Transcript for JRE MMA Show #120 with Jim Miller

Looks like you're into it. I am. Yeah. Food has always been a pretty big part of my life, a group of a family of cooks. I actually consider myself probably the worst cook in my family. Um, don't see that before you sell in your book. No, no, but I'm still pretty good. My brother Dan and my mother brother Michael are both their phenomenal.

No, I didn't the sideways. I didn't see that. I was on we're on the opposite side of the ring. I didn't see that until the next day. I was like scrolling through some pictures on on one of the forums and I was like, Oh, shit here.

team names and it's a, and I think of other couple promotions of like tried to do something similar and it just doesn't seem to work in MMA.

Yeah, it, uh, the people just want to see us punching each other's heads in. That's really what it is.

You know? Why nine? Why nine innings? Why nine innings? Yeah.

I guess it's yeah, you're cheating strategy right you're cheating throw the fucking ball throw it try to strike him out you fuck It's silly yeah I guess there's there's some there's some silly stuff that happens in MMA though and you know what's what's the silly like because I mean I fell in love with it watching like the early days watching pride and the early days of the UFC where it was like But dudes were just going in there to beat the fuck out of whoever was across from them. And, you know, like, when I see a fighter try to game the clock, you know, I understand why they're doing it because I want to win, right? Like my whole goal is to not have the judges have any fucking saying it. Because I got three questions. Yeah. The question will probably be better work. Go on, I'm shocked. On the outside of the the cage, like that have that have zero experience in the martial arts for the most part, a lot of them. A good percentage of unfortunately. And yeah, they're they're picking who's going to win or lose and like I get paid twice as much if they think that I win. So like I think that you know the the purest part of the sport is when two fighters just trying to for sure beat the shit out of you undeniable I mean there's some really good judges out there we should acknowledge that because they don't get enough love because there's so many bad ones

Who's that, which is like, he fucking definitely did. You got to make sure, yeah, like let him rip you off of them.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like as a fighter, it's, I feel like it's tough because that, you know, the ref is there to, so I can fight again. You know, there's, I mean, I want to choose my way out. Let me decide that it's enough, but I do appreciate that they're looking out for us. It's not an easy job. It's not an easy job at all. My last fight, I thought it could have gotten stops a little bit quicker. That's probably because I haven't knocked a lot of guys out. I knocked him down and it was like I threw one or two they kind of hit glove and then it was like a second one just sunk in it's like dude that that didn't need to happen and it's still it's still going on so I was a little bit amped up you know post fight but It's a difficult spot.

You don't really, you know what I'm like, you guys do a lot of fucking work.

I think he, I think fighting's easy.

Yeah. I think I found the thing that I was kind of built to do because that's one of the things that people don't understand like I I've never had surgery like knock on fucking well that's crazy uh like yeah yeah nope um you know uh the only bone that I've ever broken is I chipped my uh my sinus when uh Dan Hoker need me uh like chipped the outside of my sinus that's the only bone I've ever broken really um and that just heals up on its own yeah yeah there was nothing they could do for it but uh like And I've been bounced around outside the actor gone. Probably worse than I have been inside the actor. And it's like shit man. I was just kind of like built to take lumps. I've got a fucking giant head for a five foot eight dude. And I think that's helped me absorb some shots. And then stylistically, yeah, I try to like, I do sacrifice some power for trying to be protected.

I try. It's one of the exciting things about the sport. There's so much shit to do and to learn. It makes it difficult on one side that you have to try to get in, work out for not only to be a technical fighter, but a good athlete, and then you're working on ground stuff, clinched stuff, wrestling, striking. So there's so many pieces to the pie that you got to stuff in there. It's not like, hey, all I do is grab ball and run. We have to find your strength and try to fight to your strength. And I think that's an issue that sometimes fighters get away from as they learn new things. And then they don't fight to their strengths that got them there. I've done that in the past. And what way? When I fought gray, manored. You know, like that was my third fight in the UFC. Tough dude, good wrestler, better wrestler than me. You know, big step up. But like to that point, I really hadn't been doing like. private striking training like really before the UFC yeah I was taking I was taking like tie classes a night like group group classes like a tickboxing class no well first six fights yeah basically yeah my first six fights uh I started out of the place called planter jitsu tiny little bit bigger than this studio here. This room with the studio. And yeah, I was taking like cardio kickboxing classes because I had never thrown a punch before in it. It was helping me. You know, but the ball would already started rolling so it was like, fuck it. Like we're just going to go.

And that was in high school or that was as soon as I could walk. Okay. You know, my My mom's side of the family, pretty fucking good wrestling locally. And then one of my uncles was a two-time national champion for Lehigh. He was actually an Olympic qualifier in 1980 when we boycott it. Mike Frick, yeah. So like his wrestling career was done before I was born, but his younger brother Jim, who's also my mom's younger brother. He wrestled at Lehigh as well. Never quite made it to all American status. One of my first memories is watching him wrestling at Lehigh. I think I was like three or something like that. And I remember it because he ended up breaking his ankle that match. Yeah, as soon as I walk, I was pretty much on the mats. I wish I would have been a better wrestler, but I was a late bloomer, physically, and in the sport of wrestling too, I think.

Yeah, so I wrestled through high school one year at Virginia Tech. That was a learning experience wrestling for a D1 program. I walked on late. and three weeks later was starting. And it was wrestling at a weight class that I should probably shouldn't have been wrestling at two, 141s. and you're lighter to light yeah way too light you know we they can't do anything about it now but we snuck by the hydration test yeah I carried a cup of my coaches pee down to the gym is off it's really yeah it's out I was I was I came on after all the hydration tests and all that stuff so uh it was like hey uh this work so um you know it like I said it was an experienced wrestling and a room full of you know multiple time state champs and stuff like that and and you know it it taught me a lot about kind of surround myself with people that support me because I didn't quite have that in the coaching staff and yeah I wrestled for a year was pissed off because I didn't like you know the program and and came back was was working a little bit and my brother and I Dan were we're messing around at work working with a father and and finally decided to start training to get soon. We walked into the the first unit we trained at in May of 2005. came in and we had been like fucking around so we ended up like submitting some guys in the first day and we told the coach like hey like we want to fight and he's like all right give me like two or three years and six months later we were we were stepping into the into a ring for our first professional fight because there was no amateur at the time no striking training literally three months of striking training at a cardio kickboxing.

Yeah. So yeah, it was a trip, you know, rolled the dice a little bit. You know, yeah, then it was just like fight after fight. I mean, in a year I had six fights basically.

That's I believe so. I think that's one of the biggest issues with local MMA right now is that they're making these fighters sign agreements. So you're kind of locked in and then they're making, they're making fighters like local promotions. Local shows are making fighters fight exclusively for them.

And then they're only putting on three cards a year.

A lot of them have like those you know the UFC claws were like if one of the big promotions call you but the problem is is like you should be able to fight for a bunch of small guys actually you want to fight almost once a month exactly yeah that's exactly it you know like I have some guys to train with me that they don't get the fight as often as I feel they should now They're they're because of that because of the contrast.

Yeah, that is not that's not ethical. Especially they're making like you know a thousand and a thousand bucks like when bones is like it's crazy.

