#2036 - Kurt Angle

24:50The men, I mean, you want to talk about toughness. The toughness of progress, the mentality that you have to have to be able to do 260 plus nights a year. That's insane. Yeah, you know what? I wouldn't say you're a badass. I think that you're, well, you're a glutton for punishment. You're abusing yourself. Yeah. That's what it is. You're not, you're not beating out people. You're, you're beating yourself up. That's what it is. Yeah. But you can do it over and over. That's just the fact that you knew you had a broken neck going into that match with Brock. That's, who the fuck does that? I don't know.

25:26When you look back on it now, is there anything you would have changed?

25:32Well, throughout my career, was there anything that I would change? Yeah. Well, we'll get into this topic, I guess. After I broke my neck the second time, the first time in WWE, I was introduced to painkillers. And when I started taking them, I really liked it. I mean, it, it, it, it massed the pain. I couldn't feel the pain. It kind of gave me an energetic feel. It didn't make me feel nauseous like it does a lot of people. And I started taking, I was taking one every four to six hours like I was told. But after a while, you built a tolerance and one doesn't work anymore. Then you have to take two, then two, let the four, four, let the eight.

26:10This was extra strength, bike it in. The oxygen cottons are a lot more powerful than the bike it in. But I was taking 65 extra strength, bike it in a day. Whoa. That's how I had a control, I got. And I was hiding it from the company. And, and I mean, it was, I was in serious trouble. And is that even make you high at that point? Is it just keep you from going in with the withdrawals? It kept me from going through withdrawals, but there were times where I passed out. I mean, the company knew some of my friends knew. You know, I'll give you an example. I, there was one point that this is how, how bad it got.

26:50There was one point in my career where I, my brother called me. I was at a house show, an untelvedad show for WWE. It was the night before I was going to have the biggest match in my career with Brock Lesnar. The next day, it was an Iron Man match on SmackDown. And my brother calls me and says, hey, your sister just out of a heroin overdose. And it crushed me. I mean, I, I was, I was crying. I was in such pain thinking about my sister who was only 40 years old, dying from heroin overdose. And the thing is, I wasn't able to talk to her because I told her eight months prior. If she doesn't get clean, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna talk to you.

27:35So I didn't talk to her for eight months. And then this happens. And I was, so here I am in the hotel room. And I look at my pills. I said, fuck it. I took 20 of them through my mouth, chewed them up and swelled them. Oh my God. I didn't wake up till five o 'clock in the afternoon next day. And I had the biggest match in my career. Oh my God. That night. So what time did you have to beat of the arena and did you do it? Well, we had to be there at one, but I didn't get there till five thirty. Right. Yeah. But yeah, I ended up doing it. The WWE was trying to call me the whole time. They were like, they wanted to tell me that, hey, you can go home playing a funeral for your sister.

28:12You don't have to do this match. But I kept thinking, I know my sister would want me to. And I knew that I wouldn't have to feel that pain of losing my sister, at least for that hour. So I went ahead and did it. And it was actually one of my best performances in my career, which is kind of crazy. But that was a really rough time. And the painkillers are the one thing that I do regret I did in the company. I wish I was never introduced to them. But do you think you had to take them? I mean, it sounds like you weren't such excruciating pain all the time. There were times I needed to take them and there were times I didn't.

28:48But I was so far deep into it that I had to. I mean, I'm not gonna lie to you. I would go to sleep at night. I would have fifteen pills sitting on the desk next to me for when I wake up, because I knew I was gonna have withdrawal when I got up. I wake up sweating, shaking, and I grab those, throw them them off, chew them up and swallow. Fifteen at a time. Wow. Yeah. Most people at fifteen in time were killing you. Well, they killed me. I, you know, I took twenty at one time when my sister died. So I've been really lucky. I've been blessed. I honestly, I don't think I should be here today. How did you get off of them?

29:27Okay. Well, what happened was I left the WWE because they wanted me to go to rehab. I didn't want to go. So I ended up going to another company called Impact Wrestling. And I got my painkiller problem under control there because I got, I found a doctor that got me on MS -Contin. There are two morphine pills. They're very tiny, but they'll keep you from going through a draw. So I would take one in the morning one at night and no more painkillers. They were painkiller killers because they were morphine, but they were high dose. It was just two of them that I had to take. Well, I started having anxiety about breaking my neck over and over again, so they put me on Xanax.

30:04Oh, okay. So now I'm taking Xanax. And then I switched to TNA Impact Wrestling and everybody drank there. So I started drinking alcohol. So I'm mixing and having these cocktails. And I'm so out of control that I'm driving, okay, from town to town, drinking a 12 pack of beer. And I got four DUIs in five years. I lost my reputation. Everything I worked for, I was at the lowest point in my life. And I remember calling my wife from jail after my fourth DUI. And she said, listen, I can't do this anymore. You either go to rehab or I'm taking the kids and I'm leaving. And so I went to rehab because I want to lose my wife and my kids.

30:41And I was scared and rehab. I learned he thought I was so nervous. The first of all, the withdrawal was the worst experience I ever had. I'll never go through that again because I'm never going to take another painkiller. That was the worst thing I've ever done or drink another drop of alcohol. That was the absolutely worst thing I've ever been through. And I forget what I was going to say though. So with the rehab, how do they get you off of it? They don't do it cold turkey, right? How do they do? Yes, they do. Yes, they do. I thought they were going to weep me off. That's right. They put you in a room and let you sleep and they check on you every couple hours.

31:19How many days? About six days for me to go through the withdrawal symptoms. Oh my god. It seemed like forever. It seemed like six months. You just in a room by yourself. Yeah. Just thinking. Yeah. And you know what? And you want to stay in there. And they start forcing you out. You got to come move around. You got to come out and talk to people. You got to live your life. And you're so exhausted for the first two and a half weeks. I didn't want to move. I just want to stay in my bed. Wow. But they were forcing me to get out of bed and be a converse or conversating with people and trying to go and eat and go to meetings and do all that stuff you do in rehab.

31:58So it was really tough. How long did it take? This episode is brought to you by Buffalo Trace Distillery. Actually have some Buffalo Trace cigars here they just sent me. One of the world's most award -winning distilleries that's been making whiskey the same way for more than 200 years. Made as a tribute to the rugged free spirited pioneers who blaze their own trail to new frontiers. It embodies the perfectly untamed spirit of independence. It defines what an award -winning bourbon should be. Age nearly twice as long as competitors in new charred white oak barrels and bottled at 90 proof, Buffalo Trace is the perfect bourbon to be enjoyed in any way, anywhere.

32:49And the taste, it's damn good. It's bold and sophisticated yet incredibly smooth finishing long and deep. It's authentically American representing uncompromising quality for the rugged, the powerful and the passionate. Tap the banner to learn more or visit buffalotracedustillery .com. That's buffalotracedustillery .com. Distilled, aged and bottled by Buffalo Trace Distillery, 90 proof. Franklin County, Kentucky, Buffalo Trace, American, family -owned, independent and perfectly untamed. What do you feel normal? Well, I would say two weeks where I really felt normal, but the thing is, last two weeks, because I spent a month on rehab, last two weeks I was so nervous that I was going to fuck up again.

33:42Like, I literally didn't want to leave rehab. I was scared that I was going to go back to it right when I got out. So many guys do. That's why I hear all these stories and I'm like, oh, it's going to happen to you too, man. But the one thing that kept going across in my mind was going through a draw. I don't want to do that again. And I know if I start taking them, I'm going to have to experience that again and I don't want to. It was that bad. It was that bad. What does it like? What does the draw feel like? Okay, you're sweating because you're hot and you're cold at the same time. You're shedding your pants.

34:17You're throwing up. You can't think straight. Your body's shaking. You're getting hot sweats, cold sweats. Everything's, you feel like you don't have anything inside of you. No inside. No organs, nothing. You feel like you're hollow. It's just the craziest thing. It's the most painful thing I've ever gone through. And, you know, I'm sure people have been in a lot more pain than that with certain things they've had done to themselves. But for me, that was the worst. What's crazy is when you think about how mentally strong you are, how difficult it is for you to go through that. Now, think of the average person.

34:54You know, have you seen that pain killer show on Netflix? I watched some of it. Yeah. Fucking what they did to this country is so crazy. Oh, I know. They're advertising it. Hey, this is the best drug since whatever. And, you know, this will keep you, you know, keep you moving every day and give you a healthy lifestyle. Meanwhile, they didn't tell you that they're opiates and they're addictive. Yeah. They could kill you. Yeah. The one to start and the one to stay with. What was the slogan that they used, Jamie? Do you remember? We talked to Peter Burke who made that show. And, you know, he had obviously had to do a lot of research on the Sackler family and what they did and how they engineered this and how they knew that.

35:36I mean, people weren't just taking pain killers back then. It was a normal thing. Right. You know, like when I was a kid, we talked about this. When I was a kid, for someone to take heroin was crazy. We found out someone was taking heroin. Like, Jesus Christ, Mike's taking heroin. Right. But when those pills came around, because it was prescribed by a doctor, everybody's like, it's fine. It's okay. I thought it was too. You know, this is legal. My doctor's giving it to me. This is what I need. But I knew, you know, after I started taking more than four and I was taking five, six, seven, eight.

36:09I knew I wasn't doing the right thing. I knew that I was going against what the doctors wanted. Because, you know what I would do? I literally, I had 12 doctors that I was calling. Oh. And so, and I had 12 different pharmacies because you can't go to the same pharmacy twice in one month. Oh, my God. Okay. And I had a Mexican contact where I got them illegally. Oh, my God. So, I was getting about 2700 pills a month. Oh, my God. That is, that is, you know what? That's all you think about. That's all you think about is how you're going to get your drug the next time. So, I have this calendar and every day it tells me which doctor to contact or contact your Mexican contact down in Mexico.

36:51So, I have all these things set up so that I can get what I need. And it takes over your life. Wow. You no longer live in your life. You're marriage. You know, you're not worried about your marriage, your kids, your job, nothing. You're just worried about how you're going to get the drugs. God.

37:12So crazy. And it's so crazy that this didn't exist. This didn't exist in America till what, a couple decades ago? Yeah. When it started? Yeah. Now, who's the people that... The Sackler family. Okay. They fill you with Purdue or... Yes. Purdue Pharma. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The story from the documentary sensational, the series on Netflix is sensational. And it just shows how fucking evil. Evil. Well, I wonder if they actually knew the dangers that were involved when they first started. It seems like they knew. They did. It seems that they knew a lot. The absolutely new was addictive. That's why the FDA wouldn't approve it.

37:52And then they took this guy. There was one guy from the FDA that approved it. And this guy would not approve it. He was like, this is heroin. Like, I'm not going to approve this. And then they took this guy and they took him to a fucking hotel. And they had him in a hotel for two days. I don't know what they did. Like, no one knows what they did in this hotel for two days. But after the two days, he came out and instead of saying it's non -addictive, for the first time ever, they said it is believed to not be addictive. Wow. It's like somebody said it. Like somebody believes it. Do you believe it?

38:28Yeah, I don't think it's addictive. Okay, it's believed to not be addictive. I mean, to use that sort of terminology, you just need one person. Yeah, or someone. Yeah. It's just approval for one person. For one of the most dangerous drugs that this country's ever experienced. It is the most dangerous. Yeah. You look at the amount of people that have died from it. I mean, somewhere, the opiate overdoses in America are somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 ,000 a year, which is so crazy. So in 10 years, a million people died from this stuff. Wow. And who knows how many people committed suicide? How many people died from car accidents?

39:00How many lives and families were wrecked? Yeah, the pay goes being affiliated with that too, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So many. And it's just insane. It's insane how much power money has. And that a pharmaceutical company could influence people in that way. And in this documentary, they show, in the docu -series, or they show how they did it. And it's scary because a lot of those doctors, you know, when they're younger or whatever, they're like, I want to help people. I want to make people feel better. I want to help humans. And then they're in the business a little bit, and they realize, well, if you want a vacation or if you want a yacht, if you want to this, you got to play the game.

39:40Yeah. Also, you have liability insurance. You also have medical school bills. You have the cost of running your business. It becomes like the stock market. It becomes like anything else where you're just thinking about numbers. You're not thinking about people. It's not your responsibility. And the crazy thing is then they would shame the people when they would, when there was a strategy they had to say, oh, you're a drug addict. It's not the pills on a problem. You're a drug addict. You're an addict. And the people are, oh, oh my drug addict. Like, no, they turn you into one. Everybody's a drug addict.

40:16If you give them 20 fucking pills a day, they all become drug addicts. Every human being, every human being, if you give them oxy -contin all day, they will become that. Everybody has the ability to be a drug addict. Yeah, I believe everyone. I think everyone. I had a wisdom tooth taken out like a decade ago. And this doctor was so nice. He was like a cool smart guy. And he's like, I'm going to send you home with these 12 vikin or whatever they were. And if you feel pain, take one or two of them. You'll be great. And I started to feel pain like four, six hours after. I remember it was the day that the WWE network came out.

40:53Because I got it. I'm like, this will be fun to watch, catch up on old stuff, which it was. It was amazing when that debuted. But anyway, so I have that on. Pain starts kicking in and I take a half of one, just a half. And 20 minutes later, I just start sweating and smiling like a super villain. I mean, I could not take the smile off of my face. I was just in glory. And immediately I'm like, this is bad. And even though I had never been happier, like my body was just, it was like, an just an overall orgasm for the entire mind body. I'm going to be down here, toes. Your fingertips are sweating with excitement.

41:35And I went and I flushed those other whatever, nine and a half or eleven and a half pills down the toilet. I knew immediately. I'm like, this is terrible. Good for you. I mean, even if I would have taken the whole one, I probably would have been, I could have changed my fucking entire life right then and there. Easy. Yeah. Well, they weren't around when I got my first knee surgery. But when I got my first knee surgery when I was in the hospital, they had me on a morphine drip. And I remember lying in that hospital bed feeling so good. I was like, this is amazing. And I had a ACL reconstruction where they did the patellite tendon graph.

