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Justin Wren is a professional mixed martial artist, humanitarian aid-worker, and founder of Fight for the Forgotten: a non-profit benefiting the Mbuti Pygmy people of the Congo.
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two one and we're live justin wren how are you sir i'm great what's going on
brother
man i'm excited to be back here out there kicking ass digging wells all the
above trying yeah how
many fights have you had now back in bellator only uh two two uh but i haven't
been back since uh
the first or second one so this is what are you yeah you were here before your
first one
right which was like you had a long break yeah it was five five years and two
months wow and i
hadn't even really trained any um at that point like uh i was i was uh just
doing the wells and
going to congo and then uh got back into fighting and only had a little bit of
time to train but it
it was uh it was okay but how much time did you have before your first fight um
i think actually
whenever i was here with you i uh i i fibbed a little where i said uh it was a
little longer
because i didn't know if my opponent was going to watch or or whatever but uh
my my fight camp got
cut in half um i was traveling traveling traveling the book was getting ready
to come out and other
stuff and trying to write the book and prepare and trying to figure all that
out where we're just
talking before we got on about just life stuff and scheduling it and everything
and i had the
book and then congo and then um telling people about it and then also training
for a fight and i didn't
know how to balance those real well but uh i planned 12 weeks all of a sudden
congo corruption took me to
for for three weeks at the beginning so i cut it down to nine weeks and then
whenever i got back or while
i was there i found out they were moving the fight up on me three weeks um and
so it cut my camp down to
about six seven weeks so six seven weeks after being off for more than five
years yeah and i had trained
a few times before that uh i mean like within the few months before but um but
i i i think it was
probably tops two months uh nine weeks well plus weren't you just like just
getting over malaria yeah and
i was uh that's that's that's the tough stuff that's uh that's tougher than you
fight i feel like
fuck man we have one of our guys in congo that's got had malaria one of our
drillers uh just recently
got real sick and it's kind of like constant like it's just part of life there
jesus and it doesn't
matter what kind of medication you take before you go out there i was actually
taking uh actually our
director at water for was taking um malarone it's like the best anti-malaria
pill i think it's something
like seven eight dollars every pill so uh it's it's the creme de la creme of
malaria meds and it
didn't work on him and then i was actually going into congo um actually i
stopped in london did one
of those ted talks at a university called warwick university and the day of the
talk i was at a 103 degree
temperature 103.2 and um and i thought i was pulling out they thought i was
pulling out we were at the
hospital um for four five six hours um oh and dude even the the opportunity to
go speak at that is
because their team uh was all fans of jre wow yeah that's awesome yeah that was
the opportunity i got
because of because of this and i mean it was it was uh it was tough doing the
talk and then um whenever i
got into congo they told me i had the flu in london um the doctor's there and
that's what i feel like
here too there can be tropical medical medicine specialists here and they're
probably really great
but i i would trust a doctor that's lived in the climate the tropical climate
around malaria that's
seen it that's yeah that knows all the symptoms well knows to look for it
because no one gets it over
here yeah and so whenever i got into congo i flew from yeah from work to congo
and whenever i landed
instead of going straight to the forest uh they took me to like a airstrip at a
kind of hospital
out in the middle of nowhere um so i landed went straight to the hospital and
then right there
they're like you don't have the flu you have malaria and i'm like but i i've
been i've been in the
states i just fought and then i've uh and then in europe like there's no no
malaria really there
but it was because it's still living inside me there's like um i think there's
three strands
one will live in your body for three years five years i think the other is like
30 to life or
something what yeah and so so it just comes back yeah it can like when your
body's really run down
when you're really tired your immune system's low like training for a fight
yeah like training for a
fight or right after the fight uh right after the fight went to london spoke
then i went to congo
so so but right after the fight so you you're recovering from malaria you go
through your six
week fight camp you have your fight you run down and then after the fight you
got malaria again
yes uh now the sickness yeah i've had it now three times oh my god so at least
confirmed twice the
third time they're like yeah you have it for sure but they you with malaria you
have to get the test
the blood test while you have a certain degree temperature like fever whenever
it's cycling out of
your liver i mean coming out um they have to draw the blood at that exact time
to get it and so that's
why i was misdiagnosed four times in the congo and um what a sneaky fucking
disease yeah it's nuts
it's great they're crazy because they'll they'll hide in your liver and then
they send them out in
your bloodstream like a like a platoon they go and wreck havoc and then they
retreat right back to the
liver really yeah they live in your liver yeah that's where they're hiding away
for three or five or
30 years oh my god and what is there any solution is there anything they could
do um i don't think so
and i had a couple things that happened where um you know i i started trying to
take the anti-malaria
meds but i started getting it's the only medicine i've ever really reacted to
where
get nauseous start dragging i've heard it's awful yeah even uh even um no i'm
pasty white and i i
get real sun sensitive um i know another medicine called mefequin um which is
uh i think it's developed
in switzerland or sweden supposed to be an awesome new malaria medicine it's
actually the one thing my
body kind of responds to but um but it's actually really dangerous because uh i've
seen people that
are there for aid work and different stuff and dude they have to they have to
retreat if they're there
with kids and stuff they've moved there to the country they're taking off
because um because kiddos
or even adults have mental breaks that they can't come back from like you can
have psychotic episodes
for i think they said like if it lasts longer than a week it's probably gonna
last like three months
it'll last longer than three months it's probably gonna last forever wow yeah
so um so this is from
the medication yeah it's just the medication and it gives you terrible terrible
nightmares i almost went
to tanzania this summer i was gonna go uh on safari and uh too many people
scared the out of me
with malaria talk yeah i was gonna take my whole family and i'm like look i'll
take some malaria medication
and feel like i'm not giving it to my six-year-old yeah it's just it's not
happening that would be i'm not
doing it tough one yeah yeah but that's a real concern right tanzania has
malaria as well right
yeah they do it's it because it's more of a is that arid climate more um it's
they have less
there it's not so tropical there i've been to tanzania a couple times and out
in sanzibar i mean
it's just um i mean it wasn't there but i was saw it and it was uh i don't know
man it's it's a crazy
crazy place because you go from congo where they have all these tropical
diseases and you go i don't
know the same continent you just go over a little bit and there's all these
other kinds of parasites
like in congo they have very little of uh i believe they're called um jiggers
with a j and um
be very careful when you say that word yeah i will but jiggers with a j um
sounds wrong yeah
sounds like you should stop well but they they they're these crazy parasites
that burrow in your
feet and um and especially kids and elderly um and especially why kids and
elderly um well honestly i
think one reason with poverty uh the kids don't get shoes until they can work
and buy them and uh the
elderly if they're not able to work and provide for themselves and you know it's
harder for them to
to get shoes and stuff but also it's just where they live um because on the
sandy or it's either
sandy or the clayish um or silty soil that's real red in uganda man it just wreaks
havoc on
those kids to where they're having to have people come in every week to
different villages sit there with uh
safety pins and all sorts of these little hooks that they dig into the people's
feet
and um oh god dude it's it's painful whenever i've seen people getting it done
they're literally
putting their and i've had one in my foot and it kind of came and gone it's not
that bad when it's
just one but whenever your whole foot or your whole heel or all the you know
the balls of your feet are
just covered in i mean i'm talking 20 30 40 50 of these parasites and they're
just brutal so every step
you see them when they're walking they're grimacing when you're taking it out
they're screaming
god damn africa yeah africa is just it's such a strange strange continent
strange but man the people
are are beautiful in their hearts you know they're awesome they're uh half or
probably more than half
if you're not a good one you're very terrible yeah that's it's simple obviously
from the outside that's
what it looks like someone like me who tries to pay attention as much as i can
but i don't there's
only so much you could actually know about it without being there i think right
yeah i i think so i think
whenever you get there i don't know fall in love with the people and develop
the relationships um
that's why you can i don't know see past all the the garbage all the discomfort
you said that you
were held up with uh corruption congo corruption what happened so they they
called me and said um
my team is actually papa why i call him papa why because like a father figure
to me he's the one that
had this vision i came alongside him and it's just been it's been awesome to
see what's happened and
um whenever i went to him uh actually what what was the question you're just
asking i don't even
remember what i say i said about the corruption oh corruption yeah yeah he
called me and said fa you
got to get back here in like three weeks and i'm like what i'm training for the
fight like it's coming
up and i can't leave now he says if you don't come back now like i don't know
when you can come
back they'll they're going to revoke your visa they're going to and i'm like
what for and so
they said check your passport they said your visa's expiring in three weeks and
i'm like it shouldn't
be expiring i have a five-year visa but then you have to come in and out of the
country every 11
months because if you don't you lose that five-year visa and so whenever i left
with my wife literally
they just so that they can get money out of us and steal and um be able to ask
for 1400 sometimes
twenty five hundred dollars to get a visa like this um you know they they write
down on your visa when
they stamp it the date they write it in and so now i know look every single
time they're writing to
make sure they write the right date because she backdated it like six months or
something like
that or maybe nine months and then all of a sudden i had to get back there
because they're like nope it's
going to expire and they thought they gave them actually it might have been
less than three weeks
i think i had to go for three weeks is what happened because i had like a week
notice i just took off
went it's actually the cheapest trip i've ever got there because it was like
the last seat i was
by the toilets in the back the whole time but it was only like 800 round trip
which was incredible
that's pretty crazy yeah you can go to africa for 800 bucks yeah that was i i
never seen it like that
but it was uh yeah it's cool so i went and i mean it helped because that that
saved me some money i was
gonna have to pay to try to get out of the corruption and stuff but luckily we
went there they didn't
think i would just drop and you know be there in five six seven days so i took
off went and uh we spent
three weeks trying to just negotiate with the courts and everything else and
say look this is you guys did
this you set me up all this other stuff and trying to prove them wrong they're
never wrong you know
they're always right and uh trying to show them even receipts and pictures we
were showing him pictures
from ben's wedding he's like my best friend like a brother a translator for me
he's our team leader
and um literally we're showing pictures of me at his wedding and luckily it was
dated and everything
like i was here in the country when you said i had already left four or five
months before
so um it's just nuts like but the back dating is intentional they do it on yeah
they do it on
purpose so that for me and my wife both they uh they made it the same date
which was like six months or
eight months early um like we left earlier than what what we did so from the
outside when you're
visiting them did they did they think somehow or another that you're wealthy
and that you know they
could take advantage of you they know they know you're on television do they
know all that no um
no we keep that really kind of i i when i'm there i am a let me see if i can
get the right um i am a
professor of appropriate technologies and appropriate technologies are like
community development or
sustainable solutions um and i go there and i i'm teaching the students at the
university how to uh
and i only i only do like a week or two seminar with them the rest time i'm
with my well drilling
team and that's my covering i go there as a quote unquote uh professor probably
shouldn't give that
up on the internet yeah i mean people know no it's okay but i i do that um
because you know when i go in
and really it's not because i'm on tv or anything like that or they think i
have money they just think
anyone that's not congolese has money oh and so because that's what they've
seen from people coming
in and throwing money around um so they want theirs yeah you know a lot of the
ngos are like they they
have quotas and everything else and they have just a huge budget and they got
to spend it and they got
to meet those those quotas so sometimes they they throw it around and they're
not they're not trying
to be frugal with the money because it's not theirs they didn't go out and get
it or fundraise it or
get a grant for it or anything like that it's just they got it to spend so they'll
they'll just give
it away do the people that live in the congo like the the pygmies do they still
get malaria
is it really common with them yeah really common um but it's it's uh
it's weird because whenever people come i i guess they're more acclimated to it
but it still kills
so many um and then but whenever i get it they're they're saying you know the
doctor here told me
because of the malaria meds it would be better for you to go because you're
already getting sick to
sick with medicine just go get malaria and then get it diagnosed quick enough
get the cure and now your
body's actually going to adapt to it and the next time you get it'll be less
and less wait a minute so
they told you to get malaria yeah oh christ but but it's like one of the worst
diseases a person can
get right yeah but honestly i've seen people even even ben ben's nuts like the
year that i was there
he had malaria now it's almost killed him before too but he had malaria like
three or four times
in a year and um and it's just kind of really really common there wow and uh
but once you if you can
survive it the first couple times then they say after that it gets more bearable
because you feel it
coming you feel the the heat waves coming over you and then you feel the um
shoulder joint pains and
elbows and it just down your whole spine and your finger joints are just throbbing
like you can feel
your pulse so it's an inflammation disease uh it's a blood parasite disease and
it just uh but it causes
some inflammation the parasite somehow or another does that to your joints yeah
and it at least causes a
a lot of pain i know that and it uh it what was it i lost 33 pounds five days
um jesus christ 33 pounds
in five days 33 pounds it's a hell of a diet you get that dr oz dr oz would
sell that i could i could
yeah he'd be in here uh la i got a new uh la diet for you guys yeah you really
do it's the congo diet
getting really hot makes you hot so that's a massive sacrifice you're willing
to take to to do that and
this the fact that it's it exists inside your body for an undetermined state of
time
that's um that's pretty wild man it's it's scary um yeah honestly i feel like i
was in a much scarier
place personally um before before i found this before i found them before i got
given a second
family or accepted into a second family and more scarier because you were
depressed because yeah well
depressed suicidal thoughts i had for like 10 years just battled it from 13
years old 23 and so um
so yeah that that was a lot scarier to me than going suicidal thoughts when you're
13 yeah for sure
and i i mean i was i was one that like you know the kid in the in the class
that i mean i wasn't i
wasn't like i wouldn't say i was how do i say it it was extremely brutal but it
was happening to i mean
everyone gets bullied for the most part somebody's bullying you yeah well when
i was growing up that
from from third grade till eighth grade for sure it was brutal seventh and
eighth don't usually were
you smaller then i was you're a gigantic dude i was smaller it takes a lot of
balls to bully you
yeah and uh that might backfire it's actually kind of why i found fighting um
or not why it is or not
kind it is because uh i was 13 years old and i had just gotten so well two
things have you ever seen
in texas for high school homecomings they have mums have you heard of that no
it's a mom texas
tradition that's crazy um now all all the kids love them everything else but
you get these like
corsages or fake flowers that they put real big up top and then they are streamers
with literal bells and
whistles full-sized teddy bears you can have two three teddy bears when i was
in high school the
girl would wear it on her her shoulder and the guy would wear it around his arm
now in texas they
literally have to put a harness around them and hold these things up because
they're so big and there
you go mom's texas mom isn't that nuts that that's homecoming in texas what
look at that i'm telling
