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[Assistant] I can smell the burning fuel of the vehicle interlaced with the dust. I also smell the burning weeds near the van and the acrid smell of blood, urine, and feces.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I now hear the wailing of people in pain, seemingly coming from everywhere. I realize quickly several people have been thrown from the vehicle. The wails are not screams.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When people are screaming, they have their facilities and are generally aware of the acute pain and injury. Whales are worse. They come from a deeper place inside a person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They happen when one's body is so broken that it cannot muster a scream or even a full breath. And those wails and moans flood my senses, freezing me where I stand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Again, I was just 19. I hear Tom finishing up the radio call. Send everyone, he says. The radio operator understands and confirms. Tom places the radio back in its proper place and he hops out of the truck and as he strides past me, he says, pick one. That's something my teenage brain can understand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well that's a rough one. There's a basically a church van. Yeah. That crashes and you guys are first on scene.


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[Assistant] Uhm, 14 people were in the crash, and again, you describe everything with some awesome detail in the book, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All but one had critical, kind of life-threatening injuries and


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[Assistant] Out of those 14, 7 were actually able to survive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, because the work of you and the team, and you give a lot of credit to the team. Uhm, as you're saying right now, you were young, just kind of following directions, trying to put together what you could. But a guy named Tom Way, Anthony Stornetta, and Keith Agson, uhm, just more experienced guys that could make things happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The kind of guys that you looked at and you said to yourself, alright, that's a good role model for me to try and emulate.


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[Assistant] Yeah, again, for me, just you even being able to identify, hey, these guys, Tom Way, the way he was just acting, that's the way I should be acting. That's what I need to figure out. And like you said, it's not going to happen overnight, but at least you have some kind of a goal and you see a good example.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, speaking of firefighting, you end up becoming a firefighter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, what's a bummer for me is like you had a fire chief that wasn't a great guy. And what's a bummer for me is just like any like, like what you just said, you're a freaking dog, right? You're an attack dog. And with, without a good like leader, you're just going to bite the first freaking thing that you see. But when someone's, when you've got,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In some respects are awesome and what exactly what you would want for your young firefighters to be like and to think like they just need a little bit extra guidance. They just need to, Oh yeah, you know what? I got a freaking eye on Kennedy right now. Let's make sure we got the leash. Hold on. Hold on. All right, now go, you know, that's exactly what you needed in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, but you end up getting in trouble for a lot of this shit. Again, some of it's you're doing dumb shit, but you're doing dumb shit cause...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not like you were being neglectful, you were actually doing dumb shit that was...


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[Assistant] Aggressive and heroic to try and help. Just sometimes you could have needed a little extra guidance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The guy had a three strike rule. Yeah. And you write about the strikes. Push, push, push. Yeah. Uh, the first one, there's like a female cop who's, what, there's like a suicidal guy in an apartment. It's right by your apartment. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the way, you went to the fire academy, you're number one graduate of the fire academy, is that right?


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[Assistant] So again, to me that, that reflects someone that when you


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[Assistant] I got in trouble for that. Yeaah. So you got in trouble because you didn't follow the protocol or something like that? Yeaah. So this was strike 2. Uhm, strike 3 it sounded like you deserved a little bit. Yeaah. Yeaah?


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[Assistant] Okay, you're being stupid. Were they, was he trying to pull you back?


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[Assistant] Yeah, it sounded like a pretty sketchy roll out of there and your helmet's like melted and your mask is all jacked up.


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[Assistant] And that ended up being a strike three. That's right. So you get kicked off the fire department. Which in your mind,


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[Assistant] Uhm, unstoppable Tim Kennedy is like good because I want to be a cop anyways. Yeah, right. That was kind of, that was kind of what you're doing. Uh, meanwhile your, your fight career is going.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What year is this now? This is, uh, 2000.


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[Assistant] Uhm, you lost your first pro fight. Scott Smith. That was embarrassing.


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[Assistant] It's like, it's so crazy to think, you know, even walking into that place, you're by no means, like you're just walking into that place and training, you're sparring with Chuck Liddell, like you're a bad, you're a badass. And yet you get beat, you feel like a loser. Uh, you, but you are moving up, like moving up the respect


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[Assistant] Ranks at the pit and you're, you end up going to some of Chuck's, one of Chuck's fights, championship fight, uhm, against Bustamante. I was chuckling this whole time, you know, anyone, I don't know what it's like, maybe it's gotten better, but back in the day if you were like a teammate,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It just like sucked. Sleeping on the hotel room floor. Getting beat up. By the way, you can't win any of your sparring. You're just getting beat up. You're just getting punched in the head. It's just a bag of blood for this dude to punch.


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[Assistant] There's no, there's like no glory in being a second or a third or a fourth, which is basically what it seemed like you were at this point, yeaah. They're like, body, get in here.


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[Assistant] It was so cool. We used to run every kind of scam to get into those fights. I would go...


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[Assistant] Manoeuvres to get into those fights cuz cuz that's the crazy thing right you'd go up there you'd be cornering someone


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[Assistant] I'm gonna get a beer, I'll be back. You end up becoming the extreme challenge champion.


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[Assistant] And in this, are you starting to think maybe this is a thing? Like when you, when you go up with Chuck, are you starting to, no, still don't think it's a thing. Still don't think it's like an actual.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep, those are the good old days right there. No, no one was fighting for the money back then. No, we just fought and fought. I just wanted to fight.


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[Assistant] You fight and win in the WEC as well. Was that any better? Was there any, anything at the WEC?


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[Assistant] You kind of get, you, you, this is kind of, you're getting like a minor level of fame though at this point. Would you say?


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[Assistant] You got, you, you, you, are you getting wrapped into the whole fighter kind of thing right now? I'm starting to live the life. The booze.


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[Assistant] So that's, so you were rolling. Rolling, rolling in that. Rolling deep. And that, what a weird, it was a weird time too because it was like...


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[Assistant] The fighters weren't really getting paid much money, but you kind of had recognition. And like, people that were kind of fanboys, like club owners would be all hyped to bring everyone in and set up tables and whatever.


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[Assistant] I like, you just talked about bottle, like I remember being at like things at, at like post fight parties and stuff like this.


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[Assistant] Like warm up rooms that were, there's literally, like I remember being intense, there's, the ground is just tar. It's just a, it's a parking lot. It's like, oh we're gonna, yeah you guys can warm up right over there. It's tar. It's a fucking parking lot. You're like, what? Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Meanwhile, uhm, all that's going on, you're trying to become a police officer.


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[Assistant] Yep, that's your, that's your goal, which is a smart goal because you realize, you know, there's no money in fighting. Uhm, you go to the academy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're the honor graduate of the academy. No, runner up. Oh, you're a runner up? Uh huh. Oh, did I read that wrong?


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[Assistant] Uhm, and you had a good story in there about, you know, the combatives course that they taught you were once again, they're looking like, oh, who's this little, uh, youngster that's in here? Oh, you think you're tough? Oh, watch this. And you're like, no, watch this.


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[Assistant] Uh, it's true though, man. It's hard. It's hard when you, when someone knows how to fight.


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[Assistant] It is really hard to get control of them. It is really hard to get control of them.


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[Assistant] And especially if the other people don't really know how to fight. You know, if they learned whatever, uh, four step procedure for getting control. You know, it's like, no, that procedure is not gonna work for a millisecond against me. No. Go away. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep, and it's gotten really bad now not to derail this conversation, but I was just talking to a couple police officers and


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[Assistant] If they put a choke hold on someone, if they put a rear naked choke on someone, it's lethal force. Uhm, they, they,


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[Assistant] I'm trying to think of the steps. It's like a full, it's a full on like felony first degree murder. If, if the person dies. Yeaah. It's, but, but even if the person does it, if you just do it, it's like a, it's like a assault with a deadly weapon or something like this. And it's so hard to explain to people, I don't know, I don't know what you think, but if I had to subdue someone that I cared about,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The number one thing I would do is put a rear naked choke on. Best choke in the world. So safe. It's the gentlest, nicest way to get someone under control. And it's so effective. And there's nothing, you know, like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It leaves no marks. Like, you know, you could choke me right now and I'd wake up and be like, oh dude, you know, you could have cuffs on me. And I'd be like, oh, what just happened? And I'd be totally fine. You could uncuff me and I could go and freaking teach a class in whatever and carry on with my day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As opposed to you hitting me in the, in the head 19 times with a baton to get to subdued me. Pepper spray or tasing you. All those things are so hard and we, like people just have no understanding.


