Comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan joins Jemele to discuss a variety of topics, including how to deal with online critics, and whether or not to read comments left by other people on social media. Also, the RZA and Don L.I.P. is a guest on the show, but we're not talking about that right now. We're talking about how to handle criticism from other people, and why it's not a bad thing. Joe also talks about how he deals with it and why he doesn't read the comments people write on his social media accounts. And we talk about why people like to complain about people who talk too loud. If you're a sensitive guy, you're in the wrong business, and if you complain about other people's comments, you need to get the fuck out of your head. You're not the only one with a problem, and you don't have to be the one to fix it. Enjoy this episode, and don't forget to subscribe to, rate, review, and subscribe to our other shows on Apple Podcasts, and leave us a review on whatever platform you're listening to the podcast on! Subscribe to our new podcast, and tell us what you think of it! What's your favorite moment of the week? and what you're most annoying thing you've heard this week's episode? on your social media? or your favorite thing you're watching or listening to? Subscribe, comment, share it on your favorite streaming service, and let us know what you thought of it's most annoying or weirdest thing you think it's funny or weird or dumbest thing that you've ever heard of? and how it's making you're having a good day at work, or how much it's getting better than that's funny, or what you re listening about it's going to be more like it's more like a good one or you're just better listening to it? more like that's a good thing, more of that's more of an average day, more like you should listen to it more of something like that, or more of it, or you re just better than you're more of a day to do something more of what you like it or less of that, etc etc etc. etc etc., etc. XOXO, JOE JOE ROGAN. -JOE JORDAN Music: "Good Morning Joe" by SZA
00:01:19.000If they said that you were too loud, that means one fucking person thought you were too loud, and they've put it out there, and then another person reads that and goes, yeah, he's too loud.
00:01:40.000And every check mark, every legitimate celebrity, everybody's trying to beat each other, not just to be the first to comment on anything you post, but to have the smartest quip or the funniest one-liner.
00:02:17.000Well, it is kind of a thing on YouTube, right?
00:02:20.000When I read YouTube comments on other people, I do read them on other people's videos, but it is funny how people, they develop a little community, they fuck with each other and go back and forth, and they...
00:02:31.000You know, and then you let go, oh, this guy always has funny things to say, and you read his comment.
00:03:09.000And also, you've got to always take into consideration, there's a lot of people out there that are doing this while they work because they hate their job.
00:04:23.000And we're learning a real valuable lesson right now as to how that, what Chappelle likes to call, not a real place, Twitter, affects our real lives.
00:04:35.000Like, this line is being blurred between what's happening online and what's happening in real life.
00:04:42.000You know, I... You weren't with Dave at the Hollywood Bowl, correct?
00:04:52.000Because I'm, what, 36 hours removed from that, like one sleep away from what, in the moment, I recognize as an assassination attempt on my best friend.
00:05:06.000Incredible good fortune to be able to be laughing about it now and there's the memes and everybody is making fun of how this guy got broken up into a pretzel and Dave's good reflexes and all that only is entertaining because we don't have to have an inconsolable moment of grief.
00:05:30.000Which was one thought in this guy's mind away from that being the reality today, right?
00:05:36.000Yeah, I mean well, I think the guy was like legitimately mentally ill But also the security of the Hollywood Bowl sucks every dick that's ever walked the face of the earth not the dicks walk But the fact that you let that guy apparently people were saying to security hey this guy passed the barrier and Like,
00:05:55.000he got through the barrier and they ignored him.
00:06:20.000Security at a venue is most likely minimum wage workers.
00:06:25.000Not that the amount of money that you're being paid necessarily indicates how seriously you take your job, but it's going to be hard to get...
00:06:34.00050 people work in one venue at minimum wage that take their job incredibly seriously or have gone through some extensive training to be qualified for that job.
00:06:43.000They definitely get paid more than minimum wage, but the point is like they should hire cops.
00:06:49.000They should have people that are near the stage.
00:06:52.000Especially when it's Dave after all that shit that went down with Netflix and just I don't know what kind of assessments they do about people and like threats and stuff like that but that guy actually had made a tweet saying Dave Chappelle you're next after Will Smith got slapped or excuse me after Chris Rock got slapped by Will Smith.
00:07:11.000I don't know that there's any level of security that insulate you from real life.
00:07:51.000The idea that anybody in this world can get at you, that any thought that somebody has in their head can change literally the course of history and take the people from us that we love.
00:08:13.000Seeing in that moment that I might Actually have lost my best friend on the world stage in front of everybody on cameras all of us there Thinking that we could protect them all of us there thinking well it couldn't possibly Be a guy jumping a barrier jumping on stage with a clean run of Dave with the weapon with a knife that's shaped like a fucking gun That's inconceivable that couldn't possibly happen right if it can happen there It didn't happen anywhere.
00:08:40.000Well, not only that, there's a lot of video of it.
00:08:43.000What happened to those fucking cell phones being in a bag?
00:09:05.000I mean, you know, these questions are the kind of things that will twist you in knots and keep you tossing and turning all night.
00:09:12.000The broader emotion I'm struggling with is the reality that we have to, like, have a bit more gratitude for the people that we have on this planet, in our lives,
00:09:28.000in our sphere of entertainment and influence, While they're here.
00:09:33.000Like, I don't want to be posting about how much, oh, we all love Dave and what we missed, you know, what we could have said, and I don't need a Nipsey Russell moment, you know what I mean, or Nipsey Hussle.
00:09:47.000What I need is people to, like, just think for a minute about how we approach the people, even with whom we disagree, with this veil of violence, with this veil of like, yeah, like, you know, fuck that guy is one thing, but kill that guy is another thing.
00:10:04.000Somehow, removing that guy from the planet removes the idea that we don't like that that person has, or whatever we disagree with must be silenced forever.
00:10:13.000That is what you were saying earlier about Twitter spilling over into real life.
00:10:18.000The attitude that people take when they're removed from social cues, from looking in a person's eyes, from emotions, when you're angry about a person, that's one of the weird things that social media does.
00:10:33.000It removes you from humanity because you're not really talking to a person.
00:11:27.000Could change all of our lives forever.
00:11:29.000So instead of trying to find that needle in the haystack or hoping that the Hollywood Bowl security is on top of their game, or to be fair, all of us who were there backstage in the audience, side stage, who love him, could get there in the moment and save him from impending doom.
00:11:47.000What if we just police each other in the public space?
00:11:51.000What if we don't accept that on social media from our peers, from each other?
00:11:55.000Somebody jumps on and says some shit like that.
00:11:58.000We can't wait till he's on stage at the Hollywood Bowl to be like, hey man, maybe we should take a look at that guy.
00:12:03.000Yeah, but you're talking about, you're trying to manage at scale amongst hundreds of millions of people if you're talking about that.
00:12:10.000Like the amount of people that are interacting with people online, within every minute of every day, there's just millions.
00:13:51.000And I couldn't put it down until I realized that, you know, smokers are, it's a routine thing also.
00:13:59.000So my thing was I would have two cigarettes left in the pack At the end of every night, so in the morning, before you have that first, like, you know, pee even sometimes, you gotta have that first cigarette.
00:14:19.000So what I would do is, for instance, those moments where you need the cigarette, like right after you eat, right before you go to the bathroom first thing in the morning, I would take one of those elements away.
00:14:55.000But what did work was finding spots, just spots, when you're not allowing yourself to smoke and giving yourself free range the rest of the time.
00:15:03.000And the more spots you remove, the less smoking you actually do.
00:15:07.000And you hold to that and hold to that.
00:15:09.000And after a while, you've phased yourself out enough where then you can kick maybe six or seven cigarettes a day instead of 20. You know what I mean?
00:15:19.000And so when you got down to six or seven cigarettes a day, then you went cold turkey?
00:15:24.000Yeah, then it's just like, then you've got some discipline.
00:15:27.000That's a smart way to do it because I think they say that that's the smartest way to do alcohol unless you do it in a medical setting because alcohol is one of the rare drugs that when you kick it, it can actually kill you.
00:15:39.000You become so dependent upon alcohol that your body, if you're an alcoholic, like a severe alcoholic, your body needs alcohol to function.
00:16:33.000I stopped doing it for a long time and then Laird Hamilton sent me another one of those coffee machines and I used it here and I'm like, goddammit, now I got that ahem again.
00:16:42.000So I used to do a lot of things like in abundance, right?
00:16:46.000So drinking now, I actually did the same thing with drinking because for a while in the pandemic we all slipped a little bit too deep into like whatever our comforts were.
00:16:58.000And I was fortunate enough to be in an environment where I was very happy and energetic and we were up and we were doing things and producing stuff.
00:17:05.000And, you know, alcohol is my elixir of choice.
00:17:08.000So I went a little too far with it, right?
00:17:11.000And it wasn't like, oh, you know what?
00:17:13.000I drink too much and this isn't healthy and I need to get like, you know, a better mental state and I should be sober.