you it's the whole state the whole state i mean every every homecoming that
comes around texans are
nuts about this i mean i lived in texas and i was like four months old so it
was uh they're nuts and
they've gotten bigger and bigger and bigger every single year and uh how am i
just hearing about
real proud of it it's weird i mean are you just hearing about this jamie yeah
never i think those
are literally like two and three hundred dollars now what yeah when i was in
high school they were
like 70 100. oh my god look at all those girls look at that picture that you
had down there there's a
giant group of girls with all this this is ridiculous is that not nuts how do
you how do you go to the
dance like that how do you go to the game like that i don't understand that i
mean literally the
boyfriends are walking behind them holding the the stuff up for them because
what it's getting too heavy their
neck hurts but they want to wear it it's a tradition yeah everybody gets
excited the bigger and more
the mum the bigger the mum the better the more the more your date liked you is
this a mum company that
you just clicked on oh my god they're in every single grocery store in texas
what yeah whenever it comes
to like uh september october november around homecoming time high school like
this is people's jobs
like seasonal jobs they sit around and they take special orders they make them
for you or they sell
them to where you can make them yourself um that's so strange isn't it nuts i
just it always baffles
me when i find out about something for the very first time i don't know why i'm
so confused i i would
like to find out where the tradition uh came from probably but i mean people is
just so ingrained in
you if you're a texan that you have to get mums and so uh is there any other
states find out of other
states except that i literally oklahoma doesn't do it louisiana doesn't new mexico
i mean all around us it's just texas
12 things non-texas need to know about homecoming mums
what in the fuck the mum started as a simple flower hold on scroll up a little
bit mum started as a
simple flower guys give them to their homecoming date oh that's hilarious girls
also give guys
one called a garter like a garter oh they put it on your on your arm on your
garter belt
or over your god how bizarre like one of those things that tie boxers wear yeah
being able to make mums can make you rich oh god see sixty to three hundred
dollars what
three hundred dollars for fake flowers three hundred bucks
it ain't cheap to electrify a mum oh my god that chick's got one that lights up
that's so crazy
you can put led lighting look at that scroll scroll up a little bit you can put
led lighting in mums i
didn't know how many folks are doing this back when i was in high school but
nowadays you really want to
impress your date the latest in mum lighting technology will help you do just
that that is hilarious you
know this isn't even like a joke website right no this is real they're taking
it serious it's so strange
it's really weird and so when i was in middle school seventh grade i you know
look at that girl
she's got a christmas tree on her tits that's ridiculous they uh so you want to
save i saved it
up and my allowance asked one of my crushes to go to the homecoming game with
me she said yes to my
surprise went to the game and uh spent pretty much all my allowance on uh the
her mom and uh her name
is jessica and i took her to the game and uh i'm up in the stands with her and
home or halftime comes
around i'm up at the very top left and all of a sudden everyone looks back up
over the right shoulders
at us and this one guy's kind of my my belief through elementary and middle
school for sure and
um his name was justin as well and so he walks up and uh puts his arm out uh to
her and she puts
her arm around his and he grabs the streamer that says uh justin and jessica
and the year on it or
whatever and uh he says thanks for getting her this and i'm like what he goes
you didn't think she'd come
with you did you and so he just kind of walks down all the schools looking they're
all laughing
um having fun but and and that one hurt but what was worse was the next year
because you know people
liked that part of i don't know i think for me when i see bullying now i just
spoke out of middle school
and i told one of the teachers asked what should you tell a kid that's battling
with suicidal thought
or depression even maybe suicidal thoughts i'm like well if this is 300 400
kids in here like for sure
one person is dealing with these issues right now and i would say you know um
the thing that probably
saved me was my parents didn't own a gun probably only texans that don't own
guns and uh then um
i don't know i i mean i i guess one of the main things was um
well i i don't even know that i've ever said this publicly but i remember um
having attempted suicide once and then um thinking about it again and then um
thinking you know what
would this what would this do to my mom you know and so i love my mama my mama's
boy dad's great too
but that's just who i am she's a tough cookie she's where i got my competitiveness
she was a national
champion and barrel racing state champion in tennis and so she always pushed me
my dad if he uh if he was
at a wrestling tournament and it's the finals even state i would dislocate my
thumb or something
he'd come up you don't have to wrestle in the next match like it's the finals
my mom's like he's
getting out there so my mom's the one pushing him shut up jimmy uh yeah he's
gonna he's gonna go out
there and he's gonna wrestle he's gonna win and so uh my dad was more of the
the one wanting to
protect me and she's the one wanting to push me out there um so i guess i mean
i was saying that
except for oh that thought was just um ringing in my head and so whenever i
finally verbalized that
and started talking to people that's what really helped you know it didn't have
to be a bunch of
people i didn't have to go around and be um i don't know a drama queen or do it
for attention
or whatever but just find one person and for me at that age it was having a
great mom and um and
parents that love me and i think that's probably absolutely what saved me at
that time and so i was
telling these kids you know hey tell if even if it's just your mom so i was
taking pictures with some
of the kids afterwards and stuff and i walk out to leave and i'm in the hall
and this mom stops me
because she's with her little guy and he's crying so a mom had come to school
had heard i was there's
anti-bullying talk she came up and i see this little guy it reminded me a lot
of me the only difference
was uh was he had these kind of big glasses on but he was a little chubby and
had just had one of those
things that you'd see stereotypical like this kid's gonna get picked on right
and so um probably a lot
like me he's used to getting his fat pinched and nipples twisted and you know
all that different
stuff and so um he was out there just bawling with his mom his mom asked if i
could come talk to him
for a little bit i did and she was saying that he had never opened up with her
and uh in the last two
years but she knew he had been dealing with really bad depression and right
there he told her i've been
dealing with suicidal thoughts for two years and so i don't know why i even
brought that up except for
like it's nuts my parents have a have a photography company and they made a
memorial a few years back
for a little boy who's getting bullied didn't think he had an option out and he
took his life at nine
years old oh my god i think it was his swing set out back and so he hung
himself oh jesus christ and so
um i saw the plaque and everything made up for him and just gut-wrenching and
so you know as i say that
and the first story wasn't that but then this kind of one that kind of brought
everything to a head
was i was in middle eighth grade this time um got invited to uh jennifer's um
birthday party
really excited i got an invite one of the real invitations in my hands and um
made the plans
talked to my mom asked if i could go talk to some of the people who else is
going i was just kind of
the dorky kid anyways but um on the invitation i noticed man it says costume
contest and the winner
gets a prize i started in research all this other stuff other people were doing
it too and
i found out that her dad worked at dr pepper and that their house was decorated
with it all this
other stuff and then um and then she loves transformers and so i thought what
if i you know
combine those two things what if i could uh make myself a cardboard transformer
from head to toe
uh i think it was a 24 pack around the head 12 packs around the arms uh legs
boots i had i had a
chest plate i had a sword out of uh cardboard a country kid texas you see those
mums we can do
pretty much anything with duct tape and uh so duct tape cardboard just made it
up and
walked into the party and her grandma opened the door she goes oh jennifer's
gonna love this
walked in they literally had a dr pepper machine one of those like old school
ones you didn't have
to pay just push the button it pops out 13 year old kid you love that so we got
dr pepper can in one
hand have the dr pepper cardboard sword in the other walked to the backyard um
and whenever the door
opens i opened the door um greeted there with like some flashes of lights and
fingers pointing people
laughing and um i remember jennifer saying i can't believe you thought you were
cool enough to come to
my party and i was the only one that was dressed up everybody else had gotten
there early and they all
been planning and even the invitations were fake just so that i would come
there dress up another kid
said um you're worthless so in that moment i felt worthless and then um the
main bully said you
should just kill yourself and so whenever he said that 13 years old battle with
depression suicidal
thoughts all the different stuff minute it took me on a downward spiral tailspin
um it really sucked
i didn't know how to cover it up and then i guess i'm getting back to them and
may route where
i found that 13 years old at like a flea market in texas and walking down uh
these aisles i'm looking
for a bb gun and all of a sudden i get to this like used video shop and it's
got ufc vhs i think it was
two through ten or ten two through eleven or something like that and um so i
just i bought them all
um you were on there and that is a horrible story man yeah that is a terrible
story how the
fuck could those kids be so mean i mean that is honestly i i don't think it's i
mean that crazy
compared to i mean it is it's very like uh methodical like very planned out
yeah um and a lot of people
were in on it i think that probably was one of the things like honestly jennifer
was that the biggest
crush i ever had and you know elementary middle school growing up you know and
so she was the one
i really wanted to impress that's why i did that research you know and then to
know that she was in on
it these other guys planned it but she went along with it um but to have her
say that to you like
the i can't believe you thought you were cool enough to come to my party
yeah man yeah i ended up leaving um and this is before cell phones uh and i
didn't have a cell
phone until i was like 16 17. and um so i'm 13 run out i found a dairy queen um
and uh went in the back
and where the drive-through is there was like a i don't know a dumpster and
they got like the fence
around it and i just was able to open it sit there and just cried basically
until uh someone
came out to throw away the trash and then uh they were like oh honey got down
and what do you need
and all this other stuff can you call your mom i'm like if if i have a phone
and so i walked inside
called her but she wasn't there so it took a little while to get a hold of my
mom and then um
yeah i mean it was just it was nuts because um it's weird how you you'll
believe especially in
today's age with social media and all the tweets and things that people just
throw away i throw
around um you know it's nuts how you can see somebody don't even know them they
might have one
follower but somehow it can still if you let it it can still affect you instead
of just shrugging it
off that's a totally different thing though someone's saying something on
twitter and someone's saying
something and looking you in the eyes yeah and planning out this big deception
yeah but you're
such a nice guy like i don't understand what what the caused someone to be such
a shithead like that
well i don't know man i think well i think um i've i've matured a lot where i
mean obviously 29 said 13
but uh uh i think i just became an easy target and because you're just a nice
guy and they just maybe
i wouldn't stand up for myself and maybe i i wasn't the biggest kid but i was
chubby and bigger and uh
uh yeah i think it just was easy to pick on me in the locker rooms pick on me
in the i don't know i
think i think the stats i was looking at was something like 87 of bullying
doesn't happen in
the presence of um adults adults right and then uh i forget but you know even
the people around like
how you're saying you know to people plan it out and everything else look you
in the eyes i mean i think
that might have been what took me back the most because i was like man like
this is if you're
sitting by this is what i tried to tell some of the kiddos growing up now it's
like if you think
that by laughing i mean if you're there and you're not bullying but you're giggling
you're laughing
like you're definitely a part of it you're an encourager right but then if you're
even if you're
silent and you're just watching it and you don't like now you're if you see it
you have a choice you
can do something about it you cannot and so i feel like that's a passive
standby kind of encouragement
where and so for me it was like everyone was there people were saying it people
were laughing people
were watching but nobody was was standing up for me so it was uh i think that's
what i heard the most
well see so there's two giant instances the one with the other guy named justin
so they planned that
out too mm-hmm fuck man yeah both you went to school with some evil kids yeah
it was actually part of the
same kids so god damn yeah and then uh so from that um yeah that that's that's
definitely been the
biggest battle of my life has been depression suicidal thoughts and it was all
from that
bullying there was nothing other than that for the depression yeah yeah i i
mean it went from
technically i would say it went from third grade to 10th grade and then
whenever i started wrestling and
my parents transferred me out of school everything else then but the bullying
is what caused all these
suicidal thoughts there's nothing else that was bumming you out about life that
is so fucked up
that some shitty mean kids can all of a sudden throw this monkey wrench in your
life
and then i've learned and i mean of course i uh you know obviously looking back
it shouldn't have
i shouldn't have ever let it get to the point to where you know i think i
should hurt myself or kill my
you know what just to real quick put that together with the pygmies in congo
whenever i opened up and
shared with some of them around the campfire just hanging out talking sharing
life stories i shared
that and i just remember the looks on several people's faces just so baffled
like did he just say
he wanted to hurt himself he was suicide he wanted to kill himself all the
different stuff and then i
started asking me does that not happen here and they're like whoa some of them
were like well we've
heard of that happening before and yeah there's there's this guy that was that
guy and that guy
and that guy and we heard that someone in their village had hurt themselves or
killed themselves or
something but most of the people i think were like no never heard why would
anyone if you hurt yourself
you're only hurt like that's only hurting you right that's not going to help
anything but you just want to
the pain to end yeah yeah here i just wanted the pain to end but there it's
like it's nuts because
they if if i look at it i was a little kid i got bullied by some some stupid
kids and then
if i look at what they're going through man it makes it it makes it it shrinks
it it makes it microscopic
whenever you stop just focusing on your own problems you start looking at
others other problems that
maybe you can be a part of helping solve that problem and so so this bullying
all throughout your childhood
led into adulthood and the only thing that made it better was you going to the
congo and helping out
these pygmies and building wells and and sort of dedicating and devoting your
life to their life
yeah i would say practically um that has been you know to have a sense of
purpose i mean i think it's a
it's a lot of different things but that all kind of came together but for me
yeah i mean when you're
not living for yourself and living for others you just want i mean i i didn't
know that for me i had a big
paradigm shift or changing my life whenever you know coming out of the
addiction i felt like
oh man like i don't have to walk around and hate myself and stay away from
people because they're
either gonna hurt me or i'm gonna want to hurt them like uh i i don't have to
do that i can i can help
people i can want to love them i can you know figure out something and i dude
it first started and what
really started helping a lot was i had involved with a lot of different stuff
from a juvenile detention
center going in and meeting with some of those kids once a week to uh homeless
shelter to becoming an
official volunteer at the denver children's hospital and taking the grudge guys
through there
and i think like rashad and duane and shane carwin and brendan and all these
guys you know they were
going and and they actually saw me going through the really tough uh addictions
and getting kicked off
grudge fight team and then a year later i'm luckily able to organize an event
where the
they wouldn't let us come in just as fighters to visit the kids because they
were like fighters why
would you guys come and visit us and uh that's violent and so i decided i'll
become a volunteer
here go through all the processes and the training and all the other stuff and
then i i love volunteering
there and then after they got to know me i'm like hey can we do a team visit
man us in their the best
visit they had ever had was the bikers um like this biker gang guys they always
brought pizza on
wednesday night or something and uh and they literally did look look rough and
tumble and um and then they
said ours was the second best and i'm like you know what and then they said
well i won't say the teams but
some of the other uh big major league sports they said those have been and they
named some of them
they're like they've been some of our absolute worst and i'm like man see you
thought fighters
were going to come in here and i don't know if you thought we're gonna beat up
