00:00Sad news in the racing world. NASCAR champion Kyle Busch passed away at the age of 41 after being hospitalized
00:07with a severe illness.
00:08It's absolutely tragic. Let's take a listen to Marty Smith on ESPN yesterday.
00:13This is just an unspeakable tragedy throughout the entire racing world, certainly within the NASCAR community.
00:20Kyle is indisputably one of the greatest race drivers of all time, regardless of genre.
00:25He will be a first ballot NASCAR Hall of Famer and has been for years, just to give you an
00:30idea of how dominant he was in the NASCAR Cup Series.
00:33He's a two-time champion with 63 career wins.
00:37He's the all-time wins leader in what is now the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series and the NASCAR
00:44Truck Series.
00:45And beyond that, Kyle's maturation as a man, the incredible father he was to his children, the incredible husband he
00:52was to Samantha.
00:53Our hearts just are broken today throughout the entire NASCAR family that Kyle has passed away from this illness at
01:0041 years old.
01:02We don't have information right now what exactly that illness was, and we don't have a whole lot of information
01:08regarding this day.
01:11I just, I've struggled really to find the words, and as you guys can imagine, I think Bo will feel
01:16the same way.
01:18We've become known as being NASCAR fans through talking about it on the radio and doing all the stuff we
01:24do with Echo Park Speedway and our iRacing, and people know us as that.
01:27So, I can't tell you, and I think just me and Bo alone on group text yesterday probably got texts
01:33from four or five different people of, I can't believe that this happened, and just getting a reaction to that.
01:38And the truth is, I didn't know what to write back.
01:41You know?
01:42I just didn't.
01:43This is, and I tweeted this out yesterday, this is if Bryce Harper, if something happened to Bryce Harper, this
01:50is if something happened to Steph Curry, this is if something happened to Aaron Rodgers to me.
01:55It just, it doesn't seem like something you can fathom, and it's just, it's been a really, really hard situation
02:03to try to wrap your mind around.
02:05There's been a lot more of an outcry than I would have ever, I say outcry, like, you know, just
02:12of the effect of his taking on people than I would have thought, because there's a lot more people that
02:17are affected by this than they're Kyle Busch fans, right?
02:20For sure.
02:21And I brought that up earlier, it's, you know, you don't, you understand that there are villains in sports, and
02:30really it's because we create them, because we pull, we choose to pull for others, and that's okay.
02:38It still doesn't change the fact of what he meant to that sport, and what Kyle Busch went to NASCAR,
02:44you can say he's one of the five to ten most influential people in the sport the last 20 years.
02:54All the dude did was win, and he entered it at 16 years old, his older brother was already there,
03:03which was Kurt Busch, and he, he, all he did was win, and he was significantly better than Kurt Busch,
03:10who was his brother, who also won a championship, by the way.
03:14And it's, it's unbelievable how good of a driver he was, and he was hated, and I was one of
03:22the people that was a hater.
03:23And then, when he got older in his career, he matured, he got a family, and you saw a different
03:30side of him, one that you could either relate to, or grow to admire, like, love, whatever the verb is
03:39you want to use, whatever emotion you want to tag with it.
03:42But, I watched him with his older, with his oldest kid, Brexton, who he's helped race, and I admired the
03:51father he had become.
03:53And, you know, it's one of those deals where I hope that, I hope that with my daughter, that I
03:59can have, share something, something that we both like and can compete in together, the way that he was able
04:06to do that with Brexton, and how much it meant to him, and how he put aside, look, when he
04:11jumped on the track,
04:12he was a competitor, and he would try to beat his son in the races that they raced in together,
04:17and like, with the outlaws and stuff.
04:18But, the way he coached him was so crazily good, it was just so patient for a guy that you
04:26saw on the track at times that didn't seem to have that patience, right?
04:30But, it's a sad day for NASCAR, because NASCAR is a sport that needs its personalities, it needs its talent,
04:38and it needs its ambassadors, and Kyle Busch was,
04:42as big of one as you could ever have, and it is, and it's awful, and you gotta look at
04:48the human side with his family, and they've lost a husband, and a father, and a brother, and a son,
04:53and all those things,
04:54but it's just, out of nowhere, I never would have thought I'd be sitting there, getting ready to give a
05:02pork chop a bath, and, because I was so old last night, and I get, my phone starts blowing up,
05:06and just, I mean, I had, I did not have words last night, I couldn't, he asked mine, I didn't
05:13even text our group, I had nothing to say,
05:16because I was just taken back, and didn't know, I just didn't know what to make of all this.
05:22Well, and like you guys mentioned, you both are huge NASCAR fans, so, I don't know as much as you
05:28do, but when I saw the news, I saw his age is 41, my first thought was,
05:31does he have kids? And then you look, and he does, and so it's just absolutely heartbreaking, but of course,
05:37then I jumped on Twitter,
05:38and I will refer to the massive group we call the They, I did see, credit to Bo, exactly what
05:43you've been saying, like,
05:44a lot of people saying, I didn't root for him, I didn't like him, but I respect him, he was
05:48one of the best.
05:49He's unbelievable, I mean, he was unbelievably talented, he won the truck race at Echo Park Speedway just a few
05:54weeks ago when we were all there,
05:55and his son ran on the track and hugged him right there on the front stretch.
05:58If you're not a W, if you're not a NASCAR fan, that's fine, but if you're like a fan of
06:04like, I don't know,
06:04like, maybe like WWE or something, right, like, where they had, the villains know that they're playing a role,
06:10and I'm not saying NASCAR is scripted or staged, and I'm not trying to hate on wrestling,
06:16but you still loved what they meant for the sport and for the brand.
06:22I watched a long, I've watched a couple of long-form interviews from Kyle Busch in his career,
06:28and I was, Dale Jr. had him on his podcast maybe seven, six years ago, seven years ago,
06:35and I really grew a little bit of respect for him then,
06:38and then I heard him a few months ago on a long-form interview,
06:42and Mike, you might have listened to the same one that I'm talking about now,
06:45and I have never seen Kyle more at peace and happy.
06:52He was still Kyle, which had an edge and would take a shot at anybody,
06:56and he was like, yeah, I have a hate list of drivers I can't stand,
06:59and some of those guys were remembering him last night, it was kind of funny,
07:03but like, he was just so, you could just tell he was in a different place in life,
07:07and he was in a really, really, really good place.
07:10And to hear this news mere weeks after listening to this is heartbreaking for me.
07:18It's devastating because some of the things he said will never come to fruition
07:24that he wanted that were goals, and it sucks.
07:26I'm sure we will see tributes this weekend through NASCAR.
07:31I know they're probably scrambling to get something together.
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