Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZwv5yCf7pk
[Music] yeah come out with a [ __ ] cookbook are you a good cook legitimately i i see you cook on instagram looks like you're into it i am uh yeah uh food has always been a pretty big part of my life uh i grew up in a a family of cooks i i actually consider myself probably the worst cook in my family um don't say that before you sell in your body i know no but like i'm still pretty good like both my brother dan and my my other brother michael are both they're phenomenal your brother dan has the nastiest guillotine finish i've ever seen in all my years of watching mma yeah that won the ifl we had that dude pinned up against the cage it looks like his head is gone it looks like it's disappeared like his head is it's it's like the way it bends over it's like folks it's like an elbow like it doesn't make any sense doesn't make any sense no i didn't sideways i didn't see that i was on we were on the opposite side of the ring i didn't see that until the next day i was like scrolling through some pictures on uh on one of the forums and i was like holy [ __ ] here watch this here let's see look i'll see if they can show it from the beginning again please okay here it is i'll show it yeah folds him in half now when he stands up see he's still fighting you know like right there right there what the [ __ ] man yeah yeah how is that possible look at that look at that it looks like he's disconnected how is that possible that a neck can do that he's literally hearing his own heartbeat right i'd be dead i think that's that's the craziest guillotine i've ever seen in my life which is amazing because think of how many guillotines you've seen yeah right i've never seen anybody do that i mean that is that's a wild guillotine it is the ifl was weird because it was uh there was good fighters and good fights but the concept was so goofy that people were like what there's a team yeah and like your team wins it's like they were doing it like wrestling teams right like just kind of like you could you could win your match but your team could still lose and like there was
team names and there was it's a and i think about other couple uh promotions have like tried to do something similar and it it just doesn't seem to work in mma i don't like what the pfl does either where they have like point systems yeah you get a point for more points for finishes and more points for this and so you're ahead and like i'm not it's weird i can't pay attention to all that just like i think it's like they see how people are really into stats you know like rebounds and he's got most assists and this analogy there's a lot of guys that are like numbers guys they can tell you you know this guy ran for this amount of yards and that's not like you know what i mean like they love those statistics but in mma that's just like yeah it uh people just want to see us punching each other's heads in that's really what it is you're over complicating what's essentially the purest sport yeah it's so pure i mean you could show an mma fight to someone who has no [ __ ] idea what's going on and they're going oh my god like you show them cricket and they're like why yeah what's the point what's the goal why do you have a paddle like what's happening here how's this work you know like why is he throwing the ball like that right or baseball like baseball's american pastime but if it if it wasn't and someone tried to invent it today people be like get the [ __ ] outta here with this game too complicated it's just what is going on here he's stealing bases he gets to steal bases like what's happening you know why nine why why not innings why not yeah dudes and what's going on with the pitcher with his fingers what's he doing there he's the catcher in the picture communicating in some weird way you know yeah how about when a guy like can the though the catcher will stand away from the base and he'll potentially walk him like what are you doing like what is this [ __ ] i guess it's yeah you're cheating strategy right you're cheating throw the [ __ ] ball throw it try to strike him out you [ __ ] it's silly yeah i i
i guess there's there's some there's some silly stuff that happens in mma though and you know what's what's the silly thing like because i mean i fell in love with it watching like the early days watching pride and the early days of the ufc where it was like dudes were just going in there to beat the [ __ ] out of whoever was across from them and you know like when i see a fighter uh try to game the clock uh you know i i understand why they're doing it because they want to win right but like my whole goal is to not have the judges have any [ __ ] say in it uh because i got three [Laughter] uh on the outside of the the cage like that that have zero experience in the martial arts for the most part a lot of them a good percentage unfortunately and and yeah they're they're picking who's gonna win or lose and like i get paid twice as much if they think that i win uh so like i i think that you know the purest part of the sport is when two fighters are just trying to for sure beat the [ __ ] out of it undeniable i mean there's some really good judges out there we should acknowledge that because they don't get enough love because there's so many bad ones you know it's like i feel like number one hardest job is fight number two is referee yeah never referee's the hardest job like because they can step in too soon the guy jumps off what the [ __ ] yeah the worst is when it's a submission yeah you know like when when someone is like fighting their way out of a submission and then the referee separates them and you're like oh my god what have you done yeah and you can't restart it yeah well they did yeah before and remember marilla bustamante yeah and uh matt lindland he had to tap him twice yeah he caught lindland in an armbar and lynn you [ __ ] definitely did you gotta you gotta make sure yeah like let them you know rip you off of them there's
only two times in the ufc that i can recall that a fight was restarted and uh there's that fight and then there was another one that was actually not restarted but redone conan silvera and um sakuraba do you remember that yeah big john mccarthy stopped the fight early sagaraba dropped for a single and he thought he was out cold and sakuraba was he got hit with a punch and dropped down for a single and they stopped the fight and saw was like what the [ __ ] and they were in japan so because it was ufc japan they're like what are we doing here and uh it was actually proved to be a historic moment because then he came back and submitted conan and everybody is like what he submitted a black belt in jiu jitsu like that was unheard of like you never thought that a black belt in brazilian jiu jitsu could get submitted yeah you know so those are the only two times that i know of where a fight was like but there's a lot of times where i think it should have been that way or they should have probably let let them continue yeah yeah it's a like as a fighter it's i i feel like it's tough because i you know the ref is there to so i can fight again you know there's i mean i i want to choose my way out like let me right let me decide that it's it's enough but uh i do i do appreciate that they're looking out for us but like like i said it's not a it's not an easy job it's not an easy job at all um you know my my last fight i i thought it could have gotten stopped a little bit quicker and you know that's probably because i haven't knocked a lot of guys out i knocked him down and it was like i threw one or two they kind of hit glove and then it was like a second one just sunk in it's like dude that that didn't need to happen and then it's still it's still going on so i was a little bit amped up uh you know post fight but uh it's a it's a difficult spot it's the hardest spot other than fighter yeah you know
commentary is probably the easiest because you're just kind of saying what's happening you don't really you know i don't know you guys do a lot of [ __ ] work like it's not that hard it's something hard the work i do like uh like this weekend's a big event um the work i do is fun yeah like i'm watching fights like all week i'd be watching fights like there's some some folks that i haven't seen fight before i'm gonna watch their fights i'm gonna go back and like look at the records and look at their history and stuff like that but it's not i don't i don't even consider it research i'm just excited you know i just think if it's fun like if i was doing that on hockey or something that i don't really follow then it would be work i'd have to write stuff down i have to really think about it but you know i'm looking forward to it so it's easy yeah yeah yeah i think i think fighting's easy [Laughter] it's amazing if anybody saw you and you said like this guy has some of the most fights in the history of the sport like you in the history of the ufc like who [ __ ] has more fights than you nobody nobody yeah nobody nobody you how many fights you have in the fc 39 but what's crazy is you don't look [ __ ] up you don't talk [ __ ] up i try not to you don't at all like if i introduced you to someone and i said this young man has the most fights in the history of the the most brutal combat sport in the world they'd be like what you yeah uh i i think i found the thing that i was kind of built to do because that's one of the things that uh people don't understand like i i've never had surgery like knocking on [ __ ] women that's crazy uh yeah yeah nope um you know uh the only bone that i've ever broken is i chipped my uh my sinus when uh dan hooker need me uh like chipped the outside of my sinus that's the only bone i've ever broken really um and that just heals up on its own yeah yeah there was nothing they could do for it but uh like
and i've been bounced around outside the octagon probably worse than i have been inside the octagon and it's like [ __ ] man like i was i was just kind of like built to take lumps i guess i've got i've got a [ __ ] giant head for a five foot eight dude uh and i think that's helped me you know uh absorb some shots uh and then stylistically yeah i just i try to like i i do sacrifice some power for trying to be protected well you're very smart defensively as at the same time you're hyper aggressive which is very interesting you know it's a good combination of two things yeah well you're also very good off your back too it's like the combination of all those things is like you know you you can there's not a place where you fight where i'm like oh this is not his best like there's some guys that get taken down like he's kind of [ __ ] here like you don't have like a spot like that where you're in a bad position i try you know it's a it's a it's that's one of the exciting things about the sport is it's there's so much [ __ ] to do and to learn uh it makes it difficult on one side that like you have to try to get in workouts for you know not only to be a good you know technical fighter but a good athlete and then you're working on you know ground stuff clinch stuff wrestling striking uh so there's there's so many pieces to the pie that you got like stuff in there it's not it's not like hey all i do is grab a ball and run right you know so um yeah we we have to you know find your strength and try to fight to your strength and i think that's an issue that sometimes fighters get away from as they uh you know they learn new things and then they don't fight to their strengths that like got them there right um like i've done that in the past um in what way uh when i fought uh uh gray maynard um you know like that was my third fight in the ufc uh tough dude good wrestler better wrestler than me um you know big step up but like to that point i really hadn't been doing like
private striking training like before the ufc uh yeah i was taking i was taking uh like thai classes at night like group group classes like a kickboxing class no well first six fights yeah basically yeah my first six fights uh i started out at a place called planet jiu jitsu tiny a little bit bigger than this uh this studio here uh this room of the studio um and yeah i was taking like cardio kickboxing classes because i had never thrown a punch before and it it it was helping me uh you know but the the ball would already started rolling so it was like [ __ ] it like we're just gonna go take me back to like what was your initial martial art was the first thing you were wrestling wrestling yeah when i was in high school or uh that was as soon as i could walk okay um you know uh my my mom's side of the family uh pretty pretty [ __ ] good you know wrestling uh locally and then my one of my uncles was a uh a two-time national champion for lehigh uh he was actually uh an olympic qualifier in 1980 when we uh boycotted um mike frick yeah um so like his wrestling career was done before i was born but uh his younger brother jim um who's also my my mom's younger brother um he wrestled at lehigh as well uh never quite made it to uh all-american status uh one of my first memories is watching him wrestling at lehigh you know i think i was like three or something like that uh and i remember it because he ended up breaking his ankle that that match but uh yeah like as soon as i could walk i was pretty much on the mats uh i you know i wish i would have been a better wrestler but i was a i was a late bloomer uh you know physically and uh you know in in the sport of wrestling too i think and then you go from there to jiu jitsu yeah so i wrestled uh through high school one year at virginia tech um that was a it was a learning experience uh you know wrestling on a for a d1 uh program like i walked on late
um and three weeks later was starting um and uh wrestling at a weight class that i should probably shouldn't have been wrestling at two 141s uh and yeah too light or too light yeah way too light um you know we they can't do anything about it now but we snuck by the hydration test oh boy yeah i carried a cup of my coaches p down to the trainer's office oh really yeah since i i was i was i came on after all the hydration tests and all that stuff so it was like hey uh this will work wow so um you know like i said it was an experience wrestling in a room full of you know multiple time state champs and stuff like that and and uh you know it it taught me a lot about kind of surrounding myself with people that support me because i didn't quite have that in the coaching staff um and uh yeah i wrestled for a year was pissed off because i didn't like you know the program and and uh came back was was working a little bit and my brother and i dan we were messing around at work working with our father and and finally decided to start training jiu jitsu and um we walked into the the first gym that we trained at in may of 2005 um came in and we had been like [ __ ] around so we ended up like submitting some guys on the first day and uh we told the coach like hey like we want to fight and he's like all right give me like two or three years and uh six months later we were we were stepping into the into a ring for our first professional fight because there was no amateur at the time no striking training literally three months of striking training at a cardio kickboxing so at that place that you were telling me about planet jujitsu yeah yeah so uh yeah it was a it was a trip you know roll the dice a little bit um you know it uh yeah and then it was just like fight after fight i mean in a year i had six fights basically so wow well that's the way to do it right that's i i believe so
