Filler up. You're listening to the.

Gas.

Digital Network.

Conceived, believe, achieve. Shut the fuck up. You're listening to.

Believe U Me with.

Michael the.

Countess Bing... You know my name yet. And Anthony Lionheart Smith. Welcome to.

The show, ladies and gentlemen. It is International Fight Week, headlined by Alexander Volkanovsky, going up against J ae Rodrigez. And guess what? We've got him joining the show in about 25 minutes. Guess what? We've got Grant Dawson joining the show in about a few more minutes than Volker Nofsky. I can't do the math that quickly, but never mind that. Anthony Smith in the goddamn house.

Yeah, I'm good, man. I'm good. Man, it's fourth of July week, which is a big deal around here. It's a big deal.

Good to go, guys.

Well, I'll party enough for the both of us. I got a healthy dose of bush light peaches ready to roll. Everyone's hanging by the pool.

Can we just talk about, listen, the bush light choice doesn't seem the most manly. The miniature can and the orange label, just hold up that can.

It's not a miniature can. I just got big ass hands.

Just take a sip on it. Just sip on it and put your little finger up in the air. See? You know what I mean?

It's so fucking good, though.

Is it really? I've never had bush life. You said there's a little video of the firework display that you've got ready or something.

Yeah.

Some of it. Should I say the provisions that you have.

In place? Yeah. Every year we do this block party in my neighbourhood. We apply for a block party permit from the county. To block the entire block off for all day long, which really pisses off some of the neighbors because then they have to go around because they can't go through. Then we delegate who's bringing what food and there's people smoking brisket and pork butt and steaks and hot dogs for the kids and sides. And then we got a dunk tank, two bounce houses. There's a big audio place here that's got one of those competition vehicles with all the speakers in it. So they bring it out and then plug it in and play music for the whole party. And then at nighttime, I do a big fireworks show.

What is the budget for the fireworks?

It goes up every year, but this one was about $5,000.

Five of your own money?

Yeah, people donate as we go.

That's a hell of a five word display, though. I can't wait to see it. Film it and send it in for Thursday's show. We want to see it. We want to see Anthony Smith in his home environment celebrating the fourth of July. What happened on the fourth of July again? What are you guys celebrating?

It's our independence.

Bro, happy fucking anniversary. Happy treason day, people. America's Saturday night, we had Sean Strickland going up against Alex Magomedov. We'll get into all that stuff in a minute. But my God, Laura Sanko, Brendan Fitzgerald, Charlie Arnold. They were giving me little digs all the time as if no one cares in England. It's not a big thing that it's not a day where everyone goes, Oh God. You know what I mean? No one was alive back then. No one knows. It's not a part of history that we teach and celebrate. But literally, no one cares. Enjoy your day, everyone. I hope you have a fantastic time. My fourth of July will be spent working, of course. I'm a real man, Anthony. I've got obligations. I can't take days off. I got kids to feed for. I got mouths to feed. Okay? Or pets' heads are falling off. I got five kids to feed. What's the movie? I got five kids to feed. I don't know. It doesn't matter. It's a random total recall. The original total recall was, I'll just watch the nigger. So, Anthony, let me ask you this. Sean Strickland, Elvis MagoM ade off.

We got lots to talk about. We'll get into this real quick before Volker Nofsky joins us. Abel Smajgan, Maid off, very good. Great record. Tons of experience. First main event after one win. I think, and I'm not taking away from Strickland and I'll give you the baton, so to speak, in just a moment. I thought Strickland was great. I thought he was very good. I thought Abus made a lot of mistakes in round one. I think because getting that 90 second win over Dusty Stolzfus, he had too much confidence in his ability to finish early. And he was looking really good. He was using a lot of energy, not the most economical style, throwing tons of kicks, spinning stuff, flying knees, lots of heavy, heavy attacks. And all right, Sean beaten down. But I think he was also a gas as well going into round two. Granted Sean Strickland, who has the opposite of that, he has a very economical style, doesn't really use up a lot of energy. I thought he was fantastic. I thought it was his best performance today.

I think looking looking at it, I think everyone's going back and forth, what about this? What about that? I mean, that was really always going to happen. You get a guy that's never fought in the UFC or as a main event in the UFC, you get a guy that's really never faced the top tier competition that the UFC has to offer at Middleweight. And a guy that goes in and is used to finishing people early. And obviously he's done it once, everyone's hyping it. That's what the media is talking about. They replay it over and over and over against a guy like Sean Strickland, who typically goes through a decision. He hasn't had a finish in a long time. He's hard to get out of there. He's really, really use the word economic. Not only is he economic, he's super tough and he's got really good vision. He sees a lot of shots, he rolls with things. He doesn't get hit clean that often. So I think a guy like Sean Strickland, at this point in Magomedov's career is always going to beat him. Sean is in it for the long haul. He's there for 25 minutes if it has to be.

And he's not chasing a finish because he doesn't need it. I think it was just too much too early for Mago Metov.

Yeah, I fully agree. And that's why you do build yourself up to that stuff. But there were circumstances people were turning him down. He was struggling to get a match up and Sean was struggling to get a match up, apparently. By the way, we have Grant Dawson joining us. He was the co main event. Brian, I just sent you his email. I was just doing that as Anthony was talking. Yeah, listen, I thought Strickland was great, though. He really was. He's calling out the Chinese champion. I don't know why he calls his name. The Chinese champion has something to do with something he said when he was kickboxing in China back in the day. What do you think the possibilities are of Strickland getting a shot sometime soon?

I think if Whitaker wins, it helps Strickland for sure. I think that helps Strickland a lot.

Yeah, I can see that. I think it's tough right now. Because it is because he doesn't want to fight him a third time. Not because he doesn't want to fight him, it's because he's already fought him and beat him twice. Not because he's ducking him. It's like, Bro, I've already done this. We're just going to keep doing this. It's just like Max Halloween and Volkanovsky. We're going to keep giving him goals until he gets the job done. I do believe Roberts earns it now.

Yeah. At a certain point, it's the same with Volkanovsky and Max Halloween, which is another question that I want to ask Volkowski. Are we going for sportsman? Are we talking about sportsmanship and not sportsmanship, but in the vein of sporting where the number one contender gets the title shot. At a certain point, Robert Whitaker just earns it. You know what I mean? If that's the case and he just keeps beating all the number one contenders, then I guess you just keep rolling it back out there. And I feel like that's the same for Max Halloween. If he's going to keep beating the number one contender, if you guys got to fight 10 times, then that's just what it is. It's I don't necessarily agree that it's probably not fun. It's probably not super motivating. And honestly, it's the same situation we talked about with Israel and Alex Perera. You guys fight, they fight enough times. Isai was bound to get one of them at some point in time. I feel like we're getting in the same realm of that thinking with Volkerovsky and with Max Hall or with Max Hall away and Volkowski and Whitaker and Artisania.

Artisania, yeah. No, I fully agree. Because if you think about it, if you look at Max Hall away, he just beat Arnold Allen. Toporio said if it's not a title fight, he wants to fight Max Hall away. If Hall away was to beat Toporia and he's just beat Arnold Allen, who were definitely the next two guys at the top of the food chain in terms of next contenders. But then on merit alone, you have to give it to the guy. Max Halloween, I'm sorry, Volkanovsky, Mike McGurk, bloody hell, Mike, I've already done this three times. But I think the viewing public would buy it. I'm down to see it. I mean, yeah, the third one was an absolute shout out. But going off tracks, Sean Strickland, I thought he was great. He was great on the microphone. He was great all week. He's hilarious. He's controversial. He says some dumb shit. Fights well, though, you know what I mean? You can't deny that fight. As I said, I thought that was the best performance of his career. And I look forward to what's next.

Does it hurt him at all that Megan Mettaf wasn't ranked?

I don't think it hurts him. No, it would have hurt if he got beat.

Yeah, or if it was really close.

How could it hurt if you go out there and smoke someone in the second round? A guy that's got a tremendous amount of experience, a guy that did have a 19 second win, guy that clearly belongs in the UFC and is a tough guy. Go out there, you have a shaky first round. You could make the argument that he was making reads, just letting him finding his rhythm and stuff like that. And then in the second round, just destroyed it. Stole started with that beautiful one, two. There was some decent power on that. Mago made it for us knackered. He was looking for a way out. He was looking for a way out. And then, hey, his hands were fast. It was lightning. He was deadly. He was great, man. He deserves it. He deserves all of his success right now. He really, really does. We'll quickly go through these grand dorsen. Damir is Magulov. We're going to talk about Grant shortly. I mean, that was a dominant performance. We'll talk to Grant. Michael Morales, Max Kripping.

He's been doing that since he was a kid. He's had the same style. Did you know Grant's from Nebraska?

Yeah. Well, I was going to say, I'm sure you're familiar with him.

Yeah, I watched him come up. Yeah, I watched him come up as an amateur. He's essentially had a very similar style from the very beginning. He just is refining it and fine-tuning it. I've grappled with him a handful of times. He is so tough on the ground and he never gets tired. It's an insane pace.

His gas tank is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. Demeares Magulov, who would be? That's a solid guy. That man is legit. And he just raged all them, took him down, controlled them for three rounds. All right, it was a shame he didn't get the finish. But I still think what we saw was a lot of technical brilliance there. I had some dickheads on Twitter going on saying, What are you talking about, man? That was boring. I said, No, if you understand what you're watching and you look at the level of opposition that he's doing this to, you weren't saying that about Khabib back in the day.

Right. So Rukia didn't do that to Isma Goulaf.

No, he didn't. No. Lips could defeat Gato Benoît Dane. Got the one there. Got to talk about this one. Well, no, sultan rules the boy up. Got a first round knockout. You like that, don't you, man? Nursultan or Rosey Boy F. Listen, this takes me much, much practice. He got a great knockout in the first round, but here's what I want to talk about. Rinyat Fakr a dinov, I've been practicing these ones against Kevin Lee. Oh, man. It was sad to see. I don't know how you felt.

When I was there doing some of the media stuff for the fight pass invitation and the grappling stuff, Kevin Lee was getting his makeup done and doing his photo shoots and all that stuff. I walked in and you know what? I said this to him, it made me happy to see Kevin Lee back in a UFC uniform again.

I agree.

It was a nice little... When I walked in, it was just nice to see, like, all right, he's back where he belongs. And he seemed really happy. He seemed like he was in a good mood. His spirits were high. And it's just, I don't know, man, he just got caught. You know what I mean? That's just how it goes.

I mean, listen, Kevin Lee's a guy with a big reputation, with a big mouth, you might say as well. But listen, my fight, you've got to sell yourself. And I like Kevin. I like what he brings to the table. I like what he's capable of. I like his fights in the past. And I truly thought, we talked about it last week about how we've matured now and things like that. Still got that frozen up on my screen. There we go, Brian. I thought the reality is that was a tough match up.

As you said, it's a tough fight.

It's a vignette. Fuck it, Dean off. I mean, keep an eye out because he's only had two fights in the UFC. I forget what his record is off the top of my head. But he destroyed the two guys' decisions this time, clocked Kevin Lee with a thunderous right-hand. And I thought Kevin was out. I was like, Oh God. But then he scrambles, he grabs a hold of a single leg, he locks in the front choke, modified guillotine. And then the referee, it was hard to see. I let the referee off here because we couldn't see. I was watching live and then I was looking at the monitor and from both angles, I couldn't see exactly what was going on. But then when the referee separated them, it was just face down on the octagon.

