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This episode is sponsored by a company I've literally been using for over 15 years now and that is 511.

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So if you want to hear more about 511 and their origin story, go to episode

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338 of Behind the Shield podcast with their CEO Francisco Morales.

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Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always, my name is James Gearing.

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And this week, it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show,

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former UFC light heavyweight champion, Hall of Famer, and one of the co-founders of Umbo, Rashad Evans.

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Now in this conversation, we discuss a host of topics from his turbulent early life,

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mentorship through wrestling, his journey into MMA,

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catch wrestling, his powerful mental health story, psychedelic journeys, functional mushrooms, and so much more.

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Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.

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Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.

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Every single five star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for others to find.

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And this is a free library of over 900 episodes now.

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So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories

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so I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them.

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So with that being said, I introduce to you Rashad Evans. Enjoy.

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Rashad, I want to start by saying two things. Firstly, thank you to Del Jolly, whose name I almost butchered a second ago, for connecting us.

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And secondly, to welcome you on the Behind the Shield podcast today.

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Oh, no problem, man. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Anytime I get an opportunity to kind of

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connect with you, I'm always happy to do that.

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Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Anytime I get an opportunity to kind of

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connect with you, I'm always happy to do that.

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No problem, man. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Anytime I get an opportunity to kind of

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break down what I'm doing and just kind of give people some insight of where I'm at in my life.

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It's always a fun experience.

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And where on planet earth are we finding you this afternoon?

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I am in South Florida right now, where I reside.

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And it's hotter than Haiti's out here, but

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it's South Florida.

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Yeah, yeah, I'm only a couple hours north of you. So yes, it is.

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Okay. Yeah.

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All right. Well, then I would love to start the very beginning of your timeline.

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I know you weren't born in Florida. So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about

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your family dynamic, what your parents did, how many siblings?

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Yeah, I was one of seven. I'm born in Niagara Falls, New York.

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And my mom was a nurse.

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And she did that pretty much my whole entire life.

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My dad, before he passed, he worked at a few factories. My dad was a really good athlete,

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though. My dad was like a really good basketball player, could have went pro.

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But life caught up to him. And at an early age, he had my brother, my oldest brother.

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So he went the factory route. And back in those days,

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Niagara Falls was pretty much a factory city. And, you know, getting a factory job is what you did.

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So he went and got a factory job. But he stayed active. You know, he was a boxer, as well as a

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baseball player. I mean, he was like Bo Jackson. He did it all. So I kind of got my athleticism from

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him. But he was more athletic than I was. He passed away when I was 17 years old, though.

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I'm sorry to hear that. When he was doing the factory work, was he working days or nights?

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Well, he's on a swing shift. But most of the time, he'll work the night shift. And, you know,

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growing up, I lived with my mom for like the first three years. And then I moved with my dad for like

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four or five years. And then I moved back with my mom. And, you know, it was like they got a divorce.

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And the three boys, my three brothers, we all went with my dad. And then my oldest brother,

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well, my older brother, Lance, and myself went back to go live with my mom.

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The reason I ask, we have an epidemic of disease, mental health, physical health issues in the fire

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service. And as I have learned over the last few years, sleep deprivation is a massive part of it.

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Now, when we think about, you know, our factory workers, our healthcare workers, there's so many

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other occupations that are probably, you know, one of the issues that they're facing that's causing

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ill health in them is actually the fact that they're awake when they should be asleep.

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Well, yeah, well, he was definitely, so he passed away of a heart attack. He had a heart attack. He

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was 43 years old. And, you know, he actually had a heart attack at work. And they didn't recognize

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what was happening to him. So they sat him in the cafeteria. And he wasn't turning over, they

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thought he just, you know, was getting used to the heat because it was really hot and that

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department he was working in, he was working in DuPont. And, you know, he passed out on the floor,

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they brought him to the cafeteria to kind of see if he would be able to rest up and get his

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bearings with the heat, but he just never recovered. And then before he actually like started

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to have a heart attack, they said, you know what, maybe we should take him to the hospital. They

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took him to the hospital where he actually had a full heart attack and he passed away.

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So sad. And when I hear DuPont, I had a lawyer on who was the real guy from the film Dark Wars.

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And this whole PFAS conversation now, these forever chemicals and DuPont was making those.

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So you have that element too.

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Absolutely. And that's another thing too. And back in those days,

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well, late nineties, you know, there really wasn't too much knowledge or understanding about the

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PFAS and, you know, environmental hazards and things like that, especially in Niagara Falls,

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the Niagara Falls region. It's a very polluted area. Like we have this dump called the Seacoast

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Dump and we take dumps from New York City and pretty much all over the state. And even in

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all over the state and even in Canada, we take a lot of their garbage and waste too. And there's

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a place called Love Canal where the movie Erin Brockovich was kind of loosely based off of where

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you know, it was, it was a contaminated area. Like there's this area, Love Canal,

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this whole neighborhood where it was, they had pollution where the pollution was seeping through

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the school floors and it was just grotesque. And they ended up having to abandon that whole

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neighborhood. And it's crazy because it's like a ghost town and we used to go there as kids,

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just like, you know, to run through an empty town. And it was, it was very eerie, but we were breaking

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those houses and high parties, but it was like, it was, it was a very eerie thing just looking back

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on it and realizing, having the perspective I do right now and realizing like how that and why that

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happened. Yeah. I think this is the thing, you know, when, when people do pass away, the only

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thing that we can do to honor them is to fix the things that, you know, were behind some of their,

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their health issues, you know, so, you know, partially under the carpet is, is just unacceptable.

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We've got to have these conversations and fix these things because they are completely preventable.

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So many of these, so, you know, rather than just turn a blind eye and people keep dying,

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what can we learn from these deaths to make sure it doesn't happen again?

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Yeah, absolutely. I'm a strong believer in that. I feel like there's a lesson in everything. And

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I feel no matter how bad the situation is, there's something in it for you because I believe that,

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you know, you get in life, whatever you're capable of handling, even if you don't believe it,

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even if you don't even feel it, but there's a reason why it's happening to you. And sometimes

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there's a blessing in it. And when you're able to look at it, you can, you can decipher and pull it

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out. Absolutely. Well, you mentioned about your dad being an athlete. What were you playing kind

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of early in your childhood? And then what was that progression through the high school?

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I started off playing football. I wanted to be a professional football player. I thought I was

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going to be the one to break through to the NFL. I was pretty decent, you know, wasn't like a standout

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football player, but I got into football just because we were playing in neighborhood football

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and we, you know, it was like a passion, but football led me to wrestling and it led me to

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wrestling because the head football coach was the wrestling coach too. And his name was Armand

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Kachatori. And he says to us, he says, you know, if, if you really want to become really, really good

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at wrestling and football, you gotta wrestle. You gotta wrestle. Wrestling will teach you the

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tackling fundamentals. It'll give you the grit. It'll give you the toughness you need to be the

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best football player. So, and that's how he really talked. He really talked like he was, like he was

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Don Corleone, you know? So I listened to him. I listened to him and, you know, I ended up being

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better at wrestling than I was at football. And wrestling ended up being my vehicle, my expression,

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my way out of that region. Now, what about career aspirations? Were there any, you know, professions

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that you're thinking of outside of professional football? Yeah. I wanted to be a cop. I wanted to

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be a cop, you know, during that time when I was growing up in my adolescence, I was a little wild,

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little, little, little bad, you know, being one of seven kids. My mom worked at night shift. My

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parents were separated. So we had a lot of time to just ourselves. And, you know, we would get

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into some trouble. So my mom got us into some karate. And after a while, it got kind of difficult

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to pay for karate and everything else that she had to pay for. So I ended up working on a deal

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with the karate instructor, this guy named Carl Bracino. He was a police officer for the town of

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Niagara. And he was an amazing guy. You know, he was just a really warm, just down to earth guy who

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really wanted to help kids out. And he took me under his wing and he showed me, you know, all the

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things that I needed to know as a young man. And he gave me, helped instill in me a sense of

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accountability and just how to be a good person. And I got to be a really good karate, a little

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martial artist as well too. But it also fed into that whole wrestling dynamic too.

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Well, we're going to obviously talk about your mental health journey and psychedelics.

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When you look back now with this 2024 lens, I mean, obviously losing your father is going to be,

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you know, a trauma. Divorce is going to be a trauma. Were there any other elements of your

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upbringing that you kind of realized that maybe contributed to some of the struggles in your adult

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life? You know, I would say, you know, when it comes to just the traumas and the things that

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would kind of interfere with, or just kind of root their head in my adult life was just that

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relationship with my father. It was one where I didn't, I was young when they separated and

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I didn't really understand why he couldn't be there. And, you know, just, just splitting that

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time between parents, you know, so I had a lot of resentment for my dad. And that resentment was,

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was a big part of that, that fuel that allowed me to just hit that switch and just turn into beast

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mode, just be an animal. And I was lucky that I, that I was able to find that as a way of channeling

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that negative energy, because I had that bad streak in me. And I feel like if I didn't harness

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that anger and that energy the right way, I could have ended up in prison because I wanted to,

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you know what I'm saying? I wanted to be, I wanted to be a gangster. I wanted to be a thug. And that,

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that's what I idolized, you know, watching these, watching these movies growing up. I was one of

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those kids who, you know, had a little 22, you know what I'm saying? And just, you know, getting

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into fights and all those kinds of things. But it, but it was when I really understood, like,

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there was actually a pivotal moment where, where I decided like, you know what, I need to start

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to change my life and do something different. I was running around getting into trouble.

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Me and my friends, we had like this little 22, we had this little gun. And we used to love this

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movie Juice, this movie Juice where, you know, Omar Epps, Tupac Shakur and those guys, right? He had

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a, he had a little gun, right? And they had the gun, so they had the juice. So we got a little gun.

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And I got into some situation with some kids, like I always did, and they tried to jump me.

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So I escaped the situation. I ended up running and getting away. But I would, I would have fought

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him and just took the loss. But the girl, the girl who I was there with in the wrong neighborhood,

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she was like, no, don't go out there. They got a knife. So once I escaped, I went back and tell my

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boys and I'm like, yo, these guys tried to run up on me. They had a knife and they're going to try

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to, they're going to try to kill me. So we're like, okay. So then the next day we went to try to

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find them. And we had this little 22. And thank God we looked all over for them all day. We couldn't

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find them. They were nowhere to be found. We went to all their hangout spots. They were nowhere to

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be found. So we just kind of, you know, resigned to the fact that we'll get them another day.

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And we, and we go back to that, to the house and my, my friend, he was, he was playing with the gun.

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He was playing with the gun, cleaning it out, just playing with it. He always used to like to be the

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one to hold it. He had the most experience with guns. So, you know, he was always holding it and

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playing with it. And then, boom, the gun went off, just shot. And I look over and I'm sitting like,

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maybe, you know, three feet from him. He's sitting in his bed and I'm sitting at his desk and boom,

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the gun just goes off. And I'm just like, oh, I look over at him and blood just all over the wall.

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And, you know, he ended up, I look at him and he just like falls forward. I'm like, oh my gosh.

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And I felt like he was dead. And I grabbed him, I pulled him off the bed and then he kind of starts

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to come to, and, you know, he started talking and then we rushed into the hospital, but he ended up

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surviving. What happened was a low caliber gun. It went right up here and just kind of scraped the

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skull. But that was one of those pivotal moments where I was just like, yo, this is serious. You

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know, because all the street fighting and all the things that I did before, that was just a lot of

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fun. But when that situation happened, it was kind of, it was one of those things that was like,

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that could be you, you know, where do you want to go with this? And it just made me really start to

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put that energy that I had going towards bad things to something positive. Because, I mean,

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we would do stuff like we would rob people, you know, we were strong on robbing, beat them up,

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take their stuff. And we would just knuckleheads. But then once that whole situation happened, I

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started to really understand that this wasn't a game, you know, that you can be playing for keeps

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out here.

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I think that's what, you know, Juice did a really good job, especially Boys in the Hood. When you

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actually watch it, they tell such a great story of the environment that these kids are raised in.

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And we've seen it as firefighters and paramedics, we've been in these houses. But, you know, then

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you see the tragedy of someone who's just about to make it out and go to college and go to

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college or be signed for the NFL. And then they, you know, that environment catches up with them.

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And so I think this is, this is the shame is that there was, you know, that it was such great

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storytelling. But for a lot of young people, they just see the gangster side. And it's the same in

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England. We have a knife crime epidemic at the moment. And these, these drill kids are running

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around with ski masks and stabbing each other in the street. And for what, like you said, it's

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almost like you used, you could just project the reality of, you know, what you saw that day, what

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we see in our career onto these kids and they drop those weapons straight away and go, nah,

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I don't want any more of that. Absolutely right, man. I mean, once, once I started to, once I've

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seen that, because I wanted to be a cop, that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a cop. And

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once that situation happened, it got hard for me to even hear a gun. I will, every time I heard a

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gun or heard something loud or anything like that, I would get a panic and it will put me in like

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this grip of anxiety would just take over me. And I still thought that I could be a cop though. I

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still thought that, you know, I can train myself to get over it, but it was something for me that

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had me super scared of guns afterwards. And it was like one of those scared straight things. And

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I then started to want to be like, get my life together and start to go down a path where it can

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actually be constructive. And I went to, like, I went to a couple of scared straight programs in

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high school and going to prison and hearing what they say to you as you're walking through as a

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little kid is like, yo, this is for real. Like it's, it's no joke. So seeing where I was going,

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you know, having a chance to have that experience and actually go to prison and see what it's like

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in prison. I was like, Nope, not for me.

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What you were saying about your father, it's amazing how many times I've had almost a thousand

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interviews now, over and over again, whether it's, you know, like my, my ex wife, her dad just

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packed up when she was five, went and started a family from scratch. She never heard from him

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again. And I know that took its toll. I think the sub, you know, the subtext of this in a child's

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mind is why wasn't I good enough? Why wasn't I good enough for you to be there? Even, even if

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you're physically there and now you're an alcoholic, why wasn't it good enough for you to be sober,

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you know, whatever it is. But on the positive side, more often than not, a mentor comes into

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someone's life. It could be a female history teacher. It could be a wrestling coach, whoever

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it is, and turns a child from just like you said, right at that crossroads from a bad path to a

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good path. When you look back, who were the kind of mentors that helped you kind of get down that

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good path in the end? You know, it was Carl Brasino, the cop, and there was also Bill Dixon.

