Beyond a Reasonable Bout

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, beyond a reasonable bout, Brandon brings the case against his wife, Marie.

A few months ago, Brandon won his first and thus far only amateur boxing match.

He's starting to get the itch to compete again, but Marie is against it.

Who's right?

Who's wrong?

Only one man can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

Many fighters choose to listen to music before a fight.

It gets them pumped up.

Me,

I choose to listen to your podcast.

I find it properly enraging.

So thank you.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, swear them in.

Brandon and Marie, please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God, or whatever?

Yes.

Yes.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he's obviously biased as a screen boxing legend known for his fist-a-cuffs in the hit television program Bored to Death?

Yes.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed.

Brandon Murray, you may be seated for an immediate summary judgment.

In one of yours favors?

Can either of you name the piece of culture that I referenced as I entered this fake virtual internet courtroom.

What do we say we start with Marie?

What's your guess?

I don't know.

The movie Rocky.

The movie Rocky is definitely a piece of culture on the subject of boxing.

That was the original tagline for Rocky, I believe.

Oscar nominated, by the way.

I mean, Oscar winning, didn't it win Best Picture, Jesse?

I believe it did.

And also, I hope you're not about to say something bad about Rocky.

No, I'm not saying anything bad about Rocky.

Okay, good, because Rocky is awesome.

I also love the movie Creed,

wherein I cried while they were doing the training montage.

And I like the movie Rocky Balboa.

So there.

Well, after,

what is it, almost

more than seven years of doing this podcast?

I am still learning things about you, friend.

I had no idea you had this fondness for the expanded Rocky universe.

Yeah, I don't think that I would like any of the other Rocky movies if I watch them now, even though one of them has Mr.

T.

All right.

Brandon, I put Rocky in for Marie into the guest book.

Now it's time for me to laser etch your guess or guesses

into the golden plates that are the pages of this guess book.

Very heavy book.

I'm going to go ahead and

I've never read it.

I've seen the movie, but I'm going to say Fight Club the novel, not the movie, for that one.

Fight Club, the book, not the movie.

All guesses are wrong.

When I came up with this piece of culture to reference, and I make reference to a podcast, and I was going to direct it to Jesse, I was going to say, I listened to your podcast, Jesse.

I find it properly enraging.

I was like, I can't be mean to my bailiff.

Some would even describe us as friends.

I definitely agree that some would.

Here's the thing: we are friends, but in the courtroom, we have to keep a professional collegiality.

That's true.

But then I almost got mad at my outside-the-fake court friend Jesse because he gave it away when he was swearing you in.

He was making reference to the same thing I was making reference to.

We double-refed.

Bored to death,

the TV show,

season one, episode eight, titled Take a Dive, directed by Paul Feig, featured me as the jerk Lewis Green,

who bullies

the main character, Jonathan Ames.

Played by Jason Schwartzman, my friend and colleague in acting.

That was me.

I was referencing myself, you guys.

And Jesse gave it to you on a golden plate, the same kind we use as pages in the guest book.

But now I close this guest book because you both failed.

Good guesses, though.

Why Fight Club the book and not the movie, Brandon?

I've seen the movie a few times, and I don't recall that line ever being in it.

So I figured, well, it's fight-related.

Yeah.

Maybe it's in the book.

You were just like, it's got to be Fight Club.

It's got to be some version of Fight Club.

I don't remember that from the movie, and I've seen that.

Maybe it's from the book.

Maybe it's from the Bollywood remake of Fight Club.

Oh, Jesse Thorne.

come on

i just made someone a billion dollars

uh but this is about your fight club brandon you

uh you wanted to test your own toxic masculinity in a fight you wanted to test your mettle

in a boxing match

and you did it

and you said to marie your wife that's it But now you'd like to go back into the ring.

Tell me about what's going on, Brandon.

Well,

I had my first fight in November, and I had a lot of fun, and I thought that would be it for me.

But

as I've continued, I've continued training, not so much to fight, but just to more keep in shape.

But the more

I involve myself, the more I'm feeling like I want to get back in the ring and kind of not really prove to anyone other than myself that

my win back in November wasn't just a fluke.

Just a one-off.

Yeah.

Right.

And what do you do and where do you live?

So we live in a little city called Pleasant Grove, Utah.

It's just outside of Provo.

I work in an office for an EdTech company.

They make reading and math software for public schools and private schools.

I get it.

I get it.

Your life is dreadfully boring.

You're barely alive.

I get it.

That kids' read is awful.

I understand.

Don't say any more because you're bringing me down.

No, I'm just kidding.