I mean, credit to the referee for noticing that because it was hard to tell. It was hard to tell. And man, I felt so bad for Kevin when he went down just.

The top of the room. He was face down on the canvas asleep for a while. And have you been knocked out cold, Anthony?

Never cold, no.

Right. Submitted out cold?

Never.

All right. Well, allow me to elaborate.

I've gone out from a choke and practice on accident before.

The reason I bring this up is I am in no way, shape or form mocking Kevin Lee. We're just talking about what I saw. And this is why I really felt for him as well, because he was unconscious for a while face down on the canvas. And that's never a pretty sight. The UFC do a good job of editing around that because it's hard to watch sometimes. And I was looking at him because I was concerned when he was going to wake up. And I saw him. I saw the moment when he opened his eyes. And as always, I've done it. And people do it all the time. What happened? What's going on? And you could see the look on his face. He was like, But, but, but, no. And it's like, it's the heartbreaking moment when it sinks in and you realise now, bro, all that training, all that sacrifice, all that fucking work is done, man. You got knocked out or choked out. It's horrible, man.

I don't know how up. I don't know. I don't know how to quantify that for anyone else to understand. I've never been out in a fight before. I can't imagine what it would feel like in a fight, I guess, because I've gone out in practice, like fighting a choke, and you just wait too long and you go out and you wake up and you're super confused. I would just be so terrible, especially as hard as he worked to get back. He was out of the UFC and then he fought outside the UFC. He seemed really excited too. So I just feel I just wanted him to be more successful. If he'd have had a long, drawn out three round battle and it was competitive back and forth.

I.

Know. All right.

That's way better.

It is.

It's way better. Nobody as a fighter wants to go out there and get finished, starched, put to sleep in the early rounds just like that. Let me just look at here. Well, it.

Probably feels like he didn't even have a good shot at it. I'm sure he didn't even feel like he got comfortable in there because it's not new. It's different fighting in the UFC than it is anywhere else. So I'm sure it takes a second to get your footing back. And I know that just sucks.

It looked a little undersized as well. But did I talk about this last week? My International Fire Week experience when I fought Dan Henderson, because obviously that's when I got knocked out really bad. Obviously, International Fire Week, I remember there was a huge ton of buzz about it, just like there is this week, just like there is every International Fire Week. You got the pool parties, you got the concerts, you got the viewing parties everywhere, you got the Expo, you got all kinds of stuff. There's millions and millions of people in town. And I was fighting Dan Henderson after the ultimate fight where I talked a lot of crap. We got flown out of eggs in advance. We did these cool photo shoots. We all had these Lamborghinis and muscle cars and stuff all wearing suits. I'm like, oh, we've hit the big time, baby. Here we go. We've moved up a notch in terms of what we're doing here. You know what I mean? Anyway, you know what happened? I get clocked and I did not have a clue where I was, what was going on. I have to must have told this story a thousand times, so I'll keep it very short.

Backstage in the locker room, I thought I wasn't fighting for another three months and I was trying to... I was trying to compute. What do you mean I've lost? I'm not fine for a while. And they're like, Mike, you fought tonight. You got knocked out. I'm like, no, I'm not. Hold on. Did I step in last minute as a short notice replacement? Did I just say, fuck it, I'll jump in? They're like, No, Michael, the fight was tonight. You've trained for it. You've lived in Vegas for the last two months. You got knocked out. You need to go to the hospital. I kept turning that down. And eventually went to the goddamn hospital. I came to in the ambulance with Frank Mear. He'd just been battered off brought Lesner. And I was like, Oh fuck. It all started coming back. And then I walked back. All my friends and family, they've all flown in. Rebecca's there. They've all flown in from England. We got a suite at the Mandalay. We walk in and everyone's there waiting for me. And when I'm walking and they do it because they think they're being nice, I get a round of applause.

I walk in and everyone goes, Hey. And I'm like, Don't condescend me, man. I just got sparked. Let's go and get shit faced. Do you know what I mean? Because I'm like, Listen, you guys thought I was going to win. You're all here to party, so come on, let's go and party. And part of it we did. We ended up with Jason Statham and all sorts. We had quite the night. In fact, I just saw Statham for the last London one and he came on, Hey brother, how are you doing? Mike? He said, Last time I saw you, we were in Vegas. I was like, Oh shit. I was a heavy one. All right guys, let's talk about seed and the new product of the D So1 daily symbiotic. We're talking about gut health and apparently your brain communicates with your gut and it helps register your health all over your body. Helps you with obviously your digestion, going to the bathroom. It helps you with your mood, it helps you with your sleep, it helps you with your energy levels, it helps with so many facets of your everyday life. And you've got to give your gut, essentially, all the assistance that you can and all the help that it can, because it's dealing with 53.6 billion probiotic bacteria.

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And DSO, they are at the forefront of this technology, of these medicines, of these probiotics and the probiotics. So right now, you can get 25 % of your first month's supply of seeds, DSO daily symbiotic by using the code B elieve at checkout when you go to seed. Com. Once again, that seed. Com, use the promo code B elieve for 25 % of your first month supply. International Fight Week, Anthony, have you ever fought on International Fight Week?

Yeah, I fought once. There was three fight cards, though. There was one Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. You talked.

About it.

Last week. My bad. Yeah. And I think I fought on a Thursday And.

Who was that against?

César Fajr.

Oh, that's right.

We did talk about that. He took me down 4,000 times.

So one of the big fights that I was looking forward to was Sean braided versus Jack De La Madalena. No. Jack De La Madalena, I am so high on this guy. He's so goddamn good. I'm telling you, I think go out there and put your money on him to be a champion one day because I really do. I think he'll be another Australian champion. The boxing is unbelievable. But Sean Bradley pulled out. He got a nasty staph infection. You ever had a really bad staph, Anthony?

Yeah. After I fought Span, I had that knee surgery and then I got staphed real bad. I was walking around with that pick line in my arm and doing IV antibiotics on the road. That was a bad one.

I feel for.

Him because he hasn't fought since he fought Balal Mohamed.

Correct.

I'm sure he just wants to get back on that horse too.

Well, you do. This may be a favour, though, because because again, Balal Mohamed is great and he's going to get the title fight against the winner of Kobe versus Leon when that happens. Balal is great, you know what I mean? And I think his rest and help set up the hands. But in terms of pure boxing, Jad De La Madalena, I think is a cut above most people in the UFC.

Most of the division.

For sure. Most of the division, if not most people in the UFC. There's not many people with the hands of a Jack De La Madalena. So I'm not saying Sean Bradley couldn't have taken down and used his world-class jitsu because, of course he could have done. But on the feet, that was a very, very dangerous fight to take. Who's the replacement, Harrington? Jump on the show, mate. Hello. Thanks for being here. You got a last minute replacement, someone from the LFA, right? Yeah. So I actually sent it to Brian. I have a video of his last fight in LFA where he got a double leg take down so hard, he went through the cage door. So that...

Oh, shit.

Viral moment. Have you ever done that in training, Anthony?

Never. Never through the door. No. I was in a couple of times. I was fighting one time as an amateur, and the cage corner is busted open during the fight one time, though. No one ever flew out.

What do you mean, the cage corner?

It was very low budget back in the day. So the cage it was a square cage. So some heavyweights had burst up against the fence and they separated. And then they tried to put it back together during the show. And then during the fight, we ran up to the fence and they bust open again.

We did that exact thing what we just saw there in that video on the ultimate fighter when we were training. Because you train because you never lock it. But the UFC, obviously, is the ultimate fighter. So it's up high and you got the apron around it. Do you know what I mean? So there was a couple of guys, it wasn't me, but we didn't lock it. You know what I'm saying? Because you're going in and out the whole time, especially when you coach and you're having a piss or whatever. You're just drilling and stuff. Two guys went flying through it, fell off the apron. They had a good little bitch about it. But Jad De La Manolena, glad to see him still on the card. Volker Nofsky joining shortly. Your boy Jamal Hill, he said that he should be going up against Jürgen Perhaske soon. He says that Jürgen Perhaske is fit and he's healthy. Have you heard anything from Jamal?

I haven't. I haven't. I've seen him in... What the hell were we? Jacksonville. I seen him in Jacksonville. And at that time, he hadn't heard anything, but that's what he was looking for. He said that Urie sounds like he was going to be ready soon. He didn't hear anything on the date yet, though.

But it makes sense, doesn't it? When did Jamal fight? January? So it's been six months for him. I'm sure he's dying. It's about time to get in there.

He needs to get on a fucking diet. He needs to get on diet. That's what he needs to do. You've seen him? Bro.

He.

Gets.

Heavy. He doesn't care, though, does he? Because I've seen some videos on TikTok or something. He's got his shirt off because he's doing these memes with Maroub de Valeghili all the time.

Yeah, he doesn't care. He is not shy. He gets real heavy. So he.

Needs what are we talking numbers wise?

He's well over 240. Well over 240.

I shouldn't say this, Callen came back from England and he was 268.

What's he normally? Like when he's wrestling. What did he.

Wrestle with? He wrestled at 197 and then eventually came up to heavyweight. He embraced heavyweight with a goddamn passion. And then he'd come in at 260. When we got back from England, I told you, we were all a little bit heavy. You know what I mean? So he came back at 268 pounds. But right now, talking of pounds, we are joined by the pound for pound number one, the featherweight champ, the headliner of International Fight Week, the pride of Australia, the main man, the one, the only Alexander the Great Volkanovsky. And I dragged that one out to see if we can get you one freezey. What's up, Alex? How are you, brother?

I'm good. Did I just come in and interrupt you early? Did it?

No, you just froze a little bit. Listen, you're pound for pound number one, but you're not even in the top 10 of the WiFi rankings, man. What's going on? Is it bad is it? Yeah, my bad. We can see your beautiful face there. There you go. You got a little movement there. Hey, first of all, Alexander, we really appreciate you taking the time. I know it's fight week. You're the main event of a huge fight card, so I'm sure you've got way better things to do. So thank you for being here. But how's it going? How was training camp? How's the prep?

Everything's going good. I came actually to Vegas a little bit earlier than usual because Craig Jones was competing in the fight pass invitation. You were too. So I was there watching the guys, which was pretty cool. So it's been good. Camp was good. Did my last hard session a couple of days ago. So everything's coming together now.

A lex, obviously it's Monday and people are starting to travel in for International Fight Week. I'm sure Vegas is insane. What's it like as far as your media schedule? And how busy do they keep you all throughout the week as you guys are promoting this fight card through the week ending on Saturday?

It's not too bad. We try and space it out a little bit. We did a bit of media back home, trying to spread it out as much as you can. So it's not too crazy fight week, but I'm all good with it. It's all a part of the process. There will be, over the next few days, probably some media obligations and some things that we need to do, but it's a part of the process. That lets me remember and let me know, like, all right, we need to fight, we got to fight. It's just the normal five week stuff that you usually do. It's obviously getting more and more as the career goes on. But I'm all good with it. It keeps me busy.

