Joe Rogan Experience #1885 Andy Stumpf & Mike Sarraille

Narrator 0:01 (drum roll) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music plays)

Joe Rogan 0:12 So tell me about your dip problem. (laughs) What happened?

Andy Stumpf 0:14 Tell us about your disgusting mouth.

Joe Rogan 0:16 Is this how I start? (laughs)

Mike Sarraille 0:17 (laughs) Yes. Well, so I- I- you know, you talked about high school. You did in high school.

Andy Stumpf 0:22 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 0:22 I did it one time.

Joe Rogan 0:22 He's gotta turn it on you.

Andy Stumpf 0:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:24 You did it one time.

Andy Stumpf 0:25 One time in high school and never touched it again. Go ahead, mister 19 years.

Joe Rogan 0:28 Mike was-

Mike Sarraille 0:28 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:28 Mike was just saying that he had to get his skin grafted-

Mike Sarraille 0:32 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 0:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:32 ... and he's like, "You did it once."

Andy Stumpf 0:34 (laughs)

Mike Sarraille 0:34 Well, I- I remember the first time I did. Somebody gave me Redman Chew, and it was over. I was just yakking everywhere. Where I started was in the Marine Corps is, uh, when we're in a hide site, you have to stay awake when it's your turn for security, but that can be like 3:00 AM in the morning after you've been hiking for like six hours.

Joe Rogan 0:53 Right.

Mike Sarraille 0:54 So eventually my team leader's like, "You are gonna put a dip in to do whatever it takes to stay awake during your watch."

Joe Rogan 1:00 Does dip keep you awake?

Andy Stumpf 1:02 The, uh, nicotine does.

Mike Sarraille 1:04 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:04 It should.

Joe Rogan 1:04 But dip will?

Andy Stumpf 1:06 (inhales deeply) Yes.

Mike Sarraille 1:06 Absolutely. And so it- it morphed from there in the Marines, and we lived... I like to say we lived off of three things on deployment, water, coffee, and dip. And even on a patrol with these guys, I would have a dip in, chewing caffeine gum-

Joe Rogan 1:22 Jesus.

Mike Sarraille 1:22 ... and drinking water.

Andy Stumpf 1:23 Super healthy.

Joe Rogan 1:24 This is... I'm gonna send this to Brendan Schaub-

Mike Sarraille 1:26 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:26 ... 'cause that motherfucker keeps... He has those little pouches. They're so nasty. He keeps four or five of them in his mouth at a time. He looks like a squirrel, like he's got a little... Like he's storing nuts. Well, so tell me-

Mike Sarraille 1:38 Well, no, you're grafted.

Joe Rogan 1:39 So, you have to have skin grafted?

Mike Sarraille 1:40 They take the, uh, tissue from the top of your mouth and then graft it to the bottom of the teeth because it's-

Joe Rogan 1:46 Ugh.

Mike Sarraille 1:46 ... receded quite a bit.

Joe Rogan 1:47 Hold on one second. Sorry. Are you good now? Yeah. Okay. So, what did it do to your mouth?

Mike Sarraille 1:55 I think after 19 years of... (laughs) So I did switch from long cut to pouches, and then, uh, pouches are...

Andy Stumpf 2:05 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:05 Like that makes a fucking difference.

Mike Sarraille 2:07 There was a switch. There was a logical progression.

Andy Stumpf 2:09 I switched from beer to vodka. It's totally fine, guys.

Mike Sarraille 2:12 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 2:13 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:13 (laughs)

Mike Sarraille 2:13 I went from heroin to pills. So the intent was long cut to pouches.

Andy Stumpf 2:18 Right.

Mike Sarraille 2:19 And pouches you would wean yourself off and that did not work.

Joe Rogan 2:22 And so what is it? Is it rotting your gums?

Mike Sarraille 2:25 It just recedes your gums. Doesn't rot your gums, but it recedes it.

Joe Rogan 2:29 Wow. So you have yuck mouth?

Andy Stumpf 2:31 I don't have yuck mouth.

Mike Sarraille 2:31 You don't have yuck mouth.

Joe Rogan 2:32 Let me see. Let me see it.

Andy Stumpf 2:35 What is... How bad is it?

Mike Sarraille 2:36 First off, I'm here just to debunk or fact-check anything that Andy says.

Andy Stumpf 2:41 (laughs)

Mike Sarraille 2:41 From past episodes.

Joe Rogan 2:41 Andy, people know you, Andy Stump. Mike, please introduce yourself. Tell you how you know this degenerate.

Mike Sarraille 2:46 Yes, absolutely. I'm actually embarrassed. Uh, Mike Cirelli, born in California as well. Enlisted in the Marine Corps, was a recon marine and a scout sniper, and eventually crossed over to the SEAL teams as an officer and retired after 20 years, like Andy. We served at the same place. But I've got to tell you about the first time I met Andy. Um, because people ask me like, "What's Andy Stump like?" Because I meet people and they're like, "Oh, Andy Stump." I'm like, "He is a real dick."

Andy Stumpf 3:13 Andy?

Mike Sarraille 3:14 Andy is a dick.

Andy Stumpf 3:15 He's always been nice to me. How weird.

Mike Sarraille 3:16 Uh, yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 3:18 I don't remember the story.

Andy Stumpf 3:19 Always been a good friend. Always been friendly. The story he's about to tell-

Mike Sarraille 3:21 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 3:22 Great sense of humor.

Joe Rogan 3:22 Yeah, I'm not sure.

Andy Stumpf 3:23 Handsome guy, little reckless.

Mike Sarraille 3:25 So we're in SEAL Team 3, and SEAL teams are younger. The average age is what? I think like 19 to 23.

Andy Stumpf 3:32 At a conventional team? Early 20s at best.

Mike Sarraille 3:34 Early 20s at best. And so there's a bunch of officers in the operations room at SEAL Team 3, and we're talking. There's a lot of groupthink going on. We're- we're badmouthing the leadership on a decision that was made. And all of a sudden, this guy walks in who's got just a... He's in his uniform, which is rare. He must be checking in. He's got this big stack of ribbons to our two rows of ribbons. And we're talking, he's listening in. We sort of see this guy in the background, and which was odd was he... You stepped in and you're like, "I think you're all wrong." And he killed us with logic, because remember, each of us has like two combat deployments at this point. We think we have it all figured out. And Andy's coming in with his eight combat deployments and just destroys us.

Joe Rogan 4:16 What was he... What were you guys wrong about?

Andy Stumpf 4:19 Everything.

Joe Rogan 4:20 What were they saying?

Andy Stumpf 4:21 I don't even fucking remember this interaction.

Mike Sarraille 4:23 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 4:24 He could be making this all up.

Mike Sarraille 4:25 No, it's not. So I forget the subject, but two of us left the room and I remember... I can't remember if I looked at him or he looked at me and he's like, "Was that guy a dick?" I'm like, "Yeah, he was a major dick."

Joe Rogan 4:39 But was I right?

Mike Sarraille 4:40 You were right.

Joe Rogan 4:41 All right then. Fuck off.

Mike Sarraille 4:41 I think that was the problem that was wrong.

Joe Rogan 4:43 What were you guys wrong about?

Mike Sarraille 4:45 So, you know, you get a little experience. It's like the Dunning-Kruger effect. You get a little experience under your belt and you think you have everything figured out.

Joe Rogan 4:53 Right.

Mike Sarraille 4:53 For a young SEAL, whether enlisted or officer with two combat deployments, you think you're the top dog. The way the conventional SEAL teams work is that's a lot of combat experience for the conventional SEAL teams. But he was coming from a different side, a side we all knew about but knew very little about.

Joe Rogan 5:09 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 5:10 Um, and we held them in high regard because that's the 2%. He walks into the room and we knew once he stepped up, it was wrong. But testament to Andy, he had a reputation for going against the groupthink, and the SEAL teams have a lot of groupthink. That's the easy answer is just to get on board.

Joe Rogan 5:26 We still haven't gotten to like what you guys were wrong about though. Do you remember?

Mike Sarraille 5:30 I cannot recall. All I recall is the incident.

Andy Stumpf 5:32 (laughs) Just remember being wrong.

Mike Sarraille 5:33 But it was about combat and we thought we had it figured out and he came in based off of his vast experience or vaster than ours, much vaster.

Andy Stumpf 5:41 You know what's interesting though? Um, two combat deployments at a conventional SEAL team is four years because you got to do an 18-month workup, six-month deployment. Maybe they'll push you out to 12, depending on what's going on operationally. The deployments that I came back with was like three and a half years worth. So the velocity that I was getting the experience was just...... crazy different in the compressed nature of it, because it would be overseas for 90, back for 180. Overseas for 90, back for 180. And just constantly going and going and going and going. So about the same amount of time, but four times the amount of experience.

Mike Sarraille 6:19 Wow.

Andy Stumpf 6:19 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 6:20 I will say, the, the guys I left SEAL Team 3 and I went to where he was coming from, when I called back, uh, 'cause they were on deployment in Afghanistan. They were like, "Dude, that guy rocks." I mean, because he brought all this experience, all the planning experience, uh, a- and you basically embedded in a, a platoon.

Andy Stumpf 6:40 It was amazing.

Mike Sarraille 6:40 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 6:40 I got a .300 Win Mag, a Javelin missile, and I just was laying heat down (laughs) with both of those things. It was awesome.

Mike Sarraille 6:49 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 6:49 (laughs) They would say, "What high ground position do you want to go to?" I'm like, "This one looks good right here."

Mike Sarraille 6:56 (laughs) So th- the guys ... A- and after I heard that, the guys loved him. I ... Y- you know, first impressions, I was totally wrong. But how often does that happen? Especially in the SEAL teams, where you meet a guy for the first time and you're like, "I hate that guy."

Joe Rogan 7:08 Well, I gotta think everybody's like super alpha, hyper-aggressive-

Andy Stumpf 7:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:12 ... and also a little bit of combat experience, full of piss and vinegar.

Andy Stumpf 7:17 And everything's a competition.

Joe Rogan 7:19 Oh.

Andy Stumpf 7:19 Everything is a competition.

Mike Sarraille 7:21 Almost to a detriment.

Andy Stumpf 7:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:23 How do, how do the teams balance out that with comradery? The competitive with each other, but also comradery. Like, how do you avoid the, the internal conflict?

