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Johnny Knoxville is a stunt performer, actor, co-creator of the “Jackass” franchise, and host of “Fear Factor: House of Fear.” The series premieres Wednesday, January 14, at 9/8c on FOX and streams the next day on Hulu. https://youtu.be/bwSQms7eyVM?si=GelPfF28gflbjhum https://www.hulu.com/series/fear-factor-house-of-fear-51cd2a7b-0f54-430a-aae8-b4c630806f79 https://www.fox.com/detail/series/SER262489TTWV/fear-factor-house-of-fear
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Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
Yeah, yeah, he said fuck you all bad, he choked him asleep.
I would pay for it to say that.
How did you meet Judo, Gene LaBelle?
I met him first on Men in Black 2.
He was a stuntman.
Oh, okay.
And the stunt people would line up outside his trailer so he would choke them
out.
And he would give you that little, he would give you a patch afterwards.
You've been choked out by Judo, Gene LaBelle.
Oh, God.
He had all those cartoonish patches.
He gave you a bunch of those.
He's the character, man.
I saw one stuntman, right before Gene choked him out, he goes,
one second, this Irish dude, and he turned around and he slapped Gene in the
face.
And Gene's like, okay.
And then after Gene choked him, they were standing up, Gene just dropped him
straight to the ground
for slapping him.
Ooh.
You can get hurt like that.
Yeah.
Well, that's what you get for slapping Gene LaBelle.
Yeah, don't slap him.
Give him a kiss.
Kiss him in the cheek before he chokes you out.
Don't slap him.
Oh, God.
He had one of the very first ever mixed martial arts fights.
Oh, yeah.
It was that he fought.
Milo Savage.
Yes.
Yeah.
And didn't Milo Savage grease himself up beforehand?
Oh, yeah.
But also, Gene was wearing a gi, which kind of negates most of the grease.
Yeah.
Because you're wearing this, like, very frictiony gi.
So he grabbed him.
And was, I guess the rumor was Milo Savage's gloves were loaded?
I don't know.
I would do that, though, if I was Milo Savage.
Oh, yeah.
I would have some kind of weapon against Gene LaBelle.
Well, most people that have never grappled a guy like that, you don't have any
idea how
helpless you actually are until you think, I'll be able to push him away from
me.
I'll be able to push him away and get some punches off.
You really don't know until that guy grabs you.
And it's like being grabbed by an orangutan.
Yeah, because his mom ran the Grand Olympic Auditorium, right?
And he grew up training with all the disciplines of fighters that came through
there.
Well, he definitely knew pretty much everything.
He knew a lot.
But, you know, obviously, he's a judo specialist.
But he's the guy who taught Bruce Lee about the importance of grappling.
Yeah, because he worked with him on the Green Hornet?
Yeah.
I think he worked with him on that.
But when he locked up with Bruce Lee, like, Bruce Lee was like, oh, okay, I'm
helpless.
Like, apparently, the story was that Gene picked him up and carried him around
over his shoulder.
And then Bruce Lee was like, okay, fuck this.
Because, like, Gene was a light – I think he was a light heavyweight judo
champion.
So, I mean, he's probably at least 190 pounds.
And, you know, Bruce Lee was a pretty small guy.
Yeah.
And Gene just grabbed him.
His face just looked like a catcher's mitt.
It was just – just looking at that guy's face.
Yeah, he was a classic.
And always check out a guy's ears before you talk shit with them.
Like, if they have that, you know –
Cauliflower.
Cauliflower ear, just buy him a drink or give him a hug.
Did Steve-O have that?
Didn't he get it from, like – didn't he have John Jones fuck his ears up?
He tried to get it.
I don't know if it happened.
You know, we tried to do – I tried to do that to the director, Jeff Tremaine,
on Jackass No. 2.
Every time someone would walk past him, they would grab his ear and twist.
And we were just hoping it would cauliflower up by the end of the film, but it
didn't.
You got to earn that.
Yeah.
There's a lot of guys who fake it, though.
I know a lot of jujitsu guys who fake it.
They have guys fuck their ears up on purpose because they want to look cool.
It's kind of weak.
Yeah, that's – you got to earn it.
Yeah.
It's like Robert De Niro in that movie where he wouldn't take Viagra.
Remember?
A hard-on should be earned.
It should be had legitimately or not at all.
The old-fashioned way, with eye contact.
There was some – wasn't that some weird movie where he was going – he was a
mob boss,
but he was going to a shrink and he couldn't get it up?
Oh, yeah.
Was it Billy Crystal was the shrink?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't remember the name of it, but, yeah, I know what you're talking about.
Dude, you've had a wild ride in life.
You know what I mean?
You've done a lot of crazy shit, not just, like, with Jackass, but you became a
movie star.
And, you know, like, what has this been like for you?
Um, sometimes it feels like you're living someone else's life, you know?
Imposter syndrome?
Yeah, a little.
And, um, I'm extremely grateful, especially for a guy with my limited education.
I get the joke what I would be doing if I didn't fall into what I'm doing.
So, uh, yeah, it's pretty surreal.
I just keep trying to move forward.
How did you guys get started with Jackass?
How did all that come to bear?
Um, well, I, the short answer is my then-girlfriend got pregnant, and I had a
daughter on the way,
and I was, I moved to L.A. to act, but I wasn't doing anything, man.
I was drinking a lot, and, um, and then I'm like, oh, shit, I have to support a
daughter.
I need to do something quick.
So, I, I was living next door to Antoine Fuqua in this duplex, the director.
Oh, wow.
And he set me up with a casting director who got me a commercial agent.
My friend, John Linson, uh, set me up writing articles for this magazine, and,
because he
knew I wanted to write, and one of the articles turned into me testing self-defense
equipment
on myself.
And a lot of different magazines wanted the article, but they didn't want
anything to do
with it, because I was going to shoot myself in the chest with a bulletproof
vest as the
last thing, he's like, stun gun, taser gun, pepper spray, and Jeff Tremaine,
who now directs
Jackass, he was the editor of Big Brother magazine, a skateboarding magazine
owned by Larry
Flint, and he goes, you can write it for us, and I'll help you buy a couple of
the things,
and the stun gun and the taser gun, and I took the money my mom gave me for
Christmas and
bought the cheapest bulletproof vest they had for the last thing, and-
You don't want to skimp on a bulletproof vest.
That's all, that's all I could afford.
It was either no stun gun or taser gun, and, um, so anyway, Jeff says, hey, why
don't you
film that article that you're writing, we'll put it in our skateboard video,
and it kind
of snowballed from there.
Oh, so that was the genesis of it.
Yeah.
Wow.
Isn't it weird how, like, desperation or, like, the recognition that, like, oh,
you have
responsibilities, like, you gotta get going, just lights a fire under your ass,
you become,
like, a totally different person.
It was, like, I deal with a certain amount of overcoming fear or whatever when
doing the
stunts, but there was never any fear, like, you have a daughter on the way, and
you have
to figure out how to support her.
Yeah.
I was, I had to do something quick, and that was my best guess.
Yeah, it's the mother of invention, man.
Yeah.
That, that necessity, that understanding, like, being a dad and having to take
care
of people, it just changes everything.
Yeah, like, what am I doing?
Yeah.
You know what I'm doing?
I'm doing fucking nothing, and I need to do something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah, it's a, it's a primal feeling, right?
Yeah.
It changed everything.
But what, but why, when you're doing this, like, first of all, what round, what
caliber
of revolver did you get shot with?
Well, the vest was the cheapest one, so it could take a .38, and I got a .38.
I borrowed it from my neighbor's wife.
Jesus Christ.
There wasn't a lot of pre-production on this, Joe.
How far away were you when you got shot?
Well, my, my buddy was supposed to shoot me, but we just, we drove out the 14,
and, because
we didn't have a location, and I'm like, pull off here, and then we pull off
this exit, and
I'm like, okay, make a right, and we ended up on the fire road.
So, we get out there, and my friend's like, I'm not going to shoot you, man.
I can't do it.
I'm like, well.
So, I'm like, all right, well, give me the gun.
I got the gun to my chest, and a car pulls up behind me, and it's a bunch of
tweakers.
They're driving down the fire road.
They're like, hey, how do we get to the freeway?
And I got the gun behind my back.
I'm like, hey, you just go down here and make a right, then a left.
And they drove away, and so I went back to shooting myself.
It was sketchy.
It looked like a snuff film, because my friends, the photographer on it saw his
buddy die because
he jumped off a hotel trying to hit a swimming pool and didn't hit that
swimming pool.
And so, he was really scared, right?
He was like, stop.
Don't do this.
Don't do this.
Stop.
I wasn't getting a lot of positive reinforcement, Joe.
Yeah, it doesn't seem like it.
And I had a bunch of, because since it was Flint Magazine, I had a bunch of
hustlers under
the bulletproof vest to help absorb the impact.
And at one point, they all fall out, and I bend over to pick them up, and I'm
pointing
the gun right at my friends as I pick them up.
I don't realize this, but it was sketchy.
And that was the first?
Yeah, we put that in the Big Brother video.
Had you ever done anything, like, self-harming, any dangerous type activities
before you started
Jackass, before you started doing all this kind of shit?
No, no.
I didn't even know itself.
I mean, you can argue me, my drinking didn't help my liver, but...
But it's like, you guys, like, what you did was kind of fucking crazy.
But when you...
I guess if you stopped, I don't know, like, it just becomes something you're
doing.
It was all normal to me, and I can't speak for them.
It's just, that's what we're doing today.
And so that was the first one, and then how many times have you done a stunt
where you're
like, I could die?
A few.
Like, you've done, like, the bull one where you're blindfolded?
I was like, don't do that.
I was watching, I was like, this is crazy.
Yeah, that was...
Yeah, that was...
Anytime you're working with a bull, I think that they hate you.
And, well, really, they hate movement, and they want to make you stop moving
forever.
And, but I've had, you know, like in the Jackass No. 2 when the rocket exploded,
those were
foot-long metal rods, and there was 12 of them.
One blew out right next to my ribs, which would have been picture wrap on me.
And one flew back 300 yards and split two of our art guys right between them.
That would have, it was, we've had some really close ones.
I tried to do the Buster Keaton thing in No. 2, where the facade falls, and it
falls right,
the window falls over my head.
That was the plan.
And the guy's like, okay, when it's, because it was the, it was the close,
right, of the movie.
And the guy's like, this is a 20-foot steel wall.
Like, you hit your mark, do not move.
I'm like, got it.
And they said, action.
And then, so I take two steps, and they're like, ah, no, no, cut, cut.
So I, just like, oh, okay, I'm going to walk over here, and they'd already
released the wall.
Yeah.
And if you watch the footage, it crushes me to the ground, but my head just
makes it through the window.
Otherwise, that would have been, I would have been done.
Oh, jeez.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
That was a close one.
How heavy was that fucking thing?
I don't, it was a 20-foot steel wall.
It was, it was incredibly heavy.
How bad did you get fucked up from that?
I, nothing.
Nothing.
I'm like, it was, it was, like, I was very lucky.
I'm also hyper limber, so it just, I kind of, accordion went on impact.
Just dumb luck.
Dumb, it's the story of my life.
How many, it's all, I mean, all told, how many stunts have you done like that?
Oh, I haven't.
Oh, almost, almost.
Yeah.
Kaput?
I, I, I don't know.
Like, there's at least six or seven, like, close calls, and then, and then any
number of stunts, they can go wrong, you know?
I don't know.
I don't really, I just look forward.
Was there ever a time when you're doing this and going, what the fuck have I
got myself into?
Like, because you have to keep up, one-upping yourself, right?
Well, that was a problem for me after we did the first movie.
I didn't want to do a second movie because I didn't know how to top the first
one, which now looks very tame compared to the others.
And finally, uh, Tremaine said, you don't, we don't have to top it.
We just have to be funny.
And I'm like, okay, that made me free.
That, I, it took away all my anxiety.
And I thought, okay, if that's the case.
And a couple months later, he, he told me he was lying.
We did have to top it.
But it, by that time, I was already off and running.
Jesus, dude.
Yeah.
Your show would really give me anxiety.
It gives the guys, they, they, they get really anxious because I know 98.5% of
what's happening on the set.
Like, Jeff and I each, we keep a little from each other.
So, if we want to smoke one another.
So, but the guys don't have any idea what's happening.
So, by the second week, you can just literally go up and put your finger on
someone's shoulder.
And they're like, Jesus.
They're so, so nervous.
And I, and I, I don't blame them.
And like, when you film one of those movies, like, how long is a shoot?
Like, how, how many months do you film for?
Well, that depends.
On Jackass No. 2, usually about, we go two weeks on, two weeks off over four,
five months.
But I think Jackass No. 2, it was eight or nine months.
And finally, they had to have an intervention with me to stop shooting.
They, hey, like, come down to the office tomorrow.
We're going to finalize the edit or, or do something in the edit.
I'm like, all right.
And I get there.
And it's Spike, Jeff, a few of the cast.
And, and they're like, we're not here to talk about the edit.
I'm like, okay.
Like, we have to stop shooting.
We're like so far over.
And then it was also about, I was going to do the ski jump, you know, the
Olympic ski jump.
And it was, uh, they're like, you, we have too much footage.
You can't, let's just not, you've already put yourself on the line so much you
can't.
And then it became like, well, I'm not, I didn't, I decided not to because I
felt like this big intervention, they had, it was like doomed.
The stunt was doomed in my mind then that something negative was going to
happen.
So I ended up not doing the, the ski jump, but I did negotiate two more weeks
of shooting out of them.
How far were you supposed to jump?
Until I went kaboom.
I don't know.
It was going to be the Olympic ski jump.
Like when they fly?
Yeah.
Do you know how to ski?
Not at all.
I don't want to be good at the stunt.
Nobody wants to see that.
Well, I mean, you'd have to train for years to be good at it.
But I mean, I was just.
I had about 20 minutes.
Oh.
So that didn't happen, but I don't even know how we got on this.
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Oh, wow.
But, so, are you done with all that stuff, or would you consider doing it again?
Well, I, I can't do any stunt where I would get a concussion now because I've
had too many.
The last one was really gnarly.
I kind of went offline for a while, and, um.
What one was that?
In, at the end, uh, in Jackass Forever, I dressed up as a magician, and I got
obsessed with the idea of pranking an animal.
Uh, I just wanted, uh, the thought of seeing the animal's reaction after the
prank, and that kind of, uh, morphed into me dressing as a magician in a
bowling ring, doing the, uh, pouring the milk in the hat trick.
Uh, to get the bull's reaction, and apparently the, the bull didn't think much
of my trick.
Because it, uh, it, well, first of all, usually when you're working with the
bull in a ring, there's a lot of soft dirt around, you know.
