Shawne Merriman - Former All-Pro NFL Linebacker and Co-Founder of Lights Out Xtreme Fighting

 They said, why do you play football?
 I said, well, I can physically harm somebody
 and not go to jail.
 That was my answer.
 You can't say that today, can you?
 You can't say that now.
 I've always felt that lights out was bigger than anything
 I could do in a football field.
 And that's why when I bought the name and rights of trademarks
 at World in 2006, I'm sure all my teammates didn't like me
 and I didn't like every single teammate that I had.
 But we found a way to come together to win football games.
 That was what was most important.
 The hardest part of it need to study again.
 Roy listening to the Radcast.
 If it's radical, we cover it.
 Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
 Hey, guys.
 What's up?
 Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast.
 I'm here today talking one of my favorite things football
 with the X-All Pro, Sean, Maryman.
 What's up, brother?
 What's up, man?
 How you doing?
 It's good, man.
 I mean, the acronyms could go on and on now.
 We got life insurance.
 I know we're going to get into it.
 We got lights out, podcasts.
 We got lights out of peril, fitness.
 And we got some damn kick ass UFC and fighting and all that shit, man.
 You got to go on home, brother.
 You know what, man?
 I'm fortunate, right?
 Because now, you know, growing up like your number one thing,
 you want to play football, right?
 You want to get NFL.
 You get a chance to live out your dream.
 And now, you know, all the stuff that I'm doing now,
 it's like my second act to everything I wanted to do, right?
 And just that transition, because we talked about it
 off Air Force for a second.
 It's not easy, right?
 It's just not.
 But I've had a lot of fun with it.
 Yeah.
 Well, you look like you have a phone with it.
 I can't wait to get down some of those rabbit holes.
 But Sean, I mean, you know,
 it take half a second on Google for someone to read and do things.
 So we don't have to rehash everything.
 But I do want and to give people some, you know, your back history,
 you know, you know, as can this as you want it to be,
 but like your story and a huge chargers,
 I mean, I remember you just wrecking people.
 Like I remember, you were like that dude.
 Like that's like that freak, like they talk about some of the freaks.
 Now I'm like, dude, so I'm married and would wreck some people.
 Somebody's asking me like, oh, I remember that name.
 And I'm like, yeah, you remember that name because he fucking destroyed people.
 You were a beast, man, but talk about talk about the football background.
 And then we'll get into some business.
 Yeah, I grew up in Prince George County, Maryland.
 And so we grew up in the late 80s and 90s where,
 and I was right next to Washington, DC, which is like the, it was a crack epidemic.
 The murder capital of the country for, you know, almost a decade.
 And so I grew up around that and, you know, it's tough.
 We were, you know, homeless, you know, several different times, you know,
 to at least two or three different times where, you know, we lost our home due to fires
 because we couldn't pay our electricity bills.
 We're like my mom lit candles and then because of light and gas got cut off.
 We, we house burned down.
 We lost that, we lived the shelter back cars.
 And so, you know, kind of just fast forward and everything like that,
 because that can be a whole hour in it on its own.
 Yeah, no kidding.
 I even go to University of Maryland and I committed to University of Maryland as a junior.
 And the reason why is because I was home, you know, I didn't want to leave, you know,
 my mom leave my high school coaches, friends.
 I wanted everybody to come to watch me play.
 So I went to the University of Maryland, you know, had a great career there,
 but ended up leaving early, you know, when I found out that I was going to go
 somewhere in the top 10, top 15 of the first round of draft, I was like,
 this is a, this, this type of shit doesn't happen, right?
 Yeah.
 You want to take advantage of it.
 And then the rest is history, you know, I got out and got that nickname lights out
 my sophomore year in high school.
 Yeah, knocked out four, four players in, in one game in high school and I ended up
 getting that nickname lights out and I kind of carried that all the way through.
 Where was that, you know, that energy in that edge?
 Like, was that just bottled up physical capability or was it like, you know,
 you were talking about it, you know, some of those bad times and some of that,
 those challenges.
 I mean, was any of that bottled up from that?
 I mean, cause I can't help but think that maybe it was 100% and then kind of
 take it a step further, it was my escape, right?
 I remember when I was, I was rated my sophomore year in high school.
 I don't know top 100 defensive players, something like that in the country.
 Yeah.
 And when it was my first ESPN, my, I had no media training and stuff like that.
 And right, so I didn't, you don't get that from where I came from.
 They said, they said, why do you play football?
 And I said, well, I can physically harm somebody and not go to jail, right?
 Like that was my, that was my answer.
 Yeah, you can't say that today, can you?
 You can't say that now, right?
 But at the time, because of everything that I did go through, like that was my,
 that few hours a day at practice or games was me being able to escape what I was going through at home
 and I'd have it much.
