JRE MMA Show #159 with Quinton "Rampage" Jackson
2024-07-09 03:03:04
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What's up, Quentin? What's up, man? Good to see you, sir. Yeah, good to see you. Salud, cheers.
Good to be here. So tell me about your drink. What is this? It's called F3?.
Yeah, F3.
. It's a newer energy drink. It's got supplements and stuff in it. Oh, this is good. Yeah.
Ginseng, BCAAs, theanine. Okay, good for the brain.
What the hell is theanine?
I don't even know what that is. It's a nootropic. It's in this gum. This gum, NeuroGum. Yeah.
Yeah, I take a bunch of different brain supplements.
Does it make your dick hard, though?
No, it doesn't help there. Oh. I've been looking for something. There's other stuff for that.
But how good would it be if you can drink Dick Hardener?
I'm sure they have it. I'm sure there's, like, a Viagra soda somewhere. Thailand or some shit.
I'm sure in Thailand.
Maybe Russia.
I'm sure so. Jamie, Google Dick Hard, Soda. You can get Carl to sit still for a second.
Can you think about that? You don't have to take a pill. You just drink it. The girls have no idea.
I bet there's, like, a cocktail that you can buy at a bar.
Why do you call it cocktail, though?
Well, that's what they call them. I didn't invent it. But if there was, like, a cocktail. Yeah, that's what they would call it. The Cocktail.
Hold on, man. I don't want to spill all over your table.
It's okay. This table looks good with a little bit of stains on it. You find anything? I need, Dick Hard Soda. It's giving me, like, cocktails that people have, you know, made.
That have Viagra in them? They're just suggesting. No, no. They're just alcohol, and they call them, like, get your dick hard. Oh.
Oh, Viagra. Viagra Falls. But there's no sodas or anything with Viagra? That would probably be. It would have to be in another country.
Yeah, they probably wouldn't have that here.
Because you have to have a prescription.
That's the only thing this needs. It's got everything else. And it's green tea. That's where the caffeine comes from. Nice.
And the ginseng, too.
Yeah, I can drink, like, two or three of these a day. It don't bother me. I love it.
That's nice. Dude, the first time I saw you fight was in, like, 2000..
Yeah, about 2000.
. I saw you fight, Marvin Eastman.
My first fight? My first professional fight?
Was that your first professional fight?
Yeah, you saw that? Yeah. In King of the Cage? Yep.
I was there, live.
You was there at King of the Cage? Yep.
Wow. Yeah.
You saw me get my ass kicked.
You didn't get your ass kicked. I did. No, you just lost. Marvin Eastman was fucking good.
Man, yeah. I was lied to, by the way. Oh, really? Yeah. They was doing him a favor, and they told me the guy was just a kickboxer.
You know, I was a wrestler.
Oh, wow. Yeah.
He can kickbox, too.
Yeah.
I didn't know about the wrestling. I knew he could kickbox. He kicked me in the head. I was like, damn, that's my only time ever getting kicked in the head. Really?
Yeah, my whole career. Go back and watch my fights. That's crazy. I learned a lesson.
Never got kicked in the head again. Wow.
Yeah, he could wrestle, and he could kickbox, and he was built like a tank.
Yeah. Yeah, that's why he was my first fight in the UFC, because I don't know if you know about this, but Dana White bought an organization just to get me, because I left Pride, and I went to WFA.
Oh, okay.
And my manager. at the time, he became like the president of WFA, so he had to stop being my manager. And I fought in a company, and Dana bought the whole company so I can come over.
So this was when you were leaving Pride, when the UFC had bought Pride.
This was before. Oh. I left Pride right when it was going down.
When the UFC bought Pride, they thought they were buying a whole organization, and they didn't get anything but a library. They got a video library.
That's all they got?
All the contracts were bullshit. Everything was bullshit. That's why they never got Fedor. And that's why I think, well, it's like they honored people's contracts. Some people got great contracts.
Mark Hunt apparently got a great contract. Alistair. A lot of these guys that came over had great contracts. Crow Cop. Remember, Crow Cop came over?
But the whole thing was all fucked up. It was run by the mob.
Yeah, it was crazy.
What was it like being over there?
Man, it was crazy. It was surreal. I remember the first time I noticed that the mob had something to do with Pride, I saw these guys walking down a hallway when we was doing the piss test. And I was coming back from the bathroom with my cup, and I just see these guys walk around in nice, expensive suits. And then everybody just put their head down, put their back against the wall, and just bow.
Whoa. I was like, what the fuck is going on? Culture shock. I had no idea. Right.
And then, after a while, I asked somebody, they're like, oh, those are the bosses. Those are the yackers.
Did they have missing fingers?
Some of them. did. You see some of that shit over there. Bro.
It was crazy. That is a crazy way to gain entry. Fucking, saw your finger off in front of everybody.
I thought that if you did something bad. Yeah, if you fucked up, right. I had a friend out there. His name was 36, and the guy took a liking to me. And he was super cool, all tatted up.
And I guess he was rich as fuck. When he found out I had little Japanese kids, he said, hon, your son needs this. And it was like a gold samurai helmet. He said, this has to stay in your son's house. And I showed it to my ex-wife.
She was my wife at the time. She said, oh, yeah. I was going to have to get him this. He saved me a lot of money. I said, how much is something like this?
She said, probably like $30,000 or $40,000.
. Wow. He gave me a gift.
He had like a missing pinky finger.
But he was a cool dude. What do they do?
They chop off one digit or two? How many digits did they chop off?
I think he just had the first. Yeah, he just had the first one chopped off.
Yeah, it's like if you fuck up again, then it's the second one.
I don't know. Maybe go to the other hand, I would think. I don't think you would fuck up no more. after that, though. Would you fuck up twice?
I mean, you don't fuck up on purpose, I would assume.
Yeah, yeah. You never know about that.
I mean, it depends on how strict they are. What is a fuck up for those guys?
I have no idea.
It's a crazy culture.
It's crazy. I love it, though. I could live there.
Yeah?
Yeah, plus, I heard that their population is dying off. They ain't making babies.
They're actually asking people to come over there and fuck.
Man. What the fuck I'm doing here?
I just got back from there. I was trying to fuck. I was trying to be good because I'm trying to see somebody. I was trying to be good, so I ain't fuck nothing this time. This is the first time I'm going to Japan and I ain't fuck nothing.
Goddamn. Trying to be good for once in my life.
Do they love Americans over there? Yeah. Oh, wow.
Tell me, you've been there, though.
I've only been there for one day. Just for the UFC and right back home.
How could you do that? How could you go there? That's a long flight.
I had to. Too busy. I just didn't have any time for anything else. But it was beautiful. It's interesting how clean everything is.
So clean and orderly.
Yeah.
So many people walking on the street. Nobody's bumping into anybody. Everybody's very polite.
Yeah, they're very polite. But they're like robots, bro. I remember one time when I was fighting there. One guy on the other side of the street recognized me, but he wasn't sure. He was riding a bike and he was looking at me.
He wasn't paying attention to where he was going. And he fucking smacked the back of the truck and fell down on his bike. We all was laughing our ass off. But the Japanese people, no one laughed. No one tried to help him up.
None of that. He was hurt, kind of bad, and I would have went over there and tried to help him, but it was like a busy street. No one even helped him? No one even helped him. They just kept walking.
Just kept walking. One dude stepped over him. Oh, Jesus. Just kept walking. No one laughed, though.
That's the thing. Fuck me. We was laughing our ass off.
You don't hear about a lot of Japanese comedians.
No. I heard that the ones that they do have, they come from Osaka, not Tokyo. Oh.
Osaka's looser?
Yeah. I've been to Osaka before, and they laugh and crack jokes. You know, I married a Japanese woman, right? So I kind of learned a little bit about them. They're very serious.
Really?
Oh, yeah. Especially in Tokyo. They're very serious. You got to be careful with jokes and stuff. She learned to be funny after a couple years of being with me, and then she started joking.
Then she actually got pretty good. I'm like, damn, she started hurting my feelings a little bit. What the fuck did I create? But she was good. I remember one time we was joking back and forth, and she was laughing.
Then I made a joke about her dad, and she's like, don't you talk about my father. I was like, damn, my bad. I thought we was joking. So they just take everything serious. They don't understand the concept of jokes.
You know, our comedy movies. don't go there to Japan. Just our action movies and stuff.
Interesting.
You didn't know that?
No. It makes sense, though. They're just a different culture. They're more stoic. It's just a completely different society.
Yeah, but I'm going to go there and make a whole bunch of babies, though. They need me. They do. They need me. They do.
I'm going to make me a bunch of babies, and if they're boys, put them in MMA.
Yeah, I think they have a drastic reduction in their population. for some reason. It's so bad. I forget what the guy estimated, but there was a guy who analyzed all the people that are alive today in Japan and how many of them would have grandchildren, and it's a shockingly low number.
I wonder what's the reason, though.
That's a good question.
Probably I think they like video games. That's a problem with young people.
Bro, I love video games, too, but I also love pussy.
You know what I'm saying?
You can play a couple games, then later on at night get some ass.
I don't understand. I think they're just locked in. I don't know. I don't know what's going on.
Well, I thought it was rejection. People are so afraid of rejection over there. Like the guy go and hit on a girl, and she rejects him. He probably won't hit on that girl again for the next couple of months or years, or something like that. Oh, really?
That is really bad, especially if she rejects him in front of other people.
Oh, so it's an honor thing? Embarrassment thing?
Yeah, it's an embarrassment thing. That's what I kind of think it is. That's what I think it is.
Jamie, see if you can find something on Japan's dwindling population, because it is kind of crazy.
I got a couple of friends that's married out there, and one of my friends, we were just having a conversation. His name is Tyson. He's an African guy, and he owns a bar out there. And I've been going to this bar for over 20-something years. After all my fights, I used to go into this bar, and we got to know each other really well.
And he was talking. He was saying, if you love a Japanese woman and you marry a Japanese woman, do not give her a pet or kids, because if you give her a pet or kids, you're never fucking again. I'm like, what? I'm like, yeah, I was married to a Japanese woman. I didn't have that problem.
Maybe it was just him.
No, that's what I thought. And then he said, oh, you don't believe me? And he asked the Japanese guys and a couple of the guys that was there, American guys that was married. They said, yeah. They all said the same story.
How weird.
This was in the AP four weeks ago about birthrate declining and population decline. It says, surveys show young Japanese are increasingly reluctant to marry or have children, discouraged by bleak job prospects, the high cost of living, which rises at a faster pace than salaries, and a gender-biased corporate structure or corporate culture that adds an extra burden only on women and working mothers. Japan's population of more than 125 million is projected to fall by about 30 percent to 87 million by 20.. That's crazy. With four out of every 10 people 65 years of age or older.
Whoa. That's nuts.
Yeah.
That's a big drop, man. Doesn't really give a reason why. Falls to a record low. Interesting.
Yeah, I heard they paying niggas to go to have babies. Fuck that.
They're encouraging people to go over there and buy houses, too. Apparently, it's really easy to buy a house and you can get a nice house for a fairly low money. It's safe.
Yeah, it's cheap, too.
Yeah. It's a beautiful culture. I don't think I could ever live any place that doesn't crack jokes.
Yeah. Yeah.
I need fun.
Yeah.
I'm too used to it. You know, I've had fun for too long.
But I tell you, what, though, those yuckers, they funny, though. They're like Americans. Oh, I'm sure. They're not like the rest of them. Oh, yeah.
So you'd be hanging around a bunch of those motherfuckers.
Yeah, but I don't want to fuck up. I like my pinkies.
If you're not one of them, they wouldn't fuck with you like that.
Oh, OK.
Yeah.
Yeah. Maybe I just hang out with them.
I remember one time I had a meeting with a big yakuza boss. This guy was the biggest Japanese guy I ever met. He was like a—looked like. he was like 6'6", and he was, like, ripped to, like, twice my size. Very muscular.
And when I met him, it was right after I did that Arona Slam, and I got really popular in Japan.
What year was that?
I'm sorry. 2003?. That was actually 20 years ago. Oh, wow. 20 years ago.
2004.
. Because I did it on my 26th birthday.
Dude, that is, to this day, the greatest slam in the history of the sport. And a lesson for everybody that hangs onto a triangle when a dude's picking you up.
All he had to do was let go of my head.
All he had to do.
I couldn't have picked him up.
And other guys did that with you. I forget who tried to get you in a triangle afterwards.
It was Vandale. That's right.
He grabbed my leg after that. Yeah.
Yeah. But, you know, I did that to Sakuraba, but it didn't knock him out. I slammed Sakuraba a couple times. It was from an armbar and stuff, though.
Sakuraba was so tough.
Oh, yeah. I saw him a couple weeks ago. Here it is right here.
Bro, this is the absolute craziest, because you threw him over the top of your head like a pillow. I mean, it's the greatest KO slam of all time. I thought he was dead. I remember watching it. I was like, oh, my God.
Wait. He didn't hold it back in my head, did he? No.
He didn't hold shit.
Oh, shit. All these years, I thought he was holding. Okay. Then he let it go. He was punching.
No. You know, as soon as you get that left hand involved, so he's punching you, you scoop under and get that left hand involved.
He's holding on to something. Look at this.
Boom. When you connected your two hands like that and slammed down, holy shit. Because you think about it, man. You got your whole body like this, and he's over the top of your head. That's so much force.
That may be the hardest anybody's ever been hit in this sport.
Yeah.
Because look at the amount of travel that he does. Yeah. Bro, you got him like 12 feet in the air. Yeah. Look at that.
And he goes straight, and you were powerful as fuck. back then. Yeah. And all the speed and force you're generating, oh, my God. And then you hit his head.
Yeah.
Head to head. You guys collided heads. Yeah.
He headbutted me. A lot of people are saying I headbutted him. That's what knocked him out, but he was already knocked out. Oh, yeah. His head bounced off the canvas and hit me.
He's not going to stay conscious from that kind of slam. That's the craziest slam ever.
He didn't fight much after that either, did he?
No.
You think he was embarrassed or what?
I think he was never the same. I think when a guy gets knocked out like that, it's probably different than any head kick, any knee to the head, anything. It's a car accident.
Bro, I felt bad because he was a great fighter.
He was. He really was. He was tough. Very good jujitsu, strong as hell.
I was losing that fight up until then because he was kicking the shit out of my leg. And I didn't even want to check that. I didn't even want to check that his kicks was coming so hard. I fought K-1, and I fought a lot of kickboxers, but his kick is the hardest by far. Wow, really?
Oh, yeah. Every time he would kick me, I was acting like it didn't hurt. And after the third kick, I remember thinking in my head, I don't know if I can keep acting like this. shit don't hurt. Wow.
Because I didn't want to show him in my face.
Right.
But got the hardest leg kicks I ever felt.
Have you seen that new stupid thing that they're doing, like slap fight, where they leg kick each other?
No, I haven't. No, no, no, no. I haven't seen that shit.
This is a new one. Have you seen it, Jamie? I could send it to you if you want me to. I sent it to Dana. It's, yeah, they're having slap fight competitions, but leg kicks.
These dudes are just standing in front of each other, just teeing off leg kicks.
That's dangerous.
Oh, it's horrible.
Did you find it, Jamie?
I'll send it to you. Here you go.
That can fuck you up real bad.
Oh, it's rough. It's rough to watch. And some guys are kicking like right, you're supposed to kick the thigh, but some guys are kicking really kind of like right above the knee and buckling. And you just stand there. You can't even move.
You have to just eat it.
I wouldn't. No, that's not my shit. How do you feel about that? slap fight?
I don't.
I'm fully in support of anybody doing whatever the fuck they want to do. I'm like, if you could bull ride, if you could BMX jump and skateboard and all that crazy shit where people are breaking their necks, here it is. They're standing in front of each other. I feel like you should be able to do anything, but I wouldn't do it. Because getting hit, it should be rare, and you should avoid it.
Look, dude kicked him in the leg, then grabbed the top of his head. I would have smacked him just for that.
I think they're friends. Oh. It's like, sorry, bro.
You know? That dude tapped out. The last one. he tapped out. They got a bunch of them in there.
I didn't hear that.
They just stand in front of each other and slam each other in the knee. Or slam each other in the thigh. Yeah.
It's a good time for MMA and all this shit. I saw the karate comeback with Boss Rude. Oh, yeah. That's entertaining. Did you see the guy get that scissor kick?
Yes.
Rafael Duterte. That guy's badass, man. And he fought James Vick. James Vick's been KO'd a bunch of times. now.
It's like, he might not want to do this anymore, because that was a bad one. That switch kick.
Yeah, he was out for a while, it looked like.
It was horrible. Perfect kick, though. Did you see that, Jamie? I'll send you that. That shit was incredible.
I mean, I'd always wondered when someone was going to pull that one off in a fight. Like kick to the leg and then up kick right afterwards.
He did that shit perfect.
Oh, it was flawless.
The KO is so nasty.
The karate combat, the whole, that guy, Rafael Duterte. There it is, right before that. Watch this switch. It's so crazy the way he does it, the way he sets it up. He right kicks.
Boom. I mean, perfect.
Perfect. Yeah, that was a crazy knockout. Crazy.
That guy's super athletic.
I never heard of either of those guys.
He used to fight in the UFC. I don't know what happened. I don't know why he's not in the UFC anymore, but man.
He should go back now.
They're going to test him.
I don't know why he left the UFC. I don't know if he had an issue. I'm not sure. Good fighter, though. But, man, that's crazy.
It's interesting when you watch an organization that tests versus, don't test too, right?
Yeah. How do you feel about that?
I have two thoughts. One, I like to see older athletes compete. And if you get a guy who's like 35, 36 years old, if you let him juice, if you let him use testosterone, if you just do it sensibly, not crazy, but if you can go to a doctor and make sure it's only administered by a doctor, so they're not self-administering, and make sure they test them to make sure they're not above a certain level, I don't have any problem with that. But when you get guys like what Vitor did, Vitor just, fill him up, Doc.
He blew the fuck up.
He's just like, take it to my eyeballs. Just fucking. And, man, when he was TRT Vitor, to fans when they talk about it, like that was an era. That era when he was on a tear, when he knocked out Luke Rockhold and knocked out Bisping, and he was fucking everybody up, dude. He was fearless.
But he was also, like, heavily enhanced. You know, he was not a normal human being.
I remember the time when it was legal. Yeah. Yeah, and they fucked it up because I tried that shit. after I got beat by Jon Jones. I was like, fuck, I must be getting old.
And I tried it, and it helped me out a little bit. Then they outlawed it. I said, fuck, I guess I'm back to the old me.
Yeah, they outlawed it. There was a lot of guys on it. And a lot of guys were abusing it. Some guys got pulled from fights because they test them the day of, and they're like, there's no fucking way. You are so high.
This is crazy. Nate Marquardt, they actually stopped the fight. They stopped it from happening. Yeah, they canceled the fight.
Yeah, you know, Pride, they never tested.
Ensign Inouye told me that they had in capital letters, we do not test for steroids in the contract.
Yeah, but they'll test you for like weed and cocaine and all that shit. That's hilarious. But they wouldn't test you for steroids.
So they tested you. They just didn't test you for anything that would actually help you fight.
It seems like they kind of encouraged it.
Oh, yeah, they definitely encouraged it. Yeah. They did, with a guy I know. He went over there, and he was about, he wanted to fight at 170.. He was like, no, you fight at 185..
And they're like, we'll give you steroids.
Everybody thought I was on steroids when I was fighting over there.
Well, you just had great genetics. Some people have great genetics, and some people need steroids.
Yeah. I always tell people, like, look at me and look at some of the other fighters. You can look at my body and tell that I wasn't on that shit.
Well, the difference is when they get tested. Like when the pre-USADA and post-USADA days are so interesting because even though they outlawed testosterone,
still guys like Overeem, there's not a chance in hell. that guy was natural. He was not natural at all. There's no way. No way.
Especially when you fought Brock Lesnar. But somehow or another, he passed the test. But the test, the day of, like, the day of, like the weigh-ins test, that's nonsense. That is nonsense. Like, all the benefits are still there, and all the stuff is out of your system.
Bro, it's crazy. I used to fight over there with Alistair, right? And he was like the bony 205-er.
Yeah, he was thin.
Yeah, he was thin. Then one day I saw him, like, God damn, what the fuck are you doing? He said, horse meat.
I'm like, okay, buddy.
Yeah, he was power lifting. You remember when he got up to, like, 265, you know, when he won the K-1 Grand Prix? Oh, yeah. I mean, you couldn't hit him. He was a mountain of muscle.
He was just covered behind muscle. And, you know, K-1 style, when they, like, fight with, like, the earmuffs on, when they're standing there, like, he was. just, there was no chin. You couldn't see it in there.
He was a bad motherfucker. He won it, too, didn't he?
Yeah, he won the Grand Prix, which is crazy.
I was always worried I was going to have to fight him in pride. But I don't know why they never put me against him.
Bro, when he fought Brock Lesnar, if they kept the testing that way, he might have been the heavyweight champion. He might have stayed the heavyweight champion, too. I mean, he was hard to handle at that weight. He was so big. And he had those elite kickboxing skills.
You know, I remember when he fought, I guess it was Strikeforce, when he fought Brett Rogers. You could see the moment. He hits Brett Rogers with one low kick. And you could see it in Brett Rogers' face, like, oh, shit. Like, this is different.
This is so different. He was so scary, man.
Yeah. Fucked. Big, tall motherfucker. I would like to see him go against Jon Jones.
I would have loved to have seen that back in the day. But if, again, you let him fight enhanced, because the difference between him enhanced and unenhanced, he became an average fighter. Yeah.