And I got there that morning, and it was, it was just dirt, but no, it was like
concrete.
And I thought to myself, well, that's a problem, and, but we're there.
We need, I, I'm shooting.
So, anyway, long story short, the ball, the bull hits me, and I, usually when a
bull hits you, well, always, they drop their head, right?
So, I always try to jump a split second before it hits me, so I get above the
bull, as opposed to below the bull, which is never any fun.
So, but I miss time, I jump.
I jump too early, so I jump, and then I start coming back down.
Then the bull hits me, and it flips me like, I do like a one and a half flip,
and the only thing that stops me is the back of the head, my back of my head
hitting the concrete ground.
And I got a concussion with the brain hemorrhage, a broken rib, and a broken
wrist out of the deal.
And that was it?
And, yeah, it was, it was so.
And this is after you let Butterbean KO you, too.
Lucky punch.
That fucking dude hit so hard.
I watched that, I was like, don't let that happen.
Don't do that.
He, like, everyone's like, boy, that knockout punch must have hurt.
I'm like, I didn't even feel it.
Like, the punches before really hurt, but the knockout punch, you don't, you've
been knocked out before.
You don't feel it.
That one was a pretty bad concussion, too.
I had vertigo for six to eight weeks after that.
Just driving around a curve, everything starts spinning.
Did you go to a hospital and get checked out?
Well, I went to see my doctor, Dr. Kipper, and he had to sew up my head because
I fell back onto the hard ground of the swap meet.
I think I hit my head on the corner of a display counter as well.
I don't know.
Fuck, dude.
Should have went to college.
Do you ever feel any responsibility for how many people you inspire to do
similar things?
Well, I hope to just entertain them and not inspire them.
But I can't, I don't have any control over that, except for when I do things
like this.
Like, just watch, don't do, uh, I don't want anyone to get hurt.
I, you know, me, I'm another story.
It's kind of amazing that you're okay, you know, other than the bad concussions.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm pretty okay with how it turned out.
What's the worst injury that anybody ever suffered during jackass filming?
Um, wow.
There's been many concussions, breaks, uh, um, I, I don't know.
Just a lot, the arm breaks, back breaks.
Do you have any, like, long-term problems because of it?
Um, my lower back is pretty blown out.
Um, and who knows about, uh, how the concussions will, uh, rectify themselves.
Um, hopefully I'm okay.
Do you feel any lingering effects?
Well, my lower back's blown out.
So I, I just had a intercept procedure on my back about, on, in early December.
They're, they go, the, the nerve and the vertebra, uh, they go in and, like,
somehow use, uh, radio frequency heat to basically burn the nerve so it can't
send the signal to your brain that it's hurt.
Oh, so you just walk around hurt, but you don't feel it?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Oh.
I'm fine with that.
Is it doing continual damage or is it just pain?
I think it, it seems to be, uh, and that's an excellent question that I did not
ask, nor did I care about, but thank you for bringing it up.
I think, uh, to me, it's just pain.
So I, you know.
Jesus.
Have you done anything else for it?
Like, there's a bunch of different, is it a herniated disc?
Yeah, but the lower two discs are herniated and, uh, I had, uh, shots in the
facet joints of my lower, uh, back.
It was like they put some kind of steroid in there and it didn't give the
result that I wanted, um.
Have you ever heard of a machine called a reverse hyper?
No.
There's a machine that a guy named Louie Simmons, he was this, uh, legendary
power lifter guy.
He developed because he had, uh, fucked his discs up power lifting and the
doctors told him that he needed to fuse his disc.
Yeah.
Because they were compressed and he's like, well, can't we decompress him?
And they're like, no, there's no way.
He's like, well, there's gotta be a way.
So he developed a machine that decompresses the spine while also strengthening
the muscles around it.
It's a piece of exercise.
That's Louie.
Uh, he developed this machine.
It looks like something that happened to, uh, uh, Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction.
The, that, that's, it, what does the machine do?
It strengthens and.
On the way up, when she's lifting with her legs, it's strengthening her back.
And on the, the downswing, it's actively decompressing your back.
So it like pulls the discs apart and creates space.
I love this machine.
I have one at home.
I have one here at the studio.
I use it all the time.
It's really an important piece of equipment for anybody that has a lower back
injury or who wants to prevent lower back injuries.
And just for overall strength, it's a very odd movement to be able to recreate.
Oh, great.
I'm going to look into that.
Yeah, I'll show it to you.
Yeah.
We'll have it in the gym afterwards.
I'll show it to you after the podcast.
Oh, sweet.
Thanks.
You should get one.
It'll help you.
Yeah.
And there's another thing called a teeter.
You know those things you hang by your ankles?
Yeah.
Where you like decompress?
Yeah.
They developed one called the decks where you hinge from your waist.
So you like get in this thing, you strap your legs in and you lean forward and
it's like you're hanging from like that.
So you're hanging from your hips, like all your weight is being like set on
your thighs and your back carries all the weight and it just slowly like pop,
pop, pop.
It decompresses.
It feels great.
That thing fucking rules.
I always tell everybody if you have a back injury, you have back problems, that
thing will help you a lot.
Just do that for a few minutes every day and slowly over time it creates space
and it alleviates some of the pinching and problems that people have, depending,
of course, on the severity of your injury.
But I love that thing.
All right.
Might be getting a couple pieces of equipment.
Yeah, man.
You got to prevent.
So how the fuck did they talk to you in a hosting Fear Factor?
How'd that happen?
I met with Sharon Levy who runs Endemore.
I know Sharon.
Shout out to Sharon Levy.
She's awesome.
And I was like, I'm on the fence, you know?
And I sat down with her and I liked her so much because she seems like, how did
a woman like you,
is like awesome, get a job, is the head of, you know?
Right.
She seems very rebellious.
Right.
And I just thought, yeah, I'm in.
So it happened over a lunch.
Really?
Yeah.
I really liked her.
One of the problems that we had with Fear Factor is we did 148 episodes
initially and then we came back for a brief amount of time, but they wanted to
really ramp it up.
Like, it was like, these stunts are going to be bigger and crazier than ever.
And I was relieved when it got canceled because I was like, we're going to fuck
somebody up.
Yeah, you felt, what kind of, you have a couple of examples or?
Well, there was a bunch in the early days.
Like, first of the first one that we ever did while I was like, don't do this,
was bull riding.
Made people bull ride.
And this one lady was like, she probably weighed like 98 pounds.
Right.
And she got on the back of the bull.
I'm like, she's not going to be able to hang on at all.
She's going to go flying.
It was like, the stunt guys are some of the most savage, fucking psychotic,
zero fear at all for their safety.
Right.
Like, they get so hardened by it over time.
Yeah.
Just not normal people.
Right.
And this guy, Perry, I was like, dude, what, you're going to make them ride a
bull?
He's like, don't worry about it, boo.
These are stunt bulls.
That's what he said.
I go, does that bull know he's a stunt bull?
They got their Sank card.
I bet he has no fucking idea.
I bet he just thinks he's a bull.
So they're in the cage before they do it.
The bull's fucking fucking here.
And he's just a fucking tank.
Yeah.
And I'm just going, don't.
I told the people, I'm like, don't do it.
Don't do it.
Just quit, man.
Just don't do it.
It was like one of the only things where I was like, I wouldn't do it.
I'm telling you right now, I would never do this.
Were the bulls, were they the bulls that were, because certain bulls, they get
upset if you ride them.
But after you fall off, they don't try to hook you.
Did these bulls try to hook them after they got.
They had handlers that steered the bull away from the people, and they did a
good job with that.
But I mean, who fucking knows?
They don't want you on them.
They weigh 2,000 pounds.
They're all muscle.
Like, the thing was so powerful.
Like, you could feel it when it was in the cage.
It was just fucking moving around.
I was like, don't do this.
Man, they're smart.
Like, bulls are very smart.
That's why, unfortunately, you know, in Spanish bullfighting, they kill the
bull, which I'm not on board with.
But because they learn your movements, you can't make the same movement twice
in a row with a bull because they're going to go, oh, okay, I'm going to be,
you're going to do that, and I'm going to be right here waiting on you.
It's unfair, and you can't have anyone move behind the fence when it's on
because bulls can easily jump over the fence.
A lot of them just don't know they can.
So if you frighten them or provoke them, they're just going to jump over the
fence.
And then they have, like, 35 people they can smoke.
Yeah, it's when we work with bulls, the set is different.
The set is different.
The guy, Gary LeFue, who supplies our bulls, he was world champion in 1970.
And when we first started working with him, and it stuck with us the whole time,
he's like, when we have bulls on the set, I don't want anyone, any kind of
negativity going around the set.
It's already hard enough with the bull.
If there's anyone negative or any negativity, that person's off the set.
Negativity, like, in what way?
Just if there's any, like, saying negative things or they've had a fight with
someone right before.
Any kind of negative vibes.
No negative vibes.
The bull senses negative vibes?
Just, well, the whole, everyone on the set senses negative vibes.
And everyone has to be completely present and positive for this.
And...
Is this voodoo or is this, like, real science?
No, I think it makes total sense, especially when you're doing stunts.
When you're doing a stunt that can forever alter you, I don't like any
negativity either.
Everyone, and also, if you're doing something that can forever alter you, you
have to want to be there and want to be doing it.
You can't halfway go into it because then you're really going to get fucked up.
So, this is just some of the...
And this is knowledge you've acquired over time.
Yeah.
No, that's true.
If you, like, half commit in something that can forever...
You're going to get...
Yeah, it's bad.
It's going to be bad anyway, but you need to want to be there.
What a bizarre life skill.
Yeah, yeah.
You know what I mean?
What a bizarre skill.
I know how to survive doing something you really shouldn't do that could alter
you forever.
Stay positive.
Well, that's...
It doesn't...
It's not a guarantee, Joe.
But it does...
I think it does help.
We did a bunch of other stuff that was not bulls, like, with cars and trucks
and stuff, where I was like, ooh.
Like, we had a close call once with this lady who was strapped to the front of
a truck, and she was supposed to go through some sort of an obstacle course.
But, like, they blew through some boxes, and the box got on the windshield of
the other car, and the other car almost slammed into her legs.
Yeah.
And she was screaming because she thought it hit her, and it was like...
We were like, what the fuck are we doing?
Was that when you guys came back to the second round?
Yeah, that was the second round.
Yeah, the second round was sketchy.
You know, we had people, like, getting...
They were attached to a tree, and they had to figure out which key to unlock
them, while a bungee cord was attached to them, and a helicopter.
And so once they got the thing unlocked, they would fucking rocket off of this
tree.
Up through the limbs.
No, no, no, there was...
Luckily, it wasn't that.
There was no branches that could have got them.
But that would have been funnier.
It would have been funnier, like, through the branches and shit.
So they rocket over a fucking giant canyon.
Like, we're on the top of this canyon.
And they just went flying while they were being bungee-jumped on the bottom of
this fucking helicopter.
It was terrifying.
They were so high.
If anything went wrong, they were dead as fuck.
100% dead.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
That's sketchy.
Oh, there was so much sketchy stuff.
And then it ultimately got canceled because they had a drink cum.
Did you ever see that episode?
No, no.
Yeah, that's what sunk us.
So there was only two times...
What year was...
What kind of...
Donkey.
Donkey cum.
Ah.
Yeah.
That'll do it every time, Joe.
Yeah.
And they got donkey cum because it's the cheapest cum.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Boars...
Boars ejaculate 15 ounces at a time.
Whoa.
So...
A wild boar, like a pig?
Yeah.
Really?
15 ounces.
That's a lot.
Yeah.
That's a fucking beer stein.
Yeah.
Yeah, so this is it.
So these guys...
That guy's drinking donkey cum and his brother's drinking donkey piss.
I'd offer to piss.
And that guy chugged it.
He chugged donkey cum.
I'm getting...
I'm starting to dry heave.
Oh, that's a lot.
That was a lot of cum.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A black and tan kind of with the piss and the semen wouldn't have been a
terrible idea.
It was so nasty.
What were the...
Who were the girls there?
Well, they were all twins.
It was three sets of twins.
And they had to play horseshoes.
Like, look at her mascara.
It's like...
She had to drink the semen too?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And the thing is, three sets of people, three twins, three groups of twins did
it.
And only one won the money.
Oh.
So, two people drank donkey cum and two people drank donkey piss for nothing.
You know what the worst part of that is?
Semen burps later.
Yeah.
Just that bleachy smell that...
The ladies, like, between the two of them, were fighting over who drank the
piss.
They wanted to drink...
They didn't want to drink the piss.
They were happy to drink the cum.
Which, I guess, tracks.
You know, like, been there, done that.
Not in that kind of volume, but what's the worst that could happen?
Whereas the guys were, like, really trying not to drink the cum, you know?
I don't know what they did to decide.
Because they had to decide, like, one of them was going to drink cum, one of
them was going
to drink piss.
So, that was one of two times, two times where I was hosting this show, where I
said to the
producers, don't do this.
Don't do this.
I'm like, the show's going to get canceled.
They're like, no, we're fine.
NBC approved it.
They did.
Like, they're the bellwethers of good taste.
There was a fucking guy on set who was, like, the NBC standards guy, the
standards and
practices guy.
And I'm like, you're okay with this?
Like, this is okay.
And they're like, yeah, the network's fine with it.
I'm like, this is so fucking...
You guys are too close to this.
I'm like, you guys are too close to this.
You don't understand how the general public's going to react.
And then I think what happened, I think it was TMZ, but someone leaked the
footage online.
Someone leaked, like, images of people drinking, kind of like, Fear Factor
crosses the line.
And then the outrage was palpable.
Like, it was like some serious outrage.
And then that show never aired in America, but it aired overseas.
I think it aired in, like, maybe the Netherlands or something like that.
Right.
Killed in Germany.
Which is where Fear Factor actually came from.
Fear Factor was actually a show in the Netherlands called Now or Neverland.
Ah.
And then they brought it over to America, and them all purchased it, and then
they changed it to, I think, then they came up with the name Fear Factor after
that.
That was like, one, I was already on board.
Yeah.
Wow, I didn't know that.
Yeah.
There was virtually no blowback after Pontius drank horse cum in Jackass No. 2.
Never heard about it.
Well, it wasn't on TV, at least.
There's something about television.
You know, censored, you know, federal communications approved, Fear Factor, and
they drank cum.
So that got us canceled.
That was it.
That was, like, 2000, I guess, 11 or something like that, 12.
How many seasons did you do?
I think we did six or seven initially, and then we did another, yeah, and then
we did another six episodes, one of them that never aired.
Did you help write creative?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
You didn't want any prior to that?
I had zero.
