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The Vision Quest Podcast
A podcast about life, sports, and life in sports! Enjoy!
The Vision Quest Podcast
#102 Johnni DiJulius: Embracing Challenges: Wrestling, Adventure, and Personal Growth
Wrestling is not just a sport; it's a profound journey that cultivates resilience, teaches valuable life lessons, and forms lasting identities. Our guest, Johnni DiJulius, shares personal experiences from his wrestling career, including the mental challenges, the realities of competition, and surprising adventures in BASE jumping and acting, all while emphasizing the importance of embracing struggles and finding joy in the journey.
• Discussing the intersection of family, wrestling, and identity
• The importance of mental toughness developed through hardship
• Insights on weight cutting and the realities faced by young wrestlers
• Experiences in BASE jumping as a metaphor for wrestling struggles
• The implications of NIL opportunities for young athletes
• Encouragement to embrace passions and live momentously
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Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:We're live what's going on man. How you doing, how you doing.
Speaker 3:I'm fantastic how you doing. Thank you for having me, not a problem.
Speaker 2:So it's been a minute. How are you doing? How are you doing? I'm fantastic. How are you doing? Thank you for having me. Not a problem, so it's been a minute. I usually go almost every week, if not every other week, but sometimes there's a little bit of a break. But this is a big break. So we had some college visits going on my son's Liam, he's 16. Been going around the country up a little bit so we finally got done doing that, came back. Yeah, I'll be allowed to say where you went. What's uh, uh, where he. He committed to. So he went to. He was supposed to go to iowa. We didn't go to iowa, he went to virginia and kind of he were after the schools he'd been to already. He kind of had his mind made up, you know so, and it was just a decision. So he committed to virginia congratulations, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:It's been a fun I love the guys down there.
Speaker 3:I wrestle against Virginia quite a bit. They're good guys. That's awesome. Steve Garland how many years has he been there? 15 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, 15 or 17. Something like that. It's been a while. Him and the Paulsons. I couldn't get it. I hope they're watching. I couldn't get a good read off of Trent. First, when I met him, travis was all right. You know Travis is kind of old, but Trent was so intense Right when we first met, I was like I don't know, was that supposed to be like that?
Speaker 3:I said, okay, okay, the good thing is that different personalities on a team, on a coach's staff, is good. You know, you got the one that's young and hip and you can relate to. You got the one that's hey, that's kind of like mom and dad, I don't really want to piss them off. You got the politician, you got that. So it's good to have that mixture. But my first, uh, my first wrestling match at the ncaa tournament ever was against a uva kid oh, no kidding yeah yeah, matt snyder oh, really nice 125 back when I could make 125 UVA kid, no kidding.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, matt Snyder. Oh really Nice 125.
Speaker 2:Back when I could make 125.
Speaker 3:I'm going to look that one up. Don't Don't. I took an L. Don't look it up All right.
Speaker 2:So everybody, it's the Vision Quest podcast. It's been a minute but we are joined by this guy is so much fun to just listen to and the insight that you I mean everybody might have some insight, but the way you deliver and the insight that you do have is fantastic.
Speaker 3:Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm lucky because my dad was a speaker, so I stole the traits. So, I have a cheat code. I always say, oh, people say they comment that a lot and I say, well, well, I'm the world's best plagiarizer. I just steal right like you're gonna say something that I'm gonna like and I'm gonna say it's gonna sound like I said like it's, that's right, so I'm not like I'm not coming up with shit on my own, I just steal from everybody isn't that where we're all at at this point, though?
Speaker 2:I mean, with how long humans have been around, are we kind of copying? Anyways, we're just tweaking it a little bit. Exactly the delivery, and that's the thing. Delivery is important too in comedy.
Speaker 3:It's the same thing, delivery well, you know my dad, actually you know because you're, you were a comedian. You said you uh, yeah, actually you can't like not be a comedian. You always are right, you are a comedian, right, but he, uh, he always says that he, whenever he goes and does like speaking, uh, engagements with these big companies, uh, comedians, he uses as a reference a lot because they recall things really well. So, like you say a joke at the beginning of your set, the chicken crossed the road, ha ha ha, right. Then 40 minutes later you'll be like, oh yeah, and then I was driving on the street, what did I see? The chicken. You bring back the chicken, right, are you ready? So he does that with whatever point he's trying to make, with whatever, like they'll always revisit something he talked about 40 minutes ago.
Speaker 2:You know, I feel like it's such a good way to learn, if, if I'm recalling things, you know it was, and I didn't learn that stuff till like later on in life, right, I mean that I'm an angry old bastard now. Before that, like I was bad, I didn't leave the house very much. I still don't leave the house much. I mean, look what I do, I'm in my basement, right, but uh, so right, okay. So the the thing about you, though, is that it's I leave my house too much that's right.
Speaker 2:You've been on a wild ride, man, and that's why I you know. Just I said I don't do a ton of research. I did look some stuff up because I heard some crazy parachute story about base jumping and I was like, come on what?
Speaker 2:What I didn't look it up. I didn't look it up yet because I want to talk about it. Like I said, I want all this to be kind of fresh, right. So I just looked up articles, saw some stuff that really popped up on Google right away and I left it at that.
Speaker 3:Okay away and I left it at that, okay. So what are the questions? You just want me to kind of get into it no, we're gonna get into it.
Speaker 2:We want to start from the beginning. We want where are you from? Where'd you, where'd you start from?
Speaker 3:so I grew up in cleveland ohio, took a summer of cleveland ohio uh, aurora uh. Rested at walsh jesuit, uh. First of all, I'll tell you how I got interested.
Speaker 2:First of all, so, yeah, yeah, we want to start sports. It doesn't matter what it was.
Speaker 3:My lovely mom, right? Well, so actually my dad was a baseball player and he played at Cleveland State. He was a shortstop, so he always wanted me to be a baseball player my whole life. Okay, and I played baseball in the summertime but I had like ADHD off the charts. I was freaking hyper. I couldn't go to bed at night in the wintertime. I had nothing to like burn me out you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Wow, In the wintertime I had nothing to burn me out.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:We need to fucking get this kid tired. Somehow that's intense yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So my mom had a friend who was a four-time state champ from Ohio. He actually wrestled at Wisconsin for a couple years but he didn't finish there. His name was Dan Hanson and it was like Jim Jordan era, like around that time, yep, yep. So she hits him up and she's like, hey, I want my son to start wrestling. What would you recommend that? So my mom drove me to my first ever wrestling practice and that's at six years old. Five or six years old that's when I started wrestling and that led to, uh, you know, a domino effect of all of us right of of what we do now.
Speaker 2:so so it's not good you cut. You're coming from a great area for wrestling, right, I mean? Yeah who doesn't hear about iron man right? You know, walsh jesuit is my high school that's what I'm saying, that yeah, right, right that's.
Speaker 3:I mean it's having that like it was like a holiday at our school. We didn't have the biggest wrestling like. You know how pa some of these like wrestling schools they treat like football. Yeah, we didn't have that as much in cleveland, ohio. However, ironman felt like a holiday because we call it school. It's great for that, so that's awesome to be able to have that at my high school.
Speaker 2:They give you the day off.
Speaker 3:The entire student body gets the day off. No way, yeah, that.
Speaker 2:I didn't know. That's pretty cool. Holy cow, that's a big deal. The whole school just shut, shutdown for you. So when you started out five, you know, five years old, what club were you going to?
Speaker 3:It was a small club called Mayfield wrestling clubs, a town in the area, and then and then I left and I went to a West shore which is St Ed's youth program. Yep, yep, that's right yeah, and that led to me being at uh, north akron, which is walsh's, you know theater program yep, yep, okay, okay, so when?
Speaker 2:what was the first? Because, again, you come from a really affluent wrestling area, right? So where? When did you start going nationally to tournaments?
Speaker 3:that's a good question. So so me and me and my best friend, his name's ty mitch. He's a three-time state champ from Ohio, super tough kid, didn't pan out as much in college, just ended up following different paths, right. But high school-wise he won Fargo. He was three-time state champ. I think he was like top five, six, seven for his recruiting class, not just at his weight. I think he might have been pound for pound top ten. I'm not sure, for I think he might have been pound for pound top 10. I'm not sure for a senior class. Went to Virginia Tech, him and I pretty much started at the same time.
Speaker 3:So my dad and his mom were best friends in high school, in college, nice. That ended up families being super close as they both had kids. We started wrestling together and we became best friends, right, okay? So we're going to all these tournaments together and we're starting to win by like seven, eight years old, like pretty much everything. And my dad would always say uh, you know if, if I'm very lucky that my dad wasn't like a typical wrestling dad in the sense of sure ego driven, let's be undefeated, right, which I get, you know, dad's out there listening. I don't get it. I don't get it. But you know, go get your kids some losses, trust me, it's correct, correct. So my dad was like, okay, we need, we need to go. Uh, we. His goal was to get me 10 losses in a season. Right, that was like a really big goal. So we started going to jersey and pa and tulsa and reno and all these other you know, national tournaments, yeah, and me and ty together again started Reno and all these other you know, national tournaments.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and me and Ty together again started going to all these national tournaments Tulsa, pa and so we started seeing better kids. Right, that's better kids, different styles. Ohio might have a little bit of style. All of a sudden you're wrestling with a kid from Iowa Okay, that's a different style. And we started really seeing, you know, national wrestling on a big scale. Sure, and uh, and that's really where it started. You know, I it's cool because you walk around your little middle school and you're not, you're not just like a kid that goes to middle school, you're a wrestler.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know right, it's like it's serious, it's very serious.
Speaker 3:My whole identity as a kid is very serious.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, I can attest that because Liam had the same thing, cause it was. I mean, he started at five and when he was in school, people, like kids, would pick on him Right and like they didn't know. And then they found out you know, they the FAA phone and they found out on the playground, where it wasn't something that he flaunted about, but they knew like he wrestled right you know, wrestling was they think ddt and all that other stuff, right, and then they start messing around with them.
Speaker 3:They found out, you know, it's kind of it's kind of like the it's uh, it's like a hidden treasure that nobody knows about until they yeah yeah, right, you know, quick, quick little story too, like, uh, I don't want to skip over too much, but so two things ty and I, uh, grew up wrestling together. Okay, we go to high school. We were supposed to go to the same school. He had to go to the public school, aurora, where I live. I had to go to walsh jesuit, the private school, like 20, 30 minutes away. We end up wrestling in state finals my freshman year, right, me and my best friend now, unfortunately, you know he gets me, you know, in the state finals freshman year, uh, and then you know, we ended up being different weights after that and, uh, you know, winning three state titles each. He was a year older than me, so his freshman year I was still in eighth grade, but then we started when we were three state titles each, nice. And then, uh, this is kind of a little bit sad, I don't know a little bit darker now. So that was, that was ty.
Speaker 3:So I really started this, this journey with yeah, that's my mom who brought me to my first practice, uh, and it's kind of like the spark plug behind, like my energetic self and all you know how I, my entire personality, sophomore year after all my first sex house. She unfortunately passed away. She was in a car accident like a week or two after the state tournament. So state tournament ends two weeks later, a car accident, like a week or two after the state tournament. So state tournament ends two weeks later, a car accident. And then my mom right, but you know I like bringing this up, especially with kids. I do a lot of clinics, right, I do about 80 clinics a year and I'm talking about this kind of stuff because you know we say a lot of cliche things.
Speaker 3:Oh, once you learn in wrestling you're gonna deal with the rest of your life, you'll use those tools. But we don't really, we don't really like have like real applicable examples. You know, and for for for me, that I mean is it is it easier because I wrestled? No, but it's manageable because I put myself through suffering every day. Yeah, and it was like simulating hardship. And then all of a sudden, inevitably suffering every day. Yeah, and it was like simulating hardship. And then all of a sudden, inevitably, what do we all get? Well, grandma dies, we get injured. We, we flunk grades, something happens. That's real life hardship. Yeah, and I'm able to manage that in in the best way I possibly can, not always easy, but the best way I possibly can because I suffered so much wrestling. So you know not to jump into something deep and sad right away, but you know we're talking about my mom, you know. So, yeah, obviously something on your mind.
Speaker 2:It's, it's, it's. You know, I can't. I have both, so I can't. I definitely can't say that I can put myself in your shoes, but I can definitely think that you know it does a testament just because of the stress you go through. You know not not only that situation you know losing a, losing a parent and or or a sibling, but then having that and then also the stress of the event. You know the, the dual or the tournament that you have to go to and a lot of guys go, you know like they don't because it's. They know that that person that they're missing is that's probably what they wanted. Right, they would have wanted me to do this and as hard as it is, that's the stress you know like that's for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I think that's the prep. I think I think too, like you know, a lot of people will hear me maybe saying this and be like, well, how are you comparing you know wrestling workouts and you know it's hardship and comparing that to like losing a family member. Of course, I don't think those two things are, oh sure, right, right. But you know what they are. Short term, they're equal, and what I mean by that is is I'm not saying they're equal pain, but when you're dealing with something, if your pinky hurts or you have, you know, chest pain, something serious in the moment it hurt is hurt right, like in the moment, for a second.
