Welcome guys to Behind the Shield, my name is James Gearing and this is episode 38 and
I am extremely excited to bring you a fellow firefighter, a UFC fighter, a politician,
Chris Lydal.
Back in the early 2000s when I was going through fire school, I was a big big MMA fan, followed
the top names, watched the Ultimate Fighter show religiously and Chris Lydal was absolutely
one of my heroes.
These men at the time were incredible, the levels of talent that they got to, the amount
of training they did.
But Chris did all this whilst working every third day as a full time firefighter, losing
sleep.
So to me that was even more incredible that he reached the pinnacle that he did in his
profession.
So if you talk about a man walking the walk, Chris is it.
Ever since then he's also got into politics, he ran for state senate because he was sick
and tired of what the politicians were doing in his particular state.
He also has the Chris Lydal Foundation where he's an advocate for anti-bullying and other
elements of kindness basically.
And this was another incredible interview.
This man has so many different facets and such humility.
He comes out of a sport where he had a pretty large spotlight on him and then goes and continues
to serve his community, tries to serve his state and then creates a foundation with his
fame as well.
I have so many favorite interviews, there's not one that I don't love in one particular
way, but being a full time fireman, knowing what it's like, how exhausting it is to work,
the hours that we do, to imagine what it would be like to do the other things that he's done
in his career so far, it really does lend a huge amount of admiration and respect towards
Chris.
So you guys are going to enjoy this very much.
I apologize for the slight reduction in quality in audio, but Chris being so busy, he was
actually on shift, we had our fingers crossed the whole time that he wasn't going to get
banged out on a call.
So there's a slight lack of audio quality that we have on some of ours, but apart from
that, it's a fantastic interview and it doesn't detract from it at all.
So before we get to the interview again, please rate us on iTunes, just go to there, click
on the little five star icon, say what you loved about this interview and then if you
love this one, share this one, if you loved another one before, share it and just again
help me be part of this process of making this amazing information we have from these
incredible minds span the globe multiple times over.
So without further ado, I bring to you Chris Lydal.
Enjoy.
So welcome Chris to the Behind the Shield podcast.
Where are we finding you today?
I'm at the Fire Station 41 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Fantastic.
Now, I am very, very familiar with you and I was very proud of having a fellow firefighter
in the UFC and that's where I know you from, but I'd love to delve into your backstory
a little bit and paint the picture for the people that aren't as familiar and then kind
of walk down the path of the life that you've led.
So where were you born initially?
I was born in Indianapolis, 1974, been living here most of my life.
I lived in Bloomington, Indiana for four years, been traveled many places throughout the world,
have been fortunate enough.
I stayed in Japan for three months once.
I went back for another month later on for training purposes.
Stayed in Las Vegas for a few months for training, but most of my life I've spent right here.
Okay.
And where in Japan did you live?
I was in a place called Yokohama once and I was in a place called Sasebo once.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Yokohama actually has a theme park there that does a Viking stunt show.
I used to live in Japan in Osaka and some of my friends had worked in Yokohama for a
while.
So I'm familiar with that area.
Oh, you lived in Osaka?
Yes, sir.
That's one of the big cities, big airport.
I think I flew into Osaka once.
Yeah.
It's a very interesting place.
It's certainly a fun 15 months.
When I was in college, I was an athlete so I kind of recreated my college drunken years
in Osaka instead.
What would you do in college?
In sports, excuse me, in college I was a taekwondo athlete.
Oh, nice.
Yeah.
So I was constantly getting kicked in the face instead of drinking.
So when I became a stuntman and moved to Osaka for a year or so, that was why I let loose
a little bit.
Nice.
So, all right.
So you're born in India and that's where you work now.
Did you have firefighters in your family?
None.
Zero.
Matter of fact, I had police officers.
Oh, really?
My stepdad was a police officer and my two stepbrothers are currently police officers.
Okay.
So you're a huge...
I was a smart one.
So you're a disappointment to the family then?
No, I'm the guy they look up to now.
Okay.
And so when you were younger, were you an athlete then as well?
Oh, yeah.
That was my favorite thing.
I like pretty much all sports.
I played football, baseball, basketball, wrestling, kind of all the main sports I had there.
Okay.
And now I know that wrestling is one I want to focus on a little bit.
I have noticed a huge trend between some of the most amazing people I've had on the show
and them wrestling in school and or college.
So how long did you wrestle for?
I wrestled for, I guess, probably I remember I started early in middle school, like sixth
grade all the way through high school.
Then when I went to college, I was talking about being on the D1, Big Ten team, and I'd
opted out of that.
This was on the club team, which was nice.
We'd get to wrestle D2 varsity schools and this and that, but we didn't have to train
much.
Like you talked about earlier, a lot of that partying, drinking beer, that type of stuff
kind of took over.
I decided that was a lot funner than working out for a Big Ten wrestling career.
So I opted just to have fun and kind of play around with it instead.
Yeah.
I think that's a good balance to have too.
You got to live your life and if you want to go both feet forward, then that's one thing,
but life's too short to sacrifice everything.
So how did you feel the wrestling training that you went through shaped you for the career
that you chose and the MMA career that you chose as well?
Well more for the MMA career, I'd say it was the blueprint.
It laid it out for me.
It let me know that's why wrestlers are so successful in MMA is it's the exact same mindset
you have to have.
Not only what you think about and how you approach training, but it has to kind of dominate
your life in many ways and you have to work harder than anybody else.
When you're in wrestling when you're younger, you have to worry about the weight cut.
It's constantly on your mind 24-7.
That's different from most sports.
Usually you leave football or basketball practice and that's it.
That's not it with wrestling.
You're always worrying about the weight.
You're dealing with that.
It's a constant struggle, but you will learn how to work really, really hard to make yourself
the best you can put out there on the mat or the cage or whatever.
So that translates over with fighting.
When you go into fighting, you're going to have to use the exact same skill set, the
weight cut, the discipline, the really focus on the training, working harder than anybody
else there, the time commitment.
All that stuff I think is it mirrors fighting with wrestling are very similar as compared
to any other sport I've done.
I've been a professional boxer as well.
I think MMA is more like wrestling than it is boxing.
Right.
Would you say that also that mindset helped you a lot in the fire service as well?
I think it definitely helped me get on because once you get that mindset of I have to do
everything in my power to be successful, things become a lot easier.
I think a lot of people, it's hilarious to me, I'll talk to people and they're saying,
man, I've been trying to go to the fire department and I haven't been able to do it.
I'm like, well, what did you do?
I put in this application.
I'm like, well, yeah, you didn't do anything.
Did you try and get your fire science certification at Ivy Tech?
No.
Did you become an EMT?
No.
Did you try out for a paramedic?
Did you get a degree in the department?
No.
I mean, you did nothing besides put an application.
That's not trying to get on.
If you want to try something, you got about 10 different avenues you can try and actually
make it happen.
But putting in an application is nothing.
I just know when you do wrestling and you realize real quick, I have to do a lot of
different things to be good at this sport.
MMA is the same way and getting what you want, whether that be a fireman, a doctor or an
attorney, it's all the same.
You have to put a lot into it to get that.
Yeah.
And I think that's the ownership in that.
I think when we're applying for the fire service specifically, I always tell guys that
ask me the same things that ask you.
There's two things you can control in that process and that's the physical test and the
written test.
You can study for the written test till you've got that down pat and then the physical, you
can be the strongest fitness athlete you can possibly be.
And then obviously it's up to the people behind the desk in the interview panels and that
kind of area.
But up to that point, you should control your own destiny.
Yeah.
I mean, like you said, there's so much of this world we can't control.
There is a few things we can and if you're not willing to put forth everything you have
to get to that, I don't know what to tell you.
I mean, to me that all becomes about desire.
I love when I'll talk to people about losing weight or whatever and they're like, I just,
I can't lose weight.
I'm trying.
I'm like, well, you know, it's a straight, usually putting in, you know, expending more
calories than you're taking in.
Now if you're, if that piece of chocolate cake right there, you just, you can't deal
without it, then to me that, you know, that desire to eat that cake is more important
than your desire to lose 10 pounds.