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[Assistant] Of the power of jiu-jitsu and the power of the rear naked choke. It's, it's, it's so sad and so many more people are gonna get hurt because of it. And all it takes is if you're in law enforcement or if you're in charge of law enforcement, mandate. Everyone should be trained in jiu-jitsu. You should be trained in jiu-jitsu all the time. Uhm, I've been saying 20% of what police do, 20% of the time


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and I'll tell you what, go get hit in the face with a baton three times.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And see how you feel the next day. And then let me put a rear naked choke on you and see how you feel the next day. And by the way, the, the rear naked choke will make you want to just kind of comply. And if you don't, you're just going to wake up in handcuffs in the back of a car. So easy. Yeah. So, so good. And, um, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you, so you end up, uh, hooking these people up during that, and they have to take, how many guys did it finally take to get cops on you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of times people would just think, oh, he's just a really good athlete or something like this, and...


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[Assistant] And he's got a big smile on his face, and he's just breaks it off on people. That's who should introduce people to Jitsu. You're no good either, like you're not a great introduction to Jitsu because people are like, oh what just happened, that guy's an asshole. You know, that's what they say about me.


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[Assistant] We get done rolling, you're really strong. Like, thanks man, I appreciate it. Um, that's it. I work on that. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's why I left my little lickles.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so it's not great to have people that are big introduced you to, but also it's strange that even in a situation like that, like if I was the overall trainer, I'd be like, hold on a second, what just happened?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nine of my cops couldn't get this guy under control. There's something wrong we need to figure out.


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[Assistant] Graduate, which is cool. Uhm, at this point you, you had had a girl, you have a girlfriend. Yep. Named Casey. Yeah, she's great. And...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You find out that she's pregnant. Mhm. At this point. Uhm.


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[Assistant] And at some point, you had had a one night stand with another girl.


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[Assistant] And she tracks you down and she's like a ring girl from the UFC or from one of these fights you've been in. She's a ring girl and she shows up at the pit where you're training, not to tell you that she's pregnant, which


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're like trying to blow off some steam and you go to play paintball with your, with your, with some friends, with your brother and, and like some people huck rocks at you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you... And by the way, you're a police... Where are you cop right now at this point?


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[Assistant] Which I can imagine these guys, it's always, it's always a funny look on people's face when they realize that they did something that they shouldn't have done. And Tim Kennedy moves 200 yards in 3.8 seconds with a fully loaded paintball, sticks it into their car and unloads as many rounds as you can. That's right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is kinda funny and we can laugh at it now, but sounds like there was some po- politics, uh, in-


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[Assistant] And you get the, the basically, you're not gonna be a cop. That's right. That's not happening.


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[Assistant] I'm standing naked at the end of- at the edge of the ocean halfway through my 23rd year.


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[Assistant] The cold surf washes over my feet and the wind spreads goose fish across my skin. Goose flesh across my skin. The sun will be up soon.


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[Assistant] But for now I remain wrapped in darkness. It's nice to bask in the stillness of this moment. The only sounds are the waves lapping against the shore. There is something cathartic about being alone on the beach I grew up on and stripping my clothes off and letting them hit the sand. I feel incredibly free for the first time in ages. Normally I'd worry about my wallet and keys getting stolen, but I do not care at all. What difference does it make?


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[Assistant] I wade into Morro Bay just north of the rock, ignoring my brain's warnings that it's too cold and too dark. There's a wall of fog closing in that will soon make it hard to see my way through the black water. I don't worry about that either.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I wade deeper, my legs start to burn from the cold water. I pay no attention though. Even as it covers my legs, then waist, then chest, I barely acknowledge the surface effects. I don't want to acknowledge it. I don't want to think about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When the waves start picking me up off the sandy ocean floor, I begin to swim west.


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[Assistant] I have failed everyone I know and there's no way to fix it. What the fuck is wrong with me? How the fuck, how did I fuck up everything this quickly? I'm a strong swimmer and in no time the shore is a distant memory. It's so peaceful out here.


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[Assistant] My breath missed a little in the waning moonlight, but other than my own breathing and the sound of my hands and legs cutting through the surf, there is nothing.


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[Assistant] I didn't plan on going for a long swim to nowhere in the pre-Dom blackness, but I needed to forget all of it. My actions, the hurt that they caused and the disappointment they manifested in everyone around me. I can't hold on to this pain anymore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I kinda breezed through, like, oh, you had this girl pregnant, and you had this girl pregnant, and then you, you, you had this possible HIV, you can't get the job you wanna get, like, this is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're 23 years old. You know, sometimes I'll talk to people that are 16 or 17 or 15 years old and they broke up with their girlfriend or they made this mistake and, and, and I, I always say, listen, it seems like your whole world right now but,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But damn. Yea, that's a lot. Like, that's a lot of shit. A lot of shit going on, man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Explain that, so I didn't, I'm not gonna read that part of the story, but you swim out to sea. And you know, it's weird, it sounds like, it sounds like you weren't intent on killing yourself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, doesn't sound like you were all that intent on living either, I don't know, what's, what's the-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, uh, look, divine intervention or whatever, you ever tried to recover a single swimmer at sea on a foggy night two miles out in the ocean? Crazy. That is not, like, you plan to do that, you got an IR strobe, you have to go white strobe, you have to freaking swing your chemlight above your head, like it's hard to, if they had thermal,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They didn't. I mean, if they didn't have thermal, that's a miracle, honestly, quite honestly. And if you told me, if I got a call that, hey, some idiot got naked and started swimming out to sea, I'd be looking 300 yards out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe a thousand at the most. There's no way someone's gonna be too mu- Like that's crazy that they found you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It seems weird that this guy wouldn't have been like, hey this kid needs some help, like some, some mental health assistance here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What was your family's reaction to the two girls? It's like, when you write about it in a book.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your dad finds out, he's like, well, you know, I heard you got a girl pregnant. He's like, yeah. And you say, yeah. I mean, he's like, no, this other girl.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the children, the kids end up being born nine days apart, is that right? Uh, two weeks. Two weeks apart.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're amazing. Yeah, yeah. They're, uh, they're, uh, definitely blessed to be here. Freakin' awesome. Yeah. Uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You had after, you already mentioned this earlier in the podcast, but after September 11th, you had gone down to the recruiting station and like put me in coach. You tried, you tried the Navy. So were you, were you thinking SEAL team? For sure. And, and it was closed. No recruiter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, so the next one was the Marine Corps. How'd you decide between the Marine Corps and the Army?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They didn't call you, so you did that after September 11th, but there was no room. And so you're just, you're carrying on with your life, all this other shit happens.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fun. You had fun at bootcamp. I did. Cause now, how old are you now? 23? You have 23 years old? Uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No factor. Then you get this bonus program of the special operations prep course and


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[Assistant] Part of it is, is this, this whole idea of this 18 x-ray program means that you can do this really kind of short path to get to special forces, which some people in special forces think that's like not right. Not the right way to do it and you don't deserve to be here and you need to pay your dues like I paid. They're not wrong. Well, the only thing I'll say about that is in talking to a lot of the SOG guys from Vietnam that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That went and were in SOG where they had more than 100% casualty rate. A lot of those guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you go to the special operations prep course. What'd you call it? SOPSI? So you're in SOPSI, and it's just basically a boot beat down. Yea, it's just in Tritter.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's weird, I don't know if I grasp this, so you're there. You're living in a barracks, whatever. There's, how many people are there with you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you're in this special operations prep course.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's what, so I, so I was tracking this and people just keep showing up. That's right. To get ready to go to the, to, to the, to go to some selection, but there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's just- 27 days. That's more of- it was basically the same as SOC- SOPC, but it was counting now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cheated, cheated, cheated. Then what, what sucks is though, you get done with, you get done with, uh, selection and then you get sent back to SOPSY again for more time in purgatory. Yep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you actually got extra preparation to get ready for small unit tactics school? Yea.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And did I read this right? The weapons, the 18 bravos, the highest attrition rate? How come? Uhm, or dumb.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are you guys like, you guys do the closer support on the radio too? No kidding. On regular ODAs, it's typically the Bravo or the Echo that goes to those courses. Check. Uh, so you go to that school? You're the honor graduate of that school? Yep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, alright on. So that means you're gonna be in 18 Bravo. And then what comes next? Is Robin Sage next?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So then comes Robin, Robin Sage. And this is where like, it seems like all your mischievous life


