with Roadman Podcast
Listen on
This episode explores how adversity shapes character and resilience across cycling, fighting, and life. Our host digs into the importance of doing hard things, building anchor points through challenge, and why society's increasing comfort may be weakening us—all while unpacking real conversations about homelessness, class, health choices, and how to raise kids who understand struggle.
"The function of society is to protect the weak from the strong—and we miss that sometimes around homelessness, mental health, and people rehabilitating from addiction."
"Show me a great man who's the son of a great man—this is why adversity matters; inherited comfort breeds complacency, but inherited struggle breeds strength."
"We had nothing but we had everything in a way—we had as much love as we needed and as much spiritual guidance as we needed; money wasn't the measure of wealth."
“the function of society is to protect the weak from the strong and that's what i thought about during that time when people like you with medical conditions were getting excluded from society the function of society is to protect the people who are getting excluded and we miss that sometimes we miss that around homelessness we miss that around people rehabilitating from drug problems people with mental health problems we we exclude those and we step over them on the streets”
“i have a factor 13 deficiency um i couldn't take this ejection or this job whatever so what's a factor 13 so factor 14 deficiency is basically a blue disorder so i had to retire from the ufc um it's a clone problem so basically all of the the factors come except the last one which seals the clot in place which makes it a little bit dangerous”
“drugs was not a problem until they start crossing classes that's what we started seeing so i grew up in jobstown and where drugs was obviously the way i was going the state heroin was was always there now we didn't grow up in the 80s um but my family did and when heroin came to to earliest working-class areas and stuff like that and all it ravaged them because people that are in bad situations are trying to escape reality as well”
WANT THIS APPLIED TO YOUR TRAINING?
Not Done Yet coaching builds your plan around these principles.
5 pillars. Personalised TrainingPeaks plan. Weekly calls. $195/month, 7-day free trial.
Apply for Coaching →I give so much of myself to people already but then it gets to a stage where i'm like i'm just not doing it anymore you don't show me attention anymore it's like maybe that's for a reason welcome to the road man podcast thank you so much to the robot i love that patty this is the first time we've done there in studio so welcome i think well we're well into episodes 440 probably all the time this comes out and it's our first in person i think if i look at another screen where to zoom on i'm gonna get sick i think everyone's feeling that way the pendulum has to swing both ways though and we were talking off uh air before we can you say that offer when it's in person and we were talking off here about the pendulum and these sensationalist headlines and you had your podcast and you discontinued it you know in part because of these sort of snippets and sound bites that people are taking and then making them into big headlines i think that's super prevalent we're seeing it even with joe rogan and it happened to him but i always think the pendulum swings both ways and it'll swing back the other way to sensibility and long-form conversations and that's why i still love the podcast some things can't be put in a container they can't a complex issue can't be reduced to 500 words no 100 so even the podcast i think you you're mentioning there is like is a mixture of two podcasts and it's um one of them is three hours long so it's like a um for the the pendulum swinging there that's crazy because i was only talking to something about someone had mentioned the pendulum and i had said this i said i feel like there's kind of like a little there's a change on the heroism or something and they said the pendulum has to swing all the way up and then it has to come back and for your balance and i was like has it ever fell in balance because that's the world i want to live in yeah it's wings on everything and it's i'm looking at the you know level of inactivity people had and how they prioritize stuff in their life they prioritized i love generalizations because that's all we have time for but for a long time people a large part of society they prioritize this chase for something in the distance a mirage i'll be happy when the stoics call it the hedonic treadmill i'd be happy when i get to this invisible thing in the distance most of the time most monastery stuff houses cars clothes clothes watches but the pandemic was a little bit of a reset on that people and said hold on you can't walk around 20 30 kilograms overweight you're gonna if if a pandemic doesn't get you a strong breeze is gonna get you you know you need to look after yourself 100 percent i think i think uh john laddie who actually introduced me to yourself great on the podcast he's a top left john's great man you know um and it is we can't have conversations here like um people get offended these days where offended used to be part of of free speech basically so and it was kind of like a boy product of it now i aimed about offending people let me tell you i would fight teeth and nail to defend somebody who was trying to to be it defend them but like sometimes it gets a little it can get a little bit um you can't have a conversation now because you are going to offend someone so say john and john would have been pointing out the idea that like um heart disease and stuff like that is a massive killer in this country i don't know all countries all over the world and um people who smoke and and drink a lot and don't exercise on him but it that that's that's the truth that's not saying that but that could offend somebody because it would feel like someone was pushing them to do something they didn't want to and i'm about i'm about choice and a lot of stuff so if you want to eat 10 burgers a day each i heard that so i said if you want to run 20 marathons in 20 days eat your heart though you know so i'm a liar choice i'm normally of the opinion that i don't really care what you're doing why the legal code of my moral call don't line up totally alone and no matter what you want to do have at it like if you're not hurting someone else in the process and it's making you happy have at it but the thing that you know me and john lily talked about a little bit on the podcast where both of us took a little bit of events you know i'm not i'm projecting here a little bit but i'm assuming you're in the same boat the health and fitness and but mental and physical health it's such a huge part of your life it's it's 24 7. it's 365. it's not a pill it's not an injection it's not an afterthought so you can't have someone coming along or the only times i took offense during the pandemic where people coming along and virtue signaling to me saying you're not healthy because you didn't take this injection and it's like hold on don't talk to me about health oh he was weighing me oatmeal this morning yeah that's serious yeah wait an oatmeal you know you're going deep um so here's what we're probably having a um this is we're not saying exclusive but something we haven't disclosed already so i'm obviously in the council um and let me tell you i get to see virtue at its finest stem hypocrisy and virtue go hand in hand that's what i'm starting to realize because um we have a factor 13 deficiency um i couldn't take this ejection or this job whatever so what's a factor 13 so factor 14 deficiency is basically a blue disorder so i had to retire from the ufc um it's a clone problem so basically all of the the factors come except the last one which seals the clot in place which makes it a little bit dangerous and so we made a decision after doing research on this um but not even on what the vaccine was but what on mrna was um the the process of administrating the vaccine so i had about two years there where because i have a medical condition that i ended up in a place in society that i probably thought i never would um i couldn't go in and have a coffee in a place or sit down in a place because they had a medical condition um but they were and no one would have a problem saying to me or you're an anti-vaxxer and like saying it to me face and you could have two three people saying it but the same people would be the people who would be virtue signaling in the next conversation so i couldn't um take an ejection so he was in a situation where people who would be um he would scream about inclusive inclusive and and and against like discrimination and so and rightly so had no problem in a few weeks turning all of them mortals around and and basically i felt i felt alienated and i'm sure other people did um not and not even our medical conditions are overwhelming because maybe the reason they didn't want to take it or or they didn't wanted to to do what somebody was saying what they should do and and not only that without facts so it wasn't like someone had a piece of scientific paper saying here's all the facts here's all the knowledge and you're going against science now because we've done all of the research it's the same i have friends who uh he recovered from cancer and he was advised not to take the injection because of whatever type of cancer that he had that it might interfere with his uh rehab and again ostracized from society and you know we we didn't chat and you probably don't know super too much about my background i came through law school before i went away to pursue a career as a pro cyclist and i remember one of the cases in law school that always stuck with me i can't remember the case uh name but that's not important the story is basically there's tree lads out on a fishing boat the fishing boat get loses its way badly one of the lads on the boat gets very sick now they're not a point where they're they're gonna die if i think it was agreed in the trial they're gonna die if they don't eat there's no way of catching fish out there before some smart terrorist asks they didn't have a rod they know baits that's always gonna ask so they decided they were gonna eat one of the lads so one of the lads the weakest he was the sickest and he got eaten and it came to trial and they were charged with homicide and their defense came back and said it was necessity they they were all gonna die if they didn't need them and they were found guilty of homicide because the judge said the function of society is to protect the weak from the strong and that's what i thought about during that time when people like you with medical conditions were getting excluded from society the function of society is to protect the people who are getting excluded and we miss that sometimes we miss that around homelessness we miss that around people rehabilitating from drug problems people with mental health problems we we exclude those and we step over them on the streets they still do they still do there's like i think it was like 115 uh homeless people died so we do do a lot and in with like him with groups with the homicide like listen when or you kind of facilitate that's what we say we're helping the homeless in a way because there's absolute angels out there who are on them streets all of the time that's not me every now and again i get to go and i'm blessed to be able to be around like powerful souls because people do are in homeless situations so when you sit and talk to these people all you'll start seeing that they're not stronger than a lot of people that you might actually know