0:00
Study and play come together on Windows 11 PC.
0:04
And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds.
0:10
Get the Unreal College deal, everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs.
0:15
Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
0:20
with a custom-color Xbox wireless controller.
0:22
Learn more at windows.com/studentoffer.
0:25
While supplies last, ends June 30th, turns at aka.ms/collegePC.
0:30
This is Undaunted Life a Man's Podcast.
0:53
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:55
Let's get into it.
0:57
Wyatt Hendrickson, welcome to the studio.
0:59
I gotta tell you right from the beginning though, I'm mad at you.
1:02
Did you know that?
1:03
Could you feel at a dinner that I was mad at you that I had this kind of like underlying
1:07
anger towards you?
1:08
I felt nothing but love but explain.
1:09
Okay, so the thing was, we were supposed to be doing this sit down like six or seven
1:14
days ago, but you're like, "Oh, Kyle, I've got to go to the SPs" or something, which
1:18
is like no one even knows what that is.
1:20
And so you like literally like blocked our chance to connect, that should have happened
1:24
a week ago.
1:25
What is this SPs thing of which you speak?
1:27
Yeah, that's on me.
1:28
No, it's just, I know, it's the ESPN Awards, it's just something cool for, you know, they
1:32
just help pull some athletes in there and announce some prizes and it was a good time.
1:37
I didn't win, but it didn't matter.
1:39
The people that beat me were just, I guess, you know, I think they mentioned something
1:42
about, you know, there was some guy who was, you know, number one NFL pick, whatever that
1:46
means.
1:47
No one knows what that means.
1:48
You know, it doesn't matter, but oh well.
1:50
Okay.
1:51
So what were you up for?
1:52
I was up for it.
1:53
The best college male athlete of the year.
1:57
Cooper flag.
1:58
Okay.
1:59
What?
2:00
Pretty good athlete.
2:01
He hasn't even played.
2:02
He hasn't even played him in the league yet, right?
2:03
I mean, he played one season at Duke.
2:05
I mean, they didn't even win the natty.
2:06
I know.
2:07
I mean, they're like, "Oh, he won't.
2:08
He played one college season.
2:09
I was doing the NBA, I guess."
2:10
So, I mean, I'm just kidding.
2:12
I was really cool to go to that event and meet a lot of great people and the host that
2:15
was Shane Gillis.
2:16
Right.
2:17
We got a picture side-by-side next to each other and we looked at everyone's like, "Dude,
2:21
you guys look the same."
2:22
I'm like, "Is that like, you know, is that good?
2:24
Is that a compliment?"
2:25
It's a compliment to him and not to you because he's a big dude, though.
2:28
I mean, we've got the nice mustaches.
2:30
So I mean, people like you guys could be brothers and I'm like, "I would probably could."
2:33
Okay.
2:34
But what about his opening monologue?
2:36
Because I heard that he was going to be hosting and I'm like, "Okay, ESPN, they're not
2:39
going to let him be Shane Gillis."
2:41
And then I listened to the monologue and I was like, "Oh my gosh.
2:45
He burned the ships."
2:48
So what was it like sitting there, like listening to it?
2:51
Was it awkward for people in the room?
2:52
Because I mean, people were laughing, but some of the jokes there were like, "I don't
2:56
know.
2:57
I mean, I thought it was hilarious.
2:58
I mean, everyone I know, we thought it was funny."
3:01
And I think it was a good balance to everything because in those awards, they're so formal.
3:04
Normally, I'm not going to say you don't have fun, but you know, you got to do it a certain
3:08
type of way.
3:09
And he just went in there when I have a good time.
3:10
And so I loved it.
3:11
I liked all of his jokes.
3:12
I mean, I wasn't really paying attention to everyone else.
3:15
I was just enjoying the show with my wife and I mean, not everyone's going to think everything's
3:20
funny, but I mean, he's a comedian.
3:22
He is meant to be funny.
3:24
Yeah.
3:25
I loved it.
3:26
So speaking of which, newlywed, you've been married for how long?
3:28
It has been one month and 15 days and I did forget.
3:32
You heard my wife.
3:33
I did.
3:34
You didn't do me so we complained about it.
3:35
I did.
3:36
But what's my nice ring?
3:37
And we just got back from a big trip.
3:38
I'm like, "Oh, I'll put it on the side.
3:39
I'll put it in this little fancy cleaner we do."
3:40
And then I woke up, you know, I'm an athlete, I had left this morning.
3:44
Obviously, don't worry.
3:45
That'll ring to that.
3:46
That's all right.
3:47
I was actually going to put on my rubber ring, but my wife, she actually held it on me this
3:50
entire weekend.
3:51
So if anything, this is her fault that she took the rubber ring for me.
3:53
She's not here to defend herself.
3:54
So, you know.
3:55
Exactly.
3:56
If she was in the room, I'd be like, "Oh, it's all my fault.
3:57
I'm sorry."
3:58
Yeah.
3:59
I'm sorry.
4:00
Different story.
4:01
No, but like that's the funny thing.
4:02
I had like the fancy ring.
4:03
Like when I first got, it was like tongue, I guess it wasn't fancy, but it was tungsten.
4:04
I loved it.
4:05
Oh, it can't be broken, and then I had one person, it was like a paramedic or firefighter or something.
4:10
Yeah.
4:11
So if you get in a car accident or something like that and you like break your hand and
4:12
it swells up.
4:13
Yeah.
4:14
If we don't have a diamond blade, like we're going to have to cut your finger off.
4:17
You can't get it off because, yeah.
4:18
I remember hearing that.
4:19
Oh, what?
4:20
I don't think I like that.
4:21
And people hear about these guys out in the world, because around here, Oklahoma, oil
4:23
field and all that, guys that were wearing like real rings get hooked up on some piece
4:26
of machinery.
4:27
And it just literally like tears part of their hand and finger off.
4:29
Yes.
4:30
And so I was like, "And I can get like eight of these for like 20 bucks."
4:33
That's what I'm saying.
4:34
So it just works out well.
4:36
And then like, and you kind of forget it's there.
4:38
And they, you know, they bag out after time and then you just like throw it away and get
4:41
you a new one.
4:42
So it's a lot better.
4:43
But yeah, it's kind of a new school thing.
4:45
Yeah.
4:46
Funny, funny story about that.
4:47
I love, you know, showing that I'm married.
4:48
I love my wife.
4:49
Yeah.
4:50
I've been doing a lot of wrestling camps.
4:51
And for my wrestling camps, I actually did.
4:54
I kept it on.
4:55
I kept that rubber ring on through all my camps.
4:57
No, it's a good five, six hour days.
4:59
I'm getting sweaty.
5:00
Yeah.
5:01
I actually had it on so long and I was sweaty and I had like a broke out with like a rash
5:06
where the ring was because I kept itching and I pulled my ring off and I'm like, "Oh
5:09
my gosh."
5:10
Yeah.
5:11
It's all blistered up.
5:12
And I'm like, "Oh, I don't know if I'm allergic to this type of material."
5:14
Or I just, I think I've had it on so long and I let water get under it and I'll sweat
5:17
in.
5:18
It's probably the Chinese government.
5:19
They knew this was going to happen.
5:20
They're like, "We have to get at them before, before Worlds, before the Olympics."
5:24
I mean, you got some tattoo.
5:25
So you could always go with the tattoo route.
5:26
I thought about that.
5:27
I heard that the underside of the finger is absolutely horrifically painful.
5:32
Yeah.
5:33
So you'll see guys that just have this top, they just kind of have the person's name.
5:35
They're like, "Oh, that's all I need."
5:36
I was like, "No.
5:37
You was stopped because of the inner part of the finger because I've gotten a shot there
5:40
before."
5:41
And just last night we had to lance my five-year-old son's finger because he got a little infection
5:45
in his finger.
5:46
Yeah.
5:47
And it's just, I mean, it's the worst because you're having to literally hold him down while
5:50
a doctor's doing it and he's like, "Why are you doing this to me?
5:52
Why is he so painful?"
5:54
But I remember whenever I had, I think it was my middle finger on this hand.
5:57
It blew up.
5:58
It looked like a Mickey Mouse finger because I got staff in this finger, right?
6:01
And them milking my hand and getting all the pus out wasn't nearly as bad as the freaking
6:06
shots that they put on the underside of the finger just to numb it.
6:09
I was like, "I think I would have much rather y'all cut it and then like, milked it without
6:13
touching it."
6:14
So yeah, the underside could be a little sketchy, but I think you can do it.
6:16
Yeah.
6:17
I don't know.
6:18
I thought about that, but I mean, you move your hands a lot and the touch, I do enjoy
6:22
just wearing my nice ring, you know?
6:24
Yeah.
6:25
Because I wear as much as I can, but as a full-time athlete, you know, we lift a lot
6:28
most likely.
6:29
So you can't wear that to the gym.
6:31
I don't want to scrape that puppy up, but I don't know.
6:34
I always want to be able to wear it.
6:35
And I guess if I did, I still could, but I'd have to be really careful where I place it
6:40
exactly, you know, how thick because if it slides a little bit, it might be like, "Oh,
6:43
that's weird."
6:44
Yeah.
6:45
But I don't know.
6:46
I haven't thought about that.
6:47
Why I did think about it?
6:48
Because my youth pastor, well, he's the pastor for college in Stillwater.
6:54
He got his tattooed and he likes it, but I'm like, "I don't know.
6:58
I just...
6:59
How about wearing it?
7:00
It's more that...
7:01
Yeah.
7:02
It's that healing you get, you know?
7:03
Like, that's right.
7:04
I got a smoking hot wife.
7:05
That's right.
7:06
Hey, Anne and Ginger.
7:07
So it's just like, as soon as she walked in, I was like, "Ah, because there's not that
7:09
many of us left, I feel like, because it's like when you see another legitimate ginger,
7:13
right?
7:14
You just...
7:15
There's a connection there that people can't quite understand.
7:16
It's probably a spiritual connection there and like your wife is currently downstairs with
7:21
my wife who has a thing for Ginger's, right?
7:23
And so they're probably becoming best friends at this exact moment.
7:26
They've known each other for about 10 minutes.
7:28
So just be prepared.
7:29
Y'all may be coming over a whole lot more often.
7:31
I'm okay with that.
7:32
The drive in here and on this little studio, this is pretty fun.
7:34
Yeah.
7:35
It's gonna be fun.
7:36
But you...
7:37
So you mentioned...
7:38
So you're lifting schedule.
7:39
So we'll get into the wrestling career and matches and stuff like that, but like...
7:42
So right now, you're still training as a full-time athlete.
7:45
And so what is your current kind of breakdown of like, "Okay, how many days lifting?
7:50
How many days drilling, how many days like going live?"
7:54
Like because you...
7:55
I mean, 'cause some people, like they saw the national tournament, they saw the final.
7:59
And then they just...
8:00
They haven't like kept up and it's like, "No, you've done pan since then.
8:02
Like you've got other stuff coming up.
8:04
You've got worlds coming up.
8:05
All right.
8:06
It's not just like national title and then the Olympics in a few years, right?
8:08
So you got some more stuff you're doing.
8:09
So what does the training breakdown look like?
8:11
Absolutely.
8:12
So usually when it's more toward the competition, 'cause we have had the Pan Am championships,
8:16
we had final acts.
8:17
And so training for that's a little bit more just...
8:20
The work's already been put in.
8:21
You don't decide.
8:22
You want to start winning those tournaments.
8:23
You know?
8:24
Oh, hey, I compete in a couple of weeks.
8:25
Let's start training hard.
8:26
No.
8:27
So even for national championships, I was training months ahead.
8:31
But the last couple of months has been the transition from folks out to freestyle.
8:36
Yeah.
8:37
Because it's different.
8:38
So for those of you that don't know, folks style is only here in the US.
8:41
It's college and I guess kids too, but that's only in the United States.
8:45
Freestyle and Greco is what the rest of the world does.
8:49
So a lot of the habits I have built over folk style aren't the best for freestyle.
8:55
That's right.
8:56
And I even got thrown a couple moves because I had those bad habits of trying to stand
8:58
up and I'm like, "Oh, I can get thrown now."
9:00
So just trying to make that transition fast because the competitors I'll be going against
9:06
that world, they are all, "This is what they've been doing their entire life."
9:09
They're all very...
9:10
They're all...
9:11
They're very decorated wrestlers.
9:12
And so there can't be that half second of hesitation on these things.
9:15
So it's really just been doubling down on making good habits and obviously I can always
9:20
get better.
9:21
But we've had a lot of good training blocks.
9:23
So as a wrestling, training blocks suck because that's where you put the work in.
9:29
I didn't...
9:30
Like I just mentioned, I didn't decide two weeks before nationals almost start training
9:33
to be a champion.
9:34
You have to do that months ahead.
9:36
So it was easy then because I knew I had put the work in.
9:38
You never rise to the level of your expectations.
9:41
It was...
9:42
All the level of your training.
9:43
Exactly.
9:44
So having that solid foundation is just awesome to rely on because even on my days where I'm
9:49
out my best, I'm still a pretty good wrestler.
9:52
And so this morning, when I first showed up here, I was like, "Man, I'm a little late.
9:57
Oh, that's right.
9:58
Walking down the stairs from practice."
9:59
So I wasn't running down the stairs.
10:01
I'm like, "One step, one step."
10:03
And so it was one of those days where we got a lot of good work in.
10:06
It was a training day.
10:07
We're in a training block right now.
10:09
And so we're just getting a high volume, high volume, getting that muscle memory set
10:14
for freestyle.
10:15
And ultimately, we'll be doing this for a couple more weeks and then closer to worlds,
10:19
we'll back off a little bit and just keep, you know, just go in, get what we need.
10:23
So closer to competition, practices get lower of about 45 minutes, 45 minutes to an hour.
10:28
But right now, it's...
10:29
They're still hefty.
10:30
They should probably twice that.
10:31
So how much leading up?
10:33
So when's Worlds again?
10:34
September 13th, 14th is my wrestle.
10:37
Okay.
10:38
So like, how much technique work are you doing versus kind of like live or positional like
10:43
sparring?
10:44
Because...
10:45
So when you hear MMA guys talk about it, it's like training camp.
10:49
They're not really working technique, right?
10:51
This is all getting in shape for, you know, 15 minutes of fighting or 25 minutes fighting
10:55
depending upon how much it goes.
10:57
Because it's like...
10:59
So if you're fighting Islam Akashiv, right, and you didn't grow up wrestling, in an eight-week
11:04
camp, 12-week camp, that's a long camp, you're not going to get sufficient at takedown defense
11:10
in 12 weeks for a guy that's been like squeezing people and taking them down for 25 years,
11:16
right?
11:17
So like, at what point is there like a deficit of like, "Hey, we don't really need to do
11:20
a whole lot of technique here.
11:21
It just kind of is what it is.
11:23
We just need to be stronger, faster, and like mentally sharper than the rest of the guys."
11:26
Absolutely.
11:27
It really depends.
11:28
So right now, like for example, today was one of the toughest practices we've had in
11:33
a while.
11:34
It was no technique.
11:35
So it was all, you know, positional wrestling and a lot of drilling, a lot of reps.
11:40
We didn't do a lick of technique, but it was, you know, we also didn't do any live.
11:44
That's why it's the toughest days, because these are the days where it's just a grind,
11:47
because there's no sight in when practice is going to be over.
11:51
You're just, you show up and the coaches, it's hilarious.
11:55
So they're really big on mindset and mental attitude towards it, which is awesome for
11:58
me.
11:59
I need them to do what they do or else be a little more difficult.
12:02
They don't come in and say, "Hey, we're going to put you through two hours of drills today,"
12:05
because you're going to be like, "Oh my gosh, this sucks.
12:08
No, no, thank you," but we show up and he's like, "Hey, it's going to be a little bit
12:12
on your own at first.
12:13
So you're a partner.
12:14
We're going to switch partners every five minutes."
12:15
And so, you know, wrestling and then we do that a couple of times and they're like, "All
12:18
right.
12:19
Well, now we're going to start doing some reps."
12:20
And so the way they incorporate it, it's just the way it goes.
12:23
We're not looking at the clock.
12:24
Like, "Oh, we have more time left.
12:25
We're just focusing on the task at hand."
12:26
And what I like to do is take it minute by minute, you know, and just focus on that.
12:31
I'm not going to be like, "Oh my gosh, like I have this much more reps to do.
12:34
I have to do that later."
12:35
So take it rep by rep, minute by minute, and then the time usually flies.
12:39
But today was just...
12:41
Just a grind.
12:42
It was just one of those practices where you know you got better.
12:45
When you stepped off that mat, you were exhausted, but you're like, "I know I put the work in
12:48
today."
12:49
And so, it is a little more difficult because these are the very end.
12:53
We get close to done.
12:54
We know we're already tired.
12:55
We need to be able to break and keep pushing.
12:59
That's what's so tough.
13:00
And when people want to get the best at wrestling, they train very hard.
13:04
But there's something different about wrestling because in a match, you know both guys are
13:08
going to break.
13:09
Yeah.
13:10
Who can break and keep going through it?
13:11
And so, what the coach is trying to do, and they usually succeed, is they'll try to break
13:15
us.
13:16
And then we see it.
13:17
They see how much further we can go.
13:18
And it was awesome today because I felt like I did great because usually the stuff that
13:21
would have broke us is I kept going through it.
13:23
They added one more thing.
13:24
I got through it and even though it was the last thing where I kept like, "All right, let's
13:28
do it.
13:29
What's next?"
13:30
Because they know that we don't know when it ends in sight.
13:31
They're just going to keep going.
13:33
And I felt really confident after this practice because I mean, I've reached my limit, but
13:37
I find a way to keep pushing.
13:38
So I'm just going to keep setting that bar higher and higher and higher.
13:41
So by the time it comes for worlds, it's like, "Hey, I was at a big peak at nationals, but
13:47
now look how far we've come.
13:48
Now look what we can do."
13:49
And you know, they're still plenty more years to keep getting better.
13:52
Well there's an interesting thing that, so like whenever I run jujitsu practice or like,
13:56
you know, we have a group that gets together on Sundays, it's called Fight Club.
13:59
And so, you know, it's, you know, we do some book discussion.
14:01
We do a workout and then we do some jujitsu.
14:03
And some of the guys are like, you know, purple belt, brown belt, level in jujitsu.
14:07
Some guys are like perennial white belts, right?
14:08
So it's like they may come once every couple of months, right?
14:10
But they're just coming in there to hang out and be a part of the whole thing.
14:13
Like when I'm leading the workout, I know exactly how long we're going to be doing the
14:18
thing.
14:19
I know exactly how many reps, wall sits.
14:21
I know exactly for how long we're going to do it.
14:23
But I don't tell them that because there's a mental thing that you're like, you know,
14:27
because it's impossible.
14:28
I tell you, hey, we're going to do this for 30 seconds and your mind, you're like, okay,
14:31
I can do anything for 30 seconds.
14:33
But I've told people before, and this is kind of like, you know, indicative of a Christian
14:37
walk.
14:38
It's like, hey, I was running sprints with this guy.
14:39
We're at like hunt camp and he brought all of his deadlift stuff.
14:42
And so we're deadlifting there in the grass.
14:43
And then I'm like, all right.
14:44
Now you're going to come into my world.
14:45
We're going to run some sprints.
14:46
And I asked him on the last sprint because we ran nine sprints.
14:48
And it's the last one I said, Hey, are you willing to sprint until I tell you to stop.
14:53
And he just kind of like a laugh.
14:55
And I was like, no, I'm serious, like we got one more sprint, but I'm not going to tell
14:58
you how long it is.
14:59
Are you willing to do that?
15:00
He's like, yeah, I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to be behind you on this one.
15:03
Okay.
15:04
And if I sense that you start dogging it or that you downshift, we're going to do another
15:08
one.
15:09
Okay.
15:10
So you just got to go.
15:11
Now, if I tell you, Hey, we're going to sprint 150 meters, you're like, Oh, I know
15:14
it's kind of up there by that mailbox or that bush or whatever.
15:17
Like you can kind of like prepare your brain for it.
15:19
But what if what if it's quarter mile?
15:22
What if it's two miles or something like that?
15:23
But if you just lay your yes down, like, I'm just going to do this, even though I don't
15:27
really know, it's a crazy, like mental thing because you're right.
15:31
And we'll get to the the gable match and all that kind of stuff.
15:34
But there was something I noticed today when I re watched the match is your faints, like,
15:40
so you were doing a lot of fainting at like in the first period, especially at the very
15:43
beginning.
15:44
Yeah.
15:45
And those came back with even more fervor and energy late in the third, right?
15:48
Mm hmm.
15:49
And it wasn't like chaos.
15:50
Like, Oh my gosh, I'm down.
15:51
I got to do something.
15:52
It was almost like that was part of the plan.
15:54
And it was like, gable wasn't like quite ready for it.
15:56
But like, you know, going back to getting ready for worlds, like what exactly does well,
16:01
most people don't understand kind of the difference between, okay, training is part
16:04
of like the OSU Cowboys versus training for like international competition, like, so you
16:08
might explain that.
16:09
But what kind of bodies can guys bring in to show you, Hey, the guy from Iran is like this.
16:16
The guy from Georgia is going to be a little bit like this.
16:18
The guy from Russia is a little bit like this.