Yeah, and then like one of the, one of the new ones. Well, new, I mean, probably a few years old now, the ideas that they make these, these fighters have like ticket quotas and stuff like that. So then it's like, like, dude, you're draws me crazy. Oh, it's the worst. It's the, it's the absolute worst. Explain that to people don't know what we're talking about so in their in their bad agreement they're gonna have to sell a certain amount of tickets in order to get their their pay you know so like they'll have a you know forty forty ticket minimum or whatever that they have to hit in order to get their full pay. And then for everyone below that, they're docked from their win bonus for their show money. It's a bullshit fucking move. You kind of understand it, but it's like, hey, you're the promotion. Your job is to promote the fight. You're the one with the with the marketing knowledge and then this and then that and then the the dollars to put down you know for ads and and flyers and shit like that like If a fighter has the opportunity to sell a couple tickets and make a couple extra bucks, maybe, all right, great. But like what happens and this happened to a bunch of my training partners and this is like kind of led to my one of the things that led to me opening my gym a few years ago was with seven guys on a local card and all of a sudden there's a ticket quota. and after they saw it well it was before they signed but they didn't know that it was there so you had like a group of you know seven seven fighters so a gym like okay like one guy could have handled the quota two guys but like seven like then you're like trying to make sure that you know the the training partners buy from from this guy because he hasn't sold the bunch and And yeah, it was it was kind of a it was a bullshit move that You know, I got put in there, but like I don't think any of them like Really hit it, you know, they all got fucking doctor Dr. bit so it's like You know, you're looking at a couple hundred tickets between the seven of them that they got a cell, you know, so that everybody can make the money that they were

I don't like that. It's a weird. It's a weird model. It really like I like so the that London card. It's like everybody with a finish got a you know.

If you tell the fighters that Before the fight, Garen fucking teed everybody's going out there looking for a finish. And that's what I want to see. That's what I'm trying to do in the fight, no matter what. But as a fan, I want to see aggressive fighters, not guys that are just trying to game the clock when a couple points and get the W because they

Yeah, it's, like I said, it's, it's, it's weird.

No, I think it's all show money. You know, like, I mean, maybe on the lower end, but for when I understand it's a majority of us, it's just, yeah, you get, you get paid the fight.

Never fought for him.

Oh, that place, uh, same place.

He'll kick boxing like no geek, uh, no geekageets who tiny little room. Did they have any fighters yet? Well, that's why we went there, uh, because they had a couple of a couple of fighters. It was a closest place that had, uh, like an MMA team at the time. Um, and, uh, So I signed to fight Frankie Edgar in November of 2006. And the gym was kind of like, it was breathing its last breaths. People at the gym kind of knew it was going to go under. And it did like three weeks before the fight. So it was like, it was a shit show of a camp. Frankie was training with Team Rhino at the time, which was huge. They had like, 60 fighters, something like that. And I had like two 16 year old blue belts and like a purple belt and another purple belt. It was 305 and like I had I had Dan to train with for like two weeks. He had he had cracked a rib and then like the first sparring session. I just hooked him to the body and I was like, oh fuck. So he was out. So it was a shitty camp. Great fight, Frankie and I fucking, I've never seen the fight, but I had people coming up to me for years after that one, like dude, that fight with Frankie was crazy.

Not usually, now come. I don't know, like as I remember, like I remember the good and the bad, you know, and it's like I should, but like I'm focusing on like what's next, and just trying to, Get myself better and work on those things. I let my coach just kind of peel that stuff apart.

Occasionally, usually just to see him fight, you know, but I'm not trying to break things down because I kind of what happened in that fight with Gray is that I expect him to throw over hands and like looping punches and he came out and he just fed me straight rights and it was like, you know, I had been I had been working with a boxing coach for a couple weeks and next thing and no, I'm trying to like slip and move and it's like that's not me But I've been doing a for a couple weeks so I kind of picked it up and yeah, he broke my nose pretty early in the fight and then continued to And yeah, it was like

Fuck, if I know. You know, it's no luck. Like I said, I think I'm kind of, I'm built to get roughed up, built to get, you know, into the mix, just durable. Yeah, and, you know, like, And then there's definitely a portion of that that is like skillset. Like I try to like I try to not get hit, you know, like and I'm willing to like Like if you keep your hand up, right? If I throw a left and my right is glued to my face, I'm probably losing a little bit of power than if I like loop that left over and drop my right hand. But then if my opponent throws a counter, I'm more protected. And that's what I'm trying to do. Like, I'm trying to land good shots and hit people hard, but be protected at the same time because I also consider myself a bit of counter-puncher. So like, I'm looking for somebody to throw something at me so that I can, you know, snap something at them. And, um, yeah, just, uh, I don't fucking know.

and then you see it at the opponent and you're like, you know, that's what's scary.

No, no, I have not. I have neither, you know, it's like I said it's super wrong for giving and I'm not the type that I'm going to try to tell people what to do. Right, you know, like, but I'd like other fighters to try to make good decisions about it, you know, it's like it's a I don't I don't consider fighting like super dangerous like I think there's a lot more other You know sports and and and types of like entertainment out there that are a lot more fucking dangerous than than what we do But like over the long haul this shit, you know, it it adds up But yeah, like I hate I hate the idea of like telling somebody like hey, you know, you need to hang them up

I think in that position as the coach, it's your responsibility, you know, to have that conversation with somebody, and they might not take it well. But like coaches have a very important job and and that is to that is to protect their athlete, you know, you're not only trying to make somebody better, but you're trying to protect them. Um, and like, unfortunately, in the in this sport and the way that it is, it's like sometimes a coach has fucking 30 athletes, you know, and a lot of times they're, hey, they're all here on sparring day. So it's like, uh, It's hard to pick out like who's having all right, who's having a bad day like who's who's not on today that maybe we should just Pull them you know go go hit the bag today go we'll do a we'll do a conditioning workout something like that, but no it's hard to find a so that's what that's what we're geared up for that's what everybody's you know they got a stiffy on hard smart day because it's it's the fun day

Yeah. Yeah. And like that's one of the things that I can definitely attribute to my ability to be still sticking around here at 40, you know, just about 40 fights and how old you know? 38. Wow. Is that like I open my own place and Dude like being able to train with a with a good group of guys that I trust and not have a fucking target on my back Is is awesome You know and when did you open up your own place and the 2014 tell everybody what that is Well, actually I ended up selling it, but yeah, so I opened up a Miller Brothers time of May in 2014 then Is it still called Miller Brothers?

Yeah, I sold it to one of the guys who who worked for me and you know one of my training partners. How come you sold it? Because you know, it was like COVID was a pain in the ass obviously and it was gonna get to that point where in order to get at least back to where it was I would have had to be there you know teaching classes all the time stuff like that and I was like you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna fight as hard as I can for as long as I can you know I put it out in the air that I want to fight at UC 300 and I think the best way to get to that point is to just focus on fighting and not be, you know, teaching classes.

No. So I think like, it should be about two years from, you know, so you want to hit 40. What? Years old. Well, I'll probably be like pushing 41. Yeah. I think it's going to be tough. Yeah. I can slow my pace down. I can slow my pace down in terms of the amount. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like to fight shit. I'd love to fight four times a year. But you know, three times a year is pretty good. When I want to get those like eight month layoffs, I fucking hate it. So where are you training now? So I'm training still at the same place. Yeah, what do they call it now? Such as county MMA. Yeah, so it's still the same group of guys.

I don't have to deal with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the, you know, whatever the hell it was like 7,500 bucks a month to keep the lights on and the, you know, the rent paid and all the utilities. So it's like, Yeah, it's nice to just be a fighter again. Yeah. There's a side of me that I enjoy teaching to a degree. I enjoy teaching like self defense a little bit more than I like teaching jujitsu. Oh, why so? Because jujitsu's got like a couple different parts of it, you know, you've got the sporty side and everybody's motivation is different. If I'm teaching somebody how to defend themselves, that's like, hey man, it's fucking hardcore, I get to be an asshole. Like, if it's jujitsu, then it's like, oh, well, you know, I got a bad knee, I don't want to do take down today and it's like shut the fuck up. Everybody, everybody starts on his feet. You know, like, oh, but you're you're training so that you can go pull guard at a, you know, at a competition, like, or whatever, you know, like, I think just who's for everybody. I love it. But I just find that my personality type aligns more with like, you know, some Rex Cuando type stuff.