because they have to they're forced there they have to they battle the elements they have to to understand but they live they're living in a different world because their need for what they may have to get whether it's food or whether it's whether it's uh to support an addiction or them anything like that that becomes their life their life is now longer people why don't they just get up and do anointing to foreign it's like they live in a different realm but it's because they saw it they failed them like we're we we treated uh drug addiction and alcoholism and all this kind of stuff as like as like a criminal behavior or basically stuff like that where it's known now that's it's not it's like an addiction it's a sickness something it's a human thing it's a it's a mortal thing if you get me you know so if you where you have somebody you have the possibility of somebody being able to get addicted to whether it's gambling whether it's whether it's sex whether it's drugs and stuff like that but a society looks at them people as i'm like oh look that's your own fault now but that's not the way we should be looking at these people who can't when it comes to say what you're saying homeless and stuff like that it's like these people are some of the strongest people and some of the smartest people that you'll ever meet but they live in a realm where that can't be seen you know but you mentioned the word hypocrite earlier on and i often think about that when you're you're talking about uh drug abuse there and you know my friends on top like couldn't be further on the socio-economic spectrum like some guys who are some of the richest guys in ireland some friends who have come up and shockingly terrible you know circumstances and still live in abstract poverty and there's one thing that strikes me as there's almost no connection between money and happiness but another is it's the snobbery around the different types of drug and how we've categorized different types of dragon upper class people look down their nose at people that are on heroin on the street and go scumbag junkie he's taking heroin but at the same time they'll have no problem taking a line or two or cocaine in the night club at the weekend or more so like more often than the weekend and that that's it um drugs was not a problem until they start crossing classes that's what we started seeing so i grew up in jobstown and where drugs was obviously the way i was going the state heroin was was always there now we didn't grow up in the 80s um but my family did and when heroin came to to earliest working-class areas and stuff like that and all it ravaged them because people that are in bad situations are trying to escape reality as well they're trying to get away from this stuff you know so um but then when when drugs start crossing classes are crossing they they over to with a sort of the sea that's when we start seeing it um it kind of come into like the like the real we got to have about the war on drugs now you know we've got to we got to go after this and stuff like that and and yeah that way it is drugs like like cocaine and and that's not just ireland that has been the world over so um didn't cocaine start in like hollywood and then trickle down into the hoods if you get me but you know such a detachment like i remember going to school uh a lot i went to school rest in peace but the national flags you know i would have played football with him and been close enough piles with him you know he was killed in gangland's killing you know drug dealing you know the only stuff he showed in the bay not endorsing that and he was killed i remember coming home i was riding the bike in france my mom picked me up at the airport she's like do you hear your friends after getting killed he's it must have been a case of mistaken identity and i was thinking it definitely wasn't the case mistaken identity he probably had that coming to him but in then in law school and you know seeing people and their casual adoption of cocaine with a total detachment on that killing in north dublin we're a total attachment on the consequences of drugs where drugs come from where that supply line comes from they think it's you know made marks and spencers are delivered to them through you know a deliverer driver that that same um kind of like shield or block um is not just for drugs it's where it's with everything you know it's it it stops people from seeing homelessness it stops people from seeing the parties that have systematically created homelessness through their policies and and they're able to just disappear basically so they the drug problem in in in the world if you look at places like porsche who have um to release trucks so they basically they all drugs are illegal and crawling went down thing went down because it's it becomes a human thing as well where the the the kind of when you take away the warmth or you take away you can't have kind of situation it does take away a little bit of the people the addiction uh property to it it also takes the cool factor when you're a kid like what did you want to do when you're massage you can't play football after dinner the only thing you wanted to do was play football after dinner yep 100 and what you were saying there so you you mentioned something there if you give me a minute to and this will country and explain what my view of this is that so um you you mentioned like someone grew up in really really nice house headings and then someone grew up an absolute squatter and to me our bodies are just kind of like a shell or like a vehicle to hold um how their spirit and how their soul if you must you know um and it's things like greed and and lust and and and like jealousy and all of them things are not generally bad things they're sensors so the sensors so we can actually touch up close to these problems or these things that our body would want to do and we get to practice so we get to get better and not being greedy we get to get better at not um having 10 kids because you can't stop your addiction just probably sleeping with having multiple sexual relationships yeah in a way and then you've got 10 kids running around and to me the reason why it is so say if you grew up in a you know walking class housing or something like that you will get to meet this stuff very early so you will get to meet the idea of like like fear would be another one i'm gonna have to face this fair where sometimes you might have to you might be too protected if your life is too comfortable and now i'm not saying fear doesn't happen in different ways but it might happen for a long time until you're older and you might get to a certain age so you just run for it for the rest of your life and you might even know you're running from it to me this body and this this this all we have here we are humans we're mere mortals when we go to the other side or when we die or what we do people go ah you're just doing you're going a hole in the ground you absolutely do not 100 you do not already and this process here is about being able to transcend through that there's gonna be nobody standing at the pearly gates going yes and no so the message of be good and you go to heaven be bad and you go to hell it's kind of like a kind of like the title on a book if you get me okay because if you do loads of bad in your life when you transcend and you go to the other side you will be looking you won't be able to get through the badness you won't be able to get through that things that's facing you and you will probably spend the rest of your time wherever that space is if you don't have to deal with that if you ever have to deal with the badness because you were really good in your life you will bounce out of the lobby and you will start going into the other realms of where like where we need to be this is a process this is a big exercise i think and and our body is just a whole like our spirit our soul and the sensors these are all tests every single day you mentioned growing up in jobstown and i remember pretty vividly the first one of my first days in first year in school and you're in the yard and it's you're sort of force time experience in this the heart rate's elevating the palms are getting a bit sweaty and you're like i'm going to be in a fight there's a fight coming you do experience them this sort of sensation and this some people encounter this you know until they're you know 45 years old on dawson's three coming out of a nightclub and they're like oh my god this is the first time i felt this but when you are in working-class house in the states this is something you're confronted with earlier in life and talk to me about that first experience and how that led you to start floyd um every day we would have dealt with that look and in a good way you know like and sometimes your friends sometimes they they well i think bully is a hard word because bully can happen in so many ways but sometimes it was just another kid that was a little bit pissed off you were a bit smarter than him and he gave you a clue it wasn't deeper than that people would be like well he must be a bully and have psychological issues no we all grew up in a rough place or he was blessed so when i wrote my book the hooligan i wrote in that that wee house was a safe haven oh he was able to go back to my house we never suffered any abuse or anything in my house my mother was still is the most incredible woman i've ever met in my life she doesn't know how annie grudges people have done her terrible things bad things and she would send them nothing but prayers are great she's she's invincible in that way you know um so but then other kids i know maybe people a little bit further around not you won't say come closer so people can't recognize people or whatever it is but but they wouldn't have had safe havens to go back to so when i was out in the street it was like i was getting thrown into the ring for a little while and i'd be like hey and then i go back to my house and i'm like i was mad and i kind of recovered or i think some kids that spirit or maybe even as young adults is getting chipped at every single day of their life and by the time they get to a certain age they they have to consume something or do something to just escape a reality they're trying to escape their body they're trying to escape the responsibility of these sensors that i'm talking about because the minute they get a lot of money they they spend a lot or the minute they they they get like say a good relationship they start they need to be untrue or unloyal and they need to have maybe a girlfriend on the soil all of these things as they're getting all their stuff because they don't know how to understand that like how to just enjoy now well it's almost like their natural resting state is conflict so they're trying to so they've grown up in this constant conflict in their house so as they journey through life if they find a partner that's very peaceful it's almost like well i need to chip at this to get back to my state of conflict because that's what i know and that's what i need it's interesting though that you were going out and you were able to get into these scraps but then you were coming home into the safe haven because that's very similar to the life of a fighter where you're going out stepping into the limelight the public eyes you're scrapping in the octagon but then you're going away and you're going back to the safe environment the home skills to a very disciplined existence and then stepping back in again and it mirrors what you experienced as a kid yeah like and safe haven i mean like we were broke we we hadn't got a lot of money it was like like he couldn't get down and take like pick whatever yogurt you want out of their fridge