340: Failure Isn't Final, It's Necessary. Becoming a Better Human, With Tim Kennedy.

2022-07-02T15:48:42Z

Retired UFC Fighter, Veteran, and Author, Tim Kennedy. JOCKO UNDERGROUND Exclusive Episodes: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Jocko Store Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com Jocko Fuel: https://jockofuel.com Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Echelon Front: https://www.echelonfront.com Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles

AI summary of episode

You know, I like, you just talked about bottle, like I remember being at like things, at like post, fight parties and stuff like this, and there's like bottle service and people are ordering bottles, and I'm like, I have, I'm in the navy bottle, I've been in navy, I got three, two or three kids, but I'm not paying for shit, like you can fuck and get out of here, run that pain for a $400 bottle of some shit, I don't even know what it is, it's not happening, and I'd just be like, you know, I'll drink some of this, but like, you're getting no money for me, you're worse like whoever whatever fighter I'm with is like, I'm not paying for anything either, so we don't know who's paying for this stuff, but somebody's getting stuck with the bill and it could be us. There's no way people that are looking at, you know, even after pride, that UFC proper now, where that, you know, they see guys and suits and doing proper way and's athletic commissions, and, you know, US, the anti-doping coming in, when we're talking back then, the wild west of everything, like warm-up rooms that were, there's literally like, I remember being intense, there's the ground is just tar, it's just a parking lot, it's like, oh, we're gonna, yeah, you guys can warm up right over there, it's tar, it's a fucking parking lot, you're like, what, okay, races to the banks afterwards to try to cash your check, it's only the first five checks we're clear, there's probably, I would say a dozen fights that we had to fight our way out of, like, out of the audience, like, if you vote, beat a local, you would have to fight your way out of it and try to not get stabbed, and if you haven't forbid you fought an Indian on an Indian reservation, and you beat that Indian, like, you, dude, it is, it's hard, it's every due guys are open, you're chucks leading the way, Gans drop an L-Bows is we're bustin' through and we're just trying not to get stuck, like, this is that era of MMA. and it smelled like pukes, it smelled like piz, you know, the ammonia, like, the, as our bodies would be eating themselves because we're training so hard that we're just smell that, the off gas of our body, like eating its own muscle, the same smell that you get from like dudes and buds and the same smell that you get from guys and, like, SF selection, like during kind of peak MMA, those gyms smelled like that. But that room just like, at Jackson's in the peak, just like going into an ODA when they're getting ready to go to war, there's like this, this palatable tension of people starving to get better, like people starving for perfection. There's cuffs hanging off me and there's like I'm bleeding from you know, because they're snapping along and I'm bruised at my radius and old age is like bone bruised and there's blood dripping off of my arms and I looked like a like an animal pitball that's been tased a bunch of times in the corner. He sets up the truck, gets water pressure, and then he's like, go, you know, there's, there's, there's so cool to have people like that that that we're able to shape young men and be able to like, you know, save this one for example. You know, like, I remember smelling, you know, like, the, the, the smell of the valleys and Afghanistan, how you talked about the dirt, like I grew up on a farm in Fresno. And there's no way besides in like a horror film to depict what it feels like to be, to be hearing those sounds, to be smelling all of those smells, to be seen this just carnage, you know, with the fire truck lights and the dust that's still settling, you know, in the California dry environment that we live in, it's, you know, it's wild. Yeah, there's just a dude Dave Payton, the another example, Big House Fire, I'm running off to go do like firemen things, you know, and Dave like grabs me by the scuff of the neck and's like, that's not going to do anything, hold on a second. Yeah, so I have highest GPA, I have highest score, like highest physical score, I have like highest everything, I get in a fight with one of the instructors over report writing, and oh, that's right, I tell him how he should do report writing, and like this is a better way with more with a clear narrative, and he didn't say, wow, cadet, thank you so much for your input, that's incredible, you know, because we did not say that. There was a, like, she legitimately got assaulted, you know, and maybe a 134 year old boy when my 1112 year old sister, when she gets like inappropriately touched by dude, like, I thrown through a phone booth. Because like he said, when you ride it, when you ride something down, eat like even from a historical perspective of like writing it down and checking with your teammates and be like, hey, how do you remember this? You know, when you got the Gary Tonans and you got the Gordon Orion's, you know, you got the Jean Lowe Bdonnie's, you know, and you have just like the list goes on and on. Like, he's like, he's like, to, to, to, to, because he was like, No, like, well, I don't know what they have now, but for 100% when I went to boot camp, like you're sleeping with one of those things and then like the standard issue blanket. Like, you know, if I lost, you know, it's just like, got it, man. And like, you know, like, we have these little pages and like, beep, beep, beep, tasketero fire. I was like, I want to be back, you know, the team sergeant Ed Weems was like, you know, take a week off, come back to the team next Monday So that's, so you, you see, you're rolling, rolling in the roll of deep, and that what a weird, it was a weird time, too, because it was like, the fighters weren't really getting paid much money, but you kind of had recognition, and like people that were kind of fanboys, like club owners would be all hyped to bring everyone in and set up tables and one of them. One thing I will say about Tim is he has this kind of like disregard for, you know, I don't know if it's like convention or not necessarily rules either. Yeah, like the MMA weeklies are starting to write, you know, the up and come or, you know, on the top 10 rankings, I'm like, measurable, no mentioned. You, you were a head of your time with that though, because now, you know, 15 years down the line, the army, Marine Corps, they sponsor, you know, Timers on, you know, on every UFC fight, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a paved the way for, we have professional gamers, we have professional fishermen, you know, we have professional athletes. Yeah, that even for me, like the first time I ever did, Jiu Jitsu against this old master chief who was probably like 10 years younger than I am right now, but he seemed like the oldest dude in the world. And like that was just a knife, like this hot, searing poker straight through my chest of like, oh my God, this little girl is going to die. I know that dog, you know, I've seen that one before and I get a smell of trash and I immediately get flashback, you know, if heaven forbid, I smell somebody smoking a clove or I drive by an Indian restaurant, I smell some curry, you know, and that mixed with the fuel and exhaust of a vehicle, I'm boom, I'm right back in a combat. And, you know, Jordan, being my brothers, one of my brother's best friends and Jared, being one of my best friends, it is such a crucial moment, you know, in that like post-pubescent, you know, you're still figuring out who you are. And, you know, he just like choked me out on mock me and I was like, oh, I'm literally thinking, whatever this dude knows, I'm going to do everything in my power to learn everything about it, because I don't ever want this to happen again. Like, no, but my point is like, I, I, when I was going through Buds, I like sat in my room on the weekends and sharpen my knife and polish my boots. Yeah, you'd get like bottle service because you were the fighter, and the guys, the, the bars wanted you in there because it made them seem more famous because they had like the tough guys in their gyms or in their bars, but we still didn't have enough money to even buy the bottles, it's like, is this bottle, or are we gonna have a baby? Yeah, it was a really, in the like the ring girls, they weren't like real ring girls, they're just kind of like local girls that were getting paid. You know, if, you know, and some of these schools there were times where there, they would question, you know, he's he's he's he's he's another sick guy coming back from a combat deployment and you know, maybe they're questioning an approach that he had doing. Like you're not a great like a reduction of Jitsir because people like, who would just have them with that guy's and that was all. And what's a bummer for me is just like any, like like what you just said, you get your freaking dog, right, you're an attack dog. This is like, you know, and people say, oh, if you, if you made this into a movie script or whatever, people wouldn't believe it, it's kind of like that. Then all of a sudden, you know, you know, you know, you know, but you end up just just, to actually dominating him, all respect to a hauser gracy, but you freaking, to, we're taking him down. You know, like, I'm not going to get up at 430 AM, but like this is you and I love that. I'm like, I don't like any, I don't like anything about this, right? If, if the person dies, yeah, it's, but even if the person doesn't, if you just do it, it's like a, it's like a assault with a deadly weapon or something like this. It's like, when you write about it in the book, your dad finds out, he's like, well, you know, I heard you got a girl pregnant. You know, if they learn whatever, for step procedure for getting control, you know, like no, that procedure is not going to work for a millisecond against me. Like for someone not to see you do being successful and being in part of your community, being like hell, yeah, instead being like with the L.S. And all six of us were arguing over who shot who, you know, like one guy's like, I shot that guy. Like, I could go out drinking and like, dude, I was like, bro, I'm not risking anything. And if we're going to be going traveling overseas, the bravo is the guy that's going to have the force response plan, the emergency action plan, the evacuation plan, in addition to, you know, knowing how to run a mortar, how to set up, you know, close to our support. But also it's strange that even in a situation like that, like if I was the overall trainer, I'd be like, hold on a second. Uh, you know, like, fur like a, a while people didn't even look at me. The whole entire fight world, you know, we had really like top 20 dudes on the planet showed up to be like the super zombies to include Randy Kittor, Phil Davis and keyjardine, Julie Kenzie. You know, a couple of purple hearts that were kind of, kind of, kind of give me, you know, like some shrapnel from a grenade that went off a ways away You know, like, you, oh, you're going to go out to, you know, to a dinner, whatever. and I'd wake up and be like, oh, dude, you know, you could have cuffs on me and I'd be like, oh, what just happened? You're so pissed that when they get back, you pull a McFey aside and you like beretem, like you, hey that was bad call bro, you know, you should have taken your best your brightest. I'll go ahead and I'll be like, you know, you're, you're kind of like, up support sergeant and I'll walk the line. When somebody's lecturing me about some significant thing about, you know, hard work or, you know, how, how somebody should do something, I always look at him like, have you ever been hit in the face? You know, like immediately after capture like that's a really dangerous time. I was like, I know what I should be getting in terms of like grams of protein a day. You know, you've you've waked up, you'd fight, you know, you'd wake up, you'd rinse off whatever debotry is on you, and then the seat don't care those diseases into the gym, and then you'd go in train, and then you're trying to do some form of recovery and get some type of food, and then debotry training again, and then debotry, like that's about your day. You know, like I remember it was like kind of on the same level. He's like, you and you say, yeah, and he's like, no, this other girl, you know, I was too much of the coward and tell him, God. Be like, well, yeah, maybe I could do that, but it seems like a stretch, you know, Like the arm is now saying, construct forces, you know, on TV and stuff like this. You know, like, when I, one of the main reasons why I love listening to you and I love your books is it's just like, this is real. And not as a punishment as like, I need this, you know, like this is who this not developed soldier. And I'm like, this is also, and I see these dudes with chunked up ears, gigantic shoulders, you know, big like massive hands. You know, like, remember and walking into mats and, and like the early 2000s And I don't know if we were recording when I said this, but like, For me, I like swore at the TV. And like these are like our, you know, friends of the family scenario. You know, and, and like the alpha in me is like, cool. Um, meanwhile, while all this is going on with this kind of like fight career, which, by the way, is also like a stretch. You know, but it was like, it felt like it was stolen from me. You know, I know we're like, we can't fat shame people these days. You know, there were times that happened, but there are also times where I was just like, you know, a little snake in the grass. Like literally the exact same thing that I was like, ah, I'm going to do the same thing I did to him last time. I think in three years, five years, it's just like, you know, how good as a hijacker going to do on an airplane right now trying to take all of an airplane. And you see people getting kind of like taking a way, they look, the guys that look like you. And so when I got done writing the chapter, I was like, well, here, I go, hey, bro, here's the first chapter because if we're going to go hard, let's just let everybody know what's up out of the gate. He's like, I know what, I know I'm, and then his quarters trying to pull him away as he's seen here apologizing for cheating. I guess it is in that state, you know, but John McCain is sitting there being like, oh, it's not legal in Arizona, you know, and so it's, I do also get it. And when you start talking about Jiu Jitsu and I just got asked this question every day by a kid, it's like, oh, do I have to do Jiu to if I don't like to fight? And again, this is one of those moments where in the book I'm like, oh cool, he's going to get this lesson learned and you freely admit you're like, there was a lesson be learned there. And, you know, what, you know, all of these times where I was like, and then you lose, and I'm all sad. And, you know, he and I, you know, he's like, I may not have been the boss that you wanted, but you're as the boss that you needed. The, I can hang, I can go in there with the whole room, all the dudes and I can you know like I'm forty, you know, forty three I can do fine. You know, like, you know what's coming to the heart. And, you know, and it's like sheeped our response, you know, the purpose of global. Then like the neuros in my brain are like, why is he not treating this person that he just told, oh, they're going to die. When you, when people when shit like that happens, what point do you think you started processing that at a deeper level, like thinking yourself, trying to understand it? And it's an interesting, you can't look at you like, you look at the guy, this guy, I remember guy like this, I kicked him off to you. And I know these people very, very well, but they don't know how well I know them. Like an experienced person is going to be like, oh, this is about to go down. And what exactly what you would want for your young firefighters to be like and to think like, they just need a little bit extra guidance. Like it was like, oh, if you're going to bring a test with you. You know, if you get, and then the catarist comes up to you, hey, you're going to be the, you know, you're going to be the peel on this next patrol. You know, so like you're, you're going to have 12 hundred people in six months from now that are all fighting alongside these green berets. And then you know, you know, you're, you guys know you're slotted to deploy. That shame going on and being able to like hang with the Rashad Evans and the John Jones is, you know, 15 years later, that would never ever, ever happen without me standing there as a pathetic loser, getting destroyed in seconds.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocopont Cas number 340 with Carrie Helden and me, Jocco Willing. Good evening, Carrie. Good evening.
[00:00:09] That's when the explosion rocks me.
[00:00:12] It's so big that at first I thought our vehicle had been hit.
[00:00:16] My vision goes completely white and there's a ringing in my ears, a gentle wine as my brain re-ignites and starts working again.
[00:00:24] Sort of.
[00:00:26] It is the same feeling I had in the old days when Chuck Ladell used to hit me.
[00:00:31] Sure, I'm conscious, but I'm not quite right.
[00:00:35] My brain doesn't feel like it's processing at full speed.
[00:00:37] My vision slowly returns and white flecks of light,
[00:00:40] frolic through my eyes as my situation comes back to me in a jolt.
[00:00:43] I realize we're okay, but immediately know we're totally fucked.
[00:00:49] The vehicle in front of me hit my roof.
[00:00:52] I don't know if it hit a pressure plate or what, but a two and a half ton armored vehicle just did a back flip 20 meters in the air is completely shredded and missing everything from the front wheel forward and is now sitting on top of my vehicle.
[00:01:09] Bullets from machine gun, nest, high above us, start to hit the ground around us.
[00:01:15] I can hear rounds pinging off our vehicle. The RPG, nest comes seconds later.
[00:01:21] But luckily the asshole shooting them at me suck and they fly over our vehicle.
[00:01:28] I can now see that the firing positions have been built up. These aren't hastily made. These fuckers planned on killing us right here.
[00:01:35] I need to move.
[00:01:37] The whole fight is right here in the front. The guys in the back are so far away that all they can do is listen to the gunfire.
[00:01:43] The pass is so narrow that you can barely fit two vehicles in the gap while they are able to hit us from every conceivable position in angle.
[00:01:52] There is no way to reinforce us.
[00:01:55] Wisely, like the grizzled combat veteran he is, the ODA sergeant major starts pushing all the units to the high ground to take the fight to them and get the guys out of the line of fire.
[00:02:07] That is great and all, but it doesn't do jack shit for me.
[00:02:11] The lead three vehicles, one completely blown up, are stranded with nowhere to go while death reigns down around us.
[00:02:21] I fucking know them about to die. I'm not going to see my wife again.
[00:02:27] I'm not going to see my kids again.
[00:02:31] I don't want it to end like this.
[00:02:33] That right there is an excerpt from a book called Scars and Stripes, which is written by Greenbrae,
[00:02:49] Special Forces sniper UFC fighter and all around incredible human, Tim Kennedy.
[00:02:56] It's an honor to have Tim with us here again.
[00:02:59] I think about five years after the first time, maybe even almost six times.
[00:03:03] Six years after the first time we did this first one, it's episode 21.
[00:03:08] He's here to talk about his book, his lessons learned and his experiences.
[00:03:13] Tim, welcome back man.
[00:03:14] That's up man.
[00:03:16] Thanks for coming by my pleasure.
[00:03:18] Lot of stuff going on.
[00:03:20] Yeah, I was a heavy book to write.
[00:03:22] I was a heavy book to read. It was hard.
[00:03:25] Did it help you?
[00:03:27] Um, there are a lot of surprising things and I think I'm a pretty smart fella.
[00:03:36] I think I have a pretty good memory.
[00:03:37] I've been blown up and punched a bunch of times.
[00:03:40] Going back and cooperating first, I testimony, you know, first I witnessed to what happened
[00:03:47] in some of these situations.
[00:03:49] It was really hard to cooperate. There'd be six shooters, three different people died.
[00:03:54] And all six of us were arguing over who shot who, you know, like one guy's like,
[00:03:59] I shot that guy. I'm like, no, no, you didn't shoot that.
[00:04:00] You're right next to me.
[00:04:01] And if you're engaging this dude over there, you know, and it was so wild.
[00:04:07] You know, going back to even an 18 year old firefighter EMT
[00:04:11] in San Luis, Pittsburgh, California,
[00:04:13] just south of a taskadero,
[00:04:17] a vehicle roll over.
[00:04:18] I live pretty much my whole entire adult life thinking that this little girl that I worked on died.
[00:04:22] And writing this book, I found out that she actually lived.
[00:04:26] So there's some really great things like that.
[00:04:27] But then there were also moments where, you know, like when my best friend died when I was 15,
[00:04:33] I've intentionally not thought about that for 20 years.
[00:04:38] And having to ride it, having to remember what it felt like.
[00:04:43] You know, that was really hard.
[00:04:45] So I don't know if it helped.
[00:04:47] It definitely provided clarity.
[00:04:49] And I'll always take clarity and truth over anything else.
[00:04:53] Yeah, I mean, I always think it's helpful to talk about right about it, talk about it.
[00:05:00] Because like he said, when you ride it, when you ride something down,
[00:05:02] eat like even from a historical perspective of like writing it down and checking with your teammates and
[00:05:07] be like, hey, how do you remember this?
[00:05:09] So you get the facts a little bit more straightened out.
[00:05:12] And then just the understanding of what you went through and the understanding of the lessons learned
[00:05:16] when you write it down, it like clarifies it for you. Yeah, you know. So I, in reading the book,
[00:05:21] man, first of all, let me say this out of the gate. It's a freaking outstanding book.
[00:05:26] And I'm going to read some of it today. But if you haven't already gotten this book, then
[00:05:30] order it immediately. Because it's an awesome read and it's a wild ride.
[00:05:38] This is like, you know, and people say, oh, if you, if you made this into a movie script or whatever,
[00:05:44] people wouldn't believe it, it's kind of like that. You know what I mean? It's, it's that,
[00:05:49] it's that freaking, your life has been that wild. Yeah, it has been that wild. You know, but
[00:05:54] even though it's been extraordinary stories and the, the, the, the resounding theme I've heard from
[00:06:02] everyone is how relatable moments of that was. You know, like, I remember smelling, you know, like,
[00:06:08] the, the, the smell of the valleys and Afghanistan, how you talked about the dirt, like I grew up on a
[00:06:13] farm in Fresno. And that's exactly what it's meant like, you know? And, you know, you know,
[00:06:18] guys that fought and people that do do do do do do do do do do do do. You know, like, remember and walking
[00:06:21] into mats and, and like the early 2000s and it smelled like pukes, it smelled like piz, you know,
[00:06:26] the ammonia, like, the, as our bodies would be eating themselves because we're training so hard
[00:06:30] that we're just smell that, the off gas of our body, like eating its own muscle, the same smell
[00:06:35] that you get from like dudes and buds and the same smell that you get from guys and, like, SF selection,
[00:06:39] like during kind of peak MMA, those gyms smelled like that. Oh, yeah, where you can't eventually,
[00:06:46] you have to throw your clothes away. Yeah. Because they wreak and nothing gets rid of them.
[00:06:49] No, you can't. Then you can't put them in the sun, you can't believe you're that smell is just like
[00:06:53] part of it now. And so like, it's been wild, but it's, it's cool to have people get context into some,
[00:07:03] some of the reasons why I am the way that I am. And I think more important now in 2022 is,
[00:07:11] the book is mostly failure. You know, like the book is mostly struggles. The book is mostly,
[00:07:16] it is not like this crescendo moment of me doing this great thing. It's like,
[00:07:20] here's what croch, rock feels like. You know, here's what trench foot feels like.
[00:07:25] Here's what it looks like to, what go into a fight and lose. It's not, you know,
[00:07:31] world champion tim Kennedy. It's like not. Well, you know, jocca regates his hand raised,
[00:07:36] Luke Rock hold gets their hand raised. And I stand there not as world champion.
[00:07:41] Those moments are the moments that I really, really focus on. Because I think those are the moments that
[00:07:45] shape us. Yeah, yeah, those are, I mean, I don't know you that well, but I've known you for
[00:07:51] a long time. And I've, you know, obviously when you were fighting, I was always watching you and
[00:07:55] stoked that you were doing it. And you know, those, when you'd be fighting for the championship,
[00:08:00] and I'd be watching going, come on, man, come on. And then you would. But you know what I do?
[00:08:06] I'd like turn off the TV and go back to work. And you'd have to do, you know,
[00:08:11] suffer through the loss and all that. I mean, it like hurt me a little bit. But like I said,
[00:08:16] I just like grabbed another freaking piece of chicken and carried on with my day. You had to like,
[00:08:22] look at all your sacrifice. Everything that was going on. How the army was looking at you,
[00:08:28] how the rest of your friends were looking at you. Oh, yeah, humiliation is a powerful tool for
[00:08:35] good sometimes. You know, I know we're like, we can't fat shame people these days. But like I was
[00:08:40] shamed in moments. And that that shame, first time on an ODA, like the mistakes I made,
[00:08:45] I'm still embarrassed thinking back to the way that I behaved as a new guy on a team. Do that
[00:08:49] shame is so powerful. You know, it's so important. That's pretty legit. And you know, that's,
[00:08:57] I guess that's what, that's what makes any, any like a book or yeah, I guess any book or writing or
[00:09:04] talk that you're going to give is how honest you are about who, you know, where you came from and
[00:09:09] what happened along the way. You are very honest. Man, you're so honest sometimes I was like,
[00:09:15] maybe you shouldn't put that in there. I'll be in in 2022, right? You're on social media,
[00:09:23] the fake fabrication. That is the current existence that we live in, right? The news is is eight
[00:09:30] second headlines. That's not truth. It's just little tiny, tiny bits. Every single social media
[00:09:38] is curated and editorialized. You know, it's a filter that makes me feel good. It's my best moment
[00:09:44] with the best light. You know, and even if it's like, here's me struggling. It's like me walking
[00:09:49] into an interview and so it's like, hey, tell me something that's not great about yourself. Well,
[00:09:53] honestly, I work too hard. Yeah, I'm the only thing is I'm a perfectionist. Yeah, I'm going
[00:09:57] to relax. Yeah, I'm going to relax. Yeah, I'm going to relax. Yeah, I'm going to relax. Yeah,
[00:10:00] not get off. You know, and that's like our world right now. And I think people have been starving
[00:10:05] for truth and transparency and they want invulnerability. And we've, I'm starving for it. You
[00:10:12] know, like, when I, one of the main reasons why I love listening to you and I love your books
[00:10:16] is it's just like, this is real. This is who I am. This is my approach to things. It's not for
[00:10:21] everybody. You know, like, I'm not going to get up at 430 AM, but like this is you and I love that.
[00:10:26] You know, one of the many reasons that the circle of friends that I have is like, they're just
[00:10:29] the real humans that they say that they are where everything else around means fake. Yeah, you know,
[00:10:35] even so in the book Extreme Ownership, the opening chapter is we had a blue on blue. I was in
[00:10:41] charge. I'm from the Iraqi soldier got killed. One of my guys got wounded a few other Iraqi soldiers
[00:10:46] got wounded as well. And when I got home from that deployment, I would brief everybody. I mean,
[00:10:52] I would brief every silver tune, every seal team that was going out. I had a full brief about
[00:10:57] exactly what happened, what went wrong, how you can defend it from happening, how we prevented it
[00:11:01] from happening again. And why was my fault that this happened? And as we were writing Extreme Ownership,
[00:11:08] that chapter wasn't in there. And we talked about a bunch of other little mistakes that I made
[00:11:12] and Dave talked about some mistakes that he made and hey, we should have done this better and here's
[00:11:17] and finally one day, Dave was like, hey, you know the blue on blue and I'm like, yeah, and he says,
[00:11:23] you should put that in here. And I said, I thought about it. And of course, my mind I'm like,
[00:11:28] damn it. Now I got to tell everybody that, oh, this big combat operation, the, as far as I'm
[00:11:35] concerned, the worst thing that can happen in the war is friendly fire. Yeah. And I got to happen.
[00:11:40] Yeah, I got to put myself on report for doing that and being in charge of it. And you know,
[00:11:45] I was like, yeah, absolutely, I do. And so when I got done writing the chapter, I was like, well,
[00:11:49] here, I go, hey, bro, here's the first chapter because if we're going to go hard,
[00:11:52] let's just let everybody know what's up out of the gate. Yeah. And he was like, absolutely. So
[00:11:57] I think that's the same reason that that book hits people. This is the same way that your book hits
[00:12:03] where you're like, man, some heavy shit you're going to have to do. But you can't do it another way.
[00:12:10] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can. Yeah, you can. But then you're just a liar. Yeah. Yeah. Then you're just like,
[00:12:14] everybody else out there in this current generation, this age where, um, and I don't want to be that,
[00:12:20] you know, I'd rather continue to suffer. I'd still continue to learn from my pain and make mistakes.
[00:12:28] Hopefully, fewer of them. And uh, we'll see how that shakes out. Right on. All right, let's, let's
[00:12:36] go back to the beginning a little bit where you came from and all this. I'm going to go to the book for a second.
[00:12:41] Because it's a pretty good opener. It's gives a good assessment right here. It says,
[00:12:44] I'm an A typical dude with an with a typical parents and an A typical childhood.
[00:12:48] I don't exactly know how I ended up like this, but here's my closest guess as to the recipe that made
[00:12:54] me to start at three cups of I grew up in the 80s. So like many of you Jen X types,
[00:12:59] every day was an adventure that were no cell phones, no helicopter parents. We left in the
[00:13:04] morning and came home when the street lights came on. Then at two teaspoons of my mom, a highly
[00:13:09] educated, classically liberal woman who value books, arts, and dance. She probably fit best,
[00:13:18] teaching at any least, Easter, West Coast College, and anywhere else on the planet. Now,
[00:13:22] add three heaping tablespoons of my dad and elite counter-narcotics officer who literally was going
[00:13:29] up against Pablo Escobar on the daily at the peak of the war on drugs. He had seen the worst in
[00:13:35] life and wanted his children to be tough, quick thinking, A and able to survive in any condition.
[00:13:41] He valued martial arts, gunwork, and more risk-taking than most parents would feel comfortable
[00:13:46] allowing. Finally, add one bucket of my insurmountable drive to prove I can do anything and you now
[00:13:53] have an idea of what makes me me. You were a homeschooled. That's right. Right. So what's that?
[00:14:02] Do you own homeschooled before homeschooling was even a thing? Yep. It wasn't a thing. It's a thing.
[00:14:07] I grew up in the 70s, but it definitely wasn't a thing in the 70s. By the time I had kids,
[00:14:11] homeschooling was a thing, I homeschooled one of my kids. It wasn't a thing though in the 80s.
[00:14:17] No. Where did your parents even come up with that? They were radicals. They were radical
[00:14:24] centrist in the sense that they believed in the Roosevelt idea of what a citizen is. It is my job
[00:14:31] to be self-sufficient. It is the individual responsibility to be a providing protect for my family.
[00:14:36] As a contributing member of society, as a good citizen of America, so that old school
[00:14:42] Roosevelt approach to being a good citizen, it is our job to educate my children. It is not the
[00:14:49] government's job to do anything. That is how my parents subscribed. Religion, ethics, morality,
[00:14:56] the classical part. We had box seats in the San Francisco Symphony, Deves Hall. We travel
[00:15:03] all over the nation to go to opera and ballet and a group on Chikowsky's watching beautiful
[00:15:09] little bannerinas move around and remember that Chikowsky's composer that swan lake.
[00:15:17] So this is when you made that freak and swan lake for the year. All those years ago, there was
[00:15:23] such a real. There was some time in that. I remember like thinking, okay. There's layers there.
[00:15:30] Yeah, I did it now. When I was born, I was born with a bad heart murmur.
[00:15:36] And I was a runt to child compared to the rest of my family. My dad's a giant Olympian water
[00:15:42] pull a player, my brothers and child. My actual Olympian water pull a freak. Still to this day,
[00:15:48] when you're standing next to this guy that's still a plain full cocaine from Pauleyska Bar
[00:15:53] and you know, he's 6, 3, 280 pounds. You're just kind of like, you're unnerved in his space.
[00:16:00] He's courgarious. He's so sweet, but you're also like, do I make eye contact with him? Yeah.
[00:16:07] But being small and being a runt, I had like a ship on my shoulder.
[00:16:11] And I walked out all of you. I'm 511. So you're 511, but you were, but you had like Napoleon
[00:16:18] and you were 511. Yeah, 220 pound Harry, and I'm nothing compared to the rest of my family's
[00:16:25] athletic gifts. So like that, that teaspoon of crazy part, you know, that was me just trying to
[00:16:32] keep up. That was me just trying to be with my big brother who is faster and stronger and his
[00:16:37] friends were bigger and meaner. So like that came to be a pretty big driving force for me.
[00:16:42] And this was all taken place in up and around San Luis Obesma. Yep. And a task of
[00:16:47] a pass-a-roll bulls, just tell Patent, Cambria, which is some of the most amazing, just region of
[00:16:55] the world is. We've been everywhere. We've been everywhere, right? And I still go home. I go to
[00:17:00] my my parents' property. It's in in law-quad. Right off of Lake Nassie, I met him. We back up to
[00:17:05] camp Roberts. And just amazing. Truly elk walking through my parents yard, you know, and
[00:17:13] I'm looking down the backside of the Hurst Castle property. We look at the mountains.
[00:17:19] And it is so wild that I'm in California when I'm there. It's so beautiful and it's so
[00:17:25] serene and then I'm like California.
[00:17:31] There was like a movement a little while ago to make to separate California to different
[00:17:36] three regions. All those like, yes, yes. I think it just needs to be too
[00:17:41] read or I guess yeah, two regions. One of the regions would be San Francisco and L.A.
[00:17:47] And then at California to the rest of it. Yep. That got pretty cool. It'll be pretty awesome. Yeah,
[00:17:51] never gonna happen. So you're running around as a kid. You're doing just full on kid stuff.
[00:17:59] You're freaking running around the world. You got the Creek gang. Yep. There's no one monitoring
[00:18:07] shit with you. No, I mean, there's no parental. It's so difficult for people now to understand
[00:18:13] what it was like in the 80s. You know, bicycle helmet's not gonna happen. Oh, you know, when I say
[00:18:18] we leave it sunrise and come back at sunset, it wasn't the door was locked. Like we could not come home.
[00:18:25] You know, my mom would close the screen door and had one of those latches and should latch
[00:18:28] that thing. And we would knock on the door when the sun went down to come in to get dinner. I'll
[00:18:32] say to that, you got 10 hours to pretty much be a fair, a fair, a fair or rather child.
[00:18:39] And you spend time in the water, too. You're like a waterman, too, right? 100%. Yeah. You know,
[00:18:44] with a dad that was water polo pool in the backyard, our house was where everybody would go.
[00:18:51] It was like the center of gravity for our church and our community. So every Friday, the whole
[00:18:56] entire city was pretty much invited to our house. So we would have a few hundred people at our
[00:19:00] house every Friday and it was a made lay pit in that pool. You know, only the strong survived.
[00:19:06] It was bad. I don't know how kids didn't die. Like to this day, board of the flies type things.
[00:19:12] I have not pool. And, but, you know, with the the coast being right there, Maro Bay, you know,
[00:19:19] spear fishing, scuba diving. I got my patty junior scuba diving license at 13. The other
[00:19:25] as a surfer kid growing up, before I was allowed to scuba diving, like we're free diving, you know,
[00:19:29] using Hawaiian slings and spear fishing. We would swim out to rocker to the breakers and we would take
[00:19:37] a broom handle with a wire close hanger and a attach a fishing lure to the end of it. And we'd
[00:19:45] swim out all the way out to the breakers, like, you know, a quarter mile off of beach. And we would
[00:19:51] call it, we called poke hole fishing. And I'd take this dowel with this long broken wire that I'd
[00:19:56] bend into like this crescent. And I'd dip it over the corners of these rocks 10, 10 feet down
[00:20:02] as the ways are to smash into the breakers. But we'd get the rock cod that weren't so far out
[00:20:08] that the fish that the boats would get, but not, but they're big enough because they weren't by the beach.
[00:20:12] So I would, I would get five six rock cod a couple of hours, but I just had indoor getting my
[00:20:17] ass being on the rocks. It's, uh, man, it's kind of strange. You didn't end up in the navy. I wanted to.
[00:20:25] Yeah. When I, on 9-11, the navy office was closed. So the marine office was open. I talked to them
[00:20:33] first. And the army office was open. And, uh, on 9-12, nothing was really open on 9-11.
[00:20:40] It wasn't until the day after that I finally got to talk to recruiter and that was the
[00:20:44] Marines and the army first. Yeah, because that just weren't working. That was, yeah,
[00:20:49] it was just nobody's shocker. The, uh, the, uh, because the waters such a huge obstacle in, in
[00:20:56] buds. Yeah. And it's also, it's also like part of being in the sealtains like you're in the water a lot.
[00:21:02] So if you grow up in the water, it's kind of, it's kind of nice to be able to return to it from time to time.
[00:21:07] Um, so you're growing up and, and let me jump into the book here. And again, look, I'm,
[00:21:13] I'm like reading a small percentage of this book. The stories in here are amazing. I want to hit on one of them right now.
[00:21:21] Uh, here we go. Jared and Jordan, counting him two members of the Creek gang and two of my best friends
[00:21:27] on planet earth. We're heading to a party driven by teenagers and two separate cars. When I say
[00:21:33] heading to a party, I mean, that an elamest, most wholesome possible way. They weren't going to
[00:21:38] some Hollywood style teenage kegger. They were going to hang out at someone's house and play games.
[00:21:44] Maybe if things got wild, they'll, they'd wrestle in the grass. Just good wholesome fun. It was a
[00:21:50] kid's a church kid hang out. But church kids are still kids. And as you've seen for me, and you know
[00:21:57] from your own childhood, hood kids do dumb things. The two teenage drivers finding themselves alone on a
[00:22:04] long country road started racing each other, taking turns passing each other in the oncoming traffic lane.
[00:22:10] It was Jared's cars turn to speed by and they slid out from behind Jordan's car and started to pass.
[00:22:19] The brothers were right next to each other. They're respective drivers in mid-exeleration in that horrible moment.
[00:22:24] I know what the moment was like as do you. Boys yelling at each other through windows, laughing,
[00:22:31] swearing, feeling the invincible rush of adrenaline filled youth.
[00:22:38] Then the armed coming car came around the corner. They were doing nothing wrong, just
[00:22:43] mining their own business, doing some last minute shopping before Christmas. Neither drivers saw the
[00:22:49] other in time to hit the brakes or swore of Jared died. Age 13, December 20, 1994,
[00:22:59] five days before Christmas in front of his 16 year old brother Jordan.
[00:23:11] So, yeah that's that's gonna be a mark.
[00:23:16] The kind of hands they were lead cutting him was the discerning prosecutor for San Luis Pizpo.
[00:23:26] Jordan was like the quintessential hero. If Friday night lights the movie was made, like he is
[00:23:33] that the gorgeous athletic, everybody, you know he's the smartest and Jared had all of that going
[00:23:43] with him. That family was really not just the most pop popular family in the city, but like they
[00:23:48] are the most generous and kind and sweetest people. So, like that law, when Jared died,
[00:23:57] your children had to live with the Jared Brady law. That was because of Jared cutting him.
[00:24:02] You can't drive under the age of 18 with other kids in your car. That was because of this.
[00:24:07] Wow. And, you know, Jordan, being my brothers, one of my brother's best friends and Jared,
[00:24:14] being one of my best friends, it is such a crucial moment, you know, in that like post-pubescent,
[00:24:22] you know, you're still figuring out who you are. Frontal lobes not working yet. And when tragedy
[00:24:28] like this happens, it just reshapes and reorganizes everything. And the city just one rallied around
[00:24:36] the cutting him, which was really cool to see. But that generation, that little group,
[00:24:42] you know, they're a whole bunch of my friends from that era, our dead now,
[00:24:46] the committed suicide, or they lived a very reckless life as did I. So, you know,
[00:24:53] had a second and third order effects that lasted for decades.
[00:24:58] An interesting thing about the book is like like we've been talking about, it's very humble
[00:25:03] for you to point this out, but you'll go through these things where there should be some big
[00:25:08] lesson learned. And you'll literally say like, this was a huge lesson that I could have learned.
[00:25:15] And I missed it. And I mean, this kind of like what happens here, this doesn't slow you down at all.
[00:25:23] I mean, you're still like just going wild as a kid, doing normal kid shit. Yeah, and it sounds
[00:25:27] like everyone else was, too. Yeah. The, there is a direct intent from us to not point out any lessons
[00:25:37] and anything. I wanted people to learn not from an antidotal, hey, here, here's what you should do.
[00:25:45] Instead, here's the repercussions of it. Are you smart enough to extrapolate out of this,
[00:25:52] what you need to do to not make the same mistake? Hopefully people are smart enough to realize
[00:25:59] the consequences of every single one of these things? Yeah. So you're running around. I mean,
[00:26:05] you're getting in fights, you're getting jobs, you're getting fired, you're attacking people.
[00:26:11] It's just ridiculous. Well, you're attacking. Even though I was being an absolute psychopath.
[00:26:17] So, at an outburger, where I get fired when they fire their best fry guy. Yeah, Steve.
[00:26:27] There was a, like, she legitimately got assaulted, you know, and maybe a 134 year old boy
[00:26:33] when my 1112 year old sister, when she gets like inappropriately touched by dude, like, I thrown
[00:26:38] through a phone booth. Like, that's what you do. You know, when I was five years old, when I got
[00:26:43] with the reason I got home schooled is I got kicked out of private school. You know, in my parents
[00:26:48] were already homeschooling my brother, but so that was going to be an option, but they're going to see
[00:26:52] if if this little hairy handed idiot was going to be able to handle school. See if he can be civilized
[00:26:58] and so-so-living. Could not happen. No, a little dude made fun of Laura's hair. She got a little
[00:27:03] bull cut and I followed him up onto the place gate, punched at the grill and I shoved him off and he
[00:27:07] broke his arm. That's not my fault. So by the time I'm 16, you know, and I have a little bit of
[00:27:13] testosterone finally going on and somebody touches Brianna. I'm like a dart, a lawn dart across that
[00:27:19] polished stainless steel counter into this dude as I drag him out the front door after beating him.
[00:27:27] So at some point, it sounds like your dad realizes you need some kind of harness, some kind of
[00:27:33] direction and then comes wrestling, other martial arts. What's that like? It's weird because you
[00:27:42] wrestled, but you weren't allowed to wrestle in like the CIF. It's right California State Problem.
[00:27:48] Home schooled program. That's home schooled. So now there's mechanisms. Yeah, there's mechanisms
[00:27:53] now. But in 1985. They thought they would deal with the freaking cult member. They were.
[00:28:01] They were. They were too. So, you know, I would like club wrestling, freestyle wrestling.
[00:28:08] I could do Greco camps. I could go to drop internaments. You know, but there was no, there was the
[00:28:14] collegiate approach to wrestling. Not accessible to a home school and kid. So how old were you
[00:28:20] started wrestling? 10. And then you were your dad was getting you into other like traditional
[00:28:26] martial arts as well. What do you got? Docon, jujitsu. What was that all about? Yeah, that was the
[00:28:31] Japanese. Take out a yeah, kid jujitsu. You know, you go like, hallowed Gracie, the origin of it is
[00:28:39] Japanese jujitsu. So this was a very, very traditional Japanese jujitsu school. So you'd still do,
[00:28:47] stick fighting, you know, a screamless sticks and boasts, boasts, and a little bit of weapon,
[00:28:52] takeaways, wrist locks, striking, but very traditional Japanese striking. And I loved it.
[00:29:01] My favorite part was the grappling part of it. So it turned, you know, like I played around in clubs
[00:29:07] with the in wrestling and Taekwondo and karate. You know, wasn't until about 15,
[00:29:17] where it was a mandated activity where my dad was like, you will go do this. And that's was
[00:29:24] that was jujitsu in wrestling. It got real at 15, 16. And then you could only compete in just club
[00:29:31] tournaments. You couldn't compete in the CIF. That's right. How'd you do against kids that were good
[00:29:35] wrestlers from from that were wrestling in CIF? I guess mashed. Yeah, everywhere. My first,
[00:29:42] my first tournament was a single elimination tournament and I got pinned in like 38 seconds. And
[00:29:50] in the gymnasium, big, huge, you know, old school wooden floor, gymnasium with like the wooden
[00:29:57] bleachers. You could hear every echo. And I could, I swear, I could hear my embarrassment.
[00:30:07] Like echoing off the walls. Like I just got louder and louder. And I couldn't look at my dad
[00:30:12] who is next to me. You know, I know he was, you know, he was cheering for me as a short match and
[00:30:16] he was disappointed. And of course, he's like, come on, bud, you're all right. Let's go. So I was so embarrassed.
[00:30:23] I was showing you your dad is such a beast. We got this freaking scrawny kid that's got his ass beef.
[00:30:29] I'm just going to leave you here, son. Sorry. I remember the first tournament, first high school
[00:30:34] tournament that my son wrestled in. He was so he had might have just turned 14. And
[00:30:41] and he might have even still been 13. Anyways, he was young. But he was on the varsity team
[00:30:46] because it's pretty good. And so when he taken to the big tournament, there's 64 people in the bracket.
[00:30:51] He's the 64th seed because he's a little kid. And the first, so he's going up against the number
[00:30:57] one or number two seed in the first, his first match. And this dude comes out. He's got, he's freaking
[00:31:03] got like a full firefighter's mustache. He's like 19, a full grown ass man, right? Like just a man.
[00:31:11] He had a big ass tattoo on his arm. And I looked at my son and said, hey, no matter what happens,
[00:31:16] you just hold your head up high. We walk off this side. He got 10 30 seconds. Yeah. It's like,
[00:31:22] what are those things? There's something good about that, though, man. It's so important. It's so
[00:31:26] important. I can't, I can't, even though I think back, I'm humiliated, shameful moment, right?
[00:31:33] We're like, my dad wouldn't look at me for a second. And that might even be like projected my own
[00:31:37] brain. I'm sure he was just sitting there being like, come over here, son. But my brain, like,
[00:31:42] he looked away in that glance, like, just was a knife in my chest. That shame going on and being
[00:31:48] able to like hang with the Rashad Evans and the John Jones is, you know, 15 years later, that would never
[00:31:53] ever, ever happen without me standing there as a pathetic loser, getting destroyed in seconds.
[00:31:59] In my first match, there's no participation trophy. There's no coach being like, hey, that was
[00:32:03] great match. You tried your hardest. You know, he came over and he was like, you suck. You know,
[00:32:09] I, I hope I don't have to see you on Monday. Please don't come back. You know, but I showed up
[00:32:15] because I was furious. And if that, that, that fire is so important and it's not being a
[00:32:21] harnessed right now, because it's, it's absent from this generation. Yeah. And we, we have to let
[00:32:29] people fail again. Yeah, that even for me, like the first time I ever did, Jiu Jitsu against this old
[00:32:35] master chief who was probably like 10 years younger than I am right now, but he seemed like the oldest
[00:32:39] dude in the world. And, you know, he just like choked me out on mock me and I was like, oh, I'm literally
[00:32:44] thinking, whatever this dude knows, I'm going to do everything in my power to learn everything about
[00:32:47] it, because I don't ever want this to happen again. This is, this is what I'm doing. Yeah. And,
[00:32:52] and you gotta get your ass beats. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. It is good for you. When somebody's
[00:32:59] lecturing me about some significant thing about, you know, hard work or, you know, how,
[00:33:04] how somebody should do something, I always look at him like, have you ever been hit in the face?
[00:33:10] You know, have you ever had your ass beat? Have you ever lose so bad? You, you felt like you
[00:33:16] couldn't breathe and they're trying to impart some ways down like, I can't listen to you.
[00:33:21] Yeah, there's nothing else you can say. And then there's a dividing line too, because some
[00:33:24] people when they feel that, they just want to avoid that thing forever for our show life. And that's a
[00:33:29] bummer because that's just the wrong path to go down. Some people when they experience that, like,
[00:33:34] oh, this other human being can hold me and do what every wants to me. And I hate that. Yeah,
[00:33:41] I'm going to do everything I can to be able to stop that from happening in the future.
[00:33:44] Well, that's an, that's evolution. That's that application, right? So, like, if I put my hand
[00:33:48] on something, I'm burn my hand. I'm going to learn not to put my hand there. If I go with this
[00:33:52] really brilliant crazy hot chick on the like hot crazy scale, she cheats on me with this other
[00:33:58] better look and do that has more money. Hopefully, I emotionally learn that I maybe should not
[00:34:03] find somebody that looks like that and behaves like this. I'm going to pick somebody slightly different.
[00:34:08] Like those are all painful lessons to learn. And that's how we adapt. And like the, the
[00:34:13] adaptation process should involve pain. Pain is the, is, is the thing that fuels the change.
[00:34:21] I'm going to fast forward a little bit in the book. This is good. Yeah, it's tasty.
[00:34:32] So here I am at slow kickboxing, walking into the one of the most dilapidated buildings I've ever
[00:34:39] seen. I'm going to be training with a rising star in the UFC a guy by the name of Chuck Ladell,
[00:34:44] alongside his merry band of badasses. First, we have GAN McGee, and that was 300 pound
[00:34:49] wrestler from Cal Poly who fought for the UFC World Championship against Tim Sylvia, again,
[00:34:54] lost, but Tim Popfer steroids that in that fight. Next, we have Eric Schwartz, another Cal Poly
[00:35:00] wrestler who is undefeated in WEC and K1 Kickboxing circuit. He's Chuck's main training partner.
