Coming up, hoops UFC. Jimmy Kimmel, lots going on next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network. I put up Roadhouse and the rewatchables on Monday night, and you can watch that if you want on YouTube.com slash bill Simmons. We're putting up a lot of videos and clips on that channel coming up on this podcast. Got a lot going on. Rob Mahoney, Thursday night basketball file. Incredible Anthony Edwards game. What's going on with the Mavericks? What's going on in the west? What's going on with the heat? South Denver covered all of it. Then Jimmy Kimmel came on. What's it like to host the Oscars? What are we expecting in 2024? What is the arc of hosting for him over the last 25 years? And then we made fun of baby doll. That happened. And then last but not least, Arrel Hawani is in Saudi Arabia doing Nganu versus Joshua, which is on Friday. We talked about that. We talked about UFC 299, which is Saturday. And then Mike Tyson's going to fight in Dallas. Mike Tyson? That Mike Tyson. Yeah, we talked about that, too. So a lot going on. Let's bring in our friends from pro J.

All right. What a night of basketball. Holy mackerel. We're taping this. It is 930 a Pacific time. Rob Mahoney from the ringer, from the ringer. NBA show from the prestige TV podcast is here. Rob, I'm going to start here. The Celtics lost the Nuggets. So Sunday, Celtics kill the warriors. They're 48 and twelve. Everybody's like, whoa. Oh, my God. Juggernaut. And they're up 20 against 22 against the Cavs. They blow that down the stretch, then Yokich makes them look like a pretender tonight. I like it. All the pressure off the Celtics. No expectations, baby. We're back. Good try. Good try.

I mean, it's admirable what you're trying to do, but, yeah, I don't think we're quite there yet.

Jokic is the best player in the world and one of the best offensive players of my lifetime and is getting to the point. Down the stretch of these games, you cannot out execute him. You can really only do what Phoenix did on Sunday night is just outscore him because he's just getting baskets. He's either going to score. If you're just going to single cover him, he's going to score on that guy. If you're going to sag guys on him, he's going to find somebody. Gordon's always lurking over the baseline. It's always something. And it feels like he's 80% down the stretch of these games.

Rob.

Yeah. Somehow the most undercovered part of Nikola Yokich is that he's sneakily, maybe the best crunch time player in the league, and he is completely unflappable, stays completely within himself and gets whatever shot he wants. And usually, in the case of games like this against the Celtics, that's right at the basket. And even when it looks like the shot he wants, sometimes it's actually a lob to Aaron Gordon for one of the most impressive plays in crunch time you'll see all season.

Nuggets didn't even, other than him, didn't even really play that well except for Peyton Watson. Half of the crowd was rooting for the.

Oh, what a Peyton Watson game, though.

Incredible. Holy shit. When I saw them the other night, I hadn't really seen him in person playing real minutes this season yet against the Lakers. And his athleticism just kind of jumps out of the building when you're there. And then today was the same. Know Mike Malone, they lose Bruce Brown, and they're really like, Brown, who did some good stuff for them last year, but they're counting on him more. And then Watson, they're like, look, these have to be our guys. We're going to ride this out. We're going to have some ups, we're going to have some downs, and we hope by March, by April, we can count on these guys. To me, Watson is. And I can count on this guy. Now he's really starting to feel himself athletically. On the flip side, the Celtics bench. Tillman Horford. Minus twelve out of ten. Hauser was fine. He just happened to be out there at the wrong time. And Pritchard once again looks super small. And the Celtics bench just couldn't really hold anything. And then there's the Tatum thing. Do you want to do that now? Yeah.

Where do you want to start with him?

It was a rough week for Tatum because we had that crunch time. Last play of the game, Cleveland, 19. Dribbles walked it up, started too late. It seemed like he got fouled, but then he didn't. They lose, and the next day it's just his clutch numbers become the story. And everybody kind of, at the same time looks it up and goes, oh, wow. He's actually one of the worst clutch players in the league. Out of all the stars that we have, he's 35% field goal, and it kind of backed up what the itest was showing. So he did take a beating there in the basketball online community, he did take a little bit of a beating for the first time in a while. This was somebody that, a week ago, people were like, why can't he be the MVP? And I was on this podcast going, look, I love the Celtics. There's no way he's the MVP. Jokic is in the league and he's healthy and he's kicking ass, but can.

Think of five or six reasons he wouldn't be the MVP personally. Right?

Well, tonight's a good example. He just can kind of disappear every once in a while. The game tonight, he has five field goals and five turnovers, and he missed the biggest shot of the game. When they're coming back, cut it to two. Brown does this, like, big boy outdoor playground steal on Jabal Murray where he's just like kind of annihilating him, picks his pocket. They have a three on one, and somehow it ends up with a wide open Tatum, three in front of the bench, 40 seconds left, misses it and they take the lead. That was the game.

Especially a game where you get huge plays from Brown, from KP, from Drew Holiday, and then when it comes to be Tatum's turn, and this is the virtue of the team the Celtics have built, is that he doesn't have to do everything, but he does have to deliver in those sorts of moments. And it's unfortunate the way the magnifying glass kind of comes down on you here, or the microscope, I should say. Like, the level of scrutiny a star player is in under crunch time is never exactly fair. But this is the burden that you take on as the best player on a great team, and it's the burden he's going to be held to all postseason long, whether he delivers or not. And I think the reality of this Boston team is they're going to win some close, really competitive games down the stretch of playoff series. But for the most part, I think they're going to have to win, if not going away, then by keeping teams at a bit of a distance. I think what they want to avoid is less this kind of crunch time situation and more the right. Like, don't let teams cut into leads that they have no business cutting into and avoid those situations.

And you're probably good enough and talented enough to just be fine.

It would be nice if Joe Missoula had a sense of the pace of the game, too. Like, even today, Nuggets are in control. We go to halftime, I think they're up eight. Celtics come out two straight baskets. Mike Malone's like, I've seen enough time out calls. Timeout was like 50 seconds in. That was what was missing in that Cavs game where you could feel something flipping in the game. The Cavs started hitting threes and the Celts are up 22. It's like, just cut a time out now and we're up 17. Hey, guys. Hey. Let's stay focused here. I thought Mike Malone today was great. Some of the stuff they were doing to mess with Tatum, they were throwing length at him. They were throwing like kind of pseudo doubles at him. Caldwell Pope was jumping in the passing lanes and yes, I thought that was Caldwell Pope. What did he end up with? Yeah. Eleven points. Like, whatever. Caldwell Pope was disruptive defensively and so was Gordon. I thought the length of those guys, plus Watson, really gave Tatum problems in this game. Yeah.

That second level from KCP where when you're showing on the pick and roll, you're putting your defense in a vulnerable position. Somebody from the back line has to be doing something aggressive or else a team like Boston is just going to beat you. Right? Like KP is going to roll to the elbow, get a really clean shot over the top of somebody. A cutter is going to get a look going to the rim, or Tatum's just going to go around Nikola Jokic and get a pretty good look. But when you have KCP scrambling through and mucking everything up, coming away with three steals in this game, and they were basically like pick six type steals, like the steals going the other way. Huge momentum plays. Yeah, that's the kind of veteran thing that you're not getting from any work a day. Three and d player. It's what separates guys like KCP from the genre that they're in.

They're seven and a half with Reggie Jackson. Sure, right, the Nuggets. But the seven and a half really play well. And it's hard to notice when guys are in and out unless Jokic isn't out there. There's a real cohesion with them. The Celtics, I was psyched Porzingis played in this game. I really wanted to see their top six against Jokic, but Horford was kind of the OD man out and it was really Joe Mads riding those five guys. And I wonder if this ends up being the finals, which I think from the level of play tonight, that felt like the finals. Right.

Both teams were treating it like it. You could even tell if you just want to rewind, watch Denver's defenders closing out to the celtic shooters, and you tell me this wasn't a team taking this game very seriously.

And the stuff Jalen Brown was doing, absolutely. That was one of the best games Jalen's played in his entire career. I know he missed a bunch of free throws, but there was a couple of moments in this game when it seemed like Denver was just going to go up like 20 and he just kept pulling them back into it. Porzingis had some good plays, too, but the reason I brought up Porford is the Celts are basically five guys in this game, and when Porzingis is really playing, they lean on him like they did today, but 35 minutes today, then that becomes a weird spot for Horford, who I think they need against a team like Denver especially. I wonder, like, if they end up meeting in the finals, would they stagger the minutes a little bit, try to have him out there a little bit more against Yokich or what they'll do. Tillman to me. Did Tillman look? Does he look 100% to you, watching him run around?

Looks okay.

He looks a little gimpy to me. I know he's had some knee stuff.

He has that kind of movement, though, to be honest with you. I say this is all Xavier Tillman, but he's kind of a clunkier mover.

The one thing, like, even just looking at the box score, but also what the itest said, I didn't feel like white was involved enough in this game. Yeah, because I think that's, if you look at the guys who have really given Denver trouble, it's been a lot of, like, those guards that can just kind of slash and kick and get in the paint and do stuff and kind of torch them. And in this case, white, it was eight shots, seven points. But I don't know if it was a case of. It was very brown, poor zingus. Heavy. But you think, like, the Celtics score 109 points, they were 29% from three. And you could come away from this game and say, hey, man, if we just shot the ball a little better.

Sure.

Tatum makes that three with 40 seconds. Like, our defense was pretty good. Yokich is going to. He's a 3011 or eleven guy in any big game. We're fine. If we see these guys again, we're here. But on the other hand, Denver beat them twice and that's it. And they've only played twice this year.

It could be one of those matchups like the Lakers and the Nuggets, where the games are close and competitive, and yet one of the teams just seems to be like a cut above in execution level in the trust of their core guys, and even, as you're saying, in the flow and their ability to balance and get everyone involved. I think ideally you want to get Derek White a little more involved in what you're doing, a little more central to what you're doing. But if Jalen Brown's scoring this well and scoring this well out of isolation, right, he was killing it. Unimpeachable, creative game from Jalen Brown. I have no issues with it whatsoever, but there's going to be tradeoffs to that. And some of the tradeoffs for Boston often, whether it's brown or Tatum, usually, who are in that role, who are really going off one on one, you lose some of the movement, you lose some of the momentum, you disconnect some of the pieces from your offense. And so then when you look at, oh, why did we miss so many three pointers? Sometimes it's a matter of guys not being as involved in the offense as they're used to.

And Boston does have that dynamic where they shift from guys going off for huge individual scoring nights, and also they're trying to work in this beautiful, elegant, balanced team game. And those are hard things to bring about and have coexist at the same.

Time and pace, which they only had 81 shots today, which I think they usually want to be somewhere in the 90s. I'll say this about Jalen, who, he signed that big contract, I think even the first month of the season, I remember we did a segment on the pod about it. It's like, how's this going to play out? Is he going to feel like he has to justify this contract? Is there going to be a little weird Tatum Brown thing? Is the contract going to get in his head the first time he sucks for a week, people are going to bring it up. How's this going to play out? I think it's played out unbelievably well, and something has shifted in his personality. I'm going to say it happened mid December, but even the little stuff like him wanting to go to all Star weekend, right, him wanting to be in the slam dunk contest, him wanting to win the All Star MVP, and Tatum telling Doc Rivers, like, give him my minutes, there's just like him against Golden State, like taking offense that Draymond left him and actually talking some, like, there has been a little alpha thing kind of developing with him, which has been interesting.

And he has always had the sense, one of the reasons I love the Tatum Brown combo and I've never given up on it. They've had a sense of when to pick each other up, when one of them is kind of sucking and the other one's like, oh, I got to step it up because they're kind of attuned to each other. Tonight was a good example. Tatum didn't have it. You could see it for the first couple of minutes and Brown's like, all right, I got this. Sometimes when he says I got this, it's a little scary. But do you feel like he's gone up a level? Because the stats, he averaged more points a game last year. There's less shots this year. From a per 36 standpoint, it's pretty close. From our percentages, fairly close. But I think the difference with him is he's had some big games against good teams, which last year and the last couple of years before the good teams, the smart teams really struggle and I don't feel like that's happening as much this year.

I don't feel like that's happening. I don't know if he's gone up a level so much as I feel like he's more finely tuned on when to attack and how to attack. And maybe that's a definition of going up a level in a sense, but he seems to fit better within the complexion of what the Celtics have. And by that I mean some games he's gunning for it in the first quarter, knowing that the offense is going to go elsewhere later. Or some games he's gunning it in transition and getting a lot of easy buckets at the rim for a team that desperately needs them or cranking up defensively like we saw him do at stretches of this game. So I like that he has all those things in his arsenal. I like that he is that kind of balanced player and that, yeah, there is a teetering on the rails effect when he decides it's Jalen Brown time. I think that's kind of like it.

I've given into it.

Absolutely. Look, if you're going to be a ballsy scorer, if you're going to be a secondary guy who can stretch and explode and go off for 42 points in a game against the defending champs, you're always going to be teetering on the edge of something. You can't expect that player to be perfectly well mannered all the time and to the extent you could.

