#621: UFC Hall of Famer Bas Rutten on Fundamentals of Real Self-Defense, Savage Fight Stories, How He’s Handled Bullies, Breathing Techniques for Increasing Stamina and Endurance, The Art of Personal Reinvention, and Cultivating the Practice of Prayer

This episode is brought to you by Maui Nui venison, wildly delicious venison. Maui Nui. is one of my favorite things on the entire planet. It has been for quite a while. I've been eating Maui Nui venison for now the past three plus years, and there's no going back. My pantry and freezers are full of it. I restock every month. Why would I do this? One. If I combine Maui Nui venison with even a little exercise, I drop body fat.

Unbelievably. Quickly. And Axis Deer have roughly two percent Body fat. It's incredibly lean. Two?

It's very tender, not gamey at all. Tastes delicious and it's one of the most nutrient dense meats on the planet. I would go so far as to say it is the most nutrient-dense meat I have ever found because of the rich volcanic soils. Remarkable plant diversity, and so on. including wild grazing. So I literally, ten minutes ago, just finished some leftovers of ground Axis deer. This is Maui Nui venison with some

canned chili, just organic chili, beans and so on that I put into a Pan. And cooked for ten minutes. And I would rather eat that than a five hundred dollar meal. In New York City, honestly. It makes me happier on a deep level.

To eat this and it makes me healthier. On a fundamental. levels. Number three, ethically, I feel great about Maui Nui protein. Axis deer are an invasive species on Maui where their population needs to be managed in order to protect vulnerable ecosystems. I think the number that was introduced Well I was perhaps maybe f sixtier.

in nineteen fifty nine, something like that, and unmanaged that population could grow to I think it's two hundred thousand. Within the next twenty years. So using stress free harvesting methods, Maui Nui prevents environmental destruction caused by access to your overpopulation, which literally looks like wildfire damage. from helicopter. So back to the story. I love this stuff that much. Should be clear, I eat it all the time. I use their dog treats for Molly. I use their broth, which is second to none in terms of nutritional profile. Maui Nui's fresh venison is a nearly daily go to for me.

Both as a supplement to my daily diet, that's broth, jerks, snacks, et cetera, that I mentioned, and through main courses like last night via their fresh meat subscription program. And the cuts are all spectacular. Leg medallions are one of my favorites. I fell in love with this company so much, and the husband and wife. co-founders behind it that I ended up investing. And that is a huge rarity, especially with this type of company. Remarkably, Maui Nui has now nearly stabilized Maui's access to your population. That's been the goal all along, which means the door to one of the most exclusive proteins on the market will soon be closed. The list of people waiting for invitations to become a fresh subscriber is long. That's not. BS that is the case. There's a long wait list, which is why I am very excited to offer you guys, my listeners, Tim Farishwers, an exclusive opportunity to bypass

the wait list to cut the line and get instant access to one of the few remaining subscriptions. You can secure your subscription by visiting MauiNuiVenison.com slash Tim. That's Maui M A U I N U I Nui venison.com slash Tim. You need to have the slash Tim. to bypass the line. If you're already on the wait list and you go to this link, you will get immediate access. So Maui NuiVenison.com. Maui Nui must stop offering subscriptions at only eight thousand subscribers when the access to your population will have reached equilibrium, so you must act fast to grab one of the remaining spots. So subscribe today at MauiNueVenison.com slash Tim one more time. That's MauiNuiVenison.com slash Tim, and the race goes to the Swift.

This episode is brought to you by ASleep. My God, am I in love with ASleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. More than thirty percent of Americans struggle with sleep, and I'm a member of that sad group, Temperature. is one of the main causes of poor sleep and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, putting them back on, and repeating ad nauseum, but now I am falling asleep in record time, faster than ever. Why because I'm using a simple device. Called the Pod Pro Cover.

by eight sleep. It's the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pair dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced, but most user friendly solution. on the market. I polled all of you guys on social media about the best tools for sleep enhancing sleep and uh ASleep was by far and away the crow favorite. I mean people were just raving fans of this. So I used it and here we are. Add the Pod Pro cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as fifty five degrees Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. My girlfriend runs hot all the time. She doesn't need

cooling, she loves the heat, and we can uh have our own bespoke temperatures on either side, which is exactly what we're doing. Now for me and for many people The result, eight sleep users fall asleep up to thirty two percent faster, reduce sleep interruptions by up to forty percent, and get more restful sleep overall. I can personally attest to this because I track it in all sorts of ways. It's the total solution for enhanced recovery, so you can take on the next day feeling refreshed. And good news, 8 Sleep has launched the next generation of the Pod. The new Pod 3 enables more accurate sleep and health tracking with twice the number of sensors. It's just a smoother, better experience. That delivers you The best sleep.

on earth. At least that has been true for me. Simply add this to your existing mattress, And you're all set. It is not magic, but sometimes it does. feel like it, it just works. So go to eight sleep.com slash Tim and save two hundred and fifty dollars on the pod cover. That's eight sleep.com slash Tim all spelled out.

E I G H T aidsleep.com slash Tim. ASleep currently ships within the US, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU. And Australia. You can also find the link in this episode's description. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then I also do post some questions. No se

Cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoscal. No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and gents, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. I'm gonna skip my usual preamble because I'm fidgeting in my seat. I am extremely excited about this conversation and I don't want to hear myself talk. So my guest today, why would I be so excited? This is Sebastian Rutin. better known as Bos Ruten. You can find him on Twitter and elsewhere at Bosruten MMA. Is a Dutch American actor, former mixed martial artist, kickboxer, and professional wrestler. He was a UFC heavyweight champion and a three time

King of Pancras world champion. We're gonna talk quite a bit about that, finishing his career on a twenty-two fight unbeaten streak with a strike accuracy of seventy point six percent, the highest ever recorded by Fight Metric. Ruton was co-host of Inside MMA on Axis TV. That's AXS from two thousand seven to twenty sixteen, and he has been a color commentator in several MMA organizations, including Pride Fighting Championships, another thing that we will spend some time on. He has appeared in numerous television shows, movies, and video games as an actor and continues to be involved in MMA through his coaching and publishing of instructional materials. Boss became a naturalized American citizen in the late nineteen nineties, and in twenty fifteen he was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame. We'll link to all of the social as well as the O two trainer, which we're gonna get to. You can find that on Instagram at O2 Lung Trainer and we'll link to YouTube, Facebook, and other places.

Boss. Welcome to the show. It's nice to see you. Oh, very good to see you, Tim. Thank you so much for having me. And I gotta tell you just a little story before we hop in and it's gonna tie into a lot of things. So

I rarely turn into a heavy breathing fanboy. With these types of conversations, but I have to tell you That Она мост творенцы в майфа. In nineteen ninety two, my first travel outside of the United States was to Japan, where I became an exchange student, and I wore a school uniform every day.

Of school. And On my way to school I would always stop at this particular bookstore because they had a magazine called Kakogi Tsuji. And I started becoming fascinated by something called sh well, you know, shoot, of course.

Which was founded by uh Sayama Satoru, and then I would also follow You WF and these really bizarre pro wrestling circuits because I saw a video from a friend of mine, this is pre-internet. Where There appeared to be real knockouts occasionally, and there appeared to be real contact. And then this thing called Pancras comes out.

And I was following this because I knew a few of the people or knew of a few of the people involved, like Funaki, which I'll definitely want to ask you about. And I remember The very first fight that I saw you in, which ended in less than a minute, opponent fifty pounds heavier. And I just remember the deafening silence. in the arena at one point'cause no one really knew what to do.

And uh that was my introduction to Boss Ruten. So I have followed you for a very, very, very long time. And it's a real pleasure To connect. In person. So I just had to get that off my chest. But it's been a long time coming. And perhaps we could just begin with a question that I've always wondered, why is there

Or why does there appear to be such A strong martial arts tradition in the Netherlands because when I landed in Japan, that was the first thing That I was not expecting. So there's Peter Arts, Ernesto Houst, you had

All of these Dutch fighters, people absolutely loved Ramon Decker, for instance. And even going further back I learned, because I did judo as my sport, which was mandatory. That The Dutch had this incredible history of judo wins going back to the earliest Olympic games. Where does that come from? I have no clue, I believe, because we're such a small country and we really like the people in the world to know that we exist, maybe?

I mean the kick watchers they have to be the the best Dutch. I remember the story from uh the trainer from Host, you already understood host you mentioned him. Jan Plas and Johan Voss. The two guys. And they went with their team, like Rob Kamen, all these guys at the time. I was huge fans of those. They went to Thailand and they got a butt kicked. Like really bad. And then they realised wait a minute, uh predominantly they're only kicking. So what if we do Western boxing and we combine that

With kicks, you know, in order to set up the kicks. And boom. The Dutch kickboxing was born and suddenly everybody started just demolishing the ties. I mean, your Bob and Deckers, you touched on him as well, he was my idol. He was a good friend of mine as well. Unfortunately he passed away A bunch of years ago, but he was like part for part, I would say the the the most powerful guy. He was the first guy Who became the fighter of the year in Thailand that always went to a Thai guy, but he was so good that he couldn't go without it, they have to take him and

When you see him fighting Koban, a guy over two hundred matches, never been knocked out, and he was the first guy to knock him out, and the whole place Lumpini Stadium champ gets quiet, and you see Rob Kmart jumping in the ring with a Dutch flag, and he's waving it around, and nobody says the word. It blew my mind. That was the reason I started training at the same gym, Mang Ho. That was Roman Decker. So yeah, I truly believe it's we have natural heavyweights, we have the tallest people in the world. So I think that translates really what to K one and glory because that's predominantly heavyweight boxing at the time, the kickboxing. And then just the Dutch style. That just tied everything together. Nowadays everybody It's like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, right? At the beginning nobody knew, but now everybody knows that it's the same at the Dutch kickboxing. Now pretty much everybody's doing it. So let's

Flashback. to childhood just to paint a picture for folks, because people who have seen your highlight videos are like, My God, this guy's a savage machine. But let's go back and perhaps If you wouldn't mind, just describe a bit Your childhood and what you were like as a child.

Because I had no knowledge of this until I started doing research for this conversation. But If you could just describe yourself as a kid I think that would be helpful for setting the stage. When I was born I came out apparently full with eczema.

But that went away. And then at four years old I contract rheumatic fever. Which was the best of the two because it it was either so for leukemia or that. So thankfully it was that I took four months in the hospital. But I was six years old, we moved to a village. And that's when my eczema came back together with severe asthma. Now my eczema was really bad. I had to wear gloves, long sleeves, turtlenecks because I had it in my neck. I was a leper in school. That's what they called me. If I would do this.

Watch out your ears don't fall off. You know, constantly there were I was bullied on it on a daily basis. But you know, when I was twelve, I saw we were on a vacation in France, and I saw this movie Enter the Dragon. It was 17 years and older to get in, but my brother and I we found a way to sneak in for free, and we were young too young for the movie. And that's where I saw Bruce Lee. And boy, that was it. I realized that if I will be like that guy, because he was also a skinny guy, I was a skinny guy because of my asthma, I had these horrible asthma attacks. then uh the bullying would probably stop because then I could defend myself. So it took me two years to convince my parents to start martial arts and then after two years they just they gave up because I was every day I would ask them. And finally they broke, they say okay, just go. And I was fortunate to live next to two beautiful neighbor girls. And one of the girls was dating the coolest guy in town, Xavier. Xavier, that's how you pronounce it in Holland. And he took me onto a swing. He was always helping me a little bit because I had these things with birds. I was always in the trees. I was swinging trees. But I had these birds that came pick me up from school.

I mean they were so tame, it was all the shit on my shoulder wherever I went, even in the shower, it was amazing. And he brought me to the adult type W classes. And within months I started beating some of the adults, of course not the black belts, but I started dropping big guys and I overheard this guy talking about me in the dressing room. Man, did you see that kid Balsi drop Jack with her finger spinning back into the head? Whoa, everybody laughing. Man, that kid has a lot of talent. You know, and as a kid when you only hear bad things about you and suddenly people start talking Good things about you, you tend to listen to the adults. And uh that led to the first street fight, the biggest bully in my school, Shucky was his name.

Again I was riding my bicycle on the street and there he came with six, seven of his buddies and hey leper, whatever he was screaming and this time I shout at something back. And uh I heard them laugh, I looked back and sure enough, they started to chase me and I told myself, This is it. I'm not gonna do it anymore. So I put my bike on the stand on the sidewalk. They came surrounding me with the mics. I always have to laugh about it because in the movies this is like in the scene at night. They do it with with cars and the headlights are the lighting for the fight, you know, but this was with fighting with the young kids.

And then Shucky started uh pushing his chest to me and and challenging me, telling me that I had to hit him. So I did. And then I realized that the bullies weren't really that strong. It took one punch, which is weird, by the way, because I was doing Taekwondo, which is ninety percent kicking. So I knocked them out. One punch, nose was broke, that was a problem. Because now the police was called. And they showed up at my mom and dad's doorstep and that verified, you know, you see, they always thought that martial arts was violence.

I have to in protection of my parents. I never told them I was bullied. My mom had such an enormous A lot of trouble with me. Every night I had to be mummified is what we call it. Creams and uh cortisones and put a wrap me all around the whole family would send in old bed sheets which she would wrap up to badges and then in the middle of the night they would scratch it off because it would itch so bad she had to do it again. So she had so much work with me, I never wanted to bother with her that I was Bully because I'm pretty sure that if my dad would have known

I don't think he would have said take him off. I I I believe he would have said keep him on there because this is good for him. So That's where everything came from because then I realised, Wait a minute. That was easy. You know, so now I went after the bullies. I literally made a list about every single one of them, Adam. And other kids in school who got bullied.

Guess who took care of that problem, you know? Now I was the bully the bully guy. I took care of all the bully. So And that was it. My mom and dad they took me off, what I said, from Taekwondo, but then when I was twenty I moved out of the house. Immediately I started doing karate. not re of realizing it was not full contact. So then I started tie boxing within six months and then within three months I started competing tie boxing. And one thing led to another and bada bing bada boom now I'm here talking to you.

No here Now here you are. What do you make of the birds? I actually want to hear a little bit more about that. That's like Saint Francis of Assisi. How did that happen, or how do you explain that? I had no friends. Everybody thought I was contagious. So my time was spending in the trees. I was three, four hours a day. In the forest. We had a forest.

At the front of our home we had a big forest. And I was always climbing trees. I could literally go throughout the whole forest. Maybe I had to go four or five times down from treetop to treetop I would swing, but Who came in handy with bullies if they started to chase me, I just climbed a tree. And then they climbed the tree and I started swinging to the other tree.

And then uh That the bullish tried to do it and then one guy, uh and uh a big guy one time he fell down. And his head Next to a big rock. And that

Of course they get out and suddenly everybody Nobody wanted to chase me anymore, so Yeah, that was it. And that was my contact also with birds. I always was mesmerized with birds. And I found this nest. From uh oh what do you call him here? A jackdaw. That's why she call him here.

