#2063 - The Rock

22:32All you want is that thing, but you gotta somewhere along the line, figure out how to enjoy yourself. Somewhere along the line, figure out how to just go as hard as you can, but also enjoy it. Try to enjoy it because that changes the whole tone of the experience. And I think that makes you more successful. I really do, because I think you have more energy, you have more focus, and you collect better energy around you from other people. They feel your energy, they're inspired by the way you live your life, and how you treat people, and what you do, and how you do things, and they wanna do a similar thing.

23:14They wanna do something that makes them feel that way, and they want other people to feel that way as well, and it's got the butterfly effect. It just goes through all the people that are around you. Brother, it's like attracts like, it's that thing. It's that thing, man, especially if you're grinding and you're right, there's a lot of people out there who are just fucking busting their ass. I'm happy. You and I were both in that place at one time. We were like, fuck, I don't like the position of men. I want more, I want something more, but this idea of, but I'm gonna try and enjoy it. But I gotta tell you, it wasn't, and I wanna know about you too, like earlier on in my career, I felt like it's the grind that we love, and sink our teeth into, and just fucking go, and get after it, but I wasn't having fun.

23:59Yeah. But man, that time when it switched in my mind, like, oh, it like exactly what you're saying. Let me enjoy this now, because I've worked hard to get here wherever this thing is, just like everybody else, with this idea, like let's have fun while we're doing it along the way, and you're right, it has that butterfly effect. It affects other people, and it attracts other people, before you know it, everybody's vibrating at this great place with enthusiasm, and excitement, and fun. I realized when I was young, I got a development deal for Disney, when I was, I think I was 25, 26, and I got this development deal, and all of a sudden, they gave me like, I think it was like $100 ,000, and I had money in the back, I was like, this is crazy, because I felt later.

24:43I was like 26, I think, and it was a development deal for a television show, and all of a sudden, I had money, like my whole life, I was poor, and my whole life, I was like wondering, how I was gonna, when I was on my own, and it was like, how am I paying the bills? How am I eating? I remember like taking like a loose jar of change and counting it all out, so I could go to subway and get a sandwich, you know, like that kind of shit. You don't forget that kind of shit. You don't forget that kind of shit. But then the moment I got that check, I remember feeling light. Like, like weight had been lifted off me, like now I didn't have to worry about my rent, now I didn't have to worry about food, and I remember thinking immediately, oh, this is the key.

25:25You just gotta not get to a place where you're not worried about your bills. That means like spend less money, if that means like a liver, like a more prudent lifestyle, whatever you have to do. But get to that place where you're not worried about bills, because that shit hanging over your head causes stress that fucking ruins lives, and ruins people. And so then I was like, okay, now the most important thing is fucking keep going. Like make sure you don't lose any ground here and keep going, because now you know what it's like to be successful, continue that. Do whatever the fuck you have to do, whatever work you have to put in to continue that.

26:03And then when I got to a place where I felt like I have enough money that I feel really secure, then I started to learn how to be happy. But in the beginning it was just drive, it was just all go, and it was just very selfish thinking, just thinking only on what I'm trying to do. But that's all we know, but especially if you grow up broke, and it's the thing that you make up your mind, I feel, and it's the same thing that happened to me. I made up my mind like I'm broke today, but one day I'm never gonna be broke, and I will never fucking go back to being broke. I'm at least I'm gonna do all I can, not to be broke.

26:38So when you have that mentality, you have the blinders on. Yeah. This is the way you're thinking. This is until I think we get a little older, and we achieve the success, we understand, then it starts to go like this a little bit. Mm -hmm. I gotta ask you something, I heard this, and I always wanted to confirm it with you. You started early with martial arts, right? And you said there was this great quote, and it was something like, it was martial arts, I think, that gave you the confidence to know that, oh wait, I'm not gonna be broke one day, or something like that, is that right? I realize, yeah, martial arts is the first thing that I've realized, like, oh, I'm not a loser.

27:15Because I felt like, I moved a lot when I was a kid. We moved from New Jersey to San Francisco, when I was seven, lived in San Francisco, to I was 11, moved to Florida, from 11 to 13, Boston, from 13 to 24, so it was always - Dude, I lived in 10 states, by the time I was 13, too. Yeah, just why were you guys moving around? Well, my stepdad went to school in Florida. Well, we moved to San Francisco just to like, experience something different, and just get away from New Jersey. Move there, and then my stepdad went to school in Florida. And when we went to school in Florida, we had to go to the University of Florida, Gainesville, so we were there for three years.

27:58And then when we moved to Boston, he was going to the Boston Architectural Center. So we moved there, so he could finish and get his architectural degree. So we were just always going where we had to go, and when we did that, I would have to make a whole new set of friends. And so this thing about being insecure and young, life is kind of fucked up and chaotic, and you're meeting these new people, and kids are fucking cruel. And I always was insecure, because we're always moving around a lot, and my life is kind of chaotic, my family life is chaotic. And I just felt like a loser. I always felt like I just had a hide from people, I was socially nervous around people, and I just felt like there were certain people that were winners in life, and I was not that.

28:44I was a loser. And then I started doing martial arts, and I got really good at it. I was obsessed, and I got really good at it really quickly. And I realized, oh, I'm not a loser. Like I just have to find a thing, and fucking really get after it, in a way that I know some people that have had an easy life, they're not going to pursue it like it's going to save them. And I was pursuing it like, this is going to save me, because I knew as I kept getting better, I started getting this feeling, oh, I'm good at something. Like I'm good at something dangerous, and then I got really good at it. And then I started winning tournaments, and competing, and traveling all the road.

29:21And so my whole life from 15 to 21 was just traveling around competing. That's all I did. I was kind of socially fucked up, because I wasn't hanging out with many kids my age, I wasn't really partying, I wasn't doing... Training. I was just training. Training, competing, and teaching. I was teaching at Boston University, while I was 19 years old. I was teaching the credited course on Taekwondo. It was like pass fail A, but it counted towards your GPA. So I tell all the students, I say, listen, show up, you get an A. That's all you have to do. Show up and try, you get an A. You don't have to be awesome at it.

29:54I just want you to just show up and do your best, and you get an A. It's that simple. And so they knew that that counted towards their GPA. So I had this big fucking class. It was great. I did that for a couple of years, and then when I started doing stand up, first of all, I started kickboxing. And when I started kickboxing, dance when I started getting brain damage. And I was realizing I was getting brain damage. Like we were sparring hard for real, you were. Yeah, it would look good. It would get dined up. I was like laying in bed with headaches after sparring, and there was no money in it.

30:24And I was like, what am I doing? Like I'm 21, what am I doing with my life? Like I can't keep doing this. And I had already started doing open mics. So I had already started doing stand up comedy, but I was kinda like just dabbling in it. I thought I could do that too, but I still had these competition aspirations. And then the brain damage thing was scary, because I knew quite a few people around me that from the time I was 16 until the time I was 21, I saw them deteriorate, like noticeably slurring their words, forgetful, not knowing what you were talking about, like moments ago, and I knew that's coming.

31:03And I knew that was coming for me. And CTE back then wasn't in the conversation. Like that wasn't in the lexicon, right? The brain damage was people talk about being punch drunk. And, but I knew too many people that I saw it in them. I saw a deterioration for young people. I saw slurring in their words, and they would have like one drink of alcohol and they'd be like they were hammered. Because something happens when people are punch drunk, when they drink, they just fall apart. And I saw that too. And I was like, okay, I gotta stop doing this. Like this is, this is dangerous. Because we weren't sparring smart.

31:38We were going to war. Like no headgear and that. No, no headgear. Sometimes headgear, most of the time no headgear. Most of the time was just going to war. And you weren't really sparring. You were fighting, we were fighting all the time. And just getting guys getting dropped all the time. And that was just the kind of gym that I was in. It was a hard -ass fucking kickboxing gym and beat the fuck out of each other. And I was realizing like, okay, I gotta get out of this. Like this is gonna ruin me. Like, and then if my mind gets ruined, my life is ruined. Because then you can't think, you can't do things.

32:10You don't know what the fuck you're doing in life. It's like literally everything is the quality of your ability to think. And I knew that I was putting that in jeopardy. So, then I went all in and comedy. But I realized from martial arts that if I go all in on something, I could be successful at it. That's right, like that's the anchor. Yeah, that's it. She learned. I thought that was cool, man, when I read that. Yeah. There's things in life that you, man, I think every kid should do something difficult. Whether it's playing chess or whether it's soccer or whether it's wrestling, something that really fucking tests you.

32:43Because you learn that you can get better at stuff and you learn that you can overcome all those feelings of weakness that are inside. Oh, yeah. And it acts as like a forcing mechanism for discipline and to work through that shit. And also I feel like it's like with you in martial arts and then transitioning over to comedy. I feel like it also, for me, it forces also our kids to find their thing. And even if you get a little older, you know, and you're teens and in your early 20s, because I fucked it. In my early 20s, I was still trying to figure out who I was and what I was going to be and even into my 30s.

33:21But I feel like the, as you're searching for that thing, it's like with me in football. Like I thought football was my ticket. That was the thing that's going to allow me to, I'm going to buy my parents their first house. Right. I'm going to, because I didn't live in a house in town. I was 27. I was WWE Champion. It was the first fucking house. That's amazing. That was amazing. So I thought football was a ticket and then I realized down the road. Like I have to finish this chapter in my life because I don't have that skill set to go on. I could continue to push it and push it and push it. But no, but like I was saying, it forces kids to as well and older kids as you get into adulthood to find your thing.

34:00Right. Because a lot of times we're in the thing. We think it's the thing. Yeah. And it's going to be our ticket out, but it's not. And if you can find one thing, you can find many things. Yeah. Right. It's like the William O. Musashi quote. Once you know the way broadly, you can see it in all things. There's some real wisdom in those words because there's something about finding a pursuit or a passion or something you truly love that's engaging and challenging that is exciting for you and it advances you as a person. And the lessons that you learn in pursuing that thing, you apply to everything in your life.

34:39Everything in life, man. Yeah. Everything in life. There's a great, you probably know it, Bruce Lee quote, from Enter the Dragon. Do you remember when he was like his, it was one of his students and he told the kid, it's like a finger pointing away to the moon. Yeah. He slapped him in the head, don't concentrate on the finger. You're going to lose all that heavenly glory around you. Yeah. So back to being present. Yeah, Bruce Lee was a bad motherfucker. Dude. He was such a bad motherfucker. People really don't appreciate what he did because what he did was introduce martial arts in an exciting way to the whole world.

35:15Yes. Everybody was wearing kung fu outfits and everybody was fucking different. Marshall Lards classes. Everybody wanted to be like Bruce Lee. He was the fucking coolest guy that ever existed in movies. Oh, dude. All of a sudden you got this little rip Chinese guys fucking everybody up. And everyone thought they were Bruce Lee way away. I remember getting my first pair of nunchucks. But I had, I fucked myself up with the real ones. He was on the back of the head. So enough times that I was like, oh, they make rubber ones. That you're supposed to learn with. Dude, I did that. But and what did he do?

35:49There was, I feel like he was, he was groundbreaking away, right? When he came over here, there was something about what he was teaching. Was it Jikundo? Yes. So he was, was he the first or he was taking a version of it? And... Well, he was the first to combine, the thing was, there was the thing about loyalty in martial arts. Like if you were a judo practitioner and you started training at a kickboxing gym, people would frown upon that. Like, why are you training more time when you're a judo practitioner? judo is the way. And the same thing was, I had a very open mind to talk window coach and who actually encouraged me to start boxing and doing some other things.

36:24But most of the time that's not the case. A lot of like kung fu practitioners, they don't want you practicing karate. They only want you going to a kung fu place. What Bruce Lee said is use everything that's useful. Everything that's useful. And he put together a system of martial arts that incorporated everything that he learned from grappling from Jean Lebel and karate from Chuck Norris and Tang Su Do and kung fu from Yip Man from Wing Chun. He put it all together with Western boxing and wrestling. He realized like there's so many different ways to fight. And the style is having no style. The way is no way.

37:03Like figuring out... You said that. Yes, yes. Yeah, figuring out how to adapt and move to every situation to be like water. That's right. And be formless. Yeah. And he taught that philosophy and that philosophy eventually became mixed martial arts. Bruce Lee was the first true mixed martial artist because he was the first like true guru that was shouting it from the top of the hills. To use everything that's useful. Everything from all styles. And put it together. But back then that was really frowned upon. Really it was like kind of dangerous. Like people would go after you. If you disrespected kung fu or...

37:42Yeah. To prove you either... So not only try to prove you wrong, but like physically try and go after you. Yeah, you were disrespecting their art, which was like literally like a religion. To a lot of people, martial arts are very cult -like. And when you get into a martial art school, a lot of times the instructor is almost like a cult leader. You think that person is invincible, they can't be beaten by anyone. You have these like weird ideas about your master. You can even call them a master. And so there's this like very rigid thinking that used to exist before... But not anymore. No. Where there's no...

38:20Referential to the master or... No, the UFC just fucking put that away. Like there's still schools out there that run like that. But they're not legitimate and they're not the good ones. They're really good schools. They're just teaching you something beautiful. They're teaching you how to use your body in a way that is challenging and effective. And it makes you so much more confident. And it makes you, if a physical altercation happens, you have a massive advantage over almost anyone. Yeah, protect yourself. Yeah, it's literally like a superpower to have that and to walk around, to know that most people have zero idea how to fight.

38:58Right, right. And so you've... I'm revolving these fucking Instagram videos, the guys have no idea how to fight and they're fighting each other. And they don't even know each other. And they're swinging around. And just swinging for the fences. Yeah, I mean... Open something connects. Yeah, I mean, if you're a trained fighter, that looks hilarious. Yeah. It's like, oh, this is... What are you doing? Stop for a second. Hold on a minute. Like, dude, you're gonna get hurt here. Like, stop. Yeah. Yeah. When was the last time you got into a fight fight? I never really got in fights. I mean, I got in like one or two in high school.

39:26Yeah. But once I started training, I was just competing all the time. I never got into like street fights. Right. And you were like, they're stupid. They're so stupid. Just like, it's just your ego that keeps you there. If it's one thing, if you have to defend yourself, someone's attacking you. Or someone's attacking someone you love. But to just get into fights, because you know how to fight is so crazy. Because like, you think, oh, if I could do what you do, I'd be beating the fuck out of people. No, you wouldn't, because they'll shoot you. Yeah. Come back with a gun and fucking shoot you. You think people just like getting head kicked?

39:57No, they're gonna fuck you up, man. They're gonna look over your shoulder the rest of your life. Yeah. No, you can't do that. You can't do that. It's so fucking silly. It's so dumb. It's so dumb. But also, that's people that haven't trained. They don't understand that, like, would I tell people like the best way to stop bullying? It sounds so counterintuitive. Teach people how to fight when they're young. Teach bullies even how to fight. They won't be doing that. That's right, because in a way, they inherently have a respect. Yeah, they're insecure. The reason why they're imposing their strength on other people and trying to make people feel bad is because they feel bad.

40:32And they think somehow, they're by being a piece of shit to someone who's smaller than them that somehow or another that boosts them up. But it doesn't. It just gives you, like, you have low self -esteem. You can't think of yourself as like a hero if that's the kind of life you're living. It's a terrible way to live. It is. And they don't, but people don't understand that the way to cure that is not to, like, just simply punish them. The way to cure that is to teach everyone how to fight. Like, it should be a thing that men learn, and I think some women too. Like, not mandatory. I'm not saying everyone should have to do this, but it should be an option available to you.

41:07And if that option is available to you and you take it, I think it'll better your life. And I think it'll stop a lot of this bullying. I really do. Absolutely. And the spirit of learning how to protect yourself, right, in that anchor of learning how to protect yourself and then learning how to fight, learning how to throw a punch along how to do this, do this. Yeah. You also learn the value in difficult work and getting better at things. So some people never learn that. They never learn that. I mean, that's a whole idea about training really fucking hard. Mm -hmm. The value of putting in that hard work.

