UFC Legend Dustin Poirier: I Lost My Mind. I’ll Never Let It Happen Again.

UFC legend Dustin Poirier reveals why he can't bring himself to watch the arrest video, the paid deals he's already lost, his vow to never drink again, and why the hardest fight of his life is happening off the mat. Dustin Poirier (“The Diamond”) is a retired UFC lightweight fighter with a 30-10 record, best known as the only man to knock out Conor McGregor in MMA. He founded The Good Fight Foundation with his wife, Jolie, in 2018 and now appears periodically as a desk analyst on UFC broadcasts. In June 2026, he was arrested for public intoxication at an Atlanta airport, after which he shared that he’s struggling with alcohol. He explains: ◼ What losing your career identity feels like, and how to rebuild when the fight is over ◼ How a childhood of poverty, detention and no father figure shaped the man he became ◼ Why elite athletes often fall apart when they retire, and what to do about it ◼ What going to therapy taught him about the pain he didn't know he was carrying ◼ The mental shift that turned losing to Conor McGregor into beating him Follow Dustin: Instagram - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/E2OdPNk X - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/3XxRxB YouTube - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/3DQVB2W The Good Fight Foundation - https://link.thediaryofaceo.com/AbsZdY5 The Diary Of A CEO: ◼ Join DOAC circle here - https://doaccircle.com/ ◼ Buy The Diary Of A CEO book here - https://smarturl.it/DOACbook ◼ The 1% Diary is back - limited time only: https://bit.ly/3YFbJbt ◼ The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards: https://linkly.link/2hm7r ◼ Get email updates - https://bit.ly/diary-of-a-ceo-yt ◼ Follow Steven - https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb Sponsors: Wispr - Get 14 days of Wispr Flow for free at https://wisprflow.ai/steven Function Health - https://Functionhealth.com/DOAC to sign up for $365 a year. One dollar a day for your health Ketone - https://ketone.com/STEVEN for 30% off your subscription order

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I've had bouts with depression throughout my career, but man, when it hits me, it's bad.

• 0:04Steven Bartlett?

  Which kind of brings us to the airport incident.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, I really messed up. Man, fuck you and fuck her and fuck her.

• 0:10Steven Bartlett?

  What happened?

• 0:11Speaker 00

  So it's Father's Day and I felt good in the morning. I spent the morning with my kids, but then as I was traveling to work, I felt that feeling again. It's like a cloud in my head that I just can't get out from under. So I started drinking. I'll fight you right now. No, I don't want to fight, bro. And my emotions got the best of me. Oh, relax, relax, relax, bro, relax. Got arrested. This guy's a UFC fighter. Did I just ruin everything that I was working for? You know, I don't know yet and it could have been so much worse.

• 0:36Steven Bartlett?

  But what was going on in your mind?

• 0:38Speaker 00

  I was angry at the world and I just couldn't stop thinking about my father. You know, he's actually homeless right now and I tried to help him out and he's back out on the street. Not that anything's an excuse, but it wasn't myself. And I never really spoke about it until right now, but I'm back in therapy. And when you sit down with somebody and start opening things up, you realize this could be linked to my childhood.

• 0:59Steven Bartlett?

  And when I think about your earliest context, you've got a father that's an alcoholic, violence in the home. And your mom said that you were an alcoholic kid.

• 1:06Speaker 00

  I started drinking at 12, 13.

• 1:08Steven Bartlett?

  Expelled from school as well.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  And you got arrested and I didn't have any goals.

• 1:12Steven Bartlett?

  So it was a bit of a roller coaster, but what happened? You rose.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  One of the best lightweights in the world. That was on top of the world.

• 1:21Steven Bartlett?

  But the roller coasters go down too, and this was the moment.

• 1:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, man.

• 1:26Steven Bartlett?

  July 30th, you retired. How does it feel looking at that photo?

• 1:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm trying not to tear up, dude. It was my life, man. Those gloves, me putting them on the mat as a piece of myself, I left. But a wise man said, if a man's lucky, he gets to die twice. That part of me, that every day, wake up, push yourself to be the best fighter you can be is dead. I'm retired Dustin, I'm businessman Dustin now. You know, it's just, I'm trying to figure it all out. Cause for 20 years I was dreaming about being the best. I just want to dream again, you know?

• 1:53Steven Bartlett?

  Has there ever been anything that compared?

• 1:55Speaker 00

  No, nothing fills that void of what fighting was. And fighting was a part of therapy for me. And some days I wake up and I'm like, these top guys that are winning now on these upcoming cards, I can beat them still.

• 2:06Steven Bartlett?

  So is there any possibility that you ever returned to the UFC?

• 2:19Steven Bartlett?

  Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. It's the algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much.

• 2:53Steven Bartlett?

  Dustin Poirier.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  Yo.

• 2:57Steven Bartlett?

  You know, there's a, there's a question that we kind of threw around in society. We say it quite, quite flippantly to people we meet, friends, family, strangers. But, but in this context, I want to ask it in the most sort of intentional way. And give me the long answer. How are you doing?

• 3:16Speaker 00

  As a whole, great. Recently, there's been some turbulence, you know? But I'm, I'm doing well, doing well.

• 3:26Steven Bartlett?

  There's been some turbulence.

• 3:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:32Steven Bartlett?

  Give me some color on that.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  I, last week,

• 3:39Speaker 00

  which is not new to me, like my emotions get the best of me, kind of was in a, in a bad spot. Mentally, started drinking, got arrested, you know? Got into some trouble at the airport in Atlanta. And, uh, you know, not proud of it, but it is what it is.

• 3:59Steven Bartlett?

  Why wouldn't you give some background context? And I spent the last couple of days sort of looking through your childhood and where you come from and who you are to try and fill the picture of Dustin Poirier in my head. And I've got lots of photos of you here as a, as a young man. Got another one even younger here that I'll share with you here.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:19Steven Bartlett?

  And I think this was incredibly important context because I'd watched you fight the best that there is and beat the best that there is in the UFC. But it wasn't until I understood your earliest context that I started to like, understand the picture of where you've come from. And also in some part, like how that makes you who you are today. So, so take me back. What is the early context that people need to understand to really understand you as a man?

• 4:43Speaker 00

  I'm just a man, trying his best, trying to provide for my family, learning as I go.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Not scared to work hard, not scared to chase dreams. Just a kid from Lafayette, Louisiana, who found something to put his all into and, and try to become great at it, you know? With fighting.

• 5:03Steven Bartlett?

  Your father and your grandfather were fighters?

• 5:05Speaker 00

  My father boxed, um, growing up when he was younger. My grandfather was in the Navy and worked in the oil field and stuff. They weren't successful fighters. I wouldn't say they were like, nobody knew who they were. But definitely, yeah, I come from fighters for sure.

• 5:20Steven Bartlett?

  And from money? Do you come from money?

• 5:22Speaker 00

  No, definitely not.

• 5:24Steven Bartlett?

  What was that like growing up? Was there?

• 5:26Speaker 00

  It was normal to me because I didn't know any different, you know?

• 5:30Speaker 00

  It wasn't like I missed a meal or anything like that, but definitely wasn't, wasn't rich or anything, or had money to do a whole lot of things when I was younger. But a working class family, you know?

• 5:41Steven Bartlett?

  And your parents divorced when you were younger?

• 5:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, I lived, I lived with them up until about maybe kindergarten, first, first grade. Then they got divorced.

• 5:52Steven Bartlett?

  Do you have any sort of mental models or mental images of them being together? When you were younger, is there any memories of them being together?

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Honestly, dude, not to, to be, to turn it dark or anything, but the early memories I have of them together aren't the best, you know? It's fighting and violence and stuff.

• 6:08Steven Bartlett?

  Physical fighting?

• 6:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:11Steven Bartlett?

  In that Instagram post you, you wrote recently after the incident in the airport, you mentioned your father and you mentioned, I think some of his struggles. He had his own struggles with alcohol.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, his whole life he has. Yeah, alcohol has ruined his life.

• 6:24Steven Bartlett?

  And alcohol was present when you were a young man and you were still there?

• 6:27Speaker 00

  He's been an alcoholic my entire life.

• 6:29Steven Bartlett?

  Did you have a relationship with him after the divorce?

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course. I don't know what that's called, split custody or something where every other weekend I would go to his house, spend the weekend at his house.

• 6:40Steven Bartlett?

  How did that season of your life, do you think, as you look back, shape the man that you became? Like that early context, under the age of 10 years old, that violent parents, they divorce, they separate. Your dad is struggling with alcohol. Like, how'd you look back on that?

• 6:53Speaker 00

  As a grown man, I look back and think my father was an idiot for, you know, getting, not being there with his kids. You know, as a father, I think about that, like I don't, waking up with my kids in the house, running up to me, making them breakfast every day. Like I couldn't, I never want to live that type of life. I can't, can't even imagine it. So as an adult and a father, looking back on it, I think he's made a lot of mistakes that, you know, I think he still lives with.

• 7:21Steven Bartlett?

  And your mom?

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Uh.

• 7:23Steven Bartlett?

  Got some nice photos over here as well.

• 7:26Steven Bartlett?

  That's your wife. But she seems to have been a, a real constant throughout your life. That's her there.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  For sure, for sure. I'll be on vacation with her in a week. Yeah, look at my face.

• 7:37Steven Bartlett?

  Post-fight.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Her and my grandmother raised me. She was, you know, everything, mothers are everything. And she's, she still is, you know? Calling me, texting me every day, checking on me, asking how I am.

• 7:50Steven Bartlett?

  And you've got two brothers?

• 7:52Speaker 00

  So I have two brothers I grew up with, two brothers and a sister I met when I was 25, 26 years old from my father.

• 8:03Steven Bartlett?

  I guess I'm trying to figure out as well, because I, I heard about what you were like in school. You struggled in school. It sounds, sounds like you got in a lot of fights when you were younger. I'm trying to figure out where that came from in you.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  I mean, living in South Louisiana, we, we fought all the time. But I just kept doing it. I just kept going with fighting, you know?

• 8:23Steven Bartlett?

  As a young man, I, I read that you were expelled from school as well. And was that again for fighting and struggling to?

• 8:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, fighting. The one that got me expelled was a fight.

• 8:34Steven Bartlett?

  And that seems to be a little, quite a consistent pattern from 10 to 14.

• 8:39Steven Bartlett?

  Struggling in school, fighting. And then at 15, I hear you that you end up in juvenile detention center.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  14.

• 8:46Steven Bartlett?

  14? What was the, what was the road there? What happened?

• 8:49Speaker 00

  I had gotten into some trouble at, at one of the times I was living with my father. I got into a fight and, and physically hurt somebody in the fight and got arrested and I was on probation at the time. And I wasn't going to school. Got picked up for truancy and some other things like that for not going to school. And failed the drug test. I was on probation at the time, failed the drug test. And then they sent me to juvenile detention.

• 9:16Steven Bartlett?

  Were you drinking at that age?

• 9:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:18Steven Bartlett?

  At 15? When did you start drinking?

• 9:22Speaker 00

  I was talking to my wife the other day and I was thinking about that. I don't know, 12, 13 probably.

• 9:28Steven Bartlett?

  It is, it is quite, it's quite curious to me that, you know, 14, 15, you're getting in trouble for fighting, you end up in a detention center, you're drinking from 12 years old. And it like begs the question to me as someone that's done lots of these interviews, like what was going on in that, in that young man's mind?

