May 10, 2022 • 53 mins
While Phoenix launches his comeback as a cage fighter, rumours swirl that some of his demons are catching up with him. With Phoenix absent, his former sidekicks struggle to pick up the pieces.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel h On April two thousand and fifteen, Phoenix Jones
made a comeback of sorts, Ladies and Gentle. This fight
has rerounds in the World Series of Fighting. He returned
to the Deck a Gone, the ten sided cage where
(00:27):
the Mixed Martial Arts World Series of Fighting takes place.
In one corner, you had twenty eight year old Emmanuel
wall Of Now in the other corner, you had Phoenix,
who decided to fight under his superhero name for the
first time in his career shore. This was Phoenix's first
(00:57):
fight in the prestigious World Series of Fighting. It was
a chance for him to rebrand himself after his falling
out with his superhero teammates. It was also a chance
for him to get his finances in order. He stood
to win ten thousand dollars if he won the fight,
and winning would put him on track to get more
fights for bigger payouts. And it seemed like the world
(01:18):
was ready to believe in Phoenix Jones again. He was
going into this fight undefeated in his professional career, and
in an online poll by the m A site, topology
of the respondents predicted Phoenix would beat Emmanuel Wallow. Look
at this arena, double stacked seats. This is where the
legacy starts. This is where the phoenix rises. For someone
(01:41):
like Phoenix, who has an admittedly disastrous personal life, I
totally see the appeal of mm A. There's nothing messy
about it. Hand to hand fighting is clean and simple.
You can't misinterpret a punch to the face or have
a difference of opinion about a roundhouse kick to the groin.
It just happens, pure and visceral. Once you step into
the cage, all the noise of your life melts away.
(02:05):
The ring is the only true place in the world
where no lives matter. Like nothing you said matters, nothing
you claim to have done matters, none of it. Where
two people were gonna fight and my machine is better
than yours, and this is where I live. It's gonna
be okay for me. And even if you win, you
have to be spectacular, so you're gonna knock me out
and I don't have to deal with it because I'm
not gonna be conscious. Right. The hard part is is
(02:26):
losing and having to stand there and watch yourself lose
or not completing your goals but getting physically hurt. Who
cares like you can't possibly hate me as much as
I hate me. Sometimes, Phoenix was back where he longed
to be, in the spotlight, about to take on his
(02:47):
latest at poem. I'm pretty much known for safety to people.
But the one thing that you have to know when
they closed the deca gone doors. Not even Phoenix Jones
can saving. We are set to go here in Connecticut.
It would be a fight for the ages. You're ready,
You're ready. I'm David Weinberg and from the team's at
(03:14):
Novel and I heart radio. This is the Superhero Complex,
episode seven from the Ashes. After Phoenix split from the
(03:38):
Rain City Superheroes, he vowed to continue fighting crime, but
based on his social media posts, he seemed to be
patrolling a lot less than he had with his team
beside him. He only posted to patrol videos for the
rest of He posted five videos in January, one more
in November, and then went silent on his official Nick
(04:00):
Jones YouTube channel. To this day, he hasn't posted anything
there since. But before he went dark completely, Phoenix posted
a video from another channel, a video that was unlike
anything he'd ever put out before. Hey, this is Phoenix Jones.
I'm putting this on my YouTube channel, but it's really
for other real life superheroes. I'm gonna be sharing it
(04:22):
on my Facebook page. Phoenix is in street clothes. He
is a massive, high top haircut, black rimmed glasses, and
he's looking directly into the camera. He seems sincere acknowledging
that maybe he'd made some mistakes in the past. And
I realized I harbor a lot of resentment for a
whole lot of superheroes in this community for various actions,
(04:43):
I mean, different things, but when it really comes down
to it, you guys are the closest I have to
anyone who understands what I want to do. And like inside,
I felt this crazy excitement that I wasn't alone, that
I was gonna put on the suit, and I was
going to make a difference with my family, you know.
And as time has progressed, it's really been depressing to
(05:07):
think that it's not that way, and someone has to
start the trend, someone has to eventually give up the
pissing match, and I guess it's gonna be me. So
I'm sorry. I'm sorry for anything that I've done that's
offended you, or any of my actions that have caused you.
Guys discomfort or trouble or pain. It was never really
(05:30):
my intention to do that. I just wanted to be
the best. I still I feel like I am. I
feel like I am the best. Ah. There it is
the moment he couldn't stop himself from proclaiming his superiority.
But seriously, it must have been incredibly difficult and humbling
for him to post a video like this to admit
(05:50):
publicly that maybe he did need all those people who
we called clowns and losers by his side. When you
break it down, me and a superhero isn't all about
in crime more being effective. So as far as I'm concerned,
I'm dropping all of the negative talk about other superheroes.
And before I recorded this, I deleted my entire banned list.
(06:11):
So if you were once banned as a superhero, you
are unbanned. Uh. I hope we can really just move forward.
So funny to say this, if there was none of you,
there wouldn't be any of me. After that, Phoenix offered
to bury the hatchet with El Caballero, and he even
did the unthinkable. He volunteered to help a different team
(06:34):
of superheroes, the Emerald City Heroes Organization, which El Caballero founded,
also known by their acronym Echo. No more negative stuff,
no more garbage. We're all a team and uh I'll
see you guys in the streets. Was the self proclaimed
only true real life superhero suddenly turning over a new leaf.
(06:55):
Was he humbled by his loneliness. Was he growing as
a person and come to terms with his own shortcomings?
It was certainly looking that way. Perhaps he used his
downtime for self reflection. I do know that during this time,
Phoenix turned back to the one thing he'd always found
comfort in when he was growing up, martial arts. Martial
(07:19):
arts was how I got away from all of the
bad stuff in my life. Martial arts was what saved me.
Do you remember your first mm A fight? Yeah, Ken Brenger.
Sometimes in life you are presented with an opportunity to
do something brave or stupid, depending on how you look
at it. And for young Ben Fodor in two thousand
and six, this was one of those moments. He says
(07:41):
he went to see an m m A fight. He
was sitting there in the audience with all the other
fans of brutality when it happened, and they're like, oh, sorry.
One of the fights bailed mack Iman to joke anyone
from the audience went a fight, and I was like,
I'll do it, you know, And as the versus ken Brenger,
like I was thirty five years old, Phoenix was only eighteen.
But even though he already knew he wanted to be
(08:02):
a fighter, he hadn't quite developed the stomach for it.
Before every single gage fight, I always like projectile bombit
maybe fifteen minutes before it's my turn every time, like
clockwork right, warming have to get ready to go, just like, oh,
we know what's gonna happen, so we just carry a
bag with us. But I mean, I have crazy nerves
until I don't. It turned out the bend Photor was
(08:25):
much better at kicking and punching people than he wasn't
holding down his lunch. He won fight after fight, eventually
racking up eleven wins and only one loss in his
amateur fighting career. He says he even teamed up with
the m m A trainer, Eric Weissman, to run a gym.
The world of fighting and training was a comforting place
(08:46):
to be. Fighting is easy for me. Fighting has never
been a thing that is a hard concept for me
to understand. There's no like, oh no, someone wants to
harm me Like I feel like people want to harm
me all the time. Fighting grounded Ben and it solved
another big problem in his life. Money m m A
was a lucrative way to make a living. Fame may
(09:07):
have played a big part and the disillusion of the
Rain City Superheroes, but it also gave Phoenix new opportunities.
In two thousand and fifteen, he signed a big deal
with the World Series of Fighting, in large part because
of the celebrity status he had acquired as a costume
crime fighter. In fact, that was how Manny Wallow first
heard about Phoenix. What was your first impression of him? Oh, honestly,
(09:32):
man and don't judge me for saying that I thought
he was a weirdo. At first, I got confused because
the contracts that have been Forordab. When I kept putting
Ben folded in, I kept getting Phoenix. I'm like, who
is this? I hit him by my trainer and he's
I think that the same person. So that's why I
was the old ship. This guy got an alter eagle.
I love talking to Manny. He was g garious and
candid and he's still fighting, and like Phoenix, he likes
(09:55):
to do some good when he's not trying to choke
people unconscious. And the deck are gone lasts forever. You know,
you gotta have what's next for you. So for me,
when my passion was always the surf, my own community, everything,
so I went up to became a firefighter. Manny is
also pragmatic about his opponents. Fighting isn't personal. It's something
I do because I love it. So if I saw
my name, we could fight like me and you fight
(10:16):
and we could be friends afterwards. There's no big deal
to me. So he says he was surprised when Phoenix
started attacking him on social media, and the weeks leading
up to their fight, before I gave me a look
to see who he was, he was already talking and
shipped on me, like you know, so it's like he came.
He came looking for me. I don't hit up opponents
or nothing. I just go on YouTube but stuffing find ship.
But he started with the whole making videos and everything
(10:38):
about me, and I'm like, okay. When I spoke to Phoenix,
he said Manny had challenged him to the fight and
that made it personal. Whether he liked it or not.
Apparently all the smack talking did get under manual skin.
In the video of the way in before the fight,
it's actually Manny who looks furious and so they didn't
(10:59):
wait for the fighting to get inside the cage. The
stick started out the way and as Wallow he taunts,
Phoenix gets right up in his face as if he's
about to hit him. President Ray Setho having to step
in and back the fellows up. They were ready to
go down right there. It's Phoenix who stands there playing
it cool. At one point he holds his hand to
like it's a mouth opening and closing it as if
(11:20):
to say, yeah, I keep talking, buddy. Everybody. You know
I'm easy going guy. You know I don't talk. But
he got me out of my character. Like so at
the way is when I finally saw him, I just
went off and I'm forgetting like this is the way.
The camera's there everything. Sometimes the effects of the weight
cut plays out of the way against. The fight was
(11:40):
on Phoenix Jones a Manual Wallow. We can inside the cage.
Phoenix came out on the offensive, throwing the first punches
and launching himself Wallow Jones walks right. He had the
wallo we want to do no fear, But it's Waller
who gets the first takedown, picking Phoenix up and slamming
him to the mat on his back. The beautiful takedowns
(12:02):
coming from Wallow in the red trunks. Phoenix jump so far,
not having a lot of success. Phoenix manages to get up,
but then immediately gets taken down again. Be beautiful, beautiful
pat jobs. And then he said he continued to talk
Phoenix in the ring while they were fighting. I was like,
there's not some drunk guys down in Seattle that you're
beating up. Every time I was taking him down, I
(12:24):
was like, up another one. Every time I was talking
about I was like, Dji was another one. I was
just molding him. Pick the most flamm and pick him up,
lamming for fift him in coming up on the final
fifteen seconds of round number one, this one will go
to a second round. Who we returned to Conneticut. By
the end of round one, Phoenix doesn't have a single takedown.