00:17:20.000Bro, I started looking in the mirror and I could see alcohol in my face.
00:17:46.000During those days, man, when we were doing those shows at Stubbs, it was weird because it was like the world was still kind of shut down.
00:17:56.000Everything was kind of shut down, but then we would have that COVID bubble and we'd all be hanging out backstage with no masks and celebrities would come back there and party with us and we were all drinking and having fun.
00:18:11.000Because it wasn't just that it was fun.
00:18:14.000It was fun when no one was having fun.
00:18:15.000But it wasn't because we were being reckless or incredibly cavalier.
00:18:19.000There's a regiment of testing and we did all the stuff so that we could have that freedom inside our space.
00:18:29.000Yeah, not just testing, but we tested the entire fucking audience.
00:18:33.000We tested everybody in the audience, we tested everybody backstage, and then there was a couple of knuckleheads that violated protocol and fucked it up for everybody.
00:18:41.000It's interesting when that happened, when a couple people decided they're going to hang out with other people and do podcasts and shit, and then they got sick.
00:19:13.000That's not the fault of the infrastructure.
00:19:15.000These guys put together something That was really difficult to do at the time.
00:19:20.000It required that they pay very close attention to what the CDC was saying and how we could stop any kind of spread if somebody did go outside the bubble.
00:19:30.000And so even though, granted, ultimately we all got COVID, we kept it at bay for very long and it didn't become like a super spreader where people outside of our little world got it.
00:19:40.000We were able to recover and come back because they were so serious about But you guys got it because of a guy that violated.
00:20:53.000And needless to say, by the fourth week of March, there was no boxing world to follow me around in.
00:20:59.000There was no fights that were gonna be able to be had.
00:21:04.000Everybody's calendar was getting eliminated.
00:21:07.000And I had this deal For a show that I clearly couldn't do and Dave created this space in Yellow Springs these shows that attracted like the brightest biggest stars from the comedy world and all these different industries and I decided like well it wasn't so much a decision as kind of an epiphany like what am I missing from the life I've been having My entire adult life,
00:21:33.000since I was a teenager, I've been in a wildcard boxing gym.
00:21:51.000I had to start to do some introspection about what that part of my life meant.
00:21:56.000And I realized it was about the fight In the fighter that I'm talking to with even though the context is boxing I think the thing that separates my interviews maybe from other ones is that In addition to speaking about the opponent in the ring,
00:22:12.000I often take a look at what that person is hurtling internally, like what got them to this place to even be able to climb through the ropes and challenge for or defend a championship.
00:22:23.000And the interesting ways that people get there is entirely part of what makes me fascinated about combat sports and athletes.
00:22:33.000I'm from all walks of combat sports, but boxing is my passion, right?
00:22:39.000So I ended up surrounded by friends And associates that were incredibly accomplished at all different walks of life.
00:22:49.000A lot of them were comedians because Dave was putting on a comedy show.
00:22:51.000But he attracts people from all over the world, all different kinds of disciplines.
00:22:57.000And I said, you know, that fight that's in these boxers, these life hurdles, well, that exists in everybody.
00:23:05.000And the people whose names we know, whose accomplishments we can list, Well, they've won their fight, or at least they're constantly besting whatever their hurdle is.
00:23:19.000I want to learn about the fighting people outside the ring.
00:23:22.000So because of what Dave did, because he was able to create this magnet of excellence in Yellow Springs, Ohio, I was able to sit down with these people, and they were so gracious to talk to me about that very same subject, the fight inside them.
00:23:43.000For people who don't know why till this day, it's interesting.
00:23:46.000There's a very famous interview that you did with Deontay Wilder where you were trying to get Deontay to elaborate on things and he, for whatever reason, because he was upset and he was getting ready for a fight and fired up,
00:24:04.000Decided that he was gonna, like, explain to you what it's like to struggle as a black man in America that till this day you're like, yeah, I know, I'm just trying to get you to talk!
00:24:15.000And so he's like yelling at you that we're going to this to this day, and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah!
00:24:22.000You know, it's funny because now with this a bit longer view of it and the events that happened the other night, I got a lot of death threats from that.
00:24:32.000You know, I joke about the celebrities and shit that were mad at me.
00:24:35.000Wait a minute, you got death threats from that interview that you did with Deontay?
00:24:51.000To this day, I still get inboxed threats.
00:24:56.000People took that moment to think that I was some kind of Uncle Tom or I was trying to pretend as though slavery didn't exist or something ridiculous like that.
00:25:07.000It was so obvious that you were just trying to get him to expand on his feelings.
00:26:25.000I think I made a post when I got a job at Probellum.
00:26:31.000Which is a huge moment in my career, right?
00:26:33.000I got to be the in-the-ring interviewer post-fight.
00:26:38.000As I've said, the way you do it is a beacon to me.
00:26:43.000I love that aspect of your work, and that is my claim to fame.
00:26:48.000That's my passion, and I had an opportunity to do it on this platform.
00:26:51.000I'm still doing it, but when I got that opportunity, I thought, you know...
00:26:56.000You put me on this show the first time around about this till this day controversy, if you want to call it that, and it gave me another level of notoriety.
00:27:05.000It provided other opportunities for me because you were gracious enough and generous enough with your platform to do that.
00:27:13.000Well, you know, not long ago, people were furious with you.
00:29:09.000He's going to help us and get us an Academy Award.
00:29:12.000Yeah, he's a scumbag, but thank him when you win your Oscar.
00:29:16.000Well, I make a serious distinction between someone's actions that harm other people as opposed to someone's opinions that you have to go somewhere to hear.
00:29:30.000But what I'm saying is this is a weird time in terms of people being able to express themselves.
00:29:35.000It's so unique and unprecedented that untold millions of people at any time can pick up their phone and go onto Facebook or go onto Twitter or whatever and just start putting your opinion out there.
00:30:31.000You should do your own personal auditing.
00:30:34.000You should be objective and introspective and think about yourself and your life and who you are and what you say and how it affects other people.
00:30:42.000But you can't take all those negative things in too much.
00:30:47.000It's like drinking too much alcohol or smoking too much cigarettes.
00:30:52.000And you can't take for granted, though, the freedom of being able to express one's views and be authentic.
00:30:59.000I'm not trying to shut down the comment section by any stretch of the imagination.
00:31:03.000When it gets violent, though, when it gets to pointing out an individual for harm, which, I mean, excuse me if I'm ill-informed, but I don't believe I've ever heard you do.
00:31:36.000And for people to put on you that anything you say has to be according to Hoyle Truth and this space here where you get to talk about your experience and get from others theirs has to all of a sudden meet the standard of nightly news.
00:31:57.000Well, the nightly news doesn't hold up to its own standards.
00:32:01.000They're completely full of shit, and they're completely bought and paid for by advertising money.
00:32:06.000So in the absence of that, in the absence of credibility on the nightly news, where we were all supposed to be able to go get the unvarnished truth and the actual facts, then we find other spaces that are more...
00:32:20.000A place where we are receptive to what the messages that are being put out.
00:32:24.000The places where it resonates with people.
00:32:26.000It makes sense because the person seems like they're just a normal human being.
00:32:30.000They're not a human being that's been hired to say a certain thing a certain way because that's the way the network profits the most.
00:32:41.000That's where we're supposed to be able to go and get those truths, where we're supposed to be able to go and get actual facts, not two people debating what a fact is, but being told the truth.
00:32:53.000If they're in the vacuum that the absence of that credibility creates, well, then you'll find all kinds of spheres of people who will give you the truth that is most agreeable to your predisposition.
00:33:09.000Well, a lot of it is their fault, but what they don't understand is when you spend so much time talking about a person in a negative light, you're going to make a certain percentage of those people investigate whether or not you're accurate.
00:33:23.000And then those people are going to go, hey, that show's pretty good.
00:33:29.000I mean, I've talked about this before, but I gained two million subscribers during the whole cancellation time.
00:33:51.000I'm being honest about what they have done in the past.
00:33:53.000I'm being honest about the dangers of certain medications.
00:33:56.000I'm being honest about expressions of free speech and what it means to me and how important it is that people be able to express themselves.
00:34:04.000It's an amazing time that a person like me can have this much of a Voice and I do pay attention to it and I'm aware of it that it's unusual I'm aware of it.
00:34:15.000That's a tremendous responsibility But all I can do is do what got me here and that's just be me be me be honest try to be caring try to be kind try to be is as Generous as I can as nice as I can.
00:34:57.000As soon as money gets involved, this whole trust the experts thing gets fucking weird because we know that people have influenced people to make certain statements that do not jive with the facts.
00:35:09.000And if you look at all that accurately and you say, you know, trust the experts, like which ones?
00:35:27.000If they don't agree with each other, then which experts?
00:35:30.000I was just reading this thing about Clovis yesterday, and I sent it to a friend of mine, who is an expert in it, and I said, hey, what do you think about this article?
00:37:01.000You have to know why they know what they know, and how did they come about, and are they being influenced, and do they have an agenda, and do they have a vested interest in this being accurate as opposed to that?
