Transcript for #1503 - Josh Barnett

Two. One. Demons. Demons. Demons. I'll take them. I'll just, you know, absorb them in your soul.

That's probably possible, you know?

Could be. I've definitely always got the soundtrack for it. I'll even draw in that fucker. That's a real one.

This thing actually has taken quite a long time. I am not of the sort who was prone to growing facial hair and shit. Like it took me until probably 36 before I had a single chest hair? What? Oh yeah. Really? Yeah, I blame the the Native American side of my family. Wow.

Oh, well, there was this guy, Victor Zengiev, who actually did professional wrestling, and that guy was just coded in it. Oh, yeah, there's another guy selling Hashimikov also. He's just a fur coat.

He was a mass teacher or something like that.

You know what? When you got a head like that, it's like you're always walking under a full moon.

Well, there was also a guy named Thor something who was in plan nine from outer space. And he was also a professional wrestler.

I bet you if you put in the harriest wrestler's feet, I'm sure that would show up to.

Yeah, so I'm not naturally all that prone to being particularly hairy.

You know, it's just it's coming in kind of nice.

I use all the right locians and tinctures, ungents. Did you use locians? No, I don't know. I don't know. Not a very high maintenance guy. Every now and again, I will put some beard oil in it, but that's about it. Beard oil and it's mainly because I'm just trying to keep the the knots out of it Yeah, people will look down upon you if you groom your beard hair in any way for some strange reason.

Oh, you think you think a razor touches this? I mean, possibly.

No, you've got to let this shit just go to need. This is full will to power right here. It just does what it wants to do and gets stronger every day.

Oh, for sure. Yeah, you just can't do that formulated that into your You're your monument to your cock. Yeah.

You know, I'm surprised that he has it pointing upwards. Like, you know, he hit here instead of, but I guess the nature of chest hairs is as such.

You got the very manicured one. Yeah, I don't know. I liked that one a lot. He probably had waxed to finish that off.

Like he knows what he's doing. He's out there hanging fucking around when it comes to his chest there.

You got to figure, you know, what, what is the, What is the length of time that you can continue to be an athlete? I've said this to a lot of folks, and that is, you don't know what your athletic window is. Especially when you create something exceptional, like if you're an Olympic athlete or your world class athlete, or professional athlete, as you continue to move up the ladder of difficulty, so to speak. the shorter the window is that you can compete at that level obviously but everybody's athletic window is limited so the length of time you can be a competitive fighter is you know who knows how long I guess I've seen some stats say um over five years it starts to decline over seven or around seven it really starts to take a nose dive

But that's who's day and even then that nine years is still more towards the tails and not into not into the middle of it and I mean a lot of folks you'll see him you'll get to the UFC They are there for about three, four years, and then even towards that tail end of that four years, it's like they're no longer in the running for any of the major fights.

Yeah, you're doing untold amounts of damage to your body. And there is, of course, a matter of chance in terms of, oh, did somebody roll into your knee that day? Or not? Or did you just land a punch brawl? I mean, there's all kinds of other factors that just can't be accounted for.

That's so risky. It is and I think a lot of it stems from the origin of MMA. It's wrestling being derived from wrestling from the jujitsu from martial arts structure elements, but also the money wasn't there for dedicated trainer manager types. It's like as soon as the manager construct came into MMA and I say construct because I don't think most MMA managers are actual managers or mostly just agents. They just they find fights and whatever and they'll get a collective of other fighters under their wings so they can have some sort of collective bargaining by having these other athletes are always being able to shuttle somebody and depending on what a the UFC or some other organization might need, but they're not really overseeing someone's career, right?

No, that's true. And part of it is because I would say a lot of these quote unquote managers want a fast track and athlete in the getting the money. And with boxing managers and there are times where people are fast track, let me shanko. So he was such a high level that he's already being put into the big

True, but I didn't have 24 fights by the time I ever hit the UFC or something like that.

Yes, yeah, no it is quite young and it's it lasted as the youngest UFC champion of all time until John Jones beat it by like a few months or something like that. When he won his title, but but these management types came into the to the fold. And then they're like, well, you know, we get 33% or 20% or all these different types of stuff.

There was a case around a fighter suing his former manager and the manager was getting 33 and a third. So which I guess was the maximum allowable by California standards, I believe. But that seems so wrong. It does seem wrong, but the other thing about this and the way I approached it was You get these numbers, you get these ideas from boxing and these other avenues that are more established. But here's a thing, a boxing manager will take a fighter, how's them in the cat skills or whatever, take them to Big Bear, put them in a home, pay for sparring partners, so on and so forth. And the amount of actual management in terms of logistics and everything else going around someone's career, is being is is vastly different from just oh yeah well I called up the UFC and said yeah I'll throw you in in two weeks right yeah the same thing and you think you deserve 33 and a third percent yeah with my fighters I tell them look once I can make you over ten grand start paying me because other than that like what am I going to do with your 200 bucks right by myself you managing guys are trying I have actually been managing fighters since some early 2000s? No shit. Yeah. I didn't know that.

Yeah. No, I started off with managing Megumi Fuji's career. I got her first fights in the US, helped her turn pro all that and negotiate her Bellator deals, all that kind of stuff. And then I manage Victor Henry as for like a more modern athlete I'm working with. Victor Henry, he's on eight fight winning streak. He's probably next in line to fight for a title in Ryzen. He's been kicking the crap out of people in Ryzen. he's the deep world champion he's beating people up in Russia and the thing is you know people are so concerned about just the UFC or the American market which I get it it is the largest market is the most notable and it has incredible fighters in it But there's incredible fighters everywhere and there's also that process towards graduating a fighter up to their to their best position and giving them the best experience for that fighter. And I was just talking to someone at the UFC the other day about Victor and he goes, you're doing the right thing with it. You know, you're building them up, you're making him the best version of himself. He can be, and you're taking care of him and getting him paid. And, you know, that's part of the experience. And also, I try to make sure to give my fighters the experience of being around the world, seeing the world. There's nothing that will change your outlook towards being in other places, especially the more disparate from what you're used to. I've got a great fighter. Name AJ Bryant. Featherweight and I took him all the way over to Kabarovsk, Russia. And yeah, it was a real eye-opening experience, but the thing was, it was eye-opening in all the right ways. And he had such a blast being in such a different environment and getting to be really out of his comfort zone. And, you know, I live to do stuff like that for my fighters.

I don't see how it won't, especially I think within the within that overall apparatus of fighting and the constant fail failure to succeed rhetoric, you just can't come out and immediately win at everything that you're trying to do and you won't come out and immediately be graded everything you do. Some things sure, but it's about the overall path of all of this. It's about your overall growth and where you started and where you end up.

if not the best yeah he's got an incredible dynamism to his game and he just he's his offensive capabilities are just absolutely deadly deadly yeah he finds holes you know I mean for him to not talk about my dating life

He's very elusive. And I know a lot of people like to really rag on Page. I think he's awesome. Me too, man. And I met the kid. Uh, so we're to think that everybody's kind of like kiddo me now. But uh, uh, I mean, I'm a former youngest ever UFC champion to here you go. I just do some people. I'm sure I'm kid to like Mark Coleman. I'm sure he'll always call me kid.

And uh, G. LeBelle or Jean LeBelle? Yeah. 100%. Uh, if you ever come across Jean, if my name comes out of your mouth, he's going to go tell him uncle Jean said, uh, thanks for teaching him a Kimura. It never ends. Oh, you mean double risk lock. Yeah, he's I love uncle jeans. I absolutely do but there's great fighters everywhere and really promotions one of their their biggest One of their biggest duties is to find them to cultivate those fighters They're not great just because they're in your organization They're great because your organization finds great fighters. Right.

There's even amazing guys out there like Jack Slack and Lawrence Kenshin that do breakdowns on specific fights, fighters, and specific techniques, where if I send Jack Slack and Lawrence Kenshin stuff to my team, all the time in group chats like watches, watches, watches, watches, you know, if any of them pick up like a team like Sam Art, then I'm like, Job done. Yeah, and I didn't have anything about it. It would seem better.

I do love his sincerity. Yeah, that's just a thing that is missing, you know, sincerity and authenticity and anything you do and just like we talked about. the the the rogan man cave, but it's not about being a man cave. This place is an extension of everything that you're trying to create for yourself and that is honestly whether you have the means to create something like this or you just have the means to create something really small on your own little apartment. Everything that you do should be in worship so to speak to what your the ideal you're trying to create right yeah and you can't do that if you're in sincere you can't do that if you're if you're just trying to be the packaging and not the item yeah we were talking about that earlier that there's too many and I think this is part of the problem with social media is that people are intoxicated with this idea of having other people think they're awesome

I cannot wait to hear what, what just criticism somehow came out of nowhere to tell you what, what a jerk you were, how wrong you are.

True. It is, uh, I'm trying to be the, I'm trying to be the packaging and not the item.

All I fell in love with Samurai philosophy a long time ago from what Nitobe and the Haggar curry. And there's even one called Budo or Samurai philosophy of the Samurai. I forget the name of it, but it's a really short succinct book that really nails down some things. And I think part of why what they have to say is so So authentic, and so real, so to speak, is because it's life or death for them. You know, you're reading a storm of seal by Ernst Schinger, and you're reading this guy's take on being in World War I. And it's not that he was never afraid. It's not that he didn't understand what war is. It's just, but he had from his position as a soldier in the way he approached things. And the way he even still saw beauty in these moments in living in that part of his life. It's clearly somebody that I believe has a good grip on being towards death, as high-digger would put it, like being embracing what it means to be alive and by embracing that, you're also embracing the fact that you are gonna die. It is not going away that death is alongside you and you don't know when it's coming and there's no need to because you're not supposed to be thinking about whether or not you're gonna die or when it's gonna come or anything like that, but you need to be thinking about what you're gonna do before that time does show up. and how you're going to do it. And for why? How are you finding meaning and fulfillment in life so that when death comes along and talks on your shoulder and on your shirt sleeve, you're like, all right, well, this is it.

it's attempting to take on, it's presenting the persona of that kind of individual, mainly because they know that deep down all of us realize that there's weight to those kind of, of course, you know, and I'm sure Peter Sandwood would be like, that's the bloody archetype, or something exactly what we do.

The surface level diagnosis of all these kind of thing or prognosis. But the thing is, even as much as, you know, to put it in perspective, So I have my own journey dealing with Marxism, Neo Marxism, whatever and how it is at one point with a part of my life and just making me absolutely miserable from another person. Why is it possible with dating? Yeah, I was someone I was in relationship with and it was just like I'm getting assaulted in a way. No, I'm not trying to say words of violence. Calm down. I was just under it. I felt like I was under attack all the time for things that I didn't do and things that I from arguments that I had or accusations and like I don't understand why I am being this is being off loader non to me at the time. So I start researching and researching and researching because I truly believe essentially like J.S. Mills says that though that who he who understands only one side of the argument not the other understands a little of both. And so even through all this I have to read I had to come to the fact that as much as if you'd want to take that shallow diagnosis of Peterson. It's the same as if you want to take a shallow diagnosis of Marxism. These things aren't operating out of complete falsity. They're not coming out of nowhere. They're not built upon nothing. There is truth being said and everything. This is stemming from truth. So if you read Marx, there is true critiques. There's truth things within it. Now where people often go wrong is they take a seed of truth and they plant a forest of bullshit. right so just because you can you can grow it doesn't mean you're necessarily like like I think a bamboo right so if you put bamboo in a lot of the places especially in western especially the Pacific Northwest or Western America depends on your climate zones we're not going to get all that but a lot of strains of bamboo will grow to the point that they just they can't be stopped they will grow through concrete they will grow through asphalt they will so if you're going to plant it you have to plant it in like steel boxes and concrete barriers and things they make sure that the bamboo stays only where it's supposed to be otherwise it's going to be fucking everywhere and it's going to outcompete and dominate everything else now playing the bamboo great idea but if it goes nuts and destroys all your your native uh... flora Well, fuck. That wasn't so great. Now, was it? Right. You know, great. I hope you like Bamboo because that's all you fucking got now.

