's like, No, we missed.
He's like, No, no.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
That's a regular table, too.
Oh, yeah.
That's what you get for talking shit to Brock Lesnar.
It doesn't really compute in his head, I don't think.
Brock is a guy that, like, you know, he was NCAA Division I national champion, like elite wrestler.
I always wondered what would happen with him if he didn't go into pro wrestling for so long, if he just went into MMA right out of his college career.
I think he could have been one of the all-time great players.
What are you going to do with that guy if he's been training for that long?
Well, he didn't train much in striking at all.
Like, you could tell in the early days, his striking was, you know, he was learning it.
Obviously, an elite athlete, a freak of nature physically, but he was still learning striking.
And striking is something takes a long time to really get a mastery of.
Oh, yeah.
He wasn't, you know, so he was just and he didn't need the money, didn't need to do it.
He was already a giant pro wrestling star.
Could have just stayed Brock Lesnar, but just decided I want to see what would happen if I fight for real.
He liked it.
And he beat a lot of really fucking good guys.
Yeah.
Which is kind of crazy.
I mean, he beat Randy Couture, who's an all-time great.
He beat Frank Meir, who's, you know, an all-time great.
He's a freak athlete.
Oh, he's fucking horrific.
Horrific dude.
Who's the young guy, Gable Stevenson?
Oh, he's good.
Yeah.
I think he's a problem.
He's a striking look.
Giant problem.
His striking looks good.
He's a giant problem because he's a 250-pound man that moves like a 150-pound man.
He's so fucking fast and so athletic for a big guy and elite wrestling skills.
I mean, gold medalists in the Olympics are wrestling skills.
That kind of wrestling skill is like so hard to fuck with.
Yeah.
He's got that and ridiculous power and speed in his hands.
And just this, there's a mindset that like some guys have, like elite athletes have, this like unstoppable drive and discipline.
Yeah.
And he's got that.
And like, he's going to be a fuck.
I sent Dana White a text message because he had an MMA fight and hit this dude with a left hook.
And then as the dude's going out, he fucking slams him to the ground.
He landed the punch and he had enough speed to close the distance and fucking slam him to the ground while he's unconscious from the punch.
Yeah.
And I sent Dana White a text message.
I said, everybody's fucked.
I just sent him that clip.
I sent him Dana the same clip.
Dana, what are we doing here?
Gable's the first guy that I've ever had in the studio that isn't even in the UFC yet and that only has had like a couple fights where I was like, I want to have this guy on right away.
Like, look at that.
Like, fucking so that speed is so insane.
Look at that.
The transition between he KOs him with a left hook and then look at this, just hops to the top of the octagon.
But go back to the knockout because look at the guy when he's on.
You can see the birdies flying around his head in that one angle on the opposite angle.
I mean, that is crazy speed.
And then blasts him with a punch all before the referee can even get to him.
That dude's like, what the fuck just happened?
Yeah.
He has a hard time getting fights.
He'll probably be in the UFC quicker than he should be because no one wants to fight him.
It's on the regional circuit, the smaller promotions.
Very difficult to get a guy like that a fight because you can't beat him.
You know, you can't.
So, if you're, you got to be the type of guy, like, almost like you are with stunts, like, all right, let's fucking do it.
Let's see what it happens because you're not fast enough to avoid the punches.
You're not skillful enough to stop the takedown.
You can't do anything about it once he's on top of you.
You're not getting back up.
You're just going to get pummeled.
Like, what are you going to do?
And some guys are just so gangster, they're like, Let's see how I do.
You're just standing in front of a culture.
But most guys are going to not fight.
You're going to get that offer, and you're going to go, fuck that.
I want to be a world-class fighter someday.
I got to get better.
There's no way I'm going to get better.
If I fight that guy, I realize how tall the mountain actually is that I'm supposed to climb.
But to any prospective fighters of Gable Stevenson out there who maybe don't want to fight them, take it from me.
It doesn't take that long to get knocked out.
It's going to be an easy night.
You know, it's going, what, 15 seconds of your time?
That's not the problem.
The problem is, so, like in boxing, okay, this is a good so boxing has always traditionally done a way better job of preparing fighters for world-class fighters.
So, even Mike Tyson, who was a phenom, in his prime, he fought a bunch of journeymen in the beginning.
Mitch Blood Green.
Well, he was good.
Mitch Blood Green was good.
Mitch Blood Green went to decision.
Yeah.
I mean, he was a gang leader and just a crazy person.
No, the street fight, Mike fucked him up.
He also broke his hand in a street fight in a haberdashery in Harlem, which is crazy.
Slipped into the literation.
Yeah, I mean, they fought in a haberdash.
They fought in a place where you get custom suits made.
And why wouldn't you?
Why wouldn't you?
So that fight was like Mitch Blood Green was a real pro.
He was a real elite fighter.