you'd probably be lucky if that was yogurt you're not kind of stuck but did you know you were no no i didn't like um i can't remember who i think is tupac says in a song but he was like like it's like we had nothing but we had everything in a way and we did i had as much love as i needed i had as much like his spiritual guidance that i needed all of that kind of stuff in my way like and religion wasn't shoved down with trout football teams wouldn't shove down my trout all of these things that i think that people kind of like to get annoying to because they're born somewhere you know now you mentioned jobs town so jobs town is a place that i love and and it's always somewhere that would be close to my heart it shaped me it made me who i am the adversity i let it in and i already shaped me but i also spent a lot of time in a place called lanadown in anderson's town in belfast um jordan jordan a heavy times so probably 93 95 96 you know coming up to the good friday agreement where there was a lot of so i understood a few things of like madness i'd be going back to jobs town and there'd be like a fight on the road and i'd be like and he'd be oh i was mad i'm like you think that's bad well madness absolute madness witnessed in belfast like i witnessed like two 300 people on a field fighting against basically the army in the corner and they would be shooting and shooting plastic bullets into the crowd and they can't i was only young you know what i mean i seen true um discourse in how the media repeat part stuff as well very young so you understand this as an adult and i would see somebody i don't know maybe maybe getting hurt in in a situation and then on the newspaper i would see how how they had aggravated stated the police or they had done something when it was the absolute opposite but these anchor points are so important then you spoke with john lally mutual friend of ours uh you know his dad i'm not sure what you know about his dad with his dad's one of the best boycotters ever produced he still rides with us on a saturday every saturday he's great mid-80s but me and john spoke about this at lentz and it's the idea of doing hard stuff and having these hard anchor points in your life you're talking about you know a rough environment in jobs telling a rough environment living in belfast but when you come along and you have a little bit of adversity in your life then it's not like oh my god this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me you have an anchor point and go yeah it's a bad day but it's not that bad like i i encourage everyone to have them in cycling you know there's a big culture and cycling the mom the training indoors i'm like get outdoors training the weather train in the snow train in the rain because some of the experiences that i look back on that form here you know racing in canada and i remember one race in particular going out there and i was staying in a hotel near the start line and i looked down and everyone's wrapped up scarves long gloves you know ready for proper winter and i was like we're boycracking here and i was like you know what [ __ ] them i'm going down shorts and jerseys no gloves i'm going to start going lads are looking at me on what's this ladder up then i'm like not even this is a grand day back in ireland what he is on about and it was like immediately like he's here to race he's not over here training he's here to race and i froze to peace like got finished go hypothermia you know shake and couldn't use my hands for days after but i'm out in a race now two three years later and i'm like jesus this is very cold you have that anchor point and go it's cold but it's not as cold as that day was 100 and the thing is a lot of people have that the opposite way i think i think we're like sometimes things can happen that are absolutely the end of the world when they're really not sometimes like waiting oh you hear stories all the time and i'm honest with people i'm a coach too to a massive community and i'm the head coach there on the on the head gorilla you know what i mean in a way so so i guess some people are saying some stuff to me and some stuff could be like [ __ ] that's a serious situation we can try and get them queens but then some of it would be like let's take this away take that away and then that's [ __ ] it's nothing and they're like when you put it like that yeah so it's the idea of being able to have their manga points and nobody's problems are are able to be gauged i think by other people as well because we don't know how it affects people but some people need to talk from the top and i don't mean that in a bad way i'm not saying it like i mean for me and my circle in that way if if you're getting say they come to and they see the race and they see the snow and that's enough to not make them even get on the bike now that's where you need you would be going like how long here you need to get on the bike at least because that's the start to eat to realize that even that you couldn't do it you couldn't finish the race if you don't get on the break you'll never even know but you know what you zoom out and you take that principle of doing hard things and the more i start thinking about it it's more of a principle that governs my life it's everything it's doing the hard thing saying this evening you know long day we're gonna we're doing this podcast and you're going like this even what am i gonna cook what's the easy thing what's the hard thing the easy things take away what's the hard thing it's getting putting the backpack on it's walking to the shop filling it with groceries coming back chopping it what's the easy thing driving into the car to work what's the hard thing cycling in what's the easy thing skipping the gym session the hard thing doing the gym session the hard way is always the right way they think there's something in that in society to kind of like i don't know like when you see like the introduction of you if you go back 10 years say for for iphones or whatever it is like that to introduce this kind of like um like stabilized state of people in a way like if we just keep everybody everything handy everyone more efficient more smooth everything people will just basically be compliant and people will not have that that push back that i am that hardcore or them anchor points that you're talking about imagine what happens in 20 years when it rolls forward like um someone asked me i think it was it was actually the conversation we had here but my young lad was like like why would be like if he walked on a building site monday to florida now i would expect he'd probably need therapy you know what i mean it was the same building oh he walked down as a cage and now and it was like he just rolled off with these things still i know what society gets better we get the high low stuff and we get to recognize stuff which means that like that was bad and maybe we were down for too long and that needs to stop we absolutely understand that that happens but then you get people that's kind of like it's that job and they're like right what can we find now that wasn't like that was basically maybe a little bit kind of controversial in a way and we need to like outcast it now and make a big campaign a bit and stomp it out and let's make it all safe again like if it's a cup if it's too safe everything's just too safe all of the time and we concentrate on like let's look let's nobody's ever going to die ever again like it's like are you having a laugh like oh you don't want that life or you want to die someday or you want to go to whatever which what's happening i'm in the journey now of having a movie fourth kid on the way and i've built a lot from absolute scratch in a way so as i mean it's like i was never given like a deposit for my gym i was never given like things that i have in my life i made it with my hands and i feel that that i know that's in my body and my kids when i have my kids that's in them i can see it in them even in that behavior says my kid is sheamus is two at three years of age now and he's mad he wants to play outside he wants to be in the mock he wants to skid around he said he likes a bit of the youtube and stuff like that but he gets in moderation but but that's what he yarns for he wants to go to the mountains he wants to do these things and that's to me is like um when you do it in your life it actually does go into your kids yeah you definitely need to be that example that you want i talked to because behind the podcast we have a coaching company and we coach uh cyclists and we coach them and a big folks it used to be when i started out the coaching company i started when i was in france and i was trying to be a pro-cyclist and i was broke because i went to law school and you know talk going back to when we were talking about you know growing up poor and never knew you were poor i remember being in mass a few weeks ago and ordered a takeaway and she was telling me a story about she's like that takeaway you're spending 50 quid on sushi she's like i remember walking from here to fairview to take a fiver out with the atm machine for dinner because it was the only atm machine in dublin that would give flavors and she's like i didn't have the money for the bus fare down and i didn't want to waste money on the bus back because it'd be less fooled she's like you're not spending a 50 quid on sushi i'm like yeah so it was coming from that you know i didn't get law school fees handed to me there was no like there's your law school go and enjoy it it was like you know you want to go to college you know work on the bill and saw it in somewhere take save your money pay your bill for college get your loan from the credit union so when i got a contract over in france i lost go alone to kick back in so i need to start paying back the law school now so i was like right i have an internet connection how can i make a few quid an internet connection apart of cycling is as i'm sure ufc and we'll get into it in a minute you're trying hard with your rest hard well yes so i was wrestling hearts i was like feet are up but i have a laptop and i have an internet connection let's figure out how to make money and that's where the coaching company started from from this shitty little bedroom outside a town near close to bordeaux started from there and it was an entrepreneur of necessity i tell people at the time but it you learn so much from that you know be forced to deal with that stuff you learn just there's there's something about a back against the wall because for me at the time it was quit your dream of being a cyclist and go get a job in law or else figure this out and it's like [ __ ] going to the head here i need to figure this out and the clock is ticking because that trigger's getting pulled soon and i'll tell you get some creativity and inspiration from that situation and i just don't think a lot of that the backs are going to end up against the walls now and maybe like you ever hear that saying that i am like um weak people create hard times yeah hard times create um hardcovers create tough people both people create um good times and good times great week it goes around in a second and that kind of way like oh you don't know what kind of phase we are at that i've got to question myself now what phase are we at that because i would do everything in my power for my kids really but i know or maybe i have the sense on and i don't know if everybody has this day that they're gonna have to have to get adversity they have to feel what cold waters look like if my kids are like oh it's too cold get me a wetsuit it's like no you gotta try it get in you'll be grabbed breathe it out breathe out oh i am ground and then they play in the water or a little bit