#352 Cain Velasquez - UFC Champion Hunted the Man Accused of Abusing His 4-Year-Old Son

Cain Velasquez is a former two-time UFC heavyweight champion, widely regarded as one of the best heavyweights in MMA history, who later competed in pro wrestling with AAA and WWE. After a 2022 legal case that led to time in prison, he was released in February 2026 and has since focused on rebuilding his life. Today he coaches fighters at American Kickboxing Academy in San Jose and teaches Ascension Breath, a breathwork practice he credits with helping him process trauma and move forward. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Privacy Isn't Paranoia, It's Protection - Download Glacier: https://theglacierapp.com Join Vigilance Elite Patreon - https://patreon.com/vigilanceelite Don’t sleep on [@ultrapouches]. New customers get 15% Off with code SRS at https://takeultra.com! #UltraPouches #ad Get 31% off Buoy unflavored liquid electrolytes for any drink with code SRS at https://justaddbuoy.com Try 30 days risk free. SpotOn GPS Fence — trusted by Shawn Ryan for his dog Moose. The most reliable GPS dog fence: 100% secure from backyard to backcountry with virtual boundaries you control from your phone. No wires, no digging. Sets up in minutes, any size, any shape, anywhere. Learn more: https://spotonfence.com/srs Cain Velasquez Links: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/officialcainvelasquez Ascension Breath - https://www.instagram.com/ascensionbreath Ascension Breath Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ascensionbreath Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:28Speaker 01

  Into the wild, the Calteer Panther encounters a shimmering crocodile, a lonely lovebird, a breathless zebra, and a restless tiger.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  Kane Velazquez, welcome to the show, man.

• 1:50Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you for having me.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Thank you for coming. So, yeah, we have a mutual friend, and he had mentioned your name to me, and dude, I was just over the moon to have you. And so, it's really an honor to have you here. Thank you for coming.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  But, yeah, before we get started, man, I just want to say that I really respect, you know, what you did. And I think everybody knows what I'm talking about. And like, standing up for kids that are going through exploitation, you know, dealing with predators and stuff, has been, it's been a huge topic on my platform. And it's, it's like, the one thing that is the nearest and dearest to my heart is helping parents protect their kids and bring awareness to kids on how this kind of stuff is happening, because it's happening more and more and more

• 2:56Speaker 00

  and more as time goes on. And then the amount of predators that are online, it's just, it's atrocious. That seems like an unfixable problem. And you could go after all of them, and I wish people would. But I think that the, I think the only way out of this is, is educating the public on what they can do, you know, as parents to protect their kids from this stuff, to talk to them about it, which me and you were just talking about earlier, and to bring awareness to kids. And we've, we've displayed in real time how that stuff

• 3:39Speaker 00

  happens online and offline, from every organization you can possibly think of, sports, churches, educational systems, everything, you know, they're everywhere. And so, so like I said, man, I just, I just want you to know, it's a real honor to have you here.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Well, yeah, it is about awareness, you know, the, these things have been part of our society, or it's been part of everyday life forever, you know, but the only way to, I think, to really get past this on a positive level is awareness, you know, speaking to your kids, speaking to your kids at an early age, you know, and I know we're like, oh, they're so young, we don't want to like, instill these states of mind in them, you know, to be aware of certain things out there, because they're

• 4:39Speaker 02

  so young. But it's a must, because that happens. So educate your kids on what's appropriate and what's not. And that, no matter what, they're always going to have a free place to come and speak their mind, and they're not going to get judged out of it. You know, they won't get judged. They won't, they're not going to get, they won't get, you know, shot away. Like, the words are valid, right? Their experiences are valid, you know. So it's creating that safe space between you and your child. You can come to me with whatever, doesn't matter. I'm not going to get mad at you, like, no, like, no. You come to me

• 5:24Speaker 02

  with truth, and we're going to get through this together. And being aware, showing awareness of this, talking about it, showing it to the public, then it puts those that are doing these things, puts them in a place of, they have to pay their dues, you know? Like, that's the only way. But if you keep it hushed, or if your kid says something, and you don't take that into account of what they said, and you think, oh, then maybe they meant something else. Like, no, no, like, that's not the way to do it. And they think, oh, okay, well, I'll just take you away from that situation. It's still going to happen to somebody else. And that's, that's the same thing as it happened to your child. They're still growing. People

• 6:09Speaker 02

  aren't being, you know, processed in the way they should, you know, people that need to be, go through the system and be incarcerated and all that, like, they have to be shown. All of it has to be shed light on.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, man. A heavy, heavy topic. We'll dive into it in a little bit here, too. But, but, but I want to do a life story on you. So, you know, starting from childhood all the way up until now. And so, I wanted to give you an introduction first. Kane Velasquez, you're a former two-time UFC heavyweight champion, widely regarded as one of the most dominant heavyweights in MMA history, known for your relentless pace, wrestling, and conditioning. A lifelong martial artist, you have come to view fighting as much more than physical competition, embracing its spiritual dimensions while exploring psychedelics,

• 7:04Speaker 00

  self-discovery, and personal transformation. After serving time in prison, you emerged with a new purpose, helping others heal through your own practice, Ascension Breath, which you introduced to fellow inmates and continue to teach today. Once again, welcome to the show.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  So, I have a, I have a Patreon account, a subscription account, and they've been with me since I started this thing in my attic about five, six years ago. And, and so one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask every guest a question. And this is from Mick Cullen. "You've spent your entire career learning discipline, composure, and how to handle pressure in the toughest situations imaginable, as a fighter, and more importantly, as a father. How have those challenges you faced outside the octagon changed your perspective on what it truly means to be strong?"

• 8:11Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I learned a lot from, well, everything I did, I learned from. So, I learned a lot about myself through wrestling, through, through fighting. What are my limitations? You know, and I realize, like, there are none, unless the ones that I put on myself, right? I learned to really kill myself every day in training, every moment, give myself to that every moment, every day, to where there's nothing more I can give. Like, I gave it all. I didn't, I didn't hold back, right? From everything that I've learned,

• 8:55Speaker 02

  from winning, losing, having a spotlight on me, having it have me open up to people, to strangers, to a mass audience, I guess, I've learned over everything to be strong is to be your authentic self, and to come with truth. Truth is love and wisdom.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  Love and wisdom, and love can be in so many different ways. It could be unconditional. Yes, and again, if somebody does something wrong, then you have to shed light on it. It's also having love for somebody else that you may not have those feelings towards. But it's what's right. So being your true authentic self. And what is that? Well, I think we all see each other as different, but through to get the ego out of the way. We're all the same eternal beings from the same creator. That's what we are, not what we were told. I don't know, self-discovery.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  It's you are an infinite love is within you. Infinite prosperity is within you, like infinite greatness is within you. So how can you share that? How can you embody that? And and share it by just you just being you, your authentic self, not doing something for something else. Not having a hidden agenda. You do it because that's it. That's the essence within you.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, you just mentioned, I love what you just said there. You mentioned there are no limitations and

• 10:42Speaker 00

  that's something I've learned over the years. And it's something that I've tried to instill into just about everybody that works here. And I think I think a lot of them thought I was full of shit. And then they look back at where we started and they're like, there are no limitations.

• 11:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  And and so I'm just curious. And I think that with just about everything in life.

• 11:10Speaker 00

  When did you learn there are no limitations? What was it for you that you just always have that in you?

• 11:17Speaker 02

  No, it was always just an ongoing process. Um, I just remember at a young age, like when I started wrestling and I started getting like a lot of attention. And that I had really, I had a hard time with that with the attention, not, not what I was doing, like wrestling and doing the hard stuff. Like I love that. Um, but then as I started getting like notoriety for it, I thought to myself, well, I was like, well, you can do it too. You know, like it's within you to do this or do something that you love and then and make something great out of it.

• 11:56Speaker 02

  But I've learned over the years, the more that I know myself, the the endless possibilities get bigger and stronger. Right? Like the more that I learn the depths of myself, the more that I realize there's more that I can give. There's more that I can experience. There's more love that I can give. There's more love that I can experience.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  So it's been an ongoing process. I think I've processed things very well as a child already, like

• 12:29Speaker 02

  saw people doing things that were wrong. I didn't, I didn't understand it. You know, I didn't like, I didn't get it like, okay, that's not for me. It's that's what you're doing. Okay. Um, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna intertwine myself with that. So it's a to a path of self-discovery is a it's an endless eternal process.

• 12:57Speaker 02

  The more you tap into that, the more you grow from within in all different aspects. You forgive, you let go, but you do what's right.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  So, yeah, ongoing process of forever. I think we have time like, I don't believe it's just one lifetime. It's it's forever. We're eternal beings. We're going to eternally grow into ourselves. So imagine what what you could think the end game is like, there is no end game. It's just eternally growing, eternally knowing yourself, eternally knowing that God consciousness is within you. It is you.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  All of everything that life is like, that's bringing you into a push-pull, into a place of scarcity, all of that.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Trying to tell you that material things are what's what life is about. Entertainment, trying to get you out of from from you. All that's an illusion to get you out of yourself. How powerful would it be if everyone knew who they really were?

• 14:12Speaker 02

  And lived it.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  It'd be powerful.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  I don't think there's a lot of people that do though, but.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  But we're helping, we're helping, you know? Everyone's helping in some way.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Let's get to um, your life story. Where'd you grow up?

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Um, so I was right, I was born in Salinas, California. My parents were farm workers, so they followed the the fields of Central Valley, the Bay Area, all the way to Arizona. So I grew up in Arizona. I grew up in Yuma, Arizona, a Mexican, my, so part Spanish, part indigenous, Native American from Mexico, from the Sonoran Desert. So that's where some part Yaki, Yaki Mayo, Indian, so.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  Very traditional, hardworking family. So my, my parents worked the fields all day kind of thing. Um, come home and um, I grew up a lot going to Mexico because it was so close. Like we would go, it was like 30 minutes away.

• 15:31Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  So we'd go there, spend the day and I loved it. I loved the culture, the food, the the people.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  So I grew up as.

• 15:44Speaker 00

  What would you do there? Relatives?

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Relatives. Um, would go swim, Arizona, right? This hot, so we'd, we'd find my dad would take us all these like swimming holes where it'd be like, there'd be like canals too. Like so we're gonna swim in this canal and it'd be pretty shady like looking, but we would, we'd swim. We were just like, all right, diving in and just have a good time, swimming, food. So it was more just family time together, being together, enjoying ourselves.

• 16:19Speaker 00

  Where was your dad? Where was your dad from?

• 16:22Speaker 02

  My dad, my dad's from that neighbor in town. So he, he was born in San Luis, Rio Colorado, which is a border town of Yuma.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  So that's where he was born. Um.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  Oh, so when you were going back, you were going back to where your dad grew up?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Yep, yeah, yeah. Um, and it's not a big town. Yuma's not a big town. San Luis isn't a big town either, but they're known for their food, really good food there. Um, it's, it's so hot. It's like, what else? I don't know what else to do, you know? It's you do that, you swim, go, go to the river, Colorado River, swim there. Um, so a lot of family time, a lot of family time and um,

• 17:09Speaker 02

  as I got, as, as even as a child, I saw how like my parents' trauma started coming out. My dad, um, my mom was very open with me. Um, and I was open with her, like she like a safe place I can go to always. She told me everything. She didn't keep anything hidden. She told me everything about her, her life, my dad's life. So when she would talk about my dad's life and how he grew up, he was very badly beaten by, by his mom and older brother. Like on a daily to where he had a home, but he'd, there'd be times where him and his, him and his younger brother would

• 17:49Speaker 02

  wouldn't come home for a while because they knew once they got home, like they were gonna get, get beaten for, for whatever reason. So uh, not a very good childhood. Like he had times where he had separated himself and, you know, to be a kid out in the streets. But um, at home wasn't, it wasn't a safe place for him. And I, and I saw that like in my parents fighting, my, my dad, you know, hit my mom and all that. Like I saw, I saw that.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  You saw that?

• 18:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I heard it, saw it.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  What age?

• 18:21Speaker 02

  As young as I can remember.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, and I just, just remember like I couldn't understand how

• 18:31Speaker 02

  people that love each other would do that to each other, right? So what made me make sense for of it was my mom telling me like things that he's gone through. And she was very understanding. She was just like, well, the things that he's gone through, like it's, it's, this is why he's like this. He'd be so loving and so peaceful, but then again, have this need to, to fight. You know, and hurt the loved ones around him and try to control them. Um, so I had a very loving relationship with my father, I still do. Um, but I understand the trauma that he went through and I'm just happy that

• 19:14Speaker 02

  generationally, me, my siblings didn't go through what he went through.

• 19:19Speaker 00

  You broke.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Um, I feel like it just got better. It got better and the work, I think the work that I'm doing now is, yeah, I'm breaking all those, those family traumas.

• 19:33Speaker 00

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• 21:14Speaker 03

  He destroyed three Flock cameras. Concerns regarding automated license plate readers are under advisement.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Whether you know it or not, Flock had crossed 100,000 active cameras, the largest surveillance network in the country. The surveillance footprint isn't shrinking, it's just rebranding. In Evanston, Illinois, the city ordered its Flock cameras removed entirely. Flock quietly reinstalled the cameras anyway. What if you have a drone just hovering over your residence at all hours of the day surveilling you? We're already citing a number north of 120,000. Most of these cities aren't dropping license plate readers, they're switching vendors. Growth and revolt happening in the same news cycle.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  You have plans to continue to take down these Flock cameras?

• 22:07Speaker 05

  Absolutely, no, absolutely. They are a clear and present threat to public safety.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  That tension is the real story here. Not a company in collapse, but a company facing its first serious wave of customer backlash. At the exact moment, it's also hitting its biggest growth milestone ever.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  How many brothers and sisters do you have?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  One brother, one sister. My brother passed away in 2020, and I got an older sister.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  But yeah, my brother really took care of me a lot when I was younger. Like, I'm fucking crazy, man. I fucking, like... I don't know how someone who's two years older than me took care of me. Like, I just had so much energy, you know? Like, like, just my eyes were open to life and I just, like, wanna run and do all these crazy things. Like, you couldn't really hold me into, like, uh, like, no, no, you need to stay still. Like, that wasn't me. I had to keep moving. Like, I couldn't stay still for, for, for anything. I had to keep exploring.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  So I think I'll, I think I brought a lot of, like, anxiety to him. Because he was the older brother, he had to take care of me at a young age, and no one could do that, not even my parents. That was just so wild, so... Getting into everything, you know, I didn't stop, you know?

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Like troublemaker wild?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  I was more, no, I was more curious, right? So it'd be like times where, where like I wasn't around, like with the family, like I wasn't there. Like, where is he? He's doing something he shouldn't be doing. So I'd go outside in the garage or something, and I'd, and I, like... I saw something mechanical, I'd start breaking it, start, like, opening it up. I wanted to see, you know, what it was and that there was paint there. I started spraying things, like, oh, like, I didn't know, I just, yeah, yeah. So I just started, like, spraying things I shouldn't be spraying, like, I didn't know. I didn't know that you can't do that, that, that, that's permanent.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  You know, there are no limitations like that. I just, I saw something, sprayed paint, did that. Fucking like, something about the razor outside, fucking, like, took my eyelashes out. Took my, yeah, yeah, took my eyelashes out. And then I remember my mom having to, like, paint me eyelashes to go play with my friends, because I didn't have any, right? So now, man, I was just, I was just, I was open to life. And I, and if I saw, like, something, like, I wanted to see what it was. So then I started breaking it and started seeing, like, like, seeing the internals of it.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  So if you're, I mean, with a mischievous kid, you know, like yourself, and your dad losing his temper on your mom, you know, would he lose his temper on you guys?

• 25:32Speaker 02

  So I'm the youngest.

• 25:35Speaker 02

  I, I think they could, they knew I was very, uh, I was innocent, you know? Like, I just, like, I didn't have, like, I didn't do it for a wrong reason, I was just exploring. I think they, I think they knew that. But yeah, I got, I got spanked and all that with the belt and hit, hit, and all that.

• 25:54Speaker 02

  My dad was very possessive of my sister. Like, you have to do this a certain way, like, after school, you gotta come home, no boyfriends, nothing like that. So that was very hard, hard for her, because she was very much like my dad, where she'll fight, she'll fight you. You know, like, she won't back down. So they, they themselves clashed a lot, and that was very difficult to see. You know, how possessive he was with her, how he treated her.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  He didn't let her explore things she needed to explore as, as a child, yeah.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Did you or your siblings ever have to step in, in between your parents?

• 26:42Speaker 02

  We did, like, my parents would, would fight, you know?

• 26:49Speaker 00

  How would you do that?

• 26:52Speaker 02

  I mean, it's more so, we would just sit there, like, in front of them, like, cry, you know? Like, like, I don't wanna hurt my dad, or, you know, like, like, I just want you guys to stop. Just, just stop, whatever you'd like. Why, you know? So I just felt, I felt very helpless, like... And I think also it was more of like, I'm the youngest, people always looked out for me. So to take that role was difficult for me, at, at, at that young of, of an age, you know?

• 27:33Speaker 02

  But as we got older, we got, you know, uh, things slowed down a little bit more. I think my dad kinda grew up a little bit more, of, like, letting some of his stuff go. So it wasn't, it wasn't as bad growing up, like, as we got older.

• 27:49Speaker 02

  But yeah, I had a tough time with it, with, like, even stepping in and doing anything, because I just wanted it to stop, you know, just crying, just watching them cry. Uh, I'd be crying, watching them, what they were doing, you know? And it felt, I just felt very, very helpless.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  Do you have any advice for kids that are in a situation like that? What they're saying that every day?

• 28:19Speaker 02

  What really helped me was just understanding that my father had traumas. My mom did too, you know, and to understand their story a lot more, to understand how they were raised, how they were treated, helped me to forgive.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Not that I could have done anything in that moment, you know, like, but that helped me, you know?

• 28:48Speaker 02

  And I do believe if it's a, if it's a thing like that, like, people shouldn't be together, you know? The parenting is so like, no, man, like this, this isn't it. Like, it was hurting me, it's hurting my kids, like, I gotta put myself out of this, this situation. You know, my mom never did that. There's times where they were like separated, but

• 29:15Speaker 02

  she did it very well that she understood why.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  And she would speak to us, kids, why this is happening? And she would speak to like, to us about stuff that happened to her as she, when she was a child. So she was very much an open book, like you can come to her. I could come in all the time and talk to her about all these things that were going on with me or that I thought and just felt very at home with her, you know, so.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  I guess understanding, you know, your parent's story, but also like, if it's ongoing and if it's every day, and it wasn't every day, you know, it wasn't like that, but um, I think the parents have to get some type of control and get themselves out of something that they, they need to. They gotta do it, you know? They can't be scared of like, oh, like, how am I gonna survive all like? You gotta get yourself out of this situation. You understand why, why you, why you keep going back to this, you know?

• 30:23Speaker 00

  Did you find an escape from that or did you need an escape from that?

• 30:30Speaker 02

  So.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  I guess as a, as a child, like my kinda escape was like to play like alone.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  So I remember like going outside, getting sticks that I, I do like a lot of forms, like seeing what I saw in karate movies. You know, uh, pretending the, the stick is a sword, two sticks and just start doing what I saw in karate movies. And then I remember going to like the public pool and I'd be there for hours doing a fight scene. Like I'd be in the fight scene, like karate fight scene in the, in the water.

• 31:15Speaker 02

  Kinda like, like the Matrix, like I'd be

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Like reenacting?

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, doing flip, doing flips, kicks that I couldn't do, you know, on land. I would do them all in water and I'd be there for just, I'd, I'd be so into just playing with myself doing that.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  Oh shit.

• 31:32Speaker 02

  Not playing with anybody else, just in the water and I'd do these fight scenes. And I'd, and I'd make my own movie or whatever, like I, I'd make my own like crazy fight scene where I'm fighting an opponent that's invisible, but to me it's like, well, I'm in it, I don't care who's watching, nothing, like I'm, I'm in my world. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  You were, you were drawn to that from

• 31:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  very young age.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, Bruce Lee, uh, so we watched a lot of movies together, my family, and like it was all open to us, like, it wasn't like, oh, you can't watch this. So I got introduced to everything through movies, you know, sex, fighting, martial arts, love, all of it. And my first movies that I really love, Bruce Lee movies, watching these Bruce Lee movies, going into um, Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, uh, Van Damme, all the karate movies, like, I, I wanted to be in some type of martial arts so bad.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Karate or something like, watching pro wrestling, lucha, pro wrestling, WWE and, and lucha, lucha libre, like between the two worlds, um, so I watched a lot of that and I, and I loved it, yeah.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  What got you into wrestling?

