Marine. Combat Controller. CIA Operative… 57–1 Fighter. This Story Is Unreal.

I think about it all the time. Uh, it's one of those things that, uh, it's not good. Anybody tells you, like, you hear anybody, they talk it out in the bars or talk about, uh, oh, I killed this guy and this and that. For they're either lying or a psychopath, 'cause I can still hear this guy dying in my head. I can see his face. 'Cause we, I said, we, um, you do your bow down, you get, you get to walk around. You get to see everybody and, uh, you get to see what you did. Yeah. Yeah, they're the enemy and everything. But you know what? What would I do if somebody was coming to my house? I'd fight.

Our special guest today on Rodney Hood Talks, a former United States Marine, an Air Force combat controller, a CIA GRS operator, and a recipient of the Bronze Star with Valor. He's also a three-time Kyokushin World Heavyweight Champion, a Muay Thai World Champion with a professional fight record of 57-1, including 37 knockouts. But more importantly, he's a man who will tell you today, he's been saved, washed clean, and in his words, bathed in the blood of Jesus Christ. This is not just a fighter. This is a life story you don't hear every day.

Pretty typical, I guess, Midwest kid. Uh, my parents were divorced when I was real young, before I was a year old. Uh, kind of grew up in broken homes, that kind of deal. Moved quite a bit across the United States. Uh, got real close with my family, brothers and sisters. Kind of got separated. Uh, moved back to, well, East Peoria when I met you as a freshman, and started break dancing with you and the and the crew for a little bit. Which people probably don't know about that, but we did a little break dancing. And, uh, >> Yeah. >> Just another part of your story. >> You can do four corners pretty good. I remember that. >> And a lot of us too is, uh, this will backtrack for a second. Uh, I wouldn't be here today, honestly. I wouldn't have the life I had full of abundance if it wasn't for Jesus Christ and the Father. They blessed me beyond measure. Uh, until about four years ago, I'd have never known the life I have today. I always thought that it was my hard work that I was special, this kind of deal, that I got all these achievements or these accomplishments, all these blessings. It's not the case at all. Uh, I've been given so much that even preparing for this interview, it's kind of overwhelming to me to look at it on paper and say, "Why do I have all these things?" Because I definitely don't deserve them. And hopefully, through our conversation, I can reach a couple people that can do some understanding on their own, uh, and have a little bit more appreciation for the life that they got and their family around them.

>> The main thing I always remember about you was always, always getting into fights. And, uh, that seemed to be when you heard the name John Bates, here somebody was, somebody was getting into a fight. Um, what, what do you think influenced that? What, what, what I mean, what happened to where you, like, wanted to fight everybody?

>> That's a great question. And I'll tell you, uh, I had that same question for a lot of years. Uh, until I kind of grew up a little bit and I had an older brother. He was, he's actually about your age, a year older. His name is Thomas. And he was always heavy. And we did everything together. We fishing together, everything. And people were mean to him, you know, they'd pick on him 'cause he's fat, that kind of stuff. And I saw how it hurt him. My own parents kind of treated that way as well. And it, like, literally broke him. And I always remember, I was too little to do anything about it. And, you know, I started wrestling. I started learning karate. And so as I got older, I become like a teenager, you know, uh, I realized that I can start doing stuff about it. And if I saw somebody, uh, acted inappropriately, I should say, or picking on somebody, I stepped in and got me in some trouble. But I never, like, started, started it. It was always in defense of somebody else. And I think it's because I saw my brother grow up that way. And I knew how much it affected him and how much it hurt him and it ruined his life. You know, he passed away at 43 years old and, uh, a lot, it had a lot to do with the way he was brought up and that, the those kind of influences on his life. Even today, you know, I'm 56. If I see somebody, uh, treating someone like that, it's, there's a switch. Still. I, I pray to get rid of that anger. Hasn't gone away yet. I always get up and punch somebody right in the mouth over it. It just, it's something that sticks to me and I just, I, I won't stand for it. I think it has to do with my brother. I really do.

>> What happened to get you into martial arts then? I know you started that at as at a young age.

>> It was, I started wrestling first at the Boys Club and I enjoyed wrestling. And then I started doing Judo to help my wrestling. And that just went into Taekwondo. And then, uh, I think it was 13. No, correct me. Back up. I moved to Vegas when I was in fifth, sixth grade and we lived out there for a couple years and started learning and, uh, which wasn't a good experience. My mom, my mom was married five or six times. Uh, always picked terrible people. And I was left alone for days at a time. So I was, didn't have really much to do. But there was a, like a, wasn't a Boys Club, but it was like a little youth center that was up where we used to live. And I started learning karate there. And really picked up on it really quick. Uh, I trained pretty hard. Uh, and I just caught a passion for it. And then when I, my mom wanted to move to California, we moved back to Illinois. And I was like, "I'm tired of moving." I asked my dad, "Hey, can I stay with you?" And he really didn't want me to stay with him. He was a police officer. I didn't see much of him. So I kind of put him on the spot, but he let me stay with him. And, uh, I met a guy named Bob Hanigan who was a professional fighter. He had a school called, uh, Hanigan's Karate School in Peoria, Illinois. And I started learning there. And I was basically there every day from time school got out till 8, 9:00 night. Uh, got my black belt pretty quick. And I went from, you know, being a 15, 16-year-old kid to somebody that could beat up grown men pretty easy. I think I was a junior and we were at the Hardee's there in Peoria, which everybody used to hang out at the Hardee's there, right? And we were talking to some girls and this and that. And there were some people in the drive-thru. And they were, they were growing up. They're like men, you know, they were smoking. They're like grown men. And, uh, this guy said something to me 'cause I had on a, like an OP, like half shirt. I thought it looked cool, but it was the '80s, you know, so I was like, whatever. And he said something to me and I had a mullet too. So. And, uh, he said something to me and I told him to get out of the car. And we're, he's like, literally in the drive-thru and there's cars lined up in the drive-thru. He gets out of the car. We start fighting and I put the boots to him pretty good. And the guy I was with, the other guy got out of the car. And Tom was like, "Dude, you bring him back to your car, he's gonna hit you too." And the dude got back in his car and left the dude just laying there. And of course, it did wonders for my reputation.

>> Oh, I'm sure at that age.

>> I had a lot of anger. You, I was just, I was just, uh, didn't know how to deal with it a lot because I didn't feel like I ever belonged anywhere. So, like, the, the fighting, the, the training gave me an outlet, so to speak. Thank God I had that 'cause I'd probably been a drug addict or something like that if it wasn't, you know. Uh, you know, the Marine Corps is, you know, is always perceived as the best, the hardest. And I could never see myself being in the Army or any of that. I wanted to be a Marine. I wanted to be a Recon Marine. And that's all I wanted to do. Once you're made, once, once you decide you want to be in the Marine Corps, that's what you're gonna do. You can't enlist anything else. And I enlisted. I went in, uh, open contract, which don't ever do, because that's the Marine Corps picks your job for you. And, uh, I, well, I graduated meritoriously out of boot camp. So I got promoted out of boot camp. And I went to my school, which was, they made an ammo tech, which is worked at an ammunition yard, which is something I hated. And I got sent to Okinawa for my first duty station, right? Well, when I got there, uh, I picked, I was what they called, uh, a pretty good Marine, I guess, because when you're, when you're in the Marine Corps, you have a, you have always they called the 10%, 10% of people that are just dirt bags. And that's true. So, when you're around a bunch of dirt bags, it's easy to look good if you work hard. That's what I did. I worked hard. Uh, always performed well. And I got put up on a couple meritorious promotion boards, which I got me to promoted two more times when I was in the Marine Corps there. But also, uh, made me a little bit more aggressive. I started hitting people a lot, uh, just in my company alone. I beat up seven people that year. And they put up, got a guy named Sergeant Cook, and he put a, uh, I still got it in my scrapbook. So, you had a little legal pad and it said, "The Bates Hit List. Who will be next?" Right. Right.

>> But I never really got in trouble. Yeah. My, uh, my father was a police officer and, you know, he, I couldn't do anything in town without somebody knowing what I did. Well, I was at a girlfriend's house and her ex-boyfriend came over. He didn't know I was there and he started running his mouth talking about me and this and that. And like I said, he didn't know I was there. It made her cry. So I called my friend, "You come pick me up?" And I drove over to his house, knocked on his door, he answered the door and I beat him up, kicked him through his glass window. And, uh, and, uh, so we got in the car and I go home. And as soon as you walk in the door, my dad's sitting in his recliner. He can see, he walks in. He's sitting there smoking a cigarette and he's like, "Where you been?" I was like, "Oh, I went to the mall with Bill." Which is partially true. And he's like, "Is that right?" I was like, "Yeah." He's like, "Well," he's like, he says, "All right, smartass." He's like, "Get your stuff. Get in the car." I was like, "What for?" He's like, "John Long came by." And that's John Long is my dad's partner. I was like, "What he want?" He's like, he's like, "You smartass." He's like, "Just get in the car." I was like, "All right." So, we had to go to police. This dude pressed the guy and his mom pressed charges on me for assault, like trespass, and all this kind of stuff. And I was already going to go in the Marine Corps, but I wasn't supposed to leave until September. Well, the, my dad talked to the DA and all these people. They said, "Hey, basically, if you can get him out of here early, as fast as possible, we'll get, basically make this kind of stuff go away." So, I was, I was, I think it was like June 26th. I was in boot camp by July 4th.

>> They were like, "Let's get this kid out of here."

>> So, it was like lickety-split. Yeah. And the guy that I beat up, his name was, I tell his full name, his name's Brian. He was in a rock band. He had real long hair and he was mad because like he couldn't like jam out with his neck 'cause he had to wear a neck brace and all this kind of stuff. There was, uh, it was like probably like three months before I rotated back to the United States. I was in Okinawa and there's a guy named Sergeant Cook. He used to gamble and everything. Big country boy, great guy, man. And I was playing pool with him. We were, uh, at another base out of Camp Hansen. And I wasn't drinking that day or nothing. And this guy was sitting on one of the bar stools and he was like, just being really rude to me, like talking all this kind of smack to me. And Sergeant Cook was like, "Hey, Bates, man, just, they, just ignore it." And I was like, "All right, fine." You know, the guy kept on and on and I finally went over to him and said, "This is the man. I said, "I don't know who you are." You know, I said, "But you need to basically leave me alone." Blah, blah, blah. He said something to me and I slapped him and he tried to like stand up and I hit him like a three-piece and dropped him. I hit him a couple more times and started come over and grab me. He's like, "Pass me out of there." Right. Well, I didn't know this guy. This guy was a Master Gunnery Sergeant. He was an E9.

>> So, that's bad, right?

>> I was an E4. Yeah. Yeah. It's really bad. Well, I'll tell you what's funny is they didn't know who I was 'cause Sergeant Cook got me out of there. Fast forward, when I got to Camp Lejeune, I checked into, uh, my unit. Then I got, uh, another job where I got to go be an ammo tech for Special Operations Training Group. They train all the Force Reconnaissance guys, all the Recon guys, all that stuff. Right. The day I check in to go out there, I have to check in the Special Missions Unit and, uh, there's an EOD guy there named, uh, Gunnery Sergeant Eddie Perry. And he's like, "Are you Sergeant Bates, blah, blah, blah?" I was like, "Yes, sir." You know, blah. He's like, "You know, Master Gunnery Sergeant so-and-so." And I was like, I know he was talking, but as soon as he said it too, I was like, "No." He's like, he's like, he's like, "Don't." He's like, "Don't lie to me." I was like, I kind of remember the name. He goes, "Don't worry." But I said, "I don't like that motherfucker anyway." So he's like, "Welcome aboard." It was all cool. Yeah. Small world. Small world. Well, I was young. I didn't know about it. I thought I could, you know, get away with it. But, uh, but I was always, I always had good people around me. I always had like good NCOs, good real men to help guide me and keep me, yank my chain when I needed it. And like today's military, I couldn't, there's no way you could do get away with the things that I did back in the day. Just fighting, period. Uh, hitting a Master Gunnery Sergeant, zero chance get in trouble. I mean, 100% getting kicked out of Marine Corps. Drinking and fighting, 100%. And it was a different time. You can see, uh, back when I was in, they used to have, uh, you're either a light green Marine or a dark green Marine, whether you're a black or white, you know, there was no race. It was just different shades of green because you're in the military. And I saw like the late '80s into the early '90s that all started changing where they started putting the politics in. The culture changed. Uh, it really changed the, the Marine Corps, pretty differently. And I really didn't like the change. Uh, I think it separated people too much instead of, uh, keeping everybody as, is just different shades of green. Yeah. Yeah. It was my first duty station was Okinawa and I'm glad I went there because, you know, they always talk about the Fleet Marine Corps, which is the big Marine Corps. And if I have went to Camp Lejeune first, I think my experience in the Marine Corps would have been different. In Okinawa, you have the higher, you had a higher standard for Marines. Like your uniform was always supposed to be a certain standard, your haircut has to be a certain standard, the way you conducted yourself was supposed to be a certain standard. And when you got to Lejeune, it was a lower standard. You saw people didn't take pride in the uniform, didn't take pride in their service. Uh, for example, in Okinawa, we had a First Sergeant. He was, First Sergeant Ford. Big black dude, looked like a damn grizzly bear. And, uh, he was a Vietnam guy. And if you were a dark green Marine, if you were a black guy and you weren't holding the standard, God help you. 'Cause if you had any, like, product in your hair, he would snatch dudes and he'd take them to the deep sink and scrub their hair. He'd call them out in formation. Like, it was, he scared me, man. I was like, "I'm glad I'm not black." 'Cause this dude was like terrifying, dude. Like, and he held everybody to that standard, though. But like, if you were black and you weren't acting right, Lord help you. I was just like, "Thank you for being white." I was like, "Sheesh." That was all. He was a good, he was a fantastic leader. I shipped to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and Jacksonville, North Carolina. And, uh, I was an ammo tech there. I was there for about, uh, about eight or nine months. And there was an opening to for a job for ammo tech at Special Operations Training Group, which is what I wanted to do because I wanted to go do this, uh, assessment to go to become a Force Reconnaissance or Reconnaissance Marine. And I was like, "Well, hey, this is halfway there." So I got there, I passed the interview and I started working there. And then I started taking the courses, going through the courses. And I got so proficient that they let me be an instructor. And then it got to the point where they filled my billet with another kid and I basically stayed on for the rest of my enlistment. So I spent almost four and a half years at Special Operations Training Group, uh, teaching the Force guys, the Reconnaissance guys, CQB, pistol shooting tactics. Uh, it was like the best job I had in the Marine Corps. It was amazing. We would travel all over the United States setting up training targets for the guys that are getting ready to go out on float on on ship, the Force guys. We would, uh, do training exercises to get them ready. And then they would travel all over the United States and actually execute live missions in like downtown Miami, places in California. And we'd get to go ahead and we'd set these targets up, set up the scenarios, and when they'd come in, we'd have to grade them.

>> Very cool.

>> It was an amazing job.

>> Yeah. I mean, it's probably, it's probably tough to fall into a job that that you really, really dig in in the military, especially like you said, you went in just open book, just send me wherever.

>> Yeah. And, and that's what they did.

