Name: JRE MMA Show #158 with Tank Abbott
Uploaded: 2024-06-06T17:00:28.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #158 with Tank Abbott' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-06-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'JRE MMA Show #158 with Tank Abbott' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-06-06. Transcript available.

JRE MMA Show #158 with Tank Abbott

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
All right, what's happening, baby? Good to see you.
Oh, likewise. It's been a long road for both of us.
It has been a long road, man.
Yes.
I think I first met you in 1997.
Hmm, I don't know the dates, but I remember meeting you officially, or in my
memory, in New Orleans or somewhere around there when I was sitting, like, in
an auditorium, and you came in and sat down next to me.
And at that time, people used to bother me all the time.
And so I was getting some fresh air away from everyone.
And you came up and sat down, and I was in my head.
I was like, oh, no, I just want some peas.
And you rolled up, and you were totally cool.
And I was like, oh, that guy's cool.
We had a good session rapping.
Yeah, I remember first meeting.
You know, when you talk about, like, the early days of the UFC, like, you are
one of the real original legends of MMA.
I mean, you were one of the very first guys, and you were one of the very first
guys, first of all, you were one of the very first guys, if not the first, to
wear gloves, which I always thought was very smart.
I know Vitor, I think, was one of the first.
No.
Who was the very first?
Was it you?
I don't know.
The people out there in the Internet world say this Melton Bowen guy.
He was a striker, boxer kind of guy in the early UFCs.
I did not get the idea from him at all.
And who was the other guy with the one glove, boxing glove?
Oh, yeah, he just died recently.
Damn it.
I forgot his name.
It was back in the days with Fred Eddish.
Art Jimerson.
Art Jimerson.
Yes.
Yeah.
Fred Eddish.
That's right.
Fred Eddish.
And Harold Howard and all those guys cooking.
And at the time, I had just gotten out of jail for beating up a cop's son.
And they kind of, he used his position to his dad make things go the way for
the prosecution,
even though he deserved to get beat up.
And I obliged him.
And I was going back and forth from a halfway house to work from the guy that
got me into
the show.
And we stopped off at a, like a Dick's sporting goods store, big box sporting
goods store like
that.
I don't think it was Dick's, but it was something like that.
And they were bag gloves.
And I put them on and I go, these would be perfect, but they had a post in them.
So you couldn't really wrestle with them.
And I was like, hmm, I could take the post out.
And I ended up cutting it off.
And it was just a clear plastic thick tube that you could hold on to.
So I got rid of that.
And I go, these are perfect.
And I think they were Harbinger gloves.
And I knew because I'd been in hundreds of street fights, altercations.
That's where I come from.
Although I've wrestled since I was eight years old.
But I used to beat people up on the street that deserved it.
Yeah, absolutely.
There's not one guy out there that didn't want to do the same thing to me.
I was just better at it.
So I knew my hands would get hurt.
And I'm like, you can't fight three times in one night without your hands
getting busted up.
So I cut those out.
And I go, these are perfect.
I could wrestle in them.
As I said, I'd wrestled my whole life.
And they were perfect.
Did you have hand wraps on?
No, no hand wraps.
Just the gloves?
Yeah.
Did you wrap your wrists or anything?
No.
Nothing?
And what was the law back then?
What were the rules, rather?
What were the rules inferred?
You were allowed to wear wrestling shoes.
You were allowed to hit the nuts back then.
Your first fights, you were allowed to pull hair, hit the nuts.
You could do anything.
There wasn't until I came along.
Anyways, you just couldn't.
I can't even tell you what you couldn't do.
But you couldn't bite and you couldn't eye gouge.
Those were the only two rules.
I think fish hooking, right?
No, that was me.
Oh, really?
You started?
I introduced them to fish hooking.
And so at the fighters meeting, they have these meetings with all the fighters
and they all sit in there.
And I guess think they're badass, but I guess they are in their own world.
So they're all sitting around and big John McCartney was up there explaining
the rules.
And I think he is having trouble since there wasn't any.
So at the end of that, I asked him, I said, I had the gloves with me.
And I said, hey, can I wear these?
And in his big, bellowing, goofy voice, he goes, oh, if you want to wear them,
go ahead.
Thinking I was some kind of fool.
When, in fact, I was thinking everybody else were fools.
They've never really been in a fight and your hands get busted up.
Yeah, I thought the very first time I saw you wearing them, I'm like, that guy's
smart.
And look, and when you knocked out, was it John Tua?
Matua, yeah.
Matua, John Matua.
When you knocked him out, I was like, see, like this, you can still generate
insane power, but you don't hurt your hands.
Absolutely.
And I didn't hurt my hands, although at the end of that fight, not that fight,
but you fought three times in one night.
And I think I busted up my hand, it didn't break it, but it busted up where I
had to go to the hospital and get it x-rayed.
And I got to go.
I didn't want to go because I was a kid and, like, no one sends me to the
hospital, even myself, you know.
My busted up hands, now I'll be all right.
But my father talked me into going, so I went there, and there, all my
opponents were all stretched out.
And I'm saying, oh, well, how you doing?
I'm just passing through.
So they x-rayed it and said I was all right and went back to the cocktail party
and had some fun.
Did you have any, like, injuries during your career?
Oh, sure.
I mean, when I fought when I needed knee surgery against Ferozo, I couldn't run.
I couldn't do anything.
And I ended up taking the fight.
I told them I didn't want to fight.
And then back in those days, they had ways of stacking the cards against you.
And so the owner of the show at that time says, hey, show up.
You got a small, or you have a boxer your first fight, so that's not going to
be a big deal.
