#1605 - Mark Smith

[0] Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

[2] Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

[3] Welcome.

[4] Thank you.

[5] Thanks for doing this, man. Appreciate it.

[6] I'm trying to be here.

[7] You have, first of all, as a referee, you have one of the most difficult jobs in MMA, and you're one of the rarest guys because no one complains about you.

[8] Do you know that?

[9] I have heard zero complaints about you.

[10] Maybe there's somebody out there that's complained.

[11] I have never heard it, which is crazy.

[12] It's weird.

[13] you want your name to be called one time and that's what the announcer says referee in this fight is such and such you don't want any complaints other than that because we notice a lifetime opportunity for these fighters we don't want to do anything negatively to affect them so that's a good thing well it's such a difficult job because in impulse you have an impulse like you don't know when to stop like is it now is he okay is you going to be okay like sometimes fights get stopped early and it is the worst feeling when a guy is kind of rocked but then someone stops the fight and then the guy complains and the crowd's like, boo, and you're like, shit.

[14] You know, it's weird.

[15] Because our philosophy, and, you know, I primarily work with two of the commissions, Nevada State Athletic Commission in California, two of the top commissions in the world.

[16] You don't want to fight to go too long to risk long -term injury for the fighter.

[17] So there's that philosophy of maybe stopping a fight one punch too early versus one punch too late.

[18] Your goal is to stop it right on time.

[19] But it takes a lot of hard work to get to that point.

[20] Depending upon the history of the fighter, you know, their ability to come back and, you know, you've got to make that subjective determination right away.

[21] When is the time to stop that fight?

[22] But, man, it's the worst feeling in the world if you think you get to that point, you let it go too long.

[23] Or if you mistakenly stop it too early, oh, God, it's a hard feeling.

[24] And trust me. It's such a difficult job.

[25] It's so much harder than anything other than fighting.

[26] Like, everybody else is, like, judging is kind of hard, but they kind of, they can hide.

[27] Like, you're on TV.

[28] That's right.

[29] You know, you're right there.

[30] If it happens and if it's you that makes a bad call, like, all the, the hate comes your way.

[31] And, you know, you got to kind of stay away from, you know, some of the social media criticism because you got someone there that may not understand the detailed, you know, specifics of how we officiate and what we do.

[32] And you're going to have critics, not tell everybody going into a fight, fans are going to hate you or love you, half the fans are counting for a fighter in the red corner, half account for fighters in the blue corner.

[33] And depend upon the call, you make, it may be the referee's fault, it may be the judge's fault, but your goal is to go in there and being as objective as possible, and fighter safety is always number one.

[34] Yeah, and some guys just want to see people get beaten almost to death.

[35] They don't want to be stopped.

[36] Even if the guy is covering up and in a turtle, they think they shouldn't stop the fight.

[37] If you stop a fight while somebody is standing up, you're just going to get crucified for that.

[38] Well, there was a call, like with Max Holloway and Calvin Cater.

[39] There was a lot of people thought you could have stopped that fight standing up.

[40] But Herb was like, not quite.

[41] And I think it was the right call.

[42] I agree.

[43] He gave them, but it was touch and go.

[44] You could tell he was looking at Calvin very carefully.

[45] And there's that, you know, you obviously go to, there's no one better than John McCarthy and Herb Dean.

[46] Right.

[47] They've been doing this for so long.

[48] That's the goal.

[49] So their eye of what they're looking at, and it also, it comes down to intelligent defense.

[50] Yeah.

[51] And that's not just holding your hands up, but that needs to translate into doing something offensive.

[52] And if you could tell that a guy's listening to your verbal commands and he's doing something to fight back, as long as he's showing some good cognitive.

[53] skills and showing something offensive where he's not looking at long -term injury, there's a possibility of him letting that fight go.

[54] But man, if it's starting to stem on a 10 -7 round where the fighters just get destroyed and they're going to get hurt, now it's our responsibility to step in with fighter safety.

[55] Yeah, it's a, like I said, it's a very difficult job, but you do it well.

[56] You do it excellent.

[57] You're one of the best.

[58] And what's crazy is I got a text from Pete Spratt, the OG.

[59] And Pete Spratt, let me know about your background.

[60] Like, I did not know you were A fighter pilot?

[61] I did not know that you...

[62] Did you work at Area 51?

[63] Can not confirm or deny that?

[64] Oh.

[65] I worked at Nellis Air Force Base, which is...

[66] Okay.

[67] In that general vicinity.

[68] So you can't talk about like experimental shit or anything like that?

[69] You know what I did?

[70] The first thing I did at Nellis was when I flew in the Thunderbirds.

[71] Right.

[72] And then I went away for a couple of times and then when I came back, I was an aggressor.

[73] And if you remember in the movie Top Gun, you know, Viper and all those guys that were in the camouflaged planes, they acted as the enemy.

[74] forces and trained blue forces before they go off to comment that's what I did the second time around so the Nellis ranges are probably up in that general vicinity but as far as being someone that worked at that now I worked at Nellis Air Force Base oh we flew in that okay in that general area I don't believe you I think you're lying now now I think you're holding back you guys did you feel it Jamie all the sudden he's like smiling I don't know the answers of the question you guys don't want guys in dark suits and shades to come in here and be like Mr. Smith we needed I already talk to those dudes they're good guys They're just trying to protect us from the aliens.

[75] You know the crazy thing is in that area when people used to think they would see UFOs and stuff like that.

[76] You know there's a book that came out a couple years ago called Red Eagles that explained a lot of that stuff going on.

[77] What they thought were UFOs or, you know, transportation planes that were landing at some of the bases and stuff up there.

[78] Yeah, a lot of people see wacky shit.

[79] Yeah.

[80] The first time I ever saw a stealth bomber, I was filmed at Fear Factor in Palmdale, which is near, Was it Edwards?

[81] Right by Edwards, yeah.

[82] Yeah.

[83] And I saw a stealth bomber flying overhead.

[84] I swear to God, I thought it was Darth Vader.

[85] When you see one of those things in real life, you would think, especially if you didn't know that the United States is developing one of those.

[86] Like when they were first developing them and flying them before they made it public, that thing looks like it's from another world.

[87] So it's part of you say that.

[88] So when I was on Thunderbirds, we do incentive rights for like media personalities and other people.

[89] And I was out at our training area, which is over Death Valley.

[90] and we're talking to the Navy controllers and they come over and say, you know, I was Thunderbird 2.

[91] T. Bird 2, I need you to fly straight and level for five minutes.

[92] There's going to be aircraft off your nose.

[93] I need you to, you know, diverge to the right and stay away from it.

[94] And I'm like, what in the world is this?

[95] So I threw my radar out there, which should snag anything out there.

[96] And I'm getting these intermittent hits.

[97] And I go, I don't see anything on the radar.

[98] Next thing you know, I look up, and I go, what the shit has that?

[99] And I look up, and it's a B2 that has, you know, an escort plane right next to it that comes right next to it.

[100] I looked at it for the first time, and I go, there's, there are aliens out here.

[101] This is some kind of spaceship.

[102] Yeah.

[103] I mean, look at that.

[104] That does not look like it's from here.

[105] Yep.

[106] That absolutely looks like it's from another world.

[107] Yeah.

[108] Like all those, when people talk about seeing those triangular spacecrafts in the sky, I mean, maybe some of them are from another planet.

[109] Yeah.

[110] So if you've never seen one of those, and like for me as a pilot perspective, I've never seen anything like that.

[111] You know, you hear about the F -117 from the Gulf War and you see this big thing coming towards you.

[112] And that's what everybody always reports too.

[113] A triangular object with like a light on each corner.

[114] I mean, that is a stealth bomber.

[115] Yep.

[116] That's a crazy looking aircraft, man. Yeah, so I had somebody in my backseat.

[117] That was like, oh my God, what is that?

[118] What is that thing coming by?

[119] I mean, if we thought that we were being invaded and then you saw things like that flying overhead, that is what I would imagine they would be flying.

[120] They came from another plan.

[121] That thing is out at Whiteman Air Force Base.

[122] You know, you see it flying out there all the time.

[123] So there are folks here in a local area that I see it taken off.

[124] Are there some new ones that they haven't released yet?

[125] I don't know.

[126] So I retired about eight years ago.

[127] Right.

[128] I heard a crazy story one day that someone was hunting up in Montana and saw something similar to that that he had never seen before that like came out of the ground in like a vertical type thing and then took off, which, you know, the F -35 and planes like that will take off some of them in a vertical stance and then go forward.

[129] But to see something that size and that scale do something like that, it kind of makes me wish I was still in the military.

[130] Just so you be in the know?

[131] That's right.

[132] So which one can do that and take off?

[133] The F -35?

[134] Yeah, so there are a couple variants.

[135] So the Air Force one does traditional rolling take -off, but the Marine one, you know, it's almost like a harrier.

[136] So the back engine will rotate, so it'll take off vertical.

[137] And then as it's going forward, the engine will rotate back the other way to give it forward propulsion.

[138] But man, just technology -wise, the stuff that we're flying now, so I will tell you this, the first time I fought on the range against the F -22 Raptor, and I fought against everything in the world.

[139] So out at Nellis with the aggressors, everybody comes there to train to get prepared for combat.

[140] There is no better plane in the world than the F -22.

[141] When that thing passed me and some of the stuff that I saw it could do, I go, there's no better plane than the world.

[142] So as far as air superiority, F -22 is at the top of the food chain.

[143] What is the difference?

[144] F -22 is primarily air superiority, you know, so like air -to -air, dog -fighting, long -range, short -range missiles.

[145] F -35 is, you know, a command and control platform.

[146] It still has weapons on it can drop bombs, shoot, missiles, et cetera, but the role is a little bit different.

[147] So, yeah, that's F -22.

[148] You go to an air show and see that thing.

[149] You're like, is that a plane or a helicopter with some of the stuff that it does?

[150] But fighting against that, you know, as a fighter pilot, your average fighter pilot is the cockiest person that you were ever meet in the world.

[151] Just like Top Gun.

[152] Like the movie.

[153] That's all real.

[154] We're better than everybody.

[155] That's our philosophy.

[156] But it's very humbling.

[157] You kind of have to have that philosophy, right?

[158] I mean, look at that.

[159] That's insane.

[160] Oh, my God.

[161] That's insane.

[162] It just shoots straight up in the sky.

[163] Oh my god I mean it doesn't even look like a real A real plane That is a mean machine right there So I got friends that fly that plane And you know you see it A it's designing combat You know the United States is still going to be At the top of the food chain As far as the The personnel that we have The men and women that fly these airplanes And then the equipment that we're flying You're not going to find anything to match it That's incredible that turn that it just made In the sky So is that what the maneuverability of it Is that what's superior?

[164] What the fuck?

[165] How does it do that?

[166] That's insane.

[167] So thrust vectoring on the back, you know, plus the flight controls.

[168] I mean, look, he just flat -plated that.

[169] And the amount of thrust is coming out of it.

[170] So, you know, internal avionics, the stealth capability, and the maneuverability of it, nothing in the world is going to beat that.

[171] But they can't fly very long, right?

[172] You know, it's a total package.

[173] So whenever you go to combat or something, you're going to have tanker support out there, so you're going to meet an air refueler up at 20 ,000 feet and get gas.

[174] I think can carry external fuel tanks.

[175] But the goal is to be able to plan the mission to be able to go in, escort, have guys drop your bombs or do whatever, and get back out with tanker support.

[176] You know, there's always that philosophy without the gas.

[177] You know, no one is going to go.

[178] So like when I was in Iraq and stuff, we take off in Saudi Arabia, fly an hour up, meet a tanker, go fly a five -hour mission, come back to the tanker, get more gas, go out and fly for another couple hours, and then go back to the base.

[179] How long can that fly for?

[180] You know, I don't know.

[181] It obviously depends on how hard you got the gas pedal down.

[182] Right.

[183] I think the F -16, if we stayed in full afterburner for, you know, five minutes, you'd probably run out of gas.

[184] Five minutes.

[185] Or it could be quicker than that.

[186] Now, the goal is endurance.

[187] You obviously want to be able to stay out there to maintain the, you know, go the length of your mission.

[188] But you look at the length of the mission and fuel capacity.

[189] And the goal is obviously to have somebody there as a backup because you never want to be out there by yourself.

[190] you always want to have that support, you know, so you may have guys that are sitting back here in a cap waiting for their turn to come in.

[191] You run out of gas up front, now you swap out those guys come back in.

[192] So total protection.

[193] So until they come up with something superior to internal combustion engines, we're always going to be limited by the amount of fuel that they can carry just because of the weight, right?

[194] So as far as endurance, yes.

[195] Now capabilities of the plane, most fighter planes have a G capability of nine Gs.

[196] And as you know, times a force of gravity.

[197] Do you wear a G -suit when you're in there?

[198] We did wear G -suit.

[199] So in a fourth generation, like an F -15, F -16 is a fourth -generation fighter, we wore G -suits on the abdomen and down on the legs.

[200] And basically what that does, as you pull Gs, you're going against gravity, and blood starts to drain from your brain down into your lower extremities.

[201] So the G -suit is just a capability to help counter it.

[202] It's really a tightening restriction of your muscles, starting with your calves, hamstrings, buttocks, all the way up.

[203] And we do the...

[204] Hooking?

[205] Yeah, the hook, you hook, and that's really to hold the oxygen in.

[206] And what that does is lock everything down to hopefully hold the blood up in your brain as long as possible.

[207] I told you I flew with the Blue Angels once, and when I did that, I got to seven and a half Gs before I couldn't take it anymore.

[208] So did you start to gray out or did it start to tunnel vision?

[209] Yeah, it was like an elevator door was closing.

[210] And, you know, I'm doing that.

[211] So it's weird because people think it's, you know, two Gs would be one grade.

[212] than one.

[213] Three G's is one greater than two.

[214] But when you start to get above five, it's not a plus one, it's exponential.

[215] Oh.

[216] So when you start to get to seven.

[217] So six is ten.

[218] That's what it feels like.

[219] And you can't explain how it feels, but nine Gs is absolutely, I mean, you get back home that night from straining and everything, you know, measles, what it looks like little, we call them geesels, where your blood vessels will actually start to pop.

[220] Oh, wow.

[221] And you get these little specs on it from straining so hard that you're popping blood vessels.

[222] But the goal is obviously not to fall asleep.

[223] We call a fall asleep in an airplane, G -LOS of consciousness, G -Lock is what it's called.

[224] If you do that and you're in the air, it may take you 30 seconds to a minute to be able to come back to any kind of capacity.

[225] And if that happens, you know, majority of the time is going to be catastrophic.

[226] I made it through that and then I blacked out on the way back because I didn't hook on the way back because I thought I got cocky.

[227] I thought we're good.

[228] And we made a hard turn.

[229] And I think I blacked out of like five.

[230] Like four and a half or five.

[231] It wasn't even that much compared to seven and a half.

[232] Yeah, if you're not ready at four, you know, people are like, oh, I can do Gs.

[233] You get on a roller coaster, that's like a half a G or one G. I blacked out, and I threw up.

[234] It was double embarrassing.

[235] Did they make you wear a G -suit?

[236] No, no G -suit.

[237] See, the reason they don't wear a G -suit is because in close formation, if you wear a G -suit, the G -suit is going to fill with air to help with that restriction on your legs.

[238] And in the F -18, they have a center control stick, and they rest their arm on.

[239] their right leg.

[240] And if that G -suit is moving up and down, it's going to move your control stick.

[241] Oh, I see.

[242] So the F -16 has a side -stick controller where it doesn't touch your leg at all.

[243] I mean, it's like you're reclined back in the seat and the side -stick controller.

[244] So we can wear a G -suit so it won't affect precision, you know, moving your arm back and forth.

[245] Is there any other technology that they've invented to deal with gravity, like just the sheer force of the acceleration?

[246] So not just a G -suit, but you will have induced pressure breathing, you know, so you wear a specific kind the oxygen mask and that's going to force air into your system because the one thing you would hate to do is just hold your breath it's like a three second count you know you do that hook and then it's a three second count exhale inhale right quick and as part is that pressure breathing would you exhale and open your mouth it's going to force air back in with that pressure breathing system so with the two of those together and then we combine it with you've got to be in shape you know you got to lift weights you got to have some kind of cardio conditioning to be able to last because it's one thing to be strong enough to hold that you know g position but then you do a 45 -minute, you know, dog -fighting mission, your body's going to get tired.

[247] So you've got to be able to sustain that the entire time.

[248] So most fighter pilots are going to lift weights.

[249] They're going to do, you know, extreme cardio exercises to be able to sustain.

[250] But anything else other than that?

[251] It's kind of weird.

[252] Back in the day, it would be go drink a Coke and a bag of Doritos and get that sugar rush for that 45 -minute flight and be able to sustain through it.

[253] Really?

[254] It's more of a health -conscious thing now, you know, the total pack is staying in shape.

[255] I guess they're just smarter now about it.

[256] Probably a lot.

[257] The Blue Angel guy that I flew with was a tank.

[258] And the dude was swole.

[259] He was like Yoel Romero.

[260] He was jacked.

[261] You know, that was a philosophy.

[262] Because when I was on the team, I'm 6 '1.

[263] I probably weighed 2 .30, 2 .35.

[264] That's large for a fighter pilot, right?

[265] The cockpit was extremely tight.

[266] Usually they're smaller guys, because is that a thing with the gravity?

[267] It's easier to sustain gravity?

[268] It is a height limitation.

[269] So you can't be so tall where your head is up against the top of the canopy.

[270] Oh, that's all it is?

[271] But you also can't be that short where you can't see over the dash.

[272] board but there's a weight limitation too you know you can't be below a minimum weight because if you ever had to eject and you're below let's say 125 pounds that parachute is going to drag you you you won't be able to stop or if you're above you know whatever the weight is 250 265 you're going to come down in that parachute pretty hard you're probably going to get hurt yeah they can't make custom shit for you nope and it's the same basic fighter so the thunderbirds it's a you know it's a frontline fighter that they take some of they take the gun out and they put a smoke barrel in it but it's It's the same basic avionics, the same basic controls, and it's just painted red, white, and blue.

[273] And all the professionals that are the maintenance guys for the Thunderbirds, the best in the world, the finest in the world.

[274] And I had four of the finest when I was on the team.

[275] They take them off of active duty lines and bring them Nellis Air Force Base and do all the stuff on the planes.

[276] There hasn't been a real horrible air show collision in a long time.

[277] But the last one, I remember there was one in 1988 when I first started doing comedy.

[278] I remember watching on TV.

[279] And it was, I think it was in Italy.

[280] Yeah.

[281] So we try to cover for that.

[282] You will notice there's never any energy coming towards the crowd.

[283] That's the first thing.

[284] Because those air shows and those happen, the plane's crashed and they went into the crowd, which is catastrophic.

[285] Catastrophic in the accident in the same sense.

[286] But then if you go into the crowd, it's just horrific.

[287] So there's never any energy coming towards the crowd.

[288] So if we hit each other, you'd go into the crowd.

[289] Now, on the Thunderbirds, we have trim.

[290] So the plane is trim to fly level.

[291] But like in the diamond where I was, we would fly full nose -down trim.

[292] So I'm flying there for some reason.

[293] What does that mean full -nosed -down trim?

[294] So at level trim, the plane, I could take my hands off.

[295] It's going to fly a straight and level.

[296] Okay.

[297] Full nose -down trim, I have to hold back pressure the entire flight.

[298] It's about 30 pounds of back pressure the entire flight.

[299] So it's like doing a bicep curl for 30 minutes.

[300] And if I were to pass out with that full nose -down trim, instead of possibly bumping into one of the other planes and making it more catastrophic, my plane is going to go straight down into the ground and it'll be at a minimum loss.

[301] So, you know, you'll see when guys and gals apply for the team, they'll put them through strength tests.

[302] They'll sit there on a, you know, a shoulder pull machine and they'll have to hold this 25 to 30 pounds in this little range like this for 15, 20 minutes.

[303] They have to sit there and hold that like that.

[304] Are the women that can do that?

[305] Yeah, so the Thunderbirds have had five females on the team and I was on a team that selected the first female Thunderbird.

[306] Does they all look like Chris Seward?

[307] There are variations that are.

[308] are going to be on there.

[309] We selected.

[310] They have to be strong as fuck though, right?

[311] You got to be.

[312] And I mean, that's the, that's the standard for all fighter pilots.

[313] Nicole, Fifi is her call sign Malikowski was the first Air Force female Thunderbird.

[314] And she was outstanding.

[315] You know, she was an F -15 strike ego pilot prior to that.

[316] So she was a combat pilot prior to getting there.

[317] Wow.

[318] And she had, she had an amazing tour on the team.

[319] A good friend of mine, you know, gone through some great things.

[320] She worked at the White House a couple years after I worked there.

[321] Probably more difficult for someone like that to train for that, right?

[322] Like what kind of weight training does she have to do to prepare for that kind of physical training?

[323] Everybody does their own program.

[324] Oh, so there's no like program that's assigned by?

[325] You do have to do a Air Force fitness test, which is, you know, so they do waste circumference and then you have to do sit -ups, push -ups, and a mile and a half run.

[326] What's a weight circumference?

[327] Waste.

[328] Like, you know, I can't be a, I can't have a size 45.

[329] Right, you can't be fat.

[330] And it's really, you know, a combination of standards that they do for that.

[331] you have to do that and get scoring on it and based upon your age the minimum numbers that you have to get but honestly if you're someone that's in shape and you work out regularly like if you go out to Las Vegas and go to the base their gym out there looks like one of the best gyms that you've ever see in the world like the UFC performances exactly like that kind of stuff yeah so you'll have that kind of high level stuff and everyone is encouraged and it can be to the point that if you don't pass that fitness test and that's not just pilots that's everyone across the board you don't pass that fitness test you get another opportunity to do it If it gets to the point where you can't pass it, they'll say so long.

[332] You don't meet the standards.

[333] You're no longer in the Air Force.

[334] I would imagine that has to be that way.

[335] I mean, you're flying, how much is one of those costs?

[336] Like the F -22, how much is that?

[337] I don't know the exact cost to that, but like when I was on the team, those F -16s are, you know, $30, $40 million a piece.

[338] So, you know, if something happens to one.

[339] You know, if, so I was on the team in 2002 to 2005.

[340] Is that accurate?

[341] Oh, my God.

[342] That's a lot.

[343] F -22 is an estimated, what?

[344] 334 million.

[345] Now that cost is based upon how many you buy.

[346] Obviously, you buy more of them.

[347] The cost per is going to go down.

[348] How many does anybody have?

[349] Who's buying these things?

[350] I mean, it's obviously just the Air Force.

[351] Yeah, the F -22 is only a United States Air Force platform.

[352] Now, the F -35 is Navy Air Force Marine, and we do have some joint partners in that one.

[353] That place has been sold around the world as well.

[354] Yeah, that's what I was going to get to.

[355] They sell those other countries?

[356] The F -22, they don't.

[357] Good.

[358] F -35, they do.

[359] It may have limited capabilities on it, so it may not have all the bells and whistles that our planes have, but we do have.

[360] Does anyone have something that's similar to an F -22 in other countries?

[361] I think Russia has a stealth -ish -looking fighter, and China has one, but I don't think the capabilities are anywhere near F -22.