00:37:12.000Is there a financial gain involved in it?
00:37:14.000And oftentimes there is, and that's real.
00:37:17.000That's real human beings, and most people know that.
00:37:20.000And when you can get people to just fucking step in line and just listen to authority, The problem with that is, that doesn't go away.
00:37:27.000They keep that fucking attitude, and that's the attitude that they have in all these communist dictatorships where the people are under the boot of these fucking evil thugs.
00:37:41.000And so, free speech, in a free form, you being able to say that without having some totalitarian government come down on your head, or even People in the sphere of cancel culture try to eliminate the show from existence is the difference between,
00:38:00.000yeah, it may be a cliche, it may even be a punchline, do your own research, but you have the option to listen to what you think is credible and juxtapose that with what might not be in line with your current beliefs.
00:38:13.000How much you invest in that investigation, that's entirely up to the character and the desire for you to know the truth.
00:38:52.000So even things that are happening right now, like when they're talking about, oh, you know, we've got to stop being so dependent on foreign oil.
00:39:24.000One guy is saying that solar and wind can take care of a lot of our energy needs, and we need to optimize those, and if we don't do that, we're fucked, and here's all these examples of pollution, and this is what the carbon's doing through the atmosphere, and then there's another guy that goes, here's like a thousand-year chart.
00:39:40.000Of how the temperature of the earth just keeps going up and down.
00:39:43.000It has an effect, but it has a small effect, and there's a lot of people that are profiting off of freaking everybody out, and the control that they're going to get from some sort of climate crisis, the same as they would get it from a war crisis, the same as a health crisis, if they have the opportunity to close in and get tighter and tighter control on your actions and what you're allowed to do and not allowed to do,
00:40:14.000They would rather just tell you what to do.
00:40:16.000And in certain cases, they can do that.
00:40:18.000In cases of war, in cases of any sort of extreme medical emergency, in cases of any sort of civil disobedience, they can impose martial law.
00:40:28.000That stuff's scary because then you have an incentive for those things to take place so that you can control things.
00:40:34.000And then even after you're done controlling things, you could allow things to relax a little bit, but you have more control over the people now than you did a year ago, two years ago, five years ago, before the crisis.
00:40:47.000I don't think that the United States caused 9-11, but I most likely think, I most certainly think, that they used 9-11 to get the Patriot Act through.
00:40:56.000A lot of stuff that was in the Patriot Act existed before this, long before 9-11.
00:41:30.000Yes forever like the Patriot Act like the TSA one guy tries to blow his shoes off We have to take our shoes off forever like what is that what fuck and it just it's forever and it just keeps going and it's just that you don't when you lose power when you lose power over your decision to make Choices and whether or not you want to do this or do that and what you're allowed to do and freedom once you lose that you don't get it back you You never get more freedom.
00:42:03.000The fucking reality is we're not better off in terms of our ability to make decisions for ourselves than we were before they imposed these things.
00:42:12.000We're not as free in terms of government surveillance.
00:42:16.000The idea that the government could be looking out for terrorists and stop terrorists, yeah, that would be nice.
00:42:21.000It would be nice if you could prevent a terrorist attack.
00:42:25.000Well, the only way we can do that, Rahim, is we're going to have to look at all your emails and read all your text messages, whether you like it or not, and listen to every call you ever make.
00:42:55.000You might even get me to say yes in a moment of crisis.
00:42:57.000Like, okay, it's 9-12, and if you need to check my emails to make sure that, you know, aircrafts are safe, or I can go into the mall without getting blown up...
00:43:07.000Check the fucking emails, please, and my neighbors, too.
00:43:45.000You know, you gotta think, like, that's a real human being in 2022. I know he doesn't live in America, and I know it's different over here.
00:44:59.000Kim shot 38 under, including 11 holes in one, at the 7,700-yard championship course at Pyongyang in the very first golf round of his life, according to the North Korean state media.
00:45:14.000It was 1994 when Kim was 52 years old, even more impressive...
00:45:18.000Kim stood just 5'3", yet he was able to overpower a course as long as any ever played in major championship history.
00:45:29.000Who knows how good Kim could have been if he had taken up the sport earlier?
00:45:32.000Who knows how many times he bested 38 under in the 17 years since his first round?
00:49:06.000And so when people say, you never know what people are going through, you never know what somebody's struggle is, boy, I never knew that more truly than I have in experiencing this show that I've done.
00:49:15.000Think about that question asking people and how few people ever have that conversation with another person, right?
00:49:21.000Most of the people you meet, when you're working with them, they're going throughout their day, you never try to break down what was the hardest thing for them to overcome to get to where they're at.
00:49:55.000Just from having the experience of other people's lives and the lens through which they see their own life.
00:50:03.000I gotta talk about Jon Stewart, who was there the other night at the bowl.
00:50:12.000One thing that mortified me because I look up to him so much as an interviewer in particular was that the kind of information that we're talking about, him being at the forefront of that information war when he was the most trusted news source in America on a comedy show that was satire,
00:50:32.000but because the institution was trusted, because the guy was pointing out The song and dance show of the nightly news and the political spin, we could trust him.
00:50:57.000I thought, like, not only did you win, but I had no idea internally he would have thought anything else.
00:51:04.000But that's how true he was to the cause.
00:51:06.000Like, because it's still going on, because there is still a Fox News, because there is still disinformation happening on all news channels, he feels like he didn't accomplish what he could have.
00:51:23.000Look, the guy's back and doing his show now, but when he was the host of The Daily Show, he was the fucking man.
00:51:28.000It was, I think, maybe it was too much, maybe he got worn out, maybe it was like, you know, he felt like he'd done enough and he wanted to do something different, take some time off or something like that, but I think you get better at something the more you do it, you know?
00:51:42.000I think it's important that there is a way, there's a way to distribute comedy And have it wrapped up in the news and it actually is informative and helpful.
00:51:56.000And that's one of the things The Daily Show did when Stewart was running it.
00:51:59.000He's so likable and he's so smart and so obvious that he's smart that you hear him talk about stuff and you go, oh yeah.
00:52:11.000I think he's so true to that mission that maybe he cared even too much.
00:52:17.000It must be a tireless fight to feel like you're the only voice and have this platform that...
00:52:26.000Every other nightly news, cable news show should be doing what you're doing and instead you're like fighting them every night and having to point out how terrible they are at doing the thing they're most importantly tasked with.
00:52:37.000So if you see that as a constant struggle and they seem to be unaffected by it ultimately, even though people are listening to The Daily Show and understanding some of the song and dance about mass media, It's still not changing the bottom line,
00:53:09.000What's really interesting to me is watching how these, like, online YouTube people and online Substack journalists are changing the way people get their information.
00:53:19.000Because there's certain people that have ethics as a journalist, as a reporter, as someone who's trying to explain the truth the best they know, and their ethics are unflappable.
00:53:31.000And they happen to be on YouTube, or they happen to be on Substack, and people find them.
00:53:35.000And they're gravitating towards them now.
00:53:37.000And so those other ones, they don't work anymore.
00:54:29.000You want a broadcaster that's established, that has the resume that you're looking for, and the salty gray hair, the porcelain skin, or you've had to have been a fighter.
00:54:42.000But the people like myself, Who are in the boxing gym shooting sparring sessions, no fighters personally.
00:54:48.000I was training, never thought I would be a boxer, but so much passion for the sport that I felt I had a personal experience, a connection to it.
00:55:04.000But that's okay, because it's better this way.
00:55:07.000Because if they hired you, they would never allow you to be you.
00:55:09.000If someone just hired you straight up with no YouTube videos, no nothing, they would try to get you to be like, hey, I'm Bobby McPhee, and I'm over here with all the...
00:55:35.000And you couldn't just focus on things that you think are interesting, like sparring sessions, like the stories about people's struggles, like stuff that you actually think is interesting.
00:55:44.000The beautiful thing about something like YouTube or any kind of platform that's putting up videos and audios, it's like So many people can contribute and you can find those unusual voices.
00:55:55.000There's a lot of them in MMA journalism too.
00:55:58.000I could ask the questions that no network would ever permit me to ask.
00:56:02.000You could ask the questions that you want answers to and so then the audience gets engaged with this.
00:56:08.000It's not like some cookie cutter bullshit question and you give your cookie cutter bullshit answer to the reporter.
00:56:14.000No, you guys are having a conversation.
00:56:18.000When I talked to Mike Tyson, he was explaining to me his childhood and then what it was like to meet Cuss and what the experience was like.
00:56:27.000Learning boxing and being hypnotized by this guy who was a master of psychology as well as a master boxing coach who just happens to be a fucking hypnotist.
00:57:11.000Mike Tyson's knocking out Larry Holmes at that moment.
00:57:14.000In every bit of work, every single day, every round, for every other fighter, before he left this earth, he got to experience the culmination of all his wisdom in being imparted to this one lump of incredibly talented silly buddy.
