Why Retiring Is Harder Than Fighting

[00:00:00]I'll fight you right now.

[00:00:01]>> No, I don't want to fight, bro.

[00:00:02]>> I'll go with you right now, bro.

[00:00:04]>> I don't want to fight, bro. I don't want to fight. I don't want to fight. Let's go.

[00:00:08]Ready to have you >> Tell him. Tell him. Come on.

[00:00:10]>> You got a couple minutes.

[00:00:11]>> Cuz it's going to be bad, >> bro. Just Just >> It's going to be bad, my [ __ ] >> That's Dustin Porier, former interim champion, 20 years in the sport, headlined pay-per-views, beat McGregor twice, made millions of dollars. He's got a legacy that's already locked in, a name that every single MMA fan on the planet respects. He even got his storybook ending. one last fight in his home states, a whole card built around him. The kind of sendoff most fighters can only dream of. [applause] >> It was amazing. It was I really felt appreciated this [music] week and uh what a beautiful life. It it's it's a beautiful story because I know the author. That's that's what it is.

[00:00:45]>> And this is him not even a year later.

[00:00:48]>> About bang you up.

[00:00:49]>> How How is that even possible? How does a guy who got everything, the belt, the money, the fame, the perfect goodbye, how could he end up here? That's the question that's been stuck in my head for the last few weeks.

[00:01:02]>> Struggling a little bit, not fighting, doing my head in. I don't know how.

[00:01:04]Everything's fine. I got a beautiful family. I think you just need to keep busy >> because this is not just some random bad night for one guy.

[00:01:13]And for me, um, it it took place, the drugs and alcohol issues took place with me when I was retired.

[00:01:23]>> For is the most recent name, but he's definitely not the first, and he won't be the last.

[00:01:28]>> That's why I'm so fear. That's why he feared me when I was in the ring, cuz that's all my I was annihilated. That's all I was born for.

[00:01:36]And now [snorts] those days are gone.

[00:01:38]It's empty. I'm nothing. I'm working on being the art of humbleness. Can you be with me? That's the reason why I'm crying, cuz I'm not that person no more.

[00:01:46]And I miss him.

[00:01:47]>> See, everybody thinks the hardest part of being a fighter is the actual fighting, the punches, the injuries, the weight cuts, stepping into a cage with a guy who spent months figuring out how to put you to sleep. And yeah, that stuff is brutal. But the truth is, when you listen to the guys who actually did it for a living and then walked away, almost all of them talk about a challenge nobody ever warned them about.

[00:02:08]I mean, I've been getting ready for for a sport for the last 30 years.

[00:02:12]>> Yeah.

[00:02:13]>> You know, I had something coming up, something driving me, something, you know, that I had to I keep working, keep doing stuff. And then all of a sudden, you don't have to do anything.

[00:02:21]>> And the deeper you go into it, the more you realize the fighting might have been the easy part all along.

[00:02:29][snorts] >> Fighting business is one of my favorite new channels going right now.

[00:02:33]>> Thank you to the fighting business.

[00:02:35]Absolutely amazing. And that type of stuff is like the last time I was on the show, I was talking about it's like a gift and a curse, man. It's like you have to be all in at something. Those kind of people who are built like that, >> whether it's fighting or drinking or whether it's good or bad, you're going all in. It's dangerous. There's a rule you learn pretty early in life. If you want to be great at something, you have to be allin. You can't be great at something part-time. The people who reach the very top of anything, whatever it is, are the ones who put that one thing above everything else in their life and never let it slip. That's the price of admission.

[00:03:09]>> I had a purpose. I wanted to be one of the best basketball players to ever play. And anything else that was outside of that lane, I didn't have time for.

[00:03:18]>> And fighters are the perfect example of it. To make it to the UFC, [music] to actually get to the top of the hardest sport on earth, you have no choice but to make fighting the single most important thing in your entire life.

[00:03:30]>> I've got a girlfriend who's who's near [music] who's, you know, 7 months pregnant. I don't really care.

[00:03:35]>> Everything else comes second, I guess.

[00:03:38]>> I've got a daughter in Brazil right now who I haven't seen for one year. I don't really care. I just care about legacy and greatness. That's what I'm in this for. I'm not in this to to make money, be a champion, and leave. I'm in this for people to say at the end of it, you are the greatest. That's my only mentality. [ __ ] money and [ __ ] everything else.

