Joe Rogan Experience: #2439 with Johnny Knoxville (Transcript)

So, yeah, it’s pretty surreal. I just keep trying to move forward.

JOE ROGAN: How did you guys get started with Jackass? How did all that come to bear?

The Genesis of Jackass

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, the short answer is my then-girlfriend got pregnant and I had a daughter on the way and I was, I moved to LA to act, but I wasn’t doing anything, man. I was drinking a lot and I’m like, “Oh, sh*t, I have to support a daughter. I need to do something quick.”

So I was living next door to Antoine Fuqua in this duplex, the director. And he set me up with a casting director who got me a commercial agent. My friend John Linson set me up writing articles for this magazine because he knew I wanted to write.

And one of the articles turned into me testing self-defense equipment on myself. And a lot of different magazines wanted the article, but they didn’t want anything to do with it because I was going to shoot myself in the chest with a bulletproof vest as the last thing. It was like, stun gun, taser gun, pepper spray.

And Jeff Tremaine, who now directs Jackass, he was the editor of Big Brother magazine, a skateboarding magazine owned by Larry Flynt. And he goes, “You can write it for us and I’ll help you buy a couple of the things and the stun gun and the taser gun.” And I took the money my mom gave me for Christmas and bought the cheapest bulletproof vest they had for the last thing.

JOE ROGAN: You don’t want to skimp on a bulletproof vest.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That’s all I could afford. It was either no stun gun or taser gun. And so anyway, Jeff says, “Hey, why don’t you film that article that you’re writing? We’ll put it in our skateboard video.” And it kind of snowballed from there.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, so that was the genesis of it.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Wow. Isn’t it weird how desperation or the recognition that you have responsibilities, you got to get going, just lights a fire under your a? You become a totally different person.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It was like I deal with a certain amount of overcoming fear or whatever when doing the stunts, but there was never any fear like, you have a daughter on the way and you have to figure out how to support her. I had to do something quick. And that was my best guess.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s the mother of invention, man. Yeah, that necessity. Understanding being a dad and having to take care of people, it just changes everything.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. What am I doing? I’m doing fking nothing. And I need to do something.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah, it’s a primal feeling, right?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, it changed everything.

The Bulletproof Vest Incident

JOE ROGAN: But what, well, you’re doing this, first of all, what round, what caliber of revolver did you get shot with?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, the vest was the cheapest one, so it could take a .38. And I got a .38. I borrowed it from my neighbor’s wife.

JOE ROGAN: Jesus Christ. How far away were you when you got shot?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, my buddy was supposed to shoot me, but we just, we drove out to 14 because we didn’t have a location, and I’m like, “Pull off here.” And then we pull off this exit and I’m like, “Okay, make a right.” And we end up on the fire road.

So we get out there, my friend’s like, “I’m not going to shoot you, man. I can’t do it.” I’m like, so I’m like, “All right, well, give me the gun.” And I got the gun to my chest and a car pulls up behind me and it’s a bunch of tweakers, they’re driving down the fire road. They’re like, “Hey, how do we get to the freeway?”

And I got the gun behind my back. I’m like, “Hey, just go down here, make a right, then a left.” And they drove away. And so I went back to shooting myself. It was sketchy. It looked like a snuff film.

The photographer on it saw his buddy die because he jumped off a hotel trying to hit a swimming pool and didn’t hit that swimming pool. And so he was really scared. He was like, “Stop, don’t do this, don’t do this. Stop.” I wasn’t getting a lot of positive reinforcement, Joe.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it doesn’t seem like it.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I had a bunch of, because since it was Flynt Magazine, I had a bunch of Hustlers under the bulletproof vest to help absorb the impact. And at one point they all fall out and I bend over to pick them up and I’m pointing the gun right at my friends as I pick them up. I don’t realize this, but it was sketchy.

JOE ROGAN: And that was the first?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, we put that in the Big Brother video.

Close Calls and Near-Death Experiences

JOE ROGAN: Have you ever done anything like self-harming, any dangerous type activities before you started Jackass? Before you started doing all this kind of sh*t?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, no, I didn’t even know. I mean, you can argue my drinking didn’t help my liver, but…

JOE ROGAN: It’s like you guys, what you did was kind of fking crazy.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But when you, I guess if you stop the, I don’t know, it just becomes something you’re doing. It was all normal to me. And I can’t speak for them, it’s just, that’s what we’re doing today.

JOE ROGAN: And so that was the first one. And then how many times have you done a stunt where you’re like, “This, I could die”?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: A few.

JOE ROGAN: You’ve done the bull one where you’re blindfolded. I was like, “Don’t do that.” I was watching. I was like, “This is crazy.”

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, that was, yeah, that was, anytime you’re working with a bull, I think that they hate you and really they hate movement and they want to make you stop moving forever.

But I’ve had, in Jackass Number Two, when the rocket exploded, those were foot-long metal rods and there was 12 of them. One blew out right next to my ribs, which would have been picture wrap on me. And one flew back 300 yards and split two of our art guys right between them. That would have, we’ve had some really close ones.

I tried to do the Buster Keaton thing in Number Two where the facade falls and it falls right, the window falls over my head. That was the plan. And the guy’s like, “Okay, when it’s,” because it was the close right of the movie. And the guy’s like, “This is a 20-foot steel wall. You hit your mark, do not move.” I’m like, “Got it.”

They said, “Action.” And then so I take two steps and they’re like, “Ah, no, no, cut, cut.” So I’m just like, “Okay, I’m going to walk over here.” And they’d already released the wall. Yeah. And if you watch the footage, it crushes me to the ground, but my head just makes it through the window. Otherwise that would have been, I would have been done.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, geez.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Yeah.

The 20-Foot Steel Wall Incident

JOE ROGAN: Oh my God.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That was a close one. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: How heavy was that f*ing thing?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I don’t. It was 20-foot steel wall. It was incredibly heavy.

JOE ROGAN: How did you not get f*ed up from that?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Nothing. I’m like, it was like I was very lucky. I’m also hyper limber, so it just, I kind of accordion went on impact.

JOE ROGAN: Just dumb luck.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Dumb story. My life.

JOE ROGAN: How many, it’s all, I mean, all told, how many stunts have you done like that?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, I haven’t. Oh, almost. Almost. Yeah. Kaput. I don’t know, like there’s at least six or seven, like close calls. And then in any number of stunts, they can go wrong, you know? I don’t know. I don’t really, I just look forward.

The Pressure to Keep Topping Yourself

JOE ROGAN: Was there ever a time when you’re doing this and going, what the f* have I got myself into? Because you have to keep one-upping yourself, right?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, that was a problem for me. After we did the first movie, I didn’t want to do a second movie because I didn’t know how to top the first one, which now looks very tame compared to the others.

And finally, Tremaine said, “You don’t, we don’t have to top it. We just have to be funny.” And I’m like, okay. That made me free. That took away all my anxiety. And I thought, okay, if that’s the case.

And a couple months later, he told me he was lying. We did have to top it, but by that time, I was already off and running.

JOE ROGAN: Jesus, dude. Yeah, your show would really give me anxiety.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It gives the guys, they get really anxious because I know 98.5% of what’s happening on the set. Like, Jeff and I each, we keep a little from each other, so if we want to smoke one another, so.

But the guys don’t have any idea what’s happening. So by the second week, you can just literally go up and put your finger on someone’s shoulder, and they’re like, Jesus, they’re so nervous. And I, and I, I don’t blame them.

Filming Schedule and the Intervention

JOE ROGAN: And, like, when you film one of those movies, like, how long is a shoot? Like, how many months do you film for?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, that depends on Jackass Number Two. Usually about, we go two weeks on, two weeks off, over four, five months. But I think Jackass Number Two, it was eight or nine months.

And finally they had to have an intervention with me to stop shooting. They, hey, like, come down to the office tomorrow. We’re going to finalize the edit or do something in the edit. I’m like, all right.

And I get there, and it’s Spike, Jeff, a few of the cast, and, and they’re like, “We’re not here to talk about the edit.” I’m like, okay, like, “We have to stop shooting. We’re, like, so far over.”

And then it was also about, I was going to do the ski jump, you know, the Olympic ski jump. And it was, they’re like, “You, we have too much footage. You can’t just not. You’ve already put yourself on the line so much. You can’t.”

And then it became like, well, I’m not, I didn’t, I decided not to because I felt like this big intervention they had, it was, like, doomed. The stunt was doomed in my mind and that something negative was going to happen.

So I ended up not doing the ski jump. But I did negotiate two more weeks of shooting out of them.

JOE ROGAN: How far were you supposed to jump?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Until I went kaboom. I don’t know. It was going to be the Olympic ski jump.

JOE ROGAN: Like when they fly.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Do you know how to ski?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Not at all. I don’t want to be good at the stunt. Nobody wants to see that.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I mean, you’d have to train for years to be good at it.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But, I mean, I had about 20 minutes, so that didn’t happen.

JOE ROGAN: But.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I don’t even know how we got on this.

JOE ROGAN: So are you done with all that stuff or would you consider doing it again?

The Bull Stunt and Final Concussion

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, I, I can’t do any stunt where I would get a concussion now because I’ve had too many. The last one was really gnarly. I kind of went offline for a while.

And what one was that? At the end, in Jackass Forever, I dressed up as a magician and I got obsessed with the idea of pranking an animal. I just wanted the thought of seeing the animal’s reaction after the prank.

And that kind of morphed into me dressing as a magician in a bull ring, doing the pouring the milk in the hat trick to get the bull’s reaction. And apparently the bull didn’t think much of my trick because, well, first of all, usually when you’re working with the bull in a ring, there’s a lot of soft dirt around, you know?

And I got there that morning and it was, it was just dirt, but no. So it was like concrete. And I thought to myself, well, that’s a problem. And, but we’re there. We need, I’m shooting.

So anyway, long story short, the bull, the bull hits me and I, usually, when a bull hits you, well, always they drop their head, right? So I always try to jump a split second before it hits me. So I get above the bull as opposed to below the bull, which is never any fun.

So, but I mistimed my jump. I jumped too early, so I jumped and then I start coming back down. Then the bull hits me and it flips me. Like I do like a one and a half flip. And the only thing that stops me is the back of the head. My back of my head hitting the concrete ground.

And I got a concussion with the brain hemorrhage, a broken rib and a broken wrist out of the deal and that was it. And yeah, it was, it was. So.

JOE ROGAN: And this is after you let Butterbean KO you too.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Lucky punch.

JOE ROGAN: That dude hit so hard. I watched that. I was like, don’t let that happen. Oh, don’t do that.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: He like, everyone’s like, “Boy, that knockout punch must have hurt.” I’m like, I didn’t even feel it. Like the punches before really hurt. But the knockout punch, you don’t, you, you’ve been knocked out before, you don’t feel it.

That one was a pretty bad concussion too. I had vertigo for six to eight weeks. After that, just driving around a curve, everything starts spinning.

JOE ROGAN: Did you go to a hospital, get checked out?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, I went to see my doctor, Dr. Kipper, and he, he had to sew up my head because I fell back onto the hard ground of the swap meet. I think I hit my head on the corner of a display counter as well. I don’t know.

JOE ROGAN: F*, dude.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Should have went to college.

Responsibility and Injuries

JOE ROGAN: Do you ever feel any responsibility for how many people you inspire to do similar things?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, I hope to just entertain them and not inspire them, but I can’t. I don’t have any control over that except for when I do things like this. Like, just watch, don’t do. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. I, you know, me, I’m another story.

JOE ROGAN: It’s kind of amazing that you’re okay, you know, other than the bad concussions.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m pretty okay with how it turned out.

JOE ROGAN: What’s the worst injury that anybody ever suffered during Jackass filming? Wow.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: There’s been many concussions, breaks. I don’t know, just arm breaks, back breaks.

JOE ROGAN: Do you have any, like, long term problems because of it?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: My lower back is pretty blown out and who knows about how the concussions will rectify themselves? Hopefully I’m okay.

JOE ROGAN: Do you feel any lingering effects?

Back Problems and Treatment

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, my lower back’s blown out, so I, I just had an intercept procedure on my back about in early December. There they go. The, the nerve and the vertebra they go in and like, somehow use radio frequency heat to basically burn the nerve so it can’t send a signal to your brain that it’s hurt.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, so you just walk around hurt, but you don’t.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I don’t know. Yeah, I’m fine with that.

JOE ROGAN: Is it doing continual damage or is it just pain?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I think it seems to be. And that’s an excellent question that I did not ask, nor did I care about, but thank you for bringing it up. I think to me it’s just pain. So I, you know, Jesus.

JOE ROGAN: Have you done anything else for it? Like, there’s a bunch of different. Is it a herniated disc?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, but the lower two discs are herniated. Herniated. And I had shots in the facet joints of my lower back. It was like they put some kind of steroid in there and it didn’t give the result that I wanted.

JOE ROGAN: Have you ever heard of a machine called a reverse hyper?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No.

JOE ROGAN: There’s a machine that a guy named Louis Simmons, he was this legendary powerlifter guy, he developed because he had f*ed his discs up powerlifting. And the doctors told him that he needed to fuse his disc.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Because they were compressed. And he’s like, well, can’t we decompress him? And they’re like, no, there’s no way. He’s like, well, there’s got to be a way. So he developed a machine that decompresses the spine while also strengthening the muscles around it. It’s a piece of exercise. That’s Louie. He developed this machine.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It looks like something that happened to Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction. That’s. What does the machine do? It strengthens.

JOE ROGAN: And on the way up, when she’s lifting with her legs, it’s strengthening her back. And on the downswing, it’s actively decompressing your back. So, like, pulls the discs apart and creates space.