• 9:44Speaker 00

  I don't have an answer what was going on. Not having anywhere to put my focus, not, I wasn't trying to be the best at something. I was just living day to day, doing whatever, you know? I didn't have any goals. I was a young kid. You know, it's tough to, it's tough to say, to look back to that young and really say what I was thinking at that age.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  I was just being a kid, I guess.

• 10:06Steven Bartlett?

  Were you a happy kid?

• 10:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:09Steven Bartlett?

  You were a happy kid?

• 10:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:10Steven Bartlett?

  And you were spending the week with your mother and then the week, you said, was it the weekends with your father?

• 10:13Speaker 00

  The weekend or every other weekend. I forget exactly how it was, yeah.

• 10:17Steven Bartlett?

  And when you talk about his life being ruined by alcohol, what do you mean by, what do you mean by that?

• 10:23Speaker 00

  I mean, he has, he's ruined his marriages. He's ruined his relationships. He's ruined his friendships. He's ruined his relationships with his family, with his kids. Two son, three, well, my little brother kind of is off and on talking to him, but he has two kids that don't speak to him at all and, and won't. You know, he's been in jail plenty of times for, for alcohol related stuff and

• 10:51Speaker 00

  yeah, if I could paint a picture of what you think of, of a classic drunk or alcoholic, you know, very selfish.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  And continues to go back to it, continues. He's actually homeless, homeless right now.

• 11:05Steven Bartlett?

  He's homeless right now?

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Yeah. Part of that, me getting in trouble at the airport was, I just felt, and it's not my weight to carry, you know? But I just felt, I tried to help him out and he's back out on the street. It's like he almost doesn't want help, you know? And I was just kind of, on Father's Day, I was traveling to work and I just couldn't stop thinking about my father. And I started drinking in the airport and that's kind of what led to the incident is just, but when I feel like that, you know, I've been going to therapy and stuff like that. Years ago, I started going to therapy and when I started feeling better, I stopped practicing everything I learned through therapy, you know?

• 11:49Speaker 00

  And then I felt that feeling again, just in,

• 11:54Speaker 00

  I guess you'd call it depression, just didn't feel well. And when I feel like that, I know I shouldn't drink. And I drank anyway, so you know? Not that my father, anything's an excuse. Obviously I did what I did.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  But I knew, I knew better in the moment when I'm feeling like that to, to, to drink or do anything, you know? Alcohol has never benefited me, especially in times like that where I'm mentally not the best.

• 12:21Steven Bartlett?

  You use the word depression there to describe that feeling, to, to give it a word. So let's use that word. Can you paint a picture for me in terms of what that actually feels like? That day that you wake up, it's Father's Day, you don't feel good. Like what is that?

• 12:33Speaker 00

  No, I, I felt good in the morning, you know? I spent the morning with my, with my kids. My daughter wrote me a letter. She gave me presents, you know? Did all the Father's Day stuff. I had a great, a great morning, but then when I left my home to go, to fly out, I started feeling it, you know? And, and days leading up to that, it would come off and on, coming off and on. And I would think about, you know, my father and it would kind of bring me down, but it wasn't that bad. But for Father's Day, it just hit me, man. It hit me hard.

• 13:00Steven Bartlett?

  Because he's currently homeless?

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:02Steven Bartlett?

  Here in Louisiana?

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. I actually, man, when I got out of jail in Atlanta and flew back home on that Tuesday, I got back late, maybe Tuesday. Wednesday morning, I drove to where he, he lives or where he sleeps and went to the sheriff's office, got in contact with the coroner. I had to do a whole process to, to sign an OPC, Order of Protective Custody. I tried to get him to pick him up against his will and, and all this stuff. And they did, but I went at the wrong time and I went early in the morning when I woke up. And when they picked him up, he wasn't disoriented. He was normal, you know? And so they released him again.

• 13:48Steven Bartlett?

  What is the range of feelings and emotions you have towards him at the moment?

• 13:56Speaker 00

  You know, he's always,

• 13:59Speaker 00

  it's tough and I'm not angry at him. I'm, uh, and once again, this isn't an excuse for my actions. You know, my father just came to a head on Father's Day. But, uh, just

• 14:15Speaker 00

  upset to see him doing this to himself and not getting out of his own way and continuing to let it get just worse and worse progressively over the years when he, when he knows better, you know? When he knows better.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  I mean, most people when you make a mistake or do, you try to fix it. You try to make tomorrow better than yesterday, you know? Next year, better than this year. Everybody just keeps doing the same thing and that's because he's addicted to alcohol.

• 14:43Steven Bartlett?

  What is his story?

• 14:49Speaker 00

  I wish I, I knew more so I could tell you, but

• 14:54Speaker 00

  been like a hard worker his whole life, you know? Did whatever, worked in the oil field for a long time. But check to check his whole life.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Simple guy, you know, was a really good athlete in, in school.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  Got a woman pregnant at a young age in high school. So he couldn't pretend, uh, continue to focus and chase his dreams of playing football. You know, back then when you got a, a girl pregnant, you got married and got a job and, and things like that. So that's what he did.

• 15:24Steven Bartlett?

  So that day you wake up, you're feeling okay in the morning. It's Father's Day. You start thinking about your father. You get that feeling that you described as depression. Which is just how, what is that feeling? It's feeling, for someone that has never experienced it before.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  You know, I, I've had bouts with depression throughout my career. When it hits me, you know, it hits, it hits me hard. And that day it hit me, it hit me hard, man. You know, going to the airport, it just feels like everything is, has a, its own gravity and it's going to pull me towards the negative, no matter what it is. It's like a cloud in my, in my head that I just can't get out from under. It, it's hard to explain to you unless you've been through it. That's what I try to tell my wife, because she's always so happy and so, you know? Which is great, but like when I feel like that, and it doesn't happen often, but man, when it hits me, it's bad, you know? It's bad.

• 16:12Steven Bartlett?

  Do you remember the first time you felt that?

• 16:15Speaker 00

  I don't, but my wife, you know, me and my wife been together a long time. Since we were in, off and on through middle school and high school and all that. But she, she tells me, don't you, yeah.

• 16:28Steven Bartlett?

  There she is.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  She tells me, don't you remember like, I've always thought something, you know, you never wanted to be around big crowds, go to all the parties with me when I was younger and do all that stuff. Yeah, because I, I just didn't like to be around that many people that much, you know? I, maybe it was anxiety I was dealing with. I don't know, this stuff is all new to me. So I'm just, I would tell her how I feel and she's like, don't you remember? So she thinks I've been having it, but I started noticing it, you know, more recently in the last years, three, four years.

• 16:58Steven Bartlett?

  Was there a catalyst at all? A catalyst moment, something that happened that caused you to feel that or?

• 17:04Speaker 00

  If I could link it to something, it was I lost a big fight, came back home.

• 17:08Steven Bartlett?

  With which fight?

• 17:09Speaker 00

  My second fight with Justin Gagey.

• 17:10Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  Lost that one, came back home, everything was good. And then it would just, I was really emotional, man. You know, some days I would be fine, some days I would be sad. And I was like, something's off, you know? Something's off. So that's when I started going to therapy and trying to unpack some of the stuff that I didn't even know I was walking around with, you know?

• 17:28Steven Bartlett?

  Did you learn anything through the process of therapy? I've been to therapy too. I've been, I mean, it's still good.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  The day I got back from Atlanta, I started going to therapy again.

• 17:37Steven Bartlett?

  After the airport incident?

• 17:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Right before I went, tried to help my father. I went through a therapy session. So I had kind of closed the door on therapy when I started feeling good again. You know, but then I'm starting to realize like, it's not something that you just fix. It's something you have to work on always and you know, so. And that's, that's what I'm trying to do, you know? Since for the last week, I've been waking up early, reading some stuff, writing, doing something hard in the morning, just trying to do everything that I was doing. It made me feel better three years ago.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  And I'm trying my best, man.

• 18:14Steven Bartlett?

  Have you learned anything about yourself through the process of therapy?

• 18:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, that maybe some, some of the childhood stuff I'm still carrying around. I don't think about it, you know? It's not like the first, you know, but.

• 18:24Steven Bartlett?

  It's unconscious, a lot of it, right?

• 18:25Speaker 00

  Right, right, right. But deep down, I'm still carrying things, I think, from my childhood and everybody, you know, I've learned a lot through therapy. Everybody deals with different emotions and process things differently and.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  And I'm still going through it, you know, I'm back in therapy now.

• 18:44Steven Bartlett?

  I've been able to interview lots of people and so I've interviewed like psychologists, lots of them, so many therapists I've interviewed. And one of the things that I noticed, which was quite stark to me, was that young boys in particular that grow up without a stable father figure are much more likely to be have anger issues, be depressed, struggle in life. But it's actually the data skews more towards young boys without that sort of stable father figure. But also that if you compound that with there being violence in the home from a young age, that's also another factor which exacerbates the situation worse. So those are sort of two of the things that stood out to me was the absence of your father, also having a father or a parent that's dealing with addiction is another burden for so many reasons.

• 19:26Steven Bartlett?

  So those three things are the things that from your story and from, you know, I thought, oh, that's those are those are challenges that are understandable to stay with you as a as an adult.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. And then you don't even think about think about them at all throughout your whole life. And then you sit down with somebody and start opening things up and talking about things. You say, well, maybe I could be, you know, this could be linked to different things and I could be carrying stuff that isn't mine to carry and and things like that, you know, as I'm growing up and being more mature and talking and speaking to people with professionals and stuff, I'm starting to unpack some of that.

• 19:58Steven Bartlett?

  And was that difficult to do?

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Therapy?

• 20:01Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 20:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, yeah.

• 20:03Steven Bartlett?

  Difficult to even say, isn't it?

• 20:04Speaker 00

  Right. And even at the beginning, when I first started doing interviews like Ariel Hawani and stuff, and I would bring it up like I'm, you know, I'm working on myself, I'm going to therapy. I it felt weak in the moment, like who am I? I'm going through therapy, I'm telling the world I'm going to therapy, but then I I look at it hindsight, I'm like, you know what? That's that's strength, you know, especially in a tough guy sport. You know, we're fighting and bleeding and beating each other up, beating the best guys up in the world, you know, fighting the best guys in the world and I need to go to therapy to unpack some stuff. It's just, it's crazy, the human mind is is incredible.

• 20:37Steven Bartlett?

  It's funny because we go to the gym, right? And we like work on our physical performance, but going to therapy, isn't we gonna hide that?

• 20:42Speaker 00

  And the gym was a part of therapy for me, fighting was a part of therapy, you know, for me and and I always were always was scared of that, you know, what am I gonna do to to sabotage myself when I when I retire from fighting? Because I don't have this outlet anymore, you know, I've done it for 20 years of fighting, I always had somewhere to go, you know, I always had to get better at the gym, to to to work on fighting, to focus on something. Every day I could get up and push myself to try to be better, to answer a new question, to do anything with fighting to get better. On multiple levels, whether it's the techniques or whether it's my my physical fitness, anything, there was always something to work on, work on, always. And when I retired, I was kind of worried about that, like how will life look

• 21:27Speaker 00

  post-fighting, you know? I was scared of it. I was scared of it.

• 21:33Steven Bartlett?

  Because, I mean, you've been fighting since you were, what, 16, 17?

• 21:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:38Steven Bartlett?

  And you're 37 now, so it's just over two decades that fighting has been your kind of north star and your orientation.

• 21:45Speaker 00

  It was always there for me, always there for me. You know, no matter what was going on, I could go to the gym and drown out any noise in my brain, any you know, quiet that voice in your head.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  And I was scared to not have that anymore and I I still have it, I can still go to the gym every day if I want, but it's not the same. You know, it doesn't feel the same.