16:20
The guy from Cuba is a little bit like this, like, how can they show you, because you hear
16:23
all the time about, you know, a guy's fighting Steven Wonderboy Thompson.
16:26
So they bring in a bunch of, you know, long, lanky karate style fighters, you know, for
16:30
this person's training camp, like how, how can they kind of do that for international
16:34
wrestling?
16:35
Absolutely.
16:36
And so the number one thing I'll say is it's really similar to that.
16:40
But there's, there's two ways to look at it.
16:42
So I would say we don't ever say, Oh, hey, we're going to, we're training to be, you
16:48
know, this guy.
16:49
We're going to do it.
16:50
We're going to watch this guy and see everything he does.
16:52
We're just looking at who's the best and what does it take to beat them?
16:56
And sometimes we need to change stuff based off of that.
16:59
And so we do bring in partners.
17:02
We have a lot of great partners already at Oklahoma State.
17:05
But for example, I've been needing to get better at underhooks and some gut defense.
17:09
Well, we Greco guys are, that's all they do.
17:12
Hey, let's let's bring an expert in the field.
17:14
Let's rush them a little bit and let's see if I can make some improvements.
17:16
So it's a lot of stuff like that as we bring in guys and it is a lot different for freestyle
17:21
to say than folk style.
17:22
I mean, folk styles, there's top, bottom neutral and there's a couple of different things,
17:26
but it's just not as complex.
17:29
Freestyle is folk style, I would say is more about control.
17:34
Freestyle is more of like just exposure.
17:36
It's not about control because you can have control and easily get scored on in freestyle.
17:41
So like I talked about making that transition, those habits I have to have because in folk
17:46
style, you can stand up.
17:47
Well, one of my recent matches, I just stood up that bad habit and got thrown for five,
17:51
which is the most points you can get scored on you.
17:53
So it's finishing, you know, that making the good habits, making that full transition,
17:59
but also getting better by bringing other partners.
18:01
And so we are really fortunate at the cowboy RTC to have people from other countries that
18:05
want to come and train because they see what's going on in the United States at Oklahoma State.
18:10
And they're like, Oh my goodness, like, I want to train with these guys.
18:13
Like, look what those guys are doing. So it's really awesome to have guys from other countries
18:17
come in because those guys are going to have that feel.
18:20
Yeah.
18:21
And even when we don't have guys like that, we do a great job in the room of there.
18:24
We have so many different partners at every different way. It's like, there's someone
18:27
who's good at that position, like even when coach Taylor was training, because when he
18:30
last year, he was wrestling, we had a couple of guys come in and give him a feel that he
18:34
needed because a lot of guys are really good at chess wraps.
18:37
And we had a guy who was really good at chess wrap.
18:38
So he was coach Taylor's partner for a couple of days.
18:41
And so being able to feel it's really important and like, like that's part of the process.
18:46
Like I will have a couple of partners come in over these this next month and two month
18:49
or two that will come help me at those positions.
18:51
But got to put the work in first. We got to have that solid foundation because if you
18:56
can do all the fancy stuff, but if you're not getting the basics right, none of it matters.
18:59
I like to tell kids, like, what's your secret? What's, what, what diet do you have? What
19:04
are your supplements? What's your lift? I'm like, guys, I know you guys are going to
19:07
be a great wrestler, but by you guys trying to find shortcuts, that's already telling me
19:11
that you're not willing to put the hard work. You want a shortcut. And I've been there too,
19:14
where I was like, oh, if there was a special pill or a special thing, everyone would be
19:18
doing it. But I'm like, guys, there's no secret to success. It's just straight up hard work.
19:22
You have to go in there and be focused because people can show up to practice. You can't
19:26
just show up. You need to actually have an, you have to have intent to get better. I used
19:30
to go to practice for an hour and a half, two hours and I'd just be like messing around.
19:33
I walk out, what'd you learn? I don't know. I wrestled though versus now I go into a practice
19:37
room. I can have my practice as be shorter because when I step in that room, my mind's
19:41
like, all right, I don't care what I'm having for dinner. I'm not worried about this. It's
19:44
Russell time. It's time to focus up. And so for the, that time in practice, I get so much
19:48
more out of it because I'm intentful about what I'm doing.
19:50
Well, and so I guess the other thing for what you're having to do wide is you have to peak
19:55
at the right time as well because correct. Yeah, I don't want to peak right now.
19:58
Exactly. I'm going to help me in two months. Yeah, you've heard, you've heard about these
20:00
guys like, because again, I kind of put everything in that MMA or baseball context. Baseball is
20:04
a little different because it's a super skill sport, not a whole lot of grind. But so you
20:09
have these guys that will peak during training camp. They're the sharpest during training
20:13
camp. They're wrestling the sharpest or jujitsu the sharpest or strikeings the sharpest. And
20:17
then by the time they get done with their weight cut and get into the octagon, they're
20:20
spent like there. And it's not injuries. It's just like they're at it's kind of like when
20:24
you have an old battery on a phone. It's like, you can charge it all night and it's only
20:27
going to charge us about 68%. Right. It's kind of like that. And so like for you guys,
20:32
how are you able? I got the perfect answer for you. Okay, let's go. So as soon as you
20:36
mentioned that, so this is actually something I've never realized until just now. Earlier
20:41
in the season, a couple of weeks before nationals, even a couple of weeks before Christmas, sometimes
20:46
when I'm right, I show up and I'm like, Hey, I'm ready to grind till let's do it. They're
20:51
like, you know what? We're actually even off. So we have to have a staff that understands
20:56
that Taylor making that call or somebody else. It's all of them. They have meetings, they
20:59
talk about everything. And you know, coach Jimmy is, you know, I love him. We're really
21:03
some of many different ways. I'm just thinking of the story. We just whenever we seem a practice,
21:08
it's just all smiles and laughing. But yeah, I love all the coaches. They're awesome. They're
21:11
great mentors, not just great coaches, but they're really good at just portraying because
21:15
they sense like they just know. I don't know how it is. They just know. But I thought back
21:19
and there's been a couple of practices, even before nationals, a couple of weeks, I'm like
21:23
showing up, you know, we're all 30 minutes earlier ready to wrestle. And he's like, Hey,
21:26
we're not actually going to take we're going to take it easy today. So they're doing and
21:30
I didn't really understand. I'm like, okay, I mean, I trust them. Like you said, I put
21:33
my yes on the table with them. I said, Hey, whatever you want me to do, I'm going to do
21:36
it. Because I, you know, I trust, I trust this process of what kids are putting me through.
21:41
And it was kind of I was feeling great that day, but now I'm thinking about it. They kind
21:44
of sense like, Hey, you're getting really good right now. We need to. It's not time yet.
21:48
It's not time yet. And so they really just you have to have coaching staff that understands
21:52
that because a lot of coaches are just like coming and grinding every day no matter what.
21:55
And there's not like, don't see the bigger picture. And the, I remember our first couple
21:59
of practices, couple of weeks, your coach said, Hey, we, the end goal is nationals for
22:04
all the college guys, your guys angle is the national championship. And we're going to
22:08
take all the right steps to get you there and have you peak then because he says that
22:11
same stuff is like, Hey, we don't want you peeking right now. We're at in December, January,
22:15
February, you need to be wrestling your best and here's so we're going to do everything
22:18
we can to get you ready for that. And so you have to have a coaching staff that understands
22:23
that and is willing to step in when it's tough because some of those days I was ready to
22:27
go. And that's another awesome problem to have is at Oklahoma State, there was never
22:32
really times when people aren't showing up to practice. It's people are coming down the
22:36
off days behind the coaches because we just want to wrestle. We want to have fun. We want
22:39
to get better. And so the coaches are like, they almost have to lock the door in the wrestling
22:42
room. Yeah, because they're like, guys, you need to relax. We're like, no, we want to
22:45
wrestle. And so that's probably one of the best problems to have right now is all of
22:48
our guys are like, Hey, we're not wrestling tomorrow. Go lay down, go get some sun, do
22:52
not come wrestle. Don't lift, just relax. But it's just, it's so it doesn't feel like
22:57
it's a job. Like it's just something we get to do. So we show up every day. I mean, it's
23:01
awesome. We have fun. We get in the wrestling room. It's not like, Oh, we all show up and
23:05
start mosing. You know, as soon as we get in there, we're all chatting with each other.
23:07
We're playing games, having fun. So the atmosphere is just something you want to be a part of.
23:12
And so there's never those days when no one's coming in, it's we're doing too much. But
23:16
then like we trust the coaches, they're like, all right, we'll take it easy today. We won't
23:19
do this. Hey guys, real quick. So as many of you can attest, parenting is one of the hardest
23:24
things that you'll ever have to do in your lives. And here's the thing. You have the added
23:28
stress that if you don't do a good job, your crappy kids will end up being terrible adults
23:32
and nobody wants that kind of an outcome. And you know the drill, tons of so-called parenting
23:36
experts are all over the internet and bookstores, giving parenting advice that looks and sounds
23:42
good, but doesn't work in real life. Why? Because it lacks the wisdom that will lead
23:47
to what we all want. Resilient and morally grounded children. And that's why I want you
23:52
to watch the new series Parenting by Jordan Peterson on Daily Wire Plus. So you guys know
23:56
I love Jordan Peterson and his work. And in this five part series, Jordan sits down with
24:00
real families to hear their struggles. And he gives them wisdom-filled advice informed
24:04
by his experiences with his own children in multiple decades as a clinical psychologist.
24:09
So he deals with a bunch of different situations like toddler misbehavior and teen bullying
24:12
and how to effectively step parent and so on and so forth. And he gives advice to help
24:16
real life parents navigate those circumstances. Parenting is only available on Daily Wire
24:21
Plus and D.W. is offering a limited time and exclusive offer to indaunted lifers. They're
24:26
giving you guys 30% off of all access Daily Wire Plus memberships. So what do you get
24:32
with an all access membership? You get live Q&As with Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Michael
24:36
Knowles, Jordan Peterson and more. You get groundbreaking documentaries like What is
24:39
a woman and am I racist? You get the rest of and the entire Jordan Peterson library. You
24:44
get full uninsensored access to all the D.W. podcasts, complete access to every article
24:49
on DailyWire.com, full access to Ben Key. So that's their children's TV show and movie
24:54
zap that has content that isn't going to try to turn your kids gay and two free leftist
24:58
tears tumblers. And there's a whole lot more guys to get this deal. Click the link that
25:02
is in the show notes for this episode. If you want the link, it's get D W plus dot com
25:06
slash undaunted. That's G E T D W P L U S dot com slash undaunted or the link in the show
25:13
notes. Use the promo code Kyle 30 to get 30% off of your subscription. Again, go to the
25:18
show notes and click the link promo code Kyle 30 to get 30% off of your subscription to
25:23
Daily Wire Plus. Check out the new series by Jordan Peterson and subscribe to Daily Wire
25:28
Plus today. Well, that's that's why I try to like help people understand. So again, I'm
25:34
I come from a baseball background. I love watching baseball and everything in baseball
25:37
now is data. It's all about launch angle and it's all about like OPS plus and all these
25:42
other different things. So the feel of the game has like gone out the window. So the old
25:47
school manager that can just look at the body language of the pitcher and realize he's worried
25:52
about this next batter. This guy's like eating them up the last couple of things like, Hey,
25:56
we want to compete, but also we need to win this game. I might need to go get him. I might
25:59
need to go yank him and bring this guy out of the bullpen. There's none of that. It's
26:03
all data. It's what does a spreadsheet tell me to do? Okay, well, this guy, we have a,
26:07
you know, 87.4% chance of getting the out because he's more of a slider low and away
26:11
type guy. And this is a, you know, whatever the thing is, right? But like in wrestling,
26:17
having a feel for where your athlete is at, right? Because the athlete is just going to
26:22
go. Like I remember, uh, Dustin Poirier, this was years ago, um, he was on the Joe Rogan
26:27
experience and they were talking about whoop straps and all these like wearable things
26:30
and all that. And Dustin just kind of like, he goes, yeah, you know, I, I used to wear
26:34
that stuff, but I don't know. We really wear it anymore. And, and Joe's like, you know,
26:37
he's all about, he's like, Oh, so it's, you know, why, why don't you wear it and all
26:39
that? He's thinking there's going to be some big answer. He's like, well, I might let my
26:42
watch tell me if I'm going to work out today. Right. That's what my coaches are for because
26:46
he's worked with these same coaches. I think he's at American top team, but he's worked
26:49
with the same coaches for forever. So they know their athlete, they know when their athletes
26:53
ready to go, but when they need to yank back on the range, just a little bit, they know
26:57
like, Hey, we kind of feel like we're physically peeking right now. So we need to slow the peak
27:01
down so that we can peak here in 10 days or whenever like the next fight is. And so that's
27:06
the thing that I hate about a lot of these different sports and it's every sport. It's
27:09
all about data and all these different things. And we're kind of losing the feel of what
27:14
it looks like, you know what I mean?
27:15
Like I mentioned, like the hard work, like that's like, you know, like like 20, 30 years,
27:20
that's all you had like that. That's what it was all about. But now there's so many like,
27:23
Oh, maybe this data point here and there is so different. That reminds me of something
27:27
I wanted to say real quick is, um, I think back to I forgot where it was. It was like
27:31
a track athlete. And I guess before I tell you the story, I'll just tell you the reasoning
27:36
of all that, you know, the polar, the fitness stuff. A lot of people get comfy there because
27:39
they know all the data points they have it all. But then if that they don't have that
27:43
and other like, I don't know what's going on. I'm like, whether you're not your body's
27:46
going to probably do what you've been doing. Like you understand your body. Yeah. But like
27:50
people get comfortable there. There's a story about it was a track athlete. And I forgot
27:53
who it was. But he, um, like he is somehow his spikes got stolen. Like he didn't have
27:58
any shoes. And he's going against it. I think it was the Olympics. Yeah. And he was going
28:02
against everyone else. And he was, he was really like barefoot. Like it was ridiculous.
28:06
But he didn't care. Like he's like, so like I don't need those to win. Like I'm the one
28:10
who's worked hard. And so I'm pretty sure he won when everyone else had shoes because
28:14
a lot of people find comfort in their, you know, data points, whatever it is. Yeah, which
28:18
in routines are very important. Of course. I have a routine if I resource the same thing
28:22
every time, but you can't get so attached to that with without it. You're nothing like
28:26
that. That's not, you don't need that stuff. Um, this is actually kind of funny. I think
28:30
of, uh, I'm a big Marvel fan, big Marvel fan in Thor. Uh, when he lost his hammer, he thought
28:35
he lost his powers. And he was, uh, he saw his dad, whatever in the dream. And he's like,
28:39
Oh, I can't defeat, whatever. I don't have my hammer. He's like, are you Thor that got
28:43
a hammers? And so he kind of taught him like, Oh, I don't need this to be who I am. And
28:48
so I know I'm kind of, it's kind of different being some Marvel stuff in here. But then
28:51
he actually realized, Oh, that's not where I get my power. And so he came and obviously
28:54
came back, made a big thing in that, whichever movie he was in. But you know, same thing as
28:59
people get so like, Oh, I need this to be good. I need, I need this protein shake. I need
29:03
this one. Like guys, you know, no, you brought up the track thing. So it made me think about
29:07
so Calvin Johnson. So wide receiver, he played a Georgia tech and he goes the NFL combine.
29:13
And he's, he's already like a freak athlete. He's like six, six, like 260 pounds or whatever,
29:18
wide receiver, just like crazy genetics. Why did he ever go Georgia tech? Who the heck knows?
29:22
But like the whole thing about his performance at the combine, and this was before players
29:26
were like really picking and choosing which, you know, things they would do with the combine.
29:31
He didn't show up with cleats to run the 40, right? And they're already thinking, yeah,
29:35
he's probably going to be near the top. Something like that. Very, very unique once in a lifetime
29:39
type athlete, he borrowed some other dudes cleats, ran 140. And I think he was, if he
29:45
wasn't the fastest wide receiver, he was near near the top. Because again, with a guy that
29:49
big, you're not expecting to be the fastest, because you have these other attributes, right?
29:53
Like you've got big hands, long arms, you got high vertical, all the different things.
29:56
Smokes the 40 ends up going number one overall. And then now he's a, you know, Hall of Famer
30:00
and you know, all the different things. But yeah, it's like, did he do that on purpose?
30:04
Did his coaches do that on purpose? Did he literally just forget him? Like imagine him
30:08
showing up and being like, Oh, I can't combine today, because I didn't bring my cleats that
30:13
I specifically broke in for this day. It's like, okay, yes, if you can create a environment
30:19
and a routine where everything goes according to plan, and then you walk in there with your
30:23
highest level of physical and mental confidence, great.
30:26
That's what the way life works. Yeah, exactly.
30:28
Work out that way. That's, oh, that's so true. I can only imagine that because, I mean,
30:34
the last couple of years, you know, like God's got a plan for all of us. And you, I love
30:37
the picture. You know, whenever I tell, you know, whatever I'm preaching somewhere, helping
30:41
someone out, I'll always love to mention the picture. And usually if there's a life, what
30:44
I draw it. I'm like, this is our plan. We want this to happen. It's perfect. And, you
30:48
know, we have a couple bumps along the way. And I'm like, of course, that's what we want.
30:52
But that doesn't matter what we want. God is a plan. It's when there's a bunch of dips
30:56
down valleys. I'm like, that's just more realistic. Like all this stuff in sports translates so
31:02
well into, you know, everything Jesus talks about and number, I mean, this, even the shirt
31:06
I'm wearing is it's, the person who gave it to me is a coach Pete Delarosa. It's with
31:10
FCA. And I just like it because it kind of helps bring everything together because it's
31:14
more than wrestling at the end of the day. And someone who actually had a big impact on
31:18
me when I was at the Air Force Academy was Jaden Cox. And I remember watching an interview
31:22
from him. And he was just, it was talking about when people leave their sport because
31:26
a lot of these athletes have been athletes and their little kids. You're done with college.
31:30
You make that transition. And I remember him mentioning he's like, yeah, wrestling is
31:33
something I do, but it's not who I am. And that hit me really deep. So I'm like, dang,
31:37
like people make their sport. They're their dogs. That's just dude. Exactly. Great wrestler.
31:41
I'm very decorated wrestler. And you know, people, when we're making that transition
31:45
or whatever, they just, I don't know, they don't see the full picture. And so whenever
31:48
I can do something and, you know, make people aware of it. Hey, it's more than wrestling.
31:53
I'm out there wrestling, but I'm not the one who's, you know, of course I worked really
31:57
hard, but someone gifted me with these abilities to be able to go out there and, you know, represent
32:01
the Lord. And one of my favorite quotes is what we are is God's gift to us, but what
32:06
we become is our gift to God. And so I tell people, like God has gifted me with these
32:09
all these abilities, it would be a shame for me to waste them and not glorify him with
32:12
all the greatness he's, you know, poured into me. And so, you know, I like FCA just because
32:17
it kind of helps bring those two worlds together.
32:19
One the whole idea like, as you were saying that, I remember Colt McCoy, a good, you know,
32:24
Christian, Christian man, when he was at Texas, Texas was playing Alabama in the National
32:29
Championship game. And the freakiest of freak things happened. I think it was in the first
32:32
or second quarter. Colt McCoy takes a hit from like a defensive tackle from Alabama
32:37
and his arm goes numb, right? So if you're a right handed quarterback and your right
32:42
arm goes numb and you can't grip the football, you can't play football. So he has to come
32:46
out of the game. I think they put a red shirt freshman quarterback in the game. And there
32:51
were, I don't even remember the kid's name, but the red shirt freshman had a pretty good
32:53
second half. They looked like they were going to come back, but Alabama ended up, you know,
32:56
winning the national championship comfortably. And so it's like, gosh, if Colt McCoy doesn't
33:00
get hurt there, like Texas maybe wins the national titles, Mac Brown second title, you
33:05
know, after the Vince Young title and things like that. But I remember his poise in his
33:11
in the game. Yeah, I think it was either right going into halftime or something like that
33:14
or after the game or whatever. He's trying to talk to the sideline reporter or whatever.
