The following is a conversation with Josh Barnett, one of the greatest fighters and submission wrestlers in history, with an epic 25-year career that includes being the UFC heavyweight champion and countless other accolades. He also happens to be one of the most intelligent and brutally honest human beings in all of martial arts, and especially so about his appreciation of and fascination with violence.

Quick mention of our sponsors, which feels ridiculous to say after that introduction. Munk Pack Low Carb Snacks, Element Electrolyte Drinks, Eight Sleep Self-Cooling Mattress, and Rev Transcription and Captioning Service. Click the sponsor links to get a discount at the support of this podcast. As a side note, let me say that I've been a fan of Josh Barnett for a long time.

This conversation was indeed a long time coming, and I'm sure we'll talk many times again. For what it's worth, I'm a student of combat sports and admire when they're done at the highest level, either through masterful execution of skill or relentless dominance of pure guts. For context, I'm a black belt in jiu-jitsu and have competed in wrestling, submission grappling, jiu-jitsu, judo, and even catch wrestling, which is a variant of submission grappling that Josh is one of the great practitioners, scholars, and teachers of.

I could probably talk for hours about what I've learned from my time on the mat, but if I were to say one thing, it is that the mat is honest. You can't run away from yourself when you step on the mat. It reveals your fears, the lies you might tell yourself, all the delusions you might have, or at least I had, that there's anything in this world that can be achieved except through blood, sweat, and tears.

That honesty, taken to the highest levels, as is the case with Josh, creates the most special of human beings and definitely someone who is fascinating to talk to. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter @AlexFriedman.

And now, here's my conversation with Josh Barnett. Who were the philosophers and philosophical ideas that influenced you the most? - Are we just jumping right in? - We're right in, into the deepest. - No foreplay on camera, all right. I had an interesting philosophical journey, at least I think it's interesting, and that was, I think, as far as organized philosophy, or maybe, authentic's not the right word, but like, yeah, we'll say organized.

I would say that Nietzsche is probably one of the people with the most influence on me, but I also feel like, to a degree, your personality will oftentimes dictate what philosophers that you can vibe with. - So what ideas from Nietzsche was it, the Übermensch? - Definitely the Übermensch is huge to me, because I see it as an extension of, basically, the religious concepts of God and higher ideals, but just put into a different, secular context.

And the idea, also, that the Übermensch is striving and overcoming something that you're always working towards that very few will ever, it's not like the concept that you can just make them. It doesn't happen that way, and it's not based simply upon if you were, say, put through a genetic program and turned into a super soldier.

That wouldn't make it. That's the very surface level and incorrect understanding of what the Übermensch is. The Übermensch is the idea of this kind of human that transcends all the weaker, lower aspects of humans, which we're full of. But I also think that there's an element in Nietzsche's writing that suggests that it's not something you can even be in all the time.

Like, it's even a temporary state, because it's not something that we're capable of maintaining. - It's something to strive for. Like a morality, an image, an ideal, a set of principles that we can connect to that doesn't rely on otherworldly, kind of out there things. It's deeply human. - With Nietzsche, I feel like the concept of the Übermensch is something built on authenticity as well.

Heidegger was like Dasein, right? So when you are authentic, and Heidegger being a follower of Nietzsche's and highly influenced by him. I think that the Übermensch is an example of authenticity in that it isn't about trying to be anything that you cannot be, or to go against who you are, but to actually understand that, accept that, and then work with what you can work with and create from your lump of clay that is you.

Because I can't become... There's certain things that are just not gonna happen for me because it's not in my proclivity. I mean, I'm never gonna be five foot tall and 120 pounds. I mean, that again, I guess. But I know, as you get more in tune with who you are, as you start learning more about what unique things, or at least what that combination that makes you, that gestalt part of yourself, what those things are and how you can use them, then you can work towards being that, taking what that is and seeing if you can get to that point.

Now, the likelihood is, no, maybe, probably never. I mean, but we can never achieve godhood, yet religion is a constant striving and a look at a higher ideal concept, even if it's multiple gods or one god. It's still essentially all built around this concept. Like, I like the idea of Catholics' original sin, if you think of sin not as evil, but as missing the mark, the archer's term where it derives, or even like in Spanish, without.

So, as being, if you accept that you are imperfect, if you accept that you need to constantly strive, even against yourself, because you will figure out the best ways at which to submarine your own capabilities, submarine your own dreams and wishes and whatever, you will ruin them more than anything else.

And you will tell yourself that you ruined them on purpose, for a good reason, or you'll say that you'll figure out a way to put it on everything else but yourself. And so, the idea of thinking of, well, as I'm starting off on this whole thing, I got a lot of work to do, and that's just the way it is.

And I gotta figure out what areas those are gonna be. And so, I thought, oh yeah, if I think of original sin, actually can be, that can be kind of a clever idea, but it's also just accepting that we're all uniquely strange and unequal in our own ways, but we have to figure out how that fits in.

- The word authenticity kinda connects to all of that. So, striving to be your authentic self means figuring out exactly the shape of the flaws, the character of your little demons that you get to play with and around them finding a path to whatever the hell ideal versions of yourself you can carve, and pretending like that's such a thing is even possible.

The other idea about Nietzsche is, on his idea of morality, he presents the argument that morality's a human illusion, and that there's not such a thing as good and evil, and these are all kinda constructs. Do you think there's such a thing as good and evil that's connected to some objective reality?

- I think that there are some, I actually do believe that there are some universals. I'm not Kantian in any way, but I do think that there are some universals. And the thing that actually brought me to even the concept of that was Jung. So, Jung's concept of the collective unconsciousness, and then taking that thought and then applying it to looking through history, and the most varied history you can find.

So, I would say probably religion is your earliest one that you can get for written history, or written examples of human behavior and psychology at the furthest that we can look into it, from man's hand to whatever the medium is, cuneiform or whatever. But as you do that, and then let's say going from Mesopotamia to India to Europe, and just going from all these places, as disparate as they may seem, as many different cultures and ethnicities and religions, and how the religions will vary quite a bit from monotheist to polytheist, and so on and so forth.

But then just seeing how there's all the through lines. And of course, Campbell, he did this much earlier than me thinking about it. But I think that by looking at things that way and starting to find the threads, instead of always just looking at everything as being its own compartmentalized concept, is if it only applies to this time, this people, getting overly pomo about it is just a really idiotic postmodern.

- So, you think that there is, just like Joseph Campbell, there's a thread that connects all of these stories, narratives that we constructed for ourselves as we evolve, and that thread is grounded in some kind of absolute ideas of maybe on the morality side, which is the trickiest one, of good and evil.

- Somewhat, yeah. I think that a lot of this stuff is just derived from a biological perspective. I feel like these things are innate within us. - Do you think our innately humans are good? Like we-- - No. I don't. I feel like, I also feel like there's an issue of scale too.

Like Nassim Taleb likes to talk about how he views his, the way he interacts with groups in terms of scale. What is this thing about at the familial level, I'm a communist, and then at the civic level, I'm a Republican or something, and at this other level, and then it goes on, at the widest level, he's a libertarian or something of that nature.

- Like fundamentally, human interaction changes-- - On scale. - On scale. - On scale, and also from subjective to the environment around them. And I don't even mean environment just in the sake of physical environment, nature, right? Like nature's constantly trying to murder you. Well, it's not really trying, it's just nature's being nature and the universe is the universe, and at times it takes you out.

It's just not with any particular compunction or prejudice. It's just, oops, sorry, there's no more dodo's. - My bad. - But don't you think the particular flavor of the complexity that is the human mind was created, like, let me make an argument for that all people are fundamentally good.

- Okay. - There's an evolutionary advantage to striving to cooperate, to add more love to the world, of compassion, empathy, all that kind of stuff, and that the very thing that created the human mind was this evolutionary advantage, whatever the forces behind this evolutionary advantage. - And scale, yes.

So when we're dealing with a small tribe, sure. When you meet another tribe, maybe. There's other factors that are going into that. Let's say you scale up and so your 150 has exceeded their 150, and you start to get to a certain point where you can't really be close enough to someone down the line of that next, like that 150's 150, 150, and they just now all of a sudden become some guy, whatever.

And when it comes to some guy, once it starts hitting scale, I don't know that it's capable. People can be as magnanimous to a stranger as to the known. If they orient themselves to be secure enough, 'cause it does come to security, insecurity, in one way or the other, either brought on by the unknown, brought on by an actual threat, brought on by even their own as we would use the word insecurity in that their own insecurity within their own capabilities, their own belief in themselves, all these things can change things from being compassionate and what have you to at least at the very, maybe not evil, but self-interest driven to the point of negative results for those that aren't.

You know what I mean? - Right, but another way to frame that is maybe it's less about scale and more about the amount of resources available, so if we're overflowing with resources in terms of security and safety, all the things you've mentioned, if we have more than enough resources, then the way we treat a stranger, the way we position ourselves towards that stranger might be in a way that allows us to be our real human selves as opposed to sort of our animal self.

And therefore, it's mostly about how clever can we descendants of apes be in coming up with all cool kinds of technologies and ways to efficiently use the resources we have such that we're not constrained. And my hope is that human innovation will outpace the growth of our, the number of people that are starving for resources.

- Yes, I think that there's a lot of rationality behind this argument. And in some ways, I agree, and in a lot of ways, I see it as missing the point of how the system is a resource, but it's missing the point of how this experiment has been playing out across time.

When you look at what, for one, it's like define resources. What is a resource as humans would define it, or wealth even? And so you can say, well, an iPhone's a resource, the internet's a resource, water obviously is a resource, what is more important to human beings? Water, internet, or iPhones?

It's water, right? So if we look at resources, if we start with what do human beings need to live? I mean, actually live, not live here in this bullshit fantasy creation extension of our own ingenuity and a prison of our own creation and also a paradise of our own creation.

But this is not how human beings normally live. This is all built upon stuff, this is built on concept, on idea, and some of it's built on just, well, this is the paradigm, so this is what you do. Human beings need food, they need water to survive, they need shelter from the elements, and they need certain skills to perpetuate these things and be able to pass them down so that they can, so that these things don't become, you don't end up in this gap where you have to relearn things, 'cause if it's lost, then that time before you can get it back again is going to be dark ages of sorts, or it's going to be highly detrimental to your group, because not knowing how to fish, not knowing how to hunt, not knowing how to even clean and cook the game once you have it could be lethal.

- That's fascinating to think of that as a basic resource, the knowledge to attain the very low level things of water and food. - You'll figure it out. We did it once before, and we've done it over and over and over and over again. - It's just costly. - Yes, it has costs, for sure.

But when you think of how you look at the, well, we'll just deal with the first world of the West. You look at the pathway of Western civilization and its growth, and then you look at how technology has been injected into it over time, how it magnifies things or pushes things at orders of magnitude faster, and then the internet comes along, and even faster.

So you're watching industrial revolution to what is it, the capacitor, and then so on. It goes further and further. And as the internet and technology, especially on the electronic side of things, start increasing in capability, massively outpaces even our necessity for it at times. It becomes plant obsolescence happens quicker and over and over and over again.

And wealth increases, increases, increases, increases in terms of the things that we're able to acquire. I've seen homeless people with smartphones. So we're living in the most wealth-laden, luxury-laden age of all of humanity yet. What happens when we see calamity or people go on hard time? What are the things that they value?

