Bill Leahy (00:01):
That’s good.
Sevan Matossian (00:02):
What did you do last night?
Bill Leahy (00:04):
What did I do last night? I’m trying to remember. Not a whole lot of anything, dude. I was actually on the phone. One of my friends just got married and he moved to Texas, so we talked for a little bit because he’s been living there for about two or three days. So just catching up on how things are going and that sort of stuff.
Sevan Matossian (00:21):
You didn’t do fireworks, you didn’t go see fireworks?
Bill Leahy (00:24):
No, not really. Honestly. My younger brother normally gets after fireworks every year, but he was out of town visiting his girlfriend, so there really wasn’t a whole lot of fireworks that happened here.
Sevan Matossian (00:37):
Were you awake? Were you outside at all? Did you see, go outside and watch anything? Yeah.
Bill Leahy (00:42):
Yeah, I saw a few, yeah. And there’s neighbors or people around us that are shot in the fireworks, but for the most part, I was honestly just elevating my foot.
Sevan Matossian (00:50):
Oh, no. Bright. It’s like that still, huh?
Bill Leahy (00:54):
Yeah, it’s honestly doing pretty good. I’m about four weeks out of surgery. Yeah,
Sevan Matossian (01:02):
Bill Leahy. Wow. It’s wild how I just kind of live in my little circle and then all of a sudden, and I talk to Andrew regularly and he’s like, Hey, there’s this dude Bill. Hey dude, there’s this dude Bill. Hey dude, there’s this dude Bill. And it was fun to see him, and he really enjoyed, not did he really enjoys the relationship that he built with you and that you built with him and that you let him build and kind of a crazy detour, right? I was actually, I was just watching this video, this hype video this morning that he made of you, which is crazy. I had seen it before, but I forgot how just absolutely insanely athletic you are. And that was a
Bill Leahy (01:48):
Cool video
Sevan Matossian (01:49):
Jumping Hank from the Rims recent, right?
Bill Leahy (01:52):
Yeah, yeah. That was a month or two ago, probably two months ago, right before semi two.
Sevan Matossian (01:57):
I mean Alley oping. Fuck the alley. ING’s crazy.
Bill Leahy (02:02):
That was back in the day.
Sevan Matossian (02:05):
And even that, the little one-legged just like,
Bill Leahy (02:08):
Yeah,
Sevan Matossian (02:09):
Hop over the box. Did you think you were going to play as a kid? Did you have goals to play professional basketball? Aspiration?
Bill Leahy (02:17):
Absolutely. No doubt. Yeah. I can give you a little background, but
Sevan Matossian (02:21):
Yeah,
Bill Leahy (02:22):
Please, please. I started gymnastics when I was, I want to say two to three years old, so super, super young. And I did it pretty heavily till about eight years old, and I say heavily five days a week. And I was competing regionally, so Alabama, Texas, around that spot, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, around that area. I went to competitions
Sevan Matossian (02:46):
And did that. What’s that look like? Gymnastics at a young age, because if I take my kids here to Santa Cruz gymnastics, it feels like it’s more like there’s some gymnastics, but it also feels like daycare.
Bill Leahy (02:59):
Yeah, no. So I was on a team, there might’ve been maybe anywhere from six to 10 guys that rolled around there, but we trained every day. So it was five days a week kind of thing. And we all had, you have different events, whether it’s the floor, poel, horse, high bar rings, whatever. And so you had routines and then you went to meet, and then you would do your routine at the meet, be judged, get a score out of 16, and then you’d have an overall winner kind of thing, or you
Sevan Matossian (03:26):
Might, so you were sitting around eating goldfish, doing arts and crafts for two hours and then training for 30 minutes.
Bill Leahy (03:32):
Yeah, no, something you’ll find out was that anything I do in life is pretty hard in a lot of, so yeah, there was no, I guess fun times in that. I mean, it was fun, but it was taken seriously. I was trying to be good to the point that I was five or six years old, and I was like, I want to be an Olympian. That’s why gymnastics, yeah, it was very clear
Sevan Matossian (03:53):
And a good program. Your parents found a good program.
Bill Leahy (03:56):
I think it’s great. I’m going to put my kids in it when I have kids. I think it, it’s
Sevan Matossian (03:59):
Still around. It’s still around.