01:00:22.000But when I did, which was for a decent amount of time when I was young and really able to train crazy, I could smoke after training and it would help me with the pain, the muscle pain, the joint pain, the swelling, all that shit.
01:01:05.000I feel like there's maybe some little subtle things that I wasn't thinking about before that all of a sudden they're at the forefront because it makes you focus on a single thing.
01:01:16.000And when that single thing is something like martial arts that I've been doing my whole life, there's something about being high that gives me like a new lens for it.
01:01:26.000A new lens where you feel the way your body's moving.
01:02:15.000I can fight drunk, everybody can fight drunk, but if I had to choose a thousand times over, I would rather be a little buzz on a drink than a little buzz on a joint because I'm not thinking about anything.
01:03:56.000At least when you're actually running, you're going somewhere.
01:03:59.000There's something about cardio machines, you know, when you're like fucking just staring at the screen on an elliptical, knowing you have 45 more minutes of this nonsense, and you can't even listen to music?
01:05:07.000Now, boxing is your discipline of choice, but the fight you're going to have won't be in the ring on Thursday at 8 o'clock, as the two men have decided.
01:05:16.000It's going to be at 3 o'clock in the morning after you leave a club in the parking lot with some fucking idiot, and you're going to be drunk, too, and you're going to be tired.
01:05:55.000So, if I were boxing in a ring, I'd want to be sober, but if I'm in the street where any of my real fights are going to take place, I'm probably better fucked up.
01:10:17.000Joe, you're not going to get an argument from me there.
01:10:20.000As far as, like, Street Fighter, the more things you can have at your disposal to end the fight as quick as possible, the better you're going to do.
01:10:55.000If we're only left with our body resources, now I might pick up a bottle, I might hit this guy with a brick, but I understand that the more you're able to do, the more quickly you can end a fight.
01:11:10.000And in the street, That's what it's all about, in the fight as quickly as possible.
01:11:14.000But what we're both talking about is that if you are only doing one thing, that one thing, if you see, like, imagine if that's how they played baseball.
01:11:48.000Olympic gold medalist, elite, super, super elite wrestler, like, top of the food chain, and had been given some opportunities to fight mixed martial arts.
01:11:58.000But he's like, look, I'm an elite wrestler.
01:12:53.000MMA fighter who is gonna be a world champion at boxing unless they 100% dedicate all of their time to it for a long period of time and then you're gonna have to make your way But to be able to beat the elite of the elite in their own given sport unless you're some rare outlier Freak of an athlete with one punch death power with fucking eight ounce ten ounce gloves on that's there's not a lot of those guys and I don't see that ever happening.
01:13:23.000I mean, even if we had a Bo Jackson of MMA... But that would be a good example.
01:14:13.000I'm not talking about, you know, your mathematician skills or how well-versed you are in history, but I don't know any fighter at an elite level that isn't fucking brilliant in the ring or in the octagon.
01:14:30.000If people think that the only information or the only intelligence that's worthwhile is intelligence so you can recite information, that's crazy.
01:15:21.000So that could be the same with intelligence.
01:15:22.000It could be the same with a lot of things.
01:15:24.000And so my point for saying that only was that to have a mind of a fighter that could compete and succeed even at the elite levels and then the mind of a mixed martial artist that could compete and succeed at the elite level and be able to do both simultaneously,
01:15:41.000that would be a next level type of genius.
01:15:46.000The only way someone could do that Is they would have to be an elite specialist in one sport and then cross over at a young age.
01:16:07.000He learned grappling to the point where he even won some fights.
01:16:10.000He submitted Kevin Randleman in a rematch.
01:16:12.000So while he was doing that, was he still winning kickboxing competitions?
01:16:16.000He would occasionally fight kickboxing fights in his career, but for the most part, most of his career up until like the later ages was all MMA after he started fighting in Pride.
01:16:55.000There's guys that are not gonna knock you out with one punch, but they'll knock you out if they could piece you up for a few rounds and fuck you up and butter you up.
01:17:02.000Like Julio Cesar Chavez, one of the greatest fighters of all time.
01:17:21.000But that's not a style that would translate well to MMA. Because if he couldn't stop the takedown and someone was leg-kicking him, he doesn't have enough power in his hands to just fuck you up with one shot.
01:17:36.000A guy like Mike Tyson, even if he never fought MMA, if he's fighting against a kickboxer, his power was so substantial.
01:17:45.000If you give him those little gloves, how are you going to keep him off of you?
01:17:49.000I don't think you're going to keep him off you.
01:17:50.000I think a guy like Mike Tyson could have gotten all the way to wrestlers before he was fucked.
01:17:55.000Okay, with that said though, and school me, because maybe I'm ignorant, but how long a career is that if as soon as you get to a wrestler, you're in a lot of trouble?
01:18:05.000Does he have to get to elite wrestlers, or can an average wrestler beat a Mike Tyson?
01:18:10.000An average wrestler would take almost everyone down.
01:18:13.000But you would not fight in an MMA fight without having some training on wrestling takedown defense.
01:18:19.000And I would assume you would do some live rounds with wrestlers.
01:19:03.000I think we have to accept on both sides of this combat sport equation that these are different disciplines.
01:19:11.000It doesn't make you a lesser MMA fighter because an average boxer can beat you and vice versa.
01:19:19.000And now if you want to come up with some hybrid sport, I mean, I've seen people try it.
01:19:22.000I saw something like in the round and I've seen different promoters try to come up with some hybrid, but until one of those things becomes a thing, these are just apples and oranges.
01:19:33.000You know what would be the craziest shit of all time?
01:19:37.000If Tyson Fury says, I'm just going to take a couple years off, and I'm going to learn MMA, and I'm going to come back, and I'm going to be the MMA heavyweight champion of the world, and I'm going to fuck everybody up.
01:20:35.000It's interesting to see a guy like that big, that tall, you know, that is in his prime, you know, and just deciding he's going to step away, which I don't buy for a fucking hot second.
01:20:46.000I don't believe that he could resist the opportunity to fight undisputed and then really retire as undisputed, undefeated...
01:20:59.000Heavyweight champion of the world, if that is presented to him as an option and he truly believes that he can beat any heavyweight in the game, including the title holders at the current time, so whoever ends up with all the other belts except the WBC,
01:21:16.000I'm certain he has a belief he can beat that person.
01:21:20.000Him passing on that opportunity, I don't see it happening.
01:23:42.000Because if we're allowed to clinch, Tyson's in a lot of trouble.
01:23:45.000Because if Francis can clinch you and can hold on to you and just punch you in the face in a way that's illegal in boxing, watch this again.
01:25:17.000I want the world to see what it's like when the best motherfucker on earth, at his given thing, gets to express himself with someone who's trying it out.
01:26:06.000If you could hold onto a guy, if you could just get an overhook, and just completely tie up that arm, and just smash him in the face.
01:26:12.000If you could get him in a collar tie, where you're holding the back of his neck, and you're smashing him in the face...
01:26:19.000That's legal in MMA. That happens all the time.
01:26:21.000I would say the closest, you know, ironically, the closest I've seen to that in boxing that was pretty effective and not entirely illegal, why it have been Klitschko-Fury.
01:26:33.000Like, don't forget, that was a very clinch-heavy fight.
01:28:39.000At all lesser a fan of women's boxing than I am of men's boxing.
01:28:44.000And so the journey that women's boxing has taken to there is a competitive field of women's fighters, only now I think are we experiencing that.
01:28:54.000Spikes, we've had some stars, obviously.
01:28:57.000The coal miner's daughter, Christy Martin and Leila Lee, Lucia Riker.
01:29:02.000The names that we know for sure have had their moments, but I don't think ever was there a time like there is now where there are so many good women able to box and making competitive fields.
01:29:17.000Clarissa Shields is one of the guests on my show and I would have to say in this era she's definitely a pioneer that her accomplishments in the Olympics to gold medals her verbose nature and her ability to back it up makes her a star in the sport and it inspires another generation of women to be like you know this is something that's open to me a lane I can I can pursue yeah these ladies Man,
01:29:42.000I'm telling you, Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano put on as good a boxing match as any two guys could have ever hoped to do.
01:29:50.000To a sold out, not the theater, the actual garden, sold out Madison Square Garden, and every person got value for dollar that night.
01:30:39.000I watched as much MMA as possible, and to your point, if she was on the other foot, I probably missed a lot of very important MMA fights because I don't have time.
01:30:54.000Why is it that every time there's a big boxing match on a Saturday, there seems to be, just coincidentally, a big UFC fight on that same Saturday?
01:31:04.000Well, this is May Cinco de Mayo weekend.
01:32:19.000But if you get pay-per-view and it's on a DVR, you've got to go back, you've got to record it, you've got to fast-forward through it and get to the spot.
01:32:28.000It's a little more complicated because you've got to go home.
01:32:34.000There's no way they would want competition.
01:32:37.000If they could have a big pay-per-view event, like this one this weekend, and not have it go back-to-back against Canelo Alvarez, they definitely would.