>> And again, it comes back to where, yeah. They, 100%. And once you do that, it's almost, it's really hard to make it what they call a lap move or change your MOS, especially if you have a critically manned MOS. And that's kind of where I was at then. Uh, like I said, I was very fortunate. And the people I got to meet and train with were some of the guys I still remember today. They're some of the greatest men this nation's ever produced. Yeah. We did a, uh, it was right before I went to the SOTG. They had do a flyaway like we're, they were supposed to take the embassy in Haiti. So they sent pre-positioning packages to Cuba, Guantanamo Bay area, which you've never been there. The place is beautiful, believe it or not. Absolutely beautiful. And had to go down there for the ammo piece and had to set up all these pre-stage things. But at the same time, they also had a ton of Haitian refugees there. So they had a bunch of, uh, military police there because the Haitians are getting out of line, all this kind of crazy stuff. So I was there, uh, for about almost a month. But prior to going there, this is, I forgot to tell you this. Uh, I was at Cherry Point and it was me and, and one other guy and we were staying in this squad bay by ourselves and we weren't supposed to leave because we're on flyaway status. So you have to be close by so you can, you get on the plane, you have to go. Well, I was dating my ex-wife at the time and I was driving from Cherry Point to back to Camp Lejeune. It's about 30 miles, 35 miles-ish. And I had a, a brand new, uh, Mitsubishi Eclipse Turbo. So, I was pretty, thought was pretty cool. Yeah. And I was drinking all day. I was drinking rum and coke and I decided to drive back. So, I'm driving and these guys in front of me, uh, was throwing stuff out of their car and of course, stuff hit my car and I'm like, upset. So, I get in front of them and kind of pull them, cut them over. It was stopped at this car lot. Well, I didn't know there was like four guys in the car, right? And, uh, get out and I'm like, "All right, here we go." I start fighting and, uh, I get tackled, bum-rushed by these dudes. And, uh, all of a sudden I hear somebody saying something like, "Get up, get up, get up, get up." I'm like, "What's going on?" I get up, you know, I didn't get hit too much and I'm bleeding everywhere. I'm like, "What is going on?" I look down and I got a, my hand split open right here and they stabbed me and it hit my hip bone and I didn't know it at the time, you know? I stood up and I'm like, "Where's everybody going?" I mean, I was still amped up, half drunk, and I'm bleeding everywhere. I looked down. I'm like, "Oh, I have my Marine Corps silky shorts on, which, you know, bro, sexy shorts." And I'm like, "Oh, no." I was like, "All right." So, I can't go to medical. I can't go to the hospital because I'm not supposed to be away from the base. I'm going to get in trouble. So, I drove to see Dave Petri 'cause he was dating, uh, two at the time and Jan's sister. And, uh, I show up at their house. I knock on the door and they're like, "What the hell?" I'm like, I'm bleeding all over the place. I'm like, "Listen, man." I said, "I, I can't go to the hospital." So, they took a staple gun and stapled me up.

>> And, uh, spent the night. Serious.

>> Dead serious.

>> It was, it sounded like a really good idea at the time.

>> Yeah. Did you have a nice infection around there?

>> Yeah, it was bad. I was just like, "Oh, no." And like, my pants are stuck to it, all this kind of stuff. And I went to the corpsman. I'm like, "Hey, man." He's like, he's like, "What did you do?" And I told him a story and he's just like shaking his head. He's like, "Man." He's like, "You can't tell anybody about, telling anybody about it." So, we had to dig everything out, cleaned it out. It was, it was, it was miserable. Miserable.

>> Yeah. Do not, uh, PSA folks, do not use a staple gun to put a knife wound back together. I'm sure the staples were all sterile. And, uh, you guys all scrubbed that, scrubbed in and put your surgical gloves on before any of this drunk ass dumb shit happened. Oh my god.

>> And if it had went an inch the other way, probably would have killed me. It hit my hip bone. Like, chipped my bone. Like I was, I still got a pretty good scar about like this.

>> Yeah. And again, looking back, it's one of those things where, where, you know, there's a story in the Bible about Job and, uh, Satan challenges God saying, you know, basically the only reason that Job is so faithful to you is because you've kept this hedge around him his whole life. That's why he's so successful and faithful. And he's like, "You remove that hedge, I'll show you just how faithful Job is. He'll curse your name." And so God's like, "All right, fine. Do what you want, but you can't kill him." So he loses his wife, his kids, they all die. He loses all his wealth. His body's broken. He's completely broken. But he never lost his faith. And that kind of suffering, you know, you don't understand it. Job didn't understand it. He was crying out wondering why 'cause he, he felt he didn't do anything wrong, but it was God's way of preparing him for what was coming next. What God did was he gave him tenfold what he had before. So when I look back on my life on stuff like this, I think God has had a hedge around me because so many situations I put myself in that there's no way I should be sitting here talking to you today. I should not have the things I have today. And the only explanation that I know of is that God's kept a hedge around me. He's given me this suffering for a purpose. I'm still here. I'm still, uh, relatively healthy. I can still pretty much do all the things I could as a young man. So, I'm blessed. And I hope that the more we talk about my experiences, the more people can see that you can live this crazy life without God. You shouldn't, but you can. But if you have purpose, that you, you have His purpose, you pray that you get that insight before you die. And I've been blessed that I've got to be able to look back on my life and go, "Man, I'm almost ashamed I've been given so much."

>> Well, we're glad, we're glad that God did give you so much and that you're still here to be a testament and, uh,

>> to be able to share these stories, man. It's amazing.

>> Yeah.

>> Um, so,

>> Take, no, man. Take a minute, man. You're good. That's what this is all about. I was going to say that when I got to the Special Operations Training Group, like I said, uh, it was like a dream, dream of mine because I got to work with some of the, like the legends of the Force Reconnaissance community, the Reconnaissance community. And they, they didn't welcome me at first 'cause you have to earn everything. Which I was good with. And they knew I fought. I was a fighter. And the command was amazing.

>> They heard about you.

>> Yeah. Yeah. You know, Captain Jim was kind of a small town and I was fighting professionally then too and people kind of, kind of knew me a little bit. And plus they knew like all the bars, kind of all the Marines go. Like I didn't take, like if you step to me, I'm gonna hit you. Like, simple. I didn't take a step back. I didn't care if there was four or five of you. We're fighting because I just, it, it's one of those things that it's like, it always reminded me of my people picking on my brother. And I was just like, "No, you're not getting away with this." And right. And, uh, getting the opportunity to go there and have those guys, uh, give me the faith and trust to make me an instructor and be training other guys. They may be the primary hand-to-hand guy. Uh, it was just one of these, it was like a dream come true to me. And just being able to learn from some of these guys was something that most people don't get to get. And I had a whole, like 10 or 12 of them that I worked with every day that were just the pillars of the community. They're just fantastic guys. And once I earned my place, they knew I fought and they'd give me time to train. They'd give me like 96. I get up on Thursday. I had to be back on Monday. I would go to Virginia, Maryland, or whatever and I would fight and I come back. I'd come back with a broken hand, broken foot. And they, they were good with it. Any other command would have never let that happen. Another thing, just, yeah. And they did. It was just another testament of how fortunate I've been. And like, I couldn't see it then, but I can see it now. You know, I'm blessed that those guys like Bill Sears, Gus, Eddie Perry, Nick John, uh, who else? Captain Jones. These guys are just, I still remember the names because they did such an incredible job of mentoring and leading me.

>> Well, I was going to say, what would you say to, um, a young person coming up, uh, maybe that has a little bit of no, no aim where they're going in life? Um, maybe they, they're getting in trouble here and there. I mean, would you suggest, uh, that, uh, the military is a good idea for them?

>> If you ask me that question 10 years ago, I'd had a quick answer for you. I, I was a true believer then. Uh, once I've been to war several times and you really, you understand what, uh, what that entails, it's not romantic. It's not sexy. Uh, the loss that you see, and when you find out too that, you know, your government's so corrupt that you shouldn't have been there to start with. It's one of those things where the military is good, uh, for young men. Yes. Uh, would I recommend it? I'd be a hypocrite if I said no. But knowing what I know now, I would not let my son do it just because of just the absolute mass corruption of our, our federal government. Uh, if I would, any advice to young people, I would say find your purpose early, especially young men. Uh, find something you, you enjoy and get really good at it. Uh, first thing you should do is find your faith, for sure, because you can lose everything else. But if you got faith and you pray and you give your life to Jesus, it makes a huge difference. I'm, I'm living proof of it. I wouldn't be sitting here today if it wasn't for His grace. So, if you're a young man, you need to find your, you need to find your purpose early. Like, like you, you've been, how long you been working on your comedy?

>> Yeah. Well, probably more than,

>> 30 years.

>> Still doing.

>> You're still working. You're still working on your purpose. There's so many people never, never find that or they give up. Never give up on that stuff, you know? Never ever give up because I had my, my own parents, my mom tell me all the time that like me fighting was like, I wasn't gonna win. I wasn't gonna do this. I wasn't gonna do that. The only person that really ever believed in me was Chris Vincent. He was the only person that actually really believed in me. And that, as a young man, you know, when you got all this angst in you and you don't have a purpose or you don't have direction, you can pick the wrong direction. And I was just fortunate that all those fights I got into didn't land me in jail, that I didn't kill anybody. Somebody didn't kill me or prison, 100%. I can't tell you many people I've hit where they, they fell and hit the concrete with their head. Stuff I didn't think about then. Now I think about it all the time. I'm just like, "Oh my Lord, help me." You know? Yeah. And society is gonna make you pay for it, as they should. You know, if you're, you're, you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing, which 90% of the time I wasn't. You know, I was drinking, uh, places I wasn't supposed to be. Like when I was in, uh, when I was Special Operations Training Group, uh, I separated from my wife and I started working at a strip club. I started bouncing at the strip club. And, uh, yeah, and it was a place called, uh, Silver and Gold. And it was right outside the back gate. And it was in a fishing shrimper village, so it had a big mix of white trash guys, black folks, and Marines, all of which cultures don't mix. And it was like Road House, almost. It was crazy. And when I started working there, it was me and Eric and Cliff. And after about three or four months, people learned like if you, if you came in there to start problems, you were gonna get dealt with. And it kind of cleaned the place up pretty, pretty quick. But it also, uh, brought in a lot of, uh, tough guy type people that wanted them. And the owner, Peter, he would egg that on. Like he'd bring people in because I was like 190 pounds at the time and he's like, "I got this boy. I got this boy to whoop you." You know, all this other stuff. He'd set all this stuff up or try to do this and didn't even tell me about it till this dude shows up. It was just, but it was one of those places where I got to learn what real violence is. And I got to kind of like learn how to talk to people too, how to deescalate things, uh, first before I went to that. But if it came to that, like being in that environment, uh, especially when you're dealing with drunk Marines and people, I mean, it can be very, very dangerous. At that time, the Camp Lejeune, I mean, if you know how to talk to people, you have to fight five, six, seven, eight, 10 people and know you're probably gonna get stabbed or you're gonna get bottles broken over your head. So, I learned to talk to people first, but if you didn't, if you attacked me or attacked my guys, you're, you're leaving hurt. And it was 19, it was, uh, was it November 1995. We had a male review and the, all the, uh, ladies left and then the guys came in. There was a bunch of Marines, the platoon there. I think it was Oorah or something. And I wasn't working that night. I was just there, uh, hanging out. Well, we have a foyer and this guy started some problems. So, we escort him to the front floor where he's, he swings on me and I wasn't even working and I fall down and he jumps on top of me. So, I'm, I'm hitting him while he's on top of me. And then everybody else starts pinging out of the bar. Goes ping in the parking lot. And, uh, everybody's fighting me, Eric, Kevin, and Cliff, all fighting all these dudes, right? It is crazy how none of, I broke my foot, but none of us really got hurt when it was said and done. There was like three ambulances showed up and Cliff was going around pepper-spraying people. His big fogger, he's pepper-spraying people. And, uh, well, this, this black dude comes out. He's a Staff Sergeant, I guess. You know, I was a Sergeant at the time. And he's like, got his finger in my face. He's like, "I can't believe you're a Sergeant of Marines putting your hands on other Marines." I was like, "Uh, you better get your finger out of my face." I was like, "I don't think you, you know, like, yeah." I was like, "I was trying to be polite with the guy, but I was like, "These are your Marines. Why aren't you controlling your Marines?" And he did the thing to me. So I hit him, dropped him, knocked him out, like split him from here to here like someone took a pair of scissors. So he's knocked out, right? Cliff comes up with this bear can size pepper spray and just >> blast this dude in his face while he's unconscious. It was crazy.

>> I'm sorry. That's funny. I could just picture he's already laid out, flayed open, and you bless him with peppers. Right here you go. This is good for cuts.

>> I hear that was, that was Cliff's, uh, go-to for every, like, if you started something, he'd blast you. He had a big can of it too. It was, it was a great equalizer. But it was just like one of those nights where we got done and we just could, we just sat there kind of like, you know, when the bar closes, you guys are sitting around having your shift drink or whatever. We're just sitting there like, "I don't know how we're still, nobody's hurt." But I broke my foot. And, uh, but then actually that December was the, uh, the second world title that I won with the World Knockout Kumite, the Kyokushin World Championship. And I broke my foot the month before. And I went down to fight. And, uh, 'cause I was the returning heavyweight and grand champion. And which is just a good story, too. Uh, so I fought three times that night. And the second guy I fought, he's supposedly one of the Wu-Tang Clan, uh, rap group, one of their bodyguards, right? So, it was me and him fighting for the, the heavyweight championship. And the winner of this fight goes to fight for the grand championship. Well, in Kyokushin, you can, you can, uh, kick to the face, you can knee the face, you can kick the legs, all full contact, no pads. The thing you can't do is punch directly straight to the face. Well, we're start fighting and I'm working his legs pretty good 'cause he's bigger than me. They're, everybody's always bigger than me. And, uh, he punched me right in the nose on purpose. Bleeding. We had some, uh, I guess his fans or whatever. They were sitting, uh, corner side and they're like talking all this smack. And I leaned over and I, farmer, blew all this blood like all over them. Like, right. And they, they were just, put this way, they were not happy. Right. And, uh, so we go, time back in and I came out and I hit him with a leg kick and I threw a heart punch and I hit him right, right stern, right, right in the sternum. And he bent over and I punched him right in the ass as he went down, right? Knocked him out. And I go on to the next round to fight for the grand championship. And I'm, my foot is jacked up. I cannot, it's like, it's like this big around. I can't walk on it. And I wasn't gonna fight. And, uh, the promoter, Mike Baldwin, uh, he's like, he's like, he's like, "John, you got to fight, man." He's like, "People came here to see you fight." He goes, "One more fight. You can do it." I'm like, "Bro," I was like, "My foot is like, like a football." I was like, "I can't." And he's like, he's like, "Come on." I was like, "All right." So, I go out there and fight and I can't really kick, but I end up, I end up stopping this dude. He was like from Cameroon. I stopped him with leg kicks, knocked him out with leg kicks in the first round. And then had to leave with, uh, one shoe on because I couldn't put my other shoe on. And that type of fighting, I loved it, man. Because like, the, the year before, uh, 1994 was the first time I won the world title. And, you know, when you're fighting in Kyokushin, I love that type of fighting because it's bare knuckle, it's full contact, no pads. And you have to fight multiple, you have to fight multiple times in one day. So if you have a really hard fight, the first fight, you have to really suck it up because you have lumps on your bones, your shins, you have broken fingers, you have broken toes, you have broken hands. And then after each fight, you have to break a certain amount of bricks and boards. And that's gonna determine. So if you have a tie, whoever broke the most bricks and boards goes on to the next round. So you just can't like break your hand, suck it up, and go on. You have to keep continuing. And, uh, I fought a guy named, uh, Dennis "Hurricane" Lane. He was a multi-time Muay Thai world champion. And I knew this guy. We trained before, but he was, he was like 6'2", like 235, 40 pounds. I was, I'm 5'9", 190, you know. And he was like talking all this smack in the fighters' meeting. And I was just like, I told him, I was like, "You ain't gonna see anything but lights, dude." I was like, "So mad at him because I knew the guy. I was like, "All right, you want to be that way? Fine." I went out there, I, I worked him. I, he couldn't keep up my speed. I was throwing. It's like I used my size 'cause I'm smaller, but I was good with Judo and wrestling. And you can throw, but you have to release as soon as you throw. And if you punch on the way down, you score for it. So every time he'd come close, I'd kick or knee and I grabbed him and I just tossed him like I had just launched him and body slammed him down. I'll show you the pictures of it. Bang. And hit him like the hook. Because you're fighting on a, a platform and it just echoes all through the arena, right? People, the crowd was going crazy. And then started the second round, he wouldn't get off the stool. Like he, he quit. So I won that fight by knockout. And I was just like, "That's what you get." I broke, I broke my hand and my thumb. And, uh, then I had to fight, uh, two more times. And that, the last fight was for the grand championship. I had to fight the middleweight kid. And I had broke his leg. I got a picture of that. He, we were fighting and I kicked and he, he tried his shin block, tried to t-block me with a kick. And, uh, he didn't put his foot the right way, I guess. And I got sent the picture and we're done. And I broke his leg. Ended up winning by that fight too. And then the next year I came back and won the second year in a row. And I was the only person to win it two years in a row, heavyweight and grand championship.

