#127 Grant "The Truth" Neal - Bellator Light Heavyweight
Grant “The Truth” Neal - Bellator Light Heavyweight, Mix Martial Artist, Premed Student, Botanist, Two-Time State Wrestling Champion, D2 National Football Champion, and Outdoorsman. Grant Neal currently ranked #4 Light Heavyweight in the world, quickly climbing the ranks to become the light heavyweight champion of the world. Born and raised in Colorado, Neal played as many sports as possible and dedicated himself to being a champion at a young age. Shortly after becoming a national champion at the collegiate level, Neal set his sights on becoming a professional mixed martial artist. Dedicated to being a professional fighter, Grant started his career with multiple organizations, including Sparta Combat League becoming the SCL Light Heavyweight Champ. Please subscribe or like us on social media platforms for updates on shows, events, and episode drops. www.TheMountainSidePodcast.com
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Grant "The Truth" Neal - Bellator Light Heavyweight
Our guest for this episode is the number four ranked Light Heavyweight and Bellator MMA, Grant "The Truth" Neal. We talked about much more than just MMA and his fight career. We dove back into his family history, his accolades in high school, being a double state champion in wrestling, winning a national championship at a Division 2 college, and much more. This was an incredible conversation. I'm honored to call Grant a friend. I hope that you enjoy the interview.
Welcome, Grant. I had an awesome time hanging out with you at BKFC or the after party rather.
That was great. The cool thing about events like that and after parties is there are so many people from different walks of life that are there in support of the people that fought on that card. The person that we were supporting there was Chris Camozzi. We all have our teammates, but you guys were there for Chris. It was so cool to be able to meet all of his people and the people that mean a lot to him. We bonded that night and talking. I was like, "Bobby, I got to get on the show. I'm in Colorado. Let's go."
I was all about it too. I had such a good time with you. That night hanging out with you, I feel like, “Grant is such a nice humble guy.” I felt like I've known you longer and we've only hung out one night. It was crazy. There were so many people that we've had on the show at the party, and then some people that we haven't that I've been friends with for a long time. I apologize for some of my friends that might have tried to wrestle with you a little bit. I know Shane Bates.
Bates is my guy. We're forever bonded because we have that through line in wrestling. Getting to know all the guys and hearing some of the stories that they had to share, they're savages but in the best way.
They are some of the best people to be around, in my opinion. I've known those guys for probably 7 or 8 years. Some of them, on and off. I’m meeting new ones as they bring their friends around. Each one of them is good people to be around.
It's the perspective. I was so interested in not just being there to ask them questions, but being in communion with them to see how they respond and react. It's important to have those savage type of people. We've all met the fake savages. We've all met the guys that are rah-rah. They talk a lot. You don't know if they're about it or not. With those guys, you get that feeling immediately that they're men of what they say and do. They're almost like brothers, that whole group. I mean that when I say it. It was great fellowship.
It is. That's how I felt about you because we ended up hanging in that little clique most of the night. We took over that one side of the bar and we were there for hours. It was a good time.
It was awesome.
It felt real. Like you said, I felt like I knew you forever. Anytime I can meet somebody and have that feeling, it's awesome. Kudos to Chris Camozzi. I don't like giving him compliments, but he's got great people around.
I love hearing you guys go back and forth and banter. I've caught you a couple times on his podcast on the Fit Soda stuff. It's always good. Chris is another guy that fits right into that circle too. He's one of those people. The first time I met him, he was sitting in that seat across from here. We'd gone back and forth a little bit online. He’s just salt of the earth. He's a good human being. He's been through it all and I like to soak it up. I hope that I can give that feeling to other people as well. I love it.
You already have. Cheers to that. Thanks for coming up. Thanks for making the drive. I know it's not the closest place.
Thanks for introducing me to my first Jocko GO. We'll see what goes on with this.
It's good for you. It’s clean energy. It fits within the keto and paleo world. Me trying to be health conscious these days as I'm getting up there in age, I'm addicted to those things. They're a sponsor, but there's no bullshit. I love them. All the flavors are good. They've been a great company to work with above and beyond that. They actually paid for 100th episode to go down and we recorded at Vito’s knife shop. We then did a whole blade giveaway.
That’s the Half Face Blades. It's so funny because one of my mentor, best friend, and father figure got me into bladesmithing and forging. He was in it. We were all into Forged in Fire. A lot of people got into that space and got to figure out what it was about through that show which is a funny thing. Now that I've watched the show and then gone down, it forged quite a few things. All those guys on there are absolute savages that can forge in four hours. I was introduced to that. To put a face to the company of Half Face Blades, I've been a fan.
He makes the most incredible shit.
I made a khopesh with the help of one of my friends and mentors. I don't know if he wants his name to be out there, but his company is Maker of Blades. Vito knows about him. He follows his stuff. He's like, "Those are pretty sweet." Him and I together made a khopesh. This thing absolutely tried me.
I'd love to see photos of it.
It's awesome. I don't want to ruin the flow of the show, but I have a couple.
We can talk about whatever. It's more about how much time do you have to spend with me.
I got to show you. It's pretty slick. I love the act of forging something because it's very physical. I don't know if you've ever forged.
I have actually. I'm not a fan of Forged in Fire for some reason. It was not that I disliked it, but I have a hard time watching TV shows in general. Growing up, my grandfather forged, like old-school forge. I was doing it as a kid because I was always intrigued by it. His main income was excavation. He built roads and roadways. On the weekends, he would get commissioned to build these custom gates that were sick with all this twisted metal and elk in them.
He's a tradesman and craftsman.
He enjoyed doing that, so I would help him with that. There was something so cool about taking a raw piece of steel, putting it in a forge, and then being able to twist it or bend it. He's so good at it. You start getting a hammer and an amble around. You're basically sculpting metal. He taught me the history of it too. I'm a history buff. I love history.
Me too.
You go back and you think about those guys that were actually forging back in the day. They might have won wars for the Spartans because they had better bladesmiths or better swordsmiths or better shields. That was the technology back then.
It's not just technology, it's the beauty of it. The work and the craftsmanship that goes into each and every hammer strike, you should check that out.
Holy smokes. That is badass. You made this?
Yes.
I'm not to that level. I'm strictly a hobbyist, but that is dope. You did the handle and everything?
I did the handle and Maker of Blades helped me finish the blade. I had a lot of weight in the original piece that I forged. I was like, "This is a dope khopesh, but I want to be able to wield it with one hand or two hands." It was too heavy. I actually made a mistake on the handle to where when I forged it, I went the wrong direction. I wanted to have a rope hook that I can tie my blade to the side of me. I got halfway through the forge and I'm like, "I did it the wrong way." The funny thing, if you know about forging, nothing is the wrong way, you just got to figure it out. That's the beauty of building a blade. If you have the gall and you have the tenacity to figure it out, you get something beautiful.
If you know about forging, nothing is wrong if you can figure it out.
That is beautiful. That's impressive. You got to send me that photo and we'll overlay it over the video so people can see what we're talking about.
That blade was extremely challenging. What he did for me was he helped to bevel the actual spine of the blade, but keep the integrity of the spine. We were straight and we quenched well all that stuff, but we still had too much weight. We bevel shaved it down, we etched it, and then we gave it a nice and clean finish. We wanted to use an African wood in homage of where khopesh was derived from.
You did some history research on this.
It's an Egyptian khopesh. It's like a sickle. It was used to get around shields and to pull, but it was also used to attack and used as defense.
That's the last thing I'd want to see coming at me.
You're a history guy and you know that most of the savage men in history, their backgrounds were farming.
The tools go hand in hand.
This is basically a farming tool to hack and chuck wheat. I find all that stuff super interesting with what I do. You love history. I love history. I like to study all the best conquerors. I like to not just study them, I like to study what caused their rise and what caused their fall. I like to study all of that. It transcends me. That's what I do in each fight camp.
It sharpen your mind a little bit.
It sharpens my mind. Get that warrior mindset. Saying that, it goes hand in hand with the forge because as you know, the forge is a warrior mindset. There's some primitive about it. It puts you in that state of being completely present.
That makes so much sense. I've gotten a lot out of that too, just the mindset of hunting and some stuff that I do. Even basic life principles, like how to treat somebody because you never know. If you ran into Vito, Bates, or some of the other guys we were hanging out or you on the street, I wouldn't have no idea what you guys are capable of.
That's how it should be.
We should treat everybody with respect. That is how I feel.
You jump in with respect. There are ways to handle disrespect. Also, a lot of that is feeling. I never trust a feeling. I just understand that it's a feeling. It's our opportunity to act upon those feelings. I could have an immediate feeling about somebody, and that feeling could be a complete lie or it could be the truth. You never know until you put action on that feeling or there is action behind it. I never trust a feeling. I just let it be.
Never trust a feeling. Understand that it's a feeling, and you have the opportunity to act upon those feelings.
Studying all this history, I'm sure there's a ton of martial arts rabbit holes that you can go down with history and you start looking at the Mongolians. There's so much to read. It's so badass. It never ends.
Genghis Khan Temujin.
That was a crazy era. I would like to be alive during that just to see some of that.
You would?
If I could go back at a particular time and check something out.
He eradicated a third of the earth's population. He literally took the carbon footprint and changed it by killing that many people.
Stacking bodies.
Not just stacking bodies. There's a story about two travelers that went to a city that was ransacked by the Mongolian horde of Temujin Genghis Khan. They thought they saw ice on top of a mountain and they thought it was snow. These travelers go up and they're like, "How can there be snow? This doesn't make any sense." It wasn't snow. It was bleached bones of all these people that he killed.
From being in the sun.
We are in Colorado. For people who don't know we're in Evergreen. It's the mountains. You can see a snowy mountaintop. Can you imagine walking out this door looking at that mountain and you're seeing snow on there in the middle of the summertime, you walk up, and it's just a pile of bones?
That's insane.
I don't want to be a part of that time.
I'm very happy in air that I live in with soft men, but I think if I could go back and see some of that. Native American culture is super intriguing to me.
A bird's eye view.
If there ever was a time machine, I'd be dialing up some Genghis Khan action to go see that.
I would say if there's a time machine that I can be present.
Exactly. That's where I was going with this.
Not participate. Even though, I say that right now, but the warrior in me is like, "No, I'm participating. I'm becoming one of them."
I don’t think it was a choice back then. If you're stuck in that area, it's survival of the fittest.
It is. That's why Genghis Khan was successful. Everybody that was a part of him had to be the fittest. It wasn't simply survival of the fittest. The women were responsible for teaching the children how to shoot their arrows in between a gallop to not disrupt their shot. The women were in-charge of that.
They're traditional bows or they were actually Mongolian bows. The average person that shoots a traditional bow now probably pulls between 55, maybe even 45 and 65 pounds. A 70-pound bow is super heavy on the traditional side.
You're holding that tension.
The Mongolians had gone back and excavated some of their bows or whatever. Some of these archeologists and stuff. They've put them through these tests. It’s 165 pounds.
Can you imagine the backs on them? We talk about the savages right now in the cage or that fight for our right to be here right now, and those guys we're all hard men, but 165 pounds? I challenge anybody to go and pull a 75-pound tension compound bow. See if you can pull it and hold it steady.
There are certain muscles you have to build too. It's not just back. There are certain muscles in your shoulder that you use to pull a bow that you don't use in a normal basis.
I fight savages. I fight big human beings. It is a struggle for me to hold that position. Not just hold the position but to have complete and utter focus, to be present, to breathe, and to allow that bow to be an extension of me and my soul. That is a hard thing to do.
It is a martial art. I believe that. I have a whole mantra that I say in my shot sequence because I shoot on back tension, so I'm actually not pulling a trigger. It's just by pressure. It makes you more accurate. I've had some amazing coaching. Shout out to Tom Klum who's right here in Colorado. If you're looking for a spot to go in and get some training, those are the best guys.
You know who I am.
Those guys are all wrestlers too. I think some of his boys were state champs, so you guys would hit it off.
It would be perfect.
He probably knows you or about you. He follows wrestling from high school level all the way up to the Olympic level. Those guys are badass.
The wrestling community is tight-knit. If he do knows me or not, I probably know him or we know somebody. The community is so tight-knit.
Especially here in Colorado.
There are a lot of us out here. It's a pretty cool atmosphere.
Being a history buff and a fighter, this is one of my favorite questions to ask fighters or pro athletes in general. Have you gone back and studied some of your lineages? Do you know where you came from? Were there any warriors in your family, whether they were in medieval times or leading up to World War II or anything like that?