But you go to the early days of Mike Tyson where he's fighting guys that have fucking zero business being in there with you.
And these guys just took the payday and just got knocked into orbit.
And those fights are some of the most fun fights to watch because you realize you're dealing with a guy who's going to be one of the all-time greats.
And you're getting to see him when he's 19 and no one had any idea what was coming.
You know, like some of his first fights, people had heard rumblings.
There's this kid out of the Catskills.
Everybody talked about it.
But until you saw him, you're just like, oh, God, good lord.
Just all business, too.
All business.
No socks.
Just the towel with the hole in it.
And it just, it was throwback.
Yeah, it was, but there was never a throwback fighter that had just a towel over his head walking into the ring.
Well, you'd have to go back to the Jack Dempsey days, which Tyson did.
See, Tyson had this advantage that his manager was Jim Jacobs, and Jim Jacobs was a boxing historian.
And so Jim Jacobs had all these films of all the old school fighters, Sandy Sadler, William Pep.
Yeah.
And so Mike would just sit and watch all these great fighters, all the old school guys, all the old Joe Lewis fights on film, you know, all the Sugar Ray Robinson fights.
Which there are not a lot on film.
I wish there were because we never had prime Sugar Ray Robinson.
Like there's not a lot of films.
Well, you could watch them on YouTube.
But I don't think like prime, prime.
I think after a second.
Oh, no.
There's some prime Sugar Ray Robinson.
Yeah, you could watch some great Sugar Ray Robinson KOs that are on.
Yeah.
He was another guy.
I mean, I think he had like 90 fights.
I think it was like something like 90-0 before he had his first loss.
And then he went another 40 fights before he lost the second.
Crazy.
Insane.
Crazy.
And they were fighting all the time back then.
Yeah.
Those guys would fight multiple times in a year.
It wasn't like today where, you know, guys will like Canelo and Crawford, they talk about it.
Crawford hadn't had a fight in like a year and a half.
Yeah.
It wasn't like that back then.
They're fighting a few times a month.
Constantly.
Yeah.
But also, you know, then the end is so sad because in the end, Sugar A. Robinson had dementia and it's like he couldn't talk.
There's some interviews of him later in life that are really, really fucking sad.
Yeah.
So that's the thing about a guy fighting Gabelson, Gable Stevenson.
It's not that Gable's going to beat you and getting knocked out's not that bad.
It's that your confidence is going to be destroyed and you will get knocked out easier next time, which is the problem with getting knocked out.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I can attest to that.
Is it to happen to you now?
Like where you get KO'd easier?
I get my knockouts.
I got knocked out easier, yeah.
It's the old glass jaw.
You notice the difference?
Yeah, I mean, I could watch the impacts afterwards, and that might not have got me five or six years ago, but now it's just.
You just go out.
Yeah.
How many times do you think you've been KO'd?
About 16.
Wow.
And that's a lot.
Yeah.
Have you ever gotten brain scans done?
Yeah.
What do they say?
Well, you know, they're not the best brain scans they ever looked at.
I didn't win any awards for my brain scan, Joe.
They're like, don't get any more concussions.
But did they say there's anything going on there that you need to be concerned about?
Well, they don't know about, you know, you can't detect CTE until post-mortem.
Right.
But do you have any lingering issues like memory issues, impulse control?
The I can, well, I don't know whether it's I'm getting older or I can remember a lot of like things from four years, like from my childhood and that kind of thing.
I have complete recall, but what I did a week ago, you know, it's up in the air.
And do you think that's connected to the head injuries?
Or is it just like aging?
Because as you get older.
Well, there's the million dollar question.
Right.
Do you seem okay?
Yeah.
Which is part of the problem.
Like I know a lot of fighters that seem fine, but I know publicly or privately they're struggling.
I know they have like issues, you know.
Yeah.
I'm I after that with the magician one, I kind of went offline for a few months, but I've completely recovered.
Went offline like how so?
Just slowly over a period of months.
I just got super depressed and anxious and fearful of everything.
Just in my mind, it was just a loop of everything bad is going to happen.
It was catastrophic thinking and ruminating.
And yeah, it was my creative mind turned against me, right?
And it was frightening.
It felt like you're in the bottom of a well looking up.
And eventually I got on some medication.
What kind of medication they give you for that?
Oh, shit.
I can't remember.
But after a couple of months on, actually about four to six weeks on the medication, The colors came back and I started feeling like myself again.
Did you lose sight of colors?
Did you get color black?
No, that was just metaphorically.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then I'm not, I went off the medicine and I'm fine, but it was pretty intense.
So did they do anything for that?
Like, I know there's some different therapies they do for people that have.
I did a thing, a transcranial magnetic stimulus.
Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you about.
And I started that, and it was kind of, I was in the middle of my episode, and I started that.
You do it over like six to eight weeks, I can't remember.