01:33:14.000Because UFC has shows at the Apex Center.
01:33:16.000They have their own small arena in Vegas.
01:33:19.000And so a lot of the fights, all the fights that we did under quarantine, shit, we did a gang of fights at the Apex Center.
01:33:27.000World title fights at the Apex Center with no audience.
01:33:29.000Now, you know, I say that to say this.
01:33:31.000I'm a big proponent of the Sunday night boxing match, which is not some, like, bending of the knee to give away Saturday night to the MMA, but in my regard, let them fucking have it, Sunday night is the night for fights.
01:33:47.000That's because you're single and you go out on Saturday night.
01:33:54.000If you're married, have the boys over.
01:34:20.000Of course Saturday night's the way to go.
01:34:21.000When people look for entertainment, Saturday night's the night you want.
01:34:24.000Because Friday night, even when we do shows, right?
01:34:27.000Friday night shows, I always tell people, like when young guys are opening for me, I go, you always got to think that that Friday night late show, these people are tired, man.
01:35:13.000See, I'm thinking, because of what you just said, there's so much Saturday night competition and so many other places you want to be instead of front of a TV. If you got tickets to the fight, well, that's a different thing.
01:35:23.000But if I want to stay home and watch a fight, even with my seven closest friends, that does not compete with the things I could be doing out in the world when I don't have to wake up in the morning.
01:35:36.000If Marvin Hagler's fighting Sugar Ray Leonard and it's Saturday night, you want to be in front of that fucking TV and your hands are going to be sweaty.
01:35:45.000You're going to be like, holy shit, it's about to go down.
01:35:48.000But that's the same is true for Sunday.
01:35:49.000And people are home on Sunday evenings.
01:35:51.000More people are home on Sunday evenings anyway.
01:37:28.000Yeah, a legitimate businessman, but he makes so much money doing other shit that the fact that he wants to do that as well and promote fights as well, I'm impressed.
01:38:22.000Because those guys under 10 fights, like, what if Jake Paul knocks one of them out?
01:38:27.000Like, what if you get a guy that, like, hasn't been tested, and maybe has some promise, and maybe gets wrapped up in the hype, and maybe gets a little nervous, and this is his first chance at a big, big, big show, and Jake Paul can crack.
01:38:48.000But Eddie's point in that interview, and I think the point that just about every boxing aficionado would say is that Tyrone Woodley is not a boxer.
01:39:04.000We would have gotten some answers if Tyson Fury didn't get injured, or excuse me, if Tommy Fury didn't get injured leading up to that fight because he was the initial opponent.
01:39:13.000So if he fought him, we would have got some real answers.
01:39:16.000And that would be an interesting fight.
01:39:36.000If Jake Paul wasn't Jake Paul, If he wasn't this YouTube guy, he was just a boxer.
01:39:42.000And you see a boxer knock out the former UFC welterweight champion, not just the former, but one of the best ever, knock him out with one punch like that.
01:39:50.000You'd be like, oh man, have you seen this Jake Paul dude coming up?
01:40:17.000So if he wasn't that guy, I'm saying if he wasn't that big YouTube star, and you just saw him as a boxing contender, you'd be like, that dude's got dynamite in his hands.
01:40:26.000Okay, so there's two points to be made here.
01:40:28.000First of all, if a guy in his pro debut and the first five fights of his career are knocking out people whose names we know, you're absolutely right.
01:40:38.000That person is going to get a huge amount of attention and everybody's going to be like, wow, who the fuck is this guy?
01:40:44.000But also, if a guy who is on the track to be somebody who has potential from the Olympics or he's got a great amateur record, we're going to turn this guy into somebody.
01:40:57.000In their first fights, they're fighting guys who are like 5 and 27. They are fighting other debut opponents who don't have a great track trajectory in front of them.
01:41:10.000They're fighting tomato canes, bums, you know...
01:41:36.000But I think on both sides of the equation, we've got to admit that Young fighter under five fights isn't fighting great competition So if you're calling Jake Paul a legitimate boxer and then you're expecting him to do what legitimate boxers do I'm not sure he's not doing that and probably more.
01:41:55.000That's what I'm saying about the knockout of Tyron Woodley Because it was just a regular boxer who's just coming up and what does he have six fights?
01:43:18.000Canelo Alvarez expresses interest in heavyweight title fight with Alexander Usyk at 201 pound catchweight.
01:43:25.000Which, by the way, Usyk used to be a cruiserweight champion.
01:43:27.000The fact that not only is Canelo interested in this fight verbally, but I actually believe him.
01:43:35.000Most fighters that would say something as crazy as that would be like, alright, well, he's trying to get some headlines, he's trying to say something that's not going to happen.
01:43:43.000I think Jake Paul probably knows he's not getting that Canelo fight anytime soon, but to say something crazy like that to show that much confidence in yourself is going to get people's attention.
01:44:05.000I don't know that I could name another fighter, certainly not in the modern era, that has challenged himself more consistently than Canelo Alvarez.
01:45:15.000And so for him to decide to dabble in those deep waters again, if he was losing a fight to Kovalev, who, you know, arguably has less skills than Beevil, although bigger, I think.
01:45:25.000The one thing is that Kovalev is a big 75. Beevil is not.
01:45:31.000I think these two guys are going to be about the same size on fight night.
01:45:36.000So with the exception of the weight differential that happened, or the size differential with Kovalev, the skill matches up much better with Bivol.
01:45:47.000If he beats Bivol and acquires another title at 175 pounds, you have to actually start talking about Canelo.
01:45:57.000Already in the annals of history, like where does this guy place now before he retires?
01:46:03.000No matter what happens from that day on, this guy's got to be in the conversation.
01:46:09.000And if he goes up and he beats Usyk, now you're in crazy town.
01:47:06.000Okay, but they might have offered it to him.
01:47:08.000A report earlier this week claimed that Joshua was close to accepting 15 million, oh, 15 million pounds, 20 million American dollars Deal at his end, but he's since hit back at this and branded it bullshit.
01:47:23.000Hearn told DAZN Boxing Show, there's been an offer, there's been several discussions with myself.
01:47:30.000Okay, so he wasn't close to accepting.
01:48:47.000Oh, heavyweight champion Tyson Fury is said to have gone berserk when his boxing rival Anthony Joshua asked for an extra 3.7 million pounds in step-aside money for the Usyk rematch.
01:48:58.000So he wanted more than the 20. But if you could take that just to like...
01:49:25.000Yeah, he had his moment in the sun, and then he came back, and he also was like 380 pounds during the fight.
01:49:30.000Yeah, he admitted that he didn't train, he didn't commit to that, which is like the cardinal sin of boxing.
01:49:36.000Being beaten in a heavyweight fight is not...
01:49:40.000Something to be ashamed of unless the reason you were beaten is because you didn't prepare.
01:49:45.000That's a disrespect to everything the sport means.
01:49:48.000After the biggest victory of your life, changed your life.
01:49:50.000You'd knocked out the heavyweight champion of the world.
01:49:53.000But my point is, Anthony Joshua is always top of the food chain.
01:49:58.000If he just takes 20 million bucks, stays top of the food chain, got 20 million in his pocket, more time to train, More time to, like, whatever the corrections and changes this new trainer is going to give him.
01:52:59.000As much as I agree with that, and I do...
01:53:03.000I have been seduced now into this undisputed kind of world of, well, you know what?
01:53:11.000Having to go around and collect all the belts to get, like, there's champions, and then there's, like, undisputed, which is king of kings, which is, like, the guy who's been, and that's the elusive, like, moniker everybody wants now.
01:53:26.000So there is something too—I think there's too many.
01:53:29.000Like, I would be far happier if there was just three, period.
01:53:33.000And no international champion and no, like, regional interim, but just three titles in every division, and then the undisputed champion if you can get all three.
01:53:45.000That might be something that's more doable, and I kind of like the idea that just winning one belt, beating one guy, doesn't necessarily make you king of the division.
01:53:55.000I'm giving you an argument for you, for your position on this.
01:54:31.000We had there what I like to call the final four of boxing when we thought that this thing was actually gonna bottleneck and everything was gonna work out perfectly.
01:54:40.000That was maybe the most exciting idea in heavyweight boxing.
01:55:07.000And then he's going to fight Francis Ngannou with the little gloves on, make a fuck pile of money, and then take a little time off, and then, oh, I'm back.
01:58:24.000The difference is everybody wants to see Jake Paul fight, whoever Jake Paul picks to fight, and he is an expert at picking guys that people want to see and turning that thing into a spectacle.
01:58:35.000Well, prize fighting was a part of boxing history.
01:58:39.000Prize fighting is something unto itself, and to hold that...
01:58:44.000That stage is something that I think should be regarded.
01:58:51.000You're never going to convince boxing purists that Jake Paul is a boxer of any tradition, except prize fighting.
01:59:00.000If you can find a guy who can pack a fucking stadium, who can sell pay-per-views, who you want to see either win or lose, and facing a guy who's got a chance...