So it's like whatever you desire the most you're going to do.
And people just don't seem to want to understand that or accept that.
It's just, well, I just have a trouble knowing if you're not using your willpower.
And that willpower is all about desire to lose.
So if you have a huge desire to lose weight, you will lose weight.
Yeah.
I've mentioned this in many episodes in the past, but it's understanding your why.
And obviously you have several whys, the incredible things you've achieved in your
career so far, but it's not about the cake.
It's about, you know, what do you want out of life?
And that cake is merely a by-product of your journey.
Exactly.
You know what I mean?
And the good thing about wrestling, that helped get me kind of addicted to, you know, being
a goal oriented person.
So when I'm involved with MMA or whatever, anything I do where you have this desire to
accomplish a goal, you know, you put everything you can into that.
And then when you're successful, you know, that's a very, very good feeling, you know,
in like, I don't mind certain levels of pain now because I know it's going towards a greater
good, a greater cause of me accomplishing something that I want to accomplish.
So I don't mind that, you know, some people think it's crazy when you go in and you're
afterwards in the gym and you're hurting and your back hurts and your, you know, your arm
hurts and people are like, man, why do you, your face is bruised.
Why do you do that?
Because I know what the payoff is going to be great.
You know, I mean, I'm addicted to that feeling of accomplishment and just even when you lose
sometimes you just knowing you did everything you could to put yourself in that position,
you know, there, there, that's an addictive feeling as well.
So I think, you know, goal oriented people have that type of mentality and it translates
over to all parts of their life.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
I think like you said, even if you, you've lost and I think you learn a lot more from
a loss anyway, a lot of times, but the feeling of when you're done with a training session,
knowing that you are a little bit tougher, a little bit stronger, a little bit more intelligent
if you've been studying than you were the day before and then therefore tougher than
X amount of people on the planet and you know, increasing your survivability and your ability
to protect your family too.
Absolutely, absolutely.
All right.
Well, let's, let's delve into your, your martial arts side a little bit more.
So you wrestled in, in school.
When did you get into the other combat arts, the boxing and the striking arts?
I started doing that in, uh, right about January, February of 1998.
So, um, I, what really happened was I, you know, being a wrestler, I, my stepdad, I told
you was a police officer and where he was a police officer, they had some guys who were
doing jujitsu.
He told me, and I was like, what is that?
I mean, I've heard of that.
And he introduced me to him and I went and trained jujitsu.
I remember doing it like once a week for about a month and really quick.
I got pretty good.
You know, I was a good wrestler and they kind of said, look, man, you're, you're a little
bit past us.
I'm going to send you to this other gym where people train every day.
And so I started training with those other people every day.
I started doing really well there and they're like, you need to start competing.
And I went and watched a fight they put on and right then I was like, oh, I'm going to
do this.
And then, uh, I started fighting in the Midwest and started having a lot of success and I
was able to meet up with the guy from Indianapolis named Jason Gotsy who, um, ended up, he was
fighting in Japan and he had a manager who got him over there and they, I kept winning.
They finally got me to go over to Japan and fight in and pan craze and was able to start
doing well over there.
And then my kind of creatives took off.
Now what was the draw?
Cause I know that happens a lot with the, especially back in day of pride.
What was it that took so many American fighters all the way out to Japan?
Well, to be honest with you, I mean, you know, I fought in the UFC in the year 2000 and I
fought in Japan 1999 to about 2002.
Maybe I can't remember 2003, but, um, they, to be honest with you, I think the sport was
bigger there.
Um, they treated you better there.
They treated it like a real sport.
Uh, they had fans that fans appreciated the sport.
They understood the sport.
I mean, here back in 2000, you know, it was not the case.
Very little respect was given to any of the fighters.
And you told most people you fought in a cage.
They looked at like, like you just said, I eat babies for breakfast.
They're like, what's wrong with you?
They'd look at what can I change?
Is there barbed wire?
No, no.
I mean, they just didn't understand, you know, and they, they thought you would, you know,
the Neanderthal.
So that was not the case in Japan.
They understood the art and the sport, um, and they respected the fighters.
I remember I had like a little baseball trading card.
People would come up and get autographs.
That was not happening in the United States very much.
Uh, and actually paid a little bit better than when I went over to, uh, the UFC initially.
So there was a lot of positives to it.
Um, and I love going to other cultures and seeing, you know, how people do things in
other parts of the world.
And to be honest with you, Japan's a good one.
I mean, you know, they, they, I think they're very respectful there.
They have a different work ethic there.
They have, they have a thing that they call shame if you don't do something right.
Like here, you know, if you're not successful, certain things like, that's all right.
You know, I'll just, you know, take this or take that from somebody else who is working
hard.
That, I mean, that, that's so shameful there.
I mean, that suicide rates very high because of someone's disrespectful dishonors or pain,
but they, they can't deal with the shame.
We don't have that here.
I mean, people will be like, I don't care.
I love stealing from my family.
They don't have that there as much.
I don't think so.
I really enjoyed their thought process and how they look at the world compared to many
other places.
Yeah.
That, that losing face philosophy.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess maybe they take it to an extreme, but I mean, we're just so the opposite here
in the many ways.
You know, maybe it's just a fact that maybe on the fire department in Indianapolis and
all I see is that people who, you know, could care less about what anybody thinks and are
just out there to try and take money from the system.
And you know, they just have a totally different mentality.
They could use a little bit of that Eastern philosophy.
Yeah.
And again, it's that ownership, isn't it?
It's about, you know, being the best version of yourself that you can be.
And I think that they do have that.
And I think, you know, even use cars, for example, there's that thing about foreign
cars.
And I think the bottom line is that you that that ownership shows in the quality of, for
example, the Japanese cars.
You know, it's a better product.
Let's be honest in a lot of examples.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, you know, we, we, we, we buy, my wife had a Honda pilot for about 10 years and we
just get another Honda.
I mean, yeah, you got over 200 or something miles on it.
We're done.
We're giving to my daughter now.
So we got another car.
And you know, I'm going to buy the best product.
And here's the weird thing, you know, it used to be like buy American.
All these things are made in America.
You know what I mean?
So I got friends who work for Honda, I got friends who work for Subaru.
So it's like, hey, you are supporting America by buying that.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Well, let's talk about the the Fire Service then.
So how did you get into that?
Because I know it parallels your UFC career.
So I don't want to delve too far in before we attack your other career.
Well, you know, it's funny.
I remember when I was in Indiana University, I remember one of my friends, one summary
like, hey, let's be volunteer forest firefighters.
There's a class you can take.
And I was like, all right, I signed up for that.
And I remember, you know, I was intrigued by it.
It was fascinating to me.
I had to go to like a three day class and just sit there through it.
I really enjoyed it.
I was like, man, this is pretty awesome.
So I never really thought about doing it again.
I graduated from school and I started, you know, working in my field.
But right right about that time is when I start training in the main.
So once I started training in the main, like my real profession, kind of I didn't have
as much interest in that.
I was like, I don't really want to be doing this.
I was a personal trainer.
I was doing a couple of other things.
And at the gym I was working at, there's a couple of firemen there and they were like,
man, you need to try and get on the fire department.
This will be perfect for you.
So I thought, you know what it would.
And I started trying out for the fire department.
I was continuing to fight in the main.
Then I got hired on the fire department.
And then like I said, that was early.
I got hired in 2001 and really I would say most of my career didn't really take off an
MMA till 2003, 2005, you know, a little bit afterwards.
So most of my MMA career I was on the fire department.
Okay.
Now, obviously you were a trainer, you were a fighter.
So what was it like coming from a very intense athletic background into your department
specifically?
Did they hold the bar high physically for their recruits?
Oh, absolutely.
That's one of the reasons I know they liked me because I knew that, you know, I was a
hardworking, you know, physical guy who was going to come in there and all the people
they tried to hire at this time were really physical fitness was an important thing.
That was one good thing about the department I was on.
They knew the importance of physical fitness and they didn't want to hire people who were
going to come in and immediately, you know, gain 40 pounds and not work out.
I mean, they wanted people who were going to work out.
I was very fit when I got hired, which was a good thing.
