Pro Boxer Mike Lee On Why Mindset Is Everything

To be totally honest, I don't follow the pugilistic arts all that closely. But professional boxer barely describes this week's guest — a man who has faced stacked odds and overcome career-ending setbacks to meet the biggest moment of his life. Ask him how he did it, and Mike Lee answers with conviction: it's all about mindset. A professional light heavyweight boxer currently 21 – 0 with 11 knockouts, this Saturday, July 20th Mike will be fighting for his first world title against Caleb Plant — the current Undefeated IBF Super Middleweight World Champion. It’s Mike’s first fight in 13 months. On the other hand, Plant (18-0 with 10 knockouts) is fresh off his biggest victory. Suffice it to say, it’s shaping up to be quite the bout. And it's all going down live on Fox PBC, live from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Hardly your average fighter, what compels me about Mike is the unique path he's blazed to arrive at this place. This is a guy who studied business at Notre Dame, where he relaxed by reading The Wall Street Journal and watching CNBC. When he graduated in 2009 with a 3.8 GPA in finance, he was welcomed with lucrative opportunities on Wall Street. But then he takes the road less traveled, turning every job offer down to pursue a lifelong dream: winning Chicago’s Golden Gloves. He did just that. The following year, he went pro, winning his first two professional fights. The national spotlight shone bright. Endorsement contracts followed. The boxing world, it appeared, was his oyster. You might say the rest is history. But that belies the severity of his next bout — a fight for his life that blindsided him outside the ring. At the peak of his career, after knocking out Tyler Seever in 2012, Mike fell prey to a mysterious health condition that would bench him for over two years. Experiencing great pain in his joints, severe headaches and debilitating chronic fatigue, doctors struggled to determine the cause. Some believed it was psychological. Others prescribed a multitude of drugs, none of which resolved his underlying predicament. But all of them told him he would never fight again. The hospital bed had become home. His identity challenged, he suddenly felt worthless, succumbing to a deep depression. Nonetheless, Mike never gave up hope. He committed to seeking alternative and non-traditional solutions, which culminated in a diagnosis: an auto-immune disease called Ankylosing Spondylitis. A version of arthritis, AS can be devastating both physically and mentally for anyone, let alone a professional athlete who pushes his body to the limit every day. The path forward hasn't been easy. Mike wakes up in pain every day. But he's gone all in on this comeback. And that's something worth all of us getting behind. Layered with life lessons and formative takeaways, this is a conversation about the value of perseverance. It's about deploying a potent mindset to keep your dream live, no matter the circumstances. It's about visualizing success. And it's about the importance of always giving back. The visually inclined can watch our entire conversation on YouTube here: bit.ly/mikelee454 (please subscribe!) An exemplary ambassador of sport, I really enjoyed Mike. I think you will too. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  I had so many people that doubted me, even to this day, dude. Because I didn't have a huge amateur background. I kind of started late. So many people that didn't believe that I would get to 10-0, 20-0, let alone, dude, fight for a world title. And that's that chip on my shoulder. Like, I want to prove all those people wrong, and I even want to prove myself wrong on those days when I doubted myself laying in hospital beds. Like, that's what July 20th is about for me, dude. I know I'm gonna win this fight, but win or lose, I've accomplished so much because I had those days, literally, laying in the hospital where I was like, I thought I was never gonna do anything with my life, let alone, like, thought about whether I should continue my life. So it's about, like, proving those people, but most importantly, like, proving myself wrong.

• 1:50Rich Roll?

  That's professional boxer Mike Lee, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:06Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome or welcome back. Quick reminder before we get into it, my first legit live show, live podcast extravaganza will be Friday, September 27th at the historic gorgeous 1100-seat Wilshire E-Bell Theater here in Los Angeles. It is shaping up to be all kinds of amazing. Early indications are that it will sell out. So for more information, click the appearances tab on richroll.com and grab your seats while they're hot and I'll see all you guys there.

• 2:50Rich Roll?

  Today, I'm here with DK. What's happening, David Kahn?

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 2:55Rich Roll?

  It's time to check in on DK Goals. It's been a while.

• 2:58Speaker 02

  It's been a little bit.

• 3:00Rich Roll?

  How's it going?

• 3:00Speaker 02

  I think we're starting to get a little bit of progress. It's kind of exciting, to be honest.

• 3:04Rich Roll?

  You've dropped some pounds.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  I have. I think I'm down about, I'm down at 204. So I think I've probably dropped 10, 11, 12 pounds.

• 3:13Rich Roll?

  And it was pretty recent, right?

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, you and I went to Denver and we ate out at a bunch of vegan restaurants. Then I went to Seattle and I started getting on a scale every day. And I think that type of accountability, when you're around people that eat well and you're looking at your weight, I think it impacted almost all of my eating decisions.

• 3:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah. When we talked the other day, we were talking about accountability and momentum. And I feel like you've got a good deal of that at the moment. So I would encourage you to keep doing what's working for you, getting on that scale every day and leaning into the momentum that you've created. Because once it has that inertia, it's so much easier to keep it going than all the fits and starts that I feel like have been sort of your Achilles heel.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  No, I agree. And I'm definitely like more mindful of the eating and I'm also excited to eat better, not eat late, exercise more consistently. Like, I feel good right about it all.

• 4:15Rich Roll?

  Did you pull the trigger on the Vitamix?

• 4:17Speaker 02

  I didn't get the Vitamix yet, but that's happening this week.

• 4:20Rich Roll?

  All right. You gotta take care of that.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  It's happening this week. I actually needed to go over with you because I'm not sure which model to get and everything like that.

• 4:27Rich Roll?

  We'll talk about that. It doesn't matter. Just get one of them.

• 4:30Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:30Rich Roll?

  They're all good. And come back on again soon and we'll hold you collectively accountable. No. I like the, I like the progress and I like the inertia.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  No, I appreciate it because honestly, it's good to get like little victories because along the way, you know, like a couple of months ago even, I was still kind of despondent about the whole thing.

• 4:49Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. And you have the knee surgery looming.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we postponed that, but I'm going to see another doctor and we did have it scheduled for three weeks ago. And I just decided I gotta lose the weight. I gotta eat healthier and we can have the knee surgery later in the year when I'm in better shape and I feel better about myself.

• 5:05Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, your skin is glowing. You're looking good. And I'm excited to see where this is headed.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  I appreciate the support.

• 5:13Rich Roll?

  More will be revealed, as they say.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:16Rich Roll?

  So today, today's conversation, today I sit down with professional light heavyweight boxer, Mike Lee. Mike is currently 21 and O with 11 knockouts. Super impressive. And this Saturday, July 20th, Mike is going to be fighting for his first world title against Caleb Plant, who is the current undefeated IBF super middleweight world champion. And what's interesting about this is that it's Mike's first fight in 13 months, whereas Plant, who is 18 and O with 10 knockouts, is coming off a recent very big victory for

• 5:58Rich Roll?

  himself. So it's shaping up to be quite the bout, which will be broadcast on FOX from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. And here's the thing.

• 6:10Rich Roll?

  I'm not like a huge boxing fan. I really can't say that I follow the sport all that closely. So when the opportunity arose to host Mike on the show, I initially wasn't sure that it was the right fit for what I do. But I looked into him and the more that I discovered about this guy's life, the more I realized that Mike is not your average fighter and the more interested I became. This is a guy who went to Notre Dame. He majored in finance. He graduated with Wall Street opportunities and lucrative job offers, but he turns them all down to pursue this dream of winning Chicago's Golden Gloves. And beyond that,

• 6:53Rich Roll?

  he lives by a very interesting and strict approach to both sport and life. His strength, what I think is his real secret weapon, his greatest talent, is mindset, which is something that he rigorously and regularly deploys in his preparation to quell the many doubters. And I think it's highly instructive for all of us, how we navigate life and challenges. And it comprises a great portion of what we discussed today. I got a few more thoughts about Mike before we dive in, but first.

• 7:34Rich Roll?

  All right, Mike Lee. So this guy's a badass for sure. But what's really interesting about his story is that the obstacles that he's had to face and overcome are not all in the ring. Outside the ring, he's had a battery of crazy health challenges that he's had to face and conquer. Chronic fatigue, severe pain in his joints, severe headaches. He wasn't sure what was going on. It took him 18 months out of the ring, going to all kinds of specialists all over the country, right at the prime of his career, to try to figure out what was wrong with him. And then in 2014, he was diagnosed with something called

• 8:15Rich Roll?

  ankylosing spondylitis, which is an autoimmune disease. It's kind of a form of arthritis that causes inflammation. Chronic pain, debilitating fatigue, and it kept him out of the sport for two years battling with painkillers and depression and anxiety. So today, we're going to talk about what that was like and how he came out of it, as well as how he's preparing for this fight and all the mindset tools that he's relied upon to get to this point in his career. And it's a great conversation. Mike is a really intelligent, thoughtful guy. He's a big underdog going into this fight, but the kind of guy that you can't help but root for. So let's talk to him. This is me and Mike Lee.

• 9:01Rich Roll?

  Well, it's super nice to meet you.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Great to meet you.

• 9:03Rich Roll?

  Thanks for coming out to do this. Got exciting times ahead for you.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  This is an incredible year for me.

• 9:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  You know, a lot of big, big dreams and goals are going to be accomplished this year.

• 9:16Rich Roll?

  So July 22 is the big fight. Is that right?

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, July 20.

• 9:20Rich Roll?

  July 20.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, we just got confirmation. It'll be in New York at the Barclay Center.

• 9:24Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is beautiful. I've actually already fought there before.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  It's where the Nets play, just a gorgeous arena, probably about 25,000 screaming fans and a ton of energy.

• 9:35Rich Roll?

  And it's going to be broadcast on Fox.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 9:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so like a million people are going to see this fight.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, based on what the ratings were before, my guess is hopefully four or five million people will be tuning in.

• 9:47Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  The more, the better. So I'm excited.

• 9:49Rich Roll?

  That's pretty cool. So it's the super middleweight IBF world title fight.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 9:55Rich Roll?

  Right? And you're fighting Caleb Plant?

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 9:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Caleb's a kid from Tennessee. He just won the title. So this is his first title defense. Very good boxer, a champion for a reason, but this is my night. I'm really excited.

• 10:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So he is, what is he? He's like 18 and O with 10 KOs?

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, 18 or 19 and O. I'm currently 21 and O.

• 10:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  So someone's O has got to go.

• 10:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  You're gonna hear that a lot.

• 10:23Rich Roll?

  And how are you feeling about the whole thing?

• 10:25Speaker 01

  I feel awesome. I mean, I've had a long career. Like I said, 21-0 has had a lot of ups and downs and I'm sure we'll obviously get into that, but you know, this for me is the culmination of a dream I've had since I was eight years old. Fight for a world title. It's my Super Bowl. It doesn't get any bigger and better than this. So all the, you know, I've got scars on my hands of when I broke my hand in a fight in MSG, between all the health battles I've gone through, broken noses. July 20th is the culmination of everything I've worked for. And so for me, it's the pinnacle and I'm beyond pumped for it.

• 11:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, a lot of pressure too.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  It honestly is. You know what's a crazy concept to think about for a fighter, right? And this is my first world title fight on a stage like this. You train your entire life. I started fighting at eight years old, but you know, day in, day out, especially since I've been pro, for 36 minutes. It's a 12-round fight, three rounds, three minutes each round, and 36 minutes is gonna change my life.

• 11:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  And it's crazy to think the years.

• 11:29Rich Roll?

  Either way.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Either way.

• 11:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  And the years you prepare for a moment. It may even, I might get a knockout. It might only last around. You never know, but it's crazy how long you prepare, mostly not in front of cameras and by yourself for a moment that's so short.

• 11:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's similar to an athlete who's preparing for the Olympics. Like, you know, I come from a swimming background. I know many, you know, I wasn't at that level, but I have plenty of friends that are and their entire life boils down to, you know, that moment at Olympic trials to qualify for the Olympic team and then that moment, you know, climbing the blocks at, you know, the finals of, of the, you know, biggest sporting event in the world where millions of people are watching and the race can be anywhere from like 21 seconds to a couple of minutes at most and like, and then it's done.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:19Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 12:20Speaker 01

  It's.

• 12:20Rich Roll?

  You know, do you, you know Connor, Connor Dwyer, right?

• 12:23Speaker 01

  So I was just gonna mention that. Yeah, I know Connor. It's interesting. He actually just texted me today because I told him I was, you know, I'm hopping on the show.

• 12:29Rich Roll?

  I hit him up too yesterday because I went on your Twitter and it shows like who your mutual friends are.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 12:34Rich Roll?

  And our only overlap was Connor.

• 12:37Rich Roll?