41:42Yeah. Early, I always tell athletes, and I know you feel the same way. It's like the, whether you're on the football field, basketball court, in the cage, whatever it is that you do, whatever kind of athletics, it always always starts in the gym. Mm -hmm. And once you're done, and you're playing days are over, you're fighting days are over, wrestling days are over, you go back to the gym. You get all starts in the gym. Yeah. With that hard work, you put in. You just have to keep your body healthy. If you can't keep your body healthy, I understand. But if you can, you've got to do it. It's something everyone should do.

42:14It makes your life better. It just does. Yeah. And there's so many intelligent people that I know that ignore their body. Because they're so concentrated on their mind. They're so concentrated on intellectual pursuits. So they let their body become just a wreck. Just a little. Yeah, a physical wreck. Yeah, I feel like I've only got one man. Yeah, it's frail. It's got one bite. And your intellectual energy is dependent upon your physical energy. If your body's tired, your brain's not going to function as well. Even if you have an amazing brain. Right. You're not giving it what it needs. That's right.

42:46That's right. Yeah, I agree. And it's also the best way to filter out the noise of life. Like if you choose to do something that's much harder than anything else you're going to experience, and it's voluntary, the rest of life is easier. It really is easier. Stress and bullshit and criticism and fucking haggling and nonsense and chaos. Like you can get through that. Especially today. Right. There's so much fucking noise. So much noise. And bullshit. So much bullshit. So much toxicity. So much talk. So it's just out there all the time and you're right. It's the kind of that kind of anchoring balance and training gives you the leg up to swap the bullshit away.

43:28Swat the bullshit away. The bullshit today is fascinating because it's social media bullshit. It's a different bullshit than people have ever experienced in all of human history. Yes. These people that you don't know chiming in about everything. The good part of that is there's a sharing of ideas and there's a way of communicating that never existed before and people who are learning so much more about things than ever before. Social media allows people to break news stories long before mainstream media. It allows people to tell you about fascinating stories that maybe you would have never heard of and amazing archaeological discoveries and scientific advancements.

44:10And it's incredible in that regard. But it's also your dealing with human beings in a weird form where they're not in front of you. They're not talking to you eye to eye. They can say the shittiest things and they don't feel anything. That's right. And they're trying to hurt people's feelings and they make it like an activity. Like their activity's not jujitsu. Their activity is like shitting on people online, starting trouble. That's the trend. Yeah. That it's just to shit on everything. But you're right. I want to back up for a second because it's so important that people hear this too as well.

44:43I think especially coming from you and I are kind of in the public eye and we deal with the shit and the noise and all that but we also deal with the good stuff. And like you were saying, I am an optimist. I think in my DNA. So I like to look in search for the good stuff that's out there. The stuff that's going to make me better, help me stretch out my aperture up here, looking at things like, oh, I never looked at it like that. Thank you for bringing that up. That's great. I don't know if I agree, but let's talk a little bit more. Compared to the ones with the experts, toxicity, and it's this interesting thing that some people have to, I'm gonna go out of my way to try and make you feel bad and make people feel bad.

45:22Shit on this whole thing and really not offer anything, I think constructive. Right. You know that we can talk about and chop up. Well, it's almost all damaged people. And the problem is, Yes. A good percentage of the people out there are damaged. And there's a thing about the kind of fucking interaction that people have on social media that just makes their life worse, whether they realize it or not, just fills their life with anxiety and this weird need to constantly check, see who responded to what you tweeted and what are the comments on your Facebook post and reading them all. And you're not living your life.

46:06You're just wrapped up in this weird battle of opinions with strangers. Yes. And you see people defending themselves online, like, I have done this and I have done that. What are you doing? Fuck you doing it. You argue it's a fucking 15 year old troll who's in a basement who's hiding from his stepdad. You're like, what are you doing? And what I always love is the typing in all capital letters as if somebody's yelling and how dare you in this. It's like, what the fuck are you doing? Well, it's a sport. It's a sport in trying to get the best response and there's skill to it, the skill to shitting on people and learning how to go after people.

46:49It is a kind of a game. You're trying to like, zing them. And then you look at the comments and everybody's agreeing with you. Yeah, yeah, get them. Yeah. It's like living in that in just the clickbait culture and you wanna raise the profile. So let me ask you this. And this is something you and I were texting about last week is how can you tell the difference between the bullshit noise and the toxicity that's always out there compared to, oh, that's an opinion that is worthy of my attention. I just wanna look at and look at this for a second. How do you differentiate the two? It's difficult, right?

47:25You gotta try to be objective and you gotta try to be unemotional when you read something that someone's writing. Like say if someone, like Palestine and Israel is a great example. Because the tension is so heightened and anything you say on one side or the other people will attack you on. And so this is one that's, if you have an opinion, a political opinion, a cultural opinion about the conflict and you post it, boy, you are opening yourself up to a world of people agreeing and disagreeing and chaos and fighting. And some of those people are gonna have points that make sense. Like say if you are 100 % pro -Palestine and you read something about Hamas and you read something, wow, that's fucking terrible.

48:13You know, you have to be willing to say, oh, there's both things. There's the, you know, the fact that they live in what's essentially an open air prison is fucking terrible. Also, the people that are ruling them are terrorists. That's terrible too. Like you can't ignore any aspect. This is a complicated thing. What some of the Israeli soldiers have done some evil things to Palestine, there's videos of them shooting people. Also, what Hamas did is fucking insanely evil. Like what has to be done to fix that? I do not know. But to pretend it's binary and to pretend it's one side good, one side bad, that seems insane.

48:54It's all bad. It's all bad. It's all fucking heartbreaking. Yeah. It's all devastating and you're right. There's, and what I've learned, I feel like we've all learned or trying to learn at least, is because it is so complicated. And that is a part of the world and historically, thousands of years that I find complicated and I try my best to understand. I also try to go out with an open mind because it is all fucking crazy. It's crazy. It doesn't seem like there's a real solution either. It's just the things that you said. Yes, and I want to get to that in a second because I was thinking about that today is the, everything you said, absolutely, this part of it is devastating.

49:33This is devastating. This side, this side. The 240 hostages that still, I haven't come home yet. But also, where does it go? Right, where does it go? Where does it go? That's the thing that I think really grabs my attention because usually I think in, I'm not saying a situation like this, but there's a lot of stuff that goes on where you feel like I think this is the path to finding a resolve, or at least maybe the first steps are resolved. But in this case, I don't see it. Brother, I don't know. No, I don't see it. But speaking to what we were talking about earlier, you can learn from, that's where separating the noise from the intelligent perspectives.

50:18I've read some very intelligent perspectives so people give you a detailed history in the conflict of the region. And you realize like, oh, this is like incredibly complicated and to have a binary viewpoint, or a very black or white viewpoint, it's dangerous. It's not. And it's so easy for people to do. People love to do that. They love to other people. It's a natural human trait. It's a tribal trait that we have. And that is what led to World War II, and the fucking, the Holocaust, is that they othered these human beings because these human beings were Jewish. And you're seeing people doing that now with Jewish people, and you're seeing people doing that now with Muslim people.

50:58There's people that are angry at all Muslim people because of what Hamas did. All of it's crazy. And what we need to do is realize that othering human beings is insane. And if you could look at Earth from space, this is one of the things that all the astronauts have said. All the people that have gone to the space station, there's a moment where you are up there when you look down on the Earth, and you see this magical thing that's floating in the heavens. And you realize how insane these conflicts we have over territory, over lines in the dirt, and fighting over resources, and it's so ridiculous.

51:43We are one life form. We are one gigantic super organism that needs each other. Cause like, human beings need each other. We do not survive alone. The worst thing they could do to you in prison is put you in solitary confinement. We need each other. It's a part of what we are. We're this one gigantic group of beings that are trying to live our lives all together on this fucking magical thing that's floating through space. And we unfortunately come from tribal backgrounds. All of us, we evolved in these small groups of hunter -gatherers, thousands and thousands of years ago, and we carry that DNA still.

52:29We carry that fiercely loyal tribal DNA that allows us to look at people that aren't a part of us as something less than us. And we've got another. Yeah, and what I'm hoping is that as technology allows people to communicate far more freely and to translate languages more freely, and where information is going to exchange more freely, and it takes a long time for this to happen. But we will eventually understand each other to the point where that's way more difficult to happen. Because it's so easy for it to happen. If you don't speak their language, you don't follow their religion, their bad, your good, and then you're othering people.

53:09That's right. And we gotta stop that. That's a fucking insanely ridiculous thing that's being done by world leaders. They gather people together against other people that you don't even fucking know. You don't even know. It's one thing if you have a conflict with an actual human being that's doing something to you. But this is like, you don't even know these people. And these world leaders have told you that somehow under these people are bad and you're good, and we gotta go over there and fuck them up. We're still doing that, but that's insane. It's insane that human beings are still doing that.

53:40And I'm hoping that as we get to know each other more through technology and through what has become the most connecting innovation, the most connecting technology ever, which is the internet. I'm hoping that's gonna continue to evolve and connect people further and further. The problem is if it, along the way, it can get co -opted by governments and they can get controlled and censored. And that's the enemy. That's the enemy of all truth. That's what we can't have. We can't have that. We need to fucking ride this out and let this thing ride itself out and figure out the right way to live. But it's definitely not through war.

54:21I feel like I agree with you on that. And my hope was in the spirit and vein of what you were saying is that riding it out, getting more information, being open to difference of opinion. Here's how I feel. How do you feel? But tell me, truly, tell me a little bit more just so I can understand it. But even in that, the spirit of that, I feel like you get so much more out of that and so much benefit. But I feel like you were saying we have to, things got to get recalibrated, man. And I don't know, especially over there, I don't know what the end game is there. So I don't need that. But I agree with you.

54:59Yeah. It's terrifying. Because it can lead the whole world into nuclear conflict and then civilization's over. And then we're back to caveman if we're lucky. If we're lucky. If there's anybody left. I mean, there's a real possibility we can nuke the whole world. And there's no one left. Maybe some people living on an island somewhere that got lucky. Well, what's crazy is that is a possibility. Yeah. And that's what's happened before. Fucking wild. Well, the thing is, it's happened before with natural disasters. Do we have this? What was that super volcano? Was it Toba? Was that what it was? Yeah, the Toba Super volcano 70 ,000 years ago that reduced the entire human population to a few thousand people.

55:35Wow. Yeah, we came that close from a super volcano 70 ,000 years ago to being down to like very few people. They don't even know how many people it was. But the estimates are a few thousand, I think. Is that what the estimates are? See with it. I think that's what they think. But that's great. A few thousand people is nothing. Like how? That's not a problem. That's a concern. That's like go to a concert. Like a theater. Not even a fucking big show. It's my first wrestling match. And then imagine that's the whole human race on planet Earth. And then you're dealing with back then, of course, you're dealing with predators.

56:08You're dealing with natural disasters and even normal shit, like freezing to death in the winter and starving. Yeah. And if you're dealing with a super volcano. Do you see this? Yeah. You have also a nuclear winter. Super volcano coats the earth in ash. And it's one of the things that kills everybody. Is the temperature drops. No sunlight gets through. Plants don't grow. Everything's fucked. And then you're cannibalizing. There's a lot of that. Yes. Yeah. High possibility that our ancestors were cannibals. And that the people that had to survive through a lot of these things, they probably ate people.

56:40Did what they had to do. Yeah. Yeah. It was fucked. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I'd start with my quad. That's a meat. It's a lot of meat of that thing. It was too. I don't think I'd eat myself. I'd probably jump off a cliff. You know, it's a thing. It's like, you know, people, it's a scary thing what people resort to. Like the Donner party, right? No one of those people got trapped trying to make the way across the mountains. It's terrifying. Yeah. When you're realizing your starving people are like trying to draw straws. Who's going to kill who to eat? Yeah. Yeah. You know, you said you talked about the, who was at the astrophysic, you said, where did we talk about this?

57:24Yeah. NASA, the scientists, when they look up, there's an overview of your work. Yeah. It has that emotional impact on them. It really puts things into perspective, right? Not how we're just on this spinning thing. Yeah. We all do need each other. I always like to say too, because I feel like it connects to what you said, which is try to keep in mind history is always watching. And when you think the decisions we make today, years from now, history is going to look back at this time. Yeah. And I think if you really think like that, it kind of, it just helps force another forcing mechanism to try to make the best decision possible.

58:00At least I try to think that way. Yeah. History is always watching, man. But we have the benefit of living a good life while this is happening. Imagine being someone trapped in Palestine. And imagine being someone trapped in Gaza while they're bombing. And this idea is that they're supposed to get rid of Moss. How do they get, they have no food. They have no money. They have bad water. Like what are you talking about? Like what are they going to do? They're occupied too. Yeah. They're occupied by what, whoever's leading them. You know, when you're deeply impoverished and there's no way out and you're literally like trapped in this one place, you can't even leave.

58:34What are your options? Like saying that they need to rise up and organize. Like they're going to get killed. Do you understand how that works over there? It's not that simple. No, that's the thing. That's why I go back to where's the wise brains here in open hands? Who is what's the result? I don't know. What's the beginning of it, at least, you know? I haven't heard anyone have like a solution that really makes sense that I think is workable that they could actually pull off. I think before October 7th, you know, they're probably you could have had options. Right. But after that, it's like, God, the Israelis are so blood thirsty.

59:13And now these, the people that are like the free Palestine people are blood. And you see anti -semitism everywhere now. A level that I never saw before. Open anti -semitism online. Open anti -semitism. People chanting, chanting, death to the Jews openly in public. It's crazy to see. It's crazy to see. Yeah, never. Yeah, it's so wild. And you would imagine that in this day and age in 2023, we would be moving away from all that. But to see it ramped up in our lifetime is so insane. Because that's why it concerns me though, right? And I know you too. And a lot of people out there like, where does that go?

59:56Right. Where does this escalate to? Yeah, not a good place. No. And then where is that person, human group? Who's going to come in and say, let's try this. And how do we do that? Does it does something tragic, really tragic, not anything that's already happened has been horrifically tragic, but something horrific at a large scale has to happen that really wakes people up like a nuclear bomb handing a city. Yeah. And people go, Jesus Christ. Yeah. Like we went from 1945 until today and without doing that. If we do that now, and then they retaliate. And then that, then it's over. Then we're fucked.

1:00:34I hope that's not the case, brother. Yeah. I hope it's not the case too. But sometimes I think something has to happen to wake people up. And like one thing that happened, to shake and recalibrate everything. 9 -11 did that. Yes. Like you remember after 9 -11, everybody had those American flags on their car, even an LA, which is super liberal. And they never put a fucking American flag on their car. Everybody had them on. It galvanized. Yeah. Brought us together. Brought us together. And it made people realize like, hey, we are literally a country. We're all in this together. And without that conflict, I think people start looking for conflict amongst the people that are around them.

1:01:09I think human beings, unfortunately, have a natural desire to seek out conflict, or to embrace conflict, or to be a part of conflict. And to go after people's opinions don't align with theirs. And if there's no real problem in the world, you find problems. It's like that expression, like the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. That's right. If it's daddy taking away your role's voice, because you drove drunk when you're 16. That's still the worst thing that's ever happened to you. Yeah. But if your life has been this fucking chaotic system of foster homes and drug addicted family members and crime, and then you get free, something that would drive someone up a wall won't affect you at all.

1:01:56That's right. Because you've been through so much. That's right. And I think, unfortunately, there's a lot of people in this life in this world that we live in, especially in America that live soft ass lives. Oh, yeah. And they don't encounter real hardship. They encounter, like, kind of like minor league hardship that they have blown up to be the end of the world. It's not the hardcore shit that really shapes you. Yes. That a lot of people need. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. It's just we're going through a very strange adolescence as a species. And we're going through this teenage process of fucking up and figuring out who you are with nuclear weapons.