Excellent.
Have they maintained that standard?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, you know, they've tried to.
It's hard.
I mean, most of the newer guys, yes, absolutely.
Some of the older guys who were on before, you know, these administrations were in there.
I mean, you're not changing their opinion.
You know, they're older, they don't sound, they're just like, I'm not working out.
It's like, well, all right.
I mean, they even give bonuses now for if you do workout so many days and you do so
well on physical fitness tests.
It's not much, but it's something.
I mean, it's something just for working out every day, which is awesome.
And some people still refuse to take it.
Yeah, yeah.
It is.
It's a good incentive.
And again, it goes back to that Japanese philosophy of ownership.
You know, if you're going to wear the badge on your chest, you need to be the best version
of yourself because.
Well, yeah, here's the biggest problem to me.
I think especially in America, we're in this society right now where, you know, everybody
has a built in excuse for why something doesn't go their way.
And I think that was one of the biggest things in my career when I actually took ownership.
You know, now I look at everything.
You know, people always say, well, this is your fault.
Everything's your fault.
I promise at some level, almost everything.
There's a few exceptions, but things are your fault.
And I mean, if you don't do certain, I mean, here's an example.
I've had people who I've talked to about getting on the fire from.
We talked about this and I'm like, well, you know, did you make it past that round?
I'm like, oh, man, no, this isn't happening.
You know, everybody in the fire department knows each other.
He's a brother or cousin.
He's like, man, I can't, you know, one guy told me, like, is a black man.
I, you know, I just don't know anybody on there.
I can't get hired.
I was like, OK, right.
And I talked to a white guy and said, well, did you get passed?
No, man, they're just giving all these jobs to women and minorities.
I'm like, OK, different guys, you guys.
Both didn't get hired because of the race.
That's impossible.
But my point is everybody has a built in excuse for why they didn't succeed.
Now, it's not me.
It's my gender.
It's not me.
It's my race.
It's not me.
It's like that's an excuse.
Like I said, did you try it?
Did you go to fire science?
What?
No, that's an excuse people have.
And it's like that with everything.
There's no ownership for what people did wrong.
I look back at the different fights.
I did things wrong.
I did those wrong.
Don't blame the referees.
Don't blame the judges.
Don't blame anybody but yourself.
But we don't do that here.
Everybody has an excuse.
And here's the problem with that, though, when I figured out what things I did wrong,
I can correct them.
If you blame it on race, if you blame it on gender, if you blame it on somebody else,
you can't do it.
Then it's out of your hands.
And why change what you're doing?
You can't fix it if it's not your fault.
And we have a society that believes nothing is their fault, so they don't worry about
fixing anything.
And that's where our biggest problem is right there.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I remember having a few fights in Taekwondo and it being left to the judges.
And at the end of it, the guys would be like, oh, man, you were robbed.
And it's like, no, because if I was that good, I would have knocked the guy out and it would
have been no question.
But if you leave it in the referee's hands, then technically you've already lost, in my
opinion.
I agree.
I mean, here's the problem.
And that's the problem with the sport in a way is some guys are just tough and some guys
are so good, you're not going to be able to take everybody out.
And that's why I like the sport as far as like to me, there's nothing wrong with some
losses.
That's one thing where I think Japan had it right when you had like the Pride days when
it wasn't about necessarily winning every fight.
It's about going out there and showing the warrior spirit and putting on entertaining
fights.
And that's why I love the like the yellow card system.
So if you go out there and you were putting on a boring fight to try and eke out a decision,
they were going to give a yellow card and you're going to get fined money and people
are like, I don't want to lose my money.
So I'm going to come out there and fight.
And if I lose and I put on a great fight, they're going to want me back.
It doesn't really matter.
Yeah.
And that's really what people are paying for.
I mean, it's not the lay and pray that the people paying the money to watch are tuning
in to see.
It's obviously the slug fest and yeah, I think the guys that leave it all in the cage
and lose get a lot more respect than the guys that win sitting on a guy for five rounds.
I couldn't agree more.
I always tell people I'd rather lose a great fight than win a bad one.
You know, it's just better.
You feel better about yourself.
Only then it sucks like would you have seen the pace of what it was.
It wasn't like that in Japan.
You got like, at least when I was there, you got a flat rate, you know, but I don't know.
Yeah.
So you get the incentive to win.
Well, yeah.
Okay.
So, well, speaking of that, so that kind of ties in nicely.
How was your department with regards to your MMA career?
Did they support it?
Did they allow you time off?
Man, I was really lucky.
My department was fantastic about that.
I remember, you know, and I normally if you went off for a fight or whatever, I would
just have to do great time.
So I have somebody work for me, you know, one day and then when I got back, I'd have
to work for them to make up that day.
That's usually how that works.
But I remember one time when I went on the Ultimate Fighter Four on the reality show,
I was going to have to be off for six weeks straight.
And I talked to the chief and he was like, well, Chris, you know, this is a great opportunity.
You have to take it.
And he's like, well, I'll talk to the board and make sure we can get you off of this.
And he's like, if they decide they, you know, you can't have like a lead, then we will get
a bunch of guys to work for you if we have to.
And he's like, hell, I'll even work a day for you if I need to.
And I was like, wow, what kind of department does that with a chief since you can't work
for me?
You know, so yeah, I was I was hoping he would trade with me because I wanted to I wanted
to trade with him back and be the chief one day.
But he didn't have it.
Yeah, well, that's phenomenal.
So that was the Ultimate Fighter Four, is that correct?
Yeah.
Because I have to say, I'm not just saying this because you're a fireman and we're having
this conversation now, but I think that that cast of that that particular series was probably
the best cast that they've had on the Ultimate Fighter.
I mean, Din Tonimus and Pete Sell and all the other guys, Matt Serra that you were with.
A, any good UFC fan have been watching you guys for several years prior to that.
Yeah.
But, you know, the fights were phenomenal.
So what was it like during that whole episode?
Man, you know, to me, the thing that was different, you know, some of the guys were like, man,
I don't have my cell phone, man, I can't watch TV.
But there was a couple of us.
I don't know me and Matt Serra particularly.
I don't know what you people are talking about.
I could care less about my cell phone.
I care less about TV.
I was like, this is I mean, this is a chance to get to live the dream, you know, I mean,
my dream was to be the best fighter I could then.
And I didn't get that option ever.
I mean, I was always working at the firehouse my whole career.
That was the only time throughout my in May career where I took off and treated like I
was a real fighter for six weeks.
I trained twice a day with some of the best guys in the world, had some great coaches,
you know, got to go in there.
I got to eat properly, whatever I needed to for training and fighting.
It was awesome to me.
I mean, I loved that aspect of being there as opposed to I can't have my phone.
You know, I mean, you know, my family and everybody knew I went there for a purpose
to try and help, you know, our lives.
And that was just something you once again, you have to sacrifice.
You don't just keep things given to you and nothing's easy.
That's worthwhile, you know, so I was more than happy to be there, more than happy to
try and treat myself like I was a true professional and work as hard as I could while I was there.
I loved it.
Right.
Yeah.
Now, you're known for and this might be completely different now, but I know you were known for
training boxing in a boxing gym, training jujitsu in a jujitsu gym.
Was it a different experience having specific MMA coaches when you were on the show?
I mean, it was just I mean, it was weird having everything at one place.
You know, I mean, it was a little different, but I mean, to me, training is training.
You know, I can listen to anybody.
I feel like I'm very coachable.
So to have everybody at the same place was just another bonus.
You know, hey, I can do this all right here.
I said, I happen to go here, go there.
But you know, I didn't think that was really difficult at all.
I just thought it was great to have, you know, quality people around at all times you could
train with.
That was pretty awesome.
And quality coaches around.
You know, I have always had good coaches, but just going with different people, you
get a different thought process, a different way of doing things.
And that was, I mean, I'll pick anybody's brain who has had some success at coaching
because they obviously know something that I don't probably.
Just tweaking what I do a little bit might be a big difference.
Yeah.
Now that can relate back to the fire department, too.
I mean, the moment you think you know everything about the fire department is the day you need
to retire.
So you need to be open minded enough.
