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Oh you are as I g m80. I see dotcom slash Rogen and get yourself some delicious mushroom coffee. Full discount applied at checkout. My guest today is one of my favorite mixed martial arts journalists. I've enjoyed his work for years. We've talked back and forth. He was supposed to come on the podcast way back in the day in March before the world went fucking haywire.

But he made it. He made the trip and I had a great time talk to him. I hope you enjoy it.

Please welcome the great and powerful Luke Thomas girlfriend podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, trained by Joe Rogan podcast My Night All Day. Hello, Luke. Hi, Joe. We did it. We made it. We finally made it.

I wasn't sure it was going to happen.

Yeah, well, kudos to you for taking the chance to come here during the pandemic.

I know they're all very oppressive pandemic. Well, we were supposed to do it in March. Yeah. And then the world turned upside down, literally.

Basically, but we figured out a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's is it. You said you did some traveling. Would you do traveling for before this. So I went to the Charlo Brothers double header.

Oh you can son. Which was interesting because I got there early in the week and the casino was empty. That that bitch was slamming by Saturday night.

I was not I had not been in crowds since March. Right.

So that was a bit weird. But so the casinos packed. It was packed. Yeah. Not like not like to the rafters but crowded. Do they have rules like with this Native American territory. They make the rules. So yes. I mean they do have the normal protocol, like there is hand sanitizing stations everywhere. You have to wear a mask.

But if you're at the table and you're drinking, they just pull the mask right down.

Yeah, even if it wasn't, that's like you can imagine how fucking dirty those poker chips are to be Excalibur. You ever seen chips at the Excalibur? Holy shit.

But anyway, so I was just, you know, I mind my business because it was actually in the Sun, the Mohegan Sun Arena. So we would just like beeline to the to the place there.

And then last week I went back to Jersey City, which is where the studios are for my short time.

So so that is interesting that if it's on Native American ground, they can kind of do whatever they want pretty much, which is why the casinos there in the first place. Right.

And again, I would say, you know what? Most people were they were pretty good about compliance.

I did not feel like. Like, honestly, I thought people were more compliance and I like the airport yesterday, all these fucking week constituted people that pulled a mask below their nose.

I want to fucking hit all of them with a car antenna. I hate every single one of them.

It's not I just want to look at it's like it's not a hardship. Just put on the fucking mask.

Not only that, if you have it below your nose, you're not doing anything. I was like, just take it off. Yeah, I feel better if you had it off. Right.

Because at least you're like you're an honest broker in this exchange, you know what I mean? So it was fine.

You know, they tested us a bunch of times. We were there.

Have you seen the new things like these new hazmat suits? They're selling like it's literally like go to John Joseph, John Joseph Kromagg. Go to his Instagram page. Do you know John Joseph? I do not forgive me.

He was his lead singer. The Chromatics was also a triathlete. And, you know, he is a firm believer in strengthening your own immune system.

And he seems to be said for that. Look at this. Look at this. Holy Mother of Jesus.

Worse, we're in space. I mean, this is this is the future.

And it apparently has some fog proof attachment, some way somehow or another.

And you put your hand if you have to scratch your face, there's little zips on the side you put your hand through.

You know, I appreciate the spirit of innovation here, but this is a black mirror episode.

Is it?

Is it is. Well, you know, how many people do you know that have gotten it a bunch. Yeah, me too.

Jamie is the latest, Jamie. But they're saying which was which is very interesting. They're saying it really depends upon what kind of dose you're getting. Right. You obviously got a very mild dose. You had a very mild case of it.

It's not the mass are important, right? Because even if you get it, someone has it. You know, they're not wearing it properly.

They're not getting sprayed with this huge amount, especially if someone sneezes on your son or that's the thing with drunks like bars or super spreader events. Right. Because everyone's like drunk talk.

That's what I miss. I miss the bars a little bit. I miss the movie theater and I miss the bar. And I'm not like, you know, till 4:00 a.m. I got a kid, but, you know, just saddling up a little bit, having a couple of cocktails. Yes. I miss that a little bit, to be honest with you.

I did. Well, me too. I just got through sober October of about hey, it's November 2nd.

Yeah. You want to drink? I'll drink. I was going to lift after this, but I'll have a drink if you have a couple of drinks and still left. That's right.

I'm forty. I can have a couple of drinks and think right. Much less lift weights. But I'll try. I'll try. But you know what never gets talked about.

It deserves to be mentioned here. Send in some whiskey.

I know a guy who was an E.R. doctor in New York and he's still there now, obviously. But through March, this doesn't get talked about. But it's worth mentioning there is.

So I knew a bunch of people that went to Iraq because I was in a Marine Corps, but I got out right before my unit sent. So I was very, very lucky in that regard. But a bunch of them came back super fucked up. You know, they're all fine now, but super fucked up. These doctors who were in New York in March, they all have PTSD watching day after day. Remember, there was times when New York was losing 800 people a day.

And he was telling me, like, you know, you hold up enough phones to someone who's dying. And so their kids are crying on the other end of FaceTime. And you do that day after day after day. He started smoking the whole thing.

We don't talk enough about that.

I don't think it's bad enough now. And he was even saying, it's like if you're 25, you're fine. But like all of these at risk folks just coming in and collapsing one after the other, it fucked him up big time.

Imagine, you know, this is the also falls in line with the conversation that I've been having a lot about. Cops like, oh, God doesn't people don't understand what it is to be a cop. Like, all you see is these terrible videos like George Floyd. You know, just imagine being a person who every day you're seeing suicide, murder, rape, car accidents, you're constantly worried that the next car you pull over is going to be the guy that shoots you in the head.

And you've had improper training, probably. Oh, yeah. Your ass. You're asked to do responsibilities you couldn't possibly handle. Yeah, the policy failures of the world are just pushed onto you. And, you know, you you had to deal with the dregs of society. Like certainly obviously the George Lloyd murder is horrific, horrific in every way imaginable. But my stepfather but my mom eventually got divorced, mother and stepfather for a time. And he was a cop for 30 years in Washington, D.C..

You know, I'm not saying he had the most enlightened ideas of the world, but when you spend a few months in the hospital because they broke all your ribs and you had to deal with, you know, two year old with a gun and, you know, every other situation, it will warp you.

It will affect your moral calculations.

And if you have improper training and a proper funding, it only exacerbates the problem. Like we asked cops to do way too much shit and it results in a lot of problems.