[362] See, I would imagine that there's going to be a lot of pressure on them to design something that's competitive with that.

[363] It may look good on the outside.

[364] But it comes down to the question of, you know, is it stealth and what kind of capabilities that it has?

[365] We've never had a war or any kind of combat where those types of planes have fought against each other.

[366] You know, they hadn't been a shooting war really, you know, in a number of years since Iraq and, you know, maybe some stuff in Kosovo and like that.

[367] But there's, as far as dog fighting, enemy versus enemy in the sky, you haven't had that in a number of years.

[368] What do you think about all this Space Force talk?

[369] it's kind of weird because you had those capabilities within the Air Force already and to split it off into a separate force you're essentially just pulling entities out of branches of service that were already there doing the same thing and there are a lot of people that we got some great folks that work do all the space stuff working with NASA and international space entities doing all that but was it necessary I don't quite know you're in the no so you have to tell us because we don't know shit I didn't personally think it was necessary.

[370] So this is, is the idea that they're preparing for one day when wars are going to be fought in space?

[371] Is that the idea behind it?

[372] I don't think it's just wars.

[373] You know, it's communication capabilities.

[374] So like when I worked at NASA, we were finishing the space shuttle.

[375] And it's like, what's going to be the next generation of going into space?

[376] And the goal was eventually to get to Mars.

[377] And so my daughter at the time was six, seven years old.

[378] And my boss, NASA administrator, he looked at her.

[379] because my daughter wanted to be an astronaut.

[380] He's like, you're the perfect age of someone that's going to go to Mars.

[381] And the goal was to be able to go back to the moon, to build a platform at the moon.

[382] So we'd launch and go to the moon, and we'd have an outposts at the moon, and then launch from the moon to be able to get to Mars.

[383] And then it'd be like, you know, it's like a year to get to Mars, literally a year.

[384] Go do your stuff there and then a year to travel back.

[385] Now that has changed a little bit because, you know, you need congressional funding and all that stuff.

[386] There has to be a determination of, do we need to go back to the moon?

[387] How much money would it cost to set up a base on the moon?

[388] A lot.

[389] And that's the question.

[390] It's like, you know, priorities as far as financial budget, what we need right now.

[391] You got some incredibly smart people that work at NASA and, you know, some of the other international space entities.

[392] But I think the truth of it that came down to.

[393] And, you know, you saw those movies hidden figures and that talked about launching to the moon and stuff.

[394] Some of the knowledge and capability to get to the moon.

[395] moon was lost because a lot of these professionals that did all their mathematics and calculations to get us there they had that stuff up here they go to a chalkboard and they write it down and say okay this math formula this calculation this projection this will get us to the moon but as they started to age off guess what we didn't have that technology written down so with our capabilities today seems so ridiculous it does with our capabilities today you would think oh we can go back to the moon today my favorite is looking at the the NASA the room in Houston where they're all smoking cigarettes.

[396] They're all wearing them nerdy glasses with the ties on.

[397] It's just such a window into the past.

[398] Such a strange time.

[399] Those rooms are still down there.

[400] So I got a chance to, you know, failure is not an option.

[401] All those discussions.

[402] You go down there.

[403] Are they updated or are they in the original form?

[404] They still look like in the original form.

[405] Oh, man. So NASA has obviously changed a little bit.

[406] You know, it was a sad day with the cancellation of the space shuttle.

[407] But we had to.

[408] That thing was starting to age out.

[409] Yeah.

[410] So we look at the next phase of what's going to take us up in the space.

[411] but working there for a year i got to go down there and see all that stuff you know with the yeah oh yeah look those whack monitors and shit everything it seems it seems so weird the way everybody dressed the green computers like in the bottom left down there all that stuff it you know still looks like i wonder how many of those guys died of cancer because they all smoked right they were all smoking in the movies they were i'm looking for cigarettes in the photos oh come on these guys are smoking they just put their cigarettes away before the for the photos It's the craziest thing when I was working down there.

[412] I had some friends down there in the space industry, and I was talking to one of my friends down there.

[413] And I had on this little band that said, you know, failure's not an option.

[414] There you go.

[415] Yeah, look, he's got a cigar.

[416] Well, that's because they...

[417] I think that's when they made it.

[418] And the lady I was talking to, she worked in one of the space industries, and she's like, oh, that's nice.

[419] She got my dad's band on.

[420] And I go, what?

[421] She goes, yeah, my dad's Gene Krantz.

[422] He said that.

[423] I was like, oh, look out.

[424] He's over here.

[425] You want to go meet him?

[426] Oh, wow.

[427] All those guys, you know.

[428] Tell everybody who that is.

[429] So basically the philosophical head of, you know, all the launches down there when we had some of the Apollo missions that were not successful, you know, launches that went off that weren't able to do everything or, you know, not able to get to our destinations.

[430] He basically threw down with a NASA philosophy that said failure is not an option.

[431] That's him right there with the vest, right?

[432] Yeah.

[433] We're going to make it to the moon.

[434] We're going to do this.

[435] And as you know, it was a race, race to space against Russia.

[436] and we were able to you know they had sputnik they went off first but we were able to successfully make it to the moon first it's weird a lot of people believe that was in a studio somewhere and but man is you work at nassan get to see all this stuff you go nah well spotnik might not have been in a studio but the the film footage have you ever seen the film footage of uh Yuri Gagarin that's his name right yeah I haven't seen it's kind of crazy because the they fake the footage like they recreated it because the the actual thing that he was in what would you call with the the Russians had the first man in space what was his uh what was the the actual module the actual module they have a name for it i don't know their one now is called the soyus which you know top of the you know roman candle when they shoot you off yeah well they recreated it but it's kind of obvious because it's like he looks like he's acting and it's like a light here and a light here because like those shadows are in different directions and he's like sitting like you can tell it's fake it's kind of weird but they had to have footage of it Because just to kind of show that they did it.

[437] But then, like, you know, actual experts analyze this thing.

[438] Like, this is probably not the real footage of the actual module being in space.

[439] You know what's weird is everyone depicts Russia and the United States as being so adversarial.

[440] So when the space shuttle ended, to get to the International Space Station, there was one way to do it.

[441] Yeah.

[442] You had to go to Russia.

[443] Yeah.

[444] So we had, you know, all Russia and the United States are going ahead.

[445] the head.

[446] No, if I were an astronaut and were selected to go to the space station, I'd go live in Star City outside of Moscow.

[447] And they got, you know, U .S., Canada, all international forces there.

[448] You'd live there and do all of your training.

[449] And you'd launch on the Russian Soyuz to be able to get up there.

[450] And it's pretty wild.

[451] It is wild.

[452] So I got to visit.

[453] And, you know, people bring their families and stuff over there.

[454] And there's a row of like 10, 15 town homes.

[455] You live in your one.

[456] So it's three stories.

[457] Top two stories are yours.

[458] You know, kitchen and stuff in the middle, bedrooms up top.

[459] And then.

[460] And downstairs, everything is joint.

[461] So there's a weight room, there's a game room, there's a TV room, there's a movie room that everybody shares together.

[462] But it's at this place called Star City on the outside of Russia.

[463] Have you been?

[464] Yeah, I've been there a couple times.

[465] What was it like hanging out with the Russians?

[466] A, the food there is incredible.

[467] Really?

[468] What do they eat?

[469] So, like, we would have, you know, like barbecue meals.

[470] And so I was told, you've got to get your system ready because they're going to toast to every kind of success that they could think.

[471] Oh, no. And I'm not a heavy drinker.

[472] So my boss was like, oh, you can tip it back, but just don't, you know, don't get drunk, don't anything like that.

[473] But it's like every two minutes, cheers, you know, to this, to that.

[474] And it's like, God, man, I'm going to.

[475] Is it vodka mostly?

[476] It was a lot of vodka.

[477] Yeah, vodka is easy to get carried away with because it doesn't seem like you're drinking much.

[478] So here you are, this, you know, at their space station thing, their headquarters, and they're celebrating a successful launch.

[479] They're celebrating, going to stage two, stage three, et cetera.

[480] And there was a lot of, you know, celebration, a lot of caviar and stuff like that.

[481] But I kind of looked at it like the base could my kids live here for a year or two.

[482] Now obviously they're going to take care of you.

[483] The weirdest thing for me, when we travel around, you'd have security and stuff with you.

[484] But we went to Russia because there may be some forces that are anti -government or other things that you want to deal with, we would have, like we'd be walking in our group and there would be Russian soldiers surrounding us like in a circle that would have, you know, like their AK -47s and stuff, and if anybody thought they were going to interact and get in the middle of this, you know, those guys are hard the way they keep their security protecting their VIPs and stuff.

[485] It is interesting the relationship between the United States and Russia when it comes to space travel, that the United States needs the Russians.

[486] They just need them.

[487] Yeah, because we had a design to have, you know, the constellation, what was going to be our new rocket system, et cetera.

[488] But once again, because of budgetary constraints and what Congress is going to approve, if there was another means to be able to do that, we said we're just going to send our folks to Russia for right now so when I left the white house the boss was like what do you want to go do and he said narrowed down to three places I was either going to go fly to F -22 I was going to apply to be an astronaut or as I did I was going to go back to Nellis Air Force Base.

[489] The astronaut program would have been a dream come true but since we had already selected the last crew for flying the space shuttle I said I don't know if I'm going to get the chance to go up in the space or not what if they talked to you about going to the moon and putting the base up there would you have done that I probably would I've done that.

[490] Jesus, Mark.

[491] Why do you want to go do that?

[492] As long as I can get back, it's all good.

[493] You know what freaks me out the most about a base in the moon?

[494] There's no atmosphere.

[495] So like shit that comes flying out of the sky that we see that's just shooting stars, that stuff lands on the moon.

[496] It just slams right in there.

[497] So you could be chilling in your little space station that you spent six months to develop and set up, and then boom, you get hit with a rock.

[498] Going out with the bang now.

[499] It's that, you know, I've always had the goal of, you know, achieving something incredible in life.

[500] What is this, Jeremy?

[501] Guys going, paying money to go.

[502] Oh, my God.

[503] Oh, to the ISS.

[504] For now.

[505] Axiom, oh, for now?

[506] I mean, this is the first.

[507] Not the very first, but this is big news, like I don't think.

[508] The first private crew.

[509] Wasn't it, Martha Stewart's, you know, a former boyfriend or somebody?

[510] I think he went up on the Soyuz and spent some time in space.

[511] He might be going there just to get away from her.

[512] I think he already did it, though.

[513] A few people have already done, but this was like a new.

[514] trip, they're all paying $55 million apiece.

[515] Jesus.

[516] To go hang out for eight days, there's no room for them to sleep on the ISS, so they just grab a sleeping bag and float, I guess.

[517] Yeah.

[518] The third guy from the left makes sense.

[519] He's like, fuck it.

[520] I do that.

[521] I ain't got much time left.

[522] In a heartbeat, if I were to get the phone call to say, hey, you want to come join the current space program to go do it?

[523] I'd ask my boss is over in Dallas for a little hiatus, and I'd go do it.

[524] What is the highest you've ever been in a fighter jet?

[525] Possibly over 50 ,000 feet.

[526] Possibly.

[527] You don't want to confirm or deny.

[528] I understand.

[529] That seems like the edge of space.

[530] You can start to see some pretty interesting stuff up there.

[531] The plane is rated to go to 50 ,000 feet, and that's really for pressurization and some other stuff.

[532] But maybe to expedite get from point A to point B. You may have.

[533] You may have gotten up there.

[534] May have gotten over that once or twice.

[535] So what does it look like up there?

[536] So all the flat earthers out there, you can actually start to see the curb.

[537] I don't you want to take those dummies up there?

[538] Just get in the plane, bitch.

[539] So I made a bet.

[540] Some guy was arguing with me on social media, which is smart on my part, right?

[541] You were arguing about the flat earth?

[542] I put it to him.

[543] I said, you go find the point on earth where it ends, and you can fall off.

[544] And I said, I will pay for college tuition for all of your children.

[545] I didn't hear another thing from him ever.

[546] So when I fly now, you know, our plane, you know, will go up into the, you know, the low 40s.

[547] most of the time we're going to fly in the high, you know, 39 ,000, something like that, you can start to see the curvature of the Earth when you get up there, you know, especially at dusk and dawn.

[548] So when you get up at 49, 50 ,000 feet, you can see the good curvature.

[549] Yeah, the view from the space station, you know, just the images that I've seen from there, it seems like that would just change your life.

[550] Just the relationship that you have to the Earth, the way you look at living on Earth, being above it and looking down on.

[551] it like oh down there's home it's just it must be a like a complete paradigm shifter you know what's amazing so whenever I go fly you know we can't do anything below 10 ,000 feet but once you get above that you can take pictures and stuff and you know taking off out of Vegas at 6 o 'clock in the morning at sunrise you get some pretty amazing sunrise photos if we're going eastbound so I will post stuff to my social media all the time some of the you know if there's a big thunderstorm right next to us you know I'll film it and post it and people go crazy all that kind of stuff and I'm a beautiful day over the Gulf of Mexico and I'm snapping pictures and posted on social media and stuff.

[552] There's no restrictions on using your phone while you're up there?

[553] You can't be on Wi -Fi.

[554] You know, you can't be, we don't sit up there and watch the game on Super Bowl.

[555] You can't be arguing with people on Twitter while you're flying.

[556] You don't do any of that stuff.

[557] So in the back you can.

[558] But as far as the limitations up front, one thing I will say is we are a very disciplined group.

[559] So below 10 ,000 feet, unless it has to deal with specific flying, there can't be any casual conversation.

[560] And that's an FAA mandate.

[561] We adhere to that 100%.

[562] Once you get above 10 ,000 feet, we do have Wi -Fi up there, but we simply use it for navigation and looking at weather and stuff like that.

[563] I can't be, you know.

[564] Now, do you have a, is it a satellite link?

[565] It is a satellite link.

[566] So we have a couple communications, you know, there's a satellite link on the back of the plane and hopefully it's working because that's our communication as far as back and forth talking to the company, looking at weather and, you know, folks in the back as far as being able to socialize internet, social media, stuff like that.

[567] There are capabilities and who I work for.

[568] Is it whack?

[569] Is it like airplane Wi -Fi where it's real slow and you can't really watch YouTube?

[570] No, actually, I use it coming out here yesterday and I think it's pretty good.

[571] Now, some of the expanded, you know, things that come with you may have to pay for that.

[572] But as far as basic capabilities, you can't connect to it and be able to use it.

[573] Are you talking about on a fighter jet?

[574] Are you talking about on a regular passenger?

[575] Commercial airline.

[576] So it's gotten better?

[577] Oh, yeah.

[578] Oh, yeah.

[579] I don't even bother anymore.

[580] If I fly, I just watch a movie on my laptop or something.

[581] You know, I do that, and things have changed over the years.

[582] I used to get on the plane and sit in the back, and I would be sleep before we pushed off the gate.

[583] And that makes that trip.

[584] But now I'm so conscious of everything going around me. Because of sitting up front, we have to be a, you know, the flight attendants are amazing, everything they have to deal with in the back.

[585] But because of security procedures and stuff like that, so I had an incident on the plane about five years ago that I'll never.

[586] sleep on the plane again.

[587] What happened?

[588] So it's very secure when we come out of the cockpit.

[589] You know, you don't want any kind of cockpit intrusion.

[590] And you'll notice when we come out of the cockpit, pastors cannot use the front restroom.

[591] And there'll be security procedures in place.

[592] So I came out of the cockpit and this gentleman got up and started to walk towards me. And the flight attendant was like, you got to sit down.

[593] And the guy just stood there and it turned into a Texas standoff like, who's going to win here?

[594] A guy wouldn't sit down.

[595] So I leaned around the flight attendant, very aggressive.

[596] I was like, hey, sir, you got to sit down.

[597] And he didn't.

[598] He had this mean mug on his face.

[599] About five feet away from the flight attendant, wouldn't sit down.

[600] So what I did now is I picked up the PA, got on it and said, hey, sir, pilots out of the cockpit, you need to sit down right now.

[601] And now what that did is that got other passengers involved and everybody's looking around in the seat to see what's going to happen.

[602] I thought he aggressively was going to try to come up and do something.

[603] So what I did is I put my hand on the, back of the flight attendant and I said if he comes forward I just need you to lean about five feet to the left if he aggressively postures and tries attack I'm going to put his jaw on the floor you hate for it to come down to that you never want to be able to do that but I thought the guy was he drunk I don't think he was I think it was probably something more to it but you know our goal is safety of you as a passenger you something more to it so he was thinking about going to the cockpit you never know what someone you know they're been there been cockp intrusions.

[604] You know, the doors are really enforced, but, you know, there have been people that have, you know, before the safety seal at the bottom, that have busted that out and try to get into the cockpit and, you know, other crazy things that have happened over the years.

[605] My goal is to get you from point A to point B as safely and smoothly as possible.

[606] And if somebody tries to get into our cockpit, I'm going to defend that as much as I can.

[607] What happened to the guy?

[608] Did authorities meet him at the gate when you landed?

[609] We don't get involved in any of that.

[610] If there is a potential law enforcement engagement, we may call them.

[611] But if there was an incident, what we did is we just kept the door closed.

[612] So they may have met him, but we won't get involved in that at all unless there's actual interaction, physical contact.

[613] Did he eventually sit down?

[614] He did sit down because one thing I noticed after 9 -11, a lot of people like, not happening on my plane today.

[615] So when I picked up the PA and said that, I had a lot of other pastors turn around.

[616] I was like, you've got to sit the fuck down right now.

[617] You're not going to do this.

[618] And, you know, you got other people starting to get involved with it.

[619] They made him sit down.

[620] He very angrily sat down.

[621] How weird.

[622] But now you got other passengers.

[623] that are you know conscious of it and that's that's one thing we would probably ask you don't want people to engage in it but if something gets out of control everybody better step up and do our part to you know we never want a 9 -11 to happen and we don't want to ever experience that again it's just some people are just if there's any sort of pushback against them at all they they're almost ready for conflict there's certain people that you know you tell me you have to sit down like or what or what happens if I don't fucking sit down we're gonna land and you're gonna get a nice greeting at the gate.

[624] So like now, the big thing is the mask.

[625] Right.

[626] You got to have the mask on.

[627] Yeah.

[628] So if we're taxing out, you don't have the mask on, they will.

[629] Our flight attendants will do everything impossible.

[630] I saw a thing that where a lady got kicked off a flight because her baby wouldn't keep the mask on, which is kind of fucking crazy.

[631] We were just talking about that.

[632] That's kind of tough.

[633] What, what age do you, you know, if it's a two -year -old.

[634] Two -year -olds can't have a fucking mask.

[635] And by the way, if they get sick, it's like nothing.

[636] It just goes in and out of their system.

[637] I mean, the flu is actually very dangerous for them.

[638] and nobody ever did anything about that.

[639] But coronavirus for little kids is not, like statistically speaking, it's not a big danger.

[640] It takes some, you know, that's how I go back to our flight attendants.

[641] One of my flight attendants, Frank, you know, we talk about it all the time.

[642] They are amazing with what they have to, you know, deal with.

[643] So one, customer service, safety, et cetera.

[644] And when you start to deal with issues like that, man, it takes a lot of, you know, patience and discretion to do the right thing.

[645] But if it's an adult that simply does not want to comply, they'll do everything they can.

[646] to get that person to comply to the point of having a call up front and tell the captain that we have an issue.

[647] And then even when it comes to that, because it's about safety and customer service, we're going to get on a PA and say, ladies and gentlemen, we have compliance things that you need to follow.

[648] Please do this.

[649] If you don't do it, now we have to go to the next step.

[650] Some people just don't like following orders, man. It's so weird.

[651] You can see it in their face.

[652] It's like maybe something they grew up with or whatever.

[653] They're like, no, fuck this.

[654] There's an easy fix of that.

[655] We'll land and be like, have a good day.

[656] You said that flying over here to do the show was the first time you sat in the back in a long time.

[657] Was it weird?

[658] It was weird, one, because the lady next to me was coughing.

[659] Oh, no. Oh, no. And it was funny.

[660] Everybody around her, every time she coughed, everybody would look at her like, that's not Dorona, is it?

[661] So I casually reached down in my bag and I pulled out another mask.

[662] A double mask up with my hat on and my shades and I'm kind of sitting in a corner like this.

[663] My friend Reggie Watts has this helmet that he's going to wear when he comes here.

[664] It's the most preposterous thing.

[665] It's a hepa filter.

[666] It looks like a spacesuit.

[667] Pull that stupid thing up.

[668] Oh, you got it right here.

[669] We have it.

[670] We actually have it.

[671] Oh, wow.

[672] We bought a couple of them.

[673] That's incredible.

[674] I haven't put it on.

[675] Jamie put it on.

[676] But this, it's kind of ridiculous.

[677] Very ridiculous.

[678] Kind of.

[679] Yeah, very ridiculous, right?

[680] Yeah.

[681] No, yeah.

[682] You can't hear anything when you're in.

[683] Which one's the top?

[684] That's it.

[685] There's only one way to put it on.

[686] Oh, like this?

[687] Yep.

[688] So Reggie's going to Like this There are aliens And I guess If you seal this bitch up though Yeah there's a fan You gotta turn on though Huh?

[689] Just a fan on the side Where's the fan?

[690] There's a slit Where they're Like we were right here By your jaw Yeah I don't know where to go Where's it turn on He's fogging up There's a thing Right under there But the fan will How do I turn it off?

[691] It's in there Come Come.

[692] Come me out That's like an astronaut helmet Oh Oh, there it goes.

[693] So it's got a fan, and it apparently clears the air, too, right?

[694] Oh, man. It's like a HEPA filter.

[695] I can't, sure.

[696] So Reggie's out there flying like this.

[697] People would freak out if they saw that.

[698] Follow him on Instagram.

[699] He's a great follow.

[700] But he's actually flying with one of these things.

[701] They'll make you take it off at TSA because I've got to see your true face, yeah.

[702] Like, can you come up with the mask and stuff?

[703] Yeah.

[704] They make you pull it down.

[705] But then once you're on the plane, can you wear this?

[706] I don't see why not.

[707] I don't see why not.

[708] It's better than a mask.

[709] there was a there was a guy that had a boba fett helmet on in the airport yesterday did they let him no they'll make you take it off because they got to make a determination if you have a true mask on yeah a true mask you know because like you can't wear the ones with the vents in it right right right so they and we we never understood those vents like a guy came to the studio once and he had a mask and he had two vents on each side I'm like what are you doing yeah that you have a hole in your mask yeah this is not a real that And you know the little, like the plastic face shield that sits about, you can't wear anything like that.

[710] Those are ridiculous, too.

[711] There's a whole, you can grab up and grab your face.

[712] Yeah, I'll just, the rona will come out on the top or bottom.

[713] All of it's just so strange because nobody knows what's really working and what doesn't work.

[714] And then there's these anti -mask people think that nothing works.

[715] There's no evidence.

[716] Some of them are actually intelligent.

[717] That's what the real problem is.

[718] Like Alex Berenson, who used to write for the New York Times was on this podcast.

[719] And he said, there's very little evidence that shows that masks work.

[720] I wear a double mask.

[721] So I got my mask, and then I put one of the, you know, the medical mask on the inside.

[722] That's what Tom Cruise does.