Speaker 3:So when I'm overwhelmed with I just want to breathe. I don't want to do any sprints. My voices are talking to my head this sucks, get out of here. It doesn't matter if my fucking house is on fire. You know what I mean. The only thing I'm thinking about is when is coach gonna say practice is over, like it is engulfing my mind? So, although that is not on a grand scale, as important or as impactful or as painful as losing a parent, dealing with that like high volume of stress, you know, in the moment when it's in in discomfort, when it's, you know, full-on turbulence yeah that's a really tough place to navigate.
Speaker 3:So I have this thing that I call uh, why, what, I call why what, and basically what it means is you know, if I was going to get thrown in the first 10 seconds of a match, I would never say why me, why did I do that? Why, god? Why? Why did I shoot? Why? I'd probably say, ok, what do I got to do to get back in this match? I got to get an escape OK, now I got to escape. Ok, I got to get a takedown OK, now I got to choose down second period. Hey, now. Now I'm here Now.
Speaker 3:So when I translate that to, to, to, to real life hardship, you know I could say why me? Why does good things happen to bad people? Or I said the opposite what is bad things happen to good people? Why not? Why, yada, yada, what do I got to do to be there for my brothers? What do I got to do to be there for my dad? What do I got to do to be there to, to get over somebody that that was so close to me, to buy for my life, and I think that's a really, uh, really important asset that wrestlers have it takes a minute.
Speaker 2:It takes a minute, you know, to in again. I have an older son. He's 21 years old, so I watched him. You know, try to do the same thing. Why, why is this? Why is this? Never any kind of introspection, but just kind of why, like looking out.
Speaker 3:Why is almost like a past tense word, you know what. I mean why? And look back.
Speaker 2:Doesn't matter now.
Speaker 3:I got him. Just came off the plane.
Speaker 2:I lost all stuffy, so sorry you're good, you well, dude, you've been all over the place, man I haven't stopped traveling.
Speaker 3:I haven't stopped traveling since, like, I've been on the road since may until, like, right now. It's like my first full week home, so it's gonna be nice, yeah, it's gonna be good yeah, well, but here's the thing.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we're gonna. We're gonna get back into the wrestling here when, when you, when you were younger, you had wrestling right, it's what you grabbed onto. What did you do outside of wrestling? That passed the time for you, because this is gonna build into later yeah, how do you do what?
Speaker 3:you, do you know, I was always. I was always like, adventurous. You know, maybe not like, not to the prediction of like what I do now, obviously, but out in the woods doing stuff.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, but I wasn't like a, I wasn't a country boy.
Speaker 3:Like I've never really like vibed with the whole. Like I'm not like the hunter, you know and don't disrespect me the hunt that's all cool. Like I'm a softy, I like I'll eat meat but I can animals, like I just I just not my vibe Right and and and. Uh, you know I would, I would more so go adventure around the woods with, instead of like being outdoorsy in the sense of like survivalist, it was more like I'm outdoorsy being creative. It was more like that. Like I was like imagining you know, dragons and and and and fairy landing not critical minority, minority. Like happening when I'm eight years old playing in the woods, like that's what I was right, I was more like that nice. So you know, I'm running around, I'm riding bikes around town with my buddies, we're, we're adventuring the woods, we're, you know, climbing trees, we're doing all that crazy stuff. It was more of a creative side, right and then I wasn't.
Speaker 3:I think I wasn't. I was very lucky with my parents being, you know, relatively successful at a young age where we traveled a lot, where I saw different cultures Like I never became. I never became, you know, jaded towards specific demographics or communities, because I never. I only saw bad things on the news about X, y and Z. It was always easy because I met everybody, I saw everybody and everybody's a human being. At a young age it was really easy for me to grasp. So I'm very fortunate. I think that probably put the biggest effect on how I live life right now.
Speaker 2:Okay, okay, it explains a lot. Like right, just like I said, it's going to lead into you know things that kind of go post, post college here. But with with middle school, you know, you started kind of. You got into the national scene, you and you guys I mean it sounds like. I mean I'm gonna just be like you were pretty good, like you obviously had an area that you came from that came, that had you know good, good pedigree, good wrestling people to be around, good partners, plus with the guy that you grew up with and you know teammates and and things like that were probably all top notch. And then with high school, did you find yourself? Were there a few more challenges that you were like, oh man, I gotta catch up to something? Did you have? Did you have any kind of mental issues in high school? Like Like I don't know if I can beat this guy?
Speaker 3:No, not in high school. My transition from middle school to high school was pretty smooth. I was rest of the year. Like with a tall system, I was rest of the year.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but for all weights, yeah, okay, I think 1,500 or 1,200, whichever one was right before high school, yeah, and then when I got into high school, right away I was pretty good. I was ranked pretty high nationally, second first year at States and then, yeah, I never really struggled with that kind of stuff. You know, I developed bad habits in high school. But mental stuff, actually, I developed some bad habits mentally in high school where I relied too much on superstition and ritual. You know, like I should say ritual, because there's positive aspects to's positive aspects to, like I should.
Speaker 3:Ritual and routine are different right, I was gonna say routine, yeah, yeah, it's like, okay, I'm getting myself in the in the state of mind that I'm used to going to get in a fight afterwards. That's good.
Speaker 3:You know, if I if I crack my neck left and then crack my neck right and then I go out there and wrestle. Hey, I'm used to going left and right and then wrestle like I like I might just snap into it, that's good, I like that, right. But when it becomes like lucky underwear and and oh, I got to, you know, you know, uh, knock on wood four times, whatever weird stuff like that which a lot of wrestlers have, you know what it's trying to do. What it's trying to do is control a controllable that we cannot control. Which is the outcome? Oh, if I work as hard as I can, I can control that. No, you can't. I'm sorry, but you're going to lose a bit, because talent separates and people are better, and that's just how it is.
Speaker 3:If you don't lose again, like this time, I've lost a people, that that I've outworked. Well, how does that make sense? Well, they're better at wrestling than me. You know what I mean? That's not an excuse, right. That's just, we got to make adjustments. So, yeah, when it comes to like superstitions, what, what really bothers me about myself is I would give the credit to my superstition and not my hard work, right, like if I would win, it was because I knocked on wood and not because I trained at 6 am and that's a bad place to start developing habits from then you start to give less emphasis on, on your work ethic, and you start to give more emphasis on these, these fake controllables that are trying to control the outcome that you really can't rely on.
Speaker 3:So so it's really it's that that developed in high school a little bit because it worked right. Yeah, it worked. I won everything in high school. It was, it was, it was easy, but it wasn't because of superstitions, it was because I trained hard and and I was pretty good. And then I get to college and and I and and we don't think we, we think we know of it and and it doesn't. It doesn't come as easy.
Speaker 2:You know, college is a is a big step that's so, because of that, that, your success before and that's why I really want to talk about that transition was was it basically right when you got into the practice room or was it when you, like you, went to an open or something you know? Did you redshirt?
Speaker 3:uh, no, no, I went in.
Speaker 3:Uh, I went in right away 25 okay, okay so I was supposed to go 33. Because I was 130, my senior year of high school, I was supposed to go 33, okay, but Logan Couldn't make 25 anymore. So Logan was like Okay, logan Steber, for those watching, yeah, pretty tough guy, right, he was pretty good, he, he was gonna go. He was like Okay, we're trying to figure out the lineup. And he's like Okay, I think I'm over 33, do you think you can make 25? I was like dude, I'm gonna try. So I get down to 45 for my first open.
Speaker 3:And I had a juco kid, like first round was michigan state open, but it was like a juco kid. And it was like 10-9 and I won. But it was like freaking, like yeah, I'm big 10 wrestler like ohio state starting with 25 pound. And no disrespect to juco, juco keys are fucking tough. Yeah, right, but. But but there is, there is the expectation, right, that I'm I'm supposed to beat this guy, which is a weird thing that we say. But like, whatever, they're 10, 9, 10, 9, close, barely scraped by and after like the first minute and a half, like I am exhausted.
Speaker 3:So in high school, my first round, I can tech fall everybody and feel like dog, shit, like my weight cut could be. I could starve my way down to weight. I could eat like shit after wins, I could be a little bloated and I could still probably tech the guy in college. That first match is going to be so freaking hard and everything is going to hurt and if you don't cut your weight right, you're going to have a really bad time. You know you might wait because you're good at wrestling, but you're going to have a really bad time. So that really was eye-opening for me. You know it's like you better take this freaking seriously. You better take this weight cut seriously. You better take your warm-up seriously. I used to hardly warm up in high school. It's like. It's like this arrogance thing that happened. You know what?
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, I can see that warm up.
Speaker 3:Your warm up is so important because, yeah, all that blood is trying to break down that food that you just stuffed in your stomach and none of it is in your muscles. So if you don't start that warm up and get your heart rate up and get that blood really flowing back into your arms and back into your legs, yeah, you're going to have a hard time in your first period. You have real hard time, you know. So that that warmup is crucial.
Speaker 2:That's so. That's the crazy stuff that you know. You don't think because you're not. You're not talking about it as much, especially when a parent makes their kids start to cut, like when they're a young kid we're talking eight years old, now nine, 10.
Speaker 3:I was cutting young. I can't lie, I was cutting young, I was cutting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so okay. So here's the difference. So like, oh, and I'm not going to make excuses for it, but I'm also going to say that you guys were also in an area that this, you guys were in a competitive wrestling environment in the first place.
Speaker 2:So you knew about that coming up in the first place, right. It was about that coming up in the first place, right. Was there the knowledge around you at the time where, because you know how it is like, people will tell you something, be like you got to do this, you got to eat this way, you gotta eat this way. And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been doing this. I still eat this stuff that my mom makes. It's healthy stuff, but I still eat this and kind of disregard or did you have the knowledge around you guys about cutting properly at?
Speaker 2:that time and did it properly I never had.
Speaker 3:That properly is is I did. All that happens again. Right, I'll kind of get to what I did wrong weight cutting, wise. But no, I didn't. Unhealthy cup weight when I was eight, nine, you know, it was like, let's say, I was. I forget how much I weighed. Eight nine years old is 60 pounds, whatever right it's not the same kind of weight, right?
Speaker 3:if I was. If I was 60 pounds, yeah, if I was making 60 pounds, I would weigh 64. You know what I mean. So it's not the same kind of weight, right? If I was. If I was 60 pounds, yeah, if I was making 60 pounds, I was only at 64 you know what I mean. It was like right, right right, it wasn't like crazy, right right, which body percent? Wise, like that's, that's probably a high percent, if you really think about it at that right.
Speaker 3:But here's the thing my dad never made me cut weight. Okay, I like, I like wanted to. It was weird. I hated it. I cried. I said I'll never do it again. I've never drank alcohol before, but I'm assuming it's like when people go out and they're like I'm never drinking again right, yeah, and they do again.
Speaker 3:So for me it was like I'll cut weight and I'm fucking miserable and I'm starving, I'm thirsty and I'm wrestling on nothing and you know I make the weight. I went to tulsa and and I'm like I'm going 40 pounds next week, like you know. You just like start thinking and you know what it does, which is really good when you get older in high school, is it forces you to live a good lifestyle. There's unhealthy parts of cutting weight Yo-yoing. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:If people start to get into like bad habits of, like bulimia or anorexia, that's unhealthy. But one thing that I really like is resting on an empty stomach when you know you can't eat after this. That takes something. You know that. That really takes something. You have to. You have to learn a lot about yourself. I really like that and it forced me to live a good lifestyle in the sense of all my friends want to go out and drink. Well, I'm cutting weight, I'm tired, I'm going to watch a movie, you know.
Speaker 3:So that's a really it forces you to live somewhat a responsible lifestyle. And side note, side note to that, when my mom died, uh, when I was 16, uh, although it was, it was, it was a car accident. Alcohol kind of led to it happening. So at that moment I decided I was never going to drink alcohol, and I hadn't at this point. So now I'm 32 and I've never tried alcohol. Because of that, you know, and that helped cut weight too. You know, you see people in college who like to party and they get caught up in this college lifestyle. I'm 21, I'm allowed to drink now and I had a big advantage uh, from from from youth, from from right yeah, just from never, never wanting to uh dabble in that.
Speaker 3:You know, I've done one thing in my entire life I've never smoked, I've never drank. We can talk about this if you want yeah yeah, with jake paul I did an ayahuasca retreat. We can talk about that, you know, later on yeah, yeah, we'll bring that up. We'll bring that up, and actually I actually I had a full-on conversation with my mom like this, like me and you right now, so wow that was really cool.
Speaker 2:That was really cool. So I don't, I don't dis, I don't disregard that stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's more of a dis so people don't even look at it like a drug. Really. They more so look at it like therapy, which which I think is is good, especially, like you know, all the knowledge that we have on like the natural type of things. I'm not like super like hippie holistic, but no right, I definitely, I definitely am into like learning about it because it is really cool oh, it's introspective.
Speaker 2:I mean that's the whole point. I mean because it's not, you're not, it's not interacting with the outside world.
Speaker 3:You're trying to and I'm not doing it to escape reality. It's like, no, I'm gonna drink. And again, here's something I do want to clarify. People listening if you drink alcohol and I say I don't do, I think I'm better than you. No, not at all. That's not what I believe. I think if you are able to enjoy alcohol, smoke, weed, do what you want to do, right. And it's not because you want to escape reality, it's just hey, I just want to have a vibe for an hour or two. That's fucking awesome. I know that I would not be like that and I would abuse it. So there, because my mom, you know, had had trouble and struggled. So therefore I was like you know what? Because I'd be worse than a lot of people. I'm never gonna do anything. It was more like that. You know what I mean. So it wasn't because I think I'm better than people, you know like it's. It's, it's the opposite, kind of right, Right. And I agree, I'm a fucking, I'm a piece of shit, you know yeah.