42:12Right? So, you know, they cut your knee open, they take a slice of your patellite tendon, and then they screw it in where your ACL used to be. And then they have you on this constant motion machine while you're in the hospital bed. So this thing is extending your knee and closing now. And then you had a button and you hit the button and the morphine drips. And I'm just lying in bed. I should have been an agony and I'm like, weee. No way to me. There had to be a limitation to what you could. Yeah, imagine. I don't know. I mean, we're talking 1993. I don't know. Oh, there might not have been a little bit of a change.

42:43That was my first one. And my second one, my second knee surgery I got was in 2nd, my second ACL reconstruction. I got was in 2003, I think. And maybe four. And that time I didn't take anything. I was like, I'm not taking it shit. Because I don't like the way those things make me feel. I don't like it and I'm scared. I like it too much. Yeah, but I had friends in high school that were addicted to drugs. So I would before I was 30 years old, oh, it did was drink. I would occasionally have, you know, I'd smoked pop maybe like six times until I was like 30 years old. And then when I had surgery, I was like, I just associated pain pills and that stuff with your life falling apart.

43:27Luckily, because I know how good it. But Peter Berg was talking about that. He took one recreationally and he's like, this is amazing. He's like, oh my God, I can never do that again. Because it's fucking, because it's just too good. It's too good. And that's the problem. Too many people that get hooked on that stuff. The problem is their life is shit because they've been a drug addict. And then they get off of it. And so they're super depressed because their life is terrible because they wrecked their life. And the only thing that makes them feel good is the drugs. Yeah, you're absolutely right.

43:56And no one can tell you any different. No one can fix you. You got to kind of do it yourself. Your family can tell you. You got to stop doing drugs. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you go buy someone. It's all you. And it's wild. It only takes one charismatic, smart, sounding, seeming doctor. Because I've always avoided drugs as well. And it was just one orthodontist. It's like, yeah, no problem whatsoever. Just take one of these. You're going to think it's got to be, you have no worries. No problem. They'll give them to you even if you're not in pain. That's what's crazy. I had a nose operation.

44:33I had deviate septum fix. And my doctor prescribed me two different kinds of pain killers. And I was like, I'm not in pain. And he's like, but you might be. I'm like, Jesus Christ. I'm like, I'm not feeling this. He's pushing them on you. Yeah, he was pushing them on me. He's telling me to take him. These guys want to be one of the 12 doctors on a list. Well, if you get their kickbacks. If you're supposed to like, those numbers, you got to keep those numbers coming in. They'll come to, hey, buddy. What's going on? So they actually do get paid. Oh, yes. Wow. Yeah, there's, there's some sort of kickbacks.

45:03And there's also bribes. And the bribes are in the form of vacations and dinners. And my wife's nurse, my wife's mother, rather, was a nurse. And she would say that the pharmaceutical reps would come to the, to the clinic, to the hospital. And they would like, take everybody to dinner. Come on. We're going to take you to dinner. They take him out. There's nice, steak dinners and everybody would eat whatever you want. Yeah. Well, nice bottle of wine. And so like they were on the side of these pharmaceutical drug companies. So when the patients would say, hey, what do you think about that? They would go, oh, you should take it.

45:36It's very good. It's very good. It's a good company. So it's just you build loyalty with these people. You know, Brigham from Ways to Well. Brigham started off his career. He's a good buddy of ours who now owns a stem cell clinic. And you know, now he's into wellness and prescrib's peptides. It's the end of the United States. Yeah, he's in Austin. Okay. And you know, back then when he was a pharmaceutical drug rep, it was all about relationships with the people. Like you would go to the kids games. You would know all these people. You would know all the doctors and nurses. You had to be on a first name, but you were their friend.

46:13And so the more they liked you, the more likely they were to prescribe your drugs, the more they would give it out to people. And they were building trust. Building trust. And in painkiller, the Netflix series, they hire these really hot young girls that were the representatives that would go to the doctors and sell this stuff and bring the brochures and they had a little spiel at the same cell. It's crazy. It's crazy what they did. I mean, they followed the law. Look, if you want to be an evil sociopath, it's really that the way they did it was. That's the way to do it. It's the most effective way to make a lot of money.

46:47They made billions. And you know what? They didn't break the law, I guess. Sort of kind of. But what's interesting now is because of the Netflix series, they were going to sign some sort of a deal where they give six billion dollars and they were going to have immunity prosecution. And a judge looked at it after the series and went, hold on. We're not signing off on this. Like, we need to find out what the fuck is going on. Like, what did you guys do? Like, what did you do to the world? What did you do to the country? Yeah. So they look for more money. Well, they're not just looking for more money.

47:18They're now talking about criminal prosecution. I don't know what's going to happen. I mean, it's like you would like people to be help responsible for it. But unfortunately, they have so much money they can pay the lawmakers. They can pay the Congress. They can do anything. It's very weird. It's very weird to they allow them to, I mean, it's just, it's evil. It's really evil. They ruin the lives of untold millions of people. I don't know if I could ever do something like that. Of course you couldn't. Of course you come up with something that I know people are going to get addicted to. And lie to them.

47:50I mean, one of those things where you become accustomed to it because everyone like you is doing it and it becomes part of what you do. You know, I think it's just people adapt to whatever environment they're in. And if your environment is in getting pills to people, that's your job. Your job is to get pills to people. Right. The farmers to drug reps, they come to you. That's all they're thinking of. Yeah. That's how I get my pills to the sky. Yeah. That's what your job is. Your job is to do that. Your job is not to like help these people. There was a one doctor in the series that was like an ethical doctor that kicked the lady out of his clinic.

48:24He's like, the fuck out of here. You're selling heroin. Wow. It's an interesting scene because like that's rare. Because most doctors are rule followers. You got to think most doctors. They go to college, they get a medical degree, they go to medical school to do the residency. Everything is by the book. You got to do what they say to do. You know, and then you're working for a hospital which I, this is how naive I was. I didn't even know that most hospitals are privately owned. I didn't know that there were four profit businesses that tried to push medicine on people. I didn't know that. I thought they're just here to help you.

48:59Like, wouldn't that be the best thing? Like if hospitals were just places where the doctors get paid well because they're really good at their job, but what they're trying to do is make you better. No, those hospitals are trying to make as much money as possible. They want to keep you in as much as possible, prescribe as much medication as possible. You know what? I'll give you an example of that. It's not really drug related. But I went to a hospital. I had pneumonia. And they accidentally gave me the hospital bill of everything that they used on me. And all my, like, like if I had like a ginger ale, die of ginger ale, there's a little six ounce, there's little ones.

49:35I had like 20 of them while I was there. They were charging $12 for each one of those. They had on the bill like the linen, what the linen costs. And this and that linen was $200. Just the bed sheets. Like they, like they, I saw all this stuff on this bill. The bill ended up being for five days. It was $165 ,000. Wow. How could you spend $165 ,000 just laying in a hospital bed? You know, there's 73 meals a day. You can't get a jail. Yeah. That's it. I mean, $167 ,000. It's ridiculous. It's a business. Yeah, that's what's crazy about business, right? Businesses, people just want to make the most money possible.

50:15It's fucking crazy with involving pills and people's health. Yeah. God. So how many years have you been clean now? 12. 12 years. That's awesome. Congratulations. Yeah. That must be very nice. Yeah, it's nice. You know, I don't have a lot of, um, thank God I don't have a lot of triggers anymore. I used to when I had, because I was going through a lot of pain. And I had my knees replaced. I had my back surgery. So I'm actually on the men now. I think I've had the shoulder replaced too. I had them replaced a year ago. How'd that go? Really good. Really good. I was literally, the doctor, my doctor was really progressive.

50:57Like he, he got me out of bed. The day of surgery had me walking around. It was ridiculous. Did you do one at a time? I'm both at the same time. Both at the same time. Oh my God. You're walking around with two new news. I left the hospital without using anything. I walked out of the hospital. Oh. The next day. Yeah. He wanted me to walk up the steps and down the steps. Wow. That was crazy. I mean, I, it didn't take me long to recover though. Probably four or five months. You usually take a year, but I did it in probably four or five months. Wow. Yeah. Wow. With no painkillers. No painkillers. No.

51:32Do you take CBD or anything like that? I tried CBD. It doesn't really work on me. But I think the volume of pain you're dealing with is probably. Yeah. I don't know how to say that. I mean, your zero weight is zero weight OD on CBD. No, no, no, I don't believe so. Might be. I mean, it might be bad for you. As I look at a killcloth with CBD and it's just, this is 25 milligrams. This is nothing. Yeah. It's, um, CBD is like for people that have like mild arthritis and, you know, general discomfort and inflammation. It's, it's not for what you were dealing with. Right. I mean, shoulder replacements, knee replacements, disc replacements.

52:09I have to have, uh, I can't wait to get my neck done. I mean, I need that number of that doctor, man. That's all I'm thinking about right now, gentlemen. Yeah. Well, as soon as we get out of here, I'll contact Al Jo and try to get that hooked up and find out because his is amazing. I mean, the fact that he was able to get that surgery, I believe Chris Widenlin got the same surgery. I don't know if it's from the same doctor, but several guys in the UFC have gotten that surgery. You know what John Cena had it too. Oh, yeah. I believe, but his was a rubber desk. Interesting. Yeah. How long ago was this?

52:40Probably seven or eight years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Next surgery. I believe he had a rubber desk put in his neck. Hmm. And I'm not so sure that's going to last as long as the other one that the doctor that does yours. Yeah. Yeah. That's the scary things they'll tell you. Like we'll replace something, whether it's a hip or whatever, but in 20 years, you're going to need a new one. I know. I know. They told me to take care of your knees because they won't last forever. What did they give you like a timeline? 15, 20. But I told them, can I run on them? They said, no, but I run on them. Jesus, Kurt. You do a lot of cardio to make up for all the stuff that you can't do.

53:21I do. I run. I only run two miles two or three days a week because it because of my knees. Yeah. I don't want to overdo it because I know the, you know, but probably go to shit in a year or two if I abuse them too much. So I do very little. You know, I run a couple of miles three days a week. Not a lot. You know, as bad as the pharmaceutical drug companies are in pushing pain killers, thank God the medical, like the technological side of it, of the medical community is developing. It is. Incredible replacements. That's crazy. Yeah. I've been new knees, new shoulders. Yeah. Like Matt Sarah, who is UFC World Trade Champion, he's just got his knee replaced.

54:01He's back to Jiu -Jitsu, training again hard. He's going to get his other one done. I mean, it's kind of incredible. Now, will he compete again? No. He's not competing anymore. But he's 50, you know, close to it at least. You know, what he's doing is just training and doing normal stuff. But he's. At least he can do what he was doing before. Yeah. At least he can do what he's doing before. I mean, there's a lot of guys that they do some pretty high level athletics with knee replacements, which is pretty crazy. Does it hurt? Like, what does it, what do the knees feel like? No, but you know what, they're, they kind of, they only bend.

54:34You can't go sideways with them. Oh, really? It's almost like, it's like done like this. It's like a hinge. Yeah. So it doesn't twist. So yeah, you can't really do like, left to right. No, not real well. Not real well. But yeah, it's, it's kind of like this. It's insane because, you know, like the different, we've got all the wrestlers that we've had on. All unbelievable athletes, right? But the Undertaker, Rick Flair, Hulk Hogan, especially mostly known for their big characters, the entertainment side of things. And Kurt's also known for that. But really Kurt is considered, I mean, Triple H, John Cena.

55:14They've all said that he is the best athlete in the history of the sport. So compared to the people that we've had on, you've done more. Like you're, he was throwing people more and landing on his head more and doing longer matches at the peak of it all. And so it's wild to hear, you know, a lot of them have had replacements and this and that. But it's almost a miracle that that's all that you've had. Yeah, you know what, especially with everything that I've gone through, it is really brutal. I probably, I did, I wrestled pro wrestling. I think it was 19 years and I did amateur for about 22. And so I mean, both of them have affected me.

56:01I mean, I'm not gonna lie to you. And, you know, I had probably eight knee injuries and four surgeries in college and high school. So mostly meniscus stuff? Yeah, I had, I had one was ACL, but most of it was meniscus. I also blew out my PCO and I never had a replaced. Oh, geez. Still, I could, that's the, well, now they gave me knee replacement. It doesn't really matter. Right. Yeah. But I had my knee, I could shift my leg like three inches back here. Wow. It was, it was really loose because my PCO wasn't there anymore. That's insane. And you were wrestling with that. Yeah. See, that, you know, anyone that was a complain.

56:4640 hours a week, which a long week. I'm so tired. Like this, this levels, this levels to what people have to tolerate in this life. What they have to endure. But I guess going through all that, you could probably go through basically anything. I don't know, man, bring it on. I've gone through a lot of shit, man. Wow. What are you doing these days to keep yourself occupied? Well, I just finished a movie called, I will be done. It's a really good independent movie. And I have a movie that I'm going to be doing at the beginning next year with Michael Tadro's Jr. Brandico Tour is going to be in it.

57:30Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to that. So I've been doing some of that stuff. I run a podcast, the Kyrangle show. Oh, nice. Yeah. And I also own a supplement company. I have a thing called a company called Physically Fit. And we have a product called Smart Snacks. They're little crispy protein bites. There are a bunch of flavors, 11 different flavors. They're really good high protein low carbohydrate. They're doing pretty well right now. We're going to go, we're going into Walmart. We're in the quick fill stores. A bunch of grocery stores, a bunch of convenience stores. So they're doing okay.

58:16So you got a website that people can go to to get that. Yeah, Physically Fit .com. Physically Fit .com. How did you get that? That's incredible. Yeah. How did you get that? That's a fucking incredible URL. It is. You know what? That's what people, when they look, when they want to get in shape, the first thing they type up is, how do I get Physically Fit? Yeah. The word of first thing that pops up. It was clever on my icon or spark to do that. That's very clever. So what are those chicks in? What is that? Chicken snacks. Chicken snacks. Those are chicken protein. They're made with chicken. The ones weigh protein at the top.