Mike Sarraille 7:33 So, I think there's a line you don't go beyond, but, you know, you look at the civilian populous, one of the things that they totally lack is something called shared adversity that we have in spades. And, and you, you know, with guys you rolled with for years, you could not see them for 10 years, you see them, all of a sudden, it's like you saw each other last week.

Joe Rogan 7:52 Right.

Mike Sarraille 7:52 When you go through BUD/S or you go through the hard training ... 'cause BUD/S is not th- the end of the, the hard training, there's this, this homecoming, belonging, this relationship, esprit de corps built that, that will never die. And so while we promote competition, it pays to be a winner, as we say, there's a line at which if somebody wins, if Andy wins, the question now is, "Okay, Andy, what did you do differently than us?" And share that, that ... Y- you know, transfer that knowledge to us, so that we can, uh, elevate our game as well. So we understand, you know, Proverbs ... was it 27:17? Um-

Andy Stumpf 8:27 Are you asking me? I have absolutely no idea.

Mike Sarraille 8:28 Iron sharpens iron as one man sharpens another's.

Joe Rogan 8:30 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 8:30 So you understand that. But, uh, we understand competition makes the world go round, to a point.

Joe Rogan 8:37 To a point.

Mike Sarraille 8:37 To a point. But at the end of the day, he's gonna enter a room ... Well, first off, I'm an officer. Nobody ... I wasn't entering any rooms. He was for most of his career. But, uh, you know, I might be on his back and he's trusting me, so if he's got knowledge, he's gonna transfer that knowledge to me in training before we go to war, to make sure that I'm the very best to cover his six.

Joe Rogan 8:56 The thing about th- things like, whether it's SEALs or any high level military operation group, whene- whenever you're dealing with people that have d- done something that's extraordinarily difficult, there's like a rite of passage that you guys have gone through that a lot of people think is missing from p- particularly young men in our society and culture. There's no real moment where you recognize that you've, you've done something incredibly difficult and you've actually become a man.

Andy Stumpf 9:26 It almost seems like society is pushing it the other direction, where that shouldn't exist or it should be avoided.

Joe Rogan 9:30 Even with the teams. One of the things I- I hear is this narrative that it's too difficult.

Andy Stumpf 9:37 I think you gotta consider the source-

Joe Rogan 9:38 Right.

Andy Stumpf 9:38 ... on that one. You know, like, the most recent thing that came out, I'm sure you saw this, Mike, was the ... There was a video of training that occurred at ... Pretty sure it was on San Clemente Island, 'cause that's where they CS gassed us. And there's guys who are outside and they're getting exposure to CS gas, (clears throat) which I remember before I joined the military, if you look at any movie, probably up to and including, like, Full Metal Jacket, or if you even went into a recruiting office, exposure to CS gas is something that you do in basic training. Except, do the air ... I don't know if the Air Force does it.

Mike Sarraille 10:12 Uh, yeah, I don't know.

Andy Stumpf 10:12 Let's assume that they do. Probably they don't, but let's assume that they do. It was completely standard and normal to see. And that room sucks. You go into a room, you have a gas mask on, and they make you take it off, and they make you either do something or say something or talk so you can't hold your breath. That's the point of all that. So this video comes out of students that are outside, which, one, is a, actually a huge advantage, 'cause it dissipates quickly, especially if there's any kind of wind. And they're getting gassed. And there's already issues with the story that I'm telling, 'cause, one, who the fuck is filming this? Like, it, it ... Just the fact that there was somebody there who was filming this thing and it made it onto the internet in any way, shape, or form is a, is a mistake in and of itself.

Joe Rogan 10:50 So it couldn't have been someone who was in the program?

Andy Stumpf 10:53 There was no-

Mike Sarraille 10:53 It was an instructor.

Andy Stumpf 10:54 It had to have been an instructor.

Joe Rogan 10:54 It had to be an instructor.

Andy Stumpf 10:55 The ... So the students, the last four weeks of training, you go out to San Clemente Island. It's called third phase. And you get a very basic indoctrination into small unit tactics, rifle, weaponry, explosives. You throw some grenades. Um, you do some underwater demo. But you're out there for, like, the last tight four weeks of training. The students, I mean, I don't even remember having a cellphone when I went through actually in '97. I'd be shocked if they're allowed to have cellphones down there, so it had to have been an instructor. But they're getting gassed. They are being made to sing Happy Birthday again so you can't hold your breath. And it looks horrible, because it is horrible. And the point of that training is, is it's supposed to suck. It's supposed to be difficult. You're supposed to be exposed to that in a controlled training environment. People are like, "Well, this one person looked like they were passing out and there's mucus coming out of their face." Yeah, it's, it's CS gas. It sucks. But the first time you experience that shouldn't be in a combat zone. So, it's a volunteer only program. You can leave this particular training block if you want to at any given time. And, oh, by the way, every branch of the military exposes their people to this. So, although there are people who are saying, "Yeah, it's too difficult," you have to ... I think you have to consider the source. I don't think they know what they're talking about.

Joe Rogan 12:12 We expose people to it on Fear Factor.

Andy Stumpf 12:15 ... yeah. Again, voluntary.

Joe Rogan 12:17 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 12:17 And if they did-

Joe Rogan 12:18 Police officers.

Andy Stumpf 12:19 And if they didn't want to-

Joe Rogan 12:20 Yeah. (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 12:20 ... I bet you they came out like, "You know what, Mr. Rogan? I, I'm done with this episode. Like, I'm out of here."

Joe Rogan 12:24 Yeah. So, what, what happened with that particular video?

Andy Stumpf 12:27 It made its way onto the internet and it... Because of what it looks like, it looks like exactly what it is, a really shitty evolution where you can't breathe, your sinuses are running more than you ever have had them run in your life. You can't see, you can barely talk, you're choking, you're gagging. Some people throw up, so it made it onto the internet and people started saying, "How could you do that?" Like, "This, this is too brutal of training. How could you possibly do this?"

Joe Rogan 12:52 That's weird that people on the internet had opinions. So, they just had opinions?

Andy Stumpf 12:57 Did you just say it was weird that people on the internet have opinions? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 13:01 I'm joking.

Mike Sarraille 13:01 Clearly, I'm being sarcastic.

Andy Stumpf 13:02 Okay.

Joe Rogan 13:03 But the fact that anybody paid attention to those opinions, that's, that's-

Andy Stumpf 13:05 It trended for a while. It, it actually... Not only did they have opinions, it, it started getting shared-

Joe Rogan 13:10 Ugh.

Andy Stumpf 13:11 ... right? And then it started... You know, the next thing you know, it's on major news outlets. And then I actually think I saw an article saying that the Navy opened an investigation into it.

Mike Sarraille 13:19 They have to. At that point, you have to.

Joe Rogan 13:21 They, they're, they're-

Mike Sarraille 13:22 They should open an investigation every time.

Joe Rogan 13:23 Here, here it is.

Andy Stumpf 13:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:23 "Navy launches investigation into SEAL (laughs) tear, tear gas video. Newly surfaced video showing Navy SEAL recruits being tear gassed is adding to scrutiny," adding to scrutiny, "over elite military units' training practices." But you... I mean, you could speak to this, please, because you have to have brutal training.

Andy Stumpf 13:43 So, you have to layer onto this.

Mike Sarraille 13:44 I, I, I was gonna say this.

Andy Stumpf 13:45 Yeah, go ahead.

Mike Sarraille 13:45 I remember going through this in the Marine Corps. I cannot recall that evolution on San Clemente Island. And I asked somebody the other day, they're like, "Oh, yeah, it happened." I can't, I can't remember it.

Joe Rogan 13:53 So-

Andy Stumpf 13:54 We went, we went out onto a demo range and they had sprinkled in CS powder into the dirt. So, we didn't actually realize we were having exposure to it.

Joe Rogan 14:01 Hmm.

Andy Stumpf 14:01 And people were just covered in... I remember I'm sitting there and we were trying to do demo calculations or, like, cut det cord-

Mike Sarraille 14:08 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 14:08 ... and you're, like, dry heaving. The reason... I would say the reason that this is probably the bigger issue is that there was a high profile death in, uh, SEAL training not too long ago, uh, with a student who had just completed Hell Week and died in the hospital shortly thereafter. Um, the young man's mother is a nurse, and she's very vocal about what has happened, and there was an investigation involving that. So, it seems like, um, not to... Uh, I mean, horrendous to lose y- uh, your son in any way, shape, or form. I don't want to take anything away from that. But from that incident, you know, this is like another layer on top of the onion on something that people were already talking about which in, you combine the two and peop-... It just seems like... For one, I wish SEALs could get the fuck out of the news, in general. But since it starts, you know, they're layering on top of each other, it can seem to be a bigger deal than it is.

Joe Rogan 14:56 What did he die from?

Mike Sarraille 14:58 Infection.

Andy Stumpf 14:59 Yes.

Joe Rogan 14:59 (sighs) And, and so during Hell Week, you've got open sores, you're, you're in the water which isn't far from the Tijuana where it drains off. Uh, so th- there's... That's always been a concern and we mitigate it extremely well. Uh, and first off, my condolences to the mother 'cause this kid was a stud. He was the captain of the Yale football team. He was gonna become a SEAL. He passed the hardest, uh, stages of- So, was it like a staph infection?

Mike Sarraille 15:21 It was a staph infection. And you look at the source, um-

Andy Stumpf 15:26 Bacterial pneumonia.

Joe Rogan 15:27 Bacterial, yeah.

Andy Stumpf 15:27 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 15:28 You look at the source-

Joe Rogan 15:29 Mm-hmm.

Mike Sarraille 15:29 ... this, this is all New York Times.

Andy Stumpf 15:30 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 15:30 It's a string of, of reporters from New York Times-

Joe Rogan 15:33 It's the same authors.

Mike Sarraille 15:33 ... that have just been... They've had a hard on for the SEAL teams. They have been going out. In fact, they wrote a book, and you have the author, Matt Cole.

Andy Stumpf 15:40 Mm-hmm.

Mike Sarraille 15:40 Um, Code Over Country.

Andy Stumpf 15:42 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 15:43 And, and they have just, for the last half decade, if not more, have made it their personal crusade to bring down, down the SEAL teams. And the Eddie Gallagher incident did not help. But here's what I'll say. One, Eddie is a friend. Eddie didn't handle all situations well. But it's amazing how Eddie can have... And I think Eddie had like, eight combat deployments. How he can serve honorably, and he was number one at the SEAL team, his SEAL team, I think for, for-

Andy Stumpf 16:12 I don't know.

