Tim FerrissUFC Hall of Famer Bas Rutten on Self-Defense, Savage Fight Stories, Breathing Techniques, and More
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
135 min read · 27,023 words- 0:00 – 1:43
Start
- TFTim Ferriss
[upbeat music] Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. I'm gonna skip my usual preamble because I'm fidgeting in my seat. I am extremely excited about this conversation, and I don't wanna hear myself talk. So my guest today, why would I be so excited? This is Sebastiaan Rutten, better known as Bas Rutten. You can find him on Twitter and elsewhere, @BasRuttenMMA, is a Dutch-American actor, former mixed martial artist, kickboxer, and professional wrestler. He was a UFC Heavyweight Champion and a three-time King of Pancrase World Champion. We're gonna talk quite a bit about that. Finishing his career on a 22-fight unbeaten streak with a strike accuracy of 70.6%, the highest ever recorded by FightMetric. Rutten was co-host of Inside MMA on AXS TV, that's A-X-S, from 2007 to 2016, and he has been a color commentator in several MMA organizations, including Pride Fighting Championships, another thing that we will spend some time [laughs] on. He has appeared in numerous television shows, movies, and video games as an actor, and continues to be involved in MMA through his coaching and publishing of instructional materials. Bas became a naturalized American citizen in the late 1990s, and in 2015, he was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame. We'll link to all of the social, as well as the O2 Trainer, which we're gonna get to. You can find that on Instagram, @O2LongTrainer, and we'll link to YouTube, Facebook, and other places. Bas, welcome to the show. It's nice to see you.
- BRBas Rutten
Oh, very good to see you, Tim. Thank you so much for having me.
- 1:43 – 3:31
My first exposure to the unbridled might of Bas Rutten.
- TFTim Ferriss
I gotta tell you just a little story before we hop in, and it's gonna tie into a lot of things. So I rarely turn into a heavy-breathing fanboy with these types of conversations, but I have to tell you that one of the most transformative experiences of my life was in 1992, my first travel outside of the United States was to Japan, where I became an exchange student, and I wore a school uniform every day of school. And on my way to school, I would always stop at this particular bookstore because they had a magazine called Kakutogi Tsushin, and I started becoming fascinated by, by something called sh- well, you know, Shooto, of course, which was founded by, uh-
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... Sayama Satoru, and then I would also follow UWF and these really bizarre pro wrestling circuits because I saw a video from a friend of mine, this is pre-internet, where there appeared to be real knockouts occasionally, and there appeared to be [laughs] real contact. And then this thing called Pancrase comes out, and I was following this because I knew a few of the people, or knew of a few of the people involved, like Funaki, which I'll definitely want to ask you about. And I remember the, [laughs] the very first fight that I saw you in, which ended in less than a minute, opponent 50 pounds heavier, and I just remember the deafening silence in the arena at one point because no one really knew what to do. [laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
And, uh, that was my introduction to Bas Rutten, so I have followed you for a very, very, very long time, and it's a real pleasure to connect in person. So I just had to get that off my chest.
- BRBas Rutten
That's awesome.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. [laughs] It's been a long time coming, and
- 3:31 – 5:58
Why is there such a strong martial arts tradition in the Netherlands?
- TFTim Ferriss
perhaps we could just begin with a question that I've always wondered. Why is there, or why does there appear to be such a strong martial arts tradition in the Netherlands? Because when I landed in Japan, that was the first thing that I was not expecting. So there's Peter Aerts, Ernesto Hoost. You had all of these Dutch fighters.
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
People absolutely loved Ramon Dekker, for instance.
- BRBas Rutten
Awesome.
- TFTim Ferriss
And even going further back, I learned, because I did judo as my sport, which was mandatory, that the Dutch had this incredible history of judo wins going back to-
- BRBas Rutten
Oh, yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... the earliest Olympic Games. Where does that come from?
- BRBas Rutten
I have no clue. I believe because we're such a small country, and we really like the people in the world to know that we exist, maybe. I mean-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
... the kickboxers, uh, they have to be the, the best Dutch. I remember the story from, uh, well, the trainer from Hoost. You already, Ernesto Hoost, you mentioned him. Jan Plas and Johan Vos, they were two guys.
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- BRBas Rutten
And they went with their team, like Rob Kaman, all these guys at the time. I was huge fans of those. They went to Thailand, and they got their butt kicked, like really bad. And then they realized, wait a minute, predominantly they're only kicking, so what if we do Western boxing and we combine that with kicks, you know, in order to set up the kicks? And boom, the Dutch kickboxing was born, and suddenly everybody started just demolishing the Thais. I mean, you know, Ramon Dekker, you touched on him as well. He was, he was my idol. He was a good friend of mine as well. Unfortunately, he passed away a bunch of years ago, but he was like pound for pound, I would say, the, the most powerful guy. He was the first guy who became the fighter of the year in Thailand. That always went to a Thai guy, but he was so good that they couldn't go without it. They have to take him. And for him, when you see him fighting Coban, a guy over 200 matches-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- BRBas Rutten
... never been knocked out, and he was the first guy to knock him out, and the whole place, Lumpinee Stadium, champions, gets quiet, and you see Rob Kaman jumping in the ring with a Dutch flag [laughs] and he's waving it around.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
And nobody says a word. Dude, it blew my mind. That was the reason I started training at the same gym, Mang Ho. That was Ramon Dekker. So yeah-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- BRBas Rutten
... I truly believe it's, we have natural heavyweights. We have the tallest people in the world. So I think that translates really what to K-1 and Glory because that's m- predominantly heavyweight boxing at the time, the kickboxing. And then just the Dutch style that just tied everything together. Nowadays everybody... It's like Brazilian jujitsu, right? In the beginning nobody knew, but now everybody knows it. It's the same with the Dutch kickboxing. Now pretty much everybody's doing
- 5:58 – 13:47
Breathlessness, Bruce Lee, bullies, and birds: a glimpse into Bas’s childhood.
- BRBas Rutten
it.
- TFTim Ferriss
So let's flash back to childhood just to paint a picture for folks because people who have seen your highlight videos are like, "My God, this guy's a savage machine." But let's go back and perhaps if you wouldn't mind, just describe a bit y- your childhood and what you were like as a child, because I had no knowledge of this until I started doing research for this conversation. But if you could just describe yourself as a kid, I think that would be helpful for setting the stage.
- BRBas Rutten
When I was born, I came out apparently full with eczema, but that went away. And then at four years old I, uh, contracted rheumatic fever, which was the best of the two because it, it, it was either so for leukemia or that, so thankfully it was that. I took four months in the hospital. And then when I was six years old we moved to a village, and that's when my eczema came back together with severe asthma. Now, my eczema was really bad. Uh, I had to wear gloves, long sleeves, turtlenecks because I had it in my neck. I was a leper in school. That's what they called me. "Hey, leper, watch out you don't scratch." If I would do this, "Watch out your ears don't fall off." You know, constantly they were... I was bullied on a, on a daily basis. But, you know, when I was 12 I saw a... We were on a vacation in France, and I saw this movie Enter the Dragon. It was 17 years and older to get in, but my brother and I, we found a way to sneak in for free, and w- we, we were young, too young for the movie. And that's where I saw Bruce Lee. And boy, that, that was it. It... I realized that if I would be like that guy, because he was also a skinny guy, I was a skinny guy because of my asthma, I had these horrible asthma attacks, then, uh, the bullying would probably stop because then I could defend myself. So it took me two years to convince my parents to, uh, to start martial arts, and then after two years they just [laughs] they gave up because I was, every day I would ask them. And finally they broke. They say, "Okay, just, just go." And I was fortunate to, um, live next to, uh, two beautiful neighbor girls, and one of the girls was dating the coolest guy in town, Xavier. Xavier, that's how you pronounce it in Holland. And, and he took me under his wing. He was always helping me a little bit because I had these things with birds, I was always in the trees, I was swinging trees. But I had these birds that came pick me up from school. I mean, they were so tame. They would always sit on my shoulder wherever I went, even in the shower. It was amazing. And he brought me to the adult taekwondo classes. And within months I started beating some of the adults. Of course not the black belts, but I started dropping big guys [laughs] and I hear- overheard this guy talking about me in the dressing room. "Man, did you see that kid Bas? He dropped Jack with a fr- spinning back kick to the head. Whoa." Everybody laughing. "Man, that kid has a lot of talent, you know?" And as a kid when you only hear bad things about you, when suddenly people start talking good things about you, you tend to listen to the adults. And that led to the first street fight. The biggest bully in my school, Chucky was his name. Again, I was riding my bicycle on the street and there he came with six, seven of his buddies and, "Hey, leper," whatever they were screaming, and this time I shouted something back. And, uh, I heard them laugh. I looked back, and sure enough they started to chase me. And I told myself, "This is it. I'm not gonna do it anymore." So I put my bike on the stand on the sidewalk. They came, surrounded me with the bikes. [laughs] I always have to laugh about it because in the movies this is like in the scene at night. They do it with, with cars, and the headlights are the lighting for the fight, you know? [laughs] But this was with bicycles-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Right
- BRBas Rutten
... with young kids. And then Chucky started, uh, pushing his chest to me and, and challenging me, telling me that I had to hit him. So I did, and then I realized that the bullies weren't really that strong. It took one punch, which was weird by the way, because I was doing taekwondo, which is 90% kicking. [laughs] So I knocked him out. One punch, nose was broke. That was a problem because now the police was called and they showed up at my mom and dad's doorstep, and that verified, you know, you see? They always thought that martial arts was violence. Now, I have to in, in, in protection of my parents, I never told them I was bullied. My mom had a lot of trouble with me. Every night I had to be mummified is what we called it. You know, uh, creams and cortisones and put a, wrap me all around. The whole family would send in old bedsheets which you would wrap up to bandages. And then in the middle of the night I would scratch it off because it would itch so bad she had to do it again. So she had so much work with me I never wanted to bother with her that I was bullied. Because I'm pretty sure that if my dad would've known, I don't think he would have said, "Take them off." I, I, I believe he would've said, "Keep them on there because this is good for him." So, but that's, that's where everything came from because then I realized, wait a minute, that was easy.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
You know? So now I went after the bullies that always bullied. I literally made a list. I went, every single one of them had them, and other kids in school who got bullied, guess who took care of their problem, you know? [laughs] Now I was the bully, the bully guy.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
I took care of all the bullies. So, and that was it. My m- mom and dad, they took me off, what I said, from taekwondo, but then when I was 20 I moved out of the house. Immediately I started doing karate, not re- realizing it was not full contact. So then I started Thai boxing within six months, and then within three months I started competing Thai boxing. And one thing led to another and bada bing bada boom, now I'm here talking to you. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Now, now here you are. What do you make of the birds? I would, I actually wanna hear a little bit more about that. That's like Saint Francis of Assisi. How did that happen or how do you explain that?
- BRBas Rutten
I had no friends. Everybody thought I was contagious.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- BRBas Rutten
So my, my time was spending in the trees. I was three, four hours a day in the forest. We had a forest. At the front of our home we had a big forest, and I was always climbing trees. I could literally go throughout the whole forest. Maybe I had to go four or five times down. From treetop to treetop I would swing, which w- came in handy with bullies. If they started to chase me I'd just climb the tree, and then they climbed the tree and I started swinging to the other tree. Then the bullies tried to do it, and then one guy, a, a, a big guy, one time he fell down and his head next to a big rock, and that, of course that got out and suddenly everybody, nobody wanted to chase me anymore. So yeah, that was it. And that was my contact also with birds. I always was mesmerized with birds. And, um, I found this nest from a, oh, what do you call them here? A jackdaw. That's what you call them here. A crow is in, uh, in Dutch. And I, I, I, I took one out. I knew you had to do it with gloves because if you put a, a human scent on it then they might push the other ones out. So I had this, uh, plastic glove that I went and took one out, and now you become the dad, you know? So you start feeding it, and it's amazing, man. It's, it's so cool because they Y- you're there for the first flight. I mean, every time they go down, they crash, they crash. They're like S- S- Steve Austin, the Six Million [laughs] Dollar Man on the moon, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
But now suddenly there's this one day that he goes, and he goes zoop, and he starts going up. And they're so excited. They start, "Pa pa pa" and they start screaming, and [claps] that was the sound I used to make. And wherever I was... He would pick me up from school, this guy. He would know in what, uh, room I was, and then just, uh, uh, he was sitting in front of the teacher, got really angry because he was constantly, "Ah, ah, hey." He would see me in the class, and then afterwards he would sit on my steering wheel for my bicycle or on my shoulder. He was always with me.
- TFTim Ferriss
Wow. So I must say that doing prep for this conversation has made me laugh so many times, uh, and [laughs] I, I mean, if you didn't exist, someone would have to invent you for a novel or a movie. So the couple of things I just wanna check on. So the first is that I read after Enter The Dragon, one of the first things you did was make a set of nunchaku from two pieces of wood and some chain. The line that I wanted to just confirm here, it says, "They became an important accessory for the young Bas, and he carried them around his neck even to the local grocery store." Is that accurate?
- BRBas Rutten
That's accurate, but they were very dangerous because they didn't use any screws. It's just like with a, like, you know, you have those-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
... uh, how do you say? Nails, like curved nails. So if I would go to high [laughs] It would just let go. It was super dangerous because I could smash somebody's face by accident. [laughs] And kung fu shoes.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay.