Bill Leahy (04:01):
Yeah. That place that I went to is still around, but gymnastics in general I think is awesome. I think it creates a great base for any kid to go into any sport afterward because it just teaches in body awareness. So I think that was a tremendous part that helped me in my life, whether it was running track, playing basketball, doing CrossFit, all of it. I think that was great. But I did that until I was about eight years old, and then my dad was like, Hey, you need to take a break and try sports. So I was like, okay. Did you have
Sevan Matossian (04:27):
Any injuries in your early gymnastics years? Do you remember? No. No. You don’t ever remember hurting yourself, twisting your ankle, sitting out for a week or a month or nothing?
Bill Leahy (04:36):
Yeah. No. No. So I was around eight-ish, nine years old, and I was like, you need to try sports. So we went to the local rec kind of thing. I played basketball, baseball, and I actually was going to play football that year. And this is funny too, because I was eight at the time, making nine, and I had missed the cutoff for the seven and eights football team by eight days or something. It was
Sevan Matossian (05:00):
Like, bill, sorry. Is there a fan on in your room?
Bill Leahy (05:03):
Yeah. Hold on. Lemme see.
Sevan Matossian (05:04):
Thanks. Because what it’s doing is it’s kind of messing up your audio. It’s turning your audio way down.
Bill Leahy (05:09):
Okay. Give me two seconds. I have to crush.
Sevan Matossian (05:11):
Oh yeah, shit. Okay. We’ll enjoy that. Yeah. Damn. Yeah.
Bill Leahy (05:14):
Give me a second back.
Sevan Matossian (05:17):
Look at that. What is that in the back? Is that a window? Is he in an addict?
Bill Leahy (05:22):
Should be better.
Sevan Matossian (05:25):
Bill Leahy. Andrew made a full feature on this guy. If anyone wants to see it, go over to Hiller. fitt, you can watch the entire feature. Andrew was with him before semifinals watching him train.
Bill Leahy (05:35):
That should be a little better.
Sevan Matossian (05:37):
Oh yeah. Much better. Much better. Awesome. Yeah, thank you. I know you’re in an attic and it’s probably going to get hot up there, so I appreciate it. Or it looks like you’re in an attic.
Bill Leahy (05:46):
No, I’m good to go. Okay. Yeah, so I’m trying to remember where it was at. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I played basketball, played baseball, and then I was going to play football, like three major sports kind of thing. But they ended up not having a team in the seven and eight year olds, I’m sorry, in the nine and tens, but I was eight days too old to play in the seven and eight. So I did end up playing football, and it’s funny, but I never played football my whole life, and I think if I would’ve been a few days younger, I would’ve played football. And I think being as athletic as I was and my building, all that sort of stuff, I may have had a different trajectory in life if I ended up playing football at that young of an age. But once I did that, I fell in love with basketball. So then I started playing basketball pretty hard, honestly. I ran cross country a little bit when I was younger and did track in high school, but I was homeschooled actually through eighth grade. Oh,
Sevan Matossian (06:35):
That would explain why you’re so weird. Okay, that explains it. Okay. I got homeschooled kids too. They’re weirdos.
Bill Leahy (06:42):
That’s funny. I think
Sevan Matossian (06:43):
Homeschoolers, you’re a nice man. You come across as such a nice man and the homeschooled kids are so nice.
Bill Leahy (06:50):
But yeah, so I was homeschooled through eighth grade playing basketball for a homeschool team that my parents actually created. But what happened was I was playing on the varsity team and then a lot of people ended up graduating, and so I was kind of left alone going to be a freshman, and everybody else was graduated. So at that point I ended up going to a local high school, the one that I found around here to play basketball.
Sevan Matossian (07:12):
And that’s why you went. Why did your parents homeschool you? Is your family deeply religious or why did they homeschool you?
Bill Leahy (07:23):
Honestly, a question you’d probably have to ask them. I’m unsure. I think, I really don’t know exactly how it started, but we started in kindergarten kind of thing. My sister went to school maybe through first grade or something. I have an older sister, she’s about two years older than me, but after that, we were all homeschooled. So I don’t really know. It was kind of just a thing that
Sevan Matossian (07:42):
Happened. Is your family really religious? Did you do church every Sunday?
Bill Leahy (07:45):
Yeah, I would say. I would say yeah, we’re religious. We’re believers.
Sevan Matossian (07:48):
Yeah. And what about vaccines? Did they give you vaccines as a kid?