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You get rewarded for being sneaky. Uhm, one of the ops that you talk about, one of the training ops that you talk about in there, you're supposed to assault someplace and you guys go in and drain like


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're like, okay, these dudes are hungry. That's what we want. That's awesome. Uhm, you go to seer school, you freaking cheat in seer school in a big way. You go out and you hide MREs and caches throughout the AO so you can eat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because if you cheated, if you got caught for cheating, all this idea of being a green brain would be thrown out the window. It's gone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's pretty awesome that everyone stuck it out. Yeaah. Cause when they start saying, hey look, we already kicked Tim out, he's, he's, he's going to the, whatever you call it, in the army, we call it the fleet, the navy, but they're saying, hell yeaah, Tim already, or hey Tim just ratted you guys out. He's trying to save himself over there. He, we're keeping him because he said, you're the one that planned it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To anyone that's going through selection, what Tim Kennedy did is not smart. Don't do this. Don't do that. And the idea of like, if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying is actually not a good thing to do because you're risking your career and Tim Kennedy and his 11 friends freaking got away with it by a miracle. Uh, don't do this kind of shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's so many things you do not want to put your life, your life as a special operations guy at risk for anything, like for nothing. So if you're going to one of these selection courses,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just take the high ground on everything, really. And if you don't, you get caught. And it's like, no one cares. Like, I wouldn't even be talking to you right now. You'd be, you'd have been like some random dude. Yeah. If I would have gotten out of the army, like, that's that. I'd be a psychops. Yeah. I did civil affairs. Yeah, like, it's just, don't do it. Uhm, I wanted to throw that in there because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I think it was for me, it was like third phase in buds where the instructors started saying, if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying this bullshit. You're only cheating yourself. That's what they said. Now I think about they said you're only cheating yourself and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Man, you don't want to get caught, bro. There's too, it's too awesome to be a part of the community.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To, to risk it over something that made your life a little bit easier for those days.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean I don't know, I don't know if your, if your thought process was, I don't know what your thought process was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, no, but my point is, like, I, I, when I was going through buds, I, like, sat in my room on the weekends and sharpened my knife and polished my boots. A guy could go out drinking, like, dude, I was like, bro, I'm not risking anything. I'm not gonna, I'm just, I just want to make it through this shit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You get put into the CIF. That's right. Which is again, now you're an 18 X-ray, which means you haven't been in, in the regular army at all. You've gone straight through school and you get put into the CIF, which is the Commander's In Extremis Force, which is normally some more experienced guys. Yeah, it should be. Definitely. But you get thrown in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Do you guys know you're slotted to deploy and know where you're deploying to?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And how long does it take for you to find out that you're going to Iraq? Uh, three weeks. So this is now, so it's 2006. Yep. So Iraq is going off. It is crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How do you get there? Do you fly? C-17. C-17, but where do you stop? You stop anywhere on the way over? You must stop somewhere. Shannon Air Force Base, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then you roll, where do you land? Do you roll into Baghdad? No, we go to Al Asad. Al Asad? Yep. Direct into Al Asad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The first time I flew into Baghdad, I was with my platoon who were flying in and it's the same thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm always like, I'm not gonna show anybody any emotions at all or whatever, I'm always just like looking around, it's all good, and the f- the plane starts going to that boat, and you're like, we're like, getting jerked around a little bit, and this one buddy of mine, who's like a, a young enlisted guy, but an awesome guy,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I go, we'll be good. Something like, just totally calm, cool. Like, oh, we'll be good. No factor, you know, something like this. But I remember thinking these are some of these awesome. So you're on the ground here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your mission and kind of the country's, much of the country, certainly a lot of special operations at the time was focused on getting AMZ.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Super hostile, super aggressive, uh, Bin Laden. He pissed off Bin Laden. He was going so far. I mean, you got a good quote in the book.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Something along the lines of, hey, when Osama bin Laden is telling you you need to calm down, that's an indicator that you might be a little out of control. And that was Zarqawi for sure. Madman. Yup.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is the guy that was decapitating, uhm, you know, just on camera, just cutting people's heads off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Excuse for a human being. Uh, and so that's what you guys are focused on. That's what much of special operations and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What, like this means going after everyone in his network, everyone that he touches, everyone that he, everything that he does, we're watching, we're tracking, we're trying to get a step ahead of him. Uh, your first op, you're going on a capture kill mission, some HVT, some high value target.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You say John has us all move back about a hundred meters, forms us into an L shaped ambush on the building and begins a call out. It's exactly what it sounds like. We get on a megaphone. We start telling people to get out of the house within five minutes, two guys and five women and their children leave. One of the women tells us her husband is still in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We ask him to get out for 15 minutes. It starts nice, but at the end, our Terp is essentially screaming, get out of the house, motherfucker. We're coming in to get you. He doesn't budge. We're going in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The four of us walk to the front door as Dave Fredericks, Ben Rios, Mario Montes. Say that right? Yep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Montese and Manny Villalobos move to the back door through the sheep's pen. The rest of the guys are either hitting the other buildings or covering the windows of outs just in case the guy, guy tries to squirt out. We're set.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As the number one man, Al pulls the door open, and I, as the number two man, throw in a flashbang. John, as the number three man, covers the doorway with his rifle in case someone tries to take a shot at me or Al as we do our jobs. Bam. The flashbang goes off and we flow into the room, one behind the other.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We see a guy sprint past the door. Our turp yells for the guy to get on the ground over and over again. The guy is not going to the ground.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He is defiant. My red dot is on his chest as are Al's and John's.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He takes a breath and makes an athletic movement away from us. I hear Al switch his weapon from safe to semi. It's such a small sound, the tiny click of metal on metal, but all veterans know what that sound means. It's go time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can always hear it through flashbangs, through grenades, through artillery. That little click engages the mechanism in your brain that tells you this event is now real. My eyes see where this man is going and my brain slowly passes that message to my body.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He grabs an AK-47 and starts to spin towards us. Somewhere between the time he grabs for the gun and the time he turns toward us with it, I move my weapon a semi, as does John.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the time the man's gun gets two thirds around the half circle from where he grabbed it to where he's pointed it, Al, Al squeeze off one or two rounds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Milliseconds later, I double tap the guy. John shoots him almost the same time I do, also double tapping. The guy falls to the ground lifeless. There are five, maybe six holes stacked on top of each other through his heart.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To be honest, if you don't look carefully, it looks like one bullet wound. I just killed for the first time. Although I think Al's round gets the actual credit, but at the moment, I'm actually impressed with how good we are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I thought this would be a bigger moment. I thought it would have gravitas. It doesn't. He was a bad man. He tried to kill us. Now he's dead. It's that simple for me. What isn't simple is hearing his wife screams when the shots ring out. There's no sound like the sound of a woman seeing her husband die. It rattles me and lingers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We collect intel off the entire building. We get blood samples, fingerprints, face pictures, and we take the body with us. There's a ton of valuable intelligence here and this huge unexpected win tactically.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But his wife keeps screaming at us. She's saying we murdered him. It doesn't matter to her that we gave the guy the opportunity to leave the house. It doesn't matter that he tried to kill us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We killed her husband. I look at the other men, glaring at us. I look at the kids, crying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did we just make more terrorists? Will these kids grow up to try and kill more Americans? I probably would if I were them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The wife complains enough that there's an immediate investigation of Al's decision to pull the trigger. This is a huge shock to me. Isn't this war? This fucking guy was going to kill us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nevertheless, the Sergeant Major took statements from everyone. They did a forensic analysis of the shoot and concluded that what we did, that what we said happened is exactly what happened. Al is cleared.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When we get back to the house, when we get back to the base, the guys at Blue tell us we did a great job. They apparently watched the whole thing via satellite. Now there's a lot more trust. They don't think we're idiots anymore. We're off to the races.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, it's 2006. These guys have been working for a while. And for him to still be alive, he knows something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you had to, after this OP, you know, like you said, you start to build trust with the, uh, blue that's there, which is the Navy component. Uhm, sounds like it was a little bit of a rough start with those guys, cause they maybe didn't, didn't...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Have the same level of trust with you guys before this op or something?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if you. Meanwhile, there's 332 other people that also need to die and you're like, we'll take those too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you, you know, kick ass, that sounds cool, but then what's interesting is, uh, the next night, or the next op.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they go out and I can't even, this is like torture. This is the second op that they go on and you don't go and you, you just feel like you're being tortured and you're sitting there getting ready for QRF and all this other stuff, but it's just freaking so pissed. In fact, you're so pissed. You're so pissed that when they get back,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dude, you have a book you say, uh, you say, I'm the best shot, the most physically fit, and I dominated on that last miss, and I should have been the first to go, not the first to not go. Like, that's the kind of thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, hey man, props, you put it in the book, man. It's in there. It's, it's, it's a good perspective for those young troopers out there, man. It's good perspective, cause, cause you're gonna feel that way sometimes. You be looking at some guy like, I should be going. And the worst, honestly here's what sucks, the worst way to get to go on the next mission,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is to go to that person and say, you should have put me on this mission. It's the worst way. It's like saying, Hey, man, I think I deserve my purple belt now. Like don't do that. No, you're setting your mouth, zip it, go in there and do work. Uh, he goes old school though.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and basically says, alright, I'll tell you what, Kennedy, go grab your boxing gloves, we're gonna settle this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know I got, I got this part in that book right there, Leadership Strategy and Tactics.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, the section of the book is called Conform to Influence. And it's, I'm talking about when I was a new guy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tim Kennedy, you wouldn't have a freaking patent on being a young jackass. I was a new guy, and I was like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, trying to be hardcore and like, people be, we'd be going for a run. Our team would be going for a run. I'd be like wearing boots, putting on a rucksack.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Running the old course with a rock on and like my guy, like my platoon mates and I'm a new guy would be like, dude, hey man, you need to chill out. And I'm just like, maybe you need to be more hardcore. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like obviously I'm freaking hardcore over here. I got my rock on. I see you with a pair of running shoes on. What's up? You're telling me what's up? No. And uh, what I finally realized