I love this machine. I have one at home. I have one here at the studio. I use it all the time. It’s really an important piece of equipment for anybody that has a lower back injury or who wants to prevent lower back injuries.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And.

JOE ROGAN: And just for overall strength, because it’s a very odd movement to be able to recreate.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, great. I’m going to look into that.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I’ll show it to you. You have it in the gym afterwards. I’ll show it to you after the podcast.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, sweet.

JOE ROGAN: You should get one. It’ll help you. Yeah, there’s another thing called a teeter. You know those things you hang by your ankles?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Where you, like, decompress.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: They developed one called the Dex, where you hinge from your waist. So you, like, get in this thing, you strap your legs in and you lean forward, and it’s like you’re hanging from like that. So you’re hang hips. Like, all your weight is being set on your thighs, and your back carries all the weight, and it just slowly, like, pop, pop, pop. It decompresses. It feels great.

That thing f*ing rules. I always tell everybody, if you have a back injury, you have back problems, that thing will help you a lot. Just do that for a few minutes every day. And eventually, you know, slowly, over time, it creates space and it alleviates some of the pinching and, you know, problems that people have, depending, of course, on the severity of your injury. But, yeah, I love that thing.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: All right. Might be getting a couple pieces of equipment.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, man. You got to. Got to prevent. So how the f* did they talk you into hosting Fear Factor? How’d that happen?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I met with Sharon Levy, who runs Endemo.

JOE ROGAN: I have Sharon and shout out to Sharon Levy.

Working with Bulls on Set

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: She’s awesome. And I was like, I’m on the fence, you know. And I sat down with her, and I liked her so much because she seems like, how did a woman like you, that is awesome, get a job as the head of, you know. Right. She seemed very rebellious. Right. And I just thought, yeah, I’m in. So it happened over a lunch. Really? Yeah. I really liked her.

JOE ROGAN: One of the problems that we had with Fear Factor is we did 148 episodes initially, and then we came back for a brief amount of time, but they wanted to really ramp it up. Like, it was like, these stunts are going to be bigger and crazier than ever. And I was relieved when it got canceled because I was like, we’re going to f* somebody up.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. You felt what? What kind of, well, you have a couple of examples or?

JOE ROGAN: Well, there was a bunch in the early days. Like, first of, the first one that we ever did while I was like, don’t do this was bull riding. Made people bull ride. And this one lady was like, she probably weighed like 98 pounds, right? And she got on the back of the bull. I’m like, she’s not going to be able to hang on at all. She’s going to go flying.

Stunt guys are some of the most savage f*ing psychotic, zero fear at all for their safety. Like, they get so hardened by it over time. Just not normal people. And this guy Perry, I was like, dude, what? You’re going to make them ride a bull. He’s like, don’t worry about it.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Boo.

JOE ROGAN: These are stunt bulls. I was like, that’s what he said. I go, does that bull know he’s a stunt bull?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: They got the SAG card.

JOE ROGAN: I bet he has no fing idea. I bet he just thinks he’s a bull. So they’re in the cage before they do it. The bull’s fing bucking. Yeah. And he’s just a f*ing tank.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And I’m just going, don’t. I told the people. I’m like, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Just quit, man. Just don’t do it. It was like one of the only things where I was, I was like, I wouldn’t do it. I’m telling you right now. I would never do this.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Were the bulls, were they the bulls that, which, because certain bulls, you, they get upset if you ride them, but after you fall off, they don’t try to hook you. Did these bulls try to hook them after they got?

JOE ROGAN: They had handlers that steered the bull away from the people, and they did a good job with that. But, I mean, who fing knows? They don’t want you on them. They weigh 2,000 pounds. They’re all muscle. Like, the thing was so powerful. Like, you could feel it when it was in the cage. It was just fing moving around. I was like, don’t do this.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And they’re smart. Like, bulls are very smart. That’s why, unfortunately, you know, in Spanish bullfighting, they kill the bull, which I’m not on board with, but because they learn your movements, you can’t make the same movement twice in a row with a bull, because they’re going to go, “Oh, okay, I’m going to be, you’re going to do that, and I’m going to be right here waiting on you.”

It’s unfair. And you can’t have anyone move behind the fence when it’s on, because bulls can easily jump over the fence. A lot of them just don’t know they can. So if you frighten them or provoke them, they’re just going to jump over the fence. And then they have like 35 people they can smoke.

Yeah, it’s, it’s, when we work with bulls, the set is different. The set is different. The guy, Gary Leffew, who supplies our bulls, he was world champion in 1970. And when we first started working with him and it stuck with us the whole time, he’s like, “When we have bulls on the set, I don’t want anyone, any kind of negativity going around the set. It’s already hard enough with the bull. If there’s anyone negative or any negativity, that person’s off the set and negativity.”

JOE ROGAN: Like, in what way?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Just if there’s any, like, say negative things or they’ve had a fight with someone right before. Any kind of negative vibes? No negative vibes.

JOE ROGAN: The bull senses negative vibes.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Just, well, the whole, the whole, everyone on the set senses negative vibes. And everyone has to be completely present and positive for this.

JOE ROGAN: Is this voodoo or is this like real science?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, I think it makes total sense. Especially when you’re doing stunts. When you’re doing a stunt that can forever alter you, I don’t like any negativity either. Everyone, and also, if you’re doing something that can forever alter you, you have to want to be there and want to be doing it. You can’t halfway go into it because then you’re really going to get f*ed up. So this is just something.

JOE ROGAN: This is knowledge you’ve acquired over time.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, no, that’s true. If you like half commit in something that can forever, you’re going to get, yeah, it’s bad. It’s going to be bad anyway. But you need to want to be there.

JOE ROGAN: What a bizarre life skill.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You know what I mean? What a bizarre skill. I know how to survive doing something you really shouldn’t do that could alter you forever. Stay positive.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, that’s, that, it doesn’t, it’s not a guarantee, Joe, but it does, I think it does help.

Fear Factor’s Close Calls

JOE ROGAN: We did a bunch of other stuff that was not bulls, like with cars and trucks and stuff where I was like, ooh. Like, we had a close call once with this lady who was strapped to the front of a truck, and she was supposed to go through some sort of an obstacle course. But like, they blew through some boxes and the box got on the windshield of the other car, and the other car almost slammed into her legs. Yeah. And she was screaming because she thought it hit her. And it was like, we were like, what the f* are we doing?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Was that when you guys came back for the second round?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that was the second round.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: The second round was sketchy. You know, we had people like getting, they were attached to a tree and they had to figure out which key to unlock them while a bungee cord was attached to them and a helicopter. And so once they got the thing unlocked, they would f*ing rocket off.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Of this tree up through the limbs.

JOE ROGAN: No, no, no. There was, luckily there wasn’t that. There was no branches that could have got.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But that would have been funnier.

JOE ROGAN: It would have been funnier, like through the s. So they rocket over a fing giant canyon. Like we’re on the top of this canyon and they just went flying while they were being bungee jumped on the bottom of this fing helicopter. It was terrifying. They were so high, if anything went wrong, they were dead as f. 100% dead. Yeah.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That’s sketchy.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, there was so much sketchy stuff. And then it ultimately got canceled because they had a drink cum. Did you ever see that episode?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No. No.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that’s what sunk us. So there was only two times.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: What year was, what, what kind of donkey?

JOE ROGAN: Donkey cum.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Ah, yeah, that’ll do it every time, Joe.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And they got donkey cum because it’s the cheapest cum.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, yeah. Boars, boars ejaculate 15 ounces at a time.

JOE ROGAN: Whoa. So, so a wild boar, like a pig.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Really? 15 ounces.

JOE ROGAN: That’s a lot.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: That’s a f*ing beer stein.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: So this is it. So these guys, that guy’s drinking donkey cum and his brother’s drinking donkey piss.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I’d offer the piss.

JOE ROGAN: And that guy chugged it. He chugged donkey cum. I’m getting, I’m starting to dry.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That was a lot of cum. A black and tan, kind of, with the piss and the semen wouldn’t have been a terrible idea.

JOE ROGAN: It was so nasty.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Who were the girls there?

JOE ROGAN: Well, they were all twins. It was three sets of twins. And they had to play horseshoes. Like her mascara.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: She had to drink the semen too.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And the thing is, three sets of people, three twins, three groups of twins did it and only one won the money. Oh, so two people drank donkey cum and two people drank donkey piss for nothing.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: You know what the worst part of that is? Semen burps later.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, just the.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Just that bleachy smell that the ladies.

The Episode That Got Fear Factor Canceled

JOE ROGAN: Like, between the two of them were fighting over who drank the piss. They wanted to drink, they didn’t want to drink the piss. They were happy to drink the cum. Which I guess tracks, you know, like, been there, done that. Not in that kind of volume, but what’s the worst that could happen? Whereas the guys were like really trying not to drink the cum, you know.

I don’t know what they did to decide, because they had to decide like one of them was going to drink cum, one of them is going to drink piss. So that was one of two times, two times where I was hosting this show where I said to the producers, “Don’t do this. Don’t do this.” I’m like, you’re going to, the show’s going to get canceled. They’re like, “No, we’re fine. NBC approved it.” If they did.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Like, they held, they’re the bellwethers of good taste.

JOE ROGAN: Looking guy on set who was like the NBC standards guy, the standards and practices guy. And I’m like, you’re, you’re okay with this? Like, this is okay. And like, “Yeah, the network’s fine with it.” I’m like, this is so, you guys are too close to this. I’m like, you guys are too close to this. You don’t understand how the general public’s going to react.

And then I think what happened, I think it was TMZ, but someone leaked the footage online. Someone leaked like images of people drinking cum. Like, “Fear Factor crosses the line.” And then the outrage was palpable. It was like some serious outrage. And then that show never aired in America, but, but it aired overseas. I think it aired in like, maybe the Netherlands or something like that.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Chills in Germany, which is where Fear.

JOE ROGAN: Factor actually came from. Fear Factor was actually a show in the Netherlands called Now or Neverland. And then they brought it over to America. Endemol purchased it, and then they changed it to, I think then they came up with the name Fear Factor after that. That was like when I was already on board.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Wow. I didn’t know that. Yeah, there was no, there was virtually no blowback after Pontius drank horse cum in Jackass Number Two. Never heard about it.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it wasn’t on TV. There’s something about television, you know, censored, you know, Federal Communications approved, and they drank cum. So that got us canceled. That was it. That was like 2000, I guess 2011 or something like that, 2012.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: How many seasons you do?

JOE ROGAN: I think we did six or seven initially. And then we did another, yeah, and then we did another six episodes. One of them that never aired.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Did you help write creative?

JOE ROGAN: No. No, no, no, no.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: You didn’t want any part of that? Zero.

JOE ROGAN: No. What I would do is I’d show up at work, I’d get in my trailer, I’d take an edible, and then I’d go to the set and I’m like, “What do we got?” I did the first two, first four episodes I did sober. Then I was like, this is so boring.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I need.

JOE ROGAN: I need to get high. I would take pot lollipops and pot gummies and just get f*ing lit and then enjoy it. Because then it was like, like this is an adventure.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: What a great gig.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, it was a fun gig.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. I had a, I had so much fun, too. Because all I do is like, all I did was talk.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: You know.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, it’s easy. I ate a lot of shit. I ate a lot of things to try to encourage people. Because after a while, I got so—

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: You would do the things with them.

JOE ROGAN: I’d be like, you could do it. Look, I’ll do it. I’ll do it for you. And some of the times when I did it to just try to help people, I’m like, look, I’m going to show you. I’m going to do it, and then you’re going to do it.

And then we didn’t even air me doing it because they didn’t want to make it seem like it was so—because I could do it easily because I was so used to disgusting stuff. I could just take a roach and just throw it down. Take a worm and throw it down. I’m like, just do it. It’s not that hard. It’s all in your f*ing head. Because I was trying to, like, coach people through it.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: When I took the job, I’m like, I’m just going to give people hell the whole time and make their fears worse. But then I get to set, and there’s a human in front of you, and I’m like, I don’t know. These are regular people, and they really have fear, so I’m going to try. I ended up like you, trying to help them do it.

I never wanted to do what they were doing for the fact that I never wanted that footage to be seen. Like, I’m trying to—you were just right. You had confidence that they wouldn’t show that. And I’m like, ah.

JOE ROGAN: They showed a few things. They showed me eating spiders. They showed me eating a roach. But I ate a lot of stuff that they never saw. Or I did some things that they—because I just wanted these people to—

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Do it. I get it. You can do it.

JOE ROGAN: It’s in your head. I’m like, you just got to decide. Your mind has to decide. I’m just going to do this. Just do it. Just go ahead and do it. Don’t think about, oh, my God, I can’t believe I’m doing it. Just f*ing do it. Chew, swallow, chew, swallow. I would just talk them through it.

And yeah, I became like a f*ing motivational coach or something. That was weird.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, that’s real. Because after there was—on the first, there was one girl that quit. She’s like, I’m not continuing this bit, this stunt. It was something with snakes, right? And it was a big fear.

And after that, I got the cast together, and I’m like, at least always try to do what we’re doing. Don’t let the fear stop you. Just always try. And after that, everyone, even if they’re horrified, they made an effort, and I felt good about that, and I think they did, too.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, that’s cool.

The Primal Fear of Snakes

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I mean, some people—but it’s sometimes good that someone quits, so you realize this is real. Some people, especially snakes. Snakes. There’s something about ophidiophobia that I think is primal. I think it’s in your DNA.

I think either your ancestors were either bitten by a snake and barely survived, or someone saw someone die from a snake, and that information is encoded in your DNA. Because the fear that people have of snakes is fing—when they have legitimate ophidiophobia, it is a fing crazy fear to watch.