And I remember at the first I would start it and I'd talk to the guy running it, but by the end, the end of the eight weeks, I was just kind of, I wouldn't look at him, I wouldn't talk to him.
And yeah, I was just completely in my head all the time.
So it got worse progressively then.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, it got worse.
But yeah, the just medication and I came out of it.
Well, I'm glad you came out of it.
Yeah.
But that's a good reason to not do that kind of shit anymore.
Yeah.
That's why I was like, I can't.
I don't.
It was.
It's too much.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, that's what I worry about with fighters because, like, listen, you and I are sitting here, we're talking.
You're not slurring your words.
You seem fine.
Everything's.
There's fighters that you see the slurring and you see the mumbling of the words and yet they're still fighting.
Yeah, that's like Ollie at the end.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah.
When he's doing those interviews around the Leon Spinks fights.
Oh, yeah.
You know, even Larry Holmes was sparring with them.
They could notice the difference.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's like you, how do you it's tough to figure out how to uh, he has a certain spirit in about him and how do you outrun him, which made him a champion?
Yeah, and how do you outrun that?
How do you put that light out?
And that's, that's the that's the problem.
I think you have to plant that seed in a fighter's head when they're young.
Yeah, I don't think you could tell them that this is going to be a ride that lasts forever.
I think you have to tell them there's going to be a time when we realize we have to stop this, we have to stop doing this.
And you're going to have to trust me yeah, because i'm on the outside and i'm i'm going to watch you very carefully and we're going to make sure that you you never get to a point where you're like I, like a fighter that retires and they can talk and they're fine and they're good like I.
I like that.
I like when a guy gets out like Andre Ward is one of my favorite fighters, because not just was he a two-division world champion, not only was, like he, an elite boxer, but he retired Undefeated and never came back, and now he's fine.
He does commentary.
You're hanging out with him.
He's got no lingering problems.
He's good.
Like he got off the right time.
I like that.
Yeah, I often think, where would it's a little sort of a pivot?
Where would Roy Jones Jr. be ranked if he retired after the Ruiz fight?
Right.
After he became heavyweight champions.
It's a very good question.
I think that was one of the biggest mistakes that he ever did was going up to heavyweight and then going down to 175 again.
The fight.
Right, because he wasn't a heavyweight that was fat.
It wasn't like he could lose 25 pounds of extra fat that he put on.
No, he was shredded at 200 pounds and then lost 25 pounds of muscle.
So he had to starve himself to get back down to 75 again.
Because once your body gets accustomed to carrying around all that extra weight, like that's your new frame.
And today they would never say do that again.
Yeah.
Like in the UFC, there's been some guys that had some radical weight cuts, like Alex Pereira is probably the best example.
But once he went down to 185, he was cutting a tremendous amount of weight to get to 85.
But once he went up to 205, now he's a 205.
He stays at 205.
And now he's even talking about going up to heavyweight, which is crazy.
Right.
But he's got the frame for it.
But like, if he went all the way up to heavyweight and then tried to go all the way down to 85 again, he would be so fragile.
You're so vulnerable.
If you get hit, the guys who dehydrate themselves significantly, they get KO'd way easier.
Yeah.
And guys will tell you that.
Like when they cut the weight, they can't take a punch.
It's just different because your brain doesn't rehydrate in time.
So if you're dehydrating to make, let's say, 170, if you're dehydrating to make 170, but you really weigh 200, you can get down to 170 for the weight.
But once you rehydrate and you're 200 again for the fight, you don't have water in your brain yet.
Yeah.
Your brain's not reacting.
Your brain takes days before it completely rehydrates.
It's dangerous.
It's very dangerous.
Yeah.
But so that's the thing.
It's like you're talking about all the problems that you have, but yet you're sitting here, you're not slurring your words, you're laughing, you're coherent, we're having a good time.
And now think about these guys that you see that start mumbling and their words all kind of slur together.
Yeah, yeah.
It's weird.
You have a hard time understanding them.
Fits of rage.
Yes.
They 100% should not be fighting.
Yeah.
And yet they're still fighting.
And athletic commissions will even pass them.
Does Vandeley Silva still fight?
Does he slur?
Dude, Vandeley Silva just had a boxing match in Brazil that turned into a brawl.
So he was boxing this guy, and the bunch of people jumped into the ring and started brawling.
And one of the guys that jumped into the ring KO'd him, hit him with a bare knuckle punch and knocked him out cold where he falls back and bounces and they have to drag him out of the ring.
So while people are, there's a melee.
There's like 10 people fighting inside the ring and he's stretched out cold.
Here, watch it.
Jamie.
You find it.
He was amazing in the pride.
He was a fucking warrior, a savage.
He was so crazy.
But that's another guy that's been KO'd so many fucking times.
I don't speak Portuguese, but my friends who do say you can clearly tell the difference.