• 32:59Speaker 02

  So my, my brother is two years older than me, um, junior high, he's, he, uh, he started wrestling, uh, his seventh grade year, so I was, I was, uh, in fifth grade. And then it was free with the school, you know, so it's pretty much that, like, okay, like, um,

• 33:22Speaker 02

  fifth grade, I started doing martial arts, I started doing karate.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Before I even did that, before I even wrestled, um, and I was like, and maybe I was too old, but I was like, man, this is, this is weak. This isn't, this isn't real, you know? Like, this isn't real, this isn't, this is kinda like, yeah, working out, discipline, all of that, but I'm like, what you're showing us, like, this wouldn't work. I just, I just, there was something in there that was missing, it was. That at a, at a young age, like, maybe I was just too, I was too old or, you know, but um,

• 34:03Speaker 02

  so then I started wrestling, uh, my seventh grade year, like, okay, it's free, like, it's with the school.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  And they just started doing it, man, and um, it wasn't easy, like it was fucking hard, you know, workouts were hard. To go out and wrestle is hard in front of a lot of people, wearing a singlets, you know? Like going up in Arizona, like, not a big wrestling town, so you're getting made fun of because what you're wearing, you're getting made fun of because you're rolling around with guys, like, you know, so it's like, people that aren't, that aren't doing it are like, judging you out of what you're doing, so it's like, for me, it was like, well, why, why, why am I doing it? I don't know, I don't know, it's, it's hard, it's tough, like, it's, uh, it's nerve wracking before you wrestle, like, I don't know why I'm doing it, but there's something there.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  There's something there, yeah, so that's kinda how, yeah.

• 35:02Speaker 00

  You were drawn to it right off the bat?

• 35:05Speaker 02

  I was, I was drawn to like, how hard it was, um, but that I was good at it, even though it was like, it was hard, you know, and then no praise came from it, like, there wasn't like, you were like super popular at the, at those schools because you wrestled, like wrestling wasn't, wasn't, wasn't that big. And then, um, I didn't do very well at school, so maybe I found something that I was, that I did very well, that spoke to me, that taught me all the things that I felt like I needed to learn, um.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Like what?

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Just, uh, how to strive through adversity.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  How things may, may get hard and they are like, workouts are hard, positions are hard, and in a position, getting in a position is hard to get what you need out of a takedown. Like, it's so much work, but it's like, you get it, it's like, ah, yes, I got, but then you're on to the next, you're on to the next. So it's like an ongoing, uh, constant battle, um. But, yeah, well, so, school really like, kinda messed me up.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  It messed you up?

• 36:22Speaker 02

  It did, um, so.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  My family, we have, um, um, dyslexia and things like that, that I were going through the family, and my brother had, had a lot of that. I didn't, I could read and all that, um.

• 36:43Speaker 02

  But I'm like, man, when I was in school doing schoolwork, I'm like, why the, like, why the fuck am I doing this? Like, from grade school, I'm like, this is not what I wanna be doing, I'm not gonna do it. You know, like, my parents, yeah, yeah, so, my parents, uh, my dad stopped that third grade and just started working, you know, selling like gum and things like that in the streets. My mom, uh, stopped, stopped school at seventh grade, farm working, at that farm work at the house and also traveling farm working. Um, so they weren't really on me too much about school, so I didn't have that like, oh, did you work any of that at home?

• 37:29Speaker 02

  But in school, man, doing work, I was like, this is, this isn't it, like, this is, this is bullshit.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  Whatever I'm learning here is like, there's some subjects that I did like, history, um, things like that. But like, everything else that came with it, I was like, no, this isn't it, man, I'd say, I'd be in school just daydreaming, like, get away to get out, to just recess, go out and have fun, you know? And a lot of that, a lot of that got taken away from me too, because I wouldn't do my work, so they're like, hey, you gotta finish this paper or whatever, you gotta finish this work before you go out or, uh, during recess. And I still wouldn't do it, I still, I'm like, nope, not fucking, still not doing this shit.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Did that interfere with her wrestling career?

• 38:25Speaker 02

  So, starting, starting junior high, you have to maintain a C average. And I'm like, fuck, okay, well, if I gotta do this, if I wanna do this, I gotta do this. The best way that I can and, you know, so I had to. Not that I wanted to, but I had to. Like, if I wanna keep doing this, I have to do this. If I wanna keep playing sports, wrestling, playing football, I gotta do this. So it made me lock down more. And I had troubles with it, big time. A lot, a lot of teachers helped me and all that. And they, they knew, like, I was good at sports, but I wasn't, the school's not my thing.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  So it helped me. It did. And then in college, when I got into college, man, like, tutors and all that, like, for me, it was only wrestling in school. Like, I really had to focus on school.

• 39:22Speaker 00

  So how, I mean, how fast did your, how fast did you excel at wrestling? Started in seventh grade.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Seventh and eighth grade, went undefeated.

• 39:31Speaker 00

  No shit, right off the bat?

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Right off the bat, went undefeated. Uh, my eighth grade year, I beat the state champion. So I was a state champion in, in freestyle. Uh, so right away, I was, I was good at it, right away. Yeah.

• 39:44Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 39:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was good at it right away. Um.

• 39:48Speaker 00

  Was your brother good at it?

• 39:50Speaker 02

  He was, he was. He, uh, he wasn't as good as I was. Um.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  Our bodies are a little different. Like, I move a little different than, than he, than he used to. Um, he's very good technically, he's strong. But I can move really fast, too, for a big guy. Yeah, like, yeah, some reason, like, I, I, I got that. Yeah.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  How was your high school career?

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Really good. Um. So I went like a hu- a hundred and ten, ten in high school. So, yeah, really good. Uh.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Freshman year, I didn't place. I was one, one, one match away from placing in, in state. Um.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  And then I took second my sophomore year, and then won at junior, senior year. Uh, so.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was really good. I was one of the top, top guys in the country, uh, for, for wrestling. Yeah, yeah.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  Maintain a C average the whole time?

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, freshman year, man, I did go on the Elsible, like, for a week. Cause I had to do some work, so. It was a struggle, man, but, um.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  But, yeah, I did it. Like, uh, it's just squeezed by. High school, like, with the grades and stuff, I did. Uh, it was hard, but, um. But I did it, you know? I'm happy that I did it. I learned a lot from it, you know? How to persevere in something like, uh, I'm not good at. Like, if you really put your time into it, you can. But, like, things outside of your world has to shut down, you know? Like, friends and all that, like, well, your sport and, and your schooling. You know, so it really helped me, like, compartmentalize, like, all of that. So I'm not just playing sports, then going off, you know, my friends and doing other stuff. Like, no, no, there's work to be done. Like, you gotta work.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Were your parents into it? They come watch?

• 42:00Speaker 02

  They did.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  Support you?

• 42:01Speaker 02

  They did. My mom, yeah. My, my dad did as well. My mom was super, uh. She came to all, all the matches. She'd be yelling. Um, her, my sister as well. They'd be yelling, you know, uh, fighting for us as we're, if we can hear them, as we're, as we're wrestling. Um. Yeah, yeah, my mom was very, very proud. Um, you'd be in the town and, like, talking to whoever, and she'd be like, do you know who my son is? Like, like, mom, just stop. Like, don't, you know, like, I didn't, uh, even though I did all these things and a lot of attention started coming to me, like, I didn't like it. I did not like it at all. I don't like people watching me.

• 42:46Speaker 02

  Giving me any type of praise, none of that.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  Really?

• 42:49Speaker 02

  None of that. Yeah, I just felt very awkward, man. It's just like, no, just let me do my thing, like.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I, uh, read you're pretty introverted.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  I think, yes, yes, definitely. Um. I think at a young age, watching people.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Again, and seeing how they didn't see things the way that I saw. Or they didn't act the way that I did, it made me go inside a lot more.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  You know, it made me shut down from people. There wasn't a lot of people that I, that I got to, like, really learn from. You know, and in a true way. There wasn't like, other than my, my, my mom, my dad as well. Like, and my dad was more so watching them, watching them how it worked. You know, in the grind every day, working hard, like, and no. He didn't complain about it, right? My mom, how open she was with me, about everything, her life, like, whatever, like, we'd talk, we'd talk. Um, but there wasn't a lot of people where I'm like, oh, like you, I can learn from.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  There wasn't. So I, I'm more so shut down, did my thing, put my head down. Um.

• 44:11Speaker 02

  So, yeah, that made me really just, just go within and not share of myself. And in the other way than, like, in the physical.

• 44:22Speaker 00

  When did colleges start looking at you?

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Right, uh, probably like my sophomore se- uh, junior year. Um.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  I, I had a choice of either playing football or wrestling. Um. And had a lot of colleges look at me for football, like, a lot of big schools. Um.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  So I feel like I could've gone either way. Um. Or grades two, or something like, okay, well, his grades aren't that good, so, you know, kinda thing. So it kinda took me off of the, uh. You know, a lot of colleges wanted me to play. It took me out of that, like, the, yeah. So I had to go into junior college first.

• 45:12Speaker 00

  What, what did you like better? Did you like football or wrestling better?

• 45:16Speaker 02

  I liked them both, but I felt like I would, I, I'd have a better career in, in wrestling.

• 45:23Speaker 00

  You were better at wrestling?

• 45:25Speaker 02

  I feel like I was really good at both. I could've done either one. I felt like I wanted to focus more on wrestling. Because there's something about it that taught me so much. There's more, there's more, uh, more things you could do. I think it, it, I think I, I could chime in there a lot more. Yeah, yeah. But I got recruited more for football, by big schools, like. Wrestling, even though it wasn't like a lot of big schools, uh, asking me to go. Um, I feel like I could've wrestled anywhere that I wanted.

• 45:59Speaker 00

  Where did you end up going?

• 46:01Speaker 02

  I wanna go to Arizona State. Yeah. Um. So, like, ninety, uh, nineteen ninety-six, when I saw, uh, Jake Plummer. Um.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  They had a, they had a season where they, they went into the Rose Bowl. And I'm like, man, I wanna, like, Arizona State. They didn't even know, you know? Arizona State, okay. And then, um. I found out they had a wrestling team, and one of the best in the West Coast. If not the best in the West Coast. Um. Saw them wrestle once against Iowa, and I'm like, I'm coming here. Like, I wanna wrestle here. This is where I wanna wrestle.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  In Iowa?

• 46:46Speaker 02

  No, in, uh, Arizona State.

• 46:48Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, they read, they, uh, Arizona State had a duel against Iowa. And they got beat. They did. But I'm like, I don't care. Like, I wanna, I wanna go to Arizona State. I wanna represent my home state. Yeah, I wanna be a Sun Devil.

• 47:03Speaker 00

  Did you get there?

• 47:04Speaker 02

  I did. Yeah, I had to go through junior college first. So I went to junior college, uh, in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Um, Iowa Central Community College. We won a national championship there. Uh, the year I was there, and I was, I was a junior college national champion. Um.

• 47:28Speaker 02

  Being exposed in the Midwest was a big culture shock for me.

• 47:33Speaker 00

  Why is that? That's where I grew up.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  It was just different, man, than where I grew up. The people were different, the surroundings were different. It didn't feel like home to me, you know. For me, it was having my, my family around, you know, either like every day or at least having them come to my, my matches. You know, that was a big thing for me. So going to Iowa Central, thinking I could go anywhere that I wanted to. And I had, and I, my mind was open to that.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Once I was there for a year, I was like, no, I want to go back home. I want to go back to, I want to go to Arizona State where I originally wanted to go my whole life. I want to go there, wrestle there, and I want to have my, my family watch me wrestle. I want to, I want to still be around them.

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so I got recruited to go to Arizona State. And I was like, yeah, man, I'm coming here. I'm coming back home.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  How was the competition for you in college versus high school?

• 48:41Speaker 02

  A lot harder, a lot harder, man. You, you're wrestling every match, you're wrestling like guys are state champions now, all of them, you know, and they're, and

• 48:52Speaker 02

  if you're a freshman or a sophomore, you're wrestling guys that are much older, second, in the second high school too, but the, the level of competitions is a lot, a lot more. A lot more, a lot, a lot harder. So everything, takedowns, everything, trying to score, all the matches. You're hardly getting pins now. You're hardly, you're winning by two or three points type of thing. So, so it got harder. It did.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  How would you handle loss? That's, that's a

• 49:25Speaker 00

  I wrestled, I wasn't any good, but I think one of the most important things about that sport is it teaches you how to lose.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:33Speaker 00

  Because it all falls on you. There is no other excuses. There's no team to blame. There's nothing. It's you. And one other person.

• 49:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you learn how to lose.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  I didn't lose that much in high school, you know, and when I did, I didn't shut down, but I, I was very upset of myself. Why I lost and I don't think at that moment I started understanding why I lost. You know, like it was more, maybe my, my style of wrestling was so wild.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  Then when I got to college, I got more, more structure, more technique. So then I started understanding why I lost.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  Losing so much, you learn how to lose or you better, you better learn how to lose. It's not going to be good. You know, I didn't like it. I didn't like losing, but I understood it was a part of it. Like the only, and over time, I just put it into perspective. Okay, the only thing you could do is learn from the loss. Okay, now what did you learn from? Okay, what, what, what did you learn? Okay, you can't do this or, or this happened in this moment. Okay, okay, leave that shit there, move on, move on, because there's another match coming up right now. You know, another match coming next week.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  So, yeah, wrestling really taught me how to, how to learn from those losses. There are a lot of them. People are watching, right? People are watching. They can say anything like you, you got your ass kicked or whatever. They can say anything and you have to just take it on the chin.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  Hey, well,

• 51:19Speaker 02

  I can't even tell them I'm going to do better. It doesn't even matter, right? Like you have to show them, right? By the work that you're doing. So it really taught me to just, yeah. Learn from my losses, take what you can from it, but don't hold on to it, man. Bring it on to the next one or the next one, keep improving. Yeah.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  What time, when did, uh, when did martial arts show up on the scene then? When did you start getting interested in that?

• 51:48Speaker 02

  I started seeing how big it was growing.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  What year is this?

• 51:53Speaker 02

  So this is like, my college career was from

• 51:59Speaker 02

  two thousand one, uh, to two thousand five.

• 52:02Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  Took a registered year.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  Two thousand five. So I started seeing the UC grow and at that time I was, my dreams were to keep wrestling and wrestle into, into the Olympics. When I got into my junior or senior year, wrestling just wasn't enough anymore. Like I was getting pretty bored of it. Like, I didn't feel like I was a place that, uh, because there's certain rules, you know, it's just, it's grabbing, it's takedowns, it's, it's escapes. Um, there's no strikes and no submissions, right? So then I started seeing fighting as, well, you can do more things there. You can kind of be more free to play around a lot more. So you can use the striking and so

• 52:53Speaker 02

  I started seeing it and realizing, okay,

• 52:58Speaker 02

  I want to start doing that because wrestling just isn't cutting it for me anymore, you know? I want to, I want to learn the striking. Like I've never really done it before. I don't know if I'll be good at it, but I feel like in a fight, I feel like there's nobody that can beat me already, already in, in college. Like I feel like me learning these skills, growing that, that I'll start doing that. So I knew my junior year that I would, that I would start fighting. And I told my, my college coach that. And, um, college coach, uh, Tom Ortiz, um, still a good friend that I talk with all the time now.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  He just said, look, get done with your seasons, you know? And then well, I'll make sure we get you in touch with the right people that, of, of fighting that you want to do. So he got me in touch with AK in San Jose. He says, there's a good gym out there in San Jose. Um, I think you should go there.

• 54:00Speaker 00

  Who were you watching? Were you watching UFC and what Pride at that time?

• 54:05Speaker 02

  I wasn't watching a lot of it.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  You weren't?

• 54:07Speaker 02

  I wasn't. No, I watched like, I watched one fight, Tito and, uh, and Chuck Liddell fight. I'm like, man, I could do that. I just watched one. It was just something that was in me. It wasn't like I watched all these fights and was like, I want to do that. No. I saw one, it was already within me. I want to start doing this.

• 54:27Speaker 00

  Because I bet it wasn't like it is.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:29Speaker 00

  Now, back then, I mean, it was pretty, it was almost taboo.

• 54:34Speaker 02

  One fight every, what, three months or something like that, maybe?

• 54:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, gyms were, I don't know, but it seems like there were, from what I remember, far and few in between. It wasn't like, I'm going to go check out this judo gym.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. No, but there's a few gyms in all these different places. There's even one in Arizona.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  I saw, it was already within me that I'm going to do this. I don't know what's going to come of it. I just, I feel like I have to go do this. I saw one, I saw the fight with Chuck and Tito and I'm like, I can do that. I can do it. Yeah. Um, so then when I graduated

• 55:17Speaker 02

  with, uh, pretty, pretty good grades, like, yeah.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  I was pretty happy with like, with that. Like I was like, ah, I did it. I fucking, it was hard work, but I did it, you know? I had pretty good grades. Like, ah, yes.

• 55:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, I, so I could have stayed around Arizona State and be like, and helped coach and all that, right?

• 55:41Speaker 02

  I packed up all my stuff in my car. Everything I had, packed up my car and drove out to San Jose.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  Without knowing anything, like it was hard, man, leaving like a life that I knew so well. Good friends, you know, going to a place that I don't know, going to do something, I don't know what I'm going to do. Just a calling.

• 56:05Speaker 00

  Holy shit. So you just left everything. It's something you really had no idea.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 56:10Speaker 00

  About. You just were like, I want to try that. I want to do it.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was it.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Out of here.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was it, man. It was, I just felt like I had to go do it. I don't know. Like again, like I haven't, I don't know what's going to come of it, but it

• 56:26Speaker 02

  I didn't think of what could come from it. No, no, I just feel like I have to, and like, engulf myself in this, you know, just like I did with everything else I did. That's it. Like no, no expectations of what's going to come from it. Nothing like that. It was just, I feel like I have to go do this. Okay. Packed up my stuff in my car, went, went out to San Jose and

• 56:51Speaker 02

  at the time, my parent, at that season, my parents were in Salinas. So they're about an hour away from San Jose. They're still doing the farm working, right? And they, uh, they have a house in, in Salinas that they're,

• 57:08Speaker 02

  that they're renting to stay. So

• 57:14Speaker 02

  I went in and it just started, it just started.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  So you lived with them?

• 57:18Speaker 02

  I started, yes, living with them and just being all day in San Jose. And they were, they're not, they're very good on like,

• 57:30Speaker 02

  let you do you. You don't need to, oh, you're out of school? You don't get like, oh, you gotta pay rent? I mean, like they weren't like that ever, ever. Like, oh, you need a car? You need a car fixed? Okay. Like they're very good with that, both of them. Like it wasn't like, no, no, not, now you, now you gotta help out. They were never like that. They're always just like, oh, you want to go do this? Okay. As long as you stay in school or do whatever you're doing, you're good. You know, so it was, so I didn't have a pressure at home of like, oh, now I gotta like help out, pay rent or anything. I was there rent free and I'd be all day training.

• 58:07Speaker 00

  So what was like walking into that gym for the first time, not knowing anything other than wrestling?

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Uh, nerve wracking, a little scared of not, yeah, of like, okay, we get, it's different now. You know, I gotta learn how to fight and I gotta fight these people here, training partners and all that.

• 58:31Speaker 02

  So my coach Javier Mendez, I think it was my first little sparse technique sparring, or even real sparring, technique sparring.

• 58:42Speaker 02

  First day, it was like the first time I even got in there and he saw me work with somebody and

• 58:49Speaker 02

  he even says that now the story, but he, he knew that I, that I was gonna be good at this. Just from that, just from watching me in the beginning. Without knowing any striking or anything, just wrestling, being able to go in and control guys, taking down, you know, getting hit on the way in. I didn't know, I didn't know any defense or anything like that, or how to strike, but the striking didn't scare me. Um, I didn't mind getting hit, you know, that's the thing about other athletes coming into mixed martial arts or boxing or anything, like, how do you react when you get hit? There's a certain way, like, you could not be scared of it.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  And that's how it should be, or people get hit and they, they don't like it. They cower away, they break down. So that wasn't, that wasn't me, like, I, I didn't mind it at all. Like, it even gave me more, more fuel. So getting hit, boom, alright, take you down, just, just, just to show you. So he knew right away that I'd be, that I'd be good. Um.

• 59:56Speaker 02

  And then I just, I saw him, of how he taught, Javier Mendez, of how he taught. I'm like, man, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta learn from him. Like, he knows it. Like, the, that teacher that I was looking for, like,

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  in, in fighting was him. He knew. He knew, and, and what he taught in fighting, you're like, it translated to life too, you know? So I started learning from, from him, the fighting, everything, the, the mentality, the, the game plan, the, the giving and taking, um, and applying that to, to my life as well.

• 1:00:42Speaker 00

  Well, I'd be, where do you start?

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Huh?

• 1:00:44Speaker 00

  Where do you start?

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Just get in there.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  Get in there?

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Just get in the gym, yeah.

• 1:00:49Speaker 00

  First thing you started teaching him?

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Just get into the gym and then, okay, you have a back, you have a back on the wrestling? Yes, okay, what do we need? Okay, you need, uh, you gotta learn striking, you know, you gotta learn that, and you don't know the submission game, but you can control people on the ground, okay? But you don't know how to get us, how to submissions, you don't know how to get people into submissions, but you know how to control people on the ground. So that's a good start, already right there, right? And if you want to, you can take the fight to the ground and punch them, like, it'd be very easy, easy that way. But he started showing me, um, kickboxing on the feet. And simultaneously throughout the day, I'd do jiu-jitsu as well,

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  right? So I was learning both at the same time, um, but to really dial my, my striking in. Like, how to stand, how to, how to use your footwork, um,

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  what to, what to use to engage in the striking, what to use to set up your takedowns. Um, I felt like it was easier than wrestling, because, because now we're not hunched over in a wrestling stance, we're standing up. So if I'm trying to take somebody down, they're standing up, I want to take them down, right? And with striking, setting up the takedowns for the strikes made it so much easier than before.

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  Really?