uh i think that's one of the biggest issues with like local mma right now is that they're making these fighters sign agreements so you're kind of locked in and then and then how so well they're making they're making fighters like like local promotions local shows are making fighters fight exclusively for them oh that's terrible and then they're only putting on you know three cards a year that's [ __ ] terrible they're doing that yeah yeah oh don't do that guys yeah don't sign that don't sign that whoever you whoever's listening amateur fighters guys coming up don't sign that that will [ __ ] you yeah those guys that's unethical they should not do that because if you you know like look if you have a good promotion and you pay well and you put on a good show people will fight for you yeah but if you want to say that a guy has to be exclusive on a small card and then he gets a call from one fc or [ __ ] bellator or whoever a lot of them a lot of them have like those you know the ufc clause where like if one of the big promotions call you but the problem is you should be able to fight for a bunch of small organizations you want to fight almost once a month exactly yeah ex that's exactly it you know like i have some guys to train with me uh that they don't get to fight as often as i feel they should now they're they're because of that because yeah they're like they're the two different roads you can take you know like you can't [ __ ] be exclusive if you're a small company like that that is not that's not ethical especially they're making like you know a thousand and a thousand maybe or a thousand bucks like they don't even have wind bonuses like it's crazy yeah there's it [ __ ] your development up yeah because if you can get a fight in every two months man you'll get more comfortable with fighting you get more relaxed because you do it a lot you know and when you do it a lot it like alleviates a lot of the tension and the pressure because it could you could fight more to your potential yeah and the more you fight to your potential the more confidence you get the more you you
make gains and training you start adapting and growing and learning how to compete if you're with a company that's [ __ ] you over in some [ __ ] these [ __ ] i've met some look i've met some great guys that run some small organizations but i met some guys that just think they think they're big-time yeah and it's a real problem they act big time yeah and then like uh one of the one of the new ones well new i mean probably a few years old now the the idea is that they make these these fighters uh have like ticket quotas and stuff like that so then it's like like dude you're that drives me crazy it's the worst it's the it's the absolute worst explain that to people don't know what we're talking about so um in their in their bad agreement they're gonna have to sell a certain amount of tickets in order to get their their pay yeah so like they'll have a you know 40 40 ticket minimum or whatever uh that they have to hit uh in order to get their full pay and then for everyone below that they're they're docked you know uh from their you know their win bonus or their or their uh their show money um that's a yeah it's a it's a [ __ ] [ __ ] move uh you kind of understand it but it's like hey you're the promotion you're right your job is to promote the fight yeah you know so like you're the one with the with the marketing knowledge and the and then this and then that and the the the dollars to put down uh you know for ads and and flyers and [ __ ] like that like if if a fighter has the opportunity to sell a couple tickets and make a couple extra bucks maybe all right great but like what happens and and this happened to um a bunch of my training partners and and this is like kind of led to my one of the things that led to me opening uh my gym a few years ago was we had seven guys on a local card and all of a sudden there's a tick a quota and uh after they sign well it was before they signed but they didn't know
that it was there so you had like a a group of you know seven seven fighters so a gym like okay like one guy could have handled the quota two guys but like seven like then you're like trying to make sure that you know the the training partners buy from from this guy because he hasn't sold a bunch and uh and yeah it was it was kind of a it was a [ __ ] move uh that uh you know got put in there but like i don't think any of them like really hit it you know they all got [ __ ] docked docked a bit so it's like you know you're looking at a couple hundred tickets between the seven of them that they gotta sell you know so that uh everybody can make the money that they were and obviously they have that with everyone on the card so that's how he's selling tickets that's his promotion he's that he's double [ __ ] the fighters yeah really like if you want to say you're going to guaran i'll guarantee you a thousand dollars to fight a thousand dollars to win which i think is [ __ ] by the way i i don't like bonuses especially with bad judging i [ __ ] hate it when i see a controversial judgment and you know and one guy like here's a good one it's not necessarily controversial but really close some people think it's controversial uh barbarina and matt brown last weekend right [ __ ] real close fight yeah the idea that matt brown is gonna get paid half as much you know and one judge thought he won and two judges thought he didn't and he's gonna get half the money yeah [ __ ] that yeah that's crazy yeah i don't like that it's a it's a weird uh it's a weird model it really like i i like so the uh that london card it's like everybody with a finish gotta you know that's a great idea that's a [ __ ] great integration if you tell the fighters that before the before the fight garen [ __ ] teed everybody's going out there
looking for a finish right you know uh and that's what i want to see like that's that's what i'm trying to do in the fight you know no matter what but like as a fan i i want to see i want to see aggressive fighters not guys that are just trying to you know game the clock win a couple points and and uh you know get the w because they they granted they used effective octagon control but like right i want to i want to see finishes and that way you eliminate all the fighters that get [ __ ] over by bad judging because then they don't miss half their purse now because if you're missing half of your pay because of bad judging that that should stop that should stop that i just don't like that yeah i don't like i love the incentive to finish incentive that's great keep that keep that that'll maybe make guys fight it more well you know people definitely fight more aggressively for fight of the night and performance of the night and all that stuff but keep the finish thing that's great that'll incentivize people but the win bonus that's not incentivizing people especially if it's a [ __ ] close fight like matt brown could not have fought any harder like that was that was a war man it was a crazy fight but the idea that he only gets half as much because of some subjective opinion on whether or not he did enough this is not taking anything away from bob arena it was a great fight yeah real good fight and you know maybe i would go back and score it for him if i watched it and you know tried to score it but i remember thinking god damn it i hate that model i hate it yeah it's a like i said it's it's it's weird it only exists in mma it doesn't exist in boxing right now have you heard of it in boxing no i i think it's all show money uh you know like it i mean maybe on the the lower end but i for what i understand it's a majority of us just yeah you get you get paid to fight yeah and if it is on the lower end they probably copied mma yeah does one fc have that do they have a fight and win i wonder never fought for him yeah um it's uh it's unfortunate that's that's very unfortunate so you start off um you
do a little bit where'd you start off with jiu jitsu uh that place uh same place yeah it was like kickboxing cardio kickboxing like nogi uh noki jiujitsu tiny little room did they have any fighters yet well that's why we went there uh because they had a couple of a couple of fighters it was the closest place that had uh like an mma team uh at the time um and uh so i signed to fight frankie edgar uh in november of 2006 and the gym was kind of like it was breathing its last breaths you know like people people at the gym kind of knew it was gonna go under uh and it and it did like three weeks before the fight oh no uh so it was like it was uh a [ __ ] show of a camp you know like frankie was training with team rhino at the time which was huge they had like 60 fighters something like that um and and i had like two 16 year old blue belts and like a purple belt and another purple belt who was 305 and like i had i had dan to train with for like two weeks uh he had he had cracked a rib and then like the first sparring session i just hooked him to the body and i was like ah [ __ ] so he was out so it was it was a shitty camp um great fight frankie and i [ __ ] i i've never seen the fight but uh i had people coming up to me for years after that one like dude that fight with frankie was was crazy you watch your fights afterwards uh not usually how come i don't know like as i i remember like i remember the good and the bad you know and it's like i should um but like i i i'm focusing on like what's next and just trying to get myself better and and work on those things i let my coaches kind of peel that stuff apart do you watch tape on other guys on opponents um occasionally usually just to see him fight you know but like i'm not trying to break things down because i uh kind of what happened in that that fight with gray is that like i expect him to throw overhands and like looping punches and he came out and he just fed me straight rights and it
was like you know uh i had been i had been working with a boxing coach for a couple weeks and next thing you know i'm trying to like slip and move and it's like that's not me um but i've been doing it for a couple weeks so i kind of picked it up and yeah he he broke my nose pretty early in the fight and then uh continued to hit it and uh yeah it was like uh uh it was a good learning experience you know but uh well he's an example of a guy who had wars and then the wheels fell off yeah now why do you think you have been able to fight the way you fight and not have the wheels fall off [ __ ] if i know um there's no uh luck um like i said i i think i'm kind of i'm i'm built to get roughed up built to get you know into the mix just durable yeah and uh you know like i and then there's definitely a a portion of that that is like skill set like i i try to like i try to not get hit right you know like and i'm willing to like like if you keep your hand up right if i if i throw a left and my right is glued to my face i'm probably losing a little bit of power than if i like loop that left over and drop my right hand but then if i my opponent throws a counter i'm more protected right and that's what i'm trying to do like i'm trying to land good shots and hit people hard but be protected at the same time because i also consider myself a bit of a counter puncher so like i'm i'm looking for somebody to throw something at me so that i can you know snap something at them and um yeah i just uh i don't i don't [ __ ] know it's kind of crazy though if you really think about it because we all know guys that they how do i put this charitably they should have stopped a long time ago and they kept going yeah and you know we all know them like we see them backstage and like
oh yeah like there was there was guys at a certain point time where i'd see that they were on the card and i would just like raise my eyebrows and take a deep breath okay yeah you know because you know like they probably shouldn't be doing this anymore yeah and then and you see it at the opponent and you're like you know that's what's scary yeah right yeah and then you see them a lot of times they'll leave and they'll go to other organizations like oh boy you know like they were already having problems and now they're you know it's uh it's a business that's unforgiving and there's no when the brain goes when the chin goes there's no return i've never seen anybody where their chin went and then they made a comeback yeah and all of a sudden it's back yeah yeah no no i i i have not i i haven't either you know it uh it's like i said it's super unforgiving and i'm not the type that i'm gonna try to tell people what to do right you know like but i'd like i'd like other fighters to try to make good decisions about it you know it's like uh it's a i don't i don't consider fighting like super dangerous like i think there's a lot more other you know sports and and and types of like entertainment out there that are a lot more [ __ ] dangerous than than what we do um but like over the long haul this [ __ ] you know it it adds up um but yeah like i i i hate i hate the idea of like telling somebody like hey you know yeah you need to hang them up uh what would you do though if you're a coach and a fighter and you you realize that they're they're having problems you see telltale signs and slurring words and things along those lines i think in i think in that position as the as the coach it's your responsibility you know to have that have that
conversation with somebody and and they might not take it well yeah um but like coaches have a very important job and and that is to that is to protect their athlete you know you're not only trying to make somebody better but you're trying to protect them um and like unfortunately in the in this sport and the way that it is it's like sometimes a coach has [ __ ] 30 athletes you know and a lot of times they're hey they're all here on sparring day so it's like uh it's hard to pick out like who's having all right who's having a bad day like who's who's not on today that maybe we should just pull you know we'll go go hit the bag today go we'll do a we'll do a conditioning workout something like that but no it's hard sparring day so we're that's what it's what we're geared up for that's what everybody's you know they they got a stiffy on hart's barn day because it's it's the fun day um and you got to make the differentiation between a bad day and your skills are eroded yeah yeah and like uh like that's that's one of the things that i can definitely attribute to my ability to be still sticking around here at 40 you know just about 40 fights and uh how old do you know 38 wow um is that like i i open my own place and dude like being able to train with a with a good group of guys that i trust and not have a [ __ ] target on my back is is awesome um you know and when did you open up your own place uh end of 2014. tell everybody what that is uh well actually i ended up selling it uh yeah yeah so i opened up miller brothers mma in 2014 then um is it still called miller brothers mma no no that would be weird yeah it would be weird wouldn't it uh yeah i sold it to one of the guys who uh who worked for me and uh you know one of my training partners how come you sold it because you know it was like covid was a pain in the ass uh obviously um and it was gonna
get to that point where in order to get it at least back to where it was i would have had to be there you know teaching classes all the time stuff like that and i was like you know what i'm gonna i'm gonna fight as hard as i can for as long as i can you know i put it out in the air that i want to fight at ufc 300 and i think the best way to to get to that point is to just focus on fighting and not be you know teaching classes that's the goal 300 that's the goal yeah we're at what 270 what's this weekend 273 is that right yeah so i i think like uh it should be about two years from yeah so you want to hit 40. what years old well yeah i'll probably be like pushing 41 yeah i think it's going to be tough yeah i can slow my pace down i can slow my pace down in terms of the amount yeah yeah i like to fight [ __ ] i'd love to fight four times a year um but you know three times a year is pretty good um when i when i get those like eight month layoffs i [ __ ] hate it so where are you training now so i'm training still at the same place okay yeah what do they call it now uh susan county mma yeah so um still the same group of guys um you don't have to think about it i don't have to i don't have to deal with this yeah yeah yeah you know whatever the hell it was like 7 500 bucks a month to keep the lights on and the you know the rent paid and yeah and all the utilities so it's like it's uh yeah it's nice to just be uh a fighter again yeah um there's a side of me that like i enjoy teaching to a degree i enjoy teaching like self-defense a little bit more than i like teaching jiu-jitsu why so because jiu jitsu has got like a couple different parts of it you know you've got the sporty side and everybody's motivation is different if i'm teaching somebody how to defend themselves that's