the kids or something
but but uh no we were passionate about the sport i mean i think passionate
means you love something so
much that you'll suffer for it or or even that suffering looks like enjoyment
or becomes enjoyment
because you love it and you're passionate about it and so i mean whenever you're
a fighter you're
getting beat up and all the other stuff and man we're passionate people we we
really love each
other it's all team camaraderie and yeah there's an intense camaraderie between
people that train
together yeah because you go through such difficult sessions and difficult sparring
and difficult moments
and conditioning and all that stuff and you push each other and it's a
different kind of bond right
yeah and on that i think i saw someone recently post uh something that was
pretty cool where it showed
uh like a jujitsu gym and it was um showing all the different people and in it
it said something
like this is the where's the one place you look you can find these religious
people these different
skin colors and i forget how how it was worded but on the mats yeah and we all
get along and there's
all peace it's like on the mats i love that yeah i do as well did you do you
stay in any way in touch
with those kids from back in the day from the kids that bullied you did you
ever it was actually funny
after the ultimate fighter um i got invited out by one of the guys um and uh
just because i think a
a couple of people uh they'll just yeah i saw one of the guys who was one of
the main guys and he's
like hey uh it's just so i'm walking around downtown fort worth and he said why
don't we go out here
whatever i'm like all right i'll go and well he had actually uh brought me into
uh the sushi restaurant
and all around the table was most of the people that were not most there's
probably only eight or ten
people but they were some of the main kids that were at that party when i
dressed up and everything
wow man if you if we would have known you were a fighter or you know you could
have kicked our butts
and we wouldn't have done that to you and i'm just like it so i told him i was
going to the bathroom
and just left um i think that's the only time i've ever done anything like that
but i was like i can't
can't be around these guys did you did you sense any feeling of remorse from
them or did they just
want to be friends with you one or two of them uh one guy for sure he's he's
pretty cool now and um
but then one is uh is a knucklehead for sure and still yeah big time you know
it's that classic
thing of kids ganging up on one kid that's a weird instinct that sometimes
children have you
remember that movie carrie when they uh she goes to the prom and this did you
ever see the spasic
movie it's based on a great stephen king book you know i i know the cover yeah
the the sissy spasic
movie was really trippy uh john travolta's in it back in the day young and
handsome um but it's you
know that's the themes that they push her she has these crazy telekinetic
powers and they push her to
this point and they do it by mocking her and bullying her they take her to the
prom they pour pig's blood
on her head she winds up killing everybody oh wow yeah it's pretty pretty crazy
but that that thing that
happens when kids gang up on a kid that they feel like is vulnerable like what
the is that man what a
horrible instinct like is that but i mean i i just i struggle to understand
where that instinct comes
from or why people do it it's um especially little kids yeah i mean i guess i
could understand it if
the kids have been abused themselves and they want to lash out they're angry
and hurt but oftentimes
it's just they find someone who's vulnerable it's like they find the pecking
order and they find the
one person they can get away with and they all funnel their insecurities and
their anger and their
aggression on this one person just because they with no regard whatsoever what
kind of impact it's going to
have on that kid yeah and i think i think one of the things that makes it so
much worse now is at least
i mean i don't know i get to hear some of the stuff and they can't escape it
like because it follows them
home i'm all that cyber bullying and they get the text and the all the stuff so
it's constantly so i
could at least escape it from i don't know eight to three eight to three i was
at school but when i came
home i was i was okay and um maybe that gave me a break but uh a little bit of
a break from it but i mean
it's nuts the world that we live in and the stuff that's happening i mean what
you said happened in
germany and other like school shootings have happened here i was in aurora when
the the movie theater
thing happened um and it's just terrible but then i there's absolutely without
a doubt zero excuse for
you don't ever do anything like that but then i kind of have looked at it maybe
once before it might be
stupid for me to talk about it now but um i kind of can see where they've been
pushed over
the edge in a way no excuse they should not ever do anything like that but um
for me it's like man
they they it was never a fair fight they were always cornered um outnumbered um
beaten down over and over
and then they just snapped and uh now it's terrible don't do yeah i don't know
if that's the case with
the aurora shooter i think she was completely insane yeah but i i think it
certainly can happen to
people where they get to this point where not only do they not want to live
they don't want you to live
anymore either because i mean i'm sure if you had been in a situation where you
knew someone you had a
friend who was in the same boat as you you know like um those kids from columbine
you know where
they're the two kids got together and they sort of helped each other do
something really
up if you were involved with the wrong people at that time and someone had a
gun and you knew
where these kids were and you you know you wanted to do that to yourself who
knows what you would
have wanted to do to them as well yeah it's a it's kind of a scary thing to
think about i i did
have a dark period it was i think it was in between seventh and eighth grade
where i started hanging out with a lot of the
i don't know just the the kids that are were involved in just darker thoughts
music stuff like that where
it um where you know i'm hanging out with them and we're all we're all
depressed we you know and we're
we're listening to that papa roach song the last resort you know uh i think it's
like cut myself bleeding
you know i'm never gonna i don't want to breathe again or live again or
something like that and then
all of a sudden they're bringing out uh what are those the big big black cats
or those m80s or
something like that there's a bunch of frogs where we lived in the country and
they go get the frogs
blow up a frog get another frog blow up a frog oh jesus frog and also like this
is
this is a little way too dark for me so how do you blow up a frog you stick it
in its mouth yeah
stick it in his mouth and just light it right in front sorry for anyone and the
frog just keeps it in
his mouth for some strange reason they're hopping hopping hopping with it in
his mouth yeah with his
mouth and because i i think maybe with m80s they use those because they're they're
big so you stick
it in there because they can't get it out i can't get it out oh god yeah so
brutal anyways when that
happened i was like okay i i need to i need to change the that was a group of
like five or six kids
that were just in a very very dark place and even one's in jail so
dude what a bummer yeah bumming me out i don't want to do that every time you've
been here it's
just been all joyful and loving and all the things i didn't know your history
well hey man it's just
honest expression there's nothing wrong with it it's just it it makes me um as
an adult i almost
want to go back in time and like stop it from happening you know it makes me it
makes me very
sad it's just it's one of the worst aspects of human beings that they could
plan something like
that and do that and just try to ruin someone's life just for sport just for
fun for no reason you
didn't do anything to them it's just yeah it's up man i see it as a a thing
that actually helped
shape and mold me now in a way of like i look at it and it's it was loretta
while we were writing the
book she's like do you not see all these kind of parallels and i'm like what do
you mean you grew
up you got really really bullied then you're trying to help people that are
like maybe the
most bullied people on planet earth i'm like oh i guess i i see that now and uh
what was it last
well not the last trip but the second last trip to kong with it had i was there
and we're having to
get a mechanic to help wear tires and different stuff and all of a sudden a
drunk mechanic comes out
he's always drunk and uh and he comes out he's talking with us this little boy
walks by
he's literally he should be in school but because his family's so poor he's out
selling eggs and if
he's selling eggs he make you know nothing but he'll never be able to go to
school probably and he's
just trying to make money to to feed his family he's literally five six seven
years old and he's
coming around selling the eggs normally they sell them hard-boiled um but
sometimes they don't
when they're when they're walking around you want to eat it then but this kid's
we're all raw and
so it's even harder for him to sell them um but the drunk guy picked up the egg
he's looking at it
shakes a little bit finds out it's raw and just smashes him uh the kid this is
an adult 30 something
year old man and this is literally a five six seven eight year old kid just smashes
it over his head
and the kid looks up at him with just fear i mean it's not smart for me because
uh because you know
i'm the outsider um to the government's eyes and everything else but like i
almost got in a fist
fight with him i remember just pulling my hand straight back and and just
almost just backhanding
him right across the face and then ben's like whoa whoa and i grabbed i think i
grabbed his shirt
or grabbed his shoulder and i said ben translate for me real quick if he ever
leaves his hands on
that kid or any other kid i'm gonna lay my hands on him and so just make sure
he understands that
this kind of thing and um i don't even know what one in that except for i mean
i just don't get
get people sometimes um let's we'll get into some positive stuff but that that
one just blew me away
i was like you're an old guy picking on a kindergartner i just as a i mean as a
person
i don't understand it but i also don't understand it like logically i don't
understand like where that
inclination comes from like what what is it about a human being that makes them
want to do that like
what how's how did that develop how is it so common um i don't know i guess
when you
put someone down you feel better about yourself but do you really i mean does
anybody really i know
what i've found is the exact opposite yeah help somebody it actually helps you
of course love
somebody you feel more loved when you yeah you know so um so it's counterintuitive
but that's kind of
what people do right do the opposite of what what we could or should but it's
so common i i wonder like
what is the cause the root cause of it or does it play some sort of
evolutionary role like what is it like
like pecking order with chickens like they try to find out who's the weakest
one and they'll attack
they'll all attack like the weakest chicken they'll all peck at it it's it's
like what the is that like
why is it are they trying to weed out the weak is it an evolutionary thing is
it
are they terrified of someone doing that to them so they strike first
well you know what there's actually a a pretty incredible video pull this thing
up too so yeah
because of the voices there's actually a pretty incredible video that i was
absolutely terrible
whenever i i gave the speech or whatever but i i played part of the video cut
it down to like three
minutes it said like 12. i think it's called the battle at kruger have you seen
that no it's in africa
oh i have seen that yeah it's the water buffalo water buffalo in the back and
the crocodile yep lion takes
the the back of the pack the smaller weaker younger lions all go after that one
tackle it splash in the
water they're dragging the baby out of the out of the the lake and then all a
river and all of a sudden
a huge crocodile comes and grabs it and they have a tug of war match with this
baby i think it was a
cape buffalo cape buffalo yeah and so uh it wasn't a wildebeest right it was
capable i think it was
one of those and uh and yeah it's nuts but what i love almost in that analogy
of where you know if
you're standing by like you're encouraging it or if you're not doing anything
you're encouraging it but
if you just stand up oh that's the stat i saw where 87 percent of bullying
happens in the presence of
nobody but in the times that it is around people if one person says one thing
to the bully
90 percent of the time it's 80 to 90 percent of the time it stops within five
seconds the bullying it
just stops and it doesn't have to be anything aggressive it can be hey man lay
off of them
and then if you after that it's something like 95 percent of the time if you
invite the bullied victim
to come into your group or hang out or sit at your table or whatever um then it
stops even even better
right away when you don't address the bully you address the person that's
getting bullied so it
seems like the people that are bullying they almost need reinforcement and they
get they're getting
reinforcement by people being complicit or being silent or they're joining like
those lions the one
line decides to take out the little guys so different though that's what they
just that's what they do for
food you know that's how they stay alive that's a natural instinct this is a
weird
evilness the one thing i do like about it though is with those two stats like
say something don't be
passive whenever one cape buffalo turned around a couple other ones did too and
then one came in
there in the middle of the one hit one line threw it in the air and then all of
them tucked tail and
ran yeah once they realized what a cape buffalo could actually do to them man
that's so terrible you
know cape buffaloes apparently uh are some of the most dangerous animals in africa
and they will charge
you and just so used to being around people um or around animals rather that
are trying to kill them
yeah i almost got us arrested and not uh not just a little bit a lot of bit
where we accidentally um
believe the serengeti is in tanzania and we're on the border of kenya and tanzania
and we're taking a shortcut from some locals which is always fine if you're
from there and we saw this
awesome but we didn't know we were going through the serengeti they just
thought it was a shortcut
we didn't pay for a park pass or anything like that and also i see this just
gigantic cape buffalo
skull just sitting in the middle of nowhere i'm like let's get that let's take
it back and so we put
that in the back of the truck all of a sudden we're driving and uh we get
pulled over by the park rangers
then they see the cape buffalo skull they say we're poachers they say this that
and just swarmed by uh
by all these these park rangers like three or four different vehicles oh they're
gonna arrest me
all this different stuff and and our crew and uh luckily anyways that's a
random thing but luckily we
just said hey can i just put it right back where it was i didn't i didn't mean
to i didn't know we
were in a national park yeah they don't take any bullshit from poachers out
there it's very dangerous
they they kill poachers on site yeah um they can kill them where it's a lot of
times it's um
literally the life in prison sentence for certain poaching yeah for for for um
like endangered species
for sure with like uh the okapi um one of my last trips someone tried to i
think i maybe said earlier
where on one of the past episodes where someone tried to sell me the meat and
the fur of an okapi and then
um okabees are endangered yes and they're only found in the one area that we're
we're kind of
working in and uh and the rebel groups there went to a little wildlife reserve
for them protecting them
and uh they went and murdered like uh i don't know 15 or 20 of them something
like that that
were there trying to help stimulate them you know come help them come back in
the wild and everything
else they just went and killed them all um yeah and then another guy was trying
to sell me a uh
rhino horn um and yeah it's just brutal now i poaching sucks but i love how the
the pygmies culture
has with with hunting i even have a a quick video um if i think um did you see
what they're doing where
they're making 3d printed uh cloned rhino horns and they're going to flood the
market with them
that's a great idea yeah see if you can find that shark fins too right yeah
yeah they're um i mean
at least people eat shark fins i mean it's it's up that they're killing them
all and making soup out
of them but jesus at least they're eating them these are the rhino thing is
insane yeah that's it's
absolutely based on nothing i mean the i medicine it's but it's crazy yeah i
just can't imagine that
here we are in 2016 with viagra and cialis and all these different boner pills
you buy at the gas
station that red band takes when i was pulling this up i found uh this from
vice and also 3d printing
rhino horns are not the solution to poaching crisis experts say yeah the
experts don't agree that that's
the best way well i don't know if it's the best way either i mean i just can't
imagine that the rhinos
are literally on the verge of going extinct because people want to kill them
and take their horns which
do nothing i mean it's isn't it like the same substance as like a fingernail or
toenail yeah it is
exactly that's exactly what it is it's like hair yeah yeah it's but they have
this erroneous idea that
you eat it and it makes your dick hard if i just i don't know what the fuck is
going on with asia
that's a broad statement isn't it boy i boy did i generalize i generalize on a
billion people
what's going on with asia man i mean i wonder i think it's also a status symbol
i was reading
that even though it might not necessarily be real or really work but it's such
an uh ancient cultural
status symbol thing that like these businessmen will get together and they'll
have like rhino horn tea
you know and they but they think it's cool because it's illegal and you can't
get it and it's dangerous
and it's got to come from africa and so it must really work i don't know no i'm
just kidding maybe
that's what they think though if it does work it's this expensive yeah maybe it
does something
their their grandfather said it worked his grandfather said it worked why don't
you google
that jamie does rhino horn actually work no it won't i know i mean maybe it
doesn't work as good
