- The world now is very different
from before the film came out.
He is misleading a huge bunch of people.
He wants to have the same freedom like the drunk guy
in the pub, and that's not how things work
if you're a professional in the media landscape,
and he's gotta learn that.
(graphic popping) (graphic whooshing)
- Hey, everybody, this is Klaus from Plant Based News,
and we have Vegan Strongman Patrik Baboumian.
Thank you so much for doing this.
- Thank you for having me.
- So you've kind of been on my radar for a while now
'cause we re-uploaded one of your videos
a couple of months before "The Gamechangers" came out.
That was a documentary executively produced
by James Cameron that you were in.
Before that came out, you actually did a video
about being misrepresented in a Joe Rogan podcast.
Do you wanna explain briefly what happened?
- Yeah, so there are actually a lot of videos
or a lot of YouTube channels who talk smack about me
(laughs)
on YouTube, but I usually don't react to everything.
But in this case it was on the Joe Rogan show
and the guy has a huge following.
I think one of the hugest platforms out there.
His guest was Robert Oberst who is a strongman competitor
from the US.
And they were like, it was not just a slight kind of mistake
that they did, but they were completely
misrepresenting everything that I do.
- [Joe] One meal a day.
- See, this is ridiculous.
One meal a day and vegan.
- I agree, that's ridiculous.
Joe is talking about something that I have never done.
He's obviously just making things up
or he's just taking information from other people
and just projecting that on me.
- All the strongmen that I have seen are giants.
Well, he's only 5'7, so he's stronger than me.
(laughs)
- It's not about that size of the dog in the fight.
It's about the size of the fight in the dog.
What they tried to do there was
they tried to use this attack on me to kind of
debunk "The Gamechangers" because--
- Before it'd come out.
- Yeah, it wasn't even out so the only thing
that they had seen, or that Joe Rogan had seen was
a trailer, and he was trying to debunk the film
on the basis of that trailer.
- It was agenda-led, wasn't it?
They were trying to say that the film was sort of.
I think one of the quotes is "Lies built on lies"
before it had come out so, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah, they were trying to de-legitimize it
basically before anyone would really
have a chance to watch it, which is, of course.
That's a very malicious way to approach something like that.
Especially if you have the responsibility that Joe has.
When you have such a big platform.
He talks on his show a lot about free speech
and how everyone is so politically correct,
and that's terrible and so on,
but the point is it is something different
if you're just the guy in a pub
who talks smack, and that's fine.
- You've got a platform and you're intelligent supposedly.
- Exactly, so Joe is not stupid.
He knows exactly what he does.
He's got a (beep) huge platform
so that's a huge responsibility because
if he does stuff that is misleading,
he is misleading a huge bunch of people.
So, at some point, you have to acknowledge that,
and he doesn't do that.
He wants to have the same freedom like the drunk guy
in the pub, and that's not how things work
if you're a professional in the media landscape,
and he's gotta learn that.
- Would you go on the podcast?
- I think it would have made sense
because I have kind of a history with Joe
so that would have made sense.
But, at the same time, I think it would have probably
not been a good decision because, of course,
the history that I have with Joe is a little bit toxic so.
I mean, we had James just on his own on the podcast,
and he did a great job just basically
exposing Chris Cressler for what he is,
namely someone who talks a lot about nutrition
but doesn't really have a very profound
knowledge about nutrition.
- Do you know how to read a forest plot?
Yes or no?
- I don't.
- Forest plot.
You don't know how to read a forest plot?
- I don't know the details.
- So, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, it's almost like a comedy.
- Based on what you presented,
you haven't lost an argument yet.
There's not one thing that you've said
that's incorrect. - Thank you.
But you don't know how to read a forest plot.
- Well, it's funny you mention that
'cause yesterday he put out a post on his Instagram
about having lost weight having done the carnivore diet
for a month, and he says he feels great so
what do you kind of say back to that?
Do you give any credibility to his claims?
- Yeah, I absolutely think that you can
have short-term benefits with all kinds
of crazy nonsensical diets, even with the carnivore one.
The question is what is it going to do
with you on the long term.
And if you take weight loss as a metric for a diet,
if it's good or not,
I think that's a very misleading metric.
Because you can be on cocaine and a terrible diet.
You're gonna lose weight,
and that's not gonna be good for you.
So just because a diet makes you lose weight,
that doesn't mean anything.
And even if it makes you feel good, you know,
the cocaine is gonna make you feel good so. (chuckles)
So you have to look at the diet long term,
and you have to ask some.
The questions that you ask have to be scientific,
and you have to look at it in a neutral way
if you really wanna find out what's the best diet.
Of course, for me, when it comes to diet,
it's not only that part, which is objectively
finding out what's the best diet,
but also I look at things like
what is the environmental effect,
what is the ethical considerations around the diet,
and all of that goes into my decision,
which diet I wanna have, adapt as my own,
which leads me to veganism.
But, at the end of the day, I think one thing
that is important is when I look to
how the world looked like before Gamechangers came out
and how it looks like now, what I think,
and especially if you look at the attempts
to attack the film actually and criticize it,
what you see is that most of these people
who are attacking the film,
most of them don't even dare to say that it is not possible
to be successful as a vegan athlete,
and they would do that before the film came out.
So they just basically moved the goal post
and what they're saying now is,
yeah, it is possible, but it's really complicated,
and it's gonna be easier if you're not vegan.
And I think that says a lot because these
are the most extreme people who are really
trying to fight against veganism.
And even they now acknowledge that you can do it.
It's gonna probably be a little bit harder,
which I would disagree with because it depends on
how you look at things.
Of course, if you have been not vegan your whole life
and you are not willing to learn a new thing,
it's gonna be hard.