I did, I did. So my brother and I were training at AMF club in New Jersey and there were some bullshit and we had a great group of guys and that's kind of why I opened the place. And it was like, do I open my own place or do I go to a ATT or something like that? And honestly, I feel like having my own spot is, it saved me. If I was in one of those big gyms, like late 2015 or early 2016 when I was sick with Lyme, I don't think I would have fucking made it. Honestly, I think just the like the attitude is different right when you when you've got a big group of fighters there's definitely ego and it's not gonna that doesn't go away right but You know, there are plenty of sessions where it was like, I was kind of, you know, like, I got to, I literally defend myself sometimes. You know, like, some of our sparring days were fucking insane. And like we had, like I said, a fantastic group of guys. You know, my brother and I and Charlie Brennan and we had, like, Jamie Vaughn came for a bit and Brian McLaughlin and, and, um, Rafael Ovarra tractor found the UFC for a bit like like the best like the best fucking fucking group of of good fighters but also good people that were looking out for each other I mean we pushed each other but we were looking out but you know injuries happened and you know like you you push the shit out of each other and it's gonna happen but when it's like next thing you know you've got some you know some Russian or something like that that doesn't speak like English and you're like trying to tell him hey I'm I'm fighting in a main event next you know next week don't You know, don't stop my knee, please. And then it happens. And then it happens again. And then it happens again. You're like, it gets, it gets stressful. And I've heard some of the other fighters that have left some of the big gyms talk about some of the same stuff where it's like, you know, because obviously the gym is looking for as many people as they can because it's a revolving door. But you have to realize where the specific athletes are, like I said, like, good day or bad day. You know, and that's one of the things that I've realized over the years is it's like, man, like, as a 26 year old shit, there were fucking no bad days, really. It's like, one year where I felt like kind of sluggish. We're now, it's like, okay, you know, I listen to myself a bit more. We're like, you have to have a coach that can do that, too, because as a fighter, I feel like if I'm going to ask something, I'm going to do it, you know, and there are times where like my coach is going to be like, nah, we're good. Like we only do the extra round the extra two rounds, like you got it in today. And your healthy, like that's what we need. I have a lot of admiration for some of those. The coaches at those big gyms, but I feel like that what MMA is and how the teams are is kind of one of our detriment at the same time. I think there's a way too many like. Like, you know, gym wars. I think that they've, they've toned that shit down. You know, talk to other fighters and stuff like that. I feel like it doesn't happen nearly as often as it used to. But it's still, it's like you got, you got two alphas, you know. bang and heads and like if you look at boxing and the model they have it's usually just a small you know couple coaches and you pull professional sparring partners in and stuff like that so it's like it's focused around the fighter now granted the pace the pace completely different and and there's so much there's so much Uh, so many differences between MMA and boxing, but I feel like like that small, small, tight knit group is, it's, it's good. Like it's, it's obviously a benefit to having all sorts of bodies and styles and all that stuff.

I think the latter is, you know, like look at the Dimitris Johnson and GSP, right? Like GSP wasn't going to fucking, you know, open mat at handsos like he's doing specific training for a specific opponent and see thing with the meat shot like that going with just every everybody or like the new the next killer but those two examples are examples of like elite coaches too yeah for us a hobby and mat you know those those two guys are hugely respected yeah veteran coaches yeah the the like, you know, shark among shark thing is like I said, it's great to have that there and there are times where like you need that little bit of a push. But man, I've seen so many fighters through the years that that I've trained with that they could hang in the UFC, but they didn't make it for like various reasons and and You know, personal life stuff is probably a big thing, but a lot of times what ends up happening is that personal life stuff falls into, you know, finds its way to the training map. And then a couple of that bad days of training and it's like fuck this. You know, the guy that I was used to, you know, pick him apart is beating the shit out of me. Fuck it. I'm done. You know, like, it's, uh, it's hard.

We do, right? See them.

You've got to go. That's like, I mean, my wife and I Angel, she's, she's shit. She, she, she, she bed on me, you know, like, I mean, we're a team. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't be still fighting today without her, you know, like, It's been a long road.

They don't do it well. No one does it well. I, there might be a couple of excited about that, but maybe for a little while.

just a lot and and everybody's gotten off switch and then like everybody can make a mistake everybody can get submitted like oh yeah if I can plenty of jutsu black belt he throws strikes in the mix of oh yeah been choked out so

Yeah, it's a bitch. So I like 2015. I started feeling like shit, you know, and it was like joint pain. was getting some, like, neuropathy. I sit on the floor with my kids and my legs were fall asleep or, you know, like, just positional shit. And it's like, I fucked my neck up in 2014, like, 10 days before I fought Yansime Deros. So I was like, okay, my neck's banged up. like, like, what, bulging disc? Like, um, I don't even really know. Like, no, I didn't get an MRI. It was 10 days before the fight. Uh, it was the most unspectacular thing. It was like a whiplash injury. Uh, I, I was sparring, uh, Mickey Golf when he was like 22, 21. And he threw like a hook and I just clinched a body lock and my head hit his chest and it just tweaked to my left and like I felt it. I have it on video and it's like, I like shrug my shoulders, move my heck around. It was the last round of the day. I was like, all right, this is going to hurt later, but we're going to get through it. I only got to that fight because of, you know, a chiropractor in his magic fingers and some grass. But so like, A lot of the symptoms that I was getting from the lime, I attributed to being a fighter. My knees hurt. Of course, they fucking hurt. I mean, to the point where I'd be 45 minutes into a training session, I have to get up like an old man, push on my knees, stuff like that. It's getting numbness and tingling. I was getting brain fog. It was pretty good. I kind of like going to a room sometimes and like go to like clean up and just kind of get lost. Before my fight at 196, it got so bad that I was like, I was contemplating retirement at UC200. I was like, I'm going to get through 196. I'm going to ask the fight on 200 to retire. And you did not know you had long time. Did not know I had long disease. You know, like I said, I'd nervous system was kind of shot, joints were swollen, I'd get some twitching in my eye, was mostly where I'd get it, just for days on end. Very occasionally, I would say the wrong word while I was speaking, and not even anything close, just the complete wrong word would come out. And you know, you notice and you're like, what the fuck did I just say? Oh, they didn't notice. So I'll tell my doctor about this before my pre-fight physical or during my pre-fight physical for 196. And he's like, you know, he's like, honestly, I think you have Lyme disease. And I was like, all right, so we ran some tests, testing me for Lyme. To this day, I still don't test positive. It's about 50% of the people that have Lyme test positive for it. So he's like, if it's Lyme disease, you know, and he's like, we ran some other tests. There's some antibody that I had that showed an infection that they associate sometimes with Lyme. She's like, oh, we're going to put you on Doxie and he's like, if you do have Lyme disease within, you know, a week, 10 days, he's like, you're going to feel different. You know, what is it called doxie? Doxie cycling. Doxie cycling. So like, I fight Diego, and that was the first time. I was kind of out of it. I barely trained for that fight. I would miss training sessions, live grappling sessions, sparring sessions, because I could barely get out of bed. So I would get in maybe six sessions a week. I'm kind of just focused on like, all right, I want to just be in shape. I could run on the treadmill. the easiest thing for me to do at that point was to run the treadmill, which is weird. It's different than what most people experience. Most people experience difficulty doing aerobic exercise and they can do anaerobic stuff. I couldn't do anaerobic stuff. Like if I lifted or did sprints, I'd be banged up for fucking days. So and that fight like I remember like when I when I fight and I think it it has to do some with the lights too like I don't see the cage like beyond the cage I don't see anybody in the stands I don't I barely hear my fucking corner for crying out loud so That fight, I, the whole, during the whole fight, I could see, like, throughout the stands. You know, I was so, like, unfocused that, like, it was just, it was a weird experience. It's the only time it's ever happened to me. But I get out of the fight and, and get on some docs cycling, the following week, and it was like, within a week or so, just like my doctor said, I started feeling way fucking better. It took me a few years to figure out when exactly I got bit. I had assumed that it was probably early 2015 and then after learning about, you know, the early symptoms of Lyme disease and pulling my head out of my ass and remembering the experience that I had in 2013, I'm pretty much 100% confident that I was bit like late May, early June of 2013.