as other stuff your fingernails doesn't maybe it does then you just gotta need
to eat enough fingernails
yeah imagine what's an acceptable source to find this is true i don't think
there would be one from
china's google isn't that funny like you have to find a website that you trust
right it's got to
be like wired.com or pbs has a story on fact or fiction use on it but what does
it what does that
say pbs is probably valid it's a lot of information i'd have to read first but
just a long article about
hmm rhino horn use fact or fiction i always when i'm exhausted and i look at
something like that
i go to the very bottom and say hmm how do they wrap this up overall not much
evidence to support
yeah the plethora of claims about the hearing properties of the horns there you
go that's good
good little tip i just learned yeah if you're not really this isn't life
dependent this is not
something that you really it's not really a factor in your life yeah just go to
the bottom line it's it is
very strange oh okay not believed as once believed it's not as once believed
rather made simply from
a clump of compressed or modified hair recent studies by researchers in ohio
university oh ohio there you
go using computerized what is that word tomography ct scans have shown that the
horns are in fact
similar in structure to horses hooves turtle beaks and cockatoo bills the
studies also revealed that the
centers of the horns have dense mineral deposits of calcium and melanin a
finding that may explain the
curve and shape sharp tip of the horn the calcium would strengthen the horn
while the melanin would
protect some of the core from being degraded by ultraviolet radiation from the
sun huh softer outer
portion worn away over time by the sun and typical rhino activities bashing
horns with other animals rubbing on the
ground the inner core would be sharpened into a point much like a wooden pencil
huh yeah there were in the
horn that he this kid was basically trying to sell it he was like 15 16 years
old his dad was the poacher
and uh his dad didn't want to get arrested so he sends his kid um and uh it had
all sorts of like uh
deep deep like scratches inside of it and stuff and or just all over kind of
the top was all nicked up and
stuff university of hong kong found that large doses of rhino horn extract
could slightly lower fever in rats
imagine if rhino horn was the cure to malaria
when we would start breeding them right for like we do with chickens and stuff
yeah
how strange it's just
i mean obviously it's not happening in the western world it's not happening
here
but it could i guess right i mean p some people are just up some people they
don't care if something's
about to go extinct they just want they want what they want and if they want
that rhino horn for
whatever strange reason it's just you know well it's like it's like uh it's
like kind of with the trees
um you know we we're getting ready i think to replant um i think it's 1 000
more trees which would take our
total up to 4 500 on the land for the pygmies and around there the reason i
mean china and all these
other places are coming in they're cutting down the rare hardwoods the mahogany
and and reason king
leopold went there was the rubber boom and the trees there and everything else
but then um it's
just nuts man because i think they're you know they want it for greed money
everything else but then the
people in the country they're starting to to learn and get educated in the fact
that like hey if we're
cutting down all these trees we better start replanting some because it takes
so long
for them to grow back and so uh no but it's just for charcoal or fire and they're
like
then once that's gone what do you have yeah yeah boonia actually um the town
that
all of our well drillers live in and at the university they um they used to be
in a rain forest now you have
to drive three four hours to get to the closest forest whoa you have to drive
three or four hours away and it
used to be in the center of the not center of the rainforest but the edge of
the rainforest
oh my god used to be a forest no it's not three or four hours drive yeah it's
all just because
of deforestation all chopping down for logging yeah fuck man i was in canada
and um they they do a
pretty good job of regulating it in bc but it's still disturbing because you
you come across these these big
gigantic fields where the trees are just gone all the trees have been cut and
you know they plant some and
they have they they also have like perches they leave perches for animals which
is uh probably like
an awesome spot for like a a hawk or an eagle or something like that because
everything's cut down
they can see everything straight straight to the yeah but it's um these cut i
don't i forget what they
call it these patches where everything's cut down it's so disturbing yeah it's
like i get i get that they
replant i get that they have a cycle i get that this but it just bugs me that
people could do that they
just giant swaths of the landscape shaved off and turned into toothpicks or
whatever the fuck they do
with it yeah and uh so i was in a village before my wife's first time to congo
and it was i mean it was
almost like you know lush untouched virgin forest and then all of a sudden uh
come back next time with
her come out for us come back in it's probably a month or so because we went to
a couple other
villages we go back start going on the same hike and all of a sudden there's
just a huge clearing at
least 10 acres probably 20 25 and it was just nothing there except for a few
remaining huge
cut down trees that i could stand in front of in the the i don't know the base
or whatever was way
taller than i was like a midget next to it or fuck man so yeah it's pretty
crazy and i was telling her
i'm like babe like when i was like take some pictures of this i think i have
some pictures right here
of where where we are right now on this trail and like there used to be trees
here and it was nuts
because all of a sudden for me if i'm the rainforest is great actually i mean
it's hot and i'm all hairy
but uh but uh she or but being under the canopy of the rainforest i mean i love
that because it's
shaded and everything else right still hot still humid um but a little bit
better i'm not getting
burned yeah so especially yeah you're really pale right on the hike i was
getting burned and i'm
like man this is nuts especially on that malaria medication right right um they
were talking on this uh
documentary i was watching about the deforestation of the amazon about how fast
it's happening and how
terrifying it is and uh a big part of it i guess is uh not even well there's
logging but there's also
they cut it down to make room for cattle grazing and uh when they were showing
the there's just a sheer
size of the deforestation of how much they've done and so quickly and then um
also the people that live in
in these areas where if they resist the loggers or they resist they just get
murdered yeah especially
the um the indigenous people that are more out there and that happens with the
pygmies too because
they're the weaker more vulnerable ones that right you can push around and they
can't push back and so
when you consider your life and you consider this horrible uh these stories
that you're telling us about
your your upbringing how disturbing it is does it feel to you since you've
found this like sense of purpose
and this um this real connection with these people in the congo that almost
like these horrible events
in your life were setting you up to be the perfect person to find these folks
without a doubt for me
honestly it's it's almost like um what's the right word maybe maybe sort of my
chance at kind of
redemption or or just not not being the kid that i grew up being not that i was
a bad kid or anything
but just i hated myself and it's like you know what i get to i get to stop
hating myself i get to stop love
and i get to start loving others well not just that you also have this massive
impact on other people you
have all these people that love you you have this amazing wife now you have
this amazing pygmy family
you have your regular family it's amazing like you have so much positive going
on now it's really kind
of incredible it's almost like you're the horrible experiences you had as a
young kid have sort of
made you into this incredible adult oh i think yeah um i don't know about that
because well you're very
jacked up and i uh but you know i mean i don't even know how this honestly
there's there's not a good
explanation that i could probably explain that like it should be working or
that it's working like it
is because well with me at the front of it because i don't have any community
development training or
i would agree um i actually don't speak the language i'm learning uh but how
how much can you speak when
he i don't have a rudimentary i don't even like uh como te llamo joe yeah i can
say my name is this
where's the bathroom right you doing okay you sure when they start you're like
oh you lost me yeah
it's tough if if the saying is it's brief what does it sound like what do they
sound like when they're
talking uh jimmy pull some pick me hey yo that's what they talk oh yeah that's
some of the forest
calls that's kind of like our walkie-talkies oh yeah you yell that out let
people know where you
are yeah so what are you saying when you're saying that that is actually that's
not a word it's just
kind of like you it's like yo yeah all right it's actually i'm over here where
are you kind of things
like that or we're just checking we're even at just excitement just fun i mean
whenever we go on hikes
those hikes are long right and there's no tv or you can't text or scroll scroll
the internet um you
yeah have each other which is always great but then you goof off i mean
i actually you know what uh i bet in one of those videos it has uh them
speaking and it's pretty
awesome i remember that do you when you're saying when you're saying hikes like
you're talking like
recreational hikes no no no you just gotta get around you hear someone talk
about hikes in la
it's like oh i'm gonna take my little dog to run you and oh yeah we're gonna go
hiking like you say
hiking that's what people think they think of some recreational activity with
one of those little uh
you know those little camel things the little the water things camelback water
reservoirs you put on
your back and you suck on the straw as you're walking it was funny staying
hydrated i i took i took a
couple of those to congo the first couple times and i realized just how impractical
they are and in a
real long term not a not a day hike or a three-day weekend or something a lot
of guys don't like
those yeah a lot of guys don't like them they'd rather have a how do you say
that word now now gene
how do you say it i think it's what is that is this like a certain type of
plastic i think it's really
hard yeah durable plastic that yeah that people use for water jugs but uh that's
what i would rather
yeah use because the other one's too hard to clean and yeah to fill up and
leaks and it's just all
sorts of stuff but some people like it because they don't they don't have to
stop they can just keep
walking and just suck on that thing as they're walking i've never used one
though yeah i used it
for the first two times i went which was like uh about a month each and uh you
switched to water bottles
yeah and then even the they have those camelback kind of like i think they're
called like a platypus
or something that's um it's a gravity filter uh for water where you have a
dirty water bag you have
a clean yeah scoop the dirty you hang hang the dirty and it goes down through a
filter and into the clean
bag yeah i've seen that that's interesting yeah post let me see if you could
find that does that work
those don't work the i think they work great here in the states where you're
not dealing with much
right but whenever the water is is dirty like really dirty um it they break
pretty quick so you have to
backwash them and other stuff there's there's some that are that are good but
even the maintenance of
them just really really tough so they work for like one filtration but they won't
work over and over
over and over the first time i went for about a month i had it for a week or
two and then all of a sudden
it was it started breaking because i was even filtering the water you know in
the town that's coming from
wells because i don't know if they right if they did it properly right when
they did it and i had been
sick enough i'm like i'm done with this i hear you so i'm filtering that stuff
and then by the time i get
out to the forest i was able to use it a few days and then it was out and then
all of a sudden stuck
with just chlorine tablets the rest of the time so and you can boil it but it's
it's just impractical
where every single time you want to drink you take uh you know take a container
down to dirty water
which could be 30 45 minutes away um bring it back boil it right bring it back
boil it uh filter it
yeah and then all of a sudden all the the ash is getting in it and then it's
the hot humid rainforest
on the equator and boiling water doesn't uh cool down basically ever there
right so uh it's it's it's
impractical to do it that way fuck but what i love now is oh you know what i'm
i'm pumped let's do it
so this is this girl first of all she's way too hot to be in this video she's
very distracting
but uh they're gonna take this in what looks like a very clean stream so this
is so much different than
what you but people should also be aware that clean streams although they may
look clean you can still
get giardia from them yeah that that's exactly what i learned from uh his name
his buddy my name matt uh
he was the director of implementation now he's like the i think chief operating
officer and he uh he came
out there and one of the things he really drilled into us for a well drilling
team we're learning from a great
guy he's saying hey you can uh you can drill 100 wells or 200 wells but if you
didn't do it right
and proper then i would have rather you done one the right way or none none uh
if you do it the right
or the wrong way 100 times 200 times um and you are giving a village like he's
if you just hit home hard
because he's like look we're learning every single step you can't skip one we
gotta drill us anywhere you
know it you know because we can't skip a step or miss something and then all of
a sudden they
are looking at it drinking it it tastes good it's uh it's clean it's cool it's
crisp it's in a well
but yet it can still still be you know contaminated dirty and still get real
sick if you don't properly
construct the well no matter what well it is the wells here anywhere what is
the uh what are the factors
like when you say pro properly construct like what are the issues that you have
to avoid yeah so we um
man and our our team's getting getting great but by the way real quick last
time i was on the show i think
we had completed 20 water wells yeah i went back and looked at that 20 water
wells uh today i got a picture
sent to me um and it's our 45th water whoa yeah man that's incredible dude i
love it i absolutely love it and so
what's so great is seeing that you know they're they're they're taking this on
as as their own
thing and flying on their own two wings they they were empowered in a way that's
like hey you can
you can do this you can do it for yourself for your countrymen um you guys are
going to be more
passionate about ending the suffering because you know the suffering because
you have suffered you've lost
family members you have sick kids all that different stuff and so they're going
to be able to be a better
champion for this cause than i could be because i mean maybe we have different
resources where i get to
you know you share your platform with me which has been incredible um and the
kickstarter and the
documentary coming out all the different stuff is really great but um but i
know that the team there like
i i couldn't do anything without them doing it and how great they've gotten but
well that's a beautiful
thing that you've helped them help themselves you taught them how to help
themselves yeah well that i think
that you are right there look at that picture there we go yeah i love it that's
that to me if i could
explain it is better than um i've been to the world i was just at ufc 200 uh
was that uh uh the world
series nba finals super bowl pacquiao fights i mean i've been to all these
things and i mean those
crowds those huge crowds are 30 40 50 100 000 different stuff and that little
crowd of 100 120 like
to me it drowns out the sound of a entire stadium like it's a different kind of
it's a different kind
of gratitude thankfulness right when you've suffered your whole life and then
you you get to partner with
people and i'm not even talking about me like our team our well drillers you
know they see them coming
in staying with them living like they're living eating like they're eating
sitting around the
campfire like they sit around which nobody else does that with them and so
sleeping in the huts
that they sleep in um which nobody else would do uh in that area um and then
like you just develop
this bond and really quickly and to where all of a sudden they're jumping in
and and helping with the
construction of the well and everything else now they do the simple day labor
stuff not the technical
stuff but then um yeah our guys are they're they're they're getting it down
which is pretty cool that's
amazing yeah now you're at 45 wells yeah and what is do you have an ultimate
goal or would you just like
to continue i think the my ultimate goal lines up with water four's ultimate
goal which i love and then
with our drillers in congo like our goal is to end the water crisis if possible
um we think it is possible
and we have the technology we should be able to do it in our lifetime
like before you or me pass this earth like we should have the technology to get
everyone clean water
isn't it crazy that that is that's their issue when when over here in america
we have so many trivial
things that we're constantly worrying about and fretting when when it gets down
to basic human necessities
like water the ability to get clean water which is without that all the all the
other things that we
argue or bicker about they're all it's all nonsense yeah absolutely that's
something that oh man that's
something that i i almost like i get this crazy culture shock because i feel
like i'm in two different
worlds and when i'm there so i mean there's it's uncomfortable but because i'm
passionate about it you
know i enjoy it um but then getting back here sometimes it's like man like
everything a lot of times
everything that we're chasing even me uh it doesn't really matter um in the big
grand scheme of things
you know how can we how can we instead get for ourselves how can we give to
another person because
