Few people manage to survive 12 years in the NFL, but Herschel Walker did that and continued to look for abuse elsewhere. Walker, now 48, is training for his second professional fight in mixed martial arts. He’s scheduled to fight in the upcoming Strikeforce event in San Jose next month. When Walker won the Heisman Trophy in 1982, his opponent from his first pro MMA fight, 27-year-old Greg Nagy, hadn’t even been born. Herschel brings a freakshow quality to what many already call a freakshow sport, but also the star power earned in pro football to a promotion that needs it to keep up with UFC.

Hershel is now representing ClinchGear, who produce MMA performance gear and apparel, and they were good enough to set up a phone call with the man who, by his own admission, still wears many hats. An transcribed excerpt of our interview follows.

Josh Zerkle, With Leather: I have to ask you, before anything else, how many push-ups and how many sit-ups you did today?

Herschel Walker: I’ve done about a thousand sit-ups so far and about 500 push-ups…and I’ll probably do 1000 sit ups and 250 or 500 push ups.

JZ: So you do them in sets? When I was growing up, I always thought that you did them bam-bam-bam all at once. And then you would go and eat an entire horse, because doing all of that sounds exhausting.

HW: Oh, no. I only eat one meal a day. I’m not a guy that loves to eat.