I had a period of time where I was like, I basically had morning sickness. I was extremely nauseous in the morning. And like early Lyme, it's like flu-like symptoms and migraines and stuff like that. And so I had really bad nausea. Like if I picked up my coffee cup and I was like breathing in, and I got a big whiff from my coffee, it would make me gag. Yeah, like brushing my teeth, I'd just take the taste of like toothpaste, make me gag. I had two kids in diapers the time. Every time I bring in the friggin' garbage out, oh man, I'd be dry even the whole way down the driveway for like two weeks. And I was like, my kids are in daycare. I think my niece had rodeo virus for something at the time. I was like, I kind of a stomach bug, like whatever. And then I got a series of migraines. Like, right, kind of as the nausea was dying down, I got, I don't know if I think it was like seven migraines in 10 days or something like that. I went to neurologist in ENT, ran a bunch of tests. I tested me for Lyme, tested negative. They couldn't find anything. We're going to kick the ball down the road a little bit, see if it comes back and figure out what we can do. I forgot about that. And after, you know, kind of educating myself on mine after I, you know, was diagnosed. I was like, maybe, you know, maybe that's when it was. But it took a while to get over because it was, you know, just about three years that it had untreated, you know, and the bacteria is a sneaky little bitch. They call it the great amateur because it can give everybody completely different symptoms. And it can pass the blood brain barrier and this, all this other shit, you know. It also has a like a toxin in the cell wall of it. So if you kill too much of it at one time, uh, I'm going to short period of time. You experience what's called like the Herxheimer reaction, uh, which is basically you're being like poisoned by the death of the lime bacteria. Yeah, it's a, it's a shitty. It makes it, it makes you, it's, it's a fucking amazing thing because it's like, here's this little thing that, it's a little bacteria that when it dies, it makes you Change what you're doing so that you don't like it's a getting overlime is especially like like untreated for a while is a marathon and I'm not good at that shit So like I I was on Docs cycling for six months, you know, I ended up six months.

Yeah, today I'm about like I was I was I was I was getting like four to five times before noon. I mean and in 2016 so leaning up to like I started to lose a little weight in 2015, but I used to walk just under a buck 90. After that first six months on Doc's cycling, I was walking around at 163 pounds before the Tiagoavas fight. Yeah, I lost a fuck ton of muscle. And of course, it's like, oh, it's your soda. Jim's off the sauce. And I was like, no, I'm pooping so much. Like, you have no idea. that I just can't keep up with it, but you were still fighting. I was still fighting. Yeah. That's crazy. So, but that's not, we're not even done, Joe. So, I was on for six months and I felt way better, you know, that was whatever it was, September. Then I did, you know, in March, so I was like, hey doc, like, do you think we can, you know, get off of the antibiotics and he's like, yeah, let's give it a try. and it was about seven weeks and then I started to feel like my symptoms were coming back and then me being an asshole and like no no they're not like it's it's not it's not the line again so like I kind of waited and By the end of the year, it fucking kicked my ass. Like leading up into, what was that 208 when I fought Dustin? Like that was the hardest couple weeks before I fight that I've ever had. because I was trying to get back on the docs cycling and I was trying to supplement even way better and you're not supposed to take it within two hours, like two hours before two hours after supplements and stuff like that. I don't like working out with food in my stomach. And I can't take the doxy on an empty stomach because it then makes my stomach upset. So I was like trying to figure out like the best way to get back on it. And it just kept kicking my butt and kicking my butt. Finally, like, I don't know, maybe two weeks before the fight, I started to kind of get it, get it dialed in. And then unfortunately, I was like, fight week. I was having a herx reaction and it was a really weird experience. getting, uh, I was having like muscle tremors when I was cutting weight. So like I was sitting there. Like punching. Yeah, yeah, couldn't stop couldn't stop my arm for moving.

Like my vision was a little messed up. And I don't know if it was the lights or whatever, but like when I fought dust in that night, like ever to me, like everything kind of like a yellow hue to it. It was weird.

Yeah, because I finally like kind of figured it out like right right before that fight. Um, so then like 2017 was like I was still dealing with it and It was it was difficult like the first half of the year was pretty difficult. And then like through the through the summer. It's it started to like get a lot better for me. You know, I changed my diet. I started eating a lot like a lot better food. I mean, like when I first found that I had Lyme, I we were trying to like kind of adhere to the lime diet, you know, the lime, lime diet is like basically a paleo. It's an inflammatory disease, so avoiding alcohol, sugar, gluten, dairy, stuff like that. But it's like I also had a bunch of little kids and it's like, well, if I'm making my food and trying to make their food, so they're not eating mac and cheese, hot dogs and chicken fingers every day, like this is gonna be really fucking hard. So, you know, like, I've never like adhered to that diet, like specifically, but totally eat a ton more like whole foods and vegetables and chill like that now so and definitely like I eat way or drink way less you know so how did you get off of how did you kill the one is it is a hundred percent done or do you still have like relapses I haven't had a relapse since, yeah, about 2017. Yeah.

A few years. Yeah. So it was, well, like it took a while for it to start kicking my butt, you know, like I had that first instance in 2013 when it was when I first got bit. But then, like, I couldn't really tell anything, you know, but if you had gotten on antibiotics right then, you'd probably could get killed. Yeah. Yeah. Three to four weeks is usually what doctors will, you know, prescribe. And if you catch it early, you usually fare pretty well with it. But like, yeah, it was, uh, I mean, 2017. I didn't feel like I could start really like, excuse me. Like, push it myself and sprinting and lifting again until like maybe April of 2018. Wow. And then I was still on the oxy through that period of time. So I basically, I took it for about two years. Like, so I had a six month period. Like, eight weeks off, well, more than eight weeks off, but, you know, a couple months off, and then basically two years. Yeah, it is a lot. It is a lot. What made me completely stop. I kind of had figured, like, figured out how to, you know, the diet and all that stuff, right? And with the meds and the supplements, And I ended up getting the stomach bug was going around. So the last time that I took Doc's cycling was New Year's Eve 2018. I'd run in the New Year, puking my brains out. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. It was like, it was a bad one. That's it. I haven't taken Doc's since.

