Nick Sellers (00:01):
That sound okay.
Sevan Matossian (00:02):
You sound awesome.
Nick Sellers (00:04):
Cool.
Sevan Matossian (00:05):
I’m back. I’m back. I haven’t sat at this table in two weeks. I’ve been on the road for two weeks.
Nick Sellers (00:10):
Yeah. I’m aware. I’ll wash the shit. How’s it feel to be back home?
Sevan Matossian (00:15):
It feels great. I, I I’m I’m I’ve spent too much time on the beach. I’m a minute late. I’m like I’ve I I’ve just gotten too casual. You’re
Nick Sellers (00:22):
On beach time.
Sevan Matossian (00:22):
Yeah, I am on beach time.
Nick Sellers (00:24):
Thanks. Well, good for you.
Sevan Matossian (00:26):
Thanks for doing this.
Nick Sellers (00:27):
You’re welcome, man. Thanks for, uh, having this kinda share casing of affiliates. I think that’s real cool.
Sevan Matossian (00:33):
Yeah, I’m having a blast doing it. It’s um, uh, before we start Nicholas Sellers, uh, Thomasville CrossFit.
Nick Sellers (00:43):
Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (00:43):
Established in 2012. Now I’m waiting. Yeah,
Nick Sellers (00:47):
I gotcha.
Sevan Matossian (00:47):
We’re a strong community that believes in hard work and commitment. Hmm. Hmm. Just like just spoken like a true CrossFitter
Nick Sellers (00:57):
Keep it simple.
Sevan Matossian (00:59):
Uh, I can’t, I can’t remember why this actually started why I was just like, fuck it. I’m just going to talk to a, just a gang load of affiliates. I can’t remember what inspired it.
Nick Sellers (01:11):
Oh, I remember the episode that you did where you kind of were coming onto it. And I kind of think, say there’s, it’s the one that you might have had the idea with, but, uh, you probably had this kind of idea for a long time, right? I mean, you’re all about the affiliates. You, you did something like this a while back too, if I’m not mistaken where you had a bunch of affiliates, this is years ago, probably six years ago. Yeah. You had a bunch of affiliate owners kind of do the video and, uh, try to try to win. Maybe it was win some stuff for the gym or share
Sevan Matossian (01:38):
Case. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s right. That’s I, I do remember that, but, but I can’t remember this time. What made me think there was something that we did a few weeks ago and I just remember Susan and I going shoot. It would be cool to try to the, the irony is, is I wanna move away from doing so much CrossFit stuff. And at the same time, I’m just like, screw it. I’m gonna do, I’m gonna interview one affiliate every week for 52 weeks. And, and, and kind of just see what happens. See what the, uh, I, I know people who watch the show will start putting something together, something that I miss, or, or maybe I don’t miss, but either way they’ll start becoming some common themes, some common ideas, or maybe this thing will just end up living as a, as a resource for affiliates, you know, uh, moving forward.
Nick Sellers (02:19):
Yeah. It might, I think your show is kind of what, what you say like that an eclectic blend of all kinds of cool stuff, you know, whether it’s UFC other sports. Um, yeah. I mean, this is stuff that you’re into. That’s cool.
Sevan Matossian (02:32):
When I did the show for, um, CrossFit, there was, there was this one response we got from the affiliates that I was tripping on, cuz I never ever expected it. They said, you know, there was very, there was very, um, I don’t know. I guess I can say it. There was very little communication from HQ to the affiliates. We, um, Greg refused to spam them. He was really adamant about never sending the affiliates an email, unless it was like crazy, crazy specific.
Nick Sellers (02:59):
I appreciate that.
Sevan Matossian (03:01):
Yeah. Yeah. He never wanted to scam them. He only wanted to send stuff to people’s inbox that added value. He never wanted to ask anything of the affiliates. He didn’t wanna sell them anything. Like he was pretty, he didn’t even like it, like in the journal. If we showed a video of like a level, one seminar, we wanted to put a little button there, um, on the side of the video or in the journal that said, Hey, if you wanna attend a level one, click here and he’d be like, no, no, that’s not the point of the video to sell them anything. And we’re like, oh, and we would argue back, Hey, we’re not trying to sell them anything. We just wanted to give him an easy path to the L one and he would refuse. He wanted
Nick Sellers (03:35):
Now go ahead. Sorry, interrupt you right there.