The unfortunate thing is Black Americans don't have that opportunity to know their history pre-slavery because that was a tactic to control. When a man knows his history and knows where he came from, it's difficult to control that person or that man. That being said, we've had a small amount of time or a blip in time to where a lot of people in my lineage, slavery and post-slavery, had a tremendous effect on the person that I am now and that ancestry. It goes back and it's actually pretty awesome. Even more recent, my father was in the Navy and his first deployment was he picked up the last troops from Vietnam when he entered the Navy at 17.5. He joined an amphibious assault team.
When a man knows his history and where he came from, it's difficult to control him.
I remember you telling me a lot. I was catching bits and pieces of this but I want to hear the whole story of that time.
He did the amphibious assault route and it was an accident. He was a country boy from North Carolina that wanted to get out. That's his whole story to tell, and we don't have to go into that. He basically was a little lost, wanted to get out, and wanted to do something. The Navy was his only opportunity to get out of that life that he had. At 17.5, he convinced his mom to sign him to go into the Navy. Now, the Navy was his mom, dad, family, and everything. Back then, it was pretty difficult. Vietnam had already been over. His first deployment was picking up troops that still thought they were fighting in Vietnam.
They were MIA or something.
It was still hot. There's still Viet Cong. There were guys out there that were still fighting. He's probably 18, getting ready to turn 19. He's on an amphibious assault team bringing those guys home. That's his first introduction to war and battle.
What a place to step into.
Imagine, you're 18 or 19 years old and your assignment is to go and pick up these guys. You're like, "What do you mean? This war had been over for six years." That's the shit that people don't know. He ended up becoming a part of a SWCC team. I don't know if you know SWCC. It is not a big thing, but I think there's a military movie that showed a little bit of SWCC team. It might have been Zero Dark Thirty. SWCC are the boat crews that go insertion and extraction. They're in canals and they're doing all those things. They're fighting battles on all sides because you're literally running a boat through rivers, canals, streams, and causeways. You are an amphib, so it's attached to an amphibious. You're on the ground and you're on a boat. SWCC teams are predominantly boats, so they usually insert and extract SEAL teams.
There's so many things that go into the insertion and extraction. We had a two-star general in here actually from the 160th SOAR. They're the rotary wing team that takes SEALs or Rangers or whoever to whatever mission that they're going.
I have so much honor and respect. My dad saw a lot of different things.
That's elite warrior shit, in my opinion.
I believe it too. There's effects with that. There's family effects with all that. That being said, that warrior spirit is a direct line in me. If you go down another generation on my mom's side, my grandfather was in the Korean War. He fought in the Korean War. That's the Forgotten War, as you know. You're a history buff. The Korean War was pretty vicious. He was a medic in the Korean War. I can only imagine the things that he saw.
He's not with us anymore. Growing up, my grandfather on my mom's side was my everything. He was my best friend. I would spend summers at my grandparents' house. His one thing is as a man, it's important to have a trade. I don't care how smart you are, what you're doing, or what you're pursuing. You got to have a trade and you got to be able to work with your hands. I would spend summers with him and I'd watch him around.
It's important to have a trade. No matter how smart you are or what you do or pursue, you've got to have a trade. You've got to be able to work with your hands.
He worked for Martin Marietta and Lockheed Martin, but he was also a part of a stamping company. They did concrete and laid bricks. It's a lot of mason work. It's a lot of hard work, but it's an art. When I was younger, the thing I hate the most is laying bricks. Laying bricks is hard mentally because you can't mess up. You got to know what you're doing.
You got to keep that wall plumbed.
There's so much that goes into it, but you see them work. They love what they do and they loved the after-effect. When I was younger, I didn't understand it, but my grandfather would drive me down in Denver with concrete. You usually got to replace concrete every 15 to 20 years, especially if it's done wrong. If it's done right, that concrete can last. You can have a long lineage of your concrete in a lot of years. I didn't understand it unfortunately until he was gone, but he would drive me down Denver and he would point out, "Do you see that? What does that say?" "It says Stamping Company 1985." He goes, "That's you. That's your family." He used to do that. I always like, "This is just a sidewalk on a random street."
Do you know the history of Jerry Rice at all?
I have a brief understanding of it, but I haven't dove deep into Jerry Rice.
I saw this on a documentary or something. It was an ESPN short film or something on Jerry Rice at one point when he was getting inducted or something. He attributes his hands and being such a good receiver to his dad who was a mason. He would send him up the wall. He would have to catch bricks and hand them to his dad. That's all he did. He's like, "If you can catch a brick, you can catch a football anywhere."
In my lineage, my grandfather was a warrior. Not only a warrior, but an upstanding human being and an upstanding man. He taught me a lot of lessons that I'm still uncovering now because when I was a kid, I knew they were lessons, but when you're a child, you don't have the understanding.
I know exactly what you mean.
Going back and thinking about it, he's had such a tremendous effect on my life and the path that I've gone. The cool thing is when he passed away, he actually passed away on a Christmas, I was scared about a Christmas wrestling tournament.
He was around to see you wrestle.
He was around to see me wrestle for a little bit. I was scared of this tournament because this Christmas Classic that particular year was going to be harder than my state tournament as far as bracket. There were two returning state finalists and two state champions in that singular bracket that I would have to get through in order to be the Christmas Classic Champion. That's what I wanted. I wanted to be that because I was like, "If I win this, nobody can beat me at state." This is way harder than the state. I was scared of that, but my grandfather was always telling me, "You got this. It's in your blood. It's your destiny."
Sometimes it takes just one person believing in you, or the right person.
I had a lot of people believing in me. I don't even know if I believed in me at that time. I did have a lot of people, coaches, teammates, and everybody around me who believed I could do it. It meant something even more when my grandfather said that and he was proud. Unfortunately, he passed away that year, but he passed away with that medal in his hand. I remember I put it around his neck. It was Christmas Day when he ended up passing away. Christmas Eve, I went to go and see him. He was at the house and we knew it's his last days. I presented the medal to him and put it around his neck. He's proud.
That Christmas Day, I was like, "I got to go to practice." It was a weird day and it's just a couple of us because you're not allowed to practice on Christmas but I was like, "I got to get this work." After practice, I got a call that my grandfather passed away. He had that medal on him. That was super cool. It's sad, but it's an amazing moment.
Time is so finite. I hope that I'm understanding it right. The older I get and now that I have kids, it makes you appreciate time even more. It starts coming full circle. It was one of the reasons why I'm living here now because I was born and raised here, and I want my kids to grow up in the same spot.
I understand that connection with your grandfather so much because I didn't grow up with a dad. My dad was bad news. He was a criminal, straight up. I learned from a young age that I didn't like him and he didn't like me. It was a mutual feeling. I'm so fortunate that I had my grandfather on my mom's side. He was my father figure. It’s the same sort of thing. Blue-collar work ethic. He was the blacksmith. If he wasn't working, he was working. His days off were harder on him than him going to work sometimes. It's just a different era.
That's the one thing I always remember. My grandparents live where it used to be rural. They built their house in Parker. My grandfather built his house. At the time when they built the house, there was one street. He built the house there. They had horses. My mom grew up with horses. It was country. My grandmother always tells this story about how there's a firehouse, and then there was their house. If there was snow or something, it used to get crazy because that's the only thing there.
One time, there was a car accident and they didn't know what to do. The firehouse was there. They brought the people to my grandmother's house. My grandma had to be a nurse because that was the community. It's a different time. That's how rural it was. It was a snowstorm, so they had to bring these people to my grandmother's house and she had to do the nursing thing. To me, it seems so far removed, but that was like 40 or 50 years ago. That's not that far removed.
Forty years ago, I was born. My family was living in Summit County at the time. The nearest hospital was in Fairplay of all places. I was born in Fairplay, but the doctor never made it. Thank God, my grandfather was a fireman. He had to deliver me. He was a fireman most of his career. As he retired, he went into road construction and stuff like that. It's crazy. It was different times. Even Evergreen has changed so much from where I grew up. Some of my family homesteaded.
Where did they homestead?
Basically, all of Elk Meadow and the Evergreen Chamber of Commerce. Those old barns that you pass coming down 74. That was all in the family. All the way to Black Hawk I guess at one point. It was a cattle ranch.
Our family farm is in Nicodemus, Kansas. They were homesteaders. All of Nicodemus, Kansas is basically the farm. Back then, my grandfather, there was 13 of them, so 13 brothers and sisters.
It’s different times back then.
They had to have a lot of kids. Kids were the help. My great-great-grandfather on my grandmother's side, was a part of one of the first Black masons.
I think I've heard this story on Camozzi's Podcast.
If you guys want to go and check it out, it's on the Fit Soda Podcast with Chris Camozzi. I didn't know all my family history, but talking to my grandmother and family members, it's cool. I love history, so I do have a family history, I just don't know as far back as before slavery.
Even me, I knew my immediate family here. Basically, what I have is them getting off the boats and making their way. They came West and were like, "This is mine."
Did they take the Oregon Trail?
I think so at one point. I don't know that whole. Some of them went on to California too. I don’t know whether James Marshall that discovered gold at Sutter's Mill is supposedly my family or whatever. Some of them were miners. A lot of them stayed here in ranched. Some of them were trappers and outdoorsmen.
That's in your blood.
I feel a strong connection here. I went to elementary school and my kids are now going to elementary school. I had family members go to that elementary school and they have the original schoolhouse in the bus turnaround. They've built a whole school outside of it, but it's just a little 10x10 hand-hewn log cabin with blacksmith doors. I'm pretty sure my family might've had a hand in building that too for their kids.
Now, your kids get to go there.
It's right up the road from Evergreen High School. If you've been up there, it is a cool little historical piece to go check it out. I'm glad that they've left it. It's pretty dope. I feel a strong connection. Even on my dad's side, I didn't know my in-laws. They actually got me a DNA test, which I was reluctant to take.
I haven't taken mine yet.
It chased my lineage all the way back and I guess I'm 60% Italian, which would explain my love for pizza and pasta, and the easy weight gain. I had no idea because on my mom's side, there's not a whole lot of Italian blood. It was mostly Irish, native American, kind of a mutt.
We’re all though.
I'm 60% Italian. I didn't know my dad's side, I don't know any of his family, but it chased the lineage all the way back to there. It brought out the Native American side too, which is 1%. It told it all in that DNA test.
I have a question. Were you able to reach out or find anybody from your dad's side yet?
I haven't. It's crazy because I get these emails and this is one reason why I didn't want to do it. It's like, "Your third cousin lives 700 miles from you." They'll start popping up like, “These are family members,” which is crazy. I haven't reached out. I feel fulfilled in the family that I do have. On my mom's side, it was very family-oriented. Because my family homesteaded here or migrated here eventually or married into that original family, they've all stayed in Colorado. Very few of them have left Colorado. Very few of them have seen the ocean. We're born and raised here and still have not gone to see the ocean, and they could care less.
Colorado is pretty, but Colorado sucks.
It's horrible. It snows all the time.
In the winter, you never see the sun. It's terrible.
It's so funny because I travel a lot still and I get asked all the time, “What’s your idea of Colorado?” I'm like, "It's horrible. I live in the mountains."
I got to go to the beach.
I'm so happy to be in warm weather. They have no idea.
Did I leave my jacket in the lobby? It's still winter up here. It snows in May sometimes in feet.
You never know. That's awesome because you and I are on the same page. You were born and raised in Colorado, then you know a lot of your family.
I was born and raised in Colorado. I'm a Colorado native and my mom is a Colorado native. That's super cool. She brought us back. She met my dad in California and they came back here. That's pretty cool of her to impart that tradition on me as well because being a Coloradan is a big part of my identity. I'm very proud of that.
I am too.
There's a lot of history in Colorado. One of the people that I absolutely admire in my sport wasn't in MMA, but boxing. It was Jack Dempsey. Jack Dempsey's style is probably one of the most vicious styles I've ever seen. The only person to emulate Jack Dempsey's style is Mike Tyson. That peekaboo and get inside.
That was actually one of my questions. I don't want to jump forward but it was like, where do you get your style and your influence from? I see you doing that kind of peekaboo. MMA is so different from boxing.
There's a lot of crossover.
Those faints. A faint is a faint.
Even the way that I do martial art. Being a martial artist is being able to impart all the martial arts into your style and the way that you express martial arts. That's how you become a true martial artist. The best historical and traditional martial artist was Miyamoto Musashi.
He wrote The Book of Five Rings, but Miyamoto Musashi used The Art of War as a template. The folklore of his upbringing was, “You don't just read The Art of War. You have to be The Art of War.” Sun Tzu, a Chinese philosopher, was the one who wrote The Art of War. Miyamoto Musashi’s whole thing in reading that was completely outside of the realm of thinking of all the people in that time. The people in that time, a samurai and a daimyo would go into a house, and you would serve that daimyo. The daimyo would give you fields, wealth, farmland, homestead for your family, and a lot of honor.
