#1598 - Mark "The Undertaker" Calaway

[0] Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

[1] The Joe Rogan Experience.

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

[3] WWE royalty, ladies and gentlemen, the Undertaker and the biggest fucking wrestling fan on planet Earth.

[4] Like I was saying before the podcast, if I did not bring Tony Hinchcliff on this podcast, I would have never heard the end of it.

[5] No one loves you more than that, man. Like, being right next to you right now is probably he's tingling.

[6] He's tingling a little bit.

[7] It might be lactating.

[8] This is the highlight of my life.

[9] Oh, I don't know if I'm happy or sad about that, really.

[10] But, hey, man, thanks for coming on here.

[11] I really appreciate it.

[12] No, thanks for having me, man. Yeah, it's an honor, really.

[13] Oh, my pleasure.

[14] Honor to have you.

[15] So what is it like being in Austin, Texas right now?

[16] Are you enjoying it here?

[17] You're from this area, right?

[18] Yeah, well, I'm from Houston.

[19] Right.

[20] But I've been here since about 04.

[21] You know, it's crazy, man. We've got this influx of people from California right now.

[22] I know.

[23] We're trying not to fuck it up.

[24] What should we do?

[25] Tell us what to do.

[26] You know, it's fine.

[27] Bring the money.

[28] Leave the values.

[29] We'll all be good.

[30] What values do we need to leave behind specifically?

[31] Well, fuck, everything that fucked up California.

[32] I think that's the government, man. No, it really.

[33] Well, the government gets voted in, though, right?

[34] Yeah, but I don't think we expected them to do that.

[35] Exactly.

[36] Yeah.

[37] No one expected them to shut down all the restaurants and shut down all the gems.

[38] And now that studies have come out.

[39] There was a new study that came out.

[40] It was in fucking Newsweek.

[41] I'm hoping that when Biden comes in, they're going to go, well, you know, that lockdowns are not really good.

[42] It doesn't really help.

[43] Give people freedom and let them do.

[44] I'm hoping that this is a political thing, which is a terrible thing to hope for, that this is political.

[45] That's where we're at, though.

[46] Yeah, but that's where we're at.

[47] I'm hoping that it was all political and that they'll adjust once by us and opposites.

[48] Yeah, I hope so too.

[49] It's been nuts, man. It's crazy.

[50] What do you believe, too?

[51] Right?

[52] Exactly.

[53] You hear this?

[54] You hear that?

[55] Like, my buddy, Brendan Schaub just went down to the comedy store the other day.

[56] He rode his bike down there.

[57] He said, dude, it's like the fucking Walking Dead.

[58] He said Sunset is just a zombie land.

[59] Yeah, it's crazy.

[60] Tents and shit and weirdos and no business is open and everything's just amazing how quick things can fall apart.

[61] Quick.

[62] Like that.

[63] Like that?

[64] Everything changes.

[65] And the sunset strips extra sad because all the neon lights and everything is what kept it.

[66] When those things are shut off, it's as dark as it gets.

[67] Like even the comedy store, it's just a black building with a bunch of red and white neons around it.

[68] But if those neon's are off, it is just, it looks like nothing's there.

[69] You've got to wonder what's, what's going to happen when everything comes back.

[70] Like, how long is it going to take for things to bounce back?

[71] It could take five years.

[72] Yeah, or it could take that or just everybody lose their freaking mind and, you know, just go absolutely apeshit because they've been cooped up for so long.

[73] We can do what?

[74] We're good.

[75] Let's party.

[76] Let's go.

[77] So what have you been doing, man?

[78] What have you been doing with your life post wrestling?

[79] Yeah.

[80] So trying to figure out.

[81] what's next really uh you know i've done this for 33 years altogether 30 crazy yeah i mean it's just one of those deals like you're walking around like you're okay though like a lot of the guys that hit 30 years man you know like i hung out with iron chic one night oh it's that poor guy yeah he's uh very entertaining hilarious is great hilarious i love shiki uh but you're right you know he can't you know his ankles fused he can't walk and uh you know i've already got both my hips uh you know birmingham resurfaced job so i'm you know my hips are metal uh this is incredible that they can do that now oh it well it added 10 years to my career you know oh so you did it and then kept going so i did the first one i did the left one in 2010 wow i was i mean it looked like you know, they filmed the whole thing for me and, you know, my hip joint, the ball socket looked like a landmine had gone off on it.

[82] I mean, it was just potholes and I had spurs and arthritis.

[83] It was filled it up.

[84] And they'd only been doing them for about 10 years at that point.

[85] So they didn't have a whole lot of, you know, scientific study on how long these were going to last.

[86] And then no one had put, you know, was going to put it to the test like I did.

[87] Right.

[88] You know, especially with the amount of weight you're carrying around and then picking people up and slamming them and getting slammed and just all that, all that jarring.

[89] So Dr. Sue out of the hospital for special surgeries, he was just phenomenal.

[90] And he was so gung -ho because, like, you know, that was his baby.

[91] And, you know, he knew what I was going to do.

[92] And he's like, no one's put that kind of test on it.

[93] We're going to see.

[94] And I was like, yeah, we're going to see.

[95] see.

[96] And it's held up.

[97] I've been, I was in pain easily 12 years, every step of every day, you know, it was just, you know, had that searing down the leg pain.

[98] And you just dealt with it.

[99] He just dealt with it.

[100] You know, it was, it's part of the game.

[101] And, you know, I just, thankfully, I've got a high threshold, you know, for pain.

[102] And, but you know, people that are in chronic pain all the time and you live with it.

[103] You don't even realize the drag it is on you.

[104] I mean, you get used to it, but you don't know how much until it's gone.

[105] And when I woke up from surgery and I'm pain free, it was like, this is a whole new lease on life.

[106] Remotivated me to do, you know, things.

[107] Right away you were paying free?

[108] As soon as I woke up.

[109] Wow.

[110] How's that possible?

[111] Don't they have a saw the top of your knee?

[112] No. So here's what they do.

[113] And I wish I'd have brought it with me. But we're trying to pack our house up and move.

[114] but so they take the head of the femur all right the top of the leg bone they go in there first and they and they clean everything off of it they get all the arthritis they shave all that off they kind of bore it and clean it as good as they can clean it then they drill a hole in it and the head of your femur and then they take a titanium cap and they stick over stick over the head of the femur Jamie could probably find it if you know the exact model it's called yeah there it is right there that's it james on the motherfucker boom well it's that's money right there pull that up like that birmingham hip follow -up so that is uh what yours looks like so the thing yeah so the thing with the stem on the right side there that goes right into the head of the femur and then the porous piece of metal that goes over the top of it goes into the uh acetabulum and no restrictions wow no restrictions Yeah, I had to walk.

[115] I was walking.

[116] So on the left is the old way to do it, right?

[117] So they see A and B over there on the right hand side?

[118] Yeah, and they still do it that way.

[119] And if I, and if I screw these up, I can still have the total hip where they'll go in there, cut the femur off.

[120] What would be the benefit of doing that, though?

[121] Well, at the time, if I had had done the full hip replacement, then I would have been finished.

[122] Right.

[123] Yeah, because it just couldn't have took the trauma that I put it through.

[124] Right.

[125] but the the resurfacing that way I have absolutely no restrictions wow yeah so you have no pain now how long is this supposed to last like that don't they say that you might have to get another one of these or do something with it eventually eventually they don't know like I said when I did the first one they'd only been doing them for about 10 years and no one uh you know no one had gotten a wrestling ring and had thrown around 270 days a year on it to either.

[126] You know, I mean, it's just...

[127] Well, think about cars, right?

[128] You can get like a 95 land cruiser with 300 ,000 miles on it, easy, and they're driving fine, like, and those pistons are just going, and maybe it can just keep going.

[129] Yeah, no warranty.

[130] Yeah, I'm sure.

[131] There's no warranty, but I, you know, I just, I keep holding off and they get, medicine keeps getting better and better.

[132] Yeah.

[133] No, it'll definitely continue to get better.

[134] I mean, it's just incredible that you can do that and then still wrestle.

[135] Yeah.

[136] And then what I did the other one, I did the other one maybe five years later.

[137] Same thing?

[138] Yeah, same thing.

[139] The only thing then is I kind of had to learn how to walk again.

[140] I mean, I could walk, but I had to, my gate was so screwed up.

[141] From, from dragging, you know, from dragging the leg and everything.

[142] So I had to, what they had me do is weird, strange enough, and start walking backwards.

[143] Huh.

[144] to on a treadmill to correct my gate yeah because I weird because you know you you compensate when you have an injury right you know you start to compensate and do things differently so I walk differently to kind of alleviate the pain or so once I had no pain I still had the I still had the habits of walking that way so I had to retrain my brain and my body to walk correctly again so the left hip was the one that was really bothering you for the longest time and the right hip was bothering you less is that what it was yeah i didn't really have it was kind of weird how it happened like my left hip was bad for years and years i finally you know i said oh god i'm gonna call it a day and uh my normal my normal orthopedic surgeon he says you know i said okay doc i'm gonna call it a day and he's a shit mark you should have called it a day five years ago he said you got more out of that hip than what anybody ever should have and uh i was like well and uh so you know i'd come to grips with you know my career was going to be over and so i cut my hair off you know i'd say oh shit i'm not going to need this long shit anymore so i cut my hair off and you know i'm kind of sitting at home phone rings it's only about two or three days later right and uh dr bird he's out of nashville awesome awesome doctor he's probably the leading doctor and hip preservation like taking your natural hip as far as you can go, just really good.

[145] What does he do for that?

[146] You know, he'll go in orthoscopically, clean, clean the bone off, clean the spurs out, clean, you know, he just, anytime there's, you know, what starts to happen is you start getting that arthritis and then the spurs and it just, what happens is every time that you're walking, it's just chewing that up.

[147] So he goes in there and he's, he's, he's actually, designed his own instruments, you know, that he uses to go in there and orthoscopically clean these, uh, these, uh, these hips joints out.

[148] So he calls you.

[149] So he calls me and he goes, hey, I might have another option for you.

[150] And I'm like, fuck, I already shaved my head.

[151] He goes, there's this, there's this doctor in New York that's doing this thing called the, uh, the Birmingham hip resurface.

[152] He says, it may give you an opportunity to make a, a decision that you want to make.

[153] instead of having it made for you i was like oh shit okay so i go to new york and and i meet you know with dr sue and he goes he goes yeah he goes i think you're a you're a perfect candidate you know your bone density is really great and he says i think i think you'll do good with it right so i'm like well fuck let's let's go for it right i got nothing to lose at that point and uh i wake up i'm pain free and i'm like holy shit like i'm walking that day that day yeah and it's just like No crutches, no nothing?

[154] I started out on crutches because I had, you know, for a while I had an epidural in.

[155] So, you know, when I first tried to get up, it was funny, they bring in two male nurses, right?

[156] You know, I'm three and some change at the time, right?

[157] So, and I've never had any, you know, kind of side effects, but I guess I got up and, well, God, it's like, oh, wham.

[158] Did they catch you?

[159] They got me. They got, I landed on the bed.

[160] So, you know, the last thing I remember is getting up to go take this walk, and the next thing, you know, I'm laying.

[161] in bed and my wife's looking at me like you okay i was like what you you passed out i was like shut up i didn't pass out yeah they got you up to walk and you passed out wow i was like got it holy shit yeah i was so you know i was so looped up i i was fine i feel good i'm just so happy that they could do that for you that they could resurface both them when you're walking i mean because you walk you would never know yeah it's it is crazy i feel i'm really blessed you know now you know now if I could obviously I'd still be I'd still be going full steam ahead but I just physically can't I can't perform at the level you know and that's the thing with you know with when you use your body for you know athletic purpose yeah you know at some point it's going to say enough's enough John Wayne Parr he's a Muay champion out of Australia you know John Wayne Pai he has over a hundred fights he's like he was trying to get a hundred wins but they robbed him on his last decision is on his 100th win but he just got his hip redone and he's throwing kicks again.

[162] It's great because I thought like he was saying that he needed to get his hip done I'm like well you know I guess the career is over if you get a hip replacement but he got a resurfacing very similar to yours I don't know if it's the exact same one but he's like a couple of weeks later he was like throwing kicks in the air and a couple months later he's this is him like right post operation but if you go to his Instagram Jamie like right now Like, if you can see some video of him, what is that one?

[163] Is he running?

[164] Yeah, I mean, this is crazy.

[165] You can run?

[166] Yeah.

[167] I mean, he was fucked.

[168] He was in pain for a long time.

[169] I mean, that's just nuts to see him being able to do that.

[170] See if there's a video of him throwing kicks.

[171] Hey, you got a float tank, too.

[172] Someone hooked him up with a float tank.

[173] Nice.

[174] Yeah, there he is right there.

[175] I mean, this is only a couple.

[176] Oh, this is like a parody of a John called Van Damme, kickboxer.

[177] He's being sick.

[178] John's a funny dude.

[179] he's always fucking around but there's videos of him get out of this one it is eventually but it's gonna take too long but keep scrolling down there's a video of him throwing kicks no no like scroll down right there that's it exactly so this is I think this is three months post surgery and he can throw kicks so he's got someone holding the pads for him which is just yeah it's insane and that's that leg that leg he's thrown right there that was the one that he's so much yeah and there's so much pressure when he said and John's in his 40s but he's a fucking savage to the end yeah it's crazy it's crazy man modern medicine it's phenomenal man it really is and from the fans perspective you know they don't tell you when these guys are getting surgery and things like that you know what I mean and so what did you think happened well we don't what do you mean No, we don't know when they're getting surgery.

[180] So my point is, is like, for example, you know, you're watching The Undertaker, right, who's already been doing it years longer than all of his peers and all that.

[181] And maybe you could tell that matches not necessarily are different or slower, but they're just, they are.

[182] They're different than obviously headlining an hour -long WrestleMania match, right?

[183] I think you just diss me. I'm not sure.

[184] No. I think you did.

[185] I felt it.

[186] You felt that, right?

[187] I didn't like it.

[188] But the return on that is that people say, like, oh, this.

[189] must be it this must work coming towards the end of the undertaker right he's it's different than it's always been and then he would come back from one of these hip surgeries and it would literally add to the mystique of the undertaker because all of a sudden he's faster stronger right yeah yeah for a while there that was the yeah that was the template i would uh you know i would at the end of my career i had to kind of almost like a fighter you know when a fighter goes into camp you know because i would get ready for like one event for years like i had an eight -year stretch where i average 270 dates a year that's what a lot of people don't they don't they don't get that part of what we do the live events town to town flying everywhere that is bananas yeah easily easily eight years 278s with at the beginning of my career in the early 90s with w on the weekends we'd have two shows a day yeah yeah oh my god So, you know.

[190] Who works harder than pro wrestlers?

[191] I know.

[192] Like literally.

[193] Honestly, I, you know, I mean, obviously I'm biased, but a lot of people really, they don't get that.

[194] Because they see Monday nights or they see the Friday night show.

[195] And they don't know that we're doing live events, you know.

[196] And when I came up in the early 90s, we only did TV like every three weeks.

[197] We would tape three weeks of TV.

[198] And the rest of that time, we're on the road.

[199] And it'd be like they're throwing darts.

[200] like one day i'd be in new york the next day i'd be in denver then i'd be in miami then i'd be in toronto then i'd be in l a i'd be in dallas you must have been in a constant state of jet lag oh well i say fucked up really honestly i mean we all you know we had a motto we'll sleep when we're dead right because i mean i was just you're young you know when you're young you got that kind of energy and you can do all that and you know you're you're going out and you're enjoying your nightlife too but well no wonder why so many guys have a problem with pills too because you're in a constant state of pain absolutely yeah things have progressed in our industry so much like we are on the same standards now of major league baseball and in the football i mean our drug testing programs uh wellness programs concussions i mean we are probably in some cases even you know better why would they test you for drugs why yeah well so one well prescription drugs right you know just see if you got a problem they started out early on you know you know so we're talking 90s right so they didn't want people getting popped with you know getting pulled over and cops finding weed in the car right whatnot so that would be a fine you'd get fined a little bit this time the second time you get fined a little more the third time you get fined and maybe have to go you know rehab but I think what they kind of figured out was I still I think they still do, but they didn't realize when they took that away, what are you going to do?

[201] You're going to drink more, and then you're going to take more pills.

[202] Because you've got to cope with, you've got to cope with the pain somehow.

[203] And so then you've got guys overdosing, right?

[204] So everything's kind of led up to this drug protocol now.

[205] We have, I mean, we're talking about we didn't have doctors with us at the time.

[206] We didn't even have trainers with us back then.

[207] Now we travel with trainers, doctors, you know, there's all kind of protocols.

[208] You get your head, you know, you get a dinger used to.

[209] It was like, okay, well, fine.

[210] You know, I got to go make a living.

[211] Right.

[212] You know, and the same with injuries.

[213] Like, you don't work, you don't get paid.

[214] Right.

[215] So, you know, in that sense, our industry has come a long way.

[216] They really take good care of the athletes now.

[217] When you think of drug tests, people think about steroids.

[218] Yeah.

[219] It's, you know, which is, if I was Vince, I would tell people, like, I want to make sure you're on steroids.

[220] I'd be, like, testing everybody.

[221] Well, we've had it a few different.

[222] We've had a few different.

[223] Why are you not on steroids?

[224] You're a pro wrestler.

[225] Come on, bro.

[226] You would think, right?

[227] Yeah.

[228] And, you know, there was a time where everybody had to be, like.

[229] You had to be clean?

[230] No, you had to be, you had to be big.

[231] You had to be jacked, right?

[232] Yeah.

[233] And especially the guys, you know, the six foot eight, the big guys.

[234] There was the stigma.

[235] You got to be 300 pounds.

[236] Right.

[237] It's in our head.

[238] You know, he gives a shit.

[239] They're interested in the characters and what you do on TV.

[240] But in our heads, like, fuck, I got to be 330 pounds.

[241] They're interested a little bit.

[242] But if a guy like Brock Lesnar comes out and he looks skinny, people would be furious.

[243] Yeah.

