June 5, 2025 • 53 mins
Josh Huber aka "The Hellboy" is a former MMA and bare knuckle fighter, BJJ black belt and cancer survivor.Josh shares his journey of resilience and determination after a brain cancer diagnosis. Huber shares how this unexpected challenge has shaped his perspective, the importance of preparation, and the vital role of community support.
Follow Josh's journey on his instagram @josh_hb_huber
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Follow Josh's journey on his instagram @josh_hb_huber
Train with Josh at Kompound Training Center!
Thank you to our sponsor Honor The Brave!
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Connect with Jerrod!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You are listening to the On Purpose podcast, your guide
to living a more purposeful life. What's up, everybody, Welcome
to this week's edition of the show. You know, it's
our privilege to be here with you, and we're honored
to share the space and have this time in your
life and to share some thoughts and to hear from
you and to share with you. So this week, I'm
(00:23):
excited to bring on a friend of mine who I
haven't seen in years now, that used to fight on
the same show as I did. When I was coming
up as a fighter, I was on the early part
of the shows. This guy was an established, high level pro.
He's always the main event and just generally one of
the toughest people I've ever met in life.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Josh Huber.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So, today we're gonna sit down and we talk about fights,
both inside the cage and his life. Josh is a
seasoned professional mixed martial artist boxer bare knuckle fighter who
knows what it means to push his limits and embrace resilience.
But beyond his fights and championships, Josh is also a
brain cancer survivor and someone who faced diversity outside the ring.
(01:11):
Is battled back with the same grit and determination that
defined him in his sports career. So I hope you
enjoy this week's interview with Josh, but before you do,
please get over like, subscribe, share on your favorite podcast apps,
get over to YouTube, check us out there, and help
us reach more people around the world. So enjoy this
(01:33):
week's interview with Josh Huber. Honor the Brave was founded
by retired law enforcement officer Jeff Wolfgang and his wife
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It's their way of giving back to the first responder
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(01:53):
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the Brave dot com. We've got your six Josh, my friend,
(02:18):
Welcome to the On Purpose podcast. How are you doing today?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Great? Thanks for having me, dude.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
It's awesome to see your smile on the camera there
my friends, thank you. Yeah, I was excited you wanted
to come on the show, and you're obviously somebody I've
looked up to for a long time. I was did
your intro separately, and I was sharing on there that
back when I started fighting, I was a little older
than average, so I was fighting early in the night.
But you were the main event guy. You were the
(02:45):
guy we always looked up to because we knew you
were one you're gonna come in shape and two you're
gonna leave it all in the cage man. And I
just want to thank you for the leadership you provide,
even maybe without knowing you were doing it by setting
that example.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I always I always found the
martial arts aspect of fighting to be more interesting than
the crap talking. You know, people try to promote themselves
by talking a lot of crap. I've always seen it.
It's like honorable to be a fighter, So I always
treated everyone with respect, and I always liked being a
part of the community man like I was just as
(03:20):
happy to be a mentor. If you know, if that's
how people saw me to anyone that would take my advice. Really,
you know, I've always been happy to be a teacher.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
No, dude, you were impacting a lot of people, probably
way more than you ever knew, just by being you, man,
and just the way you showed up. And like for me,
I'll just share. Like, you know, being on shows the
main event, guys didn't always talk to the amateurs that
were fighting early in the night like it was, you know,
and you were always like you check in see how
people were doing. You kind of remember dudes from other
(03:52):
shows when we crossed paths, and that always meant something
that you remember where you came from and you remember,
like there's other dudes trying to get where you're at.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Well. I have zero fighting background before MMA. I just
I went to the bar, saw a local show, and
then I signed up. So it's not like I'm this
freak athlete that got into MMA. I was just nobody
that was lucky to find a gym, you know. And
I love the culture. I love fighting. I started fighting
right away, so I was always a super fan before
(04:25):
I even started, you know, So I always find it
interesting why people fight, you know, so I like to
talk to young fighters, you know, and like you said,
you were an older guy, you know. And I always
find it interesting the guys that start fighting late, you know,
because it's usually people that are looking for something more
in their lives, you know, And fighting, to me, is
(04:45):
like a beautiful thing. It's like something you should do.
You should test yourself. You should go out there and
put it all on the line and see where you
end up. And I think that will change the way
you look at life and change who you are. You know.
It's good to be challenged. It's good to put it
all on the line, you know, be afraid and overcome
that fear and see what.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
You made of.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, I share, you know, the story of my fights
all the time. And one of the things I one
hundred percent agree with is it opened up so many
other doors in life because I faced the fears of that,
which meant then other fears weren't quite as scary.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, you know, there's nothing more intense than fighting on
the schedule, you know. Like I used to get so scared.
I would be terrified, you know. I remember back in
the day, I was so scared of this guy. I
was just like pacing back and forth and scared as
hell all day, and then I went out and like
knocked him out in thirteen seconds. And you can't replicate
(05:45):
that kind of adrenaline, that kind of high that you
feel from that. I mean, it'll never be topped.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, no, I agree with Josh. Before we get going
on this, man, come on, now, you're still a gym rat.
I gotta warm you up. I can't have you do
the heavy stuff first. We got to warm up to go.
You're ready to get warmed up, Josh?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, whatever you say?
Speaker 1 (06:03):
All right, my friend, were you gonna pick sunrise or sunset?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Sunrise?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Why?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
I just like to get up with the day, you know.
I think the early bird gets the worm, and you know,
I just I like being up early when it's still quiet,
you know, and there's not a whole lot of rushing around.
I get up and I have my routine, you know.
I work out and I'll try to learn something. I've
been learning Spanish for like the last four years and
(06:32):
I'm getting pretty good at it. So I usually will
get up and work on my Spanish and I'll work out,
and I just like that slow time of the day
to work on myself before it gets too busy.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
What's a favorite quote that you've heard in your head?
This sticks around with you.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
The quote's kind of long. I always kind of forget it,
but it's by Hunter S. Thompson. You know you're not
the body is not meant to be preserved the funeral.
You know you should come into your funeral sliding in
headfirst and saying, what one hell of a rider? Whatnot.
I don't know the exact quote, but it's just about
getting the most out of life, and this is our
(07:12):
one chance and you should really just push hard and
get the most out of it.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
What's a song that's stuck in your head? Or on
repeating your playlist right now?
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Oh? Man, I changed my music up so much. I
listened to so much music. But I've been listening to
a lot of Sam Barber. Okay, what's the name of
the song? I was just listening to it. It's on
my playlist. The man you.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Raised okay, country guy? Right, Yeah, he's he's.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
A lot like people compare him to what's his name,
Luke Bran or whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Okay, all right, I just.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Change up my music like weekly. Sometimes I listened to
dance music. Sometimes I listened to heavy metal. Like what
I found through this whole process that I've been going
through recently is that music is like therapeutic and it
can change your mood and enhance your mood. And just
like it's incredible, music is magical. So I listen to
all kinds of different stuff depending on what mood I'm
(08:19):
in or what mood I want to be in.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, that's a great way to look at. What's a
favorite book of yours.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Josh Mick Foley, Have a Nice Day my favorite book
by a farm I've read it four times. Mick Foley
was a pro wrestler mankind. He was an everyday man.
He just did the most hardcore stuff to finally get
himself on the map. And then like after years of
sacrifice and destroying his body, he finally got the recognition
(08:45):
he wanted. And then he wrote that book, which is
a best seller, which he wrote on paper by hand,
you know, just over a few weeks or months or whatever.
He's just a super interesting guy and he wrote his
own book. And he wouldn't be a guy you would
think of as an intellection, but he's a very positive
person and I recommend I give that book to my
(09:05):
students to read.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Oh wow, yeah, I've never had come across that one before.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
You like it though, Yeah, he's written two or three
books now, but this was his first and it was
on the top ten bestseller Mick Foley, have a nice day.
It's incredible. You should check it out. He's the guy
that got thrown off the top of the cage by
the Undertaker through the table.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, I remember Mankind, Yeah he was.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
He's a very interesting guy, very interesting story.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Huh. All right, Josh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
I feel like pro wrestling and m HM a kind
of reflect each other as fine as far as like
the career paths and the kind of damn what you
take on your body?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
All right, you get to have dinner with one person,
they could have passed away or still be with us.
Who would you have dinner with them? What would you
want to ask him?
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Bob Ross? I mean, I can't think of one question
I would ask him. I just want to know how
he came to be so positive.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
You know they talk about the painter, Yeah, Bob Ross,
the painter, Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
I grew up on Bob Ross. I was actually much
more of the artsy type than the fighter type. When
growing up.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, you know what, I find out a lot. I
find out a lot. Well, let me preface it. I
find a lot of the fighters that I'm attracted to
that I have a good friendship with a relationship with
weren't the people that always wanted to be fighters. They
had other backgrounds that brought other interest into it, and
I kind of found the sport as a way, like
you said, to challenge himself further.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Well, to quote a friend of mine, Zach Hare. I
don't know if you know Zach, but he said one
of the funniest and most true things I ever heard.
He said, there's two types of fighters. There's fighters with
severe emotional problems from childhood and wrestlers.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
That's fun. So you feeling warmed up, my friend?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yeah, I'm good.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, let's talk about talk to me about your early life.
So you were more artsy than a fire because I've
only known you as the fighter. You have been the
main event, Josh the hell boy Hubert for a long
time now, So talk to me about the early part
of Josh's life.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
I grew up with I have three brothers, and then
I have three more step brothers. I'm the three out
of four. I'm one of the younger ones. I grew
up in Oceanside, California, Southern California, north of San Diego.
I grew up there during like the riots, you know,
Rodney King and all that stuff. So I grew up
really rough. We used to get in fights all the time,
(11:42):
and I was kind of you know, you could call
me a bad kid, you know that she would fit.
I was getting into bad stuff and that was just
kind of our culture. That's how we were raised. You know.
We were little kids in the hood, so we grew
up really rough. We grew up fighting and stealing shit
and just kind of being little helly and you know.
But my dad could see the kind of environment we
(12:04):
were in and he moved us to Colorado Springs at
ninety four, okay, and I pretty much grew up in
Colorado Springs, you know. I from nine to twenty one,
I lived in Colorado Springs.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
What was your what was your first experience with the
combat sports then? How old were you when you moved
to that. I.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Like I said, I had zero background in fighting in MMA.
MMA was my first official experience. What I used to
do was box. You know. My brothers were meaner than hell.