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At a point, you know, like someone said, hey, hey Rambo, you need to chill out. And I was kinda like, it took me a minute to realize, oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I'm not part of this group, I have no influence over this group whatsoever. And I'll just be ostracized and I won't be a part of this platoon. And when I realized that, I was like, okay, I get it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and this is a classic example where it's like when you're standing and you're looking at everyone on your team on the other side, that's, that's, that's a signal to you, young trooper, you're in the wrong. And look, you might be, you might be air quotes right about this particular item or that particular item.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When there's 12 against one, you're making a mistake somehow. You're doing something wrong. You're not building relationships like you should. Uh, and they line up on you and you go two minutes, two minute rounds with these dudes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, this is one of those moments where in the book I'm like, oh cool, he's gonna get this lesson learned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're like see it took those guys two rounds to get me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You guys, sounds like you got a pretty good off tempo going. June 7th, 2006. You do this bit, there's like a whole


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, uh, almost AO wide, uh, series of operations that's going on as we're, as, as they're getting closer and closer and closer to actually figuring out where Zarqawi is, um, CAG's out, Rangers are out, ICTF is out, you guys are hitting targets after target after target, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] AMZ finally gets tracked through a building and therefore spams it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Zarkawi's dead. Uh, and what's interesting is I was, you know, you and I were talking about this before we pressed record, but I was in Iraq at this time too. I think you got there in March and I got there in April. So that was a big deal. Um, when, when Zarkawi finally got killed, pretty awesome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It got wild for a couple months after that too. Yeah, well that's what I was gonna say is, I, when Zarqawi got killed, I


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't think it would have any impact on the amount of operations. I didn't think it would slow down the insurgence at all. And in fact, the insurgence kind of went ham after this point. They really started going off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, it picked up, quite honestly. And it sounds like it picked up for you guys too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How, how, how often are you guys going out?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you're getting some good experience. Uhm, did you guys take any casualties on that appointment? No.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You gotta have some level of luck, but when you're setting up these massively offensive, aggressive operations, a lot of times you're catching the enemy not ready for it, which is exactly what you're doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, it's a good way to win, man. Speed, surprise and violence of action.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you get done with that deployment, uhm, you fly back to America, uh, you and your wife go, you know, you get your wife, you get some good food, you're a little, you're still scanning for threats a little bit, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How was it dri- how was it driving around? Like, I remember when I came back from my first deployment, we were in Humvees all the time, I was like driving around, like, remember the bridges, like everyone's like, oh, if you go under a bridge, that's where they- and so you'd go, like, any car that's getting closer, you sort of get that little, like, I'm about to freakin' hit this dude off the road.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Often, not 100% of the time, often times, ranger school is punishment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's, it's a, it's punishment. It's also a little bit of purgatory that you can redeem yourself. So if you've got a problem, if you've done something, if you've been off track, they will send you to ranger school. It is sort of like halfway punishment and also a road to redemption. Jason Redman, who's been on here, um, you know, he, he, he was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was an enlisted guy, became an officer and was not quite ready for it. And he, his redemption was, all right, you're a little jacked up. We're going to send you to Ranger school. It's a great school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, before you go to ranger school, you go and compete for the second time in the army combatives championship. And you win. Wild tournaments. The, uh, I keep using the word wild because I don't know. Well, I think I'm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So this is your second one, uh, that you win. You win this again. You became the first, I think the first person. First person to do it twice. Back to back. Then you go to ranger school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Damn. Dumb. That's freaking awesome, man. Uh, you, you, you go through ranger school, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the book, there's a lot of cool, cool details about it in the book, uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Give me some highlights, rap week. I mean, you must, it's weird that you're just like a combat experience guy, won the combative tournament, special forces, Sephardic, SIF team, and you're rolling into ranger school. Rank doesn't matter in ranger school, that's pretty awesome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And by the way, all the people that you're leading are also sleep deprived, exhausted, tired, frustrated, pissed off, and all that. When I joined the Navy,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Marine Corps doesn't just- you're just a Marine. You're- you're a Marine. What else? You don't need a name?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey Maureen, get over here. God, devil dogs. Uhm, one thing that you pointed out to the book that never, it never, I never understood it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Until you explained it in the book. And that is when you're in ranger school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They call you ranger. Yeah. And I was, I always thought that was backwards, you know? Like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That, hey, you're not a ranger yet, you're in school, so why would they be calling you ranger? And the way you explained it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The fact that you were watching a guy quit, and he was quitting pretty deep into ranger school. He was maybe like 30, 40 days into it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you know, we're two phases in halfway through it and this guy decides to quit and you cause he was cold.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, you know that. Cold gets ya. Cold gets ya. Yeah, he's quick. But you were listening to the instructors kind of take him aside and they start calling him by his name and by his rank and they're not calling him Ranger anymore. And I was like, oh, damn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would have been like, dude, get me, I'm sorry, I'm going back in that patrol right now. I don't care.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So people are staring at the giant weight of all these tasks and they can't take it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, the, uh, when you were talking about SOPSY.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like they get kids done with Hell Week and you're like, you can tell them to do anything, they don't care anymore about anything. They're just like, you can just injure them with baseball bats or something, but other than that they're gonna keep moving forward a little bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In ranger school. You lost zero weight. I lost no weight in ranger school. The average weight loss is what, 25 pounds? Yeah, I think it's 10% of your body weight is what you typically lose. And you, you set up basically a system of kicking ass and taking MREs. That's it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really needing your help because they're starving. You get one MRE a day, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Helped a lot of people. I mean, that's hard. And people wouldn't be giving up their food unless they really needed it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dude, you must be the first, uh, first dude to not lose weight in rangers gold.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you ended up being the honor grad. Yep. And, so you go back and you want to throw it in McPhee's face like, you see, I'm staying at SIF. Look, I did it. And he's not even there anymore. Not there. He already moved on, bro.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So he, he psychological warfare'd you. Yes he did. You couldn't just go to ranger school, you had to graduate honor grad, which was extra, all kinds of extra work, cause the difference between like passing and being number one, the difference amount of work is huge. Yea, and I get back to the team and it's like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Crickets. There's nobody there. And then four days later, four days after ranger school, you get in this fight, you get this fight for, for the IFL, the international fight league.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your energies. What was your digestive system like after that many days of just MREs? This is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You win. You win your fight in the IFL. Uhm, and again, you got cool details and anybody that's any kind of remote fan of MMA at all, or actually sports in general, the freaking book has some kick ass details on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What's going on behind the scenes? I mean there's so much that's happening besides what you see on the 15 minutes on TV, uh, which is awesome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You end up going to SOTIC, the special operations target interdiction school, the sniper school. Uh, this was wild. You're, you're going through that. You're, you're doing your last


