The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #933 - Julie Kedzie

00:00:03.000 Five.

00:00:03.000 Three.

00:00:04.000 You start at three?

00:00:05.000 Two?

00:00:06.000 Ah.

00:00:07.000 Tricky.

00:00:13.000 And we're live.

00:00:14.000 How are you, Julie?

00:00:15.000 I'm doing well, how are you?

00:00:15.000 What's happening?

00:00:16.000 We were just talking before this podcast started.

00:00:18.000 You're working on your masters in non-fiction creative writing.

00:00:23.000 Creative non-fiction, yeah.

00:00:24.000 What is creative non-fiction?

00:00:26.000 It's actually very encompassing of a lot of things.

00:00:26.000 How does that work?

00:00:29.000 Think about, like, memoir or biography, essays especially.

00:00:34.000 We're a bunch of essayists.

00:00:35.000 We're a bunch of nerds.

00:00:36.000 They pick about, I think, nine or ten of us out of a group of 150. For this program.

00:00:42.000 And then we write a ton of essays and we read so much.

00:00:46.000 It's insane. 0.99

00:00:47.000 It's amazing how many female MMA fighters, not that this is a knock against male MMA fighters, are like really fucking smart. 1.00

00:00:54.000 Like Rosie Sexton. 0.96

00:00:55.000 Oh, yeah.

00:00:56.000 You know, there's like, there's a ton of them.

00:00:58.000 You can go down the list.

00:00:59.000 Yeah, Peggy Morgan. 0.98

00:01:00.000 Yeah.

00:01:02.000 Really intelligent female fighters. 1.00

00:01:03.000 I think that, I think there's something with MMA and creativity.

00:01:08.000 And I think whereas, because the opportunities maybe haven't been out there for women as much, when it comes to like, I guess, finding an avenue for that creativity, they're, you know, they go into other things like academics and arts, and then they find MMA, and then they try to do both. 0.83

00:01:22.000 I wonder if it's that.

00:01:24.000 I mean, I think there's probably a bunch of reasons.

00:01:25.000 Roxanne Matafari, that's another one. 1.00

00:01:27.000 She's super smart. 0.61

00:01:28.000 I always wonder if it's like maybe it's such an odd thing, especially when you started.

00:01:35.000 I mean, you were a real pioneer in a lot of ways.

00:01:37.000 I mean, you fought Gina Carano in 2007, 10 years ago.

00:01:40.000 Yeah, it was a long time ago.

00:01:41.000 It's crazy when you think about it.

00:01:43.000 MMA was non-existent in the public sphere back then.

00:01:46.000 It just wasn't something that people talked about for women. 1.00

00:01:49.000 But the women that did get into it and reach a professional level, they have to be extremely daring. 0.98

00:01:56.000 It's kind of a crazy occupation.

00:01:58.000 It is.

00:01:59.000 And I think that those of us who started back then, of course I'm not knocking the people who are doing it now because they're tremendous athletes and the women going into it now, but the environment was such that you had to be really obsessive.

00:02:10.000 And I'm sure that many other female athletes at this time Have that kind of obsessive streak. 1.00

00:02:16.000 But I think at that time, because we, I mean, you would scour the internet, like the MMA Underground, that was, I was always looking for fights.

00:02:22.000 I was always trying to find somebody to find me or the Sure Dog forums, all that stuff before it got kind of trolly.

00:02:28.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:02:29.000 No, it's like always, who wants to fight me?

00:02:30.000 Who wants to fight me?

00:02:31.000 And somebody say, I want to fight you.

00:02:32.000 Like, yes, thank you.

00:02:33.000 I'm so, I'm so grateful.

00:02:34.000 It was a weird atmosphere back then.

00:02:36.000 Yeah, well, it was people doing it just for the pure passion of it.

00:02:40.000 I talked to Jeremy Horn about this.

00:02:43.000 Jeremy, I think, has had 150 pro fights, something crazy like that.

00:02:48.000 And he was like, you have to realize, back then, we were doing it because we wanted to do it.

00:02:53.000 No one was thinking that this was going to be an avenue for you to be the next Conor McGregor or the next Ronda Rousey.

00:02:58.000 It didn't exist.

00:02:59.000 No.

00:03:00.000 Yeah, my very first fight, they videotaped me.

00:03:03.000 It was for Jeff Osborn in Hook and Shoot.

00:03:05.000 And they videotaped me and they said, what do you want to do with this?

00:03:06.000 And I was like, oh, I'm going to be in the UFC. And that was 2004. And, you know, everybody laughed at me and was like, no, I'm going to be in the UFC. Just watch me.

00:03:13.000 I actually can't believe I did.

00:03:15.000 But, I mean, I can believe.

00:03:16.000 That was my goal.

00:03:17.000 That's what, you know, I didn't do well in the UFC, but I got there.

00:03:19.000 You know, I checked that one off.

00:03:21.000 But, um...

00:03:22.000 It wasn't about being that superstar.

00:03:26.000 It was about where you would get to fight.

00:03:28.000 What you would get to do.

00:03:30.000 Just getting to fight was such a pleasure.

00:03:34.000 I have a fight.

00:03:35.000 The excitement you would have.

00:03:36.000 I have a fight.

00:03:37.000 Oh my god, this is great.

00:03:38.000 That's a crazy feeling to try to explain to someone that has never done anything remotely as dangerous as competing in MMA. Try to explain that to someone.

00:03:50.000 If you were talking to some Woman who's a doctor or a professor or a just normal job, you know?

00:03:58.000 Those aren't the most normal jobs, but you know what I'm telling you.

00:04:01.000 I'm just saying, if you were trying to explain to someone what you want to fight, like you're looking forward to something that's going to make you terribly nervous, you're probably going to want to throw up right before you go out there, you're going to be freaking out, and then finally you're going to be in there doing it.

00:04:17.000 It's difficult to explain.

00:04:19.000 I guess maybe ultra-marathon runners or somebody of that kind of different sphere of expression would maybe understand it.

00:04:26.000 You want to run 100 miles in the desert or whatever.

00:04:28.000 I think that there's an extremism in a lot of people that lays pretty dormant.

00:04:34.000 But when you get into it, when you find an avenue for it, it becomes so addictive and you just want to keep doing it.

00:04:40.000 You can't stop doing it.

00:04:42.000 Do you also kind of take comfort in the fact there's just a few of you out there like that?

00:04:47.000 Because I've been really getting it.

00:04:49.000 This is a really strange thing to get obsessed with because I'm not really going to do it.

00:04:52.000 But I'm obsessed with these people that hike across the country.

00:04:57.000 Oh, yeah.

00:04:57.000 Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:04:58.000 You know the Appalachian Trail?

00:04:59.000 Yeah.

00:04:59.000 I'm having this guy on who has completed the Appalachian Trail, and I'm obsessed with these people.

00:05:06.000 They cut their toothbrushes in half to save weight.

00:05:08.000 They wear one piece of clothing for six months.

00:05:12.000 It's nuts.

00:05:13.000 They bring water filters so they can find creeks and drink out of water.

00:05:17.000 And these are educated people.

00:05:19.000 College degrees.

00:05:20.000 And they just want to see if they can walk from Georgia to Maine.

00:05:23.000 I think...

00:05:25.000 Everybody has that in them to a certain extent where they just have to push themselves in some direction.

00:05:31.000 Although, you know, when it comes to those long hikes, I've also heard from people who have failed at the Appalachian Trail, you know, after a certain point, you're just putting one foot in front of the other.

00:05:38.000 And it doesn't mean anything anymore.

00:05:38.000 Yeah.

00:05:40.000 Right.

00:05:40.000 So I think that there's also that sense of burnout.

00:05:43.000 But those people with that drive to do something, well, passion, I think, is the perfect word for it, that just want to push beyond what they know into a different sphere.

00:05:52.000 The problem is it does become addictive and your body or your mind can't always keep up with it.

00:05:57.000 Yeah, and there's a thing that happens to people when they become addicted to things where it overwhelms them.

00:06:03.000 It becomes all-consuming.

00:06:05.000 So your all-consuming thing is trying to run.

00:06:07.000 You did 100 miles, now you've got to run 200 miles.

00:06:10.000 And you have to be faster this time.

00:06:10.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:06:12.000 Yeah, now you've got to win.

00:06:14.000 It's a strange compulsion to push yourself, to almost experience yourself.

00:06:20.000 It's almost like regular life In its placid vibration is frustrating.

00:06:28.000 There's not enough.

00:06:29.000 There's not enough tension.

00:06:31.000 There's not enough excitement.

00:06:33.000 There's not enough...

00:06:33.000 You need like...

00:06:34.000 I mean, that's how we settle the new world, right?

00:06:37.000 That's how mountains are...

00:06:41.000 Our climb, our summited, that's how we get to space.

00:06:43.000 It's because there's something in human nature that's so precious that you just have to keep pushing.

00:06:49.000 It's a collective feeling, but then there's some individuals out there who just stand a little bit apart or just in maybe a different playground, and they just want to keep pushing and pushing and pushing, and they want to be the ones, and that's It's how we achieve.

00:07:00.000 The thing about MMA, though, it's like you have to, I guess, balance that pushing with preserving your physical health, especially someone as smart as you.

00:07:10.000 It's got to be an interesting sort of an act, a balancing act, because Yeah.

00:07:16.000 Excuse me for talking over you.

00:07:18.000 I always get all excited and talk.

00:07:18.000 No, please, go ahead.

00:07:20.000 No, my body's a wreck now.

00:07:22.000 There's no way I could ever compete in MMA again.

00:07:24.000 What's going on?

00:07:25.000 Oh, my neck is out.

00:07:26.000 I had shoulder surgery in 2012, and something happened with my neck, and it never healed correctly.

00:07:31.000 What is it?

00:07:32.000 Do you know?

00:07:33.000 No, I've never.

00:07:33.000 I hate getting MRIs.

00:07:35.000 Do you?

00:07:35.000 I hate all of that.

00:07:36.000 I don't like being in a tube like that.

00:07:38.000 It makes me really nervous.

00:07:39.000 Yeah, so I just deal with it.

00:07:39.000 So you just...

00:07:41.000 I mean, just massage and stuff.

00:07:42.000 But my knees are pretty bad.

00:07:45.000 I get sciatica.

00:07:46.000 I understand that I don't...

00:07:48.000 I retired kind of young, I guess, but I understood that it was the time I needed to because things were not going to function in my body on the level that they needed to.

00:07:57.000 And my mind wasn't in a place where it would push beyond that.

00:08:00.000 Well, you competed professionally for, what, 10 years, more?

00:08:02.000 Yeah, nine years.

00:08:03.000 Nine years?

00:08:03.000 Yeah.

00:08:04.000 I mean, I've been doing martial arts since I was four, so that's a lot of years.

00:08:09.000 That's a lot of years.

00:08:10.000 That's 32 years.

00:08:10.000 That's a lot of years.

00:08:12.000 But, you know, actually competing, I knew that that wasn't giving me...

00:08:17.000 I knew it at my last fight.

00:08:19.000 Before I walked out there, I told Greg Jackson, I said, this is it, I'm done.

00:08:22.000 And he was like...

00:08:23.000 Okay.

00:08:24.000 And I was like, is he going to try and...

00:08:25.000 Right before you went out there.

00:08:26.000 Oh, I was so sick.

00:08:27.000 Yeah, I had food poisoning.

00:08:27.000 Really?

00:08:29.000 It was when I fought Betch Gohea. 0.96

00:08:29.000 It was weird. 0.96

00:08:31.000 And anyway, in Australia...

00:08:34.000 Is that about Betch?

00:08:35.000 Rolling your eyes?

00:08:35.000 Yeah, a little bit.

00:08:36.000 A little bit.

00:08:37.000 A little bit.

00:08:37.000 You know, you always have that thing where it's like, I won that fight.

00:08:40.000 Right.

00:08:40.000 Come on.

00:08:41.000 Throw me a bone.

00:08:41.000 I won that fight.

00:08:42.000 And stop wiggling your butt. 0.99

00:08:43.000 But, you know, she does her thing. 0.99

00:08:45.000 Whatever.

00:08:45.000 She does her thing.

00:08:46.000 She's been very successful with the Betch brand.

00:08:50.000 But...

00:08:51.000 No, I had food poisoning.

00:08:53.000 Back then, you're still allowed to do IVs and stuff.

00:08:53.000 I don't know.

00:08:56.000 So I had IVs, and I thought they worked well.

00:08:57.000 And I think I ate something wrong or something weird, but I woke up the next day. 0.54

00:09:00.000 Well, I have a history of a lot of shitting myself a lot. 0.80

00:09:04.000 During fights? 0.94

00:09:05.000 Well, yes, that has happened, yes. 0.98

00:09:07.000 That's what I'm known for, shitting myself in Russia. 0.99

00:09:09.000 Oh, boy. 0.99

00:09:10.000 Yeah, it was a good one, right in front of Putin.

00:09:12.000 Really? 1.00

00:09:13.000 You shit yourself in front of Putin? 1.00

00:09:15.000 Okay, I'll backtrack to that story because it's my favorite. 1.00

00:09:19.000 It's your favorite?

00:09:20.000 It's my MMA story story.

00:09:22.000 Yeah, no, it was my first fight under Greg Jackson.

00:09:24.000 It was in 2007. It was after the Carano fight.

00:09:26.000 And I'd met him at that fight.

00:09:29.000 He and Joey Villasenor and Keith Jardine and some of these people, and they were really kind to me.

00:09:33.000 And I had another fight in St. Petersburg with Bodog a couple months later, and my corner man couldn't make it.

00:09:38.000 I was in Indiana at the time.

00:09:40.000 Was that the undercard of Fedor and Matt Lindland?

00:09:42.000 Yes.

00:09:43.000 Yeah.

00:09:43.000 Yes.

00:09:45.000 So I called up this nice guy.

00:09:48.000 I didn't know he was famous.

00:09:49.000 All I cared about was women competing in the sport. 1.00

00:09:51.000 I didn't care about the guys very much.

00:09:52.000 You know, I liked...

00:09:53.000 Tough was interesting, but it really didn't do anything for me.

00:09:55.000 I would watch fights if I could, but I couldn't afford paper games.

00:09:57.000 Couldn't relate either, right?

00:09:58.000 I was like, well, they're not letting me in that show.

00:09:58.000 Yeah.

00:10:00.000 But Bodog did.

00:10:01.000 You know, these other shows that were, you know, internet-based.

00:10:04.000 And I call up this nice guy, Greg Jackson, and I'm just like, hey...

00:10:09.000 Would you be interested in cornering me for a fight?

00:10:10.000 And he's like, well, why don't you come here and train?

00:10:12.000 And I was like, oh, one of those...

00:10:15.000 And it turned out, no, he's this really nice guy who gave me a job and a place to live when I moved there.

00:10:20.000 So I drove out to Albuquerque, and I was there for three days, and I realized I was never going to leave.

00:10:26.000 This is my team.

00:10:26.000 This is it.

00:10:27.000 This is my home.

00:10:27.000 I left everything behind me.

00:10:29.000 Wow.

00:10:29.000 Which wasn't maybe very nice to my boyfriend.

00:10:32.000 Well, it's other boyfriends.

00:10:34.000 Yeah, I mean, it was my fight career.

00:10:36.000 That's what counted.

00:10:37.000 Where were you living?

00:10:38.000 Indiana.

00:10:39.000 Yeah, just outside of Indianapolis.

00:10:42.000 Indiana, Albuquerque, if you have family, it's not like you're moving to some boulder where you're looking at the Rocky Mountains or something.

00:10:51.000 Yeah, I mean, there are beautiful mountains, but no, it's not maybe a pleasure destination, Albuquerque.

00:10:56.000 Without the Jackson camp there, it's a little odd.

00:11:00.000 It would have been a difficult move without the Jackson camp there, for sure. 0.93

00:11:03.000 You know, the crack needles everywhere.

00:11:05.000 He's done a great job of fostering this amazing sense of community, though.

00:11:08.000 Yeah.

00:11:09.000 Yeah, he really has.

00:11:10.000 Him and Mike Winklejohn.

00:11:11.000 Yeah, they are tremendous men.

00:11:13.000 I feel like I did a lot of great stuff in my life.

00:11:17.000 I'm proud of the things I've done, but I think that I was also surrounded by people who really guided me well, who really like going back to school and stuff like that after my career.

00:11:26.000 This is the influences of people who were just like they care about the people on their team.

00:11:31.000 They care about who they surround themselves with.

00:11:32.000 But I didn't know any of that.

00:11:33.000 I just kind of showed up.

00:11:35.000 And first, you know, I drive to the gym and Greg says, oh, follow me back to my place.

00:11:38.000 And immediately I back into the dumpster at the gym. 0.72

00:11:41.000 I'm a total klutz.

00:11:44.000 But no, he came out to Russia with me for that fight.

00:11:47.000 And I wanted to impress him because I didn't realize till he was in that gym.

00:11:51.000 I was just like, oh, this is going to be like my sensei.

00:11:53.000 Like this is the this is like I feel like a samurai.

00:11:55.000 And this is like the person I want to.

00:11:58.000 I forgot what that relationship is called.

00:11:59.000 This is the person I really want to lead me and guide me.

00:12:02.000 He's my leader.

00:12:03.000 And I wanted to impress him so badly.

00:12:06.000 That fight, first thing she does right away was against Yulia Berzakovich. 1.00

00:12:10.000 First thing she does, punch me in the nose, just shatters my nose. 1.00

00:12:12.000 Blood everywhere.

00:12:13.000 I was like, great, this is again.

00:12:14.000 And it was right after the Carano fight, so I was like, I was used to losing, and you never want to get in that space of being used to losing.

00:12:19.000 But somehow I clicked, and, you know, I did pretty well in the fight, and I ended up getting a mounted triangle on her and finishing with strikes.

00:12:27.000 In between rounds, another corner man put cold water on the back of my neck, and I thought that I just farted.

00:12:35.000 I thought it was a fart.

00:12:37.000 Turns out, and this poor girl, mounted triangle, no less. 1.00

00:12:40.000 That's how I finished the fight.

00:12:42.000 This poor girl. 1.00

00:12:42.000 I had no idea of this. 1.00

00:12:44.000 Oh my goodness.

00:12:45.000 Yeah, so they grab us.

00:12:46.000 They put us on this bus.

00:12:47.000 I still have blood cut and lemon gloves on.

00:12:47.000 I'm still in my fight clothes.

00:12:49.000 And they just put us on a bus, separate me and Amanda Buckner from our corner men and everything.

00:12:53.000 Because we'd won our fights.

00:12:54.000 And they take us to this palace.

00:12:56.000 And I cannot remember whose palace.

00:12:59.000 Alexander or something like that.

00:13:00.000 It was in St. Petersburg.

00:13:01.000 And it was beautiful.

00:13:02.000 Gold, damask, and silk.

00:13:04.000 And just...

00:13:05.000 I'm in fight clothes, and I'm like, what is that smell?

00:13:08.000 And I was like, I'd seen a guy puking backstage because of a headshot, and I was like, I must have rolled in it or stepped in it.

00:13:14.000 I smell so bad.

00:13:16.000 And Jean-Claude Van Damme randomly walks up to us.

00:13:19.000 I mean, it was just like, you know, Fedor's here, Jean-Claude Van Damme, this and that, like just weird and surreal, already head trauma going on with me, like not really in my right mind.

00:13:27.000 Right.

00:13:30.000 It was so weird to be smelling myself and being like, God, I stepped in puke.

00:13:34.000 I'm sorry, Mr. Van Damme, that I smell so badly. 0.88

00:13:37.000 That's so crazy, too, because you got punched in the nose. 0.99

00:13:39.000 If you smelled it through your nose when your nose was fucked up. 0.99

00:13:42.000 It was bad. 0.98

00:13:43.000 I remember being on the bus and looking around going, does anybody have any perfume or anything?

00:13:47.000 And other people were allowed to shower, but I was a swing bat, right?

00:13:50.000 So I was right after Fedor, so I was just like, put you on a bus.

00:13:53.000 Didn't tell me where I was going.

00:13:55.000 That's a good way to get staff. 0.81

00:13:57.000 It was really gross.

00:13:57.000 No kidding.

00:13:59.000 I've been lucky with staff. 0.99

00:14:00.000 But yeah, so I end up going to the restroom and looking and there's shit caked all over. 0.99

00:14:06.000 Everywhere. 0.99

00:14:06.000 And I'm like, how did I shit myself? 0.99

00:14:08.000 And I was like, it must have been in between rounds. 0.99

00:14:10.000 This is disgusting.

00:14:11.000 I was like, there's no trash can. 0.94

00:14:12.000 It's like silk and gold and this beautiful palace and stuff.

00:14:15.000 So I just take my panties off and just roll them up and shove them behind the toilet.

00:14:19.000 Ah!

00:14:21.000 Black lace thong.

00:14:23.000 Vladimir Putin.

00:14:23.000 That was mine.

00:14:24.000 I want it back.

00:14:25.000 No, I don't want it back.

00:14:27.000 It's gross.

00:14:27.000 And it was, you know, in 2000. It was 10 years ago.

00:14:30.000 That's crap. 0.99

00:14:30.000 Wow. 0.99

00:14:31.000 Yeah.

00:14:31.000 And then I just go back out there and it's like Berlusconi was hitting on me and trying to pick me up.

00:14:36.000 And he was like, hey, can I be your boyfriend tonight?

00:14:38.000 And I'm just like, what?

00:14:38.000 But he's saying it through a translator.

00:14:40.000 And I'm like, I smell like shit. 0.99

00:14:42.000 I was as cleaned up as I could be. 1.00

00:14:44.000 I was like, you are a dirty motherfucker. 1.00

00:14:48.000 And Putin comes, you know, puts his arm around me. 1.00

00:14:50.000 And I'm just like, this is weird as hell.

00:14:52.000 And that was it. 0.99

00:14:54.000 And I was just like, I shit myself in front of foreign dignitaries in another country. 0.99

00:14:58.000 Wow. 0.97

00:14:58.000 And that's probably my favorite MMA story. 0.97

00:15:00.000 How surreal was it to meet Putin?

00:15:02.000 I had no idea at the time, like, what a big deal.

00:15:05.000 But that's usually, I stumble into things without knowing, which is probably best, because I'm a very nervous person, like, I'm a very intense person. 0.98

00:15:12.000 And so being there and just having had the fight, I don't know, like, when I think about it, I'm just like, I'm sorry, Donald Trump, but your hooker's pissing on you thing, I beat you. 0.98

00:15:22.000 LAUGHTER Sorry, dude. 0.99

00:15:25.000 It's been done and it's been done better.

00:15:27.000 There you are!

00:15:28.000 Look at that!

00:15:28.000 That's hilarious!

00:15:30.000 That evil, evil man.

00:15:31.000 And I had no idea.

00:15:33.000 You had no idea?

00:15:34.000 No idea.

00:15:34.000 But he looked different then.

00:15:36.000 Yeah, I was really blonde.

00:15:37.000 No, he looked different then, too.

00:15:38.000 Oh, he did look different, didn't he?

00:15:40.000 Yeah.

00:15:41.000 Wow.

00:15:41.000 That was when he had taken a break from being the dictator, right?

00:15:45.000 Yeah, I think he was Prime Minister at that time or something, but then he just went right back into power.

00:15:49.000 Oh, wow.

00:15:50.000 Yeah, it was creepy.

00:15:51.000 So strange.

00:15:52.000 Just being in that, like, kind of atmosphere and sweatpants and fight clothes.

00:15:56.000 Back when Tap Out was still cool.

00:15:57.000 Oh, yeah.

00:15:58.000 I loved them.

00:15:58.000 Look at you.

00:15:59.000 They were like, they put me on their show.

00:16:02.000 They took such good care of me.

00:16:04.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:16:05.000 I mean, it's a good, the Tap Out story is like a good cautionary tale for, like, beating a brand into the ground to the point where you gotta, like, go up to some people and go, hey, man, you can't wear our shit. 0.98

00:16:18.000 Oh, I know. 0.99

00:16:19.000 What?

00:16:20.000 It's so funny, though.

00:16:21.000 It's so weird to, yeah, it's so weird to think, like, branding and all of that.

00:16:25.000 That's a huge, like, now I'm becoming so aware of it because I know other writers, that's a really big avenue because if you think about Donald Trump, I mean, he's become president because of his brand, right?

00:16:34.000 In a lot of ways, yeah.

00:16:36.000 Yeah, and I'm stealing one of the other writers' ideas right now, so I shouldn't be saying that.

00:16:39.000 But, yeah, but I mean, really, he's a brand.

00:16:41.000 And that brand was so successful, it convinced a bunch of people that that's what was going to be best for our country.

00:16:47.000 And it was a brand.

00:16:48.000 It was a commercial.

00:16:49.000 There's that, but I think there's also a real lack of substantial options.

00:16:53.000 It wasn't like there was any one compelling person that was next to him.

00:16:57.000 I know.

00:16:57.000 I was such a Bernie fan.

00:16:59.000 I really thought that he was outside of the mold.

00:17:04.000 Everybody's a politician.

00:17:06.000 He's the best example, I think, of a guy who really isn't beholden to any special interest groups.

00:17:11.000 But I think what he offered and what Trump...

00:17:15.000 Offers as well is that they're outside of the system in some way Trump appears to be like way more inside the system than he was giving on to be but At least it shakes up this ridiculous They have this like really cryptic sort of way of doing business and bizarre way of intermingling money and influence and politics and putting it all together and It's just something has got to come along to let people know, 0.94

00:17:43.000 like, hey, this system sucks. 0.91

00:17:44.000 It doesn't represent us. 1.00

00:17:46.000 It's foolish. 0.99

00:17:47.000 It's ancient. 0.99

00:17:47.000 It was made up back when people used to write with feathers. 0.99

00:17:51.000 We really need a better system.

00:17:52.000 I agree.

00:17:54.000 I totally agree.

00:17:55.000 And, you know, like this entire election, everything about it has pushed me into being like, no, man, I'm a straight up socialist.

00:18:00.000 And I used to resist that title.

00:18:02.000 I used to say, no, I'm I'm a liberal and I'm this.

00:18:04.000 No, I'm a socialist.

00:18:06.000 I don't actually even think that I agree with some of the liberal things that have been espoused during all this.

00:18:10.000 I think that we are at a point, an evolved people, You know, in such a respect that we have to take care of each other and it has to be mandated from a bigger power because we don't take care of each other otherwise.

00:18:23.000 Now, when you say socialist, like in what way?

00:18:26.000 How do you define it?

00:18:27.000 You know, my idea of socialism, of course, would never fly.

00:18:30.000 But it's basically that we all pay into a system that pays us back.

00:18:34.000 We all, you know, we all work for the common man.

00:18:36.000 And I know that that's not...

00:18:38.000 It never works, but in my mind, that's the way it should be, that we should all be working for the guy next to us.

00:18:44.000 Well, it would work great if people like you, if they're hardworking, smart people.

00:18:47.000 Well, I mean, I have student loans out now, so I don't know that I'm the one to...

00:18:50.000 Well, there's another discussion totally, but I think student loans are disgusting. 0.97

00:18:54.000 I think what they're doing by subsidizing education and making people pay these ridiculous rates, not only that, if you go bankrupt, it doesn't matter.

00:19:02.000 You still have to pay your student loans.

00:19:03.000 You can never get away from that.

00:19:05.000 No, you It's not a single other business venture that you get into, and you would consider investing in your education and possibly your future as some sort of a business venture, business slash educational venture.

00:19:16.000 You owe that money, period.

00:19:18.000 You're not getting away from it.

00:19:19.000 They'll drag you to the ground.

00:19:21.000 They will.

00:19:22.000 I would say the thing that it does have going for it is the interest rate's a little bit better than credit cards and cars and stuff like that.

00:19:28.000 It should be zero interest rate.

00:19:29.000 It should be.

00:19:29.000 I mean, education should be...

00:19:31.000 In my opinion, it should be for everyone.

00:19:33.000 People should be educated.

00:19:35.000 I'm with you.

00:19:36.000 I think it should be free.

00:19:37.000 And I think it should be available to anyone at any time in your life.

00:19:41.000 I don't think you should be like 43 years old and you can't go back to school again.

00:19:45.000 I think you should be able to go back to school at any time.

00:19:47.000 It shouldn't just be for 18-year-old people right out of high school.

00:19:50.000 It should be for anybody that really wants to learn and educate themselves.

00:19:55.000 You're old people right out of high school should be taking some time off to actually see the world before they go back into this. 1.00

00:19:59.000 Because if you don't choose to approach your education seriously, you're going to have a really hard time.

00:20:06.000 I'm not a fan of rigid systems either.

00:20:08.000 I'm not a fan of this really regimented, go through four years of high school, go through four years of college, then you do this, then you get a job.

00:20:15.000 You're 30, you should have a child.

00:20:17.000 Now you have a child.

00:20:18.000 I just don't buy any of it.

00:20:20.000 There's so many different people out there with so many different dreams and aspirations and interests.

00:20:27.000 It's so rigid.

00:20:28.000 And when kids see this rigid path in front of them, first of all, it gives them anxiety.

00:20:32.000 That's what it used to give me.

00:20:33.000 I used to see people that were going to college and getting degrees and getting jobs.

00:20:36.000 I'd get anxious because I'm not like them.

00:20:39.000 I feel like a loser.

00:20:40.000 I feel like an outcast.

00:20:42.000 And I think that If we made education free and made it more available to people, I just don't think, I think that if we could spend the amount of money that we spend on the military, not that we should cut back the amount of money, but there's got to be that same amount of money or in the neighborhood of that same amount of money that could go towards infrastructure,

00:21:00.000 that could go towards education, that could go towards impoverished communities.

00:21:04.000 There's like zero effort made to build this country back up.

00:21:07.000 Well, I would say, yeah, and looking at the proposals on deck right now, the little that's being used for it, like the NEA and stuff like that, that's being taken off now.

00:21:17.000 The what?

00:21:18.000 The National Endowment for the Arts, stuff like that, that gives actual people and artists who maybe don't fit the mold but actually have a venture going for them that they could be successful with if they got some sort of funding or support.

00:21:29.000 I agree with that, but I've been to the L.A. County Museum of Art.

00:21:32.000 That LACMA thing, Jesus Christ, I'll take you there if you want.