What do people go to an argument about the cost of things that are luxury items generally and not necessity items? We get into fights about things that are, at the end of the day, not necessities to us. People are so concerned about Netflix and the internet. Personally, I'm very concerned about the internet because I look at it as my own little personal library of Alexandria in my pocket.

That's what I love about it. And the ability to have a tool as effective as it is, even though I'm in a constant battle, to not let that tool become a vice or to become something that actually brings me to a lower state. - But the question is, are we willing to murder each other over Netflix versus murder each other over water?

- We're willing to murder each other over water. That's a given. - Right, but that's our animalistic selves. - Well, it's also a necessity for, it's animalistic, but it's also either you do it or you don't, right? Unless somebody's willing to share that water or if that water is of such a limited capability or such a limited amount, then you will have to murder to have that water.

- With Netflix, the argument is the higher we get up to this hierarchy of what we consider in Los Angeles resources, we're less willing to commit violence. - We're less willing to commit violence, I would say, over Netflix, but we are willing to commit violence over Netflix, over everything associated with Netflix, over televisions, over sneakers, over, I mean, when we look at a good, I mean, the majority of the stuff that came with the riots, I mean, it was used car dealerships, targets, I mean, and then you look and it's like, well, okay, what are people, what do they gotta, what are they so hell-bent to get out of this whole thing?

And I'm even talking about the ideological elements or anything like that, just like, okay, something's going on, boom, looting, whatever. - Yeah, other stuff. - What are you gonna loot? You'll have AOC say, oh, people needing bread. I didn't see a single loaf of bread. I saw televisions and shoes.

- It's poetry, Josh. - But to me, it is poetry in a sense, because you get to see how we actually are operating, what is becoming first principles to most people. - Wait, wait, but you could also argue, though, that those riots were more like the madness of crowds, which is like-- - Oh, it's definitely a lot more than just that.

I'm just saying that given a chance, it's like, okay, boom, the lights are off, the grid is down, we've hacked into the whole system. Turned into an '80s movie. And you have the ability to go get ahold of whatever it is that you think is most important. And what do we do?

And I say we, as in, you know, including all of us, we grab a TV, we attack it, we break into a sneaker store in Melrose. We do, it's just like, ah, we steal giant cause statues, where the value of that is completely market-driven. It's just a piece of polypropylene or whatever, butyl, and it's cool, I'm a big fan of art.

But it's like, (laughs) you know, I can't eat that, and at the end of the day, man, you're sitting there with your, like, what'd you do today, honey, what'd you get? You know, man, we were able to, you know, oh, I got this designer art statue. Are you gonna go, well, you can't really sell it on the art markets, where people are really gonna pay for it, so are you gonna become an underground art dealer with your one piece of cause art?

- One interesting thing, just before I forget it, you mentioned the Library of Alexandria, and your-- - Phone. - Well, your phone, but also just thinking of your little world that you're creating for yourself on the internet. That's a really powerful way to actually phrase it. One of the things that, you've been on Joe Rogan several times, I've always-- - Although everybody always comes to me, and go, oh, that was so great, I didn't know, you've been on Joe Rogan?

I go, this is like my fifth time, dude. - I've been a fan of yours for a long time, from other avenues. - This is a long time coming, actually. Everybody, you have no idea how many times through messaging and missing each other over the years, this is ridiculous, this is a long time coming.

You don't realize how special this is for us. - Well, I'm also starstruck. We'll talk about this, but you symbolize something very important to me through my journey, through wrestling, through jiu-jitsu, through judo, through just street fighting, through just combat. There's, you're the, in some sense, the devil on my shoulder of violence.

Devil gets a bad rap. - He does get a bad rap. I realize, sitting encased in ice down at that low-ass level. - But the angel side is more like the athletic, the sport, the science, the technical, the chess side of things. But on the Library of Alexandria, let me ask, because you were on Joe Rogan, it does make me really sad, and I realize that I'm just probably being romantic, that his, most of his library of interviews that were on YouTube have now been taken down because he went to Spotify.

And that was the first, I'm probably an idiot, but it was the first time I realized that this knowledge that we've been building up on the internet doesn't necessarily last forever. - No, it doesn't, unless you preserve it. I mean, it's like all things. If you do not preserve them, if you do not make efforts, so many of my, it just really brings to mind right off the top of my head, so many friends of mine that are Jewish, they're basically secular.

But yet, through even the secular aspect of just keeping the traditions alive, it's like, well, you could always pick a book and read about it, clearly, it's called the Torah. But if you don't put these things into action, if you don't make them a part of your consciousness, maybe even subconsciousness, just through repetition, they will die, they will become simply something that exists somewhere until you find it again.

And Carl Gottsch used to say something, he would say that I don't invent moves, I just rediscover them. But yet, Gottsch and Billy Robinson also would understand that if someone's not carrying the torch, it'll go out. Now, that doesn't mean fire can't be rekindled, it just means that that torch no longer is lighting the way on this knowledge.

And so it's important to be an individual, even on an individual level, to be a repository for aspects of knowledge. - You mentioned Gottsch, you consider yourself a catch wrestler, so I've mentioned to you offline that I competed in a couple of catch wrestling tournaments. Can we go Wikipedia level at the very basic, you're the exactly right person to ask, what is catch wrestling, and what are its defining principles?

- I would say the easiest way for us to talk about and give an overview of what catch is, in the simplest terms, is think of collegiate wrestling with submissions, that is essentially what catch is. And it's not surprising because collegiate wrestling is actually derived from catch as catch can.

It's just that over time, certain aspects were removed from the competition structure, so that they became null elements, things that were discarded. But it's funny that you can take high level amateur collegiate types, and you can show them a move and then add a little bit to it and go, oh, well hey, that was just like what we already do here, but except, oh, I didn't know you could take it all the way to this point, or things of that nature, especially when it comes to professional wrestling, like teaching people, no, I know you're just using this for in a show, but this is actually a real move and here's how it really feels.

- And so collegiate wrestling, and wrestling in general for people who are not aware, is basically two people start on their feet, and they have to score, they're trying to take each other down, and they have to, they score points along the way. You can end matches by pinning them, for example, on their back.

I think one way to describe wrestling is, it's very much about figuring out ways to establish control and leverage in these kind of tie-ups, or there's different styles where you can do more from a distance to where it's more about the timing and all that kind of stuff. Ultimately, it's an art of both upper body and lower body, and you could choose the different puzzles that you solve there.

You could be attacking the head, the arms, you could be attacking the legs. There's also part of collegiate wrestling that's on the ground that has more, what's called a referee's position or whatever. - Right, the referee's position where you're on your hands and knees, basically. And so-- - Do you understand what that's supposed to simulate?

Why is that one of the standard positions? - It's one of the standard positions because, one, it's one of the easiest ways to actually get up, but two, it's because you cannot be on your back. If you're on your back, you're getting pinned. And back exposure, or being pinned, is pretty much the universal wrestling thing.

One, taking the guy from their feet to the floor, and two, pinning them. As you go from, what is it, Cornish wrestling, Turkish oil wrestling, Mongolian, Sumo, Indian, well, they'll call it Pellwani, it's also called Kushti, Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, so many of them. Isombo, even if it doesn't end the match, it's still one of the most important aspects of the competition itself across every style.

- And this is where submission, like catch wrestling, or submission wrestling, or Jiu-Jitsu feels different. It seems like for most wrestling, for a lot of wrestling, the dominance is the goal, as opposed to submission, which I guess those two are related, but dominating the position. So that's what pinning is.

It's almost like breaking your opponent, breaking through all of their defenses to where they're completely defenseless and you can do anything with them that you want. Maybe that's what could be a definition of dominance, I don't know. (laughs) - It sounds very much like a chain to a radiator, yeah.

- Yeah. (laughs) Yeah, there's a thread that connects all partners. But submission feels different. - It is actually different when you think about it across the landscape. I don't think radically different, but still slightly different in that, if you think of wrestling as being derived from combat, right? So, well, it is combat sports, but more lethal combat.

Getting somebody off their feet and onto their back is about as lethal a place for the person on bottom to be. In general, I mean, don't come at me with your talks about your fucking worm guards and blah, blah, blah, and whatever spider, barren, okay, get out of here with that.

We're not talking about you in this highly regimented sporting environment. We're talking about general, all the body hair, none of the waxing human beings. So, getting someone on their back, okay. As you're trying to get up, you're getting hit with a rock or stabbed or what have you, set on fire, who knows.

Generally, these conflicts are not just isolated to one-on-one. If it's four-on-two, your buddy that was with you back-to-back, now he's on his back. What do you think? Now it's gonna be one-on-one while three go on one. So, and then you go, you elevate this to armored combat, right? And it's boom, put 'em on the ground.

Oh, crap, it's hard to get up. Well, while you're struggling to get up, stab. That's where jujitsu's concepts come from with all their leveraging and off-balancing is, oh man, if I end up in this situation in tight, close quarters combat, yes, we could fight it out with swords and knives and what have you, but it's way easier if the first thing I can do is foot sweep you on your back and then pull my knife and just go stick.

- Is there a thread that connects all of these different arts from, not just arts, but from the very base violence of war, just like you said, that there's no rules, to the very regimented IBJF-- - I do. - Jujitsu tournaments. And just, you've kinda laid out some of it, but can you go all the way to the-- - So, when you start off with absolute skills in the sense of absolute offense and defense in the taking or preserving of life, full-on at its purest form of self-defense and self-preservation, and then you extrapolate part of that in that all animals train in violence.

All play usually degenerates into some sort of soft violence. So, be it cats when they're kittens and puppies, and everything learns how to kill, how to fight. Not that, just that dumb alpha meme stuff where the idea is that, oh, by being alpha, that means you run around basically just being a bully and a shithead.

No, actually, alpha wolves spend very little time fighting because if you were actually alpha, you don't get into fights. There's no need to. And if you're probably getting into any large amount of fights, it's probably 'cause you're being shitty at being an alpha, and now people are tired of you being in charge.

And yet, in the animal world, and it would be the same for human beings at that base beginning level of violence, there's a big risk. So, I know that we live in this place with healthcare, or you might be in a place with nationalized health, whatever, right? There's Band-Aids, there's penicillin, there's all that kind of stuff.

But that's not the normal way of things. - There's a channel that just hurts me every time. I used to follow, and I had to unfollow it 'cause it was too painful for me as a human being called Nature Is Metal on Instagram. It was sobering, and then it was like, this is too sobering.

- It's very sobering. - So, in there, the risk is at its highest level. The damage you take, the winner walks away hurt. - Getting lamed when you need every aspect of your physical and athletic faculties to survive because is it gonna be the, this isn't the first, and it's definitely not gonna be the last, especially if you're the slowest one.

What is it? It's a lyric from a clutch song. Don't go for the fat ones, just go for the slow ones. (laughing) - Oh, man, but that universal truth of the way nature works. You said it's not cruel, it's just the way it is. - Yeah, I mean, watch animals get into fights on any of these sort of documentary stuff.

You'll see an intense, short, and then dispersal. Like, you'll see as soon as one feels like, oh, things have switched just enough, boom, the bear or whatever it is takes off. It's like, I'm not, I'm done with this. Because if you can get out of there with just some scars and what have you, okay.

