Transcript
Thank you.
Hi everyone, PD Mangan here. I'm here with Andrew Tate, who's a world kickboxing champion. He graciously agreed to my interview and I'm really happy to have him on. Welcome Andrew, thank you for coming on.
Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here. Great. So, Andrew, you can correct me if I'm wrong. I'm going off of what I've read on Wikipedia and things from what I remember you saying online, mainly on Twitter. Andrew is a three-time world kickboxing champion, and he is 31 years old.
originally from Chicago, Illinois in the United States. And he currently lives in Romania, although he's coming to us from Copenhagen, Denmark today. So Andrew, first of all, about your origins, you grew up in Chicago, and your father was a chess master. And he was
And so...
Yeah, so what I'm wondering, this leads to the question that becoming a kickboxing champion seems like an unusual deviation from having a father as a chess master.
upbringing. So how did that all work out? Yeah, so I actually started with chess. So I started in following in my father's footsteps. I was a state chess champion for Indiana.
And I was a
Mr.
age of 12 or 13. So I was a chess kid as it goes. So I played a lot of chess from a very, very young age. And I think chess is actually probably the foundation for a lot of my beliefs in life. And I know it's a bit cliche to compare life to a board game, but chess is one of those things where all of the responsibility for the victory or the
Thank you.
lies firmly on your shoulders. You never hear someone talk about it.
because of that. It's you and only you. And if you're victorious, it's because you saw something your opponent didn't see. And if you lost, it's because you missed something. And all of the responsibility lies firmly on your shoulder. When I started with chess very young, to me, it was very easy to transition into something like fighting where it's one-on-one. There's no team involved. It's 100% personally responsible. But to me, all the things I found appealing in chess, I actually found appealing in fighting. So to me, they are quite similar forms of war.
as such. So yeah, I started with chess and then I grew up, I actually grew up just outside of Chicago,
the very top of Indiana, Gary, Indiana, which was the murder capital of the world at the time. The murder capital of America at the time.
So I grew up there and then we moved to England. My mom and dad split up when I was about 12. So when I moved to England, my chess career kind of finished because I lost my coach. And then I moved over to the kickboxing side of things. And that's it. I started fighting. I never intended on being world champion. I just intended on fighting and things happen and you win and before you know it, you know, you're fighting for a world title. So that's how it all worked out.
Right. Well, so, so that's, that's interesting because I play a little chess, though nowhere near at any, you know, fantastic level. And, and also the, but you know, my favorite spectator sport is boxing. So, you know, it's interesting similarities there. Yeah. Individual sports. So you said, I believe that you're 16 years old when you,
when you first went into a kickboxing gym or started kickboxing or something like that. And, you know, what got you into that? Why kickboxing? Did you see people kickboxing? Did you know people or were –
Are you interested in building your fighting skills for real life? How did that work? Yeah, I mean, chess left a massive void in my life. When my dad stayed in America, me and my mom and everyone went to England, England doesn't have any of the chess scene that America has. It's not in schools, there's no tournaments. All the things that existed in America, I was a big part of.
didn't exist in England. So for a few years, I was adapting to the new country and such. And then I knew I wanted to do something with my time, something constructive.
I actually started playing drums. I just picked up a drum kit and started playing drums. But it annoyed me that if I was going through life and I told someone,
I can play the drums, they say, "Okay, show me." And I say, "Well, I can't, because I don't have a drum kit, I don't have drumsticks, there's all these things I needed." And it sounds stupid, but in all sports, if you play football, you need a ball, you need a net, you need a team. I thought, "If I learn to fight, it's something I always have with me, something I always have."
Um,
which was the basic motivation for it. I didn't really care about kickboxing, boxing, mixed martial arts, nothing. It's just by complete coincidence.
gym I walked into was a kickboxing gym and that's how it went. I walked in there and I said, I want to learn to fight. And, uh, my coach is a Bosnian,
Special Forces, he fought in the Yugoslav conflict. He's been shot eight times. Interesting guy.
He said, well, okay, let's go. And that was it. And from there, it was just a brutal...
twice a day, three or four hours a day, just brutality. And I just stuck with it when most people wouldn't. And I'm,
ended up winning some fights. So that's how I went. I started at age 16. I became a world champion for the first time at 23. And then I won my last world.
at 28, so I was fighting for quite a long time.
Wow, that's awesome. So getting into that, what sort of, you know, I can imagine some young men going into a gym like that, in a kickboxing gym and, you know, getting their ass kicked and then thinking, well, you know, maybe this isn't for me.
to be telling yourself to, you know, to go from a beginning kickboxer to becoming a champion a few years later.
And this is, and I'm going to reference back to chess once again. This is one again where, I'm just going to change the...
Thank you.
Thank you.