[00:35:07] Never far from him was Scott Lates out Lidey, a K1 Kickboxer and mixed martial artist. Then
[00:35:14] there's Jason Vaughn Flu, you know, the guy that the famous jujitsu choke is named after. That guy.
[00:35:20] Cruz Gomez is the only little guy in the mix. Meaning he was about my size, 511 170,
[00:35:28] but what he lacked in statuary made up for an abject savagery. Finally, there's Glover Texturea,
[00:35:35] but jujitsu badass would go on to become the UFC champion with the most subs at light,
[00:35:40] heavyweight in UFC history. To rough room. That's a freak. That's a freak. That's them.
[00:35:47] You get to get some trade in it. Yeah, and then there's John Hackelman, who is just, you know, he was
[00:35:54] sat there with a hot iron poker of emotional because he knew all of our buttons and he was just like
[00:36:01] just walk around instigating, says a psychopath. I love him so much. And so he's how do you
[00:36:07] found the pit? So, Hawaiian Kempo. Yeah. And he got his black belt. When he was in the army,
[00:36:14] he was boxing and he was traveling and he got stationed in Hawaii. And while he was there, he
[00:36:21] grossly summarizing falls in love with Hawaiian Kempo. You know, ultimately, it becomes a black
[00:36:26] belt and Hawaiian Kempo comes back to a royal grandeur where he opens up the pit in his backyard.
[00:36:32] Um, this was before that even had a cage built back there. It was like a rope ring inside of a
[00:36:38] bar and outside barn. And we had his hill. We had a will barrel and we had sandbags. And that was
[00:36:45] all the apparatus that we had to train to, you know, which became a whole bunch of warm champions.
[00:36:51] But that was it. And then he opened up his actual martial art school, you know, the
[00:36:55] in a royal grandeur, the pit. And then sandless bispo kickboxing wasn't offshoot of the pit, where
[00:37:02] we had the ring, the an actual mat for us to wrestle. Not in the grass or dirt, which was nicer.
[00:37:11] So you're sparring Chakudel. How old are you at this time? I am 18. And what's, how was
[00:37:20] Chakudel? He is 26. A 26-year-old Chakudel. And then the rest of the guys in that room being around
[00:37:29] that age, too. I imagine. Yeah. Yeah. It was wild about this room is like Eric Schwartz. Nobody
[00:37:36] knows that name. You know, I think he retired like 12-0. He only retired because Chakudel retired.
[00:37:41] He was really only fighting so he could stay relevant for his best friend Chakudel. That was
[00:37:46] he was the best in the room. Then he had Scott Adams, who also retired as an undefeated UFC fighter.
[00:37:52] Well, I think the first three leglocks in the UFC were from Scott Adams. And I think you have a
[00:37:59] share of a poem with him in Monson. Oh yeah, yeah. I think they fought in the UFC really, really early.
[00:38:07] Did Scott win? Yeah, leglock. Yeah. And yeah, there's that video. There's a video of me in Jeff
[00:38:12] Monson. And unfortunately, it's like a three-minute video. And the match was triple over time.
[00:38:21] So like, I've seen the full video though. Yeah. It's not on YouTube. Oh, okay. But I,
[00:38:27] man, where did I see it? That was one of the most competitive. And this was peak Monson.
[00:38:31] When you fought him. Yeah. This is wooded out of his gill. This is like, you could see all of the
[00:38:37] deep all. Like there's a pumping out of his neck. And the testosterone was like dripping out of his eye.
[00:38:42] Like this was like anabolic steroid Monson of massive emotions. That was a badass mess.
[00:38:48] Oh, yeah. But also very technically. That was good to you. You should do it. Oh, yeah, for sure.
[00:38:53] No, it was. Obviously. No, that was a great match. I don't know. I don't know. I don't just like
[00:38:58] anybody else. You know, I look back. That was so long. I look at that. Oh my god. What am I doing with my
[00:39:02] hips over there? What was my weight? You know, you look at these. Thank you, your prophetic. But um,
[00:39:06] good times. Yeah. But that room, even the no names were just could have been world champions.
[00:39:13] Yeah. You know, again, that when he lost at Tim Sylvia, um, lost, you know,
[00:39:21] gained. So this is like pre-usata. Yeah. So now you're getting off that then.
[00:39:28] Man, nobody cares. Yeah. So they made it like they de-cute it. But that you don't get a belt from a
[00:39:34] DQ. So so again, it would be world champion. But is now just get to win over Tim Sylvia for
[00:39:41] championship fight, but non champion. That sucks. Yeah. That's a bummer. The room was vicious and
[00:39:46] everybody hit hard. Everybody. How many times how often were you training? I train 14 times a week.
[00:39:56] You end up your first, your first fights for money. And this is such a click. This book is insane.
[00:40:02] Uh, your first fights for money are you get it? You do somebody a favor of driving some
[00:40:07] weapons down to normally in some kind of an event or something like this. And you're standing in
[00:40:14] the bar. And you see people getting kind of like taking a way, they look, the guys that look like you.
[00:40:19] First of all. Uh-huh. Yeah. They do what, they explain it. Okay. So my buddy Gary Cobble.
[00:40:24] Um, he owns this weapons manufacturing company. And I'm driving the prototype weapons from
[00:40:29] Sandless Bispo. From past rural bulls all the way to New Orleans for trekspo east, which is like
[00:40:34] this law enforcement government convention. Think shot show or NRA, but just specific to law
[00:40:41] enforcement and military. So instead of doing the rational thing of, you know, stopping to get
[00:40:47] sleep, I get get rid of bottles, I'm pissing and get rid of bottles. And I drive straight through
[00:40:51] it like 90 miles an hour. So I can have extra time in New Orleans. Right. Of course. No doubt.
[00:40:57] This is like what you don't have to explain this. So I get there. I have a Lincoln Navigator with,
[00:41:04] you know, half a million dollars of experimental weapons in the back. And I park it on Burpens.
[00:41:09] And I go into the first bar I can find. And I'm like, this is also, and I see these dudes
[00:41:14] with chunked up ears, gigantic shoulders, you know, big like massive hands. And they're like bumping
[00:41:19] into little bros that are just hanging out in the bars. And then they walk out and somebody intervenes
[00:41:26] before they start fighting in the bar and just come down to my bar and I'll pay the winner of the
[00:41:30] two of you. Well, it was just a scam where the professional fighters were going and luring
[00:41:35] little traveling tourists that were drunk out of New Orleans to go fighting this bar.
[00:41:40] So this is brilliant. This is the best thing that could have happened to me. So I wait for the
[00:41:44] next bump, shoulder bump to happen. And I go over there and I bump into him and I was like,
[00:41:48] what's your problem? What's your, what's your, wait a second? What's going on here? I was like,
[00:41:52] I'm in. Let's go fly. So I became the new like asshole that then bring in the college kids to.
[00:41:58] And I'll just beat them and I get a couple hundred bucks per beating. And it was a great plan
[00:42:03] until I have to show up to work the next morning with swollen hands and black eyes from bare
[00:42:07] knuckle fights. Yeah. Good initiation though. I mean, you thought to yourself,
[00:42:13] hey, I can make money doing this. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to, I'm you remember the early 2000s
[00:42:20] MMA. MMA is not legal in probably 45 out of 50 states in California. I had, I would have to go to
[00:42:27] Indian reservations or I'd have to come down here and go to Tijuana. You know, I'd fight in
[00:42:32] literally every single Indian reservation up and down the state. I would have about 10 of them.
[00:42:37] And you know, the of the few states that would allow it, it was usually on Indian reservations in the
[00:42:42] state that it was kind of pseudo permitted. There was no athletic commission. There was no drug testing
[00:42:47] and you're getting paid in cash or a check that would probably bounce. That was, that was the
[00:42:54] MMA I grew up in for sure. Yeah. The the other wild thing is like, you don't know, you don't have
[00:42:59] any clue who your opponent is. No YouTube. Yeah. And you know, what how would you work with young
[00:43:05] fighters? You know, get these hyped up young fighters. They've been trained for two years like,
[00:43:09] I want to fight. I want to do an amateur fight. I'm like, okay, but you don't know who your opponent's
[00:43:13] going to be. And I'd call out one of our guys that's like a black belt that wrestled in high school.
[00:43:17] I go, you know that guy upstairs? Yeah. You train with him? Yeah. I mean, he's got his first amateur
[00:43:22] fight in two weeks too. Like think about that. You know, think about you don't know who you're
[00:43:26] getting in with. Yeah. But luckily, you have got you are well rounded for the time for sure for the
[00:43:31] time. The pit was way advanced in the sense that, you know, we had brought up Glover Tickshare from
[00:43:37] Brazil. You had brilliant by John Hackelman to bring up. I would have to drive two hours to find
[00:43:43] a purple belt to train with in Jiu Jitsu. Two hours. Like it wasn't, there's a black belt on every
[00:43:49] corner. Yeah. Like it is now. You know, like in Austin, I think we have 160 black belts in the city of
[00:43:56] Austin. And I would drive two and a half hours to go to Santa Barbara to train with the closest purple
[00:44:04] belt. Who was it? I don't remember. No. Or I'd have to drive up to San Francisco to train with like the
[00:44:13] the, um, health graces. Yeah. There's my two options. Three hours north to the south.
[00:44:19] Rock Glover in. And now you got on tap. Yep. Bad asks. You did two guys. We have all the Cal Poly wrestling
[00:44:28] team. They would come in just to train with us just to work on a wrestling. Then we had Hawaiian
[00:44:32] Campo, John Hackelman teaching off our striking. You know, we had three K1 kickboxers that were there.
[00:44:37] So it was a very rare thing to have that. This, the pit was the first
[00:44:43] super fight club. It's like a glad theater school. Yeah. But now we, you know, we have American top team.
[00:44:48] You know, there's a bunch of them. You know, the aka, you know, you have Jackson Winkle John. The
[00:44:53] list goes on and all these great schools, um, and teams. But back then, they're weren't any. You
[00:44:58] know, like the T. Do Ortiz would come up from Huntington Beach and then Rande Couture and Matt
[00:45:03] Lynn little come down from Oregon in Washington. You know, it's just, this was the spot. And I was just
[00:45:09] born there. Yeah. It's cool. These poor, freaking kids on the Indian reservation. It's exciting
[00:45:15] to fight your ass for the day. The funny thing is though, I've just think about this. You posted a
[00:45:20] picture while back of like you when you're just in the army. And, you know, you look young. You look
[00:45:28] young. Yeah. And so that's also going to throw people for a loop. They're looking at you like,
[00:45:33] oh, who's this little guy? I want to beat his ass and I'm like, oh, no, this guy's been traded to
[00:45:36] pit. You know, you got another thing coming, boy. Yeah. That's awesome. Um, meanwhile, while all this
[00:45:46] is going on with this kind of like fight career, which, by the way, is also like a stretch. I mean,
[00:45:51] I guess you could look at the UFC at the time. Be like, well, yeah, maybe I could do that, but
[00:45:54] it seems like a stretch, you know, yeah, you're not going to make money on that time. Um, so you're
[00:45:59] trying to become a cop, which you're not old enough for. That's right. So therefore, in the meantime,
[00:46:07] I'm going to become a firefighter in order to become a firefighter. The, the, the, the first step on this
[00:46:11] track many times is EMT. Yep. That's right. So you decide you're going to come, uh, become an EMT.
[00:46:17] Yep. That 18. I'm going to go to the book. As I step off the truck in my boots at the ground,
[00:46:24] I can already taste the dust, continuing the horror movie motive. The things that immediately
[00:46:29] catch my eyes are himnals being gently blown toward me across the ground. I can smell the burning
[00:46:36] fuel of the vehicle interlaced with the dust. I also smell the burning weeds near the van,
[00:46:42] and the accurate smell of blood, urine, and feces. And now here the wailing of people in pain
[00:46:49] seemingly coming from everywhere. I realize quickly several people have been thrown from the vehicle.
[00:46:55] The whales are not screams. When people are screaming, they have their facilities and are generally
[00:47:04] aware of the acute pain in injury. Whales are worse. They come from a deeper place inside a person.
[00:47:13] They happen when one's body is so broken that it cannot muster a scream or even a full breath.
[00:47:19] And those whales and moans flood my senses freezing me where I stand. Again, I was just 19.
[00:47:26] I hear Tom finishing up the radio call. Send everyone. He says, the radio operator understands
[00:47:35] and confirms. Tom places the radio back in its proper place and he hops out of the truck.
[00:47:40] And as he strides past me, he says, pick one. That's something my teenage brain can understand.
[00:47:49] That's a rough one. There's a, basically a church van that crashes and you guys are first on scene.
[00:48:02] Driver Phyllis Sleep, stumped on the gas. They think they're rolled over at 85 miles an hour.
[00:48:09] Northbound on the 101. Crossed. Crossed. Where the center of the visor doesn't exist.
[00:48:16] Rolled. Launching, you know, you're in a van. Church van's, you're not buckled up. Nobody was buckled up.
[00:48:22] And all it did was launch bodies across this rural landscape on the side of this hill.
[00:48:31] And you know, I just turned 19. I'd been with the fire department for five months. I had graduated
[00:48:39] from EMT School at Quest of College six months before that. Like I knew nothing. You know,
[00:48:46] I knew how to take vitals. I knew how to like treat bleeding wounds. And I, and my only experience
[00:48:54] in trauma had been, you know, a couple of people self-inflicted, you know, mental health type things.
[00:48:59] So this was on a scale of something I never seen and trauma that I'd never seen before. And it was
[00:49:09] that I know what to do. It was a child. 14 people were in the crash. And again, you, you describe
[00:49:20] everything with some awesome detail in the book. But all but one had critical kind of life threatening
[00:49:27] injuries. And out of those 14, seven were, or actually able to survive because the work of you
[00:49:36] and the team. And you give a lot of credit to the team. As you're saying right now, you were
[00:49:42] young, just kind of falling direction, trying to, trying to put together what you could.
[00:49:45] But a guy named Tom Wei Anthony, Stormetta, and Keith Axon, just more experience guys that
[00:49:51] could make things happen. And the kind of guys that you looked at and you said to yourself, all right,
[00:49:56] that's a good role model for me to try and emulate. Yeah, you know when you've seen this,
[00:50:02] chaos screams fire, blood pain. There's always somebody that's cool, right? There's somebody that's
[00:50:09] always just like, all right, this is what we're going to do. And that just, I didn't have that
[00:50:17] and I wanted that. And there's not a linear path to become that. And the frustration of standing
[00:50:27] over body. And again, in this triage sense, the first body I run to, I start working on and Tom
[00:50:34] Wei just walks up and as I came in, go find somebody else. And then I watch Tom not start working
[00:50:39] on that body. But this does not compute, right? Then like the neuros in my brain are like,
[00:50:45] why is he not treating this person that he just told, oh, they're going to die. Got it. So
[00:50:51] go to the next one, I start, it was a child and I start working on the child and Tom comes over and
[00:50:57] he's like, hey, go find another one. And like that was just a knife, like this hot,
[00:51:02] searing poker straight through my chest of like, oh my God, this little girl is going to die.
[00:51:08] And then I see Tom start working on her. I'm like, okay, she's got a chance, you know?
[00:51:14] But now what do I do? Right? I just took a pick-toe for two, you know, like, apparently I'm not
[00:51:20] picking the right ones. So go off to the next one, start figuring out. There's still three of us.
[00:51:27] There's 15, 14 bodies and there's three of us on the ground. Then help another truck rolls up,
[00:51:35] then the ambulance rolls up. Now we have like seven people that are there to work. We still have
[00:51:42] 14 bodies. We still don't have enough hands. So it is, I mean, I describe it nightmarish.
[00:51:50] And there's no way besides in like a horror film to depict what it feels like to be, to be hearing
[00:51:55] those sounds, to be smelling all of those smells, to be seen this just carnage, you know, with the fire
[00:52:01] truck lights and the dust that's still settling, you know, in the California dry environment that we live in,
[00:52:08] it's, you know, it's wild. Shapes, shape somebody though. Yeah, again, for me, just you,
[00:52:15] even being able to identify, hey, these guys, Tom way, the way he was just acting, that's the way I
[00:52:22] should be acting. That's what I need to figure out. And like you said, it's not going to happen overnight,
[00:52:26] but at least you have some kind of a goal and you see a good example. Yeah, there's just a
[00:52:30] dude Dave Payton, the another example, Big House Fire, I'm running off to go do like firemen things,
[00:52:37] you know, and Dave like grabs me by the scuff of the neck and's like, that's not going to do anything,
[00:52:43] hold on a second. He sets up the truck, gets water pressure, and then he's like, go, you know,
[00:52:49] there's, there's, there's so cool to have people like that that that we're able to shape
[00:52:56] young men and be able to like, you know, save this one for example. So speaking of firefighting,
[00:53:02] you end up becoming a firefighter. Yep. And it's an interesting, you can't look at you like,
[00:53:11] you look at the guy, this guy, I remember guy like this, I kicked him off to you. Oh man,
[00:53:17] you got, well, what's a bummer for me is like you had a fire chief that wasn't a great guy.
[00:53:23] And what's a bummer for me is just like any, like like what you just said, you get your freaking
[00:53:28] dog, right, you're an attack dog. And without a good like leader, you're just going to bite the first
[00:53:35] breath freaking thing that you see. But when someone's when you've got a good guidance and good
[00:53:41] leadership, you're going to get pointed in the right direction. You're going to be awesome. And you know,
[00:53:45] your first fire chief didn't, wasn't that kind of guy. And so you do things that in some respects
[00:53:54] are awesome. And what exactly what you would want for your young firefighters to be like and
[00:54:00] to think like, they just need a little bit extra guidance. They just need to, oh, yeah, you know what,
[00:54:04] I got a freaking eye on Kennedy right now. Let's make sure we got the leash hold on hold on. All right,
[00:54:10] now go. You know, that's exactly what you needed in. And but you end up getting in trouble for a lot of
[00:54:15] this shit again. Some of it's you're doing dumb shit, but you're doing dumb shit because it's not
[00:54:20] like you were being neglectful. You're actually doing dumb shit that was aggressive and heroic to try and
[00:54:26] help. Just sometimes you could lead a little extra guidance. The guy had a three strike rule.
[00:54:32] Yeah. And you write about the strikes. Yeah. The first one, there's like a female cop who's
[00:54:40] what? There's like a suicidal guy in an apartment. It's right by your apartment. Yeah.
[00:54:44] It's a Bordo apartment complexes. If you know a tasketero, it's good. Sketch. And like, you know,
[00:54:51] like, we have these little pages and like, beep, beep, beep, tasketero fire. And then you'd get
[00:54:57] the address and what type of call it was. The address pops on. I was like, do that's like six doors down.
[00:55:03] I can do this. So I walk out there and this young police officer, she's standing out in front of the door.
[00:55:08] I'm fighting. I've been a professional athlete at this point. You know, I've 50 something amateur
[00:55:15] fights. I have a handful of of pro fights now. And she is dealing with a dude trying to kill
[00:55:21] himself and he has like a box cutter. And he's cutting his wrists. And the mom had called 911.
[00:55:28] And she's waiting for backup. And she can't go in by herself. And, and I look in there and it is,
[00:55:34] it is just like a child. You know, it's a 19-year-old frail. You know, mental health, it is such a
[00:55:41] problem right now. But you very often see not physical specimens that are struggling with these
[00:55:49] problems. So when I peek my head in there, I was like, all right, you know, this is, I got this.
[00:55:53] I got this. This is not a problem. Are you going to go in? They got me going. I'm going with you.
[00:55:57] And firefighters should not do that. They should wait until it's safe. And then they should go in.
[00:56:02] They're the, they're the, the second responders, not the first responders. And then I got trouble.
[00:56:08] That was strike one. That was strike one. By the way, you went to the fire academy. You're a number
[00:56:11] one graduate of the fire academy. That's right. So again, to me, that reflects someone that when you
[00:56:17] given the parameters of what they're supposed to do, they're going to knock it out of the park.
[00:56:20] Yeah. You know, and you just kind of make sure those parameters are in place.
[00:56:24] Test condition. Yeah. Let's keep this mother fucker in the box a little bit. Here's your last
[00:56:29] second one. There's a car crash and it's in ravine and they're waiting to set up the rig to
[00:56:37] repel down into the ravine. You're like, I got this. It was on the in between a task at our
[00:56:42] and Mara Bay, California. It was a highway 41. And there's a big huge drop off that goes down
[00:56:48] into the creek. Big huge. Like, it's not. You know, I got, that's my backyard where I grew up.
[00:56:55] So this, the motorcycle, it's such a fun road to ride motorcycles on. I go there all the, like,
[00:57:00] a grew up riding my, my, my was the CFR 250 up this road. And so I know exactly what this guy was
[00:57:08] doing. An oncoming car sees this motorcycle swirves to avoid it and goes off into the ravine.
[00:57:14] They, they tumble down the hill when we get there. They're down at the bottom. And, and the door
[00:57:19] kind of like, I can see blood coming out the side of the door and the door is kind of a jar and I see
[00:57:24] this woman like messing with her leg and the other guy is tore up on the other side. So like,
[00:57:28] I go grab a tool when I just walked down the hill, pop the door open and I start treating this girl.
[00:57:33] It was not not even an event in my brain. All the while, the rest of the team was setting up
[00:57:40] to do a high and go rescue. So I got a trouble for that. Yeah. So you got a trouble because you didn't
[00:57:48] follow the protocol or something like that. Yeah. So this, this was strike two. Strike three,
[00:57:53] it sounded like you deserved a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure we're in a studio right now.
[00:58:00] You know, in fires do weird things and studios make fires do even weird things. There's no
[00:58:07] where for heat to escape. Got a bunch of electrical equipment. And in that fire, there was a
[00:58:14] studio in there. And the inversion layer, so like the smoke and the heat was so thick that you can see
[00:58:20] where the fire was. And as you know, you go up inches, you'd start going up hundreds of degrees.
[00:58:25] You go up feet and you're talking like a thousand degrees in difference. And I was trying to find
[00:58:31] the fire, which is like what a nozzle guy is supposed to do. I didn't have the experience to
[00:58:35] understand or realize how dangerous it was. So in like the little particles in the air just started
[00:58:42] combusting as the temperature of the room started reaching a flash point. Like an experienced person
[00:58:46] is going to be like, oh, this is about to go down. Yeah. Like instead, I'm like, no, no,
[00:58:51] let's find the fire. Like you're in the fire, bro. Like the fire is above you. You just can't see it.
[00:58:55] You know, if you in the top of your helmet, that popping sound is your helmet melting. You're just too
[00:59:00] dumb to know it. So in the fire, when the room fire finally flashes, like if you see the movie
[00:59:05] back drop, the back drop, where the room finally just goes, oh, that's what happens. I just crank
[00:59:10] up in the nozzle, put it on flood and why to try to not get us to burn alive in an effort to
[00:59:17] which was the right thing for us not to die, but also, you know, not great thing for a lot of
[00:59:22] steam. Who steamsucks. Got it. So I burnt me in an Allen linear, the dude behind me on the nozzle
[00:59:31] being like, hey, you're being stupid. What are they? Was he trying to pull you back? Yeah,
[00:59:36] I think so. I think that's what it's loud fire, nozzle water, and me pulling him forward and
[00:59:46] being that dog, being that bull. You know, like, no, let's go find the fire, let's find the fire,
[00:59:50] I think him being behind me and being that second set of eyes. Like, that the pulling back was
[00:59:55] literally him saying, no, no, no, no, we have reached our limited advance. We need to back up.
[01:00:00] Um, but I was just too dumb and too stubborn. Yeah, it sounded like pretty sketchy. You roll
[01:00:07] out of there and your helmets like melted and your mask is all jacked up. Yeah, so we have
[01:00:13] these self-contained breathing apparatus and you have a layer of plastic glass, plastic glass.
[01:00:19] So plastic and melted, glass had shattered, plastic and melted and I had one layer of glass in
[01:00:25] front of my face. Um, and my, the top of my helmet with my firefighter number 42, I still have
[01:00:33] my firefighter number on my desk, which is like burnt and charred and I keep it there to remind me
[01:00:38] how dumb I have that helmet. Um, that melted. The top of it was like all bubbled and boiled
[01:00:47] to weird. You don't want to see a helmet like that. And that ended up being a strike three. That's
[01:00:53] right. So you could kick off the fire department, which in your mind, um, unstoppable Tim Kennedy's
[01:01:00] like good because I wanted to be a cop anyways. Yeah. Right. That was kind of, that was kind of what you're
[01:01:05] doing. Uh, meanwhile, your, your, your fight careers going. Mm-hmm. What year is this now? This is, uh,
[01:01:12] 2000. Um, you lost your first profile. Scott Smith. That's embarrassing.
[01:01:19] Um, and, uh, arrogance. I bought him five weeks before that and like smacked him. Uh-huh.
[01:01:27] And so I walk into my pro debut and, uh, how did, how did you beat him? How did he beat you?
[01:01:32] Um, he beat me TKO stoppage. Big huge cut doctors like I can see your cheekbone. Get out.
[01:01:39] How did you beat him? Three rounds of domination. Domination. What do you catch? You just caught
[01:01:46] you? Yeah. You just weren't used clear. I mean, he got he got 15 minutes of of first person
[01:01:52] preparation. And I did exactly the same thing that I did in the first round and the first moment
[01:01:57] of our first fight where I had a big change of level. I was going to push him up against the cage.
[01:02:01] You know, make it dirty for a second. So that change of level. He just blew me open with an
[01:02:05] upper cut. Check. Yeah. I can't. Like literally the exact same thing that I was like,
[01:02:10] ah, I'm going to do the same thing I did to him last time. And he's like, I'm going to do a
[01:02:15] different thing. I didn't know how I was going to do it. And it worked out. How long? When did the
[01:02:19] fight get stopped after the first round or? Oh, no, no, like, immediately. Yeah. We're two minute,
[01:02:24] minute and a half into the first round. Oh, yeah. Walking into the pit as a zero one fighter.
[01:02:33] Walking into again and chuck and Scott and Eric and John Hackelman. I already felt like I didn't
[01:02:39] belong. And I'm walking as an Owen one pro. Lusier. Lusier. You do. It's like it's so crazy to think,
[01:02:49] you know, even walking into that place, you're by no means, yeah, they're just walking that
[01:02:54] place and training you're sparring with chocolate out like you're about your badass. And yet you
[01:02:58] get feet, you feel like a loser. You're losing. But you are moving up like moving up the respect
[01:03:06] ranks at the pit. And you're you end up going to some of trucks, one of trucks fights,
[01:03:15] championship fight against Booster Monte. I was chuckling this whole time, you know, anyone.
[01:03:21] I don't know what it's like. Maybe it's gotten better. But back in the day, if you were like a teammate,
[01:03:26] you were like, go to pay your own way to get up there. You're going to sleep with six other guys.
[01:03:31] Yeah. You know, in the same room, you weren't going to get fed anything. You're cutting weight with your
[01:03:35] fighter. It's just like sucked. Sleeping on the hotel room floor, getting beat up. By the way,
[01:03:41] you can't win any of your sparring. You're just getting beat up. You're just getting punched in the
[01:03:44] head. Just to back up what I put us to to punch. There's no, there's like no glory in being a second
[01:03:52] or a third or a fourth, which is basically what it seemed like. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're like
[01:03:57] body getting here. Yeah. When Eric or Gann are, you know, Scott retired or bored that just thrown
[01:04:03] me. So I don't even think I was like fourth string. I was not even acknowledged at being present.
[01:04:10] Did you get a ticket to the fight? Because I was not thinking there was no guarantee you're getting
[01:04:13] to the fight. I didn't get a ticket to like the first three fights I had. And I finally got to,
[01:04:17] I think veto bell fort was the first fight that I physically got to be in the arena for. It was so cool.
[01:04:25] Yeah. Like, we used to run every kind of scam to get into those fights. We, I would go,
[01:04:30] I would get in every single time 100% of the time. And we were running all kinds of, you know,
[01:04:34] tactical operations. And I love the best seats. I have the sickest seats. I've seen so I've seen
[01:04:39] so many UFC's from like road three that I had no tickets to. We did all kinds of tactical maneuvers
[01:04:47] to get into those fights. Because that's the crazy thing. Right? You go up there. You'd be cornering
[01:04:51] someone. I would literally be cornering someone and not have a ticket to the fight. But I think
[01:04:56] I'm going to come out of Marty's back. Yeah. This is let me in. The security would walk up and
[01:05:01] be like nine of us in front of four seats. Do you guys have tickets? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:05:06] Like, this is our ticket. And they're like, that was his ticket. No, no, no. This is my ticket.
[01:05:11] Well, where his ticket? I don't know. I'm going to get a beer. I'll be back. Yeah. Cool.
[01:05:17] You ended up becoming the extreme challenge champion. And in this, are you starting to think
[01:05:24] maybe this is a thing? Like, when you go up with Chalker, you start to know still don't think. No.
[01:05:29] Still don't think it's like an actual. I still like fighting. Yeah. And that tournament that
[01:05:33] eight man tournament. That was the who's who of middle weights at the time. You've Jason Manham Miller,
[01:05:38] Dennis King, Ryan Norte, me, like, for early 2000s when you put, like, these are the eight best
[01:05:45] students of the planet. Those are those that's that's that's the money right there. And that's a
[01:05:49] tough, freaking tournament. Yeah. And I think I, I think I won enough to pay for a computer for my next
[01:05:55] semester in school. You know, there's no money. Chuck paid for my pizza kitchen post-fight meal,
[01:06:02] Chuck paid for my YMCA to go in to cut weight in the sauna. It was the only sauna we could find
[01:06:08] in Salt Lake City. Like Chuck out of pocket. Like, there was no money. And I'm like the ECC champion.
[01:06:14] Yeah. So yeah, those are the good old days. Yeah. No, no one was fighting for the money back
[01:06:18] down. We just fought. I just wanted to fight. Uh, you fight and win in the WEC as well. Was that
[01:06:26] any better? Was there anything at the WEC? I got a hundred bucks to show and a hundred bucks to win
[01:06:32] to fight that as a heavyweight. You fought as heavyweight? Oh, is that 194 pounds?
[01:06:38] And I fought as heavyweight. You're kind of getting, you, this is kind of, you're getting like a
[01:06:44] minor level of fame, though, at this point. What do you say? Yeah, like the MMA weeklies are starting
[01:06:49] to write, you know, the up and come or, you know, on the top 10 rankings, I'm like,
[01:06:56] measurable, no mentioned. Like, notably mentioned type categories. So who is this guy type questions?
[01:07:05] But the WEC was nothing to sneeze at back in the day. You know, like I remember it was like
[01:07:11] kind of on the same level. Like UFC was obviously the bigger promotion, but, you know, some
[01:07:16] incredible fighters came out of the 20 C. I mean, it was a great, great place to be at that stage.
[01:07:22] Yeah, WEC was totally legit. Yeah. Um, you got, you, you, you, you, you, you're getting wrapped into the
[01:07:30] whole fighter kind of thing. Yeah, I'm starting to live in the booze, they're everything else.
[01:07:36] Not, not the booze as much, but the women, the traveling, the fighting, I mean, it is, it's a,
[01:07:43] it's a, it's a real unhealthy lifestyle when you're like committed to it. You know, you've
[01:07:48] you've waked up, you'd fight, you know, you'd wake up, you'd rinse off whatever debotry is on you,
[01:07:54] and then the seat don't care those diseases into the gym, and then you'd go in train, and then
[01:07:59] you're trying to do some form of recovery and get some type of food, and then debotry training again,
[01:08:05] and then debotry, like that's about your day. So that's, so you, you see, you're rolling, rolling in the
[01:08:11] roll of deep, and that what a weird, it was a weird time, too, because it was like, the fighters
[01:08:17] weren't really getting paid much money, but you kind of had recognition, and like people that were
[01:08:22] kind of fanboys, like club owners would be all hyped to bring everyone in and set up tables and
[01:08:28] one of them. Yeah, you'd get like bottle service because you were the fighter, and the guys, the,
[01:08:33] the bars wanted you in there because it made them seem more famous because they had like the
[01:08:38] tough guys in their gyms or in their bars, but we still didn't have enough money to even buy the
[01:08:43] bottles, it's like, is this bottle, or are we gonna have a baby? It's like we didn't know how it's always
[01:08:47] working out. Yeah, it was a really, in the like the ring girls, they weren't like real ring girls,
[01:08:53] they're just kind of like local girls that were getting paid. It was a wild, wild circus. Yeah,
[01:08:59] it was a wild, wild, interesting time, I was for sure. You know, I like, you just talked about
[01:09:09] bottle, like I remember being at like things, at like post, fight parties and stuff like this,
[01:09:15] and there's like bottle service and people are ordering bottles, and I'm like, I have, I'm in the
[01:09:19] navy bottle, I've been in navy, I got three, two or three kids, but I'm not paying for shit,
[01:09:24] like you can fuck and get out of here, run that pain for a $400 bottle of some shit, I don't even know what
[01:09:30] it is, it's not happening, and I'd just be like, you know, I'll drink some of this, but like,
[01:09:35] you're getting no money for me, you're worse like whoever whatever fighter I'm with is like,
[01:09:39] I'm not paying for anything either, so we don't know who's paying for this stuff, but somebody's
[01:09:43] getting stuck with the bill and it could be us. Those are some wild times. It's hard. There's no way
[01:09:49] people that are looking at, you know, even after pride, that UFC proper now, where that, you know,
[01:09:54] they see guys and suits and doing proper way and's athletic commissions, and, you know, US, the
[01:09:59] anti-doping coming in, when we're talking back then, the wild west of everything, like warm-up rooms
[01:10:06] that were, there's literally like, I remember being intense, there's the ground is just tar,
[01:10:11] it's just a parking lot, it's like, oh, we're gonna, yeah, you guys can warm up right over there,
[01:10:15] it's tar, it's a fucking parking lot, you're like, what, okay, races to the banks afterwards
[01:10:21] to try to cash your check, it's only the first five checks we're clear, there's probably,
[01:10:25] I would say a dozen fights that we had to fight our way out of, like, out of the audience,
[01:10:31] like, if you vote, beat a local, you would have to fight your way out of it and try to not get
[01:10:35] stabbed, and if you haven't forbid you fought an Indian on an Indian reservation, and you beat that
[01:10:39] Indian, like, you, dude, it is, it's hard, it's every due guys are open, you're chucks leading the way,
[01:10:46] Gans drop an L-Bows is we're bustin' through and we're just trying not to get stuck,
[01:10:50] like, this is that era of MMA. Meanwhile, all that's going on, you're trying to become a police officer,
[01:10:59] yep, right? Yep, that's your, that's your goal, which is a smart goal because you realize,
[01:11:03] you know, there's no money in fighting, you go to the academy, you're the honor graduate of the academy.
[01:11:10] No, runner up, oh, you were runner up, oh, huh, oh, did I read that wrong? Yeah, so I have highest GPA,
[01:11:16] I have highest score, like highest physical score, I have like highest everything, I get in a fight
[01:11:24] with one of the instructors over report writing, and oh, that's right, I tell him how he should
[01:11:30] do report writing, and like this is a better way with more with a clear narrative, and he didn't say,
[01:11:36] wow, cadet, thank you so much for your input, that's incredible, you know, because we did not say that.
[01:11:42] And I stuck to my guns, I was like, no, this is the other course, bro, you're right, I am right.
[01:11:46] How can he know? So he, he failed me and you can't be on our graduate with a failure. That's right, that's right.
[01:11:51] So then I retake the test and I do it exactly how he wants and I get my passing grade of 71%
[01:11:57] or 70% and even though like my first one was perfect and it should have been 100% so you cannot
[01:12:04] graduate if you fail a test, you can't be on our graduate as a failure. So I have my
[01:12:10] astrix and I'm number two, number one, but number two gets on our graduate. Yep, and you had a good
[01:12:18] story in there about, you know, the combatives course that they taught you were once again, they're
[01:12:23] looking like, oh, who's this little youngster that's in here? Oh, you think you're tough?
[01:12:28] Oh, watch this and you're like, no, watch this. Do you, tell me if I'm wrong,
[01:12:34] jujitsu is a superpower. Jujitsu is a superpower. Yes, it's a superpower. And when, if I'm in a room
[01:12:39] with a bunch of cadets and I say, you cannot put cuffs on me unless I let you put cuffs on me and
[01:12:44] you got like, there's 40 of us, I don't care. That is how powerful jujitsu is when you empower somebody
[01:12:52] with that type of skill and knowledge. If I can take my hands and put my hands on a grown person
[01:12:57] and they can do anything that I want them to, like that's the power of jujitsu. And they did not have
[01:13:03] that power, but they needed to know it. So again, here's so stupid, Tim, I'm like, okay, well, I will
[01:13:10] teach you guys that. This is how better, you know, so arrogant, so pathetic, but you guys can't do
[01:13:17] nothing to me. That's what it was. It's true though, man. It's hard. It's hard when you, when someone
[01:13:27] knows how to fight, it is really hard to get control of them. It is really hard to get control of them.
[01:13:32] And especially the other people don't really know how to fight. You know, if they learn
[01:13:37] whatever, for step procedure for getting control, you know, like no, that procedure is not going to
[01:13:42] work for a millisecond against me. Go away. Yeah. I, you know, I beg and I plead law enforcement
[01:13:49] to go and do jujitsu. You know, if they're 10, they're 10 police officers that are
[01:13:55] police academy trained, they do their cuffing, they're defensive tactics. And they say,
[01:13:59] Jaco, you're under arrest. I'm going to put cuffs on you. Zero chance. All 10 grown adults
[01:14:07] trying to cuff you zero chance. You know, but then you take one that trains. Totally different.
[01:14:13] Totally different story. Yeah. And it's gotten really bad now. I'm not to derail this conversation,
[01:14:17] but I was just talking to a couple police officers. And I won't mention the state where they are,
[01:14:25] if they put a choke hold on someone, if they put a rear naked choke on someone,
[01:14:28] lethal force, they, they, I'm trying to think of the steps. It's like a full, it's a full on like
[01:14:37] felony first degree murder. If, if the person dies, yeah, it's, but even if the person doesn't,
[01:14:45] if you just do it, it's like a, it's like a assault with a deadly weapon or something like this.
[01:14:49] And it's so hard to explain to people. I don't know. I don't know what you think, but
[01:14:54] if I had to subdue someone that I cared about, the number one thing I would do is put a rear
[01:15:01] naked choke on that choke. It's so safe. It's the gentlest nicest way to get someone under control.
[01:15:06] Yeah. And it's so effective. And there's nothing, you know, like, it leaves no marks. I can't.
[01:15:12] You know, you could choke me right now and I'd wake up and be like, oh, dude, you know,
[01:15:16] you could have cuffs on me and I'd be like, oh, what just happened? And I'd be totally fine.
[01:15:19] Yeah. You could uncaf me and I could go and freaking teach it class in whatever.
[01:15:23] And carry on with my debt. As opposed to you hitting me in the, in the head 19 times with a baton to get to subdue me.
[01:15:29] We're at our spare. Amazing. All those things are so hard. And we, like, people just have no
[01:15:36] understanding of the power of jujitsu and the power of the rear naked choke. It's, it's, it's so sad.
[01:15:43] And so many more people are going to get hurt because of it. Yeah. And all that takes is if you're
[01:15:48] in law enforcement or if you're in charge of law enforcement, mandate,
[01:15:52] everyone should be trained in jujitsu. Yeah. You should be trained in jujitsu all the time.
[01:15:57] I've been saying 20% of what police do, 20% of the time should be trained. Yeah.
[01:16:02] And not only shapes the body, but also shapes the mind. It does such a beautiful thing to ego.
[01:16:07] It deters things back and it makes you human. And when you're in a position of power like that,
[01:16:13] you have to have your ego checked. And the best way to do it is to put you on a mat and have you lose.
[01:16:18] Back to those people that have never been hit in the face, the city councils that enact those
[01:16:23] type policies for their cities. Those are the people that have never been in a fight that have never
[01:16:28] gone on a ride along that have never been punched in the face, but they're like, do it. This
[01:16:31] police officer can't do it to a choke or you don't know anything about anything. And you're the one
[01:16:36] that's mandating and your ignorance is causing more damage to your community because you don't
[01:16:41] understand. You don't understand violence because you've never been in it. But like as men that are
[01:16:45] pretty intimately familiar with violence, listen to the city council people, go get punched on the
[01:16:50] face and learn how important it is to know how to effectively do violence. Yeah. And I'll tell you
[01:16:55] what, go get hit in the face with a baton three times and see how you feel the next day. And then
[01:17:00] let me put a rear naked choke on you and see how you feel the next day. And by the way, the rear
[01:17:05] naked choke will make you want to just kind of comply. And if you don't, you're just going to wake
[01:17:09] up in handcuffs in the back of a car. So easy. Yeah. So, so good. And yeah. So you end up hooking these people
[01:17:19] up during that and they have to take how many guys that it finally takes to get a cuffs on you?
[01:17:23] I didn't know. It just didn't happen. It never happened. I mean, but at the end of it, I'm the
[01:17:27] we're probably 30 minutes later from risk to elbow. There's cuffs hanging off me and there's like
[01:17:32] I'm bleeding from you know, because they're snapping along and I'm bruised at my radius and
[01:17:40] old age is like bone bruised and there's blood dripping off of my arms and I looked like a
[01:17:42] like an animal pitball that's been tased a bunch of times in the corner. There's like, you
[01:17:48] who's going to have me next? And you know what sucks is? A lot of times people would just think,
[01:17:54] oh, he's just really good athlete or something like this. And that was one of my problems. Like,
[01:17:59] I'm the worst person to introduce you just to someone. You know, because they're like, well, of course,
[01:18:03] you freaking beat me for 24 pounds. Yeah. It's like the best people to introduce is like Jeff Glover,
[01:18:10] who's 150 pounds. He's like not intimidating to look at and he's got a big smile on his face
[01:18:19] and he's just breaks it off on people. That's who should introduce people to Jitsir.
[01:18:24] I'm no, you're no good either. Like you're not a great like a reduction of Jitsir because
[01:18:28] people like, who would just have them with that guy's and that was all. You know, that's what they say about me.
[01:18:31] Like, you're, you're getting on rolling. You're really strong. Like, thanks, man. I appreciate it.
[01:18:35] Yeah. I'm wrong. That's, that's it. I work on that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's why I live on my
[01:18:38] little. Because, um, yeah. So it's not great to have people that are big introduced Jitsir.
[01:18:44] But also it's strange that even in a situation like that, like if I was the overall trainer,
[01:18:49] I'd be like, hold on a second. What, what just happened? Yeah. Nine of my cops couldn't get this
[01:18:53] guy under control. There's something wrong with you. So the defensive tactics instructor for the
[01:18:57] Academy was a Jitsir guy. And I think he wanted, I think he let it go. Oh, God. I think he did.
[01:19:05] He was led. Looking back, I was like, oh, he knew it was happening. He knew it was going to hurt.
[01:19:10] He wanted them to know. And but at my expense, you know, I lost your pork with my classmates.
[01:19:15] I looked like a total asshole. Um, I was a feral animal in the corner. Uh, you know, like,
[01:19:22] fur like a, a while people didn't even look at me. But I think you knew what he exacted
[01:19:27] to do is dealing. Yeah. So I'm tipping my hat to that clever little shit. Um, you graduate,
[01:19:34] which is cool. Um, at this point, you, you had a girl, you have a girlfriend. Yep.
[01:19:39] Meme Casey. Yeah. She's great. And you find out that she's pregnant at this point. Um,
[01:19:49] and at some point, you had had a one night stand with another girl. Yeah.
[01:19:54] And she's pregnant. Yep. And at some point, you had a one night stand with another girl.
[01:20:04] Yep. And she tracks you down and she's like a ring girl from the UFC or from one of the
[01:20:11] UFC. One of these fights you've been in. She's a ring girl. And she shows up at the pit.
[01:20:19] Where are you training? Not to tell you that she's pregnant, which I would have taken that.
[01:20:27] Yeah. She tells you that she has HIV. Yeah.
[01:20:35] And then finally, um, you're like trying to blow off some steam and you go to play paintball with your,
[01:20:43] with your, with your, with some friends with your brother and, and like some people
[01:20:47] talk rocks at you. Yep. And you, and by the way, you're, you're a, please, where are you
[01:20:52] copper at now at this point? Um, I'm to applying to everywhere. Okay. So I was like testing for Santa Barbara
[01:20:57] stalked in Sacramento. So you're about to get hired somewhere. I'm in background, which is kind of like
[01:21:04] the last step to get hired by these departments. Well, speaking of background, what you decide to do is
[01:21:09] these guys, Huck Rocks at you and you assault the vehicle. Yeah. Which, which I can imagine these guys,
[01:21:18] that's always, it's always a funny look on people's face when they realized that they did something
[01:21:24] that they shouldn't have done. Yep. And Tim Kennedy moves 200 yards in 3.8 seconds with a fully loaded
[01:21:30] paintball. Sticks it into their car and unloads as many rounds as you can. That's right.
[01:21:35] That's right. Which is kind of funny and we can laugh at it now. But sounds like there was some
[01:21:42] politics in your town. Yeah. And small town stuff with, you know, a famous police officer father
[01:21:50] with, you know, a brother that is working for a different department or a department whose
[01:21:54] who's who's physically at lots of just kind of small town Egos fallen to here. And I get screwed.
[01:22:02] And you get the, the basically you're not going to be a cop. That's right. That's not happening.
[01:22:09] The whole background. Now you're getting charged with some kind of thing and they're making a look like
[01:22:14] you're crazy. Yeah. So you're racking them up. Yeah. Our great decisions just lining them up and not
[01:22:22] going to be down. I'm going to go to the book here. I'm standing naked at the end of at the edge of
[01:22:29] the ocean halfway through my 23rd year. The cold surf washes over my feet and the wind spreads goose fish
[01:22:35] across my skin. Goose flash across my skin. The sun will be up soon. But for now I remain wrapped in
[01:22:42] darkness. It's nice to bask in the stillness of this moment. The only sounds are the waves
[01:22:47] lapping against the shore. There is something cathartic about being alone on the beach. I grew
[01:22:51] up on and stripping my clothes off and letting them hit the sand. I feel incredibly free for the
[01:22:55] first time in ages. Normally I'd worry about my wallet and keys getting stolen. But I do not
[01:23:01] care at all. What difference does it make? I weighed into Moro Bay just north of the rock ignoring
[01:23:07] my brain's warnings that it's too cold and too dark. There's a wall of fog closing in that will
[01:23:12] soon make it hard to see my way through the black water. I don't worry about that either.