>> It almost makes MMA look like [ __ ] I mean, you literally are bare-knuckled and there's multiple fights in one day and you have to break [ __ ] with your hands between.

>> That sounds torturous.

>> Yep. George St. Pierre, the, uh, UFC legend, his background is Kyokushin. Uh, there's a guy named Jud Reed. Uh, Jud Reed did have a thing. It's called the 100 Man Kumite. You fight a 100 people back to back and you, yeah, it's, there's only like a handful, 10 or 12 people have ever done it. And there's a documentary. It's called the, uh, "The 100 Man Journey." And if you ever get a chance to watch it, it shows you just how tough that is. Like, it takes a different mindset to to fight that type of fighting. And I don't think most people have that mindset today. I know professional, a lot of professional fighters don't have it today because I can see it. Train with them. They don't have that, that grit they need. They'll complain about, uh, not being where they want to be, but they're not willing to put the work in to be where they want to be. I was always willing to put the work in. I'd never, I was always training in the winter. I was training when no one else wanted to train. When no one would come out to train, I was training. Uh, this, there's a place called Tommy's Training Center that people used to come to train to. It was an old house. It didn't have any walls in it. Didn't have AC or heat. So in the summer it was miserable. In the winter it was miserable. And people would come out once or twice and then when they do the training, they wouldn't come back. So anybody that showed up that stayed, you knew they were pretty good, pretty decent people because it, you had to earn your spot in that place. Let's put it that way. And I think that's what I knew that if I'm out there in the winter time kicking.

bags and kicking tires and doing all this that, you know, people that lived in Florida that I was fighting, they weren't doing it. And so I knew that maybe it gave me a mental edge to me. I thought it made me tougher than the rest. Even though if they were talented or bigger than me, I knew I'd put the work in. I knew I was meaner.

It takes a special type of mentality to um to to do [ __ ] like that. I mean, let's just be realistic. Um, you got to have that like almost almost psychotic. Yeah, I know. To you it's normal, but normal, but those people who know you personally, it doesn't surprise them at all, but yeah.

Uh, so I got out of the Marine Corps uh in 1996 and I got out because I wanted uh to go to the drill field or I wanted to go over to force reconnaissance and they wouldn't let me do either. They're going to send me back to Okinawa for a year. And my daughter was less than a year or she was 2 years old at the time. And I was like, well, you're not going to let me do what I want to do. I'm getting out. And all the guys that I knew that were in uh force reconnaissance or recon had gotten out and they went in the Air Force to become par rescue or combat patrol guys. And they're always telling me, "Hey, Johnny, you need to come over, man. This is a great job." Blah, blah, blah. I was like, "No, I'm not going to wear that bus driver uniform."

Pride was getting in your way. Yeah, 100 100%. And uh well, I decided get out and I was I started fighting full-time is what I did. And I was bartending in between while I was fighting. And uh of course, same thing. I was drinking, blowing money, beating people up. I'd be training for fights. I go fight. And uh almost a year to the day, I got a a call from Dennis Lane, the guy I beat in 1994, and he was a promoter. Now, he offered me to fight for a world title in tie boxing in West Virginia. I was like I said, "Yeah." I said, "When is it?" He's like, "It's two weeks from now." And I was like, "I ain't been training. I've been partying." And I was like, "All right, let's I'll do it. You know, I'll fight."

And when you're doing that type of fighting, you have to do a lot of conditioning for your legs because you're getting kicked to the legs a lot. All this kind of stuff. Well, I didn't do any of that. I didn't have time. I quit my job. I was working at a tire store at the time. I quit my job and I started training full-time. I was training twice a day and I did that. I went up there and I fought a guy named uh Duncan Arley James. Uh he's doing movies now. Like you remember the the the latest Tomb Raider movie? Well, he's the he's the he's the uh the her coach at the gym. That's Duncan James. He's from Scotland. Super super great guy. Uh very tough dude. I think he had like 30 something fights at the time. And uh took the fight on two weeks notice. Uh, I beat him pretty easily. If I had trained, if I had a full training camp, I'd have stopped him easy. But I broke my hand in the first round. Uh, beat him pretty easy. Morning unanimous decision and I won my third world title.

And, you know, I went back to bartending, uh, bouncing here and there, and it just it wasn't making fun. I had a family I had to take care of. uh and I started listening to those guys talking about going in the air force. So I started my process to get back in the military and I started applying for the program which I applied and uh while I was waiting I got offered uh to fight in the world knockout kumate. uh or excuse me uh world commando can't talk sorry USA versus the world commando knockout challenge it was as a promoter he put in have US commandos fight commandos from across the world like from Russia Lebanon all this stuff and I was like yeah I was like it's going to be on pay-per-view and all this stuff I was like absolutely I'm going to do this and uh it was up at Fort Bragg yeah I was like why not right and uh crazy time great time They I fought a dude, his name is uh Dimmitri Stanov. He's the guy that got uh Andre Arloski into the UFC. And I didn't know anything about this dude. Never seen him before. He's like 6'5, like 20 like 38 pounds. Well, it said he weighed 213 or something, but he was he's a big dude. And uh he came with like a camera crew like photos. Like he's crazy. I was like, who is this dude? Like they were I guess they thought he was going to knock me out and all this kind of stuff. he's going to whoop me and all that stuff. Well, I knocked him down twice in the first round and ended up knocking him out in the third round. Beat him up pretty pretty bad. And they put me on the cover of the video after that, which was pretty cool. And all the posters and all that.

And then >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. I got to get a picture of that. >> Yeah, it's pretty cool. I've got blood running down my face. He broke my nose, though. He He hit me hard and everybody hit in my life. I can tell you that. All those Russian dudes know how to punch, dude. >> Yeah. Just ask their wives. I tell you what's funny about that dude is I've talked to him a couple times over the years and like his life is mirrored mine almost like like he was in spenauts uh he was in special operations in the Russian army like he worked in bars uh you know like fighting all this kind of stuff like it was just it's so odd how our lives are very similar very nice guy but it was just like very very odd you know he was still talking smack like if we were kicking out the beach. I was like, "No, you wouldn't have." I was like, "I wouldn't allow allowed to kick you." Like it was back and forth. It was pretty pretty good.

Uh and like se seven, eight months later, they did a rematch. The first one, the USA won. Well, the promoter this time, he made sure that USA was not going to win cuz he he brought these dudes like I don't know where he found these guys from, but everybody on the card got knocked out except for me and one other dude. I mean, USA got wrecked. And uh the guy I fought, his name was Igor Sherupov. And he's probably the toughest man I've ever fought in my life. He had a head like that big. It was he was huge headed guy. Very tough guy. Like didn't take a step back. And I've never fought anybody where they I couldn't take a step forward. He had me backing up the entire fight. Uh I won a close decision, but it was very very tough. Very tough guy, man. I was just like, and then about a year after that, I uh went into the Air Force. I was in from uh 1999 to 2008. I medically retired because of my injuries.

Uh at the time, we had a it was called the par rescue combat par rescue combat control indoctrination course. It was 12 weeks long and uh it's a selection course. It's based off Navy Seals buds. And most people don't understand that the Air Force special operations program has the highest attrition rate of all special operations. And uh yeah, it's it's it's no joke. And I got there, I didn't have uniforms. I was still civilian clothes, all this stuff. When I get there, these people are screaming at me. Like I'm just like, am I in the right place? I'm just like it was like worse than boot camp. It was crazy. You had curfew, couldn't drink, couldn't drive, uh no pornography. Like everywhere you went, like if you were caught drinking, you got eliminated from the course. Like if you were out in town on the weekend and you saw the cadre, they would like they call you drop, they make you do push-ups and all this stuff. They do it out in town if they saw you. It was It was ridiculous. It was Yeah. I was 20. I was 28. Yeah. It was crazy. I was a sergeant and I already been to combat the first Gulf War and I'm like I couldn't believe it man. I went there I was 212 lbs pretty big 212 and like a month later I was like 190 cuz during the duty day you're not you're not allowed to walk. You got to run everywhere you go and you're in the pool every day for 4 hours. It's very tough course. It sucks. I mean, it was uh it was eye opening let's put it that way.

But one of the I tell you tell tell you a funny story is uh of course everybody knew and was good too is like some of the guys that were on cadre they knew me from fighting. One of the guys named Sergeant Mccclure he was from the braggard and he'd been he's actually seen me fight at the USA versus the world. So, a lot of these guys were like really cool with me, but they still smoky and all this kind of stuff, right? Well, to keep up motivation, I went to a PX and I bought like a $100 worth of Marine Corps magnets, the Eagle Globe and anchors, and I would take them and put them on their cars in the morning. Like, they'd go in the I go put them on all their cars and they'd come out and they'd be like, "Who is doing that? I know what you bait." I'm like, "I have no idea what you're talking about." They like trash my room looking for them. They couldn't find them. And uh yeah, and then they'd rip them off. I go put him back on. Well, Sergeant Clark comes up to me. He pulls me aside and he's like, he's like, "Hey, man." He's like, "Can you do me a favor?" I was like, "Whatever you need, Sergeant. What do you need?" He's like, "Can you find out who's doing that?" He's like, "Cuz this is getting a little ridiculous, you know." I'm like, "I'll see what I can do." I said, "I have no idea. No one's told me anything, but I'll see what I can do."

It was good for the guys, too. Uh this is in uh San Antonio, Texas. And that's your first that's your first part of school. So if you pass that part of school, then you go to special forces dive school in Key West. Then you'll come back to the base. Then you'll go to do like military freef fall. You'll do a couple other courses like SEIR survival. And then you'll do your uh actually job awarding school which is combat control school which is in Fort Bragg. And once you get done with that then you send you to a team. You'll do like a year train up to make sure you get all your crawifications back up and then you start deploying. That's what that's what it went out to do. And uh it took me a little bit longer because I got hurt a couple times. Uh had some stress fractures. I had to get my foot operated on. And again uh usually they would eliminate you from the program with all the stuff that I had going on. But I was always a performer. I was a team leader. Uh always my guys were squared away. I always performed. Always always kept morale. like I was always put out and they respected that. So they actually helped take care of me, look after me quite a bit and I appreciate that like those guys today still like I mean uh again I was surrounded by great people and opportunities. Uh, I got healed up, got passed the course, graduated, uh, got to Herbert Field. It's Herbert, Florida, and that's where I was stationed at the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron.

Uh, and they did my did my deployment uh, 2004. Uh, and that's where uh, we had I had a pretty rough deployment. I was in a place called uh, Drawood, Afghanistan. At the time, it's probably one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan. uh had a bunch of crazy stuff going on. Like my very first mission uh first time ever like this, I was working with SF team. We were going after this dude named Rosie Khan. He'd killed a bunch of uh UN workers and the the special forces uh commander had like a thing for him like he wanted this guy dead. So I do radio checks and everything because my job as a combat controller is I control all the aircraft. I drop bombs, do the gun strafing, all that stuff. But also in addition to that, I have to be able to do every job on the team. I got to be able to do shoot. I got to be able to do demo, all that stuff. And I attached these guys as an Air Force guy. So everything you do, you have to prove yourself to these guys. And my very first very first mission, we're going after this dude. None of my radios work. And it's like, you got to be kidding me. I did radio check on the ground. We get got actually get in on the ground going after this dude. My radio checks don't work. I had to go to Sergeant Major, get his radio to talk to people. It was just a mess. Well, we get into the compound and they had these most of these villages had these huge mud brick compound walls, right? They're 8 10 ft tall, couple feet thick. Well, we're doing a clearing and uh we're a couple uh you have like the big wall on the outside, then you have some little houses on the inside. Well, we're a couple houses in and we hear avalanche on the radio, which is everybody needs to get out like now. So everybody's hauling ass outside the compound. They found a bunch of wires running outside the wall to another uh compound. Well, they they opened this up. They found there's like something like 20 107 mm rockets wired into the compound. When they blew this thing, they had EOD guys blow it. When they blew it, like you could feel like your teeth your teeth rattled, your bones hurt. It was if it didn't it killed everybody. It was it was one of those things I remember to this day because I was just like it's it scared the [ __ ] out of me. I'm not going to lie cuz I was just like I like 5 minutes ago I was standing right in there and the other 30 guys were in there too and this you feel the the percussion the concussion wave and the over pressure like it hurts like it was just it's hard to explain that you experienced it but it was like one of those things where uh a couple times that happened to me in my radios and I kept talking back to the command saying hey you know I'm having these issues blah blah blah they finally sent somebody out and they give me a radio that had uh had some kind of issue with it there. It wouldn't keep crypto and it wouldn't keep frequency. Well, it would test, right? But then when you go work it, it didn't work. It was just crazy, right? So, I was going on half these missions and I couldn't talk to anybody. So, I was basically just being another gun on the ground, which, you know, it's not my job, but I had to because I had to keep up with the rest of the guys. It was just really very frustrating, you know, and a lot of challenges like that.

Uh, a lot of IED stuff. Uh, like when you when you're there, there's when you're going through the mountains and that kind of stuff, you're going around passes you can't see. They they daisy chain rocket IEDs there and they just detonated and just killed people just left and right. It was it was it's a hard thing to uh deal with day in and day out. Like you see people they get in the trucks do you see people get in the trucks and they're just like all right well got to do it. It's our job. You know we'll get it done. And we had a guy uh like where I was at. We had 13 IED attacks from April to July and killed uh this kid named Corbal Fray. Uh wounded a bunch of other guys. Uh I remember Corbase. He's a young black kid. He ran Bible study and the the 25th ID which is infrey's unit. They did security at our fire base and our fire base is really small probably like uh probably about 200 people and it was right backed up to a village up there wood. So they put IEDs all over the place and they they were driving and they were in an armor hum and they ran over a command detonated uh they had two anti-tank mines stacked on top of each other and it blew the vehicle up like this threw the gunner like 50 ft out. Corporal Freys radio pilot uh ripped his arm off, took his legs off. Uh the the team leader was killed. The staff sergeant in the back seat. He he survived. He wasn't even hurt really that bad. I think he chipped a tooth or something. Uh the gunner got thrown, broke his back, uh took a bunch of shrapnel on his neck. And we actually had have a we had a trauma surgeon that was there doing medcap stuff. We So we do the cure. I have to go out there, help him out. And uh he's he's trying to he's saying his arm's hurting. He's trying to move his arm, but his arm's not there, you know. So I'm on with medevac trying to get medevac to come pick him up. and you have to give him a nine line which is basically status report on what's going on with the casualty on the ground and trauma surgeons got him worked on him and the 25th ID is having a bureaucracy battle I'm trying to get the PJs a pair of rescue men to come get him because the PJs will fly in any weather pretty much the 25th ID guys wouldn't fly because of wind conditions so you got this delay going on where this guy and the rest of these guys are bleeding out on the ground and I was pissed I was I mean I was pissed and I fired off a couple messages back to the command basically saying it you know I got kind of chastised for it but I'm just like you know what are we doing here you know you got Americans dying and you guys are worried about who wants to fly and who doesn't want to fly it's like this guy doesn't have a choice you know he ends up dying and uh it was yeah but the the staff started in the back seat he was out patrolling like two days later it was a stud I was just Just stuff like that you see all the time that people don't understand.

You know, like special operations guys, they get all the credit for stuff, but most of the dudes doing the heavy lifting are the regular infantry guys, the marine battalion guys, the army rifle company guys, and the aviation guys. Like some of the pilots, man, those guys were they fly. They would do incredible things for you. I mean, it was you had your good and bad, but when when it went bad, it was bad, you know.