33:19
And he's he has choked up. And you can tell because his arm is just hanging there. His
33:23
entire life has led up to this moment, like for the Texas Longhorns so that they can go
33:27
and win a national title and the hoist the trophy and all the things. And he just had
33:31
so much poise and perspective because he realized I am a football player right now,
33:37
but I'm not always going to be a football player, but I will stand before my creator
33:40
someday and have to give an account for why I should be able to come in, right? Why should
33:45
be able to kind of be welcomed in? So for you, like was, was church and all that was
33:50
that kind of like part of your upbringing? Like you, how did you kind of come to faith
33:53
in Christ? Absolutely. And I love mentioning this because a lot of people they might they
33:59
get confused about this. So I like to mention until my story, which here we are. So I did
34:03
grow up in a Christian household. And that's, you know, I knew at a young age, there was
34:08
something greater. I knew there was a higher power. I just, I didn't know him personally,
34:11
obviously, but we went to church and it's something, it's just like a routine. Like we
34:15
did it. And of course, I went to, you know, Bible school, we did all that stuff, but it
34:19
wasn't till, I think all's, I don't know, 10, nine, 10 years old. And there was a situation
34:26
where I was just down in my room any other day. And suddenly it was just out of left field,
34:30
these terrible thoughts came started pouring into my head. No explanation. Just, you know,
34:34
like the worst of thoughts you could think of like stuff I would never tell myself. You
34:37
know, I didn't, I knew it wasn't me, but I was just all these thoughts of like, you're,
34:41
you're disgusting, you're terrible. You're not meant for this world. Like you're just
34:44
a waste of everything. And I had no idea what was going on. So I just ran into my parent's
34:48
bedroom and said, Hey, I don't know what's going on, but something's in my head. And it's
34:53
telling me this and my parents were just like, just relaxed, you know, they prayed over me
34:57
for a minute. And then everything just like, oosh, just left. And I'm like, okay, what
35:02
just happened? Like sweetheart, you just had a spiritual attack. And I was like, what in
35:07
the world is this? So that's when I was like, okay, this higher power, whatever this is,
35:11
this guy, this guy, we've been talking about Jesus and God, this is a real thing. And so
35:14
that's when I kind of, I took a step for myself, because growing up in church is great, obviously,
35:20
but you have to take it on for yourself. You can't just, you know, it doesn't just magically
35:23
happen. You have to ask Jesus Christ to come and you have to do it for yourself. And so after
35:28
that, I started looking into a little bit more. And then I was at a Bible camp, I think just a couple
35:33
years later. And I decided to give my life to the Lord for the very first time. And I like to talk
35:38
about for the very first time, because there's so many times in my life, I can think back,
35:41
because my testimony has changed a couple of times, just because I'm like, I think I know God,
35:46
I think I know how great he is, but then he just finds a way, I'm like, oh my gosh,
35:49
then you see how much greater he is. And it's just been like every couple of years, something
35:52
happens. And like, who knew like, it's just, it blows my mind. My brain can't comprehend how much
35:56
love and much, just so much God does for us. And so the first time I was, you know, I was like,
36:01
hey, I want to serve the Lord. And so I got baptized after that. And then there's been multiple times
36:05
where I talked about our path, you know, up and down where there's been some high highs,
36:08
been some deep lows. And you know, God just put me in the right spot at the right time. And I remember
36:13
a couple times when it was actually my freshman year at the Air Force Academy. And my parents
36:20
were huge. I mean, they were like, they were my, they were my everything. They were the people I
36:26
went to when I got scared. Like I just mentioned, they were the people I went to for resources on
36:30
fight Bible questions or anything. And they've always directed me in the right way. But my freshman
36:35
year, it was the first time when I was faced with a decision. And I went to my parents and they're
36:39
like, no, we're going this way. And I was like, I love you guys a lot. But God's telling me to go
36:44
this way. And I didn't first mention to my mom like that. I was like, well, I don't think I
36:49
disagree. I think I'm gonna do this. And they were still concerned like, well, and this is, and I'm
36:53
not gonna, I can't tell you the situation. But it was a life altering decision, something that
36:57
would have thrown my life in a whole different direction, like completely just different, not
37:00
necessarily bad, just a lot different. And I remember just going to, you want to church one of you,
37:07
and I was, I didn't know really the answer. And it's like a praying and praying. And then
37:10
went to church. And I remember, I never like lift my hands. Like I'm more like, it's more, you know,
37:15
I want to have my connection with God, I'm just gonna sit here and you know, worship him. I don't
37:18
like, you know, I'm always being crazy. But my end up, but I just felt called so I put my hand
37:24
up and I was just like, I don't know. So part of this tattoo is lightning in it. And I got this
37:28
after like the whole, this is kind of like a story, which I can go into in a little bit. But
37:32
I just felt like I was struck. And I was like, Oh my gosh. And it was kind of what we were singing
37:36
in that song and everything. I remember the lyric was like, God, is your line, he's always fighting
37:41
for you, which now I got a warning in a warrior. Yeah, exactly. But I was like, that's exactly what
37:46
I was thinking about. I was really praying about what I should do. And that's when God was like,
37:50
this is what I want you to do. And I remember going to my mom and I'm like, look, I'm gonna go this way,
37:54
but like, God's got me on this. And she started crying. She's like, Oh my gosh, like, she was just
37:59
she realizes that this isn't just like, you know, because I mean, your kids might go off to college,
38:03
whatever, but she's like, okay, you're like, she was so grateful to have a son that believes in the
38:06
Lord. And I'm listening to him, you know, I pray, you got to talk to the Lord, but you have to listen.
38:11
And that was the moment I listened. And I was like, Hey, this is why I'm doing this. And you know,
38:15
turn out now, look around, everything's fine. Everything worked out obviously with the way God
38:19
wanted it to work. And there's been so many different situations where it's just been,
38:23
I'm needed some guidance and God put the right resources right in front of me. Like, I didn't know
38:27
about FCA in college until my junior year. And that's when I was at one my lows and then went to FCA,
38:32
got connected with the right people that I needed to hear at that time. And it's just crazy. And
38:37
God's put some stuff on my heart. I've done some pretty random acts of kindness and just
38:40
going and talking to people just because I think that God put stuff on our hearts so we can fulfill
38:46
his will on earth. Like, since he's not here and he can't always do this. I mean, my mom definitely
38:51
believes. And there's so many angels that walk the earth because there's been some times when she's
38:55
been some dark moments in her life. And there was like, just some random person came after her said
39:00
something and she turned on, they were gone. And she was like, Oh my gosh. But I think God works
39:04
in us. Maybe someone's doing a prayer. You see someone on a bench and they look just fine. But
39:08
God's like, maybe you'll see if that person's okay. And you go talk to them and turns out they're
39:11
about to do some terrible stuff. But they just need someone to talk to. And so I think it's,
39:17
being a Christian is very uncomfortable. It's very, that's why I try to preach my preaches. This is
39:21
not going to be easy. You're not going to just, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. There's going
39:25
to be some dark times when you're going to have to do some uncomfortable stuff. And so I've just
39:28
been trying to take that leap of faith. And I mean, like I mentioned with training, I put my yes on
39:32
the table with with the coach in the camera. I've also like with with with God, I've said, yes,
39:36
what do you call me to do? I'm going to try to do it to the best of my ability. So I try to listen.
39:40
And sometimes I think sometimes it's inconvenient. Sometimes I was on my way back to get dinner with
39:44
my wife the other day. And I ended up being 45 minutes late because I saw this, you know,
39:48
some people on the side of the road and I just wanted to go talk to them. I was like, God was
39:50
saying, Hey, you need to help these people. Ended up sitting in chat with them for another 45 minutes
39:55
and tried to help them get saved and hear about their life. And my wife's just like,
39:58
where are you at? And I'm like, I'll tell you later. She called me. I love you. Of course,
40:02
she calls me to answer. I said, Hey, I love you. Everything's fine. I'll let you know later.
40:05
And it was just, you know, it messed up dinner plans a little bit. But it's like, when God calls
40:10
you to do something, it's almost like a gift that he's entrusting you that he wants us to, you know,
40:14
help out. And so it's moments like that where it's just like there might be, now I'm more comfortable
40:19
with it, I would say, but it's not always going to be easy. Well, you're bringing up something like
40:23
a lot of Christians somehow get this idea that, okay, I became a Christian. So things are going to get
40:28
real easy. It's all done. Yeah, I had a buddy years ago, he lost his job, and then he was telling me
40:34
how he doesn't know if God's God exists anymore. I'm like, okay, so you're not currently gainfully
40:39
employed. And now you're thinking that this is all just one gigantic cosmic accident that time,
40:45
space and matter had an immaterial outside of time, like, you know, beginning and all that like,
40:51
you know, it's like, wait, what, what? Like the creator God doesn't exist anymore,
40:56
because you currently don't have a job. And it was like, Hey, how do you read through the Bible
41:01
and see anybody that got out easy, right? So if you look at the disciples, so Jesus kills himself,
41:06
but then the rest of them, except for John, died to pretty horrific martyrs deaths,
41:10
and John, they tried to boil him alive, and it didn't work. So they just like exiled him to the
41:14
Isle of Patmos. And so like these Christians just get this this outsized idea that things are just
41:19
supposed to be easy. It's like, no, we win in the end, but it's not easy the whole way. But then also,
41:23
when I talked to Christians, like, so I grew up, you know, and I got, you know, part of my
41:28
education was leadership degree, and I read all these management books and all these, you know,
41:32
like, you know, books that you're supposed to read in business school and all that kind of stuff.
41:35
And so everything is about plans, right? Okay, you got to have your one to three year plan,
41:39
then you got to have your three to five year plan, then you need your five to 10 year plan.
41:43
And I'm not anti planning, right? I'm not anti. Hey, assuming things stay on this trajectory,
41:47
I think this is where we should be financially. This is where we should be inside of our career,
41:51
you know, our athletic pursuits, whatever the thing is. But I tell people all time, I was like,
41:55
I think God looks at your long term plans and thinks that is so precious. That's so precious.
42:00
Wait, you don't think you're going to get sick in the next 10 years? You don't think one of your
42:05
kids isn't going to go crazy or go prodigal. Like you don't think, you know, someone in your
42:10
life, whether it's, you know, your spouse or a business partner or a brother is going to, like,
42:14
violate levels of trust with you in a way that you never thought was possible because you just
42:18
know them so well. And it's just like, look, God is preparing you for the storm. But I think we
42:23
miss read things like Psalm 23 to where it's like, the point is not that God delivers you from the
42:27
valley. The point is that when you're in the valley, he's there with you, right? Because you're
42:31
either you're either in the valley coming out of the valley or about to go into it, right? And
42:35
people kind of, they forget all this and they just be like, wait, wait, wait a minute. Like,
42:39
I signed up for this assuming that I had to get out of jail and get out a hell-free card. And if
42:44
I'm ever uncomfortable, you're going to make life comfortable. It's like, where did you get that
42:47
idea? Because you didn't get it from the Bible? Yeah, absolutely. It's funny to say that. I mean,
42:51
obviously, like last Sunday, a pastor Craig talked about the same thing about the journey,
42:55
like if you're not in it, you're about to be, you're coming out of it. And so my first tattoo is
43:00
actually, it's on my size of three crosses at Psalms 23, four. And I'm glad you brought that up,
43:04
because that's when I realized that no matter what I have to go through, that I put my yes,
43:09
God's getting, he's not going to feed me to the wolves. He's not going to throw me in the blazing
43:12
furnace, not come in there and save me, you know? And so he's not going to put me through something
43:16
where he's, you know, he hasn't done himself or he's not, he's going to be with me the entire way.
43:19
And so what this has taught me throughout everything is like, even when it gets hard,
43:23
God's still going to be with you. He's going to be there right alongside you,
43:26
whether you think he is or not, he's going to be there. And a lot of people just,
43:29
I don't know, they just losing your faith is, it's not supposed, sometimes you're going to have
43:34
questions. And sometimes like, for example, there's been a lot of tough times everyone's been in,
43:38
but you know, when I sometimes when I pray, I'm like, Lord, I need to be a little bit more wise,
43:42
I need to be a little bit more patient. And then the next day, there's the people that are riding
43:46
your butt or, you know, doing stuff. And it's like, man, but it's like, oh wait, maybe God's
43:50
putting me in this situation. So I can, it's something I can learn to be more patient in this
43:54
situation. So, you know, maybe get stronger, you're not going to get stronger by just snapping your
43:58
fingers, you got to lift, you got to put in the work. So maybe God's going to throw some weights
44:00
in your life that you need to, you know, pick up and learn how to lift, you know, figuratively
44:04
speaking. And I guess literally speaking to yeah, a lot of people are just like, as soon as that
44:09
level you said that, because a lot of people are like, Oh, as soon as I'm a Christian, like
44:12
everything's going to go away, I'm like, that's not the point of it. He's not, you know, your life
44:16
doesn't just get like, you're a Christian. Oh, no, everything's easy. Like, oh, like, she's still
44:20
going to have that path where you just got to trust that he's, you know, you're fulfilling as well.
44:24
Right. So think about it from a physical perspective. So you've been a couch potato,
44:28
and then all of a sudden you get off the couch, you're going to get in shape, right? And you just
44:31
think, Oh, life's going to be so much better. But your body is not ready for the exercises and
44:36
the workouts that you're going to put it through. So you're going to get banged up a little bit,
44:39
you're going to get, you're going to get injured, you're going to pull some stuff, you're going to
44:41
strain some stuff, you may, may even get a serious injury, because your body's just not quite ready for
44:46
that. The same thing happens for people spiritually. So I have a coaching program I do call dominion.
44:51
And so I tell these guys when they sign up for this coaching program with me, because they're
44:55
on a team and some of these guys are, you know, they're getting one on one coaching for me and
44:57
things like that. I'm like, okay, in some way, shape or form, you've been on the couch spiritually
45:02
for a while. And Satan's not worried about do's that are chilling on the couch. Yeah,
45:07
because he has him right where he wants exactly, right? You're out of the fight, right?
45:10
So I'm like, the moment you stand up and you're in the fight now, Satan and his minions again,
45:15
they're not on your problem. Yeah, you are a big problem, right? And so I forget who who said it,
45:20
so I'd love to be able to get them get them them credit. But the attitude you want Satan to have
45:25
towards you is the moment your feet hit the floor in the morning, you want Satan to be like, oh,
45:29
crap, he's up. You know what I mean? And so you stand up, you're like, okay, I'm going to get serious.
45:34
I'm going to get serious about cultivating spiritual mental and physical resilience. I'm going to get
45:37
serious about loving my wife in a sacrificial way as Christ love the church. I'm going to get
45:41
serious about catacizing my children and being the spiritual thermostat for the house, not the
45:45
spiritual thermometer. Don't be shocked. Without a nowhere, there's health problems that come up
45:51
for you or the people around you, financial problems that come up for you or the people around you.
45:55
All of a sudden, you're going to have some conflicts at work that weren't there before.
45:58
Like something's going to happen to somebody that you truly care about. It's a, it's like a miracle,
46:02
like these things start to happen. Like there was kind of the saying with some of the early
46:05
Dominion teams, like these guys were just getting hurt during workouts or these random medical things
46:11
were coming up during exercises. And it's like, what is going on? All these guys worked out their
46:14
whole lives. And now all of a sudden, they're doing this one thing and then, you know, boom,
46:18
major injury of some kind. And not everything is spiritual warfare. Like, you know, some people
46:22
think there's a demon behind every bush. Some people think there's two. But like at the same time,
46:26
it's like, dude, this isn't just a kiwinky dink that you were just sitting around kind of going
46:31
along to get along, you know, it's kind of floating along in life. And then the moment you get in the
46:34
game, things are getting jacked up. Like you didn't just start to notice things getting jacked up.
46:38
No, they really got jacked up because saying's all over you, right? The same thing happens with
46:41
guys like you two. Yeah, well, being you have to, like you said, you can't just show up and start
46:46
going be the heaviest guy in the gym. Like, yeah, you become a Christian. It's like, you got to
46:49
learn and you got to grow in your faith. It's a it's a walk with the Lord. It's not just the,
46:53
you know, it's the walk. It's that growth. And the one thing that I think of when you just said that,
46:59
oh, I just forgot it. But it is this room becomes like a time I was so focused. What you mentioned,
47:06
I kept like, Oh, that'd be good to mention. Now this would be just rubbing, right? So I get excited,
47:10
but yeah, you can interject, right? You know how to deal with ginger. Yeah, you're with it.
47:14
But so I was curious because you keep bringing up, you know, development, if you think of it,
47:19
just interrupt me, but like you keep bringing up like development and you kind of like you're
47:23
working on your, you know, your Christian walk. But there's something that I feel there's two
47:28
big drawbacks, right? And it's discipleship and sanctification. Okay. So most modern
47:34
churches do a terrible job of discipleship because they either just flat out don't do it or they
47:38
do it poorly, right? So there's not older, more experienced sage level Christians. Yeah, that's
47:44
important that are helping younger folks, guys and ladies, helping them along their journey. But
47:49
then there's also the process of sanctification, because I became a Christian in 10th grade,
47:54
did not have a family that grew up going to church. Like I call it country music theology,
47:58
right? That's what we had. Because, you know, you know, you're baptized when you're a little kid
48:03
and grandma was a really good Christian. And you know, if you vote, you vote Republican and you listen
48:07
to 90s country music. So God's pro all those things. So you get to go to heaven, right? Like,
48:11
that's, that's what it means to be, you know, a Christian in Oklahoma for some people.
48:15
But you don't, I don't really have this Christian upbringing. I don't have any of that. So I become
48:18
a Christian as a 10th grader, but then nobody was helping me. Like nobody was discipling me,
48:23
but I'm super type. Hey, right? Okay, I'll just figure this out. So I go to the soft seller in
48:26
law in Oklahoma. I go buy me the extreme teen Bibles over the shelf. You just reminded me of it.
48:31
Go on. So we talk about, you know, you're off with the Lord and we talked about
48:37
the devil and how he always tries to cram in on you. That's right. And like I was saying,
48:40
so you're walk with the Lord, you got to walk, you got to grow in your spirituality, because
48:44
you need to understand, you know, look at the Bible. Hey, what, what do people in the Bible do?
48:47
Because like we just mentioned, when you're on the couch, that's what the devil wants you. Yeah,
48:50
when you stand up, people are like, I mean, even the most solid Christians, they're still getting
48:54
the same, you know, the devil's still trying to get them. He's still putting these bad thoughts in
48:58
their head. And the, there was a sermon that pastor Craig talked about was called pre deciding.
49:03
And that was really influential for me, because we just mentioned you need to have, you know,
49:08
people that are down that have walked the walk and a little bit more mature in their face so they
49:11
can, you can talk to them about these things. Because you can't try to figure out for yourself.
49:15
If you come up to a problem, you've never faced, you don't know what to do, you might fall for it.
49:18
I've sinned many times the devil's came to me and he maybe he's got me when maybe I wish he wouldn't
49:22
have because I just didn't know how to react to him. Like, well, maybe, maybe this is right in my head,
49:26
then you do the wrong thing. And then instantly the devil's just like, oh, you're terrible. You
49:29
did this. And I'm like, oh, get out, Stephanie. That was true. And you, you know, when God's talking,
49:33
you know, the devil's talking to you most of the time. And so like pre deciding when you're in
49:37
those situations, because even as we're going as Christians, the devil's not gonna lay off.
49:41
He's still gonna be putting these bad thoughts in our head or like, hey, you know, let's look
49:44
at that girl's butt. You know, it's not your wife. And so just doing the wrong things or oh,
49:47
it'd be okay if you just went out with her do all those different things. If you like don't know,
49:53
if you're like, if you act on those, that's the problem. Like, well, the devil's going to come
49:56
out us all the time, but you need to pre decide what I did. I was like, okay, if this thoughts comes
50:01
up, this is what I'm going to do. If this happens, this is what I'm going to do in the best way.
50:05
One of my buddies, Danny Phillips, he's our photographer at Stillwater, if you run Stilla
50:09
Boys, he's amazing. You mentioned your wife's photographer. Yeah, bring Danny up here. They
50:13
would have a let's go. And he's just so good at what he does. And I talked to him about this. And
50:17
he really helped me with it. We're all struggling a little bit. And he's like, whenever I have a
50:20
bad thought, I know it's a sin, something simple. He has a pocket Bible. He brings it with him everywhere
50:25
he goes, whether he's on his motorcycle, he never goes anywhere without this Bible. And whenever
50:29
the devil tries to come at him, he has a thought, he'll pull it out, he'll read for 15 minutes,
50:34
and then he'll sleep. He still feels the same way. If he does, he'll do it. If not, well,
50:37
in most of the time, whenever the devil attacks him, he fights it right away. Pulls at the Bible,
50:42
just starts reading. And then, you know, he's like, he fights those urges or those bad thoughts
50:47
all the time. And so that really taught me a lot because I'm like, Oh, like whenever,
50:51
whenever the devil comes at you, because as I've became more of going out, now the devil's
50:55
really out for us, you know, because I'm really off the couch. I'm up and running, you know,
50:59
I'm getting fit now. And so just kind of being prepared for those situations. And a lot of,
51:04
I wish more people would kind of have people like, it's so important to have those resources. And
51:09
some people just, they don't have those. Like we mentioned, like, you know, I go to my parents
51:12
all the time and you probably didn't have you mentioned, you might not have that. And so
51:16
that's why whenever I go to these wrestling camps, I'm like, a lot of these kids might not
51:19
have families like that. So I'm like, Hey, if you have a question, you can all help you with this,
51:23
or I'll direct you to someone who can, like, let's figure this out while I have you here,
51:27
before you get that sent back home. And now you're vulnerable, again, to all these things that
51:31
happen, because I can pray over kids as much as I want. I can tell them as much as I want. But
51:35
if they don't have a relationship with the Lord, you know, that that's ultimately what I like to
51:39
lead them to and help them. Well, and so how did Jesus fight temptation when he was in the desert
51:43
with scripture? Because Satan was quoting scripture incorrectly to Jesus and completely.