I took a few over the years. a couple different brands, I was trying to, what about like fermented foods like kimchi? Yeah, like, right after that, like when I was sick with that stomach bug, like, yeah, it was like, uh, kefir and yogurt, like that's all I ate for like a couple of weeks was, was anything fermented sour crowd, you know, unpassed rice sour crowd, like kimchi, shit. It was like, that was a, that was a ball of gas, but. But yeah, I felt like it kind of kick started me into like a little bit repairing maybe some of the damage. I don't know if I totally did, but yeah, it was a it was a long fucking road, you know, and it's it's it's such a shitty thing because it's like since people don't always test positive for it. It's hard to get diagnosed with it and you have to like I mean, some doctors don't, they don't like, uh, it's not that they don't understand. It's that they don't necessarily appreciate what, what everybody's going through. And there's like, to kind of two schools of thought with it, there's a lot that say, hey, you know, it doesn't matter how long you've had it three weeks, a doc's cycling is going to kill it. And then there's the other side. It's like, no, like, it can be fucking stubborn. Um, you know, it's, uh, For me, it was easy because I was the one fighting it. I'll fucking I'll deal with anything, you know. It the scary part is like my kids like fuck man like I it I don't want them to have to deal with the bullshit. I'm used to being in pain. I'm used to being uncomfortable because I appreciate it being a lifelong athlete. My knees are sore, my back is sore. It's supposed to be like that because it means I went hard yesterday. I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of people that have been super, like super tough and, you know, elegantly fought this thing. It's a shitty, shitty little thing, you know. It takes her assholes and they're fucking everywhere, too.

And they're the links between Lyme and like ALS and and some other stuff. It's like, it's fucking wild.

There are a lot of like a lot of like coin factions, right? So the I always hack up the name. It's like Boreal or whatever is the the typical like lime bacteria. But sometimes there are certain types of like mold. that that creates sensitivities and I mean shit you get what is the the lone star tick yeah with you get allergic to red meat like alpha gal my friend Evan yeah Evan hey very yeah yeah you know yeah he was we were hunting together and he told you he couldn't eat red meat I was like what do you say yeah yeah we've talked about a little bit Sox.

Like, what were your symptoms? Right.

That's your asshole prolapse.

My, my, my oldest when she was born she was a lactose intolerant so she like was just fussy we didn't figure it out um until like we we put her on like a uh even though I hate it we put her on soy uh formula and it was like day and night because then she's sleeping like and then uh my youngest he was lactose intolerant for uh i don't know like Maybe the first year or so. And then he kind of grew out of it.

My kids are good. They have their picky moment, except for why it. My 10-year-old, that kid will eat anything and he will out eat the both of us combined. And he's like, you know, I mean, he's a decently sized kid, but like, you know, he's strong as an ox. Uh, he's not like a huge kid. Like, and he will eat like a man and he always has. He always has. He's like four years old. No, weird how different they are out of the box.

Yeah. So my oldest, like, I didn't I didn't read any books. I didn't like I was like it's a baby work. We're gonna we're gonna figure it out right you know like be cool with it like how hard can it be? Like she was when she was born She had, I don't know, probably three, four inch long, like black hair. She had hair on her arms and legs. She had posh by four? Yeah, when she was born. She had hair on her legs? Yeah. Like pop by four arms and yes. She was a, she was a, like, a little monkey. Like she, she popped out and I was like, holy shit, I have a picture of her at a day old holding her head up. Whoa. Yeah, she's laying on my chest. I'm doing like the, you know, the skin-to-skin thing and my wife snapped it. She like, picks her head up and I'm like, what the fuck? You know, the other three, like, total newborn baby, like, you know, lose head and all that stuff. And it was like a complete trip going from her who, I mean, as soon as she could stand, she could run and jump. Wow. Like she was just, she was born at three months old. It was like, it was crazy.

Yeah, and she's shit. So she's a well, she'd be 12 in like a month and a half and She's as tall as I was when I was like 16. Like, she's totally gonna be taller than me. I mean, my dad is, well, was 64 before you, you know, squished all his discs. How old is she now though? She's 12.

He could have, he probably could have played football. He was a big dude. How do you smush his discs? Carrying heavy shit. My dad is, he still lives today just in a different way, but growing up he has a cartoon character. Like I was looking through some pictures and I I posted one a couple weeks ago He he looks like fucking mr. Incredible from the the cartoon movie, you know the Pixar like his head is just fucking his giant block and like the one picture I mean he's got the 80 shirt and it's like a like a V neck or something that just is big blue black just air coming out and it's like dude like he was yeah, he was 64 240 like just It's towered above everybody and everybody always just thought he was everybody thought he was like bigger than that. Like it's okay, you know, I've met plenty of people who are bigger than he was, but he had this like presence that he was like seven foot tall and, you know, 500 pounds. But yeah, he used to carry stupid shit.

yeah he he he definitely like exacerbated those issues like I've seen it so used to do like residential framing you know the like skeleton of the house and this one builder that he used to work for guy was a little tiny Italian guy was a bit of an asshole he wouldn't like backfill the houses to the to the foundation so it was you had like one spot to maybe bring lumber in to the foundation. So when we're doing the beams in the basement like you'd have this 40 foot beam that weighs 800 pounds and it's like you really don't have a good way to get across the fucking to the other side. So that motherfucker would cinches tool belt tight tall enough his shoulder just fit right where the middle of the beam was and he would pick that fucking shit up and walk across the stone you know three-quarter gravel stone basement uh get to the other end lean back a little bit lifted up and put it on the side and it's like eight hundred pounds yeah wait we tried eight hundred pounds he carried eight hundred parried like off the ground off off the ground yeah yep

He's got some stories, but how long is the beam? Forty feet. How is that possible? So we weighed it. So every foot weighed like 19 and just under 20 pounds.

Yep. Bounce it on his shoulder.

Yeah, air bounce. It's fucking wild.

Yeah. It's almost hard to believe. It is hard to believe. I've seen him almost die a few times too. What's stupid shit? Really? Yeah. Yeah. There are a couple of occasions where it's like, Oh fuck. You know, he's not going to be moving. Yeah. One time we were We were raised in a great room wall, so it was 2x6 wall and we had this machine, this rough terrain forklift, and it was the biggest piece of shit, like company colors were rust. You know, we weren't, we didn't, we didn't have a shit ton of money growing up. So like he, it saved so much time having this forklift. So it buys this thing and had a, it had an old straight six from a, I think it was a six made a bit of forklift from a Jeep that was, taken by the Nazis in World War II and actually had a swastika welded onto the case of it.

Yeah, like you found this thing in a junkyard and like, really? Yeah. Yeah. And it was like the big, like it was the biggest piece of shit, but it saved us so much time like getting stuff up to the second floor and let's shit. So it would, it got to a point where we would just constantly stall. It had in zero breaks. So he's lifting this wall. and are going to lift this wall in a kind of position and so we had it laid out. So you got these two by sixes and there's like the king stud which runs up where the header is, you know, the big piece that like over the windows and fireplace and and then like line or so it was like I think it was three. I think it was three two by sixes. Um, so he's driving. It's got this tiny little cage like over top of it. And it stalls. So the machine starts rolling backwards and these these two by six is get caught on the back of the cage. And like it's blinded back and my brothers and I are up on the second floor and we started fucking screaming at him because you see it just like winding up. So he like looks and he sees it and he throws his head down as hard as he can as the as the two by six slides off and it was like a Sammy so so the 450 yard bomb like And it's like, I'm jumping off the second floor. You know, my brothers are sliding down the, the, the, the studs to get down the floor like, and he rolls out. He rolls out and he like gets up the machine rolls into the woods and he's like, fuck, it's, you know, it starts swear and he's like, like, you're somebody Sam, you know, bumps anything, starts wearing like a, like a sailor. It's like, you're standing up like what the fuck like you should be dead like you should literally your brain should be like 20 feet that way wow yeah so he ended up you know spack of his head and it's well not pretty good but he was okay you know percussion but you come from durable jeans like he actually got a And MRI a few years later. And the doctor's like, you know, he's like, you know, brain looks good and everything. He's like, you know, one one interesting thing is that for the size of your head, your brain is kind of small. He's like, you're so you're telling me I've got a baby in a box car. He's like, pretty much.