 You know, whether I was going to come home and then a fictionalist is on the door.
 But what were we going to have food or life school?
 So that two hours was my, was my getaway from everything else.
 And in return, I just started to light people up.
 You know, I was like, ain't really in physical need to, you know, get out of aggression.
 And I hated, you know, my circumstances and life.
 And then I would, I feel good after practice, after games, I was like, that was my meditation,
 my therapy, whatever it was.
 But, you know, over a period of time, I just started to play like that.
 Like that was just my attitude.
 I was nasty and physical and wanted to hit everybody because that was the only way I learned the game.
 And it's just, you know, translated all the way through college and then to the pros.
 It was hard to turn that off.
 Like, you know, coming off the field, you know, both, you know, we'll talk about the transition after football.
 But like, seems like some of that would be, you know, hard to turn off.
 But was it, was it hard to kind of leave that behind when you got off the football field?
 Uh, no, not really.
 Like the attitude that you feel like you needed to carry it forward.
 Like, was it like, I definitely had a, like a chip on my shoulder, right?
 Yeah, no doubt about it.
 Even me, even now, another chip has changed from, you know, me seeing another opponent to me be eager
 to one of, you know, prove people wrong in business or grow and, you know, all that stuff.
 So the chip has definitely changed, but it's still there.
 So yes, I have it, I had a chip on my shoulder, um, but the walking off the field,
 it was almost like a, um, like an actor, right?
 The going, yeah, you know, take me on the caprio and the great gasp.
 He's not calling people always sport, you know, right in the street and act on the great gasp.
 He was like, he was an actor.
 He was a, uh, a character for, for that movie and for that role.
 And that's how I felt.
 It was like I had this lights out, the meeting right in the blue Mohawk.
 I attached to his everywhere, flying around and just being like this guy.
 Um, and actually when I walked off the field, it was, it was, it was the opposite.
 You know, I wasn't, um, you know, I wasn't that guy.
 Yeah.
 But doing those, doing that, you know, those four quarters, um, uh, 60 minutes of football,
 shoot and go out and be whoever the hell you want to be, uh, and then, you know, kind of,
 and I always say just leave it on the field, yeah, everything, everything you have,
 leave it on the field.
 And I still stand true to this day.
 How did you, um, you know, how many years did you play in the pros?
 Hey, eight, yeah.
 I mean, I, you hear, you hear pros talk about it, um,
 that I don't know that people that didn't have that energy flow and got the,
 both the attention, everything like that.
 How hard it is to transition.
 I mean, maybe I mean, in your own words, like, you know, you have heard Jerry Rice talk
 about how others like getting away from the game, like the, the highs of that, you know,
 like the emotional highs and everything.
 How hard was that transition?
 Hey, that, that first year is beyond tough.
 Um, and I'll tell anybody that is a bottom retire and I talked to guys all the time,
 right? They said they got a year, two years left, maybe three.
 I said, whatever you want to do when you're done, start doing it now.
 In that way, when you're done, you, you do it right away because if you have
 downtime, you're going to struggle.
 And, you know, for me, um, I went right into TV.
 I went NFL network and I had my clothing line.
 I was selling it, um, you know, a variety of sports shops and sports stores and retail.
 I had plenty of things to do.
 And it was still some days I sat around was like this, this is it.
 Like there's no more, you know, going out to practice or working out or hearing a whistle,
 training camp, OTAs, mini, I mean, all this is done, right?
 And so it's still hitting me and I had plenty of things to do.
 So I can only imagine a guy that's not lined up and ready to transition.
 How hard that would be.
 And that's why sometimes you hear these, um, these horrible stories.
 Is it the highs and the endorphins that are missed or is it almost like the army?
 Is it like the structure?
 Cause I heard here and you talk a little bit, maybe think less about the lights on
 and all the attention, which I think is probably some of it.
 But what I heard from you there a little bit was just maybe the structure of it all.
 It's just a structure and the number one thing is being around the guys right in the locker room.
 Because things happen and talk and be talked about in the locker room.
 You cannot do out in the workplace.
 It's just, you know, it's just point of play.
 You can't do it.
 Yeah.
 And especially even now, more so you can't do it because, you know, it's just being around the guys,
 wins and losses, didn't matter.
 It was you around the guys no matter what.
 And what happens is you have, you know, players who come from, uh, from the South,
 Wisconsin Midwest and East Coast.
 You got some city boys, guys who married, guys who aren't.
 And one day a week, you find a way to get on the same pace.
 You can go out and win the game.
 All these personalities care.
 So you look back and like, man, this, this guy was funny as hell, right?
 Those guys crazy as hell.