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pass fail evolution. It's a field shot that you have to take. Your partner freaking quits. You're shooting partner quits. So sniper is a two man thing. It seems like it's a one man thing, but it's actually a two man thing. You need someone to call the wind and call the shot for you and your partner. The last day of this freaking course decides to quit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He quits. So now you're, now the cadre says alright, you know, Kennedy's partner quit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who wants to, who wants to call for him? And the caveat is that Kennedy's getting one shot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The instructor's gonna choose the shot from the field, he's gonna pick whatever one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And whether Kennedy passes or fails is on you as, you know, column form. So you're sitting there like looking up. Everyone else is done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone's done, they're done, they don't have to do anymore shit. And you're looking up there, you're like seeing who's gonna, who's gonna hook it up for you. And uh, I gotta go to the book on this one cause it's pretty funny. You see, I scan the bleachers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Picture the Batman costume, but Asian. And that's basically Mike Glover.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This dude isn't worried at all. He walks over like he's about to choose a salad dressing at a salad bar, not making a decision, not making the decision that will affect whether I pass or fail.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What if I put your graduation on the line, Glover? The Sergeant asks. I'm making the same decision, Sergeant. Glover responds. I like this guy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, I guess it's lucky we aren't doing that to you, Glover. Uh, the contrary take one round out and place it in a little ditch, proffering it to us like they're serving the dessert at a fine dining establishment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you get a first round hit on our target, Kennedy, you graduate. If you don't, you fail sniper school.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They choose the 700, 788 meter target. It's the furthest one from our position. Mike looks at it very quickly and gives me the adjustment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His confidence and speed scare me a little. I'm not used to it after spending the whole course with my partner. Are you sure? I ask calmly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mike repeats exactly the wing call he just said. I make his adjustments and squeeze the trigger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I see the impact, and then a second later, hear the ping.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dead on balls, motherfucking accurate. Mike claps me on the back and says, good job. That was it. I can glover, dude. Coming in hot. Uhm, that's awesome. So. Mike.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What a beast. Uhm, you graduate sniper school, obviously, you got another IFL fight, and you win. You do another All Army Combatives Championship, and you win that for a third time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You get a sponsorship from Ranger Up with Nick, who wrote this book with you. That's right. Nick is a former Army Infantry Officer, a West Point guy, and he had started this company, Ranger Up, and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think you described it as like the first of the military apparel company thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You lose a decision to Jason Mayhem Miller. Yeah, that sucked. I didn't lose that fight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You lost a decision to Jason Mayhem Miller. How come you lost?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you kind of like go on a vengeance fight after Jason Miller, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You sound like you're a little bit sketched out about it. Yeah. So just to set it up, you have another MMA fight. You're about to deploy again. You're about to go to Afghanistan and you have a bad taste in your mouth from losing to Jason Miller and so you get another fight and you like annihilate this guy. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and this is where the section that I opened the podcast from, uhm, the chapter's called The Valley of Death, and as I was reading this,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was getting uncomfortable and sketched out just reading it. I'm like, I don't like any-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't like anything about this, right? So you're, you're, you're going on a resupply mission. You know, resupply mission. Oh, we're gonna go do resupply. Okay, let's think about what this means here. You gotta go 150 plus miles, uhm, from your location in Kandahar out to Fob, Anaconda.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The way that you're going to be going out there, and this is what you're writing about, it's a channelized road system.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's not a good way to go. It's just not conducive to a comfortable passage, safe passage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so I'm now I'm reading this and I'm like, okay, well that kind of sucks, you know, but you know, sometimes you got to suck it up and then I keep reading. You got 80.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 80 freaking supply trucks, but they're not American supply trucks, but they're not driven by American army drivers. They're Afghan jingle trucks, which is like these


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, bad maintenance on him, no armor obviously, driven by afghan drivers who have...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, questionable loyalty, at best they have questionable loyalty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you got the mine resistant RG's. How many RG's did you have? Three. Okay, so three RG's. You gotta check Special Forces Company. They've got slick Humvees. And uh, they have uh, Land Cruisers. Oh, okay. Are they, they're not armored?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in addition to all of them, you also have, uh, Afghan soldiers with you. And they've got Humvees. The ANA Commandos. Okay. How many of them did you have? We had just rough numbers. Eight trucks. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you guys go on this, uh, clearly you were, well, not clearly, but most likely compromised as soon as you leave because all you got all those afghan drivers and you guys did everything. You took their phones and all the stuff that you're supposed to do, but


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fighting starts almost as quickly as, almost as quickly as you start. I mean the fighting starts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You got a Czech soldier that gets wounded pretty quick out of the gate. He gets medevacked out of there. Uh, eventually you, you hit this pressure plate IED. That's where I opened the book, opened the podcast up with. There's a, the freaking vehicle in front of you lands on your vehicle. That's a hell of an IED.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, you got small arms, you got RPGs coming in on you, and uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I gotta read a little chunk from the book here. Get into some details.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dust is still fucking everywhere, but a lane of light clears from us to where the front vehicle had fallen off of our 60 meters away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When we were backed up, it is eerie, kinda like when you're sitting on your couch on a lazy day looking out the window and you catch a beam of light and watch the dust particles whirl around inside it. The beams are on either side of us full of dust, but the lane to the vehicle is clear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is almost as if God cleared a path for us, but that path didn't make my life any easier. Those dudes are still alive. They're still fucking alive. Irish shouts out. He's right. I see it too. One guy is moving. I'm gonna sprint to them, man. Irish yells to me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a bad fucking idea, man. And if you do it, we're all gonna die. I tell em.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There is no lack of seriousness in my voice. I do not think we have any chance of surviving that run right in the heart of this ambush. Irish looks right at me and says, I'm going.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He takes off in a dead sprint. I hear the guns pick up. They see him. I'm still holding my sniper rifle. For some reason I don't grab my AR as I take a deep breath and sprint after Irish. I do not want to be doing this. I do not want to expose myself, but I don't want to fail my comrades even more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Get to the vehicle unscathed, and I look inside. Fuck, they are in bad shape.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The first guy has lost both of his legs at the quads. They simply aren't there. I pull him out in a sandbag carry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And his bile and blood and guts spill out onto my uniform, rolling down my stomach and soaking my legs. Even with the adrenaline and the fear and the explosions and the bullets, I acknowledge that this is the most disgusting thing that has ever happened to me.


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[Assistant] Irish grabs the other dude who is in rough state shape but still breathing. As we start moving the 60 meters back to our vehicle, I see a squad of six to eight young, six to eight guys moving out of the woods to finish us. They are the assault element getting ready to fight to the X and kill those of us standing on it.


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[Assistant] I have a choice. I can drop this guy and leave him for dead so I can fight two handed or I can fire my cannon of a sniper rifle one handed Rambo style in their general direction while trying to move my wounded guy to a high carry with one arm on the other side.


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[Assistant] Whether it is courage or because I knew Irish would have just picked him up and carried two guys, I opt for the one handed fire. I know I am not hitting anything. I know I'm not even close. They see us. A squad against two guys who are carrying wounded Afghans and have no real ability to return fire. We are dead.


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[Assistant] Then, thank God, Keller sees them. The sweet melody of the 50 cal fills my ears and they evaporate.


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[Assistant] When I say that, I need you to understand what I mean. They didn't die. It wasn't like there were corpses sitting there. They fucking evaporated. There was just a pink mist floating in the air where they had been.


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[Assistant] It is like that Jake Gownhall scene in Jarhead where he says he wanted the pink mist you see after pulling the trigger on a sniper rifle. I had never wanted it before, but right now I have never been happier to see anything in my entire life.


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[Assistant] Keller just saved me for what proved to be the first time of many over the next few days.