He's got Homer Simpsonitis. He's just got an extra thick layer of bone around his head.

Yeah, so there have been a couple other things that were like dude. So I'm cut himself with a chain saw once. That was exciting.

eating, you know, eating just taller than me. And it's like I could take my hat and plop it on the his head. That's crazy. If I didn't have like, you know, hunched over, you know, quasi-moto posture, I'd probably look like a lily pop. You know, but yeah, if I can, his head is super.

No, not really. Just deal with it. Yeah, just deal with it. I'm not that type. I'm good at what's right in front of me. Go and forward. I mean, even with the positive shit, you know, it's like, okay, you gotta be that way if you're that way with the negative shit.

Like, okay, that's good. That's awesome. You know, like, oh, I won. I won a bonus and, you know, I made a bunch of money. Great. Wednesday next one. like what's next right um you know like I've obviously like they're there are couple fights where it's like I'd like that one back but you know I don't have a time machine so what are you gonna do yeah um what is this booze brought what is going on here tell me about this um you make your own booze now I well I haven't in a little bit these are actually well that is uh So this one right here is a coffee, coffee decor, like basically a, a cold brew, an alcohol cold brew. Like a collo-a-type deal? It's less syrup-y than collo-a. So I make my lunch open. Let's find out what's up. I make one, they're better cold than that, right?

I just read stuff and just start practice. Yeah, you know what, reading comprehension, it fucking works.

Cheers. So this one, this one I made up the recipe myself. That is not that bad. When I first make it, it's pretty hot. When it's cold, like I said, it'll be bad.

I said, this one is just like some cold brew with some other stuff in it, and then some ever clear. Is that what you add to it? Yeah, yeah, because it's it's highly alcoholic, and it doesn't affect the flavor. Do you make your own ever clear? No, no, I can't.

got to like 26 before I experienced any allergies and then I broke my nose and my septum is mushed to the side so now I have like a constant post nasal drip and it's like I experienced a little bit of hours. When you retire you need that fixed. I am. After seeing Dudley's pictures it's like

Funny thing about Kaifire. So the only time I've ever seen that, uh, so when I fought Frankie, like he's beat me, you know. So I go into the third round and I'm like, I just got to do something big. So I rip a left high kick. And of course, I don't hit him in the temple. I don't hit him in the chin. I hit him like red across the cheekbone and the ear. So his calcified cauliflower rips open and this chunk of like raw shit. Yeah, it goes flying over to the other side of the cage. Like one of the state athletic guys like scoops it up. They ended up his old coach like took it and put it in from out of high and shit like that. How big was the chunk? I think it was like, you know, maybe the size of a nickel. Wow. Yeah. So that was right before tryouts for UFC. They're not rather tough five. so like I think it was like three weeks prior so like we go down there my eyes bloodshot red still and his his freaking ear is his black as his mouth like it was gonna fall off.

I mean, I guess it's a, I feel like it makes him makes your ear a little more fragile. It does, right? So like, you might dig it into his eye and then review your ears.

I'm sorry. It names. No good with names.

Did that happen to, um, James Thompson too, right?

Yeah. That's another one. The cage side doctor is like, you have to try to make a call.

Yeah. So I, like, never wore head gear as a wrestler ever, you know, I got half two for matches, but I practiced. I never wore it. Never got caught fire. I'm training for my first fight and all of a sudden it's like my right ear starts popping up, you know. So I get through the fight and it's like a golf ball, you know, on the side of my head. So my brother, my brother, my oldest brother, excuse me, is a veteran area. So at the time he was in vet school down at U-Pen, so it was two hours away from us. So he comes up for Thanksgiving, a four weekend before Thanksgiving, and drains it. He's also stitched me up a couple times on my parents' couch before some of those earlier fights when I got cut and draining, but the athletic commission doesn't need to know about that. So he drains it. It was like Wednesday night, drains it. Thanksgiving, I'm fucking around with Dan, rolling around the floor, and he just goes, and smushes this. Like before his eyes, it swells right back up. So when it swelled up, again, it covered my the whole my ear. So a few days later, I ended up getting a like a swimmer's ear infection. And that was like top two most painful things like that I've I guess lasted. I'm sure that there I've done some things that like hurt instantly like a lot more, but like the whole side of my neck was swollen I go to a Urgent care and the guy instead of like Drawing it out and bolstering it and stuff like that like you're supposed to do he just Lances it cuts my ear open. Oh Jesus squeezes down and my gauze is my ear to my head and my dude like I've got a fucking infection in my ear I can't turn my head didn't give me an anobox or anything like that like sends me out of there like here at prick So I ended up going to a specialist, I had fucking no money going to a specialist. And he ended up doing it right, you know, putting a wick in there. I couldn't hear anything for like three weeks. I'd be driving to practice and then be talking. And I like it here was the speaker, you know, on my left side and like he's having a conversation and it's nothing, absolutely nothing, you know. And then like since that I get little, you know, I've kind of a couple little ones. But like, when mine is swelled up and like liquid, it's never hurt me. I, a lot of people complain about the pain from that, but I've never, I've never had, I've had him be like brew, excuse me, brewst and sore. but like never like the cauliflower when it's growing like as has hurt but that infection fucking that hurt like that yeah man it's funny how vulnerable your ears are like the equilibrium gets all right up to yeah yeah actually minor still healing i was out in uh... you tell last week uh... at uh... the trigger event and it was so loud like i kind of partially like blew my ear out a little bit at this party. Really?

It was that loud. So for a few days, it's kind of going away, but like higher pitch noises. Sound like they're behind me. Do you have a thing from gunshots?

What do you always do? Well, I mean, not one of my hunting or anything like that, but if I'm shooting.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's like, I don't wear anything like one on peasant hunting. And sometimes you shoot a decent amount of times, but like the shotgun is not as bad. Sometimes when I'm shooting like, if I have to shoot, or I just not have to shoot, I haven't had to shoot. My rifle or one of my rifles or the handguns, but like, they're a little sharper sounding.

Yeah. You better be taking one shot if you want.

I was just the other day I was shooting with my son. So I've got a 308 bull gun and I had him like, you know, laying in prone and we're shooting at 200 yards and Every time I'm sitting there, I've got my, my binos up and just the way the break was made. It's like throwing the, the gas is kind of back. It's like in slapped and I kept flinching like a little bitch and I'm like, alright, he's got to pull the trigger and like just don't flinch. Like keep your eyes on the door and every fucking time I kept like Blinken and fucking drawing myself.

Yeah. There's just no like a thing you can put on your chin to make it tougher again.