- BRBas Rutten
Everywhere I had these kung fu shoes.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- 13:47 – 17:18
Why Bas walked out on a culinary career path and gave up modeling.
- TFTim Ferriss
All right, so kung fu shoes and nunchucks with nails. Doesn't sound safe.
- BRBas Rutten
No.
- TFTim Ferriss
Now, we, [laughs] we don't have to spend a lot of time on the next one, but just so people can appreciate [laughs] just the full picture. So I ask all guests if they can send any exploratory bullets that might be interesting, and there are a couple of them that we're going to explore. But one that I just want to mention, and we're not gonna... [laughs] We don't have to spend a lot of time on it. But one of the bullets you sent was, "Was drunk, slipped when I came out of the shower and broke a toilet with my head when falling backwards. This was in Hawaii. My whole floor started floating. Very funny story. No clue how my skull didn't break. I guess I hit a weak spot." [laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
So you're one of a kind in terms of the bullets that I've received here, one of which came outta left field. Well, I mean, a, a lot of them came outta left field, but one was your original profession as a culinary chef, went to four years of culinary school. So I did not know this.
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
How did that happen, and then when did it end?
- BRBas Rutten
I always wanted to be a chef. I was mesmerized with it when I was a young kid already, and that went away because the martial arts started coming along. I really liked that, but I still was working as a chef, as a cook. No, I was not a chef in a restaurant. I was the sous chef. It stopped because I was working for a guy for three years and, uh, I would, I would run the whole kitchen. Only on the weekends he had to come by. Like, my, my claim to fame was I did 42 people one night, all different people with, with an appetizer, main course, and a dessert, and I did it all by myself. So I was always... I liked those kind of challenges. I never wanted to call him in because he was living in the house next to it. I always wanted to do it myself. And on Tuesdays we had maybe, the most people we ever had was eight. Never we had more people. So I would make preparation for 20 just to make sure, double it up and then some. And then, uh, one day a cycling group came and suddenly it was full and, and, uh, there was not enough preparation. I run to the house, I say, "You gotta come and help me." And he gets in my face while I'm, while we need to cook for these people. I say, "Listen, it's okay. You're angry. I got it. I understand it. It's weird because we never had this amount of people, but why don't we do this after this is over, you know? Because right now we have to get out these people." And he started screaming and he kept going and he says, "You do whatever I say, uh, you do." And, and I said, "Well, no, that's actually not true. I- y- you're not controlling me." He said, "Oh, no?" And he grabbed a big bowl of butter and he says, "If I throw this on the ground and I tell you to clean it up, you're gonna clean it up." [laughs] So I walked over to him, I hit the bowl out of his hand, and it got all over the ground. I said, "Ask me." [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
And he said, "Clean it up." And I took my apron off. I go, "Good luck with the people. Bye." And I remember at the time I had a pager that was at the time, and he kept paging me. I go, "No, do it." But what I did for you in those three years, and then just to fire at me that, that was it. And that's when I stopped working and I started focusing more on martial arts. I was also, believe it or not, [laughs] this is really weird what I'm gonna say now, a model. I was a model and I, that was controlled by three women who had a model agency, a new model agency, and they loved me. I was working three, four days a week. I was making $1,200, 1,200 guilders at the time, which is a lot of money if you're 20 years old. But, you know, once I started doing martial arts as well, that's of course when I had hair, I start showing up with a shiner here and there, and they didn't really like that. [laughs] And that was the end of that job as well. So that's how I lost both of these jobs.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Okay. Well, you were very proactive in, uh, terminating one of them. [laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah.
- 17:18 – 27:09
How Pancrase entered the picture.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. S- so let's, let's talk about, if this makes sense as a next step, Pancrase and Pancrase. I'm not even sure how you say it in English, frankly, 'cause I always heard it in Japanese. How did that happen, and what was that experience like for you in the beginning? For, you know, leading into it and then first fight let's just say.
- BRBas Rutten
Okay, so I give a little, little background story really fast. I was a kickboxer and I knocked everybody out, and then I got bored. I thought it was a great job to, to become a bouncer. Yeah, think about that. So I became a bouncer, but it was of course not a really healthy lifestyle because at 5:00 we close and then we go to the after parties. You know what it is, and everything bad goes after that. So on one of those parties, apparently I talked to a promoter after two years of not competing and not living a healthy lifestyle, uh, because there was this new guy, Frank Lontman. The Animal was his name. He was a kickboxer who came, was released from prison, and he was gonna re- [laughs] resume his fighting career if I wanted to fight him. And I go, with my drunk head, I go, "Sure." So, but I have no clue of this whole conversation.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
And then in February they gave me a call and they asked me where to send the posters to. I said, "The posters?" I said, "From what?" He says, "From the fight." I say, "Who's fighting?" He said, "You." I go, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who am I fighting?" He says, "Frank Loman." I said, "The Animal?" And he goes, "Yeah." I go, "When did I say that?" And he goes, "You don't remember? We..." Anyway, I realized, oh, I said yes to the guy. I said, "Okay, when is the fight?" [laughs] And it was in two and a half weeks. [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
Now listen, I couldn't rope skip for 20 minutes my first class. That's how bad I was.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
So needless to say, I lost that fight, and what the Dutch audience forgot all about my other knockouts, they focused only on that fight, and they kinda chewed me out and spit me out. So I said, "Okay, this is it. I don't wanna do it anymore." But my martial arts was always there. I wanted to do something with it. And my teacher, my karate teacher, came up with this crazy idea to do choreographed fight scenes. Like we go in spandex, we're all pumped up buddies. We go to a nightclub. At midnight they close the lights, it gets dark suddenly, the high-pitched music starts, stroboscope, and we come up and back flips, and we do all this crazy stuff, and we start fighting each other. And high-level stuff. We got cigarettes out of the mouth, cup spinning, back kicks, we were breaking wood chucks.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
We did everything, right? And that became suddenly a thing. Suddenly we start doing it in more nightclubs, and then suddenly we start doing it at big events, Thai boxing events at the break. And then it became a European show, and we start traveling through Europe, and it became Dutch TV, European TV. And on one of these shows, I was always going to the ring with back flips, and then at the end make a somersault to back flip, and then I would jump in the ring and we do our show. And Chris Dolman, he was the godfather of mixed martial arts, so to say, in whole the free fighting actually. That's what they called it at the time. And he stopped me after the show, and he says, "Listen, I know you from Thai boxing. You're an animal, you know? And now I see you doing all these crazy acrobatics. I mean, I think you're a perfect fit to be a free fighter." I go, "What's free fighting?" And he explained me the rules that pretty much anything would go. I said, "Okay, sure." So I went to his gym a few times, uh, but it's far away. It was in Amsterdam. It's like a two and a half hour drive, you know, especially when there's traffic. So it didn't really work, but one day the telephone went, and this was really weird. Oh, and by the way, I met my wife in '92, in s- in, uh, February of '92, and she was looking at me weird one day. She had this really weird look. I go, "What's going on?" She says, "You're gonna be a famous fighter in Japan." And I go, "No. I told you I'm not gonna fight anymore." She says, "I know, but you said Holland. You're gonna go to Japan." So a year and four months later, I get the phone call, and normally I never picked up the phone, and my answering machine was broke. Somehow I picked up the phone, and it was Chris Dolman. He says, "You gotta jump in the car right now because there's this new organization called Pancrase. There's two guys here, Suzuki Minoru and Funaki Masakatsu, who are scouting. They're looking for fighters. Maybe this is great for you, Bas. You can make a money, you know?" He says, okay, so I jumped in the car, went over there, and he had an organization, Rings, and one of his guys was the Rings champion, and we just needed to spar. They just wanted to show technique, but that guy just went really hard, so I told him to slow down. I said, "Listen, it's not necessary to try to knock each other out. Just let's relax and show technique." I think that he believed that I was afraid, so he turned it up, so I stopped him again [laughs] and I said, "Listen, I'm okay with this, but it's not gonna be one-way traffic. You have to understand." So of course, now it was on. It was short though, because I high kicked him in the face right away. He went down, needed a whole bunch of stitches, and that's it. I saw Funaki and Suzuki pointing at me, and they said, "We want him." And then las- later when I, uh, found out why they wanted me also, one of the reasons was that I was able to jump, I could stand in front of the rope from the, the ring, and the rope would be here, and I would stand still, jump over the rope to go in the ring, and they thought it was so impressive. That was also the reason that they wanted me as a fighter. I go, "That's the weirdest reason I've ever heard."
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
But anyway, the fight was September 21st, 1993, and you have to understand, I was from Holland, so you know, with us everything is small. We drive everywhere. Like, going to Paris, that's the same drive as for going from California to Vegas, you know? So we drive it by car. I have never been on a plane. Now I'm on a 13-hour plane, and I'm coming to Japan-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
... and you already touched on it. I was weird. There was no weigh-in, and I thought that was so weird. Why is there no weigh-in? Well, I, the, the guy I'm fighting is Japanese, and he apparently they're very honest people, so he will be on weight. And then I go, "Did we talk about a weight?" [laughs] I, I didn't know anything what we were gonna do.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
And on the day of the fight, I'm walking in there, and this tall guy walks up to me and he shakes my hand. I say, "Oh, you're the promoter." He goes, "No, I'm fighting you." I go, "You're fighting me?" I go, "What is your weight?" Yeah, and he was much heavier than I was.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
And I go, "Oh, that is so weird." And then the promoter walked up and I said, "Excuse me. Oh, you're the promoter. Yeah." I said, "Is he not too heavy?" He says, "No, Mr. Rutten, everybody fights everybody." So I tried to force a smile. I go, "Yeah, that's awesome."
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
I say, "Oh, by the way, before you leave, how many rounds are we fighting?" And he goes, "One round." I go, "One round? That's awesome. How many minutes?" And he goes, "30." [laughs]
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
Oh. So no break, fighting a guy who's much heavier than I am in a 30-minute match. I was like, "Whoa." So I started doing these things because I was a very aggressive fighter in Holland. Like, I would be very technical until somebody touched me, and then I would just destroy him. And because I was very explosive, I could get away with it. But against a good guy, like a Peter Aerts, who was a very close friend of mine already. He was 40, so thankfully I never had to face him. That would be a problem against a guy like that because I wasn't, it didn't really click yet. You always have these dojo fighters and you have fighters. In dojo they're really good, but they can't bring that game under pressure to a fight. It's really hard to separate that two. Like, it doesn't matter how good you are in training, the fighting with the pressure, that's the test, and I didn't have that yet. But now I'm in Japan, and I'm at 30 minutes fight, and I'm thinking, "If this guy's gonna hit me and I'm gonna unload on him, and I can't put him away because they're very known to take a, a lot of damage, these guys, to keep on fighting, I'm gonna be in trouble." So I put these big Rs on my hands with the, with the marker. R from relax. But in Holland it's rustig. That's also coincidentally with an R, which means the same. And my corner, I never had a coach, so I always had my manager with me, and I said, "Only thing, when he hits me, just shout, 'Relax, relax.' That's the only thing I want you to do [laughs] you know, because I'm a Hollander."
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
"I can't take the risk." Thankfully, it went really well. Uh, you talked about it in the opening. I knocked him out because he was taller than I. I palm striked him under his head. He went down, and you had eight counts there. Uh, and he got up. So now I turn it up. So since his hands were high, I full kicked him to the body, brought the hands down, then I hit him again. And while he went down, I kneed him in the face, and then it became very scary. You know, he, uh... He didn't wake up for two days. It was a very scary thing. Thankfully, he got out of it. He became actually a good friend of mine. But that was the deciding factor if I was gonna fight or not. I say, if he- I told my wife, "If he's not gonna come out, this is it. I don't wanna do this anymore." And I remember after the fight, people cheering for me and, and I remember a couple had a baby there. Who brings a baby to a fight? But the baby was there, and they put the baby in my hand making picture. I felt like I was the president there with a baby [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
... pushing and people are flexing. It was the wildest experience. And then the next day I'm walking on the street, and every 10, 15 people or so, they start bowing to me. And I'm going, "What is going on here?" And then I passed a newspaper ch- stands, and on the cover was me hanging in the splits, something I didn't even know I was doing. I was so euphoric, I guess. I jumped to the splits to all corners, which became my trademark later on, the Rutten jump. And I was hanging in the splits in the air, and my guy was knocked out below me on the ground. I go, "Oh, okay, so this is how these people are recognizing me."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
And from one day to the other day, suddenly I was just a known guy. It was the weirdest experience ever.
- TFTim Ferriss
So I remember that cover. [laughs] This is, this is what I saw at the newsstand. It's bringing back all these memories in Kichijoji, a place called Sun Road. I remember the whole thing. It's so wild that we're even talking. I gotta say, it's really surreal for me right now. So let's go back for a second. Your wife saying you're gonna be famous in Japan, did she ever explain or describe what she felt that brought that up, or how that came up for her?
- BRBas Rutten
No, but you know what weird was? Then in '94, she had the same look, and I immediately recognized it. And I say, "Now what?" And she said, "We're gonna move to America, and you're gonna be in the TV business." Tim, I had a show for nine years on TV. We did Inside MMA for nine years, 431 live shows. I mean... And that was the same thing. And then two years later, we're in, we're in America, [laughs] and now I'm fighting in America.
- 27:09 – 29:58
Pancrase rules.