First of all, you guys are the latest in a long line

of delightful Judge Sean Hodgman litigants from Utah.

Welcome.

I have every confidence that you are delightful.

I'm sure whatever the name of your anodyne suburban boring town outside of Provo is lovely.

I'm sure your job is challenging and fulfilling, and you're not just sitting in a cubicle with your shirt and tie, white-knuckling through the day as you wonder whether or not you still have any actual human feelings that you need to test by putting your face in front of some fist.

Am I accurately describing your incentive to begin boxing, Brandon?

Or what was it from your point of view?

I first got involved with boxing about eight to 10 years ago.

Just like once a week training with a guy that said, hey, I wanted, you know, I like teaching boxing.

This is something that I do.

He worked at like a boys, troubled boys school teaching them.

And I wasn't a troubled boy, but he'd have me and a friend.

You were hanging around a lot?

Yeah.

Someone we knew from other places.

And he would bring my friend and I in to train.

And

so I just, on a very light level, been doing it.

And then

It would have been

last year, I started working at my current position, and we found ourselves in a financial position to where I could start going to like a legit boxing gym.

And so I signed up, and after a month or so of training there, they approached me to see if I would like to participate in their next fight night.

They do one every few months or so.

And that was always something I wanted to do:

get in a ring and see how I would do.

just to see what would happen.

And so yeah,

I started training and I won.

Yeah, it was great.

All right.

Now, you did a very good job following the dictum of specificity being the soul of narrative in that you gave me a very clear and very specific timeline of how this happened.

But as I talk to Marie now a little bit, I want you to take a little moment and try to reach some emotional specificity.

In other words, I don't need to know the chronology so much as if I were to put you in the middle of the ring and say, tell me how you're feeling, or I'll punch you, which is a weird form of therapy.

And I apologize now for threatening you.

I feel terrible.

I feel like a terrible bully.

But,

you know, when you say it's something I always wanted to do, I want you to challenge yourself to give me a little bit more about why it was something you always wanted to do and what you felt when you did it and how it felt when you

did not.

What's the opposite of uh of losing oh when you won i don't know

when you won your boxing fight so marie when brandon came to you and said i've been training to box did this come as a surprise to you he wasn't keeping this a secret right well he wasn't exactly forthcoming on everything oh he told me that he wanted to join the gym that he was at which just that gym focuses on like circuit training and learning more about boxing like combinations and things like that.

And so when he joined the gym, he just told me that he just wanted to do it as a form of exercise and,

you know, a way to relieve stress in his life.

And then a couple months afterwards, he told me that they do these sparring nights.

But did you know that he was training to box at the gym?

When he told you that there was the sparring night happening?

I figured probably that's the direction it was going to go.

I was kind of surprised that it was going to be just a few months later, though.

I was thinking maybe he would train a lot more.

So you knew that he was doing some boxing training though.

It's not like he was telling you, yeah, I'm over there on the elliptical all day long.

And then I decided I'll use this now to punch a person.

Yeah.

Correct.

I knew.

Okay, cool.

And you said that you had a feeling that this was going on.

Did it come as a surprise to you to learn that Brandon was

interested in boxing?

No, like he's always had, like, he said this weird dream bucket list item to fulfill that he wanted to be in like a real sanctioned fight.

And we had always talked about it that it would just be a one-time thing if that ever happened.

Just, you know, the one fight, you check it off your bucket list.

Your weird...

you know, dream is fulfilled.

Well, whatever you do, don't condescend to his dreams.

It's a weird one, though.

Well, I mean, I think that it is not.

Look, I mean, I would never go through the rigor and exhaustion of actually training to go in the ring because I'm lazy and it's hard.

But

I did enjoy spending one afternoon at the gym getting some basic film boxing training from an actual boxing trainer.

And I did enjoy pretending to fight.

It's exhilarating on a very visceral level.

It's a weird dream, perhaps, because

you are fantasizing about hurting and getting hurt,

but not weird in that it is uncommon.

It's not uncommon.

And even weird in an interesting way rather than in an uninteresting way.

So, Brandon, I am going to strike all mention of weird from the record.

And I'll ask you, madam, not to weirdify your husband's dreams while you're in my courtroom.

Sounds good.

Now,

Marie,

when Brandon went into the ring last November for this sparring night and he had the fight, were you there or did you stay home?

I was there.

Did you bring your children?

You have children, correct, you guys?

No, we didn't bring them.

No children.

How old are your children?

We have a seven-year-old and a four-year-old and a nine-month-old.

You could have brought that nine-month-old.

Yeah, exactly.

Nine-month.

That's when they really love.

boxing matches.

Yeah, nine-month-olds are super into blood sport.