[00:03:54]>> Because when you make one thing the center of your entire world, it slowly stops being something you do. And it starts being who you are. It's what you think about when you wake up, what you think about when you go to sleep. It's what you talk about, what you plan your whole life around, the reason behind every decision you make. And for [music] a while, that's a beautiful thing. It's what makes you successful. It's what makes you special. It gives your life this insane sense of purpose that most people go their whole lives never feeling. But like I said, there is a hidden cost to this obsession. It consumed me, man. It consumed me.

[00:04:27]Fighting was my entire life. And now post fighting, it's like separating myself from the fighters. I'm I'm trying to figure it out still.

[00:04:36]>> For Dustin Porier, that obsession took him from a troubled kid in Louisiana with nothing going for him all the way to interim champion of the world. It made him millions. It made him one of the most respected and beloved fighters of his entire generation. Everything that rule promises. Dustin got it. He's the proof that being allin actually pays off. I didn't go [music] to school.

[00:04:58]Fighting was my my education. You know, traveled the world and met people [music] and sat at tables I would have never dreamed of be, you know, sitting at through fighting. Uh it was just incredible journey. But he's also the proof of the hidden cost.

[00:05:14]>> You dusting bargain, >> man. You bro, just just relax, >> man. You and her.

[00:05:20]>> Because the same obsession that built him up is the exact same thing that left him with nothing to fall back on the day he walked away. For 20 years, Dustin Porier was a fighter. That was the whole identity. So when the fighting stopped, [music] he ran straight into that question he'd never had to answer before. Who am I?

[00:05:37]>> It's like I'm relearning who I am. Like I always knew fighting was just something I did. It wasn't who I was.

[00:05:43][music] But after 20 years of doing it, even though you know that and you think that, like it, [ __ ] I don't know who I am without fighting. And it turned out he didn't have an answer at all. Think about what a fighter's life actually look like when they're active. There's always a fight coming. There's always a date circled on a calendar, some opponent on the other side of the world getting ready for them. And every single day is built around getting ready for that moment. You wake up early because you have to train. You eat a certain way because you have to make weights. Every week has a purpose. Every session is one step closer to the fight. Your whole life has this rhythm to it. This constant forward motion. And there's a specific goal at the end of it that gives everything you do a reason.

[00:06:23]Fighters love that. Even the part that sucks. The camps, the weight cuts, the early mornings. Deep down, they love having something to chase. I think we all do. It gives them a mission. It gives every day a point. But when they retire, all of that just evaporates overnight.

[00:06:39]>> I'm like a It's honestly, bro, I'm a danger to myself when I'm have nothing.

[00:06:43]No goal circled on my calendar. I'm a danger to myself, man.

[00:06:46]>> Yeah.

[00:06:46]>> Yeah. I beat I beat myself up mentally.

[00:06:49]I I'm home. I drink. I'm It's just not good. I have to have some [music] kind of battle.

[00:06:53]>> There's no fight coming anymore. No date on the calendar, no opponent, no camp, no reason to get up at 6:00 in the morning and grind. For the first time in 20 years, the days are just empty. And nobody tells you how to handle that.

[00:07:06]Nobody teaches you what to do with all that time when there's suddenly nothing to work towards. You go from a life where every hour had a purpose to a life where you're just trying to figure out how to fill the day.

[00:07:16]>> Just kind of a little lost, you know, it's it's a little weird spot to be in for a lot of people. So, you know, you still got a lot of things to do, but you got to you got to find something that drives you for a while. And that's exactly where it gets dangerous. Because when a guy has nothing to fill those empty days with, something always creeps in to fill them for him. If he's dealing with any kind of mental battles, unanswered questions, unhealed trauma, any of the stuff that fighting used to keep buried under all that structure, it comes right up to the surface now that the structure is gone. And for the first time in his life, he has no way to outrun it. He just has to sit there and face it completely on his own.

[00:07:54]>> You've got no boxing no more. you know, you can't share what you've done with your mom and dad. You can't share it with your trainer and you you you you haven't you haven't got a Mrs. or wife any you haven't got Mrs. anymore. I thought, what do I need to be here for?

[00:08:09]That's not a coincidence. That's what happens when you take away everything a man's day was built around and hand him nothing to replace it with. Now, here's where someone usually stops me and says, "Okay, but these are rich guys. A successful fighter walks away with money in the bank. Who cares if the routine's gone? Go enjoy it. And honestly, that sounds right. Think about it. Money and all the free time in the world is literally the dream. That's the thing every single person on the planet is working towards. We spend our whole lives hoping to retire with enough money that we never have to work again so we can just relax and do whatever we want.