- TFTim Ferriss
Could you describe for folks who haven't seen this... We'll put links in the show notes for people who wanna see highlights and some full fights from Pancrase. What were the rules in Pancrase? You alluded to the, the, the round and the very, very long round. [laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
What were some of the other rules?
- BRBas Rutten
So what they did, these, these rules were completely tailor-made for the Japanese fighter. The Japanese fighters are really, they're really good on the ground, right? And not as good strikers. So what they did, they said open hand strikes because open hand strikes make sure they have no gloves on, which makes it much easier to go for chokes and for leg locks and all that stuff. Not only that, they would put your shoes on, and you had shin protection.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
Shoes for leg locks is a nightmare. I mean, you, you can't escape leg locks. It's much harder to escape when you wear shoes, so that was to- totally tailor-made for them. What they didn't know is that I've, as a bouncer, I was fighting with palm strikes because I was... I saw my buddies. You know, if you fight multiple guys, it's not like you start aiming for the jaw, you know? You just hit whatever you can hit. And if you hit a skull, well, you're gonna break your hand. So I started palm striking [laughs] everybody and, and clotheslining, what I always called it. You know, with my forearm, I would, with this part, hit him in the neck.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, the inside of the forearm.
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah. And it would, uh, perfect. So then when I came there, I go, "This is easy. I can already do it." They also had eight counts, and then they had this really weird thing which some people, because of that, people thought it was pro wrestling. They had, like, rope escapes. So that means if I would, for instance, get you in a choke, but if he could touch the rope, I had to let him go. Now, now people go, "Yeah, that's not real fighting." But l- listen to this because that's why I believe, truly believe, like, that small organization, Pancrase, I think we had eight UFC champions. I mean, all these guys became good, and I believe that is the reason. Because when you look at my record, I have 11 knockouts, I have 14 submissions. But if you, if you read about my submission, I actually have 51 submissions because I would submit a guy, and then he would touch the rope. I had to let him go. Now, for that, for him, it's the same as getting an eight count. So if the fight goes the distance and he grabbed the rope one time, he's gonna lose. You know? Or if he went down one time, he's gonna lose as well. So it's kind of the same as an eight count. But because of that, now you restart back on your feet, and you have another fight. Like my last fight, the guy that I knocked out, uh, put in a coma, the first guy, I fought him the second time and I broke my punch in the very first. You see, the very first punch, I submitted him five times. So now, now I have five submissions, so you have way more ring time in there. So all these guys from Japan who went to, to the UFC, they all became UFC champions. It was the wildest thing. I mean, Evan Tanner, Ken Shamrock, Frank Shamrock, Maurice Smith, Guy Mezger. I mean, all these guys, myself included, we all became UFC champs, and we're all from that little small organization, Pancrase, so... And I believe that's because of the rules.
- TFTim Ferriss
It's incredible.
- 29:58 – 30:24
Why Ken Shamrock is known as Wayne Shamrock in Japan.
- TFTim Ferriss
Can you explain to me, I've, I've never had a chance to ask someone this question. Do you have any idea why the Japanese referred to him as Wayne Shamrock, and then he's Ken Shamrock in the US?
- BRBas Rutten
I believe it was because he did pro wrestling in Japan as well under, uh, under Ken Shamrock, and they wanted to st- stay away from that. And that's his middle name for it, I believe, Ken Wayne Shamrock, and that's why they went with Wayne Shamrock.
- TFTim Ferriss
Got it.
- 30:24 – 34:49
On fighting Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki.
- TFTim Ferriss
How would you describe Funaki? I've always wondered, ever since I was a young kid, because he seemed like he was... He seemed, again, my impression was, comparing him to Suzuki, that he was really thinking deeply about a lot of things. But that was just- the impression of a 15-year-old. How would you describe the two of those, maybe starting with Funaki?
- BRBas Rutten
Funaki has always been a good friend of mine. He helped me a lot. There's a whole conspiracy thing going on, but also with me though, because when I fought... I, I was the first guy to beat Suzuki, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
Mm-hmm.
- BRBas Rutten
I had two fights in one month. So I told my wife, "Hey, why don't you come with me? I stay in Japan because I finally have some training partners," because I didn't have any training partners over in Holland. So, um, I trained there, and I... the only thing I asked for him was to how can I stop a knee bar? Because I know Ken is really good with that. How do I stop a knee bar? And he told me one way. Now, if I tell a person how to stop a knee bar, it's very simple. I say, "Hold the leg so he can't step it over." That's it. The, whatever happens, he cannot make a knee bar. It's very simple. I won't go into the detail because a lot of people don't understand it, but it's a very basic thing, but he didn't say that. So in the fight, when I fight Ken, he, uh, he sits in the position for a leg lock, and I'm already having my defense ready to stop the leg, and now he threw his leg over my head, which was something that Funaki didn't tell me. And I thought that was weird because then I found out that these guys go six years back [laughs] and they always pro wrestle to each other. And that was always in the back of my head. Did he say that to him? Because why wouldn't he say, "Hey, just hold his leg because then he can never step over"? No, he would give me one way how to stop it. And Ken, well, he used a different way. But still, it, that didn't really matter because he was always a very friendly guy. Suzuki, too, is a very nice guy, always had a great, uh, time with him. Uh, that's why it was so out of character. Like, Funaki was my first loss. He beat me by way of a toe hold. And now for the people at home, they go like, "A toe hold?" Yeah. This is not that they grab a toe, trust me. I saw somebody break a shin bone with a toe hold. It's a very nasty move. And he got me into that. And then many years later when I became the champion, I had my rematch against Funaki. And I remember in the fight, d- uh, before the fight, he comes up to me, and this was so out of character, and I think he did it for the audience. And he would be, um, this distance, and he does this to me, which slits his throat.
- TFTim Ferriss
With the thumb across the throat, yeah.
- BRBas Rutten
And I'm looking at my manager, and I go, "I'm gonna kill him now." [laughs] You know what I mean?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
And he goes, "No, you gotta stay calm." I said, "Don't worry, I'll stay calm, but you watch him. If I connect, ooh, I'm gonna go to town." And that, that became my best fight in Pancrase, actually. That's for Funaki, they say that as well, because he was so tough. I mean, I have black and blue palms. I have bruises on my knees from kneeing him and hitting him in the face. And every time he went down, the public started chanting. He would get up again. He wipes his blood off. Yeah. Then he start fighting, and I go, "Shut up," [laughs] you know? It's because every time he got back up. And then the last one was that I had him by his hair. He had long hair. I just grabbed his hair, and I drilled him a knee in the face as hard as I could. And thankfully, he stayed down that time. That was the end of the fight. But I always wondered, why would he have done that? I, I, it had to be for the audience because he was a very respectful guy.
- TFTim Ferriss
I remember that fight, and it was like... There were, there were a number of thoughts going through my head as I watched this fight. Number one, I've never seen someone take so much brutality and get up-
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... that many times. And I remember his face at the end. I mean, it looked like a Cabbage Patch Kid with, like, uh, w- who had Freddy Krueger come after him. I mean, it was a, just a-
- BRBas Rutten
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... absolute mess. Like, his eyes were swollen shut. And I remember just being dumbfounded after watching that fight.
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
How was their English? I mean, presumably you guys communicated in English.
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
Was their English okay or how was their communication?
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah. Funaki, Suzuki were pretty okay, especially Funaki. He was always a better English speaker. He also did some movies in, uh, in Hollywood. I actually was in a movie with him. We did. And, uh, with, uh, oh, man, uh, Pat Morita, you know, from The Karate Kid?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. Sure, sure.
- BRBas Rutten
He was in that as well. The crazy scientist in the movie. Yeah, so, yeah, he was already focusing on that. He knew that, you know, to, in order to, to, to reach the people outside the country, you're gonna have to learn to speak the language. So he w- he was, uh, really good with his English. Suzuki, a little less.
- 34:49 – 37:12
Underrated Japanese fighters.
- TFTim Ferriss
In that era, let's just say '92 to sort of 2000, in that range, could be a little bit earlier, but let's just say when you first got to Japan onward, are there any Japanese fighters who impressed you, who you think are probably not known or lesser known in the US? Did anybody stand out to you?
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah, I always do... Yuki Kondo was good. Uh, Shibuya, he was a tough fighter. I had a draw against him one time. It was my only draw. And then the second time I, I told everybody I was gonna finish him with the Bas Rutten neck crank. I just came up with a move, and that's how I beat him. So that was kind of cool. He was a tough guy. Funaki was good. Suzuki was a little physically not as super strong, but he made that up with technique. He was really fast on the ground. I mean, he would jump all over the place. Those were, I think, yeah, the toughest guy. Takahashi. Takahashi was one, that was the... I would call him, he was a party guy like me. You know, after the fights we became good friends.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
That was so bad. W- what happened was I fought him, and the day before I fought him, we saw this giant screen on the building. We saw a preview from the fight the next day. So imagine this. We're walking on the street, and it goes, "Hybrid wrestling, Pancrase." And we, we're looking, and then go boom, and the first thing we see is me knocking somebody out my first fight. And we go, "Oh my God, this is the preview for tomorrow," you know, for the show we have. And I see somebody sitting in half guard, and he goes for an inverted heel hook, which at that time I didn't know. This is actually how I get my fifth degree Kyokushin, because John Blooming standing behind me, and he's the highest gaijin, the foreigner, uh, for Mas Oyama. Mas Oyama had the Kyokushin karate. He's like 12th degree, and, and John Blooming is 11th degree, so he's really up the ladder. And I look at John, and I go like, "Whoa, that's a cool move. I should remember that." And the next day I'm fighting [laughs] I'm in that position, and I go give it a shot, you know? So-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
... because I never did it before, I had no clue the amount of pressure I put on-
- TFTim Ferriss
Ah
- BRBas Rutten
... and I broke his shin bone in half So yeah, he, uh, that was bad because he went to the hospital, he got an infection in it. I mean, I think he was five months in the hospital, and it was a tough day. When I went to visit him, that was really not fun, the poor guy. And after that, yeah, unfortunately he never came back as he was before because he was a wild man. He was also taking risks, taking shots. He was an exciting fighter, always going for the knockout. But yeah, unfortunately that, I think that kinda stopped
- 37:12 – 42:15
Remembering Pride, UFC’s Japanese predecessor.
- BRBas Rutten
it for him.
- TFTim Ferriss
What was it like being involved with Pride? Because I've heard so many rumors about Pride, even, uh, I, I mean, the Japanese had lots of rumors too, and, uh, [laughs] I'll just leave it at that. I mean [laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
What was it like being involved with Pride? [laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
[laughs] Everybody when they're walking around went like this, you know? You go like this. I have a pinky
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, yeah, missing fingers. Yeah, missing fingers.
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So yeah-
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... please tell just any stories about Pride, because I've always wanted to ask somebody.
- BRBas Rutten
Pride was just an organization that was way ahead of the UFC. They were the biggest martial arts, mixed martial arts organization on the planet. We're talking about a small show, 45,000 people. That's considered a small show, and it was the Saitama Super Arena. The Saitama Super Arena was an arena that you could also expand, which could hold 49,000 people. I mean, we did one time in an open space, 91 and a half thousand people we had.
- TFTim Ferriss
Wow.
- BRBas Rutten
It was the most bizarre thing. And then they had no... You know, you see a guy like Bob Sapp coming up, who's 350 pounds, 10% body fat, giant guy fighting a 180-pound guy. You know, they made these crazy matchups.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
But the people loved it. They ate it up. And it, it was always packed. And the Mirko Cro Cop, Fedor Emelianenko, the Nogueira brothers, I mean, Wanderlei Silva, Quinton Rampage Jackson, all these guys. I remember when Dana White challenged the best fighters from Pride to a fight against Chuck Liddell, who was the champion at the time. And I remember Chuck came over, uh, with Dana, and that was at the Saitama Super Arena. And when the opening started, I'm, I'm sitting in my commentating table and I'm looking back and I see Dana is literally with his mouth open, and he sees that I'm looking at him. And I go, "Huh?" And he goes... He, he's never seen a thing like that before. You know, it was crazy. You know? And then with Chuck, he fought with Quinton Rampage Jackson and, and Quinton won that fight. So now suddenly that was a big gamble they took, the UFC. Now they put Pride even more on the map. But in the meanwhile, I always told Pride Fighting Championship, "We gotta go to America. We gotta go to America." "No, no, we're doing good here." I said, "No, no, no. It's nothing compared once you go to America. America is where the big money is. That's where you want to be." And they always declined it, declined it, declined it. Then suddenly The Ultimate Fighter came out and that bumped the UFC up to the number one spot, and now suddenly they realized they wanted to go to America. And they couldn't get through the athletic commission. It didn't work, it didn't... And every time I say, "Let me talk to the athletic commission. I have a good way to talk it to people. They know me anyway. You know, just let me talk." But they, "No, no, no." And then at the end they go, "Okay, can you talk to them?" Then I walked in, I did my whole talk, and they said, "Oh, we're splitting hairs here, hair. Okay, yeah, it's legal. You c- you can come to America." And I looked at them, I go, "You could have done this two years ago, and then you had the chance at least to catch up to the UFC." But by now the UFC was this juggernaut that nobody could touch anymore. So people started slowly but surely from Pride. Yeah. Then Pride got involved. You know, they found out that, uh, that it was m- maybe kind of a laundering thing for the Yakuza, which is the mafia.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh.