51:50
And Jesus was fighting back with scripture. The problem with us is modern Christians are
51:54
completely biblically literate because we have a stack of Bibles on the shelf, but we don't touch
51:57
them. We have five Bible apps on our phone, but we don't open them, right? And so one thing that
52:02
I've changed here recently, so Phil Robertson was a very, very important man to me. And
52:08
he always had his Bible, his tattered, busted up, well read Bible within arms distance of him,
52:15
right? Because I was with Phil at his house. I was with him in his duck shop. I was with him,
52:21
like in the studio, the Bible was either in his hand, open in front of him or within arms reach,
52:26
right? And so when we get bored sitting in like a waiting room or something like that,
52:31
what do we do? We pull out our phones, Instagram, emails, like responded text messages and all that,
52:35
you know, to a certain degree, you got to do that. I'm a content creator. I have to live in those
52:38
things, you know, whatever. But he would just read the Bible. And so I remember the first time I
52:43
interviewed Phil Robertson, he would just be talking and then he'd just be like, hey, look
52:47
at here, man. And then he would just like flip his pages and go to a thing and just read a passage.
52:52
And it was just in there, right? And so it's like, you know, it was just, it was like,
52:57
the way I say this, he was marinated in the scriptures to where it would just kind of come out
53:01
and to the point about pre decision, I tell people all the time, oh, to finish my point,
53:06
I invested in a Bible that is a Bible that I can take around with me because I got a bunch of
53:11
study Bibles. Those are kind of big. And you know, I carry them around everywhere. It's like,
53:14
it's kind of hard to do, especially if you're carrying kids or doing any of that kind of crap.
53:17
But this is one that I could carry at all times. And so that's just going to be with me when I'm
53:21
doing meetings, when I'm at dinners or do something like that, because I don't want the temptation.
53:25
I want to have to set my Bible to the side if I have to do something on my phone, right? Because
53:30
that physical act of putting a physical thing to the side is kind of important for your psyche. But
53:35
going, going back to the whole pre decision thing, when I'm helping young men, young men,
53:39
especially, because young men come to me and you wouldn't believe some of the emails and DMS I get
53:43
because people listen to me for a few hundred hours and then they feel like they know me. And so they
53:46
don't have any guys in their life they can depend on. They don't have pastors that they can rely on
53:50
or get to because they're pastors too big, too much of a big deal or whatever. And so they'll just
53:55
they'll just vomit all over my inbox with their problems. And a lot of it comes down to sexual
54:02
sin for these guys. And specifically, it's pornography. And there'll be these guys and they're like,
54:06
Oh, you know, and it's very it's kind of a loser's mindset. I don't mean that offensively, but it's
54:10
kind of like, I'm already defeated. There's nothing I can do. It's it's too big. I can't really do it.
54:15
But I just kind of changed the mechanism for these guys. I'm like, Hey, you don't have a porn
54:19
problem. You have a masturbation problem. They're like, wait, what? I'm like, have you ever looked at
54:23
porn and not used it as a masturbatory aid? Well, no, I'm like, okay. So let's go upstream from
54:30
the problem that you think you have. Okay. And the thing is, is everyone tries to everyone can
54:34
easily find a reason to lose, right? It's like, we need to find a reason to win. And so how do we
54:40
win? Okay. Winter. So I just help these guys break it down. I'm like, okay, when's the last time
54:44
you masturbate? And I literally have them tell me about the circumstances around it. And you know,
54:48
what it is, wife is gone. Kids are out of the house. They're sitting around on their board. I'm like,
54:54
okay, most of the time you know, before you're going to be in the house by yourself board,
54:58
that that's a likely outcome. And so what you do is you pre decide a few things.
55:04
You pre decide, not only am I not going to look at porn, I'm not going to throw my hand
55:09
in my pants. I'm not going to masturbate. I'm also going to text a buddy a confidant to say,
55:14
hey, man, going to be alone for a few hours, like just letting you know, check in with me tomorrow.
55:18
Like I remember whenever like 15, 16 years ago, when I was dealing with the most important thing
55:22
you just mentioned, I got to go ahead. Yeah, I did not have someone in my life. That's where I felt
55:25
that close with that comfortable with that you could trust exactly with the worst parts of you.
55:30
Exactly like that. You got to be pretty vulnerable to be telling people that I talked to. So his
55:35
name is David Wright, the pastor's in Stillwater. And he really, he was wide open door when I met
55:40
him. And you know, we came came, he actually married me and my wife's like, we're, you know,
55:44
we're very close. And he was one of those guys that mentioned, and I didn't have anyone in my
55:48
life like that, because he mentioned he was very vulnerable, vulnerable with me. And he's like,
55:52
yeah, I have this guy attacks, because the devil's gonna come knocking on your door. And like,
55:56
it's going to happen. We need reinforcements. Exactly. And so it's not like a sign of weakness.
56:01
He's just like, Hey, I needed someone to be there like in tech and say, Hey, I'm dealing with this,
56:05
right? I'm dealing with this right now. I need some help. And so that's that out of all this,
56:10
that's the biggest thing that made a difference for me is because the devil's don't come knocking,
56:14
but you need to find someone who you can trust that much. And you can be vulnerable with because
56:19
if you if you think that that stuff's never going to happen, then I mean, your daydream,
56:22
like we mentioned, like, Oh, my life's gonna go perfect. That's not the way it's gonna work.
56:26
Finding someone you have, that that's awesome. That's the biggest thing is you need to find
56:30
someone like that in your life, because I mean, for me, it's not me, my wife, you know, my,
56:34
I don't mean my wife have a good relationship with each other. But they're still, it's the boys.
56:37
No, they're still stuff that I think I should, I should be able to deal with because, you know,
56:40
we're the men in the house. I can't come in with all the problems. And you know, then it's like,
56:44
okay, but it's important to have someone in your life that you can talk with.
56:48
Well, talk about that. And the thing is, is as a man, you do not offload your anxiety on people
56:54
that cannot fix it, right? So I had a good friend of mine that lost his job. First time in his life,
56:59
he had been fired from a job. It was kind of a shock. It was one of those things. And he's got
57:04
a wife and three kids and all that. And I remember him saying, well, you know, I'm gonna go home,
57:08
and I'm gonna tell the kids I'm gonna do that. And I said, Hey, man, time out pause. Do not offload
57:14
that burden on your children, because they cannot help you fix it, right? Do not offload that burden.
57:19
Obviously you got to tell your wife you lost your job, but you don't offload that burden
57:23
on her. Right now is her job to be your helpmate. A helpmate made fit for you, right? From your right
57:28
side, that is her job right now to tell you, Hey, this really stinks, but I trust you. And I know
57:34
you're gonna fix it. I know you're gonna figure it out. I love you, boo. Like that's the situation
57:38
that you need. But you have so many guys, why that don't have the guys that they can text guy,
57:44
much less guys. You're not gonna go on the group chat. All right, guys. Yeah. One part of that,
57:48
you mentioned the word vulnerable. That's like most men's least favorite word, because they don't
57:52
ever want to be vulnerable. We always need the answers. We always got to be able to fix it and
57:55
all those types of things. But sometimes it just takes one guy in the group chat where you're just
58:00
sending funny memes and funny reels back and forth to one another to be like, Hey, guys, I just got
58:04
to be honest with you. I'm really struggling right now. Hey, me and my wife, we've been fighting for
58:08
a couple of weeks and I don't really know how to fix her. Hey, man, I can't really get through to
58:12
my middle son. Like he's just he's doing things that are just destructive and terrible. I don't
58:16
really know what to do. And guess what? You're not inviting all those guys to fix it for you.
58:21
You're just inviting them to shoulder some of that burden, which they can do. Yeah,
58:25
because when you're up under the bar, there is a certain amount of weight that I can put on that
58:29
bar that will crush you. Even if you're Ronnie Coleman back in the back in those days, back in
58:35
those days, right? But when you can have somebody just get under and shoulder a little bit of that
58:40
burden and a little bit more of that burden, maybe they're just giving you time to take a breath.
58:44
Maybe it's giving you time to reset. Maybe they are giving you some perspective. Maybe they're gonna
58:48
say, Hey, me too, or hey, I've been there. This is what I did. And so many guys, they don't have a
58:55
spiritual confidant. They don't have three AM friends dudes that they can call three o'clock in
58:59
the morning that they know that are just going to show up dudes that are just down dudes that just
59:03
love them that are there for them that are there for their family dudes that they know if something
59:07
happened to them, they would be the first ones at the house to take care of everything to make
59:10
sure things are squared away. And I mean, most guys lament not having those people,
59:15
but then they also do nothing to be one of those people for somebody else. And you know,
59:20
you tell a guy, Hey, I want you to keep me accountable, all those types of things. And the first time
59:24
a guy gets a little prickly with you and says, Hey, you told me to keep me accountable. Accountability
59:28
has come and you react all offended. Like, Oh man, you don't know me. I've been stressed at work and
59:32
I've done all that. It's like, what are you doing? Yeah, he's doing what you told him. You deputized
59:36
him to do a job that you're not complaining that he's doing. Like, what's wrong with you?
59:39
Like at some point, you have to dedicate yourself to the process. And you have to make deposits in the
59:45
lives of a bunch of other men. Because you have no idea when the day's going to come when you need
59:49
to start making withdrawals. And just like a literal bank account. Yeah, if you make no deposits
59:54
into it, the day of withdrawal, there's nothing to take out. You know what I mean? Absolutely.
59:57
Absolutely. Yeah, I keep having these awesome thoughts, but then you just keep talking.
1:00:01
So, what's the fire? I can't interrupt you. Maybe we need a buzzer. When I need a buzzer,
1:00:06
or something like a ding, I'll raise my hand. Oh, you just kind of make it awkward, though,
1:00:12
but make it like a really, really slow. Yeah, go real slow to where it's like right in the
1:00:15
middle of the thing. I don't know what to do with my hands. So, did you remember what it is?
1:00:19
Because I can rant some more. We were just talking about, all I'm thinking about is how
1:00:24
just how important it is to have someone in your life like that. Yeah. That you can, you can talk
1:00:28
to. And I get, okay, this is kind of what I'm saying. I mean, as men, we're just so, I mean,
1:00:32
myself, I'll be very honest. I have a big ego. I'm this big, strong guy. You don't want to act
1:00:38
vulnerable. Now, where you always, my problem is I was one of your right. And in the earliest
1:00:43
stages of marriage, I'm realizing that it's not always going to be the way it is. And you mentioned,
1:00:48
whenever you have that accountability partner, cold, you're accountable and you start denying
1:00:53
yourself, that's like, you know, you're wrong. You just don't want to, you just don't want to admit
1:00:57
you're wrong. I've had those exact feelings when exactly, I'm too prideful. It's okay to have
1:01:01
some pride, but at some extent, I mean, if you're hurting yourself, because I can just think of
1:01:06
a couple situations a couple of years ago, and I would talk to someone and they'd mention something,
1:01:10
and I just, oh, so prideful, I was just like, nah, I'm not listening to anything else you say,
1:01:15
because I'm, you know, I just think you're this that in the third. And I mean, I'm just kind of
1:01:19
thinking about it. It's so important, like we just mentioned, is to have someone like that you can
1:01:23
get close to. So if I was listening, if you don't have something like that, I, that's the biggest
1:01:26
step you can take. Because that's, that's, that's something that it's not like, because obviously,
1:01:30
you can Google stuff when it happens, but yeah, having a physical person you can text or call
1:01:35
that's available when you, you know, you're fighting with the wife, you're fighting with
1:01:38
pornography, you have one of these things that like you said, we just can't handle it alone
1:01:41
sometimes. And that's something I didn't really realize that we have those people until about
1:01:46
like eight months ago. Oh, yeah. And so that if someone told me that earlier, man, that makes
1:01:51
a big difference. Well, dude, you need guys in your life that just aren't that impressed by you,
1:01:56
right? Because so I have a weird job, right? I, I, you know, I talk and do a microphone,
1:02:01
and it goes out to everybody's phones three times a week. And people are gonna listen to
1:02:05
that? Yeah, I'm not, not, not that many though. It's not that big. But like, you know, I get paid
1:02:10
to put a microphone on my face and stand in front of a group of guys and talk and I get a lot of
1:02:13
kind of unique opportunities and stuff like that. But my, my, my friends, my dogs, like my foxhole,
1:02:19
like my Matt toaters, my king's table, whatever you want to call it, they're proud of me. Don't
1:02:24
get me wrong. Like when I get a cool opportunity or when we hit some sort of accolade or, you know,
1:02:28
when we became the number one podcast for Christian men and I didn't find out about it for like
1:02:32
nine months, they should really send you an email or a plaque on the mail or something like that.
1:02:35
But these guys don't mind interrupting me, right? And whenever I'm in a room full of people that
1:02:40
are like fans of the show or fans of the ministry, like they don't interrupt me, right? And they'll
1:02:44
laugh at stuff that isn't always funny. Like you kind of know how you've experienced stuff that
1:02:48
you've done. Exactly. But you need guys that are okay interrupting you, but you also need guys in
1:02:52
your life that are going to tell you straight to your face. Yeah, you're just not going to do that
1:02:55
anymore. Yeah. So I had a buddy that go ahead. Same thing I had to say is yeah, and I'll just,
1:03:00
I thought we were just having a conversation. I didn't know these were microphones. I thought
1:03:02
we're just not. Yeah. These are fake. Yeah. I have one of my buddies who I actually just was with
1:03:07
Matt the SBS. His name is Noah Blake. And at first I didn't like him because we've actually we've
1:03:12
been close friends for the past five years once at the Air Force Academy prep school together. So,
1:03:16
but he was always just, I always thought I was like, Oh, that's known. He's mean. He's just kind of
1:03:20
rude. And over the years having a lot of friends come in and out and that are so called fake. He's
1:03:26
not just rude. He's just honest. And he doesn't. He just weeds out all the crap. And sometimes I'm
1:03:31
talking and doing this stuff. And he just looks at me. He's like, no. And I'm like, what? He's like,
1:03:35
just stop. You know, I'm like, he's right. I was always mad at him because like I talked about my
1:03:39
pride. I was like, I want to be right. I don't want someone to tell me. And so you come to realize
1:03:44
like, that's one of the real friends because he's someone who will step up and tell you when
1:03:48
something's wrong or if something like he's just honest, he's not going to, like you said, he's not
1:03:52
going to laugh at the joke. It's not fun. If yes, if I told him a joke, he'd suck to be like, that's
1:03:56
sucked. Yeah, you're done. Exactly. So I want to come and find out. And now I'm more close to him
1:04:02
because I'm like, I kind of realized that as I kind of came humbled. And my wife did a great
1:04:06
job about humbling me. She does a great job. You know, she could compliment me about my hair
1:04:11
growing small, but she does a great job telling me whatever. But I mean, having a friend like that,
1:04:15
who can just be honest. And he's like, he understands all the fake friends and the fake
1:04:20
laugh, all that stuff. But at the end of the day, it's like, he's very real. And I mean,
1:04:24
I respect him for it. Well, and so, you know, when you talk about people like guys like that,
1:04:28
that can just tell you straight up stuff to your face. Like, there's a buddy of mine, one of the
1:04:31
toughest dudes I've ever met in my life, collegiate wrestler, like just super solid dude was having
1:04:36
some some problems with alcohol and was, you know, it had him more than he had it type of a thing.
1:04:43
And he got to a point where I just go, okay, well, we're just not going to do that anymore.
1:04:47
Right. So this is what we're going to do, which it might be like, well, that's rather presumptuous.
1:04:52
You're telling another human being what to do? Like, yeah, yeah, because I love them.
1:04:56
Yeah. Because I care for them. Right. It's kind of like the same as these, these gentle parenting
1:05:00
people. They're like, we never yelled our kids. We always give them options. And we always, but,
1:05:04
you know, if they, if we have to do a punch, you need to know right from wrong.
1:05:08
Exactly. That's your parent has a job to do that. Right. Nowadays, I mean, there's so much to talk
1:05:14
about here, but it's like it's your job as a parent. And this is why I do think I can speak on this,
1:05:18
because there's been some situations in my past that have made it difficult. And I definitely
1:05:22
counseling for some things. And I know that if you could do what you wanted to do and have any
1:05:27
guardrails parents, I would have gone off the rails. It would have been not been good. But it's
1:05:31
your parents job. And I'm not a parent yet. So I can't really, I can't preach too much of this,
1:05:35
but I just know in my life, the stuff my parents did for me and guided me, that was the biggest.
1:05:40
That's what I had to have. When I did something wrong, I got spanked, you know, like, yeah,
1:05:43
if you did something right, hey, you know, here, good job. But it's not like, we're not supposed
1:05:48
to know it all as kids. It takes like we have to learn. Right. I mean, there's so many funny
1:05:53
experiments. I mean, there's one where it was, they put like a bunch of, I think it was like
1:05:57
seven or eight year olds or super young kids, like five, five guys, five girls. And for the first
1:06:02
couple hours, oh, it was great. You know, there's being kids. And then like they divide into two
1:06:06
separate groups. And it's just like kids, you need guidance when you're a kid. And with SCA and stuff
1:06:13
like that, it's, you can find someone because like, you don't have someone to go to, like,
1:06:19
you need some guardrails. And so finding someone, a group you can go to and talk about that stuff,
1:06:24
it's so important. But it just, it makes me like, sometimes the parents right now is,
1:06:28
I know what my parents did. And I know what kind of parent I want to be. I want to guide my parents.
1:06:31
I want to lift, I want to raise them to love God. I want them to, you know, be what I call
1:06:36
to be a better person. But yeah, they do something wrong. I'm not going to make it. You can't let
1:06:39
them know that's okay. You know, whenever, whenever you're sitting there on the bed and your dad's got
1:06:43
the belt and you're like, that I promise I'm not going to do it again. Like, yeah, sure. But after
1:06:46
you get whipped a couple times on the butt, you're like, all right. You know, you don't have to do
1:06:51
this. I really know what, you know, it's like, no, like you kind of, it's just, it's not bad.
1:06:56
You're doing that because you love them, you know, and I've taught, I talked to my dad now,
1:06:59
it's different because I'm an adult. I'm not a little kid anymore. But he's just like,
1:07:04
something she had to do was really tough. But because he loved me enough, he did that stuff for
1:07:08
me. And so I'm sorry. You said something. It's so important because as a kid, like,
1:07:13
you need some guardrails, man, you can't do whatever you want. You can't really, you're not old enough,
1:07:17
you know, when I was 10 years old and I want to cigarette, you know, you can't do that stuff.
1:07:20
Well, parents are inculcating values. That's what you have to do. And if you take your hands
1:07:24
off the wheel, it's kind of like I'd say like these gentle parenting people that never raised
1:07:28
their voice. Well, if you're kids running off and when life hits them, yeah, they're like,
1:07:32
wait a second. I'm wrong. Right. I'm never wrong, you know, and so you can't exactly.
1:07:37
Well, it's like an absolute shock. And so it comes back to a lot of the cultural things that we've
1:07:42
kind of been talking about. But especially in the Christian walk, it's like, look, to the Christian
1:07:46
dads out there that are listening to this, if you don't disciple your kids, the public school
1:07:51
system exactly, exactly, exactly. Social media is happy to do it for you. AI is happy to do it for
1:07:56
you. I know this guy, young married guy, he goes to chat GBT for marriage advice.
1:08:01
Here's the thing that chat GBT is not. It's a great tool. It's like super Google. Like,
1:08:06
there's a lot of things it can help you with. Like, you know, if you're, if you're, you know,
1:08:09
working on a project, yeah, it's a great tool. But what it doesn't have is wisdom,
1:08:13
discernment, or the Holy Spirit, right? Because it's a machine. It's a robot. And so you need
1:08:19
people in your life that have wisdom, discernment, and Holy Spirit. Where does law that come from?
1:08:24
Wisdom and discernment is a gift of the Lord. The Holy Spirit is given to believers, right? As a guide
1:08:29
for them. And also you go back to God's word, which is something that a lot of people, they just
1:08:34
simply don't have the time to do to go back to God's word. Because people get this idea of,
1:08:38
if I don't have time to study the Bible, then it's not even worth reading because it's too
1:08:41
complicated to just read. I like, I don't really understand. And so we just don't really go anywhere
1:08:45
near it. And so yeah, I mean, this should be an encouragement to a lot of the guys out there.
1:08:49
Like, yes, this is hard. But get some dogs, like get some dudes that are going to fight alongside
1:08:54
you. Like get a wife that is for you and for your marriage and understands her role and your role
1:09:00
in, you know, before you have kids or while you're having kids or figuring out what that looks like
1:09:04
for you and your family. Like you don't get to abdicate your responsibility here. It's just not
1:09:09
something that you get an option. And again, I go back, I say the same thing. Everyone can find a
1:09:13
way to lose, find a way to win. What does it mean to be a winner as a father? What does it mean to
1:09:17
be a winner as a husband? What does it mean to be a winner as a Christian? What do what are the
1:09:21
things that winners do? Right? One thing that people that are high level athletes that have
1:09:25
like accomplished things like you have and eventually we got to talk a little bit more about wrestling.
1:09:28
But sometimes when you're not where you want to be yet, you will be like, what are the champions
1:09:34
doing? So this came up recently. So Marab Duvash Vili, so he's the 135, 135 pound champion in the
1:09:42
UFC. So he wins the UFC Championship. He beat, he beat Sugar Shano Malley at the, you know,
1:09:48
at the sphere or whatever. Yeah. And he won the championship. And the very next day, Daniel Cormier,
1:09:54
Oh, it's your cowboy. He shows up at Marab's place to like, you know, talk to him or whatever.