And he goes, then you got a little guy, like a 200-pound guy that was from Shamrock's
camp.
What is it, a bowlander?
Jerry Bowlander.
And you can fight him, and he's nothing, because he's like, you know, 200
pounds.
You throw him around like a ragdoll.
And I'm like, okay.
You know, he's talking me into it, realizing he's just trying to sell his show
and get it over.
And I'm like, yeah, yeah.
Well, I've never wanted to say no to a fight.
And so I said, okay, you talk me into it.
I'll show up.
But I couldn't run.
I couldn't do anything.
And like jog one time around the track of 400, I couldn't do it.
So I go and take the boxer, make short work of him.
And because boxing is good if you're going to box and stand up in a ring,
but you're not going to go anywhere in a fight just with boxing as a skill.
It might help you throw a punch and that kind of thing.
But if your main plan of attack is boxing, you're going to get taken down.
And you can't box from your back.
So, anyways, back to the show, I take short work of him.
And I'm like, all right.
So I got this little 90-pounder, 190-pounder, and make short work of him.
And I think I was supposed to fight Mark Coleman at that time.
And I was like, oh, well, we'll just see who's tougher and not get taken down.
And we'll just throw punches.
And he's not really, at that time, very skilled on his feet.
So I had at least a fighter's chance at the whole deal.
And so, you know, you have these, like, dressing rooms that are screened off.
And there's an opponent, or not an opponent, alternate, big guy, going crazy,
making all this noise.
He sounded like an elephant running around in a cage.
I'm going, what the hell is that guy doing?
I go, he's not even fighting.
He's just an alternate.
Well, it turns out it comes for us to go in with Bolander.
And what happens?
Oh, he pulls out.
Why did he pull out?
Oh, he just, oh, he couldn't make it.
And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
And I just fell off the turnip truck.
And next thing I know, I'm fighting this 300-pound-plus guy
who's all jacked up on God's knows what.
And going, ah, crazy.
Who was it?
Ferozo.
Oh.
So I went out there.
And this is at the advent of referees.
And I don't care about whether you're losing, never have.
I'm always down for the fight and the battle of fighting.
And getting bloody, sweaty, getting punched and punching people.
Man, that's what it's all about for me.
And so I'm like, oh, well, I'll get in there.
And we banged it out.
And they had three refs.
And they gave him the fight.
I've had people say, if you really watch it, you won that fight.
Don't care.
And they suckered me in with a little guy.
And then they throw in a 350-pound dude.
Ended up kind of ruining the show because Coleman didn't have anybody to fight.
So he went out with Randleman and did, like, a wrestling exhibition.
And it was like, why did you do that?
You didn't have to pull Shamrock's guy out.
It was behind-the-scenes kind of things that were all prevalent at that point
in time.
Yeah, there was a lot of shenanigans in the early, early days.
Oh, yeah.
Well, it was so loosely constructed.
You know, people have to realize, like, if you're looking at the UFC now,
you're looking at, you know, WME-owned UFC, gigantic money,
huge fucking special effects, screens.
Everything looks amazing.
The sound's amazing.
Professional wrestling.
Back then, I mean, UFC 12 was the first one that I did, which was Scott Ferozo's
debut.
And we did it in Dothan, Alabama.
And it was like a high school auditorium or something.
It wasn't a very big place.
I remember the name Dothan.
Yeah.
What was that?
That was when...
They did an interview with me, and it was supposed to be at a different show
somewhere,
and they got canceled.
So they put it up in Dothan.
It was supposed to be in Buffalo, but it got banned from New York.
Right.
So last minute, we had to all fly to Alabama.
Right.
So I was actually on the plane going to Dothan, or not Dothan, but to...
Buffalo.
Right.
And they said, hey, there's been a change of plans.
You got to go to Dothan.
So I went to Dothan, and I was sitting in the, like, two-story hotel.
Not really a hotel, but like a motel type thing.
And I looked out across the parking lot, and there was a bar there.
I said, yeah, what the hell?
Why not?
So I ended up walking across the street, and I was drinking at the bar with
this crazy old
country guy.
Old school dude.
He was like a peanut farmer or something like that.
And we got blasted.
And he goes, come on, I'll take you to the arena.
And I'm like, okay.
So we get in this old pickup truck, and he turns the key, and it sounds like a
dragster.
And I got Hillbilly Hayman or whatever driving this thing.
And we drive to the arena, and I'm like, no, no, no.
I'm supposed to do an interview.
He ends up parking on the island, a grassy island.
He drove up the curb.
I stumbled in there, and David Isaacs was like, oh, my God.
What's going to happen next?
They got banned, and then I showed up out of my mind.
And I think there might be a clip of me all drunk saying stuff.
I don't know.
There's a bunch of those clips, I'm sure.
Yeah, absolutely.
How old were you with your first UFC fight?
30 years old.
And did you have any competitive fights other than wrestling matches?
Did you do any amateur fights or anything?
Well, um...
It kind of wasn't around back then, right?
I, I, no.
There was no real fighting.
You only did it in the street.
And back in those days, I had wrestled.
And then on my 19th birthday, I was hoping to go on.
I had one year at wrestling in junior college, and a dumb, drunk friend of mine
drove into a light pole on my birthday.
That's why my teeth got all knocked out.
And, um, it also put a gash right underneath my knee and mangled my knee, on my
left knee.
And, um, so my wrestling, I came back, like, halfway, maybe a third of the way
into the season.
And I just could, I didn't have enough time to get whatever.
It's all written meaning spiritually.
And so, I didn't