[01:23:17] As I weighed deeper my legs start to burn from the cold water. I pay a ton of pay no attention though.
[01:23:22] Even as it covers my legs, then waste, then chest. I barely acknowledge the surface effects.
[01:23:28] I don't want to acknowledge it. I don't want to think about it. I don't want to think about anything.
[01:23:36] When the waves start picking me up off the sandy ocean floor, I begin to swim west.
[01:23:43] I have failed everyone I know and there's no way to fix it. What the fuck is wrong with me? How
[01:23:49] the fuck? How did I fuck up everything this quickly? I'm a strong swimmer and in no time the
[01:23:55] shore is a distant memory. It's so peaceful out here. My breath missed a little in the waning moon
[01:24:02] light, but other than my own breathing and the sound of my hands and legs cutting through the
[01:24:07] surf there's nothing. I didn't plan on going for a long swim to nowhere in the pre-dome
[01:24:13] blackness, but I needed to forget all of it. My actions, the hurt that they caused and the
[01:24:21] disappointment they manifested in everyone around me. I can't hold on to this pain anymore.
[01:24:30] I'm just not strong enough.
[01:24:32] I kind of breathed through this girl pregnant and then you had this possible HIV. You can't
[01:24:52] get the job you want to get. This is your 23 years old. Sometimes I'll talk to people that are
[01:24:57] 16 or 17 or 15 years old and they broke up with their girlfriend or they made this mistake.
[01:25:02] I always say listen it seems like your whole world right now, but there's so much more to life.
[01:25:08] There's so much to carry on. There'll be other girls. There'll be other opportunities. It's okay.
[01:25:13] But damn, that's a lot. That's a lot of shit. A lot of shit going on man.
[01:25:19] And an order out of there, my grandpa, who was like the Patriarch of our family, a greatest generation,
[01:25:27] woolward to. He's dying in the Vemphazema. Every breath he takes is slightly less than the
[01:25:33] prior breath. He's just fighting. He's just becoming a shell of a man and he would be the person
[01:25:40] that I would go to. He'd go to the Beach House in Canberra. He listened the waves crash and just
[01:25:45] dump on him and he had the grapple with. He's dead. He's dying. Right in the motorcycle,
[01:25:52] I already crashed that thing's going. My other cathartic releases going. I was too embarrassed to
[01:25:59] be back in the walking to the pit. I can't train right now because I don't know if I've AIDS.
[01:26:07] So I was just Maro Bay and I walked to the Coast Guard Station and I knocked on the door.
[01:26:19] The door flew up and they all knew who I was. They explained that. So I didn't. I'm not going
[01:26:24] to read that part of the story, but you swim out to see. And you know, it's weird. It sounds like
[01:26:29] you weren't intent on killing yourself, but doesn't sound like you were all that intent on living
[01:26:37] either. I don't know. What's the... There's definitely, I think, a wish for a baptism. And this
[01:26:42] is a really unique thing is you and I are dealing with lots of mental health and suicide within
[01:26:47] the military and addressing it and how do we... There is not like this linear line of
[01:26:52] where's depression, where's suicide, where's mental health. You know, what you have here is
[01:26:56] you know, an early 20-year-old boy who has made a bunch of bad decisions and he feels hopeless.
[01:27:02] And I didn't know what to do. I didn't know where to go next. And I'm doing something that is
[01:27:08] very, very dumb and dangerous and could be the end of my life. But I didn't have an intent
[01:27:14] that I'm not trying to kill myself. You know, like there's no cognitive... There's way more efficient
[01:27:22] ways than swimming out into the ocean. I definitely kept swimming. And that's a big takeaway that is,
[01:27:28] you know, not at the end of the book. There's not that adage. That's, oh, here's what you're
[01:27:32] should take away from this, is I kept swimming. You know, as fruit my balls were essentially
[01:27:37] up inside my body as I froze into death. And it still doesn't make sense. The Coast Guard said
[01:27:44] that somebody called, this is book pre-drawn. This is pre-selfam. There's no way that any of the
[01:27:51] houses along Marobe on the north side of the breakers on the north side of the rock could have seen me.
[01:27:56] And there's nobody in the parking lot when I got in the water. So I'm not saying there's like a divine
[01:28:01] intervention, but doesn't make any sense. How somebody called the Coast Guard station said they saw
[01:28:07] young man take his clothes off and swim into the ocean. You know, as a... My open water swim time,
[01:28:13] I get 28, 30 minute mile. So an hour into this from the time the Coast Guard said they got the
[01:28:20] call to the time that they found me. I'd been swimming for just over an hour. So I'm two miles out into
[01:28:24] the fog. Two miles out past the rock. And a really cool thing I discovered when I went to the Coast
[01:28:36] Guard station and they throw the door open. Like we're listening to Joe Rookett's podcast listening
[01:28:40] about this right here. They have a log book. And one of the most darkest hardest moments in my life.
[01:28:47] I'm a single log tag in a date time group. Like time date captain, boat, remarks. That's it.
[01:28:59] That's it. What could have been me dying? What became like a moment where I start to make
[01:29:06] start to make right decisions is a single line written in pencil in a log book in the Coast Guard shop.
[01:29:13] That's wild. Down to that. That could have been it too. Yeah, that last remark line,
[01:29:26] you know, pulled an idiot out of the water was pulled a dead body out of the water. That's it.
[01:29:30] It's only difference. And you know, I look divine intervention or whatever. You ever tried to
[01:29:37] recover a single swimmer at sea on a foggy night. Two miles out the ocean crazy. That is not like
[01:29:43] you plan to do that. You got an IR strobe. You have to go white strobe. You have to freaking
[01:29:47] swing or cam light above your head. Like it's hard. If they had thermal, they did it. I mean,
[01:29:52] it was you just if they didn't have thermal, that's a miracle. Yeah, I'm going to say it quite honestly.
[01:29:55] And and if you told me, if I got a call that, hey, some idiot got naked and started swimming
[01:30:01] up to see I'd be looking 300 yards out. Yeah, maybe maybe 500 yards out. Maybe a thousand at the
[01:30:09] most. There's no way someone's going to be too much. Like that's crazy that they found you.
[01:30:15] Dead dense fog. Dense fog. So dense on the south side of the rock where the breakers are in the
[01:30:21] entrance tomorrow bay. There's a fog horn. I couldn't hear the fog horn. And you know, you can hear
[01:30:26] that from miles. The fog is so dense and it was it was padding sound. I couldn't hear the waves.
[01:30:30] You know, it does really weird things to light. There is barely any light at this point.
[01:30:36] No star light. No moon light. I'm just I've just been swimming for an hour. And when this boat
[01:30:41] rolls up, I think I'm losing my sanity because I hear it. They just have an idol and it's cruising
[01:30:49] and the captain has his feet hanging over the front of the boat. And he's just like sit there
[01:30:53] with his feet. And he's like, hey, what are you doing? And swimming. He sounded like the cool is
[01:30:58] there's so cool. He's like making fun of you. Yeah. What are you doing? I'm swimming. No shit.
[01:31:05] Like even now. Even even currently you're like this. You know, that was the first indication to him
[01:31:11] that he was going to take a different approach, I think. And then he's like, so what's going on?
[01:31:15] And I give him a summary of what's happening. And he's just like, yeah, I was thinking about
[01:31:21] pulling you out of the water, but maybe just stay in the drink. He says this to me. That is like, yeah.
[01:31:29] Man, it's cold. He's cold. He's like, I see that. He's my explosion. And then he doesn't help me.
[01:31:36] He throws a cargo net down the side of that ship. And he makes me clamber up the side of that
[01:31:40] boat with my, I mean, I couldn't use my fingers. I couldn't feel anything. You know, an hour and
[01:31:43] 50, 50, 50, 30 degree water also like, I had to have kept swimming pretty actively to not be
[01:31:49] hypothermic. You know, you have a minute of what kind of like active use 10 minutes of use of your
[01:31:57] fingers, digits. And then an hour is kind of a threshold where you start losing control your body.
[01:32:02] And I was at that threshold. And he throws a cargo net over the side of the boat, climb up.
[01:32:08] You know, I'm not helping you. You did this. You get out. Show me. Show me. He didn't say anything
[01:32:15] besides there's not going to be somebody to do this again. It's all he said 20 minute boat
[01:32:19] ride back in. I had to go back all the way around the rock, come back into the bay, and then go to
[01:32:24] the Coast Guard Station, dock, not a word, just sat there. And then what they do with you. Nothing.
[01:32:32] He asked if I was good. I had to walk from the Coast Guard Station back to my car at the rock.
[01:32:39] It's about a mile. Did you feel, what'd you think? Every step I was trying to
[01:32:45] did he give you clothes? I had a blanket. I had a blanket. You say one of those old maybe wool
[01:32:52] but it's like green. Yeah. And it is I mean it's sandpaper. Yeah. Is that what you say?
[01:32:57] Well, they did not have real blankets. No, like, well, I don't know what they have now, but for
[01:33:00] 100% when I went to boot camp, like you're sleeping with one of those things and then like the
[01:33:04] standard issue blanket. If you were somewhere, was that stupid green wool itchy blanket. It is terrible.
[01:33:10] And to frozen skin, it feels like hot needles. It was terrible. And I walked all that mile back to
[01:33:16] the Coast to get my car. It seems weird that this guy wouldn't have been like, hey, this kid
[01:33:21] needs some help, like some some mental health assistance here. I, um, I don't remember what I said,
[01:33:29] but it was definitely gratitude and it was gratitude that I'm alive. And if I was looking for
[01:33:40] a baptism, however you emerge from the water emotionally and physically post baptism, I think
[01:33:45] there's this transformation where, all right, I definitely did not start doing it, right? But I was
[01:33:51] done doing it wrong. And, um, I don't know if it was discernment. Maybe it was naive on his part.
[01:34:02] From that moment, I mean, you would have to have strapped me down. Like what I went to selection,
[01:34:08] they would have had to have found me in my sleep and executed me in my sleep for me to quit.
[01:34:14] This was the beginning of that mentality where there's nothing that you're going to do to stop me.
[01:34:18] What was your family's reaction to the two girls? It's like, when you write about it in the book,
[01:34:27] your dad finds out, he's like, well, you know, I heard you got a girl pregnant. He's like,
[01:34:30] you and you say, yeah, and he's like, no, this other girl, you know, I was too much of the coward
[01:34:35] and tell him, God. So they find out from my pastor because the other woman calls my church
[01:34:42] to try and, because she's trying to get resources, you know, how am I going to pay for, you know,
[01:34:50] burthing this man's child? And so she's calling the church, being like, can I get help? And the
[01:34:56] pastor's like, wait a second, who are you? That's not the name I know. So when he calls my dad,
[01:35:01] my dad's like, what's going on? And I was just too pathetic of a coward to have the balls
[01:35:08] just to tell my family, hey, here's the decisions that I'm struggling through right now.
[01:35:12] The reason I have to go to a San Luis Biscoe every single month is to get an HIV test.
[01:35:16] And the reason that I'm, you know, I don't have any money for anything is because I'm paying two separate
[01:35:20] women, best of what preparing, it's expensive to have a child. You know, definitely prepare for
[01:35:29] having a child, don't do it on plan. And the children, the kids end up being born 90s apart, is that right?
[01:35:35] Two weeks. Two weeks apart. They're amazing. Yeah, yeah, they're definitely blessed to be here.
[01:35:43] For you can awesome. Yeah.
[01:35:49] You had, after you already mentioned this earlier in the podcast, but after September 11th,
[01:35:53] you had gone down to the recruiting station and like put me in coach. You tried, you tried the
[01:36:01] Navy. So are you, are you thinking to see a team? For sure. And it was closed. Yeah, no recruiter.
[01:36:10] So the next one was the Marine Corps. How did you decide between the Marine Corps and the Army?
[01:36:14] The 18x rate program was the, the Marines didn't have a direct route to go, there was no more
[01:36:21] sock at the time so they didn't have a clear defined pathway to go to recon. Right. And go in
[01:36:26] as a rifleman from rifleman. You can go and try out within your own unit and then if you get selected,
[01:36:34] you select that was going to be a very undefined process. When I went to the Army recruiter,
[01:36:38] they said, all right, well, here's this new program to make it to special operations. You go through
[01:36:42] if you're tree school, you go to airborne school, you go to this a trader called SOPSY. You get through
[01:36:47] SOPSY, then you can go to selection. And if you get selected, then go to the QCourse. If you finish the QCourse,
[01:36:53] then you get to go to special forces. It's like a clean of a track as you could possibly.
[01:36:58] Yeah, he laid it out for me. But they didn't call you so you did that after September 11th,
[01:37:04] but there was no room. No, right. And so you're just, you're carrying on with your life. All this
[01:37:08] other shit happens. Yep. And then by the grace of God, like a week after the swimming incidents,
[01:37:15] the naked swimming incident, a phone rings. Yeah, your phone rings and they say, hey, we got a
[01:37:20] spot for you. Yep. In the Army, you know, you get a new name was Vaughn recruiter, Vaughn or something like that.
[01:37:26] So we got, you know, as VapScore is good, D-LapScore is good. We can send you new maps in two weeks
[01:37:34] to in process as an 11 Bravo to become an 18th next-ray. So you're, this is like a no brainer at this.
[01:37:43] This is like, no, there's no choice. There's not, you're, you've signed that line as soon as
[01:37:48] that paper was in front of you. That's right. And how long was it between that call? Was it two weeks
[01:37:55] before you left? Oh, it's for you out of there? Yep. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, there was, um,
[01:38:02] from the time, from 9-11 to the call was like 10 months and then, um, they didn't do a delayed
[01:38:12] entry. I, I finished my undergrad, was in grad school. So they're, we're trying to finish school,
[01:38:17] but ultimately once I got my shipdate, I just left. I thought it was better to just go. Just go.
[01:38:24] Yeah. Boot camp. Fun. You had fun at Boot camp. I did.
[01:38:30] Was now, how old are you now? 23? Yep. 23 years old. Um, no factor.
[01:38:38] Then, then you, you get this bonus program of the special operations prep course.
[01:38:42] And part of it is is this, this whole idea of this 18 x-ray program means that you can do this,
[01:38:50] really kind of short path to get to special forces, which some people in special forces think
[01:38:57] that's like not right, not the right way to do it and you don't deserve to be here and you need to
[01:39:01] pay your dues. Like I paid, we're not wrong. Well, the only thing I'll say about that is
[01:39:07] in talking to a lot of the SOG guys were Vietnam that went in Warren's sock where they had more than
[01:39:14] 100% cash with you rate. Yeah. A lot of those guys, they took them right off the streets and
[01:39:19] sent them a special forces. And I've had those guys tell me like, yeah, whatever. And they were bad.
[01:39:25] They were as bad asses and humans that have ever walked the plan that the guys don't want to
[01:39:28] sock and be out. I was the last time that they did the e-connected reposer. That's what they did.
[01:39:32] From there. And that they rinse and repeat, like, we need dudes. We need a dudes then. This is
[01:39:39] what we did then. Let's just give it a try now. So you're, so you go to the special operations prep course.
[01:39:47] What you call it, so you're in sopsy and this is basically a boot beat down. Yeah, it's just in
[01:39:52] Tritter. PT twice a day, land-nav twice a week, rock-run, rock-run, rock-run. And it's weird. I don't know if
[01:40:03] I grasp this. So you're there. Yeah, you're living in a barracks, whatever. There's how many people
[01:40:08] are there with you? Over the court. So a couple of green or a couple of kids died in selection,
[01:40:14] the prior summer. So they cancel selections from heat exhaustion, exposure. So from May and
[01:40:22] tell August, they cancel selections at the North Carolina. So the course that you're all trying to
[01:40:29] get into is canceled. We have to wait three months for the first one to happen in August. So you're
[01:40:35] in this special operations prep course. Yep. And it's supposed to be a six-week course. It ends up
[01:40:42] being a three-and-a-half month course. And that's what, so I was tracking this. And people just keep
[01:40:47] showing up. That's right. To get ready to go to the, to go to the, to go to the course in selection.
[01:40:53] But they're, they're just quitting. It's a revolving door of quitters. Of buses arriving every weekend
[01:40:58] from basic training. So you go to basic training, you go to infantry school, you go to airborne school.
[01:41:03] And then the guys that make it from there hop on a bus and go to Fort Bragnow, Carolina. They show up
[01:41:07] at Sopsie Barracks. And you, you show up to your morning formation. And then you go off and you get your
[01:41:14] dick pushed in. That's it. And from May until August, every bus that came in was a new load of people
[01:41:22] for them to get rid of. So I think over the course, you know, we're somewhere between five to six hundred
[01:41:27] studs show up during those three to four months. And how many of them went to selection? 91.
[01:41:36] Yeah. And you were just there the whole time. Well, we got there. We got there in May.
[01:41:41] But tell you what the 91 did that went. 88 of us got selected. Yeah, that's what that's what you go on to say.
[01:41:47] Yeah. So typically you get eight out of a hundred at a selection. So if I have 400 people there,
[01:41:54] you know, we're going to have, right, 16 24 32 guys that get selected. And so we got, we batted 88 at a 91.
[01:42:02] There's no way that you could get rid of us. Yeah. Because you've been just getting crushed. Yeah.
[01:42:08] For every event that happens in selection, they had tested us on every month during the three months.
[01:42:14] So my 12 miles, I knew what my, I knew exactly my pace counts, my times, my five mile times,
[01:42:20] like bring it, bro. There's nothing. Kill me in my sleep. That's the only way. And how long is
[01:42:26] selection itself a month? And that's 27 days. That's more of it was basically the same as socks
[01:42:33] socksy, but it was counting now. Yeah. Yep. That's it. So when we get there, it was selection was
[01:42:40] easy for us because they had to stick to the, the clear, you have to test guys in vacuums to be able
[01:42:48] to compare, make sure that you're giving the fair test measurement to these guys going through.
[01:42:55] So when we didn't have to go into the gig pit in between events, we got to sleep in between
[01:43:02] events. This was new to us. I think what is this, we had been cheating for the past four months.
[01:43:08] You know, we had figured out, we had reorganized ourselves into alphabetical barracks. So
[01:43:16] and we would line up alphabetically. So we knew kind of the fire order of how people were
[01:43:21] going to be called. We had figured out a rotation of when guys are going to be running to the board.
[01:43:25] So we don't only have two people up, instead of, you know, the prescribed number that they were
[01:43:30] to acquire. So when somebody would come in, somebody had alert us, we'd all wake up. We'd be sitting
[01:43:34] there. We're just cheating. And now we cheated our way through everything.
[01:43:37] Or cheated cheated cheated. Then what what socks is though, you get done with, you get done with
[01:43:45] a selection. And then you get sent back to Sobsi again for more time in purgatory. Yep.
[01:43:53] Well, it's a, it's a new Sobsi. This one's called Sobsi too. So the next a trigger where they lost
[01:43:58] all of us. And this is what I say us, the 18 x-rays. Most special forces guys going through
[01:44:06] post selection. The, the next phase that go to is small unit tactics phase two. And most
[01:44:11] infantrymen, you got seven dash eight. You know, you've been spending time in the 80s, second,
[01:44:15] or you're coming for range of regiments. You know how to, you know how to do army things. We don't
[01:44:20] know how to do army things. So when we get done with selection, they put us into a pretty small unit
[01:44:26] tactics training course. It ends up not being a high-attritor. We only lose maybe 10% of the
[01:44:31] guys that are there. And they're legitimately teaching us react to contact how to do an ambush.
[01:44:39] How, like basic seven dash eight infantrymen stuff for when we get to small unit tactics,
[01:44:47] because small unit tactics isn't a trigger. They lose lots of guys there. So you actually got
[01:44:53] extra preparation to get ready for small unit tactics school. Yeah. So you guys must have done really
[01:45:02] well. And that as well. Yeah. We were, we were starving to get into the Q-course proper and phase two
[01:45:08] is the first post selection. That is the first moment where like you are in the Q-course. You are now
[01:45:13] in the pipeline to become a green beret. And then what's next? So what came after that? So then you
[01:45:20] learn your, you get up to this point. You're in 18X, right? You have a not defined MOS. So then you get
[01:45:28] your, you get to go to your MOS school. You have a bravo Charlie Delta or Echo. I got bravo,
[01:45:35] which was a weapon sergeant. And then you got the, so I went to my three-month MOS training,
[01:45:39] which is phase three. And then I read this right. The weapons, the 18 bravos, the the highest
[01:45:46] attrition rate. I was right. How come? We're dumb. It is, it is, it is, we are not just, it's not just
[01:45:59] weapons. Like, they're called weapon sergeants, but we're tested on basic security, we're, we're
[01:46:04] tested, we're responsible for all of the elements of the ODAs kind of preparedness for running
[01:46:11] ranges and deployments. And if we're going to be going traveling overseas, the bravo is the
[01:46:17] guy that's going to have the force response plan, the emergency action plan, the evacuation plan,
[01:46:23] in addition to, you know, knowing how to run a mortar, how to set up, you know, close to our
[01:46:29] support. That is all bravo stuff. Are you guys like, you guys do the closer support on the radio, too?
[01:46:35] Mm-hmm. On regular ODAs, it's typically the bravo or the echo that goes to those courses.
[01:46:41] Check. So you go to that school. You have the honor graduate of that school. Yep.
[01:46:49] Yeah. That's fun. What were you, what were you, what did you excel at in the school?
[01:46:53] I loved guns. As, as an armor now and I own a weapons manufacturing company,
[01:46:59] I've always just loved the watches and firearms. I love the mechanics of how things work.
[01:47:09] And I, and one of the funnest things about the 18 bravo courses, you'll get this like bucket of
[01:47:15] parts. And it'll be an ozee, they'll be, you know, parts to a goostoff that you don't get to build
[01:47:19] because the rest of the goostoff's not there. You know, you're going to have an FNFL. You know, you're
[01:47:23] going to have an AR. And you get, and like, go, time starts now assemble. You're like, well,
[01:47:28] I don't have the tube. So I don't need this. And then you start putting things together.
[01:47:31] Like this is the block from the ozee cool. Here's the trigger. So assembly of the ozee,
[01:47:35] here's here's the trigger. You know, I'm just, I was like, in my brain just loved it. I just loved it.
[01:47:44] All right, on. So that means you're going to be an 18 bravo. And then what comes next?
[01:47:47] Is Robin Sage next? So they did it a little bit different for us. We did it.
[01:47:51] Are you did some compressed language school? Yeah. Yeah. In, which is, in the last manual.
[01:47:56] Yeah. We normally, you have like three months in a language because every green
[01:48:01] bra has to have a minimum of a second language. And they took anyone that had any degree of
[01:48:09] language. And like this is peak war. You know, this is 2004, 2005. And body bags are coming in
[01:48:17] every day at the JFK chapel at Fort Bragg. If they're having a new ceremony for a dead green bra.
[01:48:23] Like this is, and our instructors are just livid that they're the ones that are stuck at
[01:48:28] SWIC having to train us. You know, they, they don't want to be there. And I get it. They want to be
[01:48:33] back with their teams. And we, the, the young want to be green braids. Like we're just
[01:48:39] shamping at the bit to get out. And we're doing everything. We're, we're trying to cut every corner.
[01:48:44] We're trying to, if you graduate on a Friday, most people would want like a month to recover.
[01:48:48] Not at this time. Can, is there any ways, or any spots for me to start on Monday?
[01:48:52] And, and when somebody says, hey, you can skip two months of language school if you do this program.
[01:48:59] Is it? I'm in. Yeah. Throw me in there. And when did you take Spanish? Yep.
[01:49:04] Wish I took a Russian. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:49:09] So then comes Robin's Robin's age. And this is where like it seems like all your mischievous life
[01:49:15] gets to be utilized. Yeah. Right. You get to, you get rewarded for being sneaky.
[01:49:22] One of the ops that you talk about, one of the training ops that you talk about in there.
[01:49:25] You're supposed to assault someplace. And you guys go in and, and drain like,
[01:49:31] most of the fuel of all the generators. Yeah. And, and you have it all kind of time. So that
[01:49:37] in the middle of the night, all the generators fail. That's right. Which means all the lights go out.
[01:49:41] Which means there's confusion by the cadre. And then you guys roll in there. Yeah. Like, you're
[01:49:46] getting after him. Yeah. We, we, one of our friends, that he had like a staff infection. He was,
[01:49:51] he was support for the cadre. And we were supposed to turn all our cell phones. We had prison
[01:49:57] pockets, so our cell phones were definitely still on us. So we're getting text messages as we're
[01:50:02] getting to like our network. Our next objective is going to be we're going to the updates as to
[01:50:05] when the cadre are going to roll and blow us out. We're getting like play by plays of what their
[01:50:09] plans are. And so we get where the objective is going to be, what time the hit time is going to be.
[01:50:15] So we get there as they're setting up. We're siphon out gas out of the generators. We already know
[01:50:19] which vehicles are the cadre vehicles. So when they roll up to start setting things up and the
[01:50:24] lights go out. And we're just like, like, we've actually agreed over our faces. We've been blacked out
[01:50:29] our uniforms. And we just cruise up and stole all their stuff. We stole their tobacco. We stole
[01:50:33] their headlamps. We stole their uniforms. I stole a kid. One of the cadre is kids toys. I
[01:50:39] just car. You know, they loved it. Oh, yeah. You know, this is again, peak war. Where they're like,
[01:50:46] KD's Deeter Hungry. Yeah, that's what we want. That's awesome. You go to Searschool. You freaking
[01:50:51] cheat in Searschool in a big way. Yeah. You go out and you hide MREs and caches throughout the
[01:51:00] A.o. So you can eat. Yeah. Again, we get informed as to where our invasion lane is going to be.
[01:51:07] They give me like a left asmith and a right asmith. And this is my invasion lane. So we go and I take
[01:51:14] boxes and MREs and I go and I dig them and plant them with head and digit grid coordinates as to where
[01:51:19] these boxes and MREs are on our invasion lane. So when they get cut loose, when they let us loose and
[01:51:24] be like, all right, we're going to chase you guys. You know, you got your couple of hours to go.
[01:51:29] Like we just be lined straight asmith to the first box at MREs. Dig those things up.
[01:51:35] And you had a crew that was in on it. Yep. Bunch 18x trace. Mostly. Except for one Air Force guy.
[01:51:43] And to his credit, he, you know, he didn't want to break any rules and he thought that we're cheating.
[01:51:51] We were. And so when he said he wasn't going to eat that MREs, cool, we ate that MRE of his.
[01:51:58] But we helped him and as best we could. Like if he's going to be a man of integrity and ethics,
[01:52:03] we hunted for him, you know, we forged for him, we tried to get and he would get all of that food.
[01:52:08] Like if I'm getting deer corn, if I'm if I'm if I'm dumpster diving into somebody's backyard
[01:52:13] and I find, you know, a leftover sandwich, like he's getting all of it. It's not getting split 12 ways.
[01:52:17] He gets all of it. So he was better off than any other dude and any other invasion team.
[01:52:22] As like there are a lot of 11 other people forging for him.
[01:52:25] And until you finally reach the your motivation to knock it caught is the longer that you stay on the
[01:52:35] lamb, the longer that you stay running, that's the less time that you spend in a concentration camp
[01:52:40] beginning using advanced interrogation techniques. So you get a weak and camp slabby period.
[01:52:49] You're going to get you're going to get period. And less you get caught early. If you get caught
[01:52:53] early every day that you get caught early is an extra-dant camp slabby. So when we get to the,
[01:52:59] you know, the final phase of seer, the camp's already full. We're the last team to roll in there.
[01:53:05] And you know, we get betrayed by our contact, our career that's supposed to take us out of the
[01:53:10] country and he turns us over to the invading forces and we have black bags of our head. They pop
[01:53:17] them off. They start slapping us and they're going down the line and all of us are lined up and they're
[01:53:21] doing the interrogation thing pretty rough and it's one of the most dangerous times is when you're
[01:53:25] initially captured. So there's really strict things that you're supposed to do to not encourage
[01:53:30] them to be more violent because that's when executions happen in real war. You know, like immediately
[01:53:36] after capture like that's a really dangerous time. You want to be really compliant. You want to really
[01:53:40] stick to this, this method of being as complicit as you can, perceptual wise. Until that dude's
[01:53:49] bag comes off and he just starts singing like a canary. These guys cheated. They buried food and the
[01:53:55] whole, it was like, you could hear a pin drop. You could, all the categories stopped talking. All
[01:54:01] of them descended like sharks under this one guy and they said, what do you say? They buried food.
[01:54:06] This whole team has been eating that MRU's. They knew exactly where they're going to be going.
[01:54:10] They took all 11 of us and they separated us immediately. So seer school became real.
[01:54:17] And it went from school to real life immediately because if you cheated, if you got
[01:54:24] comfort cheated, all this idea of being a green brain would be thrown out of the window. It's gone.
[01:54:29] You have to be no recycled. This is an integrity violation. It's different than failing.
[01:54:35] Failing you sometimes get to get rehabilitated and come back. If you cheated, you're out.
[01:54:41] Yeah. So all of you separated have to maintain the same story. 11 of us for seven days.
[01:54:53] Waterboarding, ice tanks, pain positions. And all their interrogation was based around. Did you
[01:55:00] cheat or not? That's right. Yeah. Did you have food? Where'd you get the food? Who buried the food?
[01:55:06] Hey, Tim told us, you know, you can stay. We're ticking Tim's already gone. You know,
[01:55:13] Tim told us and you can stay. We just need it be cooperated. So Sean Stain, he backed him up.
[01:55:23] We just need one more. They're good. These are professional interrogators.
[01:55:28] And the whole team held whole team. Not one of us broke. And the final day of
[01:55:38] sear school when things just start getting crazier and crazier. People are flying through the air.
[01:55:42] You know, and like, I get made fun of getting beaten, getting sprayed down with hoses and
[01:55:46] getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And all of a sudden, a moment happens where you know,
[01:55:50] it's the end of sear school. And I'm not going to ruin that moment because it's one of the most
[01:55:54] significant emotional moments. And it's um, and I just look around, I got my 11 brothers.
[01:56:02] All 11 of us stand right there.
[01:56:06] The cadre show up to our donning of our green beret. So at the end of the school, they're like,
[01:56:11] hey, we need to talk to you guys. And we're like, zero chance. Well, I see you got your art.
[01:56:17] You pulled your ID card out of your neck and it's hanging from your land. You're here. I don't give a
[01:56:21] fuck. You know, like, I don't zero chance any of us are saying anything. You can meet us when I put my green
[01:56:25] beret on it. So we get our knife. We sign our our name in the book Truth. We throw in our green beret. We learn
[01:56:31] what group we're going to and they're all standing there at that ceremony being like, we need to talk to you
[01:56:37] guys. It was, it was a proof of concepts one, one, one for the, for one of the first times they had to
[01:56:43] legitimately do interrogations on people that legitimately had something to hide to see and it proved
[01:56:51] that the things that they were teaching. What worked? Yeah. That's awesome. That's, that's pretty awesome
[01:56:58] that everyone's stuck it out. Yeah. Because when they start saying, hey, look, we already kicked him out.
[01:57:02] He's, he's, he's going to the, whatever he called in the, in the army, we call it the fleet and
[01:57:06] AB, but there's an hell of, yeah, Tim already, or hey, Tim just ratted you guys out. He's trying to save
[01:57:11] himself over there. We're keeping him because he said, you're the one that planned it. They start
[01:57:15] doing that shit. They're breaking people down. Zero chance. But the worst part was they had one guy.
[01:57:21] You know, they had one guy that had told them everything. So they were going off of all of his,
[01:57:27] is it information, which was all true. So it was a really hard thing in my head as they're recounting
[01:57:33] what, like, we knew exactly, he, he, he, he very accurately described, which I was really impressed
[01:57:38] that he can remember, you know, he didn't have the grid coordinates, but he remembered exactly where it
[01:57:42] was off of the airfield. It was about 200 meters in from this road, off of this airfield. It was
[01:57:48] under this big log. And I got to throw out a warning, Tim, anyone that's going through selection?
[01:57:58] What Tim Kennedy did is not smart. Don't do this. Don't do that. And the idea of, like, if you ain't
[01:58:04] cheating, you ain't trying, is actually not a good thing to do because you're risking your career
[01:58:10] and Tim Kennedy and his 11 friends freaking out away with it by a miracle. Don't do this kind of
[01:58:17] shit. Learn how to cheat at your ODA. When you get there, you and your team. There's, there are
[01:58:22] methods about how you're going to cheat in countries called resistance. It's called unconventional
[01:58:26] warfare. And there's doctrine designed about how to do it. That doctrine is written by
[01:58:32] the crystals and madaces. Read that doctrine and cheat that way. Don't, don't do it, like, a 23-year-old
[01:58:38] idiot. And there's 23-year-old friends. There's so many things you do not want to put your life
[01:58:46] when you're, what, your life as a special operations guy at risk for anything. Like, for nothing.
[01:58:52] So if you're in a, going to these, one of these selection courses, just take the high ground on
[01:58:58] everything really. And if you don't, you get caught. And it's like, no one cares. Like, I, I don't
[01:59:03] even even be talking you right now. You'd be, you'd have been like some random dude. I would
[01:59:07] have gotten out of the army. Like, I think that's, yeah, I did civil affairs. Yeah, like, it's just,
[01:59:13] don't do it. I wanted to throw that in there because, you know, I think it was for me, it was
[01:59:19] like third phase in Buds where the instructor started saying, if you ain't cheating, you ain't
[01:59:25] trying to bullshit. You're only cheating yourself. That's what they said now. I think about
[01:59:29] they saying, you're only cheating yourself. And man, you don't want to get caught, brothers, too.
[01:59:34] It's too awesome to be a part of the community, to, to risk it over something that made your life
[01:59:43] a little bit easier for those days. Anyways, I had to throw that caveat in there. That's, big
[01:59:48] exclamation mark. Context of time now. This is 2004. Like, we wanted war so bad. You know,
[01:59:59] for sure, for sure. And, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if you're, if your thought process
[02:00:08] was, I don't know what your thought process was. There's dudes, this is what it was. There's dudes
[02:00:12] on horseback, fighting with a mucidine. Like, no, but my point is like, I, I, when I was going through
[02:00:19] Buds, I like sat in my room on the weekends and sharpen my knife and polish my boots. Like, I could
[02:00:23] go out drinking and like, dude, I was like, bro, I'm not risking anything. I'm not going to,
[02:00:27] I'm just, I just want to make it through this shit. So, what was your, so I think we were
[02:00:34] a product of their own creation during those four months in Saapsi where we had to learn how to
[02:00:40] cheat in everything. We had, we had to reorganize our barracks. We had to, we went and stole
[02:00:45] washing machines from other barracks of the 80s, and moved them so we could do more loads of laundry.
[02:00:50] I went stole washing machines. We went, you know, there weren't enough beds for the number of
[02:00:54] guys that came in. So we went to the 80s, and stole their beds out of their, their not occupied barracks.
[02:01:02] If you watch like the original Green Brainy movie with John Wayne, one of the opening scenes,
[02:01:06] they see, you see this, who you come in, and they're just stealing stuff from the supply yard.
[02:01:11] And, like, that's what we're doing. You know, so, in, by Searschool, we had really refined
[02:01:17] we had been cheating this whole entire time out of an essence of survival. And, and that was that
[02:01:24] carried over negatively. There was a culture that had kind of been created and that, yeah, blood into the
[02:01:30] next. Yeah, as a leader, be really careful about the culture that you create, because the byproduct of
[02:01:35] the product of that you create in the environment that you build is going to be what you're going to
[02:01:40] have to deal with. So, like, yes, you can make things so hard that sometimes the creation from this
[02:01:48] environment, from this culture is going to be worse. Have you just changed what that culture was?
[02:01:57] You got married? Yeah. What, what, when did you get married after, once you got your green
[02:02:00] right, yeah, how did green Brainy, and then a couple of trips, got a couple of schools, and I was
[02:02:05] getting ready to go to Iraq. And that was, that's when the ginger finally conceded.
[02:02:13] You broke her down, Siops. I know I did. It was, it was not, she went talk to me.
[02:02:21] So, I had a, I just smart, she smart. So, I'd have to figure out who her pattern of life is,
[02:02:26] like, what? I figured out who all her friends were, I'm a friend at all for friends, and then
[02:02:31] I figured out like, there's center of gravity, like where they went, and why they hung out there.
[02:02:34] And I created, I fabricated environments that were where they would go to create opportunities
[02:02:40] for me to go and find her and talk to her. And then ultimately, I, I created this event that was
[02:02:46] like all the things that they love, live music, good food, wine, and, um, and I told them different
[02:02:52] times. So, I, I told my principal, which is my wife, to be, to be there at one time, and I told
[02:02:59] all of her friends different times. So, then when she showed up 30 minutes late, but 30 minutes
[02:03:03] before the rest of them came, which was an hour after I told her, um, I had already pre-planed
[02:03:08] the text message to go out to all of them, like, oh, cancel. Don't worry about coming over,
[02:03:12] and I tell her, oh, man, the, uh, nobody else has come and let's just go to dinner.
[02:03:16] Oh, that was it. Siaps. Yeah. You get married. Um, and you get, you get put into the siff. That's right.
[02:03:27] Which is, again, now you're in 18x, right? Which means you haven't been in, in, in the regular army
[02:03:32] at all. You've gone straight through school, and you get put into the siff, which is the commander's
[02:03:39] in extremist force, which is not only some more experience, guys. Yeah, it should be definitely.
[02:03:44] But you get thrown in there. Yeah. John McFee, uh, Sheriff Baghdad. He was a, he was a great
[02:03:51] gag operator. Um, he is the team sergeant for this team. He had known me kind of from fighting,
[02:03:57] and, um, he knew as, I, I don't know what his motivation was. Like he knew as a fighter. He knew
[02:04:03] as a shooter, and they were looking for extra bodies to get ready to go to Iraq. And, um, so they,
[02:04:12] he went and snagged me. It's pretty awesome. It's super awesome. But you're, so you got a good
[02:04:20] reputation as a, like a fighter, and you're the honor graduate and all this other stuff, but you're
[02:04:24] still a new guy showing up at a certain. Yeah. Still an FNG, uh, but a hungry, hungry bulldog.
[02:04:32] Yeah. You, I imagine they were freaking stoked. Yeah. No.
[02:04:38] It's wild that he, you know, he goes and gets me. I show up at the team room, and I'm standing in
[02:04:43] front of the team room with my bags, and they're not letting me in. You know, I stand out in front of
[02:04:47] that team room for a day, just standing there for like 10 hours. The door comes open, like, we told you to leave.
[02:04:52] If, no, I was assigned to this team, like, well, we don't want you to go away. I stand there for
[02:04:59] 10 days or for 10 hours waiting to be let in. So, and they finally let you in. Finally let me in.
[02:05:05] To go move the gym. Oh, yeah. They make you move the gym and then say, I don't like that
[02:05:11] way. It looks now. Move back. Put, put it back. Um, and then you're deployed. You end up jumping
[02:05:18] right into it, depending to a rack. Right away. Yeah. I get done with Sephardic, which is a required
[02:05:23] school to be part of the the SIF and it's a three month long kind of hostage rescue direct action school.
[02:05:30] And as soon as I graduate from that, I get on, Advon's already gone. PDS, PDS SES is kind of
[02:05:39] complete. Advon's done. They're already in country. I get on this explain, playing with the team.
[02:05:43] How freaking amped is Tim Kennedy at this juncture. I'm so happy. Yeah, I was like freaking
[02:05:51] thrilled to one being the unit to have finished Sephardic so early. Like, that's a school that you
[02:05:57] usually wait five, six years to be able to go to. I graduate from the Q-course. I go to Sephardic
[02:06:03] and I report to the SIF. Like, this is wild. And then you know, you know, you're, you guys know
[02:06:07] you're slotted to deploy. You know, we're deploying to. I don't. But they do. I haven't even,
[02:06:14] I haven't even read in yet. You know, so I've no idea what anything is. I don't know where
[02:06:18] the deployment is. I don't know where going. I don't know where mission is. So you get done with Sephardic
[02:06:23] then you check into your team and how long to take for you to find out that you're going to
[02:06:27] Iraq the three weeks. So this is now, so it's 2006. Yep. So Iraq is going off. It is crazy. Yeah.
[02:06:39] You're, how do you get there? Do you fly? See 17. See 17, but where do you stop? You stop anywhere
[02:06:44] on the way over? You must stop somewhere. Shannon in your fourth space, I think. And then you roll,
[02:06:48] where do you land? You roll into Baghdad? Now we get a lot of all of a sudden. Yeah. Directed to all of
[02:06:53] us on. And your Tim Kennedy has got to be as am to Tim Kennedy. Yeah. The combat approach of military
[02:07:05] aircraft into combat zone, it is not like a delta airlines. Please put up your tray, bring your seats
[02:07:12] to an upright position and make sure that your seat belts are attached, that your bags are
[02:07:15] underneath the seat in front of you. Like that's not what's happening. It's like this crazy
[02:07:19] corkscrew circle as they drop from 30,000 feet down to land. And the final corkscrew is your
[02:07:25] final approach. Like that's it. So as, you know, we have humvies, we have our trucks and all
[02:07:31] of our pallets of guns and our connexes. And it's like, we hit the ground, the gate opens,
[02:07:37] and you get hit with this hundred and something to green temperature in the dark of night.
[02:07:42] And it was freaking amazing.
[02:07:45] Yeah. First time I flew to Baghdad, I was with my potato, we're flying in. It's the same thing.
[02:07:51] And I'm always like, I'm not going to show anybody any motions at all, whatever. I'm always
[02:07:56] just like looking around. It's all good. And the plane starts going into that boat. And you're
[02:08:01] like, we're like, get jerked around a little bit. And this one, buddy of mine, was like a
[02:08:06] young and listed guy, but an awesome guy. He's like, got big guys. He looks like he goes,
[02:08:11] these are evasive. I can't even say he's like, these are evasive maneuvers. And I go,
[02:08:16] we'll be good. Something like just totally calm. Cool. Like, we'll be good. No factor. You know,
[02:08:20] something like this, but I remember thinking, these are some evasive maneuvers. What's the
[02:08:24] yeah? Yeah. We can just have it. Awesome. So you're on the ground, your, your mission and
[02:08:33] kind of the countries, a much of the country, certainly a lot of special operations at the time
[02:08:37] was focused on getting AMZs. Yeah. Um, Zarkawi, he was the number one guy in Iraq for sure.
[02:08:45] The number two, I underneath been modern. Um, but he was he was super hostile, super aggressive.
[02:08:55] Been a lot. He passed off been modern. He was going so far. I mean, you got a good quote in the book.
[02:08:59] I, something along the lines of, hey, when when Osama been modern is telling you, you need to calm
[02:09:05] down. That's an indicator that you might be a little out of control. And that was Zarkawi for sure.
[02:09:10] Mad man. Yeah. Um, violent, violent to a degree. We're pretty comfortable with violence.
[02:09:17] Even now looking back, the things, the, the type of way that he, the tyranny that he put on both
[02:09:23] Iraq's, the Iraqis and Americans. I mean, it, it was an extra special level of evil. Yeah. This is the
[02:09:29] guy that was decapitating, um, you know, just on camera, disc cut and people's heads off,
[02:09:34] Nick Berg. Uh, this guy's a, a, a hateful. It was the blackwater contractor capture, right? The
[02:09:42] blackwater guy's that got burn alive. Yeah. The drag through the street. That was him. Um, the dudes that
[02:09:47] were put in cages and burn like that was him. The, you know, drilling, screwing dudes hands to the walls.
[02:09:53] So they could watch their families get tortured and murdered. That was him. Like he's nasty.
[02:09:58] He's got a nice guy's an awful nasty dude, awful, excuse for human being. Uh, and so that's what you
[02:10:05] guys are focused on. That's what much of special operations. And, and what, like this means going
[02:10:09] after everyone is network, everyone that he touches, everyone that he, everything that he does
[02:10:13] were watching, were tracking were trying to get a step ahead of them. Uh, your first up,
[02:10:20] you going on a capture kill mission, some HVT, some high value target, you heal into the target,
[02:10:28] you're approaching this enemy building. Um, I'm going to go to the book on this one because it's
[02:10:33] pretty good. Uh, John, this John McFee, um, you say, John has us all move back about 100 meters.
[02:10:44] Forms us into an L shaped ambush on the building and begins to call out. It's exactly what it sounds like.
[02:10:49] We get on a megaphone. We start telling people to get out of the house within five minutes,
[02:10:53] two guys and five women and their children leave. One of the women tells us her husband is still in
[02:11:00] there. We ask him to get out for 15 minutes. It starts nice, but at the end, our turps is essentially
[02:11:07] screaming get out of the house. Motherfucker, we're coming in to get you. He doesn't budge. We're going in.
[02:11:15] The four of us walk to the front door as Dave Frederick's Ben Rios Mario Montes. So that
[02:11:22] right? Yeah Montes. Montes. Montes. And many Vielovos move to the back door through the sheep's pen.
[02:11:31] The rest of the guys are either hitting the other buildings or covering the windows of
[02:11:35] outs just in case the guy tries to scort out. We're set. As the number one man,
[02:11:42] out pulls the door open and eye is the number two man throwing a flashbang. John is the number three
[02:11:47] man covers the doorway with his rifle in case someone tries to take a shot at me or Al as we do
[02:11:52] our jobs. Bam, the flashbang goes off and we flow into the room one behind the other. We see a guy
[02:11:58] sprint past the door. Our turps bils for the guy to get on the ground over and over again. The guy
[02:12:02] is not going to the ground. He is defiant. My red dot is on his chest as our Al's and John's.
[02:12:10] He takes a breath and makes an athletic movement away from us. I hear Al switches weapon from
[02:12:17] safe to semi. It's such a small sound that the tiny click of metal on metal but all veterans know
[02:12:22] what that sound means. It's go time. You can always hear it through flashbangs, through grenades,
[02:12:28] through artillery. That little click engages the mechanism in your brain that tells you this event
[02:12:33] is now real. My eyes see where this man is going and my brain slowly passes that message to my body.