 So you miss the, you miss being around the guys more, more so than anything else.
 And that was what people struggle with first and then you're right, the structure of somebody
 telling you, hey, you got to be here to work out at eight o'clock in the morning.
 We got to film out for this.
 We got practice, got lunch at three.
 You know, so the structure part is gone and you got to figure it out.
 So we, we transitioned.
 You were ready.
 You teed it up.
 You had NFL network.
 You've got the, the parallel company lights out, um, nature or nurture, like where you
 just, uh, a natural born entrepreneur waiting to come out of the bottle or like,
 did you absorb and learn from others?
 No, I was this, I was natural, man.
 I've always mean when I was a kid, I was selling, you know, five or six Nintendo games
 and get the one best one, right?
 And I'll go out and wash cars, you know, doing the summer's cut grass, shovel snow,
 rake leaves, and I would take it and use all the money for what I wanted to, you know,
 when I wanted to go buy new, uh, mouthpiece or football equipment or cleats.
 I was always hustling in the way.
 And I think that this entrepreneur word has, has kind of become more recent,
 but yeah, you look back on everything now, even to the point of branding, right?
 I mean, I look back on everything that I did was, when I was a kid,
 or even, you know, having a nickname, like lights out at 16 years old and getting
 a tattoo and you're right, my right forearm to, it was, it was branding.
 It was marketing.
 Uh, I think that we just used the words for it now.
 Um, so, you know, though I had mentors and things I was doing this long before,
 you probably came in the picture.
 No, but you did, you created the brand.
 I mean, you talked about for the Mohawk and the look and the feel and like, you
 became the character, I mean, character, so to speak, but the persona of a brand
 or a machine, I mean, like you were that.
 I mean, and yeah, I mean, all these words have gotten, you know, buzzy and everything
 like with social media and stuff.
 What's it never going to talk about?
 But like, I think you were, uh, probably a little ahead of your time with having
 that both on the field.
 I mean, it's one thing to do all those gimmicks and then not live up to it.
 But then, you know, you destroyed in quarterbacks and taking people off the field,
 you know, like you lived up to it in both, uh, stature and, uh, brand.
 Yeah.
 And you know what?
 And, um, so as you, as you said, right?
 You had what I did on the football field as creating this character, this persona,
 all these things.
 But in the hindsight of it, I was just kind of the launching pads, everything with the brand.
 I've always felt that lights out was bigger than anything I can do on the football field.
 And that's why when I bought the name and rights of trademarks that bought in 2006,
 I bought it for, you know, numerous of things and clothing, work out stuff and equipment,
 um, marketing, advertisement, energy drinks.
 This, I bought, you know, this is something I acquired from another company at the age of 21 years old.
 And so I don't even know if trademarking was even that big.
 And the people talked about it enough.
 Um, and I just took those extra steps to know that this brand was going to be a lot bigger than I ever could be.
 So what's, uh, what's that transition?
 Like, you know, you've, you've had a lot of iterations.
 Um, what's the, uh, how is it?
 How would you compare being in business versus being in football?
 You know, and I, and I know business was football was business.
 There's contracts.
 Right.
 You're working.
 So I don't want to minimize that at all.
 I know it's a business, but how did you compare the two?
 So funny story.
 I used to absolutely hate when I go, when I retire and I go into these business meetings.
 And people would always use a football analogy to explain whatever business
 opportunity we're talking about.
 And in my head, I think like, dude, I'm not dumb.
 You know, you can, I speak to the same link.
 Oh, you speak right.
 So I don't care if it's like, uh, you know, trademark stuff or, uh, you know, stocks and whatever,
 whatever the business we're talking about, somebody in the room would always make your football
 knowledge. He said, Hey, you know, this, this is like, you know, the quarterback and say, listen,
 you don't have to, you don't have to, um, so fast forward after enough, enough of those meetings.
 And I wouldn't listen to what some of these people say about Megan East comparisons.
 And I said, holy shit.
 This is very much like football.
 And I started thinking of over and over again, right, uh, there's a team aspect.
 So you, you're not going to be successful without a good team.
 And that's what this employee's partners, whatever it is.
 So that there's your team aspect, overcoming diversity, football, knee injuries that I've
 had Achilles body parts, whatever it is, you know, overcoming having to find a way to get
 back on the field business.
 You go to get knocked on your ass, you got to find a way to get back up and go back out of
 the game. Um, being able sometime to work with people you don't necessarily like, you know,
 like, yeah, I'm sure all my teammates didn't like me and I didn't like every single teammate
 that I had, but we found a way to come together to win football games.
 And that was what was most important.
 Um, also being able to be creative, right?
 I mean, I had this sack dance and all the stuff that I kind of created about this
 moniker, this, uh, presence that I had in the football field.