A cow is in a in Dutch. I knew I had to do it with gloves because if you put a a a human scent on it then they might push the other ones out. So I had this uh plastic glove that I went and took one out and now I you become the dad. You know, so you start feeding it and it's amazing, man. It's It's so cool because they

You you're there for the first flight. I mean every time they go down they crash. They crash. They're like Steve Austin, the six million dollar men on the moon, right? But nothing'cause there's one day that he goes and it goes zzz and he starts going up. And they're so excited they start they start screaming and That was the sound I used to make and wherever I was, he would pick me up from school, this guy. He would know in what uh room I was And then just he was sitting in front of the teacher got really angry.

Because she was constantly in the class and then afterwards he would sit on my steering wheel for my bicycle or on my shoulder. He was always with me. Well. So I must say that doing prep for this conversation has made me laugh so many times. I mean if you didn't exist, someone would have to invent you for

A novel or a movie. Things I just want to check on. So the first Is that I read after Enter the Dragon. One of the first things you did was make a set of nunchaku from two pieces of wood and some chain. The line that I wanted to just confirm here, it says

The became an important accessory for the young boss and he carried them around his neck even to the local grocery store. Is that accurate? That's accurate. But they were very dangerous because they didn't use any screws just like with a Like you know you have those uh how you say nails, like curved nails. So if I would go to high just let go. Everywhere I had is kung fu shoes. Ha.

All right. Doesn't sound safe. Now just this we we we don't have to spend a lot of time on the next one, but just so people can appreciate just the full picture. So I ask all guests if they can send any exploratory bullets that might be interesting. And there are a couple of them that we're going to explore, but one that I just want to mention and we're not gonna we don't have to spend a lot of time on it, but one of the bullets you sent was

Was drunk, slipped when I came out of the shower and broke a toilet with my head when falling backwards. This was in Hawaii, my whole floor started floating. Very funny story. No clue how my skull didn't break. I guess I hit a weak spot. Yeah. Received here. One of which came out of left field. Well, I mean th a lot of them came out of left field, but one was Your original profession as a culinary chef went to four years of culinary school, so I did not know this.

How did that happen? And then when did it end? I always wanted to be a chef. I was mesmerised with it when I was a young kid already. And that went away because the martial arts started coming along. I l really like that, but I still was working as a chef. As a cook, I was not the chef in a restaurant, I was the sous chef.

It stopped because I was working for a guy for three years. And I would run the whole kitchen. Only on the weekends he had to come by. Like my my claim to fame was I did forty two people one night. All different people with with an appetizer, main course and a dessert. And I did it all by myself. So I was always I I liked those kind of challenges. I never wanted to pull him in because he was living in the house next to it. I always wanted to do it myself. And on Tuesdays we had maybe The most people I ever had was eight. Never will have more people. So I would make preparation for twenty, just to make sure, double it up and then some.

One day a cycling group came and suddenly it was full and there was not enough preparation and I run to the house and say, You gotta come and help me and he gets in my face where we need to cook for these people. I say, Listen, it's okay, you're angry, I got it, I understand it. It's weird because we never had this amount of people, but Why don't we do this after this is over? You know, because right now we have to get out these people. And he started screaming and he kept going and he says, You do whatever I say, I you do and I said, Well no, that's actually not true. You're not controlling me, so now and you grab the big bowl of butter. And he says if I throw this on the ground and I tell you to clean it up, you're gonna clean it up. So I walked over to him, I hit the ball out of his hand.

And he got all over the glass, ask me. And he said And I took my apron off. I go, Good luck with the people. Bye. And I remember at the time I had a pager. That was at the time. And he kept painting me, I go do that. What I did for you in those three years. And then just to fire at me that that was it. And that's when I stopped working and I started focusing more on martial arts. I was also, believe it or not, this is really what I'm gonna say now, a model.

I was a model. That was controlled by three women who had a model agency, a new model agency, and they love me. I was working three, four days a week. I was making twelve hundred dollars, twelve hundred guilders at the time, which is a lot of money if you're twenty years old. But you know, once I started doing martial arts as well that's of course when I had hair I start showing up for the shiner. Here and there. And they didn't really like that. And that's Was the end of that job as well. So that's how I lost both of these jobs.

Okay. Well you've uh you were very proactive in terminating one of them. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about if this makes sense as a next step. Pankrus.

And Pankurasa. I'm not even sure how you say it in English, frankly, because I always heard it in Japanese. How did that happen and what was that experience? Like for you. In the beginning. For you know, leading into it and then first fight, let's just say. Okay, so I get a background story really fast.

I was a kickboxer and I knocked everybody out. And then I got bored. I thought it was a great job to to become a bouncer. Yeah, think about that. So I became a bouncer, but it was of course not a really healthy lifestyle. Because at five o'clock we close and then we go to the after parties, you know, and everything bad goes after that. So on one of those parties, apparently I talked to a promoter After two years of not competing and not living a healthy lifestyle.

Because it was this new guy Frank Lopman, the animal was his name, was a kickboxer, who came was released from prison and he was gonna re resume his fighting career if I wanted to fight him. And I go, bit my drunk head, I go, Sure. But I have no clue of this whole conversation. And then in February, they gave me a call and they asked me where to send the posters to. I said the posters? I said, from what? He says from the fight. I said, Who's fighting? I said, You I said, Whoa, who am I fighting? He says Frank Lotman, I said the animal. And he goes, Yeah, I go.

When did I say that? And he goes, You don't remember we Anyway, I realized oh, I said yes to the guy. I said, Okay, when is the fight? And it was in two and a half weeks. Yeah, I couldn't rope skip for twenty minutes my first class. That's how bad I like I need this to say. I lost that fight and but the Dutch audience forgot all about my other knockouts.

They focused only on that fight and it kind of chewed me out and spit me out. So I said, okay, this is it. I don't want to do it anymore. But my martial arts was always there. I wanted to do something with it. And my teacher, my karate teacher, came up with this crazy idea to do choreographed fight scenes. Like we go in spandex, we're all pumped up buddies. You go to a nightclub at midnight, they close the lights. It gets dark, suddenly the high pitched music starts, strop a scope and we come up and back flips and we do all this crazy stuff and we start fighting each other. And high level stuff, because cigarettes out on the mark, cups spinning back into breaking wool shots. We did everything, right?

And that became suddenly a thing. Suddenly we start doing it in more nightclubs. And then suddenly we start doing it at big events, tieboxing events in the break. And then it became a European show. And we start traveling to Europe and it became Tutch TV, European TV. And on one of these shows I was always going to the ring with backflips and uh at the end make a somersault the backflip and then I would jump in the ring and we do our show. And Chris Dolman, he was the godfather of mixed martial arts, so to say, in all the free fighting actually, that's what they called it at the time. And he stopped me after the show and he says, Listen, I know you're from Thai boxing, you're an animal. And now I see you doing all these crazy acrobatics.

I mean, I think you're a perfect fit to be a free fighter. I go, What's free fighting? And they explained me the rules that pretty much anything would go. I said, Okay, sure. So I went to his gym a few times. But it's far away. It was in Amsterdam. It's like a two and a half hour drive, you know, especially when it's traffic. So it didn't really work, but one day the telephone went. And this was really weird. Oh, and by the way, I met my wife in ninety two in the February ninety two. And she was looking at me weird one day. She had this really weird look. I go, What's going on? She says You're gonna be a famous fighter in Japan.

And I go, No, I told you I'm not gonna fight anymore. She says, I know, but you said Holland. You're gonna go to Japan. So a year and four months later I get the phone call. And normally I never picked up the phone and my answering machine was broke.

Somehow I picked up the phone and it was Chris Dolman. He says you gotta jump in the car right now because there's this new organization called Pancras. There's two guys here, Suzuki Minoru. and Funaki Mazakatsu who are scouting, they're looking for fighters. Maybe this is great for you but she can make a money. You know he says okay, so I jumped in the car, went over there And he had an organization rings and one of his guys was the rings champion And we just needed to spar, they just wanted to show technique.

But that guy just went really hard, so I told him to slow down. I said, Listen, it's not necessary to try to knock each other out, just let's relax and show technique. I think that he believed that I was afraid, so he turned it up. So I stopped him again and I said, Listen, I'm okay with this. But it's not gonna be one way traffic, you have to understand. So of course now it was on it because I You get the face right away. He went down.

Need a whole bunch of stitches and that's it. I saw Funaki and Suzuki pointing at me. And they said we want him and then later when I Found out. Why they wanted me also? One of the reasons was that I was able to jump I could stand in front of the rope from the uh the ring.

And the rope would be here and I would stand still, jump over the rope. And they thought it was so impressive. That was also the reason that they wanted me as a fighter. I go, that's the weirdest reason I've ever heard. But anyway, the fight was September twenty first, nineteen ninety three. And you have to understand I was from Holland, so You know, with us everything is small. We drive everywhere. Like going to Paris, that's the same drive as for going from California to Vegas. You know, so we drive it by car, I've never been on a plane. Now I'm on a thirteen hour plane.

And I'm coming to Japan, you already touched it on it. I was weird, there was no way in. And I thought that was so weird. Why is there no way in? Well I the guy I'm fighting is Japanese and he apparently they're very honest people, so he will be on wait and then I go Did we talk about it? I I didn't know anything about what we gonna do. And on the day of the fight I'm walking in there. And this tall guy walks up to me and he sh shakes my hand. He says, Oh, you're the promoter. He goes, No, I'm fighting you. I go, You're fighting me. I go, What is your weight? Yeah, and he was much happier than I was. And I go, Oh, that is so weird. And then the promoter walked up.

And I said, Excuse me, Oh, you're the promoter, yeah. I sa is he not too heavy? He says no, Mr Rutten, everybody fights everybody. So I tried to force a smile and go, Yeah, that's awesome. And I said, Oh by the way, before you how many rounds are we fighting? And he goes, one round. I go, one round. That's awesome. How many minutes? And he goes thirty.

Oh. So no break. Fighting a guy's much heavier than I am in a thirty minute match. I was like, Whoa. So I started doing these things because I was a very aggressive fighter in Holland. Like I would be very technical until somebody touched me and then I would just destroy man. Because I was very explosive, I could get away with it. But against a good guy, like a Peter Ertz, who's a very close friend of mine already, was forty, so thankfully I never had to face him, that would be a problem against a guy like that. Because I wasn't it didn't really click yet. You always have these

Dojo fighters and you have fighters. In Dojo they're really good but they can Bring that game. under pressure to a fight. It's really hard to to separate the two. Like it doesn't matter how good you are in training. The fighting with the pressure, that's the test. But I didn't have that yet. But now I'm in Japan and I'm at thirty minute fight.

And I'm thinking if this guy's gonna hit me and I'm gonna unload on him and I can't put him away because they're very known Taken a lot of damage. These guys have to keep on fighting. I'm gonna be in trouble. So I put these big R's on my hands with the with the marker. R from relax, but in Holland is rustic. That's also coincidentally with an R which means the same.

And my corner, I never had a coach, so I always had my manager with me and I said the only thing when he hits me Just shout. Relax, relax, that's the only thing I want you to do, you know, because I'm a hot. Thankfully it worked really well. You talked about it in the opening, I knocked him out because he was taller than I I palm striked him under his head, he went down and you had eight counts there. And he got up.

So now I turn it up, so since his hands were high, a full kick to the body, brought the hands down. Then I hit him again and while he went down I kneed him in the face. And then it became very scary, you know, he uh Yeah, he didn't wake up for two days. It was a very scary thing. Thankfully, he got out of it. He became actually a good friend of mine.

That was the deciding factor if I was gonna fight or not. I say if I told my wife, if she's not gonna come out, this is it. I don't wanna do this anymore. And I remember after the fight people cheering for me and and I remember a couple had a baby there. Who brings a baby to a fight? But the baby was there. And they put the baby in my hand making picture. I felt like I was the president there with the baby in my head. Pushing a people a flexing It was the wildest experience. And then the next day I'm walking on the street.

And every ten. fifteen people should start bowing to me. And I'm going, what is going on here? And then I passed the newspaper stance. And on the cover was me hanging in the splits. Something I didn't even know I was doing. I was so euphoric, I guess, I jumped to the splits to all corners, which became my trademark later on, the root and jump. And I was hanging in the splits in the air and my guy was knocked out below me on the ground. I go, Oh, okay. So this is how these people are recognizing me from what they

So the other day suddenly I was just a known guy. It was the weirdest experience ever. I remember that cover. This is this is what I saw at the newsstand. It's bringing back all these memories in Kichi, Joji, a place called Sun Road. I remember the whole thing. It's so wild that we're even talking, I gotta say, it's really surreal for me right now.

So let's Go back for a second. Your wife. Saying you're gonna be famous in Japan. Did she ever explain or describe

What she felt that brought that up or how that came up for her. No, but you know what weird was, then in ninety four she had the same look. And I immediately recognized it. And I say now what? And she so if we're gonna move to America, you're gonna have uh you're gonna be in the T V business.

Tim, I had a show for nine years on TV. We did inside MMA for nine years, four hundred and thirty one live shows. I mean And that was the same thing. And then two years later. We're in America. And now I'm fighting in America. And then I got into a TV show.

It was it just came to her. She just Said it and The third time I said, We gotta see numbers here, honey. They're like eight numbers or whatever the logo is. We need those numbers, so please, the next time, tell me that. Could you describe for folks who haven't seen this? We'll put links in the show notes for people who want to see uh highlights and some full fights from

Pancras. What were the rules? In Pancras. You alluded to the round. And a very, very long round. What were some of the other rules? So what they did, these these rules were completely tailor made for the Japanese fighters. The Japanese fighters are really they're really good on the ground. Right? And not as good strikers.

So what they did, they said open hand strikes because open hand strikes make sure they have no gloves on, which makes it much easier to go for jokes and for leg looks and all that stuff. Not only that, they will put your shoes on and you had shin protection. Shoes for leglocks is a nightmare. I mean you can't escape Lagos, it's much harder to escape when you wear a shoe. So that was stu totally tailor made for them. What they didn't know is as a bouncer I was fighting with palm strikes.

I saw my buddies, you know, if you fight multiple guys It's not like you start aiming for the jaw, you know, you just hit whatever you can hit and if you hit a skull, well, you're gonna break your hand. So I started Palm striking everybody and and clotheslining what I always called it, you know my forearm I would for this part Yeah, the inside of the forearm. Yeah.

And it would uh perfect. So then when I came there, I go This is easy. I can already do it. They also had eight counts and then they had this really weird thing which Some people because of that people thought it was pro wrestling. That like rope escapes. So that means if I was for instance get you in a choke But if he could touch the rope, I had to let him go.

Now people go, Yeah, that's not real funny, but listen to this because that's why I believe Truly believe like that small organization, Pancross, I think we had eight U of C champions. I mean all these guys became good. And I believe that is the reason because when you look at my record, I have eleven knockouts and fourteen submissions But if you read about my submission, I actually have fifty one submissions because I would submit a guy and then he would touch the rope and let him go. Now for him it's the same as getting an eight count. So if the fight goes the distance and he grabs the rope one time, he's gonna lose. You know, or if he went down one time, he's gonna lose as well. So it's kinda the same as an eight count. But because of that.