• 22:06Steven Bartlett?

  It doesn't feel the same?

• 22:08Speaker 00

  Not being on the mats, preparing to fight someone for your life and your family's well being in front of the world. If I'm just training just to spin my wheels, it doesn't feel, I've done this my whole life, training. Still fun, I have fun, you know, we do whatever, train, but it's not, it doesn't feel the same to me anymore.

• 22:23Steven Bartlett?

  Because there's not a goal, a big goal at the end of it to focus your being?

• 22:26Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 22:29Steven Bartlett?

  When you look through the last 20 years, do you do you see fighting as a really productive distraction in some respects then?

• 22:35Speaker 00

  For me, yeah, for me, 100%.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was an outlet. It was something to focus on, it was something to try to be the best at, it was it consumed me, man, it consumed me, fighting was my entire life and now post-fighting is like separating myself

• 22:53Speaker 00

  from the fighters, I'm trying to figure it out still. You know, a buddy of mine told me the other day, a wise man told him, if you're lucky, you die twice. If a man's lucky, he gets to die twice. And that's kind of what I'm going through right now, now that that makes sense to me, you know, that part of me that every day wake up, push yourself to be the best fighter you can be is dead. You know, I'm retired Dustin now, businessman Dustin now, I'm father, I was a father before when I was still fighting, but I have other things, other hats to wear, you know, it's just, I'm trying to figure it out.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  I'm trying to figure it all out.

• 23:28Steven Bartlett?

  And it's only been 11 months?

• 23:30Speaker 00

  Not even a year, yeah.

• 23:32Steven Bartlett?

  July 30th, wasn't it last year that you retired?

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Here in this, in New Orleans.

• 23:37Steven Bartlett?

  Do they, do they offer you any support with that retirement process?

• 23:41Speaker 00

  As far as?

• 23:42Steven Bartlett?

  As far as giving you a like a roadmap for how to deal with the mental shift?

• 23:47Speaker 00

  No.

• 23:48Steven Bartlett?

  There's no like sort of post-fighting program?

• 23:51Speaker 00

  There should be, for sure, there should be, but no.

• 23:53Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's quite a familiar story across sports.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  Right, and that's what I was always, when I would see it happen, I knew, I was like, I'm never gonna be that, you know? I'm never gonna be the guy that goes and gets arrested or gets hooked on drugs or blows all of his money and just, you know, you see it over and over and not just in fighting and professional sports, you know?

• 24:13Speaker 00

  It's like you've done something so long, your whole life, so intense and so, you know, it takes all of you. When it's gone, it's like, what else can I do to the maximum? What else dopamine hit can I get? What can I just pour myself into and go crazy on something, you know, and a lot of times it's bad things, dangerous things, you know, you see it time and time again and I always said, I'll never be that guy. And I'm not, you know, I ran into some trouble the other, the other week, but I'm still making a lot of right decisions, you know what I mean? I'm not that, it just sucks to be at this point to where I always saw those guys getting arrested and doing stuff and I was like, man, what an idiot, what an idiot, you know? But I wasn't going through it then, I didn't understand it at that time.

• 24:52Steven Bartlett?

  And alcohol has been a constant through your childhood, through your career?

• 24:57Speaker 00

  For me drinking?

• 24:57Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  No, I mean, I

• 24:59Steven Bartlett?

  When you were younger?

• 25:00Speaker 00

  Celebrate, when I was younger, probably every weekend, you know, but

• 25:06Speaker 00

  as I became an adult and focused on fighting, I went years without drinking.

• 25:09Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  And then even now, well, as I, when I retired, it slowly became more and more and more because I didn't not have, you know, when I was in training camp, I wasn't getting drunk and and drinking like that. I had to wake up the next day and run miles and be at the gym and make a weight and I was really focused.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  But when I retired, I didn't have to anymore. So then it kind of started slipping back in and even when I was fighting, you know, celebrations, gatherings, I would drink. I would drink, but it wasn't a weekly, it wasn't a weekly or daily thing, but I've always had a bad relationship with alcohol. Like I've always 90% of the times if I do drink, I'm gonna drink to be the best at drinking. I'm gonna drink more than everybody, you know, that's danger. It can benefit you in other things that that drive and that craziness, you know, you can focus it on something and it'll benefit you. Or it can hurt you, you know, and that's, that's the way I've always been. So I as learning, learning myself over the years, I know you know, to be careful with alcohol and

• 26:13Speaker 00

  going through mental things, like I know, especially when I'm feeling the way I felt that day, to not touch it, but I just

• 26:20Speaker 00

  told that voice to shut up and I just drank and did what I wanted to do, you know, but I I know better.

• 26:26Speaker 00

  As I got gotten older, it's gotten better, you know, but until recently.

• 26:31Steven Bartlett?

  I sat here with a lady called Dr. Anna Lemke, she's like a dopamine expert. And I actually didn't really know until she she sat here and explained it to me that alcohol gives you a big hit of dopamine.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:42Steven Bartlett?

  She also said to me that sort of genetically, person to person, we all have a different vice. So for example, she said that she got addicted to erotic novels. Now, another person would never get addicted to that. Some people's vice is alcohol, so they they do what you describe, which is they have one and then it's just straight line up until

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 27:02Steven Bartlett?

  Other people, like they can have one or two or three and it kind of plateau and they stop and they go home.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  And I envy them, you know, I have, my wife is like that. One of my good buddies is like that, they can have two drinks and be done. If I drink, we're drinking till the bottle's gone, you know, that's

• 27:17Speaker 00

  no matter how many times in my life I've said it's gonna be different this time, it's gonna be, you know, I'm only gonna have two. It's never, never worked out. So coming back home, talking to my wife and stuff,

• 27:31Speaker 00

  I'm gonna cut alcohol completely out of my life. You know, I made that decision, I'm not gonna be like my father or make another mistake like I made in the airport, it's just it's not helping me in any way. You know, it might be a quick release and a quick hit of dopamine, but it's not benefiting me in any way. So I gotta cut it out, cut it out from my life.

• 27:50Steven Bartlett?

  It's not an easy thing to do.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  With socializing and things like that, it's it's tougher to to be the sober one, but in everyday life, it's it's not hard. For me, you know, I've never been an alcoholic, I just have a bad relationship if I do drink. So cutting it out completely is you know, not a big deal.

• 28:08Steven Bartlett?

  So so take me to that day then, you wake up, you go to, you go to the airport, you're flying to Atlanta, you're going, you're going somewhere, where are you going?

• 28:14Speaker 00

  Atlanta, I'm going to to South Florida. It was actually a three leg trip, I was supposed to go to South Florida for a day. That afternoon, fly out, go to LA, shoot a commercial for three days from LA, Vegas, work for CBS for the weekend and then fly home. So it was a three, it was a

• 28:39Steven Bartlett?

  Ah, big trip.

• 28:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, three leg trip.

• 28:43Speaker 00

  We didn't, we didn't even get the first leg, we didn't even get the first leg, man.

• 28:46Steven Bartlett?

  There should be a button just down below here and if it says subscribe, you're already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know and according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. What happened? What the sequence of events?

• 29:09Speaker 00

  On my flight from Lafayette, Louisiana, I drank two champagnes, nothing crazy, you know, just

• 29:16Speaker 00

  landed in Atlanta. I had a little bit of a layover. Went to a bar, restaurant bar. Started drinking champagne. Some guys came in, took some shots, one thing led to another. Go to my gate, get into it with the desk agent. They call security, call the police.

• 29:38Steven Bartlett?

  Do you remember what you said to the desk agent?

• 29:40Speaker 00

  No. No.

• 29:42Steven Bartlett?

  The police didn't tell you after?

• 29:44Speaker 00

  No.

• 29:44Steven Bartlett?

  So you didn't even get on the plane?

• 29:45Speaker 00

  No, I never got on the plane, I don't believe, I'm pretty sure. 90, 90% sure I never got on the plane.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  And it might have been that, the desk agent might have saw I was intoxicated and it's like, no, you can't get on this plane and that's might have what started it, I don't know. But I do want to apologize to those desk agents, whoever they are. And the police for having to put up with me, man, they did it. I actually asked a lawyer in Atlanta who I've been working with. If he can, please give me that officer's information, his address, I want to, if I can write him a letter, if his cellphone, if I can call him. Just to tell him how great of a job he did, you know, dealing with a person in that condition and how professional he was and you know, he's incredible, it could have been so much worse. It could have been so much worse. I just want to thank him. I didn't get to do that.

• 30:39Steven Bartlett?

  So there's some kind of argument with the desk agents that you, I'm guessing you can't recall?

• 30:43Speaker 00

  No.

• 30:44Steven Bartlett?

  And then they say you're not getting on the flight?

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that leads to them calling

• 30:48Steven Bartlett?

  The police?

• 30:48Speaker 00

  The security or police in the airport.

• 30:51Steven Bartlett?

  Video we see is of the security guy coming in?

• 30:55Speaker 00

  The police officer, yeah.

• 30:56Steven Bartlett?

  You've watched the video, right?

• 30:57Speaker 00

  No, so my wife watched it. A buddy of mine, I've kind of pieced it together at this point, I don't want to see it, man.

• 31:02Steven Bartlett?

  You don't want to see it?

• 31:03Speaker 00

  I don't want to see it. I don't want to see it, even when my wife started playing it and I heard it, she went and watched it in the other room. And then I have a buddy I work out with five days a week.

• 31:12Speaker 00

  He's kind of, between him and my wife, I've put the pieces together and pretty, pretty much know the the extent of what happened.

• 31:19Steven Bartlett?

  Why don't you want to watch it?

• 31:21Speaker 00

  I just don't want, don't want to see it, man.

• 31:24Steven Bartlett?

  Can you articulate why that is?

• 31:27Speaker 00

  To see myself in that condition, disrespecting police officers, disrespecting workers at the airport, disrespecting myself, disrespect my family, I just don't feel like it's gonna benefit me to see that. If anything, I think it's gonna bring me down, it's gonna, I'm gonna keep thinking about it.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  I, I, like I said, for the most part, understand what happened, know what happened, I don't need to see it again, you know?

• 31:51Steven Bartlett?

  So in that video, you you seem to get aggressive quite quickly and you you offered this gentleman a fight. He kind of backs off, he knows who you are clearly straight away. He backs off. What I find interesting also is he pulls out his taser, he's gonna, he says, you know, he might taser you, but as you walk away and you're arrested, you dap him up? And you you congratulate him on the job he did?

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, my buddy was telling me that. He was telling me like his, my buddy's wife thinks that's the best part of the video.

• 32:24Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's funny, because you're known as

• 32:26Speaker 00

  I didn't watch the video at all.

• 32:30Speaker 00

  And I every day passing, I'd be able to piece a little bit more together and memories kind of, you know, flashes of what happened are kind of playing in my head. But I I got home, deleted all my social, I posted that on Instagram. Then I uninstalled all social media off my phone, so I haven't since Father's or the day after Father's Day, I haven't been on anything, I haven't seen, I know they're making fun, I know they're talking about me, obviously I've been in the light with being a professional athlete for a long time, I know how this goes. So I just uninstalled all my stuff, so I haven't seen any of the clips, any of the videos, any of the, anything, you know, besides what my wife and my buddy are telling me.

• 33:07Steven Bartlett?

  Your buddy that you trained with?

• 33:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:09Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. Well, it was, it was, it was interesting because you, you seemed, as you walked away, you were quite polite.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what I told him, I was like, maybe I realized what was going on, you know, maybe I had a aha moment, like what the hell is, what am I doing, you know, in that drunken stupor, I don't know.