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[Assistant] If you're listening to this and you're like, wait a second, who's Keller and who's Irish? Yeah, you gotta get the book.


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[Assistant] You gotta get the book and you'll get the backstories on these guys. These are current dudes as well, so uhm.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I'm just saying from the point of like if you're listening to me read this and you're like, wait a second, who's cow? It's you need to read the story and you know, you might not find out their real name and date of birth and their social security number, but you'll the story will make a little bit more. They will make total sense because I only read a little chunk of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, but just to give an example of number one, what the book's like, but also some of the intensity of the combat that you're, that you're talking about and that you learned from.


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[Assistant] This goes on, man. This goes on. What was the total time it took you to get to, uhm, Anaconda?


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[Assistant] From the time that we call it a tick? No, from the time that you left, how many days was it? A week.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so just so everyone understands that the broken arrow is a call that means you're gonna get support, namely air support from all over the place to come and help you out. Everybody that's available will come and give, give that support.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you eventually link up with the ODA team that's from Anaconda. They come out to meet you guys, right?


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[Assistant] Eventually, I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. You get to this one of the villages that you were taken fire from. You guys decide you gotta go in there. You gotta clear this village of enemy fighters.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is now like urban combat, you're going street to street, you're going house to house.


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[Assistant] Uhm, at one point there's a PKM, a machine gun, is just unloading rounds at your team as you're trying to push through this compound.


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[Assistant] I can see the barrel of the PKM sticking out of a small window in the courtyard 25 meters away. The RG, that's your big, uh, mind-resistant vehicle, the RG is still smashing into the wooden gate, but the door will not give, and the rounds are pouring out of the PKM into the vehicle.


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[Assistant] It's only a matter of time before we start getting killed. I need to take out that gun.


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[Assistant] I reach for one of my frag grenades, pull the pin, and take aim at the tiny window 20 to 25 meters away.


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[Assistant] If this wasn't combat, my friends would be laughing at me at this moment. You see, I suck at throwing. I mean, I really suck. Yes, I'm a professional athlete. Yes, I can do all measures of physical activity at a level most people can't fathom


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[Assistant] But you know what I never did growing up? Ball sports. It was so bad that when I joined the special forces and had to throw something to one of my teammates, I believe it was a roll of 100 mile an hour tape.


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[Assistant] They were so horrified that they began instituting football throwing practice as part of my training regimen.


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[Assistant] I might be the only SF guy ever that as a new guy, in addition to the normal tasks of shooting, planning, and physical fitness, had to work on my spiral.


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[Assistant] But here I am, grenade in hand, with my team counting on me. And I launch it. And it is perfect.


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[Assistant] It isn't a lob that lazily floats into the window. It doesn't bounce in. It's a fucking Aaron Rodgers laser that flies from my hand and connects directly to that window. It is the best throw I ever made. In a weird, fucked up way, it is one of the happiest moments of my life.


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[Assistant] A grenade going off in the movies is very different from what happens in real life. It's not a giant fireball. It's not dramatic. It's a hollow thud.


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[Assistant] It's that late night sound of opening the refrigerator to see what's in there and the watermelon rolls out and hits the ground. That's all a grenade is after you throw it. A little hollow pop.


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[Assistant] And after you hear that pop, you either want to hear nothing or you want to hear men screaming.


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[Assistant] You do not want to hear women or children scream. You absolutely do not want to hear that.


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[Assistant] My soul churns inside. The helplessness tears me apart. I wanna take that fucking grenade back so badly I can hear kids screaming. They don't understand why this is happening to them. I can hear mothers screaming. Mothers that are punctured by fragments of a metal and can barely hold their lungs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their screams are the sounds only a parent can understand of desperately wanting to help your children, but not knowing what to do to help them or in some cases, knowing it is too late to help them.


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[Assistant] Every scream tears me apart. After everything I've been through, I thought my soul was dead. I was as hollow as a thud of that grenade. I thought there was nothing left. It all comes flooding back.


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[Assistant] I'm a raw nerve of emotion, and each sound coming from that room burns me worse than anything that has ever happened to me. Shame, horror, and guilt at what I have just done envelops me.


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[Assistant] I have seen this before in others as an EMT. The drunk driver that has killed someone.


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[Assistant] They sat there on those street corners crying, trying to sort out in their heads the disparity between who they thought they were, a decent person, and what they had just done. But I cannot stop and cry. I have to move.


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[Assistant] Keller and I flow into the courtyard with the PKM out of commission. The RG gets more aggressive and I see the wall start tumbling down. Everything is moving fast and Keller and I do not want to lose momentum. I flow right, Mike flows left.


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[Assistant] This mission never would have happened in Iraq and goes against doctrine in any unit. In Iraq we had a whole company of SIF working together to clear buildings. A normal infantry would have at least four on a door, followed by another fireteam right behind them at a minimum, with another squad or platoon in support.


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[Assistant] We have a whole compound to clear, and it's just me and Keller. That's it.


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[Assistant] When I hit the first doorway, I instantly see food everywhere. It's a kitchen.


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[Assistant] I can smell the tea kettle with the clove tea that everyone here drinks.


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[Assistant] It has just been made. I can smell right now as I write this. It's amazing how smell stays with you. You can forget details and images, specific words and conversations, but the smell of a moment is forever. Curry clove.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The screams are louder now and I move toward them. I follow a hallway to a 90 degree turn and as I hit the edge of that corner, I get the first traces of smoke and dust from the grenade. At this point, I'm in this room somewhere between 30 to 60 seconds from the moment it exploded and the scene is awful.


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[Assistant] When you throw a grenade into a building that has walls two feet thick, all that overpressure has nowhere to go.


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[Assistant] This isn't America where the pressure will break the drywall or blow the door off. Their bodies took the brunt of it.


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[Assistant] There are two women, six kids, and an old man inside.


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[Assistant] I am once again that kid standing on the street looking at a crashed church van so desperately wanting to help but not knowing where to start.


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[Assistant] Except this time, in addition to being the guy who so desperately wants to fix it all, I am also the guy who crashed the van.


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[Assistant] I screamed for the Ginginator to come and help. Why the fuck isn't he in here? Because there's no reason for him to be here.


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[Assistant] But I need this fixed. I cannot have this on my ledger. They have to be okay.


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[Assistant] He screams at me to come back and man the gun because he is running the grenade launcher and cannot abandon his post. I take one last look at the room. It is so dark. The floors are dirt and dust floats in the air. I am standing in a real life nightmare, a horror film.


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[Assistant] The smell of death, empty bowels and vomit hangs in the air. The hot machine gun is right there. Someone was shooting it, god damn. Who? The old man? One of the women? Someone else?


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[Assistant] Everyone that can scream is screaming. Some aren't. They aren't all going to make it. I did this.


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[Assistant] The, uh, a friend of mine, uhm, did this show on the History Channel. Uhm, it's now, they changed the name of it, but it's called The Warfighters.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I got interviewed for this show. It's about, is to highlight Mark Lee, who was in my task unit, who was killed in Iraq. But.


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[Assistant] It's, you know, they, they interviewed us. It's a, he did a great job. The, the guy that put it together. Uhm, and it's awesome. It's an awesome program. But there's this one part that they edited out. It's me talking. And, and they're asking me about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're asking me about war, I don't even know what they're asking me. But I do know what I said. I start talking about, if you're gonna go to war, you have to have the will. And there's two wills that you have to have. The will to kill, and the will to die. And when I talk about the will to kill,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What I, what I said was, you have to have the will to kill, not just the enemy. Cause when you go to war, civilians are gonna die. And if you think you're gonna somehow avoid that, that you're so good, or that things are gonna go your way and it's not gonna happen, you're wrong. So, if you're gonna go to war,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you gotta have the will to kill the enemy. That might not be that hard to fathom or to figure out. But you have to realize that civilians are 100% gonna die if you go to war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then obviously the other part of the will is the will to die, cause once again if you think you're gonna go to war and you're not gonna lose any of your friends, well you're wrong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One, you know, I learned so much from the troops that I work with and the conventional forces that I work with. The first, the 506, they had an expression that they said, good shot, bad result, which means


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This soldier was doing everything that they were supposed to do. They took a shot that was completely authorized, that made sense, that followed the ROE's and it so happens that there was.