And the job like now, good luck trying to find really intelligent people that could do other things.

You know, right now, no one wants to be a cop because the cops are the bad guys. They're the enemies.

And, you know, it's like defunding the police is now like a mantra that the left likes to use. Right.

Which they use to police. And by the way, I'm a member of the left. And so I, I when I when I first heard it, I was like I didn't know what it meant. And they like to tell you that it means one thing.

I don't think that it means one thing. It means a series of different things.

To some it means actually what they say, which is which is what they claim, which is utterly demolish it and start from scratch for others.

Thank you. For others, it means I'm not going to that nuclear option, but sort of rearranging funds to go to a different policy or other kind of intervention projects, you ice or noise.

Um, it depends on how good the whiskey is there.

Joe Rogan, it's still Austin. I've not tried it because I'll try. I'll try it. All right. Here you go.

We tried it when I was doing the. Cheers, salute. So. Hmm, smells nice. It's pretty damn good.

That does not eat. That's good. Yeah, it's a bummer.

And, you know, it's a really a bummer when you see cops scrap and they can't like how did you get this far, like your actual police officer and you never learn how to you don't even know how to distribute your weight on the ground.

I understand that. Quite frankly, I was I was like you.

I did six years in the Marine Corps.

The the Marine Corps has this reputation somewhat deserve it about their being supermoto and shit relative to the other forces.

And some of that is true and some of that is deserved. I had never seen I remember the first time I've ever been to the Mojave Desert at all.

Yeah. So there's the the Twentynine Palms is out there. I'll never forget the first time I was Twentynine Palms because there is fuck all to do at Twentynine Palms.

And so the Marine Corps wisely just invests in weight rooms. It was the nicest gym I'd ever been in in my life.

And it was nothing but Höss Marine after. I mean, they're all on steroids. They had to be I don't think I don't think any commanding officer gave a fuck and they were all huge. And they live this gung ho life and blah, blah, blah.

But then when it came time for hand-to-hand combat ops training, MC Map is shit.

It's not good. It's better than nothing. But if you unless you do a straight up army combatives like which is a best thing maybe the army's ever done for themselves in terms of that kind of aim for policy, you get nothing.

And every cop I know who has ever trained, there's a bunch of guys who I know from very different martial arts schools.

They took the initiative to go train outside of what law enforcement was providing them.

But like, this is what I mean, they don't get any of the shit or they if they do, it's like, you know, here's how to get out of someone's choking you. And this very almost like a women's self-defense class is really the extent to which they learn.

That's ridiculous. Yeah. It's not much it should be mandatory.

And not only should it be mandatory, it should be like a part of the curriculum. You know, JoCo Willink said that they should spend 20 percent of their time training. And I think he's right. I think he's got the money for that, though.

It's a good question. I mean, the real real consideration should be put to why don't we have the money for that?

Also, I would challenge a little bit, if I may, which is I saw in the wake of the George Floyd thing, there was a lot of people like how do we most people were basically horrified by that. But the question is, what do you do about it? And so I saw some op ed, I think I'm a junky published one from this guy. I'm sure he was well-intentioned, but he was like, I think kind of grace.

He had some similar ideas because he really believes in the transformative power of jiujitsu, right?

I do. I do to an extent. I mean, here's what I would say. It's the same thing going through the military, like if you don't if you don't succumb to the process, it will not redevelop your character.

Right. You have to willingly give yourself to that.

Just giving cops jujitsu training does not force that transformation. So while I think it would help in certain situations, it could exacerbate existing problems with whatever cop has deranged or bad training about the world. And now. Oh, wait, now you know Camorra's and you're a fucking asshole, right?

That's a problem. That is a problem. You know, you're right in that respect. If you do get an asshole and you just teach him a few moves, you could create a worse asshole.

But I would hope.

But the problem is like in normal jujitsu, the way jujitsu transforms your life, it's not transforming your life in the stress of you being a police officer. And people were in all the things that we talked about, PTSD or people shooting you, dealing with all the horrific things you see every day. You're essentially you're going through this struggle and that struggle sort of steals you and makes you a better person.

Yeah.

If you went through that struggle, along with the chaos of the police academy or of other police duty, I would imagine best case scenario is it alleviates some stress.

It helps you get past a lot of the bullshit that you would normally it would normally eat at you.

And it also allows you to relieve some tension.

And, yeah, I just I don't know that I would for cost reasons. I don't know that I would mandate that kind of training. I think I would offer particular forms of incentives to get it to the right kind of folks.

I wouldn't mandate it just because you're going to have situations where people have hand to hand experiences. You should know how to distribute your weight.

Fair enough. But what I would say doing that by itself would not be sufficient.

That along with other forms of reform, so that we're asking police to do the things that police are supposed to do and not the things that are not supposed to do, I think in conjunction, it's never one solution.

Right? Most problems in the world require a series of interventions. Yeah. Do those in conjunction. You're going to get a better policing.

When I was 19, I worked as a security guard at a concert place called Great Woods and Mansfield, Massachusetts. And it was a short amount of time. I wasn't there for about a few months over the summer, but during that time I recognized a really clear us versus them mentality between the police or the security force, rather, and the concert goers. And it happened very quickly, really quickly, where, you know, I saw security guys beat the shit out.

The first day on the job. I saw this guy get beaten up with a walkie talkie because he stole a golf cart like our nineteen year old fresh faced kid like what is going on here?

And this guy, his name is Alleycat, tackles this kid who had stolen one of their golf carts and he's hitting him in the face with a walkie talkie, kind of like what kind of job that I fucking signed up for. I mean, and it was only like, you know, fifteen bucks an hour, I would imagine.

I don't really remember. But I remember thinking real early on, like, this is a this is a very strange how I like very quickly develop this us versus them mentality.

I've also noticed, you know, back when I was 24, I was working doors at various bars in New York City to make some money to make ends meet because New York City was crazy expensive and people and I was lifting weights like crazy.

I was huge, you know, the whole bit. And I'll never forget people would always tell me. They're like, oh, I bet people don't want to mess with you. And I was like, it is totally the opposite. Drunk's right. If you got a badge on, they want to fuck with you a bunch don't.

But there's going to be a certain kind of person. Oh, he's big and tall and muscly or whoever anybody. You know, you've got sleeves of tattoos. That is exactly who they target. There's a certain kind of guy who's like, you know what? I'd like to see what happened if I tried to to ride that ride, you know?