  Which is kinda perfect. So I texted him. I was like, hey, you must know this guy.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Connor's a great dude. We both were athletes for this, this company that we were both sponsored by. And I met him through that. And actually, we have a lot of mutual friends in Chicago.

• 12:51Rich Roll?

  From Chicago.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he has a very similar story. You know, I was listening to his, his show, his interview, obviously, and how he started really late. And even though I started boxing at eight, I really didn't get into it hardcore until I was, man, almost like 18. So that kinda resonated with me when, you know, he mentioned he started getting into it and getting his growth spurt late in life.

• 13:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he really did. I mean, he bloomed much later in life for, you know, in the his, in the, in the sort of world of swimming, that's very, very unusual. I don't know what it's like in boxing, but for him to bloom that late was, you know, is really a compelling thing. But let's take it back, man. Starts at eight.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:28Rich Roll?

  You know, I kinda know the story, but it's interesting, man, how you're, you're, you got on a little scrap and your dad took you down to the gym.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's interesting. I was playing a million different sports growing up and my parents were from the inner city of Chicago, grew up really tough background. My dad didn't even graduate high school and, but created a life for me and my sister that they never had. So I'm so grateful and appreciative of that. But so while, you know, I, I grew up better than they did, I still had that kinda inner city toughness to me. And my dad brought me to a boxing gym at eight years old. I remember one hockey tournament, we were going through a line and shaking hands and saying, you know, good game, good game. And this kid spit in my face and I dropped my gloves and I punched the kid right in the face because that's what I'd seen all my heroes do,

• 14:15Speaker 01

  you know, on TV and fights. And I was just, I was a different kinda kid, I think. I, I loved competition and sports. And after that, my dad took me to a boxing gym and actually, the first time I stepped in a boxing gym at eight years old, I remember I sparred a 10 year old and I got my ass kicked. And I went into the bathroom and I started crying and I had a bloody nose. And it's ironic that we're kinda sitting here talking about fighting for a world title, cause as I think back to that moment, I think to myself, how much I hated it. At that moment, I remember, I can see it so clearly. I look in the mirror thinking, I'm never getting in a ring again.

• 14:49Rich Roll?

  So it wasn't like, oh man, this is gonna be my path?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  No, it wasn't. I loved sports, but right away boxing wasn't something I loved. And it wasn't until later in life that I really got into it. And that one on one and that competition and most importantly, that adrenaline rush. I became addicted to.

• 15:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  I'll say there's no better feeling in the world when you get a knockout and you jump on the ropes in front of thousands of people. It's it's the best drug you'll ever take.

• 15:16Rich Roll?

  Well, the stakes are high, you know, unlike other sports. I mean, you know, you're putting yourself in, you know, significant danger just even being there. So that in and of itself, I can't imagine, you know, the the sort of heightened, you know, adrenaline rush that comes with that.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and honestly, it's a battle of the mind, too. I think a lot of people don't realize, you know, people think boxing, yes, it's a brutal sport, but it's not just two guys slugging it out. The best in the world, it's a game of inches. It's a mental game, you know, the guys like Muhammad Ali, Floyd Mayweather, the iconic greats, understood and had that mental aspect and knew how to slow the fight down and knew how to play mind games. And you see, when you're in that ring, it's almost more mental than it is physical. It's incredible because you need to block out the 25,000 screaming fans and everything else and just focus on what you're doing.

• 16:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I want to get into the whole mental aspect of it because that's really kind of, you know, where I see your your your edge here. Um, but before we even do that, what is, you know, I'm somebody who I'm a sports fan, but I'd be lying if I told you I knew all that much about the world of boxing. You know, my frame of reference, with the exception of watching an occasional fight on television, is just movies and television, right? So explain to me the difference between, you know, truth and fiction in terms of like what we see up on the big screen with the training and the Rocky and the, you know, all of that versus like the daily reality of what your life is like.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Oh, it's funny. People always ask me, is my favorite movie Rocky? And I'm like, and what is training like? So, yeah, I'm not chasing chickens, you know, I'm not running.

• 16:53Rich Roll?

  Out in the desert.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. I mean, they they amplify all that like crazy. Um, so it's funny, even the Creed movies, there's a lot, the new ones, there's a lot that you're like, okay, that just doesn't happen. But, um, yeah.

• 17:07Rich Roll?

  A lot of arm butter.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's a lot of crazy stuff going on and I think the Rocky trend kind of started that. But, um, yeah, I mean, training camps are. Pretty intense, and especially the moment before the fight is intense, you know, when you're in the dressing room and you know it's about to go down. But generally, training camps consist of, you know, eight to 10 weeks before a fight and you're training, usually two a days, six days a week. I like to take Sundays off, let my body rest and recover. And it looks like everything from sparring three, four days a week to strength and conditioning. We do a lot of swimming. I do yoga. It changes throughout the week, but it's intense. It's the most you put your body and mind through. It really is.

• 17:51Rich Roll?

  So when you say two a day, well, first of all, like, yeah, Rocky's not doing yoga, you know, like cryo or, you know, the stuff that we do now. But when you say two a day, so, and you say, okay, sparring, you know, cardio, like what specifically, like, all right, you go to the gym in the morning.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 18:07Rich Roll?

  And like, what does it look like? Like, walk me through a day.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  So generally, when I first started my career, we started out in the morning. I don't necessarily do this now. I push everything towards the evening, but

• 18:18Rich Roll?

  Because of the fights at night?

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Because the fights at night, right? And I wanted to get my body acclimated. And not to mention, which we'll talk about later, when I had some health issues and started getting sick, my mornings are more of an issue for me. I'm in more pain in the mornings. So for a lot of reasons, we push training back. But generally, you know, you have a cardio in the morning. Maybe it looks like a run, maybe it looks like Stairmaster, maybe it looks like a swim. Depending on where you are in camp is how long and how difficult that is. And I really leave that up to my strength coach. And then later on in the afternoon, you're doing a boxing workout. And so, as I mentioned, three, four days a week, you're sparring. And for people that don't really know sparring, essentially, that's just like a fight,

• 19:00Speaker 01

  except you're wearing headgear and heavier gloves, so you don't do as much damage to your body. But you're bringing in sparring partners that really fight the same type of style as your opponent.

• 19:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  So you can kind of mimic that and work on your specific game plans. And some days, you're sparring four rounds, some days, you're sparring 12 rounds. You know, closer to the fight, you kind of ramp it up. And then usually about a week out, you stop sparring. So for that eight to 10 weeks, Every single day, it consists of some type of strength conditioning and some type of boxing. And then I'll also integrate in a yoga. So sometimes it is three workouts a day, or else if I'm feeling beat up after sparring, I'll tell my strength coach, hey, today, let's just do yoga or get some muscle work done. So it's very fluid in terms of what my body needs, but that's generally what a training camp looks like so that you don't peak too early. And that's really important.

• 19:51Rich Roll?

  Right. So you're looking at what like five to eight hours a day during that period of time?

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I never really break it down in terms of hours. I get that question a lot. It's more of how many training sessions. But I would say, yeah, that's, that's a fair guess right there.

• 20:06Rich Roll?

  And what's the recovery process for you look like?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  I've really dove into this world of biohacking and just really getting in touch with different ways to recover. You know, I was telling you earlier, I bought an infrared sauna in my home. I actually have a cold, cold tub at my house, too.

• 20:25Rich Roll?

  Oh, nice.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Um, I bought a cold tub that I have outside. I have it set to a certain temperature and I'll hop in there for anywhere from three to five minutes. I love that. So contrast therapy is big for me. Um, everything between, I started doing float tanks. And that's more of the mindset side. Um, I have a nutritionist that has me dialed in on the glutamine and what to eat and when to eat. And so, you know, and cryotherapy as well, which is also, you know, contrast therapy. So I'm always playing with a million different toys.

• 20:54Rich Roll?

  And what's the difference? What does the training look like when you're not in camp?

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:00Rich Roll?

  Cause you can't, you don't go into camp out of shape.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  You don't. You try not to. Some fighters do. And that's kind of the funny thing about fighters is we fluctuate in weight so much, you know, because um, I normally fight at 175. This fight will be at 168. I walk around at 190 pounds. And so it's important in any, you know, martial artist is usually like this in UFC or boxing where the last, you know, good amount of weight is water weight, but you gotta be careful that you don't come up in weight too much. Cause you'll see guys that literally maybe they just had a big title fight and they have a few months off and they'll balloon up 20, 30 pounds. And that's just not good for your body and organs. So I've been pretty good in discipline of in between fights.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  I'm not trying to kill myself. I'm doing a lot of low impact stuff, but I'm trying to keep my weight generally between, you know, 15. 20 pounds max of my fight weight.

• 21:54Rich Roll?

  Right, so how much time do you have to drop that final amount of weight after camp and before weigh-in?

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Well, when you go into camp, like you said, you want to be in good shape, you know, generally the beginning of camp, the first couple of weeks are more cardio-based so that you can start to bring the weight down and get that, you know, fluidity and your body feels good at a lower weight. But, you know, I'll have eight to 10 weeks to start to bring that weight down. I already started weeks out because in this case, I've known for a long time about this fight and signed the contract a while back. Um, but really that's when you get scientific about the weight drop. You know, for instance, uh, generally I'll hop in the ring or I'll weigh in the day before. So 24 hours before is weigh-ins in pro boxing. Um, and for my last junior world title, we fought at 175 pounds. I weighed in at 174.5 maybe, right?

• 22:46Speaker 01

  So I was under the limit. The next night, man, I had to be, I was probably 187 pounds. You put on 10 to 12 pounds and that's common.

• 22:56Rich Roll?

  It doesn't make any sense. It's such a weird thing.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  I will say this, that is the worst part of the sport. I love all aspects of the sport, but the weight cut, any fighter will tell you, you know, you're, you're up there at a press conference, like a day before weigh-ins, you know? And everyone's always like, I feel great, I feel a hundred percent, but you're cutting weight. Like, no one wants to be there. It's like, the reality of it is that.

• 23:17Rich Roll?

  To make yourself weak and dehydrated, you know, in order to make that weight and then try to rejuvenate yourself in a short period of time.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  And that's when it comes, it really having the right team around you becomes important because it's all about water manipulation there at the end. Where I will flood myself with water, drink up to two gallons, maybe a week before weigh-ins, and then systematically bring it down, maybe to a gallon, to half a gallon, .25, where My body already thinks it's over hydrated. So when I hop in the sauna or I hop in a hot bath and I sweat out that the rest of that excess water weight, I'm not too depleted. Like my body isn't in shock. And then at that point, you hop off the scale and it's the best feeling in the world. Like, I get more nervous for weigh-ins sometimes than I do for the actual fight.

• 24:02Rich Roll?

  That's strange. Does anyone just say fuck it? And like, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna fight where I'm at?

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so some guys do that. For instance, I think when Floyd fought Juan Manuel Marquez, and granted, he's in a position to say fuck it more than a lot of people, because there's strict penalties. So for this fight in particular, there'll be a penalty of probably $50,000 per pound for me, if I go over.

• 24:23Rich Roll?

  But they'll still let you fight?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  They'll still let me fight. But if you don't make that weight, and it's a title fight, you're not fighting for winning the belt. So if you don't get that weight or under, you even you win that fight, you can't be the world champion.

• 24:37Rich Roll?

  I gotcha.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  So, but Floyd came in, I think, maybe two to four pounds overweight at one point, and I think it was a mental game, but he kind of just said fuck it. I think he got fined like $200,000. But

• 24:48Rich Roll?

  But the purses are so huge. It's like, who cares, right?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, especially for a dude like that. It's just another level. So he was like, fuck it. So I won't buy another car, you know?

• 24:58Rich Roll?

  Right. Alright, so you're eight years old, your dad's like, I'm taking you to the gym, you're gonna work this stuff out here. This kid's got a lot of energy. When does it, when does a switch flick and you're like, this is what I want to do?

• 25:12Speaker 01

  So it's interesting. I started getting more into boxing at about 15 years old.

• 25:17Rich Roll?

  Were you playing, you were playing, you were playing football?

• 25:20Speaker 01

  I was playing football, hockey, baseball, basketball. I'm, I'm a very unique situation or person where it's ironic that I'm a professional fighter and at this level, but I actually don't enjoy conflict. I really don't. I'm not a fighter. If you meet me outside, most people Majority of people say, "I can't believe you're a boxer." "I don't enjoy conflict. I'm not an aggressive person." "I don't get in fights outside the ring, not to mention I get in a lot of trouble now." "It's probably like a federal offense since I'm pro, but that's just never been me." "But when it came to sports, I was extremely aggressive." "Sports and competition, when the bell rang or the whistle blew, I was a different animal." "And for instance, on my hockey team in Little League, I played goalie."