No, you restart back on your feet. And you have another fight. Like my last fight, the guy that I knocked out put in a coma that first guy. I fought him the second time and I broke my point so the very first punch I submitted it five times. Now I have five submissions, so you have way more ring time

In there. So all these guys from Chapan who went to the UFC. They all became UV C championship. It was the wildest thing. I mean Avan Tanner, Ken Shamrock, Frank Shamrock, Mary Smith, Guy Metzger, I mean all these guys, myself included. We all became U of C champs and we were from that little small organization bankruptcy, and I believe that's because of the rules. It's incredible. Can you explain to me? I've I've never had a chance to ask someone this question. Do you have any idea why the Japanese referred to him as Way Shamrock?

And then he's Ken Shamrock in the US. I believe it was because he did pro wrestling in Japan as well. On the can shark and the ones to stay stay away from that. And that's his middle name for it, I believe. Can Wayne Work and that's why they went. With Wayne Shamrock.

How would you describe Funaki? I've always wondered, ever since I was a young kid, because he seemed like he was He seemed again. My impression was comparing him to Suzuki. that he was really thinking deeply about a lot of things. But That was just the impression of a fifteen year old. How would you describe the two of those, maybe starting with Funaki?

Funaki has always been a good friend of mine. He helped me a lot. There's a whole conspiracy thing going on, but also with me though, because I was the first guy to beat Suzuki. And then I had two fights in one month.

So I told my wife, hey, why don't you come with me? I stay in Japan because I finally have some training partners because they didn't have any training partners over in Holland. So um I trained there and I the only thing I asked for him was to how can I stop a knee bar? Because I know Ken is really good with that. How do I stop a knee bar? And he taught me one way. Now if I tell a person how to stop a knee bar, it's very simple. I say hold the leg so he can step it over. That's it. Whatever happens, he cannot make a knee bar. It's very simple. I won't go into detail because a lot of people don't understand it, but

It's a very basic thing, but he didn't say that. So in the fight, when I fight Ken. He sits in a position for a leg look and I'm already having my defence ready. To stop the leg and now he threw his leg over my head. Which was something that Funaki didn't tell me.

And I thought that was weird because then I found out that these guys go six years back and they're always pro wrestled with each other. And that was always in the back of my head. Did he say that to him? Because why wouldn't he say, Hey, just hold his leg because then he can never step over? No, he would give me one way how to stop it. Again, well.

he used a different way. But still, that didn't really matter because he was always a very friendly guy. Suzuki too, is a very nice guy. Always had a great time with him. That's why I was so out of character. Like for that it was my first loss. He beat me by way of a toe hold. And then for the people at home they go like a toe hold. Yeah. This is not that they grab a toe. Trust me. I saw somebody break a shin bone with a toe hold. It's a very nasty move. And he got me into that. And then many years later when I became the champion I had my rematch against Funaki. And I remember before the fight.

He comes up to me and this was so out of character and I think he did it for the audience. And he would be um this distance and he Does this to me which sits his throat. With the thumb across the fish. I'm gonna kill him now, you know I mean and he goes, Oh, you gotta stay calm. I said, Don't worry, I'll stay calm, but you watch him, connect.

Ooh, I'm gonna go to town and that That became my best fight in Panquest actually. That's for Fanaki they say that as well. Because he was so tough. I mean I had black and blues, I have bruises on my knees from kneeing him and hitting him in the face. And every time he went down, the public started chanting, he will get up again, he wipes his blood off, Yeah, and then he started fighting and I go to Shut up You know, it's because every time he got back up and then the last one Was that I had him by his hair, he had long hair. I just grabbed his hair.

And I drilled m a knee in the face as hard as I could, and thankfully he stayed down that time. That was the end of the fight. But always wondered why would he have done That I I it had to be for the audience because he was a very respectful guy. I remember that fight and it was like There were a number of thoughts going through my head as I watched this fight. Number one, I've never seen Someone

Take So much. Brutality. and get up that many times. And I remember his face at the end, I mean it looked like a cabbage patch kid who had Freddy Krueger come after him. I mean it was a just a absolute mess. Like his eyes were swollen shut. And

I remember just being dumbfounded after watching that fight. How was their English? Did they I mean presumably you guys communicated in English. Was their English okay, or uh how was their communication? Funaki Suzuki were pretty okay, especially Funaki. He was always a better English speaker. He also did some movies in uh in Hollywood. I actually was in a movie. With him, we did. And uh With uh oh man, uh Pep Morichita, you know, from the Karate Cat he was in that as well, the crazy scientist in the movie. Yeah, he was already focusing on that. He knew

That you know in order to reach the people outside the country You gonna have to learn to speak the language. So he w he was really good with his English. F uh Suzuki a little less. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. It's summer twenty twenty two, and many small business owners are busier than ever. Finding the right candidate to join your business can be the leverage you need to be able to ignore the trivial, delegate some of the urgent stuff.

and focus on longer term strategic decisions. The big picture. LinkedIn Jobs makes it easier to grow your team by helping you find the people you want to interview. Faster and for free. Create a free job post in minutes on LinkedIn jobs to reach your network and beyond to the world's largest professional network of more than eight hundred million people. Then add your job in the purple hashtag hiring frame to your LinkedIn profile to spread the word that you're hiring so your network can help you find the right people. Simple tools like screening questions can be. Make it easy to focus on candidates with just the right skills and experience.

So you can quickly prioritize who you'd like to interview and hire. It's why small businesses rate LinkedIn jobs number one in delivering quality hires versus leading competitors. LinkedIn helps you find the candidates you want to talk to faster. Did you know every week? Nearly forty million job seekers visit LinkedIn. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash Tim. That's LinkedIn.com slash Tim to post your job for free.

Terms and conditions apply. I In that Era. Let's just say

ninety two to sort of two thousand. in that range, could be a little bit earlier, but let's just say when you first got to Japan onward. Are there any Japanese fighters who impressed you who you think are probably not known or lesser known In the US. Did anybody stand out to you? Yuki Kondo was good, a Shibuya, he was a tough fighter.

I had a draw against him one time, it was my only draw, and then the second time I Told everybody I was gonna finish it with the boss with the neck like I just came up with a move. And that's how I beat him. So that was kinda cool. He was a tough guy, Funaki was good. Suzuki was a little Physically not a super strong.

But he made that up with technique, he was really fast. On the ground, I mean he would jump all over the place. Those were I think yeah the toughest game. Takahashi. Takahashi was what that was the I will call me it was a party guy like me, you know, after the fights we became good friends. Yeah, I did. I that was so bad. What what happened was

I fought him. And the day before I fought him, we saw this giant screen on the building. We saw a preview from the fight the next day. So imagine this, we're walking on the street and it goes hybrid wrestling, bankrupt. And we we're looking and they go boom and the first thing we see is me knocking somebody out, my first fight. And we go, Oh my god, this is the preview for tomorrow. You know, for the show we have and I see somebody sitting in half guard and he goes for an inverted heel, which at that time I didn't know. This is actually how I get my fifth degree key crochet because John Blooming standing behind me

And he's the highest guy gene to foreigner. For Masoyama, Masoyama had the kill Shinkaradi. He's like twelve degree and and John Blooming is 11th degree. So he's really up the ladder. And I look at John and I go like wow, that's a cool move, I should remember that. And the next day I'm finding I'm in a position And I go give it a shot, you know? So I never did it before. I had no clue.

The amount of pressure I put him and I broke his chip bone in F. So yeah, that was bad because she went to the hospital Got an infection in it. I mean, I think he was five months in the hospital. And it was a tough day when I went to visit him. That was really not fun, the poor guy. And after that

Yeah, unfortunately he never came back. as he was before, because he was a wild man. He was also taking risks, taking shots. He was an exciting fighter, always going for the knockout. But yeah, unfortunately that I think that kinda stopped it from What was it like being involved with Pride? Because I've heard so many rumors about Pride, even I mean the Japanese had lots of rumors too, and

Uh I'll just leave it at that. I mean what was it like being involved with pride? Everybody when they're walking around with like this, you know, you're like, Oh yeah, missing my fingers. Yeah, missing fingers. Exactly. Exactly. So yeah yeah, please tell just Any stories about pride because I've always wanted to ask somebody. Pride was just an organization that was way ahead of the UFC. They were the biggest martial arts a mixed martial arts organization on the planet. We're talking about a small show of forty five thousand people. That's considered a small show. And it was the Saitaba Super Arena. And the Saitaba Super Arena was an arena that you could also expand and be hold forty nine thousand people. I mean we did one time

In an open space, ninety one and a half thousand people were. It was the most bizarre thing. You know, you see a guy like Bob Sapp coming up who's three hundred and fifty pounds Ten percent body fat. Giant guy fighting a Hundred and eighty pound guy, you know, they made these crazy matchups, but the people loved it, they ate it up and It was always back then the Kmerko Kroko, Pfredor Milanenko, the Nogueira brothers, I mean Vanderle Silva, Quintan Rampage, all these guys. I remember when Dana White challenged

The best fighters for pride. to a fight against Chuck Riddell, who was the champion at the time. And I remember he chuck him over. With Dana? And that was the Saitama Super Arena and when the opening started. I'm sitting in my commentating table and I'm looking back and I see Dana is literally with his mouth open. And he sees that I'm looking at him and I go, Huh? And he goes

He he'd never seen a thing like that before, yeah, it was crazy. You know, and then with Chuck he fought Recruit the repage Jackson and Quinton won that fight. So now suddenly that was a big gamble they took. Do you of see now they put pride even more But in the meanwhile.

I always told prize fighting championship you gotta go to America, we gotta go to America. No no we're doing good here. I said no no no. It's nothing compared to what you go to America. America is where the big money is. That's where you wanna be. And they always decline it, declined it, declined it. Then suddenly The Ultimate Fighter came out and that bumped the UFC up to the number one spot. And now suddenly they realize they want to go to America. And They couldn't get through the Atlantic Commission. It didn't work. It didn't work. And every time I say, Let me talk to the Conventico, I have a good way to talking to people. They know me anyway. You know just let me talk. But they know no and then at the end They go, Okay, can you talk to them. Tim, I walked in, I did my whole talk.

And they said Oh we're splitting hair. Okay, yeah, it's legal. You can you can come to America. And I looked at them, I said, You could have done this two years ago. And then you had to chance at least To catch up to the U of C, but by now The U of C was this juggernaut. that nobody could touch anymore, so people started slowly washing for Pride. Yeah. Then Pride got involved, you know, they found out that it was maybe kind of a laundering thing for the Yakuza.

Which is the mafia. That's why we were talking about the half a pinkies, you know, and then of course Tokyo TV pulled out. Because she can't have that. That's bad public image. And now suddenly they're just Getting the gate. You know the money, it's a whole different animal. And now they were too late to America. Yeah, they could never uh pick it up. So they sold the company. Actually the UFC bought pride fighting championships and now they had all these great fighters. Vendele, Silva, Mirko, Croco,

Coming to the UFC and it made the UFC even bigger. So yeah, they did a really good job. I was surprised maybe I shouldn't be. that when I wanted YouTube to look at some of the full length Pancras fights that they were on the UFC official channel. So they must have bought the catalog or I was surprised, but then again Not surprised. You know

Pride just for people who had never saw Pride. Like you said, it was Almost a video game with these matchups, right? You'd have Quentin Rampage Shackson. howling with the chains around the neck. He could slam anybody imaginable. Didn't matter. And then you would have, as you mentioned, Bob Sap, who became

Gaiin Tarento, like this huge TV hit he'd do like commercials for hot dogs or whatever. He became this huge celebrity in Japan against some guy Half a size. And on top of that, you had rules that were

Just savage. I mean you you had Vanderle Silva soccer kicking somebody in the head who's on his hands and knees. I mean just Absolutely terrifying. And uh Some of my favorite fighters of all time. Like Kazushi Sakaraba, you mentioned a bunch of other names.

I mean just some incredible talents. And it just goes to show. There is planning and timing involved and you know, he who hesitates is lost if when it comes to expanding to the US. Do you have any other Any other fights or stories?

Any encounters, interactions that really stand out for you from Your involvement with Pride. One of the things that I really always Enjoy is like Marinello, my commentating partner. First of all, Steve Aquadros, the five professor, and then it became Maro Ronello. He was very afraid of Merkel Croca.

Everybody was afraid of Miracle Cro said he would only want to be interviewed by me. So a miracle is facing R sorry to interrupt the Basket. You just Paint a picture of Miracle Crocop. for people who didn't see him at that time.

Because it's something to behold. He's from Croatia, he's a special forces. Do you see him guy repelling down from choppers and shooting people? I mean this guy's as legit as they come. He came from Kaywan, which is the biggest kickboxing organization on the planet, knocking people out with head kicks. They would say his left high kick If you knock twenty five people out like that, I don't even exaggerate a kick to the body. They would say left kick body hospital. Left kick head morgue, that's what they would say. I mean, and it would always like they knew it would come, but somehow this guy was just a freaking machine.

And because of his special forces was very stoic. He his answers if you interview him was yes, no, boom, boom, he didn't want to be there, you know, but With me he opened up things. So he was always Sitting with me. And then he was facing one Waterman. Won Morman. It's a pastor. He's a giant guy. So what I did, I went to Mirko Crokov before and I said, Mirko, I wanna pull the trick on Marunello because he's really afraid of you. You know, I'm gonna interview Ron Waterman and I'm gonna act oh no, because we always

I would interview one fighter and then the opponent would be interviewed by my commentating partner. So one watermont walks in and I immediately start interviewing him. And Marrow didn't see it yet. And as soon as one Mortimer leaves, I say, Okay, man, great and I go And he goes what? I go, Oh dude, I'm sorry. He goes, What do you mean?

I don't know, I interviewed uh Ron. And he goes, What do you mean? Okay, you you could have to do a miracle. It's no no I don't want to Mirko I don't want to interview Mirko and I'm afraid of him I go You have to I can interview both fighters it's gonna look weird for the people at home Joe is the perfect setup So the miracle comes to the show. And because he didn't want to do interviews before it was everything was on his time. And it was so powerful, whatever he said they had to do, because otherwise he was not going to do it.

And he goes in there. Of Morrow and I'm I'm with Morrow. And Merkel start talking about yeah. He says, Oh you, you were the last for the last fight. Marr says no that it wasn't me, he said no that it was you. He said, I didn't like the way you were talking about me.

And he goes, No no no it was you. And he looked at his friends and everybody goes, No, it was you. And Marw was looking at me like Boss, help me out here and I'm just standing still. Not saying anything, right? So he's not getting and he gets more and more nervous and Mirko Mirko really pushes it on, he's super serious. Suddenly Marw he gets up and he walks out and everybody's talking to him and said, No, you gotta go back, man. You gotta he said, I don't wanna do it, you doesn't wanna be he hates me anymore. I don't wanna do this anymore. So he goes back again and Mirko and then suddenly Mirko gets up. And he walks to Mar and Maro runs away, right? And so this is freaking out.

