Straight Outta The Lair with Flex Lewis
7x Mr. Olympia 212 Champion Flex Lewis presents Straight Outta The Lair, the podcast that aims to bring you vital information for your life's ambitions, providing valuable insight from interviews of the many many different faces that walk through our doors at The Dragon's Lair Las Vegas and a few from the man himself.
Straight Outta The Lair with Flex Lewis
Randy Couture | UFC Champ to Hollywood Hero & Veteran Advocate | Straight Outta The Lair Podcast
UFC legend and Hollywood star Randy Couture joins us for an unforgettable conversation, sharing his remarkable journey from the octagon to the silver screen. Discover how Randy's pioneering achievements as the first champ champ in UFC history set the stage for his transition into acting, carving out a new identity through roles like those in the Expendables franchise.
The episode takes a heartfelt turn as we explore Randy's dedication to supporting veterans through combat sports initiatives. Events like Operation Knockout not only empower young athletes but also raise crucial funds for wounded veterans, highlighting the transformative power of community-oriented efforts.
Randy shares personal stories, including his entry into the UFC driven by a quest to connect with his absent father, underscoring how personal experiences shape professional paths. With discussions ranging from the evolution of MMA to the empowerment of women in sports, this episode captures Randy Couture's legacy of kindness, humility, and unwavering support for veterans, leaving listeners inspired by his journey and advocacy.
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----- Content -----
00:00:00 - Intro
00:09:28 - Operation Knockout and Veterans Support
00:13:53 - Supporting Veterans After War Experience
00:22:48 - Political Discourse and MMA Journey
00:27:43 - Evolution of MMA and UFC Fighters
00:39:23 - Mental Preparation and Training Strategy
00:48:30 - Achieving Flow State in Combat
00:53:51 - UFC Fighter Talks Contracts and Competition
01:06:19 - Sports Development in Saudi Arabia
01:10:02 - Legacy of Kindness and Humility
01:14:41 - Supporting Veterans Through Combat Sports
Today's guest is a true legend and pioneer of mixed martial arts, a UFC Hall of Famer and the first ever champ champ to hold titles in both the heavyweight and light heavyweight divisions. Beyond the cage, he's also made his mark in Hollywood as part of the iconic Expendables franchise, bringing his fighting spirit to the big screen. Ladies and gentlemen, randy the Natural Couture Straight Outta the Lair Rock. Today we are joined by a legend Indeed, the man they call the Natural. A legend Indeed, the man they call the natural. The legend, hollywood star. And the first ever champ champ in the UFC. Plus, plus much more titles you forgot extremely good looking.
Speaker 2:Oh well, you know.
Speaker 1:That part too. Randy Couture, welcome to the Straight Outta the Lair show. My friend, my man, I appreciate you. It's good to see you, my friend. Good to see you as well, yeah we've had a little uh walk around the gym.
Speaker 3:Very cool to be in the lair.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's great, it's great to have you here, of course, uh, you know I'm no stranger to your place as well, the extreme couture being there many times. My daughter trains at the gym as well, and many of the athletes train here. Eric Nixick has brought the whole tribe in the whole tribe.
Speaker 3:As I said, this is a whole tribe. As I said, this is a whole tribe. Yeah.
Speaker 1:As I said, there's a lot of uh closet bodybuilders in fight 12.
Speaker 2:Don't keep them waiting for the bench press. I'll tell you yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, listen, we, we, we're going to talk about a lot of different things. I think for us kicking off the show, obviously we're going MMA, but, um, for a lot of people maybe the newer generation, the first, randy.
Speaker 3:Couture experience is going to be maybe in Hollywood. Yeah, it's interesting how that has shifted. You know, obviously retired from fighting in 2011, which is what 13 years ago, now going on 14 years ago and, uh, it's been interesting to watch the, the shift from fighting and, oh, man, I saw your fight, I loved your fights, I love your fight career to man, I love your movies. Yeah, it's been a really strange thing to to see that transition, uh, in in the last 10 years or so what is the main movie people recognize when?
Speaker 3:expendables is certainly the biggest property I've been involved with. That first one was the number one film that summer, um, and then obviously two, three and four have all done very, very well.
Speaker 3:Um, that cast is ridiculous the cast itself is literally savage row yes, we're talking about a pinch me moment, right being in rio de janeiro for the first scene when the entire cast comes together. We're synchronizing our watches to go into this tunnel and lay all these bombs to blow this palace up in the movie and and we're looking at each other and you could feel the buzz with the cast, with the crew, you know oh my god, can you believe all these guys are in the same?
Speaker 2:movie do you like? Do you like walk in the room? Obviously a bunch of legends. But then, like in your mind, you're like man, I could beat all these guys up.
Speaker 3:Never, you never you never think it, you know. You know. You just don't look at things that way, right? You know when? You guess? The only time I really had that thought I was at a at a pro basketball game. This is back when I still lived in oregon. Nate corey's a good friend of mine, obviously from the team quest days, and he he had a sponsor that gave him two courtside tickets to a toblazers game. And we're sitting on these seats like fish out of water, like what are we doing here? This is so weird. And Scottie Pippen was playing on the team in Portland at that time and I'm sitting there looking at him, literally six feet away from me on the court, and I'm like man, one leg kick and that dude is going to fold up like a cheap lawn chair right there on the floor. I don't know why that thought crossed my mind, but it did. I'm just looking at this guy like one leg kick, if he's done.
Speaker 2:I feel like you get used to sizing guys up a little bit Well if Scottie Pippen didn't know that, he certainly does know now he's like thank God, nothing happened.
Speaker 3:I would have never done that, but that's just what crossed my mind.
Speaker 2:He might actually deserve a late kick. I hear he's a notoriously bad tipper. No tip and pippin' they call him.
Speaker 1:No tip and pippin'. No tip and pippin' Another useless fact that you can take into the world today.
Speaker 3:But going back to that Expendables, the first time you got that script did you know these guys are going to be your co-stars, or did it come in time? Well, I got a call from my agent, said hey, sylvester salone wants you to stop by his office. He has a project he wants to talk to you about. And of course, that's not it, or?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's really cool. Yeah, right off the road okay where and when you know that's not what you're gonna say.
Speaker 3:Sylvester salone, or like rocky, wants to meet with you, and so I show up, of course, and I had met Sly a couple of times before in other settings at the Arnold, when he had his supplement line in stone At R1 down in El Segundo you know Rico's training facility. There he was shooting a big cover for his wife's book, her fitness book, and I happened to be training that day with with uh, uh, our Russian friend there, and uh slide's like, hey, man, would you write a? You know, write a little blurb or a forward for my wife's book. I'm like, yeah, I'd love to do that man.
Speaker 3:So I wrote a little forward for his wife's and obviously he's a huge fight fan. So he calls and says, hey, can Randy stop by? I want to talk to him about this project. I show up. Obviously the casting director is supposed to show up too. She's late. So him and I are just sitting in his office like this talking and he's telling me all about the project. And he had originally wrote the script and Hail Caesar was supposed to be Wesley Snipes' role.
Speaker 2:And Wesley was having some issues?
Speaker 3:yeah, he was, and so he was going to rewrite that role for me. Make me a college educated guy who rants about his ears and quotes nietzsche and all this stuff. And this was the conversation we're having. And now the casting director shows up and she's rushed and she's nervous because she's late to this meeting. She comes charging in and she bumps this bookshelf that he has right inside the door of his office and it's got all the little action figures from all his movies and the Brigitte Nielsen action figure from Go Red.
Speaker 3:He falls off the top shelf and hits the floor. He's like, oh hell, where were you a couple years ago? I could have used you. And we just fall out laughing. Of course we put it back up on the shelf and that, but that broke the ice and and uh, he explained this role and and then a week later he gets terry cruz to play hail caesar, which was perfect fit, and I thought, well, man, I'm, I'm out. He writes toll road into the film based on our conversation. Wow, that day. And I was man, what an honor. He thought that much of me, enough of me to go back to the script and write this new character in to keep me in the movie, so I was very honored that he did that.
Speaker 1:And it's continued. No, yeah, One, two, three four, four.
Speaker 3:I think I got more screen time in four than. I've gotten in any of the others, and it's been amazing.
Speaker 2:I imagine there must be a lot of protein on set Right Like you've got a lot of big dudes, he's got his bars.
Speaker 3:He's got those bars, those weighted bars. He carries those around on set and he's constantly rolling his wrists and, you know, pumping up his forearms and working out on set.
Speaker 2:That's Sly's doing that.