But Jon was enhanced, too, though. If they would have went against each other, both enhanced.
At the time.
At the time.
So you think Jon was enhanced?
Yeah, I think it's proven.
Really? Because of the whole thing with the picograms, whatever the fuck that shit is?
Well, you know, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to it, but I just thought he got popped, so I assumed that he was enhanced.
He did, but the problem that he got popped with, there were so minuscule levels that it didn't make sense.
He don't look like somebody. that's. He does steroids.
No, he doesn't. Oh, okay. But neither did Lance Armstrong.
He probably did. He's probably doing something different, though. Lance.
No, he was doing testosterone. I mean, he was definitely doing that, too. Those guys were doing a lot of shit. They do everything they can when they do that. tour de France.
Doctors say that it's actually healthier to do that thing on steroids than it is to not be on steroids, because your body just can't recover because you're biking for hours and hours and hours, day after day. It's a fucking crazy event.
I think, if you're biking and doing shit like that, let them do steroids. But fighting, I'm against that shit. Right. It's different. Yeah, football, boxing, MMA, shit like that.
But football, you know they're doing something.
Yeah, you know they're doing it.
But those guys are gigantic.
Yeah, but I think if you got full contact against another human, I think it should be outlawed. But baseball, I wouldn't give a fuck.
It would only make it interesting.
And basketball, I wouldn't care.
Right, who cares?
Yeah, who cares? Yeah.
Yeah. Especially if they're professional athletes. They've got a small window of opportunity. Yeah. They have like 10, 15 years at most where they can compete at their very best.
Yeah, let those guys juice.
Juice them up.
Yeah, let them do it. Help them know how to do it safely. But fighting, because you can hurt somebody. Because some people are totally against it.
Well, the only way it makes sense in fighting is if everybody agrees. You know, like if you agree, but if you're cheating, you know, if you're just jobbing the tests and, you know, you've got a good scientist that works with you and you're figuring out a way to rig everything. Nah, that's not good. Yeah.
You know, I'm against it because I fought a few guys. that was on steroids when I was fighting in pride.
Who did you fight? that was like the most obvious on steroids?
For me, I felt like it was the most obvious was Kevin Randaman, RIP. I don't ever want to talk ill of big bro, but Mark Coleman, he's honest about it. Yeah. They were doing something. And Vanilla, for sure, was on that shit.
For sure. For sure.
For sure. For sure. Bro, he fought like he was on it.
Oh, my God.
He fought like he had rabies.
Bro, that guy was so vicious. He just walked around mad the whole time. You know, all the fighters in Japan were scared of him. That's why he didn't like me, because I was never afraid of him. The first time I had a run-in with Vanilla, we were all staying at the same hotel, and I'm walking back from press, and I get in on the elevator with my corner man, and the elevator opens up, and it's Vanilla in there with two of his corner men.
And I don't notice, and I just walk on the elevator, and I turn around, and my two corner men took off. So I'm in the elevator by myself with Vanilla, and he looked at me like I was crazy because I didn't take off with them. He seemed like he was mad, that I was breathing his same air in the fucking elevator. He was like, what are you doing? And they was talking shit in Portuguese and stuff like that.
I was like, I ain't afraid of no motherfucking body. I was a kid then too, but I just never been afraid of anybody. Then, after I meet my two corner men, what the fuck happened? Where the fuck did y'all go? I was like, shit, that was the ax murderer.
I'm not getting in there with him.
Just leave. I was like, so you just want to leave? They didn't even pull you out. They didn't even touch me.
Oh, that's so ridiculous. I would have never trusted those dudes again.
Yeah, fuck them. Just left me with them. But I was cool, but he never liked me.
Were you there when he had that fight with Charles Crazy Horse Bennett in the back room?
No, I wasn't there.
Apparently, the story is Crazy Horse knocked him out cold.
Yeah, I heard that.
That's the story. The story is they ganged up on Crazy Horse. Crazy Horse was a wild dude. That dude was crazy. He was fun.
I remember I got drunk with Crazy Horse. one night. Me and I think it was Eddie Bravo went to see Brock Lesnar's first professional fight in L.A. at the Coliseum.
Was it with UFC?
No. No, I think it was with K-1.. I think it was a K-1 fight in Los Angeles.
I might have been there.
Hoist Gracie fought that night. I think Hoist Gracie fought Sagaraba, if I remember correctly.
Was that a rematch? Yes. I wasn't there. I don't think I was there.
And he beat him. And Hoist was a little saucy. He got caught.
Hoist beat Sagaraba in the rematch?
Yeah, but Hoist was saucy. They caught him in the piss test, if I remember correctly. Check to see if that's true. But I sat right next to Crazy Horse. Just me and him got fucked up the entire show.
That guy's crazy.
We had fun.
He's funny, man.
We had a lot of laughs. But he was a wild dude.
You know what he's doing now?
What's he doing now?
He's in Thailand fighting for a fight circus. You heard about them? No. Man, he's fighting like two motherfuckers at the same time. Two Thai dudes at the same time.
I said, man, this shit looks fun. I want to do that shit.
How big are the Thai dudes?
They're about his size. They're his size.
He's fighting two on one.
Two on one in Thailand.
Does he just pay a lot of money or something?
I don't know how much they pay. I did a two-headed boxing match with Bob Sapp. I didn't get paid much money, but I was doing it for fun.
So you and him versus somebody else?
Yeah, me and Bob Sapp in a two-man t-shirt. I could only use my right hand. He could only use his left hand. And we fought two dudes. That shit was so fun.
Oh, that's crazy.
That was the most fun I ever had in the ring, bro.
Just ridiculous?
Yeah, it was fun. Fight circus is crazy.
What does it say, Jim? Oh, yeah, he tested positive for fighter. Tim Percy. Tested positive for methamphetamine.
That's my friend.
And Hoist Gracie tested positive for nandrolone. Shut the fuck up, Tim. Antibox steroids.
Tim Percy is my high school, I mean my college wrestling. He's my roommate in college.
No shit. Who did he fight? Who did he fight? Who else was in the card? Let me see.
There was some.
What the fuck?
Who else fought? The original. Let's see. Pre-fight problems. Scroll back up to the card again, please.
Let me see who was on that card. Because there was one crazy KO where there was, like, a football player. Johnny Morton. Right. He fought a guy who was a comedian.
That guy.
Bernard Aka. A Japanese. How do you say his name?
Aka.
A Japanese-born taekwondo practitioner, kickboxer, mixed martial arts, and comedian. Yeah, that guy. Fuck Johnny Morton up. It was horrible.
The comedian fucked somebody up? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
I don't know how good his comedy is, but he could fuck people up. I'll tell you that. Jake Shields was on that card. He won by rear naked choke.
That's a good card.
Yeah.
Yeah, Sakuraba was on there.
Yep. So, Hoyes beat Sakuraba, but then tested positive. This was supposed to be on the card. Ray Cepho and Marvin Eastman dropped from the card with no explanation. That was supposed to be on the card.
Gina Carano. Oh, Gina Carano. So, that was a K-1, right? Yeah. That was, like, up until Brock Lesnar won real quick.
That was his first fight ever. Yeah. But, so, Crazy Horse was backstage, and I guess all the Shoot the Box guys got into it with Crazy Horse. And didn't Christian Marcelo, I think he choked Crazy Horse out, right? With a triangle.
Put him in a triangle afterwards, too.
Yeah, I heard this story.
So, Crazy Horse apparently knocked out Vanderlei and then got choked out. And then he went and fought, or had he already fought?
I don't remember, but I heard Vanderlei fought after he got knocked out. He did. After he got out cold, fought, and won.
But won by decision.
Who did he fight that time? Do you remember?
Let's find out. Let me see Vanderlei's record. I'll tell you when I see it. Because you could tell he was, like, fighting a little cautious. You know, like, maybe didn't want to get hit.
Bro, that's crazy. What if they had cameras back there in the locker rooms?
I think there is video footage of it. I'm pretty sure there's footage. There's definitely footage of Marcelo choking out Crazy Horse because he gets him in a triangle with his jeans on. I remember watching it. It's, like, 07, right?
Is that where you're looking? Yeah. It wasn't Mergo Krokop. I think it might have been Fujita. Nope, that's not it, because he won that one by soccer kicks.
Does he have any that he won by decision?
Right here.
Maybe it was – no, he lost to Arona. Is that possible?
Maybe you should look for the same card with Crazy Horse.
He lost to him and then he beat him. He lost to Arona and then he beat him. Decision split. I wonder if it was that one.
2005.
I wonder if it was that one. Click on Pride Shockwave 2005.. Let's see. Who else is on that card? Is Crazy Horse on that card?
Charles Bennett?
Yeah.
That's it.
That's the one. That's the one. He fought Arona and he won a decision. I was looking for video. And I remember – Crazy Horse is so nuts.
Look at that video of Crazy Horse staring at the camera. Click on that. Is that a highlight of Crazy Horse? Yeah. Crazy Horse had power.
Yeah.
I mean he just put people to sleep. He put a lot of people to sleep. Compact power too.
Yeah. He never went to the UFC, though, huh? Nope. He couldn't get his shit together.
He's just – he's a wild fella.
What the fuck is wrong with him?
I mean he fought with gold teeth and he fought with a gold grill in. And then he had a mouthpiece on top that was gold too. But I don't even know where he trained.
I forgot where he was from. Texas, or somewhere, wasn't it?
I don't remember. But, I mean, it did not have, like, the ultimate skill set. He just had crazy power and he was just wild. Very wild.
He was strong. Very strong. He didn't have that much jujitsu, though, huh?
No, it wasn't that good on the ground. But on the feet, I mean, I don't think he ever submitted to anybody that I can remember. But he fucked a lot of people up, man. Anybody that stood in front of that dude went night-night. And you could see it.
Once he hit them, like, one time, the difference in the power. They'd be like, oh, God. It's crazy. Power like that is really crazy. Some people just have – like, did you watch the light heavyweight title fight this weekend?
Oh, my God, yeah. Oh, my God.
Boloton, man. Alex Pereira. That fucking power is nuts.
You know what? I was thinking, like, how I would have done if I was in my prime fighting somebody like that. You can be honest.
You have very good wrestling skills. The difference is you're very strong. You were always a very strong light heavyweight and you had very good wrestling skills. You know, he hasn't really fought anybody. that's an elite wrestler.
yet. You know, I mean, think about who has he fought that could really wrestle. Prohaska is like a – he's got crazy KO power. He's got good karate skills. And he did win by choking out Glover.
He did win with a choke. So it's not like. he doesn't have skills. But he's not – he's not some Daniel Cormier type dude. He's just an elite wrestler.
Is this the video footage of the fight? It cuts off on the fight, so it's got to exist somewhere else. But this is a documentary about Crazy Horse.
But is it? Is that the behind the scenes?
It shows, like, a picture of them. It says can't show the footage as YouTuber restrict the footage. What? YouTuber restricts fights? It could age, restrict the video, and they're probably trying not to have that.
Oh, so they're just showing it. So he catches them in a triangle with jeans on, chokes them to sleep, out cold with his phone in his hand. Wait, what is that?
That's the pass. It's the pass.
So he wakes them up. He's like, oh, shit.
They shouldn't have had him in that locker room with them anyway.
No chance. Yeah, that's a terrible idea. There's Vandily.
He's talking about it?
Yeah, there's an interview with him talking about it. Vandily says he just turned and hit me.
Oh, he's trying to say he got sucker punched.
Probably did. But also, they were probably talking a lot of shit, and they probably thought they could keep talking shit before getting hit. And Crazy Horse was just...
Well, where was this corner? man? Who was with them?
Well, I think they just thought they'd get away with it. You know, they probably didn't think he was going to swing on them, especially since Charles was light. What did he fight at?
Probably 55s.
Probably something like that.
Something like that.
Yeah, and Vandily was a big 200.
Yeah, 205.
. He was a big 205.. Yeah. But I was talking about, maybe like when I... The era of the Rampage, when I fought Chuck Liddell.
I probably wouldn't have tried to take Alex down.
You would have stood with him?
I probably would have tried until he started fucking me up. Then I'm like, oh shit, then it's time to take him down.
Did you ever fight anybody who calf kicked you?
Yeah, Forrest.
Forrest Griffin did? Yeah.
Yeah. Interesting. The first two rounds. I think the first round or something, he fucked my calf up. I'd never seen that kick before.
Really? Interesting.
Never even trained against it.
Because that was 2008? 2008..
Interesting. My worst year ever.
Yeah. He calf kicked the shit out of me. I was like, what the fuck? What the fuck is this? This shit was hurting.
Yeah, no one does it like Alex Pereira does. He does it so sneaky. Also, he's got that crazy long frame. But he stands almost like square. And then just throws the leg out.
You don't even see anything coming. There's no tell at all. There's no dip. There's no step. He just throws it out there.
And all of a sudden, you see, guys, legs get fucked up. One or two of them, and you can't move good.
And that guy, he just came out of nowhere, just fucking people up.
Well, I knew about him before because I watched kickboxing. And I had seen him in kickboxing. I was like, if this guy comes into MMA, everybody's fucked. Because he was fucking everybody up with big gloves on. He would hit dudes.
And you could see that it was just like they had never been hit like that before. I remember the first time I saw him fight, he KO'd Dustin Jacoby. And he hit him with a left hook that just spun his head around. I was like, oh, my God.
Yeah, I heard he had a crazy left hook.
That's his main weapon. If you thought about one weapon that he knocks everybody out with, I mean, that's the one. he knocked Jamal Hill out with. The first fight with, or the first knockdown with Yuri, the first fight with Yuri, he knocked him out with a left hook.
Did he get Izzy?
Adesanya, he got him with a left hook. He gets everybody with that left hook. Yeah, but it's not like. that's the only weapon. Anything he hits you with, you're fucked.
But if you know, he got a big left hook, how come you don't train to just keep your hand up, so you just look out for it? That's what boxers do. I don't understand it.
He throws a nasty jab to the body, too. And that's one of the things he did with Yuri. He throws his jab to the body, and it sounded like a right hand. It was just a blap, blap. And it was like this fight.
he fought different than he fought the first fight. I think the first fight. he let Yuri get a little wild, and then he was like trying to find his openings. And this fight he was like, I'm going to shut all that wild shit down.
It was a short notice. fight for them, too, wasn't it?
Yeah, a couple weeks, just a couple of weeks. I think Yuri got three weeks. And Alex, when he found out about the fight, I believe he was in Australia doing seminars. And they said, hey, do you want to defend your light heavyweight title international fight week in three weeks? He was like, let me think about this for a little bit.
So there's the left hook.
I see this.
Boom.
Fade away left hook.
He's just got a lot of power in that hook. It's crazy power. He's a big guy, too, huh?
He's huge. And there's the head kick. They should have stopped that fight the moment he went down. They should have let him eat all those extra shots. I mean, he was done.
I think Herb wanted to give him a chance because the first fight got stopped a little premature. The thing about that guy is you can't let that guy hurt you because he'll hit you one more time. And if he hits you one more time, you're gone.
Yeah, but, you know, sometimes you just be caught in the moment. Like people give me shit for hitting Ben Aley like three more times when I knocked him out in the UFC. Sometimes you just get caught in the moment.
Yeah, you don't even know what's happening, right?
Yeah, you don't know.
Also, that guy, you had history with that guy.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, and you wanted to get that back.
He deserved it, but I know I shouldn't have did it. If I would have been in my right mind, I wouldn't have gave him. Because it's much cooler to have a walk-off knockout, you know? Right. But I wouldn't have gave him those extras.
But the day before, he pushed me at the weigh-ins. Yeah. And he talked shit to me, you know, at that rules meeting or whatever. Mm-hmm. And he was talking shit to me, like I was scared of him.
I was like, bro, come on.
I was like, I was in the zone.
I guess he felt like, because he had beaten you twice, that it was going to be, you know, you were in his head.
Not only did he beat me, he gave me two of the worst ass-whoopings I ever had in my career. And so he probably thought that was in the back of my head. But I think most times people get like that, you know, they get where, oh, this guy got my number, blah, blah, blah. I didn't have any of those feelings. I just knew, I always knew I could beat him.
But the first two times I fought him, I think the first time I fought him, I had fought Chuck Liddell 45 minutes before.
Mm-hmm.
And then the second time, I went through this crazy religious thing where I got born again, first day of training camp. Whoa. Yeah.
What happened there?
Craziest thing in my life. Craziest. I still, I still, it's like, it's the craziest thing that ever happened to me. You know, back then I was a single parent. I had got custody of my son.
He was three years old. And just overnight I was a dad. And I'm trying to fight in Japan and everything. And I don't, and after that, after that Rona fight, like I was saying, I got real famous in Japan. And then I was going out, partying a lot and drinking.
And I never became an alcoholic, because, you know, I don't like alcoholics and stuff like that, because my dad used to be one. I always drink socially. But then I started craving alcohol. So long, story short, I think one thing led to another. And one day I just had this crazy dream and I was at home and it seemed like it was a devil in my chest with his hands like this.
I never forget having his hands in my chest and had some female spirits around. And he was saying, it's OK, it's OK, it's OK. And I was like, just laying there in my dream. And I heard a voice said, do you know this man? Like, no.
They said, well, you're not OK. What is not OK? I said, oh. And I jumped up and I went to go. I was scared as fuck.
I'm a big bad motherfucker, fucking people up. And I was scared. And I went to go wake my son up. And he said he was dreaming. He wouldn't tell me his dream because he didn't like me that much, because, you know, I just got cussed out.
And I'm being the father figure, making him eat healthy and telling him no and stuff like that. So he wouldn't tell me a whole lot. But he said he was dreaming. So my friend finally got out of him. He said when my dad woke me up, God and the devil was fighting.
And God hit the devil with the sword. And when I woke him up, he just did like this. Just purged a lot of white pus out of his mouth. What? Yeah, crazy.
True story. So I take him. That's not even the scary part. That wasn't what scared me. What scared me was.
I took him to preschool and I got back in my car and I must have the radio on. As soon as I turned the radio on, it was something. It was a commercial on. I didn't know at the time what commercial it was, but it said the curse of such and such. Your soul is mine.
That scared the shit out of me. I turned the radio off for six weeks. Six weeks. I found out later it was a fucking commercial for Revenge of the Mummy Ride and fucking Six Flags. That shit scared me straight.
Hell, yeah. Oh, my God.
Scared me straight, bro. Wow. And then that night I couldn't sleep. Me and my son, we went to go sleep over at one of my friends' house. And this is what brought me to being born again, what Christians say.
I had to piss. And I was over at my friend's house. It was really dark. I told you I was scared. I couldn't sleep in my room.
Me and my son sleeping on the floor in my friend's room. And I had to take a piss. And my son was wet in the bed and he was lying a lot. I'm trying to teach him not to lie and teach him not to wet the bed. And I was wet in the bed and blame it on him because I was too scared to go to the bathroom.
You were too scared to go to the bathroom. That's so nuts.
Yeah. And what I did, I prayed to God because my dad had just got saved like two years before. He said he was praying for me. And I remember what my dad said. He said, oh, when you pray to God, just say in Jesus' name.
So I was like, God, I'm a coward right now. Just take this fear from my heart in Jesus' name. I love you. Amen. And within two minutes, I was laughing and crying at the same time.
And I received the Holy Ghost Spirit. And I wasn't afraid. I went to go use the restroom. My eyes were different. Everything was different, right?
Wow. That's the first day of training camp for Ventilator, the second fight. And then so I'm training for Ventilator. My coach thought I was crazy. He brought a preacher in.
He thought I lost my mind, thought I was crazy. Because, you know, I'm totally—you know how I was back then. I was saying a whole bunch of crazy shit, doing a whole bunch of crazy shit. And, again, I didn't cuss anymore. It just changed me right away.
And then my coach found out I wasn't crazy. But it was the start of, you know, our relationship going south. And I started training for Ventilator. And then he got closer to fight. And I was like, I'm going to kill this motherfucker.
I'm going to kill him. And I'm thinking in my mind, like, I'm Christian. now. I can't be thinking like that. It was the most confusing part of my life.
And so I fasted like an idiot. I fasted for like three or four days because I read in the Bible that you fast to get closer to God and all that stuff. And it's true. I got closer to God. But it wasn't a good idea to fast before a fucking championship fight.
And I'm not there.
How many days out from the fight were you fasting?
Well, so I got to Japan, I think, that Tuesday. And the fight was that Sunday. So I think I broke my fast. So I think it was like four days before the fight when I ended my fast. But I think I fasted for three or four days.
Whoa.
Yeah. I never did that shit again.
And you were training while you were fasting?
Yeah.
How bad was that?
Bro, I was in another place. It was the weirdest thing. I didn't have to cut weight. That's my first time I didn't have to cut weight for my fight. Wow.
I thought that was a good thing. But I thought I was doing good. I was winning the fight. Then I got knocked the fuck out. And I tried to cop it up to me fasting.
That's my excuse, I think.
Well, it certainly would have drained your body to not eat for three days. I mean, if you're going for a performance, they say it's healthy for your body every now and then to take a few days off and not consume any food. But not before a fight.
Not before a fight, yeah.
I mean, I wouldn't even say before camp. I mean, I would say make it like you're out, like you got time.
Yeah. I've been trying to fast now for health reasons, and I can't even get past two days now. Yeah? Yeah. Can't do it.
Do you eat a lot of carbohydrates?
No. I cut that shit out. Yeah? Remember, I got super fat. Especially my last fight with Fedor.
Oh, my God. Yeah. I got super fat. I got mixed, diagnosed with hypothyroid. And they had me on this fucking medicine and shit.
And that shit fucked me up. And I started training with this crazy social media guy named Sean Rez. He's been my friend for years. I met him from one of my other friends. And I used to always see him.