Yeah, I was going to say, mate, you seem to enjoy it. And a lot of fighters, they always bet you're about it. They talk about it as I hate this, but it's a necessary evil. The more of this stuff you do, the more people know about your product, the fight, ultimately the more money you make. So now you got the right attitude. So J ae, Rodrigez, obviously, he had a great show on against Josh Emmett. A lot of movement, a lot of kicks. Everyone knows the style of J ae, Rodrigez, unpredictable. How do you prepare for somebody like that? Did you bring in some special training partners? What was the deal?

Yeah, well, that's a exactly what we had to do. Bring in some good training partners.

Obviously, you're going to have game players, you're going to have things that you need to do. But as you said, he is very unpredictable, very dangerous. You don't really ever know exactly what he wants to do. So the best thing you can do is bring in guys that are going to be unpredictable, just keep you on your toes. Obviously, I was lucky enough to have Carl Van R un, who's 11 time taekwondo world champion, bringing Blood Diamond, who's, if you watch any of his kick boxing fights, he's just one of the most unpredictable guys there is. So I got the best of both worlds when it comes to close range, long range. And then I bring guys in that were really good at switching stances.

So most.

Of it was just trying to give me the looks and just keep me on my towards it, especially in the fire, because it's going to be a fire fight. I guarantee you he's going to come swinging. There's going to be some crazy shit getting thrown at me. Don't worry.

About it, mate.

I'll be ready for it. So I'm looking... I'm excited for this one. This one really does excite me because I do see the dangers in UAE, but you all know I prepare properly.

I'm not sure if this next question is just like... I think it's more personally for me, if I'm being honest. How do you deal with someone as unpredictable as that? Obviously, you're going to bring people in, they're going to emulate him and try to, I suppose just be on your toes as much as possible. But in terms of your mental preparation, because you fight a guy like Ortega, you know what you're getting into. He's going to box. He's going to have great Jutsu. Max Halloween, the same thing. He's a great boxer, long and rangy, but you know what you're getting yourself into. How do you mentally prepare for someone like Jair where you really have no idea what he's going to do?

I get it comes out of it, having them training partners that can give you close enough looks. Not going to be exactly the same, but nothing that you're froze is usually exactly the same anyway. There is some things, obviously, there is some patterns and there is some things that we could do. Obviously, having guys like that, there's biggest threats. Taking the biggest threats away, just knowing that for work without giving too much away. Just make sure I'm in the right position, making them still fight my fight. So again, a lot of people are going to be like, all these things are going to be coming at you, but I'm not just going to stand in front of you and let you have your way with me. You know what I mean? Josh Hulbert, I try to put the pressure on, but he just come forward.

And it was just not the right approach. You got to got to definitely, without giving too much away, you definitely got to approach it properly. But I mean, I'm...

So you guys have identified some tendencies. You see some things that you can take advantage of and maybe get him off of his game.

Yeah, of course. That's where the fight IQ comes in.

The game planning.

All that stuff really comes into play. And that's what I want to show people. I can systematically break anyone down, even someone as crazy and dynamic and unpredictable as you've rigged it.

So let me ask you this, Volk. I mean, the career you're having is just unbelievable. I've been saying it. In fact, Brian, our producer, was the first one to say, and I totally agree. I think we're all experiencing right now what will be known as one of the greatest careers that the sports have ever seen. And of course, anytime someone starts combat sports, we all aim for the top. We all want to be a champion. We all have these grand designs, but you've done it, man. You didn't beat Islam. It was a ridiculously close fight. But you're the pound for pound number one. You're headlining International Fire Week. You're flying around on private jets. I saw you Saturday night. I saw the attention. I looked around. There was about six or seven hot chicks there. Volkanovsky's in the middle. I know you're a loyal man, of course, but you're the man. I mean, did you ever in your wildest dreams, when you put those gloves on and you made the move from rugby to doing this, did you think it would ever come to this?

Not really. It's weird. I always picture myself being champion. You know even when I wasn't training in the MA, I used to picture myself being the UFC champion because I've always loved the sport. So you always dream of things like that. But I think everyone does. But actually going out there and doing it, I think I was going to be in this position. I don't know. It's funny that even though I'm in this position, it still doesn't feel like I'm in that position because I'm just your ordinary black guy. I'm dad, right? I'm just the same guy I was 10 years ago that's just lucky enough to be in the position I am. Obviously, through hard work, I wouldn't say lucky. I definitely earned it with what I do. But I guess it's crazy. It's crazy to think where we are because I didn't think probably that would ever happen. And it still doesn't even feel like I'm there right now. You know what I mean? So it's crazy. It's weird for me because I just go through life just how I did many years ago, which is it's funny. And then people coming up to you, like you said, it's pretty crazy.

But I think it's something that's a good trait that I have. That's why I can always keep my composure no matter where I am. I don't let anything really.

Get me.

Too emotional, get me too crazy. And I can stay composed in some of the craziest positions. So I think it definitely helps me in a sense.

I'll just ask one more. Normally, we go back to back. You know what I mean? Take it in turns, but I got to dive in. For me, Volker, I don't know what your financial situation is. I'm sure it's pretty good. Let's just say that. But for me, when I was having success, I was always, as I said, how does it feel? You know what I mean? But I always thought I've got to keep working. I've got to keep grinding because this could be taken away at any moment. This could turn out to be like a little blip in the timeline of my life. And I never want to go back to working on the building sites. I never want to go back to the factory, work in minimum wage. So that always kept me grinding and hustling my ass off. Is it a similar mindset that you have?

Exactly that. That's why you see me wanting to be active. Again, how long am I going to be in my prime for? That's why I'm like, Let's get these fights going. That's why I wanted to fight my way to do the champ, champ thing. Obviously for legacy, but not just that. Let's keep me busy. Let's make as much money as you can while you can. And that's the same mentality I have in the gym. I I literally even it's funny, even though I became champion, I swear I'm more committed to the sport than ever, even now. The focus I have in certain positions and understanding the game. I still go to sessions. Certainly certain techniques we do. I absolutely love breaking them down. I love breaking down the mechanics of it, the keys, the principles, everything. I just absolutely love it. I'm chatting everyone's ears off and I feel like they're getting over it more than me. You know what I mean? They're sitting there and they're like, I am ready to go home. I'm chatting.

Ready to.

Break down more positions. I just absolutely love it. My commitment to this sport is still there, probably more than ever. So it's weird. Whether that's just I'm lucky enough to do something I love, or just that mentality like I know. Again, I always want to drive to be better.

I always try to improve. Everyone's always seen me evolve and get better every time I step in it. That's because of that work ethic and that mentality of always wanting and loving the sport and always wanting to be better.

In terms of legacy and earning ability and everything that goes along with that. If you go in here and then everything goes to plan and and you get through EI here, are you going to plan to go back to 155? Because I feel like you're the... Again, I don't know you super well, but you seem like the type of person that, all right, you went up to 155. You guys had a crazy close fight. It didn't go your way. Now you're back down to defend your belt. You seem like the type of person, like, all right, now I need to go back and I need to do that again. Is that something that is in the back of your mind?

Yeah, it is. I definitely want that rematch again because I think it's a fun fight. It's a fight that everyone wants to see. So that's something I do want to do. And again, I want to be active. So while people are doing their thing and it's a legit. I can keep two divisions busy. I really can. And I'm proving that I would have fought earlier if I could. But I had to wait till this day. That's just how it is. I definitely want to move up, get that rematch and get that belt. And again, keep both divisions busy. I still got my eye on that. But obviously, I've got to focus on here. Again, he's a dangerous threat. But I plan on doing my thing, getting my hand raised and moving up to live weight and again, playing both.

In terms of, as you said, 155, there's one guy out there everyone wants the red panty night, Conor McGregor, right? Maybe he's coming back, maybe he fights channeler, maybe he never fights again. But obviously, he was the featherweight champ once upon a time, many moons ago. Never defended it. Have you had any interactions with Connor? Have you been the butt of any abuse? Because me and Anthony, we've both had the fucking voice notes. We've both had the Fret. Do you know what I mean? We've both had the shit coming out of him. Have you been the recipient of any bullshit from him? And obviously, I'm assuming that would be someone you'd love to fight one day.

Yeah, it's something that I've always wanted purely because, as you just said, he's the only... He's a featherweight champ as well. He's a former featherweight champ. He's the only one I haven't beaten yet. So you're talking about legacy, that's definitely there. We've had a few exchanges on Twitter here and there, but nothing more playful. After every time. If I put on a show and people are saying that I'm the go to or talking about me being one of the best feather weights, he likes to chime in and try and beat me down. But that's Connor. So I love it. It's all good. If he's talking about me, I guess that's a good thing anyway. He's paying attention. But for me, I just focus on what's in front of me and that's a year, maybe live, but I mean, Connor is definitely something I want to do. I think he's even a little interested in it. So we'll see. I got a couple of things I need to do and I'm guessing it's going to be a while till he's ready to get in there anyway. I'll do my thing and I'll be in a position where I think he will want that fight.

I'm expecting that legacy. Where I'm at, I just bring my hype around myself is going to be on a whole level as well. That's where I plan on being in a year or so.

Obviously, life's going great for you now. You're on top of the world. What's the most unexpected thing that's happened to you or the most unexpected person that you've got to meet or become friends with? Because things happen. Life's a wonderful thing. And certainly when you become a UFC champ of your level, you do find yourself in places that you never would have thought in your wildest dreams you would be. What's something that you'd be willing to share or someone that you meet in a celebrity, someone that you've looked up to, a performer, whatever? Is there someone that fits that description for you?

Obviously lucky enough to be in the position. I know there's so many people you could mention, so many things that you're like, Wow, what? I grew up watching these guys. Even Mel Gibson.

Just there watching. That's right. He was there.

Saturday night. I was just sitting right next to him, right behind him. Things like that, it's just crazy.

But probably.

Mark Zuckerberg, I'd say, is probably one of the more random type of the way it came about. And I was like, Oh, what? Now he's a massive fan of the sport. He loves the martial arts. And obviously, we keep in contact and we met up a couple of times. Cool dude. So that was probably one of the craziest.

Zuckerberg versus Mosk. I got to ask that real quick. Who wins? Zuckerberg versus Mush from the pound for pound king.

I got Zak, mate. I'm telling you, he's a bit of an athlete, mate. He's looking like It blows me out. He's an athlete. He's pretty good. I guess they both will commit to whatever they do. They wouldn't be where they were if they didn't. But he loves his martial arts. He loves staying active. You should see him waive surfing and all that. He's athletic. It's pretty incredible. So that's why I would definitely have Zaka in that one.

Well, I'd watch it. That's for sure. I keep feeling like I'm not trying to disrespect Jair, but we have the champion here. And I think that me and everyone else likes to hear just how your minds, how you think about things because we talk about this all the time. Max Hall away has got to be one of the most irritating thorns in your side because it's an incredibly tough fight. He's so crafty. And then you beat him three times and he just keeps fighting all the contenders and he finds himself winning. You know what I mean? So it seems like you constantly find yourself in these conversations where it's like, all right, well, maybe it's Max Hall away again. How do you look at that through your lens? Is it just he keeps beating him so he gets another shot, or is it just like, Goddamn, I'm sick of this guy?