• 1:02:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I felt like, I felt like it was easier, like, to get a takedown, to control somebody, um.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  So I feel like MMA was easier than wrestling. Wrestling was harder. It's a lot, yeah, it was harder.

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I just started.

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  What level do these guys at?

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  So Javier Mendez is a, is a world champion kickboxer. He's a world champion kickboxer. Um, so he started, so as far as the striking, uh, the boxing, the kicking, the knees, all of that, elbows, he knows all that very well, very well. But he's very good on game planning and how to, how to, like, you do this to beat this guy. Like, that's where he's very good at. But the technique wise as well, like, and me, I'm a visual person, so me seeing it, how it's done, I can do it right away. Like, show me how it's

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  done, because I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be so detailed on like, on where your, your, your placements of your feet were, of your hands were, of your body was, of how you're shifting your body to get into a certain place. So me being visual really helped. Like, I just had to tell him, okay, show me real quick, how, how to do that. And I'd watch him do it a couple of times, I'm like, okay, I got it. And then, then I'd start doing it. And then it was a thing of combining everything, everything that, that you know, together. So mix, mixing it up all nicely together, making it flow nicely, instead

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  of striking and then, oh, it's time to wrestle, okay, striking, up, I mean, lower change, level change, take a shot in, take somebody down. No, I made it flow very nicely together, made it look like it was all one, one movement. So like a fight scene, like it was just, it would just flow into that. So I just.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  You, you started at the top level. Walking into the gym, competition, coaches, everything.

• 1:04:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, high, high level gym, um, high level athletes already there, and guys that have fought in the UFC, have fought for, fought for titles as well. Um, yeah, best trainers, um, guy was teaching jiu-jitsu at the time, Dave Camarillo. Um, learned a lot from his jiu-jitsu, he did a little bit of judo as well. Um,

• 1:05:05Speaker 02

  but I just, I just, every, every day, every moment, like, just put myself in there. So I was in pretty much fight, training camp non-stop.

• 1:05:15Speaker 00

  How many hours a day?

• 1:05:18Speaker 02

  Uh, like five to six hours a day, five, six hours a day, six days a week.

• 1:05:26Speaker 00

  Six days a week, five to six hours.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, and then, um, for like gas money, I started working at a, at a bar at night, like bouncing, like three, three days a week.

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  Three or four days a week, bouncing, um, working out throughout the day, and I had enough for like gas money and maybe some food, you know? So that's how I lived, like. And then it even got to a point where, okay, when I was, when I was doing that at night, working, bouncing at night, instead of driving home an hour to my parents' house, having to come back, I started, I started just parking my car in different places and sleeping there.

• 1:06:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like, well, I get more rest for training if I do this. So I started doing that.

• 1:06:16Speaker 00

  I mean, do you want to talk about, you know, kind of the mentality that it takes to become a champion? I mean,

• 1:06:27Speaker 00

  from seventh grade on,

• 1:06:31Speaker 00

  you're right there, you know, junior, senior year of state championship, and then you had the mentality, you know, and we all know what you become, uh, you know, in your fighting career. But to graduate college and to just go right into it, a hundred percent, at the top level.

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  It just takes love, loving what you're doing. If you love what you're doing, things are gonna happen. Like, you're gonna be blessed. Like, you, like, you go in with no expectations. I didn't go in to do fighting because I was gonna make a name for myself, money, none of that. No, no. I went in, like, to train, like, to fight every day. That's why I went in. That's why I did it. I didn't know there was a whole other aspect to this. Notoriety, like, people watching you, notoriety, um, and they got the money.

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  They gave me that. So the love of what I, what I love to do brought me to all these places.

• 1:07:42Speaker 00

  Well, what, I mean, if you say that,

• 1:07:48Speaker 00

  because now you're what, twenty-two, twenty-three years old, probably?

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:52Speaker 00

  Eventually you have to make a living, right? So, did you, I mean, did you?

• 1:07:58Speaker 02

  Do you?

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Maybe not, but

• 1:08:04Speaker 00

  so you genuinely just went there because you wanted to learn and master it? You had no aspirations to become,

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  what happened? Become a UFC champion? It was for love of,

• 1:08:18Speaker 00

  of the sport?

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  I knew I'd be good at it. Like, I just know, okay, I know I can do this, I know I can do this.

• 1:08:32Speaker 02

  But the process of training for me was process of self-discovery.

• 1:08:38Speaker 02

  It's learning something new that I feel like

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  my mentality matches with it, my body matches with it, and it's own style, um.

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  I was just good at it from the, from the beginning.

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  Just good at it, um.

• 1:09:04Speaker 02

  But it was, it was getting, getting just lost in the process of developing myself. Developing my skills, developing myself, getting lost in that, like, that's all I needed, you know, and like, I'd be at the clubs and stuff, you know, working, and it's like, people were asking like, what, what did you do? You know, like, what, what do you do? The normal question, right? It's like, I didn't even like, tell people I was a fighter. At the time, it was like the biggest pick-up line, like, I'm a UFC fighter. I wouldn't even say any of that. And one, I wasn't in the, in the UFC, but number two would be like,

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  I'd just say, oh, I, I just do this, I just bounce. Like, keep it very simple, like, nah, not, um, just being, being so into the process of developing. It was what I needed at the time. For my soul, for my body, for my mentality, you know? No longer having school, which is, for me, was, yes, like, I'm, I'm free, you know? I'm battling with these guys every day.

• 1:10:12Speaker 02

  It's a brotherhood, you know? We're bleeding every day, we're kicking each other's ass every day.

• 1:10:19Speaker 02

  And it's kind of crazy to say, but it's in a loving way. Like, you kick their ass because you love them. Because you kick their ass in the gym, so they don't get kicked, like, their ass kicked out in their real, in their real fight. Right? So, the way of showing love in the gym is to do that. Is to beat somebody up. To beat their ass out there. Like, that's how you show them love. You make them better by that. You, iron sharpens iron. That's how you do it. So, just being engulfed in the process, man, that was it. And then,

• 1:10:56Speaker 02

  as I started fighting, started winning. So things started to come together.

• 1:11:01Speaker 00

  How did you start fighting? I mean, how long were you training, learning?

• 1:11:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:06Speaker 00

  Before it was time to compete?

• 1:11:09Speaker 02

  So, my first, uh, six months after training, I got my first fight.

• 1:11:17Speaker 00

  In six months?

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  Six months, uh, fighting Strikeforce in San Jose, um.

• 1:11:24Speaker 02

  Again, the opponent being picked, like, was a good matchup for me, you know? Like, he had that song of wrestling, but he fights, so beware, you know? But you have good enough stuff to like, go ahead and like, you know, uh, yeah, I could, uh, my coach too, like, Javier Mendez was like, well, yeah, you can stand on them, you can beat them anywhere, but why would you want to do that? Like, take the game to where you know the best. Take his ass down, beat him up on the ground. So, we did that, yeah.

• 1:11:56Speaker 00

  How did it go?

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  Uh, not, uh, stoppage by,

• 1:12:06Speaker 02

  by, uh, a TKO stoppage in the first round, the first maybe a minute or two. They took the guy down right away. They threw a kick, checked it, grabbed the kick, took him down, and then just beat him up on the ground. And they stopped it pretty, pretty quick.

• 1:12:24Speaker 00

  That was your first match?

• 1:12:25Speaker 02

  That was my first fight, yeah.

• 1:12:26Speaker 00

  Holy shit.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, um.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  And then on, I, probably a year or a couple of months later, some, uh, I fought in Russia for a show called Bodog. Fought there. First round TKO, um, again, took him down, did the same thing, broke my hand doing it. So, had to, my hand had to recover from it, um.

• 1:13:02Speaker 02

  And from then on, until my UFC career, it might have been like a year or two.

• 1:13:07Speaker 00

  That's it?

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  I've been like two years, something like that. Uh, okay, so, okay, but no, but no fights in between at all. None. So, by that, by my second fight, I was already pretty well-known as, he seemed to be the next up-and-coming heavyweight.

• 1:13:27Speaker 00

  No shit.

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  Like, so people knew already, like, what I had, my pedigree of wrestling. They already talked about, like, I had people come into the gym, other, other fighters, professional fighters, and I beat them up.

• 1:13:42Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:13:42Speaker 00

  What do you mean they would come to the gym? They would come to the gym to?

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  To train, yeah, to train, uh, so all their UFC fighters would come in to train and?

• 1:13:51Speaker 00

  Like, the UFC fighters that were already there, or they were seeking you out?

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, they come in like, you know, hey, we want to try, you know, like, you travel around training with other, other, other, other gyms, other camps.

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  They would seek you out to get better?

• 1:14:07Speaker 02

  Whether it was me, or if it was just, I want to go to this gym, because you had me, you had Paul Bonatello, who fought for a title for, in the UFC, um, he was another heavyweight, um, had another heavyweight, Mike Kyle. Um, guys that fought in like bigger shows. So, we already had like a pretty good group of like big guys. And Paul is really good in the stand-up, like, good hands, hit hard, fast hands for a big guy. Um, no, no wrestling, you know, um, or not, just not that good. But the guys would come in that were either in the UFC, or guys that are fighting in big shows, and I knew I stacked up with everybody because I, I beat them up.

• 1:14:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So, between that time, or those two years, I couldn't get a fight.

• 1:15:01Speaker 00

  Why?

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  Because people wouldn't want to fight. So, like, they, if you know, uh,

• 1:15:07Speaker 00

  They wouldn't want to fight? They wouldn't want to fight you?

• 1:15:10Speaker 02

  So, in the UFC, you get matched up, right? And you really can't say no. Well, you can, but then they're going to put you on the back burner and say, okay, well, you don't want to fight, you know, like, you got to fight this dude, you don't want to fight him, what the fuck are you doing here, right? But when we're talking about smaller shows, people want a good record till they can get into the big show. Right? They want to, they want, so you kind of have to maneuver a lot more, like, tread lightly, like, like, find a good matchup. Like, the rest is no point. Like, other than, other than, you, you're going to get beat up or go through a war, you don't have to, save that for the big show. So, that was more like the mentality, so.

• 1:15:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I signed up for a lot of fights throughout that time. And all of them backed out. Like, either the guys, like, the day of, uh, backed out for some, some reason. So, they knew, like, okay, probably going to lose if I go against this guy. It's kind of what the mentality was.

• 1:16:14Speaker 00

  Is that frustrating for you?

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  You just learn. Yeah, it was, but then you just learn, like,

• 1:16:22Speaker 02

  I got to make it make sense for me. Right? And what the best way that I could do to make it make sense for me was, okay, you're not going to get the opportunity to polish yourself in other fights. That's not going to be your road. And even my coach, uh, Javier Mendez, said, like, you're going to learn it from the gym, and then you're going to have to go to the big show. However, that, however that happens and when that happens, we don't know, but just continue the process. Keep getting better, keep training, and the sparring that you're doing here, that's your fight.

• 1:17:01Speaker 00

  So, did you only do two fights, or were there, were there fights in between Russia and your first, that's it, two fights?

• 1:17:07Speaker 02

  Two fights.

• 1:17:08Speaker 00

  Well, how do you get your, I mean, so you get your name out by people, by people turning down fights? That's the only way, right?

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  So, that and just the, the gym talking, you know, when you have like, uh, people doing interviews on like, they come into gyms, I do an interview on like the gym itself, and they'll, you know, you already, within, within the fighting world, you already know who's, who's at what gym. Right? And the story of me going around that, anybody comes in the gym, I'm, I'm beating them, is pretty well-known, right? Um, the UFC didn't necessarily know about me like that much, and

• 1:17:54Speaker 02

  I remember my, my, uh, one of the managers, Bob Cook, was calling the UFC and telling them about me. And, um,

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  he was saying, well, this guy is very good, he's going to be, he's going to be probably the champion coming up.

• 1:18:12Speaker 02

  And what the UFC says was, okay, well, put him up against Andrej Alasky, like, right away.

• 1:18:21Speaker 02

  Well, that's going from, yeah, zero to a hundred already. You can do that, but, uh, Bob Cook did it very well. He said, no, no, no, well, look, you don't know what you have here, okay? You're going to have to bring him up a little bit. You will, but he'll, but he'll, he'll be good. Okay? So, these talks back and forth with the UFC. Finally, uh, Dana, Dana White was okay with, hey, let's set up a training session in, in Vegas. Okay, I know what guys you have, me, uh, Mike Kyle, um,

• 1:19:01Speaker 02

  I think, uh, Christian Wellish is another guy that's fighting in the UFC currently. Said, look, have him come over. Just, Bob, Bob told Dana, look, just, just watch him train. That's all you got to do, just watch. So, went to Vegas, to the, uh, to the Ultimate Fighter, um, gym, in that, in that ring there, in that, that cage. And we had a full-on sparring session.

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  Me against those two guys. So, me out there the whole time, going around with those two guys. And Dana White was there and he watched. And afterwards, he said, well, why isn't he in the UFC yet?

• 1:19:47Speaker 02

  So, he signed me on the spot.

• 1:19:48Speaker 00

  Holy shit, how did that feel?

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  Fucking amazing, man. Fucking nervous going in, you know, but.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Do what I do. I did it and it was like, yeah, it was like, wow, okay, like amazing. Yeah. But like, like now I'm there. Okay. Now I'm at the show, right? Then I'm at the biggest organization in the world. Um, but now this is where the work starts. So even on there, like you now and now the, the road is, is gonna start.

• 1:20:27Speaker 00

  Damn, man. Two, two fights. Holy shit.

• 1:20:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:33Speaker 00

  Let's take a quick break.

• 1:20:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:20:35Speaker 00

  Cool.

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• 1:22:25Speaker 00

  What do you think?

• 1:22:27Speaker 06

  I think we went, but I think they lied about a lot of stuff.

• 1:22:30Speaker 00

  You do think, what do you think they lied about?

• 1:22:31Speaker 06

  I think they found some stuff on their, up there they weren't supposed to.

• 1:22:35Speaker 00

  Probably being a designated driver for the SEAL teams.

• 1:22:41Speaker 00

  Which means you pretty much just drive a bunch of drunk, angry SEALs that struck out at the bar. What's the closest you've come to walking away from your platform entirely?

• 1:22:51Speaker 06

  There's been some times where the workload was so much that it was affecting my health. I was just getting sick. I was actually getting mentally and physically ill from the, from the workload and the pressure.

• 1:23:02Speaker 00

  I get really irritable if I don't see my kids. What's the one thing you want people to say about your body of work in 20 years?

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  In deepest jungle, Cartier's panther spies a wandering bird that circles the skies. A lovebird, lost and missing his mate, is far from his past in lonely state. Dry your tears, now there's a start. Follow my steps to heal your heart. Panther stalks through the leaves with silent grace. Through the power of scent, she finds the trace. Behold, two lovers reunite in the skies, a most precious thrill sparkling in their eyes. Together forever, they shine each day, bound by the beauty of Cartier.

• 1:24:08Speaker 00

  All right. So you get picked up by Dana White, watching a training session in the UFC. Where do we go from here?

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  At our first fight with,

• 1:24:29Speaker 02

  yeah, first fight, guy named Brad Morris, fought him and,

• 1:24:37Speaker 02

  or Matt Sarah fought GSP, George St Pierre, their second fight.

• 1:24:43Speaker 00

  What, I mean, what changed? Did anything change? Did your training change? Or was it just?

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:24:50Speaker 00

  Same pace, same thing?

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. As far as training, doing the same things, just, uh, improving. You know, improving, uh,

• 1:25:03Speaker 02

  I wasn't all there yet, you know, I had, I had pretty good technique everywhere. I wasn't a natural, strong puncher.

• 1:25:14Speaker 02

  So hitting people, like I wouldn't really drop them too much. You know, especially my, beginning of my career, I wasn't, I wasn't like that. So I could punch fast, I could punch all that, but, um, I wasn't doing a lot of damage. Um, so you can see that in my first couple of fights. People even started like, again, commenting on that, that I can't punch hard. So I wouldn't be as good.

• 1:25:45Speaker 00

  What was your nickname?

• 1:25:49Speaker 02

  So I didn't have one, um.

• 1:25:57Speaker 00

  Cardio Kane.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  So, okay, I didn't have an official nickname. Okay, um, after a while, the Spanish speaking countries called me El Toro, El Toro.

• 1:26:14Speaker 00

  Bull.

• 1:26:15Speaker 02

  The Bull. They called me the Bull. Um, so Spanish speaking countries, that stuck. So in, in Mexico, anywhere else like that, that stuck. Um, but in the US,

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  yeah, they called me, uh,

• 1:26:32Speaker 02

  it was a nickname that stuck, but it was more of like, I think that's what I'm known by. So yeah, they, yeah, Cardio Kane. Yeah.

• 1:26:39Speaker 00

  Why do they call you Cardio Kane?

• 1:26:41Speaker 02

  Because I can go, man. I can keep going. Just keep going. Keep putting pressure on.

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  That was my wrestling style too. High pace. For a big guy, a lot of high pace. And I can move around pretty good. So I move around like, like a smaller guy, fast. But I always wrestled against bigger guys. Like I was weighing 240, 250 when I wrestled and the weight, weight limit is 285. Some wrestling guys 285, even heavier, they gotta cut weight. So I got really used to keep competing against big guys. So when I fought, I fought around 240. Weight limit for the UFC heavyweights, 265. So I'm always fought guys that are much bigger, much taller, much heavier than me. More of a smaller, mid, mid-sized, small heavyweight.

• 1:27:34Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:27:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:36Speaker 00

  Was that new to you? Was it?

• 1:27:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:27:40Speaker 00

  Same as training?

• 1:27:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was the same as training, it was the same as when I wrestled. And, uh, I competed against a lot of big guys, so I knew

• 1:27:50Speaker 02

  the best way of beating them would be they're gonna get tired, like, after a certain amount of time, then that's when I start scoring, um, same thing in fighting. And I gotta use my speed and my, my footwork. I gotta use my speed, my quickness. Now in fighting, again, it was a little easier. It actually was. Like I don't gotta hold on to somebody and move their body around, like in wrestling, is what you gotta do, right? So moving a mass of 285 around and trying to get under them and take them down is a little more difficult than in a fight, you're much quicker than them, hit them first and get out before they even hit you.

• 1:28:32Speaker 02

  So it became a little easier. I saw it as it was easier than, than, than wrestling.

• 1:28:38Speaker 00

  Interesting. But you, you've said, you know, in your training sessions, you would train until you feel like, felt like you were going to die. Is that metaphorical or?

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  I just, I gave myself to every training session. Like I gave, I gave everything I had. Like I had no left, nothing left for me to do, like except for rest, recover, and go on to the next. So

• 1:29:10Speaker 02

  you got a two hour practice, right? You have drills, maybe you start, you start out with. And I'm trying to, I'm winning, I'm trying to beat the, win the drills every time. Every position, I'm winning every position. I'm going as hard as I can each position. Um, but even if we're working with somebody, like I do a move, then I let them do the move.

• 1:29:38Speaker 02

  I let them do the move, whether it's like a takedown, let them do a takedown, but then I don't just land like on the takedown and like, okay, get me up or land on the takedown, then stand up. No, no, I transitioned to that takedown. As I'm going and taking, taking down, I'm going into what's next and what's next. So that's getting away, escaping, separating, reversal, right? So I'm doing that into my training. So I'm like literally every moment.

• 1:30:11Speaker 02

  Going into that choreography, I guess you would say, of the fight, ongoing, like, I'm not stopping. I'm going, I'm chain wrestling. I'm going to the next move to the next move. I'm never stopping moving. And as soon as I get up to my feet, we go back again. So,

• 1:30:29Speaker 02

  when I try to teach guys now that are like, that I see fighting, or that I see, you have a two hour training session, you start doing drills, now there's a way to do it. You do a move, maybe a takedown, boom, guys usually get taken down, they lay there, they pick themselves up, they walk back to where they were at, then do it again.

• 1:30:53Speaker 02

  My train of thought was, we do a certain move, whatever, whatever, get taken down here, roll into the takedown, into something else, and do an escape, into a reversal, so it doesn't, so the, the movement never stops. Then when you stand up, your opponent's in front of you, then you start going again. So then now you're getting all these reps in. Like, it's like, now the workout is a continuous workout. It's not, stop, go, stop, go. So, no, man, I, I just, I really just died to it. Like, I, I left everything, every training session, like, there was nothing left for me to give. Like, I did it all, in this condensed amount of time, for two hours, I'm giving you all that I have. And I did that, every day.

• 1:31:40Speaker 02

  And I just loved that. I love to push myself to that, to where I'm fucking next, like that, after that, I'm just dehydrated, like, so much, like, I really just need IV, but fuck it, you know, like,

• 1:31:56Speaker 02

  I battled, I battled every day. I got to be free.

• 1:32:01Speaker 02

  For these two hours, in this moment, I got to be free. Let everything out.

• 1:32:05Speaker 00

  How long was it, how long was it before, so you signed, how long did it take for you to get a fight?

• 1:32:11Speaker 02

  Uh, it might have been at three to,

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  three to six months, around there. Yeah, yeah, I had my first fight, uh, as in Quebec, Canada.

• 1:32:25Speaker 00

  How was that? I mean, an introverted guy, two fights in front of a ton of people, I mean, not, not, probably not a big audience, but nothing like, nothing like the UFC, right? And then you're thrown into that.

