This is the downbeat on ninety seven to one, the Freak. We kicked
it off at six am this morning, as we always do, tons of
stuff, the breaking news to do that Toby Keith passed away. Kind of
been hitting that got a little maths earlier at seven. There's some super Bowl
prop bets at eight. That was a lot of fun. It's gonna be
a wild one, is it? Super Bowl Week? Stay tuned all week
here on the downbeat for more super Bowl fun throughout the week. Uh,
because it's going to ramp up on that end. That's right, Kevin at
your bottom dollar. But Mike, I'd like for you to set up our
in studio guest. We have an in studio guest. He's walked in and
he's handed some of us his new book that is I think released today.
This is my good friend Bradley Folsom joining us. Hi. Brad, Hey,
buddy, how are we doing great? How's the yoga breathing doing?
It's good? But even still doing it. I'm probably gonna fail on the
air as I always do. That's why we bring you in. It's a
nice blend of failure and information. Bradley Folsom, I've never heard Bradley fail
on the air all life the smartest man in the room and makes us look
like shlubs. But I'm incredibly nervous, like I'm barely holding it together,
right, I can tell every time. You really can't tell. How many
times would you guess you've been on the radio with I guess me. I
think this might be five. But every time it's nerve wracking. Yeah.
I saw him down in the lobby shaking like a leafed pacing mom Brad.
And then we woke up the elevator and it's like, uh, my pants
are ripped. I have to point out when I've got something going on so
other people don't point out it. I point out first, then he points
out all his flaws, beats you to it, and then I said it
live on the radio. We've had brad on on Circuceroy, the previous show
that my brother and I had on our other station, and I don't know.
He's an interesting guy. And I know we had you on most recently
because you are a naval veteran and spent a good amount of time on a
submarine. I know I asked you every time, what how long were you
on that? Bad Boy? I was in the Navy for six years on
the sub for four on the sub for four, And I asked you how
the longest submerging was. I was only under for a month at a time,
so like we were on deployment for five months, which is way less.
I think nowadays they do it like nine month deployments, and like you'll
get the boomers, the ones that had the nukes, that will be underwater
for like three months straight. So like, did you've never come up for
air in three months? No? No, I think yeah, they have
oxygen to make oxygen, and then they'll get the little snorkel every once in
a while to go up and get some fresh air, but no underwater for
three months straight. Did you got the psychological debriefing that must go go on
for a lot of these dudes that come out of this stuff. Yeah,
yeah, exactly. I just saw something I can't find it right now.
Yesterday. It was just it was clickbait or what. But it was for
a you know, we have the billion billionaire yachts, but it was a
billionaire submarine and I'm like, okay, that sounds like something insane. I
think it was like two billion dollars, Like how many. What's your pool
of people that can spend two billion dollars on a luxury submarine. But it's
an Australian company that is that is doing these things, and I think they
can only go down to an eight hundred and fifty feet I mean, is
that a good idea after what happened with that Titanic thing? Yeah? I
know if the private sub is a great idea exactly, but I think that
eight hundred and fifty foot threshold keeps it in a different category maybe than what
the titan submersible was going for. Yeah, but why do you need that?
I mean, I can see a yacht you want to cruise around and
it's gorgeous. What's the real value of going under just to say you have
it? But what have I done? What have I not done? Yeah?
Yeah, they've done everything. Yeah. Yeah, that's a reading that
Pablo Escobar actually had submarines and with coke subs, Yeah, coke subs and
would uh traffic drugs via submarine out the Florida coast back in the day.
It seems genius. Yeah for that. And then what let him out and
boo him to the surface? Yeah yeah, and then they've got you know,
the little motor boat mules that'll come scoop it up out of the water.
Yeah. I think that's depicted in Griselda, the Netflix series. What
you guys need to watch It's good. I watched the first episode. Okay,
good, yep, h Brad, we have you in for assorted reasons.
But Brad, among many things, he is a local professor, a
history professor, an interesting guy, and he's an author. Is this book
number two? Number three? Number three? Yeah? What are your previous
two? So? The first one was on this Spanish general that killed half
of Texas, like literally he Uh. So Texas used to be under Spain
and uh uh eighteen ten, Mexico goes through its independence period. Uh,
and then they have this revolution. Spain sends this guy in put down the
revolution. He kills about half of Texas. So Texas was only about four
thousand people. He killed about half of them, So dang is that?
Yeah? And then the second one was a guy, this Apache serial killer.
I'm i'm I like morbid stuff apparently, but he he operated out of
uh. He was born in Texas, but he operated in Chihuahua. Killed
about two hundred and ninety eight people like himself, him and his buddy.