01:59:11.000Well, that guy has created an audience for boxing that is not traditional but is to be respected and is clearly worth a few hours on a Saturday night.
01:59:27.000I think this prize fighting thing, which is what I also think of when we see Tyson and Jones come back for the one night, that's a prize fight.
01:59:36.000Like you say, there's no belts on the line, doesn't even make a lot of sense, we just want to see these guys fight.
01:59:40.000Do you think Jake Paul has the stones to really follow up on a Mike Tyson fight?
01:59:44.000Because he talked about fighting Mike Tyson.
02:00:48.000And to take a guy like Mike Tyson out of retirement who we all love, and the only reason we want to see him in the ring again is because we want to see some glimpse of the old Tyson.
02:02:51.000Like, a 55-year-old man is not really a 55-year-old man.
02:02:54.000He's doing all kinds of crazy shit with electrodes, you know, where they put these, like, electrical muscular stimulation devices on you, and they have you lift weights, and it leads to, like, great gains in strength and recovery of range of motion, and he's got, like, legit scientists with him.
02:03:10.000Yeah, it does make you wonder, like, the athletes of old, if they lived in today's modern technology, what they'd be able to do.
02:03:17.000But I wasn't comparing Holyfield to Tyson's modern conditioning or even opportunity to win, but just the feeling of watching Holyfield get beat down.
02:03:56.000I mean, I feel like he's gotten away with it thus far in grand fashion.
02:04:00.000Like, man, I was against, I'll be honest with you, I was against the Jones fight.
02:04:04.000I was like, one of these guys is going to get hurt or something is going to happen that we will never forgive ourselves for just because we all want it one more night.
02:04:13.000That it wasn't going to get, like, I think they may have said as much, like it wasn't a knockout kind of fight.
02:04:21.000It seemed like that was not on the table.
02:04:24.000Yeah, which is good, thank God, because they didn't promote it that way for obvious reasons, but if that was agreed to, which I think you're correct about, then thank God.
02:06:15.000Let's not forget, he's also not 23. For the guy to have had the career he'd already had and now be challenging for a heavyweight title and winning it is crazy.
02:06:28.000And against a guy, look at John Ruiz, hit him with some big shots.
02:06:54.000When you move up multiple weight classes above your natural weight class and then fight for a heavyweight title, that fight's gonna take a lot off.
02:07:03.000The shots you get hit with by a heavyweight, they take a lot off.
02:07:08.000And then you drop down to weight to 175. You gotta dehydrate the shit out of yourself.
02:07:13.000I remember when I watched him fight Antonio Tarver, I was looking at his body and I was like, man, he looks smooth.
02:07:40.000He didn't look like he was a coiled spring ready to go like when he fought James Toney.
02:07:45.000Back in those days when he was fluid and loose and fucking punches were lightning bolts, man.
02:07:51.000It seemed like that weight loss, that's not an insignificant factor.
02:07:55.000Look at what you're demanding of your body.
02:07:59.000Let's say you're not paying attention to hitting a weight mark at all.
02:08:02.000Just training in that way with that intensity, the demands you put on your body, your joints, your muscles, even your digestion, everything that it goes into just being in that kind of conditioning.
02:08:14.000And then on top of that, you want to be 200 pounds today and 175 tomorrow and then back to 68 until you go back to 75. Terrible.
02:09:03.000Terence Crawford is an elite athlete and he's the best switch hitter alive in boxing right now.
02:09:07.000His ability to switch stances, that's a big deal too.
02:09:10.000Because there's a lot of guys who, say if you're a right-handed person, in boxing you would stand with your left hand forward, while in wrestling you'd stand with your right hand forward.
02:09:19.000So a lot of wrestlers, when they're fighting a striker, a dangerous striker, you'll see him take a southpaw stance.
02:09:26.000Because then all they're thinking is, I gotta get a hold of that fucking leg.
02:09:29.000So the left leg, his left leg is in front of you, right?
02:10:22.000He's the only guy in boxing that can do that.
02:10:25.000Like, fights just as good southpaw as he does orthodox.
02:10:28.000And he's the only guy in boxing that I know of that fights at a world championship, top of the food chain, pound for pound, best level, that also has this kind of wrestling skills.
02:10:38.000Yeah, and more than all of those things that are incredibly important, he's got this competitive killer instinct.
02:13:42.000They would have a bowling league, and they had League Nike.
02:13:45.000Guys back in those days, man, Like, old dudes, they would love that there was an excuse they could all get together one night a week and take away some of the drudgery of working every day.
02:14:36.000Archery is something that I love to do because when you're pulling back a bow and you're aiming, you don't think about anything other than perfect execution of the arrow.
02:14:54.000I don't think it's a martial art in terms of like you'd use it in a fight, but obviously it started out as something that people used in war, and to get good at it and accurate meant that you could kill more things.
02:15:05.000I wonder what it actually started out.
02:15:07.000I wonder if it started out as a weapon of war or it started out as a weapon of hunting.
02:16:25.000You've got to ride it out like COVID and take a couple of years.
02:16:28.000I'm going to be at the Joe Rogan experience.
02:16:31.000Wherever you are, that's where I'm going to be.
02:16:34.000You're the only guy I know that has a bow and arrow and is a good shot, has some idea what we should eat if it were raw, for Christ's sake.
02:16:54.000If I do bow hunting because it's harder and because it's a discipline and because I love archery, but if we're just trying to survive, we're bringing bullets.
02:17:04.000I'm not taking any chances on missing an animal.
02:17:08.000Look, if you are close enough to an animal and you have good discipline and you practice with a rifle, it's pretty much a gimme.
02:17:17.000With a bow and arrow, it's never a gimme.
02:17:19.000With a bow and arrow, you have to wait for the perfect shot.
02:18:26.000After, like, this COVID thing and the power went out here for a week last year and everything got kind of sketchy, the roads were all shut down because they don't have any fucking plows here.
02:18:36.000Like, I don't trust things to be always okay.
02:20:01.000I haven't talked to my father since I was seven years old.
02:20:04.000So I didn't grow up with anybody taking care of me.
02:20:07.000I grew up with people telling me I was a loser or I was never going to amount to anything or whatever the fuck they said that was discouraging.
02:23:06.000The people that were on the side stage, that's because they all showed up to see Dave, see Blackstar to be a part of that moment that Dave created there in that building and some It's hard for me to even characterize this individual,
02:23:23.000was willing on that one moment to take it all away from us.
02:24:10.000Because I ripped this life away from everyone else.
02:24:13.000Look, you were very fortunate that when your father died, you made it through and became a great adult.
02:24:20.000But many people have horrible things happen to them along the way, and then they find themselves homeless, they find themselves drug addicted, they find themselves falling apart.
02:25:19.000The difference between Joe Rogan and a guy right out by the lake in a tent might be one choice.
02:25:26.000One thing that he couldn't overcome that made the difference between millions and millions and millions of people listening to the Joe Rogan experience and this guy begging for food outside of a tent in a lake in Austin.
02:26:30.000When you talk about your dad and putting you on that focus, is that like a survival mentality or is that like I'm going to be something because he wasn't there and people don't think I can be anything?
02:26:45.000There's probably both of those things happening simultaneously, but there's definitely a survival thing because you realize that no one's looking out for you.
02:26:52.000You know when you realize that no one's looking out for you and then you look at the flimsy structure of society and How all would have to do is like power goes out for a week?
02:27:02.000Then what are you gonna do all the refrigerators are bad all the foods bad?
02:27:05.000Where how are people getting in how you getting in and out?
02:27:08.000There's no transportation anymore because you're out of gasoline because you can't pump it you can't refine it because there's no power and All it would take is the power grid to get killed, and it wouldn't take much, a solar flare, an attack from a foreign government.
02:27:22.000The foreign government wanted to take out the United States power grid with missiles.
02:27:27.000They used drones, and they sent drones over with missiles and took out the power grid.
02:28:14.000The same strength solar flare didn't happen today when everything is electronic and everything is using electricity.
02:28:22.000It could have fucking torched our society.
02:28:25.000A real legit solar flare, which is a fairly rare event in terms of the length of time that a human being lives, but very common in terms of the length of time the sun lives.
02:28:36.000It's just whether or not you catch one while you're alive.
02:28:40.000So while you're alive, a massive solar flare erupts and torches the entire power grid.
02:30:11.000Like, this could go sideways, and it has throughout history, multiple times.
02:30:15.000Numerous times where civilization's been basically brought down to its fucking knees by natural disasters, and then society had to rebuild.
02:30:24.000If you do that with people that you know and your friends and that you love, that's got to take a hell of a toll on your relationships.
02:30:32.000If you're finding- Yeah, I stopped doing that when I was young.
02:30:36.000My early 20s, I realized I was doing that all the time.
02:30:39.000I would pick on people for what they did that was lazy and weak.
02:30:44.000It would drive me crazy because I hated it in myself.