• 1:32:40Speaker 02

  So me fu, me wrestling at the national tournament in college,

• 1:32:45Speaker 02

  you got a stadium full. Maybe they're not watching, and maybe not everyone's watching your match, but majority of people are as well, as well, right? So, that helped me to, like, block them away, focus on what I gotta do. So, that fight in Quebec, um, George St Pierre met Sarah too,

• 1:33:09Speaker 02

  was a big card. But I'm one of the first ones fighting, so, not, the whole stands aren't full yet, they mainly show up on the main card. So, I felt like it was like I was in that, that national tournament again, where, with the blinders on, man, yeah, you gotta do these interviews and all that, whatever, like,

• 1:33:33Speaker 02

  you got a whole week to kind of process this, and just go out there and, like, just free yourself, you know, be, be free for a moment, in the chaos. Yeah, I was, yeah, went in, first round, TKO, again, um, with strikes on the feet, strikes on the ground.

• 1:33:55Speaker 00

  First round?

• 1:33:56Speaker 02

  First round, yeah. Uh, the referee let the fight go on a little too long, the guy that I was fighting took a little bit of a beating, he shouldn't have taken that, he should have stopped it way earlier. So,

• 1:34:10Speaker 02

  because my fight ended so early, if the later fights, and early as well, they'll put one of those undercard fights on the main card, on, on TV. But mine didn't get shown, because it was too, it was too, uh, it was too one-sided, like, it was bad, and they should have stopped it way earlier. So, yeah.

• 1:34:32Speaker 00

  What, I mean, what did that feel like then? You're at the top level now, and is that, is that exciting for you? Is that a disappointment for you? Were you expecting better competition?

• 1:34:43Speaker 02

  No, no, not better, no, um, I just felt like that was the first step of many steps ago, in this, in this, right? Like, if you, if you, the goal is to get that, that belt, you know, is, well, the goal is not to get that, the goal is

• 1:35:03Speaker 02

  to show that you can beat everybody, right? To have that competition in front of you, and that you have better skills than they have, all around, like, that's the goal, and that was just the first step of,

• 1:35:17Speaker 02

  of more challenges to come.

• 1:35:23Speaker 00

  How many fights did you go before you got the opportunity to fight for the championship?

• 1:35:30Speaker 02

  I think I was nine and O, I think, I think nine fights, around there, like, nine fights, maybe, um,

• 1:35:42Speaker 02

  something like that, yeah, so,

• 1:35:46Speaker 02

  I fought, uh, Minato Nogura, and we fought in Australia, and we knew the winner of this would, would be fighting for a title.

• 1:35:58Speaker 02

  And Minato Nogura, one of the best jiu-jitsu guys out, um,

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  one of the best jiu-jitsu guys in heavyweight probably ever, and

• 1:36:10Speaker 02

  he's a, he has a really good chin, like, doesn't get knocked out, doesn't get knocked out, nothing like that, um, so, I knew he was just very dangerous, very dangerous, um, and again, my fights before this,

• 1:36:31Speaker 02

  I didn't really hit hard, right? So you wanna know my, uh, my nickname before?

• 1:36:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:40Speaker 02

  So they started calling me, people started calling me Pillow Hands on social media, right? Because I didn't hit hard, I didn't, I didn't knock people down, like, I hit them, yes, I hit them a bunch of times, but I didn't hit them hard.

• 1:36:58Speaker 02

  And we got it, we got to a point in training where I developed all these skills, okay, yes.

• 1:37:06Speaker 02

  Now,

• 1:37:08Speaker 02

  focusing on the power, like,

• 1:37:13Speaker 02

  like, look, you don't hit hard naturally, you don't, okay, but how, like, with Javier, with Mendez, like, how are we gonna get that from you? So we really started working on that, and that's body placement, lowering your level, having your knees bent, um, throwing, throwing everything from your hips, as if you're like chopping wood, and you're throwing your hips, and you're not, you're not letting your arms do the work, you're letting your body do the work. So it was that, so really focusing on that, and that really helped me develop, like,

• 1:37:53Speaker 02

  what it means to fully commit.

• 1:37:58Speaker 02

  And I'm not talking about striking, I'm talking about fully commit to everything, fully commit yourself. That's with position, being in the right position, and giving all of yourself. So, again, if people don't wanna get hit,

• 1:38:15Speaker 02

  they go in and, like, give a little touch and try to get, they're thinking about getting quick in, touching, and then getting out, just as fast as they went in. But when you fully commit, you don't think of that. All you're thinking is, look, my hands are in the right place, so if he were to hit me, then he hit me, but my hands are in the right place, I'm guarded as much as I can,

• 1:38:40Speaker 02

  my level's lowered, and I'm throwing my hip, I'm throwing my shoulder, I'm fully committing to this movement right here. I don't care what happens afterwards, but I'm gonna give you all of this. Now, as soon as that punch is out, it starts to come back, that's when you go ahead and get out. So I really started, like, it was more of, like, taking my time

• 1:39:05Speaker 02

  to fully commit to that, but giving all of myself, like, I'm giving you all of this. I'm taking my time, it's gonna be a little slower, but

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  being done right, it's great outcomes will, will, will happen. So, with Nogura, I knocked him out.

• 1:39:23Speaker 00

  No shit.

• 1:39:24Speaker 02

  On the feet, yeah, yeah, uh, game plan for him was just not to tie up with them, don't wrestle with them, if you do wrestle with them, like, throw them, instead of, like, landing on them, like, don't land on them. So, play your stand-up game, punches and kicks, and we're doing that, like, and I was, I was scoring pretty well, and then he comes in and I come in, and I, and I fucking just throw his right hand, hits around the button, and I'm fucking, again, and I'm lowered, I, you know, I did what I practiced. So, he falls, I see him fall, but then also I'm thinking in my head, like, okay, he doesn't get knocked out, so you gotta make sure, right? So,

• 1:40:10Speaker 02

  as he fell, I moved, I passed his legs, came around, and I hit him with the more, more shots on the, on the ground, but like, fucking hard, like, because he's dangerous, he'll, he'll, he'll get up and start, start his thing, you know, so I had to make sure that, that it'd be done. Which, for me, was hard, because I was, he was a guy that I looked up to.

• 1:40:33Speaker 02

  If I had to choose somebody to to not fight, it'd be him. He's just a good person. He he he's just he's a pillar of the sport. What he's done in his career and and how he's done it. You know, so I respected him a lot. So for me to like to do that was was hard.

• 1:40:54Speaker 00

  Is that the first person you fought that you were thinking, holy shit, I'm fighting this guy?

• 1:41:01Speaker 02

  No, he wa- he wasn't, but he um just again, his certain set of skills. Like I had to bring a certain type of game plan to match up against his skills perfectly. So so so I so I could come out on top and win. Everybody has their own like puzzle. Everyone has their own chess game. Everyone plays a certain way. Everybody has their own strengths and weaknesses. And the game plan is what's the best way to

• 1:41:29Speaker 02

  to win against that with with with my game, with what I have? Body positioning, but but uh body size, the way you move, your mentality, your your skill level, the good techniques you bring. So it's it's a more hand to hand combat war that we're doing.

• 1:41:50Speaker 00

  Who was the first person that you got matched up with that you were thinking, oh shit? I can't believe I'm fighting this guy. Was it, did you have that moment?

• 1:42:01Speaker 00

  Or did you already fought all of them in training?

• 1:42:06Speaker 02

  I just knew that there'd be nobody that can beat me. And in training, there was nobody that could.

• 1:42:15Speaker 02

  So when I fought Brock Lesnar, um

• 1:42:20Speaker 02

  I feel like I I had the recipe to beat him.

• 1:42:25Speaker 02

  And that was interesting as well. I just um I feel like me, me and my coaches knew already, okay, like he's good at this. But the things that he's good at, I'm really good at too. Like he's good at taking people down and beating them and like beating them up on the ground. But I'm really good at standing up. So I didn't even care to get taken down with him. It wasn't like I was I was avoiding it. No, no, no, we we actually worked so much on like I had Daniel Cormier. I was sparring him and my coach, uh Bob Cook, uh one of the managers and also coaches as well at the time.

• 1:43:06Speaker 02

  Said, okay, this is what we're doing, this whole camp. When you're sparring, whenever I say Kane, get down, that's what you're doing, okay? You're gonna get on your back and you're gonna have these guys lay on you. When and and any position, at any moment in the in the sparring, this is what you gotta do. I said, okay. So sparring rounds and rounds and rounds, I'm tired, right? Um I have the better position on Daniel, maybe. And then Bob Cook says, Kane, get down. I stop what I'm doing, get on my back, open up like this and have DC start wherever he wants to start on me. And me just get up and get away. So I wasn't afraid of him taking me down.

• 1:43:51Speaker 02

  Took me down three times, but right away he took me down. I I got up. I was very good at falling down, letting that the the canvas be your springboard to like into maneuver into something else, just like I had to train normally. So that's what I did. Um took me down, I stood up right away and when you do that to somebody, that kills your will, man. It's a lot to get that takedown, like especially how he how he does it where he picks people up. Like you're picking up two hundred forty pounds, dropping down on the ground and then within an instant, they're up and away. Like that kills you. That that kills you, that kills your cardio.

• 1:44:35Speaker 02

  That also kills your your will to like.

• 1:44:39Speaker 02

  I can't keep him down, so why am I gonna keep doing this? I'm just gonna tire myself out. So I made it a stand up game.

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  So we fought in the stand up and he didn't like to get hit. So that's when I could start working.

• 1:44:54Speaker 00

  Shit.

• 1:44:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:58Speaker 00

  And how long was it before you fought him? Your career up to that point?

• 1:45:03Speaker 02

  I might have been uh ten or eleven and oh, I think. Um somebody um I'm not I'm not sure like what my record was, but um I fought him after Nogira.

• 1:45:16Speaker 02

  Um I fought him, I think twenty ten.

• 1:45:22Speaker 00

  Twenty ten.

• 1:45:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was twenty, yeah. Yeah.

• 1:45:27Speaker 00

  How did you beat him?

• 1:45:30Speaker 02

  TKO stoppage. Um so

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  so he's a freak of an athlete.

• 1:45:41Speaker 02

  I knew just my coaches and I knew that we had the recipe, right? But I could see everyone else. Even Daniel tells me later, he's like, man, when you fought him, I didn't tell you, but I was just like, I don't wanna be fighting that guy. Right? So just how, just how he looks.

• 1:46:02Speaker 02

  I mean, he's a freak athlete, you know, played in the NFL, national champion wrestler, big dude, right? Two sixty five weight limit, but I mean, he probably cut who knows how much to make that. Pure muscle, right? And that's not me.

• 1:46:19Speaker 02

  So I knew like everyone around me and they're like, oh shit, he's gonna go fight him like he's gonna go, you know, he's gonna go die, right? Like that kind of thing. Um. And then, yes, standing in front of him, like this is a massive dude right here. Okay? Even though he doesn't like to exchange, he has power. So you get hit with that, it's not gonna be good. Okay, so you still gotta, you gotta be cautious everywhere.

• 1:46:48Speaker 02

  And then as soon as I remember going out there and fighting, as soon as I tied up with him, like in the first initial, we tied up like this and he had him against the cage.

• 1:46:58Speaker 02

  I would say ninety nine percent of people, when they get me here, I can maneuver myself out of there pretty easily. By shifting their weight and me getting out with him, I wasn't like I was stuck. Like there's so much power pushing me against the cage that I was like, okay, he's not moving. I'm not gonna move him, I'm not gonna get myself out of here. So I can't have to wait until he does something. So I remember like

• 1:47:25Speaker 02

  there's a canvas in the cage here. Within the canvas, you have a little little slightly little opening, like very like almost nothing. I'm already jamming my foot in there. Like I gotta like make this hard for him to like get me wake, you know, like uh take me down. I'm gonna jam my foot in there, like get my foot nice and in there and like um kind of grounded myself to the to the cage. Well, he picks me up like like nowhere, like out of nothing, like just picks my legs up and everything. And but as I'm falling, I'm like, I'm falling like a cat. I'm like, as I'm falling down, I'm going on all fours instead of going on my back and let him lay on me. I'm falling like a cat, like I'm going on all fours so I can just kind of jump up. And I did that.

• 1:48:11Speaker 02

  So he stopped taking me down after those three, those three attempts that or those three takedowns that he got on me. He stopped anymore from there. So got to work to stand up a little bit, like hit him with some shots. And then I took a shot on him and I took him down.

• 1:48:30Speaker 02

  Like and that's ever been done before. I know he's ever like taken him down. So it was like, so I was on, so but he stayed down there. He didn't fucking like get up right away. He stayed down on all fours. So I could start working. So I started punching him, you know, from the ground, from this like uh we're in referee's position. So he was down on all fours, all on top of him, punching either side. And then when I hit him with a couple of really good ones, like let a fire in him, be like, get up, time to get up. So he got up. I tried to go in on his leg again and he was so heavy. So I'm like, I don't know, I gotta let this go. Like it's too heavy, let it go, working on my feet again.

• 1:49:09Speaker 02

  And then I think he kind of like came in maybe for a shot and I caught him with like a with like a hook or something, like a body, like his his face, his face and my hand like perfectly timed as he was coming in. So I hit him with that.

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  He started like doing these three sixties like spins. Like he's just like, he's trying to gather his feet. I don't know if it rocked him or what, but he's trying to gather his feet. He's doing these like spins and I'm like slowly, I'm not running to him. I'm like slowly like like I learned this from from years and years of training until like somebody gets hurt, you don't know what you have. You don't know what state they're in. It may look like they're they're knocked out or whatever, but you can't just like jump and pounce on them because you don't know what what state that they're in. So I was very used to like methodically, just slowly, I just kind of slowly followed him, followed him like, hey, what am I gonna get when he turns and faces me or if he falls? Ends up facing me, hit him with a couple of punches.

• 1:50:13Speaker 02

  Um and I fucking caught him with a good knee, like his head went down. I fucking just put my hip into that shit dude right in his face.

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  Dropping from there. And then his other fights, when he got in trouble in the in the in the striking, um

• 1:50:34Speaker 02

  even though he doesn't like to get hit, it's not like he's knocked out. Okay, so he's more like covering up, like like waiting for you to be done or waiting for you to tire tire yourself out, right? So I knew, okay, I can't do that with him. I gotta pick my shots, make sure they're, so he's nice and covered up like this, so he's not moving to get up. Put my knee on his belly and I just started opening his hands up and like throwing elbows in there. And I cut him pretty big, like big old, big old cut on his face. Um but I was just doing that, moving at it, his hands out of the way so I wasn't hitting his hands and like hit elbow, punching him. Um

• 1:51:17Speaker 02

  to where he stood up again, knocking down again. And then I just saw the referee coming closer and closer, like it's about to be stopped. So I can't pay that any attention. I just keep working, keep hitting those shots, keep hitting those shots, keep getting good shots. Then then the referee stopped it.

• 1:51:36Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 1:51:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:51:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, the referee stopped it. Um

• 1:51:45Speaker 02

  I remember that moment like.

• 1:51:51Speaker 02

  It was like, everything you worked for was for this moment, right here.

• 1:51:57Speaker 02

  Everything you've ever done was for this moment, right here. And

• 1:52:05Speaker 02

  if I was, dreams come true. Like fucking they do, they fucking come true. Like they do.

• 1:52:14Speaker 00

  No limitations.

• 1:52:15Speaker 02

  No limitations, they come true. That moment was that. Like dreams come true. Everything you worked for was for this one moment, right here, and you fucking did it, like, you did it. I remember that. It was that, right there, that moment. Yeah.

• 1:52:35Speaker 00

  It's crazy you remember every detail of that fight like that.

• 1:52:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:40Speaker 00

  From two thousand and ten, sixteen years ago.

• 1:52:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, um.

• 1:52:49Speaker 02

  I just think I'm so like,

• 1:52:52Speaker 02

  I'm so present in that moment. Everything, like, I'm examining, I'm calculating, you know, I'm so into the moment, I'm not thinking about anything else, like, nothing else, like, but what's in front of me, right here, right now. So you're so hyper focused on what's in front of you. And then, just that moment of when it was finished, it was like,

• 1:53:17Speaker 02

  this is why, this is why you do the things you do. This is why you, this is why you struggle, right here. This is why you put the work in. This is why you kill yourself, thinking all these places, like, this is what it's for, right here. Not for the belt, no, but to say, but to climb that, that mountain. And to be at the top. That's what it's for.

• 1:53:51Speaker 00

  What's your thought process afterwards? I mean,

• 1:53:55Speaker 00

  there's nothing left to climb.

• 1:53:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, um.

• 1:54:03Speaker 02

  It was like,

• 1:54:06Speaker 02

  it was so weird afterwards. Um, it was like, what just happened? Cause it just felt like a dream.

• 1:54:15Speaker 02

  You know, like, too, like, too good to be true, kinda thing. I couldn't, you know, I couldn't even believe in myself, like, kinda thing. Then as much as it, like, the attention that I got after that was way more, like,

• 1:54:29Speaker 02

  to where people started, like, even in the UFC, they started treating me a little different. Like, that night, the hotel that they had me at, they put me at a better hotel. You know, I was like, like, what? I was like, what? Like, what just happened? And I remember, I had a nightclub, like, I would normally do nightclub appearances after the fight, to like, make a lot of extra money, you know?

• 1:54:55Speaker 02

  nightclub I went to that night,

• 1:54:58Speaker 02

  it was like, the whole nightclub was just staring at you. Right? Like, music's playing.

• 1:55:07Speaker 02

  Nobody's dancing, nobody's doing their thing, they're just looking at you. Right? And it's just like, I just felt fucking, again, that awkwardness of, of notoriety, of attention being proud of me, came, came back, and I was like, this is fucking weird. You know, I was just like, though what I accomplished is something different, like, I'm still the same person that I've always been. Why, like,

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  there's something to learn from.

• 1:55:39Speaker 00

  Did you ever get used to that?

• 1:55:42Speaker 02

  I did.

• 1:55:44Speaker 02

  I did. I have.

• 1:55:47Speaker 02

  Fighting has really got me to a place to open myself up a lot more.

• 1:55:53Speaker 00

  How did you get used to that? I'm curious.

• 1:55:56Speaker 02

  Practice.

• 1:55:57Speaker 00

  Because people, when you reach a certain level of fame, people look at you.

• 1:56:04Speaker 00

  They get excited, they freeze up. They can't believe it, it's you. They can't believe what you look like and when you're not on TV.

• 1:56:15Speaker 00

  People get to be, you know, it gets to a point where they have a loss of words.

• 1:56:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:56:21Speaker 00

  And then, and, and

• 1:56:25Speaker 00

  I've maybe experienced like a fraction of what you have, but it's,

• 1:56:31Speaker 00

  it is awkward. And it is, like, that's what I say. And that's what I think. I'm like,

• 1:56:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, um.

• 1:56:42Speaker 00

  Same person.

• 1:56:43Speaker 02

  Yes. It's just practice. For me, it was just practice. Like, doing it over and over again. More interviews I did, the more I opened up, I got okay with letting people inside.

• 1:56:57Speaker 02

  Those interactions, one-on-one interactions, like, what really helped me with that is as I saw people, I started seeing like my family in them. I started seeing like cousins, people that I grew up with.

• 1:57:09Speaker 00

  You mean you saw family in them?

• 1:57:12Speaker 02

  Whether it was a stranger talking to me, out of nowhere, like, like, I saw a familiar, like, them very familiar to me, as like, oh, you're just like my cousin. Like, you're just like my, like, like, you're just like them. Right? So, I started seeing something very familiar in people, a closeness, like, like, you're not just a fan. No, no, you're somebody else, but yes, you enjoy, like, what I do. And all you're doing is

• 1:57:49Speaker 02

  giving praise or creating that connection. You know, you're, you're connected with me at a, at a, acknowledging me, and I'm acknowledging you. I'm not, I, I, the way I started thinking about it, cause I would think, I, I went through all phases of it, like, don't bother me. Like, people asking me, who are, like, hey, are you Kane Los? Like, no, it's not me, right? Like, I went through all those areas of avoiding it.

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  Even people like, signing autographs, like, I'd make sure, like, that I would personalize them, so they wouldn't sell them. Right? So, so all of that, like, I avoided it all. Until I really started seeing the familiar sides to people.

• 1:58:37Speaker 02

  Where they're acknowledging me, now I'm acknowledging you.

• 1:58:41Speaker 02

  Okay? Because there's something deeper within you. And

• 1:58:51Speaker 02

  and the, and the higher level, I just felt like, well, this is what you're doing, like, this is what's brought before you. Like, God has put you in this, every position.

• 1:59:04Speaker 02

  Including you to interact with somebody in that moment. That's already written right there, too.

• 1:59:13Speaker 02

  So, as they're acknowledging me, I'm acknowledging them, and I'm giving them time now. I just started doing that. I started being patient with people, being time with, having, spending time with them, even if it's a short interaction. But I, I opened myself up to give them time, to give of myself.

• 1:59:31Speaker 00

  Were you married at the time?

• 1:59:34Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:59:35Speaker 00

  Do you have a daughter at the time?

• 1:59:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:59:38Speaker 00

  How much time were you willing to give people that you don't know?

• 1:59:43Speaker 00

  And take away from your wife and daughter?