Sevan Matossian (03:38):
So, so, um, my, so it’s um, when I started doing the podcast, affiliates started saying, holy shit, this is so awesome. This is great communication from HQ. And I was like, whoa, I didn’t, I didn’t expect that at all. They just liked, because I guess throughout the podcast, I would drop little bits like, oh, today we’re going over here. You know, today we’re doing this or we’re making videos for this. Or, and it would just, I guess it gave people insight behind the curtain of what was going on. Just unin, unintentionally.
Nick Sellers (04:08):
Yeah. Yeah. I could see that. I look the thing I <laugh>, I appreciated CrossFit, not bothering me. I had, I’m a hands full enough with members, you know, and all their stuff going on. I, I appreciate the, the model of the affiliate model. Like, Hey, let the cream rise to the top. Let’s see who, who makes the cut. And uh, if you’re getting people fit, you’re losing the weight, you got the performance side of things going on and you’re hitting people’s goals. Like, uh, well you’re gonna stay in business. You’re probably gonna do a good thing. You know?
Sevan Matossian (04:35):
Do what, what do you think you would’ve done if you didn’t run a gym or do you have another job also? Woo,
Nick Sellers (04:40):
No, man. I’m retired from the army. I would’ve, oh
Sevan Matossian (04:43):
Gosh. What that, what does that mean? Retired from the army?
Nick Sellers (04:46):
Uh, it means they pay me without working. Um,
Sevan Matossian (04:48):
It’s you were there long enough?
Nick Sellers (04:50):
No, not me. No. I have a medical retirement from the army.
Sevan Matossian (04:53):
Okay.
Nick Sellers (04:55):
Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (04:55):
So, so you, you, you got retired, something happened to you and, and you’re like, yeah,
Nick Sellers (04:59):
Yeah, I got retired for sure. Um, is that where you wanna go to there?
Sevan Matossian (05:04):
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I’d love to hear that story.
Nick Sellers (05:06):
All right, cool. It’s kind of
Sevan Matossian (05:07):
The, I got, I got retired from CrossFit. I’m not getting paid, but I should be no
Nick Sellers (05:14):
Retired, bro. Um, alright. Yeah. So that’s kind of where my CrossFit thing started. Um, I guess to give us some background, I was in the army, um, uh, spent three years in first and 25th infantry division in the 25th Bri grade support battalion. Um, spent another three years in 82nd airborne. Um, kinda, that was my, that was my army experience. Got a couple deployments in. Um, and on one of those deployments, I, um, to give you the in depth one, cause I did tell you I’d be an open book. Um, I was just to, I guess, to simplify it was blown up and uh, you can’t tell, got the shirt on, but if I took it off, you see some pretty good scarring and uh, stuff like that. So I got blown up, tried to stay in the army for a while. Uh, kind of had the mentality that I was gonna be able to bounce back from this get stronger.
Nick Sellers (06:04):
I was only 21 when that happened. So in my mind, I’m basically still Bulletproof, no matter what. And, um, it wasn’t the way it turned out. I ended up not being able to hack it, uh, anymore, especially in the 82nd and ended up with a medical retirement, uh, had some rank in the military, so that’s nice. And uh, so the retirement move was good enough, you know, it was, um, it’s, I, I would probably have done that. And I did that for a while when I got out, I just sat on my butt with the money that was in my account and cashing retirement checks and being a slug. But, um, yeah, that’s that right there is kind of, that’s how I got retired. And, uh, to go into that, just to give you, uh, some of the, what happened back in 2004 Misso Iraq day was a chow hall bombing and you know, anybody can check this out.
Nick Sellers (06:51):
There’s plenty of people that talk about it better than I do. And I wrote pretty cool stories about it, but, um, I think I actually got all the names of the people that died that day in that C hall bombing on my Instagram from probably like my last post. I don’t put a lot of stuff up there, but, uh, that’s one of them. And, uh, so anyway, one of the missions right there we were doing was training the Iraqi national guard along with other all kind of just support ops and stuff like that. That was going down. But we’re training the Iraqi national guard. Oh, there’s a group of probably 50 of them in there. They’re learning everything under the sun, how to be soldiers, but, um, a guy infiltrates and I could be off on this stuff a little bit, but, uh, guy infiltrates that unit. He’s got a ton of C4, not literally a ton, but a bunch of C4 wrapped around him as a belt. We’re all in the chow hall. Um, he blows hisself up. They’re shrapnel goes everywhere. Uh, something like 13, 14 people die that day and a ton of ’em are wounded. I’m one of ’em that was wounded
Sevan Matossian (07:49):
Guy. How many, how many do you think died? 13 or 14?