Well, it's definitely a problem if you take a Thank you. mostly an external look at everything. It's all outside of me. It's all other things. It's all these systems. It's all these other aspects, these external processes. And it's none of it is me. Right. And none of it is the individual. And none of it is, you know, the small group to the large group to the, you know, all these things change from every vantage point, from the single person to the small tribe, to the larger nation-sized community. I mean, to think about The logistics it takes to keep some of these systems working and working accurately, or as accurately as we can at times, something dumb, like, um, I don't know, just making sure electricity gets to your house. Mm-hmm. It's enormous.

which turned out to be a hit home disaster and so close the time Joe I'm a man from ballard yeah and and you know it's so interesting is like of course it would be on capital hill and that was like our little hate ash barriers of sorts But, you know, I thought Capitol Hill had really jumped the fucking shark a long time ago when I was reading an article about people wanting to be on Capitol Hill so bad that they were willing to live in shared a part shared living space scenarios where they're sharing bathrooms and kitchens and all this and paying like stupid money for a room. And I don't mean a room in a house. I mean, purpose built, habitation scenarios to do that. And I'm just like, why the fuck do you want to live there that bad? I mean, there's plenty of cool shit there, but there's plenty of cool shit all over Seattle.

It was just, you know, it was the, it was the, gay or LGBT I guess now as you would refer to an epicenter there was a lot of there had some head shop stuff it was just sort of a counterculture district you know and I remember as a kid you know we go up there and go to the weird little stores I mean that would be the place we want to buy some like crystals and all that kind of stuff it would be there but it was a groovy very densely cultural place And, you know, famous for a lot of things, you know, some things unfortunate like me as a pot of getting killed behind the combat tavern or, but also for many, many great things, too. But it would definitely be the place where you would see something like a chas pop up. It's just that the separation from idea to reality was something like a chas, and it's always going to be this case. It's always going to be just mountains in between the two. You know, the funniest part I think for me is watching that altercation video with Raz and his his new police stating where the police now and the guy in being approached for graffiti and building going well you know what's up with all the guns and all the white kind of guns and this lady who's filming going don't don't worry about us having guns who cares about guns cops carry guns guns are no big deal and I'm like whoa you guys are totally exactly this episode is brought to you by vivo barefoot let me tell you something you might not know ever wondered why your feet are shoe-shaped and not foot-shaped

And there's a picture of the police of Razz and the guy then embracing each other, which to one side, I'm thinking, see I fucking told you people violence isn't the worst thing in the whole world like you know to be perfectly honest violence can bring people a lot closer together than you think you know we've never trained together but we know what it's like to train so there's already this inherent rapport between us and then the the rapport between you and anybody that gets on the mat is almost sucked out immediately because you just cannot we cannot be on a in a situation like that and and be living on persona alone. You need to really be who you are. And that might be a really great fighter. Might be a really mediocre one. It doesn't really matter. Everybody is generally towards their pure self when put into that kind of scenario. It is the Chuck I can't say is in the last name. Paloan. Paloan.

Palenuk? Okay. And he, you know, that's been lying about, you never know who you are until you've been in a fight. Like, yeah, it's too long. You really want to know who you are, getting to a fight. But watching that, you know, so the side of me is going to see, like, perhaps, you know, a little bit of fistacuffs could make things a little better, you know, especially if we were to talk about the Bob Mitchell combat that exists in Washington, which I think should be national, to be perfectly honest.

That has to be included in in such a law.

It's just not possible. And as much as we would love to think about the ideal scenario for everything, you can't. There's always going to be that one, 10, whatever. It's just not possible. And so, and then you see your as in this guy and it's like, oh, it's all good, but it's just like, well, but what if cops just got to just smack people all the time? I mean, that's part of the problem with police issues in general. Right. I mean, we can go on about, I've seen, you know, you get the arguments about stats from the FBI and about the shootings and unarmed shootings and all this kind of stuff, but they don't have stats for how many times has a cop just beat someone's ass?

They don't have, you know, and it's a lot. Right. But with the, the, the, the, the chads, you, this thing, the saddest thing about all this, even besides I'll I'll take an argument on this even besides all the fucking property damage and the just tearing everything up and obviously loss of life, right?

I think more seven people died seven people are dead and Should we have a drink to those people? Yeah, we should we should absolutely have a drink to those people warm

The fuckers have your own whiskey. Yeah, a few. A few, but yeah, we can get into my love of whiskey at at some point here. So seven people died in chas, which is obviously awful.

I didn't know it was that many. But what I guess where I'm going with this on what I think could possibly be the worst of all of this. people not learning. People not learning that it's not so easy to put societies together. Right.

It's the San Francisco International Spirits Competition. I always think those people are drunk.

Yeah, I mean, it was a repository. I don't know how guys like, I'll see Tony. How do you how do you go up there and do this whole fucking stick? If you gave me any of that, I'm done. I can't have a coherent conversation. I would be unable to actually keep track of what the fuck anybody's talking about. You get accustomed to it. I guess.

You know, it's a risky thing. You just never know what's going to come with any sort of alterations to your mirror mind state.

Dude, the idea of it terrifies the shit out of me. I have material. I got all kinds of shit. But I'm just like, whoa.

One of the scariest things I ever did was the first time I ever sang on stage with a band. And that was this band, Nile, Death Metal Band. And so I'm friends with them, Carl, you're the man. But I'm sitting in the audience. I'm there with my girlfriend at the time. And we're at the House of Blues in Hollywood. And he literally goes, hey, Josh Burnett, do you hear this then? You know they put a spotlight on me go he's got to come out and help us sing black seeds of vengeance to them just like oh you know I don't tell you before you know and some just going no okay you know so at some point Uh, yeah, by the way, uh, people, uh, fronting a band with a microphone, you have, uh, an in an ordinary amount of power, be careful about how you flex it. So I, I, I go backstage. They come grab me. I'm just waiting and I'm breaking out into a full sweat. All I can think of is that my throat is going to close up and only squeaks in and like weird mouth noises are going to come out. I'm just going off fuck. And I get up there. I, uh, I can't hear myself. I just, I'm doing my thing and I get off stage and I'm like, oh, that's pretty good. I'm just losing my shit and he's like, what the, I go, I have never been more scared of my entire life. He's like, what the, how do you afraid of being on stage and just singing when people are trying to kill you? I go, honestly, fighting for my life feels good. I'm not saying that that is the way most people should have view things and, and I'm, I'm the believer that if you're, if you enjoy delivering violence, If you really are into it, then you also enjoy when violence is brought to you. And the escalation that comes from the feeling of, I don't know, I feel like they're in your best mindset. There's a feeling of power that just derive from it. I talked to, uh, uh, uh, I got where going all over the place. You might think we were already high.

Yes, uh, when you, when you had your first fight, uh, like actual just fight or when you were the baby face assassin. Oh, my first fight was 19 years old. I was, on winter vacation from the University of Montana. One of my wrestling coaches called me up. An AMC pancreation was a project that had pro fighters and they were out there and I knew of them, but this was 1996. So this shit was still real DIY sort of. There wasn't really an avenue towards things. And these, I've talked to MMA people now. You guys don't get it. You don't know what it was like back then. My old wrestling coach he calls me up. He goes, hey, I know you've been training. I know you're into this. There's an opening to fight this guy, Chris Charnos on January, whatever it was. So it was the 11 days. All right. I go, oh, Chris Charnos. Yeah, I fought in Super Bowl. He's probably, yeah. Yeah, okay. When? All right, 11 days. I'll be there. And that's it. I just went and I trained with an old martial arts coach of mine. ran a little bit, you know, I was already training back in Montana over at Jim Harrison's, but she don't conquer out of you, you know, rest in peace since I much love. But I'm like, well, yeah, cool. I want to fight. That's it. I'm standing in line to go through the medicals and this other cat, he looks at me, this, this, his name is also also Chris, and he fought on that, that card. And he goes, so where do you train, man? I go, oh, I trained over Montana, but also trained a bunch in this church basement. And he just looks at me. He's like, cool. later he tells me he goes, I thought you were going to die.

Oh, for sure. Yeah. And so I get in the ring. I fight Chris. I choke him unconscious in like two minutes. And Matt gets in the ring and he goes, hey, you know, we love to have you come back in the summer and fight again. I'll be here. And that was just, it was just a matter of, I was so, the funny thing is that was ready to get out there and amp to do it. But even then, when you get started it felt like my first ever wrestling match to some degree and like everything kind of turned into tunnel vision and it's uh... it's so it's a strange strange feeling about how everything seems to be going a million miles an hour and you watch it back in reverse you're like oh my god that was actually a lot of time in between you know that segment eight is segment b and i do remember my first wrestling match especially because i fucking had an arm this guy who had already placed he placed in uh... the district So, or the city, whatever, in Metro, we call it. You wrestled for Ingram. I wish you had a memory of his name. He's a cool cat. But I throw him with a head and arm, boom. And as I'm pinning him, I'm screaming. Ah, sorry.

I'm just like, I get in there. And I throw him and pit him on his back. And I get the pan. I'm just like, put the fuck with that.

I think that part of it, I would say, is that we're too disconnected from things associated to that state, not just danger, but just that chaos. Chaos, too. As I got more and more and more into philosophy, and I'm really, really heavily into Nietzsche. In fact, that's actually even how I even came across Jordan Peterson to begin with, was I was just looking for lectures on Nietzsche. Really? And this is before any of his stuff with the pronouns and the bills and stuff, and now this was just me listening to his university lectures.

Yeah, you have Viral OG, and never. He's the nicest guy. He once, he did. Or someone from his Twitter reached out to me at one point when his book came out and said, hey, we'd like to send you a copy. Yeah, sure. No problem. And it was signed John. Fuck that happened, but I did it was like that in a way. It's kind of better. But whatever. So the guy named John signed it. I don't know. No, two John. Two John instead of Josh. Oh, Jesus. So I don't fuck. I don't know. You know, I know how that stuff goes. But I saw I'm sitting there and as someone being so into Nietzsche, I started to look at it as this is tapping into like your highest state of being, so to speak. So when I'm in the ring, I feel like things that are attached to me from modern and general living are removed. I feel like it is the most freeing alive moment in my life. And as I can look back, even to that wrestling match, even to getting into fist fights as a little kid, there was always something about me that was drawn to it, not just because I wanted to conquer and crush skulls, but that I literally could not get enough of the feeling of aliveness from it and it wasn't just that it was dangerous but it wasn't it's it's beyond that it is I think more akin to like people talking about that that that no mind state and of course if you can operate in that state well then you might Michael Jordan yourself a night and and look amazing but even when that isn't the case if you can you can center your focus into being in that moment you can experience a type of being that is at its highest level of human existence. It's just that it's not something that is, I had to learn is not, you can't be that way all of the time, and other people can't relate to you when you're in that state. Like you just, your ability to communicate with your fellow man just isn't really there unless they're also in that state with you.