Yeah. Chuck Liddell. So, like, when he was in his prime, guys would fuck with him. Not not the least bit surprised. You're like, dude, are you fucking deathwish? What's wrong with you? They have a death wish. Well, some people are just really stupid.

You ever seen that on your article? It's like average study. Average man overestimates fighting ability by four thousand percent. You're seeing that most people think they know if push came to shove. I know a little something. Something.

Yeah, you don't know. Fuck no. Fuck.

All the humiliation of seeing those guys on the mat is really adorable when you see a person who thinks they're fairly tough, just get manhandled and rag doll.

Yeah, that's the tragedy of modern M-m because there was a time where it was like jujitsu, really all that good. And then make videos of some guy coming in like I'm a fuck all these black belts up. And then he goes in there and they wear him out like a working like a summer job, you know what I mean?

For the Gracies, it was like the greatest promotional scheme ever. Amazing to have people come in and fight them.

Yeah, come on, guys. And they would be pretty gentle with those guys.

When you really think about I mean, they hit him a little bit, but mostly they just strangled him.

Yeah, basically that's true. But we don't really see that anymore because basically the word got out like maybe don't do that.

Well, it's kind of crazy when you think about the history of martial arts. Martial arts were around for since the dawn of time, people have been trying to figure out better ways to fuck people up since they figured out language and figured out how to teach skills, they've been working on techniques. And now until 1993, did we really know what worked?

You have a quote. I have an old DVD back when it really mattered, I bought it in I want to see 2004.

So this must have been one of the early editions of, like, Ultimate Knockouts. You know, I think Phil Baroni. Fuck it up, Dave. My name was on the cover or something like that.

And you had a quote and it was maybe was like 2003.

I think that's what it was. So I figured maybe it's like one of the Miami shows or whatever it was.

You had a quote and it was Martial arts has evolved more in the last 20 years than it has in the last 2000. Yeah, with the exception of weaponry, that is 1000 percent true. Yeah, a million percent true in weaponry.

Really like guns. You want to have weapon guns and knives. You know, knives have been around forever. Swords I guess I generate swords.

I don't know enough about hand-to-hand combat with weapons to say one way or the other.

But I just know as it relates to martial arts, the fast forwarding that happened from 93 on relative to before it was the sort of slow process and then it hit overdrive.

You know, it's really very satisfying to me is that when I first got involved in the UFC in 1997, it was when I was on Newsradio and the people on Newsradio literally look at me like I was doing porn.

Like, what are you doing? Like, why are you doing this? Like, you're going to ruin your career. Yeah. And I was like, oh, I don't know. I'll tell you, I like it. You know, my whole life I've been a martial artist. Now, finally, someone did the thing that I've always asked him to do my whole life. I was like, I want to know what would happen if you got a judo guy with a boxer, if you got to this with that.

And then the UFC is like, let's let's find out. And then I'm like, oh, my God, it's real. It's happening to me. It was like someone came along with like the Willy Wonka golden ticket, like it was happening was real.

And then when they offered me a job, I was like, fuck, yeah, I'm going.

How did you get that job? How do they know you did your agent put in?

My manager was friends with Campbell McLaren. And Campbell McLaren is amazing. He's a great guy and he's been on the podcast. And Campbell, had he had an opening and he said we need someone to do the post-flight interviews. And it was, you know, very little money. And you have to take little by little those little Buddy Holly Kaelyn planes. You can fly to Dothan, Alabama. That was the first gig I did. I was actually supposed to be in Albany, but then they kicked it out in New York.

And then last minute they moved the octagon to death in Alabama.

And I was so happy. It was the debut of Vitor Belfort back when we were calling him Victor.

He was so they were calling him Victor Gracy.

And I was trained. This is what I was training Crosson Gracies and they were calling Victor Victor. I mean, the early posters were v.i. k t o r graisse like he was Russian or something.

I don't know why they call him Viktor. Like, I don't understand why they did that, but he was using the last name Gracy and so he was fighting, he fight fought John Haas over in Hawaii and beat the shit out of John Haas. And you know, I was training in his school and I thought he was like impossible, stop.

And he was nineteen. And when he was nineteen, his hands were a blur of light. He was so fast and so aggressive and so different than any other Brazilian jujitsu guy because we thought a Brazilian jujitsu guys and he was a black belt. But we thought of black belts as being someone who just wants to get a hold of you, drag you to the ground, strangle you or get you in armor. And all of a sudden you got this guy who's wearing gloves because nobody else is wearing gloves or very few people think about wore gloves and just lighting people up with punches.

And we're like, holy shit.

And so just by chance and fortune, I was training at his school and got to be on the card and doing the post-flight interviews, the very first time that he fought in the UFC. Wow. Yeah. So I got to see him.

He fought trade Telamon. Remember Trey has in the PAC.

Yeah, he got a car accident. He's a little kid. He can still strike his ass off that he could.

It was tough as shit and he had no idea. No one knew what Victor was vetoed. I'm going back in time but we called. Yeah, I think I may have even said Victor a couple of times during the broadcast because that's what we called him at the school. Everybody called him Victor. Wow. And then also. And it was Vitor.

So you had Anglicised his name a little bit because no one I don't know, actually the call when the call came through.

Marty Well, how about Faida? His real name is Furo. Yeah, yeah. I mean puter. Yahn Like no one like Peter. Everybody called him Peter for a long time in the UFC. It was a couple of years and then finally they were like, oh, it's puter. I'm like I could say that. Why didn't you tell me that earlier? Like they just decided to amplify it. But Fadal is probably the biggest example that. Right, right.

Because like field theodores not a hard name to say something. That's the biggest example.

That's one of them.

But he's the great I mean, if you want to think about heavyweight greats, you've got. EPA came and Fattah, those are the three you got to choose and to have the Mount Rushmore of heavyweights, you have to have Faida it wasn't some anonymous figure, but you get introduced to them the wrong way.

It's hard to undo that. Right. So I got introduced to him in private as Fettah.

Yeah, I'm still saying. And that will just stick forever despite how it actually is supposed to be.

I know it's if I was friends with them I'd probably say it right. But if you ever met them, no, I would never have had one studio.

Not the most thrilling interview ever. Wow. He didn't give much.

He's not there to give. No, I found that out later. I'm like, I don't think he wanted to be here.