Speaker 3:Yes, oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I go to a pool party here, I'm doing a hundred push-ups in the bathroom before I go out there, you know. So you guys like all like you know, like hitting it working out, like you know, right before certain scenes Like, is that, that's like a thing, right.
Speaker 3:I mean, people do that for sure and you know on his chair so that he can stay pumped up when he's on screen. I saw a lot of the guys in the gym. I saw Arnold in the gym in Bulgaria we were in the Kempinski. You know we worked nights most of those films, so we'd get off in the morning, go straight to the gym, get your workout in, go to bed, get a few hours sleep and you're up getting ready for your next call time to come back and work that next night.
Speaker 3:So you got to lift with Arnold Just in the same gym at the same time. I didn't really lift with him.
Speaker 1:No, I think it's together. You tell everybody yes, we worked out together.
Speaker 2:Nobody knows details. He might have been working out over there, but we were both working out. Yeah, we were training, and we were both working out. Yeah, we were training. And let that myth then continue into whatever. Actually Randy out-benching him, let it happen. Yeah, randy smashed him in the gym.
Speaker 1:I didn't say that, but I'll keep it so. With the movie world that you're now being exposed to, is there a certain role that you would love to play in the future that may be not stereotypical to what you've done already?
Speaker 3:I've always been a fan of the Western genre. I grew up on all those spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood. I've been a Clint Eastwood fan since I was a young kid. Loved those movies, grew up on those movies. Would love to be in a film like that in that genre. I've done one Western with Michael Jai White, alba, johnny Black, but it was kind of a tongue-in-cheek, more of a comedy, even some musical numbers in that one and it was fun. I had a good time doing it and I played a kind of post-Civil War scene in a Curse of the Clown Motel where I played a cavalry guy that was a colonel that was slaughtering Indians and creating this curse.
Speaker 2:Basically, Kevin Costner's been crushing a bunch of these. Western-type movies, yellowstone, something like that.
Speaker 3:That is really good too. I just watched that on an airplane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's killing it, man. He's been doing it for years.
Speaker 3:But one of those two. It was amazing what an epic film Dances with Wolves was. Yeah, yeah, a whole, from a completely different perspective and a very, very interesting film.
Speaker 1:Is it a Tyler Sheridan? Yeah, Tyler Sheridan.
Speaker 3:Everything that dude touches. He trains you up. He comes into the gym yeah, he's very, you know, he just opened a steakhouse too.
Speaker 2:Flex, I went. I haven't gone yet. It was really good. We got to get in there. We got to get that beat.
Speaker 3:Better go because I think it's a temporary setup. It's not going to be there forever. Okay, kind of a test maybe, but it's very good. The steak was amazing. Using his ranch out of Texas for the mead, and obviously Four Sixes sponsored a couple of my events. I do the Border Brawl in St Louis for the foundation, which is a wrestling event, and they've met some of his folks from 4-6's.
Speaker 2:Border Brawl.
Speaker 3:Take all the best wrestlers from the five bordering states in Missouri and match them up against the best kids in Missouri, so it's a great outlet for these high school kids to show where they're at. It's on Flow Wrestling so the college coaches can recruit and watch these kids compete and it's a really cool event. Dave mercatoni is a friend of mine for a long, long time and he organizes that event every year that's awesome.
Speaker 3:I was just there last month, um, and it was really cool, really fun kind of a nice little segue into what we've got coming up this weekend yeah, yeah, I've got the uh operation knockout. It's our 13th year doing this, so it's round, round 13 with Tough Enough Partnered up with Tough Enough. Obviously, my son fought for Tough Enough. A lot of our young amateur fighters come through Tough Enough. Ronda Rousey fought for Tough Enough.
Speaker 2:It really is the farm league, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a great place for these young athletes to get matched up properly so they're not getting in over their head. They get a chance to show their wares and test themselves out and see exactly where they're at in the sport. No amateur sport existed when I started this. My very first fight was a UFC. No, yeah, ufc 13,. My very first one.
Speaker 1:I didn't know I fought twice that night. It was a tournament back then, so now there's amateur ranks.
Speaker 3:My son had seven amateur fights before he ever went pro and so he had a pretty good idea where he was at, technically, tactically condition, wise, psychologically, how he was going to deal with the adversity of walking out and up into that ring or cage and and uh, so and tough enough, has done a great job of of matching these fighters up, yeah, which is not an easy thing to do, so we paired up with them, uh, 13 years ago. They dedicate that show specifically to my foundation, my 501 c3 for wounded combat veterans. All the proceeds, the big silent auction, all that stuff will all go to the foundation. I think last year we raised about forty five thousand dollars for the foundation, so it's been a very, very big one and the motorcycle ride to right yeah, to date, after 13 years of Operation Knockout, we've raised six hundred and eleven,000 just to that one event.
Speaker 2:Wow. They've done an amazing thing for the family. Give a hand for that Incredible, absolutely. And from my side, because I've been supporting the events for many years now and one thing I always wanted to point out is sometimes with these organizations you don't always see the direct effect of the money and how it affects veterans, like specifically. And you know Randy and the way in which he runs the organization, you know he goes and cuts checks to families. You know, and it's a very emotional, powerful thing and you know I appreciate all the work you do for the guys and gals out there who need it, because there's a lot of them. Thanks.
Speaker 3:There is a lot of them, and we have to link arms with as many small organizations as we can to try and help as many of these men and women as we can. Uncle Sam's not getting the job done and the more of us that help each other out no ego, just help each other out the fewer of them fall through the cracks, and it's that simple. We know the stats Twenty 22 a day looking down the wrong end of their pistols. That's not right. So we've got to change the narrative. We've got to give these men and women some support and help them through this transition. It's the right thing to do.
Speaker 2:Operation Knockout, obviously, the money that's generated there and with the motorcycle rides and the foundation, obviously like legacy. I would think you know you're in, you're in a legacy phase of your life, right? Um, how important is that to you to give that back?
Speaker 3:it's huge, it's a huge piece of my journey. 19 years old, I I took that oath and wore that uniform for six years the cold war. Then there wasn't anything going on, so I did all that training, took the same oath that you took and and never had to put my butt on the line, unlike many of these men and women now. Since 9-11, they've been fighting the war on terror and putting themselves in harm harm's way and doing what uncle sam has asked them to do. And then they come back here and they and they frankly they get shit on, they don't get taken care of, and it frustrates the hell out of me both of you, I went in 06 to iraq.
Speaker 3:spent 12 days on the ground with Rich Franklin over there, went to six different fobs, met a bunch of soldiers just like me wearing that same uniform I wore, putting their butts on the line and doing the all the things I trained to do and never had to do.
Speaker 3:That was a stark experience for me to be over there in 129 degree heat, pouring water down my gullet, so I didn't, you know, drop out of heat exhaustion and wearing the you know the black jacket and the and the steel pot and the whole deal, because we had to and, uh, man, it was an eye-opener for me, yeah.
Speaker 3:And then in 07 and got to go to walter reed and bethesda and tour the you know we did at the fisher house, which is their version of the ronald mcdonald house for caretakers, wives, moms, fathers whose loved one is in that hospital, getting fitted for prosthetic or getting surgeries to get back right to then be processed out of the service and go back to being a civilian. And there's where I heard the horror stories walk the wards for the first time and meeting a bunch of these men and women fresh off the battlefield and hearing the woes. Like man, my mom's car's been in the parking garage with a boot on it for the last six months. We can't afford to pay the tickets and she can't drive back to work. We're gonna lose the house. I mean, I'm like what? How in the?
Speaker 2:I mean, talk about a kick in the gonads yeah, and another thing I'd like to point out is that and start this foundation, but even on the website now you know, people who are struggling can go to the website and get assistance. You know, this is something that's really important.
Speaker 3:This is the new way. We've created a portal there that any veteran that's listening to this anywhere, it doesn't matter where you're at it doesn't have to be in Las Vegas. We've got vets all over the country. Now Go to the portal, provide me your DD-214. Show me those bills that are on your back that you can't get rid of, and we'll pay those bills off and take that stress out of your life. Now I'm not just going to hand you cash. I don't want to enable you to continue to self-medicate and adrenaline seek, because that's what we do, indeed but I will definitely take that stress out of your life, and that's been a big, big step up in helping a lot more vets across the board. The MVP database, because we're in nine cities with MVP now all those connections, all those vets in all those cities now have access to Extreme Couture, gi Foundation, xcgiforg, and that portal is there. Any of you can go there and if you need some financial assistance, we'll help you.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. I have a couple friends personally that went into the program and you've assisted them, and so it's amazing. You know helping people, helping people.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It was what it's all about.