Yeah, it's one of those things too is like uh I can be honest with you. It's like there's times where we were doing things where I was like I'd rather be no place in the world right now than right here. It's just you get that you get that such of a high because you know that at any moment things go really really bad. cuz you've got guys here with you that are willing to do the same thing. And people back here, you know, in like the civilian world, they'll never understand that. Like, you know, you talk about that's why I think so many people have issues when they come home because they don't have that commaradery. They don't have that purpose. And, you know, they don't have faith too. I didn't have faith then. I was just me, you know. Uh, and I look back on that too and like all those times if I have got killed there, I wouldn't have been saved. I'd have been my life had been eternally damned because I was living my life for me. And now that I'm this age, I can look back clearly on things and just be like, I'm absolutely blessed. And I've got to have a purpose. I don't know what it is, but it's got to be for something. And that's why I'm trying to do things right this stage in my life. For the last couple years, I'm trying to live my life as best I can. Help out as many people as I can. Reach out to people. People ask me about my story, I'll try to tell them. Uh, you know, years ago, I couldn't even talk about it without crying, breaking down. I wouldn't even talk about it. Uh, now I have a little bit more resolve with it. You know, I have more resolve with it. I have more peace with it.

Um, and then, uh, was it uh, 19th July, that was a week before I was going home. uh our intel guy Andy, he was getting they were picking up chatter on the radios about this guy and uh his name was Zionella. He was a one of the top guys in the Taliban and he was they're picking up triangulating his radio contact and the cell phone calls. This dude was literally like three miles from us. Like you can look at our our fire base and the village is right here. He was on the other side of the village going up on the mountain making phone calls. That's how close he was to us. So, we had to get a plan together to go, we're going to do a raid on this village. It's called Buriki and uh which is they've had a bunch of firefights there since, but uh and it was like seven compounds spread out over about 1,000 meters, right? And we had the imagery and all this and the fire support plan was we're going to uh set the area and then the Afghan National Army was going to come through and then they were going to clear the village and then they weren't supposed to go past the uh the compounds because the mountains are there and then when I was if something happened I was going to have the base fire artillery rounds into the mountain so it's going to stop the retreat from any bad guys. That was the plan. So we do an overland which is you're on foot and we cross over. It takes we probably walk about two miles, three miles after got the vehicles and this is where you know you're stuck about stuff happen with your podcast like the pixelation and things go wrong. Well, we're crossing the river and I trip and fall. I broke the sling on my rifle and I broke my NVGs, which I didn't know my MVGs are broken until we got in position. So we move across the river and then we do we separate at a certain point right our insertion point we move up from that and then we get to uh our assertion insertion point and then the team split up into eight different teams we had eight threeman teams and we're going to go hold the area and then once we were set the Afghan national army are supposed to come through so it's me the team leader and the medic we start moving and when you see when you have imagery everything looks different when you get on the So energy is just a a reference a little bit, right? And that's important with what's coming next. So we start moving and as soon as we get set, we're outside uh this compound. We think we're far away because of the distance. It's night time. It's hard to see exactly where we're at and we came through a little bit of a corn field. Well, as soon as soon as we get set, we start taking fires, like pretty accurate fire from where we just came from. And we didn't know if that was the Afghan National Army coming. And so we didn't want to we didn't want to fire back, you know, just because we didn't know. So we start taking more rounds and uh Rob the team leader, he's like, "Hey, put some rounds down there." So I'm holding rear security. I'm like, "All right." So put some rounds down there. I couldn't see whatever I was shooting. I was like pretty I saw the flashes were so I fired some rounds at it and it kind of stopped. Well, we get set again and Rob and uh Mike are facing forward and I'm like kind of almost shoulderto-shoulder with Mike and I'm facing to the rear holding rear security and I put my MVGs down and they don't work cuz they're broken. I'm like, "Oh man." Uh night night vision goggles. Night vision goggles. Yeah. And I'm on the radio talking. I had a uh AC130 gunship overhead like watching us and like giving me what's going on. and he's giving me reports that there's two guys working on a car, blah blah blah, all this kind of stuff, right? And then all of a sudden he cuts off all communication for some reason and he he flies away, which he wasn't supposed to leave cuz they don't they not supposed to leave till daylight. So he leaves us with no eyes on the ground above. So we don't know what's going on after that. Well, we have uh the scaps guys come up and they have the basically they're just like uh they're like public affairs people. They like they'll drop like pamphlets and they'll put out propaganda, that kind of stuff. Well, they come up with an interpreter and all our guys are set and he basically comes over loudspeaker and he tells everybody if you're a military age male, you need to come out with your hands up. If you have any weapons, you need to put your weapons down. And as soon as he said that, everybody started shooting. the whole bit like all these compounds start opening up and like we're getting stitched up left and right and uh we're turning fire and uh sun it's like almost twilight as the sun's coming up so it's still pretty dark but you can see where the sun's coming up so you get that little uh little bit of clarity in the vision and uh I'm I'm holding rear security again and I see somebody coming through the cornfield and I'm like is that the one of the Afghan guys I didn't know you know So, they're supposed to be already here by now and they weren't. And I I leaned over and I told Rob, I said, "Hey, man." I said, "I got a guy come through the cornfield." And he's like, "Kill him." And I was like, "Never never shot anybody before." And I was like, "All right, man." I was like, he got a little closer. I could see like a silhouette. He was carrying an AK. I put some rounds on him and he went down. And then five minutes later, another dude, same like almost identical path shot him. He goes down and I can hear him dying. He was like making like diagonal noises like all this kind of stuff. And then firefight jumps off again. Everybody starts shooting. Uh me and Mike and uh Rob, we get pinned down. uh RPG gets fired right over us, hits the compound in front of us, and that's when we realized how close we were to this compound. We thought we were like 50 60 feet away, but we were like 20 ft away from this the compound. So, we had to Yeah. We had to Yeah. So, we had to like like crawl backwards and try to get distance from this thing. And there's a a drainage ditch where they had irrigate the cornfield. Well, going through that, like my weapon, everything's covered in mud. Covered in mud. And we roll back over. Sun's coming up a little bit. And we see this woman. She walks right past us. She didn't see us. She walks right past us. She walks over to the dude, the last guy I shot, grabs his AK and starts picking up. Well, Rob had he he had his MBGs. He turned on her and he put her down. And then the compound opened fire on us again. So, I turned around and it's come daylight's coming up and I see a head come up over the wall like this and I was getting ready to take the shot, but I couldn't see a weapon. And at that time, rules of engage, you had to see a weapon. And I should have shot him, but I didn't. And I didn't shoot him. And I come back down. Well, he fires an RPG. As soon as he fired RPG, uh, the next gun team took a shot at him because there was like a hole on the other side of the compound. Took a shot at him and hit him. and it hit him uh through the hip and it like broke his pelvis and hit him in the femur or because we've had to treat him anyway. And that's something I I struggle with today because you could have killed us and I should have shot him.

Well, anyway, uh this goes on for we were fighting by ourselves for about 4 hours and uh there's a there's a compound that wasn't on the imagery and this like daylight's almost all the way up now. It's still a little hazy and we started getting accurate like machine like heavy weapons machine gun fire from this position. Like I don't know if you ever seen the movie Armageddon where they're on the asteroid and they're laying on the ground the asteroid the the thing rolls over Bruce Willis and that dude and they're like could you just see that? Do you believe that just happened? Well this dude starts laying down machine gun fire on us and me and we're all three of us are like flat as you can get like this and there's this round zipping. I mean it was crazy. Well we had a uh two guys from the 25th ID young kids. They were snipers, but he was on the other end. He took shot that dude, killed him and saved us. He was like 19 years old, made a hell of a shot, killed that dude, saved our lives. And uh, you know, we were just like, "Holy shit." So, we had to get back up, holding security. And then we started getting uh the Afghan people, the Afghan National Army finally shows up. And I'm talking to I had Apache helicopters overhead. I had uh some fighter jets at different altitudes overhead. I mean, because once you start firing and start shooting, everybody shows up on station. Everybody wants to get action. So, I had all kinds of aircraft ready to go. The only problem was we had people spread out and people moving everywhere. So, I couldn't use any fast movers to drop bombs. I had to use the Apache gunships to suppress with. And uh then we they had some of the Afghans got wounded and they bring him to our position because that's where the medic is. And our medic, his name is Mike. I can't I'm not going to give his last name, but uh they wrote a book about this this SF team I was with. It was called Rough Neck 91. They were the uh the Iraq war. These dudes were the best special operations team I've ever worked with. They did everything the way it was supposed to be done. They were professional. Uh and they were all killers, man. They were absolutely the reason I'm here today because, you know, it's it's a humbling experience to be around uh men that can operate like that, you know, cuz they had families just like I did. And uh anyway, excuse me. Yeah, I ain't talked about it for a while.

Well, we start getting the Afghans brought to where we're at. So, I'm uh watching Mike go to work on these guys and one dude took uh some shrapnel through his neck and his whole neck was like wide open and uh Yeah. And Mike's working. He's working like six people at the same time and absolutely he saved all of them. He saved every single one of those dudes like and there's no way several of them should have lived but he he he did it. He saved them and I got to watch it. It was amazing. So we finally get the area secured. you start getting medevacs come in uh getting all the uh the wounded out even the the uh excuse me the bad the the Taliban guys went getting them out and uh we captured about 30 people killed something like 25 something like that. Well, when the sun come up, uh, we had to go do a battle dam battle damage assessment, all the casualties, all the dead, all this kind of stuff, right? Well, that woman that walked past us, she was probably 15 to 20 feet from us. She was like 70 years old. Yeah. Like somebody's grandma. She's going out there to kill us. It was It's something I'll never forget her laying there on her back with her mouth wide open, you know, old as dirt and I was just like I was trying to picture my grandma doing that and I couldn't. So, we had to move the CCP. Yeah. It's just the the mentality is is is something that people here don't understand.

Like I can't I can't tell you how many little girls I've seen with their noses cut off or their ears cut off because they wanted to go to school. They were listening to western music. Yeah. And you're important these Yeah. It's I had girls I had all girls had two girls at the time, you know. So we'd go to these villages to give out candy or whatever. I'd always give stuff to the little girls and they get treated like trash. And to see them like I said, they're missing their nose or their ears are cut off. I just I just wanted to burn the whole place down. I was just made me sick. Yeah. And we're importing this stuff into our country left and right. It's it's diabolical.

I'm sure you have um seen what's going on in Europe. I've been watching it for years now. And it's funny that people are just now finally waking up and I'm like, "This has been going on for a decade now." And and they're like, "We're going to fight back." I'm like, "You're you're too late. it's already over."

Europe's lost. And uh let that be a lesson to America. And people don't want to they don't want to open their eyes to it. Uh we're too PC. But the bottom line is we're a big country. So we're able to absorb x amount of of [ __ ] that want to kill us. When over the last four years and I I estimate I guesstimate 30 million. I know they say 7 to 10, but I there was probably close to 30 million people that came in unvetted, unvaccinated, whatever. which I I you know I'm not a vaccinated person anyways. But the point being is um now now things are happening and people are shocked. It's like well yeah you didn't see this coming. No of course not cuz I don't you know their heads up their ass but it's by design. You look at Europe especially Britain what people don't fail to understand is you know these countries or the these Muslims are coming in and they're out breeding a naturalb born population. in Frankfurt, Germany, they're the they're the first country in Europe that now the uh the native born people are outnumbered by the foreignb born people. And people don't realize either that Britain's coming the same way and Britain has nuclear weapons. So what's going to happen when they have an all Muslim majority? It's like it's all by design. Yeah. These people, they're incompatible with Western values. They hate you. They they will lie. they it's all in their book. They can lie. They can do anything they want as long as it serves Islam. And and it's just insanity to me that we're allowing this stuff to go on. Anybody that's been over and seen what I've seen, and I'm not like I'm nobody's special. Trust me, there's guys way more than I have, been more rotations, all this stuff. But you've been there one time and you see the evil of these people. Like in Iraq, they're putting suicide vests on kids with Downs.

Very long. Like the we had a guy on my team, his name was Bobby, and Bob's been shot every time he's been to Afghanistan. So his his Yeah. his his threshold for any of their nonsense was zero. So when we do like vehicle checkpoint stuff, you're not supposed to touch the women, all this kind of stuff. He didn't care. Like he would snatch them, pull them right out. And the week before we went, they had this this big gunfight, we were at the bazaar, which is like their like local flea market thing, and we're like doing a show of force, all this kind of stuff, meeting with the local people. Well, he had a those collapsing batons, aped it to one of these teenagers where the kid took it and stole it, ran off. Right. So, Bobb's high order about that. Right. So, not only did we get this gunfight all day, all night, all day. Uh, it's crazy. We're We're leaving on foot. We got all these people. We got prisoner watching out with them. I got Apache helicopters like right overhead. It's It was like something out of a movie. It was so cool. And uh we're flying out. We get in the trucks in the back of the Hummer. We're leaving and we're coming through the village and all of a sudden Bobby jumps out of the back of the truck and we're like, "What?" All the brakes, everybody gets guns up. for like well the kid that stole his baton was at like one of these little vegetable stands. He jumped out and went over and kicked this dude right in the face and hit him like three times like you think it's funnest jump from American you and everybody's like dude like what are you do like cuz we just fought all day you know it was like it was crazy it's still today it like gives me goosebumps I'm just like he didn't tell anybody he just did it you know and I had to talk to the patches make sure they're overhead it was just everybody was just like dude what are you doing man but I understood it cuz he was just fed up with it just fed up with it man and it And we get back to the base and you do a thing called priorities of work which is you know you clean weapons all do all this stuff team stuff first and uh we everybody just kind of sat there didn't say a word just kind of h just like kind of like you believe that just happened and we did the debrief and everything and we go through whatever happened and and me Bobby or me Mike and Rob were like yeah remember when that machine comes So I say like, "You believe that shit?" Like it was crazy, right? We're like stuck to the ground like and you kind of make light of it, but it it it's surreal. Abs. It's

And I remember uh right before the the scops guys made that announcement on the radio or on the loudspeaker, I was on a knee. I was taking security and then gunfire goes off and I'm just like, I'm supposed to be home like in seven days. I'm I'm going to die here today. That's what I thought. I was like, I'm going to actually die here today. I've never been so scared in my life. It was crazy. Like, and for the amount of uh gunfire and actions that went on that day. We didn't lose one guy. No, no American was wounded. I have no idea how that's possible. But we slayed the enemy that day, though. And uh God was on our side that day for sure, 100%. Anybody that tells you like you hear anybody they talking out in the bars or talking about uh oh I killed this guy and this and that, you know, they either lying or a psychopath cuz I can still hear this guy dying in my head and uh I can see his face cuz we I said we um you do your bow down you get you get to walk around, you get to see everybody and uh you get to see what you did, you know yeah they're the enemy and everything but you know what would I do if somebody was coming to my house I'd fight you know and we shouldn't have been there to start with then like then I didn't see it that way I was like yeah good for them you know outwardly but inside it was eating me up and uh when I got home like I guess like I didn't realize that I had PTSD or all that kind of stuff and I was drinking more. I was freaking angry. Uh I didn't have like an enjoyment of a lot of things and uh I didn't like recognize it. I guess you know like a lot of people they self-medicate. They try to do other things. Uh and I I did all those things you know I was lied to myself about it like you know yeah they deserved it you know uh you know I got got a medal for it. uh you know like lost a lot of friends and they're dead for what I mean and uh I got a guy I went through training with his name is Derek Argel. He was my team leader. I was his team sergeant, you know, and my job as a team sergeant, he was a young lieutenant, is to teach him how to be a good officer, you know, I run the team. I do all the discipline, the training, all that kind of stuff. I make him look good. He does all the takes the responsibility for the leadership decisions, all this kind of stuff. 6'7 water uh 6'7, super good-looking dude. Uh academy graduate, a water polo player, run like the freaking wind. Uh great guy. and uh we went through selection together. We were uh went to Special Forces Dive School together. And at Special Forces Dive School, when you get there, you do a a thousand meter open ocean swim in BDUs, which is uniform, fins, and your mask. And you have to do it for time. And what they do is they pair you up by your swim times. Somehow, of course, Derek got first. You know, somehow I came in second. And I have no idea how that's possible, but I did. So, it was me and him. Yeah. I'm I'm 5' 9. I was like 205 lb. I'm like this tall, like like this, but I could motor through the water, I guess. And I finished behind him. So, me and him were paired up. And uh which was great because like I was like, and which is crazy. I don't know how they find these guys, but when you have to run every morning, right? You're not allowed to walk through. You have to run everywhere you go, but in the morning you have to do scheduled bounce and runs. And they have these guys that like half half keen because they take off like at 60 m an hour and they don't stop. Well, I'm the last guy every day because I can't run like my hip flexors are tore up and they take points away from you when you can't perform. But they give the points back to me because I could do all the stuff in the pool. I could do all the push-ups with the tanks, all this kind of stuff. So they take points away from me, give points back to me. And like my hip flexors are trashed. I was miserable. I was limping all the time. I was getting shots of torid all and all this kind of stuff. And Dererick helped motivate me. And uh and each each week have to do a longer and longer swim. And we were beating people by minutes. Like it was crazy how fast like how I was swimming at me. I'm swimming for my life trying to keep up with Derek. Like I was sweating in the water. That's how I mean it was he was killing me. And we were we were beating people so much that Cadre started calling us team America. And shouldn't have told Derek that because he would just go around just like rowing that in people's faces and it's it's funny, man. And uh well, we had to do one last swim and I think it was a 10,000 meter swim or something like that. And we had won like every every challenge for swim. So technically we didn't have to do it because physically I didn't think I could do it. I was I was hurt by the in the class. I was I was I was limping everywhere. I was

really bad. And, uh, I told him, I was like, "Hey, man." I was like, "I don't think I can do this swim." And he put his hand on my shoulder. He's like, "Come on, JB." He's like, "Just give me one more." And it's the way he studies, you know, he's huge. Like, "Come on, JB. Just give me one more." I was like, "All right, man." I was like, "I'll do it." And we won that again. You know, we finished the entire team as swim team number one. Never lost the race. And he knew if I, he, he knew if I didn't do that, I'd have regretted it. And he's right, 'cause I can look back and I told, uh, you know, you know, his son's now, his son's 20, uh, and I wrote him a letter when his dad died and told him about our experiences and that kind of stuff. And that was one of the things in there.