Based on how good of a person you were, your integrity and work ethic.
The Book of Five Rings
It's integrity, work ethic, and how good of a person you are. That was all of it but it also was like, "This house uses one-long-sword style. This house uses a two-sword style. This house uses this certain technique and you can't be a part of this house unless you honor that technique." Miyamoto Musashi was like, "I want to learn the best techniques and I want to learn as much about each technique as I can so I can determine which is the best against each technique." That was a no-go. He was an outcast because of that way of thinking. He said, "What transcends that way of thinking is The Art of War. You have to know your enemy, so why wouldn't I learn my enemy's techniques?" He was famous for doing that. He's a phenomenal tactician and stuff. That's an influence.
He's so open-minded. The way he relates different careers and mindsets. His interpretation of carpentry and how precise it has to be, and carpenters are better. It's an art.
He didn't think he was the best artist, but he understood that being able to have the patience to paint a picture and to be an artist was super important to becoming a good martial artist.
It's about the preparation.
Everything was not just mind preparation but body preparation. It’s mind and body. It wasn't absent of either. Circling back, that's why I think it's important for me to understand lineage and some of the lineage from boxing. Jack Dempsey is a Coloradan. He was born in Colorado. He is a depression kid. He had brothers that were boxers. He was small and super undersized for heavyweight. He quit school to box. He had nothing to his name.
He became a pimp because he could beat people up. He said he would do anything just to get a hot meal. He said, "I would let someone smash me in the face with a baseball bat just to eat." He said, "I’m going up against The Great White Hope," which is one of the most vicious boxing matches in the history of boxing. I think he knocks him down 6 or 7 times in one round. It's one of the most brutal beatdowns you've ever seen in boxing. I think it was in July 4th, 1919.
Is there any video footage of it?
There's a video footage of it. It's July 4th, Jack Dempsey.
That was on 4th of July. That's pretty dope.
It's crazy because, a little Black history lesson, The Great White Hope came around because of Jack Johnson. That is Jess Willard, 1919, July 4th. There's a lot of craziness. The whole video is nine minutes long. This video is nuts because Jess Willard was the guy that everybody looked around the nation to beat Jack Johnson. Jack Johnson was the first Black heavyweight champion and was recognized as that. Jack Johnson was a crazy motherfucker. He didn't care.
You thought that Mike Tyson stuff that he was saying was crazy. Jack Johnson married a White woman. That's why he had to fight Jess Willard in Brazil because he was going to go to jail for marrying his wife, and he would brag about it. The KKK would say that if he fought and beat this White guy, they would hang him. He told them, "You better get your lynches ready because I'm going to beat the shit out of him." That is some craziness to say. They had riots for Jack Johnson in the South.
The mob controlled so much back then. It wasn't just even the KKK.
It wasn't just that. It was everything.
The government was probably involved.
The government was highly involved. They wanted to lock him up. He had to flee the country. They wanted to lock him up for marrying a White woman and they couldn't get him. He always would outsmart them, and always do something crazy. He's like, "Why don't you just beat me in the ring?"
Has anybody made a film about this?
About Jack Johnson? I'm sure there's a film but not a great one. Check this out. Jess Willard is the big guy in Black shorts. As you can see, Jack Dempsey is super undersized and super small. If you see Jack Dempsey's style, it's very similar to what you would probably see with what Mike Tyson was doing. Mike Tyson was a vehement stud of boxing and the boxing game. He's using that peekaboo style, that up and down. Jess Willard is towering over him, but he's getting inside of his range. He overwhelms him, gets inside his range, throws a big hook, and then peekaboo, he’s out.
That was 1919.
1919, July 4th. If you watch, Jess Willard starts to get frustrated because he can't find him. He can't find his range. Every time he's out of range, he's slipping and moving. "He's not fighting me like a man," that's what they would say. Jack Dempsey didn't care. Look how small he is. This is heavyweight. I think they said he was 195 pounds, and Jess Willard was 250-something pounds and 6'6”. Jack Johnson, they said he was 5'11” or 5'10”.
You weren't making weight?
That's knockdown number one. You talk about tactics. Look at the way that he positions himself. He's going to knock him down again. This is the most vicious round. He knocks him into the ropes. He beats him up. Watch the way that he starts to position himself. This is why there are neutral corners in boxing. Jack Dempsey was an elite tactician. He knocks him down and he positions himself behind him. He has to orient himself and through the ropes. He positions himself behind him again because he knows. He has to orient himself as soon as his hands come up. This is one of the most brutal and vicious beatdowns you will ever see in one round.
I'm punching this date into the time machine now.
If you look what was going on in 1919, there are a lot of interesting things that were going on with the country. The flappers in the '20s prohibition. There was a lot of crazy stuff going on in 1919.
That's actually when my family lost all their property. It was right after that or right before it.
This is brutal. The reason why this video is 9 minutes and 44 seconds long, his corner keeps on sending Jess Willard out. Kudos to Jess Willard. This shows toughness in the way that men were back then. He refused to give up. This is brutal. Jack Dempsey thought that they won the fight. Everybody comes into the ring. They get him and they take his gloves off. He's in the back and they said, "No, Jess Willard didn't lose. That was his corner. He wants to continue to fight."
There was a big controversy about Jess Willard. He's still on the ground. There was a big controversy about this fight. They had to clear the ring. He took his gloves off, so then Jack Dempsey has to come back out and fight. I think he fought 2 or 3 more rounds until he knocked him out. That was round one. That was after round one. He had to come back out and restart. It relays everything.
Kudos to Jess Willard, I think he survived five rounds. They think that Jess Willard was given the heavyweight championship. It's still a big controversy about Jack Johnson. They think he threw the fight because the KKK went down through the South and started lynching Black people because Jack Johnson was winning and he was the heavyweight champ.
If you know anything about boxing, boxing was still in this weird phase in the United States of whether it could get sanctioned or not. There's a lot of stuff with the mob. There's a lot of stuff with politicians and presidents. Is this a dignified sport? Overseas, it was dignified and there were a lot of things and rules with boxing in Europe. Look at how many people are there.
Where was this fight at?
I think it was either at Dodger Stadium or one of the big baseball stadiums.
That's crazy. It was probably packed.
Yeah, it's packed. This fight is crazy, but I love it because Jack Dempsey was undersized. People said that he was underprepared. They said that his style of boxing isn't dignified. Midst all of these attacks, he stayed steadfast to his martial art and beat the piss out of Jess Willard. He literally beat the piss out of him.
Professional Mixed Martial Arts: Jack Dempsey was undersized. People said that he was underprepared and that his style of boxing wasn't dignified. Amidst all of these attacks, he stayed steadfast in his martial art and beat the piss out of Jess Willard.
Thanks for sharing this. I've never seen it.
You got to read the newspaper stuff about it in '20s. Everything with reporting is so funny. They're all like, "Jess Willard's face never looked the same again."
The way that they talked were like Tommy guns. Could you imagine people running around the street with Tommy guns? Have you ever shot one of those things? They're insane.
I haven't shot a Tommy gun. I'm like, "People have these?" I have shot automatic rifles before.
The next time you're in Vegas, go to one of those gun spots.
I did. I just didn't pull the Tommy gun.
It's fun. It's crazy. Those were crazy times, and that wasn't that long ago.
It was 104 years ago. It's a blip. There are still people that were around in 1919. That's so crazy to me.
My great-great-grandmother and I shared the same birthday, which was cool. I always had this connection to her, but I was maybe 7 or 8, and she was 99 or 98 when she passed. We would go visit her at the nursing home right here in Morrison. My grandmother explained it to me. She had seen everything. They came over in horse and carriage. She saw everything develop from the bicycle to the airplanes in her lifetime. It’s pretty insane.
Even just seeing my grandmother, she's 90 years old. What she has seen technology-wise is insane. She texts. That's crazy to me like, “Grandma just texted me?” It's nuts. She's always been someone who's with the times. To a martial art thing too, a lot of times, we get so stuck in our ways that we refuse to adapt in different environments that we're in. It's super easy to do because it's comfortable. Some of the best people that I know are comfortable being uncomfortable. They can adapt. All the successful people I know adapt well.
A lot of times, we get so stuck in our ways that we refuse to adapt to the different environments we're in. It's super easy to do because it's comfortable. But some of the most successful people are comfortable being uncomfortable, and they adapt.
Look at how much the sport has adapted in 30 years or however long.
MMA is insane.
The growth rate is different. The level of fighters now, you guys are incredible. There are honestly not too many bad fights to watch now. It's a true sport now. When UFC won, you got a guy coming out with one boxing glove.
It was like a circus. It's a sideshow.
There are no weight classes. You had Tank Abbott in there. I was a huge Tank Abbott fan. I was a fan then. What it has evolved to now, you have fighters like yourself, Chris Camozzi, and a ton of these guys that we've had in from FactoryX. We had Coach Luke on. It’s insane.
Before we skip over that, I also don't want people to think that we're disrespecting that era. That era is the reason why I do what I do.
It's the foundation.
I absolutely love all of those guys. I'm sure some of them will say that it was like a circus. They got paid $100 a round. “All I had to do was go and fight somebody, that's great." Those guys never got to reap the benefits of what they did and started. I hope a lot of those guys all well. I hope that they're out there, and people who are fans of the sport or coming to the sport can go back and pay homage to some of those guys because I wouldn't be able to do what I do now without them.
It's so cool in the modern era that we live in, you can. We just did it with Jack Dempsey. That's fucking incredible, and then on the UFC side of things, you got Fight Pass. Bellator's website is amazing. I went back and watched some of your fights doing a little bit of homework and checking it out. It's incredible. That's cool that your style develops from Colorado based. When I was watching some of your fights, and I've seen you fight prior to being a Bellator fan and an MMA fan. Your style always does remind me a little bit of that Tyson era. I didn't know he studied Dempsey.
He said Dempsey is king and Johnson is the man. That's the thing. I see Tyson as that. He might not even say that about himself now, but Tyson was the man.
He's still a savage man. I watched him hit Mitch in his last fight.
No just still. He will always be that, but now he's in his garden. I would rather be a warrior in my garden than a gardener in a war. Right now he's in his garden, but if war comes, that motherfucker is going to be a savage. That's never going to change. I see that with guys like Vito, Ryan, Camozzi.
All you have to do is turn it on.
That's what I strive for too. Musashi had his guarded, but when it's time, it's time. That's why I genuinely love what I do. I love the preparation. I think I'm always going to be around it in whatever walk of life that I go by. I also want to go into medicine. I love that aspect of it. I love old people and athletes, but I'm always going to be a martial artist.
That's a great outlook. The reason why I roll jiu-jitsu is for that very reason. It does something for me mentally. You never know when you're going to be put into a situation. Being put in an uncomfortable situation on a regular basis could help you later in life no matter what you're dealing with, whether it's a medical thing or maybe it's a family member. They all relate back to having a mindset of pushing through a hard time no matter what it is.
Pushing through a hard time, it's easy to say and it's easy to feel like that's what you need to do. The action is hard. Actually doing it is hard. It's hard to be present in those hard times. That's to everybody out there. Hard times come. I don't know what you're going through on a daily basis. You don't know what I'm going through on a daily basis. One thing I do know that’s true is everybody has hard times and everybody has hardship. Whether you're Jeff Bezos or whether you're the beggar on the corner, one thing that's innate to humanity is there are hard times no matter who you are. How you adapt and how you react to those hard times ultimately is a testament of who you are and your character.
It's also embracing it a little bit. You got to grab the bull by the horn.
That's so true. It might be cliche, but it doesn't mean it's not true.
It's that perspective of like, "I'm in it. Now I need to have my head on the swivel and figure out what's the best path out of it instead of just keeping your head down."
I know I liked you when we met at the bar, Bobby.
I don't think you were even drinking then. I was.
I wasn't drinking then. I'm not here to say anything about alcohol. I like to drink when I celebrate. That's something that I give up when I'm in training.
A lot of people can't fit into a bar situation or around those people. It shows a true character of yourself.
I don't care.
I fucking love it.
I genuinely love people. To be honest, the reason I love people is because I love God. That's what the Bible says. We need community. Whether you're a believer or not, I think every single person in the entire world is born with that feeling in their heart. Even if you're a loner, you need community. I don't care.
We need community. Every single person is born with that feeling in their heart that, even if you're a loner, you need community.
You can have Jeff Bezos' money, but if you don't have anybody around to share it with, what's the fucking point?