No, what I would do is I'd show up at work, I'd get in my trailer, I'd take an
edible, and then I would go to the set.
And I'm like, what do we got?
I did the first four episodes I did sober.
And I was like, this is so boring.
I need to get high.
And so I would take pot lollipops and pot gummies and just get fucking lit and
then enjoy it.
Because then it was like, this is an adventure.
What a great gig.
Oh, it was a fun gig.
Yeah.
I had so much fun, too.
Because all I did was talk.
Yeah.
You know?
Oh, it's easy.
I ate a lot of shit.
I ate a lot of things to try to encourage people.
You know?
Because after a while, I got so numb.
Oh, you would do the things with them?
I'd be like, you could do it.
Look, I'll do it.
I'll do it for you.
And some of the times when I did it to just try to help people, I'm like, look,
I'm going
to show you.
I'm going to do it.
And then you're going to do it.
Yeah.
And then we didn't even air me doing it.
Because I was like, because they didn't want it to make it seem like it was so,
because
I could do it easily.
Because I was so used to disgusting stuff.
I could just take a roach and just throw it down.
Yeah, yeah.
I'd take a worm and throw it down.
I'm like, just do it.
It's not that hard.
It's all in your fucking head.
Because I was trying to like.
You know, I get it.
Like, coach people through it.
I, when I took the job, I'm like, I, this, I'm just going to like give people
hell, you
know, the whole time, you know, and make their fears worse.
But then I get to set and I, there's a human in front of you.
And I'm like, I don't know.
These are regular people and they really have fear.
So I'm going to try it.
I ended up like you trying to help them do it.
But I was, I never wanted to like do what they were doing for the fact that I
never wanted
that footage to be seen.
Like I'm trying to, you know, like you were just, like you had confidence that
they wouldn't
show that.
And I'm like, ah.
They showed a few things.
They showed me eating like spiders.
They showed me eating a roach.
But I ate a lot of stuff that they never saw.
Right.
Or I did some things that they, because I just wanted these people to do it.
I get it.
I'm like, you can do it.
It's in your head.
I'm like, you just got to decide, like your mind has to decide, I'm just going
to do this.
I'll just do it.
Just go ahead and do it.
Don't think about, oh my God, I can't believe I'm doing it.
Just fucking do it.
Chew, swallow, chew, swallow.
I would just talk them through it.
Yeah.
And yeah, I became like a fucking motivational coach or something like that.
That was weird.
Yeah, that's real.
Because after there was on the first, there was one girl that quit the, she's
like, I'm
not continuing this bit, this stunt.
What was it?
Can you say?
It was something with snakes, right?
And it was a big fear.
And after that, I got the cast together.
And I'm like, at least always try to do what we're doing.
Don't let the fear stop you, right?
Just always try.
And after that, like everyone, even if they're horrified, they made an effort.
And I felt good about that.
And I think they did too.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, some people, but it's sometimes it's good that someone quits.
So you realize like, this is real.
Like some people really, like especially snakes, snakes, there's something
about a phytophobia
that I think is primal.
I think it's in your DNA.
I think either your ancestors were either bitten by a snake and barely survived
or someone saw
someone die from a snake.
And that, that information is encoded in your DNA because the, the fear that
people have
of snakes is fucking wild.
Like when they have legitimate a phytophobia, it is a fucking crazy fear to
watch.
Yeah.
It's, it's like their whole body locks up.
They start shaking.
Like, it's not a normal fear.
It's like an ancient caveman fear that's locked into their DNA.
Like someone thousands of years ago survived something like this.
And that's the only reason why you're here.
And every fiber of your being wants to fucking run away from snakes.
It's wonderful.
It has to be.
When someone has that, it's like, bam, terrified of snakes.
Oh, really?
Terrified.
And of course we use that to our advantage.
Of course.
Yeah.
Well, we would make people fill out a questionnaire when they would sign up for
Fear Factor.
Like, what are your fears?
Heights, snakes, spiders.
Well, you're getting heights, snakes, and spiders.
I would write tequila, whiskey.
Blowjobs.
I hate back massages.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was, it was fascinating because like, you know, I had a background in
martial arts and,
and teaching.
And one of the things that I did when I was younger was I took a lot of people
to tournaments.
And I coached a lot of people in Taekwondo tournaments and they'd be fucking
terrified.
Yeah.
And I would, I learned how to lock in with them and how to get them into a
certain mindset,
you know, as a coach.
And I'd be like, look, you're going to get past this.
And this is going to be like one of the highlights of your life because you're
absolutely terrified.
And this fear on the other side will, it will be a completely different feeling.
You'll have a feeling of accomplishment.
You'll have a feeling of an understanding of knowing that you can overcome very
terrifying
situations and you can triumph and you could do this.
Like you have skills.
You just have to be able to go out there and perform and you can do it.
And I'd get in their head and I carried that over to Fear Factor sometimes
because there
was people that just needed help.
Like they didn't, they had never experienced anything that really freaked them
out before.
They'd never experienced the kind of pressure of not just a competition, but a
competition
where they're doing something kind of dangerous.
Yeah.
It's something that really fucking freaked them out.
They have to hold their breath underwater for like two minutes while they swim
through
a fucking thing.
We have rescue divers under there, rescue them.
There's panic.
And it was like, that was one thing that was really satisfying was being able
to like take
a person who was ready to fucking quit.
And then they went on and won the whole thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, that does make you feel good to push someone to the other side and the
survivors
euphoria waiting for you.
Yeah.
I heard that, I read about that term.
Survivor's euphoria.
And I, and I realized I'd experienced it.
Multiple times.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, uh, uh, there was a, you ever heard of Colonel John Paul Stapp?
No.
He was a doctor, a biophysicist, a flight surgeon, and he worked with, uh,
Chuck Yeager and
all that, uh, uh, uh, uh, Edwards, it was, it's now Edwards Air Force Base.
And they were conducting experiments on, uh, what happens to a pilot when they
eject at high
altitude and Colonel John Paul Stapp, because these experiments were gnarly.
They're on deceleration.
They built this huge sled out in, uh, the desert.
And he would strap himself in because the, the thinking at the time was, if you're
going
to do something, a very dangerous, uh, experiment, a lot of times people back
then would put themselves
at the center because they didn't want to.
And of course they had other people doing it and he did it most though.
So they would go hundreds of miles per hour.
Yes.
Whoa.
Hundreds of miles per hour and stop within, uh, uh, eight feet.
And at the time, I think they thought you could only experience, uh, maybe 18 Gs
of deceleration.
He at one time experienced 49 Gs of deceleration.
I think it's the most ever that any human is, and he went blind for a little
bit and he knew
that was going to happen because he'd had that happen before in these
experiments.
And the night before the one where he got 49 Gs experienced, 49 Gs, he went
around his
house with his eyes closed, uh, and just trying to do things like cook.
And if, if he did go blind forever, he's one of the most, he would, he, at one
time,
he was known as the fastest man alive on that sled.
He went faster than anyone at the time.
He, and he's the reason we have seatbelts in cars.
He's one of the most brilliant men of the 20th century.
He was on the cover of time magazine.
No one knows who he is today.
Wow.
Um, but he talked about survivor's euphoria.
Uh, and that's why I learned about it.
What did he say about it?
Just the, just the endorphins that get released after going through something
like that and
that you did survive and it's just, it just fills you up.
And so he knew he was going to go blind and he did it anyway.
He knew that there was a high probability of going blind.
And a possibility of being blind forever.
Yes.
And he was blind for like a couple of days before it started getting sensing
light again.
Yeah.
He's, he's an amazing, amazing person.
I did a flight with the blue angels once.
How was that?
It was amazing.
Um, first of all, you don't, you never think of like that being a physical
thing that those
guys have to be physically fit.
Oh yeah.
When you go to, when we went to the base before you, you know, do the whole
safety thing,
they explain everything, what you're going to have to do.
You see like that these guys are all fucking jacked.
They're all like superheroes.
Yeah.
It's because they have to.
They're not the bigot.
They're, they're, they're short like me.
And they're all like thick.
They're all like fucking jacked dudes.
And they were like, well, first of all, you don't want to be tall because it's
all about
how much time it takes for the blood to get from your heart to your brain.
And the shorter distance it has to travel, the better off you are.
And you have to be physically strong because you do it.
Have you ever done it?
You ever done a flight in a fighter jet?
Uh, no, but we did the vomit comet in Russia.
Oh, okay.
But, uh, Steve-O went up in a mig.
They do a thing called hooking.
So what it is, is like you hold onto the joystick or you, you.
There's straps that strap your legs down as well.
You know, like you're really harnessed in, you hold onto your straps.
You go like this, hoot, hoot, hoot, hoot.
And what you're literally doing is forcing blood into your brain because you
feel consciousness
closing like an elevator door.
It's like, you feel the pressure, like you're going black.
You literally see it.
You see the darkness on the sides.
Yeah.
You go, hoot, hoot, hoot, hoot.
And you're just trying to keep the blood in your brain.
We went seven and a half Gs.
But the guy in front of me, while we're doing this, so you're taking this
fucking hot, you're
like flying through these canyons.
Like he was going for it.
Like he really took me on a ride.
It wasn't a safe ride.
It was wild.
We were like a couple hundred feet off the ground maybe.
Whipping through these canyons.
Did you puke?
Taking these fucking hard turns.
And I heard him going, hoot, hoot, hoot.
So I'm going, oh, fuck, he's blacking out too?
I'm like, we're going hundreds of miles an hour, just like a hundred feet off
the ground,
whipping through these canyons.
This guy's about to fucking black out too.
That's not what you want to hear.
It was terrifying.
But also like super educational.
Like, you know, you just see people flying around.
You're like, oh, it's probably like driving a car.
No, it's unbelievably physically demanding.
And the Blue Angels, they don't use gravity suits.
Or at least they didn't.
No, no, what, they don't use decompression suits?
No, no, it's just a regular flight suit.
Well, did they not go up to a certain, what altitude were they, did they
perform at?
It's a jet.
It's not like you have to, like, you're not in a spaceship, right?
So the whole thing is just about being able to stay conscious.
And the thing about the gravity suit is, I guess, somehow or another,
it aids your ability to absorb all those Gs.
I'm not really educated about it.
But I just do know that he said there's ways that you wear suits that make this
easier,
but they don't wear the suits.
Yeah.
I think if you go up to a certain altitude, you have to have the...
Right.
But this wasn't an altitude thing.
Right, right.
This was just a G-force thing.
It was just the hard turns.
It was like the wicked turns at hundreds of miles an hour.
And also just thinking about the tolerances of the aircraft itself and the
pressure that's on the hull.
Because the feeling of being in a jet going 100 miles an hour, hundreds of
miles an hour, and then hitting a hard turn.
It's just your whole body just like, fuck!
Yeah.
And you're just along for the ride.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, they're so skilled to be able to overcome the forces.
He let me do some stuff.
Like, I got to make the jet do a loop.
Oh, wow.
I got to get it to roll over, to get it to go upside down and go back over.
Yeah, he showed me how to do that.
Wow.
And you were in control of it?
Well, I mean, he's there, too, in case I do something really fucking stupid.
I'm sure he has ultimate control.
But I have a joystick, too.
So I was allowed to do some stuff.
Do you think...
I mean, they could give you a joystick and it not be connected to anything, too.
It would make you just feel good.
But it was connected.
Yeah.
You could clearly tell while you're moving it.
Right.
Oh, man, that's pretty scary.
It made you want to get one of those things.
Like, how dope would it be to have one of those?
Get one of those jets?
Yeah.
Because you could get one of those.
If you're, like, a super rich guy...
Well, yeah, you can get one, but you got to...
I mean, how much is a...
Because we looked this up one day.
You could buy, like, decommissioned fighter jets.
You know, they don't have any machine guns on them or anything crazy.
But you can get a decommissioned fighter jet if you're, like, some fucking
psychotic billionaire.
And you got your own landing strip.
You could get a fucking fighter jet.
Oh, yeah.
Which is gnarly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, if you go to Russia, you could probably get one fully loaded.
Fifteen hundred bucks dog. Fifteen hundred. No, no, no, no. One point five
million.
A million. It's a million five.
Well, shit. Look at this one. Three hundred ninety five grand. You get one.
What's like a really dope one?
Let's like go make it price. Okay. Five four. What is that one?
For five million bucks. What do you get?
1992 McDonnell Douglas Skyhawk.
Ooh. I mean, for that price, you should get a couple of rockets with it. Come
on.
Well, I bet you could go to Russia and they'll give you some. Oh, man.
We yeah, we we shot in Russia and you can literally do anything you want in
Russia.
They let me get on a military base and shoot missiles out of a cannon.
They took Steve up in a MIG. This is back when we were friendly with Russia.
Yeah.
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brewing company fit for all times. Yeah, it was like 2005 and it was wild.
Russia, we had so much fun.
Do you ever look back on like how surreal like your life has been and all these
experiences?
I feel it a lot like when like for example in Russia because growing up like
you would do those
disaster drills in school in case Russia dropped the bomb and you know. Oh yeah.
Run out behind your
locker and put your head between your legs like that would help if a bomb was
dropped. Yeah.
But they were such the bad guy and then it was 2005 and I'm now I'm on it
been in movies and I'm over there and that felt very surreal to be in Russia
and think about
what's happened to my life. Uh, there are moments like that. Yeah. Well, it was
weird too because you got
out of it and became a movie star, but then
start do you were doing it again like you were right back in and it kind of
started
in Russia. Actually, uh, we were doing, uh, a bit. We've done a few things over
in Russia and we're
doing something with the Russian special forces where we were on a, uh, like,
uh, we're going to run
through this, uh, what do you call it? Uh, when you're there's dogs and
obstacle course. Yeah,
we're on obstacle course and they had all these things set up. I'm like, all
right, well, I was
like, Jeff, why don't you have their attack dog attack me and then, uh, shoot
me with the rubber bullets
and then have the guy kick me in the face when I get to the end. And, uh, and
we, we shot that and
the dog attacked me and the, the, the Russian guy, the special forces guy said,
I'm not going to kick
you in the face, but he did deliver a nice blow to my soul solar plexus. I had
to beg him to do it
three times to like, you know, you got to like, do it as hard as you can. But
Jeff pulled me aside
and goes, look, if you, this was just for a while, the TV show, wild boys, I
would travel with them.
Sometimes he goes, if you're going to go this hard for basic cable, why don't,
why don't we do another
movie? And I was like, all right. How many movies have you guys done? Um, we've
done four, uh, and we just
announced we're going to do, I just announced we're going to do another, uh, I
was going to be out June
26th. Have you filmed it already? No, we're going to, we're about to film it in
February, late February.