00:21:36.000 You want to throw punches at people. 0.99

00:21:38.000 They have the most ridiculous modern art. 0.99

00:21:41.000 This is a video of people playing catch. 0.98

00:21:43.000 This is art, and I'm not kidding.

00:21:45.000 It's all subsidized.

00:21:46.000 I have a very hard time.

00:21:48.000 I actually love modern art if I know what's going on, but if I don't, then I feel like I'm just not getting it, and I don't understand what's happening.

00:21:56.000 I do think that I think not pushing art on people.

00:22:00.000 I shouldn't say pushing art, but I guess providing opportunities for art for people.

00:22:03.000 Not just art as in painting or sculpture, but I mean like writing and then literature.

00:22:08.000 And it's the ways...

00:22:10.000 I do think that the rigid educational system where you're just like, you do this, you do this, you do this.

00:22:14.000 Some people's brains just aren't wired that way.

00:22:16.000 But there are other avenues for them to be creative and to find themselves.

00:22:20.000 And like I found with MMA. I mean, I was pre-law.

00:22:23.000 And then my last semester of college, I was like, I don't want to go to law school.

00:22:26.000 I don't want to do this.

00:22:27.000 I want to be a professional fighter.

00:22:29.000 What compelled you to do that?

00:22:30.000 Because you had this long history of martial arts.

00:22:33.000 You got into martial arts.

00:22:34.000 You said when you were four, five?

00:22:35.000 Yeah, four.

00:22:36.000 Four, Taekwondo, yeah.

00:22:37.000 And so you had...

00:22:39.000 When did you first compete?

00:22:40.000 Did you compete in Taigwondo tournaments?

00:22:42.000 When I was a teenager, I did a lot of the, like, the NASCA circuit and the international sport, whatever those...

00:22:42.000 I did.

00:22:48.000 So point karate.

00:22:50.000 Yeah, I did a lot of point karate.

00:22:51.000 You can tell from my fighting, because I was always sticking my chin out.

00:22:55.000 But, yeah, no, I did a lot of sport karate, and I was very anxious to be competitive.

00:22:59.000 One of my friends...

00:23:00.000 I went back to the final hook-and-shoot a couple weeks ago, and one of my friends, Daryl Neer, used to train with me, and he was...

00:23:06.000 He said, don't you remember when you were 15 or you were running around the gym just asking people to punch you in the face?

00:23:11.000 Because you weren't allowed to punch you in the face in some of these tournaments and you wanted to know if you could keep fighting.

00:23:15.000 Like, I wanted to know if I could keep fighting if I got punched in the face or if I was going to quit.

00:23:19.000 So you asked people to hit you in training so that you could see if you could keep going?

00:23:22.000 Yeah.

00:23:22.000 And then I had my nose severely broken where I had to have surgery on it.

00:23:26.000 And after that, that's when I decided to be a professional fighter.

00:23:29.000 After the surgery, I should have probably waited.

00:23:31.000 How did you get your nose broken initially?

00:23:33.000 Spin hook kick. 0.72

00:23:34.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:23:35.000 Yeah, it was like over here.

00:23:36.000 Yeah, that's a bad one.

00:23:37.000 Yeah, but I mean now it's like it's been broken like seven or eight times now.

00:23:40.000 Like I'd love to get it fixed again, but I'm not sure that my student health insurance covers that.

00:23:44.000 Does your septum work or is it mushed up?

00:23:47.000 Yeah, not really.

00:23:48.000 I can't breathe out of the left side.

00:23:48.000 It's mushed up.

00:23:49.000 What I found out that was really disturbing was that your ears, like how they calcify and become cauliflower ear, your nose does that too.

00:23:56.000 Oh, I can believe Yeah, so the inside of your nose can develop all these hard calcified areas where blood is sort of pooled in.

00:24:03.000 Oh, wow.

00:24:04.000 I had to get mine scraped out, and they cut out, I think they're called the turbinates, these big lumps in there, and they kind of cut them down to open up the path.

00:24:04.000 Yeah.

00:24:14.000 They shove splints in there and separate it. 0.93

00:24:17.000 Like it molds around there?

00:24:18.000 It makes the hole wider.

00:24:20.000 I mean, making the hole wider is not always a good thing, but I would say for a nose, it's probably good.

00:24:25.000 Yes, yes and yes.

00:24:28.000 I'm sorry, I'm kind of pervy.

00:24:31.000 Yeah.

00:24:31.000 No, that's, um, I would love to have my nose fixed, but it is kind of helps you breathe.

00:24:35.000 Like it helps you sleep if you can breathe.

00:24:37.000 Your nose is a big thing. 0.99

00:24:39.000 Mine was fucked up till I was 39, I think, or 40. And then I finally got it fixed. 0.99

00:24:43.000 And I was like, I can't believe I lived like this my whole life.

00:24:46.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:24:46.000 With a fucked up, stuffed up nose all the time. 1.00

00:24:48.000 Do you think more clearly? 1.00

00:24:49.000 Oh yeah!

00:24:50.000 My cardio's better.

00:24:51.000 Everything's better.

00:24:53.000 I just was a mouth breather.

00:24:55.000 Literally a mouth breather.

00:24:57.000 There's a lot of fighters that are like that.

00:24:59.000 You talk to them, you hear that in their voice, how they have that thing going on with the nasal.

00:25:04.000 You're all clogged up, man.

00:25:06.000 I always wonder what the relationship between fighters and sinus medication is.

00:25:11.000 Oh, a lot.

00:25:12.000 Yeah, I was going to say, I still take it all the time just to be able to function. 1.00

00:25:17.000 But the problem is that shit's addictive. 1.00

00:25:19.000 It is. 1.00

00:25:20.000 It's very addictive.

00:25:21.000 What is it, Afrin?

00:25:22.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:25:25.000 You're making me think right now.

00:25:26.000 Yeah.

00:25:27.000 Yeah, it's a weird thing, that stuff.

00:25:29.000 It makes your nostrils dilate, and it opens them up, but when you stop taking it, it all clamps down.

00:25:35.000 Yeah, and it feels like even tighter, right?

00:25:37.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:25:39.000 Not good.

00:25:40.000 You have to go to therapy for it.

00:25:43.000 Yeah, a lot of guys stuff that stuff up their nose.

00:25:45.000 Yeah, the body's just not meant to take the kind of abuse.

00:25:48.000 You were detailing. 1.00

00:25:49.000 Your neck is fucked up. 1.00

00:25:51.000 Yeah, my shoulder's still pretty weak. 1.00

00:25:51.000 Your knees are fucked up. 1.00

00:25:53.000 The shoulder that you have fixed? 1.00

00:25:55.000 Yeah.

00:25:55.000 My labrum, it happened in the Tate fight.

00:25:58.000 I think it was tearing before that fight because I always had a lot of shoulder pain.

00:26:01.000 But I've had shoulder pain on both sides a lot.

00:26:03.000 But during the Tate fight, I remember throwing a left hook or something.

00:26:07.000 Just, whoa, what the hell happened?

00:26:09.000 My labrum was torn all the way through.

00:26:11.000 But I had this weird genetic thing called a Buford complex, which, that's a hilarious name for something, but it's like a thickened tendon, so it was holding my arm up.

00:26:19.000 So I didn't know that it was actually torn all the way through.

00:26:22.000 But I do remember, like, not, all of a sudden, not being able to base on my left side and being like, whoa, what's going on here?

00:26:22.000 It wasn't, like, limp.

00:26:28.000 During the fight that was happening?

00:26:30.000 Yeah, but I mean...

00:26:31.000 So did you get that fixed?

00:26:32.000 Yeah, that's what the surgery was for, but it was a really intense surgery.

00:26:35.000 I didn't think it was going to be that big of a deal because I hear about people going to get their knees scoped and stuff like that, but I couldn't get out of bed for a week.

00:26:42.000 My mother had to come take care of me, and I was 32 years old.

00:26:46.000 I was like, this is embarrassing, but I couldn't actually get out of bed and move, and I ended up having a bad reaction to the medication, and yeah, it was...

00:26:53.000 It was a good time.

00:26:54.000 Good time.

00:26:55.000 Surgery's tough.

00:26:56.000 It is.

00:26:57.000 And what we're saying is that the human body is just not designed for combat sports.

00:27:01.000 Just after a while, everyone sort of gives out.

00:27:04.000 That's why when you see a guy like Dan Henderson still throwing down at whatever he was, like 46 years old.

00:27:09.000 Have you seen Dan walk?

00:27:10.000 He walks like he's made out of wood.

00:27:12.000 He walks like he's got no flexibility and then all of a sudden he's in the cage and he just comes alive.

00:27:17.000 It's crazy.

00:27:18.000 There is something about that.

00:27:19.000 Greg always called me the Lucille Ball of MMA because he said that I was just the clumsiest person he'd ever met.

00:27:25.000 I would trip over everything.

00:27:27.000 I fell down all the time.

00:27:28.000 But he said, but when you were fighting, you actually, something, he used that phrase, came alive.

00:27:32.000 He said you would actually move like you were supposed to be moving.

00:27:34.000 So I do think that maybe the human body's not meant to take punishment.

00:27:39.000 In combat sports, but I think we're also built to fight in a lot of ways.

00:27:43.000 I mean, we've been fighting for years.

00:27:45.000 It really is, like, it's cliche, but it is kind of in our DNA to scrap.

00:27:49.000 It is.

00:27:49.000 It's just not in your DNA to do it all the time and stay alive.

00:27:53.000 Right, and to sweat your body down to this certain part and then go here and then, you know, yeah.

00:27:58.000 Let's talk about that, because that is one of the most disturbing things that's happening lately.

00:28:02.000 All these fights that are falling apart because people are cutting weight and cutting so much weight that they're literally on death's door.

00:28:09.000 I mean, back to the Hennon Burrell fight when he was supposed to fight TJ Dillashaw, and he fell asleep and banged his head off the wall.

00:28:17.000 Just a couple weeks ago, the Habib Nurmagomedov-Tony Ferguson fight gets called off, which is one of the biggest fights of the year.

00:28:24.000 And for fans, it's just so disappointing because we were so looking forward to that fight.

00:28:30.000 What do you think could be done about that as a professional?

00:28:34.000 As a professional...

00:28:35.000 And as a commentator, let's say, too, you do commentary for Invicta.

00:28:38.000 You know, and I was also the matchmaker, so I was actually...

00:28:41.000 I stepped down from that when I went back to school, so I'm no longer the Invicta matchmaker.

00:28:45.000 But part of my job was I had this really regimented checking the girl's weight twice a day. 0.94

00:28:49.000 I should say the fighter's weight, but I'm a girl, too, so I can say girl.

00:28:52.000 But, you know, I would check their weight twice a day and I had them text me their weight and I'd be like, okay, I need you to send me a picture of what you're weighing on your scale right now and compare it to this. 0.82

00:29:00.000 Like, I was kind of a bitch, but I didn't want fighters missing weight on my watch. 0.73

00:29:05.000 The problem was they were still going to miss weight anyway. 0.98

00:29:08.000 There's something archaic about it.

00:29:10.000 It's not...

00:29:12.000 It needs to change.

00:29:13.000 I think more weight classes, you've said that before, I think more weight classes is a really good idea.

00:29:16.000 I feel like every 10 pounds is more than reasonable.

00:29:20.000 I mean, boxing is way better.

00:29:22.000 There's way more options.

00:29:23.000 I think every 6 pounds almost would be, although that's a lot more divisions, but there's so many people who want activity.

00:29:30.000 There's so many people who want to fight.

00:29:32.000 I think for women, more importantly, because when you're talking about six pounds, you're talking about a greater percentage of body weight for a lighter person. 0.99

00:29:38.000 You know, when you're talking about 10 pounds for a heavyweight, it's like they take a shit it's 10 pounds. 0.94

00:29:43.000 You know, there's giant people like Francis Ngannou. 0.99

00:29:45.000 That guy could probably lose 10 pounds in three minutes if he wanted to.

00:29:48.000 It's huge.

00:29:48.000 Yeah, there's so much surface area to sweat from.

00:29:50.000 So massive.

00:29:51.000 But when you're talking about Mighty Mouse, 10 pounds is a giant amount of weight.

00:29:55.000 It seems like it.

00:29:56.000 Or you want to own J-Check, you know, like 115. Yeah.

00:29:59.000 Oh, I can't wait to see her at 25, but I'm really 80. Is she going to go up, you think?

00:30:02.000 I don't know, but I'm hoping.

00:30:04.000 I'm hoping.

00:30:04.000 Does she have a hard time to make 15?

00:30:06.000 I don't know.

00:30:07.000 I know that she said she's expressed an interest at fighting at 125, which makes me think that 115...

00:30:11.000 Like, I don't...

00:30:11.000 I've met her maybe twice, so I've never had a lengthy discussion with her.

00:30:15.000 She's so badass. 0.99

00:30:16.000 I know.

00:30:17.000 Every time she fights, I just get so excited.

00:30:19.000 She's so ferocious.

00:30:20.000 I know.

00:30:21.000 She's so ferocious.

00:30:23.000 I watched that fight with her and Jessica Panay again. 0.82

00:30:26.000 It's like, good lord.

00:30:27.000 When she smells blood and she starts attacking and smashing with elbows, she's one of the scariest people in the sport. 0.94

00:30:34.000 I know, I know.

00:30:34.000 It's beautiful, isn't it?

00:30:35.000 You can't get her off you.

00:30:36.000 No, and right at the end of her punches. 1.00

00:30:38.000 Yeah.

00:30:39.000 She knows exactly what to do with ranch. 0.99

00:30:41.000 Timing, everything. 0.86

00:30:42.000 She's so technical, and she's just so goddamn aggressive, you know? 1.00

00:30:48.000 Technical, aggressive, ferocious. 1.00

00:30:50.000 She fucks with her hands. 1.00

00:30:52.000 Gives people cookies and shit before she beats their ass. 1.00

00:30:55.000 I love that. 1.00

00:30:56.000 I love that.

00:30:57.000 That entertainment side of it was never something I captured myself.

00:31:00.000 I didn't have that little niche, sort of.

00:31:02.000 But when I see fighters do that, like her, who can be the full package, who can destroy an opponent... 1.00

00:31:29.000 Right, right.

00:31:32.000 Yeah, and when you do fake it, everybody sort of sees that you're faking it, and it comes off gross, and they get mad at you.

00:31:32.000 Yeah.

00:31:38.000 A guy like Connor, that famous press conference where Jeremy Stevens calls him out, and he goes, who the fuck is that guy? 0.99

00:31:45.000 I love that line. 0.93

00:31:46.000 But this thing that he has is natural.

00:31:49.000 I mean, it is who he is.

00:31:51.000 He just knows how to do it.

00:31:52.000 And so when he does it, it's effortless.

00:31:55.000 But when some people try it, it just looks so goofy.

00:31:58.000 It's just, oh, it's worse.

00:31:59.000 People want to see you lose when you do that.

00:32:01.000 It does.

00:32:02.000 It comes as inauthentic, and it's the weird demand that we have as fans, because I don't consider myself a fighter anymore.

00:32:08.000 I'm a fight fan now.

00:32:09.000 But we have this demand for the fighters to be authentic when they're fighting, but also when they present themselves.

00:32:15.000 They have to be themselves somehow, or we call them fake.

00:32:17.000 We have a lot of demands on fighters.

00:32:20.000 Well, you're putting them under this massive microscope.

00:32:23.000 When you see two fighters go to war, you're seeing their souls bared out.

00:32:30.000 You see so much in what they're capable of, like how they're capable of focusing, pushing themselves.

00:32:38.000 What they've done to discipline themselves to get ready physically.

00:32:42.000 I mean you can see that.

00:32:43.000 You see them express themselves with their endurance.

00:32:46.000 Like talking about Mighty Mouse again.

00:32:47.000 Like you see what amount of work that guy has put in in the gym when you see him in the fifth round moving a thousand miles an hour and not even breathing heavy.

00:32:56.000 It's like there's expression in that.

00:32:57.000 Like you're seeing something that this guy is like showing you everything he's got.

00:33:02.000 He's showing you his full character.

00:33:03.000 Yeah, and he's showing, there's that click that happens with some fighters where they're getting beaten down and all of a sudden they turn it around.

00:33:09.000 Misha Tate's a great example of that. 0.98

00:33:11.000 Like, you know, in her fight with Holly, she kicked my ass too with the armbar. 1.00

00:33:14.000 You know, she turns it around. 0.99

00:33:15.000 Something happens in there.

00:33:16.000 And you can see that that's the warrior thing that has won actual wars in people, where they've, you know, like...

00:33:24.000 I don't know, it makes me think of Henry V a little bit, you know, like, you know, just those moments where we are outnumbered, this is gonna suck, I'm losing, everything's going against me.

00:33:32.000 Alright, here I go.

00:33:33.000 I'm still gonna keep pushing.

00:33:34.000 And it's like, you know, it's like moments like that.

00:33:37.000 If you can look at fighting from, I guess you don't take fighting personally.

00:33:42.000 Maybe, I don't know how to explain it by taking it personally, but if you can invest yourself in those moments of glory, Is that easier for you to do now that you've retired than it was to do while you're competing?

00:34:01.000 Did you compare yourself against those people too much?

00:34:03.000 I'm a terrible person in a lot of ways.

00:34:08.000 I think mentally I defeated myself more than I ever did physically.

00:34:16.000 But yeah, I always compared myself against other people and I was like, oh my gosh, this person's doing this, this, this.

00:34:21.000 I'm not getting that.

00:34:22.000 I'm not doing that.

00:34:22.000 I've got to go this direction.

00:34:24.000 And the pressure, I think, on female fighters, and it wasn't exactly an outright pressure to be sexy or be hot or something like that. 1.00

00:34:33.000 I tried that so hard when I first started fighting.

00:34:35.000 I took the nude pictures and I tried to be the sexy girl and I just could not pull it off. 0.88

00:34:40.000 You could see in my face, I'm just like, doofy girl.

00:34:42.000 I didn't have that. 0.55

00:34:45.000 I'm a huge fan of sex and sexuality and however people want to express it.

00:34:48.000 It's amazing.

00:34:49.000 But for me, it just had nothing to do with combat.

00:34:51.000 And so the female fighters who could combine that, to me, I was befuddled. 0.99

00:34:56.000 I was like, how do they do that?

00:34:58.000 How do they put that together like that and still, you know, feel tough or still feel ferocious?

00:35:02.000 Because, I mean, sex is ridiculously fun and sexuality is, like, awesome, but it's also, to me, it's not punching people in the face.

00:35:10.000 And so it was, and I would always compare myself to, oh, I should do that, I should do that, you know, but I can't do that.

00:35:15.000 It's just inauthentic.

00:35:16.000 And I think, I don't know, to me, authenticity is this, like, weird, huge part of my life that I'm trying to study with my writing and stuff.

00:35:24.000 But it's funny how I would see them just like karate hottie, for example.

00:35:31.000 Like she came into the gym, into Jackson.

00:35:33.000 Michelle Waterson.

00:35:34.000 Michelle Waterson.

00:35:34.000 Yeah, Michelle.

00:35:34.000 People don't know.

00:35:35.000 Yeah, we call her nuts or peanut. 0.91

00:35:37.000 That's what you guys call her?

00:35:38.000 Peanut, yeah.

00:35:39.000 Because she's so little.

00:35:40.000 But when she came to the gym, she was this little Hooters model. 1.00

00:35:44.000 I was like, who the fuck is this gym? 0.99

00:35:46.000 I almost Connard. 0.99

00:35:47.000 I had a black eye when we were sparring the first time, and then she gave me another black eye right away.

00:35:53.000 The first time sparring, just bam, kicked me right in the face.

00:35:55.000 I was just like, oh, I like her.

00:35:56.000 But I was also like, I had these hangups about it because I was so uncomfortable with that sort of marketing and that way of presenting yourself.

00:36:03.000 And also, women weren't in the UFC then. 1.00

00:36:04.000 Our opportunities were so weird.

00:36:06.000 And so I would question people who would push That side of themselves so much and then not, I'm the fighter woman, I'm going to do this.

00:36:14.000 Like the Instagram model type thing where they're trying to do both.

00:36:18.000 Although it was Myspace then, which is embarrassing to say.

00:36:21.000 And then it's funny because I had this tension with her because I was like, I don't want to market myself in that direction.

00:36:28.000 It's not...

00:36:29.000 Who I am exactly when it comes to MMA. And then, of course, Greg sent that there was an uncomfortableness between us, and he took us up to the top of a mountain and made us run sprints until we were crying and holding onto each other and became sisters.

00:36:41.000 He was just like, all that's bullshit. 0.94

00:36:43.000 You are sisters, you're training partners, you're here for each other. 0.99

00:36:46.000 And it was amazing. 0.99

00:36:47.000 Something clicked in my mind where I was just like, oh yeah, she can promote herself however the fuck she wants to. 1.00

00:36:52.000 Yeah. 0.97

00:36:52.000 Well, if she's being authentic. 0.97

00:36:54.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:36:55.000 That's how she is.

00:36:56.000 That's who she is.

00:36:57.000 She was a model. 0.99

00:36:58.000 That was her profession before this.

00:36:59.000 So it made a lot more sense to me when I could step back out of what the boxes that I had placed myself under, or the containers, not necessarily boxes because I didn't feel closed in, but the containers that I was comfortable working within for myself aren't the same for the person next to me.

00:37:14.000 Yeah.

00:37:14.000 And so, you know, it taught me to have a little bit more respect for people who want to Combine everything the way they want to combine it.

00:37:22.000 Well, I think there's a natural inclination to try to shoot down potential rivals or potential, you know, like you're looking at people and you're trying to pick apart what they do.

00:37:31.000 I mean, in a lot of ways, when you're a fighter, you have predatory instincts.

00:37:36.000 When you're sizing up a future opponent, there's no way you're not looking at things they do wrong or things that you think you can exploit or maybe, you know, maybe she doesn't work hard enough or maybe she misses weight because her discipline's off and you start looking for holes in their game.

00:37:36.000 I mean, you must.

00:37:52.000 Of course.

00:37:53.000 And you're going to do that with a rival in the gym as well.

00:37:55.000 Of course you are.

00:37:56.000 And, you know, I wouldn't even go so far to say we were rivals, as I was 30 pounds heavier than her, so I was just a bully.

00:38:01.000 But, you know, the truth of the matter is, also, because, especially the early terrain of women in the sport, when there was another woman who came into the gym, this could either be your best training partner ever, or it could be somebody coming in here, you know, to pick up.

00:38:15.000 You don't know.

00:38:15.000 And I think men look at the gym that way, too.

00:38:17.000 I think they size each other up in the gym with a new partner coming in and stuff like that.

00:38:21.000 Sure.

00:38:22.000 And it's interesting because it sounds so sexist when I say it, but it's also, I don't want to lie, sit here and lie to you and say, think that, you know, like I, when other women would come into the gym, I would be like, yay!

00:38:32.000 You know, that evolved over time.

00:38:33.000 And especially because the atmosphere that Greg created there.

00:38:46.000 What was it like to be sparring with men when you were the first woman there?

00:38:50.000 To be doing most of your training with men and then going in there and fighting women? 0.98

00:38:54.000 Well, they were all sizes.

00:38:55.000 But, you know, I'll be honest, I think training with women is important if you're fighting women. 0.98

00:38:58.000 I think that there's a different kind of intensity and flexibility in body types.

00:39:03.000 And I don't know that that's completely across the board, but I did find it better to have female sparring partners. 1.00

00:39:08.000 And I was very fortunate in that Holly Holm was at the gym boxing, and she could kickbox, and she knew how to sprawl. 1.00

00:39:14.000 So, you know, I was still getting sparring with women there. 1.00

00:39:17.000 And Jodi Escobel...

00:39:19.000 Man, she was fighting at 105, and I remember Keith had me spar her for 10 rounds, and she dropped me twice at 105. I have a terrible chin.

00:39:27.000 I just boxed like this all the time.

00:39:30.000 That karate style, standing there like that.

00:39:32.000 It's so hard to get out of that style, right?

00:39:34.000 I had a really good jaw.

00:39:36.000 I was rarely knocked out, but it was the jaw that I put in front of people constantly.

00:39:40.000 I was always like, come on, hit me!

00:39:42.000 Did you ever think about doing professional boxing?

00:39:44.000 I did.

00:39:45.000 I thought about it.

00:39:45.000 I did.

00:39:46.000 Especially, you know, when, because there was quite a few female boxers in that gym, and I thought it would be an interesting thing to do, but I just never took that path. 0.56

00:39:54.000 I was a pretty decent boxing sparring partner.

00:39:57.000 Like, I learned how to imitate, you know, their opponents and stuff.

00:40:00.000 But yeah, I think I was always better in the gym than I actually was in competition.

00:40:04.000 Now, throughout your career, did you worry at all about head trauma?

00:40:09.000 Did you worry about the consequences of it?

00:40:11.000 Not until after.

00:40:13.000 Why after?

00:40:14.000 Because you didn't want to think about it?

00:40:16.000 Or was it a conscious decision?

00:40:17.000 And I think you have that mentality that you can beat anyone and anything, even your own body, right?

00:40:22.000 So I was like, I'm not going to let that kind of negativity into my life if I get knocked out, whatever.

00:40:26.000 You know, but my last fight, I do remember my jaw was out a little bit.

00:40:30.000 I had, like, somebody just adjust my jaw because I kept getting dropped in the sparring for my last fight.

00:40:34.000 And I was just like, oh, this sucks.

00:40:36.000 So you got your jaw adjusted? 0.96

00:40:38.000 Yeah, I don't know.

00:40:39.000 There was a chiropractor on hand, and I don't know how legit it was or wasn't legit.

00:40:42.000 He seems like a really nice guy.

00:40:43.000 He was an orthotherapist, and he said, your jaw's offline.

00:40:45.000 And then he did some kind of thing, and I stopped getting dropped, which was nice.

00:40:50.000 That doesn't really jive.

00:40:51.000 It doesn't.

00:40:52.000 So I don't know how much of that was psychosomatic.

00:40:54.000 Probably a whole bunch.

00:40:55.000 Yeah, and me just thinking, okay, this is what fixes me getting dropped or whatever.

00:40:59.000 But I did think towards the end, if I got dropped three times in sparring before the fight with Cohea, and that was in one day, and I was like, okay, Three times in one day?

00:41:08.000 Yeah.

00:41:08.000 And you kept sparring?

00:41:09.000 Well, no, they pulled me out.

00:41:10.000 Yeah.

00:41:10.000 You have to stop now.

00:41:11.000 They should have pulled you out, don't you think, after the first?

00:41:13.000 Well, I don't think everybody was...

00:41:14.000 I mean, it's a big sparring room.

00:41:15.000 I don't think people were...

00:41:16.000 They didn't know?

00:41:16.000 Yeah, I don't think people were paying that much attention.

00:41:18.000 I mean, there's a lot going on then.

00:41:19.000 When you got dropped, was it a flash knockdown or did you feel your legs go?

00:41:23.000 Flash knockdown.

00:41:24.000 I don't think I've ever been completely unconscious.

00:41:28.000 But you've gone limp and then gotten back up?

00:41:31.000 Yeah.

00:41:31.000 And it's the same thing.

00:41:32.000 You don't recognize your weakness, right?

00:41:35.000 You don't recognize that your brain could have problems.

00:41:38.000 As long as you're walking and moving and keep your hands up, chin down.

00:41:42.000 And I think that that mentality, I don't want to disrespect that mentality because I think that's also the mentality that makes champions.

00:41:51.000 But...

00:41:52.000 If you never became a champion and you went through that, you kind of wonder, I didn't make great choices with my life, you know?

00:41:59.000 Right, right, right.

00:42:00.000 You know, I think what you're saying rings true to pretty much anybody that follows the sport.

00:42:05.000 Like, we really admire those Diego Sanchez warriors.

00:42:09.000 You know, like, pfft.

00:42:11.000 If Diego Sanchez is fighting, I'm watching.

00:42:13.000 You know, I wouldn't want my kid to fight the way he fights.

00:42:15.000 Right. 1.00

00:42:16.000 You know, Diego fights like a goddamn human wolverine. 1.00

00:42:19.000 You know, he's just a beast. 1.00

00:42:21.000 Yeah, he's so intense.

00:42:22.000 Just charge forward.

00:42:23.000 You know, I mean, and he's been stopped and he's lost, but...

00:42:27.000 It's just the ferocity in which he approaches fighting.

00:42:31.000 It's heart and will and just determination.

00:42:36.000 It's all together in this indomitable spirit package.

00:42:42.000 Diego might not be a world champion.

00:42:44.000 He might not ever win a world title.

00:42:47.000 The amount of fans of that guy has won.

00:42:48.000 Because when he's so entertaining, what you're trying to see when you're watching two people fight is one person try to figure out a way to triumph over the obstacle in front of them that is the person, over the body that wants to stop, over the lungs that are burning,

00:43:05.000 over the legs that are giving out.

00:43:07.000 Do you think that rings true now in entertainment and sports?

00:43:10.000 Do you think that the UFC or Bellator or whatever show is on, do you think that that's still what people are looking for?

00:43:16.000 I mean, I don't always look for it.

00:43:16.000 Sometimes.

00:43:18.000 Like, I got criticized because people said that the Tyron Woodley-Steven Wonderboy-Thompson fight wasn't a good fight.

00:43:24.000 I'm like, while that fight was going on, I was on the edge of my seat.

00:43:27.000 Because at any moment, it could have gotten amazing.

00:43:29.000 Because you can see the math that they're doing before their techniques, almost.

00:43:33.000 I mean, not consciously doing math, but they, you know, they're...

00:43:35.000 They're adjusting to each other every second of the fight.

00:43:37.000 And I thought it was fascinating that Wonderboy was playing this very conservative, stay on the outside thing.

00:43:44.000 And Tyron Woodley, in order to close the distance, he had a risk getting hit and he got hit a few times.

00:43:49.000 I mean, it was a fascinating fight to me.

00:43:51.000 But people don't want chess matches.

00:43:52.000 They want the last minute of the last round when Tyron connected and Wonderboy was wobbling and looked like he was going out.

00:43:59.000 That's what they want.

00:44:00.000 They want slobber knockers. 1.00

00:44:01.000 They want Rocky.

