Joe Rogan Experience #2107 - Billy Walters

(drumming music) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music) What's happening, Billy? Good to see you.

It's good- good seeing you, Joe. It's good being here. Thank you.

Uh, so you know George Knapp?

I do.

That's crazy.

I do know George, yeah.

Did you get involved in the whole UFO thing with him?

Not really.

No?

Uh, uh, I knew George, uh, got introduced to him, you know, his, uh, the way he pays the bills, he's, uh, he's in, uh, he, he covers the news in Las Vegas and does a lot of feature stories and, uh, that's how I met George and, uh, we've become good friends over the years. I have a tremendous amount of respect for George and the work he does.

He's a great man.

Yeah.

A real good guy too.

Mm-hmm.

Did he cover your story?

Uh, George has covered a lot of stories involving me, uh, over the years.

(laughs)

I've been in Las Vegas, I moved there permanently in 1982 and since I've been there, uh, I've been involved in a lot of different things, indictments. I did, uh, I've done quite a bit of business there. Uh, the biggest business mistakes I probably made, uh, I did some businesses there with, uh, I did some public/private partnerships with, with local government and I didn't make any money. Matter of fact, lost quite a bit of money but, uh, uh, I got quite a bit of notoriety that I wasn't looking for. I, I got involved in a world that I didn't totally understand until I got into it. It, uh, I got into it for business and found myself wrapped up in a political world and, uh-

Oof.

Yeah, and that wasn't good.

They think gambling's a dirty business.

Yeah.

The political world, that's the real dirty business, right?

Yeah, I would agree with that. It's, uh, (sighs) I've, I've met a lot of, uh, people over the years, uh, in that world and, uh, have a lot of respect for some and of course, I'll, I'll withhold my thoughts and comments about others.

(laughs) That's a game that you don't want to bet on, right? Because that, that is a rigged game.

Yeah, that's a pretty tough game. That's, that when there's, uh, uh, that was pretty much over before you get involved I think in most cases.

So I- I've been paying attention to your story and it's pretty wild, man. You, you essentially started gambling in a pool hall when you were about six years old.

That's right. Yep. That's a very young age to get the bug. (laughs) Yeah, well it's kind of interesting how I, how I got there. Uh, you know, my father passed away when I was a year and a half old and my mother left, uh, to find work. I was born and raised in a small rural town in central Kentucky, a little town called Munfordville. And, uh, um, I, I was lucky. I had two sisters who were older than me and, uh, and, uh, my grandmother on my father's side took my oldest sister, uh, my aunt on my father's side took my other sister and my mother, my, my grandmother, uh, on my mother's side took me to raise me. And luckily for me, I couldn't have had four parents. I couldn't have had a better role model than her. She, uh, worked two jobs. Uh, she was an extremely proud lady. She wouldn't have taken any assistance from anyone if her life depended on it. (clears throat) And so I learned a lot of things from her early on in life that have been, uh, extremely important to me and have kind of carried me through to where I'm at today. And, uh, she worked these two jobs, I mean, the first places, Joe, I ever went when I left my home were a Baptist church. You know, Sunday school on Sunday morning, uh, you know, church afterwards. Training union on Sunday night, prayer meeting on Wednesday night, and I went to a Christian youth organization on Sunday night called the Royal Ambassadors. But, uh, when I was around four, my grandmother, she had this two, these two jobs and, uh, she had to have someone to keep an eye on me. Well, my Uncle Harry had a pool room. So she started dropping me off at the pool room when I was four years old and my Uncle Harry (clears throat) , he went to the back pool table, he put up a couple old wood and Coca-Cola cases, handed me a pool stick and he went back to work and, uh, I actually started banging pool balls when I was four. And, uh, by the time I'm six, I'm racking balls in Uncle Harry's pool room and, uh, playing penny nine ball. So, uh, my life when I was six, um, in church five times a week and, uh, I'm at my Uncle Harry's pool room, uh, and, and I'm- and I just began the first grade. So that was my life.