.
where even if you need a coach to tell you, even if you need a computer to tell you, somewhere along the line, you made a mistake. You can't lose in chess without mistakes. So you'd go back to the drawing board. You'd analyze everything you...
try and find the mistake. And this was always my mindset towards anything. I walked in there. I got my ass kicked and I left and thought, how, why did I lose? Well, I need, well, I got tired. Okay. I need to run. Why? Why do I, he hits harder than me. I need to get stronger. He's faster than me. His, his jabs quicker than mine. He's, and I just broke it down and thought, why am I losing?
And when you look at life that way, if you construct it and you break it down into the whys, you know what the battle plan is. I see this all the time on Twitter and stuff. People are like, oh, my life's shit, my life's shit. I'm like, why?
They're like, oh, because X, Y, Z. And I'm like, well, if you know why it's shit,
You already know what the problems are. Why are you coming to me for advice? What do you want me to do about it? You know what the problem is. You know, I'm overweight. Why? Oh, I don't know. Well, you eat too much. I need to go to the gym. You know why you're overweight. You just don't want to do anything about it. So...
With me, my whole mindset from a very young age is working out where the mistakes are made and rectify them.
And in my first day in the kickboxing gym, I got knocked out clean asleep.
But I was back the next day with my gloves saying, look, fuck you. Let's go. That's just how I was as a person. And I just didn't want to give up that easily. I've never been the kind of person to give up on something I really want to do. And I knew if I applied myself.
I'm a firm believer in hard work and
That was it, really.
Just quitting didn't cross my mind at any point. The absolute truth. And everything crossed my mind.
So that's that's awesome. I was thinking, you know, a long time ago, I used to play chess with a guy just just fun game. This guy was really good and he beat me every time. And, and he told me something. He once he said, you know, to get good at chess, you really have to want to win.
And, you know, and I thought, yeah, you know, I treat chess as just a fun pastime. And, you know, and that's why I lose. And so I can see where you're talking about there in kickboxing. Yeah, you really want to win. Absolutely. And that's the great thing about fight sports is that you can't have to fight sports. Like you're either going to get your ass whooped your whole life or you're going to be doing the ass whooping.
If you're going to do it, you need to do it. So I decided I was going to be a fighter, and I decided I don't want to get my ass kicked. As simple as that. In the gym, I've had plenty of injuries. I've lost fights. I've been hurt in the gym. It all goes through it, but you just have to have that attitude towards it.
reflection and reconstruction and self-analyzation and no room for self-pity because that's where it goes. Exactly what you said about
people wanting to quit. They quit because they feel sorry for themselves. They go, I went to the gym. They're better than me. They beat me. I can't go. Poor me, poor me. And I've never had that mindset. I've never had the poor me mindset.
not a poor me guy.
So it's always like, okay, they beat me. Well, I'm going to change some things. I'm going to go beat them.
And this is just the way I was really raised. I was raised with this...
Maybe it's the nature of chess and chess tournaments and the way I self-analyzed, or maybe it's just my upbringing and such, but it was never a poor me situation.
It just didn't exist in my household. It just wasn't a thing. It was never a, this happened to me, poor me. It was this happened to me, well, do something about it.
You know?
which is how it's always, always been. So to me, it comes so naturally. I find it amazing, listen.
men especially more than women living their lives out there
with this self-pity and this hanging on the shoulders. I think, what the fuck? How can you exist?
in that mind frame. I don't understand how you can even be remotely happy with yourself existing that way.
Well, okay, that's interesting. That gives us a good segue into what I want to talk about what you wrote on Twitter the other day about basically, you said a lot, but I think the important thing to my mind was you talked about self-pity and excuses and how people have this self-pity and excuses.
You never thought otherwise.
We're going to be, hopefully a lot of men will be watching this video that we're doing here. And, you know, what would you say to somebody who...
You know who's had this mindset their whole life who said well, I I can't do this because of you know Like you say XYZ because of this excuse or or that? And you know what would you say to them? How can you use that mindset? What do you do? The key the key is this first thing you need to do is is you need to find people who do not listen to your excuses and
Like, if I ever tried to say an excuse to my dad or anyone, just look at me like, so?
You know, like that doesn't matter. Even when I was fighting, if I was fighting, I had a really bad ankle. I fucked my ankle up and I couldn't run properly.
I said to Amir, my coach, I said, I can't run properly my ankle. He goes, okay, let's just call your opponent and tell him that, you know, you have an excuse. So he has to go easy on you because he isn't going to. He isn't going to give a shit about all your excuses. If I get in the ring with him and he aims to kill me or hurt me as bad as he can, he's not going to pull a punch or think I better not hurt him because he couldn't train properly. He doesn't care. And life is the same. All your excuses do not change life hitting you as hard as it can hit you. Your excuses carry zero weight.
Thank you.
And these people who are excuse makers, they have these support networks of people around them who listen to their excuses.
Oh, I can't do this. Why? Because of X, Y, Z. Yeah, it's true. You need someone to say no. You can do it. You just don't want it enough. It's the absolute truth. Excuse makers have become in the habit of using excuses because of people who will listen.
