Sam Alvey Discusses His Experience Competing on Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Challenge

Right Hook Radio recently interviewed UFC middleweight fighter Sam Alvey ahead of his upcoming bout at UFC on FOX 23. Below are some highlights, including Alvey discussing his experience competing on Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Challenge. Alvey faces Nate Marquardt later today at UFC on FOX 23 in Denver.

On facing Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Challenge days after he had a UFC fight: “I did that course two days after I fought Kevin Casey. When I was in South Dakota fighting Eric Spicely I saw an advertisement come across my Facebook screen, so I applied. I had no intention of it going through, I just figured ‘Oh I’ll apply.’ Every question it asked I just said ‘I fight in the UFC, I fight in the UFC, I’m on TV,’ whatever and if I get it awesome, if not then who really cares? They called me back, and low and behold they said ‘We want you’ and I said ‘Alright I’m completely game guys, but just so you know I fight two days before and I have no idea if I’m going to be able to do it or not. I’ve won some fights where I couldn’t do it — but luckily I only broke my foot and dislocated my thumb in the fight, so nothing too bad happened. I got to do the challenge and it was a lot of fun, it was hard.

“It was hot, we were in California and there was not a breeze or tree to be had. I’ll bet you it was 115 degrees, it was insanely hot. I went through everything and at the point of getting to the rope, I knew I hadn’t beaten the time. I knew I had probably doubled the time, the guy who set the record is a professional course runner. I knew I didn’t stand a chance. I got on the rope and like I said I dislocated my thumb in the fight, I just couldn’t hold on anymore. My foot was broken and the thing I fell off on, that just killed my foot and I tried to do the rope with just my upper body, cause I couldn’t put the pressure on my foot anymore, and that was just — it was a lot of fun and I’m glad I got to beat the eight people I competed against, but the course whooped me.”

Alvey on how the event courses were shot: “No the competing, the individual events, they were on one day. The next morning you run the course. It was okay, I was very tired still from the fight when I ran the obstacle course, but the actual events — if you look at the events it was like I had to wrestle a guy, I had to pull a truck and wrestle a guy again. So it was kind of my advantage.”

Alvey on being a wrestling fan when he grew up: “I grew up with the WWE, that’s what got me into, not fighting, but working out. I used to do push-ups during the commercial breaks. Every commercial break I’d get as many as I could. I remember when I started off I could do five, then I could do 10, then I could do 50, then eventually I turned into a UFC fighter. But it all started with those push-ups, but I was a huge Stone Cold fan, the fact that I got to meet him, the whole time I was kind of biting my lip trying not to say the wrong thing. What was cool was after the show aired, so it aired on a Sunday, on Monday Stone Cold Steve Austin actually called me. He said ‘Hey is this Sam Alvey?’ I said ‘Yeah.’ He said ‘This is Stone Cold.’ I said ‘Oh my god!’ He said ‘I want to get you on my podcast, do you think you’d be game?’ I said ‘Yeah, yeah when?’ He said ‘Let’s do it right now.’ I said ‘Okay.'”

On being a fan of Stone Cold: “It was very cool, as I was on the podcast with him I was texting all my friends saying ‘Hey I’m talking to Stone Cold right now. He called me!’ So right now I even saved his number, I’ve got Stone Cold Steve Austin’s phone number in my phone.”