like hey man it's [ __ ] hardcore i get to be an [ __ ] like if it's jiu jitsu then it's like oh well you know i got a bad knee i don't want to do takedowns today and it's like shut the [ __ ] up everyone every fight starts on his feet you know like oh but you're you're training so that you can go pull guard at a you know at a a competition and like or whatever you know like i think jiu jitsu is for everybody i love it but um i just find that uh my personality type aligns more with like you know some req quando type stuff [Laughter] that's hilarious did you ever think at any point in your your career of relocating and going to a big camp like american top team or something i i did i did um so we you know my brother and i were training it at uh ama fight club in uh in new jersey and there were you know there's some [ __ ] and you know we had a great group of guys um and that's kind of why i opened the place uh and it was like do i open my own place or do i go to a you know att uh or something like that um and honestly i feel like having my own spot is it saved it saved me if i was in one of those big gyms um like late 2015 early 2016 when i was sick with lime uh i i don't think i would have [ __ ] made it honestly um i think just the like the attitude is different right when you when you've got a big group of fighters there's definitely ego and it's not gonna that doesn't go away right but you know there are there are plenty of sessions where it was like i was kind of you know i got to literally defend myself sometimes you know like some of our sparring days were [ __ ] insane and like we had a like i said a fantastic
group of guys um you know my brother and i and charlie brennaman and um uh we had uh like jamie varner came for a bit and brian mclaughlin and and uh um rafael overa tractor fought in ufc for bed um like like the best uh like the best [ __ ] [ __ ] group of of good fighters but also good people um that were looking out for each other i mean we pushed each other but we were looking out but you know injuries happened and you know like you you push the [ __ ] out of each other and it's gonna happen but um when it's like next thing you know you've got some you know some russian or something like that that doesn't speak like english and you're like trying to tell them hey i'm i'm fighting in a main event next you know next week don't uh you know don't stomp my knee please and then it happens and then it happens again and then it happens again you're like it gets it gets stressful and i've heard some of the other fighters that have left some of the big gyms talk about some of the same stuff where it's like uh you know because obviously the gym is looking for as many people as they can because it's a revolving door um but you have to realize where the specific athletes are like said like good day or bad day you know and that's one of the things that i've i've realized over the years is it's like man like as a 26 year old [ __ ] there were [ __ ] no bad days really it's like one a year where i felt like kind of sluggish where now it's like okay you know i i listen to myself a bit more um we're like you have to have a coach that can do that too because as a fighter i feel like uh if i'm asked to something i'm gonna do it you know and there are times where like my coach is gonna be like nah nah we're good like we need to do the extra round the extra two rounds like you got it in today and
you're healthy like that's what we need right um so like i i have a lot of uh admiration for some of those the the coaches at those big gyms but uh i feel like that what what mma is and how the teams are is kind of one of our detriments at the same time i think there's way too many like uh like you know gym wars i think that they've they've toned that [ __ ] down um you know talking to other fighters and stuff like that i feel like it doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to uh but uh it's still it's like you got you got two alphas you know banging heads and and uh like if you look at boxing and the model they have it's it's usually just a small you know couple coaches and you you pull professional sparring partners in and stuff like that so it's like it's focused around the fighter now granted the pace the pay is completely different and and there's so much there's so much uh so many differences between mma and boxing but i feel like like that small small tight-knit group is it's it's good like it's there's obviously a benefit to having all sorts of bodies and styles and all that stuff but uh there's been some guys that have gotten very far with small gyms yeah steep a right like stipe's gym it's not a small gym but it's not like known as been a place where people move there and train there specifically because of that um oliveira yeah you know charles oliver is jim's not known as being like a hotbed gym there's there's got and there's there's two schools of thought right there's a school of thought where you're better off in this giant ocean filled with sharks and then the other school of thought is you're better off with specialized individual and attention that's on you and your your skill set i i think that the latter is you know like look at uh demetrius johnson and gsp right like gsp wasn't going to [ __ ] you know uh open mat at henzo's like he's doing
specific training for a specific opponent and same thing with dimitri shot like he's not going with just every everybody or like the new the next killer but those two examples are examples of like elite coaches too yeah for us a hobby and matt hume you know those those two guys are like hugely respected yeah veteran coaches yeah the the the like you know shark among shark thing is like i said it's it's great to have that there and there are times where like you need that little bit of a push but man i've seen so many fighters through the years that that i've trained with that they they could they could hang in the ufc but they didn't make it right for you know for various reasons for various reasons and and you know personal life stuff is probably uh a big thing but a lot of times what ends up happening is that personal life stuff falls into you know finds its way to the to the training map and then a couple of bad days of training and it's like [ __ ] this you know the guy that i was used to you know pick him apart is beating the [ __ ] out of me [ __ ] it i'm done you know like it's uh it's hard when you're young to have that vision too because if you are getting picked apart the idea that you're banking your future on this you know maybe you could go and be a fireman maybe you can go and do this you might have other options and things you've been thinking about and then you keep getting lit up in the gym and you're like what am i doing i'm not going to be a pro i'm not going to win a world title what am i doing you just give up bad confidence or you know you're a bad relationship yeah bad relationships are a lot that's a big yeah that's a big one i knew this one guy that right before his fights his girl would start big big drama with him right before his fights like the night of the fight she would leave the hotel storm out go down the bar and drink and it was like oh my god and his coaches would be going crazy like to control this lady
yeah and you know and he's [ __ ] the night before his big fight and she's down at the bar in the hotel in the casino and he's like what the [ __ ] man but it's like there's certain people male or female that need exorbitant amounts of attention and when they feel like you're paying attention to you and this one goal that that that that fight takes away from them yeah they're vampires and they're like i'm not getting enough blood i'm gonna have to go downstairs and get some other blood yeah i mean this really right we know people like that right we do right i've seen him seen him playing plenty of times it's horrible because you want to tell the guy like you gotta get out now get out now and run change your phone number and throw that old phone in the ocean and get the [ __ ] out of here man move out in the middle of the night don't let her know where you're going you gotta go man you gotta go it's like i mean my wife and i angel she's a she's [ __ ] she she she bet on me you know like i mean we're we're a team uh and uh i i wouldn't i wouldn't be still fighting today without her you know like uh it's uh it's been a long road and well most guys like you that are like super successful over long periods of time do have a steady relationship because it takes that factor out of the equation i think for fighting it's very important i mean you look at all these fighters that are uh elite and have done really well for long periods of time a lot of them are married yeah a lot of them have families a lot they have because they that's a stable home life gives them comfort and security like relaxes them the guys that are out chasing tail all night long like and dealing with you know 50 different dms that you're juggling back and forth and like those guys are crazy like that that you're you only have so much bandwidth in your life i don't understand how they do it they don't do it well no one does it well there might be a couple exceptions maybe for a little while i've heard some
stories but it's like guys who drink a lot who also train and you know and then they they get to a point where you know you're partying like a couple of days before the fight and you still pull it off like yeah you're pulling it off but you're not hitting your full potential yeah there's no [ __ ] way yeah and if you fight somebody like you the thing is it's like if you're an elite fighter and you can drink and you can party and you can still win what if you fight someone like you who's not drinking not partying sleeping well getting all their recovery in and is doing all the discipline things that you need to be it they're going to edge you or they might knock you out they might catch you they might catch you because you even though you're a bad [ __ ] there's a lot of bad [ __ ] there aren't there's a lot and and everybody's gotten off switch and everything like everybody can make a mistake everybody can get submitted like oh yeah [ __ ] plenty of jiu jitsu black belts you throw strikes into the mix oh yeah i've been choked out so when rodolfo vieira got submitted remember hernandez caught him in a guillotine and we're like no [ __ ] way like that tells you right there and that guy is a gorilla yeah i mean he is [ __ ] jacked in an elite brazilian jiu jitsu black belt for him to get submitted yeah anybody can get submitted jacare got submitted remember i mean the people get submitted got his arm broke got his arm broken yeah my knees is no joke man that guy's terrifying yeah um it's just we're humans yeah you know the body's not designed for this so speaking of we're humans like tell me about this lyme disease thing man because i'm terrified of lyme disease yeah it's a [ __ ] um so i uh like 2015 uh i started feeling like [ __ ] you know and it was like joint pain i was getting some uh like neuropathy i i'd sit on the floor with my kids and my legs would fall asleep or you know like just positional [ __ ] and it's like i i
[ __ ] my neck up in 2014 uh like 10 days before i fought yancey maderos um so i was like okay my next banged up like like bulging disc like um i don't even really know is it like an mri no i didn't get an mri it was ten days before the fight uh it was the most unspectacular thing it was like a whiplash injury uh i uh i was sparring uh mickey golf when he was like 22 21 and uh he threw like a hook and i just clinched a body lock and my head hit his his chest and it just tweaked to my left and like i felt it i have it on video and it's like i like shrugged my shoulders move my head around it was the last round of the day i was like all right this is going to hurt later but we're going to get through it like i only got to that fight because of you know a chiropractor and his magic fingers uh and some graston but uh so like a lot of the symptoms that i was getting um from the lyme i attributed to being a fighter like my knees hurt of course they [ __ ] hurt like uh you know i mean to the point where i'd be 45 minutes into a training session and have to get up like an old man push on my knees and stuff like that it's getting you know numbness and tingling uh i was getting like brain fog and it was pretty good i kind of like go into a room sometimes and like go to like clean up and just kind of get lost um so uh before my fight at 196 um like it got so bad that i was like i was contemplating retirement at ufc 200 i was like i'm going to get through 196 i'm going to ask the fight on 200 to retire um and uh you did not know you had long did not know i had lyme disease um you know like i said i nervous system was was kind of shot um joints were swollen i'd get some twitching in my eye was mostly where i'd get it just for like days on end
um very occasionally i would say the wrong word while i was speaking and not even anything close like just the complete wrong word would come out um and you know you'd notice and you're like what the [ __ ] did i just say i hope they didn't notice um so i was telling my doctor about this uh before my pre-flight physical uh or during my pre-flight physical for 196 and he's like you know he's like honestly i i think you have lyme disease and i was like all right you know so we we ran some tests tested me for lyme um to this day i still don't test positive it's about 50 of the people uh on that have lyme test positive for it um so he's like uh if it's lyme disease you know and he's like we ran some other tests there's some antibody that i had that showed an infection that they associate sometimes with lyme um she's like we're gonna put you on doxy and he's like if if you do have lyme disease within you know a week 10 days he's like you're going to feel different you know what is it called doxing doxycycline doxycycline um so like i fight uh fight diego and that was the first time like i was i was kind of out of it i could barely train for that fight um like i would i would miss training sessions like live grappling sessions or sparring sessions and like because i could barely get out of bed or like uh so i was i i would i would get in maybe six sessions a week um you know and kind of just focused on like all right well just be in shape you know like i could run on the treadmill it's the easiest thing for me to do at that point was to run on the treadmill which is weird it's different than what most people experience most people experience uh difficulty doing aerobic exercise and uh
they can do anaerobic stuff i couldn't do anaerobic stuff like if i lifted uh or did sprints i'd be banged up for [ __ ] days um so and and that fight like i remember like when i when i fight and i think it it has to do something with the lights too like i don't see the cage like beyond the cage i don't see anybody in the stands i don't i barely hear my [ __ ] corner for crying out loud um so that fight i the whole during the whole fight i could see like throughout in the stands you know i was so like unfocused um that like it was just it was a weird experience it's the only time that's ever happened to me um but get out of the fight uh and uh and get on some doc cycling uh the following week and it was like within a week or so just like my doctor said i started feeling way [ __ ] better um it took me a few years to figure out when exactly i got bit i had assumed that it was probably early 2015 and then after learning about uh you know the early symptoms of lyme disease and pulling my head out of my ass remembering the experience that i had in 2013 it i'm i'm pretty much 100 confident that i was bit in like late may early june of 2013. what makes you think though uh i had a period of time where i was like i basically had morning sickness i was extremely nauseous in the morning um and and like early lime it's like flu-like symptoms and and and migraines and stuff like that and so i had really bad nausea like if i picked up my coffee cup and i was like breathing in and i got a big whiff of my coffee it would make me gag really yeah uh like brushing my teeth i'd [ __ ] just take the taste of like the toothpaste make me gag uh i had two kids in diapers at the time every time bringing the friggin garbage out oh man i'd be dry heaving the whole way down