1:02:39And if you looked at the actual civilization on Earth, itself, the human civilization, it's going through this chaotic period of trying to grow and get better while also engaging in ridiculous conflict. And it's all happening in the blink of an eye. It's happening so rapidly. Things have changed so quickly from the time you and I were kids. I mean, when you were our kids, it was Russia. Everyone's worried about going to war with Russia. Right. And then when the fall of Soviet Union, there was just like, it's calm that went through the whole country. The breath. And I thought we were done. I thought, oh, we're done with all this.

1:03:18This is great. You figured this out. Yeah. But no. Well, that's why I wonder where are the call for leaders? You know, like where? I mean, it's a big question. But well, nobody really wants to be president. It's fucking the crawl up your ass for a microscope. Dude, it's not fun. Let's talk to my UV president. I know. I remember at one point in time, it was like they were saying it was should be the rock and Oprah. They should be president. Vice president. So one of the parties came to visit me. Oh, no. At the end of last year asking for me to run. Oh, Jesus. That's a surprise. I mean, it was for president.

1:03:59President. Wow. It was, first of all, incredibly fucking surreal. Right. Because I was the guy who was wrestling in flea markets. Right. He was going, looking for free corn dogs and hot dogs and shit. Selling my headshots for five bucks, trying to make money. And then all of a sudden I'm having that conversation. But it was just incredibly surreal and so wild. But also so incredible that they had all this data that they had said. If this happens, here's the result. Oh, wow. It was really fucking deep. And then I started to think, again, surreal. Because that's never been my goal. Right. I appreciate it.

1:04:38And I'm fucking honored, right? Right. Because I'm like you in here in our core. But it made me think it's either this is an incredible thing. And I got some pretty decent leadership skills. Or things are so fucked up.

1:05:01They're turned into the pro wrestling movie star. They had tried to run the world. Man. But who are those leaders, whether president or not, but I just, I wait for as it relates to the conflict. They're like, who's not necessarily step up, but just information. As you were talking about, we live in this time with incredible technology and communicate so fast. And you could be as open as your aperture stretches out to be. And you could get as much information as you can. So where are those people who are going to come? They don't want to be president. They're running their own lives. And they look in on the sideline and wishing that someone with real leadership skills and real wisdom and real empathy and a real moral compass.

1:05:46Who's not governed entirely by money. You just said it. I mean, those things, empathy, those kind of qualities, integrity. Yeah. Especially the empathy part. And looking at everything is open. But if you're a person that has empathy, how do you conduct a drone strike where you know that a certain amount of civilians, 100 % are going to die, but you know that a terrorist might be in this apartment building. How do you greenlight that? Because you kind of have to, if you want to get rid of this terrorist, I mean, but we know the consequences of drone strikes, there's some insane number of people that are innocent civilians that get killed.

1:06:29It's hard. It's been explained to me by my friends in the military that it's very difficult to know the truth because oftentimes, you get lies either side. Look, for sure, 100 % for sure. Truth in terms of the reasons for the orders that they can't get. Not just the reason for the orders, but the amount of people that die that were innocent. But for sure, innocent people die. The question is how many of them, you know, when they say someone, they bombed a wedding party. That's real. That's happened. Like thousands of people have died that way all over the world. Whether it's in Yemen or wherever there's, they're conducting bombing raids.

1:07:05There have been many people that have not been a target that were killed. But what are those numbers? And what's the reality of it? Because if you're on that side that get bombed, you might put out a press information, you might put out something that says 1 ,000 innocent civilians and they bombed a children's hospital. But the reality might be it was actually 20 insurgents and 50 civilians. We don't really know what the real numbers are unless you're on the ground doing a census. I don't know if we get accurate information from either side. But if you're a president, you have to deal with that horrible reality that if you do an action, if there's some sort of a military action that has to be taken place, particularly like a drone bombing in a civilian area, you're going to kill some innocent people.

1:07:55That is a crazy thing to have on your conscience if you have a moral compass. It's crazy. And what are the options to risk our service members and have them go in there and get gone down and blown up and lose 50 % of them because you didn't want to kill the same number of innocent civilians. And then you get into that conversation. It's like, what's the fucking, what's the solution there? Yeah, yeah, other than we shouldn't be at war with anybody and we should figure out a way to stop this before that happens, before that happens all over the world. Right. Because usually you could kind of see it coming down the road.

1:08:31You could see the scenario happening coming down the road. So maybe the ability to strategically get in, have the conversations you have to have before it actually gets to the right. Before it escalates to the point of extreme violence. But some people want extreme violence. And that's the Eisenhower speech when he left office that there's a military industrial complex that wants us to go to war. They profit off a war. And they can, if they're the people that are funding political campaigns and they have massive amounts of money that they're using as influence, they can make certain politicians make decisions that are not in the best interest of the United States or the people that are the citizens.

1:09:09They can do things entirely to make money. You know, like, you see it and you see the amount of money that's involved in something like Ukraine. Whether or not you're pro us helping Ukraine or not. Where did we come up with all that money and why don't we have that money to fix America? There was one point in time we talked about this where there was six billion dollars they accidentally paid to Ukraine. They overpaid them six billion dollars. Well, that's the exact amount of money it would take to rebuild every single house in Maui. Exactly. Yeah. And no discussion about that at all. Instead, the Maui people get $700, a one -time payment, which is insane.

1:09:47What are we? Are we a community or are we not? If we have the money to donate to some guy who is a fucking literally used to be a stand -up comedian who used to play piano with his dick, that's Zelensky. He did a thing. He did a video of him playing piano with his dick. It was like one of his routines. Wow. He was a comedian and he played a character on a television show. That was a comedian? Yes. Zelensky was a comedian and he played a character of a regular guy who becomes a president. I forget what his job was in real life, but he becomes a president and then ran for president in real life and became president.

1:10:26We're just sending this guy billions and billions and billions of dollars and some of it is just like, where is it all going? Do we have an accurate account of, is anybody siphoning this? We know that there's massive amounts of corruption all over the world when it comes to this kind of stuff. Where's that money going? This is nuts. Why don't we have that money to fix inner cities? Why don't we have that money for infrastructure? Why don't we have that money for the school system? In our cities. Yeah. Homeless. Yeah. School. You see what's going on in San Francisco? San Francisco's G -G -G -Ping is going to visit in a bunch of Chinese, a bunch of world leaders, but G -G -G -Ping particularly.

1:11:03And so they cleaned up all the homelessness. They took all the tents out and they put fences up everywhere so that people can't, can't camp out anymore. We don't even know what they did with them. I was just going to ask, what would they do with them? See, if you can find a video of it, it's crazy. And then you got Gavin Newsom on TV who's making excuses for it. He's like, yeah, we did. Well, when people come over to visit, you know, you clean your house up. Like, how about you fucking clean your house up? Take care of it first. All the time. If you can do this now, you can do this always. I'm assuming you did something ethically responsible with those people and housed them and put them up somewhere.

1:11:40I'm hoping that's what you did. Did you just move their tent to the fucking middle of the desert or something? What have you done? We're in after pictures. Yeah. Insane. Well, this is just a couple of pictures, but the really wild ones are the fences. They put fences up everywhere so that people can't camp there anymore. There are a troughs up right there. What are the troughs for? I don't know. That's weird. What are the troughs for? Troughs are weird. But they hose down all the streets. Like, hey guys, why don't you fucking do this all the time? Like why isn't this always like this? This is what San Francisco used to be like.

1:12:11You ruined it. Now we know that you could fix it and fix it quick. Now we should be really upset. As upset as people were before about the homeless problem in San Francisco, they should be fucking furious about it now because they always had the ability to fix it quickly. And they brought San Francisco back quickly to safe and clean and no homeless people in the street. Now, is this temporary? Are you going to go right back to detents when Xi Jinping leaves? That's crazy. Where'd they go? Do we know? I don't know. What's the explanation? I'm looking at it. It's wild. It's like, oh, you could have always done this.

1:12:45Yeah. Why didn't you do this from the beginning? What Nordstroms wouldn't have had to close. All those Walgreens, all those everything's closed in San Francisco. They're all leaving the city. It's like the city's a fucking zombie wasteland. And you could have cleaned it up at any time. Mm -hmm. Wild. Especially with that money. What, as you said, they overpaid. Overpaid $6 billion to Ukraine. Yeah. Whoops, sorry. No worries. We're going to pay more money in the future. That was the idea. We'll just add it on to the money that we're going to give them in the future. But no discussion at all. People have completely forgotten about Maui.

1:13:20No one discusses Maui. It never comes up. Well, brother, those are my people. Yes. Right? Pollination people. My grandparents are buried over there in the islands, my families. So we started that fund. The people's fund of Maui. And now we've helped over $8 ,000 people, $1 ,200 per person who is verified over $8 ,000 which is really amazing. But one of the biggest things, which, first of all, the whole fucking thing was so heartbreaking. But then also, don't forget about Maui. And it's crazy because the work that, now that me and the team have been putting it, like, it doesn't end. Right. It's a continuous calling these corporations.

1:13:58Hey, remember, these are our American people. Right. They're not just out there on the island. These are our American people. They can't forget about them. So it's just, it's a wild thing. It's wild. It's what's not done by the government. Like, what are they, why wouldn't they do that? It's the biggest wildfire, the worst disaster in a hundred years. In a hundred years. We don't even know how many people are dead because so many people are unaccounted for and they can't find their, but there's nothing left. They're incinerated. So how do you find who's missing and who's gone? You don't know. It's going to take a long time to sort it out.

1:14:30And the, the, the bill back to stand everybody back up on their feet in the families. It's going to take a long, long time. But if you think about it, we stood this fund up on its feet, brother within six weeks, just like that. They're still waiting for the governmental money. It's insane. It's insane. It's insane when you think about how much money we donate to other countries. But it flew in after that, after the wildfires, man. And it was, it's like, it's, it's like something you've never seen before. And you feel the weight and the heaviness of the area. You know, when devastation like that happens in that way, like you just, you land.

1:15:11And you know, you've been Hawaii a whole bunch of times. I feel like when you land, you, you feel that Aloha spirit. It feels good. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. It's amazing, right? And it's, um, but you land there and you feel the heaviness. The heaviness. F**king heavy. Heavy. It's heartbreaking. And it will be for a long time. Yes. It's going to happen. But I'm proud of them. I'm so proud of our people, you know, because it's like, it's what you do in times of this. You f**king come together. Well, the people that did survive and do come together, they will never forget. And it'll be a part of them.

1:15:40And then it'll probably bring those people closer together, especially the people that helped everybody. Yeah. But it's just, it's just insane that the government doesn't do anything about it. And they still could. They still could. They're writing these billion dollar checks to Israel and billion dollar checks to this and billion dollar, just come on. F**k it step up. Would it be everybody would approve it? No one would say, what are you doing? Why spend all that money on Maui? Everyone. For our own. For our own people. Yes. Which is crazy that Hawaii is America anyway. I mean, it's great that it's protected by America, but isn't it crazy?

1:16:12You have to fly five hours over the ocean. You're still in America. You literally land in a beautiful volcano in the middle of the ocean that's created islands. Yeah. And that's America. Fiftyth state. Yeah. It's f**king wild. But if we, if that is America, we should treat it like it's America. And we should protect it like it's America. And then we should help them like it's America. Protect it to the core. And 700 bucks per person is not doing that at all. A one time payment. It's so insulting and so insane in the light of all this public knowledge of the amount of money that we're sending to other countries.

1:16:47Yeah. We know what we did on this fund just so you know, it's $1 ,200 per month. Oh, that's great. It's great for months. And anyone who's verified and you know with Polynesian culture, there's a lot of people in the house at times like aunties and uncles and grandparents. So there's some houses that are getting $45 ,000, $6 ,000. That's great. That's really great. Yeah. Yeah, that's something. And again, it should be coming from the government and it could be done. It's not something that couldn't be done. I mean, it's something that everybody would support. Take care of our own. Take care of our own.

1:17:18First. Yeah, me. What are we if we're not a country? If we're not a country. It's the same thing with family. Yeah. Like you would take care of your family first. I take care of my family first. Yes. Take care of our American people. It's a community. We should be a community. Yeah. And we're so divided and polarized right now. And I think a lot of that is accentuated by social media and also accentuated by the mental illness of being obsessed by social media because I think it is a mental illness. I think it's a mental illness just like gambling addiction is a mental illness. Yeah. I think it's just that people are goddamn addicted to apps and their phone and just reading stuff and attacking each other.

1:17:56Yeah. It's it's it's causes divide to be reading. Reading stuff and believing. Yeah. Well, he was when I was a kid, you can have a Republican friend. Like it was no big deal. Yes. Yes. No big deal. Like, oh, Bobby likes George Bush. Of course. Who cares? Who gives a fuck? You know, you were a supporter of Bill Clinton. He liked George Bush. Nobody cared. Nobody like fuck you. Yeah. You know, it wasn't like you're a Nazi. Like I'm not what I'm not. I'm a Nazi. I just want lower taxes. What the fuck are you talking about? How did everyone not see? Dude, it's a it's a craziest thing. I have friends who support Trump.

1:18:31I have friends who support Biden. I have friends. Do you really have friends who support Biden? I do. Come on. No, no, no, no. Here's here's what I do. I have I have friends. Thank you. That's a good check because that's important. This is important context. They support the Democratic Party. I have friends who are loyal to the party. Yes. Okay. The progressive. Right. Yes. Loyal to the party. Yeah. Support Trump. I have friends who are like, fuck it. I'm not voting for either one. Last election, this election. So it's that kind of thing that I would love to see us get to that place where it's okay.

1:19:04Yeah. It should be. It should be a person that probably. People should be able to have discussions about the differing opinions and not turn into just some crazy insult fest, which is what you see online and you see it all the time. You see it online even with political commentators. They get in these interview sessions and they fucking start yelling and screaming at each other. It's like. It's fucking stupid. It's bad for you too. It's bad for the people that are engaging in it. It's bad for everybody who's listening. Well, so yeah, and it's unhealthy. Not only unhealthy for yourself, but also just in terms of humanity, man.

1:19:39Yeah. It's bad for humanity. Yeah. Absolutely. Let me ask you this. You were you talked about it's hard even for our guys are military boys and girls who are on the ground to get information that they feel is really accurate. Like what have your guys said? Like for example, Marcus Atrella who's our friend Tim Kennedy and I have two Navy Seals in my family, two cousins like what are what are your guys saying? How do they combat the idea of not getting the correct information? Well, they do their very best and especially like special operators, seals, rangers. I mean, they get pretty solid information for what their objective is, but obviously their objective is very narrow.

1:20:21They deal with various whatever the situation is. They have to go and take care of it. They need to know how many enemy combatants they need to be know who's in the house, what's there, what how to get in. You know, it's a very specific skill set that these gentlemen have and they have to rely on accurate information. And for the most part, they're the very best at getting their action information to those special operators. But when it deals like with worldwide scale, like trying to figure out what's real and what's not and who's telling the truth and who's not. Fuck. Good luck because there's so much Russian disinformation and Chinese disinformation and American disinformation.

1:20:59I mean, there's just entire groups of people dedicated to these troll farms that just go online and make things up and tack people and try to organize these campaigns against a certain idea or a certain political candidate. And it's just organized and it's, you know, it's funded. And though it's hard if you're a person and you have a family and a job and interest and you check the news every, you know, once a day, twice a day, try, try to figure it out what the fuck is actually on our. It's true. Yes. So I always tell people, especially younger people, like, hey, be careful. You could read it, but be careful about really what you believe.

1:21:40Yeah. And what's funny is, I'm sure you noticed this too. And for a lot of people listening is, when you see the trolls and these campaigns that are funded, right, and they look like they're legit and they got all their shit together, is what I always find interesting is the loudest shit talkers on there who are saying really, like enough where it really stops you in your tracks. Like, wow, you really took the time to type that. They have zero posts on their account. Yeah. Very few posts, very few followers. And the only thing they want to do is that. And that's probably a funded person. There's a lot of them, the lot of them.