[02:12:40] He grabs an AK-47 and starts to spin towards us. Somewhere between the time he grabs for the gun
[02:12:48] and the time he turns toward us with it, I move my weapon to semi as does John. By the time the man's
[02:12:55] gun gets two thirds around the half circle from where he grabbed it to where he's pointed it
[02:13:00] out. Al squeeze off one or two rounds. Mill a seconds later, I double tap the guy. John shoots him
[02:13:07] almost the same time. I do also double tapping. The guy falls the ground lifeless. There are five,
[02:13:13] maybe six holes stacked on top of each other through his heart. To be honest, if you don't look
[02:13:19] carefully, it looks like one bullet wound. I just killed for the first time although I think Al's
[02:13:25] round gets the actual credit but at the moment I'm actually impressed with how good we are.
[02:13:30] I thought this would be a bigger moment. I thought it would have gravitas. It doesn't. He was a
[02:13:35] bad man. He tried to kill us. Now he's dead. It's that simple for me. What isn't simple is hearing
[02:13:40] his wife screams when the shots ring out. There's no sound like the sound of a woman seeing
[02:13:46] her husband die. It rattles me and lingers. We collect in-tarle off the entire building. We get blood
[02:13:52] samples, fingerprints, face pictures and we take the body with us. There's a ton of valuable
[02:13:58] intelligence here and this huge unexpected wind tactically. But his wife keeps screaming at us.
[02:14:04] She's saying we murdered him. It doesn't matter to her that we gave the guy the opportunity to
[02:14:09] leave the house. It doesn't matter that he tried to kill us. We killed her husband. I look at
[02:14:15] the other men glaring at us. I look at the kids crying. Did we just make more terrace? Will these
[02:14:22] kids grow up to try and kill more Americans? I probably would if I were them. The wife complains
[02:14:28] enough that there's an immediate investigation of Al's decision to pull the trigger. This is a
[02:14:32] huge shock to me. Isn't this war? This fucking guy was going to kill us. Nevertheless, the
[02:14:38] sergeant major took statements from everyone. They did a forensic analysis of the shoot and concluded
[02:14:43] that what we did, that what we said happened is exactly what happened to Al is cleared.
[02:14:48] When we get back to the house, when we get back to the base, the guy's at blue tell us we did a great
[02:14:53] job. They apparently watched the whole thing via satellite. Now there's a lot more trust. They don't
[02:14:58] think we're idiots anymore. We're off to the races. Good way to kick it off.
[02:15:07] Yeah, the it's weird though. It's weird in the sense that,
[02:15:16] in a such flashbangs, you know, call out, when we're doing a call out, we're also flying
[02:15:23] thrown flashbangs. You know, the guy at the house, the thruff flashbang in there,
[02:15:27] you're on a microphone. This dude did pre-position weapons inside the house and he didn't know
[02:15:33] which way we're going to come in. He was kind of squirting to where his designated fighting positions
[02:15:39] were hoping to get us in hallways. Not bad. That's legit tactics on his part.
[02:15:46] Clearly thought this through. Yeah, I mean, it's 2006. These guys have been working for a while.
[02:15:52] Yeah, for him still be alive. He knows something. Yep. And, you know, in that rotation of
[02:16:00] that half-second exposure, it's the book. And when the gun is seen is, or I mean,
[02:16:09] you can't even touch how fast these things happen. You know, as he turns from around the corner,
[02:16:15] you don't see anything until you essentially see the barrel and the barrel's already starting
[02:16:18] to come up. So it's just like, and that's three people shooting at the same time. And
[02:16:27] and then it's just, it's not movies. You know, it's not a dude flies back or there's,
[02:16:31] there's just drops, just drops. And that's the end. And then you continue with your clearance.
[02:16:37] Yep. Yeah, you step over that body and go to the next room. It's weird.
[02:16:43] But you had to, after this op, you know, like you said, you start to build trust with the
[02:16:51] blue that's there, which is the navy component. Sounds like it was a little bit of a rough start
[02:16:56] with those guys, because they maybe didn't have the same level of trust with you guys before
[02:17:02] this op or something. Um, this was C-37's first combat tour. Okay. So that, that, I think that
[02:17:09] reservation was well-founded. And, you know, they, they, they, they're R-O-E, they're K-O-Cane,
[02:17:16] and they're vertical K-O-Tart. They were looking for really specific targets. We just wanted
[02:17:22] to get in the fight. You know, so they didn't want to use air assets at the expense of missing
[02:17:28] an opportunity for a TST, which I also get, but then we just wanted to get a fight, you know.
[02:17:34] So there, it was kind of priorities. They had already been there. They're, they're, they're working off
[02:17:38] of, you, you, you, if you think like in the movies, you got this, this big wall, and you have the
[02:17:43] tops are cowy, and then you have all of the targets, and you have clear lines of people that
[02:17:47] might know him. You're really hoping for one of those to populate as a target. And if you
[02:17:53] mean one of those, 332 other people that also need to die, and you're like, well take those,
[02:17:58] yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but what expense, right? If 160, if we have two synops and four black
[02:18:05] cocks, and we use all of them for this mission, then this dude that's like nine tears down,
[02:18:09] and then somebody that's on tier three pops up, but we miss that one because, you know, we're
[02:18:14] off doing something else, just to find work. So yeah. So you, you know, kick ass, that sounds cool,
[02:18:23] but then what's interesting is the next night or the next stop, they like come up shy,
[02:18:30] a helicopter, forever, I was a mechanical reasons, they got lit up, those helicopters getting
[02:18:35] shot every night. So the next stop that you're supposed to go on, they're down on a helicopter,
[02:18:41] so they can't take everybody, but they can kind of rework the forest list and get almost everybody
[02:18:45] in there. So everyone's going on the opposite for one dude. Me, Tim Kennedy gets left behind. So
[02:18:53] they go out and I can't even, this is like torture. This is the second op that they go on
[02:19:01] and you don't go and you, you just feel like you're being tortured and you're sitting there,
[02:19:06] getting ready for QRF and all this other stuff, but it's just freaking, yeah, so pissed.
[02:19:11] In fact, you're so pissed. You're so pissed that when they get back, you pull
[02:19:18] a McFey aside and you like beretem, like you, hey that was bad call bro, you know,
[02:19:27] you should have taken your best your brightest. Dude, you literally haven't looked, you say,
[02:19:30] you're a bad guy. You say, I'm the best shot the most physically fit and I dominated on that last
[02:19:35] miss and I should have been the first to go, not the first to not go like that's the kind of
[02:19:41] E5, I can't even, and E5, that's crazy. I've been out of the Q-course for two months. Or I've been
[02:19:48] all the unit for two months, yeah, and an E5 is walking up to the master sergeant,
[02:19:53] like listen, listen man, let me tell you what you should have done.
[02:19:59] Let me tell you what you're wrong. Yeah, always. That's crazy. Yeah, all right,
[02:20:08] hey man, props, you put it in the book, man. It's a good perspective for those young troopers out there,
[02:20:14] man, it's good perspective because you can feel that way sometimes. You look at some guy like,
[02:20:19] I should be going. And the worst honestly here's what socks, the worst way to get to go on the next
[02:20:24] mission is to go to that person and say you should have put me on this mission first. It's like saying,
[02:20:28] hey man, I think I deserve my purple belt now. Like don't do that. No, honestly, you're such a
[02:20:33] bit of your mouth. Zip it, go in there and do work. Yeah. He goes old school though. And basically
[02:20:41] says, all right, I'll tell you what, Kennedy, go grab your boxing gloves. We're going to settle this.
[02:20:47] In which case, you're like, oh hell yeah, we're going to settle this. Why?
[02:20:53] And he's a stud. John looks just like you. He's just a brick. You know, he's broad shoulders,
[02:20:59] thick neck, you know, chunked ears. He's grappler. He's fighter. And I've seen pictures of him
[02:21:06] and he looks like a beast of a dude. I don't care. I'm going to scuff that one guy up.
[02:21:13] And unfortunately for you, he's not one guy. He's thinking gang food.
[02:21:19] So I walk into that tent and into the whole team's there. Which should have just been such a lesson.
[02:21:27] He has such a moment where it's like, dude, my whole team is on the other side of the line.
[02:21:33] I'm on this side of the line. But instead, I was like, dude, I'll show them.
[02:21:36] Ah, show them what they're missing. You know, I got this part of that book right there.
[02:21:40] Leadership, Schrodinger, and Tactics. The section of the book is called the conformed to influence.
[02:21:46] And it's, I'm talking about when I was a new guy. Because Tim Kennedy, you wouldn't have a
[02:21:50] freaking pat, not a feeling you're a jackass. I was a new guy. And I was like, you know, trying to be hardcore.
[02:21:57] And like, people would be, we'd be going for a run. Our team would be going for run. I'd be like,
[02:22:01] wearing boots, putting on a rucksack, running the O course with a rock on. And like, my, like, my
[02:22:07] platoon mates. And I'm a new guy would be like, dude, hey, man, you need to chill out. And I'm just like,
[02:22:12] maybe you need to be more hardcore. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, obviously, I'm freaking
[02:22:17] hardcore over here. I got my rock on. I see you with a pair of running shoes on. What's up? You're
[02:22:21] telling me what's up? No. And what I finally realized at a point, you know, like someone said,
[02:22:29] hey, hey, Rambo, you need to chill out. And I was kind of like, it took me a minute to realize, oh,
[02:22:35] if I'm not part of this group, I have no influence over this group whatsoever. And I'll just be
[02:22:39] ostracized and I won't be a part of this platoon. And when I realized that, I was like, okay, I get it.
[02:22:45] And this is a classic example where it's like, when you're standing and you're looking at everyone
[02:22:50] on your team, on the other side, that's, that's a signal to you, young trooper, you're in the wrong.
[02:22:59] And look, you might be, you might be air quotes right about this particular item or that particular
[02:23:03] item. But when there's 12 against one, you're making a mistake somehow. You're doing something wrong.
[02:23:09] You're not building relationships like you should. And they line up on you and you go two minutes
[02:23:15] two minute rounds with these dudes. Do do do I do pretty well for 10?
[02:23:20] Start getting scuffed up the last two, Shane Thompson, good boxer beats me. Then John starts laying
[02:23:26] it on me and I was like, all right, that wasn't so bad. Then I go back to number one and I go back
[02:23:31] through the team again. And then the whole team, they just beat the brakes off me. One due to after
[02:23:37] another and Tom sitting there, all that those tents, you have the whole thing's kind of plastic.
[02:23:45] But you carry dust and Iraq has especially at all a saw and it's like this moon dust. So
[02:23:50] there's this thin layer that's sitting on top of this plastic. So it's like the drool and the blood
[02:23:57] is dripping out of my face and the sweat's coming off my forehead and it's hitting that moon dust.
[02:24:01] I can see the white under plastic and it's this bright white of my blood and sweat and saliva
[02:24:12] splashing in front of me as the rest of the team is just walking out and I'm just looking at my own
[02:24:17] like drool. And again, this is one of those moments where in the book I'm like, oh cool,
[02:24:24] he's going to get this lesson learned and you freely admit you're like, there was a lesson
[02:24:29] be learned there. I did learn to teach you like to see it took those guys to round you to get me.
[02:24:37] So dumb.
[02:24:42] Man, um, but you continue doing ops and you guys sounds like you got a pretty good
[02:24:50] uptempo going June 7th, 2006. You do this bit. There's like a whole, you know, almost AO wide series
[02:25:00] of operations that's going on as they're getting closer and closer to actually figuring out
[02:25:06] where's our coward is. Cags out, ranges are out. ICTF is out. You guys are hitting targets after
[02:25:13] target, after target, um, AMZ finally gets tracked, you're building and they're four sponsons. Hey,
[02:25:21] Zarkawe's dead. Uh, and what's interesting is I was, you know, you and I were talking about this
[02:25:25] before we pressed record, but I was in Iraq at this time too. I think you got there in March and I
[02:25:31] got there in April. So that was a big deal when Zarkawe finally got killed. Yeah, pretty awesome.
[02:25:39] I think I got wild for a couple of months after that too. Yeah, well, that's what I was going to say
[02:25:45] is I, when Zarkawe got killed, I didn't think it would have any impact on the amount of
[02:25:54] operations. I didn't think it would slow down the insurgents at all. And in fact, the insurgents
[02:25:59] kind of went ham after this point. They really started going off. Uh, so it picked up, you know,
[02:26:08] quite honestly. Yeah. And it sounds like it picked up for you guys, too. Yeah. How, how, how often
[02:26:16] you guys going out every night, you know, when we left all of a sudden and we ended up in the green
[02:26:21] zone, the international zone, in Baghdad proper, um, I mean, whether it was a gaffer a half,
[02:26:30] whether we were being a ground assault force or a helicopter assault force. I mean, every night,
[02:26:34] we were getting out and getting after it. I mean, you'd hear the ICTF half of our troop was
[02:26:40] over with ICTF at a blood and you'd hear them in gun fights. And then we'd be on the other side of
[02:26:46] the town, hit another target and then hear us in a gun fight. And then one of us would be calling
[02:26:50] QRF and our QRF for a couple of Bradley's and the M1 Abrams. And that thing,
[02:26:55] down the street, you hear that thing. Don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't don't
[02:26:58] most beautiful sound. I mean, you've ever heard is a Bradley rattle and into a building with
[02:27:02] insurgents hiding inside of it. God bless the 25 millimeter tune gun.
[02:27:12] So you get some good experience. Did you guys take any casualties on that opponent? No.
[02:27:17] I mean, not a lick. You know, a couple of purple hearts that were kind of, kind of, kind of
[02:27:24] give me, you know, like some shrapnel from a grenade that went off a ways away and like had a
[02:27:29] due to hand. But like real no casualties. We're hammers. Yeah. And well, that's what's awesome.
[02:27:37] You know, you got to have some level of luck, but when you're setting up these massive,
[02:27:42] we offensive aggressive operations. A lot of times you're catching the enemy. Not ready for it.
[02:27:46] No, which is exactly what you're doing. That speed surprised me by ounce of action. It's so
[02:27:50] easy to say. Speed surprised me by ounce of action. But when you're on the receiving end of,
[02:27:56] let's say a company, you know, of 60 soft special operations, guys, where every single
[02:28:03] breach point of your building explodes at the same time simultaneously, every exterior breach point
[02:28:09] shatters. Every window has something flying through it. And there's a gun getting stuck in every
[02:28:13] single opening of entire building. And there's bodies coming through everything one of those exterior
[02:28:17] doors. And an entire complex gets secured in a matter of eight seconds. It is there's, there's,
[02:28:24] there's, there's nothing that you can do. There's nothing. Yeah. So good way to win, man.
[02:28:31] Speed surprised and violence of action. So you get done with that deployment.
[02:28:38] You fly back to America. You and your wife go, you know, you get your wife, you get some good food.
[02:28:46] You're, you're still scanning for threats a little bit. You know, how was it dry? How was it driving
[02:28:52] around? Like, I remember when I came back from my first deployment, we were in home visa all the time.
[02:28:56] I was like driving around like, remember the bridges? Like it was like, oh, if you're going to
[02:28:59] bring a test with you. And so like any car that's getting close, you're sort of getting that little like,
[02:29:03] I'm about to freaking pit this dude off of her first shirt. You know, somebody doesn't use their
[02:29:08] blank her. I'm like, it's a VBI. You know, and there's like a dead dog on the side of the road.
[02:29:13] It's like, there's an ID plan in that dog. There's a, that's, that's a dead dog ball. I know that dog,
[02:29:18] you know, I've seen that one before and I get a smell of trash and I immediately get flashback, you know,
[02:29:23] if heaven forbid, I smell somebody smoking a clove or I drive by an Indian restaurant, I smell some curry,
[02:29:28] you know, and that mixed with the fuel and exhaust of a vehicle, I'm boom, I'm right back in a combat.
[02:29:34] It's wild. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's cool. Yeah. But then what's what happens?
[02:29:40] You get told, McFee tells you you're going to range your school. Yeah.
[02:29:47] And he also says if you're not the on a grad of range school, you're out of,
[02:29:51] Seth. That's right. How were you fired up for range of school? I was, it was,
[02:29:59] there were other schools I wanted to go to. I wanted to go to sniper school. You know,
[02:30:02] we're going to go to Halo school. I wanted to go to school, school,
[02:30:05] wanted to like to combat dive school. And so there are all these schools I wanted to go to. But the former
[02:30:11] range of regiment team sergeant, again, here's another little clue into how useless and ignorant
[02:30:17] and selfish and equal statistical I was as in this period. Like those are all my schools.
[02:30:22] I was not even thinking how would it help, how would I become a better asset for my team? How
[02:30:26] do I become, you know, as the new guy, a better leader? How do I understand the army a little bit better?
[02:30:31] Yeah, there were, there were so many good schools that should have been on my list. And the very
[02:30:36] first one as a wise new guy with a range of regiment, former range of regiment team sergeant,
[02:30:41] like the first words out of my mouth should have been, I want to go to range of school team sergeant.
[02:30:45] You know, not hey, I want to go to Halo school, like what I wanted to, what a bag of Dixia.
[02:30:52] Yeah, in the seal teams,
[02:30:55] often not 100% of time, oftentimes range of school is punishment.
[02:30:59] It's, it's a, it's punishment. It's also a little bit of purgatory that you can redeem yourself.
[02:31:05] So if you got a problem, if you've done something, if you've been off track,
[02:31:10] they will send you to range of school. It's sort of like halfway punishment and also a
[02:31:15] road to redemption. Jason Redmond, who's been on here, you know, he was, he was an enlisted guy,
[02:31:21] became an officer and was not quite ready for it. And his redemption was all right,
[02:31:30] you're a little jacked up. We're going to send you range of school. It's a great school.
[02:31:33] You know, it's, it is a leadership school. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about what
[02:31:36] range of school is. You think about the army rangeers, which is a special operations unit that
[02:31:42] does really rad special operations things as a direct action force. And then you have range of
[02:31:46] school, which is a really great leadership school. And as an 18x ray that has not even spent a day in
[02:31:53] the regular army, like the one school I should have been raising my hand of go to is range of school.
[02:31:58] And not as a punishment as like, I need this, you know, like this is who this not developed
[02:32:04] soldier. This is what I now need. But that's not what I'm saying. So John's given John, you know,
[02:32:11] like, and at the time, and I'm so mad at John and John, I've been talking since his book came out.
[02:32:16] And, you know, he and I, you know, he's like, I may not have been the boss that you wanted, but you're
[02:32:20] as the boss that you needed. And it's so true. He was such a great, great human. He's not a great human.
[02:32:26] He was such a great leader that I needed. Before you go to range school, you go and compete
[02:32:35] for the second time in the army, combatives, championship, and you win. Wild tournaments. The, uh,
[02:32:42] I keep using the word wild because I don't know the, I mean, well, I think I'm, I've been using
[02:32:47] that word a lot today too. So I think I started off the whole podcast talking about this wild
[02:32:51] story about three, but yeah, wild. The tournament is a, is a, is a three day fight fest. You have
[02:32:57] one day of grappling or you're going to, you're going to fight somewhere between five to 10 times
[02:33:01] in one day. And the next day is pan craze. And you're going to fight if, if you're in the,
[02:33:06] heaven forbid, forbid, you lose one grappling match and you're in the loser bracket for you to
[02:33:11] fight your way back into the winner's bracket. You're going to fight five or six times in, in full
[02:33:15] MMA pan craze fights. So now you're somewhere between, I don't know, 10 to 15 fights by day two.
[02:33:22] And then day three, they're, they're, they're full five minute three round fights.
[02:33:26] 15 minute fights day. Yeah.
[02:33:31] Yeah.
[02:33:31] Thank you.
[02:33:32] Pan craze, they're going to open hand on the ground, open hand strike standing. What's, what's there?
[02:33:37] Open palm to the face, close fist anywhere else, kicks anywhere and all submissions are in.
[02:33:44] Yeah. And then day three is MMA for the championship, just, just MMA. Just MMA.
[02:33:51] Just MMA. Gloves are no gloves. Gloves.
[02:33:54] That's good question. Yeah. So, you know, again, peak war, peak like, warrior spirit, warrior ethos of the military.
[02:34:04] Everybody could compete in this. You know, we had seals that were in it. We had marine guys that were in it.
[02:34:08] And we had plenty of green braids, range regimen guys. Like this was the tournament of all tournaments within the military.
[02:34:15] And this is your second one. When was the first one? The first one when I was in the Q course.
[02:34:19] I used a roll about and one set down.
[02:34:22] So, the chance of getting hurt in one of these fights and getting, you know, out of the Q course.
[02:34:27] But one of the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the slick.
[02:34:32] Cadray, well, like, hey man, if, if you win this, I'll give you an, an arm, an arm, an achievement medal or something.
[02:34:37] And I'll give you a three day weekend.
[02:34:39] I'm in.
[02:34:40] So, I go fight this. I get a medal. First of all, I get a medal.
[02:34:44] The medals are cool. I don't have any of those.
[02:34:46] And then I, then I get a three day weekend.
[02:34:48] So, I did that. Well, we're fair.
[02:34:50] Yeah, fair. No bad. No, no, no, no.
[02:34:52] So, this is your second one.
[02:34:54] Uh, that you win. You win this again. You became the first, I think the first person.
[02:34:58] First person to do a slice back to back.
[02:35:00] Uh, then you got a range of school. The same day.
[02:35:06] What's the weight classes in the combat of the same as MMA? So, I fought a light heavyweight.
[02:35:11] So, I fought 205, um, light heavyweight on Sunday was the light heavyweight championship.
[02:35:19] So, MMA bout about 3 p.m. in the afternoon.
[02:35:22] And I checked in to Ranger School at 6 p.m.
[02:35:25] Credit.
[02:35:27] Damn.
[02:35:29] It's friggin awesome, man.
[02:35:31] Uh, you, you go through Ranger School.
[02:35:35] Um, in the book.
[02:35:37] There's a lot of cool, cool details about it in the book.
[02:35:40] Um, give me some highlights.
[02:35:43] Wrap week. I mean, you must, it's weird that you're just like a combat experience.
[02:35:47] Guy won the combat of tournament. Special forces, Sephardic,
[02:35:51] 15, and you're rolling into Ranger School.
[02:35:53] Yeah.
[02:35:53] The rank doesn't matter in Ranger School. That's pretty awesome.
[02:35:56] Love it.
[02:35:57] You go in Stripped. You know, so a staff sergeant, combat patch, special forces, airball.
[02:36:01] That's, no, that's on there.
[02:36:03] Right. I got my name tape.
[02:36:05] That's why I got.
[02:36:06] And, um, I know, that's one of the things that I love about the military is,
[02:36:14] it is exclusively off merit.
[02:36:18] Nothing.
[02:36:19] I don't care your color. I don't care your religion.
[02:36:22] I don't care anything about you. I care if you can do it.
[02:36:25] Here's a very clear task condition in standard.
[02:36:28] You're either capable of doing it or you're not.
[02:36:30] You're either going to be a graduate if you're sniper school,
[02:36:32] because you made this shot or you did it.
[02:36:34] That's it.
[02:36:35] Period.
[02:36:36] And, and Ranger School is very defined in that way.
[02:36:39] The, the grading for your patrols are very clear.
[02:36:43] The grading for the, the physical portions are very clear.
[02:36:46] The time requirements for you to make it through.
[02:36:49] Um, the obstacle course are very clear.
[02:36:52] Everything is just so clear.
[02:36:54] Here's your time to distance someone reassemble the 240.
[02:36:57] That's it.
[02:36:59] Like you can do it.
[02:37:00] You can't.
[02:37:01] You view their, prepare and train.
[02:37:03] And you know how it works or you don't.
[02:37:05] And, um,
[02:37:07] this.
[02:37:08] And in between,
[02:37:10] the,
[02:37:13] the goal is the cadre is to show.
[02:37:16] They use all of these gates as mechanisms to train somebody about how to lead.
[02:37:22] They use, you know,
[02:37:23] they have to tear down the person to see who that leader potentially could be.
[02:37:28] Like anybody can be a good person when you're.
[02:37:31] Well fed when you've had a great night's sleep.
[02:37:34] You know, like when you've been hanging out with your wife.
[02:37:36] Sure, I can go in there, you know,
[02:37:38] and I see that they're also taking a really great time.
[02:37:41] And I see that you're doing really great.
[02:37:44] Great teamwork guys.
[02:37:45] But what does it feel like when you have to volunteer.
[02:37:49] To be up on another security shift because the dude just fell asleep and you're either going to be a good teammate.
[02:37:52] Or you're not like, do you have that?
[02:37:54] And by the way, all the people that you're leading are also sleep deprived, exhausted, tired, frustrated, pissed off and all that.
[02:38:01] Yeah, when I joined the Navy.
[02:38:03] The Marine Corps.
[02:38:04] at that time, they didn't even have name tapes on their uniforms.
[02:38:08] It was just like you were a Marine.
[02:38:10] You were a freaking Lance Corpore or a Corpore or a Sergeant or that's what you were.
[02:38:14] It was a freaking legit bird.
[02:38:16] I remember thinking, I had so much respect for that.
[02:38:20] I was like, oh hell yeah, Marine Corpore doesn't just, you're just a Marine.
[02:38:23] You're a Marine.
[02:38:24] Well, so you don't need a name.
[02:38:26] Hey, Marine, get over here.
[02:38:28] God, devil dogs.
[02:38:31] One thing that you pointed out to the book that never,
[02:38:34] it never, I never understood it until you explained it in the book.
[02:38:40] And that is when you're in Ranger School, they call you Ranger.
[02:38:43] Yeah.
[02:38:44] And I always thought that was backwards, you know, like that, hey, you're not a Ranger yet.
[02:38:50] You're in school.
[02:38:51] So why would they be calling you Ranger and the way you explained it?
[02:38:55] The fact that you were watching a guy quit.
[02:38:57] He's quitting pretty deep into Ranger School.
[02:38:59] He was going to be like 30, 40 days into it.
[02:39:01] We're in Mountain Face.
[02:39:05] Two faces in half way through it.
[02:39:06] And this guy decides to quit.
[02:39:08] And you were called.
[02:39:10] You know that?
[02:39:11] Yeah.
[02:39:12] Cold, cold gets you.
[02:39:13] Cold gets you.
[02:39:14] Cold gets you.
[02:39:15] Yeah, you're used to it.
[02:39:17] But you were listening to the instructors kind of take them aside.
[02:39:21] And they start calling him by his name and by his rank.
[02:39:24] And they're not calling him Ranger anymore.
[02:39:27] And I was like, oh, damn.
[02:39:30] I never heard it before.
[02:39:32] You know, when you quit, you just disappear in like rap week.
[02:39:35] You're just going.
[02:39:36] But there, you're on this ambush line.
[02:39:38] You know, and it's been Ranger this Ranger that sometimes.
[02:39:41] But usually like a Ranger get over here.
[02:39:43] And when they're like, hey, Sergeant Smith come here.
[02:39:47] And I was like, oh, what the fuck?
[02:39:50] I would have been like, dude, I'm sorry.
[02:39:52] I'm going back in that patrol right now.
[02:39:54] I don't care.
[02:39:55] Yeah.
[02:39:56] Well, it makes people quit in Ranger School.
[02:39:59] So, I think self selection is the biggest a trader.
[02:40:04] People literally just quitting.
[02:40:06] And it is the environment's not rough.
[02:40:12] You know, at Georgia, Benny, it is a great conducive environment for you learn how to do basic patroling.
[02:40:19] Mountain phase.
[02:40:21] I think it's the accumulation of you, you start internalizing all of these things that you're going to have.
[02:40:28] And it seems this, this, this, this daunting task.
[02:40:31] Like, I can't, I have to get this, these, these patrols,
[02:40:33] I have to get through these patrols.
[02:40:34] I have to make it through these events.
[02:40:36] I have to do this time to think.
[02:40:37] I have to do this rock.
[02:40:38] And here's like, look at it from start to finish.
[02:40:42] The deeper into it you go, the fewer and fewer quidters you get.
[02:40:47] And it's not because it's any less hard because it is, it gets harder as it goes.
[02:40:53] It's because there's less tasks in front of you.
[02:41:00] So people are staring at the giant weight of all these tasks that I can't take it.
[02:41:04] They get tired, they get cold, and they look at this long list of things that they have to be able to do.
[02:41:08] And then I got, I just can't do it.
[02:41:12] Yeah, but the, when you were talking about sopcy.
[02:41:17] At a certain point, there's this like nothing you can do to make these kids quit.
[02:41:20] Nothing.
[02:41:21] Like they get kids done with how weak and you're like,
[02:41:26] You could tell them to do anything.
[02:41:28] They don't care anymore about anything.
[02:41:29] They're just like, you can just, you can just, we injure them with baseball bats or something.
[02:41:34] But other than that, they're going to keep moving forward a little bit.
[02:41:36] I have a Bengal tiger and a cage over there.
[02:41:38] If you want to graduate, you're going to go fight it.
[02:41:40] Yep.
[02:41:41] Cool.
[02:41:42] I mean, how much weight did you lose?
[02:41:46] It's so zero.
[02:41:48] In range of school.
[02:41:49] You lost zero weight.
[02:41:51] I lost no weight in range of.
[02:41:52] The average weight loss is what?
[02:41:53] 25 pounds?
[02:41:54] Yeah, I can't get 10% of your body weight is what you typically lose.
[02:41:58] And you, you set up basically a system of kicking ass and taking MREs.
[02:42:02] That's it.
[02:42:03] I'm like that.
[02:42:04] We should make it a shirt of that.
[02:42:06] So staff sergeant combat SF graduates,
[02:42:09] if the West Point kid, you know,
[02:42:12] APL, he walks up to me as a Tim.
[02:42:14] I need to go on this.
[02:42:16] Can you do this?
[02:42:19] Yes, I can.
[02:42:20] How want your main meal?
[02:42:21] Your crackers.
[02:42:22] I'll carry the 240.
[02:42:23] I'll go ahead and I'll be like, you know, you're, you're kind of like,
[02:42:26] up support sergeant and I'll walk the line.
[02:42:29] I don't need sleep.
[02:42:30] I can do extra work.
[02:42:31] I can go for forever.
[02:42:33] You got to feed the beast.
[02:42:35] And so like if you wanted to go,
[02:42:37] it was fair.
[02:42:39] You know, as I peered number one on everything.
[02:42:41] Like, and peering is another big a trigger.
[02:42:44] And every single phase you grade one through 12 or one through 13,
[02:42:47] 13 gets cut.
[02:42:48] And so the top 12 guys kind of stay.
[02:42:51] But that, that baggage carries over with you.
[02:42:53] So, you know, I was peering top the list because I was doing all the work.
[02:42:57] But guys knew that there was a price to pay.
[02:42:59] And that was the peanut butter or that made me a little.
[02:43:03] And they must have been really needing your help.
[02:43:06] Because they're starving.
[02:43:07] You get a one on one, one MRG there, right?
[02:43:09] Yeah, you get a no go on a patrol.
[02:43:12] You got to get a go.
[02:43:14] You know, if you get, and then the catarist comes up to you,
[02:43:17] hey, you're going to be the, you know, you're going to be the peel on this next patrol.
[02:43:21] If you don't get a go on there, you get a second no go.
[02:43:23] Like you're at a ranger school.
[02:43:24] No go ranger.
[02:43:25] Yeah.
[02:43:26] So, you know, they, hey man, I just got my patrol.
[02:43:29] I got a no go on my last patrol.
[02:43:31] What do I need to do?
[02:43:32] Gotcha.
[02:43:33] Yeah.
[02:43:34] You know, first, give me that hand voice.
[02:43:36] First, you pay the type of.
[02:43:39] That's incredible.
[02:43:40] How do you think you'd get like three,
[02:43:42] at main meals a day?
[02:43:44] At least.
[02:43:45] Yeah.
[02:43:46] Really?
[02:43:47] Yeah, I mean, so they're, you know, two or three patrols a day.
[02:43:49] And I was probably stepping up to two or one or two patrols a day.
[02:43:54] So I'd get an extra one or two every day.
[02:43:57] Yeah.
[02:43:58] Oh, no.
[02:43:59] Again, I just kind of, I can't go and put down the book.
[02:44:01] Cause I don't know, man.
[02:44:03] I, you probably helped a lot of people.
[02:44:06] I mean, that's hard.
[02:44:08] And people wouldn't be giving up their food unless they really needed it.
[02:44:11] You know, they got their ghosts.
[02:44:12] I, I, I batted a thousand.
[02:44:14] Did it?
[02:44:15] No, if, if you give me your main meal, you're getting to go.
[02:44:17] No.
[02:44:18] No.
[02:44:19] Dude, we'll work for food.
[02:44:21] I walked up.
[02:44:23] If, if like, some dude was, let's say we just had a.
[02:44:27] React contact or we had to go set up an ambush.
[02:44:30] And I went to patrol line and there was, they were not that they're scared of me.
[02:44:34] But if they saw me coming, I mean, they're, they're on their gun.
[02:44:37] Like, because they know it's coming.
[02:44:38] Like, the dude is going to get a go or Tim's going to have his attempt going to take
[02:44:43] a pound of flesh.
[02:44:44] Dude, you must be the first, first dude to not lose weight in range of school.
[02:44:49] That's amazing.
[02:44:50] So when I graduated, I fought a fight for the AFL a couple of days later.
[02:44:55] And, um, and I fought at as, as a light heavyweight.
[02:44:57] And I had a cut weight to make light heavyweight.
[02:45:00] So I know I fought light heavyweight when I went into range of school on Sunday.
[02:45:04] And then I graduated and I fought the following weekend at light heavyweight.
[02:45:08] So there you go.
[02:45:10] I did put on the range of pounds right after graduate research.
[02:45:13] It's like, errrr.
[02:45:14] It's shocking everything.
[02:45:15] And you ended up being the on-of-grad.
[02:45:17] Yep.
[02:45:19] And you say you go back and you want to throw it in McPhase face like you see, you don't
[02:45:24] stain it, see if it's going.
[02:45:25] Look, I did it and he's not even there.
[02:45:27] Not there, you already moved on, bro.
[02:45:29] So he's, psychological warfare to you.
[02:45:32] Yes, again.
[02:45:33] You couldn't just go to range of school.
[02:45:34] You had to graduate on or grad, which was extra all kinds of extra work, because the difference
[02:45:39] between like passing and being number one, the difference amount of work is huge.
[02:45:43] Yeah, I get back to the team and he's like, right, right.
[02:45:46] That crickets.
[02:45:47] There's nobody there.
[02:45:49] And then four days later, four days after range of school you get in this fight.
[02:45:53] You get this fight for the AFL, the international fight league.
[02:45:57] Yeah.
[02:45:58] Normally, normally you take months to recover from range of school.
[02:46:03] You guys aren't walking right.
[02:46:05] You don't have to take a P.T. test for sometimes six months to a year.
[02:46:09] And your body is a digestive system's trashed and energy.
[02:46:13] What was your digestive system like after that many days of just MREs?
[02:46:19] This is, um, if the dad graduated, um, I wanted to attack my wife.
[02:46:27] I wanted to kill an elk.
[02:46:28] I wanted to find her and I wanted to fight a vlosser after her.
[02:46:31] Like that, that's the energy I had when I got done.
[02:46:33] I was like, I want to be back, you know, the team sergeant Ed Weems was like, you know,
[02:46:37] take a week off, come back to the team next Monday and I was like, no, you know, what
[02:46:42] are we doing this week?
[02:46:43] He's like, take a week off and come back on Monday.
[02:46:47] Then my phone rings and they get a fight and it's like,
[02:46:49] ah, take that Ed.
[02:46:51] I'm gonna go fight and I FL fight.
[02:46:53] You win, you win your fight in the IFL.
[02:46:59] And again, you got to cool details and anybody that's any kind of remote fan of MMA at all,
[02:47:04] or actually sports in general, the freaking book has some kick ass details on what's going on behind
[02:47:11] this scene.
[02:47:12] There's so much that's happening besides what you see on the 15 minutes on TV,
[02:47:16] which is awesome.
[02:47:18] You end up going to soda the special operations target,
[02:47:21] the introduction school, the sniper school.
[02:47:23] This was wild.
[02:47:25] You're going through that.
[02:47:27] You're doing your last pass fail evolution.
[02:47:31] It's a field shot that you have to take.
[02:47:34] Your partner freaking quits.
[02:47:36] Yeah.
[02:47:37] You're shooting partner quits.
[02:47:38] So sniper is a two man thing.
[02:47:40] It seems like it's a one man thing, but it's actually a two man thing.
[02:47:42] You need someone to call the wind and call the shop for you.
[02:47:44] And your partner, the last day of this freaking course decides to quit.
[02:47:49] God bless this soul.
[02:47:52] He has Karen some baggage.
[02:47:56] He had a lot of traumatic stress.
[02:47:58] I think she's working through.
[02:48:00] He ultimately died in a training event.
[02:48:03] Oh, horrible.
[02:48:04] And he burnt in on Halo.
[02:48:06] Jump.
[02:48:07] And you know, there's Jack.
[02:48:10] It's hard.
[02:48:11] Stands up.
[02:48:14] Just quits.
[02:48:15] He quits.
[02:48:16] So now you're now, but the cadre says, all right, you know, Kennedy's partner quit.
[02:48:22] Who wants to who wants their call form.
[02:48:25] And the caveat is that Kennedy's getting one shot.
[02:48:29] Then structure's going to choose the shot from the field.
[02:48:31] He's going to pick whatever one.
[02:48:33] And whether Kennedy passes or fails is on you as, you know, call for.
[02:48:38] So you're sitting there like looking up.
[02:48:40] Everyone else is done.
[02:48:41] Everyone's done.
[02:48:42] They're done.
[02:48:43] They don't have to do any more shit.
[02:48:44] And you're looking up there.
[02:48:46] You're like, seen who's going to who's going to hook it up for you.
[02:48:49] And I got to go to the book on this book.
[02:48:51] It's pretty funny.
[02:48:52] You say, I scan the bleachers.
[02:48:54] I know my chances are not good.
[02:48:56] Who would want to do that?
[02:48:57] But I don't wait long.
[02:48:58] A burly Asian on the far left side stands up immediately.
[02:49:02] Picture the Batman costume, but Asian.
[02:49:04] And that's basically my clever.
[02:49:06] This dude, is it worried at all?
[02:49:08] He walks over like he's about to choose a salad dressing and a salad bar.
[02:49:12] He's looking at the dressing and not making the decision that will affect whether I pass or fail.
[02:49:17] What if I put your graduation on the line, Glover, the sergeant asks, I'm making the same decision, Sergeant Glover response.
[02:49:24] I like this guy.
[02:49:26] Well, I guess it's lucky we aren't doing that to you, Glover.
[02:49:31] The country take one round out and place it in a little ditch,
[02:49:35] proforing it to us like they're serving the dessert at a fine dining establishment.
[02:49:40] If you get a first round hit on our target, Kennedy, you graduate.
[02:49:43] If you don't, you fail a sniper school.
[02:49:46] They choose the 788 meter target.
[02:49:49] It's the furthest one from our position.
[02:49:52] Michael looks at it very quickly and gives me the adjustment.
[02:49:55] His confidence in speed scares me a little.
[02:49:57] I'm not used to it after spending the whole course with my partner.
[02:50:00] Are you sure?
[02:50:01] I ask calmly.
[02:50:02] Micropedes exact the win call he just said.
[02:50:04] I make his adjustments and squeeze the trigger.
[02:50:07] I see the impact and then a second later, here's the ping.
[02:50:11] Dead on balls, mother fucking accurate.
[02:50:15] Micropedes on the back and says good job.
[02:50:17] That was it.
[02:50:18] I can glove her dude.
[02:50:20] Come it in hot.
[02:50:22] That's awesome.
[02:50:24] So.
[02:50:26] Mic is a rare soul.
[02:50:29] Yeah, he's awesome.
[02:50:30] He's he's a fierce passionate human.
[02:50:33] He's also uncompromising.
[02:50:35] Yeah, he did.
[02:50:36] I don't think they're there something with him or he doesn't know how to back down to any fight.
[02:50:41] You know, whether he's like being censored on social media, he just doubles down.
[02:50:45] You know, if, you know, and some of these schools there were times where there,
[02:50:50] they would question, you know, he's he's he's he's he's another sick guy coming back from a combat deployment and you know,
[02:50:56] maybe they're questioning an approach that he had doing.
[02:50:59] He's like, no, no, this is right.
[02:51:00] You're wrong.
[02:51:01] They never he would just not back down.
[02:51:03] And I understood it there when they there there is a moment where they say, hey, what if we put your graduation on the line, he waits.
[02:51:11] He's like, that one changed my answer.
[02:51:13] Not a minute.
[02:51:14] He just stands there.
[02:51:16] And then they're like, okay, we're not going to do that.
[02:51:19] But he stood by those words.
[02:51:21] We're a random dude that he's never shot with on a random target with one bullet, a go no go.
[02:51:27] And he was like, yeah, got this.
[02:51:29] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, free you legit.
[02:51:33] One of the few dudes on the planet that my phone rings, I'm going to go help him with whatever.
[02:51:37] Clutter percent man.
[02:51:38] Yeah, what a beast.
[02:51:40] Um, you graduate tonight for school, obviously.
[02:51:43] You got another, IFL fight and you win.
[02:51:46] You do another.
[02:51:48] All army combat of champion ship and you win that for a third time.
[02:51:53] Yeah.
[02:51:54] Um,
[02:51:55] you get a sponsorship from Ranger Up with Nick.
[02:52:01] Yeah, who wrote this book with you?
[02:52:03] That's right.
[02:52:04] Nick is a former army army infantry officer.
[02:52:08] Your last point, guy.
[02:52:09] Yep.
[02:52:10] Um, and he had started this company Ranger Up.
[02:52:13] And I think you described as like the first of the military,
[02:52:19] a peril company thing.
[02:52:21] Yep.
[02:52:22] Yeah, is from Grunt style to nine line.
[02:52:26] You know, they're, they're, they're a plethora of them.
[02:52:29] You know, I think the two at the time,
[02:52:31] Ranger Up in 762, where the, like, the two,
[02:52:35] military, a peril t-shirt company is that you'd see it.
[02:52:38] The A fees are, you'd see soldiers walking around,
[02:52:41] Benny and her bragg, you know,
[02:52:42] Sporting their like tough guy shirts.
[02:52:45] But they were the first.
[02:52:47] Uh,
[02:52:49] you lose a decision that Jason may have Miller.
[02:52:53] Hmm.
[02:52:54] Yeah, that sucked.
[02:52:55] I didn't lose that fight.
[02:52:57] You lost the decision I lost.
[02:52:59] I lost.
[02:52:59] They have no.
[02:53:00] Yeah.
[02:53:01] How come you lost?
[02:53:03] Um,
[02:53:08] Yeah, I don't, the, if I went back,
[02:53:10] one, one, I didn't finish the,
[02:53:13] their multiple times where I was in good position.
[02:53:16] There's, there's a famous photo.
[02:53:17] I'm on his back. I have a rear naked choke.
[02:53:19] And, uh, and I'm like looking up at the refs and,
[02:53:23] and at the judges being like,
[02:53:25] show, yeah, showboding up against the cage.
[02:53:28] I have his back hooks around,
[02:53:30] rear naked choke is underneath there.
[02:53:32] And I'm doing like the Nick Diaz moment.
[02:53:34] Remember that when Nick Diaz got that triangle in,
[02:53:36] and you like sit still like,
[02:53:37] flip soft everybody.
[02:53:38] Yeah.
[02:53:39] Imagine if I got out.
[02:53:40] You know, like that was what happened a couple of times.
[02:53:44] Yeah.
[02:53:47] Not just once, but twice, where I had, I had already fought Jason before.
[02:53:49] Yeah.
[02:53:50] I fought him in a new tournament.
[02:53:51] And I destroyed him.
[02:53:52] I mean, I just like, mass occurred him through him every which way.
[02:53:56] The rules were kind of pride.
[02:53:57] So I could, so I could soccer kick on the ground.
[02:53:59] I could kneel on the ground.
[02:54:00] So in the grapple transition, which is like,
[02:54:02] where I really like to be,
[02:54:04] I was just inflicting non-stop damage for the whole entire duration of the fight.
[02:54:08] Similar to the,
[02:54:09] time I fought Scott Smith,
[02:54:11] and then I fought Scott Smith again.
[02:54:13] And I lost Scott Smith.
[02:54:14] I fought Jason.
[02:54:15] I smashed him.
[02:54:16] And then I fought him again.
[02:54:17] And I do the same fight.
[02:54:19] He doesn't.
[02:54:20] You know, he shows up different.
[02:54:23] So like again, I'm too stupid to change to adapt.
[02:54:31] So you kind of like go on a vengeance fight after Jason.
[02:54:37] Yeah.
[02:54:38] And when you describe this in a book, man.
[02:54:42] You know, it sounded like you're a little bit sketched out about it.
[02:54:45] Yeah.
[02:54:46] So just to set up, you have another MMA fight.
[02:54:48] You're about to deploy again.
[02:54:50] You're about to go to Afghanistan.
[02:54:52] And you have a bad taste in your mouth from losing to Jason Miller.
[02:54:56] And so you get another fight.
[02:54:58] And you like annihilate this guy.
[02:55:01] Yeah.
[02:55:02] Yeah.
[02:55:03] There was no, I didn't go in there to win.
[02:55:06] I went in there to like hurt.
[02:55:08] And I, I, very, you know,
[02:55:10] this, like, high low athletes, they're not going in there.
[02:55:13] John Jones isn't going in there to like murder somebody.
[02:55:15] He's going in there to be a champion.
[02:55:17] And I was going in there to hurt whoever I was fighting.
[02:55:20] Now that was not typical of any time that ever fought.
[02:55:25] I wanted to be the best fighter that I could be.
[02:55:27] And I liked fighting.
[02:55:28] I didn't like fighting because I was going to hurt people.
[02:55:31] That's like psychopath stuff.
[02:55:33] Losing that fight, getting ready to go to war in two Afghanistan.
[02:55:38] And this is now 2008 Afghanistan, which is like 2006 Iraq.
[02:55:42] Like this is peak war.
[02:55:44] And I'm like in the zone, I wanted, I wanted violence.
[02:55:48] You know, I was, um, and I wanted to hurt somebody.
[02:55:51] So how did you beat him?
[02:55:52] Was it like a mountain?
[02:55:53] Oh, I saw him on a pound.
[02:55:55] Yeah, I, I picked him up and I put him on his ear.