• 26:03Speaker 01

  "I had the most penalty minutes on the team, and I was a goalie." "And anybody that knows hockey is like, 'What are you doing?'"

• 26:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's tough to do, man.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's tough to do.

• 26:09Rich Roll?

  So where does that come from?

• 26:11Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think probably from my father. My dad played minor league ball for the Twins, and he was a professional racquetball player, and he's very type A, aggressive, Chicago Italian dude. And I think he had this ideology that he instilled in us that win, win, win. Like, always keep pushing, always keep winning. And for better or worse, it made me the person I am, even though he set really high expectations for me that sometimes I didn't meet. But that's where this competitive nature came in. So it was about 15 years old. I went to Notre Dame. So Notre Dame has a boxing team, and they have this huge event called the Bengal Bouts. And they have about, you know, a few thousand people that come to it.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  And the kids in the school fight in a big tournament. And I think I first went to that tournament at about 15 years old. And I saw Rudy, so when I was like 10 years old, being a kid from Chicago, I was like, "I gotta go to Notre Dame." And when I saw this event, I said to myself, "Not only am I gonna go to Notre Dame, I'm gonna be a boxer there. I'm gonna get good enough to be a boxer there." And that's really when it kind of took off. And I started getting better and better, and I was sparring pros by the time I was 16 years old.

• 27:22Rich Roll?

  So you go to high school, and then you hit the gym afterwards? Or what did that look like at that time?

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I had, and once again, a little bit of a two sides of the coin here. I was working in finance, so two things I loved were finance and fighting. Even in high school, I first got an internship at the Chicago Board of Trade, and I was down in the pits, and I loved that adrenaline rush of people-

• 27:44Rich Roll?

  Everyone screaming.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Screaming orders. And so in the summers during the day, I'd be at the Chicago Board of Trade, and then at night, I would go to the boxing gym. So all throughout high school, I was playing other sports and continuing to go to the boxing gym. I started at this place called Windy City Gym. In Chicago and there were a lot of great fighters out of there and throughout high school I started getting better and better and then my freshman year I ended up going to University of Missouri. To be quite honest, I didn't have the grades to get at Notre Dame and I really didn't take school seriously. I took sports seriously, but I didn't take school seriously.

• 28:15Rich Roll?

  Were you playing ball at Missouri?

• 28:18Speaker 01

  No, no, I wanted to. I was planning on walking on for a football team because I was getting really good at football and baseball and I knew I wanted to play sports. I just didn't know what I loved. But it was interesting with boxing training, I love the training aspect of it. With football, baseball, basketball, I hated practice. That's kind of how I knew, okay, if I'm going to get really good at this, I need to choose something that I'm passionate about and I can't stop thinking about and I fucking love. And I truly believe in that for anything you want to do. If you don't in your core love this shit, especially the pain that we go through, don't even mess around with it.

• 28:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  So I realized maybe around seventeen, eighteen that I loved boxing. I ended up transferring after my freshman year into Notre Dame because this was just my goal and vision and I busted my ass to get the best grades of my life in Mizzou. I transferred in and I joined the boxing team and the love of the sport just took off.

• 29:11Rich Roll?

  Is boxing an NCAA sport?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  No, it's not.

• 29:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so how did that, how did that work?

• 29:16Speaker 01

  So it was a club sport where you had some kids who had fought before. So you had some talented kids, but then a lot of kids that were athletes. It originally started by Newt Rockne, the famous Notre Dame coach. And so there are a lot of Notre Dame football players that were in it. And so that's kind of how the tournament started. And so you get a lot of good athletes that are in it. But so I did well there and I won all three years I was there, but it was really when I started fighting, I fought in the Chicago Golden Gloves and I won my class in that right around my senior year of college. And then I started fighting and training in different pro camps. And that's when Top Rank came along. Top Rank's arguably one of the best promotional companies in the world. So Bob Arum and Top

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Rank, Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather, Oscar De La Hoya, they're all signed by him. So when I started doing well in pro camps and getting the attention of Top Rank. And winning a lot of amateur fights, getting a call from them was like getting a call from the New York Yankees, man.

• 30:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  You know.

• 30:13Rich Roll?

  Well, you just breeze through like a whole thing that I want to get into a little bit more deeply. But, uh, so first of all, it's super unusual for there even to be a boxing club in college. Like, I don't think there are many colleges that even have that, but Notre Dame, for whatever reason, because of Newt Rockne or whatever, has this tradition that has to do with the Bengal bouts and the service elements of that that we can talk about, you going to Bangladesh and all of that. But it is interesting that there's this culture around boxing at Notre Dame.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's the Fighting Irish.

• 30:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  And so, you know, our team, my year, I was, ended up being captain of the team my senior year. We had about 200 guys and now they actually have a women's division as well. So you've got some badass chicks that are in there fighting it out. So the club has really grown since it started, I think in 1934 or something. But as you mentioned, yeah, it has this service element to it, which is incredible. Like, my year alone, from ticket sales and everything, we raised over a hundred thousand dollars and it goes to the Holy Cross missions in Bangladesh. It was really Notre Dame, first going Notre Dame, that instilled this idea of giving back. And so I ended up going to Bangladesh for about two weeks and helping build some schools out there and, uh, which were helping teach English and provide the basic necessities

• 31:31Speaker 01

  for these kids. And that was my first time going out there, my senior year of college, to Bangladesh, where it was really an eye opener and I realized, um, how grateful I am and how much living here in America we have, um, and how little the rest of the world has. And it really taught me a lot of gratitude.

• 31:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and you're able to kind of harness that and, and still like hold that experience tight and it informs kind of your perspective today.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  I still think about it. I remember walking through the slums of Bangladesh and seeing kids and they had these big smiles on their face. And it's such a cool thing to see when we'd walk up and help and we'd give them boxing gloves or food and water and they had these big smiles on their face and I was like, these kids are living on dirt floors. When I go back, I'm not going to complain. Like, life is beautiful, life is good and I'm lucky to be born in this country. And it really changed my perspective on things, you know, as a young man.

• 32:31Rich Roll?

  So you start to have some success. You win Chicago Golden Gloves. But meanwhile, you kind of have this, you know, these finance aspirations, right? So there was a, there's a kind of a fork in the path. You could have gone to Wall Street and you had to make this decision whether to pursue that, that kind of career or to go full in on sport.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  So my senior year in college, I was studying finance and I actually went through a few interviews. I had internships at an investment bank, at the Chicago Board of Trade. And like I said, it was finance and fighting, but my love was boxing, man. And I just knew that I had a shot to do something. And I knew that finance could wait. And I actually, right around when we were getting offers to turn pro, towards the end of my, my senior year, I had a lot of people that told me not to do it. And obviously, listen, I know people have died in the ring. People get hurt, just like any other contact sport. I knew the risks involved. And they were like, you have a finance degree from Notre Dame. Why are you doing this? And I kid you not, you can't even write this, about a month before

• 33:35Speaker 01

  I got that call from Top Rank, something changed my life. I was reading this study and I was going back and forth, trying to decide, you know, do these mentors who were telling me to not do it, are they right? Should I listen to my heart and go for it? What the study did is they interviewed people from all over the world. And I was reading this in my dorm room, different races, different religions, different ethnicities. The only thing these people had in common is they were all on their deathbed. They're all dying. They wanted to see what was going through the minds of people that were dying, right? What they found is they regretted the things they didn't do more than the things they did. I think some people may have heard this study or heard, heard about it, but I never knew this, right? And I'll never forget sitting there. And once again, I can see this moment

• 34:20Speaker 01

  clearly, sitting in my room in college and reading that study and on, on the computer and saying, right then and there, that's not going to be me. Fuck it. I'm going for this. I'm going to chase my dream. Because whether my first fight, I get knocked out or I break my nose, I never fight again, or I fight for a world title one day, which we're about to do, at least I can go to bed at night knowing that, fuck it, I went for it.

• 34:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, man, you don't want to be that guy who spends his day on the trading floor and then goes to the bar with his buddies and talks about like how you could have been a contender.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, looking at people saying, "That could have been me, man," if you're like, "Yeah, okay, Mike."

• 34:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, have another one, right?

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 35:01Rich Roll?

  So you get, you get success like pretty swiftly, like things kind of kick into high gear.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, things went fast early. I started out winning some fights and they were building me up the right way. You start out with four-rounders, six-rounders, and then I got some notoriety that most fighters don't get early in their career. I had a sponsorship from Subway and I ended up doing 16 national commercials and two Super Bowl commercials.

• 35:29Rich Roll?

  How did that happen?

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Dude, so I have a good friend of mine-

• 35:32Rich Roll?

  You were on the, you were on the come, but it wasn't like-

• 35:34Speaker 01

  No, I was an unknown, you know, I was 4-0 at the time. I just fought on ESPN. It was my first televised fight. And I had a good friend of mine, his name's Tom Bucy, and he had a lot of connections and become, he's become a mentor of mine and has been in the media world. And he knew the CMO of Subway at the time. And so he, I just fought on ESPN and he said, "Listen," you know, I actually, it's funny. So I met him in New York, right? And this is the first time I met him because he was a friend of another friend, right? And the first lunch that we had, and the lunch was all about, you know, maybe some sponsorship opportunities for me. He could be a good connection. And I'd have many lunches and dinners like this because you never know where they lead. The first

• 36:17Speaker 01

  lunch we had, this guy tried to convince me basically not to box. And he was like, "Why are you doing this?" And we still talk about this to this day. And he says that he saw the passion and fire in my eyes. And that's when he kind of knew, "Okay, I'm gonna help this kid out. You know, I'm gonna see if I can get him some sponsors and kind of help him along the way." And sure enough, he said, "Can you stay in New York another couple of days? I want you to meet one of the heads of Subway." So I said, "Absolutely." I mean, I've been eating Subway since I was, you know, eight years old, like all my, Michael Phelps, Ryan Howard, Leila Ali, Nastia Lu, like all these incredible athletes were on Subway commercials. So I'll never forget sitting down with the Subway team.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  And they grilled me like literally I remember sitting there in New York and I have a suit on. I'm all nervous and I'm talking to the CMO and the head of athletes and they're like, well, the first thing we want you to know is that um we don't just sponsor athletes. We have famous fans, so we actually have people that enjoy the our restaurants and actually eat it. So they basically were saying, are you lying about eating Subway constantly, you know? And I was like, yeah. And they were like, what's your favorite sandwich? I was like, oh, I always get the six inch turkey. They're like, no, no, no, walk me down the line like you're at Subway and tell me exactly what you get. I kid you not, but I nailed it because I actually do go and I was like, all right, let's do it. So I walk up and I say, I want the six inch turkey, you know, I want no cheese, yada, yada.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  And I go down the line and they just seemed disinterested. And I remember them being on their phones and one guy telling me, I'm the one who signed Michael Phelps. Like, tell us why, you know, you at four and O should be on this. And I felt like I was like begging for my supper. I remember leaving that um meeting and calling my dad and I was so sad. I was like, man, they just didn't like me that I don't understand what I did wrong. I thought I I told him about my hopes and dreams and it worked out. And he's like, don't worry about it. He goes, you know, you might have a hundred of those meetings. All you need is one. So I'm sitting in this pizza shop, like literally drowning my sorrows in food. And my dad calls me up two hours later and he goes, man, I don't know what you did, but the head of Subway just called. They want to put you on a plane and get you to Paramount Studios and film your first commercial.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  And I was like, holy shit, let's.

• 38:29Rich Roll?

  So what what did you misread?

• 38:32Speaker 01

  I think they were holding their cards close to their vet, close to their chest kind of thing. Um, and a lot of the people that I met were like, wow, such an incredible story. I love this. And maybe it's just their New York East Coast demeanor that they just weren't impressed. Um, but I don't know what it was. I mean, maybe they were just um, I think they were impressed. They just want, didn't want me to know, maybe. But for whatever reason, next thing I know, I'm in LA shooting Subway commercials. And less than a year later, I'm sitting around with friends, watching the Super Bowl. And there I pop up and say, Mike Lee, next to Michael Phelps and Ryan Howard. And I gotta be honest, I felt like I don't deserve to be up there.

• 39:11Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  It was uh.

• 39:13Rich Roll?

  How did the, how did the boxing community receive it?

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Haters.

• 39:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Which you're always gonna get.

• 39:18Rich Roll?

  It's just a little too premature, right?

• 39:20Speaker 01

  They felt like it was too premature and they felt like, why is he getting this opportunity? World champions aren't. And if you're me. You know, I just went in and killed it for him on camera, you know, I, they kept saying how great I was at the enthusiasm and learning the lines and all that kind of stuff. So who wouldn't take that opportunity? But so you definitely get some people that were jealous and haters and as an athlete, dude, you get that constantly. Um, I'm sure you get that too. People that absolutely obsessed with the show and people that say you suck. And you got, I've learned throughout the past 10 years how to push that out of my mind. But in the beginning, that really used to hurt me, man. I used to go on Twitter. I used to see articles and people that said I wasn't good enough. I sucked. I was this, that, and it really bothered me my early twenties.