It’s like their whole body locks up, they start shaking. It’s not a normal fear. It’s like an ancient caveman fear that’s locked into their DNA. Like someone thousands of years ago survived something like this, and that’s the only reason why you’re here. And every fiber of your being wants to f*ing run away from snakes.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It’s wonderful. It has to be when someone has that, like, bam. Terrified of snakes. Oh, really terrified. And, of course, we use that to our advantage.

JOE ROGAN: Of course. Yeah. Well, we would make people fill out a questionnaire when they would sign up for Fear Factor. Like, what are your fears? Heights, snakes, spiders. Well, you’re getting heights, snakes and spiders.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I would write, tequila, whiskey, blowjobs.

JOE ROGAN: I hate back massages. Yeah, it was fascinating because I had a background in martial arts and teaching, and one of the things that I did when I was younger was I took a lot of people to tournaments, and I coached a lot of people in taekwondo tournaments, and they’d be f*ing terrified.

I learned how to lock in with them and how to get them into a certain mindset as a coach. And I’d be like, look, you’re going to get past this, and this is going to be one of the highlights of your life. Because you’re absolutely terrified. And this fear on the other side will be a completely different feeling.

You’ll have a feeling of accomplishment. You’ll have a feeling of an understanding of knowing that you can overcome very terrifying situations and you can triumph and you could do this. You have skills. You just have to be able to go out there and perform and you can do it. And I’d get in their head.

I carried that over to Fear Factor sometimes because there was people that just needed help. They had never experienced anything that really freaked them out before. They’d never experienced the kind of pressure of not just a competition, but a competition where they’re doing something kind of dangerous.

Something that really fing freaked them out. They have to hold their breath underwater for like two minutes while they swim through a fing thing. We have rescue divers under there to rescue them. There’s panic. And it was like—that was one thing that was really satisfying was being able to take a person who was ready to f*ing quit. And then they went on and won the whole thing.

Survivor’s Euphoria

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Yeah, that does make you feel good to push someone to the other side. And the survivor’s euphoria waiting for you. I heard that. I read about that term, survivor’s euphoria, and I realized I’d experienced it multiple times.

There was a—you ever heard of Colonel John Paul Stapp?

JOE ROGAN: No.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: He was a doctor, a biophysicist, flight surgeon, and he worked with Chuck Yeager and all that out at Edwards. It’s now Edwards Air Force Base, and they were conducting experiments on what happens to a pilot when they eject at high altitude.

And Colonel John Paul Stapp, because these experiments were gnarly, they were on deceleration. They built this huge sled out in the desert, and he would strap himself in. Because the thinking at the time was, if you’re going to do something, a very dangerous experiment, a lot of times people back then would put themselves at the center because they didn’t want to—of course, they had other people doing it. And he did it most, though.

So they would go hundreds of miles per hour.

JOE ROGAN: Whoa.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Hundreds of miles per hour and stop within eight feet. And at the time, I think they thought you could only experience maybe 18 Gs of deceleration. He at one time experienced 49 Gs of deceleration. I think it’s the most ever that any human has.

And he went blind for a little bit. And he knew that was going to happen because he’d had that happen before in these experiments. And the night before, the one where he got 49 Gs, experienced 49 Gs, he went around his house with his eyes closed and just trying to do things like cook. And if he did go blind forever—

He’s one of the most—at one time, he was known as the fastest man alive on that sled. He went faster than anyone at the time. And he’s the reason we have seat belts in cars. He’s one of the most brilliant men of the 20th century. He was on the cover of Time magazine. No one knows who he is today.

JOE ROGAN: Wow.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But he talked about survivor’s euphoria, and that’s where I learned about it.

JOE ROGAN: What did he say about it?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Just the endorphins that get released after going through something like that, and that you did survive, and it just fills you up.

JOE ROGAN: So he knew he was going to go blind, and he did it anyway.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: He knew that there was a high probability of going blind and a possibility of being blind forever.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And he was blind for like a couple days before it started getting—sensing light again. Yeah, he’s an amazing, amazing person.

Flying with the Blue Angels

JOE ROGAN: I did a flight with the Blue Angels once.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: How was that?

JOE ROGAN: It was amazing. First of all, you don’t—you never think of that being a physical thing, that those guys have to be physically fit.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Well, you go to—when we went to the base before you do the whole safety thing, they explain everything, what you’re going to have to do. You see these guys are all f*ing jacked. They’re all like superheroes.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, it’s because they’re not the biggest. They’re—

JOE ROGAN: They’re short like me, and they’re all thick. They’re all f*ing jack dudes. And they were like—well, first of all, you don’t want to be tall because it’s all about how much time it takes for the blood to get from your heart to your brain. And the shorter distance it has to travel, the better off you are.

And you have to be physically strong because—have you ever done it? You ever done a flight in a fighter jet?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, but we did the Vomit Comet in Russia, but Steve-O went up in a MiG.

JOE ROGAN: They do a thing called hooking. So what it is, is you hold on to the joystick or there’s straps that strap your legs down as well. You’re really harnessed in. You hold on to your straps, you go like this, and what you’re literally doing is forcing blood into your brain because you feel consciousness closing like an elevator door.

It’s like you feel the pressure, like you’re going black. You literally see it. You see the darkness on the side, and you’re just trying to keep the blood in your brain. We went seven and a half Gs, but the guy in front of me, while we’re doing this, so you’re taking this f*ing—you’re flying through these canyons.

He was going for it. He really took me on a ride. It wasn’t a safe ride. It was wild. We were like a couple hundred feet off the ground, maybe, and whipping through these canyons, taking these f*ing hard turns. And I heard him going, “Hoot, hoot, hoot.”

So I’m going, oh, f, he’s blacking out, too. I’m like, we’re going hundreds of miles an hour, just like a hundred feet off the ground, whipping through these canyons. This guy’s about to fing black out, too.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That’s not what you want to hear.

JOE ROGAN: It was terrifying, but also super educational. You just see people flying around. You’re like, oh, it’s probably like driving a car. No, it’s unbelievably physically demanding. And the Blue Angels, they don’t use gravity suits, or at least they didn’t.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, no. What, they don’t use decompression suits?

JOE ROGAN: No, no. It’s just a regular flight suit.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, did they not go up to a certain—what altitude were they? Well, this is a jet.

JOE ROGAN: It’s a jet. It’s not like you have to—you’re not in a spaceship. So the whole thing is just about being able to stay conscious. And the thing about the gravity suit is, I guess somehow or another it aids your ability to absorb all those Gs.

I’m not really educated about it, but I just do know that he said there’s ways that you wear suits that make this easier, but they don’t wear the suits.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, I think if you go up to a certain altitude, you have to have—

JOE ROGAN: But this wasn’t an altitude thing, right?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Right.

The G-Force Experience

JOE ROGAN: This was just a G-force thing. It was just the hard turns. It’s like the wicked turns at hundreds of miles an hour. And also just thinking about the tolerances of the aircraft itself and the pressure that’s on the hull, because the feeling of being in a jet going hundreds of miles an hour, and then hitting a hard turn, it’s just your whole body just like f*.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And you’re just along for the ride. Like, they’re so skilled to be able to overcome the forces.

JOE ROGAN: He let me do some stuff. Like I got to make the jet do a loop. I got to get it to roll over to get it to go upside down and go back over. He showed me how to do that.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Wow. You were in control of it?

JOE ROGAN: Well, I mean, he’s there too, in case I do something really f*ing stupid. I’m sure he has ultimate control. But I have a joystick too. I was allowed to do some stuff.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Do you think they could give you a joystick and it not be connected to anything too, and make you feel good?

JOE ROGAN: But it was connected. You can clearly tell while you’re moving, right?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, man, that’s pretty scary.

JOE ROGAN: It made you want to get one of those things. Like, how dope would it be to get one of those jets? Because you can get one of those if you’re like a super rich guy.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, yeah, you can get one, but you got to, you know…

JOE ROGAN: I mean, we looked this up one day. You could buy like decommissioned fighter jets. You know, they don’t have any machine guns on them or anything crazy. But you can get a decommissioned fighter jet if you’re like some fing psychotic billionaire. You got your own landing strip. You could get a fing fighter jet.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Which is gnarly.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I mean, if you go to Russia, you could probably get one fully loaded.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: 1500 bucks, dog.

JOE ROGAN: 1500? A million. It’s a million. Well, shit, look at this one. 395 grand. You get one. What’s like a really dope one? Let’s like go make it. Price. Okay. Five, four. What is that one? For 5 million bucks, what do you get? A 1992 McDonnell Douglas Skyhawk?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I mean, for that price, you should get a couple of rockets with it. Come on.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I bet you could go to Russia and they’ll give you some rockets.

Wild Times in Russia

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, man, we shot in Russia. And you can literally do anything you want in Russia. They let me go on a military base and shoot missiles out of a cannon. They took Steve-O up in a MiG.

JOE ROGAN: This is back when we were friendly with Russia.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, it was like 2005 and it was wild. Russia. We had so much fun.

JOE ROGAN: Do you ever look back on, like, how surreal your life has been and all these experiences?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I feel it a lot. Like when, like, for example, in Russia, because growing up, like, you would do those disaster drills in school in case Russia dropped the bomb and you know, run out behind your locker and put your head between your legs. Like that would help if a bomb was dropped.

But they were such the bad guy. And then it was 2005 and I’m on it. Been in movies and I’m over there. And that felt very surreal to be in Russia and think about what’s happened to my life. There are moments like that.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it was weird, too, because you got out of it and became a movie star. But then you were doing it again, like, you were right back in.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And it kind of started in Russia, actually. We were doing a bit. We’d done a few things over in Russia and we were doing something with the Russian special forces where we were on, like, we’re going to run through this obstacle course. And they had all these things set up.

I’m like, all right. Well, I was like, Jeff, why don’t you have their attack dog attack me and then shoot me with the rubber bullets and then have the guy kick me in the face when I get to the end. And we shot that and the dog attacked me. And the Russian guy, the special forces guy, said, “I’m not going to kick you in the face.” But he did.

JOE ROGAN: What a nice guy.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Deliver a nice blow to my solar plexus. I had to beg him to do it three times to like, no, you got to like, do it as hard as you can. But Jeff pulled me aside and goes, “Look, if you’re going to go this hard for basic cable,” this was just for Wild, the TV show Wild Boys. I would travel with him sometimes. He goes, “If you’re going to go this hard for basic cable, why don’t we do another movie?” And I was like, all right.

The Jackass Movies

JOE ROGAN: How many movies have you guys done?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: We’ve done four. And we just announced we’re going to do another. I just announced we’re going to do another. It’s going to be out June 26th.

JOE ROGAN: Have you filmed it already?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, we’re going to film. We’re about to film it in February. Late February. Start then.

JOE ROGAN: Do you feel apprehension? Do you feel like…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, like…

JOE ROGAN: But you can’t get a concussion.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, I can’t get any concussions. But I mean, I don’t care if, like I break my arm or leg. No one cares about that. It’s just…

JOE ROGAN: You don’t care about breaking your arm or your leg? Really?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No. Really? No.

JOE ROGAN: So this is something, this is like a feeling that you’ve developed this. I don’t care. You didn’t have that when you first started doing it.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: There was probably some self-worth issues when I began. It didn’t come from a healthy place, Joe.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it, but it’s not just that. It’s like you don’t have a fear of being like radically injured because you blow your knee out or you blow your leg out, you’re limping for the rest of your life.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It doesn’t. That doesn’t bother me. No.

JOE ROGAN: God, I’m so averse to that shit.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It’s like the producer side of me overrides the performer side. It’s like, hey, but we’re going to get footage. And it’s about as simple as that.

JOE ROGAN: So you’ll still do dangerous. You just don’t want to do anything…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I can’t get any concussions. I don’t care about…

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, but how. If you’re going to be in a violent situation where you could break an arm or a leg, you easily could get a concussion as well.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, you got to, well, you got to assess, Joe.

JOE ROGAN: Risk assessment. What the f* does your waivers look like?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, I don’t know. It was, you know, on the first movie, the insurance companies insured it per bit. They didn’t insure the whole movie, they just insured it per bit.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that’s how they did with Fear Factor.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, so some bits costs, the insurance was going to be more than the whole first movie, so I can’t do those. But after that, we find a shady insurance company, and they take care of us.

JOE ROGAN: Once you started acting, though, and doing big movies, wasn’t there any part of you was like, okay, I’m done with this?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, it’s so fun. It’s something that I created with my friends. And then there’s probably my wires got crossed somehow, and then I learned to like it. I would love it. You know, I guess it’s like a comedian learning to love bombing. Right?

JOE ROGAN: No one learns to love bombing.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I’ve talked to a couple comedians, and they’re like, if you got to learn to like, love it and basically not fear it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And I kind of did that with stunts, I guess. I learned to, I just liked it.

JOE ROGAN: Wow. You ever talked to a shrink about that?

The One Door You Can’t Open

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, what I was doing, I have a therapist, and I’m like, okay, we can talk about everything in my life, but not the part of me that does stunts. Really? Yeah. Because I didn’t want to unwind that. Even though it went sideways quite a few times.

JOE ROGAN: That’s a wild statement. I didn’t want to unwind that.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. So I’ve looked into it a little. Now that I can’t get any more concussions. Don’t crush my career.

JOE ROGAN: What is. Yeah, right. What a crazy job for the therapist.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Like, the one area where you really probably should address, you know, you have this, like, overall, what is Johnny Knoxville. What’s going on in his head? And there’s this one door. You can’t go in that room.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, we can’t. The biggest problem we can address.

JOE ROGAN: It’s kind of a crazy thing.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Well, again, I should have went to college.