Right.

I think Jalen's did a really good job of that this season.

Can I read you some texts from my dad starting about halfway through the game?

Are you going to do it in your dad's voice or in your voice.

No, I'll just read them. 08:38 p.m. So this is start of the second half. Another no show by Tatum. I respond, Jalen has been great. Too bad he can't make free throws. My dad's response a little bit later. Really tired of these no show games by teams. So I texted him back, Joe mad's putting Alan Toman out there together with no yoka. Just brutal.

That was tough.

He texted back, Joe mad's getting exposed by all the top coaches. He belongs in the second row. All right. And then, all right, a little bit later, this is the Tatum from the Golden State series, afraid to be aggressive. And then his final thoughts were again, Tatum sucked the whole game. Really disappointing. No show. It's my dad. I mean, granted, he's 76 years old and it's like past midnight. He's coast time, but very grumpy. He has, like, a real fear about Tatum in some of these big games. He just feels like there's some hurdle that he hasn't hurdled yet where the game hasn't calmed down for him. He's like, okay, this is what I do. I'm going to do this tonight. Like the way Jokic did. Yokovic's like, all right, they're doing this, I'll do this. And Tatum, every time I feel like he's gotten there, a game like tonight happens.

He's so confounding in that way. Like when he's good, he's not good because he makes the game look super easy. It's just that he hits really hard shots, right? And he manufactures really hard shots and he hits them at a high rate. Those are the good scoring Jason Tatum games. And he has lots of great other kinds of games, playmaking games and defensive games, games where he's like operational and focal to what they're running, all those things. But Jokic is a great counterpoint because he does make everything look so easy. He does make splitting two defenders spinning into a third and still making the perfect read look like everyone should be able to do that. The fact that Denver can always fall back on that, if nothing else. And that's just Jokic, because I think you could make the argument that Murray does some of those similar things, although he has a similar Jalen Brown teetering on the edge of something going on.

In his game, too.

That's exciting. But when you have Jokic, all of that makes sense. A player like Aaron Gordon makes so much more sense. A cutter who is as strong and as good a finisher and oh, my God, the putback dunk Aaron Gordon had. Not to mention the lob, might be the year on top of everything else. So they just have everyone so perfectly placed around him. And when your core guy can be trusted to make offense and really make NBA basketball look so easy, this is where you get. You beat historically great regular season teams. You go on long playoff runs. You win finals, you win finals MVPs. It's really looking like Denver's angling in that direction again.

Yeah, I said on Sunday's pod. I just feel like the road goes through them. If they're going to be healthy, I don't see how a team beats them four times in seven games. I think they could beat them like Phoenix did on Sunday night where it's like, oh, yeah, we got their number and we beat them in Ot. But to beat them four times when they can execute at the level they can execute at is pretty nuts. Is Jokic climbing the ladder for you?

It's a great question because I wouldn't say he's doing a lot this year that is over and beyond who he's already been.

It's three straight years of it. I mean, really, like three and a half years of it. The team around him is better, but I think the thing that's impressive me, is you're talking like an entire presidential term now of him at this.

Democracy could die before Koliokic stops being a dominant NBA player.

It's so discouraging when you bet against it or you're rooting against it. Like today, I'm like, and I think Porzingis has been good. I thought he was actually pretty good tonight. That's about as much as you, considering they traded Marcus Smart and got Porzingis and two first round picks. And then to see him today going kind of trying to go toe to toe with Jokic, but Jokic just made him look silly. And Porzingis is four inches taller than him. He could just over and over again on one on one and get him and get the shot he wanted and made Porzingis smaller somehow. That was the craziest thing to me. He made Porzingis seem like he was like six, eight. He's really climbing up the ladder for me. I'm hard pressed to think of a better offensive player I've ever seen, especially.

Given everything that's going on in the NBA right now. There's an arms race across the sport with crazy numbers and crazy offensive efficiency, and there's kind of teams have cracked the code on spacing and how to use it and you're putting this guy who thinks the game at a level that's already in the 99th or 100th percentile we've ever seen in that sort of climate. It's really a singular thing.

I mean, he had eleven assists tonight. His assists are like super assists because it's like his assists are. Aaron Gordon had four. Alley and Pope hit two wide open threes and everything is like. He's basically serving you the meal and giving you the fork and knife and putting the napkin in your neck and feeding you the assist. It's pretty crazy to me. It's Denver and Boston. I thought from a strategy point that was about as high level a game. I've seen. We've seen a lot of entertaining games this year, but this one had some real chess going on and it felt like the finals. So if you had to pick one of those two teams to not be in the finals, which one are you taking? Because Denver is in a much harder conference.

That's the thing. I think if I had to pick one of them, I would pick Denver just because there's more people storming the gate in the west right now. If we were feeling a little better about Milwaukee, and I think their defense is obviously much improved, they're starting to show some things they haven't shown all season. They're on the up and up, but Boston was so far ahead of them in terms of postseason equity finals contending equity that I think the Bucks still have a lot to prove versus the Nuggets we've seen can get caught against the thunder or against the like some of these teams, they're good matchups for Denver, but I wouldn't put it entirely out of the realm of possibility, especially, as you mentioned, if Denver has an injury to a key guy, if Michael Porter Jr. Is out for a series, if contavious Caldwell Pope is out for a series, it changes what they do a lot and it forces another young guy into an uncomfortable position they may not entirely be ready for. So I think Boston is more likely to get to the finals. But if they both get there, I would pick the Nuggets in a heartbeat over the Celtics.

Personally, I think you have to out offense Denver. So anybody that is not going to be able to outscore them four times, it's almost a cross off. So to me it's like it's Phoenix and the Clippers at this point. And we found out actually during this game that Towns is getting the surgery. It's going to be four weeks.

Brutal.

They're going to reevaluate we talk about Minnesota in the next segment because we taped it earlier, but we're going to reevaluate after four weeks. Those words have never been so, you know, I thought their size would have made it interesting against Denver, but now I think it's going to be a tougher task. So basically you're looking at Clippers and then Phoenix, who we talk about in the next segment. Before we go to break, another injury happened today. Curry with like three minutes left was driving to the basket and pulled up and did something to his leg and limped off and did not finish the game. They lost the Bulls. So we don't know what happened with that one. But it was like the first game the warriors had everybody healthy and then he didn't even make it all four quarters. So that's another one to keep an eye on. This is like injury time right around here. Always feels like mid March is when weird stuff happens.

All right, we're barely a weekend of March and this is a cursed month.

Just totally. We're going to take a break, come back and talk about the man, the myth. Anthony Ederbertz, get buckets with your first bet on fandom, America's number one sportsbook right now, new customers get $150 in bonus bets with any winning $5 bet. That's $150 if your bet wins. I'm trying to talk Fando into doing an off the menu bet where Steph Curry wins the clutch player of the year award because he's like -280 and I think if you look at the clutch stats, he should be like -1000 I'm not allowed to bet on this, but I can encourage you to make the right bet. Plus I think Washington is going to have the worst record in the league. So I'm going to see if I can get them to parlay those two things. Stay tuned. Bet on all your favorite NBA players and teams with quick bets. Live same game parlays, exclusive props and more. Visit fando.com bs. Shoot your shot FanDuel official sportsbook partner of the NBA must be 21 plus president select states gambling problem called winning 100 gambler or visit theringer.com rg first online real money wager only $10 1st deposit required bonus issued as nominatorable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt.

See terms at sportsbook fandel.com. All right, we're back. We got to cover the early games. I told you to watch Miamida, so I covered Edwards for us, but no Carl Anthony Towns because he has a torn meniscus. Edwards comes out, he goes full alpha. Indiana's talking shit at halftime. There's like, Aaron Neesmith, go bear thing. Edwards didn't like that and he just took over and he put together one of the craziest last few minute stretches I've seen in a while. Culminating in a game winning block on Neesmith where he hit his head in the rim and then just started dropping straight down in a way that all other human beings either break their wrist, they twist their knee, something happens. He just dropped, landed, got up, and then celebrated for the next. I'm not positive as human, Rob. No.

It must be nice to be able to react that way. But I would say not only did he hit his head on the backboard, it was like he hit his lower back on the backboard. He was almost fully horizontal trying to hunch under that thing after pinning the ball. So definitely operating on a different plane. Anthony Edwards and that 90 seconds, that two minutes of basketball, unbelievable stuff from him. Especially after all the consternation about the Wolves in crunch time this season. That's quite a bit of punctuation for the resume, I will say, at this point in the season.

Well, the body language doctor was with me watching. It was curious that Edwards, I think he ended up with 34 shots. He was going full out for the whole game and was just going nuts after these baskets. And I was wondering, is he just, he doesn't like Indiana? Is he fired up for tonight? Or is he trying to show the team like, the season's not over yet? We're actually fine. They were playing slow Mo down the stretch in the town spot and basically everything was running through Edwards. And I gotta say, like, they were fine. I think the stuff towns brings, he's. He's got that weird size, he's got the three point shooting. He's the second option for them to go to. Is it conceivable to you that they could be just as good without towns? Like, where do you stand on this, the no towns, yes Towns thing?

I would be very surprised given the construction of this team as it is now, because the conversation around cat gets reduced to his fit with this group. The weird fouls he commits sometimes him being like kind of a corny personality, honestly, is a big part of the Carlin towns experience.

And the Hoops IQ, like the terrible foul out of nowhere, getting the fifth and 6th fouls right in a row, like all the dumb things he does.

Those are all part and parcel of it. But the reality is, going into this game, the Wolves offense has basically ceased to function when he's not on the floor. It's been really hard for Edwards to take over games in this kind of capacity, even for just like minutes at a time in lineups that don't include Carl. So it works really well against the Pacers defense and I'm very eager to see how this goes over the next couple of weeks when the schedule takes a turn. When you're on the road for a bit, when things really aren't going your Anthony Edwards. The overall Anthony Edwards creative experience can be very different on the nights where he starts out one for six, one for eight and it gets the offense into a weird place where you're not just worried about late game execution, you're worried about like how are we going to get through this quarter with 25 points? The Wolves do have those stretches in them and I worry. I worry about how they're going to look during some of those moments because they're going to need a lot of these sorts of Anthony Edwards games to get through the regular season and certainly through the playoffs depending on what townse's injury diagnosis is in one piece.

We agree they're not better off without towns. They're going to be more fun to watch without Towns because it's going to be the Edwards show and it's basically going to be go bear anchoring the defense. A lot of role players, people and then Edwards just doing his thing. But Towns, I watched a lot of Minnesota and I still like Russell and I talked about them on, they looked with Towns even. They look really stilted at the end of games sometimes and you're ah, offensively, especially when the playoffs and the defenses get better, it's hard for me to imagine them scoring baskets. But on the other hand their defense was so good it's like, well maybe in the playoffs, maybe you'd want that almost. And you have one creator and one shooter. Maybe that's what you need. So I just never decided on them. I wasn't sure if they were going to be first round and out all the way to the finals. Basically anything seemed possible to me. They need Towns. I'm not inventing the wheel on that one. But the thing that I really like with him is the size. He's just weird. They're weird with him, right?

What makes them weird? Well, because sometimes he can guard, they'll put him on point guards and stuff or they'll put him on James Harden, which they were doing against the Clippers, right. And they just have a little more flexibility and now they're a more conventional, you know, as you said, then Towns is making that weird face he makes or towns is doing something dumb. You're like, oh man, they're never going to win with that guy.

It's so tough without Towns because when the offense isn't going for the Wolves, one way you get over that is like this. Anthony Edwards, whatever you may think of his decision making out of the pick and roll or late in games, sometimes he makes the decision to just be the best player on the fucking planet for minutes at a time. And he will do that.

The other way they get through those.

Tough stretches is towns. To kind of your language here, being weird, like being a weird in between option where he can catch at the elbow mid late clock, hit an off balance runner, post up somebody from high up and somehow get angle to go or draw a foul. His ability to just accrue total gross offense over the course of a game is something that no one else on this roster can do for. As much as we love Nas Reed or we like what Kyle Anderson brings to the table or the variety of role players that Minnesota is rolling out there, otherwise, Jaden McDaniels is not stepping up and having 25 point games on a regular basis. It's just not going to happen. And so it's going to be ant gunning for 50 and he's going to succeed or fail. And the Wolves in some of these games are going to succeed and fail in those terms, too.

Yeah, maybe Nas Reed can like ten more minutes, a game of him can grab some of it, Edwards grabs some of it. But long term, I just like his flex. The town's flexibility. Series to series you got to have. I thought that was one of the things that made him special right now, the one seed. We're taping this before the Denver Boston game, but second segment we're going to be reacting that. So there's still the one seed you think about like the seven 8910, which I think has mattered. We've only had the playing for a couple of years, but the ten seed feels like such a death sentence to me. This Golden State, the Lakers, now Dallas is even at the 8th seed right now, though they didn't win tonight. But you get that ten seed, I have to win on the road against the nine seed, then I have to win on the road again against the seven eight loser. And then I have to go to the one seed, which could very well be Minnesota. And I don't know if you had to bet on who gets the one seed. I'd probably bet on Denver because at this point, maybe they're the most static team I trust the most with the no towns piece.