(12:45):
He looks exhausted, his mouth open as he gasped for air,
revealing his mouth guard which has vampire fangs printed on it,
and then before Phoenix can even catch his breath. Round
and this is round two of Phoenix Jones trying to
figure out the puzzle that is a manual wallow us wallow.
The next two rounds don't go much better for Phoenix.
(13:07):
He gets taken down again, and again he spends most
of the fight on his back, being dominated by a manually.
Phoenix Child's going to the guilty Phoenix needs an absolute
miracle here, but there is no miracle. All three judges
(13:28):
scorched twenty out of four year winner by humanimous decision
eat Manuo whoa Phoenix hates losing, and I'm sure this
loss in particular stue. It was supposed to be his
(13:50):
grand comeback. But Phoenix takes things personally, and he seems
to have burned bridges in the M m A world
as well as the superhero world. We reached out to
a lot of people for the story, and many of
them declined to talk to us, but some responded with
vague warnings like Phoenix is a bad person and the
attention just makes him worse. One person who knew Phoenix
(14:13):
from the gym told us that we were violating journalistic
ethics for even doing a story about him. But Phoenix's
mm A career wasn't over after his loss to Manny Wallow,
though he did go on to fight an opponent that
got a lot of attention. He went on to go
fight his own brother, Like, what kind of crazy ship
is that? I don't give a fuck if I me
and my brood the Hades, I'm not gonna fight on
(14:34):
entertaining people I don't know, like like, so there was
a lot of demons that he has. Phoenix's brother, Karros Photo,
is also an mm A fighter. He didn't respond to
our requests to speak with him, but one thing we
do know about him, his relationship with Phoenix is tense.
I hate my brother and I hate this terrible person.
(14:56):
Horrible person, Okay, I want to him physically. I would
like to hurt him now physically. If it was a
legal way for me to hurt him, I would do it.
As we speak, Phoenix and his brother agreed to fight
in the ring, and it was a media sensation a
real life violent family feud. If this sounds weirdly familiar,
the same thing happened to superhero Luke Cage, who publicly
(15:19):
fought his half brother and arch nemesis Willis Striker, but
unlike Luke, a fictional superhero, the outcome was a little
different for Phoenix. Phoenix says Karros instigated the fight behind
his back. I'm like, yo, remember that time that you
signed a cage fight behind my back to fight me
without telling me because you were my coach. Kicked me
out of the fight, Jim, I'd been training at while
(15:40):
you had been training me, and then talk about me
on the internet. In the lead up to the fight,
Phoenix posted videos trying to talk Carols out of it.
I tried to call you, but you nasty phone. So
just one last chance. We don't have to do this.
I know you want to do this, and I will
do this. We don't have to sure call see if
(16:03):
you are. Karros told journalists at the time that his
brother was only pretending that he had nothing to do
with setting up the fight. Either way, it seemed like
Phoenix was enjoying the attention and that it was a
good marketing strategy. Calos is the older brother, Ben the
caller brother. For all his posturing, Phoenix went forward with
(16:24):
the fight. He wore his signature American flag shorts with
the words Ben flat top photor so here they go. Wow,
adopted foster brothers. The commentators initially referred to Phoenix as
Ben Ben said he wanted to be called Phoenix Jones.
Tonight they are the photo Brothers, but we will call
him Jones and the red, white, blue trunks. They both
(16:46):
come out swinging, each landing a few quick punches and
then they lock arms and Phoenix takes a few knees
to the face. Carols gets the first takedown down as
he wanted to get it to the ground quickly, and
he dogs from the get go. It's a struggle for Phoenix,
Phoenix jugs having all kinds are trouble trying to keep
(17:07):
their spikes standing up. He's not there able to do
it so far. At the end of the final round,
there's no decisive winner, so they go to the judges.
Judges judges all score the fight thirty or your winner
by unanimous decision. Carol m In the end, Phoenix was
(17:40):
no match for his brother. When we hung out, I
asked him about the fight, and even still all these
years later, he's not over it. He's like, it's all
about good fun and making money. Yeah, not to me.
The most insulting thing you can do with another human
is look at them and say, I want to take
something you love, like fighting. I would think I can
beat you. I want to sell tickets to my friends
and family to come watch me beat you up. Oh,
(18:01):
by the way, we're just kidding. Fuck you, you're crazy.
You're a crazy person. We're gonna shake hands. We're not
be friends. I hate you, I absolutely hate you. Phoenix
had been defeated again, but in videos he posted online,
he decided to double down on his mm A career.
I'm gonna focus on becoming a well around him ay fighter.
(18:22):
I'm gonna take some jiujitsu classes and I'm gonna come back.
I mean, you guys deserve better. I'm gonna give us
a good shot. So for the next two years, I'm
going to give this mm A thing a real shot.
At least that was the intention. In reality, he only
fought twice more, and neither of those fights attracted nearly
as much attention as the one with his brother. After
(18:42):
a final loss, in his career ground to a halt,
leaving him to question his future. You get out of
martial arts and there's nothing left. There's no more fighting.
I have no skills that I think applied to the
world I live, and I had better off four thousand
years ago running a Germanic try of warriors like I
don't have a place anymore. The world evolved to where
(19:03):
computer people and pushing buttons are more important than physical attributes,
and who am I? And then you go, what am
I going to do with that? Phoenix Jones was adrift.
He felt like he'd lost his purpose. Who was he
if he wasn't fighting crime on the streets or opponents
in the cage. Meanwhile, back in Seattle, the members of
(19:28):
the superhero community who had once been inspired by Phoenix,
we're having to pick up the pieces and defend the
innocent without him. That's coming up alright. It is about
(20:03):
ten thirty pm on Thursday, and I am about to
roll up on Justin Service and Red Ranger from my
very first ever patrol with real life superheroes. Here we go.
From the moment I started working on this story, one
of the things that excited me the most was the
prospect of going out on a crime fighting patrol with
(20:26):
some costumed heroes. And last year, when I was deep
in the world of real life superheroes, I met up
with two Seattle superheroes in a parking garage downtown. I
was greeted at first with a powerful stench of urine.
In a far corner of the garage, I saw two
superheroes unloading equipment from the back of a station wagon.
(20:47):
Hey you must be Red Ranger. David. Hey there, David,
are you recording video right now? Audio? Okay, might snap
some photos, snap photos of us cool just got the
car just because secret. At Andy's Airport US Day, Red
Ranger was dressed in a black and red outfit made
up of the type of protective gear that hockey players wear,
plastic shoulder and knee pads, and he wore a menacing
(21:10):
looking red mask with black mesh eye holes and carried
a big metal shield with a peace sign made of
red tape on the front. Justin's service was clad in
green and white gear similar to Red Rangers, with a
bulletproof vest underneath his plastic armor. He wore a pair
of goggles that he had accented with neon yellow tape
(21:30):
and a gray mask that muffled his voice. They both
had GoPro cameras mounted on their chests. I felt a
little underdressed in my street clothes. I have a sort
of practical question, where do you guys go to the bathroom?
We've got the same out without going into too much detail, YEA,
(21:51):
make sure our seats are not just flashy for functional.
In the absence of Phoenix Jones, his old teammates at
splinter into a few different groups that patrolled together. Red
Ranger was a part of Echo, a group that El
Caballero founded and sometimes patrolled with. Justin Service was relatively
new to the Seattle superhero scene. He'd moved to town
(22:12):
in two thousand and twenty. Tonight, it was just the
two of them on patrol. They were getting ready by
loading supplies onto a cart with wheels that they would
tow behind them as we walked the streets. So we
will start rolling around Pioneer Square with our supplies, doing
our safety watch and also looking for people who might
be in need of some help. Tonight, all right, let's roll,
(22:34):
and with that we were on the move. Two armored
do gooders and an intrepid reporter in search of people
in distress. We started out in Pioneer Square, one of
the oldest parts of the city, home to a lot
of historic buildings, old saloons. Red brick streets and several
large homeless encampments. As we made our way through the streets,
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nearly everyone who saw some had some kind of reaction.
Are you guys transformers? There were double takes and wide eyes,
and some people shouted things at us Seattle Superheroes Man
control supplies at homes and Red Ranger wasn't kidding. You
guys want food, water, socks, water, don't want you also
(23:17):
got masks, hands and does want a mask? Man? Oh
you've got one. It's beautiful too. Yeah, yeah, we gotta Okay,
no worries. We're giving out free stuff tonight, including the
beef stits turned on. The superheroes seemed unfazed by all
the attention they got on patrol and maybe even a
little flattered. You guys look like want video games? Oh no, Man,
(23:38):
Seattle Superheroes brothers back in the scene. Man. Along with
all the water, food, hand sanitizer, and socks, the superheroes
were also outfitted with some more hardcore supplies. What's on
your belt and all that? What do you kind of
gear do you typically have? We've got our ballistic gear
and the FENS weapons in case anything hard and we
(24:00):
employed de escalation and nonviolent tactics always as a primary intervention.
I do like to carry medical supplies on me at
all times. Red Ranger was the more formidable of the duo.
He was a big guy. In his civilian life, he
works as a nurse in a hospital. He put these
skills to use numerous times on the patrol, giving medical
(24:21):
advice and first aid too many of the homeless people
we encountered. I used to do some time in an
emergency room. You know, I would see some things. They're
like victims of gunshot wounds, things like that, and I
would be there trying to help these people. And when
you can't help them and they end up succumbing to
their wounds, I just kind of made this resolve to
(24:45):
myself that said, as long as I can prevent this happening,
I'm gonna do everything I can to prevent it from happening.
Red Ranger came onto the scene at the tail end
of the rain City Superhero movement, and he went on
a few patrols with Phoenix and his team before the
group disbanded. At the time, you know, I was still
kind of getting to know all the drama. Um, so
I was a little bit farther removed, and at first
(25:07):
I saw him as a really good guy. I didn't
really have any problems patrolling with him for a while.
We kind of have a rule in the superior community.
You know, you take care of your own house first, right,
because you can't pour from an empty cup, right, You
still have to take care of your own life. And
if your own life needs work, you can't put yourself
out there to try and help other people if you
can't help yourself. He kind of got into this space
(25:28):
where it was definitely not good for him to be
patrolling for a while, and I think that's why he
took several hiatuses and has been less active recently. In
in the recent years, I got the feeling from patrolling
and talking with Justin's service that Red Ranger was very
much his mentor. Justin was younger, also smaller, a skinny
(25:51):
guy who was relatively new to Seattle. He was soft
spoken and had a gentleness that I found endearing. Hate Greg,
but I have a flash, right, I think bring that
big one. Justin grew up in a small town in Idaho.