00:44:02.000 Especially people that don't train. 0.99

00:44:03.000 They just watch the sport and they just think, you know, oh, I want to see someone get their ass kicked, you know? 0.98

00:44:09.000 They don't care that someone is using amazing footwork or that someone has a completely different style than what people are used to. 0.98

00:44:16.000 Wonderboy with that sideways sport karate stance, so difficult to decipher.

00:44:22.000 And he's also so good at timing.

00:44:23.000 His sliding in and out movement is so good.

00:44:26.000 And his ground is very good too.

00:44:28.000 He doesn't have to go there that often.

00:44:30.000 Yes.

00:44:32.000 I'm a fan of the whole thing.

00:44:34.000 I like all of it.

00:44:35.000 I like wars.

00:44:36.000 I like tactical matches.

00:44:38.000 I like a guy like Mighty Mouse who just barely ever gets hit.

00:44:41.000 And I like someone like Diego that comes out biting down on his mouthpiece and he could be covered in blood and he just fights harder. 0.98

00:44:49.000 Diego Sanchez won more third rounds when he got his ass kicked the first two than like anybody. 0.97

00:44:54.000 The Gilbert Melendez fight, Jake Ellenberger. 0.98

00:44:58.000 The last minute of the fight, he's on Jake Ellenberger's back, punching him in the head.

00:45:02.000 It's crazy.

00:45:03.000 He's just so ferocious.

00:45:07.000 Martin, Marvin Kampman.

00:45:08.000 Same thing.

00:45:09.000 Martin Kampman fight.

00:45:10.000 Martin Kampman had him, like his face was hanging off.

00:45:14.000 It was hanging off.

00:45:15.000 And he's still chasing him down the third round.

00:45:17.000 Like, there's nobody more ferocious than that.

00:45:19.000 Yeah.

00:45:19.000 But, you know, and it's the times like that.

00:45:21.000 Like, how can you not admire that?

00:45:23.000 How can you not want to see that?

00:45:24.000 Or find something in yourself that's like that, that will not give up.

00:45:28.000 That if you're at the brink of, I mean, not necessarily death, because it's just an enactment, right, of that fight.

00:45:33.000 Well, let's be real, though.

00:45:35.000 We're kind of being nice about it, but it is kind of at the brink of death.

00:45:40.000 I mean, Robbie Lawler, Rory McDonald, that was, to me, the brink of death.

00:45:45.000 I mean, you're getting really close. 0.99

00:45:47.000 Those guys were fucking going to war. 0.97

00:45:50.000 And when Rory's nose caved in and blood's pouring out of his face, and he just collapses and he couldn't take it anymore, I mean, how far away from death is that? 0.99

00:45:59.000 Is it a couple blocks?

00:46:00.000 Because it's in the neighborhood.

00:46:01.000 You can see death from there.

00:46:02.000 That's for sure.

00:46:03.000 But does that...

00:46:04.000 When you're watching it or when you're analyzing it, do you feel...

00:46:07.000 Does that feel differently than when you first started?

00:46:10.000 I guess watching and analyzing.

00:46:11.000 When you see these moments now?

00:46:13.000 It does bother me when I know them too well.

00:46:13.000 It feels bad when...

00:46:16.000 When I know them too well and I see them getting...

00:46:16.000 You know?

00:46:19.000 When I see a fight like...

00:46:23.000 Like Rory McDonald, Robbie Law, who I know, okay, whoever wins this fight, neither one of those guys is going to be the same again.

00:46:29.000 They gave a part of who they were in that fight.

00:46:33.000 And, you know, Don Frye said that once about his fight with Ken Shamrock.

00:46:38.000 He said, whoever won that fight, it doesn't matter because we both lost something.

00:46:43.000 We both lost whoever we were when we went in there.

00:46:46.000 We weren't the same guy when we left.

00:46:49.000 We left something.

00:46:50.000 He goes, I don't know if Ken's going to admit it, but I'll tell you.

00:46:52.000 I lost something in there.

00:46:53.000 I'm not the same person anymore.

00:46:55.000 Yeah, you know, it's funny.

00:46:57.000 It's so much, I guess I'm working on so many writing projects right now and so many things that I'm trying to analyze MMA from such a different perspective now, but if you think about it, what they've sacrificed to that canvas, like what they've given, like all of these fighters, all of these greats and all these not greats who've still given that part of themselves to that canvas and you wonder,

00:47:16.000 what's the payback exactly?

00:47:18.000 What do you get from that?

00:47:20.000 Glory.

00:47:20.000 Yeah.

00:47:21.000 Exactly.

00:47:22.000 Glory.

00:47:22.000 Those moments.

00:47:23.000 Those moments.

00:47:24.000 And also this understanding that you are the type of person that can persevere.

00:47:28.000 I mean, we've settled the world, basically.

00:47:33.000 We've been all over the world.

00:47:34.000 We know the world.

00:47:36.000 We know space.

00:47:37.000 We're getting out there.

00:47:38.000 We're figuring those things out.

00:47:39.000 But these are almost the worlds and the spaces and the glories, that fight for glory in these spaces.

00:47:44.000 Strange, heterotopic spaces that we create for ourselves.

00:47:47.000 What's a heterotopic space?

00:47:50.000 It's a Foucault thing.

00:47:52.000 I was just going to actually ask you with podcasting and stuff like that.

00:47:56.000 It's a space that's other, sort of, that you create an environment that's other than the norm, sort of, in a way.

00:48:02.000 It's kind of hard for me.

00:48:04.000 It's non-hegemonic.

00:48:05.000 Okay.

00:48:08.000 A super unusual, outside-the-box space, a strange environment.

00:48:12.000 It's something that's created.

00:48:12.000 It's kind of a utopia, but it's a controlled utopia.

00:48:16.000 It's a heterotopia.

00:48:17.000 It kind of molds those two ideas.

00:48:20.000 I was going to ask you about podcasting, because you kind of create one.

00:48:25.000 When your voice goes out over the air, and when you're doing these things, you're...

00:48:29.000 Entering into people's heads, you yourself in a way, or your voices, and it's creating this space that's other, where they're connected with you, right?

00:48:36.000 And it's just an other space.

00:48:40.000 And I think that fighting and I think the cage is that as well.

00:48:44.000 I think it's this new avenue.

00:48:47.000 It's this new area.

00:48:48.000 And that's where I feel so troubled when it comes to the commercialization of it all.

00:48:53.000 Because I wonder, people are still fighting for glory and stuff.

00:48:55.000 Or are they fighting for the pretty pictures?

00:48:59.000 I don't know.

00:49:00.000 And I can't ask people.

00:49:01.000 I don't know exactly.

00:49:02.000 I really want the answers to that.

00:49:04.000 I want to know why people still fight.

00:49:06.000 I know why I did it.

00:49:08.000 I think everybody has their own different reasons and sometimes those reasons don't serve you well.

00:49:12.000 Like when Ronda Rousey came back and when she fought Amanda Nunes and all the lead-up was all about Ronda Rousey.

00:49:18.000 And it was also about her getting back to being the best in the world.

00:49:22.000 And I was watching all that and it was like, I'm going to be world champion because fighting is the most important thing.

00:49:28.000 And I was watching and I was like, wow, this...

00:49:30.000 All on paper.

00:49:31.000 I mean, I'm keeping my mind open.

00:49:34.000 I'm excited to see that she's in great shape.

00:49:36.000 She's coming back fully motivated.

00:49:38.000 Not excited that she hasn't made any changes to her camp, but we'll see what happens.

00:49:42.000 She's got amazing judo, and she was a world beater for a real reason, but all the red flags are there.

00:49:49.000 All the wrong ideas.

00:49:51.000 Nothing about Nunes, right?

00:49:51.000 Exactly!

00:49:52.000 Nothing about the actual world champion who...

00:49:53.000 Exactly!

00:49:54.000 Yeah, and it's like...

00:49:55.000 I freaking...

00:49:57.000 I adore Ronda Rousey.

00:49:59.000 I mean, it's my teammate.

00:50:00.000 Holly is the one who... 1.00

00:50:01.000 Holly dethroned her. 1.00

00:50:03.000 But I adore Ronda and what she's done and the things that she's done and that mentality. 0.87

00:50:06.000 That's a Diego Sanchez mentality.

00:50:08.000 But it's not in the way that she's...

00:50:12.000 She got used to a very specific thing happening when she fought.

00:50:16.000 It was her dominating.

00:50:17.000 And when that didn't happen, in that one fight, look, she tried her best against Holly, but Holly fought the perfect fight and Ronda fought the wrong fight. 1.00

00:50:25.000 Absolutely wrong.

00:50:26.000 The wrong way to fight Holly. 0.53

00:50:27.000 Charge at her.

00:50:28.000 Yeah, with the hook.

00:50:30.000 And Holly was so ready for that fight.

00:50:32.000 She was ready for that fight for years.

00:50:34.000 I could see that.

00:50:35.000 She fought perfect.

00:50:35.000 I could see in her training.

00:50:36.000 It was literally a flawless performance by Holly.

00:50:39.000 So she loses that fight.

00:50:41.000 She gets devastated and chalks it off to lack of training, chalks it off to distractions.

00:50:46.000 So this time she's going to do no media.

00:50:48.000 She's going to do no interviews, no nothing.

00:50:50.000 Just go in there and just be bulldog about it.

00:50:53.000 But when you see the discussions about this fight and you see people that were behind the scenes, they were all convinced that she was going to steamroll Amanda Nunes.

00:51:04.000 There were so many people back there. 1.00

00:51:05.000 I was like, you guys are out of your fucking mind. 0.99

00:51:07.000 I was saying before the Holly fight that Amanda was probably the most dangerous fight for her. 0.99

00:51:12.000 Because Amanda's really fucking good on the ground. 1.00

00:51:15.000 And her stand-up is vicious. 0.99

00:51:17.000 Like, she's got brutal knockout power. 1.00

00:51:19.000 Yeah.

00:51:20.000 And she's long. 0.93

00:51:21.000 Like, she throws these long-ass punches. 1.00

00:51:23.000 And she catches you on the end of these punches.

00:51:25.000 I'm like, that's a nightmare for Rhonda.

00:51:27.000 Because Rhonda likes to stand up and brawl, to close the distance. 1.00

00:51:30.000 And even if you close the distance with Amanda Nunes, there's no picnic.

00:51:33.000 No, and, you know, Amanda's got actually a very good clinch and a very good awareness of where her body goes. 1.00

00:51:39.000 And her center of gravity seems to be, you're right, she's so long, it seems to be a little bit lower than, you know, I think it would be very hard to launch her on her head.

00:51:46.000 Although, Zingano did very well with that.

00:51:51.000 Belly to belly suplex. 0.80

00:51:52.000 That's what that was, right?

00:51:53.000 I gotta remember that. 1.00

00:51:54.000 There's another woman who's fucking ferocious as hell. 1.00

00:51:56.000 Kat Zingano. 1.00

00:51:58.000 So much intensity.

00:52:00.000 I remember, you know, I first met her in Colorado.

00:52:02.000 We were on the same fight show.

00:52:03.000 It was when I filmed Tap Out.

00:52:04.000 And I tried to go say hi to her because, oh, another female fighter. 1.00

00:52:07.000 You know, we weren't fighting each other.

00:52:08.000 And she just totally... 1.00

00:52:09.000 And I was like, oh, what a bitch. 1.00

00:52:10.000 And then I got to know her better. 1.00

00:52:12.000 I was just like, she is an amazing person.

00:52:14.000 She's just intense.

00:52:15.000 She had a fight coming up.

00:52:15.000 She is.

00:52:16.000 She didn't want to talk to anybody.

00:52:17.000 She didn't want to know who I was.

00:52:19.000 I didn't know who she was, and we weren't going to talk.

00:52:21.000 And then I just got to absolutely adore her.

00:52:24.000 But, you know, back to Rhonda and all of that, I feel like...

00:52:29.000 It's interesting, the Diego Sanchez, kind of the mentality, the bite down in the third round, I think you have something there where you push when it's against you.

00:52:36.000 And I wonder that something, that knockout interrupted her, or when Holly got her and interrupted her forward progression, and then going back, pulling back away from the media and stuff, I almost wonder if that in itself was...

00:52:51.000 Kind of a denial of that interruption and maybe trying to create a space for herself. 1.00

00:52:56.000 I don't know.

00:52:57.000 I'm so obsessed with this idea of creating our own spaces and what we're doing in our own lives because everybody's so different.

00:53:02.000 It's very important.

00:53:03.000 Yeah, and she was trying to, I guess, plot out the way to this fight and to wait at this victory against Amanda Nunes and not being distracted and not doing press and stuff like that. 1.00

00:53:12.000 And I almost think if she had done the press, And this is just a theory.

00:53:16.000 I don't know her that well.

00:53:17.000 I think she's a lovely person.

00:53:18.000 But if she had done the press, if she had exposed herself to all of that again, if she would have had more of a triumphant attitude, because she would have known, when you know what it's like to lose, And you know that you can still get up the next day and be okay?

00:53:35.000 And face the people who you said a million things to, a million confident things to, and you're wrong?

00:53:41.000 Or you were wrong for a night?

00:53:44.000 And understand that you can actually still get them to see your side?

00:53:47.000 I don't know if that makes any sense.

00:53:49.000 It does.

00:53:49.000 I see what you're saying.

00:53:50.000 I see where you're going with it.

00:53:51.000 I don't know.

00:53:52.000 You know, I think there's a bunch of problems technically with how she's preparing. 0.95

00:53:57.000 You know, I think her work with Edmund made her look really good on the Mets.

00:54:03.000 But there's a big difference between looking good on the Mets and having a bunch of different options tactically.

00:54:10.000 When you're in a fight.

00:54:11.000 And I think a lot of that comes with just long, long sessions in the gym, a lot of experience, and years and years of sparring and fighting.

00:54:21.000 But she was just, go forward, go forward, attack, go forward, attack.

00:54:25.000 And when she started getting hit, she didn't have any answers.

00:54:28.000 She was like throwing up this sort of push-away front kick and moving away against Amanda, and she was kind of done from like the first couple of punches landing. 1.00

00:54:36.000 And I think that if you look at real seasoned strikers, you know, like a good example would be, boy, there's a lot of good examples, but Ioana Jacek in her last fight against Karolina Kivalkovic.

00:54:51.000 Okay, that is two very seasoned strikers.

00:54:55.000 There was a lot of feints.

00:54:58.000 There was a lot of different angles.

00:54:59.000 There was a lot of different approaches.

00:55:01.000 It was try one way.

00:55:01.000 That doesn't work.

00:55:02.000 Let's go over here.

00:55:03.000 That doesn't work.

00:55:04.000 Let's go over here.

00:55:05.000 Now I got something.

00:55:06.000 Let's try that again.

00:55:07.000 Went to the well too many times.

00:55:08.000 Try back to this again.

00:55:09.000 It was a communication.

00:55:11.000 There was a conversation going on.

00:55:12.000 What you're seeing a lot of fighters is they're shouting out one or two words, but they're not articulate.

00:55:19.000 Meaning their approach is very, if you see someone and they just keep going to the big right hand over the top, big right hand over the top, it's like you're just banking on this one thing and someone is going to be able to figure out that approach.

00:55:31.000 And it might not be the person that's right in front of you, but someone who's really good is going to find their way through that and they're going to be able to talk circles around you.

00:55:40.000 I talk all the time about When I watch fighting, I try to break it down objectively.

00:55:44.000 I'm saying, what it mirrors in a lot of ways is communication.

00:55:48.000 And that really, truly articulate people that have a long history of using a deep vocabulary are way better off with a nuanced conversation than someone who is just...

00:56:00.000 They might be able to say, get off my lawn!

00:56:02.000 You know, they might be able to...

00:56:03.000 Yell out one phrase, but how can they adapt to someone who's passive?

00:56:08.000 How can they adapt to someone who tricks them?

00:56:10.000 How can they adapt to someone who paints them into a corner?

00:56:13.000 Can you figure your way out of a trap?

00:56:15.000 Do you understand a trap?

00:56:16.000 And when you see it in fighting, you see people getting set up and you see things happening.

00:56:20.000 Like Anderson.

00:56:21.000 Like Anderson Silva was a master at setting people up and a master of that Like, figuring out the language of what you do.

00:56:28.000 What do you do?

00:56:29.000 Like, what's your thing?

00:56:30.000 Like, you could see him when he was moving with guys.

00:56:32.000 He would stand southpaw, he would switch up, he'd move around, he would give you a little of this, and he'd just try to... 0.99

00:56:38.000 And then eventually, he'd figure out your rhythm and then start dropping shit on you. 0.96

00:56:42.000 And when he did, it was masterful to watch, because here's a guy that had figured out whatever rhythm you're on. 0.96

00:56:48.000 He'd figure out the symphony of your movements.

00:56:50.000 I think that's beautiful.

00:56:51.000 I think that's beautiful.

00:56:52.000 And I think that describing that as a conversation with another person, it's perfect.

00:56:57.000 It is a dialogue between two people.

00:56:58.000 It's a dialogue of physicality and strength and stuff like that.

00:57:02.000 But there's a conversation happening there in the cage.

00:57:04.000 And I think...

00:57:06.000 When we go back to maybe the aspects of...

00:57:09.000 I actually think that Ronda Rousey's training might have been a little bit too boxing oriented. 1.00

00:57:13.000 Not that she didn't throw kicks. 0.96

00:57:14.000 Not that she didn't use her judo.

00:57:16.000 But she didn't prepare for chaos.

00:57:17.000 And I don't know that boxers always prepare for chaos.

00:57:20.000 Because it's such a...

00:57:22.000 A layered, this step, you move your foot this way, you move your foot this way, you move your head this way, you respond this way.

00:57:27.000 You know, it's so beautiful, but when you see boxers like Tyson, who could throw that double right, you know, the hook to the body and then the uppercut and stuff like that, he could prepare for the chaos because he could bring chaos.

00:57:38.000 And I think that in her early fights, there was chaos there because she wasn't as sure of herself.

00:57:43.000 It was, ah, I gotta get what I need to get.

00:57:45.000 And that unsettled fighters.

00:57:47.000 But then when she got more comfortable with hitting the mitts, when she got more comfortable with them moving forward and having everything laid out for her perfectly, you're going to do this, you're going to spar this person, this is going to happen.

00:57:56.000 Now, I'm making a lot of assumptions here.

00:57:57.000 I never trained with her.

00:57:58.000 I never sparred with her.

00:57:59.000 I see what I've been presented by UFC media and commercials and stuff like that.

00:58:03.000 And I do as well as people that I know that trained with her that didn't like the environment and thought that it was just a little bit too unrealistic.

00:58:12.000 And that's, I think, what maybe the conversation between old school MMA and what's going on in MMA right now with commercialization, and it's worldwide.

00:58:20.000 And on one hand, I'm so happy for the fighters that they're getting paid more, that the opportunities are there, that they don't have to worry about crappy sponsors, although I'm not a huge Reebok fan, but whatever, it's not my business.

00:58:34.000 We're good to go.

00:58:52.000 It was that chaos that was so beautiful, like finding where you are in the chaos and finding your own patterns in that and preparing for it.

00:59:00.000 And that's, I don't know, that's the old school MMA that I miss a little bit.

00:59:05.000 Well, there's definitely something interesting and fascinating about that chaos.

00:59:08.000 But there's also, when you're talking about a professional and when you're talking about someone who's a world champion in particular, there's real value in preparation for an individual opponent.

00:59:20.000 And when you switch up an opponent last minute or something happens, like when Conor McGregor last minute wasn't facing Rafael Dos Anjos, all of a sudden he was facing Nate Diaz on 11 days notice.

00:59:30.000 I mean, that kind of chaos is a completely different animal.

00:59:34.000 I totally agree with you, and I might be contradicting myself here, but I don't care.

00:59:38.000 Because also, when Jon Jones rejected the fight, the initial, like when Chael was supposed to step in for him, and he said, no, that's not what my team wants.

00:59:46.000 And he got so much shit for that, and the whole event got canceled, but at the same time, it's just like, that's a pretty smart professional move to make.

00:59:52.000 It is and it isn't. 0.99

00:59:54.000 You know, I think John also didn't want to reward Chael Sonnen for all that shit talking. 0.93

00:59:58.000 But my thought is John Jones smokes Chael Sonnen if you wake him up at 5 o'clock in the morning after he's been out drinking. 0.98

01:00:04.000 I just don't think they're in the same stratosphere.

01:00:07.000 No, I don't think so either.

01:00:08.000 But I do think that that...

01:00:10.000 Although it was a move that affected a lot of people negatively who were supposed to be on that card and it affected the company negatively, it was a very big power move.

01:00:19.000 And it was also a move towards saying, hey, I'm more professional than this.

01:00:23.000 You can't do that to me.

01:00:24.000 Yeah, I agree. 1.00

01:00:25.000 But if I was in John's corner, I'd say, listen to me, dude, you're the motherfucker of all motherfuckers. 1.00

01:00:29.000 Go out there and smash that dude. 1.00

01:00:31.000 Yeah. 0.90

01:00:31.000 Having been the person who was with the people in his corner, I would say they're going to do things the way they see best for him. 0.90

01:00:37.000 Yeah, no, I get it.

01:00:38.000 But that's not Rumble Johnson.

01:00:41.000 No, but that's also the ways if you're not prepared specifically.

01:00:45.000 Again, I'm going back on what I was saying about the chaos, but you have to train for chaos and you do have to be prepared specifically for opponents.

01:00:51.000 You're very right in that.

01:00:52.000 You have to know what somebody's going to do.

01:00:53.000 That's how Holly was so successful about Ronda. 1.00

01:00:55.000 She knew every move that was going to come her way.

01:00:57.000 Right.

01:00:57.000 And I think that when you switch things up on such a level where it was that big of a fight, somebody he'd been preparing for Henderson.

01:01:05.000 It was Henderson, right?

01:01:07.000 John was fighting Henderson in 157?

01:01:10.000 There were a lot of fights.

01:01:11.000 Who was he fighting?

01:01:12.000 I thought it was.

01:01:14.000 Who had to pull out?

01:01:17.000 A lot of fights.

01:01:18.000 I don't know.

01:01:19.000 I know Chael came in, and it was a quest guy, right?

01:01:22.000 It was supposed to be Dan Henderson?

01:01:23.000 Really?

01:01:24.000 I thought so.

01:01:24.000 It was a quest guy.

01:01:25.000 Did Dan Henderson and Jones ever fight?

01:01:27.000 No.

01:01:28.000 I'm pretty sure it was Henderson.

01:01:29.000 I could be completely mistaken, but...

01:01:30.000 Dan Henderson did fight Daniel Cormier.

01:01:32.000 Remember that fight?

01:01:33.000 And Daniel just sort of ragdolled him all over the place.

01:01:35.000 I don't know.

01:01:36.000 I don't remember who the hell John was supposed to fight.

01:01:39.000 It just seemed as though those are the moments where a legacy can be very shaken.

01:01:44.000 Now John's done his own work of shaking up his own legacy.

01:01:48.000 John just needs someone to talk to.

01:01:51.000 I think that we all make poor choices and some people's poor choices are a little bit bigger than other people's poor choices. 1.00

01:01:57.000 Well, and there's also wild motherfuckers do wild motherfucker shit. 1.00

01:02:01.000 Like you want some dude who opens up a shogun with a flying knee when he's 22 years old and catches shogun on the chin. 1.00

01:02:07.000 That's Jon Jones. 0.92

01:02:08.000 That whole wild man thing is the reason why he's so goddamn good in the first place.

01:02:13.000 Because he has amazing confidence.

01:02:15.000 What makes Jon special is like the Gustafson fight.

01:02:19.000 A fight that he admittedly was in shitty shape for.

01:02:21.000 Really wasn't training, was partying way too much, wasn't really paying attention, didn't think Gustafson could beat him, and got dragged deep into the fifth round.

01:02:29.000 Still wound up winning.

01:02:30.000 He didn't fold up.

01:02:31.000 He fought.

01:02:32.000 I mean, he wound up winning the fifth round.

01:02:34.000 He wound up taking it to him.

01:02:36.000 He pulled that fight out.

01:02:38.000 And he made it... 1.00

01:02:39.000 I mean, look, Gustafson's a bad motherfucker. 0.99

01:02:41.000 It's not like Gustafson was a pushover. 0.98

01:02:44.000 But Jon Jones made that fight way harder than it was by not being in condition, not being in shape, and still gutted it out and won.

01:02:50.000 Yeah, he had that, I think, that part of him that I hope he returns to that is all about that, I don't know, those Diego Sanchez moments, like when you just, it becomes your spirit that's fighting there, not just your body that's fighting, but something else has to take over and take the reins.

01:03:05.000 When Vitor popped his arm and Vitor had his arm so hyperextended.

01:03:10.000 I thought he was going to tap. 0.92

01:03:10.000 I was like, holy crap. 0.92

01:03:11.000 I was hoping he was going to tap. 0.98

01:03:12.000 I didn't want to see his arm break. 0.99

01:03:13.000 I mean, it was fucking nasty. 0.98

01:03:15.000 And when his toe was half torn off in that other fight. 0.99

01:03:17.000 He didn't know about that.

01:03:18.000 Yeah, he just didn't feel it.

01:03:20.000 Like, that's another level.

01:03:21.000 Yeah, he didn't know about that until he was doing the post-fight interview and looked down and saw his toe. 0.99

01:03:25.000 And he was like, holy shit. 0.81

01:03:27.000 And then we got him a stool and he sat down on the stool and he was kind of in shock. 0.98

01:03:30.000 Yeah.

01:03:31.000 Yeah, I always called him my little brother at the gym, but I always...

01:03:34.000 Yeah, it's been...

01:03:36.000 He's not my little...

01:03:37.000 I guess.

01:03:37.000 I haven't been at the gym in a long time, so...

01:03:39.000 John is almost too talented for his own good and surrounded by the wrong kind of people.

01:03:43.000 I think that he does that, yeah.

01:03:44.000 I think that he...

01:03:46.000 100%.

01:03:46.000 There's something about him that self-sabotages, yeah.

01:03:48.000 It's easy.

01:03:49.000 It's easy to self-sabotage, you know?

01:03:51.000 It's like the pressure of being a John Jones.

01:03:54.000 But you think about the amount of money that guy missed out on.

01:03:57.000 Mm-hmm.

01:03:57.000 You know, and then he's coming back in July, and he'll most likely be fighting the winner of Daniel Cormier Rumble Johnson, which is in a couple of months.

01:04:05.000 If they could do that in time, because you've got to go May, June, July, maybe.

01:04:10.000 I mean, it really depends on how this fight goes.

01:04:12.000 But he still has a chance to pull it off and still has a chance to be the greatest of all time. 0.99

01:04:18.000 But he's fucked up pretty hard. 0.98

01:04:21.000 I like John, though. 1.00

01:04:23.000 I just think John's around the wrong fucking people. 0.98

01:04:25.000 He's a good dude. 0.99

01:04:26.000 I just think that, yeah.

01:04:28.000 I think that we all wake up at some point, and I just think his wake-up hasn't happened yet.

01:04:34.000 Like, even with maybe with the suspensions and the stuff that he's saying.

01:04:36.000 But I think that he also tried very hard to brand himself a certain way that, again, authenticity, inauthenticity.

01:04:44.000 You know, like, I think that I'm sure that I'm not a religious person, so I don't really know how to say if somebody is being super Christian or not being super Christian or being whatever that they identify with.

01:04:54.000 Like, it's not my...

01:04:55.000 That's not my knowledge sphere.

01:04:57.000 But I will say that it didn't seem, the things that he was saying didn't jive with how he was and it came out and people hated him for it.

01:05:03.000 They did get mad at that because he was trying to present this goody-two-shoes image and meanwhile he's a wild man.

01:05:08.000 Yeah, you know, the wild man is a respected figure.

01:05:11.000 Well, not maybe respected, but it's a vaulted figure in society.

01:05:14.000 Donald Cowboy Cerrone is a perfect example.

01:05:16.000 He's 100% on his sleeve wild man.

01:05:19.000 Yeah, I love him.

01:05:20.000 He's, yeah, and a good dude.

01:05:23.000 But yeah, Wildman, he has to have those rushes.

01:05:25.000 He has to have that danger coming at him.

01:05:27.000 Yeah, he lives for it.

01:05:28.000 He genuinely lives for it.

01:05:30.000 And without it, he doesn't feel as tuned in.

01:05:32.000 He doesn't feel as alive. 0.99

01:05:33.000 It's a crazy fucking sport, Julie Kedzie. 1.00

01:05:36.000 It's crazy. 1.00

01:05:37.000 I want to know you.

01:05:39.000 I want to know about you.

01:05:40.000 Who were you when you first started all this?

01:05:42.000 Who was I? Yeah, who were you?

01:05:43.000 And are you the same person now?

01:05:45.000 I don't know.

01:05:45.000 Like, who were you?

01:05:46.000 Like, who was Joe Rogan?

01:05:47.000 Well, it's just like, it's something I'm thinking about these heterotopic spaces and I'm thinking about authenticity.

01:05:52.000 I'm like, here's a person.

01:05:54.000 I was actually just going to email you these questions.

01:05:55.000 I was like, oh, well, if I come in here, I can plug Invicta.

01:05:58.000 And that would be great because I love plugging Invicta.

01:06:00.000 But also, but I just, I've never really sat down and talked to you.

01:06:04.000 And I guess, who were you when this started and who are you now?

01:06:07.000 Like, are you the same person?

01:06:08.000 Yeah.

01:06:09.000 Well, I'm not the same person I was six months ago.

01:06:11.000 I mean, that's just...

01:06:12.000 Yeah.

01:06:13.000 I would imagine if you're constantly thinking about things and constantly growing and trying to reevaluate constantly.

01:06:21.000 Yeah, I was younger.

01:06:22.000 I was just a few years removed from martial arts competition and kickboxing and doing some acting and stuff.

01:06:28.000 Did you train for acting?

01:06:29.000 Did you...

01:06:30.000 Sort of.

01:06:31.000 I had to take a few acting classes when I got a development deal, but it was because I already had a television show.

01:06:35.000 And so they said, hey, you should...