It's true.

You go to MMA, the whole front row

is toddlers and below.

Well, if you go to the mommy and me fights.

Is that what MMA stands for?

Mommy and me attacking.

Okay.

And who was Brandon's opponent?

Another person from one of their other gyms.

that they have.

You're being pretty coy about it.

I mean,

you're pretending like you don't even know who this person was, although obviously you went into the locker room and paid this person to take a dive.

Yeah.

Admit it.

Exactly.

True or false?

Did you pay?

Brandon, what was the name of your opponent?

His name was Maffy, but he went by Bubba.

Of course he did.

Also, I like the way you used the past tense.

You didn't murder him, did you?

I was like, yeah, it was a fun thing, you know, just a community gym.

We all got together for a sparring match.

I accidentally murdered him with my fists.

And it felt good to watch the life drain from his eyes.

And I just decided, you know what?

This is for me.

All right.

So, Marie, true or false, you are under fake oath now.

Did you pay Bubba to take a dive?

I wish I had, but I didn't.

I was that worried about Brandon, though.

Brandon, I presume that you wore headgear and that the length of this fight was limited.

What were the rules of the engagement?

Yeah, you're absolutely right, Jesse.

It's an amateur fight, but so headgear was required.

We fought three one-minute rounds.

So it actually came and went pretty quick.

Let's take a quick recess because it is max fun drive time.

Hello, I'm your Judge John Hodgman.

The Judge John Hodgman podcast is brought to you every week by you, our members, of course.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Tell me the story of the fight, Brandon, from your point of view.

Oh, well,

it was pretty nerve-wracking, actually.

I had seen my opponent in person

just a week before.

Bubba.

Bubba.

And he's

physically, as far as body composition is considered, much more impressive than I am.

We weighed about the same, but I am a lot flabbier than he was.

So I was pretty nervous going into it.

It was pretty clear that he was...

stronger than me.

I heard stories about how hard he could punch, and I'm not exactly a hard puncher myself.

I would imagine that that's an important part of the skill set.

Well, when you're doing an amateur fight, sometimes it's more how many punches you can throw as opposed to how hard you can throw, since you can score more points that way.

So, everything leading up to the point where I was walking in the room, I felt like I was going to pass out.

Heart just going crazy.

I hated my life.

I was seeing other people people and just wondering, like, how are you not like

throwing up in a bucket right now?

And then, once my entrance music turned on and I walked up to the ring and got in,

I felt pretty good.

And after getting kind of through the kinks of that first round,

I got really comfortable.

I settled in and

I took the last two rounds and won on points.

Like I said, I'm not a hard puncher,

but I was definitely able to score more on him than he was on me.

So I won in points in the end.

You're not a hard puncher.

You're a more puncher.

Yeah, yeah.

That's right.

Brandon, what's your entrance music?

It was Gravel Pit by the Wu-Tang Clan.

That's pretty good.

I'd have gone with Annie Up by MOP, but both are good joys.

And I can see as a Utahn why you would pick the Wutang Clan with their deep links with the state of Wutah.

With the state of Wu-Tah.

With their deep connections to the state of Utah.

Yeah.

Well, Utah is commonly known as Wu Tah.

because they love it so much.

I was hoping you were going to say the Miami's theme song was your entrance music, but I'm going to keep that one for myself.

Should I feel so moved to step back into the ring?

And so it was exhilarating.

And you, how many times would you say you punched him?

Oh, gee, I never got the official count on punches from the judges.

I'd say

I probably threw twice as many punches as he did, but his punches were considerably harder than mine.

But I was just getting a lot in.

What was it like to be hit?

Because they wouldn't let Jason Schwartzman actually hit me, no matter how many times he begged to do it.

It's kind of a weird, weird sensation.

I mean, if you get hit in the body, it hurts.

It can hurt really bad, depending where you get hit.

He got me with a

right hook in the ribs in the second round that

almost crumpled me over and down and was hurting me for weeks after the fight.

Getting punched in the head doesn't hurt per se unless you're getting punched directly in the nose or in the jaw.

But if you get punched in the head, things just kind of

go dark for

a tenth of a second, then you're right back in it.

Sure.

That's, I'm sure, very reassuring for Marie to hear.

You know, my high school friend, Paul, was an amateur fighter, and he always told me, I would ask him, how could you do this?

And he would tell me, you know, the first punch hurts.

And then after that, it's all kind of a blur.

And I believe him completely as a guy who has never been hit.

That said, he's in jail now.

So I'm going to take a look at the footage that you sent.

This is the evidence that you submitted, Brandon.