So here's the fight.
So this is afterwards.
Boom.
Oh my God, the back of the canvas.
This guy just cracks him with a right hand.
He doesn't even see it coming.
And he's out cold, flat on his back.
And then they just have to drag him away from all these people fighting.
Jesus.
Oh, that's sad.
He's dead.
Dead.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
And again, this is a guy that's, he got knocked out by Mirko Krokop.
He got head kick KO'd.
He got knocked out by Rampage Jackson.
He got knocked out by some big fucking scary shots.
Krokop had legs like Earl Campbell.
They were just ridiculous looking.
No, he was one of the most elite strikers that ever competed in MMA.
He was a terrifying dude.
The stare down between Vanderlay Silva and Mirko Krokop, in my opinion, is the greatest stare down in the history of combat sports because you've got a guy who in Vandeley Silva is one of the most intimidating, terrifying MMA fighters that ever hit.
But then in Mirko Krokop, you got a guy who's ahead of an anti-terrorist squadron who's fucking probably murdered people.
Like, look at the difference.
That motherfucker ain't scared as shit.
Look at this stare down.
Neither one of them are scared.
Yeah, I think Vandale might have been feeling it a little.
Really?
Yeah.
That guy's looking through to his fucking soul.
Mirko is 100% Mirko wins this stare down.
Mirko was looking through to his fucking soul, dude.
Oh, my goodness.
That is a stare-down, son.
Look at his eyes.
That is a serious man.
And I mean, Mirko.
That ref's got his hands full.
Oh, yeah.
Well, they always had their hands full in Pride because they had stomps and soccer kicks.
And it was a crazy organization.
Did they test in Pride?
No.
Not only did they not test, well, they did test.
They didn't do anything.
It was a fake test.
You get an A plus on steroids.
Ensign Inuway is another legend and just one of the all-time greats and a pioneer of MMA from the early days.
Ensign told me when he did the podcast, he said they had in all capital letters, we do not test for steroids.
Like, they wanted you on steroids.
What's your growth hormone?
They wanted you on it.
Because, look, if you want excitement and you don't have a sanctioning body, like, why would you, your goal is to create the best product.
Like, what's the best product?
Bunch of juiced up fucking psychopaths beat the shit out of each other.
Highly skilled, juiced-up savages going to war.
That's what you want.
You don't want anybody who's dealing with normal hormone levels.
Fuck that.
So they would encourage people.
I didn't hear any rumors of Fedor doing that.
Do you think Fedor?
I don't.
Well, you can only speculate.
You don't know because he didn't look like he was on steroids, right?
Because he had like dad bod, but jacked, you know, but he carried a lot on some extra body fat because he didn't have to worry about losing weight.
But he came from the Russian sports program, you know, and they cheated with everything.
The reality of, have you ever seen that movie Icarus?
No.
Oh, it's a great movie.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
Brian Fogel made this documentary, and it's a really interesting documentary because he made the documentary.
This was the plan of it.
He was an endurance racer, so he's going to do a cycling race, and he was going to do it naturally.
So he does it, compares his numbers, and then he hires this guy, Gregory Rychenko.
Is it Rychenkov?
Richenko?
That's the guy who was the head of the Russian anti-doping, and I'm making air quotes, anti-doping program.
And so during, yeah, Rodchenkov, Gregory Rychenkov.
So during the filming of it, it turns out that the Russians get busted because during the Sochi Olympics, the entire roster of Russian athletes was on Roy's.
So what they did was they cut a hole in the wall and they would take the piss that the Russians had given after the competition.
They'd sneak it through the hole and sneak in some new piss and put it in its place.
But what they had found was that there was microabrasions in the jars.
They supposedly had these unopenable jars.
And the Russians had figured out a way to snake some sort of a utensil or some sort of a device and open up these jars, swap out the piss and put in some fresh clean piss in the same jar.
So this is while they're filming.
So he is being taught how to juice up by this guy.
So this guy's telling him, this is what you would take, and this is how much to take.
So he's doing preparing to go do this cycling race juiced up.
And while this is happening, this guy has to flee Russia because now he gets busted.
And then he starts telling Brian Fogel everything.
He tells him how they run the program.
So now, to this day, this guy's hiding.
He's in witness protection.
They arrested his family.
I think they took his family's money away.
They took their home away.
They took everything.
And because they want them to turn this guy in.
So he's in witness protection right now still in America hiding because they'll assassinate him if they find him.
Oh, yeah.
Because this guy gave up the entire secrets of the Russian doping program, which led to in the Brazil Olympics, Russia was banned from the Brazil Olympics.
Yeah, for the doping.
So this documentary is fucking wild because it shows he tells every the only people they didn't do it with was figure skaters.
They said the figure skaters, it didn't help.
And it actually hurt a little bit.
We tried, but it didn't help.
They want to keep them gay.