Yeah.
And you always see that some people don't want to do anything different, don't want
to train different.
But I mean, you know, like you said, you're always about one run away from something terrible
happen and that kind of changes things.
I remember when I first got hired, there was a big fire here that happened, you know, a
few years before that.
And some of the people were killed and they totally changed the way they've done things
here and other places throughout the country because of things like that.
So once you're getting, being too comfortable is a problem.
You know, you don't want to be too comfortable here because not only is your situation changing,
but I mean, the environment's changing, you know, the plastics are burning faster, melting
more, you know, different things are changing and it changes what happens with our job,
too.
So if you're not willing to change, you're going to, you might get hurt or might get
somebody killed.
Yeah.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
The cars, the hybrids and the electrical cars and everything's changing.
And that's the thing is if you stop learning, you're going to be so far behind the curve
that either your life or someone else's life is going to be in danger if you haven't taken
it seriously.
Yeah.
I just want to touch back on the show.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Wasn't it that show where Scott Smith and was it Pete Sell had that incredible fight
where...
Man, that was about really one of the best endings to a fight.
I've ever seen still.
I mean, I don't know if you can really top that one.
It was pretty awesome.
Yeah, I would say the same.
That shot from lying on the floor was, yeah, straight out of Hollywood.
Yeah, it's a straight up Rocky movie.
Pete hits him with a good body punch and Scott kind of crumbles over like, oh, you can see
the look in his face, pain.
And he like musters up enough energy to throw one right hand.
At the same time, Pete's running forward to take him out, you know, to finish him off
in that right hand that Scott Smith throws, lands right on Pete's chin, knocks him unconscious,
you know, wins the fight, falls over and holds his side for about 30 seconds after he wins.
It was...
You couldn't ask for anything better.
Yeah.
No, that was...
I agree 100%.
I don't think I've seen a finish as good as that.
I mean, there's been some phenomenal ones, but yeah, as far as true grit and finding
that energy when you think you have none left, there's no better example than that fight
in my opinion.
Yeah.
I mean, it was the easiest call to give that to knock out the night in the fight of the
night.
I mean, they probably should have gave him the sub of the night too, even though he didn't
submit himself.
Just throw everything at him.
Just say, hey, here you go.
This is awesome.
You know, that was pretty awesome.
Yeah.
All right.
So, you have fought...
You know, it's funny, when I was looking at going back over your history, I mean, Matt
Serra and Matt Hughes and it seemed like everyone you fought was either a champion or absolute
top of the pile there.
But I think my most impressive fight for you and I feel bad admitting that I was totally
rooting for you the whole time, but was your final fight against my fellow countryman,
Dan Hardy.
Oh, thank you.
So, what did that feel like retiring on a win?
Well, you know, I couldn't ask for a better fight to go out on, but you know, it was nerve
racking going in there, you know, because I knew I was retiring before that and I wrote
a letter and I kind of gave it to him.
I announced I was retiring before that fight.
So you always want to go out on the win, but you don't know.
I mean, and he was, you know, extremely tough fighter.
I really liked watching him fight and I really liked the way he fought, which is, you know,
one of the reasons I was excited about the fight.
I knew he wasn't coming to win a decision.
He was going to try and take me out.
And then we got to stay in a bank for almost three, four rounds and he shot in with about
a minute to go.
And, you know, I was like, I didn't really expect this, but I love it.
And I was able to get a submission too.
So it was very nice.
Yeah, that was a great ending.
And yeah, I was very, very proud to be a fellow firefighter, I got to say.
So just scaling kind of parallel for a moment.
So what about your boxing career?
Obviously, that was over a few years as well.
What started that and then what ultimately finished that one?
Well, you know, I was funny because a lot of people think I was a boxer first and an
MMA guy.
That's not true.
I was MMA.
And I remember I wanted to get better on my standup, you know, so I started going to a
boxing gym and I was there for a little over a month.
And the guy, my boxing coach, he's like, hey, this is a tough guy.
He knew what I did, MMA and everything.
And somebody called him a guy from a top ranked boxing.
He's like, hey, I got to fight in Wisconsin.
I need a tough guy who doesn't have much experience.
And he's like, I got a tough guy who doesn't have much experience.
That was me.
So we drove up to Wisconsin and it was on like a ESPN2 card and I fought a guy.
He had like 50 amateur fights and he was two and O as a pro and he was an Indian and I
was fighting on his reservation.
So I was like, well, this kind of sucks.
I'm being brought in to lose, I can tell.
So I went over there and they, you know, the guy said he saw me warming up and he was like,
Jesus, Keith, I thought you brought me a good fighter.
This guy looks terrible.
But they said that I said I beat him up the entire fight.
They said I won every round, but they ended up calling it a draw because I figured he
was, you know, I was on his reservation, whatever.
So I was, I didn't think much of it.
I was like, well, whatever, I'm just doing this for my MMA practice.
And you know, the guy for top rank got ahold of my guys.
I can't, I need to get those guys some more fights.
He can, he can, he can hit.
And they actually, he gave me my nickname lights out right there.
So yeah, that's where I got it.
So then I started doing a lot of boxing and you know, I really enjoyed it.
Like it was really weird.
I remember at one point I had, I was just doing whatever popped up.
I remember I had two boxing things and an MMA fight all within about a five week period,
which was stupid.
I mean, I know the only boxing match I lost was the third one, like the third fight in
three weeks.
You know, I, and cause I was kind of of the opinion that I could just knock whoever out
no matter what, you know, and then, um, you know, I watched my fight, the one that I lost
is like every round, my hands were dropping lower, my hands were dropping lower.
And I just really wasn't prepared for the fight because I had been doing too much.
You know, then I, that was after that, I kind of realized, you know, there's a thing you
have to do.
We have to, you have to peak at the end of each training camp.
You know, you have to, you can't just keep going and re recharge and a recharge.
You know, you have to, you're supposed to, you know, have, so now like, and then you
have like a six week camp and you're supposed to take right into that six week.
And then you take a little bit of time off and then you redo that.
You can't just keep fighting and fighting.
You know, your body can't get up that much for every time.
That's what happened.
That fight is couldn't get up enough.
And you know, I didn't have any juice left at the end of the night.
So lost that fight, but that was a learning experience.
But like I said, it was great being able to, you know, I'll do an MMA fight this week.
I'll do a boxing max next week.
I liked it.
I was being busy.
I was learning all the time.
It was, it was a great time.
But what really ended it for me was when I signed to be on the ultimate fighter four,
you know, I signed that UFC contract and you know, they said, well, when you do this, there's,
there's no boxing.
And I remember I, I was like, well, I really like box.
I'm doing pretty well in it right now.
And then I looked at my boxing contract and then I looked at my UFC contract and I kind
of said, what's, what's boxing?
I do that contract.
I'm getting paid more to do the UFC.
So that's what ended my boxing career.
Right.
And then did you find this, this almost sounds like a silly question, but did you find that
your pure boxing training helped your overall MMA?
Oh, a hundred percent.
I mean, you know, I mean, just, just being that comfort level of being on your feet,
knowing you could knock people out.
But the difference is, I mean, you know, Pete, you got to understand there, there is definitely
a difference in boxing and MMA standup.
I think you'll find that out when Connor fights here.
But I mean, there's just a couple of different things.
And I know for my style of boxing, to be honest with you, I think it is by far the worst style
for MMA.
I mean, there's a couple of different styles.
You've got the guys who are good, you know, boxers who are going to stand and jab and
move around those that that translates over to MMA pretty well.
You got the guys who are looking for the one punch knockout, just a knockout artist that
translates to MMA pretty well, too.
I was like the worst kind.
I was a different kind.
I was more of a pressure fighter.
You get inside, you punch, you do dirty boxing.
You know, you punch a guy to the arms, the shoulder, you just overwhelm him with Julio
Sejard Chavez style of boxing.
That doesn't translate over to MMA very well, because as soon as you get in tight, people
clench you up and try to take you down.
So it's hard to hard to really implement that style of boxing into MMA.
But that was my style of boxing.
I'm a firm believer.
You don't pick your style of boxing.
You don't choose a jiu.