And then suddenly I say Marco it's so Maro, it's okay. And he stands there and he's waiting as Mirko comes walking and he has this stern look in his face. And he walked straight up to Mar and Marco And then at the very end he started laughing Mirko and he high fives Maro. He says, We're just messing with you, dude. And then actually became really good friends. And it's online, but you posted this. It's hilarious. Mirko Crocov punks. Maro Ronello. Hilarious when she watched that video. And then I have another fun story which I thought was hilarious. I wanted to bring the people at home.

On the boss tour. We A S instead of bus tour. The bus tour. And I was going throughout all the backstages at the fights, we go to the fighters, there's the dressing room. Oh here are the doctors, let's see what they test on, all that kind of stuff, right? So I'm walking I wanna walk into the doctor's office and I'm opening the door And the first thing I see is all the P tests. From the finest in little paper cups with a little wooden thing on it.

With the name on it. And I'm right away I have a great idea, of course. So I close the door, I go Okay, let's just wait outside you guys. Let me ask them first if it's okay we come in. I mean it's a little intrusive, you know, if you just walk in right now. Let me talk to the doctors and say if everything's okay. So I close the door, I get one of these cups, I put green tea in it, I put a little lid on it. And I put it in between all these other P tests from the filters.

So now I'm walking in with the cameras and we're walking around and looking oh there's the doctor. Okay, that's what they test it, but boom boom but Oh why you look at it. Here's the P test. From the fighters. Yeah, that's great. Right? W wouldn't it be weird if you imagine by tasting you could know which fighter it is?

And they look at me like I'm like crazy. I said, No, serious, I'm serious. Can you imagine you taste the pee and you could say that's that certain guy? And he goes, You're crazy. I said, No, I've got to try it. So I grabbed mine, of course. The tea. And I go, and everybody's freaking out. I go Yeah.

I think this is Mark Coleman. I believe so. These people were freaking out. They thought I was drinking the bee from Mark Homburn. It was hilarious. Until of course they found out I was messing with them. Those kind of things. That's right up my alley, man.

Messing with people. I wanna paint a picture for folks who may not recognize these names. So Mark Coleman Certainly sort of pre and Smashing Machine documentary era. Along with Mark Kerr. Just Monsters.

Absolute monsters. Right. I I mean I remember His solution for someone pulling guard was just neck cranking them so hard that their head might pop off. And that was the end of the match. And For people who don't No Miracle Crow Cop, they should look him up and watch some video. The guy's thighs

Were As big around as my Dinner table. And Not only could he kick, I remember he fought just to tie two names together that have come up.

He fought Bob Sap. And he was so disdainful. He was I remember watching the translation because of course I don't speak Croatian, but translated into Japanese. He's like, I hate people who win just because they're big. And he was so just scornful of Sap. And he threw a body kick, planted the foot, and then Hit him with a straight and I think he crushed his eye orbit.

With gloves on. And I think from that point forward, Bob Sapp's eyes Pointing in different directions. I mean it seemed like that was a real Turning point. I mean just absolute Animal. So worth checking out if people haven't seen him. Po przepoś.

He asked me one time if I would fight him what I would use. And I say, I'll kick your knees, I'm not gonna kick your thighs because they're carrying weight all day long. And I go for the body. I said because your stamina is not that good and I think with a body shot That will work with you. And then he fought Ernesto Hoost and he who dropped him twice with a body shot. But then He got lucky, he swings so hard at the rest of the hoost on his defense.

And the the scraping of the own glove Give a cut to And also who's And he lost the fight. But then after the fight he had to face Mirko Croca.

And he came to me if I wanted to train him. So I went eleven days or twelve days before the fight, because I was the commentator, I went to Japan To train with him. I changed the one and a half day. One and a half times.

And the rest he was doing interviews. And I go B. You understand that Miracle Cop Cup has a picture of you on a back. And you're the biggest guy right now. He's gonna annihilate you. Yeah, but the people wanna see me on TV. They don't care about you. You're gonna lose this fight and you're not gonna be me on TV. You need to focus on the fight. Wait with all this stuff.

But apparently he thought that was important and he kept doing it. And then yeah, this happened against Miracle Crocop he he wasn't just prepared, he was a gift athlete. Bob said. It's just that he didn't take the time anymore to prepare. That was his problem. Yeah, got his skull crushed. Oh my god. I remember that wince, that look,'cause it wasn't a knockout, it was a different facial expression and you just saw him kinda crumple and I was like, Oh

God. Horrible. For people who may I also just want to this is such a trip down memory lane for me. I'm gonna put some links to Ramon Decker Cobot, who I actually met and trained with a bit in New York City, because uh at least at the time, that's where I lived. I mean their fights Repeated fights were just Absolute brutality. And then Rob Kamen.

Who wore, if I remember correctly, those shorts with like a rainbow on the front. He was like a Care Bear. Uh different times like uh you know the murderous care bear. Let me ask since we've covered a lot of of fight game For people who are wondering how Professional fighting. differs from say street defense. I know you've Certainly spent a lot of time bouncing. You've had your fair share of street fights outside of bouncing, and you've thought a lot about this, and you're a very highly qualified.

Former professional fighter, right? Utu black belts who Teach all sorts of nonsense. How do you teach a self defense course to people who are let's just say moderately athletic? Right.

Total couch potatoes, but they're not Athletes, they're not fighters. How do you teach self defense? You know, we have to really break it down. You still wanna start with the basics. It's footwork, it's planting your feet, explaining where the power comes from, all that kind of stuff. That's why you really wanna break it down. Because I cannot teach you to throw combinations in in one or two classes. I can teach you throw really hard speaking cross.

You know, because I will tell you where the power comes from, pushing over the back foot, rotating your upper body, all that so little steps take Here and there, but The problem with self defense is what I said in the beginning, in my tie boxing I was more the dojo fighter. I was not developed yet into a professional fighter. So I didn't have that control in the dojo. I didn't have that in my fights. Now, luckily for me I was just very powerful and just slaughtered people and I won everything by first round, knocked out one in the second round, the rest eight in the first round. So I was just strong.

But again, like I said, if I would face a good guy That would be a problem for me. So for people if you want to do you take a good self defense class by the way We just shot A shot just we shot at the beginning of Covid when everything went down the drain.

Uh seven skill to save your life with a friend of mine, Amir Perets. Google his name on YouTube, Amir Perets, he will take a gun away from somebody in like two hundredths of a second, faster than the brain can react. You'll see things that you you simply that's it's not possible and he's doing it. You know, so What you need is to make sure that you can do it under pressure as well. Now there's a lot of things that you can try to mimic it with, a lot of stress and screaming like they do in the military. But still for a military guy as well, if you never shot it a life person and the people are shooting back at you with real bullets, it's a whole different animal. You don't know what you're going to do. But as long as you did it a lot and put you in worse situations, get you really tired of screaming and punching you, slapping you in the face, and then suddenly you still have to get your bearings together to fight. That will be really good. Doing a self defense class twice a week and thinking you're gonna win in a fight. Well

First of all. It's always better to know a little bit than not. If both of you don't know anything, but you had like five classes, you have more chance. It's simply that's how it is. You know, because she did it still five times. You have more chance. Is it still not it's of course it's not enough. But you have a better chance. Plus

If you do self defense If you're in a situation, a really bad situation, we will always tell you to avoid the situation, of course. They want money, give them money. Anything comply. That's what you want to do. But If this guy's not wearing a mask and he just shot somebody

And you see him Well now you're gonna be a witness in court. So the chances you're gonna die are really astronomical high. They don't want you to show for him to kill one or two people is almost the same sentence. So he's not gonna let you go. So at that moment you're gonna be forced to do something. Because if you don't, you're gonna die. Now if you have a little bit of skill Then you increase your chances right away. with defending yourself. But sure, if you had it did it three times or two months, even that It's not gonna be enough, but still. We were teaching law enforcement and Amir Peretz, he was teaching a law enforcement officer defending a knife and to a counterattack and how to do that. And that guy called him back like six weeks later and sent him an email and he said you saved my life.

I mean I knew in instantly what I was doing and I was just seeing it one time. But this guy was trained already And he just came back with that situation, like kinda with me with the heel hook that I did. That I saw a day on T V He had that as well and it actually works for him when he over he overcame the guy. And it saved his life. So you see, so it's all people who say, Yeah, but it will never work.

It's always good to know. I always say it's better to have a skill and don't need it. than to need a skill and don't have it, you know? So it's important that you do it. And if you do mixed mar oh if you do mixed martial arts, if you do s uh street fight self defense See if you can fight. Amateur, doesn't matter.

But do something under pressure because I'm telling you it's a whole different animal. Like my first Thai boxing fight, I always tell this story. I knocked him out with a back kick to the body. If at that moment when I dropped him, they would have blindfolded me, they would have called in four other guys, all with tie boxing shorts, not even the same tie boxing short, and they put it next to each other, they take the blindfold off, they say, Who are you fighting? I don't think I could point him out. Because you're not fighting a person, you're fighting a silhouette.

It's really weird. You don't hit the jaw, you don't hit the nose, you hit the face the head. You j whatever you see you hit, you know you it's uncontrolled. You don't have it down yet. You need to you know, it's like anything in life, the more you do it, the better get you get at it. So for a person if you really want to be good in self defense Schedule a a kickboxing match, even if it's amateur, and it doesn't matter if you win or lose. People are so focused on the winning. Of course it's fun to win. But just to for you to feel that pressure. You know, to go there and you don't wanna do it. There are gotta be moments in the dressing room that you gotta go, I'm doing I w I wanna go, I wanna go. And then still do it. You do you're overcoming your fears. That is something I think is very important. So that's why we the course that we have the seven skills to save your life. The first is

Situational awareness. Only on that. Why don't you walk out of the house in the morning? And you just stand there, instead of walking to your car on your phone, why don't you look around? Just make it a habit.

Look around. Oh, so you see anything out of the ordinary. Is somebody in the car? Is somebody you know, little things. And we we gem all the hints where you have to focus on. You go into a bar, you go into a restaurant, know where the fire escapes are right away. We make it a game with the kids. Yeah, where's the fire escape? Oh, the toilets, uh daddy. Oh, and there's also one in the in the kitchen I saw. You see, you start doing that, and the kids start picking it up, and it's for fun, but it is the most important thing because they say all this When you hear about terrorists, all that stuff's eighty five percent is preventative measures. You know, eighty five percent of all the attacks, they already stopped them before it happened. That's how important it is to have situational awareness. And then we go over into the stance. And then slowly but surely, once the stance is there, we start building on that stance. And then you we give you a few weapons. We're not gonna give you spinning back kicks.

You're never gonna pull off it. I never pull off a spinning back again to fight. It's the dumbest thing to do because if you miss it, you're in a bad position. Just stuff that really works. Focus on a few things. Knife attacks. Well there's this knife attack, there's the under this is 80%. Surf. I'm just for people who are only hearing the audio. Yeah. Yeah and and F Focus on those. Those are the highest percentage possible they're gonna bring. Chances they're gonna use that. It's the same on the street. If he's right handed, he's gonna throw straight punch.

No the defense for that. And we break everything down and if you do it very slowly and methodical And grind it in over and over again and then we have tricks to get you of balance to get you very dizzy and then still you have to act Slowly but surely you learn a fighting skills. And once you have that fighting skill, then it's the best to go to a gym. And to simply keep doing it.

You can't learn something once or twice a week and then believe that you can do it. Really don't think that. It's not the movies. You know, I'm always afraid. That's why I stopped actually teaching self defense in classes. Because people come in and they get a false sense of security. Like for instance, if I just teach it a knife defense and then walking on the street and suddenly his friend gets into trouble with somebody and somebody pulls a knife and he's gonna go, Hey Step back. I got it. I just had this class. You see? And then he might die. But that's kinda my fault then, you know, and especially if you taught it the wrong way. So make sure that you do your homework. The Krama Gow worldwide. That's an organization. They're very methodical. They're constantly updating the curriculum and making it better, you know, with things that happened in the field. You know, for instance there was a gun defence and there's a certain way to wrap it out of the head.

Well, it happened one day it happened in such a way that the finger broke and they wrapped around the trigger guard and they couldn't disarm him. Boom immediately when that story comes in Then they adjust it and they make sure that that can never happen again. Was one time and maybe a hundred thousand times. But hey, still. You see, but they constantly Adapting and that's what they do. So Crav Maga

K R A V M A G A Dot com en heeft je doet slash bass B A S it will send you to a link. And there you can watch it. We have some videos there. And you can see

How we present it to the people because it's important to give you little bits. And a little bit more every time. You need to be a hundred percent Sure that you can actually do that certain technique. So a few things I'd like to say and then a question. So the first is

One of my favorite quotes that I think applies to just about anything is from a very old poet uh writer Archolocus which and his quote is, we do not rise to the level of our hopes, we fall to the level of our training. And what you were describing just in terms of psychological preparedness and translating from training to Live. Say competition or self defense. Makes me think of this example which always stuck with me, which was

In college, I was competing in judo. after being in Japan. And I remember at one point wandering by this self defense class for women, which was being taught maybe once or twice a week.

And I went in to Offer the help. I wanted to see if I could just volunteer time to help and The woman who was running the class said no, this is women only. And it was women practicing with women and I thought to myself

My God. If you're women practicing with women and you think that men are just a slightly larger version of women. It's like you have to feel the strength differential and the aggression differential. take a hundred and thirty pound woman and a hundred and thirty pound man, they're not the same and you if you have any hope. Of acting under duress when it matters. You have to experience that. Or you're just you're gonna be one in a hundred that you're gonna possibly do anything correctly. And it it really stuck with me that need to practice. So let's talk about high percentage

Techniques. You've spent a lot of time bouncing. You get a good amount of practice dealing with Different types of aggression, different types of situations. And I'd like to ask you as a bouncer

Two things. So number one If you diffused situations successfully or were able to de escalate them. Were there any particular approaches or things you would say that seem to work for that. If you were training a week long course for bouncers, right? The de escalation Moves that were

expressions or questions or whatever that you might use. And then when it really just escalates and you need to take care of somebody, but you don't want to break your hand or maybe get sued or whatever it might be, what do you do? So if you could just answer those two. That would be great. First of all, it's taking the two people who it starts with. Take him to the side.