You have to build a way out of fighting so to speak. I believe to try and really simplify it and remember there was that clip just not that long ago of my Tyson talking about no longer being a fighter and you know he's broken into tears like I I was able to watch it once kind of from afar so to speak, but I couldn't watch it again. I'm like, no, no, that's 100%. Like I, I'm like, oh, I know this way too fucking much here. You're tugging on strings. I don't really want to play with right now that I already know of and it's just, yeah, I don't, I don't expect that other people are always going to know what that's like and that's okay. When people say that they don't understand my affinity to violence. I'm like, okay, yeah, sure. That makes total sense to me. You're capable of it. By the way, all of us are like there, but not everybody's built the same to do the same things, just as much as my way of abstract thinking if I sit down with Eric Weinstein. He leaves me behind if he takes certain subjects and I'm like, okay, yeah, I'm just gonna be along for the ride because I can't my brain can't operate on the same level in this fashion that you can't but you haven't spent time in that realm. Well, yeah, and maybe I could become competent enough in you would have to stay with him but I start your life over yeah one sign talks to me about that stuff and I'm like okay I don't I don't know where you're going with this I don't even know what you're saying yeah but so I was Erica was talking to because he's always interested for my take on on violence and how violence relates to humanity and how it relates to being and I listened to his podcast with Jaco, and that I would say, I mean, it was really great. And I've never met Jaco, but he sounds like a really awesome dude.

I'll come to you guys. I love to. But I, but I said to Eric, I go one of the things that I saw that was kind of different here in the way that both me and Jaco seem to approach us is that he's so very clinical about it, very regimented, and I understand that because if he's in a military presence, like you can't just have a guy who's, you know, soaking himself in the enemy's blood and running around the battlefield, screaming at the top of his lungs. That doesn't help anyone, right? Like reveling in something like this isn't really a necessity in anything, right? That is It's besides the point and it's actually in 2020. If anything, especially in 2020, when they went after Gurka soldiers, Nepalese soldiers who were sent on a kill mission to grab some sort of extremist, and we're going to have where we want proof to. So what do they do? They pull out their cookery and take the dudes head off and bring it back. And then they went and put that guy on trial for doing his job because we thought, oh, that's too much, too much proof. It's death and war and violence. What is too much? You know what I mean? I mean, what if his head had a gotten cut off and, you know, stuck on a pike somewhere to be like, don't fuck with us.

You need the head. Correct, correct. And also, I guess, to take on a tone that seems to be permeating the general sphere of consciousness in the West. Oh, well, who we need to tell Gerka is that they're not allowed to cut people's heads off.

That's their culture. Yeah, don't don't don't do this, you know, don't do this. Yeah, the cookery. Yeah. Yeah, I I own a cookery from Cold Steel man and that thing is my my one of my prize possessions. Why do they shape it that way? I don't know the history of why the blade takes on that shape, but I can say that the shape of the blade the way it's designed is one of the greatest shopping devices you will ever come across because of the the angle in the blade and the way that it it widens out towards the tip it creates this belly of cutting pressure that when you swing that fucker it just wax right through anything that's a Damascus one yeah mine's a old school Sand my three cold steel that has my logo on it. Thank you Andy and Lynn Thompson for that one, but it is arguably one of the baddest fighting knives ever created. It will take off.

That's a 19th century. There's small ones that they make folders and cold steel has a small one called the raja three and with that same blade design, they can just whack through a bunch of pork ribs or whatever. Just take it apart and just pooms, just explodes. It's gone. It's a weird shape. But it's interesting. It was sure I'm sure Eric could sit down here and I'm sure.

Well, it has to do with a lot of different things. I mean, I'm trying to go back through my military hand-to-hand fighting sample books and stuff like that.

Well, similar in Korea, they have a similar blade, too. And there's more resembles early style blades called touchies, I believe. And then the Chinese have the broadsword. And then you, of course, you have. So they don't have the exact same design. I'll give you that. You know, with the way that they have designed the shape of the edge itself, and the way that they refined their point with that sort of wedged tip. But simotars are curved also for their cutting ability and also for when you're on horse. If you come by and you swing that curved blade, when it starts to make bite as you're continuing to go through, it transfers that energy across the blade in such a way that doesn't tear your arm off your horse.

Guy goes out there, guy goes out there, fights, loses, and then when people take up the position that, oh, from this moment on. Oh, now they don't matter because it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Right. That lady just won 30 fights in a row and never lost. Now she sucks. Right. Now she sucks because she lost a fight.

You know, even the better person, I don't necessarily mean better than Ben. I just mean the better person as a general, has to look at that which even if you dislike it. Like if you hate the way Ben speaks and what he has to say, but that doesn't take away from what he's done. I'm sorry, like his body of work stands on its own. And you can think he'm a shitty person or God's greatest.

Unfortunately, Ben's finishing capabilities did not did not grow or did not It didn't grow to the same level that his wrestling ability was.

Sure, but I mean, Ben just sort of been subbing guys left and right. But he just didn't quite have it. Now, and my opinion always was at least from watching it. Like if you're this inventive of a funk wrestler in in collegiate wrestling and what have you international wrestling, I know you could be a literal submission machine. I had to be just approach maybe pressure to just get those wins. I mean, there is an issue with I think some of the wrestlers coming in and thinking about the game structure of wrestling and being like, okay, okay, so if I win this five minutes, then I'll give him the next two minutes and then I'll take three minutes. You know, they're thinking about how to win a match. Whereas I've never thought like, oh, you know, maybe if I, I'm going to kill him. And if someone doesn't come into stop me, I'm just going to keep, like, fuck it. You know, and if maybe his corner jumps in, then I'm going to kill him. And then I'm going to just, you know, it's just like, I don't have any friends when I'm in the ring. The only people I have are the people that have my back that are in my corner. And that's it. Everybody else is the enemy if they decide to get in the front of me. And that's a difference.

And Ben Asgren is,

He did the, uh, he went and elected, I guess, to get what the shaved, yeah, which obviously has technique. It's better. Uh, one of my friends, someone you might have used to roll with Victor Webster. Yeah. He got, uh, discs replaced in his back. Right now he's back on the mat.

And Victor goes, I've never felt better. That's amazing. Eddie still has pain in his.

It's insane, but that body will do what it makes to do. The body will do anything it needs to to keep going.

just the and you know he's got a lot of atrophy in one of his arms like boss boss rooting house yeah that that bingy ratica problem with that at one point two uh and luckily he was able to get it sorted out uh yet bosses right arm is obviously not it's it's best anymore and that's you know fucking around with the spine uh damage around the spine is something that we really need to be uh super aware of but at the same time Some things are just, it's unavoidable. It may happen and may not.

Yes, Mace is I swing the mace and someone that was asking me about you know, do I have weights at my house? I go I have a 22 pound Mace at my house and people like 20 pounds brums quite 450

It sounds like, oh yeah, well, what's up with this thing? And I'll tell people like, no, do not try to swing this thing. You're probably going to blow your elbows out if you don't know what you're doing.

Well, if you go look up Yuko Miyato, there's videos of him swinging clubs and he's probably 60 something now, and he can still pick up a couple clubs and just start kneeling the shit out of the iron cheek.

There's a video where iron cheek was doing callouts at some event, right? It was like, it was a promo thing. Hey, you know, whoever the biggest strongest guys are in here coming here to see if you can swing these clubs like me and one of the guys that comes up, there's ultimate warrior and he couldn't fucking swing them.

Yes, and it's a strength coordination, the ability to move through all the planes of movement. In fact, I did a whole ton of club and may swinging in preparation to fight Frank Meher.

You can do that, but he's not swinging him.

Yes. Yeah, it's it's much easier to do to sit there and just go back and forth. Yeah, he's like up to down with America.

I look at the rough was like, yeah, man, don't get bashed on this club.

Yeah, if you're into club and may swinging there's there's two people that I highly recommend. One is Jake Shannon. The other one is Greg Walsh. Those two guys are I mean, may swing clubs, especially may swing for Greg are part and parcel to the entire, like a foundational aspect of their training stuff. Yeah. And there, you know, Jake's a catch guy, Greg's a physical fitness conditioning guy. So, but I think the mace is a fantastic tool for building great strength and it's all, it's wrestling related. It's warrior related.

Yes. And part of that was also to just keep idiots away.

I was just to keep the dummies away. Because Carl was such a irassible dude, but I meeting Carl and getting a train a little bit under Carl made me feel like I met someone who, you know, may have been related to me in some way. Like I felt like this guy was somehow a part of my family, but I didn't know it for so long. And yet I come from part of that lineage, especially And we're sitting there and these Japanese reporters have set this whole thing up. And they're like, here, we're going to have Carl watch you fighting Minotaur. All right. And get his opinions. And I'm just like, oh, God, all right. So Carl's watching this thing. And he's just, he's making comments. He's tearing into it. And he's being highly critical. He'd say something. He'd look at me. He'd smile a little bit and he'd say something. And then we're all sitting down in the Japanese reporters. You know, they're just losing their shit. There's like, oh, God. Well, this is not what we expected to happen. There's like, oh, what's going to, how is this going to fall apart? Like, this Carl just tore this guy. I know new one over this. Right. And Carl looks at me and he goes, what I say is that piss you off. I looked at him and went, I don't care. All I want, all that's important to me is to try and understand what it is from how you see it and see what I can do to take that and be better. And to take your criticism and your eyes and your experience and the way you see it so that I can use it to make myself a better fighter. And he looked at me and he said, and then he just started showing me stuff and he would call me and give me workouts and see how I'm doing. I honestly not being able to spend more time with Carl and even to an extension Billy Robinson, even though I got to train under him for years and years and years and Japan. There was never enough time.

Billy Robinson worked with soccer robber and all the U.W.F.I. fighters and Carl is started with a new Japan pro wrestling in Tony and Okey brought him in there to be their head trainer. And he's the one that prepped an Okey for for Ali. You can see some of Ali's camp getting real ran bunches and Carl just laughing. Smiling, even though he knows that Noki has been just handicapped, like all you can't throw on me, can't put some missions on him. But you can't do this, you can't do that.

They didn't think about it. That's so funny. They had no idea.

Great story. I'm with Victor Webster, and we're hanging out. And he's friends with Kinesia Norton, who is an absolute sweetheart. And so Kinesia Norton's daughter. So we're hanging out at this coffee shop. And Kinesia comes by with her friend. So me and Victor are there and we're talking. I'm wearing this T-shirt. And it's got a no-key on it. It's got a no-key on the shirt. And one of the friends that comes with Kinesia goes, that's interesting shirt. I'm like, yeah, I go. Yeah, that guy put my dad in the hospital. There's one of all these daughters. Wow. I'm all.

I don't remember. I only met her the one time. Wow. But I know it wasn't Laila, obviously, because she's obviously out in the public all the time. But Aaron that I should say in the public spotlight. But I was just like,

Yes, that did happen. Yeah, and I'm like, actually, and Oki is one of my mentors, that he's worked. He's helped train me in professional wrestling and was part of the reason why I was in New Japan,

I don't know. I don't know if he was a champion at that point.

I'm pretty sure about that. Gene LeBelle was the ref. Wow. It's some wild stuff, but you know, interesting enough, that was of an era where boxing still knew how dangerous wrestling was. Because boxing and wrestling used to be really interconnected to itself, and to each other. And it wasn't actually until the Marquis de Queen's very rules, where they started, they got rid of, kind of, make it up as you go. I mean, there used to be bouts of feudalism and back in England or whatever. Okay, well, yeah, you can head butt. You can do that. You can do whatever. And so they finally set up some sort of structure of rules. And then eventually, you know, gloves and other things came into play. But even you can go read things. Oh, he was the reigning WBCWBA heavyweight boxing champion.

That's wild. Now, here's the thing, if an Okie would have been allowed to use submissions and all this kind of stuff.

Yep.

Oh, and here's the other thing, if an Okie didn't If he had worn gloves, then he could have punched, but what's the point of trying to box with Ali?