And I've never had anyone who listened to my excuses. And life is exactly the same. I say to people all the time, you know, people go, oh, yeah, but this, this, this, this. And they have their reasons for whatever. And I just sit and go, you know, you can sit and we'll use weight loss for an example. When I was training, I had lots of people ask me about weight loss and these things. I don't know. I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as you about nutrition or none of that stuff.
I just trained my ass off and ate clean. You know, I didn't, I didn't know the ins and outs, but people would go, Oh yeah, but I can't lose weight. Cause this, this, and I say, look,
If you ate less calories, you worked as hard as I do in the gym. You would not be that size. That's a fact. So you can come at me with all your excuses about how you have no time and your thyroid and all this bullshit. Or you can do it. Because when people look at you, they just see the result. They just see someone who's in shape or someone who's not in shape.
They don't look at you and see all your excuses and all your bullshit. Then no one's interested. No one has time to listen to them.
So you just have to push forward and be successful regardless. So what I'd say to the excuse makers is next time you catch yourself,
Usually the excuse for something,
Pay attention to who's listening to you because they're facilitating your garbage. You come at me with your excuses.
Come at me with your excuses and we'll see how long they last. Because the truth is I don't give a fuck. I don't care. I'm not interested. You either want to do it or you don't want to do it. And if you really want to do it, you'd be doing it already. So this is my belief system completely and utterly. Especially on Twitter. I get loads of people saying, I really want to do this, but. And I say, no, you don't. Because if you really want to do it, there wouldn't be a buck. There wouldn't be a buck. You'd already be doing it. You know? So these people, they just get in the habit of having...
Thank you.
people facilitate this mindset.
You're right. You don't have to because of your excuse. And it's garbage. It's bullshit. And, and the point of my thread was we're all on the same human timescale. You know, if you're a full grown man, you're lucky to live to 80, 90,
You know, you've got a certain amount of years and how many years you're going to spend saying excuses and praying that, you know, people are going to believe you. It's OK. You're either going to do it or you're not going to do it. And it's going to be the end. So what the fuck are you waiting for? That was that was the point of the thread, really. Right. Right. You know, I think that's that's that's tremendous. Because I just just regarding, you know, using myself as an example and how I've gone through life, you know, these these.
these kind of excuses, like, like this happens because this, someone is, someone is overweight because of,
this reason or something like that. You know, this is, it's just totally pervasive in, in society as a whole. Right. And, and it, you know,
And myself, it's only been in the last, you know, let's say 10 years or so that I've, you know, really with the advent of the Internet, I suppose, come across people like yourself who have this attitude. You know, in most cases, it's just, you know, you grow up, you go to college, you get a job and, you know, you go through life and you don't aspire for much more as long as you're making a decent living.
Yep.
Pervasive, the word you use pervasive I love because that is absolutely correct. And it translates across everything. It translates across everything. I have some beliefs that people call me crazy for.
Like I say, you know, I've had people come to me and say, I'm depressed. And I'm like, well, why? And they go, I'm depressed.
That's why I'm a fat, lonely guy with no girlfriend. I say, no.
You're not fat and lonely because you're depressed. You're depressed because you're fat and lonely. You got the wrong way around. And what you're using is depression as an excuse, a facilitator to avoid going to the gym, to avoid fixing your life, because now you have a ready-made,
fully packaged excuse that Western society buys at a heartbeat. Oh, well, he can't do anything about his life. Oh, this kid doesn't want to behave. He has ADHD. Oh, this person doesn't want to do this. You know, it's all these pre-packaged excuses that people can just pull out their pocket and say, this is my reason for doing my life wrong. And it's garbage. I refuse to believe any of it. I'm sorry. I refuse to believe any of it. You know, it's, it's completely down to you to build the life you want to make. When I had my, my, my Twitter account, I tweet on my brothers. Now when I had mine, I'm going to,
I'm verified and da-da-da.
The internet went nuts when I said that I believe in depressing situations and I believe in feeling depressed.
But I also believe that it's down to you to fix it. I don't believe that popping pills all day is going to fix that problem. I believe that you need to change your scenario so you're in a scenario that makes you happier. When I said this, I basically said clinical depression as it's currently under...
The study sold as this big evil monster that comes out of nowhere. I don't believe that bullshit. Most people are depressed. They're just living lives they're unhappy with and they need to change them. The world went nuts. People were going crazy. So desperate to defend their mindset. And I'm sitting, I think I'm reading it thinking, why are you so desperate to defend the thing you say cripples your life? You say depression cripples your life and you are desperate to defend it. You're desperate to convince me that it's real and convince me how dangerous it is. Why are you sticking up for this thing?
you know if you were half a man and they're coming and you're supposedly depressed you wouldn't you'd fight against it with everything you've got you'd say fuck depression i'm going to fuck depression i'm doing you'd fight back instead you're sitting at your computer typing at me a happy person telling me i need to change how i think
What the fuck? It's craziness to me. And it's because people religiously defend their excuses. They religiously defend their ability to absolve responsibility. If they have a way to get rid of the responsibility and pass it on to someone else.