Don't put it in the gym. Walk outside with them, do something that they feel more comfortable and not with everybody there. Like for instance, when I would they really wanted me as a bouncer. Why? Because I could fight? No, no, that was not the real reason. The reason was that was came in handy. I'm really good with people. From the ten situations, nine times we don't fight. Because I talk about it. It's always. And the only thing when I would always use break down the situation why they got into a fight. And you're gonna find out It's always stupid. Like

He but yeah, he was looking at my wife. I go, he was looking at your wife. Yeah. Did he talk to her? No, did he touch her? No. Did he say derogatory things at her? Did he make faces to her? No, no, no, no, no. Did he do something against you so to to make you mad? No, he didn't do that. I go That's a compliment, dude. I mean that means your wife is a good looking wife. He didn't overstep. He didn't do anything, he didn't touch her and he started looking and going like Yeah, yeah. I go, come, go you come here. And then I would call the other guy. I said

Did you say something bad? He says no no no I was just looking at his wife and he got really angry, you know, and then and then they start seeing yeah this is stupid because it's alcohol. Alcohol once that's involved, you make stupid mistakes. And once they say, Okay, shake hands, you guys want a drink? And I will give him a beer. And the fight was solved so simply Breaking it down. But in a nice and calm way, this is very important because the screamers will never work. You get him on the toes, no fighting stance, no nothing, hands down. And once you talk to a person always

Make sure you look at their hands. This is the first thing I always tell people If they put their hands in the pocket or whatever. Always expect something. To be a little bit on your toes there, maybe get an a handkerchief out. It doesn't matter, but Always look what they have in their hands and as soon as they don't have anything in their hands, just take'em outside, break the situation down.

And they're gonna find out it's stupidity. What they're doing. And then the fight. It's gonna be off. There's not gonna be a fight. Now if there's a fight And it depends where it is, you know, if it's in a in a bar Like I put my back against the wall.

If there's a corner, I'm with my back in the corner. Because nobody can attack me from the sides now. I got my view perfect view. It's gonna be very hard to sneak up behind me. You see? So if you have a wall, great. If you don't have wall but a corner, corner even better. Go into the corner. But it depends again on the situation. What's nice, get present and and you need to get out. Maybe you don't want to be in a corner, you wanna go to the exit and you wanna get the heck out of there. Don't fight if they have a night. Don't let your ego Control yourself. You might die. I mean this people do things for no freaking reason, you know. So simply watch out. But that would be the greatest thing. If somebody pulls a knife, you know, that's the street fighting DVD that I made a long time ago, the crazy one. Grab a box stool. Get something that you can separate him from. You need something in between. It's very hard if I just hold the bar stool in between For him to come closer, you know it's also very important. Then you know that if the fight goes outside, yeah, now it's my domain, because now I got space.

If you start hitting me, I won't even let you hit me. And most of the time that is enough. People gonna go, shit, if I cannot even hit'em and because then I've talked to them. I said good, I could have hit you already. I could have hit you already. I could have hit you again. I could have or I hit one time in front of his face. You want me to really do this now? Let's stop, dude. I don't want to fight. You know, if you say it, I don't want to fight, act like you're a little bit afraid. They know you're not, but you do the audience because most of the time it's egos as well. If I say, Well, I'm gonna kick your ass. Now it's an ego thing. He wants to prove himself in front of everybody who's watching. No, just de-escalate by saying, Dude, I don't want to fight. It's so stupid to fight. I could have hit you here already. And

Nine out of the ten times again, they realize that you're the guy with the skill. And they're the guys with no skill. No, sometimes when it's absolutely not Avoidable anymore. Yeah, well then you're gonna have to go fast, and especially if there's a weapon involved. Thankfully I didn't have those situations many times because that's a very bad situation. A knife, for instance, is a really bad, almost worse than a gun. Like a gun in front of me. I'd rather have that. Like when you stand in my arm's reach. I'd rather have that than when you have a knife. A knife is much more dangerous, can cut from every side, especially if if it's double bladed. Very dangerous. Once you control the gun and the barrel and you just go with it and you make sure that you you don't put yourself in the line of fire, you know?

Then everything is okay. Oh, and by the way, gun defenses also make sure that a loved one s doesn't stand on the side. Because if he pulls the trigger, that person is gonna go. So you have the situational awareness, that's all stuff that you need to know. And then it's basic stuff, like I said. If it's without a weapon, if they're standing with the left leg front They're orthodox. That means the right hand is gonna come. Nobody's gonna throw a hook on the street. Everybody's angry. Everybody loads up their punch because they're angry. You see? So all these things are easy. They're People have no clue how easy it is for a professional fight. It's like me challenging a professional basketball player to shoot some hoops. Who you think is gonna win. We do this every day, single day, two, three times a day. You're not gonna win. It's not gonna happen. Yeah, if you maybe from the back hit us, but otherwise it's simply not gonna work.

You know, and if you can bring that over to them and they realize that and with on top saying, I don't want to fight You know, always say you don't want to fight because that makes you feel good. You know, that it's not a threat. Most of the times they stop. And otherwise it's the cross counter. A cross comps. They always hit at an angle. So that means they always come from the side. So the only thing you have to do is literally move backwards because then the parts already is gonna miss you. And there's your counter.

It's a very simple cut, either a cross or if it's an elbow. It depends how close he is. But if you learn distance and that's the first thing we focus on, on your stance and on distance, because distance is everything. Because if a person stands here, this punch is not very powerful. It's better to go an uppercut, a hook. Or an elbow in this distance. If the thro is the throat away. A few inches from your chest or like within a foot of your chest. Yes. When I say in seminars, the longer a strike travels The more power it has. The more time it has to pick up speed than power.

And I always use an example with a bow and arrow. And I grab person in the room, I grab bone arrow, act like I have a bone arrow, and I put My hand against his chest. If I let this arrow go, it's gonna go at this deep. But if I step back three steps It's gonna go straight through him. Now I gave it space.

And now it had time to develop speed. You see, so that's also like if people hit me on close distance, I bring my hat closer to their punches. Here it hurts, but if I bring my hat to the hand He cannot load up anymore. You see I'm cutting off The distance. These little things they're not gonna do anything, but if I move away that he's got reach in order to hit me hard. So distance is everything. And especially when you're backing up as somebody comes at you If he comes with aggressive power and you make the defense, but his face is here, you see? Now a punch is not good. You have to change it to an elbow.

So that's why it's always good to have Some classes. With people who break it down like this, just a few techniques. It's not that difficult.

to knock somebody out. But make sure that you don't s have too many techniques, just a few techniques and know them very well. And you're gonna be okay. Yeah, and I'll just say for folks Listening or watching it. I mean this will sound obvious. Don't start fighting.

You just do not know who you're fucking dealing with. I remember When I first moved to San Francisco I was training at a at a Muay Thai gym called Fair Tex. at the time. I don't even know if it's there anymore. And one of the fighters Terrible temper. He was pretty good. He wasn't great. He wasn't professional, but He went out to a bar, started a fight.

didn't mind his back, he wasn't in a corner, got stabbed right through the lung. by someone who was behind him and then one of the instructors Also, Alex Gong, guy ran into his car. And then kept going. Alex's car was parked and the gym had this garage door and he chased the guy.

And the car stopped at a red light and he punched the guy's window in. And the guy had stolen the car, pulled out a gun and just shot him in the chest. And that was the end of Alex. You just do not know who you're dealing with, so don't I also have funnier stories like The guy I was training with at the time, N, who was a world champion in Thai kickboxing, but he was tiny, tiny little guy. He wore really loose clothing. And he went out to a bar and some guy started a fight with him.

And uh Kicked him once and broke every rib on one side, and that was that was the end of that. So moral of the story. If you can avoid it, don't pick fight. Don't pick fight. Emotions. Check'em. You know, you cannot get anger. You need controlled anger, like Bruce Lee said. Because anger, like I said, makes you load up the punch. That's why you want to get your opponent angry.

In a fight, in a professional fight. Because if they're really angry They start loading up, they start telegraphing. You know, it's very hard to control your emotions. But you control your emotions, you're gonna win the fight. So I I wanna ask you We're gonna get to O two trainer in a second'cause I have one on my

Table. at home and I want to ask a number of questions about it before we get there. Grand Theft Auto Four. Oh. Alright, so How did you get involved with Grand Theft Auto and what the hell happened there?

Oh, they called me and they said if I wanted to do the the motion camp, actually every fight you see, and we made history in that game. So for that you know that because all the video games are doing it right now And I came up with that because we were doing the The motion kept with all these little balls on you, you know, and that you have to hit and then they track the balls. But I said, listen, if you punch somebody and if I hit the air You see me hitting the air, you know, we need to hit something solid. He goes, Why? I said, It's gonna look much better. I said, I'll show you. So I gave him a cross across, I showed a few techniques. I said, Oh, watch this. I called my buddy Amir was holding the focus for me, the type hats. And I hit that and I remember they were up there

Looking at the footage and everybody went Y started screaming because now you see literally connecting and you see the power coming back. It made it much more realistic. So older The carjacking, the fighting on the street that you see. We did that as well. But then the best thing came. They wanted me to have my own TV show.

In the game. So there's two ten minute episodes. Of in the man's room with Boss and Jeremy. It's a very funny show. Dude, I had to send people out of the room because they start messing it up every time because they started laughing so hard. I got a script.

And I start breaking up the script. I would in mid sentence I would act like that was a period, and then I re restart it. So it Sounds complete psychotic what I'm saying. It's like what is this guy talking? It's completely crazy. Once you start shouting at the audience, the the fake audience is there, Who wants the knife fight with me in the audience, you know, as a as a commentator, as the host of the show. You see, Oh, I love that stuff. That was the best work. That's one of the best work I ever did, I think. You know, for the people G G T A four. Boss Wood, go on YouTube, they have the both the episodes. I think it's hilarious. That's kinda humor that I really like.

All right. So we'll link to those in the show notes. Question This is gonna be Well, I don't think this is gonna be difficult to cover at all, but I thought I would be remiss if I didn't ask about the role of prayer in your life. And I read about this.

And I don't know if you still Pray the rosary every day. But I'll read something that

I found it in the research This was on catholic exchange dot com. I'll give them Credit here, but Here's the line. And you can correct me if any of this has changed or is wrong.

It just lets me focus. It's meditating to me as it is to many others. Take your time to do it, go to a quiet spot and start When you really go over the mysteries. And those are in quotation marks and visualize them and repeat the prayers, it will calm you down. So could you speak to I'm not affiliated with any religion. Could you Please just describe the role of prayer for you and then also

Just elaborate on what the mysteries are because I I don't know what that refers to. The rosary they say I'm a very divine Catholic. The first hour of the day it's all prayers. That's what I start to. It's also a rosary. I do a lot of reading about it. It's really got me back into the person I really want to be. You know, not that I was ever a bad person

When you say the word religion nowadays people can freak out and But see it like this. I got in this confrontation with this twenty three year old in the dog park. And he knew that I was Christian. When did this happen? This happened maybe four months ago.

Okay. Because there was something going on in the fight in where I gave my thoughts and he gave his thoughts, he thought he was right. I said, Well I've been only doing it for thirty years and I've seen this many times, so I I think I'm right, but hey, whatever. And I think he couldn't get that, so he needed to get back at me for something. And then suddenly he said to me, uh they were talking about the fact that nowadays you have some states Where people park the car outside the supermarket, they load it up for under a thousand dollars.

And then they take off. And then by law. You can't do anything because it's not above a thousand dollars. And I said those people are bad people, they shouldn't be doing that. He said the wrong example. And he said, Oh, we used to do that in uh California, but he has five hundred dollars, so he would still till five hundred dollars. And his father stands right here, like the father of the year award, right? I mean he's telling you that He just would steal other five hundred dollars, they go, This is crazy.

And then he says, Oh, and by the way, my Christian friends, they were the worst, they stole the most. So that was an attack at me. Right? So I go Yeah, there were Christians, but they were not uh practicing Christians then. And he goes, No no, they go to they they they go to the church every week. I go, Oh, okay, let's use that analogy then. So what you're saying is that if you walk around in my gym once a week, you're a professional fighter, is that what you're saying?

And he looks at me and go, or do you think maybe you're gonna have to take some classes and learn about that and then maybe live like a fighter. No drinking, no this, no that, no that, no chasing women, no all you know, you have to be a fighter. Maybe you you think that, you see, and that is how I apply the fighting. I just want to be a good guy. That's what I want to do. Clean up my life. And I've never did bad things, like really bad things. I did people who got it. They deserved it at the moment, but still now. it's much easier for me to just walk away. And I don't need to test my skills anymore. And it completely changed my life. It made me a much better person. And once I did that, I saw my whole family started changing. I didn't even ask them. Now they started coming around because they saw the the husband, my wife and the father change, you know. I started just becoming a much

Better person. Think about what you say. Look about truth. Look all these kind of things. So Then somebody told me that you know, once you do a rosary, a rosary every beat that you have with a rosary is kind of a shotgun blast to the devil. And especially if you do it in Latin. Oh. Wait a minute. Latin, yeah. Okay, let's learn everything in Latin then. You know, if the devil really hates that. And if you really start thinking because people when you say devil and you say God They say a lot of things. You should do really some homework and search for people who had the near death experience who actually went to hell.

Or purgatory for that matter. You know, there's some really crazy stories that you hear and it's like, whoa, it's right in your face. And it's all the same. They all say exactly the same story. Thousands and thousands of people around the world. So I just started Wanted to become That person. And now it's got me in such a thing. Listen, I wake up, people like, Oh my God, you look great. They watch probably using steroids. They always have these people talking about what you can test me every day.

I'll take any bet. You can literally test me for six months straight if you want a blood test also. Not a P test, a blood test. every single day can come and test me. And if I look the same after six months, let's put some money down. Because I'm gonna make a good amount of money because I don't. But if you live like I do Then you might look like me as well. I become a five thirty.

I do a prayer here. I'm in the gym at six o'clock. First thing I do, auto trainer. Thirty repetition. Post it every single day for the last four and a half years. I post every single day. Once I have a habit, I might have missed sixty times over four and a half years. You know, because I just once I create a habit, that always helped me also with fighting. I just stay with the habit. And it became more and more and more relaxed. And it was severe because the more I learned about it, the more time I would took. To learn certain way or to do certain things.

The more calm it got me. I just feel really great right now. I mean I'm enjoying life. I'm doing everything it's like I'm feeling really good and to go back to the rosary, if the rosary they have five decades. And they're every time they're different on every day of the week. So Mondays and Saturdays are the same. The mysteries of Mondays and Saturdays is the annunciation. That's the first step but you

Meditate about enunciation when Gabriel came to Mary and say hey You're gonna be pregnant, this is gonna happen, blah blah blah. Then the number two is that you go visit Elizabeth De Sachariah. You know, because John the Baptist came from there. And that that's number two. Then number three is when Jesus gets born. Number four is when you present him with a temple. And all these little things, if you read about it, you can visualize those situations while you go over the beach. So you're turning off the world. And your focus on these mysteries is Pure meditation, you know, you completely cut off.

And your folks there sometimes, well sometimes, many times, you know, you might start shooting all over the place again. You just gotta reform again. Because it's a fifteen minute thing, or if you do the latter, it's like ninety minutes, it's a little longer. You see, but those are the mysteries and the very um boom boom boom and the very and is when they lose Jesus for three days and they find him in the temple. That is Monday or Saturday. On Tuesdays and Fridays are the sorrowful mysteries. This is where the with the crucifixion, the with the crowding of those, the scorching at the pillow, all that stuff. All the bad things that happen on Tuesday, and then you have Wednesday and Sunday, that's when he comes back.

