#826 - Justin Wren

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Two, one, and we're live. Justin Wren, how are you, sir?

Justin Wren (0:05)

I'm great.

Joe Rogan (0:05)

What's going on, brother?

Justin Wren (0:07)

Man, I'm excited to be back here.

Joe Rogan (0:08)

You out there kicking ass, digging wells, all the above?

Justin Wren (0:11)

Trying, yeah, all of the above.

Joe Rogan (0:13)

How many fights have you had now back in Bellator?

Justin Wren (0:15)

Only two. But I haven't been back since the first or second one, so this is...

Joe Rogan (0:21)

What are you... yeah, you were here before your first one, right? Which was like, you had a long break.

Justin Wren (0:29)

Yeah, it was five years and two months. And I hadn't even really trained any at that point. Like, I was just doing the wells and going to Congo, and then got back into fighting, and only had a little bit of time to train, but it was okay.

Joe Rogan (0:45)

How much time did you have before your first fight?

Justin Wren (0:48)

I think, actually, whenever I was here with you, I fibbed a little where I said it was a little longer because I didn't know if my opponent was going to watch or whatever, but my fight camp got cut in half. I was traveling, traveling, traveling, the book was getting ready to come out and other stuff and trying to write the book and prepare and trying to figure all that out where we were just talking before we got on about just life stuff and scheduling it and everything, and I had the book and then Congo and then telling people about it and then also training for a fight, and I didn't know how to balance those real well. But I planned 12 weeks. All of a sudden, Congo Corruption took me to Congo for three weeks at the beginning. So I cut it down to nine weeks, and then whenever I got back or while I was there, I found out they were moving the fight up on me three weeks.

And so it cut my camp down to about six, seven weeks.

Joe Rogan (1:35)

So six, seven weeks after being off for more than five years.

Justin Wren (1:38)

Yeah, and I had trained a few times before that. I mean, like, within the few months before, but I think it was probably tops two months, nine weeks.

Joe Rogan (1:52)

Well, Puss, weren't you just, like, just getting over malaria?

Justin Wren (1:55)

Yeah, and I was...

That's the tough stuff. That's tougher than the fight, I feel like.

Joe Rogan (2:02)

Fuck, man.

Justin Wren (2:04)

We have one of our guys in Congo that's had malaria, one of our drillers, just recently got real sick. And it's kind of like constant. Like, it's just part of life there.

Joe Rogan (2:13)

Jesus, and it doesn't matter what kind of medication you take before you go out there?

Justin Wren (2:16)

I was actually taking...

Actually, our director at Water4 was taking Malarone. It's like the best anti-malaria pill. I think it's something like $7, $8 every pill. So it's the crème de la crème of malaria meds, and it didn't work on him. And then I was actually going into Congo. Actually, I stopped in London, did one of those TED Talks at a university called Warwick University.

And the day of the talk, I was at a 103-degree temperature, 103.2. Wow. And I thought I was pulling out. They thought I was pulling out. We were at the hospital for four, five, six hours.

Oh, and dude, even the opportunity to go speak at that is because their team was all fans of JRE.

Yeah, so that's awesome. Yeah, that was the opportunity I got because of this. And it was tough doing the talk. And then whenever I got into Congo, they told me I had the flu in London, and the doctor's there, and that's what I feel like here, too. There can be tropical medicine specialists here, and they're probably really great, but I would trust a doctor that's lived in the climate, the tropical climate around malaria, that's seen it, that's treated it, that knows all the symptoms.

Joe Rogan (3:29)

Well, knows to look for it because no one gets it over here.

Justin Wren (3:32)

Yeah, and so whenever I got into Congo, I flew from work to Congo, and whenever I landed, instead of going straight to the forest, they took me to like an airstrip at a kind of hospital in the middle of nowhere.

So I landed, went straight to the hospital, and then right there, they're like, you don't have the flu, you have malaria. And I'm like, but I've been in the States, I just fought, and then I was in Europe, like there's no malaria really there, but it was because it's still living inside me. There's like, I think there's three strands, one will live in your body for three years, five years. I think the other is like 30 to life or something.