 So there were so many similarities that I got to the point where I started to go to
 meetings and give these like, uh, these comparisons.
 I'm like, uh, yeah, we're talking about, you know, whatever Della, whatever it was.
 And I say, okay, that's like, you know, the fullback, right, going to the flats.
 You know, you got, you know, so I started to use that because football was so much like
 real life and the things you have to deal with.
 And that I started looking at it as an advantage when I retired at more so than
 a, than a disadvantage.
 Yeah.
 I love it, man.
 I'm talking with X all pro Sean Maryman, Sean, I mean, I want to transition to more
 of social media and the business side.
 But like, what's the biggest thing you miss about football and, you know, maybe,
 I don't know, there's any misconceptions about football players in general.
 I think the biggest thing I miss, um, is being able to compete, right?
 Like, you know, to go against paid man named Tom Brady, uh, some of these all pro left
 tackles, right?
 Hall of Fame left tackles that I played against.
 You got to get up for that, right?
 Because it's you, it's like man versus man.
 You versus him and some big, oh, this guy's going to do this.
 He's not going to let you side to quarterback.
 You'll watch his film looking at certain tendencies and with off its line
 doing what plays they like to run on what you're aligned to just the preparation
 and to be able to compete.
 I miss probably the most, uh, because this in my opinion, there's no game like
 team game, especially like football.
 Yeah, you got, you can have 10 guys on the field doing the perfect thing.
 Everything he's supposed to do.
 You got one guy not doing what he's supposed to do and that whole plate is
 ruined, right?
 And so that part I, I missed a lot.
 Yeah.
 And I, it's so funny.
 You bring up the, the 10 and the one like I was talking to someone about that.
 Like, it wasn't that into football and they go, why do you look football?
 I don't know.
 I think I just appreciate the, the symphony of it all.
 Like it's kind of like the orchestra.
 Like, you know, there's a bad violinist you can hear it.
 It ain't going to work.
 The song ain't going to sing.
 You know, like, it's not going to be good.
 The, uh, so let's talk about lights out.
 So the brand carried forward, uh, you've got fitness gear.
 You've got a peril.
 I know you can share all that.
 What's, what's that experience been like?
 And, you know, if I was an X NFL player, I would, I would probably be like,
 oh, if I build it, they will come.
 But that something tells me it's never as easy as that.
 No, never.
 I'm still knocking down those same doors that a lot of other people have to, uh, to knock down.
 Yeah.
 I'll get into any need and just about I want me with anybody because, you know,
 by football play and people name recognition, people know who I am.
 So they know I'm not just coming to me with them, because I got some free time to waste.
 I'm, well, so I'll get into meetings, but I do have to do the same convincing
 that everyone else is out here trying to promote a girl company.
 It doesn't change, right?
 You, you got people that going in, they won't see the vision.
 They won't, won't understand what you're trying to build.
 And you may have to go doing your own so they can realize it and come back.
 And that's happened to me several times.
 Um, you know, when I launched, uh, lights out extreme fighting,
 I had to go and pitch it to Fox Sports, because that's what we started out at.
 The regionals.
 And I had to see it make, make sure they gave me an opportunity.
 And, um, you know, now we're on football sports, football TV.
 I didn't do the same thing.
 So it's not like I call and pick up the phone.
 But hey, I'm Sean Mehman.
 I play football.
 Give me a deal.
 Like it's, it's none of that going on.
 If anybody takes that.
 Yeah.
 It's flying across country, right?
 Sitting down with all the important people in the room to make decisions.
 Uh, letting them know what my vision is and how I'm going to execute it.
 And then you still got to come back.
 You got people in the room that may not be convinced.
 So you have to, when you get your opportunity, you got to convince.
 Yeah.
 Is, um,
 we're always the fitness stuff.
 I mean, are you, I know you got your own D to C stuff, but we're all can,
 like, are you distributed?
 Yeah, we were until these four some years.
 Um, and actually we're, we're going to, this time next year,
 we should be fully back in the retail.
 We're going to, um, potentially launch, uh, a really, really big retail store,
 probably one of the biggest in the country.
 And, uh, and getting going in again, because the, the apparel space is like,
 honestly, my first love, because that's where I started at,
 even when I was playing and I was, I was still in sports,
 military shops.
 I was still selling lights out here.
 Um, and I just, I loved the apparel space and once,
 because it's a part of the overall lights out brand.
 Yeah.
 Is, um,
 the transition into fighting.
 You know, like I told you pre episode, like I, I,
 I remembered you.
 I remembered like, uh, I'm never scared of anyone ever TV.
 But if there's everyone, I was like, I didn't want to get hit by.
 I might have been you.
 And I'm a big dude.