• 40:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. But meanwhile, you have all this momentum. You're kind of foisted into the, you know, spotlight and the career's going good, right? So walk me through kind of the next phase.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, the next phase of my life, uh, came out of nowhere and it was a lot of pain. So I, you know, I'm running on this high and I felt invisible. I'm doing national commercials. I'm getting notoriety. I'm making good money. Finally, I'm fighting. I fought in Madison Square Garden. I fought in Cowboy Stadium. I feel like this is it. I'm on my way, you know.

• 40:37Rich Roll?

  Talk to me about fighting at Madison Square Garden.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Dude, that, I just got goosebumps thinking about that. And I do every time.

• 40:46Rich Roll?

  I mean, that is like the movies.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  That's the Mecca, man. And I'll never forget walking through that tunnel and thinking, once again, you're kind of thinking like, do I belong here? You know, Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan and, you know, performers and everybody. There's, when you walk through the tunnels and, you know, go in the dressing rooms and stuff, there's like pictures and posters of artists and athletes and all this kind of stuff. And you hear the roar of the crowd. And I fought in an undercard of Miguel Coto versus Antonio Margarito, an HBO fight. So place was packed. And I remember walking through the tunnel and getting goosebumps and thinking, holy shit, like.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  I can't believe I'm here. And who would have thought, you know, it wasn't even three years ago, I had no idea I'd even become a professional boxer. And now I'm walking through the tunnels with twenty two or twenty thousand people screaming. And I'm about to step in the ring like this is some gladiator shit.

• 41:39Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  And it was a really cool moment. In fact, even that fight, I broke my hand. It's cool because I have a big scar on my right hand. And I always think about it when I look at it. Talk about how incredible adrenaline is and how incredible adrenaline type factor is in your body. I broke my hand in the third round of that fight. I didn't even realize it. Like my hand went numb a little bit, but the pain didn't even kick in, right? I end up getting a knockout with that hand one round later. We go back to the dressing room and I have a camera in my face and I'm sitting next to my dad. And all of a sudden I look down at my hand and it's twice the size of my left one. And it's almost like, and then the pain kicked in right away. It's almost like when a kid falls and scrapes their knee and they look up to their mom.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  I did that to my dad. I'm like a twenty four year old adult and I look at my hand. And I look at his face and his face was like, oh shit. And then boom, the pain kicked in. Um, but yeah, that was a surreal moment that I'll remember to the day I die.

• 42:35Rich Roll?

  You had another fight where you had to fight on after breaking your ribs too, right?

• 42:39Speaker 01

  I had one fight. I broke my rib in the second round. I had to go eight more rounds of the broken rib. Um, that was some of the worst pain in my life. I was in the hospital till four AM. Um, I just kept telling myself, don't quit. I kept telling myself, do whatever you have to do. It was a sloppy fight, but I was like, do whatever you have to do to win each round. You know, so I would, I would, um, throw some pot shots. I would hit them and then I would wrap them up. Try to breathe a little bit, but round two and a half, round three on. That was some of the worst pain and you're getting hit there. Um, boxing has taught me how to be tough, you know, I think after this career, I'll be able to get through a lot because getting through those moments like that, you realize

• 43:20Speaker 01

  how tough the human mind is and how much you can get through. And I mean, God, you know that with your story. It's, it's incredible.

• 43:27Rich Roll?

  Well, when you're in these heightened moments, you have this level of self-awareness. Like you know, like this is, this is a moment in my life and I'm going to remember this for the rest, you know, of my days and. How this is going to turn out depends upon what's happening in the next nanosecond. And the more you can kind of anchor yourself in that reality, I think it kind of can override whatever, you know, I've never fought with a broken rib, but I know what it's like to suffer. Like, how do you override that impulse to quit or to, you know, fall back or to, you know, let your guard down?

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's when you need to tap into the mind. Like you said, I know for me, I knew boxing is a very unforgiving sport. So I was undefeated. And once you have a loss on your record, it's very tough to kind of get back up. You're only as good as your last fight. And I knew that if I gave up in that moment and gave it up into the pain, down the line, I wouldn't get a chance at a world title. I just kept thinking of that because that's all I worked for. So I just kept thinking, just push through, man. Just win every round, get through this, because if you quit now, you'll always regret it. And once again, back to that 36 minutes in one night, I knew I was just like, dude, just get through this another whatever 30 minutes and you'll be good.

• 44:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but that 30 minutes probably felt like eight hours.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  It felt so long. And I remember looking at my parents in the stands and family and they told me I just had this dead look like I don't want to be here, that they'd never seen before. And I think they hated seeing that. You know, my sister and my mom have a tough time sitting ringside and seeing the blood and, you know, the agony.

• 45:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Wow. So this is back in, what, like 2012, 2013?

• 45:15Speaker 01

  That fight was more recent, actually. Madison Square Garden was the one that was 2012, I think. But I've had various different injuries along the way.

• 45:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, let's talk about the big one. I mean, you get blindsided with this situation that you had a really hard time diagnosing for a long time.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, I was on this ride, man. I felt invisible. I was, you know, 8-0, 10-0. I got to 12-0. And then all of a sudden, we were getting ready for a big fight. I think it was gonna be my debut on HBO. Um, and I was down in Houston, Texas, where I lived and trained. And all of a sudden, I just get it started getting really sick. I started getting extreme fatigue. I started getting incredible back pain, joint pain. I was getting headaches every single day. Um, depression started to kick in. And at first I thought, okay, did boxing cause this, you know?

• 46:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're getting hit in the head a lot, man.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 46:08Rich Roll?

  You're getting shit beat out of you. Of course, you're gonna, you know, you go to a doctor with those symptoms. He's just gonna tell you to

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 46:14Rich Roll?

  Take a break, right?

• 46:14Speaker 01

  And I remember, we were about two weeks out from my 13th fight and I, we had a media day, which a bunch of cameras show up and you're training. I remember I was feeling so shitty, I could barely get through these days. And I was like, what's going on? I felt like I had mono, but with worse pain and headaches and I couldn't understand it. And I went to the bathroom and I literally almost passed out because I was pushing through so much pain. And then

• 46:38Rich Roll?

  Was the pain like localized or just all over your body?

• 46:41Speaker 01

  It was all over. It was in a lot of my joints, but the worst pain was in my lower back. Um, and then also headaches. And then along with that just came a lot of anxiety. It was just like a momentum of bad shit going on, right? And so we pulled out of that fight. And I was like, something's not right. And I'm glad, you know, my team cares about me and my health more than me winning the fight. I spent the next two years in and out of hospitals trying to figure out what the hell was going on with me. And I only later found out like a year and a half in that I got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease known as ankylosing spondylitis. Um, I had this marker, this gene, HLA B27 that we learned through blood tests and then also just through x-rays and symptoms. It's something that I think, you

• 47:26Speaker 01

  know, maybe I couldn't avoid, like boxing maybe didn't cause it. Um, and, you know, because you go to all these different doctors and this is very common for people that have autoimmune diseases. Some people don't get diagnosed for like five years, 10 years.

• 47:39Rich Roll?

  Why is it so difficult to identify these things?

• 47:42Speaker 01

  This is where I'm gonna bash modern medicine and Western medicine, but I, I I think that ultimately, you know, we need to look at the body in a holistic way. And it wasn't until I started going to like functional medicine doctors that really understood. For instance, I walked into some of the best rheumatologists, some of the best doctors in the world. I did one program at Northwestern that was called the VIP program. I think I paid 10K out of pocket just to have every top doctor of each department meet with me, analyze me, what their expertise is, and then they sit in a room and they try to figure out what was wrong with me, right?

• 48:19Rich Roll?

  And they couldn't get in crack.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  I get in this fucking room and the head guy says, we think you need to see a psychiatrist. And I'll never forget looking at him and I basically said, fuck you. And I walked out and he called me later and I apologized and I said, listen dude, this isn't that, like I'll go see a psychiatrist and I saw one for three months, nothing changed. And I said, trust me dude, like something's going on. You got, but I realized throughout this process, they didn't analyze what I was eating and they didn't really analyze my mindset and, you know, whether I was meditating, whether stress had an issue with this and really getting down to the nitty gritty until I started seeing functional medicine doctors.

• 49:00Rich Roll?

  It's so crazy that you would go and see a battery of these top shelf doctors in all these various disciplines and they're not, they're not asking you any questions about diet and lifestyle.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Dude, and they don't find it. And you find that Western medicine in general, I mean, I walk into a rheumatologist and I tell him, I start telling him about my diet and I would come in with notes and they'd be like, you know what? We think you need to try this, we think you need to try this. It was all prescription drugs. At one point I was on eight different drugs, right? You know, the side effects that come along with that. I was having full blown anxiety attacks, then I was depressed, so they threw me on Lexapro. I was just a shit show, you know, it was the worst time of my life. I, I didn't know, I was, you know, having terrible thoughts, even like suicidal thoughts because I was so depressed and everything was taken from me. Um, and I was in pain every day. And so it wasn't until we really identified what was wrong and I could start to tap in.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  To diet, lifestyle, get the proper medication and start doing the proper things that I could really like, you know, heal myself.

• 50:01Rich Roll?

  And this was like a two-year period?

• 50:03Speaker 01

  This was a two-year period and it's not over. I'm so much better than I am, but it was like a two to four-year period. I think, you know, this was 2012 to about 2016 where I'd have a few fights and I kept pushing and then I would relapse and I'd have moments where that medication didn't work and, you know, I was on Humira for years and that was giving me rashes and I wasn't feeling good, but I needed it. And I went from eight medications down to zero. And dude, I couldn't be more proud of that.

• 50:31Rich Roll?

  So walk me through the process of, of being properly diagnosed and then getting on a protocol that's, that's worked for you.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I saw another, it was one of many rheumatologists I saw and he basically told me, I said, can I still box? And he said, you can, but I wouldn't and life's gonna be tough for you. And I remember thinking in that stage, I've got through a lot of shit like this, this fucking guy doesn't know. Like this is in my mind, I'm gonna cure this. And I truly believe, for instance, I was on Humira, which I'm no longer on. I was on it for years and I think it got me to a place where it helped me, but I knew that this wasn't something I'm gonna take for the rest of my life. And I'm not telling people don't stand the drugs your doctors recommend, but I knew in my heart that I needed to get down to even like a spiritual level, a mindset level of where I started meditating. Like I would be in hospital beds,

• 51:24Speaker 01

  dude, and I would read Tony Robbins, Dr. Joe Dispenza, books by Viktor Frankl. Like I started consuming myself with this knowledge because I was like, I'm so over this. And I started learning about these incredible stories of people healing themselves through their mind and through diet and through alternative medicine. And I was like, I'm gonna do this, that's gonna be me. And so that's when really I started taking IGG tests and doing elimination diets and I started taking like CBD, which I'm huge on and why I co-founded my company, Soul CBD, started helping me a ton and why I started meditating, like really learning about visualization and meditation as a daily practice because I truly believe that disease

• 52:06Speaker 01

  is caused by being in this fight or flight, right? Which I'm constantly in as a boxer. So I need to get myself back into that calm, parasympathetic. Um, mindset so that my body can heal and recover. And for eight, 10 years, I just wasn't doing that. And so, yeah, that was, that was the main thing.

• 52:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's almost like an Ayurvedic perspective that your body is comprised of all of these systems. And when they're not like in a synchronous, you know, kind of communication with each other and in balance, then your body's not able to repair itself. But if you can just get to that place, then the body actually knows what to do. And this is not to bash Western medicine. Western medicine is amazing for all, all manner of acute things. But obviously, you know, this was missed for you and you found your solution in alternative, you know, methodologies, which is super interesting. I mean, this AS is an autoimmune disorder that's kind of localized in the spine, right?

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. So a lot of my pain, I'll, to this day, it's gotten so much better. But I wake up in some type of pain every single day.

• 53:10Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Uh, some days are a lot better than others and I just need to really dial in. And even when I'm in training camp, I push my body hard. But for a good four years, I woke up in incredible back pain, incredible joint pain. Um, but when I started changing all these things that we just talked about, the headaches went away. I don't, I don't get headaches anymore. I had headaches every single day and I had this type of pain and fatigue. I mean, the fatigue was brutal, dude. And how much of that was being depressed versus the disease? I'm not sure. But, um, I actually, I started learning a lot from other people. I kept it secret and I was almost embarrassed about it for years. And then I decided to write about it. One night I couldn't sleep and I wrote and wrote and wrote.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  And I ended up, um, submitting my paper, I called it invisible pain to the Players Tribune.