Bill Leahy (07:52):
Did they give me vaccines as a
Sevan Matossian (07:53):
Kid? Do you remember getting your vaccines? Because usually those are the two big reasons because schools will require vaccines or they’ll be teaching the kids stuff that the parents are like, Hey, I don’t think my kids should be learning that.
Bill Leahy (08:05):
I do vaguely remember getting some, but not a ton, honestly, I wouldn’t say. Gotcha. Okay. But it was more of an environment thing too. Yeah, I guess in life I didn’t really always follow the common path to being schools and stuff like that. So yeah, that probably played a factor in. I’m not sure if the vaccine thing was a huge factor. Honestly, I don’t know how much schools around here where I live really require vaccines.
Sevan Matossian (08:30):
And where do you live?
Bill Leahy (08:31):
South Louisiana.
Sevan Matossian (08:32):
Okay, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You guys beat to a different drummer than us in California.
Bill Leahy (08:38):
Yeah. Yeah. So it might be a little different with vaccines too, but so yeah, I went to a school in ninth grade, I played
Sevan Matossian (08:46):
Did you acclimate? Well, how was that?
Bill Leahy (08:48):
Yeah, it honestly wasn’t too bad. If you want me to be totally truthful with you, that video that SVO posted, it was when I was dunking when I was 15 or 14, something like
Sevan Matossian (08:56):
That. Oh, Hiller, that Hiller posted. Yeah,
Bill Leahy (08:57):
Hiller, I’m sorry, not you. Yeah. That video that Hiller posted was two weeks into the beginning of my freshman year at that school, and it was during field day. And so what happened was the school probably has a thousand, it was an all boys school that I went to, and it was like they had the best basketball around here and driving distance, and it was during field day and they had roughly about a thousand people in the gymnasium. And word was getting around that there were some small white kid who could dunk that was a freshman. And then it started as field day was going on, all of a sudden, if you heard in the video, they had a chant, let’s go build. The entire school was chanting that. So I crawled from the top bleachers down, and one of the seniors on the team threw me a lob, like an Alley U. And so that broke it open for me. Then everyone in the school knew who I was. So acclimation after that was very, very simple.
Sevan Matossian (09:52):
Hey, isn’t that interesting? That’s kind of the same thing that happened with Andrew, right? There’s this guy, bill Leahy, just that you were really good at basketball and then all of a sudden you were just thrust into the limelight from just being kind of in your home and no one knows who you are. And the same thing with CrossFit. There’s guys who are, that have had your success. A lot of people don’t know their names, and then Andrew just pushed you out onto the court and is like, Hey, look at this guy.
Bill Leahy (10:25):
Yeah, no, honestly, it’s kind of happened that way too. Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (10:28):
Yeah. Interesting. And were you self-motivated up to that point, or were your parents in basketball were your parents didn’t have to ride you or yell at you? There were no fights at home. Bill get out there and practice. It
Bill Leahy (10:41):
Was totally understood. So basically the kind thing in my household growing up was you kind of need to be involved in something. It doesn’t necessarily matter what it was. If I told my dad, Hey, I want to go play the piano tomorrow, he’d be like, okay, but we’re doing the piano five days a week, you’re working. It was always taught to have a work ethic and do something. It didn’t matter what it was. So if I would’ve said at any point, I don’t want to play basketball anymore, I want to do X, it was fine. I mean, that’s how basketball stopped and CrossFit began. Same thing. And that was just a big thing in our household was just always be involved and be doing something and learn how to work hard.
Sevan Matossian (11:17):
So at 15 you get thrust out there, and how’s your high school basketball season?
Bill Leahy (11:21):
It was good that year I made the freshman team and played, I’m sorry, I made this varsity team started some games, so it was all good. We had a pretty good year that year. The following year, my sophomore year, we went to the state championship game for the first time as at school, and we ended up losing, but I started sophomore year the whole season. So I mean, it was all pretty good. And then that was when colleges started talking to me was my sophomore year and when I started going on visits and stuff like that. So that was about when everything started coming to, and then junior year came, and that was kind of when the realization came that what I wanted to do in this sport might not occur at best. I was going to walk on to a division one school kind of thing, and then maybe play a year and try to work my way into a scholarship.