Nick Sellers (07:51):
I wanna say 13. It could be 14. I hate to, I hate to get that wrong and not have it right off the top of my head, but it was almost 20 years ago. Um, so,
Sevan Matossian (08:00):
Uh, is that, is that the, um, it says, um, the Ford operating base, the, the more bombing.
Nick Sellers (08:05):
Yeah. Bob me re was a Bob more is the command Sergeant majors last name was meez and then they named the bobs after guys that
Sevan Matossian (08:12):
Okay.
Nick Sellers (08:13):
Yeah. So you, if you’re that
Sevan Matossian (08:15):
14. 14,
Nick Sellers (08:16):
Yeah. Okay. There you
Sevan Matossian (08:17):
Go. Four us citizens. 18 total.
Nick Sellers (08:20):
Yeah. They had all kinds of people working there where it was like brown and rude. I think might’ve been doing the food for at that time. So there could have been civilians hurt, contractors hurt, uh, soldiers, sailors, international, uh, forces were there too. So there’s French, European, Canadian, all kinds of soldiers, sailors, airmen out there.
Sevan Matossian (08:40):
Four Iraqi soldiers. Total of total of, uh, 22.
Nick Sellers (08:44):
Yeah, no, I mean, everybody that was probably standing at that table died. So you said 22?
Sevan Matossian (08:49):
Uh, yeah, 20, 22 total 14 soldiers, 14 civilians, 14 Iraqi soldiers. The, the first 14 were us
Nick Sellers (08:55):
Soldiers. That makes sense. Yeah. So that, uh,
Sevan Matossian (09:00):
Hey, Hey, what’s the longest, um, version of this story you’ve ever told you ever sat around and talked about it for five hours?
Nick Sellers (09:08):
No, no, I don’t got five hours of that story in there, but we can go, we can get his, we can get graphic if you want.
Sevan Matossian (09:14):
Yeah. Uh, I, I do. I want, I want, I wanna go back just a Schmid before we get there. Okay. Fucking nuts, dude, that, that happened to you.
Nick Sellers (09:25):
Yeah. Yeah. I was lucky that, um, great unit, good guys trained with us. Um, what happened when it blows up? Is that like, we can go right to that.
Sevan Matossian (09:34):
Sure, sure. We’ll be all over. I, I gotta go back to your younger years too, to see how, what brings you to that, but go for it. Now that we’re here. Let’s let’s let’s let’s dance a little.
Nick Sellers (09:41):
Oh, sure. Well, the cliff notes of the younger years was I lived on the farm and I needed a job.
Sevan Matossian (09:47):
And in what state? Georgia
Nick Sellers (09:49):
Uhhuh.
Sevan Matossian (09:50):
Yeah. And mom and dad married.
Nick Sellers (09:52):
Oh yeah. Yeah. They, they, uh, they were married. They stayed married. Um, since I was a baby, uh, my mom was married before, but my dad smooth talker got her, got her on the right track. And then, uh, and then I came along.
Sevan Matossian (10:05):
Awesome. <laugh> uh, congrat congratulations. Uh it’s it’s not a, I think you’re in the minority of people whose parents stayed together.
Nick Sellers (10:13):
Oh.
Sevan Matossian (10:13):
And congratulations to your parents for doing that.
Nick Sellers (10:16):
Yeah. No, they’re, they’re awesome. They, I, I love them. I love them. Um, so, you know, back to the chow hall, big explosion happens. Uh, you can feel some people will know what this is, live bomb going off besides you, but to maybe articulate it for somebody that hasn’t experienced, something like that. It’s a ton of air pressure. Like if you’ve been in front of a huge fan, uh, and it’s just literally could blow stuff off your table or, or whatever you’ve been out in, you know, hurricane type winds, it’s that kind of pressure. Um, but it’s like if it was coming from a, a blow dryer, you know, like really, really hot air or something like that, and this pushing behind me, I can feel the heat from it. But man, so many IEDs and mortars that were going off at five Morere daily, pretty much that, uh, you were kind of used to it.