So, I mean, I wasn't tall enough, long enough or fast enough to go out there and just out
jab people.
And it just, you know, I became the kind of fighter that, you know, my body and everything
naturally wanted it to be.
Right.
Now, you touched on, I literally have this word written on my paper in front of me, but
you already said it.
So, who do you pick for the corner fight and why?
Man, I'm going with Floyd.
Floyd is my least favorite fighter probably in the world.
I don't like him in any way, but every time I've ever seen him fight, I've rooted against
him and he's never came near getting beat up.
He just, he's, here's the thing, you know, the, the, the styling is different.
The gloves are bigger.
I don't think people realize how different, I mean, people think these gloves are bigger
and heavier.
That's going to help counter.
No, it's not.
He's not going to be able to hit Floyd.
Nobody, nobody can hit the guy.
I mean, Canelo couldn't hit him.
Canelo's damn good, you know.
Berto doesn't hit him, Pacquiao doesn't hit him.
I really don't think Floyd, if Conor hits him five times the entire fight, I'll be impressed.
Not talking little jabs or body shots, but if he actually hits him with five times, I
don't think that's going to happen.
So if you can't hit a guy five times, you're probably not going to knock him out.
You know, so I just don't see any way of Floyd really getting beat by Conor because I can't
see Conor really do much.
I mean, Conor, I've seen him kind of gas out on some fights.
I've never really seen Floyd.
I don't know.
I don't see how he's going to get hit personally.
Yeah.
I mean, he's definitely restricting himself within the boxing rules.
That's a pretty huge challenge he's given himself.
Well, I mean, to be honest, it's the smartest, the best thing I've ever seen for any fighter.
I'm so happy for this guy.
He's going to make himself, you know, nine figures possibly, and he'll never have to
do anything ever.
I mean, how many fighters can ever say that in UFC?
I mean, he's just, you know, he's put himself on a different level and it hasn't taken him
that long.
He's going to just have a, you know, hopefully a good life afterward.
But I mean, you just don't want to.
My big problem with fighters is they continue to fight way past the time they should.
Maybe part of it's financial.
Maybe part of it's just they, you know, they need that, you know, recognition that the
greatest in the world.
I don't know.
But I don't think that's going to be Conor.
I hope that he will be smart enough to be like, hey, I'm going to stick around as long
as I want to.
I don't need to be doing this.
And I just don't like it when fighters continue to tarnish their legacy by continuing to fight
and get knocked out and look bad.
It's like, man, how was that guy?
He used to be great.
Not anymore.
Yeah.
I think Conor, if anything, is going to be known as one of the greatest businessmen in
MMA.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
OK.
So I want to kind of touch, bring it back into the first responder side as well.
So you were doing MMA, you were doing boxing and you're on shift.
How did how did you perceive the sleep deprivation of being up every third day affecting your
your overall fitness and obviously your career as well?
Well that was the thing for I mean, for many, many years, it was this funny.
I was I felt like I was always tired.
You know, people if I'm sitting there for more than five minutes and it counts or something,
I'd fall asleep.
And people was like, man, you can you can just sleep, go to sleep just like that.
Like, I'm always tired.
You know, I just I'm constantly tired because I'm constantly, you know, not getting enough
sleep sometimes or just, you know, working real hard.
I mean, I never understood how people have like insomnia.
How do you know?
You know, I can just sleep anytime if I wanted to.
I can take a nap and fall asleep.
You know, it's just I didn't understand in any different way.
But I mean, you know, the part of that, too, was I mean, I know a lot of people used to
really, you know, I don't want to say this or just in my lifestyle.
They're like, man, it looks like you.
I mean, you have a great lifestyle.
You do a lot of fun stuff.
I'm like, no, I mean, all I do is train at the, you know, at the gym, work at the firehouse
or spend time with my kids.
Like there is no other part of my life that's actually quite boring.
You know, it's like, you know, they're like, well, do you like to go golf?
I don't ever golf.
Like you go fishing or hunting.
I've never been hunting in my life.
Like what else do you do?
This is it.
That's my life is at the gym, you know, at the firehouse or I play my kids.
That was all I did for about 10 years.
You know, so it's funny when you get down with fighting, like you don't really have
all these other interests or other things you're good at.
It's weird.
Well, now what?
You know, it kind of throws you off.
Yeah.
But did you have any any period of time where you weren't on shift?
Did you scale back from the fire department at all at any time?
No, the only time I ever did was when I went on that reality show.
I mean, before that, you know, I would train up till I remember, before my boxing matches,
you know, when they were in, you know, around the Midwest, I would be training, you know,
I'd be on the ship the day before the fight.
You know?
See, that's crazy.
The sleep deprivation is so detrimental.
And this is one of the big things I'm trying to get the point across, the sleep deprivation
and then the amount of hours that an average firefighter works as well.
But for you to have the other careers that you have, the achievements that you have on
their own are incredible.
But to do that with every third day being on a 24-hour shift and not sleeping, I mean,
I think you'd add another 40% to your achievements in all honesty.
I appreciate that.
And that's one thing, you know, I remember I was talking with my wife and she was just
always said she felt bad that I never really got a chance to fully, you know, do what I
felt like I could have done in the sport of MMA.
And I, you know, here's the thing that you got to understand back when I was fighting
like in 2001 and 2002, you know, even up like 2005, I mean, you weren't making a lot of
money doing MMA, you know?
So you know, the thought of ever like quitting my job at the fire department was never a
realistic thing.
I mean, there's another thing too.
I like coming to work.
I've never woke up once and said, I don't want to go to the firehouse.
That's weird, isn't it?
But it's never really happened to me where I was like, I don't want to go there today.
That doesn't happen.
So how are you going to quit a job that you like going to?
You know, I just, I've never even thought ever about quitting this job and not coming
to it right now.
So that's always been a difficult aspect to, I mean, if I worked in a factory or something
back then, I'm sure I quit and I just fight all the time, but I mean, I was lucky enough
to have two things I love to do and I said, I'm going to give it everything I can at both
of these right now, as long as I can.
Then when I'm done, I'll be done and enjoy my life.
Yeah.
Well, it was like I said, it was a hell of an achievement balancing those two together
and I couldn't agree more.
I mean, even promotions, I'm a fireman still and 13 years deep and I've moved a few departments,
but I'm still a fireman to me.
That's still the best seat in the whole fire department.
It's so hard even to leave that to promote.
Oh yeah.
I mean, to be honest with you, that's another problem.
You know, I haven't really had the desire to promote really because I mean, I got a
lot going on on my outside schedule, other things I do during the day, but when I'm not
here, but man, I just enjoy doing this aspect of it.
I haven't got over that part yet.
So maybe, you know, and I think a lot of people like to be, you know, do other promotions
or whatnot because they have a sense of fulfillment and achievement in other areas, but I'm like,
I'm getting at it and other things.
I like what I'm doing here and I'm happy doing it.
So I'm not really interested right now in trying to promote to different levels.
So I'm just happy coming to work every day.
Yeah.
And your department obviously is, is it your department specifically that was the inspiration
for the FDIC or?
I don't know.
It's here every year though.
I know we have it every year.
So yeah, that's pretty awesome too.
I love we have people come over from all over the place and that's pretty awesome just to
hear other people and find out how things are in other areas.
Yeah.
Well, if I make it out there next year, we will try and connect and do a face-to-face
follow up.
Absolutely.
That'll be great, man.
I'll take you out to all the places around here.
We'll have a good time.
Fantastic.
All right.
It's done then.
All right.
So you're talking about the outside.
The next thing I want to touch on is you ran for state Senate.
So what was the reason for that and what were the things that you were trying to change?
Well, the main reason was, you know, I cannot stand to be honest with you.
I can't stand politicians.
I think they're all complete liars.
They're not good people.
I don't think most of them.
I think they're just very egotistical.
They pull themselves and they just say one thing and do another.
And I really, the more I got to know them, the more I felt that they really didn't have
the public's best interest at heart.
Me being a firefighter like yourself, you see a lot more of things that I think the
general public doesn't really understand.
And I see problems with how, you know, the rules that let people do certain things and
when they're there, they might do things that they think are helping people.