Mike Sarraille 16:12 ... for E6, I believe. He served honorably for 19 years, and the last incident he's involved in, which he was acquitted for, that defines his entire career. The last sentence of his chapter as a SEAL defines all the 19 years and all the good work that he did in defense of our nation for those who would never even think of serving.

Joe Rogan 16:32 And he was, uh, acquitted. Um, what was the charge again? It was, uh, there was a... It was something about a detainee?

Andy Stumpf 16:39 I think the charge was murder.

Mike Sarraille 16:41 Yes. It wa-

Joe Rogan 16:42 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 16:42 It was, it was a ISIS prisoner that had been wounded in a strike. And, uh, while rendering medical aid, they, they, uh, accused Eddie of murder.

Joe Rogan 16:52 But he was acquitted.

Mike Sarraille 16:54 He was acquitted.

Joe Rogan 16:54 Yes. But they still don't appreciate that he was acquitted. Like, they still treat him like he's guilty.

Mike Sarraille 17:01 Some of the things I've seen in the press, um, and, and I'll keep reporters out of it. One, I can't remember their names, but, uh, a lot of the liberal news media, uh, just have painted him as a war criminal, bottom line. And his life has been impacted. If you look even at... So, first off, NCIS-

Andy Stumpf 17:20 Naval Criminal Investigation Service.

Mike Sarraille 17:22 The branch in San Diego was never held, held accountable for, let's just say, bad practices that they, uh, implemented while trying to bring Eddie down. They also had a hard on. NCIS is not always, uh, your friend. And they're looking to make a name for themselves as well. And in fact, I was, I was investigated the day I retired by the same crew of people from NCIS San Diego, uh, only six months previous to when the whole Eddie Gallagher thing, uh, uh, sort of came on. But, uh, I mean, they tapped or they put a bug into Eddie's lawyer's emails so that they could read all the documents coming into that lawyer. They, they did some pretty, uh, pretty lame tactics and they were nev- never held accountable.

Joe Rogan 18:10 Is that... Is it legal to do that?

Mike Sarraille 18:12 No. The, the initial lawyer was, uh, was fired, relieved, and they replaced him, uh, rapidly but- Was he relieved from military service? No, he was laterally transferred.

Joe Rogan 18:23 (laughs)

Mike Sarraille 18:24 Laterally transferred, and that's how they dealt with it.Jamie, go back to that article again. I wanna, uh, see something when you first pulled up, uh, the, uh, what the, the first initial complaints 'cause I wanna, uh, uh, scroll ... Yeah, right there. So, they were talking about, uh, the protocols la- la- here. "Let me be clear, we have absolutely zero tolerance for hazing, abuse or deviations from safety protocols. Uh, as Navy SEALs we serve our fellow Americans. Uncompromising integrity is our standard. Our character and honor are steadfast. Most of all, we are expected to lead by example in all situations." So, if that is like standard operational procedure for th- those kinda training s- uh, programs, why, why does he have to say that?

Andy Stumpf 19:06 (smacks lips) So, as-

Mike Sarraille 19:07 It's not hazing, right? It's-

Andy Stumpf 19:08 It's not w- I mean, you could (sighs) ... Could you haze somebody with tear gas? Yes. What I'll say is this, as somebody who was a BUD/S instructor, there is an evolution sheet and matrix for every single thing that happens in training, to include remediating the students. When they fall short of a standard, um, there are limits to how long you can remediate them for. There's limits to the exercises that you can use. There is an oversight matrix of who's in charge of the evolution, what's the ratio gonna be student to instructor? There is, somewhere, a matrix, an evolution sheet for exposure to CS gas in BUD/S. There is absolutely no way that those instructors were like, "Hey, uh, hey Mike, you doing anything tomorrow at two? Let's go gas these fuckers." Like, that, that doesn't happen. Every single day in BUD/S is templated. Why that person said that, I'm not sure, but as somebody who worked in that pipeline with that curriculum, it exists. Um, and what they need to say is, "Yeah, there's a reason that we do this, and the reason that we do this is so that their first exposure isn't in an environment where their life might be on the line." That would actually shut it down, because what that does is it leaves the door, and it leaves question in people's minds. Did they, did they make a mistake? Were they hazing people? Do we need to do this?

Mike Sarraille 20:20 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 20:20 My resounding answer is yes. And also, I'll add to that. My answer when people ask me about students who have died in BUD/S, and I think there have been 10 in the history of BUD/S since the '50s, is that it needs to continue to happen. I don't want it to happen. I don't want anybody to lose their life, but if the training becomes so exceedingly safe that that's not a potential, then we're not serving people in that training and we're not preparing them for what the battlefield's gonna expect of them.

Mike Sarraille 20:45 I'll, I'll, I'll push against you on that one. If you explain it to the American public, more than half still won't understand. They will still view it as brutal, as, uh, as, as unnecessary. But, you know, the- there's been a push to make the military a playground for progressive policies and it is the last place, politically, that we want people playing. And, I mean, you even see China has a, has an initiative to actually make their men more masculine. Yeah, I saw that.

Andy Stumpf 21:19 And, and we're going the opposite, uh, opposite direction, you know. There is a diversity, equiti- equity and inclusion chief at the Pentagon now who wrote a book that basically called the first responders, um, menaces, and, uh, you know, basically painted them as, as white supremacists. And, um, it's going a- a- a very bad direction. I will say this about the military. What people don't understand is it is highly professional. I've always been impressed. There are standards, there is doctrine, and instructors know that they follow that playbook, they mitigate risk to the lowest level because you always have the risk of getting investigated for something like this.

Mike Sarraille 21:59 So, who's letting these progressive policies infect the military? How, how is that ever an option? Is that just people who are blissfully unaware because they're on the outside? Like, how is that, how does that ever get in to the point where you're considering things like elite groups, like the SEALs, having to deal with this s- sort of politically correct nonsense? Personally, I think the, the policy of transparency that was made, or popularized, by President Obama, and, and this isn't ... I'm not attacking President Obama. He was aggressive on the war on terror. He made a lot of aggressive, uh, decisions. But there are certain communities where transparency, like the CIA Special Operations, is not the best policy, is they should remain in the shadows, and there should be, uh, just public trust that we are doing the right things. We don't want anyone to pass away in training. We, we, we don't wanna get anyone hurt. Um, but we also don't want to advertise our capabilities or our training or our capacities to potential, uh, military peers, like China or Russia. So, uh, the transparency for me, uh, propaganda, do it with the regular military, keep, keep special operations out of the public. But even doing it with the regular military, like, why?

Andy Stumpf 23:19 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 23:19 Like, what is-

Andy Stumpf 23:20 I don't know-

Mike Sarraille 23:20 What is that?

Andy Stumpf 23:20 I don't have an answer for how it, it started infiltrating other than it seems to be the groundswell. I mean, the military is just a, is just a group of people from normal society, so I don't think it's uncommon to see things that our society is dealing with working their way into the military. But I do hope that there is a backstop against it. And in my mind, it e- everything needs to be worked in a reverse direction. What is it we're asking these people to do in the real world execution of their job? Now, let's work our training pipeline to prepare those people for that. I don't know where the progressive ideology falls into that or how it infects that or how it got started, um, but ... And I'm a little bit detached from the teams at this point. I've been out now for almost 10 years, but I still stay in contact with people and what I am hearing, though, is that it is pushing at the corners and it is pushing at the edges, and it's not enhancing what they're doing. In their, in their words, not mine, because again, I've been out of it for almost a decade. In their words, not mine, it's not enhancing their ability to perform on the X or the objective.

Mike Sarraille 24:19 But I can't understand if the SEALs are filled with guys like you guys, how does it even get, how does it even get discussed?There's a melting pot.

Andy Stumpf 24:28 ... on the curve even in the SEAL teams. Uh, there, there's a, uh, you take even the command that we served at, at which it's not impossible to get to, it's a little bit more difficult, but if you take a team of 50 people, you're gonna have your bottom 10% and you're gonna have your top 10%, and everybody else in between. And it is a melting pot. I mean, I served with people who were res- just devoutly religious, devoutly religious, and then people who, come to find out later, were sociopaths and we, and m- serial killers. We've talked about that on a previous cont- uh, podcast, but, and everything in between. So, there is diversity of ideas inside of the SEAL community. People think, "Oh, it's only people who lean to the right," and I would say there are more people who lean to the right, but there are plenty who lean to the left. And we're talking ... I mean, I remember team room conversations about religion, about politics, about sexuality, and there was never like, "Yep, that's it," and we all slapped the table.

Mike Sarraille 25:18 S- let me see. Well, to his point, I wrote a book about this called The Talent War: How Special Operations and Great Organizations Win on Talent. It was about performance and about building high-performing teams and how the special operations goes about it. 'Cause when you think about it, in the private sector, people hire you based on how much industry experience y- you usually have. Well, in our profession, I can't go to a high school or a college and say, "Who here has special operations experience?" Nobody would raise their hands. So by nature, the assessment and selection process which we're talking about, Basic Underwater Demolition School, is hire for character, train for skill. And that's why we push these men and women to their limits, their mental and physical limits, 'cause that's where true character emerges, and that's what we're looking for. We're looking for mental toughness, resiliency, the ability to work as a team, and that brings up a point. You know, one of the former commandants in the Marine Corps just wrote an article a- and basically was, was arguing keep your hands off the military. The military runs off a, uh, uh, a different set of ideologies. Those ideologies are, uh, conformity to a degree, which conformity is not always a bad thing. You know, if you have a baseball team, you want some conformity to SOPs, standard operating procedures, uh, but it's also to operate as a team. So, in this training, we break people down in their individual selves and we build them up as a team player, where the public sector sort of, let's say they, they, they trend towards individuality, which is not bad either. We do want people to be people. Like Andy has a personality, I have a personality, and we almost breed this, I, I like to call it in the, the SEAL teams, a healthy disrespect for authority, to push back against my or- m- you know, I don't wanna say my orders. I never gave orders. "These are my orders." I've never said that, but, "Hey, here's my decision. This is what we're gonna do." If it's not a good ide- idea, and I outrank Andy, Andy's gonna come back and be like, "Yeah, we're not gonna do that. That's stupid and this is why." So he does it in a professional and tactful way. But I, I'm sick and tired a- and, you know, I do place very high-performing veterans into jobs. That's what I do for a living, but people based off Hollywood have these bad sort of perceptions of what the military is. It's 'cause Paramount and Warner Brothers don't paint us in a good light. We're not the Chris Kyles. Uh, this guy and all the guys I served with were the most lethal warriors in the world. I was not ... I ended up there and I was proud to be part of a team. I, I told Andy, "Always a bridesmaid, never a mi- uh, uh bride."