the down the driveway for like two weeks and i was like my kids are in daycare i think my my niece had like rotavirus or something at the time i was like i got a stomach bug like whatever um and then i got a series of migraines like right kind of as the the nausea was dying down i got i don't know i think it was like seven migraines in 10 days or something like that so i went to uh neurologist and ent ran a bunch of tests they tested me for lyme tested negative uh they couldn't find anything so they're like hey let's just we're gonna we're gonna kick the ball down the road a little bit see if it comes back and you know uh and and figure out what we can do um so that i kind of forgot about that um and uh after you know kind of educating myself online after i uh you know was diagnosed uh i was like maybe you know maybe that's when it was um but it took a it took a while to get over because it was you know just about three years that it had untreated uh you know and the bacteria is a sneaky little [ __ ] uh they call it the great imitator because it can give everybody completely different symptoms um and it can pass the blood brain barrier and and this all this other [ __ ] you know um it also has a uh like a toxin in the cell wall of it so if you kill too much of it at one time uh or in a short period of time you experience what's called like the herxheimer reaction uh which is basically you're being like poisoned by the death of the lyme bacteria yeah it's a it's a shitty it makes it it makes you it's it's a [ __ ] amazing thing because it's like here's this little thing that this little bacteria that when it dies it makes you change what you're doing so that you don't like it's a getting over lyme is especially like like untreated for a while is a marathon and i'm not good at that [ __ ] um
so like i i was on doc cycling for six months um you know i've ended up six months yeah and then it's uh that's an antibiotic yeah it's an antibiotic i was i was i was i was [ __ ] [ __ ] like four to five times before noon i mean in in 2016 so leading up to like i started to lose a little weight in 2015 but uh i used to walk just under a buck 90. um after that first six months on dox cycling i w i was walking around at 163 pounds uh before the tiago alves fight whoa yeah i lost a [ __ ] ton of muscle and of course it's like oh it's usada jim's off the sauce and i was like no i'm pooping so much like you have no idea uh that i just can't keep up with it but um but you were still fighting i was still fighting yeah that's crazy so but that's not we're not even done joe so uh i was on it for six months and uh i felt way better you know that was whatever it was uh september um then i did you know in in march so i was like hey doc like do you think we can you know get off of the antibiotics and he's like yeah let's give it a try and it was about seven weeks and then i started to feel like my symptoms were coming back and then me being an [ __ ] and like no no they're not like it's it's not it's not the lime again so like i kind of waited and by the end of the year uh it [ __ ] kicked my ass um like leading up into uh what was that 208 uh when i fought dustin like that was that was the hardest couple weeks before a fight that i've i've ever had like i i because i was trying to get back on the dox cycling i was trying to to supplement even way better and you know you're not supposed to take it within two hours like two hours before two hours after supplements and stuff like that and like i don't like working out with food
in my stomach so and i can't take the doxy on an empty stomach because it then you know makes my stomach upset so uh so i was like trying to figure out like the best way to get back on it and it just kept kicking my butt and kicking my butt um finally like i don't know maybe two weeks before the fight i started to kind of get it get it dialed in uh and then unfortunately i was like fight week i was uh i was having a herx uh reaction and and uh it was a really weird experience of getting uh i was i was having like muscle tremors when i was cutting weight so like i was sitting there like punching yeah yeah i couldn't stop couldn't stop my arms from moving uh like it's gotta be freaky my my vision was a little messed up and i don't know if it was the lights or whatever but like when i fought dustin that night like every to me like everything kind of had like a yellow hue to it it was weird um and i don't know if that was just my eyes being weird or what but so this is the side effect of the virus exuding a poison yeah yeah yeah cause i i finally like kind of figured it out uh like right right before that fight um so then like 2017 was uh like i was still dealing with it and it it was it was difficult like the first half of the year was pretty difficult um and then like through the through the summer um it's it started to like get a lot better for me uh you know i i changed my diet i started eating a lot like a lot better food i mean like when i first found out i had lime like we're trying to like kind of adhere to the lime diet you know the lime lime diet is like basically a paleo it's a it's an inflammatory disease so avoiding alcohol sugar gluten uh dairy stuff like that but it's like i also had a bunch of little kids and it's like well if i'm making my food and trying to make their food so they're
not eating mac and cheese hot dogs and chicken fingers every day like this is gonna be really [ __ ] hard so you know like i've never like adhered to that diet like specifically but totally eat a ton more like whole foods and and vegetables and [ __ ] like that now so uh and definitely like i eat way or drink way less you know so how did you get off of how did you kill the lime is it is it 100 done or do you still have like relapses i haven't had a relapse uh since yeah about about 2017 yeah oh that's nice so five [ __ ] years yeah freedom yeah um so you went through it for a sense essentially like a solid four years a few years yeah so it was uh well like it it took a while for it to start kicking my butt you know like i had that first instance in 2013 when it was when i first got bit but then like i couldn't really tell anything you know but if you had gotten on antibiotics right then you probably could kill yeah yeah three to three to four weeks uh is usually um what doctors will uh you know prescribe and if you catch it early you usually fare pretty well with it um but like yeah it was uh i mean 2017 i didn't feel like i could start really like excuse me uh like pushing myself and and sprinting and lifting again until like maybe april of 2018 wow um and then i was still on doxy through that period of time so i basically i took it for about two years uh like so i had a six month period like eight weeks off well a little more than eight weeks off but uh you know a couple months off and then basically two years that's crazy yeah a lot it is a lot and i kind of what what what made me completely stop i kind of had figured it like figured out how to you know the diet and all that stuff right um
and with the meds and the and supplements um and i ended up getting the stomach bug was going around so the last time that i took doxycycline was uh new year's eve 2018 uh i rung in the new year puking my brains out and i was like like i can't i can't do this anymore like it was like it was a you know a bad one and it's like that's it that's i haven't i haven't taken doctors did you have to take probiotics while you were taking that to help your gut health yeah what stuff did you take um i took a few over the years um a couple of yeah a couple different brands i was trying to what about like fermented foods yeah kimchi yeah right after that like when i was sick uh with that with that stomach bug like yeah it was like uh kefir and yogurt like that's all i ate for like a couple weeks was was uh anything fermented sauerkraut you know unpasteurized sauerkraut like kimchi and [ __ ] it was like it was a it was a ball of gas but but yeah i felt like it kind of kick-started me into like a little bit repairing maybe some of the damage i don't know if i totally did but uh yeah it was a it was a it was a long [ __ ] road you know and uh it's it's it's such a shitty thing because it's like since people don't always test positive for it it's hard to get diagnosed with it um and you have to like i mean some doctors don't they don't like uh it's not that they don't understand they don't necessarily appreciate what what everybody's going through and there's like kind of two schools of thought with it there's a lot that say hey you know it doesn't matter how long you've had it three weeks a doc cycling is gonna kill it and then there's the other side it's
like no like it it can be [ __ ] stubborn um you know it's uh for for me it was easy because i was the one fighting it like i'll [ __ ] i'll deal with anything you know uh it the scary part is like my kids like like [ __ ] man like i it i don't i don't want them to have to you know deal with the [ __ ] like i'm i'm used to being in pain you know like i'm used to being uncomfortable because it's like i i appreciate it being a being a lifelong athlete it's like oh yeah my my knees are sore my back is sore it's like it's supposed to be like that because it means i went hard yesterday right right you know like uh i i've i've had the the opportunity to meet a lot of people that uh have been super uh like super tough and and uh you know elegantly fought this thing um it's uh it's a it's a shitty shitty little thing you know it ticks her [ __ ] and they're [ __ ] everywhere too it's so common on the east coast i know so many people that have lyme disease yeah and do you know what morgellons is you ever hear of that morgellons is a disease that they don't even know if it's real and uh i had to interview these people once at a morgellons conference and it's it's very strange because they feel like they have fiber growing out of their body and they have like these they start itching themselves and they they hallucinate but one of the people that i talked to was a doctor and he also has more jealous and he said but one thing that we all have in common is he goes most of these people also have lyme disease and they're the links between lime and uh like als and and some other stuff it's like it's [ __ ] wild oh that makes sense right it's crazy it's got neurological issues yeah but what he was saying is that it's neurotoxic and that when you say lyme disease like if a tick carries lime the way he was
describing it to me it's like it's not as if it's like you can isolate a compound and that compound is lime he said depending on the tick it could have a host of different toxins along with this one that we consider lime it's not one thing yeah and he said the lyme disease itself like when people have lyme one of the one of the symptoms is this neurotoxicity and that in neurotoxicity he believes that it can trigger hallucinations so he was seeing like things moving across his eyes like he would look at himself in the mirror and he thought he saw like a worm moving across his eyelids so like these people they start scratching themselves and they itch like little holes in their skin and then you get carpet fibers or like in you know dog hair or something on it and you think you're growing hairs out of these fibers and part of it is because you're kind of hallucinating and he this is very controversial i'm not sure if this is right or wrong but it made sense when he's saying it that everybody who he knows who has it or a large percentage of them of course in your situation you didn't even test positive for long but he was saying a lot of these people also have lyme disease yeah it there's there are a lot of like uh i know of a lot of like co-infections right so the i always hack up the name it's like boreal borealis or whatever it's the uh the the typical like lime bacteria um but sometimes there there are certain types of like mold that that creates sensitivities and um i mean [ __ ] you get what this the the lone star tick yeah with uh you you get allergic to red meat like yeah alpha gal my friend evan has that yeah yeah yeah you know evan yeah he was we were hunting together and he told he couldn't eat red meat i was like what are you saying yeah yeah we've talked about it a little bit it sucks yeah it's bad [ __ ] up i know that would be the worst that's 80 percent of my diet yeah yeah you know and and he just he shot a giant elk too so there's like 400 pounds of red meat that you can't eat i haven't asked him like what were your symptoms right like is it worth tough
that out yeah i think it's bad yeah i think it's pretty bad you get a little itchy or like you know right right you're like your [ __ ] prolapse like one of my kids is allergic to dairy but she'll take like a lactate if she wants ice cream and just fart it out but she had no idea why she was so farty then we realized we had to take her to run some tests and she is like a legitimate allergy to lactose my my uh my oldest when she was born she was uh lactose intolerant so she like was just fussy we didn't figure it out um until like we we put her on like uh uh even though i hate it we put her on soy uh formula and it was like day and night really almost done she's sleeping like and then uh my youngest he was lactose intolerant for uh i don't know like maybe the first year or so um and then he kind of grew out of it that's interesting yeah my middle daughter was like that too she we um gave her milk one time and she threw it up all over the place and i was like that's interesting you know like what what is the what's going on like formula with milk like milk formula she couldn't tolerate it but breast milk no problem yeah and um then as she got older it went away but now she just avoids it and you know that's it's nice when your kids eat healthy yeah you know my kids eat healthy fortunately but man it's so it would be a trip when i would like like one of their friends would stay over and you know you'd have to feed them and like what do you eat like you don't eat that you know it's like can you give me pasta with butter like that's all you eat like okay i'll you know we can definitely have pasta with butter but i i need you to know that there's nothing in there like this there's no protein in there there's no vitamins in there like you're not getting any real food my cats are good like they they they have their picky moment except for wyatt my uh my 10 year old that kid will eat anything and he will out eat the both of us combined and he's like you know i mean he's a decently sized kid but
like you know he's [ __ ] strong as an ox uh he's not like a huge kid like and he will eat like a man and he always has he always has he's like four years old they're weird how different they are out of the box the personalities are different everything's different same household same parents same rules yeah they they come out of the womb different i mean i used to think i was more skeptical of the nature and i thought it was much more nurture with the way kids personalities are formed but watching my own kids they're so damn different from the jump yeah my so so my oldest like i didn't i didn't read any books i didn't like i was like it's a baby we're gonna we're gonna figure it out right you know like be cool with it like how hard can it be like she was when she was born uh she had i don't know probably three four inch long like black hair she had she had hair on her arms and legs she had yeah when she was born she had hair on her legs yeah like popeye forearms she was a she was a like a little monkey like like she popped out and i was like holy [ __ ] i have a picture of her at a day old holding her head up whoa yeah she's laying on my chest i'm doing like the you know the skin-to-skin thing and my wife snapped it she like picks her head up and i'm like what the [ __ ] you know the other three like total newborn baby like you know loose head and all that stuff and it was like a complete trip going from her who i mean as soon as she could stand she could run and jump wow like she was just she was born at three months old it was like it was crazy uh that's wild yeah and she's [ __ ] so she's a le well she'll be 12 uh in like a month and a half and she's as tall as i was when i was like 16. like like she's totally gonna be taller than me i mean my dad is