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Bill Dixon was my wrestling coach and Bill Dixon, he's seen something in me when no one else seen

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anything in me. And I would, I was a good wrestler, but I didn't, I was just a naturally good athlete,

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good wrestler, and he's seen the potential in me, but I didn't like wrestling because wrestling was

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way too hard. Like before we even started the practice, we had to run around, you know, the

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school for about an hour just to even just to warm up. And I'm just like, I signed up for

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wrestling, not the track team. So for me, I wasn't really feeling that, but I would try to skip

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practice. I would skip practice, I was supposed to go to practice, and then I would just blow them

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off. And I was like, skip and just go home, get on the bus and go home, hang out with my friends,

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smoke a little grass, just be chilling, right? And then what he did was he would send one of

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the seniors to come and pick me up. So now a senior who was, need to be focusing on himself

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in training, they would have to come and get me. And then they'll bring me back to the school,

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and then I would train and it would just be me, the coach, and the senior that picked me up.

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And then sometimes they'll pick me up, it'll be after practice, he'll let the senior get out

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probably about 30 minutes early so he can come and pick me up. And then they'll bring me to

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practice right as everybody else is going. And the practices that I had with my coach, just him and I

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were 10 times harder than it would have been if I would have just went to practice. And I couldn't

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get out of not going, like I couldn't even quit the team because he went to see my mom, my coach

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Bill Dixon went to see my mom. And my mom is all about the discipline because she understood

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that she couldn't be everything that I needed being the fact that for one, it was just her

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and she was from the mindset, it takes a village to raise kids. And she was also from the mindset,

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was like, there's things that a man can teach you that I just can't teach you. So when it came time

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for him to, for him stepping up and be like, okay, he's going to go to practice. My mom be like,

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and Rashad, look, if you miss wrestling, I'm telling Bill, he can come and get you Rashad.

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You ain't going to just be sitting here just ripping and running these streets, getting in fights,

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Rashad. That's what my mom told me. So once he heard that, that's all he needed to hear.

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And then he just kept coming to pick me up. And after a while, I realized that there's no way I'm

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getting out of this. And then it was, then that was, that was, you know, me going to practice was

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backed by, I started to get results. I started to do really good in wrestling. I started proud of

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myself. I could be pretty good, but there's one pivotal day I remember before I've truly turned

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the corner. And this is probably the thing that, that made me turn the corner. It was the gym full

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of us at the end of practice. And I'm in the back playing around with my friend and he's talking and

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I'm just, you know, doing what I do, clowning around. And as he's talking, I'm kind of listening.

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And then he says, you know, there's somebody in here that is going to go on to do some amazing

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things that has an amazing bright future. All he just needs to do is he needs to tap and he needs

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to believe in himself. And I'm sitting there listening, then like, you know, some of the

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singers are kind of puffing their chests out, getting proud, like he's going to say them. And

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then he says, and that person is Rashad, Rashad Evans. And I'm like, everybody looked at me like

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Rashad, you know, just like totally confused and totally surprised. And him saying that was that,

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that turning point for me, because he believed in me and he went on record to say he believed in me.

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So I couldn't make him look like a liar. So because he believed in me, because he said that

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he believed in me, I did my best to make him be absolutely right. And it's funny when you put that

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faith in somebody and you say, you know what, I'm not going to feed you the negative that you

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probably think or the negative that you may feel you deserve or that you're trying to get. I'm

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going to feed you positivity and I'm going to let you feel what that feels like. And once I felt

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what that felt like, that's, that was my currency. That's what I wanted. I wanted to feel that.

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I wanted to make him right.

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I mean, just to take a step back at that whole principle, I've talked about drug prohibition a

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lot, which obviously ties into the psychedelic conversation we're about to have, but you know,

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the way that we viewed addiction, which arguably is a mental health crisis, as a crime. And so,

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you know, we lock up people who are addicts and then obviously, you know, the ripple effects of

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broken homes and, you know, some of these struggling areas that again, I've seen my whole

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career, it's shame, it's guilt, it's, you know, lock them up, keep them away. Instead of the

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compassion kindness, which I would argue is taught by a lot of, you know, religious doctrine, but

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ignored when people walk out the front door, that you actually need to solve the mental health

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crisis to keep kids from going into gangs and other areas that are plaguing our society at the

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moment.

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But that you even even being able to penetrate to the kid, you have to be able to meet them on a

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level. And you have to be able to understand what their currency is, because we all have different

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currency. We all have different things that motivates and moves us. And being able to tap

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into what that is, it takes some time to just sit in with that kid, having a conversation with that

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kid, and kind of suspending your judgment on that kid until you hear where this kid is coming from

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and what is truly that thing that he may not even be able to verbalize and say is the reason why

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they're acting out. One thing I've had a discussion with when people have played individual

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sports and team sports is, you know, each of those has has lessons, obviously, the individual sport

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is the ownership, it's that kind of mental quitter that you're fighting against constantly. You know,

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and obviously, if you're actually fighting, then you got the person trying to kill you in front of

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you as well. But then the the team sport, you know, it's more for the collective. Talk to me about

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how this this mentorship, you know, the respect that you had for your coach factored into your

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success on the mat. Because I had that respect for him. And because he believed in me, I couldn't

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lose in front of him. Losing in front of him. It was like twice the loss. So when I felt like whenever

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I lost in front of him, he'd be like, hey, it's okay, we'll get him next time. But the disappointment

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was was so much that I didn't want to bear it. I didn't want to I didn't want him to be disappointed

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in me. So I worked hard. I worked hard and I want to be everything that he thought I could be.

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And I would do anything just to be like, you know what, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna prove it. And

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then what ended up happening is, is that the confidence that he instilled in me, I started to

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feel myself, because I was doing the extra things that was required. I wasn't in an attempt to make

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in an attempt to make sure he wasn't disappointed in me. I had to do more than what was just required

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in practice after training was over. I'm like, all right, cool. I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna run.

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You know, during my off time, I'm not going to go hang out with my friends, I'm going to go and do

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some kind of training exercise, something that's going to make me better. And when I started to

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put that extra time in, when I started to really personalize that that grind, I knew when I stepped

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on the mat, that the person across me hadn't done what I'd done. So that translated into confidence.

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And because that relationship that I had with him, that belief that he instilled in me,

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that ended up being belief that I had in myself. And that set the standard for me, not taking a

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step back and really believing in the extra work that I'd done and having a confidence to stand on

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my two and say, I'm better than everybody. And not being cocky about it, but just being confident

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about it. And you need to have that confidence when you're going into sport, mano y mano. Yes,

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it's sportsmanship. Of course, but understand this, if you're in front of me, my job is to break you,

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because we're in a competition of wills, and we can't get it twisted.

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It's interesting how that parallels what I'm seeing in the first spawn of professions at the

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moment. You have a lot of motivated firefighters and police officers and paramedics who dreamed

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of serving their community. But if you don't have the mentorship, the trust, the buy-in of the

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department, the actual organization that you work for, you don't eke that high level of performance.

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You don't have that extra bit, like really understanding, like you said earlier, it takes

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a village. That's the same in a fire department. It's the same in a police station. And so I think

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this is a great conversation is when we really support, for example, our police officers,

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and we give them the right training and leadership. And we're having this conversation

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two years to the day that the Ovalde tragedy happened, an epic failure in leadership.

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When there is that intact, it creates better police officers, better firefighters, because

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you believe in the mission. But conversely, if there's organizational betrayal and your tribe

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kind of turns their back on you, or they have no empathy for the fact that you're having to work

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all this forced overtime and not seeing your family anymore, that has the opposite effect.

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And you see a lot of firefighters and police officers hang up their uniform and leave when

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they could have been incredible people if they were given the right environment.

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Absolutely. There is a quote that I like, and it says, how you do anything is how you do everything.

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Right? And I kind of changed that quote a little bit to say, why you do anything

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is how you do everything. Because it's that why. Why am I doing this? And when you're connected

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with that why, that why should be something that you're willing to die for. Because it's that thing

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that gives you, that makes, it's that thing that, that it's your energy, it's your energy box.

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You know, it's the drive that you have to push through on the hard days, because there are hard

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days and you need something to push you through the hard days. Because life gets tough sometimes.

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You know, there's a lot of things that can happen in a day. And, you know, there's 180 degrees of

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parallel on any given positive or negative situation in an instant. And if you don't have

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and if you don't have your why intact, you can be swayed by the motion of those parallels.

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And being able to stay like the monk, right? And just say, you know, in the middle, we'll see,

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we'll see. That's that why. That's being connected with that why. That's being connected

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with that purpose. Absolutely. Well, speaking of purpose, I want to get from your transition

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from wrestling to MMA. I had Dan Severn on the show probably about five years ago now.

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And then I did one of his workshops probably a couple years ago. He came to Ocala here.

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So talk to me about your journey from from high school wrestling onwards and then that transition

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into the world of MMA. Yeah, so I went to junior college, became a junior college national champ,

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I was a junior college at NCCC, went to Michigan State, ended up being a captain at Michigan State

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University, was a Big Ten runner up and not a runner up Big Ten to third and Big Ten and fourth

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and Big Ten and then almost was an All-American beat this really good, amazing one of the best

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collegiate wrestlers of all time, Greg Jones, at the NCAA tournament. And that was kind of very

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telling of like, you know, when you really have your mind put together and when you're

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really tapped in and believe in, you can be the best in the world. So that left me with this

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unsettled feeling inside of me. And once I graduated from college, I didn't have a place

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to really let that out. You know, so I started to coach high school, but I was a little too

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competitive with these high school kids. And I knew that I was impeding their growth because

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I wasn't allowing them to grow because I was too busy trying to win. And I was very lucky to have

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some of the best coaches. And I am where I am right now because of the fact that I've had great

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mentors and I had great coaches and I had great teammates. I had great teams. And I wanted to be

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able to be that for these guys. So I'm like, I need to find something else to let this out of me,

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this unsettledness, this unfinished nature that I have that I really can't quite put my finger on.

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So I was working at a bar in Michigan and a fight broke out. I break it up being a security guard.

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And then one of the guys, one of the patrons was like, wow, did you see that? Talking to his boy,

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he had him in a rear naked choke. Now at the time, there's not a lot of people who knew what a rear

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naked choke was. And there wasn't a lot of people who understood what that whole, that was kind of

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like an underground thing, right? Because that's when MMA or at the time it was called NHB, No

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Holds Bar, it kind of was in a dark ages. Like it was over in Japan and there would be some fights

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in Vegas every once in a while, like a couple of times a year, but it just wasn't anywhere,

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nowhere near. So I asked him like, well, yeah, what do you know about that? And he says, yo,

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I trained at this gym in Lansing, Michigan. So he gave me the exchange information. And then the

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following Monday, him and I, we went to this gym and it wasn't a typical gym. It was in this building,

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this building called the John Bean building in Lansing, Michigan. And this building was

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an old factory that they started to just rent out rooms in because they didn't want to waste the

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space, but it wasn't very well kept. It wasn't very well kept. It was just, it was kind of nasty,

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you know, kind of look very seedy. And I go to this place, this building, I'm feeling, I'm maybe

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about to get robbed. Good thing I was broke. So it didn't matter. So I'm walking up the stairs and I

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get to this room and the room is, you know, I opened the door and like a wave of funk just hit me.

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And I see like, you know, six guys just training in a room is small. It's probably like nine by 12

375
00:38:00,480 --> 00:38:05,440
and they're training. And I'm just like, my mouth is on the floor. Like I just never seen anything

376
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:10,800
like this. This is, this is what I watch on TV. So I was like, yo, I was automatically just locked

377
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:17,920
in. I had my first training. And after that I was just hooked. And that's what I did for about a

378
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:25,680
year. I did that for like a year, just, you know, just locked in and training. And then I then had

379
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:31,760
my first fight. I had my first fight after about a year and I went to go sign up for the fight.

380
00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:38,080
And I go to this promotion is called the danger zone promotion. And it's in Angola, Indiana. And

381
00:38:39,040 --> 00:38:46,480
to my surprise, the guy who's putting on the show is Dan the Beast Severin. It's his show.

382
00:38:46,480 --> 00:38:52,880
Dan happens to live in Coldwater, Michigan. So I was like, wow, this is cool. You know,

383
00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:59,600
meeting a legend, a UFC legend and Dan Severin. So I felt like I was like in grasp of just being

384
00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:04,640
close to being in the UFC. So I was like, all right, cool. I'll fight in this organization.

385
00:39:05,280 --> 00:39:10,080
And the first, my first fight, I wanted to sign up for one fight, but they didn't have,

386
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:15,040
they didn't have, they were having a tournament. So they say, you know what, why don't you just

387
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:18,960
jump into this tournament and just do one fight and then be done just so we have enough people.

388
00:39:18,960 --> 00:39:23,680
So I'm like, all right, cool. So I do one fight and it finished fast. So I'm like, dang. So then

389
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:28,400
I do another fight and then that fight finishes fast. So I'm like, well, I'm in the finals now.

390
00:39:28,400 --> 00:39:34,000
So I might as well just do the last fight. So I do the last fight and then I ended up, you know,

391
00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:42,400
winning and become a tournament champion. So after that I was hooked. And then after that,

392
00:39:42,400 --> 00:39:47,040
I got doubly blessed because Dan Severin was like, Hey, where do you guys train at? And I was like,

393
00:39:47,040 --> 00:39:50,800
you know, we train in Lansing, Michigan. So he was like, why don't you come out to Coldwater?

394
00:39:50,800 --> 00:39:55,840
We got some guys that train out there and we can get some, you know, you guys get, will be a great

395
00:39:55,840 --> 00:40:04,000
asset. So it was really cool because we only had about six guys that we can train. And out of those

396
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:11,280
six guys, these guys weren't like, they weren't real fighters. They were just guys who like to

397
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:18,640
train. One was a lawyer, one was a cop, another one was like a nurse or something like that. It

398
00:40:18,640 --> 00:40:23,040
was like the village people, right? It was like a true, it was like a real, it was like a real-

399
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:28,480
The construction worker in India? Yeah, I swear to God, it was like a real life fight club, like a

400
00:40:28,480 --> 00:40:33,680
real life fight club. And we started going there with Dan Severin and I established that relationship

401
00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:38,240
with Dan Severin. When I look at some of the stuff that Dan was teaching and there's actually a

402
00:40:38,240 --> 00:40:43,200
British guy, I forget his name, but he's got a, like a catch wrestling, you know, Instagram page.

403
00:40:44,480 --> 00:40:50,720
There's, it's such a brutal way of wrestling, but you don't see it very often in MMA because

404
00:40:50,720 --> 00:40:56,160
we tend to be either, you know, like wrestling, specifically collegiate wrestling or jiu-jitsu.

405
00:40:56,160 --> 00:41:00,880
What is your perception of catch wrestling and is it, has it reached its potential or is there an

406
00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:06,880
opportunity for that kind of philosophy to find its way in there again in modern MMA?