And it was, uh, Memorial Day, uh, 2005. Me, my wife, and my daughters were at the beach. And I get a phone call, and it's, uh, friend of mine, Brad Riley. He was on the other team, silver team, and he told me that, uh, Derek's plane went down in Iraq. And I was like, "What?" They were on, I was Derek Casey and, uh, Jeremy. They were going to do a survey for, uh, an improvised airfield or helicopter landing zone in Iraq. And the plane they were in was a small, like a five-man plane, you know, it went down and, uh, didn't know the status of it, if they were dead or not.

So we get in, we go over to Wendy's house, which is Derek's wife. And at the time, his son was 7 months, I think, 6 months. And we get there and about 10 minutes after that, here comes the chaplain and the commander. Yeah. Devastating. And, uh, you know, fast forward to that and, uh, you know, they asked me to escort his remains to, uh, his wife and his mom. His remains fit in two boxes, a little bit bigger than a shoebox, and his wedding ring survived. So, I had his wedding ring in my pocket. Uh, and I picked him up and going through the airport. The very first airport I went to, I'm on orders that say, "You can't, you know, basically look in these boxes. This is what you're carrying." Every, every place I went to. Most disgusting treatment I've ever seen in my life. Had to take, I'm in full service dress. Made me take my jacket off. The stuff didn't have been. They broke the, uh, badges on my uniform. Like, no respect. They didn't care. It, if I would have been escort, I'd have probably been in prison for killing these people just because of the lack of respect. It just made me sick to my stomach. There was just, yeah.

So, I took that out, uh, half his remains to his mom and then I flew back to Florida. Got there that evening, uh, went to Wendy's, delivered, uh, other half his remains and gave him, gave her his wedding ring. Just the look on her face, the pain. You know, his son gets to grow up not knowing his father. One of the hardest things ever done. Yeah.

So, that exacerbated a lot of stuff that was going on with me. Uh, uh, at that time, I was, right before that, I was basically like, uh, basically like the training guy, basically for my team, like I ran like the firearms, all this kind of stuff, because of my experience, right? And then after my experience in, uh, Afghanistan, the DO, which is like the number two guy for the unit, was like, "Hey, you're going to be in charge of the training for the unit, basically. You need to do, blah, blah, blah." Like, "All right, roger that." So I started going to some of these courses and validating a course. Well, I came through a course here in Little Rock called Direct Direct Action Resource Center. I taught urban warfare, CQB, that kind of stuff. So, I went to the course. It's a 5-day course and each day gets longer and longer until you're doing basic operations. So, you'll learn the tactics during the daytime and then at nighttime, you're doing force on force with simunition. It's like a paintball and you're fighting an opposing force. And each day, the day gets longer and longer and longer until you, you're operating on sleep deprivation. And you're doing your planning and you're validating the tactics that you're doing during the day against a well-trained force. So, it's, it's one of the best, it's some of the best training I've ever done. And I went through the course and, uh, the guy that owns the place, he asked me if I wanted a job. And he wanted me, if I would come up and start teaching when I got time. And I was like, "Yeah." So, I'd take leave and I'd come up here and I'd teach. And it got to the point where, you know, he made me the, basically training director. And so I'm teaching, you know, Special Forces guys, SEALs, FBI, all these guys how to shoot, all this kind of stuff, right?

Well, at the 23rd STS, which when I was in Florida, uh, at the opening, actually, we have a three-man team here in Little Rock, a three-man combat control team that they do, uh, like DZ stuff. It's like admin stuff for, they do stuff like that. And we had an opening here and I couldn't deploy anymore 'cause I was injured. I had, I had had injuries from my back and a bunch of other stuff and, uh, so I was like, "Well, I can come up here and I can teach at DARC while I'm still in the military." And that's what I did. So I came up here, I took the position and I started teaching when I wasn't, uh, in the military, wasn't working during working hours. And then the guy offered me, he's like, "Well, if you can come on full-time, you know, I'll give you XYZ." And I'm friends with this guy, you know, I've been working with him for a couple years and I'm like, "Sure." So, I took my medical retirement. I retired at 16 years, 9 months, and I could have stayed for my full 20, but I really wasn't happy. I wasn't, couldn't operate. I was like doing survey stuff and basically sitting behind a desk and I couldn't do it, man. I wasn't, I was miserable. So, I took the medical retirement and I start.

No, I was miserable. And, you know, you got to understand too, this whole time while I'm here, you know, I'm still, I'm drinking. I'm beating people up at bars. I'm still doing like, not, not good. And, uh, so I was like, "All right, I get this opportunity. I might as well take it." So I took the job. He said he's going to pay me X amount of money, blah, blah, blah. And, uh, I even volunteered. We trained, uh, the Marine Reserve unit here that runs from, uh, New Orleans up through here. We trained the entire battalion. I'm talking like 800 men in like 5 months. I did all that for free, right? And when you're doing these courses, you don't, you don't switch out instructors. So when you do, do the urban warfare, when that urban warfare course starts, I don't go home until the course is over. So, I'm working, uh, anywhere from 16 to 24 hours at one period. It's brutal. It's, it's part of the course because you have to be able to, uh, you have to have credibility with your students. If you keep switching guys in and out, it doesn't work that way, you know. So, plus when you're suffering with these guys with the sleep deprivation and you're still operating at a high peak, they can see that they can do it as well.

And, uh, yeah, and I brought a ton of business to this place from the Air Force. Every Air Force unit, combat control, prayer, rescue, man, came to DARC because I brought him there. So I thought me and this guy were friends. Uh, very first course, he didn't pay me. And I'm like, "Hey, man." I was like, "We had an agreement. You know, I retired because of this." He said, "Well, I just don't have it." I'm like, "Well, that's not good enough. I got a family to take care of, dude." And, uh, I resigned. And then he went out of his way trying to smear my name, which didn't work. Uh, yeah. Anyway, but it was just, uh, so then I had to start contracting, which contracting, security contracted. I had to start looking for jobs that I had my skills with, which I didn't have a college education. All I knew was carrying guns, shooting, uh, my reputation, and that's what I used to get jobs.

So, I stood up the, uh, uh, the Navy started a combat, uh, what do they call it? Can't think of the name of it now. Uh, Expeditionary Combat Skills course in Mississippi that bring out in all these guys and they assign you to do these jobs and you had to like basically compete for these jobs. Well, I ended up being, uh, outperforming everyone. So, I took over the rifle, pistol, and the tactics piece. Uh, met a guy named Paul Marle who, he's got a show now called Student of the Gun. Great guy, super smart guy. He was one of the guys that worked for me. Uh, but the politics that was going on at the time there, I couldn't, I just couldn't stand it.

Well, another job opening came up with the same company called the Fox Team and it was going to be doing counter, uh, there be sensitive site exploitation in Iraq. So, basically what we do is we would go in and do post-bomb analysis on IEDs and we try to find out what the bombs were made, uh, who made them, the path they came from, that kind of deal. So, I took the job as a UAV team leader, uh, with that guy. So what we would do is we'd go out and that happened. I put the UAV in the air and we'd fly the security over top, see what's going on, that kind of stuff. Uh, deployed doing that. Uh, I actually was in, uh, place called FOB Loyalty for about 2 months and I tore my bicep and I had to get sent home. I had to have surgery. So that set me back. So I was out of work for like a year with that. And of course, drinking, still fighting. I had, I had a cast on my arm and me and my wife were at a bar and somebody said something to her where we were playing pool and I told him basically, you know, "I ain't going to take too much more of this." And he said something else and I hit him a couple times and I hit his friend and I've got a cast on my arm like to the elbow like up here so my arm can't move and he tries getting up and he grabs a bottle off the table and I was like, I said, "You sure you want to do that?" I said, I said, "Both of you just got beat." I said, "Both of you just got beat up by a one-armed man." And like you hear everybody start laughing, right? It was, yeah, sounds funny now, but it's like it was just, I had no tolerance for that stuff, man. And, and I was fortunate that the bar, uh, it was called the Goalpost. It was my bar and everybody knew me and I never started any problems there. But I never put up with anything and everybody that I, I hit deserved it. And, uh, so I never got in trouble and that kind of stuff.

And then I got healed up and I got an opportunity to go apply to be GRS guy, Global Response Staff for the agency. And there was a private company which they do. The agency sends out, they have all these different vehicles. They'll have companies that they'll give contracts to to have these guys go out and, uh, hire people. So, they're not directly connected to the agency, uh, and they're not directly paid by the agency. It's like a third-party vendor type deal. And the company I went to work for, uh, SOC. You, you apply, they check your, your resume, make sure you check your credentials, and then you have to go through a 30-day vetting course. Very difficult. Uh, rifle, rifle, pistol standards very high. Uh, tactics very high. Driving, you go to, uh, teach crash cars, driving, all this kind of stuff. Super cool stuff. Like I'm sitting there like, "You don't get paid when you're going through vetting." But I didn't care because it is just, you get, you get to do some of the coolest stuff and, and you get, it's, it's work, you know. And, uh, I passed vetting the first time. One thing I liked about it too is every week you have peer review. So, you have to rate the guys you work with and why you wouldn't work with them or if they're on the scale, which was great. Love that.

Uh, there's a, you know, Evan Hafer, Black Rifle Coffee Company. Okay. Well, he, uh, he used to work at DARC with me. Yeah. He's a great guy. Well, he, when I got, uh, when you, every year you have, every two years you have to go recall. Well, at this, my second recall, he was one of the actual cadre guys. So I was like, "Hey, man, what's up?" You know, he's super good guy. Uh, super extremely talented, too. Rifle, pistol stuff. Guy's very smart, very, very good guy. Uh, I know there was, last couple years, they've been people trying to bag on Black Rifle Coffee Company. I don't know the politics about that. All I can tell you, speaking personally about Evan, great guy, tactically, magnificent. I'd fight with the guy anywhere. Uh, anyway, so passed the course. Uh, did my first rotation in Iraq at the place called the Villa, which is like the main headquarters. You have different outposts all over Iraq for different GRS operations. And basically what GRS does, it's, uh, stands for Global Response Staff. Uh, what we do is we protect case officers, spies for the agency, is what we do. So they'll meet with people. Uh, we'll, uh, depending what's going on and where we're going, we'll go out and meet with whoever they're meeting with. If we have to go pick people up, we'll go pick them up and they'll either have the meeting in the car or we'll go to a secure location or a restaurant or something like that and they'll do, conduct all their operations. We have to protect everything to do it. Uh, very dangerous work. Uh, like I don't know if you ever seen the movie Zero Dark Thirty, there's a scene in there where, uh, the doctor kills, he has, he's wired with a vest and he blows up a bunch of people at the base. Well, that was the GRS guys that got killed because when you're, when you're a GRS operator, when it comes to security operations, you are the authority. You have final say on everything. That person in the car with you, even the chief of station doesn't have the say. Well, everything the GRS guys said not to do, this chick overrode him. Like, "No, he's a good guy." Like, "Get rid of all security protocols, everything." Ended up killing a bunch of guys. She got killed, too. But the politics is what sickens me. Uh, those guys should not have been dead. They were trying to do their jobs and they got sacrificed, basically. So, you see stuff like that. Uh, I saw that quite a bit. And my first rotation, I was at the billet in Baghdad. I did a 90-day rotation. I'm not going to talk about, uh, like operational stuff too much, but, uh, I can tell you that, uh, a lot of the people that work in that agency are so anti-American. It is disgusting. It is like, uh, you have like these case officers like they hated us. We, we were people that saved their lives. These people think that they're Jason Bourne. They have zero skills, survival skills. They wanted to do like self-drive stuff where like two case officers would go out in Baghdad and pick up an asset by themselves. One, like one, a female, by the way, too. I'm like, they, they're brainwashed to believe insanity.

Well, you get a thing on these guys. Whoever you're picking up, you have a move sheet and whoever you're picking up, you, you know their history, what they do, uh, all this stuff. And a lot of times we're picking up guys that are known Al-Qaeda members, uh, what is it? The, uh, not Revolutionary Guard. I can't remember the name. Something Brigade. Like they've admitted to killing Americans, IED makers. So you have this whole sheet on this dude that you got to go pick up that is spying now, that's telling on his people. And you're sitting, you know, right next to this guy in the car. Sometimes you're just like, "Why are we even doing this?" It's the, it makes no sense. And you.

Well, I tell you, one of the hairiest things you got to do. So, when you're a team leader of the move, you'll be in the passenger seat. You'll have a driver. Uh, you'll have your, the case officer and interpreter if, if the whoever you're picking up doesn't speak English. And then you have a follow car. Has a driver and a shift lead, the number two guy. So if you're picking somebody out in town, like as a team, there, I have to get out of the car, walk up to this guy, and give him a man hug. Basically, a hugging to see he's not wearing a vest, suicide vest. So you're getting a quick vest, which is, yeah, sucks. And then he gets in the car, he puts his hand, yeah. Like especially, you're going to some of the worst parts of Baghdad. It's like pitch black, dirty, rotten, nasty. And then you know this guy, he's admitted to killing Americans, you know, he's an IED maker, all this kind of stuff. And you got to walk up, that's the job, you know, it's just part of the job. You got to do it. And, uh, and one of the things that people would say to me, especially my family, they were just like, "Why do you keep doing that? Why do you keep going back doing that job?" And I'm like, "Well, but number one, I didn't, I didn't have skills to get another job that could pay me the money I was making, you know?" Uh, but number two is that I knew that if I got out of that car, if I had to get out of that car and go to guns with somebody, those dudes in the car would get out and go die with me. I wasn't going to die alone. I know that for a fact. And, you know, like the Benghazi example, prime example of that, those dudes disobeyed the chief of station, the chief of base to go save the ambassador, which if they had got to leave early, they might have saved him and they gave their lives for that. And it's knowing that you're working with men like that. It's hard to explain to people, uh, the comfort you have in knowing that you know you're going to die or you, if you step out of this car, you might get killed, but just knowing you have this comfort that this dude, I know is going to go to guns with you, that helps relieve a lot of the fear that you go through, you know.