what was six four before he you know squished all his discs how old is she now though she's 12. well that's 12. that's usually when they hit periods right 12 13. we don't want to go over that yeah i know believe me i've been through it um but when they do that that's when they kind of stopped growing yeah yeah for girls boys keep going boys keep going until sometimes like 19. yeah it's uh yeah it's it's wild the the difference so i got girl boy girl boy your dad is was your dad a wrestler as well no no my dad uh i think he rested like one or two years but like he uh he could have he probably could have played football he was a he was a big dude um how do you smush his discs carrying heavy [ __ ] hmm like i my dad my dad is uh he still is today just in a different way but uh he like growing up he was a cartoon character like i i was looking through some pictures and i i posted one uh a couple weeks ago he looks like [ __ ] mr incredible from the the cartoon movie you know the pixar like his head is just [ __ ] this giant block and like the one picture i mean he's got the 80s shirt and it's like a like a v-neck or something that's just this big plume of [ __ ] black chess hair coming out and it's like dude like he was yeah he was 6'4 240 like just it's towered above everybody and everybody always you thought he was everybody thought he was like bigger than that like it's okay you know i've met plenty of people who are bigger than he was but he had this like presence that he was like seven foot tall and you know 500 pounds like uh but yeah he used to he used to carry just stupid [ __ ] did he get his discs fused no no they're just still kind of yeah [ __ ] little that's a [ __ ] design yeah disc is a [ __ ] design because it's one of the things that goes in fighters and wrestlers and jiu jitsu people more than anything everyone i know that does jiu jitsu has disc issues
after a while he just hit a point where something's wrong yeah he he he definitely like exacerbated those issues like i've seen him so uh used to um do like residential framing you know the like skeleton of the the house and um this one builder that he used to work for guy was a little tiny italian guy was a bit of an [ __ ] um he wouldn't like backfill the houses the to the foundation so it was you had like one spot to maybe bring lumber in uh to to the you know the foundation so when we're doing the beams in the basement um like you'd have this 40-foot beam that weighs 800 pounds and it's like you really don't have a good way to get it across the [ __ ] to the other side so that [ __ ] would cinch his tool belt tight tall enough his shoulder just fit right where the middle of the beam was and he would pick that [ __ ] [ __ ] up and walk across the stone you know three-quarter gravel stone basement uh get to the other end lean back a little bit lift it up and put it on the side and it's like 800 pounds 800 pounds yeah we dragged 800 pounds he carried 800 pounds carried like off the ground off the ground yeah yep that's insane it is insane that sounds like one of the strongest humans that's ever lived he's he he's got some stories but how long is the beam 40 feet how is that possible the 20 so we weighed it so every foot weighed like 19 and just under 20 pounds so he's in the center of this yep bouncing on his shoulder 800 pounds yeah er bounce it's [ __ ] wild that's crazy it's almost hard to believe it is hard to believe i i've seen him almost die a few times too he's doing stupid [ __ ] really yeah yeah there are a couple occasions where it's like oh [ __ ] you know like
he's not going to be moving the uh one time we were we were raising a great room wall so it was two by six uh wall and and uh we had this machine this rough terrain uh forklift and it was the biggest piece of [ __ ] like company colors were rust like that's you know like we weren't we didn't we didn't have a [ __ ] ton of money growing up uh so like he it saved so much time having this forklift when um so he buys this thing it had a it had an old straight six from a uh i think it was a six might have been a from a jeep that was um taken by the nazis in world war ii and actually had a swastika welded onto the case of it whoa yeah like he found this thing in a junkyard and like really yeah yeah uh and it was like the big like it was the biggest piece of [ __ ] but it saved us so much time like getting stuff up to the second floor and all that [ __ ] um so it would it got to a point where it would just constantly stall it had zero breaks um so he's lifting this wall and uh we're going to lift his wall in a kind of position and so we had it laid out so you got these two by sixes and there's like the king stud which runs up where the header is you know the big piece that like over the windows and and fireplace um and uh and then like liner so it was like i think it was three i think it was three two by sixes um so he's driving it's got this tiny little cage like over top of it and it stalls so the machine starts rolling backwards and these these two by sixes get caught on the back of the cage and like it's winding back and my brothers and i are up on the second floor and we start [ __ ] screaming at him because you see it just like winding up so
he like looks and he sees it and he throws his head down as hard as he can as the as the 2×6 slides off and it was like a sami sosa 450 yard bomb like crack and it's like i'm jumping off the second floor you know my brothers are sliding down uh the the studs to get down the floor like and he rolls out he rolls out and he like gets up the machine rolls into the woods and he's like [ __ ] you know start swearing he said like yosemite sam you know bumps anything starts wearing like a like a sailor uh that's like you're standing up like what the [ __ ] like you should be dead you should literally your brain should be like 20 feet that way wow uh yeah so he ended up you know this back of his head ended up swelling up pretty good but he was okay you know concussion but you come from durable jeans yeah dude like he actually he actually got a an mri uh a few years later uh and the doctor's like you know he's like you know your brain looks good and everything he's like you know one one interesting thing is that uh for the size of your head your brain is kind of small he's like you see you're telling me i've got a baby in a box car he's like pretty much so i guess he's got here he's got homer simpson so it's like he's just got an extra thick layer of bone around his head oh man yeah so there have been a couple others that were like dude saw him cut himself with a chainsaw once that was exciting oh jesus yeah it's funny how some people are just born more durable you know like um do you ever see um when they uh examined marvin hagler's head no marvin hagler who's one of the greatest boxers of all time one of my favorite all-time boxers marvin had muscle on the outside of his head like like head gear yeah they said the size of the muscle outside of his head was far larger than a normal person like unusually large to the point where it's
literally like he had like a cushion on the side of his head it's so weird well he also had a tremendous chin anyway he was only knocked down once ever in his whole career but it was a [ __ ] knockdown um god forget it juan rodan pretty sure his juan rolled in but it was a it was a fake knockdown like it should have been a slip and they called it a knockdown it's like man it it it sucked because like you go and watch the punches he absorbed from like murderous knockout punchers like john the beast mugabe you know you know tommy hearns never goes down and there's one slip it was almost like the guy like he cuffed him in the back and kind of pushed him down but his head he had built in they this like these muscles right here yeah the mandible muscles they were like extra thick that's the like that's the the [ __ ] up part is that my head is just as big around as my dad's and he's eight inch you know eight inches taller than me and it's like i could take my hat and plop it onto his head that's crazy if i didn't have like you know a hunched over you know quasimodo posture i'd probably look like a lollipop you know it's uh but yeah he's [ __ ] his head is super do you ever go back and look at your career and go man what would have happened if i didn't have that [ __ ] lyme disease um no not really just deal with it yeah just deal with it um i'm i'm not that type i i'm i'm good at what's right in front of me like going forward um you know i mean even even with the positive [ __ ] you know it's like okay you gotta be that way if you're that way with the negative [ __ ] yeah like okay that's good that's awesome you know like oh i won i i won i won a bonus and you know i made a bunch of money great when's the next one like what's next right um you know like i've obviously like there there are a couple
fights where it's like i'd like that one back but right you know i don't have a time machine so what are you gonna do yeah um what is this booze you brought what is going on here tell me about this um you make your own booze now i well i i have it in a little bit these are actually well that is uh so this one right here is a coffee coffee liqueur like a basically a uh a cold brew an alcohol cobra um like a kahlua type deal it's less syrupy than kahlua so i make one [ __ ] open let's find out what's up i make one they're better cold they're not very cool well maybe it's better to have it when it's not cold so you see how good it really is yeah so yeah so this uh should we get ice cubes or should you just drink it like this let's try it all right let me try it all right pour a little that let's see what's up so how did you learn how to do this um i just read stuff and uh and just started practicing yeah you know what reading comprehension it [ __ ] works how does one learn how to make a coffee liqueur cheers sir cheers so this one uh this one i made up the recipe myself whoa that's an acquired taste that is not that bad when you when i first make it it's pretty it's pretty hot um when it's cold like i said it it'll it'll be it's not bad though it's interesting it's got a it is like a like a liqueur like a i guess like a kahlua ish but not yeah yeah yeah exactly essentially this one is just like some cold brew with some other stuff in it and then some everclear is that what you add to it yeah yeah because it's uh it's highly alcoholic and it doesn't affect the flavor do you make your own everclear no no i can't oh jeez jesus no that was a inadvertent cough i think i have allergies now that's the thing about moving to austin is that they say you develop allergies you got any allergies jamie uh yeah for sure did you get them before
i had them i've lived in ohio a long time yeah it's some weird stuff i'm starting to get like i'll get like runny nose and i think i'm sick but then i work out and i feel great and i'm like hmm i think it's a [ __ ] allergy because the pollen's in the air like i went out to my car there i have a black truck it was covered with like yellow stuff like this is wild so much [ __ ] pollen i didn't get i didn't i got to like 26 before i experienced any allergies and then i broke my nose and my septum's mushed to the side so now i have like a constant post nasal drip and it's like i experience a little bit of hours when you retire you're gonna get that fixed i am i after seeing dudley's pictures it's like oh i told him to do it i got mine done and man it was the greatest [ __ ] thing i fell down a flight of stairs when i was five and i think from then on i've never had a nose yeah my nose has been useless and um then obviously all the years of combat sports and and i broke it i don't know how many times yeah and then um i got it fixed and when i got it fixed it was also like you know oh [ __ ] yeah i got full like i used to go to yoga class and they'd go breathe out of your nose and i'm like that's not possible my nose doesn't work i had no nose and you could hear my voice back then it was a different voice it was a more nasally voice and it just changed everything changed my cardio yeah my cardio went up a solid ten percent oh wow like immediately i was like this is wild like i was like mouth breather i was a mouth breather there's a lot of people that are mouth breathers yeah yeah you know like justin gaichy you hear him talk it's just every time he talks it sounds like this like he's just stuffed up yeah all the wars because he gets scar tissue in there too that's what i didn't understand is that the way the doctor was describing it to me he said it's just like cauliflower ear and you get cauliflower ear and you get all that um the blood pools and it calcifies and it becomes hard yeah he goes that [ __ ] happens the inside of your nose he didn't say that [ __ ] but yeah he said that happens on the inside of your nose as well and i was like
really he's like yeah your nose is a disaster area right he's like you have like maybe one eighth of one nostril so the rest of your nose is totally closed ugh i was like oh yeah that's because one side on my left side i go i could get a little and the right side was just junk just garbage there's nothing going on in that side the funny thing about caught fire so the only time i've ever seen that ha so when i fought frankie uh like he's he's beating me you know uh so i go into the third round and i'm like i just got to do something big so i rip a left high keg and of course i don't hit him in the temple i don't hit him in the chin i hit him like right across the cheekbone and the ear so his calcified caulifier rips open and this chunk of like rock [ __ ] yeah goes flying over to the other side of the cage and like one of the state athletic guys like scoops it up they ended up uh his old coach like took it put it in formaldehyde and [ __ ] like that how big was the chunk i think it was like you know maybe the size of a nickel wow yeah uh i so that was right before tryouts for ufc uh they're not rather tough uh five so like i think it was like three weeks prior so like we go down there my eye is bloodshot red still and his his freaking ear is as black as his mug it looks like it was gonna fall off oh my god cauliflower here is so nasty yeah i've there was one mma fight in japan i forget who was fighting but a chunk fell off that was the size of a [ __ ] silver dollar it was this giant chunk of this dude's ear fell off and there was a photo of it on the canvas and it was like missing from his ear and there's blood pouring out the side of his head because it's basically a rock yeah like you don't have much you don't have much cauliflower no not too bad not too bad like randy yeah randy couture he's got goddamn gophers living in his ears i mean they're just huge lumps and that is a rock it's a calcified rock and randy told me that he would rub it in guys eyes like when he take guys down
like he would like shove it into their eye socket and like it's basically a rock in your eye as he's taking you down really a point of leverage yeah kind of makes sense right like i mean i guess it's a i i feel like it makes him makes your ear a little more fragile he does right so like yeah you might dig it into his eye and then rip your ear yeah it does jessica i fought yeah man who's the woman she fought laura god damn it yeah you're asking her i'm sorry names i'm not good with names uh pulled jessica's eyes career up she the they stopped it they stopped the fight because her ear was yeah smith leslie smith thank you what did i say laura leslie smith so jessica i hits her and it splatters and we see this hole there it is yeah it's like basically hanging off like look at that there's a hole in her head and leslie smith's so tough she didn't look at that that's the splatter she did not want to stop the fight didn't that that happened to uh um james thompson too right yes yeah but that was a that was cauliflower or his pot yeah that was liquid yeah it was just it wasn't cauliflower yeah and it popped and they stopped the fight and we're like what are you doing you can't stop that it's funny like what someone will stop and won't stop a fight for you know yeah it it's that's another one like you know the cage side doctors it's like you have to try to make a call yeah there it is so oh boy yeah it was it was bleeding pretty bad yeah but it's still it's like oh well you know what you could have stopped the fight for that yeah that's better you could have stopped the fight just for that so it's a [ __ ] referee that's funny that's big dance yeah yeah yeah that was a lot of blood coming out of his ear but i think the the punch that kimbo hit him with was the was worth the knockout yeah that's um you know the ear thing is weird because