- BRBas Rutten
That's why we were talking about the half a pinkies. You know? And then of course, the, uh, Tokyo TV pulled out because you can't have that. That's bad public image. And now suddenly they're just getting the gate. You know, the money. It's a whole different animal. And now they were too late with America. Yeah, they could never, uh, pick it up. So they sold the company. Actually, the UFC bought Pride Fighting Championships, and now they had all these great fighters, Wanderlei Silva, Mirko Cro Cop, coming to the UFC, and it made the UFC even bigger. [laughs] So yeah, they did a really good job.
- TFTim Ferriss
I was surprised, maybe I shouldn't be, that when I went on YouTube to look at some of the full-length Pancrase fights, that they were on the UFC official channel. So they must have bought the catalog or the brand. I was surprised, but then again, not surprised. You know, Pride, just for people who had never saw Pride, like you said, it, it was almost a video game with these matchups, right? You'd have Quinton Rampage Jackson howling with the chains around the neck. He could slam anybody imaginable, didn't matter. And then you would have, as you mentioned, Bob Sapp, who became
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... 外 国 人 の タ レ ン ト or like this huge TV hit. He'd do like commercials for hot dogs or whatever. He became this huge celebrity in Japan-
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... against some guy half the size. And on top of that, you had rules that were just savage. I mean, you, you had Wanderlei Silva soccer kicking somebody in the head [laughs] who's on his hands and knees. I'm just-
- BRBas Rutten
Oh
- TFTim Ferriss
... absolutely terrifying.
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And some of my favorite fighters of all time, like Kazushi Sakuraba. You mentioned a bunch of other names.
- BRBas Rutten
Yes.
- TFTim Ferriss
I mean, just some incredible talent. And, uh, it's, it just goes to show, you know, there is, there is planning and timing involved and, you know, he who hesitates is lost if, when it comes to expanding to the US.
- 42:15 – 42:47
Pranks.
- TFTim Ferriss
Do you have any other, any other fights or stories, any encounters, interactions that really stand out for you from your involvement with Pride?
- BRBas Rutten
You know, the, one of the things that I really always enjoy is like Mauro Ranallo, my commentating partner. First it was Stephen Quadros, the Fight Professor, and then it became Mauro Ranallo. He was very afraid of Mirko Cro Cop. Everybody was afraid of Mirko Cro Cop. And Mirko said he would only want to be interviewed by me. So, and Mirko was facing
- 42:47 – 51:22
Absolute monsters.
- BRBas Rutten
Rod Waterman.
- TFTim Ferriss
Sorry to interrupt, Bas. Could you just, just paint a picture of Mirko Cro Cop for people who didn't see him at that time? Because it's something to behold.
- BRBas Rutten
He's from Croatia. He's a special forces do-you-see-him guy, rappelling down from choppers and shooting people. I mean, this guy is as legit as they come. He came from K-1, which is the biggest kickboxing organization on the planet, knocking people out with head kicks. They would say his left high kick, I mean, he knocked people, I, uh, if he, if he knocked 25 people out like that, I wouldn't even exaggerating. Well, aside a, a kick to the body, they would say, "Left kick body, hospital. Left kick head, morgue." That's what they would say. I mean, and it would always like, they knew it would come, but somehow this guy was just a freaking machine. And because of his special forces, he was very stoic. He, his answers if you interview him was, "Yes, no," boom, boom. He didn't wanna be there, you know? But with me, he opened up, uh, me [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
So I wanna paint a picture for folks who may not recognize these names. So Mark Coleman certainly sort of pre and Smashing Machine documentary era, along with Mark Kerr, just monsters. Absolute monsters, right? I, I mean, [laughs] I remember his solution for someone pulling guard was just neck cranking them so hard that their head might pop off, and that was the end of the match. And for people who don't know Mirko Cro Cop, they should look him up and watch some video. The guy's thighs were as big around as my dinner table. And not, not only could he kick, I remember he fought, just to tie two names together that have come up, he fought Bob Sapp, and he was so disdainful. He was just... I remember watching the translation, 'cause of course I don't speak Croatian, but translated into Japanese he's like, "I hate people who win just because they're big." And he was so [laughs] just scornful of Sapp. And he threw a body kick, planted the foot and then- Hit him with a straight, and I think he crushed his eye orbit-
- BRBas Rutten
Yep
- TFTim Ferriss
... with gloves on.
- BRBas Rutten
Yep.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I think from that point forward, Bob Sapp's eyes were pointing in different directions. I mean, it seemed like that was a real turning point. I mean, just absolute animal. So worth, worth checking out if people haven't seen him.
- BRBas Rutten
Bob Sapp was, you know, he asked me one time if I would fight him, what I would use. And I said, "I'll kick your knees. I'm not gonna kick your thighs because they're carrying weight a lot, whole day long, and I go for the body." I said, "Because your stamina is not that good, and I think with the body shot, that will work with you." And then he fought Ernesto Hoost, and he, who dropped him twice with a body shot, but then he got lucky. He swung so hard that Ernesto Hoost on his defense, and the, the scraping of the own glove gave a cut to Ernesto Hoost, and he lost the fight. But then after the fight, he had to face Mirko Cro Cop, and he came to me if I wanted to train him. So I went 11 days or 12 days before the fight, because I was the commentator, I went to Japan to train with him. I trained him one and a half day, one and a half times, and the rest he was doing interviews. And I go-
- TFTim Ferriss
Ah
- BRBas Rutten
... "Bob, you understand that Mirko Cro Cop has a picture of you on a bag, and you're the biggest guy right now. He's gonna annihilate you." "Yeah, but the people wanna see me on TV." "They don't care about you. You're gonna lose this fight, and you're not gonna be on TV. You need to focus on the fight. Wait with all this stuff." But apparently he thought that was important, and he kept doing it, and then, yeah, this happened against Mirko Cro Cop. He-
- TFTim Ferriss
Oof
- BRBas Rutten
... he wasn't just prepared. He was a gifted athlete, Bob Sapp. It's just that he didn't take the time anymore to prepare. That was his problem.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, got his skull crushed. Oh my God. I remember that wince, that look, 'cause it wasn't a knockout. It was a different facial expression, and you just saw him kinda-
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... crumple, and I was like, "Oh, God."
- BRBas Rutten
Yep.
- TFTim Ferriss
Horrible. So for, for people who may... I also just want to [laughs] this is such a trip down memory lane for me. I'm gonna put some links to Ramon Dekker, Coban, who I actually met and trained with a bit in New York City-
- BRBas Rutten
Oh, wow
- TFTim Ferriss
... because at least at the time, that's where he lived. I mean, their fights, repeated fights, were just absolute brutality. And then-
- BRBas Rutten
Yep
- TFTim Ferriss
... Rob Kaman, who wore, if I remember correctly, the shorts with like a rainbow on the front. He was like a Care Bear.
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah. Yeah. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs] Real, re-
- BRBas Rutten
Different times. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, different times. Like, uh, you know, the murderous Care Bear.
- 51:22 – 1:09:45
Self-defense for beginners and bouncers.
- TFTim Ferriss
Let me ask, since we've covered a lot of, of fight game, for people who are wondering how professional fighting differs from, say, street defense. I know you've, you've certainly spent a lot of time bouncing. You've had your fair share [laughs] of street fights outside of bouncing, and you've thought a lot about this, and you're, you're a very highly qualified former professional fighter, right? Because there are a lot of kind of YouTube black belts who teach all sorts of nonsense. So how do you teach a self-defense course to people who are, let's just say, moderately athletic, right? So they're not total couch potatoes, but they're not athletes, they're not fighters. How do you, how do you teach self-defense?
- BRBas Rutten
You know, you have to really break it down. You still want to start with the basics. It's footwork, it's planting your feet, explaining where the power comes from, all that kind of stuff. That's why you really want to break it down. Because I cannot teach you to throw combinations in, in one or two class. I can teach you to throw a really hard freaking cross, you know? Because I will tell you where the power comes from, pushing off on the back foot, rotating your upper body, all that. So little steps take here and there. But the problem with self-defense is what I said in the beginning. In my Thai boxing, I was more the dojo fighter. I was not developed yet into a professional fighter. So I didn't have that control in the dojo. I didn't have that in my fights. Now, luckily for me, I was just very powerful, and I just slaughter people, and I won everything in my first round. Knock out one in the second round, the rest eight in the first round. So I was just strong. But again, like I said, if I would face a good guy, that would be a problem for me. So for people, if you wanna do, you take a good self-defense class. By the way, [laughs] just, guys, I'm gonna throw it in. We just shot, or shot just, we shot it at the beginning of COVID when everything went down the drain, uh, Seven Skills to Save Your Life with a friend of mine, Amir Perez. Google his name on YouTube, Amir Perez. He will take a gun away from somebody in like 200th of a sec, faster than the brain can react. You'll see things that you, you simply that's it's not possible, and he's doing it. You know? So what you need is to make sure that you can do it under pressure as well. Now, there's a lot of things that you can try to mimic it with, a lot of stress and screaming like they do in the military. But still for a military guy as well, if you never shot at a live person and the people are shooting back at you with real bullets, it's a whole different animal. You don't know what you're going to do. But as long as you did it a lot and put you in worse situations, get you really tired of screaming and punching and slapping you in the face, and then suddenly you still have to get your bearings together to fight, that will be really good. Doing a self-defense class twice a week and thinking you're gonna win in a fight, well, first of all, it's always better to know a little bit than not. You know? If, if, if both of you don't know anything, but you had like five classes, you have more chance. It's simply, that's how it is, you know? Because you did it still five times, you have more chance. Is it still not... Of course it's not enough, but you have a better chance. Plus, if you do self-defense, if you're in a situation, a really bad situation, we will always tell you to avoid the situation, of course. They want money, give them money. You, you, anything, comply. That's what you wanna do. But if this guy's not wearing a mask and he just shot somebody and you see him, well, now you're gonna be a witness in court. So the chances you're gonna die are really astronomical high. They don't want you to show. For him to kill one or two people is almost the same sentence, so he's not gonna let you go. So at that moment, you're gonna be forced to do something, 'cause if you don't, you're gonna die. Now, if you have a little bit of skill, then you increase your chances right away with defending yourself. But sure, if you had it, did it three times or two months, even that is not gonna be enough. But still, we had, um, we were teaching, uh, uh, law enforcement and, and, um, Amir Perez He was t- teaching a law enforcement officer, uh, defending a knife and to, uh, counterattack and how to do that, and that guy called him back like six weeks later, sent him an email, and he said, "You sh- sh- you s- saved my life." I mean, I knew i- instantly what I was doing, and I was just seeing it one time. But this guy was trained already, and he just came back with that situation, like kind of with me with the heel hook that I did that I saw a day on TV. He had that as well, and it actually worked for him, and he over- he me- overcame the guy, and it saved his life. So you see? So it's all... People who say, "Yeah, but it will never work," it's always good to know. I always say it's better to have a skill and don't need it than to need a skill [laughs] and don't have it, you know? So-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- BRBas Rutten
... it's important that you do it. And if you do street fight self-defense, see if you can fight. Amateur, doesn't matter. But do something under pressure because I'm telling you, it's a whole different animal. Like my first Thai boxing fight, I d- I always tell this story. I knocked him out with a back kick to the body. If at that moment when I dropped him, they would have blindfolded me, they would have called in four other guys, all with Thai boxing shorts, not even the same Thai boxing shorts, and they put them next to each other, they take the blindfold off, they say, "Who are you fighting?" I don't think I could point them out. Because you're not fighting a person, you're fighting a silhouette. It's really weird. You don't hit the f- you don't hit the jaw, you don't hit the nose, you hit the fa- the head. You j- whatever you see, you hit. You know? Y- it's uncontrolled. You don't have it down yet. You need to... You know, it's like, well, like anything in life, the more you do it, the better get, you get at it. So for a person, if you really wanna be good in self-defense, schedule an, a kickboxing match, even if it's amateur. And it doesn't matter if you win or lose. People are so focused on the winning. Of course it's fun to win. But just to, for you to feel that pressure, you know, to go there at that, and you don't wanna do it. There are gonna be moments in the dressing room that you're gonna go, "I'm not doing it. I want, I wanna go, I wanna go." And then still do it, you know? You're overcoming your fears. That is something I think is very important. So that's why we, with the course that we have, the Seven Skills to Save Your Life, the first is situational awareness. We have like 45 minutes only on that. You know? Walk... Why don't you walk out of the house in the morning and you just stand there instead of walking to your car on your phone? Why don't you look around? Just make it a habit. Look around. Oh, so you see anything out of the ordinary. It's somebody in the car. It's somebody... You know, little things. And we, we give them all the hints where you have to focus on. You go into a bar, you go into a restaurant, know where the fire escapes are right away. We make it a game with the kids. You know, "Where's the fire escape?" "Oh, at the toilets, uh, Daddy. Oh, there's also one in the kitchen I saw." You see? You start doing that, and the kids start picking it up, and it's for fun. But it's, it is the most important thing because they say all this, when you hear about terrorists, all that stuff's 85% is preventative measures. You know, 85% of all the attacks, they already stopped them before it happened. That's how important it is to have situational awareness. And then we go over into the stance. And then slowly but surely, once the stance is there, we start building on that stance. And then you, we give you a few weapons. We're not gonna give you spinning back kicks. You're never gonna pull off it. I'd never pull off a spinning back kick in a fight. It's the dumbest thing to do because if you miss it, you're in a bad position. Just stuff that really works. Focus on a few things. Knife attacks. Well, there's this knife attack, there's the under... This is 80%. That's that.