1:10:01
And his wife or whatever is like, Oh, he's out on a run. The previous day he had won the championship.
1:10:07
He went 25 hard minutes with the champion and stole his belt. But he was out on a run. And that
1:10:13
jacked Sugar Shano Malley, it jacked his brain. Right. So they just, they recently had a rematch
1:10:18
in Marab one again. But Sugar Shano Malley changed his entire life because he's like,
1:10:25
I was a champion, but this dude's something different. What is he doing? Oh, this guy doesn't do cheat
1:10:30
meals. This guy doesn't do cheat days. This guy doesn't smoke weed. This guy doesn't eat gummy bears.
1:10:35
Like this guy doesn't stay up late playing video games. This guy's entire life is about being a
1:10:40
champion. This is what champions do. Okay. Maybe I should try championship. It's not a guarantee
1:10:45
that you're going to get the championship because winners and losers have the same goals. Everyone
1:10:48
goes into the tournament wanting to be at the top of the podium. Only one guy gets to be at the top
1:10:51
of the podium. But at the same day, when you're trying to emulate people, you emulate what they
1:10:56
do in order to be that. So for us as Christians, who are we to emulate Jesus? What were the things
1:11:02
that Jesus did? What were the things that Jesus told his closest followers, his apostles to do?
1:11:09
If we just do that, if we just focus on that, can we pretend like that might have a tremendous
1:11:15
impact on all these other areas of our life? Again, doesn't mean that things are going to
1:11:18
be peachy and always work out. Yeah, it certainly doesn't mean it's going to go a lot better than
1:11:22
trying to figure it out on your own. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, with the whole, with the whole training
1:11:27
stuff there, I'm trying to think about this past year I've had about what the coaches have told
1:11:33
me about preparation for these big events. And I remember coach Taylor, I mean, for those of you
1:11:38
who don't know, if you don't know who coach Taylor is, coach David Taylor, I'm he's a wrestler,
1:11:41
multiple time Olympic champion, world champion, huge accolades. Yeah. And I remember we were
1:11:46
picking his brain, he was telling us stuff. And he was like, at one point in his career,
1:11:51
it was some like you said, Hey, what's my, what's my opponent? What's my champ? What's the other
1:11:54
champions doing? Everything coach Taylor did. He's like, Hey, is this going to make me a champion?
1:11:59
And of course you can do that big picture. Hey, am I going to go on this vacation and miss five
1:12:03
days of training? I know probably not or how to do this, but it was all the way like, Hey, this
1:12:08
drink right here, am I going to drink this? You know, he's like, he's looking at it and stuff.
1:12:12
Like, has this can make me a champion? Now this? Yes, it is. I'm going to drink this because of
1:12:16
women champion, but every single decision he made, like, is this going to make me better? Is this
1:12:21
going to aid me towards Michael of what I want to do? And I mean, that's a severe level, but at
1:12:26
some point, that's what you're going to need. And growing up, it was, it was my dad a lot that
1:12:34
talked about the mindset that is built into all of this. And the matches won or lost before you
1:12:42
step out on the mat. But that's not just the seconds before that's months before that's weeks,
1:12:46
before that's the decisions, that's what you're doing leading up to that is, you know, if you're
1:12:51
trained to be a champion, if you're just training to be a champion, there's a difference in that,
1:12:56
you can, like I mentioned, you can train with intent, or you can just go, you can, I can just go
1:13:00
train. And there's a difference in that type of stuff. And growing up, there was a couple times
1:13:05
when, because you mentioned it was the day after the fight, because everybody was just training,
1:13:08
there was a couple times where it was Thanksgiving or Christmas. And my dad was all right, son.
1:13:16
And growing up, I didn't really work out. I didn't do weights, but we did pushups, pullups,
1:13:20
setups, assisted pullups, of course, but we were working out. And it was Christmas. And on Christmas,
1:13:25
we would do a little bit more. And I'm like, Dad, like, what are we doing? Everyone's upstairs
1:13:30
reading food. He's like, son, like, these are the days that the people who want to champion are
1:13:35
taken off. So we're going to double down and do even more. That's right. And it was his coach
1:13:40
in high school who kind of helped with that. And another person was Tucker Lane. So he was in Nebraska,
1:13:46
cornhusker, he wrestled, he was their heavyweight. And he was one of those guys that whenever he'd
1:13:50
come over, they always train twice as hard on vacation days or on holidays, because everyone
1:13:56
else is taking that time off. That's their time to get ahead. And I mean, even though I didn't
1:14:00
emulate that exactly, I just put in the work enough so I could take a day off to spend time
1:14:04
with my family. And I'd still do something. But I mean, just that mindset of everything is so
1:14:09
important. And like we talked about like pre deciding everything, like you kind of you just got to
1:14:13
get to have that right mindset. Because if you're like, well, I mean, I think this, I think God's
1:14:18
true. But I mean, I don't know, maybe I can do this and he'll be okay with it. It's like, you need
1:14:21
to know the answers that you need to look at the resources and you're free to this stuff out.
1:14:24
Well, I remember. So Adam Wayne around big St. Louis Cardinals fan. And so Adam Wayne Wright,
1:14:27
I think I think it was this is when he tore his Achilles. And so an Achilles injury is like,
1:14:32
that could be a career ender. I mean, even if you've got the best surgeons and physical therapist on
1:14:37
the planet, you're out six months. If you're an elite level athlete, it was either that or when
1:14:40
he had Tommy John, doesn't matter. He was injured. He was out. He wasn't able to play every day,
1:14:44
or every fifth day as a pitcher. And he said on the day, and I've used this, and it's just haunted
1:14:50
my brain. There's some days where I'm like, I really wish I never heard him say that. But he said,
1:14:54
on the days when I didn't want to work out, I would force myself to work out twice. So you
1:15:00
think about it, you wake up, you're a little busted, you didn't get as as good a sleep as you
1:15:04
would normally do. You got some things to do and all that. Ah, you know what, we'll just skip today.
1:15:09
I'm not trying to be a world champion. I don't have to do any of those things. So he made himself
1:15:14
work out twice. And what I tell guys, when it comes to training, because I train alone,
1:15:17
I lift in my own garage. When I run sprints, it's alone on my street, what I do. Yeah, you will
1:15:22
check it out. Yeah, we'll check it out on the way out. I'll wait and get a little lifting if you
1:15:26
want to and get your get your guy out there as well. But when I'm running sprints, I run it on
1:15:30
the street by myself. When I do the Murph every year, I do it here in my neighborhood by myself.
1:15:35
Like I just do it by myself. So it'd be very, very easy for me to cut corners.
1:15:39
You give me those goggins. But the thing is, is the person that would see it is me. Yeah.
1:15:45
If I cut that corner, right? And so what I tell guys to do when it comes, especially to their
1:15:49
training, I tell them, have this phrase in your head. I've seen me do that before. So if you go to
1:15:55
your global gym and you get in there and you're not a little motivated and you kind of get warmed
1:16:00
up, you do one set of bench and you're like, I just don't really want to do it. And you leave,
1:16:04
you've seen you do that before. But if you go to your global gym and you didn't want to go,
1:16:09
right? It's cold or it's raining outside and here you're inside now and you get warmed up and
1:16:13
it's just one of those days where you don't feel strong. But if you force yourself to get through
1:16:18
that workout, an hour, hour and a half later or whatever, and you're driving home, you've seen
1:16:22
you do that before, right? Same thing with sprints. When I run sprints, my last sprint is the longest
1:16:29
one. And that's the one where I try to go the hardest because I've seen me do that before.
1:16:34
With jujitsu, there are certain guys that are just going to beat you. But if we're similar in our
1:16:39
size, similar in our athletic, you know, acumen, and you have, because we'll do a six minute round,
1:16:46
if you've got five and a half minutes of cardio, I've got six, right? So it may take me a while,
1:16:51
but I'm going to smash you at the very, very end. It's that mindset. And if you've ever gone through
1:16:56
around and you dogged it and you knew you dogged it or you got real defensive, right? You're playing
1:17:01
defense or whatever, making it look good. But you knew you were just doing it because you retired,
1:17:05
either mentally or physically, you've seen you do that before. But when you overcome,
1:17:10
when you show resilience, you've seen you do that as well. And so I think Huberman was talking about,
1:17:15
there's a part of your brain. It's like the anterior mid-singula cortex. It's a part of your
1:17:19
brain that only grows if you force yourself to do something you don't want to do, right? It's not
1:17:25
if you do something hard, because some people love running. And so they'll go run 15 miles today,
1:17:29
but they love it. But it's like, I don't want to get in this cold water. I don't want to do it,
1:17:33
but they do it. I don't want to go to wrestling practice. I don't want to do 700 double legs
1:17:38
today. And then you force yourself to do it. That part of your brain that gives you resilience,
1:17:43
that's the only time when it grows. It's almost as if all these things are connected.
1:17:46
Yeah, there's two things I wanted to say. So first, I don't want to get in this ice cold bath.
1:17:53
My buddy Calvin Son, he's probably one of my best friends. He is my best friend. And I'm with
1:17:58
the Air Force Academy together. He's currently still training, but he's going to be going. He's
1:18:01
going to be a crow, a combat rescue officer in the Air Force. It's kind of some of a Navy seal,
1:18:05
but a little different. But he's the way he understands this stuff is awesome. And here in
1:18:11
Utah, he kind of reminded me a little bit about that, because whenever we talk about recovery and
1:18:15
stuff, he's just all about hard work. He doesn't care. He would throw on his backpack or his
1:18:20
brook and just take off, just because like it would be five o'clock. And I'd be like,
1:18:24
it's nine, 30 to 10. I'm like, do where are you at? And he's like, oh, hold on. I'm still like half
1:18:27
at this mountain. I'm like, what the heck? Come home. The other day, he, what is it? It's in Colorado
1:18:34
Springs, the big mountain we have there. He was just like, it was the evening I took a face time
1:18:39
to him. And I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm going to go hike the entire mountain
1:18:42
tomorrow. And I'm like, what? Like you just, he just, he's just awesome. And cold bass, he doesn't
1:18:48
do it. He doesn't think there's any recovery benefits. He just doesn't, because he doesn't
1:18:51
want to. He doesn't, he really, when I'm in there, because I thought it was for recovery. I'm like,
1:18:54
what are you in here for? He's like, I'm here to train my brain. Yeah, that's right. He's like,
1:18:57
I'm not here for recovery. But I'm like, that's just, that's some tough stuff. But you mentioned
1:19:01
having a bad day, we actually talked about that today, because we're going to have days that suck.
1:19:05
Oh yeah. And I made an excuse last week, which was, I mean, it wasn't even really valid. But I
1:19:10
mean, we had a really tough practice. And I like eating food before I work out. I didn't,
1:19:14
I left it on the counter that day. I didn't have all my, my 600 calories and have my food with me.
1:19:18
And I had a bad practice. And I blamed it. I could have made more of it. But like, I found myself
1:19:23
being a victim. And I was like, Oh, I need breakfast. What's okay? Like, I can have a bad practice. And
1:19:28
I kind of gave up some takedowns and stuff I shouldn't have during life. Because I'm like, Oh,
1:19:32
I didn't eat breakfast and it's an hour and a half. And it's like, dude, like, there's always
1:19:35
going to be an excuse there. But like, fighting through that and overcoming that no matter what,
1:19:40
that's a different type of mindset. And we're always going to have bad days. But what I,
1:19:44
what I like to tell myself is, if you have a bad day, there's something that caused it. You know,
1:19:49
Oh, I only slept five hours. I was up on the Xbox or, Oh, I didn't eat, right? Like, there's always a
1:19:54
way there's a source, the point where that bad day came from. Never have two bad days in a row.
1:19:59
I forgot what coach told me that. But like, if you have a bad day, you need to make sure you
1:20:02
fix it and come back. Because you can, if you make that habit, that's going to be the new normal,
1:20:07
which we, as you know, we cannot let that happen. So whenever we wrestle, we do sprints, it's a,
1:20:12
it's a, it's a drill practice, whatever we do. I mean, I hate our circuits, because I can slack
1:20:20
and not get a workout in, but it's, you know, it's 12 rounds of something, 30 seconds a piece. Like,
1:20:24
I always come close to like throwing up, passing out because I'm afraid of it. But that's my normal,
1:20:30
is I need to give 100% here or else I'm going to get comfortable slacking off. And so I'm just,
1:20:35
I'm thinking about we have a circuit tomorrow afternoon. That's right. And I mean, it's a good
1:20:40
feeling and I like that I get uncomfortable about it, because it's the same thing every time. And I,
1:20:44
there's, I mean, maybe there was one when I think a little bit sick, but I was like, I will never
1:20:48
do that again, because after the circuit, I wasn't breathing that hard. I could still stand up and
1:20:52
jog and I'm like, okay, I know I just, I, I am now hurting myself, because my goals would be an
1:20:57
actual champion. Well, I'm not putting the work and someone else is going to put that working. And
1:21:01
so I hate the circuit so much, because I know what's going to suck. I used to lose sleep over this.
1:21:06
The night before we had a 9am circuit and I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do to fall,
1:21:11
because I know it's going to suck. But I mean, you have to keep that, you're normal and be doing
1:21:15
it tomorrow. It's going to suck. It's nothing different. But I'm just glad I have that. Because
1:21:18
the day I start doing that, and if I, you know, if I have one bad circuit, I'm never let that
1:21:22
happen again. But I had like that one bad circuit where I was like, Hey, I did not get enough out
1:21:26
of that. What I, because you control yourself, the coaches can be there, they can motivate you,
1:21:31
they can push you. But if you're not disciplined, none of that's going to matter. Because at the end
1:21:34
of the day, like the coaches never force us to do anything. They never say, Hey, you have to do
1:21:39
this, never have to do this, because they understand if you want to be a champion, you will do it.
1:21:44
We are the reason we are here for you on that journey, but we can't do it for you. And you know,
1:21:49
they're never going to force us to do anything. But I mean, I like to make those decisions because
1:21:53
I want to be a champion. And they're always there for us. They're always going to push us.
1:21:55
Right. And it's not just decisions. Yeah, it's pre decisions. Yeah, right back to it.
1:21:59
Exactly. I tell people all the time. So two of my least favorite days of the week are typically
1:22:04
Monday and Tuesday, because this morning, it was a Monday. So I woke up, it's deadlift, right? And
1:22:10
it's deadlift followed by pullups, right? And a bunch of other stuff. So I neck, core, all that
1:22:14
kind of stuff. But I hate it. I hate it. I just hate it. I don't like it. I don't want to do it,
1:22:19
right? But when I went to bed last night, there was no question what was going to happen this
1:22:23
morning. Yeah, there just wasn't. Because assuming the house doesn't burn down or I got sick overnight
1:22:28
or something went wrong with the kids, I'm going to wake up and the first thing I'm going to do
1:22:31
is I'm going to go out into my garage. I'm going to read a chapter of the Bible, which is part of
1:22:34
my warm up. And then I'm going to get after it. And then guess what? Tomorrow is squat.
1:22:39
You know what I know about squat? I know that I hate it. I know that I don't ever want to do it
1:22:43
again. I know if I could have the benefits of a strong, lower body without having a squat that
1:22:47
I would do that instead, right? But I've predecided, right? There is not a negotiation.
1:22:53
So tomorrow morning, when my alarm goes off, there's not like an inter-consternation.
1:22:57
There's not a choice. Yeah. Oh, it's, but it's cold out there and it's warm in my bed.
1:23:02
Or none of that comes into play because predecisions like, you know, that's part of it. But yes,
1:23:07
I do feel like we need to kind of circle back around a little bit to talk a little bit more about
1:23:11
your journey with wrestling. Because even when we were, we were talking at dinner,
1:23:15
you know, you were talking about, you know, with your, your dad was kind of, you know, he was one
1:23:18
of your coaches for club and then you have school ball and all that. But you didn't want to wrestle,
1:23:24
right? Like you wanted to play football. I want to be a football player. But at some point,
1:23:28
there, there was like a dividing line, right? Because, you know, if you're, if you're doing a
1:23:32
ride as a kid, you're developing as an athlete, you're doing everything, right? So you're playing
1:23:36
the ball sports, you're doing some grappling, you're doing some, you know, track and field,
1:23:39
like that kind of stuff. But like, let's go, let's go to that moment where it's like, okay,
1:23:43
I'm going to go the wrestling route. So what was that like? Absolutely. Well,
1:23:47
so as you know, growing up, we did all those sports, you know, baseball, football, soccer,
1:23:51
track, like we did all that good stuff. And I started wrestling when I was five.
1:23:56
And obviously at that young age, it's just, we're learning, I'm having fun and, you know, fast forward
1:24:01
a couple of years, they came down to the two sports, because I gave up baseball for, you know,
1:24:05
most of wrestling stuff, because the season started to cross over and I stopped, you know,
1:24:09
doing the other stuff. So it was just football and wrestling and my freshman year of high school.
1:24:13
And this was kind of, my dad was always like, you know, because he only wrestled for one year
1:24:17
in high school, but that one year gave him the values and his understanding of what hard work
1:24:22
really is. And the man my dad is today, he gives it, he's like, hey, because it was that one year
1:24:26
of wrestling made a big impact. Right. So he's been always in favor of wrestling. But I was like,
1:24:31
Oh, I'm going to be an NFL football player. I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be awesome.
1:24:34
I'll be this big star and all this good stuff. And there was a time I freshman year where
1:24:38
I had an injury and I was like, I can't put football anymore. And stuff like that is like,
1:24:43
I mean, got like, we talk about God's plan for us. And it's like, you know, it sucked. But the only
1:24:48
other thing I really had in my freshman year of wrestling was terrible. I didn't even qualify
1:24:53
for state. I wasn't even in the running for anything. Like, I was not at good. And after football,
1:24:59
I was like, all right, well, I've just been going through the motions with this wrestling thing.
1:25:02
I'm going to do it for myself. And I told you a little bit about this a little bit ago.
1:25:06
My dad was, you know, he's a big one of my coaches, but I just needed to do it for myself.
1:25:10
Because I was, I was really mainly doing it because my dad wanted me to. But then I started
1:25:14
not just going to practice to go to practice. I want to practice to get better. And I started
1:25:18
caring about it a little bit more. And I just started wrestling for myself, not because my
1:25:21
dad wanted me to is because I decided to start wrestling. And then that one year of
1:25:25
intentful practice and stuff, my sophomore year, I was a state runner up. And I lost to a three
1:25:29
time state champion who's a senior. So I mean, that turned around. That showed me like, if I
1:25:34
actually try to get good at this, because I was okay, you know, it was anything special. But
1:25:38
the funny thing is the real motivation was my dad always said, I'm not paying for your college.
1:25:42
And it was kind of a joke. But he was like, Hey, I want you to be good athlete. But it was,
1:25:46
I was like, okay, well, I need to, I want to get a scholarship of some sort. So that, you know,
1:25:50
I got better at wrestling. Like, man, if I keep doing this and caring about this, let's see what
1:25:54
can happen. And you know, the next year ended up becoming a state champion. And I think I maybe
1:26:00
lost one match and then I never lost another match in my high school career. And I was like,
1:26:05
you know, that's when the Air Force Academy reached out and I went to the Air Force Academy and
1:26:08
became a couple of time all American there. But the biggest thing was, and I just like we talked
1:26:14
about with my walk with the Lord is, you know, my parents, and of course they want me to do it,
1:26:18
but then I used to take it on for yourself. You have to want to follow Jesus. You want to have
1:26:22
to follow God. You want to, you want to learn about it because you want to not because you're
1:26:24
being forced to. And with wrestling was a similar thing. I just decided, I'm going to start doing
1:26:28
this for me. And I kind of realized that God blessed me with some abilities that maybe other
1:26:33
people don't. And I didn't realize until later on, because I told you that that quote, what we are
1:26:39
is God's gift to us, what we become as our gift to God. And it was, I just, you don't realize it
1:26:45
till you look back. You're like, man, that decision that God made for me, like about not being a
1:26:50
football person, being a wrestler, like that like, that was like, it would be God did that for a
1:26:54
reason. Because we talk about how there's ups and downs and God works in mysterious ways. And
1:26:58
it's living by faith, not by sight. If we all saw the goal at the end of the rainbow,
1:27:02
that's where we're going to be with you and my wife. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
1:27:06
Ginger joke. Do you not allowed to say that? Okay. She can hear it. She can feel that downstairs.
1:27:11
I bet. She probably did. She's in the be like, you know what? My phone is actually bad. That's
1:27:14
a bad answer. But, um, it's just that walk is, it's, it's hard. And God will do things in your life
1:27:22
that you aren't that it's not fun. You're like, God, why did you do this? But you just, like I said,
1:27:26
yeah, put your ass on the table. Like God, I'm going to follow you. If you're going to pull me a
1:27:29
certain way, I'm going to trust you, you're doing it for, you know, we talk with people in the Bible,
1:27:32
like they're walks and it's going to be tough. There, you know, things are going bad. And they're
1:27:36
like, what the heck? But you know, there's always going to be some like tunnel and God's got a
1:27:39
plan for he's got you. He's not life's not going to get easy. But God's gonna be on your side. We
1:27:44
talk about songs. God's gonna be with you through those hard times. Hey guys, real quick, as you've
1:27:48
heard me describe before, I am incredibly conservative about the supplements that I take. I spent years
1:27:54
being terrified of putting different products in my body because I didn't know what they were made
1:27:58
with or if it was going to be kind of fly by night companies using all kinds of crazy ingredients.