I think he was the biggest serial killer in North American history. What's that?
Uh? It's called uh uh, I'm sorry. Book that's the one
I have. Yeah, I haven't. I haven't had a chance to to
to go through that yet. But I was curious hearing your description of that
again as we had you on last year when we were on in Afternoons.
Is that Are you a Larry me Mercury fan? Have you read any of
his stuff Lonesome Dove. I've seen Lonesome Dove, okay, but I have
never read when you described that that it was a Native American serial killer.
I wonder if the character of Blue Duck was loosely based on that story,
because if you remember, Blue Duck was the the the Indian that that that
captured Loraina, and he was a murderous bad m effort that had that that
Guss and call you know we're terrified of. And I just wonder if Larry
knew that story and kind of made some type of amalgamation of characters in into
this one. Well. So I'm curious. I know this guy a lot
of like fictional characters, so, but I don't know about that one in
particular. All Right, So Brad has handed us his latest book. This
comes out today, yeah, yesterday, yesterday, and uh it's titled Roman
Spectacle on the Rio Grande, and I love a subtitle Borderland Animal Fights at
the turn of the Century. And among the many times we've had Old Bradley
in, he does always throw out the claim that he is the world's leading
inner species animal fighting expert. That's correct, that is correct. I am
don't even deny it. That is correct. I don't want to be I
want somebody to take the title from me. That happened. Yeah, well
two and four or eight one seven. We need a young, young,
aspiring historian to take the torch. Well, I love that that when Brad
knows a lot about and writes books about Texas history. And this was a
pretty interesting part of Texas history and Texas Mexico history. And this was at
the border. So on the back it just says eighteen ninety five to nineteen
thirteen, promoters on the Texas Mexico border imported a variety of large animals from
around the world to pit them against one another in interspecies combat. I mean,
that's intriguing as hell. Yeah, and uh, I guess that's why
we have you in as the pub this book, and to tell us about
some of the stuff. You want to put some battles together. We can
make our bets on who we think would win. But I don't know what's
the history of this. I guess the history of your knowledge about it and
why the hell did this ever happen down in South Texas? So I can't
even remember how it started. But I think I was just screwing around looking
at old newspapers. You go to like newspapers dot com and they have newspapers
from eighteen hundreds nineteen hundreds, and I think I ran across this one about
this lion fighting a bear and Laredo in eighteen ninety five, and it spawned
my curiosity. So I used to have this old blog. I wrote a
blog post about it, and I'd written another blog posts and nobody really cared
about the other stuff I wrote. But that one somehow got like one hundred
two hundred thousand hits something like that, and so I started writing more.
I found another one about a buffalo fighting a bull. I found another one,
a couple about bulls fighting lions, and then I found one a tiger,
lion, and a bear, I'm sorry, a tiger, a bear,
and a bull. And then I found a elephant taking on four bulls.
And like, whenever I talk about this, this is what people's were
fascinated with. Nobody cares about the legit history. It's the animal combat stuff
and the articles that you were looking at on when you're doing you know,
just stumbled across you said, the first one was in these articles. Was
there any context provided on how this manifested or was it just basically a play
by player recap of the event itself. Was there any reason to why a
tiger was in Mexico? So yeah, So that one belonged to a guy
named Felix Robert that was a French bullfighter. This guy came to Mexico because
I don't think he was making very much money. He had, you know,
tried bullfighting in Spain, just it wasn't working out. Moved to Warez.
Kind of found that Americans didn't like bullfighting. And my guess for that
is because like we like parody and the bullfighter almost always beats the bull.
And he also found, like you know, just whatever, Americans are disgusted
with bullfighting but they really like equal animals or perceived equal animals to go against
each other, so wanted to sell tickets. Started throwing this animal with that
animal, and he actually bought the tiger. I think the tiger had killed
one of its trainers, which is a common theme here their their zoos,
and then they killed the trainer. They don't want to just kill the animal
because that's a waste of money, so you sell it to Felix Robert and
he'll he'll fight it against an animal and and warez. So that's it.