But it would be interesting if it was Lakers, Minnesota somehow, and Edwards against LeBron and Edwards being like, finally I get to play my rival, LeBron James, his only know. Yeah, this is it. Finally, somebody who walks on the planet that I'm from. But that would be fun. Anyway, the Edwards thing, it looked a little weighed. MJ, hybridish. Yeah. And there's been some talk recently, especially even on this podcast, about, all right, who are the next american guys? What do we got? Curry's 35, LeBron's 39. Who's next? Is it Tatum? The Celtics win the title. Could he be the young american face of the league? But it feels like Edwards would be the -150 favorite.

Edwards feels like the climber, right? We're still kind of relatively speaking on the ground floor of this. He's still learning on the job. He's still figuring out everything he can do, including how high he can and needs to jump.

Don't hit your head on the rim anymore. Yeah, learn how to not do that.

We live and we learn, and that's what he has over Tatum. Like, the baseline for Tatum is always going to be super high. It's always going to put him well into the top ten. Maybe you can make an argument top five some seasons, depending on who else is playing in the league at that point, who's healthy and who's not. But Edwards is starting from a lower place but has the potential to be a top three guy, has that sort of explosion in him. And it's just going to be a matter of whether he can harness his inner tatum in some respects. Like, can he equalize and find the balance of his game? In addition to all these explosive qualities.

There'S a lot of deja vu with some of the great two guards that we've had with him. I was feeling it tonight. It was just so reminiscent of those late 80s MJ games, something like that. Miami and Dallas, which we wanted to really dive into because Dallas seemed like, I felt like if they lost this game, it's probably about as late as you could go where you could fire your coach and get another coach in and still be okay for the playoffs. Their defense was so bad the last two weeks. I think they were 30th net rating on defense, which is like, this is a league with Washington and Detroit and San Antonio in it.

Honestly, 30th feels better than it looked.

Somehow. It was worse than. And they just looked like I thought the Sunday game was alarming. The game the other night was alarming against Indiana. I really felt like something was broken. So they end up winning tonight. Kyrie hits the big three down the, in the corner, down the stretch. This team doesn't feel special to me. It feels like two really good guys and a bunch of, and part of it for me goes back to that weird PJ Washington trade they made, which I didn't really like at the time.

Oh, you're not into.

I'm not. I think I see the nerd cases for him.

I'm here to make it.

Well, what is he really good at? Right? Is he an excellent defender? Not really. Is he a really good rebounder? No. Is he an awesome three point shooter? No, not really. Is he like a lighted up scorer? No. He's kind of pretty good at everything. And I just feel like you're giving up your number one pick unprotected in 27, and Grant Williams, you just signed, who you're giving up in 50 games, who, by the way, has been good with the Hornets and then Seth Curry. I wouldn't say that's an upgrade. It's like, oh, yeah, we're slightly better, but I don't want to give up my first round pick unless it's like, yeah, man, let's go. Like when Miami gave up a pick for Roger, it's like, all right, that makes sense to me. Roger was a considerable upgrade. Make the case for PJ Washington for me.

Well, I think you can quibble with the price, right? What you give up and how much and whether it's worth that, I think, is a conversation unto itself. Whether PJ Washington, a player who, as you said, is just kind of pretty good across the board, is useful to the Dallas Mavericks, a team that I would remind you in the Luca doncha Jera has not had a lot of players who are just across the board pretty good. It's a lot of specialists, it's a lot of one dimensional guys. It's a lot of guys who are going to turn up six points in a game of cardio and call it pretty good. And they've needed some pretty good in their rotation. They've needed this sort of like, can we just get 20 to 30 reliable forward center minutes where we don't have to go ultra small? That's been a huge thing for them, too, is being able to play, whether it's Maxi Cleveland at the four, PJ Washington at the four, and you get to keep Gafford and lively on the floor at the same time. This is a team, it's gotten crushed on the boards all season, and so any effort to put more rebounding and more size on the floor for them, I think is a good thing.

The issue with them is they rotate so much on defense, they are just like flying around in a bad way. Over rotating, overcompensating to the point that if you just know how to pass, if you just kind of keep your head on as an opposing team, you're going to get wide open threes, if not wide open layups against the Mavs. And they have to fix that. And maybe some of it is trusting that the combination of Washington and Gafford, or Washington and lively or Maxi and either of those bigs, that that's going to be enough interior defense. We don't have to overcompensate all the time.

Well, it's tough when your two best players are below average defensive players.

It certainly does.

That's the foundation of their team. And you can only play five players. So when two of them are negative defensive players, that's a problem. It's a weird team for Kyrie, and I think he's been good. He's been good. I think if you were going into the season saying, what's the best case scenario for a Kairi season? We've probably hit it. He said no drama. He's, I think, had one semi long injury, but not too bad.

Other than the total games missed, that might be the only kind of bugaboo in an ideal Kyrie season. But you're right, it's only been one kind of significant stretch that he's missed.

From a chemistry standpoint, Luca has the ball an incredible amount. Kyrie seems okay with it. He can kind of pick his spots. Like tonight where he made a couple shots and then made the biggest three of the game. I just don't know if it's the right team for him. Like, if we were saying, what would the most fun Kyrie Irving team be? I don't know if this is the one I would have picked because of how much Luca has the ball and I don't really know what the perfect team would have been like. I was thinking about how he would have been a good rocket if they had taken that van Vliet.

Oh, interesting.

Said fuck it and given it to Kyrie instead. And it could have been him and shangun. It's like, all right, that might have been really fun, but I don't know. It's him as a Luca sidekick is the best use of him at this point. Of his career because he can't know. What makes him special is some of the crunch time stuff and the last four minutes of the game stuff, and they don't really need that stuff from him because Luca has the ball all the time.

Well, sometimes in this game, he got to pay off. In crunch time, he got to have his moments, and there's been occasion for that. I think ultimately, the Mavs need Kyrie more than Kyrie needs the Mavs, to be fair.

Right? That's a good point.

He can fit in a lot of different circumstances. He can make sense for a lot of different teams, basketball wise, a guy who can create with the faculty, he does incredibly valuable. And what makes him valuable as a maverick is the fact that, as you said, luca is going to have the ball, and when he catches on the second side, he can make hay out of almost anything. Even if a defender is right on top of him, that ability to generate and manufacture offense is really, really vital. It's what Dallas needs in a second star, and honestly, it's harder to find than you might think. That ability with 5 seconds on the shot clock, get a good shot. Kyrie Irving can do that in a way that almost no other plausible Luca running mate could. So for that reason, he's valuable. But defensively, they have to figure out a way to make it work. So they plug Derek Jones Jr. Into the lineup. Now they're trying to see if that can work at the three. Dante exhum's giving them good minutes. It's an uphill battle, finding the balance for a team like that.

It would have been more fun if he was on like.

Mean. The Rockets example is that really is the Murray Jokic two man game on acid Shangoon and Kyrie just fully psychedelic.

Yeah. Well, one thing with Dallas is Hardaway has sucked for like two months. It's been tough. Okay, tonight, but I wonder if you would have put him in that PJ Washington trade instead of Grant Williams. It seems like they just had to get rid of Grant Williams. God only knows what was going on. Locker room, and you could kind of read between the lines on some of that stuff. All right, so if I give you teams in tiers where the top four, Minnesota, OKC, Denver, and the Clippers, and then we drop a notch and you go into those next six, which is New Orleans, Phoenix, Sacramento, Dallas Golden State Lakers, would you lump those six together, or would you have a two a two B type of tier? Do you feel like there's a difference between the Pelicans and those other five teams or Phoenix because Beal has gotten going for Phoenix a little. I still don't trust that team and for them to stay healthy. But if you give me those six teams, I think I at least like the upside of Phoenix the most. Where do you stand?

I think so. And I've been skeptical of their ability to stay healthy, among other things and some of the parts of the rotation I don't fully trust. But relative to these teams, right. Dallas has these games in them like they had tonight and the high end for Dallas is super high, but they're really inconsistent. Sacramento has been a mess for a minute now, and by a minute I mean probably months. So I really don't trust where they are at this stage in the season. I would love to be able to bet on the warriors based on what they've been able to recapture.

By the way, you can bet on them because it was, I think minus 128 for them to make the playoffs and they won last night and it jumped to like minus 145 with them as the 9th seed. They would have to win two games just to get into the playoffs.

I think that's someone must be really liking their chances to beat Sacramento in a potential second play in game. I can understand that, but I think Phoenix is a cut above the rest of this group, to be honest with you.

And maybe that's like their ceiling is the highest of those six, right?

It's the highest, but also their median is probably higher than these other teams. And maybe that's being a little disrespectful to New Orleans, who they've been able to cobble together a really impressive season. But I don't know, does anyone really think the Pelicans can win two playoff rounds? I think that would be pretty aspirational, even for a deep, talented team that's had as successful a run as they've had. So I think Phoenix is probably in a two a or I guess tier two a all to itself, and then the rest is kind of a kitchen sink group led by New Orleans, but also punctuated by whatever the Mavs can put together. Maybe the best version of the Lakers you can conceive of. And I think the warriors are right there, too.

I think the Lakers and the Mavericks and the Kings all have the same thing in common, which is if you catch them on the wrong night, you're like, oh my God, this team's defense is awful. They have no chance at a playoff series. I'm watching them give up 140 points right now. What's happening? All three of them have that in common. New Orleans is different because New Orleans just looks like a bunch of guys that have only been playing together for like a week and a half, and they just were thrown together. They don't have plays yet, and I just can't get a feel for them at like, some of the deficiencies that Rosala and I talked about on Sunday night. Or Zion just doesn't rebound anymore. Just throwing that away.

Did he ever.

He would get like seven or eight now it's like that. Throw that away. Herb Jones, they're running more offense through, which is God bless, obviously, he's my guy.

Incredible.

They're at that point of the season where they're like, I wonder what else we can get from Herb Jones offensively. It's like really? But it just feels that team is just crying for a point guard. When I watch them, I just like just somebody who can just take care of everybody in the court and look out for them and think about them. Now there's not a lot of those guys left, I guess would be the counter to that. But that's a team that a Derek White would be like the ultimate perfect guy to caretaker.

Just a caretaker, a curator maybe. You really do need somebody who has that sort of high emotional intelligence in addition to the day to day possession to possession, just like operation of an offense. And that's where point Zion is a fascinating idea. I love watching it. Is it the kind of thing that you trust to keep a team afloat through difficult stretches, to keep them afloat through long playoff series or long playoff runs? And that's why you experiment with Herb Jones and that's why you give Ingram touches running offense. That's why you have this kind of balanced attack. And I think CJ's done an incredible job there as well within the role he's asked to play. But I think he would be the first to tell you he's not a tried and true caretaker type point guard like we're talking about.

It's so funny. These teams are just so erratic. Like, I saw some tweet today, Dallas has stretches this year where they went three and six, two and five, two and six and one and Lord, we're just like, for two weeks they just suck. And then like, no, we figured it out again. We're good. But I feel like the Lakers are like that, too. I saw the Lakers on Monday night against OKC and they just big boy bully balled them and looked great. Then you watch last night and it's like Sacramento had 190 points against them and LeBron's limping off in the fourth quarter and you're going, oh, this doesn't look good to me. Phoenix is the two a, and I think the warriors have two way potential. They could be. I want to see what happens with, what are they going to get from Chris Paul is because he looks old, like, since he came back, he just looks like old guy. But what are they going to get from him? What happens with Wiggins when he's back, when Brando pods is back in the lineup trying to, like, how do you figure out the minutes for the ten guys?

And then can Draymond stay normal for two months? Is that possible? Can we get two months of normal, Draymond?

Theoretically, yeah.

But anyway, I would say Phoenix two A, everyone else two B, but Golden State kind of holding on the cliff, trying to pull themselves up to the two A, and we'll see what happens. All right, quickly on the Miami Heat, who lost to Dallas tonight but have started to look heatish. And even, as you know, I'm the most afraid of Miami every season. Yeah.

Do you hear, like, the Halloween theme starting to play? Just, like, following you around in day to day life.

Like, man, it's awfully quiet here in this summer. Just, it's kind of eerie. Wait, is that a noise in the garage? Oh, no, it's the Miami Heat. I do feel like the Celtics match up with them unbelievably. Well, if we have Porzingis, I just think it's too much size for them. But, you know, especially the fact that Robinson is back. But just, I'm guessing in the playoffs, they would go, bam. Butler, Robinson, probably hero, and Roger, and then Haquez, Martin, Jovich, Bryant, maybe Patty Mills if he gets there. But they're deep. Patty Mills fits that. Kyle Lowry. I'm going to take an annoying charge at the worst possible time spot. Roger is such a massive upgrade over what they had with Lowry the last two years. And in some ways, I like Haquez for them more than Streus last year, who's hit or miss, but always scared the hell out of me. But Haquez, he can handle the ball. They can run some offense through him. This team's lurking. And I think they know they can beat Boston, they know they can beat Milwaukee. They're going to be in that four five spot. And whether they pass Orlando or not, I'm not even sure home court advantage matters in that series, but it means the Celtics will be staring at them in round two.