• 1:59:45Speaker 02

  That was the hardest part right there was,

• 1:59:50Speaker 02

  us doing family time together.

• 1:59:53Speaker 02

  Us, uh, eating, you know, and being disrupted in, in that way. To like, to take a picture, doing family things. Remember my time, uh, with my wife, like, being, you know, in a kiss together, toward being disrupted, to take a picture. Right?

• 2:00:15Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:00:16Speaker 02

  So just the more that I dealt with it, I just realized, like,

• 2:00:22Speaker 02

  To have a balance um within the best way that I could was yes, there are certain times when you can like interrupt somebody and sometimes that aren't most appropriate, but people don't know what they're doing. You know, and the best way to do it is to let your family understand what's going on beforehand. So it's not necessarily anymore that you're getting bugged or that you're being bothered. It's more of

• 2:00:58Speaker 02

  look, tell my kids this, like, look, I've done these things in my past. People love me for that. Okay, and they just want time. That's it. Like the time I give you, like I give you all of my time, like when I'm with you here. They just want a little bit of time to say hi. Take a picture, say thank you, and that's it. Okay, so now

• 2:01:26Speaker 02

  putting gas in or something like that, like pumping gas, somebody sees me and my kids are seeing that like and they say, hey, and I say, hey, what's up? Have a cool little interaction where my kids think I knew them. No longer they're a stranger. They're like, did you know them? Who was that? Like, I don't know. He said his name was so and so, but he just wanted to say hi, the picture, right? So me accepting it more and being again,

• 2:02:00Speaker 02

  I'm called to do this, like this is written already in my life to do this at this moment right here. Every moment that I'm living

• 2:02:08Speaker 02

  is made exactly for me perfectly. So how do I want to go through it all? And now all those interactions I I just give, I give, I share, I acknowledge them, you know, say, thank you, like, thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for

• 2:02:28Speaker 02

  and it's no longer, it's no longer uh it's easy. It's easy. It's beautiful, beautiful connections that we make. Just a quick little, you know, like I appreciate the souls coming together and interacting. Yeah.

• 2:02:46Speaker 00

  Right on. Good way to be.

• 2:02:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, um.

• 2:02:55Speaker 02

  You make you make life what you make it, you know, like however you want to be in in life, you can make it. So if I want to be in love with life every day, and I gotta be, that's gotta be within me and I gotta let that out. People are gonna gravitate towards that. So people are not gonna like it at all either. That's okay too. But that's not, nothing's gonna take me away from me loving life

• 2:03:23Speaker 02

  of what God is doing for me every moment of every day. Every moment is for me to go within and understand myself. There are no accidents that

• 2:03:36Speaker 02

  it's all written. It's already there. It's in life. It's unfolding in front of you for you, for me to grow into what I need to grow into. So how do I want to do that? Well, that's the case, then I'm gonna fucking dive deep into it and make this life as magical as I can. That's what I'm gonna do. And I'm gonna share that with people, whether you like it or not, that's just me, and I'm gonna share it.

• 2:04:06Speaker 00

  Have you talked to Brock Lesnar since then? Did you talk to him after that fight?

• 2:04:10Speaker 02

  We did, uh,

• 2:04:13Speaker 02

  we did a WWE wrestling match afterwards.

• 2:04:17Speaker 00

  You did?

• 2:04:18Speaker 02

  I did a wrestling match with him. Um, you kind of, you kind of fucked me over on that. Cause like, I'm not a wrestler like like him, you know, so I'm like, dude, like, let's do something together so we can fucking make this shit look good. And he's just, well, he's just not there with that, like to work with people like that, you know, but

• 2:04:42Speaker 02

  yeah, yeah, he talked a little bit. I think I think we had a better understanding of like who we are. It's a little, you know, like brother, don't take it personal, man. It's just, you know, we fucking did it back then. It's all good.

• 2:04:56Speaker 00

  You guys talk today?

• 2:04:58Speaker 02

  Huh? No, no, I don't think he talks to many people in general. Um, and I don't talk to many other fighters either, um.

• 2:05:09Speaker 02

  But like we follow each other. I follow people on social media, guys that I fought with, follow them. I like their stuff, you know, like support them, you know, and that and whatever I could do for them, I'm there, you know, whatever they need, I'm there. Um, I would love, I would love

• 2:05:26Speaker 02

  to uh take some of those guys and do some plant medicine with them. I would love to do that. Have a healing session with all our guys that I battled with.

• 2:05:38Speaker 00

  Who do you admire today?

• 2:05:49Speaker 02

  Admire?

• 2:05:52Speaker 00

  That's in the ring?

• 2:05:53Speaker 02

  Hmm?

• 2:05:54Speaker 00

  That's fighting.

• 2:05:55Speaker 02

  Fighting? Oh, uh.

• 2:06:02Speaker 02

  I don't watch fighting too much, but I see a lot of like something that I see a lot of like uh people's fights later on social media.

• 2:06:15Speaker 02

  Um,

• 2:06:18Speaker 02

  I like them all.

• 2:06:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:06:20Speaker 02

  I don't think there's any, I'm not like a fan of it like I used to be, but I know guys now have certain skills like um, I think uh Islam, one of my teammates, or Khabib's guys, the Khabib and Islam, Islam, um

• 2:06:39Speaker 02

  is fucking so skilled in the game, like fucking good everywhere to where when he was coming up, I'd spar with him like light sparring and he he hit me with stuff and nobody hits me with stuff, but he hit me with stuff. I'm like, what the fuck did that come from? Like, so I'm like, this guy's good. But everybody has something great that brings that they bring to the table and

• 2:07:05Speaker 02

  I enjoy just where the sport, where the sport is now. I feel like it's gotten so popular and I knew it was gonna happen. It's gotten so popular, the guys have gotten so polished, so good everywhere

• 2:07:19Speaker 02

  that it's getting to a place or pretty where near it needs to be. Like people know that this is

• 2:07:29Speaker 02

  this is a high level combat sport at the highest level. And it's opened up the the the way to a lot more people doing jiu jitsu. A lot more people wrestling now in high school, you know? Girls wrestling in college is one of the fastest growing sports in the world. It is.

• 2:07:47Speaker 00

  No shit.

• 2:07:48Speaker 02

  I believe that all has to do with mixed martial arts and the UFC, you know, mixed martial in general, and the UFC is the the the pinnacle. Yes, yes. So it's opened up all these doors and I feel like when I was in it, it was in a stage of

• 2:08:06Speaker 02

  going through that door, it wasn't there yet. Wasn't there yet. I remember going, they had me do a lot of publicity stuff in Mexico. So when I first started fighting, they knew I spoke, you know, some Spanish and all that, my background, that I could be a good like uh

• 2:08:27Speaker 02

  good person to go there and help the sport grow in Mexico and like Latin speaking countries. And when I first got there doing like PR with like newspapers and TV, dude, they looked at me like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, what are you like? They couldn't believe that me like

• 2:08:49Speaker 02

  they call me pocho, which is like raised in the US. Don't know that good of Spanish, you know, like you're bringing this sport over to here?

• 2:09:00Speaker 02

  Like a sport, like the sport that's fucking cockfighting for humans? You know, that's what that's what it looked at back then.

• 2:09:08Speaker 00

  No shit.

• 2:09:09Speaker 02

  So it's looked at back then and people that are not, again, that didn't know anything about it, that were they're ignorant to it were, yeah, like this is just street fighting, like it's not even a, it's not even a sport, whatever, you know, and that's kind of how I got that was like the my first couple of times of being welcomed into Mexico uh supporting a brand, a sport. Right? To where for me, dude, again, it was like all those things of like growing up, like

• 2:09:43Speaker 02

  I grew up speaking Spanish first, my first language, okay? Then I went to school where I didn't speak English that well and it was like okay, well, you don't, it was almost like, yeah, you don't fit in, okay? And then as I started speaking more English and my my brothers and sisters spoke English, my mom could speak English very well, so we spoke English at the home naturally. So I started losing a lot of my Spanish because my dad was always working to where I had people on the other side and more Mexican Spanish speaking people to where like, you don't speak very good of Spanish. So it was again, like I didn't fit in anywhere. Right? I'm not good here. I'm not good here.

• 2:10:27Speaker 02

  My parents would say the same thing. I don't feel like you guys either. Like, I don't go, like, again, like, I don't give a fuck. Like, I'm going within. I know it isn't like, it doesn't matter how good I can speak any fucking language. I can barely speak English sometimes, you know, like like, what about this? Like, what about this? What about this? Like, no, you're basically, so I went through that again, right? Uh, Mexico City, like doing that. And again, I just had to be like, dude, I just had to laugh at it during interviews. I just laughed at it and said, look,

• 2:11:08Speaker 02

  this is what the sport is. You're gonna love it later on and I just know you will, but it's okay if you don't either, uh, but

• 2:11:18Speaker 02

  this is what I got.

• 2:11:20Speaker 02

  You know, I just had to like give up like, hey, man. And then with winning, winning more and more really bought it, me winning more and more bought it more popularity to it, especially in that in in that in that area of the world.

• 2:11:36Speaker 00

  What are your parents thinking?

• 2:11:39Speaker 02

  They're just proud, man. They're just happy, proud, like.

• 2:11:44Speaker 00

  I'll bet.

• 2:11:45Speaker 02

  Like.

• 2:11:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. They're just, you know.

• 2:11:50Speaker 00

  They come to the fights?

• 2:11:51Speaker 02

  They did. They were coming to some of the fights, um.

• 2:11:57Speaker 02

  They come to some of the fights, you know, family members, coworkers, people in town, just.

• 2:12:05Speaker 02

  Showing them love, you know, like. Yeah, yeah, it was, uh, yeah.

• 2:12:13Speaker 00

  Who was your first loss?

• 2:12:16Speaker 02

  First loss against, uh, Junior dos Santos. Yeah, um, I got knocked out pretty quick. My first loss, um.

• 2:12:30Speaker 02

  So I don't think my dad watched any more fights after that.

• 2:12:34Speaker 00

  Really?

• 2:12:34Speaker 02

  He said it was hard to watch. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard from watch. Uh, I can understand why, um. But.

• 2:12:46Speaker 00

  I mean, when is the, when is the last time you had lost? I mean.

• 2:12:51Speaker 02

  Before that?

• 2:12:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, was it, was it college wrestling?

• 2:12:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, college wrestling. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, college wrestling, um.

• 2:13:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was a good, I mean, that was a good learned lesson to again, you know? It was a big show. I had a lot of pressure going in and. I was kinda injured going in as well.

• 2:13:15Speaker 02

  Like my knee was pretty injured where I couldn't, I couldn't kick. I couldn't even like wrestle. I couldn't get down, like. Take somebody down and what I needed to do for him, for Junior was to do that. So I wasn't the best going in, but I, but I, I also rested as well. I was like, well. Instead of taking time off and telling him I'm hurt and take more time on to like recover and all that. I just went ahead and did it with, with like, I don't want anybody down, you know? So I learned, I learned like, and Junior did his thing, man. He's a great athlete, great fighter.

• 2:13:48Speaker 02

  Took me out pretty quick, so, um.

• 2:13:53Speaker 02

  I understood, like, look, make sure you're a hundred percent correct for everything before you do anything. Make sure you're prepared how you have to be because. Somebody like him, you can't do that going in. There's no way. There's no way. Even, even at your best, like. It's slim to win against him. So he, with Junior, man, uh. I love him for the competitor that he is. Like he brought out something in me that I had to like. I had to like really dig deep for. You know, it was like.

• 2:14:27Speaker 02

  It was like the fights with him were like my masterpiece right there, like. But with only, with only an opponent like him, would that, would it bring this out of me? You know, so, yeah.

• 2:14:40Speaker 00

  How did you, I mean, how did you process that loss after not losing for?

• 2:14:46Speaker 00

  Years and years and years?

• 2:14:49Speaker 02

  I was good with it.

• 2:14:50Speaker 00

  It was fine?

• 2:14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:14:51Speaker 00

  And then you lost and?

• 2:14:53Speaker 02

  No, I was just. I knew what I, again, I understood what I did to, to not win. You know, I understood that and it's okay. It's like, it's, it's all good. I feel like people around me really started like, uh, like coaches and stuff really, like, to freak them out more.

• 2:15:11Speaker 02

  And.

• 2:15:14Speaker 02

  That was, that was the hardest part was like. Not, not Javier. Javier, me and Javier were, were always very good here. We're always, we're always on the same level. But some people started saying like the Javier. Changed the game plan to only stand up with it, with him, but they're like. It's like, what? You wouldn't, you weren't here the whole camp? You know, I couldn't wrestle, you know? Like, you know, when I was going into, into a fight with. So that was the hardest part. The people around me just sort of like.

• 2:15:45Speaker 02

  I had to like block them away and just say like, look. It's okay. It's okay. All right. I know what I have to do. Like you, what you guys are doing right now, freaking out is not doing anything. It's not doing any, any good. It's messing me up. So like, leave, you know, leave kinda thing.

• 2:16:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so. No, I just knew, like, you had to be prepared. You had to be ready. Somebody like him, you gotta be fucking polished, you know, and. Training for him, the second, my second fight, um. So I got, I got a, I fought Bigfoot after that. I knocked him out and also, oh, no, knocked him out. I got TKO and he, um, I cut him up pretty bad. He was fucking bloody. You know, really like bloody. So. Junior really helped me get that, that hunger back. Like more hungry. Okay. And then when I fought him the second time, man, I fucking digged into like everything that I had. I went into like the dark with it.

• 2:16:51Speaker 02

  You know, that.

• 2:16:53Speaker 02

  Like I'm gonna fucking really die out there. I'm gonna give you everything I have. Everything. I don't care if I fucking get so tired that I fall. Nothing, nothing. I'm gonna keep this up the whole time. Twenty-five minutes, non-stop. I'm, I'm gonna be on you. I'm gonna attack you every which way.

• 2:17:12Speaker 02

  And I really had to go to a dark place for that. Like I'm gonna go out and kill. If he, if he dies as we're doing it, fine. That's what I'm looking for. And if I die doing it, then that's okay as well. So.

• 2:17:27Speaker 00

  Shit.

• 2:17:28Speaker 02

  I really went into like a dark place with, with myself of.

• 2:17:33Speaker 02

  Like this is what needs, this is where you need to be in order to beat a person like him.

• 2:17:40Speaker 02

  This is where you have to be spiritually, mentally, like. You're gonna go out and punish. Yeah.

• 2:17:50Speaker 00

  But your final fight was in twenty nineteen, correct?

• 2:17:53Speaker 02

  Twenty eighteen or twenty nineteen, yeah.

• 2:17:57Speaker 00

  How did that go?

• 2:17:58Speaker 02

  Not good.

• 2:17:59Speaker 00

  Did you know before it happened that this was getting close to the end?

• 2:18:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did.

• 2:18:05Speaker 00

  You did?

• 2:18:06Speaker 02

  I did. Um.

• 2:18:10Speaker 02

  I just think the way that I work.

• 2:18:14Speaker 02

  I, um.

• 2:18:17Speaker 02

  I get bored of things, if that makes any sense, like. Like with wrestling, I got like, it got to a point where it got boring. Like I understood it so much that it wasn't teaching me that, that much anymore. Same with fighting. I've done it so much at that moment. It wasn't teaching me anymore. Like I needed to be taught. So I was getting bored of it, with how much I gave and how little it was giving me back. So. I remember going to that fight, right as I'm walking into the cage. I ask, uh, I ask God, I say. I say, God.

• 2:18:56Speaker 02

  If this is all that life is right here. I don't want anymore.

• 2:19:02Speaker 02

  So. You show me what it is, please. I want more than this, than what this is right now.

• 2:19:11Speaker 02

  So that's what I said going in.

• 2:19:15Speaker 02

  I got hit right away as I came into a shot. I was knocked out on my feet. As I fell down, uh, I fell over my, my leg, like really like tore. Everything in my knee except for my ACL.

• 2:19:32Speaker 02

  So if I were gonna, even gonna fight after that, like it'd be.

• 2:19:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:19:38Speaker 02

  You know, it was, it wasn't gonna happen. Um. So when we, so.

• 2:19:46Speaker 02

  Okay, I had this conversation with God at the moment, um. That I want something else out of life, more than what I've been used to.

• 2:19:57Speaker 02

  Didn't know what I was asking for. Um.

• 2:20:02Speaker 02

  So.

• 2:20:06Speaker 02

  I did do a, uh, a, uh, lucha libre match after that.

• 2:20:13Speaker 02

  With the whole knee brace on and everything, like my knee was pretty jacked up. And I was telling people that I was gonna do, do this, this lucha match, um.

• 2:20:24Speaker 02

  And I'm like, how am I gonna do it with my knee jacked up like this, you know, like? That was a crazy story. Went in.

• 2:20:32Speaker 02

  Uh. It was like the week of the match.

• 2:20:38Speaker 02

  I practiced lucha here and there at a place in San Jose, but I was like, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. You know, at all, like nothing. I'm there the week of the show and it's the biggest show of the year in, uh, AAA, um.

• 2:20:56Speaker 02

  So all these fans of mine know that I'm gonna do this match and I don't know what I'm doing. Number one, at all, right? But I'm promoting it. I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna wear or anything, right? Nothing. Like I got nothing. I'm like, fuck, this is fucking stupid. You know, like.

• 2:21:16Speaker 02

  And then the day before, the night before, fucking it all comes together. It was like, it was like, again, it was like, it was very spiritual, just like time, like a moment. It was like, nothing's coming together, nothing is, nothing's planned, nothing.

• 2:21:36Speaker 02

  And then all of a sudden, the night before, it fucking all comes together, everything. I mean, I get the whole outfit, you know, all that, fucking looks good, I cool. I know what I'm doing the night before. Like we piece it all together and like, I do like, they asked me like, what do you want to do out there? They're thinking, okay, come on, maybe me do some MMA stuff. I'm like, no, no, I wanted some lucia stuff. I'm gonna fucking do some flips and shit, you know? Like, and I, okay, can you do this? I'm like, well, show me how to do it and let me see if I can do it. So everything they did, they showed me how to do and I learned it right there that night. Okay, I'll do that. Boom, boom, boom. So we did the whole choreography, all that, right?

• 2:22:18Speaker 02

  I thought like, okay, good, we got it all packed. Did that, do the show that night and it fucking blew up, like. Surprised so many people by doing, yeah, yeah, dude, I was like, again, I was like, God, like, what the, like, what the fuck? I don't know what I'm doing. And then it all came together and then the show was great, like better than expected. It felt like after I won like against Brock, people were like looking at me like, what the fuck just happened? I'm like, I don't know, I have no idea. Yeah, yeah. So it was just crazy, like, it's almost like you just go out and do it, like even if you're not prepared. I don't know, it was weird. You're not prepared.

• 2:23:01Speaker 00

  She's always looking for a challenge. That's kind of what I meant after you beat Lesnar, I mean. You're, you hit the top of wrestling, you got bored. You hit the top, the UFC. So eventually you got bored.

• 2:23:19Speaker 00

  How do you find the next thing? I mean, does it just, you know, just come to you?

• 2:23:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it does.

• 2:23:25Speaker 00

  Pray for it. Do you?

• 2:23:28Speaker 02

  It just comes to you, man. Uh, I, I know that that drive, that energy needs to go somewhere else. And hopefully it's somewhere positive, somewhere that, again, that love needs to go to some, into something else. Whatever that is, that love needs to transfer constantly to other things. So the Lucifer here and there a little bit, and then.

• 2:23:58Speaker 02

  I'm just open to receiving. I'm open to receiving, even if like, I don't know what I'm, what's gonna be doing next.

• 2:24:05Speaker 02

  It somehow finds me. I'm like, wow, there's something here. Okay, let me go there. Let me learn about that. So.

• 2:24:14Speaker 02

  Twenty twenty, after my career going down. Uh, I just got cut from WWE because.

• 2:24:26Speaker 02

  I need, I just need development, you know, like it's a different, whole different dance, all this, like.

• 2:24:34Speaker 02

  My mom passed away that year.

• 2:24:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was gonna say, you know, twenty nineteen was your last fight and also. Your mom and your brother passed away, just a few months apart.

• 2:24:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:24:47Speaker 00

  What happened?

• 2:24:48Speaker 02

  So my mom had life like, uh, towards the end of her life, was very, uh, immobile.

• 2:24:56Speaker 00

  Very what?

• 2:24:57Speaker 02

  Like, she's very immobile, so she couldn't move around much, you know, so quality of life had to like, so. At the end of her life was sitting, sitting a lot, laying down a lot, you know, kind of bedridden a lot, uh. Osteoporosis, um, diabetes, and then I saw, yeah, I just saw like. The medical side of it, of how.

• 2:25:22Speaker 02

  All these things that she was taking to like, make her feel better.

• 2:25:27Speaker 02

  She had to take all these other things to like, counteract the things she was taking, so.

• 2:25:34Speaker 02

  It was kind of weird. It was kind of weird to like, be exposed to that and, uh, from, from her, you know, from like, from watching her.

• 2:25:43Speaker 02

  So she's been reading a lot, um.

• 2:25:49Speaker 02

  And yeah, she, one day she just passed, um. But that to me, for, for that was more of like, uh.

• 2:25:59Speaker 02

  It was like a weight, weightlifting being, it's like a weight being lifted.

• 2:26:02Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 2:26:03Speaker 02

  It was more like, I'm happy she's gone, you know, she's not.