And, uh, I can tell you, uh, yeah, there's a, there's a place or, you know, and like a, I got sent all over, like a lot of, a lot of guys call a homestead. They'll go to one location in Baghdad, Iraq, and they like to stay there, right? Like those places were super chill, super nice, no action, that kind of stuff. Uh, I got sent all over Iraq and I got my second rotation went to a place called Basra. It's in southern Iraq and everybody in Basra hates you. Like usually if you go to some, like in Baghdad, you know, if people like, you know, most people are friendly, like they'll wave to you, they'll be nice to you. Like they're not like terrorists, you know what I mean? But everybody in Basra, they hate you. Like, do you, you can see it, like you can see their face. They.

Well, what happened was in the job, you have license plates on your car and they were Velcroed on. Well, in Iraq, they, they're riveted on, right? And before they didn't have like a, like a real DMV database, that kind of stuff. But later on, they started getting where they were running plates. So we were in Basra and really dangerous location. So, we had to get new plates. And you can't just go order new plates. So, my team got tasked with going to, uh, acquire some plates. So, I practiced all day on some vehicles how to get the rivets off to get the plates off quickly. And when you're in, uh, country there, you're not allowed to dress like the native people, right? So, you're supposed to be wearing whatever you're wearing, which is usually like blue jeans and a cover shirt that covers your body, arm, and your weapons, but we had man jammies. So, when we went out in town to do this at night, uh, we had the right garb to do this. So, we were out getting, taking plates off and, uh, we got kind of not caught, but somebody came out while we were doing this, so we had to haul ass out. So, we're driving and we're in two vehicles and we end, we end up getting lost and, uh, and there's checkpoints all over the city and this kind of stuff, right? Well, we come to a checkpoint and usually we'll show diplomatic credentials and they just wave you through. They're not supposed to stop you, but they, they wouldn't let us go. And something you understand about the Iraqis, too, is none of these people can make a decision. Like, if they're a policeman or a soldier, they got to ask 20 people and that guy's got to ask 20 people, right? Well, this move was a, uh, the team leader is a guy named Dodge. Everybody goes by call signs. His name was Dodge. Big blond-haired former SEAL, long blonde hair. He looked like He-Man almost, big dude. Uh, a lot of people didn't like the guy. I liked him because he was just, he, he was who he was, you know, good operator. Uh, so we get stopped and they're not, this guy, he gets out of the car so he can deescalate, right? So he starts talking and this goes on for like 30, 40 minutes and then gun trucks start showing up and we're like, "Oh shit." And then he's talking on the radio. It's like, "Everything's good, whatever, blah, blah." And then more guns show up. Pretty soon there's like eight or nine gun trucks and we're like surrounded. And of course, each guy that runs each truck can't make a decision, so they got to call somebody else. Well, I guess the last guy that shows up was acting pretty sketchy and Dodge, he comes over the radio and he's like, "Hey, everybody come off safe." That means weapon's hot. So, we come off safe and we start getting assignments in the cars. I'm like, "Hey, I got this guy, this guy. I got the gun out of this truck." And we crack seal on the doors. And, uh, I can tell you right there too, it's the, the pucker factor goes completely up. And I'm sitting there, I'm just like, "I hate this job right now." I'm like, "I'm going to get, I'm going to die and get." 'cause if we didn't guns, we all got killed. We were way outgunned. And I was just like, "Oh god, this is terrible, right?" So, got no spit in your mouth. Your heart's going like 1,000 miles an hour. Everybody's trying to look cool like, "Yeah, we're good." You know, but everybody's like, "Oh shit." You know. And God bless Dodge, man. Dodge was just like, he was super chill about everything, right? Well, finally some other guy shows up and he's like talking the dirt tug and I can see Dodge. He's, yeah. And I can see Dodge. He starts kind of like laughing and he goes, "It's all good, man." He's like, "Uh, he goes, uh, we're going to get back to D. We're going to follow these dudes." So he gets in the car and he tells everybody. He's like, "The dude that showed up told us that the reason they brought in the gun trucks is 'cause we were in such a bad part of town, they didn't think we'd make it out, so they were going to escort us." I was like, "All right, that's cool." So we go back to the, the army base they got, right? So these guys in the trucks, we, the couple were speaking English. So we're talking to them and a lot of these dudes are just like us. They're just like regular, like army dudes. And the one guy is like, "I hate it here." He's like, "This town, this place is terrible. These people are terrible." He's like, "I've been shot." Like pulled his sleeve up. He shoved me. He's got shy. He's like, "I've been shot here." He's like, "I hate this place." But, you know, it was just, they hated their job. They hated what they do. And I was like, "You sound like army privates." You know, it was, it was kind of funny.

So, we're there for like a couple hours waiting to get released and they have a version of their CIA. This guy shows up in this beat-up ass car and he comes out and he takes all our passports and he goes away for like 20 minutes. He comes back, gives our stuff, and then they escort us back to the base. We do our debrief and all that. Uh, and then like a week later, we have a, a required meeting that, uh, the chief of base, which is the head CIA guy for the base, he has to go downtown and meet with the local people, like the local politicians and all this stuff. And to get to this place, it's literally a, a floating bridge that does this. It's, it's like on barrels and it would fit one car and it's like, and that's the only way to get to this little island plate. It's like, I'm like, "Who thinks of this stuff, right?" Anyway, so we get there and I'm standing outside the door with another guy and that dude that took our passports walks right up to me. He's like, "Mr. John," he's like, "How are you doing today?" And I was just like, I was like, "Oh, I know who you are now." And I was like, "Oh shit." Right. I was like, "Oh." And Howie, the number two guy, he comes out of the meeting and I told him, I said, "Hey, man." I said, "Uh, that dude from last week, I was like, he came right up to me and talked to me, called me by my name, my first name." And he was like, "Oh, is that right?" I was like, "Yeah." I said, "So, man, I couldn't, I couldn't go back out to that meeting again." That's how good those guys were doing stuff. Yeah. Crazy, man. Just stuff like that. You're like, "Huh?" And then we get back and like two days later, they poisoned all the water. We had to drink all bottled. Like we couldn't use the showers 'cause they just, the place is like bizarre. Just complete backwards. But I was so happy to get out of that place. It was crazy, dude.

I can tell you, uh, I was in Baghdad when that went down and, uh, there's some stuff that happened prior to that, uh, that kind of set the stage for that in Baghdad, right? So when we go get, you have radios and cell phones that are issued to you. So when they give you the call, you have to come to the team room, right? And all of us got the call. So we show up to the team room. They give us a brief. Said, "Hey, the am, the, the annex in Benghazi's been attacked. Uh, the ambassador is missing." Like all this stuff going down. We're just like, "What?" And then they tell you, you know, who's on the ground there. You don't know who, like if you, if you don't work the job, you won't know who they are, but they have call signs. Everybody has call signs, right? Mine was JB. Very simple. Some guys are, you know, uh, uh, like, uh, Drago and all this other kind of wacky stuff, right? When they told the call signs of who was on the ground, I was like, "Oh shit." And then they come back and, you know, we're getting updates what's going on. And, uh, you find out that, uh, Ty Woods ran was killed and, uh, Glenn Doy was killed. But, uh, both SEALs, both very well-respected guys, well-known guys, uh, good relationships with many of the guys that were on the ground that night. And it was just like suffocating, like weight in the room. It was just because then when you start finding out all the things that were denied to them, uh, all the things they did in spite of what they were told not to do. Like, it's just, they saved, ended up saving 38 State Department people. If they wouldn't have did what they did, they'd all have been killed. And I think that obviously was the plan. I think that was the plan to get them all killed because they wanted the ambassador dead because of what they were doing there. They were buying back weapons that the United States government were giving ISIS people with. Yeah. That's what was going on. And they denied special forces, uh, QRF teams. They denied air cover. They did all these things because, but the, the problem they didn't count on was the GRS operators saying, "No, we're going to defend this." And they did. And they defended with their lives. And you can't give those guys enough credit. Like the. And to see the lies and the blowback that they got here back in the States from the politicians is just disgusting, man. Like it's, and that was one of the, uh, one of the major deciding factors when I decided to not work anymore. Um, after that happened, that was running, he was one of the guys in charge, Ninja, great guy, former KAG dude, which is a Delta Force guy. He tasked me with writing the GRS escape evasion recovery plan for, like, something happened like that for our guys in Iraq. We'd have a plan that everybody could go to and do. So it took me about 3 months to write it. I wrote that and until I stopped working in 2016 or so, uh, that was the standard operating procedure for the agency for those guys.

While I was doing that, uh, what helped, well, this is something that leaving, when I left, uh, I was proud of is that we had a guy come in was called a walk-in. And people approach the embassy and they'll say, "Hey, I got information." And he said he had information on a, uh, the last MIA KIA American named Major Troy Gilbert. He was an F-16 pilot and he was a supporting, uh, SF team and he was doing gun runs in his jet and he was flying so low that he couldn't recover and he ended up crashing, but he survived the crash. Right. Well, they didn't recover. Yeah, they didn't recover his body and, uh, what do you call, uh, so they had information. They've been trying to find this guy for a long time and this guy comes in, he says, "Hey, I know the location of his remains, you know, XYZ." So me and another guy, which is one of the agency guys, I, another, uh, intel guy, they're like, "What do you think?" I'm like, "I say we shut down all operations for the GRS in the country. Uh, we get the, uh, the Iraqi army set a cordon perimeter around where this location is and we go in and we get his remains. You know, I said, I think if the longer we put this off, the less chance we're going to have to get this guy." Well, politics get, gets involved. Uh, they shoot that down. I rotate out. Um, nothing happens. I come back for the next rotation. Same thing. Uh, they, they think they know where he's at, but the United States government will pull the trigger on this to go get the dude. Well, come to find out right before I left, uh, I guess they, uh, some of the intelligence we gathered and some of the operations we did, they led, uh, part of the recovery of, uh, some of his hand and they had it in Jordan. I guess with these assets had it in Jordan. So they ended up getting part of his remains. And I'll tell you what was crazy is like the couple days after that I found that out, I was like, "All right, cool. We got at least some family got something back." I'm on YouTube and a video pops up and you know who it is? It's Major Troy Gilbert's last message to his family, like the night before he flew his mission. He was talking to his wife and kids. I think it was like Christmas Eve or something like that or Thanksgiving. And I never searched for the guy's name, but it came up in my feed on YouTube. I was like, "How, how odd is that?" You know, I was like, "Wow." So, I watched it, man. I got me choked up. I was just like, "Man, I just kept thinking if we would have acted on this five, six months ago, maybe we could have got his arm or his leg or even something more." But again, politics, bureaucracy like poo-pooed all that. That was like one of the last straws for me, too. I was just like, "It's not worth the money anymore, you know, especially after Benghazi and all that kind of stuff." Plus, you had a bunch of internal, uh, what do you call it? The politics in it, but dealing with people that you know, I'll tell you, prime example. Uh, I was a team leader from one of the moves and the case officer. She's a female. She's probably 26, 27 years old, about 100 pounds, >> right? >> So when you give your brief, you have, you give your brief on what's required to wear and policy from the chief of station, which is the number one guy in the country, is when you leave the wire, you have to have your body armor on and a weapon, right? I give the brief, everything's good to go. I have one of my guys come up and tell me he's like, "Hey, JB." Uh, she doesn't have her plates in. I'm like, "What do you mean?" She's got her carrier but no plates. So, I go up to her. I said, "Hey, ma'am." I said, "You got to have, uh, your plates in." She's like, "Well, it hurts my back. Blah, blah, blah. I'm not going out." Said, "Well, you're not going out then." Well, she like gets all poo-pooed face and goes around me and goes to the chief of base, who then turns to go to the chief of station. Chief of Station's like, "No, policy is you're going to wear your plates." Well, they come back to me, >> right? They come back to me and they're like, "All right, she got to wear a plate." I'm like, "Great." I had to carry her plates and plate carrier down to the car for her because it hurt her back. And I'm like, "She shouldn't be leaving there. She shouldn't be out of the wire. She's not physically able to sit in a car with plates on." I said, "She's now, she's become a liability to me and the rest of my team because now I got to drag." It's stuff like that, brother. Okay. It's, it's so insane that you just like, "How are these, but these are the people that are making these decisions?" It, it's like one of those, I was just like, "I'm dumbfounded." I'm just like, "Wow, that makes perfect sense." It's just, yeah. But it was like, yes, 100%.

And like you, if you saw the amount of money, like I personally have taken $2.5 million in cash in a bag in a duffel bag in a trunk of a car to a sheikh. Like we had to drive and mind you, the cars, the cars are, they're way past their service, they're armored vehicles, but they're way past our service life. Some of the doors don't shut all the way. They break down all the time. We're driving 45, 50 miles outside of Baghdad into like the bad guy town with $2.5 million in cash. And that was just one time. We had four or five teams operating doing that all over the country. We're giving these people cash. Just, it's insane, dude. And you're, everybody in the country is on payroll, too, by the way. Like you pick people up and get in a car that work in the banks, uh, the government, like almost all the generals, uh, their FBI guy. Like, it's like, "Who are we not paying?" It's crazy. And we can't even get a car that runs half the time. I'm being dead serious. It's, it's so frustrating because, because the guys I worked with, you know, most of them are like legit patriots. Like, dude, they're, they're trying to do the right thing, man. You know, they're trying to do the right thing, trying to help people, trying to, like, pursue America's mission. And then you get that kind of stuff thrown in your face, you're just like, "Is it worth doing it anymore?" It just, it wasn't. It wasn't.

Oh, politics seems to get involved in everything and, um, I mean, they're, uh, they're, they're the people that we elect that are supposed to work for us and for some reason, it doesn't feel like that. And then even on top of that, it feels like there's somebody controlling even our biggest top politicians. Yeah. I'm a firm believer of that. Those agencies, they're not there to protect Americans. They're there to protect the people that, uh, actually pay the government, you know, and that's all of them. That's MI6, all those people. You have certain floors in each of those buildings that control everything. And they'll have, you know, regular operations going on, but the other operations are used to get dirt on people, to kill people so they can keep their power, to do all these other things. People think that's movie stuff, but that's 100% not true. And then when you see like stuff coming out, Epstein files, it just validates everything that we're talking about right now. It's, it's, and how people aren't overthrowing the government right now is beyond me. Just, it's crazy.

Let's try not to end up with somebody visiting my door out here.

So, uh, you know, in 2000, May of 2000, Memorial Day of 2005, three of my, three of my teammates got killed in Iraq. So, we were going to three separate funerals. First one was to Derek's, my team leader, in, uh, California, Lompoc, California. Uh, we went out there, did the funeral. I was on the way back. We're in the airport at Santa Maria. And I'd been drinking and, uh, a little drunk, ain't going to lie, and pretty, pretty emotional. And I hear somebody talking on the phone, and I can, I recognize the voice. I'm like, "I know that voice from somewhere." I start looking around and he's a little guy, man. And he's like 5'6, 5'7, about 85 lbs, a little small guy. And he had like a white t-shirt on. And, uh, I looked over and sure as, sure as it is, it's Dan Abrams. And, you know, I've been seeing all the reporting how bad they're talking about the military 'cause the war was going on pretty, pretty heavy that time. So I go over to him and he's on the phone and I'm like staring at him. I'm like, "Hey, get off the phone." And he's like, he's looking at me. He's like, "What?" He's like, "Hold on a second." And I said, "Yeah, get off the phone. I want to talk to you." And he's like, "Uh, let me call you back." And, uh, I start going in on him like, "Hey, man." I said, "You know, I think it's pretty messed up. I didn't, I was cursing a little bit, you know. I think it's pretty messed up that, uh, you're kind of reporting, you guys are doing." It's like, "You reporting all this bad stuff." I said, "You don't report anything good what we're doing, you know, this and that." And I'm getting pretty heated. And, uh, to Dan's credit, he kept his composure because he probably thought I was going to hit him or something, which he probably wasn't wrong. Uh, well, my boss, who's a major, uh, Mike Flattton, he comes over and he's like, "JB, JB," and he's like, "Calm down, man." He's like, "Come on." I was like, "I said, no, I said, we're good, right, Dan?" I said, "We're good, right?" And he was like, "Yeah." I said, "We're good. I said, I'm just talking. I said, I'm just talking, man." And so we started talking a little bit and he asked me what's going on. So I told him about Derek and Casey and Jeremy and, uh, what we were doing and he was like, "Okay." He's like, "Hey, uh," he gives me his card and he's like, "Hey, uh, call my producer on Monday and I want to do something for your friends." I'm like, "Okay, I appreciate it." I thought he was blowing smoke, whatever.