Yeah, I think it's a weird one. I think it's a weird one to sell as well. A fourth fight with Max. I guess it's a weird position for him as well. He's probably sitting there like, Man, I hope he loses. So I need to get a shot of title. Obviously, it's a weird one for him. But that just shows you where he's at. A lot of people thought he was done because of what I did to him. I was like, no, it's not him. That was me. And I expect him to still do this to all the contenders. That's why I'm still saying I'm going to tell the UFC, I was going to stop feeding my contenders.

Yeah, exactly. I know. What is going to happen if your Leeds, Emporio fights Max Halloween? Are you just going to say, Jesus Christ, come on, mate. That's my next guy. That's the next guy in line. Number one, what do you think of a Leeds, Emporio? Because he did. I mean, he's looking sensational, right?

Yeah. Well, I've actually already said that. I was like, he doesn't need... Don't let him fight it. Everyone's hyping him up. Everyone wants that fight. And he likes to talk as well, which I like. So that'll be exciting. So it's definitely something that if the UFC brought him up, I'd be like, Yeah, Sweet. No worries.

Again.

A lot of people are hyping him right up.

I view him.

A lot different than what a lot of people are, to be honest. But everyone's hyping. Everyone thinks he's that good. So I'm like, All right, Sweet. I'll show you how good I am. You know what I mean? Because I see a lot of holes in these games, a lot of things that I could capitalize on. So I would love that fight. But obviously I got you to worry about. So I don't want to disrespect you by sounding like I'm not paying attention to him because trust me, I am. Anyway, I would be where I am if I didn't pay attention and prepare how I would be. I guess it's fine to talk about all those things. But if he wants this and the UFC want it and the people want it, people think he's going to stand a chance. I'll show you he doesn't.

Right. So you have conversations with the UFC and say, All right, can we stop running people through Max? Because it sounds funny to say that. You know what I mean? Stop feeding in my contenders. But at a certain point, it's becoming not just unfair to you, but to the other guys. If everyone has to go through Max Hall away, I think it says worlds about how good you are that you continue to beat him, and then he beats everybody else. But it's putting a roadblock in your way of having the opportunity to get in there with a lot of these young up and comers and fresh faces.

Yeah. Like I said, it's just a tricky one. You never know, right? You get to never say never with that one. For me, it just right now, it's just like, What? A fourth dollar? It really does not make sense. But yeah, so it's a hard one for me to think about that ever happening. So that's why I'm like, What's he going to do? He talks about lightweight as well. Obviously, I'm talking about lightweight. No one in our history will probably end up facing each other in freaking lightweight or something as well. Who knows? Just obviously, it's a weird one. But for for me, it's... Yeah, keep them away.

If.

People are talking about Illia, let them leave.

Yeah.

Leave him alone.

Exactly. No more Max Halloween questions. We're back riding them right now. Las Vegas. I mean, what a place that is, right? It's unbelievable. I come from a small town in England. I'm fighting in Las Vegas. I couldn't believe it. My International Fight Week did not go as well as what yours have done in the past. And I'm sure Will you're going to do well this week as well. But what's your best, your favourite and your least favourite things? Best and worst things about Las Vegas? What do you like? What do you hate? The food, right? The food is amazing.

I like and hate the same thing.

So I hate.

Being around all the vibes, the party scenes, and all that fight week. But then I love it after fight week. So it's hard.

I love hate relationship with baggers during fight week. Everyone's a couple of guys that get drinks. I'm at a casino at the moment. So you go in there, the vibe is always high and you're like, food's good. So you're sitting there and then at least you get to enjoy all that as soon as the fight's done. So yeah, again, it's like first part.

Hate it.

Last part, love it.

Yeah. So where's the after party?

Where? It's at XS at the window.

Thanks for the invite, Volk. We'll see you there.

Good man.

All right. Well, listen, buddy, listen, I'm sure you've got a million of these to do this week. So we'll let you go, man. I really appreciate you taking the time, Volk. All the best this week, man. It's going to be a great fight. I can't wait for it. All the best to you, your whole team. And once again, thanks for your time. Appreciate it, bud.

No worries, mate. Appreciate it, guys. Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you. Take it easy. There he is, the pound for pound champ, the Alexander Volkanovsky, with the not so great WiFi, but still.

Yeah, we got the information. That's all we needed.

We got the information. We got the chitchat. We got the vibe. We got the energy. We got the preparation. We got the answers to the questions. But it was like the WiFi from 1993. Still. I love the honesty. Where did we go? I love the honesty. Yeah, he's the man. He really is. I was watching Josh Emmett versus Yay, Rodriquez in preparation for this week. And J ae was so good in that fight. He really was. The movement of him, the shot selection, the kicks, the way he mixed up all of his attacks. But J ae has been beaten several times, quite a few times actually. And he was beaten quite soundly by Max Halloween. So if there's one man that's going to have an answer for all the stuff, it will be Volker Nozzy. I almost.

Didn't want to ask him the Max Halloween question, but I had to ask ask him? How does it feel? You know what I mean? What a shit position to be in?

Yeah. No, I totally get it. And it probably pisses him off because I remember when he did fight the first couple of times, they were so close and you can make an argument either way. And I had to say to his face on air in Abu Dhabi, I thought Max Halloween won. And I wasn't doing that to be a dickhead because I got so much respect. But I just said it on commentary. And then he came to the post fight desk and I'm like, I can't be a bitch and not going to say what I just said there. And it seemed like I was trying to be combative and I really wasn't. But obviously, he's a man and he took it well and comes on the show and stuff. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I can't wait for that one. When you talk about someone that deserves all the success, you know what I'm saying? Look at how humble he is. You know what I mean? Look at the people that he has around him. Look at how he carries himself in interviews. Look at how he's living his life because I'm sure his bank account is booming.

But he's not getting on like a little dickhead. You know what I'm saying? Which sometimes.

That happens. He's so polite, too. I don't know if people at home actually care about this, but I don't really know Volkanovsky that well. Not anything more than a high and bye in public and shake hands. But anytime he sees me, he makes it a point to come say hi, and not just to me, to whoever I'm with, whoever's in the room. It'll take the dude an hour to make it through the apex when there's nothing going on there because he makes sure he stops and says hi to everybody. That's makeup people, camera men, other fighters he sees. He's just that guy.

That's called being a good person. Simple as that. All right, it's International Fight Week. If you are heading to a pool party, don't show up looking like Harrington, like a bear coming out of a cave after hiding in 18 for so long. Very hairy and greasy and grimey. Sorry, Harrington. No, you want to show up looking cleanly shaved from the face to the waist. Maybe not even shaved, just downstairs below. You got to groom your manhood. And that's what Manscaped are all about. The performance package 4.0, of course, has the lawn mower 4.0 trimmer, which features the cutting edge ceramic blade. So it reduces accidents. Simple as that. It's got a 7,000 RPM motor. It's got an LED light. It's got a it is waterproof. So wherever you take it, the beach, the pool, or the shower, this will devour even the strongest pubes. I don't recommend, you know, grooming your pubes down at the swimming pool or even at the beach. Do it in the toilet. But still, if you want to do it there, it'll do it. You also get the crop observer, the bold deodrant, keeping you cool from sunrise to sunset.

By the way, it has two free gifts thrown in there. With the performance package 4.0, you also get the man skate boxes and the shed travel bag and wearing nasty sandals and some nasty toenails during the summer months. We'll take a look at the sheer 2.0, a luxury nail g ooming kit. The kit includes stainless nail cutters, tweezers, and g ooming scissors. And as a treat, you should add in the crop mops to your order. A moist tablet made specifically for your beach balls. It is the best midday refresh to stop your popsicle from melting. So right now, go over to manscaped. Com, use the code bisping to get 20 % off and free shipping. That is manscaped. Com. The code is bisping for 20 % off and free shipping. All right, let's do a little bit of non MMA, Harrington. What the hell is going on in Korea these days? Because as we know, North Korea, it's not... Oh, here we go.

My light's one on you.

It's not like the number one tourist destination. I don't think anyone's planning on moving to North Korea pretty soon. But what is happening down there lately? So there is a whole bunch going on. So over the weekend, Kim Jong, I believe it's Oon, is the new guy, he came out and said suicide is now.

Officially.

Illegal in the country. There's been too many people. So now it's banned. Don't be doing that. And if there are a bunch of people in your province.

Who do.

Choose to do that, the local officials will now be held responsible for the people. Yeah. And what's the punishment going to be if you do kill yourself and it's not allowed, I'm very intrigued. I'm just trying to bring up something else. Antony, just talk to Harrington for just a second. I'm trying to bring something up.

Yeah. Since it's illegal, they catch you killing yourself, what are they going to do, Harrington?

Go on, sorry. Go on. Sorry, go on. So North Korea's whole.

Thing, I know.

This just from a study a couple of years ago about somebody being found with a Bible in their house, the entire family was sent to a prison camp. I would assume that that punishment would then fall down upon the family and the local officials who are responsible for it. I've got an article here and it's called 21 Crazy Rules in North Korea. And there's one of them here. It's the three generation punishment. It says if anyone commits a crime in North Korea, not only he or she will be punished, but also their grandparents, their parents, and their children. This law was created to prevent people from escaping prison. It is crazy.

That's insane.

Yeah, dude. I got this article here, 21... People bitch about the countries that they live in. And there's some good places and there are some bad places. But North Korea, you've got to worship. Everyone has to have a picture of Kim Jong Un in their wall and they have to worship it. And I think it's like death penalty if you're caught not worshiping it once a day or at a certain time of the day. But here are some rules that will blow your mind. Foreign movies and songs, not allowed. Making international calls is a crime. Disloyalty to the leader can mean death. Falling asleep during a meeting with Kim Jong Un is considered disloyalty to the leader, and is punishable by death. Simple as that. Only the government... Oh, you can only have government approved haircuts.

Government approved? Does it have any examples?

It does. I tell you the pictures, but you're not be able to say it. They're bad. They're bad. You know what I mean? I think Brian and Harrington have better haircuts. You need permission to live in the nation's capital. Student loans. Our students are required to pay for their own desks and chairs at the school. I mean, it's not the worst. It's not good, but it's not as.

Long as it's not punishable by death.

Yeah, but I can't afford it. There we go. There's some of the haircuts. We need to see on the thumbnail, it needs to be me and Anthony with a North.

Korean.

Haircut. Yeah, that might be considered racist. The Bible is banned in North Korea. There's no iPhones or laptops, prison camps. I mean, it goes on and on and on. Jesus Christ, it's insane what goes on in North Korea. And you sent a story to.

Us.

Earlier this morning about 20, it.

Said, winner athletes, I'm.

Assuming that means winter Olympic athletes, who were jailed, along with their.

Families, because they were using a South Korean.

Dialect in a game that they filmed on their phone. Oh, yeah, that's right. You don't have to play it. But yeah, there's certain dialect now that you use certain words that are popular in South Korea. Just like slang terms for your wife or your husband or whatever comes into the mainstream and slang terms. If you use them, again, punishable by death or a long, lengthy prison sentence.

That's it. So we're definitely not doing a live BYM from?

No, I don't think so. No. Have you ever been to South Korea through the UFC? No. Me neither. We were meant to go last year before Perth. I was looking forward to it. But North Korea...

I think doesn't Singapore have... Not crazy. I don't think there's a lot punishable by death, but don't they have a little bit of a different rule set in their laws and stuff? Well, yeah.

It's a little.

More strict for sure.