[723] And I kind of look at it, like, if I can't smell anything, that's at least a start.

[724] You know, at least a...

[725] It's at least some...

[726] I would imagine if someone's coughing, there's stuff that's in the air.

[727] And if you have a mask, it's got to stop some of that shit.

[728] Yeah.

[729] But...

[730] That's been the goal to stay as safe as possible.

[731] Now, explain to me how you go from being a fighter pilot to being a fighter pilot to being an MMA referee.

[732] All right, so it's weird.

[733] When I was in Vegas the first time, 2002 to 2005, part of my physical fitness regime was like everyone has to box.

[734] I went to the Air Force Academy.

[735] Everyone has to box there.

[736] Really?

[737] Everyone has to box.

[738] Yeah, part of the PE programs is you go through a boxing program.

[739] Really?

[740] Yeah, so for a semester, you got a box.

[741] You know, it's part of the self -defense skills.

[742] There are the other things that they do.

[743] They make you spar?

[744] Yeah, you got full -up spar.

[745] And then, you know, we got boxing teams at the academy.

[746] And I won't say that for years, the Academy boxing team was the best in the world.

[747] Hey, Ray Mercer won the gold medal in the Olympics when he was fighting for the Army.

[748] There are a lot of, you know, a lot of my classmates.

[749] Pretty sure that's the case.

[750] All -Americans that, you know, box throughout the years.

[751] Yeah.

[752] And so when I got back to.

[753] Randy Coathing the Army, too.

[754] Yep.

[755] And so that's kind of tied in.

[756] That's how it started.

[757] When I went back to Vegas, I went to a gym called JSEC, which is now a fight capital.

[758] Sure.

[759] And Jacek, you know, with Skipper Kelm.

[760] John Lewis.

[761] Yeah.

[762] That's the first gym that I was back to.

[763] Shout out to John Lewis and Skipper.

[764] Skipper Kelp, all those guys are amazing.

[765] So, remember, back in the day, that's where Randy Couture were trained, Marvin Eastman, Tito Ortiz, Chuckledale.

[766] I went in there, and that's where I started doing all my boxing, my jit -to and everything else.

[767] So I was already doing some stuff with the UFC.

[768] You probably don't remember, but some of the old -school UFC fights, like when Randy Couture fought in Columbus, Ohio, they would have me come out to the fights and go to a local VA hospital there in the area.

[769] bring a group of like five or ten bets out to every single UFC fight.

[770] Is Columbus when he fought for the title against Tim Sylvia?

[771] Against Tim Sylvia.

[772] Yeah, I remember that.

[773] You know, that and some of the other UFC fights, I bring these guys out.

[774] So I already had a rapport and a relationship with a bunch of those guys.

[775] And here I am doing this training, boxing stuff at JSEC.

[776] And we had a couple guys coming there that wanted to spar one day.

[777] And I was like, how that looks interesting.

[778] I think I'd like to get in that referee with them.

[779] And Skip was like, practice with some of the other guys first while they're doing their live spar.

[780] And then when these pros come back, I want you to get in the ring and move around with him and see what you think.

[781] And it was weird because Dana came in there one day and I was like, Dana could I have a picture with you?

[782] We took a picture and he's like, what the hell are you doing there?

[783] I was like, I was just practice refereeing a little bit.

[784] So he's like, is that something that you're interested in?

[785] And I said, yeah.

[786] So him or somebody to work for him told me, I want you to contact these guys.

[787] I want you to contact Barry Meyer, God rest his soul, and the folks over are tough enough.

[788] Jeff, his younger brother, one of the top amateur promotions there in Las Vegas across the world, you know, MMA fighting, et cetera.

[789] So they had me go to their fight the next day, and I sat there next to Barry, and he's like, is this something that you want to do when I would practice scoring fights?

[790] I did that for a little bit, and the ISCA folks brought me on as a judge, and I did the judging for about six months.

[791] While the whole time, I'm still going to these gyms, Extreme Couture, Syndicate, JSEC, getting in the ring, and I'm practicing with these guys.

[792] And I go, you know what?

[793] I love this referee and stuff.

[794] So I decided to take a formal course.

[795] So I went and took Herb's course, and I realized how much I didn't know.

[796] So I took Herb's course, and I did really well there.

[797] Where does Herb teach his course out of?

[798] You know, he was teaching out like in the Glendale area at one of his James out there.

[799] California.

[800] Yeah.

[801] So how long is a course, like if you wanted to learn how to referee?

[802] It seems like it would be very extensive.

[803] Yeah, so you have to be qualified to get to that point to accept it.

[804] You know, so Herb's course is over two days.

[805] So you already have to have some experience as an amateur?

[806] or how does you if you want to pass if you want to pass if you if you want to come there and just you know show up and learn some stuff you're probably not going to pass you got to be proficient when you get there so i took herb's course and i did really well and i made you know herb calls his dean's list as one of his top officials and then i switched over to a referee in so here i am judging amateur fights and then referee and amateur fights bill brady who was the chairman of the state athletic commission was coming to the fights and then he knew i was military also he You know, I've done some stuff with the veterans coming to the fights.

[807] He talked to me one day, and he's like, how far do you want to progress with this?

[808] And at the time, I did know because I was still active duty military.

[809] So he came and he watched me do a bunch of fights, and he would look at my scores and watch me referee in.

[810] And I got this phone call one day that says, we want you to come to the commission meeting on Tuesday.

[811] And I was, oh, man, this is either good or bad.

[812] Either I did something wrong or about to get suspended while I went in and, you know, you stand up in front of them, and they ask you these series of questions.

[813] And, man, I was very lucky.

[814] so I got license in Nevada, which is obviously the biggest state for the biggest fights in the world.

[815] They brought me on as first a judge with Keith Kaiser.

[816] You know, he brought me on for a judge a little bit, and I'm still refereeing amateurs and getting more proficient.

[817] I started to try this again, so I went and took Big John's course.

[818] And Herb's course is hard.

[819] Big John's course is extremely hard.

[820] Three days to get to that level of proficiency.

[821] And Big John has a, you know, pass rate is extremely rare.

[822] You got to be.

[823] Yeah.

[824] And, you know, they work together, you know, with the commissions and the Association of Boxing Commission's to get proficiency across the board.

[825] Well, I took John's course and I was like, God, man, this is really challenging coming.

[826] Is he still doing that now that he's doing a commentary?

[827] I don't know if he's doing it just because of all the virus stuff.

[828] But one thing I will say is we still do training.

[829] Like, so tomorrow the state of Nevada has training.

[830] I run all the training for the state of Nevada.

[831] We're doing that via Zoom.

[832] Oh.

[833] California did training last week.

[834] And John and Herb and all the top officials in the world, everybody participates.

[835] So John is still doing that while he's doing commentary for Bellator.

[836] I don't know if John's course is still active and not.

[837] And he also does that podcast with Josh Thompson.

[838] Yeah, he does a podcast.

[839] So, you know, but although he's, you know, doing the stuff with Bellator, he's still, you know, very much involved in the game.

[840] With that knowledge base, you know, he essentially wrote the Unified Rules of MMA.

[841] He's become a very good commentator too.

[842] Yes.

[843] He's excellent.

[844] Yeah, so you can imagine me now having my two mentors in the game are Herb Dean and John McCarthy.

[845] And, you know, for folks to say, oh, these referees, they mess up, or these judges mess up?

[846] No, it's not like that at all.

[847] If I mess up something, I hear from both of them because, again, the goal is to not affect the outcome of a fight.

[848] So I do that for a little bit, and then the athletic commission goes, we think we want you to be a referee as well.

[849] So at the time, there was no one that was doing both.

[850] They want you to concentrate on one of your expertise.

[851] So if, you know, you go back and look at it, for a while there, I was the only person that was referee and judging, eventually worked my way after UFC fights.

[852] Now, I made a transition so I could focus more on refereeing.

[853] And then my fights have progressively gotten bigger and bigger as my proficiency has gotten better.

[854] If you look at that last card that we did, I think I had three of the biggest fights of any UFC card.

[855] I did the Cubs -Wanson fight.

[856] What a fight that was.

[857] It was.

[858] Holy shit.

[859] I get about a 20 -minute break.

[860] And then I do Kevin Holland versus Jacaray.

[861] Woo!

[862] And then I finished my night with Tony Ferguson and Olivera.

[863] That was crazy, too.

[864] So it's like, man. Three crazy fights.

[865] Three crazy fights.

[866] Yeah, God, that's a great card, that Kevin Holland, K .O. was bananas.

[867] I think I've done, and, you know, we don't have anything to do with the assignments.

[868] The Athletic Commission gives us our fights.

[869] I've done Kevin Holland's, like, the last four fights.

[870] And, you know, I tell folks, I got the greatest seat in the world sitting there in the octagon with these, you know, men and women who go in there and do that stuff.

[871] But I fortunately have, with great mentors and guidance and opportunities for the UFC and some of the organizations, have gotten some of the biggest and best fights in the world.

[872] I'm very high on Kevin Holland.

[873] He's something special.

[874] He's good.

[875] He's got crazy power.

[876] And it's weird.

[877] Like, to knock out Jacqueray off your back with a punch, like, what?

[878] And we sit there, and, you know, you look at both fighters and see what's happening.

[879] And I go, it went down to the ground, and you have to know your fighters to know where their expertise is going to happen.

[880] Well, he's a Travis Luter trained jujitsu practitioner.

[881] And Travis Luter, one of the best American jiu -jitsu practitioners really ever.

[882] Travis Luter, you know, it comes from a different era.

[883] But back in his day, like the guys that I know that trained with him were like, holy fuck, is he good.

[884] And it's great to see him, you know, there in the corner.

[885] You get to, you know, some time to chat with these guys and hear all the stories.

[886] He's out of Dallas, right?

[887] Yeah.

[888] When that fight happened, he's on his back and he throws that first punch.

[889] And I go, okay, this is going to be a transition.

[890] I look at Jacqueray.

[891] And, you know, if you go back and watch the fight, he's actually rocked when that first thing happened.

[892] We'll step a little bit closer.

[893] And by the time he throws the next three punches and I'm stepping in to try and stop it.

[894] you know, Jacaray is out.

[895] Out.

[896] And they'll concentrate on a fighter that wins.

[897] But, you know, one, you don't want a fighter to come back conscious and take you down and start to do something.

[898] Right.

[899] That does happen.

[900] And if there's a language barrier, you know, so I'm sitting there telling Jacare, the fights over, the fights over.

[901] You know, I say, stop, stop, so there's no misunderstanding about what's going on.

[902] And I'm holding the Jacaray and holding the fence because he's starting to, you know, come back coherent again.

[903] Right.

[904] And I want him to understand that he's been knocked out.

[905] And, you know, he's like, no, no, I'm good.

[906] I'm good.

[907] I'm going, nah, man, you got knocked out.

[908] You've been out for, you know, a minute or two.

[909] Isn't that crazy?

[910] Everybody eventually starts to come back.

[911] They all think they're fine.

[912] Like, people think that fighters, like, they're trying to cheat or something like that.

[913] Like, you don't understand what it's like and you get knocked out.

[914] Especially fighters, when they come back, they think they're in the fight.

[915] Exactly.

[916] Like, they'll try to take a referee down.

[917] They're holding on the pants legs.

[918] They don't even think that it's a pants leg.

[919] And then eventually they go, why is this?

[920] These are black pants.

[921] It's always what happened.

[922] Yeah, what happened.

[923] They always say what happened.

[924] Or they get the bright light of the, you know, the doctor's shining.

[925] in the flashlight in our eyes of what happened.

[926] And one thing we tried to transition doing, you know, I've had some fighters get really hurt, really bad.

[927] We normally keep everybody out of the octagon.

[928] But one thing we're doing is we're allowing a coach to come in with the doctor, with the inspectors, with myself, and give them a familiar voice.

[929] You know, you get knocked out, you come back, and here's Mark telling you, all the fights over, you may not recognize.

[930] But if your coach is there in the corner saying, hey, such and such, you got knocked out, calm down, it's fine, this is coach such and such, I'm here.

[931] We're finding that's calm and the fight.

[932] fighter down just a little bit.

[933] Obviously, medical protocols and safety, we've got to do all that.

[934] But I like doing that.

[935] I like asking one of the coaches to come in, stand off to my side, and kind of give them a familiar voice.

[936] When Olivera had Tony Ferguson in that arm bar, and he had his arm completely hyper -extended, and it looked like his arm was breaking.

[937] Like, what was your thought there?

[938] Because some guys have stopped fights when a guy has a fully locked out arm bar.

[939] And it's very controversial.

[940] Like, some people think you should just let it keep going.

[941] Other people think, think, like, one of the best examples was Herb Dean with Tim Sylvia versus Frank Mirre.

[942] That went through my mind during the fight.

[943] And see, what a lot of people didn't understand at first is Herb is looking directly at his arm and sees a snap.

[944] And heard it, too.

[945] He heard the crack.

[946] Yeah.

[947] Now, he called a lot of flack for that.

[948] He only did for a couple seconds.

[949] Once I got in the octagon and I explained it, and I explained it to the audience because people were booing like crazy because the fight was tops.

[950] Tim Silvey was like, what the fuck?

[951] What the fuck?

[952] Meanwhile, his arm was trashed.

[953] He had that adrenaline going too.

[954] Well, his arm was gone.

[955] Yeah.

[956] I mean, it was, and then I explained it on TV, and then when I got into the octagon, and I said, I want you to look at something, watch this, watch this.

[957] And then you hear everybody go, oh, when you see his forearm bend in half.

[958] And then everybody's like, oh.

[959] So at that level, with a choke, I'll tell guys in a rule meeting in the back.

[960] I'm not going to stop unless you go out.

[961] You can have someone in a fully compromised position.

[962] You know, who was it, the Kiesa fight?

[963] Yes.

[964] You know, he was fully compromised.

[965] But how good could it be?

[966] How long can he hold that?

[967] Can he turn his chin to the side and get out?

[968] Yeah, you've got to let him go out.

[969] You got to let him go out.

[970] But Kevin Lee has a nasty rear naked choke and he had Kiesel fully locked in.

[971] Even in that position.

[972] You've got to let him go out.

[973] So I tell guys in my room, and we learn as we progress watching fights.

[974] You know, we talk daily, weekly about stuff that we got to do.

[975] So I tell them in the back and the rules meeting.

[976] For a choke, at this level, I'm not going to stop it unless the fighter goes out.

[977] Good.

[978] If it's any kind of other submission, I got to see a dislocation, separation, or it has to break.

[979] Or if you use.

[980] You scream, and there's a difference between a scream and a grunt to get out of something, if you scream, it's a verbal submission, and we're going to stop it.

[981] That's a weird one, right?

[982] The screaming verbal submission thing is weird.

[983] Tony, man, that was.

[984] You could saw his leg off with a rusty fucking axe.

[985] That was beyond human.

[986] He will not tap.

[987] When Charles transitioned from across the chest to under the underarm, Tony grunted.

[988] Yeah.

[989] And he bared through it.

[990] Look at the hyper extension.

[991] I don't know what happened to his elbow.

[992] You can see my foot there.

[993] Look how close I am.

[994] So I'm doing two things.

[995] One, I'm looking for a dislocation, separation, or break.

[996] But I'm also listening to see if it's going to be a verbal, you know, the crack in the arm or verbal submission.

[997] He did not.

[998] He, man, he battled through that.

[999] And there's, we got to be conscious of the time.

[1000] So the 10 second clapper had already gone off.

[1001] So I'm counting down in my head.

[1002] And the goal is to right when that horn goes off.

[1003] You'll see when we stop a submission from that, we go right to the pressure point, push back the opposite way.

[1004] and take off the pivot point and it's underarm to stop it because some guys are going to try to hold it for an extra second after the bill goes off.

[1005] Right as that stops.

[1006] I'm pushing on it and stopping it also verbally telling the guy to stop because you don't want any extra damage after the bill.

[1007] You remember Hussamar Pahares?

[1008] Yes.

[1009] Yeah, so we saw, I think he did he fight, Jake Shields or somebody like that?

[1010] What's that loud noise all of a sudden?

[1011] That thing?

[1012] Oh, great.

[1013] I think when he fought Jake Shields, You know, there was some extra curricular activity.

[1014] That was with Kimura, and that was in the PFL, right?

[1015] Yeah, he held onto a Camora tap Jake, but then held it long, and then afterwards there was a brawl inside the Octagon.

[1016] Yeah, and I think I had referee the fight right before that.

[1017] And, you know, it's our responsibility as a referee to know your fighter.

[1018] You got to, you know, we do, what I do is I look at the entire card, and I'll go back and try to look at their fights, so whatever I get assigned, and I don't know what I get assigned until I get there, to know if anyone has any tendencies.

[1019] Are they great on the stand -up?

[1020] Are they great on the ground?

[1021] That they have a tendency to foul?

[1022] Because we got some guys that like to fight with their fingers extended a lot.

[1023] And I put that into my rules meeting of, you know, washed fingers, just what is going to be, fingers straight to the sky or make a fist.

[1024] Or if someone has a propensity to file a lot, that may be something I'm going to watch out for.

[1025] Now, when you see something like that, if you saw the arm break, you would have stopped it?

[1026] I would have stopped.

[1027] You have to.

[1028] But look how bad it looks.

[1029] Yeah.

[1030] It's so crazy how.

[1031] hyper extended that thing is yeah now you got some folks that are super double joint it and they will tell you ahead of time hey I'm a flexibility I'm double joint it do you remember Hoyler Gracie versus Sakaraba it was that with the he got him in a Kimura as well and he got his arm like way wrapped up behind his back but Hoyler has crazy joint flexibility like it's really nuts like and he was like I'm fine I'm fine they stopped the fight and he was furious because his arm was like Sakarabo's a catch wrestling guy you know so he's got a lot of those like old school double wrist lock techniques that are really brutal in the joints and he's got his arm like deep up high on his back and he's twisting it but whaler was like I'm fine I'm not tapping yeah and he won't tap which is crazy and it depends on the level so like can we do tough enough the amateur fights there yeah yeah if he keeps going you can see that's only the beginning of it um it got a lot worse if you say Hoyler versus No, that's the beginning of it.

[1032] Yeah, like at the amateur level, somebody could be in a choke and if it's compromised, we may stop the fight or if they get stuck in the armbar or something and don't demonstrate the capability of it.

[1033] Right, right, in the amateurs, yeah.

[1034] So this is hoist, buddy.

[1035] That's hoist.

[1036] That's hoist.

[1037] This is a different guy.

[1038] Hoyler is much smaller.

[1039] That's the problem with Sakaraba.

[1040] Sakaraba is a big guy, and Hoyler is, fairly small.

[1041] Hoyler's like, I mean, he might be like 160, maybe.

[1042] You know, it's different now because they're not fans in the UFC Apex or, you know, wherever, some of these other people are doing.

[1043] But if it's like the T -Mobile or something, and you may hear something, you may hear a snap or someone may verbally submit.

[1044] And if you stop it, man, the crowd will go crazy.

[1045] That'll be ballistic.

[1046] So we, you know, we count on.

[1047] And one thing I've learned, so I did a UFC fight a couple years ago and I had a fighter bite somebody.

[1048] at a you know who is it uh mowgli i think uh benitez he was fighting somebody and the guy bit him you know he's trying to pull his chin up and oh i remember that i stopped and i call time and man the fans went ballistic and what i learned from that is the best thing to do is to include you guys yes to what happened you know lean over to you know you or dc or annick or somebody and say he bit him or you know you guys may be able to hear that though right that part yeah they don't hear that unless at some of the like fl and other stuff like that when they mic us up that mic may go out to the crowd but that would be nice if it did right it in some senses because some stuff you don't want them to be able to hear because you could overwhelm them with you know referee feedback the goal i i really don't want to say anything to them a lot during the fight i want to interact as least as possible you know you say some stuff you know some fans like oh he's in the middle of the fight he's interacting too much but to help the tv audience the pay -per -view audience etc. What I've learned I need to do is, you know, either say it in the microphone where you guys can hear me or to come over to the table and, you know, kind of tell you what's going on.

[1049] It would help, but I think maybe you should have the ability to, like, press a button and broadcast to the crowd, too.

[1050] Like, he just bit his opponent and have the place go, you know, so we're doing some different things right now.

[1051] You know, we just started the instant replay.

[1052] Yes, which I'm a giant fan of.

[1053] So it's huge.

[1054] So that's so important.

[1055] They assign myself, Jason Herzog, Jared Villeel, and Herb Dean as a committee to be.

[1056] build that.

[1057] And we took what the boxing guys had and we developed it into MMA.

[1058] And then we had kind of an approval board that we had to present it to.

[1059] So we had to present it to Big John McCarthy and Mark Ratner.

[1060] And what we did is we took the platform, told him how we were going to do it, and then we actually got their blessing to be able to do it.

[1061] Well, those are two very reasonable, intelligent guys that have a tremendous amount of experience.

[1062] Yep.

[1063] And then once we were done with that, we took it to the ABC Rules Committee, you know, who looks at what's going to be files, what's not going to be files and then we presented it to them about two months ago everybody there you know we got some feedback we're still trying to refine it it used to be you could use instant replay but they once you did it the fight had to be over it had to be for a fight ending sequence I could not restart the fight it needed to progress past that so I can call time now we have a dedicated instant replay officer that sitting there at the table and that's all he's looking at he's only looking at potential files he's working with the production truck you know the views that you guys get for instant replay and stuff he has a capability to, you'll see, they'll put that yellow light on the catwalk of the octagon.

[1064] That's telling me it's going to be an instant replay.

[1065] Or if you see the referee do like this, that means something just happened where I need an instant replay.

[1066] I think enough people don't understand that now what's going on with the instant replay.

[1067] Because for the longest time, it stopped the fight, even if it was an illegal move and someone was going to get a point deducted.

[1068] Once you institute the instant replay to find, for whatever strange reason, the fight was automatically stopped.

[1069] Had to stop.

[1070] I don't understand that.

[1071] Why was that?

[1072] We don't know why, but we decided we had to progress past that, you know, because we had a couple of fouls and the UFC fights earlier that could have constituted the fight continuing to, you know, make a determination.

[1073] Was it a foul or not?

[1074] And then we, you know, you can get to the point that we find that if someone is faking an injury, if we find that through instant replay, it can't be point deductions.

[1075] What do you do, like, if a guy pretends he got kicked low and then you see in the instant replay that he got kicked in the liver?

[1076] So if we call timeout, I want to see the instant replay.

[1077] play.

[1078] If I miss it, if I make a mistake, I got a man up.

[1079] No ego, no pride or anything.

[1080] But if a guy's really badly hurt with a body shot and then you go to instant replay, you're talking about a minute, two minutes, three minutes.

[1081] He's got, you know, that feeling is gone now.

[1082] Now he's been able to recover and he can actually keep fighting.

[1083] You as a referee have to make a subjective call there.

[1084] So at the time would you call time out if you feel that the injury warranted enough to be a TKO, I can't stop the fight.

[1085] If that time has gone by and I think the fight, and I think the can't continue, I have to put the fighter back in that same position.

[1086] You know, if he's down on the ground, yeah, there's going to be a level of recovery there, so you are going to lose something.

[1087] But I'm going to put the fighters back in that, you know, whatever the dominant position is.