• 33:26Steven Bartlett?

  You said to him that he did a good job?

• 33:27Speaker 00

  Right, yeah.

• 33:28Steven Bartlett?

  Which was quite nice.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  Right, and I

• 33:35Speaker 00

  looking back at it now with what they're, what they're telling me and the way he handled it, he did a great job, you know? I need to thank him, because like I said, it could have been so much worse. What if it was a young hothead cop who wanted to be a superstar, wanted to, you know, it could have been horrible. You know, I could be sitting here facing serious charges.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  And just to put my wife and my children through that, you know, just

• 34:00Speaker 00

  yeah. It's not good.

• 34:02Steven Bartlett?

  So you went to jail that day?

• 34:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:04Steven Bartlett?

  You got charged with being drunk and disorderly or intoxicated?

• 34:08Speaker 00

  They charged me with public intoxication.

• 34:12Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, and they let you go the same day?

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, I spent like a night, spent the night or the afternoon in jail until I sobered up.

• 34:21Steven Bartlett?

  And they released you on probation or something?

• 34:23Speaker 00

  I'm not, well

• 34:24Steven Bartlett?

  What's it called, I don't know what the laws are here?

• 34:26Speaker 00

  I haven't been to court and all that stuff yet, so they just know they on bond.

• 34:29Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, on bond, okay. And that's when you go and, you know, after then go and you do the therapy session, you go and try and find your father?

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:38Steven Bartlett?

  All these trips are cancelled, I'm guessing at that point?

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:41Steven Bartlett?

  You have to go home and speak to your wife?

• 34:44Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 34:45Steven Bartlett?

  Can't be easy.

• 34:47Speaker 00

  It wasn't fun for sure, you know, to let her down and it's just been so long since I, I don't even know how to

• 34:55Speaker 00

  address it really when I, when I got home, I haven't been in trouble, I haven't been arrested in so long, you know, decades and decades. I don't, I don't even know when's the last time I got arrested. This is the first time in a, in a very long time. But to go back and my, my partner who's been with me through everything and and has grown with me through everything to go back and like

• 35:16Speaker 00

  see her face to face.

• 35:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. I just keep apologizing and it'll never happen again.

• 35:25Steven Bartlett?

  If I'm a fly on the wall during that conversation when you get home, what do I observe?

• 35:31Speaker 00

  Me telling her it'll never happen, never happen again and

• 35:38Speaker 00

  her telling me it can't happen again, you know?

• 35:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, man.

• 35:50Speaker 00

  Telling her that I'm gonna focus on myself and and be better from this, I know it sucks right now in the moment, but this decision, this arrest, this

• 36:01Speaker 00

  quit drinking for the rest of my life is gonna benefit me and my kids in the future, so things happen, you learn.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  And that's just what it is, you know?

• 36:13Steven Bartlett?

  You met Jolie when you were 14 years old?

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Younger.

• 36:17Steven Bartlett?

  Younger, really?

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, 14 is is like a freshman in high school. We were dating

• 36:24Speaker 00

  in middle school.

• 36:26Steven Bartlett?

  And in many respects, she's really, she sacrificed quite a lot for your

• 36:29Speaker 00

  A lot, man, a lot. She dropped out of college and moved with me to South Florida

• 36:35Speaker 00

  for me to chase my dreams.

• 36:39Steven Bartlett?

  Because she was going to nursing school, wasn't she?

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  And I honestly don't think I would have made it to the point I made it to in in fighting if I didn't have an anchor like that at home, you know?

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Man, she's been my best friend for a long time.

• 37:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, so so to go home after getting arrested and speaking to her and like not only did I let myself down, but I have a family, you know, I have kids.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  I let my family down, man, that's what hurts.

• 37:22Steven Bartlett?

  This is another beautiful photo.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:25Steven Bartlett?

  The gang.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  That's them.

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, I let them down, let myself down. But like I said, I'm gonna learn from this and continue pushing forward and it will never happen again.

• 37:41Speaker 00

  It's gonna affect the trajectory of my whole life, this one, this one arrest, you know? My, my son and my daughter is never gonna grow up and see me intoxicated, they're never gonna see me say things or do things I don't mean to do or mean to say, you know? So, like I said, it sucks, man. It's, it's bad, uh, but it's gonna benefit me and my family in the long run. So it was just something that had to happen, I guess.

• 38:06Steven Bartlett?

  So she, did she know what had happened before you got back from jail?

• 38:11Steven Bartlett?

  Had she seen videos or?

• 38:12Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no.

• 38:13Steven Bartlett?

  She hadn't?

• 38:14Speaker 00

  No, the police officer called her. When I was in, uh, in the holding cell and stuff, so yeah. She knew what was going on. She didn't know in the moment, if she probably knew a couple of hours after, you know, once they booked me and all that.

• 38:29Steven Bartlett?

  I've got sixty seconds and I'm gonna show you how much I can get done because of our sponsor called Wispr Flow. And for those of you that don't know what it is, it's a business I invested in that turns your speech into text in any app or device. I'm gonna post into our Slack channel, which rewards whichever team member conducted the most experiments this week. Hi, everyone. Here is this week's experimenter of the week. Congratulations to the Diary of a CEO trailer team, which is Ant, Liv, Dom and Cam. You guys have won. Okay, now I'm gonna open Gmail. So here is one of our founders on an email chain that I wanna connect my team with. All I have to say is add my team's emails and Wispr will do exactly that. Now, a quick message to Juan, who does my schedule every single week.

• 39:13Steven Bartlett?

  Hey Juan, could I record on Wednesday at two P? Actually, no, do you know what? Let's record at three P M. on Wednesday. Wispr Flow is four times faster than typing and it is incredibly easy to use. So if you wanna give it a go, all you have to do is head to wisprflow.ai/Steven to download it today. Every time I've tried to improve something in my life, like my businesses, my health, my relationships, I've noticed that the biggest shifts have come from being better informed. And when it comes to our health, most of us know very, very little. So when our team was approached about partnering with Function Health, it felt very much aligned. Their team has developed a way of giving you a full three sixty degree view of your health, many of the things that are going on in your body in the form of different tests.

• 39:53Steven Bartlett?

  You do one blood draw and it gives you access to over a hundred and sixty lab results, hormones, heart health, inflammation, stress, toxins, the whole picture. I use it and so have many of my team members.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  You sign up and you schedule your tests and once you're done, you get a little report like the one I have here. I can see my in-range results, my out-of-range results, and there's a little AI function too. So if I have any questions about my out-of-range results, I can just go in there and ask it any question I want. And these tests are backed by doctors and thousands of hours of research.

• 40:22Steven Bartlett?

  It's three hundred and sixty-five dollars for a yearly membership. Go to functionhealth.com/DOAC and use the code DOAC25 for twenty-five dollars off your membership. What's interesting is, um, you know, we've seen these kind of incidents happen before, but I've, I've never seen such a large amount of people understand. You'd expect the reaction to be from the general public, from fighters, from people at large to be, oh my God, this is a bad person. But I think because you conducted yourself in a certain way throughout your career, that wasn't the sentiment.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  I'm not seeing what people are saying.

• 40:59Steven Bartlett?

  Well, it wasn't the sentiment, I can tell you. It was, it was crazy. I was like, I was saying it to my fiancee, I was saying like, the reason why the sentiment has been, he's going through some things and this is a good man, is because A, you've conducted yourself so well throughout your career, you've had good values in victory and in, and, and in loss, but also I think because you've actually spoken about some of these struggles publicly.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  I've never bit my tongue, I've always been open, you know, about what I'm going through. When I was able to pinpoint and talk about what I was going through, when I didn't know, I couldn't speak on it. But as I got older and started doing therapy, I'm able to speak on it and, yeah, I am going through things at some, some days, you know?

• 41:41Steven Bartlett?

  Well, that's what I'd say to you is, I know you've not looked at the internet, but the internet has been heavily supportive of you.

• 41:48Speaker 00

  And you know, my, I think a lot of that probably is long time fight fans and people who've been following my career a long time. You know, I grew up in fighting, so people got to watch me from a kid, you know, grow up, so they, they know my character for the most part. It was a bad day, it wasn't, you know, it's not a bad life. I had, I messed up, I had a really bad day, where I was angry at the world and obviously alcohol doesn't, doesn't help that. And, uh, I really messed up, but people have seen me year after year, and I, I mean well, and I really mean it, and I think they, they know it's authentic and, but I am just a human being and I make mistakes. So I think those fans, if people are sticking up for me, it's because they, they know I, it's Dustin, like, I'm gonna, he's gonna shake back or he, he's gonna, you know, turn

• 42:33Speaker 00

  this into a positive somehow. And that's my goal, you know, I don't wanna let anybody else out there down. I'm trying my best, you know, I, I have to take care of myself first and I'm doing that, the right steps and that's, that's just it. I think the people who are standing up for me have watched me grow up, you know?

• 42:50Steven Bartlett?

  Well, uh, dare I say, I think that was the majority of the sentiment, was that this is a, a good, a good man who's, who's struggling and it was people sending sympathy because, because of that, but also because there's a couple of clips that went viral online of you speaking on both Theo Von's show and Joe Rogan's show. And so in the, in the, in the wake of, you know, this clip going viral of you in the airport, these other clips go viral with them, which is you. Oh, you haven't seen it? Okay.

• 43:17Speaker 00

  I mean, obviously I did the, I did the interviews or whatever you're talking about, so I said it, so I'm sure if you showed it, I would remember, but I haven't seen what people are talking about.

• 43:24Steven Bartlett?

  Well, this clip went viral at the same time and this is what gave it context.

• 43:28Speaker 00

  Have to, yeah. You just, there's no, if you get complacent or if you, why, what? I'm like, it's honestly, bro, I'm a danger to myself when I'm having nothing, no, no goal circled on my calendar, I'm a danger to myself, man. Yeah? Yeah, I beat, I beat myself up mentally, I'm home, I drink, I'm, it's just not good, I have to have some kind of battle. Yeah. Yeah. And I've always been like that, but like as I'm getting older, I'm kinda recognizing. Oh, you can see it more. Yeah, so I kinda set, set goals, so I.

• 43:56Steven Bartlett?

  So that clip went viral and there was a, a clip just like it, um, of you and Joe Rogan, which is you saying almost identically the same thing, which also went viral with it. So this gave everybody context. And so you see that and you go, okay, we understand. And I think we're now, you know, we're old enough, mature enough to understand that once a pro athlete leaves the high-octane, high adrenaline sport like UFC, that your brain has changed.

• 44:23Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 44:24Steven Bartlett?

  And not least because of the dopamine, but also, you know, there's other reasons why, there's, there's, head injuries are quite prevalent in, in the sport. So there was a huge amount of sympathy, I just wanted you to know that, cause I know you've not seen it, but.

• 44:35Speaker 00

  But, I mean, I still feel horrible, but it, you know, and not even using fighting or head trauma or my homeless father or any of that stuff as an excuse, I just wanna say that, like, I did these things, I know better, I know right and wrong. I don't wanna lean on these as a crutch of, of my actions, you know what I mean?

• 44:55Steven Bartlett?