407
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:14,880
I think that catch wrestling can definitely be that next nuance that fighters implement in a

408
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:22,720
game and they start dominating. I watched this guy on TikTok, Eric Paulson, who is a, is a G.

409
00:41:23,600 --> 00:41:28,960
Eric Paulson is absolutely amazing and watching the things that he does from a catch wrestling

410
00:41:28,960 --> 00:41:35,600
perspective, I'm just like, ah, damn, I wish I would have had him when I was, you know, doing my

411
00:41:35,600 --> 00:41:45,200
thing. But I, I, I did have kind of that catch wrestling background under Greg Jackson because

412
00:41:45,200 --> 00:41:52,880
Greg Jackson has his own style of jiu-jitsu, which is called garu jitsu, which is an exact,

413
00:41:52,880 --> 00:42:02,960
it's a mix of jiu-jitsu with that catch wrestling influence in it. So I did get a bit of it, but

414
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:08,880
learning it from somebody like Eric Paulson, who, who's just a master at it, at it would have been

415
00:42:08,880 --> 00:42:17,200
amazing. But I see that there's definitely, you know, a chance to really bring the game to the

416
00:42:17,200 --> 00:42:23,360
next level by just implementing a lot of those catch wrestling techniques, because it, they find

417
00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:30,320
a way in catch wrestling to simplify movement and really make it about just one thing, making it

418
00:42:30,320 --> 00:42:36,560
uncomfortable, bringing pain. You know, it reminds me of one of my favorite wrestlers

419
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:43,600
that I used to study all the time in college and this guy named Doug Blueball. Doug Blueball

420
00:42:44,080 --> 00:42:52,320
was an old school guy, nasty leg rider. One of the things that he was really good at, he was good at

421
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:58,640
just inflicting pain, making it uncomfortable. So you give up points, you give up the pin and

422
00:42:58,640 --> 00:43:00,480
that's what I see in catch wrestling.

423
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:05,840
I had Eric on and it was amazing because he started in Jeet Kune Do. He started kind of the

424
00:43:05,840 --> 00:43:10,880
Bruce Lee philosophy and then, and then found himself into catch wrestling. And yeah, I mean,

425
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:14,400
seeing some of the stuff that they teach and seeing the way that it's evolved where they,

426
00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:20,080
they combine the striking with, like you said, wrestling and the cranks, you know, when you do

427
00:43:20,080 --> 00:43:24,160
jiu-jitsu and you think about, oh, it's a clean arm bar or a clean choke. Yeah. Well, sometimes

428
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:31,120
if they just turn your leg this way, it really sucks. Just rip it, you know? Yeah, exactly.

429
00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:36,320
Well, speaking of Greg, I had him on the show as well. One of the things that I thought was really

430
00:43:36,320 --> 00:43:43,680
interesting is he said there was two types of MMA competitors. You had the martial artist and you

431
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:49,120
had the fire. Which of those two do you think you put yourself in, in your journey into, to MMA?

432
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:59,440
You know, I felt like, I felt like I could wear multiple, both of those hats, but I would even

433
00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:10,160
add a third one and it's the entertainer. You know, I would say I would, I could tap into

434
00:44:10,160 --> 00:44:22,400
I could tap into either of those. The entertainment side would give me the, the ability

435
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:31,840
to allow that part of me to come out. The part of me that enjoyed the spotlight, the part of me that

436
00:44:31,840 --> 00:44:41,600
enjoyed to put on a show. And that part was Sugar. Sugar liked the entertainment spot. Sugar would

437
00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:47,200
say some crazy stuff. Sugar would go out there and he would talk himself into a fight where,

438
00:44:48,160 --> 00:44:54,560
you know, where I would have to bring the dog out. So it would bring out that fighter in me,

439
00:44:55,440 --> 00:45:01,440
you know? And then because that fighter was in me, you know, the competitor was there as well,

440
00:45:01,440 --> 00:45:07,440
too, trying to make sure that it just wasn't about a fight. Sometimes I go into a fight and I realize

441
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:15,200
that this guy's probably better than me. He's got probably better striking. He may have better

442
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:22,400
wrestling, but I would go in there with one thought, that motherfucker is going to feel me.

443
00:45:23,680 --> 00:45:29,280
And that was all, that was all I said. It wasn't about any X's or O's. It was about, he's going to

444
00:45:29,280 --> 00:45:35,120
feel me. And when I say that he's going to feel me, my mindset was this, I'm going to go out there

445
00:45:35,120 --> 00:45:42,400
and fight in such a way that it's going to make it so hard for him that he, if he's ever presented

446
00:45:42,400 --> 00:45:49,040
with an idea or a thought of fighting me, he'll say, nah, I don't want to fight this guy. Even if

447
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:55,360
he beats me, that's how I want him to feel about me. And whenever I went into the fight with that

448
00:45:55,360 --> 00:46:04,640
mentality and I fought at that kind of intensity, I would always find in the fight, my opponents,

449
00:46:04,640 --> 00:46:12,720
they gave me that look in the eye. And I'm like, there it is. There's that moment. There's that

450
00:46:12,720 --> 00:46:19,360
doubt. I got their ass. And that was the win. That was the win for me, bringing them to that point

451
00:46:19,360 --> 00:46:27,760
where they were like, they wanted, they knew. That's the best part of the fight. Forget getting

452
00:46:27,760 --> 00:46:37,520
your hand raised. When I'm in there and I feel my opponent and he just, it's very subtle. It's very,

453
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:47,520
very subtle. But to me, that was the best part when my opponent knew that I knew that his ass was

454
00:46:47,520 --> 00:46:58,240
done. What is that the dividing factor? So you get someone who on paper is more athletic, a better

455
00:46:58,240 --> 00:47:05,040
striker, a better jujitsu practitioner, whatever it is. What is that thing? Again, is it that burning

456
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:10,960
why? Is it understanding truly what you're in there for? And if there's any kind of self doubt

457
00:47:10,960 --> 00:47:21,680
of the why you're kind of cracking it at that moment. It comes down to allowing yourself to

458
00:47:21,680 --> 00:47:28,320
just totally surrender to the moment. A lot of times when I went out there, I would find myself

459
00:47:28,320 --> 00:47:39,600
still feeling this tension. And the tension was just me not being able to know what's going to

460
00:47:39,600 --> 00:47:45,520
come out on the other end, what's going to, what the results are going to be. So what I would do

461
00:47:45,520 --> 00:47:54,400
is I would find a way to just allow myself to let go. And for me, it was embarrassment, right? I

462
00:47:54,400 --> 00:48:01,200
would be, I would have a fear of just being embarrassed. So what I would do is I would try

463
00:48:01,200 --> 00:48:07,520
to find a way to embarrass myself just so that way I got it out the way. And then now I could just

464
00:48:07,520 --> 00:48:13,840
fight. So I will go out there sometimes and I would just, I'll pinch my nipples. I'll do something

465
00:48:13,840 --> 00:48:20,400
absolutely ridiculous, something absolutely ridiculous, something that would make you kind of

466
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:28,960
blush or make you kind of, you know what I'm saying? But it was, it became my thing to be like,

467
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:34,640
all right, I embarrassed myself. I got puffy nipples. I'm twisting my nipples and I made a

468
00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:44,640
fool of myself. Now I can fight. Now I can fight. Now I can let it go and allow myself to

469
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:54,320
let my training take over, allow myself to be free enough and be loose enough that now

470
00:48:54,320 --> 00:49:03,920
I can just be and I can react in time because I'm not holding on to anything.

471
00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:11,360
Interesting. You talk about showmanship. You ended up on the Ultimate Fighter show. I've had a

472
00:49:11,360 --> 00:49:16,560
couple of fighters on here that have been on there. Correct me if I'm wrong, the era that you were in,

473
00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:22,640
was that when they were still, no televisions but a liquor cabinet full of booze, which was

474
00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:27,040
a liquor cabinet full of booze to try and eke out as much drama as they could for the TV show?

475
00:49:27,760 --> 00:49:36,560
Yeah, there was no television. There was no magazines, no books other than a religious book,

476
00:49:36,560 --> 00:49:44,800
like a Bible or whatever your religion happens to be. And that was it. No radio, nothing. So

477
00:49:44,800 --> 00:49:52,000
they wanted us to drink. They wanted us to party. And for me that was kind of crazy because

478
00:49:52,560 --> 00:49:56,240
they wanted it both ways. They wanted to be able to kick our teeth in in training,

479
00:49:57,200 --> 00:50:04,480
right? But then expect you to drink at nighttime and it just wasn't, it didn't go hand in hand. So

480
00:50:04,480 --> 00:50:14,240
you just kind of learn that if you're going to be there, then you need to have some kind of discipline.

481
00:50:14,240 --> 00:50:25,120
But being on that show was a test. Everything was a test. Yes, the alcohol was there by design to

482
00:50:25,920 --> 00:50:32,320
get you to act crazy on TV, but it was also a test to see how you handled yourself.

483
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:40,240
Were you really professional? How did you take this sport? And all of it matters because

484
00:50:41,440 --> 00:50:47,920
getting that contract and getting to the UFC, all the temptation is going to be there. All the

485
00:50:47,920 --> 00:50:57,120
things that can have you off your goals are going to be right there. But what are you going to do?

486
00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:01,760
Are you going to be that professional? And that's what that show was about. And it was

487
00:51:01,760 --> 00:51:08,000
what that show tests. When you're on that show, it tests your heart, it tests your skill, but it

488
00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:15,760
tests those intangible things that are really hard to quantify just off of watching someone fight.

489
00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:25,920
There's more that makes Tom Brady, Tom Brady. It's his work ethic. It's his mindset. It's all

490
00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:30,960
those things that added up to him being one of the best quarterbacks to ever do it. The same thing,

491
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:36,400
if you go MMA, you look at Habib Mammaka-Madoff and GSP. GSP was a teammate of mine. I watched

492
00:51:36,400 --> 00:51:46,640
it firsthand. There are things that they did in order to make them what they were, and it's those

493
00:51:46,640 --> 00:51:52,160
intangible things, those things that are not quite about the accident nose of fighting, but it's about

494
00:51:52,160 --> 00:51:58,320
a lifestyle and how professional you are. I've never looked at it that way, but yeah,

495
00:51:58,320 --> 00:52:02,640
I mean, it's a discipline test, isn't it? I think there was one guy, I don't know if I've got his

496
00:52:02,640 --> 00:52:08,080
name wrong, Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan someone, and he were thinking four out of Central Florida

497
00:52:08,080 --> 00:52:13,040
originally, but he was kind of a white guy. He had dreads and he would just be out in the

498
00:52:13,040 --> 00:52:17,200
garden meditating the whole time, whatever, almost drinking and getting into fights in the house.

499
00:52:17,200 --> 00:52:21,600
And I was like, and when you look at that, it was obvious at the time too. Yeah, I mean, he was

500
00:52:22,160 --> 00:52:28,160
clearly in control of the journey that he was on, but if you were derailed by alcohol or getting

501
00:52:28,160 --> 00:52:33,440
into fights outside the oxygen, then yeah, you're kind of exhibiting maybe some of the weaknesses

502
00:52:33,440 --> 00:52:40,480
in your pursuit for the belt. Yeah, absolutely. And then also too, it's not even about just being

503
00:52:40,480 --> 00:52:48,960
always into that monk mode as far as outwardly showing, because you had to bring the entertainment

504
00:52:48,960 --> 00:52:56,880
too. You had to be able to be good on camera. You had to be able to make people want to watch you

505
00:52:56,880 --> 00:53:04,480
because your career is predicated on how many people are going to come to watch you. How many

506
00:53:04,480 --> 00:53:09,840
people are going to tune in to watch you fight? What do you say? What do you do that separates you

507
00:53:09,840 --> 00:53:14,800
from everybody else? And that's where the entertainment side goes. So being on the Ultimate

508
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:25,600
Fighter show is truly just testing grounds and it's training to be a media trained,

509
00:53:25,600 --> 00:53:34,240
great fighter, and also an accountable professional athlete. Where is that happy medium? Because I

510
00:53:34,240 --> 00:53:39,760
remember early UFC, you didn't get a lot of that flamboyancy in the weigh-ins and that kind of

511
00:53:39,760 --> 00:53:44,880
thing. And then we've had some people obviously that have gone all the way to the other side,

512
00:53:44,880 --> 00:53:50,240
but as you mentioned, there are people that we love to fight, even Jake Paul, we all want to

513
00:53:50,240 --> 00:53:55,200
watch him get his house kicked, but that's the character of the show. And then there's the

514
00:53:55,200 --> 00:54:00,000
caricature he's created that obviously has sold a lot of tickets at the moment, even though as a

515
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:06,320
professional boxing match, obviously it's not a high level. But where is that happy medium between

516
00:54:07,040 --> 00:54:12,800
creating that excitement for a fight, but not ending up being disrespectful and kind of

517
00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:18,480
deviating from the kind of martial way that a lot of this environment is centered around?

518
00:54:18,480 --> 00:54:27,200
You know, it all comes down to, because it's a relative thing, right? You want to keep that

519
00:54:27,200 --> 00:54:32,400
bushido and that's the most important thing. And one of the most beautiful things about our sport

520
00:54:32,400 --> 00:54:39,280
is that respect, that camaraderie that we have for each other. But at the same time, you do

521
00:54:41,200 --> 00:54:47,440
want to bring the fight to your opponent even before the fight happens, because the fight is

522
00:54:47,440 --> 00:54:52,960
physical, but before the fight is physical, it's psychological. And you have to be able to

523
00:54:53,520 --> 00:55:01,280
psychologically battle with that person without being pulled into the psychological battle

524
00:55:01,280 --> 00:55:07,120
yourself. So you kind of got to divorce yourself from some of the emotion that you have towards

525
00:55:07,120 --> 00:55:12,400
anything they're going to say to you. You almost got to be like Eminem on 8 Mile, say all the bad

526
00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:16,160
things to yourself that he's going to say to you. So it takes this thing out of it when he says it,

527
00:55:16,160 --> 00:55:21,200
right? And that's how you got to approach it. But then there's another part too of not going too far,

528
00:55:21,200 --> 00:55:29,760
because even if you do, when you do go too far, even if you don't feel bad, the backlash that

529
00:55:29,760 --> 00:55:35,600
what you're going to get from saying something too far is going to interfere with your focus.