01:06:37.000 Learn how to act it was really that it wasn't that it was something that I trained for no I am I was doing stand-up and I got a development deal to do a sitcom and so then all of a sudden I found myself out here and You know I was like When I moved out here I was like Five,

01:06:53.000 six, something like that.

01:06:54.000 And I was just trying to figure out what I'm doing.

01:06:58.000 Like, why am I acting?

01:06:59.000 Like, this whole thing is weird.

01:07:00.000 You know, and then a couple years later, I guess I was 97, I was training at Carlson Gracie's place, and Vitor was 19. And he had just beaten John Hess over in Hawaii.

01:07:11.000 I was a white belt over there, and Mario Sperry trained there, and Carlos Pageto, and Marillo Bustamante used to watch those guys train.

01:07:18.000 It was amazing.

01:07:19.000 Oh, I love that, yeah.

01:07:20.000 And this was back when no one knew any of those guys were.

01:07:23.000 You know, it was really, really interesting.

01:07:25.000 It was really interesting to be a part of that original Carlson Gracie gym and watch those guys work out together and watch everything.

01:07:34.000 And so when the UFC needed a post-fight interviewer, one of the guys who was one of the producers, Campbell McLaren, was friends with my manager. 0.86

01:07:46.000 And they just casually mentioned it, and they brought it up to me, and we had a conference call, and I was like, I'll fucking do that.

01:07:52.000 Like, what do you want me to do? 0.70

01:07:53.000 And so the next thing you knew, I was flying out to Dothan, Alabama on one of those little propeller planes, and I was interviewing Mark Coleman.

01:07:59.000 I was like, this is crazy.

01:08:01.000 Watching Vitor Belfort's debut, you know, it was a fascinating time to catch MMA sort of in its transition from being...

01:08:10.000 The spectacle that it once was just four years prior to becoming a legitimate sport.

01:08:15.000 Like, Vitor entered the octagon.

01:08:16.000 He had gloves on.

01:08:18.000 You know, Vitor used to fight with shoes on sometimes.

01:08:21.000 And you were still allowed to grab clothes back then.

01:08:24.000 Because I remember this guy had...

01:08:26.000 I forget who Valid Ismail fought.

01:08:29.000 But he literally was grabbing his underwear and his pants and giving him this, like, intense wedgie...

01:08:37.000 While they were fighting, his cup was snapping, and it was totally legal.

01:08:41.000 Yeah.

01:08:42.000 You didn't have to have gloves.

01:08:44.000 The weight classes were, you know, it was only two weight classes, I think, back then.

01:08:48.000 It was real weird.

01:08:49.000 It was weird to be there, and it was interesting.

01:08:52.000 And I did it for a couple years, and then it just didn't seem like it was going anywhere.

01:08:58.000 MMA was stagnant.

01:08:59.000 It was removed from cable.

01:09:01.000 You could only get it if you had DirecTV.

01:09:03.000 So I did it for two years.

01:09:05.000 And then I quit and went back to doing other stuff and the sitcom I was on and stuff.

01:09:11.000 And then the UFC was purchased by Zufa.

01:09:14.000 And then I became friends with Dana and went to a few shows.

01:09:17.000 And then next thing you know he asked me to do commentary.

01:09:20.000 It was one of those weird things where I had zero desire to do it.

01:09:22.000 I just was talking to him.

01:09:24.000 I'd go, hey man, do you know about this guy?

01:09:25.000 He's fighting over in Japan.

01:09:26.000 Do you know about this guy?

01:09:27.000 This Russian dude, do you know about this guy?

01:09:29.000 And he'd be like, no.

01:09:30.000 Who are these people? 0.99

01:09:31.000 He'd write things down and shit. 0.99

01:09:32.000 Because I was just balls deep in K-1 and pride and all that. 0.98

01:09:36.000 I was always a huge, huge fan.

01:09:38.000 And my friend Brian from Canada would send me VHS tapes of all these Japanese shows.

01:09:43.000 So I would just...

01:09:45.000 I was just a massive fan.

01:09:46.000 The hook and shoot days.

01:09:47.000 I watched all the hook and shoots, all Jeff Osborn shows.

01:09:50.000 And then somewhere around, I guess it was 2002 when I was on Fear Factor, they asked me to do commentary and then I've been doing it ever since.

01:09:58.000 So that's it.

01:09:59.000 Yeah, that's it.

01:09:59.000 That's it?

01:10:00.000 And now, do you ever look at your old stuff?

01:10:03.000 Do you ever consider your mind space then?

01:10:06.000 You mean, like, the old commentary stuff?

01:10:08.000 Yeah, or just even think about it.

01:10:10.000 I mean, I try to do my best every time I do it, but honestly, what my contribution is is so...

01:10:15.000 I don't want to say it's insignificant, but it's not very important, because what it is is just me trying to do the best I can to describe what I see in front of me, to make it as entertaining as I can, but also honor what's happening.

01:10:31.000 You're a conduit.

01:10:32.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:10:33.000 You're where the flow of information has to come through for the average viewer.

01:10:36.000 No, I really admire that about you.

01:10:38.000 I'm not trying to suck up, but your enthusiasm is something I really tried to model myself after.

01:10:43.000 I think that I'm nowhere near the level of commentator that you are, but when I hear you get excited about stuff, I'm really happy to hear that because it makes me think, okay, as somebody who's communicating what's happening in this sphere that...

01:10:58.000 So many people know about but so many people don't really understand like what's going on if somebody's clenched up or they're grabbing a bicep here and why that's important.

01:11:05.000 Why the way this fighter is shifting their hips is so important. 0.99

01:11:08.000 You know and it's cool to see that kind of enthusiasm so that I guess other people can get excited about something without even knowing they're getting excited.

01:11:17.000 Like their blood pressure comes up a little bit when they're watching and that's neat.

01:11:21.000 It's neat to see that because it seems genuine.

01:11:23.000 It's all 100% genuine.

01:11:25.000 It's the only sport that I really follow.

01:11:27.000 I mean, I don't really even understand football.

01:11:29.000 I don't know what's going on.

01:11:30.000 Like, when the whistle blows, like, what happened?

01:11:33.000 I don't know what happened.

01:11:34.000 And, you know, people make fun of me all the time for that, but it's not interesting to me.

01:11:39.000 Kickboxing, boxing, wrestling, jiu-jitsu, and MMA, watching all that takes up plenty of time.

01:11:44.000 I don't have time for anything else.

01:11:46.000 I just don't and the consequences just aren't the same I mean when when I watch a kickboxing match or I watch an MMA fight the consequences are so extreme that I'm engaged I'm captivated and with MMA You know, when I'm watching it,

01:12:01.000 and I'm there live, and I'm cage-side, and I'm watching all this stuff go down, and I'm not just watching, but I'm also analyzing it.

01:12:10.000 So I'm trying to decipher patterns, and I'm data chunking, and trying to figure out what could possibly happen.

01:12:18.000 What am I seeing?

01:12:19.000 Am I projecting this, or am I actually seeing this?

01:12:22.000 And just trying to be as empty about it as I can, but also be so enthusiastic about it.

01:12:27.000 And then there's moments like when Darren Elkins beat Mursad Bektik.

01:12:34.000 It's just so hard for me not to cry inside the octagon.

01:12:37.000 It was so hard.

01:12:38.000 Oh, I believe it.

01:12:39.000 Yeah.

01:12:39.000 When I was interviewing that dude, I'll start welling up right now.

01:12:42.000 When I was interviewing him, after that fight, I was like, that guy just emptied out.

01:12:48.000 I mean, emptied out.

01:12:49.000 His whole soul. 0.99

01:12:50.000 I mean, he took a fucking beating for two and a half rounds and didn't give up an inch. 1.00

01:12:57.000 There was nothing. 1.00

01:12:58.000 There was no quitting him.

01:12:59.000 None.

01:13:00.000 And then finally, in the third round, he catches that guy.

01:13:00.000 Zero.

01:13:04.000 And there's this fucking roar that he did after that fight was stopped, where he throws his arm back and he's moving around the cage and screaming. 0.99

01:13:13.000 He's covered in blood, like right there. 0.99

01:13:17.000 Yeah, I mean, that's one of the purest human moments you can ever see, isn't it?

01:13:25.000 Yeah, I have to wipe tears off my eyes right now.

01:13:27.000 No, I totally understand that.

01:13:31.000 It's amazing.

01:13:32.000 It's amazing to, I guess, to see your passion for that and to see you are able to witness that and you're still able to translate that kind of passion to people.

01:13:39.000 Well, if it stops being that to me, I'm going to stop doing it.

01:13:43.000 But that was just the last fight.

01:13:46.000 Not only is it not stopped, when the fights are going on, there's no waning whatsoever in my enthusiasm.

01:13:53.000 It hasn't dissipated.

01:13:55.000 And people think, oh, he's kind of half in now because he doesn't do all the events.

01:14:00.000 That can be further from the truth.

01:14:01.000 I just don't want to travel.

01:14:02.000 No, and also you're going to wear yourself down to a certain point where it's just like you're going to be too sick to actually be able to experience what you need to experience for the viewer.

01:14:11.000 To feel what's going on.

01:14:12.000 Also, I have too many interests.

01:14:14.000 I like to do too many things.

01:14:18.000 I'm trying to live five lives, you know?

01:14:21.000 I mean, if you have the opportunity to, why not?

01:14:25.000 But it does wear you thin a little bit.

01:14:27.000 Did you have that kind of passionate connection with comedy?

01:14:30.000 Like when you're doing stand-up and when you're in that kind of engagement, do you feel that flow where you're just almost to the point of emotion and you want to cry?

01:14:38.000 No, not like that.

01:14:39.000 That's different.

01:14:40.000 Because it's life or death.

01:14:42.000 Like that Darren Elkins fight was life or death.

01:14:44.000 It's a different thing.

01:14:47.000 It's like comedy is fun.

01:14:49.000 It's like joyful. 0.96

01:14:50.000 It's silly.

01:14:51.000 It's important in that I know that people come out to see me and they pay money and I want to do my best.

01:14:57.000 It's important that I'm trying to constantly improve.

01:15:01.000 What I do is I dump all my material out every two years.

01:15:04.000 So I write a special.

01:15:06.000 I perform it, I get it tight, and then I record it, I put it on whatever, on Netflix or whatever, and then I'm done.

01:15:12.000 And then I have to write a whole new one.

01:15:14.000 And that process is a long and painful process.

01:15:17.000 Like, I did my Netflix special in November.

01:15:20.000 It came out in November, so it's been December, January, February, March.

01:15:25.000 We're four months in now, so it's like on, like, Fawn legs.

01:15:29.000 It's like it's just sort of like trotting along now.

01:15:32.000 It's not really like a cult.

01:15:34.000 You know, it's not really like fully formed yet, but it'll get fully formed and then once it gets hardened and once I know that it's ready to rock like I could smash for an hour, then I chuck it out.

01:15:44.000 And so there's a lot of intensity in that regard, but it's a different kind of intensity.

01:15:50.000 I think they kind of it's a fun intensity.

01:15:52.000 There's emotions like There's, you know, jokes that don't go well, and it's painful, and I don't enjoy that, but I also know that that's where the growth comes from.

01:16:01.000 Like, those shitty sets or what, like, some of my biggest leaps have come from post-sets where it wasn't good, and then I sort of re-engaged and reconnected and got more fired up.

01:16:10.000 And as soon as that stops being important to me, I'll stop doing that, too.

01:16:14.000 But...

01:16:15.000 It doesn't have the same feeling that fighting has.

01:16:16.000 Fighting has this unique moment, this unique thing to it, like that Darren Elkins fight, where it's like, man, there's not a whole lot of things like that in the world that you can witness, where they're that fucking intense, and that I have the honor to try to do service to,

01:16:35.000 to try to I would say fighting is one of the few arts or sports or however you want to phrase it, experiences in the world where the stakes are immediately high.

01:16:45.000 Yes.

01:16:45.000 They're laid out there.

01:16:46.000 The stakes are high.

01:16:47.000 Win or lose isn't just win or lose to a fighter.

01:16:50.000 And it's not win or lose to a fan, although you can step back and say that or you can say, well, I'm just watching this for internet.

01:16:55.000 But you get invested.

01:16:56.000 Yeah.

01:16:57.000 You get so invested in it.

01:16:58.000 I think that's, I was kind of a lousy matchmaker in that sense that I cared about the girls too much. 0.97

01:17:03.000 And I was just like, I didn't want anybody to lose ever.

01:17:03.000 I really did.

01:17:07.000 Somebody has to lose.

01:17:09.000 I was terrible with the math.

01:17:10.000 I'm very hyperactive.

01:17:16.000 When I'm in the zone, I can pay attention really well, but when I'm not, my mind is everywhere and I can't really focus.

01:17:22.000 I wasn't great in that respect.

01:17:25.000 But, man, when you see something come together, though, when you see the fight actually happen, And it does matter who wins or who loses, but it also doesn't.

01:17:34.000 What matters is just watching that physical engagement and these people perform.

01:17:38.000 And they're not performing, but they are performing.

01:17:41.000 Yes.

01:17:42.000 I don't know.

01:17:43.000 It's incredible.

01:17:44.000 You know, like when Meryl Streep was saying that MMA is not the arts.

01:17:44.000 Yeah, it is an art.

01:17:49.000 Well, listen, it's not painting, but guess what?

01:17:52.000 It's art. 0.99

01:17:53.000 It's on a damn canvas. 0.99

01:17:54.000 Like, I mean, it really is. 1.00

01:17:54.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:17:56.000 Like, it is.

01:17:57.000 I mean, it's a contained canvas that these actions are being performed.

01:18:01.000 It's art.

01:18:02.000 It just, it may not be what we identify as art, but neither is the person in the modern art with the TV or whatever you were talking about earlier.

01:18:09.000 Like, Well, when you see a fight like Misha Tate versus Holly Holm, when Misha Tate takes Holly Holm down in the fifth round, locks that choke in, and Holly doesn't even tap, she's throwing punches in the air as she goes unconscious.

01:18:25.000 And, you know, there's people on the outside that would look at that and go, oh, that's just barbaric and it's just violent.

01:18:29.000 But you see Misha Tate getting that belt strapped around her waist and her reaction... 0.97

01:18:35.000 Oh my gosh.

01:18:36.000 She was the Strikeforce champion. 0.98

01:18:36.000 Her whole life. 0.98

01:18:38.000 And no!

01:18:40.000 UFC! Phantomweight champion of the world!

01:18:43.000 Yeah.

01:18:44.000 She climbed.

01:18:45.000 She summited the highest mountain that she could summit in that time.

01:18:47.000 That was art.

01:18:48.000 Yeah.

01:18:48.000 That was art.

01:18:49.000 The way I describe MMA, my definition is it's high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences.

01:18:56.000 And that's really what it is.

01:18:57.000 But it's also done...

01:19:00.000 Especially when you watch Anderson fight in his prime.

01:19:02.000 It was beautiful.

01:19:03.000 It was beautiful to watch.

01:19:05.000 There was aesthetics involved that were undeniably artistic.

01:19:10.000 There was something going on.

01:19:11.000 There was one fight, and I can't recall right now, where he mimicked all of these different styles.

01:19:15.000 He did a capoeira move, and then he did this, and then he did that.

01:19:18.000 All in one fight.

01:19:19.000 He was monkeying around.

01:19:21.000 I don't mean that in...

01:19:22.000 I guess that sounds racist.

01:19:24.000 I don't mean that.

01:19:24.000 I mean in the playful sense.

01:19:26.000 What a ridiculous world we live in. 1.00

01:19:27.000 You can't say monkeying around if it's a black guy. 1.00

01:19:29.000 Well, I mean...

01:19:30.000 I want to respect if something that I say offends somebody.

01:19:34.000 I want to respect their angle of offense.

01:19:36.000 You didn't mean anything.

01:19:37.000 I didn't.

01:19:38.000 But it's supposed to convey intent.

01:19:40.000 Yeah, and when he's playing around like that, I guess.

01:19:43.000 When he's mimicking other things and you're just like, this is a fight.

01:19:46.000 And you're able to just play a completely different game.

01:19:49.000 Well, it was also part of his strategy, and that's what sort of turned against him in a Chris Weidman fight.

01:19:55.000 Because that playing around, sort of, it was to mock your danger, you know?

01:20:02.000 I'm sorry, I keep talking.

01:20:04.000 No, please go ahead.

01:20:05.000 Well, then Nick Diaz did it back to him when he laid down.

01:20:07.000 That was the best.

01:20:08.000 I loved that.

01:20:08.000 That was one of my favorite moments in any fight.

01:20:11.000 It wasn't even anybody getting hit.

01:20:12.000 Nick lays down, he puts his hands together.

01:20:14.000 He was like, he did Anderson to Anderson.

01:20:14.000 I know!

01:20:17.000 He played.

01:20:18.000 He played the game and it was amazing.

01:20:20.000 Nick is incredible. 1.00

01:20:22.000 When Nick starts talking shit to you, I think Frank Shermock said it best. 0.99

01:20:25.000 He's like, you can't believe it's happening. 1.00

01:20:27.000 I can't believe this guy's beating my ass and he's talking shit to me while he's doing it. 1.00

01:20:34.000 It's just, I mean, I remember when he fought Robbie Lawler and he was just constantly talking shit to him while he was fighting. 1.00

01:20:39.000 You could see, like, Robbie was like, what is going on here? 1.00

01:20:42.000 Like, it fucks with their heads. 0.99

01:20:43.000 It fucks with people's heads. 1.00

01:20:45.000 It's the complete, like... 1.00

01:20:47.000 That's the bech cohea.

01:20:48.000 Oh my god, I know, right?

01:20:50.000 Oh, bech.

01:20:51.000 Yeah, no, but it's the complete, like...

01:20:55.000 He's lying down with his hand by his hand.

01:20:57.000 He's chilling.

01:20:58.000 That was incredible.

01:20:59.000 That's one of the funniest moments in the history of fighting.

01:20:59.000 I mean, come on.

01:21:02.000 Those are the moments when you're just like, this is somebody who doesn't give a fuck. 0.99

01:21:02.000 It is. 0.99

01:21:07.000 Well, he was also trying to get Anderson to engage.

01:21:09.000 And Anderson, the whole thing with Anderson was counter-striking.

01:21:12.000 Patrick Cote sort of exposed that in a lot of ways.

01:21:14.000 Because Patrick Cote didn't lead.

01:21:16.000 He just waited on Anderson.

01:21:17.000 And Anderson was like, I don't like this.

01:21:19.000 No.

01:21:20.000 Yeah.

01:21:21.000 Because, yeah, Counter-Strikers, they have their own, I guess, their own methodology with being able to read what's happening.

01:21:28.000 And if somebody doesn't initiate, there's a lot of waiting.

01:21:31.000 And waiting is, you know, it makes the fans hate you and it makes you hate yourself because you get more frustrated and your emotions get more intense, right?

01:21:31.000 Yeah.

01:21:39.000 Yeah, especially when you get to a fight like Wonderboy Thompson versus Tyron Woodley, where you see this waiting thing and it's just going on and on and on, you know, five rounds, and you're like, get to the fucking fight! 0.94

01:21:52.000 It's not fan-friendly, right?

01:21:53.000 But for the fighters, any wrong move at that point in that waiting game, that could be death.

01:21:59.000 Yes.

01:22:00.000 Well, loss.

01:22:01.000 Loss, yeah.

01:22:02.000 For sure, for sure, for sure.

01:22:04.000 What excites you now that you're not fighting?

01:22:07.000 What excites you about the sport?

01:22:10.000 Oh, the sport, it's the stories.

01:22:12.000 I'm a sucker for the stories.

01:22:13.000 The whole reason I went back to school is I was reading some of those long-form essays the MMA writers were doing.

01:22:18.000 And I was like, you know, and I was doing the matchmaking.

01:22:20.000 I was doing okay at it.

01:22:21.000 I was doing the commentary, but I was like, I'm just not reaching that thing that I was reaching when I was fighting.

01:22:28.000 Something about me is not being expressed.

01:22:29.000 So I took a class, a writing class, wrote an essay, and it got me into school.

01:22:35.000 And I was like, I mean, Iowa, I mean, it's like one of the best schools for writing.

01:22:39.000 Iowa does two things well, wrestling and writing.

01:22:41.000 And to get in there, yeah, I was just so...

01:22:45.000 And I feel alive now.

01:22:46.000 I feel like I'm back to being the Julie I need to be.

01:22:50.000 Where I'm hungry for something again.

01:22:51.000 And it's words and stories.

01:22:53.000 And I think that MMA is the perfect, I don't know, avenue for all of these stories.

01:22:58.000 Because, you know, everybody... 0.97

01:23:00.000 At first, in old interviews, people would just say whatever the fuck they wanted to say, and they'd do whatever the fuck they wanted to do. 0.98

01:23:05.000 And then everybody got savvy to the media, right? 0.97

01:23:07.000 And they're just like, I'm only going to reveal this.

01:23:09.000 I'm only going to reveal this.

01:23:10.000 And other people played on that, and they're like, I'm going to give more information.

01:23:13.000 I'm going to give sound bites.

01:23:14.000 And so I think that when it comes to communication and words in MMA and what fighters are giving, there's a lot about what's not being said.

01:23:21.000 That can really be explored, and I'd really like to know what that is.

01:23:24.000 I want to know what makes a fighter, not what makes a fighter decide to fight, but what makes a fighter decide to wake up the next day after a fight.

01:23:34.000 You know?

01:23:36.000 Yeah, I mean it's so emotional, it's so crazy, and fighters are such insane people that after a loss, I'm surprised actually there aren't more suicides and stuff like that in the sport, and I don't mean to get super serious, but people take it to such a high level.

01:23:49.000 And with the amount of pain that they invest in themselves and the amount of emotion towards it, when fighters decide, I lost this fight and I lost this fight, but I'm going to get back in, I'm going to do it again.

01:24:00.000 Like, if they decide, they make the conscious choice to stay, not necessarily, I don't know if it's living in the sense of biologically living or just living in that space still of wanting to be a fighter, of wanting to do that.

01:24:11.000 Some people, oh, it's all I know.

01:24:12.000 All I know, all I've ever known is fighting.

01:24:15.000 So when the fighting is over, what do you do?

01:24:17.000 What do they do?

01:24:18.000 You know, I was just talking to Uriah Faber about that, but I think that he's a real good role model to young fighters because he's as enthusiastic about his post-fight career.

01:24:28.000 You know, he's like, hey, this is a new chapter in my life and I'm excited.

01:24:31.000 I'm excited to do different things now.

01:24:33.000 I went out with a win.

01:24:35.000 And I love the fact that he did that.

01:24:37.000 He fought in Sacramento, in his hometown, against a tough guy in Brad Pickett.

01:24:41.000 Beats Brad, and he's like, I'm gonna go out with a win, and I'm on to the next chapter.

01:24:45.000 Thank you all so much.

01:24:46.000 And he gets this giant round of applause, and good for him.

01:24:49.000 Yeah, he came from a place of, I guess, of Oh, I think privilege is the wrong word because he built what he built.

01:24:57.000 So it's not privilege, but maybe he came from a place of being able to see a bigger picture.

01:25:01.000 But then you think about maybe the Joe Fraziers of the sport, people like that, when they stopped fighting, what, you know, he built a gym, he did this, he did that.

01:25:08.000 But like, what...

01:25:09.000 I don't know.

01:25:10.000 Fighter stories to me are incredible.

01:25:12.000 The reasons that people fight and the reasons that commentators commentate.

01:25:15.000 The reasons that people are still so emotionally invested in this sport and what those stories are and what keeps people going.

01:25:21.000 I love that.

01:25:22.000 I think that there's something to the creation we have built.

01:25:26.000 I mean, the Fertittas and Dana built like the UFC. But I mean, we as fighters, as a fighter community, as an MMA community have built something incredible.

01:25:35.000 And I am interested in why we still want to occupy this space or what makes people want to leave it but then come back.

01:25:42.000 And maybe that's just my own personal journey because I can't get out of it.

01:25:45.000 I can't.

01:25:46.000 I can't quit MMA. Well, you used to life at 10. You know, the life going down to level 4, it's like you can't mimic the intensity.

01:25:56.000 You can't.

01:25:57.000 And I'm finding in words and in communication, I'm finding something there.

01:26:00.000 I'm finding that I can access this again.

01:26:03.000 It's harder for me because I have to use my brain more.

01:26:05.000 But I can't just go in there kicking and punching.

01:26:08.000 I have to sit and think about things.

01:26:10.000 I have to formulate these questions for life that I've never even thought about.

01:26:13.000 But you've got to love the questions, like Real Kay said.

01:26:15.000 The questions are what's important, not even the answers.

01:26:17.000 It's just finding the right questions to ask and going through that.

01:26:21.000 And I've really rediscovered a love for this sport by stepping away from it Every commentary job that I do now, every time I'm in there for Invicta, I'm just, this is amazing.

01:26:32.000 And finding that enthusiasm again is great.

01:26:35.000 I didn't have that towards the end of my fight career.

01:26:37.000 I was in the UFC because that was the dream.

01:26:39.000 I had to be in the UFC. Why doesn't Invicta have ring card boys?

01:26:43.000 Shannon thinks that's kind of disrespectful.

01:26:45.000 To boys?

01:26:46.000 No, I think that she makes it more of a spectacle. 0.81

01:26:48.000 But it's not for girls?

01:26:50.000 No, I think it's a spectacle for girls, too. 0.92

01:26:51.000 I have my own opinions about all of that, like the male gaze and MMA and stuff like that.

01:26:55.000 The male gaze.

01:26:56.000 I love that expression.

01:26:57.000 Well, it's just, I mean, we are formulated to see things.

01:26:59.000 I mean, ring card girls are tradition that have come over from boxing and stuff like that, and it's never been questioned.

01:27:04.000 Why do we still have this?

01:27:06.000 I mean, we can...

01:27:07.000 Put up the ring number on a Jumbotron.

01:27:10.000 At the same time, I don't want these women to lose their jobs. 1.00

01:27:12.000 I mean, they're part of the brand and the promotional aspect of it.

01:27:16.000 And the ring card girls for Invicta, we call them the Phoenix girls. 1.00

01:27:19.000 And they're actually, I mean, Natasha Kingsbury is like a professional runner.

01:27:22.000 Like, I mean, they're serious, high level.

01:27:24.000 She used to be a ring card girl for the UFC. Yeah, she did. 1.00

01:27:26.000 She's awesome. 0.83

01:27:26.000 She's so great. 0.83

01:27:27.000 She's very yoga-minded. 0.97

01:27:29.000 Her husband's awesome, too.

01:27:30.000 He's really cool.

01:27:30.000 I love Kyle.

01:27:31.000 He's really cool, yeah.

01:27:32.000 So, but no, I think that Shannon doesn't want that, I guess, that spectacle-ness.

01:27:39.000 Although I would argue that the ring girls are a spectacle in that self. 1.00

01:27:44.000 But, I don't know, I really like them.

01:27:46.000 Like, the girls that work for us, the women who work for us. 1.00

01:27:48.000 But it is odd, isn't it?

01:27:49.000 That there's, like, female ring card girls in an all-female... 0.99

01:27:53.000 Like, what if we had ring card boys in the UFC for all the men fights?

01:27:57.000 It would be really weird if guys were walking around with Speedos, with...

01:28:01.000 High top Reeboks on.

01:28:03.000 I mean, if we think about seeing that for the first time, if you visually picture that right now, because we're not used to it, yeah, it would be weird.

01:28:08.000 But I mean, if it was the norm, then I don't think it would be that weird.

01:28:11.000 I think in...

01:28:12.000 Bodybuilder dudes.

01:28:13.000 Do you remember King of the Cage when they had that guy who was the king of the cage?

01:28:17.000 Who was this gigantic, roided up bodybuilder dude who wasn't even fighting.

01:28:21.000 No, he was the king of the cage.

01:28:23.000 It didn't make any sense.

01:28:24.000 It was like, what is happening here?

01:28:25.000 What is this supposed to represent?

01:28:27.000 It kind of goes back to branding and like the weird ways we do that.

01:28:30.000 Like how we present ourselves to the world or what we're trying to say.

01:28:33.000 Yeah.

01:28:34.000 Yeah, it's just the ring card girl thing is an odd thing.

01:28:39.000 And it's weird when you have an all-female organization. 1.00

01:28:42.000 All-female fighters, but yet you still have girls holding up the cards. 1.00

01:28:48.000 Mm-hmm.

01:28:49.000 I think I should go with dudes.

01:28:50.000 Well, I'll bring that up, but I'm pretty sure Shannon wouldn't be on board.

01:28:54.000 Sage Northcutt looking young fellas.

01:28:56.000 Young and trim.

01:28:57.000 See, and the thing is, though, when you think about it, though, we think about combat has been so sexualized and stuff like that.

01:29:04.000 It wouldn't be out of the norm.

01:29:06.000 No.

01:29:07.000 But at the same time, Even talking about it, we laugh, right?

01:29:11.000 Because it shocks our sensibilities a little.

01:29:12.000 We're not used to that.

01:29:13.000 That's weird.

01:29:14.000 So it's...

01:29:14.000 I mean, what did you think about females when they first started fighting MMA? What did you think about female fighting?

01:29:19.000 Well, I had a chance to watch Tough Enough in Vegas.

01:29:23.000 I don't remember the event.

01:29:24.000 But Nick the Goat Thompson was on the card.

01:29:26.000 And there was this undercard fight between these two women. 1.00

01:29:30.000 And these gals went to war! 1.00

01:29:33.000 And we were in the front row.

01:29:34.000 And it was just...

01:29:36.000 Chaos!

01:29:36.000 I wish I could remember who was fighting.

01:29:38.000 But it was such a wild and crazy fight that at the end of the fight, everyone in the arena was just standing up, screaming and cheering and clapping.

01:29:46.000 And I was with Eddie Bravo, and we were both like, dude, I'm a fan of women fighting now. 1.00

01:29:50.000 I love it.

01:29:51.000 But were you not before?

01:29:52.000 Was that just, you had to see them actually in action doing, I guess, being on that level?

01:29:57.000 Or did you just, it just wasn't on your radar before that?

01:30:00.000 There wasn't enough of it to really compare.

01:30:02.000 You had to see it.

01:30:04.000 You know, it has to be presented to you.