Speaker 1:J-Roc was telling me some stories, probably like a couple of weeks before the bike ride that I came up and supported. I didn't have a bike, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:All you guys took off and left me there. I've been trying to get him on.
Speaker 1:Wait, wait, wait a minute On the back of one of these things they just left me. Randy was going, this guy was trying to kick stuff.
Speaker 2:I was like we could rent a sidecar, we could do this up proper. I'm not sure anybody wanted you shifting the gears there, Flex.
Speaker 1:But he was telling me some of the stories and then some of the people that I got to meet that were on the receiving end of some of these checks and beautiful stories where you've gone into hospitals, you've gone into people's houses and you've just changed their life in the most meaningful way just by you know, you using your platform to create the foundation and just pool people together. And I'm going to ask this question because maybe some of the fans that are watching this don't understand what you guys were talking about. You both have served. I never went that route. Unfortunately, I got failed on flat feet in the last uh stages of going into the military, so that was my military.
Speaker 2:You're a rugby player.
Speaker 1:You're great yeah, I was going in as a rugby player too, but you guys obviously have served. You've seen, you've come out. What is it that truly kind of uh frustrates you, to say one of the reasons why you started your foundation? What are the gripes? You see?
Speaker 3:I mean not these, these guys not able to get the care that they need, uh, in a timely fashion. They're waiting months and months with the VA for for treatment, for to see a doctor, to get things set up so they can even begin the process of healing. And then, obviously, the first thing that the medical institutions want to do is slap an opioid or an antidepressant on top of that, and we all know the side effects of that. They're, you know, banning plant-based medicines and a lot of other modalities that are are better and more effectively treating these people in the name of just getting them out the door and getting them out of their face. It seems to me what's frustrating is that they would rather see us kill ourselves than give us the support and the things that we deserve after taking that oath and putting our butts on the line we deserve after taking that oath and putting our butts on the line.
Speaker 2:I've also seen that they've you know, they've cut veteran funding specifically for the migrant crisis and the things that are going on like that, and obviously we're living in a weird world right now. Yeah, you know, and we're we're looking at a possible war right in front of us and and that, for me, is really scary and understanding that we already have this problem that exists with the last 20 years of wars and it's like you know, I don't want to go down that road again.
Speaker 3:Systems already overwhelmed, they can't keep up. Yeah, and that's why foundations like mine exist because we know at some point we've got to take care of our own. We've got to step up and do the job that's not being done. Yeah, that's what's frustrating.
Speaker 2:But people don't see the pain behind the family and what happens to those guys. It's not just them, it's their kids.
Speaker 3:The divorce rate is ridiculous the suicide rate. We've already mentioned and we've helped out plenty of families who've already lost their service member to suicide. Those family members still count and they still count on the books as far as I'm concerned and as far as the foundation is concerned, and we've handed checks to those women even though their service member's already gone, because they're all one unit, they're all part of the same group and the same people that have all endured what that oath means.
Speaker 2:And at the ride, naya. You know she had lost her boyfriend and her dad, both service members, in a very short period of time and Randy helped her and helped that family.
Speaker 3:And I had no idea why she melted down when we called her out and didn't know what she was dealing with. And you never know what somebody else is carrying around. So do your best to be nice for crying out loud. It's just a smile, but little did you know, little did it cost. Hand those smiles out, tell people you love them, you know, help them out. I mean, that's what we're here to do vibrate at a higher level and help each other out, love each other, take care of each other and certainly an affinity for guys that wore the green guys and galsals that wore the green. I'm going to bend over backwards to try and help those people. They took that same oath I did.
Speaker 2:That's good man, I mean. I really appreciate it and we need more of this, obviously, as you see, the political and not to get too political right. Oh, here he goes. Not to get too political.
Speaker 1:When you set the tone like you know what I'm saying, somebody I'm not.
Speaker 2:But I got it. No offense, but somebody goes in with no offense, but I'm about to offend you. It seems to be pretty easy to do these days If I start with, but it's true.
Speaker 1:It's true, Carry on bro.
Speaker 2:Well, you know we got an election. We're a week out of an election. I think it's probably, you know, we could probably agree it's a really important election, maybe one of the most important elections we've seen in our lifetime. We're in two conflicts right now, with others brewing. There's a lot of issues in the country, different politics that are being carried out, our border you know all these things and obviously you know there's got to be some things there that you're seeing, uh, that you're not appreciating or you want changed right, and so we're going to the voting box.
Speaker 3:I'm not gonna you don't have to tell me who you're voting for, but I could guess yeah, well, obviously it's a very touchy subject and still doing studio films, so I keep my head down and my mouth shut. But anybody who digs in and knows who I am and where I came from knows that I'm a conservative, that I believe in this republic and this constitution and our Bill of Rights. That's what separates us from everybody else on the planet and has been the bastion of hope for a lot of folks on this planet for a long, long time, and that is certainly being challenged. The Patriot Act in many ways changed America forever. No more privacy Under the guise of what happened in 9-11, and a lot of information come out now that it appears to have been an inside job with motives, and every war we've ever been in has been a banker's war.
Speaker 3:Why are we not at war with Russia right now? Because we're as connected as they are and we can see through the lies and some of the misinformation and crap that's out there and that's allowed us to be drug into those situations that we shouldn't be in yeah, that's one of the things more than capable of handling the palestinians and hamas themselves, and iran for that matter, and anyone with a brain knew what was going to happen.
Speaker 3:The second those funds were released to iran and where that money was going to go, including the idf, so why would they be surprised when those guys come over the border and do what they did? That's a terrorist organization, plain and simple. Wipe them off the planet. That's fine, but not at the expense of genocide in Palestine and the Palestinian people. That's the truth of the matter. You know it's a very, very difficult situation, or there's? You know it's a very, very difficult situation. You can't criticize anybody there without being called and labeled certain things. That it's not about. That we don't, you know exactly to that point.
Speaker 2:You know, because, like I love all americans, you know, don't whether you're voting for whoever you're voting for. Like we're all americans, we're all in this together. Obviously there's different viewpoints on how we think the country should, should, move forward, but we can all look at things and agree. You know there's certain things not working right. So it's like how do we stop fighting amongst each other? How does it? You know, you see the media narratives, that kind of happen and it's, I feel like it's hard for for the, for an average person, to understand what's real, what's not real at this point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess for me it all depends on who you're around and you just take I've just done this I've taken everything that's been said and then I digest it myself. You know, I'm old enough and mature enough to make my own decisions up. I'm not a sheep. There's things I agree on, things I don't agree on, but we can all agree there's no win. When you talk politics with anybody right, there's always going to be something that or somebody that's going to come after you. You know, because your opinion doesn't.
Speaker 3:Drive with their opinion.
Speaker 1:Drive with theirs. So it's kind of like that lose-lose. Whatever you want to talk, there you go. And you know even my mom in the UK, for example, all the BBC over there is the complete opposite of what we're hearing over here. It's just whatever can be picked apart and put on TV. So there's a skewed version of you know what's really going on over here. Well, not through my eyes anyway, you know. So I speak to my mother. She's always trying to change my mind. It's like I live here, you stay in the uk, that's called the shift.
Speaker 2:But I mean there's some problems in the uk too, that we're seeing here, it's everywhere, it's not just here and we don't get to see all the world news. But like these immigration problems are happening in the uk I mean we were just talking about you had some of your boys, like you know, keeping guys off the streets. It's like it's happening everywhere. So you know there's a bigger problem out there that you know.
Speaker 3:Hopefully we get some daylight here, it all seems to be part and parcel of the same plan and agenda breaking down the sovereignty of all these European countries, breaking down the sovereignty of this country with the open borders and the mass influx of migrants. It seems to be part of a plan in my opinion, and there's a lot of evidence that suggests that, and there's a lot of people that don't agree with that position or don't see those facts laid out. But there seems to be a plan here.
Speaker 1:You're a business guy. I think you should just take a ring to the fucking board. You want to come in here, fight it out, duke it out, you want to come in here, fight it out.
Speaker 3:Duke it out. You want to prove yourself.
Speaker 2:Got a new TV show? Yeah, I know, that's it.
Speaker 1:Segwaying to the ring. My gosh, where do we start with this?
Speaker 2:He's got a lot in the ring. He's got a lot in the ring Again.
Speaker 1:we just mentioned that your first fight was a professional fight, ufc 13,. Right, you fought twice in one day. Yeah, twice that I mean. Can you take us back to that timeline and you going into that UFC 13? And knowing you're going to potentially fight twice that day.
