From Prison to Topeka Fighter: Transformed Through Faith | John "Iron Man" Cantrell

So Iron man? That's where the nickname came from. That's crazy. Yeah, I'm 35 years old and I'm 10 and 0, with nine knockouts what, yeah? The only way to win at gambling is to not gamble. Yeah, and like Lazarus, jesus Christ rose my son from the dead.

John Iron man Cantrell, thanks for joining us. Let's go. Come on, man. Welcome to the studio, bro Ironman Cantrell. Give us a little backstory about John.

Oh man, that's a pretty loaded question, partner. Yes, it is Just a regular guy who was fallen and found Jesus brother. Yeah.

Let's go Come on Lost and then found Preach. Wow, yeah, are you from Topeka? No, I grew up on Pomona Lake by way of Wichita, kansas. We moved up when my dad, when Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, moved their accounting in-house. So that was dad's opportunity to get out of the city and he'd always wanted to live on a lake. So we moved to Pomona, moved onto the lake, and then he went to work in Burlington every day and I went to school in Linden for K-8 and then high school in Burlington.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then college at Wichita State and Emporia State and then graduated from Emporia State with a bachelor's in political science and history. Then, 18 months later, I was in federal prison for distribution of methamphetamine.

What.

Wow, I knew you had quite the backstory. I was wondering if you were comfortable getting into it, but I'd love to hear it.

Yeah, so after graduating college. So I was going to be a high school history teacher that taught kids that Christianity was a crutch for weak minded people that couldn't solve their own problems.

Okay, yeah, wow.

And uh, I guess God had different plans.

Wow, wow, yeah. How'd you go from graduating emporia state to selling meth prison like what, what? What happened in there?

uh. So addiction started in high school oh really you know, it started with the, the alcohol. I never really felt like I fit in. I never really felt like I belonged. Um, you know, I think that most people that aren't christian can explain this sensation of having this hole inside of them that never feels like it can be filled. Um, you know, I think that most people that aren't Christian can explain the sensation of having this hole inside of them that never feels like it can be filled.

Sure.

So you try to fill it with whatever you think will make you happy, whether that be money or or accolades, right, right, you know, nice jobs, or drugs, or sex or women or whatever, or drugs or sex or women, or whatever you know. And I went hard and fast, trying to fill that hole with whatever I thought could make me feel complete. And unfortunately, the more you stuff in there, the bigger the hole gets. It never gets full. So, yeah, yeah, I went hard and fast in the wrong direction. Wow.

So you got started. You said alcohol in high school, how did you get into meth? I mean that's quite a jump, too right.

Yeah, it is. So I started getting prescribed amphetamine salts for attention deficit disorder when I was in middle school and I quickly found out Is that a normal prescription for that? It was in the 90s, man. I mean, if you grew up in the 90s, that was. Ritalin was the answer to everything.

OK.

If your kid had behavioral issues.

Wait, is that what Ritalin is?

It's amphetamine salts, so amphetamine salts is a all ADHD medicine is are are basically based out of off of amphetamines.

Yeah.

Right, sure, and then if you do another process to them, you can create other amphetamines. Wow, but that's not. I mean, I don't really know how it works, but I, you know, I never felt comfortable being me.

I never felt comfortable in my own skin. I always had an identity issue and I found that I could blend into my surroundings, um to basically hide, to feel comfortable. You know I was a chameleon and um. You know, my dad told me when I was younger and I say this a lot but the people you surround yourself with you want to know what kind of person you are. Look at your three best friends.

Right, that's who you are as a human being?

Yeah, um, he would tell me the people you surround yourself with.

You want to know what kind of person you are.

Look at your three best friends. That's who you are as a human being. Um, he would tell me, the people you surround yourself with. That's who you become, and it's so true.

And you know I, uh, I was terrified of success. You know I liked the idea that, you know, I always did well on my test scores and like I always had a lot of potential and everybody always saw a lot of potential in me, you know, and I I lived off that gratification there, um, but I was always terrified to actually try anything or do anything, cause if I failed, I, you know, everybody would know who the real me was. You know that I wasn't that smart and I wasn't that athletic and I wasn't that this or that or anything else.

Yeah, it feels like I was faking the whole time.

Right.

Yeah.

But you know when you live your, when you live life. If you live life completely devoted to yourself and yourself only then you're living a lie, because we weren't designed for that.

Right.

You know, while our flesh craves us to be selfish in every single way, we have a spirit that craves the opposite of that, and it wasn't until I found that out, until God decided to grace me with his presence and introduce himself to me through special revelation, and after that I knew.

There you go, man. You sound like a seminary student bro.

Come on now.

I'm in seminary too, so I'm right there with you. Uh, what? So how did you, how'd you get into prison?

So, uh I. So I graduated from college and I had done student teaching and I and I knew I didn't want to teach. That was not for me. So I got a job in Lawrence and I was making more money playing pool at the bars and at the pool halls than I was going to work.

And if you had a school, yeah, after I graduated. So you were working at a school during the day and then playing pool.

So while I was in college, my fiance at the time was on the dance team for Emporia state, and so she'd have to be there like all day.

Right and I had.

I had so many college credits built up that, like my last year, I only had to take like six or nine credit hours. So I was done with all my classes by like 10 o'clock in the morning.

Right.

So I would go to the Emporia rec center and play pool for free with this 98 year old man named John Brown and he was a stud pool player man and he taught me everything you know and we'd sit there and we'd run drills and he'd show me how to how to move the, how to move the rock around the green.

That's wild. Yeah, that's wild.

So for eight hours a day.

That's all I did play pool you're like I might as well make some money off this if I'm putting so much time into it well, and I've degenerate gambling runs in my family and I'm a.

I definitely picked up that bug. I'm a degenerate gambler wow yeah, the only way to win at gambling is to not gamble. Yeah that's what it seems to be, yeah it cost me a lot of money to learn that lesson.

Yeah, yeah let's clip that and that'll, that'll heal people right there, right, but I, uh, you know, I started. You know, if you hang around bars, let's say so. I graduated, I didn't want to teach. I, uh, I got a job at a loan agency and I moved to lawrence with a buddy of mine who was not probably the best person to spend my time with Um, and I just made a series of really bad decisions, you know. And uh, when I started using the drug to help me stay up or to concentrate or to do anything, you know, at first it felt like a miracle drug and then it was solving all my problems, um, and quickly it changed from that to I need this every day, all day, all the time right, um, wow, I had a substantial drug habit.

Substantial and to uh, to support that I sold drugs wow and I and I thought that I had found my dream job. Like this was what I was meant for, right.

You know everybody was always happy when I showed up and you know I uh, yeah, I don't know, I'm not going to glorify it because it's, it was a living hell. You know it didn't take too long before the shroud of that life. Like you know, people glamorize it in movies and in music, but it's foul and filthy and there's no loyalty and no love and everybody it's dog eat dog. Nobody cares about anybody else. You know, when you are, when you are in that, when you're, when you are that kind of addicted to things, to something, you name it it just can be any sin. When you are that kind of addicted to things, to something, you name it, it just could be any sin. When you're that kind of addicted to it, you are only self-serving only. And, uh, I tried every humanly way possible to stop. I went to rehab several times. Really, um, dude, if it could have been by, if, if you could be saved by love alone, right, my parents gave me a hundred times more than I needed.

Wow.

But it literally took God removing that from me for me to stop, because I could have never stopped by myself.

Yeah, Wow, that's crazy, yeah, so um.