We used to go out and kick it and party and stuff like that. You know, go out drinking. And we'd end up at his house with girls and stuff and hang out. And he was always ripped, like a Persian guy. But he looked like a fucking viking, right?
So one day I asked the guy, I'm like, man, how in the fuck do you stay ripped like that all year round? And he told me. He said, man, this is what I do.
I do my own shit. And he said, I do two hours of cardio. He works out like two or three times a day. And he don't eat carbs.
How often? Jesus Christ.
That's my training. That's my coach. He changed my fucking life, bro.
Damn. That dude looks good.
I lost 30 pounds training with him.
And so he does. two hours of cardio, how often a week?
This motherfucker trains like six, seven days a week.
So he does two hours of cardio every day?
Well, now I think he dropped it down to an hour now. But when I asked him, he was doing two hours of Stairmaster. And so I did it with him, right? This motherfucker is on, like, level 13.. I'm over there on level four, like, fucking dying.
He's on level 13 for, like, fucking hours straight.
Damn.
He's the strongest man I ever fucking met. Really? Yeah, he changed my life. And he don't take no shit. You know how I be trying to get out of shit?
I'm like, no, you meet me at the gym at this motherfucking time. He don't give a fuck. But he changed my life and changed my diet. So now I just, I don't know if it's like a carnivore diet, but I eat vegetables and stuff. But I mostly eat steak every day and sweet potatoes.
Yeah, so like more of like a, what would they call that, paleo diet?
Yeah, I just eat what he tells me to eat.
I think there's a lot of people that feel like. the real problem that people have is with grains. Grains, carbohydrates that come from bread, pasta, that kind of shit, rice. And if you can cut all that out and just eat meat and vegetables, you'll be way better off.
Bro, I've learned by traveling the world, I went to Colombia to get stem cells. And I stayed there for like eight days. And I lose weight and I eat whatever the fuck I want. And I lose weight there. I could eat pasta, bread, whatever there.
And I lost like 15 pounds in eight days over there. getting, you know, bio-accelerator? Yeah. Getting stem cells. At first I thought it was the stem cells.
But one time I went there and I just went to hang out. I didn't get stem cells. Still lost 15 pounds. The food. American food, is bad, bro.
Terrible.
Terrible. Terrible. Just filled with preservatives and bullshit, and seed oils and corn syrup, and just shit.
Why? Why are they doing this like that, man?
Because they make money. They don't give a fuck. It's the same thing as why they over-prescribe medications. It's the same thing why they send us off to war. They don't give a fuck.
When you allow people to make as much money as they possibly can, they do almost every time. Especially Americans. Almost every time they sacrifice people for money.
Yeah, I figured that's what it is. I'll boil down the money. But there's other ways to make money off of us.
Yeah, but they started this shit in the 1960s, man. They bribed sugar scientists. It was the 60s, right? Wasn't it when they did that?
I think it was the 50s.
50s? They bribed sugar scientists. They bribed scientists, rather, to say that sugar is good for you and saturated fats are bad for you. They tried to say that all these people are having heart attacks and all the cardiovascular issues that people have, that this is actually because of saturated fat. Which is just not true.
You're right. In the 1960s, the sugar industry paid scientists to downplay the link between sugar and heart disease, and instead promote saturated fat as the culprit. Sugar Research Foundation, now known as the Sugar Association, funded the research that reviewed the scientific literature and set the review's objective. Sugar Research Foundation also provided materials for review and examined drafts before publication. Yeah, it was all bullshit.
And fat is good for you. Fat is healthy for you, especially saturated fat. What? What are you saying? Yeah, fat from meat is really good for you.
Makes sense.
Yeah, of course it makes sense. It's what human beings have been eating forever. It's what most indigenous tribes, that's what they try to get. They try to get fat. They try to get meat and fat.
That's why people like Inuits, before American food and alcohol and cigarettes started making its way to the Inuit tribes, they had very low instances of heart disease. And they ate nothing but fat. They're eating fat all the time. They're eating whale blubber and all kinds of shit like that and seal.
It seems like it's just more natural. That's what's normal.
It's food. It's real food.
When people say that margarine is good for you, margarine is fucking terrible for you. I can't believe. it's not butter. Bitch, I can believe it. It doesn't taste anything like butter.
It's got a buttery texture. It's fucking terrible. It's a big tub of seed oil. That shit's awful for you. There's also a lot of people that try to link the consumption of seed oils and margarine and shit like that to Alzheimer's.
That's when people started getting Alzheimer's disease. And they started using that stuff instead of butter and fat.
I remember hearing that it was from deodorant. Antiperspirant. That's not true?
That's got to be bad for you too.
That scared me, because I don't want to be funky, though, but then I don't want to be mindless.
You can use a—there's deodorants that don't have aluminum in it. I use a Tom's of Maine deodorant, but there's a bunch of other ones. There's another one that I use.
Native. Native's real good. I'll use that, but I use deodorants that don't have aluminum in them.
My son is a hippie, and he tried to get me into all this shit, and I tried it.
You have a hippie for a son? Yeah.
My son, Roger, he's the one that was fighting. He's a fucking hippie, bro.
In what way?
Shit. Just like hippies, bro.
All natural stuff?
He's a motherfucker. Like mushrooms.
Mushrooms are good for you. Talk to Rashad about that.
I know I did.
Rashad is one of the most knowledgeable people I've ever talked to. when it comes to mushroom supplements, like Reishi and Lion's Mane and all that stuff. He takes all those.
That's the healthy stuff, but he likes the mushrooms that make you trip and shit.
He likes those, too.
Yeah.
It changed him into a totally different person. He's a different guy.
Totally different guy.
He's this sweet, at-peace, calm guy. I think he's vegan now, too.
He's a vegetarian.
Vegetarian?
He eats pussy and vegetables.
I can't knock on that because I'm a vegetarian myself. No, he's a vegetarian. I saw him not too long ago. You know, him and I were talking about doing a boxing match against each other in November. Oh, really?
Yeah, we're trying to get that going.
What is going on with you and Shannon McKenna?
Bro, this motherfucker called me out. As soon as I got knocked out by Fedor, he called me out, and he said he was going to promote the fight. MMA. guys, we're not promoting.
Wasn't it before that?
No, I don't remember.
You guys weren't jawing at each other before that?
No, I remember. after that. Let's go, champ. Yeah, and then we were supposed to fight, and we finally had a show. We was going to do it in Qatar, but the guys they're putting on, they ended up to be fucking scam artists.
Oh. And I was trusting them. I really liked the guys. They was cool people, but fast talkers. And, like two months before I pulled out, Shannon was like, man, these guys are scammers, bro.
I'm like, man, you brought these motherfuckers to me. He said, yeah, but I don't trust them, no more. They're scammers. So I was like, man, there. go this fucker.
I was waiting to fight him.
But I heard there was talk again.
He's still trying, but I lost my faith in Shannon. I don't know if he's going to get it done. He talks a good game. I hope he gets it done. If he ever gets it done, I'll be game to fight him.
But right now, I guess my first boxing match is going to be against Rashad. I need to get that win back.
And where is that going to be at?
They was talking about it in Atlanta.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
For what organization?
I'm not sure, but he said it was going to be under the 1FC banner. Really? That's what he said. That's what he's telling me. I'm waiting for my manager to talk to him.
Oh, interesting. 1FC. 1FC does everything. That's an interesting organization because they'll have an event with grappling, kickboxing, Muay Thai, and MMA. I like that.
I love it.
I like that fight that Mighty Mouse did with that Muay Thai guy. Yeah. Rod Tang?
That was very interesting.
His name is Rod Tang?
Rod Tang. Rod Tang. Yeah. He's a wild dude.
He's tough, huh? I see his clips on TikTok all the time.
He's dangerous. Takes a crazy shot, too. He's got an iron chin. Yeah, yeah.
He just lets people hit him.
Yeah, he, lets guys hit him. Come on, motherfucker. Hit me.
That's crazy.
He kicks so fucking hard, too.
I guess those little guys, they can do that, though. They can let people hit them.
Some people. You can't let crazy horses hit you. You know?
Oh, yeah.
Different people. Yeah, I guess. Like, Peloton, when you see Pereira, there's not a fucking person in the world that can get hit by that guy.
No. I wouldn't let no big guy. If I was... No, not in the 205.. 205..
Did you watch Joe Pfeiffer fight at 85?
? Who? Joe Pfeiffer.
He's on 303?
? Yeah. No.
He was the featured prelim of the undercard. He's one of the hardest fucking punchers ever.
I got to the fight late. I watched it when that girl got that cut. I watched it. That was my first fight. He was before that?
He was before that, I believe. Yeah, because Miro Bueno Silva was in the main card on pay-per-view. And Macy Chasson. This is Joe Pfeiffer. With the white shorts?
Yeah. This motherfucker can crack. Oh, my God.
What weight class is that? 85.. And he's huge. Yeah, 85..
But he don't look 85.
. I mean, he weighs 85 for about five minutes. That fucking dude's huge.
And is it 85?
Yes.
I met him for the first time in Saudi Arabia. And that guy was big as fuck. I was surprised when I saw him. He's like tall.
He's tall as fuck. Yeah. Tall and long. You know? And the dude he's fighting, Drekas 2 Plus C, that's another guy.
Like, how the fuck do you weigh 85?
. I stand next to that guy. I'm like, how the fuck are you 185 pounds?
They must be cutting from like 230, 220.
Oh, he's cutting from a lot. He looks like a heavyweight. When you stand next to Drekas, he's a big, wide motherfucker. He's thick.
What's the weight class now in the UFC? What's the IT weight class? When I was there, it was 205..
It's probably 205 right now. But the problem is, Pereira has cleaned out the division. There's only Ankalev, who's very good. That's a good fight. But a lot of people don't know who he is.
It's not like a big name fight. Yuri Prohaska is a big name. Everybody knows who he is. He's got that crazy look with the bun, the samurai bun. He shaved that shit off after the fight, though.
Did he? He's like, what the fuck am I doing here?
Yeah, it did look kind of stupid, though.
Well, you know, it looked crazy when he got hit, because it bobs around.
Yeah, because of the way he tapes it up and shit. Why do you got to tape it up? It's not going to get in your face, right?
I don't think you should be allowed to have that, because I think that gets in the way of stuff. Because if you're trying to, like, if you're trying to secure a choke, you're trying to go over the top of the head, there's like a thing there. It might get in. It might, for a split second, might keep you from clasping your hands together. For a split second, it might keep him from getting out of something.
It's in the way.
Just braid it.
Yeah.
Yeah, just braid it. Yeah, don't put tape on. I don't understand that.
Oh, okay.
Oh, he's Czech? Yeah. I didn't know where the fuck he was from.
He's a wild dude. He's a wild dude. And he hits hard as fuck. But that's not good enough. when you're fighting a guy that's that skilled.
Bro, fighting Alex, I didn't like the way he had his hands down. You don't fight a guy like Alex with your hands that low, because it takes a while to get them up.
Yeah. Well, he likes to fight that way because he lures people in exchanges and he hits so hard. And it works on everybody else. It worked on Rockage. It works on Dominic Reyes.
Everybody else, you don't want that guy standing in front of you. You know, because he lures you in exchanges and he's willing to take a shot, to give a shot. And his punches are so hard. But you can't do that with Pereira, because Pereira's a better kickboxer, hits harder, he's huge, and he's just too slick. He knows how to set things up.
He also knows it only takes one shot with him.
Yeah, he should have learned that the first time he fought him, right? Mm-hmm. Get your hands up.
Well, the thing about the first time is what he won the first round of the first fight. And then he was winning the second round before he got clipped. And he actually had Pereira in a little bit of trouble. There were some exchanges where he hit Pereira, had him moving backwards, but Alex is just too – he hits you. It's too scary.
Yeah, I was worried about Alex's chin, but that was at 85 when he had to cut all that weight. You know, you cut a lot of weight, that fills up your chin.
100%. And his chin at 85 was not the same. I mean, you got to think of how much weight he was cutting. He was weighing in at 85 and then fighting at 225.. That's insane.
Yeah. That's 40 fucking pounds, man.
In one day.
In a day. That's insane. I mean, I don't know how he did it.
That weight cut is going to take – I think that's what fucked me up with my health. Yeah. When you get older – look at people like James Toney. Mm-hmm. You see how he looks now?
Yeah.
You remember where he used to fight at?
Yeah. He used to be super middleweight. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when he fought Roy Jones.
I remember when he fought everybody. I mean, James Toney beat Evander at heavyweight. You know, James Toney was a bad man.
A bad man.
Hard hit, too.
But he cut a lot of weight. Yes. And I think that fucks up your metabolism or something down the line when you get older, cutting all that weight and then putting it back on.
Yeah, it does. It fucks you up. I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure it does. I'm sure it does.
It's terrible for your kidneys.
Oh, who else? What's that? Prince Haseem. Uh-huh.
Have you seen him? Yeah, he's big.
Yeah, he's big. Like, a lot of fighters go through that. Like, Ricky Hadden, I think he got his self under control now. But he used to blow up. And that fucks you up.
Yeah, but it's also like fighters, when they're not training and they're not fighting anymore, they just start eating.
Oh, man. Yeah, I was bad for that.
Yeah, they just eat like crazy.
You enjoy yourself because you have to be so disciplined in training camps. And then, after that, you just – I used to always say, oh, I'm just going to enjoy myself for like a week, then get back, and I'm never going to get fat again. I used to say this shit all the time. Two weeks, bro. Two weeks, I'm back, fucking fat as fuck.
Isn't it crazy how quick it gets back on you? Yeah. Especially if you're eating pizza and bullshit, and if you're drinking. Oh, yeah, drinking. Drinking, is number one.
Yeah. Yeah, drinking puts it on you quick. And I think that's where Ricky Hadden was having a little bit of a problem. Yeah. That happens to a lot of fighters, especially guys who've got some brain damage.
They really crave alcohol. There's something about your dopamine levels drop. And when you've had a significant amount of brain damage, you've been KO'd a bunch of times, a lot of guys lean towards alcohol to make them feel better. But it's all – some people get KO'd, and they're fine.
Those K1 guys, they don't even look gun-shy. You know, when Vandalay knocked me out, that was my first time ever getting knocked out. And I didn't even go all the way unconscious. I remember hanging on the ropes. You remember that?
Mm-hmm. And I remember thinking, like, damn, I just got knocked the fuck out. And I can remember everything. I was dangling on the ropes, and I remember, like, blood dropping. And then after that, I was gun-shy all the way up to when I come in to fight Chuck Liddell.
And I remember those fights. I was gun-shy, and I was like, man, I got to fight Chuck Liddell. He's, like, one of the best strikers I've been up against. I need to bring somebody in to get me over this gun-shyness. And that's how I met Chet Congo.
Really? Yeah, I met him at the UFC once before. He was, like, a big, scary-looking guy. Mm-hmm. And my manager called his manager, and we flew him from France over to that training camp.
And he kicked the shit out of me.
And I got over that gun-shyness. Interesting. It was a great camp.
Chet Congo was a beast. Remember that fight with Pat Barry? Oh, my God. That is one of the craziest comebacks in the history of the sport.
Craziest one, hands down.
Pat Barry was just swinging. And Pat Barry was a good kickboxer, man, real good kickboxer. And Pat Barry had him real badly hurt. And a lot of people could have stopped that fight. And he went down a couple of times.
A couple of times.
And then he clipped him with one shot.
Boom. Bro, that's Congo for you. That guy, countless times, he'd go through training camp, he'd get injured, won't tell nobody. And still go out there and fight. I'm talking about with injuries that people have to get surgeries for.
that wouldn't fight. Really? Yeah. I don't know what's wrong with him.
Here it is. There it is. There's the one right hand that drops him. And Pat just got reckless. And he jumped all over him.
Pat had big power, too. I mean, look at the size of him.
Look at the size difference, yeah.
But, yeah, I mean, Congo was real tall and big, but Pat was a tank, man.
I think I was in Congo's corner. I can't remember, but I was watching that fight. I think I was doing a commentating up at the top.
Boom.
Boom.
Out cold.
You don't even see it.
Yeah, you don't even see it. He hit him with one, stung him, and then the other one, his eyes rolled back.
Oh, you see his eyes?
Yeah, they're still open. Yeah, his eyes were rolled back. He was out. He was in the dark lands. Look at him.
Oh, my God. Yeah, he was in the dark lands. He just got too wild. He got too wild. I mean, he had Congo hurt, man.
Real, badly hurt.
Yeah, he was going in for the kill.
He gets clipped behind the ear, and then this one. Boom. I mean, that one just shut him off. And, you know, moving backwards, kind of off angle. Still, crazy power.
But, you know, Congo was a really good kickboxer, too. He beat Crowcob.
Yep.
I don't want to talk shit. Congo's like my big bro, but I was real proud of him to beat Crowcob, because Crowcob is dangerous, man, with those leg kicks. Those head kicks.
Every kick. He's one of the hardest kickers ever. There's a picture of him when he fought Heath Haring. Did you ever see that fight?
Oh, yeah, he kicked him in the body.
And his body is like his shin is like halfway into his body. It's a horrible picture. And especially it's that left one, which is, you know, he said, right kick hospital, left kick cemetery. Yeah. Yeah.
Crowcob is the best.
Look at that. Oh, my God. That's Josh Barnett.
Oh, yeah, yeah. That was a good one.
Look at that other one down there.
Who is that? Is that Sean O'Malley? Yeah. Oh, my God. Look at that kick.
Who did he kick there? Good Lord. Good Lord. That is liver all day. I mean, that is deep in the liver.
That's crazy.
That's it. The upper left-hand corner. That's the one. Oh, yeah. Look at that.
I mean, that shin is – that is a perfect body kick. Wow. That's deep into the body.
The first time I met Crowcob was when I fought K-1.
. Pratt sent me to K-1 because it was like my last fight on my contract. They thought I was going to get knocked the fuck out and renegotiate for less money. And I didn't expect for Crowcob to like me. They put us in a locker room together.
He was over there playing cards and stuff. And this Japanese reporter come over to me. I was on the ground, like, stretching, warming up, whatever. And I had my chain on the ground, which is crazy. I never lay the chain down.
I don't know why I was on the ground. And a Japanese lady came, and she was like, Oh, why do you got this chain? What does this chain mean? I guess K-1 didn't know anything about me because I was coming from Pratt. And I put the chain on.
I said, Oh, I'm a dog. And I started humping her.
And Crowcob died laughing. And ever since then, he liked me. Oh, that's funny. Every time I see him, he'll come, and I can make him laugh and stuff. He's a cool guy.
He's a very cool guy. He's one of the first guys that came from kickboxing that did really well in MMA because he was so explosive. Yeah. Like a lot of those other guys, like Peter Aerts or Ernesto Hoost, I don't know if their style would have translated, because they would just set you up over time. And Ernesto would be chopping at the legs and hit you with shots.
But Crowcob would just, bah, just explode on you.
And he had good wrestling defense. Mm-hmm. Antonio McKeats, say he was training with Crowcob, teaching him wrestling. Really? Yeah.
Antonio McKeats is one of the best wrestling coaches. He's one of the best MMA coaches out there.
Well, he developed very good takedown defense, and that's what made him so scary. Yeah. Because if you have to stand up with that guy.
Yeah.
Which shows you how good Fedor was in his prime. Because those two fought in their prime, and Fedor was walking him down. Yeah. Stand up. The stand up, I mean, that was primarily a stand up fight.
Fedor gives no fucks.
He was a wild dude, man.
Even though he beat my ass, he's still one of my favorite fighters.
Yeah, one of mine as well. Yeah. I think, you know, when you look at the great heavyweights of all time, it's so hard to say, like, who's the greatest of all time, but you've got to have him in the conversation.
Yeah. I wish he would have came to the UFC, though. I wish they would have got close.
Got close. Got real close. They had some meetings, but apparently the people that Fedor had running with him, the people that were running his business, were, you know, they wanted a lot. You know, they wanted, like, co-promotion with the UFC. They wanted, they didn't, it wasn't just like, give us some money.
And, you know, I guess the UFC was willing to give them a lot of money, but they were like, no, we want co-promotion.
Yeah, it's too much.
They wanted to be a part of the business. They wanted to take over a little bit of the business.
Yeah, I heard rumors they wanted to have, like, rights to UFC Russia or some shit.
There's a bunch of different things. You'd have to talk to Dana, but I remember it was enough so that they had to beef up security. Like, they were worried about how the negotiations went south. Wow. Yeah, they got nervous.
It was a weird time. Those guys that were with him, they were serious dudes. Wow.
Yeah. I would like to fight Fedor again. You know, that was my last fight, and I wasn't me. I was very unhealthy, but I didn't like it.
Why were you unhealthy? What was wrong?
Because I got mixed diagnosed with— Hypothyroidism? Yeah, so I was on this medicine, and the medicine was making me fat. And I was training hard.
What kind of medicine did they have you on?
I forgot the name of it, but I had been on it for— Synthroid? Yeah. And I had been on it for a while, and then I started training with TJ Dillashaw and Juan Archuleta, and they took me over there to Coach Cal, and that guy's a genius.
Yeah, he's a genius.
He's like a scientist. So he looked at my blood, and he looked through everything, and he was like, you don't have a thyroid problem, dude. Something wrong with your C3 or T3, whatever the fuck, he said, but you don't have a thyroid problem, and that medicine you're taking is fucking you up. And I just quit the medicine. I said, I knew it was the fucking medicine.
But he said, hey, I don't suggest you just quit cold turkey. You don't know how your body is going to react. And then I said, fuck this. This medicine is fucking me up. I'm quitting it.