Narrator 27:49 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 27:49 Meaning I was part of a good team. We got, we got that mission done, we got that bride married, but the most lethal warriors I knew who no one will ever know in the public were kind, empathetic, respectful, and they loved their fellow man, and they were husbands, they were fathers, they were sons, they were, they were wives, daughters, mothers, and when they needed to dial empathy down and do the, the, the bad part of a job, they did it and they did it with, with, with lethality, and then they dialed the empathy back up. But people na- naturally gravitate towards Hollywood and they paint this bad picture as our veterans, and I will always ... I mean, I came from Atherton, man. It's one of the most affluent towns in, in, in America and I ended up amongst, uh, a lot of guys that came from nothing and their character far outweighs a lot of the people I know in the public sector.

Mike Sarraille 28:45 What is it about these movies? Like why, why do they paint veterans in that way and why does it permeate our culture? Like that ... Y- you would think that depictions in fiction would not overwhelm the reality of w- what, what is needed and what gets done, but it kinda does.

Andy Stumpf 29:08 I think it's harder to tell the full story when you have a time compressed medium to tell that story in. If you wanna have people put their butts into seats, and it's, uh, in the last 20 plus years of sustained combat operation, you're probably gonna make a movie about things exploding, bullets flying over your head. You might dive into a little bit of the storyline on some people's lives, but it's an easier, unfortunately, story and narrative to tell than to truly unpack what it takes to live in that world for that long.

Mike Sarraille 29:40 And that's probably the only exposure other than things like this, like a podcast where people actually get to sit down and talk, that the only exposure these people ever have if they don't know anyone that was in the SEALs or no one wa- anyone that was a Green Beret or Ranger-

Andy Stumpf 29:52 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 29:53 ... or what have you, they don't, they don't know. So, you know, maybe they read an article in the Times like, "Oh, these people are assholes. This is terrible. Look what they're doing to the recruits. We need to dial this down. We need to dial this back," like I have to do at the office. Like they don't have a comprehension of like what is necessary to get the job done and what you guys have to do.

Andy Stumpf 30:13 Yeah, if I could rewind the clock back to 2010, my last deployment, and you take somebody who says that the training that we are talking about is unnecessary, like why don't you just get in my hip pocket for tonight? Why don't you just come with me on target and at the end of this, we're gonna do a debrief, and you let me know how difficult you think the training should be so you can perform at this level in an environment that might take your life? And they're gonna go, "Okay." Well, I don't know what they would say, but I would assume they would say-... "Yeah, you guys can make this as, really as hard as possible, and I'm totally good with you gassing people, and maybe you should gas them for longer many more times, and you should do this." It's the, it would blow their fucking mind what is actually required to be able to perform in that environment. They, and I can't fault them for not understanding that, because they just don't have exposure to it.

Mike Sarraille 30:56 We've gotten comfortable. We've gotten way too comfortable here. A- and if they saw the atrocities that we saw over there, they would understand why, you know, evil exists and it, you, you've heard the Ralph, uh, Waldo Emerson quote, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to stand by and, and do nothing." And that, I mean, you, you, we saw ISIS throwing gay men from seven-story roofs with the people in the town watching. Uh, there is evil and, unfortunately, sometimes, uh, you've gotta go to hell to send somebody to hell. It's a, it's a famous quote. Um, it's an ugly job. Uh, I think you said it best. I, I watched an interview where you said, "War leaves a fingerprint."

Andy Stumpf 31:41 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 31:42 It leaves a fingerprint and, and that fingerprint will always be a part of our, our DNA. Um, and I question some of the things we did and, and the outcomes of the war. And, and I even went back as a BUD/S instructor. I was, I was the junior officer training course director for the SEALs that graduated BUD/S, and my job in one month was to turn them into ground force commanders, GFCs as we call it, and I worked a Hell Week evolution. And when I worked it, I was the, uh, not the, what do you call it, the, not the phase officer, but the OIC for the, the, the evolution.

Andy Stumpf 32:12 Oh, probably just like the shift lead or something like that.

Mike Sarraille 32:14 Yeah, the shift lead. And the first time I, I looked at the guys and I'm like, "Oh my God, we're gonna kill these kids." And they're like, "Hey, hey, Mike, calm down. We thought that the first time we saw this training as well." And we've, we've all been through it, but when you're watching it-

Andy Stumpf 32:25 It takes you back when you go back and actually... 'Cause you go through it the first time and it's so abstract because it's just day after day after day, and you go back as an instructor and there's not enough instructors to, in just first phase, which is where Hell Week occurs. They augment from all the other phases because it's a 24-hour training pipeline from a Sunday till about Friday afternoon. And you watch people who are on the verge of death, and they're there voluntarily. And even though you went through it, it, you sit back and you're like, "Holy shit. Like, did we look that bad?" I remember specifically asking other instructors, like, "Do you think that we looked as bad as they look when we were in training? 'Cause these dudes are the walking dead." I, it's gnarly.

Mike Sarraille 33:05 That's what I was just gonna say. It, it... Joe, you gotta understand, we've got medical personnel out there. We've got ambulances out there. Sometimes you have a psychologist out there. I mean, we are going through a checklist to mitigate risk down to the lowest, uh, level. But the interesting thing about the assessment and selection is, you know, we used to play a game, who's gonna make it through the training?

Andy Stumpf 33:25 (laughs) Good luck.

Mike Sarraille 33:25 And you are 90% wrong.

Andy Stumpf 33:27 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 33:27 I mean, we had a NCAA athlete in one of the classes, a f- a starting fullback. Didn't last two weeks of the... How long is the training? Uh, eight-

Andy Stumpf 33:35 BUD/S, 26 weeks.

Mike Sarraille 33:36 Yeah, 26 weeks. Didn't last past the, uh, the second week. And, and I, even going through it, 'cause I was a prior Recon Marine, so I thought I, I knew what they were looking for, made a judgment on some of the kids that were going through BUD/S with me. One of them was a little Asian kid who was sort of passive, uh, and unassuming.

Andy Stumpf 33:54 Is he an astronaut now?

Mike Sarraille 33:55 Yes.

Andy Stumpf 33:56 (laughs)

Mike Sarraille 33:56 And at the end of Hell Week, at the end of Hell Week, I'd look down the line and I think we started with 250, we ended up with 25. And there's this little Asian kid that weighs probably 140, 150 pounds. I'm like, "Huh. Wow, was I wrong assessing that kid as a, as a fellow student to him." And we ended up in the same, uh, SEAL team. I watched him earn the Silver Star literally with my eyes. Or, or he, he did something that he was awarded the Silver Star for. Then he went back and, and became a Navy doctor. And yeah, became a astronaut all by the age of 34, and his name is Dr. Johnny Kim. And he's, he's the most humble dude that you'll ever meet.

Andy Stumpf 34:32 Classic underachiever.

Mike Sarraille 34:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:34 So what is it when you're looking at them and they look like they're at the verge of death? Like, what, what part of the program are they going through?

Andy Stumpf 34:41 I would say when you're seeing them at that phase, it's gonna be the trenches of Hell Week. 'Cause that is literally a 24-hour-long, from Sunday evening, somewhere between sun going down at 6:00 PM to whenever they start it with breakout at 8:00 PM, all the way through to Friday. You're gonna get about two hours of sleep on Wednesday. So it's gonna be Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they're, they're absolute walking dead. By-

Joe Rogan 35:03 Is...

Andy Stumpf 35:04 By design.

Joe Rogan 35:04 They're just barely getting any sleep at all?

Andy Stumpf 35:07 Two hours of sleep on Wednesday, that's it.

Joe Rogan 35:08 That's it. So-

Andy Stumpf 35:09 You might get like some micro rewards because everything is like a team evolution. There's some really famous pictures of people running with boats on their heads, and if you win an evolution, you maybe get five minutes of standing there by yourself. Or the instructors might let you put your boat down and they'll not pay attention to you for a little bit so you can get like a micro nap. Other than that, they're, they're just moving constantly. Evolution after evolution after evolution after evolution.

Joe Rogan 35:31 How can you stay awake that long?

Andy Stumpf 35:33 Hypothermic. You're constantly being told to do things. I mean, the main tools that you have at BUD/S is the beach, so you have sand, which is obviously an amazing abrasive, and the cold water. And, and like the main tools at BUD/S are telephone poles, which are super low tech. These IBSs, inflatable boats, small, which is a air-filled rubber boat carried by s- uh, six people on each, or three on each side and an officer in the back generally, 'cause as Mike knows from his career, they're just generally doing less than the enlisted. (laughs) Um, and that's it. I mean, those are the main tools. So they're always... They're racing, they're running, they're paddling their boats, they're call- crawling through the mud pits. They're just constantly moving.

Joe Rogan 36:13 So the sleep deprivation is about testing your will or testing your ability to endure when you're in conflict.

Andy Stumpf 36:19 And your character.

Joe Rogan 36:20 Your character.

Andy Stumpf 36:20 And your character. I would describe, and this is my description, not anything that I think the Navy would agree with, but I would describe BUD/S training as an ability to look at who somebody really is when you're at the lowest point you ever, ever thought you've been at emotionally, physiologically, psych- psychologically. And when presented a choice...... are you gonna take care of yourself, or are you gonna take care of the people that are next to you? That is what BUD/S, to me, boils down to.

Mike Sarraille 36:50 Make somebody cold and make somebody tired, and we're talking three days without sleep. I mean, when in your youth, prior to that, did you ever go three days without sleep?

Andy Stumpf 36:59 Probably never.

Mike Sarraille 36:59 Ever. Ever. And you see different peop- you see people for who they are.

Andy Stumpf 37:04 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 37:04 And you can think somebody as hard as, uh, hard as hell, you know, at the beginning stages of, of BUD/S, and then everything changes in that one week. And, uh, you know, what we found, personally, this is, is my anecdotal sort of learning, is that people who faced a lot of obstacles early in life before getting to SEAL training usually have the scar tissue of resilience, and they do pretty damn well.