You know. We got some boxing gloves and we used
to go in the basement. I was three out of four,
so I would always beat boxing my older brothers like
(12:47):
all the time, you know, And I was scared of
my older brothers because they'd always beat the crap at me,
you know. But then I wasn't scared of anybody else
at all, like especially kids my own age. And then
like I kind of garnered a reputation because I could box,
and then like my brothers would go get me into fights,
you know, and they would like challenge other kids and
(13:09):
be like Josh said, he'd whoop your ass, you know,
like and then we'd throw on the gloves or we'd
just fight, you know, bare fisted, you know, because it
was crazy. It was the hood, you know. And yeah,
I used to box a lot growing up, and then
in high school I was drinking at parties and then
boxing kids at parties. Probably in uh. I probably had
(13:30):
like a dozen boxing matches through high school. And I
can always punch, but that's literally my only martial arts background.
I you know, we played a lot of sports growing
up as far as like baseball and football and stuff
like that, and we were really into pro wrestling, and
then once pro wrestling got old, we immediately kind of
(13:50):
switched to UFC and I just became super fan of
MMA right away. You know, we grew up watching boxing
as well.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Who was your first favorite fighter, Uh.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
I would say Arturo Gotti, Yeah, Lord the Trilogy, Yeah,
war Machine. That's the fight that really I think turned
me into a fight fan was Gotti Ward one, and
now more of a Mickey Ward fan because I feel
like my my career reflects Mickey Wards, you know, a
lot more does Gottis.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
So yeah, I see that.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
I love the beauty of boxing. What I remember about
the Gotti Ward fight is I remember Ward's reaction after
he won the decision. You know, you could just see
it on his face. It was like his big break.
He finally won a close decision in a big fight,
and he just started like kind of crying, you know.
And to see a guy like that, that tough show
(14:47):
emotions like that, it was like really kind of was like, Wow,
this is this is beautiful. It's it's sport, but it's
like so much more, you know, there's so much more
on the line in fighting there is in football or baseball,
you know, So the emotion you see out of these
guys and like, that's what really captured me. And then
(15:07):
the respect they showed each other. I was like, this
is like a brotherhood, you know. That's what I always
loved about it. I love being part of a team
and being part of a group of guys where you're
beating the hell out of each other and you just
learn to appreciate each other that much more.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, I think that's such a valuable lesson, right because
you can't get to the top and fighting, You can't
show up to your fight prepared without your partners to
help you get there.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
No, I feel like that's kind of been lost these days,
is the fight team. Man. Everyone's kind of like doing
their own thing, you know, bouncing from Jim to Jim.
And I feel like back in the day, we were
like thicke as thieves. It was us against them, and
I feel like there's been a little bit of that
that's gone now, where fighters just kind of expect you
(15:52):
to train them for free and then they're going to
jump around gym's and not really give you any credit
when they win. So it's like I don't know, man,
the scene is a little bit back in the day.
I thought I felt we were a little bit closer.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, yeah, I could see that, definitely.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
I would, you know, if I had to point to
a point in my falling into sport. Connor McGregor certainly
let in a new generation of self promotion and individuality
over what we had like as a team.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Like you said, oh yeah, I missed the team. You know,
I missed the guys I came up with. I missed
him a lot.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
What so now you've competed in MMA boxing and bare
knuckle fighting, which is crazy as well, and I what
was when you look back and go, okay, that's probably
what I don't want to do a bunch more of.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Well. I mean, MMA is the hardest sport in the
world by far. There's just so much to it, you know.
I uh, I wish I could have done more bare
knuckle boxing, but my hands wouldn't have held up for
very long, you know, Like I broke. I broke like
(17:03):
a little piece of my finger right here when I
did my one and only bare knuckle fight. It wasn't
a big deal. I could have kept going, but I
just honestly over, Like, I don't think I could have
more than ten fights and bare knuckle before my hands
would start to disintegrate, especially since I took my first
bare knuckle fight at thirty nine.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah, what was it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:24):
You think that's gonna be the lasting kind of memory
of bare knuckle fighting, because you know, fighting kind of trends,
and we move into one and kind of move out
of another one bare knuckle When we look back on it,
are we going to see a ton of hand injuries
coming out of that?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Oh for sure. I mean, I mean there's guys that
handle it better than others, but I mean a lot
of older fighters get into bare knuckles. It seems to
be guys that are on the tail end of their
MM careers. So we already have a ton of damage
on our hands already. You know, punching with gloves isn't
(18:00):
great for you.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
So, and most MMA guys don't protect their hands like
they should. They don't wrap up all the time. You know,
I see so many guys sparring without hand wraps on it,
and I'm just like, you're not protecting your hands, and
you're putting less padding between your knuckle and my freaking
cheek bones and eyeb where you're gonna cut me. I
(18:24):
tried to talk to him about it, but they don't
want to listen these days. So I think fighters need
to take better care of their hands in general, because
once you get to my age and you start locking
out your fingers for no reason all the time and
you can't figure out why, then you'll start realizing it
when it's too late, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Yeah, what would you What would you say is the
biggest thing you learned about yourself.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Career? I mean, honestly, uh, fighting was so damn hard
and I was never the smartest guy, you know, But
like for me to have a successful career in fighting
without I would say I had a successful career. It's
not like I had a super successful career, but right
(19:10):
I'm pretty happy with it. But to have a successful
career in fighting makes you prepared for anything else, Like
anything else is easy by comparison, Like I said, you're
not going to get into like computer science or like
super smart stuff, but it gives you like just an
iron will and for me, I can always find a way.
(19:30):
That was my attitude towards fighting is I'll fight anybody,
because when the moment arrives, I'll find a way to win.
And now I'll take on any challenge, you know, because
I feel like, no matter what, when the time arises,
I'll step up and I'll find a way.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah. There's truth in it, man, That's how I see it. Yeah. No,
I agree that it's truth.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Like, like you said, having that schedule, I think was
probably one of the hardest things. I see that a
lot in the gym is people want to fight. People
want to fight, and they're training hard, and they're like,
I just want to fight, and they're like, say, hey,
guess what, we just booked you a fight and it's
going to be on July sixth, and all of a sudden,
you just see like this and like they don't. They're
not as excited about practice, they're not as energetic, right
(20:15):
because there's that weight of like, Okay, now I have
to train because on July sixth, I'm gonna walk out
front of thousands of people, take my shirt off and
literally get in a fist fight.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Yeah. I mean, I think it's all about how you
approach it, really, you know, like some people, Yeah, I agree,
people want to fight too soon, you know, and then
when you get them to fight, they're they can be
a little less enthusiastic than they need to be. I
don't know. The way I trained my fighters is as
(20:46):
I'm always telling them, we're training to fight here, we're
training to win. We're training to fight. So you need
to have the right mentality when you walk in the door,
you know, like when we start doing hard shit, you
need to lock it in and embrace that much and
learn to smile when it sucks, because it's a whole
nother mentality. Like when you get out to the cage,
(21:06):
you want to have already been through a bunch of
tough situations in training camp so that you're prepared for anything.
You know, some guys train soft, They hand pick their
training partners, they don't want to get beat up enough,
and then they go out there and they start losing,
and then they fall apart mentally.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
I train the guys that like, hey, this is supposed
to suck. We're here to make it suck less for
you mentally, so that when the time comes, you're going
to be able to call upon this will to overcome
whatever you're going through. Because things are going to go
bad in the fight. You know, it's pretty much guaranteed.
You can never assume that you're going to dominate and
(21:46):
everything's going to go your way. You know, you got
to assume that things are going to go bad and
you're gonna have to make an adjustment. You're gonna have
to dig deep, and you're gonna have to find your
true self, you know, be exposed, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Yeah, And I think that's great advice for life, right
because life, you know, I can get up today and
everything's gonna go your way, everything's gonna be perfectly. You're
gonna have obstacles to face. How are you gonna respond?
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Oh? Yeah? And like we were just saying before, like
I think that's what fighting taught me is that it
shows you your true capabilities. It shows you who you are.
Will you rise to the challenge or are you a coward?
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (22:25):
I've seen it. I've seen some really tough guys just quit,
you know, in the middle of a fight because they're
not winning. You could just see him break mentally. I've
broken guys mentally. I've broken guys that were talking shit
and all up in my face and like really tough
before the fight started, and then I start to feel
them slow down in the second, and then I'm just
breaking them in the third and I can just feel it.
(22:46):
It's like a whole shift mentally, you know. Yeah, it's
another beautiful thing about fighting. It's the best fighter doesn't
always win. Sometimes the guy that's more prepared will win.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, And that's that's one of the things I liked,
is you are in complete control how hard you prepare,
like you said, like doing the right practices, knowing that, okay,
the days that sucked in practiced prepared me for when
it sucks in a fight, Like I'm not going to
get caught by something I didn't know about because I
trained right.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
And it's the same in life.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Preparation is key.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, and it's the same in life.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Like I love what you were talking about earlier you
get up earlier, your studying Spanish, Like you're preparing yourself
to go about life a certain way, right, constantly learning, evolving,
challenging yourself, not taking easy road.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
And I think.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
That if we all look back and community members aren't fighters,
we look back at our habits and what we did
this morning, is it moving us forward? Is it preparing
us for that next challenge?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
No? I agree, you know, like people aren't challenging themselves
enough in life, you know, the average everyday person. You know,
everyone's talking about the next good show on Netflix or whatever.
I could give a shit, you know, like, hey, did
you see this? Did you see that? It's like, no,
I didn't. I'm like out there doing stuff. I'm doing
(24:13):
what I love, you know, And yeah, I think if
you're not learning, if you're not challenging yourself to learn
something new, you're kind of just dying slowly, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, So let's talk about the scare you had. What
was that about a year ago?
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Now, I had brain surgery last August, so it's been
almost nine months.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Almost nine months brain search so for one of the
toughest guys, I know. Yeah, all of a sudden, you're
surprised by this.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Oh yeah, I was out of nowhere. Basically what happened.
It's a long story, but I had I was retired again.
I was on my third retirement and then BKFC came
into town and they were doing a tryout. So I'm like,
I'll just go to the tryout. So I went to
the tryout. I made the roster real quick, you know,
(25:09):
like I was with the best fighter down there and
then like the very followed the following weekend. You know,
it was on a Sunday that I made the BKFC
and then on the Friday, me and my girlfriend decided
to celebrate, you know, so we went and had some
drink sweet kind of partied and had a long night
that I woke up the next morning and I had
a seizure. Oh and I don't remember it at all,
(25:32):
you know, like the only thing I remember is waking
up in the paramedics, being in my tiny apartment. There
was like ten people in my tiny apartment. I'm on
a stretcher, completely clueless asking what happened. So I had
had like a Grandma seizure, like full Grandma seizure, Like
I chipped some teeth. I I collapsed in the shower,
(25:54):
I took out the spout, took out the wall. You know.