For sure on drugs. I mean, prostitution is legal.

Don't spit your gum out on the street, apparently, though.

Don't spit your gum out. And yeah, I do believe there's the death penalty.

Oh, no.

Small amount of drug use, I do believe. So yeah, don't be taking your edibles. Don't be going over there with your fake pens.

Better not be doing that.

We don't want Anthony coming back with one hand. Have you been to Asia much? And you been to this? No, not at all. Spent the first time there in general?

Not at all? No, I'm excited. You're going to have to show me around. You've been to Singapore, right?

It's boring.

Is it?

It's boring, especially when you're fighting as well. I mean, we went out afterwards and we had a few drinks.

Do they got a pool? They got a nice pool or anything?

They got a pool. They got a sauna. Unless you want to spend loads of money on douchey clothes, you know what I mean? It's a very, very wealthy city. It's like a financial hub of Asia. There's a lot of money there, a lot of rich people.

It's like a tax haven, right?

Yeah. I'm not sure the actual details of that, but a lot of people talk about that. But yeah, it's not the most... I mean, the Harbour is beautiful. You walk around that a couple of times and it's like... I used to run around it every morning. I'm like, We've been here. Five times. There's a botanical garden which lights up at night. It's nice and pretty. Is your lady coming with you?

No, just me.

Right. Well, I went there with John and Megan and leave it. We had a little date, the three of us. That was nice. Again, it's not somewhere... Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited to go back there and call the fight. But it wouldn't be a list of.

Places to go. You wouldn't pay to go there.

Thailand.

That's what I want to call it. Thailand. We got to go to Thailand.

Thailand is amazing. Thailand is one of the best places on earth. The people, the culture, the food, everything. Anyway, enough about that. The here, finally. Finally, this may be true. I don't know if it is or isn't, but where is it in the notes? But the saying, Eddie Hearn, the famous boxer promot that ties some fear, will eventually, after all it's said and done, be boxing Francis St. Ghana. However, it's going to be an exhibition bout with no knockdowns and no fish.

How do you stop the knock downs?

How do you stop Francis Zingano from knocking you out if you can X? Do you.

Know what I mean? How does that work?

Seems fake. What are the details, Harryton? Apparently it's not fake. Apparently it's going down in Saudi Arabia, which is a shame because again, he needs to fight Usik. He doesn't need to be fighting Francis and Garnu. I hope they both make a truckload of money out of it. But it's disappointing for me. If you're a hardcore boxing fan, this is not what you want to hear from Tyson Furi. It's not what you want to hear at all. Eddie Hearn pretty much said exactly that. He said, Is it good for boxing? I don't know. But Tyson Furi has made enough money to make his... To a point in his career where he can make these decisions. It's interesting because he was initially supposed to fight usik in Saudi Arabia later this year. Now it's looking like that's been pushed back to the first quarter of 2024, like that whole event they were trying to do. So that opened up his schedule for this exhibition here. And people in the box more were talking about it all weekend. Eddie Hearn came on a podcast and said that from what he's heard, those rumors are, in fact, true.

And it looks like it's going to be an exhibition. But again, though, if I'm Francis inganu, how do you not try and knock him out? Because again, like North Korea, if you kill yourself, what's the punishment going to be? You go and knock out Tyson Furey, you spark him out cold. You're only getting rewarded for that. If anything, you're going to get a full on fight with Tyson.

So is that not a real... How does that work? Are they just not allowed to try hard? Because who the fuck wants to watch that?

Well, essentially that's what it is. These exhibition bouts with Floyd Mayweather, what he's doing right now and all these other exhibition bouts. They're just like the re are exhibitions just for a couple of people to go out there. Yeah, Tyson and Roy Jones Jr. Thank you, Brian. They want to go out there and just p it pattern away and not have fun and not give the people what we want to see. But a guy that does not pitpatter away is the one and only grand doors. And grand, let me tell you something. Alexander Volkanov, so you can learn a lot from you. We can see you, you're moving, you have decent WiFi. We just spoke to the pound for pound champ. Fuck it all. The WiFi was straight out of 1993. Good to see you, Grant.

It was all fixated. Couldn't really.

See him. He just wasn't moving. It was like a still.

Yeah, he was frozen the whole time.

Every few minutes it got... You know what I mean? But I want you, man, how are you, Grant? How are you doing, bud?

I'm good, man. The week after fights is always rough, as both of you gentlemen know. No matter how close or not close the fight was, it's always rough the week after. So I'm healing up from some bumps and bruises, but I'm happy as can be.

Well, it's a lot nicer with a win, right?

Oh, yeah. There's no amount of injury that even comes close to how much it hurts to not win. So winning is the best thing.

Yeah, it doesn't matter. We always talk about this. You could be black and blue, nose broken, orbital broke, legs broken. But if you get that win, it's all worthwhile. That said, though, you look like you've just had a hard sparring session. You wouldn't think you were in there with one of the top guys in the world.

Yeah. I think it was one of those nights. It was just one of my nights, man. My old coach used to talk about, he would say, Nobody was beaten me that night. He would have nights where he just believed he could beat anybody. And I've never experienced that ever. I've always been like, Man, this is just not going to go great. And I got to tell you, this last weekend was the first time I was in the back. I felt really good. I was still nervous, of course, but it was just one of those things where it was like, Man, I just really don't think anybody can beat me tonight.

Well, you've done a really good job of highlighting your team and the people behind you and your coaches and your training partners. What do you attribute that feeling? Because you could see it in your eyes when you were getting ready to fight. It was the first time I'd seen that look from you before. And of course, I said this earlier. I've known you obviously for a really long time. You've always seemed to carry a bit of anxiety. Even in training, you've always asked... There's been a lot of times where I've heard you ask questions like, Why do you give a shit about that? You're way better than that. But I've seen the confidence in your face for the very first time. Is that the team? Is that the move? Is that just you're getting older and maturing and coming into your own?

I'm going to tell you, I think it's a little bit of everything. You're 100 % right. Always nervous. And I think that that's a good thing because it means so much to me. This sport absolutely means the world to me. But I got to tell you, the first time ever just fighting free. For some reason, this fight, there was nothing holding me back. There was no worry about losing. There was no anxiety. Of course, I was nervous. You're always going to be nervous. But there was no fear. There was zero fear. If we're striking the whole time, no fear. If we're grappling the whole time, no fear. I do not know what it is. I'm going to try to replicate it in the next fight and every fight moving forward. But I really can't tell you. I think that it's probably because I'm doing a lot more sparring. We didn't do a whole lot of sparring back at glory, and it was a lot more grappling than sparring. So I felt really uncomfortable on the feet. My coaches make me spare twice a week, every week here in camp. So I think that's what it is, that I'm a little bit more comfortable on the feet.

Grant, listen, I want to hear all about you and Anthony because I know you're boys from back in the day. I know you've known each other. I know you're sitting there going, why is B ispin here? We don't need this brickhead, especially on the week of Independence Day. We don't need him as part of this conversation. So I want to know some stories. So I have a little think about that. But I'm looking at your record here, Grant, and it's phenomenal, man. It really is. 20 wins, one loss. That's incredible. When we speak to you, when you speak on TV, on the microphone, you speak great. You're very eloquent. You're clearly intelligent. Your fight record is phenomenal. The skills you have are incredible. They really are. Honestly, I couldn't be any higher on you. I thought what you did Saturday night against Dmytro Magalov was incredible. And it's very underrated. I don't think people realise how good he is. He has a win over Mata'as Gamra, Guram Khodatiladze, who are fucking top of the food chain in terms of skills. And the way you fight, you go out there, the wrestling, right? It's wrestling one on one.

The pace is fucking incredible. You never slow down. You never get tired. So you versus Islam Mahachev, if that fight was to get made in terms of wrestling prowess, how would that go down? Do you think you've got what it takes to go there and go tassel with some good old fashioned American wrestling?

I do. I really do. And I'm not just saying that to hype myself up and put myself into that position. I think that I am one of the very few guys that can take Islam Makashev down and threaten him on the ground. We saw when he fought Arman Sehruki, he was getting taken down. And I think that Arman is a very incredible fighter. If I was going to nitpick at his game, I would say he's not very threatening with submissions. And he doesn't have a whole lot of great control other than riding the body lock. With me, I take down Islam. He gives up his back to get up, which I 100 % agree with that he should do. I throw in my hooks. Now he's got me on his back in the body triangle for an entire round. I'm up around. I think I'm one of the few guys that can actually hang with his grappling. I can hang with his cardio. And you don't get to see it a whole lot in the cage because I don't really get taken down in the cage. But I am very, very difficult to hold down.

I pride myself on not getting held down by these people in the gym. I get taken down all the time, but getting held down doesn't happen when it's with me.

So you've always been that nitpicking person, in your own style, in your own game. I guess it's a two part question. If you were going to nitpick your own performance on Saturday, which is probably, to be fair, there's not a whole lot to do there. But if you were going to do it yourself, I'm sure you have a whole list. And then what's your goal moving forward as far as as evolution in your own game? Where do you want to improve on? But where do you feel like you could have done better this last weekend?

Last weekend, I think the thing that I could have done better was take a little bit more risk. There were a couple of good times when I had chances to flatten him out and really start raining down punches. But I'm really comfortable going back to sitting onto the back and not letting go of the back. I think I could have let go of the back a couple of times when he was trying to get flat, take him out, punch him, punch him, punch him. He gives up his back, I throw the hooks in, and then just that way just so I could land a few more strikes. And I think that might have opened up a submission if I really, really pushed it. But things were going so well. And in my head, I was like, man, this guy's too good. You can't make a mistake with this guy. If you give him an inch, he's going to take a mile. So I played it a little too safe at times. That would be my biggest nitpick. One of the things that I'm really happy with myself is I've been fighting from Southpaw quite a bit, and I actually felt better in Southpaw than I did in Orthodox.

So moving forward, I really want to capitalize on that and really refine my skills and figure out what my exact weapons are from those stance switcheses.

Obviously, the last man to fight Islam is fighting this weekend. Volkanovsky International Fire Week. What do you think about Volkanovsky versus J ae Rodrigues? We got to ask you this. What's your prediction for that one?

Man, I think that Volkanovsky fighting Islam was one of the worst things that he could have done for his 145 pound career because now I don't want to see him fighting somebody at 145. I just don't think anybody can beat him.

He did so... Sorry. Right. I like that. That's a good take.

10 pounds heavier against the best right now, the best lightweight in the world. I don't want to see it. I have no interest in him fighting Yair Rodriguez. I think he's just going to smash everybody. So it's like, the only fight that I want to see him do is go back up to 55 and fight Islam again. That's the only one I'm excited about. I will say, though, Iliad Toporia, that dude is good, man. I think he's a little green right now to take on somebody like Volkerovsky, but give that kid another year. That's somebody I would really like to see fight.

All right, listen, you guys are all friends, right? What are you you from the Midwest. Is that how we describe it? Midwest Country Buckkins. We are. Sorry, I'm messing around. Come on. When you guys go back. Give us some good stuff. Give us a story. Give us an anecdote. I'm not here. Well, I.

Was I was.

Going to... He's sitting around having a beer. Do you like a beer, Graham?

I don't drink.

This conversation is over.