1:22:19But of course there are. It's an effective technique to get people, yeah, yeah, kill cliff. This is my own flavor. So spicy pineapple. That was my nickname in college. Ooh.

1:22:33Yeah, there's, um, it's good. There's a report they did on Facebook, the top 20 Christian sites, 19 of them were run by Russian troll farms. 19 of them. We're like staring people up and the resurrection is coming and you know, how do we navigate and combat that? Mind reading. Yeah, we have to get to a point where technology allows us to legitimately read people's thoughts. And I think that's common quicker than we realize. I think that's around the corner. I think that's 10 years from now. If we don't blow ourselves up within 10 years, we're going to be able to read intentions. We're going to be able to know thoughts.

1:23:14We're going to be able to know things about how do you think, like technology? Yeah. Probably some sort of wearable device initially. And then for probably higher bandwidth applications and especially for people that have neurological conditions and spinal cord injuries, they're going to start implanting like neural ink. And one of neural ink's first goals is to try to bring people that have spinal cord breaks and people that have lost control of their muscles and to bring them back to mobility. And they think that that's possible, which is amazing. Wow. Well, they're going to be able to do is bypass, I'm crudely phrasing this if you're scientist, I'm sorry, but they're going to be able to bypass the human neurological system in terms of how you move your arms and body and muscles and do it electronically.

1:24:04And they think they can do that. And they think that's going to be one of the first medical applications for this kind of a thing. But the other thing that Elon said to me, he said, you're going to be able to talk without words. Now, when most people say you're going to be able to talk without words, I'm like, yeah, man, that'd be wild. But when Elon says it, you're like, for real? Yeah. You really think we're going to be able to talk without words? It's like 100%. What's the B side to that? Like, what is that exactly? It's going to be something this technology will be some sort of an implanted device that allows you to have constant access, probably to something akin to chat GPT and AI or the next level of it, along with some interconnectivity with other people that are wearing the same device.

1:24:51And it'll probably initially be something that translates languages instantaneously. And then as it advances, it will be able to read thoughts. And you'll be able to transfer images, things you see. I will be able to have this thing in my mind and show my friend Greg that I'm sitting here with the rock having a conversation and he could see that through my eyes. We will have universal connectivity with all minds, all minds that have that thing. The real problem is the haves and the have -nots because just like if you go back and watch at Wall Street, Michael Douglas had that fucking big ass brick telephone.

1:25:33He was walking in the beach and he was like, look at this guy. He's got a phone. He's walking on the beach. What a baller. Now anyone, you can go to fucking T -Mobile and get a flip phone for like 50 bucks. You get a cheap cell phone. We could talk to a person. It's a tiny thing. It's hitting your pocket. It's so much better than what Michael Douglas had. Everybody can get it. But back then it was super expensive. Nobody had it. And the haves, like Michael Douglas in that movie, greed is good. They used that thing to advance their career. Multiply that times a million and you have the advantage of the initial adopters of whatever this thing is.

1:26:12Because if they integrate with artificial intelligence initially and they integrate with some sort of a universal internet system, they're going to be able to accomplish things in business and in terms of like manipulation of financial markets and in terms of acquiring resources. They're going to be able to do things that the people without those things are not going to be able to do. And they will have massive amounts of wealth and power almost instantly. Within years it'll be a change of science. Which giant shift that will go over to the people that have these devices. And that's fucking, that's the most insane have and have nots because you essentially have super humans.

1:26:55Essentially have something that's almost like an alien that exists with these advanced primates, which is what we are. Yeah. Does Elon feel like that will happen within a decade? He thinks it's going to happen pretty quick. Yeah. It probably will be within a decade. Yeah. He thinks that once they start implementing it and they already started trials with human beings. And I think the first trials they're doing are with people with neurological either conditions or injuries. Yeah. And you know, I've also heard it talked about vision. They're going to be able to restore people's vision. Yeah. They're going to be able to do some why old shit.

1:27:30By the way, brother, I mean, 10 years is right around the corner. So quick. 10 years ago was 2013. It's nothing. Nothing. It seems like a like if you have a 2013 car, that's a fucking pretty new car. Yes. 10 years ago. It's crazy. I was I was tell people this when I was in high school in 1981. A 1970 car was a classic. Yes. It was only 11 years old. But if you had like a 1970 barracuda like, wow, look at that fucking thing. Yeah. It was a classic already. But time seemed to move different then like 10 years back then seemed like a long fucking time. And as society and technology and innovation just spins as this insane, ever rapid pace, 10 years feels like nothing.

1:28:18Dude, it's the acceleration that we live in today. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, there's so much going on. And I think when that does happen, there's two. There's your first car. My first car was a 1973 Chevelle. How old were you? I was 16. Yeah, I was 16. Yeah. Yeah, I was a hunk of shit. I think I bought it for $350. I'm positive. I bought it for $350. Yeah. It was worth $300. It died the next day. It died the next day. Yeah, but the dude took it back. It was something wrong with the engine. I'm like, dude, the fucking engine seized up. Was that like your boy from your hometown? I knew. He wasn't a guy.

1:28:53I knew. But he took it back. It died the next day. Yeah, it died the next day. And then I got a, I was always in the muscle cars. I had a bunch of muscle cars. Those are always what I was in too. So how old were you when you got your first one? 16. So I'm 15. I'm in a bar in Nashville. And I had no business being in a bar. It was downtown Nashville. And on lower broad. Because at that time, I had this fantasy in my head that I was going to be a country music singer. Really? Dude, well, you know, I love country. I think you might have talked about that. I know you wanted to be a country music singer.

1:29:26Yeah, yeah. Until I was like, oh, I sing and fucking keys that don't exist.

1:29:33It's going to be a short lived dream. But dude, so I would go down to these honky tongs. So I was down there with a buddy of mine named downtown Bruno and who's still one of my best friends today and a drunk walks in. He says, he wants to buy a car. I had no car at that time, no money. We just got evicted at a Hawaii. And I said, I'll buy it. And I had no money. I said, how much? He goes 75, 80 bucks. I said, cool. I tell Bruno how much money he got. He goes, I only got 40. So give me 40. So I give it to the drunk who's probably high too as well. And I said, here, I'll come back and give you the other 40.

1:30:02It was, so speaking of cool cars, it was a 77 Thunderbird. Oh, right. Blue. There you go. That was it. Only cleaner. Yeah, but so, so dude, so check this out. So it was a honka shit. This is a beautiful one here on the screen. But mine was honka shit. Give the drunk 40 bucks. He, I said, hey, I'll come back and give you the rest tonight. I get in the vehicle. I start driving down the road. Downtown Bruno's following me in his car. I'm like, fuck, I got my first car. You know how it is when you're a kid, right? You're like, this is it, brother. This is it. I'm driving down the road on I -65 down to Nashville.

1:30:41And I hear a lot of noise, some rustling. You know, in those big bodies, they have the back seat and the floor is really wide. There was another fucking drunk on the floor. Oh, no. And he was, I was like, what the fuck? He's in the car. He's in the car. So I drive over and he just dies. Fuck, he's probably a crackhead. And I was like, dude, I bought the car. You got to get out. This is my house. This is my house. He gets out. And then the next day, I go to put gas in the car. By the way, I'm 15. I had no fucking papers. The car is probably stolen. Probably. I tried to put gas in it and the guy, the drunk crackhead, didn't give me the gasket.

1:31:21Oh. Remember those old school cars I had the gasket? So I ditched it at a fucking burger king. That was my first car. You get the chivalle that broke down the next day. You just left it there. I had no choice. Why don't you just Jimmy the thing open? It's because I, even at that time and I appreciate me as a 15 year old. I'm like, you know what? I don't think the universe really wants me to have this fucking car. And by the way, my mom's gonna come. She goes, what the fuck is this? Where'd you get this car? Right, no insurance. Nothing. No inspection. Yeah. Nothing. Yeah. The first car, the first time that you could just go wherever you wanted to go.

1:31:55To me, that was magic. I could just go wherever I wanted to go. Yeah. I just remember just getting in the car and just driving for the sake of driving. Yeah. Which I rarely do anymore. But every time I do I enjoy it. Sometimes I like to just get in a car and just drive. Just go somewhere. Oh, yeah. Yeah, just when you can't, I remember I had my car repossessed when I was 21. When I first started doing comedy, I just went broke and had a full on. They came and they took it away. Oh, yeah, they took it right in front of my house. They fucking towed it. And I knew I was behind on payments. And then now I didn't have a car.

1:32:31And I remember that feeling of like having to take the bus and having to take the train. It was such a fucking drag. Oh, man. And then when I earned enough money to get another car after that, it was like this giant wake. I lived it off to me. Now I could just drive around. Yeah. It's like the freedom of being able to go places. When you're a young kid, that's an amazing freedom. Yeah. Just to be able to just go, I need to go to work. I need to go this place. I want to go to my friend's house. You can just go. Just go. It's incredible. It's the best. Yeah. It's a great feeling. Did you, what was that at in Boston?

1:33:06In Boston. Yeah. And then what kind of car do you drive today? Like what's your go to? Well, I have a lot of cars. I collect cars. I have too many cars. But I drive my Tesla a lot. I love it. I love that fucking thing. And I drive my... Everybody who I talk to as a Tesla loves a Tesla. That fucking great. Jamie's got one. You got the one I have. The plaid. They're the shit. They're so fast. It's a time machine. How about... That's what I hear. Is there an SUV available? Yeah. They have an SUV and they have the cyber truck coming up. How about a pickup truck? That's the cyber truck. Oh nice. Have you seen it?

1:33:42No. You haven't seen the cyber truck? All I drive is pickup trucks. Oh, Elon brought one here the other day. It's fucking insane. That's insane. It's insane. It's insane. It's a spaceship. It looks like something. Seeing it in real life is so fucking cool. There's something about photos or kind of... They don't... You're not in contacts. You're not physically there. Where you get to look at it. But when you're physically there and you look at it, you're like, oh my God, this thing is so fucking cool. Because it doesn't look anything like any other car. That's it. It's bulletproof, by the way. It's also arrowproof.

1:34:15I shot an arrow at it the other day. He told me it was an arrowproof. Yeah, I pulled a fucking arrow back and I launched into his door. It bounced from the top. Barely scratched it. Barely... You could see a very slight mark where he hit it. But he said it. He'll stop a 45 -slug. Wow. Yeah, why? I go, why? Because it's cool. Well, that was... I'm just gonna ask why? Because it's cool. Like, that's literally what he did. I mean, the whole thing is made out of steel. The whole thing is made out of steel. Is it heavy as fuck? That's me shooting the arrow at it. Wow. See, see, that's like right when the arrow releases it hits it.

1:34:47It's fucking sparking up. Good. Yeah, it was... I mean, fucking just ate it. Like, it was nothing. Yeah. It's just cool. I mean, he just decided to make it like it's... Now, just make the fucking coolest cyber vehicle that he can. He just likes... Look, he is the best kind of billionaire to me. Because he does wild shit. I mean, he made the fucking tip of the SpaceX rocket pointy because he wanted to look more like the one on Space Balls. Literally. I mean, that's literally what he did. He's just a wild fella. Yeah. You know, and he just decided... So, idea... Yeah. Make it happen. It's hard. I mean, he detailed the process of going from an initial concept, making a demonstration vehicle and then production, how difficult it is and how many things have to line up.

1:35:41Right. Especially when you got something that's incredibly innovative and complicated. I was going to say so. The innovation, the complication, the production cost on that and how heavy it is. What do you think that's going for? I think there's going to be three different tiers, he said. There's going to be a beast mode, which is like the most insane, you know, 1100 horsepower, three electric engines, 0 to 16 under three seconds, which is insane for like a 7 ,000 plus pound vehicle. Three seconds. Three seconds. Wow. Yeah. Okay. And then there's going to be a lower tier model, but even like if you get a Model 3, which is like their entry level Tesla, it's fast as fuck.

1:36:16It's so fast. It's so competent. It's so, it's a joy to drive. Yeah. And if you've never driven an electric car, you've got to get past the fact that it doesn't make any noise because a lot of people love the rumble of the V8 and all that chas. Yeah. But if you can get past that, this, the sheer ability that they have to just go, just take off. Yeah. Mine goes 0 to 16, 1 .9 seconds. Do you miss the rumbling of the muscle cars? Not just drive a muscle car when I miss the rumble. Yeah. Those feel different though to me when I drive those those are, that's like, I'm on a ride. That's like I'm on a Disneyland ride for adults.

1:36:52It's like, woo. You don't even have to go fast. Just a rumble and a shift in the gears. Yeah. It's glorious. It's, I love them. Those things are, they're in my DNA, you know, because when I was a boy, those were the coolest cars. Those were the cars that everybody, all my friends, we all wanted. We all wanted muscle cars. Everybody wanted a 1970 challenger. Yeah. 69 Camaro. Like, that's what everybody wanted. So those are the cars that I really love. What's your, what's your baby? That's a muscle car. I got a bunch of them. Yeah. I like them all, you know. I have a 1970 barracuda. That's fucking insane.

1:37:27The roadster shop, silver. And it's got a 900 horsepower mercury engine in it. Yeah, it's a racing engine that goes to like 9 ,000 RPMs. That's my car. Wow. Have you opened it up? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that thing's a beast. That thing is really fun. That's really fun. But that was, the car my mom had. My mom had a 71 when I was a kid. Oh, wow. So there's a, there's an emotional thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. To me, that was always the car. Barracuda's were just, they only made them cool for like three years. Yeah. But in those three years, that body shape is just so bad out. This is what John Wick had in John Wick for.

1:38:04Yeah, dude, you know, that 71 barracuda. You know, it's crazy when you, when you tell me that, I think, because it informs a lot in my head, like, oh, hey, my mom had that car. So if just emotionally, there's a real emotional connection there. So growing up, I never had muscle cars in my life. And even my dad, so it's crazy as wrestlers. And I know you've had some few wrestlers on, especially my dad's era in the 80s, those guys. It was always important that the wrestlers either had a Cadillac or Lincoln. So they're always flossing. They're always looking amazing, pulling up to like the arena in a caddy or like that was a prerequisite.

1:38:39Oh, yeah. And then we drive home to our fucking trailer park. But it was crazy. So growing up for me, it was less muscle cars, even though I appreciated them in movies. It was more, dude, I can't wait to get a caddy. Yeah, caddies are great. That's the thing. You know what I mean? It's like just your floatin' down the road. Yeah. Those were the shit. But it's also that thing too about like just the emotional connection. And then I realized when I got my first caddy, I was like, well, I'm on a second. Like it's actually represents like what we call in the wrestling business, work in the gimmick.

1:39:13Meaning, the guy's work in the gimmick. And I thought, I don't want the caddy. If it makes me feel like I'm working the gimmick. Right, right, right, right. You're flossing like almost stereotypically flossing. Yeah, cool. And everyone does. Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I went to pick up drugs. Christian Bale drives around into the 90s. What was it? No, it's a 2003 Toyota Tacoma. And so that's like the floor. Christian Bale's was like $150 million. No, before he became. No, no, no, no. Right now. That's what he drives around in. 2003. Toyota Tacoma. Wait, so he drives. What's the emotional thing, Bale?

1:39:50Do you think there's a connection there with Christian? He says it's good. It's a good car. Never breaks. He's like, if someone needs me to carry something, I can put it in the back. He's just fucking, he's an artist. And he's just pragmatic. It doesn't give a shit. It doesn't give a shit. He's not interested in material. Of the bullshit. Yeah, for him, I drive a 2003 Toyota Tacoma. It's a fucking bulletproof car. They never break. That's awesome, man. You get a Toyota. Those motherfuckers go forever. I have a Toyota Land Cruiser. I have a 1995 that I drove here tonight. I love it. Mine's all redone.