My girlfriend found.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Me, and.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
You know, I had just made the rosters. So I
was like, what the hell, And I didn't remember it
even happening. So I just kind of like an idiot,
I ignored it, you know, because I was fine for
the rest of the day. I was just like, I
feel fine. I don't remember this even happening, and then
I kept training, and then I kept Basically I would
(26:24):
have a seizure every sixty to ninety days, and yeah,
they were scary, you know. Like I said, I don't
remember them happening. I would just black out and then
I would start seizing, and then I would wake up
and be groggy, and then I would just go about
my day.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
I trained on days that I had seizures, you know, like,
and it didn't affect my training at all. So I'm like,
I wasn't taking it that serious.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
What did you think? So real quick went back.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
So you're trying for a bare knuckle fight, your first,
your debut, and you're on the big bare knuckle circuit.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
This isn't the small one. This is the you know,
a big show.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah yeah, and you're having seizures and then you're like
just shaking it off and going to practice.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
I was, like, I said, it was my third it
was my third comeback for my third retirement. I was
just so eager to fight. I had got to fight
against Andrew Yates. And Andrew Yates was a guy that
I had been trying to fight for like ten years.
You know, I knew him about him as an amateur.
I knew him out as about him as a pro.
(27:34):
He had a really good record, you know, but I
always knew I could beat him. So he was like
two and zero and BKFC I had went to his
last fight. I watched him fight, and I'm watching it.
I'm like, I would kick the shit out of this guy,
like no problem, you know. So like I hit up BKFC.
I'm like, I want to fight Yates. I want to
fight Yates. I hit him up like three or four
different times, and they were just kind of ignoring me.
(27:56):
So I showed up to the tryout, made the roster,
and I'm like, hey, I'm the guy that keeps asking
to fight Yates, so let me fight Yates. And they
finally gave it to me. And I was just like,
I was on a three fight losing streak in my
career and I wanted that last win so bad. So
I was reaching, you know, I was overextended, making bad decisions,
(28:18):
but I just wanted to fight Yates so bad. So
I kept training through it. You know, I had seizures
during my training camp, and then then I had three
more after and then I finally got an MRI. I
got a medicaid and I got an MRI and they
found my brain tumor. It was a Grade three astrocytoma,
(28:43):
which is it's just the type of tumor I had
his brain cancer.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
So let me stop real quick, Josh, you actually did
the fight.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Before with this thing. I was bored. All the doctors
agree that this was something that I got either at
birth or early in life, and it has just been
growing in my head and I never knew about it.
The only thing that affected me was that I had
(29:16):
migraines all the time. Like even as a little kid,
I would always get migraines. My ears would ring really loud,
and I would get these just like sensitivity in the
eyes from light, and I would get really bad migraines.
Let you know if I like watch too much TV. Basically,
the astrostoma had a sack, like a fluid sack attached
(29:36):
to it the tumor, and like it would fill up
and then it would put pressure on my brain. So
like this little sack would fill up like a balloon
and then it would put pressure on my brain and
I would just I used to take a lot of
etcetern almost daily, you know, and it would like thin
out my blood or whatever it was doing, and it
(29:57):
would take care of them. So I was I had
a way of chilling the migrains. I just had to
take a shitload of medicine, you know, to do it.
And this was just normal for me. I'd been doing
this my whole life. I didn't know I had a tumor.
I just thought I got headaches. Yeah, So the only
time it really revealed itself was at age thirty eight,
(30:19):
when I started having seizures. You know, I was freaking nowhere,
you know, I was just I'm like celebrating because I
finally got like the fight I've been looking for for years,
and like then boom, seizure and then like nobody could
talk me out of taking the fight. You know, I
didn't really tell anybody. My girlfriend was the only one
(30:41):
that knew I was having them, so she couldn't talk
me out of it. And I just went through it,
you know. And I I'm glad I did, honestly, because
it wouldn't have changed anything, you know, And I'm I
feel so lucky and blessed that I finally got to
fight yates because I knew i'd beat them, and I
did you know, it was one of my best performances ever.
(31:03):
I knocked them down five times. He's a tough really
one of the toughest guys I ever fought. You know,
he kept coming, he kept trying to win. But no,
I mean I that was one of my best performances.
And I had so many people come up to me
after that fight and be like, You're going to be
a star in this sport. You know, You're going to
be the next big thing, And that's pretty much what
(31:23):
I was getting ready for. But then obviously, as soon
as I found out I had a tumor, they got
me in for surgery and that ended my career immediately.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, let's go back, go back for a second. Josh.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
So you're going into that fight, how did you get
your mind to focus on what was possible of winning
to fight and performing well, not being worried about the seizures.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Well, I wasn't worried about him at all. Like I
The only thing I remember about the seizures is waking
up from and being like a little robby, you know,
like I did some teeth. I broke some teeth that
I had to have pulled, and I did gash my
head once. But no, I wasn't worried about it. I
didn't tell anybody. My corner didn't know about it. I
(32:12):
told my corner guy an hour before the fight. I'm like, look, man,
like I have been having seizures, you know, like this
could happen. You know, I'm just giving you a fair warning.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Dude, that's not a fair warning. Hour before show.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
I wasn't worried about it, Like, I wasn't gonna let
anybody stop me. I was just so determined to fight
Yeats because I knew I could beat him. I knew
it for years. Like he he leads with his chin up,
and I'm just like, I know how to beat this guy.
I hit hard as hell. It's only a matter of
time before I knock him out. And I nailed that one.
Because that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
So how'd you celebrate so you finally get this win.
You haven't been to the doctor yet. What'd you do
after the fight?
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Not much? Really, I mean I can't I don't even
remember that much. I think I just went home and
had a beer with my girlfriend, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
No, like, man, I finally I got this guy, Like
I did what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
No. No, I mean, my my mom was in town
and my brother came over, so we just kind of
went home and had a beer and I spent time
with my family and my girlfriend, you know, the important people. Yeah,
you know, it's a shit about the hangers on, you know,
like people that support you, the people you need to
spend your time with. So, you know, I just took
(33:36):
it all in internally, you know, I don't need to
be boisterous or make a big deal. I was just
happy because, like I said, I was on a three
fight losing streak. I got knocked out twice in a row,
which was like haunting me because I went my first
fifty six fights without ever being knocked out. I got
knocked out in my last two MMA fights like they
(33:57):
were tkos.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
They did.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
It's not like they knocked me cold or anything. But yeah,
that was haunting me, man, Like that was really just
like one of those things that like kept me up
at night, like that. I was on a losing streak
and I had to kind of quit on myself in
my last fight and I lost against the guy that
I should have beat. So like, I think it worked
(34:19):
out like almost it's the word like It was poetic
how it worked out. You know, I got to go
out on a win, and honestly, I feel blessed that
I was forced to retire because I never would have retired.
I would have kept fighting fighting today. You know that
I always said, even as a twenty year old, I
was like, they're going to have to drag my ass away,
(34:41):
and like that's pretty much what happened. Yeah, I went
out on a great performance. You know, I have a
really cool story because of it, and this whole cancer diagnosis.
It's made me feel lucky to be alive. You know,
I appreciate my life now. I appreciate myself. You know,
I hated myself before that fight because I felt like
(35:04):
a loser. You know, I didn't get to the UFC.
I didn't go out on a streak. I didn't do this,
I didn't do that, and I like resented myself so much.
And then like once I found out, like, hey, you've
been fighting your whole career with a brain tumor, you know,
like you're lucky to have to have had a career
at all. Like it changed my perspective and it gave
(35:25):
me a lot more self love and self respect. So
to me, I see it as a blessing, and you
know I don't. I'm fine. I'm living my life. I'm exercising,
I'm training fighters. I was planning on doing a jiu
jitsu match before I got injured recently, but I'm still
(35:45):
planning on doing some pro jiu jitsu.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Go ahead, Yeah, let's go back a little bit. What
so you get that diagnosis and that they that was
if I remember right seeing your social media, it was
kind of a quick like they were rushing you into
surgery pretty fast.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, I uh, well, it was the seizures, you know,
like the fact that I was having them and they
were getting more frequent just kind of mess things up
for me.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yeah, And what the what did doctors tell you? Like,
because I I know you're you're you're tough, and you're
you got a good, stubborn, streaking you. So what did
the doctors tell you about like recovery and how things
long things were going to be?
Speaker 2 (36:27):
And You're like, I don't know about this.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
Well, I mean sorry, I'm gonna go outside my electric
freaking vacuum. It started. It's loud. Now. Doctors are full
of shit, man, I don't trust them. Basically, My prognosis
is the average person that gets has what I have,
(36:51):
it's gonna be a one to five year before I die.
But I don't believe that at all. Most people that
have this problem are a lot older than me. You know,
I'm only thirty nine. I'm turn to forty this year.
I was in great health before I got in, which
really helped me a lot. I'm not Most people that
(37:16):
get this are old and sick, and they're close to
death anyway. So for me, I'm taking chemo chemo pills
by mouth. I'm not on the pump or anything like that.
They're not injecting it into me. But I take chemo
once a month for five days. So starting Monday, I'll
(37:36):
be on chemo until that Friday, and then I'll have
the rest of the month to recover okay, and I'll
be doing this cycle until the end of the year.
A lot of doctors recommend that I stay on it,
that I do this for the rest of my life.
But like I said, they're full of shit. They don't
know what they're talking about. They're just trying to keep
me on chemo because they get money from chemo. Yeah,
(37:59):
you know, the longer they keep me on this drug,
the more money they make, so like they'll tell me
that I need to be on at the rest of
my life. I told him I'd take it for this
one year because that is standard procedure, and then I'm
off of it for the rest of my life and
I'm letting the chips fall where they may.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
What was the toughest part of your recovery coming out
of surgery?
Speaker 3 (38:25):
You know, it wasn't that hard, honestly, you know that
sounds ridiculous, but I was out of that. I was
out of the hospital two days after my surgery, and
I was teaching a class that night, like two days after.
And obviously I wasn't all there, you know, like I
(38:45):
was a little bit woozy. I was on a lot
of drugs, but it took me a minute to get
my balance back. But I didn't lose any function, I
didn't lose any memories. It was all that actually a
lot easier than it should have been, And honestly, I
do have to think that doctors for that. My surgeon
(39:07):
was incredible. He really put my minded ease, because from
the time that I saw the tumor to the time
that I met with my surgeon. I was scared as hell,
you know, I was crying all day and just like
afraid I was going to die. But then once I
saw him, he really set my minded ease. He told
me that I would be in and out. I found
(39:28):
out later that he had had pretty much the same
brain tumor as the child and had it removed and
went on to be a surgeon, So that really nice.