[1088] Oh, so if a fighter kicks a guy to the body and the, the fighter that is down, said he got kicked low, and you determined that he did not get kicked low, you'll make him down on the ground again?

[1089] Wherever he fell, so you got to take that snapshot.

[1090] You know, if there's a, if someone's in guard and there's a foul, I call stop time.

[1091] And if I need to have a doctor, to look at them.

[1092] Before I bring that doctor in, I'm going to take a snapshot of where they are.

[1093] So let's say the bottom guy commits the file.

[1094] I want to put him back in that same, if it's a dominant position, you know, at least 51 % dominant position, I'm going to put him back in that.

[1095] So in that case of if someone fakes an injury, I can't get it back to that point where he's 100 % hurt.

[1096] But I can put him back as close to I can in the dominant position.

[1097] Now, if I determine that a guy is intentionally faking an injury or something, and I can't put them back in that dominant position, I can fix it by saying unsportsmanlike conduct, and it can be up to a point deduction.

[1098] Or if I determine that, nope, he would have been done at that point, get up and fight right now.

[1099] Now, I'm still recovering.

[1100] Okay, fights over TKO.

[1101] Right.

[1102] So it's a tough position.

[1103] Yeah.

[1104] Because, you know, some of them are razor thin.

[1105] Was the knee down or was the knee not down?

[1106] Yeah, those are really thin, right?

[1107] It's tough.

[1108] And, you know, as a referee, you got to have, you know, a little bit of lobster eye going on to, A, look at the strike.

[1109] I had a, had a fight, two or three months ago, well, the guy was transitioning.

[1110] What a lot of fans don't understand, it's a grounded opponent.

[1111] So anything other than the souls of your feet touching the ground.

[1112] It could be a knee down, it could be a hand down.

[1113] But what we do is the hand down has to be flat palm or flat fist.

[1114] It can't just be a finger.

[1115] It can't be fingers anymore.

[1116] You know, it has to be weight bearing.

[1117] And the way we determine weight bearing, I can't determine weight bearing if he just has his fingers down, even though there may be some bending in it.

[1118] So we alleviate it and we say flat palm or flat fist.

[1119] If that fighter is flat palm, And they're transitioning, coming up, and you catch that person.

[1120] You know, if the hand is that close, man, it's a tough call.

[1121] That's what they pay us for to be able to make that high -level subjective call, though.

[1122] And a fighter is legally allowed to lift a guy up slightly, just enough to get his hand off and then land a knee to the face.

[1123] Yeah, you know, I tell him in the back, if they got him down and you got that flat palm, you can lift him back up.

[1124] I think it was a gay guard Musassie fight a couple years back.

[1125] He lifted somebody up and threw the knee and said, oh, he was grounded.

[1126] He was grounded.

[1127] Right.

[1128] That was Chris Wideman, right?

[1129] Chris Wyman.

[1130] He was transitioning, but his hand was up when that happened.

[1131] Was that your fight?

[1132] No, I think there were in New Jersey or something like that.

[1133] I think so, too.

[1134] The referee, you know, we got some great referees.

[1135] You think about in Vegas, Herb Dean, Jason Herzog, Keith Peterson, Mark Goddard, Dan Murgliata.

[1136] Oh, yeah, man. That's the best.

[1137] We all work together.

[1138] Yeah.

[1139] We got some great guys there.

[1140] You know, it's teamwork because the fans don't see it.

[1141] They may see us potentially make a mistake.

[1142] Oh, that guy's idiot.

[1143] He's this and that.

[1144] Man, we get out of the ring.

[1145] out of the cage we all talk to each other i'll go over to herb i'll go over to goddard say you know what did you think about this and it's really an education process for us to get better because again the last thing you want to do is affect the outcome of a fight and we know what this means to you what it means to dana and everybody else me as a referee go back to that i want bruce to call my name at the beginning of the fight and never have to say anything again yeah herb is such an open -minded guy too like he's come up to us before and like after a stoppage and come up and go, what do you think about that?

[1146] Like, he'll ask questions, you know, and I almost always agree with him.

[1147] I mean, it has to be that way.

[1148] Yeah.

[1149] There's, there's no, you know, we got to be consummate professionals, but there's no pride and ego.

[1150] The worst feeling in the world is as a referee to know that you just made a mistake in front of however many millions of people to just watch that pay -per -view.

[1151] Yeah, I mean, listen, if you do enough fights, you're going to make a mistake.

[1152] There's no way around it.

[1153] It's just being a human being.

[1154] But the job is so tough.

[1155] I mean, it's so difficult.

[1156] And, you know, kudos to you for never getting your name mentioned other than...

[1157] Don't jinx me. No. We got fights on Saturday.

[1158] Let's knock on.

[1159] Well, yeah, we do.

[1160] Are you doing those?

[1161] I'm very fortunate.

[1162] It's Alastor Overeem and Volkov, right?

[1163] Yeah, I don't know which fights I got, but, you know, I've been assigned to all the fights for the rest of this month.

[1164] Do you find out when you get there?

[1165] What fights you're assigned?

[1166] The only ones you know ahead of time is if it's a big title fight, when the athletic commission gets together, they will give a selection of potential referees for the title fight, and each camp has an opportunity to object or oppose anyone that's going to be one of those choices.

[1167] So your name for the title fight for the referee and the judges may come out ahead of time.

[1168] Otherwise, when we get there, we have a pre -meeting when we talk about anything that we learned from the last show.

[1169] And Jeff Mullen, who's our lead there in Nevada, he hands out our assignments with our executive director Bob Bennett.

[1170] They make the assignments and you go there and do your thing.

[1171] We do our pre -fight meeting before the fighters come out to the Octagon and talk about any potential issues and, you know, we've been very lucky having the facilities there at the Apex.

[1172] We can have the closed environment, be in the bubble.

[1173] You know, we used to have the fans there for the Tuesday night fights and hopefully we get back to that eventually, but man, what a great venue to have those fights in.

[1174] You know, there's something about the venue with no audience that's really special, though.

[1175] It's weird.

[1176] So I did the Travis Brown, Andre Olofsky fight.

[1177] Oh, my God.

[1178] That was a fun fight out.

[1179] That was a wild fight, man. You know what scared me in that fight?

[1180] It was, I mean, you remember, it was so loud in that arena.

[1181] I can hear the coaches coaching back and forth.

[1182] I can hear you guys at the table talking.

[1183] But if I can't hear that, that tells me I'm not going to hear the horn or the bell.

[1184] Oh, right.

[1185] I was so worried because, man, these guys are slug fast back and forth.

[1186] I go, I was so much into it.

[1187] I didn't have track of how much time was left.

[1188] So I go, that horn is going to go off and I'm not going to be able to hear it.

[1189] Oh, right.

[1190] But the great thing right now is, hey, you can hear the horn.

[1191] with no fans in there.

[1192] But it is so incredible because we can hear you guys with all your commentating and you can hear the coaches and then you can hear the fighters talking back and forth to their coaches they can hear all the specific instruction and as you know this whole season you know back from like March or April whenever we started man we got some hungry fighters in there that you know with the teamwork with their coaches and stuff that closed environment you could hear the punches and the kicks it's pretty wild the impact and it's just a great venue to be in.

[1193] Well the first one I did without any audience was Justin Gage in Tony Ferguson which was in Florida which was just wild just to be there and to see a fight with no audience.

[1194] I mean, you really feel, first of all, you feel very fortunate because there's so few people that are going to get to be there live.

[1195] But also, there's a dynamic to the fight.

[1196] There's a purity to it where there's no audience and you're just seeing the competitive drive of these fighters.

[1197] Just that the two fighters and they're doing.

[1198] You hear them breathe.

[1199] You hear footsteps, you hear the impact of shins.

[1200] You hear everything.

[1201] You hear every punch.

[1202] You know, the fans get to hear things they normally wouldn't hear.

[1203] Like, you know, I had the fighter that kind of quit on the stool a couple months back.

[1204] And the fans with the microphone that we hear that we have on, they get the chance to hear me actually talking to the fighter.

[1205] You know, I went over to him and said, hey, do you want to continue to fight?

[1206] And he had the interaction back and forth with his corner a couple times.

[1207] In the normal and like the T -Mobile, which is a phenomenal arena, I may not be able to hear that because you've got 20 -some thousand fans in there yet.

[1208] Right, right.

[1209] But as I go back to the corner, I can hear everything that the coaches are saying.

[1210] And if a fighter is given an indication that they no longer want to continue, now I can put that back into my equation on how the fight's going to go, my interaction with the doctor, et cetera.

[1211] In that occasion, I heard him going back and forth with his coach.

[1212] I don't want to fight.

[1213] I don't want to continue.

[1214] And the coach is trying to encourage him.

[1215] Yeah.

[1216] And a lot of people got on Drysdale for that.

[1217] But, you know, at the end, Dreisdale said, you know, he's done.

[1218] He's going to encourage his guy in the corner of him.

[1219] As much as he can.

[1220] As much as he can to try and get ready.

[1221] Yeah.

[1222] When that, you know, that 10 -second clap went off, it's my determination now, unless the corner make, they throw in the towel early, make that determination.

[1223] With my doctor, you know, two feet away from me, I go over, I look at them physically, try to get a mental assessment, ask him one question, do you want to continue to fight?

[1224] He says, no, fight's done.

[1225] You know, I go back to Nigel Ben versus Gerald McClellan, which was a tragic boxing fight, where Gerald McClellan was one of the best fighters on the planet Earth and just a destroy.

[1226] And he knocked Nigel Ben out of the ring in the first round, just had him badly, badly hurt.

[1227] But Nigel Ben was a warrior and survived.

[1228] And then later on in the fight, Jerome McClellan gets hurt, takes a knee, and winds up stopping.

[1229] And people were going crazy.

[1230] They were booing.

[1231] They were pissed at him.

[1232] Commentators were, you know, upset that he was quitting.

[1233] And then it turns out the guy collapses in the ring and winds up having bleeding on the brain.

[1234] It's never been the same again.

[1235] And Jeremy McClellan is, you know, he's basically, I believe he's blind.

[1236] He's partially deaf.

[1237] He can't walk correctly.

[1238] I mean, it was a severe injury.

[1239] But at the moment, people were criticizing him for quitting.

[1240] Yeah.

[1241] The fighter knows how fucked up they are.

[1242] You've got to imagine the kind of courage that it takes to get into that octagon.

[1243] If they're in a world -class environment like the UFC, they're bad motherfuckers.

[1244] I agree.

[1245] And they know.

[1246] they know when something's wrong and sometimes you just got to live to fight another day yeah and you know you count on having a great corner it's a whole it's a team concept yes you know so the preparation you know the matchmakers matching somebody up with a good fight having a proper preparation training etc to be able to get to that point but i mean you know this the first time i'd done hundreds of fights the first time i stepped inside of an octagon it's like man this is surreal.

[1247] And I'm just, I'm refereeing it.

[1248] Can you imagine?

[1249] What was your first fight in the UFC?

[1250] It was actually Robert Drysdale.

[1251] Really?

[1252] Yeah, I did.

[1253] My first fight was a Robert Drysdale fight.

[1254] He wound up winning.

[1255] Who was he fighting?

[1256] I don't remember who he fought against.

[1257] He only fought a couple times in the UFC, right?

[1258] Yeah, I think there were some issues that happened after that, but it was that car that I did my, my first fight.

[1259] With the bomba.

[1260] So my first big fight was at UFC 200.

[1261] Whoa.

[1262] I was the first referee to go in and step on that yellow floor.

[1263] Oh, no. And I think that was, let's see, so that night, I can't remember who I did that fight, but Was that the Brock Lesnar -Frankmere rematch?

[1264] No, I think that was the Lesnar Hunt.

[1265] Yeah, Lesnar Hunt.

[1266] Oh, that's right.

[1267] Why did I think it was a rematch?

[1268] That's so much earlier.

[1269] Yeah, so, you know, you stepping there, and for me it was preparation ahead of time.

[1270] And what helped me out is Big John pulled me off to the side.

[1271] and he's had some crazy stuff to you to prepare you he said one thing to me when you get in there he said mark don't fuck it up i was like yes sir i won't and you know that it that may seem very harsh to say that but it's a simple thing of hey we've prepared you you prepared to get to this point going in and do your thing obviously he's kind of fucking around too yeah it's to loosen you up a little bit now when we got to that my first pay -per -view fight was Travis brown and arlowski So here I want these two giants.

[1272] That's your first trap.

[1273] Oh, my God.

[1274] That's my first pay -per -view.

[1275] That's so crazy that was your first pay -per -view fight.

[1276] He pulled me to the side, and I didn't know it ahead of time, but when I got there, he said, hey, we're going to step it up a little bit tonight.

[1277] This is what you're going to do.

[1278] And I know you knew it.

[1279] The production team know it, but a lot of people didn't know about Arlofsky's injury prior to that fight.

[1280] Remember, he had the potentially torn calf muscle.

[1281] So here we are in the back with the athletic commission.

[1282] They weren't even sure if he was going to fight.

[1283] They weren't sure.

[1284] So we had to take him through a series of medical test in the back.

[1285] Mr. Ratner was back there, you know, the athletic commission was back there, a couple of the doctors from the UFC.

[1286] And they were like, Mark, if he demonstrates that he tears that muscle even more, if he's hurt, you got to stop the fight.

[1287] So can you imagine in that Orlovsky fight with Travis Brown, if I see that calf muscle tear, I have to step in the middle of that fight and stop it.

[1288] I mean, I'm like, I'm nervous.

[1289] That was one of the best one round heavyweight fights of all time.

[1290] It was.

[1291] Of all time.

[1292] It was so wild.

[1293] That was a fight.

[1294] that was fought at such a pace that you knew this fight could not go the distance.

[1295] And they had a history together training at Jackson's, and Arlovsky had incredible confidence coming into this fight because, look, in training, he had gotten the best of Travis.

[1296] That was the word.

[1297] And so, you know, he kind of big brothered him.

[1298] He knew, and it seemed like Travis kind of knew that, too, because this was when Travis was really in his prime, you know, Travis was one of the most athletic heavyweights I think I've ever seen.

[1299] he kind of changed his style at one point and he started fighting more flat -footed and slugging but when he knocked out semi -shilt with like a Superman punch I was like that guy is the dark horse of the heavyweight division because he's a huge heavyweight but he would move really light on his feet look at his you can see his legs are gone right here and you know remember he has him up against the fence here and I step in and I say Travis fight back and I need to see something and then he caught our lives and rocked him and dropped him yeah And you see me start to step in.

[1300] You know, because you think about previous fights from the guys, like when Oloski fought Fador, you know, was it like, was it that kind of shot?

[1301] But he was able to get right back.

[1302] But I can tell that.

[1303] Ooh, these guys had me. He caught him with a back fist there and heard him.

[1304] Yeah.

[1305] We thought the fight was almost over.

[1306] And why, in the middle of all this slugging, Travis catches him and drops him.

[1307] Yeah, it's coming up right here.

[1308] I just told him to fight back, and he's going to catch him.

[1309] This fight was so crazy.

[1310] Right there.

[1311] Oh, my God.

[1312] I mean, literally.

[1313] his head around, and it looked like it was over.

[1314] And you've got to remember, Travis came back against Alster Overeem, right?

[1315] I mean, Alster Overeem had him battered.

[1316] Alster Overeign had him up against the cage in deep, deep, deep trouble, hit him with some nasty body shots, really had him fucked up.

[1317] And Travis weathered the storm and came back and caoed.

[1318] It's about right here that I'm thinking the fight's over, because he's going to miss him with the punch.

[1319] And he's right there and he staggers so much that I'm already at the mind frame that this fight's going to be over and then he catches him here and then he turns away without any intelligence now see that's the kind of perfect the fans may get mad at you for stopping it standing but everybody knows see what they don't when you see his body cave in like that like his his body was barely conscious let's see it again like when he hit him with the uppercut like right there in the right hand like he's he's he covered up I mean it was a good stoppage you saved him in a way and my goal is to never get hit I said I'm 260 -pound heavyweight.

[1320] I'm not stepping to stop.

[1321] You got to worry about that, right?

[1322] You know, you try to step in.

[1323] It's always to protect the fighter, fighter safety.

[1324] Yeah.

[1325] But I will step in.

[1326] So guys get on me because I yell, stop, stop, stop.

[1327] There is no confusion if the referee is yelling, stop, stop, stop.

[1328] But I also step in definitively to protect myself and the fighter.

[1329] And then sometimes you may have to aggressively push someone off.

[1330] Have you been hit with a stray punch before?

[1331] I've been hit behind the ear before from a heavyweight.

[1332] I went in to stop it right as he's throwing a fight and he hit me. Now, I was lucky I saw it coming and I turned away.

[1333] Because can you imagine me as a UFC referee getting knocked out in there by getting hit?

[1334] I turned my head away from it and I was able to soak up most of the punch.

[1335] Who was it?

[1336] It was actually an amateur fight guy named Chuckie Williams.

[1337] You know, great fighter, a lot of power.

[1338] I went in to stop his fight and he's throwing a punch right as he's doing it and he caught me. And what I tell the guys, if you know the fighter is done, show some professionalism.

[1339] you don't have to sit there and keep punching in, you know, fighting to the referee tells you to stop.

[1340] But if you can tell that a fighter is out of their done, someone's unconscious.

[1341] You know, do the walk off and make sure they're done.

[1342] Yeah, that's a weird one, right?

[1343] Like, you're taught to keep fighting until the referee pulls you off.

[1344] But when you see guys get chaos, and they're out cold, and the guy jumps on them and pounds them a couple more times, that's unfortunate.

[1345] Like the, was it the Chaos Williams fight?

[1346] Yes, yes.

[1347] I was like, whoever catches first here is going to win this fight.

[1348] He catches them and he goes down and, you know, he's going in and finished fight and I dive in and stop it.

[1349] You know, that kind of stuff you have to do.

[1350] It's fighter safety.

[1351] You've got to protect the guy that's been dark.

[1352] And he was, you know, he was out before he even hit the ground.

[1353] Yes.

[1354] Yeah.

[1355] Chaos has got some serious power and he fights like a fucking demon, man. There's a few of these guys coming up right now that are just so talented.

[1356] They're hungry.

[1357] Yes.

[1358] Well, it's, it's you, they've realized they see these, you know, the Connor McGregors, the stylebenders.

[1359] They see these guys that are becoming these gigantic superstars.

[1360] the Dustin Poyiers, and they realize, like, wow, like, you know, fortune favors the brave.

[1361] Like, you've got to go in there guns blazing.

[1362] We see it with the Tuesday night fights and then also the Saturday venue there at the Apex.

[1363] You know, some people may not realize the impact of what the UFC did in the middle of this pandemic.

[1364] You know, and Bellator did it in their bubble as well, but, you know, UFC kind of led the sports world for everybody.

[1365] You know, folks are getting burned down on social media and it's like, what else do we do?

[1366] And sitting on the couch doing anything, that gave an outlet, you know, not just, just for us as officials, but athletes and teams and everybody have something exciting to be able to watch, you know, you know how passionate Dana is about it, and we all kind of follow that lead.

[1367] So we as officials, whatever commission you're working for, very, you know, very fortunate that he's giving us the opportunities to do that.

[1368] Well, listen, as fans, we're all very fortunate because the UFC led the way for the return of live sports.

[1369] They really did.

[1370] I mean, Dana stuck his neck out there and led the way for the return of live sports.

[1371] And they did it in as safe away as possible.

[1372] And when we're talking about the athletes, there was a lot of crazy hyperbole.

[1373] Like, you're risking their lives.

[1374] Like, listen, man, those guys are not dying from coronavirus.

[1375] Maybe we thought maybe they were risking their lives at the beginning of the pandemic because we didn't really know what the virus was.

[1376] But now, the argument that they're risking their lives now is preposterous.

[1377] You're not going to kill elite athletes with this virus.

[1378] They may not know the safety protocols that we go through.

[1379] You know, the testing, you know, you test and you go in the bubble and you isolate.

[1380] Also, they're alerting the fighters about vitamin supplementation, how to strengthen your immune system, and how to check.

[1381] And if they're paying attention, they're monitoring their resting heart rate.

[1382] Or, you know, if you wear something like a whoop strap, it'll show where you're cardiovascular, like how your body is recovering for things.

[1383] And it can actually give you indications that you might be suffering from this virus.

[1384] Exactly.

[1385] You know, like for me, it's preparation, you know, so one, we study fights and get all the understanding in there.

[1386] but proper nutrition, you know, rest and recovery.

[1387] You know, I go through a routine every single time before we do a fight to get myself ready for it.

[1388] And I do that religiously to get ready for it.

[1389] What's your routine?

[1390] So, we do our Zoom training.

[1391] And that's all the top officials in the world.

[1392] You know, Herb gets on there, Jason, Sal DeMato, Chris Lee, you know, Derek Cleary with the athletic commissioners.

[1393] We do our training there.

[1394] We go over fights and we watch them.

[1395] And then his phone calls back and forth of, you know, hey, hey, Herzog, what did you think about this fight the other day?

[1396] Give me feedback.

[1397] And then what we're doing there in Vegas is we go into the bubble.

[1398] You know, so we go to our hotel facility.

[1399] They test us and you go into isolation.

[1400] And you have to stay in the hotel, right?

[1401] I stay in the hotel.

[1402] That's amazing.

[1403] So you've got to bring all your food and stuff like that and prep for it.

[1404] And I've kind of gotten used to it, you know, and to prep us to be able to do that.

[1405] You have to do it.

[1406] They may look at some rapid testing and stuff, but for right now, this is the way we do it.

[1407] How long do you stay in the hotel for?

[1408] It depends.

[1409] Some people get there to night prior on Friday.

[1410] And then, you know, we go to the arena like at 1 o 'clock or 2 o 'clock or, like, since I I live there local.

[1411] I'll go over Saturday morning at 7 o 'clock test and isolate and then go to the...

[1412] What do you bring like a Yeti cooler with you or something?

[1413] I bring a food bag and, you know, I do my meal prep at home.

[1414] So I do all my stuff there.

[1415] Like I work with, you know, some folks like the Honest Plant Company and they give me protein supplement and immune booster.

[1416] You know, I've heard you talk about the vitamin C, the vitamin D, the zinc.

[1417] And then I take one of their immune boosters.

[1418] And that helps me out.

[1419] So like for me, I had my thyroid removed a couple years ago.

[1420] So, you know, proper nutrition.

[1421] Did you have cancer?

[1422] No, it was, I had a hypothyroidism.

[1423] I have that.

[1424] Yeah, and then what happened for me is my neck started to get bigger, and my thyroid that actually died.

[1425] Yeah, it was like nine and a half centimeters, and we decided to have a surgery to take it out.

[1426] Oh, Jesus.

[1427] The crazy thing about that is when I had the surgery, the anesthesiologist made a little mistake, and I wasn't completely anesthetized yet when they put the intubation tube in and I hit my vocal cords.

[1428] Oh, Jesus.

[1429] So you go back to that Orlovsky and Travis Brown fight.

[1430] I took a little hiatus right after that because when they hit my vocal cords, I couldn't talk for about six months.

[1431] So they, he damaged my left vocal cord and then he stretched my right vocal cord.

[1432] You know, your vocal cords essentially touched together to make the tones.

[1433] I couldn't talk for about six months.