1:40:20It's got a supercharged Corvette engine in it. It's all been redone. What year? 1995. So 1995 was finally when I came out of Miami. University of Miami started wrestling. Oh no, in 1996. And that was my first car. After the crack head car that I had to leave it. Which I get. Land Cruiser. Wow, that was great. Land Cruiser. They're great. They will go hundreds of thousands of miles and not fuck up. Yeah. Those cars are just over engineered them. The Japanese just they know how to over engineer a car to make it incredibly durable and reliable. Yeah. And that was great too, because that put a lot of pressure on American automobiles.

1:40:58Because there's a lot of people that didn't want to buy American cars for a while in the 80s, because they fucking broke all the time. Yeah. But those Toyota's they fucking never break. Yeah. Lexus's I've had three of those Lexus features. They go forever. They never fuck up. Those Lexus's yes. They always shoot these. There's never a problem. As electronics worth flawlessly, everything's flawless. It's never have an issue. Never. They're just over engineered. And that's, you know, it's like it's developed a loyal fan base. But you know, you can have a 2003 and be Christian bail. And it's not going to break.

1:41:30It's no use. You're set man. You know, there used to be a thing where they would sort of like build in the fact that you're going to have to buy a new one soon. Yeah. Like they wanted things to break down so that you would have an incentive to get a new one. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. There's this great Merle Haggard quote from one of his songs. I wish a Ford and a Chevy would still last 10 years. It should. It's really crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not. That was back then. I was going to say they do now and I drive Ford's all the time. So yeah, they're great. Yeah. Like if you go on a ranch, almost everybody has an F -150.

1:42:05Oh, that's my jam. My jeans are bulletproof. F -150, 350, the Raptor. Oh, yeah. I love them. I have a TRX. That thing's shit. Yeah, it's a badass isn't it? That thing's the shit. A mine is a Hennessy. So it's a thousand horsepower? You got it. It's a thousand horsepower. Because the 700 is not enough. It's not enough. Yeah. What kind of wheels and tires you put? The Hennessy puts them on. It's all, he does like a whole suspension change and upgrades the brakes. And yeah, that's what mine looks like. Fuck. Yeah, that's not mine. Mine's black, but it looks exactly like that. Were you opening up that up?

1:42:40Not really. I don't really open it up. I just like that it can do it. Yeah. It's just fun that it can do it. It can do it. It sounds glorious. It sounds like America. You're trying to say that. It sounds like America. It just sounds perfect. It's the best part of man, yeah. And if you're in Texas, I think you have to have a pickup truck. I think it's a law. If you're a man in your Texas, you probably want to pick up truck. I do. I used to live here in Texas. Would you live? Dallas. Oh, I love Dallas. My old man was wrestling for a very famous family, the Von Eric family. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. And they got a big movie coming out.

1:43:12By the way, this. On the Von Eric's. On the Von Eric's. Yeah, called Iron Claw. Oh, that's not the, who's starting that? Zach Efron. Zach Efron. Yeah. That is a Zach Efron movie. That's great. Some other actors too, I think. Right? Who did it? But yeah, that's a. That's it. Oh, they are. Official trailer. Right. Anyway, my wild family. My wild family and just tragedy. Yeah. But my old man wrestled for their dad, which is the guy on the left. Um, that guy looks like the dad of a bunch of pro wrestlers. It is. Look at him. Look at a hard ass. This fucking tape on his knuckles. It's Von Eric. Look at his knuckles.

1:43:53The guy's covered in sweat and he's wearing a fucking like a regular work T shirt. It looks like blood on it too as well. The guy in the middle, Kevin Von Eric is the only one of the brothers that's still alive. Wow. The guy all the way on the right. It carried was my hero man. And what's crazy is when my dad wrestled for Vince. I'm sorry for Fritz Von Eric. We lived in Dallas and every week at this famous arena called the sportatorium. This tiny little arena, the size of a like a little flea market. Those guys I used to wrestle with them in the afternoons and just roll around the ring. Wow. Those wild.

1:44:25That's wild. Yeah. Anyway, how old were you when you had your first pro wrestling match? I was 24. Wow. 24 years old. So how about this? So I again, like we were saying earlier, football for me was a ticket. Like that was the thing that I was really going to make it. And then I didn't. And I thought I'm going to shift my focus on something. I think I'm going to love. I think it's in here passion. It's pro wrestling. And so I take a quick story. So my coach from Calgary, I played up in the CFL. I got cut from the CFL. He got cut in October of 95. He calls me in December of 95 and says, hey, I want you to know even though we cut you, I want to bring you back next season.

1:45:09I think you got some real potential. I want to have you back. Dude, some on the phone. It's one of those old ass phones that are on the wall. I see my dad over there in the chair. My dad is just old time grizzly wrestler. We're living in his little apartment in Tampa. My mom's over there on the couch. And I tell the coach quietly. Wally Boone was his name. Great guy. I said, hey, thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. But I'm going to have to close this chapter in my life. And he's like, I hear him kind of softly. Okay. Yeah. And I said, so thank you very much. I appreciate it.

1:45:44Hang up the phone. I said, who was that? I said, I was a coach from Calgary. He said, what do you want? Oh, he wanted to offer me another contract for next year. By the way, the contract was like, I was making 300 bucks a week. Canadian. Wow. So there was no money up there, at least not for me. And he goes, so when are you going to go? My old man said this. I said, I'm not. He said, what do you mean you're not? I said, I think I'm done. I'm done with football and the pursuit of it. It's just not in my cards. He said, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to get in the business. He went, what business?

1:46:20I said, wrestling business. Dude, we got in the biggest fucking fight. Really? The biggest. Am I wanting you to do it? He didn't want me to do it. But my old man was a ground breaker. He had first black tech team champions in WWE. He was jacked. Pull up my dad if you get Rocky Johnson. I want to show you like he's, oh, I know you're down. Jacked man. He was he was part of that group in the early 80s. Right? Like bodybuilding and so what? There's that's a genetic son. That's it brother. That's it. That's it. Yeah. God, he was jacked. So, yeah, and we bonded. He used to get me up and take me to the gym when I was five, sitting the corner.

1:47:02And I just, that's how I get to really bomb my dad. He didn't want me to do it. And we got into the biggest fucking fight. My mom's crying. I'm crying. And he said, what do you think you have to offer? I said, I don't know. Maybe I'm going to fucking suck, but I got to give this a shot. And it ultimately got to a place where I said, either you're going to help train me. I'm asking you to help train me or I'll go to somebody else. And at that time, Brett Hart and that whole family had his dungeon up in Calgary. I said, maybe I'll go to Calgary. He agreed to train me, but I realized he didn't want to see that happen because he was, he felt like, hey, look around.

1:47:41Like I, and I was one of the successful ones in wrestling, but I got a little fucking apartment that I got. I got a, I can't even afford to pay 500 bucks a month. I don't want this for you. We got into a huge fight. He eventually trained me. A call a guy after three months of training. Call a guy named Pat Patterson, who was Vince McMahon's right hand man, very brilliant mind in the world of pro wrestling. First openly gay wrestler. Tough motherfucker. I call him up because my parents knew him and I said, hey, Pat, this is Duane Johnson. Who? Duane Johnson. Rocky Johnson's son. Oh, yeah. Now what do you want?

1:48:17I'm going to, I'm, I'm training to get in the business. What fucking business? Result, it's a, it's a recurring theme. Everybody said, what fucking business? The wrestling business. Why the fuck do you want to do that? You just feeling like you're just getting bombed right right left and right by these OGs. So I said, I'd love for you to come down and just watch me train. And if I got anything to offer, just let me know. And if I don't just let me know, that's all I want. He agreed. He came down, watch me train. He said to me as we're training, he goes, can you work as a heel? Which is as you know, bad guy in wrestling parlance.

1:48:54I should, sure, I'd love to start the match. I work as a heel more aggressive, dirty, cheating stuff, right? He goes, okay, you're done, done. And I trained in a boxing ring. And as you know, boxing is a fucking hard. It's like this. It's getting suplexed on a fucking table. So it really hurt. That's how I came up in wrestling. He's smoking a cigarette. I said, what do you think? Do I have anything? He goes, yeah, you just keep working. Take care of yourself and leave. And I was like, did I just fuck? Because he had a lot of power. He was like the vice president of WWE. I said, okay, thank you so much for coming out.

1:49:35And I said, just keep working. He goes, just keep working. He kind of blew me off. He kept smoking a cigarette and walked off. And I was like, man, I think I really fuck things up. Or maybe I'll take his word for face value, take it for gospel. I'll just keep working. Little I knew, he went home and he called Vince McMahon. He said, you gotta see this fucking kid. And Vince said, who? Rocky Johnson's son. He goes, all right, let me see him. Bring him out this Monday on Raw. And I'll throw him out in a match before the show starts. Corpus Christi, 15 ,000 people. Whoa. Dude. This is your first match.

1:50:12First match. Oh my God. So Vince says to Pat, okay, great. How long has he been working? He goes, he hasn't worked. He goes, what do you mean? He's never had a match. He's like, he's never had a fucking match. I'm not bringing him out. He's never had a match. He's gonna stink up the ring. Pat said, just trust me. So they fly me out. Corpus Christi, 14 ,000 people I got and have my first match and I'm 24 years old. Well, I have my first match. Cause usually when you break in, you know, you're wrestling at a farm or there's a barn, 10 people, 14 ,000 people. I wrestled the Brooklyn brawler. This is the famous in the world of wrestling.

1:50:51And I get backstage, everyone's, hey, great job, great job, keep working. I see Vince McMahon. He says, you did a good job. But be prepared. I'm gonna give you a little bit more tomorrow. I went, great, okay. I see Pat Patterson smoking a cigarette. Come here for a second. I said, yeah, he goes, your punches. I went, yeah. They fucking suck. Oh, that's right. That's right. He's riding me, riding me, riding me. So that was my first match, first experience, man. Wow. And then he, by the way, he said, if you have a shred of opportunity to make it in this business, you're gonna have to learn a lot of shit.

1:51:32But learn how to throw a great punch. What was wrong with the way you're throwing a punch? It just didn't look real. And the best of punches, like you gotta be snug. You lay them in a little bit. But you pull it back a little. You pull it, well, you can pull it back a little, but I found the best punches is you follow through, but learn how to just tap a little bit. And then, you know, that's where you learn that kind of timing. You know how some guys, they hit a rope, or some piece of string or something like that. Right. So yeah, so I worked on the punches too as well. Wow. That was crazy. That was my first match.

1:52:03That's insane. What was the next match? Next match was a following night. Whoa. So you were right into it. Right into it. What's the second match like versus the first? You've already done it. You already been in front of 15 ,000 people. I'm feeling pretty good because as you know, and like people out there know, if you prepare, then all right, I'm as prepared as I possibly can be. Right. So we'll just see how it goes. So the second night, I had a little bit of confidence, but the guy they put me in there with was a guy named Chris Candido, credible wrestler. Does a lot of acrobatics stuff flying stuff?

1:52:37He had me, he called the match, had me flying all around and doing all the stuff. So it was, it was a great experience. After that, I met with Vince. He said, you're not ready for WWE. You're not ready for the big time. I'm going to send you down to Tennessee, and that's where you're going to learn how to work. And it was just a smaller company, minor leagues. He said, but you're going to go down there. You learn how to cut your teeth down there. Learn how to work, learn the business. And when you're ready, if you're ready, I'll bring you up. I was like, thank you very much. I appreciate it, and I went to work.

1:53:12So dude, there's some leaving Vince McMahon's office. He says, hey, by the way, I turn around, he goes, don't go down there and cut your forehead up with razor blades. I went, okay, got it. Because in wrestling, there was a time where that's how you blend with razor blades. And he goes, I want to protect this. I do too. Then years later, I'm like, I'm doing this up at WWE. But that would be a good feeling though. We had some real real hope in you. That is my second match. This is insane. Look at that. This is insane. Wow.

1:53:52Does it seem surreal? It's, this is so surreal, man.

1:53:58Look at this. By the way, you see people still coming in, right? Yeah, empty seats. That was it, man. First match. Marries. First match. Wow, that's crazy. It's incredible. And then to go from there to where you became, how'd it be surreal? It was the most surreal thing. Because finally, when they called me up to WWE, it was November. Vince brings me in. And I go to a big pay -per -view called Survivor Series. Now the wrestling fans, I don't know what this pay -per -view is. It's November 1996. There it is. Here it is.

1:54:45Dude, look at that fucking haircut. Look at you. Ray Charles cut my hair. Like that was like, wow. So this is Madison Square Garden. 22 ,000 people. This is, there's Jerry the King Lawler, the guy's a legend. This is a little bit of watch. There we go.

1:55:09Here's a double leap frog here. Wow. Dropkick is coming up.

1:55:16Little punch. So even if you see that punch, it was a little shitty punch anyway, but this is, so that was Madison Square Garden. Just sold out. Vince McMahon tells me an hour before I go out. You're gonna win the whole thing tonight. Whoa. What do you mean? He goes, you're gonna win the whole thing. I'm throwing you right into the fire. I'll never forget this. He said, you're either gonna fucking sink. Or you're gonna swim. It's New York City. It's up to you. And I went, okay, great. I talked to all the guys. And by the way, in order to make someone like that, you need the other guys, right, to say, because I always like to say, you never beat anybody.

1:56:02Right. Interesting. Truly beat you. The guy allows you to beat him. Right. So all those guys in that ring right there, I'll forever be grateful for them, because they allowed that to happen. So I win the match. New star is born in the world of pro wrestling. It's rookie kid Rocky Mavia. This is the one, two, three here. That wrestler's gold dust comes from a very famous family. That guy was amazing. You remember him? He was amazing, man. The whole gold dust thing was crazy. So can you pause that for a second? Go back to my hair. So I didn't know, look at this, pause. I didn't know that I went to the hair person who was backstage.

1:56:41I said, can you give me something that's going to make my hair nice and go down? And she gave me a thing that made it frizzy. And then that's what you get, by the way, just a fucked up haircut on your debut. Like luckily, the people of New York was like, we kind of like this kid. His haircut is really fucked up. You look like a kid in play. I look like the bigger version of kid in play. Look at this. Look at that thing. Fuck. That's a solid foot above your head. Right, this time the referees, like, get the fuck out of the ring. Come on, we got a show. So you. So, well, so what, let's go ahead.

1:57:18No, no, go ahead. Well, I was going to say so we win this match and things are ascending. The dream is coming true. Like this is it, man. I finally feel like this is what I was born to do. And man, it's feeling so fucking good. Guys in the locker room, all everybody take me out of their wing. There's some political bullshit that you always want to stay away from. I've always stayed away from that. But for the most part, everybody supportive. Because even though it's a cutthroat business backstage, you still need some guys who are going to show you the way. So I wound up becoming the youngest intercontinental champion, beating Triple H.

1:57:58Or he let me beat him. Right. Everything was doing this. So at that time, this interesting thing was happening in the world of pro wrestling where it was fans were cheering the heels. And anti -authority, fuck the boss, led by Stone Cold Steve Austin. Give it everybody the bird, fuck Vince McMahon, fans were loving that gravitating towards this. That guy drives a pickup drug, drinks a beer, tells everybody go fuck themselves. Now in wrestling world, that's supposed to be a bad guy, but now he's becoming a hero. Then you have this kid who's 25, who's coming out. Here we go. You know, the nugget old school and Vince and the company always told me, hey, you can't smile enough.

1:58:43I was like, what do you mean? You go out, you smile. I want to make sure everybody knows you're grateful. Gratitude of attitude. And I said, okay. And it started not to feel good to me because I said, well, so you know, these nights, I'm getting beat. But I still want you to smile anyway. So you have this thing happening over here, the rise of the attitude era. And then you have this kid who's just smiling away. Everything is good, even when he fucking loses. And it never felt right to me here. And then fans started to turn. Buying every night. Got to a point to going into my first WrestleMania.