You lose an eye, nah, it's not as good. You really get hurt bad and get infected, you're done. So there's a serious risk to be, that can come with these sort of things. Yet, I believe that we are inherently born for at least aspects of use of violence. And so at the end of the day, we need these things not just to survive each other, but they're a part of being able to hunt and other things.

- So violence is a part of human nature. - Violence is, it's an absolute. It is in every person, it is a part of every interaction, it is a part of every law, everything. And I'm not, by the way, I'm not an ANCAP, so don't hit your wagon to me on that one.

- ANCAP is anarchic capitalist. - Anarchic capitalist, yes. Not an ANCAP. - They have nice book shops. - Yeah, they do. I mean, I'm not gonna sit here and shit talk ANCAPs. Although I also used to get into the conversations with an ANCOM, anarcho-communist, a good friend of mine, and he would bring up this stuff and I'm like, "Yeah, cool, man, I'm down with anarchy.

"You ain't gonna like it." What do you mean? I go, 'cause I'm gonna take all, I'm gonna gather all kinds of people together. I'm gonna make this, I'm gonna get the strongest together and I'm going to take your shit. - Okay, can I ask you, on that topic, I have a friend of mine now, a fellow Russian, Ukrainian, Michael Malice.

- Oh, yeah, I'm familiar with Michael Malice. I watched a little bit of your guys' conversation. - So this is really good to ask you because-- - I like how he's in the white suit and you're in the white and black. But he lives in New York City. He espouses ideas of anarchism.

And his idea, and this is different than sort of the Ayn Rand set of ideas, that there's a line between sort of capitalism that's backed by the state and just pure anarchism. And his idea that violence won't take over in an anarchism is one that feels to me not grounded in reality.

I may be wrong. So is there some, so the idea with pure capitalism is that-- - You mean laissez-faire, completely deregulated? Yeah, well, what it will agree, it'll end up in, one, it'll end up in, if you're anti-globalist, it's gonna be that. It's gonna be globalist 100% because it has no, pure capitalism has no consideration for, has no consideration for your native users or of any sort.

Like it doesn't-- - Yeah, land doesn't matter. But the idea of governments is that the land, the little piece of land geographically you're born on means you're going to stick to whatever founding documents created that little land. So anarchism is against that. And the argument is you should be able to choose which ideas you live with.

And the concern there is nobody, this geographical little land, the governments that organize on that land will not, do not need to protect you from the violence. And my sense is there does need to be an army, there does need to be police that help, however the form that police takes.

But there needs to be a more centralized, not completely centralized, but more centralized safety net of to protect you from the violence. - Scale again, right? So if you want to have your anarchist utopia, well, we won't call it utopia, your anarchist creation here. At certain scale, I'm sure it's doable, you know?

But as it scales, as the scale increases, it's completely untenable and a state will emerge. A state will always emerge. - A state will always emerge. - 'Cause even, people always think of states as people rubbing their hands and smoking cigars in back rooms and just out of nowhere coming around and just like, oh, we're gonna create this big centralized thing and just so that we can tell everybody what to do and we can be in charge.

I mean, I know that there are people like that that exist, that they would like to do things of that nature and that they see the use of power as something to be used more for their personal gains over first, which again, self-interest and human beings. But eventually, people want, they want something to go like, okay, who's taking care of this and who's taking care of that?

And how do we create some sort of protocol for this? Like, okay, well, when it's not Bob, when is it Susie? When is it whatever? I mean, like how do we, it's gotta get done if we want this thing to become bigger, if we want all of our plumbing to work right, if we want, it's just, I'm sorry, a state's gonna happen.

A state is also, when you think about it, is supposed to have consideration to tribe, right? So if people think that we're not tribes, well, you're not really thinking very deeply. We're all tribes of a sort. And everybody likes to use the word tribalism and this idea of this antagonistic concept.

But, and while sure, tribalism can be antagonistic, tribalism can also be a positive thing, or I could just say it just seems to be a natural thing. People, they create their groups of one sort or another. And so when you have, well, when you think about when nation states really started to become a thing, and I don't mean even the more modern-looking variants that we could think back of in, say, the 19th century or something like that.

Even older than that. I mean, you think the Assyrians didn't have a state of some sort? Of course they did. How do you increase your empire if you don't actually have a place to start from? - It has to be a ruler. So you're saying like naturally, when you start talking and thinking about scale of humans, naturally states emerge.

And can we try to make an argument for anarchism, which is-- - Uh. - Okay, okay, okay. (laughing) So anarchy in a sense is an opposition to the unhelpful, unproductive, inefficient bureaucracies that eventually the states lead to. - Yes, and that's, we can see, I mean, I would say less anarchy, more study James Burnham.

Or, well, anybody that wants to talk about the managerial problem and the manager-- - I see, so you have a sense, a hope, maybe let's think like what is the path forward with the inefficient state? Is it revolution or is it to work within the system to constantly improve it, to manage-- - Man, I don't know that one.

I mean, my general sense, and maybe this is the Nietzschean part of me, is that yeah, it would take, maybe not even just, maybe not even defining it specifically as revolution. Maybe it would just take just total calamity to get people to stop being-- - To pick people up.

- To not stop being a lesser version of themselves, to stop thinking more about things from the paradigm that we exist in now where we're giving so much value to stuff that isn't really all that valuable. We're so concerned about likes, and I don't just mean whether we get 'em or not, but that, oh man, maybe we should take this off of our platform 'cause this is too destabilizing to people.

'Cause once you exceed Dunbar's number, I think it's actually, without having the right faculties, which would need to be developed because this is dealing with tech that brings things, ways of approaching being that we are not naturally programmed to be able to handle appropriately. So, and I think it's even more detrimental to women than men because I think women have a more natural proclivity towards group association and more group-oriented thinking and patterning.

And now, and also coupled with seemingly more sensitivity towards human states. So I feel like women, the classic idea is like, oh, women are psychic, you have a sixth sense and what have you. And I think that's just a way of simplifying what I think is that women may be more in tune with picking up on the unsaid.

Like they might be better at seeing physical cues, inflection and tone, like different, like they may be far more sensitive to these things, which to me would make sense because dealing with children that can't communicate. So, so-- - It's generally more empathetic in all the full forms of human interaction.

- Right, now, okay, now, whether it be a woman or a man, but especially with even the social push on this concept of empathy, which of course, it gets to the point where it loses any meaning anymore. Like people use the word empathy absolutely incorrectly all the time and they don't even understand what you're really asking of people.

But let's just take it as we're using empathy in the correct sense and you're taking on the emotional content of the thing itself. Now you open that up to thousands of people, maybe hundreds of thousands of people all across the world that you will never meet, that you will never know, that you're not even getting an actual true representation most of the time of who these people are.

You're meeting persona. And some of these personas are even deliberately created to elicit a response inauthentically. - Are you referring to bots or artists? - Could be bots or actual people. Bots are one thing, but I mean, there are literal people out there that will create something, create GoFundMes for tragedies that never didn't really, or events that didn't happen or any number of things.

Okay, I mean, burn their own house down and then say, you know, we were attacked. And then it comes down, oh, you did it to yourself because you wanted money and empathy and this, that, and you wanted all this emotional wealth, let's say, this emotional coin, as well as actual if possible.

You wanted to leverage it in some way. That's not the majority of people, but I would say a good amount of folks are thinking, well, if I post this photo and I put this little blurb in there, I bet I can get this much cache out of it in this sense.

And I'm not even, and this isn't just a reference to like butt pics and stuff like that, because clearly, obviously, people understand that our inborn sexual nature is easy to manipulate. I mean, that's pretty obvious. - But you're saying this kind of new medium of communication on social media is unnatural.

- And it preys on us. And so as you want this, you know, you look at an anarchist kind of mindset, right? And so it's just like, there is no overarching state to create any kind of structure, right? And so if you have that unfettered capitalism aspect with it and before I say anything particularly damning about unfettered capitalism, I'm a massive capitalist because I view capitalism essentially as, what it boils down to, I get these arguments from people too, they start giving me all these extra definitions about capitalism.

Like, no, no, this is obviously some sort of theory you're taking from other shit, but that doesn't describe capitalism. Capitalism is the ability for us to create whatever we want, or, you know, create our thoughts, ideas, physical things, and trade them freely amongst each other in ways that we find acceptable, right?

You know, I'm not even using the word fair 'cause I might think it's fair to me, you might think, huh, well, I mean, that was actually, I think what he thought was unfair to him and it's more fair to me. And then someone, a third observer goes, oh man, you should not have paid that for that, you should have paid this.

And it's like, well, you know what, it works for me. - Sufficiently acceptable that you both agree to the transaction. - Correct. And, you know, but also at the root of that is freedom, right, and as far as I can tell, I've been banging this around in my head, it's like for every one unit of freedom, you need two units of accountability.

And if you don't have that, what you end up with is, is human self-interest, we're not even gonna get into evil, human self-interest, sabotaging other things, even not in a sense to be malicious. - Okay, so in terms of, let's put this as mathematically speaking, I love this, so anarchism is more like two units of freedom than one unit of accountability, or maybe zero units of accountability.

- Possibly, I mean, the anarchists tend to think like, no, everyone will be accountable, it's like, fuck they will, when have you seen this happen in real life? You know, I mean, people aren't even accountable in their revolutions half the time. So you aren't looking at the way people really are, it's like Marx is like, yeah, people are like this, they're like that, look at how capitalism does it.

I mean, he of course assigns a lot of really ridiculous economic principles and practice, but also assumes that everybody who makes any profit from anything is somehow stealing it, really assigns a negative moral aspect to them, and then it's like, oh yeah, but then eventually, communism will happen, no one will act that way anymore, and you're like, whoa, hold on, you just said that people are all, are you saying it's all due to capitalism, or is it innate, it's just, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of, and it's like, hey, look at you, you're like a notorious, anti-Semitic, angry, just absolute curmudgeon of a human being who seems to be really not all that fun to be around.

- Marx? - Yeah, and then it's just like-- - So you have to think like, if there was one billion Marxists in the world, how would they behave? - They would all, it would be absolute terror. (laughing) They would hate each other so bad, and this isn't for me to even poison the well on Marx, it's like, oh, his personality sucks.

There's lots of people whose personality sucks. That doesn't mean they can't make, I don't know that his, what? - You know what, somebody argued-- - He's just a loner, I mean, I don't know if his personality sucked at all. - Let me walk that back in that he was human.

Say his personality sucked, he was sometimes contradictory, irrational, sometimes he was quite sexist, despite the emails I've gotten. - Despite the emails I've gotten. - That told me that, this people was written to me that Nietzsche has been unfairly labeled a sexist in his discussion about women. I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of documents where he's just like, he's just a bitter guy.

- I will agree with you, and Marx is as bitter as they come to, but you know what, bitterness in and of itself doesn't make, like, why I hate Marxism comes from the whole, the entirety of the thing, but-- - The dismissal of human nature. - But I'm not going to say that Marxism, or, man, you can find any forbidden book and it could have something good in it.

- His kernel's a good idea. - Yeah, and at the end of the day, Marx is a human being. - He's got a nice beard. - Yeah, he does, he had a hell of a beard. Yeah, a decent portrait. I mean, he looks like the kind of guy, I wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley, but thankfully, I don't think he was much of a fighter.