  And the other, the other clip that went, just so you know, just so, cause this is you and Joe Rogan talking about similar thing.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  On the show, what I was talking about, it's like a gift and a curse, man. It's like you have to be all in at something, those kinda people who are built like that, whether it's fighting or drinking or whether it's good or bad, you're going all in, it's dangerous. That's the problem, yeah. The problem is like what you see with Connor, when they don't have the fighting, then they go all in with the other things. Yeah. Yeah. Fighting was always, for me, always pulled everything together, you know? That's why I like, retiring is scary, man. Days are long, I have a lot of time, it's, I don't have to get ready for a fight, I don't, you know? And you're still a young man too, you still have a whole lot of life ahead of you. Thirty-seven, man. Yeah, so it makes you think, like, what do I do now? What do I do with my future? What do I do, what do you wanna do? Dude, I kinda got like, for a, a week or so, I wouldn't say depressed, but I kinda

• 45:48Speaker 00

  got into like a funk, like what the hell am I gonna do with my life? Every day I would wake up for the last twenty years, how can I be better fighter? How can I, what's new in fitness? How can I push myself? I wanna be the champion and then boom, you lay the gloves down and you wake up and you're a fucking civilian.

• 46:02Steven Bartlett?

  And that's meant that you're, you know, some of your, your fellow, fellow peers, like John Jones have come out and said some really nice things and other fighters have come out and said some really nice things and sent their support and, you know, well wishes.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  I appreciate it. I'm, I'm working on myself, I'm trying my best.

• 46:15Steven Bartlett?

  Were you aware that John Jones had, had done a post and stuff?

• 46:18Speaker 00

  My buddy Kyle said, the guy who I work out with every day, I'm talking about, he told me that John Jones came out and said something and it was positive. He said, uh, Matt Brown as well, of, of a former fighter, did a video, he said it was really nice and stuff. And I'm sure I'll see some of that stuff, I don't wanna like, relive the moment that much, I don't wanna keep like diving back, but when I do get back on social media or do start watching videos and stuff again, I'm sure I'm gonna see some of it, you know? And I appreciate everybody, but I, I just, it feels weird to, you know, I'm, I'm not looking for, for that, for sympathy or for, to make this okay, it's not okay, you know? You know, it's not.

• 47:02Steven Bartlett?

  But I, I think the reason I'm sort of really keen to tell you is, once upon a time, we didn't really understand mental health. And so people were thought to be crazy or whatever when they acted out of character, but I think the world has gotten to such a place now where we, we think about context a bit more. And this was really, it was really nice to see for me, um, having done a little bit of background research as well, to see that people's first reaction wasn't just to villainize somebody, it was to understand, people actually went, oh no, this is someone struggling with their mental health. It's not a bad person, it's a bad mental health situation.

• 47:42Steven Bartlett?

  Which I've actually not really seen before, which was, as I say, it was really nice. But I know you, I know what you're saying, you're saying you don't wanna blame anything.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  Right, I don't wanna blame anything or have a crutch to lean on about my actions, about what happened, you know, I did it, you know, I'm not blaming it on mental health or anything like that, even though I'm focusing on that now, you know, I, I did, I did that, I decided to drink that day when I wasn't feeling well, it's, it's all on me.

• 48:08Steven Bartlett?

  So is it kind of a bit of a roller coaster in, in your world post-fighting, in terms of your mental health? Is it ups and downs and ups and downs?

• 48:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, big time.

• 48:18Steven Bartlett?

  And what is the?

• 48:19Speaker 00

  Some days I wake up and I feel like I made the right decision, you know?

• 48:25Speaker 00

  I need to be home, I need to be doing things around the house, I need to be here every day with my kids, making them breakfasts. And then some days I wake up and I'm like, what the fuck am I doing? I can beat all these guys still, you know, I can still beat these guys, but I don't know if that ever, it, it leaves. I might be sixty-year-old, having coffee one day, saying the same thing. I could beat these guys, I don't know if that's just a competitive spirit, I don't know if that's just fighting your whole life, I don't, I don't know, but I, these top guys that are winning now and, and fighting now on these upcoming cards, I can, I can beat them still.

• 48:59Speaker 00

  I know I can. And then I wake up the next day and I'm like, ah, good thing I don't have to fight these guys anymore. Then the next day it's like, like I can, I can be the world champion, you know, it's just, it's up and down every day.

• 49:15Steven Bartlett?

  And how does your, your mental health sort of correlate to those ups and those, um, thoughts?

• 49:20Speaker 00

  Even though I have those days where I wanna fight and I think I made the right decision, my mental health has been pretty even, you know? Up until recently, I, I haven't been worried about myself or having to go to my journal and sit in the morning and have coffee like I've been doing this last week, you know? But I, when I do start feeling a hundred percent normal, okay again, I need to continue to do those things, you know? I can't, I can't stop because I feel good, it's, it's a constant, it, something's going on with my brain, like I have to practice these, these things every day. And now being removed from the incident, removed from my, three years ago when I felt

• 50:03Speaker 00

  really bad and I was in a dark place, I'm realizing that, like it's, it's not a eureka moment where you're fixed, you gotta, this is everyday work for the rest of your life, most likely, I'm pretty sure.

• 50:15Steven Bartlett?

  Was it just the last week or was it, you said in recent times?

• 50:19Speaker 00

  In the recent times, that was like the, the boiling point on Father's Day. But there's been days, yeah, there's been days where I've not expressed to my wife how I'm feeling and I was feeling down or.

• 50:31Steven Bartlett?

  The last two months?

• 50:32Speaker 00

  Couple, few months, yeah, there's, there's good days, bad days, you know?

• 50:36Steven Bartlett?

  Where you haven't expressed to your wife how you're feeling?

• 50:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, some days I will tell her, but some, some days I, I don't, you know, just continue to go along my day and, you know? It's so, I don't wanna be that guy to where I wake up and my wife's worried about how I'm feeling that day, wait, you know, I don't want her worrying about me like that. I wonder who, who's waking up today is, is depressed, is upset, Dustin waking up today or is this my normal husband I'm waking up to? I don't want to worry her. So some days, you know, if I'm feeling really bad, which hasn't been that often lately, I'll tell her, I'm, you know, today I'm not feeling that well. I don't want my daughter coming in the, in the bedroom, you know, why is dad staying in bed all day? You, you know, I don't wanna tell her again that I'm not feeling good today, you know, she doesn't understand, I have a, she's about to be ten years old.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  She, she can't comprehend what's going on, I can barely comprehend it, you know, so

• 51:30Speaker 00

  to keep them more on a steady day-to-day thing, if, if it's just slightly, I'm kinda feeling a little bit off today, I just suck it up and go about, you know, my business.

• 51:42Steven Bartlett?

  But there will be days where you, you stay in bed all day?

• 51:44Speaker 00

  There has been, yeah.

• 51:47Steven Bartlett?

  And you try and sort of avoid the conversation with like your daughter?

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's, it's not often, but it happens, yeah.

• 51:56Steven Bartlett?

  Do you find that if you don't talk about it, it kinda comes out in other ways? Cause I.

• 52:00Speaker 00

  Well, you bottle it up so long until it finds a way out, you know?

• 52:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 52:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:04Steven Bartlett?

  Which kinda brings us to the airport incident, I guess.

• 52:06Speaker 00

  Could, could be.

• 52:07Steven Bartlett?

  To some degree.

• 52:08Speaker 00

  Right, but even the airport incident, those days leading up, even if I did have an off day, uh, I didn't feel like it was that, that bad, that serious, that dangerous to myself or anybody else, you know, I really didn't feel like that.

• 52:26Steven Bartlett?

  It's an interesting thing, I've, I've often actually contended with when I'm having like bad moments, do I tell my partner so I can really relate to the feeling? Cause in part, I think as, as a man, sometimes you wanna be, you have it within you that you need to be strong and steady, especially with like my fiancee, I'm like, I have to be strong and steady, so if I'm having a bad day or whatever, I, I feel like I have to keep it to myself, but then it always finds a way out and it hurts her, like it will hurt the relationship. So actually, I think with, with age, I've gone, actually, to avoid all problems, be honest as fast as you can.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  Right, right, yeah. Honesty is always the best, it's always the best.

• 53:02Steven Bartlett?

  Is that kinda how you feel as well with it or is it similar?

• 53:04Speaker 00

  I mean, for the most part, I, I am really open and honest, but like, if I'm just kinda feeling off and it's for me to, I know you don't understand what that, what that means or maybe you have something you can link it to when you feel kinda just like today's not, not my day. If I'm feeling off, I'll let her know, I've been pretty honest, but like I said, if it's just slight, like I'm just not feeling right, I won't, if it's slight, I won't, I won't even bring it up, I gotta be a dad and continue to do things every day and stuff like it. But if I'm feeling really down to where I don't even wanna leave the house at all and stuff, you know, I'll, I'll let my wife know.

• 53:39Steven Bartlett?

  On this point of purpose, when you were talking to Theo and Joe, it was, you were saying that, you know, the purpose you had for twenty years has now gone, so in its place, you, you kinda need to find something else, you need to figure out what, what's in its place. How are you thinking about that today?

• 53:53Speaker 00

  I retired at thirty-six years old, that's young to, you know, like I said, the days are long, I have all day, every day to, I need to stay busy and that's what I have been doing, you know, working with CBS, working with, uh, the podcast we have down in South Florida every Monday, I've just been trying to, saying yes to as much stuff as I can, so I'm, don't have time to sit back and think. And that could have been my demise as well, maybe I was being too busy, maybe I wasn't focusing on my mental health and myself as much, you know, it's easy to get lost in these whirlwinds of busy and be here, be there, you know, it, life just moves so fast sometimes.

• 54:28Steven Bartlett?

  And you have a plan for, for, for what you wanna commit yourself to? You're thirty-seven now, right? So, I mean, you've got another fifty, fifty years ahead of you to, to climb other mountains, potentially.

• 54:40Speaker 00

  Right, no, I don't have anything locked, like locked down with what I'm gonna do exactly, what I'm gonna focus everything on, but I need to find something, man.

• 54:47Steven Bartlett?

  Has there ever been anything that compared?

• 54:49Speaker 00

  No, nothing ever will, nothing, I have a void inside of me that nothing will, you know, being a father is very fulfilling and, and I love it and it's, it's rewarding and I actually enjoy it. But nothing fills that void of what fighting was in my life, you know, I haven't found anything yet, I don't think there is.

• 55:13Steven Bartlett?

  You don't think there is?

• 55:14Speaker 00

  I just don't know what's gonna consume me and take all of myself the way fighting did. You know, I woke up thinking about it, I went to sleep thinking about it, I, it was my life, man.

• 55:32Speaker 00

  I cared so much about it, man, I was in love with it.

• 55:36Steven Bartlett?

  You can still play a role in the industry though, no?

• 55:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that's what I, and that's what I thought I was, you know, was a good avenue, that's what I was trying to do, that was my goal after fighting, is I wanna stick around the sport, whether I'm on the desk broadcast or with the podcast, anything containing to the sport where I can talk about it, you know, be around the sport that's given me everything I have and taught me so many lessons in life, I, I just wanna be around it, speaking about it, be on the mats, helping younger fighters, whatever, you know, and I was doing, and I was doing that when I retired, you know? I'm still doing it.

• 56:10Steven Bartlett?

  But it's not the same?

• 56:11Speaker 00

  It's not the same.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  No.

• 56:14Steven Bartlett?

  How does it compare as a percentage? Is it twenty percent the way there, fifty percent the way there or?

• 56:20Speaker 00

  Probably closer to twenty, it's not, it's not even fifty, no.

• 56:24Steven Bartlett?

  Have you spoken to other fighters who have expressed the exact same sentiment, that like fighting was the, the Mount Everest for me and I don't know what to do next?

• 56:33Speaker 00

  Not really to that, to that exact point, but other fighters have reached out and said, hey, you know, I'm, I'm all ears, if you ever wanna talk about it, I went through it as well, you know, laying the gloves down isn't as easy as you think, you know? People who I look up to have reached out to me and, and, uh, I never took anybody up on it, you know, I never started speaking to other fighters about what they do to get past and I should, you know, it's all, it's my, my doing, you know?