- TFTim Ferriss
Is coming up like a volleyball.
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah. And, and, uh, focus on those. Those are the highest percentage possible they're gonna bring. Chances they're gonna use that is the same on the street. If he's right-handed, he's gonna throw straight punch. Know the defense for that. And we break everything down. And if you do it very slowly and methodical, and grind it in over and over again, and then we have tricks to get you off balance, to get you very dizzy, and then still you have to act. Slowly but surely, you, you learn the fighting skills. And once you have that fighting skill, then it's the best to go to a gym and to simply keep doing it, you know? It's... Y- you can't learn something once or twice a week and then believe that you can do it. Really don't, don't think that. It's not the movies, you know? I'm always afraid. That's why I stopped actually teaching self-defense in classes. Because people come in, and they get a false sense of security. Like for instance, if I, I just teach a, a knife defense, and they're walking on the street and suddenly his, his friend gets into pro- trouble with somebody, and somebody pulls a knife, and he's gonna go, "Hey, step back. I got it. I, I just had this in class," [laughs] you see? And then he might die. And that's kinda my fault then, you know? And especially if you taught it the wrong way. So make sure that you do your homework. The Krav Maga worldwide, that's an organization. They're very methodical. They're constantly updating the curriculum and making it better, you know, with things that happened in the field. You know, for instance, there was a gun defense, and there's a certain way to grab it out of the hand. Well, it happened, one day it happened a situation that a finger broke, and it wrapped around the trigger guard, and they couldn't disarm him. Boom. Immediately when that story comes in, then they adjust it, and they make sure that that can never happen again. Was one time in maybe 100,000 times, but hey, still, you see? But they're constantly adapting, and that's what they do. So kravmaga, K-R-A-V-M-A-G-A, .com, and if you do /bas, B-A-S, it will send you to a link. And there you can watch it. We have some videos there, and you can see how, how we present it to the people because it's important to give you little bits and a little bit more every time. You need to be 100% sure that you can actually do that certain technique.
- TFTim Ferriss
So a few things I'd like to say and then I have a question. So the first is one of my favorite quotes that I think applies to just about anything is from an, a very old poet, [laughs] writer, Aeschylus, and his quote is, "We do not rise to the level of our hopes, we fall to the level of our training." And what you were describing, just in terms of psychological preparedness and translating from training to live, say, competition or self-defense, makes me think of this e- example which always stuck with me, which was in college, I was competing in judo after being in Japan. And I remember at one point wandering by this self-defense class for women which was being taught. It was, it was being taught maybe once or twice a week. And I went in to offer to help. I wanted to see if I could just volunteer time to help, and the woman who was running the class said, "No, this is women only." And it was women practicing with women, and I thought to myself, "My God, if you're women practicing with women and you think that men are just a slightly larger version of women", it's like look at the strength ex- you have to feel the strength differential and the aggression differential. Take 130 pound woman and 130 pound man, they are not the same, and you, if, if you have any hope of acting under duress when it matters, you have to experience that or you're gonna be one in 100 that you're gonna possibly do anything correctly. And it really stuck with me that, um-
- BRBas Rutten
Yep
- TFTim Ferriss
... need to practice. So let's talk about high percentage, high percentage techniques. You've spent a lot of time bouncing.
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah. Mm.
- TFTim Ferriss
So you get, you get a good amount of practice dealing with different types of aggression, different types of situations. And I'd like to ask you as a bouncer two things. So number one, if you defused situations successfully or were able to deescalate them, were there any particular approaches or things you would say that seemed to work for that? If you were training a week-long course for bouncers, right, the deescalation moves or expressions or questions or whatever that you might use, and then when it really just escalates and you need to take care of somebody but you don't wanna break your hand or maybe get sued or [laughs] whatever it might be, what do you do? So if you could just answer those two, that would be great.
- BRBas Rutten
First of all, it's taking the two people who it starts with, take them to the side. Don't put it in the gym. Walk outside with them. Do something that they feel more comfortable and not with everybody there. Like for instance, with I would be... They really wanted me as a bouncer. Why? Because I could fight? No, no. That was not the real reason. The reason was, yeah, that was come, came in handy, I'm really good with people. From the 10 situations, nine times we don't fight because I talk them out of it. It's always. And the only thing what I would always use, break down the situation why they got into a fight, and you're gonna find out it's always stupid.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
Like, "Oh, my God, uh, he wa- yeah, he was looking at my wife." I go, "He was looking at your wife, yeah. Did he talk to her?" "No." "Did he touch her?" "No." "Did he say derogatory things to her? Did he make faces to her?" "No, no, no, no, no." "Did he do something against you so to, to make you mad?" "No, he didn't do that." I go, "That's a compliment, dude. I mean, that means your wife is a good-looking wife. He didn't overstep. He didn't do anything. He didn't touch her, and he started looking." The guy like, "Yeah. Yeah." I go, "Come, co- you come here." And then I would call the other guy. I say, "Did you say something bad?" He says, "No, no, no. I was just looking at his wife and he got really angry, you know, and then..." And then they start seeing, yeah, this is stupid because it's alcohol. Alcohol, once that's involved, you make stupid mistakes. And once they say, "Okay, shake hands. You guys want a drink?" And I would give them a beer, and the fight was off. So simply breaking it down, but in a nice and calm way. This is very important because the screamers, it will never work. You get them on their toes. No fighting stance, no nothing. Hands down. And, and, and, and once you talk to a person, always make sure you look at their hands. See, this is the first thing I always tell people. If they put their hands in their pocket or whatever, always expect something, you know? It's better to, to be a little bit, um, on, on your toes there. Maybe get a, a handkerchief out. It doesn't matter. But always l- look what they have in their hands, and as soon as they don't have anything in their hands, just take them outside, break the situation down, and they're gonna find out it's stupidity what they're doing. And then the fight's, it's gonna be off. There's not gonna be a fight. Now, if there is a fight, and it depends where it is, you know? If it's in a, in a bar, like I put my back against the wall. If there's a corner, I'm with my back in the corner because nobody can attack me from the sides now. I got my view, perfect view. It's gonna be very hard to sneak up behind me, you see? So if you have a wall, great. If you don't have a wall, but a corner, corner even better. Go into the corner. But it depends again on the situation. If one's knife get present and, and you need to get out, maybe you don't wanna be in a corner. You wanna go to the exit there. You wanna get the heck out of there. Don't fight if they have a knife. Don't let your ego control yourself. You might die. I mean, just people do things for no freaking reason, you know? So s- simply watch out. But that would be the greatest thing. If somebody pulls a knife, you know, that's the street fighting DVD [laughs] that I made long time ago, the crazy one, you know, gra- grab a bar stool. Get something that you can separate him from. You need something in between. It's very hard if I just hold the bar stool in between for him to come closer, you know? It's also very important. Then you know that if the fight goes outside, yeah, now it's my domain because now I got space. And once there's space, if you start hitting me, I won't even let you hit me, and most of the time that is enough. People gonna go, "Shit, if I cannot even hit him"... And, because then I've talked to them. I said, "Dude, I, I could have hit you already. I could have hit you alr- I could have hit you again. I could have..." Or I, I hit one time in front of his face. "You want me to really do this now? L- let's stop, dude. I don't wanna fight." You know? If you say it, "I don't wanna fight", act like you're a little bit afraid. They know you're not, but you do the audience because most of the time it's egos as well, right? If, if I say, "Oh, I'm gonna kick your ass", now it's an ego thing. He wants to prove himself in front of everybody who's watching. No. Just deescalate by saying, "Dude, I don't wanna fight. It's so stupid to fight. I don't want you... Oh, I could have hit you here already." And 9 out of 10 times, again, they, they realize that you're the guy with the skill and they're the guys with no skill. Now, sometimes when it's absolutely not avoidable anymore, yeah, well, then you're gonna have to go fast, and especially if there's a weapon involved. Thankfully, I didn't have those situations many times because that's a very bad situation. A knife, for instance, is really bad, almost worse than a gun. Like a gun in front of me I'd rather have that. Like, when you stand in my arm's reach, I'd rather have that than when you have a knife. A knife is much more dangerous, can cut from every side, especially if, if it's double-bladed. Very dangerous. A gun, once you control the gun and the barrel and you just go with it, and you make sure that you, you don't put yourself in the line of fire, you know, then everything is okay. Oh, and by the way, gun defense is also make sure that a loved one s- doesn't stand on the side, because if he pulls the trigger, that person is gonna go. So you have to have situational awareness. That's all stuff that you need to know. And then it's basic stuff, like I said. If it's without a weapon, if they're standing with their left leg front, they're orthodox. That means the right hand is gonna come. Nobody's gonna throw a hook on the street. Everybody's angry. Everybody loads up their punch because they're angry, you see? So all these things are easy. They're... People have no clue how easy it is for a professional fighter. It's like me challenging a, a, a, a basket- professional basketball player to shoot some hoops. Who do you think is gonna win, right?
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
I mean, come on. Let- we do this every day, single day, two, three times a day. You're not gonna win. It's not gonna happen. Yeah, if you maybe from the back hit us, but otherwise it's not, it's simply not gonna work, you know? And if you can bring that over to them and they realize that, and with on top saying, "I don't want to fight," you know? Always say you don't want to fight, because that makes them feel good, you know, that it's not a threat. Most of the times they stop. And otherwise, it's the cross counter. A cross comes. They always hit at an angle, so that means they always come from the side. So the only thing you have to do is literally move backwards, because then the punch already is gonna miss you, and there's your counter. It's a very simple counter. Either a cross or if it's an elbow, it depends how close he is, but if you learn distance, and that's the first thing we focus on, on your stance and on distance, because distance is everything, because if a person stands here, this punch is not very powerful. It's better to go an uppercut, a hook, or an elbow on this distance.
- TFTim Ferriss
Just for people who are listening, right, if somebody is a few inches from your chest or, like, within a foot of your chest.
- BRBas Rutten
Yes. What I say in seminars, the longer a strike travels, the more power it has, the more time it has to pick up speed and power. And I always use an example with a bow and arrow, and I grab a person in the, in the room and I grab a bow and arrow. Uh, I act like I have a bow and arrow. I say, "If I..." And I put my hand against his chest. If I let this arrow go, it's gonna go in this deep. But if I step back three steps, it's gonna go straight through him. Now I gave it space, and now it had time to develop speed, you see? So that's also... Like, if people hit me on close distance, I bring my head closer to their punches. Here it hurts, but if I bring my head to the hand, he cannot load up anymore, you see? I'm cutting off the distance, and these little things are not gonna do anything. But if I move away, then he's got reach in order to hit me hard. So distance is everything, and especially when you're backing up as somebody comes at you, if he comes with aggressive power and you make the defense but his face is here, you see, now a punch is not good. You have to change it to an elbow. So that's why it's always good to have some classes with people who break it down like this, just a few techniques. It's not that difficult to knock somebody out. But make sure that you don't s- have too many techniques. Just a few techniques, and know them very well and you're gonna be okay.
- 1:09:45 – 1:11:35
Why even professional fighters shouldn’t start street fights.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah, and I'll just say for folks listening or watching, and [laughs] I mean, this will sound obvious, don't start fights. You just do not know who you're fucking dealing with. I remember when I first moved to San Francisco, I was training at a, at a Muay Thai gym called Fairtex at the time. I don't even know if it's there anymore. And one of the, one of the fighters, terrible temper. He was pretty good. He wasn't great. He wasn't professional, but he went out to a bar, started a fight, didn't mind his back. He wasn't in a corner. Got stabbed right through the lung by someone who was behind him, and then one of the instructors also, Alex Gong, guy ran into his car and then kept going, and, uh, Alex's car was parked, and the gym had this garage door, and he chased the guy, and the car stopped at a red light, and he punched the guy's window in, and the guy had stolen the car. He pulled out a gun and just shot him in the chest, and that was the end of Alex. You just do not know who you're dealing with, so don't. [laughs] I also have funnier stories, like when my, uh, the guy I was training with at the time, N, who was a world champion in Thai kickboxing, but he was tiny. Tiny, little guy. He wore really loose clothing, and he went out to a bar, and some guy started a fight with him, and, uh, kicked him once and broke every rib on one side, and that was, that was the end of that. So moral of the story: if you can avoid it-
- BRBas Rutten
[laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
... don't pick a fight. [laughs] Don't pick fights.
- BRBas Rutten
Well, don't fight. It's so stupid. And emotions, check them, you know? You cannot get in... You need to control anger, like Bruce Lee said, because anger, like I said, makes you load up the punch. You know, that's why you, that's why you want to get your opponent angry in a fight, in a professional fight. Because if they're really angry, they start loading up. They start telegraphing, you know? It's very hard to control your emotions, but you control your emotions, you're gonna win the fight.
- 1:11:35 – 1:13:46
Grand Theft Auto IV.
- TFTim Ferriss
So [laughs] I wanna ask you, we're gonna get to O2 Trainer in a second, 'cause I have one on my table at home, and I, I want to ask a number of questions about it. Before we get there, Grand Theft Auto IV. [laughs] So all right. So how did you get involved with Grand Theft Auto, and what the hell happened there?