(both laughing) But in any case, I mean, not the anarchists, or they're more hot for, like, Max Stirner. People like to think that Nietzsche borrowed a lot from Stirner, and my argument is, one, you don't have any real evidence for that, and two, bullshit. The fact that they have some overlapping thoughts doesn't make it lifted.

Not to mention, go read more philosophy and see how there's so many different things. Oh, this guy said it in 1722. Well, and then this guy says it again in 1922. Does that mean he read the other guy's stuff? Not necessarily. I mean, he's working from the same type of human physiological construct as anybody else.

Like, of course it's possible that this guy could think the same thing. We think a lot of the same things, to be perfectly honest. I mean, reading the Hagakure, going back to philosophy books, this was really impactful on me as a younger adult, because here's a book written in the 19th century about someone who lived through the 19th and 18th century at times, as a samurai, now a monk, and his objections to society at the time, the same objections one was having to society as I was reading it.

Like, the same human behaviors, the same impetus for action that he found a problem. Like, well, that's the same shit now. And this was the thing, and then I'm reading more religion, I go, oh, we're no different than anyone who wrote the Torah or older. We are the same thing with the same problems with the same psychological issues, the same human behaviors.

Like, these things are not different, and we haven't changed. - Growing set of tools, though, to kill each other with or to communicate together and all that kind of stuff, but underlying it, there's a human nature. Well, we're also trying to understand that human nature. I think we've, just like you said, learning how to fish, acquired more and more knowledge about that human nature, but it's been a very slow journey.

It's slower than people realize. - Yes. - In terms of understanding human nature. Let me ask, in terms of egoism, it'd be curious to get your sense about Ayn Rand and her whole idea of virtue of selfishness and her, because you mentioned that everybody has a kernel of truth.

There's potential for a kernel of truth to be discovered in anything. For example, I've been recently reading Mein Kampf. You know what, that's the thing. Even, there's something in, there's probably things in Mein Kampf that are not the surface-level read. If you get all hung up on probably all his crap about, his anger at Jews and this and that, all this crap, it's like, okay, yeah, that's right on the surface.

Try to get below that. Try to see, how is he creating the Jews as a cope somehow? Like, how is he using, why are they his scapegoat? And I mean scapegoat in the, so René Girard's concept of the scapegoat, I mean it in that sense, whereas Hitler uses, wants to make the Jews the scapegoat for World War I.

- Yeah, I mean, for me, the starting point, similar with Ayn Rand, is, like, Mein Kampf is not a good place to search, not just because Hitler is evil, but it's just not full of ideas. - No, it is not. It has its significance due to a lot of things.

- Historically speaking. - Yeah, but-- - The starting point for me with Hitler is, like, to acknowledge that he's human and to at least consider the possibility that any one of us could have been Hitler. So, like, not to make-- - Well, that's a Peterson kind of concept. Also, Jonathan Haidt has a thing about the difference between hate and disgust mechanisms and things like that, and so he used, he goes into the, looking at Hitler and his, through his diary entries and journals and stuff like that, to look and see it more as the disgust mechanism than also try and see, like, if there's any evolutionary, biological attachment to this, whatever.

I mean, you're right, he is a human being. Any of us are, we're all human beings. It's not that, it's probably jarring for people to think, but we're all, I guess, supposed, potentially capable of just being in, and all these evil people in the world think they're doing it for the sake of good, which makes them the most dangerous.

- And there's some, there's differences in levels of insane. I think Hitler was way more insane than Stalin. I think Stalin legitimately thought he was doing good. - I would say that's probably true. Stalin was just outright brutal. Like, he had his five-year plan, he had all those other things.

- He just had a much lower value for human life. - Yes. - And so he was willing to take, make decisions about what he actually, as a good executive, which he was, of managing different bureaucracies and so on, he was willing to make decisions that resulted in mass human suffering, where Hitler was, it seems like to me, much moodier.

So a lot of emotions and moods to make decisions. - I think we also have to consider the different trajectories, and how, where, and when they were making their decisions. And I mean, not by time specifically, but Hitler engaged into this conflict across multiple continents. And then that, everything that comes with, basically, fighting the whole world, Stalin had his conflict, and then he really mostly compartmentalized the rest of it.

So he was dealing with his own internal instead of dealing with the internal and the external. So if Stalin was put under a World War scenario, I don't know, maybe he would've eventually lost his marbles too. - Yeah, I'm not sure that, that's, you're right. The hunger for power was more internalized for Stalin.

He wanted to control the land that already existed as opposed to wanting to colonize other land. He was as nationalistic as Hitler, but, and was as capable and willing for violent conflict as Hitler for the aims of the state. But he centered and internalized prior to then externalizing and moving outwards.

Whereas even maybe prior to him, there was an interest to continually push communism in an aggressive sense, following on the momentum from the, what, 1918 revolution. And that, the halting of that through various aspects, I guess, in Germany, part of that was the National Socialists. They came up and then they were the other ones to fight the communists, and so you had the two totalitarians going after it.

But then in the rest of the world that was not dealing with totalitarian aspects, it was just, it wasn't gonna stick, especially in the West and other places. But Stalin, just casually thinking, it seemed like Stalin decided to go, all right, well, we're not gonna go just start launching right into more conflicts here.

We're gonna, these dudes are going down, so that's cool for us 'cause they hate us and we hate them. But now we're gonna focus internally, and then we're gonna work on growing at a slower rate and picking our battles a bit more specifically. And of course, there's, you can get to the, even this is after Stalin, but you got the Beslanov type stuff talking about subversion in cultural aspects.

- Yeah, I mean, there's fascinating dynamics to propaganda throughout the whole period that's-- - Yeah, it's a whole 'nother kernel, yeah. - Do you think Hitler could have been stopped? One of the things that's kind of fascinating to look at is how many nations, both journalists and nations, wanted, almost craved to take Hitler at his word that he wanted peace until it was too late.

They almost wanted to delude themselves. I mean, the same is true with Stalin. People wanted to take Stalin at his word for-- - Oh, they still delude themselves. - Yeah. - We will delude ourselves over any number of things until even after the fact where the history just says, hey, fuck face.

You cannot supplement your pseudo-reality onto actual reality here. But yet, we deal with people in pseudo-realities constantly. We will always find a way to change reality to suit our needs. - Well, the nature of truth now, there's now multiple actual truths. It's kind of fascinating. There's multiple versions of history that people are telling.

The version of the Great Patriotic War in Russia, the World War II in Russia, is very different today under Putin than the version that we're learning in the United States and different than the version in Europe. In the United States, the hero of the war is the United States.

In Europe, there's a much more sad and solemn story of suffering and so on. - Sure. - In Russia, it's the Great-- - Patriotic War. - Yes. - It was a unifier of a sense. And it, I mean, yeah, I mean, you can't argue that war and conflict that, and/or just even reducing that to stressors, agitation, suffering, doesn't create human motivation.

We started this off, you brought up Frankel. I'm like, yeah, Frankel's dope. Man's search for meaning. Maslow's great. And I talked to you about how I started to think, like, man, the ability for human beings to live and/or potentially flourish in the worst environments you can think of is pretty incredible in and of itself.

And that it's a crazy thought to think that without Frankel and Maslow ending up in concentration camps, do they write some of the most important books on philosophy in the 20th century? And that's insane on a lot of different levels. But-- - Yeah, suffering is a creative force. I mean, I don't, do you think we'll always have war?

- Yes, we will always have war in some form or another. We need, quote-unquote, air quotes, for those just listening, war to survive. We need war to flourish. We need at least-- - Can you explain the air quotes around war? - Well, because take, take the-- - You see wars as violence?

- No, wars are not violence. - So like, so when we're talking about-- - No, air quotes, because while, you know what, us getting on the mat or just getting on these hardwood floors and wrestling around is not literal war, it's war of a sorts. You know, it is a diluted form of war.

American football is a diluted form of war. All this, these are diluted forms of war. Tennis is a diluted form of war. And I think one of the best explanations I ever got from this, another person very impactful on my life and outlook and thinking about things, Cormac McCarthy, and so in Blood Meridian, there's this fantastic speech about war given by the judge, which there's a ton of fantastic speeches on things given by the judge, yeah.

All that exists in creation without my knowledge does so without my consent. Whoa, okay, that's pretty heavy. That's hard. - Go ahead, can you break that up? Can you say that again? - All things that exist in creation, all things that exist without my knowledge do so without my consent.

- What does that mean to you? - Well, I think from the judge's perspective, it's like, well, I didn't consent to that bird or that dog or this building or all this. Like, all of this, you know, I didn't create it, so it's done so without my consent. And if it's up to my consent, well, I'll design it how I want to.

Another similar look into how the judge is in that book is he would study everything everywhere he went. And so he's collected this group of Ne'er-do-wells from all over to go on these hunts against certain tribes in the Southwest and getting paid by the US government and the Mexican government.

So he's on these Indian hunts, and yet they're going to all these different places, and they would stay the night in a cave somewhere, and he would find cave paintings, and he would write them all down. Or he would find old pieces. There's an example of him, the narrator, explaining how watching the judge and how he's drawing everything.

He's got this notebook just full of things, drawings and writings, and how he found a piece of armor from a conquistador or something way back in the day, a Spanish armor, and he draws it into his book and then crushes it. - And so the reason we'll always have war in this society is because there's this struggle amongst people that want to be the designers.

- There's that, but I'm just saying that he's got this whole quote on war. Like, war is play. War is a game, and the difference is is that what's at stake? So all things are a game of some sort, and you're putting up for it, or what you're willing to put up for it determines whether or not you're going to participate or not.

And all aspects of any game is war, and it's just what is at stake? If it's your life, it's a different story. If it's just a coin, it's another thing. - A nice way to put it is humans play a game in this kind of pursuit of creating. Whatever the hell the reason is that we keep creating cooler and cooler things, that it seems to be the result of a game that we naturally play, we naturally crave.

I don't know, I mean, that's been the struggle of philosophy is to understand what is the underlying force of all that. Is it the will to power? - I think will to power is a really great way of describing it. - Do you want to be the winner of the game?

- No, not just, no, I don't look at will to power as being the winner of the game. Well, I mean, if we're gonna get philosophical, yes, you want to be the winner of the game. What does winning the game define how you win? Everybody's gonna define that win differently.

You could define the win in the most base level like, oh, I got all the things. Well, if you got all those things without the needing component of fulfillment, then you're gonna be a very unhappy person with a whole lot of things. - But there's a self-referential aspect to where, to me, the winner of the game is defined by the people playing the game.

So if I'm playing a game, I want to win in the sense that most of the other people who are playing the game will say, yeah, that guy won. By our collective definition of, if I just come up, listen, I'm sort of, if I come up with my own-- - Well, that's a lot of weight on the external on you.

- Right, but that's how games seem to work. - Somewhat. - So I'm already a winner in my life by defining my own definition of success. (laughing) I'm basically the best person in the world at doing me. - At being Lex. - Yeah, and I'm really happy with that.

That's a source of happiness. - Well, I mean, think about it. Games are also iterated, right? So you start off with your game, and then your game with your immediates, and then the game further than that, and the game further than that, and then the game today, and the game tomorrow, and the game next week, and so it never ends.

And if you try to keep thinking about it that way, no wonder people go crazy. But we don't want to think about things that way. We don't want to think about being towards death. We don't want to think about whether or not I'm going anywhere after this other than in the ground or what have you.