So start then. Yeah. Do you feel apprehension? Do you feel like, no, no, I, but
you can't get a concussion.
No, I can't get any concussions, but I mean, I don't care if like I break my
arm or leg,
no one cares about that. It's just, I don't care about breaking your arm or
your leg. No, really?
No, really? No. So this is something, this is like a feeling that you've
developed this.
I don't care. You didn't have that when you first started doing it.
Uh, I guess there was, there was probably some, some self-worth issues when I
began.
It didn't come from a healthy place, Joe. Well, it, but it's not just that. It's
like,
you don't have a fear of being like radically injured because you blow your
knee out or you
blow your leg out. You're limping for the rest of your life.
I don't, it doesn't, it doesn't bother me. No.
God, I'm so averse to that. It's, it's, I, I, it's like the, uh, producer side
of me overrides the
performer side. It's like, Hey, but we're going to get footage. And it's, it's
about as simple as that.
So you'll still do dangerous shit. You just don't want to do anything.
I just can't get any concussions. I don't care about. Yeah.
But how, if you're going to get, be in a violent situation where you could
break an arm or a leg,
you easily could get a concussion as well. Well, you gotta, well, you gotta
assess, Joe.
Risk assessment. How, what the fuck does your waivers look like?
Um, yeah, I, I, I don't know. It was, you know, on the first movie,
they, we, the insurance companies insured it per bit. They didn't insure the
whole movie.
They just insured it per bit. Yeah. That's how they did with fear factor as
well.
So some bits costs were the insurance was going to be more than the whole first
movie. So I can't do those.
Uh, but after that, we, you know, we find a shady insurance company and they
take care of us.
Once you started acting though and doing big movies,
wasn't there any part of you was like, okay, I'm done with this.
No, it's, it, it was, it's so fun. It's something that, uh, I created with my
friends.
Right, right, right, right, right.
And then there's probably my wires got crossed somehow. And then I learned to
like it. I look,
I would love it. You know, uh,
I guess it's like, uh, comedian, uh, learning to love bombing, right?
No one learns to love bombing.
I, uh, really, I've done a couple, couple comedians and they're like, if you
got to learn to like,
I love it, I love it. And basically not fear it.
Yeah.
And, and I kind of did that was stunts, I guess. I'd like learn to, I just,
I just liked it.
Wow. Um, you ever talked to a shrink about that?
Well, what I was doing, I have taught, I know I have a therapist and I'm like,
okay, we can talk about everything in my life, but not the part of me that does
stunts.
Really?
Yeah. Because I didn't want to unwind that even though it went sideways quite a
few times.
That's a wild statement. I didn't want to unwind that.
Yeah. So I've, I've looked into it a little now that I can't get any more concussions.
Don't crush my career.
What is, yeah. Right. What a crazy job for the therapist.
Yeah.
Like the one area where you really probably should address.
You know what I mean? You have this like overall, what is Johnny Knoxville?
What's going on in his head? And this is one door. Yeah. You can't go in that
room.
Yeah. We can't, can't the biggest problem we can't address.
It's kind of a crazy thing.
Yeah. Well, again, I should have went to college.
Do you get annoyed having to answer all these questions all the time about that
kind of
shit? Because after a while I would imagine like that is the most common thing
that people would
want to talk to you about. Like how many times have you been hurt? What
happened? What is it like?
No, I don't. I, I mean, I, uh, again, I get the joke what I would be doing if I
wasn't doing this.
So yeah, I'm grateful. And so somebody wants to talk about it. Let's talk.
Well, you're obviously a smart guy. I don't buy that. You could do anything.
Well, when I started down this road, this was my best guess. So, uh, you know,
it just became
something I'm doing. Uh, and yeah, I guess I did want to write, but I
incorporate that into the movies.
It was very strange life, Johnny. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, for sure. Um,
yeah, I kind of, uh, created the environment that I grew up in with my father.
He, uh, owned a tire
company and he had all these crazy characters working for him. Like people like,
uh, big George,
ass kicking Robert, this guy, SD's named super Dick. One guy named WW Woodrow
Wilson,
boxcar Johnson Jr. He was the tire Groover who was always getting arrested for
one thing or another.
Um, and he was always pranking these people that work, his people that work for
him.
Uh, he would stage gun fights at Christmas parties. What?
When he did this twice, he, one year at the Christmas party, he gave a couple
of the guys,
his employees guns and said, okay, I want you guys to get an argument.
And I want to culminate with you pulling out a gun and firing and you pulling
out your gun.
They were blank guns and everyone just, it was in a pretty gnarly part of town
too,
but everyone just ran out into the streets. Dad was a static. So the next year,
so the next year there are two new employees and he's like, Hey, Hey Merle,
come over here.
You guys, you're going to get in a fight and you're going to start yelling and
you're going
to pull out of guns. And it's the same gag. So they did it and they were very
excited and
they pulled out the gun, started firing, but dad had given everyone else in the
party blank guns.
So they started firing back at those dudes. Those dudes take off running down
the street.
So yeah, just kind of imitating what my father did, I guess.
Does your father feel any responsibility?
Dad loved jackass, but hated the parts where I would do stunts.
My whole family did of course.
And, but they, you know, I just doing what I saw growing up, he would send
letters to his friends
from the VD clinic, rubber stamped on the envelope saying, you have to list
your last 10 partners
because you've contracted a venereal disease sign. Dr. Harlan C. Titmore.
But people would get these letters or worse, the guy's wife would get the
letter. And the thing
about something like that, people become angry and emotional and then they
believe everything.
That's the great thing about pranks. If you can get someone so wound up that
they're really emotional,
they'll believe anything. And so these guy would come home from work and then
the mother,
like his wife would be there. The wife's mother would be there. He had a gun
pulled on him over that once.
A real gun. Oh yeah. Real guns.
Your dad sounds like a fucking maniac. He would, he would send letters out from
the IRS telling people they're going to be audited.
He got visited by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation over that. He didn't do
that anymore.
Well, that makes more sense now. Okay. So you grew up in a very unusual
environment.
Yeah. Very unusual.
How did your dad get started doing shit like that? Was it just...
I don't know. He just had that personality. He was such a shit starter.
He should have been in show business is what should have been, but he used from...
Did you ever think about using him?
Uh, he was in one episode, uh, when we're doing the TV show, my mom and him
were in the episode,
but he, he wrote a couple of bits for Ja. He was like, Hey, I want you to do
this.
And we filmed a couple. See, he loved that. So, um,
yeah, he, uh, I don't know. He didn't know how to go about being in show
business. Neither did I either.
But it seems like he was doing his own, almost like a local play.
Yeah. He was doing his own version of it for himself.
Yeah. Oh, for sure. Just to entertain himself.
I guess you could do that when you're the boss.
Yeah. He, uh, I got in high school, I'd be laying on the couch. I took a nap,
you know,
it was like a junior or senior or whatever. And I felt something go through my
lips and he had went
and got a hot dog and microwaved it till it was lukewarm and drugged the hot
dog through my lips.
And then when I woke up, he acted like he was zipping his pants.
He thought it just him laughing at his own joke, just made everything. He
thought it was the
funniest thing. And then like, you're on board too. Yeah. Uh, he was a
character.
Well, that makes more sense now. Yeah. Cause I'm like, how does a normal guy
dive into something like jackass? That makes more sense. Yeah. You were sort of
indoctrinated
at an early age, very early. Some of the shit that made me the most
uncomfortable was the wild boy stuff.
Like, uh, Steve-o showed me a video of him when he climbed a tree and the lions
came up the tree
and took his hat, which is, which is disrespectful. If you think about it, just
take his hat.
Fortunate because if they didn't have the hat, they might've just grabbed his
whole head
and just dragged him off. You know, I mean, those were actual lions.
Yeah. No, they weren't pet lions.
You're entering into a situation that's unpredictable and kind of hoping for
the best
is what you're doing. And they didn't have any backup plan. I mean, when you're
in a tree
and the lions go up the tree to get you, there's nothing really anybody could
do to help you.
By the time, if it gets ahold of you, you're dead.
There's nothing. Like here's an example, uh, of the backup plans we have. We're
filming,
Steve-o's filming a bit with an alligator on Jackass and our safety guy, Manny
Puig, who dives
in swamps at night with the miner's light to pull alligators up to the surface
and crocodiles. He's
Tarzan. He's Tarzan. He was our safety guy. And it's like, okay, if this goes
south, what do we do?
Uh, man, he goes, okay, we're going to be doing this stunt with the alligator.
And if the alligator
grabs ahold of Steve-o and bites him, hopefully he will let go. And that was it.
That was the whole plan.
There's no, like, poke him in the eyes. There's no, like...
If the gator doesn't want to let go, he's not going to let go.
So.
Fuck, dude. Yeah. Yeah. The wild animals ones are the nutty one. One of the
ones where you guys
are playing keep away with hyenas. They have the strong, like one of the
strongest jaw, the bite
in the animal kingdom, maybe like third or fourth. Yeah. There's, what are you
going to do? There's
nothing you can do. Just hope for the best. Yeah. And they have instincts. Like
if you twist your ankle
and they see you limping. Oh yeah. I was doing a thing with, uh, we were in
Argentina at this zoo and
we're like, Hey, can I get in with the lions? Cause there was a couple of keepers
in there with it.
They're like, yeah, come on in. And, and they're like, but whatever you do, don't
trip and fall. I'm like, oh, shit. And so I got on a bike and started riding
around the pen. And, and they're like, if we give you a signal, you gotta. And
so I'm riding around the pen. They're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no. Get down, get off, get up.
Cause the lion locked in on me and was about to attack me. And they hurried me
out of the pen. And afterwards they're like, yeah, that was the first time
anyone besides from us has been in the pen with them. And it's also mating
season. So he's very aggressive. I'm like, well, I wish he'd have told me that
before I got in there. Well, I was still would have went in there, but it was a
real half-ass type of situation.
It's just like, you guys just have avoided death over and over and over again.
Yeah, we've been lucky.
But like, that's a fucked up way to go through life.
I guess, but.
We had a ball.
Waxing philosophically.
I don't know, man. It just.
That's what we were doing.
Oh, and for sure you entertain the fuck out of millions and millions of people
who laughed their asses off and had a great fucking time watching.
I get, I don't know why, but I get anxiety. I have a really hard time watching
those things.
Yeah.
I avoid them. Like a lot of my friends are like, we're going to see Jackass. I'm
like, I don't, I can't. I get freaked out. I don't want anybody to get hurt. It's
weird.
Yeah, I, I feel that way when, uh, like one of the guys is doing something like
pretty gnarly. I, I'm not ecstatic over watching something that could have a
forever consequence.
But with me, I don't know. I'm just like, let's go. I just, it's, I just, it's
fun.
I know. But even after you have a family and even have to, you know, you have
kids that are watching their dad get fucked up.
Well, that's the thing. I wouldn't, I didn't want my kids to see that, you know,
at a certain age.
Like I didn't let my oldest daughter, she could watch things with Wee Man or
this or that.
And, but I didn't let her come to a movie until she was 14. I made her sit
right next to me.
And I said, Madison, there was sometimes you have to close your eyes, sometimes
cover your ears and sometimes both.
And I had the list of bits. And so it was, I censored it even then.
But now it's the internet. It's a fucking free for all.
Yeah.
So I guess my younger kids, I think, you know, they saw it a little earlier.
I get with, I only showed my son like a year ago and my daughter six months ago.
What was his reaction?
That he, he was on board.
My youngest daughter, she thought a lot of things were funny, but I don't know.
I guess, I don't know what, how she felt because they only, my youngest only
saw the first Jackass movie,
which is pretty tame compared to the others looking back.
It's pretty innocent, even though Ryan Dunst shoved a car up his ass to get an
x-ray, a little toy car.
Did you see that bit?
Yes.
Yeah, that one worked.
Do you worry that they're going to follow in your footsteps?
No.
No?
Well, I have daughters and they're just naturally more bright.
You know?
I get it.
And my son, like, he would joke about it, like, to his mom that he's going to,
but he's not going to.
He's, he's bright too.
They have, they have options.
I had, I didn't see a lot of options for myself.
It's weird that you said that, like, your daughters are bright.
Because girls are definitely more risk averse and, like, ridiculous situations
like that.
Think things through.
If it, I have a way harder time watching girls get hurt.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't, I don't.
We had a girl on the show, she, like, like, broke her lower back.
She was, she was doing a thing.
We're doing a, just an, it was a pretty tame stunt compared to the ones we do.
She was going down, like, it was grass, but it was like a big hill on a, like a,
some kind of rubber raft.
And she had her lav mic at the lower, on her lower back.
Oh.
And she came off and that was the impact area.
And for the longest, and it really, it was a bummer for everybody, you know,
and, and I'm like, I don't, I didn't have, we didn't have a female cast member
for a long time.
What was the extensive, extensive range?
It was, it was, she was in the hospital for a little bit.
She's fine now.
I just saw her at the jackass art show in November and she's fine, but it, it
sucked.
You had a jackass art show?
Yeah.
Yeah.
For, cause it was our 25th anniversary last year and I'm like, let's have an
art show and have, we have some cast members and crew members who are good
artists.
And I'm like, let's reach out to some big artists to see if they'll do it.
And, and we did, it's the first time I ever curated an art show.
And I, I, you know, I even, I was like, oh fuck, I'm going to reach out to Damien
Hirst to see if he'll do it.
And he ended up doing 10 pieces of art for it.
It was, I was like, wow.
You know, I was really blown away by the good vibes and, uh, that we got from
everyone over it.
Yeah.
Because you guys didn't just create a show.
You, you, you know, you created like a chapter in modern pop culture history,
really?
Cause it became one of the most entertaining things ever and one of the most
ridiculous things ever.
Wow.
Yeah.
That's tough to, I never really walked down those roads.
Uh, yeah, I don't, I, I don't know.
I, I appreciate you saying that though, but it's, it's, it's odd, you know, to
entertain that thought of it.
And especially if you see Bea and Tremaine sitting around writing ideas, you're
like, these two idiots did that.
Like, if you could see how we shoot, it's just you, it's amazing.
We get any footage at all, Joe.
Um, Jeff Ross came out with this on Jackass number two.
We were doing some bit and some prank with me and Spike as old people.
And me and Spike would, we would like hit bus stops and, and anywhere where
there is people.
And we, but we would jump out and start doing pranks before the cameras even
arrived.
And it was driving Jeff insane.
He's like, you guys shoot a movie.
Like it's a pickup basketball game.
And he just roasted us for about five minutes straight.
It's so, and it was all accurate.
It's like, it's amazing.
We get any footage.
Yeah.
But like, that's the spirit of it is that you're doing it for fun.