It's just the nerdy kid that would avoid confrontation all
(26:12):
the time and got beat up a lot, but courage
is uh something you build on. He heard about the
real life superhero movement after seeing a documentary on HBO
called Superheroes. They genuinely wanted to help and they had
a creative way to do it, and I was like,
I want to try that out. So he put together
a costume and started patrolling the streets of a small
(26:34):
town looking for crime to stop. It was nerve racking
at first. I was just a guy in a costume
wandering around in a very conservative area, and in small town, Idaho,
there wasn't a whole lot of crime to fight. It
was also a particularly difficult time in his life. My
dad was diagnosed with cancer and getting treatments and stuff
(26:58):
at the time, so it was kind of hard, and
I didn't want to, like, I don't know, put any
extra on him. He wasn't exactly the best father, but
he was a good guy. So I alternated between like
taking care of him and going out at night. But
he uh, he recently passed in July, so Justin had
(27:23):
also lost his mom, and without his parents, he struggled
to figure out what exactly he was going to do
with his life. As he started looking into the real
life superhero movement. He met some of the Seattle superheroes
like Red Ranger on Facebook and it made the possibility
of becoming a hero more real. He decided to move
to Seattle and join them Red Ranger, sky Man, Spirit Fox,
(27:49):
El Cabro, all them. They welcome in and help me out.
Does Seattle feel like a dangerous place? Do you? Um?
I wouldn't call it safe, that's for sure. His luck
would have it. During Justin's services very first patrol in
Seattle with his newfound friends, they happened to run into
Phoenix Jones. Well technically they ran into Ben Fodor. He
(28:13):
was in street clothes, not on patrol. The first thing
he said to me, he was like, hey, new guy,
dear job or I'll kill you my fucking self. I
was just kind of taken aback by that. I was like, Jesus,
guy is supposed to be a superhero. When I first
came out here, my mindset, I had watched the videos
of Phoenix Jones and all that, and I was like stoked.
(28:33):
I was like, Oh, this is the guy. Yeah. And
then he says off the walls stuff like that, and
I'm like, oh, okay, that was my first time meeting
the famous Phoenix Jones. When I asked Phoenix about this exchange,
he admitted to saying it. He claimed he was only joking,
(28:56):
but it didn't seem that way to Justin's service. How
can you claim to be a defender of the innocent
and be a bully at the same time. After spending
time with Justin and hearing his story of losing his parents,
I just felt this paternal instinct to protect him, and
knowing that he was inspired to uproot his life and
(29:16):
moved to Seattle precisely because of Phoenix, only to meet
him and have him threatened his life, it really angered me.
We got like socks, So you're not totally free superheroes,
not coops. I'm actually a nurse. I will also say
that I'm very grateful for Justin's service, because he ended
(29:36):
up protecting me on patrol that night. I had not
expected things to go down the way they did. I
figured we'd help a few homeless people and maybe, if
we were really lucky, we'd find a bar fight to
break up. Because the vast majority of the time, superhero
patrols are pretty uneventful. Even if you patrol every night,
the odds of encountering a crime in progress seems insanely low.
(30:01):
But that's also one of the arguments I've heard for
these patrols that the presence of these crazy looking characters
can actually deter crime. I mean, would you snatch a
purse from an old lady if a dude in head
to toe body armor and a metal shield was glaring
at you. What I was not prepared for was the
profound mental health and addiction crisis that we were waiting into.
(30:24):
At one point, we were standing on a street corner
handing out food when this guy with a crazed look
in his eyes came running at me with a metal pole.
Justin's Service jumped in between me and the guy. So
we just had a guy threatening other residents of this
homeless camp with a pole, and Justin Service and I
just put ourselves between him and the residents of this
(30:44):
camp and he walked away. He's coming back though, never
mind we wear the armor. He ended up stopping short
of attacking us, but he was clearly distressed, rambling incoherently,
Oh did you need so? Red Ranger and Justin's Service
(31:05):
decided to try a different approach. They asked the guy
about his weapon. Is it a flu? What is it?
It's it's a compressed in spots like it looks like
a flu. Do you want some water or food or anything.
We can give you that right now. Brother. I'm sorry
you guys walking. Oh yeah, we're going all around the
city tonight. All right, brother, be safe with that thing tonight.
(31:28):
It looks safe, it okay. Red Ranger and justin Service
handled the situation extremely well. It was impressive, in fact,
that they were so kind and gentle with the man
that he decided he wanted to join us, and he
walked alongside us for several blocks, while Red Ranger definitely
tried to get him to go off on his own
(31:50):
so we could continue our patrol. All right, brother, take care.
We'll roll with you and see if I can orno.
It's all right, man, we're gonna be moving all around
you got There were other encounters that still haunted me.
One woman came up to Red Ranger when she heard
him say that he was in a nurse. She showed
(32:12):
him her arm, which was covered in horribly infected sores
from using intravenous drugs. Even Red Rangers seemed a little alarmed.
That's a serious infection and he needs some antibiotics for that.
I would make sure you get to a hospital as
soon as possible. Okay, can you walk there? Can you
get there? Are you hurting right now? I thought, alright, dear,
(32:33):
I understand that, but you've got to be safe with that. Okay,
make sure we get clean needles and go see a hospital.
SUSI maybe I was just paranoid, but we came across
so many people who were clearly struggling with mental health issues.
I was worried they would see the superheroes in their
armor and think they were a threat and they would
attack us. But no one did. Instead, they accepted our
(32:57):
socks and food, and we're grateful. Red Ranger administered first
aid to several people who seemed to be in really
bad shape. It was pretty remarkable to see the superheroes
in action, and it was an experience that has stayed
with me, especially after hearing the way Phoenix talked specifically
about Justin's service and the other members of the superhero
community who were drawn to the humanitarian aspect of this work.
(33:20):
Seeing Red Ranger and Justin Service changed my opinion of
the real life superheroes. Before going on patrol, I was
a lot more skeptical of the good that these superheroes
were doing, but I came away from my patrol with
a lot more respect for them. I did wonder, though,
how it affected them to wade into so much pain
and suffering as often as they do. What is like
(33:42):
your regular day to day life like when you're not
uh fighting crime. Um, I won't go into too much detail,
but I am currently homeless myself and trying to to
work towards housing and all that. Uh so fighting crime
on top of all that. It is a little tricky,
but I try and make it work even when I'm
(34:04):
not in the mask and everything. I'm I have an
app called Citizen, Yeah, and so I use that a
lot to find incidences near me, and I'll rush right
to it armor or not, just to make sure everybody's
safe and if there is anything I can do to help,
I'm I'm there, you know. So, Yeah, it's pretty amazing
(34:28):
that you do all this work and you're also like
struggling to find housing yourself. What is that like? Um?
I suppose it's just a matter of I've experienced a
lot of loss myself with my parents and being homeless
and stuff. I just understand what it is to be struggling,
(34:49):
and if I can help another person not struggle as much,
that that helps my life, you know. So, yes, I'm
homeless and I'm working towards finding housing, but I I
have ways to feed myself, I have ways to to
(35:10):
work with housing navigators and stuff like that, so I
want to help the people who don't have those resources.
It's kind of the same with the armor, you know.
If I'm the one with the armor, I want to
take the damage, not the person who doesn't have the armor.
I'm just in service. I'm here only to serve, not
to receive. I was shocked to learn that justin Service
(35:33):
was homeless. I think if anyone deserves to be called
a real life superhero, I'd like to nominate him. A
guy who's struggling to find housing and spends what little
money he has buying food and socks for other homeless people.
And learning that he was homeless made me more angry
at the way Phoenix talked about people like justin the
(35:54):
way he labeled them with his trademark insult real life
sandwich handlers. He e J said that a long time
ago and It's like, you know, from my perspective of
being homeless and all that, I wish that there were
superheroes hand and sandwiches on the times I was on
the street and all that. I'm in a shelter now.
(36:15):
But yeah, it's just crazy to think that helping someone
is bad or ineffective in some way. Like that's what
heroes do. We hope people. It's not always comic book
action and fighting Kaijus in the street. It's it's helping
people first and foremost. Thank you for coming out here
(36:42):
with our pro book. Thanks for letting me tag a lie.
I hope I wasn't in the way at all. It
was time to bid farewell to my new superhero friends.
It was the early hours of the morning. I was
exhausted physically and emotionally. I got into my rental car
and shut the door. For the first time that night,
all the noise of the city went quiet. I sat
(37:10):
there for a good while, feeling heavy with sadness. After
seeing so many people suffering, It was impressive to see
the superheroes dedicate themselves to helping, but the scale of
the problem fell overwhelming, and the need for housing and
supportive services far greater than anything the superheroes could provide. Eventually,
(37:31):
I started my car and headed back to my hotel. Meanwhile,
all was not well with the city's most famous masked adventurer,
Phoenix Jones, was about to find himself in a mess
he couldn't talk his way out of. That's coming up.
(38:04):
In the years after Phoenix's departure from the Rain City Superheroes,
his old teammates kept an eye on their old leader
from a distance, and they noticed a pattern start to emerge.
Phoenix would disappear for a while, then suddenly he would
be back out on the streets patrolling. He always makes
a comeback every six months or so when he's ready
to like up his mm A career. This is Crystal Marks.
(38:26):
He does a patrol, invites media along, and then all
of a sudden he's like, oh yeah, and I have
a fight yet, you know Karina or wherever show Wear
Center and Kent Like, okay, that's why you're doing it.
You're no longer doing it because you care. I think
you still do, but it's because you want to promote
your fight. The rain City Superheroes and moved on with
their own lives, but watching from Afar. They were getting
(38:48):
indications that things in Phoenix's life we're not going well.
Here's evocatus. I still remember the day I got a
phone call asking, you know what can I speak to
Benjamin Voter. I'm like, may I ask what this is
in regards to without saying yes or no. And basically,
there had been some altercation or crime or something and
(39:08):
he had put my contact information on the police report
for whatever crime or whatever it was he got stopped for.
I don't know what it was he did. She wouldn't
disclose that, but used my name, my phone number, and
I explained that to the attorney that had called me.
I'm like, no, this is I used to be on
his team. I don't know why he would do that
(39:31):
now I live in a completely different city. And she's like, yeah,
you don't sound anything like. I'm like, yeah, I'm I
thank you, I'm aware, I don't tell anything like. She
apologized and thanked me for my time, and that was that.
Eva wasn't the only one. Almost everyone on the team
at some point had been contacted by either the Seattle
Police Department or someone within the King County Court system
(39:53):
asking for Phoenix Jones EVO told me he and the
other superheroes were still getting calls from the police. Years
after the rain City Superheroes had disbanded. Phoenix's former teammates
had some theories about what might be at the root
of Phoenix's unusual behavior and all of the run ins
he seemed to be having with the cops. He pawned
(40:14):
a bunch of team equipment for drugs. Here's Midnight Jack
Phoenix Jones. Sociopath is what I think. The only thing
Ben cares about has been and that's why he has
no friends. All his friends have left him. He's kind
of got beaten down, started using. The man is just
not in a good place, is what it is. This
wasn't the first time there have been speculation that Phoenix
(40:35):
might have a drug problem. Many of his former comrades
told me they had suspicions for years, even back when
the rain City Superheroes were still together. His proximity to
drugs seemed to kind of increase with frequency. He keeps
going to more and more of these parties where he
would be air quotes accidentally slipped something on the Lord
(40:58):
knows what it could be that made him feel very woozier. Stuff.