[244] Even the guys that weren't huge had to do it to stay medium.

[245] You know what I mean?

[246] Like, I was friends with Roddy Piper.

[247] Right.

[248] And he was telling me about it.

[249] And he's like, well, yeah, I mean, you.

[250] Yeah, to even keep, to even stay.

[251] stay in the middle to stay in the game you had to be on steroids that was that was the wrestler's mindset though now that we're tested for everything they test for steroids they test for steroids they have for a while really yeah and which i don't understand because there's some big motherfuckers out there and cut and i don't know how they did it i couldn't get that way when i was on steroids like who's the biggest guy in the w w u .meree right now uh i'm going to pull up a picture ron stroman passes the sniff test Yeah.

[252] Braun, I think he's about my height.

[253] He used to be a power lifter.

[254] Let me see.

[255] Here you go, Jamie.

[256] Oh, Jesus.

[257] So, yeah, he's 300.

[258] Come on, son.

[259] 30 pounds.

[260] Look.

[261] Are we trying to say that that guy doesn't do any steroids in all?

[262] Hey, I'm just telling you.

[263] This is preposterous.

[264] This is what.

[265] They test them.

[266] They test them.

[267] And then they give him a grade A. Good job.

[268] I'm just saying.

[269] Look, I can only I can only say what what I've had to go through.

[270] I mean, it's positive.

[271] It's possible, right?

[272] It has to be because I'm telling you.

[273] So, when I, before I switch my contracts and, you know, now I'm not a talent is, you know, now I'm a legend, I guess, or whatever they call it.

[274] You know, I'd only work two or three times a year.

[275] This is at the end of my career.

[276] But I was still under a regular contract.

[277] So under a regular contract, you have to, this is if you've tested clean, you have to have four mandatory test, four mandatory piss test and two blood tests every year.

[278] Well, they'd get to the end of the year, like it'd be December, right, going into Christmas and I'd get a call.

[279] Like, you need to go to this such and such lab and do a piss test.

[280] And I hadn't been in a ring in six, seven months, but they would look at their book.

[281] Oh, shit, we forgot about him.

[282] and it's under, you know, you've got to have, you've got to have those piss tests done.

[283] So then, okay, well, that's only three.

[284] Sure enough.

[285] Next day, I get another phone call.

[286] Go back to the lab.

[287] So, you know, they, they test, I'd have to go two days in a row to get tested to make sure that I had everything that I was supposed to have.

[288] Maybe that's how they do it.

[289] Maybe they bang all their tests out early in the year.

[290] Well, no. Four days in a row and then just two steroids are to be right.

[291] No, they're totally random.

[292] They just show up.

[293] The drug testing, you never know when they're going to show up.

[294] I was home.

[295] That's why I didn't get tested until the very end.

[296] I just don't understand why they would test.

[297] I mean, that's like testing the rock.

[298] Like if he's doing a movie, want to make sure you're not on steroids.

[299] They'd be like, what?

[300] Well, so, you know, obviously, you know, we've had some dark, we've had some dark shit that.

[301] Come on, son.

[302] I'm just saying, brother.

[303] Come on.

[304] Well, he has the beef king.

[305] Come on, look the size of that fucker.

[306] He used to be a lot thicker.

[307] Yeah, he was 400 pounds at one time.

[308] And he's my height.

[309] it's possible it's possible to be that like it's not bodybuilding size right bodybuilding size is impossible yeah that's not possible yeah if you look at Ronnie Coleman in his prime not possible not possible but that guy maybe some Viking DNA in there I don't know giant fucking dude maybe I know what the you know I know what the protocol is and I know like if anybody was going to get out of it it would have been me right and I didn't get out of it so I'm just saying Did they test Vince?

[310] Look, I don't I don't know.

[311] Like, I don't, hey, I wish whatever he's on, I wish I was on.

[312] You know.

[313] Look at that guy.

[314] Yeah, he's 85.

[315] That's all he does.

[316] He's 70.

[317] He's 75.

[318] Come on.

[319] Who the fuck has traps like that when they're 75?

[320] Like, if you didn't know that was his traps, you would say he's going to die.

[321] He has a tumor.

[322] He's got a tumor on his back.

[323] Who's size of them?

[324] man let me tell you though that guy that's what he does that's his animal that's his love is working out who the fuck has ever been that big at that age ever he's phenomenal man he's how old is he's 75 he's older than my mom i'm gonna send my mom a picture him and go i don't want to hear any excuse his mother get it together his mom no excuses mom his mom is 99 his mom's 99 it was still playing tennis in her 90s wow Jesus Christ I mean, he's just got some, he's got some, that's his trainer there.

[325] Wow.

[326] He's shooting him in the back right now, it's towards.

[327] As he's lifting.

[328] It's just all day long.

[329] Just keep hitting him.

[330] He's the one guy that'll call.

[331] He'll call me out of the clear blues.

[332] Hey, you work out today?

[333] Wow.

[334] I'm like, no, boss, I didn't.

[335] What's wrong?

[336] I don't feel like it.

[337] He's like, well, you need your ass in a gym.

[338] It's amazing his enthusiasm after all these.

[339] Look at that picture one says related images right below that with him screaming.

[340] Go to that one.

[341] amazing enthusiasm after all these years in the game it really is pretty incredible you know he is a he is a workhorse his company and working out that's kind of crazy that's that's his love man and that's his passion that's what causes success i mean it really is it's a consistency but look at him there he looks like he's about 30 probably look at him on the right he's a hundred and fifty years old and still jacked It's crazy.

[342] I love it.

[343] I love people like that.

[344] I do, too.

[345] I wish I had a little bit of it right now.

[346] Well, he's been lifting weights and occasionally wrestling.

[347] Yeah.

[348] You've been wrestling.

[349] Well, what year did you start?

[350] I started training in 86.

[351] Wow.

[352] Had my first match in 87.

[353] Dude, I was just out of high school.

[354] I mean, we don't need to know everything.

[355] That is crazy.

[356] Yeah, it's been a long time.

[357] That's crazy.

[358] And, you know, it was tough for me. Like, I didn't have.

[359] I didn't have a, I'm not a legacy, I didn't have anybody in the business.

[360] I didn't know anybody in the business.

[361] And, like, so, you know, usually you need somebody to open that door for you, right?

[362] So when, in 86, were you thinking, like, I've got to figure out a way how to do this?

[363] And you just started, did you, how did you start taking, like, classes?

[364] Like, how did you?

[365] So I was, I was in college.

[366] I was a basketball player, right?

[367] And my coach tells me, hey, Mark, there's, there's some European scouts.

[368] that are that are interested in you you know maybe after you know next year you know they may want to give you a tryout european pro basketball right but they all say they want to get you you know they'd like for you to be a little bigger because of the style they played back then okay so i start lifting weights trying you know i'm six foot eight two 30 240 which is in in the 80s is huge for a basketball player but still so i start training european league were they just more physical yeah yeah that you know it was like uh Rick Mahorn and and Bill Lambere you know on the gas they were just monsters and so I start training and I'm trying to you know put on size and strength and I met this guy in the gym who was like every day I'd come in he goes hey he goes man I'm gonna I'm gonna go and I'm gonna I'm gonna get in this wrestling I want you do wrestling with me and I was a big wrestling fan as a kid but as I got into you know, basketball and football and everything else.

[369] I kind of, you know, I kind of drifted away.

[370] Yeah, and I was just like, man, I think I'm going to go try to play some pro ball in Europe.

[371] And he goes, man, you should really try and do this with me, you know.

[372] So I kind of started getting in touch with the product again.

[373] You know, I kind of start watching again and, you know, I got no clue.

[374] I think, you know, you know, kind of get, I fall back into it again, right?

[375] I like, oh, that's kind of cool.

[376] That's different.

[377] And I think one of the things, things that's helped me through my career is, is being a realist in what my talents are and what my talents aren't.

[378] And, you know, I was like, you know, I kind of started having these conversations with myself, like, even if you do make a team, you know, I mean, how long do you really have?

[379] Right.

[380] And being 21 and sitting on the end of the bench in Lithuania just really didn't, wasn't that appealing of a, you know, I'm trying to weigh it up against what I'm seeing on TV, right?

[381] And I'm like, you know, I'm like, because you got DeFon Erickson, you got Hogan.

[382] I'm like, well, shit, these guys are huge household names, you know.

[383] So I'm thinking, maybe I ought to give it a try.

[384] So we find this guy by the name of Buzz Sawyer to train us, right?

[385] And I got to come up with two grand.

[386] And I ain't got a pot or a window to throw it out of, right?

[387] So I get my brother, my oldest brother to co -sign a loan, hock everything I own, and come up with two grand.

[388] to pay Buzz Sawyer to train me to wrestle.

[389] Show up to his house, first morning of training, right?

[390] Buzz was a, he was a good amateur, really good amateur.

[391] And show up at his house, knocking on the door, knocking on, there's about 10 of us standing out in the fucking front yard, knocking on the door, finally, fucking door swings open.

[392] What the fuck you want, right?

[393] He's saying her butt -ass naked.

[394] Wook him up out of a day.

[395] He's just standing there naked.

[396] And everybody's like, uh, we're here to train.

[397] And he goes, oh, fuck, is that today?

[398] Yeah, you know.

[399] And so he gets another guy that was staying there with him.

[400] His name was Perry Jackson, who I'm friends with to this day.

[401] He says, go out there and warm him up, right?

[402] So he goes out there and we run and do all just, I mean, everything they can do to blow us up and run us off, right?

[403] totally gassed out about two hours just nothing but cardio shit right finally buzz comes out all right everybody line up you know all right everybody get down amateur position right so you know everybody gets down fucking he just stretches the shit out of everybody right right cross -faced just fucking you know chicken wing and just just hooking everybody and rolling him around in the in his front yard right that was it right then he goes in the house so y 'all come back you know a couple other days so this goes on for weeks and like every time i show up there's like one less guy that shows up they just like fucking until i was the last one there so i'm the last one there i knock on the door knock on the door he never answers right so i start peering in the windows fucking all the furniture's gone everything's gone he's gone he's gone to a different territory to work he just left right never never learned any pro wrestling he just teaching your wrestling he was just teaching me yeah obviously he we signed up for you know to teach us out of pro wrestling but he just came out there and his whole goal and this is the way it was back then is they always tried to take your money and then they try to run you off you know most of those guys in that era were all shooters you know they were all you know they were all good amateurs right and that was what they would do they would take your money then they'd hurt you twist you hurt you know try and get you to quit and they got your money and they're you know they didn't have to worry about there's some wrestling trainers that were famous for like crazy physical training standards before they ever taught you anything like Carl Gotts oh yeah you know who Carl Gotts is Carl Gotch who is uh not just a wrestler but one of the he's like one of the legends of catch wrestling catch wrestling is like uh so it's a lot like submission wrestling that you see in the u in the ufc or in jiu jitsu but it's a very like wrestling oriented so instead like whereas jiu jitsu maybe would be i don't want to say it's less technical but it's more violent like it's a lot of snapping people down and cross -facing and guillotines and there's still a lot of like um sakarabo was like one of the legends of mama learned from another catch wrestler in Japan and a lot of guys who like Josh Barnett is another one who's a big catch wrestling enthusiast his style is all and he you know he submitted a lot of like really elite guys but Carl Gatch was famous for making you had to you had to be able to do crazy shit like I think you had to do a thousand body weight squats you had to be able to like you had to do all these things before you even teach you anything like you had to be fucking tip top Magoo before you would ever get into those ropes.

[404] Yeah, absolutely.

[405] And that was, the whole goal was to run you off.

[406] You know, weed out the week.

[407] Read out the week.

[408] Yeah.

[409] And then if you went through all of that and you were still there, okay, well, this kid, you know, let's see what he, you know, let's see if we can teach him how to do this.

[410] But there was that big weed out process.

[411] And that was, yeah, I think Buzz's whole deal, his whole deal was a scam from the start.

[412] Yeah.

[413] I mean, you know, he, he wanted the money and he knew, you know, what he, you know, back then we had territories before Vince kind of, you know, took it nationwide, you know, Texas had a territory.

[414] California had a couple of territories, Oregon, you know, and guys just went from...

[415] $2 ,000 in 86, there's a lot of fucking money.

[416] That's a lot of money for a kid in college on, you know, on a scholarship.

[417] I didn't have shit.

[418] I sold everything I owned, you know.

[419] So you're fucked.

[420] How do you go from there?

[421] So, you know, I lived in my car for a little bit, you know, bounced in bars, collected a little money here and there.

[422] I just did whatever I could just to keep eating and keep training and did what I did what I could.

[423] And I knew, so the Von Erick's ran Dallas.

[424] That was their, that was their hub, world class championship wrestling.

[425] And I knew that they were in the office on Wednesday, like they would come in there and book the cards and the guys would come in, get their paychecks and shit on Wednesday.

[426] So every Wednesday for about eight months, I would go down there and I'd set in the lobby.

[427] and fucking guys would come right walk right by me not even not even acknowledged my presence every wednesday every wednesday for eight months i went and just sat there and eight months did you ask to speak to anybody yeah so there was there was a referee back there his name was bronco lubits who's the only one that would speak to me right and it would be kind of like you're here again huh kid i was like yes sir mr lubich i was you know hoping may i get a chance to talk somebody today all right well just good luck you know And then I would sit there and, you know, I'd walk by and try like, you know, as somebody would come through, you know, I'd kind of start to stand.

[428] Fuck, they ever stopped.

[429] Just, it just blew me, blew right by me. One day, like, I was right at the end of my ride.

[430] I was like, fuck, this is not, I'm not getting anywhere here.

[431] And Fritz von Erick, you know, the patriarch of the family, right?

[432] The guy that owned the company came in.

[433] And he walked in and he stopped.

[434] And he looked at me. Like, and I started to, you know, once again, I started to get up, you know, and introduced myself.

[435] And he turned around and went into Bronco's office.

[436] And he had a deep, gravelly voice and I could hear him.

[437] And he's like, he's like, who's that kid out there?

[438] And he's, ah, he's been coming here for months.

[439] He's just trying to get booked.

[440] And I heard Fritz go, book him, book him Friday night.

[441] I want to see what he can do.

[442] He looks just like David, one of his sons that he had lost.

[443] I looked I looked a lot like David and that's how I got my first break because I was in the right you know I was in the right place at the right time so had you ever practiced no I was practicing I mean yeah I mean I was but I'd never had a I'd never had like a real match right I mean I'm just you know every little outlaw independent kind of deal that I could get I was doing but I hadn't worked with top guys or you know when you say like outlaw independent like you So you were doing some matches?

[444] I was doing some matches, but not professional, like not televised, not for a real company.

[445] Right.

[446] It's just like some jackass, like, okay, I'm a wrestling promoter.

[447] I'm going to go to the Knights of Columbus Hall and see if I can put 20 people in here.

[448] You know, that's the kind of shit you would do.

[449] And then you have to go for no money.

[450] And then, you know, you'd set up the ring, whatever you had to do.

[451] But the wrestling, the time in the ring was what was so valuable at that point.

[452] is getting those reps and getting that stuff so and then so they booked me and I don't know you've heard of Bruce of Brody yes yes tough guy in anybody's standards back then especially is my first match right so now I'm a pretty respectful guy and I'm sure in any industry you know even when you know a new comic you pay respect to the older guy.

[453] I mean, it's just the way it should be and the way it really was back then, especially, you know, in our business, you know, you didn't say much and you spoke, when spoken to kind of deal.

[454] And so I'm, Bruiser Brody's my first professional match, right?

[455] Wow.

[456] I don't know, I'm 20, 21, maybe.

[457] And I'm, you know, I'm in the ring and I'm looking at him.

[458] I'm like, fuck, I'm bigger than he is.

[459] this is the shit that's going on in my head right now i'm so nervous like you couldn't have drove a nail up my ass with a sledgehammer i'm so nervous to start with but i'm looking like that that stupid voice in the back of my head's like you're fucking bigger than he is you know because bruiser brodie was bigger than life man he had all that hair and he was just fucking he was just a man he was an animal right so fucking bell rings and i boom i tie up with him collar and elbow and you know i jam him up into a corner, you know, he's, hey, kid, lighten up a little bit, kid, you know, relax.

[460] And I'm just like, I mean, my body's like angle iron, right?

[461] I'm so just, oh, anyway, so I go to shove him and my hands, you know, we're kind of hand fighting a little bit and my hand slips off and I kind of, you know, I kind of palm him in the, in the, in the face.

[462] Temperature in the room changed a little bit at that moment.

[463] so we tie up again and I'm about to shoot him across the ring and I'm going to shoot him across the ring and I'm yelling like I'm going to hit him with a clothesline so as I tell him the clothes line right he comes off the ropes like like a bullet like a six foot five 300 pound bullet and he kicks me square in my fucking jaw my eyes my eyes rolled back in my head And the next thing I know, he's grabbing me. He's like, let's go for a walk, right?

[464] So he throws me out of the ring and throws me down on this table.

[465] And there's a place called the Sportatorium in Dallas.

[466] They've torn it down now.

[467] But they had the folding chairs that had, they were metal, but then they had the wood slats.

[468] Fuck.

[469] He takes this chair as hard as he, you know, and not the, we're not talking about the metal folding chairs, which hurt enough in their own right when you get hit enough times with him.

[470] He swings as hard as he can.

[471] This chair just fucking explodes.

[472] Wood slats fly all over the place.

[473] I'm thinking I've never been hit so hard in mine.

[474] I'd been hit, you know, but I'd never been hit that hard by anything at that point.

[475] He throws me back in the ring, ties me all up in the ropes, right?

[476] I'm greener and shit.

[477] Don't know what the hell I'm doing.

[478] And he just starts hitting the other ropes and come in and just kicking.

[479] me as hard as he can in the head.

[480] Oh, my God.

[481] And I deserved it.

[482] You know, I mean, he was giving me a lesson that I needed to learn.

[483] Anyway, a couple of minutes later, boom, he pins me. And, you know, that was it.

[484] We go back, you know, we go back to the dressing room.

[485] And I'm like, holy shit, I just got the shit kicked out of me. And I went over to him.