Nick Sellers (11:01):
I don’t wanna say complacent. This is probably about three months into this deployment. And um, so yeah, a ton of pressure. It pushes me up against the, uh, the table. And what I do is I see everything that’s going on around me. It definitely slows down a little bit, push myself onto the ground, uh, and start doing a, a self-awareness check, which is just like, Hey, you gotta make sure your legs are still on there. Your arms are still on there and stuff like that. So I noticed that I couldn’t move. And I, so I tried to wiggle my toes and that’s just kind of part of the process you’re going through. I’m like, okay, I can still feel my toes, but I couldn’t move my legs. So I decided I’m like, I must be in shock. Okay. Continue on with the self check. And when I put my hand behind my back and pulled it back out, which is part of it, there’s just blood all over it. Um, so open up the vest right there and you’re seeing everything.
Sevan Matossian (11:46):
What, what, what vest is, is, is it, is it a vest that protects you or it’s just regular clothes? Oh yeah. No, the chow hall you’re wearing some protective shit.
Nick Sellers (11:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Every, yeah, everything. Everything’s all, you can take your helmet off, but yeah, in FA more, that was what the, that was what the protocol was. And it may be different nowadays in some places it’s not like that. But if Bob more, it was real hot, man. It was not. I mean, like I said, we’re getting mortared every day. Um, people are attacking the gates weekly, um, and it also gets pretty hot. At least it was back then it gets pretty hot when like one unit takes over for another. It’s like the, you know, the bad guys wanna test you and see what your limits are, what you’re willing to accept. And that kind of happens is that transition takes place, um, from one unit there and taking over.
Sevan Matossian (12:30):
I, um, um, did you go by Nicholas or Nick?
Nick Sellers (12:35):
Uh, my dad’s probably the only person that called me Nicholas, but I’ll answer to, to either one of those man.
Sevan Matossian (12:39):
All right, Nick, when, when I, when I see things in life, I, and, and I just think, wow, people could really hurt. There must not really be that many bad people out there because people could really hurt people. Like, oh yeah. It would be so easy just to build a drone, put to put some shit together and fucking fly that thing into a fucking building where there’s, you know, I don’t wanna say it cuz I don’t wanna get in trouble for saying anything crazy. Sure. But, um, it would be so fucking easy to hurt people, any fucking Tom Dick and Harry could put together a five year plan, get a fucking jet and fucking fly it into something. I mean, we saw that guy in Hawaii. I don’t know if you remember the guy who stole that us airways fucking giant plane. Thank God he didn’t hurt anyone, but he crashed into the ocean and killed himself. But do you remember he was doing flips in a big, old fucking commercial jet? Yeah. No,
Nick Sellers (13:33):
I
Sevan Matossian (13:33):
Don’t remember the video. It was like, holy fuck. This guy’s a beast. Yeah. But that motherfucker could have done crazy shit.
Nick Sellers (13:40):
People are capable of everything. Right. Just,
Sevan Matossian (13:43):
Yeah. So, so, and when I’ve flown, when I’ve had the, um, I’ve got to fly private a lot and I start to see the, the theater of security, meaning, um, we just fly into Canada, like rich people. Like if you’re on a private jet, you just do what you want to do.
Nick Sellers (13:58):
Sure.
Sevan Matossian (14:00):
Their customs and all that shit just turns to fucking hogwash. And, and I, and I look at the, the, the fucking, um, um, the turtles and monkeys and just goofballs working TSA. Right. They’re just metabolically, deranged. Just fucking, don’t give a fuck trying to make $12 an hour so they can get home and go to the movies with their girlfriend.
Nick Sellers (14:22):
Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (14:23):
Um, how does someone, is it, is that, is it the same in the us military? It’s just, it’s just, how does someone get in there with a bomb? How did someone I don’t under, I don’t, I don’t understand. It’s like, um, it’s like a beehive. You would hope that like a Beatle couldn’t get in and get the queen that all the other bees would just whoop his ass. How, how did, how does it, how does that happen? Are you, or is it like, come on Sev, you just explained it. Like,
Nick Sellers (14:56):
Yeah. <laugh>
Sevan Matossian (14:58):
It’s like, so there, there’s not like, there’s not,
Nick Sellers (15:00):
People are smart, man. Okay. And people are complaint. Okay. People are smart.
Sevan Matossian (15:04):
Anything’s possible. If you wanna hurt someone, it can be done.