JOE ROGAN: Do you get annoyed having to answer all these questions all the time about that kind of shit? Because after a while, I would imagine, like, that is the most common thing that people would want to talk to you about, like, how many times you’ve been hurt. What happened? What is it like?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, I don’t. I mean, I get the joke. What I would be doing if I wasn’t doing this. So I’m grateful. And so somebody wants to talk about it. Let’s talk.

JOE ROGAN: Well, you’re obviously a smart guy. I don’t buy that you could do anything.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, when I started down this road, this was my best guess. So, you know, it just became something I’m doing. And, yeah, I guess I did want to write, but I incorporate that into the movies.

JOE ROGAN: It was a very strange life, Johnny.

Growing Up with Crazy Characters

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, I guess. Yeah, for sure. I kind of created the environment that I grew up in with my father. He owned a tire company and he had all these crazy characters working for him, like people like Big George, A-Kicking Robert, this guy SD named Super Dick, one guy named W.W., Woodrow Wilson, Boxcar Johnson Jr.

He was the tire groover who was always getting arrested for one thing or another. And he was always pranking these people that work, his people that work for him. He would stage gunfights at Christmas parties.

JOE ROGAN: What?

The Christmas Party Gun Prank

He did this twice. One year at the Christmas party, he gave a couple of the guys, his employees, guns and said, “Okay, I want you guys to get an argument and I want to culminate with you pulling out a gun and firing and you pulling out your gun.” They were blank guns. And everyone just—it was in a pretty gnarly part of town, too—but everyone just ran out into the streets. Dad was ecstatic.

So the next year, there are two new employees, and he’s like, “Hey, hey, Merle, come over here, you guys. You’re going to get in a fight and you’re going to start yelling and you’re going to pull out guns,” and it’s the same gag. So they did it, and they were very excited and they pulled out the guns, started firing. But dad had given everyone else in the party blank guns. So they started firing back at those groups and those dudes take off running down the street.

So, yeah, it’s just kind of imitating what my father did, I guess.

JOE ROGAN: Did your father feel any responsibility?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Dad loved Jackass, but hated the parts where I would do stunts. My whole family did, of course. But they, you know, I just—doing what I saw growing up, he would send letters to his friends from the VD clinic, rubber stamped on the envelope, saying, “You have to list your last 10 partners because you’ve contracted a venereal disease. Signed, Dr. Harlan C. Titmore.”

But people would get these letters, or worse, the guy’s wife would get the letter. And the thing about something like that, people become angry and emotional and then they believe everything. That’s the great thing about pranks. If you can get someone so wound up that they’re really emotional, they’ll believe anything.

So these guys would come home from work, and then the mother, like his wife would be there. The wife’s mother would be there. He had a gun pulled on him over that once.

JOE ROGAN: A real gun?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, yeah, real guns.

JOE ROGAN: Hey, dad sounds like a f*ing maniac.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: He would send letters out from the IRS telling people they’re going to be audited. He got visited by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation over that. He didn’t do that anymore.

Growing Up in an Unusual Environment

JOE ROGAN: Well, that makes more sense now. Okay, so you grew up in a very unusual environment.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, very unusual.

JOE ROGAN: How did your dad get started doing shit like that? Was it just—

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I don’t know. He just had that personality. He was such a shit starter. He should have been in show business is what should have been, but he was from—

JOE ROGAN: Did you ever think about using him?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: He was in one episode when we were doing the TV show. My mom and him were in the episode. But he wrote a couple of bits for Jack. He was like, “Hey, I want you to do this.” And we filmed a couple. See, he loved that. So, yeah, he—I don’t know. He didn’t know how to go about being in show business. Neither did I either.

JOE ROGAN: But it seems like he was doing his own—almost like a local play. He was doing his own version of it for himself.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Oh, for sure. Just to entertain himself.

JOE ROGAN: I guess you could do that when you’re the boss.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, he—like, in high school, I’d be laying on the couch, I took a nap, you know, it was like a junior senior or whatever. And I felt something go through my lips. And he had went and got a hot dog and microwaved it till it was lukewarm and dragged the hot dog through my lips. And then when I woke up, he acted like he was zipping his pants.

He thought—and it just—him laughing at his own joke just made everything. He thought it was the funniest thing. And then, like, you’re on board, too. Yeah, he was a character.

JOE ROGAN: Well, that makes more sense now.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Because I’m like, how does a normal guy dive into something like Jackass? That makes more sense. Yeah, you were sort of indoctrinated at an early age.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Very early.

Wild Animals and Dangerous Stunts

JOE ROGAN: Some of the shit that made me the most uncomfortable was the wild boy stuff. Like, Steve-O showed me a video of him when he climbed a tree and the lions came up the tree and took his hat.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Which is disrespectful if you think about it. Just take his hat.

JOE ROGAN: Fortunate, because if they didn’t have the hat, they might have just grabbed his whole head and just dragged him off, you know? I mean, those were actual lions.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. No, they—

JOE ROGAN: They weren’t pet lions.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: You’re entering into a situation that’s unpredictable and kind of hoping for the best is what you’re doing.

JOE ROGAN: And they didn’t have any backup plan. I mean, when you’re in a tree and the lions go up the tree to get you, there’s nothing really anybody could do to help you. By the time if it gets a hold of you, you’re dead like that.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: There’s nothing like—here’s an example of the backup plans we have. We’re filming a—Steve-O’s filming a bit with an alligator on Jackass. And our safety guy, Manny Puig, who dives in swamps at night with the miner’s light to pull alligators up to the surface in crocodiles. He’s Tarzan. He’s Tarzan. He was our safety guy.

And it’s like, “Okay, if this goes south, what do we do, man?” He goes, “Okay, we’re going to be doing this stunt with the alligator. And if the alligator grabs a hold of Steve-O and bites him, hopefully he will let go.” And that was it. That was the whole plan.

JOE ROGAN: There’s no, like, poke him in the eyes. There’s no—

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: If the gator doesn’t want to let go, he’s not going to let go, so—

JOE ROGAN: F*, dude.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: The wild animals ones are the nutty. One of the ones where you guys are playing keep away with hyenas.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: They have the strong, like one of the strongest jaw, the bite in the animal kingdom. Maybe like third or fourth.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, there’s—

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: What are you going to do? There’s nothing you can do. Just hope for the best.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And they have instincts. Like, if you twist your ankle and they see you limping—

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, yeah. I was doing a thing with—we were in Argentina at this zoo and we were like, “Hey, can I get in with the lions?” Because there was a couple of keepers in there with it. They’re like, “Yeah, come on in.” And they’re like, “But whatever you do, don’t trip and fall.” I’m like, “Oh, shit.”

And so I got on a bike and started riding around the pen. And they’re like, “If we give you a signal, you got to—” And so I’m riding around the pen. They’re like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Get out.”

JOE ROGAN: Get off. Get up.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Because the lion locked in on me and was about to attack me and they hurried me out of the pen. And afterwards they’re like, “Yeah, that was the first time anyone aside from us has been in the pen with them. And it’s also mating season, so he’s very aggressive.” I’m like, “Well, I wish he’d have told me that before I got in there.” Well, I still would have went in there, but it was a real half-assed type of situation.

JOE ROGAN: It’s just like, you guys just have avoided death over and over and over again.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, we’ve been lucky.

JOE ROGAN: But like, that’s a f*ed up way to go through life, I guess.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But we had a ball. I don’t know, man. It just, that’s what we were doing.

JOE ROGAN: And for sure you entertained the f out of millions and millions of people who laughed their asses off and had a great fing time watching. I get, I don’t know why, but I get anxiety. I have a really hard time watching those things. Yeah, I avoid them. Like a lot of my friends. Like, “We’re going to see Jackass.” I’m like, “I don’t, I can’t.” I get freaked out. I don’t want anybody to get hurt. It’s weird.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, I feel that way when like one of the guys is doing something like pretty gnarly. I’m not ecstatic over watching something that could have a forever consequence. But with me, I don’t know, I’m just like, “Let’s go.” I just, it’s, I just, it’s fun.

Family and Kids

JOE ROGAN: I know, but even after you have a family and even after, you know, you have kids that are watching their dad get f*ed up.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, that’s the thing. I wouldn’t, I didn’t want my kids to see that, you know, but they had to see at a certain age. Like I didn’t let my oldest daughter, she could watch things with Wee Man or this or that and—but I didn’t let her come to a movie until she was 14. I made her sit right next to me and I said, “Madison, there are—sometimes you have to close your eyes, sometimes cover your ears, and sometimes both.” And I had the list of bits and so it was—I censored it even then.

But now it’s the Internet. It’s a f*ing free for all. Yeah. So I guess my younger kids, I think, you know, they saw it a little earlier. I get with—I only showed my son like a year ago, and my daughter’s reaction that he was on board. My youngest daughter, she thought a lot of things were funny, but I don’t know, I guess I don’t know what, how she felt because they only—my youngest only saw the first Jackass movie, which is pretty tame compared to the others.

Looking back, it’s pretty innocent. Even though Ryan Dunn shoved a car up his ass to get an X-ray. A little toy car. Did you see that bit?

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, that one worked.

JOE ROGAN: Do you worry that they’re going to follow in your footsteps?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No. Well, I have daughters, and they’re just naturally more bright. And my son, he would joke about it to his mom that he’s going, but he’s not going to. He’s bright too. They have options. I didn’t see a lot of options for myself.

JOE ROGAN: It’s weird that you said that your daughters are bright because girls are definitely more risk averse and like, ridiculous situations like that.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Think things through if it—

JOE ROGAN: I have a way harder time watching girls get hurt.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, yeah. I don’t. I don’t. We had a girl on the show. She like, like, broke her lower back. She was doing a thing. We’re doing a—just an—it was a pretty tame stunt compared to the ones we do. She was going down like it was grass, but it was like a big hill on a—like some kind of rubber raft. And she had her lav mic on her lower back and she came off, and that was the impact area.

And for the longest—and it really was a bummer for everybody, you know. And I’m like, I don’t know. We didn’t have a female cast member for a long time.

JOE ROGAN: What was the extent of her—

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It was—she was in the hospital for a little bit. She’s fine now. I just saw her at the Jackass art show in November, and she’s fine, but it sucks.

The Jackass Art Show and Legacy

JOE ROGAN: You had a Jackass art show?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, yeah. Because it was our 25th anniversary last year, and I’m like, “Let’s have an art show and have—we have some cast members and crew members are good artists.” And I’m like, “Let’s reach out to some big artists to see if they’ll do it.” And we did. It’s the first time I ever curated an art show. And I was like, “F*, I’m going to reach out to Damien Hirst to see if he’ll do it.” And he ended up doing 10 pieces of art for it. I was like, “Wow.” You know, I was really blown away by the good vibes and that we got from everyone over it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Because you guys didn’t just create a show. You created, like, a chapter in modern pop culture history, really. Because it—it became one of the most entertaining things ever and one of the most ridiculous things ever.

The Spirit of Jackass

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Wow. Yeah, that’s tough to. I never really walked down those roads. Yeah. I don’t know. I appreciate you saying that, though. But it’s odd, you know, to entertain that thought, especially if you see Bea and Tremaine sitting around writing ideas. You’re like, “these two idiots did that.”

Like, if you could see how we shoot, it’s just… it’s amazing we get any footage at all. Joe, Jeff Ross came out with this on Jackass Number Two. We were doing some bit and some prank with me and Spike as old people. And me and Spike would… we would, like, hit bus stops and anywhere where there is people, but we would jump out and start doing pranks before the cameras even arrived.

And it was driving Jeff insane. He’s like, “you guys shoot a movie like it’s a pickup basketball game.” And he just roasted us for about five minutes straight. And it was all accurate. It’s amazing we get any footage.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. But, like, that’s the spirit of it, is that you’re doing it for fun. So you would be doing it if the cameras were on or not. You’re doing it for yourselves as much as you’re doing it for the camera.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, for sure. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Which is why it’s so good.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I don’t know how to make, like, other people laugh. Right. If I’m writing a bit, I don’t… that would freeze me. But I know how to make my friends laugh. And if they’re laughing, I think we may have something. And that’s… that’s the only bellwether.

Like, if you do something, like in the magic trick with the bull, we did that twice. Because the first time, the first bull just came and didn’t really knock me up in the air. It just got me on the ground and just started plowing me, stomping me. And I got up, and everyone was looking at me like… I’m like, all right. I looked at Jeff and he’s like, “all right, bring the other bull in.” That sucks. Take two with bulls always sucks. You’re hoping you get that first one.

Wild Boys and Dangerous Stunts

JOE ROGAN: Oh, God. The things with the animals are the ones I think that freak me out the most. So Wild Boys was the hardest one for me to watch. I really struggled with that show.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. The one that I, Jeff and I got in a half argument over. I was in Arkansas shooting the riot control test. Me, Bam, and Dunn were standing in front of the riot control. Shoots, like, 10,000 hard rubber beads at you. We were shooting that, and they were in New Orleans about to go out and put a hook through Steve-O’s jaw, chum up the waters, and cast him out to the water with sharks.

I’m like, “what are we doing, Jeff? What’s the best possible outcome here?” He’s like, “oh, no, no, it’s fine, it’s fine.” I’m like, “we’re going to get his foot bit off.” “It’s fine.” And it ended up being fine. But I was questioning the bit, and it’s a great bit. The shark goes to bite his foot and Steve-O kicks him at the last second and scares the shark away. Yeah, it was just dumb luck.

JOE ROGAN: And he had a hook through his mouth.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, it was… it was like a big… oh, you’re not going to look at that.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, my God.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It took him, like, 15 minutes to get that hook through his mouth. And the thing about it, they shot it the day before and it didn’t go good. So there’s a hole on the other side of his jaw, too. You just can’t see it.