I didn't really want to go to prison, so I, I, I, I went through a suicide attempt to be a vehicular accident, survived that without a scratch. Which there's no, there's no way there's no way I survived what I went through without getting hurt. Gave my life to Christ that night. Turned myself into the US Marshals early to life to Christ that night. Um turned myself into the U? S marshals early to start doing my time early Cause like I knew I was going to go Right.

Yeah.

And I wasn't doing myself any good on the streets, so I was like God wants me to go here. I'm going to go here, wow. And then he immediately started putting people in my life to lead me through the Bible.

What made you give your life to God that night? Was it the reality of like wow, I, I'm alive and I shouldn't be alive. There's something else going on, so that was kind of so.

It started in Alcoholics Anonymous. When I was in Florida. I went, I uh, I thought that changing my settings would help me Sure. And unfortunately, my biggest problem was with me everywhere. I went Right, yeah, that'd be, me. So I, uh, I got introduced to the idea of a higher power and Alcoholics Anonymous, and a lot of people don't know this. But Alcoholics Anonymous was founded on Christian principles. Um, if you read, if you read how Bill Wilson originally wrote it, it wasn't higher power, it was Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

Um, that's a whole nother caveat that we're not going to get into. But, um, I got introduced to the idea of a higher power there, right, cause I had finally found something that I couldn't best, right? So clearly there are powers out there greater than me, because if I can't best this, then it's right, it's greater than I am.

Yeah.

Right, I can't beat it. No matter what I do or what I try, I can't beat it. Um, so that still wasn't enough. You know, god, uh, god had to take me. God had to let me walk a little bit further down my own horror show before, uh, before introducing himself to me. So I, uh, I come home from Florida and I say the US Marshals arrested me, but they rescued me, they saved me. If they wouldn't have done what they did I would have, I would have killed myself, not even on purpose, just with drugs in general. Us Marshals rescued me.

I got released on pretrial release, decided my life was over and immediately relapsed. Right, but I still hadn't. You know, I'd gotten introduced to the idea of a higher power, but it wasn't. It didn't have a name yet. Sure, sure, yeah.

So I, uh, I go to the bar and I'm with my girlfriend and I'm loaded and my parents think I'm sober and all my friends and family think I'm sober and I'm not. I've relapsed on meth and I'm smoking heroin and taking meth, smoking methamphetamine, I basically anything that I could get to change my reality from what I was looking at, you know. So I leave the bar and I'm driving really fast and I just decided it's time and I let go of the steering wheel and I go off the road and car flips and tumbles and rolls and everything goes out the windows, except for me, and I didn't have my seatbelt on. Oh, my gosh, wow. When everything stopped moving, I was laying on the roof of the car. What? Yeah, I was laying on the roof of the car inside because it was upside down. Oh, okay, and uh, everything, everything had went out the windows and, like I hit so hard on the impact that the pack of marbles I had sitting on my lap exploded, because all there was was shredded tobacco and I was looking for a cigarette. I needed a cigarette.

Uh, so I get out and I'm walking down the road and my girlfriend, who had left literally just right behind me, took her a minute to catch up because I was driving so fast Like I was way over a hundred miles an hour and you know, I just totaled, totaled my car. It looked like somebody had stepped on a pop can and she picked me up and she took me home and I told my parents that I'd relapsed and that I'd tried to kill myself and I just wrecked the car that they'd got me and I wanted to die. I wanted my life to be over and I was tired of hurting all the people that I loved and that cared about me and that I just was a POS that was never going to do anything good in life. Um, and you know, my heart was broken and I'd been through a string of really bad relationships.

Uh, and I've always had a really big heart, you know cause? I've always really cared about people and, like even with the drugs, at one point in time, like in my insanity, I thought that I was helping people by being a good drug dealer or an honest drug dealer. Sure, you know, we'll tell. Not as bad as the other guys you know, we like to.

We like to put hierarchy on sin and say, oh well, your sin's worse than mine, it's all guilty of the same. What is the? What is the wage of sin? Death To all of it. All of it Doesn't matter what it looks like, the wages of sin are death, right? So I, my soul's broken and my heart's broken, and I go into my bedroom and I get down on my hands and knees and I, I'm just sobbing and I just want to die.

Um, but like something had happened on that walk when I started walking down the road and I was by myself, like I knew, I knew that I shouldn't have walked away from that. You know, I knew there was something there. Um, and then I got home, oh, it's already starting. Uh, come on. I got down on my hands and knees and uh, um, and I just cried out to the universe. I said I don't know what's out there, but whatever it is, please save me from myself. Like I can't, I can't stop, I'll never quit, I'll never quit. I need help, please, if you're out there, please, now's the time, help me.

And uh, that's when Christ revealed himself to me and I didn't hear it. Like you hear me talking to you now, but I heard it inside of me Three words, four words it's going to be okay, it's going to be okay. And then I felt this just, you know, like when you take a blanket out of a dryer on a cold day, I just felt like somebody wrapped a warm blanket right out of the dryer around me and you know it was like Paul on the road to Damascus. You know, he didn't. It didn't. It wasn't Allah, it wasn't Buddha, it wasn't, it was Lord has a name and his name is Jesus Christ.

You know, I knew exactly exactly who it was that I was talking to. I grabbed a Bible and I went to storm out. The police tried to arrest me for a DUI. The ambulance went out and they were like this kid's got a broken neck or a broken back or something, because there's no way you walk away from an accident like this. He's just so loaded on dope that he's so. They just found your car. Yeah, they found my car, my car, and then they showed where'd the guy go.

That was in his car right and then they showed up at my parents house because they tracked the tags back to that and the cops got there before the ambulance. And the cops trying to arrest me, and uh, the ambulance shows up, they go like you're crazy, he's going to the emergency room. Um, you're not taking him to jail. So they took me to the emergency room and you know it's funny, like after the accident, no matter how loaded I was, like I was completely sober and like after that moment on my knees, like completely sober. It was like God, just that was it.

Like you mean you never relapsed again after that? No, I relapsed you never relapsed again after that.

No, I relapsed, I have relapsed after that.

It was horrible you're saying like you were high, but then that yeah, I was.

Then I was, yes, sure, yeah, um. So, yeah, I, uh, I went to stormvale west and I took my bible with me in my, in my big book, and, uh, I opened the Bible and I'd opened it several times before, but I'd never understood anything that it said. It's like it was hidden to me, you know, or it was so simple Like I couldn't. I couldn't. There's no way that it can be this simple, that it can be this easy, right. And then I opened it after that and it's like the shroud had been removed.

It's like God knew what I would do if I, if I understood his word too early, like I would use it to hurt people or I would use it to for personal gain. I don't, I have no idea. I don't know why he picked the perfect time to to give me the sermon over his word. But all of a sudden it started making sense, uh, and I read the gospel of John and then I finished the new Testament and then I started over in the old Testament, ran all the way through Come on, let's go. Uh, a couple of times, a couple of times while I was down, but I, uh, I left there. We went home after the hospital, and I turned myself in a couple of days later and started doing my time.

Wow which how long did you spend in prison? Uh, I went in at 23. I got out at 26, about three years. Wow, how old are you now? 35. Okay, so I got home eight years ago, september.

Wow, wow, yeah, wild, wild. So your time in prison, you were already trying to get healthy. Make a change that was all I did.

That's all I did the whole time I was down.

Yeah, yeah.

That's that's. That was what it was. That was God's time to quiet the world and distractions in the world and get them away from me so that he could teach me about who he was.