And when I got to Japan, one of my coaches told me, oh, you got to carb up before you fight. You got to carb up, because he noticed I wasn't eating carbs. And I listened to my coach. I'm a very coachable fighter, and I just got bloated overnight. I wasn't even looking that big when I got to Japan, and I just fucking blew up.
And I said, fuck it. I'm fighting. I'm not pulling out of this fight.
You were thinking about pulling out?
Yeah. When I fucking saw myself in the fucking mirror, I was like, what the fuck is this?
That's what you thought about pulling out?
Yeah, because I was fighting. Because I trained hard. I noticed I wasn't losing weight for the fight, but I was heavyweight. I always wanted to get my weight down and look good, but I got down on 265, and I was training really hard. People thought I didn't train.
People thought I threw the fight. I was training hard. It's the hardest I ever trained, but I wasn't doing a whole lot of sparring and shit, though, because when I was training with Coach Kyle, that was the hardest training I ever did. And it's so hard that you have to take the rest of the day off and the next morning.
Because it's heavy cardio, right?
Yeah, it's crazy. We were throwing 100-pound medicine balls at each other.
100 pounds?
100-pound medicine balls while we were bouncing on a boshu ball.
Jesus Christ.
With TJ Dillashaw and Juan Archuleta. I don't know if you know Juan Archuleta. Yeah, sure. You know how small that guy is?
Coach Kyle had us flipping tires up a hill, like 200, 400-pound tires. I never flipped a tire before. This motherfucker used to flip his tire up the hill, run down, and help me flip mine. That's how strong that little motherfucker is.
Yeah, he's strong as fuck. He's a great wrestler.
Yeah, a great wrestler. And they had you on that spin bike, like a hard spin bike type of thing, for like an hour.
Bro, it was torture. But I said, you know what? I'm going to do this shit. I'm going to train really hard. And at the end of the day, all this shit fucked me up.
So I cursed those two specialists that I saw. Two different specialists. And they didn't do shit. They said, oh, you've got to be on this medicine for the rest of your life. And the second one, after I saw Coach Kyle, I went to somebody and they did a, what do you call it, MRI on my thyroid.
And they were saying that there's not enough data yet to know if you damaged your thyroid from getting and putting a lot of red-naked chokes. Oh, really? They said there's not enough data yet. Because I asked them, have you ever been in a red-naked choke and you fight so hard and your throat hurt a little bit? Oh, yeah.
Yeah. I asked them about that. And they said, yeah, it's not enough data yet. You guys haven't been doing this shit long enough for us to know.
Oh, that makes sense. That makes sense that it would hurt your thyroid. I mean, it's right there.
It's right there. So they don't know shit yet.
I mean, you'd imagine, I mean, if your organs are getting hurt by getting kicked, they bleed, you know, you piss blood after you get kicked in the body a bunch of times.
Yeah. Yeah.
I would imagine it hurts your thyroid. I mean, if someone's got a real good squeeze, they get your neck.
That happened to me several times over the years, but, you know, I didn't really think anything of it.
And how many times in training? Yeah. Yeah, constantly.
That's what they get.
Well, that's what most people get really beat up from, really, right? Most of the brain damage people get is from training.
Yeah.
Especially in the early days, when people basically just fought in the gym. Do you remember when Marvin Eastman fought Travis Luter?
No, I didn't see that one.
Marvin Eastman fought Travis Luter in the UFC, and Travis Luter caught him with a right hand and knocked him out cold. But it was, like, at the end of the punch, it didn't look normal. It looked like something was wrong. And what I had heard was that Marvin Eastman had been KO'd twice in camp. At least once.
I know he got KO'd at least once. I think it was by Tito. I think they were wrestling.
This was after I fought Marvin or before?
After you fought Marvin. Because you fought Marvin in 2007.. This was in the UFC.
Oh, okay. He was in the UFC.
Oh, you fought in the UFC.
You fought Marvin in the UFC as well. Yeah, 2007..
Yeah, I don't know if the Travis Luter fight was before or after that fight. See, if you can see it. Find it, Jamie. Travis Luter KO's Marvin Eastman. Because Travis Luter was an awesome jujitsu guy.
Wasn't known as being, like, this crazy puncher. But, you know, when you see guys that have fought, that have been hurt real bad in the gym, you know, that happens all the time. You know, guys get KO'd in the gym.
That's what happens is Ninja.
Really?
Yeah, the shoebox guy that he was sparring so hard. Here it is.
So this is before you fought Marvin Eastman. That's right. You fought Marvin Eastman about 2007.. Yeah. So he catches him on the end of this punch.
And Travis Luter, man, Travis Luter is one of the best Brazilian jujitsu black belts to ever compete in MMA. And he was a guy that he was the worst weight cut I ever saw in my life. Ever. When he fought Anderson for the title. So look at this.
Isn't that crazy?
Yeah.
I mean, it's a good right hand.
But it seemed crazy, right?
Yeah. I think your chin just goes sometimes.
Yes. But what I had heard from him was that he had been KO'd in training pretty bad.
Do you think it's mental?
I don't know. I don't think that one was mental. I think if you've been KO'd, I think your brain's damaged. Just like if you hurt your hand. If you break your hand and it's still fucked up and you try to punch someone, it's going to get hurt.
Same thing with your head.
But you would think that, you know, because your body heals itself, you would think your brain would rejuvenate over time.
It doesn't really.
It doesn't?
No. No. There's a lot of problems with the brain and healing. And one of the problems, there's a lot, right? But one of the problems is the tissue, the connective tissue that keeps the brain centered in the skull.
That stuff rips over time. And that stuff is, once it's gone, it's gone. It doesn't return. It doesn't heal back. It's just like taking your meniscus out of your knee.
And your brain is just slapping around inside of there. And guys get KO'd way easier.
You think stem cells help that? Because I believe in stem cells.
I do too. Yeah. I mean, I know you go to that bio-accelerator place, which is great. A lot of people have gone there.
It changed my life.
Yeah. Stem cells are incredible. But I don't know if it helps that.
Brain rejuvenates.
Especially not helps you take a shot. It might help you heal from too many head injuries. But I don't think it helps your ability to take a punch. I think once that goes, that's gone.
You knowing that, would you let your son fight?
I would let my son fight before I'd let him do football.
Football is way worse.
I think it's way worse. They did a study on CTE with football. And they went from high school all the way into NFL players. And even in high school kids, most of them have it. And then you get into NFL.
People play all the time. They played Pee-Wee. They played junior high school, high school. Most likely they have some form of CTE. And then you get into NFL.
It's like 90-plus percent of the guys have CTE.
I never heard of this shit. until recently. We had Chandler Jones on our podcast. Our Jon Jones brother. You met him before?
No.
I've seen him at the UFC.
Yeah, he seems like a real cool guy. But he was saying that people diagnosed him with CTE. But he said he didn't believe in it.
Wasn't Chandler the one that had some sort of an incident where he went crazy?
Yeah, he did have something.
Yeah. A lot of people don't believe in things that are still real. You know?
Facts.
You know?
I'm just not hearing about this shit now, though.
You seem fine.
Yeah, yeah. Fuck yeah. You know, I don't take a whole lot of punches. I got that cover and roll, baby. Yeah.
I got the cover and roll.
Yeah, you've always been defensively responsible. Yeah.
Self-leg kicks. Self-leg kicks.
Leg kicks. You got mad at me once. But I wanted you to throw more because your leg kicks are devastating. Yeah. I would see when you would hit guys with leg kicks.
I was like, damn, I wish Quentin would throw more leg kicks.
I got to apologize to you about that.
Well, I apologize to you, too. I'm like, it's not personal.
No, I know.
When I'm looking at you, I'm not thinking of you as a human being when you're fighting. I know you're a human being, but I'm looking at analyzing movements and what I think a guy can do to be more successful. I don't mean to hurt your feelings.
No, you didn't hurt my feelings. It was nothing that you said. I'm going to clear it up for you right now. It wasn't nothing you said. It's the fucking fans.
They all come. When you said it, they all come to me on my social media, ever since social media. So I'm going to explain it to you. You remember when I was fighting in Pride, I would check leg kicks if they was hard, except for Arona. I wasn't going to check his leg kicks.
It would have hurt my knee. Wow. But I would check leg kicks if they were hard, but people in the UFC, they wasn't really kicking that hard. Really? No, their leg kicks wasn't that hard, so I'd take them and I'd try to land a punch.
But the reason why I wasn't kicking that much is because they were desperately trying to take me down. Right. Even though I can wrestle, I started late. I'm not the best wrestler. If you want to take somebody down, you're going to get them when they got their leg up.
But you were a very good MMA wrestler.
Yeah.
You knew how to use it in MMA. Yeah.
I was never good at one art. When I put them together, that's when I felt like I'd come together. So one time I tried to kick when they had me fight Matt Hamill. That's the only fight I ever wanted to back out of. I never wanted to fight that guy.
Why?
Because I just felt like he was a boring fighter, and I got tired of fighting wrestlers that hold me down and hump me and shit. And I'm like, you know, it's fucking, for me, I like exciting fights. I'd rather lose an exciting fight than win a boring fight. It's just been my style. And I didn't want to fight him, so I remember when I was fighting him, and it was back in my head, I was like, is Joe Rogan going to talk about me and Matt fucking kicking and shit?
So I threw a fucking kick, and sure enough, he almost took me down. I did not want that guy on top of me. So I said, fuck this. I never kicked again after that.
That's funny.
I kick in practice. When I spar, stuff like that. No, I love Muay Thai. I started taking Muay Thai right after that fight with Sakuraba. I started training with Colin Oyama when he was training Tito.
I went straight up to Big Bear, and I started training.
Colin's very good.
Yeah, he taught me the cover and roll. Yeah, I learned a lot from that guy.
Yeah, he's very good. He's trained a lot of MMA fighters.
Yeah.
It's interesting when you see those guys that were around in the early days, that are still around now. Yeah. And how many different iterations of MMA they've seen. The game has changed so much. You watch young guys.
now. There's guys that are entering into the UFC now that are elite fighters. They're already elite. First fight in the UFC. They're world class.
It's crazy. You remember how it started off? You just knew one motherfucking thing.
Yeah. Yep. Wrestling or kickboxing or jiu-jitsu. Yeah. Yeah.
One of those things you were good at. And everything else, you were just hoping to get to, whatever the fuck it was that you do. Yeah.
People like Carl Parisian came around with judo. Yeah. What the fuck? This motherfucker doing judo?
Carl was throwing people through the air. Carl was one of the best judo guys to ever compete in MMA. He was fucking good, man. He was good.
Yeah. Yeah. I had to train judo one time. It made me respect it a lot more. I was fighting...
I forgot the damn guy's name. I think it's Ishii something. And he was a judo gold medalist or some shit. And I had to fight him in Bellator, a big motherfucker. So I had to train judo.
I trained for like a week. I gave up. I said, fuck this, man. My wrestling gonna take care of this shit.
Well, those guys are so.
. Judo. guys are so strong. Because they're throwing bodies around all the time. There's always like hoisting bodies through the air and throwing them around.
I rolled with Carl once. He was the hardest guy ever. His body was like... He didn't look impressive, but he was crazy strong, like a chimpanzee. Like just throws you around.
There's such an evidence, like a big difference in strength with a guy like that. That's just used to throwing bodies. Like Hector Lombard. He's another one. Hector, crazy powerful.
Carl Paris, he used to train with me, Tito, and, I think, Randy Couture. He used to kick all three of our asses taking turns. And we all big into him. Wow. Yeah.
He was a beast.
He was a beast, man. He was a beast. I remember his fight with Diego Sanchez. Holy shit.
That was a wild fight. I'd like to see him come back. Because... Carl? Carl?
Yeah.
How old is Carl now?
He's got to be younger than me. I'm 46 now. He's got to be younger than me.
Carl had a bad leg injury. And he tore his hamstring and never got it surgically repaired. So he was always like... One leg, was always like 40% of what it should have been. It was bad to the point where he had to take painkillers and a bunch of shit.
He had a hole in the back of his leg. You ever see a guy that tears their bicep and they get that weird where it curls up? That was how his leg looked. So the back of his leg had a hole in it. His hamstring was gone.
It's hard to come back from that shit.
He could have had it, but he would have had to have surgery right after the tear. And he didn't. And so once it curls up and locks in place, I guess they can't bring it back.
How do you feel about older guys like me, Rashad, and Mark Coleman, all of us fighting in a league with other older guys instead of putting us with younger people?
That's not a bad idea. Like a Legends League?
Yeah, because we still love it. We still love to fight. But we just can't compete with the—.
Youngest guys.
Yeah, Father Tom is undefeated, bro.
Father Tom never loses. And not only that, these young guys haven't had all the injuries that the older guys have had. You see, older guys, they look fine. But who knows what's up with their fucking neck, my knee, my hip, my fucking wrist. There's always something.
If you've had 25 MMA fights, 35 MMA fights, you got problems. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I don't know anybody who's not banged up.
Man, when I get out of bed in the morning, like the first couple steps, I'm like, damn. Was it worth it?
Yeah, but you came out better than most people.
Yeah, I already had an injury coming into MMA. My knee was fucked. I fucked my knee up in college. But I haven't had too much.
What did you do with your knee in college?
Man, my teammates, half of my teammates wasn't coming to practice, and the coach was like, since you guys are not getting your teammates here, you got to work out for them. So they used to pair us up in groups of twos and make us do 15 push-ups, other guy do 15 reps, and then you go all the way down to five, right? And after two weeks of that, we got so strong. We was bombing out on everything, right? So I'm wrestling one of my teammates, and he tried to get a single leg on me.
This is right. when I was getting better at wrestling. I was getting good. It was hard to take me down and everything. I was in Lassen Junior College, and the wrestlers there, they was like the rejects, but they was all good.
They had to come there first, then they went to D1 schools, right? And I'm wrestling this guy, and he's still my friend to this day. He gets mad when I tell this story. He was going in for a single, and I wasn't giving it up because everybody was talking shit to me. I was the runt on the team.
I was the worst wrestler there. And I think I took him down, and he wanted to get his takedown back, and he took my leg, and he bent it sideways and went, boom. And I think he tore my meniscus or some shit. And Lassen, they didn't even take me to the—I don't even know what happened. They never got me an MRI.
They just threw me away. Really? Yeah. That was it? Yeah, that was it.
I let it heal up on its own.
And it never got 100%?
No, it never was the same. Wow. And then I think that was my meniscus. I don't know, but I injured my meniscus when I was training for Ryan Bader. I had a little partial tear, and the doctor told me, no, you don't want to fight because you can rip it all away.
And it's not a fight in Japan. It's hard for me to pull out in Japan. That's why I think it's a good idea for me to go over there and make some babies.
Well, it's amazing what they can do with stem cells now, because I had a tear in my right knee, and I got stem cells on it. I had a couple different cycles of stem cells. Now it doesn't bother me at all. I was like, fuck, I'm going to have to get it done on my right knee too, because I had my left knee, part of my meniscus removed. Because it was a bucket-handle tear, so you know it would lock out.
Yeah. So it would lock straight. It was like, pop.
Ah!
And then you can't bend your knee. You're like, oh, my God. And it's painful as fuck.
Yeah. That used to happen to Rico Rodriguez. I used to corner him one time when he was fighting. And that was my job in each round to pull his leg out.
Yeah, Rico didn't have an ACL. Yeah. He fought at the highest level with no ACL. Yeah. He was the first guy I ever heard that did.
that. I'm like, that is crazy.
He didn't give a fuck.
Crazy.
It's crazy what fighters put up with.
I know. Well, there's fighters right now that are fighting with no ACLs. I know a couple of them.
Football players wouldn't do that shit, huh? No.
No, you get it repaired.
I think we should get doctors like them. You know how they have, what do you call those, physios? Mm-hmm. I think we should have that on. every team, have a set of physios.
Because we don't know what the fuck we're doing. Right. Even today, we don't know shit.
Well, that's why the UFC Performance Institute is so important. Uh-huh. They got that there? Because the UFC, they have everything. Everything, yeah.
What? Yeah. I thought leagues, they got all this shit. Oh, the UFC Performance Institute is like one of the most high-level training environments in the world. People come and do their camp in Vegas.
So if they know they're going to fight in Vegas, they'll come to Vegas and bring their coaches, and everybody does their whole camp at the PI. PI is incredible.
I've never been there.
Oh, my God. It's amazing. They videotape all the sparring sessions, so you can watch it from multiple different angles. They have it up for you. You can review.
Like, see, you do this. You drop your hands. You do this. You can't defend like that. You got to do this way.
And you watch it all on high-def videotape.
They charge you for camp?
No. No. You just go train there. What the fuck? Yeah.
All the UFC athletes can go train there. They have nutrition. They feed you. Yeah. For free?
Oh, yeah. They'll set you up with meals. Yeah. For free? Uh-huh.
Not only that, it's all nutritionally balanced, for, like, their work with the nutritionist, for your weight cut, for everything.
Yeah.
All healthy foods.
I got more respect for the UFC now.
Oh, it's incredible. The place is amazing. I did a tour of it. It was amazing. It's amazing.
I mean, they have sauna, cold plunge, like, you name it. Every modality, red light, anything that can help you heal, anything that helps you get.
And it's for free for the fighter?
For free. For free.
And say what you want.
All the strength and conditioning equipment, anything you need, bags, everything. Everything you need.
You just got to be on the UFC roster to use it?
If you're on the UFC roster, you go there and train.
Say what you want about Uncle Dana, but he did a lot for this sport.
Oh, my God. Without him, this wouldn't be possible. You see what happens with these other organizations, with regular dudes running it? They all fold up. They fall apart.
The UFC had the name in the beginning, but they ran with it after that. Because Pride had a name, too, man. People don't know. Pride was bigger in Japan than the UFC was in America. At the time, Pride, way before the UFC could ever do this, Pride was selling out 90,000 seat stadiums.
Yeah. Pride was almost at the level of NBA is here in Japan. I remember fighting. Then the next day, my cornerman, they would go and get a newspaper, a Japanese newspaper, and I'd be on the front page of the fucking newspaper. Wow.
You never see that shit here.
No. Well, you kind of do now. Well, I don't know about. now. I don't see newspapers.
Newspapers don't really exist anymore. But when it comes to news coverage, my newsfeed was overwhelmed with Alex Pereira's knockout. Oh, for real? Yeah. Oh, that's good.
Yeah. There were so many pictures of it. It was a giant event.
ESPN.
But all these different websites were covering it. First of all, when you've got a guy, that's that dominant, that's what people love. They love a Mike Tyson. They love some dude who's just fucking everybody up. You can't wait to watch him fight people because you know it's going to happen.
Yeah. You know he's going to fuck people up.
Yeah. What fucked up Pride was. they lost their contract with Fuji TV.
It's crazy that it could be so big in Japan and then dwindle away to almost nothing. So you see events from Japan now. It's like a shadow of what it was.
You would think that Risen would do what Pride did.
Right. You would think. You would think Risen would fill in the gap. If the UFC went away, the PFL would probably take up the slack. If something happened, someone, the UFC, decided, you know what?
We found Jesus. No more fights. Everybody, good luck. Take care. We're going to close shop for some crazy reason.
Those guys would go somewhere. Everyone has a name. Right now, the only way an organization could benefit, like PFL signed Francis. That's probably the only way the PFL is going to get people to pay attention. You have to have someone like Francis.
Who is he going to fight, though?
This is a wild Brazilian dude over there who's fucking dangerous.
That big guy that beat up Ryan Bader?
Yes. That guy's fucking dangerous.
He's huge.
He's huge, and he can strike.
But that's the only guy.
That's the only guy. I mean, maybe if Francis, if the PFL gets some heat behind it because of this, maybe if they have the money. I know there's some other countries that are involved, like the Saudis, if they get involved and they start throwing money away, maybe.
You think he'll go back to boxing?
Yeah, because he's made so much money.
But, you know, after the Joshua fight, it's going to be different, right? So the Francis Ngannou fight, it was, you know, he's fighting one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time and drops him in the second round. And everybody's like, what? And then he beat him up in the eighth round too.
I thought he won that fight.
I thought he won that fight too. Yeah, I thought he won that fight too. But, you know, if they're setting up that Usyk fight, they were not going to. It just seemed like the fix was in. It was close enough that they could pull it off.
They can go, okay, maybe. Maybe you could see him winning that, but I don't think so. Yeah. I thought Francis won it. A lot of people thought Francis won it.
Yeah. Oh, there's that big guy, huh?
This dude. What is his name?
Ferreira? Ferreira?
Henning Ferreira. He's big too. He's like 6'7". Look at that knee. 6'8".
260.
. 6'8".
I think Francis can get him though.
Oh, yeah, man. Look, Francis, can get anyone. Anyone alive. Anyone alive. If that guy hits you, he could put you asleep.
Man, Francis surprised me when he knocked out Alistair Overeem. That's when he gave me my radar. Like, who the fuck is this guy?
Bro, that was, to this day, one of the scariest left hooks of all time. Because his head snapped so far back, it was like he was looking at his feet. Like, he was looking at his ankles behind himself.
Like, it was crazy. Yeah.
And then, when he knocked out Stipe. Good Lord. I mean, with the little gloves on and leg kicks and shit, there's not a whole lot like that one. Come on, man. Yeah.
That kind of power?
Yeah.
Francis, man.
Dude, I took a picture with Francis in Saudi Arabia. That motherfucker was twice my size. He's huge. He's big.
He's huge. I'm happy that he went and got paid. I'm happy that he got that money for the Tyson Fury fight because everybody was dismissing it. Dana was dismissing it. And then he drops Tyson Fury.
