Steve-O on Having UFC Fighters Give Him Cauliflower Ear

Way back when, before I got sober, I had this tour. It was called the Don't Try This At Home Tour. And I would promote every show by saying, I will be drunk and on drugs or your money back. And I'm in it. And you watched me again. What year was this? It started in 2001 and I ran that till like 2005. And I mean, you would just watch me get completely hammered on stage, like pounding tequila and shit. When I came out on stage, I would walk out with like a suitcase of Budweiser cans and I'd toss them out of the crowd and I would take the can, I would start out with one and I would just bash my head with it until the can exploded. And I'd be particularly proud if the can broke into two separate pieces and after I broke the one can, then I would take out two cans, one in each hand and go back and forth bop bop bop bop bop bop bop and break both of them. So every show I would break three beers over my head and I would do that like every night. Oh my God. And that, like what I understand about the CTE phenomenon is that you're absolutely right. It's not about how hard you get hit. It's the accumulation of lots of little hits and that's why football is the biggest one. Did you suffer anything from that? The worst part was then after I got sober, I started to stand up like initially there was a period where I would do it with sparkling water cans. And you were doing it still? You were still beating yourself in the head? I did it for a little while. How many times you think you've beaten yourself in the head? How many shows? If you had to count them all up? Hundreds. Oh my God. Right. And I mean as far as I can tell, I'm in pretty good shape. Tony Hawk told me one time, he says that he found out with regard to CTE that there's a gene which will make you predisposed to Alzheimer's disease. APOE4. Yeah. And if you have that gene, then you're very much at risk for CTE, but if you don't have that gene, you're considerably less at risk. And he said that when he found that out, he went and got the test and determined that he did not have that gene. And when I heard that, I kind of cheered on it for a while. I ended up like it was kind of nagging at me and I ended up reaching back out to Tony. I said, hey Tony, about that test, like what was your plan if you did have the gene? You can't unhate yourself in the head, you know? He's like, oh, I didn't have a plan. Like, how can you have a plan after the fact? Exactly. But so I'm like, I don't want to fucking go take that test. I don't want to know if I have that goddamn gene or not. Well, if it's been this many years afterwards, you're not suffering, you probably don't have that gene. I also went to like, and now of course, famously the whole CTE phenomenon, you can't find out if you have it until you've died and they've like, I think they can tell now. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think there's a new way that they can tell before you die, but it used to be that they had to wait and do an autopsy on you. Right. Well, I went to some like brain specialist kind of guy. Were you having problems? No, I just went because I was interested. And Dr. Drew sent me to this guy. It was actually when I was trying to get cauliflower ear as like as part of part of my multimedia comedy. And I remember telling you too that I was like, I'm going to do a crazy bit and I try to get cauliflower ear. And I remember you telling me that you were like, nope, I don't support that. You said I think the cauliflower ear is something that should be earned. You know, like and I remember thinking, oh, well, like and I became buddies with Chuck Liddell and Chuck Liddell and I got together. We made the fucking funniest craziest video like of him trying to get like I got I made this helmet that like I designed this helmet that left my ears sticking out to protect my head from like headshots a little bit. And my ear sticking out and I got Chuck Liddell fucking sets up a golf ball on my ear and fucking wax it off. Oh, no. No. Did you get cauliflower ear? No, then we spent two days with Chuck trying to do it and it just didn't work. Then I got together with Rhonda Rousey and was on the mats with her and she's like her and Travis just like roughing out my ear all day long and and and and they're looking at my ear. They're like, dude, we got it. That's it. You know, we got it and then it just went away. Then I got together with Jorge Mosvidal. He put his his BMF belt over my ear and he's just like punching against a door and and he's like dude, that's it right there man. That's cauliflower. We got it still. And then I got together with John Jones. Oh my God. I had like the who's who. You're such a glutton for punishment. I had the who's who of the UFC Hall of Fame like give their best shot and everybody said dude, we got it and then it didn't work. Dude, John Jones blasted my ear into oblivion like oh with a he took one at the time was his current light heavyweight belt and like oh yeah, there we go. Jesus Christ and he's hammering your ear. Dude. Oh my God. He's so upsettingly overdid it that my ear got got blasted apart and you still didn't get cauliflower. Oh God. So bloody. Oh my God, dude. What the fuck? We're not putting that on the bed. You just chipped it off. You didn't get stitched up. Just cut that little piece off. Oh, no. So you have like the Evander Holyfield. Like when Tyson bit Holyfield's ear, right? That was that was an idea that I pitched for Jackass like multiple times. I was like, do you want like Mike Tyson to bite a chunk? Oh no. Oh my God.