[02:55:57] You know, I take the earth and I hit him in the face with the earth hard.
[02:56:00] And he's already on, he's already on Wackadutal Street when he hits the mat.
[02:56:04] And I, I go straight to a dominant position.
[02:56:06] And I start dropping hammers.
[02:56:08] And, um, you know, he's piece out in three.
[02:56:11] And I probably hit him nine times.
[02:56:14] And, um, you know, when you're in that dominant position,
[02:56:17] you're fist hits their face.
[02:56:19] They're brain hits their head.
[02:56:21] They're head hits the mount mat.
[02:56:23] The brain then hits the head to get.
[02:56:25] So like your, like his brain is getting concussed.
[02:56:28] 18 times.
[02:56:29] It's 18 times.
[02:56:30] And I was hitting hard.
[02:56:32] And he didn't get up for a while.
[02:56:36] They, they, they, they, they, so he stayed unconscious in the ring.
[02:56:40] They brought in the stretcher.
[02:56:42] They moved him onto the stretcher.
[02:56:44] They carried him out of the ring.
[02:56:45] He's still unconscious.
[02:56:46] They were probably seven minutes into this.
[02:56:48] He's been unconscious for, you know, six, seven minutes.
[02:56:52] Oh, Jack.
[02:56:55] Yeah.
[02:56:56] What is our item?
[02:56:57] He's fine.
[02:56:58] Sure.
[02:56:59] Yeah.
[02:57:00] And now it's time for you to go on deployment again.
[02:57:03] You know, you deploy as an, as an augment to help other groups as a sniper pair.
[02:57:12] Do I have that right?
[02:57:13] That's right.
[02:57:14] Did I read that right?
[02:57:15] So we volunteered.
[02:57:16] The, the, you suck.
[02:57:18] This is pretty, first-special force command.
[02:57:21] They had seven groups going over.
[02:57:23] And they come and they ask for, they come to the Halo sniper team,
[02:57:28] which is the team that is on and they said, hey, does anybody want to volunteer for this company's deployment?
[02:57:33] Because we are looking for this specific thing.
[02:57:37] And that was to be a sniper asset.
[02:57:39] That's kind of like, as part of the siege of SOTIF asset.
[02:57:43] So if a team is going to go do a specific mission, they'll have this, these guys, you know, kind of on the deck.
[02:57:50] They can just, yeah, we got him.
[02:57:51] Here you go.
[02:57:52] That was the plan.
[02:57:53] Then as soon as you get there, your sniper partner, your shooting partner, his gets like a deer,
[02:58:00] John type letters, and the worst kind of deer, John letter.
[02:58:05] Bank accounts empty, divorce papers served, motorcycle sold.
[02:58:10] He had friends calling him, be like, hey, bro, I just bought your guns.
[02:58:13] You know, she went like scorched earth.
[02:58:16] She sulked the fields.
[02:58:18] This was total nuclear on him.
[02:58:21] So he goes home.
[02:58:23] Yeah.
[02:58:24] And this means Tim Kennedy's on the solo operation.
[02:58:28] It's by myself and Afghanistan.
[02:58:32] And this is where the section that I opened the podcast from, the chapters called The Value of Deaf.
[02:58:40] And as I was reading this, I was getting uncomfortable and sketched out, just reading it.
[02:58:46] I'm like, I don't like any, I don't like anything about this, right?
[02:58:50] So you're going on a resupply mission.
[02:58:53] You know, resupply mission, I'm going to go to resupply.
[02:58:55] Okay, let's think about what this means here.
[02:58:57] You got to go 150 plus miles from your location in Canterhart, out to Fob and Akonda.
[02:59:07] The way that you're going to be going out there, and this is what you're writing about,
[02:59:10] it's a channelized road system.
[02:59:12] There's like, there's not a good way to go.
[02:59:15] No, it's just not conducive to a comfortable passage, safe passage.
[02:59:22] Okay, so I'm now I'm reading this and I'm like, okay, well that kind of sucks, you know?
[02:59:26] But you know, sometimes you've got to suck it up and then I keep reading, you got 80.
[02:59:31] Gingle trucks.
[02:59:32] 80 freaking supply trucks, but they're not American supply trucks.
[02:59:37] They're not driven by American army drivers.
[02:59:41] They're Afghan jingle trucks, which is like these.
[02:59:44] I don't know, like the look, freaking gypsy vehicles, chips you cast.
[02:59:49] Bad maintenance on them.
[02:59:51] No armor, obviously driven by Afghan drivers who have, you know,
[02:59:57] questionable loyalty at best.
[02:59:59] They have questionable loyalty.
[03:00:02] And then you've got, I mean, obviously they got no comms.
[03:00:06] This is just, this is just, I don't like any of this.
[03:00:10] And then you've got your security forces, which is made up of an American SFA team, right?
[03:00:15] Augmented by one Tim Kennedy.
[03:00:18] You guys got RGs.
[03:00:21] So you got the mind resistant RGs.
[03:00:23] How many RGs did you have?
[03:00:24] Three.
[03:00:25] Okay, so three RGs.
[03:00:26] You got to check special forces company.
[03:00:28] They've got slick homies.
[03:00:30] And they have land cruisers.
[03:00:32] Okay.
[03:00:33] Are they, they're not armored, don't?
[03:00:35] No.
[03:00:36] Okay.
[03:00:37] So, Recipli and an replacement of the Czech company.
[03:00:40] Okay.
[03:00:41] So it was a required, we had to move these guys into this Firebase.
[03:00:46] And so they had to go, they had to make this drive.
[03:00:49] They were, this company of Czech guys were going to be at Firebase and a condo for the next year.
[03:00:54] And we had to resupply their substance for the next year.
[03:00:58] And addition to the ODA that was already going to be collocated on the on firebase and a condo with them.
[03:01:03] Got it.
[03:01:04] And in addition to all of them, you also have Afghan soldiers with you.
[03:01:08] And they've got homies to any commandos.
[03:01:11] Okay.
[03:01:12] How many of them did you have?
[03:01:13] Can we add them to just rough numbers?
[03:01:15] Eight trucks.
[03:01:16] Okay.
[03:01:18] So you guys go on this.
[03:01:20] Clearly, you are not clearly, but most likely compromise to synergy because all you got all those Afghan drivers.
[03:01:26] And you guys did everything.
[03:01:27] You took their phones and all the stuff that you're supposed to do.
[03:01:29] But fighting starts almost as quickly as
[03:01:33] you start.
[03:01:34] I mean the fighting starts.
[03:01:37] And the sabotage.
[03:01:39] Those things were happening as soon as we were on out of the gate.
[03:01:42] In addition to, you know, getting in contact with within hours of leaving can to heart.
[03:01:48] Each of the vehicles of the 80 vehicles, you know, we had three drivers and each vehicle.
[03:01:53] So we had 240 Afghans that were inside of the.
[03:01:57] Yeah.
[03:01:58] I love it.
[03:01:59] You're just immediately like, this is so terrible.
[03:02:01] I don't like it.
[03:02:04] No.
[03:02:05] But this is the, this is the soft model.
[03:02:07] Like this is the SF by with and through.
[03:02:10] You know, we're doing the special forces approach is we do everything through our partners.
[03:02:15] You know, the advise assist to company.
[03:02:17] We're doing, this is a AAA mission.
[03:02:19] You know, we're advising the checks.
[03:02:21] We're advising the Afghans.
[03:02:23] We're assisting them and we're accompanying them.
[03:02:25] So this is, this is, this is the SF mission to the core.
[03:02:29] That is dumb as it is.
[03:02:31] You got a check soldier that gets wounded pretty quick out of the gate.
[03:02:39] He gets met a back out of there.
[03:02:41] Eventually you, you hit this pressure plate ID.
[03:02:45] That's where I open the book.
[03:02:46] We open the podcast up with there's a, the freaking vehicle in front of you.
[03:02:50] Lans on your vehicle.
[03:02:52] Yeah.
[03:02:53] That's a hell of an ID.
[03:02:55] You got small arms.
[03:02:56] You got RPGs coming in on you.
[03:02:58] And I got a real chunk from the book here.
[03:03:02] Get into some details.
[03:03:04] Dust is still fucking everywhere, but a lane of light clears from us to where the front vehicle
[03:03:11] had fallen off of our 60 meters away when we were backed up.
[03:03:15] It is eerie kind of like when you're sitting on your couch on a lazy day looking out the window
[03:03:19] and you catch a beam of light and watch the dust particles whirl around inside it.
[03:03:23] The beams are on either side of us full of dust, but the lane to the vehicle is clear.
[03:03:27] It is almost as if God cleared a path for us, but that path didn't make my life any easier.
[03:03:33] Those dudes are still alive.
[03:03:35] They're still fucking alive.
[03:03:37] I risk shouts out.
[03:03:38] He's right.
[03:03:39] I see it too.
[03:03:40] One guy is moving.
[03:03:41] I'm going to sprint to that man.
[03:03:43] I risk yells to me.
[03:03:44] That's a bad fucking idea man.
[03:03:46] And if you do it, we're all going to die.
[03:03:48] I tell him.
[03:03:49] There's no lack of seriousness in my voice.
[03:03:52] I do not think we have any chance of surviving that run right in the heart of this ambush.
[03:03:56] I risk looks at right at me and says, I'm going.
[03:04:01] He takes off in a dead sprint.
[03:04:03] I hear the guns pick up.
[03:04:05] They see him.
[03:04:06] I'm still holding my sniper rifle for some reason.
[03:04:08] I don't grab my AR as I take a deep breath in sprint after Irish.
[03:04:13] I do not want to be doing this.
[03:04:15] I do not want to expose myself, but I don't want to fail my comrades even more.
[03:04:22] We get to the vehicle unscathed and I look inside.
[03:04:26] Fuck, they are in bad shape.
[03:04:28] The first guy has lost both of his legs.
[03:04:30] At the quads, they simply aren't there.
[03:04:33] I pull him out in a sandbag carry and his bile and blood and guts spill out onto my uniform rolling down my stomach and soaking my legs.
[03:04:41] Even with the adrenaline and the fear and the explosions and the bullets, I acknowledge that this is the most disgusting thing that has ever happened to me.
[03:04:49] I risk grabs the other dude, who is in rough state shape but still breathing.
[03:04:53] As we start moving the 60 meters back to our vehicle, I see a squad of 6 to 8 young,
[03:04:58] 6 to 8 guys moving out of the woods to finish us.
[03:05:02] They are the assault element getting ready to fight to the X and kill those of us standing on it.
[03:05:08] I have a choice.
[03:05:10] I can drop this guy and leave him for dead so I can fight to hand it or I can fire my cannon of a sniper rifle, one handed Rambo style in their general direction.
[03:05:18] While trying to move my wounded guy to a high carry with one arm on the other side.
[03:05:23] Whether it is courage or because I knew I wish would have just picked him up and carried two guys I opt for the one handed fire.
[03:05:31] I know I am not hitting anything.
[03:05:33] I know I am not even close.
[03:05:35] They see us.
[03:05:36] A squad against two guys who are carrying wounded Afghans and have no real ability to return fire.
[03:05:42] We are dead.
[03:05:44] Then thank God.
[03:05:48] Keller sees them.
[03:05:50] The sweet melody of the 50 cow fills my ears and they evaporate.
[03:05:56] When I say that I need you to understand what I mean they didn't die.
[03:05:59] It wasn't like there were corpses sitting there.
[03:06:01] They fucking evaporated.
[03:06:03] There is just a pink mist floating in the air where they had been.
[03:06:08] It is like that Jake Gowne Hall scene in Jarrhead where he says he wanted the pink mist.
[03:06:16] You see after pulling the trigger on a sniper rifle.
[03:06:19] I had never wanted it before.
[03:06:21] But right now I have never been happier to see anything in my entire life.
[03:06:26] Keller just saved me for what proved to be the first time of many over the next few days.
[03:06:34] I have recreated that and I don't understand how Keller was able to shoot them.
[03:06:43] It doesn't make sense.
[03:06:44] We are in between him.
[03:06:46] He is in an elevated position on the top of a humvee shooting down through us and around us.
[03:06:55] And the Taliban are below us.
[03:06:58] So he is like threading the needle in between us with a 50 cow.
[03:07:03] That is a big bullet.
[03:07:08] And it is a big bullet that carries a ton of energy and he is 60 meters away.
[03:07:14] So we are talking peak energy, perfect trajectory.
[03:07:17] If one doesn't make sense how he did it to it wasn't pink mist.
[03:07:22] It was just they were there and then they weren't.
[03:07:25] There was a line of dudes.
[03:07:27] It is the dumbest thing that we ran down to the ex.
[03:07:34] The kill zone of the ambush to grab those bodies because that is the last place you want to go.
[03:07:39] The first thing you do is get off the ex.
[03:07:42] But ours goes down there and when we are dragging these bodies, I have an SR25 sniper rifle with the suppressor on the end of it with a loophole magnified object on top of it.
[03:07:49] And I have a dude like this trying to shoot.
[03:07:52] And I also felt those rounds traveling past us and it was like it is getting hit with that round going past our heads as those bodies just disappeared.
[03:08:06] Wow.
[03:08:08] Killer.
[03:08:10] Yeah, God bless killer.
[03:08:12] Freaking Johnny on the spot with the Moduce.
[03:08:15] And God bless the Moduce.
[03:08:17] Right.
[03:08:18] Alright.
[03:08:21] This.
[03:08:22] And if you are listening to this and you are like wait a second who is coloring and who is Irish?
[03:08:26] Yeah, you got to get the book.
[03:08:28] You got to get the book and you will get the back stories on these guys.
[03:08:31] These are current dudes as well.
[03:08:35] Yeah, I am just saying from the point of like if you are listening to me read this and you are like wait a second who is counting.
[03:08:40] You need to read the story and you know you might not find out there.
[03:08:44] They are really name and date of birth and they are social security number.
[03:08:47] If the story will make a little bit more they will make total sense because I only read a little chunk of it.
[03:08:53] But just to give an example of number one what the books like but also some of the intensity of the combat that you are talking about and that you learned from.
[03:09:06] This goes on man.
[03:09:08] This goes on.
[03:09:09] What was the total time it took you to get to an economy?
[03:09:13] From the time that we call to tick.
[03:09:15] No, from the time that you left how many days were a week.
[03:09:18] And you guys are fighting kind of the whole time.
[03:09:22] Yeah, we call a tick out of a tick.
[03:09:26] We call broken arrow on ethos on ambush.
[03:09:30] So from the time that broken arrow is kind of this.
[03:09:34] If you don't send us every available asset we are all going to die type of emergency call.
[03:09:39] From that moment we have three and a half days.
[03:09:43] I think we had already been in movement for three days.
[03:09:47] So I guess six days total.
[03:09:49] Yeah, so just so everyone understands that the broken arrow is a call that means you're going to get support.
[03:09:55] Namely air support from all over the place.
[03:09:59] Every time common help you out.
[03:10:00] Yeah.
[03:10:01] Everybody that's available will come and give that support.
[03:10:08] You eventually link up with the ODE 18 that's from an economy.
[03:10:13] They come out to meet you guys.
[03:10:14] They're fighting through the village to us and we're fighting through the ravine to them.
[03:10:19] And that happens about two to two and a half.
[03:10:23] Two days in this gunfight.
[03:10:26] Eventually I'm going to fast forward a little bit.
[03:10:29] You get to this one of the villages that you were taking fire from.
[03:10:35] You guys decide you got to go in there.
[03:10:38] You got to clear this village of enemy fighters.
[03:10:41] This is now like urban combat.
[03:10:43] You're going street to street.
[03:10:44] You're going house to house.
[03:10:46] At one point there's a peak and a machine gun is just unloading rounds at your team.
[03:10:54] As you're trying to push through this compound.
[03:10:59] Let me go to the book here.
[03:11:04] I can see the barrel of the pkms sticking out of a small window in the courtyard 25 meters away.
[03:11:10] The RG that's your big miners is in a vehicle.
[03:11:14] The RG is still smashing into the wooden gate.
[03:11:17] But the door will not give and the rounds are pouring out of the pkms into the vehicle.
[03:11:23] It's only a matter of time before we start getting killed.
[03:11:26] I need to take out that gun.
[03:11:29] I reach for one of my frag grenades, pull the pin and take aim at the tiny window 20 to 25 meters away.
[03:11:37] If this wasn't combat, my friends would be laughing at me at this moment.
[03:11:41] You see, I suck at throwing.
[03:11:43] I mean, I really suck.
[03:11:45] Yes, I'm a professional athlete.
[03:11:47] Yes, I can do all measures of physical activity at a level most people can't fathom.
[03:11:52] But you know what I never did growing up?
[03:11:55] Ball sports.
[03:11:57] It was so bad that when I joined the special forces and had to throw something to one of my teammates,
[03:12:02] I believe it was a role of 100 mile an hour tape.
[03:12:05] They were so horrified that they began instituting football, throwing practices part of my training regimen.
[03:12:11] I might be the only SF guy ever that has a new guy in addition to the normal tasks of shooting, planning and physical fitness.
[03:12:19] I had to work on my spiral.
[03:12:22] But here I am, grenade in hand, with my team counting on me.
[03:12:26] And I launch it.
[03:12:28] And it is perfect.
[03:12:30] It isn't a log that lays we float into the window.
[03:12:33] It doesn't bounce in.
[03:12:35] It's a fucking air in Rogers laser that flies from my hand and connects directly to that window.
[03:12:41] It is the best throw I ever made.
[03:12:43] You know, weird fucked up way.
[03:12:45] It is one of the happiest moments in my life.
[03:12:48] A grenade going off in the movies is very different for what happens in real life.
[03:12:53] It's not a giant fireball.
[03:12:55] It's not dramatic.
[03:12:56] It's a hollow foot.
[03:12:58] It's that late night sound of opening the refrigerator to see what's in there.
[03:13:03] And the watermelon rolls out and hits the ground.
[03:13:06] That's all a grenade is after you throw it a little hollow pop.
[03:13:09] And after you hear that pop, you either want to hear nothing or you want to hear men screaming.
[03:13:15] You do not want to hear women or children scream.
[03:13:20] You absolutely do not want to hear that.
[03:13:24] Yet that's what I hear.
[03:13:29] My soul turns inside.
[03:13:31] The helplessness tears me apart.
[03:13:33] I want to take that fucking grenade back.
[03:13:35] So, baby, I can hear kids screaming.
[03:13:38] They don't understand why this is happening to them.
[03:13:40] I can hear mothers screaming.
[03:13:42] Mothers that are punctured by fragments of a metal and can barely hold their lungs.
[03:13:49] Their screams are the sounds.
[03:13:50] Only a parent can understand of desperately wanting to help your children, but not knowing what to do to help them.
[03:13:56] Or in some cases, knowing it is too late to help them.
[03:14:02] Every scream tears me apart.
[03:14:04] After everything I've been through, I thought my soul was dead.
[03:14:08] I was as hollow as the foot of that grenade.
[03:14:11] I thought there was nothing left.
[03:14:13] It all comes flooding back.
[03:14:15] I may raw nerve of emotion.
[03:14:18] And each sound coming from that room burns me worse than anything that has ever happened to me.
[03:14:23] Shame, horror, and guilt that what I have just done envelops me.
[03:14:28] I've seen this before, in others as an EMT, the drunk driver that has killed someone.
[03:14:34] They sat there on those street corners crying, trying to sort out in their heads, the disparity between who they thought they were, a decent person, and what they had just done.
[03:14:46] But I cannot stop and cry.
[03:14:49] I have to move.
[03:14:51] Keller and I flow into the courtyard with the PKM out of commission.
[03:14:55] The RG gets more aggressive, and I see the wall start tumbling down.
[03:14:59] Everything is moving fast, and Keller and I do not want to lose momentum.
[03:15:03] I flow right, my flows left.
[03:15:05] The mission, this mission never would have happened, and I rack and goes against doctrine in any unit.
[03:15:11] And I rack, we had a whole company of sift working together to clear buildings.
[03:15:15] A normal infantry would have at least four on a door, followed by another fire team right behind them at a minimum.
[03:15:22] With another squad or platoon in support, we have a whole compound to clear, and it's just me and Keller.
[03:15:28] That's it.
[03:15:30] When I hit the first doorway, I instantly see food everywhere.
[03:15:34] It's a kitchen.
[03:15:36] I can smell the tea kettle with the clove tea that everyone hear drinks.
[03:15:41] It has just been made.
[03:15:42] I can smell right now as I write this.
[03:15:44] It's amazing how smell stays with you.
[03:15:46] You can forget details and images, specific words and conversations, but the smell of a moment is forever.
[03:15:53] Curry clove.
[03:15:56] The screams are louder now, and I move toward them.
[03:15:59] I follow a hallway to a 90-degree turn, and as I hit the edge of that corner,
[03:16:04] I get the first traces of smoke and dust from the grenade.
[03:16:08] At this point, I'm in this room somewhere between 30-60 seconds from the moment it exploded, and the scene is awful.
[03:16:18] It is worse than I expected.
[03:16:21] When you throw a grenade into a building that has walls to feet thick, all that over pressure has nowhere to go.
[03:16:28] This is in America where the pressure will break the dry wall or blow the door off.
[03:16:34] Their bodies took the brunt of it.
[03:16:37] There are two women, six kids, and an old man inside.
[03:16:43] I am once again that kid standing on the street looking at a crashed church of Anne, so desperately wanting to help,
[03:16:51] but not knowing where to start.
[03:16:54] Except this time, in addition to being the guy who so desperately wants to fix it all,
[03:17:01] I am also the guy who crashed the van.
[03:17:05] I scream for the gingenator to come and help.
[03:17:08] Why the fuck is an in here?
[03:17:11] Because there is no reason for him to be here, but I need this fix.
[03:17:15] I cannot have this on my ledger.
[03:17:18] They have to be okay.
[03:17:22] He screams at me to come back and man the gun because he is running the grenade launcher and cannot abandon his post.
[03:17:28] I take one last look at the room.
[03:17:30] It is so dark.
[03:17:31] The floors are dirt and dust floats in the air.
[03:17:35] I am standing in a real life nightmare, a horror film.
[03:17:39] The smell of death, empty bowels, and vomit hangs in the air.
[03:17:44] The hot machine gun is right there.
[03:17:47] Someone was shooting at Goddam.
[03:17:49] Who? The old man, one of the women, someone else.
[03:17:55] Everyone that can scream is screaming.
[03:17:58] Some aren't all going to make it.
[03:18:02] I did this.
[03:18:06] I am the bad guy.
[03:18:23] I am the bad guy.
[03:18:37] The couple of seconds before that, my goalball.
[03:18:44] As we approach that door, that started to get disintegrated from the machine gunfire.
[03:18:50] I don't know if I can make any sense of it.
[03:18:53] We approach the door on the right side.
[03:18:56] He is on the left side.
[03:18:57] I reached for the handle to push this door and the courtyard open.
[03:19:00] I am an athletic green brazer.
[03:19:04] I am not small people.
[03:19:06] I fall away from the door as the door starts shredding.
[03:19:10] The machine gunfire starts to ripen through it.
[03:19:13] I don't know what he heard.
[03:19:14] I don't know what he smelled.
[03:19:15] I don't know what happened.
[03:19:16] I don't know if he was a six-centing thing.
[03:19:18] He knows me a heartbeat before the door starts disintegrating.
[03:19:22] That is the door that I throw the grenade through.
[03:19:25] As he peels off to try and find, Mike comes up and we end up clearing through that building.
[03:19:31] The grenade goes off.
[03:19:34] That is it.
[03:19:37] It is over pressure that shoots tiny little projectiles of shrapnel in every direction.
[03:19:44] Indiscriminately, traveling in whatever direction and trajectory that they have.
[03:19:49] That Iranian, that was in that machine gun position, had body bunkered himself with women and children.
[03:19:58] For them, it is a win-win for them.
[03:20:02] We hurt civilians.
[03:20:04] It is a win for them.
[03:20:07] Or they are protected by these civilians.
[03:20:11] It is a win for them.
[03:20:14] A different type of evil.
[03:20:17] As a...
[03:20:21] I've been attacked about this as if there was any burvato or bragadosh pride in what happened in this.
[03:20:29] Like, there is not.
[03:20:30] No, there is absolute pain.
[03:20:34] But this is war.
[03:20:36] As we have people that volunteer to go and do things, travel overseas or go to Ukraine and fight for them.
[03:20:45] You have seen war.
[03:20:47] I have seen war.
[03:20:48] I am always just like even in America where people are talking about real revolution and as a brawl.
[03:20:56] You don't know.
[03:20:58] This is war.
[03:21:01] It is the worst thing that we can do to each other.
[03:21:08] The... a friend of mine did this show on the history channel.
[03:21:16] It is now... they changed the name of it, but it is called the war fighters.
[03:21:21] And I got interviewed for this show.
[03:21:23] It is about to highlight Mark Lee who was in my task unit who was killed in Iraq.
[03:21:29] But it is... they interviewed us.
[03:21:33] He did a great job.
[03:21:34] The guy that put it together.
[03:21:36] And it is awesome.
[03:21:37] It is an awesome program.
[03:21:38] But there is this one part that they edited out.
[03:21:40] Let me talk.
[03:21:42] And they are asking me about...
[03:21:44] They are asking me about war.
[03:21:45] I don't even know what they are asking me.
[03:21:47] But I do know what I said.
[03:21:48] I start talking about if you are going to go to war, you have to have the will.
[03:21:52] And there are two wills that you have to have.
[03:21:54] The will to kill and the will to die.
[03:21:57] And when I talk about the will to kill, what I said was,
[03:22:01] you have to have the will to kill not just the enemy.
[03:22:04] Because when you go to war, civilians are going to die.
[03:22:07] And if you think you are going to somehow avoid that,
[03:22:10] that you are so good or that things are going to go your way and it is not going to happen you are wrong.
[03:22:15] So if you are going to go to war, you...
[03:22:18] Yeah, you have to have the will to kill the enemy.
[03:22:20] That might not be that hard to fathom or to figure out.
[03:22:23] But you have to realize that civilians are 100% going to die if you go to war.
[03:22:30] And then obviously the other part of the will is the will to die.
[03:22:33] Because once again if you think you are going to go to war and you are not going to lose in your friends,
[03:22:37] well you are wrong.
[03:22:39] And you think you are not going to lose any brave American souls you are wrong.
[03:22:44] So this is an example of that.
[03:22:46] This is another thing I learned so much from the troops that I work with.
[03:22:52] And the conventional forces that I work with.
[03:22:55] The first, the 506, they had an expression that they said,
[03:22:58] Good shot bad result, which means, hey, this soldier was doing everything that they were supposed to do.
[03:23:06] They took a shot that was completely authorized that made sense that followed the Arruis.
[03:23:10] And it so happens that there was collateral damage.
[03:23:13] There was a civilian killed.
[03:23:14] It wasn't what it looked like.
[03:23:16] And it was a good shot.
[03:23:18] And they did the right thing, but the result is bad.
[03:23:22] And that's when I was reading that, I was like, man, good shot bad result.
[03:23:26] Like you have to do, you have to take that risk.
[03:23:29] Otherwise everything goes to shit.
[03:23:32] Then make it an easier though.
[03:23:39] When you, when people when shit like that happens,
[03:23:49] what point do you think you started processing that at a deeper level, like thinking yourself,
[03:23:56] trying to understand it?
[03:23:59] Man.
[03:24:00] I want to finally made it when the generator and I switched positions.
[03:24:07] Now, I'm purred in much seen red for a week.
[03:24:12] You know, I'm just like in fight mode.
[03:24:15] And I get inside of the RG and I'm on the grenade, I see squirters coming out of these buildings.
[03:24:22] And I'm just like laying waste to these people.
[03:24:26] When we make it fire based in a condo, and I'm avoiding going to the medic shed.
[03:24:32] By all me, I'm not, I'm not getting near it.
[03:24:35] I'm not even looking over to that side of the base.
[03:24:37] I'm playing sniper hopping up on top of roofs, smack and dudes that are trying to embed ideas around the base.
[03:24:44] I'm just like doing every activity that I can do to keep myself occupied from dealing with what is in the Med shed,
[03:24:51] which is all of these women and children that they're trying to save.
[03:24:55] I finally go down there and I get to hold one of the children that was wounded.
[03:25:03] That's when I started finding purpose again, you know, that killing is not going to heal it.
[03:25:13] It might help a little bit.
[03:25:15] Sweat is not going to heal it.
[03:25:17] It's going to help a little bit.
[03:25:18] Sleep is not going to heal it.
[03:25:20] It's going to help a little bit.
[03:25:21] You know what, going into and doing good and going and figuring out.
[03:25:24] What is the next thing to do?
[03:25:26] Like, that's really going to heal it.
[03:25:29] You know, that's going to help.
[03:25:30] So this ended up being a really significant kind of change in my approach to how to ideal with post-traumatic stress.
[03:25:39] How do I, you know, mental health?
[03:25:41] How do I, you know, it's not any of these little things.
[03:25:44] It's all of them exercise food, fitness, relationships, and also facing those demons.
[03:25:52] You know, like I went into that and I picked up this damaged wounded child that I damaged and sat there and faced a face held.
[03:26:02] Helped this child.
[03:26:04] And, you know, smelled it, felt it.
[03:26:09] It's a little tiny heartbeat.
[03:26:11] You know, twice that of ours.
[03:26:14] So I don't know how I faced it.
[03:26:19] I don't know how, I'm sure it's not fully healed.
[03:26:23] You know, the, you're reading it still is just like a gut punch.
[03:26:26] When I read it on the audio book, then I had to stop 10, 15 times just to get through it.
[03:26:32] You know, I'd get up on walk, I'd come back.
[03:26:35] And that poor audio guy having to deal with, you know, this man child crying in between every sentence.
[03:26:42] Yeah, do it better.
[03:26:50] You, you get in pretty much, you get to anaconda, you sleep, you shower, you reload, your Sergeant Major contacts you.
[03:27:00] And he just wants you to get on the black off and fly back to canterheart.
[03:27:06] And the choice is yours.
[03:27:11] What you want to do.
[03:27:13] And I mean, by all, by all, meaning full consideration, the trip back is going to be the same as the trip out.
[03:27:24] Maybe even harger because now the enemy knows you're going to become a back.
[03:27:30] So you have a convenient little out for yourself, a convenient little opportunity to not have to ride this convoy back.
[03:27:43] And that's a decision point for you.
[03:27:47] And I read a little book for this part.
[03:27:51] You say, I have to see this mission through.
[03:27:55] I thought about it all night while holding that little girl.
[03:27:58] There is a recurring pattern that is forming in my life and I don't like it.
[03:28:03] I don't necessarily run for my problems, but I'm definitely not addressing them either.
[03:28:09] I've always found a path around the thing that scares me, hurt me, or upsets me.
[03:28:15] It is the same unhealthy coping mechanism that I've used ever since Jared died.
[03:28:21] Firemen problems?
[03:28:22] Cool.
[03:28:23] No big deal.
[03:28:24] I'll become a cop.
[03:28:25] I'll be coming to my chances of becoming a cop because I paint ball to kid.
[03:28:28] Cool.
[03:28:29] I'll go in the army.
[03:28:30] And now my boss has teed up a perfect scenario for me to do that again.
[03:28:35] I can leave right now safely and go on another mission with the brits or the French or get some cool combat patches from their militaries and pad my resume.
[03:28:45] No one would judge me.
[03:28:47] My boss is literally telling me he would like me to head back.
[03:28:52] I do not want to go back into that valley.
[03:28:55] I am scared as hell.
[03:28:57] But I can't shake that night and I rack.
[03:29:00] When John McFee made me fight the entire team after I mouth-though.
[03:29:06] I said all the right things back then.
[03:29:08] I said I understood that the team can accomplish anything but the individuals weak.
[03:29:13] But I also thought that I'd beat no better than them.
[03:29:16] And even though they all beat me up, no single one of them could have taken me.
[03:29:20] I let myself cope with the humiliation by protecting my ego.
[03:29:25] I ignored the reality that no one man, at least of all me, is that big of a deal.
[03:29:31] I'd heard the saying before and thought I understood them.
[03:29:36] You don't leave a man behind.
[03:29:38] You fight for the man next to you.
[03:29:41] But I didn't understand them until this moment.
[03:29:52] There's always an easy way out.
[03:29:55] There is.
[03:29:57] In marriage, you know, you're traveling on work and you go down to the lobby.
[03:30:04] You shouldn't have gone to the lobby.
[03:30:06] You should have gone to the gym.
[03:30:08] You walk through the lobby, you go to the bar.
[03:30:10] You shouldn't have gone to the bar.
[03:30:11] You should have walked through the lobby, got in your car and gone to a geogitsu gym.
[03:30:14] If you did it, you get there.
[03:30:16] There's a girl sitting down at the end.
[03:30:18] She's a flight attendant.
[03:30:19] You know, you could have not talked to her.
[03:30:21] But you did.
[03:30:22] There's always an easy option.
[03:30:25] And that hard right is is, you know, so hard.
[03:30:30] It's called the hard right.
[03:30:31] And you know that path that the high road is a lonely road that feels so destitute from
[03:30:39] anything else.
[03:30:41] That is the only road to be on.
[03:30:43] You know, and this is one of those moments that it was so crystal clear.
[03:30:47] It was so black and white.
[03:30:48] And that doesn't happen very often in war or the where you're served on this platter.
[03:30:54] These options of right and wrong.
[03:30:57] And I had every excuse, you know, like I can fake this injury.
[03:31:01] Man, I would have got selected, but, you know, I rolled my ankle.
[03:31:05] Oh, you didn't.
[03:31:06] You quit.
[03:31:07] You know, like, man, I just got to go to the gym.
[03:31:08] Man, I, I, I, I had my wife not been mean to me.
[03:31:12] Had she not talked smack before I went on this trip.
[03:31:14] You know, I went to, no, you know, this is on you, man.
[03:31:17] So every single time that easy option, you know, you said the convenient choice.
[03:31:22] It's always right there.
[03:31:24] And, you know, for 20 something years, it was so simple just to make the easy wrong.
[03:31:35] You wrap up this chapter. You say, that mission to anaconda defined me.
[03:31:39] And in many ways still does.
[03:31:41] It was the honor of my life to serve with these men.
[03:31:43] Every member of the ODA that fought through the valley received at least a bronze star.
[03:31:47] Every member of the Czech was awarded.
[03:31:49] The Czechs was awarded the silver star with one guy receiving the Czech Medal of honor.
[03:31:53] Right.
[03:31:54] An extraordinary number of men were awarded the Purple Heart.
[03:31:57] When I landed in Afghanistan, I wanted these things on my uniform.
[03:32:02] I wanted the bling that told people I was a bad ass.
[03:32:06] Now I felt like I didn't even deserve any of it.
[03:32:08] And I didn't want it if it was offered.
[03:32:11] I didn't even report my wartime injuries to my actual chain of command.
[03:32:15] Everything I had done thus far, range of school, sniper school, deployments fighting.
[03:32:20] We're no longer accomplishments meant to stand alone.
[03:32:23] They were tools to make me better.
[03:32:26] And the only thing I proved on this deployment was that I wasn't good enough.
[03:32:30] And I never wanted to not be good enough again.
[03:32:33] I decided as I board the plane to fly back home to Fayetteville.
[03:32:38] Just as the UFC fight for the troops event is starting at Fort Bragg.
[03:32:43] That I am going to spend the rest of my career stacking the deck in my favor.
[03:32:47] So the men around me will never have a liability in their midst.
[03:32:51] I will never live up to being the man I once thought I was.
[03:32:55] And I will certainly never be perfect.
[03:32:58] But I can be better.
[03:33:05] Lessons are sinking at this point.
[03:33:07] They're getting there.
[03:33:08] It is tragic and embarrassing that this is what it takes for me to start learning.
[03:33:16] You know, these are hard lessons.
[03:33:20] But now, you know, 15 years removed from some of this.
[03:33:26] Those, these are lessons that I revisit.
[03:33:29] You know, I'm going back to that well all the time to drink from it.
[03:33:33] You know, the drink, the, that well of embarrassment, that well of shame, that, that well of pain,
[03:33:38] that the memory of mistake.
[03:33:40] And that's fuel.
[03:33:42] You know, it's fuel that motivates when I'm like, man, I want to get up.
[03:33:47] I don't want to go to this dumb resistance court.
[03:33:49] You want to need to take a 40 hours resistance course.
[03:33:52] Okay.
[03:33:54] No, I'll do that.
[03:33:57] You know.
[03:34:00] Um, you get back and you're back in the fight game.
[03:34:06] You've got to hold another career going, you know,
[03:34:09] you're on me, but you also have this other career going.
[03:34:11] You get a fight against Nick Thompson and strike force.
[03:34:14] And at this point, you're training at Team Rock in Fayetteville.
[03:34:19] This is like a hard, but basic gym.
[03:34:22] You guys are going hard.
[03:34:25] Nick, you beat on June 16th, 2009.
[03:34:26] You beat Nick Thompson.
[03:34:27] He taps from strikes.
[03:34:28] You're a positional grappler.
[03:34:31] You know about the sometimes you just put a dude to a place.
[03:34:33] He can't move.
[03:34:35] Yeah, that's hard.
[03:34:36] He stuck there.
[03:34:37] And when somebody's able to sit there and rain down punches on you.
[03:34:39] And, you know, you can't get your arms free to tap.
[03:34:42] You know, you can't get your arms free to tap.
[03:34:47] You're just, you're just looking for a way out.
[03:34:52] Yeah.
[03:34:53] Dominant grappling.
[03:34:55] The, the, at this point, now this is like the first little
[03:34:58] friction we start to see with the arm.
[03:35:00] At least the, am I right in that?
[03:35:01] Like the arm is now saying, construct forces, you know, on TV and stuff like this.
[03:35:06] And the army does not want you doing MMA.
[03:35:09] No.
[03:35:09] Which is the arm.
[03:35:10] And the arm is now saying, you know, on TV and stuff like this.
[03:35:14] And the army does not want you doing MMA.
[03:35:16] No, which is a crazy thing to think about, man.
[03:35:20] What better representation for the US military than to have a green beret
[03:35:27] out fighting in mixed martial arts on TV and winning and kicking people's asses?
[03:35:33] How is that not good?
[03:35:35] I can curve like I agree with you.
[03:35:38] But the chain of command ultimately, like they didn't.
[03:35:41] So, you know, the motto of the green berets is the quite professionals.
[03:35:44] And when you're, when you are a main event on show time, you know, like, that's not quite it.
[03:35:51] You know, you, didn't, it wasn't this fight or was it this fight?
[03:35:58] Were they actually announced, do you know, you said, hey, I'm Tim Kennedy.
[03:36:01] I'm a, you know, a wrestler and a mixed martial artist from Team Rock.
[03:36:05] And they're like, okay, cool.
[03:36:06] And then they announced you as like Tim Kennedy's special forces range.
[03:36:09] It's my personal.
[03:36:10] I don't know who told him, okay, I didn't tell him this.
[03:36:15] You know, but they, they had done figured it out.
[03:36:17] You, you were a head of your time with that though, because now, you know,
[03:36:21] 15 years down the line, the army, Marine Corps, they sponsor, you know,
[03:36:26] Timers on, you know, on every UFC fight, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a paved the way for,
[03:36:32] we have professional gamers, we have professional fishermen, you know, we have professional athletes.
[03:36:37] We didn't know how to do it then.
[03:36:39] And we're in the middle of war.
[03:36:41] Right.
[03:36:41] So I do get it, you know, like, how, how can you go?
[03:36:45] They didn't know that they're going to have such a recruiting problem in two years from that moment.
[03:36:50] Like in two years from then, they're like in a bad position.
[03:36:53] But at the time, teams are full,
[03:36:55] dudes want to go to war, they're not burnt out yet, you know, they're not quitting.
[03:37:00] They're not going to find other jobs outside of SF because they're not ready to go on
[03:37:04] their knife deployment.
[03:37:05] This is before all that, this is peak war.
[03:37:09] And then they have this dude that's moonlighting fighting.
[03:37:12] So, you know, while I say, I don't understand how short-sighted they were,
[03:37:17] I also understand, you know, if you were the commander and you're sitting there and you have one of your studs,
[03:37:22] that's on the weekends, going off to Atlantic City and fighting in a MMA bout.
[03:37:28] What is it even legal right now?
[03:37:30] I guess it is in that state, you know, but John McCain is sitting there being like,
[03:37:33] oh, it's not legal in Arizona, you know, and so it's, I do also get it.
[03:37:38] Yeah, I guess I can kind of get it to you.
[03:37:41] But it sucks.
[03:37:43] It sucks.
[03:37:44] Dude, I wanted my cake and I wanted to eat it to you.
[03:37:48] You know, you got great advice, Ben Reels, who's a green beret.
[03:37:52] I'll brother.
[03:37:53] Yeah, dude, he gave you such solid advice.
[03:37:57] And I'm going to quote it.
[03:37:58] He says, if the army loved you, they'd figure a way to make this work.
[03:38:02] And he goes this whole comparison between, like, hey, if this was a girl,
[03:38:06] and she really loved you, like you'd figure out a way to make this work.
[03:38:10] He says, so if the army loved you, they'd figure out a way to make this work.
[03:38:13] They'd make you sign a longer contract.
[03:38:15] They'd outline recruiting things you can do, or deployments you're going to have to take.
[03:38:20] What they're doing isn't love.
[03:38:23] That's envy.
[03:38:24] Are you going to let someone else's envy dictate your life?
[03:38:28] That's of incredible advice.
[03:38:31] And what makes it incredible advice to me is Ben Reels is obviously,
[03:38:37] like a confident dude that was confident in his damn manhood to be like,
[03:38:41] oh, my friend Tim Kenney's a badass, and I support him being a badass.
[03:38:46] He's my boss.
[03:38:47] He's my senior 18 Bravo.
[03:38:50] You know, that is, so yeah, you're not wrong.
[03:38:53] Man, the layers of his wisdom, and he had done a lot of living.
[03:38:56] Good living in being in seventh group for that long, pre-war.
[03:39:00] So he had the war on drugs, you know, Colombia, trips all up and down South American,
[03:39:05] Central American, the Caribbean, during like seventh group doing some pretty
[03:39:10] seventh group things.
[03:39:12] So there's a lot of experience in there.
[03:39:14] So when he just truthfully, and he was, he's a very stoic person.
[03:39:20] Him to kind of just lay things out there.
[03:39:23] Man, it was every single one of those words was just resounding in my brain,
[03:39:27] because he meant it, like what a great human.
[03:39:30] The envy part, like man.
[03:39:34] It's not just hurts.
[03:39:37] Like for someone not to see you do being successful and being in part of your community,
[03:39:45] being like hell, yeah, instead being like with the L.S.
[03:39:48] He doing that.
[03:39:51] To me, that smells like envy.
[03:39:53] It smells like jealousy.
[03:39:54] That's what it smells like.
[03:39:55] Those are good characteristics.
[03:39:57] Yeah.
[03:39:58] I was telling somebody the other day I was coming on here.
[03:40:00] And they started shooting rounds off your bow about you, about your career,
[03:40:04] and about how you are as a real leader.
[03:40:08] And I'll say there's like listen to this person.
[03:40:11] And every word that they say, it is so apparent how pathetic they are.
[03:40:17] You know, how envious they are of your success and how jealous they are.
[03:40:22] Any time that our veteran is talking negatively about a veteran, I'm always like,
[03:40:26] what's going on with you?
[03:40:28] But then when they start taking shots, shots that are usually unfounded and or fabricated,
[03:40:33] or even worse, complete, just lies out of positions of envy.
[03:40:39] That's a bad, it's a dangerous position to be coming from.
[03:40:42] Yeah, it's a bummer, man.
[03:40:44] It is, it's sad, you know, one of my buddies,
[03:40:49] Stoner, he was trying to go to Princeton.
[03:40:53] He's a single officer, and there was like this, your program where he could go to Princeton.
[03:40:59] And he's, so he wasn't, he worked for me.
[03:41:02] Now he wasn't working for me.
[03:41:03] And he says, hey, you know, I want to go to this program to go to Princeton.
[03:41:07] And he goes, what do you think?
[03:41:08] And I go, it's freaking awesome. Why?
[03:41:10] He goes, like, some other people are telling me that like, I shouldn't go.
[03:41:13] And it's, it's going to be a bad move for my career.
[03:41:16] And I was like, bro, who's telling you that?
[03:41:20] Like, that's the most insane thing I've ever heard.
[03:41:22] I was like, you know what that is? That's jealous.
[03:41:24] That's someone thinking, oh, now this guy's got combat experience.
[03:41:28] And he's also going to be a freaking Princeton guy.
[03:41:31] Oh, shit, I can't compete without, I know you shouldn't go.
[03:41:34] I was like, dude, a hundred percent go.
[03:41:36] I go, you'll have my punk card when it comes to education.
[03:41:39] You can be like, I went through an Ivy League school bitch.
[03:41:41] He's like, cool, I'm going, and he ended up going.
[03:41:44] But yeah, that's a bomber. It seems like there's, unfortunately,
[03:41:48] some of that activity going on here.
[03:41:50] It's cool to get a lip nistesto.
[03:41:53] You know, I have a few friends that every time somebody,
[03:41:57] I'll like name drop them.
[03:41:58] And I know these people very, very well,
[03:42:01] but they don't know how well I know them.
[03:42:03] But they know, like, the public persona of this person.
[03:42:06] And when they start just like, whackin' off about this person,
[03:42:09] man, I know about you now.
[03:42:11] Like, you done fucked up.
[03:42:12] Like, I know that my little person is my lip nistesto.
[03:42:15] I know is a great person that I know is a selfless servant
[03:42:18] that is a good father that is faithful.
[03:42:20] And you're like, you're listing all these things that I know to be,
[03:42:23] to be lied.
[03:42:24] I know for a fact to be lies.
[03:42:25] And you're just regurgitating the same bullshit
[03:42:28] that everybody else says.
[03:42:29] It's like, got you, bro.
[03:42:31] I got you number.
[03:42:32] Give away that position.
[03:42:33] Yeah.
[03:42:34] That's a bomber, man.
[03:42:36] Luckily for you, the Texas National Guard.
[03:42:39] Nice, definitely.
[03:42:42] The guard has been so good in so many ways.
[03:42:45] You know, behind the tomb of the unknown soldier,
[03:42:50] carved, like, etched in stone.
