welcome to the ryzen above podcast my name
is david haas and uh today's special guest is kevin ross or better known as the dasol assassin
uh he's a world champion in muay thai and uh he's i'm honored to have him on my podcast so
uh kevin uh my podcast is pretty much i kind of told you a little bit about it um it's
about it's called rising above and it's about people telling their life stories to help others
you know maybe overcome some of the same scenarios so um i guess with that for without further ado
would you mind kind of sharing your life story a little bit just sum up 40 years for you real
quick well start off in in your childhood and uh yeah so i was born in uh reading pennsylvania
um you know at the time up until i was eight i had what many would consider the
picture perfect american dream life you know mother and father loving mother and father
brothers and sisters um you know good job they had good jobs we lived in nice homes
nice neighborhoods everything was great you know everything um kind of just felt like that
like a dream well i didn't know any difference so but then i think about eight years old is when
my parents divorced and we went from everything being perfect to just everything being destroyed
and living in poverty and living on welfare and growing up and living in people's basement
basements being basically not homeless but fortunately my mom had some friends that
helped us out for the first few years and just went from moving to place to place
school to school i never really had any uh foundation you know any anytime we would move
to a new place i knew it was only a matter of time before we'd be ripped away i i can't even count
how many schools i went to or how many different places we lived over just the you know up until i
was about 13.
When i was 12 13 i think is when i went back to live with my father and he he was uh
he was in real estate you know and he was always living in these giant houses while we were living
in poverty you know and i didn't never really uh never really viewed him as like the problem you
know i was always always kind of blame i think i'd blame him put the blame on my mother um whereas
now i can look back and think why didn't you take care of us you know we're living in basements and
you're living in these giant houses by yourself you know it doesn't doesn't really make much
sense but i was just you know happy to be out of that situation where i was living in one room
with with five other people and you know that that thinking the grass is greener on the other side
was uh quickly realized that was not the case and um we actually i thought once i moved in
with my father everything was going to be cool but about two to three months later ripped us out
right again that's when we moved to vegas that was 90 i think summer on 95.
So i grew
up i feel like i grew up in vegas even though you know i moved there when
i was 14 15 but that's really where i developed a lot and you know a lot of a lot of bad
seeds were planted there but even though they had been my my whole life really but being in that
place at that time you know was like like the perfect storm of just bad bad bad scenarios going
on so you know i grew up partying and drinking and wasting my life away pretty much i felt like
i was a full-blown alcoholic by the time i was 18 drank every day pretty much was physically
dependent on it to a degree and uh i always had this i wouldn't call it a dream of
fighting it was more like i was always very intrigued by boxers i loved martial arts movies
i loved bruce lee stuff like that and it always it always piqued my interest but i was i was
a very shy person and then non-confrontational non-violent very physically aggressive as far as
like sports goes but i was never never violent in any way you know i didn't i hated i actually hated
violence it like really bothered me a lot um but i was always really intrigued but when i'd see
people fight especially in the ring you know i just just thought you know what what is that like
to be in there with all these people watching you get in a fight you know it's
like blew my mind and um you know it always piqued my interest and i
thought maybe i'd give it a try one day but never really uh put any serious thought into
it then uh that summer we moved to vegas in 95 i um i was watching espn at two o'clock in
the morning and a muay thai fight came on and i'd never seen anything like it i was blown
away by watching these guys in the ring and do something so vicious and brutal and violent
but so pure and beautiful i was i was just mesmerized by it and uh you know i at that
time i was like if i ever do try to fight or or train or anything like that that's going to be
it that's what i'm going to do i was hooked but but as i said i was busy partying and not really
focused on those kinds of things so i just put in the back of my head like everything else um
but anytime i would see a fight it it would pop up i'm like oh yeah muay thai and i would think
about it and i'm like maybe i'll i'll give it a try one day it was always it was always that thing
like maybe maybe one day maybe one day maybe one day and the years that go by and um the partying
got worse and events in my life got worse friends dying and going to jail and all these kinds of
things and and you know that was always like this uh knocking me in the back of the head like
there's this thing you want to do and you're not doing it because you're too busy partying you're
too um concerned with whether you can do it or not you know letting fear dictate your life and
that almost made it worse because i it's like i had this thing that i wanted to do and i had to
drown it by drinking more and parting more and ignoring it more and and just the worse it got
it like kept coming back and um were you in uh go ahead were you worried at at that time about
losing some of the friends that you had well i i had i had lost i had lost friends and um you know
that wasn't uh it was more i guess it was more the thing where you're just like you just kind of
accept the fact that you're not gonna live very long you know i never i never thought i was gonna