(12:07):
After that, it was like D twos, D threes, and n ais is where I had offers. And there were some really cool schools, some very smart schools that giving me offers and stuff like that. But in general, about halfway through my junior year, towards the end of it, I kind of realized that I always had a desire in my life to be the best at something and basketball wasn’t going to be it. It was like I was five or six. I wanted to be an Olympian. And then once I started playing sports, it was like I want to be in the NBA kind of thing. And then going into senior year was kind of around, my aunt owns a box probably about 15 minutes from my house. So I had heard about CrossFit but didn’t look too much into it. But once my senior year of basketball ended, that was in 2020, and that was when Covid started and the whole shutdown, and it was March of 2020, so I didn’t get to run track that year, which I was looking forward to doing.
(12:57):
And then that was kind of over, we were on lockdown, and then my aunt was like, Hey, we have this thing called Murph at the end of May. And I was like, okay, that’s cool. That’ll give me something to do kind of thing. Stay in shape, whatever. And I was still contemplating the whole play college basketball or not. But then when I started diving into CrossFit during that time period and training hard and looking at all of what it was actually my parents, I’m at my parents’ house right now because of my foot, but they have a barn in their backyard. And me and my best friend Colin, which you’ve seen him before, he was the guy on the tree cutting video with shaved head. Okay, yeah. We built framed in the inside of my parents’ barn and made our own home gym essentially. And then that kind, this was around May about four years ago, and that was when I started.
(13:43):
I did Murph and I was like, I want to do this CrossFit thing. I had watched all the documentaries, whole nine yards of stuff. So I was like, I think I can do this, and I think I can make this professionally. I can make the NBA CrossFit, which is the games. So I was like, I want to do this. And it was one specific day. I had a treadmill in my room. I had a treadmill in my room since I was a freshman in high school or something for running with basketball. And my dad was actually running on it, and I was sitting on the bed and we were talking through it, and he’s like, what do you want to do? I was like, I want to be the fittest man in the world. That’s what I’ve always wanted to do. And I think God’s finally pointing me to the thing that he made me for.
(14:19):
Everything makes sense. It lines up, this is what I was made for, this is what I want to do. And he’s like, all right, if you want to do it, then we’re going to do it. And I was like, what do you mean? Originally I was thinking I would just go to college and train on the side, and he’s like, no, if you want to be the best in the world and you want to do it, we’re going to do it. We’re going to go all in. This is the only point in your life where you don’t have a mortgage, you don’t have a wife, you don’t have kids, you’re free, you’re youthful. He’s like, we’re going to go for it. And what’s the worst that happens? College will always be there. Getting married will always be there. Buying a house will always be there, but you being in this free. And I was like, all right. He said, it’s going to be risky and you could walk away in four or five years and not make it, but it’s worth the risk and nothing great will be done without a risk. And I was like, right, I want to do this. And then it was kind of around that time, I’d say May or June-ish, and I signed up for a gym and I went all in.
Sevan Matossian (15:12):
What did you run in track?
Bill Leahy (15:14):
I ran the open 400, so one lap. I was actually pretty good at that, to give you an idea, I probably was better than I was at basketball. The sole reason I ran it was because at my school, they had the school record for the open 400 was like 30 years old or something. So I was like, I think I could beat that kind of thing. So I went out there and my junior year I ran, because we started late because basketball went into the track season, but I ran a total of four races maybe or three races. I think I ran a total of three, four hundreds. My third 400, I broke the record. And then my fourth one was the district meet, and I actually DQ because I false started, and then that was it. I didn’t get to qualify for regionals, so it was like that short of a span, but it was totally run just to break the record at the school, which I did. And the name’s still up there today. So that was pretty cool. But I definitely could have ran at a pretty big college for track, honestly.
Sevan Matossian (16:11):
Did you enjoy running? Did you enjoy the 400?
Bill Leahy (16:14):
Yeah, I did a lot. It was super cool, honestly, it’s very comparable to CrossFit, as crazy as it sounds. It’s like a minute, and you hurt for about 10 or 15 minutes after. So
Sevan Matossian (16:24):
When you The four hundred’s? Just one lap.
Bill Leahy (16:27):
Just one lap.