[486] I was like, Mr. Brody, thank you.

[487] You know.

[488] He said, all right, kid.

[489] Just, you know, relax next time.

[490] will you?

[491] I was like, yes, sir.

[492] I just appreciate, you know, being in the ring with you and, you know, went back off in my corner to kind of gather where I was and, you know, and I could over him telling the promoter, he's like, fuck, you ought to, you ought to book this kid some more.

[493] They were trying to find someplace else to send me. He said, that kid, that kid's going to be something.

[494] And, but, you know, at the time, I was too green.

[495] I didn't know what the fuck I was doing, so I had to go somewhere else.

[496] But that was my first, my first introduction into wrestling, and I got thumped pretty good.

[497] Isn't it crazy when you think back of the days in the gym when you were getting ready to go play basketball?

[498] If you didn't meet that guy, who knows where you would have gone?

[499] Yeah, I would have probably tried to make a team somewhere, but I don't, you know, I don't think that would have lasted because I wasn't real, you know, I mean, I was limited.

[500] I mean, I wasn't, you know, my game was limited enough.

[501] I would have probably ended up in the military, I'm pretty sure.

[502] Isn't it crazy how life just...

[503] Yeah.

[504] Do you ever think about that?

[505] I think about it all the time.

[506] That one dude was like your doorway.

[507] Yeah.

[508] To a different life, to becoming a superstar.

[509] Yeah.

[510] There's one guy.

[511] You run into one guy in your life.

[512] It changes your direction.

[513] And then all of a sudden you become wildly successful at this other thing that you were not even really considering.

[514] Yeah.

[515] It's nuts.

[516] And just the fact, you know, that I went to, you know, setting that lobby for eight months.

[517] Eight months.

[518] And, you know, it was at the end.

[519] And I was like, fuck, this is getting me nowhere.

[520] And then just what they.

[521] That is what people need to hear, man. In this day and age, everybody wants everything to happen right away.

[522] Yeah.

[523] You know?

[524] That is.

[525] Everybody's got that sense, one, the sense of entitlement.

[526] Mm -hmm.

[527] And figured they're owed something.

[528] Yeah.

[529] And, you know, and aren't willing to put in the grind.

[530] Yeah.

[531] And, you know, I tell people, you know, yeah, I was living in my car.

[532] Yeah.

[533] You know, sometimes I could stay with my brother, but there was a lot of nights.

[534] I had to sleep in a Monte Carlo with, you know, at 6 '8 and 315 pounds is not real comfortable.

[535] Is there more of a pathway, like an obvious pathway, for a guy to get into pro wrestling today?

[536] So, yeah.

[537] So we have, in Orlando, we have, it's called the Performance Center.

[538] And they have, you know, they're still wrestling schools, legitimate wrestling schools around the country.

[539] And then every once, I don't know how many times a year, then they'll have a call there at the PC, like, okay, you go in and they test you and see if you're, one, physically fit enough to do it.

[540] And then, two, you know, do you have some personality?

[541] Do you have something that you can bring to the table that might be a draw?

[542] And then if they book you, I mean, this is the crazy part right here.

[543] if they feel like you might have, you know, a chance or something to offer, you get a contract right there.

[544] And you get a contract to train.

[545] All you have to do is train.

[546] It's a, I can't, you know, that's how far we've come.

[547] That's amazing.

[548] From my story.

[549] Eight months in the lobby.

[550] Eight months in the lobby, getting, you know, people walking by to, all right, this is your contract.

[551] All you have to, yeah, this is our place in Orlando right here.

[552] Well, you know, it makes sense for them because, I mean, you need talent.

[553] Absolutely.

[554] You constantly need new talent.

[555] And why not just train them and groom them?

[556] Exactly.

[557] You train them and groom them in the way that you want.

[558] Yeah.

[559] I mean, we send guys to the combine now, the NFL Combine.

[560] Really?

[561] This guy.

[562] And, you know, they sit there and talk.

[563] Who's going to make it?

[564] Who's not going to make it?

[565] And we get, yeah, we send, we go all over the world now.

[566] They recruit in China, the Middle East.

[567] Everywhere we have TV programming, which makes sense as well, they're looking for that hometown star.

[568] Like when we go to, like if we go to Saudi or somewhere in Dubai or somebody's like that, if you've got somebody local, that's just great business.

[569] How did you become the undertaker?

[570] So that's Vince's brainchild.

[571] So I went to another company, WCW.

[572] where I was mean Mark Callas and right there check that young stud out right there that's terrifying in it I guess an enormous hobbit yeah just that's uh yeah we can take that down anytime so so I go there and I was about I was there about eight or nine months and my contract was coming up and I go I go in to renegotiate my contract and they were like, look, you're great athlete kid, but no one's ever going to pay money to watch you wrestle.

[573] Like, I'm just looking for a little bit of bump, right?

[574] A little bump in my paycheck.

[575] I'm not looking for the mega deal.

[576] I'm just looking for a little bit of bump.

[577] Now, we're going to give you the same deal for a year.

[578] I mean, you just, you know, you do great things.

[579] the ring but no one's ever going to pay money to see you wrestle did they give you advice on how to get someone to pay no wow that was it that was it so i'm like okay i've my ceiling i know where my ceiling is here right so uh just through you know a few different people i get connected with some people in the in the w that which was w w f at the time's w w w now and um i had a match coming up my hip was already bad at that point even back then yeah i was It got much worse, but I was already limping.

[580] And I just heard it when we'd got Vince, you know, they had said, all right, you know, they've got a pay -per -view just watching work, you know.

[581] So Vince watches me work, and I'm calm, like, I'm, you know, talking to my buddy Bruce.

[582] I'm like, Bruce, my hip is jacked.

[583] He goes, just go out there.

[584] Vince is going to be watching, right?

[585] So I'm working with a guy by the name Lex Lugar, went out there and did what I could.

[586] I sucked.

[587] I mean, you know, I was physically, you know, I was physically not able really to go the way I could go.

[588] And Vince wasn't impressed, you know, he's like, okay, he's, you know, he's running the mill.

[589] Fortunately, guys like, you know, Paul Heyman and Bruce Pritchard, you know, they believed in me. And they kind of kept pushing for me to get this meeting with Vince.

[590] And finally I did.

[591] And he calls me, I got to go to his house, right?

[592] So I go to his house What does Vince's house like?

[593] Fuck, he couldn't?

[594] It's nice.

[595] It's fucking nice.

[596] Where's he living?

[597] He's in Connecticut, man. So you're in Connecticut.

[598] Yeah, so I'm up in.

[599] Call to the castle.

[600] Oh, dude.

[601] Yeah, and that's what I'm thinking, right?

[602] Because most people go to the office, to the towers there in Stanford, right?

[603] And I'm thinking, fuck, I'm going to the house.

[604] I got this shit, right?

[605] So I go in and I have the meeting.

[606] Meeting goes for about an hour and a half.

[607] And, you know, and this is, you know, there's a lot of, does he have a butler?

[608] Butler?

[609] But he, I don't know he had a housekeeper.

[610] I would imagine there'd be a dude with a British accent answering the door.

[611] I never saw him.

[612] No sleeves just ripped.

[613] Yeah, right?

[614] You had to be, everybody's Jack that works for, but, uh, so I go, I go there and, uh, you know, granted, we do some hokey shit.

[615] it is what it is and they really at that point had some really really fucking goofy characters and uh you know so that we're having this we're sitting in his living room and he goes well mark you got you have to be hidden talents you know other than wrestling do you do anything you know and I'm trying to be funny and not nervous and well you know I was singing in the shower pretty good and as soon as I said it right I'm like oh fuck I shouldn't I said that I'm going to be fucking I'm going to be fucking shower guy or you know something something silly, right?

[616] Shower guys.

[617] Yeah, I'm going to have to say, you know, and I'm like, oh, shit.

[618] I should not have said that, right?

[619] And then I'm like, I'm kidding.

[620] You know, I'm trying to clear the air right away.

[621] I'm just kidding.

[622] I can't sing, not, you know.

[623] And he's got the look, right?

[624] And he knows how, you know, he can read people.

[625] And he's like, really?

[626] No, I can't.

[627] I can't.

[628] So I got this long meeting.

[629] And I, at the end of the meeting, he goes, well, we don't have anything for you right now.

[630] I'm thinking, oh, fuck, I guess I overplayed my hand here, because I'd already give WCW my notice that I was leaving.

[631] I'm like, fuck, I kind of, I mean, this is what I'm thinking in my head, right?

[632] I was like, he invited me to the house.

[633] He's going to hire me, right?

[634] So I see you guys down the road.

[635] So now I'm sitting there, I'm like, fuck, I got no job.

[636] And anyway, so one day, it's getting close to Thanksgiving.

[637] And they start doing this promotion where they've got this giant fucking egg.

[638] Have you heard this story?

[639] Oh, yeah, the gobbly goo.

[640] The gobbly googer, right?

[641] So we do a pay -per -view around Thanksgiving.

[642] It's called Survivor Series.

[643] So this particular year is 1990.

[644] They're going to, yeah, there it is.

[645] They've got this giant egg on the set on the TV every week.

[646] And I'm sitting there thinking to myself, holy fuck.

[647] I'm going to be, now I've gone from shower guy.

[648] Now I think I'm going to be Eggman, right?

[649] Fuck, I'm going to have to, you know, I'm trying to grow my hair out.

[650] And I think, fuck, he's going to make me shave my head.

[651] I'm going to shave my eyebrows.

[652] I'm going to be fucking egg man off.

[653] And I'm a nervous wreck, right?

[654] So one day I'm sitting at home, phone rings.

[655] I get up and go answer it because we didn't have cell phones back then, right?

[656] So, hello?

[657] He goes, is, uh, is this the undertaker?

[658] I was like, Undertaker hit an Eggman.

[659] Yeah, yeah, this is Undertaker.

[660] Yeah, and it was Vince, and that was how he introduced the character to me. He called you up and asked you if you're the Undertaker.

[661] Yeah, and I had no clue to what it was.

[662] And wow.

[663] And I said, yeah, yeah, I'm the Undertaker because I knew it wasn't Eggman and everything had to be better than Eggman.

[664] He wasn't singing the shower guy.

[665] Yeah, he wasn't singing the shower guy, and it wasn't Eggman.

[666] Flew me up to Connecticut the next day, showed me the story, boy.

[667] and the character, the original character, is based on an old Western Undertaker.

[668] You know, the two guys in Main Street, they had the fucking shootout.

[669] One guy loses, The Undertaker comes out and measures them, does the box.

[670] Well, that was the original likeness and the name, The Undertaker.

[671] And he'd just never found the guy.

[672] He had had it for years, I guess.

[673] So why did he send you away the first time?

[674] When you went to his house.

[675] He didn't have.

[676] At the time, he didn't have anything.

[677] He didn't have a spot for me. But he was thinking.

[678] But he was thinking.

[679] And then it kind of dawned on him that he had that character.

[680] And he just needed a big guy with no personality.

[681] He needed a guy, you know, there was void of personality to do the deal.

[682] And he gave it to me. And there's my debut right there.

[683] That's November of 1990.

[684] And I was six years old and I was shitting my pants.

[685] Were you?

[686] This was the scariest thing you can imagine for a six -year -old.

[687] You know, you're watching all these It was some guy in a chicken suit that came out of that egg to show you how silly things were back then So it had our attention And then all of a sudden This guy comes out And he's like half dead And you don't know what's going on And he's scary And dominant More than anything Yeah, the thing was dominant But this is the era of everything I mean you could tell He's guys in bright pink And so that's Cocoa Beware Yeah, he's wearing some hot yoga pants.

[688] Yeah, that's, you know.

[689] I mean, you know, that guy had a parrot on his shoulder when he came to the ring.

[690] Did he?

[691] Yeah.

[692] Right?

[693] Was it a parrot?

[694] Yeah.

[695] Yeah, Frankie.

[696] How does one do a pile driver and not hurt your opponent?

[697] This is the guy to ask.

[698] Yeah.

[699] I mean, you got to, it's a way you grab him.

[700] You got to be actually, you just got to be strong enough to support their body to support their body.

[701] And the key for me is when my knees.

[702] start i'm i'm kind of pulling them up so it's kind of like a shock absorber ideally the head never touches did you ever see uh the fight between bob sap and minotaro no gara pride yeah that ruined that guy for the rest of his career yeah bob sap actually pile -draved him and bob sap was 375 with abs yeah he was a freak yeah and he pile -dra who was at the time the heavyweight champion yeah It's crazy Rampage Rampage suplexed some guys Oh my God Arona Ricardo O 'Rona Well he suplexed a lot of guys He slammed a lot of guys But Ricardo Arona It was the worst slam I've ever seen in my life Ricardo O 'Rona Caught Rampage in a triangle And Rampage picked him up And instead of abandoning the triangle He tried to hang on And Rampage picked him up like a pillow Like you know like you would hit some Like your little brother over the head with a pillow Like you'd lift back like this and then boom and he slams him into the mat and then his head collides with Arona's head upon impact.

[703] Yeah, that's the same way Rose lost to...

[704] Similar.

[705] Yeah, similar way.

[706] Yeah, she didn't let go.

[707] Yeah, exactly.

[708] Dropped on her head.

[709] Yeah, you got to let go.

[710] When you get picked up in a triangle, you got to let go.

[711] Or you got to hook a leg.

[712] It's hard to...

[713] I think for fighters, you know, us, you know, I mean, it's part of every day deal, But I think for a fighter, it just has to screw up your whole perspective because you don't expect somebody to be able to do that to you.

[714] You know what I'm saying?

[715] Like your instinct, I would imagine, is to squeeze tighter or like if I can, you know.

[716] The issue is it's hard to get a secured triangle.

[717] Yeah.

[718] So if you get to the point where your leg is like that, you're literally locked in.

[719] You don't want to let that go.

[720] Right.

[721] But you got to.

[722] Yeah.

[723] Especially when you're looking over the top of the cage, something ain't right.

[724] Especially when Rampage was so fucking strong.

[725] That's a scary moment because Ricardo O 'Rona was really never the same again.

[726] Never the same again.

[727] Because before that he was a big contender.

[728] He was an elite guy built like a fucking, like a Greek god.

[729] He was a killer.

[730] But that one slam changed his whole career.

[731] He was never the same again.

[732] Yeah.

[733] It was nasty.

[734] That was really nasty.

[735] Yeah.

[736] So in wrestling, like the amount of trust that guy has to have in you is, off the charts.

[737] Yeah, it really is.

[738] You know, I mean, we've established at this point.

[739] I think everybody understands what wrestling is.

[740] I mean, it's sports entertainment.

[741] And I think we, everybody's kind of gotten over the fact, you know, that that's what we are.

[742] We're entertainment.

[743] But I don't think what people really realize is that in any given match on any given day, you're two inches away from something catastrophic happening.

[744] And it is.

[745] I mean, it just, it's that, it's that it's two inches from being but holy shit that was really impressive to holy shit that guy ain't getting up right and i think i think a lot of people that you know that that that shit on wrestling they don't they don't understand they don't understand that aspect and you're right and it does take an enormous amount of trust and it's really hard to get in the ring with somebody that's hurt a few people right i mean you have to be you know i mean i mean i've i've i've I've lost both eye sockets, but one was just because the guy was completely out of shape.

[746] There's a lot of similarities.

[747] One's a sporting event and one sports entertainment, talking about MMA.

[748] But, you know, there's conditioning is kind of, I think, the key to everything.

[749] And, you know, a guy was out of shape.

[750] He was six foot eight, 500 pounds.

[751] And I ran straight into what was supposed to be a club.

[752] clothesline but he was he was so out of he was so gassed and behind in the spot that instead of catching the the meat of his forearm i ran right dead into his fist with his momentum coming off of the ropes oh geez just blew my you know my eye socket completely apart and you know dumb -ass me i didn't know it for for three days but but that's the kind of stuff that did you have to get it operating on?

[753] Oh, yeah.

[754] Yeah.

[755] I've had them both rebuilt.

[756] Oh, Jesus.

[757] But I didn't.

[758] You had to wear the mask?

[759] Yeah.

[760] Wow.

[761] That's, yeah.

[762] So you were just wrestling with a broken orbital, well, I'd already had the surgery at this point, but that was just, uh, so that happened, that match happened.

[763] And like I said, back then, we didn't have doctors with us and, and trainers.

[764] So it's funny how I found out that my face was shattered.

[765] Like, so I wrestled three more days, but every time.

[766] With a shattered face.

[767] With my, my, my, my, my, orbital socket blown out.

[768] So I wrestle three more days, right?

[769] And as stupid as it sounds, it's normal for our world back then.

[770] You worked hurt or, you know, it's just the way you did it.

[771] If you could walk, you go to the ring.

[772] And I think, you know, that's, that was part of the mystique of the guys, or tough guys, you know, and I think, so I work and me and, The Godfather, he's another wrestler, great dude.

[773] We were going to meet up after the show of some bar and hang out, right?

[774] And we were in Springfield, Massachusetts, and, like, I'm looking for the bar, and I can't find it.

[775] And I'm like, so I finally I give up.

[776] Once again, we don't have cell phones back then.

[777] So I give up.

[778] I'm going to go back to my hotel.

[779] So I'm driving, and I pass this hospital.

[780] I said, you know what, I'm going to, something just ain't right.

[781] Because every time, you know, I just like that, my face would just, my face would just blow up.

[782] And I'm just go in and get this.

[783] If there's nobody in there in the emergency room, I'm going to go in and get this thing checked out.

[784] So sure enough, I drive through.

[785] I don't see anybody in the emergency room.

[786] So I go in.

[787] It's midnight.

[788] I go in.

[789] They do a cat scan, doctor.

[790] He comes out.

[791] He goes, he says, do you have an ophthalmologist?

[792] And I was like, no. He goes, well, you need to find one.

[793] And you're going to need a surgeon, too.

[794] I'm like, what are you talking about?

[795] He goes, you've lost 50 % of your orbital floor is gone.

[796] Like, really?

[797] I'm like, okay.

[798] So I go home.