So Stitch was my used to wrap my hands and do my cuts for all my pride stuff, everything. So I brought Stitch with me from the UFC. And Stitch goes, yeah, he talked to Vince. He said, don't do this. Like you should not be in the ring with this guy. Your tough dude, but this is a different story because Stitch had trained my tie in Thailand and all kinds of stuff. So he's like, don't. And Vince got his fucking femur cracked.

Yes, or from Santos, or, or, you know, many leg kicks.

Yeah, it's like, oh, well, he, he's not winning the K1 Max. Like, yeah, but he's just like, Bacao and Andy Sauer. Yeah, I mean, they're all in there.

I mean that was Ramon Decker's that was those days God that was a crazy time what an amazing thing to see such high level artistry consistently man.

Yeah, I heard that too. I mean, it's just so hard to keep any of this shit going right now.

Well, I don't understand. At least put some blame on the UFC for even creating an audience that was, like, unlike when they go to the ground, because look at, like, the first, I don't know, Zifah takes over. How long have they been in charge? I don't know, 2001, 2001. So for probably the first 10 years of UFC, the highlight stuff around every event around every promotional opportunity around UFC. What is it? Knockouts, knockouts, knockouts. Everybody's getting primed to watch for knockouts. And yet, people are going to the ground, getting choked. People are going to the ground, getting on-board.

Yeah, I mean, that's a bit later longer in the tooth, but also MMA, certain later like everything. Eventually goes towards what is incentivized and how you can gain it. System is, I mean, for me, the way I look at an omega, five minute rounds, no, they don't belong. It's too short anymore. Like these, everybody is too good of an athlete. They know how to gain the system to go out, round by round scoring. No. You got to get rid of that. You got to get rid of the five minute round. You got to go at least probably six maybe ten.

Oh, yeah, by the way, you lose. We can just cut your contract.

Yep. Yeah, it's crazy. It doesn't, you know, it doesn't help anybody really. And I would say a better system would be to have a win bonus and a finish bonus and the finish bonus be double the win bonus.

Yeah, no, I feel you there, and that's a lot of ways the UFC style of pricing, which seems to be kind of a general model for MMA, is that you get five bucks to fight, and five bucks to win, or a guy that you might have paid them $8 to just fight, you know, or so there's where, and I understand the concept of a win bonus isn't centivizing, but it only incentivizes to win. It doesn't incentivize the finish.

Have you ever not tried to win? No, but I'm not that I know people who tried to win who just I've been in fights with guys who are out there trying to just win the cards against me. I've been in there with guys. Well, I mean, just like, oh, I need to win these rounds. You know, if I can't, oh, this guy seems like he's too tough to take out. Fuck that. right just just win the fight and I see it all the time I deal with it with my own fighters I go you need to make sure that you really put a herd on this person and make them make them want to call for God because otherwise if they get a chance they're just going to try and get in control ride this shit out like oh well that was dangerous glad I made it through that Okay, cool, great, man. That's not what anybody paid to go and see. And I thought we came here to see who could win. Yeah, but who could finish a fight?

I agree. It would be better if people, well, you, you pair that together with, say, more dedicated contracts like so if you're if if I'm running your company uh... uh... i'm gonna if i hire somebody if i put them on a long-term exclusive deal i do it because i believe in them now there may be ups and downs and what have you and i could make a mistake and i'll just have to take that but i want this this individual to be able to go out there and give me absolutely everything they have and know that they're they're not going to be punished if they fall short. Right. And so I'm going to pay them appropriately. Now on the on the flip side of things, I might if I'm running something as big as the UFC, I'm going to just have a lot of one-off deals on the lower levels and tell I see that person that I think I'm going to invest in this person. And that's a thing. You know, there's skin in the game in that investment and there's skin in the game for them. And that's where you get, you're going to get the best responses out of people. And that's where you're going to get their best efforts and their best energies. And sometimes you're going to be wrong, but sometimes isn't all the time. I'll take the exception to the rule as long as the rule is given me what I need.

Well, I look, man, if someone wants to put me in a position to do that, I'll do it. But nobody wants to, at the same time, nobody wants to create their proper accountability structure for judging either, or for, you know, even for some of these athletic commission apparatus for all these things. And which is, you know, when you talk about chas and all these things and about universality, everybody, whether they're voting left, right, middle doesn't matter, right? Everybody will have her, they fall on any side of any of this shit. everybody knows and I think that part of this this big protest slash riot at times slash what have you is that everyone knows that the state a lot of these state and these bureaucratic structures are unaccountable they're not being held accountable and the ability to affect them to make them accountable is also minimal if it all if potentially impossible and then on top of that What is the thing that you see as the apparatus that you interact with and interacts with you the most and directly the police?

Athletic commissions are in charge of how judges get trained, how people get licensed, how events are run, so all this stuff. So if they fuck up or if these judges do a bad job or the referees incompetent, Well, someone has to be accountable, right? They're filtered. They're never accountable. Right. And hardly ever made to be accountable.

Like George Floyd's now at worst. give me a ticket whatever if you have to or you know what maybe try having a conversation with them and just saying like dude come on well the George Floyd one too is like a fucking fake $20 bill gets you in a cage and I realize what bucks counterfeit bill is felony whatever how you gonna prove to the guy did it I don't know You know, how you prove that he deliberately, yeah. I mean, there are countless counterfeit bills in circulation that nobody knows about. Somebody gave me a counterfeit 100 once.

They say what they say was on, uh, potentially a variety of drugs, you know?

If you act out, you know, it's been really interesting to me to see people come out and try to I don't know if they're necessarily trying to justify, but they're definitely taking the sigh of trying to demonize George. And I'm like, because of his previous stuff about the home invasion, with the point of gun at a pregnant woman's belly and raise on drugs and what have you and I go, you know what? Whether you don't even realize this, but you just made the greatest argument for why he shouldn't be dead. because whether you've done something terrible or you've been the best person ever, you need to get the same amount of justice as anybody else. Equal treatment and legal treatment. That you need to be, if you have to be put into cuffs or anything like that, if you have to be brought in, whether you did XYZ or you did, you know, the nicest thing ever and you just had this one slip up that was wrote. It has to be the same across the board. That is the great argument that why police have to be held far more accountable than your average citizenry. And that means not to just land a bunch of shit on top of their head and like live up to this you know dumb fuck no it's why you need to prepare them and help them and foster them to be able to be capable like who's ever going to be capable of doing anything if you don't give them the right support I can't send in some amateur just started whatever fighter go to go out there and fight I'm just going to get them murdered. They're not capable. But over time, maybe I can get them to the position, and maybe they'll never be capable of being able to fight a been asked. Or maybe they're not capable of being a police officer, but also maybe they're not capable of being a lot of things. But there is something that they are capable for. But when that leaves the morale of my responsibility, then that's a different story.

There's something step in. If a cop needs to put knees on next for seven minutes on anyone, you're carrying a competent. And the thing is, it's not as if I can't understand and be sympathetic for how difficult a job that must be. Right. But There is no way to have a rule of law society and proxy out your violence to another apparatus, instead of you doing it yourself. without that apparatus fighting handicap all the time. It's just the way it has to be. You know, the dude that freaked out at the, he was getting arrested and he was drunk at his car and what have you and then he finds out he's going to, he's actually going to go be taken in for, for this DUI, like, oh shit, steal the taser and what, okay, I get all that, but as soon as he, you fucked up and he got away and he's back to you, can't shoot him. Sorry, you just can't shoot him.

I get it. And but it was two cops.

You got a partner. Yeah. Sorry, you got trust him. Don't blow up. Don't blast this dude in the back. I even when he shoots his fucking the taser that he stole off you. Eventually, you got his car. You know what the fuck he is? It'll just have to show up and be like, man, I know this is a real bad, and I'm sorry that it's real bad, and I'm sure you never intended it to be this real bad. But we got to do something.

You're looking how much. But that's another part of this whole thing and then this all this falls into all of this stuff. We need that we're constantly calling on the police to do fucking everything. No one wants to just be responsible for their own life. They don't want to take the agency of protecting their own things, standing up, being their own agent in the world. They always want like, oh shit, something happens. Call this person, call that person. Always, you got a problem with someone at work. Sit down, have a conversation with him. No, no, fuck that. Call HR, call this, sue this person. It's always, everybody wants them to, to, to met out their responsibilities to something else.

You're right. You're right, Joe. And that is, that's bureaucracy. For you know, bureaucracy will always grow.

I'm not about in the 95 for a good reason. I've worked in environments of that nature with HRs and all that kind of stuff working in tech and doing other things. And I've done sales. I've done medial stuff. You're not structured for that. No, I'm not. I had a real. I had some struggles with it.

But at the same time, you would like to be able to think that if you can just go and say, hey, I'm not interested.

piercings already laid this out. Men are more agents of physical violence and action than women are more character assassinations things like that which completely makes sense but you know now you you shove the myth in the environment together and you say like now don't allow anything to go sideways. Right. You know, it's hard enough for men and women to try and figure out how to interact with each other in a space to even get any each other's pants to create anything of a value. I mean, it's just not easy. Right.

Which is fucking crazy. I mean, it's, it's really typical, though, right?

So many are look at gyms. Oh, yeah.

Like the fighters are an interesting.

And so, and they're like, well, what's happening is these people are getting into better shape. Their testosterone is going up. All these different things are happening. I'm like, to me, I just thought, oh, so you started being more towards a more natural state of being, you know, being physical, being active, being, you know, I understand that this isn't a very controlled procedural environment, it's not like you're running around trying to get an elk because if you don't your tribe's gonna die, but you people need to be active. They just do.

I mean, there is a more sexual aspect to yoga. There are some sex related. And then there's, yeah, you get those, those, those tights that are made to like lift and separate the butt cheeks and all this stuff.

I look at that with Marshall Arts training tour. You guys are struggling together. You're overcoming together. You're both facing adversity. The same adversity and dealing with it in your own ways. And that creates camaraderie. It really does it. And it can create an intense rapport. But that doesn't necessarily mean even that that can be sufficient or that that that relationship can then go towards something more long-term and firm, right? Which, you know, we, we get we're so great at lying to ourselves and fooling ourselves all the time. Like, oh, I'm so intense with this person and, you know, we, we hooked up in this and that and then you start getting together and then it's, it's a shit show. You know, because you thought that just because you guys had this one metric which you guys were both very intense that that would cover for everything else. And it's like, well, no, that's not how relationships are built and that's how humans have a lot of fucking things that need to be checked.

Hey, there's a great website. I are a great YouTube that I send all of my friends and and all of my fighters for sure call the Academy of Ideas and this dude has these awesome lectures on all kinds of things dealing with with life and current climate stuff and all these different things but all dealing taking pieces and building these lectures around philosophers and and and throughout historical, historically, correct lens or not, historically, correct, but going through papers and pieces by all these people throughout time. And it's been really things like that. I mean, we need or things to help us with orientation in such an absurd world. And we take for granted that things are just microphones and cameras and I don't know how many tens of people are going to watch this because I want to show. You know, like I have this whiskey, right? I love the shit out of it, but I'm not making a whiskey to be a celebrity with a product. You know, otherwise I'd have vodka because that's just a who gives a shit and quality thing. It's a vodka to the move. vodka's always the move because it's bullshit because it's just supposed to be odorless, tasteless, great neutral grain alcohol. That's a good bullshit. And so you want to make your stupid vodka so you can be at bottle service and idiots are like I'm a I'm a buy this vodka. It's like I could give vodka for $14.

Look, unless shout out to all the chisters. And unless it's depending on whether it's made from wheat or potato or tritakao, whatever, like the grain base, maybe might influence some of it. But the standard definition for making vodka in the United States is odorless, tasteless, distilled at over a 180 proof. I mean, come on. You're not going to get that much different. The only way that you could really fuck that up is if you really don't care about the process of fermentation that much, you're just trying to get the product through and you're not that concerned with the source of ingredients.