You know, he was a great guy, you know. But
then like afterwards, I'm dealing with on cologists that want
to keep me on all these medications and all these
drugs that are supposedly going to keep me live longer.
(39:50):
But your quality of life kind of goes down after that,
you know, like I wouldn't be able to do the
things I want to do.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah, yeah, I'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Like I saw you posting that you were heading in
for surgery and stuff, and you're a pretty private guy
on social media, so I knew if you were posting like, Okay,
this is fucking real, like this is Josh. He needs
some support. And then yeah, dude, I'm watching to see
how the surgery goes. The next thing, I know, you
got a bandage on your head. Teaching kickboxing.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Yeah, you know what I mean, that's just how I am.
I'd rather be it work than stay at home, you know,
like people think rest is like the answer for everything.
I'd rather stay busy. I'd rather do what I love.
I love being at the gym, I love being around
my guys. So I just continue to do what I love.
(40:47):
I don't see this as a handicap, No.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Not.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Dude.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
There's no doubt you're gonna persevere. Man, It's just who
you are. It's what you've been doing for so long.
Like your body's conditioned to overcome things.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I am conditioned, and I think that's
what people kind of forget. You know, it's chilly out here,
too damn cold, But now it's I'm conditioned to be
a fighter. I'm conditioned to push through and be tough,
you know, and I honestly feel like my training has
(41:23):
carried me through.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Right, And that's the thing, like you you're training for sport,
you're training for an event, but you're actually really training
for life.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Because how you approach that, how you're gonna approach life.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Oh yeah, no, I mean a lot of the doctors
and nurses were very complimentary about my mentality towards it,
you know, and just how I didn't let it ever
get me down. Like I said, I see it as
a blessing, you know. I mean, it sucks obviously, but
it's all how you approach it. You know, it could
(41:58):
be a lot worse. You know, if they would have
found this thing when I was like seven or eight
years old, I would have been like a charity case
my whole life. You know, I don't want people to
feel sorry for me, you know, I want people to
see me as an inspiration. Like, hey, this guy's going
through some tough stuff, but he's not letting it get
him down and star letting them andicap him. You know,
(42:20):
I refuse to be a victim.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, I think that what you said there's super important.
Like if you had this surgery as a kid, you'd
have been conditioned to believe what people told you because
you wouldn't have had your life experience that you have
now to say, wait a second, I don't have to
believe this. I'm gonna create my own story.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
No.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
I mean, I'm not a huge fan of Goggins, but
he like found out he had a hole in his heart,
like after he had done all this stuff and then
like one thing he said that really stuck out to
me is like he used to be down on himself
because he could have done better at this, he could
have done better at that. But then he's like, hey, man,
I did this all this stuff with all in my
(43:00):
heart that would that most people wouldn't even been there
to begin with, you know, Like it's all about perspective,
you know, and this has changed my perspective and it's
given me more appreciation of myself and of life in general.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Why did you recognize that.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Pretty much immediately? Man? I mean when I woke up
from surgery, Like, I wasn't afraid, you know that I was.
I mean I was a little bit afraid, but you
never know if you're gonna wake up. Yeah, the day
of my surgery, they called me in too early. I
was getting a tattoo that day. What was my brain
(43:43):
right here? Okay, I don't know, but I was getting
a tattoo that day of brain surgery, tattoo because I
had hours before my surgery. They called me during my
tattoo and they're like, hey, you're supposed to be here,
and I'm like, no, I'm supposed to be that like
there in an hour, so they called me in an
hour early, and then they had some kind of accident
(44:06):
and then I ended up waiting there for like six
hours before my surgery. Ah, I'm just sitting there with
my little brother and my girlfriend and we're just kind
of tensely sitting around for six freaking hours and just
thinking about life. And it's like you don't know if
you're gonna wake up. And then once I woke up,
and then my girlfriend was there to take care of me.
(44:27):
My girlfriend, Laura has been a rock for me. You know.
She's also improved my life tremendously since she really cares
about me, you know, and she took care of me.
We had the conversation before surgery and after surgery. I
told her like, look, you don't have to do this,
you can walk away, you know, I'll I'll get through
(44:48):
this on my own, and she chose to stuck around,
to stick around. Yeah, both times I gave her an
out and she didn't want it. So it's like that
really just our bond so strong now, you know, and
I trust her with my life because she pretty much
saved my life.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yeah, dude, was that six hours waiting for surgery. Was
was that worse? I like sitting in the locker room
waiting to be the main event when you got all
those fights before you.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Yeah, it was just tense, man. I Uh, geez, ma'am,
I think I got my FedEx guy here. I'm really sorry.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Oh they're good?
Speaker 3 (45:31):
Are you doing? Oh? Thank you? Sorry? Actually, this is
my Keymo medication that just got delivered.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah, that's important.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
Yeah. I uh, I have to sign for it and
I have to be here when they deliver it. They're
supposed to come later. I'm sorry to be disrupted.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
It's all good. All part of the show on my friend.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Now, what were you at?
Speaker 1 (46:01):
I'm sitting there waiting for that surgery for six hours?
Was that comparable to being in the back in the
locker room waiting for your fight?
Speaker 3 (46:10):
No, I wouldn't say so. I would say it was different.
You know, it was a lot more grim. I used
to be. Uh. I used to be terrified before fights,
Like just terrified, you know, Like everyone always talked about
how calm I looked, but I didn't feel calm. I
was always afraid I was gonna embarrass myself and lose.
(46:30):
I was so afraid of losing. And that was my
problem is I was more afraid of losing than I
was jazzed about winning. You know, I should have focused
on winning, right, I was just too afraid of losing.
But before my surgery, it was, you know, you're just
very nostalgic. You're thinking about the good times and your
(46:52):
regrets and all that stuff, you know, And you know
I wasn't. I wasn't afraid. I was and I honestly
had made peace with the fact that if I die young,
that I would have died with a legacy like, hey,
this guy fought his whole career with brain cancer. He
just want a bare knuckle fight freaking three months before
(47:13):
he died, And I think that would have been cool.
That would have been a cool story, you know. So
I had kind of come to peace with that. But
now it was just very melancholy and very boring. I
didn't want to be on my phone, and I was
just sitting in a quiet room with my brother and
(47:34):
my girlfriend and they were scared and I was trying
to be brave for them. Yeah, so it was more,
I would say, just not fun at all. I mean,
even fighting, you're scared, but you know that there's glory
on the other end if you do everything right, so
there's more of a scared excitement.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
I would say, I can get up and hit pads
and rustle a little bit to burn off some of
that energy. They probably didn't have you doing that, and
you wait for him.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Well.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
I used to pace. I used to pace in a
circle for over an hour, just talking to myself, like
beating my chest, punching myself in the face, because I
was scared. I was trying to get out, almost nerved
that like this was I was sitting in a hospital
bed in my gown, you know, with my the people
I cared about just giving me like the grimmest looks that.
(48:26):
I was just like, man, this sucks.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
So you make it through the surgery, come out. What
was the first thing you wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
I just wanted to go home. I hated being in
the hospital. I hated the way people were looking at me.
You know. I just wanted to go home and be
at home. And I honestly wanted to go teach my class.
I was like very determined because I have a Friday
night class that I had canceled already. But I was like, no,
(49:01):
I can teach like I'm capable, Like I'm not slurring
my words, I'm not falling over I can teach. So
obviously my girlfriend drove me, but no, I taught that
glass and I was like just kind of proud of myself,
you know, for not letting anything get in the way.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah, that's awesome, dude. And how's it been since?
Speaker 3 (49:31):
It's been great? You know, I've always obviously had some
rough days. I'm dealing with some bull crap right now.
But no, I mean I'm lucky to be on Medicaid,
you know, and I am lucky for these doctors. I
talk a bunch of crap. I mostly have problems with
the doctors that are trying to keep me on chemo medication.
(49:54):
But no, I mean I'm lucky that the state is
taking care of me. You know, I'm poor enough. I
never they need money to where I qualify for Medicaid,
and I'm lucky and thankful that I'm not paying for
all this stuff because it's unreal how much these medical
bills would be.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
Yeah, Now there's blessed things everywhere if we know to
look for them, right.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I mean I have a lot
to be thankful for and that's what I try to
focus on. There's definitely days where I wake up very
emotional and kind of depressed. Like the medication I take
for seizures, it makes me emotional, so I take it
right before bed, and I would take it in the morning,
And sometimes in the morning I can just be very emotional.
(50:41):
I'll just like start crying for no reason, or I'll
just get a bad thought in my head and dwell
on it for too long. So I just try to
focus on the good, try to be grateful.
Speaker 1 (50:53):
Well, we're proud of you, dude, We're proud of your fight,
and we're proud to call you a friend. And I
want to make sure you know well, in any of
those moments, we're here for you.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Yeah, Josh, has been an honor to share your story.
Where can our community connect with you to follow along
with all the things.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
That's Josh Huber.
Speaker 3 (51:14):
I mean I'm pretty much on Instagram or Facebook. Josh Huber.
Josh HB. Huber would be my Instagram. I have a
YouTube page, but I don't really use it. It's Hellboy Hubert.
You can find me under hell Boy Huber Josh Huber
just on social media. You know. Right now, I'm trying
(51:34):
to build my fight team. I'm trying to get into
the next phase of my life, which is coaching. So
I got a couple of real good up and coming fighters.
One of my fighters just one last Friday. I got
another one, Natalie Klein, who's fighting Bang Ledwig's wife on Saturday.
So that's a big fight. You know, it's gonna be
a big fight for the program, you know, if she
(51:56):
can knock off the big name. But I have a
very tiny fight, being very small, but they're very skilled,
you know. I'm training them up and they're going to
be superstars. And we're very excited to see what happens.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
And for our community members in the Denver area, where's
your gym at? They want to stop buying and see
if it made a good fit for them.
Speaker 3 (52:16):
I'm at the Compound Centennial it's right there on I
twenty five and the Rappa Ho. You know, they have
a very strong jiu jitsu program. I've come in and
take over the general manager position and I'm the head
coach of the kickboxing and fight team. Like I said,
we're real small, you know, I'm not focusing so much
on building a giant team. I'm just focusing on the
(52:37):
students I have, you know, and making them into good fighters,
and I feel like their success will build more success
for the gym. Winning takes care of everything, so I'm
gonna build up some winners and just see where it goes.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
My friend, you just keep you keep winning in life.
We'll keep cheering you on and it's been a pleasure
to share your story.