[03:42:53] And it says, you, we don't accept the soldier
[03:42:55] and lay aside the citizen.
[03:42:58] That's so beautifully said.
[03:43:01] And we always look to the soldier to the Marine
[03:43:04] and we forget that that's a person, right?
[03:43:08] That's the citizen first.
[03:43:10] And we have, these, sometimes unrealized,
[03:43:12] these unrealistic expectations about who this person,
[03:43:16] who this citizen is and what they should be doing
[03:43:18] and how they're going to behave in war.
[03:43:20] And we take this, these expectations,
[03:43:23] and we throw it in front of them,
[03:43:25] and it's, it's not real.
[03:43:26] You know, like that is a person first and foremost.
[03:43:28] And it's a citizen that, you know, is married
[03:43:30] and that has a family that wants to provide for their family.
[03:43:33] And they have aspirations.
[03:43:34] And they have goals.
[03:43:35] And they're also human.
[03:43:36] And they're also human.
[03:43:37] And they're also human, they're also human.
[03:43:40] They're as distinct.
[03:43:41] And they don't do the right thing.
[03:43:42] And, you know, behind the two-ounded soldier etched,
[03:43:45] like that.
[03:43:46] And it's, one of my favorite things to look back on.
[03:43:49] Every time that I'm looking at whether I'm in a position of leadership
[03:43:51] and I'm looking at the soldier by his behavior,
[03:43:53] I always look at, like, who that person is first.
[03:43:56] And the context of them is a citizen
[03:43:58] as an individual and as a human.
[03:44:00] Then I move on to what is happening as a soldier.
[03:44:04] Yeah, yeah.
[03:44:06] When we got to our money, there were groups on the troops
[03:44:09] on the ground where National Guard unit out of Pennsylvania
[03:44:11] and a bunch of other places, but man, what a bunch of studs.
[03:44:15] Some of them.
[03:44:16] Yeah, well for us, all of them, every one of them,
[03:44:18] I, you know, like what they did and the lessons they taught us
[03:44:22] and they were just awesome, awesome human beings.
[03:44:28] And luckily, the National Guard is not technically the army.
[03:44:33] So you were able to get in the National Guard,
[03:44:37] which is the National Guard requires you to be a citizen.
[03:44:40] So you have to have a full-time job,
[03:44:43] because the National Guard, you know, you only work a percentage of the year.
[03:44:46] You know, about a month out of the year, two months out of the year,
[03:44:51] you end up working cumumably for the National Guard.
[03:44:54] The rest of the time, you got to put food on the table.
[03:44:57] And however you ever do that, that is your job.
[03:45:00] You know, as some people are senators, some people are farmers,
[03:45:06] yeah, please officers.
[03:45:08] Work for the Department of State.
[03:45:09] You know, lots of different jobs.
[03:45:10] I was a fighter.
[03:45:11] So you're trained, you're still trained in that team.
[03:45:16] Where are you trained now?
[03:45:17] Did you down in Texas now?
[03:45:19] So I do one fight out of Texas when I fight Jocca,
[03:45:22] and this is for the strike force.
[03:45:25] Yep, for the side of the way, title.
[03:45:27] And you lose.
[03:45:29] Yep.
[03:45:30] And now you say it so just clear,
[03:45:32] you know, I barely lost that fight.
[03:45:33] I know, you know what?
[03:45:34] I think I won that fight.
[03:45:36] Yeah, yeah, you just lost a Jason.
[03:45:37] No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[03:45:40] For me, it's like this.
[03:45:41] I like, I hate that you lose, bro.
[03:45:43] I don't know if you can hear that about my mind.
[03:45:44] I didn't do lose.
[03:45:45] It bothers me so much, but I don't know.
[03:45:49] I, yeah.
[03:45:51] And that was like a close fight, right?
[03:45:53] I got a shock array.
[03:45:54] And what you didn't really like let it go or something?
[03:45:59] That fight?
[03:46:00] Yeah, I, I, I fought like a super conservative.
[03:46:02] You know, I'm beating him on the ground.
[03:46:04] I'm throwing him around, but I'm not taking any risks.
[03:46:06] I'm not really pushing the pockets.
[03:46:10] I was, I was apprehensive to go to the ground with him.
[03:46:12] And until I finally went to the ground with him,
[03:46:14] I picked him up, my threw him on the ground, passed his guard.
[03:46:16] Yeah, I should have done the whole entire time.
[03:46:18] My game plan was I thought he was going to try to take me down.
[03:46:21] I'd be piecing him up on his feet,
[03:46:23] because my wrestling was going to be better,
[03:46:26] except that he didn't want to go to the ground.
[03:46:28] He thought my wrestling and my judici was as good as his,
[03:46:31] so he wanted to stand up and strike.
[03:46:34] And it was three, four rounds into it when I was like,
[03:46:36] oh, he's not trying to actually, what's going on here?
[03:46:40] Maybe I should change my plan.
[03:46:42] Ah, and that's when you realize you needed
[03:46:45] a, to go to one of these professional games.
[03:46:48] Yep.
[03:46:49] And, and your, your decision was kind of between between
[03:46:54] Jackson, went, went, went, went, went to John and AKA.
[03:46:59] You end up going to Jackson, went, went, went John.
[03:47:03] And do you talk about, so at this point you got Gsp
[03:47:07] and Rashad Evans, they're both champs.
[03:47:09] John Jones is on fire on the way up.
[03:47:12] Carlos Condit, Cowboys Soroni, Nate Mark Court,
[03:47:16] Holly Homes, Alister, O'Breme, Keith Jardie,
[03:47:19] I mean this is like a freakin' killer crew.
[03:47:22] Killer crew.
[03:47:24] salty, the variety from the young hungry John Jones to the prestigious athletic
[03:47:33] prowess of Rashad, to the international experience of Alistair Overem, to Holly
[03:47:39] Holm who had, I think at this time maybe it doesn't boxing titles and then
[03:47:44] Carlos Condit and Cowboys Seroni and Democio Page who had been winning titles in
[03:47:49] different organizations all over the place. So when you walk in here you just see
[03:47:52] like walls of belts, walls of belts, of world championships. So it's cool.
[03:47:59] You talk about role in word John Jones for the first time or Tony word John
[03:48:07] Jones. You said that was kind of next level scenario. Yeah, there was a, I'm
[03:48:14] turning a Gordon Ryan these days and he's only person that I can kind of kind
[03:48:18] of equate it to where we've been grappling for 30 years and like we got
[03:48:25] tricks of Barce Leaves and I won't teach a trick. I will use a trick and they
[03:48:30] will not like recognize it, absorb it and then apply it in the same in the same
[03:48:36] flow of around. I've never, ever in my best moments ever learned or been able
[03:48:42] to adapt that fast. John was so capable physically but intellectually and it's
[03:48:50] weird that you put in like the cognitive elements of fighting but yeah he's a
[03:48:54] savant. You know he could take something in real time and artistically steal
[03:48:59] it and then put his own flare to it and then do it back to you in a heartbeat.
[03:49:04] And that's who, that's, that's the John Jones that I meet when I get to Jackson's
[03:49:09] you know it's the same Gordon Ryan that that humiliates me every day on the map
[03:49:13] right now. The world is gonna have to wait for Gordon to decide he doesn't want to win
[03:49:21] anymore. As far as I can tell right now.
[03:49:24] You're, you're just a savage.
[03:49:26] The, I can hang, I can go in there with the whole room, all the dudes and I can
[03:49:33] you know like I'm forty, you know, forty three I can do fine. Not can embarrassed,
[03:49:40] you know, lose some positions, you know, maybe occasionally get caught with Gordon.
[03:49:45] I can't breathe unless he wants me to breathe. I can't score a position, a point, a
[03:49:50] take down. He will give me an arm bar like this and dead derights. I have all
[03:49:57] the win and then he just moves and gets out of it. He will never be beaten unless
[03:50:03] he's bored. I want to do something else. Dean Lister, I had Dean Lister came in one day
[03:50:08] and he's like, hey, arm lock me and I go, okay, so I put it on lock on him and he
[03:50:13] gives me his straight arm. Not like clinched up like he gives me his straight arm
[03:50:18] and he's like, okay, I'll say go. He, he says go and he gets out straight arm
[03:50:25] lock bro. I mean, it is extended. I'm gonna all I have to do is move my hips whatever
[03:50:29] three inches and he gets out and he does this five times in a row. And then he
[03:50:34] says, okay, he goes, let me show you what I did and he goes, okay, now you're
[03:50:38] trying to use him, but he's a bit of a five times in a row. Like I couldn't get out of
[03:50:41] it. It's in and all. Another interesting story with this just happened. We were
[03:50:45] doing a seminar or we were teaching like some basics off the fence. And he's
[03:50:50] teaching a way to get out of a position was it. Oh, like someone's just
[03:50:58] bare hugging. He's a basic self-defense. It's a bare hug, right? And there's a guy
[03:51:02] in the crowd and he says, hey, with this hand, do this and with this other hand, do this
[03:51:06] and you know, go. And then the guy raised his hand and he's like, yeah, what's your
[03:51:11] question? And the guy says, hey, I only have one hand. What should I do? And
[03:51:15] Dean, without missing a beat, he's like, oh, and you only have one hand. You
[03:51:18] turn your shoulder a little bit more and come over like this. He had the answer
[03:51:22] like completely on the tip of his tongue. So cool. For a one handed
[03:51:27] grapple. Bro, I was like, this is crazy. Um, so yeah, that's where that's what I see like
[03:51:35] Gordon's just going to be. There's people out there like that. A cornering for Roy
[03:51:40] McDonald in a couple of days with John Danner. Roy is fighting for the PFL. The red
[03:51:47] king. Like the Bayes now. Yeah, for sure. And Danner her is, uh, he's weird. He's brilliant.
[03:51:54] But that room just like, at Jackson's in the peak, just like going into an ODA
[03:52:02] when they're getting ready to go to war, there's like this, this palatable tension
[03:52:07] of people starving to get better, like people starving for perfection. And it
[03:52:13] is, it is the most contagious place to be. And I know you've been gravitating
[03:52:18] in different, you know, entrepreneurially into different business adventures. Um,
[03:52:23] like you want to be part of this like hunger of this, this star of this drive.
[03:52:29] And it's almost, it's hard to describe what it is when you got it when you walk
[03:52:34] into a room. That's where the Dan her team is like right now. You know, when you
[03:52:38] got the Gary Tonans and you got the Gordon Orion's, you know, you got the Jean
[03:52:43] Lowe Bdonnie's, you know, and you have just like the list goes on and on.
[03:52:48] Is Gordon going to fight MMA? I don't sign to, oh, really. Yeah. Within one.
[03:52:55] Yeah, in one. Did the dude hits hard. He physically is a freak. He could make
[03:53:00] two or five if he wanted. He doesn't need to. Um, his wrestling is amazing.
[03:53:05] His judo is amazing. Obviously his judo too is, um, perhaps the best ever.
[03:53:10] Um, the, um, I don't know if he needs to.
[03:53:14] Is he want to? Sometimes, you know, he sees, because I still train full MMA.
[03:53:21] So I box a couple of days. I wrestle a couple of days. I do judo
[03:53:24] a couple of days. Then I hit strength and conditioning, you know, five, five days a week.
[03:53:28] So there's my, you know, nine to eleven workout sessions in a week.
[03:53:33] And, um, but, you know, he's doing 14 math sessions a week. Like he'll have to give up.
[03:53:40] Yeah. Ten or twelve of them to focus on MMA. Yeah. I don't know if you can do it.
[03:53:46] I'm not sure I want to be. Yeah. I kind of wanted to be honest with you.
[03:53:51] Because it just, I think it'd be cool to get that, get that kind of skill level in there.
[03:53:57] And, and also, you never know, man, you never know? Like he, if I was him, I would want to know.
[03:54:04] Like I would want to put it to the test. Let's go and see what happens.
[03:54:09] Yeah.
[03:54:10] Be right.
[03:54:11] Gordon, I vote. I'm voting for you five minutes.
[03:54:13] I'm right in checks that I don't have to cash.
[03:54:15] You're with your ass. So sorry, they're voting.
[03:54:18] Uh, so you're in there now. You got, you got, um, you start fighting.
[03:54:23] You beat Melvin Manhoff, you beat Robbie Lawler, Lawler, which is, I mean, those are two freaking beast ranges.
[03:54:31] My nose though. Uh, yeah.
[03:54:33] That's Robbie right there. Was that, yeah, Robbie Lawler? Yeah. That's Robbie uppercut.
[03:54:37] I hear.
[03:54:38] Yeah. He's a beast.
[03:54:39] Yeah.
[03:54:40] I love him so much. He's a great human too.
[03:54:42] Yeah.
[03:54:42] Dude, he's just freaking awesome. He was a South Poth blasted with my head on center double leg as he threw a rear hand
[03:54:48] up or cut and just like put me on the queer street, man. He's like, yeah, that's right.
[03:54:54] Uh, meanwhile, the UFC buys strike force.
[03:54:59] Oh, they did give me.
[03:55:00] And with that, they get all the fighters and all the contracts.
[03:55:03] Yeah.
[03:55:03] And so boom, you end up in UFC.
[03:55:05] And you kind of talk some smack about you about UFC.
[03:55:11] You kind of talk some shit about UFC because UFC was bigger, but like more corporate, they were had more
[03:55:17] control. They could get away with more with the fighters.
[03:55:21] They didn't have to give as much.
[03:55:23] And you didn't really particularly like that too much.
[03:55:27] Um, so you talk shit a little bit.
[03:55:30] Talk shit.
[03:55:31] I said that.
[03:55:32] Did you not?
[03:55:33] I said.
[03:55:34] Okay.
[03:55:34] What I said, Jaco, is that a garbage man has a better career than a UFC fighter.
[03:55:40] Okay.
[03:55:41] Is that shit talking?
[03:55:42] Carry you be the judge.
[03:55:43] Yeah.
[03:55:44] Yeah.
[03:55:44] Okay.
[03:55:44] Am I wrong?
[03:55:45] No, you're not wrong.
[03:55:46] But we're shit talking.
[03:55:47] You know, we're talking union wages.
[03:55:49] We're getting legitimate medical care.
[03:55:51] Yeah.
[03:55:51] You're going to only have to work shifts.
[03:55:53] Um, you know, a manager is not taking 20% of my purse.
[03:55:57] Right.
[03:55:58] Think there's no way that a garbage man isn't making more money than 95% of the UFC roster.
[03:56:02] There's no way.
[03:56:03] And it's all facts.
[03:56:04] It's all facts.
[03:56:05] That's all facts.
[03:56:06] And that's what pissed Dana off is because that wasn't wrong.
[03:56:08] Yeah.
[03:56:09] You know, if you weren't John Jones, if you weren't, you know, Connor hadn't hit the
[03:56:13] scene yet.
[03:56:15] Like, you're, if you're not the chocolate del, you're not making bank.
[03:56:18] Yep.
[03:56:19] Yep.
[03:56:20] Um, Dana White non too happy about that.
[03:56:24] He was mad.
[03:56:25] Yeah.
[03:56:26] And, and look, to Dana's side, you know, he's trying to grow this thing.
[03:56:30] He's investing all this money to advertising and to do it.
[03:56:33] Expansion all this stuff.
[03:56:34] And like, he gets to the bottom of that list.
[03:56:36] And if these fighters, you know, and they're just want to get in there.
[03:56:40] So there's not much real demand signal for him to pay them all kinds of money.
[03:56:44] And they're still not.
[03:56:45] Yeah.
[03:56:46] They're still getting the shaft.
[03:56:47] Yeah.
[03:56:48] Uh, but so Dana, I'm, I mean, I don't know if this is a direct result, but it kind of looks like it.
[03:56:54] You get your first UFC first UFC first UFC fight and you get paired up against
[03:57:00] Hodge your grace.
[03:57:01] Stylistically, we're talking about the greatest grapple around the planet.
[03:57:06] Yeah.
[03:57:07] Yeah.
[03:57:08] As my first fight.
[03:57:10] Yeah.
[03:57:11] And this seems like a good way to get rid of Tim Kennedy and get him out of this game.
[03:57:18] If you don't want to leave him, like the money here cool.
[03:57:20] We're not going to pay you because you're going to be gone.
[03:57:22] How about this?
[03:57:23] Well, we'll send you Roger Graysey.
[03:57:24] Roger Graysey.
[03:57:25] Yeah.
[03:57:26] Uh, you kind of messed up Dana's plan on that one a little bit.
[03:57:31] Yeah.
[03:57:32] So before the fight, he takes all the fighters.
[03:57:34] He kicks out all the coaches and he just burrates us.
[03:57:36] He's like, listen, if you guys want to make more money, you go out there and make it.
[03:57:39] I'm not going to name any name.
[03:57:40] Tim Kennedy, but let me tell you what.
[03:57:42] If you want to go out and make money, don't grab a wrestle fuck somebody.
[03:57:45] I want you to go out there and knock him out.
[03:57:46] You know, if you want to get the payday, go out there and put do the work.
[03:57:49] This isn't front of all the fighters in the locker room.
[03:57:52] Call in me out by name.
[03:57:54] I'm just like, dude, dude, you know, Chris Lee bins in there.
[03:57:57] Caunners in there.
[03:57:58] I mean, those are his awkward.
[03:58:01] And so he's like, so what I do, I go out there wrestle.
[03:58:05] I go out there wrestle fuck.
[03:58:06] Did living day lights at a hudger gracing.
[03:58:08] Bro, that was a that wasn't saying.
[03:58:10] That wasn't the same fight.
[03:58:12] Yeah, hudger gracing is, I mean, just just going off the stats of his life.
[03:58:19] He's absolutely one of the greatest grapplers of all time.
[03:58:22] No.
[03:58:23] Guy, nogie across the board.
[03:58:25] He's just, he's just awesome.
[03:58:27] And actually, he was on your back for what?
[03:58:31] Two minutes, three minutes.
[03:58:33] Yeah.
[03:58:34] So I shoot a single.
[03:58:35] He's six eight.
[03:58:36] Which is bizarre anyways that you're shooting a signal.
[03:58:38] Right.
[03:58:39] That's free.
[03:58:40] That you're shooting on him is kind of bizarre.
[03:58:42] Was that your game plan?
[03:58:43] Like, I can take this guy on the ground.
[03:58:44] I wonder, put him to, I wonder, push him to the fence.
[03:58:46] And I was using a leg attack to pressure him to the fence.
[03:58:49] Okay.
[03:58:50] And, uh, accept that he's long enough because he's essentially a giraffe.
[03:58:53] Or he's he's six eight.
[03:58:54] I think six six or six ten.
[03:58:56] He's wildly tall.
[03:58:57] Okay.
[03:58:58] And he kicks a foot up and around.
[03:59:00] As I'm on his single and gets a hook around my back.
[03:59:03] While I'm on a sink, just get out of it.
[03:59:05] This is the lane.
[03:59:06] Then takes my back.
[03:59:07] You do not want his best position is back.
[03:59:11] Mm-hmm.
[03:59:12] And so I've the best grappler in the world in his best position.
[03:59:15] And we're 90 seconds in the round.
[03:59:18] Dude.
[03:59:19] It's a lot harder to put a rear naked joke on someone with gloves on.
[03:59:23] It is.
[03:59:24] It is a lot harder, right?
[03:59:26] Yep.
[03:59:27] And it's a lot harder when somebody can punch you.
[03:59:29] Yeah.
[03:59:30] You survive that and then he's tired.
[03:59:33] Yep.
[03:59:34] People are all out there.
[03:59:36] It is a weird energy system.
[03:59:37] When you like you do this, I submit your cold.
[03:59:39] And every choke has a different squeeze.
[03:59:41] And you're like, my guillotine has a different squeeze than my,
[03:59:43] than my rear naked choke.
[03:59:44] My head, no, I'm choke has a different squeeze than my liched
[03:59:46] a podry.
[03:59:47] You know, and he definitely like get hit the gas.
[03:59:51] You know, just dumped everything in that rear naked choke.
[03:59:54] And when he started getting punched and I pulled his hands away.
[03:59:57] And I did that basket back to scape.
[03:59:59] You could just feel his adrenaline dump.
[04:00:01] It's just,
[04:00:02] Wow.
[04:00:03] Taked.
[04:00:04] There's something all the psychological impact of you have a great position.
[04:00:08] You should finish this fight right now.
[04:00:10] Oh, you can taste it.
[04:00:11] I mean, let's face it.
[04:00:12] You know, he gets your back and he's like, oh, this is over.
[04:00:15] Yep.
[04:00:16] And then all of a sudden he's admitted into he's like, okay, it's not quite as over,
[04:00:18] but I'm still going to finish it.
[04:00:19] Oh, it's not over yet.
[04:00:20] Three minutes here.
[04:00:21] You know what I'm going to squeeze as hard as I can and get this thing finished?
[04:00:23] I can taste it.
[04:00:24] Yes.
[04:00:25] I didn't have to worry about this.
[04:00:26] Who this guy, who's this Tim can?
[04:00:27] I'm not worried about that anymore.
[04:00:28] Cause now I get to go and celebrate this big victory.
[04:00:30] And he just got out.
[04:00:32] Yep.
[04:00:33] And I got all these rounds and I just gave up the best position I have.
[04:00:36] That hurts.
[04:00:38] Hmm.
[04:00:39] And I experienced that myself.
[04:00:41] You know, the you won't remerow fight a while later.
[04:00:43] Yeah, that's right.
[04:00:44] You know, it's, it's hard when you have everything.
[04:00:47] And then the moment,
[04:00:48] just goes,
[04:00:49] When.
[04:00:50] You know, happens in war too.
[04:00:51] Like it feels,
[04:00:52] everything's going going right.
[04:00:54] You know, you just smash it.
[04:00:55] Then all of a sudden,
[04:00:56] you know,
[04:00:58] you know,
[04:00:59] you know,
[04:01:00] you know,
[04:01:01] but you end up just just,
[04:01:04] to actually dominating him,
[04:01:06] all respect to a hauser gracy,
[04:01:08] but you freaking,
[04:01:10] to,
[04:01:10] we're taking him down.
[04:01:12] You know,
[04:01:13] and,
[04:01:13] and I take him down more times in that fight than,
[04:01:16] his entire career,
[04:01:17] cumatively.
[04:01:18] And I land more punches on him in that one fight.
[04:01:20] Then it is an entire career,
[04:01:22] cumatively.
[04:01:23] Yeah.
[04:01:23] It was a freaking impressive.
[04:01:25] Damn display.
[04:01:27] And, you know,
[04:01:28] what, you know,
[04:01:29] all of these times where I was like,
[04:01:30] and then you lose,
[04:01:31] and I'm all sad.
[04:01:32] I was freaking like,
[04:01:33] damn,
[04:01:34] finally he pulls one out.
[04:01:36] That's what's up, man.
[04:01:37] Maricopa, baby.
[04:01:39] So that was awesome.
[04:01:41] You,
[04:01:42] then you have fight for the troops in Fort Campbell,
[04:01:46] Kentucky,
[04:01:47] where the hunting first airborne division is,
[04:01:49] fight against,
[04:01:50] Huffield,
[04:01:50] and the tall.
[04:01:51] Stud.
[04:01:52] Love that guy.
[04:01:53] You get a KO in the first round.
[04:01:54] A crown goes for you can insane.
[04:01:57] Because you're,
[04:01:59] you,
[04:02:00] and the crown is the crown.
[04:02:01] The crown is the one.
[04:02:02] It's just like,
[04:02:03] fifth group is there.
[04:02:04] Six handers.
[04:02:05] A hundred firsts is there.
[04:02:07] I mean, I had to pull it with everything.
[04:02:08] One of these guys went to cue course with a whole bunch of them.
[04:02:10] One of the dudes has them walking out to the octagon.
[04:02:13] He leans forward.
[04:02:14] And he's,
[04:02:15] he's like trying to grab me as I'm walking to the cage.
[04:02:17] The last time I saw his face,
[04:02:18] when I was,
[04:02:19] when I was handing one of my studs to him after getting blown up.
[04:02:23] The last time I saw that face,
[04:02:25] face to face,
[04:02:26] was when I was giving him one of my dudes.
[04:02:28] Boom,
[04:02:30] it's just like,
[04:02:31] this is wild.
[04:02:32] That's the emotion walking out to the cage.
[04:02:34] Every military fighter that had fought that night had lost.
[04:02:37] And then I'm the final man that's all on me.
[04:02:40] Main event fight.
[04:02:41] Every military guy has fought and lost.
[04:02:44] And,
[04:02:45] you know,
[04:02:47] hype.
[04:02:49] You know,
[04:02:50] a lot of emotion in there.
[04:02:52] And next up is Bizby.
[04:02:55] Doosh bag.
[04:02:57] You guys had some bad blood.
[04:03:01] And this goes on for years.
[04:03:04] Like it's years worth of bad blood.
[04:03:06] Yeah,
[04:03:06] he fought one of my buddies.
[04:03:07] Jorge Rivera cheated in the fight.
[04:03:09] Bragged about it.
[04:03:10] He spit on one of my friends during the fight.
[04:03:13] Literally like spad on him.
[04:03:15] And then set a whole bunch of delicious things about Jorge's family.
[04:03:19] And just bad human things.
[04:03:22] And so from that moment I had a target on him.
[04:03:24] You know,
[04:03:25] it's like I want this guy.
[04:03:26] You know,
[04:03:27] you don't disrespect my friends like that.
[04:03:29] You don't spit on.
[04:03:30] Have you ever spit on somebody?
[04:03:31] No.
[04:03:32] Have you ever?
[04:03:32] No.
[04:03:33] No.
[04:03:33] Right?
[04:03:34] Like who does that?
[04:03:35] I'm mom quickly like reviewing my life.
[04:03:37] I just gave you an honest answer.
[04:03:39] There was one incident.
[04:03:41] I got spit on and that didn't turn out well.
[04:03:44] That resulted in a bad night.
[04:03:47] Yeah.
[04:03:48] Yeah.
[04:03:49] Yeah.
[04:03:50] Was that when you were a balancer or something?
[04:03:51] No.
[04:03:52] That was back when I was in the Marine Corps.
[04:03:54] Oh, really?
[04:03:55] Yeah.
[04:03:56] That was an issue.
[04:03:57] What happened?
[04:03:58] So Greenville, North Carolina,
[04:04:02] Party Town, ECU.
[04:04:04] Yeah.
[04:04:05] And we were,
[04:04:06] it was after a night out.
[04:04:07] We were all hammered in my buddy's apartment.
[04:04:10] Fight breaks out in the hallway.
[04:04:12] And me and my buddy go out there to see what's happening.
[04:04:14] It's a,
[04:04:15] It's a friend's of ours and a fight goes down.
[04:04:19] Long story short.
[04:04:22] Everybody's dispersing.
[04:04:23] We're breaking it up.
[04:04:24] And I'm trying to help break up this fight.
[04:04:27] And I'm holding the guy back.
[04:04:29] And I'm like, look man, calm down.
[04:04:31] He's like, like fuck you.
[04:04:33] And like spit some of my face.
[04:04:36] So double that ground of bound.
[04:04:38] We're standing in front of a stairwell.
[04:04:42] This guy gets sport-appuished essentially down the stairwell.
[04:04:47] Oh, damn.
[04:04:48] Yeah.
[04:04:49] And it was bad idea.
[04:04:50] Do not push people when you're around stairs.
[04:04:53] It's a bad idea.
[04:04:54] This guy breaks his arm.
[04:04:56] Yeah.
[04:04:57] Turned into a whole thing.
[04:04:58] You got reported, you know, to my command.
[04:05:00] It was just bad business.
[04:05:02] Don't do that.
[04:05:03] Or don't spit on somebody.
[04:05:04] And don't spit on people.
[04:05:05] Let's throw it down the stairs.
[04:05:07] So as I reviewed my life over here on my end,
[04:05:10] I have to confess.
[04:05:13] This is going back way back.
[04:05:15] I probably...
[04:05:16] 12 years old.
[04:05:18] Hmm.
[04:05:19] And there was friends of the family.
[04:05:21] They're staying at my house.
[04:05:23] The kids, the parents went somewhere.
[04:05:25] And the kids stayed at our house.
[04:05:27] And like these are like our, you know, friends of the family scenario.
[04:05:30] And the kid, the son, is the daughter's my age.
[04:05:33] The son is maybe two years younger than me.
[04:05:37] And he, like, will play in a round kind of he spit on me.
[04:05:42] Right?
[04:05:43] And I was like, oh, so I, I used to chase them.
[04:05:48] And eventually I caught them.
[04:05:50] And I, I had the, for whatever five minutes of chasing them around,
[04:05:54] I was saving spit in my mouth.
[04:05:56] And I pinned him down.
[04:05:59] Before we knew what the mount was, I got the mount on him.
[04:06:02] Helled his hands down by the wrists.
[04:06:05] And I didn't spit on him.
[04:06:07] I drew on him for about 30 seconds.
[04:06:10] And as I was doing it, he was shaking his head.
[04:06:15] Like, no, no, no, he was just going all over his face, bro.
[04:06:19] Sorry about that Tommy.
[04:06:21] I did, you know, all, all in good fun.
[04:06:23] But I think you, you, you do first blood, bro.
[04:06:25] So that's what you get.
[04:06:27] Yeah.
[04:06:28] Michael's bizzbbing through first blood.
[04:06:30] And I drew last blood.
[04:06:31] That was it.
[04:06:32] What I liked, my favorite part about reading about that fight was when you,
[04:06:36] you have a good first round.
[04:06:39] You have like an okay second round.
[04:06:42] And Greg Jackson gets you in the corner in Eagles specialist Kennedy.
[04:06:47] Why do you want him back in this fight?
[04:06:49] I was like, that is so freaking brilliant.
[04:06:52] I took him into deep waters.
[04:06:54] Like, there could be, quote, take him to the deepest waters.
[04:06:56] The ocean drowned there.
[04:06:57] First round, take him down there.
[04:06:59] And then second round, I just started like, plain.
[04:07:01] And, um, and Jackson was like, why do you want specialist Kennedy?
[04:07:07] Why do you want him back in this fight?
[04:07:10] You know, take him back into the deep waters and drown it there.
[04:07:13] It was like, Roger.
[04:07:15] You know, you know, it's, you know, it's, Greg.
[04:07:18] He is brilliant.
[04:07:19] He really is a brilliant guy.
[04:07:20] You know, it's how to get to his fighters.
[04:07:21] And man, he got to me.
[04:07:22] And then that third round came in.
[04:07:24] It was a different thing for the next few rounds.
[04:07:27] I was sitting at my office a trade at one day and I get a call.
[04:07:30] And they're like, hey, Jockel, there's some guy named Greg Jackson from the UFC.
[04:07:35] That's getting a tour today.
[04:07:36] Do you want to give it to him?
[04:07:37] And I was like, what's his name?
[04:07:38] And Greg Jackson, I go, how, how, yeah.
[04:07:40] Yes, I do.
[04:07:41] And that's why I ended up linking up him.
[04:07:43] But we back in the day, we used to rest.
[04:07:46] We used to compete against all those guys.
[04:07:48] They'd come out here and enter all these grappling tournaments.
[04:07:52] And we'd, we'd be competing against them.
[04:07:55] Remember, I, I've had a match against Keith Thirty.
[04:07:59] And I lost, yeah, I lost.
[04:08:04] But Dean, he had to go against Dean.
[04:08:06] And I was like, hey, Dean, I go, he's okay.
[04:08:09] So what's the guy like, and I go, I go, he's strong.
[04:08:11] You know, he's good-grabble.
[04:08:12] I go, but he's wrestling's not very good.
[04:08:14] And he goes, okay, cool.
[04:08:15] And Dean goes out and gets taken down.
[04:08:17] Like, he's like, he's like, to, to, to, to, because he was like,
[04:08:20] So I like relaxed Dean too much on the take down.
[04:08:23] And so, me and Keith Thirty and took Dean down.
[04:08:25] And then I think Dean got a knee lock on him.
[04:08:28] And he's hard to finish.
[04:08:31] Dude, Keith, Dean got a knee lock on him.
[04:08:33] And Dean, he did not tap.
[04:08:35] And I've been in a thousand of Dean's knee locks.
[04:08:38] And I've tapped to 990, seven of them.
[04:08:41] And Keith Thirty and was just like, whatever.
[04:08:43] And Dean beat him on points, but damn.
[04:08:45] I was like, hey, dude, this dude ain't tapin' for,
[04:08:47] I would see him in the USA, because he got his laptop and dealt anything.
[04:08:50] Ever in the USA ever.
[04:08:52] When I was, I was getting ready, big fight on peak.
[04:08:57] Fight camp type shape.
[04:08:59] And Keith comes in to be a body for me.
[04:09:02] And he's, he's not, he's not in fight shape.
[04:09:06] I think he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's literally just like dropping into the gym to be a good friend, be a good teammate.
[04:09:11] And, um, I do around with him, and it's competitive.
[04:09:15] I do the second round with him, and he starts beating me.
[04:09:18] I do a third round with him, and he mobs the floor with me.
[04:09:21] And, um, he just out conditions me.
[04:09:24] Out works me.
[04:09:25] It hits the take down, it gets to positions.
[04:09:27] I'm scrambling to get away, I'm fighting to get back up.
[04:09:30] I'm just losing everything everywhere.
[04:09:32] And there's a photo of me on my knees at Jackson's.
[04:09:35] And I'm just sitting there, and you can see, and blurry out of the,
[04:09:40] in the background is Keith, heading the back.
[04:09:44] He just got done murdering me for 15 minutes.
[04:09:47] And then he goes over and he's sitting there, and I'm just sitting there like, what just happened?
[04:09:52] I'm in fight shape, I'm ready to go, I'm two weeks out, you know, I'm starting to peek,
[04:09:56] and he just comes in.
[04:09:57] I mean, Keith is, he's a freak.
[04:09:59] And he's a great person.
[04:10:01] Oh, yeah, super nice guy.
[04:10:03] But when he beat Chuck Adel, how do you beat Chuck Adel?
[04:10:06] He out pointed him in strikes.
[04:10:08] Damn bro.
[04:10:09] That's great.
[04:10:10] He beat Chuck too.
[04:10:11] What?
[04:10:13] He's just one of those guys that went, maybe he showed up.
[04:10:17] Yeah.
[04:10:18] Has he been in movies now and stuff?
[04:10:20] Yeah, he's, he's, he's a great guy.
[04:10:21] He's, he's a great actor.
[04:10:23] He's like the, the Everfield.
[04:10:25] He's so awesome.
[04:10:26] He's a great actor.
[04:10:27] Of course.
[04:10:27] Dude, a typecast that guy all day is like the Venus guy in the bar.
[04:10:30] Good stunt man too.
[04:10:31] Yeah.
[04:10:32] When I'm, when I'm made that movie, range 15, he came out and helped us.
[04:10:36] Do, he and Greg came out.
[04:10:38] We lost our stunt coordinator and Keith and Greg came out and helped me save the day.
[04:10:43] So good friend of love you Keith.
[04:10:46] You were mentioning, you well, Romero September 27, 2014.
[04:10:53] This is, you want to, this seriously won't be out bro.
[04:11:00] Amitya.
[04:11:01] So, buvr nice.
[04:11:04] Good word.
[04:11:05] So this, so you're, so now you're at a point.
[04:11:08] You've been winning.
[04:11:09] You've been winning.
[04:11:10] You be busy.
[04:11:11] You beat these.
[04:11:12] All these other guys all the man off.
[04:11:14] But, you're, you're, you're on our streak.
[04:11:19] And so now it's starting to look like title shot.
[04:11:21] Yeah.
[04:11:22] Bixbings champion.
[04:11:23] It just beat, look rock hold.
[04:11:26] Oh, that's right.
[04:11:27] That's right.
[04:11:28] Shopping left hook.
[04:11:29] Yep.
[04:11:30] On the, on the two-week notice.
[04:11:32] Good for Bixbings, good on him.
[04:11:33] Yeah.
[04:11:34] So now Bixbings the champion.
[04:11:37] So now you're like triple hungry.
[04:11:39] Yeah.
[04:11:40] You're like that's chopping the day.
[04:11:42] And you got YOL Romero, who is a, a Cuban dude.
[04:11:47] He's a silver medal wrestler.
[04:11:50] If you don't know who he is, just picture superhero human looking body.
[04:11:56] I mean, he looks like a freaking mutant.
[04:11:59] Uh, and this is a hell of a fight.
[04:12:02] And he's on a streak too.
[04:12:03] He's destroying people on his side.
[04:12:06] I'm three.
[04:12:07] He's two in the world.
[04:12:08] First round, it's a close round.
[04:12:12] It's a close round.
[04:12:14] It's a close round.
[04:12:16] Yeah.
[04:12:17] I don't know if back and forth made you stick down.
[04:12:19] Maybe if I was a judge, I'm judging.
[04:12:21] I'm giving him the first round.
[04:12:22] I don't know.
[04:12:23] Is that right?
[04:12:24] Is that accurate?
[04:12:25] You think it's super close.
[04:12:26] It's close.
[04:12:28] Second round.
[04:12:30] Uh.
[04:12:32] You catch it.
[04:12:34] And you catch him with like the mayhem combos.
[04:12:37] And you have him rocked beyond rocked.
[04:12:42] And it's, it's about to be over.
[04:12:44] Like you got the screwed.
[04:12:45] It's done.
[04:12:47] Um, then the bell goes.
[04:12:49] So he's, he's saved by the bell which, unfortunately, in MMA, that's a thing.
[04:12:54] And if you, if the bell goes, it's over.
[04:12:57] Yep.
[04:12:58] That round is over.
[04:13:00] Um, but you got him.
[04:13:02] Man, like dead derights.
[04:13:04] This guy's down.
[04:13:05] You're definitely going to get him in the next round.
[04:13:09] He goes to his corner.
[04:13:10] You go to your corner.
[04:13:13] The, like the call comes.
[04:13:15] Seconds out, which is so in MMA.
[04:13:18] You're, all your corner.
[04:13:19] You know, like I'm, I've been a corner man.
[04:13:21] I'm much like you.
[04:13:22] I'm working on Tim.
[04:13:23] I'm telling you what's up.
[04:13:24] And then the, the ref say seconds out.
[04:13:25] They do that at like 45, 50 seconds.
[04:13:28] They're telling you seconds out.
[04:13:29] That means you as a corner need to get out of,
[04:13:31] get the stool, get the water, get the ice, get all that stuff out of the ring.
[04:13:34] And you got to get that whole out of the ring.
[04:13:36] That call comes.
[04:13:38] His corner doesn't leave.
[04:13:40] Nope.
[04:13:41] Now the round starts.
[04:13:43] Boom.
[04:13:44] Round starts.
[04:13:45] And his corner is like, they spilled ice.
[04:13:48] They're like, they're trying to converse with them.
[04:13:51] They're telling to get out of the ring.
[04:13:52] They're saying they don't know what's going on.
[04:13:55] Another 40 seconds goes by.
[04:13:59] Which, listen.
[04:14:01] 47 seconds to recover is, is an an absolutely immense amount of time.
[04:14:09] In this 10 seconds and 10 seconds and boxing,
[04:14:12] it is so much time to recover that it's ridiculous.
[04:14:17] So he doesn't answer the bell.
[04:14:19] So yeah, so if you don't get up, you lose.
[04:14:23] Athletic Commission, the rules are super clear.
[04:14:26] Bell sounds.
[04:14:28] You have tensed. If you are not in the fight in 10 seconds, it's DQ automatically.
[04:14:33] Let's just the way that the rules are read.
[04:14:39] But back to the hudger gracy, you know, at being round fight, the start, the round starts, fight doesn't commence.
[04:14:50] And I look at him not getting up.
[04:14:52] And I see John dealing with things.
[04:14:54] This is how this is going, you said, hudger, this is how well.
[04:14:56] This is against.
[04:14:57] Well, well, but back to hudger gracy, I start departing.
[04:15:01] Like, I start getting the adrenaline, the fights over.
[04:15:04] Oh, this is with hudger.
[04:15:05] No, with hudger.
[04:15:06] What happened with hudger when I got out of his Rene could choke.
[04:15:10] And he had that big adrenaline down.
[04:15:12] I started experiencing the same thing against you.
[04:15:14] Well, where I'm starting to think about my after party.
[04:15:17] My mouth piece is out.
[04:15:18] You know, I'm looking at Dana White being like, you're going to pay me.
[04:15:20] And you're going to give me this title fight.
[04:15:22] I earned this.
[04:15:23] I did the exact what you asked.
[04:15:24] I just beat the breaks off your number two dude.
[04:15:26] You give me Michael Bizbeng and you're going to call me World Champion.
[04:15:29] And then I'm going to say I'm a garbage.
[04:15:30] I'm going to be a garbage man for the rest of my life.
[04:15:32] Because I leave the battle in the crowd.
[04:15:33] I already had this thing going through my head in real time.
[04:15:35] All in that 47.
[04:15:36] Those are the best 47 seconds of your life.
[04:15:38] You're celebrating every which way.
[04:15:40] I'm trying to find my wife.
[04:15:41] You know, like, you know what's coming to the heart.
[04:15:43] But like, you put on them red panties.
[04:15:45] The Connor would say.
[04:15:47] So you are down the road, victory, you're done.
[04:15:50] And all of a sudden, John McCarthy's like, hey, get your mouth piece in.
[04:15:54] Yeah, let's go.
[04:15:57] In the whole time, he's on the stool.
[04:15:59] He's on the stool just looking at me.
[04:16:01] It's freaking, just getting back in the zone.
[04:16:04] We're going to opposite directions, right?
[04:16:06] He's fighting his way back into the fight.
[04:16:07] I'm going to find my way out of the fight.
[04:16:08] You know, fall on me.
[04:16:10] Failure.
[04:16:11] Failure on me.
[04:16:12] You know, I should have just sitting there.
[04:16:14] Just staring at him.
[04:16:15] You take every second you want.
[04:16:18] I'm going to take that in years off your life.
[04:16:21] And you finally stand up.
[04:16:23] Now what I was doing.
[04:16:25] So you get up and now he catches you.
[04:16:28] And you get caught.
[04:16:31] You lose.
[04:16:35] I don't yell at the TV very much.
[04:16:40] I was a fucking I rate bro.
[04:16:44] I was so, I couldn't, I, yeah.
[04:16:49] That was ridiculous.
[04:16:51] And, and really what that means is so everyone in the big picture.
[04:16:55] Like, you get a shot where you're one shot away from the title shot.
[04:17:00] One time in your career.
[04:17:01] Yeah.
[04:17:02] You get that.
[04:17:03] And then you either win.
[04:17:05] And in most cases, that's your shot.
[04:17:08] You know, that's like, uh, raging bull, right?
[04:17:10] This was my shot.
[04:17:11] This is your shot.
[04:17:12] You know, that was your shot.
[04:17:13] That was my shot.
[04:17:14] And you bust your ass for all those years to get to that point.
[04:17:17] You had it.
[04:17:19] And then it's gone.
[04:17:21] Yeah.
[04:17:22] And gone in the worst way.
[04:17:23] Yeah.
[04:17:24] And that's, that's what hurts.
[04:17:25] Like, you know, if I lost, you know, it's just like, got it, man.
[04:17:29] I should have been better.
[04:17:30] You know, but it was like, it felt like it was stolen from me.
[04:17:33] You know, it's, it's just,
[04:17:35] Yeah.
[04:17:37] Yeah.
[04:17:39] And I don't know if we were recording when I said this, but like,
[04:17:42] For me, I like swore at the TV.
[04:17:45] And it was all mad.
[04:17:46] And then I like, got another piece of chicken and went about my way.
[04:17:48] And you, like, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you,
[04:17:51] you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you get to the locker room.
[04:17:56] What do you think when you get to the locker room?
[04:17:57] What when I'm walking to the back?
[04:17:59] Your well comes up and grabs me.
[04:18:01] And he's like, hey, man, I'm so sorry.
[04:18:03] You know, like, oh, you, you, you fucking speaking English now.
[04:18:05] You didn't speak English five minutes ago when you went get off the stool
[04:18:08] and you're pretending like you don't speak English.
[04:18:10] You know, like, not get off, man.
[04:18:11] You know the rules.
[04:18:12] You broke the rules.
[04:18:13] You cheated.
[04:18:14] You didn't answer the bell.
[04:18:15] The fight's over.
[04:18:16] He's like, I know what, I know I'm, and then his quarters trying to pull him away
[04:18:19] as he's seen here apologizing for cheating.
[04:18:22] And I, and I'm just like, you know, I, this is on you, this is on your conscience.
[04:18:26] This is on John, John messed up, you know, big John McCarthy should have called it.
[04:18:30] Um, did you protest?
[04:18:32] Did you put, nah, I never protested a fight ever.
[04:18:35] I don't know, bro.
[04:18:37] I respect that, but I think I would have been like, there's one time to catch
[04:18:40] in those chips on, on not.
[04:18:43] So, like, I'm going to, I'm going to get a title fight off a contested fight.
[04:18:47] I don't know, everyone watched it.
[04:18:49] Everyone saw this dude sit on the stool not answering the bell.
[04:18:51] That's literally called stool gate, but it's still, I don't want to title fight that way.
[04:18:55] Could they ask for a rematch?
[04:18:57] I don't know.
[04:18:58] Yeah.
[04:18:59] You know what I'm saying?
[04:19:00] Holmes.
[04:19:01] No, no.
[04:19:02] But you did the honorable thing.
[04:19:04] Hey, Roger that, I lost.
[04:19:06] Are you thinking about retirement?
[04:19:08] Yeah, this is the beginning of moving on.
[04:19:12] The, uh, this is, you know, they, they give me a group of reshot events
[04:19:18] at a Madison Square.
[04:19:20] And, um, that, that fight, you know, being a former teammate had a lot of, you know,
[04:19:26] I, I'm really confident in this fight.
[04:19:28] And it is also used a former title contender.
[04:19:31] It's a co-mate event with Connor.
[04:19:33] Um, this, this, I mean, this is a fight that puts you back into title contention.
[04:19:38] And, um, so with that, I'm okay.
[04:19:42] Maybe not very often.
[04:19:43] Do you get a second chance?
[04:19:44] Do you get a second shot?
[04:19:46] And, uh, I flanned in New York, um, the weekend for the Madison Square Gardens fight.
[04:19:51] My plane lands, and I get a text saying,
[04:19:54] Rashad can't pass as medical, the fights off.