So you would be doing it if the cameras were on or not.
You're doing it for yourselves as much as you're doing it for the camera.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
Which is why it's so good.
I don't know how to make like other people laugh, right?
If I'm writing a bit, I don't, that would freeze me.
But I know how to make my friends laugh.
And if they're laughing, I think, eh, we may have something.
And that's, that's the only bellwether.
Like if you do something like in the, in the magic trick with the bull, we did
that twice.
Cause the first time, the first bull just came in and didn't really knock me up
in the air.
It just got me on the ground.
It just started plowing me, stomping me.
And I got up and everyone was looking at me like, eh.
I'm like, all right.
And I looked at Jeff and he's like, I'm like, all right, bring the other bull
in.
That sucks.
Take two with bulls always sucks.
You're hoping you get that first one.
Oh God.
The things with the animals are the ones I think that freaked me out the most.
So Wild Boys was the hardest one for me to watch.
I really struggled with that show.
Yeah.
The one that I, Jeff and I got in a half argument over, I was in Arkansas
shooting the riot control test.
Me, Bam and Dunn were standing in front of the riot control.
Shoots like 10,000 hard rubber beads at you.
We were shooting that.
And they were in New Orleans about to go out and put a hook through Steve-O's
jaw, chum up the waters and cast them out to the water with sharks.
I'm like, what, what, uh, what are we doing, Jeff?
What's, what, what, what's the best possible outcome here?
He's like, oh no, no, it's fine.
It's fine.
And I'm like, you were going to get his foot bit off.
It's fine.
And then it ended up being fine, but I was questioning the bit and it's a great
bit.
The shark goes to bite his foot and Steve-O kicks him at the last second and
scares the shark away.
Yeah, it was just dumb luck.
And he had a hook through his mouth?
Yeah, it was, it was, it was like a big, oh, you're not going to, look at that.
Oh my God.
It took him like 15 minutes to get that hook through his mouth.
And the thing about it, they shot it the day before and it didn't go good.
So there's a hole on the other side of his jaw too.
You just can't see it.
This is so fucking stupid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Oh my God, dude.
Yes.
He's, uh, and oh yeah, it was going for him.
And then he kicks it and got him back in.
That would have been bad.
That'd have been forever bad.
Oh, peg leg, Steve-O.
And he's like mentoring young guys that are doing it too.
Like last time he was on, he was showing, yeah, let me show you this one guy
that I'm hanging out with.
Yeah, dude.
He's get this guy's running through barbed wire.
I'm like, what the fuck?
Yeah, this guy's radical.
He's covering himself in firecrackers.
I'm like, no.
Oh, I know.
That's Zach.
We got him in the cast.
He, uh, yeah, he's, he's pretty up for it.
How bad is he fucked up?
Uh, yeah.
I mean, have you seen, he got a, he was doing some trick on a skateboard and he's
a, he was
a rather Rubenesque young fellow and he just compound fractured his ankle.
He, I don't think you would like that one at all.
Popped through the skin the whole deal?
Uh, I'm not sure it popped through the skin, but it was, it was, uh, doing
things that ankles
shouldn't do.
What a weird life you've lived, dude.
Yeah.
Very strange.
It's been okay.
Yeah.
No, I mean, look, you're fine.
Yeah, no, it's odd.
I get it.
I get it.
What are you laughing at, Jamie?
I just saw the injury here.
Let me see.
Okay, here he goes.
And.
Oh!
Oh!
I guess that was more his, uh, shin is, uh.
Oh, that's his tibia and his fib.
Oh, yeah.
That's both of them.
Yeah, that's the Conor McGregor right there.
Yeah, look at the sack ass on Instagram.
The Joe Theismann?
Yeah, that's the, yeah, Anderson Silva.
I've seen a few of those.
Those are the most painful things I've ever seen in UFC fights.
Yeah.
The things that really bother me are the, the leg breaks.
When someone throws a kick and the kick gets checked and you see their leg,
like, wrap
around the shin.
The Anderson Silva one.
Yep.
That's very disturbing.
Oh, that was horrible.
It's crazy, like, it's only happened four times in the history of MMA, or in
the history
of the UFC, and two of them involve Chris Weidman.
One, Chris Weidman did it to Anderson Silva, where Anderson Silva broke his leg,
and then
Chris Weidman broke his leg in the exact same way against Uriah Hall.
Oh, I don't know if I saw the one against Uriah Hall, but I saw the first one.
Uriah Hall was so loud, because what he did was, it was the first kick he threw.
It was the first round of the fight.
He threw a full power low kick, and Uriah checked it.
And you hear it just snap.
Do the headphones work?
Can we hear it?
No, no, unfortunately.
They're still fucked?
Good.
Good.
Good.
You don't need to hear it.
But here it is.
Full power.
Correct.
And then he puts his foot down.
That doesn't look real.
Yeah.
He was never the same again.
Yeah, you can't come back from that, right?
No.
I mean, guys, they don't really come back.
You know, Conor McGregor hasn't fought again since, I mean, he's throwing kicks
with it.
I've seen him spar with it.
I don't, I mean, there's a one guy who is a heavyweight in the PFL that
apparently came
back and continued his career after he, so you can find who that guy is.
There's a heavyweight guy who's in the PFL that snapped his shin like that and
then came
back and kept fighting.
Weidman's have some fights since then, and he's actually even thrown that kick
since then.
Yeah.
But I don't think you're the same.
Yeah, that would mentally get to you.
Well, one leg now weighs more, right?
Right.
Even if it's titanium, there's more, there's screws, there's a bunch of shit in
there.
And then I've got to think that it feels different.
There's no way.
And then there's the psychological thing.
Like you've already been through, I mean, I think Chris had to go through some
insane
amount of surgeries, multiple surgeries to try to correct it and to fix it
because it
didn't take right the first time was, you know, you're, you're hoping the bones
grow back
together.
You got a rod and then screws, and then you're hoping the bone fuses all around
it.
And in some circumstances, they have to make a decision whether or not they go
back in another
time and take all the supporting stuff out and just have your bone exist
normally.
Yeah.
And you don't want, and then it's like the risk of infection.
Oh, yeah.
It's, it's, it's fucking gnarly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's, I have the hardest time, but I have a harder time watching women get
fucked up than
I do men.
You know, maybe it's the sexist in me or whatever it is, but.
The UFC fights with women, they, they go for it.
I mean, the men go for it, but it just seems like the women are just extra
aggressive.
Well, it just seems crazier when they're doing it, when they're beating the
fuck out of each
other for whatever reason.
Like there's a fight that happened at the UFC sphere when, when they did it at
the, the,
the, the sphere in Vegas.
We had one event there.
And there's this lady, uh, Arini Aldana, who's a beast.
And she got a cut in her forehead that I can't believe the referee didn't stop
the fight because
it looked like someone hit her in the face with an ax.
Like her entire forehead was split wide open.
Blood was pouring out of her face and she's just, that's it right there.
Look at that.
Oh my goodness.
And she's marching forward, throwing bombs where blood is like splattering,
like blood
splattering with every punch that lands on her face.
And she's moving forward, throwing bombs.
It was fucking crazy.
Yeah.
She's a warrior.
Oh my God.
I mean, that's the beginning of the cut.
The cut got even worse than that.
It was horrible at the end.
I mean, it was fucking massive.
It had to be like a six inch cut on her forehead.
That, that's, that's insane.
Well, you could like see the whole skull.
Yeah.
Like when I was interviewing her, when I was talking to her after the fight,
you could
see her whole skull was like exposed.
Yeah.
I, I, you know, when we're talking about the last doing Jackass forever, we're
talking
about getting new cast members and talking about bringing on some females.
Look how crazy that is.
And I was a little, that's insane.
Insane.
That's insane.
And I was a little hesitant.
And then my, uh, uh, assistant, uh, Megan, and I'm talking to other, they're
like, look,
guys do it.
What it's like, women can do it.
It.
And I was, and I, I was forced to address it and let go of it.
Uh, and I'm like, all right.
It's, who was saying guys do it.
Women can do it.
Was it a guy or a girl?
No, my assistant, Megan.
She, and, and a couple of other, uh, friends of their women.
And then, and then they're just like, you, you got to stop looking at it that
way.
And I said, all right.
And I just moved forward and we got, uh, Rachel Wolfson and she was fantastic.
I love Rachel.
She's at the club all the time.
She's the best.
She's fun.
Yeah.
She's a cool chick.
Yeah.
She's great.
Um, did, is there a photo of a Rainy Aldana's face now?
See what it looks like when it's all healed up?
It bothers me, man.
I don't know why.
Did she, uh, how, how many?
That's not real.
That's a filter.
That's an Instagram filter, dog.
There's no way.
That's an avatar.
That's what she looks like now?
After the scar?
No.
That's not possible.
That's an avatar, right?
Well, it's not possible that that, that went away.
See, uh, Google, uh, or run a search of Rainy Aldana after the surgery.
It's like two weeks ago.
Yeah, but that's all you can't.
Well, there's makeup.
I don't know.
Makeup and filter.
That's like, that's what she looks like.
Okay, there you go.
There you go.
You can see.
Go back there.
See that again?
You can kind of see in the beginning.
Yeah, yeah, when the light hits it.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, there you go.
You can see it right there.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's pretty good.
I mean, you can see it, but it gives her character.
Well, for a man, for a man, that's pretty dope, right?
I don't know.
Badass.
It looks like she's pretty okay with everything.
She's a beast.
She's a beast.
Yeah.
You know, it's an unusual woman that is not just willing to do that and get her
face cut
open like that, but also like march forward in a mask of blood like a fucking
horror movie
throwing bombs.
And she was cut over her eye.
Her nose was split open, giant cash on her forehead, and just marching forward.
So when they did, and she was fighting?
Who was she fighting?
And did they have a rematch?
Because I assume the judge, the referee called it.
No, no, it went the decision.
Yeah, she lost the decision.
What, the doctor, they go over to the doctor, he looks at you, like, ah, you'll
never notice
on a galloping horse.
Get back in there.
I don't know.
I don't know what the referee was thinking, because referees have stopped
fights for less
injuries.
Oh, yeah.
It's very subjective.
Usually when it goes from your eyebrow to the top of your skull.
It's very subjective.
Like, one referee or one doctor will say, let it go.
And then another doctor will go, it's over.
And if the doctor says it's over, it's over.
But a referee inspected it when it went, split up her head.
Oh, yeah.
They wiped it down.
They allowed her to continue.
Yeah.
She got cut.
Who was that referee who looked at it and said, yeah, you're fine.
Get back in there, kid.
See if you can find video of it while it's happening.
Look at her nose.
The nose would have stopped the fight.
Nose is destroyed.
Forehead's destroyed.
I don't remember what she got hit with.
It was most likely an elbow that did that.
Who was she fighting?
Norma Dumont.
Norma Dumont.
Norma Dumont's a beast, too.
And who won?
Norma did.
Norma won.
But what did she – like, see if we can find a video of it.
The video of it is gnarly.
Because, like – and we're freaking out because we're doing the commentary.
I'm like, oh, my God, this lady is a savage.
What round did that happen in?
That's a good question.
I want to say it was the second round, but I don't totally recall.
Oh, my God.
What did you just have?
You just had it.
It was a video game.
Oh, it's a video game.
The video games are so good.
You can't tell the difference now.
That's the problem.
You can't defy it in the video game.
Yeah.
It's – but, again, it's – I don't know why.
It's like when a woman gets knocked out, it bugs me way more.
Yeah.
I'm so used to guys getting knocked out.
Yeah.
When a guy gets knocked out, I'm like, I hope he's okay.
But a woman gets knocked out, it's like my stomach turns.
I'm like, ugh.
I just – you're sitting there in your commentary chair.
You're just like, oh, fuck, man.
When someone gets shinned in the head, just bang, and you see them stiffen up.
It's like there's something about a woman getting knocked out that I don't know
why.
Yeah.
It's part of – my brain is like, no.
Yeah.
I'm so used to men getting knocked out.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it looks like – I mean, you've seen a lot of fights.
I've probably seen more people get the fuck beaten out of them than anybody who's
ever lived.
Yeah.
In person?
Like, in person, watching elite fighters smash each other, I've probably seen
more people get pummeled than anybody.
Yeah.
I wonder the number of knockouts you've seen.
Oh, it has to be in the thousands.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know how many fights I've called.
I've started doing commentary – well, I started doing post-fight interviews
in 1997.
Wow.
Yeah.
So that was the first – I worked at UFC 12 in 1997.
Now we're at, like, UFC 324.
So – and I've been there for a large percentage of them.
I hate to pivot, but what do you think of Fedor?
I love him.
I love him.
He's one of the all-time greats.
He was one of my favorite fighters of all time.
He's the great – the great tragedy is Fedor never fought in the UFC against Cain
Velasquez because they were both in their prime at the exact same time.
And they could have made that happen.
I love Fedor.
Oh, he was amazing.
Like, the pride fights, Tremaine and I would – we'd all – every time the
pride fights were on, we'd always watch Fedor.
And, dude, he was stoic.
I mean, stoic.
Like, dead-faced no matter what was going on.
It could be the most chaotic, insane fight.
Getting blasted in the face.
Never changed his expression like a fucking robot.
Before the fight, all the fighters are jumping up and down, looking around.
And he looks like he's about to fall asleep.
Yeah.
Oh, he was amazing.
His mindset was fucking impenetrable.
Remember when Kevin Randleman suplexed him?
Oh, yeah.
And I've never seen someone get suplexed on their head and not only push
through it, but he submitted him pretty soon afterwards, right?
Yeah, yeah.
He got him in an arm bar, like, very shortly after that.
That still doesn't make any sense to me.
Oh, he was a freak.
He was a freak, man.
Look at his face.
Look how calm he looks.
Yeah.
Here it is.
So he gets slammed.
Oh, my goodness.
And just rolls.
Just rolls right into it.
I mean, that was, that could have knocked most people completely unconscious.
Could have separated your vertebrae.
And look, he's still, look how strong.
And he reversed the position, like, seconds later.
And Randleman was good on the ground.
Oh, fuck yeah.
Randleman was a world-class wrestler.
But look at that.
And a beast.
But Fedor was special, man.
He was special.
And this is like, Randleman's wearing wrestling shoes, too.
He was allowed to wear wrestling shoes.
Pride had a lot of crazy rules.
That left of Fedor's.
Oh, everything, man.
Everything.
He was the most complete.
So he pins down the arm and he eventually catches him.
I think he caught him in a Kimura.
A Kimura or a straight arm lock.
It might have been, yeah, here it is.
He caught him in a Kimura.
Here it is.
I mean, that's insane.
Insane.
Within a minute, he.
Yep.