that [ __ ] with your hearing like if you take your ear and you bend it over and listen to things like that it sounds different yeah and then you pop it open blink and now you hear everything yeah like that's how you're supposed to hear yeah like the ear is designed that way for a reason yeah so i like never wore headgear as a wrestler ever you know i got half two for matches but at practice i never wore it never got caught fire i'm training for my first fight and all of a sudden it's like my right ear starts puffing up you know so uh i get through the fight and it's like a golf ball you know on the side of my head so um my my brother my brother uh my oldest brother excuse me um is uh is a veterinarian so at the time he was in vet school uh down at u pen so he's two hours away from us so he comes up for uh thanksgiving a f weekend before thanksgiving and uh and drains it he's also stitched me up a couple times on the on my parents couch uh before some of those earlier fights when i got cut and training but uh the athletic commission doesn't need to know about that uh so he he drains it uh it was like wednesday night drains it thanksgiving i'm [ __ ] around with dan rolling around the floor and he just goes and smooshes it like before his eyes it swells right back up um so when it swelled up again it it covered my the hole in my ear so a few days later i ended up getting a like a swimmer's ear infection and uh that was like top two most painful things like that have i guess lasted i'm sure that there i've done some things that like hurt instantly like a lot more but like the whole side of my neck was swollen i go to a uh
urgent care and the guy instead of like drawing it out and bolstering it and stuff like that like you're supposed to do he just lances it cuts my ear open oh jesus uh squeezes the [ __ ] out and like gauzes my ear to my head and i'm like dude like i've got a [ __ ] infection in my ear i can't turn my head didn't give me any antibiotics or anything like that wow like sends me out of there i'm like you're a prick so i ended up uh going to uh you know a specialist uh had [ __ ] no money go to the specialist and uh he ended up doing it right you know putting a wick in there i couldn't hear anything for like three weeks i'd be i'd be driving to to practice and dan be talking and uh all i could hear was the speaker you know on my left side and like he's he's having a conversation and it's nothing absolutely nothing you know and then like since then i get little you know i've gotten a couple little ones but like when mine is swelled up and like liquid it's never hurt me um i a lot of people complain about the pain from that but i've never i've never had i've had them be like bruh excuse me bruised and sore but like never like the cauliflower when it's growing like as has hurt but that infection [ __ ] that hurt like a bit yeah man it's funny how vulnerable your ears are like equilibrium gets all [ __ ] up too yeah yeah actually mine are uh still healing i was out in uh uh utah last week uh at the traeger event and it was so loud like i kind of partially like blew my ear out a little bit at this party really yeah yeah it was that loud it was that loud so for a few days it's it's kind of going away but like higher pitched noises sound like they're behind me do you have a thing from gunshots no because i wear my earpro you always do well i mean not when i'm like hunting or anything like that but if i'm shooting right i'm yeah i'm wearing i know a lot of guys that are hunters that have [ __ ] up ears yeah because of uh in the early especially guys who've been
doing a long time because they didn't realize back in the day that you get ear damage from gunshots yeah it's uh i mean sometimes it's like i don't wear it um anything like when i'm pheasant hunting um and sometimes you shoot a decent amount of times but uh like the shotgun is not as bad sometimes when i'm shooting like if i if i have to shoot uh or i just not have to shoot i haven't had to shoot uh my rifle or you know one of my rifles or the handguns but like they're a little sharper sounding um yeah they [ __ ] hurt oh yeah yeah um i have a nine millimeter remington ultra mag with uh the the with the muzzle brake and it sounds like this is a seven millimeter yeah seven millimeter seven millimeter remington ultramark and it sounds like a [ __ ] canon going off it sounds so goddamn loud yeah and if i don't have your earphones on or a head headset something if i don't have something it's [ __ ] you're [ __ ] yeah like i would never hunt with that without some kind of plugs in yeah you better be taking one shot if yeah you know yeah follow-up shot you're going to have yeah yeah i was uh just the other day i was shooting with uh my son and so i've got a 308 uh bolt gun and i had him like you know laying and prone and we were shooting it at 200 yards and uh every time i'm sitting there i got my my bino's up and just the way the break was made it's like throwing the the gas is kind of back it's like getting slapped and i kept flinching like a little [ __ ] and i'm like all right he's gonna pull the trigger like just don't flinch like keep your eyes on the target and every [ __ ] time i kept like blinking and [ __ ] drawing myself i have a friend who was a guide and he lost his hearing because the guy had a muzzle break and uh the guy swung to take a shot i think it was at a pig i forgot what he said but it was too close to his head and blew his [ __ ] ears out no hearing now he's
got his wears hearing aids yeah it's spooky you know it's like your ears once they go man it's not like your chin yeah yeah yeah there's just no like thing you can put on your chin to make it tougher again yeah um now that you're 38 um and you're thinking of the future you know and you put out this cookbook what do you see yourself doing when you transition out of your mma career uh i'm i'm not totally like like i'm not committed to anything just yet you know it's like it's one of those things that i i feel like i feel like athletes in general uh fighters included um we need to look at the the opportunity that we have like when you make it to the ufc or like a guy that's you know playing in the nfl like dude like you have to look like look at it like tomorrow could be your last day so we need to maximize this opportunity as much as you can and i feel like that's kind of something that i failed at uh you know when i was younger i do remember asking you know former management like hey you know like i just made a bonus i want to do something i want to diversify i want to i want to get into something else and it's like nah just focus on fighting right now it's like well fighting might not be here you know in in a few months i could walk outside step into a pothole and blow my knee out and like who the hell knows right or or be training and and you know get clipped with a knee in the head or something like plenty of plenty of my peers have their careers have gone from awesome to off you know like like that so um yeah so i've been trying to figure out exactly what it is the problem is is that i've lived my entire adult life as a professional athlete so i'm super [ __ ] spoiled
um now while i you know i would have liked to have made more money over the years and stuff like that but that's that's neither yeah neither here nor there but uh i have freedom i have time so i'm trying to figure out what's going to give me at least some of the freedom that i have now to be able to make my schedule so i can spend time with my family so i can do the things that i want to do um and i you know the the cookbook is is like the that first step i think like i always knew that food was going to be a part of my life [Music] and because it's a it's it's always been a family thing like well as a kid we were always no matter we had football practice wrestling practice baseball like we we always ate dinner together so i i try to do that with my kids and i love sharing i love sharing [ __ ] food or you know any of the stupid booze that i make uh you know the home brew so it's like how can i how can i do that um and i think the cookbook is the well i know the cookbook is that first step um i'd sure as [ __ ] don't want to work in a kitchen but um i think like uh with with this the you know the fighters cookbook uh hopefully get people into like kind of realizing to that that they need to take a little control of their food because i think it's been such a uh a big thing in my ability to still be fighting today and my my getting over lyme disease has been my diet um you know like we we sacrifice a lot for the convenience that we get you know living in america and and it's easy as easy as pulling out your phone and going on ubereats and stuff like this or you know pulling into the drive through
um but it's like we don't we don't pay for that convenience necessarily with our dollars like we pay for with our health um because while while there's a lot that goes into like the food science and all that [ __ ] and i'm not a [ __ ] expert with it um i know what real food is and i know that i feel better when i'm eating real food when i'm eating you know a deer or a bear or pheasant that i shot and some vegetables that i grew in my garden uh i just feel better i perform better but uh yeah so hopefully like hopefully the the book can kind of create a little bit of environment and we can go from there and and uh i don't know you know it's uh i'd sure as [ __ ] would like to shoot my bow and my you know my rifle for a living but who the hell knows i've also you know i've spoken to dudley and i've uh i've dipped my toe into uh you know i made a pilot for an outdoor show and i man i i'm not a huge fan of like at least where it was with on tv um you know i know that they're athletes that go that direction um what did you like about doing uh well it felt a lot like mma like back in the back in the the sponsorship days um you know like i i have a couple companies that i'm i consider myself like friends with right like i [ __ ] i josh smith at montana knives i love the dude he's [ __ ] awesome um you know like but the traeger people are great vortex great but like i hate the the whole like influencer sponsorship thing like yeah you know like if it's if it's natural like because if it's like hey if we have a relationship and we're friends like it's great right but like man i have a tough time with like you know uh faking it because that's the last thing that i want to do you know like i my my attitude with
i was never very good at social media and i'm still not very good at social media um but when i when i was diagnosed with lyme i feel like i made a change in the way that i approach it and it's like hey [ __ ] it like i'm just gonna be me and i'm gonna show people who i am because i feel like every fight that i've had since then has been a gift um so it's like you know i'm just i'm gonna be honest and i'm not gonna portray you know some some brand uh like myself like make myself a brand um and not really show who i am um now granted i probably swear too much on social media but no you don't if that's who you are it is who i am it is but like yeah it's uh it's it's it's it's tough like the whole like transitioning thing going to and influencer yeah like i yeah it's a tricky world tough time it's this is it's a world where a certain amount of [ __ ] is necessary yeah and i i i don't yeah i don't do that yeah i don't do it i like yeah it's just uh like that's it's who i am and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna change who i am like i'm not like in the world of jiu jitsu and martial arts like loyalty is this thing that gets thrown out all the time right i'm not loyal to people i'm loyal to to principles right like if if you and i are similar and we believe in the same things and you're a good [ __ ] person and you treat people well hey man we're gonna get along like but as soon as like shady [ __ ] starts happening like i've i've walked away from probably a lot of money but plenty of people um because they treated people like [ __ ] or they you know but you know what you get out of that you get something that's so valuable yeah i get people behind peace of mind is everything yeah if you're involved in like imagine if you're involved with like you're you're doing you're running
like a you have some sort of a business and uh you and your partner in your office you you you know that he's like doing something illegal like imagine being like bernie madoff's kid yeah like they all worked with them right one of them wound up committing suicide yeah i mean that's not it's not an accident that that it's not coincidence that happened together like imagine being involved with someone who you know is not the way to do it because you get to live with that you go to bed at night and you think to be able to go to bed with peace of mind knowing i'm doing my best i'm doing the right thing i'm being ethical i'm being you know a good person yeah that's everything man yeah and people can't do that they live in hell even if they're making a shitload of money even if you know their their business is running well if they're [ __ ] people over i don't know how they do it yeah neither do i they're they're the the guys that i have around me that have been around me for a long time they're there for a reason you know so you don't want to run a gym you're done now with that i am done with that yeah like i well one of the reasons why i don't want to run the gym is because i didn't i don't want to have an anchor in new jersey you know um like i got i got a lot of people that i love in in new jersey um you know that are related by blood and that aren't um but it's the last the last two years just like you know there are better places yeah you're talking to a guy who bailed out of california for the same reason if you talked to me three years ago and said you think you ever leave california i'd be like man it's going to take a lot getting me away all my friends the comedy store jiu jitsu all the things i like to do in in california but then they're like oh well we'll show you yeah the the government was like check this out and that's like new jersey's it's like
minnie california you know and it's close now now granted i i i'm a firm believer on like you know turn off the [ __ ] tv don't listen to the [ __ ] and you know go talk to your neighbor right like where i live you know i'm 20 minutes from pennsylvania ish you know maybe 30 from new york so i'm like on the in the northwest corner of the state and uh i live in this tiny little town that it's [ __ ] awesome um we bought a place right before like the the pandemic hit and stuff like that end of 2019 and it was like you know okay if we're going to spend a little more time here until i'm done fighting like this where we want to do it surrounded by state land it's great um but yeah you deal with all the [ __ ] the the cost of living the the [ __ ] politics like i had to sign my kids up for private school because public school has to follow by some [ __ ] stuff that our our gen our governor is pushing down the pipeline that mimics some of the [ __ ] that california has to deal with like there's a lot of things that uh that i don't want my kids to have to have to learn at school uh like what kind of stuff well all the a lot of the the let's say you're making me [ __ ] go off the go [Laughter] florida's new thing uh you know the whole [ __ ] anti-grooming law yeah right like so i mean why is a uh why should you know fifth graders be taught about stuff that like like pleasure right it's not even because fifth graders yeah i know like even less what the hell does the math why is a math teacher in high school talking about sexuality right right
um but you know like so in new jersey they're kind of changing over the sex ed thing to to start teaching kids about like essentially kink you know like what are you doing for fun with someone else and it's a slippery slope yeah it's a it's a you know an adult telling a child what they can do that feels good i've had the conversation with my kids about reproduction because we have farm animals we have we have you know like we don't we don't have a male pig we don't have a male goat we just have females two pigs four goats but we've had the roosters those are they're they're gone now and uh we had a male duck until recently because my one new dog is an [ __ ] um and they saw that corkscrew looking thing dragging off the ground after he was on top of one of the other ducks so we're we had we've had conversations please explain that course for things that's his death many people don't know that yeah a duck's penis is very unusual oh my god it's [ __ ] weird as [ __ ] it's it looks like a like a spiral noodle and it's like 12 inches long yeah yeah it's huge well i mean it's yeah it's long it's not very thick right i i heard that i wouldn't know either but anyway um so we've had those conversations but it's like that's about like you know making baby ducks making making baby humans the thing about these conversations in school is um who's having them yeah are we talking about a a sex ed teacher that has a degree in this and understands has been educated in how to communicate sexuality and talk to you or we're talking about a history teacher yeah that for some reason wants to talk about queer theory and wants to talk about uh sex and gay sex and all these different things like i'm not opposed to people being whatever they want to be but i i think there's many people that are teaching