Speaker 3:Well, the journey started a long time before that. Honestly, I'd heard what a great wrestler my dad was. My dad was a deadbeat. He was never really around most of my life. One of the reasons I love to hunt to this day because the only times I got to see him he would come, take me out of school and take me hunting, take me out in the woods to chase deer or elk. Um, but I'd heard my whole life what an amazing wrestler, what a tough guy he was. So somewhere in my young mind at 12, at 11, 12 years old, I turned out for the wrestling team thinking maybe I'd get his attention, maybe he'd come around. Never saw me wrestle a match in my entire career. Wow, I found the place where I seemed to flourish Well you were the natural those coaches were very important Coach Case, coach McAvoy, coach Winter, you know all those guys.
Speaker 3:Those were the guys that filled that void that my father left. My dad left, and so they became very important. Those friends, that seemed to be the place I flourished. Yes, walking out in the middle of that mat in the compulsory uniform of that era, which was a pair of tights and a singlet.
Speaker 3:Now there's real courage for you in front of all your peers to potentially get your ass pinned. I mean, that's where it started learning to control that internal dialogue, learning that I'm going to get out of this exactly what I put into it, the work ethic and all those things that were indigenous to that sport of wrestling then translated to fighting at some point down the road, much, much farther down the road. Ninety-six, I was exposed to the UFC for the first time. One of my athletes brought this VHS tape over from Oregon State. I was coaching at Oregon State. We all lived in the same apartment complex. Man, check this out. It happened to be Don Fry, who I went to college with at Oklahoma State. My freshman year was his senior year in college at Oklahoma State. He was a heavyweight. I was a 190-pounder. We were two of the only three athletes on the whole team that were married, so we all hung out together a lot because we had wives.
Speaker 3:We weren't going to the frat parties strip club and don and I were good friends and here I see him in this cage fighting this dude like dude what is that? And was immediately intrigued and saw the application of years and years of wrestling, wrestling training and mindset uh and they're gonna pay. Pay me what.
Speaker 3:Oh, my God, I definitely want to try this. And then in 2007, you know, I had a friend that put me in sent, filled out the application, sent it in with some wrestling video, said, oh, we got enough wrestlers, but we'll put them on our alternate list. We want more exotic martial artists right now. So I'm on the alternate list. This is in 96, 97.
Speaker 3:Spring rolls around. I'm getting ready to go to Puerto Rico and wrestle for the US, representing the US on the Greco team at the Pan Am Championships, and I get a call three weeks before I'm supposed to leave. Hey, you're on our alternate list. We've got a heavyweight tournament in three weeks. Do you want to fight? I'm like hell, yeah, I want to fight, let's do this. Had to get it passed to the head coach. I was the assistant coach at Oregon State and he said well, if the athletic director's okay with that, I don't like it. I think it's bad for wrestling, I think it's bad for this university, but if the athletic director says it's okay, then you can do it. The athletic director thought it was the coolest thing ever. He went nuts.
Speaker 2:Guy sounds like a hater.
Speaker 3:He went nuts he thought it was the coolest thing ever, so off and going, I fight in UFC 13. Two fights that night. It was a tournament I win the heavyweight tournament.
Speaker 2:Two fights in one night. Yeah, two fights. Talk about that real quick, because Two fights in one night, ladies and gentlemen, right the old school Ironman.
Speaker 3:It was a tournament format and they had cut it down. It used to be an eight-man bracket and you fought three times those early days with Hoyce. They fought three times in one night. It's wild. They cut it down because you didn't always get the best fighter that made it to the finals. Guys got hurt and got injured. You had alternates and other substitutes in there, or a guy went in and fought injured and didn't fight up to his capability either, so they started shifting and moving away. They narrowed it to a four-man bracket, so I fought twice that night. Uh, then shortly after that they did away with the tournament format altogether and, uh, we started running towards regulation, running towards rules. There were very few rules in those early shows. Four rules couldn't bite, couldn't I gouge, you couldn't fish hook um and you couldn't groin strike all my favorites especially that groin strike.
Speaker 1:That's his fucking signature move.
Speaker 3:Joe joe, what was that korean kid, that fighter joe dong? He got just hammered oh yes, that video yeah, makes your butt pucker every time you see it.
Speaker 2:Oh my god yeah true pioneer, though you know, and also when I think about it, like you were really the first dominant wrestler right and and I feel like wrestlers at that time, it was like it was like this emergence, it was like jujitsu everybody's talking about that and all of a sudden these wrestlers just started dominating in the ufc it wasce Gracie, obviously, and nobody knew what Brazilian jiu-jitsu was.
Speaker 3:And here's this 170, 180-pound guy literally tapping out and choking out these huge guys. And the kryptonite to that style was wrestling and Fry Coleman Severin, those were the OG first three.
Speaker 2:Kevin Randleman. Yeah, Randleman.
Speaker 3:There was a bunch of us Danny Henderson, matt Lindley, myself there's a whole plethora of us guys that kind of migrated from the wrestling world into this MMA world and a real raw team, real American wrestling with Rico Ciparelli. That was the team. Me and Dan Henderson and Matt Lindley and a bunch of us were on that team. He had the wisdom to see the direct application of years of wrestling ability in this cage and how to make our mark there and that was what he set out to do is show what real wrestlers were all about.
Speaker 1:And uh, do you ever see? Or do you ever look back and think, wow, you know, the ufc, pfl, bellator, they've all evolved right from them early stages. Do you think yourself? Sometimes it's like, wow, wow, I was fighting. As you know, I would say this your legacy right now in looking back and the evolution of the sport of MMA in general, could you ever imagine what it looks like now, back then?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's been amazing to see the sport explode, to be a small part of that journey, and the sport opened up and people shifted from misinterpreting who we were and what we were doing. They thought we were criminals. Somehow we were just going to grab them and bite them or kick their ass right there. It was very interesting. It was an education process and they used guys like me that came from Olympic caliber wrestling to educate people about the sport and that we weren't mindless.
Speaker 2:It wasn't a mindless rage game Human dog fighting. It's like I remember the dog fighting.
Speaker 1:Cockfight they used to call it yeah.
Speaker 3:And so there was this education process in that period and we ran towards rules. They started implementing unified rules. It was almost a new rule every show back then. So it was really interesting. It's interesting to be involved, interesting to see the sport gain popularity and gain mainstream attention as a legitimate sport. And uh, you know they were using guys like tank abbott. You know who was a reputed barroom brawler I used to love watching this bar.
Speaker 3:You know off this bar stool and punch you in the face. That was kind of their motto and their moniker back there and that wasn't being very well received, frankly. And it wasn't really until the Fertittas and Dana White bought the brand because the brand was struggling that they were able to fashion it in a way, run towards rules, create unified rules which happened just before they bought the company. But they definitely took that to a whole new level going to rounds, going to a system, a 10-point must system, which we're all used to from boxing, and kind of gravitating towards those combative sports that we already knew, that were widely accepted everywhere, and I was used to, you know, say in some of these meetings oh, you take all the combative sports that are in the Olympic Games and you roll them up into one and you have mixed martial arts. This is what we do. So, yeah, it's been an amazing thing to see Used to be go to some of these casting calls, you know, at the same management as Boss Rutten and Kevin Randleman and Rampage Jackson.
Speaker 2:All the OGs.
Speaker 3:They saw that the next action star was going to come out of Mixed Martial Arts, because there's an authenticity and a physicality there that we bring to these roles. So they would start farming us out to these meetings to meet these casting directors and stuff Me. Rampage and Boss would be in the same room and guys would come. It used to be oh my God, you're one of those cage fighters. Why, dying us, we're going to somehow come over the table and kill them. And then it shifted in 2004, 2005. We'd go to those same meetings and guys would come from two floors up. Oh, we heard you were in the building. Can we get a picture with you? And I'm like, oh my God, it's amazing how things have changed.
Speaker 1:Is this going to help me get the part? Is this going to help me get the part In perception? Yeah, so obviously for yourself, randy. You're known for getting into the sport at a later age, even though 33 is not, you know, old in any shape or form. But when you've gone through the career, you've gone through with the wrestling, three NCAA championships you've won what do you want the Olympic alternative to?
Speaker 3:I've been on the Olympic team four times, from 88 all the way to 2000. That was the one goal I didn't achieve in the sport. I didn't make the Olympic team. I made the world team and wrestled in the world championships on four occasions. But in four Olympic trials I managed to come up short and in 92 and 96 especially, I was the number one guy in my weight class. Everybody expected me to make those teams and I managed to step on it and lose in those final matches. So again, I think everything happens for a reason. I lost those matches. I think if I had won those matches, made the team and won my medal, I would probably be a wrestling coach somewhere right now. I would have never forayed into MMA. That fire was still in me because I didn't achieve that goal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and and now I saw this application, not only to make a great living for my family and establish, uh, some generational wealth there through through the sport as a professional athlete, but the direct application of most, you know, 30 years of my life as a wrestler fit right into this sport. It was a great place to jump off. Now I had to learn all the other stuff. But that was the fun part, and so I jumped in with both feet, literally on a whim. Within three shows, four fights. I'm wearing a world championship belt. I'm like what the hell just happened.