live to see the year 2000 i just had this date in my head like it's not gonna i'm never gonna
see the year 2000 either way i'm not gonna live in this world very long so you didn't want to it's
not that i didn't want to it's just i just kind of accepted that it wasn't gonna happen you know
it's more like it's only a matter of time you know and instead of taking advantage of the years that
i had i i decided to piss them away and just keep partying that more like what's the point kind of
thing you know you know ironically i almost got in a fatal car accident new year's going into 2000
and um you know we almost drove right into head-on traffic and it just like flashed in my head like
well this is it this is the moment and we just barely narrowly miss getting plowed by
a semi truck by inches you know and then i'd like to say that was a wake-up
call for me but it was more like well that's when you were supposed to die and you
didn't so now what you know and from that point um progressively a lot of things increasingly got
worse um you know i almost almost um i got pulled over doing like 120 on the highway drunk off out
of my mind one night and uh you know i had like a a month-long series of wake-up calls like that
and they were all like sequential and um you know a friend a friend diane a friend going to jail
myself almost going to jail and it was really like i felt like life was beating me over the head
saying if you don't wake up you you're done you know and either you're gonna listen or that's
gonna be it and so like when when i got pulled over and i actually for whatever reason the the
cop let me go you know i vowed to never drink and drive ever again which was great which i should
never do in the first place but um that kind of helped in a way because that really limited my
options for going out and partying so that that that kind of helped me start to go on that road
of of of not going out every night not partying and every night and then i think because of that
the more i started thinking about this dream i had of of um of fighting and actually my one of
my friends passed away in um uh 1999 and he was he was the only person i ever told that i will
i had this dream of fighting you know i never i never even expressed the desire to fight to
anybody and we were just hanging out one night and i don't even know why i told him he just kind of
asked me we're just having all those conversations late in the evening smoking weed and drinking 40s
and he's like you know what like what do you want to do what do you want to do with your life and
you know to me at the time it just felt like a ridiculous question because i didn't think i
was going to live long like what do you mean what do you want to do with your life like
that's like asking what you would do what do you want to do when you get on the moon it's
not going to happen so what do you care and then you know i actually like sat there and thought
about it and then you know i i was hesitant but i told him because i thought i was just going to
laugh at me and i think if you knew me back then you probably would have laughed at me too just
just because of the way i was and and among the drinking party and all that other stuff but um
you know i told him and expecting him to laugh he was just like well why don't you do it i don't
understand why you don't do it and it really um you know really hit me like why don't i do it and
i started kind of telling him like well you know i have to if i'm going to do it i want to do it
all the way and i'd have to stop hanging out and partying and you know and even at that time
i was 18 19 i thought i was too old to start and he's like you know what man he's like those
are all those there are those are all excuses but really you're just you're just you're just lying
to yourself it's like if anybody can do it you can and i think you should and i i i let myself
kind of think about it for a minute like believe that it was possible but um you know
we're right back to drinking and forgot all about it but but that really like set with
me you know and then when he passed away um he had a heart defect and uh needed a
transplant and didn't get it and when he passed away in 99 uh i promised myself i was
like he didn't get to live he didn't get to he didn't get to try going after a dream and i'm
too scared to do this why because i'm a coward i i have all the uh uh chances to do it even if
i have all these reasons it's just because i'm afraid to i'm afraid to fail i'm afraid to try and
i i i made myself a promise i had problems to him that that would go after this but unfortunately
his i mean his death really sent myself and all of my friends uh even farther down this bad road we
were already on we were already on it but that was just like throwing uh gasoline on the fire
you know and um through that you know things get things got really bad uh but but again that
uh that series of events and those that kind of month-long time that was going into uh um what
was that 2000 2000 2001 uh and finally i just uh made up a decision and so 2003 is when
i started so and going into 2003 um i was talking to my dad one night um this
was like must have been the beginning of january of 2003 and he uh we're just having this
like deep conversation one night hanging out and he was like why why don't you tell me
something you've never told anybody and i'm like well what does that mean like what like i
killed somebody and i didn't tell anybody i'm like i don't even know what to say to that that's
a pretty that's a pretty open-ended question yeah i know like i don't i don't know where you go
with that but um you know that that that idea of wanting to fight was just it was like pressing
into my brain and i was trying i was trying to think of something else i could tell him because
i'm like that's so stupid like it's so stupid it's the dumbest thing ever like that's so dumb
why would you say that but i just couldn't think anything like times going by painfully
slow uh and and i was like uh well i i want to fight and he's like what you want to fight what