Yeah, well, you know, about the name. I would say research, Rene Girard, and the medic desire for that kind of thing. So you see somebody else is like, well, I have to have the, you know, celebrity vodka A because what have you and someone else goes, oh, oh, they like celebrity vodka A. Well, if they like celebrity vodka A, celebrity vodka A must be the vodka to buy and someone else sees that and then someone and so forth and now people are like, we have to have celebrity vodka A because it's what other people like.

Yeah, or I want to. I could buy, I could buy pretty much any low, low tier regular vodka and be just as much out of it as any.

It's a where and our money. Now that's a matter of are you looking for external validation or own personal validation is a job is a job to get a bunch of people. So that they're all partying with you or the job for them to seem as though you're specifically cooler because of the type of vodka you have.

Everybody looks like they've got a bunch of money.

Yeah, they're building this, this archetype, this idealization, but I'd say part of the problem with that is the ideal idea that they're pitching is a really vapid one right it has to do with like okay they're wearing expensive suit or they have explained money doesn't doesn't give you any idea about the character of the person or the things right the value of it you know um part of before I got into bed with these guys to to start making whiskey with them I said well I gotta be there to come and drink it you know I'm not I'm not gonna put my name on anything that I don't that I don't like and then I'm not into

What they had, I'm a sweet smoked bourbon on the market called Warbringer and I came up and this was legit. This is an actual 19th century bourbon bottle design too. I came up there to drink that. I drank there a school. I came up there to try basically all the stuff that they had. And I got to drink the, the, the, this rum that we're working on straight out of the barrel was fucking unreal. And from that, I go, okay, we got something here. And then I drank even their, their vodka's are the infusions they were doing with them. Is that a chicken killing another chicken? Is it chicken killing another chicken? It is, it is a blood oath level battle right there. And I've got talking to the head-to-seller David about my tastes in whiskey and what I was looking to do, and we were already on the same path. And so a single barrel, cask strength. This is batch two, uh, which has like a big dark chocolate note to it. And I like it.

even knows, and I can smell that dark chocolate element, that more bitter side of things.

I taste the tannins and like well, here's the thing is thinking, so one of one of the people, a part of this company, uh, cat, she's a whisky smile. So when we have for notes from her, I'm like, oh fuck, I am just blown away about all this stuff and I'll smell like, yeah, yeah, I can kind of see, I can see that. Oh, you're right there. Yeah, exactly, but uh, uh, uh, but ultimately, you got to just like it, you know, you smell what you smell, you related to the things that you can relate to.

It's a high-quality pure-grade cat piece right here.

I've never had a cat that lived indoors. Really? Never. My cats always go outdoors. Those are murderers.

That's the only kind of cat I've ever had.

Yeah, I believe in cats pee is in a room I'm in a fuck a high quality Sauvignon blanc funky and tangy smell Can be eerily similar to another odor, which you find often coming contact Wow, how okay, let's say it does have a cat pee note. That was that could encourage people to want to drink it What are you in the mood for? You know the capy would go with this steak right now.

Scatological tasting terms are comparatively great burgundy smells of shit.

That's how you know you've lost the plot. Like you got so far that somebody goes, you know what? How do I fuck? I'm just sound like everybody else right now. How do I turn this up a notch? Look at this. This smells like specific like Bangkok street food diarrhea. This smells like, you know, a week old yeast infection.

This smells like a pay phone that's been in Skid Row in LA for the last 10 years. Pay phones. Those used to be a thing. I do have a description though. So we're in China, me and this fighter Alyssa. And I got to listen this fight in China prior to this whole tour I had set up. So Alyssa Garcia is a 105 pound fighter in mind, but I got to this fight at 115 in China, then I was shipping her to go train with um, sentient noi, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh I got the best stuff for you. You just wait. All right. Fuck yeah. So we got these tiny little glasses. And what they're pointing at it is this stuff called buys you this Chinese wine and or this Chinese fermented liquor. And I'm like, oh, well, that's that's got a nose on it. And I drank it. And I'm just like, oh, what the fuck? And but it's the kind of thing that this is probably a pretty isn't really expensive one they're telling me and they just keep pouring lawns and at some point Alyssa goes dude, I can smell that shit from here. Why do you keep drinking? You think I'm gonna be the guy to turn over and be like, yeah this sucks. I hate it, you know, up to on your fancy, fancy booze. And she goes, what's it tastes like? I go, okay. This tastes like an old abandoned home that has been rained on for years. And what you've done now is all this water has leaked through onto the floorboards. These dirty floorboards have been pissed on and dead cats are on all this kind of stuff. And it's all gone through these floorboards. And then it's and this water has been collected. And it's been filtered out through a hobo's sock. You know, that's what they should taste like. The fuck man. I got one once like why would I ever do that?

It's brutal. I've heard people describe it as it tastes like something. You like clean a carburetor with. It's fermented, sorghum and other stuff.

I'm ever being on tour in Japan for New Japan Pro Wrestling and having so it's pretty common that as you go from town to town you would then go out and you'd be taken out by sponsors for the town, local sponsors or maybe whoever put the event on what I have you and so I'd get taken out to these restaurants and they would always order stuff like cow intestines, there's four different types that are raw or this or that and they're always I, I figure what they're trying to do is like, test me, like, see if you can fucking eat this, see if you see it with this Mikey like it or what? And so Uh, yeah, you're probably only a person laughing at that one there.

That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I was. That's where I But, you know, it's raw fish cuts. And so they bring this shit out. And they're like, here eat this. I'm, oh fuck. So I'm, I'm like, but I know bitch. So I started eating this stuff. And they're looking at me. Do you like it? know, but you know, I have to try it. And my whole the whole time just thinking about this tastes like bait, this tastes like whatever it was we were using to catch salmon growing up this tastes like fucking bait. And I can't eat salmon egg either like it's just too briny salty.

Yeah. It's just super, but I realized that that at least in this case, Japanese people's palate is more accustomed to these kind of really powerful, you know, something even similar across the board. So a friend of mine is Ludo, Chef Ludo. And we used to go to his Ludo bites events. And so I went to this moment with my buddy. He, we, we get this, we need something. It was. That was God for me, whatever. And I love seeing it was so, see, briny, what it was just, it was just the first bite me and my buddy, uh, Tomo. We go, oh, that's not so bad. Second by it's like, okay, now we're already reaching maximum saturation on this third by it's like we can't fucking do it anymore. And it was just it was just overpowering us like our taste buds just couldn't handle it. It wasn't that I would sit there and say that that unease bad. It's just that I couldn't enjoy it. Like it was just too much for me. And I tell Louder and you're, yeah, well, he goes, well, we have a huge Asian clientele that love to come to these little bikes and they love the who need to ride stuff. I go, I must be just, you know, a pallet thing and really must because I just, I can't candle it.

They just stop around with big giant fixed blade knives everywhere. bracelet. What am I?

I've only had bare ones. And I did like it.

I have no idea what kind of bear this was. I'm not too hip to the bear population or buried bear genious of forest Russia. Oh, I was in a bonia. I was in a bonia, which is a very communal thing in Russia. And so I'm in Kabarovsk. up in the the far eastern north where it's negative 30 degrees below at night and I'm up there we're in this banya and it's a banya is basically just like a big sauna And so, but it's a traditional setup where they have an oven with rocks and stone. And it's a, they will put throw water over the stones and things like that. It's not, it's not exactly, it's not a dry one like a finish, but It's a similar to any other sort of sonnet setups as you can come across, but it's not a steam room. And that's also famous for they have a process where they take these bundles of tree branches with leaves and everything on them. They'll use wide oak, eucalyptus, other, and put blends together. And what they'll do is they'll take these two bundles. They'll whip the air around you as you're sitting there. They whack your body with it. And these leaves, these bundles are made of mostly fresh. So there's still oils, there's still, you know, live, or there's still elements within it. It's not fully dried out or anything like that. And so this thing is all being hit upon you and they'll hit your feet and they'll do all this kind of stuff. to be honest. So the first time I went through this, this guy is like, beaten my ass with these things. And I'm just like, okay, I can get through this and get through it. I know it's got to be healthy. You know, I've, I've read the Wikipedia. It sounds all great. And I'm sitting there and you go through sessions, like three minute sessions or whatever. And I'm on the third one, which is like towards the end. And he's, he's, he's whackin' away and he's whipping things around me and circulating all this super hot air. And I swear to God, my pale ass sensitive white boy skin was just felt like it was on fucking fire. And to the point that I started, I'm like, I got, I got, I got, I got, I get you the name, and so I get up and I'm, I'm, I'm yelling in Japanese in Russia and jumping into a cold pool because I'm, I, I'm so fucked up from getting my ass beat by this little Russian guy with a pile of sticks. Why Japanese? I don't fucking know. I have no idea.

No, I don't know. I just, my brain was in a different place, dude. And as you can relate when you're sitting in those things, and it's pretty fucking hot, and you're trying to get through it. Like sometimes you're just, you're trying to get out of this.

Well, think about it. Right. So you're sitting still, and you're having, maybe you're having a tough sauna session. You're like, okay. If I don't move enough, I'll get through this. Right. Now, this motherfucker is pretending to be a fucking helicopter spinning around the room. I mean, he's like a Beyonce fucking dance number. Getting all this hot air blown all over you, like flying, like, yeah, caressing it up your taint. All these shimmers, like, yeah. Dude, there's no way to stop in this.

He's hitting your whole body. Scott, it's just not a little man, it's yeah, they're saying to it, you know? Taint, often really neglected part of the human body, yeah. I'm going to start the whole, the whole taint specific movement around how you need to massage and stretch the taint and you have to, you know, about your taint is all locked up, a bit the fascia around your taint is just keeping you from being able to kick properly. So this guy, so anyways, I get through all this. And they have a phone that goes right to the office. And they have a menu and all this kind of stuff. And people will bring food as well. And usually, like, some are gone, which is Russian moonshine, which is essentially, like, vodka type stuff. Oh, it's fucking good.

Oh, it's fucking good. It's beautiful. I love it. And so, it pulled this menu all in, like, Cyrillic Russians. Fuck, I don't know any of this is and so I'm just sitting here like Google Translate. You're trying to get this to you like I don't know anything. I can't get into a cell phone service out there. Well, I download the languages that I need when I'm in countries just in case that's the problem so I can get translation.

I mean, perhaps you have a pixel? No, I have Samsung. What is this? Galaxy S9 Edge X23. It's basically Elon Musk's next child's name.

No, no, never. Not going to do it.

Yeah, I'd rather have a six-speed car. Yeah. No, you're part of the resistance. That's what you're talking about. Yeah, that's tag. What basically came down to the fact that Apple is too much in charge of your hardware and your software. The minute the iPhone came out, I was like, cool phone. But you're telling me I got to pay you more money to expand my memory or my storage capacity when I have a fucking memory card. Do you think that I don't know if that exists? Go fuck yourself, Jobs.

You know, I'm not here to say that the Apple isn't creating things that are worthwhile to a degree. It's just that I refuse to spend that kind of money to have a phone. I just won't do it. This isn't S9. I mean, this thing is still good. Three years old. It works just great.

I have an iPod touch. Because the only that besides that, and iTunes, you bring to a museum. I have no interest in having any Apple products. Really?

I use Windows everything.