I'm not going to sit here and lie to you that Jeff Bezos' money isn't good. I'm sure that people like him that don't have a community have happiness, but I don't know if they have joy.
Just think about you get that success, then you have a hard problem with probably trusting people because everybody's going to want something from you. Everybody's coming at you at some sort of angle.
Maybe or maybe not, but maybe you're not in a place to see it. That's hard too.
This is why I podcast. I've gotten so much out of it. Genuinely, seeing somebody else's perspective and being able to spend time with them. Even though we had a great conversation at the bar, being in here, there are no interruptions. I can find out who somebody is and I genuinely love this. I genuinely love having somebody. Even if I don't agree with somebody, I still get something out of it. It’s just another person's perspective. I've learned so much in here. This has been a school for me. I love it, and picking up new things. I'm sure I'm going to show your Jack Dempsey glory with somebody else later on down the road. It's so cool.
You're a Colorado guy. That's a Colorado guy. Talking about community, that is in us. Jack Dempsey and I may not be family, but what he did is in me. I'm a believer. I read a book called The Talent Code. There are some parts that are dense. Daniel Coyle is the author. His whole thing is, why are there always a trend of hotbeds of talent? Why were the Brazilians so good at soccer? In this time, why were Spain so good at soccer? Why is the United States so good at basketball? His study was to study these hotbeds of talent and to dissect it.
I'm adding this to my list too.
It gets pretty dense later on in the book. It goes into extreme depth and he dissects these different hotbeds. I'll give you a synopsis if you're going to read it. I don't want to spoil anything for you. Basically, what he finds out is full circle, it comes down to the community. When someone in the community that you came from went to the same high school and elementary school, was in the same state, and was doing this. Whether they come back or they're directly a part of your life or not, if they came from that area, you attribute a lot of everything that you do, and you attach yourself to that.
I attach myself to Jack Dempsey. I know I can be a champion. Jack Dempsey was a champion. He has a similar stature to me as far as height. I'm not even fighting at heavyweight. He was fighting at heavyweight. I attach myself to that. You know it's true. It's in your destiny. That's what his whole thing was. It’s the hotbeds of talent. Furthermore, when these people that are successful go back into their communities and give themselves 100% to those communities that they came from, it pours kerosene on that little spark.
It does. I pay homage to Evergreen.
There's probably a kid in Evergreen that looks at you like, "This is Bobby."
I hope my son is. That's my goal in life. To be that role model and example.
Because you put it out there, he is. Even with my grandfather, I knew he knew. When I was a kid, I was not able to say that. Your son knows because my grandfather knew. That's what you want and you've put that out there. He's going to go through times. Every man pushes back against their dad. There are disagreements and stuff, but when it comes full circle, you know that your son is going to know that.
I genuinely try. My daughters too. It's not just my son but for both of them. Fatherhood is a crazy thing. It has changed my life.
I can't wait for it.
You don't have kids yet?
I do not have kids yet, but I know that one day, God-willing, I'm going to be a father.
Take your time with it. I don't think there's anything to rush into. I started having kids when I was 30. I had a crazy awesome career prior to that. I got to go all over the world multiple times and see so many things and experience so many things that I truly feel like made me a better father with all that experience. You see some of these kids that have a kid at 18 or 19, there's nothing wrong with that. They can still be great parents, but I just feel like there's so much to learn in that adolescence of coming out of high school, going to college, then going into your career.
You're going to stumble. There's going to be hiccups. Shit is going to happen to you that's out of your control. Stuff is going to come at you from left field. You might not have anything to do with what's happening. It could be a legal implication. It could be you're working for somebody that has some sort of thing. It's so crazy. There's so much shit that can happen to you in life. If you can set your kids up for success in that before it even happens to them, I think that they can learn from your mistakes or what's worked for you. I think it's so important.
If you can start that imprint and realize that, or if you can stand back, look at it all, and start those little imprints prior to them actually getting into their teenage years, it's so important. It's all right to start later in life. If I would've started in my 40s, I still would feel comfortable with it. You want to be around for the majority of their life to experience it.
We don't get to choose. I could be a 20-year-old dad, but something could happen. I'm not in my kid's life and he's a one-year-old because I got in a car accident or something happened. You'll never know.
You didn't like custody battles because normally people are so fucking ruthless with each other. How often do you hear of a divorce that there's not some sort of like, "I get the kids on Christmas." It's so fortunate that I have an awesome spouse.
That's a big thing too. I want to make sure. I'm preparing myself for marriage. I want to be a good husband. I want to be a good father. I want to be a good man. I want to be a man of God that can represent everything that I truly know has done wonders in my life. That being said, I'm so fucking flawed.
Just having that mindset, I'm flawed too. I grew up and experienced life on the back of a tour bus on rock and roll tours. That's not a great spot. I'm super fortunate I got to do that. I'm not downplaying that. I wouldn't change any of that, but having that mindset and you start with those four things that you mentioned right there, that's the foundation. That's all you need. It's an art form. You got to figure it out as you go. It's analyzing a situation and grabbing the bull by the horns. You got to keep your head on that swivel and make sure that you're going down the right path. Even sometimes when you think you're going down the right path, maybe you need to turn around, come back, face the bull again, and then take that next path.
When you decided to tie your soul to your spouse, how did you know?
It's a long story, but I'm going to give you the short version. We were friends prior. I was in the friend zone for 7 or 8 years. When I say friend zone, it's just my running joke. I was on rock and roll tour. She was a prima ballerina, so she was traveling the country. We met in LA. I didn't come home much that often for family holidays and stuff like Christmas and some of those because I was broke. I'm still cutting my teeth in the rock and roll industry and touring. I didn't want to come back here for some reason. It was weird. I was trying to focus on my career and be good at that.
When I was home for the holiday, she never let me spend a holiday by myself. We spent multiple Christmases together, New Year’s, and all that sort of stuff prior to us even having a relationship. We were friends first, so I truly knew her. I always had a girlfriend or she always had a boyfriend. We saw those struggles. One night she attacked my ass on New Year's Eve and it was a culmination of things. We had two kids before we actually even legally tied the knot. She's such an awesome person. Some people have values, and I'm not knocking this.
She truly understood that I loved her. She didn't need to have a ring, a ceremony, or anything like that. Now, it was about the greater good of the family. Does this financially make sense? What could we do with this? Could we experience more by doing it this way? We got all that full circle. We did a ceremony. We went before a judge, did it in Fort Collins, and then had our ceremony at the lake house here in Evergreen, which was super dope. It was great because our kids were able to experience it too. I didn't know. It just happened to me. Once I was in it, then I knew 100%. I still know to this day that she's the one. That's it. I don't need anything else. I'm content. I'm happy.
We have the common goal of focusing on our kids and our own artistic needs. She's still heavily involved with ballet. My daughters are now. This is my outlet in art form and photography, so I still work in entertainment. I'm still pursuing the careers that I love to pursue. She understands that. It's that common understanding of you both have to have something outside of family that's important to you, and then having to support that. Those are the most important things. You got to have a teammate.
I've been thinking about at some point some young man is going to come to my doorstep and ask for my daughter's hand in marriage. I'm like, "What the fuck do I say to this kid?" You truly have to like somebody. It's not even about love. You genuinely have to like them, because you're spending vast amount of time with them. Loving and liking somebody is so different. You can love and like somebody at the same time, but you genuinely have to like somebody to live with them and go through life.
What happens when you're seven years old and that lust is gone. Are you going to rely on, "This my best friend?" No.
Ride or die. Bonnie and Clyde. That's how I look at it.
My mom's in home health. She's a physical therapist. She shares with me a lot. The one thing that she says goes to what you're saying about like and love. I go into some houses and the spouses are like, "We've been married for 50 years," but they live in separate bedrooms and they don't like each other. They have that, "We've been married for 50 years."
Bickering or fighting with somebody all the time is not good. You should be experiencing life like, "This wine is good. That meal is good. This movie is so good to watch."
I'm sure you guys have disagreements though.
Always. I don't think that you can live with somebody and not truly be yourself, because one person turns into a pawn if you don't.
That's a part of being a teammate because all the teammates that I've had, we might not have always seen eye to eye. We may have gotten pissed at each other and stuff. I'm talking teammates in sports and I've been on national championship teams, we all wanted the same thing. It wasn't win or lose this argument or fight. It was like, “We disagree but let's find a path to the ultimate goal.” That's what I hope that I can find.
We can disagree and find a path to the ultimate goal.
That's exactly what you need in a spouse, in my opinion. This is just my opinion and perspective. I'm not a guru. I'm not saying that my marriage is 100% perfect. I'm sure that I have some faults.
I don’t think anybody is.
Ask my wife. I'm sure there's some shit that I do that gets under her skin. That common goal of, "This is what we're trying to achieve in life. This is what makes me happy." If you can balance those two things, being happy, being loved, and having some success. I don't care if it's collecting coins, finding a rare coin, or napping stone into tools. Whatever your passion is, pursue that. Many people get caught up in the day-to-day grind of, "This is my job. I hate going to work. This is my routine."
They make money.
There's nothing wrong with it either. I'm not downplaying that. Even outside of that, you got to have something you're passionate about. Whether it's learning, going to a library, and reading books. Maybe it's shooting archery. Maybe it's as simple as riding a beach cruiser down the strand or a mountain bike. Going for a hike or spending time with your dog. Whatever it is. Just pursue that as much as you can. That's what makes me happy.
That's an awesome insight. I appreciate you being honest and open. I think that's important not only for me to hear, but I think it's probably going to help a lot of people who are tuning in to this. It's beautiful. I love that for you too. It's something special.
I appreciate that. It feels good to hear that sometimes. I got to ask you going into that. One of my questions were for you. We didn't even go through your high school background or anything, we totally got diverted, but I'm okay with this going the way it naturally goes. Your fighter name, I fucking love it, Grant "The Truth" Neal. Where does that come from? I see you in the cage. I've seen you in some other things where it's like, "No lies. This is it. This is me." I think that's important. That’s honesty.
The three perils of men is lying, substances, and lust. I've told lies before and I told white lies. I think everybody has. I'm not saying in any aspect that you have to be perfect. I want to make sure I make that very clear because nobody is perfect. Even if you see your idol and the people that you love, if they're human, they're not perfect. I want to walk in truth and understanding. The funny thing about that name is I had nothing to do with it.
Nobody's perfect, even your idol and the people that you love. They're humans; they're not perfect.
A fighter name isn't like, "I'm so-and-so." It's given to you. It's like these challenge coins. I don't know if you know anything about these.
I have one. If you asked me to present, it's in the car.
You got to keep these things on you. That's a problem when you collect a lot of them.
It's a problem. Hopefully, you don't ask me to present.
Just the concept behind it. This isn't something you can go out and buy. It's an honor to receive it. Isn't the fighter names the same way?
Sometimes you don't feel like it's honored with the fighter names that are given to you. My fighter name was given to me on a live broadcast on Altitude Sports by a sportscaster named Todd Romero. They were replaying some of the fights that happened in the Denver area. If people don't know, Denver is a hotbed for MMA talent, which I was extremely fortunate to come up in my MMA career here in Colorado. It's such a blessing.
It was so happenstance and accident. I won't say happenstance and accident. I think that God's hand was upon me and it pushed me in that direction, even though I don't even know if I even believed anything at that time, but there was something there. Me being in Colorado pushed that. The MMA scene in Colorado was huge. I'm an amateur fighter and I got a big knockout in my very first fight. It was a right hand. It's funny when I look back on it. I don't even know what I was doing.
I want to rewind here a little bit. This is a good point, and then we're going to come back to your fighter name. Briefly going through your high school and college career, you were no slump then. The wrestling pedigree that you have, and then playing fullback and having a national championship as a Division 2 football player here in the state of Colorado. Most people don't get to experience that. I never got to experience anything like that in all the high school sports that I played and then going into college. That's amazing.
Sometimes it's hard for me to sit back and smell roses because I'm a very focused person. Those are all great things and I appreciate them. They've definitely given me opportunities and help shape me to the person I am now, but that's just what it is. I'm chasing something even probably greater than I even can articulate or know. It's hard for me to look back or even talk about that stuff, but it's important for me. The funny thing is, and this is humbling for me, being a two-time state champion wrestler, those accolades were amazing, but people got to see that I was a two-time state champion.
When I entered a wrestling room, I thought I was the baddest man on the planet, and I had false manhood as what I like to call it. I thought I was a tough guy. I thought that I was unbeatable. My ego was driving me. I was extremely proud. I was a very proud freshman. I'm 189 pounds as a freshman and I'm a football player. I'm like, "I can kick the shit out of any of the varsity football players right now. I'm going to go into this wrestling room. If I can kick the shit out of any football players, these wrestlers aren't going to do nothing to me. Especially a wrestler that weighs less than me. There ain't no man on this earth that's weighs less than me that can do anything to me. I'm the man. I'm the greatest. There's nothing that can stop me. I'm going to go out and I'm going to be a state champion.”