58:55Those are weigh protein. And I believe, I think they're weigh protein. They might be the organic plant protein. Crispy protein bites. So you sell all kinds of stuff. Yeah, well, we just sell the protein bites. Oh, they're all different. One's chicken, one's plant, one's weight. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, that's a great URL. Okay. So go to PhysicallyFit .com, folks. Go ahead and get some of that. So that's great that you're doing movies, too. Miranda Go Tour is probably the best example of a UFC fighter that went from, you know, fighting to, I mean, wrestling and fighting and movies. Yeah, I mean, he's done a great job.

59:37He has. He's done a great job. I know he's been doing, he's what? He's done two expendable movies? How many of them are there? Gosh, there's like, he's the fourth lot. Is there 11 or 12? There's four of them. I said 11 or 12. It's hilarious. You watch these really old guys kicking the shit out of them. I know, I know. I'm one of them now. They ever picked me to do it. I'm, I'm forget to be 55. So it's just funny that they're all over 50 over 60. Yeah. We'll stall on. Yeah. He looks great. He does look great. He's a canary in the coal mine. Yes, he knows. He's like, keep it going as long as that guy has.

1:00:18He broke his neck on one of those. I think he got the head. He's the best dad. Yeah. He got fusion and everything. Yeah. Yeah. He was doing a stunt because he was doing his own stunts and he got thrown into a wall or something. That's not his neck. I guess he got, he was getting a little too old and he stuck with it a little bit too long. Well, he's hardcore. You know, imagine want to do your own stunts when you're seven days. You told me to go. Let's go. It's fucking psycho. I'm a big still of fan. How can you not be? Yeah. I mean, the guy can act too. That's what's crazy about still like that movie Copland.

1:00:56You ever see that movie Copland? Good movie. Very good movie man. It was like one of his first movies where, you know, he gained weight. He actually got fat for that movie on purpose, like just to show like what he's not just all about. God, he probably gained 40 or 50 pounds. And how do tremendous performance like as an actor, just as an actor like. And he's always used to dieting down his movies. Looking ripped, taking a shirt off. He's done a lot of those movies too obviously. But, you know, that was a very impressive movie. The fact that he needs to kind of be hard for a guy like that too, is your whole career, you're looking great.

1:01:33Shredding. Oh yeah. And then I'm sure it's set him into a little bit of a depression. We answered the probably. But then you probably also enjoyed the accolades from the movie, because a lot of people really respected him after that. For a lot of those like action guys, they don't, you know, that's like the thing they don't get respect for. They're actually an ability. The agility is incredible. I watched this Gary Oldman, I don't know if I told you about this. I found this Gary Oldman, like there's like a nine minute video on YouTube of him and all of his different characters that he's done. And you can't, you can't even tell it's him, 80 % of the guy is such a freak.

1:02:13Yeah, true romance. Oh God. And that's just one of them. Just one of them. How about Dracula? Oh. Yeah, he was really good. He was fucking incredible. He played Old Dracula and Young Dracula in the same movie. Yeah. He was so versatile. Yeah. I think he's kind of, is he retired from acting? He might be one of those guys like, I don't fucking love him. There's a lot of those guys that just get so tired of being other people. Like, who am I? Right. Yeah, man. But his character, he really went way out there. Yeah, way out there. No two are anywhere near the same. Right. And it's the thing that you're watching, because it just switches every 20 or 30 seconds to a different thing.

1:02:51Yeah. And nothing, you know, so many people get kind of typecasted. Like, Christoph Waltz from Inglorious Bastards. That character that he played was so cool that it almost seems like in every movie they're trying to get him to do that again. Yeah. All right, you're going to be a villain in this. Right. You're going to be smooth talking and over -enunciating, you know, they try to like get it again. And it's so interesting, the guys that like test themselves and push themselves like that. It's got to be hard when your whole identity is wrapped up in pro wrestling to just stop. How difficult was it for you to just stop wrestling?

1:03:26It was hard. I mean, when you leave, you get depressed. You miss the action. You miss the fans' responses. It's... I understand why, you know, a lot of wrestlers have fell into depression. That start taking drugs. And their lives a lot quicker than, you know, other professions. But it is. It's a very addictive form of entertainment. I mean, once you're in it, you love it and you never want to leave it. And the problem is everybody gets to an age where they can't do it anymore. So, yeah, you have to come the grips with it. If you don't, you know, you're probably not going to survive much longer.

1:04:12But look at Ric Flair. You know what? He's living the dream. He's still Ric Flair every day. He's just not wrestling in the ring. He's just doing it in the streets everywhere. He's unbelievable. He's telling us about how you were partying with him the other day. Dude, so he's in town and he hits me up on a Sunday at noon. He's like, let's hit the streets tonight, show me the city. Let's have some drinks and pick up some babes. I'm like, okay. He goes, I'm done with this comic book signing at 5 p .m. I'm like, sweet. I'll meet you at 5. About a half hour later, he goes, I'm going to be done with the comic book signing at 130.

1:04:53That's Ric. So I go, I go. He's shabbed at the fence three and a half hours. I go, man. I go, okay. I'll meet you. Where do you want me to meet you? He's like at this hotel bar. I go to this hotel. I say, I find the first security guy. I know I go, where's the bar? And he points like that. It was just right over his shoulder. And I just see that white flanking hair. And there are on each side of him three and three. Just flight attendants, fucking nurses. I mean, just a gaggle of geese. And I'm walking up. And I'm like, this is like what you, what I've heard about forever. I'm like walking up to like a music video or the story or the cartoon of Rick Flair.

1:05:42And sure enough, he introduced this. These ladies work at Southwest Airlines. This one's a, this is that. And we, he goes, let's hit the streets. I'll get us a car. And he gets a car. He gives the guy a stack of hundreds. He goes, you're going to be our driver for the day. This random Uber driver's like, okay. He's like, you're going to be our driver. Oh, it's unbelievable. And he is just the man. He started, I mean, he was already pounding vodka cranberries. He's like, what do you want to drink? I'm like, I'll have what he's having. I haven't had a vodka cranberry since I was like 17 years old.

1:06:18And I swear to God, we went all day. We went from 130 to, he didn't leave me until like 8 p .m. He like knew his limit. He's like, I'm going to get back. He didn't seem drunk at all. He must have had 17. I think he's drunk all the time. That's what I think. And he's so nice to everybody. There's a part of me when you're, you know, I've been around so many big people for so long where I'm like, kind of, if they're with me, I'm like, kind of protective. Like, come on, give them some air. This and that. But he was just embracing everybody. He's so cool. So nice. And everyone's, everyone gravitates towards him.

1:06:59Walk a flock of flame. Rappers or like, I got anybody. Yeah. Walk a flock of flame. One of the good, great rappers shows up. He goes, yeah, Rick, I heard you were here. What's up? Let's hang out. Like people find out where he is and gravitate towards him. It is, it's everything you hear about. It's like being inside of a story. It's hard to describe. He's a lot of fun. He is a living legend. Yeah. He lives a gimmick 24 -7. Yeah. And he says he's making more money now. He is. He's the first cannabis company he ever made in Pro Wrestling. You know what? He told me when he was in WCW, he was only making 600 a year, 600 grand a year.

1:07:42Wow. And it's because when WCW bought out Crockett, the promotion down in the South, when they bought it out, they bought out Rick's contract. His contract was 600 grand. So the WCW kept it at that for the rest of Rick's career. Wow. Which was bullshit. Rick should have been getting paid four or five times that. So, you know, he always had money, but he was running out because he wasn't making as much as people thought he was. Right. And he was living that life. He lives a life he does. Whatever came in came in. He loves a life. Yeah. Well, he and a lot of these guys, they did the small circuit and then they came up and then they eventually got to the WDW.

1:08:25Or the WWF back then. You went from the Olympics right into like the big time. Yeah. Did you do any small shows to prepare? No. Okay. The crazy thing was I didn't even watch pro wrestling. Wow. So I was relatively new. When I called the WW1998, they offered me a contract in 1996, right after the Olympics. I went out and met with Vence and he gave me a multi -million dollar deal and threw it on a desk and he said, hey, 10 -year deal. Let's do it. I said, can I go home and think about it? So I went home and went to my agent and he grabbed the contract he threw in a trash. He was a former amateur wrestler, also an NFL football player, a former NFL player.

1:09:11His name's Ralph Sindrich. So he said, you're not going to do that crap. You're the real deal. I'll get you a better job. So he gets me a job as a sportscaster in Pittsburgh for Fox. And it was the worst experience of my life. I mean, I was really bad. And the thing is, it was a startup station, so I didn't get to rehearse. So the first night on the air, here I am. I'm anchoring the sports and my teleprompter goes out. And my scripts, when I went into the studio, I ran to the producer and they all went up in the air and told out of order. So when I put them down there out of order, so I'm looking at teleprompter to producers, says, just look at the teleprompter.

1:09:51Don't look at anything else. Just read it. And I go to read it and it goes black. It goes out. And I'm just sitting there for like a minute. And the producers, this card, say something, say anything. So I remembered like the first story was, Duke came basketball. They played the night. Let's go to the highlights because I didn't know what else to say. And so the next, the next sport I was, I had to guess what it was. And I guess it was baseball and it was actually football. So the whole segment turned out to be a disaster. That was my first night on the end. It didn't get any better. So anyway, so I spent a year there.

1:10:28So at the end of 1997, I started watching WWE and I fell in love with a character named Stone Cold Steve Austin. He was just kicking ass. I mean, he was, you know, he's flipping off his boss. I thought he was the coolest thing in the world. And so I decided to call the WWE in early 1998. And I said, is that contract still stand from 1996? They said, no, but you can come up and try out. So I went up and tried out. After the first day, I picked up on it pretty quickly. So they gave me contract. And I trained for about seven months. And they literally, they, they had me training. The first three months was a week a month, where I just went up to the WB.

1:11:07I went into their studio and I would train with a couple of wrestlers. And so I'd only do that one week a month for three months. And then the following four months, they sent me the Memphis to a smaller territory down the Memphis. And I worked there for four months, where I did one TV a week for four months. And then Vince brought me up on the TV. I was only work training for seven months. I wasn't ready to be on TV. And he wanted me to go on TV at that point in time. So I was like Vince, you want me to cut a promo tonight? I don't even know how to cut a promo. I didn't learn that down the Memphis.

1:11:46I barely, I did one or two promos in Memphis and they were horrible. And now Vince wants me to cut a promo for five minutes. And he, and he's gonna tell me it. He's not even gonna write down. He's gonna tell me what it is. And he wants me to go out there and do it. I'm like, holy shit, there's no way. So I said, okay, go tell me the promo. So he starts talking. And the whole time I'm just thinking, this is fucking long. This is really fucking long. I'm not gonna remember any of this. So when he gets done, I said Vince, I'm sorry, but I didn't hear a word you said. You're not repeating it again.

1:12:18He's down there telling you one more time and you gotta go out there and do it. You either sink or swim. Wow. So I went out and I did about 80 % right. And he was like, I think I have somebody here. I think it's a guy I can work with. So I was learning on the job and I was getting better and better every week. And Vince continued to push me. I mean, within three months, I was at the main event level. It was like, whoa, like what's going on here? Why am I getting, you know, why am I getting, you know, push so hard? And he just wanted to create another star. And he thought I had the ability to do it.

1:12:49And I was able to follow up on it. I did all the promos the right way. Did all the pre tapes, my matches were great. Did you get like a coach and how to do the promos? Like, how did you learn? No, no, I learned on the job. They were giving me promos. I had a great writer that wrote for me and I had a lot of funny shit. I didn't know what to do with them. Yeah, he did. It was a lot of that you and you and your writer laughing with each other. Like, does this confederate for me? So like the milk. Yeah. That's him. That was my writer, Brian Gowricks. He sprayed people with milk. I did a lot of stuff.

1:13:25I did a battle rap with John Cena. I did what else did I do? I did the sexy cart when I imitated Sean Michaels. There was like, I'll give you something that I did, for example. I was such an idiot. I always fucked up. There was one night where I was supposed to wrestle Ray Mysterio. I was like, Ray Mysterio, you're a boy in a man's world. And I'm a man who loves to play with boys. And I go, no, no, that's not what I meant to say. And then I would say something else and that would fuck me up too. I'd be like, no, not that either. So fans got to make fun of me and laugh with me. It was a really cool relationship I had with him.

1:14:06I was the bad guy but they kind of loved me. At one point in time, Tony was going to get hired by the WWE. But he didn't want to move to Connecticut. He was going to be one of the writers. Like tell that story. Because it's a kind of a crazy story. We almost, when you have to move there, you have to. Yeah, you have to move there. Some of them don't live there anymore. But they have to go up there like Ray after TV and stay up there for the whole week. Right. And they only go home for one day. Yeah. In Connecticut, which is absolute hell. And expensive as shit. Middle of nowhere. And yeah. I somehow, I came here, remember, it was so long ago, but I got this meeting with them.

1:14:44Somebody wanted to talk with me. They heard that I was a pro wrestling fan. And I just destroyed at this meeting. And I gave them a bunch of crazy ideas that I just had in the back of my head forever. Stuff for the undertaker to do, stuff for this, stuff for that. And I killed it at this meeting and they offered me a full -time job. But at the time I was already three, four, five years into stand -up comedy and working at the store, I devoted everything to stand -up comedy. So there's no way I could go backwards, especially for like a job with a boss and bosses and word on the street. Like Patrice O 'Neill, a great comedian, took the job.

1:15:20And famously, anybody who takes the job, they're like, it's hell. I know Patrice took that job. Oh, he was doing it. He was re -init. Oh, yeah. He went to Connecticut the whole deal? Well, they pay you so good. It's like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars because they make so much money. And the writers are so important because they're putting out so much content. Two, three shows a week, paper views, all of these big, long, drawn -out storylines like week after week. And they write six months ahead of time. And they rewrite the day up. So it's the nightmare. Vince will go, I hate it.