like i mean it truly is like that's that's better and i know you have to take
care of yourself so you
can take care of someone else like i get that right um i i just think it's kind
of like this our culture
here you see kids and even adults that's mine right i mean that's that's our
culture we say that's mine
give me that it's mine in congo if uh if a kid if that kid that had the eggs
instead of having an egg
if he had a bag of peanuts and he bought it for himself and then i walk by sit
down with him if i'm
a friend or not even just introducing myself he's gonna offer me his food he
said like instead of it's
mine he's gonna say you want some and so it's different in that culture where
it's not they
don't have anything but they'll give you everything they got like for instance
um that that knife last
time uh that i was able to you know bring back that chief leo may made um you
know he he made a bow and
arrow and i'm actually bringing that to you it was under our crawl space and i
lost it and now i know where
it is but uh he's pumped to bring that back to you but i mean for them to give
that kind of stuff away
whenever leo may he's the chief of his village and now because he's got a job
he might have more but
whenever i knew him he had maybe he was lucky if he had two changes of clothes
because most of the
pygmies have the clothes on their back they don't even have a blanket the fire
is their blanket
um and so it's just completely i don't know night and day difference there's a
lot of people that
listen to this that have gotten this far that want to figure out how they can
help so what what can
people do to donate where can they go yeah i mean water four's website is that
the best place to start or
fightfortheforgotten.com both of them are one and the same fightfortheforgotten.com
yeah.com.org
they both work both work for the guy.org.com and uh there's a big yellow donate
button click on that
and have at it folks well thank you man and it's been man it's been crazy to
see what's going on we're
getting ready to do something that i'm i'm pumped about me and papa why and ben
and matt we had like
talked about it and kind of dreamed it up and uh and we were saying how how
awesome would it be
if in this if in bunia which is kind of a city center maybe half less than half
a million people
for sure but um you know in the city center where there's a university there's
a community development
program that's literally changing their part of congo by not waiting on the
government or by not
waiting on an ngo like they're just taking the initiative themselves and so we've
seen that they're so
bought in that whenever we presented an idea of what if we could start a
sustainable solutions
appropriate technology center where there's land water and food solutions and
then after that maybe
we can get into solar maybe after that we can do this or that or you know
whatever but at that place
we'll have different stations where here's land you can come learn about land
rights um how to
replant the trees the forestry aspect you know all that different stuff the
importance of land
and we have people there that can help and show them things if a chief wants to
come in and book our
well drilling team for their community for their they can come in see how we do
it why we do it
everything about it we want to have a little conference room where we can train
people up on
the wash program because now we're doing that all the villages that we've
drilled wells in we're going
back in and we're doing uh the wash program water and sanitation and hygiene
and so with that i mean if you
they have they have outhouses what do they use for they're getting them they're
getting them now and
so uh for the year i was there there was one or two of the ten villages we were
in had a quote unquote
latrine but it was only like three or four feet deep which isn't isn't a safe
so most of them are just
going in the woods yeah and honestly like that's if yeah until you do it the
right way with because
outside of there some of those some of those latrines in the cities man i i
definitely think
i've gotten sick from a fly that maybe landed there so i mean i don't know but
um
but yeah so we get to go in there now teach them how to dig the latrines make
sure it's
way far enough away from the the water well um and then you know outside of the
that's another issue
too right it can contaminate the water if you want if you have to keep um what
is i think 30 meters away
or more um any latrines um and then if it's a uh like a what is that a dump
trash dump um it has
to be 50 meters or more if there's any batteries different stuff like that in
it um and so yeah
we make sure and this is what's nuts so uh one of my last trips i went and we're
going through uganda
on the border of congo and there's these people that are so proud of their
water well and i i love
that but then i feel like the people who ever did it um i don't know cut them
really short they're just
they they shouldn't be drilling wells because i went in the restroom and then
all of a sudden i
look out the window and it's i'm at a gas station uganda's a lot nicer than congo
um i mean there's
still terrible brutal poverty parts of that but just night and day difference
um and whenever i looked
out i see there's here's the 18 wheeler filling up here's someone else filling
up and in between that
i'm i'm at the toilets the other side there's a trash dump there's 18 wheelers
and trucks filling up with
fuel and right in the middle of the two fuel pumps is a water well oh god they
drilled it on the on the
lot of the gas station with a trash dump with the latrines and toilets oh and
so it was completely
contaminating and the line was so long and ben was trying to tell him like hey
just want to tell you
because we love you that water is really not safe same thing matt matt kind of
ingrained ingrained that
into us to where it's like um you know you got to do it the right way and so
ben was taught that so
this is a recent well that these guys had put in and it was one of the and
there's a big line of
people to try to get to this i'm telling you there was at least 20 30 people in
line um and ben was
trying to tell them in the most appropriate way possible to like not crush the
hopes and dreams of
the the village there but he also wanted to know like hey this water can it
looks safe it's not
oh and so uh so that's why we're testing our wells and whatever happened that
feels did you you had to
leave yeah i mean it's a town we don't i've been in the town maybe twice but um
yeah it was the first
time i i saw it last time jesus yeah so uh but that's what's creating a lot of
people don't know
like i i think it's no i know it is half the hospital beds in the world right
now are because
of dirty water or waterborne related diseases half half in the world yep so if
if we were able to if if
as human beings if we could join forces unite kind of like everyone did against
ebola you know if we
attack the problem head on and just because we got it we don't pretend
everybody else has it
like we could really end this thing we could uh we could fix it like the the
tools are there
the water is there it's under our feet um and here we waste it and there we
they're uh there they don't
have it we don't hear about ebola anymore it's like it's over it's like they
moved on to zika zika
zika zika yeah all the olympians are going to get it yeah they're all of them
oh the last time when i got back uh they were the cdc was testing me um two
different rounds
of treatments trying to figure out what so on that trip i told you going in i
got malaria right now
malaria i keep meaning to ask you this if you have malaria can someone else get
it from you no
if a mosquito stings you while you have malaria and then sting somebody else
they can't get it uh
i mean that's that's one i never heard of or i mean i've never thought of that
one but remember
that when people were worried about that with hiv they're worried about
mosquito transmission that
was like the big thing keep away from gay people in the summer yeah no i i i
had never thought of
that but i i know that don't shoot hair in the swamp i i know that the yeah the
doctors that you know
they're always saying you're you're fine and everything i mean i can i can
fight and everything
else that's crazy my blood and you you have malaria and you can fight yeah but
i i literally don't
because it's in my liver i think you would have to go into the liver unless it
was a current outbreak that
what about a liver kick if you got liver kicked don't don't let out that that
secret just kidding
um no but it's it's it's been a lot of fun to i don't know i i think what maybe
kind of shifted was
that kind of growing up you know getting bullied you're only looking at why am
i getting bullied and
all this stuff's true and i am not a good person and then or nobody likes me
whatever then when i got 23
i'm fighting still not really fulfilled i was living for more for myself there
and i'm like man what
what am i doing with my life and now it's so cool because seeing that and being
able to tell you that
last time i was here 20 water wells or 25 but regardless we've we've done 20 or
25 more and so
that to me is a life that i get to look at and if i were to if i were to die i
know i know
without a shadow of a doubt that my life meant something and i know that i
would have i never
felt that before during the depression addiction and all that other stuff but
now i know that the
life i live hopefully will i'll outlive my life you know like the i want this
team to what do what
they're doing climb higher than i can climb run farther than i can run jump
higher than i can jump you
know like i want my what's that saying i want my uh ceiling to be their floor i
want them to
to go farther than i can go because then that means that i actually made a
impact that matters
that mattered to them enough that it continued that it had a residual effect it
just kept kept on going
and man that's that's really shifted kind of kind of everything in my life like
man this is this is
what life is about like if i've been signing my book recent or ever since it
came out but i signed it
live to love love to live and i know that can sound cheesy or goofy or whatever
but that's something that
just really helped me whenever i was sobering up was man if that's what i focus
on if i can live my life
to love love then i'll love to live but everyone wants to love their own life
that they live and so
they're just focused on that and get this and get this materialistic thing and
get this different
chick because she didn't make me happier you know this or that or whatever
whenever it's like you know
what like hey let's focus let's i don't know if that's if that's a natural inclination
to gravitate
towards unattainable things like ferraris and mansions and you see those things
on tv and the
movies and you just that shows you that you've made it and when you don't have
anything and you're
wanting for things you don't have money and you're struggling you look at
someone who's got all those
things and money and you think if i only had that all my worries would be gone
and then i would
be happy but if you have that and nobody likes you your life is yeah it's it's
still
meanwhile you are in a hut in the middle of nowhere with well in the middle of
the congo with all these
people and you're having a great time and you're making wells and you're loving
life that that picture
that uh came up i think why why i got so excited was um because that night in
that village um i mean we
i'm not kidding danced and danced and danced and and and and feasted i mean we
we just all came
together just to celebrate celebrate life celebrate each other celebrate guess
what our kids aren't
gonna be sick anymore different stuff like that to where oh it's just a life
where like like what you
were just saying you're always comparing comparing comparing for me man
comparison i think for most people
um comparison is probably the number one thief what robs us of joy of of being
able to be at peace is
we're always comparing ourselves and we always compare up we never compare down
right um or just
compare ourselves to people that are just like us we always look at that what
you're saying is
unattainable and um always pursuing that and my whole thing has been like
recently it's man i just want
i think our i've learned it from our team in congo like that's been the
greatest gift like you were
saying that you know there's been a lot of great stuff that's been happening
and that's true but i
and i mean i started thinking and now i think it sounds cliche but i'll say it
anyways where man like
they've given me more of a gift than i can i can give them i mean you you see i
told you that growing
up and everything else but to to find a life of of purpose of passion of
helping one another of i
don't know our mission statement is defend the weak love the unloved empower
the voiceless and the
vision statement is overcoming oppression with overwhelming opportunity and so
if we can go into
these communities and we've seen incredible stuff that's what's going to be in
the dock this last
trip me ben matt and derek the filmmaker we would not be they wouldn't be
ashamed of me saying this
we were in tears after an interview with uh one of the former slave masters
that ran a hospital
um and actually if you could pull up a picture it's called captula um and we we
were at this this
hospital and it's tough because um we were trying to get treatment for kaptula
he's a he's a buddy of
mine that passed away um and we spent seven months taking the hospital taking
the hospital taking the
hospital and they're just sending them away because he was a pygmy and and it's
like i knew whenever i
first saw him actually uh if you bring up the maybe the first kept to the one
that's when i saw him
that's when i saw him uh for the very first time we're looking at a guy that's
extremely emaciated
yeah and so for me so what is going on with his health right here right there
we didn't know but uh
i had a i mean a gut feeling that it could have been tuberculosis because we've
we've helped several
of the pygmies that have tuberculosis and stuff a little growing fena and some
others um what's
the root cause of tuberculosis there was some sort of a study on that lungs i
think you have a low
immune system and uh there was something that just came out like really
recently about tuberculosis where
they're they had something to do with fire
oh if it's something to do with smoke i believe that because the bacteria
spread from person to
person through microscopic droplets released in the air can happen when someone
in the untreated active
form of tuberculosis cough speaks sneezes spits laughs or sings jesus christ
imagine getting tuberculosis
from a shitty song like some dude breaks out the banjo like that scene in um
animal house he breaks out a
guitar and starts singing he gives you tuberculosis as well as an ear beating
but see if this wasn't there some connection with fire i swear i read something
really recently about that
some connection between tuberculosis is that it here it is was tuberculosis
born of fire
by damaging lungs and bringing people together fire may have turned a soil
microbe into a global
pathogen whoa many thousands of years ago chilly africanite that's interesting
so they think that
might have started around around around a fire in a cave and that they're
always in the fire i can't
i can't sleep with that's why the bugs are even worse on me because i i have
many times
slept in the huts whenever the fire's going but it just fills up with smoke
where my eyes are just
tears are coming down my face they light a fire in their hut yeah that's their
that's how they keep the
the bugs out oh well it's one of the ways but it's mainly for warmth but a
benefit is there's less bugs
and then um it uh and it can help waterproof their their twig and leaf huts
where um enough smoke and
everything it kind of i think it's like a tar soot yeah that's in your lungs
too though right of course
yeah and there's so many kids that are getting at this sustainable solutions
center that we're hoping to
you know get up and running we're wanting one for cooking where they can use
either corn cobs or
uh or corn husk or peanut shells um or different things where they can put
those into little briquettes
and then they can use that and recycle it and everything else and it burns
longer uh at the
same temperature and uh yeah and you're not having to deforest anything and you're
not breathing in that
terrible smoke yeah coconut charcoal is a of really um there's a some company a
grill come kamado
company you know what a kamado is so one of those japanese grills yeah it's
like a green egg
that kind of thing and they sell uh charcoal made out of coconut and apparently
it's like one of the best
charcoals because it's like really sustainable it's really easy to to grow and
it's uh it's
so much of them they're wasting yeah yeah they just throw it away so yeah
exactly people throw the
outside of the coconut away but apparently it's really good for charcoal
so bellator has embraced this narrative they've embraced your story and they've
made it a big part
of your you're fighting there to uh let everybody know that you're doing it not
just because you want
to compete but also because you want to expose the world to this passion this
project this this
this sort of life direction that you've taken yeah absolutely and it's really
cool that they've done
that yeah no i i agree and that's that was the i love i dude i love the ufc
that's what i was 13
years old found those tapes and um just on that real quick uh i bottle those
tapes put them under my
bed and i would wait for my parents to go to work or to go to sleep and i'd be
popping them in uh the you know the vhs
and uh my dad comes in and i turn it off real quick lay down act like i'm
asleep and it's you know the
vcrs the vhs is still moving and the the i don't know the screen still lit up
and everything my dad
confiscated that tape then when he found the rest he thought it was uh all porn
but it was uh it was just
the ufc why did he confiscate it uh well i think me being 13 being picked on it
he didn't want me to
start fighting people at school and different stuff and so just uh just a precaution
but you know he
told my mom uh he's gonna do that one day if we let him keep that stuff and i
was like no it won't
but in my head i'm like yeah i will i remember looking at the vhs tape and when
i turned it over
and saw the the jiu-jitsu and sumo and boxing and wrestling and all these
different things like
it came alive to me it's like oh my goodness like these guys well i think i
originally connected
with it because because i i'm like well these guys aren't anything like me they
could stick up for
themselves they can they're an athlete they're popular probably instead of
being the laughing