[799] I call and say, look, I got to go home.

[800] I've had this injury.

[801] So they go, I get home.

[802] They do another scan, another cat scan.

[803] They said, no, you've lost more like 70 % of it.

[804] Oh, Jesus.

[805] So they end up doing the surgery, two surgeons.

[806] one to, so they, you know, they go inside the eyelid, make the incision.

[807] One surgeon holds up the eye and the nerve while the other one picks out all the pieces and puts in the in the mesh kind of thing that's going to be your eye socket.

[808] Come to find out, I'd lost 90 % of my orbital floor and my optic nerve was setting right on top of a piece of jagged bone.

[809] Oh, Jesus.

[810] If I'd have took another shot to that side of my head, I'd have probably lost the eye.

[811] eye or my sight and it's just because we didn't yeah so your eye was just hanging on it was just hanging it was just sitting on a piece of jagged bone and that would have been yeah you couldn't have yeah i mean i would have been yeah i'd have been done and you know so i had the surgery so the mask i healed i don't maybe six weeks went and had the mask made and wrestled in that for a while and made it's part of the story and so what do they put back there the mesh it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a It's a, so my other eye that I did, they have, it's titanium.

[812] But this is, it's, it's a, it's a, it's not titanium, but it's kind of a wire mesh that's, that's just, it's screwed into my, into the bone.

[813] And it works as my orbital floor.

[814] So you don't have an orbital floor in that eye anymore.

[815] You just have this wire mesh.

[816] Yeah.

[817] Is what it looks like.

[818] Yeah.

[819] That's what looks like.

[820] Yeah.

[821] Do you feel anything back there sometimes?

[822] Holy shit.

[823] The second one, my right side, I had a blowout fracture, and funny enough, it was just a freak thing that happened.

[824] The smallest guy in the company, a little Ray Mysterio, who's, he's tiny.

[825] But he jumped off the top rope and his, I mean, I should know.

[826] I shouldn't know what the move is, but I don't.

[827] Like right there.

[828] That's it.

[829] Right there.

[830] See, I set my nose, or I'm about to, because it broke my nose too.

[831] But you're good, man. Damn, you're fucking good.

[832] Wow.

[833] And he's still fought your way out of it.

[834] So that was me grabbing it.

[835] I was straightening my nose out.

[836] Oh, yeah.

[837] Oh, yeah, right on your nose.

[838] Oh, Jesus Christ.

[839] So I grabbed my nose right away, and I could feel that it was way over to the side.

[840] So I squeezed it back straight.

[841] but there was three of him.

[842] Oh, yeah.

[843] And so that one, it was just way back in the cone.

[844] It blew out the back end of it.

[845] It wasn't as severe as the first one.

[846] But after the second one, left me with double vision.

[847] Like, if I try to, like, if I look peripherally, like, you become opaque.

[848] Like I see two.

[849] Like, like that, I see two lights.

[850] when I look like that still to this day to this day and that's that's been over 10 years and what did they say is the cause of that it's just the way the nerve the nerve was pressed or you know when the when the fracture happened it pressed the nerve for two line it never it never kind of rewired itself there's nothing they can do about that not that I know of I hadn't tried like as long as I look straight you know I'm good but what if you have do a you turn or like a little of your parallel park exactly that's funny that you mention it because that's i mean i've got to literally turn my body so that i can get my head straight you know to so i can i can see straight because if you turn your eye too far yeah everything it just kind of instead of that image i got that image wow that had to certainly affect you in the ring a lot too yeah yeah that and then you know then i have no uh super spenatus either none none it's completely severed when did that happen well it was the progression of a lot of tears and uh the last tear i was working i think uh maybe around 2010 i was working with cane who's a just big big dude and uh i was i was trying to trying to throw him up on my shoulder and I was going to try to give him you know my pile driver but you know he's 330 pounds and he gets his weight kind of gets stuck here and I'm too stupid to put him down and readjust so I'm trying to you know trying to pop my hips and get him up there and finally I hear I heard it pop I was like holy shit got through the match flow to Nashville the next day and I said, Doc, I need a shot of cortisone.

[851] And he's like, he goes, Mark, he goes, your shoulder really needs to be fixed.

[852] I'm like, Doc, I'm right in the middle of something right now.

[853] I can't.

[854] I said, let me get through, you know, let me get through mania.

[855] I said, just, you know, give me the shot.

[856] And then after mania, I'll come and I'll get it fixed.

[857] And reluctantly, he did.

[858] And normally the shot would last four or five months, six months.

[859] So he's in Nashville.

[860] So I go, I get the shot, I fly back to Austin.

[861] By the time I get home, it's like I didn't get the shot at all.

[862] So I called him back up and I was like, all right, Dr. Bird, you're a little smarter than I am.

[863] He goes, he says, well, fact mark, it's so bad, like, I want you to go see somebody else.

[864] I want you to see a shoulder specialist.

[865] So I go see Dr. Andrews.

[866] You know, Dr. Andrews is like the, you know, he's the guy, did Tommy John.

[867] He's the athlete's doctor.

[868] I go see him.

[869] And it's the first time this has ever happened to me. I go into the examining room and he's already there waiting.

[870] I don't know if anybody else has ever been to the doctor's office and the doctors.

[871] He's sitting there and he's looking at me. And I'm looking at him like because I'm a little taken back that he's already in the room, right?

[872] And we're looking at each other.

[873] Nobody says anything.

[874] And he goes, son.

[875] he goes, I don't know if there's anything I can do for you.

[876] He had obviously already seen my MRI and everything.

[877] He goes, he says, can you lift your arm?

[878] I was like, yes, sir.

[879] Yeah, I can lift it?

[880] He says, can I see you lift it?

[881] Yeah.

[882] He said, can you lift you the side?

[883] No, yeah, I can lift you the side.

[884] He goes, there's no reasonable explanation why you're able to do that.

[885] I'm like, he says, you've taught yourself how to use that arm with that severe injury he goes so we talked for a while and he goes he says can we meet back in about an hour he goes I need to think about this I'm like yeah I'm in Birmingham like you know what am I going to do I got nothing else to do you know I got to find out what I you know what's going on with his shoulder so we meet back in an hour and he goes he goes I'm going to try he goes I don't think I can fix it he says but I feel like I owe it to you just to try wow and uh even with that and i'm thinking well that's james andrews right surely he's going to fix it you know he's just being humble so i have the surgery you know i wake up out of surgery and my wife is you know she's right there and i could look on her face and i could tell like you know what good and i was like babe and she goes and about that time dr andrews comes in.

[886] He goes, he goes, well, we found it.

[887] I was like, you found it.

[888] He goes, yeah.

[889] He said, the end of the super spinae, it was about back here.

[890] He says, we clamped on and we pulled, we tugged.

[891] And he said, we might have been able to get it sewn back together.

[892] He said, but the first time you try to use it, it was going to pop.

[893] It was just so dead because it had been torn for so long.

[894] How long did it?

[895] Was it torn before you went to talk to him?

[896] Well, that was when it, that last one was when it tore completely in half.

[897] So it had already been damaged?

[898] It had already been damaged.

[899] Yeah, and I was getting shots of cortisone to kind of mask the pain.

[900] And then it popped off.

[901] That was it.

[902] And there wasn't enough left to attach it back.

[903] He says your, he says your biceps tendon had come out of its groove too.

[904] He said, we did put that back.

[905] That should help you a little bit.

[906] I'm like, okay.

[907] and so, you know, I go back to work, but now, you know, now I'm getting older, and so, you know, my physical skills are already starting to kind of diminish, and you know when that happens.

[908] But now, like, when I'm in a match, now I've got to be cognizant all the time of where my shoulder is in relation to whatever it is I'm doing.

[909] Like, I had, there was a lot of things like tombstones, like I had to, I had to change how, you know how i would pick people up because i couldn't get my arm out extended because i had no strength and i couldn't close line people i mean i had to you know i need that i had to have like my my arm almost supported by my lat to to do a lot of different moves and there's no other option like they can't do a cadaver well it was and what what you know in the shit that i do and we do it would have tore and that's he told me that he said we could have tried a cadaver he says it's not gonna It's not going to last if you want to wrestle.

[910] And at that point, I had no, I, like, I've been doing it this long with it hurt.

[911] I'll figure out a way, you know, I wasn't ready to, I wasn't ready to give it up yet.

[912] And so I waited a couple years, and then I call, I call Dr. Dugas.

[913] And I said, Doc, because he assisted on the first one with Dr. Andrews.

[914] I said, hey, you guys doing anything new with the shoulders?

[915] And he says, yeah, he said, like, come on down.

[916] He said, I think I can hook you up.

[917] I was like, oh, shit, okay, I wish somebody had called me, you know, let me know, let me know what's going on.

[918] And so same kind of deal.

[919] Have the surgery wake up.

[920] See, you know, Michelle's sitting there, see her.

[921] Didn't have the quite the same disappointed look on her face, you know, about this time.

[922] Here comes Dr. Dugas.

[923] And he goes, well, he goes, plan A. No, that didn't work, which would have to retouch everything.

[924] He said, plan B, I didn't work either.

[925] He said, went to plan C. He says, which will help your, you know, your recovery time.

[926] He says, well, what I did, they took the part of my infraspinatus, the one in the back.

[927] They detached part of it, stretched it over the top.

[928] So my inferspinatus is doing double duty now.

[929] Wow.

[930] So it works where I, if you were to.

[931] look down before the surgery like if you had a tube that could see down in my shoulder i was 100 % exposed you could see the joint so now i'm about 50 to 70 % covered by the infraspinatus that he stretched over the top and reattached it once again modern medicine and uh you know i'm not my right side isn't as strong as my left side i'm right hand dominant but i'm twice as three times as strong as I was before I had the surgery.

[932] Wow.

[933] Yeah.

[934] It's crazy.

[935] I'm like a lab project.

[936] That's an interesting one.

[937] I know a fighter who's got no super spinais.

[938] I think in both of his shoulders.

[939] Yeah.

[940] It's done wonders.

[941] Like, I mean, I can bench.

[942] I mean, you know, everything's got to be, I can't, you know, everything's got to be in tight.

[943] Like if I do push -ups or anything like that, I need, I need that lat and tricep help, you know, instead of, you know, getting in those.

[944] funky angles like that, but...

[945] I mean, is there anybody that gets to your pro wrestling without a series of catastrophic injuries?

[946] You know, there's one guy that's really not had many injuries.

[947] His name's Chris Jericho, and I can't think of anything that's really, you know, bad that's happened to him, but, I mean, Stone Cold Steve Austin.

[948] Yeah, his neck is completely fused, right?

[949] Yeah, his neck is completely fused.

[950] From a pile driver.

[951] From a pile driver.

[952] Also, but didn't he win the...

[953] olympics with a broken neck that's curt angle oh kurt angle that's right yeah yeah curt angle won the heavyweight gold medal and wrestling and he with a broken neck and a hundred ninety pounds he was so undersized it was and to stone cold's credit most of the big stuff that happened in his career happened after he broke his neck right or was no he he had he was already i mean he was the guy yeah oh yeah he was right right in the middle of it yeah I mean, it was really unfortunate.

[954] They were talking about him fighting an M .MA at one point in time.

[955] You know, I saw him.

[956] It was strange.

[957] I hadn't seen him for a while.

[958] And then I saw him at Lesnar Muir 1.

[959] He was there.

[960] He was acting really weird.

[961] And I was like, Kurt, are you thinking about, you know?

[962] And nothing ever came of it.

[963] But he's got some miles on him, too.

[964] Yeah.

[965] Yeah.

[966] Well, it looks like he's got atrophied of his own.

[967] arms yeah it's yeah his neck and his neck's 23 inches his neck looks enormous yeah it's just when i see a guy who with uh that i know has neck problems he sees his arms look smaller one of the things that happens to guys like it happened at boss rutin uh he got his discs fused in his neck um his arm atrophied like he wasn't getting the nerve signals to his muscle so he has his right arm he calls it baby arm yeah so it's smaller it's like it's very weak.

[968] I don't know how much it's recovered, but at one point in time, like, he couldn't even hold out a jug of milk.

[969] Yeah.

[970] It's crazy.

[971] I mean, the neck is, there's so many of those nerves and you get pinched or squeezed.

[972] Yeah.

[973] I mean, what does Kurt Engel do to make his neck that big?

[974] I'm guessing a lot of bridges and, you know.

[975] I mean, his neck's always just.

[976] Yeah, look at that neck.

[977] He could go, man. Yeah.

[978] I really enjoyed.

[979] That neck is preposterous.

[980] I really enjoyed working with Kurt That's an extra waste It's a waste It's like his waist right Look at the muscles in that thing But I mean obviously a lot of that It's probably to compensate the fact that He's got a snap neck He could go man What an athlete Wow yeah And Brock too both of them Phenomenal Angle in his prime As a wrestle It was a fucking savage Yeah he was a beast Yeah I mean as an amateur wrestling In the Olympics He was a phenomenal talent Yeah Yeah, he was, and then he transitioned so well, you know, that's the deal.

[981] He transitioned so well into pro wrestling.

[982] And how did Steve Austin fuck up his neck?

[983] Pile driver.

[984] Not a pile driver like I give.

[985] There's another kind where you grab somebody and you put their head like, you put your head in their crotch.

[986] There it is right there.

[987] Oh, my God.

[988] Look at his head.

[989] his head's going to land oh my god with all the way to both people Jesus Christ yeah just seeing that makes me shiver just seeing that image who oh you know for the sake of entertainment man crazy way to make a living it is a crazy way to make a living now take into account what you were talking about before when you were doing that 270 nights a year yeah that is year round I mean, there's no off -season.

[990] There's no, I mean, it just goes.

[991] It's episodic TV now, especially.

[992] We do live TV every Monday, every Friday.

[993] The schedule, I don't think, is quite as bad now.

[994] There were days where I would be out 45 days in a row and just, you know, and you didn't think anything about it.

[995] You just thought it was, actually, when you get into that, you don't want to come off the road.

[996] Really?

[997] Yeah, it just fucks you everything up, you know.

[998] It's just like, it.

[999] More than four or five days, like, especially when you back in the early night, you get hurt and you're home, you know, six, seven, eight weeks, you're a raving lunatic because your body's just conditioned to go and just be out there and doing it.

[1000] And it's, you know, it's tough, tough on relationships.

[1001] It's just, you know, and you always got that word, you're always worried about that next guy coming up too, right?

[1002] like fuck i'm i'm healing up here and this guy's coming up and you know don't want anybody taking your spot you don't want anybody taking your spot everything's you know i mean although it's not competition in the sense of mama competition it's competition yeah you know you're competing to be the top guy or you're competing for your place on the card so it is and and you know in that sense of competition an important one tony it's got to be wild seeing him when you were six years old for the first time yeah and then hearing these stories now about how all that came to be yeah it's uh it's wild did you take a lot of um did you have a lot to do with the creative side of things because the you know there was an urn that his manager would hold that would charge him right it would get you know it would it would it would summon like superpowers somebody who's not a fan he's listening to this shit like no like what do you've been smoking he would put his opponents after he beats them he would put them in body bags at one point he was building a casket for an opponent for a casket match.

[1003] I think I told you at the Chappelle show when I met you.

[1004] I got in trouble when I was a kid because I was like learning about death from this man. Like I didn't know you went into a casket after you were dead.

[1005] You're seven years old.

[1006] You don't know that yet.

[1007] Like you don't know what a box is.

[1008] You're like, oh my God, you put your body in a box.

[1009] I got in trouble because I nailed my mom's piano bench shut because of the promos that you had for the Kamala casket match.

[1010] He was nailing a coffin shut, and it was so scary to see as a kid.

[1011] So I nailed my mom's piano bench.

[1012] Like, you know how they open up?

[1013] I pretended like it was a coffin, and I destroyed it.

[1014] I got in so much trouble.

[1015] I once took one of those suit bags that zip up.

[1016] And, like, me and my buddies, we would have these fake wrestling matches as kids, and then we would body bag matches.

[1017] Yeah, we would zip up the suit thing and pretend like we're dead afterwards.

[1018] Like, it was like, all these things were a part of my childhood.

[1019] Is that you, some of you, some of Vince?

[1020] Yeah, so Vince had the original likeness.

[1021] And then, you know, after a couple years, I mean, it had kind of taken over.

[1022] Like, I lived that.

[1023] Like, everywhere I went, you know, I was always dressed in black.

[1024] You know, what people saw on TV, they pretty much saw in real life.

[1025] So if you went out to dinner.

[1026] I wouldn't dress quite that.

[1027] I would be an all -black.

[1028] I didn't say much to people.

[1029] because you had to stay in character I always stayed in character I always felt like I had I always felt like that I needed to be what they saw on TV because if they saw me differently like if they saw this right and then they see that on TV it's like oh fuck it's just acting it's just this it's that so I tried to make that guy real and I did for a long time like I didn't do for years I didn't do interviews I didn't do personal appearances you got very little of me other than what you saw on TV and that's what kept people captivated like I mean everybody like fuck I know he's not dead but yeah but he's fucked up he's something's wrong yeah there's something right and it captivate you know to stay and I'm not pat myself on the back but to stay relevant for 30 years in this industry where there's so much exposure I mean you have to I I felt like that's the extreme that I had to go to, you know, to make that guy continue to mean something.

[1030] Does it feel almost weird for you to be doing like a podcast like this?

[1031] Absolutely crazy.

[1032] So it started, you know, I did a docuseries kind of chronicling the last few years of my career.

[1033] It was actually me trying to come to grips with calling it a day, really.

[1034] You can mind scooting this way just into the microphone better?

[1035] Yeah, there you go.

[1036] So we ended up calling it.

[1037] It had nothing to do with the Jordan deal, but it was called The Last Ride, which is one of my finishing moves.

[1038] So it kind of chronicled like the last few years of my career and me kind of chasing the dragon for that one match that I could hang my hat on and say, that's it.

[1039] That's it.

[1040] And as you get older and the injuries and all that, I don't, I mean, I figure that in, but I still see in my head what I used.

[1041] to do, and that's what I was striving.

[1042] I mean, you've seen it in the fight game all the time.