And all these images and links to this video are, of course, going to be on the show page at maximumfun.org, but also on our Instagram account at instagram.com slash judgejohodgman all one word.

First of all, here's a photo of you.

This is your promotional photo.

You look in good shape.

And here you are.

Well, I'll save my reaction to your post-fight photo.

But you also sent in a video that we'll link to online, which is how the internet works.

And you're wearing the blue or the red jersey here.

I'm in the blue jersey with the red gloves.

And I'm sure that you've watched this video multiple times, probably every night.

You get up at about 2 a.m.

and put it on the big projector and just relive your glory.

Is there, it's an eight minute and 21 second video.

Was that how long the bout was?

Almost nine minutes?

The video starts out with the entrance music.

So that's why the time's kind of inflated.

Three minute rounds and then I think it's 30 seconds in between each other.

So

the actual fight is very short.

All right.

How many rounds again did you say?

Three.

Three rounds.

Okay.

So what's the moment of triumph, the glory moment, since you've revisited this so many times?

And your highlight reel, what's the punch that you feel best about?

Do you have the time code memorized?

I don't.

But I connected with him really well in the third round a few times.

Did you lose long-term memory after this?

No.

No, I haven't.

But the third round,

once Moffe's kind of running out of gas,

it looks like he's getting pretty tired towards the end, and I'm able to get some good shots in towards the end there.

All right, I'm going to take a look at what I.

Okay, I see the third round here.

I'm going to take a look at it.

There you go.

Nice.

Get inside.

There you go.

That's more folks.

Okay, you're in the blue, right?

Yep.

Oh, you're just getting

smashed here.

Boom.

Boom.

Boom.

I'm not very good at play-by-play commentary.

Oh, now you're going after him.

Oh, my goodness.

Brandon, you're an animal.

Oh, wow.

You landed like 300 punches on Bubba.

Yeah, and he's getting tired.

And now men are yelling.

Oh, it's too scary.

Okay, let's stop that.

Well done.

Thank you.

So is there a moment of triumph that you remember?

What do you remember?

So at the very end of the fight, they stopped it.

They did a standing eight because Mafi was dropping his hands and wasn't really protecting himself anymore.

Because he had been rendered a corpse by your animal anger.

Yeah.

So once the refs stopped the fight

to do the standing eight count for him, that's when I was really feeling it.

The adrenaline was pulsing.

I knew that I had it in the bag and I was just...

on cloud nine at the moment.

Not so much.

I mean, I don't really do it to hurt other people.

No, just one person specifically.

Mafi, aka Bubba, the hard puncher.

Yeah, he did punch hard.

But

the most satisfaction I get on a day-to-day basis from when I'm boxing is just to be able to take a really hard punch and not...

be super affected by it.

That's where I kind of get my my thrill from boxing.

So

yeah, it was great to win, but I took some pretty big hits there and I kept going.

And that was also pretty satisfying for me.

So it is defeating the adversity of being punched that is more exciting to you than punching

a friend and colleague and neighbor in the face.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And now here is a photo of you directly after the fight.

And you're holding the belt, your fight night champion belt.

And Marie, I'm going to say that

the look,

how would you describe this photo, Jesse?

The look in Brandon's eyes is that of a monstrous adrenaline addict who's never going to stop punching and being punched.

And he's growling while this photo is being taken.

There's madness in your eyes.

He looks like Ric Flair doing a wrestling promo.

Quite right.

You were thrilled in this moment, weren't you, Brandon?

I was thrilled.

And Jesse, that's not the first time I have been compared to Ric Flair in regards to boxing, just so you're aware.

So, Brandon,

there is something else in your eyes in this photo, which I can read in this moment, and I gather from your submitted evidence.

It was doubt.

It was, was this a fluke?

Was my punching just lucky?

Why do you fear that your victory was a fluke, as you put it?

Well, it's a very small sample size I'm working with here.

You know, just one fight, you know, against an opponent who

didn't have as much experience as me boxing altogether.

So, you know, I just kind of want to up the ante a little bit, go against someone with a little more experience and

see how I do.

Okay.

Your goal basically is to kind of push forward until you hit that special moment when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have a traumatic brain injury.

I haven't given

much thought to how many fights I would like to do altogether.

I'm just kind of taking it moment to moment right now.

You're rolling with the punches.

Yeah, yes.

And

I'm not terribly concerned about hurting my brain.

I can tell it's not a priority for you one way or the other.

No, I mean, for one thing, you had a hard time remembering the word brain.

We'll chalk that up to podcast nerves.

When people step into the podcast ring, they become something else.

They're not human anymore.

They can't even remember simple words.

