John McPhee, widely known as “The Sheriff of Baghdad” or “SHREK,” is a retired U.S. Army Special Operations Sergeant Major with over 20 years of distinguished service. He is the owner of SOB Tactical, a supplier of specialized training and tactical gear to civilians, military, and law enforcement. www.sobtactical.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is John McPhee and what is his background?
See you, brother. Yeah, how are you, man? Great, great. It was nice to meet you at F1, and I really loved your episode of Sean Ryan. I fucking love that dude.
Thanks, man. Yeah, Sean is... He's the man. He's awesome. I love Sean.
I'm so glad there's guys like him doing this, that there's more people like him that are finding new ways to... Media is so wide open now, and you don't have to get hired by a television station anymore. You can just start your own shit, and Sean shows.
fucking great yeah he's great Sean's I love him as a person yeah I love him too he's great he's an awesome dude and I loved you on that show but god damn man that show was crazy like your childhood was so nuts dude hearing about you living in a brothel when you were 12 years old yeah me and my brother Fuck, dude. Your whole story was so nuts, man.
I was listening to it in the sauna this morning, and I was like, oh, my God.
So I'm there cooking at 195 degrees listening to you struggle.
I was in there for half an hour, which I usually do 20 minutes, but I kept going. I'm like, this life is so fucked up. I feel like I shouldn't bail right now. I should keep listening.
I feel like, but I'm not the only one. You know what I mean? I feel like where I was in the Army is full of guys just like that. A hundred percent. Yeah.
A hundred percent. Yeah. And I think in some, well, fighters as well. You know, a lot of fighters that I know, like Sean Strickland, a lot of guys that I know had fights. fucked up childhoods. I think it gives you an extra gear. I think when you can get through a childhood like that, you got an extra place that you can go to that other dudes can't go to.
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Chapter 2: What are the challenges of growing up in a tough environment?
run through every dude. Yeah. Every dude. And it was like, not like, not like it was a close match. It was like, whatever dude from the defo stepped in front of him was the 12 year old child against the fucking an adult. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like he just fucking handled everybody.
And I remember one of those times he just fucking, I did something and he cinched down on me like a spider and I couldn't fucking move. And he goes, yes, I did not think of this. This is good move. And I was like, I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing. Like, you know what I mean? I wasn't even a white belt yet. It was just, he was just fucking me up, you know?
But I knew like right then and there I was fucking helpless.
Yeah, it's a weird feeling.
And like, yo, unacceptable. You know what I mean? Unacceptable. Yeah, right? Unacceptable. That's the right word, yeah. Like, you got to learn this. You got to know some of it. You know what I mean? And even back then, like, we would all tell hoists, you know, because we were more Muay Thai. We would train a lot of Muay Thai, boxing, right? Wrestling, a lot of wrestling.
you know, before the Jets, and, like, we would tell Hoist back then, as soon as you learn to punch, you are super dangerous, which is, I think, where it is now.
Yeah. Well, I think wrestling is kind of... There's, like, so many elite wrestlers now that... that have learned submissions, and that extra skill of being able to throw bodies around is another level. I agree. Because wrestlers can learn jiu-jitsu pretty easy. An elite wrestler, you take a guy like a Bo Nickel or a Daniel Cormier, teach them jiu-jitsu. Hamza Chemaev's the best example of that.
You teach a guy like that submissions, he already knows how to ragdoll people. So he has this ability to take everybody down, and then on top of that, he's going to break your neck. It's like that extra—I think wrestling is like the foundation. That's the one thing, because then you can dictate whether to fight— Thank you for having me.
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Chapter 3: How does jiu-jitsu serve as a form of meditation?
Yeah, something. There's another thing, older brothers. It's like you want to find the young brother. The young brother's the beast. I'm the little brother. Yeah, that's it. The young brother gets beat up by the older brother and just constantly in battle his whole life. Like so many fighters, the best fighters have like Chris Weidman's got a great story like that.
Well, I mean, think about this. If you had to fight your bigger brother off your whole life, you would be good at jitsu. Why? Because you understand leverage. You understand patience. Wait for the move. Take some punishment. Move later. You know the deal.
You're also accustomed to being in battle all the time with your brother.
Hickson was a little brother to Holes.
Chapter 4: What insights can be gained from childhood experiences?
Yeah.
Yeah. Same thing.
Yeah. And Horian.
Yeah.
Hickson is – he's such a unique guy because he was like the first guy that figured out like that physical strength, yoga, all the gymnastic natural stuff that he did, flexibility. Breathing. Yeah. He was like a physical specimen on top of being super technical. Yeah. So he had like both things.
Yeah. He had it all, I think. Way before people knew. Way before. Like – He knew the winning mindset and how to keep that mental edge with all the other things. And the fighting was just something that he grew up to do, I think, in my opinion. You know what I mean?
Yeah, he had that samurai mindset.
Yeah, I'm telling you, I think he, like, I talk to a lot of people. I know some legendary guys from the Army, right? When he talks, it's like this weird time vortex, right? You ever talk to him?