This is where he resurrected. And then when he goes up to heaven and he's talking to them for forty days and forty nights and talking about everything That is on Wednesday and Friday and on Thursday you have the Illuminous Mysteries. That's what I do. Some people don't. And that's You start with the baptism in the Jordan, then the wedding at Kana, you know.

It's all these things from the Bible that you focus on and once you start on every beat you have a situation in your mind How the story goes for you it's really easy to just focus on that and to cut off all The noise in the outside world. Like for instance we did twice The exit is ninety. That's that's like lent on steroids, right? So it's for ninety days. Yeah.

You are not allowed to drink uh sweets, no sodas, can't eat sweets, can't eat only three times a day. Nothing in between, nothing. You can't watch TV, you can watch on your phone, you can be on your computer, only for your work, you can. You can listen to crazy music. Only music that lives a soul. You can only do cold showers. You have to work out every single day. And then once you start doing that, I realized my social media cut. With eighty percent. Because I realized I'm wasting so much time on a stupid phone the whole time and trying to get likes and posting videos. Now I'm reading a book.

And now I learned something about life, you see? So it completely changed me. I did that twice now. And it's really Put life in perspective. What is necessary, what's not necessary. And if you keep it very simple Trust me, that's the way to go. All the stuff that you like I had a portion, I had this, I had that. It's all gone.

It's all material stuff. Nothing's gonna help us to get up there with that. What's gonna help us to get up there is to be a good person. Help other people. And that's what I want to be. So I don't go crazy when people are screaming and I won't be the guy who's quoting verses. Well, if you want, I can, but I won't.

You know. You know? But if you really Take it to the heart and you really try to just be a good person. Like for instance, Jesus says the two greatest commandments. Let's say you're an atheist. Forget about commandment number one is which love God with all your might, all your heart, all your soul. Forget about that one. Number two, treat people like you want to be treated. Those are the two most important commandments in the world. You think if everybody otherwise in the world would treat everybody like they wanted to be treated themselves?

We will be in in this mess right now? We wouldn't. That's it. And that's the only thing I'm going after. I wanna just be that guy. I wanna help you, I wanna help you and uh hopefully you help me and that makes me feel good, I'll be that guy. So that's my take.

On being a Catholic. And I'm doing it every day against with how many times? I started in May two thousand fifteen. With my rosary. And I go, How many times you missed? Never. How do you all your readings? Never missed the day.

I just build a habit and I do that. But that what I had in praying and in meditation, I used to do that also in fighting. Once I tell myself today I'm gonna do ten marks off the back after a workout I better do it because if I do nine rounds Ooh I can't look at myself in the mirror. I see a failure. I program my mind in such a way that I'm a complete loser if I so I never want to experience that feeling again. So I always do the ten months.

Whatever it takes. I wake up in the morning now, like I said, I'm six o'clock, I'm in the gym. Do I want it? No. But I have a really bad arm, which you well, I can pull it up. I had four neck surgery so I atrophy my whole arm. And you see a whole dent in here, see the whole muscle is gone.

My whole arm was like this. So slowly over eleven years they came back. I did with two pound curls. I couldn't pull the trigger from a gun. You know, and now I do fifteen pound toils. I go, Oh that's a lot. I go Dude, that's over eleven years. You know, it's not a lot. I do forty five with the left arm. And I do only fifteen parts with this arm. But I do it.

You don't have to do every time everything you like. That's the problem in this whole society right now. We think that pleasure Is the same as being happy. It's not. You know, you're just feeding your pleasures, you know, your vices, give it more, more, more. And it becomes more and it controls you. And once it controls you, now it's a vice. You know? The powerful man This is what I always say.

Well I have a line. I do these talks, public speaking talks. What kind of man you want to be? I want to be a man who can overcome his weaknesses, vices and imperfections. A man who's not a slave to his passions and desires. But a real man is in control of himself. So I say oh I take a drink.

Oh, I be another drink? Now you have a little bit of bush, you really want the third one? No. Because that's gonna set me over the edge. I'm not gonna do it. That's a powerful guy. To say no.

All these guys who Who have sex all day long and drinking and dragons, profanity and screaming all the time? Those are the most insecure weak people on the planet. We think, we believe they are the strong people, but they're the opposite, because they can control their vices. They're a slave to their vices. They can't say no to alcohol. Once I read, because I was an alcoholic. Well, you gotta say I am, right? Because apparently it's never go away, but once I read. That I was a slave, that alcohol was telling me what to control my life.

That was it. I didn't drink anymore. What did it happen? I think my whole life and once I read it in the Bible, somehow poom it clicked. And I stopped doing it. So if all these great things are coming to me And it's really helping me.

I see it as a very positive thing and I truly believe that everybody would live like I live. We would have be in a very happy world. I truly believe that. Do I have my f listen, we all make mistakes. I make mistakes, but all the mistakes I make now I do to myself a little tiny things. It will never be The judging thing.

Like a complete douche. Uh, walking around screaming at people, you know, that you uh you almost want to say. In the past I would say something, now just Shut up. Now if he does something bad like hits a woman or whatever, oh trust me, that's the thing, right? You can jump in right away. They don't say turn the other cheek. That's Jesus. We don't do that. We help. The people I like to see myself as a sheepdog. You get wolves You get cheap.

And you got the sheep dogs to protect the The sheep from the wolves. And I like to be that guy. I like to be a powerful guy. Who can control his emotions and his vices. And once I can do that I just feel really good about myself.

There are a bunch of questions that come to mind. I wanna go to the the workout and the O two trainer and also what you do after that. But looking at you now, for those people who aren't watching video and just listening to audio, I mean you seem like despite the surgeries And the atrophy of the right arm. I mean you seem like a very fit guy still to this day. And so what I was thinking as you were talking about the dog park is Who on earth thinks it is a good idea?

to get into some type of altercation with boss rut and how did that start? Him and his father also. And his father told me the next day, he says Boss he's doing that all day long to me. I have students and when you see them They look like this. Don't piss him off.

You're gonna lose this. You know, and with me, he did that. If he would have done that ten years ago I might have grabbed him by the throat. Because I wasn't that fair. I would have said now you gotta stop. Would I have hit him? No. Probably not. If he takes a swing at me, sure. But otherwise but at least I would have gone by the third. You're gonna stop that right now. But I didn't do that. You see? So it's just the guy who knows

Probably that if I would hit him, hey, that's a lawsuit, right? Then they just don't care. But guys like that, and I told him that, I said, You have to watch out. Because you are gonna say this if you say this to one of my seventeen year old students Who mess you up? You're not gonna you're not gonna win this. And he's five years younger than you, or six years younger than you. You see, so I don't know what's wrong with some people. That's the same on F alcohol. Well

The alcohol challenges all that that stopped after my whole crazy Sweden bar fight story with the five bouncers and that was the whole nightmare and after people read that story, nobody ever challenged me again on the street. And that was in two thousand one, I think in two thousand. So that thankfully helped it because before that people were drunk and would come up to me and I would just go to the bouncers. I said can you come here? I can take him out. And they would get so angry. And I would write my name and the phone number on the business card. I say here. Tomorrow morning call me. And then we'll fight. Any rules you want, we're gonna fight.

But I guarantee you're not gonna call. Oh, I'm gonna call you tomorrow! You're not gonna call. You'll be the first one. And then of course they never pull because they wake up and they're sober and they go like Yeah, that was really stupid. But you see so yeah. Just

So we can't we can't tease the Sweden story without Okay. Okay, so Sweden. What happened in Sweden? Oh okay, so Understand this. When I'm drunk, I'm a happy drunk. I'm always drowned partying and you know but but still it's stupid. Because I don't have alcohol under control. But still I was always a happy guy. When I walked into the bar, it's called the spy bar. Very notorious.

For their bouncers being really bad bouncers. I mean the whole Sweden They love me. After this happened. Yeah. So when I walked in they recognized me and they said

And you couldn't keep it quiet today, boss. And I thought that's a weird thing to say. Why wouldn't I? I never get in trouble. I get friends with everybody. So I'm walking around dancing around and then this one guy wants to give me a drink and suddenly a bouncer comes to me and he says you have to go. He says, What do you mean? He says you're bothering the the customers. I say who? Him. I say He's buying a drink for me right now. So I don't think I'm bothering. Can you ask him? No, you have to come with us. I said, do it. I'm not bothering anybody. So they grab me. I don't want to fight because I know if I push somebody, it's already gonna fight. But I don't wanna fight. So I walk with them. And now with the two bounces where the fire escapes. And there's this big marble stairs going down.

And this guy's a little guy and a big guy behind him. And the little guy's wearing a leather jacket, I remember that, and then there's this big guy's thing. Croatian uh guys. Croatian mob dish. Yeah. And uh I'm talking to the guy and he's pointing on my chest the whole time. And I say, Guys

I w I'm going. Don't worry about it. I don't want any trouble. Can you tell my buddy? He's also bold, he's from Holland. Then I'm outside because otherwise he has no clue where I am. He says you don't understand he's pushing on my chest again. There's no reason to touch me. Let's let's not do that. So then he touched me again, I pushed him away. I said don't don't touch me, stop touching me and right away the guy behind him, the tall guy, snaps a finger in my eye. So I'm going like guys I don't want any trouble and it takes my other way.

As soon as that happens, I knock him out because what's next? He's gonna kick the ball, he's gonna he's gonna escalate. I mean, once you take two eyes. Should I knock them up? The problem was they had these little microphones. So now three out of parts coming. And that guy, of course, he's out, but while I'm fighting the other bouncers, he starts waking up. So I'm dropping left and right, everybody. I put three in the hospital and uh finally I realized eventually I'm gonna run out of gas.

This is gonna go wrong. I gotta go down. And it's a fire escape, so I need to go down. So I'm running down, I'm going down while I'm fighting and hitting, hitting, hitting, and I'm going down. And I remember I still did this day. I remember exactly how it looked. There was one of those copper things that you push in to open the door. And it was locked. Uh Yeah, I couldn't get out.

But till that time I was still fighting by the rules. I wasn't stabbing ice, I didn't kick the balls, I didn't all I was still kinda just Fighting, you know, not to destroy. So now I made out my mind. And I turn around and I told myself I'm gonna stab eyes, I'm gonna go all the way. And as soon as I looked at them They all step back.

And I felt really powerful for about Five seconds because I thought they saw in my face. Then I meant business. But it wasn't behind me. There was the whole police force was standing behind me because they had a pole and that's why they stopped fighting. But they threw me in jail. Uh from jail I went to a a jail in the freaking mountain. You can Google this. I mean I thought did I

Make this up? No. In the mountain, we drive in the tunnel. The tunnel stops in the middle of a mountain. I have to go to an elevator, two floors up, go out, three floors up, go out, four go down, go I go like this like a movie. I come out of it. It's like uh you're like a bad wizard in Harry Potter, yeah. It was insane. And then it put me in prison. I still couldn't call my wife.

Oh, and this is always say my wife hates this story, but she kinda thinks it's funny on one side or so, but it wasn't funny at the time. When I talked to her when I before I went into the bar She says, Why are you so happy? I said, honey, I'm just drunk. And I'm just having a good time. She says, No, no, no. You're there with two Swedish blonde girls, aren't you? I go, You know me, honey, but me right now. Alcohol counts. That's my only focus. Okay, I gotta go. So then two days she didn't hear anything from me. And now I call her. And by the way, they wouldn't give me my first phone call. It was the guards who knew me.

У геймідер селфон. And I wasn't allowed to call. Dude, they gave me a T V, I had a V CR, they gave me cookies, tea, I was playing cards with the guard, it was hilarious. But but still it was not fun because I was in jail and they told me I was gonna be six to nine months in jail because apparently one of the cops Of one of the bosses was a cop. But you didn't say he was a cop. So well if you attack me, well yeah, I'd knock you out as well. You're saying like the you said the

The cop of one of the bouncers? The like the father of one of the bouncers, or the brother one of the bouncers? No no no. One of the bouncers was a cop. Of Doody Cup. Apparently in Sweden they need one law enforcement person to be there as well. But he got the same treatment because if he attacks me I got him. So I call my wife and she's freaking out now.

And I go, honey, calm, I don't have a lot of time. I have some good and some bad news. Uh what do you want to hear first? And she says the good news. I say, I didn't have sex with two Swedish girls. And she goes, What's the bad news? I said, I'm in jail. He goes, You think that's funny? I go, Yeah So Thankfully I had some good guys there. Who are pretty powerful guys who Convinced the bad people to take the charges back.

But otherwise I would have been there sixty nine months. That's what they wanted to give me. For no reason. Then we find out and you can Google this, they put people in jail for four years for nothing. There was a guy Who went on uh one of those guys for for the bouncers? He went on a big show, like an opera kind of show in Sweden. And he was crying on the show. They said it to me.

He said that they put an actress in jail for four years And she didn't do what they said. Their boss told him to do these things. He felt so bad because they were the mafia bouncers, that's what they called them. They put in the Swedish post they put a picture of my street a self defense DVD. And then below it said that one of the bouncers said We were so happy the police came because we couldn't handle him. My salesman through the roof over in Sweden and I became their hero because everybody had trouble in that bar.

And now they finally had somebody who Who give it back? You know. But still. It was a very now I'm here and I can talk about it with a smile, but at that time If you think you're gonna be there for six or nine months for something you didn't do.

You know, try to go visit five against one. You know, nobody's gonna believe me. So uh yeah, that was the sweetest story. So so prior lifetime. Prior lifetime. Now it's now take the rosary and I start. So the the O two trainer This caught my attention. I know this is something that you're deeply involved with.

And I grew up with all sorts of respiratory issues and I'm about to spend time at high altitude in a few months. So I was very intrigued. And went on Amazon and was quite blown away by some of the Testimonials in the Reviews.

And I always, as you might imagine I've had hundreds and hundreds of guests. And there's always part of me that's worried that their book is gonna be terrible or their movie's gonna be terrible or their product's gonna be terrible. But the reviews are really Outstanding. And a bunch of my team looked at it as well. What is the O two trainer?

Who uses it, what do they use it for? How do you use it? It's an inspiratory muscle trainer. This is the best way to get in people's heads because once you you know as well as I do, once you start talking about breathing, people going, Ah, I've been doing that my whole life. But people don't realize

Is that they breathe wrong. I'll go into that. They'll give me a few facts. These facts that I'm gonna give you all scientifically proven, clinically proven in published medical journals. You can look this all up. One hundred percent truth. First of all, there's nothing more important in your body that you can control. They're breathing.

It's the number one priority. The survival rule of three states that the average human being can go three weeks without food, three days without water. Three minutes without oxygen. So if you don't have oxygen for three minutes You might die. So that's num number one priority in the world. Your lungs type number two, one hundred percent. Your lungs don't do anything by themselves. Your lungs are just two bags. There's not a muscle in your lung.

The only way for your lungs to open up is by chest expansion. And when you expand your chest, you create a vacuum between the body and the lungs that will rip open those lungs. So if you really think about it, your chest doesn't expand because you would errand them. Your chest expands and that's how you pull the air in them. Now the biggest mover for expanding your chest is the diaphragm.