He was kind of gauging the water to see how
people react to him actually taking some kind of drugs.
Evo said that Phoenix also repeatedly made excuses to be
around drugs when it came to his crime fighting. Once
a fellow team Reaper said, hey, did you see his Twitter? Like? No,
(41:19):
I said, no, no no, no, his other Twitter, And he
showed me a new profile he had made talking about
going undercover. He would dress up and just regular civilian
clothes and try to do drug busts and things like that.
But you know, he had to get in real close
with them first. And it's like he had watched a
couple episodes of Breaking Bad and you know, got a
(41:40):
couple of light bulb moments there. But Evo said the
stories Phoenix told didn't add up. The other superheroes had
heard conflicting versions from Phoenix. He was trying to take
down this crack dealer and this other person. No, he's
trying to take down this weed dealer. No, he's trying
to take down this meth dealer. And you know, I
had to earn their trust before they let me in,
(42:00):
So I had to, you know, deal some stuff from
time to time. But you know that was just for
the mission, right, and it would change so many times.
I just kind of like, Okay, well there's a problem here.
I am not qualified to address this. I don't even
know what to do. I'm just here at patrol man,
and I would just keep on with it. Evo said
things got so bad that at one point one of
(42:22):
Phoenix's close friends, someone from outside the superhero world called
him up worried about Phoenix's relationship with drugs. She had
lost somebody to drug overdose who had had very similar tendencies, like,
oh yeah, I was just hanging on with some friends
and somebody put something in my drink and I had
no idea what it was, and it bothered her so
(42:43):
much that she couldn't talk to him anymore. Evo told
me another story from back in their patrolling days, when
Phoenix had been acting really strange. He just seemed like
a nonresponsive zombie, just kind of walking but not talking
to anybody. There were rumors of some kind of potential
substance being in a system. We had two medics on
(43:03):
our team at the time, and one of them could
recognize immediately that there was something off, and it made
some kind of sideways joke about, yeah, he would set
fire to your analysis test right now if we were
to test for drugs or something like that, and getting
her and sample said, yeah, that would probably combust. Now,
mind you, that's that's rumor mill And you know, I'm
certainly no doctor, but the shoe would fit, and I
(43:24):
don't think anyone would be surprised. Evil wasn't happy with
the potential risk of patrolling with someone whose judgment might
be impaired by narcotics, so he followed up right before
the team had actually disbanded. I had purchased several ur
analysis tests drug tests. It's basically urinate on a little strip.
(43:45):
It detects like seven or nine different types of control
substances and see if you know, if the color shows up,
that means you have something in your system, that kind
of a thing, and I would I bottle those. And
I intended to bring that and kind of springing as
a surprise on everyone at a on a patrol do
to some of these rumors and stuff like that. But
Phoenix had disbanded the team just before it had happened,
(44:05):
so no one ever knew. And I suspect that someone
may have leaked that to Phoenix, or had mentioned that, Hey,
just so you know, there's going to be what we
call a whiz quiz coming up soon. So I can't
verify whether or not he knew in advance or just
he was having a temper tantrum and decided to take
his ball and go home. There was enough rumor mill
(44:26):
to substantiate me actually getting drug tests. The entire team ready.
Elcaba Lero was concerned too. I mean, it's something he
had actually talked about quite a number of times, like
I've never done drugs, Like I can't believe people do that.
In fact, that was his coming of age superhero story,
(44:48):
is that someone high on drugs broke his window and
his kid almost got cut with the glass coming in
the morning because a junkie or something broke his car
window to steal his stuff. And now he's doing these
kind of party drugs. It's frustrating because you know, you
love someone to care about him and you want him
to do the best, and then they do other things.
(45:09):
I mean, you're a parent, you know you want the
best for him, but at the same time, they're gonna
do what they're gonna do. I also had an encounter
that made me believe that Phoenix may have been involved
with drugs over the years. One night, when I was
out interviewing strangers on the street about Phoenix, a guy
told me that he had a ton of dirt on Phoenix.
He said that Phoenix was not a good guy and
(45:30):
he had a lot of inside information on his dealings
with drugs. This was around three in the morning, and
the guy said he was heading home to crash, but
he gave me his phone number and said he was
willing to do an interview with me. But when I
texted him to set up the interview, he said, quote,
I don't really like the guy. I don't know how
I feel about trashing his name in an interview. I'd
feel weird doing that to anybody. I told him he
(45:51):
could be anonymous or even off the record, but he
never responded to any of my texts after that. But
the whole exchange made me believe there was something more
to Phoenix is a relationship to drugs, and he was
willing to admit to me. It was Facebook messaging with
the net Jack and I said something about how I
commit up with you, and he was like, oh, he
was probably on cocaine. And I was like, okay, Like
(46:12):
is that a thing? Did you have a cocaine problem
that I didn't know about? But like, that's hilarious. I'll
never know because when I met men at Jack, he
was a drug addict and that's why he started patrolling.
So his comments on me doing drugs, it's really weird.
If I ever did do drugs, I would never do
them with bed night Jack. Like, I'm not talking about
drugs in any direct fashion, but what because I'm not
(46:32):
going to. But what I'm saying is like, even if
I had a problem where peanut butter every single day,
I wouldn't eat peanut butter before an interview because it
makes your mouth telling. Well, no one's saying, you know,
but that's what he's saying. But he's like, I think
you think of what he said, right, He's like he
was probably on this for the interview. That's me's saying,
and not that I've been on you saw that you
saw it as the United States Anti Doping Administration. I've
(46:52):
been a member of his saw since I was sixteen
years old. The Anti doping administration for the fucking Olympics. Yeah,
I'm a world class athlete and you think, and I've
swing up on fucking cocaine, but just you saying it's
so fucking stupid to me. You know, yeah, seventeen years,
I've never failed a drug test in seventeen years. They're
(47:12):
randomly done, but I know from two thousands two sixteen
to two thousand nineteen I was actively being tested for
you said it, right, which is once a month testing
and then a random one every three months. Right. That
leaves me eight days in every month that if I
had timed doing drugs perfectly, I could do them, I guess,
and be high for I guess two days. So there's
(47:35):
sixty days in the left five years that I could
have actively done drugs and not gotten caught. And you're
telling me that those days are the days that I've
won scheduling an interview, probably in cocaine and too. I
have my life regimented enough when I can't even show
up on time to patrols that I care about because
I'm terribly late at everything, And you think I've scheduled
my life to the point that these random sixty days
(47:55):
I could do all of these fucking drugs. Yeah, to
my superhero careers run a hundred nineteen times. Every time
you get arrested, they take you to jail and you
be you have to because when if you're on drugs
and you and then you start having like to come
down right. Only one person on our team has ever
failed a PA test, and it fucking wasn't me. So
if we're gonna accuse people of things, but somebody's on
(48:18):
record is actually I've done that on record while you
were supering with us. But I mean, if y'all want
to come at me, there's records of you doing that.
Why we were fighting crime. If I wrote a book
about the fucking ship these assholes did, I mean, Jesus Christ,
I think we're definitely on part with each other for
being assholes. Congratulations were the biggest crew of assholes. Good job,
(48:39):
But none of that has anything to do with chasing
a gunman or stopping the crime. It's like everyone has
such a short memory, Like I remember everything that I did,
and I wish you guys would just bring up one
of the things that I actually did wrong, because I wish,
why would I ever do that? I get it, I get,
I mean I don't. I'm not no shade against you.
(49:01):
I wouldn't do it either. I wouldn't be like volunteering
all these terrible things I've done to other people. But
I mean, but there are some but it is ironic
that they're talking all the ship about you. But then
it's like, well, tell me the real things that he
did so we can talk about it. But instead, and
I see your point, like I I would agree that
it seems highly unlikely that you've ever had a drug problem,
(49:22):
do you know what I mean. I'm just so frustrated,
just just sucking, irritating and just walking curious. I just
wouldn't beat the funk out of guys, which I would
not do because it's legal, but if I could, I wouldn't.
I tried to lighten the mood, but Phoenix didn't take
de bait. Have you ever thought about um doing like
a charity fight against bed night check or something like
that with a lion? Ever thought about doing a charity
(49:47):
fight with the mouse? Midnight Jack has twelve to twenty
crime stops. None of them are without me, and none
of them are hands on stops. Never been in a
fight his entire life, and I fought all over the
world as a professional fighter, and I'm gonna take out
my petty personal a grievances by going out and punching
these guys in the face. In the moment, I was
skeptical that Phoenix had a drug problem. He's very convincing
when he's talking to you directly, and he was a
(50:09):
professional athlete for a long time. But I wasn't able
to verify his claims about his USADA testing as he
isn't listed in their public databases. Now that I'm no
longer in the room with him, I don't know what
to think because there's also the elephant in the room
the moment where this whole series began. One day when
(50:34):
two thousand and twenty, EVO was at home with his
family when the news dropped. Remember helping my little girls
on homework. When I got messages from former team member.
Used to get a load of this, all right. The
crime fighting persona of Phoenix Jones has taken an interesting twist.
Interesting an m M A fighter whose real name is
Benjamin Photorc is in some very real legal trouble. Ever
(50:58):
since Phoenix put on his super suit and took to
the streets, He's claimed that the police have been out
to get him. He said they arrested him one hundred
and eighteen times, and each time he went free, but
they had finally succeeded in nailing him, and this time
the chargers would stick. Yeah, that was that was pretty hilarious,
(51:18):
not surprising, but just like, wow, he actually got caught.
What do you know? Phoenix had made many transformations in
his life, from bullied orphan to champion bowler, cocky break
dancer and then champion mm A fighter, And now he'd
gone from real life superhero to convicted drug dealer. So
(51:41):
how does the Great Phoenix Jones react when he's the
one in the jail cell? Next time, Seattle's perfect crime
fighter gets well and truly busted. The Superhero Complex is
(52:08):
hosted and written by Me David Weinberg and reported by Me,
Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thorn. Production from Amalia Sortland and
Caroline Thorn. Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien and David Waters are
executive producers. Fact checking by Andrew Schwartz. Production management from
Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing
(52:30):
and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision
by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Original music is composed
by Paul Housden. Special thanks to Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton,
Matt O'Meara, Katrina Norvelle Bet and Macaluso, Rin Rosenbaum, Shelby Shnkman,
(52:52):
and all the team at E t A. For more
from Novel, visit novel dot Audio
Novel h On April two thousand and fifteen, Phoenix Jones
made a comeback of sorts, Ladies and Gentle. This fight
has rerounds in the World Series of Fighting. He returned
to the Deck a Gone, the ten sided cage where
(00:27):
the Mixed Martial Arts World Series of Fighting takes place.