[1043] Guys are looking for that, you know, they can't come to grips with the fact that their skills have diminished, and there's a changing of the guard.

[1044] Yeah.

[1045] And it's kind of the same with what I was doing.

[1046] I was looking for that one match that I could say, motherfuckers, I still got it, and now I'm out.

[1047] Was there a conversation about this with Vince, where you were trying to figure out when to close the door?

[1048] Yeah, there was lots.

[1049] There were lots of those conversations.

[1050] And there were people that I talked to along the way, you know, through my career.

[1051] I was like, look, if I get to a point where my skills have diminished and I can't recognize it, I want you to tell me or at least bring the conversation up, you know.

[1052] And it got to the point where nobody wants to have that conversation, you know, nobody wants to have that.

[1053] Like, hey, dude, your day?

[1054] Yeah.

[1055] Yeah, it's up.

[1056] It's a real problem.

[1057] I put a big burden on people, and, you know, they just couldn't do it.

[1058] And now, Vince, who I have an unbelievable relationship with, but also, that's a, that's a huge intellectual property for Vince, 30 years, you know, so he didn't, you know, I could go out for another few years and, you know, I could knock somebody on their ass or I could choke slam somebody, but I can't do it personally.

[1059] Right.

[1060] I can't, because I know there's so many guys that are coming.

[1061] up that are trying to get that spot and, you know, I can't go out there and, okay, I got all this equity built up from all these years.

[1062] I'm just going to, you know, I'm just going to, I'm just going to live off of that.

[1063] I remember when I was a kid in Boston, they had, it was a local wrestling promotion, but Killer Kowalski, Killer Kowalski was on.

[1064] And I don't know how old he was at the time, but he had to be way, way up in the years.

[1065] I mean, it looked like he was in his 50s.

[1066] Yeah.

[1067] And, you know, I remember thinking, like, even as a kid, like, how long can a guy do this?

[1068] Yeah.

[1069] And it varies.

[1070] Who's the longest?

[1071] Are you the longest reigning guy?

[1072] No, I think there's guys, I think there's guys that, like, Flair lasted.

[1073] At his level, yeah.

[1074] He's the longest by, like, a lot.

[1075] He's probably going to be humble about this right now.

[1076] But even then, the Kowalski's and all that, the styles were different, right?

[1077] It was more, like, armed drag.

[1078] and like little tosses.

[1079] We had the claw.

[1080] Right.

[1081] And he's, I mean, he's throwing people off of 16 foot cells and getting thrown off of Titan trons like ramps and all this crazy physical stuff.

[1082] It's a whole different game.

[1083] And he went 10, 15 years probably longer than most of his peers.

[1084] Well, the fact that I stayed 30 years with one company, I think that's the one really big thing is once I started with Vince, I stayed with Vince, where a lot of guys, you know, know they would they would jump from one promotion to the other and i stayed once i got there i was there and you know wow it was uh it's been a hell of a ride 30 years is a crazy ride so what was your last match my last match was in uh was april the bone yard was april april 20 20 right here it is it's a nice bike yeah that was uh that's a west coast chopper right there um that's the bike actually belonged to Garthbrook's security guy.

[1085] But this was, we got lucky because COVID had already shut everything down.

[1086] So everybody else, this is WrestleMania.

[1087] So everybody else is doing their matches in an empty warehouse.

[1088] And we got to go off and do this kind of themed match.

[1089] They turned this whole area into like a cemetery and got to do a lot of theatrical stuff.

[1090] So that must have felt like I can hang my hat on this one.

[1091] Yeah, you know, we started filming that at about 8 o 'clock at night and we rapped at about 5 in the morning.

[1092] And like at the end of it, I was like, I can't hardly stand up.

[1093] You know, everything was just locked up.

[1094] And I was, you know, because I went into it.

[1095] And, you know, I started training for mania.

[1096] And obviously I thought I was going to be in a stadium in a ring.

[1097] And so I had really got a good head start on my training.

[1098] and you know my weight was coming down everything was was good and then fucking COVID hit and then it was just like the gyms shut down and then you know then I got to I had to get to Florida just to make sure you know that I was in Florida right yeah because you never knew like when they were going to shut all the airlines down so the training you know my training kind of went to shit and but I was really happy with how this turned out and I knew at the end of it physically your day's done man and you know as much as i want to do it here and i want to do it here is just the body just it can't deliver so what do you do now i mean that's a long career i mean yeah it is and i'm trying to figure that part out uh because i've dedicated my whole life to this to this business and you know there'll be times you know i help out and maybe mentor some guys but you know i haven't i got to find out what i'm passionate about you know and still you know earn a living like i want to right now my goal is like to be the best outdoorsman i can be at this point is that what you're into now i've always loved hunting and fishing and doing all i just never had time have you thought about doing a television show you do that i've thought about it um undertaker outdoors undertaker outdoors right just the uh it'd be a i think it'd be a hoot i actually you know um it's just kind of you know i'm I thought about it, and I don't want it to be a, you know, I don't want it to be a job, job.

[1099] I understand.

[1100] I just, I enjoy it too much, and I'd hate to lose the fact, like, I don't want to go hunting.

[1101] I don't want to go, you know.

[1102] Right.

[1103] So, but, I mean, I'm open to whatever.

[1104] What kind of hunting do you do?

[1105] What is your thing?

[1106] Well, I've always been, I've always been a rifle because I've had limited time.

[1107] So, you know, setting a stand and, you know, wait for a white tail to come, sick it's out this year.

[1108] I bought I just bought my first brand new bow this year.

[1109] I didn't get to I didn't get to shoot a deer.

[1110] Austin has a very good archery country.

[1111] Yeah.

[1112] Archery country is fantastic.

[1113] It's really good.

[1114] Yeah.

[1115] I had an issue with my bow just a few weeks before I went to Utah for an elk hunt.

[1116] It was something that was shooting low and it turned out that strings had been stretched and it had lost some of its pounded so everything had to be readjusted.

[1117] I had to get tightened up again and get the poundage put back on it.

[1118] Yeah.

[1119] They did an amazing job.

[1120] Yeah, it's, archery is, and I just found that out, you know, that Austin's a real, you know, there's a lot of archery hunters here.

[1121] Yeah, well, Texas in general has a lot of hunters and a lot of archery hunters, but that is a real good archery shop, and it's hard to find.

[1122] In California, I used to have to go to San Diego.

[1123] All the way down San Diego.

[1124] Yeah, I'd go to performance archery down in San Diego to find a real good archery shop anywhere near me. Yeah, the biggest issue with me was finding a bow that, you know, would get my draw.

[1125] Oh, I could help you with that.

[1126] John Dudley's pretty close to your size.

[1127] He's 6 .5, I believe.

[1128] 6, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, something like that?

[1129] What's his draw?

[1130] Mine is...

[1131] It's 32, I think?

[1132] Yeah, mine's 33, almost 33 and a half.

[1133] Oh, they make them for guys like you.

[1134] Yeah.

[1135] I mean, it's just, you just have to get the right cams and, you know, have someone who...

[1136] Like, a guy like John could set it up, a guy who knows how to set up a bow.

[1137] I'm sure he'd be happy to do that for you, too.

[1138] Yeah.

[1139] that's that's that's that's that's that's what I think that's I'm passionate about because that's the one thing like it's always been that carrot dangling like okay once that career is over right you know you're you're you're free you're free you're going to do this and you're going to do that but I mean that's not the way life works I mean you still need to you know I still need to be productive and do different things you know I work with a lot of uh I love working with the veterans um you know I work with these guys nine line I do stuff with them um um I It's kind of, I'm just really passionate about people that have served our country.

[1140] That's awesome.

[1141] Yeah, I think, like I said earlier, like, if I hadn't have made it here, that's probably what I would have done.

[1142] And, like, I think about it sometimes, like, I think it may be my only regret.

[1143] Like, I wish I had it served, you know.

[1144] Because I guess because I'm surrounded by so many of those guys now and getting to meet guys like, you know, Oz and Tig from Benghazi.

[1145] Lettrell, all those guys, you know, it's just, man, that's, I'm just, I'm just, like, I can sit and listen to stories, you know, all day long from those guys.

[1146] Yeah, LaTrell and I have been talking about him coming on here.

[1147] He's a good dude.

[1148] He's a real good dude.

[1149] He's those guys, like, he's so laid back, but you can tell, you can look at him, and you can tell, like, he's been through some shit, right?

[1150] He's been through some shit.

[1151] Yeah.

[1152] I mean, when they make a Marky Mark movie about your life, you know you've been through some shit.

[1153] Yeah, he's this nice as could be.

[1154] Yeah, real good dude.

[1155] I'm not, I don't, you know, I don't get real excited about meeting celebrities or, you know, people like that.

[1156] I'm just, you know, I just leave people alone for the most part.

[1157] And he spoke at, he spoke at the church we go to.

[1158] And I called the pastor up during the, during the, during the, while he was talking, I was like, look, I need to, I need to, I need to be introduced to him before I leave here tonight.

[1159] And he's like, absolutely, come on back, you know.

[1160] But that's the kind of, you know, those are the kind of people, you know.

[1161] I appreciate that.

[1162] Yeah, I just, you know, I don't think we can do enough for people that put their mouth.

[1163] I couldn't agree more.

[1164] You know, and just people like that that have been through so much, they're just, they're different kind of people.

[1165] They're exceptional in a way that it's hard to describe.

[1166] Yeah.

[1167] It really, it's cool.

[1168] You've had Goggins on, right?

[1169] Oh, yeah.

[1170] Yeah, it's a fucking maniac, right?

[1171] Yeah.

[1172] They'll send me text messages.

[1173] the blue just stay hard okay i was gonna go soft i'm trading i'm trading my ass off right now but i i enjoyed his book so that it was so good yeah he's a he's a fascinating person yeah he's wired a little different too oh for sure but he's got a great i love his story because guggins was fat and he was lazy and he was you know eating fucking yeah drinking milkshakes and shit and he was way overweight and couldn't run at all and just decided yeah that he was you know he wanted to be in the seals and decided he wanted to lose weight and decided now's the time to do it and just forced himself to be this fucking barbarian man if you can't get inspired if you don't read his book and can't get inspired by that yeah if you get a fuck well i tell everybody go to his instagram page yeah go to his when i find a good one i reposted on my page all the time yeah that's good shit you know he'll he he'll have some that literally will make me go up and work out like maybe i'm not even thinking about working out and i watch his video or you already worked I'm going right now.

[1174] Time to go to war.

[1175] I'm yelling at us.

[1176] I always wonder who the guy is that gets no credit that's running alongside of him.

[1177] He's driving.

[1178] First of all, that's his wife, and she's driving.

[1179] Oh.

[1180] Yeah, and he's got the phone out the window and she's driving.

[1181] Wow.

[1182] A lot of motherfuckers will tell you.

[1183] But no excuses, right?

[1184] There he is.

[1185] Give me some volume of this.

[1186] This guy makes me feel like a bitch every day.

[1187] What's the perfect example of that?

[1188] A lot of people lost jobs, lots businesses, lost family members.

[1189] A lot of folks spend a lot of time in the hospital, on ventilators.

[1190] That should have caused a lot of demons in your brain.

[1191] Folks see how much that work out.

[1192] And they think I'm running from demons.

[1193] It's not demons.

[1194] It's discipline.

[1195] And I'm a disciple of discipline.

[1196] You cannot run your demons.

[1197] they always find you only way to beat them motherfuckers is look at them out of the eye and make him your bitch my sister's the only thing that gets you through hard times Merry fucking Christmas It's awesome It's awesome man No excuses He's a national treasure That man is a national treasure Yeah That's just Make her you bitch Yeah, yeah, this shit.

[1198] That's this good shit.

[1199] Yeah, but well, you know what?

[1200] There's a lot of people out there that their mind concentrates on stupid shit.

[1201] They complain too much.

[1202] They whine too much.

[1203] They're haters.

[1204] They're jealous.

[1205] They're weak.

[1206] You need a guy like that out there that is just all about performance and dissonance.

[1207] and you realize like wow there's a lot of different ways to live this life you know there's a lot of people that waste time they waste time on nonsense their life is filled with nonsense absolutely and then you need a guy like david goggins to go oh my god i'm a bitch yeah i didn't even know i didn't even know i had no clue i was a bitch but uh i'm definitely a bitch yeah okay appreciate that dave all right and you know and his body gets beat the fuck up too man he he he had a video he posted just a little while See if you can find this of him draining his knee.

[1208] They drained his knee.

[1209] And it's like a fucking coffee cup filled with pus and fluid and shit inside of his knee.

[1210] And he was on crutches for a couple of days.

[1211] And then there's a video a few days after that where he's running.

[1212] A lot of your motherfuckers thought I was going to go soft.

[1213] I bet you're hoping.

[1214] Oh, Dave, you fucked up your knees.

[1215] You can't run no more.

[1216] Like, look at this thing they're pulling out of his knee.

[1217] Like, look at that thing.

[1218] Do you see that?

[1219] That's a syringe full of shit.

[1220] Look at the size of that fucking syringe.

[1221] They're pulling that out of his knee.

[1222] Look at the size of that fucking fluid.

[1223] That's a lot of shit.

[1224] They're pulling out of his knee.

[1225] They're getting a different one.

[1226] They're getting another syringe.

[1227] They're getting another one to fill it up because they're not done yet.

[1228] Oh, my God.

[1229] They're screwed another one in there.

[1230] Jesus Christ.

[1231] Look at this.

[1232] This is how much pus and fluid is in his knee.

[1233] And he's still wrong.

[1234] running so he's got two gigantic syringes of fluid that are stuck inside of his knee i mean what in the fuck first of all if i had a quarter of that shit i'd be like well no more running for me son i'm done it's full yeah i mean it's full and they keep going that is a big fat fucking syringe and then you go to like two days later he's got a video of him with crutches then a couple days after that he's running again.

[1235] Ha, ha, ha, ha, motherfuckers.

[1236] That's crazy, man. That's a lost mindset, man. He puts him miles, too.

[1237] I mean, I don't know what the fuck the inside of his knee looks like, but, you know.

[1238] Yeah, definitely need more people like that, less people, you know.

[1239] Well, it's just, there's, you know, you need to know, like, there's all kinds of people out there in this world, but you need to know there's dudes out there with bulletproof minds.

[1240] absolutely you need to know there's no I mean just the fact no excuses everybody wants the excuses like talking about earlier everybody's entitled yeah but those guys are valuable oh hell yeah hey the shit goes down I want him in my compound you know what he does sometimes sometimes he takes time off and goes smoke jumping like they just drop him out of fucking helicopters and he fights fires for like 12 bucks an hour he's rich but he just he practiced what he preaches.

[1241] He stays hard.

[1242] He doesn't need to work for 12 bucks an hour.

[1243] He does it because it's hard.

[1244] Yeah.

[1245] When he was telling me that on the podcast, I'm like, what?

[1246] He was, yeah, smoke jump.

[1247] He just jumps out of fucking helicopters of the parachute to fight fires with a with a shovel.

[1248] And camps out there.

[1249] Like those guys, that's a hard gig.

[1250] That's a hard fucking job.

[1251] But he does it just to be, just to stay hard.

[1252] That's fucking awesome.

[1253] Man, I feel like shit.

[1254] I mean, he'll do that to you.

[1255] But the people like that are, they're valuable.

[1256] They really are with all these weak people in this world, a weak entitled people.

[1257] And this is the, you know, you know, the old expression, hard men, you know, hard times make hard men, hard men make easy times, easy times make soft men.

[1258] That's what we're going through right now.

[1259] The world got a little too easy.

[1260] It was just a little too, there's too many soft people out there complaining.

[1261] fact it is really is it's it's weird how that cycle just keeps repeating itself over and over and over then it doesn't seem like human beings are ever going to learn like seems like we kind of have to go through that it's like even though you know these cycles exist you know like the Hindus they they wrote about it like years ago like it's they called them the yugas the different cycles of civilization and we're we're in Kali Yuga which is like the age of confusion Is that what is the exact term of Kali Yuga, but it's chaos and everything's falling apart?

[1262] That's what we're in right now.

[1263] And people have been predicting that we were entering into Kali Yuga over the last, like, over the last, like, 10 years or so.

[1264] And now it's pretty obvious.

[1265] We're full on in it.

[1266] Yeah, we're on the cusp.

[1267] Tomorrow's the election, I mean, the inauguration.

[1268] And I'm like, oh, my God, I don't even want to fucking leave the house.

[1269] no I had to get a body to land around the perimeter and just make sure well they said gun sales were at all time high yesterday people were just going crazy buying guns you can't yeah a place I deal with I mean their shelves have been empty for yeah I mean you can't it doesn't matter what it is like the toilet people aisle in March I mean I that's what it's like yeah absolutely yeah it's what it's like it's crazy I walk in there it's just like fucking tumbleweed rolling through yeah I'm lucky I know people that like work in gun manufacture I can buy guns off of them because if you try to go to a regular store just buy like nine millimeter or something for an AR or a wind mag like you know good luck I don't have one I thought they just handed you one when you moved to Texas I'll hand you one really yeah I give you one all I have is a golf club I have to get within four feet of someone well I've been given eight guns since I got here okay I'll give that's an excellent well That's a Texas welcome, but we'll have to take you to the range.

[1270] We'll take you to a place and, you know, you've shot a gun before?

[1271] How many times?

[1272] A lot when I was younger, but I mean, I don't know, maybe like 10, 15 times.

[1273] Oh, okay.

[1274] Oh, you know which way to point it.

[1275] Yeah.

[1276] We'll say, yeah.

[1277] Yeah, it'll be good for it too.

[1278] It's fun.

[1279] It's fun.

[1280] There's a great place out here called The Range.

[1281] It's an indoor place.

[1282] It's such a big place that they have a 100 -yard indoor rifle range.

