Robin Black Wants To Fight Kanye

We don't care that Robin Black recently lost his second MMA fight. We here at CHARTattack are still plenty fond of him. He makes cool music and he's a kick-ass cage fighter.

Black also gives good quotes and makes fun of people we don't like, which is exactly what he did when we sat down to talk with him before the fight last month. We came away with a 6,000-word transcript filled with insight on everything from the similarities between jiu jitsu nerds and music nerds to The Killers and their stupid beards.

As much as we'd like to share it all with you, we understand that you kids these days have short attention spans, so we've distilled the whole thing into these highlights:

On his new mixed martial arts lifestyle, complete with a commute to the suburbs:
If you told me five years ago I was going to be eating salad for breakfast, I would have laughed at you. But if you told me that I was going to be going to Etobicoke [a suburb of the west end of Toronto] every day, I would have told you you're fucking crazy.

I take the bus to the subway, then I take the subway to the last stop, then I take another bus to the gym. And even though it's been a couple years since I was on television or something like that, there's still lots of people who recognize me and people constantly say, "That guy looks exactly like Robin Black." But if you're on the subway, nobody ever goes, "Hey, are you Robin Black?" They go, "That guy looks so much like Robin Black," 'cause they're thinking "Why the fuck would that guy ride the subway?"

Most people don't realize that Canadian D-level celebrities are broke. People probably think Theory Of A Deadman live in a mansion, but they probably live in a condo — which is pretty good.

On beating Raine Maida in CHARTattack's "Who's legit ninja?" poll:
Had I lost the CHARTattack poll to Raine Maida, I think I would be disappointed, but that would just go to support my theory that people don't actually know anything about mixed martial arts.

I'm sure that Raine Maida loves training and I'm sure that he's very good at what he's done, but he's never gone into a cage and fought professionally, and he probably never will. I know what it is to have a passion for martial arts and I'm sure that that guy has it and loves training, but I don't foresee him actually dedicating his life to step into a professional fight any time soon.

On what musician he'd like to get into the cage with:
I'd like to smash Kanye West, especially 'cause he really thinks he's the voice of a generation. What does that even mean? And Kanye West is just about arrogant enough that he'd be one of those guys who thinks that anyone can fight, that just because they're them, they must be a great fighter.

On taking risks:
It sucks to lose. It really does. But it's also a part of it.

Imagine, psychologically, you lost and you know that lots of people want to see you lose and even to take another one means that now you've put yourself in a situation where you could be a guy who's lost two. Or you could be that guy who's had three fights and never won.

Putting yourself at the level of risk is part of the adventure. A lot of people don't do anything in their life because the idea of failing is worse to them than the idea of not doing it at all. I would rather take huge risks and fail and fail publicly, but have done it, rather than not tried things at all.

That's a personality trait that I'm really proud of, 'cause that's something that prevents a lot of people from doing anything. A lot of people never asked out that girl that they were crazy about or pursued something like that because they thought they would say no. I would feel horrible going through life wishing I had done things. Living an adventure is a lot better than living safely, to me.

Certain people in their lives find true happiness in playing it safe, and that's good for them. I think they're doing the right thing. But for me to try to experience being a rock star and try to experience being a cage fighter and one day experience being a stunt man or having 10 kids or whatever, doing things.

I've been married three times because I wanted to try things — because I have this ridiculous, romantic view of the world that you should be able to will things to be good. I don't know... but I'm happy.