El Guapo talks about his first fight, how he almost died, and how he got back on track after a near-fatal punch to the head from a table. Plus, he talks about a new drug he's trying to get into, and what it's like to be a professional boxer. Also, he explains why he doesn't want to fight anymore, and why he thinks it's a good idea to not fight at all. And, of course, he gives us a run down of what he's been up to since his last fight and how it almost cost him his entire right arm. This episode was produced and edited by Annie-Rose Strasser and Alex Blumberg. Our theme song is Come Alone by The Weakerthans, courtesy of Lotuspool Records. Our ad music is by Build Buildings Records, recorded live at WFMU in San Jose, CA. The show was mixed and produced by Haley Shaw. Additional engineering and sound design by Ben Greenfield. Special thanks to our sponsor, Caff Martell and his team of sound engineers and sound engineers. and our sound engineer, Kevin McLeod, and music engineering and mastering engineer, Patrick McKirdy, and mastering the mixing and mastering of the mixing, mastering, mastering the sound design and mastering skills of the music in this episode. by Matthew Boll, with additional assistance from Jeff Perla, and the production of the sound engineer for the original score and mastering and mastering, and mixing, and additional engineering, and his assistant, Kevin McGladrey, and background music, and special effects, and sound effects, by Patrick McElroy, and a little bit of additional mixing, by his assistant and sound editor, and bassist, and finally joins us on the show for the final edit and mastering at the audio mixing. for the show. Thank you to our theme song "The Man Who Couldn't Stop" by The Man Who Can Do It All" by John Rocha, and our thanks to the excellent sound engineer and the excellent editing and editing, and thanks to his good old days at The Goodfellas. , and our good friend, John Kasperson. . Thanks to our sponsors, , and & for making this episode and the amazing sound design, and all the hard work that went into making this podcasting and editing and production, and so much more.
00:01:32.000And I know, and I was going to do that, but the amount of force I was using at this moment, really fast, in milliseconds, and you had to go say, it's better to spread out the impact even more, because I was...
00:03:20.000Yeah, Ben Greenfield told me about that.
00:03:22.000It's great for tendons and ligaments and stuff.
00:03:24.000Yeah, even nerves and regrows apparently everything and rats I mean they regrow tendons everything and I'm gonna try it I'm gonna try it locally here on the bicep see what it does as soon as I have the water so it seems like the Muscles are growing back though like slowly, but surely.
00:03:38.000Yeah, but it's six years six years Yeah, it's a good 25 pounds.
00:03:45.000I can do eight times now bicep curls with the right That's a lot better than it used to be, though.
00:05:58.000Yeah, for this fusion, front and back.
00:06:01.000Well, one splint, you know, that opens it up, and then the other ones are fusions.
00:06:04.000And I have a friend of mine who has five, and he can't move.
00:06:08.000Like, look, with me, I have mobility, but he can't do this.
00:06:11.000He can't look to the side a little bit.
00:06:13.000Yeah, I was talking to a buddy of mine about a mutual friend of ours, and I didn't realize that he had done this, but he had went to Germany and got his whole back fused.
00:06:22.000His whole back is completely rock-solid fused.
00:07:41.000Maybe future, you know, with the printing that they do now, the 3D printing, maybe they can make an exact copy of my spine and then they can still do it.
00:08:37.000Yeah, well, we got really fucked up during the Bush administration.
00:08:42.000They put a ban on all stem cell research.
00:08:45.000They kind of halted the brakes on funding stem cell research, which is really a shame.
00:08:51.000Because they used to think that stem cells had to do with babies, like fetuses.
00:08:57.000They were thinking people were going to get abortions just so they could use the stem cells.
00:09:00.000But now they realize that mesenchymal stem cells and adult stem cells are some of the best.
00:09:06.000And one of the things they're doing in America now is sucking fat out of people, taking liposuction, and then using the stem cells from your own body.
00:14:40.000I mean, what they do with the colors, you know, when it's fighting, it's like a little reddish in the Turks, dark purple, when there's a break, you're going to run up that hill out of the pit, just a little bit.
00:14:49.000But I like it a lot, yeah, because you can use the wall as well, that 45-angle degree there.
00:15:08.000The hooks, the moasi chukis, so they allow hooks.
00:15:13.000They wanted to stay away from uppercuts, elbows and knees just before the cutting.
00:15:17.000And they don't want to make it bloody.
00:15:18.000So they understand that, you know, everything is technique, of course, but for people who have been complaining, I mix up martial arts, I can't understand the ground, and some other arts out there are too complicated.