stock at the party they might be invited to the party or it might be their
party and so i mean i i
like that aspect but um then i just fell in love with the the sport of it you
know watching it and
seeing how everything and now being a fan and watching how it's evolved and
everything else it's just
it's not seeing a guy like dan henderson that's been fighting i think isn't it
20 years straight 20
yeah 20 straight i was there when he was fighting in 97 and i wasn't there for
his first fights
he fought in 96 i think in brazil yep i think that was his first i actually i
actually watched that uh
first fight in the last couple weeks really yeah because uh dude i i love dan
um that was awesome
yeah and see him even i mean because whenever he stepped in he was just a
wrestler i had heavy hands
but then he's just well he didn't even have heavy hands yeah you're right you're
right yeah he was
just a wrestler lay down and i mean take him down and pound on him and yeah he
figured out over time
how to utilize his power that's what i want to get maybe i could bribe uh dan
or big country or
someone to teach me that that big right hand do you think you can teach someone
that uh i don't
mean dan's one of the few guys that have sort of developed you know like come
on but big country
always had power big country was known way back in the day as being a jiu-jitsu
guy he was one of
mark layman's guys and he was uh you know like really respected as a grappler
yeah black belt yeah
but to go from that to being this crazy knockout brawler it's like people
rarely see big country
you never see him submit anybody i mean the closest thing was when he took kimbo
down and got him into
the mounted crucifix and just elbowed him until the referee stopped the fight
but since i was on
that season uh he i think he threw a couple elbows but uh when they finally
stopped it we were all
counting every single punch and then uh but he was just just tapping his
forehead like this yeah
because it wasn't intelligently yeah uh defending himself but um you didn't
even have to hurt him to
stop the fight it was just tapping his forehead well he was it's almost like uh
you know when you
what is that called in wrestling when you uh have so many points it's a
technical technical yeah tech
fall almost like that it's like you're never coming back from this yeah it's
like a 10-run rule in
little league baseball yeah 10 points up you just call it and uh the big
countries got very good submissions
but everybody expected that from him when he started fighting like if you
remember back when he was fighting for
elite xc which was like the most corrupt organization in the early days of mma
he had andre olofsky down
inside control up working for a kimura had that yep had side control and had
that double wrist lock
position and he was working for the kimura and they stood him right up and i
remember watching tv going
it's corrupt yeah it's good we're screaming at the tv it's corrupt they had a
15 second rule like if you
went if it went to the ground if nothing happened in 15 seconds i think jake
shield submitted paul
daly it was one of the few submissions in elite xc but it's just he just
mounted him and just
immediately went to an arm bar and locked it in well yeah was it paul daly i
think it's paul daly
i might be wrong i was actually um well i mean now with the kimbo stuff
happening it's pretty really
it's very very sad yeah man i mean apparently he there's he had a doctor
telling him you know for
people don't know what we're talking about kimbo died really recently of uh
heart disease and he had a
doctor telling him recently that uh he needed a heart transplant i guess he had
some sort of
congenital heart disease that um i mean yeah how could that be you know you
look at him you look
guy's a stud he's in great shape i mean how could you imagine that he his heart
was so bad that they
were telling him he needed a heart transplant and this yeah this could probably
sound cliche again
too but because knowing him being an ultimate fighter and uh and him cooking
the best steak
i've ever had sorry big josh um uh but he uh i don't know he had even though he
had a bad heart
i think i don't know emotionally had a good heart and um he was always a good
guy always a very friendly
guy yeah even even with um i mean technically we were supposed to fight i think
three times before
or two times elite xc my name was in the hat for that um and then because i was
like a 19 or 20 year old
kid i had a decent record and then um but it was bad matchup so they scrapped
it i get it wasn't smart
then uh then on the ultimate fighter i was actually matched up with them and uh
then roy got it um
and then we were talking about it in bellator where at our last fight um february
19th i think
houston toyota center um and backstage uh oh actually that was uh this this
will be good in a way that
the dude just loved on ben my uh brother and translator from congo he got to
actually come from congo
uh for the my second fight and so the first fight actually if you can pull up
that video it's uh it's
called um fight day uh talking to my congo guys but um it's just uh it's less
than a minute i think
and it's they they surprised me for my first fight back um they surprised josh
woke me up and
it was a guy that's like my father figure a guy that's like my brother
and uh just awesome fight day my first thing you need to see in here is this
this was so awesome hey present who is this that's laying down it's you oh that's
me yeah is that your
voice yeah you're gonna watch it
yeah you can't fall in from from there but we'll record it the shittiest angle
ever i couldn't even
tell it's you i see it's a beard yeah talking beard yeah i miss you guys my
heart my heart's happy now i
think you can stop it in a minute
yeah yeah yes sir the battle's already won before the fight hey uh you go back
to congo today you can
stop it now and then um it was uh it was really cool like i mean josh was
filming because he didn't
want i guess it was a surprise they were going to call me and everything else
but they were in uganda
getting more well drilling supplies and because you can't you can't skype from
from congo right so
they were at a decent enough hotel that had wi-fi and uh they were able to skype
with me the day of
my first fight back and uh man it was awesome that was that was so much
motivation seeing them hearing
them and then having them come for the second fight was just uh and be there
you know he was actually
he was actually in my corner you know what you're doing is um helping them by
building wells is there
once you do that like say if you establish a series of wells and well building
and everybody has
fresh water do you want to take it another step did you did you want to try to
give them um safer
housing or cleaner housing do you want to try to teach them how to build houses
or are you are you
planning on escalating it from where you're at right now yeah in fact i i went
about it and it was a
it was a learning lesson i don't regret it because i got some great training
here in california it was
uh i think it's is it called hesperia california and uh there's something
called cal earth and they
build eco domes or earth bag homes and uh they call them super adobe the
technical term but they make
it looks like pygmy huts uh out of sandbags that they fill up with sand do it
in a circle and
supposedly they're earthquake proof tornado proof all this um different stuff
and this is it yeah right there
and a dome is the strongest structure known to man um the arches after that or
vault then arch
um but yeah i was in these exact uh buildings that's like a hobbit house what a
cool looking little
house house quetzalcoatl back up but i i went there because uh why are they
calling it quetzalcoatl that's
a aztec god right that's that aztec snake snake feathered plume serpent god
costa rica it might be
oh okay that makes sense cal earth green build i actually love all those guys
there they have
we have a lot of like-minded um beliefs of of how to help people and uh but
yeah i loved it because
housing what because i slept in the huts the first two times i went and got
rained on and literally one
time woke up in the mud like sunk halfway because it just rained and rained and
rained and rained and
just lying in mud yeah to where it just kept coming through it was just washing
down the hill and
wow um when my wife was there i was doing it again and all the pygmies get up
and uh they came out and
i didn't know what they were doing um i thought something was going on because
everyone was around
our hut in a circle um digging this trench so it wouldn't come in and get emily
wet and wow they're just
so so caring so awesome and uh but when i saw the huts those ecodomes earthbag
homes i was like man
that's something culturally sound yeah that is something that they would want
to live in because it
looks like that it looks like their huts similar um and so this is something
that you want to try to
implement with without a doubt but it has to be the right timing because what
happened was um
i i knew papa why and the the school was working on land and i was going to
help with that too um i i
had no clue how to how to get clean water um i was looking for it i was in my
backyard i bought
everything from lowe's i'm in my backyard it was like a website i think
literally something like how
to drill your own well.org or something and it's this guy i stand on the back
of his pickup truck and he's
he's drilling a well but what i didn't know is that's not drinkable water the
way he's doing it and
everything else and so i'm in the backyard with like five six hundred dollars
of low stuff with pvc
trying to drill my own well by myself um and uh trying to learn but i'm like
man this is so hard
there's got to be an easier way and so i kind of stepped around that because i'm
like you know what
i can't help them with housing if i go here get trained sandbags are cheap get
a couple shovels
make some mud and get some cement and make a plaster to go around it to
waterproof it better
um and that's going to work but then what kind of plaster um i always make it
make it out of a
mix of uh cement and um soil and uh if if it's got the right mixture which i'm
forgetting right now
um it can be just as strong as uh or waterproof as like concrete or yeah so it's
a it's a really great
thing but when i get there and all of a sudden i see you know hey uh first if
they don't have any land
of their own then building these things are going to be worthless someone else
can move into them
and uh so they got to have land first there's a process like the most important
things land and
the water because water is next then food and after that yes if you can be
housing i want to stay
in a sweet spot in a lane and not spread ourselves too thin but if you thought
about these people that
you're you dealt with in california trying to bring them in and have yeah that
would be cool take over
that aspect of it yes that would be cool the only thing that we are is we try
to be really protective
of the pygmies um and because uh kind of bringing in a lot of outsiders um most
outsiders that visit them
it's not a good experience and so just bringing a lot of random people if it
was a couple of people
that really highly skilled had the right hearts um their vision lined up with
our vision of how we
kind of do the community development because we want to there's i think there's
a great book i think
it's called uh helping without hurting or how to help without hurting or
something like that
and i have it i should know it um i have two of them and it's it's really great
about how you can go
about helping people in a way that helps them more than helps you in a way of
like a lot of people
help because it's going to make them feel all warm and fuzzy and um and yeah
you just do that enough
for random people but what if you can make a difference that that lasted longer
and it's great
to do both right it's great to do both um i actually love when i see someone
else do some random act of
kindness like it warms my heart i love it but how can we help in a way that
that really changes the game
of of things there well i think you're definitely already doing that i mean you're
certainly spreading
it i think you feel like it's a long job and your job's not nearly done but no
i don't think it ever
ever will be well for water i i've definitely hope for that but then i don't
know i think i just feel
i don't know whenever you how is it when you have that heart connection it's
kind of like
well i want to see these people if they have if they have everything i got too
like i still
still want to hang out with them all i can of course but um no you know what
though it's been
really cool to see um so there's these guys from uganda that came in and helped
train us and they're
called young men drillers and there were these guys that were you've heard of
the lra and joseph
coney and different stuff like that one of the guys was he told me around a
campfire that he was
one of two it might have been three survivors out of a three four or five
hundred person village the
rebels came in killed everybody he barely escaped and um then another kid
another kid and it's so cool
to see these young guys all of a sudden stand up and water four got involved
with them and train
them up on how to drill wells in their own country and these when i say young
men drillers like i think
someone were 16 17 18 when they started well then all of a sudden they cranked
out over 100 water wells
over 100 water wells they've been doing it longer than we have we haven't done
any i'm in the congo
we try to get them out to us to help matt comes in to train us and to continue
training with them and
then they were going to leave that team you got the main three guys from young
men drillers behind
to train us to invest and impart their knowledge in us uh matt was doing real
intensive training
and then these guys are going to stick around for the next three months make
sure we could bust out
you know a few wells and do it the right way and so it's so cool they came and
stayed with us
and so cool to see they've gone through all that where one of the guys it was
probably every other
night or every three nights he's waking up in night terrors where he is just
screaming and i've never
been around that before but the things he saw the things he's been through are
just so tough but then
to see he chose that he's going to take a different path he's gonna he's gonna
he's gonna find something
that he can help people with and he's gonna give it to others in a different
country in congo so they
came and lived with the pygmies for three years or three months it was awesome
now uh ben and a couple
of our other drillers are in cameroon um and i i kind of had this thing that i
haven't really spoken
out but i would love to see the pygmies in congo all have water but then after
that you know the other
pygmies are suffering in very similar ways to the pygmies in congo and so what's
so cool is that okay
the young man drillers comes out invest in us pours their hearts and lives they
almost died coming
to us their car flipped ran over a lady a taxi driver was driving he ran away
she died um oh
fuck they they ran over a lady no they didn't the cab driver cab driver did and
he bailed he was from
congo and they were from uganda and at the border they had to get in with a congolese
taxi driver
well they do that and they can't even speak the same language and he gets in a
wreck he knows congo
he does that drive all the time to the border and so he just bails and
literally the people in a place
called uh njoka which means uh snake um it was a place of a rebel group that
used to be there and
everything and this was a very very bad uh part of town there's gold mines on
both sides of them
luckily this lady took them in and held them in there and and called uh the
military because people
literally had and at whenever they not the military but the cops and it was
just a little shack i mean
because were people going to kill them because they thought that she killed
they killed the woman yes and
it in there it doesn't matter if you know you're guilty and we'll ask questions
later and uh um
someone it's mob justice someone's got to pay if this person just hurt somebody
even if you weren't
driving even if you were right one of our guys was thrown from the vehicle of
the car when it rolled
um and running away fearing for their lives they had uh i think fifteen
thousand dollars of well
drilling equipment in the trunk plus they had a uh a solar uh pump um solar
filter
and it did like 400 gallons of water a day and or 400 liters 100 gallons and um
anyways
they loot it they i think they set the car on fire i know they looted it but
then at the police
station little shack people outside had machetes uh literal torches um like
those hose that uh for
farming and what else they have oh tires they're gonna put tires around them
and set them on fire
oh god and so luckily um man i i yeah very luckily it was a miracle that uh
that papa why is such a great
uh like i don't know he's a peacekeeper like he can go somewhere and talk with
anyone that's having a
dispute and bring him to some sort of agreement and uh he was able to go out
there on behalf of our
uganda guys doesn't even really know him yet gets them out and while they're
leaving papa why is really
respected because of uh you know he he's actually helping people in their
country like people know
him when he's walking around because he's like oh those are the that's the crew
that's actually
putting what they're learning into action and so he went up there and as they
were getting ready to
leave someone came up to him and whispered to him and says uh we know where all
your stuff is
um and he's like what like everything that was stolen um he's like i i think it
was something like
he said it to him there or later why they didn't keep it and why they gave it
back but whenever they
got there it was uh the case they had broken the lock opened it up and uh was
oh one of there they
opened up that solar pump it's got these two different uh oh man i'm losing
words but uh canisters
on it and it and they left it because they thought it was a bomb oh god and so
they left that and all
our well-driven equipment and we were able to reclaim everything get them to us
they lived with us for
three months then uh their supply chain from uganda to congo and i'll wrap this
up where it's so cool to
see where now um no joke the guys that came out to learn from cameroon that
work with the pygmies in
cameroon are named uh willie and turbo those are their their names from cameroon
and uh actually
that that uh that big heavyweight um what is his name he's in the ufc now uh
francis and gone yeah
francis yeah now he's him in czech congo both um czech congo's from congo i
believe i'm not sure
which one he's from but no it's huge yeah dude he is huge he's a scary guy man