of a diversity now we don't want them going through the university it went through but the back is good they're gonna have to understand what that feeling's like what you were saying do you worry about that with the kids what's it saying show me a great man who's the son of a great man yes and this is it because this is what i was going to touch on now roy so we are in a situation in this country with like and this pops straight away from we're talking about where the hell's in crisis okay so in the famine the land grab happened and the lamb the land basically was was rented to to the citizens i won't even say irish citizen state citizens that called this place home basically all right so we're in a situation now where a large percent of this country um owns a small percent of this country holds a large percent of the of the the property in this country basically so um say for an example um give me two minutes on this as well so we don't i'm not i don't i don't butcher it so we have a program in ireland called the hap program russo which is the housing assistance payment program which most people would need need now these days because they can't rent and they can't buy okay so if you're earning another thirty six thousand euro you can apply for it to be on a social housing list well this would take 12 years in this country right we get friends from liverpool so and we communicate with people over there how long it actually takes over there okay takes 12 years to be housed so you will be waiting 12 years so in that place they will give you um the housing assistance so all right hap can be updated up to 900 quid okay a month and it's kind of like yeah this is great we're like we're housing people and we're helping people to be housed then we need to go back to what i just said a small minority in this country owns a large amount of the property okay so when they're waiting to be housed into a council house for 12 years the taxpayers found that a public portion will be paying this to approve a landlord so say if i don't know i'll say if some freedom file affinification or shin fine td or whatever it is they own four properties and they have four people in there at a half paying for pen hub in 12 years they will own them four properties every and they could still rent them basically okay but then they they have they die because we all have to die and then they pass them on to their kids and their kids become landlords basically to people who are working knowing the foyer who are people are the children of people who have walked 95 so we are going into a direction where this is only going to get worse and there's a reason why it's not getting solved the homelessness when someone's was lying in a doorway or someone's doing it on the street and it's it's on the newspaper and stuff like that and all that's probably to forgive me for saying this and i don't mean it this way but it's one of the biggest advertisements to why pay our mortgage because we're ruthless and we will take your house off you and we will put you on the street oh you want you want you want accommodation we have a we have a hustle down here for you but you have to be out in the morning and then when you look at how much money's going into this sorry then you realize this is a business though they would be renting beds if you're going to the dhra and or you get some of the reports and stuff like that from it because because i'm a counselor i get to see this stuff i know what's going on they could fix this tomorrow and we would have no housing problems but not only that if we don't have housing problems guess what goes down the rent it's difficult but this is why stories like yours capture the public imagination so well because it's really hard to break out of the class structure it is really hard to go from working class to middle class or middle class to upper class because it's generational welfare building and you know you talk about the homeless thing and it's i'm sure with these counselors and you know i know you're in the council and politicians they're getting reports and it's numbers and i fall into this with the podcast at times as well where you're looking at stats and you're looking download numbers but behind every download number behind every statistic of someone who's homeless it's a person it's a story there's a girl down that i'm living above a shop here where we're recording at the moment there's a girl that begs outside the shop and you know i'd often come in from trying and there's a little wall there and i'd sit with her and just shoot the crack and you know how are you getting on today and yapping away with her and she's living in a tent and she's living with a tent because you know she's a real good looking girl for a homeless girl she's really good she's a good looking girl for any girl yeah but she happens to be homeless and she's real cool tattoos funky really looks after herself what she eats even though she's homeless she's had a bad situation it's poor homeless but she's terrified to go into the hostels because she's a good-looking girl she's like i keep getting sexually assaulted and let me tell you there's men that are six foot tall muscles like scary men in a way like what your vision would be and they won't go into the hostels i see this all the time they say that there's like there's such thing as dry hustles and stuff like that and maybe there is somewhere but i've never found them i once rang um for a guy on a sunday i think it was at 10 o'clock at night and i think it's half 10 at the beds come on there were seven beds in the whole city seven beds already in the whole sea for for for people who were on the streets that's the emergency accommodation okay and no no um i rang i won't say which charity it was but people need to be very careful all of these charities as well and as i said like i am here to to to be a voice and if people want to chop me down and attack me i said about the denzel washington just before this says the devil doesn't come for people who do his he who do his work basically he leaves them alone the devil comes for those who are fighting against the toilet and splashing against it and i don't care i will put my hands up and i will fight they can say what they want about me they can try and make me out you just gotta come and meet me and you'll know exactly who i am you know it's like oh my god he's actually alright you know he's and that's i don't do that for i this is obviously who i was before the ufc after the ufc um i rang and that was two lads in one of the charities people need to be careful of the charity because every time i see something that's like oh let's give this money to the pa the house oh let's give this money to to the simon community oh let's give this money to peter mcferry and i'm kind of like hold on these are nearly like big businesses now let's jump and talk about ufc because that must have been just such an exciting ride like i think about uh i know you're not a huge cycling fan but there was a period in cycling in the early 90s when this group of lads came from the states you'll know some of the names because they're some of the most iconic in any sport ever it was like lance armstrong came over from parking all the stuff around dope and they came over and they cut through a first they were these american kids cracking into this european tradition when i think about ufc i think about you lads fighting that same fight ufc was unknown the brand was unknown i remember watching it late night you to be up late to watch us with a pirate satellite dish out the back my cousin used to install satellite issues with a pirate starter edition he was being on bravo about two in the morning you get it and then you lads came along and you made it mainstream and i just i was living in the states at the time i was still trying to make a career as a cyclist and i remember the first time i ever seen an irish lad on a billboard i was in boston for a boyce and i seen mcgregor on billabout i was like what he's from dublin and he's on a billboard in boston what's going on here how exciting was that to be a part of that journey man i looked out the window boston at the same hotel i talked about i seen connor on a bin and i was blown away and the bus as well like what what's going on here like this is yeah it's see special group of people came together there that's what that was um incredible group of people and just just wanted it just was willing to pay the process was willing to pay the point where is what he said you know what i mean i'm willing to do whatever it took and when i first started him there was no division for me so basically there was no 124 pound division no freeway division it was either wec so the ufc wasn't even kind of like uh hold on because there's no divisions and not only that when we train apparently ashley daley he was it was a female fighter as well there was no female swing in the ufc but not only that dana we had came out and said there will never be any females in the ufc so if we were against the odds we were against the odds because they didn't even the place didn't exist yet so we were putting it together we were training i remember so ash would have been ash's ireland's forced um world champion in a mixed martial arts in em because ash was like kind of leading the way at the start and like on television and i think she's going to take on channel 4 and all and now being like this is madness look so um i would have been only young i would have been about 19 years of age when i when i started the gym ate him latoya and the baby on the way and i just i just wanted to change my life so but when the ufc thing happened i remember walking into the gym we weren't it wasn't a big fancy gym at this time it was still a little small gym similar kind of thing and conor had signed for the ufc now five years before this someone named tom egan had fought in the ufc he had primary gym didn't go really well from nobody really knew about the ufc still after it but we were all in that stadium that night we were not standing there watching tom fine it didn't go well for tom and then five years later all of us made that walk so i was the second irishman to make a walk from the dressing room after tommy but it was like it was even the style that you just brought to the whole thing i remember a press conference i remember a press conference and it was mcgregor was sitting to your left side you were in this three-piece suit the leanest man i've ever seen because i was a cyclist and we were all about cutting weight i was like holy [ __ ] how lean is this lad the hooligan and i think mcgregor said something along the lines of how good does the hill they're going to look at the three pieces and i was like these lads aren't playing around like i changed the game it was a brandon master class guys it's kind of a general you know what i mean that way because in the fourth one in the dublin thing i think even dublin i think it was like i ran around looking for one of my t-shirts from the club so one of the the spg t-shirts because i wanted to represent that on the stage of the thing um connor was like i'm going to have a dickie bow i'm going to have a short he had it ready to go so what i mean where i would have probably still been struggling a lot with like i need to get this guy over here and and after that i need to fight this guy i need to win where like i think conor was a lot more confident at that time than maybe i'm a little bit more confident now a little bit more mature i think maybe he might be had that a little bit early and and that helped us all so to me or you always call him the general so he was the general at that time um and he was the one who was kind of like he was