But I think they're really unintended consequences that are making things worse for everybody.
So when I see these things, I'm like, hey, I can, I understand this and I'd like to
change it, that try and do whatever I can to make, you know, my environment a better
place.
But you can't do that just by talking to a politician.
So I tried to become one of those guys.
I felt like maybe I could explain a little bit better on the boards or at different places.
Hey, these are the problems that I see and these are the laws we could do to change it
to make that a better situation.
So I decided that I would like to, I'm not the kind of person who just wants to, if I
have a problem, just talk about it.
I was like, if I don't try and do something about it, then I don't really deserve the
right to complain about it.
So I decided I was going to go and run for state senator to try and change the laws around
my area.
And then what were some of the issues that you wanted to change?
I mean, there's a ton of different things.
I mean, you know, I still feel that, you know, there's a lot of different things with the
businesses that you need to try and work on to try and, you know, be honest with you,
the economy is always going to be a big issue.
So when you're having businesses that are leaving, going to other states, going to other
countries, you know, I want this to be a more friendly business environment because as the
economy goes, everything goes.
I don't care if you're a number one thing, it's morals and ethics.
When poverty comes in, that all goes out the window anyway.
So you really have to worry about making the place good economic situation for everybody.
So I try to do a lot of different things that we're going to be a very pro business.
I want to be more of a loser pay system when like there's a lawsuit.
I know people who own businesses where they will get sued all the time for let's say $3,500
because they know that the business has a retainer fee for $5,000.
So if they, you know, just if they take the case, they're going to pay more money than
the lawsuits even work to them.
So they just settle all the time.
That costs people.
I know a lot of money, a lot of business, a lot of money.
So I think that's not fair.
I want if you're going to file a frivolous lawsuit, I want you to have to pay that's
going to keep the business from having to shell all this money out of all these attorneys.
Problem is all the people in the state government are about 90% of them are attorneys.
They don't like these kind of laws.
They don't want things like that where it's common sense.
I mean, I want, you know, if you have a legitimate problem, you know, people are going to take
the case and you're going to win.
I want to protect the customers.
At the same time, I don't want people taking advantage of business and over regulation
in certain aspects, I believe, or just a problem that kind of hurt business.
And I know other business people say they have, you know, four guys who were just there
for compliance of, you know, FDA, different, different, you know, things that are just
a complete waste of them.
And they can't hire more people to help grow their business because they're spending all
their money on different regulatory restrictions.
And I just don't enjoy that.
I think that's a foolish way to waste our money.
It does create another job for a politician.
It creates another job for a government employee.
But I mean, you know, I'm paying, you know, that's another thing.
But I mean, I look at these taxes I was paying, I'd get a big check from USC and I noticed,
you know, 30 something percent would go to the IRS.
And then I'm seeing how they're wasting money blatantly.
I remember the IRS had a big party and they, they brought this guy in and paid him $500,000
to do some mural and these guys were staying in hotels that cost $3,000 a night.
I said, you have an IRS agent staying in a room costs $3,000 a night?
That was my tag.
This is unbelievable.
I don't want people spending money like this.
I mean, you can stay in a Best Western for $100 a night.
They're staying at $3,000 one night.
That's unacceptable to me.
But nobody's holding these people accountable because they're like, well, you know, I just
can't deal with the way government does stuff.
They want everybody else to pay for all their, they're like Kings and Queens really.
Like if you took it, the American government, I think they live like Kings.
Yeah.
I would say, I concur completely.
One of the things I think coming from outside the country and coming in and obviously having
a fresh pair of eyes, we talk about making this country great again.
Frivolous lawsuits are by far a cancer to this nation and the legitimate lawsuits I'm
all for.
So if you get the surgery and they sew half their operating equipment inside your abdomen,
clearly that needs to be mitigated.
But you spill coffee on yourself and now you're crying that you got burned, then that's ridiculous.
Yeah.
Well, you know, that's even one that won.
That actually won.
So I mean, my point would never be, I think how it would work is you would find a law
firm, if you have a legitimate case, I think they're going to say, hey, we will do this
for you, but we're going to get 40% if you win or whatever.
I mean, they're not going to not take cases they think are actually going to win.
They're not going to take stupid ones now, you know, because before they would just take
them and if people would sue and they know that whoever's trying to defend themselves,
if they have to pay more than the lawsuit's worth, they're not going to do it.
They'll just say, well, screw it, settle.
If I have to pay $5,000 instead of 10,000 is going to cost a fight, I'll just pay the
5,000.
And a lot of people, I know people realize how many, I'd like to say scammers or how
many people out there who are, you know, just taking advantage of loopholes and things that
they know they can get money off of that.
That bothers me.
Yeah, yeah.
And we see it obviously in our profession.
I know every time you have like a two mile an hour vehicle collision, the average person
will be fine.
I had one that just this shift, I guess got off shift this morning.
A lady got hit really hard and she was like, I'm fine, I'm good.
But then you get these ones at my neck, my back and then it's on the radio too here.
You know, there's a certain commercial where after you call 911, you call 411 and you know,
yeah, call them if someone has really affected your life.
But if you got hit two miles an hour and just slightly moved the dust on the back of your
car, you're probably not having a career engine injury.
When you look and there's absolutely no damage to the vehicle, none and they're throwing
this, you know, big fit of I need, you know, I need this, I need that and just see colors
like man, you are not hurt.
Are you kidding me?
This is for real.
But yeah, I mean, they're just, I guarantee they're just looking for that lawsuit.
I'm like, look, you don't have to go by ambulance.
You can still sue.
I told you, even if you don't go by ambulance, let's say it hurt tomorrow.
Okay.
I mean, yeah, that stuff bothers me.
But the man is just a lot of things to me.
You know, as the economy goes, I think society goes look at all the places I know here in
Indianapolis, there's areas that used to be very nice.
And as you know, jobs go away, you know, plants close down.
That area gets really bad economically and then everything goes bad.
You know, you got a lot more crime there, drug problems.
So my point is, as the economy goes, I think, you know, morality, everything that that area
is going to go downhill.
And I always want to avoid that.
I think there could be better living situations.
I sympathize, I empathize with the people who I see here.
Because there's nothing worse to me than seeing a person, a little kid.
And I think you're such a cute, nice little kid and you have very little chance to be
successful.
That's where you're going to have a very tough life.
I guarantee it.
Just looking at your environment that you live in.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I've had exactly the same, you know, situation where there's an escalate in the
front and, you know, the poor kids are running around with no shoes and filthy clothes.
And when people are judgmental towards certain members of society, it's like until you've
seen a two year old in that situation where the parents are slinging dough or whatever
it is that they're doing, you imagine what it would be like growing up as that child
and then trying to function as a positive member of society when all your role models
have been teaching you the wrong way.
Well, that's the thing, you know, I've looked at, you know, I've done certain things right
now.
We try and help out with the gym, indie boxing, graphing where I'm at now.
And it's free to all kids.
And it's not a nice area.
And we put it there for a reason because we want those kids who have, you know, no chance,
you know, who have nobody look up to.
If you're like in those areas and you're looking up to somebody, I guarantee the person
in that neighborhood who's looked up to is probably a gang member or a drug dealer.
One of the two.
Those are the people who get the respect.
Those, because if you're a successful individual, you start a business, you don't stay in those
neighborhoods, you move out.
So if you're in this bad neighborhood and you are a success, somebody who's looked up
to, you're doing something illegal.
So as a kid, you don't really know why you, I mean, you don't consciously think you want
to be like this, but you know, that rubs off on you.
I mean, you as you idolize somebody, you kind of want to be more like them in subconscious.
You do become more like them.
So that's who we're creating.
We're creating people who are wanting to be criminals in a way.
And that's looked up to in our society.
So we wanted to put a gym where who's going to be looked up to a UFC fighter, you know,
so people are going to go to the gym and be like, I want to be this guy.
So they're going to try and become more like that.
How do you do that?
You work hard.
So if they see they can work hard, maybe that'll rub off on them and maybe they will want to
work hard in life.
That's kind of the thought behind the gym and learning to work hard, not learning how
to, you know, steal things or sell drugs or whatever.