It was kind of God's rehab for you. So when you get out, did you kind of hit the ground running? On rebuilding your life generally, to like your, your work, like, obviously you probably weren't selling drugs anymore. What do you like? How did you get? How'd you get from out of prison to? I mean, you mentioned before we started the camera. You have several businesses. You're obviously you're a fighter, which is how we heard of you and reached out. Yeah, how did, how did you get from there?

Just, picking up the cross and following him every day. Man, yeah, do that. A lot of 24s in a row, and some of my some is bound to work out.

Yeah.

You know he'll lead you right to where he wants you to be. Yeah, so I got home in 2016 and the whole time I was down, I prayed for God to put a good woman in my life. You know, because I'd been through a string of bad relationships, and my parents picked me up in Forest City, arkansas, and they drive me all the way back to 25th and California, the halfway house here in Topeka, and I opened the door on their car and I step out and I shook my wife's hand.

Oh, snap Wow.

Yeah, I met Taylor Hawks that day. A year later we were married. Wow.

Wow.

And we've been married since then. Wow, so we're going on eight years now. Let's go, come on, man. Yeah, we just celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary. Let's go, I'm seven years in too, on man, yeah. Yeah, we just celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary.

Let's go. I'm seven years in too. Come on, amen, we got through the rough seven.

Everybody says seven is rough.

I will say the first seven were pretty rough.

Yeah, they were pretty rough.

We're cresting that hill yeah yeah, yeah, let's go.

Life's good. Amen, amen, yeah, probably once or twice a week, and just be like man. Does it get any better than this? You know, and it's not it's not about things um or getting you know, it's just about you know the relationships that we have and the people that we have in our life so good, the connection that you share, the direction, what you're doing in your life.

I agree, yeah, I mean that's how I feel, our, my wife. I mean we've been through a lot as well, probably different, but I mean it's how I feel, just like man. We'll look at each other Like man. Our life's never been this good.

Yeah Right, I couldn't. I, I like you, think back to like when you were a young man before and you were like man and I want her to be this and this and that and this and that, and then what God gives you is so much more perfect than anything you could have ever imagined yourself. Yeah, you know.

Yeah, yeah, honestly, yeah, I'm not like I have different dreams than when I was 18. I'm not doing many of the things that when I was 18, I thought I would be doing. You know, not making the money I thought I'd be making when I graduated college with an engineering degree. But man, I just think the same thing, like man, life is. This is so much better than what I would have done myself by far. It's amazing.

Do you guys have kids? We do, we do. Ok, so we're going to, we're going to wrap up and catch you guys up because there's a couple of things that, yeah, got to come out. That got to come out. So, uh started falling away. Taylor wasn't a Christian when we met. Um, wasn't a Christian when we got married.

Things started. Problems started happening in the right, the storms of life started to hit. You know, taylor went through a really bad depressive state. Um, I started drinking. Uh, it took me about a month of drinking before I was smoking meth again. So I relapsed right after I'd celebrated five years. So, prison to where I was at five years sobriety, just picked up a five-year chip and then I went out and had a drink. Ouch, we split up, we split up. I went crazy, thought she was the devil, took everything that she owned and put it in our driveway after we just bought a new house and changed the locks. Wow, yeah, and then that was her way to find God. You know us splitting up and her having to go through that was her, was what drove her to God.

I should try that on my friends who don't know God lock them out of their house.

Well, I so, it wasn't just that. I mean, I uh, when I, when I use I, turn into a monster. You know, every people talk about oh yeah, he's a good guy, he's this and that. No man, I'm a. There are several people that I am the monster in their story. Sure, several, you know, and I've made amends to a lot and I you know there's still yet more to make amends too. Um, but I was a. I was an absolute monster to my wife, monster psychologically, uh, adultery, I mean really bad man.

I appreciate how you just kind of put it all out there man. You're like just owning your story.

You know what's funny, partner? That's really the key If you want to learn how to get past your problems in life and your issues. Put them out there. You know, God tells us if we want, if we want to air out that dirty laundry bring it out, bring it to light.

As long as I'm trying to figure it out by myself, I, I listen, I use every great idea that I had to try to solve my own problems right To follow my own navigation and that led me straight to federal prison. So once I realized that I maybe wasn't the best director of my own life yeah, yeah, you know God puts it on us. I think if we could openly talk about our sin, and and and and we, you know, we're, we're, we're as sick as our secrets. We're sick as our secrets. Yeah, the stuff we do. What does God say about stuff done behind closed doors? We're done in the night. It's going to be brought to the light sooner or later. The sooner we can bring that stuff to the light, it means he doesn't have to. He doesn't have to burn it out of us when we get our trial by fire.

Yeah, you know, yeah. So, man, yeah, obviously it seems like you're in a pretty good place now. I mean, it seems like you're, you're healthy, you've been sober for a while I just celebrated five years again in september let's go. Let's go celebrating with a drink, this time, no no, no, no.

I have finally came to the realization that I am highly allergic to alcohol. Right one little drink and I turn into a massive a-hole. Yeah, so I just avoid it completely.

That's great, yeah I know, I think a lot of people and and even in maybe less extreme situations, people you know whether it's a really bad relationship they're getting out of or something it's like well, like we can still be friends. And you're like why, like, why risk ruining your life again? You know, like it's like there's this pressure to like be friends, you know, or, in this case, you know, yeah well, I can still, I can still use alcohol wisely like. Why like? Why risk it?

you're like you got a good thing going here. Man like just move on, you know what is this?

I look at his death. If I drink that, that means death to me, right, yep you know what I mean, and everything you built, your family.

Yeah, it's, it's death yeah, it's death that.

but another thing and this is what I tell a lot of my friends that are heavy drinkers but wouldn't consider themselves alcoholic what has it ever done for you?

Sure.

Right Headaches, saying things you know out of anger, or or saying stupid things that you didn't mean, um, being late to work, or even if you're a even if you're a functional right Just being miserable and sick, eating all the junk food when you get home, or stopping at Sonic and getting you know whatever you know it doesn't. It's not added one good thing to your life.

Right.

Right Now you can say, oh well, it makes me feel better in stressful situations. That's great. There are a lot of other things right. Sure, you could go through resilience training Right, and I can show you how their breathing exercises and a little bit of exercise, you can have that same thing, that same feeling, and not have to drink empty calories that are junk. Yeah yeah, you know that alcohol turned the finest men into fools.

That's true. So if we switch gears just a little bit, man, it's incredible. Obviously, god's done a lot in your life and still is, um, obviously, uh, which is praise God. It's amazing, um, and I appreciate just the honesty and the transparency I mean.

Oh, I love that. I didn't know if you were going to go into that today.

Yeah, I didn't really know how this was going to go. This has been awesome so far. Um, you're getting more than you paid for so far. But tell us about how you got into fighting. Tell us, like, how did that start? Where are you at now? I saw it from social media. You have a title.

So I'm the. I have three. I'm the Kansas heavyweight professional boxing champion, the. Missouri heavyweight professional boxing champion and the American boxing organization heavyweight champion. Wow, so I'm currently ranked number 27 heavyweight in the United States.

Wow, is there different levels of boxing, or are you like across all boxers? You're number 27 in that category.

Yeah, across all boxers. I'm number 27 in that category. Yeah, across all boxers. I'm number 27 in the U? S. That's crazy, yeah.

That's wild, yeah, and he's from Topeka.

Kansas.

That's crazy. So tell us a little bit about that journey, like how'd you get into it? How'd, how'd you get from starting to being number 27 in the U S?

So I started training when I was my last year in prison, when I was in RDAP, the residential drug abuse program. Uh, if you completed it, you got a year off your sentence and you got guaranteed six months halfway house. So you got to go home 18 months early.