Speaker 2:I totally agree with that. I mean, that's the same thing with anything that really I'm just in life, but you do get what you got to do, like, if you're doing it to and it's all for you and that's all it's about, then have at it, man.
Speaker 3:Right, all right.
Speaker 3:But so we're going to pause, because if you're going to skip weight cutting, there's one thing I thought when I was talking yeah, I'm sorry if I'm filibustering too much, but I get excited. I get fired up about this, it's all right. I want kids if they're listening, or dad's listening I really want to spread this. My biggest problem that I carried into college from youth weight cutting was I knew I can get away with starving my way down to weight. I could float a lot. I always understood, like, okay, every six hours I'll lose a pound. Okay, so if I don't eat all day at school and then I practice and I lose two pounds and then I don't eat until dinnertime, oh, I can have like three pounds at dinner. I would always think to myself I can starve my way down to weight.
Speaker 3:Because I was scared of one thing I was scared to work out extra, and I think a lot of kids are scared to work out extra. They're scared that if I eat I'm going to have to run Right, and that was something that I really struggled with in college. You know, jay Jaggers, if he was here right now, he'd be yup. You did Like he'd be fucking, he'd be giving it to me. It's, it's. It was a really big problem where I was so scared to like have like a grape, you know, because, well, if am I going to have to work on it? Cause if I feel like shit right now, it's like yeah, you might feel like shit right now, but you know why you feel like shit. Right to weight, because you want to eat at night and it'll feel so good, you can have that big ass Gatorade.
Speaker 3:Stop fucking being a pussy, go eat and don't be afraid to work out extra. Ok, I had a sandwich and a Gatorade and I got to go run for 20 minutes. Good job, you do that three times a week. Well, that's 12 workouts a month. Hey, in three months week. Well, that's 12, that's 12 workouts a month. Hey, in three months, that's that's 36 workouts. You know what I mean? It's like that adds up over time and that's a little bit of an edge, you know. So don't be afraid to work out extra. Don't be afraid to eat. I think that's a really important thing that I wish I was better at uh in middle school, because it would really help me in college so it's a.
Speaker 2:It's interesting that you mentioned that, because liam is, there's a kind of everything's going to roll back, because liam is like currently, everything you're talking about is literally what he's going through, right like we can get away with it.
Speaker 3:I can starve. I can get liam's good, I can get away with starving and kick an ass. First round of the tournament. Oh, by the seven, by the time the semis come around, I'm full. I feel good. I've had hours to digest, but it's like in college. Don't work like that. You can't just be used to starving, you know right, not good, right, right, and that's it.
Speaker 2:So that's the balance. Because he wouldn't. It's literally. I told him, and there's endurance, you can tell that they're, they're dead right, yeah, I said you. You need to get on a bike, dude, you don't have to run, run it running's impact.
Speaker 3:It's on a bike airdyne. You can go like this feet and arms go at the same time, just freaking low impact, who stands in motion, like you know, like something that doesn't get you sore. It's close to it's close to the time you're supposed to compete. I get it. You're not trying to abuse your body, but just don't be afraid to move around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that's the discipline thing you know, that's there's a at an age where, like, you're already defiant enough because you're going through another testosterone spurt and you know how to. Like, he knows how to do everything right, he knows how to do it all by himself, and that's, and that's fine.
Speaker 3:I want the independence, but, like I don't know how to do shit alone.
Speaker 2:So, like you know, I think I think we all think that when we're 16 and then all of a sudden, you're like dude and I'm going to be like 45 years old, calling my dad Like dude. What do I do? Hold on, I thought I knew how to do this, but I told you I did, but I really don't. So, yeah, so I can, I, can, I, I, I can't relate as far as just everything you guys went through, especially Liam, and what you went through for wrestling.
Speaker 3:I appreciate you saying. You always say I can, I'll uh, you know, I do 80 camps a year. I see like 10,000 kids. I do a lot Right and at full time, pretty much like even in the winter, and I'll do these camps. I'll teach something that I learned, like that I didn't know until, like college. Yeah, you know. Hey, freaking travel to lag They've taught me this. Third in the Olympics.
Speaker 3:Like, know, coach, goes to me, hey, I'm really happy you're teaching. I said the exact same thing last week and it's just good that we're on the same page and I'm like, dude, you may have said the same thing last week, I don't know, but why are you telling me that? Like, what is the point? Like, are you trying to relate to me like I, I'm sure you're a good coach? You don't have to prove to me you're a good coach, like I believe I believe you, you're a good coach. You know, jordan Burroughs taught a double leg and I taught a double leg last week. I would never tell JB, hey, dude, I taught double legs last week. I would probably think, jb, I'm not going to tell Gordon Ramsey, hey, dude, I cooked pie last week, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:I cooked filet mignon last week. Randy probably fucking does it pretty good.
Speaker 2:I just don't. I tell Liam that too. It any good, you know, I just don't I tell liam that too. I mean I don't. It's at a level that I don't anymore. I don't know. You know, right, even I'm trying to pay people to coach him because I don't know, like I'm trying to make sure that I don't screw whatever he's got going up. But like, even sports wise, I played, like soccer was my gig. But soccer is way different than wrestling. Right, there's a. It's completely different. There's a little physicality to it in soccer, but it's different.
Speaker 3:I love soccer, though Soccer's sick.
Speaker 2:I absolutely do I fell in love when I was like four or five and I didn't stop. Wrestling was a filibuster for not playing indoor soccer is what that was.
Speaker 3:I love all sports too. As wrestlers, we have a chip on our shoulder because we don't get the love that the football team gets in high school or the basketball team or whatever, and I get it. That gives us like a really cool, like niche community, which is really good. I do like the side of it, but I'm a cheerleader bro. Like basketball we're supposed to hate that. Basketball's sick, basketball's so sick.
Speaker 2:Like the Cavs are defeated.
Speaker 3:Well, they're playing the horse right now. I don't know if they're winning, but the casual defeated Basketball's sick LeBron's dope Stop calling him a sissy, like dude freaking. Basketball's sick man. Like all sports are sick. And if you want to keep wrestling, sick man, put good energy out there. You know, put good energy out there. It'll reciprocate itself, I promise you know I like the ch. I get it. I get it, but at the same time, dude freaking soccer is cool, it's a cool sport.
Speaker 2:It tried to get Liam into it and it was interfering with wrestling practice.
Speaker 3:Well, that's fine, something else to decide.
Speaker 2:I like wrestling more than anything, and that's what I told him.
Speaker 3:But as a fan, I like all sports, I like competitiveness.
Speaker 2:I play a lot of very good yeah Hell yeah, I watch Angel.
Speaker 3:Reese and Kayla Clark freaking, claw their faces off. It's sick, it's gangster. I don't care what it is, I'll watch anything yeah let's see. Yeah, jesus, yeah, freaking, I'm kind of team Angel. I think I might be team Angel. I know that's going to piss people off, are you Okay? Kayla Clark's dope, she's dope, they're both dope, they're both dope, she's dope, they're both dope they're both dope, but Angel is getting like.
Speaker 3:If everything Angel did was in male form, she would be like, oh, she's a competitor, but instead she's a girl and she's complaining and it's like no bro, she fucking is like she's putting it out there. Let the entertainment happen. I think she is.
Speaker 2:She takes a beating and she keeps going.
Speaker 2:You know she does.
Speaker 2:It's tough, like I'm a critic, right, like I'm a guy that's out there saying this sucks or doesn't suck, and I can, I'm sure I bring enough negativity to make people throw up.
Speaker 2:But at the same time, though, do I do see that I mean, it was the same thing when I, you know, like I said with ben, like you're a kid's club kind of thing, but you know, it was part of the entertainment, it's part of the gig, and they're able to talk about it, right, exactly, and if they're able to take it and still play and do that and I'm not saying that they're not hurt.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm sure that there's stuff that's set out there that absolutely can rail on someone's mind, right At the. Yeah, at the same point, though, too, that they're getting paid, not much by the wmba, but for sure, with their, with their nil deals, I mean, they're getting a good good amount of money to do the thing that they love, right, and I can't, I can't come down on that, that's. That is a positive thing, because I I was able to do that for a little bit, but then I had to realize that I was old and not able to play with 18 19 year olds anymore yeah, two, two things that I really think of.
Speaker 3:One people don't get paid a lot In certain aspects, not just the WNBA, usa Wrestling and here's something that I do wish was a little bit different we as wrestlers have to do better as a community. Because, number one we always think If you're not making the world team, what does everybody on the forums and Twitter say Washed? It's like, hey, if somebody're not making the world team, what does everybody on the forums and Twitter say Washed?
Speaker 3:It's like hey if somebody doesn't make a world team and they want to wrestle, guess what the fuck they should do Wrestle.
Speaker 2:Wrestle.
Speaker 3:Wrestle it's getting hard.
Speaker 3:You got like, like, with that same mindset, you better be the best fucking insurance salesman in the country, otherwise quit, like. What is the point of saying like, oh you know, chance marston doesn't make the world team burned out? How much longer he's got bro, I don't care. Like he can wrestle to his sport, I don't care if he wants to wrestle and the more people we get wrestling. If somebody's not winning the nba championship every single year, should they stop playing basketball? No, they're probably pretty good on their freaking team.
Speaker 3:You know, we need, we need. We need lebron james's and we need people that are just like run-of-the-mill guys. We need the james hardens, we need the yeah, the jr james hardens pretty good, but jr smith's, like we need across the board. We need that, right. So that's the first thing. The second thing I was just thinking of, too, is we're talking about angel reason, we're talking about kayla clark, we're talking about these people, right, his personalities in wrestling. I think we do a really bad job of suppressing an individual expression and we don't allow superstars we have this phrase act like you've been there before and a lot of times people haven't been there that say that you don't know what it feels like to win. And I'm not saying like you know, you can't have opinions if you haven't won something, but it's like we wrap it up in a respect cloak yeah, we think it's respect and it's not dude me flexing.
Speaker 3:You know what. That's respectful to my freaking family in the stands looking at me and saw how fucking hard I just tried. That's respect. I respect the sport of wrestling and the art of wrestling enough to be passionate about it and give a fucking fist bump. Do I need to go AJ Ferrari and double finger the crowd? No, I'm not saying that. But it's okay to have personality in your sport and I think that's a really important thing In a sport that we can't be that creative Like if a kid dyes his hair or wears a knee sleeve or wears like a chin cup. That's about as much creativity as we can get. We can't do that. We don't have the visors at football, you know what? I mean, we don't have the touchdown dances.
Speaker 3:We don't have that visors and football and, uh, you know what I mean. All that. We don't have the touchdown dances. We don't have that much creativity. Let us do it. You know what I mean. Stop hating on everything so much. You know jake, being close with jake, jake has a really good phrase and this kind of attests to, to how jake paul is and a lot of people probably, uh, understand him more with this quote. Yep, make them have an opinion of you. Make them have an opinion of you. Right, who's? Uh, you know some ufc fighters, that that that you know I dislike colby covington. I have an opinion of him and that is a good thing for the sport.
Speaker 3:He's a piece of shit, but guess what? It's a good thing. I think he's a piece of shit because it helps the ufc, right like. That's the, that's the attitude, like everything's gonna make them have an opinion of you.
Speaker 3:Then there's people Leon Edwards right, I like Leon and he's came on more star power in the past couple of years, but at the beginning he wasn't a factor, a talking point. You're right, he wasn't talking about. Nobody had an opinion of him, and sometimes just getting your hand raised is not enough to sell a sport. Drama and storylines sell a sport. Drama and storyline sell a sport and winning caps it off. Winning is the period or the exclamation point at the end of the sentence.
Speaker 3:It can't just be the thing that the sentence is about.
Speaker 2:And I think we have some actors in the play. Fuck, we have Carson.
Speaker 3:Arachi, we got AJ Ferrari. I don't love his antics sometimes. Aj Ferrari's a bad example because I don't like some of the stuff that he's done.
Speaker 2:An example. Nonetheless, there's a line.
Speaker 3:I don't need you to be a punk by having a chip on your shoulder. He's a fucking gangster. Let's go.
Speaker 2:Correct If you're listening.
Speaker 3:No disrespect, just, you know, be a good human dog, all right, be a good human. I hope the best for you. All right, Just a good person, that's all. Good person, man? And if you're not a good person, I'm going to talk about it.
Speaker 2:And guess what? Man Spreading the love. I agree, I think when they brought it back in the we know what the celebration's in the NFL I was like, yeah, why not? I mean these guys. It's like a natural. It's almost natural, right, it's almost natural to do. Some guys do and some guys don't.
Speaker 3:But the guys that do, man, it's entertaining the good thing about the guys that don't is like okay, the Iowa style wrestling, Iowa style mentality. Even though they get their hand raised, run off the mat, act like you've been there before. It's almost they do it in a way. That's still a talking point because it's like Iowa, right, so it's not exactly what I'm talking about. That's still a talking point and that's still good because it's villainous. It's like well, you think you're too good to do that, right, so I like that one still.