Nick Sellers (15:07):
Yeah. I mean, look, this isn’t gonna be this, isn’t gonna shine a light, a, a positive light on the military. So it’s all my brothers and sisters out there. Don’t, don’t take offense. But, uh, look, and I’m one of these, like, there’s a lot of, of D students in the military and that was me. Like I needed, I needed a thing. I needed something to reset. So Dick to gimme some direction. Okay. Right. So people are, people can be complacent, man. Um, people can get comfortable and that’s what they were like when you have one unit come in and another unit transition and they take over, um, like, that’s that check? They’re making sure you got your game up. Um, they’re
Sevan Matossian (15:43):
The bad, like, are there soldiers at the checkpoint showing their favorite only fans, girls, and some guy walks by with the bomb on and just waiting. And he’s in this, this,
Nick Sellers (15:50):
Yeah. No, probably not, but there’s,
Sevan Matossian (15:51):
I’ll give you this, that bad.
Nick Sellers (15:54):
Okay.
Sevan Matossian (15:55):
<laugh> uh, <laugh>,
Nick Sellers (15:56):
I’ll tell you this. I’ll tell you, uh, and this is, this is, uh, this probably shouldn’t well, here it is. Um, do you remember those, um, support the troops fans?
Sevan Matossian (16:07):
Yeah.
Nick Sellers (16:07):
Okay. I’m pretty far enough for moved from, and I don’t think they’re coming after my retirement check, but what we used to do was the pink ones. We would, uh, I didn’t not me, but I other people would, uh, give out these pink wristbands for jobs, basically. You know, you gotta understand the infrastructure is just destroyed at this point in time. We’re dropping bombs all over everything. You,
Sevan Matossian (16:29):
The infrastructure, this is in Iraq. That’s right.
Nick Sellers (16:31):
Okay. So people that needed to get jobs and stuff like that would come work on the Fs. It could become doctors, welders, whatever. Um, and so some of the things that could happen, well, we might give you a, a pink wristband in exchange for a bottle of alcohol. So you were getting a job and you could get in, like if you snuck in this booze, oh, cause there’s no, there’s no drinking. There’s no partying. There’s nothing like that. So I’m, I know that happened.
Sevan Matossian (17:00):
Right. So
Nick Sellers (17:01):
If that can happen, anything can happen. Now look there, this that’s, that’s an exception, right? An exception to the rule. This is, that’s not, there’s not people drunk partying. That’s not what it is. And if you get caught, you’re, you’re done.
Sevan Matossian (17:13):
Right, right.
Nick Sellers (17:14):
They’re putting you under the jail. You’re going back to, to your home and going to jail. Um, anything like that. But if that can happen then anything, then someone can be complacent enough to let a guy in with some bombs. And also some of these people are becoming soldiers themselves. So there is, there may be explosives training. There may be, um, you need to know how to disassemble vehicles and like make ’em inoperable. So you might have to have a, a certain type of grenade. That’s just gonna burn through this stuff and make it to the, the vehicle can’t move. Cuz you don’t got time to sit there and play around. So we have to teach these people how to do this kind of stuff. It that’s one level of it and anything in between. Okay.
Sevan Matossian (17:52):
It it’s um, uh, do you remember when that stuff went down in, in, um, Abu grave where the soldiers were like putting leashes on the prisoners and like taking pictures of them? Do you remember that shit? Yeah. So I I’m, I’m watching that and, and I’m seeing like people shocked and disgusted it and I’m like, dude, what do you think? 17 and 18 and 19 year old boys do. I’ve seen crazier shit than that at the fucking fraternities in college. The fuck. Yeah. They’ll build a pyramid at a naked guys and fucking right in the fucking main square. And then they’ll other dudes will throw piss and shit at ’em and that’s called hazing. And you there’s this like expectation. Hey, I don’t mean to be defending this behavior, but there’s this expectation of men that’s completely fucking unrealistic. These are fucking boys. They wanna do two things.
Sevan Matossian (18:40):
They wanna fight and they wanna fuck. And if they don’t, they’re not real boys. This is like, gold feels like this. And boys behave like this. This is it. Yeah. And so, and so like, it’s hard for me to blame a, uh, like if me and you are sitting around and we’re not kept busy, of course. Even if we don’t wanna drink, we’ll wanna trade a wristband for a bottle of alcohol, just because the same reason why we throw rocks at cars, we don’t wanna hurt the cars. We just wanna see who can hit the car.