1:59:21Chicago, I'll never forget it. Every night they were chanting Rocky socks. Whoa. And I had to smile through it. The bosses were telling me, you got to smile. Now keep smiling, ignore it. Ignore it. Just ignore it. If you're paying your hard earned money as a fan, even though this world is fiction and it's not real, the best of the wrestlers always came from a real place. So I was smiling away. I get to WrestleMania, Chicago. Sold out. Stone Cold Sea Vosons on top in the main event. I'm defending my title. WrestleMania, 20 ,000 people start chanting Rocky socks. So imagine that you're a kid, 25 years old.

2:00:08You got the belt on you, pressure. You're in there. And the guy who I was wrestling, the Sultan, who was actually my cousin, Rikishi. From my son on side. He had me in a rear chin lock. Whole arena's chanting Rocky socks. He's whispering to me, don't listen to him. Don't listen to him. Now I'm like, this is my life now. Right. We get out of the match. I go backstage, Vince looks at me and Pat and just says, I don't know what we did wrong, but we have to make a change. I know what that means. Two days later, I dropped the belt to somebody else. Now I'm getting beat every night. I'm getting beat every night.

2:00:53And then I get hurt. I tear my PCL wrestling guy named Mick Foley. Now by this time it's May, Vince says, take time off, heal your knee. I don't know what we did wrong or where we went wrong, but we got to really figure things out with you. I don't know if this is gonna work out. Ooh, yeah man. And this is 1997, summer of 97. Now you'll appreciate this part. In 97, during that time, while I was still going out to LA and working out, we were crossing all the MMA guys. Pride just opened up in Japan. So I was seeing all these MMA guys going over to Pride. You remember that time, right? I think you might have been with UFC at that time, right?

2:01:43Going, and at that time I was making $150 ,000 wrestling 235 days a year. So do the math of that. How much you're making per match. We start hearing, hey, these guys over in Pride are making 250, 350, 500. And I thought then, well, fuck it. I don't think I'm gonna make it in WWE. People are booing me out of the arenas. I can't be myself. They're telling me to fucking smile. I don't wanna fucking smile. It's not who I am. I start talking to Ken Shamrock at that time, who's wrestling with us. I run into Mark Kerr. I start talking to him. He took me a little bit about Pride. And I had this idea of my head.

2:02:21Well, maybe I should train to MMA and go to Pride and make money, real money. And then I don't have to smile. I'm sure I'm gonna get fucked up over there and knock one of my lungs loose, but maybe I could do something like that. Find the right coach and train. So I had this whole thing in my head. I was talking to my wife at that time. I said, I think that's the way to go. Cause those guys are paying real money. And these fans are booing me over here for 150 grand. I get a call from Vince and he says, how's your knee? I said, it's healing up. I don't tell him about this idea. After I've talked to Shamrock and Kerr and all these guys, he goes, I wanna try and bring you back one time.

2:03:05See how it works out. I wanna turn you heal. And we have a faction called the Nation of Domination. Who DC loves by the way. Who is his favorite? His favorite? Daniel. The black militant group. He goes, I wanna have you join them and we'll see how it works out. I come in and I said, okay. But I still got this MMA thought in my head. Again, I just wanna make money and I wanna be myself. When I get to the arena that night, I'm gonna join the Nation. I went to Vince and at that time, there was only just two hours of live show Monday Night Raw. Now there's six hours of show on two different programs.

2:03:42So I said to Vince, hey tonight, when I go out there, could I just have two minutes on the microphone? And he's like, I don't know, he goes, it's live, you know, all our times accounted for, allocated. I said, I just need two minutes. He goes, why? I said, I just wanna be real and just tell the fans how I feel. And I feel like I need to recalibrate things here. He said, fine, a minute you got. Great. Get on the microphone. Now I'm walking out, they're booing me. Rocky sucks, but now the heel with this heel group. I grabbed the microphone and I say something like, listen, I'm a lot of things, but sucks isn't one of them.

2:04:20And joining the Nation isn't a white thing. It's not a black thing. It's a meat kick and your ass thing. And I'm gonna earn this respect one way or the other. Dude, that was the most freeing thing for me in my career. It was like, you know how you have these defining moments? Even in that one little moment, I was just fucking ripping all this open. Say, here I am. You know how you can fucking boo me, but now watch how I respond. It'll be real. Nine of the smile anymore. And I fucked the smiling. I'll smile when I wanna smile. Right, right, right. But now watch how I can respond. Watch my words now, watch my actions.

2:04:55Dude, the fans felt something that night within a month, I became the hottest heel in WWE. Wow. Like this is all you have. That's the gratitude I get from your pieces of crap. For all my blood, my sweat and my tears. You that baby face. Look at that, dude. This isn't about the color of my skin. This is about respect.

2:05:25I became the youngest intercontinental champion in WWE history. And what did it get me? In arena's a trust the country. I heard a chance of Rocky sucks.

2:05:44Well, Rocky, my beer's a lot of things, but sucks isn't one of them. You know, hey, there's not a black thing. It's not a white thing. And hey, let's talk about a racist faction. You wanna talk about a group that's prejudice? Let's talk about the DOA. The DOA epitomizes racism. But hey, you know what the hell with the DOA? I wanna make one point or you jackass fans out there. Ooh. Rocky, my beer and the new nation of domination lives, breath and dies respect. And we will earn respect by any means necessary. That was it. That's it. That started off. The heel journey. It started it off, man. And then that was it.

2:06:33But you know what it is. I look back on that. And I feel like it's just a life lesson for all of us, which is the most powerful thing you could be is yourself. And even in that crazy world of fucking fictionalized pro wrestling that some people love, some people don't, that idea of... Yeah, ripping it out, being who you are. Yeah, man. Yeah. Vince is just so interesting. He's such an interesting guy. The fact that he's driven for so long, for so long, this guy's been just fucking getting after it, for so long. And just lives and breathes this idea of crafting narratives and figuring out who's the good guy and who's the bad guy and how to set up a storyline.

2:07:19And paying attention to what's happening and politically what's happening, tapping into that. And they always have his finger on the pulse of what's happening. I can see how he tried the thing about you smiling all the time. You got a great smile, friendly, good looking guy. Why not? Have a smile. It's a smile. And you know what he said? He goes, I'm going to give you a push, but I want to make sure if you smile, then people will know you're grateful. And I was like, okay, I get the conceit of that. But there's other ways I think I can be grateful because otherwise I'm coming across as being a phony.

2:07:53And that's just not who I am. So by the way, years later or even months later, I mean, he admitted he said, I totally get it. Now I understand. Or he's going to be. Did Japanese pro wrestling come out of American pro wrestling or was it a separate thing that evolved on its own? I think it was a separate thing that evolved on its own. Well, I think everything evolved out of American wrestling that started off originally, started off in the carnivals, started off in catch wrestling and things like that, which eventually evolved to one of MMA techniques. So the carnivals for people that don't know, literally they'd have traveling carnivals where someone would take on anyone in the crowd.

2:08:31That's right. And these were real wrestlers, real catch wrestlers who knew submissions and they would pin guys and get them in ankle cranks. And oh, yeah. And so the thing that started going sideways, which required a Vince McMahon type, well, wait a second, we're not doing this right. Cause these guys who were just these fucking bad asses, they go to the carnival, 10 bucks, five bucks, you come in and try your luck if you could beat the champion. The champion beat the shit out of all of these guys. But every once in a while, you got a guy who came in out of the blue off the street who knew how to protect himself and hold his own might have known a holder to and whiter beating the champion.

2:09:12And this started to happen. And before you know it, a promoter or promoter's or some, whether it's the fighters, whoever it was, the wrestlers possibly. But someone was like, hold on a second, we need to work this. Because otherwise we're running a risk. That's getting fucked up. It's like, what did we took the show on the road? Right. So that's how this idea of pro wrestling out of the carnival started to happen. It's really interesting because wrestling itself is one of the most dynamic and difficult amateur sports. But they never really figured out a way to take actual competitive wrestling and make it a legitimate professional sport that's watched by people, which is really insane.

2:09:52Because it's so exciting. So many people don't play tennis, but they still enjoy watching tennis. That's right. How is it that wrestling never got to that place? And I think it's probably because of the carnival wrestling, pro wrestling became a thing that everybody kind of knew was entertainment. Yes. And it became all these characters and killer Kowalski and all these guys that were like, I'm gonna rip his throat out and shit down his neck. And everybody, and the crowd goes nuts. And to try to have just actual freestyle wrestling become a sport where you're competing for cash prizes, like you would do with tennis or something else, I never made it there, which doesn't make any sense to me.

2:10:40Because so many people wrestle. So many people appreciate wrestling. Wrestling is the cornerstone of MMA. He's one of the most important, it's I think the most important, because if a guy is a kickboxer and he does not a wrestle, wrestlers are just gonna take him down and beat the fuck out of him every single fight. Wrestling is the side, whether the fight stands or goes to the ground, because once they grip you, you ain't doing shit. So you're gonna get ragged all, that's just a fact. And for whatever reason, boxing has a legitimate professional application. There's even professional karate. There's all these different things, but wrestling as a competition, an actual athletic competition, never took traction, professional.

2:11:17No, it didn't. And as you were saying, I think the cachet and the entertainment value just started become more appealing. I think to people, and if you think about it back in the early 1920s and 30s, and at that time, where fucking times were tough, and people were trying to stretch the dollar, what do I wanna go see? I wanna go see this wrestling event, it feels like, and plus those matches, they would work those matches where they're fucking hour, hour and a half, like a long matches too as well. Crazy. But I will say one of the most important elements, which I know you'll appreciate, and a lot of MMA fighters appreciate is the, as you say, the wrestling is a cornerstone of MMA, but also for decades and decades and decades, and even still today, having a great base of wrestling is important, even though there's antics and showmanship, and this guy's jumping off this thing and going to the building and bringing the car in and doing all this shit, they're still the basics of wrestling is always very important because as you know, with catch wrestling, like it taught a lot of wrestling, and myself included, because I came up old school to have real respect for the holds, and to be able to get out of holds, put people in holds, know how to work them, or know how to apply them, where you fuck someone up if you had to.

2:12:34So I always appreciate that about the basics of pro wrestling. Did you ever amateur wrestle? So, dude, yes. So especially in Pennsylvania, I got there in Alan Teth, the whole area in Pennsylvania, you know, like they're great wrestlers coming out of Pennsylvania in Ohio, but I love pro wrestling. So I was 15 years old, wrestling coach who was also the football coach, was like, yeah, I want you to come out for wrestling, you come from a wrestling family, I'm like, yeah, great. I had this thought in my head, I don't wanna fucking kill this, but I've already got my, I've already, my dad was working my ass out on the mats when I was five, right?

2:13:13And the Von Erichs were working me out when I was five, right? And so I had this base, holds, lockups, everything. And my first wrestling practice, I was like, fuck, this is the most boring shit I've ever felt. I'm like, I'm like, and I told my grizz, I was like, guys, I don't mind. Cause I was just so now conditioned. Now of course it's the hardest fucking sport out there. It's the hardest sport. Hardest fucking sport. I have so much respect for it, but you know what it was, it was just me at 15. Dude, I love the pile drivers. Right. I love the back drives. I love the people. I love the people.

2:13:48I get it. Yeah. It's a, it would have been an interesting turn of events if you want to go and pride. What did you have an idea where you were gonna train? I had no idea. I was just, I felt like I'm spinning here. Did you have any experiences striking? A little bit. Very little. My dad was a great amateur boxer. He'd sparred with Foreman. Wow. A few times sparred with Ali that was a little bit more of a show. Great amateur, golden gloves in Canada. Like, he was a badass. So he was teaching me how to hit it. A young age, heavy bag, speed bag, things like that. He's had a little bit. And I felt like, I've always been, I've always been very coachable in whatever it is that I did, whether it's football, wrestling, track, whatever it is.

2:14:33So I felt like, hey, I'm gonna go into this if there's a shot at this and I could go to pride and make money. By the way, I just, I had this thought of pride because it felt like, oh, those guys there, they're making money, they're putting on these big shows. There's 20, 30 ,000 people in these shows. This looks incredible. And not only that, but then I think when you're talking to guys and they're in it and they're saying, yeah, you could do it. You could do it. Well, you know, Shamrock was very smart, by the way, which I really appreciate about him. And at that time, we were wrestling each other every night.

2:15:02So I got a chance to get to know him very well and work out with him. And he was just like, you might just stick with this first. Like this real shot here. Like you got something here. Stick with this. And if you remember, he started in pro wrestling. And then went over, when you were there in the early days of the UFC. Yeah, he was dominant in MMA in the early days. He was one of the first guys to figure out conditioning. His gym, the Lions dad was notorious for being absolutely brutal with their strength and conditioning routines. Yeah. They would put people through a fucking gauntlet to join that team.

2:15:35And it was one of the most difficult teams to join. It was like legendary sessions that they would put you through. They would try to break you. Yeah, just try and he would just try to let you know, like the worst thing you want to be in a fight is tired. And you are going to get tired as fuck training with us so that the fight's going to be easy. Easy. Yeah. Wow. And they developed some amazing fighters. Yeah. So many, the early days of MMA, his brother Frank, he was one of the very best, he was one of the very best complete MMA fighters. In my opinion, the first truly complete MMA fighter we saw and a guy with insane cardio.

2:16:11Insane. And that was one of the things about Frank is that he could just fucking go forever. Yeah. And he, like when he beat Tito Ortiz, he beat Tito was much better than him, stronger than him. And he just overwhelmed him with volume and cardio and eventually beat his ass. I remember that. He was, and now Tito a giant lesson. And he was in crazy shape too. Crazy, both of them. Yeah. Frank and Ken. Yeah, and Frank was fighting. I mean, he had been training for like a year and a half and he was fighting in Japan. Yeah. I mean, just insane. Insane. But he was just a quick learner and just fully committed and by the time he became UFC champion, I mean, he just had an arsenal of skills.

2:16:48Yeah. He was the first truly complete MMA fighter and people for whatever reason they forgot how good he was. Yeah. But he was, he was in my opinion, the first real complete, like fully well -rounded submission artist. He could knock you out. He was a dog in a fight. Yeah. Just incredible conditioning, built like a god. Yeah. He was the first. Let me ask you this about these guys. Say for example, to take Frank Shamrock, Ken Shamrock, my low, I love that guy, Mark Kerr, who I've gotten to know very well, do you think these guys, I don't want to say were they ahead of their time? Because they were all founding fathers.

2:17:24Yeah, they're pioneers. Pioneers, man. How do you think those guys would fare today? Even with the insane mindset that those guys had, right? I feel like with the different kind of coaching, how they were coached back then, I feel like they would still dominate. I feel like all champions have a quality that in any era, dependent upon the skill level of that area, era, they would rise to whatever that skill level is. Yes. What's going on today is you've got guys with one, two fights in the UFC that are elite fighters. They might have 30 amateur fights. Right. Yeah, you're getting these guys that are competing now, that are first fight in the UFC.

2:18:09They're world class. You see like how smooth and technical they are. Like Jesus Christ, these guys are so good. Back then that wasn't the case. So you could get away with a lot more and you didn't have as high a bar to aspire to. But champions rise to the level of competition that's around them. That's right. And I think guys like Frank Shamrock or Ken Shamrock or Horace Gracie, they would rise today. They would all rise today. Because they're champions. There's a mindset. They would just have to do things differently. And they would have to check the leg kicks. What way? They would have to know every aspect of it.

2:18:46Like Horace in the beginning, very little striking. He would just kind of throw kicks just to try to get a clinch and get a hold of you. And his Jiu -Jitsu was so superior to everybody's that once he got you to the ground, you were fucked. But that's not good enough today. Like now everyone's a black belt in Jiu -Jitsu. Now everyone knows how to move on the ground. Now everyone knows how to defend. And everyone has nasty stand up. And you have to have everything today. But Horace would have developed that. He would have, he's a champion. There's a mindset of someone who can win one of those gigantic tournaments that he won like in the early days.