So but yeah, you see that day in and day out.
You think, I mean, how can you change this?
What can you do for it?
Only thing I've noticed what we're trying to do is trying to put other if you're not
willing to put in the time and actually, you know, mentor people without them even knowing
they're being mentored.
That's kind of the goal right there.
Yeah, yeah, I really enjoyed working in those neighborhoods for pretty much the first 10
years of my career.
And obviously, they're the neighbors, a lot of people that want to getting away from in
certain departments, but to me, I used to tell people, you might be the only person
that shows kindness to some of these people, whether they're, you know, sling and dope
or you know, whatever it is that they're doing that may not be contributing positively to
society if they're addicts, your kindness may just may be the one thing that turns them
around.
And certainly, like you said, the influential kids, if they see a firefighter or a policeman
that's compassionate, it may be something that pushes them towards realizing that the
negative role models that they've been looking up to maybe aren't the best way of moving
forward in life.
Yeah, I mean, that's the worst part and the toughest part is just seeing this and knowing
how little you can do to change it.
And then, like I said earlier, knowing that I feel like in certain ways, some of our laws
and rules are being not only to me, the politicians are just going to say whatever they have to
do to buy votes.
They don't care how it affects the people really.
They're trying to buy their vote.
So when they give them this and they give them that, I'm like, you're doing the work,
you're doing a disservice to these people.
You're not helping them.
You're hurting them.
Why do we keep doing this?
Come down here for a week and work with me and tell me what you're doing.
Your programs are helping them.
You know they're not.
Maybe you don't know that because you're not here.
I'm here and I'm seeing it and I want this to stop and you're continuing because it sounds
good.
It gives a good sound bite and everybody's going to vote for you because they think you're
trying to help people.
You're not.
You know what you're trying to do is best for them.
Yeah.
Well, expanding on that.
So one thing I was impressed is the wrong word, but I admire you for, I guess is a better
way of saying it is you're a fireman.
You had this very, very successful MMA career, your household name.
And then I discovered that after retiring from there, you created your foundation, which
is obviously giving back to the community rather than going some other way.
So can you tell me about what your foundation is and how you started it?
Sure.
I have something called the Chris Lott of Foundation.
And what that is, is we go out and we speak to majority, most of the time, kids about,
I call it an anti-bullying thing, but to be honest with you, it's more about standing
up for other kids who are having trouble standing up for themselves.
How it really came to be was I was going and I was giving speeches to many people about
different things, work ethic and time management, different things.
I came to realize I have four kids, my youngest son, Jake, he has autism.
I think it's always kind of made me hyper sensitive or hyper aware of people who are
being picked on, mistreated, made fun of, because I've always worried about him.
He's been very lucky.
I think most people around where we live know him, know the family and they've treated him
very well.
That doesn't happen all the time.
They don't always have that support system.
I've looked into kids who are depressed.
They commit suicide, they attempt suicide.
As a father, I can't think of anything more devastating in the world than if your kid
hurt themselves or killed themselves because of how people were treating them.
You'd never be the same average.
Anything like that, you want to try and help and do things.
Like I said, I can't just sit by if I feel like I have the ability to help at all.
I'm going to try and do it.
I sat down, I wrote this book out.
Me and one of my friends helped me run for state senate, got it published, started this
foundation.
We go out, we try and read the book, we try and get the book out to as many schools as
we can.
We try and just tell people the impact of, or really the benefits of being a hero to
somebody, how good it feels when people look up to you.
I always talk about when I was a little kid, I was very little, smaller than most of the
kids.
I hung out with older people.
All the people who stood up for me back when I was a kid, I still look up to them this
day.
It's probably been 30 something years and I still look up to these guys who stood up
for me.
When I was a kid, I idolized these guys.
Just trying to tell people how good it feels to have people look up to you and you can't
have that feeling if you will stand up for some people.
I always talk about different examples, different examples.
It's a great feeling to be looked up to and you can be that person.
The bullies that have their own issues, nobody is happy when other people are not happy.
They don't feel comfortable in their own skin so they try and make somebody else feel bad.
Don't be that guy.
Be the person who people look up to.
That's what the Chris Lytle Foundation started out as.
That's what we do a lot of.
We've also done some where we do self defense classes for female victims.
We kind of go in a lot of different directions.
Anything that's about helping somebody out where people are being picked on or mistreated
is kind of what we're trying to do.
What was the book called?
The book is called Lights Out on Bulleen.
Brilliant.
Now, have you heard of Mark Mero?
Mark Mero.
Yes.
I don't think so.
I actually interviewed him quite a while ago now.
He's a local guy.
He was a WWE wrestler and he actually tours schools doing talks about the same things.
That's something that you guys should probably connect with.
He's a phenomenal guy.
He has a very inspiring story of how he spiraled down into addiction and alcoholism and just
egotism really.
Then he tells this heartbreaking story about how he never really got to tell his mother
how much he loved her and she passed away.
There's actually a video on YouTube, but now he uses that as a kind of anchor point for
his whole talk.
He's the same thing.
He's anti-bullying.
He points out how a lot of bullies are fighting their own battles and that's how they're
dealing with it.
Totally aligned with what you just said.
Wow.
Yeah.
Was that his wrestling name as well or do you know?
Oh, God.
I forget his wrestling name.
I'll look it up in a second.
I'm not a wrestling guy like a pro wrestling guy, so I probably wouldn't know it anyway.
His organization is called Choice of Champions.
When we publish this, if you look at the podcast, if you go back, I'll give you the episode
number in a moment, but he's on there and I'll give you his story.
All right.
Yeah.
Touching on what you're saying about the bullying, that's something that I think that is a real
epidemic at the moment.
I'm sure there are a lot of people that do step in, but it's so sad how now in the social
media world, we see so many videos of people being bullied instead of that person having
the courage to put the cell phone down and actually stop it instead of being a, I'll
use the word, little bitch and filming it instead.
Yeah.
I mean, people, and I give examples of stuff where a situation where I didn't do the right
thing, because people think bullying ends when they're kids, not necessarily.
I think of an example where I didn't do the right thing and how ever since then that's
ate away at me.
I was like, man, that's probably 11 years ago and I'm embarrassed for myself for not
doing anything about that because I'm supposed to be this big tough fighter, not afraid of
anything, but I was the one having the problem, so it's just easy sometimes not to.
I just tell people, well, 11 years later I'm still beating myself up for being in that
situation and not doing anything.
Ever since then when I have been in that situation, I make sure because I look, I'd rather be
made son of for the next week.
I'll deal with that.
That doesn't bother me.
What bothers me is for the 11 years later where I'm embarrassed for myself.
I tell people, I hope if you see something, you don't do anything.
I hope you feel like I did.
I hope you're embarrassed.
I hope you're ashamed of yourself and I hope that you say, I don't care.
I'm never letting that happen again.
I'm not going to sit back and not let it be because that's easy at the time.
I keep trying to tell people, having courage isn't about not being afraid.
It's about being afraid and still doing the right thing no matter what.
That's what courage is.
If you're not afraid, you're either not smart or something.
You're going to be afraid.
There's nothing wrong with that, but not doing anything about it, that should make you feel
bad.
I want you to feel bad and I want to make you feel so bad that you say, I don't care.
I'm not having this feeling ever again.
Amen to that.
I don't want to reiterate as well.
It doesn't mean that you're jumping in because we're not all MMA fighters that were in the
UFC.
Then that means just going to tell someone, whether it's a teacher or calling the police
or doing something positive.
I've even talked to people and said, look, man, I don't even care if afterwards, let's
say somebody's getting their chair pulled out from them, everybody's laughing at them.
I don't care if afterwards you come and say, hey man, sorry that happened.
The worst thing about people being like, the thing that makes people suicidal and sad is
they feel like everybody's against them.
They don't have any friend, nothing can help them out.
The loneliness, the isolation and just going up and talking to people make them feel better
sometimes.
Hey man, there's nothing I can do to help.
I'm afraid of that guy too, but I don't know.
Just kind of going and trying to be empathetic to the person can make the world of difference
in their eyes sometimes.