Speaker 2 (52:56):
Josh.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
And remember life is far too short to live any
other way than on purpose.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
We will see you all again next week
You are listening to the On Purpose podcast, your guide
to living a more purposeful life. What's up, everybody, Welcome
to this week's edition of the show. You know, it's
our privilege to be here with you, and we're honored
to share the space and have this time in your
life and to share some thoughts and to hear from
you and to share with you. So this week, I'm
(00:23):
excited to bring on a friend of mine who I
haven't seen in years now, that used to fight on
the same show as I did. When I was coming
up as a fighter, I was on the early part
of the shows. This guy was an established, high level pro.
He's always the main event and just generally one of
the toughest people I've ever met in life.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Josh Huber.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
So, today we're gonna sit down and we talk about fights,
both inside the cage and his life. Josh is a
seasoned professional mixed martial artist boxer bare knuckle fighter who
knows what it means to push his limits and embrace resilience.
But beyond his fights and championships, Josh is also a
brain cancer survivor and someone who faced diversity outside the ring.
(01:11):
Is battled back with the same grit and determination that
defined him in his sports career. So I hope you
enjoy this week's interview with Josh, but before you do,
please get over like, subscribe, share on your favorite podcast apps,
get over to YouTube, check us out there, and help
us reach more people around the world. So enjoy this
(01:33):
week's interview with Josh Huber. Honor the Brave was founded
by retired law enforcement officer Jeff Wolfgang and his wife
Xana after Jeff was injured in the line of duty.
It's their way of giving back to the first responder
and military community through real estate. If you're a military
or first responder, pasted or present buying our selling a home,
(01:53):
Honor the Brave connects you with trusted realtors nationwide and
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thank you, and additional five percent goes to a charity
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receive a handmade wooden flag honoring your service. Visit Honor
the Brave dot com. We've got your six Josh, my friend,
(02:18):
Welcome to the On Purpose podcast. How are you doing today?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Great? Thanks for having me, dude.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
It's awesome to see your smile on the camera there
my friends, thank you. Yeah, I was excited you wanted
to come on the show, and you're obviously somebody I've
looked up to for a long time. I was did
your intro separately, and I was sharing on there that
back when I started fighting, I was a little older
than average, so I was fighting early in the night.
But you were the main event guy. You were the
(02:45):
guy we always looked up to because we knew you
were one you're gonna come in shape and two you're
gonna leave it all in the cage man. And I
just want to thank you for the leadership you provide,
even maybe without knowing you were doing it by setting
that example.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I always I always found the
martial arts aspect of fighting to be more interesting than
the crap talking. You know, people try to promote themselves
by talking a lot of crap. I've always seen it.
It's like honorable to be a fighter, So I always
treated everyone with respect, and I always liked being a
part of the community man like I was just as
(03:20):
happy to be a mentor. If you know, if that's
how people saw me to anyone that would take my advice. Really,
you know, I've always been happy to be a teacher.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
No, dude, you were impacting a lot of people, probably
way more than you ever knew, just by being you, man,
and just the way you showed up. And like for me,
I'll just share. Like, you know, being on shows the
main event, guys didn't always talk to the amateurs that
were fighting early in the night like it was, you know,
and you were always like you check in see how
people were doing. You kind of remember dudes from other
(03:52):
shows when we crossed paths, and that always meant something
that you remember where you came from and you remember,
like there's other dudes trying to get where you're at.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Well. I have zero fighting background before MMA. I just
I went to the bar, saw a local show, and
then I signed up. So it's not like I'm this
freak athlete that got into MMA. I was just nobody
that was lucky to find a gym, you know. And
I love the culture. I love fighting. I started fighting
right away, so I was always a super fan before
(04:25):
I even started, you know, So I always find it
interesting why people fight, you know, so I like to
talk to young fighters, you know, and like you said,
you were an older guy, you know. And I always
find it interesting the guys that start fighting late, you know,
because it's usually people that are looking for something more
in their lives, you know, And fighting, to me, is
(04:45):
like a beautiful thing. It's like something you should do.
You should test yourself. You should go out there and
put it all on the line and see where you
end up. And I think that will change the way
you look at life and change who you are. You know.
It's good to be challenged. It's good to put it
all on the line, you know, be afraid and overcome
that fear and see what.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
You made of.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, I share, you know, the story of my fights
all the time. And one of the things I one
hundred percent agree with is it opened up so many
other doors in life because I faced the fears of that,
which meant then other fears weren't quite as scary.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Yeah, you know, there's nothing more intense than fighting on
the schedule, you know. Like I used to get so scared.
I would be terrified, you know. I remember back in
the day, I was so scared of this guy. I
was just like pacing back and forth and scared as
hell all day, and then I went out and like
knocked him out in thirteen seconds. And you can't replicate
(05:45):
that kind of adrenaline, that kind of high that you
feel from that. I mean, it'll never be topped.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Yeah, no, I agree with Josh. Before we get going
on this, man, come on, now, you're still a gym rat.
I gotta warm you up. I can't have you do
the heavy stuff first. We got to warm up to go.
You're ready to get warmed up, Josh?
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Yeah, whatever you say?
Speaker 1 (06:03):
All right, my friend, were you gonna pick sunrise or sunset?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Sunrise?
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Why?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
I just like to get up with the day, you know.
I think the early bird gets the worm, and you know,
I just I like being up early when it's still quiet,
you know, and there's not a whole lot of rushing around.
I get up and I have my routine, you know.
I work out and I'll try to learn something. I've
been learning Spanish for like the last four years and
(06:32):
I'm getting pretty good at it. So I usually will
get up and work on my Spanish and I'll work out,
and I just like that slow time of the day
to work on myself before it gets too busy.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
What's a favorite quote that you've heard in your head?
This sticks around with you.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
The quote's kind of long. I always kind of forget it,
but it's by Hunter S. Thompson. You know you're not
the body is not meant to be preserved the funeral.
You know you should come into your funeral sliding in
headfirst and saying, what one hell of a rider? Whatnot.
I don't know the exact quote, but it's just about
getting the most out of life, and this is our
(07:12):
one chance and you should really just push hard and
get the most out of it.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
What's a song that's stuck in your head? Or on
repeating your playlist right now?
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Oh? Man, I changed my music up so much. I
listened to so much music. But I've been listening to
a lot of Sam Barber. Okay, what's the name of
the song? I was just listening to it. It's on
my playlist. The man you.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
Raised okay, country guy? Right, Yeah, he's he's.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
A lot like people compare him to what's his name,
Luke Bran or whatever.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Okay, all right, I just.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Change up my music like weekly. Sometimes I listened to
dance music. Sometimes I listened to heavy metal. Like what
I found through this whole process that I've been going
through recently is that music is like therapeutic and it
can change your mood and enhance your mood. And just
like it's incredible, music is magical. So I listen to
all kinds of different stuff depending on what mood I'm
(08:19):
in or what mood I want to be in.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, that's a great way to look at. What's a
favorite book of yours.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Josh Mick Foley, Have a Nice Day my favorite book
by a farm I've read it four times. Mick Foley
was a pro wrestler mankind. He was an everyday man.
He just did the most hardcore stuff to finally get
himself on the map. And then like after years of
sacrifice and destroying his body, he finally got the recognition
(08:45):
he wanted. And then he wrote that book, which is
a best seller, which he wrote on paper by hand,
you know, just over a few weeks or months or whatever.
He's just a super interesting guy and he wrote his
own book. And he wouldn't be a guy you would
think of as an intellection, but he's a very positive
person and I recommend I give that book to my
(09:05):
students to read.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Oh wow, yeah, I've never had come across that one before.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
You like it though, Yeah, he's written two or three
books now, but this was his first and it was
on the top ten bestseller Mick Foley, have a nice day.
It's incredible. You should check it out. He's the guy
that got thrown off the top of the cage by
the Undertaker through the table.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, I remember Mankind, Yeah he was.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
He's a very interesting guy, very interesting story.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Huh. All right, Josh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
I feel like pro wrestling and m HM a kind
of reflect each other as fine as far as like
the career paths and the kind of damn what you
take on your body?
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
All right, you get to have dinner with one person,
they could have passed away or still be with us.
Who would you have dinner with them? What would you
want to ask him?
Speaker 3 (09:57):
Bob Ross? I mean, I can't think of one question
I would ask him. I just want to know how
he came to be so positive.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
You know they talk about the painter, Yeah, Bob Ross,
the painter, Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
I grew up on Bob Ross. I was actually much
more of the artsy type than the fighter type. When
growing up.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, you know what, I find out a lot. I
find out a lot. Well, let me preface it. I
find a lot of the fighters that I'm attracted to
that I have a good friendship with a relationship with
weren't the people that always wanted to be fighters. They
had other backgrounds that brought other interest into it, and
I kind of found the sport as a way, like
you said, to challenge himself further.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Well, to quote a friend of mine, Zach Hare. I
don't know if you know Zach, but he said one
of the funniest and most true things I ever heard.
He said, there's two types of fighters. There's fighters with
severe emotional problems from childhood and wrestlers.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
That's fun. So you feeling warmed up, my friend?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yeah, I'm good.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, let's talk about talk to me about your early life.
So you were more artsy than a fire because I've
only known you as the fighter. You have been the
main event, Josh the hell boy Hubert for a long
time now, So talk to me about the early part
of Josh's life.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
I grew up with I have three brothers, and then
I have three more step brothers. I'm the three out
of four. I'm one of the younger ones. I grew
up in Oceanside, California, Southern California, north of San Diego.
I grew up there during like the riots, you know,
Rodney King and all that stuff. So I grew up
really rough. We used to get in fights all the time,
(11:42):
and I was kind of you know, you could call
me a bad kid, you know that she would fit.
I was getting into bad stuff and that was just
kind of our culture. That's how we were raised. You know.
We were little kids in the hood, so we grew
up really rough. We grew up fighting and stealing shit
and just kind of being little helly and you know.
But my dad could see the kind of environment we
(12:04):
were in and he moved us to Colorado Springs at
ninety four, okay, and I pretty much grew up in
Colorado Springs, you know. I from nine to twenty one,
I lived in Colorado Springs.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
What was your what was your first experience with the
combat sports then? How old were you when you moved
to that. I.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Like I said, I had zero background in fighting in MMA.
MMA was my first official experience. What I used to
do was box. You know. My brothers were meaner than hell.
You know. We got some boxing gloves and we used
to go in the basement. I was three out of four,
so I would always beat boxing my older brothers like
(12:47):
all the time, you know, And I was scared of
my older brothers because they'd always beat the crap at me,
you know. But then I wasn't scared of anybody else
at all, like especially kids my own age. And then
like I kind of garnered a reputation because I could box,
and then like my brothers would go get me into fights,
you know, and they would like challenge other kids and
(13:09):
be like Josh said, he'd whoop your ass, you know,
like and then we'd throw on the gloves or we'd
just fight, you know, bare fisted, you know, because it
was crazy. It was the hood, you know. And yeah,
I used to box a lot growing up, and then
in high school I was drinking at parties and then
boxing kids at parties. Probably in uh. I probably had
(13:30):
like a dozen boxing matches through high school. And I
can always punch, but that's literally my only martial arts background.