1:28:03
So I've always wanted to partner with an American company that only uses the highest quality ingredients.
1:28:09
And that's why I want to remind you that we are partnered with Jocko Fuel. Jocko Fuel is Jocko
1:28:14
willing supplement company that is based here in the United States. So what are some of my favorite
1:28:18
products that they make? So they make whey protein powder and guys, they just released a cookies and
1:28:22
cream flavor not that long ago. And it is ridiculously good. Make sure you use it with milk. It makes
1:28:26
it even better. They also make clean energy drinks. I finally decided what my favorite was. And that's
1:28:31
pink lemonade. That is my favorite of all their flavors. But they also have the best tasting greens
1:28:36
powder on the market. I prefer the peach flavor myself. They also make pre workout and ready to
1:28:40
drink protein. So I actually mix the ready to drink protein in my boy's milk. And they love it.
1:28:45
They're constantly like Dada banana milk banana milk. So we got to hook that up in the Thompson
1:28:50
household. But I also use their krill oil, fish oil, creatine, vitamin D, and their sleep aids.
1:28:55
And guys, they've got new stuff coming out all the time and a bunch of stuff I didn't even have
1:28:58
time to mention. Guys, if you take your health and wellness seriously, then you simply can't
1:29:02
afford to put cheap and inconsistent supplements inside of your body. Try origin out today by going
1:29:08
to www.jockofuel.com. That's jockofuel.com. Use the promo code undaunted to get 10% off your order.
1:29:16
Again, that's jockofuel.com promo code undaunted to get 10% off your order.
1:29:21
Okay, so you mentioned Air Force Academy there. So Kansas high school champion junior and senior
1:29:27
year, right? So you're getting recruited. You initially weren't going to go the military academy
1:29:33
route. But then like it was your dad, I guess that said it was a good idea. Yeah. So I'll explain
1:29:37
that story real quick. The only visit I actually never went on the official visits before I committed.
1:29:42
I did go to an unofficial visit at Oklahoma State, though. And so it was the closest to
1:29:46
visual and wrestling school to my house. I've been to still water to watch them wrestle many
1:29:50
times growing up. That was the one school I just watched a new college about. But I got a letter
1:29:55
in the mail from the Air Force Academy. And I didn't know what it was. I just thought it was a
1:29:58
recruitment letter. And I've gotten those before. And I was like, Oh, the Air Force Academy. And
1:30:02
I just kind of threw it away in the trash. And my dad was spinning around the corner because I was
1:30:06
in the kitchen with my mom. And she was like, Oh, it's just recruitment, whatever. My dad goes,
1:30:10
wait a second, did you see the Air Force Academy? I'm like, yeah, that's what they just want to,
1:30:14
you know, probably recruit me for something. And he's like, where's that letter at? And we went,
1:30:17
we grabbed it. And he was like, Do you know what this is? I'm like, no, just a little letter there.
1:30:23
He's like, this is the Air Force Academy son. And he read it over. My dad actually, he wanted to go
1:30:28
and to the military, but he had some problems with the little eye disease. So he was disqualified. But
1:30:33
he, he knew about it. And I just didn't know about it. And so he was like, son, you need to look
1:30:39
into this opportunity. You didn't know what this actually is. Because I mean, it's a, you know,
1:30:44
it's a full ride scholarship. I'm going to, you know, serve my country. And just at the time I was
1:30:49
thinking that I was just thinking, Oh, they want me to come, you know, blah, blah, blah. I didn't
1:30:52
think it was wrestling related, but then I looked into it. My dad, what he did is he just opened my
1:30:57
eyes to what it was. I didn't mean I didn't know what it was. You don't know about something to
1:31:00
you learn about it. And so after I started to learn about it, I'm like, wait a second, this is actually
1:31:05
pretty cool. Because at first I started looking into it because he wanted me to, but same is wrestling.
1:31:10
Like my dad got me started wrestling because he wanted me to, but then I decided to do it for myself.
1:31:14
Same thing with this. He was just like, he opened the door and he's like, Hey, this is what this,
1:31:18
this is what this is. And then I did it. Okay, I'm going to do this because I want to do it. It
1:31:21
just felt right. And so yeah, I mean, fast forward a couple months or a couple years after that.
1:31:28
I think it was like the very first day, excuse me, the very first day that colleges are allowed
1:31:33
to send letters, that's like the day the letter showed up. And so, um, I mean, I committed to the
1:31:38
Air Force pre before I actually ever visited there. Cause that's kind of like that was my column. That's,
1:31:42
God was like, Hey, this, this is where I want you to go. This is my plan for you. And so you know,
1:31:45
I did it. And it wasn't as easy as that like, Oh, okay, thanks. But you know, like I said,
1:31:50
looking back, okay, you can see the steps that happened of where God wanted me to be that calling
1:31:54
that, you know, what he calls us to do. And it just felt right for me. And I went to the Air Force
1:31:59
Academy. And that was during COVID, my freshman year. That's sucked because there wasn't much
1:32:04
wrestling. It's a contact sport. And there's all this mask and stuff. And we did what we could,
1:32:09
we had these little groups of threes and wrestled. But that was a tough year. That was a tough year.
1:32:14
And then my sophomore year was also super difficult because that's when like, um, like
1:32:20
competitions and the COVID shot was out. And there was just a lot of really weird rules on that. And
1:32:26
I didn't have a normal year to like my junior year of college. And then I was like, man,
1:32:31
there's two years left on to be a national champion. I need to do everything that everything's going
1:32:35
to take. And so I trained my butt off. And you know, I took third. And I think that people
1:32:40
asked me what was my, uh, my biggest loss that I like regret. And I think it was so the semifinals
1:32:46
that you're I faced, Greg Kirklave. And I mean, I went out there to win. I took him down and I just,
1:32:52
I had never been in that many situations because in suitable term, it's a hard tournament. I hadn't
1:32:57
had any super, any super hard people to wrestle that gave me that feel until a national tournament.
1:33:03
And I just did the stuff I'd usually do. I'd just do like a little Grammy roll out of stuff,
1:33:07
but then it wasn't working on him and I stressed myself out. And if I were to just wrestle with
1:33:11
smart auto on that match, but I'd like, I mean, Greg's a great wrestler. He still is a great
1:33:15
wrestler. But there's things I did in that match that I didn't set myself up for success. And so
1:33:21
it hurts because that's a match I knew I could have won, but I was foolish. I wasn't patient and
1:33:26
then stitch the basics. And I, I lost it. I like this. Like I lost it for myself. I gave him
1:33:30
opportunities that I shouldn't have given him. And if you watch that match, exactly what I'm
1:33:34
talking about, but, um, just that happened. And then same thing the next year. And that's the best
1:33:40
thing about wrestling is it teaches you how to deal with adversity because both of those times,
1:33:45
the hardest, I think of the instability tournament being a champion is hard. It's very tough. But I
1:33:49
think one of the hardest things is coming back and taking third because being in the semis,
1:33:53
yeah, one step from the championship and then you lose. Well, now you have to, you have to keep
1:33:57
wrestling. That's right. And you're like, Hey, the next best thing is not being a champion. It
1:34:00
might be taking third, but that's not fun. That's not easy to do. And so all I remember in those
1:34:05
moments is as soon as I stepped off the mat, coach Joe Johnston, he was like, this is gonna suck.
1:34:11
Let's go back, relax for 10 minutes. But he's like, the way you're feeling right now,
1:34:16
everyone else you're going to wrestle feels the exact same way. And so it really taught me is,
1:34:20
I mean, it's such a mind, it's such a mindset type of tournament and coming back and losing
1:34:27
because I mean, what I did after that, the next opponents I wrestled, I wrestled like I was
1:34:32
still winning for the championship. And so they felt that and they just went, Oh, my, I've wrestled
1:34:37
this. You know, like this, this is going to suck. And even though it was like, I was hurting,
1:34:41
my body was beat up. I didn't, I was just, I was actually like, everything was amazing and that
1:34:45
got in their heads. They're like, Oh, this guy, you know, well, how am I gonna wrestle him? And I
1:34:49
came back both those years and took third. But I remember that last year, I was like, dude, like,
1:34:54
that was my chance. Because I wanted to be an national champion. I didn't, I wasn't into some
1:34:58
of those guys that said it. I wanted to do it. I was doing everything my power I could. But then,
1:35:03
I mean, it's tough to get the military academy, a lot of stuff going on. I got academic, we got
1:35:07
military dues, we're doing all the time. So it's not just wrestling wrestling, wrestling third becomes,
1:35:12
you know, it's really like military school and then athletics versus because of COVID. I had a
1:35:17
COVID year and I went, I came to Oklahoma State, you know, and it was a little different. I had more
1:35:22
time just to wrestle. And so that just getting recovered, I learned the importance of recovery.
1:35:27
And yeah, I just wish I would have taken that stuff more serious earlier on because
1:35:30
sleep is the most important thing. Your body heals during sleep. And I was, that's the one
1:35:36
thing that I was letting myself sacrifice. I was like, Oh, I'll do this. I'll play Xbox. But then,
1:35:42
like, instead of going to bed, I'll, I'll just sleep a little bit last tonight. And that's not
1:35:45
bad if it happens for a couple days, but I don't let that happen for way too long. Yeah. Now that
1:35:49
I'm married, I'd say now that we've been dating pre seriously, I haven't played Xbox in a long
1:35:53
time. Yeah, I guess that's good. I need to actually cancel my Xbox subscription. But
1:35:57
get a reminder. I know. Well, I actually want to go to where you're talking about going to
1:36:01
Oklahoma State. So you got your COVID year, but you can't be a graduate student and an athlete
1:36:08
within the military academy, correct? So at the Air Force Academy, there's not a graduate
1:36:11
college. It's just the Air Force Academy. So four and done. So even for athletes that get hurt one
1:36:16
year, you don't get injury. It's that's it. No injury. That's it. Nothing. Okay. So I could not
1:36:20
have wrestled there. So you enter the portal. You choose Oklahoma State. Were there, were there
1:36:26
other options or was it basically Oklahoma State or bust? I knew I wanted to go to Oklahoma State.
1:36:30
Okay. But I was, I had still had a lot of coaches along my journey that poured a lot into me.
1:36:35
So there was a coach at Minnesota who's always been really good to me at Michigan and then
1:36:42
Mizzou. There was just coaches that I said, Hey, I'm going to give you the time of day. Yeah,
1:36:46
because you've done so much for me. I'm going to see what you're about and see if it's right
1:36:49
for me. Yeah. And I did. I went to those schools, but I remember originally Coach Taylor wasn't the
1:36:54
head coach of Oklahoma State. Right. That's when that that's when Coach Smith retired. We didn't
1:36:58
know who was going to be yet. Right. That was a big impact because Coach Taylor, someone I looked
1:37:02
up to, I mentioned when I lost my love for wrestling, watching it was the two wrestlers,
1:37:06
it was Kyle Deakin, David Taylor watching them, dude, brought that love back having someone like
1:37:10
that be so impactful in my life and then having them give you a call saying, Hey, I want, I want
1:37:16
to be your coach. That's, it's hard to beat that. Yeah. Well, so because I remember around here,
1:37:21
because, you know, with me running, running my business and, you know, young kids and stuff like
1:37:27
that, like, you know, it's kind of hard to keep up with everything. Yeah. But dude, when Coach Smith
1:37:31
retired and when David Taylor came in, because it was almost like a perfect storm, because David got
1:37:37
beat on the Olympic trials, because if he wins that match, like he's going off to the Olympics,
1:37:44
he's not available to be the Oklahoma State head coach. John Smith maybe doesn't retire,
1:37:48
maybe he was already going to retire and his heir apparent who had been being grown for a long time.
1:37:52
Yeah. It would not have been Coach Taylor. But now you got Coach Taylor came from that Penn State
1:37:57
tree. And, you know, obviously Penn State is like on a planet by themselves right now. It's like 11
1:38:03
of the last 13 national titles or 12, 14 or something. It's crazy. They're the run that they're on.
1:38:07
The gap that they've created between them and Oklahoma State and Iowa and Michigan and Ohio State
1:38:13
and Minnesota and all these different programs is substantial, right? So in, you know, all power
1:38:18
to them. But then now you got Taylor who's still in his wrestling prime. He just got got right during
1:38:25
the trials. Yeah. Now he's done as a competitor, but now he's a coach and Smith was older. So we
1:38:32
wasn't able to get on the mats and scrap with guys. And but you have a guy that's in his wrestling
1:38:36
prime. That's more experience than everybody else in the room. Oh, also he's got a gold medal.
1:38:40
And now he has the potential to, you know, take that gap between Oklahoma State and Penn State
1:38:47
that has grown over the years and basically combined with the NIL and transport portal
1:38:51
and all that type of stuff, bring it down to almost nothing to where it's at least competitive.
1:38:56
Cause anymore, it's like you get to, you get to the national final and it's like, okay,
1:39:00
by how much is Penn State going to win the team title? It's like that's what record are they
1:39:05
going to break this year? Yeah. But gosh, I mean, you're, you're right there where, I mean, Taylor
1:39:10
was a few points away from not even being there. I mean, you're maybe not at Oklahoma State and
1:39:15
then, you know, we'll, we'll get into the national tournament. But I mean, my gosh,
1:39:18
just going back to that time period, what a crazy call for you to make to be like, yeah,
1:39:21
okay, coach Taylor, like let's go. Let's get after it. Yeah. And at that time when he called me,
1:39:25
like I said, I talked to these other coaches and I said, and I have respected them enough to say,
1:39:29
I'm going to give you the time of day and come see your programs about. And I remember, I had
1:39:32
actually already taken my Oklahoma State visit when Taylor wasn't there. And so now all I had left
1:39:37
was when they had no coach. So coach Coleman Scott was going to be like, he's like the interim
1:39:42
coach, right? But it wasn't John Smith and we hadn't gotten Taylor yet. Yeah. And so I mean,
1:39:46
I was stuck one on my other visits and I was really like trying to take it in every other place I
1:39:51
went. I was paying attention. I was like, this is what we got, but it just didn't really feel,
1:39:54
you kind of know when what feels right. I mean, we talk about that and what anything in life,
1:40:00
like you kind of just you get that feeling when it feels right. Like we talk about like,
1:40:03
listen to your heart, listen, you know, and all those other places I went, it felt good. But my
1:40:07
I was like, this doesn't feel like where it's at. And then I came back to still water. I'm like,
1:40:10
okay, this is where I need to be man. It's some different. I mean, when you go there,
1:40:14
when you go to the duels, and I mean, obviously there's the history and all that. And I mean,
1:40:18
growing up kind of going there and, you know, seeing some of those duels,
1:40:21
but you go from Air Force Academy, so you would qualified for the national tournament each year.
1:40:25
I think you were the first Air Force wrestler to qualify your freshman year, right? Like for
1:40:30
the national tournament. I made that up. There's probably been a couple guys.
1:40:33
Okay. But I mean, I did call off. There's been very few people that qualified four times.
1:40:37
Okay, so you qualify four times. Wait, you get a qualified five, 10 degree.
1:40:41
Right. Yeah. But for Air Force, qualify four times. First of your five time,
1:40:44
right? Hey, check that out. And then, you know, you get a couple of third place finishes. I think
1:40:48
you led, led the country and pens a couple of times and falls. And then you get to Oklahoma State.
1:40:53
And so you have just an absolutely dominant spectacular season. You were undefeated going
1:40:59
into the NCAA tournament. So you're a big 12 champion again, all that type of stuff. You know,
1:41:04
on the duels where the heavyweight was the last weight, it was basically like, Hey,
1:41:08
we're about to see a fall here. Like it is just a super dominant season.
1:41:12
But nobody cared because Gable Stevenson's a thing, right? So Gable Olympic champion,
1:41:19
right? And this is what I'll do to kind of set up because I want to go slowly through the tournament
1:41:24
slowly through that match. But you know, we'll kind of begin with the end in mind.
1:41:28
I'm watching the national final like that the whole last last day on my back porch by myself.
1:41:34
I'm having a nice scotch and a cigar. And I'm a kind of an early to bed guy. I go to bed between
1:41:39
nine and nine 30. But for stuff like that where I know there's going to be a lot of commercial
1:41:42
breaks, I'll let it go for an hour, hour and a half before I start watching. So I can just kind of
1:41:46
fast forward through stuff. Yeah. Before the heavyweight final, I almost went to bed. And the
1:41:50
only thing that kept me up is I want to see Gable do something great. I want to see excellence in
1:41:56
motion. Yeah, this white kid, he's got a puncher's chance. But I who cares, he's wearing an orange
1:42:00
singlet forget this kid, right? I'm thinking like, you know, you just want to see greatness and
1:42:05
you want to be around it. So yeah, here you are. You've got a coach that knows what it's like to
1:42:09
peek at the right time. You've got your surrounded by champions and you're going in undefeated into
1:42:14
the national tournament, right? And you've just been absolutely dominant. How do you feel going
1:42:20
into the tournament? Because obviously we're going to get to the ending for any of you guys that
1:42:23
have not listened to my show and heard me talk about it or watched anything on the internet for
1:42:27
the last like six months. But how do you feel going into the tournament? How's your body feel?
1:42:31
How's your mind? How the coaches feel like you're set up? Looking at the bracket, you kind of see
1:42:37
who's going to be on your side? Like let's go through the field at the beginning. Absolutely.
1:42:41
So I felt great. Like this is one of those times when I wanted to practice a couple more times that
1:42:46
week, but the coaches were like, you're ready. Like the works with the haze and the barn. That's
1:42:50
right. Let's go. So multiple times we come in and they cut us off like 30 minutes because they know
1:42:55
we'll wrestle forever. But they're like, hey, you've got what you need. It's not time to
1:43:00
wrestle your best right now. And so going into that tournament, I felt really good. My body was
1:43:04
healthy. And my mindset in everything is if you ever put stress on your situation, if you were
1:43:12
put stress on yourself in a situation, you're hurting yourself. For example, my best days in
1:43:17
the practice room, it's just any other day. I wake up, I eat some breakfast, you know,
1:43:21
watch some TV, do some homework, go to practice, you know, then go to class. It's just a normal
1:43:26
day and I have great practices. Why is this any different? It's just another wrestling match.
1:43:30
So whether it was the first match or the last match, I'm just doing same old, same old, you know,
1:43:34
yeah, I'm a different place, but get some food, hang out with the guys. I'm not going to sit around
1:43:39
in my room all day and be like, well, that's the national tournament. I need to be focused. I need
1:43:42
a new style. You're just hurting. I've learned that the hard way. You're just I mean, it's exciting,
1:43:47
but use can't let yourself go that path. And I just did it, you know, it was awesome. I just
1:43:53
haven't even the day of the the last match of the finals. It was just any other day. But it felt,
1:43:58
I've always wrestled at the NCAA tournament pretty well, but even the last couple times,
1:44:02
my body just depleted the last day. It's just all heart like my body, my arms are locked up,
1:44:07
my forms are locked. I felt so fresh at the last I felt like a million bucks. I felt good to go.
1:44:14
Nothing was hurting. I'd wrestled a great tournament. There was there was no complaints. I was
1:44:18
feeling great. And I mean, the biggest thing is like, Hey, like, I like how you asked. Hey,
1:44:23
what was it before the tournament? Yeah, what was the training like? It was like, it was excitement.
1:44:26
It was just excitement and we were just grateful. But a lot of people they just asked, what was it
1:44:30
like the last day, you know, that the morning of before the match, I'm like, same as any other
1:44:35
match. Yeah, I'm not like, now, because of the thing about this, there's an arena full of 17, 18,000
1:44:39
people. There's, of course, a lot of people watching online, which you were to, yeah, maybe going for
1:44:43
gable. It's fine. I didn't say I was going for him. But I, you know, I wanted to see it. Yeah, I did.
1:44:48
Yeah, it was good. But the people, you know, the president was there, you know, I'm going against
1:44:53
a really reputable wrestler. If I'm if that's what I'm thinking about before the match,
1:44:58
what do you think's going to happen? I'm going to be so overwhelmed. And I just did this. Because
1:45:02
all the intros are different. There's lights and music. And like, so it's not just like, all right,
1:45:07
we'll get out there and put the red or the green around the wrestle. Yeah. And so if you've ever
1:45:11
seen the movie Cree, that's the best example you can give for this, because there's that moment when
1:45:16
he's in the center of the ring, and it's just him and his opponent. There's a spotlight.
1:45:20
No one's in the crowd, completely inaudible. That's, that's how I am when I wrestle in that match.
1:45:25
I remember walking out on the walking out of the tunnel, just ready to wrestle as soon as
1:45:31
copperhead road is like my cue. It's my mental cue to get locked in. We're about to wrestle. So
1:45:35
whether most matches don't have a walkout song. So I put plug my headphones in and before I'm about
1:45:40
a minute out, I turn it on. That gets, that's just, that's my cue of, hey, it's time to go to battle.
1:45:46
Yeah. And, you know, I heard that song and I was like, all right, it's, I'm ready to go. It's
1:45:50
the normal thing. And people are like, Oh, would Gable Sadie would have like, I don't remember any
1:45:54
of that? No, timeout, timeout. I'm going to say this right now. I don't believe that for a second.