01:30:06.000 Now I'm obviously a huge fan of it, but you have to see it.

01:30:09.000 It's like we weren't really exposed to it because it wasn't in the UFC. So you'd have to go out and seek it.

01:30:14.000 And this is, you know, pre-strike force.

01:30:16.000 So it just wasn't something that people were aware of.

01:30:21.000 And it wasn't like, you know, when you first started fighting and you're talking about trying to get a fight, it just wasn't that prevalent.

01:30:26.000 Right, yeah.

01:30:26.000 No, I think that it wasn't.

01:30:28.000 I mean, Women didn't even know they could fight at a certain time. 1.00

01:30:32.000 So it's like shifting the attention to that when you can actually watch these dudes who are fighting.

01:30:37.000 You don't have to think of that on your radar.

01:30:39.000 You don't have to seek that out if you're actually seeing fights.

01:30:41.000 Unless it's given to you or unless it's presented to you, then why would it be on the radar?

01:30:47.000 What would you think of it?

01:30:48.000 Women fighting was also in my mind connected to a certain sense of frustration for the athletes that they had like Lucia Riker could never get Christy Martin a fighter.

01:30:59.000 You know there was always that thing like I had always known Lucia Riker was like the best women boxer and everybody kind of knew but she couldn't get that fight like where everybody would know how good she was and then everybody's like oh Christy Martin's the best female boxer like god damn it no she's not like you gotta she's gotta fight this woman from Holland You know, 1.00

01:31:18.000 and then it sort of never happened.

01:31:19.000 And then, you know, there was Mia St. John, who was more like a girl's, a good boxer, and she was cute, and she was really working that angle. 0.71

01:31:27.000 And then there's Layla Ali, of course, who was Muhammad Ali's daughter.

01:31:30.000 But there was no one who caught fire.

01:31:32.000 There was no one, there was no like, oh my god, this girl's gonna fight this fight, this is gonna make, like what we have now. 1.00

01:31:38.000 Like, what we have now in MMA is incredibly unique.

01:31:40.000 You know, like, Valentina Shevchenko and Amanda Nunes.

01:31:44.000 That is just two super high-level MMA fighters who happen to be women, who have worked their way up the ladder. 1.00

01:31:51.000 Amanda Nunes is obviously the champion. 1.00

01:31:54.000 Valentina, though, is just knocking on that fucking door. 1.00

01:31:57.000 And that is an exciting, dynamic match-up for the women's bantamweight title. 0.99

01:32:01.000 That didn't exist in boxing. 0.81

01:32:02.000 There was never that sort of match-up, build-up thing in...

01:32:06.000 By the way, there's other people waiting past Valentina.

01:32:11.000 There's contenders.

01:32:12.000 It's real.

01:32:13.000 And there's contenders at strawweight as well.

01:32:15.000 It's real.

01:32:16.000 And so I think that...

01:32:18.000 There was always this sort of thing that was connected with women fighting that it wasn't legit, that it was kind of like the WNBA. As good as an athlete, as some of those players are, no one gives a fuck in this country. 1.00

01:32:31.000 It just doesn't catch on. 0.99

01:32:32.000 I'm sure they give a fuck and they're probably mad that I'm saying that, but you know what I'm saying. 0.99

01:32:36.000 I know what you mean. 0.99

01:32:36.000 Marketing-wise, for whatever reason, it's not seen as an equal sphere to the NBA. Right. 0.99

01:32:43.000 And what's been unique about female fighters in MMA is that because they can share the same octagon on the same night, because they're in the same playing field, then there's a chance to see more of an equal setting. 1.00

01:32:57.000 100%.

01:32:58.000 Yeah, I think that's hugely important.

01:33:00.000 I mean, when you have someone like Ronda Rousey who's headlining a massive card and the pay-per-view sells 1.5 million buys, that is gigantic for women's combat sport, for combat sports in general.

01:33:11.000 And it's unprecedented.

01:33:13.000 Anybody who says it's not is crazy.

01:33:15.000 Before Ronda Rousey came along, there had never been an athlete like that, that had been dominating in a combat sport and on a worldwide scale where everybody knew who she was.

01:33:25.000 It's totally uncharted territory.

01:33:27.000 She was the mainstream appeal. 0.92

01:33:30.000 With what she presented, well, she's an incredible person, but with what she presented, she had the package that transcended, oh, this is a female fighter. 1.00

01:33:39.000 It was Ronda Rousey is a fighter. 0.80

01:33:41.000 And of course, they focused on her femininity. 0.92

01:33:42.000 They focused on her being a female. 0.66

01:33:44.000 But at the same time, I mean, she was doing way better than the men when it came to universal appeal and stuff like that.

01:33:48.000 Like there was something that she crossed.

01:33:50.000 Yes.

01:33:50.000 Well, she was a unique thing.

01:33:52.000 What is this unique thing?

01:33:53.000 And I think that that just did not exist.

01:33:56.000 I mean, Gina Carano sort of caught it a little bit, but she was gone before it really caught fire.

01:34:03.000 And then when she lost a cyborg, there was a lot of weird feelings about that because there's all these speculations.

01:34:11.000 The cyborg was on drugs, and then they looked at Gina Carano, and she was all beat up afterwards.

01:34:15.000 And that left this sort of weird taste in people's eyes.

01:34:19.000 I understand that and I think that there's something to that.

01:34:27.000 It's unfortunate because I know Chris Cyborg.

01:34:31.000 I was the matchmaker with Invicta when she was fighting for us and I was there for her weight cuts and I saw some of her struggles and what a kind, kind person she is.

01:34:40.000 Just a genuinely kind person.

01:34:42.000 But then there's this persona of toughness and her saying this kind of thing to Rhonda or she's saying this to Gina and then they're saying it back and it's this, that, you know, and it's just like for some reason, I never thought she got the respect that was due.

01:34:53.000 But at the same time, then she did fail a drug test.

01:34:55.000 So it was like, like, unfortunately, you carry the burden of having your entire legacy be questioned when you mess up like that.

01:35:03.000 But we know what a human body looks like.

01:35:06.000 You know what a female body looks like and you know what someone looks like when they most likely have been introducing male hormones into a female body. 1.00

01:35:16.000 I don't, you know, I understand what you're saying because we know what we think is normal or what, you know, what a female body is like.

01:35:22.000 But I would say that we know what a male body looks like, too.

01:35:27.000 Yeah, we know there's some dudes.

01:35:28.000 Yeah, and I mean, you look at somebody who's like perfect physique, Sage Northcutt.

01:35:32.000 I mean, is everybody speculating that he's on steroids because he looks a certain way?

01:35:35.000 Because I met the kid when he was a kid and...

01:35:38.000 He looked like that.

01:35:39.000 The problem with that line of thinking is that he's a male.

01:35:42.000 Right.

01:35:43.000 And that he has natural testosterone and that you can accentuate natural testosterone pretty significantly, especially if you're someone like a Kevin Randleman or, you know, like a Marvin Eastman who just has this extreme mesomorphic build.

01:35:55.000 There's a lot of people that are built that way that don't do anything illegal.

01:35:59.000 There's not a lot of women that are. 1.00

01:36:01.000 Yeah, you know, again, when we do the eye test like that, I completely understand that.

01:36:07.000 I guess I wanted to believe that Cyborg was drug-free, and now I believe that she is.

01:36:14.000 I believe that she's not.

01:36:15.000 Yeah, I believe that whatever happened in that time, in 2011, she has rectified it.

01:36:20.000 She's passed all of her drugs.

01:36:21.000 I guess something happened.

01:36:22.000 I'm not really, because it was with the UFC with some kind of test, but it turned out it was with her birth control pills or something.

01:36:28.000 What, more recently?

01:36:29.000 Is that what you're saying?

01:36:29.000 Yeah, something happened with her birth control.

01:36:30.000 No.

01:36:31.000 Something happened there.

01:36:33.000 No, it's spironolactone.

01:36:35.000 It's spironolactone.

01:36:35.000 Which is a DHT inhibitor, a dihydrotestosterone inhibitor, that is used for a bunch of different reasons.

01:36:41.000 It's used as a diuretic.

01:36:45.000 It's used for people combating the effects of anabolic steroids for females combating the effect. 0.99

01:36:51.000 It's used for cysts.

01:36:53.000 It's used for a bunch of different possible reasons to use it.

01:36:57.000 I think, yeah.

01:36:58.000 Because I think I've known somebody who's been on that for cystic acne before.

01:37:01.000 So I understand.

01:37:02.000 I don't understand what happened in all of that.

01:37:05.000 And I would love to...

01:37:06.000 I need to read about it.

01:37:07.000 I'd love to know more about it.

01:37:08.000 It wasn't in my sphere of interest exactly then.

01:37:12.000 But, you know, pre-2011 drug test, I wanted to believe she was natural because I wanted to believe in her and believe that somebody...

01:37:19.000 It could be that vicious and ferocious and wonderful like that and take the idea of women fighting to a different level. 1.00

01:37:27.000 And when she tested positive for the, it was a...

01:37:31.000 Steroids.

01:37:32.000 Yes, stanza something.

01:37:35.000 In 2011. And then I was heartbroken because, first of all, I didn't believe anymore.

01:37:43.000 And then I got to meet her actually in a professional setting and I got to know her as a person.

01:37:48.000 And you realize that when you know people, it's a lot more nuanced.

01:37:50.000 I believe in you as a person.

01:37:52.000 You know what I mean?

01:37:53.000 Well, I've believed in a lot of guys that turned out to be taking steroids.

01:37:55.000 Yeah, and it's weird to associate.

01:37:58.000 I guess I never...

01:38:00.000 You're kind.

01:38:00.000 Well, you're a nice person.

01:38:01.000 You wish for the best.

01:38:02.000 I do, but I also wish for the best for women all the time and that we're not going to mess up.

01:38:07.000 Right, but if you do wish for the best for women, wouldn't you definitely want to take a hard stance against someone who's introducing male hormones into a female body?

01:38:16.000 And also the problem with that is a lot of the effects are permanent.

01:38:20.000 I think a lot of the effects of a woman altering her physiology with male hormones, there's a certain amount of those effects. 1.00

01:38:26.000 And this is also argued against men taking steroids.

01:38:29.000 There's a certain amount, and there's been tests about this, this isn't just speculation, that certain amount of physiological changes are permanent when you take steroids.

01:38:38.000 Because you're introducing these hyper-human levels of testosterone to a male system.

01:38:44.000 And things change.

01:38:45.000 Bone density changes.

01:38:46.000 The shape of your body changes.

01:38:48.000 The tendon strength changes.

01:38:49.000 Right. 0.98

01:38:50.000 And your testicles shrink. 0.99

01:38:51.000 Because you don't have the ability to... 0.98

01:38:54.000 See, that comes back, like the testicular atrophy.

01:38:58.000 It's really the shutdown of the endocrine system, but that comes back, and when it comes back, there's a certain amount of the improvements that you've received because of those steroids that you will keep forever.

01:39:08.000 Oh, really?

01:39:08.000 So even when you're in that post-steroid area?

01:39:11.000 Exactly.

01:39:11.000 Yes, which is one of the things that infuriates people that have been clean their whole life, is that someone can test positive, and then they continue on their career, even if they are not taking steroids now, they have a benefit.

01:39:23.000 They have a permanent benefit of taking those illegal drugs.

01:39:26.000 Mm-hmm. 1.00

01:39:27.000 That sucks. 1.00

01:39:28.000 Yes. 0.99

01:39:29.000 Exactly.

01:39:29.000 I mean, there's nothing I can say that would champion that being a good thing.

01:39:33.000 It's not a good thing.

01:39:34.000 But I will say that she did not test positive since 2011. And so if there was that advantage in something like that, we saw somebody like Urena Baer in kickboxing still work against that and still find victory.

01:39:48.000 Right.

01:39:50.000 I don't know.

01:39:51.000 But should someone have to work against that?

01:39:53.000 First of all, the Jorena Barge fight was a testament to Cyborg's courage and fighting spirit that she took that fight because nobody wanted to fight Jorena for a long time.

01:40:02.000 And if you don't know who Jorena Barge is, if you watch her Muay Thai fight, she's some ungodly number of fights she's had. 0.99

01:40:08.000 She's a multiple time world champion and she's just so stunningly technical as a fighter. 1.00

01:40:14.000 But, you know, you look at them physically, they looked very, very different.

01:40:18.000 You know, Cyborg's just this attacker, berserker style, and fought a very good fight.

01:40:23.000 She did.

01:40:23.000 It was incredible.

01:40:24.000 Against a girl that nobody wanted to fight. 0.98

01:40:25.000 It was a wonderful fight.

01:40:26.000 Yeah, it was a fantastic fight.

01:40:27.000 You know, that's like one of those fights, even in a loss, like...

01:40:30.000 Her stock came up.

01:40:31.000 Yeah, you can't...

01:40:31.000 Yeah, Cyborg thinks I hate her.

01:40:33.000 Look, I think she's awesome.

01:40:35.000 I'm a fan, and I tweeted this many times along, that the UFC needs to make a 145-pound women's division, but... 1.00

01:40:41.000 There's also some realities that you have to address and those realities have to be addressed for the other women that haven't done anything as well just to look up for them.

01:40:49.000 I think you're right about that.

01:40:50.000 I think that when people test positive I think that the penalties have to be harsh.

01:40:55.000 They have to be hard.

01:40:55.000 And I don't know what's going on with the new testing and stuff like that.

01:41:00.000 I'm not in the know when it comes to the UFC. I'm no longer on a team.

01:41:04.000 You know what I mean?

01:41:04.000 It's like everything I do, I read through MMA media now.

01:41:06.000 So I don't know who's testing what and what's going on.

01:41:09.000 But I will say that the men had been doing it for so long as well.

01:41:12.000 So should men who were clean have to have fought against men who were dirty?

01:41:17.000 Very good question.

01:41:17.000 And a lot of people think they shouldn't.

01:41:19.000 Yeah, so I don't know what we do about clean slating it at this point.

01:41:23.000 And it's also, is it the same thing?

01:41:24.000 Is a man taking male hormones the same as a woman taking male hormones? 0.93

01:41:29.000 Well, if the man already has the male hormones, right?

01:41:31.000 Wouldn't that be even more of an increase?

01:41:37.000 No.

01:41:38.000 No, because a woman's adjusting her physiology and becoming masculine, whereas a man is becoming more masculine. 1.00

01:41:43.000 There's a shift, literally, in the body structure that happens to women when they start taking testosterone. 0.97

01:41:49.000 That's why a transgender man goes from a woman to a man and all of a sudden grows a beard. 1.00

01:41:54.000 Right, right.

01:41:54.000 Like Chaz Bono, it changes the shape of your face, changes the tone of your voice, your voice gets deeper.

01:41:59.000 I mean, so many different factors play in it.

01:42:02.000 I mean, it really depends on...

01:42:03.000 There's no...

01:42:04.000 There's also...

01:42:04.000 There's a rainbow, like a broad spectrum of dosages.

01:42:08.000 Like, who knows how much you're taking, how long you're taking it for.

01:42:11.000 And then there's also massive negative consequences health-wise for women. 1.00

01:42:16.000 Yeah, that's what's...

01:42:17.000 I mean, it's already hell on your body to fight.

01:42:19.000 Mm-hmm.

01:42:19.000 And it's hell on your body to be a female athlete.

01:42:22.000 In many ways, it's wonderful and encouraging.

01:42:23.000 But you're right.

01:42:24.000 And again, I don't have an answer for that.

01:42:27.000 I don't think there's a clean slate.

01:42:28.000 I do think that Chris Cyborg is in the position right now with her career.

01:42:31.000 And with the things that have been questioned about her, the things that have been done, she has actually the opportunity now to really spearhead making it all clean.

01:42:38.000 And coming forward with whatever happened in the past with this spironolactone.

01:42:44.000 That's less of a concern because that's not really a performance-enhancing drug.

01:42:49.000 The spironolactone is not performance enhancing.

01:42:52.000 It's not like the other stuff was.

01:42:53.000 It wasn't a failed test then?

01:42:55.000 It's not prohibited.

01:42:57.000 It is prohibited, but she could get a therapeutic use exemption.

01:43:01.000 Did she?

01:43:02.000 I think she did, didn't she?

01:43:03.000 They believe they're doing that or in the process of trying to do that.

01:43:07.000 Maybe it has been cleared.

01:43:09.000 But what that means is, look, it's not hurting anybody she competes against.

01:43:13.000 It's not that.

01:43:13.000 It's just they don't like people taking it because it can mask some of the effects of androgens in the female body.

01:43:21.000 And it also, as a diuretic, diuretics are illegal because diuretics also can mask some of the potential properties of testosterone or hormones or That's why they did away with all the IV rehydration.

01:43:36.000 I was the only person who liked IV rehydration.

01:43:39.000 No, I think there's a lot of people who liked it.

01:43:39.000 You're the only one?

01:43:41.000 I loved it.

01:43:42.000 I mean, I was clean.

01:43:43.000 I hate to say that I was clean my whole life, but I was possibly because nobody ever offered me anything.

01:43:50.000 If somebody offered you steroids, you think you would have taken it?

01:43:51.000 I don't know.

01:43:52.000 I look back now and I'm like, I wonder.

01:43:53.000 Because I wonder how many other women were. 1.00

01:43:55.000 Yeah, what if it was back in the day, like the Wild West, like Pride days?

01:43:58.000 Like Pride days were the Wild West.

01:44:00.000 Like during Pride, like I talked to Ensign Inouye.

01:44:03.000 He described about his contract literally in capital letters said, we will not test you for steroids.

01:44:09.000 And Ensign was laughing about it. 1.00

01:44:11.000 It was like fucking everybody was on shit back then. 0.99

01:44:13.000 You know, to that question, I think I probably would have. 0.99

01:44:16.000 If I'd have been offered it, I don't know.

01:44:18.000 But then you think about that, and then you think about, okay, 2011 was just on the cusp of being the Wild West, right?

01:44:23.000 So if she did take steroids, if she was on something, isn't that just what everybody else was trying to do?

01:44:30.000 Some people were.

01:44:31.000 I don't think Gina was doing it. 0.98

01:44:32.000 I don't think Gina did it at all.

01:44:35.000 But some women definitely did, for sure. 1.00

01:44:37.000 I think they did.

01:44:37.000 I mean, you look at the old pictures, the fighters of the generation before me, and I'm not throwing out accusations.

01:44:43.000 I'm just saying people with musculature, like Becky Levi and people like that, you kind of wonder, like, okay, how much of that was, you know...

01:44:50.000 Sure.

01:44:51.000 Well, I know girls that just compete in jujitsu tournaments that do testosterone. 1.00

01:44:55.000 I mean, they just want to be stronger and better, and there's no money in it.

01:44:58.000 They're just trying to get an edge.

01:45:00.000 And it's kind of weird.

01:45:01.000 You know, it's weird.

01:45:03.000 It's, you know, it's amateur, and no one's testing, and they say everyone's doing it, so they're doing it.

01:45:09.000 So you go, okay, like, I got no position on this.

01:45:12.000 I mean, I don't know what to say.

01:45:13.000 But when it comes to MMA and when it comes to professional sports, and back then, if it was the Wild West, I'm sure a lot of people were doing it, you know?

01:45:22.000 But Chris Heiborg became sort of the poster girl when she looked the part and then tested positive.

01:45:27.000 Right, right.

01:45:28.000 I mean, what do we do with that now?

01:45:30.000 That's a good question.

01:45:31.000 What do we do with that now?

01:45:32.000 What do you do with it?

01:45:33.000 I think she's a phenomenal woman. 1.00

01:45:35.000 I think she's a kind and good woman and a wonderful fighter for people to look up to. 0.89

01:45:39.000 So I don't...

01:45:41.000 I don't know what you do with that now.

01:45:43.000 I think that what has to go on the table is just we take everything by what happens today.

01:45:49.000 And if a person doesn't test positive, we take them at their word.

01:45:53.000 Yeah, the real problem though with what's going on today is they're offering these massively steep Steep sentences for people and suspensions for people so like first if you get caught I think the first suspension is like two years and then if you get caught again it's even deeper and then three years it's three times if you get caught a third time it's like life you're done yeah like Vanderlei Silva one is the most disturbing one to me because he ran away from a test and they banned him for life like that is fucking that's abusive yeah you gotta wonder how many other fighters have run away from it but

01:46:23.000 it just wasn't as public Sure. 0.99

01:46:26.000 Well, not only that, but when you talk to Chael Sonnen about how sketchy the USADA people were when they came to him, like they made him do it in a broom closet and give boys like this.

01:46:34.000 Is this sterile?

01:46:35.000 Like, who are you?

01:46:35.000 Do you have an ID? Like, they don't want to give you ID. They just want to test right away and you just have to listen to them.

01:46:42.000 I kind of understand in the case of him where they may be trying to Hawkeye him a little bit more just because of his past.

01:46:47.000 Sure.

01:46:47.000 Yeah.

01:46:48.000 But it is...

01:46:50.000 I don't know.

01:46:51.000 I don't know when it comes to regulation who regulates the regulators.

01:46:55.000 That is the question, right?

01:46:57.000 That's the question, yeah.

01:46:58.000 But at the same time, we don't want this taken away from us.

01:47:02.000 Right.

01:47:03.000 Like this whole thing, the moments of passion, the Darren Elkins moments.

01:47:06.000 We don't want that taken away from us.

01:47:08.000 And to have that soured by knowing that that person was cheating.

01:47:12.000 I think there's a huge emotional investment to see a clean sport.

01:47:17.000 Well, how about the grayest of gray areas, which is Vitor Belfort?

01:47:20.000 Yeah.

01:47:21.000 They let him.

01:47:21.000 Yeah.

01:47:22.000 They let him.

01:47:23.000 I mean... 1.00

01:47:23.000 He was a testosterone use exemption, and when he was doing it, holy shit, was he fucking terrifying. 1.00

01:47:29.000 Yeah, he looked like 19-year-old Vitor. 0.99

01:47:31.000 He looked crazier than 19-year-old Vitor. 0.92

01:47:33.000 He looked like a demon. 0.96

01:47:34.000 I mean, Vitor would come out and just starch everybody. 0.53

01:47:36.000 He was smashing people.

01:47:38.000 Wheel kick Luke Rockhold.

01:47:39.000 We've never seen him throw a wheel kick in his life.

01:47:41.000 Yeah, I know.

01:47:41.000 He threw two wheel kicks in his entire career.

01:47:43.000 Look at the pictures of him.

01:47:45.000 This is 2007 on the left and 2012 on the left and 2017 on the right. 0.99

01:47:52.000 Fucking A. That poor guy, though. 0.99

01:47:54.000 Can you imagine being on that level?

01:47:56.000 I mean, do you take testosterone?

01:47:57.000 Yeah.

01:47:58.000 So can you imagine being on that level where you feel like your body is in a certain, it can perform a certain way and then have that taken away from you?

01:48:04.000 Yeah.

01:48:04.000 And then, like, just having to compete with that and then compete with whatever's going on in your mind, too.

01:48:09.000 Well, there's the thing is that with youth is, you know, you have all this athletic ability, you have all this strength and speed, but you don't have any experience and wisdom.

01:48:20.000 And then as you gain experience and wisdom, father time slowly takes away your physical gifts to the point where you're trying to, like Bernard Hopkins when he fought Joe Smith.

01:48:28.000 There was that weird moment where you realize like, oh, we've passed the point.

01:48:32.000 Here, where your knowledge and your hard work and discipline makes up for the fact that your body's deteriorating.

01:48:39.000 Then you're fighting this young bulldog who's just an animal.

01:48:42.000 He went through the ropes, didn't he?

01:48:43.000 Yeah, it fell on his head.

01:48:44.000 It was horrible.

01:48:45.000 It really made me think about the way boxing rings are set up.

01:48:48.000 Yeah, I'm kidding. 0.98

01:48:49.000 Why the fuck is it so easy to fall through the ropes? 0.97

01:48:52.000 And why is there no one there to see that happening and catch them? 0.99

01:48:56.000 Like he fell on his head. 0.99

01:48:57.000 Didn't know where the fuck he was. 0.99

01:48:58.000 Didn't know what was going on. 1.00

01:49:00.000 So dangerous.

01:49:01.000 So dangerous.

01:49:02.000 I mean, he could have died there.

01:49:03.000 The way he fell back to, he literally fell head first and landed on the ground.

01:49:07.000 And I'm assuming it was concrete.

01:49:09.000 I mean, and didn't know what happened.

01:49:12.000 Didn't know where he was.

01:49:13.000 Thought he got pushed out of the ring.

01:49:14.000 Didn't know he got knocked out.

01:49:15.000 He was just so out of it.

01:49:17.000 Yeah.

01:49:17.000 There comes the time when we have to recognize our mortality, and unfortunately, fighters are not people to do that.

01:49:23.000 Yeah, well, then you look at this, and you're like, you didn't have to recognize it for a couple years.

01:49:27.000 They turned back the time.

01:49:28.000 I mean, you went from Vitor Belfort, who fought Rich Franklin, Vitor Belfort, who fought Sexyama, and, you know, you look good, but then, when he got on the testosterone, it's like, all of a sudden, you have the phenom, this demon. 0.54

01:49:42.000 That therapeutic use exemption stuff, it seemed to spike at a certain time for a lot of people.

01:49:48.000 Why is that?

01:49:48.000 Since people found out it was legal.

01:49:50.000 There was a bunch of shady ass doctors. 0.97

01:49:52.000 I know some people who use some shady ass doctors and what the doctor would literally tell them is you take testosterone for a short amount of time, take a lot of it, get your system hooked on it, then get off of it and then get tested. 0.99

01:50:06.000 So then they would go, well, it's got low testosterone. 0.99

01:50:09.000 Because your body isn't producing it.

01:50:10.000 Because your body, you jolted it down with like 10 weeks of high-level tests, and then you say, oh, I'm feeling a little run down, and maybe I have something wrong with me.

01:50:19.000 I have a medical condition.

01:50:20.000 It's like a lot of it was just guys who take steroids, and their body had stopped producing it naturally, and then they got a therapeutic use exemption, and they were shooting it up all the time, and then they were going in there, and they were 27 years old.

01:50:32.000 So the Benefits of the previous steroid use didn't linger to the point that, or was it a mental thing?

01:50:39.000 Well, the benefits, if their endocrine system caught up, say if they did a certain amount of cycles and they gained a certain amount of strength, they would keep some of that benefit permanently.

01:50:50.000 But when their endocrine system crashed because they had taken all the steroids and then they got off of it, that's when they can test.

01:50:56.000 And the test shows low testosterone.

01:50:58.000 That's all they needed to show.

01:51:00.000 So they could still physically perform to a higher level than they could have if they've never done steroids in the first place?

01:51:05.000 Probably, but while they're at a low testosterone, they're going to experience very significant decreases in endurance and stamina and your intensity.

01:51:13.000 All that's going to be down.

01:51:14.000 Your body's like...

01:51:15.000 Really depressed.

01:51:16.000 Like that's one of the things that happens to men when they get head injuries, is that head injuries and traumatic brain injuries cause a disruption in the pituitary gland, which causes your body to produce less testosterone, which oftentimes leads to soldiers, football players, fighters becoming severely depressed.

01:51:33.000 And oftentimes they lean towards alcoholism and drug addiction.

01:51:36.000 And a lot of that is trying to combat that depression.

01:51:39.000 Actually, that makes a great deal of sense.

01:51:41.000 I was never tested to the extent of this, but when I quit fighting, I was put on estrogen because I have a really messed up reproductive system.

01:51:48.000 I don't know if I was like...

01:51:50.000 I have polycystic ovarian syndrome.

01:51:54.000 Whatever it is, I was put on a birth control pill with very high estrogen, and that led me to have to go on antidepressants.

01:52:01.000 Which led me to have to go into this.

01:52:02.000 Yeah, it was just the amount of estrogen.

01:52:04.000 Why did that lead you to...

01:52:05.000 What happened there?

01:52:05.000 I wanted to have babies really badly.

01:52:08.000 And I had horrible...

01:52:11.000 Not to be too...

01:52:12.000 Whatever, we're talking about everything.

01:52:13.000 You mean while you got on the...

01:52:13.000 While I was fighting, I had...

01:52:17.000 Horrible periods.

01:52:18.000 I would have periods for an entire month and stuff like that while I was fighting.

01:52:21.000 When my body fat lowered for whatever reason, women are supposed to stop. 1.00

01:52:25.000 They're supposed to enter menorrhea.

01:52:27.000 But for me, it was different.

01:52:29.000 I was bleeding all the time.

01:52:31.000 It was a long 10 years.

01:52:34.000 My body was really, really weird.

01:52:37.000 When I stopped fighting, I was sick of being in pain.

01:52:40.000 I was sick of this and that.

01:52:41.000 I don't have to...

01:52:43.000 I didn't want to put any chemicals into my body when I was fighting.

01:52:46.000 I was really worried about that, worried about if that would make me gain weight if I went on the birth control pill or something like that.

01:52:51.000 So when I quit fighting, I went to a gynecologist and she put me on it and I crashed. 0.99

01:52:56.000 I don't know which birth control pill it was, but I was severely depressed when I quit fighting.

01:53:00.000 So the birth control pills cause depression.

01:53:02.000 It regulated me.

01:53:03.000 I don't know if it caused depression, but I would say that the changing chemicals in my body post-fight.

01:53:08.000 So you can't just say it's like this one thing, but I would say a heightened estrogen probably...

01:53:12.000 I was all of a sudden eating carbs again for the first time.

01:53:15.000 You know what I mean?

01:53:15.000 A lot of things were different.

01:53:16.000 I wasn't exercising however many hours a day.

01:53:19.000 Everything in my life was different.

01:53:21.000 But I will say, you know, I put on 30 pounds within...

01:53:23.000 Six months of retiring.

01:53:25.000 Wow.

01:53:25.000 Yeah, it was insane.

01:53:26.000 I mean, I have breasts now, which is a great thing, but it wasn't something I was used to for a decade.

01:53:31.000 And, you know, it's so funny about how when your reproductive chemicals or when all that gets messed up, how that actually messes with your brain as well.

01:53:40.000 Because I can understand these men coming off of head injuries if they're having a decreased chemical, like testosterone or whatever it is, I can understand that actual...