00:15:30.000Well, this has been around for such a long time.
00:16:22.000You're gonna have to get up with skill, like real skill, to see if you can get up.
00:16:26.000The only thing about this is if you were in the distance, if it was quite a distance away, it seems like, oh, you could throw guys?
00:16:33.000You can throw, and then once they hit the ground, you can't clinch, but the person on top who just threw you can rain down strikes for five seconds from a squatted position, so you can't go down there.
00:16:43.000And I already saw fights getting finished like that, so it's a very effective technique.
00:17:51.000Well, also, you can't condition the lower leg the same way you can condition the upper leg.
00:17:55.000Your upper leg gets used to taking a beating, and some guys can just take low kicks.
00:17:59.000But not that low calf kick is debilitating.
00:18:02.000It's annoying, especially if you do it just after a front kick.
00:18:05.000Somebody gives you a front kick, you tap it to the side and you immediately kick it so when the muscle is still relaxed, it'll go straight through.
00:18:12.000That's when something breaks, if you can't flex.
00:18:15.000Yeah, we've seen over the last few years, that's a devastating technique.
00:19:26.000The pride gloves used to have that curve to them, and we saw much less eye pokes in pride than we do in the UFC. You know, but I never got that anyway.
00:19:34.000In Pancras, we just open-hand strikes, I never poked anybody in the head, right?
00:26:04.000I mean, I've been saying for the longest time that striking sports in America, like you got boxing and then nobody pays attention to the other shit.
00:26:11.000I mean, people barely pay attention to kickboxing.
00:26:53.000Well, it's not mainstream enough in terms of, like, its exposure.
00:26:58.000I mean, you get it on UFC Fight Pass, which is amazing, and then you get it on ESPN3, which is only online, and sometimes ESPN2. But, you know, I think, I mean, you look, Rico Verhoeven, and you see Jamal Ben Sadiq, that fight, holy shit!
00:27:12.000And he said he was going to do it like that, right at the end.
00:27:21.000If that was on television, that fight was on TV, in the end when Rico's pouring it on and Ben Sadiq collapses in the ropes, I mean, and they're big, giant fucking guys.
00:29:14.000But Conor, even fighting from the clinch, you could tie him up, you could tie him up and hold on to him and hit him like Randy Couture style.
00:29:22.000You remember when Shane Carwin fought Frank Mir and tied him up and just obliterated him with uppercuts?
00:29:46.000If he can clinch with them, and they're standing on the outside, and Conor can grab ahold of him, how is Mayweather going to shake him off?
00:30:41.000What I read, the only difference, they're not going to let him kick, they're not going to let him punch, they're not going to let him elbow or knee or takedown or submissions, but they'll let him clinch.
00:32:28.000We knew that a world was a gear suit What Toby or am I was a gear all those kicks you see but you should know this and you know this you just That's what I want no background.
00:32:36.000Oh, that's you get the Jackie's Yeah, yeah, we got the Jackie's we got the Gary's again Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:32:47.000So, how many events are they going to do a year of this?
00:35:03.000Because I've been doing commentary and I met some people from the organization because I did some commentary over some fights together with Phoenix Carnevale.
00:37:23.000That's what we did here in America with Bud Brutsman.
00:37:27.000And the other show we did in Holland with all these old, crazy Russian guys who had like an A and an E and a name and the rest was V-P-S-T-R-M-Z. You know, I mean, I would call them the guy with the red hair or the guy with the red pants because I couldn't pronounce their names.
00:37:43.000Yeah, there's some guys in the UFC that when I read their names at the weigh-ins, I have to pause and try to put it together, like some of them.
00:41:08.000I mean, they're preparing everything like long in advance and practicing and going over, okay, turn to page seven, you know, beat 152. You got to introduce Monster Energy Drink and they're stepping into the Monster Prep Screaming in the ears the whole time, you hear it?
00:45:40.000And Pulver actually lost in the finals to a guy who he never heard from.
00:45:45.000That was weird because Pulver became huge.
00:45:48.000Anyway, Ron Waterman is fighting this out of shape, out of big guy.
00:45:54.000And Peretti, because I got Peretti as the matchmaker, because I knew if I have Peretti as the referee, if I have the referee, everybody's going to come because they want to show off in front of the UFC matchmaker.
00:46:07.000And then they're going to fight in our thing.
00:46:24.000He's on top and he loads up and he goes very gentle, starts hitting him like a gentle giant, like really not hard.