• 53:58Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Um, it's a platform that Derek Jeter started where, you know, athletes write about their experiences. And I was super open and vulnerable, man. I talked about what I'd gone through and, you know, other people that had gone through this, that inspired me to get better. And I was super nervous to put that out because normally I was not very open about it, but. Man, I received hundreds, if not up into the thousands of messages on Facebook, email, Twitter, being like, I have an autoimmune disease, or I had this happen. Your story inspired me. Like, I have people that I still connect with on a daily basis that I haven't even met, that are like, I just ran an Ironman, or I just did a Spartan race. I have this autoimmune disease. You inspired me to get back in the gym. And dude,

• 54:42Speaker 01

  that was one of the coolest moments, most fulfilling moments of my life.

• 54:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I read the piece. It's great. It's interesting, though, that you had trepidation about sharing that. Is that like a fighter thing of not showing vulnerability?

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:56Rich Roll?

  Or something around like, oh, it's this weird disease no one's ever heard of. He must have made it up.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  I think I grew up with, I'm not gonna blame my dad for this, but I grew up with a father who was very masculine and very like, you just push your problems under the rug. Our house wasn't really an open, honest communication, I think, at times. I had a great relationship with him, and I still do. So I don't mean to bash that. I'm just saying, I thought the idea of being a man and a fighter was just to bottle it up and not say anything. And after a while, I felt like, fuck, I need to like, talk to people and be vulnerable. Because you think about it, like, you go in press conferences as a fighter, and everybody says the same fucking thing. Feel 100% man. Training camp was great. Let me tell you some bullshit. And you know what? Honestly, I'll probably get up there

• 55:43Speaker 01

  this press conference and say the same thing, because it's just what you say.

• 55:47Rich Roll?

  Now I'm gonna be watching. I'm gonna be like...

• 55:50Speaker 01

  You know, I'll probably be like, oh, I feel great, which is true, which could be true, right? But you never getting, my point is, you're never getting up there and saying, well, yeah, three weeks in, we thought I broke my hand, and then, you know, I had this and that. Like, and dude, every training camp, there's always something. Because if you're not having some type of setback in training camp, you're not training hard enough. So it's like this ebb and flow. So that's really, it was the first time I was like, open and vulnerable. And now I talk about it, and I even do a little bit of speaking to, I've spoken to Division One athletes, to different corporations about the mindset of getting through pain and pushing through. And dude, it's the most fulfilling thing ever. I could, I could see myself doing that and trying to help people get out of pain after my career.

• 56:32Rich Roll?

  And the great irony, of course, being that... That that willingness to be vulnerable in that manner ultimately makes you stronger. You have you've can you've you've basically built this, you know, coalition of support behind you and all these people that want to see you do well. And I think there's an appreciation for that honesty that in the long term, emboldens you and makes you, you know, a better, more well-rounded person, but also an athlete.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just afraid because at the time, my contract ran out with Top Rank, and I was afraid no one would sign me. I was afraid they'd see me damaged goods.

• 57:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  And it was so liberating just to say, fuck it.

• 57:14Rich Roll?

  Wasn't that guy in a Subway commercial?

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I sold sandwiches, my shirt off for a couple of years.

• 57:20Rich Roll?

  Well, and for two years, you're down for the count. And this is, this is the prime of your life, right? Like, what are you, 27, 28, something like that?

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the prime of my life, prime of my career.

• 57:29Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And and no, no guarantee that you're going to be able to claw your way back. I'm sure a lot of people thought, this guy's done.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  A lot of people did. And even, I mean, I remember my first fight back, I fought on NBC Sports, and I fought another undefeated fighter. And I remember the promoter at the time I heard was like, we're not sure about this. Don't blame me with the matchmaking. Don't blame me if Mike loses to this kid. And I won, I got a six round knockout. But I had so many people that doubted me, even to this day, dude, like, because I didn't have a huge amateur background. And I kind of started late. So many people that didn't believe that I would get to 10-0, 20-0, let alone, dude, fight for a world title. And that's that like chip on my shoulder. Like, I want to prove all those people wrong. And I even want to prove myself wrong on those days when I doubted myself laying in hospital

• 58:19Speaker 01

  beds. Like, that's what July 20 is about for me, dude. Like, I know I'm going to win this fight, but win or lose, I've accomplished so much because I had those days literally laying in the hospital where I was like, I thought I was never going to do anything with my life, let alone like, thought about whether I should continue my life. So it's about like proving those people, but most importantly, like proving myself wrong.

• 58:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, being able to channel that negativity into fuel.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. Which, I mean, don't get me wrong, like, when people say, you know, they talk shit, or there's haters out there, it still affects you, like, everybody's a human. But nothing like in the way it did before. Now it just rolls off.

• 59:07Rich Roll?

  So let's talk about the mindset game. You kind of mentioned at the outset, you know, there's so much more to boxing than meets the eye. It really is the sweet science and it's the attitude, the frame of mind, the ability to be present and everything that gets packed into, you know, what's between the ears when you step onto the ring, that's going to make the difference. And you've got a lot of really interesting practices around this that I want to learn more about.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Well, I started seeing a sports psychologist kind of early in my career. I think maybe I was training with, I was training with other professional athletes at this gym called Plex in Houston. And I think someone referred me to this guy and I remember at the time thinking, why am I seeing a psychiatrist? You know, I'm not going crazy.

• 59:53Rich Roll?

  Is this pre Tony Robbins, Viktor Frankl?

• 59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is pre, this is when I was like, I just want to run through.

• 59:59Rich Roll?

  A brash.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like smash people, you know, it was very like Rocky-esque. But that started opening my eyes up to like visualization especially. I didn't get into meditation and a lot of the other things I do until after I got sick and later on. But I started early in my career visualizing fights, right? Because there's all this study and evidence out there that the brain really doesn't know the difference between perception and reality. You know, for instance, and I talk about this all the time, you can give yourself a heart attack just from stress and your thoughts, right? That's fucking crazy. That's a physical manifestation that could kill you all because of your mind, right? So I was thinking, who's to say the opposite can't happen?

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  So I will visualize every single fight and what I want to happen with extreme clarity. And what I learned is I do it with all five senses. I'll literally think about what it looks like that night when I step in, what it smells like, what the blood and sweat will taste like. And I walk through these moments. Maybe sometimes it's five minutes a day, sometimes it's 30 minutes, whatever I can get into. But it's crazy that when I step into the ring, my heart rate's lower and my cortisol levels are lower and I feel calmer and I feel in flow state because I think my brain is like, oh, you've already been here hundreds of times. So I've done that every single fight in my career. And now I'm trying to learn how to do it for other things like, you know, maybe I'm speaking in front of hundreds of people and that makes me nervous or whatever it is.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  But I truly believe in that brain-body connection.

• 1:01:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I learned visualization techniques very young. I had a coach, a swim coach, who walked me through this when I must have been like 14 and kind of developed a habit around that at that time. And I started to get almost obsessive compulsive about it where I would, like if I had a huge meet, like I know the nautatorium, you know, I know what lane I'm going to be in, and I could do a visualization that would take me an hour to go through a race that was only two minutes long because every little detail, like this is what the bottom of my foot is going to feel like when I step on that block and this is what the temperature, like every minutia of it. But the difference, I'm taking this in a place

• 1:02:11Rich Roll?

  I'm going to want your input on, the difference being like in swimming, you can control not all the variables, but most of them. You're diving into a pool, it's just you and a lane and the black, you know, the black line on the bottom of the pool. And there's not going to be a lot of intervening things to kind of, you know, throw you off whatever trajectory you're on. But to perform a visualization for a fight, it's almost the opposite. Like you want, as soon as the fight starts, there's eight billion permutations of what can happen. So how can you possibly visualize every aspect of that so that you can create that, you know, safe, comfortable place?

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  It's a great question. I've actually, I've never gotten that question. I create different scenarios. I never think of myself as losing, ever. But I will create scenarios where I got knocked down and I'll get back up, or scenarios where I lost that round and I'll get back in it. Majority of it is positive. I don't take it to a dark place. But you're exactly right. I mean, shit can change quickly. One shot can change a fight. So I guess for me, what's most important is that before the fight starts, I'm calm. That when the fight starts, my heart rate isn't at a crazy 180, 190, or whatever it is. I'm as calm as can be while the fight starts. But you're right. I mean, there's degrees of variability that you just can't account for.

• 1:03:33Rich Roll?

  And do you do a specific visualization for your opponent? So that you're like, oh, I know this person always, this is his move. And I know how to like, you know, this is what I'm going to do in response to that. So that's all like super rehearsed mentally.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Yes, I'll dive into what the opponent looks like, what they're doing. So I really feel like that this is the 300th time we fought together. So I'll think about everything between, do they have facial hair? You know, do they have tattoos? Uh, what their style is when I throw that punch, what do they usually do? And it kind of helps me prepare in training too. Because I'll think like, okay, anytime a guy is double jabbing against him, he's usually countering with this. So I'm kind of playing those games in my mind. And I like it. It kind of gives me, it calms me down, you know? Because there's so many unknowns in boxing that I feel like it, it gives me a sense of, okay, like no matter what, I got this. Does that make sense?

• 1:04:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it's, I mean, it's a great life skill that, like you said, you can use for anything in life. You know, not just sport, but business. Anytime you have to do anything that is anxiety provoking to kind of prepare you for it and acclimate to success.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Do you still use the visualization techniques?

• 1:04:46Rich Roll?

  I do. I mean, not as, you know, I mean, when I was like super into my, now I'm doing a million different things. I do it for public speaking because that definitely.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Does that make you nervous?

• 1:04:55Rich Roll?

  Jacks me up a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and when I'm calm on stage, then I do my best work. But when I'm nervous, then it's like, I can't, like, I can't catch my breath. And then I'm like, you know, you space out, you don't know what you want to say and all that kind of stuff.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  What makes you more nervous, like the crowd size or maybe the venue?

• 1:05:17Rich Roll?

  A lot of it has to do with how much sleep I got.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 1:05:20Rich Roll?

  So much of it, like if I slept well and I feel good in my body and like I worked out in the morning, like, and I just feel myself, that's very calming.

• 1:05:30Rich Roll?

  It really has to do with venue. So, I mean, sometimes like a big venue with a lot of people is is easier than a small room with like 10 or 15 people because then you're like locked in with this. And if they're not responding, man, you're going down.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  I was just gonna say that. It's funny. And even with 10 to 15 people, when you're in an auditorium, there's always gonna be someone on their cellphone, you know, and then you see that person and it'll kind of like throw you off like, oh, I'm doing a shitty job. They don't care what I'm gonna say. But you're exactly right. When it's like 10 or 15 people, it's so intimate.

• 1:06:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  You know, and it makes, the same thing here, it makes me a little more nervous.

• 1:06:04Rich Roll?

  And if it's a big venue, like you're going into Madison Square Garden, like I've, you know, I've been, I spoke at Carnegie Hall, like you, there's an energy to that. There's a, you know, that that kind of, you know, sweeps you up. It's almost like an, I, I approach public speaking like I approach athletic events. It's a very similar preparation.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great point. Cause when it's a small crowd, you need to bring the energy.

• 1:06:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  You're right. If it's a big venue, the energy's already there. So you just kind of ride with it.

• 1:06:30Rich Roll?

  Right. And it's easy to be excited because it's, you know, there's a lot of people and all that kind of stuff.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:06:36Rich Roll?

  All right. So visualization, what else? What else is part of the toolbox?

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  I really started getting into meditating a lot. I'm in, as I mentioned, I'm in such fight or flight. And if anything, that's more for my health. I will find that if I'm very stressed about something or overworked, you know, for instance, I, like I said, I started this company a few months back. So literally the past few months is like trying to work on the company and then also training. And once I, very soon here, get into training camp, like I completely put that to the side, but there's so many things running through my head. That meditation, whether it's even like five minutes to 30 minutes, whatever it is that day, I feel like really kind of like calms me down.

• 1:07:16Rich Roll?

  Do you have a specific type of meditation?

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  So I use the Calm app, you know, I'm kind of, like I said, I'm no master by any means. Like I can't go into a room with complete silence for an hour, two hours. Like that shit is, that's like next level stuff, which hopefully I'll get to. So I do like guided meditation, Calm or Unplugged or whatever it is.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  And that's, you know, that's pretty consistent for me and I enjoy kind of being talked through that. Another thing I love doing is breathing. And I think obviously this goes along with meditation, but for instance, there's a breathing technique that I'll do in the dressing room. This guy, Dr. Andrew Weil, created it. It's called four, seven, eight breathing. And essentially it's inhale through the nose for four seconds, hold for seven, and then audibly exhale for eight. And it's just a way to like calm your nervous system down. And I'll do about four cycles of that. And I do it in the dressing room and all of a sudden my heart rate drops. So breathing techniques, ones like that really kind of helped me get into it. And I'll even do it, you know, right before I have to go into training.

