‘Brendan Schaub: You’d Be Surprised’ On Showtime Reveals Former Fighter’s Softer Side

We’re not quite at throwing gladiators to the lions in the Colosseum phase of American pop culture yet, but we’re closer than you might think.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s movies have earned more than $3.4 billion domestically (closing in on $10 billion globally!), while Dave Bautista has become one of the Guardians of the Galaxy. John Cena is no slouch, either. They’re all big box-office action stars. But they’re also known as comedy stars, too. Mick Foley, Colt Cabana, Dolph Ziggler all have hit the comedy club circuit. Ric Flair and The Iron Sheik have appeared in other comedians’ stand-up specials.

And, of course, in the 1960s, Muhammad Ali wasn’t just the greatest boxer, but also one of the wittiest Americans on a microphone.

It’s almost surprising we haven’t seen more brawlers attempt a full-fledged comedy special until now. You’d Be Surprised. That’s also the title of Brendan Schaub’s first stand-up special for Showtime.

It opens with a sketch in which the former Arena League Football player and UFC fighter plays all of the supporting players (bartender, food truck guy, homeless man, bouncer, and fan) as Schaub makes his way to the theater in San Diego for his big gig.

As the bartender, he cynically reacts to the idea that Schaub has his own special after only starting stand-up comedy in 2016. “Three years?” Schaub as bartender replies. “Jesus Christ, this fucking town.”

It helps that the 36-year-old already had spent 2016 on a live theater tour with comedian Bryan Callen on the backs of their hit podcast, “The Fighter and The Kid,” which generates about nine million downloads each month. Schaub expanded his fan base even further out from the UFC in 2018, co-hosting Bravo’s Play by Play talk show, serving as a correspondent for E! on the after-shows for the Grammys and the Golden Globes, and starting a podcast and web series for Showtime called “Below The Belt.” Top podcaster and YouTuber Joe Rogan, who frequently invites Schaub into his home studio, also does the honors of introducing Schaub to the stage for Showtime.

All of this talking has presumably softened the rough edges of this heavyweight fighter.

Although You’d Be Surprised aims to let audiences know he’s always been a bit of a softy.

In the first half-hour, Schaub accomplishes this through self-deprecation, mocking his own fashion sense and his weekly haircut habit. He wears tight jeans and prefers renting a convertible Mini Cooper to a monster truck. He doesn’t see himself joining pals Callen and Rogan on their hunting trips. “It’s not my thing, man.”

He makes light of the fact that bros might react to all of his choices by calling him gay, but then also jokingly recounts how he debated himself about masturbating to the Hulk Hogan sex tape, or about offering oral sex to a random man just because he was that high the first time he tried marijuana (and recalling it much later in a bit about seeing Leo DiCaprio at his last UFC fight).

Schaub resets for the second half-hour, pausing to reflect on the moment.

“I get it. I don’t look like your traditional comic. I crawled through some shit to get to this stage,” he says, comparing his journey to a plot point in The Shawshank Redemption. “So how did I get here? How in the world did I get a Showtime comedy special?” Don’t worry. He’ll answer his own question. “All jokes aside, growing up, my heroes were not wrestlers, they were not fighters, they were not football players. My heroes were stand-up comedians: Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Robin Williams.”

Schaub shouts out his father, sitting in the audience, allegedly seeing Schaub perform stand-up for the first time. Dad had other plans for his growing boy, giving him a football at age 7, and showing him a video at age 10 of the first-ever UFC bouts and jump-starting his career in violent sports.

That career lasted 20 years, and Schaub takes his time walking us through that final fight in Las Vegas in December 2014. From the highs beforehand to the lowest of lows in the locker room filled only with losers, he thought it was all over for him.

And yet, that’s the exact moment when his comedy career began to take shape.

All it took was a TKO and a BFF to realize his childhood dreams.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

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