[00:08:43]That's supposed to be the finish line, the reward for a life of hard work. So why isn't it enough for these guys? Why do so many fighters get exactly that?

[00:08:53]and still fall apart. Think about what a fighter actually gets from this sport.

[00:08:58]Strip away the money, the belts, the fame for a second and ask what's really underneath all of it. Because that's the thing they lose the day they retire and it's the one thing none of that money can ever buy back.

[00:09:09]>> Has there ever been anything that compared?

[00:09:11]>> No, nothing ever will. Nothing. I have a void inside of me that nothing will you know being a father is very fulfilling and and I love it. But nothing fills that void of what fighting was in my life. You know, I haven't found anything yet. I don't think there is.

[00:09:27]>> There is nothing on earth like walking to that cage. The fear and the adrenaline hitting you at the exact same time. Tens of thousands of people screaming your name, knowing you're about to do the most dangerous thing a human being can do with another human being watching. And then that moment when your hand gets raised, when [music] everything you sacrifice for pays off in front of the entire world, that is a high that does not exist anywhere else in life. You can't recreate it. You can't find it in a business, in a hobby, in a relationship. Nothing else even comes close. Why return?

[00:09:59]What is this that is pulling [music] you back into the game?

[00:10:03]>> My most state of freedom is making that walk. [music] You know, I yearn for competition and at the core of it, I do this for fun.

[00:10:13]This is fun to me to get in, compete against another able body in a live event, you know, ignite the passion of the fans and the entire ecosystem around the fight game. I enjoy it. I get great pleasure out of it. That's it. That's why I'm back. I'm back for the fun, for the thrill.

[00:10:30]>> That's the cruel part. These guys retire thinking the money and the free time will be enough. And then they spend the rest of their lives chasing a feeling they're never going to feel again. So they go looking for it somewhere else.

[00:10:42]And for a lot of fighters, that search leads straight to drugs, alcohol, partying. It's the fastest hit of dopamine you can find. And after 20 years of walking out in front of thousands of people with everything on the line, that's about the only thing left that gets them anywhere close to how fighting felt. The high isn't as big. It isn't as real. It's obviously not as rewarding. But it's the nearest thing to that feeling they crave. And that's why the list of fighters who walked away with everything and still ended up lost in a bottle is so long. It was the closest they could get to a feeling they were never going to have again. That's one way of chasing the feeling. But there is another because the guys who don't disappear into all of that usually go chasing it in the one place they know it actually lives. They come back.

[00:11:28]>> I'm back. Trust me. I back.

[00:11:30]>> I'm back.

[00:11:32]>> Back, baby.

[00:11:32]>> Why are you back? because it's easy money.

[00:11:34]>> I think I'm going to go back as Zoe.

[00:11:35]>> If it's the right fight, I'll come back for sure.

[00:11:37]>> They'll tell you they're back to challenge themselves again. They're back to prove they've still got it. That there's still the best in the world, that there's one more run left in them.

[00:11:46]And they believe it, too. That's the most important part. They actually convince themselves that's why they're doing it.

[00:11:52]>> The [ __ ] am I doing? I can beat all these guys still. [music] These top guys that are winning now and and fighting now on these upcoming cards, I can I can beat them still.

[00:12:04]I know I can't.

[00:12:05]>> But that's not really why they're back, is it? They're back because they couldn't handle the other side of it.

[00:12:12]>> I hate you.

[00:12:14]>> Because they got out there into retired life [music] and couldn't figure out who they were without fighting. Couldn't sit in those empty days. Couldn't find that feeling anywhere else. The comeback isn't really about proving anything.

[00:12:24]It's an escape. It's running back to the one place that made them feel like themselves. because the alternative was facing a life where they don't know who they are anymore.

[00:12:32]>> Former UFC star BJ Penn was arrested yesterday for the third time in six days. The 46-year-old was first arrested on May 25th for allegedly assaulting his 79-year-old mother. It's like getting out of a relationship with someone you were obsessed with, someone who gave you the best years of your life, who made you feel things nobody else ever did, and now they're gone and you're miserable. And deep down, you know you're never going to find anyone who makes you feel that way again. So [music] what do you do? You go crawling back because the thought of living your whole life without ever feeling that again is impossible to accept. That's what the cage is for a lot of these guys. It's the ex they just can't get over. They felt something in that cage they are never going to feel anywhere else in life. And once they get out into the real world and realize nothing even comes close, walking away from it forever becomes impossible. So they convince [music] themselves they're coming back for the challenge to prove they still got it. To chase greatness one more time. But really, they just can't accept a life without that feeling. The comeback was never about proving anything. It's about getting back to one thing that made them feel truly alive. And once you [music] understand that, everything about the way fighters retire starts to make sense. It was never really about the fighting. It was about the feeling. And when that feeling's gone, [music] these guys will do almost anything to get it back, even if it destroys them.