Andy Stumpf 37:28 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 37:28 And the thing about BUD/S is you don't know anyone's story. You know when no one's ... I mean, uh, yeah, you may know that Andy's from the Santa Cruz area and Mike's from, from, uh, from Palo Alto area, but you don't know their background. Point in case, Johnny Kim, you know, I knew, uh, I've known Johnny for 15 years, and then we finally hear on the Jocko podcast where he sort of goes into his background, that his dad was killed by police. And he, he was sort of, you know, he's the one that called the police on that day. His dad had a standoff and he blames himself. We never knew that about Johnny. But had I known that before making an assessment of Johnny, I would have realized that, that, that kid at the time had been through a lot more, uh, in life than I had.

Joe Rogan 38:12 And there's no other way.

Andy Stumpf 38:13 I don't think that there is.

Joe Rogan 38:15 How else could you know w- what, what someone's capable of? I mean, unless you really test them like that, it doesn't seem like there's another way. Otherwise, you, y- like you were saying, you don't know who they are until they're under that kind of stress.

Andy Stumpf 38:30 And for clarity, the selection process is not perfect. There are still people that make their way through. I have seen people who have been ... fully made it through the multi-year training pipeline who have been awarded their trident, they've may- maybe even done a combat deployment. I have seen them quit. I have seen them give up, which is supposed to be what that training crucible is all about, finding those people that in theory would never be able or would never allow themself to make that decision. It's ju- it's just not perfect, but it's as close as I think we can possibly get.

Mike Sarraille 39:02 I have a deep respect for anyone who makes it through BUD/S.

Andy Stumpf 39:05 Sure. Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 39:05 That they ... You are part of the select few. But let me re- like, let me reshape this for you. Ultimately in the, the career, uh, of a SEAL or, uh, uh, Army Special Forces or 75th Ranger Regiment, they all go through very similar training. That's just the entrance exam. It's a long entrance exam, and it's the longer- longest behavioral interview probably in hi- i- in the world. And, uh, to Andy's point, we still get it wrong, but that's the entrans- ex- eh, entrance exam. And then the next part of your career, the next, you know, potential, uh, five years, 20 years, 30 years, it, it then sort of transforms into performance. Can you perform? Can you do the tactical and technical side? We already know you have the mental toughness, the resilience, but there's a lot of guys that graduate BUD/S that just, quite frankly, in his- to his point, this, this talent distribution, this normal distribution, this bell curve. I mean, we've got our top 2% and they're completely in a different realm, and then you've got the 98% and you can split that into multiple traunches of the high performers, middle of the road performers, and then, uh, uh, we call it the bottom of the barrel.

Joe Rogan 40:12 And when you get out of BUD/S, what is the process, like once you graduate, once you're out of BUD/S, what's the process from there out?

Mike Sarraille 40:21 Training.

Andy Stumpf 40:22 Yeah, I'm a little over my skis on this one because they changed it. When I went through, we did a bunch ... So, the goal at the end of the day is to be awarded your trident. It's a metal pin that you get handed and they change your NEC, or what does that mean? Naval Enlistment Classification?

Mike Sarraille 40:35 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 40:36 It ch- it changed it to a 5326 for an enlisted person, which means you're a SEAL. When you show up on ... Like, you're now officially a SEAL. When I went through, it was BUD/S, it was static line jump school out at Fort Ben and we checked into our team, and they put us through another six months to a year of training. And then you went around all of the departments and you tested in front of your peers and you were doing calculations for a demo. You were planning a dive with currents, you were taking apart weaponry. I mean, you were talking about tactics. And it, it was a very ... At the time, I, I was like, "This is unbelievable." Like, I thought it was just this robust test of knowledge. I look back now, I'm like, "Holy shit, those were the entry level," like, those were just the chapters. I didn't understand the words that were even on the page. So, each team kind of did their own thing. And, you know, post 9/11, a lot of things got course corrected, and I think this is one of them. They realize it's not a good idea to have SEAL Team 5, which is literally a, a nine iron golf shot away from SEAL Team 3 doing different training. Probably better if we all get the same product at the end of the day. So, now when you graduate BUD/S, you go to a program called ... it's SQT, SEAL Qualification Training, which is gonna be like another maybe two years depending on when you time it. And you go through ev- cold weather training, jungle training, uh, desert training, wea- like everything. You know, comms, all of that stuff. And at the end of that, they graduate as a class. They're all awarded their trident, so they all have the same baseline level of training, and then you go to your SEAL team. So, you're two years into a pipeline before you show up for your first day on the job at a SEAL team.

Mike Sarraille 42:05 And that's what I went through.

Andy Stumpf 42:06 Like what he's describing.

Mike Sarraille 42:06 Like broadly. Like there, there's gonna be some outliers in that, but that, broadly that covers what they're gonna do for the pipeline. Basically, we were better and smarter than, than his generation.

Andy Stumpf 42:15 They knew more, for sure.

Joe Rogan 42:16 Is it difficult to get people to ... Is it like ... Do, do you have the same amount of people that are trying to become SEALs now as there was in the past? Or is it ...

Mike Sarraille 42:27 I would say so.

Andy Stumpf 42:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:28 Yeah?

Andy Stumpf 42:28 I would say so. If not more.

Mike Sarraille 42:29 It's, it's more competitive to even get into the training.

Andy Stumpf 42:32 Yeah. Real-

Mike Sarraille 42:32 Because they've got thousands of kids competing for only 250 slots per class. And these kids are better athletes, they're smarter, uh, so it's, it's more competitive. So, the process is work. The- y- there is something to say for Hollywood and, and, and, you know, the Paramount+ show, you know, SEAL Team, they are a funnel filler.

Joe Rogan 42:52 ... for recruitment, for high-performing kids coming out of high school or college that, that wanna give it a shot to see if they have what it takes to become a, uh, a SEAL, an Army Special, uh, Forces, uh, Green Beret, Ranger Regiment, MARSOC, Raider. Um, and that's the whole point. The whole point is to, uh, we hope the next generation behin- coming behind us is better, faster, stronger than, uh, than we were.

Andy Stumpf 43:15 It, it's interesting you ask that though, because in one of those articles, and I believe it was around, uh, I read it in an article, it was around the young man's death, it was talking about the attrition rate, you know, the number of people that are making it through.

Joe Rogan 43:26 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 43:27 And it would appear that the attrition rate, or the number of people making it through is decreasing, which gives you an opportunity to look at that in two different directions. I know I have my take on it and then there seemed to be a more popular take that was being talked about. And the more popular take was, "Well, this training is too hard. Why are we doing these things?" The way I look at it is, let's assume that the training has actually been the same largely since its inception. I think it was in, like, the '40s or '50s when they switched from being the, you know, the UDT into the SEAL teams. If the training's actually stayed the same and we're using the same fucking telephone pole logs, I wouldn't be shocked if we were still using some of the actual same telephone pole logs from back in the day, then what is it that is actually tr- changing? And the answer is, the people who are attempting the training. So, instead of vilifying the training, maybe we oughta take a hard look at our society and maybe the curriculum is just doing, is doing just fine, but as a society, we're getting softer and softer and softer with less resilience. And that, to me, explains a lot more the, the differences in attrition than the actual curriculum itself.

Joe Rogan 44:31 It's hard to argue that that's not the case in terms of the people that you see today. Like, it seems like today, people d- demand more, they feel like they deserve more, they feel like they're entitled to more, and they feel like they wanna work less. I mean, that, that's a narrative that you see pushed over and over and over again, which is the exact opposite you want for any kind of extraordinary achievement. That attitude is gonna keep you from ever being extraordinary at anything if you think that the world owes you something-

Andy Stumpf 45:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:01 ... you think that you're entitled to something, you think that you're working too hard. The, the people that excel in any endeavor in life are the people that are willing to work the smartest, the hardest, and the people that are able to get out of their own fucking way and realize that they're task-oriented, they, they get the job done, whatever the fuck it is. People that concentrate on ... And, and this is something that's enforced in our society, people that concentrate on the, the negative aspects of things, like the, like, that, you know, "Why is it so hard? Why is this, why does this person have something that I don't?" You know, "Why do they get a chance and I don't?" And that, that kind of thinking is encouraged in our culture today. It's, like, encouraged that if you didn't succeed, it's more likely that somebody fucked you over. It's, it's less likely that you're kind of fucking lazy or entitled or, you know, and nobody wants to tell anybody that today. Nobody wants to tell you, but you're getting worked up on.

Andy Stumpf 45:58 Well, or you'll get ganged up on-

Joe Rogan 45:59 Yes.

Andy Stumpf 45:59 ... by the people who are used to being told, like, "It's not me, it's everything else-"

Joe Rogan 46:02 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 46:02 ... externally." Yeah, I don't know where the end state leads to that, but I don't, I don't think it's awesome. I don't, I don't think it's the place where we wanna end up.

Joe Rogan 46:10 It's only awesome for people who don't think like that, 'cause then they excel. (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 46:15 It, uh, it's like- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:17 You know what I'm saying?

Andy Stumpf 46:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:18 I mean, for, you know, I had this conversation, uh, with someone about, uh, uh, Gordon Ryan, like, why is Gordon Ryan so good? And I said, "Well, one of the reasons why he's so good is he works every day."

Andy Stumpf 46:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:29 He's, he's 365 days a year, he doesn't take any days off.

Andy Stumpf 46:31 Almost like he's dedicated his life to it.

Joe Rogan 46:33 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 46:33 Crazy, right?

Joe Rogan 46:34 Yeah, crazy.

Andy Stumpf 46:34 Who would've thunk?

Joe Rogan 46:35 Crazy. I mean, you, you wa- everybody wants to be a bad motherfucker, but nobody wants to do what it takes-

Andy Stumpf 46:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:39 ... to become that. And therein lies the problem, I think. So, one, I, I think the next epidemic that we need to confront and confront now is victimhood. It's, it's permeating the United States-

Andy Stumpf 46:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:51 ... uh, rapidly. But you're awarded for it.

Andy Stumpf 46:53 You're rewarded for it.

Joe Rogan 46:54 But you look at Gordon Ryan, everyone who looks at him on social media thinks it just came overnight.

Andy Stumpf 46:59 Well, he just got canceled on social media. I can't believe you brought that up.

Joe Rogan 47:01 Yeah, what is happening with this v-

Andy Stumpf 47:03 They shut his account down.

Joe Rogan 47:05 They didn't even know why, they didn't even tell him why. They said it was bullying.

Andy Stumpf 47:09 So-

Joe Rogan 47:10 He's literally in a business where elite athletes that are trained killers try to bully each other.