[04:19:58] You know, that was kind of like, that was the second strike into the, what am I going to do in the fighting world?
[04:20:04] When that Rashad fight fell through.
[04:20:06] I had a cut weight real bad to, they wouldn't pay me my fight first unless I made weight.
[04:20:11] God, those savages.
[04:20:13] So I had to cut hard to make that weight.
[04:20:17] And then they made me fight five weeks later against Calvin Gesslam.
[04:20:21] Uh-huh.
[04:20:22] So then I had to cut weight again five weeks later.
[04:20:24] And I was trashed.
[04:20:26] And that was the third, and final nail in the coffin of being like I'm done fighting.
[04:20:30] Meanwhile, you got a chapter in here.
[04:20:36] And that's called TV in a movie.
[04:20:39] You're just like, uh, getting after it in like 47 different directions.
[04:20:45] You end up doing the deadliest warrior, which was flutter.
[04:20:50] You give, you give such little details in here about your, you, in that show.
[04:20:56] You're going against, uh, what, Koreans, was it?
[04:21:00] Yeah, Korean Special Operations, guys.
[04:21:02] And, uh, and the, and the show people say, hey, can you put some colds in their target that are closer to the bull's eye?
[04:21:11] So this looks like a little bit tougher than like challenge for you.
[04:21:14] Yeah.
[04:21:15] And you're like, I guess so.
[04:21:16] Not a problem.
[04:21:17] They, it was so, it was so, it's supposed to be television.
[04:21:20] It's supposed to be close and competitive and exciting.
[04:21:22] Um, you know, and they couldn't, they couldn't hit anything.
[04:21:25] Right.
[04:21:26] So I would go every shot that you saw the Koreans take the Korean Special Forces guys take on their targets.
[04:21:32] I shot for them.
[04:21:33] Every single one of them.
[04:21:34] There was not a single shot that I didn't shoot.
[04:21:36] So I ended up doing all of the shooting for the whole entire show.
[04:21:39] Okay.
[04:21:41] So you do that.
[04:21:42] You do something called ultimate soldier challenge, which is you and, uh, another green beret.
[04:21:48] And you're going against, uh, pair of contractors.
[04:21:51] You're going against a pair of Norwegian.
[04:21:53] And you guys kick ass again.
[04:21:55] And once again, you have to like re-shoot stuff so that it doesn't look like you're crushing everyone.
[04:22:00] So yeah.
[04:22:01] This is bad TV.
[04:22:02] And, you know, it's, um, but they're taking war fighters that are like doing real war.
[04:22:07] I think throwing him into these competition shows.
[04:22:10] And like shooting competition.
[04:22:12] And they, like, all we've done for the past 15 years is, uh, shoot things.
[04:22:18] So it was not a good television.
[04:22:21] Uh, this is my personal favorite celebrity boot camp season seven boot camp.
[04:22:26] To.
[04:22:27] I'm figuring it out.
[04:22:30] I haven't, don't the worst people on the planet.
[04:22:34] Actually, no, the second worst.
[04:22:36] Now that I'm working in the non-profit kind of NGO space, especially humanitarian aid and evacuation.
[04:22:42] And like, really, really important work.
[04:22:45] The people that, that are evil in that world, they're the most evil.
[04:22:50] I, I hope that I can someday call them by name and be like, you pretended that you're doing humanitarian aid,
[04:22:55] but you're paying yourself 10,000 a day to go, not really do anything at all,
[04:22:59] but then you went in front of cameras and said that you rescued all these Afghanis.
[04:23:02] I know the truth, you weren't there.
[04:23:03] You're a liar.
[04:23:04] Some day I'll get to you.
[04:23:05] But besides them, these people, these like Hollywood second string people are so pathetic.
[04:23:12] How tough.
[04:23:13] They're so pathetic.
[04:23:15] Uh, co-ceds, liars, manipulators.
[04:23:18] Is it like, is it like a whole season you do this for?
[04:23:22] Or is it just one show?
[04:23:23] I do, I do, it's a whole season for them.
[04:23:25] Yeah, but the way that, I think there's like a VH1 show.
[04:23:29] They had like a dedicated drill sergeant that would take these people through a season.
[04:23:35] And then they would bring in people every episode that would do different challenges and different types of fitness things.
[04:23:41] So they were, they would take these really fat, soft body, gelatinous people.
[04:23:47] And try to get them hard in the season.
[04:23:50] It's a perilous endeavor.
[04:23:52] Uh, you can't make a marshmallow getting shaped.
[04:23:57] Like that's just, it's a marshmallow.
[04:23:59] I don't fire.
[04:24:01] Hunting Hitler.
[04:24:03] Yeah, it's very, pretty rad.
[04:24:05] Um, you, you're out searching for Nazis is what you're doing.
[04:24:10] Yep.
[04:24:11] And you find like Nazi stuff, man, everywhere and Nazis.
[04:24:15] Yeah.
[04:24:16] Nazi stuff, you find Nazis.
[04:24:18] What do you do though?
[04:24:19] Like, so you're, like, get off active duty and somebody from New York with a Jewish accent called
[04:24:24] as you and say, hey, Joaquo.
[04:24:26] You can play a drone.
[04:24:28] You can do ground penetrating radar.
[04:24:30] Would, what would you think about me paying you to travel the world to hunt Nazis?
[04:24:34] Yeah.
[04:24:35] Right.
[04:24:36] Yeah.
[04:24:37] You know, like, okay.
[04:24:38] All right.
[04:24:39] This is amazing.
[04:24:40] Yeah.
[04:24:40] Best thing ever.
[04:24:41] I was in.
[04:24:43] Uh, and that ends up running for three seasons.
[04:24:45] And we've got a fourth season that was going to be completely bonkers.
[04:24:50] And what happened?
[04:24:51] Pist her channel lost lost their balls.
[04:24:54] What was, what were you guys going to do in that third one?
[04:24:56] We're going to talk about Operation Paperclip.
[04:24:59] Uh, so we traded Nazi scientists.
[04:25:02] Uh, we gave them kind of leniency.
[04:25:04] We gave them free passes for their crimes as Nazis to come work on the space program as we're
[04:25:11] fighting now the Russians in the space race.
[04:25:14] So that was one part of it.
[04:25:16] Um, another part was a bunch of the Nazis.
[04:25:18] One of the rat lines that we didn't cover.
[04:25:20] We covered people going through Norway and going through the church and people going, um, into South America.
[04:25:25] One that we didn't cover was going to North Africa and into the Middle East.
[04:25:29] A whole bunch of Nazis went to North Africa and then the least.
[04:25:32] And, um, the founders of the Mujahideen, you know, as we pulled all these photographs,
[04:25:36] when we started figuring out who all these people were, a facial recognition,
[04:25:39] you would see founders of the Mujahideen.
[04:25:41] You'd see all these like little brown dudes.
[04:25:43] And then you'd see this tall six foot three blonde hair blue eye guy.
[04:25:47] You know, okay.
[04:25:48] This is 1946.
[04:25:50] And, uh, who is this guy?
[04:25:51] I gave facial recognition.
[04:25:52] Oh, that is Scorsenski.
[04:25:53] What is Scorsenski doing in Saudi Arabia with the founders of the Mujahideen?
[04:25:58] As we know, a Kaita ISIS, the Taliban, the PLO.
[04:26:02] And, um, like, what do they have in common with them?
[04:26:06] Oh, they want to kill Jews.
[04:26:08] Cool.
[04:26:09] As Israel is trying to become a state.
[04:26:12] And they're fighting for partition, right?
[04:26:14] Go to mayor is like trying to, how are we going to become a country?
[04:26:17] And they're buying PT109s from German surplus.
[04:26:20] They're preparing to like the invasion of every single country around them.
[04:26:24] Those, all of those countries were being advised by former Nazis.
[04:26:28] So, history of Canada was like, uh, we're not touching this, man.
[04:26:33] So, the corporations that were funding it from VW to Mercedes, you know,
[04:26:37] like, oh, this is real.
[04:26:39] Nice.
[04:26:40] No way.
[04:26:41] Can we talk about any of this stuff?
[04:26:42] It's relevant currently, because some of these organizations still exist today.
[04:26:45] Some of them are political organizations that are now lobbying for relevancy.
[04:26:51] And, um, so, yep, nope.
[04:26:53] Can't talk about any of this.
[04:26:55] Yeah.
[04:26:56] So, that was that.
[04:26:57] That was that.
[04:26:58] Luckily, you had a movie to make.
[04:27:00] Yeah.
[04:27:01] Yeah.
[04:27:02] A naked tim Kennedy fighting Randy Kaitour.
[04:27:05] Uh, you laughing at it, or zombie Randy Kaitour.
[04:27:09] A naked tim Kennedy.
[04:27:10] Both of them.
[04:27:11] Both of them.
[04:27:12] They're not even a single single.
[04:27:13] They're not even a single single.
[04:27:14] They're not even a single single.
[04:27:15] I, uh, when that movie came out, one of my friends is a writer and director and stuff up in Hollywood.
[04:27:23] And he is friends with Rocco.
[04:27:28] And he got me said, hey, this Rocco is in the movie.
[04:27:31] I want to come up.
[04:27:32] And I was like, the premier.
[04:27:33] And I was like, oh, yeah, the article 15.
[04:27:35] And I was like, hell, yeah, I'll come and see that.
[04:27:37] So I go and watch the premier up there in Hollywood.
[04:27:40] And, um, actually were you there?
[04:27:43] No.
[04:27:44] Okay.
[04:27:45] No.
[04:27:46] I'm trying to think of who I ran into people.
[04:27:47] Anyways, Matt Best Evan, uh, Nick, Jared, and Rocco were at the Hollywood one.
[04:27:53] Okay.
[04:27:54] Well, I'm sure I ran into those guys.
[04:27:55] I don't think I knew any of them yet.
[04:27:56] But, um, so I like watch this movie.
[04:28:00] And I'm expecting it to be, you know, bad.
[04:28:04] A little over the top or not.
[04:28:06] No, I didn't expect to be bad, like bad, uh, like a bad movie.
[04:28:09] But I thought, you know, it'll be kind of crazy.
[04:28:12] I watch the movie.
[04:28:13] I was like, oh, no.
[04:28:15] There is, there is no, that's a no hold bar movie.
[04:28:19] That is a no hold bar movie, 100%.
[04:28:21] No.
[04:28:22] No.
[04:28:22] No.
[04:28:23] No.
[04:28:23] No.
[04:28:24] They're trying to put a turn and get on this guy's pelvis.
[04:28:28] And he have two metal of honor recipients.
[04:28:30] You know, leeway, P tree is like, who is already missing a hand from throwing a grenade.
[04:28:35] As another metal of honor recipient is trying to throw a turn and get on his other hand
[04:28:39] after he just got his other hand blown up.
[04:28:41] It is so dark and so terrible.
[04:28:43] It is, it is insane.
[04:28:46] It's insane.
[04:28:47] Uh, it's a shocking movie.
[04:28:49] How good did that movie do?
[04:28:51] So it was the number one independent film ever up to that point.
[04:28:56] Oh, so, but number one privately sourced and it'd be number one on Amazon number two on Apple
[04:29:03] and the number one movie to date up to that point.
[04:29:07] Uh, my couple movies have passed us now as an independently sourced and finally it's
[04:29:12] film.
[04:29:13] It's freaking crazy.
[04:29:15] And I remember watching it going, well, I guess we're going to find out what the limits are.
[04:29:20] There are no limits in that movie at all.
[04:29:23] It's nuts.
[04:29:24] It was so fun though.
[04:29:26] Yeah, but it was, it was, it was the veteran community came together to do it.
[04:29:31] You know, there were all of wounded veterans coming without limbs to be our zombies.
[04:29:37] Yeah.
[04:29:38] Like volunteer to do it, the hountain the sun, you know, is in LA at the middle of the summer.
[04:29:44] The whole entire fight world, you know, we had really like top 20 dudes on the planet
[04:29:49] showed up to be like the super zombies to include Randy Kittor, Phil Davis and keyjardine,
[04:29:55] Julie Kenzie.
[04:29:57] Um, crazy.
[04:30:02] Yeah, yeah, it's just epic.
[04:30:05] Um, so if you haven't watched that yet, check that out.
[04:30:09] Uh, then you do this show called Hard to Kill, which is bizarre because a dude freaky.
[04:30:15] A dude freaky locked you into a damn fiery fake cockpit of an airplane.
[04:30:22] Yeah, I was an experimental aircraft and they drenched it with aviation fuel and they took a screw
[04:30:28] and they drilled it into the back of the cockpit.
[04:30:30] So the canopy went open and then they set it on fire.
[04:30:33] Yeah.
[04:30:34] So let me just give a little more info from the book.
[04:30:37] You think to yourself, okay, here's uh, here's what we're going to do.
[04:30:41] They say we want you to escape from this burning cockpit.
[04:30:43] You go, okay, cool.
[04:30:44] If I'm going to get into a place that's on fire, I'm going to make sure I can get out.
[04:30:47] So you drill this, you rehearse it, you go through the motions on the UC bill.
[04:30:50] Whenever here's how you open this thing, you go through it over and over again, like any normal soldier would rehearse
[04:30:55] of potentially life threatening evolution.
[04:30:58] So you get it done.
[04:31:00] You're like, okay, now I'm ready.
[04:31:01] Now you can put gasoline on this thing and I'll sit in it and you can light it on fire.
[04:31:06] Now I'll get out.
[04:31:07] I'll go through the procedures that I've just rehearsed a hundred times to make sure that I don't die in here.
[04:31:11] Well, some freaking jackass wanted it to be better.
[04:31:16] So put one single screw in the back of the cockpit where you are actually now walked in this bitch.
[04:31:26] Yep.
[04:31:29] Yeah, I mean, he wasn't wrong.
[04:31:31] It ended up being really great.
[04:31:32] I was a great team.
[04:31:34] So the cockpit ultimately didn't open.
[04:31:37] I paired.
[04:31:39] I tore the entire canopy out of the aircraft.
[04:31:43] Like that's how it got out.
[04:31:44] I tore through all the fiberglass and the plastic that that around the fuselage of the canopy of the aircraft to finally get out.
[04:31:51] Burned my back, melted my t-shirt, melted the seat belt for me to get out of this.
[04:31:55] And this was their second plan.
[04:31:57] Their first plan was to set this thing on fire and push it out the back of an aircraft.
[04:32:02] So then I would fight it my way out of it.
[04:32:04] Then I would go into free fall as if I injected like a halo.
[04:32:07] And then I would parachute down into the ground.
[04:32:10] That was their first plan.
[04:32:12] When the insurance company said no, this was the second plan.
[04:32:15] So they ended up taking my visor and frosting it over and covering it and then throwing me out of the back of an aircraft in a blind folded free fall.
[04:32:25] That happened in the same episode that they screwed me inside of an experimental aircraft.
[04:32:31] Draught, doused it in aviation fuel and then set it on fire.
[04:32:36] Yeah.
[04:32:38] My television time has come to an end.
[04:32:41] What the hell is up with that?
[04:32:45] The start of this show was really altruistic.
[04:32:48] We wanted to highlight, not dirty jobs is going in and showing all the cool things that blue collar workers do.
[04:32:56] And I think there were a lot of people that do really incredible jobs that don't get any credit.
[04:33:00] And that was the goal was to go and highlight some of these people that every single day go out and do really really rad things.
[04:33:07] You're not just for sure, responders, even though they do it every single day.
[04:33:10] But the guy that climbs up to the top of the cell tower to make sure that the flashing bulb works.
[04:33:16] That's sketchy.
[04:33:17] That's dangerous.
[04:33:18] Like electricity, static electricity, just the wind, as it takes you two hours to get to the top of that.
[04:33:24] The temperature could change.
[04:33:27] You know, guys that go deep sea welding on mixed gas is trying to fix pipes that that's super sketch.
[04:33:35] You know, you make a cut the wrong way.
[04:33:37] You're using a torch or a welder.
[04:33:39] And that bead drops through in that pipe.
[04:33:41] That's over pressure.
[04:33:43] Your dead.
[04:33:44] And it went from a really cool show talking about this group, great group of Americans doing very American things to like, let's see if we can kill Tim.
[04:33:53] No, I don't want to do it anymore.
[04:33:56] So what'd you do one season of that?
[04:33:58] Yeah.
[04:33:59] Hard past.
[04:34:01] Yeah.
[04:34:02] You got this section in here about human trafficking.
[04:34:10] And you get connected with a group called Deliver Fund.
[04:34:15] Mm-hmm.
[04:34:16] And what they do is they do their best to get in there and get people out of these situations and help set up law enforcement to arrest human traffickers.
[04:34:26] Is that an accurate description?
[04:34:28] That's right.
[04:34:29] And they're slightly different now, but at the time that was there.
[04:34:33] That was what they were doing.
[04:34:35] Yeah.
[04:34:37] You end up working on a team that's doing this.
[04:34:40] You end up doing surveillance and again,
[04:34:43] Ham, skipping through a bunch of stuff right now.
[04:34:45] Get the book for all these details.
[04:34:47] But you end up doing surveillance.
[04:34:48] You're putting together target packages for the police.
[04:34:51] And I thought this was a man in lightning and scary and disturbing and horrible.
[04:34:58] And informative thing to learn about.
[04:35:02] I'm going to go to the book here on what you saw.
[04:35:07] The situation almost always looks the same.
[04:35:11] Trafficking operations run out of hotels or motels on the ground floor.
[04:35:16] There is a madam or called bottom bitch, got a hair.
[04:35:22] The bottom bitch is pure eivost.
[04:35:24] She's usually 25 to 30 years old and she is fucking the pimple.
[04:35:28] She used to be one of the girls, but for whatever reason she showed loyalty or skill.
[04:35:33] And she elevated herself out of that part of the business.
[04:35:37] The bottom bitch typically runs four to six girls.
[04:35:40] She recruits them when they aren't just stolen.
[04:35:43] Get's them hooked on meth or heroin.
[04:35:47] Keeps them high and gets them to rest when they're off duty.
[04:35:51] Interacts with John's when they arrive and basically runs the day-to-day operation.
[04:35:56] The reason I say she is pure evil is because she worked the job.
[04:36:01] She knows how terrible it is.
[04:36:03] She knows what it did to her.
[04:36:05] And she is still willing to do the same thing to other girls.
[04:36:08] Girls.
[04:36:09] Little girls.
[04:36:12] The girls are usually 14 to 21.
[04:36:15] And the bottom bitch keeps them in a room together and releases them one at a time
[04:36:19] to rooms they have upstairs when the Johns arrive.
[04:36:22] You usually don't see them older than that because the Johns that prefer non-consensual sex prefer younger girls.
[04:36:30] Once they don't look young anymore, they are either sold in the slavery elsewhere, killed,
[04:36:36] or thrown out onto the streets.
[04:36:39] Now with a heroin habit and no way to get a fix.
[04:36:43] Or if they're smart enough and evil enough, they become the new bottom bitch.
[04:36:48] Back to the Pimp.
[04:36:51] The Pimp always locates himself close enough to get involved if a John gets violent,
[04:36:56] but always far enough away that if the police come he isn't really involved in what's going on.
[04:37:01] The Pimp may only have one bottom bitch where he may have up to five.
[04:37:05] The structure of the relationship of the Pimp and the bottom bitch and the bottom bitch to the girls though is always the same.
[04:37:12] Above the Pimp are the higher end to traffickers.
[04:37:15] What we do is try to get, try to hem up the Pimp's.
[04:37:19] So their asses are on the line and get them to turn on the traffickers.
[04:37:27] So that's a nasty world to say.
[04:37:31] Being overseas so many times in North Africa and in Eastern Europe and South America.
[04:37:40] And like my peripheral I would see this type of nefarious activity.
[04:37:45] But that's not what I was there to do.
[04:37:48] Whether I was there for a fid, Jay said whatever my mission was.
[04:37:52] But I would always see it and it always like ate it me.
[04:37:56] You know, is this naugh of, maybe you can't do anything.
[04:37:59] I wanted to but there's, that's not what I was there for.
[04:38:02] And even in combat zones, you know what see it.
[04:38:06] See the poor little boy with the makeup on. You know what's happened to him.
[04:38:10] You know, would see that young girl that doesn't have her parents anymore.
[04:38:13] And she is just at use of the Taliban.
[04:38:16] And so I really wanted to make a difference in this world.
[04:38:21] And so I started working for multiple different non-profits and NGOs.
[04:38:25] And this, this is the story that I, I, you really used to demonstrate.
[04:38:30] This wasn't just a weekend.
[04:38:32] This was a weekend of many weekends that happens all over the United States and all over the world every weekend.
[04:38:38] And how, how difficult it is to, to make a difference and how hard it is to, to affect change in there.
[04:38:46] And, you know, if you've been to Las Vegas and you get off the strip and you go a couple three or four blocks into the poor areas.
[04:38:53] And you see that third year old girl that is just tore up with scars up and down.
[04:38:58] You know, and she's homeless now.
[04:39:00] Like, this is where she started. Like, this is where she was 15 years ago. If she's alive, which she's very, very one out of a hundred live that long.
[04:39:07] Like the life expectancy of a human trafficked girl is somewhere between eight to ten months.
[04:39:14] Months.
[04:39:18] Are these girls American? Where are these girls from?
[04:39:21] Up here, they were.
[04:39:23] You, depends on like the size of the network.
[04:39:29] You know, when you're, this was happening in Texas.
[04:39:31] So you saw a lot of girls from Louisiana and you saw girls from Florida.
[04:39:34] You saw girls from California.
[04:39:36] You saw girls from New York and New Jersey.
[04:39:39] So there were some great reco type charges as these girls were being trafficked across state lines.
[04:39:45] But that never came to fruition.
[04:39:47] But most of them were American girls.
[04:39:49] And that line between like a consensual prostitute and a traffic person is a very blurry one.
[04:39:57] When, when you have addiction and pimps and, and bottom, the dams involved, like, where is the line of me wanting to be here?
[04:40:05] It's not clearly defined.
[04:40:07] It's really clear when a girl's under 18, but she doesn't have a right to consent.
[04:40:11] But then when you look into that, that girl, even under 18, that girl, she has no home life.
[04:40:17] You know, she was probably coming from a very low-sisicomic minority on a border town.
[04:40:25] She has no place to go. Her mom was probably an addict. Her dad was gone.
[04:40:29] She's never known him.
[04:40:31] So she does have, she doesn't have any other options.
[04:40:34] And it is, it's really, it's heartbreaking to be in that world and try to figure out how can I help.
[04:40:42] You know, and, and like the alpha in me is like, cool.
[04:40:45] Let me find a target. Let me create a target package and we'll prosecute these guys.
[04:40:49] Like, that is the, the simple answer that isn't really the real answer.
[04:40:53] You know, we're talking halfway houses and rehabilitation and, you know, emotional and physical counseling and support for these girls.
[04:41:01] You know, like, I was thinking about any of that stuff.
[04:41:03] I was thinking about being a hammer to these dudes, and which is a small part of the problem.
[04:41:09] Yeah, on this particular one.
[04:41:11] Obviously it's not dead.
[04:41:13] He's dead, but you didn't come to himself.
[04:41:15] This is dead.
[04:41:16] That's a great example of you.
[04:41:17] That is the bottom bitch.
[04:41:18] You know, you saw that girl. She was not just, you know, keeping these girls.
[04:41:22] She was training them how to perform these acts for these people as these young girls.
[04:41:27] It is just, it is a horrible world, horrible.
[04:41:32] Yeah, and, and in this particular case that you're talking about, you and your team, you guys are all
[04:41:39] just in your ass to try and put together these freaking targeted packages and you're going to like bust a bunch of these people and you get shot now.
[04:41:45] Yeah, for political reasons, donation money, whatever the motivations were ultimately, we put together, I mean, black and white, close case.
[04:41:57] Here you go.
[04:41:58] This guy, here's a video of him buying this girl in exchange for services.
[04:42:03] You know, he took money, paid this person, and in exchange he got this thing.
[04:42:07] Here's the video of it. Here's the pictures of it. Here's his phone number. Here's the text communications.
[04:42:11] Here's everything.
[04:42:12] And, uh, not a girl.
[04:42:17] The evil is well-connected.
[04:42:20] Yes, they are.
[04:42:21] Yeah, you know, if you're able to trade in one human pain, one human suffering of drugs, you'll do it with people.
[04:42:31] If you're going to do it with drugs and people, you're going to do it with guns.
[04:42:34] If you're going to do it, guns, drugs and people, you're going to do it with young people, you know, you're, you're lying just becomes product.
[04:42:42] Yeah, yeah, you kind of talked about it here. Like if you're willing to be a drug dealer, then it's just like what else.
[04:42:48] Yeah, you're just going to do it all.
[04:42:50] Um, that whole thing doesn't seem to, I mean, it affects you, it impacts you, but like you seem to get more determined.
[04:43:00] And is, is it safe to say that sheep dog response is like a response to that and a bug.
[04:43:07] I mean, obviously, there are other things, but it seemed like from the book, people learning how to take care of themselves is incredibly important.
[04:43:16] Especially when you know, you can't take care of everyone.
[04:43:21] I mean, I had this conversation with my, especially with my daughters.
[04:43:24] Like when they were young, hey, I'm not going to be with you.
[04:43:28] Yeah, I am not going to be with you. And if you don't know how to handle yourself,
[04:43:32] the bad things are going to happen to you.
[04:43:34] You created this awesome program, sheep dog response. Talk as, talk to us about that.
[04:43:39] The, um, I'm starting to get my traction now. Like things are starting to make sense is how, how can I impact change?
[04:43:47] How can I really start making a different, making a difference?
[04:43:50] And, um, you know, like, well, I can't be in every hotel motel.
[04:43:54] I can't be in every super bowl. Why can't be in every movie theater back to the soft model of, you know, we are forced multipliers.
[04:44:01] You can, you can take 12 special forces guys. You drop them into a country.
[04:44:06] And they're going to train a company of peace.
[04:44:08] You know, so like you're, you're going to have 12 hundred people in six months from now that are all fighting alongside these green berets.
[04:44:15] That's 1212 because you're going to also have to deal with the 12 ODA guys that now each have a hundred due to work in form.
[04:44:22] That's the soft model. So I come back and I'm just like, okay, I know what to do.
[04:44:27] No tears already showed me how to do it. I'm just going to buy it with and through start training people.
[04:44:32] Americans about what it means to be individual or responsible.
[04:44:36] What does it mean to have to provide for your own security?
[04:44:39] Like if you really believe that no help is coming, I know that first hand that no help is going to come.
[04:44:43] Like you have to be able to do it yourself.
[04:44:45] Um, if I can make community stronger, if I can have somebody sitting in a movie theater and so, you know, in a war
[04:44:51] for the next dude that's, well, at the debut of the next Batman movie that comes into hurt somebody.
[04:44:56] And then there's just this one dude that's like, about today.
[04:44:59] Yeah, you kidding me? Just puts that dude in the dirt.
[04:45:02] Caves in skull.
[04:45:04] Stories over. You know, like no headline news, no anything.
[04:45:07] So you know, we're running a couple hundred courses a year now.
[04:45:12] Uh, sold out that, uh, in response to not just this, but also seeing the actors shooters, the bombings and Boston.
[04:45:22] Um, we, we have to get our teeth back. You know, you don't, you don't look, you don't look at a flock that's being attacked and be like, do you want it?
[04:45:30] We should take all the teeth out of this sheep.
[04:45:32] That's good plan.
[04:45:33] Like that's just do anything, right? You know, I'm a dude walking around. There's rapes happening all the, all over.
[04:45:38] You know, I should just cut my dick off. You know, that's not going to change anything. The only way that we're going to really start impacting change is to have, well, these wolves are walking around and then they're cool.
[04:45:50] Is that another jokker willing? You know, nope. That's just another American that got on the jokker program.
[04:45:56] That's what it is. That's another dude that started training you did, too.
[04:45:59] That's another woman that learned how to shoot.
[04:46:01] That's, that's another former traffic victim. That's like, nope, I fought my way free.
[04:46:05] I'm healthy now and I have a whole bunch of them. Every single one of our courses, we have dedicated spots to gold star members and anybody that has ever been assaulted, sexually assaulted.
[04:46:15] And we sponsor people all the time and these women are fierce. They are passionate and I would never want to be on the receiving end of trying to hurt one of these women again because they will find a space and put a knife in between your ribs. They're awesome.
[04:46:30] So that's what she's done with response. It's trying to the onus of protecting and providing for your family is on you. Nobody else is going to do it. It's on you.
[04:46:39] So I am poaching, you know, like mass myth or director training army green bra, special forces guy coming from special missions unit, Carl Kringol Kringol RCO. He's a Navy Special Warfare guy.
[04:46:53] He's going down the list in the hallways and you're like, cool, a marsach dude, another green bra, another Navy dude. And I could just every single one of these absolute hammers that are servants to just Americans that want to learn how to be better prepared for whatever's next.
[04:47:10] The statement that no one else is coming is it might sound if you're just listening to this if you don't know anything or whatever.
[04:47:19] It's not really negative. Like no one cares about you or whatever. The fact of the matter is it's just impossible to police up the world.
[04:47:29] And even in the best case scenario, if you have the time to dial 911 or make a call for help, the best response times in the world is too late.
[04:47:42] And here's the other thing. You know, we talked earlier about you just to be in a superpower, which it most certainly is.
[04:47:52] There's aspects of being aware and aspects of knowing how to respond immediately to something that are also and aspects of firearms that are also a superpower.
[04:48:09] And by that I mean, someone that has trained.
[04:48:14] Look, you should train all the time in if you're if you're going to carry what you should you should train all the time to know.
[04:48:22] But even after a basic course where you get a little bit of stress test, you understand your weapon system, you understand how to utilize it.
[04:48:33] That's a freaking superpower. And you can you can protect yourself. You can protect your family and you should have that capability as a human being.
[04:48:42] So this is like to me what you're doing with this is just like a it's just the beginning of people becoming aware and like you said, this force multiplier where when something happens out in the world.
[04:48:58] I think in three years, five years, it's just like, you know, how good as a hijacker going to do on an airplane right now trying to take all of an airplane.
[04:49:08] Like it ain't happens. That's where we can get to in America where it's like, oh, this stuff we're not, no, it's not happening. No, it's not happening. You're not doing that not today.
[04:49:20] Not in this movie theater, not in this school, not in this grocery store. It's not happening.
[04:49:26] And do I wish that the world was just filled with benevolent people and we didn't have to think like this? Sure. Of course. Of course. Yes.
[04:49:36] I think that way, but it's not. It's not that it never will be.
[04:49:40] It never has been like this isn't a new problem. You know, this goes back to the beginning of recorded history where evil people exist and evil people are going to do terrible things.
[04:49:49] And when you are calling for help and help is minutes away, you're the end of your life as seconds away. He just don't have enough time. It is on you to do this.
[04:49:59] And I don't, and I say this because you don't know what this is. It might be medical. You know, it might be a response to a disease that would never seem before that's killing lots of people. Like, oh, cool, you're, you're out of shape, you're super fat.
[04:50:11] You haven't been exercising. You are very susceptible to this. Well, you want the bet. I was never worried about it because I'm, nor was I worried about my family because we're all young, healthy and shape.
[04:50:21] And, and insert whatever this is, and we don't know what the next this is going to be.
[04:50:27] But you better be prepared for it. And the only way you prepare for something is to start training. One of the soft truths is that you can never prepare for a bad event after the bad event happens.
[04:50:39] You have to prepare for it ahead of time. So start preparing. Yeah. And I've talked about this before with, like, you know what you're just, or was shooting.
[04:50:49] Like, hey, what if you, what if you spend a, invest a bunch of time in GJJJ and you've invested a bunch of time in shooting and you never get in a fight and you never have to use your weapon.
[04:50:59] Okay. First of all, that's great that you never had to get a fight and it's great that you never have to use your weapon. But also, you're going to be just be a better person because when you're, when you're doing GJJJJ, you're getting good shape you're having camaraderie, you're, getting a cardio workout, you're working on your flex.
[04:51:14] Well, this is a million other benefits with shooting. Oh, you work on your hand eye coordination, you get the, you get the learn how to focus on things. You get to learn how to read, know how to extractions, like there's a bunch of really cool things that happen regardless.
[04:51:26] this.
[04:51:27] So these are just good.
[04:51:28] And I would even argue that a bad thing didn't happen because you were training these
[04:51:32] other things.
[04:51:33] And that's a real difficult thing to quantify.
[04:51:36] But when you look the bad things that happen around people that are trained are less
[04:51:39] frequent than people that are around untrained.
[04:51:42] And like why does this happen?
[04:51:44] Well, because we don't put ourselves in those positions, because we condition our mind
[04:51:47] and our body to be in great places, to not go into the dark parking lots.
[04:51:52] So we start watching videos to be better.
[04:51:55] And as I'm watching this video, I was like, oh, I don't want to be walking down
[04:51:58] a dark alley in the middle of the night by myself.
[04:52:00] I will avoid that.
[04:52:01] You know, it's a good thing I learned this.
[04:52:03] Yeah.
[04:52:04] Kids.
[04:52:05] I love them.
[04:52:08] And when you start talking about Jiu Jitsu and I just got asked this question every
[04:52:13] day by a kid, it's like, oh, do I have to do Jiu to if I don't like to fight?
[04:52:17] And I was like, you know what?
[04:52:19] If you don't like to fight, that's even more of a reason to do Jiu Jitsu.
[04:52:23] Because if you know Jiu Jitsu, you probably won't have to fight.
[04:52:26] Because your whole attitude is different.
[04:52:29] And now you got this thing called the Apagee.
[04:52:31] Is that right, Apagee?
[04:52:32] Apagee?
[04:52:33] Apagee.
[04:52:34] Cedar Park.
[04:52:35] School for kids or your kids, if I can say that.
[04:52:38] You can't.
[04:52:39] Yeah.
[04:52:40] Got your book on the shelves.
[04:52:41] They really do.
[04:52:42] Yeah.
[04:52:43] Awesome.
[04:52:45] That's how many.
[04:52:46] So you start this September, right?
[04:52:47] You're kicking that off.
[04:52:48] We started, we were one year in.
[04:52:50] Your two starts to September.
[04:52:52] Oh, I just, on this podcast, you and me.
[04:52:54] Yeah, we talked about it.
[04:52:55] And I was like, I'm done.
[04:52:56] I'm starting my own school.
[04:52:58] Like that realization happened while you just like this, where face to face four years
[04:53:03] later, we launched the school.
[04:53:05] We launched two branches of it.
[04:53:07] One is Apagee Strong.
[04:53:09] That is an online mentorship for young men.
[04:53:11] That is how to be a provider, a protector.
[04:53:15] You know, you are the lone security member of your family 13 years to 30 years.
[04:53:20] We have 30 year old men that are in this young men mentorship program.
[04:53:24] I'm tip in my hat to them because it's a cool thing to be a pseudo grown man.
[04:53:30] But then realize, I don't know how to change my oil.
[04:53:32] I don't know how to, you know, I've never read Jocca's book.
[04:53:35] Your book is on a reading list.
[04:53:37] And so that is one is the young men mentorship program.
[04:53:41] And then the other one is our physical school in Austin, Texas.
[04:53:46] That's Apagee Cedar Park.
[04:53:48] You know, 100 hero school, bunch of just rad-secretic learners.
[04:53:53] And we are your one and the books in what days of the day?
[04:54:00] It's 28, 20 years.
[04:54:01] Yeah, with two days.
[04:54:02] It's the end of the school session.
[04:54:05] And your one is in the books getting ready for year two.
[04:54:07] Michelle Myers is our new director of program.
[04:54:11] She's amazing.
[04:54:12] I'm just so proud.
[04:54:13] It's amazing.
[04:54:14] In every corner, you just see magic happening.
[04:54:18] You see, so our students are heroes, the learners in the school.
[04:54:23] They're in charge of everything.
[04:54:25] So they figure out their day, their schedule.
[04:54:27] We have these launches where everybody get together.
[04:54:30] And if we're focusing on math, maybe we're talking about how to measure to put extra
[04:54:36] sod out in our place gap.
[04:54:38] How do we figure out area?
[04:54:40] And then they're off.
[04:54:42] They're doing their research, their guide is in there saying, maybe try this formula.
[04:54:47] Have you thought about researching this way?
[04:54:49] But every day, these kids are making all of their own decisions.
[04:54:54] Unlike in school, whether Lemines is just going to where they're told or somebody's
[04:54:58] lecturing them.
[04:54:59] Instead, they're doing everything.
[04:55:01] They're sitting there like, this is what time I'm going to get here.
[04:55:03] This is what time I'm going to do my homework.
[04:55:06] This is the program that I'm going to use.
[04:55:08] I have a question.
[04:55:10] How do I do this?
[04:55:11] And the guy's like, oh, I'm actually not going to tell you.
[04:55:13] I'm going to ask you a different question for you to figure out yourself.
[04:55:17] So our guides provide no answers.
[04:55:19] We just ask more questions.
[04:55:21] Totally, it's so crowded.
[04:55:23] A lot of times people ask me, how do you get people to take ownership?
[04:55:26] I might say you have to give them ownership.
[04:55:28] Yes, you do.
[04:55:29] You have to give them ownership.
[04:55:30] It's so hard, though.
[04:55:31] Yeah.
[04:55:32] It's easier than just give them ownership to take the reins and just release somebody up.
[04:55:38] You have to have faith that the process, because they're going to fail, is a parent
[04:55:43] okay with their child failing.
[04:55:48] I'm not going to give you a grade this year.
[04:55:50] The parents like, well, I want to stick her that shows that Tommy is a straight-a student.
[04:55:56] If you don't get that, you know, they're going to be learning at their own pace to different
[04:56:02] things.
[04:56:03] Yeah, and when you give the kids the ownership, they're so much more engaged.
[04:56:08] You know, instead of just, hey, here's the task you've got to do today, Timmy.
[04:56:11] Like you do this this and this, you're like, oh, whatever.
[04:56:13] But I say, hey, Tim, how do you want to do this?
[04:56:16] What do you think you need to get out of this?
[04:56:17] And all of a sudden, you have ownership, and now you're engaged, which is freaking as
[04:56:22] it should be.
[04:56:25] So there you are.
[04:56:26] You got the school going, you got the sheep dog response, everything's rocking and rolling.
[04:56:35] And all of a sudden, Afghanistan falls apart.
[04:56:42] You're talking a neck on the phone.
[04:56:47] I'm going to go to the book for this.
[04:56:52] What a fucking shit show, man.
[04:56:54] He says, referring to our government's performance so far while shaking his head and
[04:56:58] discussed.
[04:57:00] It's an idealist.
[04:57:06] He still gets genuinely surprised when people fail as bad leaders.
[04:57:10] We are failing on this mission right now.
[04:57:11] How do we pull out all of our forces and then try and evacuate?
[04:57:13] He isn't really talking to me.
[04:57:15] He's just venting.
[04:57:16] He and I have had this conversation about a thousand times in the past 48 hours.
[04:57:20] We sit by our coffee and silence for a little while.
[04:57:23] Him wrestling with being let down by America, me wrestling with a conversation I had earlier
[04:57:27] today with Chad Robashall.
[04:57:31] Chad was a rangered up sponsored MMA fighter who fought and strived for us at the same
[04:57:35] time.
[04:57:36] I did.
[04:57:37] A lifetime ago, he was a force recon Marine who was then assigned J. Sock and deployed
[04:57:42] multiple times to Afghanistan.
[04:57:44] Now he runs successful nonprofit called the mighty Oaks Foundation, which helps veterans
[04:57:49] find resilience in all aspects of their lives.
[04:57:52] I personally attended one of their resiliency programs and it was life changing.
[04:57:57] Chad is a good friend and he has a problem.
[04:58:01] His interpreter, Aziz, is trapped and is actively being hunted because of who Aziz is and
[04:58:08] who he helped.
[04:58:09] If he is caught, they will rape and murder his wife and children while he watches, then
[04:58:15] they will kill him.
[04:58:19] Chad isn't looking to send messages to Kabul like everyone else.
[04:58:24] He has been working with his old J. Sock buddy, Santa 6, who now does contracting work
[04:58:29] in that region, putting a plan in motion to get Aziz out.
[04:58:33] Unfortunately, their timeline just got blown because no one expected the entire country
[04:58:38] to fall to the Taliban in a week.
[04:58:41] Chad wants to know if I will go with him to Afghanistan via the United Arab Emirates.
[04:58:46] Apparently, Santa 6 rides motorcycles with another former force recon Marine that has some
[04:58:51] kind of connection to the UAE and they might let us use a plane to get it into Afghanistan.
[04:58:58] This already feels like six degrees of Kevin Bankon and I'm nervous at the friend of a friend
[04:59:03] structure we discussed.
[04:59:06] Is there a plan?
[04:59:07] I asked him when we were on the phone earlier.
[04:59:09] If we're going to go do some crazy shit, I need to know that we're doing this to make
[04:59:15] a difference and not just go.
[04:59:18] As I'm thinking about this, Nick gets lost in his phone for a minute and I see that
[04:59:23] I have another text message from Chad.
[04:59:26] He's heading to UAE in 48 hours.
[04:59:29] The only thing he's waiting for is his COVID test to come back so he can travel.
[04:59:33] He wants me to go.
[04:59:35] I'm with Nick right now working on the book.
[04:59:37] I text him.
[04:59:39] Awesome.
[04:59:40] Bring him to we could use him.
[04:59:42] He answers.
[04:59:47] So it's on.
[04:59:53] At that moment, people falling from land in landy gear have Afghanistan.
[04:59:59] That's what's happening right here at this moment.
[05:00:03] My phone was just our entire world, our men that aren't used to being helpless.
[05:00:11] There's something that we can always do.
[05:00:14] We felt as a collective helpless.
[05:00:17] We didn't know what to do.
[05:00:20] That was not something, I mean, that's the reason I started shooting out response.
[05:00:23] Obviously, that's the reason that we started to save our allies.
[05:00:26] This answered a helplessness.
[05:00:28] I'm just not going to ever accept that I don't have an answer.
[05:00:32] That I am helpless.
[05:00:34] In just accepting that is a form of quitting.
[05:00:39] I'm not down with that.
[05:00:42] So we didn't know what to do yet, but we had to do something.
[05:00:50] So you, Nick, Chad, a woman named Sarah Virardo, I'm saying that right.
[05:00:59] She seems like just an incredibly awesome human.
[05:01:02] She's the CEO of something called the Independence Fund.
[05:01:06] Her husband was wounded bad.
[05:01:08] This Independence Fund, it helps with all kinds of stuff.
[05:01:13] Wounded vets with mobility, with caregivers, with advocacy, with case work, with resiliency,
[05:01:20] family programs, like just doing a lot of great stuff.
[05:01:24] The Independence Fund.
[05:01:27] She also has good connections because she's been very effective.
[05:01:33] She's involved as well because she's got some good political connections of people that
[05:01:36] can help out.
[05:01:37] As a end up, planes trains an automobile to get to UAE.
[05:01:43] You get, and again, the detail, get the book so you can read this story.
[05:01:50] You end up getting to UAE.
[05:01:52] It's like even getting into UAE, you've got to get, you've got to call people in Congress,
[05:01:57] you've got to get phone calls or made, things are happening.
[05:02:03] You end up with a C-17 that's going to help you get people out of Afghanistan.
[05:02:11] That had to be an interesting flight.
[05:02:13] You're in an empty C-17.
[05:02:15] You're in an empty C-17.
[05:02:16] You're in an empty C-17.
[05:02:17] You're in an empty C-17.
[05:02:18] We also chartered slash bought an Afghan airline.
[05:02:26] The C-17 has just landed and is unloading.
[05:02:31] We're taking a 737 from UAE into Afghanistan while they're prepping the UAE said,
[05:02:40] okay, if you can take a C-17, fill it up with perfect, a perfect roster of people.
[05:02:46] You have a manifest of, if we made one mistake, they're going to cut us off.
[05:02:51] We put one bad dude on a plane, we're out.
[05:02:54] We were being the degrees of verifying who is on our list was very arduous.
[05:03:01] So after we fill that first plane out, they're like, okay, well, you can do more.
[05:03:07] Let's empty this one.
[05:03:08] And like, well, can we also just use this air strip if we have other planes?
[05:03:13] And then it said, yeah.
[05:03:15] So then we started this revolving door of aircraft of using the UAE C-17s and a fleet of 737s.
[05:03:24] All plugs, we're pulling every, we're throwing flags in every single window at this point.
[05:03:32] We are full on, we gave zero shits.
[05:03:36] We're going to make this happen and we're going to make it work.
[05:03:39] Because, you know, this is, this is August 18.
[05:03:45] We know two weeks, we got two weeks.
[05:03:49] So wherever we get out in two weeks is going to get out, whoever doesn't is going to die,
[05:03:56] period.
[05:03:57] So there's, we'll, we'll deal with consequences of, you know, breaking international laws
[05:04:01] or however the FAA is going to become an atta.
[05:04:03] We'll, we'll deal with that later, but right now we're going to save life.
[05:04:11] Eventually you get on the ground.
[05:04:13] You get on the ground in Afghanistan.
[05:04:15] You got like, what is it? Sean G, some dude named C spray.
[05:04:22] And you, you guys, the guy's four of us and who's the other one?
[05:04:25] And Dave.
[05:04:26] Okay.
[05:04:27] So it's you four that are going to basically go outside the wire and link up with the, the people
[05:04:35] that you're looking for, which you have a legit manifest of people that you got to gather
[05:04:39] up.
[05:04:41] So the thing is Nick is on base helping out coordinating, decinflicting all that other shit,
[05:04:47] a bunch of other guys, what's a total number of guys on the team, a dozen guys or something like that.
[05:04:51] 12 guys.
[05:04:52] So in DC, Sarah Varado sets up like this talk and every name, I know everybody remembers
[05:05:00] signal and WhatsApp and emails.
[05:05:03] Hey, I got this guy who's my turp.
[05:05:05] Here's his paperwork.
[05:05:06] He's currently an SIV applicant.
[05:05:08] He's here's letters from the commander that he was working with.
[05:05:11] A lot of hundreds and thousands of them, right?
[05:05:14] Like the phones were just melting down.
[05:05:16] Sarah would burn through her phone like nine times in a day.
[05:05:19] And so she is co-located.
[05:05:22] I'm not going to say who in the government she's with, but our manifest is going through department
[05:05:26] of state and DOD.