2:19:18He's fighting guys 270 pounds. When he fought Dan Severin, Dan Severin was giant. He got some of his jangles. And multiple fights tonight. Multiple fights tonight. Multiple fights tonight. Yeah. Champions are champions. And the thing is, the level of competition today is so high that it's like there's more required of everyone. But I feel like champions are a very unique breed of individual. And champions would rise in any era. Cause they would figure out what they need to do in accordance to like what's the competition and who's around them and they would rise to that occasion. That's what I think.

2:19:54It's the capacity that they have. Yeah, they have. And back then nobody knew, I mean, Marco Huas was the first guy to show us leg kicks. And we were like, Jesus Christ, look at this guy. He's just chopping at Paul Varlan's legs. Yeah. Yeah. And Marco's like 220 pounds and Paul Varlan's the polar bear. Was huge. Fucking huge. It's like 300 plus and Marco's just kicking his legs, kicking his legs and eventually he collapses and we're like, oh my God, you can kick the legs. Yes. And then it became a thing. Yeah. And we're like, it's sort of kicking legs. And then Pedro Hizzo comes around and he's in the most devastating leg kicker.

2:20:25And there was these guys that learn from what they're seeing around them. And you see that now we're talking about the calf kick. Yes. A relatively new thing in MMA, but it's devastating. And everyone does it now. And if you don't know it and you don't know how to check it, you're fucked. Yes. One or two kicks to the calf and your legs useless. And done, right? Yeah. Foot goes numb. Yeah, leg doesn't move. You can't stand on it, right? So you're compromised. And so all your balance is on your left leg now because your right leg's fucked. So you switch stances and you put your left leg forward.

2:20:56Now that gets kicked. And you're trying. And then you're trying not to show your shit. Exactly. You're trying to keep a poker face. And let me ask you this. Do you think it ever goes back to at any point where it's different weight classes against each other? It could. Some wild organization in Russia, I'm sure, is doing that right now. There's always someone who's trying to Japan did a lot of that. Yes. Crazy freak shows. That was the thing about Japan. They love to put like Bob Sap, 350 pounds of solid muscle. And they put him against Minotaro, who's the champion. He was like 220 natural, you know, just, but Minotaro won.

2:21:33It was one of those cases where Jiu Jitsu prevailed over a larger, scarier opponent. But there's a moment in that fight where Bob Sap, at the beginning of the fight, piled drives Minotaro. I remember that. And he fucked his neck up for years. His neck was probably never the same again after that fight. Wow. I played against Bob Sap. In football? Yeah. Yeah, giant, giant. Giant, giant. Like a cartoon. He didn't even look like a real person. And the body. Yes. It's insane. It's 70 with abs. Yes. Yeah, you would see him and you would go, what? Yeah. Like he was across the ring and pride. That's what they loved.

2:22:06They loved that freak show aspect of it. That Bob Sap standing over there, just not even looking like a human being, looking like a character in an Avengers movie. Look at the size of him. This is the, this is the round one. So this is Bob Sap. So Minotaro shoots for a shot. Bob Sap picks him up. Bob Sap. On his head, bro. On his fucking head. Yeah. I mean, insane. And Minotaro's got to be an ag. He's going again. Yeah. But he got a hold of the leg this time to stop that. But I mean, it went back and forth and then Minotaro, he hits the switch and eventually gets on top of Bob Sap at the end of the fight and gets him in an arm bar.

2:22:43But it was a grueling encounter. Yes. Spent a lot of time on his back and beaten up by this enormous, super powerful dude. Incredible. And then did Bob guess out like that? Yeah, Bob. Yes, though. Yeah. I mean, Bob was so big. I mean, the cardiovascular requirements of someone who's that big. I mean, Jesus Christ. But also Minotaro's jujitsu is next level. Yeah. Yeah. Just super next level. He was really one of the first Brazilian jujitsu black belts to have an elite guard. So like when you were on, if you were on top and he was on his back, you were still dangerous waters. Yes. Because this guy was just an elite black belt in Jiu -Jitsu.

2:23:20And for Jiu -Jitsu, when he caught him in this arm bar, it was the biggest win ever. I remember me and my friends were watching us. I have to come back from that. Look at this. Me and my friends were watching this. And when he catches him in this arm bar and he eventually gets it, we fucking jumped up and cheered. Because like fucking Jiu -Jitsu. Yeah. Oh, right away. Yes. And we were like, no way. He did it. He fucking did it. He was our hero. He was the jujitsu hero. Really? Yeah. Minotaro and Hogueira was the hero. For sure. Wow. Because he represented Jiu -Jitsu against the worst case scenario.

2:23:50A fucking super athlete. Yes. A person that didn't even look like a person. Which is dumb to only fucking head, by the way. A massive guy who was battering him. But was beating him up and slamming him on the ground and he prevailed with skill. Yeah. Like Minotaro, that guy would be a champion today. He would be a champion in any era. Yes. Just champions. Well, a fator. Fator. He would be a champion in any era. Yes. There's guys like that that are just, they're special. They're special people. Did you wish that he had his run in a hundred percent? Yeah. What happened there? I don't know. There's a lot of different versions of the story.

2:24:22Yeah. There's a lot of characters in Russia that were connected to Fatal. They had some heavy requirements of what, you know, they wanted from the UFC and the UFC wasn't willing to give it to them. Sure. It got pretty testy. You got, you got, got dangerous. It got, you know, there's some real people over there. Yes. Real dudes. But, you know, I feel like that's the, that's just, that's the fight business. That's really the fight business from Russia too. Yes. I mean, these are hard men. And Fator was the hardest. That motherfucker never changes expression. Man, right. He was beating people into a bloody pulp and he looked like he was sipping teeth.

2:24:57Yes. He was a, he was a special guy. That mentality. Oh my God. He was a special guy. He fought Kevin Randleman. He Kevin Randleman and suplexed him on his neck. Just threw him through the air and slammed him on his neck and within moments afterwards, Fator had him in an arm bar. Moments afterwards. You know, just a machine. He was a machine. And, and dystopic. A stoic and deceiving. Deceptively, right? Because you're even Kevin Randleman. Just the body. Oh my God. You know, these guys who look like a, a, a $1 ,000 ,000. Yeah. God. And you have Fator, who's just like a fucking sloppy body. Look like he just ate a bunch of potatoes and drank beer.

2:25:34Big ol' roll of fat and just fucked everybody up. So here's the fight. And you look at Fator. That does not look like the best fighter in the world when you look at his body. Unbelievable. But if you look at his movements, his movements were fucking perfect. Yes. He had such good striking too. And he was so elite on the ground. And he was one of the first, you know, guys who could do everything. Ground and pound, stand up, blast you standing up. And you, there, here's a slam. This is just the beginning. This is the beginning of the fight. But at one point in time, Fator figures out a way to get up and then Randleman suplexes him.

2:26:07And when he suplexed him right here, right on his neck. Boom! I mean, but look, Fator just immediately rolls. Yep. He ate it. He's good. And so they get into this scramble. And this is back when you could throw knees to the head on the ground too. Pride. But he looked, he reversed him. So show how you reversed him. Because it was fucking beautiful. Watch this. So Randleman, who is an elite wrestler, you got to imagine what kind of skill it takes to be able to reverse a guy like that. Yes. You know, a real elite college wrestler. You see that fucked up leg? Yeah. See the veins of his legs? That's when a fight with Pedro Hizo.

2:26:39Pedro Hizo would kick your legs so hard that all your arteries would burst. And that's what happened. And you guys would get compartments in during their leg. Where their leg would fill up with blood. And they would take them like six months to recover from a Pedro Hizo fight. Wow. Yeah, Pedro Hizo was the scariest fucking leg kicker that ever fought in the sport. And look at this immediately. Locks up a Camora. And that's it. That's a wrap. That was Fader. And look, never changes expression. Even when he wins. Nothing. Nothing. No yeehaw. No fuck yeah. Look at, as he's getting slammed. I mean, right on his fucking neck, man.

2:27:15And then he catches him in the Camora. I mean, that was Fader. He figured out a way to win against anybody. And for a period of time, he was the greatest ever. I don't know. Yes. It's you got to look at guys when they were at their best. And Fader in pride was one of the greatest of all time, if not the greatest heavyweight ever. Yes. Yeah. He was a monster. I always wish he had that run. I do too. You know, him versus Brock Lesnar would have been fucking insane. It would have been fucking insane. Yeah. When Kane was at the top, Kane's another one. There's an argument when Kane was at his very best, like when he beat Brock, when Kane was just destroying everybody, there's an argument that he's the greatest, but his run was less because he was so tough that he broke his body.

2:28:05He was just so mentally tough. He just fucking pushed it. It turns the training. Yeah, tours, knees, his shoulders, back, everything. Everything just started giving out. And then he got to a certain point in his life where he just said, you know, I'm not sure how much of that is. Coach compared to him. I mean, he'll make the decision to train. I believe and push himself. But at what point you think coach is stepping in and saying. It's hard to say because Kane is another one that was so stoic and he would never complain. And also the training session. You wouldn't know that he's hurt. Yeah, and the training session, I mean him and DC were just going to war all the time.

2:28:54And AKA was just this talent filled shark tank of a bunch of assassins just beating the fuck out of each other and just all iron sharpens iron. And you're going to get banged up. You're going to get banged up in training. You're going to get banged up in these fights against guys like, you know, these fucking huge super athlete fighters. You're going to get banged up. Yeah. But in that time when he beat Minotaur Jesus Christ, this is like when you could see the levels of competition as they pull up Kane Velasquez versus Minotaur. Because in my opinion, this is prime Kane Velasquez when he just seemed unstoppable.

2:29:34Because he was a heavyweight but he had the cardio of a welterweight. Yeah. And he had speed and precision and he never was out of position. Everything he threw, he just threw precise and perfect and technical and he was so fucking game. And when you watch it, look at these leg kicks. I mean, he was so fucking smooth. Yeah. Everything he did was precise like the way he's throwing these combinations and head kicks and his defenses on point. Kane was a monster in his time. Yeah. And like in this time, like this came Velasquez, I put this came Velasquez against anybody that's ever lived. Yeah. And I would love to see it.

2:30:09Yeah. And he was so fucking good. He was so good. Yeah. And then he lost the junior dos Santos but what a lot of people don't know is that was like the first fight on Fox. It was like this big, big fight. I remember that. And Kane tore his knee before that fight. His knee was fucked up. Oh, he really, look at this. Look at that combination. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That's Kane. That was Kane at his best. That's the fucking, that's the knee Kane. He was a monster. Monster, man. Everybody's terrified of that guy. Yeah. He never got tired. They call him Cardio Kane. Never got tired. Yeah. Never got tired.

2:30:43I remember that Arizona. I want to say Arizona State, or he came out of Arizona State and then went to a K .A. to begin his MMA career and just was a monster. And was like nothing anybody ever seen. The guys would get this thousand yard stare in their eyes when they'd be in like the second round with him. They just, they couldn't believe they had four more rounds to go. This is fucking insane. Yes. And that guy, and he's not breathing heavy. He just, just, just fucking marching you down, beating your ass. Who's next big heavyweight star? Tom Haspinal, the guy who just won the interim title. He's phenomenal.

2:31:20And he is again, the next, the next advancement of the evolution of the sport. House, though. Well, because he can do everything. That guy's got elite jujitsu. He's got elite takedowns. He's striking his outstanding. I mean, he knocked out Sergei who's the scariest fucking striker in all of MMA. And he knocked him out in the first round. And the way he did it was just picture perfect. And he did it with a fucked up back. He fucked his back up and wasn't able to train for like, like, he fucked his back up in one of the sessions when he was, because he only got the fight call two weeks before the event.

2:31:54I was just going to say, right? Like it's just, he took it early. Yes. He couldn't train. He couldn't train. He couldn't train. So he just went out there and fought. He just said, let me back, let my back heal up. I'm fit enough. I'm in shape enough. I'll do whatever I can do in training, but he couldn't wrestle. He couldn't, you know, he couldn't do much sparring. His back was fucked up. So he had to kind of let it heal as much as it could in like 10 days and then go out and fight the fucking scariest. Look at this forever. That's a crazy. Did you call that? Yeah. I knew you called it, but did you call?

2:32:24Did you do you? Oh, I had no idea. I had no idea. Both of those main events, I had no idea. It was like you couldn't, Sergey could connect on anybody and put them to sleep. He just knocked out Derek Lewis in one round and knocked out Tine 2. He was a monster. And so you watch Sergey and you go, I don't know. You watch Aspenal. I knew Aspenal was going to have a speed advantage because he's faster than any heavyweight. And that's something that his coach drilled into him when he was young. Speed. Like, be fast. Like, you got to be fast. That's what's going to separate you from everybody else. Speed kills.

2:32:55Speed. Yeah. And he's a giant dude, 260 plus pounds, but he moves like a fast young guy, like a light guy. And so that was, that's what's, and he's also just so well rounded. And he's just beginning. Yeah. I mean, that was really the first big test of his career. He had fought some good guys up until that fight. Yeah. That is the first guy where you were like, boy, every fight before that, Aspenal was a heavy favorite in my eyes. Yeah. And then that fight, I was like, whoa, I don't fucking know. I don't know what's going to happen here. Yeah. So for him to do that, what he did and to, to perform that way under those situation, and that, and that circumstance where you're back as fuck, and you can't really train incredibly impressive.

2:33:35That's incredible, man. But I want to go on a back. That's what I want. That's the champion. I mean, dude, that's the champion. Fuck. And that guy relinquishes crown. And what he did with Tyson Fury is probably one of the greatest performances in combat sports history. Ever. Ever. Yes. Ever. Yeah. That guy go over there with no one gave many chance. Terrence Crawford was sitting across where you are right now. And he's like, zero chance. He's going to get knocked out, zero chance. And then when he dropped Tyson Fury in the third round and then was battering him in the eighth. And then at the 10th round, at the end of the fight, you're like, I don't know what's going to happen here.

2:34:11I don't know who won. And one judge saw it for him and one judge saw it for, and the other two judges saw it for, for Fury. But it was that close. It was that close where you, and a lot of people are saying that this puts Tyson Fury's argument of being one of the greatest of all time in jeopardy. Because now people are saying, well, hey, man, you got dropped and brought to a questionable decision by a guy with zero boxing matches, which is crazy. Yeah. But that's the kind of freak that Francis is. Francis is, man. He's a freak. He's the freak of all freaks. If you're, and you've seen Francis up close, yeah, that's the thing.

2:34:45So you know the kind of freak is, if you're him and if you're as people, what? What's that? What's his next move? Get as much money as you can. Of course. This is what I think they should do. Put him in with a heavyweight boxer that he could beat that has a good record. Like someone who's in the argument of like a top 10, and if Francis knocks that guy out, then if they can try and it hoax Tyson Fury into a rematch, that would be fucking bananas. And I think Saudi Arabia has enough money to actually pull that off. I think so too. I think so too. They might be able to fucking get Tyson in with just fucking life changing generational money.

2:35:26So here's the thing about Tyson and I love and respect. I love that guy too. There's two train of thoughts here. It's either, well, I don't actually need to fight him again. Right. There's that train of thought. But then I wonder if it goes back to the champion mentality that you talked about is as a champion, I need to fight that guy. It may be that. I mean, he's certainly a champion. And he's certainly one of the greatest of all time. And I think he's certainly underestimated Francis. And I don't know how he trained for Francis. He said he trained his heart as any fight ever, which is possible because he always looks that way.

2:36:01He always like, like, Fedor. He has like this very disarming body and he jokes around about it. That's fucking belly. And he's a character. I love the guy to death. I think if he knows now what he's up against and he just boxes, just boxes with a real understanding of the consequences of making a mistake, I think it's probably a different fight. If he doesn't engage and just use that beautiful jab and movement and stays away from him and just does what he does when he's at his very best. And one of the things you see from Tyson Fury is when he does have a rematch, he performs so much better. Like the Deontay Wilders, Wilders, for example, first fight down to the wire gets dropped in the last round.