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[Assistant] Collateral damage. There was a civilian killed. It wasn't what it looked like. And it was a good shot.


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[Assistant] They, they did the right thing, but the result is bad. And that's, we know when I was reading that, I was like, man, good shot, bad result. Like you're, you have to do, you have to take that risk. Otherwise everything goes, goes to shit.


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[Assistant] When, when, when people, when shit like that happens


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[Assistant] What, at what point do you think you started processing that at a deeper level, like thinking yourself, trying to understand it? Ah man.


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[Assistant] By all, by all meaningful consideration, the trip back is gonna be the same as the trip out. Uhm, maybe even harder because now the enemy knows you're gonna be coming back. Uhm, so you have,


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[Assistant] Convenient little out for yourself. Yeah. Convenient little opportunity to, uh,


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[Assistant] To not have to ride this convoy back. And that's a decision point for you. And I'm going to go to the book for this part.


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[Assistant] You say, I have to see this mission through. I thought about it all night while holding that little girl.


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[Assistant] There is a recurring pattern that is forming in my life and I don't like it. I don't necessarily run from my problems, but I'm definitely not addressing them either.


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[Assistant] I've always found a path around the thing that scares me, hurt me, or upsets me.


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[Assistant] It is the same unhealthy coping mechanism that I've used ever since Jared died. Fireman problems? Cool. No big deal. I'll become a cop. Screwed up my chances of becoming a cop because I paintballed a kid? Cool. I'll go in the army. And now my boss has teed up a perfect scenario for me to do that again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can leave right now safely and go on another mission with the Brits or the French or get some cool combat patches from their militaries and pad my resume. No one would judge me. My boss is literally telling me he would like me to head back.


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[Assistant] I do not want to go back into that valley. I am scared as hell.


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[Assistant] But I can't shake that night in Iraq when John McPhee made me fight the entire team after I mouthed off.


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[Assistant] I said all the right things back then. I said I understood that the team can accomplish anything, but the individual is weak. But I also thought that I'd beaten up eight of them. And even though they all beat me up, no single one of them could have taken me. I let myself cope with the humiliation by protecting my ego.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I ignored the reality that no one man, least of all me, is that big of a deal. I'd heard the sayings before and thought I understood them. You don't leave a man behind. You fight for the man next to you. But I didn't understand them.


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[Assistant] An extraordinary number of men were awarded the Purple Heart. When I landed in Afghanistan, I wanted these things on my uniform. I wanted the bling that told people I was a badass. Now I felt like I didn't even deserve any of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I didn't want it if it was offered. I didn't even report my wartime injuries to my actual chain of command. Everything I had done thus far, ranger school, sniper school, deployments, fighting, were no longer accomplishments meant to stand alone. They were tools to make me better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the only thing I proved on this deployment was that I wasn't good enough. And I never wanted to not be good enough again.


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[Assistant] I decide as I board the plane to fly back to, fly back home to Fayetteville, just as the UFC Fight for the Troops event is starting at Fort Bragg, that I am going to spend the rest of my career stacking the deck in my favor so the men around me will never have a liability in their midst.


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[Assistant] I will never live up to being the man I once thought I was. And I will certainly never be perfect. But I can be better.


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[Assistant] You get back and you're back in the fight game. You get a whole another career going, you know, you're in the army, but you also have this other career going. You get a fight against Nick Thompson in strike force.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And at this point you're training at Team Rock in Fayetteville. This is like a hard but basic gym.


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[Assistant] And yeah, just like I said, it's like a hard but basic gym. You guys are, you guys are going hard.


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[Assistant] Nick, you, you beat, on June 16th, 2009, you beat Nick Thompson. He taps from strikes.


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[Assistant] At this point, now, this is like the first little friction we start to see with the army. At least, am I right in that? Like the army is now saying, cause strike force is, you know, on TV and stuff like this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the army does not want you doing MMA. No. Which is a crazy thing to think about, man.


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[Assistant] What better representation for the U.S. military than to have a green beret


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[Assistant] You didn't, it wasn't this fight, or was it this fight where they actually announced you, you know, you said, hey, I'm Tim Kennedy, I'm a, you know, a wrestler and a mixed martial artist from Team Rock. And they're like, okay, cool. And then they announced you as like, Tim Kennedy, Special Forces Ranger Sniper. You're like, uh-oh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you got great advice. Ben Rios, who's a Green Beret. My brother! Yea, dude, he gave you such solid advice, and I'm gonna quote it. He says,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They'd figure a way to make this work. And he goes this, this whole comparison between like, hey, if this was a girl,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And she really loved you, like, you'd figure out a way to make this work. He says, so if the army loved you, they'd figure out a way to make this work. They'd make you sign a longer contract. They'd outline recruiting things you can do, or deployments you're gonna have to take.


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[Assistant] What they, what they're doing isn't love. That's envy.


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[Assistant] Are you gonna let someone else's envy dictate your life?


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[Assistant] That's of incredible advice. And what, what makes it incredible advice to me is,


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[Assistant] Ben Rios is obviously like a confident dude that was confident in his damn manhood. To be like, oh, my friend Tim Kennedy's a badass, and I support him being a badass. He's my boss. Freakin'.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That just hurts. Like, for someone not to see you do being successful.


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[Assistant] And being part of your community and being like, hell yeaah. Instead being like, what the hell is he doing?


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[Assistant] It's sad, you know, one of my buddies, uh, Stoner, he was trying to go to Princeton. He's a SEAL officer, and there was like this weird program where he could go to Princeton. And he, and he's, so, he wasn't, he worked for me, now he wasn't working for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he says, hey, you know, I want to go to this program to go to Princeton.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he goes, what do you think of that? I go, it's friggin' awesome, why? He goes like, some other people are telling me that like, I shouldn't go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was like, you know what that is? That's jealousy. That's someone thinking, oh, now this guy's got combat experience and he's, and he's also going to be a freaking Princeton guy. Oh shit. I can't compete with that. I know you shouldn't go. I was like, dude, a hundred percent go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Unfortunately, some of that activity going on here.


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[Assistant] When we got to Ramadi, the troops on the ground were a National Guard unit out of Pennsylvania and a bunch of other places. But, uh, man, what a bunch of studs. Some of them. Yeaah. Well, for us, all of them. Every one of them. You know, like, what they did and the lessons they taught us and they were just awesome, awesome human beings.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And luckily, the National Guard is not technically the Army. Active Army, yea. So you were able to get in the National Guard, which is awesome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you're training, so are you still training that team? Where are you training now? Are you down in Texas now?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this is for the strike force? Yep.


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[Assistant] And that's when you realized you needed, uh, uh, to go to one of these professional camps. And your, your decision was kind of between, between, uh, Jackson Winklejohn and AKA. Uh, you end up going to Jackson Winklejohn. And do talk about


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You, you talk about rolling with John Jones for the first time or training with John Jones. You said that was kind of next level scenario.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The world is gonna have to wait for Gordon to decide he doesn't want to win anymore as far as I can tell right now.


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[Assistant] Dean Lister, I had, Dean Lister came in one day and he's like, hey, arm lock me. And I go, okay, so I put an arm lock on him. And he gives me his straight arm. Not like clenched up, like he gives me his straight arm. And he's like, okay, I'll say go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He, he says go, and he gets out. Straight arm lock, bro. I mean, it is extended. I'm gonna, all I have to do is move my hips, whatever, three inches, and he gets out. And he does this five times in a row. And then he says, okay,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he's teaching, uh, a way to get out of, what position was it?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, like someone's just bear-hugging, it's a basic self-defense, it's a bear-hug, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there's a guy in the crowd and he says, hey, would this hand do this and would this other hand do this?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, go. And then the guy raises his hand, and he's like, yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For a, for a one handed grappler, bro. I was like, this is crazy. Um, so yeah, that's what, that's what I see. Like Gordon's just going to be, there's people out there like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah. I kind of want him to, to be honest with you. Cause it just, I think it'd be cool to get that, get that, get that kind of skill level in there. And also, you never know. Man, you never know. Like, he, if I was him, I would want to know. Like, I would want to put it to the test. Let's go. And, and see what happens. Yeaah. Be rad.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Meanwhile, the UFC buys Strikeforce. And with that, they get all the fighters and all the contracts, and so boom, you end up in UFC.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dana White not too happy about that. He was mad. Yeaah. And, and, and look, to Dana's, uh, side, you know, he's trying to grow this thing, he's investing all this money to advertising and to, to expansion and all this stuff and like, he gets to the bottom of that list and it's these fighters, you know, and,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Dana, I mean, I don't know if this is a direct result, but it kind of looks like it. You get your first UFC, is this your first UFC fight? First UFC fight. First UFC fight. And you get paired up against Hodger Grayson.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and this seems like a good way to get rid of Tim Kennedy and get him out of this game if you don't want. Like the money here, cool. We're not going to pay you because you're going to be gone. How about this, we'll send you Roger Gracie. Roger Gracie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean just, just going off the stats of his life, he's absolutely one of the greatest grapplers of all time. No. Gi, no Gi, across the board, he's just, he's just awesome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which is bizarre anyways that you're shooting a signal, right? That's fre- that you're shooting on him is kind of bizarre. Was- was that your game plan? Like, I- I can take this guy on the ground?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a lot harder to put a rear naked choker on someone with gloves on.