Andy Stumpf 47:16 I think-

Joe Rogan 47:16 (laughs) That's, but it's what they do.

Andy Stumpf 47:18 Yes. And then they end up going to a mat and actually objectively working it out, and then they generally high five afterwards and they fucking move on.

Joe Rogan 47:23 Yeah, and a hug. If you look at the photos of him and Andre Galvao after he strangled him-

Andy Stumpf 47:27 It was awesome.

Joe Rogan 47:27 ... they're, like, hugging each other. He's holding Andre's hand up, they, they hug.

Andy Stumpf 47:31 I think, and I heard this from somebody else, that he ... Let's be honest, Gordon gets a little wild from time to time, so he'll say some shit.

Joe Rogan 47:38 Of course he can, or of course he does, rather. That's why he's who he is-

Andy Stumpf 47:41 'Cause he, he-

Joe Rogan 47:42 ... 'cause he does think like that.

Andy Stumpf 47:43 I think, what I was told is that he essentially told someone that they should go kill themself, which again, that was told to me second or third hand, but that would fall into, like, the bullying policy.

Joe Rogan 47:54 Did he tell another elite jujitsu fighter that they should kill themselves?

Andy Stumpf 47:57 I would be shocked if it wasn't another elite jujitsu fighter.

Joe Rogan 48:00 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 48:00 And I'm not even positive that's what happened, but to me, in, in my head I'm like, "Okay, that would probably make sense if they were to take that action."

Joe Rogan 48:06 H- how many times did we tell that to each other when you do something embarrassing? "Don't do-"

Andy Stumpf 48:09 I told that to you when we were out there.

Joe Rogan 48:13 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 48:13 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:14 It's, I mean, is it, uh, what? I mean, what does that mean? Is it literal? It, no, it's, you're, it's-

Andy Stumpf 48:19 It's clearly not literal.

Joe Rogan 48:21 Yeah, it's a figure of speech. It means embarrassing. Yeah. You should be embarrassed. Yeah, you should be embarrassed. It's like if Sebastian Manosocle, "You should be embarrassed."

Andy Stumpf 48:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:30 I mean, that's, should he say that? Is that okay? Is that bullying?

Andy Stumpf 48:33 Fortunately, he has a backup account where he basically posted-

Joe Rogan 48:36 I know.

Andy Stumpf 48:36 ... the, the screen was like, "R- RIP to me."

Joe Rogan 48:39 Well, yeah, he kinda knew-

Andy Stumpf 48:41 Poor bastard.

Joe Rogan 48:41 ... but, uh, the, my fear is that they go after his backup account now.

Andy Stumpf 48:44 Uh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:45 Which is kind of fucked, 'cause, like, I actually had a conversation with Zuckerberg about him. He's, you know, he's like, "Do you like the way he talks online?" I'm like, "It's fun."... no one's getting hurt. Like these, the, the people that he's doing this to are also people like that. Now you could be that person who wants every martial artist to behave like a noble warrior who's out there testing their skills with respect and dignity, or you could be the guy that fucking fills up arenas 'cause people g- wanna come to see him. That's what Floyd Mayweather is. That's what Gordon Ryan is. Like the elite of the elite who talk a ton of shit and there's a psychological warfare aspect that I don't think, I think non-competitors don't understand that. There's a thing about that guy. He gets into your fucking head. When you go to sleep at night and you, you think about the, the fucking Instagram post he made about you-

Andy Stumpf 49:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:32 ... you're like, "Fuck."

Narrator 49:33 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:34 There's part of that. And-

Andy Stumpf 49:36 What was Zuckerberg's, what were his, what were his thoughts on the way that he communicated?

Joe Rogan 49:39 He doesn't like it. You know, Zuckerberg is a respectful martial artist. He's doing martial arts now and I think he's, you know, he's a nice guy and I think he wants other people to be nice guys and he doesn't want that kind of harassment and bullying on social media networks. But I think that's censorship, and I don't think censorship is ultimately good. I think you have to ... Like if people don't like the way he's behaving, you should not follow him. You should not pay attention to him, you should not support him, you should not go to see him. Or if you do like it and you're like me and you t- you don't have a problem with it at all and you think it's funny, you know, you should follow him.

Andy Stumpf 50:13 Yes.

Joe Rogan 50:13 I mean this, this is not a terrible person. He's not a bad guy. In fact, he's exemplary. He's a guy who's doing something that's very extraordinary. He's w- you know, what Goggins likes to call uncommon amongst uncommon men. And that's what he is. He's, he's as uncommon as you get. He's the fucking best ever. Like leave him alone.

Andy Stumpf 50:32 It, it worries me though that y- you know, obviously Zuckerberg maybe replace him with somebody else 'cause that guy literally could probably throw the switches at these companies.

Joe Rogan 50:42 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 50:43 But what does it matter whether or not I like the way he conducts himself online? Like I'm super appreciative of the rights that we have in this country but I've yet to come one that says you have the right not to be offended-

Joe Rogan 50:54 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 50:54 ... at any point in your life.

Joe Rogan 50:55 You should be offended at some things.

Andy Stumpf 50:57 Well you-

Joe Rogan 50:57 It's not bad for you. You should f- be offended, you should, and then you should figure out why you're being offended.

Andy Stumpf 51:01 Well you also have the choice, like you said, I don't know if people know this who are on Instagram or Facebook, it's really easy to click the same button that you click to follow that person and not have to deal with that.

Joe Rogan 51:10 You can block them and you'll never see anything they post ever again.

Andy Stumpf 51:13 That's bullying, right?

Joe Rogan 51:14 You c- (laughs)

Narrator 51:15 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 51:15 (laughs)

Mike Sarraille 51:15 We're now in an age where facts have feelings.

Joe Rogan 51:18 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 51:18 Facts, in fact, have feelings but-

Joe Rogan 51:19 (sighs)

Mike Sarraille 51:19 ... there, there's an element of showmanship in anything you do and h- he understands that well.

Andy Stumpf 51:25 Yeah.

Mike Sarraille 51:25 Even in the SEAL teams there was an element of showmanship. I don't-

Andy Stumpf 51:28 If you don't know what you're doing, just look good.

Mike Sarraille 51:29 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 51:29 That was one of the rules I lived by.

Joe Rogan 51:30 You're thinking something big. I'll, I'll give like Jocko. There's an element of Jocko that I, like, I highly respect. He's got the showmanship piece-

Andy Stumpf 51:37 100%.

Mike Sarraille 51:38 ... down and, and he won a lot of fanfare because of that. He does that well. But y- you know, you look at our industry, the highest performers are also the wildest variables. They're ... Like to, to attain that level, to get to that level, there is an imbalance, an, uh, an imbalance, uh, amongst those guys.

Joe Rogan 51:58 Look at MMA, look at Jon Jones. He's the wildest motherfucker ever and he's the best. I mean there's a reason why he's the greatest light heavyweight of all time. He's fucking wild. He's a wild dude. I mean when he was fighting Daniel Cormier and they were doing the press conference he said, "I beat you when I was on coke."

Andy Stumpf 52:14 (laughs)

Mike Sarraille 52:16 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:16 You know how funny that is? That's fucking funny, man 'Cause that fucks with a guy. When a guy's getting up in the morning and eating oats and, and drinking distilled water and fucking jogging up hills and this dude's doing blow-

Andy Stumpf 52:27 Looking in the mirror as you're brushing your teeth like, "Fuck." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:30 ... partying, dancing, kicks your ass. That's, that-

Andy Stumpf 52:34 Will he be back?

Joe Rogan 52:35 Yes. Yes, he'll be back. Yeah, he'll be back as a heavyweight and, you know, it's a lot of exciting challenges for him at heavyweight. I, I like the fact that he decided to do that. It's interesting. I think he's still the best light heavyweight in the world and he can still make the weight. I mean, he's not really a heavyweight, he's deciding to become a heavyweight. He's doing it through deadlifting and squatting and, like, serious power lifting. You know, he's put on a lot of weight. He's put on ... I think he's like 253 now or 255 now. He's fucking ... He's a big fella.

Andy Stumpf 53:04 Still with the same gas tank?

Joe Rogan 53:05 I don't know. It's ... I don't know how you could, honestly. You know, I mean how, how do you have the same gas tank? You don't see heavyweights operate at the same pace that you see welterweights or lightweights.

Andy Stumpf 53:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:16 There's a reason for that. I don't think you can. And if you look at someone like Demetrious Johnson who's a fucking, a whirlwind in there, he's 125 pounds. There's a ... You know, you don't have a lot ... The demand for oxygen is very different than Francis Ngannou. You, you don't see a guy like Ngannou that fights at that pace. They, they literally cannot. It's, there's, these variables need to be taken into consideration when you apply tactics and strategy and how you choose to ... You know, obviously he has a different amount of force in each shot and that is also the case too. I talked to Max Holloway about that once. We were talking about, uh, Jose Aldo and I was, I was asking him like, like he knew that Aldo was fading after like one or two rounds and he said, "It's power." He goes, "Those guys have more power than me." He goes, "They're hitting harder, you know, and that shit takes up a lot of energy." And he was kind of laughing about it. He's like, "I don't have any power, man." He's like, "Those guys have so much more power." He goes, "I gotta hit a guy a lot of times to take him out." But these guys, th- these one shot guys, they're all like ... That's Conor, Conor McGregor who's got that incredible power. But that power, when you throw at that explosiveness, you're essentially sprinting whereas other guys are running marathons. You know, a guy like Max Holloway's putting that volume on you. Nick Diaz puts that volume on you. It's a different s- type of fighting.

Andy Stumpf 54:36 I got nothing but respect for those guys. How much would you have to get paid to get in an octagon?

Mike Sarraille 54:42 A lot of money.

Joe Rogan 54:43 (laughs)

Mike Sarraille 54:43 And I would not last long.

Andy Stumpf 54:45 I don't think, I don't think there's an amount of money that I would do it. Those guys are out of their damn minds.

Mike Sarraille 54:49 You, you would do it for the right price.

Andy Stumpf 54:50 No, I would not.

Mike Sarraille 54:51 You would do it, bitch.

Andy Stumpf 54:51 I like to do safe things.

Joe Rogan 54:53 Shut the fuck up. (laughs)

Mike Sarraille 54:54 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:54 He's still full of shit.

Mike Sarraille 54:56 This is the guy that has the world record for a flying squirrel suit.

Andy Stumpf 54:58 I used to have the world record.

Joe Rogan 54:59 Oh, who's got it now?