Speaker 3:It's other ones that like I can't think of a good example, but it's like you. Just you could have gave me more. You're a non-factor. Show your personality. Don't be afraid to talk. Have a life outside of wrestling a little bit, where I have communication skills, I have personal skills and I can give interviews. I can give interviews, I can talk. I have hobbies that people are interested in and all of a sudden, I go to the mat and now there's a storyline behind me. Right, Spencer Lee had fans. That because he was good at wrestling. He had fans because of fucking Pokemon, which is good. Show your personality, Wrestlers. Show your personality.
Speaker 2:All the way through, all the way through, all the way through. I think a lot of in what brings to wrestling is the is the edges, because there's so much. It's all you right, it's about you and, like you said, I'm showing my family that we just killed it, you know, because they put something into it too right. So he put balls on the road for me, exactly, exactly, and I'm not about a guy standing over the top of him like screaming in his right, yeah, that line.
Speaker 2:Right, but getting up, you got the pin. Whatever you're walking away in your flex, whatever it is, that's a that is fine and, honestly, not a lot of refs have a problem with it. It's the other people on the outside that want to bitch about it. Right, and I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll put myself up against the wall. I'm sure I've done it with someone, or it was like man, you look like an idiot, you know just whatever it is Kind of thing I'm talking about them.
Speaker 3:Right, like you got my attention, I'm still like a sense of like okay, let's say, but it makes me go. I want that guy to lose that's good it's still part of the storyline you don't want everybody to win in wrestling because now all of a sudden it's just two good guys, it's never a fun story. Two bad guys is good and a good to bad is good but two good guys is not good, it doesn't work like that.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, it just doesn't work like that. And if you're a wrestler out there and you want to be the good guy, go be a superhero. If you're out there and you feel like you're the kind of guy who's like fuck everybody else, they don't get me, go fucking lean into it and beat it.
Speaker 2:Go fucking beat it, that's right. What was your first flex? I did, bro and I regret it.
Speaker 3:I hate that. I was like I was scared to be cocky and cocky is a strong word, but in general I was just scared to like, I was scared to let it show. Yeah, yeah, and I wish I did, you know.
Speaker 3:And you never know what you're going to do Like. Is the reason we wrestle For NIL money? No, it's a good byproduct, though. Is the reason we wrestle for nil money? No, it's a good byproduct, though. Is the reason we wrestle to go to go viral? No, of course not, but it's a good byproduct if you never know what could happen. You say something stupid in a post game, post fight, post wrestling match interview. You do some stupid dance, you there is a company out there that will see it and be like oh, let's give him NIL money. He just shouted us out. He just, you know, you never know where that can go.
Speaker 2:See how many people like that, how many people are watching that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know when Trey Hedlay did the hoagie thing, like after, it was like eight years ago or something After who's number one If that was NIL time and that was subway and that was quiznos and that went viral and that went.
Speaker 2:you never know what that can lead into he is, you know, he's hokey that's what I'm saying that's right, it worked, I mean, so that was that's, I guess, even aj being a heel, and even the because he puts he puts himself there right. It's not like he's trying to avoid it I don't think he put it where.
Speaker 3:I think he just is there. I I don't think he's trying to be anything, I think he is, that's there, that's what it is.
Speaker 2:That's what it is, and I can get along with it. You got it everyone. Someone has to do something, right? Well, I?
Speaker 3:don't love it. I don't love aj's antics, but you know, if here's where I struggle, what I want my son to do, what AJ Farrelly does, no. Nope.
Speaker 2:That's called parenting.
Speaker 3:But yeah, but is it? What are the pros and cons of wrestling? Does it make us look bad? Does it make us is it good because we want him to lose? What are the pros? What's the upside? I don't know, and I'm sure if I, if I hung with aj. I've been told he's a nice kid, angelo actually, I heard angelo's a great kid yes, liam's actually hung out with him. He's, I've heard angelo's a real good kid so it's like, it's like being a talking point.
Speaker 3:You know, I feel like age is a tough, a tough example to use, uh, because it is so far over the line, true, but you know, carter sriracha, I think, is a better example. I like carter, yeah, I like Carter. I think he plays a heel perfect. He talks his shit. I think Carter's a perfect example.
Speaker 2:So don't get me wrong, I'm not the guy that, like I've done comedy right. Like I understand the, I'm having a hard time buying the meanness though. Oh Carter, yes.
Speaker 3:Really.
Speaker 2:Interesting Because these guys have been so nice for so long.
Speaker 3:That's they was, that's they said, the gold state warriors. Don't be so like. Everybody is like a good, good boy, except draymond green, right, right. And it's like hey, I'm gonna take it on myself to be the the guy you know. I mean so it's almost like you like a couple of those. Let me say something real quick.
Speaker 3:I'm friends with a lot of Penn State people. I'm friends with a few Penn State wrestlers. I fucking hate Penn State. Bo's my boy. Shout out to Bo, that's my boy. I hate you man. I hate wrestling you guys. I hate everything about you.
Speaker 2:Out the boat like that's my boy. Yeah, that's my boy, but I have a hard time buying his.
Speaker 3:I hate y'all man, like I hate wrestling you guys, I hate everything about you.
Speaker 2:I hate the way you look you're so good oh well, you guys have to be so good right, yeah, yeah, I just I think I I do like the entertainment value. I think when we first came in I've evolved, but I was probably the same stuffy way as like no, we don't need that, we don't need and that's that's good if you don't recognize for sure and the only thing that it came from was just the parenting side.
Speaker 2:Like if I teach my kid this stuff now, like he's going to be out of control of stuff and people are having their cameras out I would just rather him just be like yeah, okay, if he's crying a little bit after he loses, don't mind, whatever, go do your thing. But then as we started getting into middle school and he got into high school and kind of watching how you know, like how these guys Penn State and Staracci and stuff like that go with it, but I was like all right, I was like God, but these guys just don't seem very good at it. Right, like, could they like maybe take a couple Siriano, took some acting classes? Those guys could probably pay off a little bit.
Speaker 3:I forgot, siriano did acting classes.
Speaker 2:He did, he did, yeah, and I think he's actually taken some out in California, but I can't get him back on too.
Speaker 3:I did a little acting recently. I don't know if you found your….
Speaker 2:See, now we've got to get back into you. We've got to get back into you. We're going to get there. You did do some. Sure many people that are watching probably know of it. I'm excited about that. So when we, when we left off, you were let's get into high school. You were transitioning into college practice room. You know you got into dieting and and. But as far as competition wise, I mean, it's not like you're walking into a light you know light room, you're walking into ohio state right yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:What was that the?
Speaker 3:guys in my room at that time. We had henry suhudo training for uh, freestyle stuff. We had angela sabato and so we chan for freestyle stuff. We had reese tom free training freestyle stuff with logan steven, who's on my team. We had hunter steven, who was my weight uh not my weight, but my team, my roughly my weight uh with sean bunch, who was you know old team member. So we had like seven or eight guys that were all within 10 pounds of each other that were either all americans or trained to make a world team, or henry suhudo, olympic champion, right like right. It was insane. You know you didn't get a break. Where it can be detrimental and it can be good. It's like if you're not able to build confidence, that sucks right. But also, like you do watch your ass kick once in a while too, which is great right, but you don't want it every single day.
Speaker 2:So I mean, so that's the mental side, I guess, because you know you talk about dieting but most guys don't get that until they get into college with nutritionists and like talking to the you know coaches about it. Anyways, mental side, what did that do to you? You're a competitor, right. I mean you like to push yourself and put yourself in positions that make you uncomfortable, but when you get into that type of a situation, like you said, high school is like oh, I'm going to do this. Now you get in the college room. I mean, what was the first month like?
Speaker 3:I mean tough. I you know you always hear stories like freshmen don't get takedowns. For the first month I didn't. I didn't score a lot of points for probably a few practices in a row, unless it was another freshman. It's tough and there's guys there that you would have beat up on in high school. They weren't the toughest and they're a byproduct of a really tough system.
Speaker 3:Now Big Ten college wrestling and one thing is I call it taking someone's last breath, where in wrestling you take something down and you kind of feel like, as you're about to secure it, they go and they kind of bail out. That happens a lot in high school, in college. Nobody like conceived that easy where it's. It's almost like you ever trip in front of your crush. Yeah, you know when you were, when you were young, you trip, play, you play it off like, like no, I don't. You stand up real fast. You put wrestling in college like that. You're about to get the takedown and it's like they play it off. It's like it's like you didn't get, it's like they're already back to their feet and you're like you're like fuck what's that too, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Like that was really. It's one of those where it's so hard, where me scoring points almost takes away on me. If I score points in high school, I gain confidence. If I score points in college and somebody's trying really hard, please don't get up. I'm so hard and that's like a crazy thing to have, like as a freshman, young man, 18 years old, like it's awesome yeah, I can't again, that kind of thing I can't relate to.
Speaker 2:I played tough guys in soccer and again, or when it comes to the, the, the mental, and your liam was excited because number one, he wanted, just wanted to get into a room where the guys were also you know, again you're talking about probably state champs and state placers, things like that, where that's a whole room, right and and that's got to be an exciting time. But, like, at some point did you wind up questioning yourself once you got into college? Yeah, yeah, of course, where you're like, of course, yeah, should I keep doing this?
Speaker 3:well, one thing is is, if you don't, if you don't push yourself to a place where you question yourself, you're probably probably going to a pretty easy, easy, okay field of people, which which I don't think is the best thing. So you know that's hard to do like be me being removed from discomfort right now. It's very easy to identify. It's like you ever play like mafia or werewolf. It's like, okay, when I'm dead I can. I know who's the mafia.
Speaker 3:I know exactly who you know, like if I see the movie already, I know who the killer is. Like. How do you not know? So that's how I feel right now. Right, but when you're in it and all the discomfort is like everything sucks, it's cloudy, I hurt my, my chest hurts, my brain hurts, like when you're in it, it's really hard to realize what's good for you and what's bad for you, because all you want to do is feel comfort again. All you want to do is feel like I can breathe again and you know. Okay, here's a good story. I had this wrestler. His name was mac mcguire. Pretty tough kid, nationally ranked top 12, top 13 every year. Uh, four-time national qualifier, never all american, but pretty tough, you're not sure.
Speaker 3:Kent state okay mac was somebody I did not match up well with it stylistically. You know people that would would whoop on him, I would be. But when I wrestled mac I I struggled. He was a left leg lead. I didn't do good with left-leg leads. You know he shot a sweep to my left side right, no, I'm sorry, my right side. He just shot a sweep to my right side and I just wasn't good there right Now. I wrestled him four or five times in college.
Speaker 3:I never lost to Mack, but again, I didn't match up well. I won five matches against him. I never scored one takedown, never one takedown. So I always won some weird way, like I got to turn, I have to do his back, some weird shit would happen. I got to ride out points, like some weird shit would happen. Oh shit. So we're at the national duels and it's Hofstra versus Ohio State. We win, kent State has Iowa State. We have the winner. Next it's coming down to heavyweight and Mack wrestles for Kent State and I'm sitting there and I'm watching this come down to heavyweight and I'm getting emotionally invested into this match, rooting for Iowa State, because I don't match up good with Matt McGuire. I don't want to wrestle somebody I don't match up good with Matt McGuire. I don't want to wrestle somebody. I'm matching good with right right, so I'm getting all into it. Well, iowa State ends up losing, kent State wins. I have to wrestle Matt McGuire, but I just took an emotional loss before.
Speaker 3:I even stepped foot on the mat, yeah. Like instead of just going to recovery putting my feet up hey, who do I? Got next Cool Deal with it when it comes. Like instead of just having that kind of attitude, yeah.
Speaker 2:You went through a whole other night.
Speaker 3:I just emotionally invested into something, lost the emotional investment and now I got to go wrestle it with a negative attitude and go going it fucking match up with this guy. Now the story would be better it had I lost the match. Right, I ended up winning, but but it doesn't show what is important. What's important just winning or getting better. And that sounds like I'm a ribbon giver. Everybody gets a trophy. That's not what I mean. What I mean is, though, if, if, imagine if my attitude could be fuck, I don't match up good with this guy to oh, I don't match up good with this guy, so ooh, I don't match up good with this guy. That's sick. What if I got excited for that, which is a really hard thing to do? And another way would be like, let's say, I'm terrible in a position what's a position that Liam isn't that great at yet oh, just his probably.
Speaker 2:I would say down position. He's still a little weak Down.
Speaker 3:Okay, fine All right, so let's say it's two to one third period or three point takedowns now, so we'll say it's three to one.
Speaker 3:Liam's winning third period. About a minute left, he gives up a takedown. He's on bottom. He's down by one. Most people who aren't good on bottom are going to say fuck, he just took me down and I'm not that good on bottom. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Instead. What if it could be that delusional optimism? He just took me down, I'm not good here, I'm not good here. I know I sound fucking dumb and crazy right now and nobody will ever be that delusional and optimistic about it.
Speaker 3:But if I can get excited where I suck at, well, that's what I want, because I want to get better at wrestling. You don't get better at hitting home runs by not swinging the bat, so you should get excited to be in a position that you suck at. It makes you better. It makes you a better wrestler for it and I know it's cliche, we say that kind of stuff all the time, but it's so easy. It caught up in like I'm not getting takedowns. This is hard. I don't like this. I don't match up good with this guy. He's on my side of the bracket. This person got upset.