01:53:52.000 Weirdness, like taking part, and that affecting their brains severely.

01:53:56.000 Yeah, and the shutdown of the endocrine system post-steroid cycles has led a lot of guys to depression.

01:54:01.000 They even think it's led people to suicide.

01:54:03.000 And if you're inclined towards depression in the first place, I'm sure it probably gets accentuated by those things.

01:54:09.000 Yeah, there's a big history of depression in my family.

01:54:11.000 I went through a really rough time.

01:54:13.000 And then, remarkably, I discovered writing, and that was great, and that's led me on a completely different path.

01:54:19.000 But yeah, post-fighting, there's something about that.

01:54:22.000 It's not even...

01:54:23.000 I mean, I think the chemicals are a great...

01:54:25.000 I'm not a doctor and I'm not a scientist.

01:54:27.000 That's my family. 1.00

01:54:27.000 They're all scientists and shit. 1.00

01:54:28.000 I don't know any of it. 0.99

01:54:29.000 I don't know the science behind it exactly.

01:54:31.000 But I will say that I don't know that it's necessarily always chemical.

01:54:36.000 I think that there's a big part of it.

01:54:38.000 It's also purposeful.

01:54:39.000 I think when you don't have a purpose, when you don't have a goal and something to strive for, then your body reacts to that as well and your brain reacts to that as well.

01:54:46.000 So it's probably that as well.

01:54:47.000 Yeah, I think it's something.

01:54:48.000 And then the exercise thing too, I'm sure that played a big factor.

01:54:51.000 The lack of exercise or the much greatly reduced schedule.

01:54:55.000 Yeah, it's different.

01:54:55.000 You can run three miles a day, but it's not the same as sparring every other day or whatever you're doing or doing jujitsu twice a day or whatever it is.

01:55:02.000 So much of probably what depression is, is so many, it's just a giant combination of factors.

01:55:07.000 Yeah, I think, yeah.

01:55:09.000 I mean, again, I'm not, I have a great therapist, but I'm not, you know, I can't tell you what that is.

01:55:14.000 But I can say that there is something to having all of that in balance, having, being chemically, I guess, physiologically in balance with the way your body's supposed to be.

01:55:27.000 And then have your exercise the way it's supposed to be, and then have your purpose the way it's supposed to be.

01:55:32.000 And it's such a weird balance as human beings that when any of those things get thrown out of whack, you're headed for trouble.

01:55:38.000 Yeah, and friendships, family, you know, all the different relationships that you keep in your life.

01:55:44.000 I saw this really interesting clip from this guy, and he was talking about, he's a rapper, I think he was, but he was talking about his mental diet.

01:55:53.000 Mm-hmm.

01:55:53.000 And the way he looked at it was like that people are really concentrating constantly about what they eat, but they're not concentrating constantly about what they take in their mind.

01:56:03.000 And that you should really be aware of your mental diet, too.

01:56:07.000 You know, that if you snack on too much junk food mentally, it'll weaken your mind, you know?

01:56:11.000 I think that makes sense.

01:56:12.000 I think that makes sense.

01:56:13.000 Yeah, I think that we don't push ourselves mentally a lot.

01:56:17.000 And when it comes to that, I think Honestly, it's just coming down to, I mean, it's not a cure-all, but reading.

01:56:23.000 If you just read, if you just sit and force yourself to read and you actually engage with a text, all of a sudden you realize something is happening in your brain.

01:56:30.000 You're creating space for more thought in your brain. 1.00

01:56:33.000 But also, you can't be exposed to too much bullshit. 1.00

01:56:36.000 And who knows what's bullshit and what's not bullshit. 0.99

01:56:38.000 I mean, there has to be a discernment somewhere along the line. 0.98

01:56:41.000 Some sort of, like, I guess...

01:56:44.000 I don't know, literary consciousness or something like that, where you know that...

01:56:48.000 I mean, I'm addicted to Twitter.

01:56:50.000 Are you?

01:56:50.000 Oh, I love Twitter.

01:56:51.000 I love it. 0.99

01:56:52.000 And I know that I'm a giant bitch on there, and I don't care. 0.99

01:56:56.000 I am. 1.00

01:56:56.000 How are you a bitch? 1.00

01:56:57.000 Oh, I'm always telling people to go fuck themselves. 1.00

01:56:59.000 Always. 1.00

01:56:59.000 Why are you doing that? 1.00

01:57:00.000 Because it's so enjoyable to me.

01:57:02.000 It's like playing a game.

01:57:03.000 And I, you know, the part of me is like, I hate that part of myself, but I also really like it because I think I'm becoming, it's, to me, it's not, I'm not a brand.

01:57:12.000 There's no Julie Kedzie fighter who has to impress anybody anymore. 0.51

01:57:16.000 Granted, I represent Invicta to a certain extent, but I fully understand that Shannon could fire me if I say something just outrageous and horrible.

01:57:24.000 She wouldn't.

01:57:25.000 She's a wonderful person.

01:57:25.000 And I'm no longer behind the scenes there.

01:57:28.000 I'm a commentator.

01:57:29.000 I'm not somebody making any decisions with the company.

01:57:31.000 Right.

01:57:32.000 But I don't know.

01:57:34.000 When it comes to Twitter...

01:57:35.000 So what do you do?

01:57:35.000 Are you getting flame wars of people?

01:57:37.000 Like someone says some stupid shit to you and you fight back? 1.00

01:57:39.000 Yeah, I kind of enjoy when people insult me and I go after them. 1.00

01:57:42.000 Really?

01:57:42.000 Yeah, but I do feel my brain deteriorating a little bit when they do that.

01:57:46.000 I was just like, okay, I need to stop.

01:57:48.000 I need to put this down now.

01:57:49.000 But when they come at me and they're just like, you're a feminazi, you're this, you're that. 0.80

01:57:52.000 I'm just like, yeah, come on.

01:57:53.000 Who says that?

01:57:53.000 Why do they say you're a feminazi?

01:57:54.000 Okay.

01:57:55.000 Because I'm very outspoken being a feminist.

01:57:57.000 I'm very, you know, when I talk about socialism, when I talk about I hate Donald Trump, when I talk about this, you know?

01:58:02.000 Yeah, but I would never label you in, like, you're just a genuine person, like, who happens to be a woman who believes what you believe.

01:58:10.000 Like, you're not, like, sexist.

01:58:12.000 You're not, like, anti-male or anything.

01:58:14.000 No, but I know I love men.

01:58:15.000 I love men.

01:58:16.000 I believe you.

01:58:17.000 Settle down.

01:58:19.000 But the thing is, I am pro-woman to a certain extent.

01:58:24.000 I mean, when it comes to MMA, I'm more interested in what's going on with women in the sport than with men.

01:58:28.000 That's just where I'm oriented.

01:58:29.000 That's my career.

01:58:30.000 Sure, I mean, that's part of your job.

01:58:32.000 But, well, I don't know.

01:58:33.000 There's this association that, first of all, the whole Feminazi label is just...

01:58:36.000 I mean, that's the first thing.

01:58:37.000 Like I said, yeah, I'm really proud to be a feminist. 0.59

01:58:39.000 And then people are just like, oh, that means you hate men. 0.98

01:58:41.000 You think they're all rapists.

01:58:42.000 And I'm like, no.

01:58:43.000 That discredits men so much.

01:58:46.000 Like...

01:58:46.000 Why?

01:58:47.000 No. 0.87

01:58:48.000 Well, it's silly. 0.80

01:58:48.000 And the term feminist has been so co-opted by negative thoughts. 0.80

01:58:52.000 So many people have this negative connotation they attach to it.

01:58:55.000 Of course.

01:58:56.000 And it's movements that, you know, third wave feminism, this, you know, there's certain when, whenever people... 0.99

01:59:00.000 The real fucking problem? 1.00

01:59:02.000 Male feminists. 1.00

01:59:02.000 They've ruined it. 1.00

01:59:04.000 Those fucking twats. 1.00

01:59:05.000 You know, it's... 1.00

01:59:06.000 Men ruin everything. 0.91

01:59:07.000 I don't know. 0.99

01:59:08.000 They've even ruined feminism. 0.83

01:59:09.000 No.

01:59:10.000 That's funny.

01:59:11.000 I know.

01:59:11.000 Jamie was on here and he was a friend of mine and something weird happened with that guy.

01:59:14.000 I don't know what's going on with his life right now.

01:59:16.000 Jamie Kilstein?

01:59:17.000 Yeah.

01:59:18.000 Oh yeah, not good.

01:59:18.000 I don't know what's going on.

01:59:19.000 I don't want to speculate on any of that, but we were really good friends for a while and I know his...

01:59:25.000 Like, he was very disliked as a male feminist, quote-unquote male feminist.

01:59:28.000 Well, it's because everybody thought that he was what he just got accused of being.

01:59:33.000 Right.

01:59:33.000 That they're just poonhounds that are taking that angle.

01:59:37.000 That is an interesting...

01:59:39.000 I honestly think sometimes people are just... 1.00

01:59:42.000 Assholes who want sex. 1.00

01:59:44.000 And I also think sometimes people are manipulative assholes who want sex. 1.00

01:59:46.000 I don't see him as a manipulative person. 0.99

01:59:48.000 You didn't have anything to offer him.

01:59:50.000 Probably not.

01:59:51.000 I didn't interact.

01:59:53.000 I don't know either.

01:59:54.000 I think people are a bunch of different things depending on who they are at what time of the day.

01:59:59.000 I think it'd be nice if the whole world was egalitarian and if we all looked at people as just treating them Who they are based on their character and their personality and not categorizing them so specifically like, oh, you are a woman, so you are less or you are a man and you are more or vice versa.

02:00:17.000 Yeah, but when you say male feminist and you're like, that's the problem. 0.99

02:00:19.000 I mean, are you joking when you say that?

02:00:21.000 Yes.

02:00:21.000 Yes, I'm joking.

02:00:23.000 Yes.

02:00:25.000 No, I mean, the problem is there's a lot of people that virtue signal and a lot of people that are posturing and a lot of people that are putting a label on themselves to try to make themselves seem like they're in a higher moral high ground than the rest of the folks around them and that's the motivation for doing it.

02:00:41.000 That becomes transparent and people get angry at that.

02:00:43.000 They recognize what it is. 1.00

02:00:44.000 So when someone like Jamie Kilstein slips up after all these years of virtue signaling, they're like, ah, I knew it, you fuck! 0.99

02:00:51.000 But does that really negate some of the good things that he's done if he's influenced some men? 0.99

02:00:56.000 I don't know.

02:00:57.000 What are the good things?

02:00:59.000 I don't know.

02:00:59.000 If he's maybe said, oh, hey, a woman is actually a person.

02:01:03.000 Well, absolutely. 1.00

02:01:04.000 Who the fuck doesn't think a woman is a person? 1.00

02:01:06.000 Well, a lot of people on my Twitter timeline... 1.00

02:01:08.000 Let me tell you something. 0.99

02:01:09.000 Those people, if there's a person out there that doesn't think that a woman's a person, fucking Jamie Kilstein is not going to change their opinion. 0.99

02:01:16.000 He's just going to broadcast it and let everybody know that's how he thinks. 0.98

02:01:20.000 And he's going to get all this love and people are going to send him all these likes and they're going to give him thumbs up and say nice things to him on Twitter.

02:01:27.000 And that may or may not be a good thing.

02:01:29.000 It's more a good thing than a bad thing.

02:01:31.000 It's not a bad thing. 0.99

02:01:32.000 But you're not going to change some asshole's opinion by saying something like that. 0.98

02:01:36.000 I don't know that you are, but I don't know. 0.99

02:01:38.000 Have you changed any asshole's opinion with any of your things? 0.94

02:01:41.000 If you've come out and said something, do you think you've changed people's opinions? 0.95

02:01:44.000 I think people's opinions change if they value what you're saying, if they believe that you're being truthful, and if what you're saying is compelling enough for them to reconsider the way they look at things.

02:01:56.000 It is possible.

02:01:57.000 Mm-hmm.

02:01:57.000 But it's not 100%, and it's not the motivation behind doing things in the first place.

02:02:02.000 I don't ever try to change people's opinions, but I do try to express myself as cleanly and as accurately and as honestly as I can.

02:02:10.000 And I think that, in my opinion, in my experience, when I've heard people like you talking about your life, like you just talking about your life in this podcast, I take that in, and I know it's pure, and it'll make me consider every little...

02:02:24.000 Everything that a person says, every sentence, every conversation that you have with someone where they're being real with you, it adds more knowledge to your database of human interaction and the way people behave and think.

02:02:36.000 And I think in that way, it does slowly make you consider more things about people and that adds to the overall surface area of knowledge that you have about people in general.

02:02:46.000 Absolutely.

02:02:47.000 In your position, because you have considerable influence, do you worry about having people kind of latch on things hive-minded and go a direction?

02:02:57.000 Do you feel a responsibility, I guess, to people?

02:02:59.000 I definitely feel a responsibility in not manipulating them.

02:03:01.000 I definitely feel a responsibility in not taking advantage of that, not starting a cult or something like that.

02:03:07.000 Yeah, I mean...

02:03:08.000 But the good part about it is if you don't need anything from anybody, like you're not trying to get people to send you $50 a month for the fucking, you know, platinum plan where you get access to secret messages from L. Ron Hubbard or whatever.

02:03:25.000 But you know what I mean?

02:03:26.000 It's like you can take advantage of people in certain ways.

02:03:29.000 And I think that's a real issue with any sort of hive mind thinking, right?

02:03:35.000 Yeah, I don't know where I get.

02:03:37.000 This is fascinating.

02:03:38.000 I guess religion and things like that always trouble me.

02:03:41.000 And that hive-minded mentality, that troubles me.

02:03:44.000 It troubles me.

02:03:45.000 Yeah, it should.

02:03:46.000 I mean, to be honest, it troubles me that Alex Jones was on here or somebody who kind of leads that sort of thing.

02:03:51.000 Yes, but when Alex Jones was on here, I think people got to understand Alex Jones way more after me getting him drunk and stoned and having him talk about interdimensional child molesters.

02:04:00.000 You get to see a channel like, oh, this is kind of like a half-wacky show where he's also commenting on the craziness of the world, but you got to see who he really is.

02:04:10.000 The guy that I've known for almost 20 years.

02:04:12.000 That's what I wanted to do by having him on.

02:04:14.000 People are like, why are you friends with that guy?

02:04:15.000 I'm like...

02:04:16.000 Watch.

02:04:17.000 Watch what happens. 1.00

02:04:18.000 We'll get him fucked up. 1.00

02:04:19.000 We're gonna have some fun. 1.00

02:04:20.000 And you realize like, oh, this guy's like, he's kind of wacky.

02:04:23.000 Like half of what he's doing is almost like a show.

02:04:26.000 It's a show, right?

02:04:26.000 It's a brand, right?

02:04:28.000 Well, it's like, it is and it is and that's kind of him.

02:04:31.000 But if people are buying into that.

02:04:33.000 But what are they buying into that's false and what are they buying into that's true?

02:04:38.000 Unfortunately, a lot of what Alex Jones has been presenting over these years is actually true.

02:04:43.000 Like what?

02:04:44.000 Like agent provocateurs, like when they have peaceful protests, they'll send in people to smash windows and they're wearing government-issue boots and they get rounded up and they don't wind up being prosecuted because they were literally brought in by the police to turn a peaceful protest into a violent protest. 0.87

02:05:00.000 The people that took over Occupy Wall Street and undercover cops that were doing all this fucking crazy, chaotic, violent shit to get people to move in and break up these camps and break up these protests when they were all legal.

02:05:14.000 Alex Jones sort of exposed all that stuff first. 0.94

02:05:16.000 When he puts his support...

02:05:18.000 And I don't want to be...

02:05:19.000 I actually don't want to be in this...

02:05:20.000 I'm not trying to be controversial, honestly.

02:05:22.000 I'm just like following conversation.

02:05:24.000 Express yourself.

02:05:25.000 But when he puts his support behind people like Donald Trump, who is actually pushing these sorts of agendas...

02:05:30.000 What sorts of agenda?

02:05:32.000 The anti-protesting, like trying to change the laws so that you can run over protesters when they're peacefully protested.

02:05:37.000 Is he changing the laws?

02:05:38.000 I don't know.

02:05:39.000 He's changing the laws, but these things are coming up.

02:05:40.000 You can run over a protest?

02:05:41.000 What is that?

02:05:42.000 It's Wisconsin or Michigan.

02:05:44.000 There's something like that.

02:05:45.000 They're trying to put a thing into...

02:05:46.000 One of them farm states.

02:05:47.000 Whatever it is.

02:05:48.000 Yeah, I know.

02:05:49.000 And I'm so bad because when I follow my train of thought, then I can never have citations and it drives me bananas because I don't want to present information as speculation.

02:05:56.000 Well, I think that people are trying to stop people from violating other people's rights.

02:06:01.000 Right.

02:06:01.000 But is a person's right to drive a car down a street more important than a person's right to express themselves by saying, I don't want this to happen.

02:06:09.000 I am willfully challenging the law right here in a peaceful way. 0.98

02:06:13.000 But it's not peaceful if your grandpa is dying and you need to get to the hospital and some asshole wants to stand in front of him with a macrame hat on with a, you know, I'm a male feminist sign. 0.99

02:06:21.000 Right. 0.98

02:06:22.000 But is that, what instance are you quoting specifically?

02:06:25.000 We're talking about blocking people on the road.

02:06:27.000 It doesn't help anyone.

02:06:28.000 No, it doesn't help anyone.

02:06:29.000 I mean, I've been arrested for political protests before, and I was very aware I was crossing a line onto here.

02:06:34.000 I was doing something.

02:06:35.000 I was going to be arrested for it, but it was the voices behind me and the collective voices together that were doing something not...

02:06:41.000 Knowing that they were going to be arrested, knowing that the part about going to jail and being able to write about or being able to understand that you were taking a stance on something, you're just trying to bring attention to something that you think is wrong.

02:06:51.000 Well, what were you arrested for?

02:06:52.000 Oh, it was many years ago, and all the military guys already hate me, but it was the School of the Americas.

02:06:56.000 I was 18. I think I got arrested twice, 18 or 19. It was the School of the Americas when they were teaching the counterinsurgency techniques down in Fort Benning, Georgia.

02:07:06.000 I'm banned for life there.

02:07:08.000 But I was very religious then.

02:07:09.000 I was very into social justice.

02:07:11.000 I wanted to be a nun, and I wanted to change the world, and I wanted people to not kill each other anymore.

02:07:16.000 And I wanted us not to fund military groups in South America who were slaughtering people.

02:07:21.000 At the same time, it was protesting.

02:07:24.000 I was stepping deliberately onto a military base and saying, no, I don't want this to happen anymore.

02:07:28.000 I'm peacefully going to go with you.

02:07:29.000 You're arresting me.

02:07:30.000 I know my rights.

02:07:32.000 Okay, well let's unpack that because what you did there was you made a, there's a political protest, you went to the scene of where you think these terrible things are taking place and you took a stand knowing you were going to get arrested and that it was going to bring media attention to this.

02:07:48.000 There's a big difference between that and you deciding, we're gonna block the 101 because Black Lives Matter.

02:07:54.000 You know, that doesn't have anything to do with all those people that are driving to work.

02:07:58.000 You're violating their rights to pass.

02:08:00.000 You're violating their space.

02:08:01.000 You're stopping them from being able to move freely.

02:08:04.000 You're also calling a great deal of attention to it, aren't you?

02:08:07.000 You're doing it in a way that inconveniences and puts people in danger, and it's not necessary.

02:08:12.000 You could do it in a public space.

02:08:13.000 You could do it in places where you're allowed to protest.

02:08:15.000 You could do it, and you could still get your voice out and still get your message out and not block traffic on the highway.

02:08:22.000 The blocking traffic on the highway is attention whoring. 1.00

02:08:25.000 And it's attention whoring in a very dangerous way. 0.57

02:08:27.000 Because you are stopping people from getting to medication.

02:08:31.000 You're stopping people from getting medical treatment.

02:08:33.000 People can be in the middle of giving birth. 0.99

02:08:35.000 There's a lot of shit that happens where you fuck with people's ability to travel and move around. 0.99

02:08:40.000 We rely on that. 0.99

02:08:41.000 It's extremely significant.

02:08:43.000 So when you just decide that, you know, you, whatever, I want transgender rights for the bathroom. 1.00

02:08:48.000 Let's block this fucking highway. 0.99

02:08:50.000 Just because you think you can get attention doing something like that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. 1.00

02:08:55.000 There are ways to get attention doing things that are lawful, and there's ways that are noble, and then there's blocking the fucking highway like a baby. 0.95

02:09:02.000 Are they still working, though? 0.98

02:09:03.000 I'm not just talking about a highway.

02:09:04.000 Are they working?

02:09:05.000 Are bringing attention to things...

02:09:07.000 I mean, is that still working?

02:09:08.000 The Dakota...

02:09:26.000 Yeah, I mean, it does get attention.

02:09:33.000 It does.

02:09:34.000 That's a different thing, though.

02:09:35.000 I understand what you're saying, and I'm not disregarding...

02:09:38.000 The Dakota Pipeline, they're protesting there at the scene.

02:09:40.000 I'm not disregarding what you're saying about the highways and stuff like that, because that wouldn't be the kind of protest that I would want to be a part of.

02:09:47.000 That's not the kind of thing I would want to enact.

02:09:48.000 Now, do I believe in the Black Lives Matter movement? 0.99

02:09:51.000 Yes, to a certain extent.

02:09:52.000 I also believe...

02:09:53.000 In police officer training and better training for police officers in situations of high stress.

02:09:58.000 I think that there's so much nuance to what's going on there and there's so much carried on.

02:10:03.000 And the highway blocking and the stuff like that, you're giving very, very good counter arguments to this.

02:10:11.000 But I will say that there's also something in effect when you can make the loudest noise.

02:10:17.000 And you know something is wrong.

02:10:19.000 Isn't it your responsibility to try and fix things?

02:10:22.000 Not by stopping the highway.

02:10:24.000 Maybe not.

02:10:25.000 Maybe it's not by stopping the highway, but if people are so determined to be against what you're saying, they're so enrooted.

02:10:31.000 People have to make noise in the strangest ways.

02:10:33.000 They have to do what people pay attention to.

02:10:35.000 Also, people are very self-righteous and they think that you have to listen to them and you don't want to listen to them.

02:10:39.000 No, you don't want to listen.

02:10:40.000 It's your right as an American to not have to listen to someone's protest as much as it's your right as an American to protest.

02:10:45.000 It is.

02:10:46.000 You can't force someone to listen to you because you think you're right.

02:10:48.000 And that's what you're doing by standing in front of someone on the highway and blocking their passage.

02:10:52.000 Okay, but getting beyond the highway thing, because again, what you're bringing up...

02:10:56.000 That's the only thing that I have an issue with.

02:10:56.000 Okay, okay.

02:10:57.000 Literally, I have no problem with protesting. 1.00

02:10:59.000 I think, but when you're protesting on the highway and you're blocking traffic, you're a cunt. 1.00

02:11:03.000 I mean, that's a shitty way to do it. 0.98

02:11:05.000 I cannot disagree with you to a certain extent where it is a very inconvenient thing and it can be a dangerous thing, and I don't think any protesting should endanger people's lives at all.

02:11:14.000 By the way, I hate marathons, too, for the same reason.

02:11:17.000 Yeah, well.

02:11:19.000 I mean, it makes a lot of sense.

02:11:20.000 But at least those are scheduled. 0.94

02:11:22.000 I don't think that that's caused to be able to have the right to run somebody over and kill them. 0.96

02:11:27.000 No, you shouldn't have the right to run someone over and kill them.

02:11:29.000 I don't think somebody's life is not worth something because they're expressing themselves in a way that you disagree with.

02:11:33.000 No, but that's not necessarily what the law is saying.

02:11:35.000 The law is saying that you exonerate someone's responsibility if someone jumps in front of your car and tries to stop you.

02:11:40.000 We've seen people assault people, smash their car windows because they're trying to get through some sort of a protest line and they don't have anything to do with what the protest is.

02:11:48.000 They just want to get out of there.

02:11:49.000 They're in their car and they're stuck and maybe they have their kid with them and the kid's crying and freaking out and they hit the gas.

02:11:54.000 This is incredibly...

02:11:57.000 Detailed.

02:11:58.000 This is an incredibly detailed example of something that I don't actually have the reference point to.

02:12:02.000 I don't have a citation for this, so I can't argue with you on any of the story that you're giving me because I have no way of knowing this incident.

02:12:10.000 But I do think that your speculation is correct in the sense that I think that, no, that would be horrible.

02:12:15.000 That would be horrible to have people saying, okay, this means more to me than you're getting your sick kid to the hospital.

02:12:23.000 I think absolutely.

02:12:24.000 I think that, no.

02:12:25.000 I don't think that anybody's life is worth more than another person's life.

02:12:28.000 Well, it's also there's something going on where there's a lot of misdirected rage and anger.

02:12:31.000 People are very angry.

02:12:33.000 My friend was at one of these things where he was trying to get his car through and they were all blocked and stopped and people had crossed hands, locked hands and blocked the highway.

02:12:40.000 And some guy came up to his window and is screaming, black lives matter, black lives matter, screaming at his window.

02:12:46.000 He's like, yeah, I agree, man.

02:12:47.000 Okay, I agree, but I'm stuck in traffic.

02:12:49.000 Why are you yelling at me?

02:12:50.000 I'm not doing anything.

02:12:51.000 I think we're very angry right now.

02:12:53.000 There's a lot going on.

02:12:54.000 He's like this white guy yelling at him, another white guy, and he's screaming Black Lives Matter at him.

02:12:58.000 He's like, okay, this is so misdirected.

02:13:00.000 My friend is a Democrat.

02:13:02.000 He votes liberal.

02:13:03.000 He's so liberal, like down the board with pretty much everything.

02:13:07.000 And someone's screaming at him.

02:13:08.000 He's screaming at him like he has done something wrong because this person is misguided and misdirected rage.

02:13:13.000 And they're a part of this whole mob mentality.

02:13:16.000 Everyone's together.

02:13:17.000 They're all chanting and yelling, and everyone's getting excited.

02:13:19.000 And they think that they're doing the right thing.

02:13:21.000 It's today.

02:13:23.000 A lot of them that are involved in these protests, they're so enamored by this idea that they're doing the right thing and they're enacting change, they don't realize that they're also polarizing the opposition.

02:13:32.000 And this is one of the reasons why Donald Trump was elected in the first place.

02:13:35.000 Because so many people are so tired of people shoving in their face their righteous indignation, shoving in their face this locking hands and blocking the highway, and you have to listen to us.

02:13:45.000 That is energy.

02:13:46.000 And it goes like this, and then when it goes like that, people go like that.

02:13:50.000 It's in and out.

02:13:51.000 There's a cycle.

02:13:52.000 And can you understand where the rage is built up of people felt like they've been ignored and they've been pushed back so hard that they actually start exploding like that and they get into these hives because they have no other group to belong to?

02:14:03.000 There's definitely a way that you could see that.

02:14:06.000 There's definitely a way that makes sense.

02:14:08.000 I guess, what is the appropriate way to do things, then?

02:14:10.000 What is the way to do things?

02:14:11.000 To continue to write, to continue to talk, to continue to express yourself in a way that's going to make other people consider what you're saying, and maybe change people's minds and thoughts.

02:14:23.000 And it's not an instantaneous thing.

02:14:26.000 No, that's the problem.

02:14:26.000 It's not like you put up a sign and everything's fixed.

02:14:28.000 No, it's going to take time.

02:14:29.000 We are a society that...

02:14:31.000 Right, but I think that's part of the rage of people screaming, is they want it to change now. 0.99

02:14:35.000 And by going up to my friend's window and yelling, Black Lives Matter, this fuckhead thinks he's going to change. 0.99

02:14:40.000 But he doesn't even really think that. 0.99

02:14:41.000 He thinks he's got the right to do it. 0.99

02:14:43.000 You've got to fucking listen to me, man. 0.98

02:14:44.000 There's this thing going on where people get these mob mindsets, where they think they're allowed to hit a girl because she's got a red hat on that says, Make Bitcoin Great Again. 0.99

02:14:54.000 Have you seen that video?

02:14:55.000 Where that poor girl got mace in her face? 1.00

02:14:57.000 Yeah, it was horrible. 1.00

02:14:58.000 Shit! 1.00

02:14:58.000 It was a joke hat. 1.00

02:14:59.000 They maced her in the fucking face. 1.00

02:15:01.000 I get that. 1.00

02:15:02.000 I get what you're saying.

02:15:04.000 And I am on board with the sentiment of what you're saying.

02:15:08.000 I really do understand it.

02:15:09.000 But I also think there's such a finger pointing going on. 0.99

02:15:14.000 And I'm guilty of it on my Twitter because I go after these fuckheads. 1.00

02:15:17.000 All the time. 1.00

02:15:18.000 They call me, you feminazi. 1.00

02:15:19.000 And I say, no, fuck Donald Trump. 1.00

02:15:21.000 Seriously, that person is not qualified to be president. 1.00

02:15:23.000 Well, Hillary's bad, too. 0.98

02:15:24.000 I didn't say anything about Hillary.

02:15:26.000 I said, this person in office is not qualified.

02:15:28.000 He should step down.

02:15:31.000 I don't think he really wanted to be president.

02:15:33.000 No, I don't think he wanted to be president at all.

02:15:35.000 I think the whole thing just got way out of hand.

02:15:36.000 Yeah, no, I think he's terrified.

02:15:38.000 He is a scared, terrified little man up there.

02:15:41.000 Maybe he's not terrified. 0.68

02:15:42.000 Maybe he's crazy.

02:15:43.000 But I don't think he wanted to do this. 0.82

02:15:45.000 I think this just sort of happened.

02:15:46.000 Yeah, I think he didn't think it through.

02:15:49.000 And I think that's when we're talking about not thinking it through.

02:15:51.000 I think the guy screaming at your friend in the window, he's not thinking it through.

02:15:54.000 He's calling it through.

02:15:54.000 He's caught up in a wave of something.

02:15:56.000 Well, he thinks he can do it.

02:15:57.000 There's a million other people behind him.

02:15:58.000 Everyone's screaming.

02:15:59.000 He's looking at my friend.