Now he's going to give obscure things, you know, to your point about like a. The origin of things I remember, like most people, like I've been watching you offseasons, USC one, well, I didn't because I just didn't know I was a 12 year old kid at the time. I you know, you only know when someone shows you for the most part, this is pre Internet, so you definitely only know that shit. And I had a family friend who was involved in a martial art that was South Korean called to Kong, which what apparently was the official.

So taekwondo is, as I understand it, and someone is going to correct me on this. But as I understand it, it was explained to me was that taekwondo is the official sport of South Korea.

But to Kong was the official martial art or self-defense system of the military.

Well, Tikhon Teekay Wilens, what we're taught was like an earlier version of taekwondo. I don't know anything about it.

Generals chase General Che Youngie. He was the guy I was a I used to teach taekwondo and General Che Young-Hee was the guy who really formulated taekwondo into a system. And my instructor, John Kim was one of Che Young, these original students. So I got real lucky that I got it from the route. I got early taekwondo rough like attacking taekwondo before.

It was like more of a point fighting.

Well, whatever the his background, I can't speak to to accurately. All I know is that I remember was the summer of God, was it 95, 96, something like that.

And he was like, have you seen this skinny Brazilian dude that your fucking people up? That's always how they introduce it, right? Yeah. And I didn't believe it.

He's like, let's go to Blockbuster. Went down to Blockbuster. It's the one down there by Barracks Row for folks here in Washington, DC listening. It's now a farmers market or a U.S. market. And it used to be Blockbuster. I went down in there and I got UFC four was the first one I ever saw.

For me, it was to lose. To me, I was four and obviously at four I think it was was three.

He had skipped before you come back and forth, IMO, what was the one where he had I forget the genesis, but there was enough in the video where he was just like lighting these people up in the way, like how the fuck is this possible?

And it's been politicized now. It takes a whole different meaning. But I truly was red at that moment. Like there was a eureka moment and the lights go on.

You're like, wow, it's really weird. That red pill has been politicized now because it's such a great term. Isn't this a great term? Like you just see Matrix fantasy, Laurence Fishburne given a choice, you know?

Yeah, it's been really co-opted because that was the name that Radio Raheem came up with for the radio Raheem, the boxing giant. Later he came up with that for this to this day. And I'm like, yeah, that guy.

Yeah. I'm not sure if that's a bummer, man.

That Deontay Wilder stuff that's going on right now, he's he's released three different excuses. The first one was the weight vest. The thing that he was wearing, that crazy costume weighed forty pounds, apparently towards legs out. The next one was that there was a bunch of people saying that Tyson Fury's gloves weren't attached correctly. So the gloves were extended. So he was hitting them with the knuckles and the glove part was not really attached. It was like so he was catching on with the part that's supposed to be over the wrist.

Not correct. Not true. And easily provable. The next one, he said egg weights.

He said he had egg weights and say this is recently a couple of days ago. Then yesterday there was an article that said that he believes that he was his water was poisoned by his own trainer and Mark Breeland was a part of that.

Understand, for folks you mean I don't know who Mark Breeland is, former, I think, Olympic gold medalist, world champion across two different weight divisions, if I'm not mistaken. He is the voice of sanity or was told he was dismissed in that corner. That was the guy that threw the towel for him, who I mean, Breeland should be thanked.

Yes. By Wylder and his camp until the end of time. His other trainer, I forget his last name starts with a D. He was out there at the post for a press conference being like, you know, I don't know if that's how it's like you fucking.

Yes, man, are you kidding me? Yeah.

Breeland took it upon himself to say, I don't save the guy's life, but certainly make the right call for holding the contest. He was thanked by being dismissed and now essentially dragged through the mud for utterly what I'm guessing or utterly baseless accusations about poisoning his own fighter.

I mean, maybe Tyson Fury is fucking awesome. That seems like the simplest explanation.

Well, for all of Tyson fury changed his strategy. And also, you have to realize that Tyson fury in the first fight was coming off of multiple year battle with depression, mental illness, drinking, got suicidal thoughts. He talked to my podcast about driving his Ferrari and almost slamming into a bridge. He's like, I was I was pedal to the metal. And I was thinking about slamming into this bridge and they changed his mind.

And I just slowly worked his way in shape, got healthy again, got his mind right again and pulled it back around.

But when he fought Deontay Wilder the first time, his father didn't want him to take the fight. He's like, you're not healthy enough yet. You're not ready yet. And he did his best. He fought well, but it was a draw. By the time they fought. The second time he was in tip top condition, he had gone through the camp for the first fight. His body was completely recovered from all the abuse of alcohol and cocaine and all the shit that he was doing.

And then he took on the Krunch trainer, Sugar Hill, and then his whole strategy changed.

He's like, the guy does not fight well off the heel, off the back foot. Let's. Let's move him back and Tyson Fury is fucking enormous, you know, he's huge, six, nine. Yeah. And he came into the fight, I think, to 80.

And so he just pressed him and pressed him and just was throwing bombs. And I think Deontay Wilder expected that Dante, while there, expect him to run and move and jab and fight the same way he fought in the first fight. And instead, Tyson Fury just came right at him and just clipped him hard and often. And I think if you go back to their first fight and you look at how when Tyson Fury got dropped in the 12th, rose like Lazarus and then came back, survived and then started winning the round.

Right. And then I think he realized from that moment on all the way to beat this guys to back them up. Right.

And then he took that strategy. Sugarhill, of course, like KROK, legendary, aggressive attack.

I mean, they're like the people who are my fans who have shoot the box. They like to shoot the box of boxing. Right. If you think about it like aggressive attacking multiple champions General McClellan, Tommy Hearns, I mean, the list goes on and on. And he employed that sort of attacking strategy. And he's a fucking masterful boxer, too.

That's the other part about I mean, folks don't realize he can play the defensive game. I think you saw it in the auto vallen fight.

He's so long and has such good trunk movement, you can actually lean on the ropes and the punches go in front because he's so tianlong, he can he can play that game.

Well, the Klitschko fight. Right, exactly. It's boxing. Vladimir Klitschko is one of the greatest ever, wasn't the most thrilling fighter.

I mean, the wider fight was much better. But I did a whole video on it too.

I was like amazed from the stance he took. He had a little of an a frame stance. So you can say just the way and he was always a double jab away. So he was long enough for he was outside of anything that Wylder could have put together was a real one to kind of guy or, you know, Walter will just come lunging in with a punch. And he was good enough to back him up and then steer him into punches.