In one corner, you had twenty eight year old Emmanuel
wall Of Now in the other corner, you had Phoenix,
who decided to fight under his superhero name for the
first time in his career shore. This was Phoenix's first
(00:57):
fight in the prestigious World Series of Fighting. It was
a chance for him to rebrand himself after his falling
out with his superhero teammates. It was also a chance
for him to get his finances in order. He stood
to win ten thousand dollars if he won the fight,
and winning would put him on track to get more
fights for bigger payouts. And it seemed like the world
(01:18):
was ready to believe in Phoenix Jones again. He was
going into this fight undefeated in his professional career, and
in an online poll by the m A site, topology
of the respondents predicted Phoenix would beat Emmanuel Wallow. Look
at this arena, double stacked seats. This is where the
legacy starts. This is where the phoenix rises. For someone
(01:41):
like Phoenix, who has an admittedly disastrous personal life, I
totally see the appeal of mm A. There's nothing messy
about it. Hand to hand fighting is clean and simple.
You can't misinterpret a punch to the face or have
a difference of opinion about a roundhouse kick to the groin.
It just happens, pure and visceral. Once you step into
the cage, all the noise of your life melts away.
(02:05):
The ring is the only true place in the world
where no lives matter. Like nothing you said matters, nothing
you claim to have done matters, none of it. Where
two people were gonna fight and my machine is better
than yours, and this is where I live. It's gonna
be okay for me. And even if you win, you
have to be spectacular, so you're gonna knock me out
and I don't have to deal with it because I'm
not gonna be conscious. Right. The hard part is is
(02:26):
losing and having to stand there and watch yourself lose
or not completing your goals but getting physically hurt. Who
cares like you can't possibly hate me as much as
I hate me. Sometimes, Phoenix was back where he longed
to be, in the spotlight, about to take on his
(02:47):
latest at poem. I'm pretty much known for safety to people.
But the one thing that you have to know when
they closed the deca gone doors. Not even Phoenix Jones
can saving. We are set to go here in Connecticut.
It would be a fight for the ages. You're ready,
You're ready. I'm David Weinberg and from the team's at
(03:14):
Novel and I heart radio. This is the Superhero Complex,
episode seven from the Ashes. After Phoenix split from the
(03:38):
Rain City Superheroes, he vowed to continue fighting crime, but
based on his social media posts, he seemed to be
patrolling a lot less than he had with his team
beside him. He only posted to patrol videos for the
rest of He posted five videos in January, one more
in November, and then went silent on his official Nick
(04:00):
Jones YouTube channel. To this day, he hasn't posted anything
there since. But before he went dark completely, Phoenix posted
a video from another channel, a video that was unlike
anything he'd ever put out before. Hey, this is Phoenix Jones.
I'm putting this on my YouTube channel, but it's really
for other real life superheroes. I'm gonna be sharing it
(04:22):
on my Facebook page. Phoenix is in street clothes. He
is a massive, high top haircut, black rimmed glasses, and
he's looking directly into the camera. He seems sincere acknowledging
that maybe he'd made some mistakes in the past. And
I realized I harbor a lot of resentment for a
whole lot of superheroes in this community for various actions,
(04:43):
I mean, different things, but when it really comes down
to it, you guys are the closest I have to
anyone who understands what I want to do. And like inside,
I felt this crazy excitement that I wasn't alone, that
I was gonna put on the suit, and I was
going to make a difference with my family, you know.
And as time has progressed, it's really been depressing to
(05:07):
think that it's not that way, and someone has to
start the trend, someone has to eventually give up the
pissing match, and I guess it's gonna be me. So
I'm sorry. I'm sorry for anything that I've done that's
offended you, or any of my actions that have caused you.
Guys discomfort or trouble or pain. It was never really
(05:30):
my intention to do that. I just wanted to be
the best. I still I feel like I am. I
feel like I am the best. Ah. There it is
the moment he couldn't stop himself from proclaiming his superiority.
But seriously, it must have been incredibly difficult and humbling
for him to post a video like this to admit
(05:50):
publicly that maybe he did need all those people who
we called clowns and losers by his side. When you
break it down, me and a superhero isn't all about
in crime more being effective. So as far as I'm concerned,
I'm dropping all of the negative talk about other superheroes.
And before I recorded this, I deleted my entire banned list.
(06:11):
So if you were once banned as a superhero, you
are unbanned. Uh. I hope we can really just move forward.
So funny to say this, if there was none of you,
there wouldn't be any of me. After that, Phoenix offered
to bury the hatchet with El Caballero, and he even
did the unthinkable. He volunteered to help a different team
(06:34):
of superheroes, the Emerald City Heroes Organization, which El Caballero founded,
also known by their acronym Echo. No more negative stuff,
no more garbage. We're all a team and uh I'll
see you guys in the streets. Was the self proclaimed
only true real life superhero suddenly turning over a new leaf.
(06:55):
Was he humbled by his loneliness. Was he growing as
a person and come to terms with his own shortcomings?
It was certainly looking that way. Perhaps he used his
downtime for self reflection. I do know that during this time,
Phoenix turned back to the one thing he'd always found
comfort in when he was growing up, martial arts. Martial
(07:19):
arts was how I got away from all of the
bad stuff in my life. Martial arts was what saved me.
Do you remember your first mm A fight? Yeah, Ken Brenger.
Sometimes in life you are presented with an opportunity to
do something brave or stupid, depending on how you look
at it. And for young Ben Fodor in two thousand
and six, this was one of those moments. He says
(07:41):
he went to see an m m A fight. He
was sitting there in the audience with all the other
fans of brutality when it happened, and they're like, oh, sorry.
One of the fights bailed mack Iman to joke anyone
from the audience went a fight, and I was like,
I'll do it, you know, And as the versus ken Brenger,
like I was thirty five years old, Phoenix was only eighteen.
But even though he already knew he wanted to be
(08:02):
a fighter, he hadn't quite developed the stomach for it.
Before every single gage fight, I always like projectile bombit
maybe fifteen minutes before it's my turn every time, like
clockwork right, warming have to get ready to go, just like, oh,
we know what's gonna happen, so we just carry a
bag with us. But I mean, I have crazy nerves
until I don't. It turned out the bend Photor was
(08:25):
much better at kicking and punching people than he wasn't
holding down his lunch. He won fight after fight, eventually
racking up eleven wins and only one loss in his
amateur fighting career. He says he even teamed up with
the m m A trainer, Eric Weissman, to run a gym.
The world of fighting and training was a comforting place
(08:46):
to be. Fighting is easy for me. Fighting has never
been a thing that is a hard concept for me
to understand. There's no like, oh no, someone wants to
harm me Like I feel like people want to harm
me all the time. Fighting grounded Ben and it solved
another big problem in his life. Money m m A
was a lucrative way to make a living. Fame may
(09:07):
have played a big part and the disillusion of the
Rain City Superheroes, but it also gave Phoenix new opportunities.
In two thousand and fifteen, he signed a big deal
with the World Series of Fighting, in large part because
of the celebrity status he had acquired as a costume
crime fighter. In fact, that was how Manny Wallow first
heard about Phoenix. What was your first impression of him? Oh, honestly,
(09:32):
man and don't judge me for saying that I thought
he was a weirdo. At first, I got confused because
the contracts that have been Forordab. When I kept putting
Ben folded in, I kept getting Phoenix. I'm like, who
is this? I hit him by my trainer and he's
I think that the same person. So that's why I
was the old ship. This guy got an alter eagle.
I love talking to Manny. He was g garious and
candid and he's still fighting, and like Phoenix, he likes
(09:55):
to do some good when he's not trying to choke
people unconscious. And the deck are gone lasts forever. You know,
you gotta have what's next for you. So for me,
when my passion was always the surf, my own community, everything,
so I went up to became a firefighter. Manny is
also pragmatic about his opponents. Fighting isn't personal. It's something
I do because I love it. So if I saw
my name, we could fight like me and you fight
(10:16):
and we could be friends afterwards. There's no big deal
to me. So he says he was surprised when Phoenix
started attacking him on social media, and the weeks leading
up to their fight, before I gave me a look
to see who he was, he was already talking and
shipped on me, like you know, so it's like he came.
He came looking for me. I don't hit up opponents
or nothing. I just go on YouTube but stuffing find ship.
But he started with the whole making videos and everything
(10:38):
about me, and I'm like, okay. When I spoke to Phoenix,
he said Manny had challenged him to the fight and
that made it personal. Whether he liked it or not.
Apparently all the smack talking did get under manual skin.
In the video of the way in before the fight,
it's actually Manny who looks furious and so they didn't
(10:59):
wait for the fighting to get inside the cage. The
stick started out the way and as Wallow he taunts,
Phoenix gets right up in his face as if he's
about to hit him. President Ray Setho having to step
in and back the fellows up. They were ready to
go down right there. It's Phoenix who stands there playing
it cool. At one point he holds his hand to
like it's a mouth opening and closing it as if
(11:20):
to say, yeah, I keep talking, buddy. Everybody. You know
I'm easy going guy. You know I don't talk. But
he got me out of my character. Like so at
the way is when I finally saw him, I just
went off and I'm forgetting like this is the way.
The camera's there everything. Sometimes the effects of the weight
cut plays out of the way against. The fight was
(11:40):
on Phoenix Jones a Manual Wallow. We can inside the cage.
Phoenix came out on the offensive, throwing the first punches
and launching himself Wallow Jones walks right. He had the
wallo we want to do no fear, But it's Waller
who gets the first takedown, picking Phoenix up and slamming
him to the mat on his back. The beautiful takedowns
(12:02):
coming from Wallow in the red trunks. Phoenix jump so far,
not having a lot of success. Phoenix manages to get up,
but then immediately gets taken down again. Be beautiful, beautiful
pat jobs. And then he said he continued to talk
Phoenix in the ring while they were fighting. I was like,
there's not some drunk guys down in Seattle that you're
beating up. Every time I was taking him down, I
(12:24):
was like, up another one. Every time I was talking
about I was like, Dji was another one. I was
just molding him. Pick the most flamm and pick him up,
lamming for fift him in coming up on the final
fifteen seconds of round number one, this one will go
to a second round. Who we returned to Conneticut. By
the end of round one, Phoenix doesn't have a single takedown.
(12:45):
He looks exhausted, his mouth open as he gasped for air,
revealing his mouth guard which has vampire fangs printed on it,
and then before Phoenix can even catch his breath. Round
and this is round two of Phoenix Jones trying to
figure out the puzzle that is a manual wallow us wallow.