00:46:31.000And Peretti walks in, breaks it up and he says, okay, it's over.
00:46:34.000The big guy on bottom jumps up and he gets in Paredes' face, the corner jumps over the rope, we get in Paredes' face, and they start yelling, yelling at this bullcrap, bullcrap.
00:46:42.000Everybody gets super aggressive and Paredes goes suddenly, okay, okay, you want to fight?
00:51:22.000So, Yves is fighting, and he's mounting this guy, and he sits next to the cage, and I'm standing, I mean, I'm a foot away from him, because I'm standing next to the cage, and the cage is raised, and he's raining down straight, straight, straight, straight, straight, straight, and I go, Yves!
00:51:38.000And he stops punching, and he looks at me, and I say, hook straight, dude, and he goes, hook straight out.
00:51:54.000Well, it's amazing to be a part of something that developed like that because there's no other sport where you go back to 1993 and then look at it in 2018 and it's almost unrecognizable.
00:55:37.000He would win, then we would win, then Hippolyte would win, constantly back and forth.
00:55:40.000So that's why it was so interesting for us.
00:55:43.000Yeah, if you're just getting into Muay Thai now, and you're just hearing about it, the fucking day we live in today, where you could just go on YouTube and find hours and hours, you could fill the rest of your life just watching amazing fights.
00:59:06.000Glory, like I said, I'm a giant fan and I think it's one of the most underrated Underrated organizations in all of combat sports, and they have a great library.
01:00:49.000Yeah, but K1 you would think, okay, all these people at least...
01:00:52.000Yeah, but you love it, I love it, but the average person go to fucking 7-Eleven and go, hey man, what do you think of Robin Van Moosballen?
01:01:00.000Who the fuck are you talking about, man?
01:01:19.000Yeah, it would have been greater for them, better, if the UFC had a channel, a TV channel like the WWE. They were going to do that for a while.
01:01:27.000That would be great because then you see Glory will catch on for sure.
01:01:31.000This right now, I don't know how many people at Fight Pass.
01:03:25.000I mean, you have special rules, like they did in Holland, because Thai boxing they did not do with elbows, but at special events like Hippolyta and Wheat, what I was just talking about, they added the elbows.
01:05:44.000Shorter, had a hard time getting in on him, and Zabid had more skill in terms of more techniques and more things that he could do, but goddamn, Bokniak is a fucking animal.
01:05:56.000He is a savage, because he was there at every second of this fight trying to win, never gave up, never quit, and then at the end of the fight, the very end of the fight, in the third and final round, the last minute of the fight, He's pouring it on, and he's got Zabit up against the cage.
01:09:01.000Yeah, when I was a kid, when I was living in New York, there was a bunch of Tiger Shulman karate places, but they were always like karate schools.
01:12:28.000Yeah, and it's all gone now, and now he's cleaning, making shoes shine, and then to make his money still in paradise because he couldn't buy a ticket back.
01:12:36.000What I was going to say is, imagine if the roles were reversed.
01:12:39.000Imagine if it was Ray Borg threw the dolly and it cut Conor McGregor's eyes.
01:12:43.000Oh, listen, I'm not saying that it's good.
01:12:57.000And I think he has to sort that out and I think that the picture this morning with his baby and his wife was there you could tell on his face that There was something like, he was like ashamed.
01:13:28.000So if he settles with Michael Chiesa, who already filed a lawsuit against him, or already filed some sort of a complaint, Or charges something.
01:13:36.000So him and Ray Borg, for certain, is going to do the same thing.
01:13:58.000Like that he at least because when he talked to Dana there he didn't apologize but he apologized for all the people who were on board right?
01:14:04.000He said no for the fighters I'm so sorry.
01:14:06.000So I'm happy he did that you know but it's something you can turn back and you can you can make it right but you can you can try to make it right like a band-aid on a wound but you know to give him all hell I would say give the guy a little space and then hopefully he'll figure it out and you He'll settle it with those guys.
01:14:23.000Some would say that the only way for him to really learn is to face consequences for his actions.
01:14:27.000And if you just keep giving him space, he's going to just keep pushing the needle, and he's going to keep doing more fucked up things like this.
01:16:17.000Do you remember when Rick Rufus fought that Thai guy and the Thai guy just kept his hands out like this and just kicked the shit out of his legs?
01:26:56.000So if you wake up in the morning and you smoke a bong and you do that all day long and you keep doing it, I mean, maybe that's the reason, right?
01:28:37.000Yeah, I mean, I think nobody, I don't think they know of anybody who definitely successfully made it, but today people do it all the time.