[1283] yeah which is just bananas like who the fuck has that yeah yeah it's a nice place that's that's that's that's high in shooting out there when i got there they told me if you hear a helicopter it's tim kennedy he helicopters in he flies his own he's another maniac yeah i used to watch him train over here over here on it and he's he's a psycho too oh yeah he's a bad motherfucker yeah yeah you know again you need people like that yeah but he's a he's got a lot of varied interest too you know tim is a fascinating guy yeah yeah he's he's good dude he was a great fighter too and really did a lot of his fighting while he was also still serving in the military you know a lot of his early days so did brian stan you know a lot of the uh elite guys that were in the military they were in the military while they were fighting you know yeah i didn't know that about stan i didn't know i know tim was still yeah stan i believe when he was in the wec the early days of his career i think he was still serving pretty sure and you know and then he went from the u the uc and transferred over the ufc and now uh i forget what he's doing in business i think he's i don't want to say because i'm not exactly sure but he's very successful in the the corporate world now oh good for him which is crazy yeah this guy transitions and he was a great commentator as well but he just decided he didn't want to do it anymore and just decided to uh do things outside of uh outside of fighting That's not an easy job either.

[1284] Commentator?

[1285] No, it's not.

[1286] It's, you know, like when you hear a guy like Dominic Cruz or Daniel Cormier or something like that, I mean, just because you're a great fighter doesn't necessarily mean you'll be a great commentator.

[1287] Like, there's a lot of things that they have to learn.

[1288] But it is really nice that the UFC has that available to them so they can transfer from fighting right into commentary.

[1289] Yeah, D .C. does a good job.

[1290] Oh, he's phenomenal.

[1291] After I can't remember the fight, but y 'all were doing it together, I think.

[1292] you all are like a couple of kids I don't know I'm trying to think I'm always a kid with him I love him to death but something happened I wish I can remember who was fighting man but you guys were fucking jumping on each other and it was just like it's fun no because yeah it's good because you're obviously still a fan right yeah you could be obviously you're doing your job I know the fight you're talking about is Benil Daryush and Jekar close that's it and Jekar had him hurt bad and then Bineal and he abandoned like his defense and started going after him and Benil wasn't as hers he thought he was and Benil cracked him back and then Benil wound up kale in him and it was such a wild exchange and we're like wah we're leaning back and DC's leaning on me and John Anick is like this that's us yeah that's it right there that's it that's it look at he leans on me he's like and you don't see in that small version of it you don't see John Anick in it but John Anick was freaking out too it was it was wild man it was wild i mean it was just here's the exchange jaccar like i mean look man a lot of people would have been out it was incredible and then once he had jacar closed he hit him or hurt rather he hit him with that beautiful left hand and drops him and we were just going ape shit but i just love working with dc period because he's that's the picture that's like a famous picture that's awesome there's uh there's one where we're all green and they gave us like alien antennas and the aliens watching Earth 2020 like the series finale of Earth 2020 like you know DC's he's such a big kid like you would never believe like my wife said it best like she met her for the first time pretty recently and she was like he's so nice you would never believe that he is like one of the baddest fucking people to ever compete in the sport two division world champion heavyweight champion light heavyweight champion elite wrestler yeah fucking savage Literally, the only guy to ever beat him is John Jones and Steepay.

[1293] Two other complete total savages.

[1294] He's such a cool guy.

[1295] I remember I was, I'm positive.

[1296] It was the first time I ever saw you guys commentate together.

[1297] And, you know, you guys were like getting ready or whatever.

[1298] And he's like, hey, man, you know, such a cool guy.

[1299] He's like, you know how to tie a tie?

[1300] I'm like, yeah.

[1301] He's like, will you tie this for me?

[1302] And I put it around my neck and tied BCs tied for him.

[1303] It was just like such a down -to -earth guy.

[1304] So normal.

[1305] see him in the octagon at the highest levels one of the smartest fighters yeah i mean i mean knocked out stepe amyotrich i mean what i mean he didn't see that one coming he's a fucking tank of a man too you know because he's only like 510 but he's like 510 wide you know just and just couldn't be nicer i mean i there's a lot of people that are really nice but dc's like he's exceptionally nice and funny it's hard to be funny when you're a fighter It just is.

[1306] You got the stigma on you already, like, oh, okay, he's going to be a dick.

[1307] He's a badass.

[1308] He's got a great sense of humor.

[1309] He's always silly.

[1310] Him and Max Holloway were always fucking with each other.

[1311] It's really funny.

[1312] Like, when he was the heavyweight champ, Max was saying, I'll fight you two, D .C. They were talking about him going.

[1313] Did you see the Max Hollowie fight?

[1314] How good did he look the other night?

[1315] Jesus Christ.

[1316] It was insane.

[1317] He broke his own record.

[1318] He has number one, number two, and number three for the Moal Strikes landed.

[1319] Most strikes landed and most strikes thrown.

[1320] Oh, it was really.

[1321] ridiculous his volume is off the charts it's hard to imagine and didn't slow down one iota in the fifth and final round he still no no problems with the cardio at all i mean that pace will cripple a person it's just he's superhuman it was like a superhuman performance like i i really want to talk to him about what the fuck he does for cardio yeah he should he should give seminars because like i just don't understand i don't understand how he can keep that volume up and you could Like, and Calvin Cater, the dude he fought, is one of the toughest men that's ever lived.

[1322] Because the beating that he took in that fight, the fact that he never stopped swinging, never gave up, never stopped trying to win, took some shots.

[1323] I mean, was wobbled on multiple occasions and covered up and was still swinging, was still trying to win.

[1324] God, what a fight.

[1325] That was great.

[1326] What, I mean, what a performance.

[1327] Like, one of the greatest performances, it might be the greatest single performance I've ever seen.

[1328] He was sharp, man. I just, you know, wow.

[1329] Yeah.

[1330] And that's coming off, what, two losses, too, right?

[1331] Yeah, but I don't think the last loss was a loss.

[1332] The last loss was, you could make a real argument.

[1333] Yeah.

[1334] Real good fight, though, still.

[1335] It was still, yeah.

[1336] That just shows you how good Volcanovsky is.

[1337] Yeah.

[1338] You know, that he could beat him in the first fight and then, you know, have such a close fight in the second fight.

[1339] But when you watch Holloway in this fight, he was different.

[1340] First of all, he was never in the same spot.

[1341] Like, a lot of guys, they make this mistake they like they like they think i want to hit this guy so i'm going to go at him and hit him straight in holloway's thinking i want them to think i'm going to hit him and then i'm going to be over here and now i'm going to hit you and you're going to swing but i'm not going to be there i'm over here now his footwork and movement and angles were off the chart and he never let calvin set you're like a guy's like to set up and think ready now and you don't get a chance with holloway you never it's always punches coming at you there's always a kick There's a side kick to the leg.

[1342] There's a leg kick coming.

[1343] There's a jab in your face.

[1344] It's all mixed up.

[1345] And then when you think you got to figure it out, boom, spinning back kick.

[1346] Like, fuck.

[1347] It was a clinic.

[1348] It was absolute clinic.

[1349] And you've always been a huge MMA fan, right?

[1350] Oh, yeah.

[1351] I think you were, you had to be one of the first people to really start bringing those elements into the WWA.

[1352] Yeah, I started to, yeah, I used.

[1353] I mean, hell's gate is what, a triangle?

[1354] No, no, no. It's a go go go plata.

[1355] Yeah.

[1356] I just changed the name.

[1357] Yeah, I've been a fan from way back in the day.

[1358] I'm trying to think the first one I went to was in Miami.

[1359] Might have been, so I used to, Liddell was on the way up.

[1360] I think Randy was the champ.

[1361] So this is like 2003 or something.

[1362] Early, yeah, yeah.

[1363] There you go, go to Blata.

[1364] Wow.

[1365] That's crazy.

[1366] Changed the name to the Hell's Gate.

[1367] So you would grab them by the back of the head And run your shin underneath their neck Without trying to actually do that, yeah Did you have you trained much jujitsu like actual jiu -jitsu?

[1368] I used to we used to have a funny enough We used to have a ref that he I'd get in and roll with him And man I would I would get there early and just pick his brain And by the time it shows I'd be I'd just be exhausted but you know um but i was but then you know and i did it because i was such a fan of it i want to i like to understand i like to understand why things are done and why they're done and you know and everything boxing and you know wrestling and everything else so that fight that you're talking about i feel like that's 2003 the miami one because i think that was the first time that i ever did play by play and boy was i fucking terrible at it um but phil baroni did color so it was me and Phil Barone did the commentary because I think I think Mike Goldberg at the time I had like a hockey game to call or something like that and he couldn't get out of it and so they asked me to do it but I didn't know what I was doing wow play by play is like what John Anick does is hard what I the my role is pretty easy like if you understand fighting there's a lot going on you just have to know who's fighting and you know I'm such a fan I'm watching everything so yeah that's attention I remember the fight because tank take Abbott found me and man he wasn't even set anywhere close to me but he he spent the he spent the fight with me oh that's awesome yeah he talked to me the whole what a character that guy was oh my gosh yeah I ran into him years later in L .A. at a bar and same thing man he he's lost a crazy amount of weight now yeah he was he was a lot slimmer when I had seen him in L .A. I think he had some issues some health issues yeah I wouldn't doubt that yeah for all the booze and yeah but uh yeah i'm a yeah big fight went to uh i quit going to lesnar's fight so every time i'd go you'd get he'd lose but uh sure you felt like you were a jinx yeah i was a jinx so i went to i went to his fight with mere and uh you know he got caught in that net knee bar and then uh then he obviously came back and he won the next one then i went to the velasquez fight oh you know when he came back from that fibroticholitis thing and he was that was not the velasquez fight that was alster over him i was at that was the diverticulitis fight yeah okay yeah but i so yeah so i was at the i was at the blasquez fight yeah yeah so he had diverticulitis already when he fought but he doesn't know like when he had it or how long he had it for the the scary one was him coming back from having i mean i think he had like 12 inches of his intestines removed and then he fought alster over him like not that long later yeah um less than a year later and Alster kicked him in the body.

[1369] Right, and the liver.

[1370] You know, Alistair at the time was he was hopped up on all the Mexican supplements.

[1371] That was when they had a silly drug testing program.

[1372] It was basically like an intelligence test.

[1373] Yeah.

[1374] They would just test you the day of.

[1375] And if you knew what you were doing, you could pass.

[1376] And Alistair passed.

[1377] And you looked at them and you want to see someone not pass a sniff test.

[1378] It's Alistair Overeem when he was fighting.

[1379] Good pride.

[1380] Go to the way in with Alster Overeem when he's fighting Brock Lesnar.

[1381] It is the most preposterous physique in the history of the sport.

[1382] I mean, if you think, like, Yoel Romero has a ridiculous physique, Alistair Overim, when they used to call him Uberim, like, and he was 260, shredded, full six -pack, and just a destroyer.

[1383] Like, no, no, no, that one down right in the bottom, lower right -hand corner.

[1384] Right where it says related images, right below related images.

[1385] No, right below related images.

[1386] Right there.

[1387] They see the word of related images?

[1388] It's right next to your cursor.

[1389] See where it says related?

[1390] Yeah, right there.

[1391] Bam.

[1392] Look at that.

[1393] Son.

[1394] What is that about?

[1395] I mean, what are you fucking talking about?

[1396] Are you out of your mind?

[1397] That is a preposterous physique.

[1398] That's, uh, yeah.

[1399] So that's Alistair when he fought, um, Brock and just, he, I mean, he has small children living in his biceps.

[1400] This size of these fucking biceps.

[1401] That's ridiculous.

[1402] And he just smashed Brock.

[1403] It was just, Brock really shouldn't.

[1404] have been fighting at that time yeah no he came back way too much major surgery and you know and his trainers they they were concerned you know like you kicked in the stomach after you've had literally a gigantic chunk of your intestines removed for a disease that who knows how long that was bothering him yeah you know he's sick he almost died man yeah you know diverticulitis is crazy oh it's yeah it's nasty yeah yeah it's just like the something gets caught in your intestine and it gets infected and hands up and clogs up and yeah and they don't totally understand it either I once saw a clip of Brock leaving the octagon and you guys are staring at each other that's it right there yeah you guys have like a very serious moment what was that about do you think he was trying to goad you into a fight I was there to pick a fight you were there to pick an an MMA fight with him not a yeah fuck no what are you smoking never mind everybody fucking crazy so you were there to pick uh yeah yeah uh yeah um yeah that's was my wife was very confused she you didn't let her in huh you didn't let her in on it no she she knows what's going on but she's still like did she play it off yeah she's she's a worker too she knows she gets it yeah i was on ariel's show and he asked me about it right did anybody ever off you in an MMA fight because like when CM Punk had gone in and then you know Alistair and or excuse me Brock and there's a few other guys that were circling it yeah no so fuck I'm it's too late in the game for me you know if I'd have you know if if MMA and UFC had probably taken off sooner I might have and but fuck I you know know it took a while you know for them for you know for the UFC to come mainstream right really 2005 yeah that was when it really started happening with the first season of the ultimate fighter yeah and then but even but even still that that was for the the people that that were in it yeah not not in it but we're fans of it yeah mainstream society was still kind of you know and i think it was like ronda rousey yeah those years like the ronda rousey Yeah, she, yeah, you know, I think when Sports Center and everybody kind of started, like, because they tried to stay away from it as long as they could.

[1405] Yeah.

[1406] And, you know, but once Sports Center came in, ESPN and those guys, and it was like, oh, fuck.

[1407] Yeah.

[1408] Because I think, you know, there's some people, like, in the MMA world, like all Ariel's fans, they just kill him.

[1409] Like, when he interviews me, why you got the fake -ass bullshit wrestlers on there, right?

[1410] And I'm like, you know, I'm like, hey, I do what I do.

[1411] I don't, I don't make any bones about it.

[1412] But I think MMA people are a little more sensitive about it because I think they got looped in.

[1413] Like, because they didn't understand.

[1414] Most people didn't understand what it was yet.

[1415] So, really?

[1416] Early on.

[1417] Like, early on.

[1418] And I think, I think there's that stigma that MMA was, was it kind of, is it like wrestling?

[1419] You know, and everybody was like, fuck, no, it's not like wrestling.

[1420] It's, you know, this is a fucking shoot.

[1421] So I think there's a, you know, if you get it, you get it, you know, what we do.

[1422] But I think that stigma of like is MMA pro wrestling and the fighters, you know, they're like, and it's not even so much the fighters as is the fans, you know, somebody, most of them had thrown a punch or got hit by a punch, they get all up in arms.

[1423] So why you get that fake bullshit wrestler on there?

[1424] Yeah, you can't worry about those people.

[1425] No, I don't worry about them.

[1426] I mean, don't judge me for what I do, you know.

[1427] Yeah, I know.

[1428] You know, it's like, don't read the comments, but it's just like.

[1429] What do you think about what David Arquette's doing?

[1430] What's he doing?

[1431] I don't even know what he's doing.

[1432] You know, David Arquette is like in wrestling right now.

[1433] Oh, yeah.

[1434] And they just did a documentary about him.

[1435] Yeah, and it's great.

[1436] I saw it.

[1437] What is it called?

[1438] Oh, geez, man, I can't remember it.

[1439] I can't remember the title of it, but I watched it.

[1440] I know he did some stuff back.

[1441] Is it, Jamie?

[1442] You cannot kill David Arquette.

[1443] That's what it's called.

[1444] It's really awesome.

[1445] I know he was a big wrestling fan, and he did some stuff with WCW.

[1446] Well, he's, like, really, really into it now.

[1447] I mean, that's mostly what he does these days.

[1448] He's doing a lot of pro wrestling.

[1449] Really?

[1450] And he's super dedicated to it, apparently.

[1451] I know that he...

[1452] Look, he gets busted the fuck up.

[1453] Jesus Christ.

[1454] Yeah, and the wrestlers that he goes against all want to teach him a lesson, like, oh, you're not going to, you know, they're all extra tough on them.

[1455] so it goes into that a lot they're like oh David Arquette thinks he's going to come and show us show us yeah yeah that mentality's kind of going away I think yeah yeah you know back in the day like when I broke in and the guys before me like anybody's you know fucking wrestling is bullshit it's fucking go time right yeah it's like you had to defend you remember that famous um excuse me famous video with John Stossel oh fuck you got the shit slapped out of it who was it David Schultz right slap the dog shit out of him like hard and was that fake yeah was that fake yeah yeah yeah but that was the mentality back then like well it was also the way he was talking about it was pretty disrespectful yeah saying it in a way like he was immune to getting hurt oh he slaps the dog shit out of me let me hear this give me some point over in the camera reading he ain't in it reading these rednecks out here ain't in it because it's a tough business that's terrific way is that all you got i ask you the standard question you know standard question i think this is fake you think it's fake what the hell's wrong with you that's open -hand slack huh you think it's fake he was not expecting that that was disrespectful yeah his the way he communicated was disrespectful and he thought that he could just get away with being this hard ass reporter to a guy that was clearly amped up.

[1456] That's called reading the situation incorrectly.

[1457] Yeah, absolutely.

[1458] I mean, you see how amped up he is?

[1459] David's looking him in the eyes all fucking jacked.

[1460] Yeah.

[1461] Like, you don't say, I'll tell you what, I think it's fake.

[1462] Yeah.

[1463] You don't have to, you know, you don't have to like it.

[1464] Not everybody likes all forms of entertainment, but whatever happened to him?

[1465] Did that, did he suffer because of this?

[1466] Yeah, I think he yeah, he got blackballed from a few places, I think.

[1467] Yeah?

[1468] Yeah, wouldn't touch him.

[1469] Yeah.

[1470] Because of that.

[1471] It's unfortunate because he was taken up for his business.

[1472] Well, not only that.

[1473] I mean, what great publicity.

[1474] Yeah.

[1475] Yeah.

[1476] I mean, the same thing with Kaufman and, uh, you need to stop that, David.

[1477] Right.

[1478] Give him a little slap on the old wrist.

[1479] Yeah.

[1480] Yeah.

[1481] And come on.

[1482] I mean, what do you, listen.

[1483] Yeah, you shouldn't go around smack reporters.

[1484] Also, reporters shouldn't talk so disrespectfully to a, a gigantic savage.

[1485] Yeah.

[1486] Exactly.

[1487] You know?