The next two rounds don't go much better for Phoenix.
(13:07):
He gets taken down again, and again he spends most
of the fight on his back, being dominated by a manually.
Phoenix Child's going to the guilty Phoenix needs an absolute
miracle here, but there is no miracle. All three judges
(13:28):
scorched twenty out of four year winner by humanimous decision
eat Manuo whoa Phoenix hates losing, and I'm sure this
loss in particular stue. It was supposed to be his
(13:50):
grand comeback. But Phoenix takes things personally, and he seems
to have burned bridges in the M m A world
as well as the superhero world. We reached out to
a lot of people for the story, and many of
them declined to talk to us, but some responded with
vague warnings like Phoenix is a bad person and the
attention just makes him worse. One person who knew Phoenix
(14:13):
from the gym told us that we were violating journalistic
ethics for even doing a story about him. But Phoenix's
mm A career wasn't over after his loss to Manny Wallow,
though he did go on to fight an opponent that
got a lot of attention. He went on to go
fight his own brother, Like, what kind of crazy ship
is that? I don't give a fuck if I me
and my brood the Hades, I'm not gonna fight on
(14:34):
entertaining people I don't know, like like, so there was
a lot of demons that he has. Phoenix's brother, Karros Photo,
is also an mm A fighter. He didn't respond to
our requests to speak with him, but one thing we
do know about him, his relationship with Phoenix is tense.
I hate my brother and I hate this terrible person.
(14:56):
Horrible person, Okay, I want to him physically. I would
like to hurt him now physically. If it was a
legal way for me to hurt him, I would do it.
As we speak, Phoenix and his brother agreed to fight
in the ring, and it was a media sensation a
real life violent family feud. If this sounds weirdly familiar,
the same thing happened to superhero Luke Cage, who publicly
(15:19):
fought his half brother and arch nemesis Willis Striker, but
unlike Luke, a fictional superhero, the outcome was a little
different for Phoenix. Phoenix says Karros instigated the fight behind
his back. I'm like, yo, remember that time that you
signed a cage fight behind my back to fight me
without telling me because you were my coach. Kicked me
out of the fight, Jim, I'd been training at while
(15:40):
you had been training me, and then talk about me
on the internet. In the lead up to the fight,
Phoenix posted videos trying to talk Carols out of it.
I tried to call you, but you nasty phone. So
just one last chance. We don't have to do this.
I know you want to do this, and I will
do this. We don't have to sure call see if
(16:03):
you are. Karros told journalists at the time that his
brother was only pretending that he had nothing to do
with setting up the fight. Either way, it seemed like
Phoenix was enjoying the attention and that it was a
good marketing strategy. Calos is the older brother, Ben the
caller brother. For all his posturing, Phoenix went forward with
(16:24):
the fight. He wore his signature American flag shorts with
the words Ben flat top photor so here they go. Wow,
adopted foster brothers. The commentators initially referred to Phoenix as
Ben Ben said he wanted to be called Phoenix Jones.
Tonight they are the photo Brothers, but we will call
him Jones and the red, white, blue trunks. They both
(16:46):
come out swinging, each landing a few quick punches and
then they lock arms and Phoenix takes a few knees
to the face. Carols gets the first takedown down as
he wanted to get it to the ground quickly, and
he dogs from the get go. It's a struggle for Phoenix,
Phoenix jugs having all kinds are trouble trying to keep
(17:07):
their spikes standing up. He's not there able to do
it so far. At the end of the final round,
there's no decisive winner, so they go to the judges.
Judges judges all score the fight thirty or your winner
by unanimous decision. Carol m In the end, Phoenix was
(17:40):
no match for his brother. When we hung out, I
asked him about the fight, and even still all these
years later, he's not over it. He's like, it's all
about good fun and making money. Yeah, not to me.
The most insulting thing you can do with another human
is look at them and say, I want to take
something you love, like fighting. I would think I can
beat you. I want to sell tickets to my friends
and family to come watch me beat you up. Oh,
(18:01):
by the way, we're just kidding. Fuck you, you're crazy.
You're a crazy person. We're gonna shake hands. We're not
be friends. I hate you, I absolutely hate you. Phoenix
had been defeated again, but in videos he posted online,
he decided to double down on his mm A career.
I'm gonna focus on becoming a well around him ay fighter.
(18:22):
I'm gonna take some jiujitsu classes and I'm gonna come back.
I mean, you guys deserve better. I'm gonna give us
a good shot. So for the next two years, I'm
going to give this mm A thing a real shot.
At least that was the intention. In reality, he only
fought twice more, and neither of those fights attracted nearly
as much attention as the one with his brother. After
(18:42):
a final loss, in his career ground to a halt,
leaving him to question his future. You get out of
martial arts and there's nothing left. There's no more fighting.
I have no skills that I think applied to the
world I live, and I had better off four thousand
years ago running a Germanic try of warriors like I
don't have a place anymore. The world evolved to where
(19:03):
computer people and pushing buttons are more important than physical attributes,
and who am I? And then you go, what am
I going to do with that? Phoenix Jones was adrift.
He felt like he'd lost his purpose. Who was he
if he wasn't fighting crime on the streets or opponents
in the cage. Meanwhile, back in Seattle, the members of
(19:28):
the superhero community who had once been inspired by Phoenix,
we're having to pick up the pieces and defend the
innocent without him. That's coming up alright. It is about
(20:03):
ten thirty pm on Thursday, and I am about to
roll up on Justin Service and Red Ranger from my
very first ever patrol with real life superheroes. Here we go.
From the moment I started working on this story, one
of the things that excited me the most was the
prospect of going out on a crime fighting patrol with
(20:26):
some costumed heroes. And last year, when I was deep
in the world of real life superheroes, I met up
with two Seattle superheroes in a parking garage downtown. I
was greeted at first with a powerful stench of urine.
In a far corner of the garage, I saw two
superheroes unloading equipment from the back of a station wagon.
(20:47):
Hey you must be Red Ranger. David. Hey there, David,
are you recording video right now? Audio? Okay, might snap
some photos, snap photos of us cool just got the
car just because secret. At Andy's Airport US Day, Red
Ranger was dressed in a black and red outfit made
up of the type of protective gear that hockey players wear,
plastic shoulder and knee pads, and he wore a menacing
(21:10):
looking red mask with black mesh eye holes and carried
a big metal shield with a peace sign made of
red tape on the front. Justin's service was clad in
green and white gear similar to Red Rangers, with a
bulletproof vest underneath his plastic armor. He wore a pair
of goggles that he had accented with neon yellow tape
(21:30):
and a gray mask that muffled his voice. They both
had GoPro cameras mounted on their chests. I felt a
little underdressed in my street clothes. I have a sort
of practical question, where do you guys go to the bathroom?
We've got the same out without going into too much detail, YEA,
(21:51):
make sure our seats are not just flashy for functional.
In the absence of Phoenix Jones, his old teammates at
splinter into a few different groups that patrolled together. Red
Ranger was a part of Echo, a group that El
Caballero founded and sometimes patrolled with. Justin Service was relatively
new to the Seattle superhero scene. He'd moved to town
(22:12):
in two thousand and twenty. Tonight, it was just the
two of them on patrol. They were getting ready by
loading supplies onto a cart with wheels that they would
tow behind them as we walked the streets. So we
will start rolling around Pioneer Square with our supplies, doing
our safety watch and also looking for people who might
be in need of some help. Tonight, all right, let's roll,
(22:34):
and with that we were on the move. Two armored
do gooders and an intrepid reporter in search of people
in distress. We started out in Pioneer Square, one of
the oldest parts of the city, home to a lot
of historic buildings, old saloons. Red brick streets and several
large homeless encampments. As we made our way through the streets,
(22:55):
nearly everyone who saw some had some kind of reaction.
Are you guys transformers? There were double takes and wide eyes,
and some people shouted things at us Seattle Superheroes Man
control supplies at homes and Red Ranger wasn't kidding. You
guys want food, water, socks, water, don't want you also
(23:17):
got masks, hands and does want a mask? Man? Oh
you've got one. It's beautiful too. Yeah, yeah, we gotta Okay,
no worries. We're giving out free stuff tonight, including the
beef stits turned on. The superheroes seemed unfazed by all
the attention they got on patrol and maybe even a
little flattered. You guys look like want video games? Oh no, Man,
(23:38):
Seattle Superheroes brothers back in the scene. Man. Along with
all the water, food, hand sanitizer, and socks, the superheroes
were also outfitted with some more hardcore supplies. What's on
your belt and all that? What do you kind of
gear do you typically have? We've got our ballistic gear
and the FENS weapons in case anything hard and we
(24:00):
employed de escalation and nonviolent tactics always as a primary intervention.
I do like to carry medical supplies on me at
all times. Red Ranger was the more formidable of the duo.
He was a big guy. In his civilian life, he
works as a nurse in a hospital. He put these
skills to use numerous times on the patrol, giving medical
(24:21):
advice and first aid too many of the homeless people
we encountered. I used to do some time in an
emergency room. You know, I would see some things. They're
like victims of gunshot wounds, things like that, and I
would be there trying to help these people. And when
you can't help them and they end up succumbing to
their wounds, I just kind of made this resolve to
(24:45):
myself that said, as long as I can prevent this happening,
I'm gonna do everything I can to prevent it from happening.
Red Ranger came onto the scene at the tail end
of the rain City Superhero movement, and he went on
a few patrols with Phoenix and his team before the
group disbanded. At the time, you know, I was still
kind of getting to know all the drama. Um, so
I was a little bit farther removed, and at first
(25:07):
I saw him as a really good guy. I didn't
really have any problems patrolling with him for a while.
We kind of have a rule in the superior community.
You know, you take care of your own house first, right,
because you can't pour from an empty cup, right, You
still have to take care of your own life. And
if your own life needs work, you can't put yourself
out there to try and help other people if you
can't help yourself. He kind of got into this space
(25:28):
where it was definitely not good for him to be
patrolling for a while, and I think that's why he
took several hiatuses and has been less active recently. In
in the recent years, I got the feeling from patrolling
and talking with Justin's service that Red Ranger was very
much his mentor. Justin was younger, also smaller, a skinny
(25:51):
guy who was relatively new to Seattle. He was soft
spoken and had a gentleness that I found endearing. Hate Greg,
but I have a flash, right, I think bring that
big one. Justin grew up in a small town in Idaho.