[00:13:53]>> Uh, you know, I saw read all the things that the fans were saying. A lot of my fans want to see it. Mhm.

[00:13:58]>> A lot of other people saying, "I can't do it. I'm too old. Been out of the game too long." I took it as a challenge. I love a challenge.

[00:14:04]>> Mhm.

[00:14:05]>> And so, here I am. I'm ready to knock this fool out one more time.

[00:14:10]>> You know, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I really feel like a program to help these fighters once their career is done could go a long way. Sending them to therapy if they need it, helping them with their financial decisions.

[00:14:20]>> What do you have left to prove? Don't you just want to make money now?

[00:14:22]>> Yeah. But, but that's why I'm in this game.

[00:14:25]>> What?

[00:14:25]>> I'm in this game. I'm in this game to make money.

[00:14:27]>> Maybe pointing them towards a career for the next chapter of their life.

[00:14:30]>> Do they offer you any support with that [music] retirement process >> as far as >> as far as giving you a like a road map for how to deal with the mental shift?

[00:14:39]>> No.

[00:14:40]>> There's no like sort of post fighting profile.

[00:14:43]>> There should be for sure there should be, but no. [music] >> Something like that could genuinely help, but at the end of the day, it's all up to them. For a lot of these guys, the same obsession that made them great is the exact thing that won't let them rest.

[00:14:57]>> There's had to be a point throughout this 5 years when he's planning this comeback that he looks in the mirror and and asks himself, "What the hell am I doing? Why am I doing this?" You know, he's a smart guy that he had to be honest with himself at some point in the last 5 years or at some point in this training camp and said, "What am I doing?" And I believe the answer to that is he's addicted to the limelight. He's addicted to people talking about him.

[00:15:20]He's addicted to being in headlines.

[00:15:21]>> That drive to win, to be the best, to chase that feeling. It's so deeply ingrained in them that it'll keep pulling them back towards [music] the same bad decisions no matter what kind of safety net you put underneath them.

[00:15:32]>> I'm never going to be that, you know.

[00:15:33]I'm never going to be the guy that goes and gets arrested or gets hooked on drugs or [music] blows all of his money and just, you know, you see it over and over and not just in fighting, in professional [music] sports. You know, it's like you've done something so long your whole life. so intense [music] and so you know it takes all of you when it's gone it's like what else can I do to the maximum what else dopamine hit can I [music] get what can I just pour myself into and go crazy on something you know and a lot of times it's bad things dangerous things [music] >> and that's what makes the Dustin Pory story so heavy here's a guy who did everything right he won he made his money he got the perfect send off he's beloved by everybody in the sporting right now >> um >> and he still ended end up struggling the second the fighting stopped. Not because he did anything wrong, but because he gave every last piece of himself to this sport. And when it was over, there wasn't much left underneath it. [music] And that's really where all of these guys end up. They give us the greatest moments the sport has ever seen. The knockouts, the wars, the comebacks, all of it. And then one day, it's done. And the crowd goes home and they're left sitting there with all this life still ahead of them and no idea what to do with it. Because when it's all said and done, fighting was never their whole life. It was just a part of it. A huge part. The biggest part maybe, but still just a part.

[00:16:55]>> She said, "You didn't get the BMF belt."

[00:16:57]And also, she hates curse words and stuff like that. So, like she she didn't like the BMF belt, but she gave me this.

[00:17:03][music] She made this for me.

[00:17:06]>> Wait, put it a little bit lower. A little lower. Uh, best dad ever. Oh my god, that is incredible, man.

[00:17:12]>> I got the I don't have the BMF, but I got the BDE, bro. Yeah, that's even better. That's better. That's one of one.

[00:17:18]>> And now they've got to answer the hardest question any human being can ask themselves. The one they spent [music] 20 years too busy to ever think about.

[00:17:27]Who am I?

[00:17:29]Dustin at least got to ask that question on his own terms. Connor didn't even get that. He experienced something even worse than a loss. [music] It was something I've genuinely never seen happen to a fighter before. Not once in the history of this sport. [music] And it took less than 10 seconds. I broke down the biggest reality check in UFC history in my last video. Click here to go check it out.