[1488] Yeah.

[1489] And that, And that era, guys, too, you know, those are men.

[1490] Yeah.

[1491] Like, you go into a dressing room nowadays, and you, it's, it's a lot different.

[1492] I remember walking into my first real dressing room.

[1493] And I also were some crusty men, right?

[1494] Like, half of them had guns and knives in their bags and, you know, shit got handled back then, you know.

[1495] Now you walk in, you know, the guys playing video games and fucking, you know, making sure they look pretty.

[1496] and hard times make hard men exactly yeah you know it's evolution i guess or yeah i don't know what it is but i don't know i just prefer i don't know i just i just liked i like those areas man i like that when men were men and i get it well i mean that's obviously how you came up when you came through that era when you see people that have it easier you go like when you know you think about those days you spent rolling around on the grass in front of that dude's house why's face cranking you I do I think about that off I was like fuck dodging piles of dog shit yeah look what a rich amazing story you have you know like the eight months you spent in that lobby going there every Wednesday like all that all that stuff is what makes you you and when it's all said and done you're 30 plus years in the game you can look back on that and go I earned every fucking ounce of this yeah I can look back and you know I didn't cut it, you know, I gave me shortcuts and nothing was given to me. Yeah.

[1497] You know, I can be proud of that, if, you know, nothing else.

[1498] Do you think it would feel the same way if you went through, like, the grooming situation that they're going through now and when they get paid to train?

[1499] I'm sure they think they've got it hard.

[1500] Yeah.

[1501] Well, it's still not easy.

[1502] No, it's not easy.

[1503] But, you know, I'm sure they wake up certain days and like, fuck, I got to go to the performance center and train.

[1504] You know, like, fuck, I don't know where I'm going to sleep tonight.

[1505] Meanwhile, David Goggins is running with a port.

[1506] fucking fluid in his knee.

[1507] He's running.

[1508] Stay hard.

[1509] Did you ever find the guy your original coach that just moved out?

[1510] Oh, that guy's dead.

[1511] He is dead.

[1512] Yeah, he's dead.

[1513] I ran into him a few years later.

[1514] I got in the business and I left a really key point out of that story what I did.

[1515] So I showed up his house that day, right?

[1516] And all the shit's gone.

[1517] All this shit, all his furniture.

[1518] He'd moved on to another territory.

[1519] But I guess he had to leave so fast that he couldn't, he couldn't take his dogs.

[1520] He had two beautiful Rottweilers.

[1521] He left, his dogs, just left them?

[1522] Just left them.

[1523] Oh, my God.

[1524] They got good homes.

[1525] Well, you took them.

[1526] I took them.

[1527] I took them.

[1528] Oh, that's right.

[1529] I was like, I was like, I mean, imagine if you didn't take them.

[1530] What the fuck is he going to do?

[1531] I have, I have no idea.

[1532] I would think he would have came back or had somebody come back for him, but I was like, I got, I'm out two grand.

[1533] I hadn't learned anything but some amateur wrestling.

[1534] I was like, fuck that.

[1535] I'm taking these dogs.

[1536] I'm taking these dogs.

[1537] dogs.

[1538] I couldn't eat myself.

[1539] You know, I didn't have enough food, you know, money to feed myself.

[1540] I don't know how the fuck I was going to feed some dogs, but I knew I was getting something out of this, you know, I got the shit kicked out of me for six weeks.

[1541] I'm getting something out of this.

[1542] And I ran into him, you know, it was a few years later for a different company.

[1543] And we're setting across, and he had no clue, you know, he had no clue who it was.

[1544] And we're sitting across the dressing room.

[1545] And I'm just fucking staring at him, right?

[1546] And he's like, you know, and he was, like I said, Buzz was, he was a tough guy.

[1547] He was, you know, good amateur.

[1548] He said, fuck, why are you staring at me?

[1549] I said, you don't know who I am, do you?

[1550] He was who?

[1551] Should I?

[1552] I was like, yeah, you probably should.

[1553] You took $2 ,000.

[1554] It was my money.

[1555] You should probably know who I am.

[1556] Yeah, he's kind of fucking squinting at me. Like, what do you want to fucking do?

[1557] So, I don't need to do anything.

[1558] I got my money.

[1559] So how do you have your dogs?

[1560] like like the fate is like you took my dogs like yeah i took your fucking dogs you fucking left me it's like well fuck what do you want to do i'm good man i'm all good at that point you know i'm still a fucking greenhorn right he's he's a veteran i'm like fuck yeah i'd have probably got my ass kicked you know he'd probably took me down and fucking, you know, put me out.

[1561] But I'm thinking like, hmm.

[1562] But, you know, there's always like, fuck, you know, here I am trying to get my foot in the door and, you know, do I fight this guy and get fucking fired right out of the get -go?

[1563] Right, right.

[1564] And I remember one night, I had a chance.

[1565] And I don't know, sometimes I think about it, I should have took it.

[1566] I was looking out my hotel window.

[1567] And this hotel, there was a waffle house.

[1568] And I was looking out my window, and I could see.

[1569] in the waffa I could see him and he was by himself he was all fucked up he was all peeled up you know you tell you know he's bobbing and fucking I'm thinking fuck I could go hide behind a car right now and just fucking tee off on him no one no one would care right and no one would know so I'm having this battle with myself it's like three in the morning like fuck yeah I think fuck no don't do it don't do it don't do it fucking yeah I didn't do it because I That's how people die.

[1570] Yeah, it's how people fucking really, you know.

[1571] And there would have been me on camera somewhere.

[1572] Yeah.

[1573] He owed me $2 ,000, but I did get his dogs, and now he's dead.

[1574] I'm sorry.

[1575] Yeah.

[1576] Everything worked out, all right, I guess.

[1577] Yeah.

[1578] Have you ever tried Dallas Diamond Page's yoga?

[1579] I have not.

[1580] And you know what?

[1581] I'm actually contemplating giving Dallas a call.

[1582] You should give them a call.

[1583] It's legit.

[1584] It's very legit.

[1585] It's legit for everybody.

[1586] But, I mean, he has a soft spot in his heart for wrestlers.

[1587] obviously yeah yeah i mean he's taking guys in and he really helped jake the snake yeah but his his whole system his ddp yoga he doesn't even like calling it yoga he likes to call it just ddp yeah it's it's you know it's it's it's it is yoga i mean he's doing yoga moves but he adds some dynamic tension to him and a bunch of other things and i mean that guy is fit as fuck yeah in 60s he's in his 60s i think he's in his 60s he's in a 60s he's in a 60s he's in a 60s He's super flexible.

[1588] And that's one of the secrets to Chris Jericho's not getting injured.

[1589] He's another one of those big yoga guys.

[1590] And when DDP came out with his, he switched over to that.

[1591] Listen, man, Hicks and Gracie, the greatest jiu -jitsu player of all time, was a yogi.

[1592] He was really into yoga.

[1593] It was one of his big secrets early in his career.

[1594] Hexon was, like, super flexible and super strong.

[1595] I mean, yoga's amazing.

[1596] But Dallas can, he can grab his foot, like right now at his age and stretch it up to a full.

[1597] split standing.

[1598] It's crazy.

[1599] He did it in my fucking studio without even warming up.

[1600] Just grabs his foot and can do it.

[1601] Look, I'd tear something.

[1602] You'd have to pull me out of here.

[1603] Well, he did it.

[1604] He learned yoga and did all this because his back was so fucked.

[1605] And his back to this day, it's like, you know, stenosis is off the charts.

[1606] He probably barely has any discs back there.

[1607] But he just strengthened all those muscles on a spinal column so strong through yoga at the point where, you know, he doesn't really have any pain anymore never had to get everything fused like a lot of guys wind up getting their shit fused he just really got into yoga and and helps a lot of people with it too and there's amazing success stories on his website where you see there was this one guy in particular who was overweight and he was he had to walk around on crutches and at the end of the video the guy's running you know like a couple of years of him training him and and adjusting his diet and then you know this constant daily dedication to that yoga yeah my wife's been on me she said you need to call him or you know you don't even have to call him i was like well if i want to do it i need to i need to call you know i need to talk to him just i to do it i need to do it he's such a great guy too he's such a great guy yeah he's another one of those modal guys that you know positive energy yeah you know makes you feel better just being you know being around him he's also he like does so much for other people like he really does love helping other people like helping them get clean clean their act up and then get their body in shape and get fit you know he has a whole house in Dallas is dedicated or it's Atlanta.

[1608] I think he's in Atlanta.

[1609] Atlanta.

[1610] Yeah, he has a whole house in Atlanta where he keeps people that, you know, like, that are trying to get their shit together.

[1611] It helps guys out.

[1612] Yeah.

[1613] I should.

[1614] I get me, I get these guys a guy comes in once a week to my house helps me stretch and it does wonders and I'm, you know, I should probably do it three times a week.

[1615] Yeah, it's, stretching is one of those things if you don't do it, you need it.

[1616] Yeah, these guys are good They used to be out on it too I don't know if you ever saw TK.

[1617] Is that from Black Swan Yoga?

[1618] No, no, no, no. There's those guys?

[1619] TK.

[1620] Stretching, man. It's this couple.

[1621] Oh, okay.

[1622] And Kimberly, she stretches my wife and then Tim stretches me and it's like one of the highlights.

[1623] It's like afterwards, it's like that two, three hours where I can still move.

[1624] You know, I could, maybe I could still do this shit.

[1625] Well, imagine.

[1626] And then it goes away.

[1627] If you just did yoga every day, that's how you feel.

[1628] Like, legit.

[1629] Like, that's how Dallas is.

[1630] I mean, it's really because of his yoga.

[1631] Yeah.

[1632] I got it that mindset.

[1633] Like, when I have, like, when I was getting ready for an event, I'm a fucking animal.

[1634] Like, it's like, okay, I got to be ready on this date, you know.

[1635] What would you do?

[1636] Like, what's your training?

[1637] I would, it's kind of like a modified crossfit strength training kind of deal, which is catered around my injuries.

[1638] You know, there's a lot of things that I can't do, but most of my concerns over the last few years because I would, you know, sometimes only work once a year is cardio.

[1639] You know, I'm not so worried about, you know, being all yoked up or a lot of times I need to lose weight because I feel better at this point in my career at, you know, $290 or $2 .85 than I do at 305.

[1640] have.

[1641] And so, you know, first thing to do is assess where I'm at.

[1642] Okay, do I need to, you know, do I need to add weight, gain weight, or lose weight, whatever I need to do.

[1643] And then where's my cardio?

[1644] Um, you know, because my cardio is good, then everything else, it's kind of like riding a bike, you know, I mean, I'll need to get in spar a little bit just for timing of, of certain things, but it all begins and ends with cardio.

[1645] So I back out 16 weeks and have the, you know, this is the this is the goal for this deal and you know um a fair amount you know strength i have to do some strength train just to keep my sanity you know because i'm a you know a muscle head from you know used to do what five five exercises four sets 10 reps you know that's the school that i come from right right so i had to break it down into you know pushing sleds and and kettlebells and all of that thing and assault bike fuck yeah that's my favorite the assault bike yeah for torture oh my gosh that's the tobadas you do tobadas on it yeah yeah 20 seconds sprints and then 10 seconds off have you ever seen the assault bike no it was at my studio i have it at home now but it's uh you know it's like got the handles and i got an echo bike from rogue that's the best one's the best one yeah it's fucking phenomenal it's so hard to do you do sprints so for 20 seconds you go all out and then you rest for 10 seconds and then 20 seconds all out and you do I still do a series of eight of those it takes four minutes and dude you just want to just want to die after four minutes is over you just fall down you collapse you look down as a puddle of sweat like what happened yeah and four minutes honestly yeah yeah four minutes of crush you yeah and I do when I was you know getting ready for elk hunting season because you know that's in the mountains it's hard altitude yeah I did 10 of those so I did 10 of those four four minutes so 40 minutes so i'd do one i'd let my heart rate drop down below 130 beats per minute and then i'd just do another one again and then i i just kept doing it just kept doing it and my legs never got tired at elk hunting season they would always get tired but it conditions your your legs so much because it's you're pushing like that against the resistance of that thing it's just one of the best cardio exercises ever and fighters use it all the time after they'll do their all their their drills and all their pad hitting work and then when they have to do some extra conditioning at the end a lot of guys love that yeah yeah i usually i would start up uh either on a wrong row and then uh you know do my workout and then the end if i can hit that tabata it's amazing it's so good but it is you're right you feel so good and i've actually done it too with with where you cut the oxygen off and oh jesus oh yeah like we're wearing those masks why yeah exactly that's what i'm thinking while i'm doing it but i feel like my lungs my lungs are like a dried out sponge i'm like fuck get this thing off of me yeah uh but uh yeah but i'm when i have that like that date right and i have i got four months and i got to be i don't want to embarrass myself right you know that's that's the key i i i you're you're old you're going to be out you're putting yourself out there nobody's making you do this you're doing this yourself so you got to be you know right you got to be the best you you can be so then it's easy for me like but like right now i'm in this transition period in covid like i'm going to need a goggins call here in a minute i'm about to put us out i'm going to need goggins to call and just custom me out like a bitch but uh yeah You know, it's just trying to get that, you know, that workout.

[1646] I'll go upstairs and, you know, do some bench to see what I can, you know.

[1647] Okay, yeah.

[1648] I would, I, with your shoulder, I can't imagine that you still do benching.

[1649] It's crazy.

[1650] Yeah.

[1651] Because that's the thing that fuck shoulders up the most really is benching.

[1652] I tore, I tore my peck benching early, or 99.

[1653] I used to train with this guy.

[1654] He passed away.

[1655] His name was Brian Adams' crush.

[1656] Oh, yeah.

[1657] Yeah.

[1658] It was one of my best friends.

[1659] And he grew up in Hawaii.

[1660] And, you know, he'd go down.

[1661] He's always in the ocean.

[1662] And just incredible, funny story about Brian.

[1663] So I met him when I first started with W .B. I met him in a gym.

[1664] And, you know, I don't know anybody there, really.

[1665] he's on a squat rack and he's got 315 on it and he comes over hey you mind spotting me right and I said yeah yeah sure so you know he's moved up to the you know he's up on the bar and he's getting his hands on it so you know when you spot somebody when you think they're about to squat you know you grab them you know underneath right right so I go and I grab him right and he goes what the fuck are you doing what do you know I will I I won't, I don't know how political, you know, I won't use the expletives in the, in the derogatory, yes, you're following me, right?

[1666] Okay, so he goes, I'm not going to squat this.

[1667] So this would crush me. I'm on a military press.

[1668] 315 behind the neck.

[1669] He did eight, boom, boom, boom.

[1670] Wow.

[1671] And racked it.

[1672] I was like, and he was six foot seven, right?

[1673] Big upper body.

[1674] That's a lot of fucking weight to military press.

[1675] It's standing.

[1676] a Smith machine he just did it right huge upper body like pool pool cues for legs but yeah uh but anyway that's who that was my training partner right so we're training one day and uh i was rehabbing a groin injury and i was just about to go back to work and uh feeling really strong one day so i got 485 on and brian was a social butterfly right so he's talking to the guy over here so he unrax it go down one I'm like oh fuck that felt good great so I come down for the second one and it felt like you know when a fish starts to hit a line it starts tugging that's what my chest that's what I feel it's like oh no Brian's oblivious oh no so I'm sitting there with 485 on my chest like this like, Brian, right.

[1677] And he's like, and he comes, come on, you got it?

[1678] Oh, my God.

[1679] Look, I can already tell.

[1680] It was just, it was just fucking gone.

[1681] So he fucking upright rose this shit off of me. Oh, my God.

[1682] Well, adrenaline.

[1683] And, you know, and I'm just like, oh, shit.

[1684] I tore the, I tore the, I tore the muscle from the tendon.

[1685] And, yeah, that's.

[1686] You get it reattached?

[1687] Yeah, I got it reattached.

[1688] and, you know, another time Dr. Bird tells me, he goes, and I look, he goes, I know you know a lot more about medicine than I do.

[1689] I just, he goes, you tear it again, I'm not going to be able to fix it.

[1690] So you might want to do your rehab.

[1691] And, you know, back then I would, I do half -ass rehab and get back to work as soon as I could.

[1692] But how long to take the recovery from that?

[1693] That took a while.

[1694] And it was a long time.

[1695] That was about an eight -month rehab on that one.

[1696] And then I didn't bench again for years.

[1697] Yeah.

[1698] I was just scared.

[1699] you know i like fuck i don't want to tear it again but yeah it's a scary one yeah it was torn pecks are weird i had a friend who had a torn peck he never got it fixed so he had this like weird crazy divit yeah yeah it was real odd it's like that extra tit here and this was like yeah whole it's crazy how tough wrestlers are i remember one of my one of the piper things that i remember the most is we were hanging out a lot he was doing stand up at the comedy store in some of the last years of his life hanging out there a lot late night with me embarrassed like we would all just go to the diners afterwards and he would drive a lot and he was having trouble with his shoulder sort of famously for a month and he's like oh god when he was turning his steering wheel is oh you could tell even though he was had obviously had a very high tolerance for pain he's like oh shoulder he's like yeah I'm going to a doctor in a couple weeks next couple of a whole couple weeks my shoulder geez louise then after that he's like yeah I went to the doctor turns up my Necks broken.

[1700] He said a broken neck.

[1701] Not he had a sore shoulder, but...

[1702] How did he break his neck?

[1703] I mean, it's just like every injury is...

[1704] It's crazy.

[1705] So I wrestled after that.

[1706] I think it was 2015.

[1707] I wrestled Lesnar at WrestleMania and the Superdome.

[1708] Somewhere in the first five minutes or so of the match, I get concussed.

[1709] I can't tell you where it happened, when it happened.

[1710] But I have no memory whatsoever of the match at all.

[1711] Oh.

[1712] Like my memory from that day, the last memory that I have is like three o 'clock in the afternoon.

[1713] This is crazy, right?

[1714] Three o 'clock in the afternoon, I have a conversation with my wife.

[1715] So obviously I had all that time.

[1716] I think we went to the ring around 9 .30.