 And I'm like, I don't want that fucker hitting me.
 Um, and, but like was fighting just always a passion.
 And it's like been this national transition for you.
 Yeah.
 Actually, that was probably my most natural transition, right?
 Because, um, you know, for one, I grew up in print.
 I was in the county Maryland.
 Uh, that Washington area, that Washington DC area, that DMV area,
 it was a ton of boxes, professional boxes, champs.
 And so they would come around my neighborhood.
 I went box a lot as a kid.
 We would always throw in a glove and neighborhood and box.
 And the cookouts of family reunions.
 It was, it was just a part of it.
 Um, and so when I transitioned into MMA, um,
 a good friend of mine, Jake laser in 2006, uh, got me involved in MMA.
 I was the first day training in the main ones with him
 and Randy Gator.
 Uh, and so that was my engine.
 Welcome to the sport.
 Right.
 Yeah.
 You know, and like you could imagine, it wasn't so great, right?
 Yeah.
 Because Randy was at that time still, he was still on top of his game.
 Yeah.
 So, um, you know, it even made, picked out a lot of steam in the mid
 late 2000s.
 And, you know, UFC has done a great job.
 I'm just branding the hell out of the sport and making it as big as it is today.
 And now, uh, look at the week or two ago, Adrian Peterson just fought
 maybe on bail, right?
 A boxing match.
 There's going to be a long list of former athletes that get into some form of
 combat sports when they've done, and it's recommended in my opinion,
 because that transition, as we just talked about, is not easy.
 And some of these guys get done and still have something left in the tank.
 And they want to go compete at something.
 They can't play football anymore.
 And they're not going to get picked up by team.
 Yeah.
 And, you know, a lot of these guys start training combat sports in a maze.
 So I'm, I'm actively transitioning former guys right now.
 When that's interesting, because like you can play in the pro,
 that's a so fast thing.
 I look at you and you, I mean, you look young anyway.
 But it's like, I mean, if I didn't know better, I think you were still,
 you know, I mean, like a lot of you guys play six, eight, ten years,
 which is good career in the pros.
 But then you're 30, 31, 32, 33, I mean, you're still very athletic.
 Maybe not, maybe a bad ankle, bad knee or something that you just can't be at all,
 you know, full, fourth football.
 But there's still a lot of athletic ability there.
 So it does seem like kind of a, and like, shit, who's these boxers,
 some of these fighters, you know, at 40, I mean,
 if Dam Tom Brady can play football at 45, then I think a next football player
 can kick somebody's ass at 33.
 Yeah.
 No, no, no question about absolutely.
 And you know, it was funny about that is,
 it's not, if you look at the grand scheme of things,
 it's not that long in football, right?
 So I retired at 28, you know, you said 33, 34.
 The problem, why I didn't sign the fight when I got dumped because they wasn't paying.
 Yeah.
 The opportunity for, you know, when I remember pitching,
 when I, when I retired in 2013, I said, hey, man,
 I want to go fight with paper view.
 I remember asking for half a million dollars for me to fight,
 which is now is not much.
 If you have a name and you can fight and you can sell paper views,
 that's a starting point, half a million dollars for anybody that,
 you know, is fighting another person with a personality you'll follow.
 It's a starting point.
 So that's why I'm like, come on, you know,
 these guys, they only played two, three years.
 They still, you know, they can't get back into the NFL.
 They're tired, maybe tired of getting pushed to the side.
 I bring them, I bring them over.
 Yeah.
 Is what's been the learning curve with promotion and, you know,
 everything that goes into the fight game?
 I'm curious on that and also curious on, you know,
 I know Dana White has done an incredible job with UFC.
 I'm not, let's question about why they're so popular.
 I know what, you know, the machine he's built, what he's done.
 Damn, I grew up watching boxing with my grandfather and like,
 you know, to see kind of the decline of boxing, you know,
 has hurt me a bit, you know, and I don't know why.
 I mean, maybe it's starting to pick back up,
 but I know that was kind of a double loaded question,
 but I'd love to know your perspective.
 Well, for one, what would kill box in the fastest is the uneven matches.
 Right.
 You got, you got these guys as 23 and 0 fighting,
 somebody that's 10 and 20, right?
 10 and 15.
 And also, I believe that the promoters and managers, you know,
 kind of made the sport decline faster.
 What is?
 Because they're holding their champ back or somebody with a big name
 from fighting another big name.
 They're afraid that if they lose, they're going to lose the brand winner.
 Yeah.
 And that's happening too much.
 And what Dana and those guys done at UFC is the best is our fight
 and the best, right?
 You're getting the number one and number two, the number one and number four,
 number one and number three.
 They're fighting each other all the time.
 So the best man actually literally wins boxing.