[1434] So here I am, an airline pilot and a UFC referee and I got to be able to talk or, you know, MMA referee got to be able to talk for both of them.

[1435] As a single dad, primary income from my kids, I was like, what do I do?

[1436] I can't talk.

[1437] So I had to go through voice and speech therapy and I eventually got all that back.

[1438] For six months?

[1439] It was about six months.

[1440] It took my voice to get back.

[1441] Did they give you any kind of medication or something to help heal the vocal cords?

[1442] There wasn't really anything they could do.

[1443] I would do the voice therapy.

[1444] You know, I go through a speech therapist and, you know, they, she do stuff like she, you know, had me go over certain tones to be able to get it back and, you know, never raised my voice.

[1445] They don't even want you to whisper because I guess the whispering would still have, you know, effects on the vocal cords being able to heal.

[1446] Oh, my God.

[1447] And my voice has changed a little bit now.

[1448] because I'm still not back to 100 % recovery.

[1449] How long ago was this?

[1450] This was, shoot, 2015.

[1451] You're not 100 % recovered?

[1452] My voice would never be the same.

[1453] Sounds good.

[1454] I appreciate that.

[1455] I mean, this is your voice from now, and that's a good voice.

[1456] Right?

[1457] You can't be hating it.

[1458] No, I'm very fortunate that I got in that.

[1459] How is it not recovered, though, in what way?

[1460] So my voice is a little bit scratchier.

[1461] Oh, it just sounds different.

[1462] Yeah.

[1463] But you can talk, no problem.

[1464] I can talk no problem.

[1465] The only place I notice it, if I do.

[1466] a lot of fights where I have to yell a lot at the end of the night my throat can be sore and I you know sound like I lose my voice just a little bit oh okay so in that preparation thing I take caution to all of that so I bring my food bag with all my supplements and stuff I do a lot of do you know who norm Turner is no no Turner he's a strength and conditioning coach at syndicate he's work with you know Gina Carano okay I've traded a syndicate before John John Wood you know he works with a lot of fighters there he works a lot of good fighters there Vinnie Mogulish, so he's my strength and conditioning coach.

[1467] He helps me do all that stuff.

[1468] And in the hotel, you know, I do a lot of prepping, stretching and other stuff.

[1469] But I got to tell you, the one thing that religiously, whether I'm doing it with the UFC or whether I'm doing my flying, I got into Tim Tammie.

[1470] Oh.

[1471] That thing is incredible.

[1472] I was in the gym one day.

[1473] And it just so happens.

[1474] I got a gift for you.

[1475] What is this?

[1476] That is one of their newest products.

[1477] That's their portable.

[1478] Oh, it's a pocket massage.

[1479] That's the pocket one.

[1480] So, Joe, I got to tell you.

[1481] I probably changed the name of that.

[1482] I know.

[1483] You know, it's people.

[1484] But I got into TemTam.

[1485] I was in the gym one day and I was, you know, lower back soreness and some other stuff.

[1486] And I saw this guy.

[1487] He's doing this massager thing.

[1488] I go, what is that?

[1489] He goes, man, it's my Temtam.

[1490] I go, let me try that.

[1491] And he said, take it home for a couple days.

[1492] And then I didn't realize how magical that thing was as far as, you know, pressure points and, you know, active release and stuff like that.

[1493] So I take that thing with me whenever I go fly, a trip for the airlines.

[1494] or when I do that preparation for the U .S. It's good because it's small.

[1495] Well, you know, they got to traditional ones that have the heated tips and the pressure points and stuff like that.

[1496] That is part of my everyday routine and I absolutely love it.

[1497] So I do that and then I sit there and I will call up.

[1498] I got U .S .C. fight pass.

[1499] You know, I got some of the other stuff.

[1500] I will sit there and watch fights.

[1501] If I know it's someone that's going to be on the card, I will sit there and I will shut my phone off.

[1502] I'll put it on Do Not Disturb and I'll get myself in the mind frame of, okay, this is a serious business.

[1503] the world is watching us right now.

[1504] Again, go back to that philosophy of, I don't want to have any negative impact on the fight.

[1505] And I'll sit there on our watch fights and then make sure my body is all warmed up and stretch ready to go.

[1506] And we'll go over to the arena as soon as we step in that door, it's game time.

[1507] You really do have to be warmed up, right?

[1508] Because you've got to sprint sometimes.

[1509] People don't realize the lateral movement back and forth.

[1510] I am sore when I'm done with the fight.

[1511] I'm all the side -to -side movement.

[1512] And if you have to step in and pull somebody off, you know, it can be, you know, inserting on the body.

[1513] So I lift weights and do other preparation and stuff like that.

[1514] And just a mental fatigue from, you know, you go back to that last car with the three big fights that I had, all huge fights.

[1515] Every fight is important, whether it's the first fight on the card or whether it's the 12th fight on the cart.

[1516] But when you have a night like that, just a mental preparation and the let down when you get done with that, you know, you realize it's a little bit fatiguing, tough on the body, et cetera.

[1517] So, man, there's so many elements that you've got to come into to be ready for that.

[1518] Do you train by, do you do side to side movements in training?

[1519] Like, do you run sideways or anything like that?

[1520] So when you see me warming up and, you know, I learned a lesson.

[1521] I watch Bruce Buffer warm up.

[1522] You know, and how, what an incredible person.

[1523] I watch him warm up.

[1524] Nobody gets the fights more pumped up than that guy.

[1525] Pumped up.

[1526] But I said, I'm a great shape.

[1527] I can go in there and do this.

[1528] And I realize I'm not doing this good enough.

[1529] So I watched Bruce warm up and I had to come up with a routine, you know, to make sure I'm prepared.

[1530] So I go in the back, you know, behind the curtains and stuff.

[1531] and I'll do some forward, backward sprints.

[1532] I'll do a lot of side -to -side movement, you know, stretch hamstrings, quads, and stuff like that.

[1533] You don't want a referee going in there, pop of the hamstring or something in the middle of a fight.

[1534] He blew his ACL out in a fight.

[1535] Yeah, I remember that.

[1536] We've had some referees that have gotten hurt before during fights, and, you know, it affects the rest of the fight.

[1537] You know, what do you do?

[1538] You call timeout and, you know, you bring in another referee, or what exactly do you do?

[1539] That's a good question.

[1540] What do you do?

[1541] What do you do if someone accidentally gets caoed?

[1542] I saw a referee get punched, accidentally in the nose before and he was, you know, he's leaking from the nose and he wasn't able to call timeout so one of us ran up and said, stop, time out and then the doctor's going to give attention.

[1543] You got to make determination is he or she good enough to continue the fight.

[1544] He puts some, you know, stitch or one of those guys, you know, they do their thing.

[1545] A cut guy went in there and put some stuff in his nose.

[1546] Doctor made a determination that he was able to continue the fight.

[1547] For the fighter, I imagine like that sort of momentum stopping for something outside of the actual fight.

[1548] It's got to be very annoying.

[1549] I have never seen Knock on Wood a UFC fight or Bellator fight or anything like that have to be stopped because of that.

[1550] You see all the stuff on YouTube and everything if a referee gets hurt.

[1551] Most of the fighters, you're going to hope at this level they're professional enough, they're going to stop.

[1552] It's pretty rare.

[1553] You're going to let them come in and get the proper medical attention, but we don't want that to happen.

[1554] But I would imagine, like so fly weights or something like that, like man, you got to be in shape.

[1555] Right?

[1556] I call it getting on my bicycle.

[1557] Yeah.

[1558] You know, some of the, like, you know, Benavides, guys like that that are, you know, hustling moving around the whole time, man, you got to, and folks don't know it, but we're in a slightly smaller octagon inside the apex right now.

[1559] Yes.

[1560] So there's not a lot of room to run.

[1561] Right.

[1562] You got to get away from those dudes.

[1563] You got to stay away from them.

[1564] And last thing you want to do is get pent in a corner and have the fight come into you.

[1565] So we try to maintain that, you know, 90 degrees off where the fight is directly on your left and right and keep a constant movement with them.

[1566] You're looking for eye pokes and groin shots and stuff like that, but you, you're, you, You sit there and watch us, you know, we're usually sweating by the end of the fight because there's a lot of movement.

[1567] Oh, yeah, for sure.

[1568] I mean, you have to be in great shape to referee a fight, especially with small guys that move a lot.

[1569] And I try to, you know, so in addition to the strength and conditioning stuff, you know, I've done some classroom stuff like, you know, people talk about what they do during the pandemic.

[1570] I was actually crazy enough.

[1571] I went back to grad school during the pandemic and I got master's number three.

[1572] And I went and got a master's in exercise, wellness, fitness, and nutrition.

[1573] And that helps me understand, you know, do I really?

[1574] really know how to meal prep.

[1575] I really know what proper proteins and supplements and stuff to put in my body.

[1576] So I wanted to learn that side of it.

[1577] And then I'm planning on taking that back to share it with the other officials that work with this and doing some corporate wellness and fitness too.

[1578] So I got grand plans and stuff that's coming out there.

[1579] Well, that's cool.

[1580] That's cool.

[1581] I would I would think that like it would benefit you to like get to a field and just do some sideways running, you know, just do some sideways, that kind of stuff.

[1582] I do like, you know, the octagon surface is one thing to be able to do it.

[1583] But like what I do for preparation in the back, I do a lot of side to side movement to the left and back to the right and then shuffling back and shuffling forward to try to mimic the actual movements and I'm going to do inside the octagon.

[1584] You know, I got to be able to practice with the application I'm going to use it for.

[1585] So I try to put myself in that scenario.

[1586] Where we stand, you know, when guys are fighting, what am I looking at?

[1587] When they go to the ground and certain submissions come up, what position am I going to be able to go in to look at the pressure point, to be able to hear and see, you know, what the fighter is saying so it's a lot that goes into it it's a lot of preparation and getting ready for it is there a fight that stands out for you is like the most difficult fight you ever had a referee um i would say that Travis brown and olovsky because of knowing of arloffsky's injury ahead of time the impact of that the number of fans that were there how loud it got and and first pay -per -view first pay -per -view the expectations of my two mentors john McCarthy and herb dean but you know one, it takes a, you know, a great message like that from a mentor, you know, don't fuck it up.

[1588] You know how John's personality is.

[1589] He's a great teacher, but there's, you know, no one more knowledgeable about the sport than him.

[1590] But knowing that you got to trust, because, you know, the athletic commissions are going to talk to the senior referees as to where to start to put people.

[1591] And to make it to a UFC slash Bellator level of fight, you've got to be really, hopefully, a good judge, a good referee, or great judge, great.

[1592] referee because of the impact that it could have.

[1593] And then to have that on a pay -per -view, to have the expectations of the Athletic Commission and Dana and the rest of the UFC staff there, because the last thing you want is to have a fight get messed up and catch the criticism of the promotion, the fans, you know, fellow referees, et cetera.

[1594] And then because of how loud it got in there.

[1595] But what I try to do is I try to say, regardless of its, you know, amateur fighter, A, B, professional fighter, fighting for a title, contender, et cetera.

[1596] Once that door closes, I try to treat everybody the same.

[1597] My routine is the same.

[1598] How I talk to the fighters, how I treat them is the same.

[1599] But, man, just going in and have a good time.

[1600] I may smile a little bit every now when I'm in there because I'm like, man, this is a credible fight.

[1601] No, you box, but have you trained in any ground fighting?

[1602] You've done any jiu -jitsu or anything?

[1603] I do, you know, so we have to be careful how we do that.

[1604] You know, do you want to go train with someone you can potentially do their fight.

[1605] So there is a fine line between how you do that.

[1606] But I've had the best of both worlds.

[1607] You know, when I started there at JSEC, you had John Lewis and stuff.

[1608] And then when I went back to D .C., I belonged to Lloyd Irvin's school, which...

[1609] Another great school.

[1610] Lloyd Irvin, he teaches you.

[1611] You know, my first interaction, he's coming in and spar with us.

[1612] You know, I have 230 pounds, and he slammed me down to the ground.

[1613] But just the amount of learning.

[1614] Well, that doesn't seem fair.

[1615] I didn't let it happen again, though.

[1616] I'm not sparring with you again.

[1617] But, you know, you get the best stuff there.

[1618] And I came back to Vegas, you know, I go to a couple of different gyms there and trying to keep that balance of professionalism with training with the guys.

[1619] I go to Coutures and I go to syndicate.

[1620] And then, you know, I was at one point there, we had Vinny and Fredson and Mike Powell, all those guys in the same gym.

[1621] Now, I train for application.

[1622] A lot of people train, you know, to get the belts or to go do a tournament and stuff like that.

[1623] That's not my focus is.

[1624] One, because I don't have the time, I trained to learn how I can apply that back to me refereeing, you know, knowing the details of a specific submission or a hold or something like that.

[1625] and at what level amateurs am I going to stop it when the guy's in a good choke and he can't get out of it versus at the next level knowing how somebody's going to transition from one position to the other that's what my focus is going to be there's a benefit to a guy like lloyd irvin throwing you around though and that is that just you recognize the levels because sometimes people get a very distorted sense of what they could physically do to a large black belt you get the you know the guy sit at home eating wings with the beer in his hands I can get in there and I can, and you hear it at the T -Mobile.

[1626] I could get in there and kick his ass, you know, this, whatever.

[1627] And they don't realize the level of professionalism proficiency some of these fighters have.

[1628] You know, to watch a Vinnie Mogulay's, you know, do a stand -up fighting and transition to the ground.

[1629] You're like, man, you're about to see something incredible.

[1630] Oh, his ground game is insane.

[1631] Yeah.

[1632] And to train with a guy like you know, I've never trained with Vinny, but he's one of the best in the world.

[1633] And his ground game is just preposterous.

[1634] And then, you know, the, you know, your fighters across the roster in the UFC, they may think someone is a stand -up expert and they go to the ground and you see something amazing right there.

[1635] So that's why us as referees, you got to be proficient at it.

[1636] You got to have an understanding of how that's going to apply.

[1637] And really, our judges as well, you know, the judges are like they think they just sit there and score the fight.

[1638] But our judge has to be able to determine is that more of a position or is that a scoring type of point?

[1639] You have to understand what's going on.

[1640] You have to understand.

[1641] So that's where our training comes into play and we talk about stuff like that.

[1642] There's a judge I will not name, but he told me that he was in the middle of a fight once judging a fight, and one of the other judges asked him what the person was doing.

[1643] Oh, God.

[1644] The person was, it was something simple, too, like an Americana.

[1645] And the person was like, what is he doing?

[1646] You won't get that now.

[1647] You know, you got the Derek Cleary's and all these guys.

[1648] This is back in the day.

[1649] This is, you know, we're talking about more than 10 years ago, but it was weird back then because you had a lot of people that were refereeing fights that didn't really even understand what they were, or excuse me, judging fights.

[1650] They really didn't understand what they were judging.

[1651] They didn't understand what they were looking at.

[1652] And, you know, you see that criticism out there, you know, these judges in this jurisdiction or their boxing judges and stuff like that.

[1653] Now, you've got folks that have been doing this for, you know, 15, 20 years.

[1654] They may not be proficient on the ground themselves, but they have an understanding of it.

[1655] You know, some of the judges may be in whatever, you know, their 60s or the...

[1656] The issue is when you go to some smaller commissions that don't have the kind of experience, It's obviously Nevada and California are the top of the heap.

[1657] But there's places we've gone to where you've seen judging that you're like, well, this is just insanity.

[1658] Like this is not a person that really understands what they're talking about.

[1659] And it's really incumbent upon every referee and judge that wants to get into the game.

[1660] Like I had somebody called me yesterday, a former fighter at Fortis MMA, you know, great guys down there, incredible team.

[1661] Great gym.

[1662] That wants to transition into refereeing.

[1663] And we talk about how to start it from step one.

[1664] knowing which one you want to do you want to referee or judge got to understand the unified rules of mMA yeah you got to get proficient at it you got to start from the bottom you know go find an amateur organization sit there and watch and start a shadow program with them yeah and then so we do that now like i don't know if you're new or not but like jake ellenberger is making the transition busy over to officiating you know frank trigg did it a couple years ago is jake going to referee or is you going to judge i think he's going to look at judging and you know like Can we do our training tomorrow?

[1665] You know, I started a process, you know, with a training with him, so he's going to participate with us from tomorrow.

[1666] But being a consummate professional, he understands where he has to start.

[1667] So we need amateur fights to come back.

[1668] We need to be in a position where we can do amateur fights because that's really where they got to start.

[1669] No one is ready from day one to step in the seat and do a UFC fight.

[1670] So that's a thing now with the pandemic that makes it difficult, correct?

[1671] It's tough because we can't do in -person training.

[1672] So what I would do before the pandemic is I would do, go to these gyms.

[1673] It's like how I got started in this.

[1674] So in Vegas, you know, you got a lot of gyms.

[1675] I'd go in the syndicate on a Saturday or I'd go into Coutures when they're doing their sparring.

[1676] And I'd get in there, that's how I keep my proficiency.

[1677] I'd go in there when they're sparring.

[1678] You know, you got Inganu at Couture's.

[1679] Yikes.

[1680] He does his, you know, sparring with big country.

[1681] I'd get in Randy's Octagon with him and practice referee.

[1682] I mean, can you imagine just a Saturday casual sparring?

[1683] Well, I guess no casual sparring with those two.

[1684] You got And Ganu and Roy Nelson sparring against each other, I couldn't get any better proficiency than that.

[1685] And I treated just like a fight.

[1686] I treated it as a professional.

[1687] There's no BSing with them on the side because who knows I could get one of their fights one day.

[1688] Right.

[1689] But what I started doing is, A, you got to get the permission of the commissions.

[1690] I bring one or two judges in with me while they're doing their rounds for sparring.

[1691] And I say, go sit as you're an A or B judge, come out, and I want you to score.

[1692] It's a little bit different because they're not going in 100%.

[1693] Of course.

[1694] You know, some of the places go with 50%, 75%.

[1695] but they're still getting hands -on proficiency.

[1696] When you've got two high -level guys like that that are doing it, you may see some things that you may not get at a lower level.

[1697] But it's upon each person, the commission is not going to force you to go do this training.

[1698] They're not going to make you take Herb's course or John's course, like I teach as well.

[1699] They're going to encourage you to do it.

[1700] And if you want to get the top -level assignments, you want to get these opportunities, you've got to show proficiency.

[1701] You've got to be consistent.

[1702] Like our executive director Nevada, Bob Bennett and Jeff Mullen, they're going to make the selections for the, know, the top referees and judges in the world, they're going to give those opportunities.

[1703] Yeah, those are great guys, and it's a welcome change from the past administration.

[1704] Now, when you're talking about fighters that you can't really get close to these guys, huh?

[1705] That's kind of a tricky situation for you.

[1706] It is.

[1707] If you train with these guys and you're friendly with these guys, do you excuse yourself from a fight?

[1708] Or do you just keep it professional with everybody?

[1709] You try to keep it professional with everybody.

[1710] That's kind of annoying, though.

[1711] Like, what if someone's cool and you want to be their friend?

[1712] It is.

[1713] You know, and like I will tell you, Mike Powell is one of my best friends in a world.

[1714] Mike's an awesome guy and we've been friends for a while.

[1715] Mike and I have a fight.

[1716] I can pick up the phone afterwards and, you know, get honest feedback from him.

[1717] You know, it's a little bit easier right now that Mike's not fighting and I can get that kind of feedback.

[1718] Is he training guys now?

[1719] Yeah, I think he's out at Syndicate.

[1720] No, he's still doing some of the movie things, but he's still rocking the mullet?

[1721] Off and on.

[1722] I think it depends on what day and a week it is.

[1723] He's such a skillful guy.

[1724] You know, just such a really intelligent, well -rounded game when he was fighting, like, just a consummate professional.

[1725] And, you know, for me, so like when I started at J -Sec Fight Capital back in the day, he was in there with Randy and Marvin Eastman and all those guys.

[1726] So, you know, I've taken this transition with him the entire time.

[1727] It would be really tough for me to go in there and do a Mike Powell fight.

[1728] So what I do is, like, two primary commissions, Nevada and California, I'll call them ahead of time and say, you know, hey, Mr. Foster, I've trained with Mike Powell.

[1729] before I did this kind of training with them, and I'll leave it at that.

[1730] And that's something that Herb and Big John taught me back in the day, present it to the commission and tell them and let them make determination.

[1731] Yeah, that guy, Andy Foster's one of my favorites.

[1732] He's really so ahead of a lot of other commissions that they're so proactive and implementing more weight classes and weight cutting and a lot of the things that they do.

[1733] I'm a big fan of.

[1734] There are a lot of great commissions around the world, but you can't get any better than California and Nevada.

[1735] No, you can't.

[1736] the opportunity to be licensed in both.

[1737] I'm very fortunate.

[1738] Do you have any championship fights under your belt?

[1739] So I've done some, I have not done a UFC title fight yet.

[1740] I did some in PFL and some of the other organizations.

[1741] What did you call in PFL?

[1742] Which title fight?

[1743] I don't remember.

[1744] I've done, shoot you.

[1745] I've done like 1 ,500 fights.

[1746] I can't tell you the name of a fight I did last time.

[1747] Yeah, so you lose track of that.

[1748] And because I try to treat every fight as the same, it's a level of confidence you know so the UFC has to have confidence in who they're going to put in the main event and it's not a matter of we're not confident in Mark Smith but the household names of you know Herb Dean, John McCarthy, Mark Goddard well John's now stepped aside Mark Goddard, Dan Mergliata those guys Mark Goddard and Herb Dean are going to be the top tier guys Yeah guys are getting more and more of a name The more big fights that they get But yeah those guys get the championship fights efficiency.

[1749] I think, you know, John Morgan and the MMA junkie guys did the article a couple months ago, and they talked about, you know, the numbers of fights of the year for 2020, and I think Herb was at the top, and then, like, he had 80 -some fights, and Jason had 60 fights.

[1750] I didn't realize I had 57 fights.

[1751] Wow.

[1752] And then within those, the confidence in the commission and obviously the promotion of which fights that they give you.

[1753] So I think Jeff Mullen showed a lot of confidence in me with that last card to Cubs Swanson, Kevin Holland, and then the, you know, Oliveira.

[1754] Tony Ferguson fight, that's showing confidence.

[1755] Yes.

[1756] And it's about working your way up.

[1757] Yeah.

[1758] You know, it's, even if it's a title fight, and you're like, I've done this thousand times before, you've got to be mentally prepared for it.

[1759] There's something to be said about, you know, the Blockovich and Adasanya fight coming up.

[1760] You've got to be mentally and physically prepared for that one.

[1761] That one, you've got to be really ready.

[1762] That card has three title fights on it.

[1763] Yeah, that's a crazy.

[1764] Is that going to be on Fight Island?

[1765] No. I think the next, like, eight to ten weeks are projected to be in Vegas.

[1766] Oh, Jesus, Louises.

[1767] Yeah.

[1768] So that fight, you got those two.

[1769] You got Amanda.

[1770] Nunez fighting and then you got the and that is that's March correct March what do we know I don't remember the exact date I usually look at you know the UFC fight or you know share dog or one of those and style bender's he's special March 6th style bender is he's something when you see how he picked apart Paulo Costa you know like that is some that's a special athlete because Paulo Costa literally had wrecked everyone they put in front of him yeah I did Paulos fight against Uri Hall and had you know two great fighters, you know, that came down to, you know, that last round where he caught him with the body shot, I've heard them.