Speaker 2:I suck against him.
Speaker 2:It's easy to get into that route and so a lot of negative, I agree, and with the kids that I coach in soccer, you wind up getting.
Speaker 2:You see the body language on guys, even in a wrestling match, when something especially when you're a ways into a match something happens that they didn't want to, that they feared would happen, and you see the body language change, right like the, the arm slumping or you see the head down further. But like, so coaching soccer and having a group of kids that come into a game number one that they probably lost last year, so some of them already have kind of a brain into it that this is going to be a hard game already, right, like they don't even, they have no idea, they haven't even started, the whistle hasn't even blown yet. Right, oh, you get down by a goal and you still have a half to play yet and guys are now dropping their shoulders. That's, as a coach, like. Just watching that as a coach is like my god, you already gave up on yourself. Oh, you've already mentally given up and it's hard to bring now, let alone one kid.
Speaker 3:What if, as a coach, we could do what I just suggested, though, who gave up on himself? Now it's time for me to coach. Now this is going to challenge me. What if we can get excited for like, I never really judge a coach by a team of awesome kids, instead of judging a Big Ten school that gets really high level recruits? Those kids are probably going to pan out Pretty good at wrestling. What if it was like a Lock Haven, cleveland State, kent State, and you get a like a uh, you know, a lock cave in cleveland state, kent state? You know, and you get a kid that you know he was fourth, fifth, sixth in the state in high school and you get. You get him to to the round of 12. You're a pretty good fucking coach. You know, that's how I see it, you know so yeah, so that and.
Speaker 2:But that's the kind of how I approach it with with the kids once they're down, because I mean I can individually call them over and be like, hey, dude, you got him coming right at you. Every single time he's just doing this, stop him. Then they get that one. Stop, you know right. Then it starts to build from there and then taking it, then the other kid sees it. So it all of it's infectious, right. So again, even as a coach in the corner, that's got to be tough. I mean, again, high intensity. It's a different intensity from soccer to wrestling, for sure.
Speaker 3:I think a lot of the principles could be translated pretty good. For sure, he gets the one stop, he gets the one stop Built for it and it's look the infection right. So I would say confidence. Actually, before I even say it, I'll ask the question when do most people say confidence comes from? They would say what Well, winning, winning, sure, or like preparation. I would say a lot of people say they're confident.
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's a pretty common like hey, if I study for the test, I'm confident on the test, right, like that happens, yep. So I've trained really hard before before and I've still been nervous and I've always wondered like, okay, why am I so nervous, like unsure if I'm gonna win? Well, because the win is not guaranteed, right. So for me, a lot of people think, okay, I'll hit that move when I'm confident. Oh, I'm learning this new move, I'll throw legs in when I'm confident. And I think it should be the opposite. I think confidence is a reward you get from trying. So I throw legs in, I get reversed. I throw legs in again, I get reversed, I throw legs in again. Oh, I flatten them out, great way to look now I'm confident.
Speaker 3:It's the same thing with my cliff jumping. If I'm on a cliff right and I jump into water, not a base jump but just a regular cliff jump, it's really high. I'm not confident After I jump though, totally vulnerable, totally insecure, and I hit the water. I come out of the water, I go, let's go again. Now I'm confident. Confidence is the reward you get from effort. So kids out there that are listening, don't wait till you're confident to do the move. Don't wait till you're confident to ask a little shorty out right, right, do it first, get get curved, get dumped. Now I'm a little bit more confident because I did it. I put myself out there. That that's what I think confidence is. Is is after effort, not before. You know, that's a big part of it for me.
Speaker 2:I agree. I think a lot of times the sight always gets lost and I come back to this every single time. Parents lose sight and then, once the parents lose sight, the kids lose sight. The building blocks start from there. I see it in soccer, not just wrestling, I see it in soccer too. The reason why kids get and I think a lot of the mental disappointment comes from is because kids, social media kids see doing other kids doing these awesome things. And why can't I do that? Why, you know? Then when they try to do it somewhere and it doesn't work, then there's the disappointment, right and but at least. And I look at them and say, hey, at least you tried it. Because how are you gonna know now you know what, know what you've got to fix? Now you go to the drone, you go back to work and figure out what you had to do the last time. So they get so disappointed because they're not the Pele's and the Diego Maradona's right away they want to score six goals a game.
Speaker 3:Do you think Maradona was better than Messi?
Speaker 2:All hands down. Really yes, Really yes. I do, I think, as a ball handler, I think he was 10 times better.
Speaker 3:That's really the GOAT debate now. Right, that's MJ LeBron.
Speaker 2:It is To me. I don't know if we want to go there, but to me MJ is the. I mean LeBron's won how many titles, how many championships.
Speaker 3:It's a team sport, right? What about Bill Russell? He has 11.
Speaker 2:If we go by titles championships it's a team sport, right? What about? What about bill russell? He has a lot of this he if we go like titles bill russell's to go bill russell, oh yeah, I put him up there I, but I would not have lebron. See, that's weird about basketball, because I don't know enough either, so I shouldn't talk. I know, I know, I mean either I don't know, I always find it funny.
Speaker 3:This is just super little, like we don't have to go into basketball much. I I was kind of funny, though, like with LeBron, and you know MJ might be better, Like you know, whatever, but I was kind of funny. Lebron is four and six, I think, in the finals. Well, let's say we took six of those losses in the finals and instead of losing in the finals, he lost in the semis. Right, and he's four for four, but he didn't make it to the finals six other times. We would respect him more, which is a weird, it's like.
Speaker 2:No he made the finals.
Speaker 3:Like that's sick, like it makes no sense that we do that. We base it. Like you know, we're a very outcome-based society.
Speaker 2:We are which in wrestling.
Speaker 3:When I talk to kids about like outcomes and stuff like that, like my biggest thing is surrender the outcome I stole that from somebody in my life at some point. But surrender the outcome and what that means is not that winning doesn't matter, but winning is almost like that crush that you have at school, where this is stupid analogy. But if you let the crush know you like her, what happens? Oh, all of a sudden she doesn't really like you because you're too too much. If you act like mr cool, oh now, all of a sudden you're mysterious, you're cool and the crush is into you and all that stuff. So it's like if you are overly focused on winning, sometimes you don't do any moves and you freeze up yeah, and that's the crush, right.
Speaker 3:And if you don't, let your crush if you're not thinking about winning and you're thinking about, hey, I'm gonna'm going to eat good, I'm not going to think about the match, I'm going to eat good. Hey, I'm going to warm up, it's going to be a good warm up, I'm not going to think about the match, I'm going to warm up. And you continue to stay present, you know, all up until you're already in the tie up, and now it's like I'm not thinking, try moves. I'm not, you know, stuck in the mud. If I shoot, he might score, she might score. I'm willing to do moves and I think that's a really important thing, like not being outcome-based, at least as a competitor. Us, as fans, we can be outcome-based, but as a competitor I am so about surrendering the outcome and being focused on the present controllable moment. You know I can't control the outcome. I can controllable moment. You know I can't control the outcome, I can control my warm-up. Focus on that. You know that's really important to me.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry, I'm getting fired up about this. No, that's well. I mean that obviously that went around for a little bit, right? You know that's it's to. To me, I think that's obviously what's missing from a kid's brain. You know the the thought process whether it doesn't matter what, sport doesn't matter, like you said, you could be going for that, that girl that you've been staring at for right, exactly it's always about am I gonna get?
Speaker 3:am I gonna get rejected? And not, am I willing to put myself out there and that's a loss, and that's the most important thing, because now that'll translate like okay, here's something I love talking about.
Speaker 3:I used to always hear don't take practice home with you. Lou rosella would always tell me that and he he's one of my favorite coaches. I've ever had right, but I never knew what that meant. I would always hear, like you know, if I got beat at practice I'd say, all right, don't take it home with you, like, leave me here, leave practice here. But nobody really like opened it up and dissected it to me. Right, travell and me were talking one time and he was basically like what does that mean? What does don't take practice home with you mean? I don't know he goes.
Speaker 3:What becomes a part of your personality is not the outcome. It doesn't become a part of who you are as a man or your identity. Basically, me and Nathan Tomasello were similar weight classes. He was 25, I was 33. We'd wrestle every day. Now, let's say I was feeling really good and I can get them. Today I beat them. I would leave practice feeling sick, but the outcome doesn't go home with me.
Speaker 3:What does go home with me is the choices I led up to the outcome. Well, I shot one time and then I did the whole. Oh, I lost my contact because I got really tired and, oh, my ankle kind of hurts and oh, I'm, you know, to hit some blocking and backing up and I won two to one. I won three to one. Okay, you think the wind goes home with you. No, no, the wind stays here. You know what goes on with you. You're a fucking. You know you're not willing to risk. You know you're you're. When it gets really uncomfortable, your ankle starts to hurt. You find a way. You know, like that stuff goes home with you. On the flip side of that, if he beats me, he kicks my ass. He beats me 10 to 2, but I shot 12 times.
Speaker 3:I put myself in wrestling positions when I got really tired and the voices were talking and I was looking at the clock and I started being a clock watcher. Guess what I fucking shot again. And guess what that goes home with you. Not the loss, that again. And guess what that goes home with you. Not the loss, right, right. That choice that you made to be a bad motherfucker. That becomes a part of who you are as a man. And the best thing about wrestling is, every day, we get to reset that. We need to reset that every single day. And it's really cool and it's really powerful that we have that as as wrestlers, and not just wrestling. Soccer has, all these sports has it, but you know, everything has, and and I really, really stress to these kids, as much as the outcome matters in the sense of your social currency hey, I won this tournament.
Speaker 3:At the end of the day, I would much rather you try wrestling moves and lose for your. I know I'm talking a lot right now, but I get so fired up by this. My best analogy, my best analogy, is a casino versus a real world investment. For example, could I go to the casino and play craps right now and win a hundred bucks tonight? Yeah, maybe it could happen. Could I do that for a full year and sustain winning the entire time? Probably not so so.
Speaker 3:So winning two to one, doing zero moves, is like playing craps. I got away with it. Yep, doing moves, a million moves, putting myself in positions, trying new things, but coming up short losing would be like a real world investment. I just put my money in the crypto, in the stock market, in something real estate. I didn't see the return today. I didn't see the win today, but I will in a year. So it's like the casino. I did zero moves in a year. So it's like the casino. I did zero moves. The real world asset I did a lot of moves but I lost. But I get better at wrestling by trying moves. I don't get better at wrestling by trying gimmick ways to win in blackjack you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:That's like my best way I can put it out there. It's like I'd rather you lose trying moves than win and sneak it trying no moves, even though I am under the impression that, yes, winning matters. It's such a crazy thing because we want to win so bad. We want to win so bad. We don't want people to think we suck, but we forget to try moves. I did it, everybody does it. If you're listening, don't fucking do it. Don't do it. Do, do it, don't do it. Do move, don't do it.
Speaker 3:Put yourself in positions the better guys gonna come out on top, the better guy, the better guy or girl will come out on top of the rest of the move right, put yourself in positions, let's see what happens.
Speaker 2:That's the attitude and again because kids want to be able to do things like instantly and they want it to work instant, the instant gratification type thing, you know where if it yeah, I can ride them out and I can win.
Speaker 3:It's like right, you go get 10 takedowns and maybe win, but get better nonetheless right, right, and the game changes.
Speaker 2:You know, just talking about going from high school to college, you know the game is up and now you have to be able to step up to that level and and keep the mental capacity. That's what's kind of curious about the mental side, because every person handles it differently. But even like people that you know, like you that had success already, that knew what it was like yeah, I had to go and work and do this, but then you got to the college room you're like, oh shit, okay, I gotta do this, this and this and this as well. Holy cow, okay, okay, but you know, knowing, knowing what you knew, going into college and and obviously the, the life that you were already kind of living, as far as you know, learning about how to, how to diet properly Once you got into college and I didn't diet properly in college.
Speaker 3:You didn't. No, I had bad habits from middle school to high school that I brought into college and I was trying to starve my way down to weight. It was senior level. When I, when I, when I started doing Team USA stuff that's when I was like, okay, I need to fucking do this right, because I was. I had that happens.
Speaker 2:I definitely okay okay, so that followed through into college. Okay, yeah, and I could see it. I mean, it's not like it's odd, right, like I mean, what college guy isn't out there having a hard time with anything that they're doing with eating? Yeah, for sure we're giving a shit about it, right like whatever, I'll lose it. So when college freshman year I think you said 125 the sophomore years when you went to 133.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had redshirt sophomore year and then second sophomore year, junior Senior year. I was 33.
Speaker 2:How was, how was the redshirt season and why did you redshirt?
Speaker 3:Just moving up weight class, it was good, you know, just got some good open tournaments in Trained. Good, you know, was living with some Non-wrestlerslers, which I don't think is the best uh idea, not that like I'm not the party right, I don't drink right, but in general, just a clash of lifestyles they're.