• 1:08:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Do you do that when you start to feel a flare up?

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Rich Roll?

  From AS?

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  I will, man. And, and the part of it is like, is it the chicken or the egg? And I think most people with autoimmunity deal with this. It's like, am I having a flare up today because I'm stressed? Or am I stressed because I'm having a flare up? So you don't know, but I just have to trust the process and keep doing it. Cause there's some days when I get into meditation where I'm like, damn, I feel calm. I feel loose. And there's other days where I was like, this is bullshit. Like, why am I meditating? Like, I'm not gonna lie. So the key is just being consistent with it for me, you know?

• 1:08:54Rich Roll?

  And the cold therapy too, right?

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 1:08:57Rich Roll?

  That's part of it?

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I mentioned, I have the infrared sauna in my home that I got that really helps. All these studies show it. It helps with rheumatoid arthritis and different autoimmunity. And then I bought a cold plunge. And I usually set it, you know, anywhere from like 36 to 40 degrees. So it's pretty damn cold. And I have it out on my patio and I just lift up the top and I jump in for, you know, three to five minutes kind of a thing and just freeze my ass off. But I love that. It's like, it's like cryotherapy times 10, you know?

• 1:09:26Rich Roll?

  Well, all of these practices are anti-inflammatory, right?

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:09:31Rich Roll?

  It's all about reducing the inflammation. So there must be certain foods that you have to avoid for that purpose as well.

• 1:09:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I went back and forth, you know, and as I mentioned, I did I G G testing. But I really recommend that people dive into foods because the food is food is medicine. And so for me, when I'm gluten free and dairy free, I'm really good. You know, I did that whole thing where say no to nightshades, say no to nuts. I did what's known as the A I P elimination diet where you do it. I did it for like sixty days and you're basically eating nothing like it's it's terrible and miserable. I noticed no effects of it, so I ended up being like, okay, you know, these type of foods aren't an issue for me like nightshades and all that kind of stuff. So it's so detailed to exactly who you are. There's no blanket term. And once again, the issue with Western medicine, like it's incredible.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  Western medicine saves lives every day. But it's too blanket in general. And I think diet is so specific based on your genes and your lifestyle and all those things. So, yeah, I say gluten free, dairy free, that really helps with flare ups. And I just try to eat as clean as possible.

• 1:10:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, do you cook all your own meals?

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  I I cook a lot, but I have my meals prepared for me. So like, for instance, this camp, I'm working with a nutritionist. His name's Andy Galpin, he's phenomenal.

• 1:10:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. Yeah, he used to run the Red Bull Performance Lab, right?

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Andy's done, yeah, he's been on Rogan a few times, talking about a lot of this stuff. He's just a brilliant guy. He's worked with fighters, so he's going to help me with a whole array of things. But essentially kind of helping me find, you know, someone's going to cook for me and have the meals planned out. That way, there's no guessing in it, you know? And I just, he tells me what to eat and I eat it. That's the best way in training camp. But when I'm out of training camp, yeah, I cook myself.

• 1:11:18Rich Roll?

  Right, so you're not in training camp right now, but you're getting ready to?

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  As we are now, it started. I mean, we're pretty far out, but I've been training. It's not every day crazy. But definitely a few days a week with cardio, with boxing. I actually been sparring already. I want to come into this camp, this is the biggest fight of my life. I want to come into this camp ready. That way, if I'm peaking too early, we can pull back and I don't have to worry about it. So I've already kind of started implementing the diet.

• 1:11:46Rich Roll?

  So when does camp officially start?

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Probably May 1st.

• 1:11:51Rich Roll?

  And you go out of town for that or are you doing that here?

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  I have before. So we've gone up to Big Bear. We've done high elevation before. I got a chance to train where Triple G, Gennady Golovkin trains and Shane Mosley's up there a lot. And I've also done training camps.

• 1:12:05Rich Roll?

  And altitude?

• 1:12:06Speaker 01

  And altitude. Altitude's a huge aspect of it. I actually did one training camp, actually the fight before Madison Square Garden. We trained in Mexico City because I was with another fighter, that world title fight there. And I remember the first day I got there in Mexico City, walking up the stairs, I was out of breath. And I was like, oh shit, I have to fight a human being here. I'm out of breath walking up the stairs. But then, once you got acclimated, it was phenomenal. This camp, I'm going to stay in LA. I don't need to do the high altitude. I think a lot of times for fighters, they, they want to go away. And it's like a discipline thing.

• 1:12:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's focus.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  It's focus. I never, I don't like to go out. I'm not partying. I'm very disciplined. I know how important this is. So I'm actually more comfortable at home. Not to mention, I've got all my toys. I've got my cold plunge in Fred's sauna. I've got all my doctors here. Like, it makes more sense for me here.

• 1:12:55Rich Roll?

  And there's a boxing gym in, on the west side that you train at?

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  There's a couple different I train at. I started training at a boxing gym. It was called Wildcard West. Now it's called Churchill Boxing.

• 1:13:07Rich Roll?

  Is that Pete Burke's place?

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, Pete's place. So I met Pete. I met Mark Wahlberg a few years back. He's a big boxing fan and we became friends and got to spend time with him on movie sets and hang out and then met Pete. Obviously, they do a lot of projects together. And that was just so cool to see guys at such a high level doing some really cool shit.

• 1:13:28Rich Roll?

  It seems like Pete's obsessed.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Pete's obsessed with boxing and he's a great guy. So Wildcard West in particular, and we'll train at other gyms throughout the west side, but yeah, it's now called Churchill Boxing, but it's cool because you'll get actors and actresses that come in. I mean, I'll be in there and Jennifer Garner, Bradley Cooper, you know, all these like really cool people. And then you'll get some of the world-class world champion fighters too. But everyone respects each other. It's a really cool kind of community.

• 1:13:57Rich Roll?

  It's like only in LA.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  Only in LA, man.

• 1:13:59Rich Roll?

  That's where I'd be like, come on, dude, you gotta get out of town. You know, it's like, if Bradley Cooper's like, bro, come on, we're going out. Like, I got, you want to come to the premiere of whatever tonight? Like, then you're in a position to say no. You have to say no to that.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Good point, man. It's a good point. No, you definitely say no to some tough invites and some tough things.

• 1:14:18Rich Roll?

  Except Wahlberg, he's got discipline. The guy wakes up at like 2:30 in the morning to work out.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Dude, I gotta tell you, I, I spent a lot more time with him a few years back. He was one of the most disciplined, hardworking guys I ever met. I remember we'd be, I was on the movie set for him when he filmed, one of the Transformer movies and he would be in there, we'd be hanging out. He just got done working out and he'd be taking calls, then he'd be learning, going over his lines. It was nonstop for him, dude. And he'd be up at 4:30, 5:00 AM, working out, you know, so maybe two a days. He, uh, and it's credited to his success. I mean, that's, that's why he is where he is. He's a disciplined dude.

• 1:14:56Rich Roll?

  It's an interesting time where, uh, there's a couple of guys who've kind of flipped that equation. You know, people sort of look at actors, oh, they're dilettantes or whatever. And you've got guys like Wahlberg and Kevin Hart and The Rock, who are sharing what their day in, day out looks like. And it's like, those guys are working, you know, 20 hours a day and unrelenting, like, discipline.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't know when they sleep. I don't know when Mark sleeps. I, I think ultimately, like I said earlier, those dudes must just have passion, like crazy. And I know Mark does.

• 1:15:27Rich Roll?

  Of course they do. You know, they're like, they couldn't sustain their lifestyle if they didn't, if they weren't fueled by like some deep, like, deep, deep emotional drive.

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  That's gotta be it. Yeah. Those guys are, uh, doing some pretty incredible stuff.

• 1:15:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So all you gotta do is go live with Wahlberg, get ready for the fight, right?

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. He'd love that. Just move in. Yeah. But, uh, well, actually he, he did a great job on The Fighter, uh, that movie. I wish, I wish they'd make a sequel. Um, honestly, I watched a lot of boxing movies. We were talking about Rocky earlier.

• 1:15:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  The boxing is so terrible in most movies, but Mark is an athlete and Mark actually did really well. I thought, you know, Jake Gyllenhaal did well too. Um, in, uh, God, what was that?

• 1:16:09Rich Roll?

  What was that called?

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Southpaw.

• 1:16:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Kurt Sutter is a friend of mine wrote that movie.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  Did he?

• 1:16:13Rich Roll?

  It's been in here. Yeah.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  Okay. I actually, so I met.

• 1:16:16Rich Roll?

  Jacked.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Was he really? Oh, Jake was.

• 1:16:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Jake was for that movie.

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  He got shredded.

• 1:16:21Rich Roll?

  Um, but that was good?

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  Before. I thought it was good. Yeah. And Antoine Fuqua, who's become a friend of mine as well, was the director of that movie. And he's done some stuff with Mark and whatnot. Antoine loves boxing, but Antoine really made the details of that movie, you know? So often as a fighter, you watch the movie and you watch him, for instance, taping up in the dressing room or putting a certain glove on, you're just like, it doesn't work like that, dude. But he really like went to boxers and like talked to us and talked to people in the game and was a student of the sport. And you could see it in the movie because it was like, oh, the commission's always there watching hand wraps. Yep. Those are the hand wraps that you actually wear. Those are the gloves. So everything was really dialed in. And for me as a fighter, I love seeing that, you know?

• 1:17:02Rich Roll?

  Which movie got it terribly wrong? All of them? Most of them?

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  I'm gonna get killed for this.

• 1:17:08Rich Roll?

  Come on.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  I mean, Rocky, man, like, like, I love Stallone. I've never met him or anything, but I, I think he's, Rocky changed the game and I love, love those movies. But yeah, dude, like guys, Rocky, he's taken haymakers and still standing. And it's a ridiculous movie, but, um, but yeah, iconic. So yeah, in terms of like actually how good, uh, how close to the real thing it was, yeah, Rocky was way off.

• 1:17:34Rich Roll?

  What in your opinion makes for a great boxer? Like, what's the difference between a great boxer and like an okay, a good boxer?

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  Great question. Um, I think staying calm in a heated moment. I think hand eye coordination and I think discipline. Often boxing does come down to skill, but it does come down to will. Comes down to who wants it more? Who wants it? Who wants this more essentially? And I think that combination is dangerous. I mean, you've got guys like Floyd who have incredible skill and can change the game. It's a game of inches and they roll and they get you off your rhythm. And, um, there's a few fighters like that, but a lot of fights can be won with pure will. Um, it's two guys duking it out. And when you get hit really hard, you know, I've been hit so hard in the ring, you can't feel your legs. And I got knocked down my seventh fight.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  I remember getting up at the count of nine and barely beating it and thinking, what are you gonna do now? You've got 45, maybe a minute left for the round. Just survive. You find that some guys are great in the gym and they're incredible in the gym. When it comes to fight night, the lights are on, there's 20,000 people. It's a different story. So who can mentally be calm in those moments? I think it's the difference between good and great fighters.

• 1:18:49Rich Roll?

  Do you think that will can be taught or is that just something?

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I'm not sure. I think maybe it's taught in a way when you're growing up. There's certain things that are, that are just learned. I'm not sure. Maybe it depends on your, your life and all that. But if, if you don't have that will and that, that gut instinct to win no matter what at a young age, you're not going to get it.

• 1:19:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  I just, I don't think you're going to get it.

• 1:19:16Rich Roll?

  How do you maintain your equanimity when you get punched in the face?

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  Man, I mean, in a weird way, you almost have to like, like it. It's, it's kind of weird. Like even, I'll, I'll tell you what, like you're always, you're a little nervous or anticipatory for a fight, but once you get hit a few times, you feel better. It's weird because you're like, okay, I feel it. I know what he's got, you know? And so you almost like look forward to that exchange. So you're kind of like in the rhythm.

• 1:19:44Rich Roll?

  So you, you, you know what you're dealing with, you mean?

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Yes. You kind of know what you're dealing with. Um, you know, it's before the bell rings, where you're like feeling each other out. That's more nerve wracking. But once you're in the fight, you're kind of like, okay, I've gotten hit by some shots or I've blocked some shots. I feel the rhythm. You feel more comfortable. You forget about everything else. But yeah, I mean, dude, there's moments when, yeah, I got hit so hard, I broke my nose and it's just pure will, man. It's like telling yourself, stay calm and keep pushing forward. But yeah, it's, uh, you gotta be a little bit sick in the head to get into this sport.