1:15:56Change everything. The day of famously. The an hour before. And as a real fan. It's happened many times. Yeah. Yeah. And you hear these things and it's like, God. You know, it would have been cool if it would have been cool. What I mean by that is like, if I could do it during the day and then take a train to New York City and do stand -up, that would have been fine. But it's not that kind of job. We need you in the office right now. Where are you? That type of thing. Right. So you could have had a gig. You would have to cancel your gig. But. That's the big man fired him six times. Yeah. Yeah.

1:16:30I'm afraid of this article I'm reading about right now. That's what they do. They fire you. Who's that fire six times? Pitrease because he had stand -up gaze conflicting with his WWE stuff and said he. And they hired him back. Yeah. It says Stephanie, you'd credulously fired him six times. Yeah. That's hilarious. I had no idea Patrease did that. Mm -hmm. I never heard that story. Yeah. I can't believe I have a mention. I can't believe I didn't know. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's the, it was the money, especially then. I mean, I was so broke it was crazy for me to turn down the job. I mean, I was fucking starving.

1:17:02This is like right before I start writing on the roasts and, and on television right before. And I'm not headlining yet. Couldn't sell a ticket to my name. Just some comedy store door guy. So like, I should have on paper. I am a moron for not taking the job, but it was a huge gamble that thank God paid off. Yeah, well, you believe in yourself. But yeah, I mean, it also would have been fun. It'd be fun to like have a clone of me and live that life for a bit, because I think I would have done some really crazy stuff. I think I would have worked my way up really fast and probably been. Oh, you would have been a mastermind at that stuff.

1:17:38Because you're such a fan. Yeah. And you're so good at writing shit for other people too. Yeah. You know, Brian Goverts, that's what he was. He was a huge fan. I don't know if you know who Brian is. Well, he's the one that he wrote for the rock for me, for Chris Jericho, Edson Christian. He would write for guys he had a certain chemistry with. Right. And he actually wrote a book this past year. And he's had a lot of success. Actually, you know who hired him? Stolen from the WLB. The rock. The rock he works for his production company now. Oh, nice. Yeah, seven bucks productions. I think that's where Brian is now.

1:18:14And that's what you were part of. This guy was part of peak entertainment. You look at Cena, the rock, Kurt Engel. This was all every Monday, every Sunday, every Thursday, every Friday. I mean, everybody's a star. They stayed stars. Hogan's movie career, while you know, he was in some stuff. It was always like, you know, kind of low budget tonight on the USA Network. A Hulk Hogan movie. Whereas, you know, the rock is fucking him. What is his number one, right? Yes, yes. And Cena and Batista are kicking ass. Yeah, Batista, exactly. And this is all his class. These are his people. Batista is doing some real movies.

1:18:56Yes, he's challenging himself. That glass onion movie? Yeah. That's a great fucking movie. Yeah, he was great in that. Yeah, he's, he's, he's talented. Very talented. No, it's crazy, man. He was like, I guess he was a dormant for a bar. And DC and, you know, he was always big jacked up dude. And someone came up doing, said, hey, he should be a pro wrestler. Look at him. He worked out. Yeah, worked out. He's doing, he's doing all these movies and just having a lot of success. And he seems to be okay physically. Like, he's gotten through it physically. I'm really surprised at how well he moves around, considering his age and, you know, what he's been able to go through.

1:19:38But it's crazy. I mean, he actually, he actually is like working out like he's 30 years old. That's crazy. Yeah, and he's probably about 55, 57 years old. Probably, and he looks great. It's just amazing that he's been able to do it without any of the real big injuries. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Because he wrestled for a long time. How long did he wrestle for? 20 years. Wow. That's incredible. That's really incredible. Any letter? Thank you. What is it like working for Vince? That guy's got to be a fucking... I mean, we need to get him in here. Yeah. You know what? That's a good idea. I love to get him in here.

1:20:16Especially now that he's got this relationship with the UFC. Now that there is that thing working?

1:20:25Yeah. You know what Vince is very, very talented. He's a workaholic though. Very, very, very much a workaholic. Oh, clearly. Yeah. He works seven days a week. Even when he's on vacation, he makes his writers go down to the vacation with him. So, there is a sitting in a hotel room or on the beach talking about work. Wow. And he's working 24 -7 days. And he's in a seven days. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what's crazy when he's done, he goes to work out when he gets home. Which, like, when he's on the road traveling, TVs are over at midnight. He'll go to the gym at 1 o 'clock, train till 3. He'll go to sleep from 4 to 6.

1:21:11Then he'll wake up and he can pick this, repeats the cycle. How? He only sleeps two hours a day. I don't know. That's real. How? He's the real deal. He's a workaholic man. He's a machine. And he's created an entire universe that people, generations and generations, grandfathers, their sons and their sons all have their favorite people and favorite things that have happened. I love the guy. I love the guy. He's always trainy right. I never had a problem with Vince. He is. I'm just glad he got the money he got because I never thought he was going to sell the company. I thought he would have to take it from his cold dad hands, pry it from his cold dad hands.

1:21:52You know, when he died, I really thought he was going to keep the company forever. And he saw the team the other day. He bought it. I can't remember the exact numbers, but for one million in whatever 1982 from his father, he bought it. And it's a nine billion. Yep, nine billion at the valuation last week. One million to nine billion. Wow. Yeah. He put his heart solid to it though, man. Obviously. It just goes to show you. Nobody becomes that successful unless they're fucking driven. Insane workaholic. There's no other way. You're absolutely right. That's crazy. No one works hard and he does. Two hours sleep in your seventies?

1:22:35Yeah. I know. I mean, I need eight now. I need eight. I just don't, I don't get it. I mean, it's incredible. I don't know how you function like that. He works out. Continuous flip. He's fucking jacked. He's jacked and he's in his seventies. Yeah, he actually might be a. How old is he? He's got to be close to the 80, right? It's pushing. Yeah. Let me see a picture of him now. That's fucking bananas. That's the real canary in the coal mine. Yes, he is. He just turned 78. 78. Yeah, yeah. 78 jacked. Okay. You know, you know, he told me when I came back to WWE, he said, uh, listen, um, I'm going to have this company for a lot longer than you think, Mr.

1:23:18Angle. I'm 73 right now. My mom lived to be 101. I plan on living to I'm 120. He said, so, uh, and he said, I'm never letting the company go. I'm always going to, I'm always going to be working here. Uh, and they're going to have to pull it from my cold pride, dead hands to my pride for my cold dead ants. He really, uh, Vince, uh, that's, that's what keeps him going. This is why I'm a little not nervous, but what's he going to do now? What's he going to do now? Cause his whole life was wrestling, wrestling, wrestling. Isn't he still involved in the company though? Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's still going to be stepped back from the creative position.

1:24:01Kind of, but that's what he says, right? Okay. That's what they sell. It's not true. You've got to wonder with him how much of it is a storyline. I'm back. Right. You damn it. If I want to done right, I have to do it myself. Yeah. Just see him fucking walk it. Yeah. And power walk. Yeah. I mean, he's just a fucking maniac. I mean, the head of creative on paper is Triple H who is, is his son in law, who I mean, that's the most like dominant. I mean, it's, that's his former employee, like he's got Triple H. No, no, I guess if Triple H has had a creative, that's his advantage. Look at him. The head of creative.

1:24:39Look at that picture of him in his 70s. That's his personal trainer that travels with him everywhere. All the way. Yeah. Yep. We're done at 3am. Wow. 3am. After raw. Wow. In same 3am workouts, despite being strong. Oh, I was in a long time. It was 3am. Yes, that was only two years ago. So there's 76 there with a fucking big motorcycle chain around his neck. He's jacked. Yes, man. That guy is incredible. That is incredible. That's incredible. It's just incredible that you can keep doing that. But I guess if you don't stop. You know, eat the right foods, take the right supplements, wink, wink. And just keep, keep, keep, make some chips to Mexico.

1:25:24You can keep that fucking trainer rolling. Like the fucking aerospace song. Train, get the rolling. Oh, not long. Look at him there. Squatting almost a thousand pounds. No, not a thousand pounds. Bell squat thousand pounds and 76. I mean, that's fucking bonkers. That's bonkers. Good for him. Fuck yeah. There's very few humans like that out there. There's only one chance. I could tell you that. There's only one Vince. Yeah. And he's the... I've seen him at his best in his worst and that guy, he's unbelievable. I mean, he is, he's the hardest working and most dedicated person I've ever been around.

1:26:02Like he really is. He sticks to his diet. He works all day. He makes sure he gets his workout in. Everything is like a line for him. Everything has to go a certain way for Vince. He has to have everything lined up just perfectly. You know, he's just a... He's an animal. He really is. He's an animal. Clearly. I mean, that's what he looks like. You don't look like that when you're 76 unless you're a fucking complete psycho. And again, the creativity. Like it never ends. He puts out two, three hours of content every Monday for 30... What is it? 35 years now or something? 30 something years. He's something to think about.

1:26:3930 years. He's two years younger than Biden. Wow. Wow, man. That's a big difference. Geez, the least. You know, everything. Not just his body, but the mental sharpness. The mental sharpness. I mean, that's just incredible. He's still sharp as a rock. I mean, he really has. Crazy. Yeah. I own rocks or sharp. A jade rock. A little Flintstone that they used to cut mammoth meat with. Diamond per hop. Yeah, something sharp. So, diamond is really nice sharp. They can be diamond drills. Diamond drill bits. Yeah, well, it's just hard, really. But yeah, I know what you're saying. It's just extraordinary when you see someone who's such an outlier.

1:27:27I mean, if you got all the 78 year old guys on earth, that's number one. Oh, yeah. 100%. Yeah. Like, if you had to ask me, like, who's the fittest, most driven person? On top of it, 78 year old guy like, that's big man. 100%. Who's competing with them? Who the fuck else? Who's out there? You would have heard of them. If there's another guy like that out there, you would have heard of them. No, you're right. There's only one bench. I know that for sure. Yeah. What a maniac. And with this new union, man, I mean, this is something that I've been talking about for a while. Is like the power of and how close the UFC and the WWE can be.

1:28:08But yeah, it's mostly going to be eye picture being a transfer from almost like a retirement party to go to the WWE. I mean, imagine what a, you know, D .S. brothers or something like that could do in pro wrestling. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I just don't see, well, I guess there are guys. I'm just wondering if I know that Dana and Vince, they didn't, okay, their contracts have specifically that you can't go to WWE. Or you can't go to UFC. Right. Like they're, they're like going against each other when they shouldn't be. They should be worried about AEW, W .O .B. should be worried about them.

1:28:54They're not the UFC. This merger, that's a part of the contract. Or a bellator, you know, no, before the merger, I don't know what's going on now. Right. But they were in their contracts, you couldn't cross over to UFC. Interesting. And UFC couldn't cross over to WWE. Interesting. That's what's crazy. And I, one's MMA and one's wrestling, you know. Yeah, I think Derek Lewis. Oh, yeah. Derek Lewis. Oh, yeah. He's the number one heavyweight that I would say could transfer over to WWE and be a fucking huge star. Oh, yeah. He's so funny. He's entertaining. Oh, my God. He's entertaining. And he's legit.

1:29:28You know, everybody would know. He's the most heavyweight knockouts in the history of the sport. And he's funny. Yeah. He's funny. He's giant. Funny is a big part of it, man. It's a big part of it. I'll tell you what, I think Conor McGregor could have done really well in it too. He might still. But he's got so much money. Yeah. I think it would be hard when the guy's got a half a billion in the bank. I know. Very hard to get a guy like that fucking gets slammed. You're not getting him out of that. Yeah. I mean, that's what's really impressive about like some of these guys like, you know, that go over and do things in the WWE.

1:30:03Like, Floyd Mayweather went over there and the Paul Brothers. These guys were willing. They're making money, handling the best. Yeah, they're going over there. Yeah. Yeah. They're still willing to get out there and put it all in the line. Well, the thing for the Pauls and for Logan Paul and for. It's really just Logan, right? Does Jake Dunn, WWE, and Buddy? Is he going to say that? Well, yeah, but they can promote their own things as well. Logan Paul goes out there drinking a prime energy drink. So, Conor could conceivably go out there with a bottle of a. Yeah, a proper 12. Yeah. I think he sold that too though.

1:30:38Oh, okay. But I mean, he's probably still part of the company. Yeah. He's stock or something. He sold it. I think so. Pretty sure. Something like, see if you can find that. I think he got. Pay. He got fucking pay. It's everywhere. I see it everywhere. They got it in there. I never even tried it. Have you tried it? I don't think so. How much did Conor McGregor sell proper number 12? 600 million. 600 million. Juh -ching. Made $100 million from the Mayweather fight and just started. Rollin. Wow. That's worth a half a billion dollars. And these, you know, 35? Yeah. Is that it? Is that it? Yeah. I mean, if it wasn't for his leg snap, he's still in the prime of his career.

1:31:22But that leg snaps a real problem. That's a real problem. Yeah, he's not coming back from that. I don't know. I mean, if he does, he'll be the first. And if anybody does, maybe he can do it. Yeah. If anybody can do it, maybe it's him. Because he snapped his leg in the prime of his career. Anderson was a little older, I believe he was 36 or 37 when he snapped his leg. Chris Mlaidman was a little older. It's a hard one to come back from. Nobody really comes back from that one. Not, I mean, it's just... Is it because you have to have metal put in there? You do? You have to have plates. And then it's also, you got to think the difference is you're kicking, you know, and you're taking kicks.

1:31:59Yeah. Like, guys are going to kick you in that shin for sure. They're going to kick you in your calf. I'll just do it in everything. Yeah. Nerve damage. All the above. And you got to think when that leg snaps, it snaps like that, right? And then you got all that broken bone that's damaging, all that tissue inside of it. And I don't know the extent of, you know, how much damage was done, but it's been two years, right? Is it about two years now? Since the last competed, I believe it's about two years. And, you know, there's all this talk about him and Michael Chandler fighting from the ultimate fight.

1:32:32And I know he's sparring. I've seen footage of him sparring and he looks good. He looks real good. But he also looks saucer. You know, so there's that. So like, you got to get off that. And then there's a six month period where you saw it has to test him randomly. Which I think is, well, I think that you saw the thing, some mistake. I really think they should do all that in house. Because you saw it does stuff like, well, they don't do it anymore, but they were doing stuff like waking guys. I would six thirty in the morning like the day of the weigh -ins and testing them. Oh, no. Fucking insane.