They wanted to keep them like whatever they wanted to keep them.
They just felt like there's something about giving them testosterone, giving them human growth hormone, steroids.
It fucked with their fine motor skills.
And it's like such a delicate sport.
You know, it's a sport of, it's just hand-eye coordination and balance.
And it didn't help them to be on performance-enhancing drugs.
You said keep them gay.
I don't think if you gave steroids to Johnny Weir, it's going to, you know.
Only one way to find out.
No, I'm just kidding.
That guy is pretty entertaining, Johnny Weir.
Was it a gay porn star?
No, he was an Olympic skater, right?
Is it Johnny Weir?
It's Johnny Weir.
Oh, right, right.
That's fantastic.
I don't know why I thought gay porn star.
I thought, like, if you're giving steroids to a gay guy, what would be the last guy that you would want to do it to to see if you could turn him not gay would be a gay porn star, right?
Like, give him steroids, and also he's like, why am I fucking all these guys?
This is crazy.
Thank you.
You've cured me.
It turns out it wasn't pray the gay away.
It's inject the gay away.
That preacher, pray the gay away.
Yeah.
Oh, those guys are funny.
Those guys are almost all gay.
Those gay.
Of course.
Yeah.
It's like.
They'll get together and hug it out, boners.
Yeah.
Kind of sad.
Just be how you're going to be, man.
Don't like tell everyone what to do.
Just live your life however you want to live it.
Well, this is a burden of responsibility on some of us for being judgmental.
And for so long, I mean, being gay was so dangerous to come out.
You could get killed.
You get beaten.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a testament to our society today that it is like not just accepted but celebrated that people are gay.
It's because for so long, it was so hard to be gay.
Yeah.
You know the Turing test?
You know what the Turing test is?
Yeah.
Well, Alan Turing was gay.
And they, I mean, that's a terrible tragic story.
The man Really had an enormous impact on World War II, but still he had to be closeted, and then the and then they chemically castrated him in England in the 1950s.
And he's the guy who came up with the Turing test, which is a way to determine whether or not artificial intelligence had achieved sentience.
Could you tell if you're having, and most people believe that at this point in time, you can't tell.
Like, the Turing test has already been achieved.
Like, they've already passed it.
Like, if you talk to, like, perplexity, this is what I use for everything.
If I talked to it, I would not know whether or not that's a person or not.
I mean, it can communicate like a human.
Yeah.
And it can answer questions about anything.
It's just basically like a super genius human being that I ask questions to all the time on my phone.
And I don't, I don't ever feel like this is a computer.
It feels like a fucking person that's just like you have a wizard that you can ask any question of, and it can give you the answer.
So that's Alan Turing's invention was this test to determine whether or not you could determine whether artificial intelligence had achieved sentience.
And what did they do, this guy?
They fucking chemically castrated him for being gay, and he wound up committing suicide.
It's tragic.
I mean, all that he did in World War II, I mean, he's the father of the modern computer.
He break the Enigma code, which was considered unbreakable.
Yeah.
And just his country turned his back on him.
And everyone liked him, really.
And not even that long ago.
That's what's crazy.
Like, people who were alive back then are still alive today.
And that's how much the world has shifted.
Yeah.
And, you know, whatever it's been, 80 years.
It's kind of crazy.
Yeah.
Not even 80 years, 70 years, right?
Crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm fascinated by World War II and the characters from that.
Oh, yeah.
No, World War II is a nutty time in history.
And it's also in a lot of people's eyes in America, one of the reasons why people are so fascinated with World War II.
It's the last time Americans got to feel like real heroes.
Yeah.
We fucking did it.
We turned back the Nazis.
We defeated them.
We stopped this takeover of the world by the most evil group that we've ever seen assembled in modern history.
And America came back, and there's that photograph, that famous photograph, I guess it's in Times Square, where the soldiers kissing that woman.
That was staged, right?
I believe it was.
Unfortunately.
Because the wars after that were muddy.
It was not like this is a good guy, this is the bad guy.
It's like, and then in Vietnam, it's not, you're not taking a hill.
It wasn't about that.
It became just the number of casualties.
Well, also, it was a war that didn't make any sense.
No, no.
We found out later on that it was a war that was started under false pretenses.
Sure.
Well, there's been a few of those.
But that was the one that's the most obvious.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident is the most obvious and proven.
Like now, it's not a conspiracy theory.
They staged a false flag.
They lied to the American people.
It's the same thing Hitler did in the Russian mortgage.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you ever read Blitzed?
No.
It's Norman Oler wrote about Hitler marching through Poland and about all the drugs that they were giving.
Oh, yeah, the Purveton.
They would get jacked up on Purviton.
Fucking meth.
They had capsules, meth capsules, and the people at the front of the line got the most meth.
Yeah.
They dosed people up according to where you were.