Nick Sellers (19:06):
Oh yeah. Look,
Sevan Matossian (19:07):
I mean, we’re boys,
Nick Sellers (19:08):
I’m with you and look and, and to hit on some of that, I’m not sure if it was Harvard, if it was yeah. If it was whatever university, but they had this like, um, it’s kind of referenced a little bit where it was like some of the students were prisoners. Some of them were guards. And by the end of this little exercise, maybe only to it, like they’re being complete dirt bags to each other. Yes,
Sevan Matossian (19:27):
Yes.
Nick Sellers (19:28):
Um, so that’s in a controlled environment, man, if you it’s, it’s very controlled in any Ford observation base. At least it was for my experience. So, um,
Sevan Matossian (19:39):
Stanford prison experiment. Yeah.
Nick Sellers (19:41):
So if that can happen, I, I think I understand what you’re saying with that. And, and look, I don’t blame anybody. I don’t think complacency.
Sevan Matossian (19:46):
Right. And you weren’t and you weren’t. Yeah.
Nick Sellers (19:48):
It, it is, it is. I’m not, I wasn’t perfect. A hundred percent. Uh, I, I guarantee if you put a microscope over me then, uh, I would’ve messed something up too.
Sevan Matossian (19:57):
Did you think you were going to, um, when you, when you were there and that, and that bomb went off, did you think you were gonna die?
Nick Sellers (20:05):
I’ll tell you something freaky. Ma’am I used to have this dream. All right. When I was a kid, you know how you people have dreams of falling. Right. And, and you get the experience like this exhilaration of you’re actually falling in your sleep. It wakes you up, pulls you outta your sleep. All right. So when I, that I had those, but there was one that was, that was real wild. I, and it was about getting sh shot or stabbed in the back. And it was a recurring dream. Maybe it happened half a dozen times a year. And this was from a kid
Sevan Matossian (20:32):
Pre-military like you had no. Oh yeah,
Nick Sellers (20:34):
Yeah. As a kid, all through my life, it would be like my buddy stabbing me or getting jumped. And it’s like, in your dreams, your worst dreams kind of stuff, you know? Yeah. And it would wake me up out of it. And then when I landed in country and there were like, I think we’re in Kuwait when we land and we, we gotta do about 30 days there just kind of acclimating to the area. Um, I felt, I was like, oh man, I feel like, I feel like this. I, I feel like this is gonna suck. You know, I had a bad feeling in my gut. And then
Sevan Matossian (21:00):
Do you tell anyone that, or no, that’s just internal. That’s internal talk.
Nick Sellers (21:03):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s me, um, bad feeling in my gut. And then after that injury, I’ve never had that dream that’s 20 years ago.
Sevan Matossian (21:10):
Oh,
Nick Sellers (21:11):
I know. Right. So I’ve got, I’ll say a premonition. Right. But it’s, it’s, that’s freaky. Like to me, yeah. That’s a little weird.
Sevan Matossian (21:20):
Did, did you think you were gonna die when you’re feeling around the blood and, and, and like, you’re there, you’re like, oh, and I’m assuming your ears are ringing, right?
Nick Sellers (21:28):
Uh, no, my ears weren’t. I don’t remember like a ringing in my ear. Um, nothing like that. Did I think I was gonna die? No, no. Um, super confident. Super cocky. I mean, no, no, not at all. And plus man, we had been through so much training, uh, and this is a, a very strong unit. It’s not, no, it’s not just Joe blow. Who’s doing it on the weekend. Like we’re professional soldiers. Um, so yeah, my, my guys immediately responded to me, like pick me up, throw me on a table, get me to a, a, a home V. And I’m probably the first one to the cash. It I’m like maybe the first one. And thank God because you know, they’re gonna triage you as you’re coming in. Um, so again,
Sevan Matossian (22:13):
Do you know the guys, as you’re looking up at the table, are you like, Hey John? Yeah.
Nick Sellers (22:16):
Michael Sanders? No. Michael Sanders was the guy that picked me up in there. He’s riding in the back of the Hume with me. I passed out about three times from blood loss. He’s slapping me in the face and waking me up and make sure I got it together. We roll into the cash, which is combat army surgical hospital. We roll into the cash. Another little funny story. I like to tell when I tell this, so, uh, here we go. I get in, you know, they put you on the table and everything’s happening fast, man. Um, so they don’t, they’re not, unlacing your shoes. They basically take a pair of shoes and they’re just cutting. They just start cutting up, cutting up, cutting up. And right when the nurse gets to my knee, I slap my knee. I’m like, wait, wait, wait, don’t cut my Dick. All right.