And I always talk about this Eugene Berriman, who is the you know, and everyone who gets on me because I'm always promoting city kickboxing, but it's like he's a masterful trainer.

It's like, well, not only that, I mean, every once in a while you come around to a guy who not only can train fighters to a high degree, but has an idea about what the game is missing, how to fill that gap. And they are big believers in feinting.

They make a point. They basically say, like, how is it possible you can have people come from this little tiny island? And, you know, autism is the very best version of that.

But they've got good Firebreather, Brad Ridell, Shane Youngin, Hooker, Dan Hooker, they got a lot of guys and vulcanology has trained under Brad, who trained under Eugene Rivers.

What they believe is that what has been missing for a long time and most striking is effective, faking, faking the painting and that they do shadow boxing drills for hours just on feinting, no punches thrown, just feinting, just to set it all up, because they basically say if you look at the way which a lot of American and even European strikers throw, it's a lot of sit down and throw combinations, which you could do, but they don't really believe that's the best way to do it.

The best gap to fill is that FURI to circle the point here is excellent.

He is such a brilliant painter and he had Deontay Wilder dead to rights over and over and over again, which he didn't really do the first time around.

And so, you know, all these excuses about my trainer poison, it's like it's like that's not what the tape shows, bro.

Well, he got it. He was making excuses when he got dropped with the first punch, he was like, point to the back of his head and he was upset.

And you could see it's like it's really weird. It's really weird when you see a guy who's so utterly dominant and who has what Teddy Atlas calls the greater racer, that right hand, because it really is.

It raises all your problems. You fucked up a little bit. Watch this plan, all your mistakes gone with that. His right hand is a force of nature.

It's one of the best right hands in the history.

Never, ever the Lewis Ortiz fight. Like, what the fuck, man? Yeah, what the fuck? Hit him on the forehead.

And Ortiz is down with a look at his face. Like, what? What happened?

Ortiz is not some chump. He's you is a Cuban boxer, you know, who has great pedigree.

One shot said his ass down and he was winning the fight. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it was one of the fight. And all of a sudden.

But if you look at the my my view on his power is that four straight rights, which is really what he basically throws or maybe a little bit over handy because it's a little bit looping. That's one of the best, if not the best.

Right. Hands in all of boxing. If you're talking about full on power punches, though, I don't know that he's got the full repertoire, like is his uppercut with the right hand as good as his straight? I don't know that it is just you guy like Earnie Shavers, right?

Foxborough. Yeah. Go look up. Earnie Shavers highlights on YouTube and then spoke some weed beforehand.

You will literally laugh at what he does to men for shocking to watch his power and he has the full repertoire of it, you know. Yeah.

A lot of fighters have fought him, said he is the most powerful punch they ever faced. A lot of fighters.

Someone told me I forget who was, but they got hit by Shaver's and then they felt it in the in the roof of their foot.

What's what's the arch?

The arch, the force of the arch of like radiated into the arch of their foot. What the fuck is. That I never heard some shit like that, you know what I mean? Yeah, well, power is a weird thing, right? Like you're the born with it or you're not. I mean, I've seen so many guys who you'd look at and they're big and strong and you would say, wow, but hits hard and they can't crack an egg.

No, there was there's like there's a bunch of them. There's always been a bunch of them in boxing. There's been a bunch of them like you see them in the gym. And then you see guys like, do you remember Michael McDonald when he was a kid? And he's coming up.

Yes. Skinny looks like a little boy, knock people into another dimension.

And he's like, whoa, this is crazy. Do you follow boxing currently? Yes. Yes. So how about this kid? Many Munguia. You seen him?

I have not fought last Friday night.

Holy Mother of God. You look at him, he obviously is an athlete, right? He's in good shape. You would look at him and think, well, you know, I'm not going to average, but there's nothing that stands out about him, at least while there is huge price bricked up.

Makes sense. Munguia is is in is in fine shape, but he's not bricked up. And this fucking guy, I mean, he's rearranging. I mean, he is keeping dentists in business.

Was he on Showtime? He was on his own. This was on his own. And what was the undercard of which fight?

Oh, God, I don't I don't I don't remember. I only tuned in because I was like, I have an alert for him whenever he fights. Yeah. Is that good? Yeah. There's Munguia, the guy on the left. This fucking look at it. Does he look like a power. Pretty normal. He is arguably the biggest power puncher in boxing for a while, by the way.

Arguably. Arguably. Yeah. That's crazy. That fucking guy can korac and I think he rearranges.

Oh so you remember the lip split that Overeem had when he was a stroke. Wait, you see what he does? This fucking guy's face, he uppercuts him to the point where a piece of his face goes flying off. This was last Friday's just a couple of days ago.

Look at that shit. Look at that. That was from one uppercut. Oh, God. Look at his face, Joe. It's pretty crazy. He looks like he got attacked by a bear.

Now, do they let fights go on in boxing with us? No, they called it eventually here.

That's interesting because like you remember Robbie Lawler with that crazy split lip, we fought Roy McDonald, but it was right at the end.

Interesting, and then, yeah, I mean, look at that Javon Davis knockout, bro, how beautiful is that uppercut? That was a thing of the same uppercut that pivot can used.

Yeah, a little bit similar.

That same like if you go and look closely, Davonte is squared and so he's leaning to either side. And so when the punch comes, he's able to slip this direction.

So he's left handed, Joe. But here this is the watch.

So you look at it, look how we square. Yeah, it's so square. So we'll see how that left hand go back and pause it for just a second. I want to show you something. Pausa, right. The moment of impact. If you can, even if it's at all possible. That's when he's going to throw here, so he slips. Now watch. First of all, the one the arm was extended, so came under the arm.

This is in front, it's on the inside angle. But notice Davonte is left handed. He is left hand forward here.

So he's squared and he's you know, how some guys jab with their power hand to, like, throw people off or just sticking with it.

So. Exactly. So he sat in square and then gave this guy every inch of a lead uppercut from his power hand.

God damn. That was a beautiful shot. Look at that. Al Bernstine got saved, too, because poor Allburn seems the man I love every time I've interacted him. He's the sweetest guy. He's a great guy.

He was about to say, you know, if he was like right in the middle of saying, you know, if Davonte Davis thinks that his power is going to put, you know, Santa Cruz down and then he cracked him with it so he stopped midsentence, wouldn't have been his fault because the point was like Santa Cruz opened up like he was engaging because like, I think he's what he got 23 knockouts, something he's only had one person go the distance.