• 2:26:08Speaker 02

  Uh, struggling anymore, she's not, um.

• 2:26:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's free, you know, so that was more, that was more of that. It was time and. We talked and everything before, all that, um.

• 2:26:25Speaker 02

  And she asked me once, she asked, she was like, how'd I do, you know, like in life, right? How'd I do?

• 2:26:31Speaker 00

  She asked you that?

• 2:26:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. I said, Ma, you're fucking perfect.

• 2:26:40Speaker 00

  That's awesome, man.

• 2:26:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:26:48Speaker 02

  She was, brother, she fucking was. So my mom, really fucking perfect, do the best.

• 2:27:04Speaker 02

  So yeah, it was good to give her that. Well, she knew, you know, she knew.

• 2:27:11Speaker 02

  It was good to share that with her. Um. Yeah, then I, I saw, I just saw her transfer to the other side, like. Towards the end of her life, she wasn't here. Her mind was somewhere else. She's in a different place, different realm.

• 2:27:28Speaker 02

  You know, she was like a newborn looking out, looking out, not really looking at anything, right? Uh, so I knew it was time. Yeah, she left, that was. It was good, it was peaceful.

• 2:27:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, then my, my brother had.

• 2:27:50Speaker 02

  He had to do a long life of just, uh, a lot of substance abuse.

• 2:27:56Speaker 02

  Um, I think a lot of things just really messed with him in his life, uh.

• 2:28:02Speaker 02

  Like school, I think really was hard on him.

• 2:28:06Speaker 02

  He has a lot of anger within him.

• 2:28:10Speaker 02

  And, uh, put into the right places, so he came out of the wrong places and then he started doing a lot of, a lot of drugs like, um. Methamphetamines, um.

• 2:28:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, going into.

• 2:28:26Speaker 02

  Alcohol as well, a lot of alcohol and.

• 2:28:33Speaker 02

  He got off the methamphetamines and then, and then he needed, well, he got into alcohol like a lot, really hardcore.

• 2:28:41Speaker 02

  And again, that was something that was new to me. I didn't really understand.

• 2:28:46Speaker 02

  What all that was. So I saw it firsthand through him, like.

• 2:28:56Speaker 02

  He told me about like him having stomach ulcers. Time to time, go to the hospital, getting, you know, stitched up. And then getting out, you know, and I didn't realize like, that's the, that's the road people go down. Like when they're that heavily drinking and I'm talking about like.

• 2:29:17Speaker 02

  Dude, a couple of bottles, like.

• 2:29:21Speaker 02

  Just hardcore, just drinking it, just to not feel so much. To a point where you can't, you couldn't even get off, uh, of it. Um, because that, that would kill him. So. He was at, he was at our house, Michelle and I, um.

• 2:29:42Speaker 02

  Staying there, we're trying to help him get sober and all that. It wasn't working. Um, so he started getting like, towards the end of his life, jaundice. Yeah, jaundice, liver shut down. Yeah, liver shut down.

• 2:29:57Speaker 02

  And again, fuck, I didn't, I didn't know, brother, I didn't. I didn't know, like, what all that meant, you know, more so just like saw it in front of me, like. Uh, yeah, and then.

• 2:30:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, one day he had a, like a big stomach ulcer, stomach just ruptured, um.

• 2:30:24Speaker 02

  Got the call from Michelle that he was in the hospital. Took him, uh, ambulance came, picked him up, took him, that he's bleeding everywhere. Um, so went to the hospital and he was just fighting for his life and there was like a water faucet and blood coming out. Um, yeah, so.

• 2:30:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I watched him do that.

• 2:30:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:54Speaker 02

  That was hard. That was fucking hardest thing I've ever gone through, the moment was that.

• 2:31:00Speaker 02

  Watching him just helpless fucking.

• 2:31:05Speaker 02

  Go through that and.

• 2:31:08Speaker 02

  I was just so like, also mad at him too, you know, like this is what you wanted right here, right? Couldn't even give him like a moment of grace at the moment. I was so into like. Like, like you know what you were doing as well, right? So I didn't get, I couldn't even give him that moment of his last like moments with us. I was so into that.

• 2:31:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 2:31:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, yeah, so.

• 2:31:41Speaker 00

  What would you say to him now, if you had the opportunity to say one last thing?

• 2:31:46Speaker 02

  I've already said it. I love him. Uh, thank you for being the best big brother.

• 2:31:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've had, I've already had healing with that. We've already talked. We know where we stand. And it's not, it's not for the downs that we're in, it's not, it's.

• 2:32:11Speaker 02

  The way that I learned from that, from that moment,

• 2:32:15Speaker 02

  was take myself out of the picture. Take my emotions out of the picture. No matter what, no matter who's gone through anything at that moment. If they're leaving this earth, you give them their time, no matter what. You do that. Appreciation.

• 2:32:33Speaker 02

  You do that. You know? So, you tell me a hard lesson, right there. And we had love between us, we did. Big time. So

• 2:32:46Speaker 02

  I had to just

• 2:32:49Speaker 02

  focus on what

• 2:32:52Speaker 02

  the great things he's done in this earth. The great things that he showed me. How he took care of me. You know? And my heart was there to help him. But he just couldn't help himself for that moment. Yeah.

• 2:33:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so. Yeah, um.

• 2:33:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:33:20Speaker 00

  Did you do your first ayahuasca ceremony one year on the one year anniversary?

• 2:33:25Speaker 02

  I didn't.

• 2:33:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, um.

• 2:33:32Speaker 02

  So, yeah, it's gone at the end of my career and also

• 2:33:38Speaker 02

  mainly having that death with my brother and that, and the way that he passed was fucking hard and difficult.

• 2:33:52Speaker 02

  So

• 2:33:56Speaker 02

  after that, I saw a medium. Somebody speaks to the other side.

• 2:34:04Speaker 02

  That helped me put him to rest a lot. Cause I had conversations with him. Of him just saying like, look, I didn't know what I was doing, I'm sorry. Thing is simple. You know?

• 2:34:19Speaker 02

  I don't want to relive his death over and over again like that. I don't like, I relive the things we've gone through in life. So that helped me like, okay, like, yes. Yes, like, yes, that's like look at the great things, the positive things, what we taught each other, like the love between us. That's all that matters, that love between us, that's it.

• 2:34:42Speaker 02

  So that helped me.

• 2:34:50Speaker 02

  Well, that night when he passed away, man, that was the first night I ever left my body.

• 2:34:57Speaker 00

  You left your body?

• 2:34:58Speaker 02

  I did, um. Seeing that.

• 2:35:03Speaker 02

  Gone, gone home and Michelle and I, we were just talking over like what just happened. Like, everything we're just like, and like so traumatized of what just happened. And

• 2:35:17Speaker 02

  as I was sitting there like, kinda like laying down, I just decided to let, let go. Fully. So, I let go of everything, like I let go of myself for a moment.

• 2:35:31Speaker 02

  Like, I don't care anymore. I'm not attached to this anymore at this moment. So that trauma really like helped me let go. So, yeah, I left, left my body for a moment. I felt like a lifting, like I was leaving.

• 2:35:48Speaker 02

  And that made me, made me do that.

• 2:35:54Speaker 02

  So we get into

• 2:35:59Speaker 02

  we get into that year, um. I already started processing of like putting him away, you know, like

• 2:36:07Speaker 02

  doing all of that and then, um. A friend of mine, a good friend of mine tells me about a ceremony he just did. So, ayahuasca Saturday, a five MEO DMT Sunday.

• 2:36:22Speaker 02

  And he explains to me everything that happened in the ceremony and his experience and just all of his experience. I said, oh. I don't think I have to do it, cause you explaining it. I got it. Right? But then he tells me the day that it's on. It's anniversary of my brother's passing. I said, okay. I'm, I'll be there.

• 2:36:49Speaker 02

  Did no research.

• 2:36:52Speaker 02

  No intentions.

• 2:36:55Speaker 02

  I just felt like I had to be there for a reason. I didn't know what. Uh, so I show up. And don't know anything about ceremonies in general at all.

• 2:37:08Speaker 02

  This, where I went to was more like a one day in, do ceremony and get out, so no introduction, no integration, didn't know anything, don't know anything about anything. I don't, I'm just fucking gonna show up, right? I just feel like I have to be here.

• 2:37:24Speaker 02

  So

• 2:37:27Speaker 02

  first day's ayahuasca. Start, uh, they give you cups and they give you, you know, as much as you want, like, uh, every hour or so. Cups, if you wanna keep, you know, keep going deeper into the, into the experience.

• 2:37:46Speaker 02

  So as soon as I felt the medicine.

• 2:37:50Speaker 02

  It felt like

• 2:37:54Speaker 02

  I know this medicine more than I know myself.

• 2:38:03Speaker 02

  I felt like what ayahuasca was.

• 2:38:08Speaker 02

  I know that more than I know myself. That was very familiar to me. As if I've been there before, as if I've done this before.

• 2:38:17Speaker 02

  So as soon as I felt the experience. I said, I'm with you on everything you wanna do. I'm with you. You show me what you need to show me. And my first experience.

• 2:38:34Speaker 02

  I first started looking at my family. Each one individually, and saw them.

• 2:38:41Speaker 02

  I saw them more than what I've ever seen of them.

• 2:38:47Speaker 02

  I understood them more than I ever understood them. Like the little things, like my daughter, for instance, like I saw her so much, like I finally like understood her now than before I didn't.

• 2:39:01Speaker 02

  The way that I was trying to be a father was what I thought was supposed to be a father was

• 2:39:10Speaker 02

  we expect these certain things to be a good person. To where now I just, I saw her in her essence. Of what she was bringing to me. And that was I saw the love in her. I saw the beauty in her, all of it, even the quirks and all that, like, like what you think are shortcomings, like that's all her, her own essence of beauty. And I saw that there. Finally, like, oh, like, I understand you now more than ever. And I understood family and friends a lot more than ever. And my job as a parent is to be there unconditionally with love.

• 2:39:55Speaker 02

  That's it. Need something from me? Wisdom, whatever?

• 2:40:01Speaker 02

  I'm right here, whenever you want. But I'm gonna love and support you no matter what. With kindness, with acceptance. I'm not gonna freak out, you tell me you did something, like, no. You did this, okay, well, how can I help? Okay, I can help this way, I'm here, I'm here for you to hold space, like you need to cry, whatever, man, I'm with you, it's all good. Do whatever you need to do, I'm here, I love you no matter what.

• 2:40:28Speaker 02

  So I saw everybody like that, I even saw people that I didn't even like. Like and I appreciated them for what they were showing me. And that was themselves to like have me grown to something much more pure in myself. Even if somebody I don't like, even if somebody doesn't see the same things I do, they're like shitheads, they're fucking bad people. But they're essential for my growth. No matter what, so everybody's essential. So I appreciated everybody for being their own authentic self at the moment. Right?

• 2:41:08Speaker 02

  And then dude, I felt like I just had like,

• 2:41:14Speaker 02

  I felt like my heart got unlocked. Maybe not totally, because we're always gonna keep growing. But my heart got so unlocked than what I knew before. My heart, my mind, my soul got unlocked to either, and these things that I got were downloads, or it was just stuff that I remembered finally. I believe, I believe the fullness is already within us. We just gotta remember. You know, like, all those things are already within us. We just gotta remember, that's it. It's already there. You don't gotta outsource it. It's right there, it's already in here.

• 2:41:55Speaker 02

  So I felt like there's so much that I understood, find like,

• 2:42:00Speaker 02

  of more, more than I understood of God, more than I understood of life, that life is,

• 2:42:14Speaker 02

  life is perfectly made for me, for you, for, for me, exactly every moment, to you to grow into what you need to grow into, to essentially ascend.

• 2:42:31Speaker 02

  Okay?

• 2:42:33Speaker 02

  So if it's made for me exactly every moment, for me to grow into that,

• 2:42:39Speaker 02

  now how do I go through it? Do I go through it with resistance? No, I go through acceptance, the grace, with love and compassion.

• 2:42:50Speaker 02

  Me seeing that,

• 2:42:54Speaker 02

  I said, oh, okay. So I need to make my, my life more loving. Like, I need to be in a love story with my life every moment. Even if it's just me by myself, I need to have a love story with me. It starts with me.

• 2:43:10Speaker 02

  So,

• 2:43:13Speaker 02

  I felt like I had like a new lease on life where I understood a lot more.

• 2:43:19Speaker 02

  I felt like everybody needed to do something like this, this type of medicine, at that time.

• 2:43:28Speaker 02

  So I've,

• 2:43:31Speaker 02

  again, with no integration, you had came this one day, and then within a week or two, you had came this other way. So it was a lot for people to take in, especially my closest family and friends.

• 2:43:45Speaker 02

  And that wasn't even the, the five meal trip.

• 2:43:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43:52Speaker 00

  I've done ayahuasca, I've done ibicam a handful of times, and twice, five of me a handful

• 2:43:58Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:43:59Speaker 00

  times. Suicide and had good experiences, I've had horrific experiences.

• 2:44:09Speaker 00

  How has that

• 2:44:16Speaker 00

  changed your interpretations of God?

• 2:44:21Speaker 00

  If it has.

• 2:44:24Speaker 02

  From what I was taught, and what I could perceive, from people teaching it to me at a young age,

• 2:44:32Speaker 02

  to me experiencing what I experienced and what I see it now,

• 2:44:40Speaker 02

  with my experiences with it.

• 2:44:44Speaker 02

  So when I had a five meal trip, I died off of that. I had a good ego, ego death. Though that I know, ego, like, I just knew I was dying

• 2:44:56Speaker 02

  on it.

• 2:44:58Speaker 02

  And the time of death, I was filled with so much love,

• 2:45:02Speaker 02

  like endless amounts of love.

• 2:45:06Speaker 02

  To where I was ready to go. Regardless, I came back and it didn't even matter, like, that none of it mattered, but being in a state of love.

• 2:45:18Speaker 02

  So I fully let go.

• 2:45:23Speaker 02

  My consciousness left my body, but became everything else after that. So as I left, my consciousness expanded. And

• 2:45:37Speaker 02

  I became the trees, I became the earth,

• 2:45:40Speaker 02

  I became space, and I became beyond. So

• 2:45:46Speaker 02

  I was all of it,

• 2:45:49Speaker 02

  yet nothing as well, all at once. And the message that I got there, that was fucking ingrained into my, my soul from now on is, there's only one here.

• 2:46:05Speaker 02

  All different versions, I don't wanna say that, but there's only one here.

• 2:46:12Speaker 02

  God is the only thing that exists. That's it.

• 2:46:18Speaker 02

  God is within me. I'm looking out at myself.

• 2:46:24Speaker 02

  That's my viewpoint, that's from my experience. I know people have different viewpoints.

• 2:46:30Speaker 00

  The oneness.

• 2:46:32Speaker 02

  The oneness is the only thing that exists on all different levels, teaching itself

• 2:46:40Speaker 02

  to get back to the higher. So

• 2:46:46Speaker 02

  where I'm at now with it,

• 2:46:51Speaker 02

  I am here as myself, learning from myself, experiencing myself, always. Now,

• 2:47:04Speaker 02

  there's depths to the self.

• 2:47:07Speaker 02

  That's a forever ongoing thing.

• 2:47:12Speaker 02

  Where I'm at with it right now is that I'm interacting with myself all the time. Myself is guiding myself.

• 2:47:21Speaker 02

  There is no you or I, there's only the I am. That's it. Different versions in this earth plane to help us

• 2:47:32Speaker 02

  on the path of ascension, getting out of the third dimension.

• 2:47:38Speaker 02

  And it's a forever learning of yourself. That's all we have. Time, space, like, just here now.

• 2:47:47Speaker 02

  That's it. So that was, that was ingrained into me at that moment.

• 2:47:55Speaker 02

  To where

• 2:48:00Speaker 02

  I'm looking at myself. I'm seeing the sunsets, me.

• 2:48:06Speaker 02

  Like, how beautiful is, is I?

• 2:48:11Speaker 02

  Like, having compassion for animals now. Because there is no you or I, there's a oneness.

• 2:48:25Speaker 02

  And there's always, there's a forever depth of knowing yourself. More, there's more. The bigger you deep,

• 2:48:33Speaker 02

  the more you go out, like, the more you go within, more will be shown to you. So how much do you want? But you gotta look for it, you gotta dig deep for it. You gotta keep,

• 2:48:45Speaker 02

  keep on the journey.

• 2:48:51Speaker 00

  Let's take a quick break.

• 2:48:56Speaker 00

  I'm excited to introduce to you the newest member of my family. We call him Stanley. We got Stanley this past Christmas, and pretty quickly, my focus became making sure he was safe, while still giving him the freedom to actually be a dog. I went looking for the top rated GPS fence, the number one. And that's how I found SpotOn. Stanley wears their Nova collar. With SpotOn, I set up a GPS fence for Stanley right on my phone. No physical fence, no leash. I just walk my property line or draw it on the map, and that's the boundary the collar recognizes. I can create multiple fences, save them, and adjust them whenever I need to.

• 2:49:41Speaker 00

  So whether we're at home or traveling, Stanley always knows where his boundaries are. Another thing that stood out to me is these collars are designed right here in the USA and assembled in New Hampshire by a team that's been working with high-precision GPS technology for years. And you can tell, a lot of attention went into making this thing reliable. The Nova collar uses a dual-band GPS system connected to more than 150 satellites, along with an antenna that's over five times larger than typical GPS fence collars. That keeps the boundary accurate, even around trees, terrain, and changing conditions. SpotOn's True Location technology has been independently tested

• 2:50:25Speaker 00

  and delivers 99.3% containment, which matters when you're trusting something with your dog's safety. It's incredibly durable, and on top of that, I can check his location in real time, send voice commands directly to the collar, and track his activity through the day. I use SpotOn so Stanley gets the freedom to run and explore, and I get the peace of mind knowing he's safe. Let your dog roam with SpotOn. Go to spotonfence.com/srs and use code SRS for $50 off the Nova collar. That's spotonfence.com/srs and use code SRS for $50 off.

• 2:51:12Speaker 00

  You've seen the movie. Guy walks through a train station, pulls a phone out of his jacket, makes one call, drops it in a trash can, and keeps walking. Clean. That's not Hollywood. That's tradecraft. And the principle behind it is simple. Never let one piece of your life connect to another. Here's your problem. You've got one number. It's on your bank account. It's on your kid's school forms. The pizza place. The dating app. The guy who sold you your truck. One number, and every part of your life is wired to it. That's not a phone. That's a map to your front door. And it's for sale. Glacier gives you burner numbers.

• 2:51:56Speaker 00

  Any US area code you want. Hand it out. Use it. And the second it starts filling up with spam calls or somebody you'd rather not hear from again, you delete it. It's gone. Make another one. That's the loud half. Here's the quiet half. Right now, sitting in your pocket, your phone is talking. Apps you're not even using are calling out to servers you've never heard of. Telling them where you are. What you look at. What you buy. You never approved it. It just happens. All day. Every day. Glacier's secure DNS cuts those calls before they connect. Not after. Before. Two days after we launched, I checked my own phone.

• 2:52:40Speaker 00

  Eight hundred and thirty-seven trackers blocked. Before lunch. This is intelligence-grade protection. The kind of thing that used to cost tens of thousands of dollars a phone and only went to people with clearances. Now it's an app. And it could be yours. And I want to be straight with you. I'm not reading somebody else's ad. I'm a co-founder of this company. I put my name, my money, and a year of my life into building this. Alongside the people who did the work for real. I use it every single day. Install the app. Hit connect. And you're protected. That's it. It's that simple. TheGlacierApp.com. Or

• 2:53:24Speaker 00

  find Glacier in the App Store. Remember. Privacy isn't paranoia. It's protection.

• 2:53:38Speaker 00

  Ready to roll into your son? All right.

• 2:53:46Speaker 00

  Where do we start?

• 2:53:48Speaker 02

  So,

• 2:53:51Speaker 02

  when I was coming back from my 5MEO DMT trip,

• 2:53:59Speaker 02

  I spoke to God again. And I said, I work for you now. Everything I do for you.

• 2:54:09Speaker 02

  Everything I do is I do for you. So just continue to show me. Put the path out in front of me. And

• 2:54:21Speaker 02

  do it.

• 2:54:25Speaker 02

  So

• 2:54:28Speaker 02

  my life changed big time. Not just internally, but externally.

• 2:54:39Speaker 02

  My wife at the time, Michelle, we just

• 2:54:45Speaker 02

  on a different journey of self-discovery.

• 2:54:50Speaker 02

  Not that you couldn't coexist, you can. And we have. We've been able to do that. But, um,

• 2:55:00Speaker 02

  I had to go out and learn. Learn what I wanted to learn. Which was

• 2:55:08Speaker 02

  learn of the divine, good plant medicine, but also

• 2:55:14Speaker 02

  learning from being by myself, solitude, nature.

• 2:55:23Speaker 02

  I got into everything. I got into a lot of different religions. I got into the occult as well.

• 2:55:35Speaker 00

  What cult?

• 2:55:36Speaker 02

  Huh?

• 2:55:37Speaker 00

  What cult?

• 2:55:37Speaker 02

  The occult. So

• 2:55:40Speaker 00

  occult.

• 2:55:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like, uh,

• 2:55:45Speaker 02

  like hermetic teachings. The Vattho Pialantian.