So I was doing that.

You know it's funny, though, at the very end, when I was real short on time, I started praying God, if it's not, if I'm not ready yet, don't send me home. I, god, if it's not, if I'm not ready yet, don't send me home. I would rather stay here and have you than go home and throw you away for all the things that.

I think the world needs that's real talk, like I would have rather stayed in prison than come home and gone back to what I was. You know, you kind of make that decision. You come to the decision in your life where it's just like God is. When I had nothing right, I'd lived in a world where I'd had everything and it meant nothing to me. And then, in prison, I'm in a world where I have nothing but I have everything because I have God. You know, and I, when you realize that that's all you really need is God, it makes life so much simpler. We forget and I forgot, right, you know I forgot several times. I still do. I have to remind myself. You know, I've got, I've got my little reminders all over me.

There you go. So you got Taylor Swift's album title yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a got to have my Swifty tat?

No yeah.

Psal no, yeah Psalms.

Matthew 633 is my, my daily reminder. Come on, love it man. Yeah, love it. So tell us about boxing man. So I started training for an Ironman competition and I ended up getting married instead of going and doing an Ironman.

I mean it's a good trade.

Yeah, I had to pick one.

Yeah.

They were. They fell on the same weekend and right, I was bound to determine this was this was the one. So, uh, I, uh, I wasn't able to run the race and I was poor and the ticket to do the race was expensive and the was it one in like Hawaii or something like that? It was Ironman Austin 70.3, austin Texas.

Wow yeah, those things are no joke, no, they're brutal. And 70.3 Austin Texas. Wow yeah, those things are no joke. No, they're brutal, yeah, brutal. Just the training is insane, insane.

Yeah, what is an Ironman? What all goes into an Ironman.

Run, bike and swim.

That's one.

But it's like for 70.3 miles.

Yeah, yeah, you run 13 and you bike and you swim.

Running wouldn't be a problem for you. Well, yeah, but swimming? Johnny Boy's been training over here. It's the swimming that gets you.

You doing the half marathon, I'm doing a full in a month in a month. I'm doing a half next week. So I ran 14 this morning.

Good for you, let's go. I do five a day, not 14.

But I'm not, I was just training for the marathon race you know so I probably wouldn't be doing 14 very often if I wasn't doing you know the right thing, yeah no, thank you.

Yeah, so iron man, the uh, that's where the nickname came from. My friends invited me up to a fight gym. After they saw that, because I was on facebook, real upset about not being able to do it, they invited me to a fight gym and they were all teasing me because they're like come on, man, you can run 10 mile. You run 10 miles every day. You can't fight for 30 seconds without getting gassed.

Come on, iron man, there it is yeah, so it was a joke it was a joke, but the best nicknames yeah, like that, yeah amen.

So, uh, 90 days after I started training, I had my first fight. Yeah, I don't know if you've picked this up from my story yet, but when I decide I like something, I go all the way.

Yeah, you're an all in type guy, very much so.

When. I believe in something. I believe in it.

Yeah, you know Love it.

Yeah, so did. A bunch of MMA fights went, 12 and one as an amateur cage fighting MMA, kickboxing, Muay Thai.

What were you training at the gym? Were you training jujitsu, mma? So everything you're training, yeah.

I mean it was, but it wasn't like boxing training, it was MMA, Right it's. I mean you train standup, but it's different. You know, in boxing you you stay real guarded and you you keep your stance and you stay bladed. You can't do that in MMA. I mean like if you leave that leg out there it's going to get kicked. I don't like getting kicked in the legs, it's one of my least favorite things.

So I, uh, I did well, and then I had my relapse and my wife and I separated and that was a six month period and then I, uh, I booked a fight. I, you know, she invited me to go to church with her, and that's what got us back together, Cause I was really upset with God, Um, and I blamed him. And then, when my wife invited me to go to church, I knew that I had been deceived by myself and by the drugs and by the enemy. So we went to church and then we got into the book and we moved. She moved back into the house and we got baptized together. Our job started going really well.

She got pregnant and I, I booked a fight when we got back together, Cause I knew that I would, I wouldn't use if I was training for a fight, Cause I I hate losing, hate it. Uh, so I started training for another fight and won that one, won my next one. I did one pro boxing fight and one pro mixed martial arts fight, one of them both within the first 30 seconds of the fight. And then I retired and I was going to focus on my career. So Taylor got pregnant. You know, we prayed and prayed, and prayed and I didn't think I was going to be able to have kids. And then Taylor got pregnant. Um, I got real big. I got up to like 315 pounds from not training, from not training, and sympathy weight and COVID weight, Cause we were working. I was able to work from home, so we just ate out every day.

you know, and I you know, we both made good money, so it's not like we're not looking at our receipts. We just do you know? Let's go eat.

Yeah.

Um, so I gained a bunch of weight and then everything happened with my son, which was crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. He was stillborn. Oh, wow, yeah, 12 minutes. I prayed with my head on the OR room floor. God, please, I can't, after everything that I just put my wife through, you know, and, and us getting back together in the miracle you've made there, please, I have, I cannot go to this woman and tell her that we're going home with an empty car seat. Um, you know I'd read the new Testament to this kid while he was in my wife's stomach. You know I'm playing classic rock music on her stomach on headphones, so that he comes out liking the same music. I read him the first three Harry Potter books. Like me and this dude are connected. Yeah, you know, and I begged God and I told him I would devote the entire rest of my life to serving him in every capacity that I had, if I didn't have to have that conversation with my wife. And, like Lazarus, jesus Christ rose my son from the dead.

Wow, wow, how long was he dead. 12 minutes, 12 minutes.

Yeah, and then they asked on time.

Was he early?

No 40 weeks plus three days Wow, full term plus nine and a half pounds. He was a monster. He'd lost oxygen in the womb sometime between Wednesday and Sunday and suffocated, so he lost 50% of his brain. Severe brain damage Uh, he started having an hour long seizure every three hours. Uh, they had to do the hypothermia. He was a head cooling baby, which means they had to cool his temperature to get medicine in him to preserve his organs and his heart, and he had all kinds of problems. The first week we were there, they asked us five times how we wanted to say goodbye to Cooper.

Yeah.

Yeah, well, cause it was like. You know, if he's his heart rates dropped to 19 beats a minute, you know we're going to have to take him off the morphine, cause the morphine is going to stop his heart. You know, cause it's slowing him down so much. No-transcript compressions. Do you want us to shock him? Do you want us to this? Do you want us to that?

How do you even answer those?

questions I know yeah. You let God lead. So, uh, we just prayed and prayed, and prayed and we didn't know what to do. So we put posts out on Facebook. You know the doctors would tell us what they needed for him to survive Like mile markers what they needed to say.

Like dude, we need this guy. We need to be able to get a pick line in. Uh, we need to be able to get medicine. We have to be able to get this medicine in him through the line. Um, we need him to go to the bathroom, you know, cause he hadn't, he hadn't had a chance to go to the. You know, we need, we need him to do this and we need him to do this, and they'd give us a son. Wow, and like dude, it was the craziest we were watching literal, biblical miracles happen in front of us every day. So the doctors would give us a list. I'd post it on Facebook. Within hours, the doctors would come back to us and tell us that what we had prayed for had happened.

Wow.

And we got to watch that happen every day for like six weeks in a row. That's amazing, it was wild. It was wild, um, so I had retired cause I wanted to do the dad thing from fighting, um and but fighting, you know, being a professional athlete had always been my dream. You know, I loved watching Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield box man and George Foreman and you know all these guys.