Was MMA in the back of your mind at that point?
Not at all. The way I got into wrestling is as a middle schooler at seventh grade. I got into wrestling because I thought I was going to throw chairs at people. I remember I'm like, “This a lot of work.” I'm all in. My mom's like, "You don't get to quit anything that you start.” That's going to come up after I tell you what happened in wrestling. I thought in middle school I was going to throw a chair at somebody. Three weeks into it, after all this hard conditioning, I asked the coach, "When am I going to do that?" He goes, "This is real wrestling." I was like, "What do you mean? I just saw John Cena do this. I want to do that."
You don't get to quit anything that you start.
This is about The Rock and "Stone Cold" Steve Austin era. That was a great era.
I'm like, "When do we get to do that?" That was a rude awakening. The thing that's always been in me is, I'm extremely competitive and I like to win. Everybody likes to win, but I absolutely hate losing. I hate it to the point where even talking about it, it's like I'm saying the worst word possible.
I can see it in your face.
I don't even like putting that word in the atmosphere.
It's a negative feeling right out of the gate.
Even when something says loss in anything that I did, I never said I lost. I said I learned. Wrestling in my freshman year, coming in so proud, I was humbled beyond belief. I was the biggest pussy in the room. I cried every single day and I wanted to quit every single day. I'm so ashamed. It's scary for me to even say that. I want people to think, "This is a tough guy." I was not tough. I thought I was tough. It absolutely wrecked my life.
Some of the worst things I've ever gone through have been in a wrestling room.
It wrecked my life. I'm like, "I'm never going to be good at this." Going into the regional tournament in Colorado, you have to be top four in regionals in order to make it to state. I was in under 500 wrestler going into the regional tournament in my freshman year at 189 pounds. I was under 500.
You were a state champ as a freshman?
No. This is what helped me become a state champ. I'm under 500, which means I've lost more than I've won. I thought I was going to that room and no one can beat me. I just told you how I felt about losing. I ended up going to the regional tournament and I placed third at regionals. I punched my ticket to state as a freshman. My mom rushed down to the regional tournament because I was like, "I think I'm going to state.” She was doing something completely different because she's like, "He's probably going to go to and out.” She's like, "I can't even wait." Her and my dad rushed to the tournament to see me punch my ticket to state.
You were saying a few minutes ago that you wanted to quit but your mother had a hand and you’re not or something.
That actually is my junior season. I went to state. I won my first match, and then I had the quarter finals match. I was beating the kid bad. The ref had it out for me. The ref since then has not been able to ref in Colorado. He started giving the other opponent points instead of taking away team points because my coaches were furious about certain positional things. I was up by nine points. The guy ended up beating me by one point and he didn't score a point himself. At that point, I was like, "Fuck wrestling. This is unfair," which is my mantra in life. Life is not always fair. You can be doing all the right things and shit can still hit the fan.
That's what I was getting at a few minutes ago. You never know.
Wrestling is an awesome precursor for life and how you handle things. I handled that poorly. I was like, "I'm never doing this again." I ended up defaulting out of the tournament. I didn't do anything on the backside. I had terrible character in that match and the matches after that. It was in this “poor me” mentality. Sophomore year comes. I'm still pissed off about that year, but now I know that I'm capable of winning and I'm capable of making it to state. I had a lot better year in my sophomore year. I believe I lost maybe six matches. I lost about 28 matches in my freshman year. I lost 6 matches the rest of my entire career after freshman year.
Wrestling is an awesome precursor for life and how you handle things.
That was a huge turnaround.
My sophomore year, I got pretty sick during the tournament. I had a pretty bad asthma attack. I fought as hard as I could. My asthma is allergy-induced or sickness induced. I was sick. I had a bad asthma attack, and my mentality was starting to shift. Old Grant would be like, "I'm done. It's over." I fought through and I finished every match.
That's amazing. I'm sure most people know what asthma is, but you cannot breathe. Ninety percent of wrestling and MMA in my opinion is cardio and how well your gas tank is. That depletes you of everything to the point where you could die.
Wrestling also is mental. As I said, I hate losing. Also, if I die, that means I lost. I was refusing to die because I don't like to lose. Not only that. I got this little bug in me like, "You're not going to quit." In my junior year, and this is the first state championship year, I'm bitter. I haven't placed that state yet. I was one place away from placing my sophomore year. I'm like, "Something always goes wrong." My freshman year coach said I was going to be a state champion. I had a different coach in my junior year than my freshman year coach. He played a big role that I didn't even know about. He brought in my worst enemy into the room. The entire year, he'd come in twice a week.
From another school or was this guy at your school?
He was at the Olympic Training Center. He is an Olympic athlete. They brought him down here because I was still proud in sophomore year. My coach at the time couldn't wrestle me because I was way bigger than he was. I think he was a 35-pounder in college. He had a lot of skill, but it was overwhelming. I started to develop enough skill to not let him do anything. I knew how to sprawl and I still wasn't a good wrestler. I wasn't a good wrestler in my junior year and I hated to lose. Dwight, the guy who came down every Tuesday and Thursday, this dude is mean. He's not nice at all. He was ruthless to the point to where you can't do that to a kid.
There's no going 50%.
Not even now going 50%. You can go 50%. He was very progressive in that point. If you want to go 50%, you can, but this 50% that you're going is going to be hell. If you want to go 50%, that's fine. You're just going to go through hell at 50%. He's like, "I'd rather go through hell at 100% and win than go through hell at 50% and lose." That's what his mentality always was. I felt like a freshman again. I cried every day. This is where I told my mom, because my dad was a hard dude. He was salty, but he never coached me. He never said anything because he never wanted to be that guy. He didn't wanted to see me have resentment.
I can understand that because I have a hard time with my son a little bit. It's like I've found that I give him all the right tools or the sharpeners for his tools, I guess. I have a hard time pushing him. When he's doing push-ups, I want to tell him like, "You are such a pussy and you're doing it wrong. You have horrible form." You can't say that. A real coach, that's how they get under your skin and let you know, "I better do this." In my opinion or that's how I grew up. I grew up with coaches that would literally abuse you, especially in the wrestling room.
Talk about abuse. I was abused. The funny thing is the moms nowadays in wrestling, bless their hearts. Wrestling is a hard sport and your kid is going to have a point at some time where they're going to want to quit. Unfortunately, nowadays, that is applauded. My biggest thing is you never quit on a bad day. That's my one rule. I coach at Regis now. I’m a wrestling coach as well, trying to give back. That's my rule. You don't quit on a bad day. I learned that from my mom because I came out and I had two black eyes from Dwight. I'm bawling and crying. I'm like, "I'm quitting. You can't tell me any different. I don't want to wrestle. I'm not wrestling anymore."
My mom looked me dead in my eyes and I've never seen her so stern. I thought I was going to get a mother's touch and console me like, “Poor me.” Now, I think this was harder for her than it was for me because she can see where I'm at. That's probably what she wanted to do, but she knew that's not what I needed to grow. I applaud my mom. That moment in my life has been probably one of the most defining moments that's ever happened in my life. She said, "Grant, this family doesn't raise quitters and you're not my son if you quit. We finish what we start. You made a commitment. You finish what you start. If you decide to quit, get out of my car right now, you're not my son. No son of mine is a quitter.”
That's so gangster.
She looked at me stone cold and just said that. She said, "My son doesn't quit." I got chills because my dad always told me to honor my mother. I knew that and I thought I was going to get something totally different.
It takes a good woman to raise an outstanding man.
My mom is phenomenal. That moment changed the rest of my high school career. Dwight still beat the absolute piss out of me. He was the meanest person still to this day that I've ever experienced.
Do you guys still keep up with each other?
He's so mean that he's a part of my camps now. He's a wrestling coach in my camps now. He's a lot different. Now, he's a little more chubby and I beat the shit out of him. I always tell him, "Remember this. I'm getting it back." He's still an important part of my camps in fighting and everything that I do now, but I go on and I talk about winning. I never cared about winning. I was more scared of, "I got to see Dwight on Tuesday. I got to be prepared to go and wrestle with Dwight." All the high school kids that I wrestled, all the way up until the tournament, I wasn't even remotely scared of them. I just thought, "I got to be able to practice with Dwight."
I had my junior year. I was coming back from an injury from football. I lost one match, came back, and won everything. My semi-finals match, I wrestled a guy named G'Angelo Hancock who ended up being a bronze medalist in the Olympics. He's a prodigy. He was good. Everybody said that he was going to beat me. Dwight told me if I get in any trouble in the match, do a lateral drop. I didn't even know what a lateral drop was. I was a bad wrestler as a junior, but Dwight, my mom, my coaches, and people around me put in me, "Refuse to lose." They got to kill you.
It's accountability.
This dude may be better than me. He may be the prodigy and I have to see him in the semi-finals, but he is not tougher than me. Sure enough, I'm down. I throw a lateral drop. I end up winning that match, putting him on his back, and go into the finals. I wrestled pretty tight in the finals and I wrestled a kid that had beat me all three years. I finally get to see him in the finals. He has wrestled his whole life and everything.
In the first period, I beat the piss out of him, and then I started coasting just to win the match. I learned a good lesson there. I won the match. I'm so excited. I'm a state champion. Not only is my mom proud of me but everybody else was proud of me. Now, this motherfucker who has been kicking my ass this whole time never has he said anything good about me the entire year. With all the matches that I won, he hasn't said one good thing about me. I was like, “If I'm going to win the state championship, he's going to say a good thing about me, finally. He's going to be proud of me.”
He looks at me and he goes, "Are you happy about that?" I was like, "Yeah. I'm state champion. That's what it's about." He goes, "You wrestled like a pussy. You wrestled like you were afraid. You wrestled scared. You shouldn't be proud of that." In that moment, it crushed me. It crushed my soul. I was like, "What do you mean? I'm the best. I did it." He was like, "You should be ashamed that you're proud of that." That's what he told me as a state champion. That's what I'm saying. Kids nowadays can't talk like that.
It has gotten so strange.
In senior year, I was a motherfucker. I didn't have an offensive point scored on me in my senior year. Not one offensive point scored on me. It wasn't just win, it was beat down. I beat the shit out of everybody. In senior year, it was scorched dirt. That's where my mentality and my skills started to catch up. Not only that, I remembered what Dwight said. In my finals match, I subluxed my shoulder. My coach put it in, and I still majored the kid. I pinned my way through the state tournament, and still majored the kid with the subluxed shoulder. I beat the shit out of him with one arm, and Dwight was proud of me. He's goes, "You should be proud of that."
You got your thing.
He's all like, "That's always been in you." What was cool even to this day is he's like, "That's always in you." Sometimes I even find myself in certain things and in certain moments where some people will be like, "That's good." Dwight has known me and seen me, and he's all like, "Was that good?" He can challenge that, be honest, and candid with me about certain things.
Make you question yourself. That's important.
That's the biggest downfall of a lot of fighters. It's not losing.
You could apply it to anything in life. I've had shitty interviews where I've totally fucked up. I called somebody the wrong name. I did this one at 4:00 in the morning in Ukraine. We're on remote. This incredible foundation that's doing all this incredible research like boots on the ground. In a war zone, we're doing this podcast and I totally screwed up the name of the foundation because I was underprepared. I didn't have it in front of me. I'm doing it at 4:00 in the morning and it's 3:00 in the afternoon there, but I didn't prepare well enough. It's nobody's fault but mine.
It's hard to even own that.
I'm still losing sleep over that. People are going back and listening to that. When I'm talking to this incredible human and totally embarrassed because I didn't even know the name of it. This guy has been on Fox News and all this stuff on a regular basis.
He's human too.
It was cool. We had a great conversation, regardless.
Those are the defining moments that I bet you prepared great for everything else.
I was some dumbass in a hotel room at that point. I don't even know where I was at in the country. I'm such an idiot. I think it's super important and it applies. I guess that's what I was getting at with jiu-jitsu. You can take those lessons that you learn in those hard moments or even in the wrestling room or from playing high school sports. It's so important to have your kids, if you're a father, to involved them in something like that, where there's some suffering or those moments where they want to quit. I've had it with my son where he's like, "I don't want to do this."
Coaching kids is important. I tell all the kids in wrestling, "This is going to be the hardest thing that you do in your life." Dan Gable says, "Once you've wrestled, everything else in life is easy." Still to this day, that held true. I've been through a lot of hardships, but the wrestling room, there's nothing that has been harder.