Sevan Matossian (16:28):
And when you set the school record, did, did that feel special that were you holy? Were you at some point turning one of the turns being like, wow, I’m flying
Bill Leahy (16:41):
In the race. I was so far ahead, everybody else in my heat that I was kind of running alone and you see the clock, but you always don’t know what your laser time is going to be and that sort of stuff. So I was just running as hard as they could all the way through the line. And then when I broke the record, yeah, it was a good feeling. It was something that had set out for, and as soon as basketball ended, I had a month and a half before track was over, so I was like, I have to train as hard as I possibly can in this month and a half if I want to be able to be conditioned enough to break the record. And so I went pretty hard and it was goal that was achieved. So that was pretty cool. And it was disappointing because my senior year, which I guess I can explain this too, but I transferred schools, so ninth through 11th grade, I went to that high school basketball for St. Paul’s. And then my senior year I transferred to another school probably about, I don’t know, 15 or 20 minutes away. So it wasn’t too far, but I was looking forward to running at that school because I wanted to try to break their form meter record too, to have two records at two different schools, but Covid hit, so then we didn’t end up running track.
Sevan Matossian (17:41):
Why did you transfer schools?
Bill Leahy (17:46):
Basically put, it was kind of like
Sevan Matossian (17:48):
You got a girl pregnant at the first school.
Bill Leahy (17:51):
There was all boys, so I’m not sure that,
Sevan Matossian (17:54):
Okay, alright, alright.
Bill Leahy (17:57):
No, basically speaking, it was more of an environment. I was starting to realize that there was more to life than just playing sports and basketball. I was like, I never went to prom, homecoming and that sort of stuff didn’t hang out with people and the kids at that school didn’t really do a whole lot of what I did. I guess I could say I walked a more straight and narrow path. So the other school that I transferred to was a little bit better of a school and I’m thankful I did because my girlfriend that I still have dating today was at that school. So I met her and then one of my best friends who just got married and moved to Texas, I met him too. So I made friends from that school that I wouldn’t have made at the previous school. So ended up being a really good senior year of high school for me. I started kind of enjoying it a little more.
Sevan Matossian (18:38):
When you run the 400 and you’re setting the school record, do you feel free on the track? Does it feel effortless?
Bill Leahy (18:45):
Yeah, it felt really good. It was a natural thing. It didn’t take very long for me to be pretty good at it, and it was definitely a natural thing and it was something I heavily enjoyed.
Sevan Matossian (18:54):
There’s no point of it that’s like a slog, like Murph. It’s just like,
Bill Leahy (18:59):
I mean, all it is, it just comes down to pacing on the 200, running the third turn and then given everything you have on the straightaway. So yeah, it was a cool thing.
Sevan Matossian (19:08):
And when someone’s running fast and you say they’re giving it everything, what does that mean? Is that leaning as far forward as you can? Does that mean, what does that mean?
Bill Leahy (19:17):
It means holding technique when your body feels like it’s failing. So for that last 400, the last a hundred meters of the four meter run, you feel like your lactic acid is building up, you can’t turn over anymore. So it’s like extra emphasis on pumping those arms, keep it up, right chest, that sort of stuff. So it’s like your body’s failing but you’re trying to hold it together, which is similar to think maybe if you were to sprint the echo bike for a minute, those last 20 seconds of what the echo bike feels like to where you’re giving it everything you have and your body’s failing, that’s what a 400 feels like. And then the next 10 minutes after pens and needles in your butt and it hurts really bad.
Sevan Matossian (19:53):
Could you tell me what the, and I don’t even know what I’m saying here, but what the points of performance are for running a 400, like you said, pumping arms. What other stuff, is there
Bill Leahy (20:03):
Points of performance for running a four oh meter
Sevan Matossian (20:06):
Or just running sprinting? What are the points of performance? What should someone remember? What should they be queuing themselves?
Bill Leahy (20:14):
I would say keeping your arms pumping could be a points of performance because a lot of times people have dead arms when they’re running and you want to have an emphasis on that, staying on your toes. Track shoes are interesting. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen sprinting shoes, but the entire front of it is a pair of spikes and then the back of it is a heel that has nothing because you only run on the balls of your feet. So it’s like when you’re walking on the track, it feels weird walking on your heels, but when you run, it was the craziest thing. I’d never worn those before and they were like, these are what they look like. I’m like, no way these things work.
Sevan Matossian (20:45):
It felt so weird.
Bill Leahy (20:47):
But once you run, it makes sense and it feels so normal as soon as you go to walk. It’s awful. But that was pretty cool. I think I still have those shoes actually. I kept those.
Sevan Matossian (20:56):
In those years from gymnastics. As a toddler to your senior year, did you ever have any significant injuries?