- All of these games are a sense of some distraction. This is where we brought up-- - Kind of, but I mean, it's violence is that we need to let this out. And so it is of our, kids need to wrestle and play, just like animals need to wrestle and play.

We need to have forms of competition. We need to have ways to test ourselves, to create, when, what is it? When at peace, a man of war makes war with himself. And so we need to be able to competently go at war with ourselves, and go at war with our neighbor, and go at war with our neighbor's neighbor in a way that is repeatable at the very least.

- So one way of saying that there will always be war, I mean, that's my hopeful view, is that most of the war conducted in the future will be, like you said, the man must go to war with himself. - That would be great. That's what, to me, love is, is like focusing on yourself and your own improvement, and your own creativity, and towards others feeling, sort of emphasizing cooperative behavior, and compassion, and empathy.

- It would be great, but I mean, you can have, well, I'll put it to you this way. If you have a whole community of Randians, and a whole community of ANCOMS, and they could all, like, I don't know, a toast of London on Netflix, and they love Netflix, and they love the internet, and they love picking apart Mon Camp with you.

They like all these things, even the esoteric that they can get on with. But at the fundamental root, they cannot help but go to war, because they are literally oil and water. - No, but see, but they would, the very labels they assign to themselves would need to dissipate.

- Well, true, well, then you would have to stop being whatever it is that you took on as your ideological or religious point, right? - Yeah, I mean, there's some days I'm a ANCOM, some days I'm an ANCAP, some, whatever the, an ARCA, an ARCA cap, I mean, it depends on the hour, the minute of the day, you're constantly changing moods and embracing that flow, the change of opinions, of ideas.

As there's some days where, like, I'm actually cognizant of the fact, 'cause I've been not getting much sleep, and after I get some sleep, I see I'm so much more optimistic about the world. The less and less sleep I get, the more sad and cynical I get. - I can see that.

- Up and down, constantly. - I don't even let my, well, okay, I try not to let, and most days it's never a problem. Any sort of, like, what do the kids call it now, blackpilled way of thinking be my, my over, the umbrella which I hang under. - So we actually, to drag us back, can we talk about Carl Gotch in Catch Wrestling?

(laughing) 'Cause I do wanna make sure I touch it. I mean, who were-- - Carl Gotch is-- - Is he the greatest catch wrestler? - I don't know if he was the greatest catch wrestler ever. I don't, I mean, he's one of them for a myriad of-- Carl Gotch, Billy Robinson, Gotch and Robinson's trainer, Billy Riley.

- So who are these figures, and what do they bring to-- - Mitsuo Maeda, he's one of the greatest catch wrestlers ever, because he's responsible for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, along with Cristal Gracie. - Okay, there's a bunch of things I'd like to say here, but one of the things that Catch Wrestling seemed to espouse as a principle is that of violence.

I just, the tournaments I competed at, the unfortunate thing, and we'll probably, hopefully talk about it a little bit, they were disorganized, and the level of competition was pretty low, where people really sucked. - Pretty typical. - Is that typical, okay. - Well, it's, I mean, think about local, run-of-the-mill Jiu-Jitsu tournament versus IBJJF created, you know, a vast difference, so.

- So I, you know, but there is a, to me as a human being, like intellectually, philosophically, it was more interesting to go to a Catch Wrestling tournament, it seemed more real and honest, because of the way they communicate about violence and aggression, and so-- - I love that, it is often more honest.

I think that as-- - Who is that from, does that originate from Gotch and then Billy Robinson, Maeda? - Well, it originates from all wrestling, in that, even Wade Chalice, not a, not a classically considered Catch Wrestler, yet the reason why he has the world record for most amount of world champions pinned, or the record for pins in the NCAA, is because, well, of course the idea is to put you on your back and pin you, but there's no way you're gonna let me do that.

So, how do I make it so that you want me to pin you? Well, it's by you putting me in excruciating pain. So, at the end of the day, you're both there, you both wanna win, neither one wants to allow anything to the other, so how do I get you to lose to me?

I make it so unbearable for you that you decide losing is better than staying. - So those two are so fascinating, because, so coming from Russia, I don't know if that's where I got it, or if it's just my own predisposition, is I always loved the, there's two ways to get you to want to pin yourself.

One is to making it so painful not to pin yourself that you pin yourself, or whatever, and the other is, it's sort of like Bruce Lee water flows, make it so easy to pin yourself. So, it's technique, it's like the elegance, the ease of movement, this is the Satie brothers, Vova, Sietse, Satie, just the elegance, the efficiency, the chess.

- Yeah, they're practically like ballet, watching those guys, it's incredible, Satie brothers are massive. - So those are the two pests, right? - I'll also caveat a little bit that, if you're approaching this from a Russian perspective, Russians are quite truthful about things, especially when it comes to something like combat.

They just, this is how it is, and this is how it's going to be. - It's honest. - Yes. - And honesty is what I really like about catch wrestling, because I find that we, given any opportunity for us to be dishonest, for any number of reasons, we're gonna, especially if it's a dishonesty towards a positive, right?

Like, oh, well, it's all technique, and it's all this, and it's the gentle art, and blah. Bro, I have rolled with ADCC world champions, some of the best you have ever heard of. There ain't a lot of gentleness when it comes to like, oh, yeah, they wanted to sweep you, and you said no, and then you did said no again, and then you said no and attacked their leg.

It ceases to be all that gentle, because at the end of the day, these dudes are strong as hell, they're flexible. They're all, I mean, they're, the difference between the athleticism and the ability to actually win is a pretty wide gap. The athleticism shows up, but then there's all that other extra, and part of that is meanness and pain and getting what you need out of it.

- But see, there is a philosophical difference in the way it's thought, 'cause-- - I think some of it is just, they're just in denial. Like, oh, people will, they like to, people like to espouse a lot of things as theory, and then it's like, okay, let me watch.

Oh, you're not doing anything about what you said right now. In fact, you're doing the opposite. You're literally hurting that guy because your shit ain't working, in the way that you'd like it to. So you're having to use strength. You're having to, it's one of my favorites. It's like, oh, you're using too much strength.

And it's like, well, hold on. Do we want people not to use strength at this point to understand more of mechanics? Or are you trying to tell people if they use strength at all that they're somehow bad at what they do? 'Cause, you know, it's not my fault you're not stronger than me.

- But see, I'm speaking of something else that's-- - I tend to think what it comes down to is like, strength is fine until you beat me with it. Then it sucks. - Okay, so strength is another thing. I'm thinking about more like anger. - Oh, sure. So you have a lot of angry guys in jiu-jitsu.

I know that. - Really? - Mm-hmm. - Okay, good. But let's talk about-- - Tons of 'em. - Let's talk about-- - They're only human. - The highest level of competition. There's a book called "Wrestling Tough." - Yeah. - It's a really good book. I've encountered in my life a few, especially in wrestling, people who really try to find a way to use anger, to get really angry at their opponent.

Not like stupid anger, but just like-- - Intense, pointed anger distilled into something that you can use as fuel. - And I remember this story. I don't know where I read it. It might be "Wrestling Tough," where a person was imagining that their opponent just raped their mother, raped their girlfriend or something like that, to create this method acting thing in their head to be like, to snap 'em out of this polite interaction of usual athletic convention and really go to the-- - You know what, that's a design of necessity.

So my anecdote for this was I was sitting with, backstage before a fight, not my fight, and I'm working with this guy, and this dude is, this is a world champion guy, and he's competed at the highest levels. And he looks at me and he goes, "You ever get nervous before fights?" I looked at him and I went, "No, I don't." And he just looks at me, he's like, "Fuck, man, I'm so nervous.

"How do you do it, man? "I wish I could be like you." And I said, "You know what? "That doesn't mean that what I'm doing is better. "It's just what is necessary for me. "It's the way I am." And I told him, so this anecdote goes into another anecdote.

This is a "Family Guy" episode, I guess. (Lex laughing) Where another famous high-level guy told me about this experience with a world champion boxer in Japan. And this guy would get insanely nervous and worked up and anxious before his matches. And he hated it and hated it and hated it.

And so he wanted to get rid of that feeling. So he went to a hypnotist for a bunch of sessions and managed to, and he goes in, and next fight, he's cool as a cucumber and doesn't perform and loses. And so what I said, going back to anecdote one, was whatever is necessary for you to get yourself in the best state of being right now to compete, whatever that may be.

It could be absolute stress and fear. It could be anger. It could be calmness. It could be whatever. But there is a-- - So brilliant. - But there is a state at which you need to be in to do your best. - And you as the individual, you have to find that.

Can you comment on Tyson, Mike Tyson? - Oh, yeah, that thing? - There's two things I wanna know. So he's, in terms of fear, there's a clip there, I think from a documentary, where he talks about he is fully afraid as he walks up to the ring. And as he gets closer and closer and closer, he gets more confident until he gets in and he's a god or something like that.

That coupled with his statement on Joe Rogan that he gets aroused at the possibility of hurting somebody in the ring. So he gets aroused at the violence. - Yeah. - I like it 'cause it's coupled to your, basically, statement that we need to find our own unique way of existing at our top level of performance, and that perhaps is Mike Tyson.

But do you think there's something more deeply universal to Mike Tyson speaking to the fact that he's aroused at the possibility of violence? - Yeah, I do, actually. Although I don't think that it always equates to arousal. For people, in fact, I would say in general, it doesn't. I can say I've never had a boner in the ring.

In fact, if anything, old combat cock is like, we're not hanging around, we're leaving. We're going up, we're taking off. We don't want anything to do with this. You have fun, come back to us when you have something warmer, softer, smells better. But the power, the feeling of aliveness, yeah, I could see it.

Back to even the concept of the Ubermensch, I feel like the highest states of being I've ever been in were in the midst of conflict. I felt like that was the time, those were the moments in my life where I felt like I was at the highest level of being as a human in existence.

But yet, even being in that state, it was not something that you could interact with people that weren't in that state with you. They wouldn't get it, you would almost seem. And to be that way all the time, either A, might drive you mad, or B, is you're something that's untenable to the rest of society.

You can't function with everybody else. It will not work. - It's just like you said with the Ubermensch, it's perhaps that ideal is not something you can hold for long. That's the very nature of it is. - Yeah, well, there was an example in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" about a snake being down the person's throat and biting it, and then having this maniacal laughter erupting, and to me it was, at least I read it as, yeah, okay, there's this insane moment that isn't forever, but that it is life and death.

And the overcoming it is the thing that all of a sudden gives you that tapping into your highest state, right? This is, man is a chasm, a tightrope between man and Ubermensch. Well, I don't wanna leave your thought about, we'll call those things flourishes to the aspect of Tyson's interpretation or his expression of his feelings in combat.

And so I gave this anecdote to the guy, and I just, my first anecdote to that athlete I was working with, and I said, there isn't a superior way in this sense. There is the way that works for you. That may be something you can implement to other people if you find that person, 'cause we all have different personalities, and to me, that's an absolute.

I don't wanna, don't come at me with all your other fucking social sciences crap. No, we have distinct personalities. That personality, who you really are, and this, again, Heidegger, Dasein, being authentic. If you're authentic with who you are, goods and bads, you will know how to create what that is.

And for me, violence and fighting and conflict was something that always felt normal to me. And I don't mean normal in, like I grew up in a war zone or an abusive household or something like that. I just meant that, and I was a kid who was very joyful and inquisitive, and spent a lot of time around older people, of all things.