children all kinds of things that probably that's not their field of study and they might not be qualified to teach it and i don't necessarily want them to be the person that introduces my kid to the idea of you know whatever fill in the blank about whatever sexual proclivity it doesn't seem like that's your your business it's not i don't i don't think it is either especially not for a [ __ ] first grader dude it's yeah so it's a they don't really that's not what they're interested in kids that's not what they care about uh so i guess like with with new jersey it's it's teaching them about uh you know anal stimulation and stuff like that hey yeah like which again two consenting adults how old are these kids where they teach them this uh that's like fifth grade so what really yeah like 10 11. fifth grade they're teaching about anal stimulation maybe just math yeah maybe just history yeah like this it's just not their job to it's like i think it's their job to educate children in all sorts of ways right you can teach them how to teach you could teach them you know history and sociology and all sorts of things but when you start doing stuff like that it's like why are you doing that yeah what is this we we never had that before like this seems like something that i mean some parents are never going to have those conversations with the kid right true which is maybe not good either but who are they teachers like are they what teachers qualified to do that i would want to know who is this person talking to my child about anal stimulation who are or or even what are they what is the conversation like like is it a skilled conversation do they know what they're doing or is this like some weird clunky [ __ ] where you're saying try it billy put your finger in your [ __ ] it feels good like or even just i don't think anybody's doing that just like
like orgasms right right like okay it's a it's a part of reproduction but do we need to go into like hey man some of them are [ __ ] great like like oh if she if she tickles your balls right they're teaching eight-year-olds that look we don't we don't need to we don't need to teach them what they can do for fun or what they can do for pleasure if it's this it's the like the creation of life because i mean on the flip side a lot of a lot of kids don't understand about death right like having having some animals and being a hunter my kids kind of understand that like hey once the lights are out the [ __ ] lights are out right but then it's also like we you need to you need to have the other side of that where where life begins right uh but yeah like the stuff that you do for fun i don't i don't i don't need i don't need any teacher i don't need any adult teaching my kids that it's a complicated issue and i think rightly so a lot of parents are very sensitive about people teaching their children about these things and there's a lot of teachers that feel like they're saving the child because they are allowing the child to explore subjects that the parents don't explore at home yeah and they feel like maybe there's a lot of queer kids or a lot of gay kids or trans kids that don't have these conversations with their parents and then the teacher could step in and help and that would be like a way where they could have uh like a safe discussion about these issues which is but then on the flip side they're trying to hide it right they're trying to say like hey you're not allowed to know what we're talking about right that's like whoa yeah yeah that's not not yeah but they're worried about parents complaining about stuff but you know what parents have a right to know what their children are being taught because because listen we all know that some teachers suck we've experienced it i've had teachers that
sucked you vet teachers didn't suck if you have a teacher that sucks and they're teaching you history the consequences are not grave if you have a teacher that sucks and they're teaching you you know various things about alternative sexuality alternative sexual practices like are you encouraging the children to try this are you encouraging the kids to do things they encourage the kids to have sex with each other like what are you doing and how is this conversation being handled i don't know and that's where parents are very right to be concerned because a lot of these people they don't they're not qualified to have these conversations and maybe the way they have these conversations are against your values as a parent and you you would not have that same kind of conversation in that way with your kid and they think it's their right to do this and that it's not your right to know what they're teaching your kid well like it depends on what the subject is if you're saying do i have the right to tell you how to teach math if i'm not good at math no i don't but when you're talking about things that aren't even your field of study yeah i mean yeah why why is it it seems super complex if you want to talk to children very young children about sexuality that seems like that should be something that you go to school specifically for and then this curriculum is carefully analyzed with psychologists and sociologists and people who are experts in sexual reproduction and those let's they should have like informed conversations of how to have these conversations if you're going to have a conversation like that but you're just like a [ __ ] a a history teacher yeah and you want you want to talk about your husband and you're a gay man you have this is how me and my husband have sex with each other and you're you're talking to a seven-year-old like hey like maybe this isn't the place for that it's not the place for you to talk about how you [ __ ] your wife either it's not like when my wife sticks my penis in her mouth like hey hey hey exactly hey this is a [ __ ] little kid who just wants
to play games and have a hang out with their friends and you're just supposed to be educating them but it's it's one of those things where it's the idea that you don't have any say in how your children are educated is bonkers it is that's bonkers it is and i know i've seen some of those [ __ ] parent meetings where the karen's get up and start screaming at the board members and [ __ ] ruin it for everybody i get it i get it if you're a teacher and some crazy person is like who believes in cueing on and thinks just [ __ ] kids tied up in the basement somewhere of a pizza place you know i get it you don't want to talk to that person that person maybe shouldn't have you know the the influence on how the school curriculum is run i get it but that's doesn't you can't lump everybody into that thing and when there's something that makes people very uncomfortable like all of a sudden a public school stepping in yeah and dictating how sexual orientation and and sex preferences and all that should be handled and discussed amongst seven-year-olds i think i'm right to go wait wait wait yeah who are you yeah who are you just not like whether or not this subject should ever be breached with kids it's like who's doing this and how good are you at this and i'm not supposed to know what you're teaching my kids and then they come home and mommy what's a rim job what the [ __ ] what did you just say what the [ __ ] is going on well know it's like well it's like hey hey it's different than toss and salad is it though it's like i get it i mean i'm we're in a weird place as a culture we really are you know and i'm you know i'm not some right-wing nut but i i see the writing on the wall i don't like it i don't i don't like this idea that parents don't have any say in what how their children are being educated because like who's to say this person who's teaching school is even good at it yeah it's there's oftentimes they're not good at it and i mean not that listen not all parents
are [ __ ] good parents but absolutely not all teachers are good teachers no so i mean you're still seeing to this day teachers doing inappropriate things with their students yeah so so why why are we like why are we trying to skirt the line of like what they can get away i just saw an article about some guy who got arrested because he was forcing boys to watch him masturbate a teacher like what the [ __ ] man it's like 13 boys she forced like 13 boys to watch and masturbate jesus christ yeah what what the [ __ ] you know and then and then there's the other one that we don't care about it's when hot teachers [ __ ] kids yeah that's the weird one when the hot woman has sex with like a 15 year old boy like ah he'll be fine hey what do you want what do you want because we all were like that would be cool yeah you know but that would be super confusing it would be well a lot of i mean that's you know yeah there's a lot of those stories out there you can go find them in the news yeah it doesn't usually wind up so well for the guy yeah yeah yeah it's um but so that's so new jersey you're thinking about yeah where would you go i don't know um um that's a smooth transition right there um i want to go west i want to go uh to the mountains montana utah idaho maybe colorado um my wife is looking further like just straight south on the eastern side so um western north carolina south carolina how old are your kids now uh 11 10 8 and 6. you can do it now well you know listen now's a good time you know why because like when they get into high school it's hard to move yeah that's that was our thought when we moved here it's like get them get them and they get made friends like that yeah you know it's i moved to a new high school i knew moved to a new town when i was uh 14. and it was rough it was not that rough but i mean it's hard you got to make friends it's like everybody grew up with everybody and i come in on the new kid
it's uncomfortable yeah you know so yeah we haven't figured it out yet i've got i've got a family and and you know one of my like coaches mentors down in north carolina so like in that area it'd be nice i [ __ ] love tennessee um north carolina is nice too yeah it is um it's just wicked storms they do yeah and it's like like it snows like two flakes and the whole state shuts down that's how it is here yeah last year everything's shut down yeah well that was a that was a pretty rough one i grew up in boston yeah i know it's not rough it was fun i was i have a 95 land cruiser it's like all built out and so i was like yeehaw but it wasn't it was cold it was cold for a while and yet like people don't it sucked for people don't know how to like winterize their house and stuff like that so people lost their power that was a real problem yeah that was bad about it but the roads were what people were complaining about i'm like come on yeah it ain't [ __ ] yeah you just get used to it but it's also having the wrong vehicle is the true thing if you don't have a four-wheel drive true we had uh we had some snow a couple weeks ago and like yeah they're they're still they're people out i think so on a 13 mile drive from my house to the gym there were five cars that were like stranded and it's like come on like like one you knew this was coming and it's like two you should be used to this by now if i was living in a place like jersey where it snows there's not a [ __ ] chance in hell i didn't have a four-wheel drive there's no that would be my car i'm not gonna like when i travel in new york i'm trying to make it so you can only have uh uh 40 miles per gallon like you have to have something that gets like 40 miles per gallon is that new jersey yeah in a few years or whatever the hell it is that's crazy yeah that's crazy yeah my truck gets like 10. yeah 11 if i'm lucky yeah why can't you pump your own gas there i know it's weird right it's weird new jersey
i was like what the [ __ ] going on well you can't what you can't trust anyone you can uh i i do it all the time okay well why aren't you supposed to but uh i think it was uh it was it was a liability thing yeah yeah you're not supposed to um but everywhere else was like yeah what's the what was what was the issue well new jersey is right next to new york you go to new york you pump your own yes pennsylvania no i just it's one of those i don't understand it i think it's like there's a couple other states that have a similar role no i think like oregon is the only other state i believe that um yeah i believe so uh that has certain stations that are like full serve did i [ __ ] never see full serve gas stations when was the last time you saw a gas station where someone's pumping people was getting it's weird because it's like you know uh people are like hey get rid of it so that we can save money on gas and it's like you know but pa has pretty [ __ ] high like their gas tax is high so the gas is kind of similar they would save money like we would save money um you know if we got rid of it but there are a lot of people that live in new jersey like i won't pump my own gas really yeah that's so weird yeah they just want to stay in their car yeah and stay warm yeah that's so bizarre i used to work at a gas station and we used to pump people's gas that was in the 80s i wonder if it was even legal to pump your own gas back then i wonder if they had self-serve gas back then because back then i don't even know if people use credit cards i remember growing up there were pumps that were both there would be stations that would like that's the ones closest they're full the ones everything else itself i've seen that in places there's like one one in ohio that i knew yeah i've seen that in places but it's been a long time but yeah we used to pump people's gas and they would check your fluids and everything oh yeah yeah pop the hood clean your yeah add washer fluid all that jazz yeah clean your windshield it's not like a bum on the side of the highway spinning on it with a piece of newspaper
oh my god there's a guy the other day that he was so dirty and he had this bucket of water that i'm sure was as dirty as him yeah and he's trying to wash people's windshields like this is it's already clean what are you doing man poor guy there's other ways to make money that's true also you see like i saw a guy the other day it was just standing there with a bucket he had a thick gold chain on like a fat like a wrapper gold chain and a nice pair of sneakers and it like looked good he looks like he's all right he's like he's doing good and he's standing there on the at the stop side on the corner where the stop light is with a bucket just asking for money and then the light turns red and he starts walking up to cars with the bucket and some people are giving him money i'm like what's going on here you do not look like a bum sir you look like a man who's found another way to make money yeah just ask for it yeah which is tricky it's tricky um so you'll go somewhere else and then so you're just going to figure out what you want to do when when you're done yeah yeah uh you know it i want freedom yeah like i've kind of come to that point where it's like um i no matter what i do i kind of need to be able to do some of the stuff that i want and you know i i finally got the opportunity to go el cunning a couple years ago i haven't gotten one yet i've gone twice i've been [ __ ] from me to jamie away from one oh wow didn't get shot at it because it was still in the oak brush um but uh i really want my kids to hear that like i want i want to be able to be somewhere where like okay since you know elk season's in september you're not you're still gonna have to be in school but like we can go on the weekends like that's my yeah it's uh well montana is a good spot for that yeah so is colorado yeah for now for now they're trying to bring in wolves to colorado oh