They were just incredible. Um, and I'm thinking to myself you know my son's going to have a really hard life, and who am I to tell him like? You can achieve anything if you just put your mind to it and you trust God. And you do this and you do that, when I had so easily discarded my dreams, wow. So I, I walked into great life at 421 Van B and I bumped into this wild man named Damon Reed and I asked him if he'd be my coach and he said no. And then I told him my story and he said maybe. And then, you know, he started coming over and helping me out a little bit at a time and showing me some different pointers and stuff like that, and before you know it, he's training me twice a day and in five and a half months he cut 105 pounds off of me.

I went from 40% body fat to under 10% body fat. Wow, right, that's amazing.

So 315 pounds to six pack in five and a half months, wow. Um so we fought. So I fought once at carriage club when I got to about the two 40 range, uh. And then we booked Mario Munoz, who was the Kansas heavyweight champ at the time. He had 20 pro fights Like this was going to be my third fight.

Third professional fight.

Nobody believed in me, but Damon Damon's like we're going to knock him out. We did. We knocked him out.

Wow.

Yeah, we knocked him out. We did, we knocked him out. Wow, yeah, we knocked him out in the fourth round. When was this? 2019? 20, 21, 20, 21, yeah 21.

What? What's the pro level of boxing called like? What's the like? It's not. Ufc would be mma. What's the like pro? It's just pro, it's just called boxing.

Boxing is so scattered, there's so many different sanctioning bodies and, yeah, titles and circuits and everything else.

Boxing is really scattered okay, so you knock him out, not you. Do you book a bunch more fights after that, or is it one of those things where you kind of fall back a little bit?

nope, for the last three. So I've I've really only been boxing for like three years now yeah so like that's crazy. Yeah, I'm 35 years old and I'm 10 and oh, with nine knockouts, yeah, they need to call you John knockout.

No, just John's fine with me. Um, yeah, so I, uh, you know, I and I've, I've, I've used it as a platform to uh, to share the gospel, you know, and to share hope, and to spotlights on people that others feel maybe are undeserved or they get pushed in the corner or they get overlooked. I've been able to be a part of some really cool things because of it, but I just decided to make it God's fight, not my fight, which took all the stress and pressure off of it, but I just decided to to make it God's fight, not my fight, which took all the stress and pressure off of me. And, uh, you know, I, I'm doing it a lot differently than most fighters do. You know, I pray with my opponents before we fight, you know, and I, I have nothing bad to say about any of them.

Yeah, have you seen the movie we were soldiers with Mel Gibson, where it's like the day before he goes off to Vietnam he's in the chapel on base or whatever, and at the end of his prayer he's like and please ignore the heathen prayers of my enemies. I was very bad to you. Like bless this man and God, please ignore all his prayers before we fight.

Nope, I never pray for victory, man, I never pray. I try not to pray for victory. Uh, I just pray for safety, not to pray for victory. I just pray for safety. Pray for safety for my opponent and for myself. You know, I pray that we're both able to go home to our kids and be dead Pray.

he doesn't get CT when I knock him out.

So how often are you boxing? How often do you have matches? Every couple of months, every couple of months? Yeah, is that a pretty normal schedule?

We're normal schedule, for we're fast paced. Most people fight twice a year.

I'm fighting for that was really yeah, wow 35 man.

I don't have time to waste. Yeah, yeah, if we're gonna do it, we gotta go and what is?

the. What is the lay of the land where you are now, like you're looking forward in your boxing career, are you? You're wanting to progress and keep moving forward. What does that look like? What? What's the next? Probably a couple stages look like.

I'm probably four fights away from a world championship. Wow Fights away so pretty close. Where do those fights typically take place? So we just we missed an offer. Um, we missed an offer for the WBO world boxing organization big one intercontinental heavyweight world title in the UK. Wow, that would have happened November 2nd, but they ended up going with another fighter instead of me. That's okay, it'll come, it'll come. So I trust god man, I trust his timing. Oh, I don't know level.

So, like I, I know very little about boxing. The only thing I know about boxing is, like you know, a pay-per-view fight. You know that's in vegas, you know that's like the really, really famous guys or whatever. Is that close to that level, like what you're talking about?

Yeah, those, that's those fights, oh, okay, so you're saying you almost got into a fight.

That would have been at that kind of a level.

So I've been in fights so I fought on Showtime. I won the Kansas Missouri heavyweight title against the undefeated Missouri heavyweight champion on Showtime.

Yeah.

Wow, right. And then I fought on Fight TV.

Wow and.

I fought on Triller Fight Club. These are all big promotions, sure.

Okay, sure, sure.

So I've already fought there. Wow, it's just the next time it won't be, just on the card, it will be. I am the card. Right, okay, sure, the top of the bill Jake Paul versus John the Iron man Cantrell.

Yeah, what do you think about Jake Paul? What do you think about that? I'm not a fan.

I'd love to fight him.

I was going to ask him about.

Jake.

Paul, too, I'd love to fight him. Yeah, you think he's legit. I thought he was just like a Dude.

Listen, you hang around a barbershop long enough. You get a team in Puerto Rico and he has the money to diet and to train and to do everything perfectly Right, yeah, perfectly, duke can fight.

So he just like people underestimate him because he was just like a social media People underestimate him because he fights these old bums.

Okay yeah, he's fighting a 58 year old Mike Tyson, right?

Well, I my impression, cause I've I've not even really followed, except I see memes about him, you know. And so my impression, because I've not even really followed, except I see memes about him, and so my impression was oh, he's just kind of it's all show Like he's not actually a boxer because he's just like okay, so he actually can't Watch, like if you watch, and he doesn't post very many training videos because he doesn't want.

he wants everybody to think he can't fight.

Right, he wants to be underestimated. Yeah, that dude can move Interesting.

But you would fight him if you were given a chance In a heartbeat. Oh yeah, in a heartbeat. That would be awesome. He hasn't gotten hit, really. He hasn't gotten hit. Oh, he hasn't been able to take a hit and keep going.

It hasn't happened yet. Right, he hasn't caught one yet.

Yeah, flash KO'd in a fight in the first round and got up and fought tooth and nail for six more rounds just to get the knockout at the end with 50 seconds left in my fight. I know what it's like when your butt hits the canvas and you come to and people in suits are looking at you and you don't know where you're at.

You're like oh wait.

I'm in a boxing ring and I'm fighting and this is my fight, and you've got to ask yourself that question Like man am I really cut out for this Am?

I really made for this Cause, you know, I could sit here and I could get my payday, you know, and I could just go home and say, hey man, I had a great career and now I'm. You know, I I was a pro fighter and I fought till I was seven and one. Right, I could have done that. Nobody would have said anything, but I would have known, right, yeah, more importantly, god knew Sure, and when he told me to get up, I got up. Wow. But I wonder if Mr Paul would have that same kind of experience and if he'd make the same decision.

Wow, that's wow.

I hope to find out.

So yeah, is there anything you would say to Mr Jake Paul right now, because he definitely is going to see this, you know.

Who is your dream person to fight?

Oh man, are we talking about in history or are we talking about right now? Both. So if you could see my water bottle, which I left in my truck, the guy's name is Alexander Usyk. He's the linear heavyweight champion. He, uh, beat Tyson Fury. He's beat all the. He's beat all the greats man, and he's done it at two different weight classes. I mean, he is perfect. He's perfect.

