The Joe Rogan Experience - JRE MMA Show #151 with Bo Nickal

Joe sits down with Bo Nickal, a mixed martial artist currently competing in the UFC middleweight division. https://www.ufc.com/athlete/bo-nickal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Duration: 2h 16m
Broadcast on: 21 Dec 2023
Audio Format: other

Joe sits down with Bo Nickal, a mixed martial artist currently competing in the UFC middleweight division. https://www.ufc.com/athlete/bo-nickal

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm going to ask you, we were just looking at that photo of Carlin and talking about the Soviet program, the doping program, did you ever see that movie Icarus? Yeah, I did watch that. I thought it was just insane to how it didn't even really start off the way that it ended. He wasn't even really trying to figure all the stuff out and just fell into it. Yeah, total dumb luck. Yeah, but I mean, since I rustled my whole life and stuff and pay attention to the international scene, it's not really a secret. Everybody kind of knows. That's the first legitimate real proof that somebody's kind of come out with, but everybody kind of knew like that's what's going on. But that was so insane though, that they had a hole in the wall where they were handing through the dirty urine and getting back clean urine and then submitting that. And if it wasn't for a micro analysis of the jars, then they realized, oh, the Soviets had figured it wasn't the Soviets, it was the Russians had figured out some way to open up these unopenable jars because they had scratched them in little places. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they freaking, they want to win really bad and it's like for them too, it's a different level. Like the guys that won that were very successful, maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago, those guys are like big government positions and stuff like in the US, you win the Olympics and wrestling. You win like a quarter million bucks and it's a big deal for like a month and then you kind of move on. You're kind of set for life. So it's like, yeah, it's like a different, it's a completely different kind of motivation, I think. What is it like competing when you know that there's like state sponsored programs that are involved in these other countries doping up their athletes? It's pretty weird. You know, I think that because like I said, I kind of grew up, you grew up with the understanding of it knowing like this is kind of the way it works. You're ready for it, you're prepared, you understand, but and I'm sure I've competed against a lot of guys that were doping and doing stuff. But the one experience that I had that was like really kind of prominent in my mind. So I wrestled this dude, I wrestled a tournament in Rome. This was a few years ago and I was trying to go up from, I was in between weights. So my weight was 86 kilos or 97 kilos and I was kind of having a little trouble with my lower back. So I was like, I don't want to cut. I just want to like get bigger. So I came in and I was weighing like 210, which the weight class is 213, 97 kilos. And I was like, I'll be fine. I'll be good. And I rolled up to this second round match and I was wrestling to say Iranian dude. And my coaches weren't there with me. So I had like some different coaches and they didn't really warn me who this dude was. I had wrestled the number one Iranian guy a few months earlier and I tech, I tech followed him. Like I killed him. So I was like, I'm a smasher steal.

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