Speaker 3:They're rolling in at 5 am eating pizza. You know I'm I'm getting up for a 6 am workout. Like it's a clash of lifestyles. It is good. However, uh toi, don't want people to distract themselves from wrestling. There's a good balance. I need to be all in, but I also need a life outside of wrestling where I can reset my brain if I need to. Tom Ryan actually said this to me one time. I was figuring out where I wanted to go to college. I was pretty young, I was a sophomore and I forget who had reached out to me at the time, like I was stayed. I think I was talking to karen mccoy at maryland, a little bit like different colleges. I you know david taylor was actually texting me, not kale, it was david at at penn state, but I think I'm assuming it was. It was, uh, indirectly through kale, like you, like some legal thing, I don't know. I'm probably snitching on somebody right now Accidentally. I apologize.
Speaker 2:You were the first. No, it's not odd. It's not odd.
Speaker 3:When I was kind of thinking about where should I go, tom said if you broke your leg, god forbid, and could never wrestle again, would you still want to be there? And I kind of asked myself okay, iowa State. I'm not a big. Some people love the country, they love the open air. They, like I know Ames is more of a city than other places, but that's just not me. I do like a city. I like being able to go to a comedy club, a movie theater. I like going to see friends that are in an apartment complex right next door, like I like the, the, the fast pace. Oh, they're shopping. There's restaurants, like I like that. Yeah, I just do so for me.
Speaker 3:When he asked me that, it's like you know what that does matter. It does matter because if I need, I'm gonna be the best version of myself on the mat. If I am, you know, not feeling like it's a chore sure you know what I mean. If I'm only at the college only for the chore, then it's gonna drag, it's gonna be like the rest of it. It's like, you know, people think of it as like no, you got your blinders on and you're got no for me.
Speaker 3:It wasn't like that. You know, for me it was like I need to enjoy the quality of life and I'll work hard for you. Don't don't. I don't drink, I don't party, I promise you, I'm not trying to distract myself. I just want to be able to shut it down when I am overloaded from practice and go. You know, go go play some blackjack at the casino. You know, go do something where I can go entertain myself a little bit, like it's's important to me. You know, and I really liked that he asked me that question, cause that really helped me come to Ohio state.
Speaker 2:Annoying Cause with Liam. Having gone through the process and and I was I have a friend that I talked to quite a bit. Uh, jamie Nelson, and he was telling me the same thing. He's like you have to school and wrestling there, but you're living there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're going to be there.
Speaker 2:Right. So he's like you gotta. He has to like the environment, like they visited Ohio state, things like that. And he was like you have to be able to be comfortable of like on Saturday you're going to go do stuff right, like stuff.
Speaker 2:And you have to be able to be like oh yeah, I can go right over here. I love it, you can go right over here, this is great, you're gonna have something to complain about everywhere. But, um, we got joe williamson listening. Hey, he's pretty, pretty excited about, uh, probably I would say, getting out and doing stuff, because that guy's my guy.
Speaker 3:He's all over what og man?
Speaker 2:that's my guy if I, if it wasn't for joe, I probably wouldn't be doing a podcast.
Speaker 3:I'll be honest for joe there'd be no wrestling media period.
Speaker 2:freaking trendsetter, some of those old videos watching, some of the old flow stuff, man, that is some of the best stuff on the planet. Him and Joe Cania those guys I tell you what, man, if I had met Joe Williamson, I probably like I said, you're damn right there, Joe I probably wouldn't be doing a podcast. But if I hadn't met the other Joe, Joe K, I probably wouldn't be doing a podcast. But if I hadn't, uh, if I hadn't met the other joe, joe k, I probably wouldn't be doing it still yeah, yeah, yeah I told you joey came in.
Speaker 3:That's the guy. He's awesome, I know I know I know he's jersey. How do you? How do you know him?
Speaker 2:so I actually had him on and we were talking a little bit about, uh, um, some stuff over twitter and and just kind of I can't remember if it was about flow or whatever it was about. We're just talking about stuff on twitter. I was like, man, I'm gonna get you on the show. You're just kind of knowing about the stuff that he'd been with flow. I was like, all right, this is wrestling plus the media before and and his uh, his uh.
Speaker 3:I can't say much, but his project that he's working on oh, I know so much about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:It'll be cool, it's going to be fun and I and Joe is such a he's one of Joe K is one of those guys that running into him and like talking to him to get a completely different perspective on many intelligent people and there's some dumb people too, but there's so many intelligent people in this group that going especially you know, going with liam down to virginia, knowing the networking that you can do with a lot of the people that are in the sport, it's, it's fantastic and ever there again, there are going to be people you like, people you don't like, but it's probably one of the and I've been in the dog world training dogs with labrador retrievers.
Speaker 2:That is just a strange world on the side of its own right. This is probably one of the most energetic and, I would say, unique small worlds of all of them, of all the small worlds you can be in, and I think that I think the world's about to blow up a little bit more with wrestling. I think it's going to hurt a little bit, but I think it's going to have a whole different look once everything kind of comes out with this ncaa stuff.
Speaker 2:But I digress right, maybe I'm not, I'm, maybe I'm not tuned to what's going on so you I mean, obviously you know about the house versus uh, ncaa or ncaa versus house, whichever one it is uh, the 2.8 billion dollar um settlement that they had with, I think, athletes from 2017 to present, as far as NIL deals things like that. So all that is going through.
Speaker 3:Why does it just start in 17? I was 16. What the frick? Yeah, wait, you cut out audio. I can't hear you. Can you hear me? I can't hear anything you're saying yeah, there you go yeah, yeah, I I hit something, it's my fault.
Speaker 2:But with the ncaa, the all, that's, all that stuff that's going on with, because sports are going to start getting eliminated, because schools have to pay into this $2.8 billion deal, right, so it's getting kind of scary. Fucking NIL man oh yeah, so okay, don't get me wrong. I applaud the kids that were able to grab some cash Right.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, like I want kids to get paid, yeah, but it's not. It's not. The car dealership down the street wants your picture for their image and likeness on a billboard. Like that's not what it is it's turning into hey, we're this school over here. We have some money and we can't give you a scholarship. We can give you millions of dollars. Come to our school. It's like what? How is Bloomsburg going to compete with this? Like you know, how are these teams gonna like? This is crazy. It's a social stratification, like it's just. It's. It's the hunger games is what it is. It's it's district 12. District 12 has to fight for food and scraps. District one is literally training tribunes to fight in the hunger games as trained killers and then they get thrown into the same test. How, how is that fair?
Speaker 2:you hear about campbell. What happened with campbell university?
Speaker 3:well, they got. They cut their scholar what they cut they cut all their scholarships.
Speaker 2:They had three kids that were on scholarships and they based oh, basically okay, this is just a synopsis basically said they weren't going to be able to compete that season. Oh wow they essentially cut out. You know now I'm not throwing shade. There's a lot of beef going on on twitter. I'm not throwing shade towards the athletic director there or anything like that they had to.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did see senses.
Speaker 2:And then we're like defending yes and I'm gonna get scotty on too. He said he was willing to come on.
Speaker 2:We're gonna get him on too, but yes they were defending the athletic director because they were being told I mean, she's only the athletic director right, because the schools are the ones that are being told that they have to pay this money. Now they can open up their scholarships to every person that's on the roster right. But the ncaa just had roster cuts, so a football team has 135, they're going to go to 105 wrestling is 30 30 correct across the board.
Speaker 2:But they're like you can give scholarships to whoever you want. Caveat the school can give the money to whatever sport they want, so obviously you're going to give your money to a sport that's high revenue, right? Football, basketball. We're talking about the importance before so we are going to see programs most likely being nixed now. This is something that college has wanted before in the first place. That's right you know well it's all again.
Speaker 2:It's because of nil, because everybody won. I should be getting paid this. You will. Would you just let them work something out? But?
Speaker 3:I think nil, I think nil simultaneously with the transfer portal is a dangerous combo. I don't want kids to be stuck in a place. I get it. You need to be able to, if you know. I get it. Like I'm not saying like, hey, you made a decision, you can change the decision. A coach can leave anytime. I understand, but I also think you know when they're jumping ship because they're getting more money somewhere else and then they're taking that and they're taking it away from the program that maybe built them up to be able to get that money. Like sometimes it makes me question if those small programs are going to be around long. And it actually was only going to be 30 teams that are profitable and those are the only 30 teams that are left.
Speaker 2:Well, and they're talking about? They're talking about schools having to possibly and this is not anything that's on paper yet but they're talking about schools possibly having to cut down to eight sports. I mean, that's how far this is going with this, like I don't know, and that's like per gender.
Speaker 3:Like.
Speaker 2:I think again. I believe so. I think, cause if you cut, you know, if you cut a man's, real men's sport or whatever you can cut a woman's. However, that title line stuff, I don't know how it works Exactly. I'm on the outside and I get information, but I do minimal research. I just am, I kind of, I get frustrated and I get upset because of what, how you're feeling the same way. Liam is just starting to get into it. I have questions. What's going to turn into this for him? I'm not going to college, so like I don't have that aspect of it. But I just, you know, I asked and these guys don't know either, like I'm, I'm asking stupid questions for something that they can't even answer yet, cause they don't know. But I was like, dude, what's gonna happen, you know, like if fafsa gets wiped away, you know with with the department of education, like what's?
Speaker 2:gonna happen, like I don't know the prices right now and I'm my kid hasn't even got to college yet, right, still trying to figure this out like I don't even have a kid, yet all I wanted to do is wrestle yeah, hey, you know what? Hopefully it's leveled out by then, where you'll be back in the mix, where your kid's not you, he'll have the after effects and maybe it won't be that bad right joe makes a good point.
Speaker 2:Rich, you're getting richer. It's going to be tough a smaller school kid all americans. They're gone, yep literally man sucks yeah, yeah'll, we'll see, but that's what's going on right now. I know there are some certain things that have been somewhat finalized, but they still called it preliminary for some reason, so I'm not sure we'll find out the exact specifics. But back to johnny lighter news. Johnny, okay, when did you get into base jumping? When did all this part?
Speaker 3:yeah, so I was on this. So I'm 18, uh, I had just turned 18, july 5th 2010, okay, and 10 days, five years later, it's like 10th. Uh, my dad, you know, at the time was like, hey, what are you gonna do for your birthday? Obviously you're not gonna go party. You don't party, um, you know, I said, well, maybe, uh, what's something I do when I'm 18? Like, well, I guess legally I can skydive. My mom went when she was still alive. She was skydiving.
Speaker 3:Maybe I'll do like a tandem. Tandem, for those listening, you know, means straps to another person. That is a professional. So I go tandem. I love it. It was great.
Speaker 3:A month or two later, I go back with my buddy, ty that I was telling you about. Go right, I did maybe like one more tandem. So I did like three and I went to the same place. Every time one of the workers goes dude, you're wasting your money. Like you should, uh, you should try to get your license. It's 25 jumps and you, you know you have your own parachute, but you're like we hold you in the sky and then you open your pressure. You know we let you go and, like you know, you you're basically skydiving alone for 25 jumps and you're learning how to fly your body. So I did that. That led to me having my skydiving license. Now I can do whatever I want.
Speaker 3:Hundreds of jumps later I understand yeah, I'm getting to that joke. Hundreds of jumps later somebody comes up to me and goes hey, there's this event called Bridge Day in West Virginia. Bridge Day is an event where there's hundreds of thousands of people come watch us jump off a bridge in West Virginia, and BASE is an acronym. It stands for Building Antenna Span and Earth Span is bridges, earth is cliffs. Okay, and basically the difference between skydiving and BASE jumping is just you're jumping off of that fixed object as opposed to an aircraft. Now, the dangers are you're a lot closer to the ground, so it's a lot less time. There's no reserve chute. You know, when you're base jumping, if you're doing something, it's usually illegal, it's at night, it's in a city, there's power lines, there's crosswinds coming up the alleys of all these different cities. It gets hot. Right wrestling. Prepared you for that? Yeah, so I, uh, I did. I did my first spaceship and a bridge, now a bridge this would kind of fall into what joe's talking about.
Speaker 3:Yeah, uh, a bridge is what we would call a forgiving object, because as an object you have people think like the parachute open, oh my gosh, thank goodness, that's like the least of my thoughts. I don't think about that at all, and not because I'm not scared, I'm terrified when I'm terrified of those a lot different things. The gear is designed to work. It's gonna work. It'd be like me worrying about my parachute opening would be like you worry, is my break gonna work if I apply the brake pressure on the brake, like it's happened. But that's not the fear. The fear is how does it open? We have on heading openings, then we have off heavy openings, which means the direction I'm jumping yeah body position wind something yeah gives it a 90 left, 90 right or a 180.
Speaker 3:Now, if you have 180 degree opening on a bridge, that's okay. You have nothing behind you, you just circle off right on the bridge, true? Well, if you're on a cliff, that's a bad day, right? That's a bad day, right? So I'm on this. I'm on this cliff in the superstitions called, uh, called the ramp, because we built a ramp up there to give us a little bit of separation from the cliff. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:Right. So if you think about it like inertia-wise, I jump off a cliff. A lot of people think the closer you are to the ground, the scarier it is. But really, the closer you are to the ground, the farther you are away from the object. Right, that's the thing. So it's not always like the closer the ground the more dangerous. Sometimes it's like it's the opposite. I took a what we call a weak delay, which weak be, not weak, w e w? E a like it was not strong. Took a week delay. I ran off the cliff. Took like a two second delay. Probably could have got another second out of it, which would give you more separation right Right.