And, in a lot of people's eyes, won the fight. Like, fuck yeah. And then he gets a big payday against Joshua. I'm happy that he made money. But I wish he would have made that money in the UFC.
I wish. My dream fight was at heavyweight, John Jones and Francis. And I still think to this. There was actually an article that I read this morning. That with the Saudis, you know, the UFC is now doing shows in Saudi Arabia.
That Dana is not opposed to the possibility of a joint promotion with John Jones versus Francis. Wow.
That would be huge. Huge. Huge. Huge. With all due respect, I think John Jones is a smart enough fighter to not fight Francis' fight on El Mundo.
Really?
Yeah. John Jones, he ain't no dummy. He's a smart fighter. I always say John Jones is Neo.
Neo from the Matrix? Yeah.
The kid, his mind is so strong. I think that he would desperately try to get Francis down and submit him. He won't be dumb enough to stand.
No. He won't stand with him. No. John, as good as he is, has never been like a one-punch knockout guy. No.
You know, he beats guys up and strangles them and beats them up on the ground.
Does he have any knockouts?
From one shot? I mean, he head kicked Daniel Cormier. Yeah. Yeah. And dropped him with that and then beat him up on the ground and stopped him.
Yeah. But, yeah.
When he punched me, I was more worried about the eye pokes than the punch.
He does a lot of that. What do you think about that, man? Like the gloves that they have. I think, to this day, I know the UFC changed their gloves and they got new gloves now. And I think the new gloves are definitely better than the old gloves.
But Trevor Whitman has the best gloves ever. You ever see his gloves?
No. But I heard that when the UFC gloves was coming out, coming out with new gloves, I heard that somebody invented gloves that keep your hand.
Curled. Yeah. That's Trevor Whitman. Oh, okay.
But they didn't go with that one.
No. Apparently, Trevor wanted some crazy amount of money for the gloves for the UFC.
For the patent?
I don't know what. Like to sell his design, his product, whatever. And he wanted a lot of money, apparently. And the UFC wasn't willing. They were trying to make a deal with him.
And I was telling, Danny, get his gloves, man. They're way better. And, excuse me. And his gloves are curved. They're curved.
So that your hand sits like this always. So that's his boxing gloves there. But what about his bag or his MMA gloves? Does it show the Onyx? Onyx is his company.
O-N-X. MMA glove. That's the sparring glove. But there it is. I'm wearing it.
Okay. That's it. That's when Justin did my podcast. And I put his glove on. See how it's curved?
Yeah. That's not even me making a fist. That's just putting it on.
Oh, yeah.
You put it on. It's curved.
That makes sense. But why he didn't just back off on the price a little bit?
He should have for sure. Here's my thought. And tell me what you think about this. The UFC gloves, the way they are right now, why don't they cover the fingers? Why don't you have a glove where you have the padding on the knuckle, but that you just have a layer of leather that goes over the fingers and goes behind the hand like this?
That way, even if you do have your hands open, you'll be running into it like this.
Like a mitt? You're talking about like a mitt almost?
Yeah, like a mitt.
Almost like pride, gloves a little bit, but over the fingers?
But covering the fingertips.
I think the referees will get upset about that.
Because you never do this. You never interlace your fingers together, right? That's Hayabusa. Yeah, I know, but like that? No, I mean covering the tips of the fingers.
The tips are still going to be there. The problem is the tips. The problem is the fingertips going into the eyes. Like every time you see a poke, it's like one finger going into the eyeball. But if you have it covered up, at least it would be different.
It wouldn't be one poke going straight through. It would be a layer that's covering, a layer of leather that covers over the tip of the finger.
I need to see those. I'll tell you this. I've been fighting for 25 years. I've never poked anybody in the eye, not even in training. Really?
Yeah, I never. Because why do you have to do this shit?
You shouldn't do that. Exactly. John is a master.
Bro, I was begging the referee. I was begging the referee. I'm like, look, I never do that in fights. I never take my attention off my opponent. But I was going to that fight.
I was thinking about wearing goggles out and walking out because I knew he was going to poke me in the eye.
Yeah.
I got poked in the eye in training camp trying to train that shit. Oh, wow. And I had like a little red spot in there. And when we did the stare down, I know you saw that shit. I'm like, damn, I'm getting a fucking target.
Yeah, damn.
He's really good at those leg kicks too, those oblique kicks to the knee.
I think that should be illegal, bro.
You think so?
Yeah, yeah. See, I'm thinking about starting my own MMA league like Rampage style. You know what I'm saying? My own, what I think MMA should be like, right? And I'm going to make that shit illegal.
That one thing.
That one side kick to the knee?
Oh, that oblique kick. Fuck that shit.
Did you see the one? Khalil Rountree landed?
Oh, my God. I got on him about that shit. Oh, my God.
Did you get on him about it? Hell, yeah. What did he say?
He was like, man, fuck that. It was a fucking technique.
It is a technique.
But that guy got some scary Muay Thai skills.
Oh, my God.
Yeah. I want to go where the fuck he went and train.
Yeah, well, I don't know which camp he went to.
Oh, my God. I can't even, bro, I can't even watch that shit.
I know, it's horrible. He tore his knee apart. Bukakis was out for like a solid year after that. Look at that side. kick right to the knee.
Bro, that should be illegal, bro.
Oh, man, full power.
I can't even watch that shit.
Just tears his knee apart. It's horrible.
Bro, John bent mine backwards. My knee haven't been the same. But when I went and got stem cells, thank God. Bro, that shit changed my life. I took my knee braces off.
I could wrestle without my knee braces and shit after that. But before that, it was hard for me getting in and out of my cars and everything. And I bumped into John Jones. one day. We was at a nightclub or something.
And you know how I am. I fucking, I cussed him out. He was like, oh, man, I'm sorry, man. He was like, come on over here with me. We was going to go somewhere else.
And we had to walk up on some couches and shit. And I tried to get up there. I couldn't, because this was before I went and got stem cells. I couldn't get up there because of my fucking knee.
I laid it on thick, like the Jewish guilt. You know what I'm talking about? I laid it on thick. He felt bad. And for me, that was good enough.
I forgave him after that because he did feel bad. But my thing about fighting, I feel like we all Conrads. And, you know, that's how we make our living. So I never tried to really hurt nobody besides Arona. He made me lose my temper.
That's why I did that to him. But nobody else, I never really tried to hurt anybody. So they can continue to keep making money. So I just have honor when I fight. And I want everybody to understand, like, look, this is just a sport.
I'm not trying to fucking, I'm going to try to knock you out and stuff like that. But I'm not going to try to maim you, you know.
Tiago Santos, he ruined both his knees. John did. Yeah, both his knees. after that fight. He had to get surgery on.
He tore both of them apart. He sidekicked the fuck out of his knees. Yeah. He does the oblique kick to the thigh too. He does it everywhere.
So think about this. You're a promoter, and you've got this fighter that sells a lot of tickets. So you want to give him at least two fights a year, three fights a year. But you've got a guy like John Jones fucking your fighters up, man. Now they fucking injured and you'd be lucky.
they come back in two years or something like that. It's not good for business.
It's definitely not good for business, but it's still legal. It's legal right now. So it's hard to say. I see the point that you shouldn't be allowed to target the knees, but then someone would say, okay, but you could, brownhouse, kick the knees, but you just can't sidekick it. You can't hyperextend it.
Can you front kick it? No, you can't front kick it. Darren Till does it too. He was doing it a lot. He fucked up Wonderboy's knee that way.
Yeah, it's like the elbows. You're allowed to elbow somebody, but not in the back of the head. Right. But you remember John's spin, elbow?
Mm-hmm.
Where did it land most of the time?
Back of the head. Well, how about wheel kicks and roundhouse kicks? A lot of times they land in the back of the head too.
Yeah.
You go over the top of the shoulder, bang. It's over the back of the head that lands.
Yeah, but those don't come off that often.
A lot of roundhouse kicks land in the back of the head.
They come off a lot?
Yeah, because especially if, like, say, if a person is standing orthodox and you're standing orthodox and you throw a high kick and you go over a shoulder, you're hitting them right here, right behind the head.
Mm-hmm. You know how to do that kick?
Yeah.
I saw you kicking a bag. I was like, damn! I knew you was good at jiu-jitsu. I didn't know you could kick like that.
Yeah, that's what I used to do. I was a taekwondo guy. That's how I started.
I called it taekyo-do.
Taekyo-do? Yeah. It's not good for—it's good for learning how to kick. That's what it's good for. It's not good for learning how to fight.
You don't think it's good for MMA?
It's good if you know all the other things. Yeah, because— But you have to know all the other things. There's no one from taekwondo, that's just going to go into MMA and dominate.
Well, I think Anthony Pettis.
Right, but he's got great jiu-jitsu, great boxing.
I think he did Muay Thai with it.
Great low kicks, yeah.
Did he do Muay Thai with it?
Pettis could do anything. He does everything.
That guy's a beast, too.
He's a beast. That Showtime kick where he fought Henderson and bounced off the cage. to this day. Bro. Highlight reels forever.
Bro, that's like MMA. That's like some Tekken shit. Mm-hmm. You know what my dream was? I was training for it one time, but I never had the balls to pull it off.
I always wanted to do the all you could—the jump uppercut. I was training for that shit, and Collin was like, man, sit your ass down.
That's hilarious.
I was going to pull it off in pride one day, but when the fight came, I just didn't have the balls. So that's why I get jealous of guys that can do that shit, that can pull it off in fights, that can beat themselves. Because when I fight, I'm not myself. I'm not the same person that trained. If you come, see me train, even when I was champion, you know, best in the world, at one time I was best in the world.
I was fucking the first unified champion of fucking MMA. Right. Before Anderson Silva did it. In my mind, I was the best in the fucking universe. And when I train, you come to the gym, I look like shit, getting the dog shit kicked out of me all over the fucking gym.
Really?
Yeah. How come?
I think when I fight, I think Rampage comes out. You know, he's just my alter ego or something. But sometimes he don't show up.
It's the weirdest thing.
And I'm not.
It's me out there fighting. You know what I mean? I like to joke around, laugh. I like to say I'm a comedian pretending to be a fighter. So I'm out there.
And one time I noticed I wasn't howling before the fight. And the guy was just walking me out to the fight. He dropped something. And I bent down to help him pick it up. I was like, Rampage would never do that.
That's when I knew. I was like, he is not here. I was like, I hope he show up when I get in the fucking cage.
Roy Jones Jr. said he had something like that too. He called it RJ. He goes, this is Roy Jones. He goes, when RJ comes out, everybody's in trouble.
Yeah, he was on the next level too. Oh, man. I don't know what that is, though. I don't know what happens. I know, in my locker room I'm joking and stuff up to five minutes before the fight.
And then, when I start howling and stuff, oh, shit, Rampage is here. My team, they knew it. They always say, oh, there you go. I remember hearing them say it.
It must be crazy for them to watch you spar and lose in the gym and not look good, but know that you're just working hard as long as you're in shape. Once you get in there, the real Rampage comes out.
One of my coaches said that. He said he knows people. that's really good in the gym, but then when they're getting out in the lights and with the pressure, they don't perform.
It's way better to be the other way, look bad in the gym, good in the fights. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's also like people put themselves in positions in the gym because they want to work hard. So they put themselves in bad positions all the time. Yeah.
That you would never allow yourself to get into in a fight.
I do that with jiu-jitsu because I never really liked jiu-jitsu a whole lot, and it was like my worst thing. So I used to just start rolling with myself in guillotine chokes or get put in bad positions.
Just to fight out of things all the time?
Yeah, and I wouldn't tell my sparring partner what I was doing.
Oh, you, just let them get you in there?
Yeah, I just let them get me and stuff, and I try to work my way out. That's why I always, I've only been submitted like two times with red-naked chokes. I just, those are my kryptonite. Sakuraba got me.
Who else got you other than Sakuraba?
And Jon Jones.
Oh, that's right.
You know, I didn't train with tall jiu-jitsu guys for him. I had a tall guy to spar with, but I didn't have anybody long and lengthy like that. And I didn't think they would make a difference, but after the fight, I was like, fuck.
It makes a difference on the ground, for sure, because they can secure chokes from places that you just can't get to.
Yeah, training for that guy was like the hardest training camp.
It was the hardest thing. I remember my coaches, I just listened to my coaches. I don't watch the fights. They was like, if he turns out, Paul, you're going to throw this kick. If he do this, he's going to do that.
I had to train for the bleak kick, for the spinning elbows. That was the hardest motherfucking training camp. Before him, it was, I'm having a brain fart. The Brazilian guy, the karate guy, karate kid.
Lyoto?
Oh, my God. That training camp was so hard, too. Training for a karate guy. He's softball, too.
Oh, he was so good, too. In his prime, Lyoto Machida was a beast, man.
Yeah. Bro, I had to bring in karate guys. We brought in this karate coach, and I'm bad with names. He was in that movie, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Okay.
And he was a karate guy, and I was with those managers from the UK, so they knew him.
Oh, the Wolfslayer?
Yeah, and they brought that guy in. And he was getting mad. when I was beating up the karate guys. I was like, this is supposed to be my coach. But, you know what I'm saying, he getting mad when he brought his karate guys.
And then the first day it was fucking me up, but then I learned, and I started fucking up the karate guys. He was getting mad at me. I'm like, man, you, my coach.
That's crazy. Why was he getting mad?
I think because it was his—.
Loyal to karate? Yeah. Oh, no.
That's crazy how—.
That's not a good coach.
Bro, martial artists have big egos, bro. They do.
Huge. Huge. Huge egos. And they get real loyal to their particular style. You know, like, one of the things that would drive me crazy when I'd watch young guys is like, there was this guy that we were working with back in the day.
that was a black belt in jiu-jitsu, and he had this Muay Thai coach. And his Muay Thai coach had him convinced that he's a dangerous Muay Thai fighter. Just dangerous. You're going to fight—you're going to stand up. And I remember they were asking him before the fight, is he ready?
How's he feeling? He goes, he's Bangkok ready. He's Bangkok ready. Like, this motherfucker, better shoot for doubles and take people down and strangle them. Like, stop all this kickboxing.
You're not a kickboxer. I'd watch the dude hit the bag, and I'd go, please take that guy down. You don't have any power. Don't listen to this guy, man. You're fighting guys that are real strikers.
Like, you can't be striking with a real striker. You're thinking you're striking because you're striking in the gym with guys and you're doing okay. Real strikers are different, man. Yeah. These guys in the gym are not trying to kill you.
Right. Sometimes they let you, you know— Yeah. They don't want to—especially if they're getting paid.
Exactly. Yeah. Well, they're also sparring. They're not fighting. Yeah.
There's just a fucking giant difference, man, when someone's setting something up and they're just looking to draw. And you don't even know what it is. Yeah. There's so many guys that get delusional because they're good at one thing. You know, they're good at one thing, and they think that they know how to fight.
One of Eddie Bravo's black belts was—he was going to do MMA. He said, I'm going to do an MMA. I go, how much training are you doing? striking? Like, not much.
I'm just going to take him to the ground. I go, listen to me.
I go, you know how good you are. on the ground? There's guys that are that good at stand-up. You know how you can just play with some dude who's a white belt. on the ground?
There's dudes that they get in front of you. You can't do a damn thing about it, and they're going to be hitting you. That's the difference. The difference is, if you take a guy down, you get him in an arm bar, he taps, and that's the end of it. This is not that.
This is you getting separated from your fucking consciousness. Yeah. And getting punted in the head. Yeah. By a leg.
A leg. I mean, you're fighting Muay Thai guys. He went up again. Fucked up. And that was his only fight.
And I was telling him, like, don't do that again. You can't disrespect that. You can't think that just because you're good at this one thing, you're going to be good at everything. But guys, think that, which is why—one of the things, I'm sure you've seen this. Like, a lot of, like, real good kickboxers, they don't like to roll.
Yeah. They don't like to roll because they don't do good at rolling. Yeah. They want to spar because they want to hit the mitts. They want to hit the pads.
They feel good. They throw those pads.
They look good, hitting those pads like, yeah.
But you've got to do what you shit at, though. You've got to do it.
But that's different than you, who became a champion, and some guys who just have big egos and they're fragile, because you were willing to look like shit in training. Yeah. You were just training. It was just training. And then, once you fought, you fought great.
But it's like you've got to be able to look like shit in training. Yeah. And if you're going to get good at jujitsu, guess what? There's only one way. You've got to roll with guys who know how to strangle you, because you've got to figure out how to defend yourself.
If you don't do that, you're never going to learn. Right. And there's guys that were, like, real good fighters, that just never learned that aspect of the game and they just always were limited. They always had a ceiling on how far they could progress. Yeah.
I surprised a lot of people with my jujitsu. People that, because I didn't like it and I didn't never show it, people thought I didn't know it. But when I fought Dan Henderson, it kind of showed a little bit. But what helped me out is, you know, Mayhem Miller? Mm-hmm.
He was my buddy. We was like brothers.
Mayhem was good.
Yeah, he was good. He was my training partner. He was good, yeah. And he went to train with Dan Henderson for that fight.
Oh, no shit.
Yeah, and so Dan Henderson's ground game was like Mayhem's. And Mayhem used to dominate me on the ground. So Dan Henderson was fighting like, I'm like, oh, I've seen this before. And he's not as good as Mayhem at it. So that helped me, my buddy going training.
Mayhem was fucking good on the ground, man. I remember Mayhem's finest performance was against Sakuraba. When, Mayhem, he beat the shit out of Sakuraba. And I remember watching that fight. And I had a phone call with him.
We talked on the phone. I was like, dude, you're on it right now. Like you are right now. You're world class. Like just keep your shit together and you could be like an elite fighter, like a world championship caliber.
See if you can find Jason Mayhem Miller versus Sakuraba.
I don't think I ever saw it. Maybe I saw it years ago. But that guy, his jujitsu was next level.
Next level. Very high level. Very high level. But, you know, he was just whatever, just couldn't put it all together in the best fights. You know, the Michael Bisping fight, George St.
Pierre. You know, there was guys that knew how to beat him. But this was Mayhem, focused, in shape, training, like full skill set.
And this was when Sakuraba was at the top. He was beating the Gracies and stuff.
Oh, and, dude, Sakuraba was still very good. I mean, he was a little past that now. Like, I think he'd already got KO'd by a couple of guys. But he was still Sakuraba. This is not an old Sakuraba.
I mean, he had his legs taped up like a mummy by then.
I saw Sakuraba a couple weeks ago in Japan.
Yeah, he was Sakuraba in his day. Man, I remember when he knocked where he submitted Conan Silvera. And everybody was like, what? He submitted a jiu-jitsu black belt?
Yeah, he's good. He's tricky. He don't stop. He goes from one submission to the next. That's how he got me.
So this is Jason. Like Sakuraba's, going for a leg lock. Jason defends.
Jason was so good on the ground. Like, good luck catching him with something.
He won't tap anyway. Jason won't tap. Even if he got a fight in a week. You give him an armbar, he won't tap. Break his arm, he don't give a fuck.
Jesus. He was a wild dude, man. He was a wild dude.
And this was like a dominant performance over a legend. Look at the camera.
Gives a peace sign to the fucking camera.
Oh, once he got that wrist tie.
This was in Pride? Yeah, man. Man, I don't know why I didn't see this one.
Oh, no, it was Dream.
Oh, that's what it was.
Yeah, so this is post-Pride. What year was this? Does it say? No.
Man, he's fucking Sakuraba up.
Oh, he fucked him up, dude. It was a complete domination. 2010? 2010,? yeah.
So this was like Sakuraba had already been beaten up by a bunch of guys. And then he gets him on a triangle.
Bro. This is it right here? Yep. In the first round?
Yep. Look at that. Tapping. Mayhem.
I couldn't believe. Sakuraba tapped. Yep. I thought he was gonna go to sleep.
I think he did go to sleep.
Did you know? Sakuraba is a fucking chain smoker? I heard.
Isn't that crazy?
Crazy, bro. How? I don't know how he did it. Imagine the fucking cardio he has.
Imagine the cardio he'd have if he didn't chain smoke.
Do you remember that fight when he went, what was it, was it Horse, Gracie? Mm-hmm. And they took the time limit out?
Yeah.
That's because they knew he was a smoker.
Really? So they just wanted to drag it out?
Yeah, because they thought that he was gonna get tired.
Or he's gonna want a cigarette.
Man, I did a movie with him in Japan, and he had to take a smoke break every five minutes. Wow. Every five minutes, bro. Wow. Every five minutes.
I'm not over-exaggerating.
Was this like when he was in training. back then? He smoked that much?
Yeah. It was like a couple years after I fought him, maybe like a year or two after I fought him.
How does he not fuck his lungs up?
Bro, I think it's mental. See, I think a lot of things is mental. I believe in the power of the mind. I used to have a really strong mind back in the day. Remember, I told you about the forest kicking me, the calf kick?
Yeah.
Bro, my mind was so strong back then, I healed my leg up in between rounds. My shit was in pain, but I was mentally strong. And I also think that's why I lost that fight, because I had the manager at the time that I didn't trust him anymore. And I remember him saying, like, if Rampage loses this fight, I'm gonna retire. And I had been trying to fire him a couple times, but he got pulled on the hard strings every time.
So I was thinking, I think subconsciously, in the back of my mind, I lost that fight.
So you think, maybe if I lose this fight, I can get rid of this guy?
In the back of my mind. But I really wanted to win because I was champion.
But you were torn.
Yeah, but in the back of my mind. But my mind was strong enough to heal my leg up where I could go. I couldn't feel pain. My leg was really fucked. That fight, I still think I won that fight.
when I went back and watched it. I think I lost two rounds, and I won three. And I lost my belt.