• 2:55:53Speaker 02

  All, everything just really spoke well to me. All of it did.

• 2:55:59Speaker 02

  So religions, I started learning more about different religions as well. I just Christianity.

• 2:56:07Speaker 02

  So

• 2:56:10Speaker 02

  I saw spiritual work as mixed martial arts. And that's how I see it now. Is that I can learn from everybody. Every form of way of doing certain things. I can take it into myself and take the parts that I think are very beneficial. The parts that I don't think are beneficial, I leave them. And I know that there's spiritual teachers everywhere.

• 2:56:35Speaker 02

  They got on the face of the planet, real people that are black belts. But not all black belts are the same.

• 2:56:43Speaker 02

  So knowing that the power's within you, it's not somebody externally. They can teach you some things. Yes, they can. They don't have all the answers. No one, not all one person does. So I realized just like in MMA and Jiu-Jitsu. Somebody can be a black belt, but there's levels to it as well. And they may be good at certain, certain things, but they're not good at other things. And you get a teaching. They may not be good at certain techniques. Their body type. So I really saw it that way. Have discernment. Have boundaries set up with myself, with other people. More so than I wanted to before. On extracting

• 2:57:28Speaker 02

  what makes sense to me and putting that in to the way that I want to put it into. And how I want it to form in within me and out. And whether it's truth or whether it's not. If it's love, if it's wisdom, compassion, then all that's truth. It is. If there's anything outside of that, then I don't take that with, with me.

• 2:57:57Speaker 02

  And I don't tell people that's the wrong way of doing things. No. Like let them do them. Let people do them. I let I read the teachings. What I get, what I get out of it. But I can make it make sense for me. And have it speak to me. Then I try to dive deeper with it. I try to go deeper with it. Deeper understanding. And how can I do that? Well, just my train of thought by dissecting things. Trying to make, make sense for me and trying to teach me.

• 2:58:34Speaker 02

  So essentially, I'm open to all. Even the darkness, but

• 2:58:40Speaker 02

  the darkness is more of

• 2:58:45Speaker 02

  I know that is not truth.

• 2:58:49Speaker 00

  Then why are you open to it?

• 2:58:51Speaker 02

  I'm open to it.

• 2:58:55Speaker 02

  I'm open to it, but I don't let it come in me. I have discernment over that. I have discernment over all darkness. Okay? What I am is a child of the divine. Child of light. Child of truth, child of love. So

• 2:59:13Speaker 02

  but I can go into some dark places as well. If you push me there. Okay? So I know that's within me as well. I choose to be this way. But if I have to, I'll go there. And I'll go just as dark as you or even darker. Okay, so don't fuck with me. Like you do not cross certain lines. You don't do that. So those are the boundaries that I have up. Why do I open up to it? But I don't let it in? I need to learn what your objective is. I need to learn what your train of thought is. I need to know what you're trying to do here on this earth. That's the poison? My brothers and sisters? No, fuck that.

• 2:59:57Speaker 02

  Why are you doing that? Okay?

• 3:00:02Speaker 02

  So I choose to walk a certain path.

• 3:00:08Speaker 02

  A divine path. Of truth. I'm not perfect. But I choose to walk down this path. And I walk down it with dignity. With respect. With with grace. In all things. And I may mess up here and there. I will. And it's given. I'm still learning. I'm always learning. But I'm going to take those mistakes. And I'm going to try and meet them into something positive. Because I have that choice as well to do that. So I learn from everybody. If it doesn't line up to me, I don't take it in. If it turn on the people, if I can put a stop to it, I will. In some way or another. So that's

• 3:00:54Speaker 02

  how I see it.

• 3:01:04Speaker 00

  It's interesting.

• 3:01:07Speaker 02

  It's learning your enemy, you know?

• 3:01:12Speaker 02

  It's learning your enemy's objective.

• 3:01:16Speaker 02

  If I don't know what I'm fighting against,

• 3:01:20Speaker 02

  how can I fight against them? How can I prepare myself?

• 3:01:23Speaker 00

  How do you learn it?

• 3:01:26Speaker 02

  Just by, whether it's things of like reading.

• 3:01:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I take, I take things out

• 3:01:37Speaker 02

  that speak to me that are truth. And things that aren't lined up with me, I don't take them. I say, okay, well, this is what you're about.

• 3:01:49Speaker 02

  And the only way I can know somebody is really by sitting down with them, conversating with them. So I can't judge you, I can't judge you what you look at or what you think you you're associated with. I can't. I can't. Because I we haven't had time to spend time with each other and conversate and hang out with each other to know what you're about. So I can't judge you off of one thing you said. I can't judge you off of what things that you're practicing because you may carry yourself differently.

• 3:02:23Speaker 02

  So

• 3:02:26Speaker 02

  I'm open to a lot of things, but I don't let everything in within me. I don't. And I realized from my journeys that the darkness, the um,

• 3:02:42Speaker 02

  it's not truth, it's not real. It's an illusion. There's only one truth. That's love. That's it. Everything else is fake. Yeah, someone may kill me,

• 3:02:57Speaker 02

  but I go home. This is not my home.

• 3:03:01Speaker 02

  But I'm learning here. That's it. I have a short amount of time here. That's it. We all do.

• 3:03:08Speaker 00

  What do you think happens when you die?

• 3:03:12Speaker 02

  You go back home.

• 3:03:13Speaker 00

  What is God?

• 3:03:15Speaker 02

  God. You're back to the one

• 3:03:19Speaker 02

  where we all come from. We all come back from source. We all go back to source.

• 3:03:25Speaker 02

  For the one truth, the love, the the wisdom, the eternalness of it all. Like, our humans' words can't even explain that. And I'm, you know, like, I can't put, I can't paint you a picture of what that is because there's so much of that that I cannot describe. And we try to describe that. People fight wars over it, what that is. But it's something that's undescribable to humans, like, it's.

• 3:03:52Speaker 00

  Do you think you've experienced that through your five A M O trip?

• 3:03:57Speaker 02

  I've experienced levels of it of what only I could comprehend at the time. Yes. For what this physical body can take in, I've experienced as much as this physical body and my mental capacity and my heart and soul can take in at that moment. That's all that I experienced. There's an infinite amount more, infinite amount more of love, of wisdom that I can't even grasp. I know that. So my job is to dig deeper. Is to go within more. Is to try to understand more. Be open to the understanding of it all, of everything.

• 3:04:43Speaker 00

  Do you believe

• 3:04:47Speaker 00

  in a heaven and hell?

• 3:04:50Speaker 02

  I do.

• 3:04:55Speaker 02

  Well, the way that I see it is those that put themselves there

• 3:05:03Speaker 02

  mentally at a soul level, they'll be there.

• 3:05:10Speaker 02

  We all manifest what we want to manifest.

• 3:05:14Speaker 00

  Wouldn't that mean that the darkness is real?

• 3:05:19Speaker 02

  But nothing's real to love. To the highest form of

• 3:05:24Speaker 02

  of God, that's an illusion. Because though we may practice that here on this earth, as you go on the higher planes, that gets erased.

• 3:05:38Speaker 02

  Because that's a low level of being.

• 3:05:42Speaker 02

  And if we have an infinite amount of time, well, this is how I,

• 3:05:47Speaker 02

  if we have an infinite amount of time to know of yourself, you wouldn't be in that place. Because it's a low level of being. Okay, and we're all going to the same place. Well, you do, it takes work. But you're gonna be playing with that for so long until you get bored of it and understand that that's not real. It's fake.

• 3:06:13Speaker 02

  It's not real.

• 3:06:15Speaker 00

  So you think we all go to the same place?

• 3:06:19Speaker 02

  You have to. I think you get bored of it so much

• 3:06:25Speaker 02

  that you'll have to. Or you just choose to stay there. But with you, infinite amount of time of growth,

• 3:06:34Speaker 02

  I don't understand how some people could stay there. But I believe it's possible to stay there, stay at a low level and you do not rise up.

• 3:06:43Speaker 02

  Like, things growing, like, plants growing, some die, some grow, some bloom. You know, seeds get dropped. They don't even, they don't even have a chance to form. I think all that happens. It does, so.

• 3:06:59Speaker 02

  It's an internal growth continuously looking from within, not outward, from within. And you'll get those things that you need to constantly move up. So it is, it is work, it is a choice. But like after, after infinite amount of time, wouldn't you fucking get tired of that? My thought. Wouldn't you get tired of that? I believe, I believe in other past lives, maybe I've been in that space before. And I got tired of it. Realize that's not where it is.

• 3:07:37Speaker 00

  You think reincarnation is how you believe in reincarnation?

• 3:07:42Speaker 02

  I do.

• 3:07:45Speaker 02

  I do, I do.

• 3:07:50Speaker 02

  It's helped me so much to be okay with being myself and know that I don't have to rush to anything. To know that I'm on my path.

• 3:08:02Speaker 02

  And

• 3:08:04Speaker 02

  there's no push anywhere. There's no put, like,

• 3:08:09Speaker 02

  the growth, the growth will come when I'm ready. The continuous growth will come when I'm ready. And us being internal beings,

• 3:08:18Speaker 02

  all we have is growth. All we have is a deep knowing of ourselves. And that, like, that growth is infinite.

• 3:08:26Speaker 02

  So.

• 3:08:26Speaker 00

  If you believe in, let me ask this, if you,

• 3:08:34Speaker 00

  I'm just curious. I'm not pushing.

• 3:08:40Speaker 00

  I believe you said you had a conversation with your brother

• 3:08:46Speaker 00

  in one of your journeys. Did you?

• 3:08:50Speaker 02

  Not a conversation, more of a, an understanding, a knowing, a sense of peace.

• 3:08:56Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:08:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:09:01Speaker 00

  How could that happen?

• 3:09:05Speaker 00

  If you believe in reincarnation?

• 3:09:10Speaker 02

  That he's in a place of,

• 3:09:15Speaker 02

  so I don't believe necessarily that we reincarnate right away.

• 3:09:18Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:09:19Speaker 02

  Like, you die and all of a sudden you're, I read a story, um, so looking to a lot of um, past life progression as well. So Dolores Cannon uh, has some good books on past life progression that really helped me

• 3:09:38Speaker 02

  understand life lessons. Because she goes into, well,

• 3:09:44Speaker 02

  somebody goes to her and says, I have this anxiety of this. I don't know why. I've never been through something like this. Okay, so puts them through hypnosis, goes through a past life progression. And they talk about a past life that they've gone through this scenario where they gave control to somebody else. Maybe like they're on a ship or something like that. And then they gave their control to a captain that shouldn't have been a captain. Okay? So that person knew we shouldn't be following this dude. But did it anyways. Okay? Now, what happens months later? The lost at sea, no food, nothing, everybody's dying. Right?

• 3:10:28Speaker 02

  What happens in the story is, person dies,

• 3:10:33Speaker 02

  releases from their body, and

• 3:10:37Speaker 02

  she asks the collective consciousness, which is the divine consciousness within them. Like, well, what did you want them to see in this life?

• 3:10:47Speaker 02

  Okay, well, we wanted them to see that

• 3:10:52Speaker 02

  they're in control of their life. And if they don't feel like,

• 3:10:57Speaker 02

  if they have any kind of,

• 3:11:01Speaker 02

  if they shouldn't follow somebody for some reason, then they shouldn't. You have discernment, you have power within your own self to not do those things, because anything can happen. So it was more of like giving the power back to the person. So

• 3:11:18Speaker 02

  if we're on an infinite moment of growth,

• 3:11:24Speaker 02

  constantly raising our vibration to a higher level and essentially leaving this third dimension, then we have to learn our lessons as some of those masters that had before us that have taught us the way.

• 3:11:41Speaker 02

  So to hold on to things is to trust in your own power. Is to grow from within. Is that growth from within of love, of higher understanding

• 3:11:54Speaker 02

  in order to constantly raise yourself in that. So what you talk about also in that book is,

• 3:12:05Speaker 02

  One instance, being reincarnated to do a certain job here on earth. Working with plants, working with agriculture, while taking in a place of schooling to learn all these things before you reincarnate. And now, this is what you're doing here, is learning and teaching people how to grow certain things. And you don't know how you grew it, right? Because the memory is wiped out. It's a beautifulness of self-discovery over and over again. And tell you what, this isn't the last plane. We constantly move up and up until we do finally go back to source. And that's what I believe.

• 3:12:45Speaker 00

  Until you think you reincarnate over and over until you go to the source, which is a final resting place?

• 3:12:58Speaker 02

  Which is back home, with the all-knowing, united as one. Finally, again, truly united as one, all-knowing, all-being. Everything, yes. So I think this earth plane is a school. It's a certain school. But other masters have

• 3:13:28Speaker 00

  To develop.

• 3:13:30Speaker 02

  To develop, to ascend, to grow higher than this. No longer, our bodies are like, no longer do we live here anymore. Our level of consciousness has grown up so much that we no longer have to come back to this anymore, to this third dimension, 3D earth.

• 3:13:56Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 3:14:03Speaker 00

  Let's move to your son.

• 3:14:07Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I went through these ceremonies. Filled with so much understanding, so much love. Right? Had this conversation with God, that I work for, I work for God now. Everything seemed to be all good. And challenges came up where Michelle and I were at different interests. You know, growing differently, right? So that was happening, and it was me, it was me pushing her away.

• 3:14:49Speaker 02

  It was me, it was me thinking I had to do something else. Or knowing that I had to do something else, and that I couldn't, I couldn't be in a relationship where I wasn't giving my all, wasn't fully committed. Just that I had to go grow. And I maybe just needed myself to do that. So, yeah, one night, I put my son to bed, and he tells me things that are happening to him at his daycare. He goes, so I ask questions about what happened, tells me.

• 3:15:32Speaker 02

  Ask him how long has it been going on? Says for a while, right? So, we do what we're supposed to do, make a report, call the authorities. We do that.

• 3:15:52Speaker 00

  What did they say?

• 3:15:54Speaker 02

  You know, they should get, they should get everybody's documented down on what, you know, they're going through the process. And I understand, like, there's a heavenly realm and there's an earthly realm, the laws that we gotta abide by here on earth. Okay, God's laws are a little different. But you gotta do, so you gotta act accordingly. So, we do things that are right, correct, we make the report, all that.

• 3:16:33Speaker 02

  We hear that the daycare, the son, who's a 40-year-old man, Harry Goodhart, was there, and that's who my son told me that, you know, did all this stuff. And I ask him, do you have other kids? And he's like, yeah. My son, he's like, yeah, other kids, yeah, okay. So, put the report in, they book him. He gets out on Friday, and that same week, he gets out on Friday

• 3:17:12Speaker 02

  with no ankle monitor, nothing, because it's the Friday, end of the day, and the weekend, they're not open. So he's out on two days, with no ankle monitor on. Not back at the daycare, the daycare's at a house. And, okay, so, that happens.

• 3:17:41Speaker 01

  In deepest jungle, Cartier's panther spies a wandering bird that circles the skies. A lovebird, lost and missing his mate, is far from his past, in lonely state. Dry your tears, now there's a start. Follow my steps to heal your heart. Panther stalks through the leaves with silent grace. Through the power of scent, she finds the trace. Behold, two lovers reunite in the skies. A most precious thrill sparkling in their eyes. Together forever, they shine each day, bound by the beauty of Cartier.

• 3:18:24Speaker 00

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games. Witness the beginning of the revolution. Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start. Filmed for IMAX. Make them remember you. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Weeping, November 20th, rated PG-13.

• 3:18:40Speaker 02

  And then, just seeing my son and seeing all the troubles now come out, right? Because he's disclosed it, so seeing the hurting him, breaking down, crying.

• 3:18:53Speaker 00

  You could see it?

• 3:18:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, he let it out, you know, cry and all this.

• 3:18:59Speaker 00

  How long had it been going on?

• 3:19:03Speaker 02

  He'd been going there since he was maybe around three years old, and he told us at four. So, I'm guessing pretty quickly, as soon as he was there. And the daycare, the mom and the stepdad, all that, that ran it, I knew they were all, they were all into it. They're, they let it all happen, you know? So I was like, okay, they're all guilty too. Like, he would go in during the daycare, you know? Hang out with the kid, and then take him to the bathroom and fucking crying and all that. And they fucking let it all happen.

• 3:19:45Speaker 02

  So, grab more information later on, that the dad, like, that has been doing it forever. Okay, now the community, either son didn't know, right? Or son did know, and are okay with it. So I had to like, okay, there's people in our community that are okay with this. Okay? The person that told us to go there, like, we asked around, it's a farm across the street from where we live, and the owner is like, yeah, go here, I went there, whatever, like, whether he knew or not, I don't know. Okay, but now I knew from all this that there are certain families that are okay with this.

• 3:20:29Speaker 00

  Holy shit.

• 3:20:30Speaker 02

  Okay? So, I've never been introduced to this at all, like, my mom was very open with me talking, and she worked with Child Protective Services, and she'd be open about all this stuff. Talk to me about it, talk to me what's right, what's wrong, you know? And I never dealt with that, and families that I, family members that I knew never dealt with it. So this was all very, it's very new to me. Other than my mom, like, prepping me for this, like, type of thing. So, kind of got opened up, like, okay, there's people that know, there's people that don't know.

• 3:21:10Speaker 02

  There's people that had told us later on, like, the kids opened up, and their parents didn't do anything, didn't even report it, right? Took them out of there. So, I saw this as a bigger problem than what it was, just in the community. I didn't know what all of this was in the world. More recent, more recent things have been coming out, where it's like, okay, this shit's in our, it's in our everyday, it's in our lives. So, me just being exposed to all that.

• 3:21:51Speaker 02

  So, seeing my kids break down, seeing Michelle break down. That was like, hurting my brother, that was one of the hardest things, if not the hardest things, to watch them go through their hurt in the moment. Watching it and not being able to do anything, but let them go through it. So.

• 3:22:24Speaker 02

  It was a Monday, we just took my son to a

• 3:22:30Speaker 02

  to the zoo to kind of get him out of things, you know, get him out of

• 3:22:35Speaker 02

  the structured things and just

• 3:22:37Speaker 00

  New headspace.

• 3:22:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, and okay, we believed

• 3:22:45Speaker 02

  the daycare would be shut down, we knew, but then like the owner of the daycare, Patty Gilart, the mom

• 3:22:55Speaker 02

  put out a ma- a mass email and kept us haunted, didn't take us off, saying that oh no, those allegations are false, like that kid wasn't even here that day, blah, blah, blah, and saying that they're gonna be open on Monday. Right, which they, they technically can't, but that like fucking just blew my mind. Like

• 3:23:18Speaker 02

  we did all this and it's still not gonna get stopped, what the fuck? You know, like

• 3:23:25Speaker 02

  the system's fucking sucks, it's broken, people don't know what the fuck they're doing. So all these things started running through my mind.

• 3:23:33Speaker 02

  Get home from the zoo and I'm like, man, I should have taken a drive, like I did have my gun on me at the time, um.

• 3:23:45Speaker 02

  And I had all these thoughts, like I wish, you know, like I would see him, like, what about that, like? I'm driving out in public, I've never seen him out in public, ever, right? Well, that day I saw him.

• 3:24:00Speaker 02

  Uh, I saw them.

• 3:24:05Speaker 02

  Hmm. Had a conversation with God again, and I said

• 3:24:15Speaker 02

  well, it was like God told me, like, look, well, they're in front of you now.

• 3:24:21Speaker 02

  Now what?

• 3:24:24Speaker 02

  Right?

• 3:24:25Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:24:26Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:24:29Speaker 02

  Well, I said, God, you know what I'm doing? So you make this however you want. You make this outcome however you wanna make it.

• 3:24:41Speaker 02

  But you know what I'm doing?

• 3:24:44Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 3:24:46Speaker 02

  Followed them and they went right to pick up Harry, go take him to go to the ankle monitor, and I lost it. Whatever you would say

• 3:24:59Speaker 02

  having it is, I lost it, I fucking lost a will to live.

• 3:25:06Speaker 02

  Didn't care about dying, didn't care, didn't care about anything.

• 3:25:12Speaker 02

  I was in a different place at that moment. Um. I wasn't maneuvering in the parameters of what we call a normal life, I was in something else. Um.

• 3:25:30Speaker 02

  So I did what I did.

• 3:25:33Speaker 00

  What age did you start talking to your kid about this stuff?

• 3:25:37Speaker 02

  Pretty young, like, pretty young.

• 3:25:42Speaker 02

  Like, take him to the bathroom, you know, and like, we wouldn't touch him or anything, you know, we'd like have them test their privates and like, and aim and do all that, you know, and like

• 3:25:56Speaker 02

  and like when we wipe him or anything else like that, we'd tell them, like, look, like, your dad and I are the only ones that do this, okay? No one else does this, right? And you're in control of your own body. So if you don't like something what somebody's doing, even if it's us, you fuck it, you just tell us. Okay? Like, this is appropriate, and this is not, anything that you don't like,

• 3:26:19Speaker 02

  you just say it, cause you're in charge. So we just, Michelle was really good about that, she did that at that, from a young age, like telling our kids, like, what's appropriate, what's not appropriate touch, things that you don't like, say it. So. So yeah, from a pre- young, young age, like potty training, doing that, and it's like now, like, look at the signs, like, my son started, like, digressing his potty, and his potty training, cause that's something that would happen, you know, so he wouldn't even, so he just wet himself versus like

• 3:26:56Speaker 02

  you know, he was progressing and all that, and all of a sudden he wasn't, and I'm like, like, what's going on? Like, I don't understand, right? So he was avoiding going to the bathroom.