01:28:45.000It's like all those triathlete endurance, those serious animals, those guys who do like triathlons, ultra marathons, those motherfuckers, they have ridiculous cardio.
01:28:58.000But there's a woman also, like a 90-year-old woman who did it?
01:33:29.000A bunch of WWE guys got mad at me because I was analyzing the figure four toe hold and I was saying the other guy is actually in a better position.
01:33:36.000The guy who's getting the toe hold has a heel hook right here.
01:33:40.000Just reach over, grab a hold of that shit.
01:38:57.000His Instagram page is fucking hilarious, but I'm always like, how long is it going to take for someone to find that page and just go over his archives and go, what in the fuck?
01:40:59.000With Damon Perry, you remember when we did that show and I was laying on the bar and I was acting like I was drunk and everybody said, dude, that was unbelievable.
01:43:03.000Sometimes it can relapse when you get it bad.
01:43:05.000When you get it in your system and you don't completely get it out of your system, sometimes it can come back.
01:43:10.000A friend of mine had this blood poisoning.
01:43:14.000From a low kick it was all like there was fluids in it and this little thing like a pinky thick purple line started going up on his body like towards the heart oh yeah you got to see that leg I mean they went in there they stapled it close with like 34 of those staples over his whole thigh.
01:44:46.000Anyway, even if that's not the case, as a manager, you would say, I think from now on, you should buy only products that are on a list and you don't do anything else anymore just to make sure because people, you know, where the smoke is fire.
01:45:24.000A lot of baseball players have tested positive for the exact same thing that John tested for.
01:45:28.000Apparently it's in a bunch of different supplements, but you get it in trace elements, or trace amounts.
01:45:34.000You're not getting big amounts, and a lot of it comes from They take the same vats in China, wherever they make that shit, and they'll make some steroids, and then they'll fucking clean it out, but do a shitty job of cleaning it out, and then they'll make some creatine in there.
01:45:48.000Yeah, it's like the gluten-free products, you know?
01:45:50.000Because sometimes they use a machine that has product with gluten in there, and then it's tainted.
01:45:59.000You know, I've heard a bunch of crazy stories.
01:46:01.000One of the craziest ones was they think that Cocaine sometimes they cut with creatine and creatine is often infected with this steroid that it's often tainted because, you know, you're getting cheap creatine from China and they use creatine to cut cocaine with.
01:46:56.000I think he can still come back and maybe, you know, look, it's clear, one thing is clear from his test, is that whatever he took was a tiny trace amount, and it must have been accidental, must have been.
01:47:07.000This is according to Jeff Nowitzki, because if you look at right before that test, he tests negative, he tests positive for the tiniest amount, and then he tests negative again right afterwards.
01:48:51.000And with the money situation and how he changed suddenly with Cormier when they were filming them with the interview and they kept it rolling and they didn't know they were rolling.
01:49:01.000And he starts, hey, how much money do you have?
01:53:09.000Yeah, that's the problem with a reality show, is you're dealing with all these wacky people that are trying to get famous, whereas you're on a sitcom, you're dealing with the other people that you're working with on a daily basis.
01:53:19.000When I was on news radio, we were like a weird little dysfunctional family.
01:53:23.000That's what happens in those sitcom sets.
01:53:36.000If people would have a camera on me, if I'm laying in bed going over the script, I didn't realize that almost everything they say is funny.
01:53:43.000You don't catch that when you're watching.
01:53:45.000But that's why the reruns are so good.
01:53:47.000Every time you see new jokes, but pretty much everything is tied in together.
01:53:51.000Every single line, you go, my God, this comes back from...
01:54:16.000I went to a few because once we were there, he started going to some...
01:54:21.000Stand-up places, you know to start practicing because he was out for a little bit.
01:54:25.000Yeah, and an album we started out together We have the same manager and I got him hooked up with my manager.
01:54:32.000Yeah back in like fucking 1993 or some shit I don't even remember what year it was when Kevin and I were buddies in New York I remember you used roommates, right?
01:54:42.000Also, we never lived together, but we were just like We were friends.
01:54:47.000We were both like in our early, early 20s.
01:55:55.000And his punches, if you see him, that's not sped up on here comes the boom.
01:56:00.000I mean, the way he's hitting, what he's doing.
01:56:02.000The very first time I was training him, I remember coming home and telling my, she says, and I said, man, he's a big guy, but dude, he listens to every little thing I say, and he will do it immediately.
01:56:12.000I mean, his mind-body connection is really good.