530
00:55:36,240 --> 00:55:43,760
So the line is where when it starts to impede your progress, and that's when it's like,

531
00:55:43,760 --> 00:55:52,320
okay, I can go and say something terrible about my opponent. But other people are going to hear me

532
00:55:52,320 --> 00:55:58,160
say something terrible about my opponent. And all the questions and everything that I'm going to get

533
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:04,800
about this whole situation is going to be about this terrible thing that I said. And now I'm having

534
00:56:04,800 --> 00:56:12,480
to find myself defending what I said, or even wearing egg on my face about what I said. So now

535
00:56:12,480 --> 00:56:21,760
I'm distracted by what I said to him. So now my words are coming to work against me. Because now

536
00:56:21,760 --> 00:56:28,000
I'm having to defend what I said. And I'm getting my mind on that instead of the task at hand.

537
00:56:30,800 --> 00:56:37,120
So you find yourself winning the ultimate fighter, and then you go to Albuquerque and work with Greg,

538
00:56:37,120 --> 00:56:45,280
walk me through again this southern uptick from finding yourself in learning MMA after

539
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:50,720
acting as a bouncer to now the pursuit of a belt in the UFC itself.

540
00:56:52,080 --> 00:56:59,920
Yeah, it was quite the transition. Going from Lansing, Michigan, I went in the ultimate fighter,

541
00:56:59,920 --> 00:57:09,600
training with my Lansing, Michigan crew, which is Joaquin Rodriguez out of team Mercy Lago,

542
00:57:09,600 --> 00:57:14,720
which is a really good team right now. Him and I started that team way back then. I went to go see

543
00:57:14,720 --> 00:57:21,360
him after the ultimate fighter show. He was working at this gym, Crown Gym, where it was a boxing gym

544
00:57:21,360 --> 00:57:27,520
for wayward youth, like a PAL organization. And he was just volunteering his time. And I came there

545
00:57:27,520 --> 00:57:33,120
and just begged him to give me lessons. And he put me through the wringer. And then finally he said,

546
00:57:33,120 --> 00:57:37,200
all right, I'll give you a shot. And then that's when he became my coach. And I worked with him

547
00:57:37,200 --> 00:57:45,520
for a while. And when I was on the ultimate fighter show, I realized that I had quite a skill gap.

548
00:57:47,520 --> 00:57:52,480
Those guys were training with Greg Jackson. Some guys were working with Matt Hughes and

549
00:57:52,480 --> 00:57:58,480
Pat Millichich gym. They were part of professional gyms. And my training up until that point has been

550
00:57:59,920 --> 00:58:06,160
primarily with this guy named Matt Torres out of Lansing, Michigan, which he was a great teacher.

551
00:58:06,160 --> 00:58:11,280
But he was around my age. He was around my age, but he'd just been in the sport for a long time.

552
00:58:11,280 --> 00:58:17,520
And he was mentored by a guy named Noe Hernandez, who fought Chuck Liddell. And they debuted

553
00:58:17,520 --> 00:58:24,160
together. So that was our way of understanding MMA. But it wasn't anywhere near where the level

554
00:58:24,160 --> 00:58:30,640
had gone since then. So when I was on the ultimate fighter show, I realized I had a skill gap.

555
00:58:30,640 --> 00:58:40,000
And Keith Jardine, along with Rich Franklin, Keith was like my coach. Keith would show me all the

556
00:58:40,000 --> 00:58:45,440
things that Greg Jackson was showing him and help me to stay out of this submission and look for this

557
00:58:45,440 --> 00:58:50,640
and do all those things. Keith was coaching me. So after him and I fought and after I won the

558
00:58:50,640 --> 00:58:58,320
ultimate fighter, Keith Jardine, being a coolest dude he is, he said, I want you to come down to

559
00:58:58,320 --> 00:59:05,360
Albuquerque and train with me. And Keith put me up. I stayed in Keith's house for the first

560
00:59:06,800 --> 00:59:12,880
probably 10 times I went to Albuquerque. And he gave me a key to his house. And I would go there

561
00:59:12,880 --> 00:59:19,600
and I would train. But it was finally my first chance to be in a professional training situation

562
00:59:19,600 --> 00:59:25,760
where everybody I trained with were not, they didn't have a vocation in anything else. They

563
00:59:26,640 --> 00:59:33,920
weren't professionals and a doctor. They were fighters. Everyone was a fighter. And that was

564
00:59:33,920 --> 00:59:39,280
my first experience with that. That was my first experience having a coach who was just totally

565
00:59:39,280 --> 00:59:47,520
an MMA coach. And it was a wild experience because the intensity in which Greg brought,

566
00:59:47,520 --> 00:59:58,560
the mindset which Greg brought ended up being that thing that put me here. And Greg made us animals.

567
00:59:58,560 --> 01:00:06,400
Greg would train us and take us to the Sandia Mountains and take us to the sand dunes and

568
01:00:06,400 --> 01:00:12,960
kick our teeth in, whoop our ass in training. And you better not cry or we're doing it again.

569
01:00:13,600 --> 01:00:19,280
You know what I'm saying? And the mindset was, hey, this is what you want to be, right? It's

570
01:00:19,280 --> 01:00:23,520
that Dana White. Yeah, you want to be a fucking fighter, huh? You want to be a fighter? Okay.

571
01:00:23,520 --> 01:00:29,520
This is what you got to do because you're not going in there to play a game. This isn't a game.

572
01:00:29,520 --> 01:00:36,480
You can get hurt. So if you're not willing to be that nail, you better be a pretty damn tough,

573
01:00:37,680 --> 01:00:40,880
I mean, if you're not willing to be that hammer, you better be a pretty damn tough nail.

574
01:00:41,440 --> 01:00:48,400
So that's what Greg did to us, man. He instilled that mindset, but that growth from one aspect

575
01:00:48,400 --> 01:00:55,200
to the other from being in Lansing, Michigan and trying to grow as an athlete to now being

576
01:00:55,200 --> 01:01:01,520
an ultimate fighter, winning and now training with the top level guys was a crazy transition.

577
01:01:03,520 --> 01:01:08,320
Well, we talked the other day on the phone in 2000, I think it was either five or six,

578
01:01:08,320 --> 01:01:15,280
I joined Shootbox. They opened one in LA and one of the athletes there was this black guy built

579
01:01:15,280 --> 01:01:20,320
like a damn superhero and that obviously ended up being AJ, Anthony Johnson. So I trained with him

580
01:01:20,320 --> 01:01:24,880
for, and when I say train with him, we were in the same room, we would do sparring, like mitts and

581
01:01:24,880 --> 01:01:32,560
stuff together. I was never ever sparring probably with him, but it was incredible to see his rise

582
01:01:32,560 --> 01:01:43,040
as well. So talk to me about when your paths crossed. Well, I knew AJ when I was training

583
01:01:43,040 --> 01:01:50,400
over at Greg Jackson's gym, but it was kind of like, hey, what's up? We'll talk to each other

584
01:01:50,400 --> 01:01:54,960
whenever we see each other, but we weren't really that close. When I left Greg Jackson's gym, where

585
01:01:54,960 --> 01:02:06,400
the whole thing happened with John in like 2009 or so, I went to South Florida to start my own

586
01:02:06,400 --> 01:02:11,120
team because like I'm done with this team bullshit, no more super teams. I want to be the best

587
01:02:11,120 --> 01:02:17,920
team around me, have my coaches pay for my trainers to come and train with me and that's it. So I

588
01:02:17,920 --> 01:02:26,000
start this gym and I'm training and I kind of jump in and already moving gym as far as like guys

589
01:02:26,000 --> 01:02:35,600
doing their own thing with Yuri Villa Ford, Danilla Villa Ford, George Santiago, Jaseous Cavacante,

590
01:02:35,600 --> 01:02:42,560
and Bigfoot and even Alir Latifi. All those guys were training at this gym called Imperial.

591
01:02:43,120 --> 01:02:47,200
And I was like, all right, this would be a good place for me to just kind of set up camp and

592
01:02:47,200 --> 01:02:53,120
bring guys in. And as camp started, because I was supposed to fight Phil Davis, I started

593
01:02:53,120 --> 01:02:58,400
bringing guys in and one of the guys I brought in was Anthony Johnson. And Anthony Johnson came

594
01:02:58,400 --> 01:03:03,600
down and you know, he was getting things set up from over there in California. So I was like,

595
01:03:03,600 --> 01:03:09,280
I'm going to let him use my car because I had an extra one. So I let him use my car and then we

596
01:03:09,280 --> 01:03:15,360
established a really good relationship. And you know, AJ was my number one training partner.

597
01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:21,520
Him and Alir Latifi were my number one training partners. And you know, back in the early days of

598
01:03:21,520 --> 01:03:28,960
Black Zillion, it was just us just getting that work in and it was very reminiscent of the old

599
01:03:28,960 --> 01:03:36,720
times back at Jackson. Because before Jackson got super populated, popular and super

600
01:03:37,920 --> 01:03:45,600
hyped up. It was a place like, we're going to come and get our work in. As the popularity came,

601
01:03:45,600 --> 01:03:50,880
it became a very intransient place that lost a little bit of the lore that it had from before.

602
01:03:50,880 --> 01:03:55,760
But here I was at Black Zillions, you know, starting up another team and it had that same

603
01:03:55,760 --> 01:04:02,720
quality, that same fertile ground that I know champions grow from. So we just all put our heads

604
01:04:02,720 --> 01:04:05,760
down and we just started training and we started grinding together.

605
01:04:08,880 --> 01:04:14,720
When MMA fighters, you know, go from A to B, usually there's multiple times where injuries

606
01:04:14,720 --> 01:04:19,120
are shelving them for, you know, three months, six months, a year, two years. When I look at

607
01:04:19,120 --> 01:04:24,480
the impact of an injury in my profession, it can be very, very difficult to get a good

608
01:04:24,480 --> 01:04:29,760
job. It can be very, very jarring for the firefighter, the police officer, because it's

609
01:04:29,760 --> 01:04:34,560
our entire identity. It's our physicality. You know, I'm a strong firefighter. I kick in doors

610
01:04:34,560 --> 01:04:39,680
and run into burning buildings. And then I'm also part of something. I have purpose. And then one

611
01:04:39,680 --> 01:04:43,600
day you're lying in a bed and your back is completely fucked up and you can't even put

612
01:04:43,600 --> 01:04:47,840
your shoes on no matter how you pick up your child. And it's, you know, mentally crushing.

613
01:04:48,560 --> 01:04:53,440
As you progress through, because I know you had multiple injuries, you know, were there any times

614
01:04:53,440 --> 01:04:58,720
where maybe some of the things we discussed early on started kind of seeing their way back when

615
01:04:59,360 --> 01:05:02,800
this physical path that you were on was being challenged?

616
01:05:04,240 --> 01:05:11,200
Yeah, you know, a lot of the things that some of the things like, for instance, you know,

617
01:05:11,200 --> 01:05:17,920
I mentioned before that being able to tap into some of the things that upset me about my dad

618
01:05:17,920 --> 01:05:26,560
as a kid was a great fuel for me because it wasn't easy growing up, you know, and I attributed to him

619
01:05:26,560 --> 01:05:34,960
not being around. So it gave me that motivation. But, you know, one thing about that pain is that

620
01:05:35,760 --> 01:05:43,520
when you really don't face it and address it the way you need to, it masks itself in different

621
01:05:43,520 --> 01:05:52,080
kind of ways that you don't really recognize and you don't really pay attention in which ways that

622
01:05:52,080 --> 01:06:00,000
it's really revealing itself. So during my rides in the sport and throughout all the success,

623
01:06:01,040 --> 01:06:10,960
I felt myself getting pulled into just the whole life of it all, you know,

624
01:06:10,960 --> 01:06:16,080
kind of getting off of my bases a bit and really losing that

625
01:06:20,640 --> 01:06:26,880
losing sight of that why, losing sight of that why in more than just a competitive nature,

626
01:06:26,880 --> 01:06:32,320
but just in life in general, you know, just from a family situation. I was married before.

627
01:06:32,320 --> 01:06:40,640
I was married to my college sweetheart and, you know, she was a great woman. She was a

628
01:06:40,640 --> 01:06:45,040
really good woman. Had my back no matter what. If you watch some of my old fights,

629
01:06:45,040 --> 01:06:50,320
you hear her screaming like crazy. They reference her all the time. She was a good woman. But,

630
01:06:50,320 --> 01:06:59,200
you know, during that time of my life, it got really hard to be in that situation, in a marriage,

631
01:06:59,200 --> 01:07:09,680
because I just wasn't right. You know, I wasn't right because those old things, those old resolve,

632
01:07:09,680 --> 01:07:17,280
unresolved feelings were there. And the resentment that I had for my father,

633
01:07:20,000 --> 01:07:32,160
it started to mimic in my life. I became what I believe my father was. You know, I ended up,

634
01:07:32,160 --> 01:07:39,360
you know, getting a divorce from my wife and, you know, we had two kids and as a result of us

635
01:07:39,360 --> 01:07:44,480
getting divorced, I was separated from the kids. So then now I'm not growing up. Now the kids are

636
01:07:44,480 --> 01:07:51,680
not growing up with me in the house. So effectively, I ended up passing that resentment

637
01:07:52,880 --> 01:08:00,080
that I had for my dad. And it's crazy because it really taught me a lesson

638
01:08:00,080 --> 01:08:08,000
that when you behold something, and you got to be careful what you hold on to,

639
01:08:08,880 --> 01:08:16,480
and you got to be careful who you criticize and the way you do it, because the resentment

640
01:08:16,480 --> 01:08:22,400
that you hold for somebody else, one day somebody might hold it for you for doing the same exact

641
01:08:22,400 --> 01:08:32,800
thing. And you may not even see that you're even doing it because you're blinded by your own

642
01:08:32,800 --> 01:08:42,240
resentment. You're blinded by your own pain. And it shows up in different ways that may be

643
01:08:42,240 --> 01:08:49,040
unrecognizable to you until the damage is already done. And then you're just like, damn it, I see.

644
01:08:49,040 --> 01:08:56,160
The whole multi-generational trauma thing, I think, is a massively under discussed element of a lot

645
01:08:56,160 --> 01:09:01,360
of the problems that we're going through. If you are able to process trauma when you're younger,

646
01:09:01,360 --> 01:09:06,800
I believe that becomes a strength. I believe that is resilience. And you're able to stop that last

647
01:09:06,800 --> 01:09:12,400
domino from falling onto your child and grandchild, etc. But this is the issue that we see a lot is,

648
01:09:12,400 --> 01:09:16,080
you know, like you said, if you don't recognize it, you know, you're not going to be able to

649
01:09:16,080 --> 01:09:20,560
see a lot is, you know, like you said, if you don't recognize it, you know, people, you can't blame

650
01:09:20,560 --> 01:09:26,160
someone for not understanding that deep down, and there's a phrase, a Mexican proverb, they try to

651
01:09:26,160 --> 01:09:30,480
bury us, they didn't know that we were seeds. So it's growing in there, you've pushed it down,

652
01:09:31,200 --> 01:09:36,640
it is going to manifest. So you have kind of one or two paths, either the child does the same thing

653
01:09:36,640 --> 01:09:43,120
as the parent, whether it's, you know, alcohol or infidelity, or whatever the thing was, or that

654
01:09:43,120 --> 01:09:47,680
there's there's some sort of growth early on, again, just by accident, by luck, that they're

655
01:09:47,680 --> 01:09:52,800
like, I'm never going to do what my father did, because I know how it feels. So you know, this is

656
01:09:52,800 --> 01:09:58,160
this is a really powerful conversation. Because now, like you said, you're not only feeling the

657
01:09:58,160 --> 01:10:03,280
kind of the resentment from your father, but now you got the shame and guilt that you feel having

658
01:10:03,280 --> 01:10:08,160
passed it on to your children. Absolutely. And that's the thing about it, that shame and guilt.