do you mean you want to fight like in the ring and i was like yeah i was like i've always
wanted to do this and uh you know i kind of told him about that and told him about how i
promised my friend moe who passed away i was like i made a promise to him that i would do that
and like it's been two years and all i've done is the opposite you know i've i've been wasting my
life and i just can't do that anymore and uh you know he made a deal with me he's like all right if
you quit drinking i'll take care of your training because that was that was a big uh thing that
was holding me back i'm like i can't afford to i can't afford classes i can't afford training i
don't even i just can't like there's no way among every other reason i i didn't think i could do it
he's like well i can't do anything about all that other stuff but if you promise to quit drinking
and and dedicate yourself to this i'll take care of your training expenses and um i was drinking a
40 at the time i was like okay cool deal and uh he was like what about the drink that's in your hand
and i'm i'm thinking well we could start tomorrow now i'm like halfway through and then i think
you know i i didn't even argue because even then i kind of knew you know it's like you can't you
can't put things off anymore you know you gotta you gotta start now and do whatever you can right
now to start going down that road so poured out the 40 then most in my hand and two days later
i was in the gym and that's where it all began wow that's incredible um so the moment that you
decided to kind of change your life um that that i didn't i didn't really know where to go with
that um i'm sorry oh you know it was it was it was a progressive thing because because it's like
one of those things like like how do you know or when did it happen but but it was it was a it was
a series of events a series of years it was it was everything from the first day of learning about it
which was almost 10 years prior um in you know um over the years you spent you spent 10 years
from the point where you found out about muay thai to when you actually started yeah so so
yeah it took me 10 years to actually do it you know i i mean when i learned about i was
like oh yeah this is this is dope i want to do this but just like most people when they
want to do something they let every excuse in the world keep them from going after it i'm not
gonna make it uh it costs too much i'm too small i'm too old i'm too i'm two whatever whatever
it is i i was too everything to me and then you know when when i finally realized you know my
friends passed away i was like you're never going to know unless you do it you can you can sit here
and debate with yourself and question everything and list all these reasons about why why it's
pointless why you're never going to achieve but you're never going to know unless you do it
you know every single person that's ever achieved anything has had reasons not to and excuses
not to and and things that have held them back especially things along the way you know once you
decide that's that's probably the easiest part it only gets more difficult but once you're kind of
set on your uh path um that that's the easy part following through with it and going through the
work and the endless endless work and pain and sacrifice and failure and that's that's really
where it gets difficult um so when you decided to you know focus all your energy into doing martial
arts you obviously had to make a life choice to stop drinking and stop partying hanging out
i'm assuming with some of the friends you were hanging out with that kind of led you down that
path um what do those relationships look like afterwards well that was one of my biggest fears
was losing all of my friends you know these were people i'd spent almost the last decade with
going to school with after school partying just every day i mean it was my my family basically
and i had such a big fear of losing them and you know fortunately none of them i don't know
i don't think i don't know how many of them took me seriously but none of them were like banished
me because i wasn't hanging out anymore i thought i was an idiot they were just like oh yeah
that's cool you know i wish you were hanging out more but you're not there you know so in
that in that regard they were they were very um supportive of this but i think particularly
once they really saw how dedicated i was to it and that it was something i was doing i'm
sure most of them thought it was still just a uh kind of a temporary thing like eventually he's
gonna stop and realizes kind of a a hobby or something like that you know so for me to still
be doing this uh almost 20 years later is pretty crazy but yeah they were all they were all they
were all cool and very uh very supportive of that you you kind of sound like you're a all-or-nothing
kind of person yeah i am so that goes for bad things and good things i can tell yeah so
it's a that that that's kind of always been my thing like if i'm gonna do something and i'm
gonna do it like if i'm gonna drink i'm a drink if i'm gonna train i'm gonna train you know if i'm
gonna be focused you know i think i think like a lot of us um we don't realize that that energy can
be pointed towards something positive you know i think i think energy in itself is doesn't have an
emotion behind it it's just a matter of what you put it towards you know and i i always put things
in the context of fighting because it's like when you when you lose a fight that can be the greatest
thing in the world if you use it correctly or it can be the worst thing in the world if
you if you let it it's just a matter of uh what you choose to do with it and uh i was i
think i was fortunate to have to face a lot of those things early on and then the fact that i did
start so late in life and had already gone through so many things it really helped me pull out of
those things into the proper context and be able to use them as a benefit as instead of a detriment
you know i got destroyed my first fight like not even not even funny oh bad i got destroyed but you