[1771] Yeah.

[1772] But, you know, folks don't understand, you know, I'm 6 '1, I walk around like 2 .20, you get in there with these giants.

[1773] And even if these guys weigh less than me, just, you know, the...

[1774] They weigh less than you for about five minutes.

[1775] Paulo Costa, he makes $1 .85 by the skin of his teeth.

[1776] This is the big one, baby.

[1777] This is the big one.

[1778] Yeah.

[1779] My God, I'm excited about this fight.

[1780] That's going to be a great fight.

[1781] That whole card.

[1782] And, you know, kudos to the, you know, Sean Shelby and the matchmakers over at UFC.

[1783] This entire season, there have been some great fights the entire time.

[1784] And Aljo versus Piotr -Yon is a crazy fight.

[1785] That's going to be wild.

[1786] That is a wild fight right there.

[1787] Amanda Nunes is in a tough position, you know, right?

[1788] Because she's a two -division champion.

[1789] And there's not much competition for her at 145.

[1790] And, you know, Megan Anderson is long and tall, and she's got very good strikes.

[1791] but you know holly home kind of exposed her on the ground i'm sure she's gotten much better than that but there's no like compelling like this is the fight for her you know she's just so terrifying i'm just so dominant i'm excited that you know we took a little break i think our december 19th was our last fight there in Vegas and we had the holidays and then they did the three fights over fight island but now they're coming back man oh my god yeah 10 weeks coming up and that's you know in addition to doing the tuesday night fights and then we're going to do the ultimate fighter again so Well, there's so many UFC cards.

[1792] Yeah.

[1793] If you're a UFC fan, it is the best sport to follow.

[1794] Because first of all, there's no season.

[1795] It goes all year round.

[1796] Oh, my goodness, Woodley!

[1797] Oh!

[1798] Usman and Burns is the fight.

[1799] That is the fight right there.

[1800] And I'm excited to see, you know, these guys train together.

[1801] Yeah.

[1802] So they're both training down South Florida under Henry Hooft, and now Usman has moved to, Trevor Whitman, and he's training with Justin Gaichie.

[1803] Yep.

[1804] You look at the number of top -tier fights that we got coming up.

[1805] I think they said a number of champions that we have, like 70 % of them are going to be in title fights coming up in the next couple months.

[1806] Yeah.

[1807] And, you know, both guys dominated Tyrone Woodley, which is crazy to think about that Tyrone Woodley was literally at the top of the heap destroying everybody, and then two guys come along.

[1808] dominate them back to back and those two guys are now fighting for the title and both guys can do everything I mean both Usman and when you look at Gilbert Burns you're talking about a guy who's a Brazilian jiu -jitsu black belt like top of the food chain grappling game and all you know like learned how to strike while he was fighting yeah like started training in MMA and didn't know how to strike now is one of the scariest strikers in the sport and he dominated that fight with striking so dropped Woodley in the first round which is crazy Well, you would thought if anybody has an advantage in the striking, it's going to be wooded.

[1809] What, I mean, so well -rounded both of those guys.

[1810] And Usman is just such a destroyer.

[1811] And you find out that Usman fought Jorge Amos -Medal with a shattered nose.

[1812] That's right.

[1813] Which is crazy.

[1814] Yeah, that just came out recently, didn't it?

[1815] He just announced that.

[1816] That guy's mind is a steel vault.

[1817] It really is.

[1818] And I think fans don't understand, you know, we see the fighters afterwards with the physical impact that it has on them.

[1819] You know, the fans have their favorites and they watch.

[1820] And they want this and that to happen.

[1821] They don't understand the physical impact on the fighters, you know, during the fight and after the fight.

[1822] Well, that's why, you know, a guy like to bring up a guy like Tyrone Woodley, you know, who was on top of the heat for so long.

[1823] And then you go through three brutal fights in a row.

[1824] He has those two fights and then the Colby Covington fight.

[1825] It's like you, you, you, it's such a fucking hard, scrabble game.

[1826] Like you're on top and then you're not.

[1827] And then you look at a guy like Anderson Silva was on top forever.

[1828] And then just lost like eight fights of.

[1829] in a row.

[1830] I mean, he won one fight.

[1831] Who did he beat?

[1832] Derek Brunson, beat Derek Brunson by decision.

[1833] Every other fight he lost, which is crazy.

[1834] Yeah, and I got to do the, you know, the inspection of the pit for his last fight, you know, with your Rye Hall.

[1835] What did you think of that fight?

[1836] He looked good, you know, for the first couple rounds.

[1837] And then, you know, when he got caught and went down, that's when you go, you know, the skills have depleted a little bit.

[1838] It's crazy to watch, you know, Uriah Hall put it up on his Instagram.

[1839] He said, when I said, I learn from this man, I learn from this man. And it shows the difference between, it shows a contrast in Anderson Silver's fight with Forrest Griffin.

[1840] When Forrest Griffin comes charging at him, he picks his spot and lands the right hand.

[1841] And that is exactly the same thing that Uriah Hall did to Anderson Silver, the exact same move.

[1842] Like literally the same punch.

[1843] You know, what impacted me the most was the interoperable.

[1844] action after the fight.

[1845] He realized this is probably, you know, the transition point and really the emotion and thankfulness that, you know, Uriah showed for it.

[1846] That, that as officials, you know, that touched everybody.

[1847] Well, it's interesting to me that Anderson's not going to hang it up, but the UFC doesn't want him anymore.

[1848] They don't want him fighting in the UFC anymore.

[1849] So, like, where does a guy go?

[1850] And what, you know, this is just being honest, it's probably better if he does go to another organization, not that there's not high -level talent in another organization, but they don't have high -level testing.

[1851] And I think when you get these older fighters, the fighters that are able to sustain their careers outside of the UFC are clearly using hormones.

[1852] You know, and so there's protocols obviously for that that, you know, from the USADA.

[1853] In some places.

[1854] Yeah, some places.

[1855] But what we do is if a fighter has aged or something, the commission will talk to you about that ahead of time.

[1856] You know, you have two fighters where there's a higher propensity for a knockout.

[1857] You have fighters that a little bit age, and they have to go through different testing if they're at a certain age.

[1858] We are cognizant of that as officials that we may have to watch someone a little bit closer.

[1859] And you really count on, regardless of organization, the officials knowing and understanding that that someone's a little bit older and it's going to have an impact, you better do your part as a referee.

[1860] Yeah, it's a, it's, you have to look at each fight differently, don't you?

[1861] You have to look at, you know, you see two 22 -year -old guys, you'll give them very differently than two 39 -year -old guys, or a 39 -year -old guy versus a 22 -year -old guy.

[1862] You do.

[1863] You have to treat each one differently.

[1864] Every round is looked at differently.

[1865] Every impact has looked at differently.

[1866] But you have to have an understanding of the fighter before you step in there.

[1867] You know, someone has gotten knocked out a couple times.

[1868] Right.

[1869] And, you know, we have to do, you know, brain trauma, protocols and courses, you know, because you want, like, you're, like, high school coaches and stuff like that to understand that for their athletes.

[1870] But we as officials have to go through those protocols as well, you know, to take these courses and understand, you know, the impact of brain injuries.

[1871] Because once again, fighter safety is always a top priority.

[1872] I would never want to be part of a fight that someone had a long -term impact injury because of brain trauma or something else because I didn't intervene.

[1873] Yeah.

[1874] What is your thought, how do you feel when you see guys that are fighting, like they have these 20 plus year careers like guys like Diego Sanchez that is you know what I mean he won the ultimate fighter season one in 2005 which is really crazy when you think of the fact that 16 years later he's still fighting in the UFC and then his his actual career fighting career goes back a couple years before that you know he's been fighting a long time you know it's tough because I think at UFC 100 or 200 he fought against Joe Lozahn yeah you remember up against the cage he was taking some pretty hard shots.

[1875] And you have to delineate as an official, do I step in and stop this, or do I know this fighter's history of being able to come back?

[1876] Man, that was probably one of the tougher fights I had to do.

[1877] And then looking back at it, that was probably a lesson learned for me that I probably should have or could have stopped that fight a little bit earlier.

[1878] You think so?

[1879] You know, I let him take the shots and then he threw some punches back and then finally when he punched him and he went down, I stepped in.

[1880] and Diego actually, excuse me, he thanked me afterwards for when I stopped it.

[1881] You know, he came to a realization that he could not have come back.

[1882] But you think of a guy's resilience, you know, and then I did this fight several years later against Kiesa.

[1883] And, I mean, you know how Diego's one of the all -time great fighters when he does stuff, his ability to be able to come back.

[1884] So subjectively as a referee, there's that fine line balance of, man, do I make this decision, my decision, and the best interests of the fighter?

[1885] or do I think about the impact, you know, the capabilities of this fighter to be able to come back.

[1886] So one, you've got to know who it is in there fighting with you.

[1887] It's kind of have to look at where they are now.

[1888] Because if you go back to the Diego that fought Marvin Campman, I mean, he was like indestructible.

[1889] Like Diego is responsible for some of the greatest third rounds in the history of the sport.

[1890] Oh, my God.

[1891] Oh, my God.

[1892] Well, that was from the jump from the opening round.

[1893] I mean, he won the opening round and Clay won the second.

[1894] but like another one is a Jake Ellenberger fight he was losing that fight that was a 170 fight Ellenberger was a destroyer at the time who was knocking everybody out right he he literally gets hit with all these big shots from Ellenberger in the third round Diego starts coming on and Diego actually had his back when the fight ended and you got to think about those kind of things yeah you know it's one of the worst feelings in the world you go in to stop a fight and you stop it too early and the guy gets up and he's fine.

[1895] A lot of fighters instinctively are going to I was fine, I was good.

[1896] But if you do make a mistake like that, yeah, you feel like crap.

[1897] So what's that balance between, where are they at in their career?

[1898] How's the fight going?

[1899] How are their last couple fights going?

[1900] Did they take a knockout blow in their previous fight?

[1901] Are they still suffering from...

[1902] You really kind of have to be a historian of the sport.

[1903] You've got to study it.

[1904] You can't step in the fight and not do your pre -fight study and look at the fighters that own the card.

[1905] You can't know every single thing about all the fighters, but it's your responsibility as an official to know as much as you can.

[1906] Yeah, to know what a guy's capable of, whether or not a guy's a big shot lander or whether he's not, yeah.

[1907] It's such a complex sport.

[1908] You know, there's so many different things going on because of when you're combining the wrestling and the jiu -jitsu and the striking and then powerful guys versus endurance guys.

[1909] And, I mean, even, like, I get in my head, like, oh, this is the way to do it.

[1910] And then I see another guy who does it differently.

[1911] I'm like, well, that way is pretty goddamn good, too.

[1912] Like, it changes.

[1913] Like, there's trends.

[1914] that happen in this sport like some guys are just big time power shot guys and then other guys they hit you with like 50 60 percent guys like colby covington or guys like nick diaz they don't really throw 100 percent shots they just pepper you and stay on you guys like neil magni they just stay on you and overwhelm you with volume you know one thing i try to do it's completely different worlds but i try to treat it just like i did you know as a fighter pilot and if you're in a dog fight against someone, you know, knowing possibly what could happen here.

[1915] Think about the predictions.

[1916] So if I'm fighting against a certain type of plane, know what their capabilities are.

[1917] I got a certain type of fighter here, knowing what their capabilities are.

[1918] Is this fighter going to be more apt to want to go to the ground than going to throw a power shot?

[1919] And doing your study of what the fighter traditionally does, you know, some people go back to their bread and butter, regardless of what's going on.

[1920] The guy's going to want to fall down and, you know, pull guard or something like that, or he's going to go up against a cage and do this.

[1921] But just going with the flow of the fight, as we move with the fighters, look and see what's happening.

[1922] If it's time to stop the fight, it's our responsibility to step in and stop it.

[1923] Now, when you train, if you're training Jiu -Jitsu or what have you, are you training just to get better as a referee, or do you actually enjoy it?

[1924] I do enjoy it.

[1925] I would say my foundation is more in stand -up, like with, you know, so one of my best friends in the world is Chaz Malki, you know, one of the great Mouitai fighters in the world.

[1926] So that's probably where the basis is.

[1927] So I do twofold.

[1928] One, you've got to be in the positions.

[1929] Do you train Maitai?

[1930] Oh, yeah.

[1931] Yeah, that's where my foundation was.

[1932] I started with Marvin Eastman.

[1933] Oh, no kidding.

[1934] Yes, I moved up a little bit more, you know, started training with Chaz and, you know, a couple other folks in town.

[1935] So I would say that would be more of my foundation.

[1936] But to fully understand, you know, with the jiu -jitsu, taking a shin to shin kick, you got to do it at least one time to know what it feels like to see what these fighters are going through.

[1937] With the positions, you know, to train to get an understanding of, yeah, that's a good choke right there.

[1938] You know, that's a good pressure point submission right there.

[1939] But what I also do in conjunction to get on the mat and actually doing that is I will have two guys get on the mat and roll.

[1940] And it may be a step -by -step process.

[1941] Okay, put on a Kimura, and I want you to flex it to the point of knowing when you're going to tap to be able to equate that.

[1942] So I've got a fighter in the cage right now knowing what to look for.

[1943] And when you got Vinny and Fredson and those guys out there showing you the different types of things.

[1944] So I do a little bit too -fold.

[1945] You're going to get on the mat and roll, but I also want to stand there next to Vinny and say, that's a pressure point right there.

[1946] That's where the guy is going to tap.

[1947] So my method is maybe a little bit different, but me as a referee, I got to understand fully what I'm looking at there from the outside perspective of knowing.

[1948] Yeah, there's some that are really confusing, right?

[1949] Like a Von Flew choke?

[1950] Yes.

[1951] That's a weird one because it doesn't seem like a choke unless someone puts it on you.

[1952] And then you go, oh, Jesus.

[1953] And you've seen some crazy ones.

[1954] Yeah.

[1955] I think I had one on a Tuesday night fight.

[1956] You remember when Snoop was announcing with you riot favor.

[1957] And what's unique about that sometimes is a guy will go to sleep with their eyes open.

[1958] And you don't know they're out.

[1959] So the first time I saw one of those is an MA fight.

[1960] The guy's looking at me and he stopped moving and he stopped like this and I realized he was out.

[1961] Now you put that into your memory bank and go, okay, fighters have, they're apt to go to sleep with their eyes open based on this.

[1962] It's very unique choke.

[1963] That's one of the only ones that they're going to do that.

[1964] I had a Tuesday night fight that the guys on the ground and he gets put in the Bonflew and he's looking at me. They really should rename it to the OSP choke.

[1965] Yes.

[1966] He has more than anybody.

[1967] That's right.

[1968] But that Tuesday night fight.

[1969] This guy goes out from it and everybody's like, what is, what is he?

[1970] He's still, his eyes are open.

[1971] He's awake.

[1972] I go, no, his eyes are open, but he's not awake.

[1973] And then when a fighter lets go with a hole and then you realize that he's out, that's the kind of thing you've got to train for to be able to understand.

[1974] Well, OSP, he moves the guy's arm to the guillotine position.

[1975] It's so interesting.

[1976] He'll, like, he'll force a guy, like, he'll say, why don't you try to choke me?

[1977] He'll, like, force a guy's, yeah, and then he'll tie it up and then he'll sit back and put people to sleep.

[1978] And it's weird because they're an, apex everybody can see it and you'll hear the coaches saying no don't do that don't do that because they know what's going to happen and he'll put you in it the thing is it's like if a guy's neck is there and your arms here it's like an instinct there he is see the way he he and look at his eyes yep see he's out he's eyes are wide open how cold well show the setup again because the way oven sets it up it's really interesting yeah because ovens well they're not going to show the whole setup but the way he clamps it down he does it better than von floo he does it better than anybody it's amazing it's such a good choke it's just weird you know fans and stuff that don't understand it they'll yell at you for stopping a fight and they go his eyes are open he's still awakening fuck those people stand them up they'll be yeah they don't know jack shit but that that's a great example the vaughn flu chokes a great example of a you know a situation where it's hard to figure out what's going on if you've never been put in that position before so i've ever let anybody do that to you i you know i have and i've actually you know you either didn't train you training and stuff all the time.

[1979] I try to, you know, you never, from a flying perspective, a pilot perspective, you don't ever want to get knocked out or passed out.

[1980] So there's limitations there.

[1981] You know, that could affect your medicals and other stuff like that.

[1982] If you get choked out, it could affect your medicals?

[1983] You know, they'll ask the question.

[1984] That's a little bit different versus getting knocked out.

[1985] You know, if you got any kind of brain injury.

[1986] But I mean, we got a lot of pilots that we work with, you know, that, you know, they do train, you know, for one, cockpit defense and, you know, physical preparedness and stuff.

[1987] But I think to fully understand it, you got to be put in those situations.

[1988] Like I will tell you, for me, one of the most painful things I've ever been in was a toe hole.

[1989] I mean, I thought I was going to, you know, break the damn mad.

[1990] I got put in a toe hole before.

[1991] And some of the other, you know, submissions and stuff like that may not be as effective on you, but...

[1992] What about, like, heel hooks and stuff like that?

[1993] Do they show you where it's dangerous?

[1994] Yeah, I try to get into the fine details of, you know, what can potentially break or dislocate or separate what's going to be the pressure point.

[1995] And it's a, it's a multi -process.

[1996] You've got to look at that to see how deep it's in right but you also got to be able to look at the fighter to see how much agony they're in and be able to hear you know somebody goes ah you know they scream you got to stop the so you have to even if they're in pain they want to keep going you have to stop the fight it depends on what they do a grunt versus a scream and i tell them in the back but if they scream and they're trying to get out if you scream it's a verbal submission god that's so weird because a lot of guys just want to scream because it hurts but they still want to keep fighting and i will i'll explain to them in the back.

[1997] There's a difference between a grunt to get out of something and a scream.

[1998] If I make determination, I say, please don't put me in that position.

[1999] Wasn't there a fight recently where someone did make a scream and they said it wasn't a verbal submission?

[2000] I thought it was one the PFL or Bellator guys that did that.

[2001] Something like, I think it was a Belator fight.

[2002] If I remember correctly.

[2003] He screamed at, I think it was a knee bar or something.

[2004] And he screamed out of it.

[2005] And the referee stopped and he yelled.

[2006] He said, no. People do that though, right?

[2007] What is your opinion on the low calf kick uh it is becoming prevalent you know there's certain camps that everybody isn't it crazy they don't see people don't realize the physical impact of it when you get hit with that thing a couple of times and it starts to swell and because of where it is that swelling you know the blood doesn't have room to expand like maybe if it's the quad or something like that it can expand out a little bit more but in the calf you know with the strict and limitation there that swelling and the you know the blood compact is going to stay there in that area and And if you don't learn how to properly check, you get hit with that thing a couple times.

[2008] Let me ask you this, though, as a Muay practitioner, because I haven't really gotten a good answer.

[2009] Why isn't that prevalent in Muay?

[2010] Isn't it interesting?

[2011] Like, that's not very common in Muay that guys get stopped with low calf kicks.

[2012] Don't just think it's because of the capability to check?

[2013] I would imagine so.

[2014] I would imagine so.

[2015] You think about the fights where the kicker has gotten hurt.

[2016] You know, Anderson's a fight.

[2017] Yes.

[2018] The Corey, whatever's last name, when he broke his leg on that.

[2019] one.

[2020] Yeah, Corey Hill.

[2021] You got people that are proficient in checking.

[2022] Like, you know, what Chris Weidman did against Anderson Silva was a simple turn of the leg and he tried to catch it, you know, right on the top.

[2023] Yeah.

[2024] And if you do that shin to shin, it could hurt the kicker more often than the person that is getting kicked.

[2025] So if there's proficiency in defending against it, guys are going to be apt to not do that.

[2026] Yeah, but it seems to me that, like, guys are trying to check them.

[2027] But maybe it's in MMA, the stance is different.

[2028] I was going to say the stance.

[2029] If it's a, you know, a wider type a stance where that front leg is open to it.

[2030] Right.

[2031] And you know, you could tell people, you know, with the fight that happened, you know, with Connor and Dustin, that camp is practicing that a lot.

[2032] Oh my God.

[2033] And, you know, we as referees look at what people may be more apt to do during the fight.

[2034] But also specifically in that fight because Connor has that wide stance and he puts a lot of heavy weight on that front leg and they're also southpaw to south paw.

[2035] So it opens up that back left leg kick to that front leg of Connors.

[2036] And we can tell that if somebody gets kicked like there are a couple times and then they change their stance, you know, that's going to alert us on what we've got to start to look for.

[2037] And if I think someone's hurt from that, we may not interact with them.

[2038] But, you know, I'll bring the doctor in a couple times and the doctor will sit there and they'll watch them stand up and they'll look at it.

[2039] If it gets to the point, like the, what's the kid's name, Sean?

[2040] You know, the, oh, sugar.

[2041] you know it's sugar time baby Sean O'Malley You remember when he fought that kid And he hurt his foot Or his knee If he could not His opponent's mistake Was he went down to the ground with him If he stepped back And Sean couldn't step back up To get into a fighter stance I would have to stop that fight So I know if you could hear But the corner was yelling at him And you refereed that fight I refereed that fight right Marlon Vera put him out right He put him out with an elbow No I don't think it was a Marlon Vera fight.

[2042] This was...

[2043] Wasn't it Cheeto Vera?

[2044] No, this was a couple years back.

[2045] Oh, different fun.

[2046] So that was the second time he heard his foot.

[2047] Remember, this was when we were over at the MGM or T -Mobile that he hurt his foot.

[2048] And he went down to the ground.

[2049] Oh, that's right.

[2050] And he won the fight.

[2051] He won the fight.

[2052] He won the fight.

[2053] That's right.

[2054] And I interviewed him when he was down.

[2055] That's right.

[2056] Yeah.

[2057] So remember, he got hurt.

[2058] He threw a high kick and it hurt his foot.

[2059] And he went down to the ground.

[2060] Yes.

[2061] If he had not been able to stand back up and maintain a standing fighter posture, I would have had to stop that fight.

[2062] Right.

[2063] So his opponent went down to the ground with him.

[2064] His corner is yelling, let him back up, let him.

[2065] And he never did.

[2066] And he stayed on the ground.

[2067] He's able to finish the fight.

[2068] Well, you know, that happened in Bellator.

[2069] In Bellator, Michael Chandler got hit with a low leg kick, and he got hit with that calf kick, and his foot went numb.

[2070] You know, sometimes that does happen, and his foot just gave out.

[2071] And when his foot gave out, they stopped the fight.

[2072] Yeah.

[2073] And was it, Jamie Barner, had the same thing happen in UFC fight years ago?

[2074] Yes.

[2075] So we as referees had the discussion in the debate.

[2076] What does a fighter have to be able to demonstrate to continue to fight?

[2077] Yeah.

[2078] And it's, you know, they're down posture and they're standing posture.

[2079] But a guy has to be able to start or continue to fight up in a standing posture.

[2080] Right.

[2081] So if your ankle keeps giving out and you fall down, we have to step in and stop the fight.