We got to get him out of here. I'm wondering how your Nebraska ass is getting along in Florida because it seems like when you left Nebraska and you went to Kansas City, it was like, all right, that makes a lot of sense. Grant Dodson fits in perfect in Kansas City. Now, Florida, it's a whole different lifestyle. How is it going being a Midwest kid in Florida?

I'm going to be honest with you, I absolutely love it. And you're 100 % right. Kansas City is just Nebraska if you order Nebraska off Wish. Nothing changed for me in moving from Kansas City to Nebraska or the other way around. But moving to Florida, man, it's sunny all the time, except for when it's raining. I haven't seen snow in a year and a half, which just blows my mind because I grew up with snow, so it's pretty crazy. I absolutely love it, though. We got the sun. Everything's a little bit more expensive, and that's the thing that I really don't like about here. But I get it because everything is cheap.

You are cheap ass. I am. I've heard the stories. Grant Dawson, he's like the younger version of Michael B isbing. He is cheap as shit.

How the fuck am I cheap? Jesus Christ.

Grant, save your money. There's a difference.

Yeah, no, exactly. You're being sensible. What's not to like about living in Florida than Nebraska? It's ridiculously cold there, right?

It does get cold.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Florida, 365 days of sunshine. You got beautiful women. They're on the roll of the their blade. These days, people can walk around with guns, conceded. They don't even need a fucking permit. It's the land of madness.

It depends on who you are. That was probably a positive in both of our books, I would imagine.

Yeah, I'm sure. Do you ever carry a gun to the airport with you, like Anthony Smith?

No, not to the airport. Well, I guess we had a gun in the car. We had a gun in the car and our car was at the airport, but that's the only thing. I've never accidentally... I walked through with a pair of scissors, though, once because I was going to a buddy's fight. So I brought my scissors, my tape, and my Vaseline and stuff, and they pulled me aside to check my bag. And I'm like, I got my scissors in there. I'm so stupid. I was like, Look, I left my scissors in there. I forgot. I'm sorry. They're like, Oh, we don't care about your scissors. And I was like.

What the.

Fuck have in there that you would care about? They're like, You got Vaseline in here. You can't have that. I was like, So my scissors is fine. I can cut somebody with it. Vaseline.

Why can't you have Vaseline on a plane?

It's.

Weird sex. Nobody wants that.

On a plane. I was going to say, You're in your quarterman are going to sneak up to the bathroom. My God.

No, it's because it's like a jelly and you can put explosives in. I'm not a terrorist, but apparently.

The pair seem pretty versed in that. You seem to know what you're talking about. You seem.

Like you know what you're talking.

About there. I've brought it up. Who do you want to fight next? Have you had any conversations with anyone afterwards from the UFC?

Yes, it's looking like the winner of Jaylen Turner versus Dan Hooker is what's next for me. Nothing is set like that, but that is the fight that everybody is talking about. A lot of people are booked up. A lot of the division is hemmed up. But top 10 is definitely what is next for me. And what I've heard is the winner of Hooker and Jaylen Turner is my next opponent.

So who would you prefer to win out of them two?

Man, it's a win win situation for me because I feel like Turner is ranked a little bit higher, but Hooker is a bigger name. So it really doesn't matter to me whoever they want. Me personally, I would probably rather fight hooker just because I feel like he's towards the tail end of his career and he has a bigger name. Jaylen is very good. And I think I match up well with him, but his name just isn't as big as Dan Hooker's.

And that hooker can't stop a take down quite as well as Jaylen Turner. I agree with that. Let's just be honest. Let's just be honest. Dan Hooker is great. He brought a lot of excitement to the octagon, so I'm not talking bad. But he struggled with wrestlers. Jaylen Turner, again, he's a kickboxer. But against Matias Gamma, he really impressed me with his take down defense. Okay, did he get taken down? Yes, he did, of course. But he got back to his feet and he continued fighting. So not that you want the easier fight, but you might as well take the easier route.

I get paid the same no matter who I fight. And they talk about me the same on Sunday. So it doesn't matter to me. And like I said, he's a big... But that's the thing that you're saying. It's like, if I beat Dan Hooker, I almost go up higher because it's a bigger name. I beat Jailin Turner, they're just like, Oh, well, Matous Gamron already beat him the same way. So it's like, Yeah, do what was going to happen. It's a win win for me. Either of those guys is good for me. Personally, Dan Hooker would be better just because of the name.

Hey, does Gamron train at the same place as you?

Yes, sir.

How those rounds go?

Dude, it's so much fun. I love training with Gamera a lot. We are like two little Tasmanian devils.

Yeah, is it insane?

He can scramble, man. He can scramble.

Hey, did your wife still fight?

Mm.

Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm.

Your wife fights? She just got back to training and she's looking to fight September.

How is that? I mean, have you ever been in a situation where you're both in a training camp at the same time? Because I can only imagine that is the most miserable situation on planet bloody Earth.

We did that for my... It was either my Jared Gordon... I think it was my Jared Gordon fight. It was either my Jared Gordon fight or my Nadinar Armani fight or not my Madsen fight. I can't remember which one. But we did where we overlapped for three weeks, and it was just horrible because I was hungry, she was hungry, it was just the worst thing. And we said after that fight, we are never fighting around the same time ever again, which is really great for me because my fights are the one that bring the money in. So I get first pick.

Yeah, exactly. You get priority because I was going to say when I was fighting, Rebecca, my wife, she was always very good. She would assist me with my diet. She would obviously do all my laundry. She would cook my meals specific to my diet and all the rest of it. So who's cooking? If you're both in camp or in that one occasion, who is the one that has to say, okay, I'll do the cooking?

Well, if we're both in camp, we have it because I cannot cook at all. God blessed me with fist of theory, not with the chef's tongue.

You don't have everything.

You can't have everything. You can't be great everywhere.

So she always cooks, whether she's in camp or I'm in camp. But if she's in camp and I'm not in camp, I help out a lot more with the house. I help out a lot more with the dogs. And then also I help her out with her training. I watch her film, I game plan with her. I'm not her coach by any means, but I'm pretty good at what I do, so I can lend a hand. But if we're both in camp, man, I'm selfish, bro. I'm not I always pull out the, Hey, you're making $2,000. I'm making $100,000.

Help me out here, woman. It's simple math. That means that your fight was $98,000 more important. You know what I mean?

She comes from a doctor's family, so she should understand the surgical talk and lingo. You know what I mean? It comes down to the numbers.

Which also means that you need to keep winning because she's probably got expensive taste.

You know, she's not too bad.

She's actually... Oh, well, that's not bad then.

Our biggest problem is we love to eat out. We eat out.

That's our.

Problem too. Too much. We just got Shake Shack and after this, I'm probably going to go get some more. I love.

Shake Shack. Oh, man, I'm starved. And Shake Shack sounds amazing. They do do a good burger. What are you waiting right now? Because you're big for the weight class, right? What do you think? Monday morning you've enjoyed, you've been to Shake shack, you don't drink. But what do you think... Oh, no, no, no, no. What's the heaviest you get up to?

The heaviest I've been was 196. Jesus. 196.

Just cheeky 50 pounds.

Hand.

To God.

40 pounds. But this morning I was 181. 181. Hand to God. Weighed myself this morning.

That's still a lot.

But yeah, the heaviest I've gotten is 196. That was a while ago though. I normally walk around 188, 85, 88.

That is my. What do you weigh Saturday night when you stepped in there?

A lot lighter than I normally do. Normally, I step into the cage at 86. I stepped into the cage at 79, 78. So that's actually my goal to be lighter. I felt like it really helped with my cardio, being lighter.

That's still 23 pounds over the weight limit. That's amazing. Let me ask you this, because I've never been to American Top Team, and I know you spoke about them on Saturday night and how grateful you are. And you were very humble in victory. You really were. I'm sure you won a lot of people over. It's how you are every time. I've never been to American talk team, though, but I've heard a lot about it. I've heard people like yourself talk about it. And I know that Dan Lambert is a very, very wealthy, successful man, and he's put a lot of money into it because of his love for the sport of mixed martial arts. But how fucking boogie is that place? Because it looks and sounds like it's just next level.

Like a country club.

Yeah, dude, I'm going to be honest with you, man, it's the best facility I've ever been a part of. I'm not even talking about coaches. The facility is just incredible. You got a sauna, you got ice tub, hot tub, showers. You got a weight room right there that has every type of weight machine. They got row machines. They got the sprinting treadmills. They got the regular treadmills. We have three cages, three wrestling rooms and then three big open maps. So it's like there's so much space. There's so much where you can get your personal training. You can get it with your team. Everything is just top notch. And then also I feel like the coaches are super good at what they do. They all work together really well. They have a coaches meeting every Monday morning where they talk about everything. They got a big list of who's fighting who, what's going on here, who do we got to keep away from this, who's coming. It's really the most professional team I've ever been a part of. The thing that I told my mom when I was moving to Florida was when I trained in Nebraska, the gym that I was training at was a high school level football team.

Then I moved to Missouri and I was training on a college level football team. And I just got drafted into the NFL. And now this is the big League. And that's what I really feel like.

Thanks for the invite to come train. I appreciate that.

I'll be honest, it's incredible to see how far the sports come. When I started, my God, the gyms I was training in, they were literally, as the old boxing gyms they described, spit and saw dust, leaks in the roof, just a few mats put together. They were absolute shitholes. You know what I mean? Freezing cold. I remember if we would wear socks on the mat. You know what I mean? You stop training, your body just freezes up. People would start... The instructor is showing a technique or whatever. So you warm up, you stop, the instructor is showing something. You can see the breath coming out of your mouth, you know what I mean? And then your body cools down and then you start training again. People are pulling ligaments left, right and centre, you know what I mean? And now you're up there, you're living it up. You're in Florida. You got ice baths, you got the sauna, you got the PT's, you probably got acupuncture. You got people holding your dick when you piss. I mean, you have gone soft, Grant Dawson. You have gone soft. How are you going to make it to the top?

It's a match of the other. He's carrying fucking boulders on his shoulders. He travels 73 miles to get water for breakfast. Do you know what I mean? How are you going to compete with this? I'm getting Dagnesthan confused with Africa.

Hey, man, I will say when it stops working, I'll stop doing it because in my last performance, I don't think we can argue that ATT knows what they're doing.

That's fair.

Listen, we'll be going to go on that. So hold on, who did you say? The next one? Dan Hocker, hopefully that fight materializes or Jaylen Turner. All the best. Congrats again on Saturday night. Phenomenal stuff. Can't wait to see you back in there.

Thank you guys for having me. This is a lot of fun.

Yeah, take care. Any time, man. We'll talk to you soon.

Yep, take care, guys.

Take care, buddy. Give us a little story. Give us a little Grant Dawson.

Behind the scenes. There's not a lot of great Grant Dawson stories, to be honest. He's too sensible.

He's been this committed to the sport since he was.

A teenager. Focused is a better way. He's too focused. He's not an idiot.

No, he's always. I've never known him to drink. I've never known him to party. I've only known him to have one girlfriend, and that's the wife that he's with now. He's been a really good kid. I would say a bit on the nerdy side. He's a great wrestler. He's super focused on the sport. He loves MMA. This is all he's done.

So.

There's no great stories. I wish I had one. I tell you, if I had.

One, I really don't. A little bit of controversy or something. Yeah, but listen, incredible fire. Not the guy you want to spend the night out with on a Saturday. We're not taking him to Barry's.