And also, while I don't think I have much capability toward engineering, my mom said that one of the first things as like a little baby, when she put me in my sister's old crib, instead of my sister who just milled about and was fine with it all, the first thing I did was I completely deconstructed it.

I didn't break it, I figured out how to pull it apart. - Curiosity about the world, and yet that wasn't in conflict with the idea of violence? - No, not at all. And so, being a very joyful and nice kid, but kids are kids, and if kids can find that you respond maybe more easily to agitation, they will agitate you.

And if you should stand out in some way by being taller or bigger or something, or caring especially, they will agitate you. They don't really fully understand it either, and so I don't hold anything against any of the kids that used to pick on me or whatever, especially at the youngest ages.

Man, they don't know shit either. But once that line was pushed, for me it was, oh, well, I was being cool, now you're being uncool. Well, then that gives me license for everything. And so, boom, we would just go at it. Or kids that would try to initiate a fight, okay, and being in that moment of just going to town with someone else, it just felt like this is-- - I belong here.

- Yeah, it was never a problem for me. In fact, if anything, what I had to understand was, well, not only did I learn the hard way, that it doesn't matter, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what anybody else does if your response in violence, even to their violence, if you're the winner, is often going to be penalized severely.

Society, state apparatus, they don't want any of that. They wanna be the only arbiter of violence in the world always. But I learned a very difficult lesson with that, and it was really impactful in a negative way on me, but also I had to learn on an individual sense to, you need to manage violence too, because, hey, if someone attacks you or starts a fight with you and you go at it, okay, beating 'em up is one thing, trying to grab a handful of broken glass from the street and throw it in their face, maybe that's a bit much at seven.

So you need to learn what level is necessary, and you need to learn what comes with all, what's the responsibility of, when you enact violence, I mean, you take on something when you have a responsibility for that. This is the extension of your actions. But as I got older, and especially as I found sports, and then combat sports, now this was a place for me to flourish, and to the point where I was more myself in that space than I was outside of it until time enough where I could learn to get this back together again.

And I never say that I'll merge the two or anything like that, no, all what happened, my journey from adolescence on to manhood, a huge portion of it, besides the normal finding yourself, whatever, whatever, actually what it was was getting back to who I always was. - That curious kid, the kind kid.

- Getting back to the guy that I should have been allowed to become instead of what happened under the pressures of other things. And the attempt for society and certain people within a managerial positions to compress what that was into something that they found more suitable. - Yeah, but those pressures allow you to discover this little world, forbidden world, in many ways, of violence that you could explore.

Through sport, you can explore it, and it's more socially acceptable to explore it through sport. - For sure, but even then, at times, it's socially unacceptable. So I beat Sem Schilt, he cut my right eyebrow, I cut him and busted his nose, and he's bleeding all over me as I have an armbar on top, and it's raining blood, quote some slayer, from a lacerated Sem Schilt, bleeding in his horror, creating my structures, now I shall rain in blood.

But I win the fight, armbar, nasty one, I get on my feet, and the first thing I do is I wipe all the blood off onto my hands, and I lick it, and I do my thing. And all the MMA journalists freaked out. Dana Wise, like, "Man, I don't know about that.

"We don't want him doing, everybody had this huge problem." And then some folks would even contend, oh, you're trying to do, like, no, no, no, this isn't planned, I don't think of these things, this is how I really feel, this is who I really am. And it was even kind of comical after the fact, BJ Penn was on the very card with me, watching him at some point in his career all of a sudden win fights, and then do this licking the glove thing, and everyone thinks it's the coolest thing ever, and I'm like, "Hey, fuckfaces, I did this in 2002, "or one, 2001, and BJ Penn actually back then "was like, dude, you're a badass, you're a killer." - Where did that come from?

Because that seems like a deeply human moment. - I could say, I could just be goofy about it and call it orgiastic, to align with-- - Are we back to Mike Tyson? - Yeah, Tyson, but no, no, it's beyond that. - Is it a celebration of human nature? - I've had some pretty decent orgasms in my life at this point, I'm 43, but no, none have ever compared to that.

Like I said, it is a feeling of highest being to me. - That's your Ubermensch moment. - This is where I feel like the restrictions of general existence in society are gone, and I get to fully live in a state that feels more meaningful, of the most meaning. I think of it as life and death.

It is the way I'm built, and I've never had any problem applying violence. Like it doesn't, I don't know where it comes from or how you would define it or whatever, if you wanna stick me in a psychologist chair, but there's a part of me that can just, no, if I'm gonna apply, I can apply violence to any level and be okay with it.

And it doesn't, I don't lose sleep, it doesn't bother me, it's not a problem. It was me learning how to fully understand violence, humans, and the broader perspective that allowed me to think about things and like, well, what do I really wanna accomplish with my actions in the world just on a whole?

Not compartmentalizing my sporting career. Even when I get in the ring, I don't have any mercy, generally, and if I do, it's because I make a really deliberate attempt to be in a state where I can have mercy. If I just go in there to fight with everything I got, there is zero-- - The natural state of violence.

- There's nothing that will hold me back other than the referee, and that's that. I know I agreed to be allowed to do and not to do, but within that, no, and I expect it to be done to me. - But in terms of values, in terms of seeing what, to me, violence is just yet another canvas that humans can paint beautifully on.

- Clearly, I mean, we have venerated the violent. There are communists that venerate the violent on their behalf. There are national socialists that venerate the violent there, and then if you remove it from an ideological perspective, we venerate the violent when they're a hero. We venerate the violent in our religion.

Well, I mean, I guess some people venerate the violence of Yahweh and Sodom and Gomorrah, right? So, or do we say Jehovah? I don't know. - Is there, you've already mentioned one, but is there a fight where you've achieved the highest of heights for your own personal being, just when you look within yourself that you're the proudest of, or maybe was your most beautiful creation?

Is there something that stands out? - Yeah, there are a few, actually. Fighting semi-shield and a rematch. Well, the first one was pretty good, too, but the rematch was I was suffering, I had suffered prior, the week prior to food poisoning, and so while my abs were looking all right, I, in the ring, didn't have the power that I expected to, and I was struggling in ways, in some of the grappling, with the submission stuff, that I hadn't accounted for.

- Just exhaustion or mental exhaustion? - No, I mean, like, just physical, I wasn't back up to 100% in terms of just power output, and semi was, well, he's always seven foot tall, but this time he was, the first time I fought him, he was 260, or 257, or 260 something, something like that.

This time, he was like 290, and so he was a significantly bigger cat, and he's a big dude, and I just remember being up against the ropes with him, changing levels, trying to take him down, and he's fighting, he's hipping, and I just thought in my head, there's no fucking way I'm gonna lose this fight.

There's no way, you are not going to beat me, it's not gonna happen, and I armbarred him, the other arm. You remember the fact, he's like, man, I really wanted to get you for that, I wanted to get that match back, and then you fucking got my other arm, dick.

I'm like, eh, dude, I still love you, though. - But the whole time, you're like, so this has to do with the dichotomy of you feeling your worst. - And having to overcome and make it. - You're literally mentally telling yourself, there's no way. - There's no fucking way I'm gonna lose this fight, and then there's even my last bare knuckle match, and getting in the ring and fighting bare knuckle boxing for the first time, and just thinking, just being in a great state, and just looking so forward to seeing, I mean, I called someone, I was talking to them the night before, and I said, yeah, well, I video called you 'cause this face might not look like this when I see you next, and they're just like, ooh, okay.

- So it's not just empty trash talk. - No. - That's a clarity of mind and a seriousness about this particular battle. - I might die, pretty high chance of being deformed some way, so, well, fuck it. I don't really care. - Do you think about, are you accepting your own death that you're going through?

- Yes, 100%. In fact, and that's, in a strange way, that's partially what makes it so elevated in terms of my sense of feeling, by being able to have death at my side, it feels good. And to be there and to think that this could be the one, like, why not?

I'm not a religious person at all, even though I very much have to, seems to bang on the drum about the usefulness or understanding the usefulness of religion for people. But if I gotta do something, then yeah, put me in Valhalla, man. I don't wanna be anywhere else. Nothing else seems like a good place for me to be.

I wanna fight all day long and feast all night. You know, it sounds great. - I saw you throw your hat into the ring of Vader, I mean, I mean, I think. - Yes. He got COVID, I guess. I hope he overcomes it and comes out just as good, if not better.

- Epic with that. Did I understand correctly that that might be his last fight? - Yes, that's my understanding. And it would be epic as hell. And it would be epic as hell because the person that I wanna give my most to is a person that I respect, especially at this long career of mine and getting at this-- - And his as well.

- Twilight years. - It's like two warriors. - And that's the thing about even this going in there with the aspect of being with death and all that is that when that person is in there, they are my brother with me in this. And that so when you give me your best, even if I win dominant fashion, but if you show up and you're as authentic and being here as I am, then I love you.

And I'm glad for you to be here and we're in this together. And at this point, your loss or my loss or whatever is no less deserving of veneration than the win. Like we're here in this. And so to be in the ring with Fyodor and to venerate him in win or defeat, to be in there with someone like that is to me, it's so rare.

- It's incredible how the ultimate violence is coupled with like love or respect. And it's like, it's weird how this is, how the competition in its violent form is also a veneration of just human connection. - It's also the removal. I feel like it's the purest, one of the purest ways, purest, most honest places a person can exist.

That line in Fight Club, you don't know really who you are until you've been in a fight. I mean, believe that. And I've seen so many examples of people trying to portray themselves as one thing. And then in the ring, you see who they really are. Or even when they're trying to portray themselves as one thing and they're winning, the crowd at times will see who they really are and still hate them.

It's like, but I said all the good things. Bro, don't work that way. - Yeah, but speaking of fado, if we take you out of the picture, who are the greatest mixed martial arts fighters of all time? - I feel-- - You out of the picture. - As a cop out to some degree, I feel like we need a little bit more time to see how this unfolds.

Because you gotta compare a lot of things. And I, did I, I think I'm-- - Like centuries? - I did an interview. I don't know about centuries, but that would help if we can keep accurate records and not allow too much bias to fall in, too much propaganda. - The victor still, right?

- Yeah, good luck, yeah. But I made an argument. I did a, it was a interview with an MMA outlet of some sort. And I can't recall who it was. But oh, it was an argument about, will the winner of Cain Velasquez versus Stipe Miocik be the greatest MMA heavyweight of all time?

And I said, fucking no way. Oh no, it's Cormier and Miocik. That's what it was. I said, absolutely not, not even close. And I said, these guys need a bit more time to see how things go. And also how things go for some of their opponents. And there's more factors than just this one fight.

It really is. And I go, and when you wanna weigh these people, even if let's say, we'll bring Alistair, yeah, Alistair Overeem into the equation. Okay, you judge him on what you know now, what he's done for you lately, okay? - Right. - Which is a very myopic way of doing it.

What has he done over his career? K1 champion. He was a champion in Dream. He striked for us, blah, blah, blah. His overall record. The entirety of all the different opponents he's fought. And I just sit back and I go, okay, he's not the UFC champ, but his accolades, his merits, in some ways, actually stand up higher than Cormier's and Miocik's.