Felix Robert is he the He's one master of this spectacle. So there's a
guy named Daniel Boone. That guy Daniel Boone, No, but he named
himself after that. I think he uh, he was a promoter, vaudeville
promoter. These guys used to like just make up names to make them sound
cool. Daniel Boone was a big figure at the time, so he was
one. He's the guy that staged the bear versus bull, bear versus lion
and bull versus bear fight. And then you had a another promoter that I
think this guy is really interesting. This a guy named Billy Clark. He's
a African American guy moved to Mexico as a boxer. Couldn't find a white
opponents in the United States because they were started to be segregation in boxing at
that point, so moved to Mexico, gets there, finds it. At
that point, Mexicans didn't really care about boxing. It wasn't one of their
big sports. So he's like, okay, well, I'm down here,
how do I make money? Starts fighting bulls, starts fighting bears, starts
fighting lions, and he'd actually get in the cage with them. Now,
I think most of the time they're drugged, but there are some instances where
the bear will just like rip into them. So yeah, but he's one
promoter. There's a guy Bill Badger. He's an Aboriginal Australian guy. He's
the guy that owned the elephant, or he trained the elephant that's going to
fight fight all the bulls. So they're just these wild ass characters from all
over the world coming together. It sounds like the common thread among these guys
are hustlers. Many they're they're trying to make their way through this world,
you know, and and they're desired or profession or initial professions not working out.
It's like well, I guess I'll just make these animals fight each other,
or hell, I'll fight them. Yep. Well, I mean it's
as old as time. I mean, the Super Bowl is this Sunday,
and that's the most like refined, perfected version of you fight you, and
we will pay to watch it. Yeah, it just keeps getting a little
more sanitized and more acceptable to the palette of our our I don't know,
our evolved sensibilities. I mean, so death, obviously, we hope is
not in play in modern sports, although it is, but back in the
day it was to the death. So I don't know, Give us a
few of these matchups, give us a give Kevin and Danny, because I
actually remember who the I'm pretty sure I remember who the king of them all
is when it comes to animal fighting. But throw out a couple of matchups
and let these guys place their bets and see how they do well. On
the cover, it's got a picture of one of these buffalo bull fights.
Who do you guys think would win that? WHOA? So it's like an
actual by Yeah, the buffalo bull I think, I mean, I would
say the buffalos. I think it's heavier, but I don't know. But
the bulls more agile, and I think their horns are long more too.
You could really gore. I'll go ahead and guess buffalo. I'm gonna guess
bull. I think the bull is more athletic. So the buffalo is one
of the ones that's going to take out the bull. The bull's a pretty
strong contender, but this the buffalo, almost every fight is going to win.
I actually did a speech on this, like at a history conference on
one of these fights. Sounds but where were you when I was in college?
I might have finished, Yeah, I might have completed my studies.
But after I did that, a lady who was a rancher came up to
me and she said, I had buffalo and sometimes they would get in the
pen with the bulls, and she said, there was one instance where the
buffalo tried to head butt head butt a bull, but it happened to like
hit right on the bulls horn and so like the bull's horn went right through
its forehead. So that's one instance where the bull win. But like the
insta killing. Yeah, otherwise the buffalo's coming. Why is the buffalo winning?
Just I think it's a weight. I think it's just a lot of
times, these bulls think that the buffalo's defenseless because the buffalo is just sort
of chilling there. But the buffalo, like it's the way it builds momentum
is different. Like a bull needs to charge sort of lower its head and
ram but the way buffalo does it is it uses its front legs and like
it's just massive head. So the bull will come in just charging. Then
you'll get the buffalo like pivoting at the last second, hitting it and it's
just like all that weight comes in and the buffalo's got a thicker skull.
So I think that's what okay, But does how does the buffalo get the
kill shot on the bull with its horns? So it in these instances or
do they stomp them to death. I'll just give you a couple ones,
like they they don't kill in the first couple of fights. Basically, the
buffaloes just get I'm sorry, the bull gets beat up so much it gets
grows tired and just runs away or goes to sleep in the ring. But
there's one and some of the stuff with this is like this is the time
of yellow journalism, so you kind of have like a lot of it's sensationalized,
so you kind of have to piece through some things. But supposedly in
some of these buffalo bull fights, like the buffalo hit the bull so hard
it flew out of the ring. I don't yeah, like it one it
it like broke through the fence and like the bull kind of spills out the
other side. So cash, good question, real quick. I'm sorry you
said sensationalized. Yes, even like back then sensationalized, because I feel like
our media is sensationalized now, well it's always been sensationalized, but late eighteen
hundreds, early nineteen hundreds that's kind of famous for like sensationalism and journalism,
Like it's even more sensational than now, like that sort of like peak sensationalism.