• 56:57Steven Bartlett?

  Cause it's not, it's not a new problem, is it?

• 56:59Speaker 00

  No, this is.

• 57:00Steven Bartlett?

  Everyone, but lots of people have expressed.

• 57:02Speaker 00

  Right, and it's not just a new problem with fighting, it's a new problem, I think, with a lot of athletes, you know, who've done it for a long time and reached the pinnacle and, you know, when it's over, you know, you have a lot of life left to live.

• 57:14Steven Bartlett?

  I've heard similar sentiments expressed from some of my friends that were in the military and then left the military thirty-six, thirty-seven years old and it's like that was their Everest, that was also the camaraderie that they had being in camp and, uh, being in, in, on base and stuff like that and going away, being deployed and then they come back and they're a civilian all of a sudden, right?

• 57:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:34Steven Bartlett?

  It's difficult.

• 57:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, but that's life, life's difficult, you know, it's just, gotta figure something else out, you know, gotta figure, solve a new puzzle, it's just, life keeps going.

• 57:45Steven Bartlett?

  You were going off to work when you were caught up in this airport incident?

• 57:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:49Steven Bartlett?

  How are you thinking about work prospects and stuff like that, considering all that swirling around at the moment and all these things?

• 57:56Speaker 00

  Worried about losing everything I've been working on, you know? That is a possibility as well, you know?

• 58:07Speaker 00

  Like post-fighting, when I retired, all the stuff that I've been doing, all the

• 58:12Speaker 00

  the desk work, that me focusing on getting better at all that stuff, I'm like, did I just ruin everything that I that I was working for? You know, I don't know yet.

• 58:21Speaker 00

  It's still too too early to really have those answers, I think.

• 58:24Steven Bartlett?

  Have you got like sponsors and stuff like that? Or is it just your partners where you do guest work and podcasts and stuff like that?

• 58:29Speaker 00

  No, I have a bunch of sponsors. Yeah.

• 58:32Steven Bartlett?

  And they've been understanding?

• 58:34Speaker 00

  It's kind of murky right now. I think it's still too fresh. I know. One big one isn't a sponsor anymore.

• 58:41Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, you lost a sponsor?

• 58:41Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, I'm sure I lost a few. I'm waiting to see when the smoke clears, who's still with me or not. That day cost me not only embarrassment and embarrassment to my family, it cost me a lot of money, too, you know?

• 58:57Speaker 00

  I'm losing sponsors, I'm losing gigs and losing things that I had set up, you know?

• 59:02Steven Bartlett?

  You're losing gigs you had set up in the future as well?

• 59:05Speaker 00

  Well, we'll see. Obviously, the gigs, the three things I was supposed to do that that week

• 59:12Speaker 00

  are gone. And then a big sponsor of mine is gone because of it.

• 59:19Steven Bartlett?

  And of the of the professional commitments you have coming up, what are those kinds of things that you have? I know you you said in an interview that I watched that you'd reached out to, was it Paramount?

• 59:29Speaker 00

  Oh, I work with Paramount.

• 59:31Steven Bartlett?

  You work with them. But you'd reached out to them to say, listen, I want to sharpen my skills as a commentator?

• 59:36Speaker 00

  As a desk analyst.

• 59:37Steven Bartlett?

  Desk analyst. And so you'd reached out to them post, you know, post-retirement, because you wanted to get more and more into that. I just thought it was really cool that you proactively reached out to them and said, listen, I'm here.

• 59:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you guys think that I would be a good fit anywhere on a broadcast or anything, I would love to talk about fighting and talk about this sport as it continues to grow with what I've learned through the two decades of doing it. You know, if I can be a voice in this area, please let me do it. And they did, you know, and I told them like I'm coachable. I don't have no hard feelings. Like if I'm doing something wrong, please let me know. I'm very, you know, because a lot of these other people who work the desk come from a media background or things like that. Of course, we have a lot of fighters, but who work the desk, but a lot of these other people might not take criticism in coaching as well as somebody who's been coached their whole life. So I'm letting them know, like, if there's something I'm doing that is not the right etiquette, is not, if I can do something

• 1:00:33Speaker 00

  better, please let me know, coach me, I'm not, it's no judgment, you're never gonna rub me the wrong way, please let me know, I want to be good at this. That's what I was trying to let them know.

• 1:00:41Steven Bartlett?

  Well, it's cool. It's cool, because a lot of people, they come in with a lot of ego, especially if they've been at the the peak of their powers in one profession.

• 1:00:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:49Steven Bartlett?

  They kind of don't want to humble themselves enough to be honest.

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  This is a whole new thing for me, you know, talking on TV and talking about fights and things like that is a whole new thing. So I wanted to learn as much as I can.

• 1:00:59Steven Bartlett?

  And you have a contract with them?

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did. We'll see.

• 1:01:03Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, you're worried that it might not be?

• 1:01:05Speaker 00

  It could be. Yeah.

• 1:01:07Steven Bartlett?

  I guess when something like this-

• 1:01:08Speaker 00

  I had a year contract with Paramount CBS to work the desks for the fights.

• 1:01:14Steven Bartlett?

  Okay. Well, I hope they all stick with you.

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  We'll see. I think in a few weeks, I'm back on the podcast. So I know they're bringing me back to the Monday podcast. We talk about fights every Monday. In two weeks, I'll be back on that. And so we'll see if that continues, you know?

• 1:01:29Steven Bartlett?

  You know, the other thing is, you are you are young. You're 37, I'm 33. And

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  You're young.

• 1:01:35Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah. That's how I can I can almost relate would be like if my career was was wrapping up in a couple of years, like my main, you know, but I'm in the, I guess my career is business. So I can kind of do that forever.

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  Well, for sure.

• 1:01:48Steven Bartlett?

  But if I if I had to, if I'd spent the last 20 years of my life, I've spent the last 15 years of my life building businesses. So if I wrapped up in a couple of years' time and I had to change profession, and I couldn't do what I've done for the last 20 years anymore? Gosh.

• 1:02:03Steven Bartlett?

  That's what athletes go through.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 1:02:05Steven Bartlett?

  They climb the mountain and then aging happens and they get older like we all do. And then they have to say, right, brand new mountain. That doesn't happen to most people in most careers. You kind of just keep climbing up.

• 1:02:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. True. I never thought about it, comparing it to other other careers.

• 1:02:19Steven Bartlett?

  Do you enjoy the the desk work?

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  I really do, man.

• 1:02:21Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:22Speaker 00

  That's why I'm scared to lose it, too, because I really enjoy being connected to the sport, you know, this sport has, like I said, given me everything I have, me and my family, everything we have is through fighting.

• 1:02:33Steven Bartlett?

  Just like John Jones, where marginal improvements in your cognitive performance can have a massive impact. Sometimes I podcast for 10 hours a day. Over the last couple of weeks, I've been in filming for a TV show and I have like one or two days off to get all of my work done, which means there's lots of cognitive load. And so I turned to ketones because I find myself more articulate, able to think more clearly, able to work out better when I'm fueled by ketones. And so the reason I became a co-owner of this company and the reason why they now are a sponsor of this podcast is because I remember one of my team members called Christiana, she tried it once and came up to my desk and she goes, this is the best product ever made. And I think in part, that's because she really cares about those cognitive benefits, as I do, as John Jones does, and as I think most of my listeners probably will. So if you haven't tried these yet, all you have

• 1:03:15Steven Bartlett?

  to do is go to ketone.com/steven. And you'll also get 30% off your first subscription order. You'll get exclusive ketone IQ merch and of course, cognitive benefits that might just change your life. If there's anything we need, it is connection, especially in the world we're living in today. And that is exactly why we created these conversation cards, because on this show, when I sit here with my guests and have those deep intimate conversations, this remarkable thing happens time and time again. We feel deeply connected to each other. At the end of every episode, the guest I'm interviewing leaves a question for the next guest, and we've turned them into these conversation cards. And we've added these twist cards

• 1:03:56Steven Bartlett?

  to make your conversations even more interesting. And there are so many more twists along the way with the conversation cards. This is the brand new edition. And for the first time ever, I've added to the pack this gold card, which is an exclusive question from me. But I'm only putting the gold cards in the first run of conversation cards. So get yours now before the limited edition gold cards are all gone. Head to the link in the description below. And this is obviously a bit of a personal question, but it gives useful context is, at 37 years old, you're thinking as a man, you know, I've got to provide for my family for the for the next 30, 40 years potentially. Are you are you set up sufficiently? Because there's a lot of talk around fighters not getting paid that much in the UFC as well.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  No, the career I've had?

• 1:04:37Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  I don't have to work another day in my life.

• 1:04:40Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:04:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:41Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, congratulations. Well done. Because a lot of people also, they go out and they, you know, we hear the stories of buying a little too many watches or gambling or whatever it might be.

• 1:04:51Speaker 00

  I need to stop gambling. That's what I need to do. I told my wife the other day, she was like, she's like, I just paid some bills. I saw you made another deposit to the gambling thing. I was like, I can't cold turkey everything. Give me one, let's go one thing at a time. One thing gambling's a couple of steps up on the list. I got some other things I need to stop doing first.

• 1:05:09Steven Bartlett?

  Well, if you can take care of yourself the rest of your life, then, you know, all good, right? To to have fun still.

• 1:05:15Speaker 00

  Right, right, yeah.

• 1:05:16Steven Bartlett?

  So a lot of a lot of a lot of fighters, a lot of people generally can't say that when they leave.

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  But I've always, you know, I have a few businesses in Louisiana and elsewhere. I've always planted seeds my whole my whole life, you know, I started investing when I was 23 years old, you know, before I was even making real, real money. I was investing what little I had. I always planted these seeds because I I knew I couldn't fight forever. It was going to end any, any, you know, I could have gotten a car accident and never fight again. It could end any day with fighting. I knew that. So I've always planted seeds to try to have my future taken care of, you know, always, since a young age.

• 1:05:54Steven Bartlett?

  Smart.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  Actually, when I was like 18, 19, I told my wife, I'm not, I'm not going to fight past 35 years old. And I almost hit that mark. I was too young to, at the time when I told her that, too young to see the, you know, full picture and know how my career was going to play out. But at 36, I hung it up. I told her from a very young age, 35, I lived half my life, I have a whole nother life to live at 35. I can go to college, I can go, I can do, be whatever I want to be. I have a whole nother life to live. So I kind of always

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  angled at 35 to pivot.

• 1:06:28Steven Bartlett?

  And that was the moment?

• 1:06:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, man.

• 1:06:31Steven Bartlett?

  That's the moment where you retired?

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Steven Bartlett?

  How does it feel looking at that photo?

• 1:06:36Speaker 00

  Man, these are my brothers in this picture, man.

• 1:06:38Steven Bartlett?

  I can see the emotion in your faces.

• 1:06:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, my mother's back there. And this is my family, you know?

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  All these guys are my family members.

• 1:06:52Speaker 00

  It was a special day.

• 1:06:55Speaker 00

  And I got to do it in Louisiana, you know, it meant a lot to me. It really meant a lot to me.

• 1:07:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, I was just a kid chasing dreams and it just flew by so quick. And I guess that's a part of me that's

• 1:07:17Speaker 00

  scared for the future is I don't, I don't know.

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  You know, for 20 years, I was dreaming about being the best. I just want to dream again, you know? I don't know what that dream will be. I just need that in my life, whatever that is.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:37Speaker 00

  Special day, man.