- So what about the moments, do you give much value to the special moments, like the highest heights you rise to? Not in terms of records or the strikes landed, but just creating a magical moment in a fight. It doesn't have to be even a championship fight, but just, you know, Conor McGregor is an example of somebody who creates a narrative, who creates a story, who creates a drama, and a special magic happens, even if it's like not with a-- - Myth is greater than reality, and that is always the case.

- But do you-- - And so I understand that so very much, and it takes an asshole like me to poo-poo on your myth. At least get you, at the end of the day, you're not gonna abandon your myth, but perhaps temper it with the facts and logic. - So you're not a fan of myth?

- No, I'm an absolute massive fan of myth. - But you prefer facts and logic. - It's like when I, no, I mean, I like saying facts and logic, because people, I also, I am not a materialist in that sense. I don't think that materialism can solve for everything.

It's not enough, it's not robust enough. I'm sorry, if facts and logic, or reason, as the Enlightenment scholars all thought, including Marx, was enough for people, then we wouldn't have any religions. We wouldn't have, there would be no, we wouldn't have narratives and myths and all this kind of stuff.

It would not, it just, I'm sorry, there is no, there is nothing about history that supports the idea that rationality will overcome all. - There's something about Ben Shapiro's facts don't care about your feelings that feels to be, feels to be missing something fundamental about human nature. It's not clear to me exactly what is missing.

- To give old Ben a fair shake, and I don't know Ben Shapiro. I don't really listen to Ben Shapiro, not against Ben Shapiro. I'm not here to say anything particularly bad about him. Although I will say at one time, Tom Arnold was seemingly trying to pick an actionable fight with Ben Shapiro.

- In the ring. - Somewhere, yeah. And I just, and I actually responded, and I tried to get him to clarify, say hey, are you saying that you wanna fight Ben Shapiro, that you're looking to actually, 'cause I was waiting for him to say something, and then I can be like, okay, well, it's one thing to wanna get into a fight with someone.

It's another thing to go pick on a little tiny guy like Ben who's much smaller than you and doesn't train or whatever, but if it's not me, I can find someone your size, and you can go fight him. Basically, don't be a bully piece of shit. Which, by the way, Tom Arnold, you are a mental midget.

You are never going to be able to compete even with Ben Shapiro in an argument on any level about anything. - Oh, intellectual argument. - Yeah, intellectual argument. Maybe you can scream louder than him, but whatever. - But nevertheless, in the discussion of greatness in fighting, are numbers. - I think you need to look at some of the, you need to look at some of the numbers.

- And there's the magic. - There is some context also in that, where did Alistair Overeem fight? Oh, he fought in Pride, where you could soccer kick people and stomp their head and this and that, and so the game environment is actually different too. - There's more uncertainty, there's more chaos in Pride, there's more-- - Go back a little further and go like, what about the guys that used to fight, Dan Severn fought bare knuckle, head butts, the whole nine.

- You beat Dan Severn, right? - I did beat Dan Severn, that was killing an idol, so to speak, although I didn't really kill him because I still love him. I mean, he's still responsible for inspiration along this whole pathway. It's meeting your God and then putting a knife in it, I guess.

(laughing) - Realizing they're human and then bringing them down to your level. - Exactly, but also there's a huge misconception there and that is that I could bring, maybe I could bring Dan Severn down to my level, but I couldn't bring his mustache down to my level. It is of mythic proportions and-- - Greater than yours.

Your facial hair is greater than yours. - My facial hair is creating its own legacy, but it is not Dan Severn mustache level or now Don Fry mustache, so Don Fry mustache, Dan Severn mustache, now you have like Shia versus Sunni, like that's-- (laughing) - You think there'll be Karl Marx painting of Josh Barnett one day with the beard?

And is that basically what you're trying to-- - I hope so, I will actually comb my hair, unlike Marx. But-- - Chaos has a charm to it. - It does, it does. I mean, we all thought Doc Brown in Back to the Future was quite charming. - You have to throw that into the calculation where they fought.

- Yes. - I mean, this is the-- - And the rules that they fought under, you know, some guy like Igor Volfeynchen won a 32-man tournament or something like that. I go, okay, Stipe and Daniel Cormier are awesome. And they will, for sure, be revered for their careers, 100%.

Can you say that they're particularly even better overall than Igor Volfeynchen? Well, maybe one of them could've beat them, maybe one of them wouldn't have. Maybe Igor would've fuckin' got 'em with the knuckles right away. Well, maybe if they fought 'em in pride, they wouldn't have won. Maybe if they fought 'em bare-knuckle, they wouldn't have won.

I don't know. - And there's something about the chaos, like do you put Hoyse Gracie in the top 10? You know, there's something about-- - Top 10 of all time in terms of competitors? Capable? I don't know, I'd have to think about that, maybe not. But I put Hoyse Gracie as like pyramid level, like wow, dude, what an amazing man.

Yeah, he's so important, absolutely incredibly important. - But there's something about stepping into, like fighting another human being under all the uncertainty that the early UFCs had. I mean, you don't know what is going to happen. And couple that with not much money. All of it. - Yes. - So the purity of it, too.

There's something about money, I mean, that gets the shit for that in the capitalist world, but that ruins the purity of the violence. - Yeah, people, given the opportunity for, yeah, the bigger things get, the more, I love the fact that fighting has opened up to such a degree that the career business side of it, 'cause I absolutely distinctly separate the two, the business side of it has opened up to give me far more possibilities, opened way more doors for me than I ever intended it to.

Whereas the athlete side of things has, if anything, just gotten substantially worse, I would say. And some of this can be, some of this is due to all, the nature of all games will be learned, will be gamed without even the rules being broken. And once that's figured out, you need to make an adjustment.

No adjustments have been made. So the game just appears to be the same game over and over and over and over and over again, on ESPN+, on whatever, on whatever, on whatever. It doesn't really matter which night you watch, it's the same game constantly. And that's not because the athletes are worse or better, it's because they have had that game structure long enough that they figured out, what do you do to be the most successful at it?

What is the highest percentage way of approaching it, essentially, even if you're not thinking of percentages? - What were the, if we take a step back, it's really fascinating to think about the early UFCs. Did you fight Dan Saverin in the UFC? - I fought him in Super Brawl.

- Super Brawl, so that was in the early, early days, you're undefeated. - 2000. - What were those early days, let's say, of mixed martial arts like? Did you have-- - Let me tell you the day of high adventure. (laughing) Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun.

Yeah, it is, it was so much fun. And it made you feel absolutely like you were a part of a novel, a comic book. I mean, I would love to transcribe my experiences as what I consider a second generation MMA athlete, except I'm way too sensitive to anybody's personal, any things that are, not even to, I'm not a gospy person.

I really do believe that small people talk about others. Big people talk about ideas. But there's just some stories that you can't tell without telling the whole story. And there are so many amazing stories that could be told. - People being at their best, people being at their worst.

- Yeah, the whole, the whole-- - Is there something you could speak to the chaos of the time? - Oh, 100%, like, well, okay, so we at AMC got connected to somebody that was throwing an event in Nampa, Idaho, and we all piled into this and Matt Humes, Subaru wagon, and we jammed out.

And we left Kirkland and we headed over to Idaho, only to find out that there was nothing really put in place. It was absolute disrepair and chaos. They didn't have a ring, they didn't have this. It was such a bullshit adventure. But we were like, well, you know, there's hardly anywhere to fight.

It's tough to find these opportunities. So, okay, well, how about this? Whoever is here to fight and is willing, all right, well, since there's no venue, there's no this, whatever, we all got gloves, we got mouthpieces, we'll just go to the park as long as they'll get paid. And so, folks were kind of like, I don't know about that.

The guy I was gonna fight was, he finally figured, he finally gets information on who I actually am. And I was undefeated at the time. I think I had fought Super Bowl XIII and already won that tournament. And so, he's like, yeah, I had no clue. I'm so glad we didn't fight.

You would have murdered me. This is, you know, what a setup. And eventually, Matt had to strong arm the guy and get our money that we were supposed to all get and drive back. And 'cause his whole position was, well, there ain't no fucking way. We drove all the way out here for free.

This is on you. You fucked this up, not my problem. But what is my problem is the lack of cash in my account. So, fix it. You know, or me fighting my first organized fight against an AMC guy on 11 days notice through a connection to an old wrestling coach I had.

And I just gathered up with all my old martial arts, my old martial arts instructor that I had worked with. And we grappled in his apartment. We did tie pads in the park. I ran a couple miles every day. And then, all right, boom, show it up. Won my fight by front choke in two minutes.

And then Matt goes, okay, well, hey, you did really great. We'd like you to come back and fight again in the summer. What do you think? Okay, go back off to university. And then I think, hmm, well, that fight didn't go exactly how I wanted it to. So, I gotta find a way to get more experience.

I would literally fight people in the university like rec center on the old wrestling mats as they didn't all have a wrestling team. I would find anyone doing martial arts, anyone talking about getting into street fights, anyone, whatever, and just basically go, oh, you ever watch UFC? Yeah, yeah, that stuff's cool.

What do you think? Oh, man, I'm super into it, man. It's badass. Rad. So, would you wanna fight? (laughing) I mean, it was way easier picking fights than it was getting a girlfriend. So, I just, you know, path leads to resistance. - I think it might be useful for us to get some advice from you.

- Yeah, all right. - 'Cause you've accomplished for the journey of a martial artist first. If you've accomplished some of the greatest accolades there is in the sport, if somebody who's starting out now or early on in their journey, what advice would you give on how to become a martial artist, a catch wrestler, a fighter?

- Well, I mean, really what it comes down to is do it because you love it. Do it for that reason and that reason alone. Most people that get into this and attempt to make any sort of professional inroads with it, you are not going to be the world champion.

You probably will never even fight for a belt. You're probably not going to net make money at this. So, don't do it for those reasons. Do it for the reason of the passion. Do it for the reason to be the absolute best that you can be, whatever that ends up being.

You might, at best, only be mediocre. But you won't even be mediocre if you don't do it like you really mean it. So-- - The passion look, where's the kernel of the passion, would you say? Is it in the learning process itself, the improvement? - I think it really depends on the person, right?

I mean, there's some people that really love the fact of they feel like they're growing, right? Will to power, you're growing, growing stronger, growing better. The idea of eliminating weakness. So, to which I'll quickly define weakness as just like things that weaken you, not like being physically weak. Sure, you could call that weakness, but maybe you're not meant to be a super strong guy.

But choosing to be weak is really a different story other than just like we're all deficient in some way or another. So, that's neither here nor there. It's a matter of what you decide to do with it. And that's an information strength and weakness, at least the way I look at it.

Like strength is choosing, regardless of the difficulty, to make improvements. Strength is even choosing to acknowledge that you do lack and accept it and then make a decision on what to do with it. - Yeah, but there's also, there's a bunch of stuff that just like you said, it's what you're drawn to.

There's an honesty to just grappling that it seems more real than anything else you can do. - Sure, well, and also-- - That's where the passion and love can come from. - Yeah, I mean, it's being in an environment, hopefully, that is as true as possible, would be a starter.

So, it's hard to be a bullshit person when you're literally trying to tear each other's arms off. - Yeah. - You really sort of see who somebody is. I also feel like you really get to see somebody who, there are a couple instances where you really see who people are on the mats and in the bedroom.

So, even the aspect of self-betterment, growth along a path, I mean, hell, that's part of the device of capture for martial arts as a business. Give you a belt, put a stripe on your belt. Each of these iterations cost 20 bucks. - But there's a benefit to that, too.