I'm not totally like, like, I'm not committed to anything just yet, you know? It's like, it's one of those things that I feel like I feel like athletes in general. Fighters included. We need to look at the opportunity that we have. Like when you make it to the UFC or like a guy that's, you know, playing in the NFL, like dude, like you have to look like look at it, like, Tomorrow could be your last day. So we need to maximize this opportunity as much as you can. And I feel like that's kind of something that I failed at. You know, when I was younger, I do remember asking, you know, former management like, hey, you know, like I just made a bonus. I want to do something. I want to diversify. I want to I want to get into something else. And it's like, no, just focus on fighting right now. It's like, well, fighting might not be here, you know, in a few months. I could walk outside, step into a hot hole and blow my knee out and like who the hell knows, or be training and, you know, get clip with a knee in the head or something like plenty of my peers have their careers have gone from awesome to off, you know, like like that. So, Yeah, so I've been trying to figure out exactly what it is. The problem is is that I've lived my entire adult life as a professional athlete, so I'm super fucking spoiled. Now while I, you know, I would have liked to have made more money over the years and stuff like that, but that's, that's neither, yeah, neither here nor there, but I have freedom. I have time. So I'm trying to figure out what's going to give me At least some of the freedom that I have now to be able to make my schedule. So I can spend time with my family, so I can do the things that I want to do. The cookbook is the first step I think. I always knew that food was going to be a part of my life. and because it's it's it's always been a family thing like well as a kid we were always no matter we had football practice wrestling practice baseball like we we always ate dinner together so I try to do that with my kids and I love sharing I love sharing fucking food or you know any of the stupid booze that I make uh... you know uh... the home brew so it's like well how can I how can I do that um... and i think the cookbook is the Well, I know the cookbook is that first step. I sure should don't want to work in a kitchen, but I think like with this, the fighters cookbook, hopefully get people into realizing that they need to take a little control of their food, because I think it's been such a big thing in my ability to still be fighting today, and my getting over Lyme disease has been my diet. We sacrifice a lot for the convenience that we get, you know, living in America and it's easy as easy as pulling out your phone and going on Uber Eats and stuff like this or, you know, pulling into the drive through. But it's like we don't, we don't pay for that convenience necessarily with our dollars like we pay for with our health. while while there's a lot that goes into like the food science and all that bullshit and I'm not a fucking expert with it. I know what real food is and I know that I feel better when I'm eating real food when I'm eating, you know, a deer, a bear, or a peasant that I shot and some vegetables that I grew in my garden. I just feel better, I perform better. But yeah so hopefully like hopefully the the book can kind of create a little bit of environment we can go from there and and uh i don't know you know it's uh I'm sure a shit would like to shoot my bow and my, you know, my rifle for a living, but who the hell knows? I've also, you know, I've spoken to Dudley and I've, I've, I've dipped my toe into, you know, I made a pilot for an outdoor show and I, man, I'm not a huge fan of, like, at least where it was with on TV. You know, I know that they're athletes that go that direction.

Well, it felt a lot like MMA, like back in the back in the the sponsorship days. You know, like I have a couple companies that I'm I consider myself like friends with, right? Like I fucking Josh Smith at Montana and I love the dude. He's fucking awesome. You know, like the trigger people are great vortex great, but like I hate the whole influencer sponsorship thing. If it's natural, because it's like, hey, if we have a relationship more friends, it's great. But I have a tough time with fakeing it. Because that's the last thing that I want to do. My my attitude with I was never very good at social media and I'm still not very good at social media But When I when I was diagnosed with lime I feel like I made a change in the way that I approach it and it's like hey fuck it like I'm just gonna be me and I'm gonna show people who I am because I feel like every fight that I've had since then has been a gift So it's like you know I'm just, I'm going to be honest and I'm not going to portray, you know, some brand like myself, like make myself a brand and not really show who I am. Not granted, I probably swear too much on social media, but.

It is who I am. But like, yeah, it's, it's, it's, It's tough like the whole like transitioning thing going to and yeah, yeah, it's a tricky world.

Yeah, and I don't I don't do that. Yeah, I don't do it. Yeah, it's just like that's who I am and I'm not going to I'm not going to change who I am like I'm not like in the world of jutsu and martial arts like royalties this thing that gets thrown out all the time right I'm not loyal to people I'm loyal to to principles right like if if you and I are similar and we believe in the same things and you're good fucking person and you treat people well I mean we're going to get a wall like but as soon as like

Yeah. Neither why. They're, they're the, The guys that I have around me that have been around me for a long time, they're there for a reason, you know.

You don't know what time I am done with that. Yeah. Well, one of the reasons why I don't want to run the gym is because I don't want to have an anchor in New Jersey. You know, like, I got, I got a lot of people that I love in New Jersey, you know, that are related by blood and that aren't. But The last two years is like, you know, there are better places. Then you talk to a guy who bailed out the California for the same reason.

the government was like check this out and that's the like New Jersey's it's like many California you know and is close now now granted I'm a firm believer on like you know turn off the fucking TV don't listen to the bullshit and you know go talk to your neighbor right like where I live You know, I'm 20 minutes from Pennsylvania. Maybe 30 from New York. So I'm like on the Northwest corner of the state. And I live in this tiny little town that it's fucking awesome. We bought a place right before like the pandemic hit and stuff like that in the 2019. And it was like, You know, okay, if we're going to spend a little more time here till I'm done fighting like this where we want to do it surrounded by state land. It's great. But yeah, you deal with all the bullshit, the cost of living, the bullshit politics. Like I had signed my kids up for private school because public school has to follow by some bullshit. stuff that our our governor is pushing down the pipeline that maybe some of the bullshit that California has to deal with. Like there's a lot of things that that I don't want my kids to have to have to learn at school. Like what comes to well the a lot of the. Let's say. You're making me fucking go off the door.

We're not even driving. We're not even driving. I'm not actually a little bus, but Florida's new thing, you know, the whole fucking anti-grimming law, right? Like, so I mean, why is a, why should a, you know, fifth graders be taught about stuff that, like, like, pleasure, right?

Yeah, I know. Like Florida is even even less. I don't know. What the hell does a math? Why is a math teacher in high school talking about sexuality, right? But yeah, like so in New Jersey, they're kind of changing over the sex head thing to to start teaching kids about like essentially kink you know like what are you doing for fun with someone else and it's a slippery slope yeah it's a it's a you know an adult telling a child what they can do that feels good I've had the conversation with my kids about reproduction, because we have farm animals. We have, you know, like, we don't have a male pig. We don't have a male goat. We just have females, two pigs, four goats. But we've had the roosters. They're gone now. And we had a male duck until recently, because my one new dog is an asshole. And they saw that corkscrew looking thing dragged on the ground after he was on top of one of the other ducks. So we had we've had conversations played in that course for thinkers people.

Oh my god, it's fucking weird as shit. It's it looks like a spiral noodle.

Yeah, it's huge. Well, I mean, it's for a dog. Yeah, it's long. It's not very thick, right? I heard that. I would know either anyway. So we've had those conversations, but it's like, that's about like, You know, making baby ducks, making, making, making baby humans.

I don't think it is either. Especially not for a fucking first grader. It's, yeah. So, it's over.

So I guess like with with New Jersey, it's it's teaching them about, uh, you know, anal stimulation and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like what again, to consenting adults. How old is kids with the teaching them those? Ah, that's like fifth grade. So what really? Yeah. Like 10, 11.

But do we need to go into like, hey man, some of them are fucking great. Like, like, oh, if she, if she tickles your balls while you're like, right, they're teaching eight-year-olds that. Like, we don't, we don't need to, we don't need to teach them what they can do for fun or what they can do for pleasure. If it's the creation of life, because I mean, on the flip side, a lot of kids don't understand about death. Like, having having some animals and being a hunter my kids kind of understand like hey once the lights are out the fucking lights are out but then it's also like you need to you need to have the other side of that where where life begins but yeah like the stuff that you do for fun I don't need, I don't need any teacher. I don't need any adult teaching my kids that.

But then on the flip side, they're trying to hide it.

What the fuck is going on? You know, it's like, well, it's like, hey, it's different than tossing sound. But is it thought?

I mean, not that, listen, not all parents are fucking good parents, but not all teachers are good teachers. No. So, I mean, you're still seeing to this day, teachers doing inappropriate things with their students. Yeah. So, why are we like, why are we trying to skirt the line of like what they can get away with?

He'll be fine. Because we all were like, that would be cool. Yeah.

I don't know. That's a smooth transition right there. I want to go west. I want to go to the mountains, Montana, Utah, Idaho, maybe Colorado. My wife was looking further like just straight south on the eastern side. Western North Carolina South Carolina.