And I think this is what Miami wants.

Is it what you want. You're talking a big game about the Porzingis matchup, but does anyone want to walk into that against the Heat, even if you are the deepest, like the most talented top six in the league?

Well, even tonight, Butler was like, I'm going to guard Luca now, and Luca still got some shots, but there was no space with him and Butler and any shot he made was a really nice shot. The Porzingis thing is still the X factor for the Celts that they just didn't have last year because they can't hide a small on him and I just feel like they can put him at the foul line and try to shoot over people. On the flip side, the Roger revenge factor with the Celts combined with the butler, I'm tired of hearing about Jason Tatum, that piece, of course, and then the fact that every time Jalen Brown dribbles, they're just going to be diving at his knees trying to get the ball and all that. There's so much like deja vu DNA that I think worries me about that. But do you like the heat is heading in tonight. They're 6th and net rating for the last 15 games and the itest backed it up. They just looked heatish. Do you like what you're seeing from them?

For sure. I mean, I love them as a potential challenger. I think as much because the Heat have been good as everyone else has been kind of hurt or dinged up or sliding a bit in the standings like that next tier after Boston, but especially after Boston Milwaukee, really anybody's game. If you want to talk yourself into the heat relative to the Cavs, I'm here for it and I think they've made that case for themselves. I think the defense has picked up significantly over the last month or so. I think you're starting to see some of the new additions like Rosier payoff, but also Delon Wright when he's been healthy. It's been a nice piece for them. I think he could be a playoff impact player.

Certainly I should have mentioned him when I was listing all their dudes. The Celtics wanted him, by the way, and Miami promised them playing. He should.

He should be in a position to get that cohesive upgrade of their point guard position between those two guys is pretty huge for them. And then Robinson playing better all he's, he's been a really good playmaker. He's really expanded his game. But overall when they work now, when their offense is hitting, there's just like a pace to it and a cleanliness to it. In terms of how it's ordered, that makes sense. Like when the ball is pinging around from driving kick to another guy who's going to drive and kick, everything just works a little better than it did.

Earlier in the season.

And some of that is just like the guys who are in there are healthier or the guys who were out before are now actually in the lineup and so the players are better, but some of it is just rhythmic, too. I think they've started working out of the post a little bit more where that's to Jaime Haquez's and Jimmy's advantage. Guys like that are going to have an easier time creating an initial advantage off the block versus trying to beat a defender one on one from the three point line. So I think they're just getting a better sense of how to use this group. But what's most frustrating about them is that it really does just seem like the primary difference from the beginning of the season to now is they just started playing better, as the heat often do. And I don't know how to diagnose that in the games where they don't play great at this point of the season.

It looks like Bam. I don't know what was going on with him offensively the first couple of months, but it looks like he's more bamish than he used to be. And then Butler is just playing more now. Butler somehow missed, I think, 19 games, and I can't remember a single semi major injury he had. They've just been really careful with send him down, resting him. You think that dame trade, though, so that would have been Haquez and. Yeah, plus all their picks, maybe Jovich and whatever, any pick they wouldn't have been able to get Roger. So it's basically Dora is Dame, Dorby is Hero, Rosier, Jovich and Haquez and one more first round pick.

Yeah, I think there were some constructions where Robinson was in it, too, for salary. Right. There's that potential which, if that's the cost now, the aggregate cost of all those guys that might be kind of know, Miami's been really reliant on them.

Yeah, well, I didn't like the dame trade when they were talking about it, so I feel kind of vindicated. If I was a GM, I would have tried to steal Robinson from them.

Yeah, I just thought he had a.

Bad year and I think Streus was playing well and his minutes got yanked around. But shooting doesn't go south like Joe Harris went south, but Joe Harris had some real injuries and it seems like physically, he broke down. Robinson was still like, what, 27, 28? And we'd seen him do it on these stages. So I don't know, it just felt like he was sitting there for somebody. It was like 16 million, which was a lot for Miami, but not a lot in the big scheme of things.

No, I think what scares you is all the stuff that he's added to his game, like working off the dribble and driving, creating a little bit all that's predicated on the shot. And so when the shot doesn't go, the whole floor falls out. And we've seen that, especially in the playoffs with guys like Davis Bertons, for example, look really good in the regular season. For certain teams, you get in the playoffs, the shots don't fall or teams change how they're guarding them, and then it's just zero value. And that's a tough bet to make with a player who is at his salary level.

Do you think that'll happen to Dean Wade, the best player in the league this year, or no?

You can't take Dean Wade out of.

Celtic murderer Dean Wade fucking killed that 21 with nine minutes left and loose. All right, Rob, thanks for staying up late with me. We can listen to you on Ringer MBA show and group chat.

Of course.

We can read you on ringer.com. And we can hear you, most importantly with the Queen Joanna Robinson on the prestige TV podcast breaking down Showgun, a show I still have not watched but I promise to watch at some point over the next two weeks.

Make some time for it. I think you'll really enjoy yourself.

Subtitles psych me out and I really have to be in the right mood and know I'm going to put my phone away. I need to concentrate. I need to read. There's a lot of new characters. I need to devote the right time.

Yeah, it's not a great show to watch while you also have, like, blazers thunder up on a second, you know, definitely turn off the other monitors for this particular occasion. But so far, Shogun's made it more than worth it. That's all we can really ask for.

All right. Good to see you, Rev.

Thanks, Bill.

Male boss Jimmy Kimmel is here. He's hosting the Oscars for the fourth time on Sunday night. You are now moved into fourth place by yourself in the career oscars host standings. Jimmy, congratulations. Bob Hope, 19. Billy Crystal, nine. Johnny Carson, five. You're one away from the king, Johnny Carson.

I think I'm tied with Whoopi, though, right?

Yeah, but she did a co host thing once I count that as a half, I don't count that as a full one.

Okay, well, I'll go with that.

I'll go with that. To me, if there's tiebreakers, you were four by yourself. Plus, if you go through the first one, it was the envelope Oscars. The next year was the me too Trump Oscars in 2018. And then last year was the can the Oscars just please be normal again? Oscars. A chance to be your most normal Oscars. Yeah, I guess.

Would that be a win or would.

That be a loss?

And it's funny because I'm like the olympic athlete who does okay, but doesn't get a medal. Being in fourth place is not a great spot. I think it might be the worst spot. I think I'd rather be in less than fourth.

Well, you just need one more to be to at least tie Carson. I think you got to do one more after this. You have to.

I don't know.

All right, let's go backwards. 2017, first one you hosted, moving like a whirlwind, and then all of a sudden, the craziest moment in the history of the Oscars happens.

Yeah, then it was the craziest moment. But, yeah, it was going really well. Everything was working. The show felt brisk. People seemed happy, was getting a lot of laps. It seemed like a grand slam. And then one more bit to do, just one more little bit where I talked to Matt Damon at the end of the show, and I'm sitting next to him and something's happening. They announced the best picture winner. And I said, what's going on? He goes, yeah, I think they messed up. He said, I think you better go up there. And I was like, why would I go up? And I was like, oh, yeah, right. I'm the host. I'm the only one with a microphone on and went up there, and we end up tap dancing for about 15 minutes.

And now looking back, it's funny. Like, it's seven years now. I don't even remember who ended up winning and losing.

It is confusing. I sometimes have to really think it through. But the wrong winner was la la Land, and the actual winner was moonlight.

And they've just kind of merged together into one giant envelope mess. And we've never really gotten the full story from Warren Beatty. What the hell?

Hold on. I heard more of the story that I did know, but I think I might have forgotten about, and I'm going to share it with you now because I heard this from some of the people at the Oscars. So this is a little detail for those who don't remember. Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty presented the.

Oscar for best picture.

I don't know that they are close friends, let's put it that way. So there was some, I think, disagreement about who would read the name of the best picture winner. And Warren Beatty was the guy who was going to read the name. And Faye, I don't think, was thrilled with that. She wanted to read the name, and there was some kind of a discussion between camps or something like that. Ultimately, the decision was made that Warren would read the name, but this was kind of like a little drama that went on behind the scenes the week leading up to the Oscars.

This sounds fun.

When Warren opens the envelope and looks at it and then kind of hands it to Faye Dunaway, the producers in the booth went, oh, wow, that's nice. He is going to let her read the winner. But I think the reason that he was passing it off to her was because he wasn't entirely sure that it was correct, and he figured it'd be better to let her screw it up.

So she screwed it up.

But then he didn't. No, I think she declined to read the name. And he read the name, and the rest is history.

But then he kept the envelope, right? Like they were trying to get it from him and he wouldn't give back.

The guy who was at fault tried to get the envelope from Warren. There's some kind of, like, if Warren had handed that envelope to that guy, we still wouldn't know what happened. Probably. Most people would think it was that guy. I think that was his hope, that people would think it was Warren's fault, because he knew he had a disaster on his hands. But Warren, quite wisely. No, no, I'm not giving anybody this envelope. I have an envelope right here that says Emma Stone la la land on it, which is obviously confusing. So it was the best actress winner that got mixed up with the best picture envelope. And that guy, I think, is retired now.

He might not be alive. So where's the envelope now? Where's the second envelope? Like, that feels like that should be in a museum or something, right?

You mean the correct envelope?

No, the mistake envelope. Because there were two envelopes. Right open. Warren still has it.

Yeah, it's in Warren's house.

Oh, that's amazing. Can you imagine just going through his house? All the crazy shit he must have from the. Holy shit.

What a life this man had. I mean, really ridiculous.

All right, so that was your 2017. That was your inaugural experience. You came on the podcast, I would urge people, they can go back March 2017. You, me, and Sal, we went to your office. You rehashed the whole thing. 2018, way more intense Oscars. Nobody was feeling for you on that one.

Well, in 2017, at the end of the show, like, after that envelope deal, they asked me right there to host the Oscars again the next year because it went well. Not just because it went well. They also felt bad that the narrative was not that it went well. The narrative was about the envelope. Everything was about the envelope afterwards. So I think they were like, oh, man, we owe him one. This Oscars went well, and nobody's even talking about that. They're all talking about this mistake that our accountants made. So they asked me to come back in 2018, and I said yes pretty much right away. So I knew for the whole year that I was going to host the show, and I knew I'd have something to talk about. I knew at least we had the envelope to refer to. But in the meantime, there are so many jokes, there's so much talk about it that you have to make sure you have a, whatever you say about the envelope. Just like the Will Smith slap has to be a home run. It can't be anything short of that. So I had that in my head, and how was I going to handle that?

And I think there was a lot of anticipation for the 2018 Oscars just because of what happened at the end of the 2017 Oscars.

Okay. Because that was like that. We were a year into. Me too. Harvey Weinstein. There were all these people, and it had a weird edge, but it still ended up, I mean, the bigger problem with that awards was, like, the movies, they weren't like giant movies. Wasn't that like three billboards?

Yeah.

It was just kind of one of those indie years. Not the exact opposite of what you have this year, where you have giant movies that people have seen.

Yeah, it was a tough, even, like, the best picture, I think, was that movie Casey Affleck was in, right? He won. I know that he won best.

Manchester by the Sea.

Manchester by the Sea. It was a very grim movie. I mean, it was about like, children burning in a house. So it's not a lot of fun there.

I somehow watched that a second time, like six months ago. And the movie is fantastic, but it's the grim of a movie that's ever been made, but it's incredible in it, and the movie's great.

After that Oscars little note, I went outside and Casey was just standing there alone with his Oscar, looking for his car, and he couldn't find his car. And it was really a funny contrast with winning best actor triumphantly, then just standing out there, just another guy on the street corner driver.

So then the Oscars goes, they do the train station one, which was a disaster, and the ratings are dropping like crazy. And then you come back last year because basically everybody's like, hey, can we have a normal Oscars again with a host that tells jokes and people dressed up in a big stage and can we just do it the way we did it?

Well, it was funny because after I hosted that second year, and then it went well. The show went well. It was well received. They decided that. I decided, okay, that was good. I did two. I wasn't really necessarily even planning to do two. I was planning to do the one. But then the envelope deal kind of made it like, well, I should probably, and don't forget, I hosted the Emmys in 2017. So I hosted the Emmys three months before I hosted the Oscars. And we put a lot into that, too, which is funny because I thought like, oh, this would be kind of cool. Nobody's ever done this before, hosted the Emmys and then hosted the Oscars right after the Emmys. And the truth of the matter is I'm the only person that remembers that. And even I forget sometimes.

So then there was Dean Sanders. Yeah.