He does not make mistakes. I mean as as far as, like the chess game goes, unreal, unreal, and he's humble and he quit boxing to fight for his country in ukraine yeah you know he's a real one when it comes to being the. He's the best boxer in the world, best pound for pound fighter in the world. In my opinion, that's who I want to fight. Love it. When I pick up my water bottle every day, I look at his name because he's he's currently he's the linear.

What does that mean? What's?

linear. He holds all the major titles wbo, wbc, ibf, iba ring, everything, wow, all of them he currently holds all of them right currently okay, not just in heavyweight right in cruiserweight too.

Wow, so he's like me, you know, because I'm real small for a heavyweight. I weigh 210, 210 pounds, the cutoff's 200. So I could cut to cruiserweight if I wanted to. He did it and won all the titles at cruiserweight, then put on 30 pounds and is doing this at 230 pounds, fighting guys that are five inches taller than him and 70 pounds heavier than him and move like defensive ends for the Packers. Wow, I mean, like dude, these are real-life monsters. Yeah, you know, I fought guys that are 100 pounds heavier than me, five inches taller than me. Yeah, man, that's bonkers. There'll be monsters around them heavyweights, brother.

Yeah, you just saying that I have enough self-reflection to know I am not cut out for that?

I don't need to find out, I just know I was thinking like during this episode. You know, jake Paul is not the only one who hasn't been given the chance to be knocked out. I thought we could provide Justin with that opportunity live on air and just see if he can push through Dude.

I'll tell you what. So I you know why I pray for my opponent before we fight, cause I know that the minute that somebody actually gets hurt, or that actually hurt somebody, it's over. I'll know that God's not in it with me anymore If somebody gets hurt. So I uh it's funny Like people think I'm some tough guy. I'm not. I'm not tough at all. Like if if some random person came up to me and started like giving me the lip service and telling me what a you know you can't fight, you're not a boxer, this, and that You're right, bro, you got me, you got me.

Yeah, jesus loves you.

Have a nice day.

Go eat some rolls, right, I wouldn't fight, you see there was a video my friend was telling me about at a baseball game recently. I can't remember. But there's these two dudes. This one guy started yelling at some guy in the stands and starts yelling at this guy and up in his face and the guy's huge, the guy yelling at the other guy and he's yelling at him, and then the smaller guy just kind of like takes it and walks away. And then the announcers find out later that the guy being yelled at was some world champion fighter or something.

And so it's like he would have literally murdered that other guy yeah, dude, I don't have anything to prove to anybody.

I don't have anything to prove to anybody. Yeah, you really want to find out what it's like. I'm at 421 Southwest Van Buren, at 330 every day. Put some gear on, you're gonna need it. Yeah, yeah, uh, you know, I don't have anything to prove to anybody. That's wild, you know and once again, this isn't about me, yeah, this isn't about my ego. This isn't about my pride. This is about reflecting the light of christ through my life into everybody that I possibly can to help further his kingdom. That's great. Love it.

You know me out there bullying people on the street. What's that prove Right?

That you're insecure.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I'm insecure. I can't, I can't handle my problems without without getting angry and being violent. Nah, that's the old me man. I'm not that person anymore. Yeah, you know, I'm a new creation in Christ.

Come on. Well, hey, you left us hanging with your son.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, super Coop Duff, is he okay? Double G.

I assume he made it through.

Listen, man, this kid is a straight up gangster. He is the coolest kid. You know they said he was never going to walk, never going to talk, completely blind, completely deaf, severe cerebral palsy, you know, massive, massive brain damage. Like half of his brain is just gone Right, and like you're looking at it and you're looking at the scans and you're just like this kid is going to have a really miserable life. Dude, this kid lives his best life every day Truck ride, boat ride, motorcycle ride, scooter ride, stroller ride, right.

So he's nicknamed all of his favorite people, which are his grandma. So my mom, nana, taylor's mom, graham, and then mama Barb. So we adopted this couple from church Jeff and Barb Gray. Love it, they're the nicest, and Barb never had kids. Love it, they're the nicest and barb never had kids and oh, that's amazing. So we are her kids. Yeah, that's so cool. You know we do they're. They're with us for everything. You know that's one of them. God things. God put us together and it didn't make any sense. That's how you know it was god. But uh, yeah, we do holidays together, everything together, and she comes over and watches cooper. So, uh, he's nicknamed each of us what his favorite thing to do with us is.

So, my wife is dog treats because is that stick with the family?

too. No, well, we'd be in big trouble, for this kid wakes up, and he's an early bird like me. You know I wake up at three, 34 o'clock every morning Cause I got to get my road work in before I go to work. Um, oh, crazy, insane. So this dude wants to like wake up with me and like his mom's not an early bird, but that's not even early bird, that's not even early.

That's middle of the night, that's cycle.

Early bird is like 6 am, 5, maybe 3 am, that's middle of the night, four is early, six is six. I've slept in we live very different lives.

I don't even want to hear it.

You ran 14 miles this morning, not at 3 am yeah, I gotta, I gotta have my road work done, I gotta get it done. But cooper won't get up, and the first thing he says when, when they get up, he looks at my wife and he goes dog treats, dog treats, dog treats. They'll go out to the kitchen and she'll open the cabinet, she'll get the dog treats and she'll pull them out and she'll break three or four in half and then you'll stand there and he'll grab one or she'll hand him one, you know, throw them at the garage door and then the dogs run.

And they go after the dog treats and that's his favorite thing 's amazing. I'm truck ride, love it, or scooter ride or boat ride, depending on what time it is it's like during a great nickname yeah yeah, yeah.

So we, uh, I, I got rid of my. My partner, my business partner died on a motorcycle at 10th and fairlawn on his 19th birthday. And I sold my bike. Well, I didn't sell it. I traded it for a boat the same day. Um, and when cooper's grown up and he's out of the house and he's doing his own thing, and I sold my bike, well, I didn't sell it. I traded it for a boat the same day. And when Cooper's grown up and he's out of the house and he's doing his own thing, I'll get another one. But until then I'm off bikes, at least for a while. But I got that boat because I found that you know you spend. When you're young and you're selfish, you spend money on things that you like.

Yeah.

Right, spend. When you're young and you're selfish, you spend money on things that you like, yeah, right. And then when you start growing up and stuff like that, it's like, man, I could, I could afford a bigger house or I could afford a newer car, I could do this or I could do that, it's like. But what do I really enjoy doing? I enjoy being with my wife and my son. Like I just want this, like I like hanging out with this dude, right, and what does he like to do? He likes to go for rides. All right, well, cool man. So I got us electric scooters. That's awesome. Instead of going for a truck ride all the time, we just get on the little electric scooter and we put up and down the road in front of our house. That's awesome.

I got little Bluetooth speakers so we can be jamming out to outlaw country which is his favorite, while we're riding around that.

That's awesome, yeah, no he's killing it, man, so he's what?

Four or five now, he'll be four next month, cool, and he's walking, wow, running, wow, talking, putting sentences together. No way, oh yeah, knows all his colors, knows his 50 flashcards Wow, dude, I think this is going to be fine. It's amazing. Yeah, I and he dude. He already likes it, man, like we rough house and we rough house when I'm at home, and yeah, man, my favorite time in the world is when I get to be on the floor with that boy. Absolutely it's also fun Body slams and choke slams and power bombs.

And yeah, oh yeah, some old like WWE moves. That's it, that's exactly right Piledriver. Yeah.

So, cool Steve, all right. Changing subject up a little bit Before we started the camera's rolling. You said you have three or four different businesses outside of you know, just boxing. You want to walk us through what else you're doing in Topeka?