Sevan Matossian (22:53):
<laugh> yeah. That’s a great story.
Nick Sellers (22:57):
Well, she laughed. She laughed and she’s like, oh, you gotta go to sleep, honey. And they, uh, you know, hit me with whatever. And I was out, I was in a coma for about 21 days after that.
Sevan Matossian (23:07):
No, you must have been so impressed that you said that if I said that I would be, so I’d be
Nick Sellers (23:11):
Like in the moment, dude.
Sevan Matossian (23:13):
I’d be like, yeah, I got it. Yeah. I still got it. I’ve
Nick Sellers (23:17):
Been holding that one in forever. Thanks for the opportunity
Sevan Matossian (23:21):
For sure. Caleb. Do, do you guys ever PR uh, Cal, I just see Caleb just popped up in, in the bag. Caleb, do you guys ever practice cutting shoes? Just like, Hey, here’s a pair of shoes. Cut. ’em
Nick Sellers (23:30):
Well, they cut in the, the, the very bottom of it. They’re just slicing right up. They’re not taking your pants down from anywhere else. They’re getting that shot fast.
Caleb Beaver (23:38):
You have to, you mostly we’re just like training on boots or something like that. Cuz it’s not very often. We’re gonna see like tennis shoes or anything, anything, but yeah, we’ll work on cutting people with trauma, shes and just trying, cuz it’s not as easy as it would seem depending
Sevan Matossian (23:52):
On what. Oh, it sounds hard. It sounds like, fuck you guys. It’s like, I just imagine bolt cutters cutting off shoes, but you don’t wanna cut off someone’s toe.
Caleb Beaver (23:59):
Yeah. And then sometimes you have to like remove a ring or something too. So there’s a lot of fabric and shit and you have to get through,
Sevan Matossian (24:08):
Um, are rings allowed. Can you wear a ring when you’re in, um, combat?
Caleb Beaver (24:13):
I mean you can, but that’s not very many people don’t
Nick Sellers (24:16):
Yeah. And the
Caleb Beaver (24:17):
Ring, usually people like
Nick Sellers (24:20):
He’s gonna go, he’s gonna go right into it. You could get the like obviously these little rubber ones are cool, but a metal one gets caught on something and you’re moving, man. It’s your finger could be gone or to rip all the skin right off of it. Right? Yeah. You don’t want that. You could,
Caleb Beaver (24:31):
You could get de glove pretty easily. If you get it caught on a piece of piece of anything like just a crate or like even something on your uniform. If it gets caught with enough force it.
Nick Sellers (24:41):
Oh yeah.
Caleb Beaver (24:43):
Probably gets pretty painful.
Sevan Matossian (24:45):
Um, uh, Caleb, I, I would love to keep you in the front. You got a crazy hum. See you see you crazy. Hum. I like having too much. I like having Caleb back there. Oh
Nick Sellers (24:59):
I like him. I like him VA. I like
Sevan Matossian (25:01):
Him. He’s great. Isn’t he? Yeah.
Nick Sellers (25:02):
Yeah. He’s always there. Right? He’s always in the background listening. It
Sevan Matossian (25:06):
Seems like he’s there. He’s there a lot, man. That dude, that dude’s good. Um, I wanna, I wanna go back and it, so, so you before then, did you think you were gonna be a 20 year military guy before that accident?
Nick Sellers (25:21):
Man, I didn’t know what I, what to do. I
Sevan Matossian (25:22):
Was there, but that was, that was about six years in that happened. You did, you did six years total?
Nick Sellers (25:27):
Yeah. Six years total. But that, that happened at about year three.
Sevan Matossian (25:30):
Okay. But, but then when you got to year four, you reenlisted,
Nick Sellers (25:33):
I had already reenlisted up at that point. So, uh, my initial sign on was for four years. And then at, when you’re about a year out, they’re asking you what you want to do and try to reup you. So I had picked up like as much as much extra cool school stuff as I could, whether it was like, Hey, I want to go to the 82nd. Uh, I need jump school added to my packet. I need this unit. Or you could be like, I wanna go through selection for special forces. You can kind of play it up. Whatever your recruiting officers got for you. And our unit kind of had everything on the menu. So whatever, whatever you wanted, you could pretty much get and lot of cash and you reenlisted out in country that was tax free. So you know, lots of good incentives.