Bill Leahy (21:06):
No. I mean there’s the occasional ankle twist or jam your thumb, but there was no significant injuries that I can remember. I never hurt myself at any point. No.
Sevan Matossian (21:19):
And when you’re chasing your basketball dreams and then you realize that, is there anything you could have done, what’s the limiting factor to when you’re at the highest level of your potential, but you want to go pro and you don’t think it’s going to happen? Is there anything you think you could have done? Any kind of difference in training, spend more time in the yard, shooting free throws? Is there anything that you weren’t doing?
Bill Leahy (21:43):
I think generally speaking, you always look back on whatever you did in life and think in hindsight with 2020 vision, yeah, I could have done a little more of this or that, but overall, I mean I worked as hard as I could. I believe God led me in that path to put me where I am today. It grew me in person and molded me into the person that he wanted me to be now. And I play basketball as hard as I could every day. The amount of experiences I gained, places I went, uncomfortable situations, adversity, all of it I think was very beneficial to help me out and where I’m at today. So no, I wouldn’t change anything with it honestly.
Sevan Matossian (22:17):
Bill, do you remember, I’m going to meets and crying. Do you remember the Yeah. Do you, last time you cried at an event? I take my kids to events and there’s crying, right? And their events, they don’t cry at tennis, they cry. There’s a lot of crying. I mean, you see kids crying everywhere. Do you remember crying? Yeah, I do.
Bill Leahy (22:41):
So I can give you a story about it. There’s this guy, Jr Chow was his name. He actually is doing, I don’t know if he’s still at Stanford right now for gymnastics or not, but he is trying to go to the Olympics. But when we were training together, being younger, it was kind of more or less me and him always we would butt heads. It was like I was a consistent second and I could beat him every once in a while and he would win most of the time. And then it was everybody else and we were at a state meet. Was
Sevan Matossian (23:07):
He also at your academy or was he at a different academy?
Bill Leahy (23:10):
No, he was same one. So we did gymnastics together every day and we were good friends growing up, slept over at each other’s houses and that sort of stuff. His dad was a gymnast too, so it was pretty serious of him doing gymnastics and more so my parents just put me in it. But I guess the last time I cried and it wasn’t more of being upset, it was upsetting too, but it was a state meet, I think. I want to say it was one of my last meets, so we were seven or eight years old. Parallel bars was the event, which they haven’t CrossFit, so P bar traverses. And to finish the event, we had to go from an lsit to a handstand and you could get a bonus and there was something, we were like seven, so we didn’t really do that very often.
(23:48):
And it was only trained to get a bonus on your routine. And I remember I was thinking in my head, if I want to try to beat JR here, I have to go for this. It was basically me and him at the state meet and it was like we were competing against each other. And I remember being like, if I want to beat him, I have to go for this. And I remember going into the handstand and falling over the top. So I fell on my back on the P barss and then rolled off and I remember crying really hard. My coach came over, I had a salute to finish my routine, and I remember being upset. It hurt and scared me, but I was more upset because I was like, I went for it and I failed. I was like, I knew I needed this to have points on the P bar event to try to beat jr. But that was a good lesson because it was like I went for it and I failed and that’s okay, but I never would’ve had a shot at beating him if I didn’t. But that’s a specific time when I remember crying. But yeah, I’m sure times that happened all the time.
Sevan Matossian (24:43):
And how would your dad react to that?
Bill Leahy (24:48):
I remember him just helping me out afterwards, just making sure I wasn’t hurt or anything, but he was more like he was proud. He knew that I went for it. I was trying to beat him. I wasn’t playing it safe.
Sevan Matossian (25:00):
We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Matt Burns. Did Bill want to Dick slap Hiller after the quarterfinal workout?
Bill Leahy (25:05):
I put none of that on Hiller. All he was there was to help me. His total intentions through all of it was to assist me and help me, and that’s what he did. I have no remorse for that. Everything he did was helpful. It was totally my fault. I don’t believe he had any doing in that.
Sevan Matossian (25:20):
I know him pretty well. I spend a lot of time with him and I’d never have seen him like that.
Bill Leahy (25:29):
Yeah, he was pretty messed up.
Sevan Matossian (25:30):
He was really fucked up and not for what other people were saying about him. He could give two shits. He felt like he really let you down. I don’t want to misstate it, but I think I feel even bad saying this, but I’m pretty sure he told me, I knew that they weren’t perfect and I didn’t say anything to him because he felt the pressure of being there. He’s like, dude, I fucking basically failed. I fucked up. I could have done something and I didn’t.