Once you've wrestled, everything else in life is easy.
How much do you rely on that now in Bellator?
It's tremendous.
Your wrestling game and your takedowns are incredible. They're savage.
There's a lot to work on. I do actually appreciate you saying that, but I'm still a work in progress. People have not seen the best Grant Neal. They still haven't seen that.
That's scary.
They might be scared and some people might not be scared because you don't got to be scared to get your ass whooped. I am evolving and constantly challenging myself to paint the canvas with my masterpiece. Unfortunately, that's going to be my opponent.
It's showing in your growth, from watching you back in Sparta Combat League, and then up into Bellator. It's a night and day scenario.
It's been beautiful. I love the process.
I love watching it too. I went back and watched some of it because I needed to refresh. I was like, "I remember this fighter. This was so good." I love it. I love the sport.
I love what I do. I tell people all the time. It's funny, now I get some parents coming up to me like, "My son wants to fight MMA" or "My daughter wants to fight MMA."
Are they hard on you for that?
For me, I try to tell every parent and every kid, "You may think you want to do it. Don't do it." If they can hear that from me and they still want to do that, then I know there's something there. I tell everybody, "Don't do it." A lot of people see the good things about MMA. I see the Conor McGregor and the Justin Gaethje. Do you know what these men had to do to get to where they're at, and the turmoil in their lives, the sacrifices they've had to make, and the things that they've had to do to get there? I'll say this clear. There are so many ways that are 20, 30, 40 times easier to make money than MMA.
If you're in it to make money, I'm a number four light heavyweight in the world in Bellator and I still have to work on financial planning to get my bills paid. If you want to make money, there are so many other ways. I can make money doing a podcast and talking to cool people. Do that if you're good at it, you love it, and you're passionate about it. When you're passionate about something, the money will come. It'll take care of itself.
I don't know what's going to happen today or tomorrow. I'm throwing my bones into somebody else with 4-ounce gloves on. Right now, I'm doing well, but it's not beside the point. I could slip and fall into a knee or whatever. Shit happens, but I'll bet on myself every single fucking time. There's no question. I'm going to give it my all. Win, learn, or draw, I know that I've prepared well.
I love that you don't even use the L word. I like learn better than lose. It's so much better.
It seems like a cuss word. God doesn't operate in winning or losing. Everything that he said is his plan, whether you like it or not, whether it's hard or not. Why me as a human am I going to say lose? I'm learning.
We're two hours in right now. This is awesome. We haven't even touched on it. If you can spend a little bit more time with us, I'd love to have you, but I want to be respectful of your time. I know you have to drive up here and I don't know what you got going on.
I'm a Coloradan. I took care of my obligations. As the kids say, I got time.
I'm going to keep you here for a minute then. Back to your fighter name because this is where we keep spinning off. I'm bad about this, but I'm so selfish at this episode. It's not for the audience, it's for my own. This is where it goes. I hope you guys are getting something out of it. If you're not, I guess you could turn it off. I'm not forcing you to tune in. Back to your fighter name. Altitude Sports, this goes on. Now, we have a little bit of a background. I'm sure that this guy knows about your background as a two-time state champion.
I met him through his son at Regis. Regis needed somebody to take his son to school and nobody signed up for it. His son is a freshman and I'm a senior. At Regis High School, they don't have a busing system. They sent a newsletter out to all of the parents and stuff, "Would it be possible if you guys were in this area or a ZIP code if you can carpool his son to school and then they'll be able to pick up?"
For me, it was more so my mom. She answered the call. Also, at that time, as a senior after everything that I had been through in wrestling, I was humbled in the most visceral and hard way. Picking up a freshman to go to school as a senior, maybe for some seniors, it's like, "This isn't cool. I got to take this freshman. I don't know. He might be weird."
At that point, I had a lot of clarity and I didn't care. I loved the man that I had started to become. At that point, I didn't even know I had so much more growth to go. I liked the path that I was on, so I had no problem taking this kid out to school. I did and then I developed a relationship with him. We were acquaintances and everything going through. I then started the fight game. He had a little bit of a background of who I already was in Colorado, in sports, in Pueblo, and in real life.
That was cool, and then I think that helped so much. He ended up seeing that fight video and they showed all the fights from the Sparta Card and they showed my highlight knockout. On air, he goes, "Grant "The Truth" Neal with the highlight knockout." I'm like, "Is that my nickname now?" He called me and he was like, "We put your highlight on Altitude Sports. Go and watch it." I watched it. I was like, "Is that my name now?" A lot of people ended up seeing that knockout and a lot of people happened to see it on Altitude Sports. I don't know how many people watch the late night sports calls and stuff.
Is it still on?
I think the knockout is still on YouTube. I think Altitude is in a big lawsuit with Comcast or something there. I don't know where their stuff is. We couldn't even watch half of the Nuggets games this season. You got to have a certain connection to get Altitude Sports to watch it. If you had Comcast or whatever, you couldn't watch it. That being said, that's the Nuggets. I don't know if you would be able to find my amateur fight.
Maybe it's on YouTube or something, but we'll have to look that up here eventually. I guess at some point out of your high school career, you had to make a decision whether to go play football or to go wrestle. Did you go for both? Did you have schools recruiting you for both?
I had a different coach from my junior year. I had a different head coach. I had three different head coaches in wrestling. The funny thing is I hated wrestling. People are like, "You must have loved it. You were a two-time state champ. You never quit." To this day, I hate wrestling, but I love what wrestling does. I love the outcomes. I love the man that it makes you. Now, women are getting into wrestling.
There are so many girls right now.
I think girls wrestling is phenomenal. I'm a big advocate for it.
I am too.
I think it builds strong women with good values.
Just the self-defense.
Self-defense, but it also allows women to be strong and women to be women in communion with other women. In any male sport, there are so many avenues for us men to be in communion with other men, and it's celebrated. Unless you're very skilled or talented, for women, there's not that many outlets outside of, "If you're tall, you play basketball. If you're fast, you're on track or you play soccer. If you're tall, you play volleyball." There's not a lot of outlets for that in between for women that want to develop themselves as women and become strong women. Now, they have an outlet to where they don't have to wrestle guys.
Girls wrestling is phenomenal. It builds strong women with good values, and it allows women to be strong and in communion with other women.
It's an individual sport.
It's an individual sport and you don't have to wrestle guys now. You can just wrestle women.
Even the women in MMA has been amazing.
I think it's great. I didn't want to wrestle in college. I knew it. I had a lot of schools reaching out to me. I had scholarship offers and opportunities to wrestle at the next level in college, but I was a football player. I was a football player that hated to lose and that's why I wrestled. The choice is football. I was doing good and I still know to this day, I was a Division 1 caliber football athlete. I got injured in my junior year. It was the biggest recruiting year of football. As soon as I got injured, I had a lot of interest from a ton of different schools my junior year. I got injured the second game of my junior year. It was an injury that required surgery.
What was the injury, if you don't mind asking?
I tore my syndesmosis tendon in my ankle, which is the tendon that attaches your tibia and your fibula together. It attaches, so they don't pull apart. I tore that.
How painful was that?
It's like a high ankle sprain. That's the pain. It's a high ankle sprain, but instead of irritating that ligament, it completely tore through. I had to have a tightrope surgery on that and I didn't know what was going to go on with that. That was a very difficult situation and time in my life. I think that factored into me wrestling in my junior year too because I knew that I only had two games on tape for football. I knew that some way I would be able to show these coaches my physicality in wrestling.
There's nothing more physical than wrestling.
A lot of these coaches that didn't even know much about wrestling, I would have them got coaches that were on visits because duels were on Thursdays. Usually, a recruiter will come and see you on Thursday for football. All the recruiters that would come and see me for football, I would have them come into a wrestling match on Thursday and watch me compete and perform there. I had a good relationship with the running back coach for USC. His name was Tommy Robinson. He brought me out there and recruited me. I had all my eggs in that basket. I wanted to play at USC.
I'm getting ready for signing day and Tommy Robinson had to call me and tell me that their scholarships got cut down because of the Reggie Bush scandal. That was the year that that all came down, which is crazy now to think about it. Now, that wouldn't even be a scandal. You can get paid now as a college athlete. I wasn't going to be one of the scholarship athletes that they picked. That was hard for me to hear. It tore me up. I felt broken. I was already committed to that and I knew that that's where I was meant to be and where I was going to go. The only thing left on the table were some lower grade Division 1 AA schools and high grade Division 2 schools.
Coach Steve Sewell came to 3 or 4 of my wrestling duels. He was from a Division 2 school, CSU-Pueblo. He was the running back coach there. He put in the footwork that some of these one AA schools didn't. Even though to have that Division 1 was on there, something in me told me to go to Pueblo. I committed. This all happened within that signing week. I had a conversation with Coach Sewell and he's like, "I know that there are these schools looking at you." There was a Division 1 AA school that they had played, and CSU-Pueblo beat the shit out of them. At that time when I committed, CSU-Pueblo was piqued to have more guys go to the NFL than CU and CSU combined.
You guys were national champs.
Yeah. My freshman year, I earned a starting position. I played fullback. That was my way on the field. Not only I played fullback, I earned that position. I fought for that position. It was difficult, and then I became a freshman All-American and a national champion all in that same year. I was the only freshman starter on the football team.
I bet you that was fun as fuck. Wasn't it?
It was so much fun. I'll tell you this much. Winning a national championship was an amazing feeling, but it doesn't even come in the same ballpark as winning a fight. I don't even think you're playing the same game. That's how crazy it is to win a fight.
Why do you think that is? Is it the adrenaline dump and adrenaline rush?
The adrenaline rush and stuff is similar.
Is it more the mental fortitude or discipline?
It was all similar because our national championship team had discipline. We all were there in the summertime. We all did our best. We weren't abusing substances. We took it very seriously. We held each other accountable.
That's so important.
We were truly a team. Not only a team but we expected a lot out of each other. My running back coach, Steve Sewell, hadn't said a cuss word since 1990s. It was at a concert and he said, "Damn." He never rose his voice, but our running back room had the highest production on the entire team. Behind me, I had 2,000 yard running back. I'm blocking for it. I'm on the field sometimes more than he's on the field. There were games where I played more plays than our running back.
That fullback position is no joke.
I wasn't just a fullback, I was a utility. I was a better pass blocker than everybody. I wasn't even the best catcher in practice. I don't know what it was. I was terrible at catching the ball. I would just get in my head. I would get all in my head about it. Game time, it's crazy. I'm sure. I'm not letting you down. I don't care. We had even one play when we played a Division 1 team, Sam Houston State. They had the longest Division 1 home winning streak. We were going over there to get beat. This national championship here, we spoiled the party, and they shut the scoreboard off on us. It was like 49 to 12. It was Texas football.
In that game, we had a backside play that I was supposed to be a decoy. The reason I was supposed to be a decoy is because in that week of practice, I dropped everything that the quarterback threw at me. In the pre-game meeting, our offensive coordinator is like, "Whatever you do, do not throw the ball to the fucking fullback." He threw me the ball. It was a huge first down that started in onslaught. I think it was probably a 20 or 30 yard catch. It started an onslaught and we murdered it.
Trust me, I've been humbled in so many ways. I'm not going to sit here and say I was the greatest football player ever or anything like that. One thing that I had that I know that not everybody has is that competitive drive, that refusal to lose, the mentality to get up after being knocked down, and the willingness to do what it took. I think that's why I had success in football. Those traits would've allowed me to be a very successful NFL football player if that was in my plans.
I don't doubt that by any means. I think anybody that steps into the octagon could perform almost at any sport, maybe not to the physical stature. Some of these NFL players are huge. Having Derek Wolfe walk in here is unbelievable.
Derek Wolfe is a Viking.
He's got something about him. Sitting here with this interview, I feel very comfortable with you. Derek made me a little uneasy. He has these eyes. He's an intense human. He's looking at the back of your skull. He might be thinking like, "I wonder if I could rip Bobby's spine out right now." He'll tell you that. You don't know. That's his mental mentality. I saw the lion that he got. I was like, "You're a big human. That's a freaking enormous cat."
He's putting all that effort into hunting now. That's so cool. I love seeing his success. I'm so fortunate I got to be there for Super Bowl 50. I was on the sidelines with the line of work that I'm in. It was incredible. To have him come in as a guest was super rad. What I'm getting at is I think that's a guy that could transfer to MMA with that mindset and mentality. He's a huge individual.
They would've to probably make a different weight class.
He couldn't go into heavy weights. There's no way. He'd have to cut way too much weight, but if they made that next division like the ultra heavyweights or whatever it was, or changed the weight classes.