They'll defend that with everything they've got because if, because if they can't defend that, they have to face the reality and they have to look in the mirror. They're going to be, they're going to be really pissed off.
So they need to just go, oh, no, my life's, I'm a black person from the ghetto, so my life's bad. I'm half black. I grew up in Gary, Indiana. My life's not bad. Oh, I'm, you know, I'm from a single mother. My life's bad. So was I for a large portion of my life. I've heard every excuse. And it's all bullshit. And people just want to keep them as this blanket to hide under. And that's why I don't, I refuse to buy them. I refuse to buy them. Absolutely. And Western society, you use the perfect word, pervasive. It's absolutely through and through everything people do.
It's just tinged with this, oh, but I can't because but, but, but. It's garbage.
garbage. That's, that's, wow, that's fantastic, Andrew. I mean, I agree. The, the, the thing about depression, you know, that,
I posted something myself recently. I wrote an article a while back about depression being physically being inflammatory, right? And so where does this inflammation come from? Basically, diet, exercise, sleep, and so on. So these are all ways that you can, you know, you can take care of it. And, you know, and I get this pushback. They say, no, no, no, it's a chemical imbalance in the brain.
to this idea because this is one of the prepackaged
uh excuses and depression the reason depression is so violently defended is because depression is universal excuse for everything
Depression is a cure-all excuse for why you're out of shape, why your marriage is falling apart, why you're an idiot, why you're broke, why you ain't paid your mortgage, why you don't go to work. Every single bad thing in your life, you can pull out the one cure-all excuse, depression. That's why it's so violently defended.
And even the point you made about diet and inflammation, of course you're depressed, you're fat, you're eating shit, you're not training. And this is my exact point. Depression, as it's currently taught, is that...
You can be going through your life and your life can be perfectly fine and absolutely out of nowhere for no reason from the sky, something's going to cripple your brain to a level where you can't function. I don't believe that. And if that was the case, if it was the case the way they're teaching it in the Western world, depression would be universal across the human species. How come there's countries where no one has this garbage? If it's something that you can't help and it's nothing to do with your environment, nothing to do with your diet, nothing to do with your mindset, why are there in countries where they eat good and they don't live in a victim culture?
They're not all depressed. Explain that to me. It's something which has been manufactured, and people just don't want to accept this because it's their cure-all excuse. There are people going through their lives, and their field against all criticism they ever receive is depression.
That's their shield. Why is X, Y, Z wrong with your life? I'm depressed.
That's their shield. They don't want to lose their shield. When you point out they need to eat better and go to the gym and look out for themselves, no, no, no, that can't possibly be true. No. They need their shield. No, it's not my fault.
Come out of nowhere and my life's just been crippled by this terrible thing. Garbage. Absolute garbage, man.
and it's pervasive. And depression is a great one because it's a cure-all for everything, but there's lots of things.
things like,
I, I, my, uh, and this is a family issue. One of my cousins got diagnosed with ADHD or one of these disorders or something. And I said,
If, if, if,
It was my cousin. I said to my uncle, I said, if you were raising him the way dad raised me, his ass wouldn't be talking back. I'm telling you, you can say he's got whatever he's got, but he ain't putting his hand in fire because he knows he's going to get burned. He ain't repeatedly putting his hand in fire because he knows it's a consequence. He's living life without consequence. Now he's acting like a little shit. If he had consequences for acting a certain way, he might think,
Twice. That's how I see it. Like you pull out this excuse for your kid to be an idiot and get expelled from school. You need to drop the garbage and fucking discipline your child.
It's just craziness, man. It's craziness. It really is discourage of the Western world. I have a unique view on the world because I live in Eastern Europe, which is,
It was a communist country in the 90s where I lived. It was only 25, 30 years ago.
And there are certain hangovers from communism, which are still there. It's technically a poor country, et cetera, et cetera. But things like discipline, things like gender roles, things like all these things are still very firmly in place. There is no victim culture. There is no, well, we're all depressed. There is no kids acting like idiots. There's none of this shit because family units are still together. And, you know, you can't act like a dickhead. Your dad's going to smack you in the mouth.
things. We've gone so far off track.
And they're all interlinked.
Everything from the excuses to why marriages are breaking down, to how kids are being raised, everything is interlinked, and it's all falling apart. And I find it amazing, especially like when –
Twitter to me is like a social experiment. I can scroll through Twitter all day and see some of the garbage people are tweeting. I'm like,
Do people think like this? Like, is this how people like live?
And you read some of these things like, oh, you can't do this, you can't do that, da-da.
And we have people out there now trying to rewrite human history and the way humans have always been raised. My dad, if I fucked up, my dad hit me.
Now, people can say that's wrong. I'm happy with who I am in the life I live, and I'm happy I was hit. He didn't beat the shit out of me. He wasn't abusive, but if I fucked up,
I got hit.