I understand it.

Marie,

did Brandon make a promise to you that he was only going to fight this one time?

Yes, that is what we had talked about.

Yep.

Describe the nature of the promise.

Was it in writing?

No, it was a verbal agreement.

And were you sitting at your kitchen table screaming, promise me!

Promise me!

No, but I think he knows exactly how I have felt about it.

Sure.

And so he knows the anxiety it's caused me.

How did it make you feel to see him fighting?

And what is the worry of what's going to happen next?

Well, I think what made me really worry is when I realized that he was nervous and he was worried

before the fight.

Because I trusted that he had, you know, worked hard enough to be able to

fight well.

But when I saw how nervous he was, it made me doubt it a little bit.

And then just seeing someone that you care about get punched multiple times really,

I don't know, that

triggers some

fear, some anxiety,

just that something's going to happen.

There's definitely a lot of anxiety.

So, Marie, there was definitely a period of time where you did not have faith in your man and you were concerned that he was going to be destroyed in front of your eyes and be humiliated in front of all of his friends, and I understand that.

And obviously, you were afraid for his safety.

But you had this promise.

You had had a conversation before the fight.

Brandon, do you deny that this is true?

I may have said something

at some point saying this would be the only fight to

hopefully

get her off my case a little bit.

So your defense is, I may have made that promise, but it was obviously a lie.

He made the promise.

Now, before the contract pedants write in, I need to ask you, Marie, did you offer consideration?

that is to say did you offer anything in return for his promise such as if you promise this is your only fight i will give you a dollar or some other consideration a return promise

um well it was just the fight that i was concerned about so i told them that he could you know keep boxing at the gym that he could go um

you know, three times a week, they have like practice sessions where you can go get punched.

And that was never like completely off the table so if he wants to get hit in the face he can still go do that on occasion

but yeah the fight was just the one-time thing right but that is not consideration you know giving him permission to get ponywani punched in the face That's not consideration for his promise.

This is therefore an agreement and not a contract because he's a grown man.

He can arrange to get punched in the face anytime he wants.

He doesn't need mommy wife's permission to go get punched in the face in a controlled environment.

Yeah, he just needs a Craigslist.

But I do gather that there is something about a boxing match that is more troublesome to you than fight training, including gym sparring and getting punched around in a gym environment, in a more controlled, less, I mean, without an audience, I guess.

Is that correct?

Yeah.

And

if he's training for a fight, then he's doing

getting punched in the face at least three times a week for a matter of months.

And that length of time kind of is concerning to me.

I think that's one of the biggest things, not just the fight, like where people are going all out, but getting, you know, when he was training for it, he would come home, you know, a couple of times a week every time with bloody noses and black eyes and things like that.

And so that over and over again just doesn't seem like the healthiest thing to be doing.

How did your children process the fact that their dad was coming home all messed up?

Well, our four-year-old son thinks it's really cool to like fight bad guys and stuff.

And so obviously he doesn't understand the difference between the sport of boxing and just like hitting people.

And so that was definitely concerning to me that he would just know that his dad was hitting people and not

know the difference about it and that it was okay.

Brandon, did you explain to your son that

Bubba is not a super villain, but just another dude?

That is a lesson I've had to teach him multiple times.

Is he hitting on Bubba too?

He just likes hitting things and sometimes me.

And I've just had to say, you know, we don't do that.

You know, if it's boxing in a ring, you're fine to do it, but don't go around hitting people.

That's a bad idea.

But you can appreciate that there is a certain mixed message you're sending because you are basically begging this court for permission to keep on hitting and being hit.

But it doesn't bother you, obviously.

The distinction is enough to satisfy your concerns as a parent.

The boy will get it through his head at some point.

I'm sure he will.

Well, that's encouraging.

Brandon, how many more fights do you want to do?

I know you haven't thought about it, but I'm asking you to think about it now.

I would, okay, so if I had to make a decision right now and say, how many fights do you want to do, and then you're done, you're ready to retire, I would like to do at least two more.

To make it three?

I'm doing the math for you.

That would be three.

That would be a career of three.

How are we to know, given the fact that you had agreed to fight one fight and now want to fight more, that after three fights, you're not just going to

George Foreman it on out until you're 65 years old.

That is a very good question.

I

couldn't guarantee either way.

But I think three would be enough where I'm done.

Yeah, I mean, you've already displayed and basically tacitly admitted to being a liar whose word is worth nothing.

Now, John, don't say he's a liar whose word is worth nothing.

He's a bloodthirsty liar whose word is worth nothing.

Yeah, believe me, I would not be saying this if I were anywhere near Wutah.