• 3:27:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:27:12Speaker 02

  So yeah, I did what I did, uh. Went through an 11 mile chase, shooting at them. Um.

• 3:27:22Speaker 02

  And all of them were guilty, Sullivan could have got it. Look at the photos now, um, from the crime scene, their

• 3:27:32Speaker 02

  their truck was shot up and it was

• 3:27:39Speaker 02

  like, that I only hit the stepfather who was in on it. Hit him in the arm, it was like, it wasn't like

• 3:27:49Speaker 02

  it'd have been much worse, right? But it wasn't, um, and look at the crime scene, I was like, wow, like

• 3:27:58Speaker 02

  all of them could have that's what I was going for, so 11 mile chase.

• 3:28:07Speaker 02

  You know, like, two gun clips. Um. There was like a stop there, uh with police, during traffic, during traffic, so innocent people were gonna get hit.

• 3:28:24Speaker 02

  I was trying not to, but I wasn't here.

• 3:28:28Speaker 02

  I wasn't, so I understand, like, it could hurt a lot of people that weren't even involved, um.

• 3:28:37Speaker 02

  So, went into jail that night.

• 3:28:47Speaker 00

  How long were you in jail?

• 3:28:50Speaker 02

  So.

• 3:28:56Speaker 02

  So.

• 3:28:59Speaker 02

  Went to jail.

• 3:29:03Speaker 02

  I was there nine months before I got, uh

• 3:29:08Speaker 02

  before I got on parole, or, yeah. Um, so nine months, solitary confinement.

• 3:29:19Speaker 02

  Um.

• 3:29:25Speaker 02

  But I knew it was part of my path.

• 3:29:28Speaker 02

  For whatever reason, right, I knew who was in charge, ultimately in charge, I knew that it was for my betterment, so I didn't let it, I didn't let it fucking break me down, I didn't go crazy in there, like

• 3:29:47Speaker 02

  I knew I was protected, I knew I was being guided in it all, I knew that this is for something bigger. Don't know what, I don't know, but even just that little mo- just what's happened in that first day, like people found out why and everything else, like, it brought a lot of people together. It made them more open to speak about these certain things. You know, to speak about life experiences of, of these things that had happened to them, um, so I actually

• 3:30:20Speaker 02

  knew that the solitude was a blessing.

• 3:30:26Speaker 02

  It was, like, okay, you've been at the top, been at the bottom, like, you've done all these things in this life. Whenever do we get the chance to have true solitude unless you're like a monk, right? Be, to be comfortable, truly comfortable with yourself. Regardless of what the exterior looks like. I got nothing, got these four walls, this little room, I'm in this little room for 21 hours of the day. Three hours to get out, shower, get a little TV time, other than that, I'm my, I'm my best friend.

• 3:31:04Speaker 02

  And I have to be, I have to be, um. Soon as I got in there, got a little claustrophobic, you know, started like, feeling like a, like a mouse in a cage.

• 3:31:15Speaker 02

  And telling myself, no, you're not doing this, nope, you can make it comfortable right here, right now. These four walls are keeping you enclosed, but no, like what you just gone through, what you just learned, all these things you just learned, you put it into practice right now, and

• 3:31:36Speaker 02

  I just, my outlook on life became so much more more magical, like

• 3:31:43Speaker 00

  What did you think about it in there?

• 3:31:46Speaker 02

  It was like

• 3:31:49Speaker 02

  like, I stayed happy within myself, and the guards were like

• 3:31:58Speaker 02

  how can you be happy right now?

• 3:31:59Speaker 00

  They would ask you that?

• 3:32:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, how can you be happy right now?

• 3:32:02Speaker 00

  Ask them how they can be happy by putting somebody that tried to get justice for a four-year-old being arrested in solitary confinement for nine months, 21 hours a day?

• 3:32:12Speaker 02

  They're doing their job, brother, it's a li- it's a life law, right, it's a earth law, okay? Laws of the United States, laws of California, whatever, they're doing their job, that's it. I don't

• 3:32:26Speaker 02

  I can't judge you, or, I can't, okay, you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, cool.

• 3:32:34Speaker 02

  I thought of it as, look, you're breathing and you're conscious.

• 3:32:41Speaker 02

  Okay, that's all you need. That's it.

• 3:32:46Speaker 02

  I don't care if I'm getting tortured. At the end of my life, I wanna appreciate that I get to feel. That's where I had to put myself to be happy. If I'm being fucking tortured at the end of my life, I'm gonna be happy that I get to feel. Cause after that, I won't feel anymore. I won't feel that anymore. I'm gonna be in a higher state. I get, uh, I love that I get to feel that pain. So that's what made me be happy in that.

• 3:33:12Speaker 02

  Be happy with myself. Be happy with yourself. That's it. You don't need anything else to validate it. You don't need anyone else, but you. You created it all. You create your happiness.

• 3:33:24Speaker 02

  So, I did that. I did that. I was happy, man. I was happy just...

• 3:33:31Speaker 02

  I'm still experiencing life. I don't know what's gonna lead. I don't know, but I'm happy that I get to experience it.

• 3:33:39Speaker 02

  And I just started like celebrating like little wins, like about the day, like...

• 3:33:47Speaker 02

  Whether it's a meal, like, "Ah, I do, I like this meal." Like, "Yeah." You know, it's fucking, jail food sucks, but it's like, this is a blessing. Sometimes they give me like an extra meal. "Oh, wow. Yes." You know, like I make a bigger thing than what it was. And one, one thing, like, I started getting other downloads. Like, I started, uh...

• 3:34:11Speaker 02

  As I'd wake up when my eyes were still closed, I started getting these like geometric shapes, patterns. Like, as if I was on something, but I'm not. I'm just by myself, meditation. And it's like, "Wow, like, you're still with, you're with me. You never left me, ever." It's just me not being able to see you, but I see you and I feel you, always.

• 3:34:37Speaker 02

  And then, I was looking outside the window. I love looking at hawks, red-tailed hawks. I love, just like... Even now, like, search for them as I'm driving. I'm like, "Oh, wow." Like, I love the way they fly, their shape and everything. And looking through the window, I saw hawks like far away. I'm like, "Like, that'd be awesome to see one in close up." And I like, I would love that.

• 3:35:04Speaker 02

  Then a minute later, through the window, big old fucking hawks flies up like this, like fucking all open, dude. Like, wow.

• 3:35:14Speaker 02

  Like, come on. Like, that, right?

• 3:35:22Speaker 02

  Started picking little positives out. I made them bigger than what they were. It's a state of mind, you know? We're, we're so like...

• 3:35:35Speaker 02

  We're so like, what's the next thing? What's the biggest thing? What? Like, living in those highs and lows, like...

• 3:35:47Speaker 02

  Being in that room for that long a time...

• 3:35:53Speaker 02

  When I got to get out and have freedom of like, leaving my room whenever I wanted to and go to the fridge, like... That's a blessing. That's a blessing that we shouldn't, um...

• 3:36:08Speaker 02

  Look over.

• 3:36:11Speaker 02

  So, yeah, I just saw the little things that, that we take for granted, man, and saw how... How beautiful freedom is to be in your car and just go wherever you want.

• 3:36:22Speaker 02

  Go wherever you want. Go see whatever you want. Explore whatever you want, um... And just appreciate it all for what it is. Make it bigger than what it is.

• 3:36:33Speaker 02

  So, did nine months there. Got out of parole, uh, with ankle monitor for about a year and a half, two years.

• 3:36:45Speaker 02

  Now split up from Michelle, um...

• 3:36:50Speaker 02

  Friend of mine has a place in Gilroy, uh, pretty big property, like three hundred acres. So, got an RV, stayed there. And I put it in my parole that I'm working on, on, uh, on the property. So my job, one of my jobs is I'm working on the property. Cut down trees, whatever, whatever it may be. So I had a free range of three hundred acres in nature. So every day for about a year and a half.

• 3:37:24Speaker 02

  Other than like picking up my kids from school and like having, I, I was able to have a little bit of time at home before I had to leave and go back to my, to where, where I was living.

• 3:37:35Speaker 02

  I go in nature every day. So, continued the solitude. Continued being okay with myself, being in nature alone, um...

• 3:37:48Speaker 02

  Being everything taken away, right? Physical things taken away, but...

• 3:37:53Speaker 02

  Like, this is the only thing that matters. This, this, only thing that matters. Everything can be taken away. It's okay. It's okay as long as how, how you feel about it. You know, you can, you can make it the best thing. You can still be in, in heaven on earth. So, it was a lot of internal work. Yeah.

• 3:38:13Speaker 00

  How was it seeing your son after you got out of there for nine months?

• 3:38:19Speaker 02

  It was crazy. It was crazy to like, at, at a young age, like, you, you don't see him for a couple of days and you see how they changed. Yeah, saw him first time, just saw how he changed and just... Yeah, just what I missed, you know? Like, what I missed, but... Back home with him.

• 3:38:42Speaker 02

  Being in their life and all that, yeah, that was, yeah. It's the best, best thing. Like, yeah. Things I can't get back, but... All I can focus on was they're, they're here now, you know, and...

• 3:38:58Speaker 02

  Try to help them with their, with their longing of missing me as well. You know, those, like, I understand, like, the time that he needed me the most was right after that. And I wasn't there for him for that. I wasn't. So...

• 3:39:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:39:18Speaker 00

  And then you went to state prison?

• 3:39:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, instead of, um...

• 3:39:26Speaker 02

  Instead of trying to fight through trial... You know, um, the judge we had was, was pretty good, like, I felt like he was, he was solid. You know, like, I already done some time for what I did, for the circumstances. Um, instead of going to trial, I just gave it up to the judge to make a decision. Instead of doing the whole shit, you know, like, I've made up to my mistakes. Um, understood what I did was wrong, like, I could've hurt a lot of people, you know, all that, like, okay. Um, so, he gave me a total of five years, which, everything else I've done

• 3:40:09Speaker 02

  added up for me to do one more year in state prison. So, went to state prison.

• 3:40:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, um...

• 3:40:24Speaker 02

  I went to a good place. Place where California normally with, with prisons, it's, it's controlled by gangs. But there's some prisons that are, that are not. Um, the prisons where people that are trying to get out, really get out. So do their internal work, do their schooling, they go to... There's a couple prisons in, in the, in the US, in the state that, that do that. Where I went to in Solidad, and that was one of them. But I was told, "Okay, you know what you're going into, right?" And I said, "What?" Well...

• 3:41:07Speaker 02

  People that you shot at are the same type of people that are gonna be there, and you can't do anything. If you do, you get more charges on your, on your record.

• 3:41:16Speaker 00

  Holy shit.

• 3:41:17Speaker 02

  Right? So, going into a place like that, you're mingled with everybody. Past gang members, past killers, um, sex offenders, child rapists, all that, right? But we're on a road now to better ourselves, to understand why we are the way that we are. There's all, there's a bunch of classes built for every, everything, and...

• 3:41:48Speaker 02

  Okay, I said, "Okay, well, I'm just looking to get out. That's it. I don't give a fuck." Like, I did what I did, like, that's where I stand, but...

• 3:42:00Speaker 02

  I had to put in my mind that, "Look, when I, when I go to this, this place..."

• 3:42:06Speaker 02

  I can't judge them because they've already gone through their process. I can't. My job is to get home now. So. When I got there to Solidad, um.

• 3:42:20Speaker 02

  There's two ways of doing this. One, keep my head down.

• 3:42:26Speaker 02

  Just do my thing. Don't talk to anybody, get out. Or.

• 3:42:32Speaker 02

  I can try to help. I can try to share with myself. I can look past what people have done in the past and know that they're on the road to get back to where they need to get back to. Hopefully, they're learning a lesson, but if they haven't, hopefully, they get reported again. You know? Um, so I went in. Started making friends with people, interacting, you know, sharing out myself, and then I started doing, uh, the breathing there. Um, I started, um, Ascension Breath there. Yeah. I learned Ascension Breath from putting these different breathing practices together. Um.

• 3:43:15Speaker 02

  Because after my plant medicine ceremonies, people that I talked to about doing these certain medicines, they didn't want to do them.

• 3:43:24Speaker 02

  So I had to learn, okay, everybody wants to go down this road of learning in this way, and that's okay. But what's like, what's a good way in the middle? Something that, that isn't plant medicine based?

• 3:43:38Speaker 02

  So. Started putting these different practices of breathing together to get people in the same state as if they were doing plant medicine on their own breath. So I put that together, started a program there at the prison, and very successful, and now I'm in talks with, um, San Quentin Prison to do the same breathing there. And not just for the inmates, but also for the, for the, for the staff as well. So the staff is open to doing, to doing this. So. I just like to share, you know, whatever you get, whatever anybody gets from it, if it helps them, good. Like.

• 3:44:22Speaker 02

  I'm here to help, I'm here to share with myself.

• 3:44:27Speaker 00

  Wow, man.

• 3:44:30Speaker 00

  You're going back to the same prison, aren't you?

• 3:44:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Did it help out? Yeah, uh, it's already going on. They've continued since my absence, it's still going on. Um, so.

• 3:44:45Speaker 00

  This is Ascension Breathing?

• 3:44:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. Ascension Breath, yeah, Ascension Breath, um. So every, so they do it three times a week, and every month, they do like a day of healing that we started, we started a day of healing there, like, where it's a whole day, uh, yoga, uh, breathing, um. People do sound healing as well, come in, so we'll do a whole day of it. We do Reiki, uh, like, they do a whole day of it, um. Just help somebody out, you know, help release their traumas, get better, better understanding, help them get in tune to themselves a lot more. The breathing, the breathing gives you what you need every time.

• 3:45:32Speaker 02

  Not what you want, it gives you what you need. So you may have to relive certain things that aren't so pleasant, but

• 3:45:39Speaker 02

  with reliving them and that, and that state of mind, you can put it to rest. Put it to rest, understand it wasn't your fault. It's okay. It's a learned thing that you learned from somebody else that put it on to you. Um, and now the choice is, okay, do I want to carry that with me and keep continuing, or do, do I not?

• 3:46:04Speaker 02

  So. Been able to do this, uh,

• 3:46:09Speaker 02

  with some police departments, um.

• 3:46:13Speaker 02

  Went to the UFCPI, did a, did a session there with some of the fighters. Um, it's just a little breathing speak for itself. People see that it's

• 3:46:23Speaker 02

  beneficial in some way, then it'll keep growing, but

• 3:46:28Speaker 02

  I'm just helping out anywhere that I can. Um, so breathing, uh, working with plant medicine also. Um. I don't know which way, I know, I know what I get out of it. I don't know if it's being a facilitator, doing shaman work, I don't, I don't know, but I know what it does for me, and I know that

• 3:46:52Speaker 02

  all it is, is teach me.

• 3:46:55Speaker 02

  I gotta do the work here. So it's not that, it's not for me to go back to it always, constantly do medicine, that's not it. It's live, live a little bit, live.

• 3:47:11Speaker 02

  Incorporate into your everyday life, incorporate the love, incorporate that essence, incorporate being true to yourself. Incorporate those boundaries that you learned more, keep those boundaries up. See darkness, you know, if you can do something about it in that moment, do it. If you can speak out, speak out. Um, so. Sharing with the collective in the best way that I know how. Uh, showing of myself and trying to show more of

• 3:47:43Speaker 02

  who I am within.

• 3:47:46Speaker 02

  Be authentic.

• 3:47:55Speaker 00

  Some, uh. Wow.

• 3:48:03Speaker 00

  How's your son doing today?

• 3:48:07Speaker 02

  Amazing. Amazing, um.

• 3:48:13Speaker 02

  He has amazing people around him.

• 3:48:17Speaker 02

  Um.

• 3:48:22Speaker 02

  I see him as the hero in the story. Him speaking up, so, you know.

• 3:48:31Speaker 02

  The time that it happened, and it was happening to the time that he spoke up, and him putting a stop to that situation.

• 3:48:42Speaker 02

  And making a big impact on the world in that way, from the things that I did as well, but like.

• 3:48:51Speaker 02

  I see great things in him and

• 3:48:54Speaker 02

  it's like, he's done something already so great.

• 3:48:58Speaker 00

  How many kids do you think he saved as a four-year-old?

• 3:49:04Speaker 02

  It all depends on how long it would have kept, how long the.

• 3:49:11Speaker 00

  Lot of kids.

• 3:49:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. From how long they've, they've been established as a daycare to how long they would have been. You put a stop to it there, not, I mean. They don't have a daycare anymore, but again, there's people that are into that thing, so.

• 3:49:32Speaker 02

  It still happens.

• 3:49:34Speaker 02

  Right? They're still in the community. Still is, um.

• 3:49:41Speaker 02

  But.

• 3:49:45Speaker 02

  I'm happy that he, yeah. That he, that he had the strength to, to say something. And that we took the right precautions. You know? Calling the authorities and all that. Um, so I've heard so many stories afterwards that people opened it up to me about that happened to them as a kid, telling their parents, and their parents just taking them out of the situation, but not doing anything about it, not like calling the authorities or anything else like that. So.

• 3:50:15Speaker 02

  Them living through this life of resentment of their parents, that they didn't put a stop to it.

• 3:50:23Speaker 02

  You know, or even, even to somewhere like, they told their parents and they didn't even do anything about it.

• 3:50:31Speaker 00

  That's crazy to me.

• 3:50:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, well. I didn't know all this before, but now I have

• 3:50:41Speaker 02

  more information that I've, from life experience through it to realize like how important it is to.

• 3:50:51Speaker 02

  To protect your children.

• 3:50:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not saying just by doing something. No, no, I'm saying by doing what's right and like the eyes of law.

• 3:51:01Speaker 02

  Doing that like does so much, you know, just doing that, reporting it, speaking about it. Like, that's the only way it's gonna, it's gonna like stop and people are gonna get held accountable for their actions is that, not by hiding it away, not by being embarrassed. You know, that keeps everybody safe, keeps everybody doing it, like keeps everybody safe that shouldn't be safe, that should be held accountable. So we have to talk about these things, has to be open. We have to learn and teach from each other and do the right things.

• 3:51:40Speaker 02

  Cause like, that'd be the worst, man. Like, I thought of that too. Like, damn, if I,

• 3:51:47Speaker 02

  if my son later on in life would tell me like, you didn't do anything, like that would've killed me, you know? Like, if he just told me that. Man, that would've fucking killed, you know, like, dude, I'm, I'm your dad, dude, like, I love him more than anything. I love my kids more than anything. So

• 3:52:09Speaker 02

  to have them say that to me, that would've fucking, like, how much trust is gone from a parent to a, to a child?

• 3:52:22Speaker 02

  You know, like, I love you, I say all these things, I love you and I'm here for you, but I won't do this for you. You know, I won't do anything for you when, when you really need me. So like, how, how deep is a love for real? So I,

• 3:52:40Speaker 02

  that's just the way I work. I had to dissect all of it, put her in its place, the good, the bad.

• 3:52:48Speaker 02

  Like, I can't even say, I wish she's never gone there. Cause if he, if he didn't, then my son didn't go to where he went, this would continuously go on, right? There had to be somebody to stop it. So I can't even, I can't, I could never say to myself, I wish she's never gone. I can't say that. Right? So I had to like, accept, how can I accept it? Well, he went, yeah, he got hurt, really hurt.

• 3:53:19Speaker 02

  Mostly hurt forever.

• 3:53:22Speaker 02

  But it stopped to it, yes, he did. And he has a foundation around him that's gonna help him. Um, you know, even like my, my daughter went through it with like, seeing it all, you know? So she went through all of that, like.

• 3:53:40Speaker 02

  So I really have to dissect all of it in order to not keep this anger, resentment towards these people.

• 3:53:50Speaker 02

  Cause I don't need that for me. If I'm holding on to all these things that I shouldn't be holding on to, well, how am I gonna get more understanding if I'm gonna hold on to all of these things?

• 3:54:04Speaker 02

  I need to let those things go that are, that don't suit me anymore. They didn't do nothing for me. They do nothing but keep me in a place of, of darkness, of, of doubt, of, of hurt. Let that go because I don't want that. But I understand it, let it go, and I learn from it. I move on. They're gonna get what they need to get, just like we are. Whether they get it in this life law,

• 3:54:33Speaker 02

  they're gonna get it from a higher place.

• 3:54:37Speaker 02

  God will teach them, like, so it's all good. It's okay. We're just teaching each other. So I really have to do that to like, let go of things. Really go into it, dive into it, dive into the hurt, let it flow through me. Uh, if I'm not holding on.

• 3:54:57Speaker 00

  You're a great dad.

• 3:55:01Speaker 02

  Thank you, brother. Thank you.

• 3:55:02Speaker 00

  My pleasure, man. Thank you. Seriously. So much, man.

• 3:55:08Speaker 02

  Likewise, brother. Likewise.

• 3:55:11Speaker 00

  Cheers.

• 3:55:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, brother. Thank you.

• 3:55:25Speaker 00

  No matter where you're watching The Sean Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.

• 3:55:50Speaker 00

  Witness the beginning of the revolution. Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from Star. Film for IMAX. Make them remember you. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, November 20th, rated PG-13.