And people are saying that that's completely wrong. And I say, and I just wonder, I think,
Throughout the half a million years of human history, kids have been getting hit. Throughout the 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s, kids got hit. Everyone was fine. We're all still here. We still pushed forward. We still went to the moon. We still built all these great cities. And now you want to come along now and say that all of human history is wrong and we can't discipline kids anymore.
And you think you know better? Like, like, you know, like, has anyone else seen the disconnect here? I'm like, bullshit. I think, I think that, you know, one, one thing in the Western world is, as opposed to Eastern Europe, where you are, is that, you know, in a sense, we have a luxury of being able to do that.
discipline. Uh, you know, and, and when, when you can, when you can do what you want, when you can lead a life of indiscipline, when you have your excuses and you, and, and you suffer a few or no consequences from this as far as, well, I still got my job or I still got the, you know, welfare check coming in or what, what have you, then, you know, then it keeps going on. Um, so, um, what, what would, you know, so you,
You went into kickboxing and you persisted in eventually becoming world champion. What would you say...
to someone who, um,
Well, let me put it this way. Obviously, a lot of other guys were kickboxing, right? And they didn't all make it. And so there's some level of talent, innate skill. I don't know how you look like you're very big. I don't know how tall you are, but yeah. I guess.
You got to have some of that. So what do you say, not just in kickboxing, but in any field of endeavor,
Somebody really wants to do something, but maybe they don't have the talent. Is that another excuse or how do you see that?
Talent certainly helps, but I'm telling you, it doesn't matter whether it's golf, it doesn't matter whether it's kickboxing, it doesn't matter whether it's chess, anything else. 95% of it's hard work.
There is no talent without hard work. You can't realize talent without hard work.
Because if you're going to argue that I'm more talented than someone else, that's fine. But we have to have both done the same hard work to realize that.
If I've done no hard work and this guy takes 10 years, then you've got to fight for talent. You know? So talent is a slight edge after the use of hard work.
So people say this to me a lot. Like people go, oh, Tate, you have money because you're lucky. You're a fighter. I'm like, lucky.
Okay.
I'm a fighter. That's easy, chocolate. I'm lucky I'm a fighter. You think getting up and running and training and breaking bones and literally risking my life and losing 10 kilos in a week and all this bullshit is easy? People don't connect. Like, oh, you're talented. I say, how would I know I'm talented unless I fucking train for all these years? I don't know these things.
is my brother. I'm very lucky to have my brother. Me and my brother are closer even than twin brothers are. We work together. We live together. We train together. We share a bank account. We'll never live apart. And I was always lucky to have someone like that because I'm not a big fan.
I always had that masculine energy around me to keep me focused on the right things. Like if I split up with a girlfriend or something, nothing could distract me from my mission. You know, me and my bro, we're always getting stuff done. So I was lucky. In general, a lot of it's down to just who you surround yourself with, how you view your life and your priorities and your relationships and stuff. You know, the number one thing I've seen from a lot of fighters who fall off is just shitty girlfriends, man. I've seen some amazingly talented dudes just lose careers because their girlfriend's interviewed.
He's trying to keep the relationship working. This is sometimes I say things about girls and women and stuff and things on Twitter. But I've seen it. I've seen probably the number one thing I'd say that ruins fight careers, especially, can be a toxic relationship. Because the stress you're under, you're in a very masculine environment. It's very testosterone-fueled. Then you're under huge stress for your upcoming fight. And then your girlfriend wants attention, too. And it can also...
I'll just spiral down into nothing. So there's a lot of little things, but just me personally, I always had my house in order. I always had my priorities in check. You know, I always just decided, you know, if I'm going to fight, it's going to be the number one thing I do. I'm never going to have anything else that equals this in, in regards to importance because it's my life. It's my health, it's my safety, it's everything.
So I was just good at prioritizing, I guess. And it's the same with everything.
If you prioritize something, you're going to do well at it. It doesn't matter what it is. If your number one priority in the world is scuba diving, you're going to do a lot of scuba diving. But if it's number seven or eight, you ain't going to get much done. So it really is just down to just prioritizing. And I think a lot of people...
In fact, I'm going to say this now.
What a lot of people want. They don't want what they think they want. They want the benefits of what they want.
They say they want.
So I've realized like people come to me and go, I'd love to be a fighter. And I say, no, you wouldn't go. Yeah, I would. I'd love to be able to fight. And so that's not true. Cause you don't fight. So it's not true. And I go, yeah, but I'd be able to do X, Y, Z. I'd feel more confident. I say, yeah, yeah, but you don't fight. So what you want is all the benefits without any of the hard work.
And what's crazy about that is there's not a single skill in the world where I wouldn't take the benefits without the hard work. If someone could come along like the Matrix and plug my brain in and say, do you want to know how to be a fucking freestyle ice skater? I'd be like, yeah, sure. Click the button. Yeah, can I skate now? But I don't want it enough to go and learn it.