He's not going to Barry's, that's for sure.

He's not coming to Barry's. Jesus grand or so. Maybe one day. I'm a fan of the guy. Everything that you said about him, that's what makes you a great fighter. Be focused and all the rest of it. Well done, grand. Don't change a little bit. Let me ask you this then. We got a couple of... Did you see what was going on with Twitter at the weekend?

Yeah. Were you talking about the view limit thing?

The what was it? Something rate?

Yeah.

You can only see so many tweets or something? I'm sure you guys know about this stuff because I was driving into Vegas and I put a little thing on. I do check my Twitter a little bit now and again when I'm on commentary, I just see what the general vibe is. I'm like, What is this? Exceeded the rate or something like that. What's all that about?

You got it.

I haven't seen that yet. Me neither. You got too much screen time, Mike. No, there was no screen time. I'm sorry, I was working working all day, but I got a lot of interaction on this. That must be what it is. Exceeded the rate limit. That's what it was. Yeah. So the way it was explained, at least what I saw, is to limit the people that are just going on Twitter and scraping everything and cataloging it for internet archives, they limited how much you could do that. So if you have a verified account, you can see up to.

8,000.

Tweets I think now. But an unverified account, it's like 800. Yeah.

I feel like I look at way more tweets than that. I haven't done it yet.

But so basically, can we just cut the bullshit? This is a way for Elon to get people to pay for Twitter.

Sure.

Yeah, for sure.

So do you have to click on the tweets for it to count, or is it just the tweets that you scroll through? I will find that out right now.

I reckon it's just scrolling through, but I don't look at that many tweets, to be honest. I don't spend too much time on Twitter. I'll get up in the morning, I'll have a look and I'll have a look you're sporadically throughout the day. If I'm bored, if I'm sitting on the toilet or whatever, I'll have a little nosey, you know what I mean? But I'm not living on Twitter. So this is just a way of... First of all, they took away the... Twitter Blue. To get people to pay. I refuse to do it. I'm not going to do it. Are you going to do it?

No, not at all.

People paid for the verification badge. I do see a lot of people doing that. Were you verified?

I was, yeah. I lost my Twitter verification when that all that expired and I'm not paying for it.

It was a sad day. I must admit, if I see something...

You still have yours, though, right? Because you have over a million followers? I think you do. If you have over a million followers, I think you keep your verification.

I'm just under.

Oh, are you?

I'm a loser. What can I tell you? 961,000.

Oh, so you lost it?

I'm not verified.

Did it hurt your feelings? I remember how excited I was when I got verified.

39,000 away from being a real person on Twitter. There it is.

Jesus Christ. I'm way far away. I'm nowhere close.

Well, what are you going to do?

Just say, should I did the day I lost it.

Nothing. Try and take over the world, Twinkie. You know what that is?

Isn't it Pinky?

Same thing we do every day. Try and take over the world. Let's have a look. So we did that one. Did you see this thing about these tourists in the Coloseum? Some British tourist went to the Coloseum, which I'm sure, as you know, it's... I don't know. I'm going to say it's about 2,000 years old. I'm maybe getting that confused with the birth of Christ. But it's old. It's old. It's old. It's thousands of years old. And they went to the Coliseum. Have you been to the Coliseum?

Never. I would love to.

It's incredible. You got to check it out. It's older than Christ, says Harrington. Some British Jewish went there and they got a key out and they engraved their names and their wife's name onto it. H, have a little bit of respect. So they're facing up to five years in prison. Do we have the little video of it? I mean, what.

A day. They're going to face something older than Christ? That's crazy.

Or just anything. I mean, are you a bit of a graffiti artist when you were younger, would you put Anthony Smith was here?

No, never that guy.

No, I've never been into that. Although I do remember I was.

In the arts. I do think graffiti is cool looking, though. When you see the murals and shit, I always think that shit's cool. But what a dumb ass.

Yeah, what a dickhead is the first description. But still, yeah. What was I going to say? Oh, no. The graffiti in inner city is like that. The grimy areas. It always looks so cool. There's an area called Short Hitch in London. It used to be a grimy area, but now it's not. Now it's all gentrified and it's a very nice, nice place. But some of the streets down there, yeah, covered in graffiti and all that looks very cool. I was going to say a second ago, talking of graffiti, I was at Fort Hoel Hoel Rivera in Sydney. And then I went to the toilet. No, I went to this bar afterwards. There was a couple of friends with him in the corner, I remember Rebecca, her brother. And the brother went to the toilet and he comes out, he goes, Mike, go and have a look in there. Go and have a look. I said, What is it? He said, Just go and have a look. And I went in and on the wall, it had been graffiti, Michael Bispen's a dickhead.

Did he do it or it was just already in there? No, he.

Didn't do it. No, it was probably someone because that was the night I had a bit of controversy, shall we say? It was probably someone watching and knew I was in there, but it made me laugh and it tickled me just a little bit. All right, guys, let's talk about Shopify really quickly. You've heard of Shopify by now. They are taking the world by storm. And what they are doing is allowing entrepreneurs, little startup businesses, to get a foot, to get a grip on the world wide web and really make a difference, really make some sales, really get some money in the bank because it's not 1992, it is 2023. And if you have a business, if you have any idea, if you have any entrepreneurial spirit, you got to be online. Whatever you're doing has to have an online presence. It has to have an e-commerce facility so you can sell to all the billions of people around the world. And that's what Shopify offers. And it offers it extremely cheap, extremely convenient, and extremely simple. And if you don't know how to use it, well, guess what? There is support there 24 7.

They also have an extended business cost library and they have phenomenal support, as I said, available 24 7. Also, it is packed with leading industry tools so that you can ignite your growth. Shopify gives you complete control of your business and your brand without having to learn any new skills in design or code. So you're never going to go out there. You're never going to be a whiz on the internet. You're never going to learn anything, particularly. I mean, if you want to, you can. Shopify covers every sales channel from an in person POS system to an all in one e-commerce platform. And it even lets you sell across media market, social media marketplaces like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. So not only online, it'll help you get on all those social media sites as well to boost those sales. And of course, you can accept every major payment method straight away. So listen, what more are you waiting for? If you're not online right now, we have a tremendous offer for you. Go to Shopify. Com. Sign up for $1 per month. What are you going to lose? It's $1 per month. Sign up for a trial period, $1 per month at Shopify.

Com believe all over. Or go to Shopify. Com believe to take your business to the next level today. Shopify. Com believe. All right, Harry, what have we not got to? Big shout out to Grant Dawson. What a great guy.

He's really smart, too. He's great. He's well spoken. He's intelligent. You can tell just by speaking on why he's such a good fighter.

Yeah, yeah. I guess we'll save the breakdowns and the predictions for the fight for Thursday's show. So we'll save that one for then. We'll go in deep on them. We'll give you some predictions that you don't really want to miss. But in the meantime, if you have any questions, please send them into bynpod@gmail. Com. You know the joke by now, the better, the funnier, the sillier, the actual better intelligent question, maybe one we haven't heard. You don't have to be funny. You don't have to be silly. You can try and get some inspiration. You can try and get some real life advice, but we are here to answer them at bynp od@gmail. Com. And if you're listening on iTunes, Spotify, we're a really fun podcast. Make sure to subscribe. Leave us a five star rating positive review. It really helps out on those platforms. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to subscribe to the channel and you hit that notification bell to find out whenever a new video drops. And if you want to catch up for 400 episodes, you can't find anywhere else. Completely ad free and totally uncensored, head to gasdigital. Com.

Use the promo code BYN, get yourself a seven day free trial. Check out over 20 great shows on the network.

That's a good one, Harrington.

It could have been a little quicker. It's getting better.

It's getting better. It's getting better. It wasn't great. Don't get your head all big, but it was getting better.

We're going to quit you're or that I've been watching 1883. Any of you guys? No, you can stay on, Brian. I know you guys are seeing that.

Is that the prequels to Yellowstone? Yellowstone. I haven't watched it yet. Is it good?

Yeah. Starts off really great. It's going to be slow. It's slow. Anyway, sorry, Brian. What did you say? Quick, John? Western guys. Brian, what we got?

First question we got here today is from Mr. Steven Chen.

What's going on, BYM?

This is Steve from Cape Coral, Florida. Niko Price's hometown. Go Niko. Question for Anthony and Mike. When you guys first started out training, I know you guys are fight movie fans, John Clough fans, the question would be, when you first started training, did you guys ever imitate any of the 90s action movie montage scenes when they're training? Use any of the exercises that Stalone did in.

Rocky.

Or.

John Clough did in Bloodsport. And if you did, did any of them work for you? And if they didn't, do you have any funny stories about that? Huge fan.

Keep up the good work, guys. Harrington, grats on the baby. And Brian, keep it up, man.

Great job.

Thanks, guys.

Well, thank you very much for the question. Funnily enough, I was watching, as you guys call it in America, Lionheart with Lucas yesterday. We only got about halfway through, but he was really enjoying it, really liking it. And then some friends came up, so we got distracted. But, Anthony, answer the question brother.

Well, I think every fighter has been on a run with their headphones and put on one of those Rocky montage and pretend that they were or Rocky running down the street. I think that's probably a pretty normal thing. No, I used to always want to kick like Van Damme, like those jumping round kicks. So of course I've tried them a bunch. But turns out you got to be really good to do that.

You can do a jump and spinning back kick for sure.

Yeah, but not with the flexibility all the way in the splits and coming around and whips around. I could do it. If it hits someone, it probably hurt, but it's not going to be pretty.

I've never done the Rocky training. Obviously, I've punched bags. And in fact, I used to work at a slaughterhouse, and I think I might have even on the side of a bit of beef just messing around with my mates, done a little bit of shadow boxing on one of those bad boys. But I've never ran on the side of mountains in Russia and dragged combine harvesters through the snow. That sounds difficult. But yeah, we've talked about this question quite a bit recently, to be fair, when we talk about movies that we like. What is your number one favourite fight movie of all time?

It's Lionheart.

Lionheart?

Yeah, for sure. Bloodsport is a close second.

I put the money on a tiller. I put the whole thing, 50-50 , man. 50-50 .

Wrong. The whole thing is on a tiller.

The whole thing is on a... I haven't seen that for many years. We stick the money, man. 50-50 . The whole thing is on a.

Tiller, man. Wrong bet.

Wrong bet. Oh, shit.

My favorite one.

Have you ever seen... Is it called The Raid?

No, I've never seen it. I don't know.

Yeah, The Raid, watch that. It's subtitled. It's ecoways. It's an Indonesian dude. Even though it's subbed out, the action is unbelievable. You got to check out The Raid. I am telling you.

Brian, will you text that to me? So I.

Don't forget that. The Raid. Oh, yeah. I'll just do it. The R, A, I, D. It's a wild thing. You got to check that. Yeah, it really is. Incredible. Go on, Brian. What else we got?

All right, so the next question we.

Got here, a little.

More energy on this one.

This is.

From Sterling Jones. Yo, what the.

Fuck is going on, boys? Sterling, let's go. I got two questions.

Let's go.

Ahead and get to them real quick. First one's for Anthony Smith. My question is, what the fuck did it feel like going out to.

Fight John Jones, bro?

Oh, my God. God, man. I couldn't imagine that, Billy.