Yeah. And that together with the External intercostal muscles, which are the muscles in between your ribs. Open up your chest. Exhaling is done by your obliques, your abs and your internal intercostal muscles. And by the way, just to let you know, the average human being has about 11 pounds. Or breathing muscles.

Fact number three. Metaborflex. Do you know what it is, Metaboreflex? I don't Okay, we know it as gassing. You know what gasing what happens when you're gassing?

Let's say you're cycling and you're going up a hill and suddenly you start guessing that is your body regulating the airflow. Getting really tired. Yeah, getting the because it's gonna pull the air of your your oxygenated blood, it pulls it away from your legs and it sends it to your number one priority in the body, which are your breathing muscles. That's why you're gassing, because your breathing muscles are not updated. Now let's attach another thing to it, stamina. How is it or why is it that when you train really hard your stamina increases? There's gotta be a real reason for that. Well the reason is that if you train a muscle over and over again

It becomes more efficient. And once the word already says it efficient, it uses less oxygen, so boop. Your stamina increases and now you're gonna go, Wait a minute, so if I train my elephant partial breathing muscles They don't have to steal blood anymore. By the way, stealing blood, blood stealing is a medical term. And gasing.

In uh metabore flex. And that's number five, the fact. This is the biggest one and it's gonna get everybody. And I'm gonna get you with it as well, Tim. Ninety five percent of us breed strong. So Tim, take a deep breath. Deep deep breath.

No, he's raising his shoulders. That's a complete incorrect breath. The densest, most rich part of your lungs is at the bottom of your lungs. And I will go in a little bit over why we are breathing wrong. Chest breathing, four to six of these breaths is the same as one diaphragmatic breath, a horizontal breath. Think about that. So if you're a a a fighter and you go back out of a hard route, you go back to your corner, instead of raising your shoulder forty times. I think the lowest number now, because it could be four to six.

You can do the same amount of air can pull in by doing it ten times correctly. And also think about this. Doing this Your traps, your shoulders, your neck muscles. All have to work. They all cost oxygen. So why not updating your level parts of breathing muscles that you have?

So they don't have to steal the blood anymore and bada bing, bada boom. You gotta be good. Mm. Test also show. That after the age of twenty nine, you see what I always dislike when the project comes out and they say, Oh, this project will increase your long volume.

It's a lie. You have a set pair of looks. When you're an adult, a guy is uh like one and a half gallons, six point four liters I believe, and a woman is four point two liters, which is give or take a a gallon. That's it, you have it. But

After the age of twenty nine, your thoracic flexibility, which means your chest flexibility, starts decreasing. And I already said it. If you need that to open up your means your lungs start shrinking. They're actually getting smaller after the age of thirteen. So if you are a person who's forty years of age and you never did any breath work Your lungs are smaller. Then yes, the O to trainer. Can make your logs bigger again.

But not bigger than they were. They just go back to the original size that they had in the first place. So that is everything taught. About breathing the most facts one hundred percent true of facts. I always wrap it up with this. Imagine you have two brothers, right? Two clones. Identical in every way. The fingerprints if one gets caught for murder, they're gonna have to figure out because both they can be it. You know, if they'll have DNA. That's how close they are. They eat the same, drink the same, sleep the same, they do everything the same. And both guys decided to do a triathlon.

And then see who's the strongest of the two of them. Now they do the same things. Every everything is the same. So if when a running coach comes in, he sits in front of them, they get the same information at the same time from the running coach, the cycling coach and the swimming coach. Now the one thing that One does different is that he trains his breathing muscles. So his chest can expand maximally and he can squeeze also all the air, so he can move more air in and out of his body.

Who you think is going to win? Well they do the trial then. You know the answer. is the person who did the breathing muscles. This is how important it is to train your breathing muscles. And you are breathing correct. Till you're five and a half years of age. You can look this up. Google it, and you'll see the studies that are there. And the reason is.

At five and a half, hey, that's the age when you start going to school. That's the age when you maybe get belts. Starbucks so now already your belly bath gets away. If you look at the baby, it breathes the belly. Like this. We are all chased be we are actually the only animal on the planet. Who breeds incorrect? Every animal with a long

Breat diaphragmatic breath. That's what they do. So it's important. That you make sure that you focus on that technique and the O two trainer with hard resistance This is like a short resistance cap here.

When you breathe in with resistance, you cannot pull the air in you raising your shoulders. You're going to be forced. To use your core. And once just that by itself can give you up to five times more oxygen in your body. Now with kids also they become self-conscious. For instance, they start seeing supermen, superheroes, they start seeing and girls see Barbie dolls and oh everybody this and if you breathe through your belly, oh

Other kids might think you're fat. Or you go to the doctor and they put a stethoscope and they say take a deep breath. I go. And then you think, Oh, so this is where my lungs are. No, that's not where your lungs are. Your logs are here.

That's the most rich. That's just oxygen rich part of your lungs. It's below. So once you start breathing The correct way. What it did for me if I have a fight that I show on my website but I fought Funaki.

And you see me in the corner like this. I'm chest breathing. That It's completely gone. I can go as hard as I want on a round, uh or go back, I come out as dead.

There's no movement. Then think about uh military guys, snipers and all the special force. You think when they're with a gun, they stand do you think the chest breathing? Of course not. Value breathing because there's no movement here. Everything in your life becomes better. It's good.

It's for asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis, anxiety, PTSD. I have a list on my website, otrainer.com. Go there, click on science. There's a list of published medical journals what it does for you. And it will blow you away. Published medical journals for the people at home. I just want to touch on that. It means it's clinically proven to do what it says. I'm saying this because a lot of people sell a product and it says it's clinically tested. Stay far away from that product. It's just a way for them to put the word clinically in and then some people go, Oh, clinically it's gotta be good. No, it's clinically tested.

What is the result from that test? That's what you should ask. Because if it was clinically proven, it would have said clinically proven. So don't buy a product if it says clinically test it, because you want to know what it did. What the result was. No, I brought this thing and I want to do this really fast. It's a vegetable steamer. But guess what? It also looks like a diaphragm, believe it or not. Don't shape tendon muscle.

That's attached to the bottom part of your ribs. So if you walk your fingers down here and you stir them all the way back. Along the spine of this is connected to the bottom of your ribs. And when you breathe in, this happens. Your diaphragm drops down. And from that few

Not a lot happened. But watch what happens from this view. Poof. It expands. So once this expansion happens inside, expand your chest. And again, there's the vacuum between the body and the lungs that will open up your lungs and that's how you breathe. So the more chest expansion you have. the easier it will be for you to fill up your logs right there. To me, this is the gift that keeps on giving. I started training with the prototype.

Three weeks later, and I told you before, I had severe asthma. Every single fight. Everywhere I went in the world I was always carrying an inhaler with me. Because if I sneeze violently, my lungs clothes have to open them up. Many aspect patients right now who are watching have exactly the same that I have.

After three weeks I never even had an inhaler anymore. I don't have it. I send it to my buddy in Holland. Yes, asthma. Eight days later he calls me, he said, Dude, I asked my screen. So he sells them in Europe right now. This is my thing for the people at home.

If you buy an o to train for your asthma or for your C O P D And it's not seventy percent or more gone in one month, and you only have to do this for four minutes a day. Think about that, four minutes a day. Then I give you your money back. The only thing that I wanna see is I wanna see you doing the The thirty repetition.

Because everybody nowadays they say, Oh, I did it thirty times. You didn't. You did it, because it's a work out. You're gonna feel your core. I have bodybuilders buying it now for their abs. That's how much you gotta strain on your abs and on your back breeding muscles. Back breathing muscles, yeah. You have muscles three hundred and sixty degree circumpreferential around around your body. They air breathe everywhere.

Once you start including your back beating muscles and we have great exercises for that on the website. And by the way, if you do the back breathing exercise, do fifteen repetitions. We tell you to do thirty. Don't do thirty, you're gonna walk around for three days in enormous pain because it feels like you've worked out your back muscles really freaking hard. So just do fifteen repetitions. These are muscles you never used before, and you watch your stamina go up. It's just bizarre. I had Leoda Machina, you know Leoda Machira as well, of course, the the U of C might heavyweight champion. He left me a message. I can let you listen to the message even if you want. So that means He's got a habit.

I gave it to him, I said this is really good for you, Leoda. He started using it for five four five months. He got covet. Then he had COVID. Five days after he had COVID, he decided to start training with the students again who are fighting and competing in the U of C and Bellator. He says, Boss, I outworked everybody. I've never been in control with my breathing like I was there. It's the most insane thing. He says my muscles got tired, but my breathing was completely controlled. He was blown away, but he's a guy who actually did it.

Now the problem at which I found out now. Two weeks ago I woke up in the middle of the night and go, Now I know Why people stop using it. If you buy it for your stamina. What happens is this. You're working out your breathing muscles. So right after you did thirty repetitions, you have to do it a certain way, you can find it on online.

You worked out your breathing muscles, so they're tired. So then if you start doing stamina Yes, it looks like it actually works against you because you get more tired because your breathing muscles are tired. The trick is to simply Do it anyway for thirty days straight because once you update these muscles The sky's the limit.

They found out now in preliminary tests That your second wind is your diaphragm being warmed up. Like I've been doing it four and a half years every day. I I just told you that. If I do a traditioning workout, I do thirty repetitions and then I start hitting the back. And I have no dip, I fly to the workout. Every single workout that I do, stamina

I'm like in the break I'm like This is insane. It blows me away till this day, every single time. Yeah. And in the early days I was

I couldn't catch my breath. It's completely gone. Everything is controlled right now. Sleep apnea balance. back problems. I mean, look at the list. You have no clue. You know that the your diaphragm is the main muscle for balance. You know what the diaphragm also massages your intestines? You know the diaphragm also aligns your spine? I mean diaphragmatic breathing does things for you you don't even know. And it's only four minutes a day. I'm an overachiever, I do it five minutes a day. That's it. Five minutes and then I start more cash.

Done. Question for you. I'm gonna try it. I've had issues with endurance and breathing my entire life, so I'm actually gonna give it a shot. And How do you suggest when someone is just getting started that they incorporate this into their workouts. So for me right now, I'll give you

An example. I'm going on a high altitude trip. I'm gonna be carrying a lot of weight. In Six to eight weeks. And my training right now is

Let's call two three days of weight training. A lot of rucking, so carrying Wait. And Hiking, marching.

And then a handful of other things. And I'm just curious how if you were me just getting started probably have very weak breathing muscles. How would you incorporate it into your Weak, let's just say. Or your workouts.

In the beginning I started doing my workouts with it. But then I got in contact with the guy who used to train Usain Bolt as well. And you say he says Boss, stop doing the workouts with it. And so what do you mean? I have a breathing exercise for you. And that's what you should do. Like you say Ball sleeps in a uh in a high altitude tent.

He wakes up first and when he comes out to does thirty repetitions, respiratory muscle training. He says that will do way more for you. Then when I started doing that because all this knowledge that I have about breeding, people I had a doctor tell me, a pulmonologist said, Do you know more about breeding than any doctor I know. Not a pulmonologist, but other doctors, it's insane. I said, Well that's doctor Belisa Bradic. You know, she is a world renowned breeding expert. I'll tell you a fun story. Hopefully we can touch on that uh right after this. But so what you start with is doing breathing exercise. It's very simple. For the basic thing, normally you have to do it with movement. For now I would simply Put in your mark.

Exhale, squeeze guys. You wanna squeeze all the air out of your lungs. I always explain it like this. Imagine you have two buckets. One bucket is filled with bad water and the other one is fresh water. If I throw the bucket with bad water, if I throw seventy percent out I can only fill it up with seventy percent good water because there's still thirty percent left. Bad water in there. So squeezing, exhaling is very important. Get all the bad air out, so to say, the carbon dioxide, everything that you breathe out. So you can use your entire inspiratory system again to breathe out. To inhale.

And to work this all these muscles. In the beginning what you want to do you want to grab the bottom of your chair. So you cannot raise your shoulders. Whatever you do, do not raise your shoulders. In the beginning also you're gonna get neck pain. Because if you breathe in with resistance, this is what you're gonna do in the beginning. You're gonna clench your neck and your face. But once you get the technique done

You just start breathing and breathe pushing out your belly. Focus on that. Once you get your belly down and you really want to do this for months Then we're gonna start focusing to the bottom part of your ribs because officially you wanna do it a little higher because that's where the diaphragm is attached to. But this what it would look like. For the super beginner.

Is it? Just focus on that. Those are your front breathing muscles. The back breathing muscles, like I said, don't do thirty. That will be from the side, it would look like this. Your legs are like in the ninety degree angle. I'm just gonna lean on my legs. And for now Just sit there.

Don't do the exercise like I'm showing you. Make it simple. You're just gonna sit. Oh to train a breathe out. Then you start breathing in and you focus on the lower part of your ribs on your back.

To expand. And it's really weird how your mind works. You will feel this immediately. Just focus on those muscles and you just relax every muscle in the body. And only let your back muscles expand.

You do only thirty repetitions of that and that's it. What I personally do, I alternate. So today I do thirty repetitions with the front breathing. And tomorrow So my front breathing muscles can rest. I attack the back breathing muscles.

And then I flip every time. So every time I give the balls, then I take the day before rest. And I think the other side. So let me hop in for just a quick second. So for me then, starting off I would instead of doing it. in my workouts, maybe I do it first thing in the morning and I would alternate since I'm just getting started thirty front and then the next day doing fifteen back.

Repetitions and not thirty because I'll feel like I got kidney punched by uh by you, maybe if I overdo it. And I'll also say just for people who are listening to just the audio and they're like, okay, I think I hear Darth Vader. We will Post this video, of course, on uh on YouTube on my YouTube channel for people to see. And I'm sure there are other videos that people can find on uh The O two trainer.

YouTube channel and elsewhere. So we'll include all those links in the show notes. But for me, just to be clear, so if I have my normal workouts maybe later in the morning or in the afternoon, sometimes both I would potentially do this, say, first thing in the morning. And do Thirty fraught. Then next day fifteen repetitions back and alternate back and forth. Is it two questions. Is it seven days a week

Do you recommend that to begin? And then second question is do you pause it all? Between the inhales and the exhales. What I do is this as soon as I inhaled I swallow because if you don't swallow

And later on you're gonna do the exercise with movement, you might start drooling through the auto trainer. Now I don't care, but if you're somewhere public and you wanna do it, you know, and you start drooling, that doesn't look that good. Yeah, yeah. And then you're doing it. The fifteen repetitions, the first time you did fifteen? The next day you do the thirty front.

Then when you go back to the back, two twenty. Then you go back to the front and do twenty five. So every time just add five. Till you also do thirty with the back breathing. That's the only thing for you I would do. And by the way, Tim, if you go on the website, you click on science.