fighting the character now we were all doing around walk we already don't walk this way there's no one can fight the fight for you you know but him when the dublin card came up i think that's when the world really knew you know but when he when he knocked out there diego um not the egg bundle it was um first guy i was at the ultimate foyer so i had already been i was in vegas and i was trying to get on the other mafia which is like big brother which you're [ __ ] yeah remember [ __ ] you know what i mean and i was i was there and i was telling dana about like like one of my friends or the wolf last week and he was like oh [ __ ] look you're with that where is his kid looking like i'm like yeah we're not gonna miss i was 10 i was going to walk in that door i told her tommy turned and started you know where like he would come with sleep mags and phone numbers that's what he said to him like and he was like he was laughing this was the interview process which was hard and that didn't go well for me i got got this horrible wrestler kind of like a khabib style but doesn't hit you either like so horrible last two rounds there came back to dublin slipped the disc had to get soldier out of this stuff it was just so much like adversity but as i said all of that adversity is part of your spread of chrome and oh you got i got the phone call five weeks before ufc dublin to sign for the ufc so four weeks before and you headlined ufc dublin didn't you the second one of your headlines yeah so i i opened the show with the foursome so it was the berserker the nars man covered in animal fa and hallucinogenics running down the hill that's what that's what that's what berserker was back in there celtic clamps and so i opened the show i ran down and i was the one who like created the madness and put it in you know that was it i was the hooligan he is real he's in he was in there he's not there anymore but he used to be there when people look at ufc now and ufc is a billion dollar global brand now that's not what it was when you lads arrived it was this wrinkly dink almost car park fight club cult brand and if people said they were into it you kind of looked at them going like wow that's a weird thing to be into does mcgregor get enough credit for because his extracurricular activities he's in the newspapers every week for stupid [ __ ] and does that take away from how big of an influence he was a new ladswear as a collective at launching ufc to that brand no he doesn't and he deserves more em as i said here sometimes the the devil only comes he doesn't come for his own you know so with the newspaper stuffing i would come out to me as a is them maybe we should focus a lot more on what our governments are doing and the corruption that's going on in these places and and and be more open about this stuff and like conor's a sports star if connor wears a track suit he'll tell you the price of it tomorrow in the newspaper and i'm like i don't think connor really cares about that and i don't think that's i don't think this is my opinion that should not be the news the news should be about the serious stuff that's going on you know now but connor was an abs an absolute iconic irish sportsman and that's the way people whether you want to see it or not it's just he is the one who broke that he changed it the price of that company and dana knows that and they all know that you know how did i come into it how did we come into it i think maybe at the same time all of the kind of the all of the classes were represented if you must okay so um carl pendrick was there ashland daily was there oily was there um arthur was there connor was there arthur was a beast not an animal yet and you had people on the air and an animal an ab absolute ana and a fight or a heart you know but what i mean is that like we struck a female series was there we struck a few all of the classes there are all of these communities at the same time so what happens is each person player someone already told me just you today look when i first seen connor i was like that's brilliant the kids in crumbling have this icon or not i was going to be great if tyler had somebody looked at yeah he said it was only the next day after that i was like oh my god that was one of my students now but he was like i found you and he was like and then i'd seen you a message and it was all about like like about what you are community and all of this kind of growth in your community and all and he was like and this is what this is where i'm here now you know but don't we hold athletes up to be too much like you're talking about you know we need to focus on news being news and sport band sport like i heard some interviews i'm not sure how long ago it was from mcgregor and they were asking some questions he's like i think you're confused on what i do he's like oh you get into a cage and i smash people's faces open for money yeah that's what fighters do that's what athletes do they race bikes they run as fast as they can but we want to pull them into you know tyson fiori last day before his toilet flight he's getting asked about uh daniel kanahan connections it's like it's not what he does tyson maybe he'll give you a bit of a sing-song at the end of the fight but he's a follower let fighters fight as we said the media don't want that they don't really want to be talking about that that doesn't sell the papers that doesn't they want to be printing stuff on the front of the paper about connecting some athletes to something or whatever it is and that's it we just we need battle we just need to expect yeah it's our it's our own fault as well because we need to expect more from our media i don't know we're not picking up a paper that's talking sweet about something on the front of it like i want to see what's going on i want the truth like i checked the dates twice on the newspaper right now because i don't believe it that much here how dialed were used on when i look at cycling and i talk to other high performance athletes i'm always amazed at how their high performance in just hack and they're not doing the basic stuff that cyclists have been doing for you know since armstrong changed the game in the early 90s the attention to detail and cycling like i was half joking about weighing the oatmeal earlier on but that is the life of the cyclist it's you know constant i remember my previous girlfriend starting going out with her and she moved in she's like what's going on here and i was like i have an altitude tent like chains around the bed for sleeping and i'm taking you know pulse oximeter readings every night come to bed cyclists are just it feels like they're moving the needle all the time how does ufc and that type stuff well the building the engine thing um comes from cyclists um for for mma so it's not too far away to be honest because it takes a lot of pressure off him off our back and our legs and our knees and stuff like that so a lot more stuff would have been done in the pool and then you probably know julian dalby yeah iconic or cyclists you know paul uh doyle yeah so paulie teach paul sun royal and stuff like that so um i've done a little bit with them and we did a little bit on iceland as well about building the engine so in one minute intervals and like like the the green the red and the yellow are they orange song and so what you're saying there so um checking your heart rate in the morning to see where your recovery heart rate is if your heart rate is up you've got to take the day off you've got to sleep and then because recovery is a massive part of it and are they still doing that as like how much are they moving the door how much are you connected to that elite level now in ufc um well the idea is what are you doing now so i am i'm into athlete development that's what i'm in i'm not into i like was gonna say i'm not into people winning oh yeah with the people winning but i mean the people see i'm into watching people do the process and then seeing it coming out and going right that's it and then monitoring rechecking it and going again so basically it takes about five or six years i think to get something as a professional athlete in mma but some people if you wire down the time that they put in could be only four years they're in the gym six years but the work has only been doing dawn it's interesting i had a consultation with a buddy of mine and he's a podcaster he's one of the top podcasters in the business genre when i was launching the podcast and he was saying to me look if you publish once a week with your podcast this is the sort of growth you can expect and i was like well how do i shortcut that he's like publish five days a week there's five years of growth at the same time someone else is publishing once a week again and i was like that just spoke to me as a cyclist because i don't feel like i was ever i don't feel like i was ever the most talented in anything like all through school i was never very talented but when it came time to crunch for exams i could turn into a jedi knight for two three weeks where i'd hardly sleep no one had seen me and i'd know books inside out like it was preparation and that's what got me through school that's what got me through university that's what got me through law school that's what gave me some limited success in cycling to a point i feel like i got the very very most out of so that's when i started hitting the podcast and i was like let me how do i turn this dial up yeah athletes can do that especially when they have people like you and their corner to shortcut stuff and say hey look i went down that road for two years and it's a waste of time torn left at the end of there because right to that end mate you want to see the people who talk to now and they say i'm going to be smashing my head off that wall there like i say it to them and they look at me like yeah but you're lying you know and i'm like why would i lie to you like i just don't and i don't have time for people like i give i give so much of myself to people right but then it gets to a stage where i'm like i'm just not doing it anymore you don't show me attention anymore it's like maybe that's for a reason maybe because they have to chase you maybe because you're not torning up and you're expecting the results and you're representing my name now in a way like as like i trained you but you're going out and doing something else yeah so it's like it's a bit like um i don't know you training a cyclist and then he turns up on a skewer and it's like you're like we didn't train on a skewer you know what i mean in a way they do they they can do the wrong things now then again on the opposite side of that we have some incredible adidas so we have with some incredible athletes that are so good they're willing to play the process they don't see the dark swim so you don't see when you're gonna be off injured and or you have to get a surgery and you have to recover or you have to you have to keep your weight down where people think like they don't see that so it doesn't exist so someone comes to me and go i go to somebody and say i want to climb everest they'll go oh that's going to take a lot of training even if they don't know but fighting's not like that for some reason everyone has this entitlement to like oh yeah we can bang bro yeah yeah we go for you had 10 10 street votes it's like if someone comes to me and says they want to fight in the ufc they basically came to me and said i want to perform in the tour de france and now we get people right now and i'll probably get i don't get in trouble for saying this because i don't get in trouble anymore because i don't even listen to trouble but we had another school fighting in the ufc last week i don't know if you know but you should not