Yeah, you're a rebel. Well, I also, I mean, I remember when having to, And I've had computers in my households since I don't know when. I'm not like some super programming geek or anything like that. But I remember what it was like you have to operate things. You had to learn how to use DOS and other operating systems before that or using Unix type based stuff to get on the internet and do things. from the library back in the day. So for me, I just want the ability to get what I need and to have them out proper amount of storage is necessary. And that's it. My phone isn't for holding music on it. It's not for it's I have Spotify, which by the way, I've just took over what used to be the adrenaline workout Spotify playlist. And now it is the War Masters workout. And so I put together ninety six ninety seven songs for this playlist for people to just go absolutely fucking ape shit in the gym and and get their shit done and so part of my Spotify deal I am putting together Spotify workouts.

Nice. Nice. Yeah. So I now, do you have the warm ass to work out? So if you guys are out there and you want to be fueled by the incredibly powerful thing that is metal. I want to do some serious games. That's it.

We got a monomar, we got behemoth, we got bolt-roar, we got dissection. Goodness, there it is. Yeah, that is me from the every time I die show.

I threw, I threw people head. Oh, it doesn't end. I threw like 50 people off the stage at night. My buddy to the right that's Andy Williams. He's in AEW as a pro wrestler right now as well. You see, you know, keep all the every time my guy guys. Keep some theirs. It's like, don't crush me. Mom, if you're trying to sing. There's this chick who must have been this tiny little blonde thing who maybe weighed 110 pounds at honor best day who I chucked her once and she comes back she goes I'm gonna do it while holding this beer the whole fucking time and a man mind you was a can but still There's a, I have a picture that I got from someone where she's launched into the air. She'll has her beer. She lands on the crowd and when she comes back to backstage, she goes, yeah, didn't spill it. That's hilarious. Fucking champ.

No, because the, the, the, the risk is too much.

I think it was shatter pretty. And then it's just a non, and a pit man. That's bad news. Bad fucking news. But yeah, so I've taken over this Spotify playlist. In fact, you know, I've been a really busy little fucker. Come, COVID. People are like, oh man, are you doing? busy is shit. Well, that's good. I launched a new one of the first, Josh Barnett.com is up and running. We got this Spotify takeover that I just did where I'm running this warmasters workout playlist. We got the whiskey stuff. We have more whiskey projects in the the works as well as rum. We have our vodka of all things, although that's a sign of a man who adapts. And you know, there's a challenge with I came on here a long time ago and I said, Life gives you the opportunity to grow and as many ways as you want to choose to. You can, you didn't come out of the womb and just start shooting arrows. It was something you decided you wanted to do. And as you went through life, you know, Joe Rogan's journey brought him to all these different things. And from those, he acquired new things, new endeavors, but all these things required growth required having to suck or whatever or deal with new things to begin with. I'm learning how to distill. Mahar had distillers like, I want you running these runs from front, I want you to learn how to do this from start to finish. So you're part of the entire process? I'm becoming a part of the entire process. So even with this stuff, it started off with. So we talked about what we were going to do as far as a whiskey was concerned and what we wanted it to resemble. And by the way, it's miscealed smoked because this place is in Oxnard. This is a Southwest derived variant on what you might think of even as like Ila Scotch's which is Pete Smoke. Well, we we use Mesquite because that's Mesquite's found in the southwest and we finish it in Sherry cask.

Like we start with a work. Yeah, you would take grit's corn and grit's corn. What is the difference? You grit's corn. The way that the quality of the corn kernels itself and the way they're cut. begin with. The way they're initially milled with leaves them all and big kernels, but it exposes the sugars in such a way that when we put it out there in the smoker, this kernel of corn gets hit. The smoke hits all of it and brings all these sugars to the surface.

What kind of smoker? It's something that he David, who this guy, I'm not entirely sure if he has four PhDs or at least multiple PhDs and multiple degrees. I'm not, I don't know. He used to be like head of R&D at Procter and Gamble. Like this guy is brilliant, bonkers brilliant. And In fact, I'm going to one of my students, Mary works in, she works in microbiology and so I want to bring her up to try and mentor her under him a little bit. Wow. Awesome shit. So, Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn.

Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gritzcorn. Gr And so it's more smokey. It's a smokey for smoking grits corn and then we cost him thing that he's built them.

It's on the might be on the war bringer bourbon website and might be up there of me a picture of me shoveling.

Yeah, I think it was because it was war bringer Alfred one of the investors came to me and said hey, we could make this fucking thing. It's gonna, you know, we, you know, kind of my Gregor's got a whiskey in this and I go hold on. I'm not here to talk bad about Connor McGregor and what he's doing. I don't care if my product and his product are different, it's fine. And I understand the marketing potential, but I'm a whiskey head. I got into this shit living in Japan. My family's always drank whiskey. It's always been around us, but I really got deep into being a connoisseur this shit living over in Japan. I was actually actively searching to link up with a whiskey distillery to, yeah, there I am, shoveling the ski chips to create a whiskey. And I know that there's like McConaughey and other people and you know, slipknot has a whiskey. Lots of people are doing different booze, but I really am involved in creating this. McConaughey's cut whiskey. McConaughey's got a whiskey with Wild Turkey. And Wild Turkey's a great distillery. Doesn't make great shit. I'll write our right blend. Probably. Well, because McConaughey, I'm sure it's good, but generally the celebrity route is to make something for the biggest audience possible, right? I didn't I'm like no let's put out this big smoking motherfucker. Yeah, some people are gonna be like I don't dig it. It's fine, but it's for the most part of us people can get off most people. I've had people come back to me and say this is the smoothest best whiskey they've ever had. I just makes me happy to bring That into their life.

No, that was that was David David came up with the original Miscuit formula and all of this. And then the other portion of portion of the the mash bill is multi right or yeah, multi right. So that goes into a mash and the way he ferments it is three times as long as a normal whisky fermentation cycle. So even if you get what's called the white dog, which is the stuff just coming off the still, it hasn't been barely aged in any way. And I sat there with this cat will from Burma Review and we're drinking straight up. This shit smooth is hell at 160 proof. And it's because of the, or 135, sorry, it's because of the fermentation cycle and the fermentation that the yeast city uses all this. And as this thing gets done, we had three barrels. Three barrels are choose from. And because it's a single barrel product, you got to choose them. So I did, I tested every single barrel. Took notes, did my deal. And then we did a blind. and came back again, same day and I tested again and I chose the same barrel twice. And so we went with barrel seven to be our initial release. This is barrel eight and then barrel nine was cycled back into normal war bringer and then we've got another barrel sitting there ready to be put together because fucking batch one was done in like two months. It was all sold out. It won a gold medal. It was gone.

No. Oh my goodness. So batch one, which was barrel seven is a hundred nine per year.

Yes, in this case, yeah. So once you stick it in the barrel, right, you just got you whatever happens happens.

No, this is when people say craft, distillery or small batch, this is, we get about anywhere from 210 to 230 bottles out of anyone around. That's, and once it's gone, it's fucking gone.

The fact they're doing it that way. That's the thing is, I've always tried to do everything that I do that way. Because in a sense, right, if you take the concept of what is your word, right? Your word is essentially the social credit on anything you do. And if you're word, It doesn't have value, right? If it doesn't hold up to scrutiny, if it doesn't consistent, then no one's going to ever fucking believe you. Well, when I'm endorsing things, that's an extension of my word. So if I'm going to put bullshit out in the world that I don't fully invest in, then my word is going to get degraded. So for even something like a whiskey, it could easily just merchandise it. Like, who gives a fuck, right? You could take that approach or you could take the approach of every bottle of this shit that goes out and gets into someone's hands and touches their lips is an extension of me and my word. And so a better hold up to it. And if you don't like it, that's okay. Like, that's fine. It really is fine. Everybody's got their own palette.

Of course it is. The nature would say a man goes into a crowd. He comes in with one mind and gets rid of it and takes on another. And it's true. There's a difference between the mindset of groups and the mindset of the individual. And I'm not one to be like such a hardcore individualist where I think the individualist is I mean, I believe it is the starting point of everything, but it's not the end point of everything. And we're made to be social creatures, exiling somebody out of a tribe way back when was tantamount to basically giving them a death sentence. And they've said that somebody being an isolation away from other people can at a point become more detrimental to even being an alcoholic. I don't know how they came up with that metric, how that lined up per se, but I know that by not being attached to not having proper interaction with others is it is it's degradation to your sense of being and it is incredibly harmful to you. So we're made to being groups and we're also made to be individuals. Now I would say that the makeup of what you bring into a group is also related to what you create as an individual. If you come in as a fully formed, healthy, capable individual, then you're only going to be somebody who could potentially, as long as you can keep what's important about yourself, you're only going to be a benefit to a such a group.

Well, yeah, and if a group does something, okay, great. But if you're a part of that group, then you're accountable too. You can't just pass it off on everyone else.

How often do you come across people that will fight you tooth and nail to the death to hold on to those preconceived.

Exactly. A simple one I came across was even involved with this COVID stuff was trying to talk to people about How the the mainstream media has had bad narratives from the get, you know, be it. They were given bad information, but they fucking doubled down on it all the time, or if it's the WHO and they're running interference for China, whatever, right? There's all this manipulation going on around something that is not that is It's not subjective. Viruses aren't subjective. You just can't play this game with that kind of thing. And people would fight me, tooth and fucking nail to defend the mainstream media over it. And I go, look, here's example one, two, three, four, five, look at how they're all fucking wrong. They're fucked up, they're doing this, they're politicizing, they're doing all these different things for different reasons. But none of it is really for your own betterment of understanding and to be safer and healthier. or even just to say, we still don't know yet because we just don't have the data. And people fight to the nail over this ship because there's so many people that use the current media apparatus as their mainstream sense-making apparatus. And if you tear that away from them, Now they have to sit back and go, what do I really know? What is the reality of what I think truth is? What is the metric upon understanding? Now that you've just shown me that, and of course, even at its best, of course media is going to be faulty at times because it's just made up of people, right? We're always going to be imperfect, we're always going to make mistakes, but there is no admitting of mistakes anymore. There's no saying I was wrong.

They came after you for no reason. You know, they would write all this kind of completely disingenuous, just narrative-driven bullshit around you, a person who brings people on and has conversations and tries to flourish that idea of the what are they going to mark a place of ideas like having conversations and trying to earnestly and sincerely explore things and try to have a better grip on the world and try to better orient themselves towards just knowing and knowledge in addition to even have a fucking good time about it being a competitive thing to of course someone reaches a point where they're they're interacting with too many people and they have this potential to really influence things

You're not sitting here saying that it's okay, but what you're saying is I know what the landscape looks like. I know what I expect.

I really do. I know what you feel. I wouldn't hate that. On a personal level, I can relate to that.

I don't know. I think you're tapping into something that is universal. I think that, you know, when it comes to like I love studying history and religion because those are some of the oldest insights into the way people think and the way people act. And within these frameworks are tons of windows into human thought process and psychology. And it's the same as you know, none of it has changed over the oldest religious texts, the oldest historical things we can find, the stories that exist the myths, all these things. They're all this, this is the same shit over and over and over. And in the first time I ever saw that I was reading the Hogger Curry and seeing that the complaints and the issues of criticisms, that this monk who was a former samurai had of his current era in the 19th century, the same criticisms and problems and the same issues with people's actions, just driving from the same human places of insecurity and psychological element. It's all the same shit and nothing has changed. We're not any different than a person in the 6th century. in the Roman Empire and they like that then then anybody this this area where we're not different people we have different technology we have we have different communication in terms of which language use but we don't act differently we're not driven from different impulses we're not you know we're not Russo we're not a blank slate you know I don't buy that concept at all because history would look so much radically different, but it's fucking doesn't. And I've written you so many times, and at times whoever has your old number was probably incredibly confused about what the fuck is this guy talking about, but I think a person like you is critical. towards the interaction of the current paradigm is you are a necessity because right wrong whatever your personal opinion is is whatever it's the fact of creating the ability for people to get out here and speak nobody ever had Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders in a place to feel more open. And I'll say as politicians, they probably were as open as they could be, but they're fucking politicians in this current, and the paradigm of the Western politician who knows I'll legitimately sincere any of those fuckers are. This has been probably the only place that you could have had someone like that and allowed it to that window into their, their least politician self. You know, I got to see it here and listen to Andrew Yang talk about UBI and be like, nah dude, I don't, I don't fucking buy it. I like you. You know, I'm not gonna like you. I like you. Or just a matter of not being so pent up on, oh God, well, my narrative, my ideology, my fucking, I gotta tribalize all this and to such a degree that I have to tear down everything else around me so that mine can exist. And that even goes to this, this bourbon or anything I do. I don't need to, I don't need to cut other things down for mine to rise to, for other people to enjoy it. You don't have to, you don't have to tear apart the mainstream media for years to exist. Mind you, the mainstream media tries to destroy you all the time. But... I think it's just players in the media.