JOE ROGAN: This is so f*ing stupid.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, my God, dude.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yes, he’s… and, oh, yeah, it was going for him, and then he kicks it and got him back in it. That would have been bad. That had been forever. Bad old Peg Leg Steve-O.

The Next Generation

JOE ROGAN: And he’s, like, mentoring young guys that are doing it, too. Like, last time he was on, he was showing… yeah. Let me show you this one guy that I’m hanging out with. Yeah, dude, this guy’s running through barbed wire. I’m like, what the f*? Yeah, this guy’s radical. He’s covering himself with firecrackers. I’m like, no.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, I know. That’s Zach. We get… we got him in the cast. He… yeah, he’s… he’s pretty up for it.

JOE ROGAN: How bad is he f*ed up?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. I mean, have you seen… he had a… he was doing some trick on a skateboard, and he’s a… he’s a rather Rubenesque young fellow, and he just compound fractured his ankle. I don’t think you would like that.

JOE ROGAN: When it popped through the skin, the whole deal.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I’m not sure it popped through the skin, but it was… it was doing things that ankles shouldn’t do.

JOE ROGAN: What a weird life you’ve lived, dude. Yeah, very strange.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It’s been okay.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. No, I mean, look, you’re fine.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, no, it’s odd. I get it, I get it.

JOE ROGAN: What are you laughing at, Jamie?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I just saw the injury.

JOE ROGAN: Here, let me see. Okay. Here he goes. And…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I guess that was more his shin is…

UFC Injuries and Leg Breaks

JOE ROGAN: Oh, that’s his tibia and his fib. Oh, yeah, tib fib. Yeah, that’s the Conor McGregor right there on Instagram.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: The Joe Theisman.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. That’s the… yeah. Anderson Silva. I’ve seen a few of those. Those are the most painful things I’ve ever seen in UFC fights.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Things that really bother me are the… the leg breaks when someone throws a kick and the kick gets checked and you see their leg, like, wrap around the shin.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: The Anderson Silva one was very disturbing.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, that was hard. It’s crazy. Like, it’s only happened four times in the history of MMA or in the history of the UFC. And two of them involved Chris Weidman. One, Chris Weidman did it to Anderson Silva, where Anderson Silva broke his leg. And then Chris Weidman broke his leg in the exact same way against Uriah Hall.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, I don’t know if I saw the one against Uriah Hall.

JOE ROGAN: So loud. Because what he did was, it was the first kick he threw. It was the first round of the fight. He threw a full power low kick, and Uriah checked it. Oh. And you hear it just snap. Do the headphones work? Can we hear it? They’re still f*ed. Good, good. You don’t need to hear it, but here it is. Full power corral. Whoa. Whoa. And then he puts his foot down.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That doesn’t… that doesn’t look real.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. He was never the same again.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. You can’t come back from that, right?

JOE ROGAN: No, he… I mean, guys, they don’t really come back. You know, Conor McGregor hasn’t fought again since. I mean, he’s throwing kicks with it. I’ve seen him spar with it. I don’t… I mean, I… there’s a one guy who is a heavyweight in the PFL that apparently came back and continued his career after he… so you can find who that guy is, is a heavyweight guy who was in the PFL that snapped his shin like that and then came back and kept fighting.

Weidman’s have some fights since then, and he’s actually even thrown that kick since then. Yeah, but I don’t think you’re the same.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. That would mentally get to you.

JOE ROGAN: Well, one leg now weighs more.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Right, right.

JOE ROGAN: Even if it’s titanium, there’s… there’s more. There’s screws. There’s a bunch of s* in there. And then… and I’ve got to think that it feels different. There’s no way. And then there’s the psychological thing like you’ve already been through… I mean, I think Chris had to go through some insane amount of surgeries, multiple surgeries, to try to correct it, to fix it, because it didn’t take right the first time.

You’re hoping the bones grow back together. You got a rod and then screws, and then you’re hoping the bone fuses all around it. And in some circumstances, they have to make a decision whether or not they go back in another time and take all the supporting stuff out and just have your bone exist normally.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. And you don’t want… and then it’s like the risk of infection. Oh, yeah, it’s… it’s…

JOE ROGAN: It’s f*ing gnarly.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Yeah.

Women in Combat Sports

JOE ROGAN: That’s… I have the hardest time, but I have a harder time watching women get f*ed up than I do men. You know, is sexist in me or whatever it is. But…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But the UFC fights with women… they… they go for it. I mean, the men go for it, but it just seems like the women are just extra aggressive.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it just seems crazier when they’re doing it, when they’re beating the f* out of each other for whatever reason. Like, there’s a fight that happened at the UFC Sphere, when they did it at the Sphere in Vegas, we had one event there, and there’s this lady, Irene Aldana, who’s a beast, and… and she got a cut in her forehead that I can’t believe the referee didn’t stop the fight because it looked like someone hit her in the face with an ax.

Like, her entire forehead was split wide open. Blood was pouring out of her face, and she’s just… that’s it right there.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Look at that. Oh, my goodness.

JOE ROGAN: And she’s marching forward, throwing bombs where blood is, like, splattering. Like blood splattering with every punch that lands on her face. And she’s moving forward, throwing. It was f*ing crazy.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. She’s a warrior.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, my God. I mean, that’s the beginning of the cut. The cut got even worse than that. It was horrible at the end. It was f*ing massive. It had to be like a 6 inch cut on her forehead.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That… that’s… that’s insane.

JOE ROGAN: Well, you could, like, see the whole skull.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Like, when I was interviewing her, when I was talking to her after the fight, you could see her whole skull was, like, exposed.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. I… you know, when we’re talking about the last… doing Jackass Forever, we’re talking about getting new cast members and talking about bringing on… yeah, look at that. Some females, how crazy that is. And I was a little… that’s insane. Insane. That’s insane. And I was a little hesitant. And then my assistant Megan, and I’m talking to other… they’re like, “look, look, guys, do it. It’s like women can do it.” And I was… and I was forced to address it and let go of it, and I’m…

JOE ROGAN: Like, all right, who was saying, “guys do it, women can do it.” Was it a guy or a girl?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, my assistant Megan and a couple of other friends. Women. And they’re just like, “you got to stop looking at it that way.” And I said, all right. And I just moved forward, and we got Rachel Wolfson, and she was fantastic.

JOE ROGAN: I love Rachel. She’s at the club all the time.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: She’s the best.

JOE ROGAN: She’s fun.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Cool chick.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, she’s great.

JOE ROGAN: Is there a photo of Irene Aldana’s face now? See what it looks like? It’s all healed up. It bothers me, man. Did she?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: How… how many…

JOE ROGAN: That’s not real. That’s a filter. That’s Instagram filter dog.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: There’s no way that’s an avatar.

JOE ROGAN: That’s what she looks like now after the scar.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That’s an avatar. Right?

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s not possible that… that… that went away. See Google or run a search. Irene Aldana after the surgery. Yeah, but that’s all. You can’t…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, there’s makeup. I don’t know.

JOE ROGAN: Makeup and filter. That’s like… that’s what she…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Okay, there you go. There you go. You can see…

JOE ROGAN: Go back there. So again, you can kind of see…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, yeah. When the light hits it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go.

JOE ROGAN: Right there.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Wow.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It looks pretty good. I mean, you can see it, but it gives her character.

JOE ROGAN: Well, for a man… for a man, that’s pretty dope, right? I don’t know.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I don’t… it looks like she’s pretty okay with everything. She’s a beast. Yeah.

The Brutality of Women’s MMA

JOE ROGAN: You know, it’s an unusual woman that is not just willing to do that and get her face cut open like that, but also march forward in a mask of blood like a f*ing horror movie throwing bombs. And she was cut over her eye. Her nose was split open. Giant gash in her forehead and just marching forward.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: So they did. And she was fighting who?

JOE ROGAN: Who is she fighting?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And did they have a rematch? Because I assume the referee called it after that.

JOE ROGAN: No, it went the decision. Yeah. She lost a decision.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: The doctor, they go over, the doctor, he looks at it. He’s like, “Ah, you’ll never notice on a galloping horse. Get back in there.”

JOE ROGAN: I don’t know. I don’t know what the referee was thinking. Because referees have stopped fights for less injuries.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: It’s very subjective.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Usually when it goes from your eyebrow to the top of your skull.

JOE ROGAN: It’s very subjective. One referee or one doctor will say, let it go. And then another doctor will go, it’s over. And if the doctor says it’s over, it’s over.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But a referee inspected it when it went and split up her head.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah. They wiped it down. They allowed her to continue. Yeah, she got cut.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And who is that referee who looked at it and said, “Yeah, you’re fine. Get back in there, kid.”

JOE ROGAN: See if you can find video of it.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Look at her nose. The nose would have stopped the fight.

JOE ROGAN: Nose is destroyed. Forehead’s destroyed. I don’t remember what she got hit with. Most likely an elbow that did that. Who is she fighting?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Norma Dumont.

JOE ROGAN: Norma Dumont. Norma Dumont’s a beast, too.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And who won?

JOE ROGAN: Norma did. Norma won, but I don’t… See if you can find a video of it. The video of it is gnarly because we’re freaking out because we’re doing the commentary. Like, oh, my God, this lady is a savage.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: What round did that happen in?

JOE ROGAN: That’s a good question. I want to say it was the second round, but I don’t know. What did you just have? You just had it?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Video game.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, it’s a video game. Video games are so good. You can’t tell the difference.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Fight in the video game.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. But again, I don’t know why. It’s like, when a woman gets knocked out, it bugs me way more.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I’m so used to guys getting knocked out.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: When a guy gets knocked down, I’m like, I hope he’s okay. But a woman gets knocked out, it’s like my stomach turns. I’m like, you’re sitting there in your commentary chair. You just like, oh, f*, man. When someone gets shinned in the head, just bang. And you see them stiffen up, there’s something about a woman getting knocked out that… I don’t know why. Yeah, it’s part of my brain is like, no.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I’m so used to men getting knocked out.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Well, I mean, looks like… I mean, you’ve seen a lot of fights.

JOE ROGAN: I’ve probably seen more people get the f* beaten out of them than anybody who’s ever lived.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: In person. In person, watching elite fighters smash each other, I’ve probably seen more people get pummeled than anybody.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. I wonder the number of knockouts you’ve seen.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, it has to be in the thousands. I don’t know. I don’t know how many fights I’ve called. I started doing commentary… Well, I started doing post fight interviews in 1997.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Wow.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, so that was the first. I worked at UFC 12 in 1997. Now we’re at UFC 324, so… And I’ve been there for a large percentage of them.

Fedor: The Last Emperor

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I hate to pivot, but what do you think of Fedor?

JOE ROGAN: I love him. I love him. He’s one of the all time greats. He was one of my favorite fighters of all time. The great tragedy is Fedor never fought in the UFC against Cain Velasquez because they were both in their prime at the exact same time, and they could have made that happen.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I love Fedor. The Pride fights, Tremaine and I would… we’d all get… Every time the Pride fights were on, we’d always watch Fedor and dude, he was stoic.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, stoic like dead face. No matter what was going on, it could be the most chaotic, insane fight. Getting blasted in the face. Never change his expression. Like a f*ing robot.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Before the fight, all the fighters are jumping up and down, looking around, and he looks like he’s about to fall asleep.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, he was amazing. His mindset was f*ing impenetrable.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Remember when Kevin Randleman suplexed him?

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And I’ve never seen someone get suplexed on their head and not only push through it, but he submitted him pretty soon afterwards, right?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, he got him in an armbar very shortly after that.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That still doesn’t make any sense to me.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, he was a freak. He was a freak. Man, look at his face. Look how calm he looks. Yeah, here it is. So he gets slammed.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, my goodness.

JOE ROGAN: And just rolls. Just rolls right into it. I mean, that was… That could have knocked most people completely unconscious. Could have separated your vertebrae.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And look, he’s still… Look how strong.

JOE ROGAN: And he reversed the position seconds later.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And Randleman was good on the ground.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, f*, yeah. Randleman was a world class wrestler, but look at that. But Fedor was special, man. He was special. And this is like Randleman’s wearing wrestling shoes, too. He was allowed to wear wrestling shoes. Pride had a lot of crazy rules.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That left of Fedor’s.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, everything, man, everything. He was the most complete. So he pins down the arm and he eventually catches him. I think he caught him in a Kimura. A Kimura or a straight arm lock. It might have been… Yeah, here it is. He caught him in a Kimura. Here it is.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I mean, that’s insane.

JOE ROGAN: Insane.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Within a minute, he turned it around.

JOE ROGAN: Well, he was the most complete out of all those guys, because he was a guy that could fight you standing up at an elite level, but also in any kind of wild scramble, he would catch an arm bar off of his back. He would submit you on the ground. He could throw you. He could do everything. He was the most complete out of all the heavyweights of his era.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. I remember when he was fighting Nogueira, I was like, oh, no, this could go south for Fedor. I was worried. You know, because I love… You look up to a fighter and you’re like, he can’t lose. I don’t want him to lose. And I was worried about Nogueira. But he beat him twice, right?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And they were brutal. The ground and pounds were f*ing brutal when he was on top of Nogueira, just bombing on him.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. I’m like, Fedor, don’t go to the ground with Nogueira, because I’m just worried. I’m like his aunt or something.

JOE ROGAN: But he…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No problem.

JOE ROGAN: No, he was awesome. But there’s a time where a fighter can operate under that peak form, and it’s a short window. And I always say, when you’re looking at the greatest of all time, you have to look at them in that peak window. You can’t look at them when they’re fighting in their late 30s and they probably shouldn’t be fighting anymore.