Then there was the hostless Oscars, which was kind of funny that after I hosted two years in a row, they're like, you know what? We don't need a host. Was that the one, that first one in the subway? Because there was some COVID stuff going on there, too, right? Yeah, that's why they had it in the train station. And that Oscars was kind of beautifully shot and very boring. It just didn't have any. It looked like a movie. It didn't look like a TV show. And I think sometimes that's one of the problems with hiring movie producers to host the Oscars. They don't know how to produce a TV show. And there's an arrogance. They presume, well, I know how to produce a movie. Of course, I could produce a television show. And they're very different skill sets, I think. So the next one. Then, of course, they had the Oscars with three hosts and the slap.

Yeah, they sure did. Yeah, they had that.

And then they asked me to come back the year after the slap, which obviously was tumultuous. And having three hosts, I think, was bad in that situation because it wasn't at all clear which of the three hosts should go up on stage and handle that. So what happened was nobody handled it. In fact, I don't know if you remember, Diddy was the person who was on stage.

Oh, my God.

Bleeding for calm.

You need the alpha parent. You need the dad, basically, to come in and be like, guys, here's what happened.

And you need a laugh there, right? I mean, you need to break the tension because there's a huge amount of tension. You need something. You need to be able to move forward, I think. I don't know if you remember, they have a pretty strict limit as far as time goes when it comes to these speeches, and they'll give a little when it comes to best actor, best actress, best picture. But in this case, they let will Smith talk endlessly. He gave, and of course, it was riveting. You're watching this man have what appeared to be a combination nervous breakdown and dream moment at the same time. But there was nobody there to handle it. And I think at that point, they were like, okay, you know what we probably do need? These driverless cars aren't a great idea for the Oscars. So they asked me to do it again, and I was very surprised. I did not ever imagine I would be asked to do it again. The administrations change over, and the people you worked with are no longer there. And sometimes it feels like, sometimes when they put in a new set of producers, it feels like they act like you never even did it.

Hey, we're here, and we're going to do this, and we're going to do it right. Never mind what happened in the past. When the Oscars are largely about the past, I mean, it's part of the magic of the show is remembering these great moments, these great movies that are still around and these great performances. So to separate yourself from the past can feel insulting when you're the host of the show. Right. Anyway, I didn't think I would ever be asked back, and I didn't necessarily even. I was planning to retire from my show, so I really didn't think I.

Was like, nobody thought you were retiring. Like, literally not one person. Who knows you thought you were retiring from your show. Not one. There was the image like, oh, my God, Jimmy's coming back. Not one.

Well, you guys know me better. I know myself, I guess, but, yeah. So then I came back, and, of course, knowing that the slap had happened, from a comedy standpoint, it's enticing.

You want it? Well, the ratings were way up, and the ratings will be even better for this one. I was thinking how many things? Well, I think it will. The show started a year earlier, right?

I think this hour earlier thing has potential to really screw me in particular up because not only is the show on mean, everybody's used to the show starting at 05:00 in LA and 08:00 in New York and 07:00 in the Midwest. But now we have a situation where not only is it on an hour earlier, not only does it start at four and seven, but it's daylight saving time, which I don't know about you, but it takes me like ten full days to figure out daylight saving time. So I think there's going to be a lot of people who are standing around their house in their shorts and go like, oh, wait, I think Oscars are on and they're going to tune in and going to be an hour and a half into the program already.

Because it's 03:00 Pacific time mentally, but it's really four. Yeah, it is going to be a little weird. It'll be fine. I think a lot of people are going to care about this Oscars. I was thinking how many things you've hosted over the years. What was the first thing you hosted? Something like the weenie roast. What was your first MC job?

Oh, my first Mc job actually was at a church flea market in Las Vegas. I think I was like 14 years old, and everybody brought their stuff to the parking lot and set up tables, and you'd sell stuff and the church would get all the money. And our priest, Father Bill, who was a friend of mine, still is a friend of mine, said he thought it was funny. He's like, hey, do you want to be, we need people to read the raffle numbers and to make announcements. Do you want to do it? And I said, yeah, of course I want to do do it. And I got up there and I immediately started making fun of him. And I liked it. I got a kick out of it, and people were laughing really hard, and I was like, oh, yeah, this is fun. But I never imagined that I would do it for a living. It just seemed like something that would be fun to do at the flea market every year. And then the first award show.

I.

Guess, besides my show, like charity.

What was the roast we did in 2003? Was that Pamela Anderson or Courtney Love? One of those people? We hosted that one.

The Hugh Hefner roast was the first big event that I hosted. Yeah, it was right after 911. It was one.

That's the famous Gilbert Godfrey. That's right. The aristocrats story.

That's the aristocrat stroke. That was a night that I don't think anybody who's part of that will ever forget. It was a very emotional and very special night and a very funny night, actually. I think I met Sarah Silverman at that roast, and we later went on to date. So it was a big event in my life, hosting that thing, and it was fun. Those roasts at that time were very. Everybody's all dressed up, but it was like a bar fight. No punches were pulled, especially back then. And I kind of love that.

Well, the pre social media, too. So it was kind of whatever happened in the room, for the most part, stayed in the room, and I don't think it's like now where people are probably a little more self conscious. But I remember we did three. What was it, Courtney? It was the Courtney love roast or Pamela Anderson. Courtney Love acted insane during it.

It was a Pamela Anderson roast, but it might as well have been the Courtney love roast, because I was the host of that roast, and I was sitting next to Courtney Love, who is very nice, but just didn't stop talking the whole time. Like, she didn't necessarily understand that it wasn't a panel discussion that each person got up and spoke.

That was a cocktail party.

Yeah, be quiet during the. And I remember Sarah was about to get up and do her stuff, and she just said to me, keep her the fuck quiet. And I basically had her was. I was basically hugging her during the whole segment, whispering in her ear while Sarah did her act.

Oh, my God. All right, so then we did the.

AMAs, which the American Music awards five.

I wrote for you for two of those. You can read one of the pieces. I think I did a running diary of the first time Jeff wrote completely insane.

Completely insane.

There's probably, like, five jokes that should have been there, but that was when Suge Knight, we ran into him in the stairwell, and we thought he was going to. Him were just going to kill all of us. He did not like that. He felt like we had come up on him a little bit. There was a weird vibe.

He was smoking a cigar alone in the stairwell at the Staples center. Is that where it was?

Or the Nokia theater, whatever the fuck it was.

We were moving from the audience to the stage, and, I mean, I almost bumped into sugar, I think, as we were going, but, yeah, that was pretty crazy. And also, I hosted the american music awards once during the writer strike, when shows were still allowed to be on the air, but you couldn't have any writing. So I decided that I was going to dance instead of do a monolog. And I don't know if you remember, but I practiced for a solid two weeks to learn the soldier boy dance. Do you remember the soldier boy dance?

Yeah.

I just couldn't learn it. It was just impossible for me. And I went into it thinking, like, there's a 30% chance I'm going to be able to pull this off. And I in no way pulled it off. It was a complete disaster.

Have you bombed as a host? Has there been one of any?

I think that would be. Yeah, that's probably the only time where it went poorly, but I think overall it was fine. I think I had other things to say throughout the course of the show, but there was no written material on that one, so it was a little bit different.

And then you did the Emmys a.

Bunch of times, and then I've done the Emmys three times, I think. Yeah, every fourth year, ABC has the Emmys, and they were reluctant, I don't know if you remember, they passed me over.

Oh, I remember to let the reality.

Hosts host the Emmys. So it was Ryan Seacrest, Jeff Probst, Tom Bergeron, Heidi Klum, and Howie Mandel were the hosts of the Emmys that year.

It was an fu to Jimmy Kimmel.

It was. But they did give me, I think, was the best bit of the night, and it was not my idea, so I'm not taking credit for it. But what they had me do was I presented the Emmy to those hosts, the best reality show Emmy. And just before I read the name, I said, and we'll find out who wins the emmy after the break, which is something that Brian Seacrest used to do all the time on American Idol when it was huge. And those guys, I think, hated that. They didn't know it was going to happen. They were just kind of standing there waiting. But I felt like it was proper to give them a little taste of their own medicine.

Yeah, it was good revenge. When did the hosting thing start slowing down for you? Because, like Tom Brady always talked about when he was in a bunch of Super Bowls, by the time he got to the six, seven Super bowl, the rhythm of the event, he had figured out, and it was like, you don't want to get too hyped up before the game and then the game, the first half, and then it's like a 40 minutes halftime show, and if you get too hyped up, then it's hard to rally back in the second half. And he's like, once I figured that out, the Super bowl was way easier. And I think he won his last or four of his last five. But does that make sense to you?

I feel exactly the same way about hosting an award show. And I don't know that there was a moment where I figured it out. I do feel like I have it figured out now as much as you can figure it out. I mean, it's like a sporting event. You can't figure everything out. But I do feel like I have it figured out now. But I did feel like I've done a bunch of award shows, but the one that I'm most proud of, I think, was hosting the Emmys in front of no audience because that's something that I had agreed to do before COVID I'd agreed to host the Emmys and I wanted to honor my commitment because I knew nobody was going to want to be in that spot. And we knew we were going to have to have an empty theater and we had to figure a million things out. I mean, just when you think you have the formula down, it's a completely different situation.

So.

I did a monolog and I did the whole show just to camera. And I think it came out surprisingly good. And it's funny because you meet other award show producers and people who pay attention to this sort of thing, and they will often mention that as something that they were very impressed by.

You know why I don't remember that? Why? Because just large patches of those two years when we were in isolation and COVID, I just don't remember stuff because you don't go all the time. It might have been somebody mentioned we were talking about rewatchables ideas and I was like, oh, we should do that one. And they said, we did that in 2020. And I was like, I have no recollection of that. I don't know what happened, but it's just like a fucking blur. For two years, I went through Bob Hope's 1971 and 1975 monologs and wrote down a couple of the jokes.

That's one of the things about Bob Hope. It's people like, he hosted 19 times. I was like, yeah, I think he put a total of 19 minutes into.

Well, the last couple he had like ten minute monologs, 1970, 519 78. I thought he would have a bunch of inappropriate jokes. But I'm just going to read you a couple and you can decide if you want to take any of these.

All right, maybe I'll adapt them. We'll replace the names with, you know how that goes.

Chinatown got eleven nominations, six from column A and five from column B. Think that's a chinese food joke?

Oh, yes, probably. Yeah. Like a chinese menu.

The crowd laughed. The crowd was like, great joke, Bob.

Okay.

It's not a terrible joke.

It's solid.

I think.

Yeah. I think godfather two has an excellent chance of winning. Neither Mr. Price or Mr. Waterhouse has been heard from in four days.

It's not bad either.

Crowd like. And then he said, I'm wearing a tuxedo with a bulletproof cumberbun. Crowd ate that one up. I didn't fully understand this, so I had to research it, but I'm just going to read it, too. Marlon Brando won't be here this year either. The Indians are holding him for the balloon payment. Long ovation. So apparently he gave a house and there was a mortgage thing. And then he followed up. No, he gave them a little land with a mortgage on it, some gift. That's like getting a liver transplant from Dean Martin. Big laugh. It's a lot of those, though. It's actually really fun. You should watch some of these. I think you'll eat these up. 1978, he did the. I haven't seen this much expensive jewelry go by since I watched Sammy Davis Jr's house slide down Coldwater Canyon. Huge laugh.

That's a good one. Yeah. That must have been based on a real event, right?

Yeah. He said the biggest surprise of the year is young John Travolta. And I mean young. I have wine older than he is. Big laugh. It's a lot of that.

Maybe, I don't know.

You can dip in there. Comedy a lot different back way. It's like the kind of jokes we make on our text threads where we're intentionally making bad jokes.

There are some jokes there that you could tell that he'd done that. He'd fill in the blank. John Travolta. I have wine. I have socks older than those kind of. He'd done that at a lot of Friars club events, but there are a couple of pretty decent ones in there. I like Sammy Davis. Funny. If it was based on a real event. If it wasn't, then it's kind of just ridiculous.

The 50th Oscars, which was 1978, which I would highly encourage people to watch on YouTube, they had all the Oscar winners, and they did this crazy, crazy giant ten minute, like Debbie Reynolds dancing. Just basically everybody who was still alive who'd won something, this huge performance. And I was thinking, like, I don't think that would happen now. What would the participation rate be for that? Like 52%.

Oh, I think that at the hundredth Oscars, which are not far off, I cannot imagine they won't do that very thing.

That would be 2028. 2028. Yeah.

And I would imagine that they would do that. And I can't imagine anybody who was able to be there not being there. I mean, how could you not be at something? You have to remember the Oscars. Oscars, they become less present in our society over the years, year after year, as we are focused on more things. But to the actors and to the directors and the people in the industry, that's a big deal. If they're going to put every living Oscar winner on a stage, every living Oscar winner is going to be on that stage.

I am the most pro Oscars of all the award shows because I still think it matters the most.

I think fun if they had every living Oscar winner and one dead Oscar winner on the stage, like, everyone gathered around, yeah, maybe someone's recently dead or an exhumation of some kind. Maybe you get somebody like Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Wells. They exhume Orson Wells, put him.

Be.