But they realized that had diminishing returns because they're just jacked up all the time and they're not sleeping and then it starts falling off.
Yeah.
But by then they were addicted.
Well, it turns out you could do it for three days and get all the way through Poland.
Yeah.
That's how they did it.
Yeah.
Three days, no sleep.
And Hitler was like, I know how we could do it.
Just meth everybody up and have a march.
Well, he was taking more drugs than anyone.
Oh, yeah.
Just.
Well, he had his own doctor that wasn't a part of the.
Yeah, that shady-ass doctor.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's all in the book.
book is fantastic it's really good because it's just like and he said that most of what Hitler was on was actually opiates Yeah, eukinol.
I don't know.
Pervitin.
Well, Purvitin is a meth, right?
It's an yeah, Purvitin is the meth, but I think eukinol was an opiate.
He was on a lot.
He was on a lot of shit.
Yeah.
A lot of different things.
Do you know that he also had a genetic anomaly that would lead to his testicles not descending?
And most likely.
Yeah, I think it's called Cormann syndrome or something like that.
Eukinol.
Oh, actually, it was an opiate.
Yeah.
I think it's called Hallman syndrome or something like that.
Whatever he got.
What is it called?
Moral was like Elvis' doctor.
Yeah.
So they got blood from the fabric.
What was it called?
What was the syndrome called?
Micropenis.
Yeah, well, definitely.
Micropenis was the Kalman.
That's what it is.
Kalman syndrome.
So what it was was they found blood from the couch where supposedly Hitler committed suicide.
They took that blood and matched the DNA to Hitler's bloodline.
So they knew it was a male and they knew the blood came from someone in Hitler's family.
So they're reasonably assured that this is Hitler.
And then they found that they had Kalman syndrome.
So researchers analyzing blood-stained cloth from the sofa where Hitler died found genetic marker linked to Kalman syndrome.
Disorder is a form of hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, which resulted in insufficient production of sex hormones and can prevent or delay puberty.
Makes sense.
Yeah.
Right?
Methed up dude.
Yeah.
Little dick.
Tiny dick.
No balls.
Most evil man in history.
Wants to fuck the whole world.
Maybe one ball.
Maybe one ball.
Well, he was diagnosed with one undescended testicle.
That was a fact from one of his medical reports.
One of his testicles stuck up there.
Yeah.
He had some problems.
He had some issues.
Yeah.
What a fucking monster.
Speaking of meth, we always talk about this documentary that Johnny had a hand in.
Oh, that's right.
All the wild and wonderful whites of West Virginia.
I fucking love that documentary, dude.
Thank you.
That documentary was crazy.
How did you get involved in?
Thank you, Jamie.
How did you get involved in that?
A friend of mine knew Julian Nitzberg, and Julian is the one who found Jessica White.
Julian was doing another documentary on, oh, shit.
Fuck, I can't remember right now.
But they're like, hey, do you want to meet Julian Nitzberg?
And I'm like, yeah.
And so I talked to Julian.
He told me the story of his being involved with Jessica White, the first doctor.
You saw the first one, right?
You did more than one?
No, no.
The first one Jacob Young did.
Julian Nitzberg found Jessica White, went to Jacob Young and said, hey, look at this guy.
Look at this character.
And it came out on videotape.
And if you saw it back in the late 80s, early 90s, it was usually like a copied over fourth.
Is this the dancing outlaw one?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
So that's what you're doing.
That's not the wild and wonderful one.
No, that was yours, right?
Yes.
And so I was talking to Julian, and I'm like, well, what do you think Jessico's up to now?
He's like, I don't know.
And so we got some money together and sent him to talk to Jessica and his family.
And now because of just generational neglect and all the young kids coming up, he's like, he was like, you know, the wildest one in the family, but now he's like the eighth wildest.
All the younger ones are much, you know, more intense.
And we came back with three days of footage and we're like, holy shit.
And we cut something together and took it to my friends at MTV.
And they're like, yeah, okay, we'll give you some money.
They weren't even sure.
They're like, you guys haven't, you know, failed us yet.
So they just pushed the money our way and we came back with that.
It was wild.
It's a fucking amazing documentary.
They're a charismatic family, a charismatic bunch of outlaws.
Yeah, well, it's certainly entertaining.
And it's also an untold story about that part of the country and how they've been ravaged by pills.
Well, they've been rapped.
First of all, they were ravaged by the coal companies.
Right.
Jacking their town, and then you can only buy stuff from the company store.
And then when the coal's gone, fuck you, we're out of here.
And the town's just left, you know, massacred.
And then with no thought of what happens to those people.
Yeah.
And you see how that can make the whites and anyone in that area feel, right?
And so, like, oh, the man, we're going to stick it to the man.
The man stuck it to us.
We're going to stick it to the man.
Yeah.
With, you know, they all get checks for disability checks.
And, you know, they're, I don't know.