You got to judge them based on who they were in their prime. Because every combat sport athlete has a limited amount of time where they can operate in their prime. And Fedor in his prime was about as good as anybody who ever lived.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I love hearing you say that. Because I…

JOE ROGAN: Really f*ing amazing. But it’s like when we had Cain in the UFC, Cain Velasquez, who was another superhuman freak, also super stoic, and had cardio like no heavyweight ever. Freakish. God given cardio.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And they’d call him Cardiocaine because he would just put a pace on guys. Well, you’d see the look on their face, and it was like the second round, like, I can’t do this.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, he’s ready to go.

JOE ROGAN: Just not even out of breath, just smashing you over and over and over again, picking you up, slamming you down. Like what he did to Brock Lesnar. Brock Lesnar was fing terrifying. He was a 300 pound man who was built like a Viking. Like he just hopped off of a fing ship with a battle axe. Yeah, Cain beat the f* out of him.

Brock Lesnar and the Wee Man Incident

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I know that. That was an amazing fight. And I watched Brock Lesnar body slam Wee Man through a table at a restaurant one night. It was one of the best things.

JOE ROGAN: We were Jackass.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, no, we were there to do… I was going to do WrestleMania, I believe it was WrestleMania against that low down and dirty Sami Zayn. And we’re at the restaurant, I think we’re at a Four Seasons in their restaurant. And we all had a couple of drinks and Brock just comes by, he’s leaving. He comes by to say goodbye, and Wee Man gets a little chatty. Wee Man got a mouth on him.

So Brock just scoops him up like a baby and he goes, “You’re going through that table” and just lifts him up over his head and bam, right through the table. It was one of the best things I’ve ever seen. Just it looked like one of those tables in an old west bar fight. Yeah, this is it. He’s like, no. Wee Man’s like, no, no.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, Jesus Christ. That’s a regular table too.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, yeah. That’s what you get for talking s* to Brock Lesnar. It doesn’t really compute in his head.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t think Brock is a guy that… He was NCAA Division 1 national champion, elite wrestler. I always wondered what would happen with him if he didn’t go into pro wrestling for so long. If he just went into MMA right out of his college career. I think he could have been one of the all time greats.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: What are you going to do with that guy if he’s been training for that long?

JOE ROGAN: Well, he didn’t train much in striking at all. You could tell in the early days, his striking was… Obviously an elite athlete. A freak of nature physically, but he was still learning. Striking and striking is something takes a long time to really get a mastery of.

He wasn’t… So it was just… And he didn’t need the money, didn’t need to do it. Was already a giant pro wrestling star. Could have just stayed Brock Lesnar, but just decided, I want to see what would happen if I fight for real.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: He liked it and he beat a lot of really f*ing good guys.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Which is kind of crazy. I mean, he beat Randy Couture, who’s an all time great. He beat Frank Mir who’s an all time great. He’s a freak athlete. He’s f*ing horrific dude.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Who’s the young guy? Gable Steveson.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I think he’s a problem. His striking looks good.

JOE ROGAN: Problem.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: His striking looks good.

The Gable Stevenson Phenomenon

JOE ROGAN: He’s a giant problem because he’s a 250-pound man that moves like a 150-pound man. He’s so fing fast and so athletic for a big guy. And elite wrestling skills, I mean, gold medalist in the Olympics wrestling skills. That kind of wrestling skill is so hard to f with.

Yeah, he’s got that and ridiculous power and speed in his hands. And just this, there’s a mindset that some guys have, like, elite athletes have this unstoppable drive and discipline. And he’s got that. And he’s going to be. I sent Dana White a text message because he had an MMA fight and hit this dude with a left hook. And then as the dude’s going out, he fing slams him to the ground. He landed the punch and he had enough speed to close the distance and fing slam him to the ground while he’s unconscious from the punch.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And I sent Dana White a text. I said, everybody’s f*ed. I just sent him that clip.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I sent Dana the same clip. Did you really? Dana, what are we doing here?

JOE ROGAN: Gable’s the first guy that I’ve ever had in the studio that isn’t even in the UFC yet, that I always wanted to have on right away. Like, look at that. That speed is so insane. Look at that. The transition between he KOs him with a left hook and then look at this. Just hops to the top of the octagon.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But go back to the knockout, because look at the guy when he’s on. You can see the birdies flying around his head in that one angle, on the opposite angle.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, that is crazy speed. And then blast him with a punch all before the referee can even get to him. That dude’s like, what the f* just happened?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: He has a hard time getting fights. He’ll probably be in the UFC quicker than he should be because no one wants to fight him. On the regional circuit, the smaller promotions, very difficult to get a guy like that a fight because you can’t beat him. You can’t beat him. So if you’re, you got to be the type of guy, almost like you are with stunts like, all right, let’s f*ing do it.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Let’s see what happens.

JOE ROGAN: Because you’re not fast enough to avoid the punches, you’re not skillful enough to stop the takedown. You can’t do anything about it. Once he’s on top of you, you’re not getting back up. You’re just going to get pummeled. Like, what are you going to do? And some guys are just so gangster, they’re like, let’s see how I do.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: You’re just standing in front of a culture.

JOE ROGAN: Most guys are going to not fight. You’re going to get that offer and you’re going to go, f* that. I want to be a world class fighter someday. I got to get better. There’s no way I’m going to get better if I fight that guy and I realize how tall the mountain actually is that I’m supposed to climb.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But to any prospective fighters of Gable Stevenson out there who maybe don’t want to fight them, take it from me, it doesn’t take that long to get knocked out. It’s going to be an easy night. It’s going to be, what, 15 seconds of your time?

Boxing’s Traditional Approach to Fighter Development

JOE ROGAN: That’s not the problem. The problem is, well, so like in boxing, okay, this is a good example. So boxing has always traditionally done a way better job of preparing fighters for world class fighters. So even Mike Tyson, who was a phenom in his prime, he fought a bunch of journeymen in the beginning.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Mitch Blood Green.

JOE ROGAN: Well, he was good. Mitch Blood Green was good. Mitch Blood Green went to decision. Yeah, I mean, he was a gang leader.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Not just crazy.

JOE ROGAN: No, in the street fight, Mike f*ed him up, but he also broke his hand. In the street fight, in a haberdashery in Harlem, which is crazy.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Slipped into the alliteration.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I mean, they fought in a haberdashery. They fought in a place where you may get custom suits made.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And why wouldn’t you?

JOE ROGAN: Why wouldn’t you? So that fight was like, Mitch Blood Green was a real pro, he was a real elite fighter. But you go to the early days of Mike Tyson where he’s fighting guys that have f*ing zero business being in there with him. And these guys just took the payday and just got knocked into orbit.

And those fights are some of the most fun fights to watch because you realize you’re dealing with a guy who’s going to be one of the all time greats. You’re getting to see him when he’s 19 and no one had any idea what was coming. Like some of his first fights, people had heard rumblings. There’s this kid out of the Catskills. Everybody talked about it, but until you saw him, you’re just like, oh, God. Good Lord.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Just all business, too.

JOE ROGAN: All business. No socks.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Just the towel with the hole in it. And it just.

JOE ROGAN: It was throwback.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, it was. But there was never a throwback fighter like that that just had a towel over his head walking into the ring.

JOE ROGAN: Well, you’d have to go back to the Jack Dempsey days, which Tyson did see. Tyson had this advantage that his manager was Jim Jacobs, and Jim Jacobs was a boxing historian. And so Jim Jacobs had all these films of all the old school fighters. Sandy Sadler, Willie Pep.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And so Mike would just sit and watch all these great fighters, all the old school guys, all the old Joe Louis fights on film. All the Sugar Ray Robinson fights.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Which there are not a lot on film. I wish there were, because we never had prime Sugar Ray Robinson. There’s not a lot of films.

JOE ROGAN: Well, you can watch them on YouTube.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But I don’t think prime, prime. I think after a certain point.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, no, there’s some prime Sugar Ray Robinson. Yeah, you could watch some great Sugar Ray Robinson KOs that are on. Yeah, he was another guy. I mean, I think he had like 90 fights. I think he was like something like 90 and oh, before he had his first loss.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And then he went another 40 fights before he lost the second. Crazy. Insane, but crazy.

JOE ROGAN: And they were fighting all the time back then. Yeah, those guys would fight multiple times in a year. It wasn’t like today where guys like Canelo and Crawford, they talk about it like, Crawford hadn’t had a fight in like a year and a half. Wasn’t like that back then.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: They’d fight a few times a month.

JOE ROGAN: Constantly.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: But also, the end is so sad because in the end, Sugar Ray Robinson had dementia and it’s like he couldn’t talk. There’s some interviews of him later in life that are really, really f*ing sad.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: So that’s the thing about a guy fighting Gable Stevenson. It’s not that Gable’s going to beat you. And getting knocked out is not that bad. It’s that your confidence is going to be destroyed and you will get knocked out easier next time. Which is the problem with getting knocked out.

The Glass Jaw Effect

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, the glass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can attest to that.

JOE ROGAN: Did it happen to you? Like, will you get KO’d easier?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I get my knockouts. I got knocked out easier. Yeah. It’s the old glass jaw.

JOE ROGAN: You notice the difference?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. I mean, I could watch the impacts afterwards, and that might not have got me five or six years ago, but now it’ll just go out. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: How many times you think you’ve been KO’d?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: About 16.

JOE ROGAN: Wow.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And that’s a lot. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Have you ever gotten brain scans done?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: What do they say?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, they’re not the best brain scans they ever looked at. I didn’t win any awards for my brain scan, Joe. They’re like, don’t get any more concussions.

JOE ROGAN: But did they say there’s anything going on there that you need to be concerned about?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, they don’t know about, you can’t detect CTE until postmortem.

JOE ROGAN: Right. But do you have any lingering issues, like memory issues, impulse control?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I can, well, I don’t know whether it’s I’m getting older or I can remember a lot of things from my childhood and that kind of thing. I have complete recall. But what I did a week ago, it’s up in the air.

JOE ROGAN: And do you think that’s connected to the head injuries or is it just aging? Because as you get older.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, there’s the million dollar question.

JOE ROGAN: Right. You seem okay.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Which is part of the problem. I know a lot of fighters that seem fine, but I know publicly or privately, they’re struggling. Yeah, I know they have issues.

Knoxville’s Dark Period

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, I’m, after that magician one, I kind of went offline for a few months, but I completely recovered.

JOE ROGAN: Went offline? Like, how so?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Just slowly, over a period of months, I just got super depressed and anxious and fearful of everything. Just in my mind, it was just a loop of everything bad is going to happen, catastrophic thinking and ruminating. And yeah, it was, my creative mind turned against me. Right. And it was frightening. It felt like you’re in the bottom of a well looking up. And eventually I got on some medication.

JOE ROGAN: What kind of medication they give you for that?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, I can’t remember. But after a couple of months on, or actually about four to six weeks on the medication, the colors came back and I started feeling like myself again.

JOE ROGAN: Did you lose sight of colors? Did you get color blind?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, that was just metaphorically. Yeah. And then I went off the medicine, and I’m fine. But it was, yeah, it was pretty intense.

JOE ROGAN: So did they do anything for that? Like, I know there’s some different therapies they do for people that have.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I did a thing, transcranial magnetic stimulation.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that’s what I was going to ask you about.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And I started that. And it was kind of, I was in the middle of my episode and I started that. You do it over like six to eight weeks. I can’t remember. And I remember at the first, I would start it and I talked to the guy running it, but by the end, the end of the eight weeks, I was just kind of, I wouldn’t look at him, I wouldn’t talk to him. And yeah, I was just completely in my head all the time.

JOE ROGAN: So it got worse progressively then.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Wow.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, it got worse. But yeah, just medication and I came out of it.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I’m glad you came out of it.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: But that’s a good reason to not do that kind of s* anymore.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That’s why I was like, I don’t. It was.

JOE ROGAN: It’s too much.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Well, that’s what I worry about with fighters, because listen, you and I are sitting here, we’re talking. You’re not slurring your words. You seem fine. Everything seems, there’s fighters that, you see the slurring and you see the mumbling of the words, and yet they’re still fighting.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, that’s like Ali at the end, it was.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: When he’s doing those interviews around the Leon Spinks fights. Even Larry Holmes was sparring with them. They could notice the difference.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Yeah.

The Physical Toll of Fighting

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But he’s like you. How do you—it’s tough to figure out how to. He has a certain spirit about him. And how do you outrun that?

JOE ROGAN: Which made him a champion.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. How do you outrun that? How do you put that light out? And that’s the problem.

JOE ROGAN: I think you have to plant that seed in a fighter’s head when they’re young. I don’t think you could tell them that this is going to be a ride that lasts forever. I think you have to tell them there’s going to be a time where we realize we have to stop this. We have to stop doing this. And you’re going to have to trust me because I’m on the outside and I’m going to watch you very carefully, and we’re going to make sure that you never get to a point where you’re—

I like a fighter that retires and they can talk and they’re fine and they’re good. Like, I like that. I like when a guy gets out like Andre Ward is one of my favorite fighters because not just was he a two division world champion, not only was he an elite boxer, but he retired undefeated and never came back. And now he’s fine. He does commentary. You’re hanging out with him. He’s got no lingering problems. He’s good. Like, he got off the right time. I like that.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. I often think, where would—it’s a little sort of a pivot. Where would Roy Jones Jr. be ranked if he retired after the Ruiz fight, after he became heavyweight champion?

JOE ROGAN: It’s a very good question. I think that was one of the biggest mistakes that he ever did, was going up to heavyweight and then going down to 175 again. Right. Because he wasn’t a heavyweight. That was fat. It wasn’t like he could lose 25 pounds of extra fat that he put on. No. He was shredded at 200 pounds and then lost 25 pounds of muscle. So he had to starve himself to get back down to 175 again. Because once your body gets accustomed to carry around all that extra weight, like, that’s your new frame.