Some organizations do have super heavy weight or they'll make that weight class. Even guys like Ngannou. He has to cut viciously. He has to make a weight cut to make heavyweight, which is 265. I honestly don't agree with it. I might get some flack from the MMA folks out there, but if you're a heavyweight, there shouldn't be a limit on it. The reason they put that limit out there initially was because they didn't want guys showing up there that are sloppy.
That happens in high school wrestling because I was always a heavyweight. There were guys that showed up in shape and there were guys that showed up that were job of the hut. That's one reason why I didn't like wrestling, honestly. I felt like all the other weight classes, the guys were in shape.
They had to be.
I could understand that.
I used to hate the heavyweights. They used to piss me off.
Sloppy heavyweights.
There has been phenomenal great heavyweights in Colorado history. One of the heavyweights I coached at Regis, he's one in the last 10 years in Colorado history that's going Big 10. He’s one of two. He's going to Northwestern. His name is Dirk Morley. You guys look out for him. He's a heavyweight here out of Colorado. He's absolutely stacked. He's a unit. He works hard and he's got great work ethic. That's why he's had success and that's why he is nationally ranked. On the flip side, when I was wrestling, there was a heavyweight that was on my team at the time, I would look at him and he would be eating freaking McDonald's and donuts, and we're over here suffering.
There's no accountability.
He doesn't even have to run the sprints hard because he's too big. He's there to fill a spot.
It’s almost like there should be something based on height. If you're a certain height.
How do you know? You might get a freaking absolute unit and a tank. He's got great work ethic and he's super athletic, but he might be shorter and he might be over the 265 limit. I think it would be hard to put a stay on that. I think the 265 limit, I have to do my research on it, but my intuition says that they probably made that because they didn't want that sloppiness.
You don't need a guy that's 320 coming in.
Even in high school wrestling, the weight limit is 285. There are guys that are 285 in high school that look good that couldn't fight in Bellator and the UFC. A lot of football athletes want to get into MMA.
They're monsters. They're big dudes. They're super athletic. Those guys train MMA a little bit and they did for footwork on the line.
You switched the upper weight classes. Think about it. It's 185 pounds, and then there's 205 pounds. That's a 20-pound gap, and then 205 pounds to 265 pounds. If you're over 205 pounds, now you got to fight a guy that's potentially 265 pounds.
What would you think the cap would be, 320?
I think you add another weight class in there. You add a 220-pound weight class and you call that light heavyweight, and then 205 pounds is cruiserweight.
Bare Knuckle is doing that.
Yeah. I think you could even have a weight class at 195 pounds. It's a 20-pound gap between 185 and 205 pounds. Every other weight class has a 10-pound gap. It's 125, 135, 145, 155, and then it starts to become gaps. It goes 155, 170, 185, and then it goes 205.
I'd love to see some of those guys. I'd love to see Derek in there. I know he doesn't want to do it, but that would be incredible. It'd be like watching Brock Lesnar when he came into it.
I know he could cut to 265, but I don't know if he would be the best self that he could be.
That's so miserable.
I would love to see him at a super hydrated 315 pounds.
Like his football size? Even if it was 285, that would be scary as fuck.
Cut up and ready to tear someone up.
Where I was going with that to come circle back to it is I feel like most MMA fighters could translate to another pro sport very easily, as far as mentality goes. The mentality and work ethic that you need to have to perform at a certain level. Maybe not John Jones.
The mentality, for sure, but this is probably the first time we're going to disagree in this entire interview.
It's going to make me like you even more.
The thing I'm going to disagree with is this. I see it because I played multiple sports. I've basically played every sport. Fighters are extremely skilled. Very few fighters are athletic. They're athletes, but the common attributes that we attribute to athletic, there are misses there.
You're talking about running speed, agility, jumping, lateral movement, and those sort of things. That totally makes sense.
There are some skills that comes with running and stuff like that, but everybody is able to run. You don't need anything to run. Everybody can run. If you watch a fighter run a sprint, just your average fighter. I'm not talking about your best fighters. The best fighters can find a happy medium in being an athlete and super athletic, as well as being skilled. Every single champion is athletic and skilled. I don't think there's a champion in any MMA right now that is not both athletic and skilled because of where the sport has come full circle. We were talking about back in the days.
Every single champion is athletic and skilled. There is no champion in MMA right now who is not both athletic and skilled.
That's a different era.
Back in that era, that's where the Gracie run came. The Gracies were extremely skilled.
There was no weight classes back there or limits. That dude that showed up in the white Gi, he's had to be 340 or 350. The sumo guy. Was he in a Gi or was he in a sumo suit?
There were a couple guys that fought in Gis. There were a couple guys that fought with shoes on. There were wrestlers that fought with singlets and wrestling shoes on.
It was a free for all.
It was a different game. I would say even fifteen years ago, you could have been a champion by just being skilled.
You're right. I guess my point was more based on mindset and fortitude.
That has a lot to play in any sport and any great in sports identifies with that.
Especially at a pro level.
That's why in The Last Dance, Michael Jordan. He's a basketball player, but I identify with his mentality. The basketball players now, they may be tough people, but the game is geared towards being soft.
I'm going to throw some hate at LeBron right now because I went to the Nuggets game the other night and my son was even like, "Why does this guy cry all the time?"
If you can't act, you're hurting your team. That's why I can't even hate on LeBron.
The sport has adopted that like the flopping. It’s like soccer. Soccer is the same way.
There's a point to where you're protecting the players for sure, and then there's a point to where if there's an advantage to be had, you best believe that the best players are going to find a way to take advantage of that and the rule set. That's what the best players do. If your rule set is around me taking advantage of something and exploiting it, I'm the best player in the world. You best believe I'm going to take advantage of that. People are getting mad at LeBron James. You can get mad at him, but this is the game that he's playing right now.
It's his chess game.
When LeBron James first came into the league, he wasn't doing that. When he first came into the league, it was a different game.
It was a different era when Jordan played. It was hard-nosed basketball.
It was a contact sport. There was a Jordan rule. You should see some of that shit. We don't go in the lane because that motherfucker is going to maul us.
He's going to run your ass over.
He's not going to get teed up. He might get called for a common foul, but he can punch you in the face, elbow you, beat the shit out of you in the lane if you come in his lane, and they're not going to tee him up. If you look at a guy sideways, they're giving you a technical. To that play, I hate losing. I absolutely hate it. It would be idiotic of me to say that I wouldn't take advantage of that rule set if that's the way that the game was.
It makes total sense. These organizations have crafted that into it.
It's innate to it.
Just like the WWE scripts or whatever it is. It's the same sort of thing.
It's a part of the game now. The game has evolved. That's a whole different conversation and argument.
MMA has evolved too into some things. Some of the things, I don't agree with. I would assume that and I don't want to put words into your mouth, but the judging disgusts me sometimes. Looking at your record, because I went back and looked at it, and then seeing a split decision on a fight that I feel like you clearly won, now that's chalked up as an L. How do you feel about that?
The issue with the judging is that it is state sanctioned by a boxing commission. I want to reiterate, boxing commission. It's not an MMA commission. These people are judging MMA now in the states that have allowed MMA.
It has turned into a huge fucking sport. There are multiple fights on a weekend, Friday night, and Saturday night. You can catch LFA, Sparta, Bellator, Bare Knuckle, and UFC.
The thing is boxing is a different sport than MMA. We are also using a boxing ten-point judging rule system and trying to somehow adopt that to MMA with gray area. The reason why we're even using a boxing commission was in order to hold value to the sport of MMA. That's the reason why boxing commission is even involved.
Is it to sell tickets or is it legal issues?
It has nothing to do with ticket sales. It has everything to do with the sanctioned sport because it would be illegal to do it if your state didn't sanction the sport.
Via fight club basically.
The only thing to sanction the sport that was remotely close was boxing. Now that every person in every household knows what MMA is. Every single household, whether you like it or not, recognizes MMA as a sport, now is the time to actually put some minds together and be like, "This is different than boxing.” We need an MMA commission. We need to have judges that I don't necessarily think should have fought because the fight game is so tight-knit. It's too small of a community. It would be hard to have an unbiased opinion because I could have a guy that I'm judging and he actually fights out of the gym that I grew up fighting at.
I get the biasness behind it and stuff. On the contrary, it might provide some careers for some fighters that don't know what they want to do.
One hundred percent, but I don't think that you should say, “Only fighters can do that.” There should be definitely a healthy mix of athletes that competed.
Maybe they have to score it differently. Maybe they're strictly scored on points and keeping track of that.
You might have even a tribunal, because MMA fighters watch fights. Some of these older MMA fighters that didn't get an opportunity to make the money that the younger fighters are making, now you give them an opportunity to be involved. You have a tribunal and this is their scorecard with another one.
Here's my issue with it. Why is it just three judges? Why couldn't it be 10 or 15?
Logistics. You got to pay those people.
Don’t you think you would get a more consensus? I think you would have different perspectives and more opinions.
Yeah but more opinions doesn't always mean good.
More opinions don't always mean better.
That's true.
We could have 10 judges, but what if all 10 judges are bad and unequipped to actually score it. It does no good. I don't think more necessarily is better. I think better is better. First of all, we need better judges who understand and value MMA, and understand positional things that are scoring. If you slam somebody and the crowd “oohs” because they hear a slam, and the guy gets right back up, lands five jabs to that guy's face, and cuts them open, those five jabs do way more damage than the slam.
Sometimes it's the corner's chirping too. That can have a huge influence.
They can sway the judges too, good and bad. That's why my corner is the way it is. We've even had conversations like, "There are guys in my corner that pushed me and can get certain things out of me.” They have to be able to say that in a way that doesn't sound desperate. If they say it in a way that sounds desperate, then the judges might be like, "They think that he's losing so maybe he is losing because I don't know what I'm watching."
From a spectators perspective, there's so much going on around you at the fight. I'm sure that they have monitors in front of them, but there's so much influence. Going to Bare Knuckle the other night and sitting in the first 3 rows or 4 rows, it's nuts.
It's insane.
When Conor McGregor walks out, all attention goes to him, and not even what's going on in the ring. You even see the refs in the ring turn around and look at Conor McGregor like, "What is he doing?"
They might ref or they might judge a different way because of that.
This is a common thing working with security. My role in rock and roll, I was a stage manager on some of the tours I was on. I got to work with some high-level security dudes. That's how I know Bates. He's from that personal protection detail and stuff. These paid security guards in an arena don't make a whole lot of money, maybe $20 to $30 an hour on the high end. Some of them might make $12 an hour. I'm talking about the guys in the yellow jackets. They pull all those guys together before an artist walks in the building. If I was there with Rihanna or whatever, they would be like, "Here's what we want."
Their head of security, which was normally some former operator, lot of ex-military guys. Just incredible humans, but they're dealing with a lot, especially when you're dealing with a diva. They're getting death threats. They have photos of people that might be showing up at the show. They're stage jumpers that hop on the stage while she's on the stage to try to go after her. These guys are combating all of that. When that artist walks out on the stage, these people that are supposed to be watching the crowd will automatically turn around and watch her because it's a starstruck moment.
That's probably what a lot of those people are doing it for. It's a free ticket to a concert, and I get paid to go to these concerts.
I could see how that happens in the judging world too. In the event, those events are so insane. We saw 3 or 4 fights outside of the cage or outside of the ring the other night because shit happens.
The thing about it is these judges are paid well. They're paid by the state. Most of their jobs are tenured. The problem that I have is there have been fights where if I get a bad call, you are literally taking the food off the table for me and my family.
That's the worst part about it. It's so critical to your career.
The thing with fighting, Bellator has done good with me, but I am still on a win bonus and a show bonus. You make weight on the scale and you get this amount. You win and you get this amount, but it's half your money. When I win, I get all of it. Same preparation and everything like that. If I do the same preparation and one judge sways a certain way and every single person in the stadium knows that I had won that, because it says that I lost on their card, I lose half of my money.
Even on your last fight, the one that you won by a decision, there was one judge that scored it as a split decision. I was like, “Were you even watching the same fight?” You dominated that entire fight.
That's a 30-27 split decision for the other guy.
I think you even said something at the end of it. I love the fact that you're vocal about it in the ring and in the cage.
Accountability is key. I don't know if that was the right thing to do because if I fight in California again, I might have a hit for me. I definitely got to finish everybody that I fight in California from now on out, but there's an accountability factor.
That's the other thing.