Speaker 3:On my open 180, on opening, bad pack job, bad body position, whatever it was, it wasn't a lot of wind that day. I open, I'm facing the cliff. Now I only have about a second and a half until I hit. So I reach up, I grab my steering toggles it's called popping togglesles I grab and I just immediately impact the cliff. Now in Arizona it's sandstone, a lot of sandstone, and while I'm fighting off this wall I'm like just two-stepping down this thing. It's just cheese grated my parachute.
Speaker 3:I finally turn off and you see in the video I look up and I go, oh, I shredded my fucking canopy. A canopy is a parachute. I shredded my fucking canopy and now this cliff that was on the ramp. I go oh, I shredded my fucking canopy. A canopy is a parachute. I shredded my fucking canopy Fuck. And now this cliff that I was on the ramp is 500 feet to impact, like a rock drop, basically like impact. But when I open there's like a talus, so I still have to fly. It's maybe like 1,000 feet, 1,500 feet to the landing area where it's flat. So when I turn off I have all these holes in my parachute and now I'm losing so much altitude over that talus, where I'm not going to outfly it Right, and there's all these chibi rocks all around, like all over the place.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So I'm like, fuck, I'm not going to outfly this talus.
Speaker 3:If I hit these, these chibi rocks, you know, if my, if my, if my shoe gets caught, that's the best case scenario, right, like, if it doesn't get caught and my parachute collapses and like loses pressure, I'm going to, I'm going to hit the ground at from, you know, a hundred feet high, like it's not, it's a bad day. And, uh, you know, fortunately I, I fly right into a rock. It gets draped up, it catches. I'm hanging there for a minute and I'm like, oh my gosh, something has to be broke my leg, my ankle, something broke. So I ungear because I don't trust that it's going to hang.
Speaker 3:And I kind of like, you know, shoot me on like Spider-Man, you know on the wall and I'm hanging on to the, the rock and a minute goes by, 10 minutes goes by, and nothing really hurts, and I'm like I think I'm okay, like I think I'm good, like this is crazy. I call I had service, somehow, I call a buddy. Uh, they're all hiking up to try to find me and they asked me if I wanted to call rescue. And I'm like I can't be that motherfucker. It was like during covid. Like people are in the hospital and shit, i'm'm not going to be that motherfucker yeah.
Speaker 3:You know that that takes a bed from some old dude that needed it.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. Like fuck you out there thinking you're you're about to die on the cliff side and you're like I don't want to bug someone.
Speaker 3:It's that, it it's right right, I was, I was good, I was, you knew, yeah, I was good. But I'm still 50 feet above the ground, you know, and this sandstone is like just fucking it's, it's not great grip. So about an hour goes by, this guy named david finally hikes up to me and sees me. He finds me because it was a very, like you know, weird area to get to me. Okay, finds me, he finds me. It was a very weird area to get to me. He finds me. I'm like, okay, I'm going to start climbing down. I don't want to climb and fall, break my leg and have nobody there. I'm like, okay, I'm going to wait until David gets here.
Speaker 3:I start climbing down. I get 15 feet over the ground. This little nook that I was in just gets really wide. I couldn't really wedge myself in it. I'm going to have to jump. So I jumped. It felt like a million feet. It was probably 10 feet or less. I jumped, I hit the ground, I'm okay, give him a big hug. You know, love you, bunch of love yous Jesus. And I jumped the next day.
Speaker 2:Holy shit, that's so. So I mean honestly because and I've been in situations like not that, but I've been in situations where you're more focused on just staying alive, right like it's, you're not thinking about how high you are, whatever it is, you're just focused. Okay, where am I? What do I gotta do?
Speaker 3:frantic you know what's good, though.
Speaker 3:You know what's good about wrestling that Alcubese thing again, like when you're in the middle of a wrestling match, you're not thinking like you're thinking about the result before you step on the mat. Dude, I want to win. Oh shit, I want to win, I want to win, I want to win. That's how it is when I basically fuck. Man, I don't want to like this. Why am I even doing this? This is fucking dumb. But then when you get in the match and you're like in a hand fight and you're in a shot, you're not thinking about like minute number six and oh, dude, I'm going to get my hand raised. You're thinking like I better fucking score.
Speaker 3:That's all you're thinking about I better get out on bottom, I better like I'm only in the match now and when I'm base jumping, I'm not thinking about living and dying. I'm thinking about like okay, gotta turn right right now, oh, I gotta turn left right now. Oh, I gotta you know, you know whatever it is and and I gotta bleed some altitude off right now. I'm really high or whatever it is. So that's a really cool. You know parallel where it's. You're very, you're hyper present, yeah you know, that's why no, that's how no tomorrow started.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you looked into, you know any of that, but I own a brand called live no tomorrow. Okay, basically, it doesn't mean go jump off buildings and be suicidal, right, that's not what it is. What it is is more like hey, what makes you feel present? Now go fucking attack it. You know it doesn't mean you have to give up disciplines of tomorrow and be, you know, irresponsible today, but it means, if your goal is to be an actor, is to go start brand is to start a podcast is to start, you know, uh, your bakery, tiktok shop, I don't care. Go fucking do it. Live tomorrow. Stop thinking, one day I'll do it.
Speaker 3:One day I'll do it, go fucking do it and for me that happens to be something that's very high risk, right, and you know, and base jumping is not my no tomorrow. Actually, base jumping is something I love and it's very fun. Traveling in general is I feel so present, like when I'm in the philippines or I'm in brazil or I'm in italy, like if I'm doing something that is just with a different culture, with a motherfucker that don't speak english. Like that to me I am like high on cocaine, like I am so happy in that moment. That is my live. No, tomorrow, I am nowhere else in the world except that moment, and it is so it's such important. So traveling is more than base jumping and wrestling more than traveling, most likely. But you know you can't wrestle forever, so we gotta find some shit have you thought about putting shoes back on to wrestle something?
Speaker 2:So I wrestled.
Speaker 3:I did a quad after I graduated through 2020. And then I go up to Cleveland State quite a bit and I train, where I can wrestle with college-level guys. So I'm still ashamed. I feel good, but I'm 32, and I travel full-time. You do this summer. I summer was like 20 countries everywhere right now. Yeah, it's hard to give that up. To be honest, like being able to see the world. It is a really unique opportunity. It's hard to give that up.
Speaker 2:So I agree, I agree and I I I'm not doing the world, but like the after doing these college visits I was my wife and I like we should just get like one of those camper vans it's a blast man, it's a blast. I just started traveling around. I did van life in.
Speaker 3:Switzerland for a little bit, it was great. Yeah, in Switzerland, like you, just it's rough because you just rough it, but it's fucking yeah there's a generator hooked up to it.
Speaker 2:What's rough? And I still get a flat screen TV and a stove and a sink in there. I'm good.
Speaker 3:I meant like lacking of showering. Roughing, I still get a flat screen tv and a stove and a sink in there. I'm good, I bet. I bet like uh uh uh, lacking of showering.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, no, I'm not going without that there's. That's not right. No, no, no, no, I'm not roughing it that way, sorry, right, I'm 45, I can't do that anymore. You can do that. You can do that. That's cool, that's cool. But so you had I? I looked at you, I did look up your college career. College crew is pretty good. I mean, you were what. Four times you went to the national tournament, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I actually am pretty insecure about my college career, to be honest. I always felt like I was better than my results showed. I beat a lot of national champs. I beat the number one seed in my bracket, sophomore, junior and senior year. I beat hodge trophy winners after they won hodge right like I beat world bronze medalists, but I don't have any like accolades to show for it, which kind of goes against what I'm talking about earlier surrounding the outcome. Like it's, it's your choices that make up who you are as an identity. I still believe in all that, but when I do these podcasts and I do like different wrestling clinics, it is nice to have like credibility result wise, and I do struggle. I I find myself better than what I have to show for and, yeah, it bothers me.
Speaker 2:And I get it as a competitor. I understand, but I do know that you know a lot of times, and I can attest to this, I mean, I wasn't an awesome athlete, but I feel like my coaching abilities are 10 times better right.
Speaker 3:If you win everything, you're not a good coach.
Speaker 2:You have to fuck up.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you know where how I can spot a fuck up motherfucker.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, and that's the thing. Is that that's why I do jv. We're the development side, we're not the. Of course the varsity coach wants to win like we. Just we went out like two games early out of the season. We're like what, what the fuck just happened. Like what are we?
Speaker 2:doing, you know, but I like the development side. I'm a big fan of kids understanding and getting a perspective of not just how do I win or do better here, but how do I do better in general. Like you said, building on things and and the building blocks are important. I love watching kids get a grasp of those building blocks. You don't have to be in I don't know how many national champions or coaches right now, but not all of them. Is it a great?
Speaker 3:athlete to have. Some of the best coaches are. You know, it's interesting when you're really successful. Sometimes you have this like this is how I did it, so this is how it has to be done. That could be an Achilles heel as a coach, I think, whereas I would like to think it's hey, this is how I did it. Let's figure out what works for you. When you look at people that are really successful, one thing that they have in common is sometimes they have nothing in common. They're messy people and super organized people and they've been successful. There's people that wake up early and people that sleep in and get workouts later in the day that are successful. So I think you know, being able to be a coach not me, but just coaches in general that, okay, let's not make broad rules that everybody must follow and let's treat eat. It's an individual sport. Let's make this individual, let's be circumstantial per athlete, and I think it can be really powerful, you know big time.
Speaker 2:I agree, I agree, um, so let's, let's go ahead and jump. You've recently done a film, so and I know some people obviously know about it already, but there's a lot of people I I don't think do I. I know, but what's the film called?
Speaker 3:All right. So this film is called the Stop Kind of give you my short little summary of how I got into it. So, to be honest, after college wrestling was over, after TVSA stuff was over, when I was done competing RTC-wise, I just always had a passion for travel. Travel led to being super adventurous. The skydiving, the base jumping, I just kind of coupled into that. That led to being social media-wise. Hey, I post some base jumps. They do pretty well, right, I can see some money on YouTube. I can see some money on TikTok, you know, getting billions of views.
Speaker 3:And then not only that, but being close with Jake Paul. So how I know him, he wrestled in ohio. I was at ohio state, he was a little high school wrestler. We stayed close. Now he's jake paul, jake paul now. And and we're still close friends, right, we're close, we talk every day. Right, like every, we have group chat, me and and his few roommates. We talk every single day. I was nice, I was with him this morning. Uh, so when I started to like understand, that's not really the industry, but social media is like as close to like the hollywood industry as like other things could get, yeah, I started to really like, you know, put my foot out there more of of wanting to be on camera and do things you know as maybe narcissistic as that sounds, it's fun, it's a fun it's fun to be creative.
Speaker 3:It's fun to be entertaining, it's fun, right, and you know I don't find it wrong to like appreciate affirmation. You know I will say before I even get into the movie there's one thing where I did make a rule for myself. So I posted a video of sky at one time out of a hot air balloon. It got everywhere yeah, sports center, bar stool, like all these accounts and it's posting it. I was coaching at harvard at the time and I was so excited.
Speaker 3:I was so excited to leave practice early to see, to look at my phone, and it got to the point where I was not living on, I was giving up the present moment, yeah, to go attack, like this virtual world that doesn't matter to read comments, right, yep, because I was getting so much traction. So I made a rule for myself it's okay to appreciate affirmations, hey, comments, people saying stuff, joe schmoe from kansas, that's fine, you can appreciate, but not at the expense of what you're doing right now and not at the expense of do you like that more than you like actually skydiving itself, right, like? That's my rule, yeah, so, so if I'm not doing anything, I do something cool. I share it, I post, I post it and I'm just chilling. I'm in the car, I'm just looking at my phone. That's okay to appreciate all the attention, but if I'm giving up things to do, that that's not okay. That's not okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, present yeah, yeah, present. So I'm, I'm, I'm starting to really appreciate this, this, this, this world where I see on social media they're looking for extras in a movie that are wrestlers okay, yep. So like fuck, let's do this, let's, let's see what I'm a wrestler, right. Send an email, cold email, just email the director, right? This director won an oscar. He's a good director, not for directing, he won it for editing. He edited Argo.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:He edited Zero Dark Thirty. He edited Heat, which Heat is like one of my favorite movies. He did the Breakfast Club. He did Spider-Man Homecoming. He's done a lot of stuff First time directing, and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are producing Artists. Equity is the production company and the story is about Anthony Robles, one-legged wrestler from Arizona State, wins the nationals. He beats in the finals Matt McDonough. Matt McDonough is kind of this Ivan Drago character who was the returning national champ, iowa villain type, you know right. Yeah, well, I wrestled Matt McDonough in college. So I say that in my email yeah, I wrestled mcdonough and I kind of like I juiced up a little bit, like I had done some extra stuff in movies before. I've had lines, but all independent and it was just for fun for friends that I had in la. No, nothing like no big actors or nothing, but I put that in there, you know, just because right it helps.
Speaker 2:Yeah, why not?
Speaker 3:director hits me's like yo can we get on Skype or not Skype? Sorry, zoom, skype Skype doesn't exist anymore. Zoom, I would love for you to audition so we get on. And this motherfucker's having me do like Stance in Motion in this room. I'm doing Stance in Motion right here, really In my socks.