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[Assistant] There's something all the psychological impact of you have a great position. You should finish this fight right now. Oh, you can taste it. I mean, let's face it. You know, he gets your back and he's like, Oh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yep. And I got all these rounds and I just gave up the best position I have. That hurts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you end up just, just, actually dominating him. All respect to Hodger Gracie. But you, freaking, were taking him down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then you have fight for the troops in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, where the 101st Airborne Division is. You fight against Hafeel Natal. Stud. Love that guy. You get a KO in the first round. The crowd goes freaking insane. Uhm, because you're you and the crowd is the crowd. The crowd is a bunch of soldiers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this goes on for years, like it's years worth of bad bl-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And don't spit on people. So as I reviewed my life over here on my end, uh, I have to confess, uh, this is going back way back. I'm probably


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] 12 years old. And there was friends in the family, they're staying at my house. The kids, the parents went on vacation somewhere and the kids stayed at our house. And like, these are like our friends in the family scenario. And the kid, the son is, the daughter's my age, the son is maybe two years younger than me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before we knew what the mount was, I got the mount on him, held his hands down by the wrists, and I didn't spit on him. I drooled on him for about 30 seconds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What I like, my favorite part about reading about that fight was when you're, you have a good first round. You have like an okay second round.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was sitting at my office at Tradeout one day and I get a call and they're like, Hey Jocko, there's some guy named Greg Jackson from the UFC that's getting a tour today. Do you want to give it to him? And I was like, what's his name? And they go, Greg Jackson. I go, hell yeah. Yes, I do. And that's how I ended up linking up with, but we back in the day,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We used to wrestle, we used to compete against all those guys. They'd come out here, uhm, and enter all these grappling tournaments. And we'd, we'd be competing against them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Dean, he had to go against Dean. And I was like, hey Dean, I go, uh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's like, hey, so what's the guy like? And I go, I go, he's strong. You know, he's a good grappler. I go, but his wrestling is not very good. And he goes, oh, okay, cool. And Dean goes out and gets taken down by Keith Jardine in the first like 10 seconds. Cause he was like, so I like relaxed Dean too much on the takedown. And so me and Keith Jardine took Dean down and, and then I think Dean got a knee lock on him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, he's hard to finish. Dude, Keith, Dean got a knee lock on him, and Dean, he did not tap. And I've been in a thousand of Dean's knee locks, and I've tapped to 997 of them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Keith Jardine was just like, whatever, and Dean beat him on points, but damn, I was like, hey dude, this dude ain't tapping for ni- Oh, I would see him in the UFC, I'd be like, this guy's not tapping, doing anything, ever, in the UFC, ever.


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[Assistant] Of course dude, I typecast that guy all day as like the meanest guy in the bar. Good stunt man too.


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[Assistant] So, bummer night, good word. So, this, so you're, so now you're at a point, you've been winning, you've been winning, you beat Bisbing, you beat these, all these other guys, Lawler, Manhoff, uh, Hodger, Gracie, Rafael, you're on a streak.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yup. On a, on a two week notice. Good for Biz being good on him.


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[Assistant] So now, Biz Bing's the champion, so now you're like triple hungry. You're like, that's chomping at the bitch. And you got Yoel Romero, who is a Cuban dude. He's a silver medalist, wrestler. If you don't know who he is, just picture superhero human looking body. I mean, he looks like a freaking mutant.


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[Assistant] And this is a hell of a fight, and he's on a streak too. He's destroying people on his side. I'm three, he's two in the world.


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[Assistant] Maybe he, maybe if I was a judge, I'm judging, I'm giving him the first round. I don't know, is that right? Is that accurate? You think? It's, it's super close. It's close. Second round. Uh. You catch it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Rocked. Beyond rocked. And it's, it's about to be over. Like, you got this dude. It's done. Uhm.


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[Assistant] Then the bell goes. So he's, he's, he's saved by the bell, which unfortunately in MMA, that's a thing. If you, if the bell goes, it's over. That round is over.


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[Assistant] The, like the call comes seconds out, which is so in MMA.


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[Assistant] You're all your corner, you know, like I'm a, I've been a corner man, I'm much like you, I'm working on Tim. I'm telling you what's up. And then the, then the ref say seconds out, they do that at like 45, 50 seconds. They're telling you seconds out. That means you as a corner need to get out, get the stool, get the water, get the ice, get all that stuff out of the ring and you got to get the hell out of there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That call comes, his corner doesn't leave. Nope.


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[Assistant] Now the round starts. Round starts. And his corner is like, they spilled ice. They're like, they're trying to converse with them. They're telling to get out of the ring. They're saying they don't know what's going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That it's ridiculous. So he doesn't answer the bell. So yeah, so if you don't get up,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Connor would say. So you are down the road, victory, you're done, and all of a sudden, John McCarthy's like, hey, get your mouthpiece in. Yep, let's go.


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[Assistant] That was ridiculous. That was totally ridiculous. And really what that means, just so everyone in the big picture, like, you get a shot where you're one shot away from the title shot.


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[Assistant] One time in your career. Yeah, you get that and then you either win, and in most cases,


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[Assistant] Yeah, and I don't know if we were recording when I said this, but like.


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[Assistant] For me, I like swore at the TV, and was all mad, and then I like, got another piece of chicken and went about my way, and you, like,


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[Assistant] I've never protested a fight ever. I don't know bro. I respect that, but I think I would have been like if there's one time to cash in


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[Assistant] I don't know, everyone watched it, everyone saw this dude sitting on the stool not answering the bell. That's literally called stool gate, but it's still- I don't want a title fight that way.


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[Assistant] And the show people say, hey, can you put some holes in their target that are closer to the bullseye so this looks like a little bit tougher than like challenge for you? And you're like, I guess so.


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[Assistant] Okay, so you do that, you do something called ultimate soldier challenge, which is


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[Assistant] You and uh, another green beret and you're going against a pair of contractors, you're going against a pair of Norwegian.


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[Assistant] And you guys kick ass again. And once again you have to like reshoot stuff so that it doesn't look like you're crushing everyone so bad.


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[Assistant] This is my personal favorite. Celebrity Bootcamp Season 7 Bootcamp.


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[Assistant] Is it like, is it like a whole season you do this for? Or is it just one show? I do just, I do, it's a whole season for them.


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[Assistant] You're out searching for Nazis is what you're doing. Yep. And you find like Nazi stuff man. Everywhere and Nazis.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, nazi stuff, you find nazis. What would you do?


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[Assistant] And that ends up running for three seasons. We got a fourth season that was going


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[Assistant] I, uh, when that movie came out, one of my friends is a writer and director and stuff up in Hollywood, and he is friends with Rocko. And he called me and said, hey, this Rocko's in the movie, you wanna come up?


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[Assistant] The premiere, and I was like, oh yea, the article 15. I was like, hell yea, I'll come and see that. So I go and watch the premiere up there in Hollywood, and uhm, actually were you there? No. Okay. No. I'm trying to think of who, I ran into people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, well I'm sure I ran into those guys, I don't think I knew any of them yet, but uhm.


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[Assistant] You know, bad. A little over the top or... No, I didn't expect to be bad, like bad, uh, like a bad movie. But I thought, you know, it'll be kinda crazy.