I would say the media among a lot of things. Like, there is a good... for a term that I really like, it's called managerial elites. And so, most things are big bureaucratic structures that have managers. And it's just all managers everywhere.

And they don't. They don't. Managers don't usually create anything. And this is not to say that managers are an important thing. I think managers are very important. How many times does anybody work in a place where they have management that has is so divorced from the creative or from the actuality of creating a product or whatever the job role is and yet these people are making decisions all the time. and bleeding into telling people how to do their job instead of managing people to be able to be best at their job.

That's putting bad faith on you. That's thinking that as if

That's all that is. That's a horrible heuristic saying that the makeup of somebody's external or the makeup, the external makeup of a company somehow has any real indication of its actual quality and character.

There's all these different scenarios that can lay themselves out. Some of it can even be perhaps that the aggressiveness of men in towards acquiring certain positions versus maybe a more subtle approach a woman might take.

One of the things I like about when Peterson brings that up is, and people always neglect this as he goes And almost seems as if really that perhaps women are just fucking smarter than us. Like they're just saying or they're like, oh, well, why be a maniac that only lives for this job is that how about a be a person that does all these other filling things in their life instead of driving myself into this, this insane near single-minded obsession?

correct which is money and social status inside of a corporation right money's a great tool clearly it can do a lot of things for people and and you know it's a lot easier to to exchange money with people and to exchange live stock fucking i don't know giant buildings and pieces of stone like what are you gonna fucking carry around a bunch of pieces of gold on you and come on A bill is probably the simplest solution though to creating ways of barter instead of actually having it.

Well, I mean, think of how happy someone might be buying something versus if you actually built it.

I keep telling people, like, there's two people that I really idealize. I don't even know if they know this. So, Bill and Wanda Goldberg and Michael J. White and Gillian. two couples with families that I look at them and I think this is proof that this is a thing that is that is createable. You can have a beautiful, amazing family and have a great relationship and you can continue to create and make great things and you can really have it all. It really is possible and I look at that and that that's what I want. I want family, I want to be able to create my own sort of tribe around that from a familiar sense. And I want to bring some, I want to bring a child into the world, and it passed along all that has been given. And I say, given to me by all these amazing people and all the amazing relationships and experiences that I've acquired throughout life. And I try to do that with my so-called quote-unquote kids, my, my, my students. And I impart these this lineage down to them, these experiences, this knowledge, I give to them and I give to my friends and I do as much as I can to keep the flame alive.

Yeah, I don't know what that window is. I just know that I've got some fights left to do.

Still signed.

I personally would love to even run like people have talked to me about running my blood sport events, my, my processing stuff that I've been doing. And me and GCW could easily put together a blood sport event with no audience. And as long as we got the revenue to do so, like, we'll fucking, we'll make a killer event. We don't need an audience for what we create. Right. And the UFC has done a great job in the way they have been handling, testing, and putting people in one of my, my best friend, Eric Hammer, Eric R. Bello. He trains and works with Spike. who fights in UFC right now, uh, ginger-haired wild man, and he told me all about the process they put everybody through for testing and he also worked pretty well. You know, hats off to the UFC for keeping people employed. I don't, and this isn't to knock at Bellatory either because they, I'm sure they have their reason and their rationale for, for running their, their business the way that they do. But the UFC found a way that they could create the opportunity to keep people working. So to speak, I think it's great.

It's, you know, very exciting. Props to them. Yeah, it's a bummer.

Yeah, it's long as he's healthy and he comes back.

I personally would probably love it. I love the quietness and the name when I fight. I fucking, I think it's the best.

Okay, they're just so well educated. They're combat sports is such an integrated part of Japanese culture. Being doing judo or karate or something like that, it's just in grade school or middle school.

They know what matters. And you know, there's sometimes I really love the the rockest nature and energy of an American crowd. But I think At least for myself, I just don't give a shit about anything else but going to war at that moment. I don't care about the crowd, I don't care about anything. All I want to do is, is fucking kill.

And intimacy versus intensity.

I mean, when you have a crowd, again, like when a man loses his mind and gains another, as this crowd starts to surge, you get pulled into it. Yeah. So if you've got a protest and you're out here to say, like, hey, fucking, get your shit together. And then someone starts to lighten off fireworks in the middle of your crowd. You know, everyone, or someone starts turning it into, hey, get your shit together. Hey, we're gonna push your shit in. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's a lot of people lose their shit. And so plus or minus man, you go out there and a fight goes on and when the crowd reacts, oh, this really matters. Oh, yeah, I'm into it now. I'm involved. Yeah, you are because everybody else around you is. Yeah. Yeah. First you are.

They're both awesome. I think that's a completely can get behind that.

I'm glad that it's going on. I'm glad for the fighters. I'm looking forward to when when Scott and company get things up and rolling again. I just want to see the world. in general, just open up to when fights can be a thing.

had distiller David is used to work in infectious disease and he told me about the structure of the disease itself and why why is open water so effective. Well, the it emulsifies the fats around the virus itself and it breaks it down. This is also why things like Windex will kill it. You know, it's not particularly hearty. Do you be light kills it? You be light and sunlight. Correct. But he also says that, you know, coronavirus is our known for enjoying colder weather. So fall and winter is a possibility. And then when you talk about spikes, So that thing, one of the things that really was in my mind when I was talking about people fighting tooth and nail to defend their use of mainstream media as their de facto sense making apparatus is that I was posting stuff about wearing masks. And by the way, all the people that I listen to who were giving me information, either stuff coming straight past the firewall in China, like weird Twitter accounts and YouTubers and whatever, I had my supplies. end of January because one I live in an earthquake state and I needed to have it anyways so it didn't make it wasn't like no skin off my nose I didn't have enough I wasn't storing water and whatever and okay I should have that just in case there's an earthquake right so I'll do it for this and then but I had enough toilet paper I had enough things because I figured people are gonna be the big problem That's what's that's the thing that I get that's gonna affect this the most and I told so many people and they all are gonna be like, what are you some sort of fucking weirdo prepper and I go I guess, but when I can wipe my ass, you'll be, you know, let's see what you do. And I'll see how much your cat likes it when you've gotten a more toilet paper left over.

But I was like, look, everybody, we need to be wearing masks. And people would fight me because the mainstream media said, don't wear masks. You know, we need masks for the, I'm not, Look, fuckface. I didn't say N95 mask, which by the way, there's also N99, and there's also P95 and P99 and there's, you don't even understand the classification of masks. And now you're gonna fucking tell me when I've already done the research, and I know what the difference is. And now you're gonna, just fucking put cloth over your face, do something when you had lex on here, fucking sweet dude, lex freed me. I love that guy. And he's just simply showing you, that's enough. And I said, look, if we're just wearing masks, as a guy who used to live in fucking Japan.

Of course there's that too, but they think about their own But they think about the honor of having their own social responsibility.

Very low.

I think it's due to, uh, I personally think it's due to just mask wearing on a cultural basis. I think it's due to, uh, if you tell people in Japan like, okay, hey, we got some shit coming up. Here's these three things you need to do. They will do them.

It's the same reason why when you have you have a natural disaster coupled with a nuclear issue like the tsunami Fukushima that the older people will come up and go okay hey you younger guys you've got families you've you've not lived as long as us leave we're gonna go in we'll take care of it you know that's why they will put together resource centers or or fallout centers for people to to house in while everything's destroyed and no one's getting raped and murdered. Whereas Katrina hits you fill up the super dome because holy shit man there's always people that are displaced it's it's it's you guys are suffering like mad okay well we got this at least this this piece of property that we can use to try and help people out and it turns into a fucking nightmare in that place. that won't happen in Japan. It's just not the way that they are.

correct and I spoke to people I had a conversation with someone long time ago and I go, look the problem is if if you have the ability to at least vote I mean and we can I mean that's a whole another discussion about how effective our votes are anymore but at least there is some semblance of us being a part of the process and being able to freely protest and do other things or try to influence the way government is going. When you have this massive top down structure, it's just not going to happen. They're going to dictate from top down plus it's the idea that you can You can predict everything that everyone's going to need all the time. And that's just impossible. You can't predict every necessity. You can't predict every, every problem that's going to come. It's just not, you can't do it. Well, this virus is showing that for sure. Well, along supply change, you want to push all your manufacturing out through other places. You want to stretch out all your supply lines or how about all the people running businesses on the edges all the time. Like, oh, if you get money, you don't save it. Spend it. Go into, you know, buy more debt to do this with it. And then all of a sudden, this happens is like, well, you're fucked.

There is a, There is a possibility to create protocols to take into consideration the unknown and protect as many people. I mean, I've been wearing a mask every public place I go to. I wear a mask. I just do.

That and just what I understand, what little I will say I understand from even reading people like in the seem to lab or a balaji serene of us and or any of the or if a demonologist or talking to my head distiller or my student Mary who literally works on covid machines in a microbiology lab. Really. Okay, I can understand a little bit but I know that even they don't have all the information. Nobody can't. It's novel because it's new. Now, I know that they've been studying Chinese horseshoe bat coronavirus since like 2015 or maybe even sooner than that, especially after the issue that the world had with SARS. So, of course, it starts to become a priority. Fine. But here we are, here and now, what I don't know, I'm not going to just assume that things will just be fucking fine. That's just not a way I can approach things. What I have to do is what I can take on responsibility for myself, okay, that's mine. But for other people, different story. And when I can do something as simple as where I'm asked and be in public, I'm not damaging, I'm ensuring myself and others, from hardly doing anything.

And following up on any kind of studies and just any previous understanding of supplementation in regards to other viruses and infection and things like that. But also, as when this first came down, I had stuff to protect my eyes. I had a 95 masks. I had a Tyvex suit if need be. What's a tie-vix suit? They're using, using for painting and things like that. So you can duck tape them off and what have you and you don't break. Who knows, right? But I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going to happen. I just know that I don't want to get fucked.

Could have been. Could have been. But then, okay, so it's not. That bad at least, right? So, but for a while there, what I would do is when I would leave the house, I had my outdoor clothes and my indoor clothes. When I came back in the house, I took all my shit off in my little foyer, put it in the corner. Clean, took a shower, cleaned up, then put on my indoor clothes. Really? To make sure that if I was an issue, all right, I'm not, I don't know what this virus can or will do, but I'm gonna avoid bringing it into my house as best as possible.

And so then, as I started to learn that, okay. doesn't seem like it's this like it is gnarly it's real, but it's gnarly to certain people.

Yeah, I am.

There may be a few strains for sure, although from what sources I have, coronavirus is and are not, they're not the kind of thing that mutates very much. And what they're more likely to do is become more benign and not more aggressive.