You make it look nice. You get some of these great makeup artists. You get the guy who did Bradley Cooper's nose to fix him up. And everyone gathers around.

I still care about the Oscars the most because especially doing the movie podcasts we do, it's always fun to look back and say, did this person, oh, that person won. But for the most part, there's some Oscar travesties and some bad decisions in retrospect. But for the most part, it's a pretty good blueprint of who mattered the most in this year. I mean, this year, Margot Robbie not getting nominated. I think people remember that Greta Gerwig didn't get nominated for director. I think the fact that Oppenheimer got nominated for so many more than Barbie, but I actually thought that made sense because Barbie was more of a superhero movie.

And those, I think people forget, yeah, people forget that. Who could have ever imagined that Barbie would have been that, like, the idea that comedies don't even get nominated at the Oscars. So movie that's essentially a comedy. I mean, it is a comedy about a doll that, like, it's crazy that it's nominated the Oscar. So now people are like, I can't believe it was like, how about, I can't believe that this movie became an Oscar caliber movie. It's pretty.

Yeah, it's insane.

That project got passed around. I remember like, oh, my God, Schumer was in charge of, like, it seemed like leftovers by the time it got to Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, and somehow they came up with this mean, you know, whatever you think about the movie, it's very inventive, very creative, and also hit some chords with, especially my wife and my daughter. That is meaningful. I think Barbie, in a way, is like the female version of Hoosiers, where a lot of times you show, like, hoosiers to your wife over there, they're like, yeah, okay, whatever.

It's true. My wife and daughter loved it, too. And most of the guys from my life were like, yeah, it was all right.

Yeah, I mean, I liked it. I thought it was good, but it didn't make me cry.

I'm with you. All right, so 2028 Oscars you'll be hosting. You'll have just signed another three year extension. Baby doll will probably be dragging around an oxygen tank at some point. Still negotiating three year deals for you, baby doll.

And I know your listeners are pretty familiar with baby doll.

I would hope so. At this point.

Who might not be? He is our manager. I just recently figured that out. I thought he was my agent for like eleven.

No, I think he's back to being the agent again. Is he? Yeah. I don't know. He's a magent.

It's so hard to figure out what he is. But I will tell you, every year I send out this grand Christmas card and it appears to be from baby doll, and it's insane. It's just full of crazy pictures of him smoking in places he's in smoke and showing people his abs and just doing like crazy baby doll things. And the whole card is one of those, like, what my year was like cards where we talk about. He just boasts about his wealth and his successes and his homes and his golf courses and the cars. So anyway, the other day, one of my friends comes over and I haven't seen him in a while, and he brought his new girlfriend, and I said, oh, baby doll is here. And she goes, oh, the guy from the Christmas card. And sure enough, he's one of those people who does not ever disappoint. Really. The only two people I can think of who are in that category are baby doll and my aunt Chippy, who are exactly what you hope they will be when you meet.

Been.

He's staying at my house. He has been out in the backyard. By the way, if you want to know everything that's going on in my career and Bill's career and John Stewart's career and Stephen Colbert's career just kind of stand on the perimeter of my home, and you will hear all this coming from, and you look for the smoke signals, and you will find baby doll yelling at somebody on his Bluetooth earpiece while other people are trying to live their lives and work, because it's really something special.

Well, one of the great things about baby doll is you remarried and then you decided to have kids. And at that point you think, well, baby doll, now he won't stay with Jimmy. He'll stay at a hotel. He won't want to be there with, like, young kids and smoking. No, he's quite the opposite. Yes, complete opposite.

And to my kids, it's like Bluey shows up to the house. I mean, there is a lot of excitement around baby doll showing up. They can't believe he smokes. They're even more shocked because kids learn the smoking is terrible and even the littering is beyond their comprehension. It is just like, I mean, he drinks. We have glass bottles of coke that almost nobody ever drinks, but he'll go through a dozen of them in a day and a half. And then he just throws the bottles around our yard in our house, and I pick one up, I'm like, baby, what the fuck? You're throwing bottles of soda on the ground? And he's like, I did not. That did not come from me.

Really?

And he'll actually convince me that it didn't come from him. And then days will go by, and I'll go, of course that came from him. Who else is going in and drinking these sodas? Nobody else lives here besides our family and baby doll, but my son is obsessed with them.

I don't know if you know this, but a couple of weeks ago, he broke the record set by any agent for the most times he's been insulted by an offer.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

How many times?

I think it's 223 times. Out of the 226 offers, he's gotten 223 of them. He's really insulted and doesn't even know how he's going to counter.

You know what? I'm not even going to bring this to him because I know he will fucking.

I can't bring that to him. I can't. It's too insulting. I'm not going to insult him.

The best part is when he recounts the story of his negotiation, and he's laughing and he's so pleased with himself.

Oh, I was breaking his balls, baby.

This fucking guy. And then I said, there's a time years ago where this is a long time ago. I think I was on the man show at the time. Titleist wanted to do some commercials with me and a new ball, and I'm not a golfer, but I think that was kind of the hook, right? So I wrote these commercials, and I remember it was like $150,000 to do like three commercials. And the deal was I would talk real seriously about golf and the ball and how important it is. And then I'd put the ball on the tee and you'd see my horrible form, and I'd hit the ball. And then the tag was, it's not the ball's fault.

Right? Right. It's a good idea.

Anyway, the guy who runs Titleist apparently had not seen the man show after the deal was made. They're like, oh, you know what? These scripts are really funny, but we can't have Jimmy Kimmel speaking for Titleist, so we're going to back out of the deal. And Dixon was like, fuck you, you know? So he squeezed them for half the money and also three sets of golf clubs. He wanted one for himself and the other two for himself and one for my father, who has never played golf in his whole life. He just decided to throw that in there. I was like, well, that's nice. Why my father? How did that even come in your hay? He's like, I just wanted another set there for when I come out to LA. And he didn't want to say he wanted two sets for himself, one for my father.

I was thinking yesterday, because I guess he didn't want us to mention this, but we had dinner with him last night, which is a whole other saga, but I think he's the most consistent person in my life. He's always in the same mood at all times with the same energy, no matter what time of day it was. I was walking around LA, like a month and a half ago, and he was here and somebody was driving by and waving at me. I'm like, who's that? And the car turns around. It's baby who is smoking in his rental car. We get out and we talk in a parking lot, and he has, like, three Marlborough reds in 20 minutes, and we're just in this random parking lot.

As I recall, you were like 11 miles from your house, right?

I was pretty far away. Somehow he recognized me and could not have been more excited. Yeah. So we had dinner with him, and I guess we have to announce this. Our friend Daniel was suspended for one game. Suspension. You called him Draymond Kellison because baby was mad about his last two performances and wouldn't refuse to invite him.

I think it's important to mention that baby is going to be furious that we discuss this because he doesn't want to go through a whole thing or whatever. But yes, he had to serve a one game suspension, a one night dinner suspension, because Dixon did not like his.

Behavior at the last dinner, the first ever one dinner suspension, by the way.

Can you imagine him not liking someone's behavior at the dinner last night? At the dinner, the wine guy comes in and he starts talking. Know, there's some brothers who made this bottle of wine.

He's like, baby.

And he knows full well what the answer is. Like, is it okay if I smoke in here? And the guy goes, it's like a private. He's the Somalia. He doesn't want to be the bad guy. He's like, well, I'm not going to tell you not to smoke, but the guy's very timid. And he's like, if I light up in here, I'm like, baby, you cannot smoke. You can't smoke in here, baby.

It smells like beautiful wood and wine. You can't add the cigarette smoke odor to this. Yeah.

I said, they're going to be very unhappy. And it's like everything's in negotiation, and then he gives up. But it's like they owe him something because they didn't let him smoke in the room.

Well, the craziest thing is we found out there was a guaranteed fee, a minimum room, a minimum that we had to spend on food and drinks. And Sal couldn't go because it was his then. No, and then his wife's birthday or his wife's birthday. And then Daniel was on a one dinner suspension. So the two people who would have been the most excited that we had to spend enough food and drink to get to the minimum were not.

Was. You know, there are a lot of missed opportunities last night, but this is going to be good. In fact, maybe I'll try. You know what I'm going to do. Okay, so you're going to like this. When I tell baby doll, who's here somewhere at my house, that we talked about the dinner on the podcast.

Yeah.

I'm going to try to tape. I'm going to, unbeknownst to him, tape his reaction to it and put it.

On, and then you can put it.

At the end of this episode.

Okay. That would be great. Okay. We'd probably have to have some.

Mean, but here's my prediction of how it's going to go. I'm like, baby, I have bad news. Simmons and I talked about dinner last night. No, you fucking.

Yeah. Yeah. We did. Oh, my God.

And then he's gonna get quiet. But, yeah, I'll tape it and we'll see if I'm right.

Okay. All right.

And then he's going to suffer a little bit, and then he's going to relent and understand that this had to.

Happen and it had to happen this specific way, I think, are the two important things to remember. Well, Daniel's suspension is up now.

Yeah, he's over.

It's like Draymond came back. Run our test, came back.

Just tell him it's a one game suspension. That's it. He's going to understand or think. He might even think it's funny, but he's like, I don't want him to feel bad. I don't want him to feel bad anyway.

Well, maybe lessons needed to be learned. Good luck on Sunday. Good luck with your fourth Oscars hosting. To me, you're in the undisputed fourth place. I know Whoopi Goldberg might have a case, but it's fine.

Yeah, we need to come up with a medal below bronze, and I should be adorned with it, maybe aluminum.

It's called the fourth place medal, but you're one away now. Good luck on. Good luck at 07:00 ET. Thank you.

Sunday, I'm going to go.

Yes.

04:00 p.m. On the west coast, daylight saving, don't forget. And now I'm going to go try to find baby doll to see if he hasn't moved to his hotel yet. He stays with me until the Oscars pay for his hotel, and then he moves over to the hotel.

That's why he's smart. All right, good to see you.

If I can catch him, look for it at the end. Thanks, Bill.

Well, we had to have this guy on. He's in Saudi Arabia, RL Hawani. He hosts the Ringer MMA show. There is a huge, huge, much anticipated UFC 299 event this weekend that we're going to talk about. But that's not why you're in Saudi Arabia. There's Anthony, Joshua and in Ghanu are going to go at it. And Joshua is a big favorite. He's been my favorite guy to bet against, but he looked really good his last fight. I think I'm going to bet on Francis. He's like almost a three to one dog. I know you thought he won the Fury fight. So where do you stand? What are you seeing with this fight?

Okay, well, first of all, great to be back. I believe I hold the distinction of the first guest to ever join the show. From Saudi Arabia.

I think you. That's it.

I'm going to put that feather in my cap. It's quite the scene out here. I really thought Francis won the Tyson fight back in October. I felt good about his chances going in. I thought a lot of people were sleeping on him. I feel like the boxing pundits are still sleeping on him. They keep talking about him as this Owen, one debutante. Like, yo, guys, he's had 20 MMA fights. Like he's not some TikTok er, he's not some YouTuber, he's not some influencer coming over. He's been hit with kicks and knees and elbows and punches with four ounce gloves. Like he knows how to fight on the biggest stages possible. So I think you're selling him a little bit short. That being said, to your point, not only did AJ look great in his last fight, December 23, he really had an incredible 2023. He went three and this will be his fourth fight in eleven months. And if you recall, August of 2022, in this very country, Saudi Arabia, he fought Alexander Usick for the second time and lost and afterwards had a total mental breakdown. He took the belts, he threw them out of the ring.

He was on the Deus at the post fight press conference, crying. Everyone thought he was done. Here he is, reinvents himself, has a new head trainer, Ben Davison, and has looked like vintage AJ all week. Seems to be taking this very seriously. Tyson didn't take it seriously back in October. He was joking around, he was going to galas, dinners.

All this stuff wasn't in AJ.

I just interviewed him on the stage at the weigh ins. I'm here for. He was. He was burning a hole through my head, like he did not want to talk to me, you know what I mean? He was so focused and in large part because the stakes are so high. This isn't just like a fun gimmick fight. They've already said if he wins this fight, he's fighting the winner of Alexander Usick versus Tyson Fury, which is May 18. That's for undisputed heavyweight gold. There's never been a heavyweight undisputed champion, four belt era and so there's a lot at stake here for him and I think he's taking it very seriously. That being said, I think it's a very winnable fight for Francis. And anyone who is just dismissing his chances is making a huge mistake.

Part of this was Anthony Joshua's destiny, right? To lose to some underdogs a couple of times in a row, to seemingly have a breakdown. That's like, oh, this is it for this guy. Now he's going to end up on reality shows and then to come back and suck everybody back in and be the favorite again. I mean, he said three losses and I just don't trust him. And I thought he looked good in the last fight. I thought that was the sharpest one two stuff was great, and it just felt like a new Joshua. And yet I don't buy it and I don't believe it.

So the first loss, obviously, was the shocker against Andy Ruiz at Madison Square Garden in 2019.

One of the worst boxing losses of the century. Yeah.