• 1:20:19Rich Roll?

  Obviously I would imagine you have certain things you're really good at, strengths in the ring, and then weaknesses. When you're preparing for a fight, how do you figure out like which to focus on? Is that contingent upon your opponent? Like you focus like, I'm really strong here. Let's develop that. Or I really need to work on these weaknesses.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's a famous saying in boxing, styles make fights. And essentially what that means is whatever style your opponent has, or those two fighters will have, will dictate how the fight goes. So maybe some guys are more Floyd Mayweather-esque where they sit back and they counter a lot. Maybe there's some guys that are more Mike Tyson-esque that come forward and are bulldozers. How those styles are dictates how the fight is. So it's important knowing what kind of style your opponent has and what your strengths are and kind of being honest with yourself and saying, okay, I need to either come forward and break this guy down and break his will, or I'm going to box him all night because that's my strength. So it really comes down in training camp, working on a few specific, whether it's punches

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  or combinations, or more of like a mindset of what you want to do against that opponent based on their strengths and weaknesses. So styles make fights is the best way to say it.

• 1:21:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And so with respect to Caleb specifically, do you keep that under wraps?

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, we definitely do. Like, I'm not going to sit here and say exactly what I'm doing.

• 1:21:42Rich Roll?

  Here's what I'm gonna do.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  I'm gonna do X, Y. Wait, when does this air again? No, I mean, listen, like I said before, he's a very good boxer and he's slick. I mean, there's, there's no one, I'm not giving away anything by saying that. He's, he's more of a boxer. He likes to move around. I'm more, I'm, you know, a bigger guy. I'm coming down from 175. I'm a true light heavyweight. I'm a power puncher. I've got heavy hands. So it will be that game of, you know, boxer versus a big puncher. And I can box too. I'm athletic. I can move too. But yeah, I mean, no one's, anybody who knows boxing looks at R2 Styles and, you know, and they know what's, what's up.

• 1:22:20Rich Roll?

  What is the state of union of boxing right now? I mean, it used to kind of dominate.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:27Rich Roll?

  You know, the media, when there was a big fight, like time stood still. But now with the rise of the UFC and the, and MMA, I mean, that's really kind of. Taken over in a big way.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:39Rich Roll?

  And, and I'm interested in, you know, how you kind of perceive how boxing now fits into that world.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  I think boxing is coming back. I mean, you see, especially fights overseas. You see guys like Anthony Joshua is one of the heavyweight champions that will literally put 70,000 people in a seat in Wembley or wherever they end up fighting over there in London. It's on a surge, but really, honestly, it comes down to the heavyweights. In the prime of boxing, in the heyday of boxing, you had American heavyweights. You had Evander Holyfield. You had Mike Tyson. People love to see big heavyweights because one punch can knock, knock you out and change everything. And then I also think that UFC came into play and took some market share. And I think that a lot of big athletes, guys that normally would have gone into boxing are now going into football or going into other sports, you know?

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  A guy like LeBron James would have been a great heavyweight fighter, but he decided to go into basketball and I don't blame him. He doesn't get punched in the face and he makes hundreds of millions of dollars. And you can make that as a fighter, but it's tough to get to that point. So I think you kind of have all these factors coming into play. And then not to mention the bureaucracy and bullshit of boxing. I mean, this is a dirty sport. You've got promoters. There's no regulatory body, right? So if you think about that, you've got the NBA, the NFL, you've got a commissioner in each one. Boxing is regulated state by state. So you've got promoters all over the world that are kind of just doing what they want. And promoters that hate each other to the point where they won't even work together.

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  So then you've got a promoter that's got a great heavyweight and another heavyweight, which is a situation right now between Tyson Fury and Deontay Wilder. They should have had a rematch right away and fought, but they're essentially in different promoters, different teams that can't agree on terms. So that's hurt the sport in terms of big matchups as well.

• 1:24:28Rich Roll?

  Well, I think we also, you know, are due for like another massive star, you know, like somebody like a Mike Tyson that just captures the imagination of everybody.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:38Rich Roll?

  You know, and I think that would, you know. Be like a sea change in how we all perceive the sport.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  I agree. I think there's some stars out there. You'd be surprised. I mean, the highest paid athlete in the world is a boxer. It's Floyd Mayweather, and I know he's retired, but then you've got Anthony Joshua, you've got a Mexican kid named Canelo Alvarez, who's a huge star. You've got Deontay Wilder, Tyson Fury. These are maybe household names, kind of, if you like sports. So I think it's doing well.

• 1:25:08Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Yeah. Well, we'll see what happens on July 20th, 20th, man.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  I can't wait.

• 1:25:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Do you get, uh, do you get drug tested?

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, everything by WADA, the World Anti-Doping Agency, which, um,

• 1:25:21Rich Roll?

  You have to account for your whereabouts, all that kind of stuff.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you get tested either throughout camp or before, after the fight, you know, and that depends on each state. But yeah, they, they make sure that everybody's playing on an even, even field, which is, you know, awesome. It's what the sport needs.

• 1:25:37Rich Roll?

  Can you, do you take supplements, any kind of supplements? You have to be careful about that.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta be careful. Um, so I'll take, you know, vitamins or anything that my nutritionist recommends or anything that I've been reading about and learning about. But first things first, I'll clear it with my lawyer, you know, because the worst thing in the world is get popped for something and it happens. Sometimes guys get popped. Sometimes they're lying, sometimes they're not, but you get popped for like tainted stuff and you thought you were taken. So yeah, at this level, you just gotta be careful.

• 1:26:03Rich Roll?

  Right. And so meanwhile, while you're pursuing this, you're also running this business. You're wearing a t-shirt of it. The CBD company. Uh, so walk me through, I know CBD has played a big part in your healing from, from AS and now has led to this kind of entrepreneurial venture.

• 1:26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, um, you know, as I mentioned, I, I've always had an entrepreneurial mindset, but WADA in early 2017 approved CBD. They took it off the banned list. And so, I started taking CBD throughout this journey and I noticed how much it helped me, you know, and there's reports out there of it helping inflammation, sleep, anxiety, honestly, all the things I was having trouble with. Some people are obsessed and love it. Uh, some people maybe don't, but there's no toxicity with it. So I knew that at the time I could take it while I was taking other medications. And then I started weaning off medications and I've been taking it for years now and I'm absolutely obsessed. So my vision and why my sister and I, um, her name is Angie, why we started the company,

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  Soul CBD was to help people with anxiety, sleep and pain. And that's where it came from. And so we started less than nine months ago. Um, and we were like, I gotta share this with people, you know? And so literally after my last fight, I've been diving in as an entrepreneur. We now have about maybe four or five employees and it's just absolutely taken off. Like it resounding testimonials from people, um, who it helps. And if anything, I'm just, I want to spread the message that like plants can heal. You know what I mean? And one important thing of a lot of our line is we have zero THC. So I've sent this off to a lot of my buddies that play in the NFL and other professional athletes. And they care about that. So that way they know that everything you're taking, um, is zero THC and you're fine on drug tests.

• 1:27:52Rich Roll?

  Right. And do you take it topically or it's like a drop, right?

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the most efficacious way is sublingually is a tincture underneath the tongue and you hold it there. That enters the blood brain barrier faster. And essentially what CBD does is it activates the endocannabinoid system, um, which all humans and mammals already have in their body. So, um, underneath the tongue gets in faster, but we have capsule form. Um, we have, you know, pain cream. So I'm taking it every single day.

• 1:28:21Rich Roll?

  And what is the experience of taking it been for you? Like what is the impact of it?

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  The first thing for me is it calmed anxiety. As I mentioned, on all these medications, I think just my chemical levels were messed up. And I started taking the CBD and I started noticing just general calmness and general well-being. And listen, you can point to placebo or whatever you want. All I know is it worked for me. And so I started taking it more and more. And then as I started taking stronger doses, it started helping me with pain and inflammation. So I'll literally take it every single night, and I'll take it in the morning as well, sometimes throughout the day. And it started helping me more with inflammation and sleep as well. But I started taking it for anxiety because I was having like full blown anxiety attacks, man. And it was crippling stuff.

• 1:29:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I've only taken it a few times. I've never taken it to address any kind of, you know, acute symptomology, just like, hey, you know, everyone's like taking CBD.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:29:19Rich Roll?

  And I like, I took it and I was, I didn't notice anything. It's not like a drug where you're like, suddenly you feel different.

• 1:29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:28Rich Roll?

  But I did notice, I guess there was a, I'm sure it was an anxiety reducing, you know, kind of experience, but I got like really tired.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  Ah, interesting.

• 1:29:37Rich Roll?

  You know, I slept really well that night. But I just felt kind of a little bit just like, like it drained me a little bit.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And listen, I'm not saying it's the end all be all. And I'm not going to sit here and be like, CBD is the reason I'm back in the ring.

• 1:29:52Rich Roll?

  If I had, yeah, yeah. But no, I'm not, and I'm not saying, yeah, I'm just saying, like, probably everybody's different. And if I had like an acute anxiety situation, or I had some kind of pain that I was trying to address, I would certainly, you know, try it for that.

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just think we're finding in general hemp and cannabis are playing huge roles. And you're seeing kind of like the conversation change is like now hemp is completely legal and certain states are legal. And I honestly think it's a plant that maybe it doesn't work for some people, but is helping a ton of people, you know?

• 1:30:22Rich Roll?

  And how is it running a business when you're trying to train?

• 1:30:25Speaker 01

  Dude, I'm busy, man. I mean, now, now, when I get in training camp, you know, I have a proper COO I hired, and we have a president that we're bringing on, and we've brought in proper investment. And so we have a whole team and they know, starting basically now, I'm putting my head down, I'm just training. But yeah, there were months there after the fight that I was literally, I was in between fights, we were negotiating different contracts and fights. But I'd be up running business, man, like taking out fires every single day, hiring, you know, making changes. There's always something going on. So, but it's been fun. It lights me up. And I know that, you know, being an entrepreneur is something I want to do the rest of my life.

• 1:31:04Rich Roll?

  Is it a direct to consumer model? Or are you selling it in retail?

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything we sell online. My soul CBD.com shameless plug. But yeah, everything we sell online, direct to consumer. We're planning on rolling out into retail later on the year. But obviously like CVS and Walgreens are now running CBD. I remember a couple of weeks ago. So the big, the big guys are getting into it.

• 1:31:27Rich Roll?

  But you can, can you sell it in all 50 states?

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  Yes, as long as it's under 0.3% THC. Which we have 0% THC, which is huge. We'll probably run a full spectrum line, which means it'll be, you know, have a little bit of THC in it later on. But it fits with our brand better. I mean, as an athlete to do 0 THC. But yeah, we sell to all 50 states.

• 1:31:47Rich Roll?

  And what are the lessons? You know, somebody who came up interested in finance, potentially was headed to Wall Street and now is, you know, wearing this entrepreneurial hat. What are the, how do the lessons of business and sport like inform each other for you?

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  It's a great question. Well, there's so many boxing analogies that I say, you know, you get knocked down seven times, you get back up eight. Like dude, I can't tell you how true that is. There were so many days, the first, we're in our ninth month, but and I, I've started another business before, early in my career with a couple of partners that failed. And it's crazy through that failure in that business, I feel like I got my MBA. So my biggest lesson is like, if you want to go into this and be an entrepreneur or whatever it is in life, know you're going to get knocked down, dude. And you just gotta know, I gotta get back up and tomorrow's a new day. And so there's always something that you're freaking out about and it's about managing the highs and lows. That's what boxing and the sickness has really taught me. I've had some really high highs and I've had some really high low man, lows.

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  But um, it's about managing those highs and lows and knowing that, like I said, you get knocked down seven times, you get back up eight. And you know, all you can really do, there's a famous saying, my strength coach, his name's Gabe Rangel, he tells me all the time, he says, he's an ex-special forces marine. So he's one of my best friends and he's seen some terrible things, you know, overseas. He's done multiple tours and he always tells me in camp, control the controllables. And control the controllables basically means just worry and focus on what you can control, right? When you start worrying about what if this happens, what if that happens, whether it's boxing, business, life, that's when you start to go in a wrong direction. So I always tell myself, control the controllables. And that kind

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  of saying that Gabe taught me and that him and some of the Marines have gone by really helps.

• 1:33:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the more you rely on that, or the more you kind of invest yourself in that, the more you realize there actually aren't that many things that you can't control. You know what I mean? And most of our energy is spent obsessing on the eight billion things that we can't control, thinking that we can control them. But a healthy appreciation for how little control we do have over basically most of the stuff in our life allows you to more deeply focus on those few things that you can control and release the rest.

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you said it beautifully.