659
01:10:08,160 --> 01:10:17,840
It took me down a path of self destruction. It took me down a path of me not being proud of who I was.

660
01:10:19,200 --> 01:10:26,960
And it was a shame that I carry for the longest time. And I'll be lying if I didn't say even a

661
01:10:26,960 --> 01:10:33,680
part of me now still didn't feel that shame that that sense of failure, you know, and it's something

662
01:10:33,680 --> 01:10:40,320
that I've I've I know that I'm just going to have to live with, because there's there's no going back.

663
01:10:41,360 --> 01:10:46,960
There's there's no going back. And that's, that's the only thing that I can do. And that's the only

664
01:10:46,960 --> 01:10:52,160
reason why I'm even speaking about it, because maybe somebody at home, you know, maybe somebody

665
01:10:52,160 --> 01:10:56,720
listening to this can hear it, and not make the same mistakes. I've had friends who've

666
01:10:56,720 --> 01:11:04,640
been in situations, marital situations, and, and things have been rough for them. And I, and I,

667
01:11:04,640 --> 01:11:10,960
and I just, and I just tell them, I just tell them straight up, I tell them that, you know,

668
01:11:10,960 --> 01:11:19,440
perspective blinds you sometimes, most of the time perspective blinds you. And you got to understand

669
01:11:19,440 --> 01:11:25,360
that you feel like this now, but you may not feel like this, you know, you're not going to be able

670
01:11:25,360 --> 01:11:31,520
to make the same decisions. You may not feel like this, when it when when those when rent is due,

671
01:11:32,320 --> 01:11:42,400
and the rent. And by that is, is a ramifications of those decisions. Because it always comes due.

672
01:11:43,120 --> 01:11:49,280
And no matter if you can get away with not paying that debt, that karmic debt, one day you will have

673
01:11:49,280 --> 01:11:56,320
you want to repay it when you have the ability, right to repay it, versus when you emotionally

674
01:11:56,320 --> 01:12:01,600
broke busted and disgusted. Because then if you if you get it then if you get that, that bill,

675
01:12:02,480 --> 01:12:07,520
that receive you get it then when you have nothing left, you might put a gun in your mouth.

676
01:12:07,520 --> 01:12:10,960
And that's not to make light of suicide or anything like that. But that's just

677
01:12:10,960 --> 01:12:13,680
the reality of the situation. That's what brings people there.

678
01:12:13,680 --> 01:12:22,720
100% on that same kind of vein, you mentioned obviously about this, you know, this early life

679
01:12:22,720 --> 01:12:29,200
kind of fueling your path, you hear a lot of people that get to the pinnacle. And you not only

680
01:12:29,200 --> 01:12:32,640
knocked out Chuck Liddell, who's been on the show, too, I want to say he talked about that fire,

681
01:12:32,640 --> 01:12:39,520
if I'm not mistaken. But then you know, then you have obviously the the other side of the curve

682
01:12:39,520 --> 01:12:50,080
with Anthony Smith at the end. When you were ascending, did you feel a sense of fulfillment?

683
01:12:50,080 --> 01:12:54,160
Or was it like you hear many, many times that you kind of get to the the top of the hill,

684
01:12:54,160 --> 01:12:57,600
and you were like, Oh, I thought this was going to be it. I thought this was going to be

685
01:12:57,600 --> 01:13:01,360
happiness at the top. And there's actually a sense of unfulfillment underneath.

686
01:13:02,880 --> 01:13:09,200
Yeah, I felt the latter. I thought it was gonna be different in my mind

687
01:13:09,200 --> 01:13:15,200
when I got to the top. I thought I was gonna feel different. I thought that it would be

688
01:13:16,240 --> 01:13:22,880
a lot different than than it was when I got there. Because when I got there, what I didn't realize

689
01:13:22,880 --> 01:13:32,080
is that there's a recalibration that needs to happen. See, because I made it there,

690
01:13:32,080 --> 01:13:38,560
because of the why that I had there, that the why that I had to really force me to get there,

691
01:13:38,560 --> 01:13:43,600
right there, they're really pushing me to get there. But once I made it there, I needed to

692
01:13:44,480 --> 01:13:50,400
reconstruct my why I needed to sit down with myself and say, Okay, I'm the champion now.

693
01:13:51,920 --> 01:13:56,480
What what, why, why do I still want to do this? What do I want? You know what I'm saying? And just

694
01:13:56,480 --> 01:14:05,200
ask myself the hard questions and really get personally in touch with with my feelings on

695
01:14:05,200 --> 01:14:11,200
those things. I used to have a book that I will write things down. I used to write these, just

696
01:14:11,200 --> 01:14:15,600
just my feelings. And I write my thoughts down, I write my fears down, I write it down. But

697
01:14:15,600 --> 01:14:23,200
as I started to have more success, I just stopped having time to do those things. I stopped drawing,

698
01:14:23,200 --> 01:14:30,560
I stopped drawing, I stopped doing all those things that allow me to have, you know, some catharsis

699
01:14:30,560 --> 01:14:40,720
and work through some of, you know, some of this pain and some of this unsettledness that I had in

700
01:14:40,720 --> 01:14:53,200
me. Once I got away from that, it became hard for me to connect with myself the way I used to. And

701
01:14:53,200 --> 01:15:01,920
when I did that, fighting became hard for me. You know, at one point, it was super easy to the point

702
01:15:01,920 --> 01:15:12,560
where it was never easy in a sense where like the actual fight was easy, but to fight was an easy,

703
01:15:12,560 --> 01:15:21,920
I enjoyed it. I loved it. I dreamed about it. I watched, I was obsessed over it. You know, it

704
01:15:21,920 --> 01:15:30,480
wasn't about the violence. It wasn't about, you know, taking someone's consciousness. It wasn't

705
01:15:30,480 --> 01:15:36,800
about any of those things. It was just, I just loved it. Everything about it. I just loved the

706
01:15:36,800 --> 01:15:42,400
raw nature about it. But then as I started to get further and further away from myself,

707
01:15:43,600 --> 01:15:49,600
I became almost a little too civilized in a sense where I got away from that,

708
01:15:50,720 --> 01:15:57,040
that savagery that you need to tap into in order to be at that level.

709
01:15:57,040 --> 01:16:03,440
When I think about mental health in your world, you know, Paddy Pimmel did that very

710
01:16:04,640 --> 01:16:07,920
powerful conversation when he lost one of his friends to suicide. And obviously that wasn't

711
01:16:07,920 --> 01:16:12,880
a fighter specifically, but I had Angela Lee on, she lost her sister, Victoria, and she herself

712
01:16:12,880 --> 01:16:19,840
had actually had a suicide attempt that she survived driving into a bridge. And then you got

713
01:16:19,840 --> 01:16:23,440
Stefan Bonner, you know, and then there's the addiction side. I mean, you know, John Jones,

714
01:16:23,440 --> 01:16:29,360
for example, clearly, you know, no, no, not judging whatsoever, but there seems to be

715
01:16:29,360 --> 01:16:34,080
symptoms of some sort of addiction there, which is happening. Both of those happen in my community

716
01:16:34,080 --> 01:16:41,360
as well. When you look at this journey that you had, where were the darkest places you found

717
01:16:41,360 --> 01:16:45,840
yourself? And then let's walk through to finding psychedelics as far as the therapy.

718
01:16:45,840 --> 01:16:53,040
Oh, man, the darkest places that I found myself, you know, of course, you know,

719
01:16:53,040 --> 01:16:57,840
of course I did drugs, you know, I did those drugs. I never really did like coke or nothing

720
01:16:57,840 --> 01:17:05,360
like that, but I would do like party drugs and, you know, the kind of stuff that and lots and lots

721
01:17:05,360 --> 01:17:18,480
of drinking, you know, womenizing to the, yeah, womenizing and just really not being considerate.

722
01:17:19,920 --> 01:17:29,120
And, you know, those were my darkest, just being super selfish and just getting to the point where

723
01:17:29,120 --> 01:17:37,120
I became so self-absorbed that it was hard for me to even see it, even realize that I was that

724
01:17:37,120 --> 01:17:49,760
self-absorbed until, you know, you have that downfall, right? I lost, first it was a series

725
01:17:49,760 --> 01:17:57,320
of bad things and it was like, I broke a mirror and I had, you know, a

726
01:17:57,320 --> 01:18:07,600
rain of seven years of bad luck. You know, I blew my ACL out one year in 2014 and then 2015,

727
01:18:07,600 --> 01:18:14,240
re-injured the same knee, blew the ACL out. That was a graft and had to get another graft. And then

728
01:18:14,240 --> 01:18:23,840
when I came back, I lost, you know, a fight to Ryan Bader. And I'm like, shit, I know I'm better

729
01:18:23,840 --> 01:18:30,640
than Ryan Bader. And then I lost to Glover Tashir and then I dropped down weight class and then

730
01:18:31,120 --> 01:18:40,560
I lost to Dan Kelly and then I lost to Sam Alvey and I lost to Anthony Smith. And it was like,

731
01:18:40,560 --> 01:18:51,440
I just kept losing. And every single time that I lost, it was just more of a boom, boom, boom. And

732
01:18:51,440 --> 01:19:02,960
it was more of unveiling because people treat you different, you know? And that to me was a hard

733
01:19:02,960 --> 01:19:08,640
adjustment because they were like, oh my God, you know, they used to treat me so different. And the

734
01:19:08,640 --> 01:19:16,320
different, the way that people treated me, it hurt. It hurt. And it's nothing that people were

735
01:19:16,320 --> 01:19:23,680
doing, you know, people were just peopling, you know? And it's just the flow of life, you know?

736
01:19:23,680 --> 01:19:30,400
It's just the flow of life. And, you know, sometimes you're it and sometimes you're not it.

737
01:19:30,400 --> 01:19:36,960
And when that spotlight moved and that's the thing about it, like when you got that spotlight on you,

738
01:19:36,960 --> 01:19:44,240
no one owns a spotlight. It's always in motion, always in motion. And the only thing you can do

739
01:19:44,240 --> 01:19:53,920
is when you got the spotlight, it's just shine as bright as you can and just embrace it and do right

740
01:19:53,920 --> 01:20:03,760
by it. Don't, you know what I'm saying? Do right by it because when it goes, it goes. And you got

741
01:20:03,760 --> 01:20:12,080
to be okay with that. And I had a hard time adjusting to that, but I was able to find my way.

742
01:20:14,080 --> 01:20:17,360
So walk me through then how you found the toad.

743
01:20:18,400 --> 01:20:25,920
So I just lost my last fight with Anthony Johnson. And I kind of felt like

744
01:20:25,920 --> 01:20:32,000
the last few years of me competing, something was happening inside of me. Something was happening.

745
01:20:32,000 --> 01:20:37,600
It's like some kind of internal revolution that was happening, like all the things that I've done

746
01:20:37,600 --> 01:20:45,040
in my past that I wasn't so proud of. And, you know, the relationship with my ex-wife and

747
01:20:45,840 --> 01:20:51,840
the relationship with my kids and how things were. And that way it started to hit me.

748
01:20:51,840 --> 01:21:04,480
And I started to feel a way that I just never really anticipated. And I remember like making a post

749
01:21:05,440 --> 01:21:14,320
on IG and it was like, it was like a, just it was, it was a video. I don't know if you've ever seen

750
01:21:14,320 --> 01:21:20,400
this called I Pet Goat. And it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like,

751
01:21:20,400 --> 01:21:29,520
go and it's like that. It's something on YouTube. But I posted that on my IG, on my platform.

752
01:21:29,520 --> 01:21:37,520
And my boy was like, yo, you all right? You know, and he's, and I was like, yeah, he says, you know

753
01:21:37,520 --> 01:21:42,960
what? I know what you need, man. I know what you need. And he told me about the toad and I'm just

754
01:21:42,960 --> 01:21:49,280
like, okay. And I just kind of kept it in my back pocket. And then I went and fought Anthony Smith.

755
01:21:49,280 --> 01:21:55,120
And after I lost that fight, got knocked out in like 30 seconds, I'm just like, damn, you know,

756
01:21:56,240 --> 01:22:03,040
I was feeling crushed, crushed inside. And I just didn't know what I was going to do because

757
01:22:03,040 --> 01:22:10,160
I was a full fighter. Like if I can't fight, then what? Then I'd rather be dead. Like I got to fight.

758
01:22:10,160 --> 01:22:22,080
It was just who I am. I got to fight. And when that happened, I spoke to my guy, Dale Jolly,

759
01:22:22,640 --> 01:22:28,880
one of my best friends. He says, are you ready to go on that trip? And I was like, yeah, I'm ready.

760
01:22:29,440 --> 01:22:35,920
So there was a ceremony planned already. And I ended up going there. It was I fought Anthony,

761
01:22:35,920 --> 01:22:46,960
like June 6th and then June 23rd or 25th or so, June 25th, we were out there in Colorado.

762
01:22:47,760 --> 01:23:00,320
And I had my toad experience and it was life changing. It was a chance for me to wake up

763
01:23:00,320 --> 01:23:05,600
and really start to put things in perspective. And when I think about my toad experience,

764
01:23:05,600 --> 01:23:12,800
I just think about, you know, I feel like I woke up in the middle of my life. Like I've been dreaming

765
01:23:12,800 --> 01:23:21,600
all up until this point. And then when I had that experience, it was just so raw and so visceral that

766
01:23:21,600 --> 01:23:33,040
I was like, oh, so this is what this is. Now I remember. Because it was more of a remembering.