02:30:47.000Dude, I was so crazy when I was young that I was married to the idea that pleasure was weak.
02:30:58.000I had to figure out a way when I was in my teens that I didn't feel like a pussy because I wanted to have sex with a girl instead of training.
02:31:11.000I literally had to put it in my head that the idea that pleasure Wasn't bad.
02:31:18.000I felt like pleasure was weak because it was like weak.
02:31:21.000It was too easy to slide into anybody could have pleasure You can go out pleasure.
02:31:27.000It's difficult to train hard and it's difficult to fight It's difficult to go out there and win and that's what you should think about not getting your dick sucked and fucking and all that stupid shit No, you should only be thinking about fighting Is that because fighting is discipline and pleasure is giving in to a desire?
02:31:44.000Oh, are you going to take a nap afterwards?
02:31:56.000I just I realized what was wrong with the way I was thinking because I am always I'm always editing my not editing I'm using introspective thinking on my own life on my own like if I have an interaction with someone like if I have a disagreement with them I always want to like okay I don't want to believe that I was right when I was wrong like I need to know what the fuck did I say how did I say it and Could I have said that better?
02:32:41.000I want to know, did you do this work Do you want to call me and tell me that you and this guy got in an argument because you want me to tell you you're right?
02:33:33.000So you're so attached to being correct here that you're ready to dig your heels in the sand and then fight for your side regardless of whether or not it's correct.
02:34:01.000I wasn't a bully, but I had a very, very thin line between I'm totally cool with this and I'm ready to kill anybody that's involved in this.
02:34:25.000Michael Irvin told me that once on a fucking flight to Australia.
02:34:28.000He was on a flight to Australia, just randomly, same flight.
02:34:31.000And he was going over there for a football thing, and I was going over there for the UFC thing.
02:34:36.000And we were talking, just because of a fucking $16 flight, and we were just hanging out in the galley, chit-chatting.
02:34:41.000And he was telling me about these guys that he works with that are experiencing...
02:34:47.000These guys came from an environment where their mother was exposed to violence in the womb.
02:34:53.000So they're getting hit or they're seeing violence and the cortisol level rises and it's literally preparing the fetus for a violent world.
02:35:01.000So those guys come out of that world and they have a shorter fuse, Quicker to violence, and a lot of these guys wind up playing football.
02:35:09.000And then what happens when you wind up playing football?
02:35:11.000Well, then you're in a place that rewards violence.
02:35:14.000It rewards explosive behavior, explosive speed, and you're getting hit all the time, and then you get hit all the time, and what happens then?
02:38:24.000I would never want to do it in front of people for the sake of that.
02:38:28.000Or it wasn't even about destroying the other guy.
02:38:31.000It was about working through that anger and working through all of that pent-up Aggression and getting it out and healthy, it felt like getting high.
02:38:41.000But the liking me part and being an affable guy and being able to communicate well and speak, huge, huge objective.
02:38:51.000I wouldn't even like to admit how much and how important it was, especially for me younger, to be liked but also to be thought of well.
02:39:25.000And so, but at the same time, it gave me this desire to not be the stereotypical, because you're a white man, but a black guy without a father is a stereotype.
02:39:34.000White man without a father, well, that's sad.
02:39:40.000So, for me, it's like, well, only this much is available to you.
02:41:00.000It gave me resolve that knowing the finality of life at such an early age, I'm not living it for anybody else.
02:41:07.000With that said, I want people to like me.
02:41:09.000Part of my career choice is going to require that I have an audience that wants to hear what I have to say or at least trusts me and likes me enough to come back tomorrow.
02:41:16.000But I'm not going to trade my desired experience on this planet for somebody else's judgment.
02:41:24.000And the way I see you attacking life, well, you went to college just so that people wouldn't think you're a loser.
02:41:31.000How important was it at some point that it wasn't that everybody else didn't think you were a loser, but that you realized that you weren't a loser?
02:41:41.000Well, I realized I wasn't a loser when I got really good at martial arts, but the problem was there was no money in it.
02:41:46.000And so, the saying that I didn't want people to like me, or I didn't care if people liked me, well, I didn't care if people liked me in the realm of the most important thing in my life, which was competition, because it didn't matter.
02:42:16.000When that didn't matter anymore, because then I wasn't doing it anymore, then I had to address my whole way of approaching life It was so aggressive and it was so weird.
02:42:26.000It was so like that I was only focused on this one extreme thing and then I realized like oh like I missed out on like most high school experiences that a lot of people had.
02:42:39.000I was traveling around the country fighting in tournaments my whole high school all through like 15, 16, 17 until I was 21 years old.
02:43:20.000The thing that I learned from martial arts is that I can be...
02:43:24.000There was a first time in my life where I didn't feel like a loser.
02:43:27.000Like I felt like, oh, all I have to do is learn how to get really good at something.
02:43:32.000Like put a lot of effort into it, a lot of thinking, and you can get really good at something.
02:43:37.000And when you get really good at something, all of a sudden people admire you.
02:43:41.000So instead of being a loser, When I was four-time Massachusetts state champion and I would enter into this weight class and I would see people get upset that they were going to have to fight me.
02:44:07.000I found a thing I found good instruction I found good training partners and I fucking fully completely dedicated my whole life to it because so although like my approach to it was so aggressive and probably not healthy in the realm of the rest of the world like I What I learned from that,
02:44:23.000though, is that by completely focusing on one thing, you can get better at it.
02:45:16.000And I would be the one who talked a lot of shit.
02:45:18.000Because when we're nervous, like for me, it was an opportunity for me to get attention.
02:45:21.000Like everybody's nervous, so I'm gonna say some fucked up things so everybody laughs.
02:45:24.000And I realized that it's a good icebreaker and people enjoy it because they want some sort of a relief from the weirdness of knowing that you're gonna go fight in a full contact tournament.
02:45:34.000And so I would be the guy that would crack people up by doing impressions of people and talking shit.
02:45:39.000And so my friend Steve was like, dude, you really should be a fucking comedian.
02:45:42.000And I was like, you think I'm funny because you like me.
02:45:45.000I go, other people think I'm a fucking asshole.
02:45:47.000But I went to an open mic night, and then I realized on an open mic night, I was like, oh, everybody sucks.
02:47:38.000Are you 100% aware when the deterioration sets in?
02:47:42.000Because the quality of my thinking, my ability to solve problems is what kept me sane.
02:47:47.000My ability to work my way through things, my ability to obsess at things and figure out how to get better at them, that was the only thing that brought me any joy.
02:47:55.000And all of a sudden, that's gonna go away and I'm relying on what?
02:49:04.000Because if there was a clear path, I would have just dedicated myself to being a fighter and I would have never become a comedian.
02:49:09.000Did you mourn it when you had to step out of the ring?
02:49:13.000You mourn the excitement, the fear, the fear of competition, and then the fucking exhilarating feeling of victory.
02:49:23.000The exhilarating feeling of victory is wild.
02:49:26.000When you're at home and you're looking at this gold medal, you're like, holy fuck, I did it.
02:49:30.000So for me, the person who was, like I said, I felt like I was a loser most of my life until I was 15 or 16 and I started getting good at martial arts.
02:49:38.000I was like, oh my god, I'm good at something.
02:49:40.000And this insecure feeling like a loser was replaced with this feeling of accomplishment and confidence and just a good feeling that I didn't really have in any other...
02:49:55.000I didn't have that good of a feeling, the feeling of accomplishment, of victory.
02:49:59.000So I was gonna do everything it took to keep that feeling.
02:51:13.000It's so difficult, but not unlike fighting.
02:51:17.000You've got to punch, you've got to defend, you have to have footwork, you've got to be able to grapple a little bit, you've got to be able to win in the clinch, you've got to remember your game plan, you've got to best the other guys.
02:51:26.000When you step off the stage and you killed, you got the last or the bitwork, is that comparable to winning a match?
02:52:22.000I had porn too, but we it just seemed fake It seemed like because the stark contrast between being a loser and being a winner was like so immediate Because it was like I was a loser when I was 13 I was a winner when I was 16 and I was winning all the time It's like this is crazy and luckily I had physical talent like just natural born with certain amount of physical abilities and So that like when I learned,
02:52:47.000I didn't just learn, I was really fast.
02:52:49.000I was really fast and I could hit really hard.
02:53:47.000I'd want to pick on them, like a dog does.
02:53:51.000That's an evolved way to look at it because the competitive nature of me, and we both talk to very competitive people all the time, every loss feels a little bit like a loser.
02:54:03.000It's almost a reminder that at any point, well, I can go from being a winner to being a loser.
02:54:14.000I believe that and I think that most fighters feel like that and when a fighter loses his title, you know, like when Anthony Joshua lost to Usyk that night, I guarantee you he felt fucking terrible, right?
02:54:27.000He immediately went back to the drawing board, immediately called for a rematch, immediately started searching for other trainers because he's not a loser.