be in the ufc and someone else needs to say it i always seem to be the person to say it but as i said i don't i don't i don't do jealousy i don't do all this i do truth i do so i'm gonna say it and people don't say it let me get ready he's like don't say i'm i'm gonna say it shouldn't have been there we've got a squad in the fourth round um the biggest opportunity in his life ever we have other athletes in this country then where they have paid the process over and over and over again and we would get frustrated seeing somebody jump in the queue and and taking that from them and people go yeah well you should be happy for everybody that's in there like imagine somebody cycling the tour de france where you're like he's shy and you're like yeah well you better get behind him because he's irish but is there if you zoom out and you look at it is the decision to put someone into ufc is it multifaceted is this you know you talk about there's it's not straight up who's the baddest man in the world anymore it's there's a branding element to it there's a you know i'm bringing he's bringing a new audience to it there's probably a here's a big social following element to it you've many different elements to it now yeah but that's that the thing is i can't understand it and i don't think another paperwork whatever and i wish the best to people even when that happens i wish the best of them but the urinary exactly happened what like was what i was not i was fairing but it's like we don't want we built that we built a big brand at the ufc has the irish being here the fighting irish and if we start representing it with people who are probably not up to scratch i just i don't know like you know what i mean we built a big thing bringing the ufc back to dublin and arkana did that kind of oh you happened to be part of that in that where i got to go out and fight and do that thing and and as i said people bring criticism now when it's constructive criticism from somebody who is is um qualified to have an opinion on like and i listen to this in cycling all the time and people are having the opinion i'm like like shut up like you don't get to have that opinion you know it used to frustrate me with soccer because i i grew up every my life my two lives so the soccer life and the cycling life and up until i'm 17 like all i've done was on the streets playing football all day long never bought it at school because i just thought it was pointless i'm going to be but i think sometimes uh i don't know where i was going with that but the question i meant to ask you on this before i got segwayed on that random journey was uh we spoke about john lally oh yeah john lily's young lad max yes how goes max incredible max is one of these lad one of these kids as well that has has paid the process over and over and over again he's incredible he i remember like i remember there was a seminar i think years ago and max was there like as a kid rather he was always interested in this and i think with his father's goings and stuff like that and all because he has that has got like a smart background because let me tell you one thing and you know this is what i'm not telling you i'm telling whoever's listening and stuff like that people think like that someone's going to walk past a park and see someone playing football and going oh my god look how good that kid is i'm going to ring my mate that's a scale and now he's going to play for you it doesn't work like that it's not enough it's so much more political than that you know like there there could be someone in the way that goes like like i hate him or he hate his coach and they can oops subconsciously try and get in the way you know what i mean and where i think ebb john is going to be a great grade for max and if you think of the gray foyers think of them um the welsh guy what's that kazagi where is da um khabib where is da toys and fury where is that gooney nelson where is da these people that i really have somebody that actually gives you can even charge hoisin in there as well of course tomato yeah it goes tomato you know so i think when you have got a real good with you that actually is emotionally invested but not emotionally invested where they're trying to get their own success because some coaches can procrastinate live through our athletes to get our um get to get their own success because they probably never got it themselves you know what i mean in a way they never got satisfied in what they did in their career so he flogs from young lad forever until he gets it and then they they hold up the trophy or something you know so there's a buddhist uh saying that some people come into your life for a reason orders come into your life for a season orders come into your life for a lifetime you have three different types of interactions you have with people do you look back when i was listening to you and reading the extract from your book which is brilliant by the way uh i was reading an extract from your book and you're talking about you're all coach john kavanagh i think about that saying and i think about someone that came into your life for a season and that season that was maybe passed out have you rekindled that friendship i don't have a car i don't talk to john we don't talk at all unfortunately you know what i mean that's just one of them things listen i am massively grateful for everything we have got in my life and every lesson that i've been taught with people like i hold no bitterness or badness for anybody do you know why because that's that would be that would be eating me you know so um we just don't have a relationship um you said it unfortunately is there a regret there um well i think that anybody who would be like would would have get forward for somebody or who would have trained under somebody or being mentored by somebody would probably always have that that connection like where i just don't think whenever i don't know where i'm tired i may want to just have it just i just stopped you know what i mean it was kind of like a a process where like we were either doing something together and that that was the only reason we had a conversation there was never any kind of like conversation outside that you know like um was it just an entirely professional relationship er yeah you could kind of say that you know and then there was times where it was like i think maybe probably didn't see how big some of the decisions he was making regarding you know on my side what my effect would have been from decisions that were being met you know so where sometimes you can be flown through life it's so busy and you can be like what you know but you don't understand that that person's standing there going this is everything to me so i needed to make a little think about this process and think about this situation because this is everything all of it and it's kind of like if someone's just rushing too fast sometimes you just have to kind of like i don't know cut them toys and and i said don't hold them emotionally because you can't do you think we're more experienced head now with the life experience you've gained now if you transplanted that back to den would a the dynamic of your relationship been different would you have taken control of different matters that you maybe just handed off to him you can't change people that's the thing as well you can change people so just just because sometimes you know something or you think it you can't change people so we don't we don't know if john is that person that's been straight with you you know i don't know if and i think maybe because he has to he does so much that he has to be a little bit kind of like straightforward you know and like there's no time to stop and be like hold on here and i don't know you know just i didn't have that relationship i feel as much you know and maybe at the time i did but after i didn't think you know you know it's a really difficult part of every sport is the transition of finishing up your career and i think we don't do enough for athlete welfare we celebrate these massive successes of olympic athletes professional ufc fighters cyclists footballers and nicholas roach on the podcast a few times you know the sony stephen roach massive pressure his whole career just finished up a brilliant career last year and it's like boom lights are off on celebrity dancing with the stars and it's like no one wants to talk about well how are you getting on nicole how are you doing are you okay can we check in with you and see how you are that's like did you have anything you could draw on you know you're a good family and stuff but was there any professional support you could draw on to say okay you're you're you're paddy hill and the ufc fighter well now you're not patty hill on the ufc fighter let's work on who you are on it was from that time i retired it was like a washing machine falling down the stairs it was everywhere all over the place and random nobody knew like it was just it was one of them situations i didn't i'll just be straight i'm not mad or like that i don't have family that could really go and have a conversation or talk to and i didn't really ever talk to anybody i'm pretty good at being able to not bury stuff on somebody that like i walk in the woods i swim in the sea or you understand as i said at the start now you understand more that this is just a vessel you know what i mean in a way and all of these things i pray for some of these adversities at times because it's like don't give me the easy life give me the strength to enjoy the hard one you know because i know that my spirit is being shaped and and molded in this process of life or whatever it is um and everything else outside it's kind of a it's kind of [ __ ] you know and everyone else is on that vessel as well on their own did you have any work to do to understand who you are when you're saying when you look in the mirror when you're taught well i'm not a fighter anymore what am i who am i i was i was always a coach and i was always i've always coached when i was 19 i'd done finished off cultural studies in canada and stuff like that and all always interested in athlete development as i was saying there and that's what i am obsessed with now so i'm about five years into building my own team now and with some incredible athletes there you know so we've got i've got i've got my first first person who's done professional sean a balance she's one of a total she fights for the next toilet which is the way open and i couldn't ask for somebody else as an athlete who was like she's incredible as an athlete she's one of these people that's like this is what you need to do and she does that and she trusts you you know and then we've got athletes in underhold and just just some incredible athletes on my team now without him again i'm very blessed to be around and not only my team as i'm like the people who fight from the gym or something like that but my coaching squad and you know my facility we've got like i'm blessed but i built i built this with people who who are like angels you know what i mean so people who were really good people in my life and they will be there forever you know and do you have any frustrations i get this coaching and i have to you know even i'll talk to sarah at times about it in my frustration when i'm coaching an athlete and that i never had some of these short comments that now they have and one of the big ones is just like doing your training sessions like no one ever had to push me out the door they were trying to session it was just automatic it was like it was like breathing it's like what am i doing today like of a headache it's raining and i'm sick it's like you've got days and you've bad days at work i just thought it's out the