767
01:23:34,000 --> 01:23:42,240
Do you remember not who you are, but what you are? Everybody wants to find out who I am, who I am,

768
01:23:42,240 --> 01:23:51,600
who I am. But the who I am is all defined within this societal matrix that we have going on,

769
01:23:52,160 --> 01:23:59,680
which has a bunch of other things that you can't take with you. And most of the things in this

770
01:23:59,680 --> 01:24:06,640
societal matrix, it's everything is based in materialism. Everything is based in this material

771
01:24:06,640 --> 01:24:12,960
understanding of existence and not the true existence in which we emanate from, which is

772
01:24:12,960 --> 01:24:23,600
consciousness. And we emanate from this, from a totally different experience versus what society

773
01:24:24,480 --> 01:24:31,600
gets us to focus on, the material aspect. From the moment we wake up, the world does not exist

774
01:24:31,600 --> 01:24:39,520
unless James opens his eyes. Because it's a relative thing. The world does not exist if when

775
01:24:39,520 --> 01:24:48,160
I wake up and I'm not making sense of the things that are in front of me, it doesn't exist. So

776
01:24:48,880 --> 01:24:57,200
consciousness is supreme. And once you start to realize that we're struggling in this world,

777
01:24:57,200 --> 01:25:05,040
because we're trying to solve what is a conscious problems through material means, it'll never work.

778
01:25:07,920 --> 01:25:15,520
I know people call 5-MeO-DMT the God molecule. And the way you've described what I am versus

779
01:25:15,520 --> 01:25:20,160
who I am, when I think of, for example, the documentary, The Weight of Gold, you've got all

780
01:25:20,160 --> 01:25:25,840
these high level athletes and they're on the same level. And you're talking about the weight of

781
01:25:25,840 --> 01:25:30,960
athletes and they're on the podium in the Olympics or the world champion, whatever it is.

782
01:25:31,520 --> 01:25:35,680
But then one day they're not, whether they've aged out, whether they then start losing as you were

783
01:25:35,680 --> 01:25:40,080
talking about. And it's no different than the firefighter. Whether we get hurt, whether we get

784
01:25:40,080 --> 01:25:46,480
fired, whether we retire, if you have just seen yourself as a firefighter, that's who I am. I'm a

785
01:25:46,480 --> 01:25:52,320
firefighter, but you're not. You're a person who then has to make the decision and that's what you

786
01:25:52,320 --> 01:25:58,000
do. And it's a beautiful calling. But the moment you get lost in that, that becomes your identity.

787
01:25:58,000 --> 01:26:04,240
Now that's taken away from you, that can be crushing the people. What did your Toad experience

788
01:26:04,240 --> 01:26:12,640
do to the identity piece? Rashad Evans is a world champion UFC MMA fighter versus who you actually are.

789
01:26:12,640 --> 01:26:25,760
It smashed it. It showed me that I was nothing, that I was no thing,

790
01:26:29,440 --> 01:26:36,480
but I was everything. And that this experience that I'm having,

791
01:26:36,480 --> 01:26:42,000
because when we talk about this, it's the difference between tapping into the ego

792
01:26:42,640 --> 01:26:53,440
and then tap it into the beyond conscious aspect of yourself. This higher self. And

793
01:26:54,800 --> 01:27:03,520
the dance between your higher self and your ego is one where you're not just a person,

794
01:27:03,520 --> 01:27:12,880
and your ego is one where the ego really wants to hold the floor. When I say ego,

795
01:27:14,400 --> 01:27:24,560
the ego is Rashad Evans, the name Rashad Evans, the story Rashad Evans, this experience.

796
01:27:24,560 --> 01:27:37,280
And the higher self is more akin to the I am, the I am Rashad, the I am that goes before James.

797
01:27:37,280 --> 01:27:49,680
It's the I am, it's that conscious I am that I am that we tap into from source. So when you're in

798
01:27:49,680 --> 01:27:58,240
that position where you're going from that higher self to the egoic self, there's always that feeling

799
01:27:58,800 --> 01:28:07,840
that the egoic self has of death. And it's afraid to die. And it's afraid that it's going to be

800
01:28:07,840 --> 01:28:14,880
annihilated. But then once you get on the other side of that, you just laugh your ass off and be

801
01:28:14,880 --> 01:28:22,800
like, Oh my God, I can't believe that I was so afraid. Because I was never that I was never

802
01:28:24,480 --> 01:28:32,160
just that. I've always been so much more. And for me, it really got me to

803
01:28:32,160 --> 01:28:45,200
it really got me to just enjoy the experience. Because this experience, I do believe that it has

804
01:28:45,200 --> 01:28:56,560
a purpose. I do believe this experience is is part of this web of existence that makes up this whole

805
01:28:56,560 --> 01:29:05,760
body of existence. So I do believe it has its purpose. But I wasn't solely trying to live there

806
01:29:05,760 --> 01:29:14,480
anymore. I realized that I didn't have to solely define the who I am and feel full and just being

807
01:29:14,480 --> 01:29:20,960
that I'm Rashad Evans, a fighter and I accomplished this because that's a story. Those are things that

808
01:29:20,960 --> 01:29:29,920
I've done. Those are things that are passed and they're already done. But the part of me that I

809
01:29:29,920 --> 01:29:37,840
learned to lean into more, I would say is more in that in between of the higher self and the ego

810
01:29:37,840 --> 01:29:46,000
itself. And I and the ego self still needs to be there because I want to have this experience. I

811
01:29:46,000 --> 01:29:53,520
came here to have the experience. I came here to forget. I came here to forget just to see if I

812
01:29:53,520 --> 01:30:00,320
could remember again. And this game of hide and go seek that we play with ourselves that we don't

813
01:30:00,320 --> 01:30:09,200
really know that we're playing. It's the beauty of life. It's the thing that that makes life

814
01:30:09,200 --> 01:30:16,480
as sweet as it is. And sometimes as sad as it is. But it's that dualistic nature,

815
01:30:17,600 --> 01:30:25,120
that dualism that truly defines existence as we know it from an experiential point of view,

816
01:30:25,120 --> 01:30:32,320
from the egoic sense. But there's only one and we are it. We are it.

817
01:30:32,320 --> 01:30:40,720
I've heard several people talk about terminally ill patients that have used, I think, five year

818
01:30:40,720 --> 01:30:46,480
MAO DMT and or psilocybin and found peace, you know, in that palliative care phase,

819
01:30:46,480 --> 01:30:49,840
because obviously, I mean, I know, I'm sure I would be terrified if you were told, hey,

820
01:30:49,840 --> 01:30:55,120
you've got X amount of days left. But to be able to bring peace to someone and give them an insight

821
01:30:55,120 --> 01:31:00,400
into exactly what you've talked about. What a beautiful tool to bring into someone who

822
01:31:00,400 --> 01:31:07,840
has such a terrifying diagnosis. Absolutely. When you have that experience,

823
01:31:10,160 --> 01:31:17,040
I remember that when I first took that hit of five in the.

824
01:31:19,200 --> 01:31:29,040
As soon as I exhaled it, the minute I exhaled it, I was gone. I was no longer here. I was no longer

825
01:31:29,040 --> 01:31:38,240
human. And the first thing I thought was, oh, shit, I just killed myself. And no sooner that I felt

826
01:31:38,240 --> 01:31:48,560
that there is this knowingness. And it says to me, you've died countless times. This is what you do.

827
01:31:48,560 --> 01:31:58,800
And on that realization, because that's what it is. It's a remembering. It's a realization.

828
01:31:59,360 --> 01:32:06,720
Because all of this is written inside of you. It's written inside of all of us. But we're so

829
01:32:06,720 --> 01:32:12,640
materialistic in our world that we're taught that everything of value is outside of us. So nobody

830
01:32:12,640 --> 01:32:18,560
looks to the inside. Very few are afraid to go inside. Some people don't want to try to set the

831
01:32:18,560 --> 01:32:23,680
doubts. I don't know. I don't want to release what's inside of me. But when you go what's inside of

832
01:32:23,680 --> 01:32:33,680
you, there's a peace that's beyond comprehension. And once I was in that space where it was like

833
01:32:33,680 --> 01:32:44,000
you died countless times, there was a peace that just me just relaxing. And when I let go,

834
01:32:46,000 --> 01:32:56,640
the beauty was there. It was like I was in the palm of God's hand, like just cradled. And I knew,

835
01:32:56,640 --> 01:33:07,840
I knew not psychedelically experience is a knowingness that's beyond truth. That is the

836
01:33:07,840 --> 01:33:17,760
very essence of truth. It was absolute truth. Absolute truth is written in the depth of our

837
01:33:17,760 --> 01:33:27,120
soul. And when you tap into that, there's nothing that you fear in life.

838
01:33:28,800 --> 01:33:33,200
Amazing. One more area we're going to psychedelics and we're going to functional mushrooms.

839
01:33:33,920 --> 01:33:40,160
I've heard a lot of extremely promising things about psilocybin and TBIs as far as actually

840
01:33:40,160 --> 01:33:44,560
starting to repair the damage. Now, you know, anyone in a profession where you're getting

841
01:33:44,560 --> 01:33:48,240
punched in the head a lot, kicked in the head a lot. I mean, I was a weekend warrior and I've got

842
01:33:48,240 --> 01:33:53,120
dislocated jaws and broken noses. So I can't imagine what's going on in your head. Have you

843
01:33:53,120 --> 01:33:59,440
had any experience with that kind of therapy and the neurological cost of being a fighter?

844
01:34:00,800 --> 01:34:09,680
Absolutely. I had a TBI injury that was kind of brought to my attention when I was trying to

845
01:34:09,680 --> 01:34:14,720
fight in New York State. I was going to fight Tim Kennedy had a great training camp showed up to

846
01:34:15,040 --> 01:34:21,600
New York to fight first fight in New York. And I go there and they say, Hey, you're not going to

847
01:34:21,600 --> 01:34:25,360
be able to fight on this card. I'm like, what do you mean? This is well, something came back on your

848
01:34:25,360 --> 01:34:32,000
MRI. And you have something going on in your frontal lobe. And you need to go see a doctor to see

849
01:34:32,000 --> 01:34:38,880
what it is. But as of right now, you can't fight in New York and you honestly may never fight again.

850
01:34:39,680 --> 01:34:45,920
And, you know, you talk about your roller coaster going from high to lows and, and just,

851
01:34:46,720 --> 01:34:56,880
you know, your shocks. I was distraught and, you know, I wanted to figure things out. So I did a

852
01:34:56,880 --> 01:35:04,400
bunch of different tests to try to figure out what was going on and what I needed to do in order to

853
01:35:06,960 --> 01:35:15,760
get myself cleared to fight again. And I even went to go see the guy from, from, from concussion in

854
01:35:15,760 --> 01:35:22,400
Pittsburgh. And he looked at my results and he, you know, he's like, okay, well, you know, from

855
01:35:22,400 --> 01:35:29,760
what I see, you had a bit of this from your first NRI that you ever done with the UFC. And this is

856
01:35:29,760 --> 01:35:36,720
the one we have right now, which shows that it's gotten a little, a little, a little worse, but,

857
01:35:37,600 --> 01:35:42,320
you know, it's, it's on par with what you had before. So I was able to get the clearance and

858
01:35:42,320 --> 01:35:50,240
continue to fight. But when I was retiring, that was lingering in my mind. And I was like,

859
01:35:50,240 --> 01:35:55,040
that was lingering in my mind. Like, what am I going to do? That was part of my fear because I

860
01:35:55,040 --> 01:36:02,640
was an analyst and I still am an analyst. And I'm like, dude, what am I going to do? So I ran into

861
01:36:02,640 --> 01:36:12,640
an interview of Joe Rogan and Paul Stamets. And Paul Stamets was talking about this protocol that

862
01:36:12,640 --> 01:36:22,560
he does with psilocybin, niacin, and lion's mane. And, you know, this trifecta, and he was talking

863
01:36:22,560 --> 01:36:27,760
about what it does and how it helps people with concussions. So I'm like, all right, shoot, you

864
01:36:27,760 --> 01:36:36,800
know, I'll give it a try. And I started to give it a try. And I couldn't even begin to tell you,

865
01:36:36,800 --> 01:36:51,040
like, how effective this was for me, that it truly started a revolution inside of me. Like I started

866
01:36:51,040 --> 01:37:00,320
to not only start to feel better from a neurological standpoint, not even from a, even from a

867
01:37:00,320 --> 01:37:09,280
cognitive standpoint, but spiritually, and also my diet and everything, it even, and even

868
01:37:11,040 --> 01:37:21,520
my whole morality and that whole being a better person, you know, I stopped doing the things that

869
01:37:23,200 --> 01:37:28,640
didn't serve me anymore. All the things that didn't serve me. And this is with the mushrooms

870
01:37:28,640 --> 01:37:36,240
and that toad, all of that, everything that didn't serve me, it just fell away. I lost

871
01:37:36,240 --> 01:37:42,640
interest in them. Like a kid lose interest in toys. You know, I just lost interest in it.

872
01:37:42,640 --> 01:37:51,520
Nothing judgmental. It was just like, all right, I'm done with that. And it was quite amazing.

873
01:37:51,520 --> 01:37:59,120
But those mushrooms started to heal me in ways that I didn't know I needed to be healed.

874
01:38:00,560 --> 01:38:07,840
And having that experience of what those mushrooms did for me, I became a blabbermouth. I'm like,

875
01:38:07,840 --> 01:38:12,960
dude, I gotta tell everybody about this, man. You know, everybody's got to experience this.

876
01:38:13,520 --> 01:38:18,480
But, you know, it takes some time, you know, I feel like now people are starting to

877
01:38:18,480 --> 01:38:24,160
really want to explore and starting to really want to take their own, take their health into

878
01:38:24,160 --> 01:38:29,760
their own hands and start to look at more holistic ways to change the body. Because with these

879
01:38:29,760 --> 01:38:35,200
mushrooms, they're adaptogens. So what they do is they bring your body into balance. And all your

880
01:38:35,200 --> 01:38:42,240
body needs to do is be in balance to heal itself, because your body is absolutely miraculous. It's

881
01:38:42,240 --> 01:38:52,000
amazing. What God done creating our body is, is a thing of amazing artwork, and just of precision

882
01:38:52,000 --> 01:38:57,040
and all every kind of amazing accolades you could throw at it. And it has this ability to heal

883
01:38:57,040 --> 01:39:05,040
itself. But it's got to be brought into balance first. And these mushrooms, they bring your body

884
01:39:05,040 --> 01:39:10,160
into balance. And it's been, you know, a journey ever since, but I'm still on it.

885
01:39:12,160 --> 01:39:14,480
The psilocybin portion, is that a micro dose?