- BRBas Rutten
Oh, they called me, and they said if I wanted to do the, the motion cap. Actually, every fight you see, and we made history in that game. So for let you know that because all the video games are doing it right now, and I came up with that. Because we were doing the, the motion cap with all these little balls on you, you know, and then you have to hit-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- BRBas Rutten
... and then they track the balls. But I said, "Listen, if you punch somebody and if I hit the air, you see me hitting the air, you know? We need to hit something solid." He goes, "Why?" I said, "It's gonna look much better." I said, "I'll show you." So I gave him a cross, hook, cross. I showed a few techniques. I said, "Go watch this." And I called my buddy Amir, who was holding the focus mitts but for me, the pads. And I hit that, and I remember they were up there looking at the footage, and everybody went, "Yeah." They started screaming-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
... because now you see literally connecting, and you see the power coming back. It made it much more realistic. So all the The carjacking, the fighting on the street that you see, we did that as well. But then the best thing came, they wanted me to have my own TV show in the game. So there's two 10-minute episodes-
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
... of In the Men's Room with Bas and Jeremy. It's a very funny show. Dude, I had to send people out of the room because they start messing it up every time because they started laughing so hard. I got a script, and I start breaking up the script. I would, mid-sentence, I would act like that was a period, and then I re- restarted. So it sounds complete psychotic what I'm saying. It's like, "What is this guy talking? It's completely crazy." You know?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- BRBas Rutten
Once you start shouting at the audience, the fake audience is there, "Who wants to knife fight with me in the audience?" You know?
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah. [laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
As a commentator, as the host of the show, you see. Oh, I love that stuff. That was the best work. That's one of the best works I ever did, I think.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
You know, for the people, GTA IV, Bas Rutten. Go on YouTube, they have the, both the episodes. I think it's hilarious.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
That's the kind of humor that I really like.
- 1:13:46 – 1:26:56
Now a devout Catholic, Bas explains how the rosary is like meditation.
- TFTim Ferriss
So [laughs] all right.
- BRBas Rutten
[laughs] Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
So we'll link to those in the show notes. Question, this is gonna... Well, I don't think this is gonna be difficult to cover at all, but I thought I would be remiss if I didn't ask about the role of prayer in your life.
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah.
- TFTim Ferriss
And I read about this, and I don't know if you still pray the rosary every day, but I'll read something that I found in the research. This was on catholicexchange.com. I'll give them credit here, but here's the line, and you can correct me if any of this has changed or is wrong. Uh, "It just lets me focus. It's meditating to me, as it is to many others. Take your time to do it. Go to a quiet spot and start when you really go over the mysteries," and those are in quotation marks, "and visualize them and repeat the prayers. It will calm you down." So could you speak to, I'm not affiliated with any religion, could you please just describe the role of prayer for you, and then also just elaborate on what the mysteries are? Because I, I don't know what that refers to.
- BRBas Rutten
Okay, so the rosary, they say I'm a very devout Catholic. It's, uh, the first hour of the day is all prayers. That's what I start with. It's also a rosary. I, I do a lot of reading about it. It's really got me back into the person I really wanna be. When you say the word religion nowadays, people can freak out. But see it like this. I got in this confrontation with this 23-year-old in a dog park, and he knew that I was a Christian, that I love Jesus.
- TFTim Ferriss
Wait, when did this happen?
- BRBas Rutten
This happened maybe four months ago.
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay.
- BRBas Rutten
And he wanted to push my buttons because there was something going on in the fight where I gave my thoughts and he gave his thoughts, and he thought he was right. I said, "Well, I've been only doing this for 30 years, and I've seen this many times, so I, I think I'm right." But hey, whatever. And I think he, he couldn't get that, so he needed to get back at me for something. And then suddenly he said to me, uh, they were talking about the fact that nowadays you have some states where people park their car outside the supermarket, they load it up for under $1,000, and then they take off. And then by law, you can't do anything because it's not above $1,000. And I said, "Those people are bad people. They shouldn't be doing that." He set the wrong example. And he said, "Oh, we used to do that in, uh, in California," but he has $500. So he would steal till $500. And his father stands right here, like Father of the Year Award, right? I mean, he's telling you that he just would steal under $500. I go, "This is crazy." And then he says, "Oh, and by the way, my Christian friends, they were the worst. They stole the most." So that was an attack at me, right? So I go, "Yeah, they were Christians, but they were not, uh, practicing Christians then." And he goes, "No, no, they go to, they, they, they go to the church every week." I go, "Oh, okay. Let's use that analogy then. So what you're saying is that if you walk around in my gym once a week, you're a professional fighter? Is that what you're saying?" And he looks at me. I go, "Or do you think maybe you're gonna have to take some classes and learn about that, and then maybe live like a fighter? No drinking, no this, no that, no that, no chasing women, no all, you know? You have to be a fighter. Maybe you think that," you see? And that is how I apply the fighting. I just wanna be a good guy. That's what I wanna do. Clean up my life. And I never did bad things, like really bad things. [laughs] I did with people who got it, they deserved it at that moment, but still now, um, it's much easier for me to just walk away. And I don't need to test my skills anymore, and it completely changed my life. It made me a much better person. And once I did that, I saw my whole family started changing. I didn't even ask them. Now they started coming around because they saw the, the husband, my wife, and the father change, you know? I started just becoming a much better person. Think about what you say, you know? Look about truth. Look all these kind of things. So then somebody told me that, you know, once you do a rosary, a rosary, every bead that you have on a rosary is kind of a shotgun blast to the devil, and especially if you do it in Latin. Oh, wait a minute. Latin, yeah. Okay, let's learn everything in Latin then, you know? If the devil really hates that. And if you really start thinking, because people, when you say devil and you say God, they say a lot of things. You should do really some hom- homework and search for people who had a near-death experience who actually went to hell, or purgatory for that matter, you know? There's some really crazy stories that you hear, and it's like, whoa, it's right in your face, and it's all the same. They all say exactly the same story, thousands and thousands of people around the world. So I just started wanting to become that person, and now it's got me in such a thing. Listen, I wake up, people are like, "Oh my God, you look great. Oh, it's probably you're using steroids." You always have these people talking like this. Well, you can test me every day. I'll take any bet. You can literally test me for six months straight if you want. A blood test also. Not a pee test, a blood test. Every single day you can come and test me. And if I look the same after six month, let's put some money down, because I'm gonna make a good amount of money because I don't. But if you live like I do, then you might look like me as well. I wake up at 5:30. I do a prayer here and there. I'm in the gym at 6:00. First thing I do, O2 Trainer, 30 repetitions. Post it every single day. For the last four and a half years, I post every single day. Once I have a habit, I might have missed 60 times over four and a half years, you know? Because I just, once I create a habit, that always help me also with fighting, I just stay with the habit. And it became more and more and more relaxed. And it was so weird because the more I learned about it, the more time I would took to learn a certain prayer or to do certain things, the more calm it got me And I just, I just feel really great right now. I mean, I'm enjoying life. I'm doing everything. It's like I'm feeling really good. And to go back to the rosary, if the rosary, you have five decades, and they're, every time they're different on every day of the week. So Mondays and Saturdays are the same. The mysteries of Mondays and Saturdays is the Annunciation. That's the first 10 parts. You meditate about Annunciation, when Gabriel came to, uh, Mary and say, "Hey, uh, you're gonna be pregnant. This is gonna happen. Blah, blah, blah." Then the number two. The number two is that you go visit Elizabeth and Zechariah, you know, because John the Baptist came from there. And that, that's number two. Then number three is when Jesus gets born. Number four is when you present him in the temple. And all these little things, if you read about it, you can visualize those situations while you go over the beads. So you're turning off the world, and you focus on these mysteries. It's pure meditation. You know? You're completely cut off, and you focus. And sometimes ... Well, sometimes [laughs] many times, you know, you might start shooting all over the place again. You just gotta reform again because it's a 15-minute thing. Or if you do the Latin, it's like 90 minutes. It's a little longer, you see. But those are the mysteries. And the very, um, um, boom, boom, boom. And the very end is when they lose Jesus for three days, and they find him in the temple. That is Monday and Saturday. On Tuesdays and Fridays are the Sorrowful Mysteries. This is where the, with the crucifixion, with the, with the, the, the, the crowning of thorns, the scourging at the, uh, at the pillar, all that stuff, all the bad things that happened on Tuesday. And then you have Wednesday and Sunday. That's when he comes back. This is when he resurrected. And, and then when he goes up to heaven, and he's talking to them for 40 days and 40 nights and talking about everything, that is on Wednesday and Friday. And on Thursday, you have the Luminous Mysteries. That's what I do. Some people don't. But, uh, and that's, uh, you start with the baptism in the Jordan, then the wedding at Cana, you know. It's all these things from the Bible that you focus on. And once you start on every bead, you have a situation in your mind how the story goes for you. It's really easy to just focus on that and to cut off all the noise in the, in the, on the outside world. Like, for instance, we did twice the Exodus 90. That's, that's like Lent on steroids, right?
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
So it's for 90 days. You are not allowed to drink, uh, sweets, no sodas, no ... You can't eat sweets. You can eat only three times a day. Nothing in between. Nothing. You can't watch TV. You can't watch on your phone. You can't be on your computer. Only for your work, you can. You can't listen to crazy music, only music that lifts the soul. You can only do cold showers. You have to work out every single day. And then once you start doing that, I realized my, my social media cut with 80% because I realized I'm wasting so much time on the stupid phone the whole time and trying to get likes and posting videos. Now I'm reading a book, and now I learn something [laughs] about life, you see? So it completely changed me. I did that twice now, and that's really ... Yeah, it, it, it puts life in perspective, what is necessary and what's not necessary. And if you keep it very simple, trust me, that's the way to go. All the stuff that you ... Like, I had a Porsche, and I had this, and I had that. It's all gone. It's all material stuff. Nothing's gonna help us to get up there with that. What's gonna help us to get up there is to be a good person, help other people. And that's what I wanna be. So I don't go crazy when people are screaming, and I won't be the guy who's quoting verses. Well, if you want, I can, but I won't, you know, because that scares people off. They think, "This guy is freaking crazy." You know? But if you really take it to the heart, and you really try to just be a good person ... Like for instance, Jesus says the two greatest commandments. Let's say you're an atheist. Forget about, uh, a commandment number one is which love God with all your might, all your heart, all your soul. Forget about that one. Number two, treat people like you wanna be treated. Those are the two most important commandments in the world. You think if everybody all the way in the world would treat everybody like they wanted to be treated themselves, we would be in, in this mess right now? We wouldn't. That's it. And that's the only thing I'm going after. I wanna just be that guy. I wanna help you, I wanna help you, and hopefully you help me, and that makes me feel good. I'll be that guy. So that's my take on being a Catholic [laughs] and the, and I'm, I'm enjoying it every day. Like, like against with how many times I started in May 2015 with my rosary. And they go, "How many times you missed?" Never. "How do all your readings?" Never missed a day. You know, I just built a habit, and I do that. But that, what I had in, in praying, in, in, in, in meditation, I used to do that also in fighting. Once I tell myself, "Today I'm gonna do 10 rounds off the, on the bag after, uh, after a workout," I better do it because if I do nine rounds, ooh, I can't look at myself in the mirror. I see a failure. I program my mind in such a way that I'm a complete loser if I ... So I never wanna experience that feeling again, so I always do the 10 rounds, whatever it takes. I wake up in the morning now, like I said, I'm six o'clock, I'm in the gym. Do I want it? No. But I have a really bad arm, which you ... Well, I can pull it up. I had four neck surgeries, so I atrophied my whole arm. And you see a whole dent in here. You see that the whole muscle is gone.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah. I can see that.
- BRBas Rutten
This arm, my whole arm was like this. So slowly over 11 years, it came back. I did with two-pound curls. I couldn't have pulled the trigger from a gun, you know. And now I do 15-pound curls. They go, "Oh, that's a lot." I go, "Dude, that's over 11 years." You know? It's not a lot. I do 45 with the left arm, and I do only 15 pounds with this arm, but I do it. You don't have to do every time everything you like. That's the problem in this whole society right now. We feed, we think that pleasure is the same as being happy. It's not. You know? You're just feeding your pleasures, you know, your vices. Give more, more, more. And it becomes more, and it controls you. And once it controls you, now it's a vice. You know? The powerful man, this is what I always say. Well, I have a line. I do these talks, public speaking talks. What kind of man you wanna be? I wanna be a man who can overcome his weaknesses, vices, and imperfections, a man who's not a slave to his passions and desires, but a real man who's in control of himself. So I say, "Oh, I take a drink. Oh, another drink." Now you have a little bit of buzz. You really want the third one. No, because that's gonna send me over the edge. I'm not gonna do it. That's a powerful guy to say no to a vice. All these guys who, who, who have sex all day long and drinking and drugs and profanity and screaming all the time, those are the most insecure, weak people on the planet. We think, we believe they are the strong people, but they're the opposite because they can't control their vices. They're a slave to their vices. They can't say no to alcohol. Once I read ... Because I was an alcoholic. Well, you gotta say I am, right? Because apparently it's never go away. But once I read that I was a slave, that alcohol was telling me what to ... controlled my life, that was it. I didn't drink anymore. When did it hap- I think my whole life, and once I read it in the Bible, somehow, boom, it clicked and I stopped doing it. So if all these great things are coming to me and it's really helping me, I see it as a very positive thing and I truly believe that everybody would live like I live. We would have, be in a very happy world. I truly believe that. Do I have my vi- Listen, we all make mistakes. I make mistakes, but all the mistakes I make now I do to myself, are little tiny things. It will never be a, a judging thing, like a complete douche, uh, walking around screaming at people, you know, that you, uh, you almost wanna say ... In the past I would say something. Now I just, shut up. Now if he does something bad like hits a woman or whatever, oh, trust me, that's the thing, right? You can jump in right away. The, the, they don't say turn the other cheek. That's Jesus. We don't do that. We help the people. I like to see myself as a sheep dog. You got wolves, you got sheep, and you got the sheep dogs to protect the, the sheep from the wolves, and I like to be that guy. I like to be a powerful guy who can control his emotions and his vices, and once I can do that, I just feel really good about myself.