know it was it was i used it to catapult myself to where i am today just that having that really
bad first first fight and that was kind of uh that kind of set the tone for everything like once
i had i had that loss you know i had a few moments afterwards or maybe even a day of like oh this
isn't for me i thought it was you know everything because everything up to that point so it was nine
months from the time i started to my first fight my train like i i i i came to fighting like
like a like a fish to water man i was just like i was picking it up like i'd been doing it
my whole life you know people thought i'd been doing my whole life that watched me train and
i was like yeah i'm i'm on the road to success here like everything's working everything's
everything's working out i i had like zero hurdles no injuries no problems no nothing everything was
i was i was like dedicated and focused i'm like oh this is what happens when you're dedicated
and focused everything works out everything's great and then that happened it was like hit
the brakes man and then it's like that's it's not always going to work out the way you wanted
to but but what i realized in that moment was are you only going to do this if you're
winning are you only going to do this when it's easy are you only going to
do this when everything's working out and i'd i'd answer those questions and the
answer for me was no i love to do this even if i never can win a fight ever i love to do
this and i'm gonna train my ass off to be as good as i can possibly be because nobody else
can tell me what that is you know i might not be the best in the world i might not be a champion
i might not even be in the best in this gym but i can still be the best i can be and i
don't know what that is unless i keep going and i refuse to give up and i refuse to let a
loss or a bad day or a bad life hold me down um so would you have any advice for people
who are you know trying to get into shape or maybe they're chasing some sort of goal to uh just
improve their life i mean i i like to tell people just don't give up keep trying yeah even it's
the easiest it's i'd say it's the simplest like everything's everything is very simple it's just
not easy you know like don't give up continually keep your eyes focused on the goal and adjust
make the adjustments put the work in you know failures in themselves are our lessons in
learning and you're learning how not to do something as long as you keep striving and
working and sacrificing towards that goal you're probably going to get there either way
you're going to be in a better place than you were i think i think we need to make sure that we're
being very honest with ourselves because a lot of us say that we really want something but we're
also not doing everything we can to get there you know we're making exceptions we're taking
shortcuts or days off or that kind of thing it's very it's very difficult to hold hold
yourself accountable you know and that's why uh it helps to have somebody that can hold you
accountable with you somebody that's a a partner or just someone that that's checking in on you
um i i was fortunate in the sense that i did feel like i had already wasted so much of my life and
so much of my time that once i started i felt like i felt like everything in my life since 2000
has been extra credit like i don't have this isn't time to waste is that you're not supposed
to be here anyway so it was in that sense it was pretty easy for me to say this is going to this
is helping or this is hurting and i'm only going to do things that are going to help it was never
even a debate in my mind like oh maybe i'll go out and hang out with the boys tonight you know
it's saturday i've trained really hard it was no is that is if it's either going to help me or it's
going to hurt me it it's one of the other you know so if you once you put it in those terms it makes
things really clear i think i think the problem is we're just not honest with ourselves i mean most
people know what they need to do to be successful or at least they know they're doing things that
are slowing them down they just don't want to admit it and and they don't want to put the work
in it and that's okay but you got to be honest with yourself about what you really want you can't
just say you want it but then when something comes up you change your mind it's got to be it really
does have to be a life and death thing like this is my life this i have to do this or i
die right regardless of what it is whether it's like going to school or you know whatever
goal like i just uh i just ran a 50 mile race um yeah i know it was the dumbest like
smartest decision i've ever done like i actually just lost another toenail from
it today but um you know like having to train for that run taught me a lot of diligence
i've never trained like that for anything and having to wake up every day and you know go
for those really long runs in preparation for that race you know kind of set the tone for for
my life um yeah for the for that period of time so yeah it's a you know a um really great
motivational speaker eric thomas he always puts he's like what's your why like why are you
doing this and like do you want it bad enough to lose some sleep do you want it bad enough not
to hang out with your friends do you want it bad enough to skip a meal do you want it
bad enough to give up your job give up a girlfriend that's only you can answer that
but the clearer that answer is to you the the easier it's going to be because then it's not
a you're not sitting there trying to figure out if you want to give this up for that or if you
want to sacrifice this because really you're sacrificing for the unknown you're sacrificing
things that you might not get to that place and um that's just uh that's on the individual
and i think the the more you can ask yourself that question and the more clear the answer is
the more likely you are to um at least limit the things that are holding you back you
know and i think with uh you know fighting makes things for me at least it makes things
very very easy because someone's trying to hurt me and could possibly end my life if i'm