886
01:39:15,280 --> 01:39:23,200
Yeah, so it's a micro dose like is a like 0.5 that I do. And here's here's what I do. I do like

887
01:39:23,200 --> 01:39:28,960
0.5 for like four days, and then I have like three days off. Or then sometimes I'll switch it up and

888
01:39:28,960 --> 01:39:34,960
do it like every other day. So that way I'm getting a little bit of a better body. And

889
01:39:34,960 --> 01:39:41,600
a little something every other day, but you have to give yourself a chance to allow your your

890
01:39:41,600 --> 01:39:49,120
receptor, your receptors to kind of flush themselves out. So that way you just don't become,

891
01:39:49,760 --> 01:39:59,520
you know, too used to it, right. And I also do have a protocol where if I have a hard sparring day,

892
01:39:59,520 --> 01:40:04,800
and I got hit in the head a bit, what I would do, or even a hard training day, what I'll do is I'll

893
01:40:04,800 --> 01:40:13,920
take like a little like I'll take like two grams to like 2.5 grams. And I'll do that right before

894
01:40:13,920 --> 01:40:19,920
like probably about two hours before I go to sleep. And some people can't sleep on mushrooms, but for

895
01:40:19,920 --> 01:40:26,880
me, I just go right to sleep. But what I find that does happen is the next day when I wake up, my

896
01:40:26,880 --> 01:40:36,480
mind is clear. My body is feeling amazing. The inflammation has gone down. And it's been one of

897
01:40:36,480 --> 01:40:40,960
those things that I've been able to do that's helped me to recover because when it comes down

898
01:40:40,960 --> 01:40:48,480
to it, competing in a sport where you're constantly tested, it gets hard to take anything that

899
01:40:49,520 --> 01:40:52,800
that can help you recover because everything that works is illegal.

900
01:40:52,800 --> 01:40:56,480
Yeah, which again, we won't dive into the prohibition laws, but I talk about that a lot.

901
01:40:57,360 --> 01:41:01,040
We got people that come home from fighting for this country that have to go overseas to get the

902
01:41:01,040 --> 01:41:05,520
therapy for you know, what they brought home. So yeah, and again, I think that's inspiring to

903
01:41:05,520 --> 01:41:10,400
hear from the TBI side, but also for you know, the fire service and a lot of the other shift

904
01:41:10,400 --> 01:41:14,960
working professionals, even your dad, ironically, it's a shame, maybe that would have helped him

905
01:41:14,960 --> 01:41:19,840
back then in some way, shape or form, but absolutely a neurological damage from shock

906
01:41:19,840 --> 01:41:25,120
work mimics TBI is a breakdown of the myelin sheath. So I would argue that that same protocol

907
01:41:25,120 --> 01:41:31,600
would probably be great for our first responders to absolutely and just in even just, you know,

908
01:41:31,600 --> 01:41:36,080
first responders, I used to work in a hospital, and I used to be a security guard in a hospital.

909
01:41:36,800 --> 01:41:42,240
And it's quite the traumatic experience you deal with death like it's nobody's business. And

910
01:41:42,240 --> 01:41:46,640
sometimes when you're dealing with death, the way you deal with death, you become a little bit

911
01:41:46,640 --> 01:41:53,600
cynical, just because you see it so much, you know, so, you know, and everybody and everybody

912
01:41:53,600 --> 01:41:57,520
handles death differently, right? I might have a guy that was like, oh, you never believe what

913
01:41:57,520 --> 01:42:05,200
this num nuts did. And you know, just was just kind of very, I don't know, just like, yeah,

914
01:42:05,200 --> 01:42:11,600
very callous, very callous about about the way you're talking about the dead. So that

915
01:42:11,600 --> 01:42:16,640
trauma is real. And that the pressure that comes along with that is real as well, too.

916
01:42:16,640 --> 01:42:27,280
And when you are on a good program and a good routine, it starts to dissipate. Because what

917
01:42:27,280 --> 01:42:36,960
the mushrooms they do is they light up your brain, and they get your brain out of its normal

918
01:42:36,960 --> 01:42:43,760
thinking pattern. Because because we're creatures of habit, we, we tend to do the same things. And

919
01:42:44,320 --> 01:42:50,480
you know, we because we do the same things, our brain is used to thinking a certain kind of way.

920
01:42:50,960 --> 01:42:57,120
And after a while, that's the way your brain function is the way it moves. And that's how

921
01:42:57,120 --> 01:43:01,760
it lights up. And this would does that. And if you don't use it, you lose it, right? So

922
01:43:01,760 --> 01:43:07,360
you're not you're not sharp in certain areas where you could be sharp at. But when you start taking

923
01:43:07,360 --> 01:43:13,440
these mushrooms, it lights your brain up like a Christmas tree, all over the place. And what ends

924
01:43:13,440 --> 01:43:18,480
up happening is you have to build new neural pathways and, you know, all kinds of things to

925
01:43:18,480 --> 01:43:25,360
really get that signal in their brain. And you have neurogenesis, you have neuroplasticity,

926
01:43:25,360 --> 01:43:31,040
that ended up happening as a result. So you start having this, you know, this, this, this,

927
01:43:31,040 --> 01:43:39,120
having this amazing ability to get perspective. And perspective is one of the key things in life

928
01:43:39,120 --> 01:43:45,840
that helps us to, to move forward and to make great decisions. Because the only thing that

929
01:43:45,840 --> 01:43:51,520
normally can give you perspective is time. But when you're able to use these modalities,

930
01:43:51,520 --> 01:43:56,000
it kind of gives you a shortcut because it gets your brain firing in different kind of ways. And

931
01:43:56,000 --> 01:44:03,440
as a result, you get different perspectives. Well, you mentioned adaptogens, that was kind

932
01:44:03,440 --> 01:44:08,000
enough for you guys collectively were kind enough to send me one of your kind of intro boxes. So

933
01:44:08,000 --> 01:44:14,960
I've been taking the umbo tincture. And then I literally just did jujitsu this morning when I

934
01:44:14,960 --> 01:44:19,040
drove home, I had one of your recovery drinks, and then I've been snacking on the bars at night,

935
01:44:19,040 --> 01:44:23,280
if I'm being completely honest, too. So talk to me about that. You mentioned lions,

936
01:44:23,280 --> 01:44:29,200
Maine and some of the other nutritional mushrooms. What was that journey for you using them yourself?

937
01:44:29,200 --> 01:44:34,960
What were you seeing within yourself? And then what made you kind of join, join with two other

938
01:44:34,960 --> 01:44:43,520
men and create umbo? So when I was doing that, that trifecta with the psilocybin, the lions,

939
01:44:43,520 --> 01:44:50,640
mania, the nice and I started to really, you know, learn more about the mushrooms in general.

940
01:44:50,640 --> 01:44:55,600
And at first I'm like, okay, so aside and so aside and so aside, but then I started to

941
01:44:56,800 --> 01:45:01,600
really go down the road of just all of the functional mushrooms and realizing that

942
01:45:02,880 --> 01:45:08,960
it's the whole mushroom, as Jake calls it, queendom is the whole mushroom queendom that

943
01:45:08,960 --> 01:45:14,640
that is just full with all kinds of medicinal benefits for the body. So I started with the

944
01:45:14,640 --> 01:45:24,160
cordyceps and with the turkey tail and and with the reishi and the lions, Maine, all of it, it was,

945
01:45:24,160 --> 01:45:31,200
it started to rival the results that I started to have with just the psilocybin. You know, it was,

946
01:45:31,200 --> 01:45:38,320
it was very powerful result that lions, Maine, man, it was bringing back memories that I thought I

947
01:45:38,320 --> 01:45:47,200
forgot about. And it was just giving me so much more than I expect from a cognitive level that I

948
01:45:47,200 --> 01:45:53,040
was really dumbfounded. And then even the cordyceps too, you know, the cordyceps for me was one of the

949
01:45:53,040 --> 01:46:00,320
ones that it made me feel like I just couldn't get tired. Like I would be going with guys who

950
01:46:00,320 --> 01:46:06,160
are in the gym training consistently day in and day out. And I would just, you know, going there

951
01:46:06,160 --> 01:46:11,120
every once in a while, I'm on some moonlight and stuff. And I would be able to hang with these guys

952
01:46:11,120 --> 01:46:16,400
and be able to push at a high level. And I wasn't getting tired and I had gas and, and I'm like,

953
01:46:16,400 --> 01:46:21,280
dude, this is crazy. So, you know, I started doing my research and I started to understand just the

954
01:46:21,280 --> 01:46:26,400
power of these mushrooms. And, you know, around this time where I'm really digging my teeth into

955
01:46:26,400 --> 01:46:32,560
the mushroom and getting the results of such, Del introduced me to Jake, and Jake was kind of going

956
01:46:32,560 --> 01:46:37,200
through his own experience as well and his own transition out of the line, right now in the sport

957
01:46:37,200 --> 01:46:44,720
and finding himself and we gave him some mushrooms and, you know, it was, it was quite,

958
01:46:46,480 --> 01:46:55,120
it was quite one of the exciting to see Jake start to get the mushroom. We gave him a box of

959
01:46:55,120 --> 01:47:02,080
Lifecycle. Lifecycle is another brand of mushrooms, great company as well. We gave him some Lifecycle

960
01:47:02,080 --> 01:47:09,440
mushrooms and, you know, he started using them and he started to have results too. And then,

961
01:47:09,440 --> 01:47:14,720
you know, we all start, we're singing the praises of mushrooms. And, you know, as a pandemic started

962
01:47:14,720 --> 01:47:19,840
to approach me, like even before, you know, Del's like, man, we need, we need to find a way to

963
01:47:19,840 --> 01:47:26,720
really give back and find a way to package this in a way that, that people can get some of the

964
01:47:26,720 --> 01:47:32,800
results that we have. So we decided to start a function mushroom company called Umbo. And the

965
01:47:32,800 --> 01:47:38,720
Umbo, we call the Umbo because Umbo is just that little cap on top of that mushroom and that's

966
01:47:38,720 --> 01:47:45,280
called the Umbo. And we came up with this company and we said, you know, what we want to do, we want

967
01:47:45,280 --> 01:47:49,760
to do things a little bit differently. We want to, we want to do things from the perspective of an

968
01:47:49,760 --> 01:47:55,040
athlete because all the other brands, they, you know, they had their way of doing it, but we wanted

969
01:47:55,040 --> 01:48:01,520
to put our own twist on it that differentiates us from everybody else and really lean into what we

970
01:48:01,520 --> 01:48:07,200
are, which is athletes. You know, I need, I love the effects of mushroom, but I want to hit, you

971
01:48:07,200 --> 01:48:13,120
know, I want to hit at that level. I need to hit it as an athlete. And that's what we did. We

972
01:48:13,120 --> 01:48:19,040
formulated our mushrooms and we came up with a great brand. And, you know, here we are, I think

973
01:48:19,040 --> 01:48:26,800
almost four years later, just pushing away and really just diving into it at another level and

974
01:48:27,840 --> 01:48:36,000
still passionate, but it's great to see that everyone is starting to, to catch up. You know,

975
01:48:36,000 --> 01:48:41,920
people are starting to really be like, Oh, okay. The mushrooms are, are more than we ever thought.

976
01:48:41,920 --> 01:48:47,840
You know, it's starting to feel like now how people felt about cannabis before the whole CBD

977
01:48:47,840 --> 01:48:53,520
craze and, and before everything was legalized in the cannabis world. And now people are starting

978
01:48:53,520 --> 01:48:58,960
to understand that in mushrooms that, wow, these mushrooms are powerful and these mushrooms can do

979
01:48:58,960 --> 01:49:03,120
quite a bit. But when you look at Chinese medicine and when you look at our uvated medicine, you see

980
01:49:03,120 --> 01:49:10,240
the fact that they've been using this for thousands of years and they have protocols that they use

981
01:49:10,240 --> 01:49:15,760
behind these mushrooms and there's mushrooms that they use for all kinds of diseases. And

982
01:49:15,760 --> 01:49:23,840
then I'm not going to make any claim with, with that, uh, with, with what they treat, but

983
01:49:24,480 --> 01:49:28,720
people just have to research it for themselves because of the way things are, you know, um,

984
01:49:29,680 --> 01:49:36,000
there are no claims that we can make, but when you look and you, and you start to, uh,

985
01:49:37,360 --> 01:49:43,760
look into what mushrooms do for you, you will realize that everybody needs to be taking

986
01:49:43,760 --> 01:49:50,240
mushrooms, especially when you realize as we get older and what we call old age is nothing more

987
01:49:50,240 --> 01:50:03,120
than neuropathy and, and, and neuropathy can be, I guess, put off a bit or, or treat it a little

988
01:50:03,120 --> 01:50:08,880
bit better if you're under a program that really treats your neurological body like mushrooms have

989
01:50:08,880 --> 01:50:16,480
the ability to do. Well, I can testify because I'm pretty good at self-experimenting. Like I just

990
01:50:16,480 --> 01:50:23,360
started using a company called Transcend about five months ago now, and that's a peptide and DHEA and

991
01:50:23,360 --> 01:50:28,720
some of these things. And with them, actually it was, it was over prescribed and I got rid of some

992
01:50:28,720 --> 01:50:32,320
of them and then found that beautiful happy medium. Like, okay, I can totally feel this

993
01:50:32,320 --> 01:50:38,080
CBD when I got into it, which was probably six, seven years ago now. Um, I was amazed again,

994
01:50:38,080 --> 01:50:42,320
seeing the results, but with Umbo, what's interesting, I just finished writing a book.

995
01:50:42,320 --> 01:50:49,280
So I literally to, to, to get it finished, I sat down for three months. Um, didn't even,

996
01:50:49,280 --> 01:50:54,320
I barely even saw the inside of a gym at the jujitsu just once a week for the last two months

997
01:50:54,320 --> 01:51:00,160
or so. And then last week was game time. Again, I gave my script to the editor. I'm like, right

998
01:51:00,160 --> 01:51:04,960
now I've got to get back in the gym and get back on the mat. So in the first week, I did four

999
01:51:04,960 --> 01:51:11,040
strength and conditioning days and three jujitsu days. Now, 50 years old, I'm expecting to be dying

1000
01:51:11,040 --> 01:51:16,720
from muscle soreness. But you're 50 years old. Oh man, you looking good, man. Damn. Okay.

1001
01:51:18,240 --> 01:51:23,680
Oh, I look terrible two weeks ago. No, but it's true. But so I'm, you know, being an athlete my

1002
01:51:23,680 --> 01:51:28,480
whole life, I know, you know, Dom's and all these things, I know how I should feel. And I didn't.

1003
01:51:28,480 --> 01:51:33,440
And I was like, wow. And this is definitely partly due to, to that. And then understanding,

1004
01:51:33,440 --> 01:51:37,040
like you said, and I've talked about this a lot, the arrogance of modern medicine.