Yeah. Yeah.

Which goes back to the Wylder fight like wylder. Deontae before Tyson Fury beat him had only gone to decision two times. Tyson Fury and Dharmic Brazil was. That was. Brazil, he knocked out in the first round in the rematch. Oh, no, Steve Irwin, right? That's right, Steve. Steve Irwin was in the first fight. He beat him by decision. Right. And so he had been used and he had gotten so confident.

And towards the end of his career, I remember there's a photo of him walking to the fight or walking through a casino in Vegas. It's an amazing photo. He's wearing a fur coat with an open shirt holding his wife's hand. And he just looks like the ultimate heavyweight champ in the world. Like you seem like that is what I want from a heavyweight champion, just top of the game, just wearing these crazy sunglasses, fully shredded fur coat, holding his wife.

And I'm like that. That's a heavyweight champ.

Connor has that in his head. Yeah. Connors, the heavyweight champ of the world in his head, you know, which I don't like. I'm not bashing for like I want that. That's you.

You should be resplendent and ignorant and amazing all at once.

You find that photo of Deontay Wilder holding his wife's hand wearing a fur coat is one of my favorite fighter photos, like getting ready for a fight of all time because it's so just aggressively confident just and on top of the world.

How do you do that? It's almost like a fuck you to everybody, you know that. I mean, he was basically he was being the baddest man on the planet. I don't think I've ever had that kind of self-confidence ever.

Well, you have to have that to be that guy, right? Right.

Especially when you have you know, he doesn't have the widest skill set, you know, I mean I mean, literally came into the game.

I mean, I had the privilege of. That's one of them.

Is that the one this one where he's got no shirt on up.

And is it for the first or second he doesn't have a shirt on. It's just a oh ok.

OK, that is. Yeah, there it is. That's it. There's a few of those.

He looks like Mr. T with all the chains. Yeah. I mean come on, you got a white guy getting your luggage even better. Just I mean I'm a fan of his.

I really am and I'm a fan of his as a human being. I really enjoyed talking to him and he told me a story.

Great interview. He's a great guy. He got into boxing because his daughter was sick and he was doing it before the right. Yeah.

And he's a delivery guy for like, was it Budweiser or something like that or Coca-Cola? Yeah, some liquid.

And he was like, look, I got to make some fucking money. And he knew it wasn't going to be able to play in a college sport or in a professional sport without a college background. She's like, I'm going to get into boxing a year and a half in wins a bronze medal in the Olympics.

Like, what the fuck? Just dumb power comes power crazy like like one in a billion human power.

But you've ever seen him interact with his kids, like the the nobility of trying to do that for your daughter is one thing. He's got like a bunch of kids know like five or six of them.

And I didn't know I just had a kid about eighteen months ago. I didn't understand it when I would watch. But like, I don't think he's happier than when he's with his children.

And it's not even there's not even a close second a doting family man.

It's really unfortunate he's made his excuses because as a person, he seems like such a sweet guy.

It's a bummer. And I wish someone was there to advise him. Breeland He was.

Well, I should bring you know, I don't know, maybe Marc doesn't have the kind of relationship with them that he can call.

My understanding is his his manager, John, his manager was the one who brought in Breeland years ago. I was like like we need somebody here who's like a high level trainer and brought him in. And it worked for a time anyway.

But here we are. I talked to Roy Jones about them. And Roy Jones was saying if he trained them, what he would train them is he would concentrate on his left hand. He was like, where, you know, you could put people to sleep with your right hand. He goes, What about your left hand? He goes, I want to keep people distance. Use the jab, use the hook. He goes, I would concentrate on just working that left hand.

He goes, that would fix so many of his problems because his left hand is just like, here comes the right comes the right boom.

I mean, he'll throw jabs, but you're not terrified of it the way you're terrified of Roy Jones, the left hand.

You know, Roy Jones, if you're seeing Roy Jones left bicep, is that the one that splits down the middle like a perfect he'll show you like his right bicep is like a normal bicep and his left biceps, like twice the size.

It's crazy. It's huge.

It's got the stage north cut bicep because he throws so many left hooks like he was flexing.

It's like, look at this. And I was like, that's crazy. Sitting right is like, this one's normal. You look at this one, his left, look at his left, but he's got that sage Northcutt splitter down the road.

It's enormous. I mean, it's enormous. It's it's it's crazy how much bigger it is, like legitimately. Fifty percent larger.

Wow. Yeah. No idea. Well, his left hook is just a thing of beauty. When he was in his prime, he barely jab people. He was just leaping left, hook them and crack them and his speed is his foot speed and his hands were so incredible that he could get away with that.

You know, folks of this modern era, they know the name, but they don't really know what he meant to the game.

You know, like if someone asked me, who's the modern Roy Jones junior in boxing? There isn't one. There's not one.

There's there's this guy to take risks and liberties and had crazy athleticism and pinpoint. Punching and Shoman, he was a showman, too, there's great boxers boxing in a great place in many ways, there's nobody who does what he did.

Roy made world champions look like they had no business in there. And people were like, oh, he didn't fight anybody else.

Shitty world champions.

He fought really tough guys, but he fucked them all up. I mean, it's the same with Kobe. Yeah.

Oh, Kobe did fine, but no motherfucker. Yeah. He makes them look like they're fighting me. That's the different look they did to Justin.

That's all you need to know. If you say just engages in nobody. You crazy. What's that Tony Ferguson fight just engages a fucking animal savage.

And he just close that gap and he ate a lot of leg kicks to men. He had a lot of leg kicks that would I mean, I don't know how many of those you can eat from Justin, right? Maybe he had like five or six more in the tank. Right. You're on E! But he closed the gap and then one finishing with a triangle off of his back.

He got a serious question about this because I went through it a couple of times. So from the moment he got kicked and he initiates the takedown, so he tried the first round he did over the head inside single didn't work. Second round, he tried it off a double from the outside. Look at first, what was an inside look at the inside single. Didn't work, so then he goes to the double, it's twenty two seconds from that till the finish.

So 20 seconds were apart, 20 seconds later you're unconscious. I mean, this is my question to you. Is that the best tactic you've ever seen in him? Because what he does is when Gidgee is sprawling in this contest, he's not just sprawling, he is sprawling and turning so he doesn't get pushed into the fence. He was very diligent about that in the Alvares and the gates you find you can go back and you can watch it. So in this fight, when it was you see the level change that cobweb hits, you see automatically Geikie turn because he doesn't want to get turned that direction.