One of the biggest upsets ever in the heavyweight division. It was Haseem Rahman, Lennox Lewis. It wasn't quite Buster Douglas, Mike Tyson, but it was a pretty damn shock, especially because Andy Reeves was relatively unknown and took that fight on short notice after Jarrell Miller got popped, came back in Saudi Arabia, his first fight here and won in December of 2019, had a very measured, calculated performance. People didn't think it was spectacular, but he did what he had to do to win. And then he meets Alexander usick a few fights later. And Usick is just incredible. He's one of the best fighters. That's nothing to sneeze at. And so, yes, he lost to him back to back, but he comes back in April of last year, the same night as the first night of WrestleMania. I remember watching it in the media room. He beats Jermaine Franklin. Solid performance. Then he beats Robert Hellenius, who took the fight on short notice after dillian white got popped. And then he just smoked Oto Valen, who almost beat Tyson Fury because of that cut a few years back. So to me, he's not good.

He looked really good. The last fight, I was shocked because I bet against him, because I'm like, oh, I'll bet against Anthony Joshua. This will be fun.

And let me tell you, like, oh.

Shit, he's going to win.

No, he looked amazing. And these two guys, man, off the top of my head, I think Francis weighed in at around 271, chiseled AJ 251. The thought that came to mind was WrestleMania three, Pontiac Silver dome, gorilla monsoon. The irresistible force meets the immovable object. Them two coming together. Those two guys looking like greek gods chiseled. Because, you know, Francis and Tyson facing off like Tyson just doesn't have the physique, he has the skill. But you look at him and you're like, what? That's the heavyweight champion of the world. The lineal heavyweight champion. AJ looks the part, Francis looks the part. And every time they faced off yesterday and today, Francis has this little smirk on his face, almost like he knows something that we all don't know. It's fascinating. He's a lot more comfortable this time. He's a lot more relaxed. He's already gone ten rounds, right, against Tyson. He dropped him. He almost beat him. I think he beat him. I can't wait. It's a fascinating fight because heavyweights, one punch, power, all that stuff. The Francis story is one of the greatest stories that I've ever seen. This guy's in his second boxing match ever and he goes from Tyson to AJ to now, potentially, if he wins this fight, he's fighting for the undisputed heavyweight.

So I thought that first fight was a draw and if you put a gun in my head and said, pick who won, I would have picked him because I thought he landed harder punches. You could even see their faces after. Part of the thing that was frustrating was he didn't have the ring experience to understand how to steal rounds that were kind of up for grabs. Right. And Fury, he won a couple of rounds just by hair and that, I think, ended up getting it. Plus, you kind of have to beat the champ and he sort of beat him, but he didn't totally take it. I bet this fight he'll probably have learned from that. He's not going to fuck around with this one.

The other thing is, the biggest knock on Francis, even dating back to his UFC career, has always been his gas know, like his first title fight against Stipe in just, he fizzled out and he's gotten a lot better in that regard. And I think there was a part of him that was trying to conserve energy because he was afraid of the idea of him gassing out in the later rounds. But now he knows he can go ten, three minute rounds and so I don't think that will be a problem as much. I think we're going to see a very aggressive Francis and I think we're going to see a very measured and calculated Anthony Joshua, because he knows all he has to do is win. Nothing flashy, nothing fluky, nothing crazy, just get the W. And now you're next in line for undisputed gold. So I think Francis is going to go out there and try to shock and awe him and I think AJ is going to be very similar to the AJ that we saw in the second Andy Ruiz fight where all he wanted to do was get the win, move on, survive in advance.

Did anyone ever knock out Nganu in UFC?

No. He lost to stipe, and then he had that loss to Derek Lewis right after the stipe fight. But he was a shot. Mean, he had no confidence. It's going down, at least as of right now, is one of the worst, if not the worst, UFC fights of all time. It's Derek Lewis versus Francis Nganu. It's in Las Vegas, July of that year, international fight. And I think they both threw a combined 15 strikes. They just stood there and Francis was gun shy. And Derek had a bad back, and everyone thought Francis was done. He was just like this guy that they built up. He gets a title shot and he'll fizzle out. And then he was able to build himself back up on route to becoming champion when he knocked out stipe. So, no, not only that, he's never really been rocked. He's never been knocked down. You can't say the same about Anthony Joshua.

And I think that you can. Important to note, what time exactly is this fight? Because we're on Saudi Arabia time, so it's very important.

It's a Friday night, which is great, because, as you said, UFC 299 is Saturday, so you don't have to worry about them bleeding into each other. It's Friday because there's a big f one race here, I'm told, and then Ramadan starts on Sunday, so they wanted it on Friday. And if my math is correct, the ringwalk will be at around five eastern. If my math is correct, if I'm doing the math, because it's going to be around 01:00 a.m. Local time, five eastern.

But this is why my son didn't care. He's missing the fight because he's got a lacrosse game tomorrow.

Come on, you got to sit that one out. This is massive. This is massive. It is. And by the way, the card is great. They're slowly but surely starting to figure out that you can't just have one good fight on these UFC model. Exactly. It's about time. The co main event is Lei Zhang versus Joseph Parker. These are two top six heavyweights. It's a phenomenal fight. So, yeah, very excited to be here and very curious to see what it's all about. I've never been here before, so I've never experienced a sporting event here.

So I'm curious to experience that UFC 299, which. Yes, the last time you're on, we were talking about how 299 is somehow better than 300, which makes no sense. But then you explain why it made a ton of sense. O'Malley versus vera. I watched the COVID fight. And on the one hand, O'Malley's doing this whole thing where it's like, you never really beat me. It's like, no, he actually really did beat. Know it's not Vera's fault your leg got hurt. And he did get him down and stopped the. That's. That's a loss. There's no excuses for that. On the other hand, if O'Malley gets revenge, this catapults him. Where.

Look, the UFC is in search of a face. It's in search of a superstar. They have a few, and obviously Connor is always going to be that guy, but he's a little inactive. Sean is on the cusp of being that guy. There's a few people that I feel like are on the cusp, but not quite there.

So who else is on that know?

So it's almost like different guys for different markets, like Islam. Khachev is huge with the muslim fans. He walks down the street in America, no one really knows who he is. Alex Pereira is starting to become a really big star as well. People love him, but he doesn't speak English. Can he connect with the american audience?

Can we get him a nickname? He needs some sort of.

Is his nickname, which is something in Portuguese, but I don't want the gimmick. Fair enough.

Sean has it all, right?

I mean, he has the look, he has the hair, he has the tattoos. He's buddies with the Nelk boys, all that. He just has everything that I feel like every kid your son's age would like.

Well, you get the quick rise, the kind of fall, and then the meteoric rise back.

But can I tell you something, Chito Vera? If he wins, he's from Ecuador, is a huge star in Latin America. And honestly, like, top five coolest human beings that I've ever met. Like, just a cool guy. He could be a star, too. So this is one of those classic ones. Know, sometimes you like to ask the promoter, like, come. Are you sort of rooting for someone? I feel like the UFC is in a win win here, either guy. If Sean wins, one step closer to becoming the face, the big star, et cetera. If Cheeto wins, that's a whole new market. And look, look what just happened with Ilya Toporia. He knocks out Alex Volkanovsky, and now you see him in front of 85,000 people at the Barnabeu in Real Madrid, and he's all over Spain. Spain has never been a market for the UFC, and this guy is now up there with the most famous footballers in Spain, like, hugging Jude Bellingham and Sergio Ramos. It's like, what the heck just happened? He just won his first title and now he's on the level of these.

So UFC winning Spain and France unexploded, right. The two biggest countries that they've conquered in the last couple of years exploding.

It's absolutely exploding.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

So it's really fun to see these things kind of come to fruition. France had know they didn't legalize MMA until a couple years ago in Spain. They never even had an event there. But all you need is that one guy to carry the flag. Allah Connor in Dublin and all that stuff in Ireland. And then it just changes everything once there's that local guy. And so, yeah, Sean is american, obviously, and the american fans treat the fighters a little bit different. No one's winning a UFC title and then is being brought out in front of a hundred thousand people at an NFL game or a college football game, et cetera, the equivalent of whatever Real Madrid is. They just treat them a little bit differently. But this is a big one. And by the way, I don't know if you made this connection. I certainly did. What happened to Jalen Brunson on Sunday is the exact same thing that happened to Sean O'Malley in that fight.

Oh, the knee contusion thing?

Well, with Sean it was more like his lower leg ankle, but he hit this perineal nerve that all of a sudden makes you feel like your foot has just like fallen off, dropped what they call it. And that's essentially what happened to Jalen. So I mean, you mean the scariest.

45 minutes of the last five years for Knicks fans?

Yeah, I was like in a ball. I was distraught. But it's crazy that that happened on the week of Sean's return fight against the guy who did it to him.

So on Fandel right now we're taping this Thursday, early afternoon Pacific time. O'Malley is -280 and I'm surprised. Plus 210. And my reaction was like, man, I thought that would be like -140 so Sean is like one of the most public UFC fighters now from a betting standpoint, it seems like.

Yeah, I'm really curious what that opened at. I would be surprised if it opened with those kinds of ODs because the gap is closer, in my opinion. And I mean, Cheetah won that fight fair and square. It wasn't like a fluke thing. It wasn't like he stepped the wrong way and broke his ankle. It was as a result of a kick and several kicks from Cheeto to Sean so he doesn't get the credit. And Sean is trying to wind him up a little bit and get under his skin when he says that stuff. But, yeah, I was surprised when I saw those a couple of days ago as well, those ODs.

Well, the COVID fights were pretty weird in general. They had a weird vibe and a weird energy to them. So if you're O'Malley, you can talk yourself into seven. Oh, here's why that happened. Now I'm going to get revenge now. But if he does get the revenge, see, you said it's good for either. Win is good for UFC. I actually disagree. I think they need O'Malley, at least in America. And, yeah, they just kind of need a guy like you said, Conor McGregor. I don't even remember the last time I watched Conor McGregor fight anyone.

It's been July 2021. July of 2021 was his, allegedly or definitely. Oh, no.

July 2024 for this year.

Well, no, June of 2024 is the return. The last fight was July of 2021 against Dustin when he broke his foot.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we're approaching three years, by the way.

Yes.

Obviously having a big star in America, especially one who's colorful with the hair and the look and all that stuff is great. Different fight, different circumstances this time. Number one, I think Cheeto has improved a lot. Number two, they're fighting in the bigger cage. That fight was at the apex, where it's a smaller cage, bigger cage. We'll see who it favors. And also, Cheeto has a tendency to start very slow and then pour it on. Guys. It happened against Frankie Edgar. It happened against Dominic Cruz. He didn't show up against Corey Sanhagen. So I think the first two rounds really going to tell a lot about this fight if it makes it there. If I'm O'Malley, I start out hot. I try to pour it on him because it usually takes him some time to, as they say in the fight game. Download the information.

Poirier against BSD.

What a fight. Speaking of French, MMA, BSD. Benoit Saint Denis is from France, and he wins this fight like he's on a rocket ship, by the way. Five round comain. A rare five round comain. Usually those are reserved for title fights or main events on fight nights, but Porier asked for five rounds and BSD didn't really have a leg to stand.

On, so he went with it -215 favorite. And could he be the next guy at stake?

1000%. He is violent. He's like scary violent. Great story, too.

A rare violent french guy was in.

The french army only started training MMA in 2019. Was in some crazy unit where he was in the hostage rescue unit. He would have to go in there.

Yeah.

This dude, you look at him and you're like, you have seen some stuff. Just look at his face and you're like, you have seen some stuff. But he's a gentleman. But you just know he's been in some places violent. His last Ko at MSG was violent. And here's the thing. He's on this run of incredible finishes, knockouts, et cetera, where he's coming off the knockout loss to Justin Gaethje.

And a bad July.

Yeah, it was a bad one. So it's like, sometimes it happens where the rubber meets the road and it's like. But I will say Poirier has all know. He has all the experience. He's been there. He's done that. This is a massive step up for Benoit Santini. His last fight was against Matt Trivola, who's great, but not on the level of Dustin Porier. He's ranked 11th, last I checked. He might have gone up a slot or two. And Poirier is ranked, like third.

So there's a bit of a gap there between DST is -215 on Fandel.

Yeah, because I think a lot of.

People think that Porier, well, it reminds me one of those march madnesses where it's like March Madness is favored by five points. You're like, what's going on with this? Yeah. Or twelve five, right? Yeah. It's a great fight. That's going to be an awesome one. My son. I texted my son. I said, aro is coming out today. What do you got? Sent me two questions. The first one was about MVP Michael Venom. Page the 36 year old former Bellator star. And Ben just texted me. He's like, I'm in class. I can't really. But is he too old?

Come on.

First of all, I love the fact.