Turned it around.
Well, he was the most complete out of all those guys.
Because he was a guy that could fight you standing up at an elite level.
But also, in any kind of wild scramble, he would catch an arm bar off of his
back.
He would submit you on the ground.
He could throw you.
He could do everything.
He was the most complete out of all the heavyweights of his era.
Yeah.
I remember when he was fighting Noguera.
I was like, oh, no.
This is.
It could go south for Fedor.
You thought so?
Yeah.
I was worried.
Yeah.
You know, because I love, you know, you like, you look up to a fighter and you're
like,
he can't lose.
I don't want him to lose.
And I was worried about Noguera, but he beat him twice, right?
Yeah.
And they were brutal.
The ground and pounds were fucking brutal.
When he was on top of Noguera, just bombing on him.
Yeah.
I'm like, Fedor, don't go to the ground with Noguera.
Because I'm just worried.
I'm like, his aunt or something.
But he, no problem.
No, he was, he was awesome.
You know, but there's a time where a fighter can operate under that peak form
and it's
a short window, you know?
And I always say when you're looking at the greatest of all time, you have to
look at them
in that peak window.
You can't look at them when they're fighting in their late thirties and they
probably shouldn't
be fighting anymore.
Yeah.
You got to, you got to judge them based on who they were in their prime because
every
combat sport athlete has a limited amount of time where they can operate in
their prime.
Yeah.
And Fedor in his prime was about as good as anybody who ever lived.
I love hearing you say that.
Yeah.
Because I really.
Fucking amazing.
Yeah.
But it's like when we had Kane in the UFC, Kane Velasquez, who was another
superhuman freak,
also super stoic, which is, and had cardio, like no heavyweight ever.
Freakish, God-given cardio.
Yeah.
And they'd call him cardio Kane because he would just put a pace on guys where
you'd see
the look on their face.
And it was like the second round, they're like, I can't do this.
Yeah.
He's just ready to go.
Just not even out of breath.
Just smashing you over and over and over again.
Picking you up, slamming you down.
Like what he did to Brock Lesnar.
Brock Lesnar was fucking terrifying.
He was a 300-pound man who was built like a Viking.
Like he just hopped off of a fucking ship with a battle axe.
Yeah.
And Kane beat the fuck out of him.
I know.
That was an amazing fight.
And I watched Brock Lesnar body slam Wee Man through a table at a restaurant
one night.
It was one of the best things.
Was that on Jackass?
No, no.
We were there to do.
I was going to do WrestleMania.
I believe it was WrestleMania.
Against that low down and dirty Sami Zayn.
And we're at the restaurant.
I think we're at a Four Seasons in their restaurant.
And we all had a couple of drinks.
And Brock just comes by.
He's leaving.
He comes by to say goodbye.
You know.
And Wee Man gets a little chatty.
Wee Man got a mouth on him.
So Brock just scoops him up like a baby.
And he goes, you're going through that table.
And just lifts him up over his head.
And just, bam, right through the table.
It was one of the best things I've ever seen.
It looked like one of those tables in an Old West bar fight.
Yeah, this is it.
He's like, no.
Wee Man's like, no, no.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
That's a regular table, too.
Oh, yeah.
That's what you get for talking shit to Brock Lesber.
It doesn't really compute in his head, I don't think.
Brock is a guy that, like, you know, he was NCAA, Division I, National Champion,
like, elite wrestler.
I always wondered what would have happened with him if he didn't go into pro
wrestling for so long.
If he just went into MMA right out of his college career.
I think he could have been one of the all-time greats, too.
Yeah, what are you going to do with that guy if he's been training for that
long?
Well, he didn't train much in striking at all.
Like, you could tell in the early days his striking was, you know, he was
learning it.
Obviously an elite athlete, a freak of nature physically, but he was still
learning striking.
And striking is something that takes a long time to really get a mastery of.
Oh, yeah.
He wasn't, you know, so he, it was just, and he didn't need the money, didn't
need to do it.
Was already a giant pro wrestling star.
Could have just stayed Brock Lesber, but just decided, I want to see what would
happen if I fight for real.
He liked it.
He beat a lot of really fucking good guys.
Yeah.
Which is kind of crazy.
I mean, he beat Randy Couture, who's an all-time great.
Yeah.
He beat Frank Mir, who's, you know, an all-time great.
He's a freak athlete, you know.
Oh, he's fucking horrific.
Horrific dude.
Who's the young guy?
Gable Stevenson?
Oh, yeah.
I think he's a problem.
His striking looks good.
Giant problem.
His striking looks good.
He's a giant problem because he's a 250-pound man that moves like a 150-pound
man.
He's so fucking fast and so athletic for a big guy and elite wrestling skills.
I mean, gold medalists in the Olympics are wrestling skills.
That kind of wrestling skill is, like, so hard to fuck with.
Yeah.
He's got that and ridiculous power and speed in his hands.
And just this, there's a mindset that, like, some guys have, like, elite
athletes have.
This, like, unstoppable drive and discipline.
The discipline, yeah.
Yeah.
And he's got that.
And, like, he's going to be a fuck.
I sent Dana White a text message because he had an MMA fight and hit this dude
with a left hook.
And then as the dude's going out, he fucking slams him to the ground.
He landed the punch and he had enough speed to close the distance and fucking
slam him to the ground while he's unconscious from the punch.
Yeah.
And I sent Dana White a text message.
I said, everybody's fucked.
I just sent him that clip.
I sent him, I sent Dana the same clip.
Did you really?
Dana, what are we doing here?
Gable's the first guy that I've ever had in the studio that isn't even in the
UFC yet.
And that only has had, like, a couple fights where I was like, I want to have
this guy on right away.
Like, look at that.
Like, fucking, so, that speed is so fast.
Look at that, the transition between he KOs him with a left hook and then look
at this, just hops to the top of the octagon.
But go back to the knockout because look at the guy when he's on, you can see
the birdies flying around his head in that one angle on the opposite angle.
I mean, that is crazy speed.
And then blast him with a punch all before the referee can even get to him.
That dude's like, what the fuck just happened?
Yeah.
And he has a hard time getting fights.
He'll probably be in the UFC quicker than he should be because no one wants to
fight him.
It's on the regional circuit, the smaller promotions, very difficult to get a
guy like that to fight because you can't beat him.
You know you can't beat him.
So you've got to be the type of guy, almost like you are with stunts, like, all
right, let's fucking do it.
Let's see what happens.
Yeah, that's what you need.
Because you're not fast enough to avoid the punches.
You're not skillful enough to stop the takedown.
You can't do anything about it once he's on top of you.
You're not getting back up.
You're just going to get pummeled.
Like, what are you going to do?
And some guys are just so gangster.
They're like, let's see how I do.
You're just standing in front of a coal tree.
But most guys are going to not fight.
You're going to get that offer and you're going to go, fuck that.
I want to be a world-class fighter someday.
I've got to get better.
There's no way I'm going to get better if I fight that guy and I realize how
tall the mountain actually is that I'm supposed to climb.
But to any prospective fighters of Gable Stevenson out there who maybe don't
want to fight them, take it from me.
It doesn't take that long to get knocked out.
It's going to be an easy night.
You know, it's going to, what, 15 seconds of your time?
That's not the problem.
The problem is, so like in boxing, okay, this is a good, so boxing has always
traditionally done a way better job of preparing fighters for world-class
fighters.
So even Mike Tyson, who was a phenom, in his prime, he fought a bunch of
journeymen in the beginning.
Mitch Blood Green.
Well, he was good.
Mitch Blood Green was good.
Mitch Blood Green went to decision.
Yeah.
I mean, he was a gang leader and he was a crazy person.
No, the street fight, Mike fucked him up, but he also broke his hand in the
street fight.
In a haberdashery in Harlem.
Which is crazy.
Slipped into alliteration.
Yeah, I mean, they fought in a haberdashery.
They fought in a place where you get custom suits made.
And why wouldn't you?
Why wouldn't you?
So that fight was like, Mitch Blood Green, he was a real pro.
He was a real elite fighter.
But you go to the early days of Mike Tyson, where he's fighting guys that have
fucking zero business being in there with him.
And these guys just took the payday and just got knocked into orbit.
And those fights are some of the most fun fights to watch.
Because you realize you're dealing with a guy who's going to be one of the all-time
greats.
Yeah.
And you're getting to see him when he's 19 and no one had any idea what was
coming.
No.
You know, like some of his first fights, people had heard rumblings.
There's this kid out of the Catskills.
Yeah.
Everybody talked about it.
But until you saw him, you're just like, oh, God.
Good Lord.
Just all business, too.
All business.
No socks.
Just the towel with the hole in it.
And it just, it was throwback.
Yeah.
But there was never a throwback fighter like that had just a towel over, you
know, his head walking into the ring.
Well, you'd have to go back to like the Jack Dempsey days, which Tyson did.
See, Tyson had this advantage that his manager was Jim Jacobs.
And Jim Jacobs was a boxing historian.
And so Jim Jacobs had all these films of all the old school fighters.
Sandy Sadler.
Yeah, he's a big, yeah.
And so Mike would just sit and watch all these great fighters.
All the old school guys, all the old Joe Louis fights on film, you know, all
the Sugar Ray Robinson fights.
Which there are not a lot on film.
I wish there were.
Because we never have prime Sugar Ray Robinson.
Like, there's not a lot of films.
Well, you can watch them on YouTube.
But I don't think like prime, prime.
I think after a certain.
Oh, no.
There's some prime Sugar Ray Robinson.
Yeah, you can watch some great Sugar Ray Robinson KOs that are on.
Yeah.
He was another guy.
I mean, I think he had like 90 fights.
I think it was like something like 90 and 0 before he had his first loss.
And then he went another 40 fights before he lost the second.
Crazy.
Insane.
Crazy.
And they were fighting all the time back then.
Yeah.
Those guys would fight multiple times in a year.
It wasn't like today where, you know, guys will like Canelo and Crawford.
They talk about it.
Like Crawford hadn't had a fight in like a year and a half.
Yeah.
It wasn't like that back then.
They were fighting a few times a month.
Constantly.
Yeah.
But also, you know, then the end is so sad because in the end, Sugar Ray
Robinson had dementia and it's like he couldn't talk.
There's some interviews of him later in life that are really, really fucking
sad.
Yeah.
So that's the thing about a guy fighting Gableson, Gables Stevenson.
It's not that Gables going to beat you and getting knocked out is not that bad.
It's that your confidence is going to be destroyed and you will get knocked out
easier next time, which is the problem with getting knocked out.
Glass, yeah.
Glass, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can attest to that.
Is it to happen to you now?
Like, will you get KO'd easier?
I get my knockouts.
I got knocked out easier, yeah.
It's the old glass jaw.
You notice the difference?
Yeah.
I mean, I could watch the impacts afterwards and that might not have got me
five or six years ago, but now it's just...
You just go out.
Yeah.
How many times do you think you've been KO'd?
About 16.
Wow.
That's a lot.
Yeah.
Have you ever gotten, like, brain scans done?
Yeah.
What do they say?
Well, you know, they're not the best brain scans they ever looked at.
I didn't win any awards for my brain scan, Joe.
They're like, don't get any more concussions.
But did they say there's anything going on there that you need to be concerned
about?
Well, they don't know about, you know, you can't detect CTE until post-mortem.
Right.
But do you have any lingering issues like memory issues, impulse control?
I can, well, I don't know whether it's I'm getting older or...
I can remember a lot of, like, things from four years...
Like, from my childhood and that kind of thing.
I have complete recall.
But what I did a week ago, you know, it's up in the air.
And do you think that's connected to the head injuries?
Or is it just, like, aging?
Because as you get older...
Well, there's the million-dollar question.
Right.
But you seem okay.
Yeah.
Which is part of the problem.
Like, I know a lot of fighters that seem fine, but I know publicly or privately
they're struggling.
Yeah.
I know they have, like, issues.
You know?
Yeah.
I'm, uh...
I...
After that, with the magician one, I kind of went offline for a few months.
But I completely recovered.
Went offline, like, how so?
Uh, just slowly, over a period of months, I just got super depressed and
anxious and fearful of everything.
Ooh.
Just, in my mind, it was just a loop of everything bad is going to happen.
It was catastrophic thinking and ruminating.
Ooh.
And, uh...
Yeah, it was...
My creative mind turned against me.
Right?
Uh, and it was...
It was frightening.
It felt like you're in the bottom of a well looking up.
And eventually I got on some medication and...
What kind of medication did they give you for that?
Oh, shit.
I can't remember.
Um...
But after a couple of months on...
Actually, about four to six weeks on the medication, I...
The colors came back and I started feeling like myself again.
Did you lose sight of colors?
Did you get colorblind?
No, that was just...
Metaphorically?
Yeah.
Okay.
And then I'm not...
I went off the medicine and I'm fine.
But it was, uh...
Yeah, it was pretty intense.
So did they do anything for that?
Like, I know there's some different therapies they do for people that have...
I did a thing, a transcranial magnetic stimulation.
Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you about.
And I started that and it was kind of...
I was in the middle of my episode and I started that...
You do it over like six to eight weeks.
I can't remember.
And I remember at the first, I'd start it and I'd talk to the guy running it.
But by the end, the end of the eight weeks, I was just kind of...
I wouldn't look at him.
I wouldn't talk to him.
And, uh...
Yeah, I was just completely in my head all the time.
By the...
So it got worse progressively then?
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, it got worse.
But...
Yeah, the...
Just medication and...
I came out of it.
Well, I'm glad you came out of it.
Yeah.
But that's a good reason to not do that kind of shit anymore.
Yeah.
That's why I was like, I can't...
I don't...
It was...
It's too much.
Yeah.
Well, that's what I worry about with fighters.
Because, like, listen, you and I are sitting here, we're talking, you're not slurring
your words, you seem fine, everything's...
There's fighters that you see the slurring, and you see the mumbling of the
words, and yet they're still fighting.
Yeah, that's like, Ollie, at the end, it was...
Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
When he's doing those interviews around the Leon Spinks fights, and...
Oh, yeah.
You know, even Larry Holmes was sparring with them, they could notice...
Oh, yeah.
...notice the difference.
Yeah, yeah.
But it's like, you...
How do you...
It's tough to figure out how to...
He has a certain spirit about him, and how do you outrun that?
Which made him a champion.
Yeah, how do you outrun that?
How do you put that light out?
And that's the problem.
I think you have to plant that seed in a fighter's head when they're young.
Yeah.
I don't think you could tell them that this is going to be a ride that lasts
forever.
I think you have to tell them there's going to be a time when we realize we
have to stop this.
We have to stop doing this, and you're going to have to trust me.
Yeah.
Because I'm on the outside, and I'm going to watch you very carefully.