11 10 8 and 6. You can do it now. Well, you know, listen.

You know. So yeah, we haven't figured it out yet. I think I've got I've got a family and and you know one of my like coaches mentors is down North Carolina so like in that area be nice. I fucking love Tennessee. I don't care.

Yeah, it is. I guess just wicked storms, but they do. Yeah. And it's like, like, it's nose, like, two flakes in the whole state shut down.

Yeah. Well, that was a pretty rough one.

It was cold for a while. And yet, like, people don't

We had we had some snow a couple weeks ago and like yeah, they're they're still there people out I think so on the 13-mile drive from my house to the gym, there were five cars that were like stranded and it's like, come on, like, yeah. One you knew this was coming and it's like two. You should be used to this by now.

I try to make it so you can only have a 40 miles per gallon. Like you have to have something that gets like 40 miles per gallon. Is that New Jersey? And yeah, a few years or whatever that it is.

That's crazy.

Well, you can't trust anyone. You can. I do it all the time. Okay. Well, why'd you supposed to? But it's, uh, I think it was, uh, it was a liability thing. Yeah. Yeah. You're not supposed to.

No, I think like Oregon is the only other state. I believe that just they have yeah, I believe so that has certain stations that are like full serve.

What the fuck's going on here? It's weird because it's like, you know, people are like, hey, get rid of it so that we can save money on gas. And it's like, you know, but PA has pretty fucking high, like their gas taxes high. So the gas is kind of similar. They would save money. Like we would save money. You know, if we got rid of it, but there are a lot of people that live in the Jersey. They're like, I won't pump my own gas.

Uh, you know, I want freedom. Yeah. Like I've kind of come to that point where it's like, um, I no matter what I do, I kind of need to be able to do some of the stuff that I want. You know, I. I finally got the opportunity to go elk hunting a couple years ago. I haven't gotten one yet. I've gone twice. I've been fucking from me to Jamie away from one. I didn't get shot at it because it was still in the oak brush. But I really want my kids to hear that. Like I want I want to be able to be somewhere where like okay since you know elk seasons in September you're not you You're still gonna have to be in school, but like we can go on the weekends. Like that's right. Yeah.

I don't understand why. So they, they bring in, they bring in the wolves. Right. They're willing to do that. Like, okay, why don't you, you know, breed up a herd of 3 million bison and let them loose in the center of this country? We know there's talk about that.

That's cool. Yeah. I like it. I just like, you introduce the wolves and the wolves don't stay where you want them to stay. They don't go everywhere. They eat cattle. They fucking, you know, eat sheep. They, they get into all sorts of trouble.

It's similar to like black bears in the dirty so that's crazy. Yeah, New Jersey thing is crazy fucking wild so in Yeah, and like turn a 2000 we had we had the largest population of black bears per capita yeah in the United States yeah in the fucking world yeah like that section of northwestern New Jersey because it was only three counties had black bears like legitimately had black bears in New Jersey and then it was New York Pennsylvania right in the tri-state corner And like, I started hunting them right when it opened. I never saw a fucking bear during during season because it was always during six day fire arm, which is a second week of December. And I can never saw them. I'd see them before and I'd see them afterwards.

They're so, like, tuned in. Yeah, their nose is so fucking good. And like, yeah, you manage them. You got the first year that they opened it up. We got a decent amount. And then like, they started to spread out. And now they're in every county in the state. And like me, I've got trail camp pictures of a sal with five cups. And what people don't get, it's the only reason a sound has five cubs is because she, her body feels like she can support them because she's got plenty of fucking brows to eat. You know, these, the bears don't want to eat garbage and get into, you know, human shit. but they will. And like a lot of the issues you have to is that people are like, oh, well, you know, we can just scare him off shooting with rubber buck shot. You know, and that's what like the cops try to do when they come to a bear call. And it's like this bear doesn't have millions of acres to go like a bear in Montana. Right. Like he can go like 1500 yards if that. Right. You know, and then he's in the next person's, you know, the next town over the next person's yard or whatever. Like and the reason that they're coming into peoples like get busted into garages and stuff like that is because they're not the big bearer like the big bear never does that shit the big bear eats whatever the fuck the big bear wants to eat which is the blueberries and the and the raspberries and all sorts of cubs yeah and cubs and eats whatever the hell they want and it's the little ones that come into you know uh where humans are and create all the trouble and the thing is is they know that that bear the big bear will kill them. They don't necessarily know that we're going to kill them. So they're more willing to deal with us than they are with the big fucker that's scared them away. Right. So like, I mean, yeah, they got rid of our bear hunt this last year. You know, we're trying to get it back. It's a it's a shit show because it's like you've got the most populated state in the country and a giant fucking bear heard That I mean you shouldn't you shouldn't see one You really shouldn't see them like in your yard. In suburbs.

I feel like they taste a bit more like Bison that's what I get like beefy yeah like beefy little more irony than beef but like I've prepared them I made some suede for thanksgiving the one year so like I cooked them in the in the the water bath for a while at like 135 or whatever and then took a map because trigonosis You know, it dies at whatever the hell it is. I think we all won 37. And that's where I got it to and left it there. And then just hit him on the hit him on the grill real quick and like you couldn't tell that they weren't beef.

But also freezing kills the trick in it. So if you've not always if you've well, you got to put it in the deep freezer.

Well mine was a new jersey bears.

I think it was 137 or 2027, something like that.

Oh, the hell website was it was a it was a government website that I went to.

Well, I hope that nothing eats me because they might get trickin' us.

I kind of see if we wanted to get it. Some people do, right? My eyeballs are floating. I need to run to the.

So the book is shipping on April 16th.

Fighters Cookbook because, uh, you know, I've used, I've used food to kind of fight, uh, all the age and, and, and, I'm the same thing to fight, uh, just to maintain health. Yeah, man. Like the direction that we're going with some of the shit. Like I see some of this like lab grown meat or this 3D printed shit or like the I mean even like the the some of the farming methods that we're you know that we're using that we have been using for a long time. It's it's so fucked. Yeah. It's so fucked and people have gotten into this rhythm of just eating for convenience and eating real food. It changed my life. And yeah, it's a tool, it's a medicine. We need to take it seriously.

On everything on Twitter? Yeah, I'm not on Twitter. Yeah. Yeah, you know what?

He's going to fix it. Hopefully, because when I heard that they like fought to like keep child porn on. There was a case where this kid got catfished. And he was like 15, somebody took his pictures, that he sent to this person, and had him on Twitter, and Twitter was like fighting him. because they wanted to keep them up. You sure that's true?

That's what I thought. So that's what I had. Yeah. I haven't deleted my thing, but like, oh, I don't want to go on there.

Some Twitter's a wild west anyway. Like I forget what fight it was. It was like a 35 pounders. The guy like hits an arm bar and his toe got caught in the cage. And like I remember like people like attack him. Oh, he's grabbing the cage with his, you know, his pinky toe is like last two toes. Yeah. And I'm like, he's not like it's got caught. Like when you're pushing your toes kind of curl, it's the way it worked. People were fucking arguing with me. Like, I'm like, have you ever fought? Like, have you ever, have you ever put your foot against it?

You know, like, he's not, his arm bar would've been better if his foot wasn't caught. He would've been, it would've been tired. He ended up finishing the arm bar, but they're like, oh, you know, he used it. I was like, no, he didn't use it. like it was just fucking happens dance and you fucking dumbasses are you're on here because it's so toxic and you're just fighting with me a subject matter expert right well they might have been a 15-year-old kid it might it was like six or so people that I was it was just like fuck this I'm done trolls now stay away from the trolls jim Miller