 That's, that's what killed the sport.
 That's what killed the sport because you got a guy that's an extreme
 talented fighter, a big name, fighting somebody that no one heard of.
 Yeah.
 And when you have that enough, people are not going to pay for it.
 Why do you think people are okay with, you know,
 and I know there's a few of these now, but for the most part,
 the champion in any divisions, like 16 and five, you know what I mean?
 Like, I mean, it's okay that he's lost, you know,
 because they're fighting their ass off.
 They fight the best.
 You know, in boxing, you do kind of, they've built it up to where,
 even I think I do it myself.
 Oh, he's got a couple of losses.
 He must not be, you know, and I'm like, shit, I don't know why I think that way.
 I don't know why it's acceptable and UFC to lose, but in boxing, it isn't.
 Well, because, you know, in MMA, there's so many different disciplines, right?
 You might have a guy that's a great wrestler, a jujitsu, Muay Thai, a striker, a box.
 You know, and so sometimes you're just out of match.
 You get out smart.
 Yeah.
 And, you know, most of these boxers have been boxing since they were 10, 11 years old.
 So, they're so technical that if you lose in boxing,
 it's automatically that that guy is so much better than you, right?
 And that's not true.
 I give Kanelo all the respect in the world for stepping up a weight class,
 even though he lost.
 Yeah.
 You know, he went for it and he didn't go fighting other guys.
 We could just put the ropes and knock out.
 And so while other people said, oh, he lost.
 And that's the boxing community, right?
 That's the boxing community, which I don't agree with.
 Other people are saying that.
 For me, I'm like, damn, that he went to go, he was unmasked.
 Yeah.
 Right?
 He was, he was, he was fighting a bigger guy.
 And it wasn't even matched, but he did it.
 And so, boxing is not going to pick up unless Javonte Davis going to fight Ryan.
 Yeah.
 Or, you know, it's just, it's only got freaking spits and whatever there's name in.
 I can't keep up with every name, but a arrow spits tuna and freaking Terence Crawford.
 Crawford.
 I mean, like those guys should have fought three years.
 I mean, it gets to where it's the end of the guy should have fought three years ago,
 and they're prom.
 You know, like, we're going to see Kanelo and Triple G for the third time,
 which is good, but it's like, you know,
 it's like, you know, something seems to get delayed so much.
 Yeah, and because, you know,
 and Hayney need to fight terms, Crawford or Aerospace,
 like that has to, in order for boxing to come back
 to compete with the NEMMA,
 those fights are going to have to happen.
 And if the promoters and these people are guarding them
 and trying to have this huge, huge, huge big payday,
 it, yes, it's going, everybody get paid,
 but it's not going to do much for the sport.
 And so unless the, you know,
 number one fights, number two or three,
 number four guys fights, you know,
 number eight, number seven,
 that's not, the boxing is going to stay where it's at.
 It's never going to be able to take him away again.
 Yeah, well, I hope somebody gets their head out of their ass,
 but talk to me about your,
 your fighting league and with lights out,
 like where were we headed with that?
 And you talked about some of the ex pro players,
 where you want to take your league and everything.
 Yeah, so we're on, we're on Fubo TV, Fubo Sports.
 We start back up in November,
 we go every month after that.
 And so when I'm looking to do his,
 and probably next few, we start announcing three,
 three dates at a time,
 then you're using so forth,
 but I love this sport, man, that I wish,
 you know, that somebody saw back in 2013,
 I retired, that, you know,
 how much I love this sport,
 I would have done it and paid me accordingly.
 But, you know, to be on the back side of this now,
 being part of the production,
 being part of the, you know,
 we have big TV trucks outside and, you know, just everything.
 Yeah.
 We want to be, you know,
 the biggest minor league there is out there, right?
 We want USC to come and see our talent and be respectable
 and have a great brand.
 And back to me, I just,
 I want to be able to get these fighters more fights, right?
 You have so many fighters out there
 and not enough quality promotions
 to give them opportunity and lights out, you know,
 we can do that.
 Yeah.
 That's great, man.
 Is, are you partnered with anyone?
 I mean, I know it's bad.
 I mean, a lot with your name and stuff,
 but are you partnered like,
 other than like Fubo and stuff like that?
 Who else are some of your partners or sponsors?
 Well, we have,
 what Fubo's obviously are,
 an exclusive partner with our fights.
 Yep.
 But we always partner for our fights with different casinos.
 Okay.
 Fubo, obviously Fubo sports book
 who just just launched this recently.
 Yep.
 And sooner or later,
 you will be able to bet during our fights
 through the Fubo app,
 you know, bet knock outs and chokes and everything else.