Bill Leahy (26:02):
Yeah, no, I felt really bad. I remember texting him. I was sitting in the living room actually with my parents. This was maybe Saturday evening or something
Sevan Matossian (26:09):
For people who don’t know. Just real quick, the quarterfinal workouts were some workouts that happened and a lot of people got penalties on the box, step up a lot of people. And that’s what we’re referencing, that you took a significant penalty there.
Bill Leahy (26:22):
Yeah. Major penalty, correct. Yeah. I don’t remember. It was a few days after the due date or whatever when they started throwing out the penalties and I got an email and it said major penalty and my heart sunk because I was like, what could it possibly be? This was before I knew the whole shebang on the step ups. So I saw it and my heart sank. So then I hurry up and did math because the leaderboard hadn’t even updated. I got the email saying I received a major penalty, but I was still in sixth or seventh. So I hurried up and mathed it out and I was like, I’m going to be in 36th. I’m still in the top 40. It’s okay. But then I texted Hiller about it and he said he was hanging out with friends or something, but then he saw it and we had a phone call and I could hear he was upset and I was upset too. It was like I almost felt bad for him because I knew all the repercussions he was going to have to face, obviously with his followings and who he is. And I knew he just cared everything he did when he was here, he was just trying to help me and it was a mistake. So I honestly felt bad. I felt like I let him down. I knew that was going to be a lot of hurt from him, and I didn’t want that.
Sevan Matossian (27:24):
Yeah, when I talked to him on the phone, he sounded like he was going to throw up. He sounded like I was talking to someone who was physically ill. He was not in a good place. It was really weird. It seemed like that. And like I said, he never mentioned to me giving a fuck about what anyone else thought. Yeah, he was just like, fuck dude. He felt like he let you down. It was weird. I mean, it was a trip.
Bill Leahy (27:49):
No, and I think that’s a testimony to who he is as a person. I know a lot of people have a lot of opinions about him. And I mean, I did too when he made the first two videos about me, and I never got to talk to him, but I knew in the grand scheme of things, I was like, I just want to talk to this guy. I want him to meet me. I want to meet him. Truly find out who he is as a person and then vice versa. And once you do that, you’ll understand there’s a lot more behind that camera.
Sevan Matossian (28:12):
Did you feel like when he showed up at his house right away, could you tell that he really cared?
Bill Leahy (28:18):
Yeah, definitely. I mean, I could tell he cared when we had the interview at Crash and he wanted to just ask me about it all and figure it all out. And he was nice and he didn’t want to interrupt any of my events. He’s like, look, dude, this is going to mess your head up. We don’t have to do this. Let me know a time. He was very, very helpful with all that sort of stuff. And that showed me that I was like, okay, he’s cared. He’s not just in this to get a video out.
Sevan Matossian (28:41):
And you see he worked with Haley Adams and it’s one of the biggest videos and most impactful videos in the last five years that anywhere in the CrossFit space. And so for him to put that time into you who doesn’t have the name, who wasn’t going to garner that attention, was very interesting. I, and I know because him that he was so excited at what you were showing the world. He was like, seriously, dude, I’m not joking. This guy can win. I’m not like, this isn’t a joke.
Bill Leahy (29:11):
I think it’s really, really cool to have people of that stature believe in you. I think that’s a super, super cool
Sevan Matossian (29:16):
Thing. You didn’t mind the pressure
Bill Leahy (29:19):
It comes with it and everything you did. And it was pressure that I had in basketball. And I’m not going to say I didn’t let it get to me a few times, but at the same boat, would you rather not be known and not have,
Sevan Matossian (29:32):
I had a friend who was bugging me all the time and I was complaining to another friend about this friend who was bugging me all the time, demanding too much of my time. And then he basically said, Hey, you have to ask yourself the question. Would you rather have it the other way and not have this person be in your life at all? And I was like, oh, fuck you. Think of it like that. And it’s like,
Bill Leahy (29:50):
Yeah,
Sevan Matossian (29:51):
I’m all in
Bill Leahy (29:51):
Way more than just pressure and aspects in your life. Yeah, it’s like looking at the other person’s grass and just looking at the one part that’s green and saying you wish you want.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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