So, we get on the plane, we fly back to LA. As we're getting off the plane in LA, there's an old guy as we're departing, probably 60s, 70s. He's early 70s, old guy. He didn't look healthy at all. He looked sick. Him and his wife. And he's walking. He fell like right in front of me. He like stumbled, fell face first, busted his head and his nose and his lip and like people just walked right around him. I couldn't, I couldn't believe it. I was just like, and of course immediately go like try to help the guy and I told Major Flatten and, uh, uh, can't think, I'm losing my train. What's this? Uh, Rob, excuse me, Brad Riley. Sorry, Brad Riley, who was on crutches 'cause he got shot in Afghanistan. So, he's got shot through the foot. So, he's on crutches. I said, "Hey, man. You guys stay with him." I took all our stuff, our clothing bags, gave it to Dan Abrams. So, he's like standing there with like all our stuff like a sherpa. So, I ran down the gateway and trying to find some help for this guy. And I find no one wants to help this. I can't find anybody in the airport to help him. I get a wheelchair. We get him to the bathroom. We're trying to clean his face up and all this stuff. Then finally paramedics show up and Dan's like following us around with all our stuff and he was just like, "Hey, he's like, I'm serious, just call me on Monday, blah, blah, blah." I was like, "Yeah, whatever."

And I come to work on Monday and his, his producer had already emailed me. She was like, "Hey, I'm so-and-so with the Abrams show. I want to do XYZ." She's like, "I needed some information." I sent her all the information I had on what happened, who Jeremy, Nate, Derek, and everybody were. And, uh, he ended up doing a segment on his show at the end of his show about a minute long or so. And he did a fantastic job. You know, he represented them well and it meant a lot to the families, too. And he made, uh, copies, CD copies, and he mailed them to us. He mailed them to me and then I gave them to the families, you know, and it was nice to see finally somebody recognize the sacrifice people are making that it's real. It's not just something you see on TV. He got to experience it firsthand of the pain that goes along with it, you know, 'cause those people, they don't understand that. They don't care. They really don't care. But I give him credit, you know, because he is not a conservative person by any means, but he did the right, he did the right thing and he did a good job of, you know, production crew and everything. So, I give him hats up. Once in a while, I'll email him and you got to pay to email him, too, by the way. Uh, and I'll.

Yeah, it's like one of, it's weird. And I'll say, "Hey, I don't know if you remember me, but you did something good for my friends. I appreciate it." You know, thank you so much. And, uh, it was a good thing he did, and it was meant a lot to the families. My closing argument, a story about my time in Santa Maria, California that has nothing to do with Michael Jackson. I was flying out of Santa Maria for the weekend and was approached in the airport by a guy named John who said he was a fan of the show. He was with what I assumed were two friends, one on crutches. They just looked like three guys on vacation. I quickly learned that their trip to the area was anything but. They were in town for the funeral of a colleague, one of their quote teammates, Captain Derek M. Argel of Lompoc, California, who along with three others died in a plane crash.

On Memorial Day in Iraq, Captain Argel, 28, was survived by his wife Wendy and 11-month-old son, Logan. Argel's was the first of three funerals they would be traveling to attend. Also, that of Captain Jeremy Frescus of Farmington, New Mexico, and Sergeant Casey Crate of Spanaway, Washington. All members of the 23rd Special Tactics Squadron out of Herbert Field, Florida, an elite Air Force unit that has, among other things, been helping to locate bombing targets in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So, here I am consumed with the minutia of a celebrity trial in California while these guys are doing the nation's work. I was almost ashamed that Sergeant John, they've asked me to only use their first names, had walked up to me to tell me how much he liked my work rather than me walking up to him. But that's just the beginning.

I learned that the one on crutches, Sergeant Brad I'll call him, was recovering from a gunshot wound he received in April in Afghanistan. His team had been called in to support an ambushed coalition convoy. He apparently killed a number of enemy fighters and performed life-saving treatment on another wounded soldier after he was hit with a round from an AK-47.

Okay, so now I'm thinking about the relative insignificance of my life on my short flight from Santa Maria to LA. As we're leaving the plane, Sergeant John was offering up some suggestions for better coverage of our men and women in uniform when an elderly man about 10 yards in front of us falls flat on his face. I later learned he just had chemotherapy, his head and his hands severely bruised and bleeding.

Immediately, Sergeant John called to Sergeant Brad, Major Mike, and instructed them to stay with the fallen man while he ran for help. Sergeant Brad on his crutches ran down the gateway. It was as if they had trained for this mission, too. To help anyone in need. They called for first aid. There was none. They did what they could. Eventually got a wheelchair and took him to the men's room, helped him clean up. About 30 minutes later, a medic arrived, and all was well. These guys are heroes on the battlefield, but they're also living heroic lives, making sure their fallen comrades are remembered properly, and while they're there, helping out anyone else in need. Sergeant John, Sergeant Brad, and Major Mike, I salute you guys.

Coming up, your emails on the Jackson Jurors. And he actually made it better than it he he made it sound a lot more uh positive on my end than it was because I came across very aggressive with him and he handled it with a lot of grace and I'll give him credit for that as well.

>> Hey, so I was told to ask you a question from uh Dandy Callum. He's been blowing me up. He said to ask you about being lost out in the wilderness and having a near-death experience.

No. All right. I'm like, my face is getting red now. All right. So, Lord have mercy. This is funny because, yeah. And you know what? I completely forgot about that till you just said that. And it's taken like, what is this, 2026? It's taken 10 years to live that down. Uh, we were in the me uh, a friend of mine, another friend of mine and his wife, we went camping in the Ozark National Forest and it's March and it was cold. It was like uh, during the day it was like 35, at night it was like 22. It was pretty cold and we're camping. We had a fire and all this and it was late and everybody went to bed and I'm been drinking, of course, and I didn't want to go to bed. I wanted to drink some more and I needed more firewood. So I went to get more firewood and if you've ever been in a real forest, it's you can't really walk like you see in the movies. I mean, it's there's trees and all this stuff. And I went off and uh, I, I must have fell. I don't remember. And I woke up. It was kind of daylight. It was still dark, but it was daylight. And I, my head hurt. I was bleeding. I busted my head open. I was like, "What the," you know, I'm still pretty drunk. And uh, I was medicated, too. I was taking a lot of pills. Gives them, you know, I was the VA was giving me uh, anti-depressants. I was taking Xanax and my pain medicine for my injuries. Stupid mix. But it was one of like, now I can look at it and go, "What are you, you're you're so, so irresponsible, you know?" Cuz I had a family, I had children, you know, just irresponsible. I don't look at that way cuz I was just, I was so miserable. I was so broken, but I didn't really recognize it, you know? Anyway, and I'm hurt. I'm like, "Damn, I don't know where I'm at." And I didn't. So, I just started walking trying to find my way out, right? I had on a pair of like, like hiking pants, some tennis shoes. I had a t-shirt and a like a windbreaker jacket. That's all I had. And uh, I'm walking and daylight comes up. I still have no idea where I'm at. There's no sign of anything. And I come through this stream, probably like 20 feet across. So I try to cross it. I went and put my, there's like a big rock sticking out of the water. So I was going to like put my foot and jump across. Well, I put my foot and it slipped and I fell chest first on this boulder. And I, you hear like crunch and I could hear it in my head. I was like, like knocked the wind out of me and I fell in the water, which was freezing cold. So I think that kept me conscious, otherwise I think it would have knocked me out. And I'm like, like, "Oh, I can get to the shore." I'm like, "Can't hardly breathe." Like, "Oh, like hurt." I know I hurt. I thought I thought I broke some ribs, is what I thought. And uh, and I get up and I pull my shirt up and I got this like, it looked like a, a bent eggplant going like from the top of where my penis is up off to the left side of my belly button. And I was like, "Oh, that ain't good." And I was like, I just tuck my shirt in. I was like, "All right, well, I'm just going to keep going." You know, I, and I really couldn't breathe right. So, I kept walking and uh, I come to this place that said uh, uh, it used, it looked like it was old. It said you used to have inner tubes for rent or something, which didn't make any sense because the water is not inner tube deep or whatever. Right. And then off, yeah. And off to the distance, there was like a, like a not a cabin, like an improvised building, but you could tell somebody actually took time to build it. And then there were uh, little, you ever see like the little plastic soldiers they put up on the ground for like target practice, like like little like uh, plastic army men, but they're like hollow. There were several of those around and I was like, "That's weird." I was like, "Hey, well, maybe there's some people around here, right?" So I start walking and uh, it gets weirder and weirder and then I see some uh, vehicles that I've never seen before. People in uniform I've never seen before. And I'm like, "Listen, man." I said, "I'm hurt." I said, "Can you help me?" No one will talk to me. No one will speak to me. I'm being dead serious. And it was so weird cuz I'm like, "Hey, man." I said, "I'm a retired military guy." I said, "I'm hurt." I said, "I need some help." And no one would talk to me. It was the weirdest thing ever because I've never seen people in uniforms like that before. And I never seen the vehicles like that before. And there was a lot of people out there. It was, it was odd. And I don't know if uh, it, I'm being, I'm being dead serious, brother. I'm on, I'm on my children's life. And so I'm like, whatever. So I'm, I keep walking and walking and walking and I try to cross another slip and fall, hit my head again and I'm just at this point, I'm so frustrated and I'm just like, so I keep walking and I'm going up and down these hills and all that stuff. Night comes, I'm freezing to death. It's so cold. So I'm like trying to cover myself with leaves and then I start wheezing. I can like, just, I'm like, "M, that's not good." Daylight comes up, I keep walking. And usually when you go anywhere in the forest, you can find trash, signs of people, right? I didn't see any trash. There was nothing. And I was like, "Man, this is, this is weird." So, day two goes by, day night goes by, so I'm not there the second night. And I didn't know, I didn't know till after I got back. It was like 27 degrees. And uh, I'm trying to stay, I'm trying to stay warm. I've got these leaves covered off me. I'm just jackhammering, like freezing. I'm, I'm wet. And I tell you, it's funny as I'm laying there and I hear this like growling. I'm like, I was like, I was thinking either like, I'm, I think it was a mountain lion or hogs. I'm, I'm not kidding. I started laughing. I was like, "Oh, this is great." I was like, "I'm going to die out here getting eaten by a mountain lion, right? Or a hog, right?" Well, it was my stomach growling. It was my stomach growling, but it, I wasn't hungry, but it was just growling. It was so weird. I started, it was kind of a moment of levity. And if you ever been lost, like you, there's this thing called infrasound, and you start hearing music. You think you're hearing people talking. I kept hearing music like all kinds of, I was like, "Man, there's a must be a bar or something around here." But it was, it was just the sound of the forest. And like I would, I would stop and I'd pray, you know, and it, I was saved then, but I, I was, I believed in God, but I was not practicing at all. I mean, it was just, but I was praying and uh, I was talking to myself and I'd pray and I'd stop and then uh, the wheezing started getting really worse and I knew I was something was wrong and uh, my legs started hurting really bad, getting really stiff and my feet were like, I took my shoes off one time and I almost could get my shoes back on. My feet were so, so swollen and like I was trying to come up the hill and I slipped and fell and I like came upside down and I was hanging upside down on the hill and I almost started crying. I was just like, I was so frustrated. It was just like I couldn't and I'd follow, I thought I'd follow the water. I'd follow the stream down and I'd find my way out. Fall to a stream, move it just stopped like rocks and I have to turn around and it was this went on for like 3 days. And uh, I finally, finally I get up this hill and I slip and fall again and I'm laying there just in agony cuz I knew something was really wrong then cuz like I couldn't breathe and every time I, I thought I had broken ribs or broke my sternum and I knew I was sick because I couldn't, I was like, like getting that really bad wheezing, I started coughing, which made everything else worse cuz and I, I'd start coughing almost pass out. I have to sit down and then I, I'd pray. I keep walking and I came to the top of this hill, you know, it's like a old dirt road that hadn't been used in a while. And I was like, "Oh, thank God it's a road." So, I just like, "Which way do I go?" And I thought to myself, "Right, right way of life." That's what I said to myself. And I just followed the road for a while longer and I came to a, a dirt road, like an approved dirt road. And the same thing, it went two ways. And I'm like, "All right, let's go right." And uh, I started walking and my legs stopped working. Like they were like, they wouldn't bend anymore. They were like super stiff. I'm just like, like this isn't good. And I, I couldn't breathe. And I, I found a uh, old Bud Light bottle, but it was the metal one. And I had anything to drink for the whole time. And there was like a, a puddle and I found it bottle. I took the lid off and I bent down to uh, scoop the water up and my legs didn't bend. I fell face first into the road and I, I started, I started laughing because I had to look ridiculous cuz I just like fell forward like and like just like the, probably if I didn't laugh, I'd have started crying. I was so frustrated and I was just like, and then one, was it the, was it the sec, second night or the third part or third morning when I was, I was coughing, I almost passed out and I came to, I was like, sitt there, I was so ashamed. I was like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "You got a wife and children and you're going to die out here and no one's going to know. Your, your wife and your kids are going to think that you just left them." That's what they, that's what they. And I was like, the shame I had plus my background like in special operations and all this, I shouldn't have been lost. I shouldn't have been in this position to start with. I totally put myself in the position just by being stupid, legitimately stupid. And it hit me just like I had so much shame that it was just, it was almost unbearable. But something, I, I just kept one foot after the other and I rolled over and I got up and I started walking down the road and it started getting really bad. I started going, I couldn't get a breath and I was getting really dizzy and here comes a truck up the road. I was like, and you, I had my, I had blood all over my face, dude. I looked terrible. I had thorns all my fingers like in my, like I had thorns everywhere. And uh, this guy stops and he's like, "Uh, partner, you look like you need some help." And I couldn't hardly talk. I was like, I said, "I, I need to go to the hospital." And his wife got out a truck. She's like, "Come here." And she like got me in a truck. She took her jacket off, gave me her jacket. She gave me her Diet Coke and they called the uh, ambulance on the drive and they're sitting there trying to talk to me and they're being super, super nice and I'm like, I'm fighting everything not to break down crying and not pass out. I felt so bad. I was just, I thought I was dying. I ain't going to lie. And uh, they're being so sweet talking to me and uh, they asked me if I needed anything and I was like, I wanted an orange soda for some reason and they're, she's on the phone with the uh, the dispatch trying to get an ambulance and they're like, where we were at, it have been faster for them to drive me to the hospital. So on the way, she stopped at a convenience store and got me an orange soda, which is just crazy awesome people. And uh, they get me to the hospital and they wheel me in. And my brother, my oldest brother, I ain't seen him since I was probably 16. He left for the air, air force when I was a kid because he wouldn't get out of the house because of our parents, right? And uh, he's, he's, he's in right in the front of the hospital where the emergency room is. And I'm like, he's look, trying to talk to me and I'm looking at him like, like I didn't know who he was at first. It was like, cuz it didn't make any sense. Why would he be there? You know, I'm like, he's like, he's like, "John, it's, it's, it's Tim." And I'm like, "I, like what?" I was like, "What are you, what?" He's like, "It's Tim." And they kind of hit me. I was like, "What are you doing?" He drove from Texas cuz my mom called him and said I was missing and they found, so he drove from Texas and he met me there and they get me in the hospital and I'm like, jackhammering. I'm like, really messed up and they did a CT on me. Of course, I had a concussion. Uh, and they did a CT on my abdomen and they, they had a bruised duodenum, whatever that is. I guess that's where your intestines connect or something. And I, uh, they, they think I broke a bunch of the cartilage in my chest, which I makes sense. I've had that before when you, your ribs. It's very terrible. And uh, and I had rhabdomyolysis. You know, usually get that like, you know, a lot of CrossFit people get it. And what happens is like you, you when you overexert your muscles to a point they break down. It gets in your bloodstream and it clogs your kidneys and it kill you. And of course, I was hypothermic, all this kind of stuff. And I was just a mess, dude. And the doctor told me he's like, "If they wouldn't have picked me up, I probably would have died." He said, "I wouldn't have lasted another day just because the rabdo would have killed me." And of course, now I'm sitting there, I'm sitting there miserable already and I'm sitting, now it's hitting me again. What a just dumb decision I made. Like, and then when my kids came in to see me and my wife, I apologized. I just like, the shame I felt like was right now, even just senseless, you know, selfish, too. Now, selfish is probably the better word. Like, I was just just doing whatever it could to kill the pain without really addressing it, I guess, you know. And uh, and the medications didn't help either. It just didn't help. Like the, the stuff the VA was giving you. Like, I'm, I'm convinced that that they don't try to help you. I think they want you to kill yourself so you don't have to pay you anymore. I, I, I honestly believe that. I, I can tell you that uh, like uh, I wrote a little uh, like a paper after, like a little short story on it that helped me deal with it and like the times when I was like stopped and being miserable. I've thought back about selection, that being at the comeback control indoctrination course, like my gold ring ceremony, fighting. Definitely, I 100% believe that the way I brought, I was brought up, uh, the fighting aspect, my ability to deal with pain, uh, I, I do, I do believe that saved my life. Uh, I'm grateful for it. And again, like that shows like, you never know, you know, you, you, you have to suffer through some things. You don't know what that purpose is, but if I wouldn't had that suffering as a young man or a teenager or as a child or even in my military life, I probably wouldn't survived it. So, like everything has a purpose and it's hard to see when you're, you're constantly drunk or you're taking pills because that's, that's what your life becomes. You know, you surround yourself with people that are going to make you keep you in those environments. And that's what I did, you know, and I didn't, I kind of knew I shouldn't been, I didn't, I didn't feel like I needed to drink or take the pills. I wanted to, if that makes sense. I didn't feel like I had the physical need, but I wanted to because I just didn't want to have to deal with all this stuff like we're talking. Like I couldn't even talk like this a couple years ago. I'd be, I couldn't get through. I'd be a mess. I'd be just broken over it. And now I can, I can talk about it. I can control it a little bit. Like I broke down a couple times tonight, but before it'd be, I would, I wouldn't be able to complete the interview. That, it's just, and I'm, I'm grateful for that. You know, I am. And that was that, and that's another thing too, is it was even miserable because I couldn't have, I didn't have any of my medicine. I couldn't drink. So it was like, like the, like with the withdrawal and like the, it was all that mixed on top of it. The mental aspect was >> Yeah. >> and sick on top of it. And again, you know what? I deserved it. I deserved every bit of it. And I think I think God, you know, God was like, "Okay, you know what? You want to act like a jackass? All right, let's see what you got. I'm going to give, I'm going to give you all that you want." He delivered. Oh, yeah. Mhm.