 You know, we're getting to that point where,
 you know, at least 10 or 9 or 10 states,
 you'll be able to, you know, gamble with this
 and bet on the fight.
 Being a gambling,
 that's changed a lot.
 I hadn't been from your days.
 You know, that's a whole circle.
 I could tell you that several years ago,
 I felt uncomfortable talking about it.
 Yeah.
 Because it was so frowned upon that,
 I'll tell you this,
 I didn't even know what an over under was
 until like, I retired.
 I had no idea.
 If somebody asked me what an over under was,
 I looked at you like,
 listen, I don't know if the hell you talking about it.
 That's probably a good thing.
 Well, yeah.
 But yeah.
 But at least while you're playing,
 but it's crazy.
 But now it means it's wide open.
 It's the wall, walled west out there.
 I mean, I really commend how you've used social media.
 You know, we talked pretty upset a little bit about this.
 How much power there is in social media
 for growing a brand and doing business.
 Talk about how you've leveraged it.
 You know, for me,
 I like for one,
 one thing I never really talk about a social media
 is politics, religion,
 that type of thing because it's a waste of time for me.
 It's not like I'm not interested in politics,
 so I don't care what's going on.
 But, you know, for me, social media
 is not the place for me for that, right?
 So I use,
 I have these, sign them up,
 but don't sign them up.
 Funny videos where I post fights and people like it.
 So, you know, it's funny.
 It's entertaining.
 If the guys could fight, sign them up.
 They can't fight, don't sign them up.
 And that's why, for that,
 I promote the league.
 I promote what I do.
 You know, and so I see people sometimes
 taking these vacations once a month,
 or this and that,
 which is all fine.
 I mean, I'm not saying you shouldn't go on vacation,
 but I'm just,
 I'm just about growing this brand and working.
 Give me a gym.
 I want to have six days a week.
 Give me some food.
 Give me six hours of sleep.
 And just let me work.
 And that's how I like my schedule.
 I was going to ask you what your routine is these days,
 you know, still lift a lot.
 Yeah, I just,
 so this morning,
 I work out as a place in Vegas.
 I live in Vegas for a time called Dragon's Lair.
 Flex Lewis,
 he's former bodybuilder,
 he owns a slot.
 I go to him three days a week,
 and I go to extreme tour,
 train there,
 ready to get to his gym a few days a week too.
 Actually, you know,
 hitting mids and rolling and stuff like that.
 So I'm pretty active, man.
 It's so much part of my makeup,
 like I'm scared not to, right?
 I always felt that if you've been doing something
 for so long and then you just stop,
 I don't know if I'm just,
 just croak and fall right over.
 If I missed a gym four weeks,
 I don't even know what that feels like.
 I know.
 What is Sean Maryman do for fun these days?
 What's fun?
 Don't say go to the gym.
 But what is?
 No, no.
 I, you know what I like to do is,
 so I try to base everything around what I'm already doing, right?
 So yesterday I was in,
 I was in Arizona,
 I had some meetings meeting my really good friend,
 Jeff Hoffman who co-founded a price line.
 And so what I would do is,
 I'll like stay an extra day somewhere, right?
 So if I got to meet in Miami or New York,
 wherever I go, I'll try to stay there
 and hang out, you know,
 guessing drinks, catch up dinner with whoever I can.
 So that's pretty much the fun, the most fun that I get.
 But you know, it's not, you know,
 going somewhere for a week or vacation.
 I mean, that's just totally out the question.
 So I'll just try to book trips
 where I can stay an extra day somewhere and enjoy it.
 Yeah.
 Do you think, is there a good, like, you know,
 you've embraced it,
 you've taken advantage of the opportunities
 of social media and growing brands
 and making deals and all that,
 but like the average players,
 are they kind of just left to their own devices?
 I mean, is it like,
 do you just see it and you go after it
 or you don't like,
 I mean, I don't see a lot of education
 or what, I don't know what happens, you know,
 like some of these guys,
 like yourself, go make it happen
 and some just kind of fade away.
 You know, we talked about, you know,
 the adrenaline and running out to 70,000 people
 to spotlight and all this stuff
 and just really a passion for the sport that you played.
 You know, I tell a lot of former guys this,
 if you find that same passion, right, that,
 whatever that was,
 and let me tell you,
 it's next impossible to replace that feeling
 and run out to 70,000 screaming people
 and making a big catch, a big tackle sack.
 Yeah.
 Turn it over.
 Everybody's going crazy.
 You're a teammate to slap and you're on top of the head
 and patting you on the back.
 You get home and you got, you know,
 50 text messages for everybody
 because you just had three sacks on Monday night football.
 You can't replace that feeling.
 That's that part of it's just not gonna happen.
 What the next thing you can do is,
 is replace the feeling of something you're building, right?