It's hard to do stuff that you haven't done before.
But if you're a little bit flexible
and if you are willing to learn new stuff,
and if you are willing to do something that is
not what everyone else does,
but you're willing to do that journey, it's not hard at all.
I never found it hard or complicated or anything.
And I can say that I had my best results
after being vegan for half a decade.
- What year was that?
- That was 2016, so I went--
- And that was when The Gamechangers was filmed,
with that scene, correct?
- Yeah, a lot of.
So "The Gamechangers" was filmed over a lot of years.
So my earliest scene actually, or one of my earliest scenes,
is from 2013, and that's actually what you
see in the end of the film.
So that huge yoke thing, that high energy thing
in the end of the film, that's actually from 2013,
but we also have stuff from '15 and so on.
But, at the end of the day, my personal records that I set
in the deadlift and in the squat and in all big lifts,
I set them all in 2016,
and that's five years after going vegan.
And I've been vegetarian six years before that
so meat has been not a part of my life
for a very long time at that point,
and I've been vegan for half a decade.
So you can't attribute anything of what I did in 2016
to some glass of milk that I was
drinking half a decade before that.
The film has really changed people's perception
in the form of a huge landslide actually.
I think the world now is very different
from before the film came out.
And I think a lot of stuff is gonna now happen
because I feel like we're approaching the tipping point
where everything is getting so much easier,
and this toxic kind of negativity
from certain people out there is gonna get less and less
because they feel less and less emboldened to
be toxic because they just see, well,
I can't go out and tell everyone it's not possible
if people are doing it everyday so.
So I'm excited to see what happens in the next few years.
- It's really inspiring hearing that.
Are you still competing?
- So I stopped competing in 2016.
So when I say I did all my personal records there,
that was right before I had an injury.
I tore my tricep at the World Championships on log lift
in 2016, that was insummer '16,
and right before that was basically
where I set all my records.
So that injury happened like, basically,
on the height of my performance level.
So I had to have surgery done and then it took me
half a year where I couldn't even use that arm.
And then, as I said, it was already meant
to be the last competition because.
So what a lot of people might not now
is that I started actually training
and competing when I was 14.
So at this point in 2016 I'm competing
for almost a quarter of a decade, a quarter of a century.
- Actually. - Yeah so.
So that, of course, over all these years
there's a lot of stuff accumulating,
little injuries here and there.
And so I could feel that I was,
most of my effort was not going into trying to get better,
but it was going to trying to navigate
around all these old injuries and stuff,
so I thought it would be a good time to call it a day
and focus on other things,
also knowing that the film would come out.
It was actually planned that it would come out
in '17 already so I was.
With that in mind, I was thinking I'm gonna now
focus on promoting the film and stop doing competition.
So right now I'm training.
I have a lot of fun trainings
so I don't think I'm gonna stop training.
- [Klaus] So you just do it for fun.
- Yeah, I do it for fun.
And I try to kind of keep 80% of my strength level
or as much as I can, but at the same time
I weigh less because I'm constantly trying
to lose weight because I don't need all that mass
that I need for competitions in every day life
so I try to have a more functional body
for just normal stuff.
- What do you squat?
- My best squat was, in kilos, it's 370 kilos.
- [Klaus] One rep or?
- Yeah, that's a max rep.
- Wow, and what would you do now
if you were to this morning?
- Well, right now I'm a little bit handicapped
due to a slight misalignment in my hips,
but the heaviest session in the last few months that I did
was 330 kilos, and that was a very easy rep,
so I'm not that far away from back then.
But that 370 was in 2016, that's what I meant
with my highest numbers, that's all from '16.
- Wow, just the last couple of questions.
What does the next few years look like for you?
- Well, right now, I'm basically focusing completely
on activism so I'm doing a lot events where I just
give talks and try to basically
just use all these experiences that I have from the years
competing as a vegan strength athlete and try to just get
as many ears as possible and try to get that out to people.
At the same time, promoting the film, of course.
That's gonna be something I'm gonna probably
spend the next two years still trying to
help promote "The Gamechangers."
Because you have to think now it's available everywhere,
but, at the same time, we can still do a lot offline.
For instance, one thing that I'm planning to do is,
I have a lot of requests from universities, for instance,
to give a talk there so I'm using these opportunities
to show the film there and basically
use the film as a tool to get that information
to as many people as possible.
- Would you do WWE is they approached you?
(laughs)
- I was actually a fan of wrestling when I started training
so I don't know, depends on the money. (laughs)
- Any closing remark?
Thank you so much for your time.
Any final thoughts or where can people find your stuff?
- Yeah, so if you're interested in the stuff that I do,
I'm actually on Facebook and YouTube, and Instagram,
so social media it's pretty easy to find me on,
Patrik Baboumian.
And then I have a small online store
where you can get like T-Shirts
and my books and stuff like that, it's VeganBadass.com.
- Great.
- And, other than that, I just really hope that.
So for me basically, what I'm really trying to do is
I'm trying to take away people's irrational fears
and uncertainty that they feel towards going vegan.
Mainly it's guys.
So I'm trying to help them basically
get rid of that fear to lose manliness or anything,
and I feel like that goal is very close to being achieved
in huge parts of society, and that makes me very happy so.
Yeah, thanks to everyone who is a part of that.
I mean, like you guys with your platform
are a huge part of that.
And, as I told you, I'm always happy if you
take a bunch of my content and just spread it.
- Yeah, 'cause, off camera, we reposted one of your videos.
And I was just saying to you, off camera,
that it was easier for us because we titled it
"Vegan Strongman Slams Joe Rogan"
and you had never put that on your platform
so it's great to collaborate,
and thank you for everything that you do.
- Thank you.
(graphic popping) (graphic whooshing)
(graphic popping)