There is an high altitude link from inspiratory muscle training that will show you that you're all you can move more air in and out, so it helped you tremendously with it. I actually clicked on it as you were talking. Yeah, there's a there's a study on PubMed. Inspiratory muscle training altitude and arterial oxygen desaturation a preliminary investigation. So you do have some great links. Yeah. on this site that I'm gonna go through later. These are these links. I mean if you go on a published medical journal website

And you put inspiratory muscle training in the search bar. Click. You'll have hundreds. Hundreds of published medical jewels, you pick'em. And they will all say the same thing. The story that I wanted to say with Dr. Belisa Vrenich, right? So she's a world renowned breeding expert. All my knowledge I have from her. She put me to this rigorous course. The first time I met her

She uh Joey Diaz, the comedian, he actually set us up because he said she's breathing, you doing the breathing exercise, you gotta meet this lady. Sorry, hold on. How the hell does Joey Diaz No her. How did that come about? He can roll whole classes now in Bazan Ji Jitsu. He calls me every six weeks. Boss, love you, gotta go. He loves it because he said, Buzz, since I've used the auto trainer, I can complete my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes, which he could never do before. Amazing. All right, good for him. Yeah. She comes.

Uh we're at the office at Fifth Avenue. She's gonna measure my chest expansion. So I knew what she was doing right away. So she says exhale, inhale and she measures. And she says inhale and she goes as she started laughing, she goes She's no, that's not possible. Do it again. So I do it again. And she looks at me and says, Wait, and she walks out.

And she comes back with another doctor. And I go, Okay, what's going on? She says, Well if I don't bring him, he's not gonna believe it. I said, what's going on? She says, Well, normally when people break our chest expansion, the difference between inhaling and exhaling It's by an eighth of an inch. You almost went two inch more than everybody else.

I have a breathing IQ. You can go to the breathing IQ.com. This will tell you How you have to measure yourself the breeding IQ.com. Number hundred is great breath. I had a hundred and eighty two. So it was a whole big difference.

And then she realized it was this thing. And then she put it in a book. And that's when everything started getting better. For the people who are really interested and want to dive into breathing, we came out this week. Breathing for Warriors dot com

Go there. It's everything you need to do because what I'm saying now is the tip of the iceberg. But once you watch that and you see what you can do with breathing She gets you into some breathing exercises that get you high. Without drugs. You start tinkling like crazy, it's really Crazy what you can do. And if you really think about it, also if you want to

Meditate, right? Meditation. Think about it. Why do you think in Aramaic and Latin and in the Hebrew language the word breath A spirit. Spirit and breath are the same words. But it's all because it has a connection. So if you want to meditate

Get your breathing in the in perfect form because once that happens. I mean sky's the limit. You can take up to five times more oxygen. People have no clue. We all think Oh, I've been breathing since I came out of the world. You're breathing wrong. If I breathe wrong, fighting professional fights. Chances are you are too. And those five percent who are breathing correct?

Probably have breathing classes. That's the difference. This is exciting to me. I'm gonna try this out because as you noted, I mean there's a lot of nonsen out there. There's a lot of hand wavy pseudo scientific Bullshit, frankly, but as you noted, I'm just searching on pubmed.gov. For

published research or at least research that's available on PubMed. I just put in inspiratory or in inspiratory, I'm not sure how to pronounce that word, honestly, muscle training and their two thousand thirty two results. And the first result is Inspiratory muscle training for asthma. And it just goes on and on and on. I mean, th there is to enhance recovery from mechanical ventilation functional capacity in patients undergoing cardia surgery. It goes on and on. So there's a lot of

Published literature that one can lean on and it makes Logical sense. When you layout as you did sort of the functional anatomy and the process for proper or any respiration.

Really. It's always struck me as odd. I'm glad you mentioned it when somebody's like improve your lung capacity. I'm like, Is that even possible? I mean it seems like Yeah. But it does make sense that if at a certain point, past age twenty nine or whatever it is, when you start to atrophy and lose the ability. to muscularly

Expand the chest to create the vacuum to therefore then lead to filling the lungs that you would Exhibit all the Negative effects. Of that. So I'm gonna I'll give this a go. I'll let you know how it goes.

Yeah. What should one expect? Of course, your mileage may vary, people are different. And I'm sure you have high responders and you have maybe lower responders. But What would you suggest, not so that it's pie in the sky expectation and people are potentially disappointed, but maybe a conservative

expectation that someone could have, let's say me, after thirty days of doing this because I will have basically thirty days until I need to be at high altitude and kind of performing, because I'll be I'll have a lot of weight on my back and I'll be moving up steep inclines at altitude at you know eight to nine thousand feet. So it's called yeah, three thousand meters. After thirty days, what would you expect that I might experience or see?

The thing is that you you automatically start breathing correctly. I had a SWAT guy, uh a SWAT officer who said he used the O two trainer today, the next day he was running and he broke his running time. And he says, That's impossible, he says, but he said, but boss, then I started thinking about it. I was breathing warm. And the auto trader forced him to use his core. And the next day when he was running, he was using his score. Therefore you got more oxygen in it. That's over one day. You do this for thirty days. You program your mind, especially if you do it early in the morning. It's like the book, The World's Greatest Salesman, right? You have to read that three times a day. It takes ten months to read. I did that. You know, because once you do that in the morning, first thing in the morning in the middle and then before you go to sleep, you realize for thirty days, within twelve days, you memorize the whole thing. You can

It's crazy. You ingrain it in the mind and it's the same thing here with your muscles. You do it the first thing when you get up. If you really want to take it to the next level Do it in the evening as well. If you do it twice a day, and especially for a big trip like uh you're going to do Tim, you want to do both same exercise on one day. Because then the front breathing if you try to take it twice. They can rest the next day when you attack the back muscles twice. You see what I mean? Because otherwise it's like twin biceps every day, eventually the back ship is gonna stop because

They need rest in order to get stronger. Rest and protein. That's what they need. That's the same with the breathing muscles. You're gonna feel it immediately. I always wanna say if you're a professional fighter Like every fighter is jealous of Tony Ferguson. Tony Ferguson, why are they jealous of him? Because he's the guy with the unlimited stamina. Now watch Tony go back to the corner. Shit there. Watch out of fighters. Watch Tony.

There's no movement. Only his belly moves. So all these fighters They believe they have to do it three times a week, four times a week, an hour beating exercise. Guys, I'm talking about four minutes a day. And if you're a professional fighter, make it five minutes. And do it before a workout, which you're gonna do anyway. Warm up your diaphragm. And you watch after thirty days watch your muscles get trained. It's resistance training, it's weight training for your breathing muscles. See it like that. You know, and you're gonna have to find a cap.

That you can do it Oh, this is another thing, this is important, Tim. Don't don't fall into the trap that you wanna do the smallest setting right away in the smallest time, in the shortest time. Don't do that. I used to do that and I was able to do thirty repetitions in two minutes and fifteen seconds and I thought oh I was such a stud. And then Doctor Blizzard told me I wasn't completely inhaling. Once I started doing that, it became six and a half minutes. So then I went to decrease the size. I give you another one. If you go all the way back on my Facebook page, there's a Facebook page called Boss Rutens O Two Bootcamp. It's for all O True trainer users. Baswood's O two bootcamp. You can go all the way back to two thousand eighteen. May two thousand eighteen. This is where I started.

That's something I used. It took me it was setting number four with the the the new auto trade setting number four. It took me three minutes and forty five seconds to complete thirty repetitions. Two years later, just for fun. I said to my wife I'm gonna use that same setting again because now it was much stronger.

I did with the same setting, I did it in fifty five seconds. So I went from three minutes and forty five seconds To fifty five seconds. That's a seventy five percent increase. It's bizarre. So that's what happens when you train your brain muscles and once you train them They don't have to steal blood anymore. From your other muscles, so you stop gasing.

You delay your guessing. Way for Oh my God. I might finally have Endurance better than Homer Simpson for the first time in my life. I'm excited about this. Well

Pus You're a lot of fun. You're a maniac, and I love it. So Hope people can find you. Yeah, people that's a compliment. People can find you, of course, uh Twitter, Instagram at Bossfruit and MMA. We'll link to everything, Facebook pages, the YouTube pages, also O2 Trainer.

Dot com as you mentioned. And Also all the social handles and YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash O2 Trainer, so easy to find. Is there anything else that you would like to point people to? Any last Comments, parting thoughts, complaints.

That you'd like to Air publicly. Like I said, that's seven skills to save your life with Amir Pareth. You should really YouTube this guy so you have an idea what he can do. He's a bizarre. So craftmug.com slash boss B A S, then you can go to that site.

Then the breathing4warriors.com Go to that course. Check it out. There's nothing on the market like that. And people by the way, if you do believe that Stix Everenson, Wim Hof, Stanislav Grov, Botteiko Tech, there's so many different reading programs. It doesn't matter. This makes it better.

Why? Because you're working out the muscles responsible for breathing. They will teach you the technique. This will give you the endurance. and the power in order to do it. And then the last thing I have is the body action system. BAS Body Action System is the punching and kicking device. that I created like eleven years ago and that's going really well. The U of C actually sells it now as well. And you can beat the crap out of it.

And it won't break and it's like a real hat, not like different targets because you don't fight Multiple people though one head, one body with targets on it. You hit that thing, there's no impact for your joints. You can leave all your joints nice and smooth. And you can hit it like a real person. It's a real fun little thing to watch. So uh Google that as well, please. We will link to all those things in the show notes at Tim.blog slash podcast and you will it be there there will not be another person named Boss Ridden on the podcast. You can just search Boss at PAS and I'm sure it'll pop right up. Well, Boss, you know, I hope someday we have a chance to

Right, break some bread or have a coffee or Maybe have a green tea. Uh instead of a cup of urine and I used to do that. You heard that right.

You ever heard that? Wait, what is it? In the morning they drink their own pee? I did not know this. No. Yeah, okay, okay, that's a whole different level. I would do that. That's gonna be right, that'll be round two with Boss.

So yeah, protocol number one, thirty days of O two trainer. And for people who are not watching the video, it's something you can stick in a pocket. It's not a large device. So just for a visual cue, it looks like a mouth guard with a very small Uh it's not a pipe, but it's a very small sort of appendage on front. It's it's something that you could easily travel with and Nice to spend time with your boss. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I I'm I'm so happy and especially all the questions about prize finding championships and to have a person who actually lived in Japan as well. So that's always refreshing. Yeah, it's a great time. And take care. And I really appreciate uh you and certainly for all the years of entertainment and excitement, and also for you carving out the time and space to have this conversation today. Thank you very much. Awesome.

That's why we say. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. albums perhaps gadgets gizmas all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends including a lot of podcast guests and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun again it's very short a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash.

Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Aidsleep. My god, am I in love with Aidsleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. More than 30% of Americans struggle with sleep, and I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, putting them back on, and repeating ad nauseum, but now I am falling asleep in record time, faster than ever. Why? Because I'm using a simple device.

called the Pod Pro Cover by 8 Sleep. It's the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pair dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced but most user friendly solution on the market. I pol to all of you guys on social media about the best tools for sleep enhancing sleep. And uh Aidsleep was by far and away the crowd favorite, and people were just raving fans of this. So I used it and here we are.

Add the Pod Pro cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. My girlfriend runs hot all the time. She doesn't need cooling, she loves the heat, and we can have our own bespoke temperatures on either side, which is exactly what we're doing. Now for me and for many people. The result, eight sleep users fall asleep up to 32% faster, reduce sleep interruptions by up to 40%, and get more restful sleep overall. I can personally attest to this because I track it in all sorts of ways. It's the total solution for enhanced recovery, so you can take on the next day feeling refreshed. And good news, 8 Sleep has launched the next generation of the Pod. The new Pod 3 enables more accurate sleep and health tracking with twice the number of sensors. It's just a smoother, better experience that delivers you the best sleep on earth. At least that has been true for me. Simply add this to your existing mattress. and you're all set. It is not magic, but sometimes it does feel like it. It just works. So go to aidsleep.com slash Tim and save$250 on the pod cover. That's 8sleep.com slash Tim. All spelled out.

E-I-G-H-T 8Sleep.com slash Tim. Eight Sleep currently ships within the US, Canada, the UK, select countries in the EU. and Australia, you can also find the link in this episode's description. This episode is brought to you by Maui Nui Venison, wildly delicious. Maui Nui is one of my favorite things on the entire planet. It has been for quite a while. I've been eating Maui Nui venison for now the past three plus years, and there's no going back. My pantry and freezers are full of it. I restock every month. Why would I do this? One

If I combine Maui Nui venison with even a little exercise, I drop body fat. unbelievably quickly. And Axis Gear have roughly 2% Body fat, it's incredibly lean. Two. It's very tender, not game at all, tastes delicious, and it's one of the most nutrient dense meats on the planet. I would go so far as to say it is the most nutrient dense meat I have ever found because of the rich volcanic soils, remarkable plant diversity, and so on. including wild grazing. So I literally ten minutes ago just finished eating some leftovers of ground Axis deer. This is Maui Nui venison with some

canned chili, just organic chili, beans and so on that I put into a pan. and cooked for 10 minutes. And I would rather eat that than a$500 meal in New York City. Honestly, it makes me happier on a deep level to eat this and it makes me healthier. on a fundamental level. So number three, ethically, I feel great about Maui Nui protein. Axis deer are an invasive species on Maui where their population needs to be managed in order to protect vulnerable ecosystems. I think the number that was introduced, well that was perhaps maybe six deer in 1959, something like that, and unmanaged that population could grow to I think it's 200,000.

within the next 20 years. So using stress-free harvesting methods, Maui Nui prevents environmental destruction caused by access to your overpopulation, which literally looks like wildfire damage from helicopter. So back to the story. I love this stuff that much. Should be clear, I eat it all the time. I use their dog treats for Molly. I use their broth, which is second to none in terms of nutritional profile. Maoinui's fresh venison is a nearly daily go-to for me. Both as a supplement to my daily diet, that's broth. jerks, snacks, etc, that I mentioned, and through main courses like last night via their Fresh Meat subscription program. And the cuts are all spectacular. Leg medallions are one of my favorites. I fell in love with this company so much, and the husband and wife. co-founders behind it that I ended up investing. And that is a huge rarity, especially with this type of company. Remarkably, Maui Nui has now nearly stabilized Maui's access to your population. That's been the goal all along, which means the door to one of the most exclusive proteins on the market will soon be closed. The list of people waiting for invitations to become a fresh subscriber is long. That's not

BS that is the case. There's a long wait list, which is why I am very excited to offer you guys, my listeners, Tim Ferriss Show listeners, an exclusive opportunity to bypass the wait list, cut the line, and get instant access to one of the few remaining subscriptions. You can secure your subscription by visiting maui neuivenison.com slash Tim. That's Maui M A U I N U I Nui. venison.com slash Tim. You need to have the slash Tim to bypass the line. If you're already on the wait list and you go to this link, you will get immediate access. So Maui NuiVenison.com. Maui Nui must stop offering subscriptions at only 8,000 subscribers when the access gear population will have reached equilibrium, so you must act fast to grab one of the remaining spots. So subscribe today at MauiNuiVenison.com slash Tim one more time. That's MauiNuiuiVenison.com slash Tim, and the race goes to the Swift.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.