It's just, it's just pretty sad.
It's very sad.
Entertaining and sad at the same time.
Like, it's like you're very conflicted.
Like, you want to laugh at them, but you're also like, oh, my God, like, there's kids there.
Like, there's families here.
They're all fucked up.
Like, the kid doing backflips because he's high on Mountain Dew.
Yeah, yeah.
And he's talking about stabbing, I forget which boyfriend of Sue Bob's or Sue Kirk's.
It's crazy.
It was intense.
Yeah, but it's both funny and entertaining, but also deeply disturbing at the same time because you realize, especially towards the end of the film, where they want to get out of this life.
Like they're trying to clean up, you know, and she's trying to get off pills.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, you know, it's tough when you're raised in an environment and, you know, you don't know how to get out.
Right.
You don't have those tools.
Well, there's no clear path.
There's no clear path out of there.
And everywhere around you is fucked.
Everything's fucked.
Everyone's fucked.
There's no good examples of people that figured it out, got their shit together.
There's no one cool uncle that, you know, went straight.
Well, there is part of the family that moved to Michigan and they started flourishing.
I think we.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's right.
That's the movie.
But it's, yeah.
Fucking hard.
Yeah.
It's hard.
Yeah, it's like, I think There's just forgotten sections of our country when it comes to just extreme despair and poverty and just overall, like you said, fucked over by the coal companies, fucked over by pills.
Everyone's addicted.
Everyone's just like this long history of crime.
And when you're raised in that continually, how do you see a way out?
You know, it just, I don't know.
It's pretty, pretty sad.
But when you filmed it, did you think it was going to be sad?
Or did you think it was just going to be crazy?
You don't know what you're walking into.
You have no idea.
So what came back was it was very impactful and you couldn't turn away.
It just, yeah, there's a lot of shit that really pulls on your heartstrings, but they're so charismatic and they have such a way about them.
I don't know.
It makes it their sense of humor helps ease you through it about the situation.
But still, it's a situation.
Did you take them to the premiere or anything?
Did any of that?
We flew Jessico and Mamie in for the premiere.
And I remember he was going to tap dance at the premiere, and he's got his tap shoes, which were his father, D-Ray White's tap shoes.
They're just in a plastic pharmaceutical bag.
But I dropped them when I got out of the car, and I was just hard.
I was just like, I felt terrible.
But their characters, it was pretty wild meeting Jessica and Mamie.
That's my friend Storm I grew up with.
He helped produce.
I remember me, Jessico, White, and Mike Judge just sitting in a bar before having drinks.
Oh, Mike Judge was involved in this too?
No, no, he's just a friend of mine, and he was like, I want to meet Jessica and Mamie.
I love that guy.
Mike Judge is cool as fuck.
He's so talented.
Very, very talented.
So bright.
Man was an engineer starting out, then a musician.
And he's an interesting character.
Very, very interesting guy.
But how did they react to the film?
And watching people watch them and laughing and going crazy.
I mean, at the premiere, they seemed, they really enjoyed it.
You know, it's like it's a big thing.
You see yourself up on screen.
I know the subject matter is tough, but I don't know.
That's their life, right?
They're not surprised by anything.
Right.
It's just, you know.
What happened with them after the film?
Do you follow up on them?
Every now and then, Julian will send me something.
One of them will be in the news for this or that.
You know, I haven't stayed in touch.
I didn't stay in touch.
What'd you say, Jamie?
Subob's on TikTok with her daughter.
Oh, boy.
Subob's got the best voice.
Yeah.
I was always a sexy one.
How do you even get that voice?
That's crazy.
Yeah.
What a voice.
Have you ever thought about doing a follow-up?
Someone else can.
I don't.
We did it, and I think we moved on.
I think at some point it's a little much to go back to that well.
I don't feel right about it.
Right, a little exploitative.
Yeah.
I don't feel right about it.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Do you do, do you have aspirations to do other stuff?
Do you have any other things that you're trying to do?
Well, I mean, in the film world, sure.
So, yeah, I have a lot of doing documentaries.
I have a couple of documentaries I'm trying to get off the ground.
And, you know, one on David Allen Coe, who's who Julian Nitzberg was going to direct.
Do you know who David Allen Coe is?
Yeah.
He's a country singer, songwriter, who's like, was the he from the age of nine to 35, he was institutionalized.
You know, his parents just kind of used too much and they put him in the boy's home.
And he was the head of the outlaw motorcycle gang for a while.
He had eight or nine wives for a while.
He formed his form.
He formed his own religion.
He wrote his own, you know, wrote a book.
He was the best.
I have to show you a picture.
And he also wrote some racist songs while he was in prison, and Shel Silverstein convinced him to record those when he got out.
I turned my face.
Shell Silverstein, the guy who wrote children's books, and a boy named Sue, and on the cover of The Rolling Stone.