[05:05:27] At the same time, every single name that comes in, we take that name, we create a packet around that name.
[05:05:32] Here's all of their digital documents.
[05:05:34] And like here's here's their PID and here's that they're good to go.
[05:05:38] Once they're good to go, that gets forward to UAE.
[05:05:40] In UAE, we had eight people that were working in our forward operating base.
[05:05:46] And then there's the four of us on the ground in Afghanistan.
[05:05:49] Dave was staying on the base and then the three of us, Sean G,
[05:05:53] see spray in myself, we're going out into Kabul to grab these people to conduct
[05:05:57] wakeups to bring them back onto H.K.
[05:05:59] When did this become save our allies?
[05:06:01] This is save our allies, right?
[05:06:02] That's right.
[05:06:03] When did it become save our allies?
[05:06:05] At some point you had to put a name on it.
[05:06:07] We had to put a name on it.
[05:06:09] The only reason I say that right now is just if people want to help out,
[05:06:14] because I know you're still doing work, is it what save our allies.com.
[05:06:18] Ork.
[05:06:19] So save our allies.org.
[05:06:20] We still have safe houses all around the Middle East that we've,
[05:06:24] we've literally padded people out of Afghanistan.
[05:06:26] We're still paying for these people until we work through the department of state immigration
[05:06:30] system to get them to go to wherever.
[05:06:33] Ultimately they're going to go Albania, Brazil, Colombia, the United States,
[05:06:36] sometimes, but very rarely right now.
[05:06:38] So, save our allies.
[05:06:40] It was the founding members were Chad, me, Nick, and Sarah.
[05:06:44] So from that initial phone call of, hey, we got to go get Aziz.
[05:06:47] And then it was, well, there's also these a couple hundred Christian children,
[05:06:52] orphans.
[05:06:53] They're going to die if somebody doesn't go get them to.
[05:06:56] Well, hey, we also just got a call from a senator and he has some constituents.
[05:06:59] He has like six people that were on a mission strip in Afghanistan.
[05:07:02] The six of them are stuck here.
[05:07:04] Can you guys go get these Americans?
[05:07:05] So this list went from like, I mean, just started exploding of hey can you.
[05:07:11] And we could, you know, for any old call,
[05:07:16] it's good men to do nothing and we could do something.
[05:07:19] So what are we going to do?
[05:07:21] So you're on the ground and talk us through,
[05:07:25] without giving away details that might compromise like your procedure.
[05:07:28] But you get information that there is a person that needs to get extracted.
[05:07:33] Yep.
[05:07:34] What do you do?
[05:07:35] So that person has submitted to us usually by a sponsor.
[05:07:41] So somebody texted you, Jaco, hey man, we were together here.
[05:07:46] I'm stuck.
[05:07:47] I've made it to Kabul.
[05:07:48] I'm trying to get my way out.
[05:07:49] So you reach out to me and say, hey, can you get this guy?
[05:07:53] And I say, this is what I need from you for him to be on our manifest.
[05:07:56] I need his current DOS application process.
[05:07:59] Here's all the documents that are going to be required for PID.
[05:08:02] Once that's done, all that goes through Sarah and DC.
[05:08:05] Once that person's approved, that person comes back to me with a contact.
[05:08:10] I directly go point to point with them and I start coordinating the link up.
[05:08:15] I essentially have a digital packet with them.
[05:08:18] And that packet has all of their digital documents.
[05:08:21] And I kind of aggregate, I collective groups throughout the city.
[05:08:25] So sometimes I'm meeting six people over here,
[05:08:28] I'm meeting a dozen people over here or I take a truck and I push it in a Kabul.
[05:08:33] And they all go to that truck.
[05:08:34] And they all have to be the right place at the right time with the right information.
[05:08:37] And that truck driver is going to check everything.
[05:08:39] And then that guy is going to drive them to meet me.
[05:08:41] So then I have a far recognition signal that they all have to know.
[05:08:45] Then they come up and they give me my near recognition signal.
[05:08:48] Then they have to PID their documents.
[05:08:50] So the stuff that they physically have is an alignment with the digital documents that were sent.
[05:08:54] And if that stuff checks out, I mean, now we're like a cipher level confirming that we have all the right people.
[05:08:59] Then I have to smuggle them past the Taliban and then get them onto H.K.A.
[05:09:04] Sometimes with permission of the military, sometimes without.
[05:09:09] I have to get them on to base without the military.
[05:09:12] What was the Taliban?
[05:09:14] Was there you are you just playing clothes going out in the town?
[05:09:18] Yeah.
[05:09:18] What's the Taliban looking at you or are they looking at you?
[05:09:20] Like, suspect, there's enough westerners that it's you're like.
[05:09:24] It's a mix.
[05:09:25] So we're in Kabul, right?
[05:09:26] So Kabul's.
[05:09:27] It's like semi-promissive environment.
[05:09:28] It's capital city, but the exterior perimeter of the airport is controlled by the Taliban.
[05:09:36] And whoever controls the exterior perimeter controls the ground on the inside.
[05:09:41] So the Taliban set up a perimeter around the airport.
[05:09:44] Every single main entrance into the airport is check pointed by the Taliban.
[05:09:49] So if you are trying to get on base and you have your blue passport and you go to the Taliban,
[05:09:54] the Taliban checkpoint and they're like, this is nice.
[05:09:58] Thank you for this.
[05:09:59] Get back out.
[05:10:00] So they're now limiting who's coming in and out and they're not letting engineers plumbers.
[05:10:05] You know, if you work on the sewage system, if you're a garbage man, they don't want you to leave because Kabul is going to fall and Afghanistan is going to fall without the infrastructure of the people that run it.
[05:10:14] So they're the ones that are making all the decisions about who's coming on and who's coming off.
[05:10:18] We were just trying to blend into the noise.
[05:10:22] You know, we were trying to be, there were lots of organizations in Kabul that were working all the way up to the fall and now they're trapped too.
[05:10:31] So we were just kind of looking like other trapped people.
[05:10:35] You know, I wasn't walking around with body armor and being against her.
[05:10:38] You know, there were times that happened, but there are also times where I was just like, you know, a little snake in the grass.
[05:10:45] And what amazes me as you, as you talk about the effort that you went through to vet everyone and that was setting it up.
[05:10:54] And just that one, you know, when you said, well, in Jokho, if you text me, you need this guy and here's what you got to do.
[05:10:59] Bumble, bumble, bumble, bumble, bumble, bumble.
[05:11:01] It's obviously a very complex hard thing to do.
[05:11:04] And then you got to link up with these people in a truck or at this building or whatever.
[05:11:07] And you guys did this over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
[05:11:14] So the tune of 12, 12, 12, 12, 1000 people just you and your team got out of there.
[05:11:25] Yeah, 10 days were on the ground for 10 days.
[05:11:31] And you know, let's work, I think we're at 17,000 people now that we've moved.
[05:11:36] We've moved in additional five since the fall of Afghanistan.
[05:11:40] And we've got to have an extra kind of expeditionary type of efforts.
[05:11:46] The government, DOD, on H.K.A., they gave us a ramp.
[05:11:52] When they saw that we were being a successful as we were when, you know, Colonel Sonso or General Sonso or Senator Sonso is like, hey, I need to get this guy.
[05:12:01] They're calling us because nobody else could do it.
[05:12:03] Nobody could actually go into the city.
[05:12:05] There were tons of organizations that rent that raised millions of dollars.
[05:12:09] They still came to us to go get those people.
[05:12:12] You know, some of them threw us, some of them, a lot of them didn't, a lot of them promised to throw us some money.
[05:12:17] And then didn't, you know, but like we were paying for the fuel, we were paying for the aircraft.
[05:12:22] We were, we were the physical dudes on the ground linking up with them and Kabul to bring them on to H.K.A.
[05:12:27] And, and it is like, this is, this is unlike anything I've ever seen.
[05:12:35] I mean, this is, this is, in those power vacuums, if you remember like peak ISIS, like this is what this moment is.
[05:12:45] This is a complete power vacuum where American security instability evaporated.
[05:12:50] And what was there no longer exists and the only thing that flows into that space and that delta is evil.
[05:12:57] It is just unadulterated pure evil of what the Taliban does and did in that moment.
[05:13:03] And we are trying to go into that and find these people.
[05:13:08] And so we did get some degrees of approval.
[05:13:13] I don't, I use approval cautiously.
[05:13:16] Yeah, because the government knew who we were.
[05:13:20] They like, if you walked into the base and you looked up on that, there's our ramp with our name on it and what we are doing.
[05:13:27] Like we had, like we had tag numbers for our tail numbers for our aircraft and they're tracking.
[05:13:32] And you know, we moved almost 11% of everybody that left that base, we moved on our aircraft.
[05:13:43] That's, just a phenomenal, just a phenomenal work, phenomenal.
[05:13:56] 26th of August, let me go to the book.
[05:14:06] The Earth shakes and the explosion echoes through the airport.
[05:14:10] That was bomb.
[05:14:12] Sean G. C. Spray and I look at each other.
[05:14:15] We're simultaneously hoping no one got hurt.
[05:14:18] And that our trip isn't coming to a premature end.
[05:14:22] The internet moves at the speed of light. At the same time that some of our partners from DOD and DOS are letting us know there are casualties that abbey gate.
[05:14:31] A gate we have frequented many times over the past week.
[05:14:36] Nick and Santa 6 are hitting up Sean G and me asking if we're okay.
[05:14:41] A suicide bomber got inside the wire and detonated killing 13 US service members.
[05:14:47] All 25 years old or younger.
[05:14:51] One of them I would find out later is Sergeant Nicole G, a young leader who grew up a few hours from where I did in Sacramento.
[05:15:01] She helped us earlier that day when we had to search the women we rescued before bringing them on base.
[05:15:07] She was really sweet and high energy.
[05:15:09] She wasn't going through the motions. She greeted every Afghan with a smile.
[05:15:14] She loved her job and her service.
[05:15:19] This is absolutely the worst possible situation.
[05:15:23] I joined the military in my early 20s. I felt old then. I felt knowledgeable. I felt like I had experienced life.
[05:15:30] I had no idea.
[05:15:33] These brave troops, 11 Marines, one corpsman and one soldier gave their lives to help those in need.
[05:15:44] There's nothing more honorable.
[05:15:48] She didn't have to come. She was, you know, they were working 12 hour shifts.
[05:15:59] In that morning we were at black gate and we had pre-positioned.
[05:16:04] We knew time was short and we had pre-positioned buses throughout the Kabul.
[05:16:10] We were telling people the great coordinates and intersections to go to to find these buses.
[05:16:16] If you go, they had a secret word.
[05:16:18] They had a far recognition signal.
[05:16:20] The bus driver would see, he'd wave them in.
[05:16:23] Once they came up, they had to have a secret word to get onto the bus.
[05:16:26] We filled these buses up.
[05:16:28] We drove these buses in and ended up being a real bad situation with the base commander who didn't want to let them on.
[05:16:34] He didn't always bat all aside.
[05:16:36] Once we got some of these buses on, we can't touch women in the country.
[05:16:45] We asked the Marines, can we have a couple of bodies to help the search these women.
[05:16:51] And she, somebody hops in a car, zips down to the barracks and says, hey, we need some women.
[05:16:57] Can you guys wake up? She just finished 12 hour shift.
[05:17:01] She was going to start in six hours from now. She just pops up and is like, yeah.
[05:17:04] This is how freaking bad ass these people are.
[05:17:07] These soldiers and these Marines that were there.
[05:17:12] Yes, they were in the military and yes, they were told to go there.
[05:17:15] But what happens on the ground?
[05:17:17] Nobody asked her to volunteer.
[05:17:19] She's still the one that's like, yeah, and every one of these, she's just got shafdered.
[05:17:23] X-number hours asleep. She probably has gone comitably four hours a night for that whole entire time that she's been there.
[05:17:29] And her hand goes up. She comes in and she greets every one of these women and children that's coming on this base with sincerity.
[05:17:35] She's just a good human.
[05:17:37] You know, and then 10 hours later, she dies at Abbey Gate. A gate that I had smuggled, I crawled through sewage with children and women on my back through human shit to get through this gate.
[05:17:47] And this is the gate that ISIS goes. ISIS K, I eat the Taliban to blow up.
[05:17:52] Yeah, that's the 13 hour here.
[05:18:07] And after that, I mean, things going to lock down.
[05:18:11] Yeah.
[05:18:14] That's it for you.
[05:18:20] You got a couple more interesting stories in there about some other things that did take place, but eventually you end up, you got, you guys got to get out of there.
[05:18:29] You're, you have an ex-filled bird.
[05:18:33] That's coming to get you.
[05:18:35] And it ends up making emergency landing in Pakistan and it can't quite make it to pick you up, which I find very, very suspect.
[05:18:44] So you, eventually you have to hit your right out of there and you got to hit your right out of there with the military.
[05:18:52] I got to read this section, uh, as you're looking for someone to give you a ride. Here we go.
[05:18:58] Every lead we run down comes up short.
[05:19:00] The military birds are full.
[05:19:02] As are the state department birds.
[05:19:05] I begin to wonder if we're going to have to walk out of this place.
[05:19:08] If we have to, at least I know this is the team to do it with.
[05:19:12] Still, I'd rather not.
[05:19:14] Finally, I find an airman that recognizes me.
[05:19:17] Oh, shit.
[05:19:18] Are you Tim Kennedy, yes?
[05:19:20] He is Tim Kennedy, see spray answers with a smirk.
[05:19:24] Awesome man.
[05:19:25] I'm a huge fan.
[05:19:26] My new airman friend says, me too, see spray chimes.
[05:19:30] Ignoring him.
[05:19:32] I ask is there any chance you could have some room for us?
[05:19:35] Are ride crashed in Pakistan?
[05:19:37] No shit.
[05:19:38] How many of you are there?
[05:19:39] Four?
[05:19:40] Yes, I just for a bus, I answer.
[05:19:42] Hey, did you know he's Tim Kennedy?
[05:19:44] He's patch.
[05:19:45] He hasn't, in fact, Tim Kennedy.
[05:19:48] Sean G says, joining in the game.
[05:19:50] David, at least just smiles.
[05:19:52] I can put you on the ramp man.
[05:19:53] No problem.
[05:19:54] My airman buddy tells us, you're the shit.
[05:19:56] I really appreciate it.
[05:19:57] I said, then add.
[05:19:58] So where are we going?
[05:19:59] Cotar.
[05:20:00] He tells us.
[05:20:01] Looks like we're going to Qatar.
[05:20:02] I jump on the signal app and type.
[05:20:04] Found a ride to Qatar.
[05:20:06] We'll touch base when we land.
[05:20:08] Communications now complete.
[05:20:10] I shut my phone off to save battery and walk to the edge of the ramp.
[05:20:14] I turned to look one last time at the vastness of the Afghan landscape.
[05:20:19] I've left so much of my life in this place.
[05:20:22] A lot of Americans died here.
[05:20:24] Hell, I almost died here.
[05:20:26] Was it worth it?
[05:20:28] It's dark now, but I can still see the edges of the mountains against the night sky.
[05:20:32] A feeling of sadness and failure encompasses me.
[05:20:36] I might never be here again.
[05:20:38] I walk up the ramp.
[05:20:48] That's how you wrap up.
[05:20:50] 10 days, constant operations.
[05:20:52] Like we said, you and your team secured vetted and evacuated 12,000 people.
[05:21:00] American citizens, permanent residents, Afghan allies, Afghan refugees.
[05:21:04] This is like 10-over 10% of the total people evacuated in this.
[05:21:12] Just like work, incredible work.
[05:21:18] Yeah, those are Dave and Sean G, Sean Gs, the ground force commander and C-spray.
[05:21:26] I don't know, again, divine intervention.
[05:21:30] Like Mike pushing me that time or,
[05:21:34] cumumatively, that group, their individual experiences combined.
[05:21:40] That the aggregate of the four of us who we were, the three of them,
[05:21:44] they could have ruled that country.
[05:21:48] That is the amount of brilliance that was cease-spray and Sean G in Dave.
[05:21:52] That truly, three of the most intelligent humans I've ever met.
[05:21:56] And selfless operators that, you know, the expeditionary mind of being able to look at a problem in this asymmetrical way.
[05:22:06] And problem-solve is a really unique thing in an environment like the fall of Afghanistan.
[05:22:14] You know, they're in the center of gravity and they are pulling strings.
[05:22:18] They're calling generals. They're buying, like let's buy a bus.
[05:22:22] Yeah, let's buy, let's buy seven buses and put them out here.
[05:22:26] Let's buy an airline. Who sits there's like, let's buy an airline.
[05:22:30] Let's cool. We'll tell the pilots that they'll get their families out if they fly for us.
[05:22:36] It's a different kind of brain.
[05:22:38] And that's who these three, these three men are.
[05:22:40] They're the most amazing men to ever walk the face of this planet.
[05:22:44] It's awesome too.
[05:22:46] And you talk about this in the book.
[05:22:48] Basically that you, and it's applies to all of them.
[05:22:54] But all of you were like, none of us like, hey, I'm in charge.
[05:22:58] No, I'm in charge. No, we should do it my way.
[05:23:00] You guys are all just humble. Like, what's the best solution? How can we move forward?
[05:23:04] And that place, such a key role. Like you can't, you can't like argue about dumb shit,
[05:23:08] ego shit when you're trying to actually make things happen and don't work.
[05:23:12] So there's not a time for it. And there's a consequence for it when it does happen.
[05:23:20] And those men are still doing the work. Like right now as you and I are talking.
[05:23:26] You know, we're operating other theaters.
[05:23:30] And if you can smuggle people out, you have the same thing in that expeditionary mind to smuggle things in.
[05:23:36] And we're doing everything that we can.
[05:23:38] Like the mission statement of Savor allies, it's it's warren torn countries that need help.
[05:23:44] That's, you know, whether it's humanitarian aid or evacuation.
[05:23:46] It's rescuing of Americans, you know, saving our allies.
[05:23:50] It's not a misnomer. It's exactly what we're doing.
[05:23:52] And, you know, and it's like sheeped our response, you know, the purpose of global.
[05:23:57] Yeah, global response.
[05:23:59] We are a global organization.
[05:24:01] Save our allies dot org.
[05:24:04] Or, that's it. If you want to support a sheep dog response, a worldwide global.
[05:24:09] Yeah, that's what's happening there.
[05:24:10] I want to read one last section here from the book.
[05:24:14] Just to close out this part of the book or just to close out from the book.
[05:24:19] This is as you're flying home.
[05:24:21] You're, you're on this aircraft.
[05:24:23] And you start reflecting on things from a broad perspective.
[05:24:28] And you say this, I think about my own trials and the scars that came with them.
[05:24:33] My thoughts finally land on the moment.
[05:24:36] All those years ago, standing on that beach.
[05:24:38] I had failures stacked against me.
[05:24:41] Two women pregnant, possible HIV, kicked off the police force, and a host of other problems.
[05:24:47] It seemed like the end of the world.
[05:24:50] Those challenges seemed impossible to overcome.
[05:24:54] Now, that night in the ocean is a blip on the radar.
[05:24:58] It doesn't matter except as the impetus to finally get off my ass and attack life.
[05:25:05] Those two pregnant women gave me Sabrina and Julia.
[05:25:09] My first two reasons to be a better man.
[05:25:12] Those girls have given me nothing but joy and pride.
[05:25:17] Being kicked off the force created a situation where I had to come to terms with my shortcomings.
[05:25:22] I didn't fail because life was unfair.
[05:25:25] I failed because I was a cocky asshole who made poor decisions.
[05:25:30] Without that failure, I would never be a green beret.
[05:25:33] I never would have found my calling.
[05:25:35] I never would have reached my potential.
[05:25:38] Thank God for those failures and that night.
[05:25:42] The guy standing on that beach looked at life as a scorecard that you went or lose.
[05:25:48] He thought failure was the end.
[05:25:52] He was an idiot.
[05:25:55] The guy and I rack who got beaten up for not being a team player couldn't have succeeded in the rescue effort.
[05:26:00] I just undertook with this amazing team.
[05:26:02] He would have wanted to lead it to show everyone how good he was instead of contributing to the group effort.
[05:26:09] He was an idiot.
[05:26:11] But it's okay that he was an idiot.
[05:26:14] In the army, when you graduate from being a soldier to a non-commissioned officer,
[05:26:19] you were in the title of Sergeant.
[05:26:22] In that moment, you earn your stripes.
[05:26:25] The upward facing rockers that you affixed to your uniform.
[05:26:29] Those stripes are the symbol that shows you are a leader.
[05:26:34] That you assume responsibility for yourself and those around you.
[05:26:39] It took me a lot to get there.
[05:26:42] It's been a hard road.
[05:26:44] And every step of the way, every additional rank, every additional accomplishment,
[05:26:48] every great success has required more of me.
[05:26:52] I've had to sacrifice more, suffer more, and yes, fail more.
[05:26:59] Failure isn't final.
[05:27:01] It's necessary.
[05:27:02] It's the fuel that allows you to advance to succeed.
[05:27:06] To earn those stripes, you need to earn those scars first.
[05:27:12] I take a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth,
[05:27:17] pulling my stomach to the back of my spine.
[05:27:20] My mind is calm now.
[05:27:23] My eyes feel heavy, and I lean back into my seat.
[05:27:27] When I wake up in Atlanta, it will be my birthday,
[05:27:31] and I will be 42 years old.
[05:27:33] I'm excited.
[05:27:35] This is the beginning of a whole new, amazing year of failure
[05:27:41] and suffering.
[05:27:44] I can't wait to get started.
[05:27:47] So there you go, man.
[05:27:52] There it is.
[05:27:55] Life is filled with failures and suffering for everybody.
[05:28:00] You know, one of the things that I didn't read from the book,
[05:28:05] you've got some kind of rules, and your number one rule,
[05:28:10] page two of the book, number one rule, take accountability.
[05:28:13] It's your fault.
[05:28:14] Yeah.
[05:28:15] I like that a lot.
[05:28:16] Do you like that a lot?
[05:28:18] I don't know where I got it.
[05:28:20] It took a long time.
[05:28:21] Why didn't you read that book in like 97?
[05:28:24] It would have been really useful because I was the jackass that was a running around
[05:28:28] playing with other people for doing dumb shit or dumb shit happening to me.
[05:28:31] That's why, yeah, I'm taking ownership, taking accountability.
[05:28:35] When you recognize and listen, you can't control everything,
[05:28:38] but man, you can control a lot more than you think you can.
[05:28:42] And what matters the most when you come up against these challenges is
[05:28:46] how you respond to it, what you learn from it.
[05:28:51] How can these sufferings and failures actually make me better?
[05:28:58] And that's what it's about.
[05:29:00] And that's what the book's about.
[05:29:02] And that's what Tim Kennedy's about.
[05:29:04] That's what I'm learning to be about.
[05:29:06] There's a fine balance from wallowing in your failure and being defined by your failure
[05:29:12] and then embracing it, recognizing it, learning from it and moving it on.
[05:29:16] And I have wallowed in it clearly as I went for a drink,
[05:29:21] swim through the cold icy waters of Morave,
[05:29:24] and I've also not learned from it.
[05:29:27] And somewhere in between there on that spectrum is where learning happens.
[05:29:31] And I definitely like a bump or bowling ball going down the bumpers have been figuring it out.
[05:29:38] So I think I got more failure and more suffering ahead of me.
[05:29:42] Yeah.
[05:29:43] That's how you get better man.
[05:29:45] Here we go.
[05:29:46] That's how you get better.
[05:29:48] Well, I've had you in here for way too long.
[05:29:50] I apologize.
[05:29:51] Kerry, you got any final questions there?
[05:29:54] No, no final questions.
[05:29:56] We pretty well covered in fear of being.
[05:29:58] We got we were kind of hard on the pain on this.
[05:30:01] Yeah.
[05:30:02] Tim, before we go to closing thoughts, so we got SaberAllies.org.
[05:30:08] That's the main place to support that thing.
[05:30:13] You're all over the place at Tim Kennedy.
[05:30:16] MMA.
[05:30:17] Yeah, all the socials.
[05:30:19] I'm not out of care about that stuff.
[05:30:21] If you're going to support us, you can follow me if you're going to
[05:30:24] talk about shenanigans, but between shape, sugar, sheep dog response,
[05:30:28] Apigee and save our allies.
[05:30:30] So sheep dog response dot com dot com.
[05:30:33] Apigee, cedarpark.org.org.
[05:30:36] There you go.
[05:30:38] Awesome stuff.
[05:30:39] Yeah.
[05:30:40] Any closing thoughts, brother?
[05:30:41] Dot per se, you.
[05:30:42] Right.
[05:30:43] But per se your voice.
[05:30:44] I appreciate what you do.
[05:30:45] Not often enough to I think our people recognize for really the impact that they're having.
[05:30:50] We have been bordering on a very dangerous direction.
[05:30:57] I think our country and you and a handful of very few other men and women have been
[05:31:02] voices of rational logic of like no man.
[05:31:05] It's up to you.
[05:31:06] You got to get to back to work.
[05:31:08] So thank you first and foremost.
[05:31:09] Thanks for being a voice of truth and being a voice to inspire people like me to
[05:31:16] conclude me to go on.
[05:31:21] Do good things.
[05:31:23] Well, I certainly don't think Tim Kennedy needs much inspiration for anybody.
[05:31:26] Man, awesome to see you again.
[05:31:28] Thanks for coming on.
[05:31:29] Thanks for your service and the army.
[05:31:32] Thanks for your continued service with everything that you're doing.
[05:31:35] I mean, it's just it's just outstanding to see everything you do to try and help.
[05:31:40] Your community.
[05:31:42] Your our country.
[05:31:44] And people of the world, like I said globally, you're making an impact and it's just it's just outstanding to see you out there
[05:31:53] making it happen, man.
[05:31:54] Respect me in a bunch of people way smarter than me.
[05:31:58] You know, I'm more than other their coat tails as they're dragging me along.
[05:32:01] Well, we both have that benefit of being a being around a bunch of people that are a lot smarter than the two
[05:32:06] Nuckle Dragors sit in here.
[05:32:07] Awesome.
[05:32:08] Thanks for coming back.
[05:32:09] Thank you.
[05:32:10] And with that, Tim Kennedy has left the building.
[05:32:15] And I believe at this point in time, we are at the world record, Jockel Podcast.
[05:32:20] We are at the record.
[05:32:23] Well, I don't know, man, but that went by, you know, split second in my mind.
[05:32:30] I don't know.
[05:32:31] I could just talk and listen to Tim and talk with Tim and convert him for a really long time.
[05:32:36] So I guess pushing six hours at this point is pretty awesome.
[05:32:41] What a what a dude, man.
[05:32:43] What a great dude.
[05:32:45] And I guess we should try and keep this a little bit short.
[05:32:48] I'm who's left out there.
[05:32:50] Especially now that Tim's gone.
[05:32:51] It was like, I've already pushed the limit.
[05:32:54] You already pushed the limit boys.
[05:32:56] You know, wrap it up quick.
[05:32:58] One thing I will say about Tim is he has this kind of like disregard for, you know,
[05:33:05] I don't know if it's like convention or not necessarily rules either.
[05:33:08] But if Tim wants to go do something like Tim's going to go do it.
[05:33:13] And it was just awesome.
[05:33:14] Everything from him doing the MMA career while he was still in the service.
[05:33:19] And then just, you know, everything that he's had a conviction to go do,
[05:33:23] he's going to do a freaking guy's answer in the call of managers.
[05:33:26] He's getting after it.
[05:33:27] Yeah, such an awesome awesome.
[05:33:29] And you know, like I read that last little rule of his take accountability for it.
[05:33:34] It's your fault.
[05:33:35] And you know, we kind of joked about it.
[05:33:36] That's the, that's the concept of extreme ownership.
[05:33:40] That's helped so many, so many people out there.
[05:33:42] You know, so many people.
[05:33:43] I mean, so many people.
[05:33:46] I don't want to put a number on it.
[05:33:48] But it is a lot of people that have contacted me and contacted
[05:33:52] Lave and said, hey, that's what got me straightened out is when I realized
[05:33:59] I needed to take extreme ownership.
[05:34:01] I needed to take accountability for every kind of
[05:34:03] accountability for everything.
[05:34:04] It's all my fault.
[05:34:05] That's such a great starting point for life.
[05:34:09] And for someone like Tim, it obviously has had a huge impact when he started to take accountability
[05:34:15] for his life and move it in the right direction.
[05:34:17] And then he just turns into, you know, a damn what he say, a missile of some kind,
[05:34:24] fire and forget, there's a way to say, you're a flesh missile.
[05:34:28] You've got all kinds of stuff going on.
[05:34:31] But what a great guy.
[05:34:34] So you're in charge of your own life.
[05:34:37] You're in charge of your own security, by the way.
[05:34:39] So check out that cheap dog response.
[05:34:42] Also get yourself in good physical condition.
[05:34:45] You know, when you start talking about, when you start talking about this,
[05:34:48] remember when he was talking about, you got to be ready for this.
[05:34:51] What, what is this?
[05:34:53] This could be so such a wide variety.
[05:34:56] It could even be, oh, my kid fell down.
[05:35:00] We're in the woods.
[05:35:03] And, you know, he or she child banged their head and need to get to a doctor.
[05:35:09] And we're two miles, you know, from the road.
[05:35:13] And I got to go up hill.
[05:35:14] And I got to carry him.
[05:35:15] Yep.
[05:35:16] Do are you in the physical condition to do that?
[05:35:18] Because if you're not, that could be tragic.
[05:35:21] I remember my wife got stung by the damn,
[05:35:24] stingray and we were at a beach around San Diego that has a bunch of stairs to get up to
[05:35:33] to get to the parking lot.
[05:35:35] And my wife got stung and I just straight just buddy carried this roll.
[05:35:39] I'm getting her to the aid station.
[05:35:41] I was like boom, you know, just buddy carried her up those stairs.
[05:35:44] But hey, that was just a stingray.
[05:35:46] What if something, what if she had a femoral bleed and I had to get whatever.
[05:35:49] Something crazy happened.
[05:35:51] Yep.
[05:35:52] So what are you going to do to be prepared for this when you don't even know what this is?
[05:35:57] Well, let me tell you one thing, be physically prepared.
[05:35:59] 100%.
[05:36:00] This and my mind represents stress.
[05:36:03] Some sort of stress is going to be put on you.
[05:36:06] And you got to be ready for that stress.
[05:36:08] Yeah.
[05:36:09] Physical stress, mental stress, whatever it is.
[05:36:11] That's what this is going to be.
[05:36:13] It's going to be a stress on your system.
[05:36:15] Yep.
[05:36:16] How is your system prepared to take care of that stress?
[05:36:18] You know, that means you're working out.
[05:36:20] That means you're doing your jitsu.
[05:36:21] That means you're on jockelfield, jockelfield.com.
[05:36:23] Get yourself some mulk.
[05:36:24] Man, you can't understate the beauty of mulk.
[05:36:31] The fact that you could have dessert, you can have a dessert of the legit dessert that you think my God.
[05:36:38] This is good.
[05:36:39] That's what I think.
[05:36:40] When I drink mulk, I think, you know, this is a, you could, you could put it up next to a dam hog and does.
[05:36:47] Baskin Robbins. What? What do you want to go toe to toe?
[05:36:51] And this one is good for me.
[05:36:53] Do you track protein?
[05:36:55] Do you track any like, no, you don't do any track and everything like that.
[05:36:58] I was curious, you know, this started a month or two ago.
[05:37:02] I was talking to JP to know about it too because he gets, he gets the protein.
[05:37:06] You know, and I was, I was curious.
[05:37:08] I was like, I know what I should be getting in terms of like grams of protein a day.
[05:37:12] And I just didn't know where I was following.
[05:37:15] So I tracked it and I was coming up short, coming up short.
[05:37:19] I was coming up short, man.
[05:37:20] And I, you know, you know, you got on that mulk.
[05:37:23] I'm going to go to the life.
[05:37:24] But why, why not have two mulk shakes a day for sure?
[05:37:27] It makes sense.
[05:37:28] It's, it's a, you know, a hundred calories of scoop or whatever.
[05:37:31] You're getting 22 grams of protein to hit.
[05:37:34] Like, you know, it's nice too.
[05:37:36] It's a little pre-game.
[05:37:37] You know, like, you, oh, you're going to go out to, you know, to a dinner, whatever.
[05:37:41] Dinner, something with my wife.
[05:37:43] You know, I'm going to some restaurant with some friends.
[05:37:45] It's a Italian food.
[05:37:47] You know, it's just there going to be throwing pasta at you.
[05:37:49] What's up?
[05:37:50] So it's like, you know, do a little pre-game.
[05:37:52] Get that mulk hitter.
[05:37:54] Because then instead of eating nine slices of freaking garlic bread in the openers, right?
[05:37:59] You're good.
[05:38:00] You don't need it because you're not hungry.
[05:38:01] Right.
[05:38:02] So you need to get the chicken parm.
[05:38:03] Eat a couple of noodles just because of what's up, you know.
[05:38:06] But try that pre-game.
[05:38:08] It doesn't necessarily have to be a post-game evolution.
[05:38:11] That is right there.
[05:38:13] I'm going to try to jazz them over a little bit.
[05:38:15] Jockelfield.com.
[05:38:16] Mulk, joint warfare.
[05:38:18] Super cruel.
[05:38:19] All that stuff, immunity.
[05:38:20] Don't get about the ghost.
[05:38:22] Ghost, new flavor formulation.
[05:38:24] Just coming down.
[05:38:25] Yeah.
[05:38:25] They're speaking of ownership.
[05:38:28] As we know, my fault.
[05:38:30] The original flavors weren't quite for the normal human.
[05:38:35] They were for me.
[05:38:37] But we fixed them. All the flavors are insanely delicious, insanely delicious.
[05:38:43] I know it's getting good if everyone runs for their money with the new flavors,
[05:38:46] DAX Advage.
[05:38:47] Dakota Meyer.
[05:38:48] The new DAX Advage is one of the best beverages I've ever tasted in my life.
[05:38:56] So the Jockelfield guys rolled into the last mustard.
[05:39:00] Main tie.
[05:39:01] Justin over there.
[05:39:02] Jockelfield.
[05:39:03] They rolled in new flavor formulations.
[05:39:05] Some of the mustard attendees got a little sneak peek of what's coming.
[05:39:10] I didn't try the DAX Advage and now I'm kicking myself because I want to see what that's.
[05:39:15] They're all unbelievably good.
[05:39:17] The DAX Advage.
[05:39:18] Maybe I was just surprised that it was so good and that the flavor, the way they nailed it,
[05:39:23] it's going to be so it's so good.
[05:39:25] And they're out.
[05:39:26] So anyways, if you need some of that clean energy, clean energy, good and for you.
[05:39:33] We don't need to do crystal meth and fedemine to get energy.
[05:39:36] You don't need to do 378 milligrams of caffeine.
[05:39:41] You don't need a bunch of 32 grams of sugar.
[05:39:44] You don't need chemicals at all.
[05:39:47] You can just get on that on that discipline.
[05:39:49] Go try it.
[05:39:50] Not only is good not bad for you.
[05:39:53] It is good for you.
[05:39:54] It is good for you.
[05:39:56] Jockelfield.com.
[05:39:58] OriginUSA.com.
[05:39:59] If you need some American made clothing.
[05:40:01] If you need some hunk gear, it's common.
[05:40:03] You saw that first little saw that little visual.
[05:40:06] Is that what's coming out first?
[05:40:08] That's will be the first item.
[05:40:11] Yeah, that would be the, yeah, because those are getting ready.
[05:40:13] That was like the test line.
[05:40:15] That was the first one coming off the test line.
[05:40:17] How sick was that?
[05:40:19] Oh, so sick.
[05:40:20] And that Tiger Stripe Camo is just, it owed to saga.
[05:40:25] Oh, disog.
[05:40:26] But also like obviously it's functional right and they're on the person.
[05:40:30] There's science and peat and all those brains back there.
[05:40:33] Like figuring out the function application.
[05:40:36] But it is also just let you look in.
[05:40:39] You know, like you see that pattern out.
[05:40:41] And you recognize it immediately.
[05:40:43] And what's up.
[05:40:44] So Hans common.
[05:40:46] Gitu gear, geese, rash guards, you know, whatever you need.
[05:40:49] Whatever you need boots, you need boots.
[05:40:51] We got you.
[05:40:52] You need jeans.
[05:40:53] We got you.
[05:40:54] Jeans are always getting a little incrementally better, too.
[05:40:57] The jeans we are learning.
[05:40:59] And so the jeans are just at a just getting better and better all the time.
[05:41:04] So origin USA.com, jocco store got dot com.
[05:41:07] I see you got assured on over there.
[05:41:09] Says just again again.
[05:41:10] This is my it's one of my favorites because that that's the mentality over here.
[05:41:14] You know, just to get again more.
[05:41:16] Yep.
[05:41:17] Harder.
[05:41:17] Yep.
[05:41:18] Like listen.
[05:41:19] So jocco store dot com.
[05:41:22] If you want to get rash guards, you want to get some stuff that says stuff that we said on this podcast.
[05:41:26] I guess that's the most basic way to break it down.
[05:41:28] Jocco store dot com.
[05:41:29] Subscribe to the podcast.
[05:41:31] Don't forget about jocco unraveling.
[05:41:34] Man, they're a couple.
[05:41:36] And I got we're supposed to get another one of those in.
[05:41:39] Check those out.
[05:41:40] Jocco on the ground dot com.
[05:41:41] We got $8.18.
[05:41:43] That's what allows us to do this and not live in fear of the man.
[05:41:49] We're not living in fear because if they throw us off, sorry, we got our own.
[05:41:53] Got our own system.
[05:41:54] We got our own platform.
[05:41:56] Thanks to you, subscribing to jocco on our ground dot com.
[05:41:59] We're also doing little, little, alternative podcasts there.
[05:42:04] We're answering a bunch of questions.
[05:42:05] So if you're, if you're a subscriber to jocco on our ground dot com, you get an email to send questions to.
[05:42:10] I'm answering those questions all the time.
[05:42:12] So check that out.
[05:42:13] Check out our YouTube.
[05:42:14] You want to check out the, the, what Tim Kennedy looks like.
[05:42:17] Check out the YouTube channel.
[05:42:19] Jocco podcast.
[05:42:20] Check out the origin USA.
[05:42:21] For there for there YouTube channels.
[05:42:24] Well, books.
[05:42:27] Stars and stripes by Tim Kennedy.
[05:42:29] If you haven't gotten it yet, obviously get it.
[05:42:31] Only cry for the living, Holly McCabe.
[05:42:33] Check that one out.
[05:42:34] All the books I've written.
[05:42:35] If you like some of the stuff I talk about here, you can check out those books.
[05:42:38] Ashillonfront.com.
[05:42:40] If you have leadership problems inside your organization, go to.
[05:42:44] Ashillonfront.com.
[05:42:45] And we will help your organization align its leadership and get moving in the right direction.
[05:42:52] We have a big event called the master.
[05:42:55] Next one is in Atlanta, October 12th and 14th.
[05:42:58] We have sold out all events that we've ever done.
[05:43:02] This one's going to sell out to.
[05:43:04] So if you want to come to that.
[05:43:07] Go to Ashillonfront.com.
[05:43:09] Get registered.
[05:43:10] We got some of an online training platform for life for life.
[05:43:14] For life.
[05:43:15] Figure it out how to take ownership of your life.
[05:43:18] Figure it out how to lead yourself through life.
[05:43:21] And also that will help you figure out how to lead others.
[05:43:26] So this is what we talk about.
[05:43:28] We talk about all these different facets of leadership through yourself, through the way you're living your life.
[05:43:33] We got pre-recorded courses on there with tests.
[05:43:38] We've got live sessions that we do.
[05:43:40] What else? What role plays?
[05:43:42] role plays on there.
[05:43:43] What else?
[05:43:44] Application exercises.
[05:43:45] It is a way for...
[05:43:47] Listen, leadership is a skill.
[05:43:49] Just like shooting is a skill.
[05:43:52] Just like fighting and GJ2 is a skill.
[05:43:55] You can't expect to get good at GJ2 without doing it.
[05:43:58] You can't expect to get good at fighting without doing it.
[05:44:00] You can't expect to be a good shot without learning how to shoot.
[05:44:03] It's a skill set.
[05:44:05] So is leadership.
[05:44:06] So since it is a skill set that you need to learn.
[05:44:09] Where are you going to learn from?
[05:44:10] Well, I will tell you where you learn it from.
[05:44:13] Extremeownership.com.
[05:44:14] Go and check that out.
[05:44:15] I'll see you on there.
[05:44:17] And if you want to help service members,
[05:44:20] active and retired their families,
[05:44:21] Gold Star Families.
[05:44:22] Check out Mama Lee.
[05:44:24] That's Mark Lee's mom.
[05:44:26] She's got an awesome charity organization.
[05:44:28] Where she helps veterans, families,
[05:44:31] Gold Star Families.
[05:44:33] It's America's MightyWorriers.org.
[05:44:36] We've also got Heroes and Horses.org.
[05:44:39] MicahFink.
[05:44:40] Just take them guys out of the wilderness on horses.
[05:44:43] To sit and cold water.
[05:44:45] And eat trail food.
[05:44:47] That's what he's doing for 41 days.
[05:44:50] It really helps guys out.
[05:44:52] Helps them get through the trauma that they've been through.
[05:44:55] Clearly.
[05:44:57] Tim Kennedy.
[05:44:59] Save our allies.org.
[05:45:02] Just an outstanding organization.
[05:45:05] You heard about some of the stuff.
[05:45:07] What's up with evacuating 12,000 people with 12 guys?
[05:45:11] Intendase.
[05:45:12] Intendase.
[05:45:13] That you want to see results from a charity.
[05:45:18] Go ahead and check that one out.
[05:45:20] Save our allies.org.
[05:45:22] And you know what?
[05:45:23] They're engaged globally.
[05:45:26] And stuff that I'm not going to talk about.
[05:45:29] But globally helping people throughout the world.
[05:45:33] That's what that's what Tim and his team are doing.
[05:45:36] So if you want to help the world,
[05:45:38] you want to help people that are that need saving.
[05:45:41] Save our allies.org.
[05:45:45] Also check out Sheep Dog Response.
[05:45:48] Go go into some of those courses.
[05:45:50] Learn about how to defend yourself.
[05:45:51] Learn about how to protect your family.
[05:45:53] You can tell the names he's rattling off of the guys that are teaching that.
[05:45:57] Tim included.
[05:45:58] I mean, they're just they're just outstanding humans.
[05:46:01] And there's no one better to learn from.
[05:46:03] So check that out as well.
[05:46:05] Once again, Tim Kennedy.
[05:46:07] Twitter and Instagram.
[05:46:09] Facebook.
[05:46:10] I'm at Jocca Willing.
[05:46:13] Were you at Kda.
[05:46:14] Carry underscore health.
[05:46:16] Is that the best you could do?
[05:46:18] You had a phone underscore in there.
[05:46:19] Yeah.
[05:46:20] Yeah.
[05:46:21] We covered.
[05:46:22] There's already a Kda.
[05:46:23] Yeah.
[05:46:24] There's a carry held out there.
[05:46:25] And I tried to message him and no response.
[05:46:28] Just leaving me out to dry.
[05:46:30] So I guess we're going underscore going underscore.
[05:46:33] Carry underscore help.
[05:46:35] Hey, when you're getting on there,
[05:46:37] you want to check us out?
[05:46:38] Cool.
[05:46:39] We appreciate it.
[05:46:40] Dude, I'm going to tell you right now.
[05:46:41] The algorithms got it's got it's an offensive.
[05:46:45] If that effective.
[05:46:48] Cool.
[05:46:50] That they're using to get in your head and steal your time from me from you.
[05:46:55] I feel like if I'm on there, I feel like someone stealing my time from me.
[05:46:59] I feel like, oh, they're getting me right now.
[05:47:01] So look, come on.
[05:47:03] Check in.
[05:47:04] That's cool.
[05:47:05] Throw a comment.
[05:47:06] Whatever.
[05:47:07] Do not.
[05:47:08] Get caught in the algorithm.
[05:47:12] So that's that.
[05:47:14] Once again, thanks to Tim Kennedy for everything that he has done.
[05:47:19] He is doing just an awesome human.
[05:47:22] And, you know, is he a perfect human?
[05:47:25] He's not a perfect human.
[05:47:26] None of us are.
[05:47:27] But talk about squared away trajectory.
[05:47:32] It's just inspiring to be around him.
[05:47:35] So thanks Tim.
[05:47:38] Once again for everything you're doing and everything you've done.
[05:47:40] And thanks to all the folks that are in uniform right now out there in the world.
[05:47:45] Standing the watch protecting freedom, protecting our way of life.
[05:47:50] Thank you to all of you in uniform.
[05:47:53] And the same goes to our police and law enforcement.
[05:47:55] Firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correction officers, boarder patrol.
[05:48:00] See we're service and all the first responders out there.
[05:48:03] Thank you all for standing watch.
[05:48:06] Here at home.
[05:48:07] And we got to hear some stories of what it's like for an EMT.
[05:48:10] What it's like for a firefighter.
[05:48:12] What it's like for police.
[05:48:13] What they see every day.
[05:48:15] Thanks to you all and to everybody else out there.
[05:48:20] Just remember where Tim was at.
[05:48:24] Remember what Tim went through.
[05:48:29] He was in a rough place.
[05:48:30] Man, he'd been a firefighter.
[05:48:33] Fireed.
[05:48:34] He had his hopes of dreams of becoming a police officer.
[05:48:38] Had those dreams squashed.
[05:48:42] He had a bunch of problems going on.
[05:48:45] And he was using a rough spot.
[05:48:48] He's ready to call it quits.
[05:48:51] But he didn't.
[05:48:53] He took accountability for his actions.
[05:48:55] He learned.
[05:48:56] He grew.
[05:48:57] He worked hard.
[05:48:59] He got a lot of good stuff.
[05:49:01] He learned.
[05:49:02] He turned his life around.
[05:49:03] And now he's out there helping others do the same.
[05:49:06] So no matter what happens.
[05:49:08] Don't ever give up.
[05:49:11] Don't stop moving forward.
[05:49:14] And instead embrace those scars.
[05:49:19] And look from them.
[05:49:22] Can't go conquer.
[05:49:24] And until next time, this is Kerry and Jocco.
[05:49:28] Out.