Speaker 3:He up on the wall I'm like guys like, yeah, I, I have, I've, I've beaten jason ness before, like I better get this, really want to be doing this like you know what I mean. Like and uh, you know, he, he hangs up. They call me a couple days later. They go hey, we would love to offer you the part of man. Great, right, great. And then they go who's your agent we can send your offer to? I'm like oh yeah, shit.
Speaker 3:So I go, uh, you know I'm in between agencies right now. Uh, just send it to me. Just, you just send it right to me. So, boom, that'll be a nice offer. Now this is a sag movie, so I'm, like, you know, sag, eligible now, like all that stuff. Don jones bringing a coach, uh, uh, you know anthony robbins, played by this kid named gerald jerome jerome wanted any. There's. There's a. There's a tv show about these five black kids in new york city that get police brutality in like the 80s. It's called central park five.
Speaker 3:It's like a famous story it's, it's huge, right, and the show is called when they See Us Now. Jarrell won an Emmy for that show. He's like a really good actor, right. Okay, michael Pena is in it. He's from Fury. He's great, a lot of big, you know, having the director, obviously. And yeah, I was getting ready to go and then boom, writer's strike, actor's strike happened.
Speaker 2:Oh shit, yeah.
Speaker 3:Active Strike happened. Oh shit, yeah, so fast forward I'm in. Like six months later I'm in Lusaka, zambia, all the way in Africa, yeah this dude. And. I get a phone call.
Speaker 3:I get a phone call From the production and I'm like Dude Strike just ended, when can you be in LA? So I fucking flew From Lusaka, zambia, to Los Angeles that's like A 17 hour flight and flew from Lusaka, zambia, to Los Angeles that's like a 17-hour flight. I get there and I'm like let's go. We ended up filming, we wrapped and it's premiered. It's trending good right now. It releases December 6th in theaters, but it's a select data release just to qualify for if there could be Oscar contests, because J-Lo gives a really good performance. She's Anthony's mom in the movie J-Lo. She does a really good job. It's not just wrestling. There's a lot of drama in his home life.
Speaker 3:My character has a good amount of screen time, but I'm not like the main antagonist. It's like his own home life is his antagonist and I happen to be the wrestler that he wrestles the last in the third act. That's really what it is. And yeah it's going to be fun.
Speaker 2:So did you have to get your ears extra cauliflowered.
Speaker 3:No, they did get Don Cheadle, so people listen. Don Cheadle is War Machine, tony Stark's best friend in Iron man, and you guys probably know who I'm talking about. He's Rhodey. He's been in Hotel Rwanda. He's been in Crash. He's been in Oceans 11, 12. He's a brilliant actor. One of my favorites Grew up watching him. They gave him cauliflower here. It was pretty cool. So me and him we had every scene together. Me and Don and you know we are chairs were next to each other for the month. That was on set and it was great, you know we got to chop it up quite a bit.
Speaker 2:So so you got. You got some great experience doing that, but at the same time, though, too, like now, that broadens your horizons. I mean, what are there other things you're looking at? Now, too, I would love.
Speaker 3:I would love to stay in that. That was like the most fun I've ever had in my life. It was it made me not want to base jump because I didn't want to get hurt. Like it was like that. It was probably a good thing for me. You know what I mean. Like base jumping is like people look at it like it's a it's a death wish, it's a drug addiction. To me it's, it's, it's, it's, it's. There's so much beauty in it and like all this, like creativity that I can have, and it's it is dangerous and we have inherent risk. So it's not this death wish to me. I love living. I do not. I do not want to die. I do not want to die right.
Speaker 2:But I understand that in the video. Yeah, I understand the narrative that it plays.
Speaker 3:But also, I really do want to uh, you know, continue to pursue, you know, possibilities in acting. Maybe I can be an mba fighter, some movies, maybe you'll be in a in a, in a sag film, one with this magnitude.
Speaker 2:You never know what kind of doors you're gonna, so we'll see I, I think, because your creativity, I think there's a lot of things you can accomplish and do.
Speaker 3:I hope so I did an independent film. Actually, I gotta put my phone in the charger, it's about to die. I did an independent film, uh, about a month ago. Small budget thing, but just to keep you know, in the, in the, in the area which, is good so that's good.
Speaker 2:And again, I I don't do after seeing just the you're you're obviously viral clip with those kids, you know, and I I watched that on the speech.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah speech.
Speaker 2:seeing that, that's what kind of drew me towards you a little bit more and, like I said, I try to find guys that are that have something that ought to offer as far as just a personality Cause, I mean, not everybody that you talk to is able to, you know, articulate a story and not everybody that you talk to is has a story.
Speaker 3:you know what I mean. Again, again. I'm only as good as the people around me because, like, I steal from them so my dad's a good speaker and I've had dope coaches and friends that I can steal cool anecdotes from, and that's why I can articulate well at all. So it's not me, it's, it's, you know. It's people like joe, joe, you know joe in the comments.
Speaker 2:Both the joes yeah, like them, you know, and that's why I love doing this, bringing guys like you out to be so people can, you know, hear everything, right, like I said, just to get the whole story, not just part of the story, because I think I listen to a lot of different podcasts. Yeah, and it's great information. It's not that they suck, it's just like I want to do that one where it's literally it's just about them. I just want to be about them all the way through. You know, because all the stories that up with that that you don't get time to talk to somebody about at a tournament, right, and you don't want to bother people that's how I am most of the time at a tournament. I don't want to bother that guy. Usually you're here because it's business, right, it's fun being at a tournament, but that's business time, right, like you're coaching a guy or you're competing, kind of thing I don. So this is a place where people can come and listen to that stuff. But, joe, joe does have another question here.
Speaker 3:So this is Evan, from Wrestling, best advice for me to support. I've been standing back so far. I mean, dude, you have been. You've been a part of the sport as long as I have. I think that you know the advice I can give you is you can give me better advice than I can give you, in my opinion. But if I were to offer something, I you can give me better advice than I can give you, in my opinion. But if I were to offer something, I would always go back to what Lou Roselli always said to my dad you'd be a dad at home, you let your coach be the coach at practice, and I think that's the best thing that he could do.
Speaker 3:But yeah, like you know, when I do these clinics, you know I have like five things, maybe four things that are important to me, and skill and technique is fourth, the first three. The first three are, and here's why the first three are is he having fun? Is she having fun? Are they relating to the stuff and are they finding ways to fall in love with wrestling? Then it's did they get better? Did they get skill? Did they learn moves? Did they whatever? Did they work hard? And the reason being is because if they don't do the first three, they won't learn anything.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean. That is just a dictatorship. I'm telling you what to do, so I really try to bring fun into wrestling. Listen, we're going to have I hate my life days where I'm doing sprints, you know, and if I can understand why that's important as opposed to just being fucking whipped into doing it, I think that's a lot more beneficial. Like, if I can get excited to go to practice. I'm going to play dodgeball like coaches that are listening not Joe, obviously, but other coaches that are listening that don't play games at practice. You're an I'm sorry, I'll be blunt like you need to make the practice fun. And guess what? Wrestling isn't always fun. Wrestling's fucking hard. It's a really hard thing to do to wrestle. It sucks sometimes. I love it. I love the suck, I love it, but it's fucking hard.
Speaker 2:We have to be able to make it fun.
Speaker 3:We have to be able to enjoy it. We have to have a smile. You don't get. You're not able to suffer for something that you dislike. You're able to suffer for something that you love. And if you could find ways to fall in love with someone. I don't have to love sprints, I don't have to love losing, I don't have to love cutting weight, but I love putting my foot on the line and seeing what happens. I love being on the bus playing cards. I love, you know, waking up and making fun of the freshman when I'm a junior and I'm in high school, whatever it is. Find a way to fall in love with wrestling and the rest will follow. The hard work will follow.
Speaker 2:We had a couple of practices where I wrestled some kids this was at youth and then I actually trained again to wrestle in a tournament Sweet. And I'll never forget when I had my first practice back in my 30s or something like that. It was at that point where I was telling Liam I was like you need to toughen up Like this, you need to certain things need to suck up right. And I wound up going to like two or three practices.
Speaker 3:I went home, I told my wife was like don't ever fucking tell our kids that this sport's right ever don't like there's a way. There's a way to say like, hey, you can give more here, you can give more there.
Speaker 2:Don't ever tell them, it's not by, but we just.
Speaker 3:The disconnect happens like that, like I remember it being so much easier than it was it. It was so fucking hard. So, it's.
Speaker 3:We'll just be like oh dude, you got, you gotta run, you gotta lose weight, go run. But when you're doing it it's like there's nothing. I want to do less right now than move my body. It's. It's so fucking hard. It is, it is so hard and it's so hard and it's like we're saying it from a place of comfort. It's so easy to say. Then, all of a sudden, discomfort is introduced and you're like, wow it's a whole dunning kruger effect right like it is.
Speaker 2:It is fucking insane. That's right it is. And that's why I say I always say, because I mean I wasn't that good at wrestling, I didn't put that much effort into it, I can't, I can't equate how it feels like you guys, can you know like?
Speaker 2:I can't do it just because I didn't put that much into it knowing, and I did into soccer, but that was a team sport, right like I was also playing with five other guys in the field by yourself. Man, like you're, you're getting the crappy dotty and that's why a lot of these stories. I I've had other guys on that that. Uh, you know one of the, the guitars from red clay strays. He didn't wrestle but he played football. I like equating all sports into this. Obviously, vision Quest is more of a wrestling thing.
Speaker 3:It's kind of fitting that Vision Quest podcast and the next wrestling film. It's kind of cool. I like to put that together. I don't know why it's cool.
Speaker 2:I have tried to keep it a mix, because every sport has its own quest. Every athlete is trying to do their own thing. So, dude, you've been on here for almost two hours. It's been great.
Speaker 3:Honestly, it felt like it's been a half hour, let's do it again. Man, I would love to do it again. I feel like we spark, noted a lot of middle school, high school, college and even post-college and knowledge and we can really get into some stuff, I think for sure, and that so that's the other thing too is like I've got plenty of guys that have been on here a couple times, two, three times.
Speaker 2:That's what this is about right continuing conversation, and it's always to me it helps me clarify my mind a little bit. I've been off for a while, right, like I gotta get off twitter dude, like I gotta go go away or something. Yeah, it's just, it's gotten and I'm I don't get super political.
Speaker 3:I have my thoughts on certain things, it's hard right now. Right, it's hard right now.
Speaker 2:And because I'm impulsive so I don't shut my mouth right, I open my mouth.
Speaker 3:It's sad how both parties are very mean to each other, and I wish it was nicer.
Speaker 2:So far, opposites right, literally just let's talk, let's talk and I get pushed.
Speaker 3:Whoever I'm around, I get pushed away. Like you know, when I'm in the small town wrestling community, I'm like dude, don't. I don't want to hear another fucking conspiracy about how hurricanes are fake do not do not tell me a shit. And then when I'm in the city and I'm more like with my liberal friends and it's like, bro, I don't want to hear anything from you, I just want to hear nothing stay, keep your wokeness away yeah like, yeah, over there, but it's, it's been awesome.
Speaker 2:Dude, we'll definitely get you back on. I know, um, we do have katherine shy. We got to get her back on. She's gonna be on. She's great. Huh, she's awesome that luca fit she's doing. It's great. Um, what do you got coming up? You got any shout outs or anything like that? Anything you got coming up soon?
Speaker 3:You know, I don't think I'm traveling. I have a lot of camps coming up but nothing. It's just a bunch of high school like teenagers having me in, but there's nothing really major except go watch Unstoppable. Coming up in January 16th. It releases on Amazon Prime, so that's probably the most we're gonna be able to watch it yes, and also you know live no tomorrow.
Speaker 3:That's my biggest shout out. Live no tomorrow. Do cool stuff, even if you're not purchasing it from me. Go live it yourself. Go do school, actually, before we go. Let's end with that. What would your no tomorrow be? What makes you feel the most present? That you know gets you fired up like you're. You're laying it's, it's, you're a kid. Tomorrow you're waking up to go to Disney World and you have your Disney outfit picked out the night before. What are you drooling at? Tell me what it is that makes you feel the most present at age 45.
Speaker 2:Watching my kid wrestle.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's a good one. I'll be over here doing selfish shit, risking my life. Fuck you man. That's such a good one. Damn Watching my kid wrestle. That's good. I like that. That's a good one. I like that.
Speaker 2:I can't live, and that's the thing is I can't I live. I lived so much of the moment in the corner. Now I get to be dad. It's cool huh. And that's yeah, well, good, good, that was awesome, man, I'm really happy you have you on. Thank you, it's been a great show. I'm gonna get us out of here. Um, I know joe, joe and joe have been listening. You guys appreciate you commenting. It's been awesome.
Speaker 3:Uh, joey k popped on just at the last minute here, but um, last minute we just got done talking crap about him. He missed it.
Speaker 2:I know, right? Yeah, well, that's fine, I'll let him know in text later on. I'll let him know just how much of a great guy he is, right, yeah, yeah, all right, well, we're gonna lead out here, I'm gonna play some music, we're gonna end the stream. I still want to talk to you for just a minute afterwards, sweet, and we're gonna go from there. Peace, thank you.