Shel Silverstein wrote a lot of songs.
And he convinced a couple of the songs are, you know, racist and can't really, there's no defense to them.
He's lived a very complicated life.
But in the 80s, he decided, I'm going to become a magician.
And I have a picture of him and a ventriloquist.
And I'll show it to you in a second.
It's pretty.
He's the most frightening fucking ventriloquist you've ever seen.
Like, and the weird thing is, the magicians, Penn and Teller, credit him as one of their influences.
Is that him with his dummy?
No, it's Terry Gallen.
Okay, let me find it real quick.
So it's an incredible story, but it's just hard getting something like that made now for people who aren't wanting to.
Okay, come on.
I'm bringing up.
So we're trying to tell that story.
And so just whatever just strikes your interest, like things that you find fascinating.
Can I airdrop this to Jamie?
Yeah.
Yeah.
How do I do this?
Here we go.
And his son, Tyler Coe, does that podcast, Cocaine and Rhinestones.
It's a brilliant podcast.
His son's really sharp friendly.
It says airdrop code required.
And so that's how you decide things, just based on what's interesting?
Just like I don't know how else to decide things.
Look at that.
David Allen Coe, look at his bell buckle.
Look at that bell buckle.
Oh, yeah.
Scary looking dude with a dummy.
His son, Tyler, is like, I thought that thing was real when I was growing up.
You know, it's because he made it seem that way.
Well, there's a weird connection between a really good ventriloquist and their dummy that gets very odd.
Yeah.
It's like in the Twilight Zone episode where the guy has the dummy.
Do you ever see that?
No.
Oh, it's great.
It's a Twilight Zone episode where the dummy and the guy are having conversations when no one's around.
The dummy is alive.
And then I think the dummy kills the guy.
And then, but I had a guy that I used to work with way back in the day.
His name was Otto and George.
And he was a ventriloquist comedy act.
And George was the dummy, and Otto was the guy.
And Otto would be like, I can't believe you're saying these things.
And George would say, like, really fucked up.
And George was an evil-looking dummy with like crazy eyebrows.
He was a legend, like a comedy legend.
That's Otto and George.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
They were a little too close.
It was a little close.
Like, he would be driving in the car, and George would be in the trunk, and he would tell the guy driving, pull over.
I got to check on George.
Like, he felt like he had to pull over and talk to the dummy.
And he'd get out by the side of the road, pop open the trunk, and hear him back there, like just fucking around with the dummy, like looking at it, talking to it.
Then he'd put it back in and drive off.
Like, he would get in his head that the dummy needed to be checked on.
How does a guy like that operate in life?
I mean, he's dead now, unfortunately.
We all end up that way.
He partied hard.
Right.
Like, he had he was an enthusiast.
Relationships?
I don't know.
I mean, I never heard about him being married or anything like that.
I don't believe he had any children.
But he was nuts.
He was like, it was a, like, I never got to know him all that well.
It was, I worked with him a ton of times, but it was always like, and he's like, hey, Joe, how are you?
You know, he'd have his dummy there.
But you would just, everybody would go to the back of the room when Otto would go on stage.
We'd all want to watch.
That was his relationship, the dummy.
Well, I was, you know, I don't know if he had other relationships, but that was a big one.
And one time he was going back and forth with some guy in the audience, and the dummy was saying horrible things to this guy.
And the guy stabbed the dummy.
The guy jumped up on stage and stabbed the dummy.
It was at Dangerfields.
Yeah, I think it was at Dangerfields.
What a brilliant mood.
Yeah.
That's inspired.
Yeah, I mean, he was a part of the program.
The guy was a part of the performance.
Jumped up and stabbed the dummy.
Because he would just say.
That's probably worse than stabbing him.
You know, his heartbroke.
Well, I mean, you know, I'm assuming the guy was doing it for fun, but unless he thought the dummy was actually the problem.
That critical thinking.
I think they're actually doing a documentary on Otto and George.
Really?
Yeah, I think someone's working on that right now.
So that would be interesting.
He was a legend on the East Coast during the 1980s and the 1990s.
Like we all knew Otto and George.
Wow.
I completely missed that.
Yeah, but like a lot of people that are brilliant, he was out of his fucking mind and never really got traction in terms of like a real national career.
But he was very funny and a really good joke writer.
He was a funny guy.
Yeah.
Yeah, because they don't have that little extra side of them.
Business part.
Yeah.
The business part was missing.
Yeah.
He was just a maniacal genius.
I have something to do after this.
I'm going to look up Otto and George.
Yeah, it's something to look up.
Listen, man, good luck on Fear Factor.
Thank you.
I hope it runs another 148 episodes, just like when we did it back in the day, and I hope nobody gets hurt.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
I appreciate you having me on.
Oh, my pleasure.
It's great to meet you, man.
You've entertained the fuck out of me over the years.