Speaker 2:How did that?
Speaker 3:happen. It was crazy and I got into a rhubarb with the old owners, scg and over their contract because they were experiencing the huge backlash politically from senator mccain and others that were speaking out against the sport and calling it human cockfighting and all that. So they got got us canceled off people's choice, the pay-per-view character carrier. So now they were struggling financially. Here I signed this new three fight deal for for great money. And then they're like we can't pay you that. Oh, you know, I'm ready to defend my title. Here it is in black and white this is what you need to pay me. No, I'm sorry, we can't pay you that.
Speaker 3:And I said well, I'm ready to fight, but I'm gonna fight for the amount we just spent weeks negotiating for. And so you choose oh well, you choose not to defend your title, we're going to strip you of the title. And they started a heavyweight tournament and that's how Boss ended up becoming the title. Him and the Randleman fight happened in that tournament, which was a classic, iconic fight between those two warriors Guys. I know very well both of them. So ultimately, kevin eventually came back and and won that title.
Speaker 1:I ended up coming back to the usc and fighting kevin for the heavyweight championship what was the duration in time between you vacant in your title and then coming a year, a year? Yeah, were you active?
Speaker 3:I was wrestling tried to make the 2000 team basically oh wow, I was in the finals of the olympic trials again and lost to garrett lowney, who went on to win a bronze medal in the sydney games. Um and I, I knew at that point it was time for me to retire from wrestling. So I hung up my shoes, put my boots on the mat that day, uh, in dallas, at those olympic trials, and then I could focus solely on on fighting and and not juggle both of those, uh, wrestling and and fighting at the same time.
Speaker 2:Did you have boxing? Sorry, did you have any boxing background or did that start?
Speaker 3:It's a common misconception because of UFC 13. They said, oh, he had extensive boxing training in the army and that wasn't true. I would have done anything to run in formation in boots. So volleyball, yes, sign me up. Boxingball, yes, sign me up. Boxing, I'm in. Sign me up for the boxing smoker. At Fort Rucker, alabama, I did three weeks of training, go to the boxing gym instead of running in formation and then didn't get a match in the smoker. So I did that three weeks of boxing training to get a match in that smoker and then didn't get a match. So that was my extensive boxing training.
Speaker 3:That the announcer said at ufc 13 so everybody thought I was a boxer. I'm like what are they talking about? I'll take it, yeah. So I knew I had to learn the boxing, especially in that second fight against vitor. He was smoking everybody jab cross, jab cross, jab cross so fast too, very very explosive.
Speaker 3:You know, I think, ufc 13. He fought trey tellingman on that, on that card, and literally beat him up in 60 seconds, smoked him, yeah, and he'd done the same thing to tank, yeah, in the next show. Yeah, and vanderley, yeah, um, I think that was later.
Speaker 3:That was later after that I was already the champ when the vanderley fight happened. I watched that fight too, but uh, yeah, he was smoking everybody. And that's who. After my tournament win, they wanted me to fight him in the super fight. And the guy who won that super fight was going to get the title. Shot against Mo Smith. Mo had just beat Mark Coleman Leg, kicked him to death until Mark couldn't stand up anymore.
Speaker 2:Little Maurice Smith yeah.
Speaker 1:I remember that Vito fight. You had him in a clinch. You were just uppercutting him, looking for up Dirty boxing you had him in a clinch.
Speaker 3:You were just uppercutting him. Yeah, dirty boxing, dirty boxing. Born that night yeah.
Speaker 1:I was going to mention that because that's what you know. If you go online and you do some research around, the dirty boxing is next to the name of yours and, like you just told the story now that your boxing extent was, three weeks. At that point in time, of course, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, I definitely went and found a boxing coach to get ready for that Belfort fight because he was smoking everybody, and Scotty down at Boxing Works in Hermosa Beach, and Tony, who was a great kickboxer and a stunt guy. Me and Tony ended up working together in a couple movies after that, but those guys helped me shore up my boxing to get ready for Vitor Belfort the first time I fought him. Here's this southpaw that was in a black belt in jiu-jitsu and literally crushing everybody with his hands just blasting through everybody. So I knew if I could get my hands on him and not get punched in the grill. I had a chance to wear him out and making him wrestle me and that was our goal was to get my hands on this guy and make him wrestle me as much as I can in this fight, tire him out, and that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1:Was it a ritual that you had going into each one of your fights? Was it something that you used to do?
Speaker 3:Superstitions Not superstition, but I did have the same plastics when I cut weight. I wore the same clothes, the same gear. That's how you know exactly how much water weight you lost. It's a regime. So I know I'm sweating, getting my stuff on. By the first 10 minutes of that walk I've already sweat out one pound. I had it calculated. So if I'm nine over, I know it's going to take me 90 minutes. Once I get dressed it's going to take me 90 minutes to sweat out this water and be down to weight. And I had it dialed in to two, literally the ounce I could. I could time it perfectly. I knew exactly the sweat coming up my panties, like I know this is a problem.
Speaker 1:I've lost five.
Speaker 3:I got three or four more to go and I just, you know, do that regularly. Visualization I had a huge visualization routine that I would do every practice in that camp camps. The sweet spot for me tended to be about 10 weeks. 12 weeks was too long, eight weeks was too short. As I got older and later in my career I became more active, I shortened my camps to eight weeks. I didn't need a full 10 week camp because I was just bouncing one camp to the next. There wasn't no downtime in between. So, um, you refine the, you know, dial in what you need and how you feel both physically and mentally.
Speaker 3:All those modalities, massage therapy, my chiropractor, acupuncture, all those things were part of of that camp new school psychological skills that it takes to deal with the adversity of walking out of that tunnel and up into that cage. So, practicing those mental skills, framing uh, visualization. I saw that fight hundreds of times before I ever walked out of that tunnel, with the one common denominator it was me getting my hand raised at the end of it. He could throw the kitchen sink at me in those visualizations, but it was always me being victorious. That that's what I had to picture and program myself, prepare myself to experience. And that's what most people don't recognize.
Speaker 3:You control that internal dialogue. It does not control you. So many people are a slave to that voice in their head and that voice says things that nobody in their right mind would say to your face and not expect to get punched in the mouth. And that's the truth. You control that voice. That voice does not control you, and so many people miss the boat there. And so, getting it to say the same things that come out of your conscious voice, get that subconscious voice to say the same things, and, man, you're, you're going to be a force to be reckoned with. When they're both in line and they're both saying the same thing, especially when the pressure gets turned up, that internal dialogue starts chirping.
Speaker 3:What, what ifs, all the what ifs come in. What if this happens? What if that happens? What if he does this? What if the ref does that? All these things you can't control. So, learning to give those affirmations and make that voice shut up and recite those affirmations and I had to write those on three by five cards in the early days and eventually you don't need the cards anymore because you know them by heart and you can reprogram that voice to say what you need it to say, to keep you on task and keep you doing exactly what you trained to do and go out and execute. Smile, and go out and execute.
Speaker 1:You're a big well, we're a big mindset guy in this podcast and obviously you are a big mindset guy. Would this be principles that you start putting together on that 10-week camp, 8-week camp, that you start putting together on that 10-week camp, eight-week camp? And are you then, as the fight is coming closer, are you more aggressively having that visualization, or is this something that's being prolonged throughout?
Speaker 3:It starts as soon as I know that's the guy they want me to fight and I start watching the video and I go from the oldest video to the newest video. How has he progressed? Where did he win when? How has he progressed? Where did he win? Where did he lose? Where did he like to be? Where did he seem not to like to be? Where are his strengths and weaknesses? And there's where my team comes in guys like eric nixick, right shout out eric aren't gonna love you, eric, aren't gonna blow smoke up behind them.
Speaker 3:They're gonna be honest and say look, this is where he's really dangerous, where he beat this guy and where he wins here so it's an important relationship you need to prepare tools and sharpen tools for you to stay out of those situations or be able to address those situations.
Speaker 3:If you should happen to fall into that situation, tito takes you down. You've got a problem. 96 of his fights he won from that top position, dropping elbows on guys. So it boils down to not conceding that takedown and allowing him to get the position where he has the most success right and then spank his butt.