[2082] Well, it's interesting enough, Dustin Porrier was in that same situation with Jim Miller.

[2083] Jim Miller had his leg destroyed, but Dustin got the fight to the ground.

[2084] Like, Jim was like one kick away from ending the fight.

[2085] Justin's leg is just trash.

[2086] Keep there.

[2087] You can continue.

[2088] Yes, and that's what he did.

[2089] But if there's a stand up and he can't stand up, then you've got to step in and stop the play.

[2090] It is just bananas to me how that one technique has dominated the sport over the last several years.

[2091] Sometimes a technique comes around and a lot of fires start doing it.

[2092] But it's very rare that a technique that's been around forever, just they change the location of the impact.

[2093] And by the way, Benson Henderson was doing that way back in the day.

[2094] And for whatever reason, it didn't have the same impact.

[2095] And you have people that don't know how to defend it.

[2096] Because some people simply think lifting your leg.

[2097] No. But you're still catching that.

[2098] You got to turn it.

[2099] You got to turn it out.

[2100] Yeah.

[2101] It's just weird that it's not working with MMA fighters, but with Moy Thai, it's just, it's not a factor.

[2102] It's not a factor.

[2103] Because with Moy Thai fights, like a lot of fights get stopped because of leg kicks.

[2104] You know, like Liam Harrison, how many fights has that guy have stopped from leg kicks?

[2105] A lot.

[2106] You know, he's got, like, highlights.

[2107] all over his Instagram of him stopping guys just chopping at their legs.

[2108] And if someone's proficient, they chop that enough.

[2109] One of the guy is going to probably change their stance, which is going to have impact.

[2110] You know, if you fight traditional and you now have to switch to South Paul, your whole game plan may be going out the window.

[2111] Yeah.

[2112] Well, Liam is very good at hiding.

[2113] He doesn't have, his kick comes out so quick.

[2114] Like he doesn't have like a pivot, a step.

[2115] It's not like there's no telegraph.

[2116] It's just, he's in the middle.

[2117] And he's showing you hands, and he just chops at the legs.

[2118] before you even know it, but not targeting the calf.

[2119] It's interesting because he can land that shot to the thigh like that.

[2120] It just seems to me that he should be able to land it to the calf.

[2121] And other Muay fighters should be able to as well, but they're just not doing it that way.

[2122] Does this make sense I'm reading it's because the Muay stands to your front leg is usually off the ground, so like weight bearing?

[2123] Sort of.

[2124] This is an argument I'm reading online that this is a decent argument.

[2125] It's a decent argument.

[2126] But the problem is that argument applies to the thigh kick as well.

[2127] but die kicks in Muay Thai are of course one of the most prevalent techniques it's just such a devastating technique it really is a devastating technique when they that shin slams in that calf you got a few of those you got a few of those and with some guys look kabib said that he was in trouble like his leg was in trouble in that fight and then just Justin Gaichi that was as hard as he's ever been hit but he's just so fucking tough that he figured out a way to get through it and get Justin to the ground and finish him and people may not understand impact so it's like you know you got chas that comes out there and kevin ross to train with you if they see you're not checking it right they may target it a couple times yes you realize i'm tough i can i'm tough through it and then you realize after the second or third we're like oh oh that was a mistake there's no tough and through that kaff kick man especially not the way dustin was showing it to car and he took what like you know he threw two of them and that changed the whole impact on the fight yeah it really did well because you could see Connor was moving funny like even though he's trying to pretend everything's fine when he would get hit you would see that little because the pain is just it's a weird pain, it's nerve pain there's not enough muscle there to absorb it.

[2128] We have to recognize that.

[2129] Yeah.

[2130] You know, if we see a fighter change in their traditional game plan because of an impact or injury, now that changes.

[2131] So, you know, I may stand about 7 to 10 feet away from a fighter.

[2132] If I see that somebody's hurt like that, I may move a little bit closer so I can get a better feel, look at their face and see what kind of impact.

[2133] Or if he changes his stance, now I know we could be stepping down to ground to a stoppage of this fight.

[2134] So as a referee, you've got to build all that stuff into it.

[2135] You've got to understand what the guy just threw, the impact, that calf kick, impact that it could have on it, and honestly, go back to that fighter safety again.

[2136] If a guy doesn't know better and he keeps taking all those shots, it's our responsibility to help him out.

[2137] What do you do if you think a guy's got a broken hand?

[2138] So I won't make a medical assessment.

[2139] I'll make an observation.

[2140] I'll look and see if he or she is stopping to throw it.

[2141] And then what I'll do, we've got the best doctors in the world, you know, Nevada and California.

[2142] and I try to never wait, take away time from, if it's during the round, there's no injury time out.

[2143] But how do you decide what to do?

[2144] Like, say if a guy like Tony Ferguson, who his hand could be broken in a million different places, it's not even going to let you know.

[2145] He'll still keep swinging it.

[2146] Like, how do you know, like, if you notice that someone did something like that, they pulled a hand back or shook it, like, how do you make that distinction?

[2147] I'll look at whether they continue to throw it, and you got to look at, you know, the look on their face or if they make any sounds after they throw it.

[2148] And it's really my responsibility.

[2149] In between the round, I'm going to get the coach there a full minute.

[2150] I let the timekeepers know I'm going to call time out and I bring a doctor in.

[2151] But if it's broken, do you stop the fight or do you allow them to keep swinging?

[2152] It depends on the severity of it, you know, because you've got guys that may be hurt.

[2153] They're going to continue fighting.

[2154] Yeah.

[2155] They'll just change their game plan.

[2156] But if the doctor makes a determination, you know, for the long -term, longevity, their health, et cetera, you know, you'll see the doctor and I walk off to the side and, you know, we'll cover the microphone up to, you know, you still can hear what we're saying.

[2157] but, you know, we want to be able to have a discreet conversation right there.

[2158] In our jurisdiction, in Nevada, it's up to the referee to make the decision with the consultation of the doctor in other places, California, etc., the doctor can stop fights.

[2159] But we work together as a team.

[2160] So if the doctor says, you know, Mark, his hand is messed up, we need to stop this fight.

[2161] I'll go back, we'll make decision, and we'll pass it, you know, under the advice of the, you know, medical staff, Nevada State Athletic Commission, or whatever commission, referee such and such is going to stop this fight.

[2162] I know corners have stopped fights before because of broken hands, but I can't remember a time that a referee stopped to fight for a broken hand.

[2163] I have only stopped fights if I see like compound fractures, you know, bones and stuff sticking out.

[2164] Oh, have something sticking out?

[2165] Have you seen that?

[2166] Yeah, you know, we've had, you know, at the amateur, tough enough where you get some of the best competition.

[2167] We've had fighters that have had, you know, leg breaks and bones coming out and, you know, other stuff like that.

[2168] You know, we've had fighters get teeth knocked out.

[2169] And, you know, if a fighter says tooth came out, you know, they swallowed a tooth or something like that.

[2170] That's an automatic stoppage, you know, stuff like that.

[2171] We, I was seeing some crazy stuff.

[2172] We had, you know, fighters that have gotten knocked out and, you know, defecated on themselves or peed on themselves or something.

[2173] Yeah.

[2174] You know, that causes bigger problems.

[2175] Now you've got to sanitize the ring and stuff like that.

[2176] How can you sanitize poop once it's there?

[2177] You call it a night and wait for the next show to come up.

[2178] Yeah, it seems like if that's in the early fights, you've got a real problem.

[2179] some diarrhea is all over the octagon we've seen it before though you know you haven't trying to do what you can but we haven't seen it in the UFC well Tim Sylvia shit his pants once in the middle of a fight but I think he didn't get knocked out he just had diarrhea I think there was a female fighter that had some yeah there was an issue right yeah Michael Kiesa almost shit himself he was in the middle he came up to me uh at cage side he goes dude I'm about shit I go no he's like yeah this is before he fought and he was fine He kept it together, but he's like, dude, I am about to shit myself.

[2180] So out of respect for the fighter, we had a UFC fight during this season that somebody probably used a bathroom on himself.

[2181] Oh, okay.

[2182] Well, unfortunately.

[2183] I'd say don't wear white shorts inside the cage because.

[2184] Yeah, that's right.

[2185] When you've had this incredible military career and been a fighter jet pilot, and I would imagine that the thrills and the physical demands of that, it's probably, pretty hard at top.

[2186] So I've been very lucky with getting to do some great things.

[2187] You know, so first I attributed back to my parents, Norris and Shirley Smith, who, you know, an older brother, Norris, who...

[2188] Don't you have, like, three masters, too?

[2189] I graduated from the Air Force Academy.

[2190] So I got a...

[2191] Everybody from the Air Force Academy gets a Bachelor of Science because of the amount of math science and engineering that you do.

[2192] So I did political science there, but I focused on, like, legal studies in pre -law.

[2193] And I got a master's in computer systems management.

[2194] I got a master's in, international security and strategic studies, which is like State Department stuff.

[2195] And then this last one with, you know, health and wellness, nutrition, physiology, et cetera.

[2196] And you fly for Southwest.

[2197] That's outrageous.

[2198] I fly for A airline in Dallas that.

[2199] I believe it might be Southwest.

[2200] That's what I heard.

[2201] So I tell you what it comes down to.

[2202] One, my parents always push me to do something amazing.

[2203] But you've got to have motivating factors to go do stuff.

[2204] One, I wanted to be successful.

[2205] successful.

[2206] And it's kind of an analogy for me. You know, my parents worked too hard for me to not, you know, keep making them proud of my accomplishments every day.

[2207] But I had somebody years and years ago that looked to me and they said, you're never going to amount to be shit.

[2208] Oh, one of those guys.

[2209] Okay.

[2210] That's a bet.

[2211] Isn't it amazing how haters can motivate some people?

[2212] Who is the person?

[2213] This was a, so when I went to the Air Force Academy, you know, we got enlisted instructors, you know, along with the officer and instructors, it helped us do stuff.

[2214] And it was someone I guess didn't like my, the way I talked and my persona.

[2215] And, you know, she pulled me to the side and gave me the, you ain't going to ever amount to be shit.

[2216] Oh, one of those.

[2217] And I said, okay.

[2218] We'll see how this going to go.

[2219] Isn't it funny how the people that do that usually ain't shit?

[2220] You know, nobody who's like very accomplished pulls someone aside and says they're, you're never going to accomplish shit.

[2221] And it was funny because I saw them years later, you know, and it was a pretty big accomplishment.

[2222] It was a childhood dream.

[2223] I dream to be in a Thunderbird.

[2224] And when I made it back, you know, we always do the show at the Air Force Academy.

[2225] It was a stroke of luck that saw the same person.

[2226] I think she's like, I know you from somewhere.

[2227] And I went up to her and I said, thank you for what you said to me years ago.

[2228] Look where I am right now.

[2229] But it's one of those never...

[2230] You told her what she said?

[2231] I did.

[2232] What did she say back?

[2233] Oh, I don't believe I said that.

[2234] Why would I say something like that to do?

[2235] I'm like, okay, I'm not going to worry about it.

[2236] But I'm never...

[2237] I love being able to accomplish stuff.

[2238] But it's like, what challenge can I take And one of my friends said, man, you have about three or four or five lifetime dreams all of one lifetime.

[2239] You really do.

[2240] Thunderbirds and being an airline pilot and then, you know, people call a UFC referee.

[2241] It's an MF, MMA referee.

[2242] Your academic career, just the academic accomplishments are pretty goddamn impressive on top of that.

[2243] I've been very lucky.

[2244] Dude, that's more than luck.

[2245] Come on.

[2246] That's the thing that I love about military vets is that when you become very accomplished in that, in the military, like the amount of discipline that's required, They just develop superior human beings.

[2247] Like, I run into so many guys that are accomplished military vets, and they're just, they have more character, they have more discipline.

[2248] It's like, it's standard.

[2249] It's like, you know, like some cars have a V8 with a lot of horsepower.

[2250] Like military vets, accomplished military vets.

[2251] They just have more character.

[2252] You know, so you kind of related to the fight game.

[2253] I had a mentor tell me, you get championship fights.

[2254] It takes a lot to be able to get there.

[2255] And he said, you think about your career, military, academics, you know, referee in fights.

[2256] And he said, you begin to hang around champions enough.

[2257] You start to get that championship mentality.

[2258] And I try to look at it on everything.

[2259] You hang around Herb Dean, Big John McCarthy, all these guys enough.

[2260] That stuff starts to rub off.

[2261] You want your level of proficiency to be that good.

[2262] At Nellis Air Force Base, where, you know, it's the home and a fighter pilot, the best of the best hang out there.

[2263] You begin to increase your level of proficiency.

[2264] You become one of the best in the world.

[2265] You know, you've got to have that.

[2266] Is it cockiness?

[2267] I'd rather call it, you know, confidence.

[2268] yet unassuming.

[2269] You don't want to be too cocky to the point of thinking you're, you know, you're indestructible, but you want to be good enough to be able to declare and know that you're the best in the world.

[2270] And if I achieve something, yeah, I'm satisfied with it, but it's like, okay, what else can I go do now?

[2271] You know, I finish at the Air Force Academy, let's go get a master's.

[2272] Go to pilot training.

[2273] Let's not just go to pilot training.

[2274] Let's finish in the top so I can choose which plane I get, and I chose to get to F -16.

[2275] So here I am this kid from southeast Washington, D .C., that, you know, grew up with my parents taking me down by rigging airport and watching planes take off.

[2276] And then I saw an air show, Thunderbirds, and I said, I think I want to do that one day.

[2277] And here we are years later, I stand out.

[2278] And the greatest accomplishment, the greatest thing I think I've ever had, I was in the gym at the base in Arizona working out one day and I get paged to the front desk.

[2279] I go, what is this about?

[2280] On the phone, it's a four -star general that's in charge of, you know, all of air combat command.

[2281] And he goes, what are you doing six months from now?

[2282] Why don't you come out to Nellis and be one of my thunderbirds?

[2283] I fell on the floor.

[2284] Wow.

[2285] And then my parents were on vacation somewhere, and I called him, and I said, what are you guys doing in about three months?

[2286] I don't know, boy, what's going on with you?

[2287] And I said, why don't y 'all kind of one of my air shows, and I'm a Thunderbird?

[2288] And my parents started crying, you know, to know that that type of dream has come true for all of us.

[2289] And then as we get to do these other things, you know, my parents are in their 80s, and I get them watching UFC fights on Saturdays to, you know, they enjoy and respect the fighters, but also get to see their son, you know, smile about this.

[2290] and I guess I don't smile enough inside the octagon that's what my mom tells me, but you better smile in there, boy.

[2291] That sounds like something the mom would say.

[2292] You just smile more in there.

[2293] You look mean in there.

[2294] Why you look so mean in there?

[2295] I'm serious.

[2296] I'm concentrating on what's going on.

[2297] But man, and you know, like I told you, when I got that message from you about stuff like this is, you know, we believe in the adage of good things happen to good people and, you know, a lot of dreams that keep coming true.

[2298] And I try to impress this upon my children as a single dad.

[2299] And I will tell you, above all else, Anything else I've done, I'm most proud of being a single dad.

[2300] That's beautiful.

[2301] That's beautiful.

[2302] You should be proud of a lot of things that you've done, man. You've accomplished a lot.

[2303] I'm trying.

[2304] I'm trying.

[2305] Keep doing some good things.

[2306] Yeah, no, you certainly have.

[2307] Now, tell me what, like, to be a Thunderbird, when they have those crazy air shows, I mean, there's so much danger and so much, so much coordination between all the jets.

[2308] Like, how long does it take to prepare for one of those shows?

[2309] So the training season is about five to six months.

[2310] Pull up a video of one of them Thunderbird airship because they're so crazy.

[2311] They give me anxiety.

[2312] I was on the team probably doing one of the most unfortunate.

[2313] If you look at the Thunderbird ejection at Mountain Home.

[2314] So do you barely touching.

[2315] Yeah.

[2316] So I think if you do like Thunderbird ejection at Mountain Home in 2003, and everyone has seen, you know, this video.

[2317] This is one of my teammates.

[2318] So I was in the diamond.

[2319] Yeah, that's it right there.

[2320] I was in the diamond, which is the four planes that stay together.

[2321] We had just taken off and we go behind the showline and come back around.

[2322] The two solos, excuse me, the two solos do their take off.

[2323] Ah, ha, you're using an ad blocker?

[2324] That's okay.

[2325] The two solos take off and do their things.

[2326] So this second guy that takes off, he's going to go do a max climb to get out to about 5 ,000 feet and then roll and then do a split -ass back in front and he actually winds up rolling too low and that picture that you see right there is the result of it so he actually crashes right in front of us so that's the video from in there's a little cockpit camera that sits right here that looks at it so he he rolled too low and then he ejected and we're a half a mile away can explain what that means he rolled too low so when he rolls inverted come back the other direction he needs so many thousand feet to be able to make it on the backside of it without impacting the ground so how does he make that incorrect like what what so the f -16 has a radar altimeter on it which tells you you're above ground how many feet you are and let's say on this maneuver he had to be 3 ,000 feet above ground but the antenna is on the bottom of the plane so when you roll inverted the only thing you can look at is your altitude calculation inside the cockpit and there's above ground level and there's mean sea level so you know like like las vegas is you know 2 000 mean sea level whereas washington dc will be like at sea level so you have to make a calculation based on being in mount home he had to add 2 000 feet to his above ground level to be able to read it properly inside the cockpit so it makes it makes it transition to determination of how hard he just had a math problem it was a a miscalculation versus where we practice at home versus where we are stationed at home.

[2327] And when he rolled, he didn't have enough altitude to come around the backside.

[2328] Is this a cockpit camera?

[2329] Yeah, this isn't 4K is pretty cool.

[2330] Yeah, that's gaming, but that's exactly what it looks like.

[2331] Oh, this is not okay, okay, okay, it's way too fake then.

[2332] All right.

[2333] But that's a true depiction of what an F -16 cockpit is going to look like.

[2334] So your air speed will be on one side and your altitude is going to be on the other side.

[2335] Do you use one of these simulation machines and practice in it?

[2336] So at the basis, they have actual simulators that you can get in.

[2337] Does it seem like you're actually, like is it all HD and?

[2338] Yeah, it's high level stuff.

[2339] So it seems like?

[2340] Some of them may not be motion, but this is exactly what they're going on.

[2341] Some of them are motion, though.

[2342] Some of them will sway side to side and the whole deal.

[2343] Oh, wow.

[2344] Yeah, so.

[2345] So you really do feel like you're flying.

[2346] you don't have the three dimensions you know the xyz axis so you don't get that part of it but as far as the you know the ocular stimulation you're going to get all that you're going to see everything that you would actually see and it's more of a a hand -eye coordination so you know athletes tend to do very well when we fly because it's a lot of look outside it's not a lot of looking down at your instruments inside the cockpit with the heads -up displays it's designed to very rarely look inside the cockpit and then your your control stick is going to be on your right hand and then your throttle and everything on your left hand with you know anywhere between five and ten buttons on either one so we used to call it the piccolo drill you know you do all this stuff and you'd have to manipulate doing shooting missiles and turning the gun on and turning your radar and doing all the stuff with so it's like your musical instrument all exactly wow the whole time you're fighting against the g forces and you're looking outside so what's unique about this the solos demonstrate the performance capabilities of the F -16, et cetera.

[2347] The diamond, which I was in, we demonstrate proficiency, close -in flying.

[2348] So in a diamond, we may be doing 450 miles an hour, doing a loop upside down.

[2349] We may be 18 inches apart from each other.

[2350] So our wings are overlapped and then 18 inches apart.

[2351] And the goal is to do everything in unison.

[2352] And in that training program to get used to that, it's a step -by -step process.

[2353] So go out and learn how to fly a loop, get proficient in that, then put another plane.

[2354] next to you we start off at about seven feet apart and then as you get more proficient we go into what's called the diamond position so the closest plane there on the left is a position that i would fly and that's about seven feet apart right there we eventually get to the part where your wings are overlapped and the slot is going to fall down into the slot position in the bottom of the diamond oh fuck that and we get closer your wings are overlapped and you're about 18 inches apart so that's the first solo he may do something like an aileron roll how you know exactly where they are.

[2355] So in the diamond, there are two positions that I would look at to put my plane in the right position.

[2356] So the back of his wing, I would always line up and I would take the front of the missile rail.

[2357] It has United U .S. Air Force painted on the side.

[2358] I put the front of the missile rail on the A in Air Force.

[2359] And then, you know, for two years, my neck would be turned 45 degrees to the right.

[2360] I mean, you can see right there how close you are.

[2361] and everyone is going off of the movements and the cadence of the lead plane and he's saying you know something like you know left turn and the T in turn is when he's starting to move the stick to turn to the left or you know back in with the pull to start pulling back you practice that hundreds and hundreds of times before we ever get out in front of a crowd is there video you doing this uh I don't know if you'll be able to find specifically to me because I mean should we in 69 years of the Thunderbirds doing stuff so you'd have to find it.

[2362] But anything between 2003 and 2005, you know, that team is a team that I was on.

[2363] Is it an important method of recruiting?

[2364] Like, what is the purpose of the air show other than being awesome?

[2365] It's a primary recruiting tool, you know, for us, United States Air Force, we're the spokesperson for the Air Force, Department of Defense, et cetera.

[2366] But it's also instill, you know, faith and confidence in your military.

[2367] It's a little bit different than out there dropping bombs and shooting missiles.

[2368] But it's the, you know, to show the performance capabilities of the men and women in the Air Force, the personnel, as far as the performance capabilities of the equipment that we fly.

[2369] You know, the F -16 is a fourth -generation fighter.

[2370] The best of the best will be the fifth generation plus F -22s, F -35s.

[2371] But us also to have a little bit of fun and go out and do an air show, you know, as fans.

[2372] You're living in life of a rock star.

[2373] I mean, there's no doubt about that.

[2374] The Blue Angels, Thunderbirds, you know, we did shows in Fort Lauderdale, like over spring break, where there, you know, a million plus people out there on the beach.

[2375] Oh, God.

[2376] So, and you know, you imagine you get back on the ground and your picture and everything is in the paper, you may not be able to, you think, you know, UFC fighter is popular.

[2377] It's the same sense.

[2378] You go to a restaurant and you can't even eat because everybody recognizes who you are.

[2379] A million people watch.

[2380] Over spring break in Fort Lauderdale.

[2381] We fly shows over the water.

[2382] You're going to have that many people there.

[2383] So to prepare for that kind of a show, how long do you train?

[2384] So the training, so we practice in Las Vegas.

[2385] at the ranges just up north, and you start basically right after Thanksgiving.

[2386] So the last show of the year is going to be the second week of November.

[2387] They take Thanksgiving off, and then they get cranking from there.

[2388] And from end of November, all the way up until March, Monday through Friday, sometimes on Saturdays.

[2389] You fly two to three times a day every single day.

[2390] So it's about 100, you know, anywhere 120, 150 rides, flights to get you prepared for that.

[2391] Wow.

[2392] And then it's, you start off as a two ship.

[2393] bring in the third plane, bringing the fourth plane.

[2394] So the diamond goes in a desert thing, the solo's going to do their thing.

[2395] When they get proficiency up to like 50 % of the flights, everybody comes back together.

[2396] And the goal is always perfection in an air show.

[2397] We honestly believe we never achieved perfection.