Joe Sondom said he felt like a sacrificial lamb. Glover Tejera said he.

Was like, just, man, here we go.

What.

Did that feel.

Like, bro? Just in general, going out to the guy.

And then my second question, by the way, you handled that like a gangster, Anthony. My second question is for.

Michael Bits being.

What the does it feel like being a mother.

Legend, son? Conceived, believe, achieve.

Shut the F up. Let's go.

We're going to answer every one of your questions. You send questions in like that. Every week. That's how we get an answer. We don't need the show being brought down. We don't need to be bored. We don't want to go, Hello. So I got a question for you. And by the way, Harry, two Congrats on the baby. That's not what we want to hear. We're like, Man, Anthony, what the fuck? That's how we want it. Anthony, what the fuck did it feel like fighting John Jones?

I'm not just saying this, it felt pretty normal, to be honest with you. Walking out there, I was super motivated, I was focused. I had some things I wanted to do. There was a couple of times during the fight where I was like, What the fuck was that? Because sometimes he'll just do some shit. He'll spin, jump. Sometimes he can reach you when you don't think that he can. He'll do funky shit like clench you, and he'll start jumping up and shoulder striking you, which isn't super painful at the time, but it's real confusing. There's he does a lot of confusing shit where you just don't know what it is. But for the most part, I didn't ever feel like I was a sacrificial lamb or anything. I just was going out there trying to win a fight.

Did you ever feel, though, that... Listen to my words, odds on I'm not going to win this fight because look at what he's done to through on else. Look at how successful he's been. Look at the show work he made of Chai Sun. It's like shit.

There was plenty of moments where I was like, This is probably a long shot. Given my skill set versus his skill set, let's just be honest, I don't have any problem being honest. My opportunity to be the guy like Jon is to drag him into situations that he doesn't like, to get him into a braw, to get him to dirty box and get him outside of himself. That's my opportunity. So that was my goal was to try to make him uncomfortable and make him do things he didn't want to do. But just straight skill set for skill set, I knew that's a tough one.

But that's what it's called testing yourself. You know what I mean? You want to go out.

There and test him? It's also the same thing with Shogun. Skill for skill, skill is a better fighter than I am. Oh, yeah. Roshad Evans, skill for skill is a better fighter than I am. Alexander Gustafson, skill for skill is a better fighter than I am. I've never been the guy to claim that I'm the best in the world. I've always claimed that I have an opportunity to beat anybody on any given day and I can beat the best in the world. I'm not going to say that I'm going to go out there and I'm going to outstrike him, out wrestle him, out grapple him. I'll find a way. And that's what I've always said.

But that's what people like to say because, listen, I'm trying to find the right words. Shut up, Harry. But these dogs bark and his elephant in the background. Shut the fuck up. There must be someone at the door or something. I'm going to strangle him. He's got the most high pitched... It's like, Give me a good man's dog. You know what I mean? If Harry too was a dog, it'd be Harry. In fact, Harry, Harry in turn. There you go. No, going into fights that you know you can win, it's not the same thing. Now, granted, you don't know you can win every fight, but there's some matchups where you can be like, I got this. I got to smoke this guy. That's a very different feeling than going in there against someone where you're like, shit, I don't know, man. In fact, odds on, if I think about it, I'll probably lose, but I'm going to have a go. I'm going to bite down on my mouthpiece. I'm going to train my goddamn ass off. You know what I mean?

And there's something free about that, too. When I fought Gus, I was like, Listen, he probably wins. Let's fuck it, Gus, way better than I am. So it's a freeing feeling. I'll just go out there and fight my ass off and see what happens.

When I fought Vitor Belfort, you know what I mean? He was knocking everyone out with head kicks. He was the heavyweight champ. He was a light heavyweight champ. He was also a juice to the gills as well. But you still think, Well fuck it. To get what I want to achieve, I've got to go through that guy. And if I want to become the champion of the world, that's the matchup I've been given. Is it a favourable match up? No. Is he probably a better athlete and stronger and faster and all these things? Yeah, probably. But you've got better Jutsu, probably got better hands. But fuck it, I've got to go find that guy. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to turn up at the gym every single day. I'm going to get the best version as I can, and I'm going to have a go. I'm going to roll with the punches. I'm going to let the dices roll, roll the dice and let it fall where it may be. And if you don't get the job done, well, then you go back to the grandstand, you do it all over again.

You know what I mean? And that's how it goes. And you don't give up on yourself.

And I do think the people, they get this illusion that like, we believe that we're always the best. Are there guys out there that are like that? For sure. Like Grant Dawson? He's probably the type of guy who deep down knows that if he can get anyone to the ground, he's probably going to outgrable everybody. I can't always say that. Yeah, for sure. If I get to my spot, I'll probably be okay. But it's a fucking dice roll, especially light, heavy weight. The best guy doesn't always win.

And that's just how it goes. There wasn't many fights that I have that went into where I thought... Towards the end, my skill set was better, but I was like, I'm definitely not as good as a wester. I'm not as good as J ujitsu. My boxing or my striking isn't maybe as clean as these other people's. I'm not as strong. I'm not as experienced you know what I mean? I only started doing this a few years ago, but I believe in myself and I've got something that I don't think they had and I had heart, you know what I mean? And the mindset, I'm definitely tougher. I'm definitely gamer. You might have some fucking physical attributes of me and you might have been doing J ujitsu a little bit fucking longer, but you are not me. You haven't got my heart. You haven't got my determination, my skill set, my fucking confidence. You haven't got what I have that's the intangibles, the stuff that you can't teach. Yeah, you might have some stuff that you can teach, but what I have over you, you can't teach.

You.

Know.

What I mean? Totally agree.

Yeah. All right, we'll just talk about my fucking... I'm so great for a minute.

More than that's why you're a fucking legend. That's how it's supposed to be a legend. That was his question and you just answered it.

There we go. There it is. It feels amazing, bro. Bracken, do we have one more?

All right.

So.

We have options.

We have a.

Question from a pretty lady or a short question about equipment?

Call me stupid, but it's just all about diversity. We've had two questions from males and they're dominating this space. It's not fair. The women aren't getting a fair crack of the whip. Jesus. Brian, it's got nothing to do with what she looks like, right? I want to see her face. Her parents do that. She deserves to.

Be recognized. Is her name Claire? It's not.

It's Deja.

Okay, well, I'll take it. I'll take it as their name. Her name is Deja, like Deja vu.

Deja. Hey, guys. I had an interview in question for Anthony and Mr. B isping. I just got done watching the Max Halloween interview with Erioh Hawaii. And it was really nice to see him talk about just him and life and other things besides fighting or other aspects that are not usually talked about in MMA interviews. So I was wondering, what do you guys like to talk about? Or what do you like to be asked that you.

Find refreshing? Because I'm sure it gets.

Old having to talk about the same stuff over and over with different.

Mma media outlets.

And then I don't think this fight will happen between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. But if it did happen and you guys had poll, what rules would you put in place.

Special.

Exhibition match rules to.

Make.

It either funnier, more interesting.

Or just palatable.

For.

Consumption.

Viewer.

Consumption.

Me personally, I would make sure that they have shirts on because I think them fighting shirtless is just disgusting. And I don't think the fans want to see their face taken care of milky lab grown tits anyway. No. I'm curious what all four of you guys would.

Put on.

That match to make it funner.

And then what do you think their walk out music is.

Going to be?

I can't think of anything. Even begin.

To guess. I know. Curious to see your guys answers.

All.

Right.

Bye. Deja, thank you.

That's some good questions. She's thinking real deep on that.

With the Joss T shirt on there. I like the milky lab grown tits. Say, Jesus Christ. When did we start? There was a lot of things that.

I had to go. What was the first question?

Well, let's work in reverse. Let's talk about Elon Musk. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, what rules? Do you know what I thought of? It's got nothing to do with us. But she said they can't be topless. It's got nothing to do with the question whatsoever. But why do some women in the US choose to wear the rash guards? It's not a good look. When they wear the little, I think, sport bras, it's a way better look, in my opinion. But some of them, like a rock, sand, mud, or fairies, they wear the rash guards and I understand the application of that. I understand that sometimes can make it harder to escape holes.

I think some of them are just a little more modest. I think some of them worry about the nip slips. I think some of them are just maybe not used to having their bellies out, which I agree with you. I think that they all look fantastic and it's just probably more comfortable to fight in a smaller top you would expect. I don't actually know. I don't have boots.

But what I meant was, from a rules perspective, because as I say, you're not allowed to wear knee pads, right? Or in some.

States you can.

You know what I'm saying? Because it can vary how much of a grip you have in certain situations and things like that. And I think it'd be detrimental to have that on. If you're trying to escape and you've got a rash guard around all your midsection. I do think that was a denture.

Especially in a tight guard or an arm bar position.

For.

Sure.

Yeah, I agree.

Anyway, rules.

I don't know. I don't know about the.

Rules either. Not a fast.

Time for that to happen. In terms of questions, things I like to talk about, and I would bet you're probably the same, too. I like when people ask about my kids because it's the only time you can... I love when this is totally off subject. You know what I love with my daughters that compete? M y oldest is a pretty good volleyball player and then my six year old is a pretty good wrestler. I love when we go into places for their games or their matches and they get recognized for their sporting events and people completely ignore me. Oh, my God. We've seen you wrestle and you did great. And no one ever says shit to me. I love it because they think it's the greatest thing in the world. But anyways, I like when people ask about my kids, what do we like to do.

For fun? No, that's amazing. But Deja's right because a lot of the time, like with Vogue as well, I'm sure it's the same questions all the time. But we only have a very short... Ariel has them in studio. When I pitch the interviews, I might have got 15, 20 minutes. We're not going to take much of your time. We're not doing a long, in-depth interview. We're not going to talk about your childhood and all the rest of it. We'll talk about what's coming up and we'll try to have a couple of fun things. But it does get lousy. It does get boring. It gets repetitive. When you're answering the same old things over and over again. But that's what people want to hear about as well. They do want to hear about the fight going up this week and they want to hear how confident you are. They want to hear about your training camp. But yeah, I like to hear about also that everyday life. Tell me who you are as a person. What's it like? What are you doing on a day to day? You know what I mean?

That's the tough thing with having these shorter interviews with people because I don't want to ask a question that I know is going to lead into a 15 minute conversation where.

I.

Definitely want to know, but it's going to be hard to keep their interview short and you want them to come back. I want.

To know for sure.

Exactly. I would love to ask them like, hey, come and tell us how it was. And then we go over that. But so I don't want to... Because how many times have you done an interview where people say, Oh, it's 15 minutes. And then next thing you know, it's 40 minutes later and you're still on there and you don't want to be a dick. But also.

I only allowed 15 minutes. As you do in the interview, you're conscious of it. In your mind, you're like, You.

Said 15 minutes. 15 minutes motherfucker.

It's been 45. I've got places to be. But still, anyway, we'll be back on Thursday. Big shout out to grand d oorce and to the champ, Mokenovsky. Thank you for your time, both of you. Thursday, we're going to have a breakdown show. We're going to give you predictions on all the fights. Of course, all the fights on the main card as well. So don't go anywhere. Be sure to tune in for that one. That's about it, right, H and?

Yeah, I think that's it. See you Thursday. Bye. Bye.