Speaker 3:Well, could have, never in a million years imagined ending up in that circumstance with 45 seconds left in that fight. But it happened so. But again, you know you sharpen the appropriate tools you believe you have to solve the problem. It's problem solving that guy across across the cage poses a significant number of problems that you have to mentally and physically figure out how to solve. And and so sharpening the appropriate tools, hoping you get that combination right and you're out to able to go out there and execute those things.
Speaker 3:You keep that internal dialogue in line. It doesn't undermine your confidence. You're not out running sprints the week of the weigh-ins because you what if I get tired? And then you wonder why you don't have your legs under you on saturday night because you listen to that voice and we're out in the parking lot running sprints instead of having confidence in your plan and sticking to your guns. Yeah, oh, I mean. All those things are a factor, and a huge piece of athletics is is mental, and what I wished I'd realized is that a lot of those same mental skills apply to my everyday life, not just my athletic life. I could have probably saved myself a couple of divorces maybe not, maybe not we're not gonna go down that road.
Speaker 1:I know you said nothing's old, but you know. Off the record, yeah, but we won't go on that record. There's obviously a few ex-girlfriends that uh would love throw me under the bus too, so I'll move away from any of them ex-relationships. But just fast, quickly, and I'm going to dive into this. In the cage, when you're fighting, you obviously mentioned that guy across the cage has got an excessive amount of tools that he's going to use on you. Your job is to make sure that you have more tools than that person In the fight. Are you just in flow state or are you consciously reminding yourself to be present? And if so, what kind of tactics do you use?
Speaker 3:I think the goal is to be in flow state In the heat of the moment. In an action-reaction sport like mixed martial arts or wrestling, you don't have time to think. That opportunity to execute that technique happens in a split second and if you're not already in the motions of of executing that technique, that moment passed and you've missed it. So you're absolutely trying to achieve that flow state. The machine in in the zen world, what's it called? Everything slows down. You see everything that's coming. It's a crazy state of mind, but when you get in that flow state, that's what that flow state is. The zen call it machine. Yeah, I have that tattooed on my side.
Speaker 2:Uh, in kanji it's a real thing, too right.
Speaker 1:It's like you like everything slows down is it a fight in particular where you just had that flow state and you're like oh my gosh, I'm, I'm absolutely tricks though?
Speaker 3:I've had some amazing uh encounters in that flow state where everybody was like what the hell?
Speaker 1:How did he do that? I got fucking goosebumps thinking about this.
Speaker 3:It's wild and that's absolutely what you're trying to achieve. And again, controlling that internal dialogue, letting that chatter go on and undermine your confidence, having all those things firing on the same cylinder, seeing that success, visualizing and preparing yourself physically because those pictures you put in your head you will have a physical response to Amen. I do this all the time with people. Make them close their eyes and visualize that lemon and you see your hand come in and slice that lemon and the two halves of the lemon open up and you can see the segments and the clear juice and the pulp and it's running out on the counter and you start to smell that, smell that lemon.
Speaker 3:Close my eyes doing this with you and now you're. And now what? Your mouth is starting to pucker and I can open your eyes. I don't see any lemons in here. You just put that image in your brain and had a physical response to that picture. That's how powerful that is and it's the same thing with me visualizing that fight and seeing myself walk out of that tunnel, walk up into there and execute those, especially that first encounter, that first engagement, because that gets the momentum going your way, and then it's action, reaction and everything that you've trained to do unfolds right in front of your face. It's an amazing thing to experience is there?
Speaker 2:is there a particular fight that you you know is your favorite fight, or you just you had that flow state, right, you know there's three that come to mind immediately.
Speaker 3:That first belfort fight. Nobody gave me a snowball's chance in hell winning that fight. He smoked everybody. I think he had six fights to that time and an aggregate time in the cage of about three and a half minutes.
Speaker 2:He was like a Mike Tyson in the UFC.
Speaker 3:Just blasting through everybody and I knew if I could get my hands on this guy and hang on to him and make him wrestle me, literally hang around his neck like a weight, he was going to have a problem. And that's exactly how that unfolded and nobody gave me a chance to win in that one. The first Chuck fight Again, everybody was sure Chuck was going to knock me out and I made friends with that eventuality, that that was a possibility. But by god, I was going to go down swinging and I was hitting him first and that totally threw him off. He never got in the groove in that fight.
Speaker 3:And the second and third fight, what happened? He changed his footwork. He changed the way he approached me. Because of that it made it much more difficult to get bearing on him. He was a moving target instead of that stationary target that he was. He had those long levers and that unique innate ability to catch you right on the end of those things and I had to make friends with that's exactly what he was going to do and there's a damn good chance he might catch me. So make friends with the worst possible outcome and go out and do exactly what you trained to do and it worked. Can I ask you that?
Speaker 3:I know we go one tim sylvia fight was the third, the third and and again six foot eight much chef in the cage, been retired for 13 months going through the divorce and all that, and came back for that fight. Nobody, nobody. 43 years old, everybody's like this guy's out of his mind I was jumping out of my chair. I think everybody was.
Speaker 2:When he landed that right hand.
Speaker 3:It was like practice that left inside kick to break Tim's balance and bring his head down overhand right left hook and he disappeared for the left hook. I was as surprised as everybody when he fell over. That was huge.
Speaker 1:We were talking about that. I don't know if you were on this episode, but me and Eric were talking about that particular fight on one of the episodes him and I done together. Eric has been a co-host on the show a few times, co-host when we brought guys like Strickland in because we need to have a little formative. Because you know Eric would be like okay, okay and Sean's like okay.
Speaker 3:You know, if there's anybody that can control.
Speaker 1:Sean, I think Eric has a slight advantage there, you know, but that's so impressive. Like I'm 40 right now, I'm 41 in November and the thought of me getting back onto a competitive bodybuilding stage is crazy, you know. You've got to go through the whole process. More than anything else, it's the mind change Because there's such a journey to getting back on stage in my world. But I have to start believing that I'm going to win that Mr Olympia long before I've even touched a weight. And that process is so far behind me right now because obviously I've gone through the stages losing weight, killing the ego off, because again, otherwise it's that next competitor that I've got to beat and face on stage. For you, 43 years old, getting back into the octagon facing the current champion again, otherwise it's that next competitor that I've got to beat and face on stage. For you, 43 years old, going, getting back into the octagon, facing the current champion. How hard was that for you to get back into that routine and training again, um, and get into that mindset it never left.
Speaker 3:So it wasn't like I had to. You know, I was still those, even though I stepped out for 13 months. There was other stuff going on. I was going through a divorce, I was in a rhubarb with the powers that be Dana and company over contracts and BS. But that fire, that hunger in me and what it took to walk back up into that belt, I knew what I had to do and I also knew Tim pretty well.
Speaker 3:Tim came and stayed with me for three weeks in oregon and team quest stayed in my house and I liked him. Tim and I were friends and god, we're still friends to this day. But I knew tim, psychologically, was one of those guys that had to do this to put his own mind in the right place, have that animosity and that anger between whoever he was fighting so he could go out and do his job and he the right place, have that animosity and that anger between whoever he was fighting so he could go out and do his job, and he was going to have a little trouble because of our friendship, garnering that same energy with me. I knew psychologically that was going to be an issue for tim. I'd also spent three weeks on the mat with tim training and so I kind of watched him progress, watched him progress all the way to rico when he won, won the title and was in there cracking dudes and you know knocking out cabbage knocking, you know, literally yeah he was crushing and I saw that mentality changing him.
Speaker 3:He started fighting not to lose instead of going out there and fighting to win, which is a completely different mentality. Then there was the andre oloski tim silvia show. For about five years there it was them back and forth, yeah, and they knew each other so well and some of those fights were like watching paint dry. They just they didn't engage, they weren't very exciting. So I watched this change in tim.
Speaker 3:I knew tim tactically and technically and, uh, psychologically I knew he was going to have an issue doing what he needed to do in a fight against me. We had worked on that first engagement that left inside kick to break his balance and bring his head down. And man did that work like a charm. And then again, once that momentum is going your way, it's going to take something pretty drastic from him on his side of things to get it to swing back his way. And he just never. He never got in the groove. He couldn't make it happen. Biggest crowd we've ever had in North America at that time, over 22,000 people nationwide in Columbus Ohio. It was a crazy crowd. I'll never forget that last 10-second countdown. It was amazing.
Speaker 1:Is that something you miss the crowd response.