For everybody, you know, think about being in India, think about it being all these other places. It is. It is.

I think a lot of it comes to fear there yeah and there's fear the unknown is one of the greatest motivators or creators of fear but I would say that this reminded me a lot from get as soon as it was like okay we need to shelter in place or safer at home or whatever the case may be And it just made me think of Kormack McCarthy in no country for old men. You know, you can change your name. You can do this. You can do that and go to some other place. But at the end of the day, when you're laying there and bed and you look up at the ceiling, it's just yourself staring back at you. And you're made up of the days that came before and nothing else. So you can try and change what all, but you're not any different. You're the same person. It doesn't matter where you're at in the world. You're still you. And so these people are having to sit there at times, especially those that don't, you know, there's these people in a relationship where they're now starting to realize, well, what kind of relationship do I really fucking have? What is this built upon? Or even sitting at home and people having to sit there and basically be in the mirror all day long with themselves. And how many people are really built upon the foundational tools of fulfilling meaningful things? Things that... Here, I don't wanna die. Tomorrow, today, not even five years from now, not 10. Hell, if given the chance, I would fucking live a thousand years if I could, because I think that this world is so fucking amazing, that there is, I don't think I could learn all the languages, eat all the foods, even the ones that don't like, see all the mountains, all the architecture, meet all the people, all the cultures, all the fucking everything that exists in this glorious fucking amazing place. I don't know that I feel sad that my life can't go on long enough to know these things. But I've lived such a life to this point. There are things that 10-year-old me would just have just fucking had an aneurysm thinking that this was ever going to be the way his life turned out, considering what an outcasted, you know, pushed aside, bullied, fucked with, you know, really sort of twisted up, confused, young lad, and getting to where I am now, and I can leave this place and die, and my life has been all fucking great. I'm fulfilled. I live because I want to experience things, I want to create more, I want to do more with my life, my life has been great enough. Spinger, I've had all the things that I need that are sent to us. That's real success.

Yeah, I'm more concerned like in an instant anyway. way. I want to die right. I think more about that, you know, or like the stoics, how to, you know, I want to die right. I want to go to Bohala. I want to, I don't want to die a pathetic way from living an epic life. That's more of a concern in terms of death. But otherwise, not death is there. Death is coming. Death's alongside me. Death's writing in the car with me everywhere I go. And that's fine. He's a good fucking wingman. That's great.

So I fucking played Doom scared me as a kid when my friends like check this shit out. You know, it's like a fucking secret drug deal. I pop in the little discs in the library computers. We're like, okay, okay, what's this? You know, it was just yeah, what a freak out. Yeah, I play God mode. God.

There's no risk. If there's no risk, if there's no struggle, if there's no, there's no, there's no overcoming. And it's like I always say, like I always say, I have this eye-a-concept of human entropy that all humans without proper suffering and overcoming to use some generic words. And obviously from a knee-cheon perspective, you just go to your lowest state of energy. And people are All things in the universe are subject to entropy and humans are no different. And so obviously we experience entropy and our bodies break down and obviously we have cellular degradation and things like that. But we can We can spiritually degrade. And if we don't have proper overcoming, if we don't have a certain kind of suffering in our life or our agitation, we don't grow. Agitation is a great way of living. Agitation is a great way of living. And I'm also a big fan of a hiterger, so like being towards death, knowing that this is inescapable, stop trying to to look for anything, to alleviate the burden of your own death and the responsibility of your own creation of an authentic life. You cause, at the end of the day, you can do all these different fucking things, you can change your mind, you can become a, this kind of an, a fucking ideological prener, communist or you're a alt-right or you're this or you're that, you can create all these little things, you can be a Christian or a Catholic or whatever, right? You can, if you're using these things to replace your your ownership of authenticity and the carrying the burden of your own being in the world then eventually regardless of all this shit that you do when you're laying in bed at night and you're looking up at that fucking ceiling you know that you're a fucking fraud and that you're you have off low you've tried to offload something that you can't get rid of yes yes

How far did you start shooting arrows at to practice?

But you had to get there, you know, I went shooting yesterday and pistols, pistols. you know I can I could put some groups together and honestly part of that's because you know the the pistols I'm using are fucking they're accurate enough to do it it's it's not them it's me and I like to you know go not not to shoot shit at ten yards and six yards like okay well ten yards is fine or whatever but unless I'm doing a specific you know motion derived real I don't whatever man. I can hit center mass and I can hit ahead all the time. I don't care about that. I want to I keep pushing it out as far as I can go and the. Because I want to get better and I bring it back in and like it's not not not good enough. I've been shooting my old 44 auto mag as much as I can recently, especially they're starting to make new ones. they're gonna re-re-develop revamp and re-re-put this fucking thing out there and I'm like, oh, yes, thank God, I'm getting new parts. That's a fucking cannon. It's great, it's the original cartridge was made by taking like a 30.06 or 30.08 rifle cartridge. You put it in a base block and you cut it down to size, you remit flare it and then you make your ammunition out of that using a point point 429 caliber bullet. I reload. Do you really? Yeah, I'm a reloader. I grew up reloading shooting hunting fishing.

You save your shells. If it's 44 automag, yes, or 475 willdy or any of these kind of wildcat weird things that I shoot. Yeah, I reload. But if it's just 45, it's cheaper to just buy whatever, you know, regular shoot them up ammo.

Oh, 100%. Because again, it's the being involved in the process and the creating part of it. And one of the things while I love my automags so much is because we'll want him a fucking weirdo. So if everybody says, hey, do the easy thing? No, I want to do the weird and odd thing. I want to go. Oh, yeah. No, why do you do you do? And you can catch wrestling, right?

I use an iPhone. So, you know, for me, it was, yeah, let's buy this gun made in 1970 and it has an incredibly rare amount of spare parts available and reloading data and all this stuff. Like, yeah, sure, I'm game. Yeah, I'll do it. And a lot of kick, too, right? It's not that bad, actually. I mean, it kicks pretty substantial, but I've seen women shoot them with no problem. And you know, I learned to the point of taking the, in fact, I dislocated my shoulder fighting croca. So I couldn't work on my, my cobra, my Mustang. And I couldn't even drive it at the time. Well, this blows. What can I do? All right. Well, my arms and a sling. I'm going to take this my auto mag apart and completely take it down to the frame. Have the frame be blasted. Put it all back together. And then I was on this forum. So I'm talking with this legendary, uh, pistol arrow, uh, rest in peace. Lee Juris, who was famous for creating these custom badass auto mags and like taking analog with auto mags at 200 300 yards. Yeah. He's bonkers. He is so incredible. And he was crazy shot chatting with this fucker. Yeah, well, I mean, or he could you stick some free hand or whatever, like the guy is like one of the great American pistol shooters. Wow. And so, uh... I'm sitting there just chatting with this guy on direct message on fucking forums and he's like, yeah, okay, well, when you're gonna if you want to slick this action up here's here's the type of compound I would use here's this, you know, here's the places and so here I am just fucking away playing around on this little this tinkering around on this piece and I'll put my gun back together and you know, take go out and shoot it and it's just fucking clover leaf things and this is you know it's brilliant but it's also the brilliant that regardless whether it's pistols or what it doesn't matter learning you're learning you're putting yourself in the position to wear okay well you're gonna make mistakes and yeah and and now you're part of that creative process by being is involved in the whiskey it means that much more to me but I also don't know any other way to do it. Like I probably could have had someone make that playlist for Spotify for me or just thrown in a few tracks and then just use the recommendation at the bottom.

Wouldn't be the section. Yeah, wouldn't be there's Melvin's are in there the Bronx.

They're not a death metal band. They're a hardcore punk band at LA. Okay, and you would like them. Oh, okay.

Let's do it. I will. I will. I will. But it's just being involved in the process and starting from Not knowing anything and then that overcoming man.

Well, and your podcast, like anything else, anybody does will take on evolution. One of the things that I would say in regards to you is the way people talk about you to me says more about them than it ever says about you. And when I have someone, let's say, you know, respondents and take a bunch of unsheritable takes. And I'm like, oh, you actually don't fucking pay attention to you. You're really not listening. You're not listening at all. You don't understand anything that was Joe's creating here. You have no clue. And you're telling me not about you at all. You're only telling me about yourself. And I just, through everything you do, that opportunity for new pathways, new growth, better understanding. What is it that my Angelo quote, we do the best we can, and when we know better, we do better. And that's a really simple way of looking at things, but when we know better, we can do better. When we know better, whether we do better, we can just do differently sometimes. And seeing the progress of this podcast, Like I told you, I talked to people from the internet dark web. Now, I talked to the IDW guys. I talked to Dr. So. I talked to James Lindsay. I talked to Eric Weinstein. I've been to dinner with Eric. And there's probably other people I'll meet through this. And for me, it's just, I want to be exposed to all these people's ideas and thoughts in these conversations, especially when they're going to be in areas of expertise I'm not an expert.

Fuck out of here. I get a lot of this off. Oh, I'm so surprised that, you know, I really didn't expect that this that or the other. I'm like, well, okay.

I've seen it on Twitter where they're like, oh, well, you get you. Well, you know, what a dummy you are. Clearly you've been hitting the head too much.

Of course it is. It's a sign of someone that doesn't actually want to engage in anything in good faith.

And I could have said, I feel like personally that I've, something I've had to deal with in my life is that I think that there was, or is maybe even still this idea, this construct of what I'm supposed to be and how successful or what have you, I'm, I should be, right? And if I exceed that, people get pissed. that I'm somehow doing something in a way that they don't think I should be, or that I'm getting notoriety in a way that they don't... No, no, no, you're not supposed to be that person. Now you're supposed to be this and only this. And if you exceed that, fuck you for not being what I want you to be.

And so I want other people to fail so that where you're at at this point can then still can be the new, uh, the new peak.

Well, you're only halfway up the mountain as long as nobody gets higher than that. It's good enough.

They're caging themselves to be only as good as they are at that moment.

Well, nobody lies to themselves more than themselves. And unfortunately, we are the best at finding every excuse we can to justify our position. And it's just like, okay, I'm dealing with whatever from all this ideological poisoning and all this shit in my own home. And yet, At the end of the day, instead of going out there and just being like, look at how terrible everything is and just taking a very surface level understands me and like, well, it sucks. I'm going to tell you it sucks. I'm going to tell you that this person sucks and blah, blah, blah, blah. But the reality is, is that, okay, even the ideological stuff, it's not all bullshit. Not everything is a lie. And it wasn't necessarily created just to damage me, like stop, stop making it all about myself. And even then, it's also like, okay. If all you can do is say something bad about the person that you chose to be in a relationship with, then that says more about you than them. And to think that I would never be involved in somebody with somebody that I didn't love and enjoy. And so to say that regardless of how things finished, that doesn't mean to sit there and say that that which was negative takes precedent over anything else is a really myopic way of viewing things. And it's more or less I would see it as a tool to to narrow your focus into that, which you want to take precedent. So you can justify your grievance in this instead of saying, OK, well, I can have a real grievance. And that's totally acceptable. And I can create, I can justify it. I can show for the grievance itself. But this wasn't only a grievance. The whole thing itself isn't nothing but grievance. It isn't nothing but bad. If it is, then it's on your fucking ass.

They can get it from the website warbringerbubbon.com slash warmaster and we ship to everything but I think maybe only seven states and it is available in some liquor stores obviously can't get it any bars really right now since they're not open but it is yeah go through with the website use Warbringer 10 to get 10 bucks off.

I have a website up www.JoshBarnett.com. It is now the fortress for the Warmaster on the web. And I'm taking over that Spotify playlist. Use the Warmaster's workout to get fucking jacked.

I always get... You know what?