1:45:58
Okay. Wait, wait, let me set it up, dad, gummy. It's my show. So here we are.
1:46:01
Like my hand on the Bible. No, no, no, no, no. Bibles are over there. Okay. It's just us.
1:46:05
So Gable walks out first, comes out to the notorious B.I.G. like all the confidence in the world.
1:46:11
Dude hasn't been taken down in his collegiate career. Dude, I think it was against, I can't
1:46:15
remember who it was, but it was like the quarter final, semi final match. Like at one point,
1:46:19
he literally picks a dude up and throws him out of bounds, right? It was, it was one of the weird,
1:46:24
like he was almost just like, I, I'm bored, right? He's just mowed through this tournament,
1:46:28
right? And he had mowed through the entire season. Then you come out second, you're wearing your
1:46:32
Jesus more than a conqueror shirt. You got the American flag wrapped around you. And then you
1:46:36
walk on the mat and Gable gets right in your face. And you kind of go to your left a little bit,
1:46:40
you start walking around and he is chirping at you. And I've heard you say it a million times,
1:46:44
dad, gummy. I've heard you say, I don't even know what he said. I was too much in the zone.
1:46:47
I don't believe that. Okay. So you're going to break some news now for the entire world.
1:46:50
What did Gable, Steven, say to you? Because we've all guessed and we've all tried to context
1:46:54
clue this and DC and JB, Jordan Burrows, they were, they were on the mic trying to say, hey,
1:46:59
they thought this is what he said. This is what he said. What do you say to you, man? All right.
1:47:02
All right. I'm gonna be I'll be 100% honest with you. Okay. I'm gonna tell you guys.
1:47:07
I'm gonna tell you guys what he said. Okay. What do you say? I don't remember.
1:47:10
You don't let me explain. Let me explain this to you. So this, I'm going to go into a little
1:47:16
detail about about me and the person I'm always uplifting. No one's ever in the wrestling match.
1:47:21
My entire life came up to me and distress been disrespectful and any, I'm gonna say disrespectful
1:47:27
made a scene before wrestling match. That's never happened. Very odd. Only time that's ever,
1:47:31
someone's came up to me was out of gratefulness, out of respect. So even on the world stage and
1:47:36
someone comes up to you when they shake your hand, it's not a normal handshake. They grab
1:47:39
your hand and they pat you on the shoulder. It's always good stuff. And so in my, that's all I think
1:47:43
about. I thought until I after the match was over, I thought Gable was being nice to me.
1:47:48
I thought he was coming out to me to be like, Hey man, like great job. Like this is exciting. I
1:47:53
thought he, I never realized because I wasn't looking at him. I wasn't, I didn't watch his walk out.
1:47:58
Right. I didn't see him. Obviously not seeing it now, but I didn't see him turn around. I didn't
1:48:02
see him put his arms up. I didn't, I, I'm being so honest. I didn't see any of that. I just was
1:48:06
walking through the wrestling. I remember he was a little closer than usual. Yeah. And I was just like,
1:48:11
okay, you know, I looked at him. I looked at it. If you watch the video, I looked at him in the face,
1:48:15
I realized he was close to me, looked down, shook his hand, went to my corner. I thought he was just
1:48:20
like coming and showing some respect. So I didn't know until after I watched the video and watched
1:48:26
everything. I didn't know he was doing that to like get in my head. So a lot of people,
1:48:30
I would you say, I'm like, well, my, my, no one's ever done that to me before. And I didn't know.
1:48:34
And it didn't click until the interviewer asked me what did Gable say to you. I was like, I legit
1:48:40
thought he was being nice. I thought it was coming up to me, just being respectful. And so he's like,
1:48:45
what did he say to you? And I was like, what do you mean? I don't know. I promise. I didn't hear
1:48:50
him say anything. And I mean, a lot of kids, I'm like, no, I'm like, I'm being so honest with you.
1:48:56
But you have to like, no one's ever done that to me. And when I wrestle, I'm ready to go. Like,
1:49:00
even when my coaches yell at me, I can't hear him. I don't listen. But it was in that moment when I was
1:49:05
like, I kind of felt a little the way he asked me that question. Like, maybe he was saying something
1:49:09
to me. And I'm like, you know, but I'm the champ right now. And so I obviously, I kind of wish I
1:49:14
remember what he was saying. But all I know is I was so focused for that. And you can ask coach
1:49:17
Taylor too, because I think coach Taylor in the back corner for also, I mean, I get nervous.
1:49:22
I just like, I like to pray. I haven't prayed so much. Even like I had the flag around me. I'm like,
1:49:25
coach, bring back in one more time. Let's just pray again. And I mean, coach saw if you ask or
1:49:31
watch his areas, he knows I'll focus too. I was I was ready to go. And I maybe I think because he
1:49:37
even tried to like pat me on the back and like whisper something to me, or he was talking to me
1:49:40
and I wasn't paying attention. I was just ready to go because copper had rock. I played it before
1:49:44
the walkout song. It was more time than I thought. And I knew they'd play it again. But
1:49:48
I mean, my head head gear was on. I was focused and coach had to like, like grab him. But he
1:49:53
knew we got to go wrestling. I was already locked in. And I don't know. I wish I remember what he
1:49:58
said, but I really don't remember. But now I was rewatching it. He obviously was he was in the
1:50:02
middle of the mat. He stopped turn of the crowd, all that stuff, which is great, whatever. But
1:50:08
he was more involved in that than the wrestling match, I guess, because Gable's a great wrestler.
1:50:11
But whenever I when ever I stepped out there on the mat, there's a couple things coach Taylor
1:50:15
told me, he's like number one, like wrestling good match, wrestle, wrestle solid, be smart.
1:50:20
Because I like having a lot of fun. I do something I'm losing use to be smart and make it hard on him.
1:50:25
Because a lot of people when you wrestle that good of a wrestler, it frees up. You're just like,
1:50:29
Oh, that's the person like they're supposed to win. Like this is I'm not supposed to have a chance.
1:50:33
But that very first scramble, I know that Gable felt that and he was like, Oh crap, this is actually
1:50:38
I get a wrestle. I'm like, yeah, I am. And so let's get into the discussion of the match because
1:50:44
okay, because what what JB said on the broadcast was that he kind of felt like he could he saw
1:50:50
that he was like, Hey, you don't get to wear that American flag until you're a little champion.
1:50:53
It was definitely something on those lines. And here you are. He is an Olympic champion.
1:50:58
You're in the military. You raised your right hand said that you're going to protect this country,
1:51:00
including him from enemies foreign and domestic, not exactly the same thing. So I'm pretty sure
1:51:04
that you have the credentials to wear the flag. So match starts again. So it's, you know, it's a
1:51:08
three minute period and then a two and then a two. So in the three minute period, the thing that I
1:51:13
remember from from watching the match is immediately you are very active and fainting quite a bit.
1:51:19
Like, you know, kind of like almost like setting up shots. He's not really biting, but within 10
1:51:23
or 15 seconds, he snaps you down. Right. And that is when most guys that are going against Gable
1:51:28
Stevenson, they just go, Oh, gosh, dad, it's like that deer and headlights thing. It's a lot of
1:51:33
guys that have fought John Jones and in the UFC have said, it's very similar to that. All of a sudden
1:51:37
you're in there. So Chelsea on and who's very confident guy, you know, champion, you know, wrestler
1:51:41
from Oregon, all those types of things. He said, the only time I walked to a cage in my fighting
1:51:46
career where I knew there was no path to victory was John Jones. And the moment they locked the
1:51:51
door behind me, I was absolutely petrified at what was about to happen to me. And he ended up,
1:51:57
you know, losing that fight, even though John Jones broke his toe, if it had gone the second
1:52:00
round, you know, he would have been declared the winner, all the things right. So it starts,
1:52:03
you get snapped down, but you don't just quit. Like, it turns into like a 45 second scramble,
1:52:10
almost. So let's talk about just that first thing, because you are snapped down, like he
1:52:14
moves you against your will, but like you don't, you don't stop wrestling.
1:52:18
Yeah. Well, I mean, he shot very fast. He got to my leg, but how many so you don't get three points
1:52:25
for getting to someone's leg, you get three points for taking someone down. And I like to make it
1:52:30
hard on people. I like to wrestle my match. But like, I know how to wrestle before this match,
1:52:35
like coach, doesn't tell him anything. I don't know. He just knows that he was doing everything
1:52:41
right to make sure that I'm not freaking out about anything. And he didn't really need to do
1:52:44
anything. He'd done such a great job. Earlier matches this year, I was ready to go. But I mean,
1:52:48
he was just saying make it hard. Like just wrestle any other way you'd wrestle anyone else. And
1:52:52
I did he went out there. He got to my leg. Well, the normal things that just let him take you down,
1:52:56
you fight it a little bit. And so I wrestled, I wrestled. And then, you know, I found myself
1:53:00
in a position where I could try to score. And so I did. So I wasn't like doing anything magical.
1:53:06
This isn't like anything different. It's just any other wrestling match. So I'm going to wrestle
1:53:10
like any other, why would you change what you've been doing to see success? Right. And I remember
1:53:15
there's two, there's two times in that match where, because I mentioned like, I don't listen to
1:53:19
anything. I can't hear anything. There's two times in that match where I felt something. I felt the
1:53:23
energy of the arena after that scramble. And we got up. I remember that because then everyone was like,
1:53:28
Oh, this is a mess. I remember I'm getting used to losing his mind. Yeah, I can feel the
1:53:35
energy. Okay, like, who cares? It doesn't matter. That was the first time I felt that energy. And
1:53:39
the second time obviously was as soon as I got that takedown, that was the second time. But I'm
1:53:43
getting a little ahead of ourselves. But but but dude, like, so I remember that as well. So,
1:53:47
so you could tell because DC is a goofy guy. He gets into it. He absolutely loves wrestling.
1:53:53
Whoever makes the decisions at ESPN, it's DC and JB from now on those two are spectacular. And the
1:53:58
color guy was perfect. He would set it up and get the heck out of the way and let the experts
1:54:03
like chat. Yeah. So you got that first minute. It's zero zero and there's been a lot of wrestling
1:54:07
that's happened. Right. And to be honest, if you go back and watch the entire final from this year,
1:54:12
there were a lot of matches that were just like, both guys were trying not to lose as opposed to
1:54:17
trying to win. Exactly. There's a difference. There's a difference. A lot of the matches were just
1:54:21
not spectacular. They were not great. I was glad I had a fast forward button for some of those
1:54:24
matches. But then again, those guys are killers and their national champs or national runner-ups,
1:54:29
like, you know, for all the respect in the world to them. But then at some point during the first
1:54:33
period, I think it would, you know, he got in on what a high crotch and then kind of, I think,
1:54:37
some kind of situation, but I fell over the top right fell over the top. He ends up finishing the
1:54:41
takedown three to nothing. You end up escaping before the end of the first. And so coming out of
1:54:46
the first period, it's three to one him. How do you feel about where you're at? Because, you know,
1:54:51
starting in the second, well, you know, afterwards, you're starting in the second, you're going to
1:54:55
start down. Odds of you kind of getting a point for an escape is going to be there. And so you're
1:54:59
looking at three, too. But how do you feel going into the second? I felt pretty good. I mean,
1:55:03
and there wasn't really a game plan. But I told you those three things earlier, that was like the
1:55:07
game plan, so to speak. Because if I'm doing the right things, if I'm wrestling smart, making it
1:55:12
hard on him, I'm going to wear him down. And at that point, I knew, I knew that, you know, I was
1:55:17
kind of wearing on a little bit. And then the second period starts. He chose bottom, I believe.
1:55:24
And, you know, he escaped. And in that second period was a lot of just let's weather. I want to try
1:55:30
to wear him out as much as I can. So obviously, I can't give up another takedown. But I can't go
1:55:34
out and shoot three because I don't know if you've watched the rest. I shoot a lot. I'm very offensive.
1:55:38
But sometimes against the best wrestlers, I can't shoot 50 times. I have to like be committed,
1:55:42
like two or three good shots. Or else I'm going to give up a takedown. And his sprawl is ridiculous.
1:55:46
Heavy hips, everything. Exactly. And so I was just weathering the storm until I could wear him down.
1:55:51
And towards into that period, I almost got taken down. I knew that a short time, I still blocked
1:55:58
them off. I think I should have, I got lazy. Yeah, they reviewed it, but it was clearly not
1:56:01
taken down. This is when I knew that I'm like, okay, it's go time. I knew Gable didn't take me down.
1:56:08
Gable knew he didn't take me down. He was tired. He was huffing him puff and looking at the coaches.
1:56:12
I look at him and he's going, Hey, yeah, he's yelling at the ref. Hey, hey, he's looking at the
1:56:17
coach. Hey, challenge, challenge, not because he knew he didn't take me down. He needed a break.
1:56:21
And that's when I walked over to coach and I'm like, coach, he's tired. And he's like,
1:56:24
Yes, I know you're making it hard on him. Be smart. Let's let's do this. And so that's
1:56:29
when I knew he was getting tired. And the third period, he didn't leave. No, sorry. I chose bottom
1:56:34
second. Yeah, you choose bottom because it was three, two going in the third. And I remember the
1:56:38
coaches like you need to hold him down. And I was, I was trying to hold him down. But he's got
1:56:43
out. And I was like, all right, this is what I was like, this is what it's going to take. I need to
1:56:47
get one good shot and I need to finish this shot. I need to, I can't, there's no more like lolly
1:56:51
yagging around. And so I remember I was just kept trying to snap his head fake because on my fakes,
1:56:57
I need to do as many fakes as possible. Right. So that he can't his brain can't decipher what's
1:57:01
a real shot and what's a fake shot. And most of the time, whenever I snap your head down,
1:57:04
I do a fake. I never like snap and do a shot, but about 30 seconds left.
1:57:09
If wait, wait, even before the 30 seconds. So he gets, he stands up immediately at the start of the
1:57:14
third. So it's forwarded to, yeah, you got to take him down. You got to get three and hold him down.
1:57:18
And hold him down. Right. Because if he gets right back up, we're neutral, like, or we're tied,
1:57:23
we got we got to go to, you know, extra time, we got to go over time. But the first few seconds of
1:57:28
the match, right, with all the faints and all the energy, that kind of went away for the second,
1:57:33
the second was really very strategic from the both of you almost like, Hey, this is a strategic
1:57:38
break just in case we got to go crazy in the third. But you started doing a lot more of the
1:57:42
frenetic, not frantic, but very frenetic, you know, energy filled movements. And Gables typically
1:57:48
pretty stoic. He's not reacting to most faints. Like some guys like they're already sprawling
1:57:52
before you're shooting kind of a thing. He doesn't really do that because he's so confident in his
1:57:55
hips and so confident in his sprawl. But yeah, now we're at 30 seconds. We're on short time,
1:58:00
and you are down to, and I mean, you go ahead and start talking about the takedown, because I
1:58:04
have literally rewatched this over and over just to kind of figure out what your timing was and
1:58:08
trying to figure out what was going through Gables head because he knew you had to be shooting,
1:58:12
right? So he was being defensive without getting a stalling call, right? So we're on short time.
1:58:17
There's 33 34 seconds left. What did you see that that made you kind of go for your shot?
1:58:22
Yeah, well, I heard one of the coaches yell and they said 30 seconds. And you can hear it on the
1:58:26
broadcast to whenever we say that we do in practice many times, whenever we say, hey, 30 seconds,
1:58:30
and it's a sprint. So you're shooting fake in what we do these situations. I've done some practice,
1:58:36
you know, 100 times where it's a situation that's 30 seconds left, and it's a sprint. So it doesn't
1:58:40
matter if you're fake and snap. And you were you're not sitting there. And I remember those like,
1:58:45
because 30 seconds, it's time to pick it up. And you know, these season, oh, he looks fresh. I'm like,
1:58:50
well, just I was going to hate 30 seconds off. I got this in the tank. I'm not tired yet. But I
1:58:55
remember on that for my first couple of fakes, I did a fake and he dropped his head down for the
1:58:59
first time of the match. Yeah, he had never even any fakes. He doesn't put his head down. He just
1:59:02
kind of blocks it. I saw his head go down. He went boom. And I'm like, green light, let's go. And
1:59:10
so I just, I took that shot and then I got in the leg. And that's almost a dead man's position if
1:59:15
you don't finish because you end up in a front headlock. You sit there for 10 seconds. Oh, now there's
1:59:19
five seconds left. Right. It's over. So I actually I shot that shot. And I remember I got to his leg
1:59:24
and then his hips, he put his hips in at most point. No one's strong enough to pull him in. He's
1:59:30
got you immediately as I'm watching it. Yeah, I immediately. I'm like, Oh, he's not going to get
1:59:35
it. And even see on the broadcast. I lost I lost his hand. Yes. Well, but I remember I've done this.
1:59:39
We've done this so many times. And you know, we talked about the training I've had this entire
1:59:44
year. It's, you know, I'm not doing squats and all this big stuff. Like we're doing dumbbells,
1:59:50
motions that simulate wrestling. And one thing we've done is our, you know, dumbbell pulls and
1:59:54
pulling the leg. And I've done so many shots. My training's been wrestling. And so when I got
1:59:57
in that situation, I'm probably one of the only people that could finish on gable in that position
2:00:00
because of how much I've done it this year. I had one hand on it, but I didn't, I just, I just
2:00:05
kept my head up and just tried to suck it in. I got it closer. I did another knee slide. And I
2:00:10
start to lock my hands. I just did, I just kept in sticking to the basics. I just kept finishing
2:00:15
that shot because I remember I felt it. And you know, we talked about in wrestling and you know,
2:00:19
it's, it takes heart, but I was pretty tired. And I like, the Holy Spirit was definitely with me
2:00:25
in that moment because I mean, I don't remember it. I just remember that I just kept trying to go
2:00:28
for it. I just kept pulling it and sucking it in knee sliding. And I was letting my legs were tired,
2:00:33
but somehow some I just powered through it. And I remember finishing that double. And I took
2:00:37
him down. And I'm like, okay, this is real. We're here. I have 20 seconds. And I was just holding on.
2:00:44
That's when I felt the arena. I'm like, all right, right, I got this. I'm not alone on this
2:00:49
matter. I know I've got this. And so I just remember just squeezing him. People talk. And
2:00:54
I just, I closed my, I was squeezing so hard. I could open my eyes. If you look at me, I'm just
2:00:58
like, dude, you were super red. Oh, I'm just, I am. Oh, sorry. I'm just holding on to him. And
2:01:04
I'm like, you were not getting up. And I'm all my pressure on him. Oh my gosh.
2:01:08
At the beginning of the third, DC and JB are basically sitting there like, Hey, why it's got
2:01:12
really good top position, all that type of thing. And Gable just stood right up and escaped. And
2:01:17
it was like, Oh, it's almost like whenever you, Oh man, this is a great kicker. He's done a great
2:01:21
job. All season has miss a kick, shake up on him. He said like into the fourth row, like off the
2:01:27
sidelines or whatever. And so you finish. And on the broadcast, you can see what's funny is you
2:01:32
can kind of see your family over here down on the bottom left, but you can see all of Gable's coaches.
2:01:37
And what's weird about Gable's coaches and Gable is they lost about five or six seconds to seemingly
2:01:46
complete and utter shock, because Gable had never seen himself get taken down as collegiate career.
2:01:51
You got to think about this realistically. How many times was Gable taken down in the room?
2:01:56
Yeah, in Minnesota, much less in a duel, which was never, right? How many times have they seen
2:02:01
that man get taken down, right? Which you got beat on that interaction, right? And so Gable and
2:02:07
some people have speculated Gable maybe thought that he was up three. And so you would just tide
2:02:12
him or you know, something like that. But we're talking four, five, six, seven seconds. Yeah,
2:02:19
and you can see he's kind of fighting the hands and then he looks up and he's like, Oh, shoot,
2:02:24
I got to get up now. I get up right now. And so he stands up and it looks like he's trying to
2:02:29
kind of swim over your face. Yeah, you want to face me. Yeah. And dude, I was holding him so
2:02:35
tight. Well, see, that's the thing is like, I was just going to stand right up. Well, actually,
2:02:40
what I need to do, you actually owe me a few trips to the chiropractor, which maybe your parents can
2:02:44
help me out. Because again, I'm watching by myself on the back porch, right? And when you land the
2:02:49
takedown, whenever you finish the takedown, and there's 15 seconds left in the match or whatever,
2:02:53
it was like a shot of electricity shot me out of my chair. My crocs go flying. I asked my cigar all
2:03:00
over myself. And but I can't scream because everyone's asleep. It's late at night when I'm watching.
2:03:05
And so I'm kind of like silently yelling right when that happens. You should have let it out.
2:03:08
And I'm just standing there like, but then in my mind, I'm thinking, but he's going to stand up.
2:03:13
He's got plenty of time even whenever he realized it. And whenever he kind of got up to his feet to
2:03:19
start to turn, I'm like, okay, this is OT. This is incredible. This is crazy. And then you tilt him
2:03:24
and he falls down. And then he immediately stops moving. Yeah, like there was, you know,
2:03:29
the broadcast and the actual match timer was off the whole night by like a two to three seconds left
2:03:35
where he went down. And then he stops moving. You fall backwards. You realize you've won this.