yeah and both those
guys ended up in france because um they're french speaking countries right um
both congo and cameroon
and so it's just cool to see how how the trickle effect comes from these guys
that are lucky to be
alive then from growing up then they're lucky to be alive coming to help us
then they decide to stay in
the country that they were almost murdered in for an extra three months so that
we get it down to
where we really know what we're doing then they can go back and we have this
great relationship but
now another can come and learn from us and now we're sending our team out to
different parts of the
continent to rwanda to kenya to cameroon to um i think rwanda uganda and
training up these other teams
of that are wanting they have a desire to uh to do the same thing that's such a
crazy story man they're
so lucky oh they'll stick them in tires and light them on fire yeah i saw a guy
ben and i both saw a
guy beat to death um uh because they called him a thief and then rumors were
that uh we were kind of
far away i tried to get up kind of kind of too scary close ben's literally
pulling my shirt away
because i'm seeing this i don't know who he is and he's getting beat and kicked
and all this other
stuff but ben's like f8 we gotta go we gotta go and so he pulled me away and
then when we came back
later i couldn't even bend my body like that like it's like a contortionist
kind of thing where he's
like bent up like a pretzel and just laying there and um supposedly the rumor
was that just some drunk
guys started a rumor called him a thief or called him a thief and when someone
says thief they they
pounce on the on the thief and so i sometimes it's really a thief or whatever
but um and other times
it's some innocent guy and you know they can crazy stuff can happen yeah i can
only imagine yeah and uh
but it's you've seen some dude man it's been uh it's been different but i
wouldn't change it it's
it's beyond it literally is is wild like i couldn't i couldn't uh i couldn't
have dreamed it up
for myself and what's what's kind of funny is um i i think not funny it's
actually uh have you ever
heard of i think it's a book called what they don't teach you at harvard or
what they don't
teach you at harvard business or something like that no i think the author's
name is mark um well
he did something pretty incredible and um i heard i heard about it when i was
in high school but kenny
monday um which he got to it came full circle he coached me in high school then
for my comeback fight
and he coached me a little bit in mma at the beginning but then for my comeback
fight and this
last one he was in my corner um but anyways he told me you know hey if you want
to wrestle go home
write down your goals like write them down and this book talks about how if um
they pulled
some class some senior class in at harvard and asked who has goals that are um
who who knows their
goals and some like 87 didn't know like besides i'll get my college degree from
harvard and then i'll
figure it out then they asked who knows who knows your um i think that was 87
of them or something
like that and then uh or 83 something and um then it was it was uh 13 or
something like that where
they had um i'm sorry i'm screwing this up but it was uh they it's an
incredible stat it's so 87 or 83
didn't know their goals 13 or 17 did know their goals but they didn't have them
written down
and then only three percent of the class had written concise direct goals of
what they wanted
to do in their life i think they went back 10 years later and the ones that had
goals but didn't
have them written down were making twice as much on average than all the other
83 or 87 percent that
didn't have goals and then the people that had written down goals they were
making 10 10 times yeah
10 times as all the other 97 combined here is why three percent of harvard mbas
make 10 times as much
as the other 97 combined harvard mba program is extremely competitive and today
admits approximately
15 of the applicants in the 1960s acceptance rate was about 30 percent down to
25 in the 1970s
fluctuated between 10 and 15 ever since students who make it past the
application process are typically
standouts and already fairly successful by most traditional definitions they
have an undergraduate
degree typically three to five years of work experience hold on uh and when
considered suitable for
acceptance into the harvard business school blah blah blah blah blah so okay so
it's explaining about
writing your goals down yeah and having a clear direction makes sense and and
um for for me and and seeing that
hearing that hearing that and then having coach monday tell me that um honestly
wrestling mma having a goal
to focus on having a goal to write down um i think that really helped me escape
the depression for for a
while for a few years um because now i found something that i could focus on
and i was passionate about i could
you know that was my outlet and um but he he also told me he went a step
further i don't think i've said
this publicly publicly but um he told me write down be it that what's your goal
i'm like i want to be a
state champion and he said okay go home write that down and uh put it somewhere
you can see it either on
your you know your bathroom mirror or somewhere i put it above my bed um but i
didn't never write down
state champion i wrote down national champion start working towards it with
state champion that you're the
next having a great great training partner and i'm kind of jazzed up that the olympics
is coming up
i know some guys that are going robbie uh smith he's a heavyweight he was my
roommate at the olympic
training center and treville delagniv we wrestled together um in high school
and then after and
um so i'm pumped about it but see these guys obtaining their goals their dreams
um and writing them down
well then with coach monday he's like hey get some of your favorite wrestling
moves some pictures
like so you can visualize and i just see the words but see the actual thing
that you want to do like
see it and so i went and i put one wrestling move on the left and another on
the right and uh and man i
just would go to sleep dreaming about it basically and wake up motivated to to
attain that gold national
champion and having a guy that's olympic gold medalist teaching you the basics
like you you'll
get good quick that way but um also having the goals like i the first national
championship i won
um was with the move on the left and the second national championship was with
move on the right
um and it was just it was nuts to see how all that works out and looking back
on this book and seeing
like man you gotta write down and i need to update that now i've been working
on it and everything else but uh
i think a lot of us do yeah i think focusing on one individual goal like that
or writing something
down having a very clear thing that you're working towards it takes away a lot
of the ambiguity about
that people have about wanting to be successful you know just wanting to be
successful just wanting
to do well that's not enough you have to have like a real like something that
you're looking towards
something you're moving and working towards a plan an initiative yeah well that's
probably one of the biggest
um strengths that our team has has had uh the 18 employees we have um and at
water 4 we write down
what we want to do and it's so cool when i came on the show the first time um i
had gone and i'd only
experienced the terrible stuff like nothing good had happened yet um only
corruption and me holding the
little guy that died and all this just brutal stuff but i came back and like
finally was like okay
i can't say no anymore i got to do something and so let's just write it down
and do it and start
speaking about it and throwing it out there um and then to see the other team
like they're coming in
with uh with the real like here's the big vision stuff but here's filling in
all the details how we're
going to get it done and man my my first time to write things down was one
water well on 300 acres of land
and maybe we could build a school and get a teacher and they would help them
with education because the
pigmies don't have any representation in the government because nobody is
educated
and that's their excuse at least in congo um what i hear and so it's like
school that'd be great
one water well and 300 acres and now it's by the end of this year will be 3 000
acres that's incredible
that they literally own they'll be 10 times more 45 wells yeah 45 wells that's
amazing employees um
we've got three working farms over how long how many years you've been doing
this now uh five um
that's pretty incredible over five for sure that's an incredible commitment
well thanks it it's been a
yeah it's been an awesome watch even even like being able to go back and had
all these pictures
to show you about uh leo may growing papaya trees and standing from a banana
trees and um all the
different stuff and they're growing them with the water that they're getting
from the wells well it's
the rainforest and everything so it's it's pretty fertile yeah you can spit a
seed on the ground that's
gonna it's gonna sprout up wow in the rainforest well that's great too are you
bringing seeds over
there for these people and is that they have they have pretty good seeds um
there and uh a lot of
those trees were doing seedlings and they take and they know how to garden and
farm and all that stuff
yeah especially at the university because they have a whole agriculture
department that teams up with
the community development department so they come and teach the pigmies how to
do it yeah they come in
and teach them and then uh they start learning how to do it for themselves and
this was okay i think i can
tell you two moments real quick where going back and seeing leo may and walking
in and seeing
all those banana trees blew me away and then now there it's just so cool
because i was leaving and
there's a little guy named jippy and i've seen him grow up i've watched him
grow up and i saw whenever
his his water source was absolutely disgusting like you could not ever imagine
a human being drinking
drinking it and uh that was what am i looking at that was their water source
where they got water
what is that it's uh this little stagnant pond kind of thing with all this moss
over it that's a pond
yeah now what's so cool is this picture green yeah no it's it doesn't look like
water at all there's
definitely it's a big thick thing so they'll get a stick and they'll push all
the moss did you send
this to jamie this photo that's what i i had and then it all lost um what
happened on the screen
what happened oh what the people could see oh i see oh how's that working that's
ridiculous and what is
it what what is wrong with the uh connection to you it didn't uh i don't have
that photo oh no he doesn't
have the photo because everything like crashed on me i had dude i i didn't even
sleep last night at all
zero because i was trying to send videos uh to water for um an update video and
it was in my hotel it was
it's a little roach motel but it it took like two hours to send one video and
then i have to do another
another oh jesus and then all of a sudden it uh it just i lost the powerpoint
that went back to well
speaking of videos let's watch the video that you said bellator did for you
yeah yeah that'd be great
let's watch that i want to see that what is this one i'm looking at right here
that's uh where where
we drilled one of the new wells what is those things in their hands uh jerry
cans they're filling oh oh i see okay
in fact okay so let's play this foundations
justin wren versus josh burns the story of that fight was the time off of a
very talented fighter he'd
been away from the sport for years one of those guys when he was active when he
was at his peak
was considered one of the hottest prospects in the heavyweight division
talented wrestler aggressive well
rounded well coached but the time off the ring rust the time away from the
sport against josh burns a
guy who traditionally wasn't a very fast starter we thought he'd have time to
warm up and he didn't
burns came right after him a guy i think was trying to take advantage of the
fact that ren had been off
for so long ren handled it extremely well ren had been away from her a long
time so you could see the
surprise you could see the fatigue you could see the questioning of himself you
could see those times
when things started working out and it started coming back to him the story of
all his time off was
on his face and was in his performance that's a guy making up for time off in
one fight what's easy to
forget with justin wren's story with him helping out the pygmies with all he's
done socially with all
he's done politically for that tribe they can't go in there with him and the
pressure of having a big
story on your shoulders everybody rooting for you everybody reading your book
that's not an easy thing
to carry into a fight everybody talks about how great the story is and what it
does for a fighter and
what it does for their career it's also a gigantic burden you're not just
fighting for yourself
anymore you're fighting for everyone who looks up to you winning that night was
a big deal for him
people don't understand what he was carrying he was carrying ring rust and he
was carrying the hopes
and dreams of everybody he was fighting for and he managed it could you go back
to 127 real quick and
pause it just one one minute 27 seconds because i just uh that's not easy it's
great it's right there
so uh the girls on the left through the cage this is the only time this ever
happened that's my wife
this is her first fight of mine to ever go to her sea and we've been together
for four or five years
and um it's so funny because i was throwing the knees right here and this is
the ring look dominic cruz can
say it's uh it's there's not ring rust he's just way too mentally tough and uh
and stubborn and he's
a way awesome competitor but uh dude i well one i didn't train like i really
should have yeah i'm
sure that had a big factor yeah and two it was uh man but one of the ring rust
kind of things was um
i could hear the commentators and i could um i looked out first person i see is
my wife and i see her
make eye contact with her like we stared into each other's eyes and i know this
is gonna sound goofy
but uh uh she had a new outfit on and i'm just like she's beautiful and then
all of a sudden i see her
and she's like go and also i'm in a fight and he's like punching me and i'm
just like ah crap so uh no
it was in and actually right there was the closest part where i almost finished
him there with some
some knees or coulda shoulda woulda and um and then i stop look out at my wife
see her and grace
which she came to conga with us too and uh i see them and i'm like what am i
doing after the fight
i instantly thought what was i doing in the fight looking out seeing my wife
and thinking she's beautiful
so uh i don't know why i brought that up except for this really yeah i mean it
was it was unique and um
it was a it was a blessing and that video actually was uh i'm glad to show it
because of that but then
i meant to show you the one that came first which um we don't we don't need to
play that but what
happened for the first fight back which is kind of nuts that um those guys the
guy surprised me and
called me in the morning and i was able to see him and they were able to
encourage me for the fight and
say we know you're fighting for us all that it's really great then emily sent
me a picture of her
with it's so awesome her with like 10 or 12 kids around her and they all have
the biggest smiles
she says remember um remember who uh you fight for and why you fight and so
that's a lot of pressure
it is but at the same time she she's she's so awesome loves me and i i have
some reason i like
pressure um i like to be under the gun something like that what's next for you
man man i think um
i think i just we just got pretty much settled into colorado um and joining the
mma scene up there
kind of uh team takedown was great it kind of dissolved and um team takedown
dissolved uh
sort of yeah yeah when johnny hendrix left is that what he's not on there right
but once he left
yeah the uh coaches are gone um that came in from out of state no team takedown
was a weird situation
right it was like some wealthy guy was financing the entire thing right one and
he's a he's a great
dude and then uh and then he brought in a bunch of other people but i think i
think for them it was
just uh i don't know i think they they might have got burned well they had a
deal right where they
would pay guys a salary and then salary car your rent your groceries but when
you won you were supposed
to give them a percentage of your winnings i think it was 50 50 50 50 but you
get your house payment
your car your insurance and the health insurance you get your groceries that's
great until fighters
started making making 10 million bucks and then they're like what yeah yeah
that's very true
because if you're they're only spending 50 or 70 years well who agreed to that
did johnny hendrix
agree to that yeah so he was giving 50 of his purse yeah i think most every
team takedown guy was
johnny might have been a little i think his might have been a little different
than that seems like a
crazy deal and how much were they paying them i love i love all the guys right
they're awesome dudes
uh i'm i wouldn't even want to quote it right i know i i don't know over 50
maybe under 100 but a year
yeah huh but uh well that's a good investment if you get five million bucks
back that's that's true
and but i guess it didn't work out because when johnny started making real
money that's when he
is that when he left or was there other issues yeah i think it was it was that
and then i think uh
i think internally there was some some butting of heads between a few different
people between
maybe coaches maybe management maybe fighters too and um so now you're in colorado
now i'm in colorado
because where are you training in colorado uh well i'll be my home gym will be
grudge training center
um which is actually pretty cool there's a instructor named drew that's pretty
great uh
came in he opened i think he opened up maybe i'm wrong on that one but 10th
planet uh jujitsu in
i think boulder but now he has one in narvada which is inside of grudge and so
now we got a 10th
planet in there and he's actually showing some slick darse chokes and uh and oh
yeah that's awesome
and some stuff does bellator have a fight lined up for you maybe um maybe november
december where we're
looking at that and the thing that i want to do is getting a real i haven't
given myself time to
settle to really train to really focus and i know that now um it's a time
crunch you know i'm 29
i know that the youngest heavyweight i think is still jds and junior dos santos
and uh in the top 10.