door do your transition just it's on paper execute do it there was never like an excuse i couldn't do me session today because boom like there was no fill in the blank it was sessions got done regardless you know me granny could die the session to get done before the funeral that morning and you know the worst [ __ ] has happened to me in my life i don't miss my training sessions and then i work with athletes and like i came home from work and i was a little bit tired i didn't get me session in and i have to [ __ ] that often really stopped myself driving over to their house and going that's that's what that's what em that person i mentioned shauna would be like she would anything could happen anything she would finish that session there's another two lawyers sam and um daniel so i call him the dangerous duo so the jiu jitsu guys there guys i said i don't know because they're just two athletes they don't really do mma um but they've been with me since their teens listen to this story so there is people like yourself and still there right um i comes into the gym and they're over lifting weights with their skill back their bags on and our jackets on and dressed ready to go home and i said what he is doing and he said well we had a class to teach so we just came down to finish off the last set and i just i went back into the kitchen and i was like i love you they're still there but still they still exist there's a mate of mine i still roid room i was only reading last week and i was writing a new group of lads on him and he loved telling the story we stopped for a coffee at the midway point we were out and i was back from france and i was getting ready for the national championships and we were doing i was in a 20 minute interval and doing up around the back of the airport and we're going around around about about five minutes left in this 20 minute reference 20 minutes you know closing off the full gas so five minutes left in the effort going around the roundabout he slid out lost his back wheel went down and broke his collarbone and i looked at him i was like i'll be back for you in 40 minutes so i finished the interval it went back for him he was gone he was going to the hospital someone picked him up off the side of the road and i didn't even think annabelle was like really one more interview today we'll get that done then i'll go home and figure out what happened to him where did he go to and that's the sound looking like i don't said to people like you need to be like see fighting this test and the reason why i even mentioned the ufc and and kind of anybody in the generation that's there now is because um i'm trying to like if i was going to climb everest and if he was going to do something like that i'd want someone to tell me what it was going to be like i wouldn't want them to give me like oh you're going to be grounded i slap on the back it's not like that like mixed martial arts is one of the most hardest sports in the world i think you know what i mean in a way you've got everything going on you've got like knees elbows you've got like like someone's heating you've got to take them down you've got jiu jitsu you've got all mixing in and it's very hard to stay calm and relaxed in all of that your be calm in the chaos but then some people it's like turbulence they can do two minutes and go for it and then they turn into a human again and then it's like oh my god yeah you gotta be able to roid the wave like say if you come out of there the blocks but you go as fast as you can go go go you're like winning the race and winning the race and winning the race but you're not really because you know the guys it's about pacing the staff they're gonna they're gonna catch it you're gonna be screwed you're gonna blow your load is that what they say can you put that feeling into context for someone who you know like me i probably never step into an octagon or a listener who's never going to step into an octagon what's that like when you're a full house in the tree arena you're headlining the fight the announcement's dawn the cage closes and it's just you in the ring and another lad who wants to rip your head off yeah it's brilliant it's probably the most smallest louisville ever fear it's an absolute incredible feeling and it's like is it scary yeah scary yeah that's scary it's all of them all mixed together like i had to say i remember whatever john saying to me like this is the f the last day after the rest of your life basically and i was like what and we walked out for dublin and he was dead really i couldn't walk over the stadium after that you know what i mean it was it was great advice um when all you got to say the idea of walking into a cage i was doing it in the basketball arena which was down the road from my house that was a lot more the risk because at that that that edge you wouldn't get paid money or much money around for it and you were putting yourself on on basically show in front of your whole house in the state so that was a lot more vulnerable but the time i got today to the ufc like especially the night i did for my first fight in the ufc you could have put godzilla in there and i would have killed him i swear like that day when i look at that picture of myself walking out that's not me that is not me i don't recognize that man i had like left my body i just gave it over i remember feeling my grandfather on my shoulder you know what i mean and i know that that sounds mad and split is wrong but the more as when they get younger you're like you don't even want to admit that tsf but oh he was oh he was greeted at times in there and we went in there be it be a good guy you know what i mean that they probably got the hardest draw and probably about from conor with the jaguar band there of all of us and was a bit of a hydraulically i got a division 2 wrestler that wouldn't treat all american wrestling toils and had won six of his last five of his last six flights and stuff like that i was coming back from double back surgery so he was a messy guy to fight i had been out for a year and a half like because of my back surgeries i had back surgery on the 14th of december and then i fought in july so i was i was like today i could die and i wouldn't give it i don't care you know that's maybe i'm too invested no i think it's the nature of an athlete i was just as you were saying that i was thinking back to my first ross which is the tour of ireland and i remember the first time being in the split with all the pros and i was still in college came over the top of the category one client in the healey pass came over the top and said it was 25 of us left in the group and i was like oh amazing then i thought [ __ ] now have to go downhill he passed with these lads and i'm only starting boy chryson these lads are all experienced it's a wet day and i remember the first corner and thinking to myself you know what okay if i die or die i'll go out happy here it's a good story and it was just full commitment people won't understand that i was like oh my god how was it it's like looking at someone else when i i was writing this story out uh the other day in a diary and it's like writing a story about someone else i don't recognize myself in that it's like a drone following me down this descent that all the way back to the start of the conversation that we had like jealousy envy all of these things your body will do things and your mind's gonna have to will it and it goes all the way back to even further the conversation where body and mind is everything so if your body is massively out of shape and unfair your mind will be in the same place you'll very rarely find a really really healthy mind in in an unhealthy body that's what i think where the same way you won't you won't find a lot of um wisdom and youth in the same place it's like a lot of things don't belong where you've got to spend one to get the euro you know what i'm saying so if you've got a bad body of bad health and you get better and that helps you work on it you walk on it you'll get a better mind if you've got a bad mind and you start working on your moonshield he'll start helping a better body so we're i think people get to a stage where like spirits are growing in this body you're hitting that corner there and your spirit's gone whatever and even if you did die there you probably end up in a place where you don't have no regrets you don't have the fear of like or they slow it down and and i let them beat me you let the voice kick in and then you know what you haven't received when you go to that place that he was talking about that's what you have to face that's what you have to answer to no one else matters and i had ian mccall on the podcast uh who fought in the ufc yeah yeah yeah a mccard was in there even though i was in weight division oh yeah yeah really interesting uncle creepy yeah he was talking about now he's i'm not sure how much you follow him anymore he's a psychedelic integration coach so he uses psilocybin with his fighters i've read a book on this and it's very very interesting and we haven't really seen it too much you know depending on where you're listening to the podcast it may or may not be legal but in some sports you can take this it's largely undetectable from what he's telling me in a lot of sports but it's not on the water banned list i think i'm not sure i would double check that before anyone goes how tight is the open controls in ufc or how much because i know cyclone obviously posts the u.s postal atlanta armstrong it's you know it's non-negotiable it's you know they're very very heavily tested i'm just off whereabouts only a few months brilliant uh jeff slivinsky is that his name that was his name yeah that's the guy who got up yeah the reason why i know that is because i don't like a seminar with a basic at the ufc telling us all about lance and how he did it and how they didn't like to me i just i know the sound there's nothing more disgusting than people don't pay your days and that's just why you know especially in my sport if you want to hear a ball faster and you want to inject something into your body today or something like that go ahead you want to punch somebody in the face and you want it you want to take an injection to do it i have a serious problem with that i think somebody somebody should be brought for charges for like maybe the lion's not black and white is it it's gray because it's like what about then you're taking tramadol which isn't on the usada band list but it's undoubtedly performance i've seen study after study on help performance enhancing it if you could get into a cage and fight on tram at all i played and paid to see that only because i took a travel dollar when they took me back surgery and i never took one ever again because i just couldn't get myself together i like if anybody i know you understand this where public and now obviously you were talking about like so there's someone named like the epo you know what i mean um what's his name tj dalsha today dale shot won a toy and had won a toilet he had bm he be somebody that now is on a far for a losing streak i think but he tested positive for epo when he did it so did he take away someone else's chin on a performance enhancing drugs with epo and and now that's it it's over it shouldn't be like that he's back for eating yeah or you have a blood disorder all right oh you can't fight and i said this somewhere in the tournament i can't fight in the ufc because all you would harm myself some of these people take epo go and punch somebody else in the face and get a two years ban and then get put back into the ufc and is it happening how prevalent is it in there now oh the ufc is a drug m thing is is incredible absolutely incredible 24 7.