- 1:26:56 – 1:29:13
Who picks fights with Bas Rutten these days?
- TFTim Ferriss
There are a bunch of questions that come to mind. I wanna go to the, the workout and the O2 Trainer and also what you do after that. But looking at you now, for those people who aren't watching video and are just listening to audio, I mean, you seem like, despite the surgeries and the atrophy of the right arm, I mean, you seem like a very fit guy still to this day. And so what I was thinking as you were talking about the dog park is who on earth thinks it is a good idea to [laughs] get into some type of altercation with Bas Rutten? How did that start?
- BRBas Rutten
Him and his father also, and his father told me the next day, he says, "Bas, he's doing that all day long to me." I mean, he's pushing the boundaries. They've been never a b- Like, I have students and when you see them they look like this. Don't piss him off. You're gonna lose this. You know? And with me he did that. If he would've done that 10 years ago, I might have grabbed him by the throat because I wasn't that fat. I would've said, "Now you gotta stop." Would I have hit him? No, probably not. If he takes a swing at me, sure, but otherwise ... But at least I would've grabbed him by the throat. "You're gonna stop that right now." But I didn't do that, you see? So it's, it's just a guy who knows that probably that if I would hit him, [laughs] there's a lawsuit, right? And they just don't care. But guys like that, and I told him that. I said, "You have to watch out because you are gonna say this. If you say this to one of my 17-year-old students, he will mess you up. You're not gonna l- You're gonna lose this, and he's five years younger than you or six years younger than you." You see? So I don't know what's wrong with some people. That's the same when they have alcohol. Well, the alcohol challenges, all that, that stopped after my whole crazy Sweden bar fight story with the five bouncers and there was the whole nightmare and, uh, after people read that story nobody ever challenged me again on the street [laughs] . And that was in 2001, I think, in 2000. So that thankfully helped [laughs] because before that people were drunk and would come up to me and I would just go up to the bouncers. I say, "Can you come here? I can take him out." And they would get so angry and then I would write my name and the phone number on the business card. I say, "Here. Tomorrow morning call me and then we will fight. Any rules you want, we're gonna fight, but I guarantee you you're not gonna call." "Oh, I'm gonna call you tomorrow." "You're not gonna call. You'll be the first one."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
And they, they of course, they never call because they wake up and they're sober and they go like, "Yeah, that was really stupid."
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
You see? So just it makes me more calm.
- 1:29:13 – 1:36:00
That time Bas got into a bar fight with five bouncers in Sweden.
- TFTim Ferriss
So we can't tease the Sweden story without [laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
Oh. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
Okay. Okay, so Sweden. What happened in Sweden?
- BRBas Rutten
Oh, okay. So there was crazy Bas. But understand this. When I'm drunk I'm a happy drunk. I'm always drunk, see, partying and, you know, but, but still it's stupid, you know? You, you ... Because I don't have alcohol under control, but still I was always a happy guy. When I walked into the bar, it's called The Spy Bar, very notorious for their bouncers being really bad bouncers. I mean, the whole of Sweden, they love me after this happened. So when I walked in they recognized me and they said, "And you're gonna keep it quiet today, Bas." And I thought, "That's a weird thing to say. Why wouldn't I?" I never get in trouble. I get friends with everybody. So I'm walking around, dancing around, and then this one guy wants to give me a drink and suddenly a bouncer comes to me and he says, "You have to go." I says, "What do you mean?" He says, "You're bothering the, the customers." I say, "Who, him?" I say, "He's buying a drink for me right now so I don't think I'm bothering. Can you ask him?" "No, you have to come with us." I say, "Dude, I'm not bothering anybody." So they grab me. I don't wanna fight because I know if I push somebody it's already gonna fight, but I don't wanna fight. So I walk with them and now with the two bouncers we're at the fire escapes and there's this big marble stairs going down. And this guy's a little guy and a big guy behind him, and the little guy's wearing a leather jacket, I remember that, and there's this big guy standing. Croatian, uh, guy. Croatian mob they said. And, um, I'm talking to the guy and he's, he's pointing on my chest the whole time and I say, "Guys, I w- I'm going. Don't worry about it. I don't want any trouble. Can you tell my buddy, he's also bald, he's from Holland, that I'm outside because otherwise he has no clue where I am?" And he says, "You don't understand." He's pushing on my chest, the guy. He does. There's no, there's no reason to touch me. Let's, let's not do that. So then he touched me again. I pushed him away. I said, "Don't, don't touch me. Stop touching me." And right away the guy behind him, the tall guy, stabs a finger in my eye. So I'm going like, "Guys, I don't want any trouble." And he stabs my other eye.
- TFTim Ferriss
Right.
- BRBas Rutten
As soon as that happens I knock him out because what's next? He's gonna kick the bal- He's gonna, he's gonna escalate. I mean, once you take two eyes So I knocked him out. The problem was they had these little microphones.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
So now three other bouncers come in. And that guy, of course, he's out, but while I'm fighting the other bouncers he starts waking up. So I'm dropping left and right. I mean, I put three in the hospital and then finally I had to go... I realized eventually I'm gonna run out of gas. This is gonna go wrong. I gotta go down, and there's a fire escape, so I need to go down. So I'm running down. I'm going down, while I'm fighting and I'm hitting, hitting, hitting, and I'm going down. And I remember, I still to this day, I remember exactly how it looked. There was one of those copper things that you push in to open the door, and it was locked.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah. I couldn't get out. But till that time I was still fighting by the rules. I wasn't stabbing eyes. I didn't kick the balls. I didn't, all... I was still kinda just fighting, you know? Not to destruct. So now I made up my mind, and I turn around and I told myself, "I'm going to do any- I'm gonna stab eyes. I'm gonna go all the way." And as soon as I looked at them they all stepped back, and I felt really powerful [laughs] for about five seconds because I thought they saw in my face that I meant business. But it wasn't. Behind me there was the whole police force was standing behind me. [laughs]
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
Because they had a call, and that's why they stopped fighting. But they threw me in jail. Uh, from jail I went to a jail in a freaking mountain. You can Google this. I mean, I thought, "Am I, did I make this up?" No. In the mountain. We drive in a tunnel. The tunnel stops in the middle of a mountain.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
I have to go to an elevator two floors up, go out, three floors up, go out, four go down, go... I go like, this is like a movie. I go, I come out of it, I'm a-
- TFTim Ferriss
You're like a bad wizard in Harry Potter. [laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
It was insane. And then they put me in prison. I still couldn't call my wife. Oh, and this is, I always say my wife hates this story, but she kinda thinks it's funny on one side or so, but it wasn't funny at the time. When I talked to her, when I, before I went into the bar, she says, "Why are you so happy?" I said, "Honey, I'm just drunk, uh, and I'm just having a good time." She says, "No, no, no, you're there with two Swedish blonde girls aren't you?" I go, "You know me, honey. For me right now alcohol counts. That's my only focus. Okay, I gotta go." So then two days she didn't hear anything from me, and now I call her.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
And by the way, they wouldn't give me my first phone call. It was the guards who knew me who gave me their cell phone and I was allowed to call. Dude, they gave me a TV. I had a VCR. They gave me cookies, tea. I was playing cards with the guard. It was hilarious. But, but still it was not fun because I was in jail, and they told me I was gonna be six to nine months in jail because apparently one of the cops, of one of the bouncers was a cop. But he didn't say he was a cop. Said, "Well, if he attacked me, well, yeah, I'd knock you out as well."
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh, wait. You said the cop of one of the bouncers? The, like the father of one of the bouncers or the brother of one of the bouncers?
- BRBas Rutten
No, no, no. One of the bouncers was a cop, off-duty cop.
- TFTim Ferriss
Oh. [laughs] Okay.
- BRBas Rutten
Apparently in Sweden they need one law enforcement person to be there as well. But he got the same treatment.
- TFTim Ferriss
Ah, got it.
- BRBas Rutten
Because if he attacks me I got him. So I call my wife and she's freaking out now. And I go, "Honey, calm. I don't have a lot of time. I have some good and some bad news. Uh, what do you wanna hear first?" [laughs] And she says, "The good news." I say, "I didn't have sex with two Swedish girls." [laughs] And she goes, "What's the bad news?" I say, "I'm in jail." And she goes, "You think that's funny?"
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
I go, "Yeah, yeah." [laughs] So thankfully I had some good guys there who were pretty powerful guys who convinced the bad people to take the charges back, but otherwise I would've been there six to nine months. That's what they wanted to give me for no reason. Then we find out, and you can Google this, they put people in jail for four years for nothing. There was a guy who went on a, one of those guys for, for the bouncers, he went on a big show, like an Oprah kinda show in Sweden, and he was crying on the show. They said it to me. And they, he said that they put an, an actress in jail for four years and she didn't do what they said. They were... Their boss told them to do these things. He felt so bad because they were the mafia bouncers. That's what they called them. Dude, they put on the, in the Swedish post they put a picture of my Street Smart Self Defense DVD, and then below it said that one of the bouncers said, "We were so happy the police came because we couldn't handle him." My sales went through the roof over in Sweden and I became their hero because everybody had trouble in that bar, and now they finally had somebody who, who could give it back, you know? But still it was a very... Now I'm here and I can talk about it with a smile, but, uh, with a laugh, but at that time, you know, if you, if you think you're gonna be there for six to nine months for something you didn't do, you know, try to convince. It's five against one, you know? Nobody's gonna believe me. So, uh-
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah
- BRBas Rutten
... yeah, that was the Swedish story. [laughs] It was good.
- TFTim Ferriss
So prior lifetime. [laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
Prior lifetime. You see? Now it's, now we take the rosary and it's... [laughs]
- 1:36:00 – 2:25:26
Re-learning how to breathe with the O2 Trainer.
- TFTim Ferriss
So the O2 Trainer, this caught my attention. I, I know this is something that you're deeply involved with, and I grew up with all sorts of respiratory issues, and I'm about to spend time at high altitude in a few months. So I was very, uh, intrigued, and went on Amazon and was quite blown away by some of the testimonials in the reviews. And I always, as you might imagine, I've had hundreds and hundreds of guests, and there's always part of me that's worried that their book is gonna be terrible or their movie's gonna be terrible or their [laughs] product's gonna be terrible. But the re- the reviews are really outstanding, and a bunch of my team looked at it as well. What is the O2 Trainer? Who uses it? What do they use it for? How do you use it?
- BRBas Rutten
Okay. It's an inspiratory muscle trainer. Let me, let me... This is the best way to get in people's heads, because once you, you know as well as I do, once you start talking about breathing people are gonna go, "Ah, been doing that my whole life." What people don't realize is that they breathe wrong. I'll go into that. They, give me a few facts. These facts that I'm gonna give you are scientifically proven, clinically proven in published medical journals. You can look this all up 100% true. First of all, there's nothing more important in your body that you can control than breathing. It's the number one priority. The survival rule of three states that the average human being can go three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without oxygen. So if you don't have oxygen for three minutes, you might die. So that's the number one priority in the world. Your lungs, fact number two, 100%, your lungs don't do anything by themselves. Your lungs are just two bags. There's not a muscle in your lung. The only way for your lungs to open up is by chest expansion. And when you expand your chest, you create a vacuum between the body and the lungs that will rip open those lungs. So if you really think about it, your chest doesn't expand because you put air in them. Your chest expands, and that's how you pull the air in them. Now, the biggest mover for expanding your chest is the diaphragm. And that together with the external intercostal muscles, which are the muscles in between your ribs, open up your chest. Exhaling is done by your obliques, your abs, and your internal intercostal muscles. And by the way, just to let you know, the average human being has about 11 pounds of breathing muscles. Fact number three, metaboreflex. Do you know what it is, metaboreflex?
- TFTim Ferriss
I don't.
- BRBas Rutten
Okay. We know it as gassing. You know what gassing, what happens when you're gassing? When you t- let's say you're cycling and you're going uphill and suddenly you start gassing, that is your body regulating-
- TFTim Ferriss
Ah. Got it. Getting really tired
- BRBas Rutten
... getting really tired-
- TFTim Ferriss
Huffing and puffing
- BRBas Rutten
... because it's gonna pull the air of your, your oxygenated blood, it pulls it away from your legs, and it sends it to your number one priority in the body, which are your breathing muscles. That's why you're gassing, because your breathing muscles are not updated. Now, let's attach another thing to it, stamina. How does it, how is it, why is it that when you train really hard your stamina increases? There's gotta be a real reason for that. Well, the reason is that if you train a muscle over and over again, it becomes more efficient. And once, well, the word already says it, efficient, it uses less oxygen, so boop, your stamina increases. And now you're gonna go, "Wait a minute, so if I train my 11 pounds of breathing muscles, they don't have to steal blood anymore." By the way, stealing blood, blood stealing, is a medical term in gassing, in, uh, metaboreflex. Number five, the fact, this is the biggest one, and it's gonna get everybody, and I'm gonna get you with it as well, Tim.