I'm saying this from the safety of parks like Brooklyn

because I know this beast can't punch me through a microphone.

Marie, does he ever do anything?

Is this out of the ordinary for Brandon?

Does he do anything else risky like this?

Maybe not risky, but he really does crave like being slightly uncomfortable in his life.

I think he gets bored if he's not.

So like for instance, we're in the process of moving right now and it's something for me that gives me a lot of anxiety that I hate doing.

And the other day Brandon was like, isn't this the best?

Because it like it's something different and it pushes us beyond what we think we can do.

And I was sitting there in the corner hyperventilating, being like, No, this is awful.

And so I think he really does with fighting.

I think it's that domino effect.

Like he'll never stop because

he, if he wins, you know, it fuels that weird passion.

Right.

Oh, sorry, not weird.

That passion he has.

I'll allow it.

I've changed my mind.

You can say weird.

Okay.

And if he loses, he has to, you know, keep proving himself that

he can do it and be, you know, slightly uncomfortable.

And let me ask you this.

If I were to rule in Brandon's favor,

what would that mean to you?

Well, I don't know.

I think Brandon's going to do what he wants to do no matter what.

Even if I were to rule against him?

Well, I think if you ruled against him, I would hope that would give him enough that it's not just me saying no, that there's other people that think that he shouldn't do it as well.

Maybe that would make him stop.

It's not just his wife who he loves.

It's a stranger on the internet.

Exactly.

Jesse Thorne, you say that like that's a joke.

But of course, a stranger's opinion on the internet is much more important than your spouse's.

And I'll explain why in my verdict,

which I'm about to give.

In a moment, I'm going to go back into my chambers, which is a cooler full of sides of beef that I punch with my mind.

and think this over and render my decision.

But here's the problem, Brandon.

If I were to find in your favor and I were to say, okay,

you can do two more fights.

I have no faith or confidence that you would stop after two.

And we'll just be back in this courtroom again

because you'll have the taste for it and you have been proven to be a liar already.

So what enforcement mechanism is there, Marie, that I could put in place that if he were to violate, if I were to find in his favor, which is by no means settled, what enforcement mechanism could I put in place that would be sufficient punishment if he goes beyond my ruling?

That he's done with boxing, with the gym, forever.

He cancels his membership and he's done.

Okay.

So instead of yeesh, yeah, right?

Yeesh.

That's right, Brandon.

I'm just concerned.

Have you ever had to face consequences before?

Many times.

That's true.

I mean, you're facing the consequences of going into that ring and getting punched in the ribs and the neck.

Okay.

I think I've heard everything I need to in order to make my decision.

I'll be going into my chambers full of beef sides, and I'm going to punch them up, and I'll be back in a moment with my decision.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

How do you feel about your chances in the case, Marie?

I think I have a pretty good chance.

I think I brought forth a pretty good case.

What about you, Brandon?

How do you feel you stand?

I'm kind of hoping there's some sort of compromise, you know, kind of meet somewhere in the middle.

And I will stay true to my word,

whatever the verdict may be.

What would constitute a compromise?

Maybe you use Cold as Ice by MOP instead of Annie Up?

The Meow Mix song.

Oh, my my God.

Brandon, I'm not a judge, but I hereby rule that if you're willing to use the Meow Mix song as your walk-on music, you can have as many fights as you want.

We'll do that.

You know, compromise will be one more fight.

You know, I think I could live with that.

Well, we'll see what Judge John Hodgman has to say about this when we come back in just a minute.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother meet for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on My Brother, My Brother, and me.

Me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So, how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined.

No, no, no.

It's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Long.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom and presents his verdict.

Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum.

What you can't see right now is I'm in my chambers, sort of like jumping around in a silk robe.

Now I'm going to take it off.

I'm taking off my silk robe.

I'm in my trunks.

I look like an oiled Adonis.

I am ready to make my ruling, and I'm putting my mouth guard in.

Oh, God, come on,

I'm going to take my mouth guard out, actually.

Do you think that was the problem with Rocky that Sylvester Stallone accidentally wore his mouth guard the whole time?

Yeah.

Hey, Rich!

He still has it in.

Okay, so boxing is a sport.

It is a primal sport to the most reptilian portion of the biology of the brain.

It speaks of very, very primal biological evolutionary impulses to fight or fly

and resisting that urge to run away from someone who is attacking you and instead stand there and take it.

I can appreciate why it is extremely alluring, especially if you've done it once and survived it.

And you feel like Brandon looked in that photo, like, to cite the title of a different Bored to Death episode, like a demented god.

Bored to Death, now available on digital versatile disc.