So I do consulting, which is basically like if you have a business that's struggling and you need, like, your operations tightened up or processes streamlined or made more efficient, you can hire me to come in and help you do that. Yeah, um, so that's the consulting gig. As soon as my sister's ready, she will, it will be. It's so. Right now it's Cantrell Consulting Corp. Um, when she's ready, it will be Cantrell Consulting Safety and Environmental Corp, because she brings the safety and environmental side of that. My sister's a genius, she's crazy. Um, and then Cantrell properties and management. So I leased to Oxford, which is a sober living program.

I know some guys who live there.

Yeah, oxford's a fantastic program. We've got guys in our church such a good deal, um, so I do Oxford and then I am, so you own the property. Cool Um and now I'm getting a house for to me, which is going to be a basically like a dorm house for guys that are taking our our seminary classes while they're in jail, so when they get out, they can move into the dorm house and continue their classes. Wow Right, it's amazing. Yeah, pretty cool.

Wow.

Actually, I think the director and dean is probably going to move into that house first, but her house is going to become that. So either way, I'm kind of involved in all kinds of stuff. Topeka Auto Glass yeah, my business partners and I took Topeka Auto auto glass and it is just grown like crazy. You know, we put it in God's hands. We decided we were going to tie the 10% of the business straight off the top to our churches and it has. God has 100% rewarded that.

That's cool.

You know, we we read this book when we started, called business by the book and it was written by a pastor and, um, you, you know it kind of talked about how to, how to run a business christian like, in a christian way, you know, with christian values. Uh, and we made a decision early on that that's how we wanted to do it and you know we've, we've kind of each of us made that that systemic mind change from you know, I keep 90 of my money and I give God 10% of my money. Right To now it is God lets me have 90% of his money and he only asked for 10% of it back.

It's amazing, you know, it's all his, everything is his.

You know he just asked for 10%, little 10% back. So good, yeah, Um, but yeah, yeah. But yeah, I'm involved in commercial development $750 million Starbonds projects in Gardner and working on a deal in Junction City and I do consulting for some car dealers and I'm on several board of directors for local children's charities 2030 Club member, which is a fantastic organization. Unitedhealthcare is getting involved in our neighborhood ministry and we're starting at Central Park and if we know what, if God does what we think he's going to do, our program will become the outreach arm of UnitedHealthcare. At least I think it will. Wow, right, and it's the idea is different, right? So you look at impoverished neighborhoods and urban neighborhoods and people think, oh well, we just need to raise more money. You know more money will help. More money will help. More money will help. What happens to people that don't know how to handle money when they get a lot of it right disappears, yeah, they go back. People you hear about people hitting the lottery.

Yeah, and then they're classic in four years they're bankrupt.

They just had 70 million dollars yeah, money wasn't the problem or professional athletes that never went to college, I was wondering what the stat was, but I know there's a large percentage of professional athletes that go bankrupt after their first big contract. They never learned money management right, you know.

So I don't know what the stat was, but I know there's a large percentage of professional athletes that go bankrupt after their first big contract.

They never learned money management Right.

You know. So I don't know what they think is going to happen when we dump all these money into these neighborhoods with people that don't know what to do with it. So the director and dean of my organization, mary Flynn, you know she proposed a new outlook to me, which was you know, we have to heal neighborhoods from the inside out. A new outlook to me, which was you know, we have to heal neighborhoods from the inside out. You know, and she's always carried that with with the urban ministry Institute, and how she teaches and how she leads it. Um, you know, you, god pulls you out of the muck and cleans you off so that you can go back into the muck and serve you know not just move back to the suburbs Right.

So that's why I you know my my jail ministry is effective. I've been there. You know my homeless ministry is effective I've been there, right. You know my recovery and substance abuse and additional recovery is effective. I've been there, right. You know what. You know.

God pulls us out of that and then it's our job to take the new skills and gifts and tools that he gives us in the, in the support system that he gives us, and go back in and start at the bottom Right. So instead of instead of looking at things from a top down perspective, trying to heal them from the top down, we're looking at it from going in and doing it from the bottom up Right. So we create new, we create leaders that are already established in these neighborhoods, right. We build them up and we fill them with the support of the church and the body and and everything else, and then they go back and then they lead by example. You know you're going to do your.

You know me by my fruit, right. Not by what I say, but by the fruit of my actions, right, yeah, if I have good relationships and a good job and you know healthy boundaries and I'm able to give back and support my community and support my family and do all these things. Figure it out for yourself, right, yeah, so, uh, that's great. Yeah, we've got, we've got a lot going on and we're we're partnered. We have some really strategic partnerships with, uh, barry Feeker and compassion strategies and working on the, the, the homeless issue. Sure, now, when did we forget that people were our neighbors?

Sure you know, when did we forget that people were our neighbors? If you live on this rock called earth, you're a neighbor. You know the Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus. They say teacher, rabbi, of all the commandments, which one is the most important? What does Jesus say? Said if I had to pick one, I would and I'd pick two Love your God with all your heart and your soul and your might, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Right, If you do those two things, all the laws of the prophets and all the commandments have been fulfilled. You know, and we have criminalized being homeless, being homeless, We've criminalized not having an address in Topeka.

Wow, so I have a address in Topeka.

Wow, so I have a one-off question. Sure, as someone who maybe has a real world first firsthand look at like addictions. What are some things about addictions, whether that's, you know, alcohol, drugs I'm even thinking like screens or you know, addiction to sugar or things like that. What are some of the things that people misunderstand about addictions?

So, first off, I'm going to rephrase that to anything we put in front of God, yeah Right. And if we can't sit that down or we're glued to it all the time, we're putting it in front of God. So if you have a friend or somebody that is in addiction and active addiction, um, probably the only way you're going to be able to help them is through prayer. Um, enabling them to continue going down their destructive path is not going to help them. You know, it wasn't until I was finally cut off and mom and dad's money stopped coming and I quit.

You know it's like listen, john, if you want to destroy yourself, we understand. You know, no matter how much we love you and we want you to be healthy, we have free will. You know I have free will to make my own choice. So understand that it's nothing, that if you're struggling with addiction or if you're somebody that knows somebody struggling with addiction, it's not your fault. God can relieve you of what is oppressing you if you give it to him wholly and you have the capacity to be honest with yourself that you are a person or somebody you know has a problem. Um, and there's a lot there. I could, I could, I could get on my soapbox about addiction and recovery and we could be here all day, yeah. But you know, just trust, trust God. You know, if it gets better, it gets better, it gets better. And here's the best lesson If a big dummy like me can make it out, I promise you you can make it out.

We always like to close with some of the same questions to each person. So just some real deep, heavy, heavy hitting questions. How many potholes did you hit on the way here? At least four, let's go.

At least four, and that was from Best Buy. I wasn't that far away.

Yeah, it was right down the street. Uh, did you hit construction on the way here?

Uh, I avoided it. But yes, I would have hit it on 21st street if I would have gone down 21st.

Yep, yep uh do you have a favorite local restaurant? Uh jong's thai kitchen. Oh my god, jong's. We got a 17th person in a row.

But wait, wait, wait. I can't just throw that one out there. Chef hall, you guys know chef hall. No, he's got to be on here at some point in time. Who is that? Okay, chef Hall was an executive chef for like four of the casinos in Las Vegas. Ended up in some craziness, was a gangster his whole life. Ended up at the Topeka rescue mission.

Wow.

Started teaching all the inhabitants of the rescue mission how to be sous chefs. And kicked off like a catering deal out of TRM. What?

Wow.