Well, I can tell you uh even when I was doing GRS and I'd come home, you know, I do 60-90 day rotation, come home for a month, a couple weeks and go back. If things were not good at home, I'd spend two weeks home and I or I'd go back just because, you know, I'm not going to say anything bad about somebody, but I wasn't getting the support that I needed. And uh so I had to go. I was drinking every, I was, I think secretly I was trying to get myself killed. I can tell you an example. I was at the bar one day and I was drinking pretty heavily and I was taking a lot of pills and I stopped at McDonald's. It was like probably 5:00 in the afternoon. I've been drinking since like 10-11. And I stopped at McDonald's to get something to eat. I'm in the drive-thru and these two guys, Mexican guys, uh, in the drive-thru behind me and I can see them like like doing stuff with their hands and the one guy flips me off. Have no idea why. No idea why. And it infuriated me. And I pulled up as I was leaving and they're right on my tail. So I'm going to exit to get onto the road and they're like right on my tail. And I see the dude like doing all this, right? I put my car in park. I got out. I walked out, walked over to the driver's or the passenger side, opened the door, started punching the dude in the face, dragged him out of the car and started started hitting him. He like, he tried to run and he ran in front of the truck and he fell on the other side by the driver's. So I followed out, started hitting him and the dude in the driver's seat gets out and he hits me with a bottle, a full bottle. It cut my ear in half and uh busted my head open. I'm bleeding all over the place. Have no idea. So, I'm fighting both of these guys right in. Nobody can leave McDonald's or exit or come in or come out. So, I'm right in the middle fighting and uh uh the one dude just kind of goes limp and the other dude kind of tries to let go of me and I stood up and I pushed him off and the other dude is bleeding all over the place and I'm like bleeding all over and I knew I got hit with something and I, I get in my car and I, I take off and I call my wife. I'm like, "Hey, meet me at this, there's a middle school on the way to my house." I said, "You need to meet me at the middle school. I need to go to the hospital." And she's mad. She's like, "Whatever." And I'm like, "Listen, you need to meet me." I hang up and as soon as I got the phone, cop pulls me over. I pull into the, I pull into the school and I get out of the car, which you're not supposed to do. I'm my shirt ripped. I'm bleeding all over the place. I get out of the car and he's like, "Are you all right?" I was like, "Obviously not." And he asked him what happened. I told him, I said, I said, "Hey, I just got a fight with these two guys up here." And he was super cool about it. And he asked me, he was like, "What happened?" I told him. And he goes, "Why didn't you shoot him?" I was like, "Well, I didn't even think about it. We were fighting." I He said, "You have a gun in the car." Yeah, I have my gun in the car, but I wasn't going to shoot nobody over a fist fight, you know. And he called an ambulance. And ambulance come took me to the hospital. And they stitch my ear back together and they staple my head up. And my wife was sitting there and she's like, just pissed. She's like, "I can't believe it over." I'm like, "Well, maybe you shouldn't have married me." You know, I was like, that, I was just that angry still. I was just. And it's just stuff like that. It was happening all the time. But to me, it was normal because that's what I was used to. And I, and you know, because the PTSD and there would be times we'd fight. And uh, I'd go park my car. My friend has a piece of property off the highway and it's he's got a chain off. So I could, I'd go out there and I'd have like a, I'd put a fire and I'd sleep outside. I'd bring my laptop and I'd watch a movie and I'd drink and take pills till I went to sleep. And a couple times I went out there with a pistol and I was going to kill myself. And uh, one night I went out there and was drinking, did the same thing, had the pistol out. I guess I fell asleep and I had to take my youngest to school that morning and my alarm woke up, woke woke me up in the morning and I kind of like grabbed everything and I threw it in my car and I drove and you know, I'm looking like a mess. I took her to school, which I shouldn't have. And uh, I get a call from my friend. He's like, "Hey man," he's like, "You left your pistol out here." And I was like, "Huh?" Didn't remember it. Didn't. And then I was like, "All right, man. Okay." Went got it. And then uh, went back to drinking same day. Same thing. Doing the same thing. And uh, so many times I, I'm not gonna lie to you. I sat there with a pistol. The reason I pull the trigger is my kids. And nothing made it better. And it's one of those. And I had a guy, he was, I was on team. His name is uh, Matt Mansburg. He's a combat control officer. You uh, young guy, great guy. Uh, he killed himself. And uh, not to mention like just all the, you know, my story is not unique to anything. There's people, I mean, you see young talented people broken and honestly, society doesn't care. America doesn't care. They don't, I mean, they don't. They say they do, but they don't. Uh, and they, they can't understand why people are broken when you can't understand the experience because you haven't done it. And talking to people, you can talk to people all you want, but unless you've lived that experience, it's so hard to get that across, just just to know the pain that people have dealing with it. And again, I'm, I'm blessed. I'm look at my life and I just cannot believe I've got, I've gotten all this despite my best efforts. And I'd have a, um, there was, I was thinking, they were, the VA gave me this medicine. They're supposed to help with nightmares. And they don't tell you though, if you stand up too fast, it make you pass out. Well, I was home one night and I got up to use the bathroom and I stood up. I went head first right into the door. Almost broke my neck. And uh, yeah, and uh, I was on so much medicine like I couldn't, I didn't have really any like emotion of happiness. I could like laugh, but I wasn't really happy. Like I was like, like flat and uh, all the medicine like counteracts each other and they, it's anybody that's been on it understands like it's, it's you think you have to be on it because that's what the doctors tell you, you know, cuz what was your other coat medicine? It was taking other pills and taking booze, right? And uh, I struggled with that for so many years until about four years ago. And uh, like nightmares, I'd have nightmares where um, I'd be shaking and my wife would have to like wake me up cuz I couldn't wake up, but I'd be like, like night terrors, like just horrible. I was scared to go to sleep. And uh, I started uh, picked the B, I picked the Bible up one day and I started reading. Didn't know, uh, couldn't really understand it, you know, cuz the way it's written, all that. But I just started reading and uh, I didn't stop and uh, I didn't understand a lot of it and still don't. Uh, but I, I stopped taking all my medicine one day. I just stopped taking it and uh, kept reading. Every morning I get up and I read. Still to this day, I get up every morning. I get up and read. I've read the Bible probably 20 times. And every time I read, I, I've learned something new. And uh, I can tell you for a fact that it saved my life. It's, it's given me a new life. The peace I have now, never had before. My nightmares gone. Uh, like I used to feel the need to drink, uh, do all this stuff, party, go beat people up. If I drink, I'll have like a cider because I like the taste. I don't drink to get drunk. Uh, I don't have the need. I don't feel the need to go out and party or like get in uh, arguments with people. Like, I actively avoid all that stuff now. Like I look at my life completely different. Even my, my military life where that was my whole identity, is what I did. Fighting was what I did. Uh, really doesn't, I don't care about it to be honest with you. I'll talk about it because it's good experiences for me. I enjoyed some of the stuff I did. I was very fortunate. Uh, but I don't have that need now to be that person. I have a, I have a deeper need. I want to serve people. You know, I'm, I'm teaching now. Uh, all the young guys I teach, they're all Christian. We sit there and talk about our faith when we working out or what we get done. Uh, just, and I try to help as many people as I can. Like, you know, if it's getting some old lady's basket or grocery or help or whatever it is, you know, I try to serve other people. I don't look to get credit for any of that kind of stuff. Uh, like my family means more to me now than it's ever meant. I spend every Friday I get to watch my grandson. I've actually, I'm watching tomorrow, too. Like, and the relationship with my children is better than it's ever been. And this again, just cuz my outlook is different cuz I've been given the, the opportunity to see, to see life clearly. It's like when you have dirty sunglasses and you clear them off, you're like, "Oh, that looks a lot different." That's exactly what my life is now. And it is, it's a miracle. Like there's some stuff I've left out on this too that I said no one would believe half of this stuff and I wouldn't believe it either, but I've lived it and I've been given such a life of abundance that even just like when I talk about it now, I haven't talked about it in a long time. It's just a, it's sobering to realize how much time I wasted on things that mean absolutely nothing. I could give my life for something that came out of a pill bottle for being stupid or could have hit somebody and killed them or paralyzed them or something. And I didn't, wasn't caring about me. I didn't think about those things. Now I do all the time. It's just, and I've been fortunate that I can be this age and have that kind of honesty with myself. It's hard to deal with, like a lot of times the, the shame that comes with it. That's why I pray. But I know that's a life I'll never have again and I don't want it. My life I have right now is the best it's ever been. You can't lie to yourself anymore. You have to be tr, you have to, you have to look at yourself and be truthful. One of the sayings I heard was uh, what is it? You, uh, if you, you really want to change your life, uh, blame the person in the mirror or something like that. And that's 100% true. Like if, if there's, if you got any problems in your life, look at the person in the mirror. That's true. If you can't be honest with yourself, you'll never, you'll never get past that. And that's hard for some people. It was hard for me because your, your ego, especially as a man, you know, you have to admit that you failed so many, so many people, so many times. Yeah. Uh, I, I tell you man, uh, I tell people that, well, back in the 90s, I got back from the Gulf War where I was a young Marine and of course, I was fighting and all that. Had gray hair back then and uh, you know, you couldn't stop me, right? And so me and Chris were out drinking and we saw that thing advertised. Is like, "You can come wrestle a grizzly bear." And I was like, "All right, let's go do it." So, you go there. I was shocked that there so many people didn't want to do it. I was like, "You what?" I was like, and I legit thought, I'm being dead serious. I thought I could like hold my own against this thing, right? Cuz I wrestled, you know, I was a karate guy, all this kind of stuff. I was a Marine, you know, I was young and uh, I had some, had some uh, jean shorts on and a button-up shirt and uh, some uh, they call them boat shoes, I guess, now or whatever, like slip-on boat shoes. And uh, the bear was, it was like 5-600 lb. It was an old circus bear. Didn't have any claws, didn't have any teeth, and had a like a leather collar on. And what you do is you had 2 minutes and you grab it by the collar, it would stand up, and you just kind of wrestle with it, right? Well, it barely didn't look that big when it's on all fours, right? So, I give the Y. I was the first one to do this, too, by the way. There's two other guys behind me. And I yanked it. This thing stands up and it like puts its paws on my shoulders. And this thing's big, dude. I was just like, and it can, it was moving like slow motion, like slow. And uh, I'm trying to like muscle and move this thing. This thing ain't moving at all, dude. It was cra, I could not believe how strong this thing was. Well, and it then it like bit me in the armpit like through my arm like this. But yeah, it like, like guming me, right? And I was like, and yeah, it didn't have teeth or claws. It was like an old circus bear. And uh, it bit me and I'm like, I was like, kind of wincing and it like started like growling. Dude, I was legit freaking scared cuz it was like, I could feel it like in my body when it was growling. I was like, "Oh." And then it like went from here to my face and it put its whole mouth around my head and it like gummed my head and I slipped and I slipped on the floor and I hit and busted my knee open. I couldn't get back up and uh, I got slobber all over me. Right. It was the longest two minutes of my life and I could not, to this day, where I see people survive a bear attack, I have no idea how that's possible because this thing, it was literally like moving in slow motion. Rodney and I tell people I had better luck picking the bar up and throwing it than doing anything to this animal. And I'm sitting here and I'm like, get done. I'm watching the rest of this and I'm like, slobber all over me. Like I had so much slobber, my hair like moose. I had hair back then. And I'm like, like super sore. And this big uh, fat white trash guy behind me, he gets to wrestle it because he'd wrestle to get like a minute break and then they would begin. And uh, anyway, the guy gets up and first thing he does, he grabs a chunk of fur out of this bear and pulls the fur out. As soon as he did that, this bear slapped him like it was, it slapped him beside the head and like almost cartwheel this dude. He fell on the ground. This bear flopped right on top of him and grabbed him around the head on his back and started like like gnawing on his head like licking his head like I was just like, "I'm glad I ain't you, bro." I was like, "Oh." So, we, we get done, we get done drinks and uh, the next morning I got up and I've got like blood blisters like through my armpit and my bicep where it gnawed me in my hand on my arm and I was so freaking sore. I was just like, "Oh." And me and Chris just started cracking up. I was like, "Rest of a bear last night. No, nobody's going to believe this." Of course, they had, they had protesters out there protesting and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it was pretty funny.

>> I appreciate you coming on and opening up and giving people a real look into what life was like and what your life was like. Uh, if you got something out of this, hit that like button, subscribe, and share this guys because conversations like this matter. And uh, hey, listen man, thank you so much um again for coming on. It's been a long time in the making. It was great catching up with you and we'll see you next time on Rodney Hood Talks. You guys remember, God loves you and so do we. Peace.