2:36:40It's a draw. Second fight dominates. Third fight dominates. And was put through adversity. Dropped. I mean, I think he dropped, got dropped four times over the course of their three fights. Yes. By the heart is fucking one punch knockout artist ever, man. Deontay's got lightning in his hands. He just, just electrocute speech. Easy, man. Deontay's, he's the greatest knockout artist ever. If you look at his career, it's like mostly knockouts. That's it, right? And also too, I feel like tall. So as your tall, your muscles get elongated as you know, and then it becomes deceptive. Mm -hmm. What's a leverage thing too?

2:37:18Yes. Because he's got broad shoulders and insane speed. Yes. So when he drops that hand on you, it's just, when he turns it over at the end with all that length and torque and leverage, he's like nobody, like nobody. He just starches people. Yeah. I always go to the Lewis Ortiz fight. When he cracked him in the head and our teeth got tough, he's like, what the fuck? Hit him on the forehead. Yeah. Hit him on the forehead and just shut the lights out. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Deontay, what Terry Atlas calls it, the Teddy Atlas calls it the eraser. He's like, any mistakes that he has, he just a racist with one shot.

2:37:52And it's true. Like you can, you can win every round with Deontay. And you just zig when you should have zagged and blah, blah. And he almost did it to Tyson Fury. I was gonna say, he did. He almost did. If any other man, it might have been the end, but Tyson is just so game. He's just such a fucking warrior. He figured out a way to get up and hold and he got dropped again. He got picked up again. And then wound up stopping him after that. That's right. And an amazing, glorious finish to the fight that cemented him as one of the greatest heavyweights of all time. Of all time. I think really to get it back, to really get that reputation back, he should fight Francis.

2:38:29I really think he should. But he probably wants to fight Usic first, unify the title. And then if they come to him with just gigantic banana money, just, just Kuku for Coco Puffs, like what? How much? $200 million. Back what truck up? Yes. Fucking crazy like that. He might just go, all right. And then. Which you know the resources are there for that. Oh yeah, they could do whatever the fuck they want. They got, they got, they got the fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, money. Call of your money. Fuck everyone money. They got the plan of money. And I liked that they're putting together that fight. I liked that they put together that fight and I liked that they're putting together a bunch of other fights.

2:39:10They're trying to do a lot of crazy shit over there. I love it. Good for that money out there. Absolutely man. I love it for the athletes because they're going to get paid. Love it for the athletes. It's a good paid. And that's why I think with Tyson, it just feels like, like just in here, you know, it's a fight that I need just in terms of as champion, but mentality. The champion that's in here, the mana. I need to do that again. Well, right now it's got to be in his head. I mean, he's a sensitive guy. I'm sure he's responded to all the criticisms, probably eating them up, probably drives them nuts.

2:39:40And I bet you'll see an entirely different Tyson fear in this next fight. In this next fight, you will see a focused, fucking assassin. But he's fighting the craftiest heavyweight, maybe of all time. Yeah. Oosik is so slick. I mean, he's the guy who's trained by the same guy that Loma Chancuo was trained by. So he's got just unbelievable movement. His angles the way he boxes his fucking faints and movement, total next level. But it's quite a bit smaller. I mean, he's really, it was a cruiserweight and then went up to heavyweight. So there's, you know, there's money in that fight and I would hope that the winner of that fight then fights Francis.

2:40:22Whether Oosik would want to fight Francis, who knows? But if Oosik wins, if he beats Tyson Fury, that's, you know, pretty incredible. That's the date for that fight. February 17th and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia going crazy. Yeah, that's a very, very interesting fight. Yes. And although Oosik is smaller, man, that fucking guy is so skilled. Yeah. Those Anthony Joshua fights were insane. Is sane. By the way, Tyson is like six, nine. Yeah. And Oosik is not that much. Well, Oosik is wearing shoes. Shorty. And Tyson is not. Oh, okay. And Tyson is right after the fight and they're standing there. Okay.

2:40:56Okay. So Tyson's quite a few, but it's also his arms are longer. Just the reach and distance is such an advantage because you could hit a guy where he can't hit you. Yeah. But we were talking about Mike Tyson earlier that Mike Tyson made his height and advantage because he would come in and Bob and we even, you'd be like, oh, geez, where's his coming from? This fucking tornado coming at you with punches that just moved way faster than any other way. I was going to say any other heavyweight with that kind of speed, quickness. Yeah. Sure. I don't know. I'm asking. Nobody, right? He's the fastest of all time.

2:41:30I feel like he's the fastest of all time. The only, you can go to Ali with his hands. Ali had hand speed. See Ali, there's Ali before they forced him into retirement because he wouldn't fight in Vietnam. That Ali, if you go to like the Ali that fought Cleveland big cat Williams, that Ali is one of the greatest of all time. I mean, the greatest fucking heavyweight in terms of movement and he could move like Sugar Ray Robinson, but he was a heavyweight. Tall and switching stances and popping you with a jab and you couldn't touch him. And he's standing right in front of you with his hands down. Yes.

2:42:04That Ali was a different Ali, but then when they made him take three years off, Ali really didn't train for those three years. Yeah. He didn't do anything. So when he came back against Jerry Quarry all those years later, he physically, he was like soft. He didn't look the same like pull up Ali versus Cleveland big cat Williams. So this is Ali Ali and this is Ali when there was never a heavyweight like him before. There's no one like him and no one knew what to do. And Cleveland big cat Williams was a fucking killer. It was a bad mother fucker. Like look how powerful. Yes. Serious knockout artists and Ali would just stand right in front of him and just start tuning him up.

2:42:44And he just starts popping him with the jab hooks and Cleveland was just trying his best to close the distance. What's happening is a freezing. It's a video breaking down the whole fight. Oh, look at that. It's not justified. So it's just doing stop motion while someone's explaining. Look at that. Look. Japs to the body and then hook and he's nowhere to be found. Catches him when the hook coming in and then immediately off the ropes and out into the seat. You just couldn't catch him. Incredible man. Something special man. And then eventually he starts tuning and Cleveland up and drops him a couple of times.

2:43:16You know, he knows. This is the end. This is the end. And then he stands over and his hands up. Look at this. Bang. Bang. And then the right hand. Bam. I mean, come on man. Nobody moved like you. No, I'm dude. But Tyson could you put up a picture? Dwayne Johnson, Muhammad Ali. I got to show you this picture, dude. Oh, yeah. Why did you meet Muhammad Ali? When I was a kid. Oh, wow. And New Zealand, I told you my dad was sparring with him. So here's a picture of me sitting on his lap. Do you remember what year this is? It would have been 77. Look at that. Wow. That cool man. Ali and some little girl.

2:43:53But that's me. So dude, how about this? When I started the nation that turned the heel rock, right, that you saw earlier. Not a white thing, not a black thing. And you know, it's me. It's a respect thing. I started calling myself the People's Champion just to piss people off. Like I'm your champion. I'm the People's Champion and the Rock as the People's Champion. And we were wrestling down in Louisville, Kentucky. And Ali's family came to watch. And his wife was there. Family was a big group. Afterwards, they were waiting to say hello. Now again, I'm going out there. I'm grabbing the microphone.

2:44:32And the People's Champ says I'm just laying it all in. So when I come back, I say hello to the family, his wife, and I say, hey, I just want you to know I, if you could let Muhammad know, I call myself the People's Champion in a way to pay homage to him out of respect. But I'm going around the country saying it and people are shitting on me because that's what you want. As a heel. And I said, I told his wife, so if you could please tell him, if he doesn't want me to use this because I know what this meant to him being the People's Champion, I won't. And dude, she said he told me to tell you it's yours.

2:45:08That was one message he told me to tell you tonight. I was like, what I got emotional. It was just incredible. He was such an important cultural figure. Because he was the first boxer, a first professional athlete of the highest regard who stood up and said, the Vietnam War is wrong. I'm not going to go fight some Vietnam War. No Vietnam ever did anything to me. I'm not going over there. That's right. And they took away his livelihood and they did it for three years. And when he came back, he was a fucking hero, a cultural hero. My parents, who were hippies, made me, what didn't make me, but we all watched his rematch with Leon Spinks because it was on TV.

2:45:48And it's like, that's how much he transcended the world of sports. He was an important figure for the beautiful qualities of human beings. That this guy had character and stood up for something that was more important than sports and told the world. He used his platform to tell the world, I'm not going to participate in this. This is wrong. And they took away his livelihood. And when he came back, he was a hero in a completely different way. And when he fought Leon Spinks and he beat Leon Spinks, everybody was like, oh my god. Everyone was so happy. It was like, because when Leon beat him, it was like, no, no way.

2:46:30Then he had the rematch and he beat Leon and it was like, oh my god, he won. The world was better. You felt it. You felt it. And there's a guy, as you said, who stood up. And also, it's one thing he would stand up, but it's another thing. I stand up and the willingness to know him and lose it all. I can lose it all. Yeah. And he did. For that moment, you know, they tried to take it all. Also, what I thought about a lot when I was worried about brain damage. I thought about him a lot when I was having headaches from these sparring sessions, because he was already deteriorating by then. This was after he fought Larry Holmes, which was a horrible fight to watch.

2:47:05Larry was just tan off on him and you knew that the end was there. And he fought Trevor Burvik. And it's like, yes. Oh, these are horrible fights to watch. This guy who just needs a payday and can't let it go. And you know, and he was our hero. And now you're watching the worst cliched ending to a great career, which is a great box or just getting beat up by the up and coming guys. He was sad. Really? Not really. Like, ruined Larry Holmes's career because people hated Larry after that. And Larry was one of the greatest of all time. Greatest of all time, man, out of Eastern Pennsylvania. He's in the sassan.

2:47:41Yeah, he's still a sassan. And he's just doing his job. And just doing his job. One of the best jabs of all time. And not only were people hating him back then, but that Tyson was watching that fight. Remember that Tyson watched that and he knocked out his hero. He beat his hero. Tyson already made that promise. I'm going to come back. And I'm going to. Well, there's a famous moment where Ali comes up to Tyson before he fights Larry. And he says, get this motherfucker for me. Like he said, it's like, yeah, just walks up to you. Get this dude for me. Wow. And Tyson is like, already just so charged up.

2:48:17Just all right. This is like a legacy making fight. And when he knocked out Larry Holmes, it was like everybody was like, oh my god, no one's ever knocked out Larry. No, dude. That was crazy. And he was a big heavyweight. Yeah. Yeah. It was a big heavyweight. Here it is. He comes up to us like, look at this. Get this motherfucker for me. Wow. Look at that. Look at the nod. Yeah. And look at Tyson. Fire up. But I'll tell you something, man, Larry was older than he was an older fighter. Yeah. He let it go. Larry was an older fighter back then. You know, back then it was this is 36, you know, in the age of no testosterone replacement.

2:48:58Yeah. Larry had taken some time off and you know, came back for this fight. He was still very, very good, but Tyson was on another level. It was just a level. He was just the new destroyer. He was the new sonny list in. He was the new Joe Lewis. He was the new Jack Dempsey. Combined. He was just something special. And combined also because of his, his trainer had all the videos of those guys. So he watched all those guys and studied their movement. Cuss and Jim Jacobs, who was his manager. Jim Jacobs, who's a boxing historian, but Mike Tyson was just something different, man. He was just something different.

2:49:37And when he starts battering Larry and beating Larry up, I mean, it was just. Even in body language, you could just tell. Yeah. I mean, it was just seeking destroy. Yes. You know, and Larry, any mistake that he made was met with hands that were moving far faster than any boxer he'd ever faced before. But Larry came out in this round and showed that job. This is round three. Yeah. This is where you see Larry, like when Larry was like 25, he would have given anybody. Yes. But then Mike catches him, boom, and drops him. And Larry's in like real trouble. And I remember watching this. I was like, oh my god, he's going to get him.

2:50:13I can't believe he's going to get him. Nobody liked Larry Holmes. It was so, so fucked up. He never got his just due. And then Tyson catches him right. Boom. Boom. It's like over the top of the head. Mm -hmm. And then when Larry gets up, he's in real trouble. And then Tyson closes the show. Yeah. Larry said he was so hurt. It was so bad. Like right there, that overhand, right? Yes. Yeah. I mean, he's just fucked. You know it's coming. And when Mike is coming at you, the punches are coming so fast. You can't anticipate what angle they're coming from. Boom. And here's the right hand that comes here.

2:50:45Boom. And then the second one. Boom. And that was it. Outfall, man. That was the legacy making fight for Mike Tyson. That was the one where everybody's like, god damn, he might be the greatest ever. And he still might be the greatest ever. I think Tyson in his prime, damn, I put up him up against anybody. Without anybody that's ever lived. Yes. In his prime. I mean, you can't look at Tyson when he lost and Tyson later in his career. I feel like you can only keep up those RPMs when you're fucking there after it for so long before guys lose motivation. They lose their body doesn't perform the same way anymore.

2:51:21There are too many wars, whatever it is. But if you look at the Tyson when he was storming the gates when he was in his prime, like no one ever. And motivating too. Oh my god. I'm watching his fights and just ready to fucking run through the wall train anything I could do. Anything. He's just like, what? How is it possible that a person could be that proficient at something? Dude, so at about the time when I was my first amateur wrestling days in high school and all that, again, as you're 15, 16, you're looking for a way. What's my thing? And you're just thinking about money. Like I want to make money.

2:51:54And so I was kind of had a connection to boxing, my old man box. Watch all the fights. Tyson, Michael Spinks, 87, I think, or 88, remember that? Yeah. And I think that Spinks was champion. Spinks was, he was the light heavyweight champion and then he beat Larry Holmes when the heavyweight title, I think he had one version of the heavyweight title. I think it was a unification fight. Is that correct? It was a one in like 90 seconds. Yeah. Right. And I remember and at that time, Mike was coming up. Here it is. Yeah, this was, I think Mike said that he fought this with a venereal disease. I did. I just thought like, I'm like, gone for years.

2:52:35I've checked. Don't we all. But, you know, Spinks was just terrified going into this fight. You saw that in their face off too. You saw it, right? It was just an execution. I mean, Tyson was just, and Michael was really, he just dropped him to the body there. Michael was really a light heavyweight. I mean, he blew up. He put on some weight to make it up to heavyweight, but he just never had the kind of power. He was an amazing light heavyweight. But at heavyweight, he just did not have the kind of power to, and here comes the bomb. About bone. And like a ghost fucking punch that comes out of nowhere, right?

2:53:08Just a fucking ruthless right hand. And that was it. So, dude, so during this time in my life, I'm thinking, you know, I got an idea. Amateur wrestling, I don't, I'm not driving with. I like pro wrestling. My old man, this taught me at a box just a little bit. That's what I should do. Well, I should box, because at that time, my eyes were on Michael Spinks, and I used to think at that time, even though I got a lot of respect for the game, and I always think everybody's got a one punch chance, right? I was like, I know. I bet you I could work my ass off in two, three years with the right coaching and discipline and training.

2:53:42I could be up there. And if Michael Spinks is heavyweight champion, I got a shot. I think I got a lot of to do. And now again, I'm fucking 15. Right. Of course. Yeah. Oh my God, I got a shot. I see this fight, and I went, there's no fucking way. With Mike Tyson as champion, that my dreams of boxing and making money, whatever come true. Yeah, where does it go? Go to get executed. Like if everything goes well, you get executed. If all the training goes well and the discipline, the road work, you get executed. Yeah. Yeah. There's levels. Well, listen, brother, it's been awesome to sit down and talk to you and you're an inspirational guy.

2:54:26You really are. You're a guy that just you're just a workhorse, man. And you're such a fucking expression of positive energy and in all of the things you do in life. And I just appreciate you very much and I really appreciate you coming on here. Oh, brother, look, I appreciate you. Thank you. And this has been years in the making, man. Years in the making. And it was really fun to get to hang out together. No cameras, no bullshit. Oh, great. We just all got together and had a good time and worked out. It was fun. It was fun. Well, I appreciate all you do. Thank you. Appreciate all you do. Appreciate the brotherhood.

2:54:57We'll do it again. We'll do it again. Thank you. Bye, everybody. See you guys.