And today they would never say, do that again. Yeah, like in the UFC, there’s been some guys that had some radical weight cuts, like Alex Pereira is probably the best example. But once he went down to 185, he was cutting a tremendous amount of weight to get to 185. But once he went up to 205, now he’s a 205er. He stays at 205, and now he’s even talking about going up to heavyweight, which is crazy.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Right.

The Dangers of Weight Cutting

JOE ROGAN: But he’s got the frame for it. But, like, if he went all the way up to heavyweight and then tried to go all the way down to 185 again, he would be so fragile. You’re so vulnerable if you get hit. The guys who dehydrate themselves significantly, they get KO’d way easier.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And guys will tell you that, like, when they cut the weight, they can’t take a punch. It’s just different because your brain doesn’t rehydrate in time. So if you’re dehydrating to make, let’s say, 170. If you’re dehydrating to make 170, but you really weigh 200, you can get down to 170 for the weight, but once you rehydrate and you’re 200 again for the fight, you don’t have water in your brain yet. Yeah, your brain’s not re—brain takes days before it completely rehydrates.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It’s dangerous.

JOE ROGAN: It’s very dangerous. Yeah, yeah, but so that’s the thing. It’s like you’re talking about all the problems that you have, but yet you’re sitting here, you’re not slurring your words, you’re laughing, you’re coherent. We’re having a good time. And now think about these guys that you see that start mumbling and their words all kind of slur together and they go, “yeah, yeah,” it’s weird. You have a hard time understanding them.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Fits of rage.

JOE ROGAN: Yes, they 100% should not be fighting. And yet they’re still fighting. And athletic commissions will even pass them.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Does Wanderlei Silva still fight? Does he slur?

Wanderlei Silva’s Recent Knockout

JOE ROGAN: Dude, Wanderlei Silva just had a boxing match in Brazil that turned into a brawl. So he was boxing this guy and a bunch of people jumped into the ring and started brawling. And one of the guys that jumped in the ring KO’d him, hit him with a bare knuckle punch and knocked him out cold, where he falls back and bounces and they have to drag him out of the ring. So while people are—there’s a melee, there’s like 10 people fighting inside the ring and he’s stretched out cold here. Watch it, Jimmy.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: He was amazing in the Pride fights.

JOE ROGAN: He was a fing warrior. Savage. He was so crazy. But that’s another guy that’s been KO’d so many fing times. I don’t speak Portuguese, but my friends who do say you can clearly tell the difference. So here’s the fight. So this is afterwards.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Boom. Oh, my God. The back of the canvas.

JOE ROGAN: This guy just cracks him with a right hand. He doesn’t even see it coming. And he’s out cold, flat on his back. And then they just have to drag him away from all these people fighting. Jesus.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, that’s sad.

JOE ROGAN: He’s dead. Dead.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, my God.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And again, this is a guy that’s—he got knocked out by Mirko Cro Cop. He got head kicked, KO’d. He got knocked out by Rampage Jackson. He got knocked out by some big f*ing scary shots.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Cro Cop had legs like Earl Campbell. They were just ridiculous looking.

The Greatest Stare Down in Combat Sports

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, no, he was—he was one of the most elite strikers that ever competed in MMA. He was terrifying too. The stare down between Wanderlei Silva and Mirko Cro Cop, in my opinion, is the greatest stare down in the history of combat sports. Because you’ve got a guy who, in Wanderlei Silva is one of the most intimidating, terrifying MMA fighters—

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That ever lived.

JOE ROGAN: But then in Mirko Cro Cop, you got a guy who’s the head of an anti-terrorist squadron who’s fing probably murdered people. Like, look at the difference. That motherfer ain’t scared of sh*t. Look at this stare down.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Neither one of them are scared.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I think—really? Yeah. That guy’s looking through to his fing soul. Mirko—is this 100% Mirko wins this stare down. Mirko was looking through to his fing soul.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, my goodness.

JOE ROGAN: That is a stare down, son. Look at his eyes. That is a serious man.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And I mean, Mirko, that ref’s got his hands full.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah, well, they always had their hands full in Pride because they had stomps and soccer kicks and it was a crazy organization.

Pride’s Testing Policy

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Did they test in Pride?

JOE ROGAN: No. Not only did they not test—well, they did test. They didn’t do anything. It was a fake test.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: You get an A plus on steroids.

JOE ROGAN: Enson Inoue is another legend and just one of the all time greats and a pioneer of MMA from the early days. Enson told me when he did the podcast, he said they had in all capital letters, “We do not test for steroids.”

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: They wanted you on steroids or growth hormone.

JOE ROGAN: They wanted you on it because, look, if you want excitement and you don’t have a sanctioning body, like, why would you? Your goal is to create the best product. Like, what’s the best product? Juiced up fing psychopaths beat the sht out of each other. Highly skilled, juiced up savages going to war. That’s what you want. You don’t want anybody who’s dealing with normal hormone levels. F* that. So they would encourage people.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I didn’t hear any rumors of Fedor doing that. Do you think Fedor—I don’t.

JOE ROGAN: Well, you can only speculate. You don’t know. Because he didn’t look like he was on steroids, right. Because he had like dad bod, but jacked, you know, but he carried along some extra body fat because he didn’t have to worry about losing weight. But he came from the Russian sports program, you know, and they cheated with everything. The reality of—you ever seen that movie Icarus?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, it’s a great movie.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

The Icarus Documentary

JOE ROGAN: Oh, my God. Brian Fogel made this documentary and it’s a really interesting documentary because he made the documentary—this was the plan of it. He was an endurance racer. So he’s going to do a cycling race and he was going to do it naturally. So he does it, compares his numbers, and then he hires this guy, Grigory Rodchenkov. Is it Rodchenkov? Rodchenkov. Who is—that’s the guy who is the head of the Russian anti-doping—and I’m making air quotes—anti-doping program.

And so during—yeah, Rodchenkov. Grigory Rodchenkov. So during the filming of it, it turns out that the Russians get busted because during the Sochi Olympics, the entire—the entire roster of Russian athletes. So what they did was they cut a hole in the wall and they would take the piss that the Russians had given after the competition. They’d sneak it through the hole and sneak in some new piss and put it in its place.

But what they had found was that there was micro abrasions in the jars. They supposedly had these unopenable jars, right? And the Russians had figured out a way to, like, snake some sort of a utensil or some sort of a device and open up these jars, swap out the piss, and put in some fresh, clean piss in the same jar.

So this is while they’re filming. So he is being taught how to juice up by this guy. So this guy is telling him, “This is what you would take and this is how much to take.” So he’s doing this, preparing to go do this cycling race, juiced up. And while this is happening, this guy has to flee Russia because now he gets busted.

And then he starts telling Brian Fogel everything. He tells him how they run the program. So now, to this day, this guy’s hiding. He’s in witness protection. They took his—they arrested his family. I think they took his family’s money away. They took their home away. They took everything. And because they want them to turn this guy in.

So he’s in witness protection right now, still in America, hiding, because they’ll assassinate him if they find him. Oh, yeah, because this guy gave up the entire secrets of the Russian doping program, which led to—in the Brazil Olympics, Russia was banned from the Brazil Olympics.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. For the doping. And stretchy.

JOE ROGAN: So this documentary is f*ing wild because it shows—he tells every—the only people they didn’t do it with was figure skaters. They said the figure skaters—it didn’t help. And it actually hurt a little bit.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: We tried, but it didn’t help.

JOE ROGAN: They want to keep them gay. They wanted to keep them, like, whatever. They wanted to keep them. They just felt like there’s something about giving them testosterone, giving them human growth hormone steroids. It f*ed with their fine motor skills. And you have—it’s like such a delicate sport, you know, it’s a sport of—it’s just hand eye coordination and balance. And it didn’t help them to be on performance enhancing drugs.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: You said keep them gay. I don’t think if you gave steroids to Johnny Weir, it’s going to—you know, you—

JOE ROGAN: Only one way to find out. No, I’m just kidding.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That guy is—he’s—he’s pretty entertaining. Johnny Weir.

JOE ROGAN: Was he a gay porn star?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, he was an Olympic skater. Right, Johnny. Is it Johnny Weir? It’s Johnny Weir.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, right, right, right, right. I don’t know why I thought gay porn star. I thought, like, if you’re giving steroids to a gay guy, what would be the—the last guy that you would want to do it to, to see if you could turn him not gay, would be a gay porn star. Like, you give him steroids, and all of a sudden he’s like, “Why am I f*ing all these guys? This is crazy.” Thank you.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: You’ve cured me.

JOE ROGAN: It turns out it wasn’t pray the gay away.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It’s inject the gay away. That preacher. Pray the gay away.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Oh, those guys are funny. Those guys are almost all gay.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Those—

JOE ROGAN: Gay.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Of course.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It’s like they’ll get together and hug it out. Boners. Yeah. Kind of sad. Just—

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Just be how you’re going to be, man. Don’t, like, tell everyone what to do. Just live your life however you want to live it.

The Burden of Judgment and Acceptance

JOE ROGAN: Well, this is a burden of responsibility on some of us for being judgmental and for so long. I mean, being gay was so dangerous to come out. You could get killed. You get beaten.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, it’s a testament to our society today that it is not just accepted, but celebrated that people are gay. It’s because for so long, it was so hard to be gay.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You know the Turing Test? You know what the Turing Test is?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Well, Alan Turing was gay. And I mean, that’s a terrible, that’s a tragic story. The man really had an enormous impact on World War II. But still, he had to be closeted. And then the…

JOE ROGAN: And then they chemically castrated him.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: It was in England in the 1950s. And he’s the guy who came up with the Turing Test, which is a way to determine whether or not artificial intelligence had achieved sentience. Could you tell if you’re having… And most people believe that at this point in time, you can’t tell. Like, the Turing Test has already been achieved. Like, they’ve already passed it.

Like, if you talk to perplexity, this is what I use for everything. If I talk to it, I would not know whether or not that’s a person or not. I mean, it can communicate like a human, and it can answer questions about anything. It’s just basically like a super genius human being that I ask questions to all the time on my phone. And I don’t ever feel like this is a computer. It feels like a f*ing person.

That’s just like, you have a wizard that you can ask any question of, and it can give you the answer. So that’s Alan Turing’s invention was this test to determine whether or not you could determine whether artificial intelligence had achieved sentience. And what did they do to this guy? They f*ing chemically castrated him for being gay, and he wound up committing suicide.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It’s tragic. I mean, all that he did in World War II. I mean, he’s the father of the modern computer. He broke the Enigma code, which was considered unbreakable.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And just his country turned its back on him and everyone like him, really.

JOE ROGAN: And not even that long ago. That’s what’s crazy. People who were alive back then are still alive today, and that’s how much the world has shifted.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And, you know, whatever, it’s been 80 years. It’s kind of crazy.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Crazy. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Not even 80 years. 70 years.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Right. Crazy. Yeah. I’m fascinated by World War II and the characters from that.

World War II and America’s Last Clear Victory

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah. No. World War II is a nutty time in history. And it’s also in a lot of people’s eyes in America, one of the reasons why people are so fascinated with World War II. It’s the last time Americans got to feel like real heroes. We f*ing did it. We turned back the Nazis. We defeated them.

You know, we stopped this takeover of the world by the most evil group that we’ve ever seen assembled in modern history. And America came back. And there’s that photograph, that famous photograph. I guess it’s in Times Square, where that soldier’s kissing that woman.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That was staged, right?

JOE ROGAN: I believe it was, yeah. Unfortunately.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Because the wars after that were muddy. It was not like, this is a good guy, this is the bad guy. And then in Vietnam, you’re not taking a hill. It wasn’t about that. It became just the number of casualties.

JOE ROGAN: Well, also, it was a war that didn’t make any sense.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No. No.

JOE ROGAN: We found out later on that it was a war that was started under false pretenses.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Sure. Well, there’s been a few of those.

JOE ROGAN: That was the one that’s the most obvious. The Gulf of Tonkin incident is the most obvious and proven. Now it’s not a conspiracy theory. They staged a false flag. They lied to the American people.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: It’s the same thing Hitler did in burning the Reichstag. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hitler, Drugs, and the Nazi War Machine

JOE ROGAN: Did you ever read Blitzed?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No.

JOE ROGAN: Norman Ohler wrote about Hitler marching through Poland and about all the drugs that they were giving.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, yeah, the Pervitin. They would get jacked up on Pervitin.

JOE ROGAN: F*ing meth. They had capsules. Meth capsules. And the people at the front of the line got the most meth.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: They dosed people up according to where you were.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But they realized that had diminishing returns because they’re just jacked up all the time and they’re not sleeping and then it starts falling off. But by then they were addicted.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it turns out you could do it for three days and get all the way through Poland. Yeah, that’s how they did it. Three days, no sleep. And Hitler was like, I know how we could do it. Just meth everybody up and have a march.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, he was taking more drugs than anyone.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah. Well, he had his own doctor. That wasn’t a part of the…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, that shady a doctor.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s all in the book. The book is fantastic. It’s really good because it’s just like… And he said that most of what Hitler was on was actually opiates.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, Eukodal. I don’t know Pervitin.

JOE ROGAN: Well, Pervitin is a meth, right?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Pervitin is the meth. But I think Eukodal was an opiate. He was on a lot.

JOE ROGAN: He was on a lot of sh.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, a lot of different things.

JOE ROGAN: Do you know that he also had a genetic anomaly that would lead to his testicles not descending and most likely… Yeah, I think it’s called Kallmann Syndrome or something like that.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: You can all opiate.