It's just the nerdy kid that would avoid confrontation all
(26:12):
the time and got beat up a lot, but courage
is uh something you build on. He heard about the
real life superhero movement after seeing a documentary on HBO
called Superheroes. They genuinely wanted to help and they had
a creative way to do it, and I was like,
I want to try that out. So he put together
a costume and started patrolling the streets of a small
(26:34):
town looking for crime to stop. It was nerve racking
at first. I was just a guy in a costume
wandering around in a very conservative area, and in small town, Idaho,
there wasn't a whole lot of crime to fight. It
was also a particularly difficult time in his life. My
dad was diagnosed with cancer and getting treatments and stuff
(26:58):
at the time, so it was kind of hard, and
I didn't want to, like, I don't know, put any
extra on him. He wasn't exactly the best father, but
he was a good guy. So I alternated between like
taking care of him and going out at night. But
he uh, he recently passed in July, so Justin had
(27:23):
also lost his mom, and without his parents, he struggled
to figure out what exactly he was going to do
with his life. As he started looking into the real
life superhero movement. He met some of the Seattle superheroes
like Red Ranger on Facebook and it made the possibility
of becoming a hero more real. He decided to move
to Seattle and join them Red Ranger, sky Man, Spirit Fox,
(27:49):
El Cabro, all them. They welcome in and help me out.
Does Seattle feel like a dangerous place? Do you? Um?
I wouldn't call it safe, that's for sure. His luck
would have it. During Justin's services very first patrol in
Seattle with his newfound friends, they happened to run into
Phoenix Jones. Well technically they ran into Ben Fodor. He
(28:13):
was in street clothes, not on patrol. The first thing
he said to me, he was like, hey, new guy,
dear job or I'll kill you my fucking self. I
was just kind of taken aback by that. I was like, Jesus,
guy is supposed to be a superhero. When I first
came out here, my mindset, I had watched the videos
of Phoenix Jones and all that, and I was like stoked.
(28:33):
I was like, Oh, this is the guy. Yeah. And
then he says off the walls stuff like that, and
I'm like, oh, okay, that was my first time meeting
the famous Phoenix Jones. When I asked Phoenix about this exchange,
he admitted to saying it. He claimed he was only joking,
(28:56):
but it didn't seem that way to Justin's service. How
can you claim to be a defender of the innocent
and be a bully at the same time. After spending
time with Justin and hearing his story of losing his parents,
I just felt this paternal instinct to protect him, and
knowing that he was inspired to uproot his life and
(29:16):
moved to Seattle precisely because of Phoenix, only to meet
him and have him threatened his life, it really angered me.
We got like socks, So you're not totally free superheroes,
not coops. I'm actually a nurse. I will also say
that I'm very grateful for Justin's service, because he ended
(29:36):
up protecting me on patrol that night. I had not
expected things to go down the way they did. I
figured we'd help a few homeless people and maybe, if
we were really lucky, we'd find a bar fight to
break up. Because the vast majority of the time, superhero
patrols are pretty uneventful. Even if you patrol every night,
the odds of encountering a crime in progress seems insanely low.
(30:01):
But that's also one of the arguments I've heard for
these patrols that the presence of these crazy looking characters
can actually deter crime. I mean, would you snatch a
purse from an old lady if a dude in head
to toe body armor and a metal shield was glaring
at you. What I was not prepared for was the
profound mental health and addiction crisis that we were waiting into.
(30:24):
At one point, we were standing on a street corner
handing out food when this guy with a crazed look
in his eyes came running at me with a metal pole.
Justin's Service jumped in between me and the guy. So
we just had a guy threatening other residents of this
homeless camp with a pole, and Justin Service and I
just put ourselves between him and the residents of this
(30:44):
camp and he walked away. He's coming back though, never
mind we wear the armor. He ended up stopping short
of attacking us, but he was clearly distressed, rambling incoherently,
Oh did you need so? Red Ranger and Justin's Service
(31:05):
decided to try a different approach. They asked the guy
about his weapon. Is it a flu? What is it?
It's it's a compressed in spots like it looks like
a flu. Do you want some water or food or anything.
We can give you that right now. Brother. I'm sorry
you guys walking. Oh yeah, we're going all around the
city tonight. All right, brother, be safe with that thing tonight.
(31:28):
It looks safe, it okay. Red Ranger and justin Service
handled the situation extremely well. It was impressive, in fact,
that they were so kind and gentle with the man
that he decided he wanted to join us, and he
walked alongside us for several blocks, while Red Ranger definitely
tried to get him to go off on his own
(31:50):
so we could continue our patrol. All right, brother, take care.
We'll roll with you and see if I can orno.
It's all right, man, we're gonna be moving all around
you got There were other encounters that still haunted me.
One woman came up to Red Ranger when she heard
him say that he was in a nurse. She showed
(32:12):
him her arm, which was covered in horribly infected sores
from using intravenous drugs. Even Red Rangers seemed a little alarmed.
That's a serious infection and he needs some antibiotics for that.
I would make sure you get to a hospital as
soon as possible. Okay, can you walk there? Can you
get there? Are you hurting right now? I thought, alright, dear,
(32:33):
I understand that, but you've got to be safe with that. Okay,
make sure we get clean needles and go see a hospital.
SUSI maybe I was just paranoid, but we came across
so many people who were clearly struggling with mental health issues.
I was worried they would see the superheroes in their
armor and think they were a threat and they would
attack us. But no one did. Instead, they accepted our
(32:57):
socks and food, and we're grateful. Red Ranger administered first
aid to several people who seemed to be in really
bad shape. It was pretty remarkable to see the superheroes
in action, and it was an experience that has stayed
with me, especially after hearing the way Phoenix talked specifically
about Justin's service and the other members of the superhero
community who were drawn to the humanitarian aspect of this work.
(33:20):
Seeing Red Ranger and Justin Service changed my opinion of
the real life superheroes. Before going on patrol, I was
a lot more skeptical of the good that these superheroes
were doing, but I came away from my patrol with
a lot more respect for them. I did wonder, though,
how it affected them to wade into so much pain
and suffering as often as they do. What is like
(33:42):
your regular day to day life like when you're not
uh fighting crime. Um, I won't go into too much detail,
but I am currently homeless myself and trying to to
work towards housing and all that. Uh so fighting crime
on top of all that. It is a little tricky,
but I try and make it work even when I'm
(34:04):
not in the mask and everything. I'm I have an
app called Citizen, Yeah, and so I use that a
lot to find incidences near me, and I'll rush right
to it armor or not, just to make sure everybody's
safe and if there is anything I can do to help,
I'm I'm there, you know. So, Yeah, it's pretty amazing
(34:28):
that you do all this work and you're also like
struggling to find housing yourself. What is that like? Um?
I suppose it's just a matter of I've experienced a
lot of loss myself with my parents and being homeless
and stuff. I just understand what it is to be struggling,
(34:49):
and if I can help another person not struggle as much,
that that helps my life, you know. So, yes, I'm
homeless and I'm working towards finding housing, but I I
have ways to feed myself, I have ways to to
(35:10):
work with housing navigators and stuff like that, so I
want to help the people who don't have those resources.
It's kind of the same with the armor, you know.
If I'm the one with the armor, I want to
take the damage, not the person who doesn't have the armor.
I'm just in service. I'm here only to serve, not
to receive. I was shocked to learn that justin Service
(35:33):
was homeless. I think if anyone deserves to be called
a real life superhero, I'd like to nominate him. A
guy who's struggling to find housing and spends what little
money he has buying food and socks for other homeless people.
And learning that he was homeless made me more angry
at the way Phoenix talked about people like justin the
(35:54):
way he labeled them with his trademark insult real life
sandwich handlers. He e J said that a long time
ago and It's like, you know, from my perspective of
being homeless and all that, I wish that there were
superheroes hand and sandwiches on the times I was on
the street and all that. I'm in a shelter now.
(36:15):
But yeah, it's just crazy to think that helping someone
is bad or ineffective in some way. Like that's what
heroes do. We hope people. It's not always comic book
action and fighting Kaijus in the street. It's it's helping
people first and foremost. Thank you for coming out here
(36:42):
with our pro book. Thanks for letting me tag a lie.
I hope I wasn't in the way at all. It
was time to bid farewell to my new superhero friends.
It was the early hours of the morning. I was
exhausted physically and emotionally. I got into my rental car
and shut the door. For the first time that night,
all the noise of the city went quiet. I sat
(37:10):
there for a good while, feeling heavy with sadness. After
seeing so many people suffering, It was impressive to see
the superheroes dedicate themselves to helping, but the scale of
the problem fell overwhelming, and the need for housing and
supportive services far greater than anything the superheroes could provide. Eventually,
(37:31):
I started my car and headed back to my hotel. Meanwhile,
all was not well with the city's most famous masked adventurer,
Phoenix Jones, was about to find himself in a mess
he couldn't talk his way out of. That's coming up.
(38:04):
In the years after Phoenix's departure from the Rain City Superheroes,
his old teammates kept an eye on their old leader
from a distance, and they noticed a pattern start to emerge.
Phoenix would disappear for a while, then suddenly he would
be back out on the streets patrolling. He always makes
a comeback every six months or so when he's ready
to like up his mm A career. This is Crystal Marks.
(38:26):
He does a patrol, invites media along, and then all
of a sudden he's like, oh yeah, and I have
a fight yet, you know Karina or wherever show Wear
Center and Kent Like, okay, that's why you're doing it.
You're no longer doing it because you care. I think
you still do, but it's because you want to promote
your fight. The rain City Superheroes and moved on with
their own lives, but watching from Afar. They were getting
(38:48):
indications that things in Phoenix's life we're not going well.
Here's evocatus. I still remember the day I got a
phone call asking, you know what can I speak to
Benjamin Voter. I'm like, may I ask what this is
in regards to without saying yes or no. And basically,
there had been some altercation or crime or something and
(39:08):
he had put my contact information on the police report
for whatever crime or whatever it was he got stopped for.
I don't know what it was he did. She wouldn't
disclose that, but used my name, my phone number, and
I explained that to the attorney that had called me.
I'm like, no, this is I used to be on
his team. I don't know why he would do that
(39:31):
now I live in a completely different city. And she's like, yeah,
you don't sound anything like. I'm like, yeah, I'm I
thank you, I'm aware, I don't tell anything like. She
apologized and thanked me for my time, and that was that.
Eva wasn't the only one. Almost everyone on the team
at some point had been contacted by either the Seattle
Police Department or someone within the King County Court system
(39:53):
asking for Phoenix Jones EVO told me he and the
other superheroes were still getting calls from the police. Years
after the rain City Superheroes had disbanded. Phoenix's former teammates
had some theories about what might be at the root
of Phoenix's unusual behavior and all of the run ins
he seemed to be having with the cops. He pawned
(40:14):
a bunch of team equipment for drugs. Here's Midnight Jack
Phoenix Jones. Sociopath is what I think. The only thing
Ben cares about has been and that's why he has
no friends. All his friends have left him. He's kind
of got beaten down, started using. The man is just
not in a good place, is what it is. This
wasn't the first time there have been speculation that Phoenix
(40:35):
might have a drug problem. Many of his former comrades
told me they had suspicions for years, even back when
the rain City Superheroes were still together. His proximity to
drugs seemed to kind of increase with frequency. He keeps
going to more and more of these parties where he
would be air quotes accidentally slipped something on the Lord
(40:58):
knows what it could be that made him feel very woozier. Stuff.