[2398] You know, the crowd may be sitting there loving it and crying out.

[2399] That was incredible.

[2400] You've never seen a debrief to talk about a flight until you watched a Thunderbird or a Blue Angel debrief.

[2401] We could be in there for hours talking about you taxied out and you were, you know, six inches off to the right are you attacking five knots too fast we want perfection you know the way we salute to where your uniform look you can't be fat dumping and sloppy in your thunderbird uniform it was that goal of perfection because you know you as an american citizen want to have faith and confidence in your military and that's one of the greatest tools that we can have to be able to demonstrate that you know it's fun for people to go to air shows we want to recruit we want to have that next generation come in and following our footsteps you know it's all voluntary force so we got to get people to join but we also want you to have a little bit of fun and you know see something amazing when you come to an air show when there's a disaster like the mountain home crash or some other crashes like what is that like what's is there a complete revamping of how things are done like what how much uh you know what what happens so the the first thing is you know we hope and it there's there's video to it out there and audio sometimes you know the first question that came out was did he get out of the jet and that's what scares everybody.

[2402] Our heart sank.

[2403] And you can't see it at first because there's so much smoke and the engine goes flying, you know, down the side of the runway.

[2404] But we would practice for stuff like that in off season.

[2405] You say if you ever eject out of the plane, we wear red show suits so everybody can see you, physically capable if you can stand up, wave to the audience and then take care of yourself.

[2406] And that's exactly what he did.

[2407] Is there a way you can move?

[2408] Like, the horrible thing would be if the plane crashed and then they parachuted down to the fires.

[2409] Can they maneuver the parachute in any way?

[2410] You have drawstrings on it, but so when he ejected there, so when you watched a video inside the cockpit, he's going down like this, and he has his hand on the right stick, and you could see his left hand move three times.

[2411] He's thinking about ejecting.

[2412] Had he ejected first time, he would have gone right into the fireball.

[2413] Second time, he's starting to flat plate the plane a little bit.

[2414] He still would have gone to the fireball.

[2415] So he waited to the perfect time.

[2416] below the ejection envelope.

[2417] It's a zero -zero seat, meaning sitting on the ground, no air speed, I can eject out of it and it's going to give me a parachute.

[2418] He steps on the rudder, which turns the nose of the plane about 10 degrees to the left, because he's over the runway.

[2419] When he ejects, the drogue chute comes out, which slows him down and he separates from the seat, but he does not get a full parachute.

[2420] So you go, how does somebody survive without getting a full parachute?

[2421] Where the drogue chute pulls him out enough.

[2422] Is this him done?

[2423] Yeah, so you can see his hand, see his hand move right there he's actually reaching for the ejection handle and there he ejects and you see him and that's the the camera turns off when he ejects wow but because he stepped on the rudder he's so close he moved a little bit to the left uh he actually misses the runway when he hits the ground he lands on the side where it's it rained you know a day or so before and he uh he lands in some soft dirt right there and that kind of is what saves him but if you're high enough you can grab the strings you can manipulate the parachute but he was not even close to be in high enough right so there was no other way for him to pull out of that he had to go eject yeah he's full aft stick and full power trying to get out of it there's no way he was going to make it he would have missed it i think they did a calculation he missed it by like you know 900 feet a thousand oh my god and they they roll out at the bottom they're at you know the solos are low they're you know 150 feet above the ground when they finished it right here oh i'm scared to watch this even though i know he's okay oh wow he's like right before the around yeah holy shit and this there was a so that picture there was an air force photographer that was on a catwalk of the tower that this one digital cameras start first start coming out he's sitting there click click click getting everything and that's how that that picture now is that good dude get in trouble after something like this uh he was they'll make a determination of cause and you know unfortunately this one it was deemed to be pilot error and he was removed from the team so that was towards the beginning of the show season.

[2424] So it's always six airplanes.

[2425] And they're only six, they're six demonstration pilots.

[2426] There are eight pilots on the team, but one is the narrator and others, the safety officer.

[2427] We don't have any backups.

[2428] So if I wake up Tuesday morning and I got a cold, there's no backup for me. So he got removed from the team.

[2429] And then, you know, unique for us, we finished the season as a five ship.

[2430] So we changed around some of our formations.

[2431] Instead of having a six ship formation, we did five ship formations.

[2432] We had to do some, you know, downtime there in Idaho.

[2433] And then we got a waiver to fly back to Vegas.

[2434] And then we sat for a little bit to they made determination there was not actually something wrong with the plane.

[2435] Because if there's a determination, there's something wrong with the plane, everybody has to be grounded.

[2436] When they determined all that was fine, we started training again and made a transition to a five -ship show.

[2437] And we finished the season as a five -ship.

[2438] And then they hire odds and evens every year.

[2439] So 1 -3 -5 -7 -9 will stay on the team while they hire a 24 -6 -8.

[2440] and that's to keep consistency on the team every year.

[2441] So that next year, when 1 ,35, 7 are done, they'll hire a new 1, 3, 5, 7.

[2442] And now you've got your 2, 4, 6s and 8s that are second year of consistency and will be the instructors for the team.

[2443] Wow.

[2444] But it's, again, at Nellis Air Force Base, a homeowner fighter pilot out in Vegas.

[2445] You've got the best of the best that are out there.

[2446] And, you know, to be a Thunderbird, it's a multi -step process.

[2447] You know, you've got to have great flying capabilities, these letters of recommendation from a lot of people and you've got to look good in uniform, you've got to look fit, you can't be out of shape, and you've got to be, you know, have the nerves to be able to do this.

[2448] It's one thing to go out and fly a fighter plane.

[2449] All the basic maneuvers that we're doing are the same as every Air Force pilot learns, but now you're doing this in tune to music, you know, sitting 18 inches away from another plane, you know, in front of a crowd of however many hundreds of thousands of people.

[2450] And it was fun, though.

[2451] You know, it's high stress.

[2452] You know, my instructor's like, wigger your fingers and wigger your toes because you start to tense up and you do that you're going to relax a little bit but you know my neck was stuck like this for about two and a half years because that's you know they were like oh we're going past Mount Rushmore how did it look and I go it looked like 132 bolts on the left side of Thunderbird 1 because that's all I can see all you can concentrate on yeah how many different jets have you piloted so I started in gliders at the Air Force Academy and then we flew so they teach you how to do it in a plane with no engine?

[2453] Yeah, yeah.

[2454] So you, a tow plane, you're being pulled behind another plane and they take you up to 5 ,000, 10 ,000 feet and you start off on a glider.

[2455] Wow.

[2456] Very capable.

[2457] And then we went to...

[2458] Why do they do that?

[2459] You start with the basics.

[2460] You know, so you, it's a two -seater's, you know, you got the instructor sitting behind you, you know, so it's safe, but you want to start with the basics and learning the concepts of flight, you know, aerodynamics of flight.

[2461] And then from there, you move into, it's a little bit different now, but when I did it, they had a, you know, a single -engine in Cessna.

[2462] And then when I went to Air Force pilot training, we went into a T -37 tweet.

[2463] And then from there, we tracked based upon how well you did.

[2464] So we went fighter -bomber track or tanker transport.

[2465] I went fighter -bomber, so I flew the T -38.

[2466] And that was the first, you know, really sleek, fast training type of airplane.

[2467] How many years into training is this?

[2468] So you do to T -37 for, so at the academy, you flew the glider for, I don't know, 10 rides, and then the T -41 for, you know, 10, 20 rides until you solo.

[2469] You know, they put you in a plane when you're proficient, you go out and solo.

[2470] And then in pilot training, this is a formal, after you graduated ROTC of the Academy, you do six months into T -37, decide what track you go on, and then you do six months into T -38.

[2471] And then I did well enough in the T -38 that I was able to pick.

[2472] I selected F -16s, and then I went to LUCARE Force Base out in Arizona and became proficient in F -16s.

[2473] And then from there, I went to combat squadrons all around the world.

[2474] South Carolina, Korea, you know, back to Arizona, Nellis.

[2475] So I've flown, I think, six different versions of the F -16.

[2476] And then flew to Thunderbirds where they fly F -16s, went away to do the tour at the White House, and then came back and finished up on F -16s again.

[2477] And the tour of the White House, were you Secret Service?

[2478] What were we doing?

[2479] No, so I was actually a White House fellow.

[2480] So in 1964, President Johnson formed a program called the White House Fellowship, whether it's actually the president in the United States will select anywhere between 12 and 15 young Americans doesn't matter military civilian anything to come and serve in their administration and what it is is the highest level mentorship leadership program that you can be a part of in our country and the president places you somewhere in their cabinet to be a senior advisor to like a cabinet secretary or like for me I was a senior white house advisor at NASA so I worked directly for the NASA administrator and you're a you know essentially a senior white house you know advisor or consultant and whatever task that cabinet secretary wants to have from you at NASA and what I did for you know NASA administrator Mike Griffin one of the smartest guys you'll ever meet in your life like he had seven degrees a couple of doctorates in there I was in a lot of capacities his right hand man so he would have me do all the programming for stuff at NASA he would take me on trips with him to Russia you know discussions about the international space station and I prepared a budgetary book for Congress 2007.

[2481] I was presented to Congress to talk about the, you know, the compartmental programs for NASA moving forward.

[2482] With the cancellation of the space shuttle, where is NASA's budget going to go?

[2483] So that was my, you know, kind of summary project for working at NASA for the year.

[2484] And then I got to interact with all the agencies that work with NASA, you know, the International Space Station, working on the Soyuz, going to fly, and essentially getting to see things at that level.

[2485] Now, part two of it was back on the White House side.

[2486] They bring us in a couple days a week, and we'd have, you know, one -on -one private meetings with cabinet secretaries or, you know, chief of staff of the Air Force and folks like that.

[2487] What is that like?

[2488] What's it like just being in the White House?

[2489] How bizarre does that feel?

[2490] So I grew up in Washington, D .C. And you get these tours of the East Wing of the White.

[2491] You know, you can walk through and see all the stuff on the east side.

[2492] But it's surreal to be in the West Wing.

[2493] Because you, they meet outside and, you know, you got to do all the safety protocols and everything.

[2494] And they take.

[2495] you in and you take the elevator up to that like what of the safety protocols they check you for weapons yeah you got to do all that you know you can't you know you can't you know right just all the protection stuff are going in they take you in the elevator and you go up and you're like man this the floor right here and they walk you down the hallway and they open up that door into the oval office and you're like wow god man i've seen this on all the movies i heard it's small um it it it i think it it's not really huge but it depends on how much furniture and stuff that they have in there but i mean i heard it it feels small maybe because it's just so grand the idea of being in the oval office where the president sits it's so crazy but when you're actually in there like oh it's like a regular room yeah it's i mean it's obviously circular um i guess oval in shape and like so i work for president bush i would say the best part of it is that program is a bipartisan position so you don't have to deal with the partisan politics and all the nonsense in dc right but i work for you know president uh george w bush and what a incredible person because your perception is he nice guy?

[2496] What an awesome guy.

[2497] Really?

[2498] You know, outside of, you know, politics, everyone has their opinion there.

[2499] Right.

[2500] But a lot of times, regardless of whatever administration, they only know what we see on, you know, the news media.

[2501] Also, like, 50 % of the country is going to hate you.

[2502] Exactly.

[2503] No matter who you are.

[2504] You know, but as a husband, as a father, you know, how passionate he was about, you know, his incredible spouse and, you know, his children, to see that side of a person.

[2505] And, you know, a lot of stuff we can't disclose just because it's private conversation, and it's nondisclosure, but to see the emotion, you know, of a father talking about his daughters, you know, who are in college and, you know, his hopes and dreams for them, and to be able to really respectfully ask any question, you know, that you want.

[2506] We'd have these sessions, like with the president, we'd meet in the Roosevelt room and the old office, and it's tough as a cabinet secretary to get five, 10, 15 minutes with the president.

[2507] We'd sit in there with him for an hour and a half and talk about stuff, you know, ask, is the country ready for a female president?

[2508] You know, you asked the city.

[2509] What did he think?

[2510] He had people that he looked at leadership that he thought would be candidates for, you know, presidency.

[2511] Like Condoleez -Rice was on, you know, his administration and obviously, you know, Hillary Clinton was there.

[2512] So the level of people that were out there to have these discussions of these are the type of people that we think, regardless of political affiliation that could be looked at for leadership in our country.

[2513] And with us, the people that they select to be in that program, you know, to be future leaders, military, non -military, you know, you're sitting around some of the finest people in the world.

[2514] People that I still talk to and associate with and, you know, have discussions with today.

[2515] So here we are years later that these are still some of my best friends in the world that you talk about goals and dreams and, you know, you think about stepping into politics and stuff like that.

[2516] and, you know, you get some sound advice to these people.

[2517] But I'd already seen and been around the president before because when we did some of the air shows, you know, the president or vice president, someone comes and, you know, they come and speak.

[2518] And we did a show at the Air Force Academy.

[2519] President Bush is there.

[2520] So I got, you know, pictures and stuff with him and, you know, getting to talk to him.

[2521] And it's weird because we have military call signs, you know, like Maverick and Goose.

[2522] My military call sign was Chappie.

[2523] Chappie?

[2524] Chappie, after General Chappie James, the first black four star in the Air Force.

[2525] So we go back and do this White House stuff, and we're at a Christmas party, and there's a formal greeting line to go and meet the President and First Lady.

[2526] And the aide is standing there and he says, you know, Major Mark Smith and he goes, Chappie, come on in, meet the wife.

[2527] And I was like, how the heck did he remember, you know, what my military call sign was?

[2528] but that's the type of personal relationship in that ultra -professional environment that you get.

[2529] So here I'm growing up in southeast Washington, D .C., go away to school, and the proudest moment I think I've ever had is we would get to give tours and stuff with the White House.

[2530] So I get to bring my parents down and give them a tour of the West Wing of the White House.

[2531] So people talk about dreams come true, hard work and stuff like that, man. I've had a life time.

[2532] You've had a wildlife, man?

[2533] It's been good, so.

[2534] And still going.

[2535] I should say it like it's over.

[2536] It didn't mean it that way.

[2537] No, no, we don't want that to happen.

[2538] No, it's amazing.

[2539] I got a lot of stuff I'm still trying to accomplish.

[2540] Now, you were talking about all the various jets that you flew.

[2541] Did you ever, like, fly, did you ever test fly anything?

[2542] Like, how do they, what do they do with, like, when they're testing out new vehicles?

[2543] So we do have test pilots.

[2544] You know, Edwards Air Force Base out there in California does a lot of testing with, you know, current inventory and potential future inventory.

[2545] And then we do have test and evaluate.

[2546] there at Nettless Air Force Base, testing planes and, you know, weapons and stuff like that.

[2547] I never did that.

[2548] I traditionally stayed in combat roles at combat coded squadrons or training, you know, they're like I was an instructor teaching kids how to fly F -16s at Luke Air Force Base.

[2549] The reason why I brought it up is like I've always been curious, like when they develop a new vehicle, they must have to talk to pilots, right?

[2550] I mean, that has to be an integral part of the design of it.

[2551] Like you have to talk to someone who has a, like, you have to talk to someone who has a new vehicle.

[2552] a lot of experience flying a fighter jet like what is missing what what could be done better like how do they do that so as part of the design program uh we have pilots that will be coded as test pilots you know so they may be stationed at edwards that they may be stationed there at nellis air force base that that's their active role you know they look at development of it based on historical platforms you know you go from the f -16 f -15 to the f -22 to the f -35 you get all that kind of input So they're guys that instead of being in a combat coded squadron, they're actually in a test in the evaluation squad and they get to do all that stuff.

[2553] And they go out and test, what are the capabilities of this missile?

[2554] It's not doing exactly what we wanted to do.

[2555] And they take all that feedback to the design folks and like Lockheed Martin or, you know, general dynamics back in the day when they're building stuff.

[2556] Because, you know, for the longest time, the F -15s and the F -16s, for us, that production line was done.

[2557] But you go to St. Louis, and you look on the opposite side of the runway, they're built an F -15s there again.

[2558] And we just announced that the Air Force is going to start buying the next block of F -16s, the block 70s, which is, man, that's a really advanced plane.

[2559] And guys that are active duty, they get to go out and fly that thing and test it.

[2560] Now, when you had, you said the F -22 is the most capable.

[2561] It depends on what it is.

[2562] You know, between the F -22 and the F -35, those are, you know, probably the most.

[2563] What does the F -35 do better than the F -22?

[2564] Command and control.

[2565] So, you know, like maybe communications with other systems.

[2566] The F -22 is by far the air superiority, dogfighting air -to -air.

[2567] It's the most advanced plane in the world.

[2568] So why don't they just make only F -22s?

[2569] Budgetary constraints.

[2570] So the amount that it cost, you know, when the agreement came down to how many we were going to buy, I think it's probably in the hundreds now that we have.

[2571] Congress is going to allocate a certain amount of funds to, okay, you can have this much money to buy this money, F -22s.

[2572] And the more you buy the, you know, per price.

[2573] may go down but because we have a limited amount budgetary wise that's what we stop with and then we got congressional approval for the F -35 and you know their competitions the F -22 versus you know YF -22 back in the day versus the YF -23 which company makes it they're gonna have you know fly -offs and make a determination of which one we're gonna get but so it's only communication that makes the F -35 that the F -35 does better than the F -22 it probably has a lot more than that but I can tell you I've never flown it I have a chance to fly it but advanced avionics, weapons systems, stealth capability, all that stuff is probably encompassed in the package.

[2574] Don't you want to fly one?

[2575] I would, but they're going to have to make some concessions and things to allow me to go back into the Air Force.

[2576] Man, I would feel like someone like you, that would drive me crazy if I never flew one of those things.

[2577] Yeah, but...

[2578] That thing looks insane.

[2579] I'm living in a pretty good life as an airline pilot right now and, you know, MMA referee, so I got a pretty good right now.

[2580] No, you do have a pretty good.

[2581] I'm not saying you don't.

[2582] I'm just saying that at all the jets, like watching that thing maneuver, I didn't know it could do all that.

[2583] Yeah, it's insane.

[2584] It's like, it's not a plane or a helicopter.

[2585] First time I fought against it in an air.

[2586] I was like, I'll sit there.

[2587] I probably got lost for a second.

[2588] Like, is that a plane or a helicopter with some of the stuff that is doing?

[2589] Is there a way to improve upon that?

[2590] I think with there are probably limitations in the capability of the pilot that's flying it.

[2591] You know, like I think the most I've ever played.

[2592] pulled is 10 .3 Gs.

[2593] The plane is designed that...

[2594] 10 .3.

[2595] Yeah, so if you think about the concept of a G, if you're the amount of G that you pull, you take the body weight or whatever it is and multiply at times that.

[2596] So if my hand weighs 10 pounds, I'm pulling, you know, seven Gs, my hand feels like it weighs 70 pounds.

[2597] So as a 200 -pound guy, you pull 9 G's, your body feels like it weighs 1 ,800 pounds.

[2598] And you're trying to maneuver the plane, keep side of the other plane, you know, maybe deploy weapons, control avionics, control your radar and stuff like that as you're doing all that.

[2599] So they're physical limitations of the person that's flying the plane.

[2600] That's why they looked at, you know, pilotless aircraft.

[2601] You know, I think some of the cargo companies have talked about that.

[2602] There's a human element that I believe you always have to have there because of unknown conditions, you know, emergencies and stuff like that.

[2603] They've looked at single pilot, you know, cargo airplanes and stuff like that.

[2604] But I can tell you, when you have emergencies up there, it's nothing like having a person sitting in the sea.

[2605] next year where somebody can handle the emergency while the other person is flying the plane.

[2606] You can't get around that.

[2607] Right.

[2608] But as technology advances, you know, we got drones and stuff that are out there and you may have a pilot or a controller that's on the ground that's controlling a single drone or multiple drones.

[2609] So, yeah, we're probably going to advance to that because the physical limitations of the human body.

[2610] Because watching that thing, the way it just changes direction and shoot straight up in the air, you're like, what is that like on a human body?

[2611] Yeah, you've got to get over the air sickness and the fear of, you know, moving in the third dimension and really combating against the G forces.

[2612] But in a dog fight scenario, you may get maneuvers like that.

[2613] But in a, you know, a long -range fight, you're going to be flying straight and level and maybe shoot a missile.

[2614] You may not do stuff like that.

[2615] But my body eventually got used to it.

[2616] It was tough at first, you know, fighting against, because I'd never experienced anything like that before.

[2617] You get on a roller coaster.

[2618] It's like one or two Gs.

[2619] I'm like, that's nothing.

[2620] Right.

[2621] When you get up to nine, you're like, oh, my God, this is.

[2622] is, you know, sinking down into the scene.

[2623] And you've seen, like, a footage of, they call it the, like, the G chamber where guys go and do their stuff.

[2624] When they spin like that, you can see the physical toll that it has on the body and what it does to you.

[2625] Now you put that up in the air moving in three dimensions while you got the G forces on you.

[2626] Is it complete?

[2627] Do that with you?

[2628] Yeah, you have to go through training for that.

[2629] You know, when I finished pilot training, it's down at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

[2630] You got to do that to be able to go into your file.

[2631] and then once you're done to be able to prove that your combat ready, you've got to go down there and you do that.

[2632] You sit in a seat and you've got to be able to pull nine Gs or whatever it is for a certain amount of time.

[2633] If you don't pass it, see you.

[2634] How much time do you have to do nine Gs for?

[2635] You've got to do like a series of different exercises.

[2636] I think the longest one was off and on anywhere between 30 and 45 seconds.

[2637] They have you looking over the shoulder to do it, to look at a plane back behind you.

[2638] They put a plane out in front of you on the screen and you're like, you've got to stay.

[2639] with him, you've got to keep him in that pocket, which means you've got to pull back on the stick a certain amount.

[2640] Wow.

[2641] And that determines the amount of G that you've got to pull.

[2642] You got on your G suit and everything like that, but if you don't pass it.

[2643] 45 seconds sounds so crazy.

[2644] It's an eternity when you're sitting there in the seat.

[2645] And the weird thing is in the centrifuge, because you're at the end of a pendulum, it doesn't feel the same as it does in a plane.

[2646] And, you know, because the shorter the pendulum, the higher the force is going to feel.

[2647] If you're sitting at the end of a, you know, a 50 -foot pendulum, it's going to feel a little bit different.

[2648] But a shorter of pendulum, it's going to be exponential.

[2649] So guys hate going to the centrifuge.

[2650] Guys and gals hate doing that just because it's so tough one.

[2651] You make it through the centrifuges, there's probably going to be a little bit of party and in a celebration after that.

[2652] Well, listen, man, I appreciate you.

[2653] I respect you tremendously.

[2654] You're a great referee and your accomplishments are incredible.

[2655] And it was fun talking about.

[2656] Thank you, Joe.

[2657] I appreciate you.

[2658] I'll see you in like two weeks, right?

[2659] Which one are you coming back for?

[2660] You coming on a six or the 13th?

[2661] I'm there for the three.

[2662] I think I'm there for both of them, but I'm there for the 13th for sure.

[2663] Absolutely.

[2664] I'll be there all months.

[2665] All right.

[2666] Just a little incredible opportunity.

[2667] Thank you very much.

[2668] I appreciate you.

[2669] Bye, everybody.