what a what a [ __ ] show like the people's fascination with bringing in large predators is really interesting to me i don't understand why so they they bring in they bring in the wolves right they're willing to do that like okay why don't you you know breed up a herd of three million bison and let them loose in the center of this country we know there's talk about that do you know about that you know about the american uh prairie what is it called the um oh my god what is the name that they use there's a there's a group of people there's a fun they're buying up land and they're reintroducing all sorts of uh bison um pronghorn all sorts of and they're they're trying to make like an enormous national park type deal but they're also uh opening it up american prairie foundation that's it yeah that's it and so they're buying up enormous chunks of land but they're also going to have it open for hunting oh yeah so this is not going to be like yellowstone where you know you have all these animals and they live in this very bizarre protected sort of park area they're trying to sort of bring back this enormous swath of land and reintroduce all the kind of animals that lived here you know probably at the turn of the 19th century it that's cool yeah i like it i just like you introduce the wolves and the wolves don't stay where you want them to stay they know they [ __ ] go everywhere they eat cattle they [ __ ] yeah you know eat sheep they they they get into all sorts of trouble it's a complex issue it is and the problem is um when people agree to bring the wolves in they generally agree that there's a number that those wolves will get to this is what what happened with yellowstone they agree there's a number that those wolves can get to that's a sustainable population then they'll open them up to management and what management means is hunting
like people will kill some of those wolves to keep the populations in check and as soon as they hit that number then they move the goalposts and they they fight against that and they the environmentalists a lot of these animal rights groups they have they call themselves environmental so really animal rights activists they have lawsuits against these proposed hunting seasons yeah and they do that all the time that's that's a giant issue i think if if they recognize that needs to be taken into consideration when they whenever they make this sort of agreement to reintroduce wolves they have to look at what happened when they reintroduced the wolves in the yellowstone how money how many lawsuits were like how many people fought against this idea of the hunting of the wolves because i know they they've had problems with them in other states montana they have wolf seasons in some places and they never reach their quotas that's the thing they need to understand like if like if someone says we're gonna release a hundred wolf tags you're not gonna kill a hundred balls no there's just not they're they're so smart they're so clever they're so [ __ ] they're so adaptive if they get lucky you kill a percentage of that i don't know you'd have to ask someone like steve ranella he would be able to tell you what the percentage of success is but it's definitely not a hundred percent yeah you know it's similar to uh like black bears in new jersey so oh that that's crazy yeah new jersey thing is crazy it's [ __ ] wild so in yeah in like turn of 2000 we had we had the largest population of black bears per capita yeah in the united states yeah in the [ __ ] world yeah like that section of northwestern new jersey because it was only three counties had black bears like legitimately had black bears in new jersey and then it was new york pennsylvania right in the tri-state corner and like i started hunting them uh right when it opened i never saw a [ __ ] bear during during season because it was always uh during
six day firearm which is the second week of december um and i i [ __ ] never saw them i'd see them before and i'd see them afterwards as soon as they hear the first bang bang dude they're they're so tuned in yeah their nose is so [ __ ] good um and like yeah like you you you managed them you got a the first year that they opened it up we got a decent amount um and then like they started to spread out uh and now they're in every county in the state um and like me i've got trail cam pictures of a sow with five cubs and what people don't get it's the only reason that sao has five cubs is because she her body feels like she can support them because she's got plenty of [ __ ] brows to eat you know these the bears don't want to eat garbage and get into you know human [ __ ] um but they will and like a lot of the issues you have too is that people are like oh well you know we can just scare them off shoot them with rubber buckshot you know and that's what like the the cops try to do when they they come to a bear call uh and it's like this bear doesn't have millions of acres to go like like a bear in montana right like he can go like 1500 yards if that right you know and then he's in the next person's you know the next town over or the next person yard or whatever like and the reason that they're coming into people's like get busted into garages and stuff like that is because they're not the big bear like the big bear never does that [ __ ] the big bear eats whatever the [ __ ] the big bear wants to eat which is the blueberries and the and the raspberries and also cubs yeah and cubs um and eats whatever the hell they want and it's the little ones that come into you know uh where humans are and create all the trouble and the thing is is they
know that that bear the big bear will kill them they don't necessarily know that we're going to kill them so they're more willing to deal with us than they are with the big [ __ ] that scared him away right so like i mean yeah they they got rid of our bear hunt this last year um you know we're trying to get it back uh it's uh it's a [ __ ] show because it's like you've got the most populated state in the country yeah and a giant [ __ ] bear herd uh that i mean you shouldn't you shouldn't see one you really shouldn't see them like in your yard in suburbs yeah and you see them all the time you see them all the time did you see that one in far rockaway where there's two giant bears wearing a brawl and there's a youtube video yeah yeah it's a [ __ ] residential suburban neighborhood and you got like two 500 pound bears going to war yeah fighting over trash cans yeah that's what they fight over they fight over territory like who can who can get the trash cans in this neighborhood it's a it's so dumb california almost killed it they almost killed it last year but all the protests and all the people like rallying against it they backed off but they were trying to get rid of the bear hunt in california and it's a similar situation there's an overpopulation of bears you know and overpopulation of black bears is uh i understand that people have this thing about bears where ranella calls them uh charismatic megafauna you know and it really is what that is like people grew up with teddy bears right you grew up with yogi the bear on tv but bears are predators and they're also edible and they taste good they do taste good yeah that's that's another thing people go man you don't eat bears why would you cool bear no i [ __ ] eat bear yeah i've eaten them they're good buy my cookbook there's a couple recipes yeah it tastes like that i describe it it tastes like a deer [ __ ] a pig i i think they fair taste i feel like they taste a bit more like bison that's what i get like beefy yeah
yeah like beefy a little more irony than beef um but like i've prepared them uh i made some sous-vide for uh thanksgiving the one year so like i i cooked them in the in the water bath for a while at like 1 35 or whatever um and then took them out because trichognosis um you know it dies at whatever the hell it is i think we have 137 and that's where i got it to uh and and left it there um and then just hit him on the hit him on the grill real quick and like you couldn't tell that they weren't beef it was a little tougher if you're gonna do 35 i think it's over a prolonged yeah it was right i didn't get trigger notes yeah it's not like if you throw it on the traeger get it to 135 you're gonna you might get sick but also freezing kills the trigger so if you're not always if you well you got to put in the deep freezer yeah but even then yeah it's some some trichonosis the trichonosis from cold areas does not die that way i didn't know that yeah i think there's different strains of trichinosis let's look this up make sure i'm right but i'm 99 sure i am because this is something ronaldo told me ronell said that um there's strains of trichinosis that are southern strains and those strains that if you do put them in the deep freeze they'll die but then there's strains from like you know montana okay alaska well mine was a new jersey bear so let's see here freezing pork yeah but uh i guess it's similar okay um however trichinella parasites in wild animal meat are not killed by freezing even over a long period freezing pork that is less than six inches thick for three weeks will kill parasites but freezing trichinella parasites in wild animal that's interesting i wonder why that is that because if pork has one of the things they're saying recently is that you can kind of eat um pork medium rare yeah where you used to uh domestic pork because yeah because they're raised on yeah concrete right so here it is uh does freezing kill trichinosis and bear meat smoking freezing or curing gay meat does not
kill all trichinel species low temperature smoking will not kill trichonella either yeah i think from what i've read you have to do it over a long period of time i think and i don't think it's 135 buddy i think it was 137 or 20 20 something like that i think it's like 150. where what the hell website was that it was a it was a government website that i went to uh yeah there it is right here it says 160 is more than ample yeah uh temperature to kill all forms of trichonosis and meat that may be living but right it says while freezing for at least 20 plus days is known to kill most forms of trichinosis i cannot recommend this method as there are strains that are resistant to freezing yeah that's what i've heard and that's what uh yeah well i hope that nothing eats me because they might get trichognosis well if you had that you would know ranella had that he said his whole crew got it and they uh they ate bear um uh they they were hunting with rorke denver and they were in uh alaska and he shot a bear and they cooked it over the fire and i was watching the episode knowing that they had all right but it was kind of rainy and they had a shitty fire and they just made do like yeah i think he's like secretly wanted to have yeah it's kind of secret we wanted to get it [Laughter] some people do right my eyeballs are floating i need to run to the oh well go ahead we'll just wrap this up okay it's already four o'clock um so tell everybody when is this book coming out so the book is shipping on april 16th uh april 16th and it's called the fighters cookbook fighter's cookbook cause uh you know i've used i've used food to to kind of fight uh old age and and lyme disease to be able to continue to fight uh just to maintain health yeah man like the the direction that we're going with some of the [ __ ] like i i see some of this like lab-grown meat or this 3d printed [ __ ] or like the uh i mean even like the the some of the farming methods that were you know that we're using that we have
been using for a long time it's it's so [ __ ] yeah it's so [ __ ] and people have gotten into this rhythm of just eating for convenience and um eating real food it changed my life um and uh yeah it's a it's a it's a tool it's a medicine it's it's we need to take it seriously well we'll let it excuse me we'll let everybody know when the book comes out and uh to get you on social media what's your instagram jim miller underscore 155 on everything on twitter yeah i'm not on twitter yeah good for you yeah you know what elon musk just bought a giant chunk of it maybe he's gonna fix it hopefully cause uh when i heard that they like fought to like keep child porn on there was there was a case where this kid got like catfished and uh that he was like 15 somebody took his pictures that he that he took and sent to this person and he had him on twitter and twitter was like fighting him because they wanted to keep them up knowing that's true that's 100 true i believe so that sounds insane it does sound insane that doesn't seem we need to find out that's true otherwise we have to edit that out okay that seems that maybe there's one of those things where you get a weird twitter refused to remove child porn because it didn't violate policies yeah copyright that's what the lawsuit says and let's let's see what the actual case said you're going to have to hold your urine in for three minutes here um says the teen who's now 17 lives in florida identified only as john doe was between 13 and 14 years old when sex traffickers posing as a 16 year old female classmate started chatting with him okay um doe acting under duress initially complied and sent videos of himself performing sex acts and was also told to include another child in his videos which he did the suit claims eventually doe blocked the traffickers and stopped harassing them that they stopped harassing him but at some point in 2019 the video surfaced on twitter under two accounts that were known to share child sexual abuse
material over the next month the videos reported to twitter at least three times first on december 25th 2019 but the tech giant failed to do anything about it until a federal law enforcement officer got involved the suit states doe became aware of the tweets in january 2020 because they'd been viewed by widely by his classmates holy [ __ ] which subjected him to teasing harassment vicious bullying and led him to become suicidal court records show while doe's parents contacted the school and made police reports he followed a complaint with twitter saying there were two tweets depicting child pornography of himself and they needed to be removed because they were illegal harmful and were in violation of the site's policies a support agent followed up and asked for a copy of doe's id so they could prove it was him and after the teen complied there was no response for a week the family claims around the same time doe's mother filed two complaints to twitter reporting the same material and for a week she also received no response finally on january 28th twitter replied to doe and said they wouldn't be taking down the material which had already racked up over 187 000 views and 2 23 retweets disgusting holy [ __ ] thanks for reaching out we reviewed the content and didn't find a violation of our policies so no action will be taken at this time wow [ __ ] you that's what i thought so that's why i yeah i haven't deleted my thing but like i don't want to go on there that's great but that's that's employees man yeah it's some [ __ ] twitter's the wild west anyway like i forget what fight it was it was like a 35 pounders uh the guy like hits an arm bar and his toe got caught in the cage and like i remember like people like attacking him oh he's grabbing the cage with his you know his pinky toe is like last two toes yeah and i'm like he's not like it got caught like when you're pushing your toes kind of curl it's the way it works people were [ __ ] arguing with me like and i'm like have you ever fought like right have you ever have you ever put
your foot against it you haven't even grappled you know like yeah he's not his arm bar would have been better if his foot wasn't caught he would have been it would have been tighter he ended up finishing the armbar but they were like oh you know he used it i was like no he didn't use it like it was just [ __ ] happenstance and you [ __ ] dumbasses are you're on here because it's so toxic and you're just fighting with me a subject matter expert right well it might have been a 15 year old kid it might it was like some knuckles six or so people that i was i was just like [ __ ] this i'm done trolls stay away from the trolls jim miller listen brother i'm a fan uh i appreciate you very much as a fighter and as a person and i wish you all the best and wish you all the best with your cookbook and your career until that uh ufc 300. let's do it and you're going to wrap it up yeah all right brother thank you very much thank you bye everybody [Music] [Applause] [Music] you