JOE ROGAN: I think it’s called Kallmann Syndrome or something like that. Whatever he got. What is it called?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Morell was like Elvis’s doctor.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. So they got blood from the fabric. What was it called? What was the syndrome called?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Micropenis.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Well, definitely micropenis was the Kallmann. That’s what it is. Kallmann syndrome. So what it was, they found blood from the couch where supposedly Hitler committed suicide. They took that blood and matched the DNA to Hitler’s bloodline. So they knew it was male, and they knew the blood came from someone in Hitler’s family.

So they’re reasonably assured that this is Hitler. And then they found that they had Kallmann syndrome. So researchers analyzing blood stained cloth from the sofa where Hitler died found genetic marker linked to Kallmann syndrome disorder as a form of hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, which resulted in insufficient production of sex hormones and can prevent or delay puberty. Makes sense.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, right?

JOE ROGAN: Methed up dude.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Little d, tiny d, no balls. Most evil man in history wants to…

JOE ROGAN: F* the whole world.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Maybe one ball.

JOE ROGAN: Maybe one ball. Well, he was diagnosed with one undescended testicle. That was a fact from one of his medical reports. One of his testicles stuck up there.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, he had some problems. He had some issues.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: What a f*ing monster. Speaking of meth, we always talk about this documentary that I had a hand in.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, that’s right.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia.

JOE ROGAN: I f*ing love that documentary, dude.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Thank you.

JOE ROGAN: That documentary was crazy. How did you get involved in… Thank you, Jamie. How did you get involved in that?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: A friend of mine knew Julien Nitzberg, and Julien is the one who found Jesco White. He just… Julien was doing another documentary on… Oh, sh.

JOE ROGAN: F*.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I can’t remember right now, but they’re like, hey, do you want to meet Julien Nitzberg? And I’m like, yeah. And so I talked to Julien. He told me the story of his being involved with Jesco White. The first documentary. You saw the first one, right?

JOE ROGAN: You did more than once?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, no. The first one Jacob Young did. Julien Nitzberg found Jesco White, went to Jacob Young and said, hey, look at this guy, look at this character. And it came out on videotape. And if you saw it back in the late 80s, early 90s, it was usually like a copied over fourth…

JOE ROGAN: Is this the Dancing Outlaw one?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Okay, so that’s not the Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. That was your…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yes. And so I was talking to Julien and I’m like, well, what do you think Jesco’s up to now? He’s like, I don’t know. And so we got some money together and sent him to talk to Jesco and his family. And now, because of just generational neglect and all the young kids coming up, he’s like… He was like, you know, the wildest one in the family, but now he’s like the eighth wildest. All the younger ones are much more intense.

And we came back with three days of footage and we’re like, holy sh. And we cut something together and took it to my friends at MTV. And they’re like, yeah, okay, we’ll give you some money. They weren’t even sure. They’re like, you guys haven’t failed us yet. So they just pushed the money our way. And we came back with that. It was wild.

JOE ROGAN: It’s a f*ing amazing documentary.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: They’re charismatic. A charismatic family. A charismatic bunch of outlaws.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, well, it’s certainly entertaining. And it’s also an untold story about that part of the country and how they’ve been ravaged by pills and…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, they’ve been ravaged. First of all, they were ravaged by the coal companies. Right. Jacking their town. And then you can only buy stuff from the company store. And then when the coal’s gone, f* you, we’re out of here. And the town’s just left massacred. And then with no thought of what happens to those people.

Yeah, you see how that can make the Whites and anyone in that area feel, right? And so, oh, the man. We’re going to stick it to the man. The man stuck it to us. We’re going to stick it to the man. Yeah, with… You know, they all get checks for disability checks, and, you know, they’re… I don’t know. It’s just pretty sad.

JOE ROGAN: It’s very sad. Entertaining and sad at the same time. You’re very conflicted. You want to laugh at them, but you’re also like, oh, my God. There’s kids there. There’s families here. They’re all f*ed up. The kid doing backflips because he’s high on Mountain Dew.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Yeah. And he’s talking about stabbing. I forget which boyfriend of Sue Bob’s. It’s crazy. It was intense.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. But it’s both funny and entertaining, but also deeply disturbing at the same time. Because you realize, especially towards the end of the film, where they want to get out of this life. They’re trying to clean up, you know, and she’s trying to get off pills and…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, yeah. But, you know, it’s tough when you’re raised in an environment and, you know, you don’t know how to get out. Right. You don’t have those tools.

JOE ROGAN: Well, there’s no clear path. There’s no clear path out of there. And everywhere around you is fed. Everything’s fed. Everyone’s f*ed. There’s no good examples of people that figured it out, got their sh together. There’s no one cool uncle that, you know, went straight.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, there is part of the family that moved to Michigan and they started flourishing. I think we…

JOE ROGAN: Oh, that’s right.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, that’s right.

JOE ROGAN: So that’s the move.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: But it’s…

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, f*ing hard.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, it’s hard.

Forgotten America and Documentary Filmmaking

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. It’s like I think there’s just forgotten sections of our country when it comes to just extreme despair and poverty and just overall, like you said, fed over by the coal companies, fed over by pills. Everyone’s addicted. Everyone’s just like this long history of crime.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And when you’re raised in that continually, how do you see a way out? You know, it just… I don’t know. It’s pretty sad.

JOE ROGAN: But when you filmed it, did you think it was going to be sad or did you think it was just going to be crazy?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: We don’t know what you’re walking into. Right. You have no idea. So what came back was it was very impactful and you couldn’t turn away. It just… Yeah, there’s a lot of s* that really pulls on your heartstrings.

But they’re so charismatic and they have such a way about them. I don’t know, it makes… Their sense of humor helps ease you through it about the situation, but still, it’s a situation.

JOE ROGAN: Did you take them to the premiere or anything? Did any of them…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: We flew Jessica and Mamie in for the premiere, and I remember he was going to tap dance at the premiere, and he’s got his tap shoes, which were his father, D. Ray White’s tap shoes. They’re just in a plastic pharmaceutical bag. But I dropped them when I got out of the car, and I was just… I felt terrible.

But their characters, they… It was pretty wild meeting Jessica and Mamie. That’s my friend Storm, I grew up with. He helped produce. I remember me, Jessica White and Mike Judge just sitting in a bar before having drinks.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, Mike Judge was involved in this, too?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No, no, he’s just a friend of mine. And he was like, I want to meet Jessica and Mamie.

JOE ROGAN: I love that guy. Mike Judge is cool as f*.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: He’s so talented.

JOE ROGAN: Very, very talented.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: So bright man. Was an engineer starting out, then a musician, and he’s an interesting character.

JOE ROGAN: Very, very interesting guy. But how did they react to the film? And watching people watch them and laughing and going crazy.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: At the premiere, they seemed… They really enjoyed it. You know, it’s like it’s a big thing. You see yourself up on screen. I know the subject matter is tough, but I don’t know. That’s their life. Right. They’re not surprised by anything. Right. It’s just, you know, what happened.

JOE ROGAN: What happened with them after the film? Do you follow up on them?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Every now and then Julian will send me something. One of them will be in the news for this or that. You know, I haven’t stayed in touch. I never… I didn’t stay in touch.

JOE ROGAN: What’d you say?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Jesco White’s on TikTok with her daughter. Oh, boy’s got the best voice.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I was always the same. How do you even get that voice? That’s crazy.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. What a voice.

JOE ROGAN: Have you ever thought about doing a follow up?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Someone else can. I don’t… We did it and I think we moved on. I think at some point it’s a little much to go back to that. I don’t feel right about it.

JOE ROGAN: Right. A little exploitative. Yeah.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I don’t feel right about it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that makes sense. Do you have aspirations to do other stuff? Do you have any other things that you’re trying to do?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Well, I mean in the film world, sure.

Future Documentary Projects

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I have a lot of… I love doing documentaries. I have a couple of documentaries I’m trying to get off the ground and you know, one on David Allan Coe who Julian Nitzberg was going to direct. Do you know who David Allan Coe is?

Yeah, he’s a country singer songwriter who’s like… Was the… From the age of 9 to 35 he was institutionalized. You know his parents just kind of… He was too much and they put him in the boys home and he was the head of the outlaw motorcycle gang for a while. He had eight or nine wives for a while. He formed his… Yeah. At the same time he formed his own religion, he wrote his own… His, you know, wrote a book.

He was… Oh, the best. I have to show you a picture. And he also wrote some racist songs while he was in prison and Shel Silverstein convinced him to record those when he got out.

JOE ROGAN: Shel Silverstein, the guy who wrote children’s books?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: And “A Boy Named Sue” and on the cover of the Rolling Stone. Shel Silverstein wrote a lot of songs and he convinced… A couple of the songs are, you know, racist and can’t really… There’s no defense to them. He’s lived a very complicated life.

But in the 80s he decided I’m going to become a magician and a ventriloquist. And I have a picture of him with his… And I’ll show it to you in a second. It’s pretty… He’s the most frightening f*ing ventriloquist you’ve ever seen. And the weird thing is the magicians, Penn and Teller credit him as one of their influences.

Okay, let me find it real quick. So it’s an incredible story, but it’s just hard getting something like that made now for people aren’t wanting to… Okay, come on. I’m bringing up… So we’re trying to tell that story.

JOE ROGAN: And so just whatever just strikes your interest, like things that you find fascinating. Can I airdrop this to Jamie?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: How do I do this?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Here we go. And his son, Tyler Coe, does that podcast, “Cocaine and Rhinestones.” It’s a brilliant podcast. His son’s really sharp.

JOE ROGAN: It says airdrop code required. And so that’s how you decide things just based on what’s interesting.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Just like, I don’t know how to decide things.

JOE ROGAN: Look at that David belt buckle. Look at that belt buckle.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: A scary looking dude with a dummy.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: His son Tyler’s like, I thought that thing was real when I was growing up. You know, it’s because he made it seem that way.

Otto and George: The Ventriloquist Legend

JOE ROGAN: Well, there’s a weird connection between a really good ventriloquist and their dummy. That gets very odd. Yeah, you know, it’s like in the Twilight Zone episode where the guy has the dummy. Do you ever see that?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: No.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, it’s great. It’s a Twilight Zone episode where the dummy and the guy are having conversations when no one’s around. The dummy is alive. And then I think the dummy kills the guy.

But I had a guy that I used to work with way back in the day. His name was Otto and George, and he was a ventriloquist comedy act. And George was the dummy and Otto was the guy. And Otto would be like, I can’t believe you’re saying these things. And George would say really f*ed up things. And George was an evil looking dummy with crazy eyebrows. He was a legend. A comedy legend. That’s Otto and George.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Oh, wow. Yeah, they were a little too close.

JOE ROGAN: It was a little close. He would be driving in the car and George would be in the trunk and he would tell the guy driving, pull over. I got to check on George. Like, he felt like he had to pull over and talk to the dummy.

And he’d get out by the side of the road, pop over the trunk and hear him back there, just f*ing around with the dummy, looking at it, talking to it. They put it back in and drive off. He would get in his head that the dummy needed to be checked on.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: How does a guy like that operate in life?

JOE ROGAN: I mean, he’s dead now, unfortunately. We all end up that way.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: He partied hard, right? He had… He was an enthusiast.

JOE ROGAN: Relationships?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I don’t know. I mean, I never heard about him being married or anything like that. I don’t believe he had any children, but he was nuts. He was like… It was a… I never got to know him all that well. It was… I work with him a ton of times, but it was always like… He’s like, hey, Joe, how are you? You know, he’d have his dummy there, but you would just… Everybody would go to the back of the room when Otto would go on stage. We’d all want to watch.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That was his relationship, the dummy?

JOE ROGAN: Well, that was… You know, I don’t know if he had other relationships, but that was a big one. And one time, he was going back and forth with some guy in the audience, and the dummy was saying horrible things to this guy, and the guy stabbed the dummy. Guy jumped up on stage and stabbed the dummy. It was at Dangerfield’s. Yeah, I think it was at Dangerfield’s.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: What a brilliant move. Yeah. That’s inspired. Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, he was a part of the program. The guy was a part of the performance. Jumped up and stabbed the dummy. Because he would just say…

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That’s probably worse than stabbing him. You know, I’m heartbroken.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I mean, you know, I’m assuming the guy was doing it for fun, but unless he thought the dummy was actually the problem.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: That critical thinking.

JOE ROGAN: I think they do. I think they’re actually doing a documentary on Otto and George, I think.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Really?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I think someone’s working on that right now, so that would be interesting. He was a legend on the east coast during the 1980s and 1990s. We all knew Otto and George.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Wow. I completely missed that.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. But, you know, like a lot of people that are brilliant, he was out of his f*ing mind and never really got traction in terms of a real national career. But he was very funny and a really good joke writer. He was a funny guy.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah. Yeah. Because they don’t have that little extra side of them. The business part.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, the business part was missing. Yeah. It was just a maniacal genius.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: I have something to do after this. I’m going to look up Otto and George.

Wrapping Up

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s something to look up. Listen, man, good luck on Fear Factor. Thank you. I hope it runs another 148 episodes just like when we did it back in the day. And I hope nobody gets hurt.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, I appreciate that. Appreciate you having me on.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, my pleasure. It’s great to meet you, man. You’ve entertained the f* out of me over the years.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Thank you.

JOE ROGAN: And give me a lot of anxiety as well. I’m glad you’re okay for the most part.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Thanks, man.

JOE ROGAN: Well, thanks for doing this. Tell everybody. When does it air? When does Fear Factor start?

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Premieres tomorrow. Oh, no. Excuse me. Premieres tonight, the 14th. Okay. Sorry. I’ve been on a whirlwind kind of thing, so it’s on tonight.

JOE ROGAN: Awesome.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Yeah, awesome.

JOE ROGAN: All right, well, good luck.

JOHNNY KNOXVILLE: Thank you. Thank you.

JOE ROGAN: All right, bye, everybody.

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