I you know, we played a lot of sports growing
up as far as like baseball and football and stuff
like that, and we were really into pro wrestling, and
then once pro wrestling got old, we immediately kind of
(13:50):
switched to UFC and I just became super fan of
MMA right away. You know, we grew up watching boxing
as well.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Who was your first favorite fighter, Uh.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
I would say Arturo Gotti, Yeah, Lord the Trilogy, Yeah,
war Machine. That's the fight that really I think turned
me into a fight fan was Gotti Ward one, and
now more of a Mickey Ward fan because I feel
like my my career reflects Mickey Wards, you know, a
lot more does Gottis.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
So yeah, I see that.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
I love the beauty of boxing. What I remember about
the Gotti Ward fight is I remember Ward's reaction after
he won the decision. You know, you could just see
it on his face. It was like his big break.
He finally won a close decision in a big fight,
and he just started like kind of crying, you know.
And to see a guy like that, that tough show
(14:47):
emotions like that, it was like really kind of was like, Wow,
this is this is beautiful. It's it's sport, but it's
like so much more, you know, there's so much more
on the line in fighting there is in football or baseball,
you know, So the emotion you see out of these
guys and like, that's what really captured me. And then
(15:07):
the respect they showed each other. I was like, this
is like a brotherhood, you know. That's what I always
loved about it. I love being part of a team
and being part of a group of guys where you're
beating the hell out of each other and you just
learn to appreciate each other that much more.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Yeah, I think that's such a valuable lesson, right because
you can't get to the top and fighting, You can't
show up to your fight prepared without your partners to
help you get there.
Speaker 3 (15:31):
No, I feel like that's kind of been lost these days,
is the fight team. Man. Everyone's kind of like doing
their own thing, you know, bouncing from Jim to Jim.
And I feel like back in the day, we were
like thicke as thieves. It was us against them, and
I feel like there's been a little bit of that
that's gone now, where fighters just kind of expect you
(15:52):
to train them for free and then they're going to
jump around gym's and not really give you any credit
when they win. So it's like I don't know, man,
the scene is a little bit back in the day.
I thought I felt we were a little bit closer.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Yeah, yeah, I could see that, definitely.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
I would, you know, if I had to point to
a point in my falling into sport. Connor McGregor certainly
let in a new generation of self promotion and individuality
over what we had like as a team.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Like you said, oh yeah, I missed the team. You know,
I missed the guys I came up with. I missed
him a lot.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
What so now you've competed in MMA boxing and bare
knuckle fighting, which is crazy as well, and I what
was when you look back and go, okay, that's probably
what I don't want to do a bunch more of.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
Well. I mean, MMA is the hardest sport in the
world by far. There's just so much to it, you know.
I uh, I wish I could have done more bare
knuckle boxing, but my hands wouldn't have held up for
very long, you know, Like I broke. I broke like
(17:03):
a little piece of my finger right here when I
did my one and only bare knuckle fight. It wasn't
a big deal. I could have kept going, but I
just honestly over, Like, I don't think I could have
more than ten fights and bare knuckle before my hands
would start to disintegrate, especially since I took my first
bare knuckle fight at thirty nine.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah, what was it? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:24):
You think that's gonna be the lasting kind of memory
of bare knuckle fighting, because you know, fighting kind of trends,
and we move into one and kind of move out
of another one bare knuckle When we look back on it,
are we going to see a ton of hand injuries
coming out of that?
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Oh for sure. I mean, I mean there's guys that
handle it better than others, but I mean a lot
of older fighters get into bare knuckles. It seems to
be guys that are on the tail end of their
MM careers. So we already have a ton of damage
on our hands already. You know, punching with gloves isn't
(18:00):
great for you.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
So, and most MMA guys don't protect their hands like
they should. They don't wrap up all the time. You know,
I see so many guys sparring without hand wraps on it,
and I'm just like, you're not protecting your hands, and
you're putting less padding between your knuckle and my freaking
cheek bones and eyeb where you're gonna cut me. I
(18:24):
tried to talk to him about it, but they don't
want to listen these days. So I think fighters need
to take better care of their hands in general, because
once you get to my age and you start locking
out your fingers for no reason all the time and
you can't figure out why, then you'll start realizing it
when it's too late, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Yeah, what would you What would you say is the
biggest thing you learned about yourself.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Career? I mean, honestly, uh, fighting was so damn hard
and I was never the smartest guy, you know, But
like for me to have a successful career in fighting
without I would say I had a successful career. It's
not like I had a super successful career, but right
(19:10):
I'm pretty happy with it. But to have a successful
career in fighting makes you prepared for anything else, Like
anything else is easy by comparison, Like I said, you're
not going to get into like computer science or like
super smart stuff, but it gives you like just an
iron will and for me, I can always find a way.
(19:30):
That was my attitude towards fighting is I'll fight anybody,
because when the moment arrives, I'll find a way to win.
And now I'll take on any challenge, you know, because
I feel like, no matter what, when the time arises,
I'll step up and I'll find a way.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah. There's truth in it, man, That's how I see it. Yeah. No,
I agree that it's truth.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Like, like you said, having that schedule, I think was
probably one of the hardest things. I see that a
lot in the gym is people want to fight. People
want to fight, and they're training hard, and they're like,
I just want to fight, and they're like, say, hey,
guess what, we just booked you a fight and it's
going to be on July sixth, and all of a sudden,
you just see like this and like they don't. They're
not as excited about practice, they're not as energetic, right
(20:15):
because there's that weight of like, Okay, now I have
to train because on July sixth, I'm gonna walk out
front of thousands of people, take my shirt off and
literally get in a fist fight.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Yeah. I mean, I think it's all about how you
approach it, really, you know, like some people, Yeah, I agree,
people want to fight too soon, you know, and then
when you get them to fight, they're they can be
a little less enthusiastic than they need to be. I
don't know. The way I trained my fighters is as
(20:46):
I'm always telling them, we're training to fight here, we're
training to win. We're training to fight. So you need
to have the right mentality when you walk in the door,
you know, like when we start doing hard shit, you
need to lock it in and embrace that much and
learn to smile when it sucks, because it's a whole
nother mentality. Like when you get out to the cage,
(21:06):
you want to have already been through a bunch of
tough situations in training camp so that you're prepared for anything.
You know, some guys train soft, They hand pick their
training partners, they don't want to get beat up enough,
and then they go out there and they start losing,
and then they fall apart mentally.
Speaker 2 (21:23):
You know.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
I train the guys that like, hey, this is supposed
to suck. We're here to make it suck less for
you mentally, so that when the time comes, you're going
to be able to call upon this will to overcome
whatever you're going through. Because things are going to go
bad in the fight. You know, it's pretty much guaranteed.
You can never assume that you're going to dominate and
(21:46):
everything's going to go your way. You know, you got
to assume that things are going to go bad and
you're gonna have to make an adjustment. You're gonna have
to dig deep, and you're gonna have to find your
true self, you know, be exposed, so to speak.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Yeah, And I think that's great advice for life, right
because life, you know, I can get up today and
everything's gonna go your way, everything's gonna be perfectly. You're
gonna have obstacles to face. How are you gonna respond?
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Oh? Yeah? And like we were just saying before, like
I think that's what fighting taught me is that it
shows you your true capabilities. It shows you who you are.
Will you rise to the challenge or are you a coward?
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (22:25):
I've seen it. I've seen some really tough guys just quit,
you know, in the middle of a fight because they're
not winning. You could just see him break mentally. I've
broken guys mentally. I've broken guys that were talking shit
and all up in my face and like really tough
before the fight started, and then I start to feel
them slow down in the second, and then I'm just
breaking them in the third and I can just feel it.
(22:46):
It's like a whole shift mentally, you know. Yeah, it's
another beautiful thing about fighting. It's the best fighter doesn't
always win. Sometimes the guy that's more prepared will win.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, And that's that's one of the things I liked,
is you are in complete control how hard you prepare,
like you said, like doing the right practices, knowing that, okay,
the days that sucked in practiced prepared me for when
it sucks in a fight, Like I'm not going to
get caught by something I didn't know about because I
trained right.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
And it's the same in life.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Preparation is key.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah, and it's the same in life.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Like I love what you were talking about earlier you
get up earlier, your studying Spanish, Like you're preparing yourself
to go about life a certain way, right, constantly learning, evolving,
challenging yourself, not taking easy road.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
And I think.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
That if we all look back and community members aren't fighters,
we look back at our habits and what we did
this morning, is it moving us forward? Is it preparing
us for that next challenge?
Speaker 3 (23:52):
No? I agree, you know, like people aren't challenging themselves
enough in life, you know, the average everyday person. You know,
everyone's talking about the next good show on Netflix or whatever.
I could give a shit, you know, like, hey, did
you see this? Did you see that? It's like, no,
I didn't. I'm like out there doing stuff. I'm doing
(24:13):
what I love, you know, And yeah, I think if
you're not learning, if you're not challenging yourself to learn
something new, you're kind of just dying slowly, you know.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yeah, So let's talk about the scare you had. What
was that about a year ago?
Speaker 3 (24:31):
Now, I had brain surgery last August, so it's been
almost nine months.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
Almost nine months brain search so for one of the
toughest guys, I know. Yeah, all of a sudden, you're
surprised by this.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Oh yeah, I was out of nowhere. Basically what happened.
It's a long story, but I had I was retired again.
I was on my third retirement and then BKFC came
into town and they were doing a tryout. So I'm like,
I'll just go to the tryout. So I went to
the tryout. I made the roster real quick, you know,
(25:09):
like I was with the best fighter down there and
then like the very followed the following weekend. You know,
it was on a Sunday that I made the BKFC
and then on the Friday, me and my girlfriend decided
to celebrate, you know, so we went and had some
drink sweet kind of partied and had a long night
that I woke up the next morning and I had
a seizure. Oh and I don't remember it at all,
(25:32):
you know, like the only thing I remember is waking
up in the paramedics, being in my tiny apartment. There
was like ten people in my tiny apartment. I'm on
a stretcher, completely clueless asking what happened. So I had
had like a Grandma seizure, like full Grandma seizure, Like
I chipped some teeth. I I collapsed in the shower,
(25:54):
I took out the spout, took out the wall. You know.