1:33:03Yeah, fucking insane. For world title fights. Right. Fucking insane. I just think that if anybody can do it, it's going to be Connor. If anybody is going to come back from that and fight again, it's going to be Connor. But, you know, it's that famous Marvin Hagler quote. It's, you know, it's hard to get out of bed and run in the cold when you sleep in silk sheets. You know, when you're in the champ, you're the champ and your richest fuck like he is. And you don't have to do nothing forever. He's got generational wealth. Oh, yeah. And yet, here we are in the situation where, you know, he, you know, he's still in the prime of his athletic career.

1:33:38You know, and he lost that fight to Dustin Porriot, but it was a great fight up until the moment his leg snaps. And so, and you know what, he is a different breed, man. He's a fucking savage. He's a real savage. I hope he comes back. I mean, it would be an amazing story. And I would love to see someone actually come back from that injury because so far, wide men, you know, came back and not taking anything away from Brad D 'avarice because Brad D 'avarice is a fucking beast. And he looked great in that fight. He looked so good. But wide men looked a step behind. But you got to think why men took two years off as well.

1:34:10It's hard taking two years off and then jumping right in the heap with a top 15 guy. You know, and the guy like Tavarice is a real veteran is real talented. And you know, real driven to super disciplined, always in great shape, always fights well and is a real good striker. And he was just chewing wide men up, you know, wide men just couldn't get off. It's a bummer. Yeah, it is a bummer. It's a bummer because that fucking injuries, man. It's like all these other, I mean, so many other injuries guys can come back from soft tissue tears. Yeah. You get them fixed, you come back. That one is, that's a motherfucker.

1:34:45I mean, think about it. You break it right in half. Yeah. Frank Meir came back from that. Frank Meir got a motorcycle accident where he got T -bone by a guy who ran a red light and got sent flying. I think they said he flew like 30 feet through the years and snapped his femur so his upper leg. And it took a long time before Frank was like back again and arguably never really reached the same form that he had. He still beat really good guys though after that. He still beat really good guys. Frank was still a real world class heavyweight after that break. And he might be the only guy now that I think about that's ever come back like that.

1:35:27But everybody, that was, you know, I don't know the extent of that injury. Do you know that he had like real problems with that leg though and they, they were so real touch and go moment with it. They didn't know if he was going to make it. I mean, you snap a femur. That's like that's that big bone and there's some blood flow. It's so thick. You snap that thing, you know, hard it is to snap that. Yeah, it's just like you can even car, you know, it's a different situation. But it's just that that lower leg snap, apparently it's just very difficult for it to fully heal. It's not like an arm. Like you break your arm, they put a pin in it, you're good to go.

1:36:00I know a lot of guys have broke their forearms and they went back and Paul Felder, a lot of guys, they get their forearm snapped like blocking a kick and they get back in there and they're broke. There's a difference, you know, you walk on your legs. Yeah, big difference, big difference. You don't walk on your hands. Right, yeah. And I mean, and that's the argument also for him not being in the Usada pool. Of course, I mean, if anybody shouldn't be in the Usada pool, like, yeah, get him out of that. Like, you'll let him do everything he can to come back, especially in the prime of his athletic career.

1:36:30I mean, that's that's, and also there's a real problem where there's stopping guys from taking things like PPC157. All that stuff does is let your heel. Right, right. It's like, you know, it's just letting your heel. You need things to let your heel. So that's on the band list. But it is now. I think they're trying to bring it back. You ever use that? No, I use it. It's great. It's fantastic. It's very good. Yeah. Very good when you get injured. You'd probably love it. Yeah, I need to hear more about this. They call it the Wolverine drug. Is that what it's called? Yeah, it's a peptide, essentially.

1:37:01It's called body protection peptide 157. Body protection peptide peptide compound. It's a really good peptide for healing injuries. A lot of people have very good success with it. So a lot of people are coming in. Yeah, I can connect you with someone who couldn't take care of that for you too. You know, I don't know. I think athletes should be able to use everything they can. Especially in a sport like in a movie. Yeah, everything they can. Yeah. But you know, the problem was it used to be. They used to be able to do testosterone. Well, I think they should still. I do too. I think it's a good, well, the thing is like with testosterone, you can take a guy who's an older athlete who has like an older mind who thinks like, you know, a veteran.

1:37:45Like they really understand the game because a lot of those guys when they're by the time they get to that certain age, they think real well. They understand the game better, they're more mature. But the body just doesn't work the same anymore. They're a step behind. They don't have testosterone in their bodies anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And also, especially fighting with fighting, with football, with a lot of things, those knocks to the head. There's a guy named Dr. Mark Gordon, who's a friend of mine who specializes in traumatic brain injuries. And he says one of the real problems is you get damaged to your pituitary gland.

1:38:15So the damage to the pituitary gland from getting knocked in the head a bunch of times is your body is just not producing testosterone anymore or other hormones. Your body is just like very deficient in hormones, which makes those guys depressed too. So they're dealing with all that, they're dealing with depression, they're dealing with fatigue all the time. And it's just like the problem is with fighters. You tell them they can take testosterone. Some of them, they go v -tour it out. Oh yeah. Like when v -tour was in his prime, I still to this day think that the TRT v -tour was one of the greatest fighters of all time.

1:38:49When he was juiced to the tits, he would come out there like a fucking alien and just attack. He was so confident. I took it. He was so juicy. He was juiced up. And so skilled. It was a combination of those things. So he's an older athlete. So he had been fighting. I mean, I was at the first UFC, the v -tour fought at in UFC 12. I was actually training at the same gym as him. I was at Carlson Gracie. Carlson Gracie's gym in Hollywood. V -tour was 19 years old and he went over and he fought John Hess in Hawaii. And everybody was like, holy shit. Look at this guy. We knew. Like all the guys in the gym knew, like v -tour was the future.

1:39:26And then when he gets older, it's like your body is slowing down. And also, he did a lot of stuff with his younger two. And that limits your natural production of testosterone. So as soon as they start telling you, you got to fight on the match. Everything is just slower. You know what? When you get older, you lose testosterone. Yeah. Now, I'm on a program right now, my wellness doctor, that I'm on the level of testosterone that I was when I was 30 years old. So he only gives me a certain amount. I take a half a CC of testosterone a week to keep my testosterone at the level that it should be. I'm not going above and beyond and trying to, you know, abuse it.

1:40:11Yeah. Yeah. So I take a half a shot of test a week just to keep my testosterone at the right level. Yeah. Between 600 and 800, I think is what it is. That's a good level. Yeah. I do the same. Yeah. And that allows you to function, your body functions like a young man. Like I'm 56 years old. I don't have any problems in terms of like my body working well. Yeah, me neither. I mean except for my interest. Yeah, except for your interest. But other than that, it keeps your energy level. It also helps your immune system. A lot of people have it in their head that it's cheating, right? They think about Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa and all that shit and getting busted.

1:40:47And, you know, they think it's got a negative connotation in a lot of people's minds at testosterone placement. It's like, oh, you're doing steroids. You're cheating. But if you're intelligent about it and if you do a good doctor and you get your blood worked on and you're, you know, you don't abuse it, it's very good for you. It is. It is. And that's why I do it. Yeah. And I condone anybody out there that's in their 40s or 50s that's, you know, doesn't have a lot of energy and was wondering what's going on. Go get tested. It would be good to think to with fighters if like the UFC administered it.

1:41:24Like you can't administer it on your own. They have to randomly test you to make sure you're not fucking off and doing something crazy. But like this is the amount you get. Let's make sure that your blood work stays within this very normal. Yeah, not parameter. Right. So you're not cheating. You're just maintaining. Exactly. That would be a good call. But it's just hard to regulate. Especially you got guys who are, you know, they're in Russia, they're in Thailand, they're, they're, they're training, you know, you got to send people over there to test them. You see them over in Thailand. They look like a fucking job.

1:41:54Like a human pit bull. But the thing is if you're on that stuff like that, my God, you could train fucking three times a day. Yeah. You mean you really, if you really go crazy with the test, like, you know, Alster over in his prime, you know, you like that guy. He's my favorite example. Alster over in when he fought Brock. Jesus Christ. Oh my God. Jesus Christ. He was so juicy. But he was so good too. He's so skilled. It wasn't just a guy on juice. It's a guy on juice who was a K one grand prix champion who was also won the Abu Dhabi truck. Have you seen him now? Alster now is a vegan. He lost 60 pounds of muscle.

1:42:37Yeah. He looks like fucking Kurt Metzger. Oh my God. See? See? See, I think you find Alster over him now. He's lost so much weight. It's crazy. And he only eats vegetables now. No, no, no, no. He's like me just bad for you. Like, no, it's not. Who are you talking to? Oh man. Let me get you some really good scientists. Fucking actually understand nutrition. He's talking to some fucking cook and holland who's got wooden beads around his neck. Look at him now. Oh my God. That's not the same person. He's not the same person. I mean, I think he's probably natural now. I mean, also maybe look at me.

1:43:13Whoa. I think you just kind of get tired of being a fucking assassin. You just want to be a nice guy. You're like, I'm done. I'm tired of braining people. I mean, you know, Alster was fucking kicking people in the face and knocking their teeth out for 30 fucking years. He was a vicious fighter. You kind of think he's still competing up until recently. He fought Chuck LaDelle in pride in like 2004 or something like that. I know almost 20 years ago. Yeah. Is this him now? This is 16 weeks ago. Sickness around his birthday. Well, he looks good there. Yeah, he's just not gigantic. Yeah, he looks lighter.

1:43:51He's a lot lighter. Now go to Alster Overame weighing in for the Brock Lesnar fight. Because that's crazy. That's him right there. Look at that. Look at that. Jesus Christ. Jesus. I mean, oh, look at me behind him. Like, Jesus. Oh my God. That's Uber him. That's when he was at his prime. He was a fucking destroyer. I swear to God, if they never outlawed testosterone, here's, would you smash in people? This is when it was K1. Bro, he was a fucking monster. He was a monster. Because he was huge. He was powerful and fast, but he was also supremely skilled. He was a real elite striker. I'm really surprised.

1:44:33I'm really surprised anybody could beat him. Well, you know, like he put it on the line. He fought everybody. He fought Potter, Harry, even Potter, Harry was in his prime. Knocked Potter, Harry out, and then Potter, Harry knocked him out in the rematch. Like, those guys got knocked out a lot. And that's part of the problem. If you look through Alster's career, I don't know how many times. Chuck knocked him out. I don't know how many times you got knocked out. Francis Nagano knocked him into veganism. Bro, he sent him to the dark lands. Oh, we were there for that one. And it's different. You know, sometimes it's different not on TV.

1:45:07Yeah. When you're there and you physically watch somebody's head go back. And their soul leave their body. Oh, yeah. That's why I see that all the time. No, I did. Okay, fine. Francis, you got him knocked out. Alster over. And by the way, this is Alster Overiem post -Ussada. Right? So this is a different Alster. This is Alster natural. And also natural after taking supplements for who knows how. He was still a big guy, but look how small he is in comparison. And Francis is a natural 265 plus. Francis has to cut weight to make 265. Francis is fucking huge. And also the absolute scariest fucking guy to ever compete the heavyweight division.

1:45:47Francis fucking scared everybody. He gets about us. Oh, he's so good. And his fucking knockout power is so ridiculous. He's such a heavy striker. Here it is. Boom! Boom! Now, did he ever fight John Jones? No, he didn't. But he might still. They've left that door open. Francis is actually coming in soon. And I'm going to talk to him about this. Because I think, watch this. Look at this left hook. Boom! I mean, insane. His head snaps back to where he's looking at his heels. Look at that. Look how hard his head snaps. Oh, god. He ever been knocked out? Not out cold. I got TKO'd in my last kickboxing fight.

1:46:30But I've never been knocked out like that. That's a... I've seen a lot of people. It's got to be a scary situation when you wake up and come to. There's one where I got knocked out. Is this one right here? Yeah, the table gave to Roy at my head at the concrete floor. Oh, god. Oh, god. My hands would be high my back. I was on loopy street. Look, I started trying to get up and hunters going to pull me back down. Like, he wanted me to stay there. He's snoring. Yeah. And so, what happened was, okay, this has been fast forwarded. But what happened was, I was supposed to pretend to get knocked out. That's why we did the thing on the table.

1:47:10Mm -hmm. So, it's supposed to be a pretend spot. So, I'd get taken to the back. And then I was supposed to be come back to finish the match. You know what's crazy? You guys use regular tables. Don't you think he's used a fucking wrestling table? Shouldn't someone design a table that can take the fucking weight that you guys can't... You guys are like, regular conference tables from Costco. You're scrolling the fucking regular tables. Hey, that's wrestling, man. Yeah. They don't spare any expense. So, did you wake up and realize what was happening? All right. I don't remember any of it. What happened was, they wheeled me back, and rock and triple -eight were out there still wrestling, because it was a triple threat match.

1:47:53I was part of it. And they wheeled me back, and I'm back there. And they're getting ready to do a live shot at me. They're getting ready to do a live shot at me, where I was going to tell them, stuff he was going to say, Kurt, I want you to go out and help triple -H. Do it for me. And I was going to say, all right, I'll do it for you, stuff. So, they told me to say it, and I forgot. So, I said, what am I saying again? And stuff he said, just say, I'll do it for you. I said, what am I saying again? I did it like eight times. And Vince is in the back right. He's like, God damn it. Get him some smelling salts.

1:48:26Get him out there. So, I end up going back out, and I don't remember. I don't remember any of it. They carried me through the match, and there were spots where I had the duck, and they actually pulled my head down, and it would hit somebody else when I was supposed to duck at it. Like, I wasn't able to do it. So, they were, I was out there just, you know, being a dead human being, you know? And they're like pulling me around, and pro wrestling, you can still have a match even if one person is incoherent. So, the other person carries that person, and tells them to do whatever. So, they were telling me what to do during that match.