Speaker 3:No, you know, it took me a good year to come to terms with walking away from the sport. When I did the James Toney fight was that camp, for whatever reason, every old injury I'd ever experienced through wrestling and fighting flared up in that camp for no particular reason. And that was the first time that little voice in my head started saying hey, maybe that's your body telling you it's time to do something else. And I think once you start having that conversation in your brain, that's something you have to take very seriously. That's hard to fight, especially the nature of this sport where you're literally putting yourself in harm's way to try and solve those problems that guy poses. So once that little conversation started happening in my brain after that camp, I knew I didn't want to go out on that fight. I wanted a real fight.
Speaker 3:so not that he wasn't a real fight, but that was more of a gimmick fight, boxing versus mma, the whole thing and I was honored to get the nod. I think they were originally yeah, it was interesting that chuck for that and they thought, well, chuck, might be silly enough to try and stand up and box with James Toney. We know Randy won't do that and I honestly think that's why I got the nod. Yeah, it was because they knew I would wrestle him. I wasn't going to try and box with him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ufc wasn't trying to lose face on that one. No, there was a lot of back and forth. They In Boston.
Speaker 3:I mean, that was an amazing place to fight. That crowd in Boston was ridiculous. They are sports crazy there. Dana's hometown.
Speaker 2:He's like don't you go out there and fuck me Not in front of my hometown. Speaking of Dana. Speaking of Dana, you know I've heard there always hasn't been the best relationship there and I don't know if that's because you're integrated with the PFL and essentially it's a competing league.
Speaker 3:Dana had issues with me because I held their feet to the fire over their ancillary rights and their crappy contracts when they bought the company in 2001,. I had just signed to new management Jeremy Lappin and Peter Levin the same guys that were sending me out all these casting calls because they believed the next action hero was going to come from the MMA world because of that, like I said, that authenticity and physicality and so they understood what those ancillary rights were, and what that meant to me is, when they bought the company, I was the heavyweight champ and I was due, after one more fight, to sign a new contract with these new guys that owned it and we took them to task over those ancillary rights. Why should I give away all those ancillary rights in every category in perpetuity, forever? Yes, that means if I wanted to write a book or be involved in a film like expendables or whatever in a video game.
Speaker 3:I would have had to have asked their permission to do those things and they would have wanted their cut of that. Yeah, I get owning the fights that I'm in. That they've created a platform for that's fine, but all this other extraneous stuff why would I give that stuff away? Right? That's silly.
Speaker 2:How has it changed now? I mean, is it, is it still similar? Cause you know just the it hasn't changed.
Speaker 3:Uh, obviously the class action lawsuit been approved by the judge, the. We were hoping for injunctive relief. Uh, money's great and and the you know, 375 million dollars is a lot of money for 1200, what was originally 1200 fighters in that class, for the league class. But the real goal on this 10-year process with these big class action firms was injunctive relief, create some transparency in our sport and change the way that's that this company has to do business. Now the most direct way to do that is to get the Muhammad Ali Act amended to cover all combative sports athletes, not just boxers. That act was passed in 1996 to protect boxers from promoters like Don King and Bob Arum.
Speaker 3:The commissioner of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, who was the number one commission in the US, was Lorenzo Fertitta when that act was passed in 96. As far as creating a stable of fighters that he can then exploit, sign to these 17-page crap contracts and basically keep them to a minimal amount of the take from any single event, the fighters are taking 13% to 15% of any single event in the UFC home. All the rest goes to the promotion. Their goal is to keep the athletes under 20% and they've done that very, very well at 13% to 15%. Show me another sport in our society where that's the case. The athletes that are putting their butts on the line are taking that little amount home. There isn't one. Everything's at least 50%. Boxing is 60 to 75%, depending on who's fighting on that card. So there's a huge issue in our sport with transparency.
Speaker 2:It's a prevalent issue too, right? It's like we see a lot of this being talked about, even though he's in the sport. He's not in the sport, right, but he's in the sport, jake Paul. He's been leading that. Jake Paul's been doing these crossover boxing matches.
Speaker 3:Guys from the MMA world like Ben Askren, tyron Woodley, anderson Silva and those guys made more money from that one crossover boxing match than they ever made in in mma. And jake paul is poking dana in the chest about fighter pay. John jones stepped up francis nagano, but back when I was taking them to task over this stuff in 01 and 06, nobody. I was the only one chirping about it.
Speaker 1:So it'd be pretty scared to to. Yeah. No, rock the boat. Nobody wants to be.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah um, nobody wants to be the kurt flood. I mean, what kurt flood did for baseball is is exactly what needs to happen. They need these top echelon fighters to step up and be willing to put their careers on the line to force the companies to do business differently you, uh, obviously, uh, uh, involved with different leagues.
Speaker 1:Obviously you've got your own, we just spoke about, but then, uh, pfl is is big with yourself and, um, how long have you been with pfl?
Speaker 3:seven years now seven years. Yeah, they're a fledgling new organization but they've exploded. Obviously we just absorbed bellator and the 215 fighters that bellator had. Surprisingly, they kept that brand intact and put that as the umbrella and kind of the pay-per-view model over the top of the global season where I work. And then we've created these regional feeder programs. Uh, you know, pfo europe is just finishing its second season. Pfo mina, which is middle east and north africa, is just finishing its first season. You're going to see pfo, australfl Australia and PFL Africa come online next year as these feeder programs into the global season and then the global season into the pay-per-view model which is right now still Bellator and the Bellator champs. So obviously, francis just fighting in that big championship against Henan Ferreira, francis just fighting in that big championship against Henan Ferreira and that was our first kind of real official big pay-per-view Was an amazing card and amazing fights. I'm not sure how the pay-per-view did. I suspect it probably didn't do that well, unfortunately, because I think we need it to do well. But at the end of the day, we're still experiencing some growing pains.
Speaker 3:This company has just grown so fast that keeping up with it and doing things the right way and taking care of the fighters the right way, which is what they set out to do.
Speaker 3:They created a meritocracy. It's not about talking smack or publicity stunts. It's about going in that cage in the global season and certainly in the feeder programs and scoring criteria point, and assuring that you get into that playoff and then that championship at the end of each one of those seasons. And then, once you've elevated into that playoff and then that championship at the end of each one of those seasons, once you've elevated yourself that way and become a world champion in a feeder program or a world champion at the global level, now you move up into the champs versus champs and the pay-per-view model at the highest level. That's how it's set up. I love that global season, that meritocracy. If you want to talk smack, talk, smack, but it that meritocracy. If you want to talk smack, talk, smack, but it's not going to get you anywhere. You still got to go up in that cage and score points.
Speaker 2:Back it up. Yeah, you got to back it up.
Speaker 1:I've got a number of friends that fight for PFL battle to overseas. They love it. They have an incredible relationship with you guys over there. They said that some of them have come over from the UFC and have found their new home. They speak no names mentioned, but they truly said that they feel like this is the organization that they wish they had in their books from the beginning, because it's just a different experience. So I don't know what you guys are doing differently over there, but seemingly it's we're doing our best, best again to create that meritocracy.
Speaker 3:It's all about how you fight. It's not about all this extraneous other stuff and giving the fighters a voice and how they're regulated. You know we have a athletes advisory board and me and ray lewis are are on that board. Now I wish that was more active. They've created that, but we haven't really used that. But at least the fighters are having a say in how they're paid and how they're regulated, in the rules that are installed. They want to bring elbows back, especially at that pay-per-view level, at the highest level. We're used to elbows.
Speaker 2:Where did elbows go?
Speaker 3:We eliminated elbows just because we're asking these fighters to turn around in the regular season every eight weeks. So the more cuts we can eliminate through elbowing, but they're getting cut anyway.
Speaker 2:That would take a lot out of your game, though.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you look at Tito and so many others. We made a living with those elbows, so I have sharp, bony elbows, evidently.
Speaker 3:You also gave guys nightmares with those elbows, the athletes want to see that rule and that tactic come back into the global season, because they're getting cuts anyway and they're still able to make it to that next fight in eight weeks. So what did we really accomplish by taking the elbows out? I think it was worth a try and we're asking them to turn around and fight again eight weeks later in the regular season and then eight weeks after that for their playoff. So I think we'll probably see that rule change come back here in this next season. As we close out our finals coming up in Riyadh on the 29th on Black Friday for the global season, Some great matchups. This new young gal from the UK, Dakota Ditcheva. She won the PFL Europe first season at 125. And she is just tearing people up. Wow, Muay Thai world champ two times as a teenager and really developed an amazing MMA game. She's been fun to watch. But a lot of great fights on that final card coming up on the 29th in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1:Yes, saudi seems like it's taking a lot of the big fights now.
Speaker 3:Saudi is definitely taking over in sports in many ways.