Sevan Matossian (26:14):
And, and, and so you, when you reenlisted, was it for another four years? Mm-hmm <affirmative> okay. Um, you said they put you in coma for 21 days?
Nick Sellers (26:22):
Yeah. Yeah. I medically induced coma for 21 days. Yeah. I mean they jacked me up. I mean, you got blown up guts are all jacked up common bile, duct got screwed up, uh, lost a lot of intestines, stomach missing. Some of that 30% of my abdominal tissues gone, uh, fracture, vertebra all up and down that back just from the impact, uh, lung collapsed, filled with blood, like, yeah, I was jacked up man. And they kept me in that coma because they needed to take my guts out, clean ’em cut on ’em stitch ’em up, do whatever they do on the inside, put ’em back in and then keep me in. They had, you know, whatever breathing tube ISS down my throat and all that kind of stuff.
Sevan Matossian (26:59):
How, how was your brain
Nick Sellers (27:01):
Before after right now? What <laugh>
Sevan Matossian (27:04):
Uh, uh, any damage done to your brain? No. Like physical damage?
Nick Sellers (27:09):
No.
Sevan Matossian (27:09):
No. And um, and when you, and when they do the initial work, do they do it, do they fly you out of Iraq or did they take you somewhere?
Nick Sellers (27:18):
So the initial surgery was done right there at the combat army surgical hospital to, uh, or the cash to stabilize. Then I went on a medical Blackhawk to bead from there. I actually flatlined on the Blackhawk a couple times. So they had to pop me and bring me back up then Reed and bead, which had a medical unit there then over to Germany, um, where I got stabilized and, uh, had some treatment done there, all this I’m unconscious for, I don’t remember that part of Germany. And uh, then I get flown back to the states. My parents are made aware, then the army brings my parents to the, to the hospital that I’m at. And I’m not sure if they thought I was at Walt Reed or Fort Sam first. And there might have been some confusion there where they had stuck me, uh, with my parents. But now the army took care of ’em a hundred percent man. The, um, I think it was the Fisher houses where they were staying,
Sevan Matossian (28:06):
Oh, your parents, they brought your parents and put, they even put your parents up. No shit,
Nick Sellers (28:10):
Dude. Uh, Denzel Washington, boughted another Fisher house while I was there because he loved what they were doing so much just to bring families of people so they could stay. And I would, if I had to give credit to what helped me get through a lot of that, having my mom, my dad, my brother, aunts and uncles buddies that were in and out when they went on, leave, coming in and hanging out with me. Good chaplain, great staff,
Sevan Matossian (28:33):
Chaplains, chaplains. That’s the dude who talks to you about God, the afterlife.
Nick Sellers (28:36):
Yeah. Yeah. He’ll play chess with you too. If he knows how he’ll do a lot of cool stuff with you, he or she.
Sevan Matossian (28:41):
Um, so you go down in some obscure desert and you come to 21 days later in America.
Nick Sellers (28:50):
Yeah. In a hospital. Yeah. Wild
Sevan Matossian (28:53):
Fucking weird.
Nick Sellers (28:55):
<laugh> yeah. Screwed my Christmas up the whole time.
Sevan Matossian (28:57):
Did you have any, um, of those? Uh, um, I had a guy recently on the show who spent 30, 80 days in the hospital is COVID 30 days in coma. And he was talking about these delusions of Grande you had and just they’re fucked up. He was basically saying that like when he was in there, he just, he had fabricated this whole story that his family had been murdered. Did, did you have I got nothing
Nick Sellers (29:20):
Like that? No man. No, for me, um, I had a little bit of problem sleeping at the very beginning. Like anytime I would try to go to sleep, it would bring me back to that day and that kind of stuff. Uh, but
Sevan Matossian (29:30):
No shit, this is after you’re awake after 21 days. It, it, you got some like damage, like, like, uh, shell, what the turtles used to call it, shell stock, right? Like just like you’re fucked. You’re you’re shaking.
Nick Sellers (29:43):
Yeah, for sure. And uh, anytime I would try to go, you know how, like sometimes you can maybe think of some things before you go to bed and then you like dream of that stuff. Yeah. I could do anything. I could be dreaming of the hottest chicks, the coolest thing I’d ever done. And by the time I started those off, it would kind of bring me back to that. That happened for.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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