I'd have to watch it again. But I feel like it was a very close fight. I remember that.
I remember it being a close fight, but I remember I slammed him. I think I dropped him a couple times, and I think the only thing he did was really hurt my leg. It was the first round or second round, but I think I won the last three. But I remember watching it again because I'm honest about it. When I fought Ninja at the time, I thought he won.
I told him right then and there. I was like, oh, bro, I thought he won. I thought I got my ass kicked, but they gave me the decision. I'm honest about that shit.
So you said that Ninja got hurt in training?
Yeah, that's what the word around the campfire. Because, you know, Shoebox, they spar hard. And you haven't heard about him fighting in a long time. He retired a long time ago.
I heard he had some sort of brain bleed.
Yeah, they get knocked out a lot in sparring.
Yeah.
I heard some other people was training there with them. So they go full back.
I heard that Shogun and Vandalay, they fought for a puppy. Because Shogun had some pit bull puppies, and Vandalay wanted one. And he was offering to sell it to him. He said, let's fight for it. And Vandalay KO'd him and took the puppy.
I believe it.
I believe it, too.
I believe it.
Because apparently those guys knocked each other out a lot.
They're like savages at MMA, bro.
I think they just didn't understand that. it's like a punch card. You only have so many holes you can punch in that card, and then that's it. And if you're sparring like that, you're KOing each other, and then you're back in the gym on Monday. Like, that's nuts.
Yeah, because normally, when you get knocked out, well, you've got to take 30 days off.
You should take a long time off.
More than 30 days?
Yeah, a long time. Like, Justin Gaethje said, he's going to take six months off and not do anything for six months. after that, Max Holloway fight.
He's not even going to train?
I don't know. I mean, I'm sure he's probably training, probably working out a little bit, but he's not going to do any sparring at all.
Bro, I think that's the most iconic knockout in MMA. Ever.
Ever. One second to go in a five-round fight that he was dominating and a five-round fight where a lot of people thought Max was outgunned.
I thought Max was winning that fight.
He was winning, but, I mean, outgunned going into the fight. Like, Justin Gaethje's, a big KO artist. He just got done head kicking Dustin Poirier. He's a 55-er. Max had lost a few times at 45 to Volkanovski, and everybody was thinking he was past his prime, and then Max just puts on a fucking performance of a lifetime.
But I always knew Max's boxing was his next level, though.
Next level. Well, his heart and mind is next level, too. And people also forget Max is only 32.. He's just been in the UFC for so long. His first fight in the UFC, he was 20 years old.
Oh.
Yeah. I didn't know he was that young.
I think his first fight was Conor McGregor. Was it? Yes. I think so. Go to Max Holloway's career record for the UFC.
Did he beat Conor?
No. No, he lost a decision. He was the only guy to survive in the early days of Conor, when Conor was just flatlining everybody. This is 145 Conor. Oh.
No? His first fight was against Dustin Poirier. Oh, that's right. He got armbarred against Dustin. Yeah, Dustin got him in an armbar, and then his second fight.
was Conor, correct? No, that was like his sixth fight, actually. Really? Yeah. No shit.
Wow. And then, okay. Wow, he had so many fights, man. Isn't that crazy? So he lost to Dustin Poirier.
That's 2012.
. And then Pat Shilling, he wins. Justin Lawrence wins. Leonard Garcia. Leonard Garcia.
I forgot about Leonard. Shout out to Leonard. And then he loses Dennis Bermudez. I forgot about Dennis, too. And then he lost to Conor.
That kid was 20 years old at that time, which is wild, man.
Yeah.
Way back in 2013.
. And then he goes on a run. And then his run, like look at his win streak. after that Conor McGregor fight. I mean, that is a crazy win streak.
Charles Oliveira, Anthony Pettis, Jose Aldo, twice, Ortega, fucking crazy. And then he fought Dustin again at lightweight. He tried to fight for the interim UFC lightweight title, but he didn't really gain weight the correct way. And he talked about that. He said he had like a little muffin top on the top of his shorts.
Mm-hmm.
You know? And so then loses to Volkanovski a couple of times. Beats Arnold Allen, who's really fucking good. And a lot of people still like, eh. Then he knocks out the Korean Zombie.
And people are like, hmm, maybe. And then the Justin Gaethje one. People are like, oh, shit, we forgot. We forgot. Meh.
Max is the man. And he's such a nice guy.
Nice guy.
Great dude. The nicest guy.
Great dude. Yeah. I want to ask you, who do you think is the most well-rounded in MMA right now? Like, that's good at like three or more arts.
That's a good question. That's a good question. It's hard to say. You know? It's hard to say.
Might be Sean O'Malley. Sean O'Malley's not the best wrestler, but damn, his takedown defense is fucking good. Because he survived against Al Jermaine. You know? I mean, Al Jermaine couldn't take him down.
He can knock anybody out with one shot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He submitted Takanori Gomi in a jiu-jitsu match. His jiu-jitsu is real. Like, Sean can do everything. And he's just a relentless, tireless worker.
He's a star. Superstar. Hey, have you seen those posts that, what's his name? How do you say his name? Mohab?
What's his name? How do you say his name?
Which one?
The guy, I thought he was Mexican. Murab. Yeah, Murab.
Murab Dawlish-Wooley.
Yeah, I thought he was Mexican when I first met him. You see his posts. he do about Sean O'Malley?
Oh, yeah. He's trying to get him to fight him.
Yeah. But have you seen his posts?
His recent ones?
Man, he got somebody that looks like Sean O'Malley, and he be doing crazy shit to that motherfucker, bro. That dude's funny, bro. You know I like funny shit, man.
Yeah. Murab's funny.
Yeah.
Murab is an animal, man. What he did to Henry Cejudo, I was like, I can't even believe this is happening.
I was there.
When he carried him, when he picked him up, and then he's like, like, stuck his tongue out, and he walked over towards where the UFC people were, and then slammed him. Slammed Henry Cejudo? Olympic gold medalist? Who the fuck does that?
Bro, I'm conflicted for that fight, because, you know, F3 sponsors Henry, right?
That is crazy. Brought him over to Zuckerberg. That's right. Bro. I think that was, was that at the Apex?
No, that was in Anaheim.
That's right.
In Anaheim. I was there in the crowd.
I mean, then he had him in a 10-finger guillotine. Dude, Marab is a scary character, because that motherfucker never gets tired. And his heart is crazy. Did you ever see his fight with Marlon Mraz?
No.
Marlon Mraz had him dead to rights. He had him out. I mean, he was battering him. And Marlon is the best guy who never won a title in the UFC. He was so good, but he would fold.
Something would happen, he would fold up. And when he started getting KO'd a few times, it all went away. And he fell apart. He's a cop now in Florida. But, Marlon, in that fight, he had Marab in all kinds of trouble.
And Marab just wouldn't stop.
He got a big heart, huh?
Oh, his heart is enormous, man. He's unstoppable. Like, his mind is unstoppable. I mean, you can beat him. Ray Borg submitted him, like, way back in the day.
He got him in a guillotine. But, guys, you know, that, he just keeps getting better, too. Marab, every time he fights, he gets better.
You think he's going to beat him? You think he's going to beat Marab?
He's the worst matchup for Sean. The worst matchup on paper for Sean in that division is Marab. Because if you would say, if you have a chance to beat Sean, how would you beat him? You got to take him down, right? I would imagine.
I don't think there's anybody in that 135-pound division that can deal with that height, that length, KO, power, footwork, and movement. What he did to Chito, I was shocked. I was shocked. Because the first fight, you know, Chito beat him. He kicked his leg and fucked him up and got him down.
But in the second fight, Chito didn't have a chance.
Now, Chito's a beast.
He's a beast. He's a beast. And he hurt him real bad in, like, the last couple seconds of the fight. He hit him with a liver punch. Chito hit him with a nasty left hook to the liver.
And, man, if he landed that punch early in the fight, who knows? But Sean is so good everywhere. He's so good. And you can't corner that guy. He's just moving.
You know, you can't, like, corral him. He's just constantly, like…. And the consequences of moving in and, like, what Aljamain did, he just got a little rushed. He rushed in on him. Yeah, yeah.
With that right hand.
Yeah.
You can't rush on that guy.
I wonder what Aljamain was thinking. He said he kicked himself after that.
I think he just got—he just rushed it. He just tried to close the gap. He wanted to get a hold of him, you know, and he just tried to rush in. I think Aljamain's better at 145, anyway. I think Aljamain's so big.
I was always shocked that he could make 135.
. He's another guy. He would walk around at 176, 175 pounds. Like, how? How are you losing 40 fucking pounds?
I don't know how they're doing that shit.
Killing themselves. That's how. Killing themselves. But when he rehydrated at 35, he was, like, just ripped. Just jacked big muscles.
Strong as shit. And his back control is better than anybody's, man. When he took Corey Sanhagen down and strangled him, I was like, oh, my God. Corey's good, man.
You think Aljamain's going to make a comeback?
Yes. Yeah, I think he's going to make a comeback at 45..
Yeah, yeah. Who's the champion at 45 right now?
Ilya Taporia.
Taporia. Yeah. I don't know a lot of these new fighters.
Ilya Taporia's a monster. He's a monster. That dude's good. He knocked out Volkanovski.
Oh, yeah. I think I saw. That was the same night that Henry and what's-his-name fought, right? Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Ilya Taporia's a bad man.
That's him right there? Mm-hmm.
He's a bad man. He's very, very, very good. But I want to see Sean O'Malley versus Corey Sanhagen. That's an interesting fight to me, if he can get past Murab.
That's his next fight, Murab? Mm-hmm. When is that? You know, they already got it set?
I don't know when that is. I heard rumors that that was going to be at the Sphere, which is in September. But I've also heard rumors of other fights at the Sphere.
That one's going to sell out right away.
Fuck, yeah. Oh, man. That one's going to be nuts. You've got to go to that.
I want to go. I heard Dana said that he's going to do one and done there.
Yeah. You've got to go to that one.
I would love to go to that one.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's going to sell out right away. I'll be trying to ask Tiki to get me tickets sometimes to help me out.
Bro, I got you.
You got me?
I got you for that. Let's go.
Let's go.
Come on, Rampage. You've got to be there for that.
I would love to be there for that.
Yeah, man. You've got to be there for that. The UFC doesn't hook you up with tickets?
No, you don't.
That's ridiculous. You're a former champion. You should get tickets for the rest of your fucking life. If I was running the UFC, no offense to the people that are champions, you get tickets forever.
You know what? I fucked up my relationship with the UFC by doing that fucking movie over that Rashad fight.
What was the movie?
18.
. Oh, that's right. That's when I fucked up my relationship with Dana and everybody. But it was the hardest decision of my life. I lost money doing the movie, but I'm not really fueled by money.
I don't love money, but I always wanted to do that movie. It just came at a bad time.
The thing about doing a movie, though, is that if that takes off, then you're the rock. Who fucking knows? You're John Cena. Who knows? Yeah.
There's a lot of guys that have become action movie stars. Look at Randy. He did The Expendables with Sylvester Stallone. Yeah. Crazy.
You could get a real career in the movies.
You can't fight forever.
Right. Exactly. Some certain things like that. But the UFC, they're a business. Their business is making fights.
I understand. I understand Dana's point, because I didn't sign the bout agreement. That's the only thing that saved me. It was supposed to be in my hometown. It would just come off The Ultimate Fighter.
The episode that season broke records.
Yeah.
I understand, but it was just so hard for me to turn down that movie. I try to keep my word. When I give my word that I'm going to do something, I was already dedicated to that project. even when John Singleton was attached to it. I was like, this is what I'm going to do.
Yeah. It's a tough call. Yeah. When you were on The Ultimate Fighter with Rashad and you broke that door, I was like, they need to get new contractors. That was the cheapest fucking door I've ever seen in my life.
Bro, whether you know it or not, most doors inside your house look like that. Yeah, they're bullshit. They're bullshit. I had no idea, but I was glad it was. Because my dumb ass, I lost my temper and I head-butted it.
Bro, I'm still embarrassed about that. Oh, really? That's one of my most embarrassing TV moments.
Just because you lost your temper?
Yeah, I hate to lose my temper, bro. I hate it. It's so embarrassing. I have several relationships, friendships. when I lose it.
I just get embarrassed. That's why I never post that shit on my social media. That shit is embarrassing. But, fuck, fans love that shit.
They loved you tearing apart a door.
Yeah. Fucking true.
And they love you and Rashad. Like, you, a bitch. Treat me like a bitch. You a bitch. Treat me like a bitch.
Bro, I hated him, bro. I hated Rashad. I hated him. Like, what you were talking about earlier with the mushrooms, it changed. He's a totally different person.
He's a different human being.
He's likable now.
He's very likable. He's a sweetheart.
I still want to knock him out, though.
Who do you want to knock out more, him or Shannon?
Shannon.
He keeps calling you a pie. Yeah. Who calls people pies?
Something wrong with that guy, man.
He's fun, man.
I love that, dude. Let's go, champ.
Yeah.
He put my face over fat women's bodies. And he keeps fat, shaming me. And he's fatter than me right now. I'm like, why are you so delusional, bro? You should not rip no more.
Did you ever see where he was on a boat and Vladimir Klitschko was out there paddleboarding? He went and fucked with him when he was on the boat and made him fall off the paddleboard. He's a fucking troll.
He's a fucking troll, man.
He showed up while he was eating and poured water on his face, started eating his food. When you eat, we eat. Yeah. Look at Shannon. Hey,
Klitschko.
What's up, Klitschko?
Everywhere you go, I go.
You think it's funny? You think it's funny. now? You think it's funny?
Now you see me, I'm everywhere, baby. Klitschko. just don't seem like a guy to joke around like that, though.
No. Well, find the one where he finds him eating.
He was doing everything he could to get that fight. Because he fought his brother, right? His brother stopped Shannon, I think.
Oh, did these two ever? They didn't fight?
No, so he sits down while he's eating. What you eat, I eat, Shannon. He's eating his food.
Eating his food.
He's helping him eat.
Hey, Klitschko.
Here, have some food. Here, have a glass of water. Then he pours the water on his head.
He slid the bottle on his head.
He could sell a fight, though, that motherfucker.
Oh, yeah. Well, that shit sold fights, man. Look, and Shannon, in his day, was a dangerous boxer. He was a very, very good heavyweight boxer. in his day.
He showed up at the gym. when Klitschko was sparring. He showed up everywhere. I mean, he was the bane of Klitschko's existence. Kind of amazing.
that fight never happened.
I didn't know which one it was. I thought it was that fight. It was his brother. Right. I didn't know.
No, he fought. Shannon fought Lennox Lewis and had a great showing, too. He hurt Lennox at one point in time in that fight.
Shit, Lennox sent his ass to the hospital.
He did. He beat him bad. He beat him bad in that fight. Lennox was a monster in his time, man. Lennox was one of the greatest of all time.
Hell, yeah.
Yeah. I'd love to see Lennox against any of these guys today.
Man, I was in Saudi Arabia for that Tyson Ngunu fight.
And we was meeting with the—what's his name? Turk, the prince or whatever. And he asked—he had all the fighters that they invited there, had us all in the room, and they were talking about doing, like, the Legends boxing. And he asked who wanted to fight Lennox Lewis. Nobody said nothing.
I raised my motherfucking hand. I was like, yeah, I'll fight him. And Lennox came over there, came to me and, like, checked me out and looked at me and stuff like that. I was like, yeah, shit, they paying big money. I want to box.
I've been asking to box for years. Nobody wanted to fight him, so I thought they was going to put him together. And then Shannon said, oh, Saudi Arabia want us to fight. And they never put their fight together.
I know that they were talking about having Lennox fight Mike Tyson. It was right around the time after Mike Tyson fought Roy Jones Jr. And they were talking about making that, but it didn't come to fruition.
I think Lennox really don't want to fight.
Yeah?
That's the feeling that I got. But I think Lennox would have fought me. It'd be a good fight for him.
Well, that's a, you know, that's a thing, like, you'd have to wonder, is Lennox working out at all?
He looked like he was in good shape. He didn't look, like, overweight or anything.
Right. He's not overweight. But is he working out? Like, I don't even know. You know, at least before Mike Tyson fought Roy Jones, you got to see all that footage of him training.
Like, okay, Mike looks good. Like, you could sell that. But if you don't, you just decide to start working out again at 50, whatever he is. How old is he?
I don't know how old he is.
Lennox is older than me. I'm 56.. I think Lennox is, like, 58..
You're 56?
I'm 56.
You're 10 years older than me.
I'm 10 years older than you.
Damn.
And he's older than you.
Yep.
He shouldn't be fighting. You don't think they should be fighting past 55 or something like that, huh?
It's, I mean, I think, a person, again, just like I think you should be able to do slap fighting, you should be able to ride bulls, do whatever the fuck you want.
But over, like Mike Tyson fighting.
I don't think you should be able to stop a person from doing it. I think, if they pass medicals, if they want, look, fighting is bad for everybody. It's bad for 20-year-olds. It's bad for 58-year-olds. You know?
I just feel like you should be able to do whatever you want to do. I mean, look, riding bulls is always bad. It's always bad. But yet bull riding is legal, you know?
Yeah.
Those BMX flips, those dudes who do those flips, they paralyze themselves all the time. Skateboarders, they fall down, break every fucking bone in their body, get horrible head trauma. That's legal. I feel like you should be able to fight. If you're an adult human being and you make a decision and you pass the medicals, they look at you, they say, yeah, he doesn't have brain problems.
He doesn't have heart problems. Let him fight.
But they should fight people closer to their same age, though.
Yeah, the Jake Paul thing is kind of crazy. You know, Mike is 50.. He just turned 58 yesterday.
Yeah.
So Mike is going to be 58.
. Jake is going to be 28.. Jake's active. You know, I mean, you see Mike run. It doesn't look like his knees are in good shape.
Oh, for real?
No, it doesn't look good.
I've just seen him hitting pads.
He's done some sprints and stuff, and people look at him and go.
I'm going to tell you something. With all due respect, Mike Tyson just looked like his body type is awkward anyway. Yeah. The way he moves. So that might just be him.
Have you ever seen him dance?
Yeah. He dances awkward.
Yeah. So I assume that maybe part of him running like this is just his body mechanics. He's just like an awkward dude.
But he's also 58, you know, and then all the punishment of all those years. You know, I know he's had back problems and neck problems. I believe he's had neck surgery. You know, 58 is 58.. There's no ifs, ands, or buts.
But then again, he's doing stem cells, peptides. I would assume they let him do hormones, everything he wants. I mean, there's no way they're going to ask him to be clean at 58 years old.
That's a dream fight to fight Mike Tyson, though.
This is what Lennox Lewis said after the USIC. He says, do hucksters still try to entice Lewis back in the ring? He says, yeah, they do. But, as my friend says, I ain't no fool. Hopefully that means a rejection of any stunt of a comeback for an undisputed championship as significant as Lewis.
Undisputed champion, rather, as significant as Lewis. He laughs. I was seeing if I could catch you out there. For me, money talks, bullshit walks. Does that mean that we consider an astronomical offer to make a return?
That's what I'm saying. I'd 100% consider it. Lewis is still smiling when I ask if he works out regularly. Yes, I do. I ran five miles this morning.
I swam a couple lengths, 100 meters. Then I woke up and took a shower. Oh, he's joking.
He looked like he still trains, though, when I saw him. I didn't see him with his shirt off or anything.
He's definitely not fat. No. No.
He looks good for his age.
How old is Lennox? 58.. 58, yeah.
Same age as Tyson.
Yeah, it's like when you get to that age, why? Yeah. Because if you get hurt bad at 58, you don't really recover.
Did you watch Evander versus Vitor? Oh, yeah. That was sad.
Yeah.
That was sad. And that's the same kind of age. I think Evander was 59 during that fight. Maybe 58.. But Vitor just beat the shit out of him.
Did you feel bad for Evander? Yeah. Did you want to give Vitor a little talking to? No.
Nope. Because if Evander could, he would have done that to Vitor. If everything was working correctly, I don't even think he took that on a full camp.
No, no. It was a short notice because he was supposed to fight somebody else, but they pulled out, right? Right.
But how can a guy like Evander at 58,, 59 years old, whatever he is, fight a short—and he didn't look good. It's like Vitor hurt him to the body with that left hand.
You know, boxers, they don't respect MMA fighters.
You better respect, Vitor.
Because he was a boxer first, wasn't he?
Yeah. Well, he had good hands. I mean, he wasn't necessarily a boxer, but he was a jujitsu black belt under Carlson Gracie. When I first started training in 96, I started at Carlson Gracie's place. And that was when Vitor was—he fought for his first time.
He fought John Hess in Hawaii, and he fucked John Hess up. John Hess was this big, tall dude. He had some crazy system. I think he called it safta. It was like a lot of nut punches and eye pokes, and he was kind of a dirty fighter, like a dangerous, mean dude.
And Vitor just beat the fucking shit out of him. And he was 19.. He was so fast.
I remember that.
He was like 200 pounds. He wasn't a big guy. And see if you can find that. Vitor Belfort versus John Hess. So this is Vitor's debut.
This was happening while I was training at that academy.
In the UFC? His fight was in the UFC?
No. This was before the UFC. And so this was 96-ish, somewhere around there. And then in 97, the first time Vitor fought in the UFC was the first time I worked for the UFC. That was UFC 12..
Did he fight Vanderlei?
No. He fought Scott Ferozo.
This is Vitor?
This is Vitor. See, look at this dude's fighting with pants on. Oh, my God. Oh, bro.
Why would the referee?
Oh, my God. There was no. Referees. didn't do jack shit. Look at, the referees are right in.