Speaker 3:They have largest sovereign hedge fund in the world. The PIF is $800 billion. They realized that their gas isn't going to last forever. Their oil isn't going to last forever. They need to create opportunity. See what's going on in Qatar. They see what's going on in Dubai and they're the largest population base in that region. So they're the largest population base in that region. So they're like this new king is like why are we taking a hind seat, a back seat, to any of these other nations? We should be building these opportunities for our population and our people. Everything's changed there.
Speaker 3:I was pleasantly surprised. I've been over there four times now in the last year, year and a half to close the mina deal, to go to the fury francis fight, the champs versus champs. I got to commentate that one bell. When we bought bellator, we did a champs versus champs. I got to commentate that one. When we bought Bellator, we did a champs versus champs fight. And now we just had the big Nagano fight over there. And now I'm going back over for the fifth time here at the end of November. So long trip, but amazing. They treat us like kings, literally. The food is amazing.
Speaker 2:Everything the building hand over fist I mean there's cranes all over riyadh and kadia. The architecture itself, too, it's like, it's remarkable, it's beautiful, right, it's really almost sci-fi ish some of it.
Speaker 3:It's really, really amazing what they're doing there. And women are now driving, women are now going to school, women are now in the workforce. The minister of sport for the entire country is a female. Before 2016, she was doing underground soccer Underground and if they'd have caught her, they'd have probably stoned her to death. Now talk about cojones, right, true? So this new king's like I'm making you the minister of sport. Wow, that's the kind of backbone that you have. You're exactly who I need running sports.
Speaker 3:Good for the king to have that forward thinking too, and Turok obviously is a huge boxing fan and a huge gamer. He's taken over boxing in many, many ways. A lot of these big boxing matches are being funded and taken by them. That's why the Francis and Tyson Fury fight was over there. I must have saw every top boxer for the last three decades at that show. It was a remarkable show, unbelievable. The arena was state-of-the-art. Everything they did there was incredible. Um, I spoke at a magnet school for judo and taekwondo. There were more girls on those mats than there were boys.
Speaker 1:So things have definitely progressed and changing there significantly, which is great to see it's great to see you, know, know, I'm sure, from your, from your shoes, from early days, to see the just the progression of how many females now are coming into the sport that, whatever martial art level.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, fastest growing sport in our country right now in the U S is women's wrestling. They're going to have their own NCAA championship next year, in 2025. For for women's wrestling. There's over 38 collegiate programs now for women in in college wrestling, so that sport has exploded at every level and and we're seeing that across the board on the international stage, our women's wrestlers are doing fantastic in the worlds at the olympics.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's been great talk about a feeder market for becoming a fighter also. Right, You're going to see a ton of those girls transitioning over At some point you'll see.
Speaker 3:Bella Meir Frank.
Speaker 2:Meir's daughter who's?
Speaker 3:wrestling for Iowa. She will be stepping up in a cage somewhere, using her wrestling prowess and martial arts prowess to become a world champion at some point. I fully expect to see that, yeah she's a stud, my gosh.
Speaker 1:she's come to the gym with Frank a few times. I won't say that she outlifted Frank, but she outlifted Frank, which is no small feat.
Speaker 2:I was going to say Frank's hard to outlive man.
Speaker 1:That dude is a Well, this is his daughter, so the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Randy, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you here, truly truly. You are a legend and somebody that you know. I grew up watching. Um, you know it's, it's a full circle moment for me and and something I left out early in the show we met for the first time in columbus, ohio, for the honor classic and, uh, we, somehow, we kept on meeting there every year and surprisingly if I don't say you'll be shocked it was at the bar upstairs at the hyatt, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, we'd always see each other there, whether you remember or not, but I would come up introduce.
Speaker 1:Don't say you'd be shocked. It was at the bar upstairs at the Hyatt right. Yep, we'd always see each other there, whether you remember or not. But I would come up, introduce myself. And you're an unbelievable champions champion because you give so much time to everybody and I've seen so many people just wait in to say something to you and you were sitting on your own which is crazy at the bar, on a high, high table, um, just trying to have a drink or just have a break from working the expo, but you give everybody your time, man, and I sat back and watched that from from afar, uh, until I became that guy myself.
Speaker 2:I was like fuck it, I gotta do this too I was literally just gonna say like that is exactly how that's exactly how he is unbelievable, bro.
Speaker 1:But but that's great for me to to see that in the somewhat of my early part of my career, to see somebody that is done everything in the ufc become the first of a champ, champ, hall of fame, hall of fame in the fitness industry too. You just won that, uh, the award at the honor classic hall of fame award. Um, but it was incredible just to see how much time you took with the fans, how engaging you were, because there's many people who don't have half the accolades that you do and they're kind of like hey, you know, let me sign something. No eye contact, but you give everybody your time, and that was incredible for me to see.
Speaker 3:I appreciate that. I try to keep it simple. I love people, people love you. I try to keep it simple, I love people. People love you and the golden rule is the golden rule for a reason. You treat people exactly how you want to be treated. It's a pretty simple thing. We, as humans, tend to complicate the hell out of everything, and it doesn't need to be complicated, but I try to operate from that position of humility in everything that I do.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 3:Start with humility, act with humility, end with humility. You meet so many people that you know my motto is every single person I meet is better at something than I am, and if I approach that person with an open heart and an open mind, I have a chance to learn from that person. So I always try to start with humility, act with humility and with humility, and that puts me in a position to learn from every single person I meet.
Speaker 1:What a great life statement, right there, right, just treat everybody you want to be treated yourself. And suffice to say I've tried to do the same thing myself, from the humble beginnings of where I've come from to where I am. We all have them circle back, stories where people have met you and may have become a success in themselves, and then remember that first time they spoke to you. Whether you remember or not, but I'm sure you have many of them stories, as do I. But, um, it's good karma too, right, this?
Speaker 3:yeah, it's planting seeds and most of us don't realize we're planting seeds and we'll probably never see that plant, that, whatever that seed was we planted, grow. Some of us will be long gone when that person achieves what that seed was that you planted in them, and I think that's the way you have to look at it. Do your best to plant those seeds, pay it forward, fill your cup up and pour that cup out, give it to people so you can fill it up again and give some more. I mean, that's how life's supposed to work, in my opinion.
Speaker 1:Well, in wrapping up this podcast, when that day comes for us all and we get put into the ground, what is it that you want people to to know and be reminded about?
Speaker 3:I think just exactly what we're talking about how you treat people. You know. Spread love, be be uplifting. High tide raises all ships all the time though your ego. That's our motto at the gym. Leave your ego outside. It's only going to get in the way. Come in with an open heart and an open mind and treat people the way you want to be treated. It's not rocket science. I try to represent the sport with integrity. It wasn't about creating personas or any of that other stuff. I tried to keep it simple and be myself. I think, whether I won or lost, the fans stuck with me. They they weren't fickle that way with me and and I think they appreciated that approach. So I hope they still see that in me and that's, you know. That's. That's what it's all about.
Speaker 1:Well, rest assured, I don't think anybody has a a bad word, and we spoke about briefly earlier when we'd done a little tour of the gym. It's incredible to hear what people say about you when you're not in that room and suffice to say you've done an incredible job throughout your career and all the people that you've met on the climb and all the people that are around in retirement that either know you from the Expendables or know you as the MMA legend that you are.
Speaker 2:But Rock, in wrapping up anything, no, just it's a pleasure having you here today, randy, and also just to the folks out there this Saturday, november 2nd, get out there and go to some fights, have some fun, it's for a good cause. Or donate XCGI Foundation. Or donate.
Speaker 3:XCGIFoundationorg is is the website. That's the portal for any of you vets out there that need some assistance, need some help. We can get you in touch with counselors, help deal with some of those wounds that are on the inside that are a lot not so visible. Uh, we can help pay off some of those bills that are nagging at you and causing some stress in your life. So come see us, come support the cause. If you want to support our veteran community, come to the fights on Saturday, get in, you know, buy a piece of art at the auction, come watch some great amateur fighters get down and show their abilities and, at the same time, support our veteran community. So I appreciate you guys having me on and allowing me to promote that and what we're doing and and to talk about all this. Man, it's great, and I love the layer. The layer is amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, this is your home from home. If I want to convert you into the body, this guy is Benjamin button You're. This guy could be seen on the fucking Mr Olympia stage. He only needs like a couple of weeks of boxing done him well, a couple of weeks of bodybuilding we'll get him back on the olympia stage. But that all said, my friend, it's uh, uh, incredible. As I said, well wishes to everything you're doing and the legacy that continues to grow, and we will be supporting all the causes, including this saturday, and all the future ones that are going to be happening this year and next year. So this is Flex, it's Rock, and this is Randy, the natural couture. We are out.