1:49:08But I don't remember anything. I ended up in the hospital that night, and I came to and said, what happened? They said, God, you don't remember anything? Then I said, no. I don't remember anything. They should have probably taken you to the hospital immediately. Which is what's crazy about pro wrestling. No, no, no, no. Show them what's going on. Well, listen, that wouldn't happen now. This was in 2000, yeah. It was a different time. I guess it was crazy is that they really didn't understand head trauma until, I mean, really that movie concussion. When that movie came around, then people started looking at what's going on with football players, and what's going on with boxers, and they really started looking at it more differently.

1:49:48You know what? I'm wondering if, you know, they're starting to like, like pro wrestling has this, what's it called, a concussion role, okay? So if you had concussions, they'll take care of it. So what I'm saying is, don't you think you have seen that the Lothar fighters are going to end up with some kind of brain damage? 100%. And that there's going to be some liability that comes out. Well, I don't know if there's going to be some... I'm just wondering if something like that is going to happen, because these guys don't use gloves. Right. You know, they got the small ones. Well, not only that, you're getting kicked.

1:50:29You're getting kicked in the head. Yeah, you're getting kicked, need, you're getting slammed on your head. You see all the damage is done in boxing. Yes. And I mean, you'll see as MMA is probably worse. I think about when Leon Edwards knocked out Camaro Usman. Think about that kind of a strike. You're getting head kicked by one of the greatest strikers to ever do with sport. Might as well get a hit in the head with a baseball bat. Might as well get a leg of an athlete like that is... Oh yeah. It's just hard as a wooden bat. You're getting bone, shin bone right to your neck. Yeah, you know, it's crazy.

1:50:59And, you know, who knows? I mean, they do their best to mitigate some of that in training. You know, some guys don't. Some guys spar real hard in training. And it's part of the sport. And they know it coming in. And they know... There's no denying it. You're literally in the brain damage business. Here it goes. Boom! Oh, jeez. And when you know how good Camaro takes a shot to see Camaro go out like that. Now, what kind of long -term damage do you think that just occurred to that guy? It's a real good question. And it varies with everyone. There's some guys that got knocked out a bunch of times and they're fine.

1:51:37And there's a thing called... I think it's called APOE4. There's like a gene expression that if you have that, you're more susceptible to CTE than other people. And it's different. But it doesn't mean that you're immune to it if you don't have it. I mean, you're getting kicked and punched and, you know, headbutts, guys' clash heads all the time. It's just... It's a very, very, very hard sport. And without doubt, there's going to be guys who the rest of their lives are dealing with the consequences of that. And we see it. We see it with the older fighters. You know, some of these guys are just in complete agony.

1:52:14Like, Don Fry. Don the Predator Fry is a legend. Like, one of the greatest events of life. Don was in here, and he's a hurt. It's hard for him to walk. He's like, everything is in pain. He can't hardly move. You're talking about an old school fighter. Oh, that guy was a badass. He's a bad motherfucker. He's a real old school man. Is there at the beginning? Yeah. Oh, yeah. The very, very, very early days. Mark Coleman, too. Yeah. Look, Mark Coleman's got a celebrity boxing match in October against Montel Griffin. Montel Griffin fought Roy Jones Jr. He was a white, white, white marksman training.

1:52:49Okay. Yeah. Hammerhouse for life! If you watch his Instagram, he was one of my opponents to make the Olympics. Wasn't really? A Hamam Marker. Oh, wow. Yeah, they were bad asses. Those two gave me the worst problems in 1993 and 1994. Really? They're the ones that were beating me. And then I ended up beating them in 95, 96. But I had, I went through, if you saw my documentary, it's about my training and what I did. What I was doing was exhaust training. That's when you trained to your exhausted and that's when the training actually begins. And it's almost a form of torture. I learned it from the University of Iowa head wrestling coach, Dan Gabel.

1:53:31Yeah. You're talking about wrestling. You're talking about wrestling. And it's about staying in someone's face and just keep going at it. Just never back off. Just stay in there and just keep hand fighting and keep attacking. And that's what I was doing. And I was staying on my opponents and getting them tired. Once they got tired, I was scoring. And so I wasn't the biggest or the fastest or the strongest or the most technical. But what I knew I could be is the most well conditioned. Here it is. This is Mark Kerr. This is Mark Kerr. Wow. This is Mark Kerr when he was in normal size. Yeah. When Mark Kerr went on to fight in the UFC and went on to fight in pride.

1:54:09Oh, my God. Oh, you're the smash. When he was a smasher machine. That documentary is insane. Have you seen that? Yeah, I did. The documentary on Kerr. Mark Kerr submitted Dan Bobish in the UFC. I was there for this fight. He got on top of him and he stuck his chin in Bobish's eye socket. Oh. Grab the back of his head and drove his fucking chin into his eye socket. And he has his point of chin too, man. And he was just a giant of a man. Yes. Show Mark Kerr in his prime. I mean, his trap started at the top of his ears. I know. He was an animal. He was so fucking huge. He got, listen, by the time 96 came around, he didn't look like that anymore.

1:54:52He was like 250. And he wasn't that big. Look at this guy. He was a monster. He was a monster. And then he was a monster and pride. He was such a machine. Yeah. But he's another guy who fell victim to pain pills. Yes, he did. And what's crazy about that documentary, the smashing machine is they caught him in his prime. And what they were documenting in that documentary was a guy who was like this unstoppable force. They didn't know that he was at the verge of collapse. They didn't know that he was in the middle of his position. Oh, they were just doing the documentary because of how dominant it is.

1:55:31Yes. Yes. The documentary originally was just about this guy who's this unstoppable force who was competing in Japan in the height of pride. In the height of pride, they were doing this like Japan is so different. When we have the UFC in Japan, they're so knowledgeable and so respectful. It's such such a part of the culture that, you know, the matches were huge. They did the cytoma super arena. It was 90 ,000 people. And that was when Kerr was in his prime. So what they were documenting was this guy from America, this insane wrestler, this gigantic man that they called a smashing machine going over there and dominating and they caught him right when it was all falling apart.

1:56:13Oh, and that's where the story changed, right? Yes. And that's the documentary. And it is about pain pills. It's about pain medication. I mean, I think he was on a bunch of different things. But it was just dealing with the constant. He was the most talented individual I've ever stepped on the mat with. I mean, he was really good. Really? Really good, yeah. He won the NCAA's at 190. My senior year, I wanted heavyweight. And then he moved up to my weight class. Oh, yeah. He just kept getting bigger and bigger. I mean, kids, six foot four. So he had a lot of range, you know, long arms and you knew he could fill in.

1:56:52I didn't know he was going to be in 310 pounds. Yeah. And then back then, you know, if you were either going to go into pro wrestling or you were going to go into MMA and back then in MMA, like Mark was competing in the MMA. In the early days of Baron Nuckle. You Baron Nuckle wearing wrestling shoes and Coleman as well with head butts. Yeah. I was the other thing back then. Yeah, they were legal. Yeah, head butts were legal. I wonder if you could still do that eye socket move. I don't even know if that's illegal. I've never seen anybody do that since. See if you can find that. Mark Kerr submits Dan Bobish.

1:57:25Very submitted with it. Yes. And bought them. Yes. Oh, yeah. He tapped them with a fucking chin to the eye socket. By the way, Bobish was fucking huge too. Bobish was a giant of a man. So for him to do that to Bobish, but you know, Bobish is just not that level of wrestler. When you get that big, I mean, there's big and then there's that big, but also talented. And that was Mark Kerr. That big. He had like a head arm and drove his chin in. I want to say he mounted him. I think he mounted him. So here he is. No, side control. So he got on top of him shoved his chin in his eye socket and just fucking drove it in their tap to.

1:58:03Oh my God. I mean, the guy's in fucking agony. Wow. And you look at the size of Bobish. Bobish is fucking huge too. He's selling his eye too. Look at Kerr. Jesus Christ. Oh, he does have a scary chin. Yeah, he just shoved that thing right in his eye socket. Wow. I don't think anyone's ever done that since. The Leno choke. It's the Leno choke. It wasn't a choke man. I lost a lot of sleep over this guy. Look at this.

1:58:39Look at that early days. I guess he was wearing gloves in this one. But when he started, he definitely was in the no glove stage. Who started first? Kerr or Coleman? Well, Coleman was the first ever UFC heavyweight champion. Coleman beat Dan Severin. And that was in 1997. That was the first UFC that I worked with. You had a man tapped out with a headlock. That's how strong Coleman was. Yes, he was very strong. He got him in a judo like a head and arm. So it was a choke, but it was a power choke. So what he did is he basically got head and arm inside control and got a hold of him. See if you can find that.

1:59:19Dan Severin and Mark Coleman. To me, it looked like a headlock. And he was like, I know how strong he is. So I was like, I would probably tap out there. Yeah, it was a headlock, but it was also like he had him completely trapped in there. And that's Coleman in his fucking prime. He had a stint with alcohol too, then. He's been sober for a while. Yeah, and he talks about that. Like, you know, that's another big thing about his, you know, that's bare knuckle too. You see he's got no gloves on. Both guys have no gloves on. So he got him down. And by the way, Dan Severin was a hell of a wrestler as well.

1:59:53I wrestled Dan. I wrestled Dan. It was my freshman year in college. He was about 28 at the time. I was 10 years younger than him. And yeah, there it is right there. We just had it, Jamie. Well, you got it right there. So he gets him this. So he gets him in this like side control head choke. And it's really like a neck crank. He got him in. This was the first UFC that I worked at. I never wrestled a guy. And I had a kid in his home. And he was such a, he was so strong. I knew he was going to tap out here. I watched this fight and I did happen. Yeah, look at him. I was like, I know how strong cool in this.

2:00:36Dan Severin's arm is almost like green. Yeah, there's just no blood getting there. Well, this is a legit choke too. If you can get a guy's arm trapped like that in between your thigh and his hand. And with the amount of weight that Mark had. And he's just pressing down on him and in that pressure. And he steps that way, the tighter it gets. Yeah, Dan's fucked. Oh, I remember Carlson Gracie's after this fight. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah, he tapped right there. That was it. And that was how Coleman became the first ever UFC heavyweight champion. Wow. That was a UFC 12. And I had to go and interview him afterwards.

2:01:20He was just like, who the fuck are you? Yeah, he's just jacked out of his mind. This is me interviewing him. Mark, we can get a couple words. You congratulations. Unbelieveable impressive performance. Thank you. Thank you. That was so great. He's the first guy ever interviewed. I wanted for you to win the first super fight where two wrestlers meet in the finals. Very important. Look at the size of him, dude. I love wrestler. And I'm looking to. It was amazing that he wrestled at 220 pounds. I think he was still competing in wrestling at the time too or wanted to compete in wrestling. Wait a minute.

2:01:59Whoa, whoa, whoa. What year was this? 97. This was a year after. His last competition was 97. He was 32 at the time. So you said you wrestled him when he was 28 and you were? Uh, seven. I wrestled. And what happened there? He beat me one nothing. It was a college match. I was a freshman in high school. I was 18. He was 28. He was already on the US 18. So I'd say I did pretty good for a young upcoming kid. He's 28, but he still has that full mustache probably. Yeah, yeah, he did. Mustache is amazing. But I wrestled Coleman quite a bit, man. We beat each other quite a few times, but we went at it for a while.

2:02:36But it was really cool to see these guys having success in UFC. Yeah. I mean, this is when I won the Olympics and, you know, it was kind of bragging rights, you know, high beat these guys. Or when the UFC title, uh, well, that people talked about that too. Cause back then you were brought up a lot. Like people were saying, because there was some, some, some talk, like would Kurt Angle ever fight in the UFC? Right. In the early days of the UFC, there was a lot of that. Because there was quite a few guys that did Royce Alger. Yeah, Royce tried it out. I know that quite a few like real elite wrestlers that competed in the UFC.

2:03:10And that skill set is the best skill set for MMA. It's, when you dictate where the fight takes place. Because if that guy wanted to take you down, he's taking you down. Like you just did, you just, the back then, the guys just did not have the ability. There was so many karate guys and so many Jiu -Jitsu guys. They just not have the ability to stop that guy from taking them down. I mean, you look at Kibib, how scary. Oh my god. He gets you down. He puts his legs underneath your legs. Now you have nowhere to go. There's no standing up. There's no Jiu -Jitsu where there's no option like that. Like Jiu -Jitsu.

2:03:41I did a competition called the Contenders. Do you remember that? Yes. Yeah, yeah. So Jiu -Jitsu versus wrestling. Yeah, I remember that. Yes, wrestling. The wrestling didn't do that well. Well, because they didn't understand submissions. Right. That was when Frank Shamrock was there. I think he tapped. I think he tapped Dan Henderson. I think he got him on an angle. I think so. Yes. They just didn't understand the positions. And these guys were so good at submissions. Kevin Jackson. Yeah, Kevin Jackson. Kevin Monday. Kenny Monday. That's right. Yeah, Kevin Jackson fought Frank Shamrock. And he got arm -bard.

2:04:20They just didn't understand the positions. But if they did. But if they did, if they had real training, having that ability, wrestlers' ability, first of all, wrestlers are the very best at controlling bodies. They're the very best at taking people down. And then the next step is just understanding those submissions. The hardest guys to deal with for sure in Jiu -Jitsu are guys who are great wrestlers who learn Jiu -Jitsu. Because they already know how to control bodies. So then they understand these new positions. And they just have this massive advantage in being able to control bodies. It's still the cornerstone for MMA.

2:04:52If you can't wrestle, you can't fight. Because guys just take you down. No matter how good it is. They're the guys who tried to be, they're stand -up fighters. They tried to get in there and do it. They get crushed. Yeah, there's not a lot of guys who can't wrestle whoever wind up doing well in the sport. Yeah, I saw a funny thing. Again, it's all on Instagram. These memes lately are videos. But I saw a good one of Derek Lewis going wrestling. It's not that big of a deal. All you have to do is stand up. And then it shows this real of wrestlers taking him down. And he just rolls over and starts planting up.