But what he does is he actually scoots under him, pulls him up, and then with his head postum over, gets the hands to plant.

Well, once the hands are planted, the double is over. He doesn't care about it anymore. Now he just wants the tight waist and from the tight waist he's holding, his elbows aren't flared.

They're tight here. Right. Like he's directing inside.

At that point you have created if you're just in put in your hands, you've created a stable structure for this guy to now mount. Plus, if you want to get to the fence to, like, stand, he can control the ascent.

So he goes double turns, push his hands to the forces, get you down, and then with his his Gabal grip, then keeps it there and then replaces it with the hooks and then turns into turns it to a fake, not a real Joe Rogan, a fake head, an arm triangle attempt just so he gets his elbows away from his body.

Then he chair sits to occupy the space, then throws the leg over and then sits back and takes mercy upon him.

As we learn later from Dana Cormier, rather than arm bar him from his mom's.

I'm just going to try and do you because that's the mercyful.

This guy is out here taking fucking pity on his opponents and he's doing back takes like that.

He is. Jon Jones, to me, is the most accomplished fighter we've ever seen. Like the things accumulate over time. No one is as flawless as could be. No good man. Not even close.

I think that is the argument. Right. Like who is the goat? I think if you look at John Jones's early career, right, John Jones wins the title in 2011 and from then on has fought more fights as championship fights than he has other fights.

So he's the most accomplished for sure. Wins the title earliest youngest guy to ever win the title in the UFC beats Mauricio Shogan, who who's a legend, and then the way he dominates all these other fighters. Up until you get to Alexander Gustavsen, you can make the argument that he had a similar career.

You can make the argument, look, if you look at what he did, John didn't lose any rounds.

John was smashing people. He look what he did to Rashard Evans to rampage. Jackson liquidated Lyoto Machida. Look what he did to everybody. All everybody he thought up until the Gustavsen fight but the Gustavsen fight, then you have to say, well, how much slack do you give him for admittedly not training?

Because it was a really close fight. He pulls it out in the championship round even though he's out of shape. Even though you talked to Greg Jackson, he didn't train for that fight, didn't fucking train like, barely worked out, but definitely didn't go through a training camp. Still managed to beat one of the best guys in the division after getting taken down for the first time in his career, then goes on a tear right beats.

Look at the way he beat Daniel Cormier in the first fight, took him down like who the fuck takes Daniel Cormier down? Right. And then you look at him in the second fight, even though it ruled a no contest, we know what the fuck happened. He had kicked him and stopped him. You know, it was spectacular.

You look at what John has done, then you have to take into account the things that didn't go that well. And we haven't seen those from KABB yet.

You have to take into account the fight like Tiago Santos, right. That fucker goes to a split decision you like. Whoa. Dominic Raaz Dominic Greyest thought he won the fight. Right.

You know, Grifter's real close fight.

So those fights haven't happened with KABB yet.

And we don't know if they ever could. We don't know. Right.

Like right now, would you see flawless victory after flawless victory? You can maybe make the argument that could be lost two rounds his entire career, maybe the second round against Justin or rather or maybe first round, rather, against Justin and maybe the third round with Connor.

That's right. That's it. And either one of those didn't get cut, didn't get dropped, didn't get hurt to never get cut and to never get dropped.

I don't think folks understand what that means in a sport filled with it's not a scientific measurement per say who gets cut the most or something. But in a sport built on unpredictability.

Yeah, on violence, you know, Saint-Pierre went to wrestling to get away from all of that in large in large part. And then to never experience that is like it is shocking beyond description, shocking.

I don't know how to explain that to folks.

It's but to your point, the thing about Kobe where he falls short is that it's just an inevitability.

Like your run through twenty nine fights is the best one I've seen through twenty nine five.

Never, ever, ever. But you know, and John's not my best friend or anything, but I just don't. That is the best total resume I've ever seen. John is the best resume. It's just it's not I mean, I know he got he was he was getting all salty on Twitter being like these fucking Cubie fans.

It's like, dude, put in here shouldn't do that. Oh, he shouldn't do it. But here's my point to John. It's like, dude, put the keyboard down for just a second. Here's what's going to happen. You're going to go to a heavyweight and you're going to probably win. I mean, I don't know. That's a guarantee.

But let's assume that you do all of the conference. Everything that happens right now is just recency bias and could be retired. And his father died and was just incredibly sad and like, yeah, inspiring moment.

Let the fucking guy have his moment, because when you have your moment, all of the warm is going to turn.

Yeah. And then everything gonna be like John's the fucking greatest hits.

He's going to get his just not today at this moment. Recency bias.

That's real recent bias. It's a real thing like, you know, we just watch could be and then the fact it could be did supposedly retire.

Come on. So I know you want somebody. I know I haven't eaten much, so my head is spinning a little bit. That's all right.

Everyone asked me, like, when when I go on, are you going to smoke weed? I'm like, there's no chance I'm smoking Joe Williams fucking super weed.

There's no good chance I'm smoking it right now. I haven't done anything in a month. I had a couple of glass of wine last night.

I was like, yeah, I'm feeling a little bit going. And the the Jonjo situation is also it's a contrast in personalities, right, to be who's really religious, very moral, ethical person who doesn't drink, he doesn't party, doesn't do anything.

He just trains. He's always in phenomenal shape. He takes every fight incredibly serious. He's never been out of shape. He's never been fat, is never I mean, he's missed weight a couple of times earlier in his career, but he got that dialed in.

He's he's just so dedicated.

Whereas John is a wild man. It's just wild.

I mean, you talk about not training for the so excuse me, for the the Gustavsen fight, buddy, that ain't the only fight.

He didn't. How about what he said to call me. I did coke.

You still beat you. And I'm like, I don't think he's like I mean the stories I've heard, I don't want to repeat them because I cannot verify them.

No, but I've heard stories like if you all think that was the one fight, he just like, oh, I'm going to take it. I'm going to pump the brakes this time. No, bitch. I mean, here's the part about it.

It's like when you so who's a guy, for example, who maintain dominance of the game and took, you know, significant amounts of time off in boxing? Floyd Mayweather would be a great example of that. Yeah, but Floyd has been training as a family affair from adolescence.

Right. For the long part of his life. And he is so gifted that he can take time off and the game is so developed that people aren't going to make warp speed development in his absence. And so they got a little bit better every time he took a little time off, like the Maidana first fight with the corkscrew punch.