I really enjoyed the progression of belts. - Sure. - 'Cause a bit of it is OCD or whatever, but you're enjoying the recognition of your growth when you feel, when you're made to feel, when I think genuinely you do earn it. - Yeah, I agree. - In that process.

- I agree. It makes complete sense to me. It just, anything that has a goodness in its purity can also have a detriment in its perversion. - And there's a value to competition. I've gotten some shit in the past for saying this. I've gotten the most value in giving everything I have to try to win and lose.

So I've gotten, I remember most of the matches I've lost, and I think that's what I've gotten the most from the sport is losing. - Think about it. I mean, if you really think about it, what makes you wanna actually, in detail, go over what happened? Oh, it's the time when you didn't get what you wanted.

It's a time when you gave it everything you had and you came up short or failed miserably. - Especially if you're embarrassed in some way. - Right, and so that's usually the only time people, again, calamity, is the impetus for them to actually turn around and go, "Who the fuck am I?

"What am I doing and why am I doing it?" Instead of naturally going, "Hmm, okay, well, I won. "Why? "What was it that caused it?" And so I think part of my success is that when I win, I'm brutal. When I lose, I'm brutal. And there is no in-between.

So I remember losing the rematch against Noguera, and I still feel like it was a bullshit call. I feel like I won that fight, but my opinion is that, and this even came up, so one of the coaches in the back was like, "Oh, you did great. "Don't feel bad, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And I go, "No, fuck that.

"I didn't finish him. "I allowed the referees to make a decision "that I think is incorrect and bad, "but that came because I didn't take him out. "Fuck that, no, no. "He won, he's gonna get more money, "he's gonna get more recognition, "blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

"I accept all this, and it's not okay. "And I need to, when I get a chance to fight him again, "I gotta figure out how to take this guy out, "I don't wanna say forever. "I'm not trying to put him six feet underground. "Well, when I fight, yes I am." But the point being, I need to find a way to, this is definitive, you don't get to say shit about it, 'cause I'm the only one who can stand right now.

That's the way it's gotta be. Anything less than that is not good enough. And even if I achieve that, then I gotta figure out, okay, it's not a given. How did I get to this point? How did I make that happen? Was it simply because of his own mistakes, or was it because of my successful action?

- So it was always self-critical. - Always, constantly. - You love movies. I read this somewhere. You mentioned "Blade Runner" as a favorite. - Number one of all time, the final cut, that's my go-to. - So you would say "Blade Runner" is the greatest movie of all time. - It's one of the greatest movies of all time.

- What's in the top? - My top five, "Blade Runner," final cut. - This is the original "Blade Runner." - And I used to own, on tape, the original-- - VHS? - Cut, yeah. And I had the director's cut on DVD. - Why "Blade Runner," by the way? What connects you to it?

- As a kid, I just thought it was so cool. There was something about it that really spoke to me, the whole cyberpunk landscapes, and this guy chasing down rogue androids, replicants, and all this. - Is it just the entire cyberpunk universe, or is it just robots as well?

- No, it's, I mean, the cyberpunk universe is part of it. On the surface, I've always tended towards dark subject matter, like things that are of the dark, so to speak, are things that I've always been gravitated towards. I think maybe part of it is that the things that are darker are more accepting and more upfront with death.

And perhaps I think that maybe that is what was-- - Yeah, somehow more honest, perhaps. There's also the aspect of rebelliousness, usually. Like there is, I was never one to wanna just do what somebody told me to do. I'm not sitting around trying to always be such a radical individual that I can't take orders.

No, in fact, I'm more than willing to take orders from somebody that I feel is competent and has merit and reason behind what they're doing and makes like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm 100% for it. Not only will I kinda take orders, I will help you achieve whatever it is if I think it's worthwhile, even at my own expense.

But to get to that point is a rarity. Like it's just not a given. And so you can even imagine like being a grade school teacher and this kid doesn't respect you and he doesn't really think you're that smart. They don't really appreciate that. - So cyberpunk is number one.

What else is there? - Cyberpunk is kinda number one. It's an environment I love, but at the same time, Conan the Barbarian by John Milius is one of my favorite films of all time. And that's such a pure film in a way. Like the motivations are pure. They're very easy to follow, but not lacking in depth.

It's not just explosions and teal and orange. It's more on the human condition and I love it. And it's shot incredibly well. It's got an incredible soundtrack. Yeah, I fucking love it. But with Blade Runner also in a deeper sense, again, the human condition. You start seeing like what is being?

What is being human? How does this relate to, if you can make it and you can tell it what to do, at what point is it like you should or you shouldn't? Why do you get to determine what's alive and what's not? What's a life that should be allowed to live and what isn't?

And what would be the strain of being Roy Batty and seeing all these incredible moments that with his passing will no longer exist? Especially if he hasn't had a chance to put that flame into another torch, so to speak. If he hasn't written them down, if he hasn't passed them down to somebody else.

Gone like tears in the rain. - Like tears in the rain, that scene is incredible. But it's funny 'cause those two universes are very different according to the barbarian and cyberpunk 'cause that makes me curious about what else might be in the list. - Well, let me think. It's a pretty-- - Do you like the Godfather type of universes?

- No, I mean, I'm sure the Godfather. I've never actually even watched the whole Godfather. - No, but also like was it Casino, Goodfellas? - Goodfellas is a good movie, but no, that's not in my top. It's a good flick. But it doesn't really do it for me. If people really wanna get into this a little more, I did make a list of 100 of my favorite movies on my Facebook fan page.

- Nice. Do you remember like some-- - Oh yeah, like Blazing Saddles is on there, Rage of the Lost Ark, Valhalla Rising by Nicholas from Winding Refn, Maniac by William Lustig. It's a 1980 gnarly, video nasty horror movie about a serial killer who murders women and scalps them. And it's gnarly as hell and very brutal and very bleak and very, I mean, it's the kind of thing that like a lot of people would have a real hard time watching.

But one, again, I like things that are dark, but two, I thought the performances were fantastic in this film. And they really got out, I think, what the underlying thing was. And it was a guy who was basically just like run amok by the overbearing mother, Jungian archetype. And she imparted her insanity into him.

But yet there is this aspect you could see of him wanting to try and actually be able to be in the world and have love and have feminine companionship to go with his masculine aspect. But he had no way of understanding how to really make that happen. And he had a complete negative connotation to the feminine.

So it's his struggle with, and there's a little part in the movie where he somehow comes across this model or something. And then actually he starts to feel like maybe he might be able to actually have a relationship with somebody and it goes somewhere. But yeah, even the Elijah Wood remake, I felt was really well done and captured most of the essence of what the movie was about.

But I still feel like the original by William Lustig is the best. - What's the greatest love movie of all time? - Greatest love movie of all time. - So like something where love is, I mean, I suppose love underlies most of these movies, and especially if you like the dark.

- I mean, hell, Takashi Miike's films are all about family of all things. As bonkers as those movies are, the general theme is family almost entirely in all of his films. - Yeah, there's very, I mean, even you can argue Blader on it. Yeah, it's everywhere. - Greatest love film of all time?

That's, I mean, is Excalibur a film about love? - What's Excalibur about? - King Arthur. Excalibur is about Arthur becoming king of the Britons and his love of his country and his love of Guinevere. But eventually, yeah, it becomes more of about the necessity for the king to love, to hold Excalibur, to stay, to realize that while if you're the king, you can love your wife and you can love your best friend, and they may fuck each other behind your back and as they fall in love too, but at the end of the day, your responsibility, your love has to be to the country and everyone else first and not your own personal wants, which made a much more interesting story when you have Carmen Berenina and, or was it, oh, what is that one?

It's a German opera, but, and horses and slow-mo and sword fights and an epic death scene between Arthur and his son. - Okay, I'll definitely have to watch it, and I haven't watched it in embarrassing. - It is John Borman's second film in Hollywood, his first one being Point Blank with Lee Marvin, which is also on top, one of the upper echelon movies on my list, derived from a book by, called The Outfit by, what is his name?

I forget, but Darwin Cook, the comics illustrator, he did, Donald Westlake wrote, so Darwin Cook does an amazing comic book send-up of Darwin Cook's novels, and they are fucking incredible. So anyways, but the Point Blank with Lee Marvin, it's a man driven by purpose, revenge, but also by really pure motivations.

He wants his money. He was betrayed, and he wants his cash, because this is what he agreed to do the thing for, and this is, which also is part of the reason why I like No Country for Old Men so much, which I felt was a great movie, even better book, but I remember talking to my friend, and I go, you know, Anton Chigurh is the most pure human being in that whole book.

Well, that guy's the villain. I go, ha ha, is he evil? He's the one, he lies to no one. He does everything he says he will do. He always follows his word, and on the rare occasion, he allows fate to make a decision, as he figures, like, well, whatever all led us to here will lead us one way or the other, and if we're at this crossroads, how is there any better or worse way than to do it over a coin flip?

And so that whole scene where the guy's going, well, what am I putting up? And he goes, everything. You've been putting it up every day of your life, and that's true. Everything we do is a decision, is a calling, is a choice. And then it bummed me out that they reduced the last interaction between Chigurh and what's-his-face's wife, and he finally finds her, and she's like, you don't have to do this.

And he's like, yes, I do. This is the way it is. You can think that your life could have turned out any sort of way, you could have done this, you could have done that, but the reality is this is the way your life is, and it's the way it was always going to be.

The fact that I'm here is the end of it, and that's that. - Yeah, it's funny, if you're honest, this is what dark movies reveal, that the villains are the purest of humans, and can teach us the most profound lessons, and that's certainly an example of it. What do you think, the big, ridiculous, last philosophical question, what do you think is the meaning of this whole thing we've got going on, of life and existence on Earth, from your individual perspective, but the entirety of the human species?

- Life, the universe, and everything? - Yeah. Don't. (laughing) - We could just leave it at that. - You knew exactly where I was going, I love it. - Josh, I love you very much, you've been a huge inspiration. - I have a friend who, she said, "Do you know Lex Friedman, have you gone on Lex's?" And I go, "Yes, I know Lex Friedman is." I've sadly been way too long in contact without making it happen for too long, and yes, I will 100%, I even cut a shirt at the beginning of the pandemic to make my own little mask at one point, due to the Lex process.

(laughing) And I love it, I can't really hear you, but I'm demonstrating. (laughing) Just see it through, but this has been a blast, and I hope you come back. - Next time, let's drink some of the Warbringer whiskey. - I will bring some Warmaster, I wasn't sure if you imbibed at all in spirits.

- 100%, it felt a little weird to do it early on in the morning, especially 'cause I'm flying out there. - Does it though? I mean, I've had some wonderful morning whiskey at times. - Now that you've mentioned it, it doesn't at all. So next time, let's make sure, what Joe Rogan calls the adult beverages, let's make sure we indulge.

- I have zero reservations for doing such a thing, I'm into it. - Josh, thanks for talking today. - My pleasure. - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Josh Barnett, and thank you to our sponsors, Munk Pack, Low Carb Snacks, Element Electrolyte Drink, 8 Sleep Self-Cooling Mattress, and Rev Transcription and Captioning Service.

Click the sponsor links to get a discount and to support this podcast. And now, let me leave you with some words from Sun Tzu in the art of war. "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy "without fighting." Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

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