Yeah, and now he opened a chicken place at the mall called Love Me Tenders. Ah Ooh, buddy, that's awesome. That is some of the best fried chicken you will ever have in your entire life. Like literally, when we get done, turn off your mic, get in your car, go to the food court, get a three-piece yeah, and it comes with a what like a maple glazed like honey waffle oh okay, let's go.

Let's go. I can't eat it because I'm in fight camp damon.

Right, damon, I'm not going. Yeah, I'm not going, I'm gonna have some fat-free water that's a yeah, exactly some gluten-free water.

Uh the globe oh, oh yeah.

My partner, dr Sunil Ghotru, is the owner of the Globe and it changed. Like the previous Globe was Northern Indian cuisine, his is all Southern. The Majestic it's not on the menu. Tell them you want the Majestic.

Oh, okay, off-menu item, let's go.

Go into the Globe, order the mixed grill and, and this and the majestic, all right, love it you heard it here.

Oh let's go. Do you? Are you a coffee guy? Oh yeah, Favorite coffee place.

Classic bean blackbirds, higher grounds, that's. I spend my days like my offices are usually coffee shops sure I'm doing things on the computer, which is, you know, when I'm not driving around selling, when I'm doing things on the computer, I'm in a. I'm in a coffee shop yeah, yeah yeah, love it. What's your coffee? What's your favorite coffee shop?

pts? I have a few. Uh, oh man, I loved pts when they were at college hill. Me too. I used to go there all the time. Now Circle has kind of replaced that for me. Circle's great. It's right down the street, yep Circle.

Dialogue's great and they do good things.

We go to Blackbird. Their pastries are solid. Yes, the yeah man. Are you guys ready for the new ones?

To the Stars Play Cafe. Wait, what is that? Yeah, so I think her name's Kayla Shattuck. She was like Miss Kansas or she was like a beauty, huh, but she has a daughter that has. I can't remember, but it's some form of developmental delay.

OK.

But it's basically like an all inclusive cafelusive cafe for people with kids like mine. Wow, the kids can go in there and like he's got sensory stuff.

Oh, no way he can do different stuff.

Yeah, it's awesome, it's awesome. And then, of course, man, I got to give a shout out to my dude, Troy Mentzer, at the Padden.

Yep, right yeah.

Best salad bar in town. I never get to eat. I, for the last three years, have been in a perpetual fight camp.

Dude. Their burgers are fire. Their burgers are insane.

Troy's restaurants run like a top.

Dude, what's the place in East Topeka on 6th and like Golden or whatever Prize package.

Prize package. Oh yeah, have you guys been there? Oh my gosh. Dude that place will destroy you. It's so good.

It's so good It'll run right through you could also, just like you know, dump what's left in the bag in your oil in the car and it'll just.

It's like your free oil change yeah it's amazing, crazy, okay.

So, uh, we hit. Uh what? Where are you, you and your wife, going on a date night?

if you get a date night I owe her white linen with adam vanandone, Um, cause she's never been there and I promised her I'd take her there. Um, I'll tell you. What my wife and I are going to do on date night is we're going to have Cooper go stay with somebody and we're going to stay at home and watch Lord of the Rings and eat popcorn.

Let's go yeah no, we don't need to go anywhere, but you know, there's dude, topeka is the coolest small town, one of the coolest small towns in the world. Like I know for how many people we have, people are like man to be good man. Dude, this is a small town. This is a small town and there are so many little hidden gems here yeah, so many cool things to do there's no such thing as boring, there's just boring people yeah, let's go, but there's so much to do down here and what averaging plaza is doing yeah you know, and what cody foster's doing with the mall again, have you been to check out the mall yet?

I haven't been in since they started renovating.

Okay, save souls, right save souls. My buddy, uh patterson, uh-huh, I he's, so he's sponsoring me now. But I bought a pair of Jesus shoes and they are the coolest shoes.

Wait, is Safe Souls a shoe store? Safe Souls, yeah, s-o-l-e-s. I get it. Yeah, I get it, that's awesome.

Yeah, pretty incredible. People will idolize things and name brands and stuff like that this dude was like you know what. Let's put the true idol on there. There you go, put Jesus on. That Sounds like was like you know what. Let's put the. Let's put the true idol on there. There you go, put jesus on that.

So it's like a jesus branded shoe yes, like that in the whole store.

Yes no, it's not just that brand, he's got other stuff, but sure, but they offer that one as well. But, like dude, the insoles have, like, the three crosses of calvary on them and there it's. It's neat, it's worth supporting, that is cool that's awesome.

Yeah, stay local. Yeah, support local. Uh, are you a handy guy? Like something breaks you, you try to fix it yourself depends on what it is man I'm.

I work like 80 hours a week. Sure I leave my, I'm up at four and I don't get home until seven or eight. Yeah, so when I'm home, like I'm sure it drives my wife, but like I'm gonna be hanging out with my kid if you have to go to, you know if you have.

If you need supplies to fix somewhere, are you going to home depot lowe's or menards?

probably menards, because they the rebate. Let's go. Yeah, I like menards.

We got to keep a running tally.

That's when you start, I think I'm up still, but yeah, you're making I swear by menards. Well, here's.

So like if I, if I need power tools because I'm a milwaukee guy yeah, you can't buy them at right menards, so I go to home depot for stuff like that because I'm gonna do it um because that's where actual contractors go. No, well, that's fine, I did have when I was not actual contractors well, I was when I had second chance construction, which was one of my not better businesses. That lasted all of like nine months. Uh, we had our. We had our account at Home Depot.

Yeah, nice, yep, yep, yep. But for the average person, menards is far superior. And then maybe let's just end on this. Obviously, we love Topeka. We think Topeka gets some unnecessary hate. You know people are like crazy. There's nothing to do here. This place sucks. You know, you know people are like crazy, there's nothing to do here. This place sucks. You know you're like you look around man, like look with fresh eyes at what's going on. You know so. But we do also like to be honest. You know like, hey, what, what would we like to see develop in our city? So what are some things that you would like to see more of in Topeka? Maybe it's a specific business or store, restaurant or or anything. Just what would you like to see develop more in the next five to 10 years?

So one of the things what attracted UnitedHealthcare and what attracted some of the other. What's brought a lot of attention to Central Park neighborhood is this thing called neighbor night. Right, and Mary Flynn opens her house up and feeds people at the table. Right, cause so much, so many things happen at the table. Like, in our faith, you're not really brothers until you, until you've broken bread together, right, come on, Um, sometimes they have upwards of 80 homeless people, wow, having a meal. They bring their kids there on Thanksgiving to have Thanksgiving dinner. It's amazing, right. Kids there on Thanksgiving to have Thanksgiving dinner it's amazing, right. But you see, where there was high crime and high murder and high death rate and high this and high that, like, all of a sudden, all these people are breaking bread together and crime rates have plummeted. So if I could want one thing in Topeka, I would wish that it could do the same thing in every neighborhood. Wow, that's cool Neighbors neighbors could just get same thing in every neighborhood.

Wow, that's cool.

Neighbors, neighbors could just get together and remember to love their neighbors. They love themselves.

Come on. Well, that's a great way to wrap the episode. John Ironman Cantrell, where can people find you on social media?

Well, you can't right now cause I'm locked out of all my accounts, but you can follow. You can follow Ironman Cantrell on Instagram. You can follow John the Iron man Cantrell on Facebook. Go to my website ironmancantrellcom. I'm all over the place, unfortunately.

Love it. You're good man. Hey, appreciate your time, man. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much, man. Thank you for having me.

I really appreciate you guys Absolutely. This was great.