 And see it pan actually,
 you can put panning out like you plan for it to pan out.
 That is the closest thing for me
 that I can get back to that feeling.
 And because athletes are some of the most disciplined,
 hardworking, like, I mean, think about it,
 my whole life has been structured, right?
 Since I was 10 years old.
 I was told what time to eat,
 told what time to wake up,
 told what time to watch film and be in practice
 and go what time I had to go to sleep
 to be ready for practice the next day.
 My whole life is structured.
 And so what do you need out here
 to be successful to things, discipline and structure?
 If you had those, you got to,
 you got a good chance to be successful
 when anything, because that's what a lot of people lack.
 A lot of people lack just being disciplined
 and have a structure in their life,
 which is one of the only things that I know.
 I love it, brother.
 I know I'd be remiss if I didn't like get in life insurance.
 I mean, we're at the life insurance,
 you know, like is it lights out life insurance?
 Come on.
 You know what's crazy is so, don't a pandemic, right?
 And everybody I felt got hit in some kind of way
 during the pandemic, right?
 You lost somethings, you had to figure it out.
 Everybody, no matter if you were worth $1 billion
 or $100, don't a pandemic,
 everybody had to figure it out.
 And when everything shut down for me,
 in the main league, the TV shows,
 when I was shooting some stuff with Fox Sports then,
 and doing some broadcast and work,
 everything shut down.
 And I lost everything in the matter of four days,
 shut down, done.
 And so one of my best friends came up to me and said,
 hey, man, you should get your, you should do life insurance.
 I laughed at him.
 I said, well, can you want to have a red shirt
 and some khakis too, why I'm at it?
 Or knock on doors and, you know, and I made a joke of it.
 Yeah.
 And I said, you know what?
 We were three or four months into the pandemic.
 I said, let me just go ahead and get my insurance license.
 I might not ever use it.
 Might not do anything with it, but at least I'll have it.
 So I ended up partnering with this company
 called Affirmative First Life.
 And I went with them, one of the founder of this name
 is Sean Mike.
 We had a really good conversation and same mindset
 when it came to a bunch of different things.
 But the second part of everything
 were paying more compensation than everybody else.
 And at the time, I knew nothing about insurance.
 Compensation, what, you know, what company did, what.
 And so I said, and that's immediately started to think.
 Damn, everybody don't know you can make more money
 so I started to build an agency.
 So now I have, you know, 207 agents in my agency.
 And, you know, we're probably going 30 to 48
 just a month at this point.
 And so my goal is to get to a thousand plus agents
 and help people make as much money as they possibly can.
 I love it, man.
 Hey, help is funny when you help others.
 It usually comes back around to yourself, right?
 It's so, you know what, and you don't think about doing it
 as you're doing it, but somehow some way
 it's like a boomerang effect.
 And it happens every single time.
 Sean, man, I could talk to you all day.
 But tell me, let's tell everybody
 where they can keep up with you, your brands,
 your insurance and all that stuff.
 People want to learn more about you.
 Yeah, just follow me at Sean Merming
 on Instagram and Twitter.
 The lights out XF is in a may handle lights out XF
 for lights out extreme fighting.
 And looking for a job, man, lights out, lights out A to C.com.
 And that's pretty much it, man.
 But I'm rocking over here.
 Now you are.
 And, you know, ironically enough, you said,
 you know, beginning your time out,
 like people having to use the football and all that
 analogies that they needed to like
 talk at a different language.
 I think I listen to you and I hear a business man
 that just happened to play football.
 That you're right, man.
 That's that is is people joke about that now,
 especially because I'm so far removed from the game.
 Yeah.
 So everybody's well, when I'm talking to some people,
 they may not know or remember what they,
 what didn't watch football.
 And so they automatically assume
 they have this stuff going on.
 And like, hey, which, which business school did you go to?
 Which, you know, which I said, I didn't go to business school.
 Trust me.
 School of hard knocks called real life.
 That's right.
 Sean, man, I really appreciate it.
 And everybody out there listening,
 you need to go watch Sean take some of his head off
 if you hadn't seen it, those highlights.
 But then, then listen to this episode
 and you'll learn it even in another lesson.
 Sean, I really appreciate you coming on, brother.
 Hey, thanks for having me all, man, I appreciate it.
 Hey, guys, you know where to find us, theradcast.com.
 Search for lights out.
 You'll find all the highlights clips from today.
 You might throw up some highlights from Sean.
 Knocked people out on the football field.
 And now he's knocking them out on the business field.
 We appreciate Sean.
 You know where to find me.
 I met Ryan Alfred on the platform.
 Go follow me on TikTok and blowin' up.
 We'll see you next time.
 All theradcast.