Pull it back to the beginning. so you see the beginning of the fight. That's all it showed. Show it again.
He was a fucking kid.
Here it is. So he stormed. Oh, is it bad footage? Yeah, it didn't. So he stormed across the fucking ring and just teed off on that dude.
So I was training at Carlson Gracie's place. I was learning jujitsu. I was a white belt in 96.. And Vitor was making his UFC debut. And I remember everybody thought, like, oh, he's a black belt under Carlson Gracie.
This is going to be a jujitsu match. Oh, here it is. This is like real shitty footage of it. So he grabbed John Hess.
That's a big motherfucker. Huge.
John Hess was huge. And Vitor was not big. And Vitor just dragged him to the ground and beat the fuck out of him. Look how thin he is back then, too.
Look how fast he's throwing.
Oh, my God. His hand speed's insane.
Bro, that looked like a murder. It looked like I just witnessed a murder, bro.
You basically did. I mean, he could have kept going, and he would have been dead. Have you seen his son? No. Vitor's son?
No. Bro, find Vitor's son hitting the pads. His son is apparently a star football player, like an elite football player. But crazy hand speed. For real?
Hitting the pads.
Looks fucking phenomenal.
It's wild to see, because it's like, that's got to be genetic. So here he is. Look at his hand speed.
Damn.
That's Vitor's son. Kind of keeping his chin a little up in the air when he's throwing punches.
But he's not a fighter, though, huh?
No. Well, I don't know. I mean, he's sparring.
Bro, the kid has crazy hand speed. I mean, you got to think, like, with Vitor as your dad, I mean, those genes, that's some real genes, man. Look at him hitting the pads, man. Fucking dude's got hands.
Damn.
Hand speed. Like, wild hand speed.
You should let him get out there.
Yeah, look at those fucking combinations, man.
Yeah, fuck.
Crazy hand speed. Bro. But that was Vitor when Vitor was young. So when Vitor fought in 97, I mean, we all knew, but we were. like, everybody thinks, he's a jujitsu guy, and you're going to have to deal with a hail of punches coming from this guy.
You mean when he fought Vandalay? That's when he came on my radar.
He wore shoes and just went. Apparently, he was so scared of Vandalay, he was terrified before that fight. That's what everybody was saying. He was, like, crying in the locker room, like, did not want to fight Vandalay, but just went out there and starched him in, like, 10 seconds.
And just fucked him up. He never gave him a rematch.
No, fuck that. He ran across the octagon and just blitzed him.
I've never seen shit like that before.
No, it was wild.
And look, my son was sparring with Anderson Silva's son a couple weeks ago. Wow. And he gave me an idea. I said, fuck, man, we got fighters now, and we all got kids, like, in their 20s, and so we should just do a fucking reality show with the fucking kids.
AJ McKee. Yeah. AJ McKee's good, man.
Next level, bro. He's very good. Yeah. Very good. Next fucking level, bro.
Yeah. And everywhere. He's a guy who's well-rounded.
But I've been knowing that kid since he was three years old. I knew it already. I'm not even surprised, because I used to train with his dad.
That's what bothers me about other organizations, is that a guy as good as AJ McKee doesn't become a household name. Nobody knows who he is. Like, that sucks. That's what makes me, that's what upsets me when guys wind up going over there. Like, I get it.
You know, like, Corey Anderson.
They didn't want to let him go, bro. They didn't want to let him go. I told his dad, I said, man, get him over to the UFC. He's under contract? Yeah.
And Bellator, they just kept offering him money. They didn't want to let him go, because he'll walk a highlight reel.
Yeah. He's so good. But it's still not good enough. The Bellator thing, it's just like, you can't be famous over there. You can get kind of, like, Venom got famous.
Michael Venom Page got famous from some of the knockouts, some of the things he did over there. But even he, like, now he's famous, he's in the UFC. But he's 37 in the UFC. Like, I would love to see Michael Venom Page in the UFC at 27.. Yeah.
Like, good Lord.
Bro, I'm going to tell you. I can barely go anywhere without guys asking me for a picture and stuff, right? I left the UFC, went to Bellator. Now, for years, I was in Bellator for years, and people come ask me for a picture. They're like, man, I wish you hadn't retired.
I'm like, dude, I just fought last week.
They have no idea. Bellator, do not promote fights. They don't fucking do shit. I don't get it. I don't understand.
Nobody knows who's watching. It's unfortunate. It's unfortunate. I mean, I get it that fighters will want to go, like, to PFL, right? If you win that tournament, you make a million dollars.
So Olivier Aubamercier, I think he won it twice. So he won $2 million in the PFL. Nobody watched. Nobody knows who he is.
I mean, it's just, I mean, people know. But nothing in comparison to, like, a Dustin Poirier or someone who wins in the UFC.
Bro, I'm going to tell you this. If AJ McKee goes to the UFC, I would bet money. I never bet on fights. I would bet money on him, and he'll walk through the whole thing and get the belt easy. Mm-hmm.
How old is AJ now?
He got to be, like, 26.
Hold on. How old is he? 29..
What? Yeah. Damn, I didn't know he was that much older than my son.
But still, in his fucking prime. He's in his prime. And how much longer is his contract over at Bellator?
I don't know.
Like, they're not really—they're two different organizations, right? Like, one of them they're going to do overseas is Bellator, and the PFL is over here.
Yeah, I don't understand that. But I like their belt, though, when you win that thing. Have you seen their belt?
The belt's, so good, yeah.
With the ring?
Six-fight multi-year contract, and this is 2023.
. Yeah.
Fuck. I wish he would have went to the UFC, because that kid—.
Why'd he sign that contract?
They must up to him money. I don't want to put his business out there, but his dad said that AJ is really successful, and I think they was paying him monthly. on top of everything. They did what they had to do to keep that kid there.
Well, that's the thing. If you do have a talented guy that has a potential of being a star, you cannot let him go. Well, Bellator lost Michael Chandler, and look what happened. Michael Chandler became a fucking star. Like, people don't even know.
Michael Chandler fought Eddie Alvarez in some of the craziest fights in Bellator. They're both dropping each other. I mean, wild, wild fights. And no one saw them. I mean, some people saw them.
I'm exaggerating, obviously. But no one in comparison to who saw him knock out Dan Hooker or when he knocked out Tony Ferguson.
All right. So teach me this. So in Bellator, maybe their views, they get like a million.
Do they even?
Yeah. I got the numbers. When I was fighting, I got at least like a million, 1.5.. The UFC do a free fight. How many million views do you think they get?
That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that.
So they got to be getting at least 20 million.
If they have a free fight like on ESPN+, I don't know how many people. I don't even know how many people are subscribed to ESPN+. Like, let's find that out first. Because you have to watch it on ESPN or ESPN+. So if they have, well, they do a lot of those cards where they, like, fight nights.
Well, they'll have it on ESPN as well. ESPN, how many people are watching ESPN? Millions. Millions of people. So if you have, like, a big event, like a nice fight night, like they had that last one, that was a fight night.
It's, like, you know, all the other countries that are watching it. The UFC is just a bigger name product. People don't know what a Bellator is.
That's why they sold it. I think they were losing money hand over fist.
I heard they were losing a lot of money. It's just, it's hard to make money if you're not the UFC.
Yeah, but they don't know how to promote it. PFL must be making money.
I don't think they are. I don't know how they could be. If they're paying a million dollars to the tournament winners, like, how are they doing that? I would imagine the only way, I mean, it's one thing, because it does, it's a good promotional thing. You tell people how much money they make and you get people like, oh, shit, maybe I'll go over there.
And you get people thinking they can win the tournament and maybe you can lure, like, more big name guys. But then PFL has that weird point system that nobody understands. Do you know that?
PFL? Yeah.
It's crazy. Like, if you win by stoppage in the first round, it's three points. If you win the second round, it's two points. Third round, it's one point. It's like points.
The only time I watched it was when they had that Bellator versus PFL. Yeah. It's very weird. Yeah.
Well, that was interesting, too, because you get to see, like, there's levels. Like, Johnny Eblen versus Impa Kasagane.
I don't know them, motherfuckers.
Impa Kasagane is fucking good. He's the guy that lost to Joaquin Buckley by that crazy head kick. Oh, yeah. That jump spinning back kick, head kick. That's some Mortal Kombat shit.
Yeah, he grabs his left leg and Joaquin hops up in the air and hits him with a jump spinning back kick to the face.
After that, he got kicked out of the UFC?
Well, he left the UFC and went to PFL. And so he was representing PFL. And Johnny Eblen, who's the PFL middleweight champion, is really fucking good. And he's, like, one of the guys out there that I looked at and I said, that guy could be, like, a UFC star. But Impa Kasagane and him had a war.
And, like, Impa, won a lot of that fight. It was a good fight. So it's like there's guys out there that are really good fighters. That's my point. And nobody's seeing it.
Nobody's watching them.
Well, what happened to that guy that did that, that Buckley guy? What happened to him?
Oh, he's in welterweight now. He dropped down to welterweight, and he's very successful now. Oh, so, he's doing good. He just knocked out Vicente Luque. And who did he just knock out?
in the first round? He just fucked somebody else up, too. He's fucking good, man. And he keeps getting better. Joaquin Buckley just keeps getting better.
The thing about him is, like, every time you see him fight, that's right. That Roozebov guy that he fought, that guy's a big dude. He's, like, 6'3", 6'4", and he fights at 170.. Wow. And he beat him by unanimous decision.
Knocked out Vicente Luque before that. What's that?
6'5".
Yeah, 6'5", at 170.
. That's nuts. And, you know, that guy was, like, very highly touted going into that fight. But Buckley beat him. Buckley at 170 is a real force.
He's a real force. He's just, like, he's one of those dudes, like, he's never stopped. He's never going to stop learning and growing. Every time you see him, it's a better version of Buckley. And his cardio is crazy.
What camp is he at, you know?
He's got a very small camp in Detroit. You know, it's a very small camp. It's not a big gym.
I haven't heard of many fights coming out of Detroit.
Yeah, there he is. Murcielago MMA. And it's Detroit, right?
Doesn't say? I'm 90% sure that's where he's at. St. Louis? He's from St.
Louis?
Am I wrong? Out of St. Louis. I'm sorry. So, shout out to St.
Louis. Sorry, I confused you with Detroit. The point is, he's, like, in a small team. It's not a big team. It's not, like, he's not an ATT.
And there's some people that think that that's not good either, because, like, I've talked to some dudes that went over and trained at ATT and say, hey, man, like, you've got these dudes coming in from Russia and Dagestan, and, like, you're in wars every day. You're not incorrect. That is in Michigan. Oh. Looking up their pages.
It says, like, top MMA.
So you was wrong.
The internet was wrong. Oh, okay. The internet fucked up. Jamie's never wrong.
He's never wrong.
This isn't stuff I know. Okay, so they're in Michigan. Lansing, that's it. Lansing, Michigan. But let me tell you something.
Joaquin Buckley, he's a real force at 170.
. I think he could be a champion. He's just got to keep growing the way he's growing. But it's, like, you see these guys when they're on the come up, it's, like, there's so much potential you never know. And some guys, they have so much potential, and then it just never comes to fruit.
It's, like, that's probably the hardest thing is realizing your potential.
Yeah, yeah. Because you don't know until you get out there, right? And you got to put it to test. And you go out there, and some people, you know, you can be really good, right? And you can have, like, two bad days in the office, right?
Lose two fights in a row, then your career's over.
Look at Max Holloway, right? People were writing him off. People thought, before he fought Dustin Porte or, excuse me, before he fought Justin Gaethje, that it was over.
Yeah.
And he's only 32.
Yeah, you got to reinvent yourself. You can't listen to all that noise, put your head down. I lost two fights in a row one time in my career, and I was like, what the fuck is wrong with me? But you got to put your head down and come back and train. Because normally, at the beginning of my career, like, I lost to Marvin Eastman, my first professional fight.
Then I went on a long run. I didn't lose again until Sakuraba. Then I lost to Sakuraba, and I went on a long run, and I didn't lose again until whoever. Maybe it was Vanderlei. I can't remember who beat me after that.
But, you know, then you lose two fights in a row. Then you start thinking, like, you start doubting yourself. Like, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? Do I suck?
now? Is it over? And then you got to have a strong mind. You got to come out of that.
Did you learn how to have a strong mind, or is it just something that you – did you read books? Did you talk to someone? Like, how did you develop having such a strong mind?
Do I look like I read motherfucking books? Do I sound like I read books? I read one – well, I can read the Bible. But I read two books in my whole motherfucking life.
What's the other one?
Christine.
Oh, the Stephen King book?
That's a good book. Yeah, I was in jail. I had a bunch of free time on my hands. I went to jail in college, and I fucking – What'd you go to jail for? One of my teammates was a fucking asshole, and he hit me in the mouth.
with, you know, the payphone receiver. I got this scar on my lip, wherever side it is. Motherfucker hit me in the mouth, and I tried to kill him. And he went to the hospital. I went to jail.
It was self-defense. Right. But the problem was – what fucked me up is that I went back and stumped him some more. And I think that was no longer self-defense. once you did that, and I didn't know.
You were just in the moment. I was in the moment. I was in the moment. Tim Percy, the one you saw that name up there that got caught with the fucking –.
Methamphetamine?
He was my roommate. He was the one that pulled me off. the motherfucker. Oh, wow. And I wish he would have just kept me in that fucking room.
Maybe I wouldn't have had to – but you know what? Going to jail at that time, that changed my life because, remember, I got a real bad temper. And that taught me how to control my temper, going to jail, because I hated jail. I was there for like 47 days up in Susanville. That changed my fucking life.
I'm like –.
Yeah.
I don't see how anybody can go to jail or prison and fuck up and go back to that motherfucker.
I think you had a life already, and some people don't. And I think they get to jail, and then in jail you know where you're going to eat. You know where you're going to sleep. You know who you're hanging out with. And then you get out in the real world, and you have no skills, and nobody wants to deal with you because you're a felon.
And then you're just lost. Yeah. And you say, I'd rather be inside.
Yeah, it is kind of like you're in a fucking circle motion where you got this rap sheet and you can't get a job. I can understand that.
People get institutionalized too. They get accustomed to a schedule.
I'd rather be out on the street just doing odd jobs. It's something else. You know, when I was growing up, before I started wrestling, I was heading for prison. And I tell this to my boys, the thing that changed my life. My mom got remarried, and her husband had this best friend.
His name was Jerome Jackson. He got the same last name as me because when I used to get suspended from school, he used to go and put me back in school, like he was my dad. I love this guy. He was a musician. And he told me one day, he said, man, God told me to tell you something.
And this is back when I was, I'm from the Bible Belt, but, you know, I believe in God and stuff like that, but I didn't know. You know what I'm saying? And I was like, what, God told you to tell me something? I'm like, yeah, man, he's just, you know, he put it in my mind to tell you something, and I'm going to tell you. He said, don't judge me.
I got to tell you. He said, the way you're going and the shit you're doing, you know you're heading straight for prison. You know, I don't know if you know this about me, but, you know, I was selling drugs at eight years old. I was just a product of my environment. Some guys that lived across the street from me were a lot older.
They liked me. They taught me how to fight. I was drinking and smoking weed at eight. You know what I'm saying? Fucking bitches.
I thought I was grown. And they was really smart.
Eight years old, you were fucking?
Oh, fuck, yeah. Wow. Yeah. My first time fucking, I was five.
Whoa.
Yeah, I just grew up too fast. That's why I'm a big kid now. Yeah, true story, man. I haven't lied to you yet. Wow.
And the guy was really smart. He put drugs, he put the drugs and the guns and stuff on me because I was a kid. And he was like, the police are not going to look at you, and if they do, take you to juvenile. Your mama can just get you out. But if I go to jail, you'll be fucked up.
You know, I grew up kind of poor, and I was a middle child. My mom really, she really wasn't studying me, really. And so this guy fed me. And, you know, he gave me money and clothes and stuff, shit I need. So I didn't want him to go to jail.
So I did it for him. And then, after a while, he taught me how to sell drugs. So that's the environment I was in, and that's how I lived, right? And my mom's husband, my stepdad's best friend, he knew it. My mom didn't know I was selling drugs.
I was really slick. But he could tell I was living that street life. He said, you know what they do to young men in prison? I'm like, what, no, they fight them? He said, no, they rape them.
They fuck them. I'm like, well, ain't, nobody fucking me. I can fight. He said, look, I've seen you fight. I know you can fight.
Now, at this time, I'm like 15 years old, he's telling me this. He said, I've seen you fight, but I don't think you can fight five motherfuckers. And I thought about it. I was like, damn, you know, I used to get jumped a lot. But five motherfuckers in prison, five grown men.
And I was like, wow, he said, I said, really? He said, yeah, man, they rape kids. I said, this is what God wants me to tell you, let you know. I don't think nobody told you. I don't think you know.
Wow. So, whatever you're doing, you want to get off that path. And then I was thinking, a lot of my friends was coming up dead. And they was going to prison. And they was getting hooked on drugs.
So I was like, wow, that conversation right there changed my life. And we moved to a different side of Memphis. And then I started wrestling. And nobody knew anything about me. They used to smoke weed.
They didn't know anything. I just changed my whole life from that one conversation. Wow. So that's why. Then I found it.
I had been a juvenile before. I got caught driving. Like I said, I used to sell crack. So I gave this junkie. He had an IROC.
So I gave him some crack. I'm like 14 years old.
He had an IROC?
Yeah, for a couple of days. I gave him some crack for his car. And I was driving that motherfucker. And then the police saw me. I took this one lady.
She wanted to go to these projects. I didn't know what she was doing. But you know what she was doing. And she had me take her over there. And the police saw me.
I guess it was a hot spot. And I didn't know. And I'm waiting in the car. And it's like 8 o'clock in the morning. And the police come up to me like, what the fuck?
A little kid driving his car. He said, don't your ass want to be in school?
I couldn't lie my way out of it. I went to juvenile. My mom came and got me out. My mom, what the fuck are you doing? I said, shit.
My friend and me borrowed a car. My mom had no idea. I was selling drugs. Wow. I kept lying to her.
She didn't know. And then that was just like getting out. You know what I'm saying? Then I got in some trouble. one time.
I was innocent for what happened. But I was in there for two weeks. I didn't think about it. It wasn't that bad. But when I went to jail and college, I'm like, fuck this.
I'm never coming back. Wow. But I'm kind of glad it happened, because it changed my life. And I can kind of control my temper better now. That's why I was walking out of that room in Ultimate Fighter, because I knew I was losing my temper.
I threw that water bottle. And I was trying to get out of there. And that door got in my fucking way. So I didn't want to lose my temper, because I didn't know if I was going to punch Rashard or anybody came up to me. Right.
I didn't know. I just wanted to get out of there. And I was like, fuck this shit. But I'm glad that shit happened to me in college. It changed my fucking life.
Wow. I can control myself now. As long as nobody don't punch me out of, like, violence or nothing like that, I think I can control it. Everything else, you know, I just think about I ain't going back to prison. Fuck that.
Well, you've been able to control your mind in so many fights, you know, that alone. I mean, how many people get tested like that?
Oh, fights don't bother me. But sparring is where I have to control myself. Really? Yeah. Fights don't bother me.
Sparring is where I lose my temper a little bit. But I'm scared because I feel like I'm going to go hog wild and lose my cardio.
Oh.
That's the only reason why I try to control it in fighting and in sparring.
Oh, the worst is, like, losing your temper when you're sparring.
Yeah, that's where I lose it.
Because you get tired quick.
Bro, I sparred Luke Rockhold. Mm. I hadn't sparred in a long time. And he's a Southpaw. He's tall.
His stand-up is fucking good. Yeah. And I just thought I was going to be fighting Shannon, so I was like, oh, let me start sparring. And he kicked the shit out of me. I'm like, he didn't even fucking let up.
It's like it was fucking field day for his ass. I was so fucking mad I tried to knock him the fuck out. And I was so arrested, hadn't sparred in years. My old ass in there with him. I hate Southpaws.
And he kicked the shit out of me. I was like, oh, all right. And then next day I started running because my cardio was bad. Everything was bad. I started running.
I was waiting to spar his ass back. I said, I'm going to knock this motherfucker out.
So right now, are you training at all?
Yeah. Are you training? Yeah, I'm training. I've been sparring and moving around. I just did my first Japanese Pro Wrestling match with Josh Barnett Bloodsport.
Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. So I started training MMA with my son. I didn't have anybody to train with because my time is fucking crazy, because I got a podcast. now.
Because of your ass, you got everybody doing fucking podcasts. Crazy, huh? It's crazy, man. Everybody's mom got a fucking podcast because of your motherfucking ass. That shit is so time consuming.
It takes up time. But it's a great way to be your own boss.
Yeah.
That's the best thing. And you're a funny guy. Your Jackson podcast, that's a great podcast. It's fun. I watch it all the time.
For real? I watch it a bunch of times.
Oh, thanks, man.
Yeah, you have great clips, too. Because it's good, man. It's a good thing for you to do, because you could do that forever.
People were asking me to do it for years. And I was like, man, I don't have the drive to do this shit myself. But my friend Barrett, he got everything set up and he does everything. And I just come and sit down. And people started liking it.
I said, okay, I guess I'm doing a podcast now.
That's all you have to do. Someone has to set it up for you. If someone's got a good personality, they should totally do it. Because it's a way that you can make a living. You don't have to get hit.
You don't have to be in shape. You don't have to do anything. Just show up and talk about shit.
Yeah. Yeah. But how long is this shit going to last? Because I felt like it was watered down. I feel like everybody's got a podcast now.
If you're good. Yeah, everybody has a podcast. There's 5 million of them. 5 million. 5 million podcasts.