2:05:27But yeah. Not with Daniel Kormier. Right. Daniel Kormier got him down and says, It's just who you're doing it to. Right. That's who you're doing. When you deal with a wrestler as a lead as Kormier, here's Derek just standing up. But Derek is just a giant of a man and has ferocious knockout power. Look, he just pushes people off of him. The ability to get up. Plant a foot and just stand up as incredible. But that reach around move like that. That's a legit move. Whether he knew it or not, Craig Jones does that. That reach from the position, you get into that spot. He actually has like, I think he calls it the octopus guard or reach around, Craig's really funny.

2:06:05But Craig actually does that. But he stands up with everybody. And that's with Roy Nelson. He's a great grappler. But you know, when you got Derek throwing punches at you, there's not a human alive. I mean, that guy punches so fucking hard. He's so crazy powerful. But he just gets up. He just gets up. Yeah. And if you're fucking Roy Nelson, you're like, oh, shit. Like someone's gonna get him in an American. He's like, yeah, I think I'll just stand up. Get up. Lance the foot. Stand up. Yeah. Then turns around. That's a guy, Derek, I think, would shine in pro wrestling at the end of his career. He just signed a new deal with UFC.

2:06:42A new, I think, is an eight fight deal. They're really giving him a lot of money. So I'm happy for him. You think he'll go all eight fights? I don't know. It's who knows? It's so hard in that sport. But the heavyweight division is so shallow. You know, all he needs is string together a few wins and he could fight for the title. Because there's really only, like, I mean, just like, fucking 15 or 20 elite heavyweights. Whereas you go into like lightweight, 155, there's fucking, there's a sea of them. 170, there's a sea of them, 185. There's so many guys. So there's like five times as many than, so I was saying.

2:07:18Yeah. Heavyweight is probably the shallowest division. How's it going to always been? Yeah. I mean, it's just, there's not that many, those guys go into the NFL. You know, those guys going to the NFL, NBA, pro basketball. I also think that, you know, the average human being is right in the middle, you know, 165, 175. And I think that most of the people, like, I'll tell you this, in amateur wrestling, most of the wrestlers are in the middle weights. And then as you go up and down, they become less and less and less and less. And then when you're at the very lightest weight, there's very few, and the heaviest weight, there's very few.

2:07:57So there's like an average weight of people, of human beings. And when you go higher and lower, it gets lighter. There's another guy that they, everybody wanted to see compete in MMA, and that's Correllen. Did you ever get a chance to see Correllen compete? Yeah, yeah, man. Now, you know what, these guys were, they were so scared of them that, that when he would pick them up for the reverse gut wrench, they would pin themselves. They would hold them in pin themselves. It was like, I went to the world championships one year, and this guy's in the finals with Correllen, and Correllen goes to lift them up, and guy turns over and pins himself.

2:08:27I'm like, why did you do that? Like, you wrested with Correllen, at least, you know, try to beat him. They were worried about getting smashed. Yeah, they didn't want to get hurt. And hit you with the world. You would basically, I mean, there's a photo that we have in the gym out here that I put up just to remind myself of what a pussy I am. It's Correllen. Show that photo. This black and white photo of Correllen, where he's about to pick this guy. That photo right there. Look at that fucking photo. I mean, tell me that's not, that dude was 300 fucking pounds and moved like a panther. You know, it's crazy that he got beat his last match.

2:09:02Yeah, well, he got beat by a new rule, right? A technicality. Yeah, the technicality was when you broke the grip, it counted as one point. And that was really at the end of his career. And Rulon was also a tank too. He was. He was. He in Rulon went on to fight and he did fairly good. I mean, yeah, he did well in progress. Yeah, but I just had Rulon on my podcast. And he said that, you know, Russell Correllen, at that point in his career, he knew that Correllen wasn't in the best form of shape. You know, not the same. Yeah, yeah, but he was still Correllen. I mean, yeah, doesn't matter. I mean, he's the baddest dude in the planet.

2:09:44And for Rulon to stay close with him and then end up beating him on a technicality, that's still pretty impressive. Very impressive. If you watched Correllen training though, what was so fantastic about Correllen was his mobility. Even though he was this enormous guy, his mobility was sensational. So you can find some of that footage of Correllen training. Incredible athlete. For a giant guy, he really emphasized his movement. And, you know, the Soviet training, what they were doing with those guys back then was so technical. Well, you know the rumor about him, right? They called him the experiment.

2:10:19Yeah, his parents were like small. They were like my size. And then, you know, all of a sudden, they have this kid that just looks like some science project. It does. It does look like an experiment. It's like Ivan, who Ivan Drago, yeah, was based off of her. Well, he with him, pretty much, Drago up and spike him to China. His feet would have been poking out of the fucking top of the earth. But if you watch his training, like a lot of his training was like box jumps and kettlebells and mobility, a lot of it was like movement based. He was very, very flexible. So you see that when you kind of fast forward it through that, but what they showed before when it was on the mats there, look at that.

2:11:00Him wiggling around on the top of his shoulders. Wow. Well, they're kind of a jillion. That's called mobility. Yeah, for a 300 pound guy. I mean, and this is at the end of his career too. But he was all about athleticism and, you know, and also being fucking enormous and incredibly strong, but moved like a panther. Now, why didn't he fight? He had one kind of fake fight. I think he had one like in Japan. What was interesting about Japan, Japan had real fights mixed in with fake fights in the beginning. They eventually became all real fights. That was pride, right? Yeah. So there was some fights that they had and also in some other organizations, some smaller organizations.

2:11:45So is this Karellen? Yeah. So this was kind of like a kind of a fake fight. I think he gets tapped in here and this is at the end. You know, he wasn't wrestling anymore and I think they just probably gave him a lot of money. I think I forget how he loses here, but it seemed suspicious. You think he just threw it? I think so. I don't know. I didn't really show the ending here. I'll be honest with you. Watching him compete, I just didn't... I always thought that if he ever fought, he would just dominate. Oh, I think he would have too. In his prime, I don't think a human being would have been able to stop him.

2:12:26No. That was the end. That was the end? Okay, so he didn't... I thought, what do I want to think? Maybe he fought more than once. I don't think it was a real MMA fight though. Because it just didn't... I don't know. It was weird over there, because Japan had such a history of pro wrestling that a lot of their early stars, you got to be... A lot of their early stars in MMA were also stars in pro wrestling, like Takata. When Takata fought in the first UFC. Takata, yeah. But he fought Hicks and Gracie and that was a real fight. And Hicks and was quite a bit smaller than him. But Hicks and was the master of Jiu -Jitsu back then.

2:13:06I mean, he was so... Yeah, he was the man, huh? He was the man. And, you know, he was the guy that when Huy's Grace he won the UFC, everyone said, listen, Huy's is great, but his brother is literally a hundred times better than I heard. Yeah, and then you would see him roll. What Hicks and would do famously is he would teach a seminar with world champions in the crowd, Blackbelts. Teach a seminar, explain to him certain principles that he used. And then at the end of the seminar, he rolled with everybody. And he would roll with him one at a time. So these guys would wait, and then these Blackbelts world champions, like the top of the food chain.

2:13:40They would go in there and roll with Hicks and Hicks, they would tap them all. There's videos of it. Of him just effortlessly tapping everybody. He's rotating in and out. Rotating. No breaks. Bringing the next guy my friend. And they would come in and he would tap them too. So it's just his level of Jiu -Jitsu was so advanced. He started, his dad was Alio Gracie, he started when he was a kid. And the thing that separated him from somebody that those other guys was his physicality. Because Hicks and his knowledge was as good, better than anybody's, but his movement and his physicality. He was also, he was jacked.

2:14:15And he was like one of the first jacked Gracies. Well, let me ask you this. Why was Huy's the one they pushed? There's a lot of talk about that. Because of Hicks and his age? No, no, no, no. Because Hicks and was still young. One thing was that, Horean Gracie, who started the UFC, he could control Huy's. And you couldn't tell Hicks and what to do. And the thought was, if Huy's ever lost, then they bring in Hicks and. But Huy's didn't lose. Huy's was tapping everybody. And it was also, in some ways, a better advertisement for Gracie Jiu -Jitsu. Because you have this guy in Huy's who was 175 pounds, who was tapping guys like Dan Severin, who was trying to jump from his back.

2:14:56Yeah, he was smaller, yeah. He was smaller than everybody. So it showed just that Jiu -Jitsu was superior. Right. Because the early days of the UFC was really an advertisement for Gracie Jiu -Jitsu. Yes it was. Horean was a genius. And his idea was like, look, he knew that Jiu -Jitsu was superior if you didn't know it. Right. So all these guys that didn't understand what those submissions were, they didn't understand those positions. And Huy's wore the key. So when he would grab ahold of guys, guys would instinctively grab his key. They didn't understand. They didn't know how to push him off. They didn't know how to leg kick him.

2:15:28They didn't know how to do any of those things back then. So they would wind up getting dragged to the ground. And Huy's was just so much better than everybody. Right. But still his brother was so much better than him. Hexen. Yeah, Huy's was the man. And everybody said, there's like, there was no argument back then. It was like, who's the best Jiu -Jitsu? Everyone said Huy's had Huy's. Everyone. That doesn't happen. There's always debate. You know, like even in boxing, like when Terrence Crawford fought Aerol Spence, everybody was like, you know, maybe Spence is too big, maybe Spence, I don't know.

2:16:00Back then, when it came to fighting, when it came to Jiu -Jitsu, everyone said it was Hixen. But Hixen went over to Japan, and he competed in Valley Tudo, Japan in 1994. And that was, or was it 96? I forget. It might have been 96. And that was when, you know, MMA was really just emerging. And the first pride, Pride 1, was with Hixen. Hixen versus Dakota. Oh, Dakota worked with her. Yeah. So if you find that, Pride 1, Hixen versus Dakota. But it's just like, once Hixen got you to the ground, man, you were just fucked. You were fucked. He was just too good. He was too good, and he was strong. He was just a different guy.

2:16:43He was just different. Now it was bigger than Huy's, right? Yes, he was bigger. Hixen have like a good, greasy documentary, explaining how these guys basically invented Jiu Jitsu. Yeah. The Gracie in action is very good. But this is Hixen when he was young, when he was in his prime. I mean, this is, that's hoiler behind him. And this is like, and, and Dakota at the time was this pro wrestler. And, you know, I don't know what he knew in terms of real martial arts. And Hix, I mean, this is just a different world. I mean, even if you just see how these guys are moving around, Hixen just stood straight up and walked towards him.

2:17:22He doesn't look scared. No, not at all. He just knew all he has to do is get a hold of you. But again, he's not fighting a guy who's like a real legit striker. And when he did, he fought Funaki, and Funaki wound up fracturing his orbital bone, but Hixen choked him to sleep. And like, one of the most dramatic finishes ever in MMA. He literally had him a sleep out cold in a choke, with blood all over the place. It was pretty wild. Was it his orbital bone or was it his opponent? Oh, he got hit by Funaki, and Funaki fractured his orbital. Wow. So now Hixen assumes mount. And by the way, this is, you know, nobody was as good as Hixen back then.

2:18:01His jujitsu was so good. And look, you see how different he is than Hoyce. He was muscular. So he was very physically strong, incredibly agile. He could do yoga. He was an incredible yogi. So he had like the physicality, but also the incredible. So right now, that right arm of Funaki's foot, or of Takata's foot. So as he's reaching with his arms right there, he doesn't understand. Hixen's just kind of softened him up here. He has kind of taken these on him, huh? Well, he's just, he's just cooking them. They would just take their time. And once he's got you in mount, you're not getting out, he gets him an arm bar here.

2:18:37So he picks an arm, whichever arm he chose. I think he chose the left arm. And he's basically just pushing down on him. And yeah, see his right knee comes up, and that's it. Whap. And now you fucked. Now you fucked. And he tapped him. Now see, find Hixen versus Funaki. That was Colosseum in the year 2000, I believe. And that year was the year that, that was when Fador was emerging, and all these other guys were emerging. And this is, this was Hixen's final fight. So you didn't fight after this? No, this was it. This is his last fight. And they were talking about him fighting and competing against Fador.

2:19:24That was the big one. And he wanted a very large sum of money that they probably should have paid him, because that would have been insane. How good was Fador? Fador was amazing. He was amazing. He might have been the best every way of all time. He certainly was in that argument. In his prime, so he's beating him up here, and then he eventually gets his back and strangles him. And he puts him to sleep, but it's so dramatic, because his blood coming out of Funaki's face and he catches the choke here. And Funaki doesn't tap either. He just goes out. Yeah, he just goes out. Colosseum goes out with his eyes open.

2:20:01So when you watch the choke, when they show up right here, like this is a wrap right here. So he has eyes. Oh, he can't. Yeah, he's out cold. They're stuck open. Yeah, he's just out cold. Cheese. The early days, Kurt Angle. That was the early days. It was barbaric. It was wild. It's wild. And they're just see where it is now. And to see what's really crazy is this for Francis and Gano, Tyson Fury fight that's going to happen. It is? It's happening. Wow. October. Yeah, that's Francis is coming in. It's been training for a year. Yeah. Is that in America? No, Saudi Arabia. Oh, okay. Yeah. The Saudi Arabians, man.

2:20:43Oh, yeah. They're throwing that money around. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't know how Francis is going to do. This is a boxy match, right? Well, conventional wisdom says Tyson Fury is one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all times going to box his face off. I mean, that's conventional wisdom. But there's also the possibility that he overestimates things, underestimates Francis and gets clipped. Who knows? Few months, Tyson Fury could be a vegan. Ah!

2:21:15Yeah. I mean, look, I'm just happy Francis is getting a lot of money. But Dana White talked about this recently that there is a possibility that if Francis fights Tyson Fury and after that comes back and fights John Jones, that would be the ultimate. Yeah. Well, that would be ultimate. Two straight losses for him. Yeah. Yeah, probably. That's the thing about John too. John could do everything. Yeah, he's my favorite. Yeah. I always has been ever since he came out, man. I just, he is the most overall talented fighter. So talented. Yeah. So intelligent too. Yeah. Just knows what to do. By the time he gets in the octagon with someone, he knows everything about them.