My girlfriend found.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Me, and.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
You know, I had just made the rosters. So I
was like, what the hell, And I didn't remember it
even happening. So I just kind of like an idiot,
I ignored it, you know, because I was fine for
the rest of the day. I was just like, I
feel fine. I don't remember this even happening, and then
I kept training, and then I kept Basically I would
(26:24):
have a seizure every sixty to ninety days, and yeah,
they were scary, you know. Like I said, I don't
remember them happening. I would just black out and then
I would start seizing, and then I would wake up
and be groggy, and then I would just go about
my day.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
You know.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
I trained on days that I had seizures, you know, like,
and it didn't affect my training at all. So I'm like,
I wasn't taking it that serious.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
What did you think? So real quick went back.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
So you're trying for a bare knuckle fight, your first,
your debut, and you're on the big bare knuckle circuit.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
This isn't the small one. This is the you know,
a big show.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah yeah, and you're having seizures and then you're like
just shaking it off and going to practice.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
I was, like, I said, it was my third it
was my third comeback for my third retirement. I was
just so eager to fight. I had got to fight
against Andrew Yates. And Andrew Yates was a guy that
I had been trying to fight for like ten years.
You know, I knew him about him as an amateur.
I knew him out as about him as a pro.
(27:34):
He had a really good record, you know, but I
always knew I could beat him. So he was like
two and zero and BKFC I had went to his
last fight. I watched him fight, and I'm watching it.
I'm like, I would kick the shit out of this guy,
like no problem, you know. So like I hit up BKFC.
I'm like, I want to fight Yates. I want to
fight Yates. I hit him up like three or four
different times, and they were just kind of ignoring me.
(27:56):
So I showed up to the tryout, made the roster,
and I'm like, hey, I'm the guy that keeps asking
to fight Yates, so let me fight Yates. And they
finally gave it to me. And I was just like,
I was on a three fight losing streak in my
career and I wanted that last win so bad. So
I was reaching, you know, I was overextended, making bad decisions,
(28:18):
but I just wanted to fight Yates so bad. So
I kept training through it. You know, I had seizures
during my training camp, and then then I had three
more after and then I finally got an MRI. I
got a medicaid and I got an MRI and they
found my brain tumor. It was a Grade three astrocytoma,
(28:43):
which is it's just the type of tumor I had
his brain cancer.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
So let me stop real quick, Josh, you actually did
the fight.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Before with this thing. I was bored. All the doctors
agree that this was something that I got either at
birth or early in life, and it has just been
growing in my head and I never knew about it.
The only thing that affected me was that I had
(29:16):
migraines all the time. Like even as a little kid,
I would always get migraines. My ears would ring really loud,
and I would get these just like sensitivity in the
eyes from light, and I would get really bad migraines.
Let you know if I like watch too much TV. Basically,
the astrostoma had a sack, like a fluid sack attached
(29:36):
to it the tumor, and like it would fill up
and then it would put pressure on my brain. So
like this little sack would fill up like a balloon
and then it would put pressure on my brain and
I would just I used to take a lot of
etcetern almost daily, you know, and it would like thin
out my blood or whatever it was doing, and it
(29:57):
would take care of them. So I was I had
a way of chilling the migrains. I just had to
take a shitload of medicine, you know, to do it.
And this was just normal for me. I'd been doing
this my whole life. I didn't know I had a tumor.
I just thought I got headaches. Yeah, So the only
time it really revealed itself was at age thirty eight,
(30:19):
when I started having seizures. You know, I was freaking nowhere,
you know, I was just I'm like celebrating because I
finally got like the fight I've been looking for for years,
and like then boom, seizure and then like nobody could
talk me out of taking the fight. You know, I
didn't really tell anybody. My girlfriend was the only one
(30:41):
that knew I was having them, so she couldn't talk
me out of it. And I just went through it,
you know. And I I'm glad I did, honestly, because
it wouldn't have changed anything, you know, And I'm I
feel so lucky and blessed that I finally got to
fight yates because I knew i'd beat them, and I
did you know, it was one of my best performances ever.
(31:03):
I knocked them down five times. He's a tough really
one of the toughest guys I ever fought. You know,
he kept coming, he kept trying to win. But no,
I mean I that was one of my best performances.
And I had so many people come up to me
after that fight and be like, You're going to be
a star in this sport. You know, You're going to
be the next big thing, And that's pretty much what
(31:23):
I was getting ready for. But then obviously, as soon
as I found out I had a tumor, they got
me in for surgery and that ended my career immediately.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, let's go back, go back for a second. Josh.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
So you're going into that fight, how did you get
your mind to focus on what was possible of winning
to fight and performing well, not being worried about the seizures.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Well, I wasn't worried about him at all. Like I
The only thing I remember about the seizures is waking
up from and being like a little robby, you know,
like I did some teeth. I broke some teeth that
I had to have pulled, and I did gash my
head once. But no, I wasn't worried about it. I
didn't tell anybody. My corner didn't know about it. I
(32:12):
told my corner guy an hour before the fight. I'm like, look, man,
like I have been having seizures, you know, like this
could happen. You know, I'm just giving you a fair warning.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Dude, that's not a fair warning. Hour before show.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
I wasn't worried about it, Like, I wasn't gonna let
anybody stop me. I was just so determined to fight
Yeats because I knew I could beat him. I knew
it for years. Like he he leads with his chin up,
and I'm just like, I know how to beat this guy.
I hit hard as hell. It's only a matter of
time before I knock him out. And I nailed that one.
Because that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
So how'd you celebrate so you finally get this win.
You haven't been to the doctor yet. What'd you do
after the fight?
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Not much? Really, I mean I can't I don't even
remember that much. I think I just went home and
had a beer with my girlfriend, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
No, like, man, I finally I got this guy, Like
I did what I wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
No. No, I mean, my my mom was in town
and my brother came over, so we just kind of
went home and had a beer and I spent time
with my family and my girlfriend, you know, the important people. Yeah,
you know, it's a shit about the hangers on, you know,
like people that support you, the people you need to
spend your time with. So, you know, I just took
(33:36):
it all in internally, you know, I don't need to
be boisterous or make a big deal. I was just
happy because, like I said, I was on a three
fight losing streak. I got knocked out twice in a row,
which was like haunting me because I went my first
fifty six fights without ever being knocked out. I got
knocked out in my last two MMA fights like they
(33:57):
were tkos.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
They did.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
It's not like they knocked me cold or anything. But yeah,
that was haunting me, man, Like that was really just
like one of those things that like kept me up
at night, like that. I was on a losing streak
and I had to kind of quit on myself in
my last fight and I lost against the guy that
I should have beat. So like, I think it worked
(34:19):
out like almost it's the word like It was poetic
how it worked out. You know, I got to go
out on a win, and honestly, I feel blessed that
I was forced to retire because I never would have retired.
I would have kept fighting fighting today. You know that
I always said, even as a twenty year old, I
was like, they're going to have to drag my ass away,
(34:41):
and like that's pretty much what happened. Yeah, I went
out on a great performance. You know, I have a
really cool story because of it, and this whole cancer diagnosis.
It's made me feel lucky to be alive. You know,
I appreciate my life now. I appreciate myself. You know,
I hated myself before that fight because I felt like
(35:04):
a loser. You know, I didn't get to the UFC.
I didn't go out on a streak. I didn't do this,
I didn't do that, and I like resented myself so much.
And then like once I found out, like, hey, you've
been fighting your whole career with a brain tumor, you know,
like you're lucky to have to have had a career
at all. Like it changed my perspective and it gave
(35:25):
me a lot more self love and self respect. So
to me, I see it as a blessing, and you
know I don't. I'm fine. I'm living my life. I'm exercising,
I'm training fighters. I was planning on doing a jiu
jitsu match before I got injured recently, but I'm still
(35:45):
planning on doing some pro jiu jitsu.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Go ahead, Yeah, let's go back a little bit. What
so you get that diagnosis and that they that was
if I remember right seeing your social media, it was
kind of a quick like they were rushing you into
surgery pretty fast.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, I uh, well, it was the seizures, you know,
like the fact that I was having them and they
were getting more frequent just kind of mess things up
for me.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Yeah, And what the what did doctors tell you? Like,
because I I know you're you're you're tough, and you're
you got a good, stubborn, streaking you. So what did
the doctors tell you about like recovery and how things
long things were going to be?
Speaker 2 (36:27):
And You're like, I don't know about this.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
Well, I mean sorry, I'm gonna go outside my electric
freaking vacuum. It started. It's loud. Now. Doctors are full
of shit, man, I don't trust them. Basically, My prognosis
is the average person that gets has what I have,
(36:51):
it's gonna be a one to five year before I die.
But I don't believe that at all. Most people that
have this problem are a lot older than me. You know,
I'm only thirty nine. I'm turn to forty this year.
I was in great health before I got in, which
really helped me a lot. I'm not Most people that
(37:16):
get this are old and sick, and they're close to
death anyway. So for me, I'm taking chemo chemo pills
by mouth. I'm not on the pump or anything like that.
They're not injecting it into me. But I take chemo
once a month for five days. So starting Monday, I'll
(37:36):
be on chemo until that Friday, and then I'll have
the rest of the month to recover okay, and I'll
be doing this cycle until the end of the year.
A lot of doctors recommend that I stay on it,
that I do this for the rest of my life.
But like I said, they're full of shit. They don't
know what they're talking about. They're just trying to keep
me on chemo because they get money from chemo. Yeah,
(37:59):
you know, the longer they keep me on this drug,
the more money they make, so like they'll tell me
that I need to be on at the rest of
my life. I told him I'd take it for this
one year because that is standard procedure, and then I'm
off of it for the rest of my life and
I'm letting the chips fall where they may.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
What was the toughest part of your recovery coming out
of surgery?
Speaker 3 (38:25):
You know, it wasn't that hard, honestly, you know that
sounds ridiculous, but I was out of that. I was
out of the hospital two days after my surgery, and
I was teaching a class that night, like two days after.
And obviously I wasn't all there, you know, like I
(38:45):
was a little bit woozy. I was on a lot
of drugs, but it took me a minute to get
my balance back. But I didn't lose any function, I
didn't lose any memories. It was all that actually a
lot easier than it should have been, And honestly, I
do have to think that doctors for that. My surgeon
(39:07):
was incredible. He really put my minded ease, because from
the time that I saw the tumor to the time
that I met with my surgeon. I was scared as hell,
you know, I was crying all day and just like
afraid I was going to die. But then once I
saw him, he really set my minded ease. He told
me that I would be in and out. I found
(39:28):
out later that he had had pretty much the same
brain tumor as the child and had it removed and
went on to be a surgeon, So that really nice.
You know, he was a great guy, you know. But
then like afterwards, I'm dealing with on cologists that want
to keep me on all these medications and all these
drugs that are supposedly going to keep me live longer.
