William Shatner is a ‘paintball fiend‘, there’s an official cruise for flat earthers, and Mike Tyson was stoned when he sent Andrew Golota running from the ring in 2000.
All of these tidbits were gleaned from episode 1,285 of the Joe Rogan Experience featuring Cypress Hill front man B-Real on Tuesday (April 23).
The two chopped it up over the rapper’s early gangbanging days, his cannabis activism, the various mosh pits he’s lost shoes to, and the illogicality driving a group of science-deniers. But the interview struck a local chord when he gave British Columbian growers some shine.
Last weekend, Cypress Hill was in Vancouver, headlining the city’s 25th annual 4/20 cannabis protest. They played to a heady crowd of over 65,000. Of course, while the group was in town, they sampled some of Canada’s finest and B-Real said Vancouver’s bud is a strong contender against California’s best.
“They [B.C. cultivators] had some shit that California boys would be like: “Yo, this is fire right here.” They had Animal Cookies that was really good, Wedding Cake, that’s a strain that popular here in Cali via the Jungle Boys and Berner when they were working on exotics. They also had this joint called Black Diamond, and Tri Octane,” he told Rogan.
“These guys, their shit—all white ash, the taste was fucking beautiful, and the high was definitely there. And I gotta say, guys in Vancouver, they stepped it up.”
Playing paintball with William Shatner
As it turns out, when B-Real isn’t pushing the music and weed industry forward, he spends his downtime playing paintball.
“It’s addicting,” he said to Rogan. “It’s chess with guns.”
His team is called the Stoned Assassins because, well: “We were always pretty stoned when we were playing.” They’ve exchanged fire with the likes of the Bee Gees’ Maurice Gibb, actor Will Smith, and, wait for it, William Shatner.
While dodging pressurized caps of paint and tumbling through an obstacle course is literally the least anticipated activity-of-choice for the octogenarian, B-Real said the former Star Trek star is a “paintball fiend”.
He said Shatner, although rarely diving in the trenches with the teams himself, would set up games and tournaments—like capture the flag or extraction missions—and play from higher vantage points.
“When I went into paintball, there was a price on my head in every game,” B-Real said, laughing. “Everybody wanted to give me extra shots. I’d be walking out and I get 10, 20 extra paintballs to my back.”
Ouch.
“We’d give it right back.”
Smoking weed with Mike Tyson
Just before the interview came to a close, B-Real shared a sesh story with Rogan’s listeners. In February, he hosted Mike Tyson on an episode of “The Smokebox”, a show on BRealTV in which he hotboxes celebrity guests.
A martial arts practitioner himself, B-Real asked Tyson about the role of cannabis in fighting. While the retired heavyweight said he normally preferred drug-free approaches to getting in an orbital-bone-busting mindset, like meditation, he once smoked weed before a fight.
Tyson said he took a few puffs before the infamous Showdown in Motown in late 2000—a match pitting ‘the Baddest Man on the Planet’ against Polish heavyweight boxer Andrew Golata.
“He said he never had so much focus in a fight and it made him realize he should have been smoking weed through every god damn fight because he focused on everything that he was supposed to,” B-Real told Rogan.
And, unfortunately for his opponent, weed made the legendary heavyweight solely fixate on the task at hand: making hay. In that fight, Golata took an infamous Tyson right hook to the brow, breaking his orbital bone, and several body shots resulting in a busted rib and back. After taking a heck of a beating in the first two rounds, in which he stopped the fight twice, Golata’s ceded the title and Tyson won by technical knock-out. He left the ring, despite the pleas of his coach and cornermen.
A few months later, Tyson’s toxicology tests were announced, showing a positive result for cannabis. The victory was overturned and changed to a no-contest.
The boxer has since created Tyson Ranch—a cannabis company based outside of Los Angeles—and regularly discusses the benefits of cannabis for athletes.
B-Real says he and Tyson have smoked a handful of times before their on-air hotbox, including in the parking lot after one of the Lyoto Machida and Rashad Evans grudge matches.