• 1:07:44Steven Bartlett?

  So many emotions in your faces you look at that photo.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm trying not to tear up, dude.

• 1:07:48Steven Bartlett?

  How come?

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  Because it just makes me feel that way, you know?

• 1:07:56Speaker 00

  Because I still love it, but I know I need to walk away from it, you know, continue walking away from it. But I still love it. And like I told you, it's like a piece of me.

• 1:08:08Speaker 00

  Like those gloves, me putting them on the mat is a piece of myself I left, you know? I really truly believe that.

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  You know, I was a kid when I started this.

• 1:08:35Speaker 00

  The fight life.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  You know, it taught me how to be a man. It taught me how to do business. It taught me a lot of things about myself.

• 1:08:50Speaker 00

  I didn't go to school. Fighting was my my education, you know?

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  Traveled the world and met people and sat at tables. I would have never dreamed of, you know, sitting at and through fighting. It was just incredible journey.

• 1:09:07Speaker 00

  You know? But if I can go back in time to when I was a kid, 16, 17, if I could do it again, I would do it again, even knowing everything that what could be, what damage I could take. I would do it again. That's how fun the ride was.

• 1:09:29Speaker 00

  But nobody rides for free, you know? That's why I'm saying I would do it again. The damage, the ups, the downs, the unknown. Nobody rides for free. Whether you're working, clocking in at a job, working in an office for your whole life, you know? Or you're fighting men all over the world. We're exchanging something, you know, for something. So I would do it again.

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  Just glad I got to do it here in Louisiana, you know, where it all started.

• 1:10:09Speaker 00

  Yeah. That was special to me.

• 1:10:13Speaker 00

  Because UFC doesn't come here often to Louisiana.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  The time they came before my retirement was back in 2015, and I fought on that on that one as well. To get them to come back here just for my retirement was a big deal.

• 1:10:30Speaker 00

  And I'm proud of that. I'm proud of bringing it back to the city, you know?

• 1:10:35Speaker 00

  I have a game room at my house and I have this, the UFC actually sent me a retirement big picture frame with my wife, my daughter, their name was on the canvas for this fight. And I didn't even know. The UFC printed their names on the on the canvas of the octagon. So they cut them out of the thing and they have them framed in a in a nice shadow box with pictures from the fight and their names and stuff. That was that was really nice, man. So I have this picture hanging on my wall in my game room in my house.

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  I got, actually, I need to call Mike, this guy here, Mike Brown. I need to call him back. He tried to call me and he's been texting me the last few days. I need to call him back, let him know I'm good, you know?

• 1:11:19Speaker 00

  I've been silent in every call, you know, and I just, I want to talk to people since Father's Day. But I need to start, I need to reach back out.

• 1:11:30Steven Bartlett?

  There's a lot in your head, isn't there? That photo seems to have teleported you back.

• 1:11:34Speaker 00

  I'm just thinking, thinking about that night.

• 1:11:39Speaker 00

  Thinking about the guys in the picture, seeing my mom in the background, you know?

• 1:11:44Speaker 00

  My friends. It was just incredible night.

• 1:11:49Speaker 00

  And it hurts me a little bit, like to to be sitting here talking about getting arrested last week. Like, it feels like such a fall from grace, you know, looking at this picture, like I was on top of the world in this moment.

• 1:12:01Speaker 00

  Felt like I did it all the right way, you know?

• 1:12:05Speaker 00

  Even had the UFC play Sinatra. I did it my way when I was walking out the octagon that that night. And, you know, it just

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  it's life.

• 1:12:22Steven Bartlett?

  That's life.

• 1:12:23Speaker 00

  That's life.

• 1:12:25Steven Bartlett?

  It's life. It's part of the part of the hero's journey is the the ups, the downs, the redemptions, the all of it. And everything you teach, you know, it's funny, because when I think about your earliest context, it was in my objective, subjective view, difficult. It was a real challenge. You got a father that's an alcoholic, the violence in the home, growing up in a, you know, in a working class area, and you rose from there. And look what happened.

• 1:12:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was beautiful.

• 1:12:50Steven Bartlett?

  And then look at, you know?

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  I'm proud of it.

• 1:12:51Steven Bartlett?

  And then the roller coasters go down, too. And that's why they're so good when they go the opposite way and such. And and so this is just, for me, this is maybe just the platform of your next era, you know?

• 1:13:03Speaker 00

  For sure, whatever that is. I'm here for it. But man, I'm just learning and living, you know, and trying my best, just like everyone else.

• 1:13:13Steven Bartlett?

  It's incredible, though, what you've proven that you can do, you know, from

• 1:13:17Speaker 00

  I honestly, no BS, look you in the eyes. Like, I feel like anything I set my mind to, I can I can accomplish. I can make it happen.

• 1:13:26Steven Bartlett?

  Look, you've done that.

• 1:13:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:30Steven Bartlett?

  You don't need to look me in the eyes and no BS me. You've you've done something that, you know,

• 1:13:35Steven Bartlett?

  very few men could ever, ever accomplish, especially considering where you came from. So I think I am quite excited to see what you set your mind to next, because if that's what you're able to accomplish by 35 years old or something, God only knows what you could do with the next two decades of your life if you aimed all that energy at an equally terrifying goal.

• 1:13:54Speaker 00

  I would love to. That's what I need, something terrifying. I need something like that, something that I can't stop thinking about.

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:14:05Steven Bartlett?

  And you've got the mentality that you have, right? Like, to accomplish this, you've got something, the core components to be wildly successful, as you say, with whatever you put your mind to, so.

• 1:14:15Speaker 00

  Well, I'm not scared to work for it, you know?

• 1:14:18Steven Bartlett?

  At this moment, in this photo, were your family encouraging you to hang up the gloves?

• 1:14:23Speaker 00

  My wife was. Nobody else in my family, no.

• 1:14:26Steven Bartlett?

  How come?

• 1:14:27Speaker 00

  She was pregnant. She was a couple of months away from giving, a few months away from giving birth to my son. I had been doing it for a long time.

• 1:14:39Speaker 00

  We just kind of both knew it was about the time, you know?

• 1:14:43Steven Bartlett?

  You said you were scared because of the the void of purpose that would be in your life thereafter. But I've also heard you say you're scared of like the the brain injuries that fighters often get in the wake of any sort of contact sport. I had the the great privilege of interviewing arguably the world's leader on CTE. And for people that don't know, CTE is a progressive brain disease caused by repeated head trauma, leading to abnormal protein buildup, which lead to brain decline. Older adults with a history of traumatic brain injuries have a 230% greater risk of developing Alzheimer's than those without. 61% of UFC fighters stated they worry about potential long-term brain damage,

• 1:15:25Steven Bartlett?

  with with a good percentage, about 21%, noticing differences in their brain function after their fighting career. And lastly, a 2023 study found that more than 40% of brains from contact sport players who died before the age of 30 had CTE. I I think I heard you say that you were concerned about brain damage or brain trauma from from fighting.

• 1:15:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, part of me laying the gloves down, like I said, for my wife wanting me to, was because she was kind of worried about my behavior a few years back. And I went to a neurologist and did a scan with contrast where they put the dye in your brain and your veins and do all that stuff. And I have, I had some, you know, changes in my brain, but we don't have a passport of

• 1:16:12Steven Bartlett?

  Before.

• 1:16:13Speaker 00

  Or throughout the process, you know, we just have a snapshot of right now of my brain. But the doctor, the neurologist told me that, you know, it has to be posthumous. You can't, you put a chemical on the brain, it releases a protein, you know, if you, so we won't know until I pass away and they study my brain if I if I have it or not. But the doctor was telling me, like, you know, looking at the things you have going on, like, I can't say you have it, but.

• 1:16:40Steven Bartlett?

  Your wife was noticing different behavior?

• 1:16:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:44Speaker 00

  Just like emotional and.

• 1:16:48Steven Bartlett?

  It's not a conversation people have a lot about CTE. I actually only learned about it about a year ago when I interviewed this person and I couldn't believe it.

• 1:16:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:56Steven Bartlett?

  I couldn't believe that athletes that are doing contact sports, kids that are doing American football are.

• 1:17:02Speaker 00

  And not only fighting, I played football all my youth, you know, as well. So I'm sure my head's been rattled a good bit.

• 1:17:11Steven Bartlett?

  I have a brain scan here, which is really for the listeners at home to show them what what advanced CTE looks like on the brain. But it is these kind of like plaques that kind of build up in the brain from contact head injuries. And what the symptoms of that are often mental health disorders, they are. And there's a spectrum, addictions also sort of associated with CTE. People sometimes see boxes, for example, slurring their words and such. And that's also within this sort of same family and category of CTE.

• 1:17:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:38Steven Bartlett?

  But but as you say, it's not something you know when you're alive. And they have to post, obviously, look at your brain and check if you have it. And what did the neurologist say, that it was a little bit abnormal?

• 1:17:47Speaker 00

  I have a scarring and stuff. I'd have to pull out my phone and find the the exact terminology for the parts of the brain. I don't know. You know, I have a thinning in the back of my brain at whatever part. And I have a, you have a septum in your brain, like your nose.

• 1:18:03Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Speaker 00

  And my septum is is splitting, separated a good bit. And the neurologist thinks my left and right side aren't communicating as smoothly as they should because of the separation.

• 1:18:17Steven Bartlett?

  And they suspect that that's to do with head trauma.

• 1:18:19Speaker 00

  I mean, we don't, we don't know.

• 1:18:22Steven Bartlett?

  Do you feel different? And it's a strange question to ask, but have you noticed any difference in yourself other than, you know, the differences one would experience when they left a job that was that significant?

• 1:18:34Speaker 00

  No, besides like ups and downs with mood and stuff like that, that's one of the the things I kind of notice. And all, being honest, like spontaneous decisions, I notice like if I'm like, fuck it, I'll just put $5,000 on this bet right now. Like just, I wouldn't normally do that, I feel like, but maybe it's just who I am now, I don't know. Or saying, fuck it, I'm gonna get drunk as I can right now in the airport, just. You know, I feel like that is like spontaneous decision making.

• 1:19:10Speaker 00

  That I wouldn't normally do, I think, but maybe I would, I don't know. If we're talking about brain trauma and like decisions I made or ways I feel, I'm sure I can draw links to all kinds of stuff. You know, I don't even know if it would make sense or would be correct. You know, when you're scrambling for answers, it's easy to like draw lines and say, well, this is because of that, this is because of that. You know, I feel, I feel normal, besides ups and down days and stuff like that, I feel, I feel normal.

• 1:19:35Steven Bartlett?

  So is there any possibility that you ever return to the UFC?

• 1:19:43Steven Bartlett?

  If you had to plot it as a percentage?

• 1:19:49Speaker 00

  Five percent?

• 1:19:50Steven Bartlett?

  And since you've retired, has that percentage gone up or down, do you think, progressively?

• 1:19:56Speaker 00

  Down, I think.

• 1:19:57Steven Bartlett?

  Down, okay.

• 1:19:58Speaker 00

  Down, I think. Because I would have to reinstate, first of all, I'd have to get my wife on board. That I'm gonna do another training camp and do this again. But I'd have to reinstate myself in the drug testing protocol. And I think I'd have to do like six months of clean drug testing before I'm eligible to compete again. So that would be another six months, you know, it's just a lot of hoops to jump, to jump through.

• 1:20:22Steven Bartlett?

  And your father? Difficult, difficult, extremely difficult, layers of emotion. It's funny, you know, we've all got people in our, well, a lot of people have people in their lives where they've watched them struggle with addiction, they've tried to help them. They can't make sense of why they won't accept the help, why they won't change, they know they're doing, like I've had, it's such a familiar story.