not training accordingly like they're trying to end me and uh you know when you when you put
in those terms it make it makes it pretty clear whether you want to go hang out with your
friends on the weekend or whether you want to train and they think if uh if if we would
put things in that context even if even if the outcome isn't as severe uh as life and death um
it makes it a little bit easier to figure out what is helping you and what is hurting you right
um you said earlier that you just stopped drinking you were at a point where you was like nope i'm
done with that and i'm going to start training in muay thai and you you had said that you you drank
and you had shakes um you would have to drink every single day because you had shakes what was
that like ah i don't know you know what i think because i was so focused it was just like it's kind of like when you're uh training for a
fight and dieting and doing all this stuff you don't want to do it's not it's not like oh this
sucks it's just well this is what i have to do to get there it's it takes the emotion out of it
not that that makes it easier it just takes the emotional like like dread and like oh this
is painful i'm like yeah it's painful it's supposed to be painful it's supposed to suck like
this suckiness is what gets you there you know strange enough that actually you know for
i'd say the beginning half of my career you know i went through that just like
anybody else does waking up at five six in the morning like [ __ ] dude like this is
awful like i don't want to do this i used to basically um want to get through the training
aspects so much that i could get to the fight and then one day i i just had this
realization like you're you're you're rushing not rushing but but wanting to so badly to get
to the fight you're just trying to get through training as quickly as possible like get the
work in get to the fun thing like all of this is the fun thing i'm like that fight is five
seconds right compared to you know it's like 99 of our career is spent in in in training and spent
out of the ring you know that you're you're trying to skip over all that like you got to enjoy you
got to enjoy the suck it's part of the process yeah and like once that shifted in my mind it
changed everything it changed everything like you need to learn to enjoy this even the
really difficult stuff because this is all part of the process yeah and if this that
once you realize this is what's going to get you to where you want to go you can learn
to enjoy the most awful agonizing painful process there is because you know where it's going
to get you and it actually it becomes the opposite it's like the harder it is like the more i want to
do it because i know other people aren't willing to go through this sacrifice in order nor did i
have this you know and i was like i wish i would have done that from the beginning but you know
it's like you don't want to you don't want to fast forward through any parts of your life even
the really bad stuff because because looking back you're gonna realize you missed out on on so much
right um okay well so moving forward um you uh you're a motivational kind of figure right yeah
i guess try i try to be i try to be you know i i i understand that i didn't really
have that coming up and i i know how powerful and impactful it is to have somebody
in your life and i have i've been fortunate to have people in my life like that so i
really do my best to i guess be open honest and transparent with all the ups and downs
and of everything and um you know this sport quite literally saved my life and then and i know
how um positive it has been and i want to share that in any way that i can and that has nothing
to do with with fighting because i know that these lessons that i've learned and this knowledge that
i have uh translates to to all aspects of life not just uh ring sports i would say everything in the
ring translates to life yeah without question it puts it under almost under a magnifying glass
so again moving forward with your life um do you have any ambitions or aspirations to help
um i'll be a motivational speaker or help kids or yeah i mean that's that's that's probably one
of the the biggest things i would like especially you know helping the youth um and and you know
people with uh bad circumstances and situations that is really what i would love most to do
as far as how i'm going to do that and what i'm going to do i don't really know this is all
i just try to stay on the path that i'm on and navigate it as i'm going and uh take it take
it take it where it goes you know i don't i never i never planned any of this out it was
just uh one day to the next uh trying to stay on the right course and adjusting as i go i don't
uh i don't know i don't know where this leads you know i i try to take every day as it comes
and live every moment uh as it comes as well okay fair enough um well i don't really have any
further questions about any of that stuff um i do have one question and one statement i'd like to
make about your wife gina we all know about that um and it's real unfortunate what happened to her
and i know i know you probably don't want to talk about it too much so i'm not going to ask you too
much about it but uh thanks oh you i'm sure you've heard a crap ton about it i for one just wanted
to you know let you know that i support her and uh you know there's i know a bunch of other people
that do as well so i appreciate it yep and uh yeah i'm not gonna ask anything about it all
right but better to leave it on said yeah well i appreciate i appreciate that
man yeah and i appreciate you coming on and i know it you know it took 30 minutes of
your time but you know i don't know my pleasure it's my pleasure i'm nervous as crap doing this
that's her that's sorry it's okay to be nervous um so yeah it was a real honor to sit down and
talk to you and have you come on um i'm gonna send you an email because i want to send you a couple
shirts and stuff okay so all right man well thanks for coming on the ryzen above podcast and uh it's
been great having you thank you appreciate it you