The guys are good. I'm in a sport. The guy that I just beat also beat the champ. It's not like I'm fighting a slouch. I have to be tactical. I have to be precise. I cannot lose focus. I hit that man with some vicious punches and kicks, and he was tough. I want to fight the best and he withstood that. That doesn't mean I lost the fight. He threw a lot of punches and a lot of kicks. I think he threw two times when he punches and kicks, but I landed two times more than he did. I made him miss more than he landed. I landed more strikes than him and he threw two times as much. Just because he threw a lot of strikes and missed, doesn't mean he won the fight.
It's about accuracy.
Not just accuracy but damage.
There's so much that goes into it. That's why you cannot score it on a boxing card.
There's so much more. If you genuinely don't know what you're watching, you have no right to take half of my money. At that point, I hadn't fought in a year. We don't get paid unless we fight. Plain point blank, period. I love what I do. I love everything about it. I love fighting. I don't want to give it up. I love that I have an opportunity to make a living for it and with it, but we do not get paid until we actually fight. You might see $50,000, $60,000, or $200,000, whatever it may be.
That's got to last a year if you're fighting once a year.
Not only just once a year. You pay your coaches a percentage. You pay taxes. You pay management. If you only get half your money to start with, that half turns into a fourth of the money that you thought you were getting. Now, you're getting a fourth because a judge gave you a bad decision. That's hard.
That's some heavy weight right there to deal with.
That's pressure. Pressure makes diamonds. I love it. I love what I do, but I would be way more comfortable knowing that this judge or person takes it as serious as I'm taking this fight.
They should.
Unfortunately, they don't.
If you put these people in a lineup, I don't want to judge a book by its cover, but it's not like they're training in jiu-jitsu or something. Very few of them.
Some of them are on power trips. Some of them literally have the most vicious egos ever. We had a commissioner in New York and I can't stand this guy. I won't even name him, but you'd go look up who the commissioner is. He's on a power trip because he had a lot to do with the new adopted writing of the rules for MMA. He's tenured in. He's had a lot of problems with a lot of different fighters, but because he's tenured, nobody can do anything to him. One of my teammates, his name is Brandon Girtz, you can go and watch him.
He's a savage.
When he was fighting in Bellator, he had to make 145 pounds, but you get a 1 pound allowance. He had to be 146 or below. He gets on the scale and it says that he's 145.7. This specific commissioner tells him that he misses weight and he's wrong there. The commissioner is completely and utterly wrong and is not paying attention,
The scale doesn't lie.
He goes, "You missed weight. You're supposed to be under 145 pounds." Girtz is cutting weight. He hasn't eaten and dehydrated. He goes, "I made weight. This isn't a championship fight." This is the most calm I've ever seen Girtz in a situation where he 100% has the right not to be calm. This commissioner proceeds to berate him. Girtz was like, "What do you want me to do? Get naked right here? I'll take off my underwear right now and I'll get back on the scale. Is that what you want? What do you want to do? Do you want to see me naked?"
He didn't know the rule book.
The commissioner made a mistake. I understand people make a mistake. After Girtz said that, he says, "This is why I don't want fighters cutting weight. Fighters are the worst. You need to hydrate well." He was going on an absolute tyrant power trip craziness, and he was wrong. The internet had had a heyday with it. He called and apologized to Brandon, but he didn't apologize. It was like, "The championship weight is 145. That's what I was looking at.” He didn't even say sorry.
He's the Head of Commission for the New York Athletic Boxing Commission. He's in charge of all this stuff. He didn't even apologize. He makes crazy rules like, "Your corner is not allowed to cuss in the corner. I'll find you if your corner cusses. If your corner yells too loud, I'll find you. I'll the fighter." During COVID, he was like, "If any of your corners are seen out at a restaurant, I'll find you." This dude is a nut job. These are the type of people that are in charge of whether I get paid or not. Crazy.
With as many organizations and as much money that's coming into it on the Pay-Per-View side, there's got to be something that's got to be done. This has turned into a major sport.
You don't have fights without fighters. Plain and simple. Unfortunately, people don't have to get that because UFC has made a phenomenal product. Bellator has made a great product. There are always going to be people that are willing to fight for less money than you feel like you're deserving. They might get a lesser of a product, but now MMA is so big that regardless of the type of caliber of athlete that is being portrayed, people are still going to watch fights.
You don't have fights without fighters.
I love watching it.
These companies know that. If you are going to stand up for a fighter pay or you're going to take a stand like Ngannou did and he got blackballed, somebody is going to take your spot. Don't let somebody like me or somebody else say anything about it. I got to be careful because I know where my bread is buttered. That's hard. If you see fighters that you like and you own a big company or you do something, sponsor them.
You need a model like Dana White to step up and be like, "We got to change this shit."
What incentive is that Dana to change? There's no incentive for him to change it. If you're looking at it from a shrewd business person, as someone who's heartfelt, none of these fighters should be treated like that. If I own that business, you guys are going to eat before I eat because I know what you guys go through. There's no incentive for that to change. There's nothing.
From a business standpoint, no. There's going to be growing pains and all kinds of shit. People know the system.
There's going to be good enough fighters to carry that product on forever. They can always market that they produce the best fighters in the world. Right now, it's getting scary because a lot of their fighters are going to different organizations. Those fighters are getting beat in other organizations, which isn't good for the company.
The Bellator Light Heavyweight Division right now, everybody in there are former UFC guys.
They also said that Bellator is the most that they've ever gotten paid and best they've ever been treated. That's wild. There are phenomenal perks with the UFC. The exposure is great. I have 4,000 followers on Instagram. People don't know who I am. I believe I'm the number four in the entire world. You look at the light heavyweight division in Bellator and you look at the light heavyweight division in the UFC. If you put them match for match and ranking for ranking against each other, we win. That's point blank.
That's what I was getting at with it right now. That's insane.
The UFC, they're top 10 is where they reap the benefits. They get great exposure. You know every time a UFC card is on. Unless you're a true fight fan, sometimes people would struggle to find Bellator.
It's all the promotion. It's all in the production value.
Their production value is good. The promotion is great, but the promoting of the fight and the fighters is lacking. That's a knock on the organization.
Back to your point, I didn't mean to cut you off there but you're absolutely right. Some of these organizations like Bare Knuckle or Bellator, you can still sponsor a fighter if you're an individual company. Fucking do it. If you're a fan of the sport and you have the means or you have a company that needs some advertisement, what a great way.
Even if it's unbegrudgingly. You might see a fighter that you identify with. You might see a fighter that means something to you. If you own a company, don't sponsor that golf tournament that you sponsor every year that you have a set amount of money for. Go sponsor a fighter. How cool is it to see a gladiator wearing your brand or a gladiator representing your company?
Just even the friendships that I form in here. I guarantee you, whenever there's a Grant Neal fight from now on, I'm going to be watching.
That means the world to me.
I've probably watched before, but I love you as a human. I'm so much more invested in you as a person now because of that. When you put your own little stake in it, I think it helps. If it helps you guys and helps the sport in general, fucking do it. You're absolutely right.
It's awesome. As you said, we're people. We can turn on a switch and we have gladiators. We're doing our best to represent you and your company in the best that we possibly can. As you said, anything could happen in there for sure. Regardless of what happens in there, knowing that you are sponsoring an athlete that is 100% about you and in your corner, that's so cool.
Especially somebody like you that's humble, well-spoken, and doesn't fly off the handle.
I'm not super uncommon. There are a lot of fighters that are like me.
That's the thing. That's what we were talking about at the beginning of this. Some of the people that we were hanging out with the other night are NFL football players. They are super humble. Former Navy SEALs, high-level Navy SEALs, not just Navy SEALs, the elite, and pro fighters. Who else was in there? Some hunting outfitters. There were all walks of life. Some podcast hosts, but I didn't see one bad thing happen at that after party. Everybody was humble. Everybody was getting along. Everybody was having a great time. Every conversation that I had there, I honestly enjoyed.
I've had a lot of fighters in here, and I don't think I've had one egotistical fighter come in here. Normally, when a fighter walks out of my life or I walk out of theirs, I feel like I need to be a better person because they were a great example. I feel that with you. I feel it with the coaches especially. I’ve had Coach Marc Montoya in here. He's been on several times. I know you don't train at the same gym, or Coach Luke. All those guys are amazing.
Coach Luke was brought up by my coach, Jake Robins. You got to get him in here. It's cool having different perspectives.
It's hard. I want to have them all. I want to have you all at the same time. It's like this girl thing. I want to do so much more. I love this so much. This is so great.
I believe in you. Whatever you want, it definitely will be granted. You have a beautiful soul and you're a great person. You stay steadfast.
That's why I feel connected with you. You can tell right away. I knew the moment I shook your hand and met you, within the first 30 seconds, I was like, "I want to know more about Grant. Who is this guy?" I knew who you were, but I didn't know who you were. I was like, "I've seen him fight before." Having you in here is so great. We're coming up on three hours. We got to wrap this thing up here pretty soon, but I don't want to rush out of here either. You’re Bellator number four in the light heavyweight division right now. What's next? Is it a title shot? Is there anything on the books? What's going on?
You're going to be the breaking podcast on what is going on next. If you stayed for this long, you guys get a little treat. Right now in my career with the way that the light heavyweight division is, there are a lot of phenomenal fighters that make a lot of money. All those guys that are ahead of me make a lot more money than I do and they've earned it. I want to fight those guys 100% for sure. Unfortunately for those guys, they've paid their dues because of that. They only got to fight one time a year. Unless I continue to fight back in the rankings and potentially even start to lap guys that I've already beat or passed, I won't be able to fight as frequently as I absolutely want to.
That being said, there also is another opportunity for me in a fresh division at 185 pounds that I know that I can get to. It's been a journey, but we did a mock cut and it went well. I know that I can not only compete at that division, but I believe I can be the champion at that division. More so I believe I can be the champion at light heavyweight as well.
There's talk of some big things happening in the 185-pound division. I can't necessarily spill that news of what on the horizon there. I know that there will be an opportunity for me to fight multiple times in one year. Not only fight multiple times but have a direct path to the title. It could be potentially my next fight at 185 pounds. Regardless at 185 pounds, I know that I'll be fighting at least 3 times in 1 year. That excites me. It's a new challenge. It'll be an opportunity for me to see how I fare with that challenge. I also know I can be the best at light heavyweight as well. I'm going to be on that run for champ. Not just on that run I will be.
I'm so excited to see all that. I can't wait. I can hear the James Brown music playing in my head right now. I love your walkout music and I'm going to tell you a little story off the mic about that and my love for James Brown. That's awesome. How can people help you achieve this? Obviously, go and follow Grant on Instagram.
On Instagram, it's @GrantNeal34. I paid homage to my football number and Walter Payton. I got a Bellator picture on there. I would definitely appreciate that. Follows actually do help. I'm not a big Instagram guy and that's something that I have to work on. It helps with endorsement. It helps with you getting sponsorships and things like that. If you want to support me and you don't have a big company or anything. Follow me on Instagram, that would be great.
You also have a website, GrantNeal.com.
My website is actually pretty cool. You can watch my fights. There are also links to my merchandise. All the proceeds to those merchandise that come to me, it helps me out a ton if you buy the merch. A cool thing that I also do on my website is I do have links to all the sponsors that have helped me be who I am in the cage as a fighter. If you guys want to check that out, every single one of my sponsors, I actually, not only use the products, I backed the company and they have backed me.
That's super important. We've kept the same philosophy here. We've turned down some and we have some good ones. They've been awesome to us, so I appreciate those values.
I've turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential sponsorships that I didn't align with. Know that every sponsor that's I'm aligned with right now, I want to use the products or use the facility or things that they're doing or the utility. They're great people. They're like-minded people. If you like me, that helps as well. If you don’t like me.
How could you not like him?
I don't know. There are some people out there.
There are some people that don't like me either.
I wish them the best. I need those people in our lives that challenge our ideals and opinions and see if we're steadfast. If you don't like me, you're helping me too.
It does. It helps me out too. At least I know I'm doing it right then. Everybody can't like me. Grant, I love you. I'm wishing you the best of luck with everything. I feel we got to have you back. This was just the tip of the iceberg. We didn't even get into you being in the outdoors and your love of music. You came in here in the Retro Nirvana shirt. They didn't even come up in the conversations. It's been staring me in the face the whole time. There's so much more to talk about. We'll definitely have you back. Whenever it's convenient, you're always welcome up here. I had an awesome time with you.
Bobby, I appreciate you having me. I appreciate your audience. I thank you for being who you are and I consider you a friend. I don't take those words lightly. I do have many friends, but all the friends that I do have are super genuine people that I have love for and care about. I consider you a friend now. Thanks a lot.
That means a lot to me hearing that from you. The feeling is mutual. Any way that we can help each other out, I'm all about it.
I appreciate you. Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much.
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