That he asked about MVP because that shows that he's a legit hardcore fan. MVP has been Mr. Must see TV for the past decade. The issue is he's been fighting in Bellator, which doesn't get the same type of love and attention and all the buzz that the UFC gets. But he's the kind of guy who's, like, dancing in the cage and he's doing all kinds of crazy stuff and, like, Pokemon celebrations, Dragon Ball Z. He's incredible to watch. Finally, he leaves Bellator, he signs with the UFC, and they give him Kevin Holland, who's a tough out and this is the type of fight that Kevin Holland always thrives in because he's just bad against wrestlers. MVP is not going to go for a takedown at all. Like, he is a true blue kickboxer, if you will. But I think it's a very winnable fight for MVP because here's the thing.

Yes, 36, but he doesn't get hit.

He's gotten one knockout loss, and then the other loss was one where he was just out wrestled and I actually thought he won the fight.

He doesn't have a lot of wear.

And tear on his body, so forget the age. This is big for him.

And he saw he's a slight underdog. He's plus 106 on Fanduel. I was surprised.

I think a lot of that is because of Holland. He's got a strong fan base at this point, so close to the fights. A lot of it comes down to popularity, in my opinion, and Holland's a great fighter, too. But Kevin Holland fought wonder boy Thompson around a year and a half or so ago, another kickboxer, and lost that fight. And so I think there's a blueprint there for MVP and if he can win this fight, man, a potential fight between Michael Venom Page and Leon Edwards, two Brits at 170 in England, would be gigantic for the UFC.

Do you buy? We probably have enough data now to really figure this out, but these guys, once they pass 35, that was the thing. Especially after Volkanovsky last week or last month at 35, it's almost like with running backs in football, when they have over 370 carries, it's like, oh, this is bad. Do you buy that there might be some sort of age point for UFC guys that just once we get past this, this is starting to get really dicey.

Yeah, but I think 35 is too young to be honest. Okay, maybe for title fights, that's the line. But for these up and coming fights, I don't think 35 is that number. 37, 38. That range, I don't like mid 30s.

Coming off, getting knocked out.

No.

To me, the combo of that is like, all right, now I'm out. Dustin Porier.

That's exactly Dustin Porier. And that's why he's the underdog going into that fight, right?

Yes.

That is not a good spot, especially. He's taken a lot of damage throughout his career, even though I think he could win this fight because we have yet to see BSD on this level. I know the 35 thing is like a hot topic right now, but I feel like that's more for title fights and this is a little different.

Ben's other question. Oh, Ben also wanted to point out that MVP only fought Bellator bums.

Ben is such a troll, by the way.

I saw his video. He's 16.

Oh, my God. He says these things. He's like a real. He's like the guys that I block on Twitter. The lingo that he uses, bellator bums. What does that mean? Michael Chandler. Was he a bell tour bum? Look at him now.

Ben will be doing his UFC 299 predictions this week. YouTube. He says, ask about the six foot seven taekwondo fighter who's debuting. That's the other thing he cares about. Who's this guy?

I love it. He's from Cuba. He's another guy who could be a potential despine is his name. Another potential huge star. His knockouts are. And by the. Again, like, what a deep cut. This card is like nine deep in terms of big names. And he goes off the grid and goes for the debutante from Cuba.

Yeah.

Ben, man. I mean, he should just be hosting the ringer MMA show at this point, if I'm being honest.

Ten years from now, maybe.

Yeah, no, he's great. Must see TV as well, by the way.

He'll just be added. He'll just be the fourth. It's like, oh, that's fine. Bill's son is in now. He's now our fourth. They're just arguing.

Is that kind of like when Noah Eagle gets the Clippers gig or.

Bit different, but no, Eagle's good. So maybe if Ben's good.

Yeah, he's good.

He's earned it. My daughter's boyfriend is really into UFC, too. Maybe that'll be the show. My daughter's boyfriend.

Such a weird thing with.

That.

You guys all watch together.

The workshop. Now he's in Boston.

Can I just ask you a question? What's it like saying that line, daughter, boyfriend?

Yeah.

I just felt like my daughter's seven, so I have a ways to go.

But listen, in your head, your daughter always stays, like, four to nine. That's just where you are mentally. It's just seeing a guy with her arm around your daughter. I don't know how you ever get.

Used to getting sweaty?

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Sounds awful. Blades versus Almeida.

Ooh, that's a great.

So there's some. There's some heavyweight, like, winner of this might be fighting for the title and two or three UFCs.

Is this a Ben question? Maybe like a Ben question?

Yeah. This is Ben's focus on, are we going to actually get a heavyweight title fight at some point in 2024.

Okay.

Yeah, it's a big concern. Here's the fascinating thing. The UFC is going to Brazil on May 4, the headliner was supposed to be Alex Pereira against Jamal Hill. The problem was they didn't have a headliner for UFC 300, so they took the 301 headliner, which was perfect for Rio, because Pereira is from Brazil, and they moved it to 300, thus leaving them without a main event for 301, which is crazy. So there are some people who believe if Jelton Almeida wins, they might do Almeda versus Tom Aspinal for the interim title at 301 because Almeida.

So he would have two months recovery time. Yeah, but if he'll be fighting again. Yeah.

Look, they're going to say, you want.

The title fight or not, or it's like you knock the dude out in 90 seconds, you're fine. Yeah, but if it's like a three round war, then the whole thing, we're both. Then they won't be able to do that.

Now we've got nothing.

Yeah, this is what a lot of people won yet.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. There's Alejandro de Pontosha, who's the flyway champion, but I can't headline a pay per view. That's a tough sell. I mean, I guess they could headline it, but if I'm ESPN, I'm like, really? This is the best you.

So you're doing a heavyweight title fight.

That's what's. Yeah.

Are they breaking up the bills before we go?

What's going on? What a weird time.

A lot of guys cut left at the altar.

Sort of thought Hyde's time was coming to an end. Poirier a little bit, even though he just resigned. Mitch Morse was a bit of a surprise. Is Diggs next? Do you think Diggs is gone?

He's like the oldest guy in the team, though.

They're not rebuilding, but it looks to.

Me like they're kind of throwing away a salary cap year and figuring Josh Allen will just take them to ten and seven or eleven and six anyway because he's Josh Allen. But they're really using. The Pats did this a couple of times with Brady where they were like, we got to reset some stuff, but we still have Tom. We'll be fine. But it does feel like. And then you try to hit the draft is the other thing. They basically have to crush the draft and get four or five guys who play real minutes for them.

Yeah, they got some cap space as well. I don't know. Hyde and Poyer were like the heart and soul of that defense, so it's tough to see them go. But I still believe as long as we have number 17, I'm feeling good.

By the way, is white gone or not gone? No.

Yeah, he's gone, too. He's been.

You had. The secondary was like one of the. Oh, my God, their secondary is so fast. It's smart. It's the eyes and ears of that defense. And now the secondary is gone.

ACL and then Achilles injury. Tough to come back from.

Ask Clay Thompson. But Morse.

Yeah, Morris was a huge. I mean, he was also heart and soul, and I know Josh loves him, so. Yeah, bit of a bummer by the. You're. I know you're trying to wrap me up here, but no mention whatsoever. I actually thought so. This is funny. I thought you were calling me about two things. I thought you asked me to come on about two things. 299. Didn't even cross my mind because my time zones are all messed up. I thought you were calling about Joshua Francis. Clearly not. And then I thought you were calling about Jake Paul.

Mike Tyson.

Have you seen this?

Yeah. Oh, I've seen it.

This is nuts.

I don't even want to pay for it. Sal said, I'll pay for you and me. I'll pay for it twice. I'm so no pay per view. What do you mean? Netflix. This is crazy. Oh, Jesus.

This is Netflix's first. They're usurping the WWE thing. Obviously, they're all on board, but Netflix's first foray into combat sports at and T stadium. July 20.

Too big. They're not selling out at and t stadium.

Mike Tyson.

Mike Tyson. I don't. Even older than I am. He's like 30 years.

Are you in or are you in?

Well, of course I'm going to watch it, but I'd like to present the front now that I'm not going to watch it. But, I mean, it's a brilliant move by Jake Paul. Crazy, right? It's like, oh, my God, he's fighting Mike Tyson. Who hasn't been good in 30 year age gap.

I was at his fight last week in Puerto Rico. He beat a guy named Ryan Borland, 17 two. And everyone said he was an Uber driver. It lasted two minutes and 50 seconds, and so people said they wanted to see him fight a sexy name again. I think this qualifies. But to me, the most interesting part about it all is Netflix. As someone who loves the sports media biz and all that stuff, like, wow, is Netflix getting into the combat business? I know WWE, but are they getting into boxing?

Too crazy. Well, like everything Netflix does, this is a major test and they're going to see what works. When people came on, did it use the know, they're in like major, major test mode with all the live stuff. But the wrestling part was the raw day was interesting because that's 52 Mondays a year. And I think that was one of the reasons they wanted it. It's just like steady. It's not like, oh, here's the season now it's over. It's just every Monday night we have this. So the pay per views is a different model. That's pretty haphazard, by the way, conspicuous.

By its absence in the press release was the word Monday night. They have yet to confirm that raw is going to be a Monday night show moving forward. Is that true?

Yeah. What other night would it be?

Think about it. Our friend Nick Khan is a very savvy guy. And if I'm Nick Khan, I look at Monday Night Football 17 weeks out of the year. Do we really want to keep going up against Monday Night Football, especially as the ESPN ABC deal is getting better and better. Then you've got the national championship game. That's another Monday, the football one. Then you've got the basketball one. So now we're talking 19 Mondays out of the year. At least you're going up against pretty heavy competition as opposed to perhaps, I don't know, I'm just throwing out a Tuesday or a Wednesday where you'll own that.

Yeah, Tuesday you're not competing against really anything ever. There's never football.

If you go back to the press.

Release, the word Monday was never in it. And just kind of digging around, is.

This a conspiracy theory from you or have you done some.

No.

Kicking the tires on this.

I asked and I got some. Like, look, could it end up Monday?

Absolutely.

But I do think it was not a coincidence that it wasn't in there.

Yeah. Because the other thing that happened is the NFL moved in that Monday night playoff game. There's actually another one.

There's another one?

Yeah. So there's probably at least 20 terrible Monday night things. That's interesting. So Tuesday night raw, how would that work with the scheduling and all that stuff? Yeah, the pay per view on Sunday and then the next night, but now it's Saturday.

They've moved to Saturdays pretty much. So it's not even the next night thing anymore.

Good point.

We're talking the longest running show on cable. Moving Days is a pretty big deal to me. Like, Mondays has always been wrestling since the mid 90s. It's going to be really interesting. Imagine they go off Mondays, right? Imagine they say, let's go Tuesdays or Wednesdays, whatever it is, and then aw.

Goes Mondays to try to steal the. Just to say, all right, we'll take this. Crazy. What a time. Jesus, I love it. Tuesday night, raw. That doesn't even sound right.

Again, I'm not reporting this. Please don't. Someone.

No, but I think the fact that.

It was in the press release wasn't in there. And some wrestling websites picked up on this, too. So it's not just me.

Like, pulling one thing with Netflix and the VOD schedule in general is that Tuesday is usually the day when the new movies come out we need. They're like movies you can buy or rent. Yeah, it's usually the new. The schedule is basically Tuesday and Friday. Friday is when the streamers heading into the weekend are like, we've got this and we have this. And then Tuesday is like, Barbie is now available to rent or buy on Wednesday.

Now we're going up against Aw.

Or maybe they think Tuesday is like one of the two big Netflix days. So let's load it. And now we have raw on Tuesdays. Yeah, it'll be interesting.

Sorry, Wednesday feels too far away. Tuesday or Monday.

All right, give us two predictions for the weekend and then we'll go.

Francine Gunn is going to shock the world and MVP is going to win.

Okay.

BSD.

Poirier doesn't go the distance.

I like it. All right, you're doing an MMA show after?

Yes, we're doing a live show. We already have our preview up on the feed, Spotify feed. And then Saturday night I'll be landing right as the prelims start. 18 hours journey home. Jesus, it is rough just to watch the fights. And then we'll do the post show and then I'll be up Sunday morning. So while you're walking your dog Sunday morning, you can listen to us half.

Asleep talking about the fights immediately after. Good to see you. Have a great weekend. Safe travels.

Thank you.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Jesse Lopez and Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerruti. Thanks to Jimmy Kimmel. Thanks to era Homani. Thanks to Rob Mahoney. I'm going to be back on Sunday night with rosillo. Enjoy the weekend on the way. I don't have with him on the wayside. On the front must be 21 plus in president select states. Fando is offering online sports wager in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino, LLC. Gambling problem. Call 1800 Gambler or visit fandel.com. Rg in Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia, you can call 1800 next step or text next step to 53342. In Arizona, call 188-78-9777 or visit ccpg.org. Chat. Connecticut 1809 with it in Indiana, 1805 two two 4700, or visit ksgamblinghelp.com. In Kansas 18770 stop in Louisiana mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland, 1800 gambler. Net in West Virginia, or 1805 two two 4700. In Wyoming, hope is here. Visit gamblinghelpelinema.org or call 803 2750 50 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts, or call 18778 Hope NY or text Hope NY in New York.