Go check it out.

I think I get a little royalty, so please, everyone, buy a thousand copies.

It's a great show.

I wish they hadn't canceled it.

That was going to be my job forever, but guess what?

You don't win them all.

You don't win them all.

And

yet, sometimes you win them one.

And you're left to wonder, was it a fluke, Adrian, was it a fluke?

Or am I really the greatest puncher of all time?

The GPOAT,

as is known in boxing.

But for all of that primal stuff that goes on, in boxing.

Even in fake boxing, I felt it.

It is still a sport.

There are rules.

You won on points.

You didn't win because you hurt another person the most.

There was a judge there who is counting how many times you punched the other person.

There are enforced breaks.

There is a contract that is made when you touch gloves that you will follow the rules of this particular sport, that circumscribing the bloodlust within it to make it somewhat halfway, maybe one-eighth civilized.

You follow the rules in boxing.

Now you're asking me, Brandon, you're coming to me and asking me to excuse you from the rules, the common sense rules.

Now look, what you had, Brandon and Murray, was not a contract, but an agreement, and a pretty common sense agreement between spouses.

You were going to do this one time.

And not only are you asking me to excuse you from that promise, Brandon, but you basically acknowledged that you never meant it when you said it.

Like, I think I said something like that to get her off my case.

How can I have any faith that you're going to follow any of the rules that I put down now?

By rights, I should just hold you to your promise

and

let you face the consequence of my law punch to your breadbasket.

However,

the court is also forced to acknowledge that Marie

is on your case.

Marie, you're on his case.

And when I said that this verdict hinged on the fact that a stranger on the internet's opinion is worth more than one spouse,

I meant it.

I mean, the fact of the matter is you marry someone and you do so presumably because you love them and you respect them and they are your best friend.

You care about them.

You don't want to hurt them.

You want to protect them from hurt, and sometimes you have to acknowledge that your being hurt hurts them.

And as far as I can tell, you guys are in love and you have a healthy relationship.

You obviously have some communication about boxing matches, so there's at least an open channel of communication there.

But even though you make these promises in a marriage,

you each continue on as individuals.

And there are certain tests and obsessions that we feel as individuals that will not make sense to the spouse.

And sometimes you have to do

what Jess Moss's mother said when I was house sitting for Jess Moss's older sister's apartment on the Upper West Side.

And I was so excited to be there because they had a roof deck.

And then Jess Moss's mother called and said I had to get out of the apartment because she wanted to stay there that weekend instead.

And I was so angry and she could sense it.

And she said, and I've said this on the podcast before, she said to me on the phone, I know it's wrong, but I'm doing it anyway.

Sometimes you have to do things, you know, even if it's like taking a job that's going to disrupt your family life and take your kids out of school and away from their friends because this is a job that you've always wanted, you know.

or having

another kind of dream that you need to follow.

And even though Brandon's dream is weird, I do not mean it in the pejorative sense.

I mean it in that sort of weird, eerie sense, in that it speaks to some prehuman almost impulse.

He doesn't know if his win

was a fluke or not.

He'll always wonder.

And it won't help

if his wife is telling him he's allowed to get punched in the face under very certain circumstances, circumstances.

That he's not allowed to fight, but he can go down and play with his friends in a different way.

And a wife giving a guy permission to go this far no further?

I hate to put it in such heteronormative terms, but we are talking about real, dumb, dumb, masculine stuff here.

You're only tempting him to go further at that point.

When you tell him you can play in this sandbox, but that sandbox that you were in before, that's off limits now.

Oh boy.

That's when the opinion of an internet stranger is the most important opinion in the world.

Because that's when you gotta get outside of the deep emotional interplay of spousal relationships and just hear from an outside party to say, no, dude, or okay, maybe, or whatever.

So it now then falls to me.

It should seem that it should not fall to me for my opinion to count more than Marie's.

I think that you need to hear what Marie is saying, that it is hard for her to see you come home bloodied and beaten,

that this is a kind of trauma to her and a confusing message to your son, who loves to hit.

So I have to weigh the fairness.

What is fair to Brandon as a human being?

What is fair to Marie as a human being?

I have to weigh the fact that if I rule in Marie's favor, I know Brandon is always going to be wondering, could I do it again?

And is that fair to him?

But if I rule in Brandon's favor, Marie is always going to be wondering, will my meathead husband come back with a true meathead and forget who I am?

These are hard things to judge.

And it's adding to the point that there is no faith.

Ruling in Brandon's favor would be ruling in favor of breaking a promise.

And since he has already shown the willingness to break a promise, the court has no faith that he can adhere to any promise I force him to make right now.