55:00 Uh-

55:01 Does it bother you?

55:02 No, no, I, God-

55:03 Not even a little?

55:05 No. I, I was doing it to try to... I was doing it for fundraising.

Andy Stumpf 55:09 I think it, I think it bothers you.

Joe Rogan 55:10 Th- there's nothing, there's nothing worse-

55:11 What a sad ass dude.

55:11 ... than a has-been.

Andy Stumpf 55:12 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:12 And, uh-

Andy Stumpf 55:13 That's true.

Joe Rogan 55:14 Are you speaking from experience?

55:15 I would just kill, I would kill-

55:16 As a cuck? (laughs)

55:16 ... yourself. I would kill yourself.

Andy Stumpf 55:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:18 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 55:20 It's-

Joe Rogan 55:20 Oh my God, we're gonna get kicked off of Spotify.

Andy Stumpf 55:23 ... I'm embarrassed.

Joe Rogan 55:24 L- luckily, Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify, is an MMA fan, so I don't think that's happening.

Andy Stumpf 55:28 I have nothing but res- I'm dead serious. Those guys, to me, they're out of their mind.

Joe Rogan 55:32 Yeah, well-

Andy Stumpf 55:32 That's just like-

Joe Rogan 55:33 ... that's what they wanna do.

Andy Stumpf 55:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:34 They want, they wanna be that guy. They wanna be the top of the heap. They wanna be that fucking warrior standing on a pile of heads. And there's no other way to do it, you know? If you wanna, if you wanna be the top dog in MMA, you know, that's a weird desire, but a lot of people have it. It's, it's a extraordinary accomplishment to become a guy like that and there's very few people that are capable of doing it, you know? And there's a lot of talk in MMA about like fighter pay and w- whether they should be paid more. I think they should, but I'm not a fucking businessman. I don't understand... I don't, I don't sit down and crunch the numbers. I don't understand how much it costs to run a promotion. It's a lot. There's a lot of money involved.

Andy Stumpf 56:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:08 I, I don't... But also, I know that they get paid more than boxers. When bo- when you, we talk about boxers, you talk about elite boxers like Floyd Mayweather or Manny Pacquiao, the, the, the top of the heap guys who make a shit ton of money, and they do. But the undercard fighters in those fights, they don't make shit.

Andy Stumpf 56:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:23 They, they, they barely get by, but that's 'cause they don't put asses in seats. There's a direct correlation between how many people are coming. They're, they're like, they're plopping down money... Oh, uh, Volkanovski is fighting? Fuck yeah. They put that money down. Why do they put that money down? 'Cause Volkanovski is a fucking animal and they wanna see that guy perform. He's being paid for what he's done and if he's not being compensated fairly at that level, well, that's a different conversation. And I don't n- I mean, there's contracts, there's negotiations, there's managers, there's a lot of shit involved in running a business that I, I'm not... That's not my world, I don't understand it. I don't put any thought into it. So I can talk about it from respect and the way I feel about fighters, I feel like they should be paid a lot of money. I feel like you should be r- able to retire and, you know, your body's essentially broken. By the time these guys are 40 years old and they're getting out of the game, their fucking knees are shot. Michael Bisping has two artificial knees now, he's missing an eye, his one eye is dead. I mean, it's a, it's a fucking hard world. It's a hard world and I feel like you should be able to retire and that should be... You're good. You should have enough money in the bank, so if you don't live like an asshole, you should be able to take care of yourself forever.

Andy Stumpf 57:32 E- educate me here. Uh, so the NFL has a players union. Have the MMA fighters for the different leagues created sort of fighter unions?

Joe Rogan 57:41 There's been d- there's been discussion about the problem. The difference is MA fighters are individuals competing against other individuals.

Andy Stumpf 57:48 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:48 It's not a team sport.

Andy Stumpf 57:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 57:50 You know, I, I could see the merit in having a structure like a union, I just don't see fighters going along with it. Because like s- let's say, like a big fight is coming up, right? Like, uh, uh, Alex Pereira is fighting, uh, Is- Israel Adesanya. If Pereira gets injured and he can't fight Adesanya, and you know, there's a bunch of people that are saying like, "I want to fight," and then there's... Well, you have to get paid the same amount as Pereira, this is our union dues. And then someone comes along and says, "Listen, I'll fucking take that shot for half that money because I want to be the fucking champion and I want that opportunity." You're gonna get fighters that cross that line.

Andy Stumpf 58:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 58:27 And if there's no union, that makes it easier to do. Could, could you conceivably form a union where people would get paid the, the correct amount? Yes, I think it could be done. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how it could be structured, but, uh, I think there's some arguments. There's some arguments that a union would be a good thing, and then there's some arguments that it's better to have, uh, uh, a group like the UFC, uh, uh, an organization that cares deeply about the fighters and tries to compensate them fairly. Do they? I, you know, again, it's not my world. I'm, this is my world. I sit down, I put the fucking headsets on, I understand what these guys are capable of, I know their history, I know what they're doing. I, I talk about what's happening during the fight, I try to give honor and respect to it. That's what I do. Uh, other than that, all I can say is I want them to be compensated fairly.

Andy Stumpf 59:16 Y- how many fights have you called at this point?

Joe Rogan 59:17 Thousands. I have no idea.

Andy Stumpf 59:19 What's the wildest shit you've ever seen go on in there?

Joe Rogan 59:22 Broken legs. Broken-

Andy Stumpf 59:24 Oh, like the shin on shin?

Joe Rogan 59:24 A lot of KOs. Shin on shins are the worst because those guys are never the same again. Never the s- no one, no one breaks a leg and is ever the same again.

Andy Stumpf 59:33 Yeah, I have a hard time watching those. Like-

Joe Rogan 59:35 KOs-

Andy Stumpf 59:35 ... I only watch it once, I cannot watch it when you guys start doing the slow motion replays.

Joe Rogan 59:40 KOs are rough, but guys have bounced back from KOs. Again, Bisping, like that fucking KO against Dan Henderson was one of the worst KOs I've ever seen in my life. He got flatlined and then Bisping, uh, was out cold and Henderson leaps through the air and smashes him in the face while he's unconscious. I mean, it's like he literally has... Henderson's logo is an image of him flying through the air-

Andy Stumpf 1:00:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:04 ... delivering this haymaker to an unconscious Michael Bisping. Find Henderson's logo. I mean, this is like Henderson's fuck you to Michael Bisping. He literally made a logo of him hit- hitting, hitting Bisping when he was out cold.

Andy Stumpf 1:00:18 It's a power statement.

Joe Rogan 1:00:19 That punch right there-

Andy Stumpf 1:00:20 Oh my God.

Joe Rogan 1:00:20 ... in the left corner.

Andy Stumpf 1:00:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:21 That's him. That is him. That, that is that. That's his most, uh, you know, historic moment, his most brutal, legendary moment.

Andy Stumpf 1:00:33 (laughs) Look at the one with the red coat. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:34 I mean, you know how crazy that is? Look, the red coat one is hilarious.

Andy Stumpf 1:00:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:00:38 But you know how brutal that is? Like the guy's fucking logo is him delivering a flying right hand, and he had one of the greatest right hands in the history of the sport. If you ever hug Dan Henderson...He feels like this table. He's made out of wood. There are certain dudes, they just have like a different composition to their body. Like, I talked to his massage therapist, and she was like, "His fucking body is like... You, you can't get in there." Like, she'd be, like, trying to mas- you're not going anywhere. It's so... He's so fucking dense. And when he would deliver a right hand, it was just preposterous, and he would load that fucking thing up and just always look for it, always look for it. And when he landed it, you're fucked. He knocked out Fedor. That fucking guy is a middleweight, and he knocked out one of the greatest heavyweights of all time in a fight where he was in trouble. He got caught in a bad situation, he was on the bottom, Fedor is cracking him, and he escapes. He sneaks out the side and cracks him with an uppercut, and then, and then lands a couple follow-up shots and puts him out. That motherfucker could punch. And imagine his logo is him flying through the air-

Andy Stumpf 1:01:46 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:46 ... hitting an unconscious opponent.

Andy Stumpf 1:01:49 It's, it's quite the boss move, for sure. (laughs)

Narrator 1:01:52 That, that is like pulling your dick out and, you know, laying it on the table.

Andy Stumpf 1:01:56 And having a big old hog.

Joe Rogan 1:01:57 Big old hog.

Andy Stumpf 1:01:58 (laughs)

Narrator 1:02:00 Big old donkey dick.

Andy Stumpf 1:02:01 I mean- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:02 Have you ever been hugged by dudes where you're just like, "Don't ever hug me again"?

Narrator 1:02:06 Yeah, all the time. I fucking hug all those guys. Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:02:09 Insane.

Joe Rogan 1:02:10 Yeah, man. I mean, literally, I mean, look, when you meet Brock Lesnar, you're like, "What the fuck are you?" I had a joke about Brock Lesnar. I'm like, "I'm not worried that Brock Lesnar would fuck me. I'm worried he would use me as a condom to fuck something way bigger."

Andy Stumpf 1:02:23 (laughs)

Narrator 1:02:23 (laughs) Breaking into the zoo, like, "Where are we going?" "Shut the fuck up!"

Andy Stumpf 1:02:28 (laughs)

Narrator 1:02:28 "Okay."

Andy Stumpf 1:02:29 God.

Narrator 1:02:29 "Okay."

Andy Stumpf 1:02:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:31 Yeah. I mean, there's, there's different kinds of humans in this world.

Andy Stumpf 1:02:34 Tim feels like that.

Joe Rogan 1:02:35 Oh, yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:02:35 Fucking to my own poor decision-making was rolling around with Tim this morning for a little bit, doing wrestling practice. He feels exactly the same way.

Joe Rogan 1:02:43 Yeah, he's a giant chimp. That's what he is.

Andy Stumpf 1:02:45 That's what I was gonna, that's how I was gonna describe him. He's an ape, for sure.

Joe Rogan 1:02:46 Yeah. He is a giant chimpanzee with a psychotic mind.

Andy Stumpf 1:02:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:02:50 And a beautiful human being and a great American.

Andy Stumpf 1:02:52 I was gonna say-

Joe Rogan 1:02:52 I love that guy.

Andy Stumpf 1:02:52 ... he's one of the kindest people I've-

Joe Rogan 1:02:54 Oh, I love him to death.

Andy Stumpf 1:02:54 ... ever met, and he is so ridiculously capable and dangerous.