It is um you're on a nap basically look what yourself they could knock you have to let yourself know where people are so if you're going on holidays so it's four where above so full weird about 24 7. that's why john jones hit under the cage apparently you ever heard that story he hid under the cage apparently when eddie came from supposedly now this is if he can read the story of a grasp on nobody but supposedly he had a piss on the day under the cage and he went in and took it they took a sample from it jesus before you do hit him there for eight hours or so party conscious of uh time uh what's what's the future hold for you now um i am just the last little while i've just i'm just flying and the amount of planning i've done with stuff like that so um in the last five years i'm a toyota of like i've been elected in a way earlier i've wrote a book i've had i've had three kids i'm like buddy's the most fair though man and so i would love to keep on the idea of to keep we put my finger on the pulse of this politics thing right because i do think that there's a lot of people who wish i would go away i do think there's probably more moves in the in the in the way that maybe it's a conspiracy to to kind of make me go away you know what i mean in that way but when i the most most inspiring thing that's happened the last little while is looking into that doll seeing people going you are that's it like you have spoiled the whole nation that if you can do it anybody can do it by looking into a house full of millionaires that's all looking into and people who probably haven't got the life experience of most people that they're making rules for people are now making rules with no consequences so if they make they're cutting the tough off and stuff like that like look let's have no more toefl aiming coming out with this stuff like he's asleep like we are we're absolutely embarrassing ourselves that's what i feel well this was my problem when i was in king's inn which is the only place you can qualify to be a bar star in ireland so every single person in my class without exception lovely people but they're all in the upper levels of the socio-economic bracket i was the only person in the entire class that have to go alone for their phase everyone else was handed that so what happens these people in law school they go on to become bursters they're going to become senior counsel they're going to become judges they're going to become policymakers now there's not a massive problem with that the only thing is in any debate now we only have one socio-economic viewpoint represented and that's what our politics has largely become and that's why i think it's brilliant that people like you are striking out and representing another opinion and not to say your opinions are always going to be right and theirs is going to be wrong but that's what a healthy democracy is about challenging opinions the thing is what you're saying there is we talk about equality and all only in places that were allowed well don't talk about there because that matters like so should that not be like some sort of bar and i do agree with this others like em obviously there's a gender equality um where it there has to be so many females and males in a bit of pit positions and stuff like that i agree with that you know i mean i think that's that they should be open and probably best person for the job as well but when it comes to like say that they think judges and stuff like that should we have an equality process where there's so many people need to be middle class so many people need to be working class and it could be like now best person for the job but obviously that's not the truth because the last judge that just got appointed in our country didn't even have anybody else challenging for the job so how can you not win the race if you're the only cyclist if you're the only fighter in the cage now and some of this stuff where people be like ah i don't i'm not into politics and i'm trying to say to people like that there's a small group of people in this country for the last 100 years who have been ruling everything that's going on and we're running out of things to take because each generation that comes along is going to create something to take it so when the nct wasn't here that got created when the war irish war wasn't here that got created were creeping into like well how do i get but you know it's such a difficult one because you're in i often think this separates people who are having conversations and who are challenging opinions and trying to progress in self-development you need a space to do that and if you if you journey back to the very origins of entertainment it's the coliseum and it's gladiators fighting each other and why did they put that together they put it together because it was a struggling political system at the time and they wanted to distract and stop the conversations being about politics and substantial matters they wanted to distract the populace and have conversations about who lads killing each other inside the coliseum now we have the coliseum but there's thousands of them there's tick-tock there's facebook there's instagram there's you know celebrity big brother everyone's distracted by everything and we're so distracted and caught up in this nine-to-five rat race trying to pay rent trying to pay a lease on a car trying to pay for clothes and there's very few people in society that have you know true their own hard grit through good fortune whatever it is they've gravitated they've risen above that slightly and you know they're not in a financial position where they need to go out and occupy all their creative energy doing someone else's work and you can sit back and you can read the books on politics you can read the books on history you can question things about calvary you can question agendas but it's difficult to get people into that situation when you look at who the next lawyer or who the next judge is going to be it's difficult for them to come from working-class families because we just we haven't got we haven't got a system that allows those working-class families to get that headspace to say okay i'm going to put that few quit away to get little johnny into law school down the road so that's what they say when you keep people occupied by general needs which is field and stuff i think it's a great em there's a great a picture of it in history it's like they they're the guy's throwing bread on the floor but the guy is behind the in a locked door luxelle but he has the keys here and the guy is only concentrating on the field because he's not looking at the keys because the most important part is the is the bread that being thrown on the floor to me what do i think i can do and people are like well i don't i don't as i said i don't really care what people's opinion of me and somebody that and and some of the opinions we've had of me and even on twitter and stuff like that are like i borrowed a little racist like that's just being straight like like look at how he says that look at what he says look at what he's wearing and can't believe he's just wearing you know i mean like if this was actually that kind of nationality or it would be racist but it's okay to be racist in a walking class against change and then and in ireland it's just that's that's that's i think that's been the norm for a long time which is like it is our routine kind of like saying we're traveling communities and stuff like that and all to be like oh you have to watch them over there like people can say them things but so what i think i can do is or you can i'm not here with the answers i am here with integrity and i will not be compromised i will not be compromised you will not be able to come with me money fame a tr anything like that and compromise me because as i said i'd rather be dead than give up that stuff because when we get to the other side you're gonna have to face it so as i'm not religious sometimes i don't go to the children like that but i know that there's something going on spiritually notice the spirits in here so we can't be compromised and what i can do in my next years of my life is i hope that i can inspire some of the brains to show them that it is possible i can run with that torch and say look we can do it and and if you sit in your garden all day smoking weed it's not going to happen we need to get rid of that you need to start looking that politics does matter and it doesn't only matter for russia matters for the most important people which is the people coming after us is that kids and and the reason people go look why would i put myself out here why would i say the stuff what you say why would i bring the hassle to me well you know we haven't waited why marty we could just sit back and be like oh my check so what i'm trying to do is even the people that are against me i'm trying to get you to see look and we can do this so whether you're from jobs town or whether you're from from clontarf you know i think me and you could have a great conversation and we go on i'm not saying that everybody's different and anybody's good at anybody's bad all i'm trying to say is that we need to stop looking out for the stupid [ __ ] and we need to start looking out for the royce stuff let's make this country where it's a people there's a great i have to say this already because it gets said now that people say oh we should be looking after our own forced i think that warding is planted um to kind of separate it straight away our own is human it's made out of you said that they would say so look also you're far right because you only want to look after the irish no we should look after people that we bring into this country as refugees and look at the people that are in a direct provision and stuff like that why because they're human and everybody that calls this place home should get a chance to be able to live a proper life here you can't be you can we can't be separating nationalities and and then and then calling someone else racist and then it humans are helmets let's start getting the housing sorted we've got loads of land we've got loads of resources we've got all of the the wind all this kind of stuff you've got data centers getting announced and made without telling the people not to burn that off and therefore it's ridiculous it makes no sense and the reason why it is because it's coming from people that don't live in the real world it's coming from someone that can fall asleep on television in dollars and keep their job if we fell asleep at movie job and i worked in the esp or something like that would probably be sac if you're working the ufc yeah if i fell asleep you'd definitely be getting you definitely lose your job buddy you talked about uh the forced irish lad coming into the ufc and the success off the back of that you and connor just saying that i'm following i'm a big fan of that can't see me can't be me and i think it's a nice way to end the podcast because right now you are that inspiration where you know what enough for a lot of people in working class communities to destroy you for a little bit better to start asking questions so good job on that thanks for joining me thank you man it's an absolute honor cheers buddy
Weekly insights from the podcast. The stuff that actually makes you faster.
The written companion to this episode.
Every Episode of Roadman Podcast with Dan Lorang
Dan Lorang has been on Roadman more than any other World Tour coach. Here's every episode, what it covers, and why it matters for age-group …
Cycling Training with a Full-Time Job: How to Get Faster on Limited Time
You have a job, a family, and maybe 8 hours a week to train. Here's how to make every single one of those hours count.
Fast Talk vs The Cycling Podcast vs Roadman: Which One for You?
Three of cycling's best podcasts. Three different missions. Here's the honest breakdown of what each does best — and when to reach for which…
More episodes you might enjoy
In this deeply moving episode of Roadman Podcast, we sit down with cycling sensation Fred Wright, who recently experienced the stark contrast of life's highs and lows. Fred opens up about his remarkable victory at the British National Championships, a pinnacle in any professional cyclist's career,...
with Roadman Podcast
In today's special episode, we sit down with cycling legend Rob Britton to delve into his extraordinary experience at the Badlands — one of Europe's toughest gravel races.
with Roadman Podcast
William Butler Adams (CEO of Brompton) joins Anthony for another Roadman Cycling Podcast.
with Roadman Podcast
Welcome to this week’s episode of Rider Support where we dive into the crucial steps every cyclist should take before embarking on their winter training journey. Whether you're gearing up to maintain your form or planning to build strength during the colder months, this episode is packed with...
with Rider Support
The episodes that masters cyclists keep coming back to. Faster after 40, smarter recovery, and the honest version of what changes in the body — and what does not.
If you have six to ten hours a week and a serious goal, this is the curated list. Pro structure at amateur volume — without the burnout pattern most busy cyclists fall into.
The Not Done Yet coaching community is 1:1 personalised coaching — training, nutrition, strength, recovery, and accountability. $195/month. 7-day free trial.