Wow.
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Chapter 5: Why is proper training essential for police officers?
What a crazy fucking task.
I know. But back to the point is, if a guy cracks that door, any door, let's say it's your first time. I'm showing you like, all right, Joe, I'm going to show you some close quarter battle. I'm going to show you how to clear a door. And then just joking around like you're about to go through a door and I shot you in the fucking forehead. Yeah.
you would mentally never want to go through that door again, right? So I have to build you up to where, well, the first time you come through the door, why don't I just let you come through the door? Right. And then it builds from there. Got it. And then there's a point where it's like, whoa, this motherfucker's shooting through the crack of the airplane. Wait till I'm in this fucking bitch.
I got two pistols on me. This motherfucker's going down. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. So as you're... As your confidence, your core, that core of a human being, like that core of an operator, right? As that like becomes fucking concrete, a guy's just unshakable. Like, let's go. I don't give a fuck what this position. I don't care. Like, I don't care if I fucking die. Let's do this, you know?
And it's consistent training over and over and over and over and over. Do you think that this is what's missing in the police force?
Oh, man. Are you kidding me? First off, I work in a lot of police departments. I love police. I support police all the time. It's a fucking thankless job. I'll say that. Yeah. But I would say, like, think about this, Joe. If you trained police better. Right. Right. I work at a lot of police academies. I've helped a lot of police academies. They don't fail people anymore. I show them what I do.
I train them to do what I do. They have great success with it. I would say this in a police academy, let's say it's six months long, whatever they do. I don't fucking know. Probably about four months of that is fucking paperwork. And then, you know, you get a little hand to hand, you get a little driving, you get a little shooting and And then you learn what? Yeah. But I'm going to tell you this.
As a cop, you got the rest of your life to do that paperwork. Right. And when you're in training, right, as soon as you, like, get your first arrest, your training officer is going to be like, don't write it that way. Hold on. Let me see your paperwork. Like this. Uh-huh. The paperwork could be OJT, and they could spend them time, right, training these guys. Right.
Now, I'd also say this is if police were trained better and truly uniformed officers are probably the only guys like stopping crime as it happens. If we train those guys better, why would we need SWAT teams?
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Chapter 6: How do personal experiences shape perspectives on violence?
think about it you know what i mean all we had to do was flood put a fucking tank under every fucking overpass in every fucking neighborhood there's a machine gun and fucking 50 cal humvee right like who's fucking around they're everywhere and that's the safest iraq ever was i'm telling you we have that here and people don't understand that in general so if you want to defund the police fuck man we're fucked you know what i mean yeah like it's it's a crazy but
You know, do you know Evan, Evan Hafer?
Yes.
Yeah, Evan was, we were in elk camp and he was explaining some of the shit that he saw when he went from Iraq to Afghanistan. He's like, Afghanistan is so fucked that you can't even comprehend it until you're there. He goes, once you're there and you see it and you understand it, you become so cynical. You're almost like, this culture is like unfixable.
And he's like, most people just don't know that a place like that exists. That's so just down to its core. So fucked. And we was talking about how these guys have these boys that they have as their harem.
The number nine boy. What's that? That's what the Egyptian Special Forces called him, the number nine boy. He's the boy that gets fucked. Why number nine? I don't know. That's what the Egyptian Special Forces called him. But every Afghanistan village had a fucking, what do they call it, the chogie boy or fucking something like that. Yeah, something like that, yeah.
But basically the 12-year-old that gets raped.
He was saying these guys have harems and they would parade them down the street to show they have the most boys.
Yeah, this happened to me on my – so I did a solo mission in Afghanistan, the book Kill Bin Laden. You ever hear of it? Yeah. I brought a hardback for you. Oh, nice. I'll sign it for you if you want. Sure. But it's hard to get a hardback. It's like it's got library shit in it. I had to buy it because people always ask me to sign it. I didn't write the book. I'm just in it.
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Chapter 8: How do cultural differences influence combat sports?
I have not seen Choke, but I just finished his new book, the dark one. Dark? Hickson came out with a new book. I just audio-booked it the other day.
Because he's got Parkinson's now.
Yeah, but he's got the Breathe book, but he just came out with a new one. I just listened to it last week. You know what I mean?
Yeah. You got to watch Choke.
I got to.
One of the greatest documentaries of all time.
I know. I've heard that. For a martial artist? I've heard that.
It's fucking incredible. It's Hickson in his prime competing in Japan, Valley Tudor. You see him training and doing his yoga and all the crazy breathing shit where his stomach sucks up inside of him. I don't even know how to do that.
Yeah. When he was testing me for my purple belt, he was like, Yes. Yes. Yeah. When I lay on the ground, I am flat. He's like, when you lay on the ground, you are not flat. You should roll more. I'm like, I know you know enough English just to call me fucking fat. You know what I mean? But God damn it. You should roll more. Yeah, I should roll, yeah.
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