02:54:36.000The difference is someone who just fucking lays down and says, woe is me, and you know, you can make that argument for Tyson Fury at one point in time, even though he didn't lose, he acted like a loser.
02:54:48.000Like he was gonna commit suicide, he was drinking, he was fucked up, he had depression, anxiety, but, because he's not a loser, He figured out this is not good.
02:56:34.000Well, there's a lot of people out there that think that way right now, listening to this.
02:56:38.000Yeah, and again, I hope there was something more grand in my character than simple vanity, but if I'm honest, to point to, like, well, I can't be here in the ass, it's all dirty, and I look like shit here.
02:56:59.000I was like, I can't live the rest of my life at this level, so I find something else to get back on my feet and take what I've learned and take a little bit of what I can get out of the ashes and put that as a part of the next thing.
02:57:16.000And so, you know, here I am, and hopefully this house doesn't catch on fire, and certainly I'm not the one with the match.
02:57:32.000It's like people define themselves by failures and successes, which is good and bad.
02:57:38.000It's good because you can kind of get a tally and a running score of whether or not you're doing the right thing, but it's bad in that with each...
02:57:46.000Thing that doesn't go right you have this feeling that nothing's gonna go right and this is it from here on out I'm just a fucking loser it's all gonna fall apart and some people that becomes They're fulfilling a self-fulfilling prophecy.
02:57:59.000They decide that that's who they are, and they don't course-correct.
02:58:04.000They don't regroup, and they never do.
02:58:08.000They'll believe, you can only get this far, and then if I get any place past that, then they end up destroying it themselves, because they can't see themselves in a different light, anything better than what they've conceived of prior.
02:58:56.000But if you are an adult and then you have to pay your bills and you have a family and you're falling apart and you have an idea of some new thing you want to try but it's really risky, Yeah.
02:59:31.000I had a knee surgery that I had to get done in the early days of my comedy career.
02:59:36.000I had a tore ACL. That's actually probably one of the things that kept me from fighting again, too, because I probably would have, from bombing, I would have at least tried a couple of times just to get a good feeling because I knew I could win some fights.
02:59:47.000But when I went to different gyms, like in California, I was doing the Jet Center.
03:00:06.000My manager, my comedy manager, was friends with one of the guys who was the producer of the UFC, this early producer, this guy, Campbell McLaren, who's a great guy.
03:01:41.000I don't remember who won the fight, actually, now that I say that, but he's a guy who had a jiu-jitsu match with Hoist Gracie on the beach in Rio de Janeiro when Hoist Gracie had won the UFC and he choked Hoist Gracie to sleep on the beach.
03:02:36.000For them, and it says that in the title of the match, and this is 100% true, because this was also different schools of thought in terms of the strategy of jiu-jitsu.
03:04:02.000How do they even see that he's asleep down there?
03:04:04.000I haven't done the gi clock choke in a while, but the way the gi clock choke works, you get a grip on this like this, like here's a person's collar, you grip here, and then this hand goes underneath the armpit, and you spin like this.
03:04:17.000And when you spin, you have his neck wrapped up in his collar, and then you have your arm on the other side.
03:05:44.000This great video is called Gracie in Action.
03:05:47.000And the Gracie in Action videos, a lot of those videos are...
03:05:51.000Someone would come to their gym and talk some shit, and they'll go, do you want to fight?
03:05:54.000And they're like, I want to fight you right now, motherfucker.
03:05:56.000Like, okay, great, we're going to set up a camera.
03:05:58.000And they would set up a camera, and this guy would come in and try to do some kung fu, and then someone like Hoyce, or Hickson, or Horian, or any of these Gracies would take them down and fuck them up.
03:06:09.000And Horian, in his infinite wisdom, used that as an advertisement for jujitsu.
03:06:13.000See if you can find some Gracie in action, because first of all, Horian has that beautiful Portuguese-Brazilian jiu-jitsu accent.
03:06:21.000His original language is Portuguese, so the way he talks, everything sounds so smooth.
03:06:27.000So he's explaining to you, the jiu-jitsu practitioner takes him to the ground easily and submits him with a choke.
03:06:36.000These videos, this is Horry and Gracie back in the day.
03:07:18.000So he was trying to find ways to popularize Jiu Jitsu and he wound up starting the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
03:07:26.000Horian Gracie is the mastermind behind the UFC. So when the UFC is taking place this weekend and I'm doing commentary, None of that shit would have happened if it wasn't for that man that you just saw in that video.
03:07:36.000See if you can find the Gracie in action.
03:08:05.000And there's a shit ton of these and they're all like really grainy VHS tapes where these people didn't know what they were doing and they thought they were badasses and they went and tried to have a street fight and now he's tapping.
03:08:56.000Then it was like Muay Thai, kickboxing, leg kicks.
03:08:58.000And there was a lot of different styles that sort of showed what they could do until it became what it is now, where it's like just fighting.
03:10:02.000If he's trying to grab ahold of you, you're going to hold onto his clothes because you think, oh, yeah, well, I'll fucking grab your clothes.
03:10:08.000So if you're a guy who doesn't train with a gi, and you fought Hoist Gracie back in the day, Hoist would just close the distance, and people would just grab him.
03:12:26.000That's the thing that I think makes a lot of...
03:12:30.000Potentially really good comics quit is they can't take the pain of sucking and there's no structure, right?
03:12:37.000There's no like if you want to learn music you can go to Juilliard, right?
03:12:40.000You can go to there's people that teach guitar lessons.
03:12:43.000You can go and you can learn, you know You can watch videos and you can pick up technique and you can learn how to play saxophone It's it's it's available.
03:13:30.000I've seen a few classes where they're applying things that probably would be detrimental to your overall career, like cookie-cutter, formulaic versions of how to write comedy.
03:13:39.000But what they do do is at least they allow people to get on stage for the first time.
03:15:18.000Yeah, the early days, I was teaching for a little while, but then I realized I couldn't teach and do comedy at the same time because I wasn't into it.
03:15:25.000I wasn't just teaching, I was teaching and taking people to tournaments.
03:15:29.000So I would take students to tournaments and I would coach them, and I was realizing I wasn't in it.
03:15:43.000There was quite a few people that I'd taken, even young people, that I'd taken and brought them up through the ranks and gave them higher belts and brought them to tournaments.
03:16:58.000The whole idea is you've got to blend in.
03:17:01.000A lot of it was insurance, like busting people that were pretending they were hurt, but they were really working under the table somewhere else.
03:17:18.000There was one of those that was pretty significant.
03:17:20.000I wasn't involved in that case too much, because I think Dave had already got his license back by then, but my God, he loved telling me about it.
03:17:28.000I would go with him sometimes if you needed a certain person, because Dave and I stayed friends.
03:17:31.000And it was just by sheer coincidence, Dave was the cousin of a guy named Bill Downs, and Bill Downs was one of the owners of the Comedy Connection.
03:20:07.000Obviously there's external forces and things that are, you know, points of adversity that you learn from in life, failures, but a lot of it was my fault.
03:20:19.000And so, like, a lot of that, other than, you know, the things that I couldn't handle when I was a child, or rather that I didn't have any control over when I was a child, it's all me.
03:20:48.000You are disciplined enough to have this experience, the Joe Rogan experience, do MMA, UFC broadcasting, have a comedy career, have all of these things going on simultaneously.
03:21:01.000I still have to compartmentalize the stuff that I'm doing, which isn't all that different from what you're doing, but clearly not at this level, so I can appreciate that.
03:21:09.000How much discipline it takes to put a life like yours together and execute it so excellently.
03:21:48.000I also do it for mental health like the working out stuff is like I Need my workouts to be so much harder than anything else I ever do in life because it makes everything else easy So the workouts are so goddamn brutal that everything else is easy.
03:22:06.000So a lot of like my build is a It's a factor of the work.
03:22:11.000It's not like a goal to like be built like a brick shit house It's like the work requires So much strain and so much effort.
03:22:22.000And the end result is you just look jacked.
03:22:42.000Is an example of you beating the weakness in your mind that, well, this is good enough.
03:22:48.000I could do this level of conditioning and stay in shape, but I'm not challenged anymore.
03:22:53.000There is the guy who does that and just maintains, and then the guy who you are that continuously adds one more plate because that makes it just hard enough to know that boy couldn't get any harder and I still did it.
03:24:05.000I have a lot of faith in that if you could do something that you find that's very difficult and it tests you and it makes you rise, it makes you push.
03:24:43.000And comfort and being able to just continuously do what you're good at and not stretch, not go into that other space where it might not work, like the skill set that you have and have home.
03:24:55.000That's what I had to do when COVID hit and boxing stopped.
03:25:06.000The conversation you and I had is much like the structure of that show.
03:25:10.000And finding that inner bitch as your opponent is what I had the opportunity to do with my other friends as we had a discussion not unlike ours.
03:25:18.000And it required me to go outside of my comfort zone, not talk to boxers, but talk to people who I thought I knew and see if the conversation there about the passion that I have for understanding the fight in them Could be made something that was interesting to everybody,