He was kind of gauging the water to see how
people react to him actually taking some kind of drugs.
Evo said that Phoenix also repeatedly made excuses to be
around drugs when it came to his crime fighting. Once
a fellow team Reaper said, hey, did you see his Twitter? Like? No,
(41:19):
I said, no, no no, no, his other Twitter, And he
showed me a new profile he had made talking about
going undercover. He would dress up and just regular civilian
clothes and try to do drug busts and things like that.
But you know, he had to get in real close
with them first. And it's like he had watched a
couple episodes of Breaking Bad and you know, got a
(41:40):
couple of light bulb moments there. But Evo said the
stories Phoenix told didn't add up. The other superheroes had
heard conflicting versions from Phoenix. He was trying to take
down this crack dealer and this other person. No, he's
trying to take down this weed dealer. No, he's trying
to take down this meth dealer. And you know, I
had to earn their trust before they let me in,
(42:00):
So I had to, you know, deal some stuff from
time to time. But you know that was just for
the mission, right, and it would change so many times.
I just kind of like, Okay, well there's a problem here.
I am not qualified to address this. I don't even
know what to do. I'm just here at patrol man,
and I would just keep on with it. Evo said
things got so bad that at one point one of
(42:22):
Phoenix's close friends, someone from outside the superhero world called
him up worried about Phoenix's relationship with drugs. She had
lost somebody to drug overdose who had had very similar tendencies, like,
oh yeah, I was just hanging on with some friends
and somebody put something in my drink and I had
no idea what it was, and it bothered her so
(42:43):
much that she couldn't talk to him anymore. Evo told
me another story from back in their patrolling days, when
Phoenix had been acting really strange. He just seemed like
a nonresponsive zombie, just kind of walking but not talking
to anybody. There were rumors of some kind of potential
substance being in a system. We had two medics on
(43:03):
our team at the time, and one of them could
recognize immediately that there was something off, and it made
some kind of sideways joke about, yeah, he would set
fire to your analysis test right now if we were
to test for drugs or something like that, and getting
her and sample said, yeah, that would probably combust. Now,
mind you, that's that's rumor mill And you know, I'm
certainly no doctor, but the shoe would fit, and I
(43:24):
don't think anyone would be surprised. Evil wasn't happy with
the potential risk of patrolling with someone whose judgment might
be impaired by narcotics, so he followed up right before
the team had actually disbanded. I had purchased several ur
analysis tests drug tests. It's basically urinate on a little strip.
(43:45):
It detects like seven or nine different types of control
substances and see if you know, if the color shows up,
that means you have something in your system, that kind
of a thing, and I would I bottle those. And
I intended to bring that and kind of springing as
a surprise on everyone at a on a patrol do
to some of these rumors and stuff like that. But
Phoenix had disbanded the team just before it had happened,
(44:05):
so no one ever knew. And I suspect that someone
may have leaked that to Phoenix, or had mentioned that, Hey,
just so you know, there's going to be what we
call a whiz quiz coming up soon. So I can't
verify whether or not he knew in advance or just
he was having a temper tantrum and decided to take
his ball and go home. There was enough rumor mill
(44:26):
to substantiate me actually getting drug tests. The entire team ready.
Elcaba Lero was concerned too. I mean, it's something he
had actually talked about quite a number of times, like
I've never done drugs, Like I can't believe people do that.
In fact, that was his coming of age superhero story,
(44:48):
is that someone high on drugs broke his window and
his kid almost got cut with the glass coming in
the morning because a junkie or something broke his car
window to steal his stuff. And now he's doing these
kind of party drugs. It's frustrating because you know, you
love someone to care about him and you want him
to do the best, and then they do other things.
(45:09):
I mean, you're a parent, you know you want the
best for him, but at the same time, they're gonna
do what they're gonna do. I also had an encounter
that made me believe that Phoenix may have been involved
with drugs over the years. One night, when I was
out interviewing strangers on the street about Phoenix, a guy
told me that he had a ton of dirt on Phoenix.
He said that Phoenix was not a good guy and
(45:30):
he had a lot of inside information on his dealings
with drugs. This was around three in the morning, and
the guy said he was heading home to crash, but
he gave me his phone number and said he was
willing to do an interview with me. But when I
texted him to set up the interview, he said, quote,
I don't really like the guy. I don't know how
I feel about trashing his name in an interview. I'd
feel weird doing that to anybody. I told him he
(45:51):
could be anonymous or even off the record, but he
never responded to any of my texts after that. But
the whole exchange made me believe there was something more
to Phoenix is a relationship to drugs, and he was
willing to admit to me. It was Facebook messaging with
the net Jack and I said something about how I
commit up with you, and he was like, oh, he
was probably on cocaine. And I was like, okay, Like
(46:12):
is that a thing? Did you have a cocaine problem
that I didn't know about? But like, that's hilarious. I'll
never know because when I met men at Jack, he
was a drug addict and that's why he started patrolling.
So his comments on me doing drugs, it's really weird.
If I ever did do drugs, I would never do
them with bed night Jack. Like, I'm not talking about
drugs in any direct fashion, but what because I'm not
(46:32):
going to. But what I'm saying is like, even if
I had a problem where peanut butter every single day,
I wouldn't eat peanut butter before an interview because it
makes your mouth telling. Well, no one's saying, you know,
but that's what he's saying. But he's like, I think
you think of what he said, right, He's like he
was probably on this for the interview. That's me's saying,
and not that I've been on you saw that you
saw it as the United States Anti Doping Administration. I've
(46:52):
been a member of his saw since I was sixteen
years old. The Anti doping administration for the fucking Olympics. Yeah,
I'm a world class athlete and you think, and I've
swing up on fucking cocaine, but just you saying it's
so fucking stupid to me. You know, yeah, seventeen years,
I've never failed a drug test in seventeen years. They're
(47:12):
randomly done, but I know from two thousands two sixteen
to two thousand nineteen I was actively being tested for
you said it, right, which is once a month testing
and then a random one every three months. Right. That
leaves me eight days in every month that if I
had timed doing drugs perfectly, I could do them, I guess,
and be high for I guess two days. So there's
(47:35):
sixty days in the left five years that I could
have actively done drugs and not gotten caught. And you're
telling me that those days are the days that I've
won scheduling an interview, probably in cocaine and too. I
have my life regimented enough when I can't even show
up on time to patrols that I care about because
I'm terribly late at everything, And you think I've scheduled
my life to the point that these random sixty days
(47:55):
I could do all of these fucking drugs. Yeah, to
my superhero careers run a hundred nineteen times. Every time
you get arrested, they take you to jail and you
be you have to because when if you're on drugs
and you and then you start having like to come
down right. Only one person on our team has ever
failed a PA test, and it fucking wasn't me. So
if we're gonna accuse people of things, but somebody's on
(48:18):
record is actually I've done that on record while you
were supering with us. But I mean, if y'all want
to come at me, there's records of you doing that.
Why we were fighting crime. If I wrote a book
about the fucking ship these assholes did, I mean, Jesus Christ,
I think we're definitely on part with each other for
being assholes. Congratulations were the biggest crew of assholes. Good job,
(48:39):
But none of that has anything to do with chasing
a gunman or stopping the crime. It's like everyone has
such a short memory, Like I remember everything that I did,
and I wish you guys would just bring up one
of the things that I actually did wrong, because I wish,
why would I ever do that? I get it, I get,
I mean I don't. I'm not no shade against you.
(49:01):
I wouldn't do it either. I wouldn't be like volunteering
all these terrible things I've done to other people. But
I mean, but there are some but it is ironic
that they're talking all the ship about you. But then
it's like, well, tell me the real things that he
did so we can talk about it. But instead, and
I see your point, like I I would agree that
it seems highly unlikely that you've ever had a drug problem,
(49:22):
do you know what I mean. I'm just so frustrated,
just just sucking, irritating and just walking curious. I just
wouldn't beat the funk out of guys, which I would
not do because it's legal, but if I could, I wouldn't.
I tried to lighten the mood, but Phoenix didn't take
de bait. Have you ever thought about um doing like
a charity fight against bed night check or something like
that with a lion? Ever thought about doing a charity
(49:47):
fight with the mouse? Midnight Jack has twelve to twenty
crime stops. None of them are without me, and none
of them are hands on stops. Never been in a
fight his entire life, and I fought all over the
world as a professional fighter, and I'm gonna take out
my petty personal a grievances by going out and punching
these guys in the face. In the moment, I was
skeptical that Phoenix had a drug problem. He's very convincing
when he's talking to you directly, and he was a
(50:09):
professional athlete for a long time. But I wasn't able
to verify his claims about his USADA testing as he
isn't listed in their public databases. Now that I'm no
longer in the room with him, I don't know what
to think because there's also the elephant in the room
the moment where this whole series began. One day when
(50:34):
two thousand and twenty, EVO was at home with his
family when the news dropped. Remember helping my little girls
on homework. When I got messages from former team member.
Used to get a load of this, all right. The
crime fighting persona of Phoenix Jones has taken an interesting twist.
Interesting an m M A fighter whose real name is
Benjamin Photorc is in some very real legal trouble. Ever
(50:58):
since Phoenix put on his super suit and took to
the streets, He's claimed that the police have been out
to get him. He said they arrested him one hundred
and eighteen times, and each time he went free, but
they had finally succeeded in nailing him, and this time
the chargers would stick. Yeah, that was that was pretty hilarious,
(51:18):
not surprising, but just like, wow, he actually got caught.
What do you know? Phoenix had made many transformations in
his life, from bullied orphan to champion bowler, cocky break
dancer and then champion mm A fighter, And now he'd
gone from real life superhero to convicted drug dealer. So
(51:41):
how does the Great Phoenix Jones react when he's the
one in the jail cell? Next time, Seattle's perfect crime
fighter gets well and truly busted. The Superhero Complex is
(52:08):
hosted and written by Me David Weinberg and reported by Me,
Amalia Sortland and Caroline Thorn. Production from Amalia Sortland and
Caroline Thorn. Sean Glenn, Max O'Brien and David Waters are
executive producers. Fact checking by Andrew Schwartz. Production management from
Sharie Houston, Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolf. Sound design, mixing
(52:30):
and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision
by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Original music is composed
by Paul Housden. Special thanks to Peter Tangan, Willard Foxton,
Matt O'Meara, Katrina Norvelle Bet and Macaluso, Rin Rosenbaum, Shelby Shnkman,
(52:52):
and all the team at E t A. For more
from Novel, visit novel dot Audio
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