he's 32. i mean barnett's i think 38 and brock's 39 to mature later in life 42.
well brock is pretty
much done now i think i think that last positive test he did two positive tests
in a row yeah you
know one before the fight one after the fight it's most likely one and done
yeah yeah um so i got i got
some time are you thinking about going to the ufc are you so you have this bellator
deal is are you
enjoying competing for bellator i i have thoroughly um appreciated how how they've
been treating me
uh they've been but you're mentioning all these mma fighters from the ufc so
are you thinking about
going over there is that what's going on or uh i mean i i would never be
against that because i love
the ufc love mma and that's a big big platform how long is your deal at bellator
for i have two more
fights and um so i'll i'll fight two more and for me i mean reason we're in
colorado first is i'm
going to get my wrestling back because i'm pretty disappointed in my first two
i'm honestly winning
this was the first two times winning felt really good because i did it i didn't
do it for me right
but then at the same time right away the competitor comes in and it's like
messed up here here here here
here here and i think pretty much every guy i've taken the ground finished it's
like why am i trying
to outbox the boxers whenever i need to i need to wrestle i need to take them
down is it difficult
for you to balance the two worlds because you know you have one that demands
incredible attention your
your fighting career demands incredible attention and then you have the other
that also demands
incredible attention you you have an amazing commitment to these pygmy people
and uh this incredible
passion and love for it but then you also have you're you're in the most
dangerous combat sport in the
world i mean it it requires massive attention like we were talking about francis
gano like if you're
gonna fight francis gano you gotta fuckin batten down the hatches you gotta be
in incredible shape and for
being consistent yeah dedicated and no excuses and um that's that's what left a
pretty sour taste in my
mouth uh after these last two fights because i knew i i hate doing that like uh
rushing it or getting in
whenever i'm not prepared and um are you training at all when you're in the congo
and how often are you in
the congo uh now i'm now i'm gonna start going back just after every fight when
i fight go back for a
couple weeks um i try to be real safe this time i took my own food um like all
of it like an entire
check bag was just kind bars and lara bars and all these different green smoothies
and different stuff
so i was i was i wasn't even eating any food there still got sick and so had
malaria then after that i got
shingles um which is crazy um it was completely across my forehead and over
here so that was like
the middle of the trip that's coming back at herpes right isn't that like kind
of a herpes uh yeah i
believe so but it's related to that it's the adult form of the chicken pox and
it's uh it's brutal like
it was it was a different pain than i've ever felt because it's a nerve pain
and i was out in the forest and
there was a couple two three days where we were there you know for the
documentary for the water
wells everything else and we got a team that came and so we gotta we gotta get
it done so i kind of
stayed back a couple days but then while we're out there and different stuff
like a rebel group actually
came like i believe it was three miles from us and only about a mile away from
our truck and so i'm sick
i can't get back to the hospital that i just came out of from getting treatment
for malaria to get
treatment for shingles um and then uh so that was tough but for me to answer
your question like i i
want to be i want to be realistic but at the same time a quote my mom taught me
i i forget who it was
but she says something like uh um an optimist is someone who goes after moby
dick in a rowboat
and takes the tartar sauce with him and uh so an optimist goes after moby dick
in a rowboat
and takes the tartar sauce with him so for me i want to be i want to swing for
the fences
make the biggest impact possible but at the same time like we're restructuring
stuff we had meetings
at water four and i think just getting everyone on the same page well me too
because i was
spreading myself too thin the biggest thing possible is the ufc heavyweight
championship yeah without a
doubt is that maybe first bellator then ufc yeah is that a thought that you
have in your mind with
well yeah we'll be on one of those goals okay at ufc 200 uh this could sound
goofy to anybody else i
think a lot of athletes would probably get it some might not um but you know i
i bought a ufc replica belt
because uh i want to i'm not going to hang it or anything but i want to have
times where i set that
down on a table or a desk and look at it think about it dream about it um and
know that before i go out
the door training um you know that's that's a goal of mine you know if i could
get there then i know
this fight for the forgotten can be set up for you know the maybe the rest of
of my life there you know
it could keep going on and on further than it would if i didn't realistically
to try to attain that sort
of a goal like it's going to require more than just staring at a belt or
writing something down you're
gonna you're gonna need to go on a rampage yeah we've we've uh we've surrounded
well water forest
surrounded fight for the forgotten with like a team of like eight people from
media to my sports agent to
lawyers and i mean just uh all these all these people are incredible and i'm
sitting in the room with
them at a conference table like this and i'm like like what am i doing in a
room with these incredible
people um yeah they're all focused on me and them and the story and like look
how i don't know if you
just call it raw or pure or like like and they're getting behind it which has
been incredible but
then they've just overwhelmed me saying we want to free you up in a way we're
kind of talking a little
earlier was alluding to it but um you know i've really got to readjust
everything in my life of
how i'm training because when now that i'm getting settled into denver um i'll
go up to denver one to
three times a week and then i'll also be going to the olympic training center i've
been talking with
brandon slay the old freestyle coach which he actually just moved to penn state
um but uh talking
with uh and i have access there at the olympic training center and about
hopefully i can get in
touch with matt linland he's the new head coach for the greco team there um but
with uh have you ever
heard of adam wheeler adam wheeler is an absolute beast and i wonder if i have
that video in there but
uh there's one if you just search adam wheeler on youtube it should be called
isopure but this dude
is an olympic bronze medalist and uh black belt in jiu-jitsu and he won nogi
worlds um heavyweight
and so he's a beast just an absolute monster and so uh i was helping him train
before the 2008 olympics
and stuff and um it was pretty great oh here it is this guy's a beast
we're not hearing anything jamie i never actually got into wrestling until i
was in high school
there was a point when i started getting in a little bit of trouble and just
hanging out with
the wrong crowd my wrestling coach he's the one that kind of put me back on the
right track
he taught me what work ethic was
i try to be the guy who motivates people pushes people
the most pure moment of my athletic career is 100 percent the olympics even
though i didn't win
i still was on that podium representing my country for the sport that i put so
many hours into
that feeling is indescribable and the point is this is a guy you're you're
working with or something
yeah and sorry i probably should have set that up a little better but this guy
is an absolute
monster and we've we're we're getting together and starting to we're going to
start working out and
um he's at prime jiu-jitsu now in colorado springs but they cross train with
eastons
and anyways the thing i'm all over the place but he is the only guy at the
little bit training center
we're all jumping uh doing squat jumps uh row by row up these bleachers and i
promise he's skipping
one at least and sometimes two and he's just he's just flying up there people
be halfway three
quarters of the way this guy's six foot four 235 pounds solid muscle freakish
athlete and uh he's just
so there's a training partner yeah training partner so i guess what i was
trying to allude to is
man i i feel like how water forest around me was such an incredible team
to achieve success that we want to fight for the forgotten and now i'm really
trying to do that
with uh with fighting because if i don't then i'm gonna fail and i'll be
wasting time but if i because
this isn't a it's not a it's not patty cake right i mean we're we're going in
there and we're throwing
down and i've got to have my head on straight yeah as you move up in
competition for sure without a doubt
like i mean when you're you're looking at the competition you faced in bellator
it's there
it's good steps it's tough guys to to fight against they're they're good steps
but if you for the
timing yeah of everything yeah yeah if i i mean it's yeah it's not it's not i
guess uh swinging for the
fences or taking the tartar sauce with me if i see that uh that it's not going
to happen then you know i'll
also i hate saying that because i would i want to fight so bad but fight for
the forgotten is more
important in a way but man i think it's possible i really do and i think i
think it's possible to
well i think you've also brought a lot of people in to help you with fight for
the forgotten yeah
and sort of pick up the slack as well and you've started a movement i mean
there's a lot going on
here besides just your involvement you've started this movement and being
involved with water for and
and and in writing the book and letting people know about on these podcasts and
and educating
people to what your goal is and what what you've been able to accomplish over
there you started a
movement so i think man i mean if you really can do it it would be absolutely
incredible and it
certainly would shine even more light if you could really become successful as
an mma fighter from here
drawn out no i i agree with that with but it's going to require everything it
requires everything
and i i feel like there's there's two parts of this where um man the the fight
for the forgotten guy
in me wants to be uh wants to be humble and everything else say you know it's
not going to happen unless
i do all the right things which is the same on the other side of the coin but i'm
uh at the same time i feel
like if if i can just get the time i haven't been getting the time uh to train
and um one of the
things that well you have to make the time yeah we have to make the time and it's
got to be the priority
and it's i don't think i it can't be some sort of eight hours i mean like six
eight whenever i was
telling uh the guys at water four um and it's just because they don't know they've
been incredibly
supportive but whenever i broke it down like when's your training schedule what
time do you train a day
i mean they know some nfl guys and stuff like that that might train once a day
for four or five
times a week or or maybe twice a day but with mma it's just so different that
they're like oh wow so
that's why they've rallied around me and i think that through that it's going
to free me up to really
go to all the right places get up to grudge for my strike and get to the olympic
training center for my
wrestling get around these black belts and world champs in jiu-jitsu get around
the 10th planet guys get
around this so that we can we can take this the farthest that we can beautiful
yeah all right man
listen um again one more time for people at home fightfortheforgotten.org fightfortheforgotten.com
uh what is your the big pygmy on on twitter on twitter and uh instagram it's
the big pygmy i translate it's
mabutimangbo there you go yeah so it's the big pygmy fight for the forgot to
work oh this is
something that that i just found out at water for is that i mean 25 some of the
people have been so
generous some of the donors have given a full water well but even just 25 a
month if that's possible
uh it it gives water to 15 people per year if you do it the next year it's
another 15 people
that could save their lives save kids lives and so um i just know it's being
used the right way and uh
passionate about it seeing it in action so you're a beautiful soul justin wren
you really are man
what you're doing is absolutely amazing and i'm so happy that we can help you
out in any way
so thank you very much for coming on again and uh let's do this again brother
yeah i love you man
thank you so much you got the best community best fans man well i'm honored and
i'm i'm honored to
be able to help you tell your story it's powerful thank you thank you my
brother all right folks
we'll be back tomorrow with duncan trussell see you that's going to be a great
one
you