2:22:02He knows all their tendencies. He knows what they do. So he does his homework. Oh, yeah. He's meticulous about it. It's not luck that makes John that good. Yeah. Well, I thought it was talent. It's talent too. It's talent too. But it's one of those things, right? To be the best of the best, it can't just be talent. He's got to be so many factors. It's mindset. It's that warrior mindset. It's, you know, having incredible skill set, it's just knowing so much about the, the art of fighting. And you got to realize John has been fighting at a world championship level for, God, what year did he win the title?

2:22:41I mean, he won the title when he was 22 years old when he fought Mauricio Shogun, and since then, every fight he has had since then, except for like one or two, it's been a world title fight. Wow. Which is just nuts. Yeah. Just nuts. Talk about consistent. Yeah. And again, that wrestling base. He's got that wrestling base. I mean, that wrestling base is, in my opinion, the best base ever to enter into MMA. And it's also what you were talking about with the training with Dan Gabel. It's the mental toughness. There's no one who's more wrestling tough. Yeah, wrestlers do have a lot of mental toughness.

2:23:15And, you know, it's a tough sport. Yeah. It's as tough as the Gats. Yeah. I mean, and there's no money in it, right? So you have to be just tough. You can't be tough because, you know, you're going to buy a house, tough because you want to drive a Bentley. Even the weight cutting alone. Oh, yeah. Did you ever have trouble cutting weight? I didn't cut weight. Have you ever? I wrestled up a weight class. Oh, God. What a dream. I actually weighed 199 at the Olympics, and the lower weight class was 198. Wow. I could have made that. I wrestled at 220. Yeah. Smart. And also I weighed 197 when I wrestled the rest of Turkey and the NCAA champions.

2:24:01Championship to vision. One championship. My senior year, he was, he was 270s by 6 '6". Real big. Big kid. Looks like a Greek god. You were 191. Wow. Yeah. What was the mindset behind that of not cutting that extra pound? Why? Why do I want to? Now, I could have made it easily. Easy. What I did is I tricked myself and said, you don't have to die. You just need whatever you want. You can stay where you are. So, I figured, you know, why? Well, I'm sorry. College is 190, not 198. That's Olympics. Right. That was the, what the old weight class is in the Olympics. College is 190. I would have had to lose 7 pounds to make it.

2:24:50Wow. So, why start myself when I don't have to? I could win a heavyweight. Wow. That was my, that was my reason. Well, that's incredible because that's how good you were. You actually did that. Yeah. Nobody else has that, that problem. Right. That's the whole mindset of weight cutting. You know what I think you're going. I was a hand fighter and I had great positioning. And that's, that's why I won so many matches. Nobody could score on me and, and I was always on them. You know, I was skating them tired. And I never, never let them breathe. I was all over them. Just hand fighting and attacking them and, staying in their face, headbiting them, everything, anything I could do.

2:25:31The time that you wrestled Brock, do you remember what you did? Was it double leg takedowns? Did you like duck hunters? Ah, yes. Yeah. Yeah, because Brock, Brock would come with these double legs. Right. He'd come up and I jack him up and duck under and get behind him. Yeah. So it would be like in a flurry. I wouldn't just do a move. He'd do something I'd counter and do it. You'd be happy to know I beat up on our friend David Lucas, who weighs about 330 pounds with a duck under. Who did? I did. At 145 pounds. Well, David was tired in 13 seconds. Yeah. Yeah. In 13 seconds. David's a little over.

2:26:09All of his training is exhaust training. Yeah. He starts out exhausted. He starts out exhausted. But there was a lot of shit talking before that. They wrestled on the stage at the Vulcan Comedy Club. Yeah. It was hilarious. He was talking shit for a month. There he is. What did he do? He was just in flat. David was done. See me counting the score, two points. We had Chinese dumplings right before. Whiskey to Kila, Chinese dumplings and blondes. It's not exactly a sanctioned wrestling match. It definitely was not that. It definitely was not that. I did take off my cowboy boots to do that. I still have a bandana raptor on my neck.

2:26:53I think he's wearing socks too. What's just incredible about your career was that you were able to accomplish that by violating that one card in a rule. You want to fight and be the biggest you can in your way class. And you were like, fuck it. Yeah. Yeah. I did want to have to do that. I didn't want to have to lose weight. I was like, why? You know, I just wrestled 220 for the Olympics and heavyweight for a college wrestler. How much do you think you weighed in the Olympics? I weighed 199 when I wrestled 220. Wow. And the way class below was 198. So I was a bit faster. This is the guy 6 '6". He was 270.

2:27:35And I was 197 here. Incredible. Yeah. That's incredible. Look at the size difference. This kid was, he was like, he was a pinner. He pinned everybody. Actually, he pinned all five opponents before this match. Wow. And within a minute. Did any of your coaches try to get you to go down to the next weight? They never fought me on it. They knew my mind was made up. So they didn't care. I was winning titles. I guess as long as you're winning. But it's so crazy that you violated that conventional wisdom. You know what? I would have won it 192. I'm not that I'm bragging. But Mark Kerr won the NCAA. When Kerr started beating me, he got bigger.

2:28:27But I think I could have probably beaten Kerr in college. So I wasn't like I was trying to stay away from people. Right. You know, I just didn't have to lose weight. That's amazing. You know, that's one of the biggest problems in MMA. It's the weight -cutting. It's a real problem. You know what? Not only that, not only is it hard, it takes the fun out of it. And then you don't enjoy what you're doing anymore. And not only do you have to worry about the fight now, you have to worry about your weight too. And it's just like you just have so much shit, so much stress going on at one time. Last thing you need to be worrying about is your weight.

2:29:03Yeah. And all you're worrying about, at least from my high school experience, all you're worrying about is your weight until the match. And then you're like, okay, now I get to fight. And then you're like, oh shit, I have to fight. And I will also agree with you because when you're cutting weight, you're not training properly. Right. You're not able to have the energy to train right. So now all you're doing is you're letting someone beat you up while you have plastics on. You're rolled up in the ball and this person just beating the shit out of you and trying to get you to sweat. Yeah. I mean, it really lowers your work ethic.

2:29:36Yeah. So you don't want to do that. But I've always said it about MMA. It's the one thing that would cut it out if I could. I think there should be more weight classes. And I think they should make guys fight at whatever the weight there. I think it's sanctioned cheating. I mean, I really do. I really think that's what it is. When you got guys like Alex Bahedis, probably the best example, he weighed in at 185 when he fought Israel out of Sonya and won this title. When he got into the Octagon, he was 226. Oh. He got, he gave that much weight. He gained 40 pounds. You know what, that is what I was scared of.

2:30:08That's what happened to me for the Olympics. Like Mark Kerr, Mark Coleman, they would cut down the 220 and get up to 245. Yeah. And I was wrestling down at, you know, 200, 299 pounds. It was like, holy shit, man. Like, this is not right. But, you know, I guess they probably tired more. Yeah, yeah, they did. They did. I mean, especially if you have a full belly and you're wrestling on a full belly. Right, because they've been starving themselves forever. Yeah. So you know, when they finally get a chance to eat, they're going to eat. That's going to slow them down. But then the mindset is, but at least somebody would be bigger.

2:30:41Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Well, that's the ultimate triumph of skill and mindset over everything else. You know, it didn't matter what you weighed. No. It's pretty fucking impressive. I had a worry about it. You know what, my training was better than anyone else's. I had more intense training. I was able to do whatever I wanted to do. And I could eat whatever I wanted to eat. And you could recover better. Yeah, I was recovering a lot quicker than everybody else. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I really wish they would do something about that in MMA. I really do. Yeah. I mean, I just think if they just had more weight classes, they should have more weight classes.

2:31:16That's not enough. No. I don't think so. I say about 12. I think 12. I think every 10 pounds is the right way to go. Yeah. I mean, in boxing, I mean, you've got, it's so much different. You've got 135, then you've got 140, and then you've got 147, and then you've got 154, and then you've got 160, and then you've got 168, and then you want 75. That's, that to me makes more sense. It makes a lot more sense. Yeah. But it's just for whatever reason, this is just how people have been doing it for a long time in MMA. And like, when you stand at, like, there's guys that weigh 185 pounds, and I stand next to them when I'm interviewing them, I'm like, how the fuck?

2:31:52Did you ever weigh, like, Paheda? How the fuck are you ever 185 pounds? Right. What's he, 210? He's giant. Yeah. And he's fucking dense like this table. Yeah. Like, when you put your hand on the guy, he feels like a table. Right. It's just nuts. And it takes a lot out of their body, too. It's terrible for their kidneys, terrible for their, just their overall body. 24 hours before an MMA fight, you're literally on death's door. Almost that. Yeah. You're exactly right. There have been a lot of guys that cut weight. It has been rushed to a hospital. This Paheda before and after. It's not hard to tell.

2:32:28Like, that's, see, see there? 99 kilograms. So what is 99 kilograms? 220 something? Holy shit. Yeah. That's 220. And then he went up to the light heavyweight and he just beat Jan Behovitch at light heavyweight who was the former light heavyweight champion. But he's a real freak. He's the greatest example of weight cutting. Like, there's no, no one cuts weight like that guy. No one's that big at 185 pounds. Yeah. He has some tricks up his sleeve. He's able to cut weight like that. I don't know what he's doing. Yeah. And it's a lot of mental toughness, too. A lot of mental toughness. Maybe genetics, maybe his body is able to do it better.

2:33:00Some guys just, their body breaks down. They're trying to dehydrate themselves like that. It's hard. Brushing your teeth the morning of, that's the thing I always remember, the Saturday mornings, brushing your teeth, your mouth wants to drink the water. Well, the toothpaste. Because it's in your mouth. There's been nothing in your mouth for days at that time. Yeah, you want to swallow it. Exactly. What's crazy about wrestling is you have to compete the day of. Yeah. That's what's the way in and then you compete. Yeah. That's what's nice. Yeah. That's really nice. Because of the MMA, the stark contrast.

2:33:31Well, they also now, they weigh in in the morning. And then what we do is we have an official weigh in ceremony at 5 p .m. So when I announce it, I'll say, you know, like Robert Whitaker, official weight 186. But it's not 186 when he's standing there. He's really probably 200 pounds. Yeah. It's like 186 is like for a couple minutes. Yeah. Where he gets down there, he slucks it up, and then they start rehydrating. They're going to have to go down here. Yes, they hit up. They're going to wait for it. Yeah. So here's during the weekend, I mean, they're going to have fucking dying. Look at him. He's just lying there that covering them with plastics and.

2:34:11There's no editor. No, I mean, he's literally dying. I mean, you can't do this very long and he takes a long fucking time for him to drain himself down to 185. And I think he's more suited at 205. How tall is he? He's big. He's about 6 '4". Oh gosh. Yeah. He's big. And he's got giant mitts. I mean, his fucking hands are huge. Guys got just paws. Just massive knockout power. And a huge size advantage. But also, I think it affects your chin. I think when you do cut that kind of weight, you can't take a shot as well. Right. When you take a shot better when your body's like healthy. Yeah. When you're eating right, and you're mentally and physically strong.

2:34:55So when Tyson Fury fights Francis and Gano, Francis and Gano used to cut weight to make 265, which is crazy. Because the UFC has a weight limit. No. The UFC had a weight limit, which is nuts. On their heavy weights? On the heavy weights. Yeah. Yeah, because there's a super heavyweight division that we've never used. Is anybody ever used it? Pride. You know, but Pride has crazy rules. Like Pride, they're allowed to do steroids. Like when Tyson Inuay was on my podcast, he explained that in Pride, they had in the contract in all capital letters. We do not test for steroids. No shit. Yeah, I'm not telling you what to do, but I'm telling you what to do.

2:35:37Right, right, take them. Yeah. They wanted you to look awesome. Right. You know, they wanted you to fight at your best and look huge. That'll help. That'll help. That'll help. Yeah. My mean for sure. Yeah. Crazy sport. Yeah. Well, Kurt Angle, it's been an honor and a privilege having you in here, man. I'm a giant fan. You're a fucking stellar human being. Can I ask one more question? Yes, please do. I've always wanted to know, where does one keep a gold medal? Like yours. Oh, good question. Because it is a sock. Is it in a safe? Is it right when you walk in your house and a glass case? I'll tell you what's the question.

2:36:13Yeah. I used to take it with me to all my events whenever I would speak or do appearances. The actual one? Yeah. Wow. And so one time I took it to an appearance and this little kick grab then he was holding it. Then he kind of grabbed the ribbon. Then he started flinging it. Oh, no. And he let it go and hit the wall. Okay. So there was a big dent in my gold medal. So I never took it to another event again. It's been in my, it's been in my safe because my kids. They were playing Barbie one day and they had the, they had them go metal around the Barbie. And I was like, okay, they're just giving you a makeup on this.

2:36:51So I decided from now on I'm going to keep it in a safe. So it's a way for my kids. It's a way for anybody that's going to do any damage to it. Because I already had damage done to my medal and I'm not going to have it again. There's a kid out there somewhere listening to this cringing. How old do you think that kid is now? Oh, God. That was 10 years ago. He'd be, he'd be about 18. He's probably listening. Oh, fuck. You know what I never even thought about that. Oh, that poor kid. Here's just a little kid. You don't know anything about it. Yeah, I did it. Yeah, whoops. Sorry, kid. Thank you very much for being here, man.

2:37:28Really appreciate it. It was awesome having you. I appreciate it. And I just want everybody out there to watch my documentary. It's called Angle. It's on peacock. All right. And one more time the supplement is physically fit. There's a leaf fit dot com. Yeah. All right. It's called chicken snacks and smart snacks. All right. Yeah. Thank you very much. Oh, and Killtony, you guys sold out the arena. You have another one now. Yeah. Second show. December 30th. Yeah, it's already half way sold out. That is wild. Yeah. Podcasts in an arena. The H .E .B. arena right here in Austin. In Austin. Unbelievable.

2:38:01Yeah, and I'm on tour all over the country. Town of Hinge, put dot com. All right. Bye everybody.

2:38:11Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.