• 1:34:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, you're training. So all you can, all you can control is what you eat, you know, how much you sleep and what you do when you get into the ring and your training, you know, and like, everything else is a variable that's out of your hands.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  And that speaks a lot to the meditation and mindfulness that really, the more you can be in this present moment, and it's very difficult, but the more you can just focus on this present moment and control what you can control, the better off you're going to be, probably the more successful you're going to be.

• 1:34:34Rich Roll?

  People ask me all the time, like, oh, you're running an ultra marathon, or you're in this long race. And like, when you're starting to suffer and you're in pain, like, how do you not quit? And it's like, oh, well, you be present and all that. But no one's punching me in the face. You know what I mean?

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:49Rich Roll?

  Throw that in there and then like, try to grab, like, I don't know how you could possibly do that.

• 1:34:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, but you're going a lot longer than me with these ultra marathons. I remember

• 1:34:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but time is elastic, man. You know what I mean? Like, your relationship with time changes. Like I said, you're getting punched in the face, that 30 seconds feels like three hours, you know?

• 1:35:06Speaker 01

  It's a good point. I just think it's, you know, maybe we're wired differently. Because I sit here and thinking, you know, hearing about your ultra marathons and stuff. And I think to myself, I don't think I could do that, you know?

• 1:35:16Rich Roll?

  It's just a different thing, you know? But it's a different kind of pain, for sure.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:21Rich Roll?

  Less acute. But how do you, how do you, so how do you deal with or think about fear?

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  I think fear is an incredible tool, you know, because fear in a sense is the reason why I'm gonna train my ass off for this fight and fear is why I work so hard to build my business. A healthy fear, I think, is important, you know. Um, I, I like this, courage isn't about not being scared, not having fear, it's about courage is about pushing through it, right? So I think if you can use fear as a tool and almost like a counter punch, sorry for more of the puns, but you roll off the punches and you counter punch, I think it's a beautiful thing. So having that fear, if I didn't have fear, um, I wouldn't train, I wouldn't train hard, I'd be like, ah, whatever. But when stakes are high, that fear I kinda

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  use as an asset, you know?

• 1:36:15Rich Roll?

  What about when you're in the ring?

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  When you're in the ring, I'm more scared, I'm more scared of losing than getting hurt. I'm more scared of messing up than getting hurt, which as I say out loud, is probably crazy and stupid, because the first thing you should think about is your safety, but I'm more concerned with, with winning. And so for me, that fear just, it's a different type of fear. Um, I know from the outside looking in, it looks like a brutal sport and intense, and it is, but um, it's more of a fear of not performing well. And when you're in the ring, like I said, you just have to stay calm and just trust the process. And listen, some fights don't go your way, and it is what it is. But at the end of the day, like I said before about the reason I wanted to turn pro, there's a weird thing

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  in boxing where, and I've hopped in the ring in fights where maybe I didn't train as hard as I should have, and that little sense of doubt, like, fuck, could I have run another mile? Could I have sparred another round? That'll kill you. So if you go all out and you give it everything you have in training camp, you can step into the ring with this feeling, because I've had both feelings, both ways, but you can step into that ring and feel like, well dude, no matter what, like, I did everything I could to prepare for this, so let's just let the chips fall where they may.

• 1:37:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Have you ever been hit so hard or in a situation where you're like, I can't, I can't do this anymore, man?

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, the broken rib, the...

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  When I broke my nose, um, when I got knocked down, my sixth or seventh fight, um, you have those moments of like doubt and you can't do this, but you know, I'd be lying if I said I didn't. But ultimately the will to win and push forward kinda, you know, overcomes that. But yeah, I mean, I'm human, man. You, you get those moments and this is an elite level we're fighting at and talented guys. And so, um, yeah, I think anybody who doesn't say they've had moments like that, they're probably lying.

• 1:38:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, walk me through the, the kind of ritual, like the pre-match ritual. And the reason I wanna explore this a little bit is I think for anybody who's listening, we all have things that we're working towards, whether it's a big presentation to your boss or, you know, you're gonna run your first marathon, or you're gonna give your first speech, or whatever it is. Like, there's always, you know, something looming in the distance that we're kind of trying to gear up to be our best self for. And I think there's something to be said for really canonizing, like, a specific approach to those events so that you can show up and be your best self.

• 1:38:54Rich Roll?

  And that's gonna look different for different people, but you know, what is your ritual for getting your head right? Like, when you're right on the precipice of like, walking out there?

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  Well, like I said, I do the breathing technique back there and the weeks before I'd been visualizing. Um, you know, every morning when we're in the hotel and about to leave for the arena, I, I say a little prayer and I kinda do a little visualization and I kinda, I thank God and, and basically wish for, uh, both of us to, I honestly do, I wish for both of us to come out, uh, healthy. You know, I, when I go in there, I don't wish ill will on my opponent. I never have. And I've even had opponents that have, in a face-offs, literally, you know, call me the most ridiculous shit you'd imagine and F you this and F you that. And when I step in the ring and the bell rings, I'm not thinking about hurting them out of anger. I'm only thinking winning and I'll do anything to win, right? But-

• 1:39:49Speaker 01

  I, I so.

• 1:39:51Rich Roll?

  Anger is not a great fuel source.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  It not for me. And maybe like I said, Tyson, it was, but for me, when I come out of the ring, you usually see me, I'm smiling. Like dude, I'm smiling. I feel loose. When I'm loose and I feel like I'm having fun, I perform better. When I perform like I'm gonna kill this dude, I don't, when I'm thinking that, I don't perform well. So I always kind of say a prayer every single one and I, I say, you know, let me perform the best I can. Thank you for this opportunity. Let's keep us both healthy, but you know, um, let me, let me do my thing. And it's really just little things like superstitions. For instance, I always put uh, my left sock on, my left wrap on, my left glove on every single time. Everything is left first, left shoe.

• 1:40:36Speaker 01

  Um, so these little superstitions give me comfort. Um, but yeah, it's staying calm and breathing and kind of moving through it and then um, just kind of doing the damn thing. So it's, it's one of those things that I think if you can find your routine, you're gonna be well off. It's when there's too many other variables that you can't control that you, that you really kind of get thrown off course. Um, so for me, it's like trying to wear the same thing and say the same things in my head and eat the same thing. And then, you know, before I get in the dressing room and wrapped up and all that kind of gives me a little bit of uh, confidence.

• 1:41:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but none of that is of value if you haven't been doing it all along. Like you haven't put all the work in, right? So you show up on that day and it just unfolds in the way that you visualized it because you visualized it a million times and it feels comfortable and normal.

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember my first fight, I fought actually on national TV, I fought on Fox Sports and I fought uh, my hometown, Chicago. And I remember you get to the arena and we were walking in and I remember walking towards the ring just to take a look at it before anybody came in. And I was so nervous, I couldn't feel my legs. And I thought to myself, shit, this better go away. And it was my first pro fight and it's such a different world because in the amateurs, you wear headgear, you have bigger gloves, you feel naked, your pro fight, because you walk out there, you're shirtless, no headgear, you've got these 10 ounce gloves, you can feel your knuckles through, there's cameras in your face. But sure enough, once I got to the dressing room and stayed calm and I, I walked through,

• 1:42:11Speaker 01

  um, as soon as I started to walk to the ring and the actual, you know, moment of the fight, I felt calm. I felt my legs again, but for a good like hour, I could barely feel my legs from nervousness.

• 1:42:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Ever since that fight, now I'm good. Like, I never get that feeling again.

• 1:42:27Rich Roll?

  So when you're doing the weigh-in and you guys are like nose to nose and there's all the shit talking and all that kind of thing, like how much of that in general, and not necessarily just with you, but with the other, you know, your fellow boxers? Like, how much of that is just performative bullshit? And then behind the scenes, when the cameras are off, like you're cool with each other?

• 1:42:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:46Rich Roll?

  Or like after the fight, you're bros? Or is it really like what's being portrayed?

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  You're never bros after the fight. You always have mutual respect. Like, I respect every single opponent that gets in the ring with me, for sure. I'm not really a shit talker. I've never have been in press conferences. And you'll see this leading up, multiple press conferences, interviews we do. I mean, obviously, if it gets heated, you're gonna say some stuff and when you're face to face, but I usually don't say much. Um, it's not really my style, but yeah, you see some fighters that kind of really amplify it to kind of whatever, sell more pay-per-view and like Floyd and Conor McGregor when they fought. I think a lot of that was pageantry, but a lot of it is-

• 1:43:24Rich Roll?

  It's like perfect showmanship.

• 1:43:26Speaker 01

  Oh, dude, and listen, they sold the hell out of that show and they made so much money, so, um, you know, all for that. But it's just not my style, so I really don't go into it that way. I don't like talk a lot of shit, um, and do things just to get attention. Um, but I would say the majority of it's pretty real, man. Like, you're about to go to battle with this dude and you've always got like his entourage and your entourage chirping and barking while you're, you know, and that adds to the fuel, so-

• 1:43:54Rich Roll?

  You just need to bring Wahlberg with you.

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, bring Mark, you know, and Pete. Um, but yeah, so you, you always got those guys that are chirping in the background, which kind of adds to it, so.

• 1:44:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool. Well, uh, I wish you much luck, my friend.

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  Thank you, sir.

• 1:44:11Rich Roll?

  July 20th, I'll be tuning in and, uh, really great to talk to you.

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  I had a great time.

• 1:44:16Rich Roll?

  Cool, man.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  It's been an honor to be on the show.

• 1:44:17Rich Roll?

  Feel good?

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  I feel great, man.

• 1:44:18Rich Roll?

  Cool. So, uh, if people want to dig on Mike, please just set the DVR or make an appointment to watch the fight, July 20th. And My Soul CBD is the website if you want to check out that and where else people go to learn more about you.

• 1:44:35Speaker 01

  I guess Instagram, @officialmikelee and then Facebook, Mike Lee. And yeah, usually I'm more active on Instagram. That's where I'll show a bunch of stuff about training and leading up to the fight and all the fun stuff.

• 1:44:47Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Thank you, brother.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:44:49Rich Roll?

  Come back and talk to me about it after the fight.

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  Let's do it. I'll bring the belt.

• 1:44:52Rich Roll?

  All right, man. That's a promise.

• 1:44:55Speaker 01

  I got you.

• 1:44:55Rich Roll?

  Cool. Peace. Good dude, that Mike Lee, right? Like I said, like just the kind of guy that you want to get behind, that you want to root for. Let Mike know what you thought of today's conversation. You can hit him up on Instagram @officialmikelee and don't forget to tune into the fight on Saturday, July 20th on Fox. If you're struggling with your diet, if you really want to master your plate once and for all, but you feel like you don't really have the skills in the kitchen, you don't have the time, or the budget, or the attention level that something like this requires, I can't stress enough how helpful our Plant Power Meal Planner can be.

• 1:45:36Rich Roll?

  We created this digital platform to solve one very fundamental problem. How do you make nutritious eating delicious, healthy, accessible, and affordable? And I really think that we succeeded. Everybody who uses it really loves it. It's very affordable, it's just $1.90 a week. And I'm really proud of it. When you sign up, you get access to thousands of delicious and easy to prepare, plant-based recipes that are customized based on all these inputs that you fill out when you sign up. We have unlimited grocery lists. We have grocery delivery integrated into the platform. So everything you need to prepare these meals arrives at your doorstep and that's available in most metropolitan cities, areas.

• 1:46:18Rich Roll?

  And we got this great team of expert nutrition coaches at the ready to guide you, to answer all of your questions seven days a week. For more information and to sign up, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website, and you will not be sorry. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the podcast, a couple of simple ways to do that. Just tell your friends about the show, grab their phone and hit the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or on YouTube or on Spotify, wherever you choose to enjoy this media. Take a screen grab of the episode that you're listening to, share it on social media, tag me, I like to share that stuff out. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts and you can support us on

• 1:47:01Rich Roll?

  Patreon at richroll.com/donate. I appreciate everybody who helps put on the show, because I do not do this alone. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering. Actually, Jason, who lives in Phoenix, is here today in the studio. He's pumping his arms right now. Thank you, Jason, for all your production help. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for videoing and editing the podcast. Blake is here, serving up some audio duties as well. Jessica Miranda for graphics. DK for advertiser relationships. Ally Rogers for portraits. And Chris Swan, who's here today as well, for free-floating assistance on whatever's needed. Thank you, Chris. And theme music is always by Anna Lima. Appreciate the love, you guys. See

• 1:47:44Rich Roll?

  you back here next week with a conversation with author and New York Times Deputy Sports Editor, Matthew Futterman. It's a good one. Until then, keep fighting the good fight. Peace. Plants.

• 1:48:00Speaker 02

  Namaste.