And we're going to make sure that you never get to a point where you're...
Like, I like a fighter that retires, and they can talk, and they're fine, and
they're good.
Like, I like that.
I like when a guy gets out.
Like, Andre Ward is one of my favorite fighters, because not just was he a two-division
world champion, not only was he an elite boxer, but he retired undefeated and
never came back, and now he's fine.
He does commentary.
You're hanging out with him.
He's got no lingering problems.
He's good.
Like, he got off the right time.
I like that.
Yeah, I often think, where would...
It's a little...
It's sort of a pivot.
Where would Roy Jones Jr. be ranked if he retired after the Ruiz fight?
Right.
After he became heavyweight champion?
It's a very good question.
I think that was one of the biggest mistakes that he ever did, was going up to
heavyweight and then going down to 175 again.
To fight Carver.
Right, because he wasn't a heavyweight that was fat.
It wasn't like he could lose 25 pounds of extra fat that he put on.
No, he was shredded at 200 pounds and then lost 25 pounds of muscle.
So, he had to starve himself to get back down to 75 again.
Because once your body gets accustomed to carrying around all that extra weight,
like, that's your new frame.
And today, they would never say, do that again.
Like, in the UFC, there's been some guys that had some radical weight cuts,
like Alex Pereira.
It's probably the best example.
But once he went down to 185, he was cutting a tremendous amount of weight to
get to 85.
But once he went up to 205, now he's a 205-er.
He stays at 205.
And now he's even talking about going up to heavyweight, which is crazy.
Right.
But he's got the frame for it.
But, like, if he went all the way up to heavyweight and then tried to go all
the way down to 85 again, he would be so fragile.
You're so vulnerable.
If you get hit, the guys who dehydrate themselves significantly, they get KO'd
way easier.
Yeah.
And guys will tell you that.
Like, when they cut the weight, they can't take a punch.
It's just different.
Because your brain doesn't rehydrate in time.
So if you're dehydrating to make, let's say, 170.
If you're dehydrating to make 170, but you really weigh 200, you can get down
to 170 for the weight.
But once you rehydrate and you're 200 again for the fight, you don't have water
in your brain yet.
Yeah.
Your brain's not rehydrated.
Your brain takes days before it completely rehydrates.
It's dangerous.
It's very dangerous.
Yeah.
But so that's the thing.
It's like you're talking about all the problems that you have, but yet you're
sitting here.
You're not slurring your words.
You're laughing.
You're coherent.
We're having a good time.
And think about these guys that you see that start mumbling and their words all
kind of slur together.
Yeah, yeah.
It's weird.
You have a hard time understanding them.
The fits of rage.
Yes.
Yes.
They 100% should not be fighting.
Yeah.
And yet they're still fighting.
And athletic commissions will even pass them.
Does Vandale Silva still fight?
Does he slur?
Dude, Vandale Silva just had a boxing match in Brazil that turned into a brawl.
So he was boxing this guy and a bunch of people jumped into the ring and
started brawling.
And one of the guys that jumped into the ring KO'd him, hit him with a bare knuckle
punch and knocked him out cold where he falls back and bounces and they have to
drag him out of the ring.
So while people are – there's a melee.
There's like 10 people fighting inside the ring and he's stretched out cold.
Here, watch it.
I'm trying to find a good version of it.
You can find it.
He was amazing in the pride fight.
Oh, he was a fucking warrior, a savage.
A problem.
He was so crazy.
But that's another guy that's been KO'd so many fucking times.
I don't speak Portuguese, but my friends who do say you can clearly tell the
difference.
So here's the fight.
So this is afterwards.
Boom.
Oh, my God.
The back of the canvas.
So this guy just cracks him with a right hand.
He doesn't even see it coming.
And he's out cold, flat on his back.
And then they just have to drag him away from all these people fighting.
Jesus.
Oh, that's sad.
He's dead.
Dead out cold.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
And again, this is a guy that's – he got knocked out by Mirko Krokop.
He got head kick KO'd.
He got knocked out by Rampage Jackson.
He got knocked out by some big fucking scary shots.
Krokop had legs like Earl Campbell.
They were just ridiculous looking.
Yeah.
No, he was – he was one of the most elite strikers that ever competed in MMA.
He was a terrifying dude.
The stare down between Vanderlei Silva and Mirko Krokop, in my opinion, is the
greatest stare down in the history of combat sports.
Because you've got a guy who in Vanderlei Silva is one of the most intimidating,
terrifying MMA fighters that ever lived.
But then in Mirko Krokop, you've got a guy who's a head of an anti-terrorist
squadron who's fucking probably murdered people.
Like, look at the difference.
That motherfucker ain't scared of shit.
Look at this stare down.
Neither one of them are scared.
Yeah, I think Vanderlei might have been feeling it a little.
Really?
Yeah.
That guy's looking through to his fucking soul.
Mirko is – 100% Mirko wins this stare down.
Mirko was looking through to his fucking soul, dude.
Oh, my goodness.
That is a stare down, son.
Look at his eyes.
That is a serious man.
And, I mean, Mirko.
That ref's got his hands full.
Oh, yeah.
Well, they always had their hands full in Pride because they had stomps and
soccer kicks.
And it was a crazy organization.
Did they test in Pride?
No.
Not only did they not test – well, they did test.
They didn't do anything.
It was a fake test.
You get an A-plus on steroids.
Ensign Inouye is another legend and just one of the all-time greats and a
pioneer of MMA from the early days.
Ensign told me when he did the podcast, he said, they had in all capital
letters, we do not test for steroids.
Like, they wanted you on steroids.
Or growth hormone.
They wanted you on it.
Because, look, if you want excitement and you don't have a sanctioning body,
like, why would you – your goal is to create the best product.
Like, what's the best product?
Bunch of juiced-up fucking psychopaths beat the shit out of each other.
Highly skilled, juiced-up savages going to war.
That's what you want.
You don't want anybody who's dealing with normal hormone levels.
Fuck that.
So they would encourage people.
I – I didn't hear any rumors of Fedor doing that.
Do you think Fedor?
I don't –
Well, you can only speculate.
You don't know because he didn't look like he was on steroids, right, because
he had, like, dad bod, but jacked, you know.
But he carried along some extra body fat because he didn't have to worry about
losing weight.
But he came from the Russian sports program, you know, and they cheated with
everything.
The reality of – have you ever seen that movie Icarus?
No.
Oh, it's a great movie.
Oh, my God.
Brian Fogle made this documentary, and it's a really interesting documentary
because he made the documentary – this was the plan of it.
He was an endurance racer, so he was going to do a cycling race, and he was
going to do it naturally.
So he does it, compares his numbers, and then he hires this guy, Gregory Rechenko.
Is it Rechenko?
Yeah.
You got it.
I think I just said it.
Rechenko?
Yeah.
He was – that's the guy who was the head of the Russian anti-doping – and I'm
making air quotes – anti-doping program.
And so during – yeah, Rechenkov, Gregory Rechenkov.
So during the filming of it, it turns out that the Russians get busted because
during the Sochi Olympics, the entire roster of Russian athletes was on droids.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So what they did was they cut a hole in the wall, and they would take the piss
that the Russians had given after the competition.
They'd sneak it through the hole and sneak in some new piss and put it in its
place.
But what they had found was that there was micro-abrasions in the jars.
They supposedly had these unopenable jars.
Right.
And the Russians had figured out a way to, like, snake some sort of a utensil
or some sort of a device and open up these jars, swap out the piss, and put in
some fresh, clean piss in the same jar.
So this is while they're filming.
So he is being taught how to juice up by this guy.
So this guy is telling him, this is what you would take, and this is how much
to take.
So he's doing this, preparing to go do this cycling race juiced up.
And while this is happening, this guy has to flee Russia because now he gets
busted.
And then he starts telling Brian Fogle everything.
He tells them how they run the program.
So now, to this day, this guy is hiding.
He's in witness protection.
They arrested his family.
I think they took his family's money away.
They took their home away.
They took everything because they want him to turn this guy in.
So he's in witness protection right now still in America, hiding, because they'll
assassinate him if they find him.
Oh, yeah.
Because this guy gave up the entire secrets of the Russian doping program,
which led to, in the Brazil Olympics, Russia was banned from the Brazil
Olympics.
Yeah, for the doping in Sochi.
So this documentary is fucking wild because it shows – he tells every – the
only people that didn't do it with was figure skaters.
They said the figure skaters, it didn't help, and it actually hurt a little bit.
We tried, but it didn't help.
Yeah.
They want to keep them gay.
They wanted to keep them, like, whatever they wanted to keep them.
They just felt like there's something about giving them testosterone, giving
them human growth hormone, steroids.
It fucked with their fine motor skills, and you have – it's like such a
delicate sport.
You know, it's a sport of – it's just hand-eye coordination and balance, and
it didn't help them to be on performance-enhancing drugs.
You said keep them gay.
I don't think if you gave steroids to Johnny Weir, it's going to – you know.
You know, only one way to find out?
No, I'm just kidding.
That guy is – he's pretty entertaining, Johnny Weir.
Was he a gay porn star?
No, he was an Olympic skater, right?
Is it Johnny Weir?
It's Johnny Weir.
Oh, right, right, right.
He's fantastic.
I don't know why I thought gay porn star.
I thought, like, if you're giving steroids to a gay guy, what would be the last
guy that you would want to do it to to see if you could turn him not gay would
be a gay porn star, right?
Like, give him steroids, and all of a sudden he's like, why am I fucking all
these guys?
This is crazy.
Thank you.
You've cured me.
It turns out it wasn't pray the gay away.
It's inject the gay away.
Oh, that preacher, pray the gay away.
Yeah.
Oh, those guys are funny.
Those guys are almost all gay.
Those gay retreats.
Yeah.
It's like...
They'll get together and hug it out with boners.
Yeah.
Kind of sad.
Just be how you're going to be, man.
Don't, like, tell everyone what to do.
Just live your life however you want to live it.
Well, this is a burden of responsibility on some of us for being judgmental,
and for so long.
I mean, being gay was so dangerous to come out.
You could get killed.
You could get beaten.
I mean, it's a testament to our society today that it is, like, not just
accepted, but celebrated that people are gay.
It's because for so long it was so hard to be gay.
Yeah.
Oh, of course.
Do you know the Turing test?
Do you know what the Turing test is?
Yeah.
Well, Alan Turing was gay, and they, I mean, that's a terrible, that's a tragic
story.
The man, like, really had an enormous impact on World War II, but still he was,
he had to be closeted, and then the, I don't know.
And then they chemically castrated him.
Yeah, it was.
In England.
It's tragic.
In the 1950s.
And he's the guy who came up with the Turing test, which is a way to determine
whether or not artificial intelligence had achieved sentience.
Could you tell if you're having, and most people believe that at this point in
time, you can't tell.
Like, the Turing test has already been achieved.
Like, they've already passed it.
Like, if you talk to, like, perplexity, this is what I use for everything, if I
talk to it, I would not know whether or not that's a person or not.
I mean, it can communicate like a human.
Yeah.
And it can answer questions about anything.
It's just basically like a super genius human being that I ask questions to all
the time on my phone, and I don't ever feel like this is a computer.
It feels like a fucking person that's just, like, you have a wizard that you
can ask any question of, and it can give you the answers.
So that's Alan Turing's invention was this test to determine whether or not you
could determine whether artificial intelligence had achieved sentience.
And what did they do to this guy?
They fucking, they chemically castrated him for being gay, and he wound up
committing suicide.
It's tragic.
I mean, all that he did with, in World War II, I mean, he's the father of the
modern computer.
He helped break the Enigma code, which was considered unbreakable.
Yeah.
And just his country turned his back on him, and everyone liked him, really.
And not even that long ago.
That's what's crazy.
Like, people who were alive back then are still alive today, and that's how
much the world has shifted.
Yeah.
And, you know, whatever it's been, 80 years.
It's kind of crazy.
Yeah.
Not even 80 years, 70 years, right?
Crazy.
Crazy.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm fascinated by World War II and the characters from that.
Oh, yeah.
No, World War II is a nutty time in history.
And it's also, in a lot of people's eyes in America, one of the reasons why
people are so fascinated with World War II,
it's the last time Americans got to feel like real heroes.
Yeah.
Like, we fucking did it.
We turned back the Nazis.
We defeated them.
You know, we stopped this takeover of the world by the most evil group that we've
ever seen assembled in modern history.
And America came back, and there's that photograph, that famous photograph.
I guess it's in Times Square, where that soldier's kissing that woman.
That was staged, right?
I believe it was.
Unfortunately.
Because the wars after that were muddy.
It was not like, this is a good guy, this is the bad guy.
It's like, and then in Vietnam, it's not, you're not taking a hill.
You can't, it wasn't about that.
It became just the number of casualties.
Well, also, it was a war that didn't make any sense.
No, no.
We found out later on that it was a war that was started under false pretenses.
Sure, well, there's been a few of those.
But that was the one that's the most obvious.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident is the most obvious.
And proven.
Like, now, it's not a conspiracy theory.
They staged a false flag.
They lied to the American people.
It's the same thing Hitler did in Poland.
With Bernie the Reichstag.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Did you ever read Blitzed?
No.
It's Norman Ohler wrote about Hitler marching through Poland and about all the
drugs that they were giving people.
Oh, yeah, the Pervitin.
They would get jacked up on Pervitin.
Fucking meth.
They had capsules, meth capsules.
And the people at the front of the line got the most meth.
Yeah.
They dosed people up according to where you were.
But they realized that had diminishing returns.
Yeah.
Because they're just jacked up all the time and they're not sleeping and then
it starts falling off.
Yeah.
But by then they were addicted.
And well, it turns out you could do it for three days and get all the way
through Poland.
Yeah.
That's how they did it.
Yeah.
Three days, no sleep.
And Hitler was like, I know how we could do it.
Just meth everybody up and have a march.
Well, he was taking more drugs than anyone.
Oh, yeah.
Well, he had his own doctor that wasn't a part of the SS.
Yeah, that shady ass doctor.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's all in the book.
The book is fantastic.
It's really good.
Because it's just like, and he said that most of what Hitler was on was
actually opiates.
Yeah, Yukonol.
I don't know.
Pervitin.
Well, Pervitin is a meth, right?
It's an amphetamine.
Yeah, Pervitin is the meth.
But I think Yukonol was an opiate.
It can, were you?
He was on a lot.
He was on a lot of shit.
Yeah.
He was on a lot of different things.
Do you know that he also had a genetic anomaly that would lead to his testicles
not descending?
Yeah, I've heard about that.
Like, yeah, I think it's called Corman syndrome or something like that.
Yukonol.
Yeah.