Yeah.
Also, I guess the more people that align with that person and it strengthens numbers and
you're going to discourage the bullying from doing something else.
I've told people that too, man, if you're having problems, say, hey man, can you walk
with me here?
We're going to go to this class and you always give me a prop.
That's another solution.
People ask me what things they can do.
There's a ton of different things.
I obviously talk to somebody but don't just sit there and dwell on that and internalize
it the whole time and not do it or say anything about it because over time, that's when a
problem arises.
Yeah.
All right.
I looked at Mark's name.
His wrestling name was Johnny Bebad.
He was episode 13 of this podcast.
I will actually, after we're done, I will send you his information too and see if we
can get you guys connected because I think you'd probably have a very, very great conversation.
All right, Chris, will you give us an hour of your time?
I don't know if people listening are aware, but you're actually on shift at the moment.
We're praying to the call gods that we're able to get this interview done.
We got lucky, man.
We've already had about four runs a day.
I thought we'd probably catch one but we didn't.
That's a good thing.
Yeah, it is.
I just came up with a 48 this morning.
Oh, a 48.
Do you normally do 48s or are you doing a double?
No, I did a double.
I had a couple of shifts that I owe people from them helping me out in a pinch.
I've done four of them in three weeks.
I'm not going to get it.
That's a long time.
That's a lot.
Yeah, it sucks.
Now, one of my good buddies, he lives out in Colorado and where he works, I think in
Farmington, New Mexico now, everybody kind of travels the distance.
They work 48 on, 96 off.
That's crazy.
You work two days straight and then you're off for four days.
That's a little different than what we do here.
We're 24 on, 48 off.
I'm only thinking two days on is a long time.
Yeah.
Now, do you have Kelly days at your department?
We actually do.
Okay.
Good, good.
I think so as well because one of my pushes for this, not this project specifically but
one of my personal pushes within the fire service is addressing the seat deprivation
and the illness that comes from that.
I kind of took a step back and realized that when you ask a firefighter about the shift
patterns that the return is always, oh, maybe we should do 212, maybe we should do a 14
and a 10 instead of addressing the fact that our work week is way higher than the average
person, grocery clerk, whatever it is.
I think that ultimately if you're talking about changing the world, changing our profession,
that going towards 24 72s and getting our average work week down to about 42 hours a
week is the future of health and first responders.
Well, I do know one of my friends, he's a chiropractor, he has like a hormone replacement
therapy in his place as well.
He says one thing when firemen come alive, they're very low on testosterone due to the
fact they're not getting enough sleep.
So yeah, I know what you're saying is it's not just a lack of sleep problem, it has other
effects on the body as well.
There's a lot of problems and people don't understand how important sleep is and when
you're not getting that properly, your whole body could be thrown out of whack.
Yeah, exactly.
I think sadly it even translates to a lot of the heart disease and cancer that we see
taking a lot of lives in our profession too.
Absolutely.
So anything we can do to know that that's the beauty of it.
Like you say, that we're constantly learning and coming up with things.
I remember when I first got hired on, there's still a lot of people who were on before they
used to wear masks a lot.
That's unheard of nowadays because all the cancers that people get.
But I mean, that used to be the thing back in the day, like if you wore a mask, you were
looked down upon.
And that's just unbelievable to me.
I'm glad to see things are slowly but surely getting in the right direction.
It'll be there eventually, but it just takes time.
Yeah.
I think we've come a long, long way in the protective gear.
I think now the area that we really need to be more aggressive on is the sleep and the
shift patterns to allow us to recover from what's pretty brutal 24-hour shifts, especially
if you're up all night and give them the time to actually recoup and get that sleep so that
when they go back to work, they're focused and not sleep deprived when they're working
on your child.
Yeah.
But I mean, I know that is one good thing, at least I know in my department where you
can 48 hours, the most you can work in a row.
After that, you have to have at least a 12-hour break because it used to be that way.
I remember a guy worked like five shifts in a row once, but you're not allowed to do that
anymore.
48, then you have to have 12 hours off.
Yeah.
I think that's a very sensible practice.
Okay.
Well, I'm going to wrap up with a few short questions so I can let you get on with your
shift.
So, I always ask people first, is there a book that you recommend, doesn't have to be
about what we've been talking about, but any book that you like to tell people about apart
from your own, what we've discussed already?
Oh, geez, man.
Okay.
I got a book that I just read not long ago and I absolutely loved it.
It's, once again, I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to everything, but this is an economics
book again, but it's not like a boring, dry economics book because I've never read one.
This is called How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes by a guy named Peter Schiff.
I thought that was a great read.
It makes it very easy.
It's like a parable about fish and everything.
It's a pretty funny story, but I think it's a very good book that kind of explains economics
and how we're doing things wrong.
Especially, you've got the Fed Reserve creating a lot of different money, why they want inflation,
how inflation, how devastating it is, and how stupid it is.
Yeah, I really like that book, How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes.
Check that one out.
Okay, brilliant.
And then a movie and or a documentary.
Oh, man.
Let me think, man.
I like it.
I mean, we watch movies here all the time.
That's one of our things.
Let me think here.
What movie did I watch recently?
Any kind of theme type of this?
Or is it like a newer movie, older movie?
Anything.
Anything at all.
Let me think about that.
As far as documentary, I know we watched something here not too long ago.
They ended up making a movie about it, but this was called Man on a Wire.
Oh, yeah.
Great film.
Did you see that documentary?
The guy that did the tightrope walking?
Yeah, I had no idea.
I mean, that was a crazy story, but I really like that as a documentary because we were
at the firehouse once we watched it just kind of flipped through like, man, how did he even
get that accomplished?
It was pretty amazing.
Yeah, that's a great mental toughness documentary, in my opinion.
Oh, absolutely.
I really enjoyed that.
So I can say as far as documentaries, that was the one I've watched in the last few months
that I really enjoyed.
Okay.
And obviously, you train and that's definitely one of my outlets.
But do you have anything else you do to decompress after a shift?
Oh, man, no.
To be honest with you, training is definitely the thing I do.
It's funny.
You can always like, you know, my wife has told me before, if I don't train for very
long, I become kind of very short with people and kind of in a bad mood and she'll be like,
you need to go to the gym, you know?
Because she can tell I'm in a bad mood.
It's funny, like, if I do that, you know, I'm kind of in a bad mood, I'm short with
people or whatever.
And then, you know, when I leave the gym, I could come home and if I saw my house on
fire, I'd be like, that's all right, you know, it's just a house, we'll get new stuff.
My mindset totally changed.
I'm totally relaxed with everything.
I've actually gotten into recently more actually trying to do a little bit of meditation where
I will just go each morning and try and, you know, actually go in the closet, turn off
all lights and try and just, you know, meditate kind of for 15 minutes and try and just clear
my head, clear my thoughts.
And I think that kind of has another good effect on me.
Yeah, yeah, I'm the same.
I notice my road rage and I say that it's not like I'm getting out my car and dragging
people out, but my intolerance for selfish driving is a lot better after a couple hours
of training.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Now, just while I'm looking at my list of episodes here, episode six of the show was
a Navy SEAL who became a doctor and is now the Navy SEAL's doctor.
And his name is Doc Parsley, Kirk Parsley.
His episode is all about sleep deprivation.
So if you want to delve into that, and that's totally related to the short temperedness
as well, that's what I find, you know, if I haven't slept after a few shifts, then my
nerves are pretty sharp.
I'll have to check that one out in episode six.
Okay.
All right.
And then the last question.
So where can people find you and the foundation online?
You can go to chrisleidlefoundation.org or you could go to just chrisleidle on Facebook.
Hit me up.
I always answer people when they ask me questions.
So anything you could do there are on Twitter.
Chris Lidle, L-O. I'm sorry.
Brilliant.
All right.
Well, Chris, thank you so much.
I really appreciate it.
And thank you to the Core Gods for not toning you guys out for the last hour and 15 minutes.
And it's been a real pleasure to talk to you.
And I really, really appreciate you taking time out to reach out to the community.
Hey, no problem.
Thanks for having me on.
Let me know if you're going to make it here next year.
Thank you.