And yet,

that look in your eyes in that photo, Brandon,

that triumph,

and that wondering,

it haunts me,

Brandon,

you're going to make a promise right now.

And I want you to repeat after me.

I am going to fight one more time.

I am going to fight one more time.

And that is it.

And that's it.

Marie, keep repeating.

Marie.

I apologize for breaking my promise.

I apologize for breaking my promise.

This man is making me say these words.

This man is making me say these words.

If I were the husband that I want to be,

if I was the husband I want to be,

then I simply would never fight again, ever.

Then I would simply never fight again, ever.

But John Hodgman is making me fight one more time.

But John Hodgman is making me fight one more time.

Because John Hodgman has won a mental boxing match with with me right now and owns my very brain.

I don't think I can repeat that.

No, because you forgot the word brain.

I understand.

But you get the point.

No matter the outcome.

No matter the outcome.

If I even propose fighting a third time.

If I even propose fighting a third time.

I will tear up my membership card at the gym.

I will tear up my membership card at the gym.

This offer offer good for boxing and MMA only.

This offer good for boxing and MMA only.

If I take up Taekwondo, that's my business.

If I take up Taekwondo, that's my business.

Right.

Okay, so my ruling is, now that you have made that solemn affirmation, And as well, there is a punishment mechanism in place.

My ruling is that you fight one more time.

You train and fight one more time, that you explain to your family, including your children, that this is the last time you will be getting into the ring.

You will walk into the ring to the Meow Mix theme song.

Of course,

either a recording of me singing it or the original.

It's up to you.

This will be recorded and will be put on our Instagram page and submitted to this court as due evidence that you followed my rulings.

And I hope you lose.

Even if you win, I want every punch.

I want you to know that that is punishment for breaking your promise to your wife.

That I am allowing so that you can learn whatever it is you need to learn about yourself.

And I hope you lose because then you will have the full gamut of the boxing experience.

The thrill of,

what is it, winning?

I always forget which one it is.

I always forget about the winning.

and the horrible, aching feeling of defeat where you wish, oh, if I could just do it one more time, I could do it.

But then, then, that is when you will feel the full wrath of my judgment because you will not be allowed to do it again.

You will just have to live with the pain of loss

and get over it.

and get beyond it and realize that you have already won because you have a wonderful family and wife and you live in Utah, Wu-Tang's own country.

And I also urge you to take up Taekwondo or some other kind of martial arts training that has a meditative quality in it so that you're looking inside yourself in a more directed way than just putting yourself up for punishment.

Those are all of my rulings.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Judge John Hodgman rules.

That is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Brandon, how are you feeling right now?

I feel that was very fair.

One fight will be really good to just focus all my energy onto that one, and I'm excited to see how things go.

Marie, how are you feeling?

I think one more fight is fair.

If it's just the one more, then I can live with that.

You got to admit, it's going to be a real thrill to watch your big, powerful husband jogging into that ring.

This sounds so

mixed song.

I'll go just for that part.

Brandon Marie, thank you so much for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

It was a pleasure.

Another thrilling Judge John Hodgman case in the books.

Before we get to our swift justice, our thanks to Ryan Stratton for naming this week's episode Beyond a Reasonable Bout.

If you'd like to name a future episode like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook, we put out our calls for submissions there.

You can follow us on Twitter at Jesse Thorne, J-E-S-E-T-H-O-R-N, and at Hodgman.

Hashtag your Judge John Hodgman tweets, hashtag J-J-H-O.

I always love to see them.

And you can check in at the MaxFund subreddit at maximumfund.reddit.com to discuss this week's episode.

This week's episode recorded by Gaynor Brunson at Rock Canyon Studios in Provo, Utah.

Our brilliant producer on the boards here in Los Angeles is Jennifer Marmer.

Now, Swift Justice, where we answer your small disputes with a quick judgment.

Leanne says, My friend says you can't say someone is almost 30 when they're 27.

I say 27 is 90% of 30 and therefore almost 30.

I'm glad that you really want to say that your friend Leanne is almost 30, despite her obvious and reasonable objections.

But I will say that as someone someone who is turning 47 this year, I can tell you is beyond a reasonable doubt that that is basically 50, for sure.

But that's only because past 40, I'm already beyond all delusion of youth and accepting of my inexorable march to death.

But if you are in your 20s, hold on to those precious years.

You can't say you're almost 30 until you are 29 years and 364 and a half days old.

Give your young friend a break.

That's it for this week's episode.

Submit your cases at maximumfund.org/slash JJ H O

or email Hodgman at maximumfund.org.

No case is too small.

We'll see you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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