[1717] The concussion happens somewhere within the first five minutes of the match.

[1718] and anyway, I go through the match.

[1719] The match goes for 30 minutes.

[1720] I couldn't tell you one thing about it.

[1721] I mean, I've seen it back now, but, I mean, at the time, I got no recollection.

[1722] Couldn't tell you my name.

[1723] Couldn't tell you where I was at.

[1724] Had no clue.

[1725] Never lost consciousness, but had no clue.

[1726] Anyway, they take me to the hospital, and they take me back, and my wife and Vince are there in the waiting room.

[1727] they come out it's the same kind of deal they go all right uh he he's broken his neck and uh you know we're going to give him another scan like obviously my wife is completely freaking out at this point and uh come to find out they had read the scans wrong it was an old break that i never knew i had yeah yeah so you had a break you just i never knew still wrestling with it and i never knew it Oh, my God.

[1728] Probably just assumed, like, was that pain in your shoulder, too?

[1729] Like, that's what I'm noticing.

[1730] It's like a lot of these neck injuries go to the shoulder.

[1731] Well, you're talking about your neck injury.

[1732] Is that where it's bothering you?

[1733] Yeah, totally.

[1734] The whole back of my shoulder blades messed up.

[1735] And I just found out that my neck's messed up, disc on disc, whatever.

[1736] Bone on bone, yeah.

[1737] You have stenosis.

[1738] Yeah.

[1739] Yeah.

[1740] Yeah.

[1741] And you probably got that from wrestling.

[1742] Yeah.

[1743] Yeah.

[1744] Oh, yeah.

[1745] They have me on steroids right now.

[1746] Can you tell?

[1747] Yeah.

[1748] They ain't got you on the right ones.

[1749] They probably have you on cortisone.

[1750] Yeah.

[1751] Methyl prednisone or something?

[1752] Yeah, prednisone.

[1753] Yeah, I don't think you get jacked on prednisone.

[1754] Damn.

[1755] It's the wrong stuff.

[1756] I'd be huge if you did.

[1757] Yeah.

[1758] I contacted that dude about stem cells.

[1759] Oh, cool.

[1760] Talk to him about that.

[1761] Have you had any stem cells?

[1762] I have.

[1763] I've had, you know, I did PRP and stem cells and didn't do much good for me. like I put them in my knee but I had all these guys now they're going down to Panama and Columbia yeah and they swear by it yeah I think because they I think they're getting more down there than they'll FDA will allow here exactly but two guys yeah two guys that I know I have have gone down there and swear by it it's like yeah I set my mom down there I said my mom to Panama yeah twice and she she had a really bad knee and it was in pain all the time and she went and then six months later uh the pain went away it took a while but for six months she was like i'm not feeling anything i'm not feeling it doesn't it feels the same and then about six months later because you know she's in her 70s right it took a little while before it kicked in but then it started feeling much better and then she went back again for a a booster a while while later it helped a lot really stopped i've heard yeah i've heard nothing but yeah I hadn't heard any bad, for sure.

[1764] What's going on with your knees?

[1765] Aniscus.

[1766] Arthritis, yeah.

[1767] Just, I think it, once again, going back to my hips and throwing my gate off, my walk off.

[1768] It's just, yeah.

[1769] Well, it's just also the weight, you know, carrying that much weight around for anybody with your cartilage and your mizcus and the kind of shit you're doing.

[1770] So these crazy explosive movements and, you know.

[1771] When I was getting, I was getting ready, I got three or four years.

[1772] ago I was I did a I was training I was training over here for that too uh way too old but did a 40 42 inch box jump oh and then did a 500 pound pull um which I was like I couldn't believe it I was like I didn't even know what I could get down that low you know to even to even get to a deadlift To deadlift, yeah.

[1773] And, but it started, you know, then I started looking back through some of the footage of the training.

[1774] Like, it started with me doing step -ups.

[1775] Hmm.

[1776] I mean, that's where, that was where I started my program at, just doing step -ups on a bench to end up.

[1777] 42 inch box, yeah.

[1778] That's impressive.

[1779] Yeah.

[1780] That's impressive.

[1781] Yeah.

[1782] I couldn't do it now.

[1783] But deadlifting.

[1784] You know Robert Oberst?

[1785] He's a strong man. He doesn't even believe in deadlifts.

[1786] He's like, you shouldn't do deadlifts.

[1787] It's just the weight on your, it's very controversial for him to say.

[1788] Some people disagree.

[1789] But it is, it's one of those things.

[1790] It's like, you can, you can fuck your back up.

[1791] Easily.

[1792] Especially if you're doing heavy weights.

[1793] With poor technique.

[1794] Yeah, it's real easy to do.

[1795] Yeah.

[1796] I mean, I don't have any reason at this point to try 500 pound deadlift.

[1797] I got nothing left to, I got nothing left to prove.

[1798] I got one.

[1799] I got one on field I'm good man We gotta boost Tony up to that That's it I've been telling you If you want to get bigger You gotta lift heavy things Squats and dead lifts You gotta tell your body That something's wrong Something's horribly wrong And you have to lift heavy things now forever Yeah I was going I was going to the gym And then my neck got messed up like a lot ago We need a fucking Gagin's hotline For Tony He just saw Gagans pull a quart fucking fluid out of his knee and you're like my neck's kind of bothering me I can't really do squats I was really getting into it but you know now it's just uncomfortable so I'm just gonna sleep sleep it off do you still follow WWE now are you still yeah yeah because I think you know once things kind of starting lighten up hopefully can you enjoy it as a fan or is it like are you too close to it I try it's tough right now for me because it's the product has changed so much and it's it's kind of soft you know you're going to get in trouble for saying that probably I probably piss a lot of people off but they need to hear it right you know it it is what it is but to the young guys oh he's you know he's a bitter old guy right I'm not bitter I did my time I'm I'm good.

[1800] I walked away when I wanted to walk away.

[1801] I just think the product is a little, a little soft.

[1802] There's guys, there's obviously, there's guys here and there that have an edge to them.

[1803] But there's too much pretty, not enough substance, I think, right now.

[1804] 100%.

[1805] You agree?

[1806] Yeah.

[1807] What bothers you?

[1808] I think they're, you know, I think they're playing for, you know, a billion dollar market.

[1809] They want the kids.

[1810] They want the kids merchandise to sell.

[1811] the you know that the parents will buy stuff for the kids the new t -shirts come out but really it was you know i i think that the peak of everything was you know the attitude era right 99 early 2000s and all the your you're learning thing like it's like you're becoming instead of playing to kids to be like hey look at this silly character you're a kid you'll enjoy this the kids like me you know in grade school in high school we're watching because it was wrong it was like oh my god you know it's darker it's a crazy sexual like the stuff dx used to do yeah you learned you just they would just make fun of each other harsher it was there was the shit talking was harder the the storylines were tougher now it's like more of a big brand for a big network and they don't have that edge that it used to have they're they're they're trying and it's always been this way but they mean they're trying to put something out for everybody you know what they're just like you know some guys you know are into into the comedy shit and then there's other guys that want to see the hardcore you know more hardcore type fighting what i think one of the big things that that happened is that uh the generation before we all got old at the same time like and So there weren't enough guys to work with the young guys.

[1812] I mean, we can sit and talk and, you know, I can give you my theories on what you should do or, you know, you should do this or maybe you should try this.

[1813] But until you actually can get in the ring and actually do it, it doesn't really translate a lot of times.

[1814] And then you also have too many people that, well, they're on the Internet.

[1815] These guys on the Internet say, I'm pretty fucking great.

[1816] you know okay well you can you can listen to them or you can listen to somebody who's who's been there and done it uh you know i so i think that there was there was there was there needed to you can't help it but there was just not enough uh merging of the young and the new talent like when we had stone cold and rock and triple eight sean all these guys you know we were all working together and everybody we were making money and we were we were drawing And then we all just kind of, we aged out.

[1817] You know, I mean, I hung in there for a long time, but we kind of aged out.

[1818] And then it just left all these young guys to learn with more young guys.

[1819] And the product, you know, the product changed.

[1820] We have, you know, the PC, the training center is helping.

[1821] We got triple H is, you know, great wrestler.

[1822] You know, he heads that whole thing.

[1823] And he's trying to get some of the toothpaste back.

[1824] in the tube you know it's trying to you know move it back to kind of a you know take a step back to move forward right to give the product a little more edge and I think that's what it's missing is what is CM Punk doing is he wrestling again no no no I don't think so he's not I don't think he went to EW or anything now I don't think so yeah so when he stopped when he had his last fight you just I've seen him a couple of times uh on uh one of uh fox's shows yeah they had them on a few times i think they i think they stopped doing that show they had him doing like a little like here's what's happening this week in uh wwee on fox and it was on like fox one or fox sports one or whatever um but then that was it i think they canceled that show god that was a crazy gamble for him to fight yeah i just i don't i don't i'm not real close with him i mean you know we got along uh i didn't understand it um i know he you know he had He had an issue with the company.

[1825] And sometimes, you know, people just want to, you know, they need a new challenge.

[1826] But, I mean, he was a top dude.

[1827] He was, you know, he was a top guy for the company.

[1828] Sometimes, you know, like I said, I don't know enough because I wasn't around enough at that time.

[1829] But, you know, I don't know that he had enough background.

[1830] It was kind of late in the game, I think, for him.

[1831] to make that transition.

[1832] You know, it was easier for Brock.

[1833] Brock had that really strong wrestling pedigree.

[1834] Brock's also crazy athlete.

[1835] He's a freak athlete.

[1836] Just crazy.

[1837] I mean, you see his combine numbers?

[1838] Oh, my God.

[1839] It's ridiculous.

[1840] Bananas.

[1841] Yeah.

[1842] I mean, he's one of those guys that defy, you know, I mean, he was 260 pounds, but, you know, his shot was like a 160.

[1843] I mean, it was just, you can't believe somebody his size can move the way he can move.

[1844] No, he was a freak.

[1845] He was a freak.

[1846] athlete you know i used to call him the the the vanilla gorilla yeah i mean and he was he was just a freak freak dude and um so you know i just don't you know punk you know i don't know i mean if he if he just wanted the challenge i mean good for him i mean he tested it i think that's what it was you know i mean he had one he fought micky gall and it didn't he was Mickey was a good very good fighter and up -and -coming guy too you know and so you know and he fought michael jackson another guy afterwards who was like a pretty solid striker.

[1847] Yeah.

[1848] So you got kind of a tough draw.

[1849] Yeah.

[1850] But the Michael Jackson, I'm telling that was like is easy a fight.

[1851] No, I want to say easy a fight.

[1852] But that was a commensurate to someone who is oh and one.

[1853] Like, I mean, and Michael's much more like much more experienced.

[1854] But he wasn't terrifying.

[1855] Right.

[1856] It wasn't like, he didn't put him in there with some guy who's going to kick his head off into the fifth row right it was a it was a good fight for him but not really yeah you know it wasn't um the guy's good you know and he's just I think I don't know what Sam Punk's ultimate motivation and goal was but I think he wanted to test himself I think they paid him a lot of money I'm sure I'm sure he did good buy numbers I bet I'm sure I'm sure you got a piece of the pay -per -view or a really good deal but uh you know I feel like if somebody wants to do something like that if you really want to do it what you should do is start as an amateur.

[1857] I don't know if he has a time, because I believe he's deep in his 30s by the time he had his first fight.

[1858] Yeah, absolutely.

[1859] That's what I'm saying.

[1860] Yeah, it was late in the game.

[1861] Yeah.

[1862] But if he wanted to do it, really would...

[1863] The right way is not just jump into the UFC.

[1864] The right way is you do some amateur fights, maybe a Muay smoker or two really learn how to do it.

[1865] And it takes long fucking time.

[1866] Yeah.

[1867] Long fucking time to get...

[1868] like real legitimate martial art skills.

[1869] Anything.

[1870] And it takes a long time to, you know, be relevant with WWE.

[1871] Anything you want to do and want to be good at, it takes a little.

[1872] Yeah, for sure.

[1873] You don't do it in a couple of years, you know.

[1874] You've got to take your lumps and you've got to learn your craft.

[1875] It is interesting how few guys have jumped into the water, though, of actually having a real MMA fight.

[1876] Yeah.

[1877] Well, I think, you know, now it's so, it's.

[1878] so specialized now.

[1879] Now everybody's so good at Jiu -Jitsu and everybody can stand -up is good.

[1880] Everybody can wrestle, you know.

[1881] Not like in the early days, you know, where you had, you know, everybody had their specialty.

[1882] You know, you had your stand -up guys and, you know, and then, you know, Gracie came along and fucked everything up.

[1883] What happened with Kane Velasquez?

[1884] Kane Velasquez was working for the company for a little while.

[1885] I, I, you know what?

[1886] I saw him one day at the performance center.

[1887] I was there working, I think I was getting ready for mania.

[1888] He had that match with Brock Lesnar.

[1889] Yeah.

[1890] And I thought, okay.

[1891] They messed that one up on the creative side, is my big guess here.

[1892] I mean, they had one sort of match, right, him and Brock, sort of, and then they did this weird MMA thing where they tried to make the second one like MMA, and it was just a debacle.

[1893] Was it?

[1894] Yeah, it was really, like, one of the saddest things I've ever seen.

[1895] Because they tried to make it like they were doing MMA in the wrestling ring.

[1896] That's tough to do.

[1897] I mean, even, you know, unless you go.

[1898] go, you know, unless you go a half shoot or a full shoot, it's just hard to, it's hard to do it.

[1899] People don't know what you're saying.

[1900] Shoot for folks who don't know means a real fight.

[1901] Yeah.

[1902] Yeah.

[1903] Yeah.

[1904] It's old school wrestler's terms.

[1905] Oh, yeah.

[1906] I'm old school.

[1907] Yeah.

[1908] I know you are.

[1909] That's all I got.

[1910] Kane, what's crazy is Kane like is a big fan of pro wrestling and he's got moves.

[1911] There's a video of him.

[1912] You see what he does that flying scissors?

[1913] Yeah.

[1914] Catches a guy in the, wraps his legs around his head and then flips him.

[1915] And that's exactly what they should have done with him and Brock.

[1916] They should have him learn a few cool moves like that protect him and then let him come along it's funny i remember going to a fight it was in vegas and uh i run into matt hughes and his brother they were huge wrestling fans and they started showing me their their moves and like i think matt was matt was putting a body scissor on his brother is this it's standing right right they're just like what do you think about this what about this and i was like yeah it's pretty good you got a fighting you got a fight in about an hour you're worried about and he's trying out pro wrestling news and they weren't my opinion on them i was it was funny but uh those were good dudes and i remember uh you know pat millich he used to you know he used to invite me out to his place all the time it's like but i was when i was on the road all the time but all those guys you know tim sylvia all those guys are big wrestling fans huge yeah yeah well listen mark thank you very much for being here man I really appreciate it.

[1917] I've really enjoyed it.

[1918] I've had a good time.

[1919] Indeed, thank you guys.

[1920] You're the gap, brother.

[1921] Well, if there's ever a pro wrestling person on, I have to have Tony.

[1922] I was just here to lessen the testosterone in the room a little bit.

[1923] Lesson it a little bit.

[1924] I needed to add some, what's it called, estrogen.

[1925] Let me extend it.

[1926] So we just announced for the next three years where our manias are at, right?

[1927] So this year is going to be in Raymond James.

[1928] Next year, 22 is going to be.

[1929] in Texas Stadium again.

[1930] Where's Raymond James?

[1931] That's in Tampa.

[1932] That's going to be 21.

[1933] But in 22, it's going to be in Dallas at Texas Stadium.

[1934] You should come.

[1935] If I can.

[1936] I know you're not a wrestling fan.

[1937] I know, but.

[1938] I'll take acid and go.

[1939] How about that?

[1940] I guarantee you.

[1941] I guarantee you you, you'll have a good time.

[1942] I would go if I'm home, if I'm around.

[1943] I just, I never know where I'm at, especially in 2022.

[1944] I hope 2022 you actually have, like, like real audiences.

[1945] Isn't that weird that you got to, I would have imagined we would have real audiences by now.

[1946] You kind of can still in Tampa.

[1947] Is that why April it's in Tampa?

[1948] I think so.

[1949] They just announced these yesterday.

[1950] So we got the Royal Rumble coming up in two weeks.

[1951] That kind of sets off Russellmania season.

[1952] But I promise you, fan or not a fan, you will have a good time.

[1953] I'm sure.

[1954] I've been telling him this for years.

[1955] Hopefully you get it through it on.

[1956] Can you pull up a live shot of Texas Stadium?

[1957] Just to give you a feel that's the one in Dallas right yeah yeah that's where Cowboys play they wanted to do a UFC fight there that's where Connor wanted to fight um I think you wanted to fight Kabib there oh that would have been awesome yeah I think he was trying yeah they wanted to do a UFC fight there which is just fucking bananas oh my god that is so crazy 100 and Jesus Christ 5 ,000 people oh that's so many people look at the size of that ground oh my God How big is fucking WrestleMania?

[1958] That's crazy.

[1959] Huge.

[1960] That is crazy.

[1961] When you look at that many people there for that.

[1962] What a successful fucking event.

[1963] They come from 25 different countries.

[1964] Just people all over the world.

[1965] That's the big one.

[1966] That's the big event.

[1967] This is our Super Bowl.

[1968] This is, yeah.

[1969] That's amazing.

[1970] I was supposed to go to my first one this year.

[1971] I still have the ticket.

[1972] Never got to use it for Tampa Bay.

[1973] It was going to go in April.

[1974] I was going to do shows in Florida and then have the Sunday off.

[1975] I had it all planned out.

[1976] I tell you, we're alive.

[1977] We're alive.

[1978] We can keep going.

[1979] Yep.

[1980] Well, thank you.

[1981] Thank you, Mark.

[1982] Thank you very much, man. Thanks for having me, man. My pleasure.

[1983] Thank you, Tony.

[1984] Thank you, young Jamie.

[1985] Always.

[1986] Thank you, everybody.

[1987] Goodbye.

[1988] Thank you.