• 1:20:43Steven Bartlett?

  What's the latest with him?

• 1:20:46Speaker 00

  He was, latest with him is two days ago, he was sleeping in his truck, behind a business.

• 1:20:55Steven Bartlett?

  And how'd you find this out? Oh, you have a.

• 1:20:57Speaker 00

  Dude, when I got a, this is Father's Day week.

• 1:21:05Speaker 00

  This is, my sister sent me this, somebody who she knows. He was parked, my dad was parked at the, at the park.

• 1:21:15Speaker 00

  Somebody snapped a picture of him getting out of his car.

• 1:21:24Steven Bartlett?

  He's, so he's got his top off? Oh, gosh.

• 1:21:27Speaker 00

  No shoes?

• 1:21:28Steven Bartlett?

  No shoes.

• 1:21:37Speaker 00

  My sister actually gave him that truck that he's living in.

• 1:21:42Steven Bartlett?

  God.

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  And we're still working, we're still working to to get something, get him to do something or admit himself, just to help himself, you know?

• 1:21:56Steven Bartlett?

  Sorry, I'm so sorry.

• 1:21:58Speaker 00

  I mean, that's life, but to see your father like that, you know, it's just like, damn, man.

• 1:22:03Steven Bartlett?

  Is it alcohol?

• 1:22:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:04Steven Bartlett?

  It's alcohol?

• 1:22:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:06Steven Bartlett?

  Does he, does he do other types of drugs?

• 1:22:07Speaker 00

  Nope, never smoked a cigarette in his life, never smoked marijuana, doesn't take pills, like just alcohol.

• 1:22:17Speaker 00

  We're trying, me and my sister are trying, his other, his other kids don't want anything to do with him. But me and my sister are trying to get him right. And my wife's super on board, like trying everything too to, but if he doesn't want to help himself, we can only do so much, you know? But like I said at the beginning, that's not my weight to carry, you know? I'm trying my best. I'm a father now too, I gotta look out for me and mine, I can't babysit my father, you know?

• 1:22:49Steven Bartlett?

  It's, it can often drag people down themselves if they try and save someone from themselves.

• 1:22:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, dude, I almost lost my mind on Father's Day. I'm the guy you're talking about.

• 1:23:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I know, because I've got a sort of personal story in this regard where I had to sit with one of my close relatives. And I could see that they were destroying themselves trying to save someone else. And they are the only person in this family that I'm talking about that have made that decision to try and save this person. And they are paying the price. They are sick, they are upset all the time, they're like, they've got constant despair. Whereas all the other siblings in that family have thought, fuck it.

• 1:23:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Steven Bartlett?

  And it would appear that they're living more peaceful lives because they've said fuck it. But because of this person's heart, they are unable to just cut it off and let this person go.

• 1:23:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:23:39Steven Bartlett?

  Is there part of you that's that's worried that someday you're gonna get a call and it's gonna say?

• 1:23:43Speaker 00

  I've been waiting for months, every day, I've been waiting, I know, me and my wife talk about this all the time. Like every time I get a call about my dad from my sister or something, I'm like, just waiting for the, you know, waiting for the news. He's not in good health and he's 74, 75 years old, like.

• 1:24:02Speaker 00

  I'm telling if he's eating and I don't know. You know, every call I was like, this is the one.

• 1:24:09Steven Bartlett?

  What did your mom think about this, about your father?

• 1:24:13Speaker 00

  I mean, as of most recently, she didn't know, she didn't even know that he was homeless. I told her recently, after all this stuff happened, you know, I explained to her that he's, she's just sorry that I have to deal with this and, you know?

• 1:24:28Steven Bartlett?

  She got remarried and then, yeah.

• 1:24:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:24:38Steven Bartlett?

  So what's next?

• 1:24:41Speaker 00

  Vacation with my family.

• 1:24:43Steven Bartlett?

  Where are you off to?

• 1:24:44Speaker 00

  Right here in Florida, 38.

• 1:24:48Speaker 00

  Going on vacation with my family, sitting in the sun with my kids and family, just have a good time, man.

• 1:24:54Speaker 00

  Stay off the internet. Continue to work on myself, have good mornings. That's it.

• 1:25:02Steven Bartlett?

  Well, you know, I know you're not looking at the internet, but I just wanted to let you know that the internet's been really kind. There's a lot of really, really.

• 1:25:07Speaker 00

  You don't hear that too often, so.

• 1:25:08Steven Bartlett?

  You don't hear that too often.

• 1:25:10Speaker 00

  Good to hear.

• 1:25:10Steven Bartlett?

  And that's actually why I wanted to do this interview as well, is in part, I just wanted to tell you that. But also, I just wanted, I hoped we could be a bit of a platform for people understanding the like complicated nature of mental health and purpose and addiction and alcohol and all these things that through doing this show, I've been able to sort of piece together myself. I've probably interviewed 700 people now. You don't find many new things. It's one of the most crazy things I've learned from doing this show is like, oh, fuck, we're all the same. We all struggle with the same things at the most fundamental level, you know, so.

• 1:25:39Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 1:25:40Steven Bartlett?

  You know? And we're all excited to see what it is you put your, your great talent and your mentality and your obsession to in the next season of your career. Because whatever it is, you know.

• 1:25:54Speaker 00

  Thank you, man.

• 1:25:54Steven Bartlett?

  It's gonna be incredible.

• 1:25:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just gotta find it and continue doing it and continue working on myself and.

• 1:26:00Steven Bartlett?

  And please be patient with yourself.

• 1:26:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, patience is a virtue I wasn't blessed with, I don't think. But I'm working on it, I'm working on it every day, every single day, man.

• 1:26:12Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question to the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is, dear next guest, what are you doing to improve the world?

• 1:26:30Speaker 00

  Trying to leave it better than I found it, better, leave it a better place than I came into with everything I can, you know?

• 1:26:43Speaker 00

  For the most part, making the right decisions and showing that people do care. Trying to be a good, you know, a person who cares about people and stuff like that. That's what hurts me too, man, is me doing that, I wasn't, I wasn't myself, you know? I know it's easy for me to say and try to hide behind like drunkenness or

• 1:27:07Speaker 00

  mental breakdown and all, I feel like all those are excuses, like that's, people who know me know that's, that's not how I roll, man. I just feel bad about it because that's my, my attentions are always 99.9% of the time good, you know? And to hear about the video and everything I did and, you know, I just hurt myself, man, really let myself down. Hard to look in the mirror at times.

• 1:27:36Speaker 00

  But I'm gonna continue, continue doing what I was doing before this happened, you know? Leave the world a better place than I found it, man, and teach my kids to do the same.

• 1:27:48Steven Bartlett?

  And in 2018, you did start the Good Fight Foundation.

• 1:27:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:53Steven Bartlett?

  You and your wife, after clearing out your old fight gear and auctioning it off to support Lafayette families. You started this foundation and you've actively been involved in, in the charity. I went on the website and saw you driving delivery trucks and packing school supplies in the kitchen. But also, I saw the work that you'd done in Uganda, providing kids in Uganda with multiple new water wells as well. And you were a 30 years old, awarded the first ever Forrest Griffin Community Award, the award presented annually by the UFC to recognize an athlete's exceptional volunteering and charity work. And you didn't have to do that, you know, especially at such a young age, at sort of 28 years old when you, when this all began.

• 1:28:35Steven Bartlett?

  And if people do want to go and check out the foundation, I'm gonna link it below. It's called the Good Fight Foundation. And I looked at the mission statement on the website, et cetera. It's exactly what this question asks, it's how can you do good for other people in the world that need it?

• 1:28:49Speaker 00

  Right, and I truly honestly 100% believe I'm doing it, you know? I'm using the platform I built through hard work to benefit as many people as I can, you know? Fighting was gonna benefit me and my family every time I walked to the ring. So why couldn't I, my mindset was why couldn't I stack more on my back and go in with a cause and sell everything I wore that night and benefit a family or benefit a person or another organization? I was like, let me stack up as much on my back as I can and keep this momentum going with the foundation. But when we first started it, it wasn't, I didn't auction off everything I wore to the octagon and we didn't link it to goals. It was just kind of random. We were packing up my house, moving from South Florida back to Louisiana.

• 1:29:35Speaker 00

  And we had all this stuff and we just saw a news article that a police officer got killed a couple of streets where me and my wife went to school, a couple of streets away from where we went to school and he left behind a wife and kids. Officer Middlebrook here in Lafayette, Louisiana. And we're like, well, we're packing up the house, what about all these gloves and fight shorts that you fought in on these big fights? Can we sell, maybe we can sell it and donate to his family? And that's what sparked the whole foundation starting. We did it for maybe a year, two, a year and a half, two years, just out of my name, before we made it an actual nonprofit. We were just eBaying fight worn stuff and donating it to the food pantry, donating it to this fallen officer's family. And then it turned into, let's, let's keep this going and see if other fighters would get behind this and give it a name.

• 1:30:19Speaker 00

  So it's not Dustin Poirier does this, it's the Good Fight Foundation, so more people maybe get behind it. And it just kind of organically happened, that's something I'm very proud of. I mean, in a couple of weeks, we have the backpack, back to school drive, we do, we do probably 1,300 backpacks filled with every school supply on the school supply list for Louisiana.

• 1:30:39Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 1:30:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it takes, it takes everybody to make these goals happen, man. Not just the monetary side, but the going in this warehouse and packing every single backpack. Because we stretch the dollar with this foundation, you know, we don't have any paid, any, everything is, and we try to keep it as minimal as as possible to keep everything affordable. So we buy bulk backpacks, break all the pallets down to backpacks, bulk flash cards, everything that goes in the backpack for the school year. We buy bulk and have to pack every backpack ourselves. And it's something that I really enjoy doing. And I'm happy I have a platform to do it and raise awareness. And, you know, no kid should go to school without a, that's just one of the things we've done annually.

• 1:31:22Speaker 00

  But no kid should go to the school without the proper school supplies they need, you know? It's crazy, so just small stuff like that, you know, we're just trying to make a difference.

• 1:31:32Steven Bartlett?

  Well, if anyone wants to donate, you can go to the Good Fight Foundation, I'll link it below. And they're doing incredible work, so it's a wonderful thing, wonderful cause. And as you say, you run it in a very lean way so that you can optimize for doing more and more good. Dustin, thank you so much.

• 1:31:46Speaker 00

  Thank you, man.

• 1:31:47Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you so much for being such a class act and thank you for agreeing to have me interview you today, it's a real honor. You're a legend in my eyes for so many reasons, not just because of the man that you are, but because you've climbed impossible mountains. And also the way that you conduct yourself after fighting, which is a real, it's really like inspiring to me. The values, the integrity, the orientation towards family, towards doing good, and actually to being openly human.

• 1:32:13Speaker 00

  Definitely, definitely in that.

• 1:32:14Steven Bartlett?

  You know?

• 1:32:15Speaker 00

  It's my first time living life, man.

• 1:32:17Steven Bartlett?

  The good, the bad and the human, and you're, you're willing to be so honest and open about that. And it, there's lots and lots and lots, I know this sounds like a crazy thing to say, but that airport incident is gonna help a lot of people in a lot of ways that I don't think you'll ever get to see indirectly because of what I think is gonna come from it.

• 1:32:35Speaker 00

  Thank you, man. So I, I hope you're, I hope you're right and I'm an open book, I'll talk about it and talk about my struggles and I hope it does help somebody.

• 1:32:44Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you.

• 1:32:44Speaker 00

  Thank you.