2:03:42
But let's go back to you've gotten them down. You know where you're at time wise as well.
2:03:47
Was there any doubt in your mind that you were going to be able to keep him down?
2:03:51
Gable, Stevenson, that's when I made up my mind is I had a plan. So I mean, in that moment,
2:03:55
I was like, all right, I am winning by one. I am not taking this to overtime. And that's why I
2:03:59
think I didn't ride him as long. And not that I mean, I wanted to ride him, but I wasn't committed
2:04:04
to the ride. There's a difference we talked about in the room. And I was just like, I knew this
2:04:08
was going to come down to play a takedown. And if I did ride him, which I was just like my,
2:04:13
I think my better chances if he gives up his feet and I take him down. Because then I'm not just,
2:04:17
I'm not holding on him to hope for a tie. I'm take I'm taking him down and holding him for the win.
2:04:23
Well, let's let's actually play parallel universe here for a second. Let's say he gets up. Let's say
2:04:28
he gets up and he escapes. Right. So I love doing parallel universe stuff. I like making people
2:04:31
uncomfortable. So that would have made it five five correct going into OT. And again,
2:04:37
there there's no there's no ties. Right. Someone's got a win. Did you kind of have like a mindset or
2:04:42
a game plan? Like beforehand, like, Hey, if for whatever reason, you know, I get a takedown,
2:04:46
he gets a takedown. We both get an escape. You know, five five, was there an idea? Like,
2:04:51
over time is it? Hey, we're in on a shot immediately. Is it we're kind of moving around being real
2:04:55
defensive without getting another stalling call or something like that? Like, what would the plan
2:04:59
have been for OT? So I like to say Arnold Schwarzenegger has a good quote. If you have a plan A, that's
2:05:05
good. Whenever you start to create a plan B, now you're taking away from plan A, which is not good.
2:05:10
Now, hey, this might have even happened. So why are you even considering that? Yeah,
2:05:13
I never thought about going over time. And when I took him down, there was no what I have. I said,
2:05:18
I made up my mind. I said, in some of my interviews, I was so passionate about because it was fresh.
2:05:22
This was like a couple minutes. I'm like, I took him down and I knew I was like, I am not letting
2:05:26
him up. I am winning this national title. I'm becoming a national champion. He is not getting
2:05:29
I made up my mind. I had a plan. So obviously I was holding on to him. And I was, I mean,
2:05:34
I'll just hold on to him. But if he stood up, the one thing I was thinking to my head was just
2:05:37
don't lock your hands. That's not lock my hands because now I screw myself. So what I was going to
2:05:42
do is I was going to hold on to him. And if he stood up, I was going to lock my hands and
2:05:46
just pick him up and hold him. Okay, but he's a good rest. I never had that sit like whenever I
2:05:52
stood up, all I was thinking was I'm just going, I was sagging on his right side really hard.
2:05:57
Yeah, I just remember, I just got to commit to this. And I just with all my everything I had,
2:06:01
I was just holding on to him. And I was just going to drag him out of bounds or if I had to
2:06:05
drive him out of bounds, but I felt it when he stood up and he turned into me that second time,
2:06:09
I kind of felt him give in like he would just he just accepted defeat. And I was like, Oh,
2:06:16
I don't even need to pick him up or he fell down for me. Yeah. So I mean, in that moment,
2:06:20
I was just like, holy crap, like I've been trying, I've been training to be a national champion in
2:06:26
the past nine months. And when Gable joined, there was no, I didn't sit down with the coaches.
2:06:30
Nothing ever changed because the goal was still the same no matter who I had to go against.
2:06:34
But my set a goal to be a national champion. I wanted to be a national champion. I trained
2:06:37
to be a national champion. We set high goals for ourselves. When we reach those goals,
2:06:41
it's awesome. And I just remember, I don't remember anything. I kind of blacked out all
2:06:48
my members, the coaches were coming to me and like my face, there's hands on my face. I didn't
2:06:51
care. I didn't feel anything. I was just like, we did it. Because I just, I mean, looking back,
2:06:57
I graduated from the Air Force Academy and was upset. I never reached my goals. And I
2:07:04
came to acceptance with it. I was like, well, I'm just never been, I set a goal to be a national
2:07:09
champion. You know, that wasn't the cards for me. Little did I know that, you know,
2:07:13
I'd be able to get another shot at it. So in that moment, like within five seconds,
2:07:17
the realization just came to me from, I went from accepting, you know, defeat. So to say, like,
2:07:23
I'm not going to be able to ever reach this goal. But now I just did it against one of the best
2:07:26
wrestlers in the world. And so it was really nothing but just pure emotion and gratitude in
2:07:31
that moment. And I mean, I had to think of, I was so, I wasn't in shock, but I was just like,
2:07:36
that was the best. I felt so powerful. Like, this is awesome. You know, I was like, okay,
2:07:40
let's, where's my family at? Where's my, where's my girlfriend at? Where's my fiance? I want to
2:07:44
see my family. And I was like, well, the coaches came to me first off. Oh, dude, they mobged. Oh,
2:07:49
it was so crazy. Went to my family. And then I was like, Oh yeah, my boss is here. Like, man,
2:07:54
her chief seems. And you know, that iconic moment of popping that. So that felt good.
2:07:58
Dude, I mean, especially because of that entire situation that felt that that salute. Oh, man.
2:08:05
One, you want to talk? So you mentioned the two crowd pops. So the first scramble,
2:08:09
obviously, the next takedown, like even even on the broadcast, it was astonishingly loud.
2:08:14
The third pop was when you saluted Donald Trump. Oh, that was awesome.
2:08:17
Because you had already been mobbed by your coaches. You had already kind of, you know,
2:08:21
seen your dad fiance, like you'd been here with your family. And then you're walking around the
2:08:26
mat. I think you yelled at everybody like, are you not entertained or whatever you yelled at
2:08:30
everybody and then you see him. So what I said there, and I thought, so that I remember it was
2:08:35
a match when I was a kid. And Tucker Lane, I mentioned he won a match against a really good
2:08:40
wrestler with the best. And he looked and he's like, is there no one else? That's right. It's,
2:08:43
of course, from Troy. Exactly. And so I remember in that moment, I actually thought, I mean,
2:08:48
obviously I had a plan after I won. I was like, okay, if I do this, the president's there, don't
2:08:52
forget to show your respect there. And that one quote has just been with me for so long. I don't
2:08:56
know. I just thought it's so tough. It's so tough. And I remember and I literally beat one of the
2:09:01
best. And I'm like, is there is there no one else? And I just, I remember, I was like, don't
2:09:07
forget to maybe say that if I win, you know, but go back, go back to that scene from them. That's
2:09:11
early in the movie, Troy, right? This is back in the Greek city state days. It was against your
2:09:14
best fighter. They're best fighter. They've got this big disguise. This guy's never lost. Yeah,
2:09:18
his full agrias. He's like, Goliath size and all that. Yeah, he just dispatches with them. And then
2:09:22
he stands in front of the entire opposing army and just yells multiple times. Is there no one
2:09:27
else? I mean, dude, you want to talk about tough for sure. But did, did Gable say anything to you
2:09:31
after the match? Like, or I've never spoken to him since. So he didn't say anything going to the
2:09:35
podium or all that? Because I think he dabbed you up on the way to the podium or something.
2:09:38
I think he, he pat him on the back, gave me the dab up and never haven't ever, ever since that
2:09:42
match, never, never spoken. Okay. So not everything bad. Yeah, not this wouldn't. Yeah, it's just,
2:09:48
there's, I mean, we looked at each other and probably, you know, I don't even think we, I mean,
2:09:50
we're like the head nod, like, yeah, I don't want to, I'm not going to try to be
2:09:54
Yeah, you're not going to be like, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I'm just, that was a great match.
2:09:58
So I just going to be low, give it a little head nods and win our surprise.
2:10:01
So you get down off the mat. Now you give Trump a big ol' hug. All right. So what did Trump say to
2:10:07
you? Because he all had a short interaction. Then you, you know, went up to our mutual buddy,
2:10:10
Mark Wayne Mullen, and it said we were there, which was awesome. But what did Trump say to you?
2:10:14
So I mean, he, we got there. And obviously I went up to him and he just had open arms. He was,
2:10:17
he was proud. I was like, this is pretty sweet. Because Secret Service was supposed to get him
2:10:21
out of there. Mark Wayne told me that. Yeah, they were supposed to, they were supposed to leave
2:10:24
match before. Right. And then he, so don't know what I'd met him before. And he was like,
2:10:28
no, I'm staying a lot from a big guy. Because he's a big guy when I was at the Air Force Academy.
2:10:31
I met him like, you know, previously at a tournament and he wanted to stay and watch. And
2:10:35
I remember when I was there with him and a lot of people like, Oh, great job. Congratulations.
2:10:41
But I mean, President looked at me and he's like, that's a cart. And I know it did. Yeah. He's like,
2:10:47
that was, he's like, that was impressive. And I was like, thank you, sir. Dude, this is actually
2:10:51
funny. I've actually never mentioned this before. So this is the first time I actually mentioned
2:10:54
this. I was so, I mean, I was just so excited. The one of the Secret Service people in the suits,
2:11:00
I thought that was Mark Wayne. So I looked to the left and I look at it. So in this guy's,
2:11:07
I mean, he's like in the middle of everything. That's right. And he just either to protect the
2:11:10
truck. And he looks at me, kind of looked down. He's like, didn't know what to do. Because I mean,
2:11:14
I was looking at him like I was ready to dab him up. And then I was like, oh, you're not
2:11:17
the senator. You're not the guy. You're not, I'm all in. And so then, um,
2:11:21
then he, thankfully he came to me and I'm like, Oh, there you are. Yeah. So what's up. But I was like,
2:11:27
oh, man, I was about to dab with the Secret Service too. But that's right. Hey, you may have
2:11:32
gone for it. I think that would have been okay. I looked at it for you. But if you look in the
2:11:35
video, you see like me walking to the left. That's right. The only person there is the Secret Service
2:11:39
guy. He does not look comfortable. He's just like, Oh, I mean, because he was supposed to leave because
2:11:44
how Mark Wayne told it to me was that, you know, Donald Trump said, you know, yeah, I'd like to
2:11:48
stay for my big guy. What are his chances? And Mark Wayne like gave him like a phone like, no,
2:11:52
this is like Abel's legit, but like this is going to be a serious match. Yeah. And again,
2:11:57
it's Donald Trump. So he just turns around says we're staying, right? And so you're already dealing
2:12:01
with the logistical nightmare of getting him out of there along with everyone else in the stadium.
2:12:07
So now the plan has to change. No one can leave their seats pretty much until we get, you know,
2:12:12
the Eagle out of here or whatever the thing is. So everything changes. So he's probably already
2:12:15
stressed out. And then he's obviously watching the match as he's also, you know, scanning the crowd
2:12:20
and being a bodyguard for Trump. And then when the when the thing explodes, whenever you finish the
2:12:26
takedown, like he's got to obviously be ratcheting up because as part of their training, when there's
2:12:31
a big distraction over here. Oh, yeah. Don't look over here. Yeah. Looking right where you're
2:12:36
supposed to be and all that. So yeah, that would have been hilarious if he had like picked him up
2:12:39
and gave him like a big old hug, the worst slash best day of that dude's life. Yeah.
2:12:44
So matches over. You got your trophy, right? You get to the top of the podium and all that.
2:12:49
But one thing that I'm always curious about with champions, because I remember Dion Sanders
2:12:54
talking about this. It's been his whole life trying to be the best football player on the planet.
2:12:58
He's with the Dallas Cowboys. They win the Super Bowl. They've got the champagne. He's got
2:13:03
the championship hat in the shirt. You know, they've got all the confetti and everything like that.
2:13:07
He says, when he got back to his hotel room, he was alone. And he realized, oh, there's nothing
2:13:12
up here. I worked my entire life to get to the top of the mountain. And there's nothing here,
2:13:16
right? You're just moving on to the next thing. And that's whenever he says he gave his life to
2:13:21
Christ and his whole whole life changing. He gave gave his life over to God and all those types of
2:13:24
things. So I'm curious for you, you know, you're a believer. Obviously you wore the name of your
2:13:30
savior on your chest as you're walking out onto the match, right? As you're wearing it right now.
2:13:33
For those of you not on YouTube, you're missing out. But you got the trophy, right? You're the
2:13:38
baddest dude on the planet. At least for that night, we're back at the hotel room or we're back
2:13:42
at home or whatever. Was there a letdown of some kind to where it's like, Hey, I accomplished my goal,
2:13:48
but you know, maybe it wasn't all that I cracked up to me. And Dion Sanders is the only one I've
2:13:52
heard about people that went Wimbledon or they win the PGA championship or they win the World
2:13:55
Series, whatever thing is. And it's all. Yeah. Well, was that the guy who just recently talked
2:13:59
about that? Yeah, he was like, yeah, I mean, I'm gonna tell you a story real quick. When I was a
2:14:05
kid, when I was five or six years old, I remember multiple times my dad came and talked to me like,
2:14:10
and he was just out of pure joy and gratefulness. He was like, son, the Lord has blessed you with
2:14:15
something. We don't know what it is yet, but God has truly blessed you. He's like, God chose you
2:14:19
out of everyone. He's like, God chose my son to do something great. He's like, thank you son for,
2:14:23
you know, just everything. And the biggest thing he used to mention is like, God has picked you.
2:14:29
And there's someone, you know, so the Excalibur sword, King Arthur, he's the only person that could
2:14:35
pull the sword from the stone. My dad was like, Hey, like you're the one that can do it. And so
2:14:38
this is actually his tattoo I've had. It's it's the Excalibur sword. And in that moment, walking off
2:14:45
the mat after I had my podium picture, I just went to my dad and it was just nothing but just
2:14:49
tears of joy because this has been a moment that not only we've been looking forward to for a year,
2:14:54
but since I was a kid, my dad's my dad and he's like, God's going to use you for something great.
2:14:59
I know he has. And so having a full circle moment like that, it was nothing but just
2:15:03
I was grateful. I mean, it was there's nothing else to know. I mean, that whole match in itself,
2:15:10
everything that's happened this past the past year, the only person that could see the plan ahead
2:15:16
of me was was God. He paved the way. And so it was just pure gratefulness. And ever since then,
2:15:22
I've been doing every opportunity. I have to spread that joy and love of Jesus and, you know,
2:15:27
hopefully inspire some kids. And that's why I like to go do so many camps. And sometimes I do stress
2:15:31
myself. I do overextend myself. But there was when I was a kid, there was so many people that did
2:15:36
that for me that came into the camps that signed my poster that signed my shoes just gave me that
2:15:40
next step of confidence to go out there and do something great. And so that entire night was
2:15:45
nothing but joy. I mean, I for that week, I felt awesome. There was never like, this is it. I was
2:15:51
grateful. I'm like, okay, I set out on a mission a long, long time ago. And now we fulfilled it. So
2:15:57
it wasn't any, I mean, there was never a letdown. It's still to this day. I'm more than grateful
2:16:02
that God has blessed me with these abilities to go glorify him and, you know, show the world that
2:16:07
anything's possible. You know, the big thing I talked about was David and Goliath. And no one
2:16:11
like, Oh, we don't think you can do it. And then you know, boom, David, David, I mean, he had five
2:16:16
stones. That's right. And it's not me. He wasn't worried about missing. It was just like for
2:16:22
the brothers. That's right. And so it's like, there was never a, you know, stuff like that.
2:16:26
It's just, I was, it was nothing but grateful, to be honest with you. I mean, I don't have that
2:16:31
feeling of I still never felt that feeling of, well, this is it. I mean, obviously, that was a big
2:16:36
step for me. I've wanted to be a national champion for a long time. But there was still something
2:16:40
else after that. Hey, I need to make, I need to make the world team. Hey, I need to be a world
2:16:43
champion. I want to be an Olympic champion. So I've obviously proved I'm a great wrestler. But this
2:16:49
isn't it. This isn't like my big hurrah. Oh, now I'm now I'm not an athlete. Now I'm just going to
2:16:53
take it easy. Now I'm done. Uh, I still got more to do. And so I mean, my journey's been a lot
2:16:58
different than that because that wasn't one of the peaks in college. But I mean, I don't know,
2:17:02
I'm, I'm so intertwined with, you know, just family and Jesus and wrestling. It's all just,
2:17:08
it's just all part of it. So there hasn't been a moment when I'm like, Oh, this is it. It's
2:17:12
just been nothing but awesomeness, getting to do cool stuff like be here with you today.
2:17:16
There's no, no bad things are happening. I'm still being able to, you know, spread the word
2:17:20
of Jesus, spread about wrestling and like I've been able to have such a platform to talk about
2:17:25
things I love. And so I haven't, I haven't, um, I haven't reached that, you know, bad area,
2:17:31
bad feeling yet. Well, and even if that's, if that's your only athletic highlight,
2:17:34
it's a hell of a high. Oh, yeah. If that's what's in the car to me, I'll accept that.
2:17:38
Hey, and I, I said earlier this year, I'm like, I don't care what happens the rest of the year.
2:17:41
I mean, that's the sports highlight of the year in terms of the circumstances, when it happened,
2:17:45
who had happened to, you know, the context within the sport, but you're right.
2:17:49
2028, Los Angeles Olympics, like they're, I mean, again, you went and smashed pans where I wasn't
2:17:55
a fall attack and then a fall, like you just smashed your way through pans. Right. And then you,
2:17:59
you know, hopefully we can call yourself by the end of the year, world champion, all the things
2:18:04
that we've already talked about. But obviously the looming goal is summer of 2028, not just because
2:18:10
it's going to be here in America, but because that is what you train for as a wrestler. Correct.
2:18:14
Right. Yes. Yes. You want to be a state champion, check. You want to be a national champion in
2:18:20
college, check. There's one more check. Yeah. So let's talk. I mean, we'll wrap up our discussion
2:18:26
with that. I mean, that's, it's far enough away to where it seems like it's too far away,
2:18:31
but it's close enough to where it's like, man, I got to prepare every day as if that's the end goal.
2:18:37
Right. Yes. So for me, it's, I like to mention, it's more than wrestling. Obviously, some people
2:18:42
can eat sleep wrestling every day. All they do is wrestle, wake up, workout, blah, blah, blah.
2:18:45
That's not me. I like to be able to take a step back and have my off time, because then it makes
2:18:50
me not much more hungry to come back and come wrestle again. And obviously we have a plan,
2:18:55
we have a training plan, you know, five, six, seven weeks out. And it's what we have training,
2:19:01
we have to do, but you can't look at it from like the big perspective of seven weeks. I just
2:19:05
take it day by day. In this past couple, you know, couple of days, past couple of weeks,
2:19:09
I've been kind of relaxed. I'm still training. We're still working out, but I'm kind of getting
2:19:12
my decompression so I can build that hunger to come back and wrestle hard again. We talked about
2:19:17
today's practice. It's sucked, but now I'm sitting here like, man, we even talked about those days,
2:19:21
you don't want to wrestle or you don't want to lift when I do stuff. I'm so grateful that I'm
2:19:25
the way I feel right now. Because I'm like, Hey, I know I put that work in this. I know it's going
2:19:28
to be worth it. Because of those days you slack off those one couple of days I've had where I took
2:19:32
it easy. As soon as you're done, you're like, man, like I feel terrible. I know I could have done
2:19:37
more or I skip the workout. Like, oh, I knew I should have worked out. So I don't, I feel great
2:19:42
right now. But we're just taking the day by day. Because if I can't stress myself, stress myself
2:19:48
out and be like, Oh, I need to be this, I need to learn this this by then. It's just like we just
2:19:52
show up every day and wrestle and have fun. And everything else just, it just falls into place.
2:19:57
Well, that's the idea over the next few years. Hopefully that falls into place, but three years
2:20:00
will be long for 28. But hey, I'll take it year by year, month by month, day by day,
2:20:03
a lot of wrestling and I mean, you're in good hands over there with the program that's being
2:20:07
built out with Coach Taylor and everybody else that's working with all those different programs.
2:20:11
Obviously, there's still going to be good wrestlers coming through still water that are going to be
2:20:15
wrestling for the pokes, but also like getting ready for international competition themselves.
2:20:19
But man, we've weaved in and out of a lot of different conversations here, but that's all for
2:20:22
me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest? No, I think we've talked,
2:20:26
I think we thank goodness on this one, I was able to talk about my faith and everything I want to,
2:20:30
you know, really pour out. I mean, I think I have to be able to do that. So thank you for
2:20:33
inviting me on today. It's been awesome. But yeah, I mean, for me, it's always about
2:20:37
it's God country and wrestling. And at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. And so I
2:20:42
think I've covered all three of those topics. And so I think we're good. Amen. All right, brother.
2:20:47
Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Wherever you're listening to this,
2:20:50
please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five star review. If you want me to come speak live
2:20:54
at your event or on your podcast, shoot me an email to info@undonton.life. That's iNFO@undonton.life.
2:21:01
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else,
2:21:04
including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undonton.life.
2:21:09
And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for our
2:21:13
content. The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self-titled debut
2:21:17
album on Face Down Records. The links are in the description. I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
2:21:22
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
2:21:29
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
2:21:52
you