02:16:00.000 My friend's vulnerable.

02:16:01.000 My friend's below him because he's seated.

02:16:03.000 And he's just screaming, Black Lives Matter! 0.99

02:16:05.000 Black Lives Matter!

02:16:06.000 He's like, okay.

02:16:07.000 Yeah. 1.00

02:16:08.000 It's that bullshit. 1.00

02:16:10.000 But it's also that bullshit. 1.00

02:16:12.000 Twitter generation protesting. 0.99

02:16:13.000 You know, but it's also, we have learned, it's so hard to just generalize and say everything is because of this and everything is because of that, isn't it?

02:16:22.000 Yeah, it is.

02:16:23.000 Everything has to come from an individual place.

02:16:25.000 And at the same time, we're all trying to belong to communities.

02:16:27.000 We're all trying to belong to something we believe in.

02:16:29.000 Right.

02:16:30.000 And we're latching on to that.

02:16:31.000 And then I think that the sins that happen along the way, the missteps that happen along the way, we tend to forgive them instead of pointing out, no, you shouldn't do this.

02:16:41.000 You shouldn't affect somebody who's driving their child to work or something like that.

02:16:45.000 That's not what should happen.

02:16:46.000 But we do tend to forgive the people who are in the same team as us, don't we?

02:16:50.000 Of course. 0.99

02:16:50.000 And that's where the make America great fuckers, sorry, well, they can't see their team lose. 0.99

02:16:57.000 And they'll defend him now to the death. 0.99

02:16:59.000 They'll defend his decisions.

02:17:00.000 He does something wrong.

02:17:01.000 Well, you don't understand how it works, Julie.

02:17:02.000 No, actually, I do understand how it works.

02:17:04.000 This person is not supposed to be in power.

02:17:06.000 This person's not supposed to represent America.

02:17:09.000 And he is, and he's not who I want the world to see America as.

02:17:13.000 I think we're a great country. 1.00

02:17:14.000 We fuck up a lot. 0.99

02:17:15.000 There's also a problem when having a popularity contest to decide who gets to run things. 0.97

02:17:19.000 Imagine if they had a popularity contest to get to see who's the dean of Harvard.

02:17:23.000 Yeah.

02:17:23.000 Like, what's the curriculum going to be this year?

02:17:25.000 The curriculum's going to be Jesus! 1.00

02:17:26.000 Because I'm fucking one, pussies! 1.00

02:17:28.000 Well, I mean, that's what's going to be happening right now. 1.00

02:17:30.000 We're going to do away with, you know, the public's... 0.97

02:17:32.000 All the vouchers and the shit that's happening... 0.99

02:17:34.000 There's a lot of weird shit going on that Jeff Sessions guy scares the shit out of me. 1.00

02:17:37.000 Oh my god, he's terrifying. 0.99

02:17:38.000 He wants to bring back Just Say No.

02:17:39.000 He wants to bring back the 1980s Just Say No campaign.

02:17:41.000 He just said that marijuana has the same negative effects as heroin.

02:17:45.000 Yeah, slightly less bad than heroin. 0.97

02:17:47.000 What the hell, dude? 0.99

02:17:49.000 It's a child. 0.99

02:17:50.000 It's an old child.

02:17:53.000 Yeah, it's not good.

02:17:54.000 No, it's not good.

02:17:56.000 Because I get worked up thinking about it.

02:17:57.000 I think about these people in power and I get worked up.

02:18:11.000 But the team mentality that we have, the us versus them, it just gets so weird. 0.79

02:18:16.000 It gets so fucking crazy.

02:18:17.000 People get so out of control with it. 0.99

02:18:19.000 And like you said, the Make America Great Again people, they don't want to hear shit about the left. 0.99

02:18:24.000 They don't want to hear shit about Bernie. 1.00

02:18:26.000 They want to say Barack Obama's a Muslim from fucking Kenya. 1.00

02:18:30.000 And I'm guilty of not wanting to know good things about Donald Trump. 0.99

02:18:34.000 I don't want to know them.

02:18:35.000 I don't care.

02:18:36.000 I don't care because I see so much...

02:18:40.000 You know, it's just like there's so much that's working against human achievement with him being in power and the people he's appointing in power.

02:18:45.000 There is, but I think it gives people a goal.

02:18:48.000 I think it gives people, like, I think without opposition, it's very difficult to get motivated.

02:18:54.000 And I think there's a significant amount of opposition now.

02:18:57.000 And people are, I think they're organizing, people on the left are organizing in a way that they never have before.

02:19:01.000 And hopefully, hopefully, people will understand there'll be someone along the line That understands that the polarization effect that happens between choosing these hardline teams left and right and not recognizing the possibility that there's so many people in the middle that just pick a side.

02:19:17.000 They just decide to go left or decide to go right.

02:19:19.000 And they could be on either side.

02:19:20.000 But both of them are unreasonable.

02:19:22.000 Both of them are unrealistic.

02:19:24.000 Yeah.

02:19:24.000 And yeah, Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate.

02:19:27.000 She was a terrible opposition candidate. 1.00

02:19:28.000 Hopefully next time there'll be someone that's really good and we'll understand what is the problem with having a megalomaniac who's a business vulture run the country.

02:19:39.000 Which happened.

02:19:40.000 I mean, that was the choice.

02:19:41.000 This one or this one.

02:19:42.000 I will say, in my opinion, she was more qualified.

02:19:45.000 She served as secretary of the state.

02:19:46.000 Now, I didn't like that she was a professional politician, because I think when you're a professional politician, then you're dedicated to just winning and not, you know?

02:19:55.000 But I don't know her. 0.99

02:19:56.000 She was a liar. 0.98

02:19:57.000 I don't know her. 0.99

02:19:58.000 There's real problems.

02:19:59.000 Yeah.

02:20:00.000 Yeah, there's real problems. 0.99

02:20:01.000 But who the fuck wants to be president? 0.99

02:20:03.000 That's the other problem. 0.99

02:20:04.000 Well, the thing is, like, who...

02:20:06.000 The people who want to be president don't understand it's the highest public service office that you can possibly do. 0.99

02:20:12.000 But you're also going to get shit on. 1.00

02:20:14.000 The whole world's going to dump on your head. 1.00

02:20:16.000 Yes, and you have to absolutely serve the country.

02:20:20.000 That's what I don't get.

02:20:21.000 I don't understand how anybody would want to be president and want to give that much of themselves up.

02:20:25.000 But I also can see how people would want to aspire to serve the country, not lead the country, serve the country. 0.99

02:20:31.000 And that's where I lose my shit. 0.98

02:20:33.000 Honestly, So many of my friends, I've tried to express this to them that I can't have conversations with them on Twitter anymore. 0.99

02:20:40.000 I have to talk to them via text.

02:20:43.000 Really?

02:20:44.000 Yeah, because people jump into my conversations.

02:20:46.000 I get it.

02:20:46.000 Oh, I see.

02:20:47.000 I see. 1.00

02:20:47.000 I got so many rape threats during this fucking election. 1.00

02:20:51.000 Really? 1.00

02:20:51.000 Oh, my God. 1.00

02:20:52.000 It was insane.

02:20:53.000 It was just to the point where she's like, okay, I can't speak with this person who's arguing with me, even though they're my friend.

02:20:58.000 And I'm not unfriending them, not being their friend.

02:21:00.000 I'm just like, you have to talk to me one-on-one.

02:21:02.000 Because so many people were just coming at me.

02:21:04.000 Well, that's like having a conversation in a mall and people just walk by and start yelling at you. 1.00

02:21:08.000 I'll fucking rape you! 1.00

02:21:09.000 It's like, okay! 1.00

02:21:12.000 Good luck!

02:21:13.000 What do you do with that?

02:21:14.000 I'm okay with understanding that kind of...

02:21:17.000 I guess that kind of...

02:21:19.000 It's not an assault.

02:21:20.000 It's a word indicating assault. 0.98

02:21:22.000 But I've been not a public figure necessarily, but I've had people talk shit about me to my face, talk shit about me here and there because of my previous career. 0.97

02:21:30.000 Because in MMA, you get a certain amount of people just... 0.99

02:21:33.000 Telling you how terrible you are.

02:21:34.000 But to a certain extent, you don't also... 0.99

02:21:36.000 You want to be desensitized to somebody threatening to rape you? 0.98

02:21:38.000 Right. 0.98

02:21:39.000 You don't want to be desensitized.

02:21:40.000 Of course.

02:21:40.000 You never want that to be...

02:21:41.000 It's a terrible thing.

02:21:42.000 Yeah.

02:21:42.000 It's a horrible thing.

02:21:43.000 Well, it's also so fucking easy to say something and just type it out. 0.90

02:21:47.000 Yes. 0.80

02:21:47.000 And try to get... 0.80

02:21:48.000 I'm going to get Julie's fucking goat. 1.00

02:21:49.000 Yeah, right. 1.00

02:21:50.000 I'm going to get her to think. 0.82

02:21:50.000 I'm going to get her pissed. 0.82

02:21:51.000 And when I'm looking for a fight, I jump right on it because I want to fight them, you know?

02:21:57.000 Why do you want to do that, though?

02:21:59.000 I miss combat.

02:22:00.000 Do you like it?

02:22:00.000 Ah!

02:22:02.000 Really, I miss arguing with people.

02:22:03.000 I do.

02:22:04.000 Like, arguing with my fists or arguing...

02:22:05.000 I miss combat.

02:22:06.000 I do miss that.

02:22:07.000 Have you thought about, like, maybe entering grappling competitions or something?

02:22:10.000 Yeah, I... You know, with that, actually, Iowa has a really good Brazilian jiu-jitsu club, and I went there once, and I had a great time rolling, and then I just...

02:22:17.000 I don't know what it is about the way my mentality works, but I feel like it would distract me away from my writing.

02:22:23.000 And I know it wouldn't.

02:22:24.000 I know it would probably be balancing me more, but I get so intense about the things that I'm doing.

02:22:28.000 Like, I had a list of questions for you today just because I wanted to find out what you think about certain things.

02:22:36.000 Narrow-minded maybe is a thing for it, but I just get so obsessed about Getting answers to certain things or asking questions about things.

02:22:42.000 And I'm afraid I'd do that with grappling and jiu-jitsu and I would get too far into that.

02:22:46.000 Right.

02:22:47.000 And not address the new direction that my life needs to take.

02:22:50.000 You sound a lot like me.

02:22:52.000 Well, I'm a terrible stand-up comedian, so I'm nothing like you.

02:22:56.000 You're good.

02:22:56.000 But I mean you're a need to get completely absorbed in things.

02:23:01.000 Yeah.

02:23:02.000 And then you worry about being absorbed in other things.

02:23:04.000 Yeah, I do.

02:23:05.000 And it's a weird...

02:23:06.000 I got...

02:23:08.000 Sort of diagnosed when I went through my depression spell.

02:23:10.000 I'd had depression before, but post-fight depression was pretty rough.

02:23:14.000 I was on this, I was on that, and my body was getting all weird.

02:23:20.000 They said that I have real attention deficit disorder problems.

02:23:23.000 I'm still going through the testing for that, but they did give me Adderall, which is amazing.

02:23:29.000 Amazing!

02:23:30.000 Another person on speed! 0.68

02:23:31.000 Very dangerous, I know.

02:23:33.000 But it calmed me down so much.

02:23:35.000 I was so calm.

02:23:36.000 And I was like, oh!

02:23:37.000 Adderall calmed you down.

02:23:38.000 Yes!

02:23:38.000 Yeah, that's what they say about the people that have real ADHD. They give you Adderall and it calmed you down.

02:23:43.000 It's just like, oh, okay.

02:23:44.000 This makes a lot more sense.

02:23:45.000 I'm not looking at 10,000 things at once, right?

02:23:47.000 I'm always looking at 10,000 things at once.

02:23:50.000 You know, actually, it's something I did talk to my therapist about.

02:23:54.000 I was just like, what if I'm going to lose creativity this way?

02:23:57.000 Right.

02:23:58.000 No, you still on the antidepressants?

02:24:00.000 No, I went off of them.

02:24:02.000 When I started school, they mess with your sex life a little bit.

02:24:06.000 I don't have an active one anymore, so it doesn't matter.

02:24:08.000 For me, it was really hard for me to reach orgasm and stuff when I was on them.

02:24:14.000 I know.

02:24:15.000 We're talking everything.

02:24:16.000 I try not to blush. 1.00

02:24:18.000 Shit your pants in front of Putin? 1.00

02:24:18.000 I know, I shit my pants. 1.00

02:24:19.000 I couldn't orgasm for a year. 0.99

02:24:21.000 For a year? 0.89

02:24:22.000 Yeah, about, I think.

02:24:23.000 Whoa.

02:24:23.000 It was rough.

02:24:24.000 It was rough.

02:24:25.000 But I was also so sad. 1.00

02:24:26.000 Fuck. 1.00

02:24:27.000 You know, like, I don't know. 1.00

02:24:29.000 Goddamn, Julie. 1.00

02:24:30.000 Now that I'm off of them, I'm also mid-30s, so sex is awesome. 0.99

02:24:35.000 Like, as a woman in your mid... 0.92

02:24:37.000 Really?

02:24:38.000 I turned 36 on Saturday, and I'm just like, I've never been in a happier...

02:24:42.000 Which is weird because you think, okay, well, my fertility is dwindling.

02:24:45.000 I may not have kids.

02:24:46.000 I may have kids.

02:24:47.000 Who knows what's going to happen? 0.99

02:24:48.000 But sex as a woman in your mid-30s is horrible. 0.99

02:24:53.000 Now I know. 1.00

02:24:53.000 So much better. 1.00

02:24:54.000 Yeah, now you know.

02:24:55.000 I wasn't sure.

02:24:56.000 Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that's something that would keep you up at night.

02:24:58.000 What is a woman? 1.00

02:24:59.000 I wonder.

02:25:01.000 I can't believe I'm talking about this, but it doesn't matter.

02:25:04.000 It doesn't matter.

02:25:05.000 It's real life and real bodies and how people go through things.

02:25:08.000 And antidepressants really messed me up.

02:25:10.000 I've heard that before from men as well.

02:25:12.000 Yeah, it was tough, but it was needed.

02:25:15.000 I didn't...

02:25:18.000 I didn't want to hurt myself anymore, and I think that I was going down a path where I was going to be hurting myself.

02:25:24.000 With your decisions, with the mindset?

02:25:27.000 Yeah, and just physically.

02:25:28.000 I have a history of eating disorders and doing things, and I could see myself slipping into that path again.

02:25:34.000 And so it was like leaving fighting and then discovering That I actually really want to explore this new area of fighting that is writing or this new area of creativity that is writing that you can bring fighting into.

02:25:45.000 And I needed all of these kind of things to be laid out.

02:25:48.000 And I thought I probably would have interrupted myself if I hadn't gone on antidepressants.

02:25:52.000 And I hadn't kind of pulled back a little bit from feeling everything so intensely.

02:25:57.000 And were you worried that the Adderall was going to invade your creative thoughts and somehow mess them up?

02:26:03.000 I'm worried about that now.

02:26:04.000 I'm still being tested.

02:26:05.000 They put me on it, but they said, we have to go through all this testing for it.

02:26:07.000 So I'm still being tested for if I have attention, deficit disorder, or whatever it is that makes me think in a peculiar way or not be able to get tasks finished.

02:26:17.000 And so, you know, I'm still being tested for it.

02:26:20.000 But, you know, taking it now, I am able to calm down.

02:26:24.000 How often do you take it?

02:26:26.000 Once a day, but it only lasts four hours.

02:26:28.000 So my doctor gave me enough for two a day.

02:26:30.000 I've only taken one today and it was hours.

02:26:32.000 I've been drinking a shitload of coffee, but I took one earlier this morning.

02:26:35.000 What does it do?

02:26:37.000 What's the effect?

02:26:38.000 So if, say, I wake up in my room and I look and it's messy in my room, what What I tend to do, or my tendency to do, especially post-fighting, whenever I enter this weird mind space, is panic about,

02:26:55.000 this is messy here, this being messy here means I won't be able to complete this task, this will happen here, this will happen here, and then I'm never going to be able to, and then I just get paralyzed.

02:27:03.000 And I panic, and I'm fearful that I can't actually just get out of bed to put a shirt on, or to pick something up, because everything all of a sudden clouds in at once.

02:27:14.000 It would lead me to hyper-focus on really strange things.

02:27:18.000 And I think that actually helped with fighting, if that's what I have.

02:27:22.000 I'm still in the diagnosis-like process of this, but, you know, so far this is the medicine that's worked the best for me.

02:27:27.000 But when I was fighting, one thing that I did do poorly was I would go from A to C instead of go to A to B to C. I would see what would happen after I won the fight in my mind.

02:27:37.000 When I first started training camp which a lot of fighters do and I think that helps but sometimes you miss B where the actual fight happens and in my mind sometimes I would gloss over that and I would get caught up in things I would wait for this to happen and wait for that time or be paralyzed and not be able to make the next step now I feel like I am able to when I take a pill I'm able to put my feet on the ground and Out of bed,

02:28:00.000 look up and say, okay, my room needs to be cleaned, but first I need to do this.

02:28:03.000 And I'm able to make, I'm able to go A to B and then do C. Instead of just jumping over and then looking at C and then thinking all the things after me just come crashing at me and I freak out.

02:28:13.000 Now, you said earlier that post-career you started thinking about brain trauma.

02:28:18.000 Yeah.

02:28:18.000 You started thinking about, do you, what, like what thoughts specifically?

02:28:23.000 I wondered about, well, the depression, right?

02:28:25.000 Right.

02:28:26.000 You know, and I wonder about how many shots that I've taken.

02:28:28.000 I mean, I had a good chin.

02:28:29.000 I was rocked a lot in the gym.

02:28:30.000 I sparred a lot.

02:28:32.000 I mean, you know, like I said, back in the old days, I would fight whatever opportunity came my way.

02:28:38.000 I didn't have CT scans until I got into Strikeforce, which was late in my career.

02:28:43.000 Or CT or MRI. I forgot which one does what.

02:28:47.000 So I don't know how much of the ditheriness that I have is...

02:28:52.000 Dithery?

02:28:52.000 Yeah, just like, oh, here, here, here.

02:28:55.000 Not finding my sunglasses because they're on the top of my head and wandering around looking for them.

02:29:00.000 And for a while there, I was really scared.

02:29:02.000 Maybe this is a post-fight brain trauma.

02:29:05.000 And the depression set in pretty hard post-fight.

02:29:08.000 So I was wondering, well, what?

02:29:10.000 And seeing doctors and stuff like that, they were like, maybe you should get an MRI. Maybe you should get your brain checked.

02:29:17.000 But let's also address the depression right now.

02:29:19.000 And once the depression was addressed, and I was able to see that there's something else going on here that may not be due to getting hit in the head.

02:29:27.000 It may actually be due to me having a chemical thing that makes me just all over the place.

02:29:32.000 Because I'm in the best school in the world for writing right now.

02:29:35.000 I didn't get in there, like, without...

02:29:37.000 How do I explain it?

02:29:39.000 The focus is different.

02:29:40.000 I think I just needed to channel it.

02:29:42.000 And I think that I got very scared that I had brain damage, that I was going to never be able to do anything, that I wasn't going to be able to...

02:29:48.000 And the truth was, I think that my body chemistry had changed somewhat.

02:29:54.000 And my learning disassociation, my learning, whatever it is that made me good at fighting...

02:29:59.000 I had to translate into a different world.

02:30:01.000 And so I had to kind of take steps to do that and get into some pretty intense therapy and do things like that in order to understand that, no, my brain is just wired differently.

02:30:09.000 So I don't know if it's the creative brain or the obsessive brain or whatever.

02:30:15.000 Yeah.

02:30:16.000 I mean, I sound like I'm talking bro science here because I really don't have a diagnosis sheet to show you from an actual doctor.

02:30:23.000 Well, not only that, the reality of depression is that a doctor can't really say like, oh, hey, look, you've got herpes.

02:30:29.000 There it is.

02:30:30.000 Right.

02:30:30.000 You know what I mean?

02:30:31.000 It's not something like that.

02:30:32.000 Depression is some very, very difficult thing to define.

02:30:36.000 You only know whether or not you have it yourself.

02:30:38.000 They can't scan you and go, oh, Julie, you're depressed.

02:30:41.000 Yeah, you can answer a whole bunch of questions that they give you, but you can also lie if you know what they're looking for, which is what I did in many depression tests.

02:30:47.000 I would just lie because I didn't want people to think I had depression.

02:30:50.000 And it was just like, okay, but I am actually feeling this on this survey.

02:30:54.000 I should answer this correctly.

02:30:55.000 And I will say that something that I did, you know, when I look back at my lifetime of choices and the things that I did, I self-medicated with experiences.

02:31:04.000 Like, trying to have this experience, this experience, this thing.

02:31:06.000 Have all this, all this, do this, do this, you know, all this.

02:31:08.000 And I self-medicated.

02:31:09.000 I had very severe bulimia.

02:31:11.000 And that would calm me down.

02:31:12.000 It would calm me down.

02:31:13.000 While you were fighting?

02:31:14.000 No, early days of fighting.

02:31:16.000 It's actually one of the things I really...

02:31:18.000 And I don't talk about it, but I really credit Greg Jackson for this and putting me on a path.

02:31:22.000 Because I confess to him, okay, this is a problem that I have when I first seen it.

02:31:25.000 This is something that I've dealt with a little bit with some treatments.

02:31:28.000 But, you know, I puke my food up.

02:31:30.000 And he...

02:31:32.000 He didn't let me anymore.

02:31:34.000 I don't know how to explain he didn't let me anymore, but he put a lot of care and pressure on me to be a more mentally healthy person by directing that energy, that panicked energy, when I would get all worked up and just have to go puke because I didn't know what else to do with myself.

02:31:46.000 And he helped me direct that energy into the sport.

02:31:49.000 And he gave me tasks to do, and I ended up working for him. 0.97

02:31:52.000 But it was just like, I mean, he's a really fucking good dude. 0.89

02:31:55.000 Like, really good dude. 0.96

02:31:56.000 Yeah, he's a very good guy.

02:31:57.000 Yeah, and just, you know, I honestly credit him for, I think he saved my life to a certain extent, because I got pretty bad there for a while.

02:32:05.000 And when I moved to Jackson's, it was like, sort of that understanding that I'm stepping into a new realm where I am a professional athlete now.

02:32:14.000 I have to conduct myself a certain way.

02:32:15.000 I have to eat food a certain way.

02:32:17.000 I have to address my body a certain way.

02:32:19.000 I have to...

02:32:19.000 You know, it took a burden off of me that made me panic.

02:32:23.000 And I don't know how to explain that, but it gave me purpose, maybe?

02:32:26.000 To be...

02:32:27.000 Somebody that somebody else is invested in to understand.

02:32:30.000 Okay.

02:32:30.000 He's like, you know, you're my first female MMA fighter that I really want to put work into.

02:32:34.000 So don't get fucking pregnant. 1.00

02:32:36.000 Don't do this. 1.00

02:32:37.000 Don't puke anymore.

02:32:37.000 Don't do, you know, he's just, he put some rules in place for me when I came there.

02:32:40.000 Cause he said he wasn't really on board with him.

02:32:42.000 Oh, I shouldn't say that. 1.00

02:32:43.000 Cause it'll get him a lot of shit. 0.99

02:32:44.000 He wasn't on board with female MMA. And then, you know, he saw my Corona fight. 0.99

02:32:48.000 He liked it.

02:32:48.000 He liked me.

02:32:49.000 And he was just like, okay, I'll give this a shot.

02:32:51.000 And for me, it saved my life because I don't know where I would be without MMA. And when it comes to, I guess, the bulimia and the self-sabotage that I was doing to myself, competing in the sport and finding purpose was really important.

02:33:10.000 And just the talks I would have with him about philosophy and this kind of thing, because it's hard to find people to talk about.

02:33:29.000 Were you eating poorly?

02:33:39.000 Oh, yeah, of course.

02:33:40.000 Yeah.

02:33:40.000 I mean, sugar is so addictive when you actually get to eat it again.

02:33:44.000 Like, what do you do?

02:33:45.000 Like, it feels so good.

02:33:46.000 Yeah.

02:33:47.000 So, yeah.

02:33:48.000 I went through a rough time there.

02:33:49.000 And then I found school. 1.00

02:33:53.000 And I was like, oh, shit. 1.00

02:33:54.000 I can do this. 0.99

02:33:54.000 This is where my energy can be. 0.99

02:33:57.000 Well, that's awesome that you found something.

02:33:59.000 I mean, I would really think that diet would have also a pretty significant effect on the way your brain works.

02:34:03.000 Oh, yeah, of course.

02:34:04.000 Do you monitor that now?

02:34:05.000 Do you take care of yourself now?

02:34:07.000 Yes.

02:34:08.000 Because I actually, I mean, I still, I'll drink sugar, like I'll put sugar in a drink or something like that.

02:34:13.000 But I don't care for it as much.

02:34:15.000 My tastes have kind of changed over time.

02:34:16.000 I like vegetables.

02:34:18.000 I like meat.

02:34:19.000 You know, vegetables and meat were a huge staple when I was fighting, and now I find myself just being drawn to that anyway, you know?

02:34:26.000 But, you know, post-fighting, it's like it's the orgy of sugar and things that you were never allowed to have.

02:34:31.000 Right, you were deprived.

02:34:32.000 Yeah, and it's like, well, your body originally wasn't designed to eat this anyway, so it's going to affect your brain.

02:34:38.000 Do you just give yourself, like, a cheat day or a reward day or something like that?

02:34:41.000 What I don't do is, and this could come from a lifetime of I grew up very Catholic.

02:34:51.000 I'm very not Catholic now.

02:34:53.000 Don't tell my grandma.

02:34:54.000 No, but what I don't do is I don't beat myself up.

02:34:57.000 If I eat junk food, fine.

02:34:59.000 Okay, but the next meal is going to be healthy.

02:35:01.000 So you're more concerned with overall health, mental, physical, the whole thing.

02:35:06.000 And to be obsessive about something is actually probably worse than just having a little sugar.

02:35:14.000 Yes.

02:35:14.000 Because then it's self-flagellation, right?

02:35:16.000 Then you're just like, ah, fuck. 1.00

02:35:18.000 Everything's terrible. 1.00

02:35:19.000 I'm just going to eat this now.

02:35:20.000 I'm just a terrible person.

02:35:21.000 Yeah, exactly. 0.99

02:35:21.000 It just goes down that spiral and it's kind of dumb. 0.99

02:35:23.000 And I realize that I need something to be obsessive about.

02:35:26.000 And that has actually come through writing, you know, and that sort of thing.

02:35:30.000 And working towards, like, I'd love to write the great book.

02:35:34.000 Just the book.

02:35:35.000 Well, then do it.

02:35:35.000 I'm working on it.

02:35:37.000 It seems like this style of thinking that you have would lend itself towards something like that.

02:35:41.000 This obsessive style of thinking.

02:35:42.000 Like, it could really be an amazing tool for you.

02:35:45.000 I would hope so.

02:35:46.000 I would hope.

02:35:47.000 And I guess translating MMA to people, not just in the commentary.

02:35:52.000 Is that what you want to write about?

02:35:52.000 I think so.

02:35:53.000 I think so.

02:35:54.000 When I first came into it, I was just like, no, no, I'm done with MMA. I'm not going to do it.

02:35:57.000 And then I'm just like, oh, but these are my people.

02:36:01.000 What about just your life experiences itself?

02:36:04.000 I mean, coming from a point of view of someone like you, so smart and articulate, I would imagine that your memoirs or what you would be able to describe about your days competing would be really fascinating and compelling.

02:36:15.000 Yeah, I've definitely worked on that.

02:36:17.000 I've written some things to that extent.

02:36:20.000 The stuff that they picked up for Sports Illustrated was really nice.

02:36:23.000 That was nice.

02:36:23.000 That was a help.

02:36:25.000 I like things to be on a little bit, I guess a little bit, not woo-woo, like literary level, but just something that's...

02:36:34.000 I'd like a little bit more symbolism, a little bit more...

02:36:37.000 I don't know.

02:36:38.000 When I wrote the piece about cutting...

02:36:39.000 It's the piece that got me into Iowa.

02:36:42.000 It was the piece about cutting weight when I decided to retire.

02:36:44.000 And when I cut weight and I was in Australia and I saw this painting and it just changed everything.

02:36:48.000 And I was just like, wow.

02:36:49.000 What was it?

02:36:50.000 It's a Picasso painting of this woman with a hat on her head.

02:36:57.000 A Dutch hat.

02:36:59.000 It's...

02:36:59.000 Oh, God.

02:37:03.000 Mademoiselle, I cannot remember the name of it.

02:37:05.000 I'm drawing a blank right here.

02:37:08.000 Think about eggs.

02:37:09.000 Think about how eggs are prepared.

02:37:13.000 Poached?

02:37:13.000 Scrambled?

02:37:14.000 Fried?

02:37:15.000 Keep going.

02:37:17.000 Hollandaise.

02:37:19.000 Mademoiselle Hollandaise?

02:37:20.000 Yeah, something to that effect, I believe.

02:37:22.000 I have the print in my room, but now I don't look at the titles of things.

02:37:25.000 I just look at the images more than anything.

02:37:27.000 But I saw this painting, and I was in a museum in Australia, and I was cutting weight for my fight.

02:37:33.000 I had all my sweats on, but I was in an art museum, and I saw it, and I just felt like it was talking to me all of a sudden.

02:37:37.000 And I was just like, Were you delirious because you were losing weight?

02:37:40.000 See, no, but symbolically, I know what you mean.

02:37:43.000 Like, the symbolism there.

02:37:44.000 Like, I was...

02:37:47.000 Maybe?

02:37:47.000 I was talking to myself.

02:37:49.000 Is that it?

02:37:49.000 Yeah, that's it.

02:37:50.000 That's the painting.

02:37:50.000 Yeah.

02:37:51.000 And I just looked at that.

02:37:53.000 La Belle Hollandaise.

02:37:54.000 Yeah, La Belle Hollandaise.

02:37:55.000 That's it.

02:37:55.000 Not Memo.

02:37:56.000 I suck at names.

02:37:58.000 I have a very bad memory.