(39:50):
But your quality of life kind of goes down after that,
you know, like I wouldn't be able to do the
things I want to do.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah, yeah, I'll never forget.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Like I saw you posting that you were heading in
for surgery and stuff, and you're a pretty private guy
on social media, so I knew if you were posting like, Okay,
this is fucking real, like this is Josh. He needs
some support. And then yeah, dude, I'm watching to see
how the surgery goes. The next thing, I know, you
got a bandage on your head. Teaching kickboxing.
Speaker 3 (40:23):
Yeah, you know what I mean, that's just how I am.
I'd rather be it work than stay at home, you know,
like people think rest is like the answer for everything.
I'd rather stay busy. I'd rather do what I love.
I love being at the gym, I love being around
my guys. So I just continue to do what I love.
(40:47):
I don't see this as a handicap, No.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
For sure.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Not.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Dude.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
There's no doubt you're gonna persevere. Man, It's just who
you are. It's what you've been doing for so long.
Like your body's conditioned to overcome things.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I am conditioned, and I think that's
what people kind of forget. You know, it's chilly out here,
too damn cold, But now it's I'm conditioned to be
a fighter. I'm conditioned to push through and be tough,
you know, and I honestly feel like my training has
(41:23):
carried me through.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Right, And that's the thing, like you you're training for sport,
you're training for an event, but you're actually really training
for life.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Because how you approach that, how you're gonna approach life.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
Oh yeah, no, I mean a lot of the doctors
and nurses were very complimentary about my mentality towards it,
you know, and just how I didn't let it ever
get me down. Like I said, I see it as
a blessing, you know. I mean, it sucks obviously, but
it's all how you approach it. You know, it could
(41:58):
be a lot worse. You know, if they would have
found this thing when I was like seven or eight
years old, I would have been like a charity case
my whole life. You know, I don't want people to
feel sorry for me, you know, I want people to
see me as an inspiration. Like, hey, this guy's going
through some tough stuff, but he's not letting it get
him down and star letting them andicap him. You know,
(42:20):
I refuse to be a victim.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, I think that what you said there's super important.
Like if you had this surgery as a kid, you'd
have been conditioned to believe what people told you because
you wouldn't have had your life experience that you have
now to say, wait a second, I don't have to
believe this. I'm gonna create my own story.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
No.
Speaker 3 (42:39):
I mean, I'm not a huge fan of Goggins, but
he like found out he had a hole in his heart,
like after he had done all this stuff and then
like one thing he said that really stuck out to
me is like he used to be down on himself
because he could have done better at this, he could
have done better at that. But then he's like, hey, man,
I did this all this stuff with all in my
(43:00):
heart that would that most people wouldn't even been there
to begin with, you know, Like it's all about perspective,
you know, and this has changed my perspective and it's
given me more appreciation of myself and of life in general.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Why did you recognize that.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Pretty much immediately? Man? I mean when I woke up
from surgery, Like, I wasn't afraid, you know that I was.
I mean I was a little bit afraid, but you
never know if you're gonna wake up. Yeah, the day
of my surgery, they called me in too early. I
was getting a tattoo that day. What was my brain
(43:43):
right here? Okay, I don't know, but I was getting
a tattoo that day of brain surgery, tattoo because I
had hours before my surgery. They called me during my
tattoo and they're like, hey, you're supposed to be here,
and I'm like, no, I'm supposed to be that like
there in an hour, so they called me in an
hour early, and then they had some kind of accident
(44:06):
and then I ended up waiting there for like six
hours before my surgery. Ah, I'm just sitting there with
my little brother and my girlfriend and we're just kind
of tensely sitting around for six freaking hours and just
thinking about life. And it's like you don't know if
you're gonna wake up. And then once I woke up,
and then my girlfriend was there to take care of me.
(44:27):
My girlfriend, Laura has been a rock for me. You know.
She's also improved my life tremendously since she really cares
about me, you know, and she took care of me.
We had the conversation before surgery and after surgery. I
told her like, look, you don't have to do this,
you can walk away, you know, I'll I'll get through
(44:48):
this on my own, and she chose to stuck around,
to stick around. Yeah, both times I gave her an
out and she didn't want it. So it's like that
really just our bond so strong now, you know, and
I trust her with my life because she pretty much
saved my life.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Yeah, dude, was that six hours waiting for surgery. Was
was that worse? I like sitting in the locker room
waiting to be the main event when you got all
those fights before you.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Yeah, it was just tense, man. I Uh, geez, ma'am,
I think I got my FedEx guy here. I'm really sorry.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Oh they're good?
Speaker 3 (45:31):
Are you doing? Oh? Thank you? Sorry? Actually, this is
my Keymo medication that just got delivered.
Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah, that's important.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
Yeah. I uh, I have to sign for it and
I have to be here when they deliver it. They're
supposed to come later. I'm sorry to be disrupted.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
It's all good. All part of the show on my friend.
Speaker 3 (45:59):
Now, what were you at?
Speaker 1 (46:01):
I'm sitting there waiting for that surgery for six hours?
Was that comparable to being in the back in the
locker room waiting for your fight?
Speaker 3 (46:10):
No, I wouldn't say so. I would say it was different.
You know, it was a lot more grim. I used
to be. Uh. I used to be terrified before fights,
Like just terrified, you know, Like everyone always talked about
how calm I looked, but I didn't feel calm. I
was always afraid I was gonna embarrass myself and lose.
(46:30):
I was so afraid of losing. And that was my
problem is I was more afraid of losing than I
was jazzed about winning. You know, I should have focused
on winning, right, I was just too afraid of losing.
But before my surgery, it was, you know, you're just
very nostalgic. You're thinking about the good times and your
(46:52):
regrets and all that stuff, you know, And you know
I wasn't. I wasn't afraid. I was and I honestly
had made peace with the fact that if I die young,
that I would have died with a legacy like, hey,
this guy fought his whole career with brain cancer. He
just want a bare knuckle fight freaking three months before
(47:13):
he died, And I think that would have been cool.
That would have been a cool story, you know. So
I had kind of come to peace with that. But
now it was just very melancholy and very boring. I
didn't want to be on my phone, and I was
just sitting in a quiet room with my brother and
(47:34):
my girlfriend and they were scared and I was trying
to be brave for them. Yeah, so it was more,
I would say, just not fun at all. I mean,
even fighting, you're scared, but you know that there's glory
on the other end if you do everything right, so
there's more of a scared excitement.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
I would say, I can get up and hit pads
and rustle a little bit to burn off some of
that energy. They probably didn't have you doing that, and
you wait for him.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
Well.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
I used to pace. I used to pace in a
circle for over an hour, just talking to myself, like
beating my chest, punching myself in the face, because I
was scared. I was trying to get out, almost nerved
that like this was I was sitting in a hospital
bed in my gown, you know, with my the people
I cared about just giving me like the grimmest looks that.
(48:26):
I was just like, man, this sucks.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
So you make it through the surgery, come out. What
was the first thing you wanted to do.
Speaker 3 (48:39):
I just wanted to go home. I hated being in
the hospital. I hated the way people were looking at me.
You know. I just wanted to go home and be
at home. And I honestly wanted to go teach my class.
I was like very determined because I have a Friday
night class that I had canceled already. But I was like, no,
(49:01):
I can teach like I'm capable, Like I'm not slurring
my words, I'm not falling over I can teach. So
obviously my girlfriend drove me, but no, I taught that
glass and I was like just kind of proud of myself,
you know, for not letting anything get in the way.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah, that's awesome, dude. And how's it been since?
Speaker 3 (49:31):
It's been great? You know, I've always obviously had some
rough days. I'm dealing with some bull crap right now.
But no, I mean I'm lucky to be on Medicaid,
you know, and I am lucky for these doctors. I
talk a bunch of crap. I mostly have problems with
the doctors that are trying to keep me on chemo medication.
(49:54):
But no, I mean I'm lucky that the state is
taking care of me. You know, I'm poor enough. I
never they need money to where I qualify for Medicaid,
and I'm lucky and thankful that I'm not paying for
all this stuff because it's unreal how much these medical
bills would be.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
Yeah, Now there's blessed things everywhere if we know to
look for them, right.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, I mean I have a lot
to be thankful for and that's what I try to
focus on. There's definitely days where I wake up very
emotional and kind of depressed. Like the medication I take
for seizures, it makes me emotional, so I take it
right before bed, and I would take it in the morning,
And sometimes in the morning I can just be very emotional.
(50:41):
I'll just like start crying for no reason, or I'll
just get a bad thought in my head and dwell
on it for too long. So I just try to
focus on the good, try to be grateful.
Speaker 1 (50:53):
Well, we're proud of you, dude, We're proud of your fight,
and we're proud to call you a friend. And I
want to make sure you know well, in any of
those moments, we're here for you.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
I appreciate it. Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
Yeah, Josh, has been an honor to share your story.
Where can our community connect with you to follow along
with all the things.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
That's Josh Huber.
Speaker 3 (51:14):
I mean I'm pretty much on Instagram or Facebook. Josh Huber.
Josh HB. Huber would be my Instagram. I have a
YouTube page, but I don't really use it. It's Hellboy Hubert.
You can find me under hell Boy Huber Josh Huber
just on social media. You know. Right now, I'm trying
(51:34):
to build my fight team. I'm trying to get into
the next phase of my life, which is coaching. So
I got a couple of real good up and coming fighters.
One of my fighters just one last Friday. I got
another one, Natalie Klein, who's fighting Bang Ledwig's wife on Saturday.
So that's a big fight. You know, it's gonna be
a big fight for the program, you know, if she
(51:56):
can knock off the big name. But I have a
very tiny fight, being very small, but they're very skilled,
you know. I'm training them up and they're going to
be superstars. And we're very excited to see what happens.
Speaker 1 (52:09):
And for our community members in the Denver area, where's
your gym at? They want to stop buying and see
if it made a good fit for them.
Speaker 3 (52:16):
I'm at the Compound Centennial it's right there on I
twenty five and the Rappa Ho. You know, they have
a very strong jiu jitsu program. I've come in and
take over the general manager position and I'm the head
coach of the kickboxing and fight team. Like I said,
we're real small, you know, I'm not focusing so much
on building a giant team. I'm just focusing on the
(52:37):
students I have, you know, and making them into good fighters,
and I feel like their success will build more success
for the gym. Winning takes care of everything, so I'm
gonna build up some winners and just see where it goes.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
My friend, you just keep you keep winning in life.
We'll keep cheering you on and it's been a pleasure
to share your story.
Speaker 2 (52:56):
Josh.
Speaker 3 (52:58):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
And remember life is far too short to live any
other way than on purpose.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
We will see you all again next week
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