You know where I'm coming from. And this is how people are. People are, I want the benefit. I want, they think of all the benefits they want, but they don't want any of the work and everything else that goes into the benefits, which is, which is a garbage mindset. Because if that's the case, I want all the benefits of everything. I wish I could play basketball and all these other fucking stupid things I'm not going to do. If you could just download it, it doesn't mean anything. If it's easy.
if it's easy, everyone can do it. The only reason they have value is because they're difficult to attain. It's the only reason they have any value and people don't want to do that connection. Like, oh, I wish I could fight. It was like, well, if you want to be able to fight without ever training, that means everyone can fight.
So then who gives a shit? It doesn't mean anything anymore. You know, like the difficulty is what gives the value to the skills.
And people are so shunned from the difficulty. They're so like shying away from the difficulty.
but they still want the skill and they don't understand that the skill won't have a value of it any other way. Am I making sense or am I rambling? No, you're totally making sense. I think it's a great point. I think...
you're really putting putting this the idea of talent into perspective that uh uh that that it's only developed by the hard work and and you know maybe if you're talking about uh uh
you know, I don't know what, if you're going for an Olympic gold medal and everybody's, everybody's trained equally, if you're in the top 0.1% of the elite,
Yeah, you can say, well, yeah, maybe that guy's got an edge because he was born with it. But anything else you're talking about, and even at that level, they did the 99.9% hard work to get to that point.
I had just, uh,
you know that you got to do the hard work to develop the talent i think that's you got to grind out for a long long time to find out if you're talented you know you got to you got to do a good 10 years of hard work before you could even look back and think am i talented or not you got you got to do a whole bunch of work first you know and and people but i want the work and and the number one thing man is is for me personally i see a lot of people on twitter a lot of people message me and they say all these things they want and they don't understand that
It's hard to attain.
Like having a nice body is valuable because it's hard to have a nice body. If you could have a nice body at the click of a hat, then no one would give a shit.
So all these people are like, I want this, I want this. They don't want to work for it. It's like, well, you're trying to defy the law of capitalism and economics, along with being lazy. Like, that's just not going to happen. All the things you want only have a value because they're hard to get.
And that's not going to change. The second they become easy, in the future, when they invent a pill that gives us all six packs, no one's going to give a fuck if we have a six pack. That's how it is.
I totally, totally. I just total agreement there. Yes. Everything valuable is valuable because it's scarce because it's hard to get. Otherwise, otherwise it wouldn't be valuable. I mean, this is what, you know, people who try to make excuses for the way they are, like saying basically along the lines of, oh, this way that I am or the way people are is just as good as the other thing.
things that are more common are less valuable. And the things that are more valuable take hard work or, like you say, gold. That's a perfect example. It's valuable because it's scarce. And this is the Western world. But this is the Western world. We're all the same. It's all the same.
I don't know about in America, but where I lived in England,
They're trying to convince people that being fat isn't unhealthy now. You can be fat and healthy. You cannot be morbidly obese and as healthy as someone who's not morbidly obese. I don't give a shit what you say or what bullshit science you want to pull out of.
That's not possible. Let's run 100 meters and let's see. If you want to pull a little bit of theory to the test, let's go do it. You know? But they just – everyone's the same. Everyone has –
We just...
Because people...
Thank you.
got completely upset. Everything must be fair. And if it's, if it's, if people aren't the same, life's not fair. And that's, that's bullshit. People being the same and things being fair are actually completely different. Two people can, can attempt the same thing fairly and one can fail and one could succeed.
But if someone succeeds, they look at them and go, well, that's not fair. That's not fair. And they're trying to drag him down again. It's just really, it's a crazy mindset. And the most dangerous thing about it is it only exists in the West.
If you go to China,
where they're building all our stuff, but they have all these huge factories and stuff. You think you can walk around there and say I'm depressed?
You can walk around there and say, oh, that's not fair. No one gives a shit. It's sick to swim. That's how it is. So you better learn to swim, you know? And there's people out there who are surviving. Even in Romania, where I live, the average wage is about $500 a month. And the prices really aren't too different to America. Like the price of a can of Coke or the price of a meal is not too different. People are fucking surviving, man.
And they're surviving. They've got houses. They've got cars. They're eating good. They're in good shape. They're going to the gym. Their nails are done. I'm like, how the fuck? Because they're not waiting for anyone to come save them. They're not waiting for a politician to give them a tax break. They're not waiting for a welfare check. They're not blaming the Republicans or Democrats. They're just like, it's down to me. This is what I got. You've got to make it do, you know?
And it's really, it really is crazy. This whole mindset is strange. It's fair mindset. It's completely odd.
An analogy I like to use when I had my old Twitter and I was getting constantly attacked.