02:38:00.000 But I looked at that and I just connected with this painting in this weird, weird way.

02:38:06.000 How so?

02:38:07.000 I just saw it and I couldn't stop talking to it in my head.

02:38:10.000 Like there's just a person I'm talking to now.

02:38:12.000 Okay.

02:38:12.000 And I wrote about this.

02:38:14.000 It was just like, oh yeah, you know what, I'm done.

02:38:16.000 And I knew that in that museum, just standing there looking at this painting before my fight.

02:38:20.000 Well, you sure you weren't just looking for a sign to latch on your thoughts to?

02:38:24.000 Yeah, of course I was.

02:38:25.000 Of course I was.

02:38:25.000 And it was just this beautiful image of this woman who doesn't look like a fighter, doesn't look like anything to do with combat.

02:38:31.000 It's just a naked woman wearing a hat. 1.00

02:38:33.000 But all of a sudden, to me, that was what I was looking for.

02:38:35.000 I was looking for that sort of sign.

02:38:37.000 And that's where it became cohesive.

02:38:40.000 That's that moment.

02:38:43.000 And I just knew I was done.

02:38:45.000 That's fascinating.

02:38:46.000 I think I'd been looking for excuses for a long time before that.

02:38:49.000 And I think I wanted to retire before I fought Jermaine Duran to me.

02:38:52.000 I was just so tired and my mind just wasn't going that direction.

02:38:59.000 Do you see that in other fighters?

02:39:00.000 You see that moment where you know that they're just sort of phoning it in and they can't figure out how to get off?

02:39:06.000 Yeah, and for me, it was like I would overtrain.

02:39:08.000 Like, before the Jermaine fight, I was so overtrained.

02:39:09.000 I was so tired.

02:39:11.000 And it just, like, froze, you know, and stuff like that. 0.99

02:39:14.000 Also, she hit, like, a fucking Mack truck. 0.98

02:39:17.000 She put me out on my feet in the third round of that fight. 1.00

02:39:19.000 Like, she hit me with two right hands. 1.00

02:39:20.000 The second right hand, I didn't know what was going on.

02:39:22.000 Like, I was out.

02:39:23.000 What did you think about her fight with Holly?

02:39:30.000 What did you think about the late hits?

02:39:31.000 I think it was terrible.

02:39:32.000 Horrible, right?

02:39:33.000 Yeah, I think it was terrible.

02:39:34.000 I think that should have been called and that should have been point deducted.

02:39:35.000 And I don't mean that as an insult to Jermaine or anything like that.

02:39:39.000 That's combat-minded or whatever, but that's cheating.

02:39:41.000 Yeah, it's 100% cheating.

02:39:43.000 And she rocked her, too.

02:39:44.000 She rocked Holly with one of those shots. 1.00

02:39:46.000 And I think it's something that she saw that she could do and she did it.

02:39:50.000 I was very disappointed when they denied her protest.

02:39:53.000 Yeah, me too.

02:39:54.000 Of protests, that was a very legitimate one.

02:39:57.000 100%.

02:39:57.000 And that's not something that Holly's ever done before.

02:39:59.000 No, she's not.

02:40:00.000 No.

02:40:01.000 And it's not like she doesn't accept defeat.

02:40:03.000 I mean, she doesn't accept defeat, as I will keep moving forward, but she doesn't find excuses.

02:40:08.000 I've known that woman for almost a decade.

02:40:09.000 She doesn't look for excuses.

02:40:11.000 She looks for ways to improve. 0.97

02:40:13.000 And, yeah, so that, you know, her putting a protest in is a very legitimate thing.

02:40:17.000 Very legitimate.

02:40:18.000 And Holly Holm's another one. 0.95

02:40:20.000 She's all heart.

02:40:21.000 I mean, she came back from a deficit in that fight, landed that question mark kick over the shoulder and clanged her. 1.00

02:40:28.000 That was beautiful.

02:40:29.000 That was one of the best question mark kicks I've ever seen landed inside the octagon against a really tricky Muay Thai opponent who was getting the better of her early on. 1.00

02:40:37.000 Mm-hmm.

02:40:39.000 Holly is...

02:40:40.000 I feel like the world hasn't even seen the best Holly Holm yet.

02:40:43.000 I know that sounds weird, but...

02:40:45.000 She's 36, right?

02:40:47.000 Yeah, 35. I think that there's more to her, though, potential-wise, that we haven't even seen yet.

02:40:53.000 But we'll see if that is going to...

02:40:55.000 I don't know what her plan is.

02:40:56.000 I don't talk to her that much anymore.

02:40:57.000 Isn't that kind of what we're talking about with the Vitor thing, though?

02:40:59.000 It's almost like your experience and your ability and your knowledge gets overwhelmed by father time.

02:41:06.000 It's like father time and there's a cross in the road and you have to figure out how much experience do you have, how much knowledge, and whether or not your body can actually act on those things anymore.

02:41:17.000 And there comes a point where they're just...

02:41:19.000 Yeah, and I don't know...

02:41:21.000 I'd say that's pretty early to say about her in her MMA career, but she has had all that boxing and kickboxing experience before this, so maybe, you know...

02:41:29.000 She's had some wars. 0.98

02:41:29.000 Yeah, she has. 0.98

02:41:31.000 Like, gosh, she's so inspirational.

02:41:35.000 That fight that she lost, that one boxing match where she got KO'd was so hard to watch.

02:41:39.000 Brutal.

02:41:40.000 And the ref not.

02:41:41.000 Horrible.

02:41:42.000 They should have stopped that fight way earlier.

02:41:44.000 Oh my god.

02:41:44.000 I know.

02:41:45.000 And her mentality coming out of that fight. 0.94

02:41:47.000 I had to be her sparring partner after that fight if that tells you how much brain damage I might have now.

02:41:51.000 But her mentality after that, she refused to interact with people or have people corner her that would doubt that she could win that fight in the future.

02:42:00.000 Refused.

02:42:01.000 She is such a champion mind that, no, if people thought she would take corrections, she would take, you know, I've got to switch this up, I've got to do this differently, but if you believe that she shouldn't have the rematch, she wouldn't work with you.

02:42:14.000 Wow.

02:42:15.000 Yeah, because she was like, no, I can't have somebody not believing in me.

02:42:18.000 I mean, it was incredible.

02:42:19.000 It was very inspirational.

02:42:20.000 Well, she was right.

02:42:21.000 She came back and won the rematch, which is crazy.

02:42:24.000 She did.

02:42:24.000 Oh my gosh.

02:42:25.000 No, she's a warrior. 1.00

02:42:26.000 No doubt about that.

02:42:27.000 Yeah.

02:42:28.000 So, we only have a couple more minutes.

02:42:30.000 I've been talking so much.

02:42:31.000 I'm sorry.

02:42:31.000 You said you had a bunch of questions.

02:42:32.000 You still want to throw some at me?

02:42:34.000 Because I know you've got them written down.

02:42:35.000 You know, I think when we went back to the, and these are, you know, it's a shorthand, but it was, you know, the who were you when you started and who are you now?

02:42:43.000 And I guess what goes with that, and I ask these questions because I've been asking them of a lot of people in this sport or in this industry or people who are high level in what they're doing today.

02:42:54.000 What would you have left behind?

02:42:58.000 What do you regret?

02:43:00.000 What would you have left behind in becoming who you are now?

02:43:03.000 What could you have changed?

02:43:04.000 And it's a hard question to ask because nobody wants to look back and, oh, I regret this.

02:43:08.000 Because we learn from our regrets, right?

02:43:10.000 But if there's something you could have changed, you could have done differently, would you have?

02:43:14.000 I think all of my errors have made me a better person, so I don't think they're bad.

02:43:18.000 You know, I think, I mean, that's a real cliché thing.

02:43:21.000 You don't make mistakes, or if you do make mistakes, you learn.

02:43:25.000 If you don't make mistakes, you grow and you improve.

02:43:27.000 I mean, like, it's all good.

02:43:30.000 It's not what happens, it's how you react to what happens.

02:43:32.000 And what one mistake do you think, like, really defined you to make you better?

02:43:36.000 Oh, geez.

02:43:37.000 Not one.

02:43:38.000 It's just a bunch of them.

02:43:39.000 I mean, God, there's a million of them.

02:43:41.000 There's nowhere to even start.

02:43:43.000 You know what I mean?

02:43:44.000 You just constantly make mistakes.

02:43:45.000 You make mistakes with your friends.

02:43:46.000 You make mistakes with people you're involved with romantically.

02:43:50.000 You make mistakes career-wise.

02:43:51.000 You make mistakes with comedy and art.

02:43:54.000 You're constantly...

02:43:54.000 I mean, it's a constant process of mistakes.

02:43:57.000 You know, especially when you're writing new stuff.

02:43:59.000 With jiu-jitsu, there's constant mistakes.

02:44:00.000 You know what I mean?

02:44:01.000 I think...

02:44:03.000 Testing yourself and constantly seeking improvement and constantly trying to expand upon your creative work and expand upon what you're doing as a martial artist or what you're doing as an athlete or improving upon your conditioning drills and trying to advance in yoga,

02:44:24.000 get better at that.

02:44:25.000 I'm always doing something that I'm failing in. 0.86

02:44:28.000 I think that's a big I like doing new things and sucking at them.

02:44:33.000 I think that's good, too.

02:44:34.000 So, in that vein, I guess, of reasoning, what do you carry into this?

02:44:39.000 Like, I mean, I don't know the exact numbers of your podcast, but it's huge, right?

02:44:43.000 Like, I mean, you get a huge amount of downloads.

02:44:46.000 You're number one or in the top, at least the top five all the time for, you know, whatever.

02:44:51.000 But so, what do you carry into this space with people that you don't want to leave behind?

02:44:56.000 Like, what is it that you think you bring to this?

02:44:58.000 That I don't want to leave behind.

02:44:59.000 Yeah.

02:45:00.000 That you've carried since you were young, since you first started in the entertainment industry or in MMA or in jiu-jitsu.

02:45:05.000 What part of Joe do you bring into this space that you continue to bring?

02:45:10.000 I definitely don't think about that.

02:45:11.000 But if there was anything, it would be genuine curiosity.

02:45:15.000 I'm genuinely curious about things.

02:45:17.000 And I'm trying to make this as entertaining as possible.

02:45:19.000 So I do my best to try to...

02:45:21.000 Make the conversation flow.

02:45:24.000 And I don't always succeed.

02:45:25.000 I fail all the time.

02:45:26.000 And that failure makes me try better.

02:45:28.000 I definitely think I'm better at podcasting now than I was six months ago, and better six months ago than I was a year ago, and then I hope I'll be better a year from now than I am today.

02:45:36.000 And that's just...

02:45:37.000 Beckett.

02:45:38.000 Fail more, fail better.

02:45:39.000 Fail all the time.

02:45:40.000 But there's also, this isn't, in a weird way, it's an audio art form.

02:45:45.000 And it doesn't seem like it is, but the art of conversation is, there's an interaction to it, and you're very good at it, which is one of the reasons why you apologize when you accidentally talk over each other.

02:45:55.000 But that's a part of human interaction.

02:45:57.000 We talk over each other.

02:45:58.000 We accidentally do, or sometimes you have a point that you feel like you have to get in now or forget it.

02:46:02.000 I mean, and it's a matter of how to do it the right way.

02:46:05.000 And one of the things that I've found from doing podcasts is how bad people are at that.

02:46:09.000 It's really frustrating to talk to really self-centered people that just talk over everyone and don't listen to what anybody has to say and aren't genuinely listening.

02:46:19.000 They're just waiting for their chain to talk.

02:46:21.000 I mean, that is really frustrating.

02:46:23.000 And it's...

02:46:25.000 You realize the art of conversation is something that's cultivated.

02:46:28.000 It's something that you have to work on.

02:46:31.000 And a lot of people just don't.

02:46:33.000 They're not good at it.

02:46:33.000 Mm-hmm.

02:46:34.000 Because you have to be aware that you're weaving something into a bigger picture as opposed to just saying what you're saying and then walking out.

02:46:42.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:46:43.000 I think listening is huge.

02:46:44.000 I think you're a very good listener.

02:46:46.000 And I think that that's what I see from the outside, that you're able to do well.

02:46:50.000 And I'd love to emulate you as a commentator in that sense and you as creating this space.

02:46:54.000 I'd love to model a certain amount of myself after that because I think it's wonderful.

02:46:59.000 Yeah.

02:47:01.000 So, I mean, any huge regrets?

02:47:03.000 I mean, you don't have to share them, but does anything keep you up at night?

02:47:06.000 No.

02:47:08.000 No. 0.85

02:47:08.000 I mean, there's many things in my life that if they were presented in front of me right now learning that I've done them in the past and fucked up, I would do it differently. 0.85

02:47:15.000 But that's part of being who you are today.

02:47:18.000 I think people that word regret is a very dangerous word because people far too often define themselves by their past failures instead of saying that's not you like you're not that person you're you right now and that's what I really truly believe I believe that you Are all of your experiences in life and all the data that you've acquired and all the revelations and understandings that you've gathered up because of those positive and negative experiences and that creates who you are at this moment and the

02:47:48.000 most interesting people to me are the people that have been tested that have gone through trials and tribulations and it's one of the reasons why fighters are so interesting because the emotional rollercoaster of a fight camp and then fighting and competing and Not just MMA, but people that do jujitsu and boxers and just people that have done something that's very difficult to do.

02:48:08.000 You've tested yourself in a way that very few people have.

02:48:11.000 And so you understand yourself in a much deeper way.

02:48:14.000 You understand where that breaking point is.

02:48:16.000 You understand what happens when you break.

02:48:18.000 You understand who the demons are in your mind that tell you to break.

02:48:21.000 You know, and some people never meet those demons and they're there.

02:48:24.000 They're waiting.

02:48:25.000 They're waiting for the call. 1.00

02:48:26.000 They're waiting for that fucking button to be pushed so they can pop up into your brain and wreck havoc. 1.00

02:48:31.000 Yeah, and some people just want to fight those demons so badly they make them up. 1.00

02:48:34.000 Sure, they make their own demons up.

02:48:35.000 They create problems.

02:48:36.000 They create stress.

02:48:38.000 And, you know, sometimes they invoke those demons.

02:48:41.000 They ask those demons to come in and distract them from all the real issues that they have in their life and all the things that they actually do need to deal with, all the real work that the pain of the mundane, the pain of the boring discipline work is sometimes so great that people, 0.53

02:48:58.000 I mean, that's why some people Fighters wind up fucking off and getting drunk and never coming to work out and wind up being in poor shape when the fight comes off.

02:49:06.000 It's not because they didn't know the fight was coming. 0.99

02:49:09.000 It's not because they're a coward. 0.66

02:49:10.000 It's because they're letting their demons trip them up.

02:49:13.000 I think boredom and that not listening aspect, I think that it's also connected.

02:49:19.000 No, yeah.

02:49:21.000 And that leads people down paths where they can't get back from it.

02:49:25.000 Sure.

02:49:26.000 And that's unfortunate.

02:49:27.000 That's...

02:49:28.000 Yeah, I think when we lament the loss of somebody's potential, it's not always because they were doing the wrong things or they lost the wrong fight, but it's because they never recognized where they can move on from there.

02:49:39.000 Yeah.

02:49:40.000 And exploring your personal sovereignty, exploring your ability to truly manage all these very difficult scenarios that present themselves in life is one of the most interesting and fascinating things about studying human beings.

02:49:55.000 And to me, it's like the exact opposite of the mob mentality.

02:49:58.000 When you're swept away in this groupthink, and you're really not responsible for yourself, and you're thinking in this very almost selfish way of giving into this thing.

02:50:06.000 It's too easy.

02:50:07.000 It's too easy.

02:50:08.000 There's so many people around.

02:50:09.000 I just go crazy.

02:50:10.000 It's like the opposite of like the lone...

02:50:13.000 One of the reasons why I never really was into team sports.

02:50:15.000 I was like, I understand that it's a challenge.

02:50:17.000 I understand that it's difficult.

02:50:19.000 There's an intensity of the one-on-one competition that cannot be matched in any other forum.

02:50:26.000 Even if it's one-on-one playing tennis, it's so much more intense than a group game of volleyball or basketball or whatever.

02:50:33.000 I would say to that, though, because you are who you are and you've built so many...

02:50:40.000 You've built so many people who listen to your opinion.

02:50:42.000 You are in a sense on a team and you are a leader because so many people download your podcast.

02:50:47.000 So many people want to enter this space that you create.

02:50:49.000 So do you feel a responsibility to them to tell them to think for themselves?

02:50:54.000 I hope people just figure that out on their own because there's no way anybody can think for you.

02:50:58.000 Right, right.

02:50:59.000 But I do allow people to think for me in a certain way.

02:51:01.000 Like when I listen to someone, like if I listen to a book on tape or I listen to a lecture, what I'm listening to is I'm allowing this person to direct my thoughts with their words.

02:51:12.000 They're painting pictures.

02:51:14.000 They're explaining facts.

02:51:15.000 They're going over their own personal experiences.

02:51:19.000 And you are, in many ways, allowing that person to think for you.

02:51:23.000 But then when that's over, you think for yourself, and you take into account what that person has said, and it can enhance your perceptions.

02:51:30.000 Because if someone's being honest with you, which I think is one of the most important parts of expressing yourself, I would like to know what your real motivations are.

02:51:37.000 I want to know what your real thoughts are.

02:51:38.000 I don't want you to pretend.

02:51:39.000 I don't want you to be a politician. 0.99

02:51:41.000 I don't want you to just give me some bullshit version of who you are because you think I'm going to like you more from that. 0.98

02:51:47.000 And I think people can tell when someone's doing that. 0.98

02:51:50.000 Right.

02:51:51.000 And I think when someone's not doing that, when someone's being genuine, people cling to it and they go, look, maybe he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, but maybe he's being honest about it and I'll find out together.

02:51:59.000 We'll figure it out together because at least this dude's telling me the truth or she's telling me the truth or this group is an honest group.

02:52:06.000 That's what I think we belong for in this life because this life is so filled with dramatic interpretations of reality.

02:52:12.000 Right. 0.99

02:52:13.000 And there's so much just bullshit that it's hard to find truth. 1.00

02:52:17.000 It is. 0.99

02:52:17.000 And we seek truth, I think. 0.99

02:52:19.000 I think truth is sought in combat.

02:52:21.000 I think there's a lot of people that seek truth in watching MMA. Like, when we're talking about that Darren Elkins fight, there's no truer moment in the world.

02:52:28.000 And this guy digging deep.

02:52:30.000 I mean, it's as raw as it gets.

02:52:32.000 His face is covered in blood. 0.99

02:52:33.000 He can't even fucking see. 0.99

02:52:35.000 There's a truth in that that's inescapable. 0.99

02:52:37.000 You can't dance your way out of it.

02:52:39.000 You can't bullshit your way out of it. 1.00

02:52:41.000 Spotlights and glitter and fucking hype music. 1.00

02:52:45.000 There's none of that. 0.99

02:52:46.000 It's down to this inescapable reality.

02:52:51.000 And I think when people are confronted with all the trials and tribulations of life, and there's so much confusion, and we seek inspiration in so many different avenues, and we seek leadership, and we seek mentorship, and we seek hopefully this light out there that guides us in some sort of a way.

02:53:09.000 And one of the only ways that we can really truly trust that light is if we know it's coming from a person that is committed to the path of honesty.

02:53:18.000 Right, right.

02:53:19.000 So what are your tools for discernment in that? 0.97

02:53:21.000 Just don't bullshit myself. 0.94

02:53:23.000 Yeah, I know, right? 0.53

02:53:25.000 Manipulation is so easy to fall into, but it's also so easy to just resent everybody about them, too.

02:53:31.000 I teach rhetoric, so we consider a text and we're just like, okay, who's the speaker?

02:53:36.000 What is the text?

02:53:37.000 What is the message in the text?

02:53:39.000 What are they trying to say?

02:53:40.000 And then what is this huge mythos surrounding all of this?

02:53:44.000 What are they trying to do here?

02:53:45.000 And it's so interesting to see kids' minds change about like, oh, I don't actually have to believe this because I've been assigned.

02:53:52.000 Or I do have to think a certain way or I have to consider the source.

02:53:56.000 It's kind of a rabbit hole sometimes.

02:53:58.000 That's where, in my mind, the truest religion to me, or whatever you want to call it religion, is science.

02:54:05.000 I just think science is The scientific method is based on so much philosophy, so much, and it's trying to fail all the time.

02:54:14.000 Repeatable results, if you can't get repeatable results, like blind results on something, then that's what you're always trying to do, and you're always failing.

02:54:21.000 I come from a family of scientists, so of course, for me, it's what I love more than anything, is to hear them talk about how to find truth.

02:54:29.000 And then truth is also different from fact.

02:54:31.000 And so when you go down, okay, is it truth or is it fact, or is it opinion?

02:54:34.000 What's going on here?

02:54:35.000 It gets really, um, finding tools for discernment, that's really, that becomes really tricky.

02:54:42.000 And I think that's where a hive mind comes from, right?

02:54:45.000 You know, like people not trying to grab those tools, not trying to assess their own motivations for latching on to thinking that this is right.

02:54:51.000 They just want their team to win.

02:54:53.000 And it's also absorbing information and sort of formulating your own viewpoint takes time.

02:54:58.000 It takes a long time.

02:55:00.000 And who you are today is going to be different than who you are 10 years from now.

02:55:04.000 And that's something that you have to kind of embrace.

02:55:06.000 And, you know, it's hard to think in the moment, but be happy for those uncomfortable moments.

02:55:13.000 Yeah.

02:55:13.000 Because those uncomfortable moments, you learn from them.

02:55:15.000 Yeah, you have to be wrong.

02:55:16.000 You have to seek being wrong as much as possible, right?

02:55:19.000 Yeah.

02:55:19.000 And you have to see things that maybe change the way you look at things and experience things and change your boundaries, change your perceptions.

02:55:27.000 It's one of the things I worry the most for, I think, as a country, for us, that we get so comfortable. 0.99

02:55:33.000 Oh, we're soft as fuck. 0.99

02:55:34.000 And I don't even mean soft as in like... 1.00

02:55:38.000 We're puppy shit in a plastic bag. 0.99

02:55:43.000 I don't know what it is about. 1.00

02:55:44.000 And it's, again, I do believe what you said about individualism and doing your own thing and striking, you know, forging your own path and stuff like that.

02:55:52.000 But our inability somehow to commit ourselves to learning.

02:55:57.000 Yeah, but it's not everybody.

02:55:58.000 A lot of people are.

02:55:59.000 You're committed to learning.

02:56:00.000 I'm committed to learning.

02:56:01.000 There's a lot of people listening to this that are committed to learning.

02:56:04.000 Yeah, I hope so.

02:56:05.000 I'm banking on that because I actually believe in people.

02:56:08.000 I believe that people are good.

02:56:09.000 I believe you believe that.

02:56:12.000 I think the group think thing is real and what you're talking about is real.

02:56:16.000 But I also think that When you're judging 350 million people, it's impossible to generalize.

02:56:23.000 Right.

02:56:24.000 When you say, as a country, we're soft.

02:56:26.000 Yeah, we're soft.

02:56:27.000 We're right.

02:56:28.000 A lot of us are. 0.99

02:56:29.000 If you look overall, if you looked at the pie chart of soft people, like, oh, fuck, look how soft we are. 1.00

02:56:34.000 If you look at the pie chart of ignorant people, look how ignorant we are. 0.99

02:56:38.000 But in that pie chart, in defining people, in that sort of broad generalization process, You lose the beauty of individuality. 0.94

02:56:47.000 And that's one of the things that's unique about us is that we have the ability in this country to seek out all sorts of different paths, to be who you would choose to be, to follow whatever occupation or whatever path of interest that you choose to follow.

02:57:04.000 And I think that's a beautiful thing.

02:57:06.000 That's an amazing thing.

02:57:07.000 And It is a beautiful thing.

02:57:09.000 I don't think those opportunities are available to everybody in a lot of senses.

02:57:13.000 And that's just through my own experience of becoming a fighter and having to struggle to be a female fighter.

02:57:17.000 You know, that makes me think of, I'm actually privileged to have been able to make that decision.

02:57:23.000 And, you know, the female fighters after me, I think, benefit from me making that decision and from other fighters like me making that decision. 0.97

02:57:28.000 Sure.

02:57:29.000 It's moved on.

02:57:29.000 But I do think that when we look at society and we talk about, I don't know, being soft or not being soft, sometimes people just...

02:57:36.000 They can't pull themselves up from their bootstraps if they don't know where the fuck their boots are or where they find them. 0.97

02:57:41.000 And I do think there's so much divisiveness and I think that's what leads to. 0.99

02:57:46.000 And I'm a fucking perpetuator of that. 0.99

02:57:49.000 Like when I go off on, you know, this fucking MAGA guys and this and that, you know, I go nuts sometimes. 1.00

02:57:53.000 I fall into that anger and I wish I didn't. 0.99

02:57:56.000 So then don't.

02:57:57.000 Well, that's what therapy's for, right?

02:58:01.000 I like a good fight.

02:58:02.000 I do.

02:58:02.000 I like a good fight.

02:58:03.000 I do.

02:58:04.000 Well, I would say to you as a friend that I think you'd probably be better off expressing that aggressive energy in some sort of another outlet.

02:58:11.000 I believe you're absolutely correct.

02:58:13.000 And avoiding interacting with strangers. 1.00

02:58:15.000 Because another thing about some of those people that you're interacting with are fucking losers. 0.99

02:58:18.000 And they will lock onto you and they find out that you are a source of entertainment where they can press your buttons and make you dance. 1.00

02:58:25.000 And they'll keep doing it.

02:58:26.000 And that's what trolling is all about.

02:58:28.000 It is a phenomenal art form, this trolling.

02:58:34.000 It's great.

02:58:35.000 The best thing I've ever discovered is my mute button.

02:58:37.000 Not even blocking people, but just muting people.

02:58:39.000 Actually, the best thing I've discovered is that I have to take my phone and physically put it away from me, and then I can write, and I get into that zone, and it feels wonderful.

02:58:47.000 That's very important.

02:58:48.000 Putting the phone away and just putting it down, disconnecting.

02:58:51.000 I want to connect with people.

02:58:52.000 I love that.

02:58:53.000 Twitter has made great friendships for me.

02:58:55.000 Yeah, for sure.

02:58:56.000 Well, one of the beautiful things about doing podcasts, one of the things that's taught me is that I don't ever have three-hour conversations with people outside of podcasting.

02:59:03.000 Like, you and I got deeper and got to know each other better in this conversation than we would if we knew each other, passing each other at the UFC for a decade.

02:59:11.000 Has it been three hours?

02:59:13.000 Yes. 0.99

02:59:13.000 Holy shit. 0.99

02:59:14.000 I'm sorry. 0.98

02:59:14.000 I had no idea. 0.98

02:59:15.000 No, that's what we usually do.

02:59:16.000 I had no idea.

02:59:17.000 It was that long.

02:59:18.000 Time flies.

02:59:18.000 I figure you always have other guests.

02:59:20.000 No.

02:59:21.000 Three hours.

02:59:22.000 You and I just did three hours.

02:59:23.000 Oh.

02:59:24.000 But we, whenever in life, do you get to sit across from someone, just stare them in the eyes, across the table, like you and I have done, for three hours, and just go deep?

02:59:32.000 Well, and it's a space you've created, right?

02:59:34.000 Like, you've built this.

02:59:36.000 You're big on that word space.

02:59:37.000 I am.

02:59:38.000 I don't know.

02:59:38.000 Creating space.

02:59:38.000 Creating, I know, right?

02:59:39.000 It's all this writing shit. 0.99

02:59:40.000 It's so weird. 0.99

02:59:41.000 It's like I was reading all this cult and this heterotopia stuff, and I'm just like, this is Really cool because I see this when we read and I see this, I listen to so many audiobooks and so many podcasts and I'm just like, I'm finding weird spaces in my brain to be connected to people who don't even know who the fuck I am. 0.76

02:59:55.000 But I feel close to them.

02:59:57.000 Yeah, in that sense.

02:59:58.000 Yeah, that's exactly what it is in that sense.

03:00:00.000 Yeah.

03:00:02.000 I should probably stop talking, but I totally forgot to plug in Victor.

03:00:07.000 I was going to email all these questions to you anyway so I could talk to you.

03:00:12.000 But I love actually talking to you in person because I feel like I haven't had the opportunity to actually know you.

03:00:17.000 Except for when I listen to you.

03:00:19.000 That's a different...

03:00:20.000 Yeah.

03:00:21.000 Yeah, it's weird.

03:00:23.000 But life's weird.

03:00:24.000 Life is weird. 0.98

03:00:24.000 It's weird as fuck. 0.98

03:00:25.000 It's fucking weird. 0.99

03:00:29.000 It is. 0.99

03:00:30.000 It is.

03:00:30.000 What is this all about?

03:00:32.000 I think it's good for people to hear that it's weird for other people too. 0.93

03:00:35.000 You know, it's good for me to hear that it's weird for you and it's good for other people to hear that it's weird for me and it's fucking weird. 0.95

03:00:41.000 Yeah.

03:00:41.000 You know, but you could be nice.

03:00:43.000 Yeah.

03:00:44.000 You could be nice through this weirdness.

03:00:45.000 You could be nice and you can actually, you can connect to people and like, if it is like the Appalachian Trail and we're just putting one foot in front of the other, at least it's I don't think the people that finish that trail think that.

03:00:55.000 I don't think they do.

03:00:56.000 I think the people who fail.

03:00:56.000 I think the people who quit, they decide it's just one foot in front of the other.

03:00:59.000 I want to stay at the fucking Red Roof Inn tonight. 0.99

03:01:01.000 Exactly. 0.99

03:01:03.000 Julie, thank you very much.

03:01:05.000 Thank you, Joe.

03:01:05.000 Really appreciate you coming on here.

03:01:06.000 It was fun.

03:01:07.000 Thank you for having me.

03:01:07.000 I really enjoyed it.

03:01:08.000 All right, folks.

03:01:09.000 We'll be back next week.

03:01:10.000 See ya.

The Joe Rogan Experience - March 16, 2017

Joe Rogan Experience #933 - Julie Kedzie

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