Incredible, And there wasn't as much, I much photography at all,
so I think you're talking about hand drawn reenactments and then you you want to
sell pamphlets or papers, right, So we do have some photographs, and
the book's got a couple photographs, like one with the elephant fighting the bull
and the cover again the buffalo fighting the bull. But there were a couple
videos of these things, so like the elephant fighting the bull, they took
a video of that. The Mexican police seized it, so I don't know
if that exists somewhere. If you go on YouTube, there's a couple buffalo
versus I'm sorry, bull versus lion fights. What supposedly one is from Warez,
but I think the person who posted it got it wrong. I think
that one's actually from Spain. But yeah, you can find so there are
videos and photos, just not as many as I would like. I'd like
to put more of the photographs. Cool, all right, This is our
buddy Bradley AO. He is a friend of mine and friend of the show,
front of the station for for a long time. His new book Roman
Spectacle on the Rio Grande Borderland animal fights at the turn of the century.
I do have a text question. If you put them in the ring,
what is it that makes them fight? Why wouldn't they just coexist? So
a lot of times they would, they'd get in there and they'd just be
like, I don't want to deal with this guy, and at that point
they would just like start poking them. There's a this is something they would
actually do to bulls in traditional bullfights, like if the bull didn't want to
fight they would like stick firecrackers in him. They have this like poker that
would stick firecrackers somehow and just sort of force him to do that. So
they they would provide incentives, like for the elephant. I don't think the
bulls wanted anything to do with the big elephant, so they tied a flag
around it to like basically simulate the you know, the little mattador k or
whatever. So something has to defend itself if this thing is charging at him.
Yeah, So sometimes they would go at it, but other times they'd
have to sort of prod them. So the first chapter is called The Lion,
the Bear and the Bull. Let's get some lions and bear action going
here? What do we got here? So? Are we taking bets or
you just want me to well? Who was against who? Was it?
All three of them against each other? Is that? So it was a
trifect It started out with the started out with the lion and the bear,
then it went to the bear in the bull, then it went to the
lion in the bull. Sounds like a C. S. Lewis novel,
Yeah, I know right, and the wardrobe So lion versus bear happened?
Yes, So I'll give the background story. It's a guy, this is
the Daniel Boone guy. He was a vaudeville circus performer. Like, he
had this lion thing that he would his wife would stick her head in the
lion's mouth. He would have lions riding tricycles, things like that, and
he had one particularly vicious line named Parnell who killed a trainer. And so
he's got to get rid of this lion. Doesn't want to waste the money,
so tries to to set up a bear versus lion fight in California.
At this point, the ASPCA Humane Society, they're up and running like people
think that that's modern, but no, that was in the eighteen hundreds.
They wouldn't let it happen. California canceled it. Tries to fight in Texas,
Texas wouldn't let it happen, and then decides to go down to Mexico.
So Innuava Laredo, across the border from Laredo, and yeah, he's
sixties two in the cage. So the bear a guy named Ramadon is what
they called it. The background of him is a little shady, but like
or I couldn't couldn't tell for sure, but one stories he killed a trainer.
Another one is a hunter just found him in the California wilderness but threw
him together in a cage in Laredo. What kind of bear grizzly? It
may be one of the last California golden bears. So which is a type
of grizzly Okay? And what kind of lion? I guess I don't know.
A five hundred and fifty pound African lion? Yeah, all right,
boys, who do you got? Grizz bear? African lion? Man pro
handicappers Kevin Turner and like, the weight and power thing seems to play a
big factor in this. Man. I'm gonna go with bear, brown,
grizzly bear. Yeah, brown bear, ye bear. Yeah, Yes,
it's the weight factor a lot of times, not all the time, but
a lot of times you can tell with the weight and uh yeah, the
grizzly bear, they go at it. The lion like basically grabs them,
tries to like use its uh rear pause to rip out the bear's guts,
but but bears hide was too thick. The bear grabbed him, uh and
then sort of they said, broke his ribs. Broke the lion's ribs I
don't think that's the case. But did a bear hug threw it in a
somersault? Hit lion, hit the side the cage and knocked it, knocked
it out. Some people are texting in a few questions like they have some
matchups. Should we take some more text matchups and see if Brad can handicap
those two? Absolutely? I bet we'll stick around for a minute. Sure,
Brad, I bet you are a fascinating first tender date. Surprisingly,
women don't find this fast. What, No, they don't find it interesting
at all. Yeah, we have a lot of texts, including some matchups.
Let's get to him. We even have he needs to be a weekly
guest, and then we also have checking out until animal fighting is done.
Not an interesting topic that happens. You can't please everyone. That was a
girl on Tinder. It just said, girl, this is our buddy,
brad fulsome the world's leading expert on interspecies animal cage fight. We'll screw around,
play some talkbacks. Yeah, follow up anything we missed out on,
and maybe present a couple of animal fights to Brad and see where his head
at. His head's out. We'll do that next right here. In ninety
seven, to one the freak