Because I was verified. Once you're verified on Twitter, it becomes a completely different place because you can select to only see interactions from other verified people. So all the verified people are constantly fucking arguing with each other. All the nobody blue checks that no one's heard of are constantly fucking bickering.
So as soon as I got verified, I stuck in all these assaults from these weird feminists and these fucking weird people. And I made a point. Have you ever played the video game The Sims? Have you ever played that video game? I have never played it, no. It's a video game where you build a little person and you make him move around, whatever. And you choose the little person's attributes at the beginning of the game.
And I'm saying if life was the same as this video game, if you could choose your attributes at the beginning, nobody would choose to be fat, weak, lack confidence. No one would choose any of these things. All the things everyone is saying are okay now. It's normal. It's fine. It's okay. If you had the choice, you would all choose to be big, tall, strong, confident individual. None of you would choose the life you're currently living. And what they're trying to do is instead of rectify their things that are not happy, rectify their problems with themselves.
put a spin on it and convince the world that it's good. It's good to be obese.
It's good to be depressed. It's good to lack confidence. It's good to be this. It's normal. It's normal. There's something wrong with you, Andrew, because you're toxically masked. You have the problem. And it's not pointing the finger the other way. And really, if people were given a choice from the offset,
No one would choose to be fat, unhappy, lonely, and depressed. No one would tick those boxes.
So when these people are trying to put a spin on it and convince the world that it's normal,
I don't buy it for a second. I refuse to buy it. And I just, I just don't buy it. And this is probably why I kiss so many people off. I won't, I won't even entertain their bullshit for half a second. They're like, Oh yeah, but don't care. Don't care. Nope. You haven't heard me. Don't want to hear. So I don't give a shit. Don't care. I can't stand it. But yeah, pervasive. The word you use, man. Perfect word pervasive.
psychologists would call an internal locus of control versus an external locus. So, so an internal locus, I, I, I mean, I could hardly give you a better example, but you, you, you know, you, you, you believe that, you know,
everything depends on yourself. Nobody's coming to save you. You know, it's like, like the people you're talking about in Romania that make $500 a month, but they're getting by because they know nobody's coming to save them. It's all up to them. And, and versus the external locus of control, which is all these conditions around me are, are affecting how I am and what I'm able to do. And so on. I, I think in, in the,
In the Western world, this has become more, again, that word pervasive. It's a shift to the external way of control.
Absolutely. You know what I find most crazy?
When you speak of control, one of the very few things you have control over in this world, because we can't.
control very much like even even we can we can do our best to maintain healthy but you can still be unlucky and have a brain hemorrhage you can still get hit by a car
You can't even control your personal safety. You can't control the weather. You can't control if your company you work for is going to shut down. You can't control if the government's going to change. One of the only things you actually have control over is your state of mind. That's one of the few things you can affect directly in real time. You can wake up pissed off and sad, and you can brush your teeth, and you can make a coffee, and you go, you know what? Fuck it. I'm not sad. I'm the fucking man.
And you can bang. You can do that. And people go, no, you can't. I say, yes, you can. That's one of the only things in the world you have control over. You don't have control over anything else. And that's where life starts from. It starts from in your head. Every movement you do with your body starts in your head.
The weights we lift starts here. We get up and we prepare ourselves to do it. It all starts in your mind. That's the only thing you actually have control over. And if you refuse to control that, if you refuse to control the only thing you can control, and then you want to complain that life's kicking your ass,
ass. I'm sitting here thinking, well, what the fuck did you think was going to happen? You know, you think there's other people out there in the world who wake up and go, you know what, I want to make Andrew's life better. No one wakes up giving a shit about my life but me. No one wakes up and goes, you know what, I really want to get Andrew a hot girlfriend in Ferrari. I'm going to go out my way and I'm going to really, no one's going to do that. So like you're saying about these external control mechanisms, people are like, oh, well, I need this to do this, or I'm
No one is coming to save you. There is no superhero to your life.
It's absolutely down to you and your state of mind. The only thing you can affect, I'm a massive Trump fan. I'm a huge Trump fan.
But I also understand that under Trump, who I believe is the greatest politician ever,
But my life hasn't really that dramatically changed.
changed. I mean, I enjoy watching him piss everyone off. I'm happy there because I think he deserves to be there. I respect him. But my life day to day hasn't changed. Like that's the biggest political upset you could possibly hope for. And that's the most powerful.
masculine politician we've ever had. And still my life hasn't changed. So if you think anything else is going to change your life, and certainly you think some other president is going to change your life, or some other change from some other shit,
down to you absolutely. And the only thing you can control is your own mindset. This is why I don't understand when people say I lack motivation.
So you lack motivation to do what? To live a life worth living?
You're that unmotivated? You'd rather have a shit life?
I just don't understand it. I'm like, you're waiting for someone to come along and drag you to the gym every day for the rest of your life. That's what you want. You want to message me on Twitter and me convince you to go and fix your life. That's not my job. And that's no one else's. Unless you're going to start paying me money, then I'll think about it. But otherwise, unless there's some finance involved, the only person who's going to give you the motivation you keep looking for is yourself.
again, down to absolving responsibility, getting rid of excuses, looking in the mirror and just taking responsibility for your life and your actions.