- TFTim Ferriss
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
95% of us breathe wrong. So Tim, take a deep breath. Now, he's raising his shoulders. That's a complete incorrect breath.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- BRBas Rutten
The densest, most rich part of your lungs is at the bottom of your lungs, and I will go in a little bit over why we are breathing wrong. Chest breathing, four to six of these breaths is the same as one diaphragmatic breath, a horizontal breath. Think about that. So if you're a, a fighter and you come back out of a hard round, you go back to your corner. Instead of raising your shoulders 40 times, you know, I take the lowest number now, because it could be four to six, you can do the same amount of air you can pull in by doing it 10 times correctly. And also think about this. You doing this, your traps, your shoulders, your neck muscles all have to work. They all cost oxygen. So why not updating your 11 pounds of breathing muscles that you have so they don't have to steal the blood anymore, and bada bing bada boom, you're gonna be good. Now-
- TFTim Ferriss
Hmm
- BRBas Rutten
... tests also show that after the age of 29... Do you see what I always dislike when the product comes out and they say, "Oh, this product will increase your lung volume"? It's a lie. You only have a set pair of lungs. When you're an adult, a guy is, uh, like, one and a half gallons, 6.4 liters I believe, and a woman is 4.2 liters, which is give or take a, a gallon. Right? That's it. You have it. But after the age of 29, your thoracic flexibility, which means your chest flexibility, starts decreasing. And I already said it, if you need that to open up, yeah, that means your lungs start shrinking. They're actually getting smaller after the age of 29. So if you are a person who's 40 years of age and you never did any breathwork, your lungs are smaller. Then yes, the O2 Trainer can make your lungs bigger again, but not bigger than they were. They just go back to the original size that they had in the first place. So that is everything taught about breathing, the most facts, and 100% true facts. I always wrap it up with this. Imagine you have two brothers, right? Two clones, identical in every way. The fingerprints. If one gets caught for, for murder, they're gonna have to figure out because both, they can be it. You know, if they left DNA. That's how close they are. They eat the same, drink the same, sleep the same. They do everything the same. And both guys decided to do a triathlon and then see who's the strongest from the two of them. Now, they do the same things. Every, everything is the same. So if an, a running coach comes in, he sits in front of them. They get the same information at the same time from the running coach, the cycling coach, and the swimming coach. Now, the one thing that one does different is that he trains his breathing muscles so his chest can expand maximally, and he can excrete also all the air, so he can move more air in and out of his body. Who you think is gonna win when they do the triathlon? Now, and everybody's going, you know the answer. It's the person who did the breathing muscles. This is how important it is to train your breathing muscles. And you are breathing correct till you're five and a half years of age. You can look this up. Goog- Google it, and you will see the studies that are there, and the reason is at five and a half, hey, that's the age when you start going to school. That's the age when you maybe get belts. Start with... So now already your belly breath gets away. If you look at a baby, it breathes the belly like this. We are all chest breath. We are actually the only animal on the planet who breathes incorrect. Every animal with a lung breathe diaphragmatic breaths. That's what they do. So it's important that you make sure that you focus on that technique, and the O2 Trainer with hard resistance, there's like a s- a short resistance cap here. When you breathe in with resistance, you cannot pull the air and you're raising your shoulders. You're gonna be forced to use your core. And once, just that by itself can give you up to five times more oxygen in your body. Now, with kids also, they become self-conscious. For instance, they start seeing Supermen, superheroes. They start seeing... And girls see Barbie dolls, and they, "Oh, everybody needs..." And if you breathe through your belly, oh, other kids might think you're fat. Or you go to the doctor, and they put a stethoscope, and they say, "Take a deep breath." They go And then you think, "Oh, so this is where my lungs are." No, that's not where your lungs are. Your lungs are here. That's the most rich, densest, oxygen-rich part of your lungs. It's below. So once you start breathing the correct way, what it did for me, if I have a fight that I show on my website, that's I fought Funaki, and you see me in the corner like this. [pants] I'm chest breathing. That is completely gone. I can go as hard as I want on a round. Out of the bag, I come out as this. [pants] There's no movement. Now think about a military guy, snipers, and all the special force. You think when they're with a gun, they're standing, do you think they're chest breathing? Of course not. Belly breathing because there's no movement here. Everything in your life becomes better. It's good. It's for asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis, anxiety, PTSD. I have a list on my website, o2trainer.com. Go there, click on science. There's a list of published medical journals what it does for you, and it will blow you away. Published medical journals for the people at home, I just wanna touch on that. It means it's clinically proven to do what it says. I'm saying this because a lot of people sell a product and it says it's clinically tested. Stay far away from that product. It's just a way for them to put the word clinically in, and then some people go, "Oh, clinically, it's gotta be good." No, it's clinically tested. What is the result from that test? That's what you should ask because if it was clinically proven, it would have said clinically proven. So don't buy a product if it says clinically tested because you wanna know what it did, what the result was. Now I brought this thing and I want to do this really fast. It's a, it's a vegetable steamer, but guess what? It also looks like a diaphragm, believe it or not.
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
Now your diaphragm is dome-shaped tendon muscle that's attached to the bottom part of your ribs. So if you walk your fingers down here on your sternum all the way back along the spine. Now the bottom of this is, is, is connected to the bottom of your ribs, and when you breathe in, this happens. Your diaphragm drops down. And from that view, not a lot happened. But watch what happens from this view. Spoof. It expands. So once this expansion happens inside, expands your chest, and again, there's the vacuum between the body and the lungs. That'll open up your lungs, and that's how you breathe. So the more chest expansion you have, the easier it will be for you to fill up your lungs right there. To me, this is the gift that keeps on giving. I started training with the prototype three weeks later, and I told you before, I had severe asthma. Every single fight, everywhere I went in the world, I was always carrying an inhaler with me because if I sneeze violently, I have t- my lungs close, I have to open them up. Many asthma patients right now who are watching have exactly the same that I have. After three weeks, I never even had an inhaler anymore. I don't have it. I sent it to my buddy in Holland. He's sell- he has asthma. Eight days later he calls me, he says, "Dude, my asthma is gone." So he sells them in Europe right now. This is my thing for the people at home. If you buy an O2 Trainer for your asthma or for your COPD, and it's not 70% or more gone in one month, and you only have to do this for four minutes a day, think about that, four minutes a day, then I give you your money back. The only thing that I wanna see is I wanna see you doing the, the 30 repetitions because everybody nowadays, they say, "Oh, I did it 30 times." You didn't. You didn't because it's a workout. You're gonna feel your core. I have bodybuilders buying it now for their abs. That's how much you got to strain on your abs and on your back breathing muscles. Back breathing muscles, yeah. You have muscles thir- 360 degrees circumferential around, around your body. They ev- breathe everywhere. Once you start including your back breathing muscles, and we have great exercises for that on the website... And by the way, if you do the back breathing exercise, do 15 repetitions. We tell you to do 30. Don't do 30. You're gonna walk around for three days in enormous pain because it feels like you'd worked out your back muscles really freaking hard. So just do 15 repetitions. These are muscles you never used before, and you watch your stamina go up. It's just bizarre. I had Lyoto Machida. You know Lyoto Machida as well, of course.
- SPSpeaker
Yeah, I do.
- BRBas Rutten
The UFC light heavyweight champion. He left me a message. I can let you listen to the message even if you want. I gave it to him, and he's a karateka guy, so that means he's got habits. I gave it to him, I said, "This is really good for you, Lyoto." He starts using it for four, five months. He got COVID. Then he had COVID. Five days after he had COVID, he decided to go start training with his students again who are fighting and competing in the UFC and in Bellator. He says, "Bas, I outworked everybody. I'd never been, um, in control with my breathing like I was there. It's the most insane thing." He says, "My muscles got tired, but my breathing was completely controlled." He was blown away, but he's a guy who actually did it. Now the problem, and which I found out now two weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night, I go, "Now I know why people stop using it." If you buy it for your stamina, what happens is this. You're working out your breathing muscles. So right after you did 30 repetitions, you have to do it a certain way, you can find it on, online, you worked out your breathing muscles so they're tired. So then if you start to do stamina, yes, it looks like it actually works against you because you get more tired because your breathing muscles are tired. The trick is to simply do it anyway for 30 days straight because once you update these muscles, and the sky's the limit. They found out now in preliminary tests that your second wind is your diaphragm being warmed up. Like I've been doing it four and a half years every day. I, I just told you that. If I do a conditioning workout, I do 30 repetitions, and then I start hitting the bag. And I have no dip. I fly through the workout. Every single workout that I do stamina, I'm like in the break, I'm like, "This is insane." It blows me away till this day every single time. This. [pants] And in the early days I was [pants] . I couldn't catch my breath. It's completely gone. Everything is controlled right now. And sleep apnea, balance, back problems. I mean, look at the list. You have no clue. Do you know that your diaphragm is the main muscle for balance? You know that the diaphragm also massages your intestines? You know the diaphragm also aligns your spine? I mean, diaphragmatic breathing does things for you you don't even know, and it's only four minutes a day. I'm an overachiever. I do it five minutes a day. That's it. Five minutes-
- SPSpeaker
[laughs]
- BRBas Rutten
... and then I start my workouts. Done
- TFTim Ferriss
So question for you. I'm gonna try it. I've had issues with endurance and breathing my entire life, so I, I'm actually gonna give it a shot. And how do you suggest when someone is just getting started that they incorporate this into their workouts? So for me right now, I'll give you an example. I'm going on a high altitude trip. I'm gonna be carrying a lot of weight in six to eight weeks, and my training right now is, let's call it two, three days of weight training, a lot of rucking, so carrying weight and hiking, marching, and then a handful of other things. And I'm just curious how, if you were me, just getting started, probably have very weak breathing muscles-
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah
- TFTim Ferriss
... how would you incorporate it into your week, let's just say, or your workouts?
- BRBas Rutten
In the beginning, I started doing my workouts with it, but then I got in contact with the guy who used to train Usain Bolt as well. And Us- he says, "Bas, stop doing the workouts with it." I said, "What do you mean?" "I have a breathing exercise for you, and that's what you should do." Like, Usain Bolt sleeps in a, in a high altitude tent. He wakes up first thing.
- TFTim Ferriss
Yeah.
- BRBas Rutten
When he comes out, he does 30 repetitions in respiratory muscle training. He says, "That will do way more for you." Then when I started doing that, because all this knowledge that I have about breathing, people... I had a doctor tell me, a pulmonologist said, "Dude, you know more about breathing than any doctor I know." Not a pulmonologist, but other doctors. It's insane. I said, "Well, that's Dr. Belisa Vranich." You know, she's a world-renowned breathing expert. And I, I'll tell you a fun story. Hopefully we can touch on that right after this. But so what you start with is doing breathing exercises. It's very simple. For the basic thing, normally you have to do it with movement. For now, I would simply put it in your mouth, exhale, squeeze, guys. You wanna squeeze all the air out of your lungs. I always explain it like this. Imagine you have two buckets. One bucket is filled with bad water, and the other one is fresh water. If I throw the bucket with bad water, if I throw 70% out, I can only fill it up with 70% good water because there's still 30% left bad water in there. So squeezing, exhaling is very important. Get all the bad air out, so to say, the carbon dioxide, everything that you breathe out, so you can use your entire respiratory system again to breathe out, to inhale, and to work this, all these muscles. In the beginning, what you wanna do, you wanna grab the bottom of your chair so you cannot raise your shoulders. Whatever you do, do not raise your shoulders. In the beginning also, you're gonna get neck pain because if you breathe in with resistance, this is what you're gonna do in the beginning.
- TFTim Ferriss
You're gonna clench your neck and your face.
- BRBas Rutten
Flexing, and that's gonna create muscle. But once you get the technique down, you just start breathing. And breathe, pushing out your belly. Focus on that. Once you get your belly down and you really wanna do this for months, then we're gonna start focusing to the bottom part of your ribs because officially you wanna do it a little higher because that's where the diaphragm is attached to. But this is what it would look like for the super beginner. You sit. [inhales] [exhales] Just focus on that. Those are your front breathing muscles. The back breathing muscles, like I said, don't do 30. That would be from the side. It would look like this. Your, your legs are, like, at a 90-degree angle, and I'm just gonna lean on my legs. And for now, just sit there. Don't do the exercise like I'm showing you. Make it simple. You're just gonna sit, O2 Trainer, breathe out, then you start breathing in and you focus on the lower part of your ribs on your back to expand. And it's really clear with how your mind works. You will feel this immediately. Just focus on those muscles. And you just relax every muscle in the body and only let your back muscles expand. [inhales] [exhales] You do only 30 repetitions of that, and that's it. What I personally do, I alternate. So today I do 30 repetitions with the front breathing, and tomorrow, so my front breathing muscles can rest, I attack the back breathing muscles. And then I flip every time. So every time I give the muscles that I attacked the day before rest, and I attack the other side.
- TFTim Ferriss
So let me hop in for just a quick second. So for me then, starting off, I would, instead of doing it in my workouts, maybe I do it first thing in the morning, and I would alternate, since I'm just getting started, 30 front, and then the next day doing 15 back repetitions and not 30 because I'll-
- BRBas Rutten
Yeah
Episode duration: 2:09:25
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