Joe Rogan 1:02:58 When I, when I asked that question, that's exactly who I was thinking of.

Narrator 1:03:01 Tim Kennedy.

Joe Rogan 1:03:01 'Cause when I moved to Austin in 2015, there was a workout going on at Onnit, where they were raising money for some veteran charity. And we had a mutual friend, uh, who basically, you know, had told Tim about me and "Hey, he's in the military," and he just comes up and he, he wraps his arms around me. And I, I felt so uncomfortable.

Andy Stumpf 1:03:20 (laughs)

Narrator 1:03:21 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:21 And, um, I waited for it to end, and it would seem like he was just, he was just sinking it in, almost like, "Hey."

Narrator 1:03:26 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:03:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:26 "Good to meet you."

Andy Stumpf 1:03:27 I was taking a picture with him today, and he was alternating between grabbing my balls and biting me on the shoulder for the picture.

Narrator 1:03:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:35 So unprofessional.

Andy Stumpf 1:03:35 I'm gonna say. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:35 So unprofessional.

Narrator 1:03:35 Yeah. There's, there's different kinds of humans.

Andy Stumpf 1:03:38 But what am I gonna do about it? I'm like, "Tim, Tim, please stop." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:40 You're gonna have to get on steroids. Have you ever met Yoel Romero?

Andy Stumpf 1:03:43 No.

Narrator 1:03:44 No.

Joe Rogan 1:03:44 That's the freak of all freaks. He's the freak of all freaks. Out of all the freak athletes that I've ever met in my life... You know, I talked to Luke Rockhold about him, and he's like, "Even when you hit that guy," he's like, "he's made out of metal." Like, y- you know, Yoel Romero is a famous story I've told it before, forgive me if you've heard this. He went to a doctor, because the UFC sent him to this doctor after one of his fights, and, uh, because he had a fractured, uh, orbital. And, uh, the doctor examines him and then calls the UFC. He goes, "Where did you find this guy?" And he goes, "Yeah, he's fucking amazing, right?" He goes, "No, no, no, no, you don't understand. I've never seen a human like him." He goes, "I have been studying medicine and practicing medicine for more than 40 years." He goes, "I've never seen a person like this." He goes, "The ligaments and the tendons in his eyes are three times larger than a normal person's." Like, the structure of his face is different. He had a fractured bone in his orbital. He, they said... They brought him in a few days later, he goes, "It's already healing." That's Yoel.

Andy Stumpf 1:04:48 (laughs)

Narrator 1:04:48 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:04:49 (laughs) I mean, he was on-

Andy Stumpf 1:04:50 Just run.

Joe Rogan 1:04:51 ... the Cuban Olympic-

Andy Stumpf 1:04:52 Just run.

Joe Rogan 1:04:52 ... wrestling team, uh, and just, he was a part of that program. And, you know, the way... He, he came on the podcast and Joey Diaz translated, you know, he was speaking Spanish and Joey's also Cuban and, you know, and they were, uh, they were... It was a, a beautiful thing, and he was, the way he was saying, the way he was describing it, he was like, "When you go through that program," he goes, "you become a fucking machine! You become a machine!" Because, you know, the, the elite wrestlers get better food, they eat more often, and so it, you know, motivates the people below him who they're training with every day-

Andy Stumpf 1:05:29 Oh, God. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:29 ... to beat them and get better. Yoel was a freak. And you got to understand, Yoel's still elite, and he's, he's like 43 or 44 years old. He's a fucking freak, man. He's a fucking... By the way, cheated against Tim Kennedy. Let's just say that right now. They, he, he, Tim Kennedy had him really badly hurt, cracked him, rocked him, in his corner, did some sneaky shit and kept him on the stool-

Andy Stumpf 1:05:54 What do you mean sneaky shit?

Joe Rogan 1:05:55 Sneaky shit where he wasn't, he didn't come out at the end, at the beginning of the round.

Andy Stumpf 1:05:58 They get one minute, right?

Joe Rogan 1:06:00 They get one minute, and he, uh, you know, he was still sitting down, and Tim Kennedy is walking around standing up, he's like, "What the fuck is going on?" And it, it rattled Tim, and, you know, Tim to this day said that, you know, he made a mental error getting upset and flustered about it, and, you know, it really cost him in the fight. But also, you know, he fought Yoel Romero, and Tim wound up losing that fight, but he's got a legitimate argument that they should have stopped that fight. He was not ready at the beginning of the round after, you know, Tim had him bat... See if you can find that, 'cause Tim had him badly hurt, like rocked him, in one of the worst times that Yoel had ever been rocked in a fight.

Andy Stumpf 1:06:34 Like probably almost barely made it to the chair at the end of the round?

Joe Rogan 1:06:36 Barely made it.

Andy Stumpf 1:06:37 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:06:37 Barely made it. And he got to the corner, sat down, and the, the corner, look, they did their fucking job, just like, uh, Angelo Dundee did with, uh, Cassius Clay when he fought, uh, in England, when he fought... What the fuck is that guy's name? (bongos playing) So, the gentleman in England, uh, who caught, uh, I- I- it's not the tip of my tongue. Who caught, uh, Cassius Clay when he was young with a vicious left hook and dropped him, and Angelo Dundee cut his gloves and they had to change his gloves. They're like, "Oh, his gloves are broken. We gotta get new gloves."

Andy Stumpf 1:07:06 (laughs)

Narrator 1:07:06 You know?

Andy Stumpf 1:07:06 It's gonna take a few.

Joe Rogan 1:07:07 Yeah. And, th- they kinda did the same sorta deal. See if you can find it. Did you find it? They did the same sorta deal with Yoel. Yoel, they kept him sitting down, and Tim's walking around going, "What the fuck?" They were like, he got an extra, like, I wanna say 20, 30 seconds. Henry Cooper's the guy with M- Muhammad Ali. He caught him with a left hook. So, here's Tim. Tim cracks him. He hits him with this uppercut-

Andy Stumpf 1:07:30 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:07:30 ... and another one. Tim's got him. Bam! Look at this.

Andy Stumpf 1:07:32 Get him, Tim.

Joe Rogan 1:07:32 Left h- right hand. I mean, he's got him badly hurt. Look at that, right hand, left hand. So, this is the end of the round, goes back to his corner. Tim's got him fucked, right? Look at him. He's really bad. Now, at the end of the round, the round's over, and Tim's down, and he's still sitting down. The round's supposed to start. He's still on a stool. They're wiping him off. They took all this extra time. And then finally, I wanna say it's a legit 20, 30 seconds later, Yoel gets up, and Yoel eventually catches Tim with that right hand and-

Andy Stumpf 1:08:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:01 ... and finishes him.

Andy Stumpf 1:08:04 (sniffs) Wow.

Joe Rogan 1:08:04 And Tim lost that fight. But y- there's a real argument that he should've won that fight. There's a real argument they should've stopped that fight when he was not ready and getting up at the beginning of the round. Because if you don't get up when you're suppo- you're- you're basically quitting. You're saying, "I can't, I'm not ready," which means you're not ready to fight, which means the fight's over.

Andy Stumpf 1:08:22 God, I wish I had gotten into this stuff, like, paying attention to this earlier.

Joe Rogan 1:08:26 Mm-hmm.

Andy Stumpf 1:08:26 I've only been watching UFC for, like, the past few years 'cause it now makes sense to me what the hell they're doing.

Joe Rogan 1:08:31 Dude, you gotta come with me. You gotta come with me and sit next to me.

Andy Stumpf 1:08:33 I mean, can I have-

Joe Rogan 1:08:35 Fuck yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:08:35 ... a headset and say shit that's not happening?

Narrator 1:08:37 (laughs) No, you can't say shit.

Andy Stumpf 1:08:38 Be like, "He is going for an inverted fucking..."

Narrator 1:08:41 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:08:42 You can sit there. Well, you'll know the jiu-jit, you're a brown belt, you know the jujitsu.

Andy Stumpf 1:08:44 No, now I, but now I know. I had no appreciation for it, though, until I started training.

Joe Rogan 1:08:48 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:08:48 I actually had no interest in watching it 'cause, and this is how fucking stupid I am. I'd be like, "Well, why doesn't the guy just stand up?"

Joe Rogan 1:08:56 Blah.

Andy Stumpf 1:08:56 Why, what, just stand up. What, wh- why are they up against the cage? That's boring. How hard is that?

Joe Rogan 1:09:02 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:09:02 Then you get, you get somebody who puts their hands on you a little bit, you're like, "Oh, I- I can't stand up right now."

Joe Rogan 1:09:07 Yeah, you ain't going nowhere.

Andy Stumpf 1:09:08 "And I also can't get off this cage." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:09:10 Yeah, well, that- that's a boring part of fighting that's necessary. I- I am a big advocate of never, like, removing people from a cage and never standing people up. I think if a guy can hold you down, the r- a round is five minutes long. If he can hold you down and you can't get up, tough shit. And a lot of people say, "No, you gotta have stand-ups, otherwise people just take you down and hold you down." I'm like, "So what? Then they take you down and hold you down."

Andy Stumpf 1:09:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:32 That's part of the fight. It's still less boring than baseball. So, shut the fuck up.

Narrator 1:09:37 (laughs)

Andy Stumpf 1:09:37 I think once, I mean, obviously not everybody trains, but once you start training a little bit, you have an appreciation for-

Joe Rogan 1:09:43 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:09:43 ... how hard it is to actually hold down somebody your size-

Joe Rogan 1:09:46 Yeah.

Andy Stumpf 1:09:46 ... probably same skill level, that wants to get up. Like, the cage work, it can look boring. But again, once now they understand what's going on in the fight for the underhook and the head, you're like-

Joe Rogan 1:09:55 Yes.

Andy Stumpf 1:09:55 ... "Oh, shit, this is badass."

Joe Rogan 1:09:56 You know, there's another argument too that I think they should add weapons. Like, there's a lot of shit (thumping sound) that you can't do on the... Not weapons, like knives and shit.

Andy Stumpf 1:10:03 Hold on, I was gonna say, like-

Joe Rogan 1:10:04 I mean, like, knees on the ground.

Andy Stumpf 1:10:04 ... are we talking a golf club? What are we talking? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:10:06 (laughs)

Narrator 1:10:06 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:10:06 I mean, knees on the ground.

Andy Stumpf 1:10:08 He's just left.

Joe Rogan 1:10:08 Knees to the head.

Andy Stumpf 1:10:09 (laughs)