People don't want to do it. They don't want to do it.
Even like crime.
You watch crime and criminals and stuff like, oh, yeah, I shot him in the face 10 times, but I'm from the hood.
Like, like that's an acceptable excuse. You shot him in the head. Like, what the fuck? What do you mean you're from the hood? Who cares where you're from? You knew what you were doing.
You know, once again, people got people got their excuse card ready. And that's that's the Western world, man. Right. Right. I think that.
Well, for me, following people like yourself and, you know, some others on Twitter has been tremendous for me in that, you know, people people talking like you.
and so on. For most people, this, this kind of other attitude that we've been talking about it, you know, it's everywhere and they, they don't, you know, it's just so easy to, to,
fall into what everyone else is doing. And they don't have people like yourself telling them this. It's crazy, but it's almost like people don't even realize that they can do this. They need a swift kick in the rear to understand that it's all to them. If they want to change, they've got to do it themselves.
Absolutely. I'm 31, so I haven't got any kids yet. But in the next three or four years, I'll have kids. And let me tell you something.
They ain't going to come to me with no excuses about nothing. It's down to how you're raised. These people are raised with an atmosphere of, if I come up with a good enough excuse, then I don't have to do it. If I come up with a good enough excuse, it's okay. I haven't achieved this.
that's the bullshit that needs to go I don't listen to excuses and people call me an asshole I see myself as the absolute opposite
I'm a philanthropist. When you come at me with your excuse, and I tell you to fuck yourself, I'm being a nice guy. You may not notice it,
You may not see it, but I'm promising you I'll be nicer to you than if I were to sit there and go, oh, yeah, okay, yeah.
understand nah fuck that bullshit get to fucking work that's how it is you know so completely man it's down to the mechanisms it's also like a lot of it's down to the people you hang around with man if you look you hang around with a bunch of winners none of them are making excuses and you hang in a group where you know you can't pull out the excuse card because no one's interested and then you're going to change your mindset
You look at these people who are making excuses and are depressed and stuff. So one guy was depressed and he was sending me links. He put in a forum and the forum was a depressed forum. I was like, so what? You hate your life and you're depressed and you sit there all day talking to other people who hate their lives. Where is this going to go? Like, where do you like you? You don't want to talk to me because you think I'm an asshole. Well, I'm happy and I'm moderately successful. So maybe you should want to talk to me. Maybe I'm the guy you should be trying to talk to. Maybe you should be listening to me, not the other people who hate themselves.
to what they say for. You know, so people are just lost and sometimes the only way to be shown the path is just to be told to fuck off.
Sing or swim. I love the sing or swim analogy, man. Sometimes that's how life works. Do it or don't do it.
but that's it or don't do it. My coach said that to me for one fight talking about my ankle I was talking about earlier I was saying I can't run I can't run he's going are you going to fight or not? I was like yeah he goes then fucking run that was the conversation but there wasn't no well let's go to the doctor it was like are you going to fight? yeah then run that's it there's no between and that's people trying to live in this grey area you've got to get rid of the grey area it's do or don't so that's how I believe
Well, that's awesome. I think we're going to wrap it up here now, Andrew. I wonder, so I want to ask you just one or two more things. So what's in your future now? What do you have plans for?
more years of running around being a playboy and acting silly.
Um, that's it, man. I sit on Twitter sometimes, piss the world off and I travel a bit.
You know, I do a bit of work and stuff, but all in all, uh,
I'm kind of enjoying, I had such a rigid framework to my life when I was fighting for so many years. I'm kind of enjoying now being a bit of a vagabond and just,
living in hotels and sleeping in and dumb shit. Because for 10 years of my life, I always had something hanging over my head. I always had the pressure of a fight in my mind.
And now that's gone. So,
I'm kind of enjoying it, but I'm also kind of missing the pressure. So maybe I'll go back and –
We'll see. I'm in one of those kind of limbo periods, but
All in all, man, I'm just waking up each day. If I wake up and both my arms move and both my legs move,
that puts me in a good mood. I've seen too much fucked up shit. There's too many people in the world now who...
Their houses are getting bombed somewhere in some country no one cares about. And, you know, if you wake up and the people you love are still alive and your arms and legs are still moving –
that's enough reason to smile, have some breakfast and just enjoy life. And,
That's how I look at it, man. I just try and stay super positive and just be a happy guy and piss everyone off on Twitter. That's about it. Man, that's a perfect lesson there to wrap up with. Thanks so much for coming on, Andrew. Really great talking to you. I think your message is fantastic. No excuses. It's all within you. No one's coming to save you. It's under your control. And you've totally showed that that's the case.
you are. It's awesome. Thanks so much. Okay, we'll talk to you later. I'll stop the recording now.