You started, how long ago did you start?
15 years ago.
Oh, god damn.
Yeah. Yeah. Started in the beginning. There wasn't that many. back then.
There was only a few.
What made you start your podcast?
I always wanted a radio show. But nobody was ever going to give me a radio show. So I would do radio shows. And I'd be like, man, this is fun. It's fun to just sit around with friends and talk shit.
And then, when I started doing Opie and Anthony. Opie and Anthony was a show on Sirius XM. And when I first did it, they were on the regular radio. And then they went to Sirius and Sirius XM. And you could, maybe I didn't do it when they were on the regular radio.
But the point was, like, you could swear when they were on Sirius. And I would be on with, like, 4 or 5 other comedians. We would have a ball. It was so fun. It was the only show I would look forward to getting up, for.
I'd get up early in the morning, smoke a joint, get a cup of coffee. Go in that room, and everybody would just talk shit. We had so much fun. I was like, damn, I wish I had a radio show. But no one would hire me for a radio show.
And so I thought about it. I was like, nah, I'll fuck it up anyway. I talk about too many crazy things. It's like, I need to just do something on the internet. Even if no one's going to listen.
I was like, at least it would be fun. In the beginning, you know, we got 1,000 people watch it. That was a lot. Nobody was watching it. But I thought it was fun.
So I just kept doing it. And then it just kept growing. I didn't promote it. I didn't take out ads. I didn't make videos.
Please watch my podcast. I didn't go on other podcasts and tell people to watch my podcast. I just kept doing it. Just kept doing it. Just kept doing it.
Just work, ethic. And then eventually started making money.
Bro, during COVID, I heard people complaining that your podcast was more listened to than the news. And people was hating on you. Like when you was talking about ivermectin and stuff. Oh, my God.
Well, they were threatened. Well, that was also. they were being paid off by the medical establishment. They were being paid off. They were being paid to promote this one thing, and that was the vaccine.
And anybody that said anything other than the vaccine. I mean, CNN did me so dirty. They changed the color of my skin to make me look yellow and sick. They kept saying I was taking Horstie. I got prescribed medicine by a doctor.
Not only that, it was only one of the things that I took. I took a bunch of things. But they did not want this video of me saying I got better in three days. So it's a video of me. You see the real video.
I look fine. I was fine. I wasn't lying. I wouldn't lie. And I had to cancel these shows because I was doing shows with Chappelle that weekend.
We were supposed to be doing this arena, and I had to say I'm sorry. We're going to reschedule it, but I got COVID. That's the only reason why I made that video. If I didn't have shows that I had to cancel, I would have never made that video. I only made that video because I had to cancel the shows.
So I said I feel great. It was three days ago. We threw the kitchen sink at it. I said all these drugs I took, IV, multivitamins, monoclonal antibodies. I said all this stuff that I took, Z-Pak.
But they locked in on this horse dewormer, trying to make me look like a fool. But what they didn't know back then because people didn't – I didn't talk about it.
I never – They knew.
But they didn't know how big the podcast was.
Oh, no, no, no, no. They didn't know how big that – That's the problem. But they knew the drug worked, though.
Right. They did know the drug worked, and it did work, and it worked for a lot of people. It didn't take all the other stuff that I took. I was better, quick. Six days after that, I did 10 rounds on the bag.
I worked out five days after I got sick, and I'm like I feel pretty good. And then the next day, I said, all right, there's one way to find out how good I feel. Set the timer up. Let's do some rounds. And I did 10 solid rounds on the bag.
At the end, I was like I feel 100%.
I feel totally normal. Bro, I swear by it. When you talked about it, I knew you was right because I had learned about it like a while ago, a little bit before, when COVID first started happening, because I got this friend. She was a box with Floyd Mayweather's dad, and her name is Miss Knockout. She got this assistant from some South American country, and they had symptoms like COVID years ago, like maybe 15, 20 years ago, and they took ivermectin.
And so she told me about it. She said, if you get COVID, let me know. I'm going to get you some ivermectin. I had never heard of it. She said my assistant had COVID, and she got rid of it in six days to give a negative test.
I said, okay. I keep it on my radar. And my son caught COVID. I never caught COVID, but my son caught COVID, and I got the medicine. And I gave it to him.
They could have saved a lot of lives. And they still, to this day, ridicule it. Still to this day, people ridicule it. But meanwhile, doctors prescribed it. And one of the reasons why they prescribed it is because there's a reason.
There's a medical reason. It stops viral replication in vitro. That means in cell cultures, when you put ivermectin in with the virus, it stops the virus from replicating. So it just makes sense that it would stop it in the human body too. It stops yellow fever and dengue.
They used it for river blindness. They've used it for a bunch of different diseases. It's also very healthy. It's not a dangerous drug. It's one of the safest drug profiles of any drug.
It's not a dangerous thing to take.
But do you think your body gets used to it? Because I take it for colds, because I hate colds.
I don't think it's something that you get used to, no.
Because I remember when I first started taking it, because I stocked up on it in case I got COVID. And I got like a runny nose and a cold. And I took it away right away, right? And then the next couple of times it took it away, then, like the fourth time, I got a cold, it didn't.
They tried to –. well, it could have been just a different cold or a different intensity of the cold. But they tried to ban a lot of other things secretly that also help people. One of the things was thymosin. Thymosin is a peptide.
It's a safe peptide. There's no history of like negative side effects. And they tried to ban it because people were using thymosin to get over COVID. They tried to do everything they could to make people take the vaccine, because that's what was profitable. Everything.
They tried to stop people from taking monoclonal antibodies, which also helped heal you. But they didn't want any alternatives. So when they started attacking me, they were only attacking me because people could say, oh, Joe Rogan got better. Oh, he's healthy and he works out. I don't need that fucking vaccine.
That 55-year-old man took it, and he's fine. Quick. And they didn't. Like. they exaggerated how many people died.
The whole thing was fucked, man. The whole thing was fucked. They treated us like we were a bunch of sheep. And a lot of people acted like they were a bunch of sheep. A lot of people, you know, and they didn't have any alternative news sources other than podcasts.
And so then they were just really – why are people listening to podcasts? They should be listening to doctors. Well, because we don't lie.
That's why. I might be wrong.
I might be wrong about things. I'll be wrong about things, I'm sure. But I don't fucking lie. Right. I'm not a liar.
They're liars. They're liars and they're on TV. The TV is filled with liars.
I don't even watch the news. no more, fucking more.
Yeah.
I don't trust that shit.
You shouldn't trust that shit. I mean, I don't trust mainstream news anymore. If they're telling you something, someone's telling them to tell you something. Some of the things might be true, but the reasons for those things being true, they're probably not telling the truth.
I'm going to tell you. COVID and all this stuff that happened, it woke me up to a lot of things where just not trusting government and stuff and everything. And I'm going to be 100 right now. The main reason why I decided not to take the vaccine is because I saw the interview with Bill and Melinda Gates. Really?
That interview, them saying that they got to give it to blacks and Latinos first. I was like, oh, fuck that. I'm not taking it. They never want to give our black ass shit first. Fuck that.
Wow. That's why I didn't take it. I didn't take this shit.
Look at the history of them giving vaccines to people in Africa. There's some horror stories. They gave vaccines to people in Africa, where they told these people that it was for the DTP vaccine, but it had HCG in it, which is something that stops women from being fertile. And they gave it to them on a schedule that didn't make sense. So people started investigating.
They found that they were putting enough HCG in it to make sure these women didn't have kids. They basically vaccinated them against being pregnant. And who knows what the fuck that's doing to their bodies.
Yeah, that's fucked up.
And they didn't tell them they were doing it. That's fucked up, bro. Bro, there's a lot of sketchy stuff.
So I see Fauci is getting in trouble, but how come nobody is saying anything about Bill Gates? And why would we listen to him about medicine? anyway, a computer guy?
About anything health.
He's fat.
He's got a big pot belly.
But he's a computer guy.
Not only that, he's got no medical degree. I mean, I don't even think he has a college degree. And he looks like shit. Like, why are you taking health advice from a guy that looks like shit? Just because he invested a bunch of money in the company?
Why is he even on television talking about it? It doesn't make any sense.
I couldn't figure that shit out for the life of me.
Money. It's all money. He made a lot of money off those vaccines, by the way. He made a lot of money. And he dumped all his stock, and then he started talking shit about the vaccine.
Oh, he started talking shit about the vaccine?
Yeah, he talked about it afterwards. It wasn't as effective as we'd hoped. It didn't stop transmission. Like, oh. Oh, now you tell us.
The crazy thing was that people that was taking the vaccine, they was the super spreaders.
Well, what happens is, unfortunately, there's different strains of the vaccine. And one of the things that they've realized with—one of the things that virologists will say is you never vaccinate during a pandemic. The reason they say—and again, I'm not an expert—but the reason they say is, when you vaccinate during a pandemic, it encourages variants. Because what happens is, when you have a vaccine, it targets a very specific strain of the virus. So then new strains come around that evade the vaccine's immunity.
And so then you have all these new strains. Over time, it makes the virus weaker. So the new viruses get weaker and weaker so that they get more infectious. So they can infect you, but it doesn't kill you, so you can spread it to more people. That's how viruses survive.
They're sneaky little, clever motherfuckers, these viruses. But when they do that—I mean, this is what veterinarians were saying. All these different virologists were saying, like, you don't—but they silenced all those people. That was the craziest thing that happened, is they silenced legitimate experts. They banned them from being on social media.
They banned them from talking about it on YouTube. People from Harvard, Stanford, were, like, legitimate doctors who had a differing opinion about how things were handled. And they were silenced and treated like fools. It's evil.
They pay all that money for their education. And then, when it's time to use it, it can help a lot of people.
Not only that, science is always supposed to be questioned. Science is all about a bunch of different experts giving peer review on a subject, right? But they're not supposed to be biased and bought and paid for. But that's the problem with today. Whenever there's so much money involved in one thing, like a vaccine or any kind of medicine, you get a bunch of people that are willing to bullshit in order to sell that medicine.
And so when someone doesn't want to do that and they have a different opinion, it doesn't go with the narrative, they just make that person out to be a crazy—that's a crackpot. They're nuts. Meanwhile, these are, like, legitimate PhDs, like, legitimate scientists, well-respected up until that moment in their field.
But you know what? I ask myself sometimes, like, what if I was in that situation? Would I sell out?
I always say that about UFOs. Like, I would lie. Show me the UFOs. I won't tell nobody. I'll say it's all bullshit.
I will lie. I'll lie. Show me. Show me. I'll sell out for that.
I'll sell out for aliens.
You really believe in that, huh?
No.
You know, you got all these aliens. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I know, but I don't. Why? I do kind of. This is what I think. I think the odd—if there is alien life out there, I think, if you look at just the immense size of the universe, there's hundreds of billions of galaxies, and each galaxy has hundreds of billions of solar systems.
The odds of there not being other life out there is almost zero. I think it is zero. I think for sure there's other life out there. And if there was other life out there, if they found out about us, these crazy territorial apes that have nuclear weapons, and they have cell phones, and they're taking pictures of their dicks, and they're fucking sending videos across the world. They're stealing resources and pulling oil out, killing all the fish.
I'd be like, these fucking things are nuts. This species on Earth, the dominant species, is completely insane. They lie on the news. They pretend they're monogamous, and they're not. They're doing drugs.
Everyone's saying, just say no to drugs while they're on drugs. I mean, it's a crazy species. They elect officials. The officials get paid off by everybody, and they're all lying about this. They're getting people into wars.
They're getting people into pandemics because they're doing research on viruses, and the viruses accidentally get out, and they go, nope, that was just a wild virus. They knew it wasn't. They're just liars. If I was an alien, I would be studying us like crazy. I would visit, and I think they probably have visited, but I also don't believe the government.
So when the government says they have off-world vehicles that are not from this Earth, I'm like, oh, you guys got a drone that you don't want anybody to know about. I think that's a lot of it.
I'm going to tell you this, brother. I'm going to tell you this. Your boy, Eddie Bravo, he knows some shit, but he just sounds crazy when he says it.
Oh, he knows a lot.
He knows a lot of shit.
Eddie knows a lot. He's definitely wrong about some things.
He's wrong about, come on, we all are, but I'm going to tell you, when I watch him, and I watch him explain stuff, I'm like-.
He goes deep.
He goes deep, and it's just how he explains it.
He knows a lot about conspiracies that are absolutely legit. He educates me on some, and where I start reading about them, I'm like, oh, shit, he's right. Yeah. You know, and you find out some things about the government, and things about what they've done before, Operation Paperclip. They brought in all the Nazis to start NASA.
You're like, what? NASA was started by Nazis?
Yeah.
And you realize, you're like, what? And then the Kennedy assassination. There's so many conspiracies that turn out to be real.
Look at the coincidences. It's too many, and so I think there are extraterrestrials, but I don't think they're from outer space.
That's possible, too.
They come from the water.
That's possible.
Because they come from the other side of the ice wall.
Oh, you're going to get into that.
No, I'm not.
I'm not.
He's right about that part.
I don't think he's right about that. I think that there's too much evidence that it's not true. Also, it's like the way planets are formed. We know how planets are formed. There's a reason why they're all circular.
It's like all the mass coalesces in the center, and the gravity, and the way things spin. It all forms balls. But the idea that we know what the fuck is going on in the ocean is ridiculous. We don't know what's going on in 90% of the ocean. And the water surface is three quarters of the earth.
So three quarters of the earth, we don't know 90% about it.
I know. That's crazy.
There's a lot of people that see things coming out of the water and going into the water. Also, if I was from another planet, and I wanted to come here and make a base, I'd just do it in the water. They can't see shit. If they have the kind of capability that allows them to come here from other galaxies, they could easily make a base under the water.
Yeah. That's probably what the Bermuda Triangle is. We don't fucking know.
Well, they think the Bermuda Triangle is methane getting released under the floor of the ocean. And what it does is when it comes up, it kills all the buoyancy. It makes boats sink. No, they know where it is.
That sounds like when I watch the Men in Black and right when they hit you with that thing.
They hit you with that thing?
It sounds like that's the excuse they give you.
Oh, right, right, right. It could be. there's something under the water that's sinking boats. I don't think it is, though. I think there's a valid scientific reason.
So these gases get released. And apparently, if there's a boat above, when all these get like we're talking about immense spaces of this gas gets released, those boats just sink. And it's not just that. It's like the updraft of this stuff can fuck up planes. There's a lot of theories about what causes it.
It's also like there's so many storms in that area of Bermuda. So it makes sense that more ships would go down in those areas, too.
Yeah.
But I still think there's probably something in there. There's probably something in the water. Have you seen that video, that one craft that they're watching on night vision and it flies over the water and then goes down into the water?
No, I haven't seen that one.
Yeah, they call them transmedium crafts. They've been observed by multiple fighter jet pilots, different people on battleships. They've observed them going into the water.
And they think that's UFOs?
They think there's something going on. They don't know if it's China's or Russia's, or it could even be ours. That's the thing that drives me crazy.
See, this is what the problem is. Right now. we've got cell phones, right, with the cameras and technology is so good. We can see a lot more things than we could, like, 20, 30 years ago, right? So I feel like if the military has a lot of stuff they don't want us to know about, they can say, like, oh, it's a UFO.
But why are they telling us now that it's not? Right.
Exactly. That's exactly how I feel. When they're telling you that it's a UFO, I'm like, hmm. And the thing is, they're always happening near military bases. They're always happening close to the water off of San Diego.
It's all military all over San Diego. Yeah. East Coast, in all of the restricted air spaces, that's where they see these things, which is exactly where they would practice if they had these things.
If we got our technology strong enough, where we could go to different planets, would you like to go?
No.
I'd be scared as fuck.
I'd be scared as fuck. Fuck that. Yeah, fuck that. We talked about, like, they do SpaceX flights. I'm like, uh-uh.
I ain't going to be that dude that dies like that. Yeah, yeah. Fuck that. Imagine the feeling you would have, how stupid you would feel if you're up in the jet or in the rocket and you hear, these things start breaking.
You only feel stupid for a couple of seconds.
Boom!
Right before that thing blew, you'd probably be like, my dumb ass, could be at home with a margarita. right now. I could be at home with my feet up on the fucking couch watching TV or out in the yard listening to birds chirp. My stupid ass is dying just so I can get a couple hundred miles above the surface and look down. Because that's all you can get.
You can only get a couple hundred miles.
Yeah.
You can't really go to another planet. I don't want to go to another planet.
What, Elon trying to go to Mars?
Fuck that. I'm not going to be one of those dudes. No. I'm staying right here.
How do you think those dudes felt when they tried to go see the Titanic?
Bro.
What were they thinking, bro?
They're just rich people that, for whatever stupid reason, wanted to go on an adventure. Not only that, they're looking through a screen. They're looking through a screen. They just wanted to be there. Bro, the moment before that thing fucking imploded, apparently it was free-falling before it imploded, so they knew it was over.
They knew it was over for a few seconds before it came to an end.
I would have had a heart attack, I think. I would have probably had a heart attack.
Probably. I bet a lot of them did. They, probably hyperventilated, went into shock.
How many was on there? I don't know. I don't remember. Yeah. I don't know.
Fuck.
Apparently they're talking about doing it again.
All right. So no one has been able to go down to the Titanic, so it's too far.
Well, no. They had manned craft that went down to the Titanic, because I went to the Titanic Museum this past weekend at Luxor in Vegas. They have a chunk of it that you could see, this big piece that they pulled up and different artifacts they pulled up. So they did go down there and attach things with manned crafts and then they pulled them up with some kind of drone. But I do think people have actually – I think James Cameron actually went down there.
Here it is. The 14th trip. The Titan made the first of several dives to the famous shipwreck of the world. While generally successful, these expeditions hadn't been without their own problems. The fatal dive was the vessel's 14th trip to the remains of the Titanic.
Oh, it probably just wore out, then. Probably.
Well, apparently, the people that designed it and built it were telling them there was flaws in it. And there was a lot of lawsuits coming, I'm sure, because there was a lot of whistleblowers that wound up leaving the corporation, the company rather, that developed these things. They're like, this is not tested for the kind of pressure that's down there, and you're sending people down there.
I just believe there's certain things that man shouldn't – certain places man shouldn't go.
Bottom of the ocean is one of them.
We just shouldn't go.
Why go – why? Why?
Certain things we shouldn't do. I don't think we should be jumping out of planes and all that shit either, though. I just don't believe that. I'm not interested in that shit.
I'm not interested in that. People who are like, you should go skydiving. No, you go skydiving.
Yeah, fuck that.
My friend, his dad, used to work with this lady. And when he would go into work, she was like, you should go skydiving with us. And then one day he goes to work and she's not there. And he's like, what happened?
He's like,
skydiving. But I'll tell you what looks fun, though. You seen them motherfuckers in those squirrel-looking suits? Oh, yeah. That shit look fun.
But I see it on TikTok, but they scared. Like, what if they hit a tree going that motherfucking fast?
You ever see the one where the guy hits the bridge? No. We'll watch this and we'll end this podcast. Show the one where the guy hits the bridge in the squirrel suit. So this dude was trying to go through the arches of the bridge and he missed it.
Here, watch this.
So he's on the thing and he's trying to fly past the bridge. And he's got a bunch of people on the bridge watching this dude. Like, oh, my God, this is amazing.
It looks fun.
Yeah, I mean, he's going like 100 and something miles an hour, too. So he's trying to figure out how to get through this bridge. But watch this.
Oh, fuck.
Bro, that sound. That's a horrible sound.
He just misjudged. Well, he just exploded, huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just misjudged.
Why would you try to go through the bridge? Fuck that. Showing off.
Showing off. Yeah. Just wanting to do something fun. People have done things like that. They fly between buildings.
They do a bunch of wild shit with those squirrel suits on. But if you misjudge it, that's your ass. Oh, man.
Showing off.
Showing off. Quentin, thank you, sir.
Man, thank you for having me, man. Great, to hang you. It's been a great experience.
It's been great to be here and to hang out with you, man, and see you after all these years.
Yeah, I know. It's been a long time. I'm going to hold you to those tickets. Yes, sir.
I got you. I got you for two tickets.
Because Tiki always let me down. I can get two? You got two. Bring me somebody.
Bring me somebody. I think that's September 14th. So I got you.
September 14th. Yes, sir. I'll be there. All right.
It's going to be a banging car. It's going to be crazy. inside that thing with all the whole ceiling is a screen. Yeah. So, I mean, who knows what they're going to put up there.
It's going to be wild. Apparently, they've been working on it this entire time. They've been working on it for months. I think they already spent $9 million just on the production. 16.
now. Jesus. What the fuck?
Jesus. They got, fucking, they worth billions now, so. Yeah.
Throwing that money around. Tell everybody where to get your podcast.
They can go to, what, Jackson on YouTube, right? I think it's on Spotify, just to hear.
It's two X's or one X?
Yeah, two X's.
Oh, like your shirt. Like your shirt. There you go.
Oh, thanks for the plug, brother.
No, no worries.
So it's Jackson Podcast on YouTube. And is it on everything like Spotify?
No, I think we just got on Spotify. Okay. But tell them about the energy drink.
And your energy drink.
It's good. I'm glad you like it.
It's very good.
That's my favorite flavor.
F3, energy drink, ginseng. It's got all sorts of good stuff. BCAAs, theanine. What else has it got in here?
But it won't make you dick hard.
Ginkgo biloba. It won't make you dick hard. Not yet. Not yet.
Version two. If they come out with one that says Rampage Punch or something.
There it is. Rampage Punch.
No, you're going to make you dick hard.
In Japanese letters.
All right, brother. Thank you for being here. Bye, everybody.
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