1005
01:51:37,600 --> 01:51:41,760
And what I'm talking about is the kind of chronic disease management, not the amazing innovators

1006
01:51:41,760 --> 01:51:47,680
that are in modern medicine, but this downplaying of holistic and functional medicine, chiropractic

1007
01:51:47,680 --> 01:51:52,080
and, you know, Chinese medicine and herbs and things like that. I think we've gone full circle

1008
01:51:52,080 --> 01:51:56,000
and we've gone, you know, trauma medicine. You're amazing. You know, some of these other modern

1009
01:51:56,000 --> 01:52:01,440
things we need you. Thank you. Come on in. But we're actually going back to, oh, you can leave

1010
01:52:01,440 --> 01:52:06,800
pain just by getting a chiropractic adjustment and then figuring out where the imbalances are

1011
01:52:06,800 --> 01:52:11,840
and doing foundation training that you don't need painkillers and, you know, muscle relaxers. And I

1012
01:52:11,840 --> 01:52:15,600
feel like this is where this revolution is now with mushrooms as well. It's just like you said,

1013
01:52:15,600 --> 01:52:21,360
we're finally turning around to our ancestors and going, okay, sorry, we were distracted for a few

1014
01:52:21,360 --> 01:52:26,000
decades by these assholes. Can you teach us again about, you know, this medicine that you've been

1015
01:52:26,000 --> 01:52:33,600
using for thousands of years? Absolutely. You know, there is a, I guess, a realization

1016
01:52:34,240 --> 01:52:41,840
once you start to really look at allopathic medicine and you start to pay attention to,

1017
01:52:41,840 --> 01:52:48,480
to, to, to just the medicine that, that they're putting into people's bodies.

1018
01:52:48,480 --> 01:52:56,080
And you start to realize that these, these medicines, they're not healing people,

1019
01:52:56,720 --> 01:53:04,960
you know, they're, they're, they're managing a symptom, a disease is just management,

1020
01:53:04,960 --> 01:53:09,760
but it's nothing that's going to ever cure that person. And you start to realize,

1021
01:53:09,760 --> 01:53:14,400
I've seen people who start off with just, I'm going to get, you know, I'm going to take this

1022
01:53:14,400 --> 01:53:20,400
because I have high blood pressure. The next thing you know, they are on like eight different

1023
01:53:20,400 --> 01:53:26,240
medications and it's just, you know, once you get on one, you need a medication for the medication,

1024
01:53:26,240 --> 01:53:30,240
then the medication is affects this part of your body. Then you need a medication for what it

1025
01:53:30,240 --> 01:53:34,800
affected in that part of your body. And then now that's setting off something. So it's just such a

1026
01:53:34,800 --> 01:53:42,720
chain reaction of all these different debilitating, sometimes problems that you have with your body

1027
01:53:42,720 --> 01:53:49,520
that comes by way of, by way of going down the way of allopathic medicine. And the sad thing about

1028
01:53:49,520 --> 01:53:58,160
it is the fact that these medicines people take for years, for decades, and don't realize that

1029
01:53:59,280 --> 01:54:07,920
it may be the medicine that's keeping them sick. It's, it's a hard discussion and it's one that

1030
01:54:07,920 --> 01:54:14,720
many people would debate you on, but those that have had the experience and those that have woken

1031
01:54:14,720 --> 01:54:23,200
up and decided to take medicine into their own hands, they see it for what it is. And like you

1032
01:54:23,200 --> 01:54:27,440
said, there's no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water because, you know, trauma based

1033
01:54:27,440 --> 01:54:35,840
medicine is, is, is very good, but, you know, pain management and everything that comes along in

1034
01:54:35,840 --> 01:54:42,080
between that is, is something that definitely people need to take a second look at and really

1035
01:54:42,080 --> 01:54:48,880
find a way to hear the body in a way which, which stems from bringing their body in balance.

1036
01:54:50,080 --> 01:54:54,480
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. All right, one more area before we close out. I want to make sure that

1037
01:54:54,480 --> 01:55:01,920
we fit this in as well. I think one of the most powerful things in my profession is when people

1038
01:55:01,920 --> 01:55:05,760
find other things that they're passionate about. And I always encourage people that are still

1039
01:55:05,760 --> 01:55:11,840
working as a firefighter or a police officer, for example, to start some sort of entrepreneurial

1040
01:55:12,400 --> 01:55:17,360
venture. It could be just mowing lawns, it could be painting or playing a guitar or whatever it is,

1041
01:55:17,360 --> 01:55:23,200
but having that next thing. So your transition is going to be more, more fluid and you're not

1042
01:55:23,200 --> 01:55:28,080
going to just be jarred by that identity piece. So Umbo is obviously one of the companies you're

1043
01:55:28,080 --> 01:55:33,360
part of. Talk to me about the vending machine industry. Yeah, so, you know, along with that,

1044
01:55:33,360 --> 01:55:40,240
I also do broadcasting, but I got, I got into a, unattended retail space. You know, I got eight

1045
01:55:40,240 --> 01:55:47,120
machines and I'm, you know, going to have a fleet. I want to have maybe grow to maybe have like a few

1046
01:55:47,120 --> 01:55:55,040
hundred eventually one day. But, you know, what I find fascinating about the unattended retail space

1047
01:55:55,040 --> 01:56:01,360
is the fact that when you look at retail and you look at the brick and mortar stores and you look

1048
01:56:01,360 --> 01:56:06,960
at, you know, um, online buying and everything like that, you start realizing that there is a

1049
01:56:06,960 --> 01:56:16,640
certain trend that's happening with, with retail. And as we get further down the road with technology

1050
01:56:16,640 --> 01:56:26,160
and AI getting better, there's a face of retail that's changing. We've seen it with the online

1051
01:56:26,160 --> 01:56:31,040
market and how that's emerged and really pretty much, um, it's crushing brick and mortar,

1052
01:56:31,520 --> 01:56:39,040
it's crushing brick and mortar. Uh, there's yet another revolution as well too, which is

1053
01:56:39,040 --> 01:56:44,800
in the unattended market. Whenever you go to a store, there's more and more key, key things

1054
01:56:44,800 --> 01:56:51,120
that you can do. There's more and more kiosk, self checkout lines to the point. Now you go in most

1055
01:56:51,120 --> 01:56:56,400
places, you may be lucky to find one or two registers open with actual people on it. So we're

1056
01:56:56,400 --> 01:57:09,360
being groomed for this unattended market space. So me trying to find what, where I need to be so I

1057
01:57:09,360 --> 01:57:16,160
can find myself, uh, uh, better for the future and, uh, have a better chance at survival and just

1058
01:57:16,160 --> 01:57:25,920
being able to, um, being able to be happy in life. I, uh, I ran into unattended retail and I, um,

1059
01:57:27,120 --> 01:57:32,480
it's been, it's been one of the most amazing things that I've been a part of because not only

1060
01:57:32,480 --> 01:57:37,680
do I own machines, but I'm also part of the company, which is called naturals to go, which is an

1061
01:57:37,680 --> 01:57:45,680
vending, uh, retail solutions place. And naturals to go is honestly one of, one of the best, uh,

1062
01:57:46,320 --> 01:57:52,000
things that have happened to me since I've, um, retired because, you know, there's, um,

1063
01:57:53,680 --> 01:58:01,200
there's this great team aspect and there's a great culture at naturals to go that it makes

1064
01:58:01,200 --> 01:58:08,400
diving into all the things that is unattended retail and trying to find different, uh, innovative

1065
01:58:08,400 --> 01:58:16,160
ways to expand unattended retail market, uh, and bring it in different ways is, uh, it's been fun.

1066
01:58:16,880 --> 01:58:21,120
It's been fun. So that's been one of the things that I've been working on. That's been one of

1067
01:58:21,120 --> 01:58:26,240
things that I've been transitioning and, and trying to help other people transition into,

1068
01:58:26,240 --> 01:58:32,560
because, you know, as an athlete, sometimes it's feast or famine and trying to find a way,

1069
01:58:32,560 --> 01:58:38,960
somewhere to put your money that allows you to actually grow your money instead of hoping for,

1070
01:58:38,960 --> 01:58:46,160
you know, uh, this stock to do well or do this, you know, you can actually go in an unattended

1071
01:58:46,160 --> 01:58:54,320
retail space and, and kill it because everything is going to be unattended, everything. No, no,

1072
01:58:54,320 --> 01:58:59,920
no, I mean, machines are going to do everything, but being able to be a stakeholder in that

1073
01:58:59,920 --> 01:59:08,480
unattended retail space by understanding it and, and being able to be at the forefront with these

1074
01:59:08,480 --> 01:59:14,320
great minds in the unattended retail that are re-imagining the space in different kinds of ways

1075
01:59:14,320 --> 01:59:19,920
have been an amazing experience for me. Yeah. I mean, it makes perfect sense. It really does.

1076
01:59:19,920 --> 01:59:27,120
Even I lived in Japan in 2001 and there was so many, you know, this was vending machines specifically,

1077
01:59:27,120 --> 01:59:31,680
but there was just so many places that you could buy stuff that what, even, even if you got ramen,

1078
01:59:31,680 --> 01:59:36,640
you bought tickets at a machine first and then people just hand out ramen in the kiosk, you know?

1079
01:59:36,640 --> 01:59:40,960
So, yeah, I mean, it does make a lot of sense. If people want to learn more about that, where are

1080
01:59:40,960 --> 01:59:47,520
the best places to go online? You know, you can go to, uh, nationalzago.com and you can find, um,

1081
01:59:47,520 --> 01:59:53,120
information on that. And, uh, even if you go to, if, if you go to some places, uh,

1082
01:59:54,240 --> 02:00:00,800
you know, like, um, a brokerage form where they find you franchises, you know,

1083
02:00:01,600 --> 02:00:06,400
well, they have, they have us there too as well. But I think it's just a great opportunity for

1084
02:00:06,400 --> 02:00:13,280
people to really, um, be a part of something, be a part of the change, because we're never

1085
02:00:13,280 --> 02:00:18,160
going to be able to beat the technology. We're never going to be able to beat the technology.

1086
02:00:18,160 --> 02:00:25,680
And, uh, people are always going to buy stuff. So it's, it's not so much about, because when I

1087
02:00:25,680 --> 02:00:29,280
tell people about vending machines, they're like, oh yeah, vending. And sometimes I see them like,

1088
02:00:29,280 --> 02:00:37,040
kind of like, you're selling snacks, you know what I'm saying? But it's, it's snacks. Yeah. But you

1089
02:00:37,040 --> 02:00:45,200
can sell anything in a vending machine, anything. So at the end of the day, it's just, you know,

1090
02:00:45,840 --> 02:00:53,120
it's just retail. I've always said recently, not always said, I've said recently, I've watched the

1091
02:00:53,120 --> 02:00:58,560
American mall kind of disintegrate, especially the department stores. I mean, they're falling

1092
02:00:58,560 --> 02:01:04,320
left, right and center, but I think there's a beautiful opportunity for those communal spaces

1093
02:01:04,320 --> 02:01:09,280
to be replaced and not the consumption. Cause you think about the height of the American mall,

1094
02:01:09,280 --> 02:01:13,920
people were going to clothes shops and going through racks and DVDs and you know, all those

1095
02:01:13,920 --> 02:01:19,360
things, but they weren't talking to each other. Really they were consuming. So now with this kind

1096
02:01:19,360 --> 02:01:24,000
of, you know, model that we have, whether it's machines, whether it's, you know, Amazon, you can

1097
02:01:24,000 --> 02:01:29,200
get all your things there, but then now these spaces can go into the more bespoke, you know,

1098
02:01:29,200 --> 02:01:34,640
the barbershops, the breweries and you know, whatever you're into where people sit down and

1099
02:01:34,640 --> 02:01:40,080
actually communicate like the village, you know, high streets that used to be a hundred plus years

1100
02:01:40,080 --> 02:01:49,200
ago. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's something that is going to happen a lot more as we start to

1101
02:01:49,200 --> 02:01:55,360
come together. And I feel like there's this coming together of all of us. Cause I feel it.

1102
02:01:55,360 --> 02:02:00,320
I feel it. I've been there. There's more and more people asking me questions about some of the things

1103
02:02:00,320 --> 02:02:06,560
I talk about on a metaphysical level and they started to understand. I'm starting to, you know,

1104
02:02:06,560 --> 02:02:11,360
what I'm saying is starting to resonate with the deep part of them and there is this coming together.

1105
02:02:11,360 --> 02:02:16,320
So I truly believe, you know, exactly what you're saying. I do as well. All right. Well,

1106
02:02:16,320 --> 02:02:21,040
then what about Umbo? Where are the best places to find them online? Yeah. So you can go to get

1107
02:02:21,040 --> 02:02:26,080
umbo.com and sign up for our newsletter and that way you can find out all the great things that we

1108
02:02:26,080 --> 02:02:31,520
have coming down a pipe and also, you know, you know, find out what it was, the latest deals.

1109
02:02:32,800 --> 02:02:36,160
And then lastly, what about yourself? Websites or social media?

1110
02:02:36,720 --> 02:02:45,200
Yeah. You can find me at sugar shot Evans on Instagram. And that's primarily where I'm at on

1111
02:02:45,200 --> 02:02:54,080
Instagram. I'm also on Facebook, but I'm mostly still on Instagram. All right. Well, Rashad,

1112
02:02:54,080 --> 02:02:58,080
I want to say thank you so much. You've been chatting for two hours now. It's been such an

1113
02:02:58,080 --> 02:03:03,360
amazing conversation. And I've said this many times before when a, and I'm doing air quotes,

1114
02:03:03,360 --> 02:03:08,560
alpha male comes on and talks about, you know, vulnerability and, you know,

1115
02:03:09,280 --> 02:03:14,640
overcoming trauma and healing. It's so important because, you know, I, I could go on and go,

1116
02:03:14,640 --> 02:03:19,680
yeah, well that guy's kind of a pussy anyway. But when it's a USC champion or a member of the SAS,

1117
02:03:20,320 --> 02:03:25,200
it kind of rebukes that bullshit that we were raised on men don't cry, suck it up, all that stuff. So

1118
02:03:25,920 --> 02:03:31,680
to add that with the, with the solution, with the therapies that I've heard so often. And I hope that

1119
02:03:31,680 --> 02:03:36,560
this will go full circle and, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll bring you and your, your family back

1120
02:03:36,560 --> 02:03:40,480
together and there'll be forgiveness and healing from that side too, and get rid of that, that guilt

1121
02:03:40,480 --> 02:03:45,360
and that shame. But I want to thank you so, so much for being so generous with your time and coming

1122
02:03:45,360 --> 02:03:50,240
on the Behind the Shield podcast today. Hey James, thank you for having me and to your listeners.

1123
02:03:50,240 --> 02:04:10,880
I thank you and I hope I was able to impart something that you can take with you and be loved.