Yeah, he was an opiate.
He, yeah.
I think it's called Corman syndrome or something like that.
Whatever he got.
What is it called?
Morrell was like Elvis's doctor.
Yeah.
So they got blood from the fabric.
What was it called?
What was the syndrome called?
Micropenis.
Yeah, well, definitely.
Micropenis was the Corman.
That's what it is.
Corman syndrome.
So what it was was they found blood from the couch where supposedly Hitler
committed suicide.
They took that blood and matched the DNA to Hitler's bloodline.
So they knew it was a male and they knew the blood came from someone in Hitler's
family.
So they're reasonably assured that this is Hitler.
And then they found that they had Corman syndrome.
So researchers analyzing blood-stained cloth from the sofa where Hitler died
found genetic marker linked to Corman syndrome.
Corman syndrome disorder is a form of hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, which
resulted in insufficient production of sex hormones and can prevent or delay puberty.
Makes sense.
Yeah.
Right?
Methed up dude.
Yeah.
Little dick.
Tiny dick.
No balls.
Most evil man in history.
Wants to fuck the whole world.
Maybe one ball.
Maybe one ball.
Well, he was diagnosed with one undescended testicle.
That was a fact from one of his medical reports.
One of his testicles was like stuck up there.
Yeah, it's a crazy time.
He had some problems.
He had some issues.
Yeah.
What a fucking monster.
Speaking of meth, we always talk about this documentary that Johnny had a hand
in.
Oh, that's right.
Oh, The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia.
I fucking love that documentary, dude.
Thank you.
That documentary was crazy.
How did you get involved in it?
Thank you, Jamie.
How did you get involved in that?
A friend of mine knew Julian Knitsberg, and Julian is the one who found Jessica
White.
Julian was doing another documentary on, oh shit.
Fuck, I can't remember right now.
But they're like, hey, do you want to meet Julian Knitsberg?
And I'm like, yeah.
And so I talked to Julian.
He told me the story of his being involved with Jessica White, the first
documentary.
You saw the first one, right?
You did more than one?
No, no.
The first one, Jacob Young did.
Julian Knitsberg found Jessica White, went to Jacob Young, and said, hey, look
at this guy.
Look at this character.
And it came out on videotape.
And if you saw it back in the late 80s, early 90s, it was usually like a copied
over fourth.
Is this the Dancing Outlaw one?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
So that's what-
That's not the wild and wonderful White's of West Virginia.
That was yours, right?
Yes.
And so I was talking to Julian, and I'm like, well, what do you think Jessica's
up to now?
He's like, I don't know.
And so we got some money together and sent him to talk to Jessica and his
family.
And now because of just generational neglect in all the young kids coming up,
he's like, he was like, you know, the wildest one in the family.
But now he's like the eighth wildest.
All the younger ones are much, you know, more intense.
And we came back with three days of footage, and we're like, holy shit.
And we cut something together and took it to my friends at MTV, and they're
like, yeah, okay, we'll give you some money.
They weren't even sure.
They're like, you guys haven't, you know, failed us yet.
So they just pushed the money our way, and we came back with that.
It was wild.
It's a fucking amazing documentary.
They're a charismatic family, a charismatic bunch of outlaws.
Yeah, well, it's certainly entertaining.
And it's also an untold story about that part of the country and how they've
been ravaged by pills.
And, well, they've been ravaged.
First of all, they were ravaged by the coal companies.
Right.
Jacking their town, and then you can only buy stuff from the company store.
And then when the coal's gone, fuck you, we're out of here, and the town's just
left, you know, massacred.
And then with no thought of what happens to those people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You see how that can make the whites and anyone in that area feel, right?
And so, like, oh, we're going to stick it to the man.
The man stuck it to us.
We're going to stick it to the man.
Yeah.
With, you know, they all get checks for disability checks, and, you know, they're,
I don't know.
It's just pretty sad.
It's very sad.
Entertaining and sad at the same time.
It's like you're very conflicted.
You want to laugh at them, but you're also like, oh, my God, there's kids there.
There's families here.
They're all fucked up.
Like the kid doing backflips because he's high on Mountain Dew.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he's talking about stabbing, I forget which, boyfriend of Sue Bob's or Sue
Kirk's.
It's crazy.
It was intense.
Yeah, but it's both funny and entertaining, but also, like, deeply disturbing
at the same time.
Because you realize, especially towards the end of the film, where they want to
get out of this life.
Like, they're trying to clean up, you know, and she's trying to get off pills.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But, you know, it's tough when you're raised in an environment and, you know,
you don't know how to get out.
Right.
You don't have those tools.
Well, there's no clear path.
Yeah.
There's no clear path out of there.
And everywhere around you is fucked.
Everything's fucked.
Everyone's fucked.
There's no good examples of people that figured it out, got their shit together.
There's no one cool uncle that, you know, went straight.
Well, there is part of the family that moved to Michigan and they started flourishing.
I think we-
Oh, that's right.
Yeah.
That's right.
So-
That's the move.
But it's, it's, yeah.
Fucking hard.
Yeah.
It's hard.
Yeah.
It's like, I think there's, there's just forgotten sections of our country when
it comes to just
extreme despair and poverty and just overall, like you said, fucked over by the
coal companies,
fucked over by pills.
Everyone's addicted.
Everyone's just like this long history of crime.
And when you're raised in that continually, it's, it's, how do you see a way
out?
You know, it just, I don't know.
It's, it's pretty, pretty sad.
Did, but when you filmed it, did you think it was going to be sad?
Or did you think it was just going to be crazy?
Like, you don't know what you're walking into.
Right.
You have no idea.
Um, uh, so, uh, what came back was, it was very impactful and, and you couldn't
turn away.
It just, yeah, there's a lot of shit that really pulls on your heartstrings,
but they're so charismatic
and they have such a, a way about them.
It, I don't know.
It makes it, uh, their, their sense of humor, like helps ease you through it
about the situation.
Yeah.
But still, it's a situation.
Did you take them to the premiere or anything?
Did any of that?
We, we, we, we flew, uh, Jessica and Mamie in for, uh, the premiere.
And I remember I, he, he was going to tap dance at the, uh, premiere and he's
got his tap shoes,
which were, uh, his father, D-Ray White's tap shoes.
They're, I was, and they're just in a plastic pharmacy, pharmaceutical bag, but
I dropped them
when I got out of the car and I was just hard.
I was just like, I feel, I felt terrible, but, uh, their characters, they, it
was pretty wild
meeting Jessica and Mamie.
That's my friend, Storm, I grew up with.
He helped produce.
I remember me, Jessica White and Mike Judge, just sitting in a bar before
having drinks.
Oh, Mike Judge was involved in this too?
No, no.
He's just a friend of mine.
And he was like, I want to meet Jessica and Mamie.
I love that guy.
Yeah.
Mike Judge is cool as fuck.
He's so talented.
Yeah.
Very, very talented.
So bright.
Yeah.
The man was an engineer starting out, then a musician.
And he's, uh, he's an interesting character.
Very, very interesting guy.
But like, how did they react to the film and, and watching people watch them
and laughing and
going crazy?
They, they, and for, I mean, at the premiere, they seemed, they really enjoyed
it.
You know, it's like, it's a big thing.
You see yourself up on screen.
I know the, the subject matter is, is tough, but I don't know.
That's, that's their life, right?
They're not surprised by anything.
It's just, you know, what happened with them after the film?
Uh, do you follow up on them?
Every now and then Julian will send me something.
And one of them will be in the news for, uh, this or that.
Uh, you know, I, I haven't, I, I haven't stayed in touch.
I never, I didn't stay in touch.
What'd you say, Jamie?
Sue Bob's on Tik Tok with her daughter.
Oh boy.
Sue Bob's got the best voice.
Yeah.
She's a lawyer.
I was always the sexy one.
I got to even get that voice.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
What a voice.
Have you ever thought about doing a follow up?
I, I, I, I, someone else can, I don't, I don't, we, we did it and I think we
moved on.
I, I think at some point it's a little much to go back to that.
Well, I, I don't, I don't, I don't feel right about it.
Right, a little exploitative.
Yeah.
I don't feel right about it.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
Do you do, do you have aspirations to do other stuff?
Do you have like any other things that you're trying to do?
Uh, well, I mean, in, uh, the film world, sure.
Um, uh, so yeah, there's, I have a lot of pro I, I love doing documentaries.
I have a couple of documentaries I'm trying to get off the ground.
Um, and, you know, one on David Allen Coe, who, who Julian Nitzberg was going
to direct.
Do you know who David Allen Coe is?
Yeah.
He's a country singer, songwriter, who's like, was the, he, from the age of
nine to 35, he
was institutionalized, you know, his parents just kind of used too much and
they put him
in the boy's home and he was the head of the outlaw motorcycle gang for a while.
He, uh, had eight or nine wives for a while.
He formed his, yeah, at the same time, he formed, he formed his own religion.
He wrote his own, his, you know, wrote a book.
Uh, he, he was, oh, the best.
I have to show you a picture.
And he also wrote some racist songs while he was in prison and Shel Silverstein
convinced
him to record those when he got out.
Uh, I turned my phone off.
Shel Silverstein, the guy who wrote children's books?
And a boy named Sue and on the cover of the Rolling Stone.
Shel Silverstein wrote a lot of songs and, and he convinced a couple of the
songs are,
you know, racist and can't really, there's no defense to them.
He's lived a very complicated life.
But in the eighties, he decided I'm going to become a magician.
And I have a picture of him with his and a ventriloquist.
And I'll, I'll show it to you in a second.
It's pretty, uh, he's the most frightening fucking ventriloquist you've ever
seen.
Like, and, and the weird thing is, uh, the, the magicians, uh, Penn and Teller
credit him as one of their influences.
Um.
Is that him with his dummy?
Okay.
Let me, uh, find it real quick.
So it's an incredible story, but it's just hard getting, uh, something like
that made now
for people who aren't wanting to.
Okay.
Come on.
I'm bringing up.
So it's, we're trying to tell that story.
And so just whatever just strikes your interest, like things that.
You find fascinating.
Can I airdrop this to Jamie?
Yeah.
How do I do this?
Here we go.
And his son, Tyler Co. does that podcast, Cocaine and Rhinestones.
It's a brilliant podcast.
His, his son's really sharp.
Friend of mine.
It says airdrop code required.
And so that's how you decide things.
Just based on like, what's interesting.
Just like.
Yeah.
I don't know what house to decide things.
Look at that.
David Allen Co.
Look at this bell buckle.
Look at that bell buckle.
Oh yeah.
What a scary looking dude with a dummy.
His, his son, Tyler's like, I thought that thing was real when I was growing up.
You know, it's cause he made it seem that way.
Well, there's a weird connection between a really good ventriloquist and their
dummy that gets very odd.
Yeah.
You know, it's like in the Twilight Zone episode where the, the guy has the
dummy.
Do you ever see that?
No.
Oh, it's great.
It's a Twilight Zone episode where the dummy and the guy are having
conversations when no one's around.
The dummy is alive.
And then I think the dummy kills the guy.
And then, um, but I had a guy that I used to work with way back in the day.
His name was Otto and George and, uh, he was a ventriloquist comedy act.
And, uh, George was the dummy and Otto was the guy.
And Otto would be like, I can't believe you're saying these things.
And George would say like really fucked up.
And George was an evil looking dummy with like crazy eyebrows.
He was a legend, like a comedy legend.
That's Otto and George.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
They were a little too close.
It was a little close.
Like he would be driving in the car and George would be in the trunk.
And he would tell the guy driving, pull over.
I got to check on George.
Like he felt like he had to pull over and talk to the dummy.
And he'd get out by the side of the road, pop open the trunk and hear him back
there.
Like just fucking around with the dummy, like looking at it, talking to it.
Then he'd put it back in and drive off.
Like he would get in his head that the dummy was needed to be checked on.
How does a guy like that operate in life?
I mean, he's dead now.
Unfortunately, we all end up that way.
He partied hard, right?
Like he had, uh, he was an enthusiast, um, relationships.
Uh, I don't know.
I mean, I never heard about him being married or anything like that.
I don't believe he had any children, but he was nuts.
He was like, it was like, I never got to know him all that.
Well, it was, uh, I've worked with him a ton of times, but it was always like,
and he's like,
Hey Joe, how are you?
You know, you'd have his dummy there, but you would just, everybody would go to
the back
of the room when Otto would go on stage.
We'd all want to watch.
That was his relationship, the dummy.
Well, I was, you know, I don't know if he had other relationships, but that was
a big one.
And one time, uh, he was, uh, he was going back and forth with some guy in the
audience.
And the dummy was saying horrible things.
This guy and the guy stabbed the dummy, got jumped up on stage and stabbed the
dummy.
It was a danger fields.
Yeah.
I think it was at danger fields.
What a brilliant move.
Yeah.
That's inspired.
Yeah.
I mean, he was a part of the program.
That guy was a part of the performance, jumped up and stabbed the dummy.
Cause he would just say,
That's probably worse than stabbing him.
You know, I'm heart broke.
Well, I mean, you know, I'm assuming the guy was doing it for fun,
but unless he thought the dummy was actually the problem.
That critical thinking.
I think they do.
I think they're actually doing a documentary on Otto and George.
I think there's really, yeah.
I think someone's working on that right now.
So that'd be interesting.
Yeah.
He was, he was a legend on the East coast during the 1980s and the 1990s.
Like we all knew Otto and George.
Wow.
I completely missed that.
Yeah.
But you know,
like a lot of people that are brilliant,
he was out of his fucking mind and never really got traction in terms of like a
real
national career,
but he was very funny and a really good joke writer.
He was a funny guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause they don't have that little extra side of them to business part.
Yeah.
The business part was missing.
Yeah.
It was just,
just a maniacal genius.
I have something to do after this.
I'm going to look up Otto and George.
Yeah.
It's something to look up.
Listen, man.
Good luck on fear factor.
Thank you.
I hope it runs another 148 episodes,
just like when we did it back in the day.
And I hope nobody gets hurt.
Yeah.
I appreciate that.
I appreciate you having me on.
Oh, my pleasure.
It's great to meet you, man.
You've entertained the fuck out of me over the years.
Thank you.
And give me a lot of anxiety as well.
I'm glad you're okay.
Yeah.
For the most part.
Thanks, man.
Well, thanks for doing this.
Thank you.
And tell everybody,
when is it air?
When does Fear Factor start?
I, uh,
premieres tomorrow.
Oh no,
excuse me.
Premieres tonight,
the 14th.
Okay.
Beautiful.
Sorry, I've been on a whirlwind kind of thing.
So it's on tonight.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Awesome.
All right.
Well, good luck.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
Bye, everybody.