That's a little bit of a wild card there.

But in general, he able to maintain that dominance in May.

The game changes rapidly, super fast, because people are still discovering best practices in two years. People will not be doing the same kinds of things to the same degree they do now. The kovacic and it's explosion is sort of an obvious example of that.

John was doing things like not training between camps.

I mean, that's something only elite boxers do because they've been doing this since they were five, six years old. And they can take the time to not necessarily do that, whereas most enemy fighters are like, I'm a I'm an everyday martial artist. I just ramp it up.

He would do nothing and then something and still go out there and beat world fucking champions.

And at the time was the UFC marquee division that is out of this fucking world, bonkers.

I'm going to train I'm going to beat you as like a part time guy. Yeah. What? Yeah. You just couldn't wrap your head around it.

I wonder if maybe there's some benefit because it's not like you got totally out of shape, but I wonder if there's some benefit to that and that he's not getting beat up, he's not getting his joints wrecked.

And you know, there's probably there's a lot.

Yeah, it's a real question of like what is what's the best way to approach it? I mean, we're still trying to figure that out. Right? If you go back to the early days of like, say, like Hammer House and like the militant fighting systems, guys like those guys to beat the fuck out of each other.

Khateeb, shoot the box. I'm talking about those guys. Beat the fuck out. It was hazings call. It was. Sure.

Well, you know, that's a famous story about BJ Penn, like BJ Penn's crew, like they would just scrap, they would fight, they would get together in the afternoon. They'd beat the shit out of each other and that would be training and like, whoa. And, you know, that was how everybody did it. And now they realize, like, hey, you can't really do that. If you do that, it's going to really fuck with your longevity.

But my sense about it is, is I mean, even then a jujitsu, too, like the old health crazy school, like I talked to Dave Comerio or whatever this guy's back then.

I mean, half, you know, SAVITCH they were not fucking around. No, not fucking around. This is not like, hey, you want to get better at self self-defense, do not that kind of school. But my answer to the question about like, is it better to do what John did? My my hunch is that there are probably some net benefits to it. Right, on balance, there's going to be some downsides and some upsides, the downsides are going to be that this development that you might need as a martial artist will be somewhat impeded.

However, there'll be some longevity issues you may not have to worry about by consequence.

In fact, you look at him tearing his toe in the sand and fight, and I fucked up my toe similarly not not to the extent where I was through the skin. But, you know, he has a buddy system with the wrap on the toe. And I had to use the exact same thing for a long time, because even now, if I step on my right foot just right, it stands fire through my toe. It hurts like shit, you know.

Yeah. John still tapes as he still tapes it. And so my point being is to that extent, he is probably minimized some of the long term impacts. It's just he was so far ahead of the game, so naturally talented, so athletic, he could just get away with it.

But you could not be average and do what he does know.

You have to be very I mean, the day he fought Shogan before, it was either the better part of the shogan fight that morning, he chased down the robber. Yeah.

In Newark, New Jersey, which is I had worked there one time. It fucking sucks. I was born there is that is. You were born in Newark. Yeah. Wow.

Joe, you've come a long way. Newark sucks anyway.

And he's we chased down a robber there and the whole nine yards and, you know, I mean, just things about distraction and blah, blah, blah.

And it had zero impact on any fucked. And everyone wants to say, by the way, I just follow closely on Twitter. I'm a little bit more, you know, in the weeds on that kind of thing. By virtue of my media placement, everyone wants to say, oh, Shogan was washed, motherfucker.

He was the belt holder at the time.

John took it. Yeah. Just knocked out the ultimate. What the fuck are you talking about? Was that prime shogan from the twenty five middleweight tournament and. No, but was he some kind of washed afterthought. What the fuck.

What kind of revisionist nonsense is this was one of the best fighters in the world, right.

Yeah, right. It's hard to say he was washed up just because John comes along. First of all, John opens up with a flying knee. Who the fuck does that? You know what young kid? What was he, 23?

Right. If it's three, the opens with a flying knee on a legend.

You almost watch it. Here's what he really did at the time. He was just disrespectful, not like in the fuck you kind of sense, but like I'm going to fight you in a way.

We're like all these stories that they told me about you.

It's like the buzzing of flies to me didn't matter. He was so confident. He just was a guy who, first of all, when you look at just the genetics and his family are phenomenal.

His father is a massive man.

Both of his brothers are NFL players, elite NFL players. There's just tremendous athletes in the house. And then they grew up together. If you watch guys who grew up with athletic brothers, like they all beat the fuck out of each other.

Right. Like Matt Hughes and Mark Hughes, they beat each other's asses. Like that is like Joe Lozano downloads on beat each other's asses. There's so many examples of guys growing up with tough brothers, and they are fucking hardened. You know, by the time they get into the octagon. This is just like there's there's so many of them like that. I think there's something to that. Right, having two bad motherfuckers as brothers and, like, constantly competing with each other, I think.

But it doesn't also say something that like, OK, Nogueira, exception aside, most of the brother tandems or even the sister tandem's one is clearly better than the other, though. Like Matt. Better than Mark. Right. Fontina Antonio. Better than damn Joe. Better than Dan. Right.

The Nogueira Brothers, I might say that big dog a little better than little Nog. A little. I was pretty fucking great, you know, it wasn't like a tremendous difference.

But in general, usually one like kinda kind of puts it on the other one for me.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Well sometimes that is what makes a really tough fighter too, like Chris Weidemann story him.

His brother used to beat his ass and his brother was bullying him. And Chris Weidman became a fucking savage because he was just so tough from dealing with his fucking brother. You know, like any siblings, I don't have a sister.

Forget migrants. I have a brother. Not the same kind of thing. My brother was super hard core academic nerd. And so I don't have any like I have a brother. And like, you're telling me these stories and it's like that is so divorced for life.

My reality from having a brother as a sibling in a really weird we're talking about like a lack of observation, like parents should be there, hey, stop beating each other up like this.

Separate or, you know, probably parents didn't have the time or the there's only so much you can do.

And you've got to imagine if you had Arthur Jones, Chandler Jones and Jon Jones in the backseat of the car and they want to slap each other, the fuck are you going to do?

What are you going to do?

I mean, that's so so so I don't know. I don't know if Arthur is still in the NFL. I think he is out now. I don't know if he still is in there, but his brother on the right is Chandler Chandler.

And if you fall and you don't watch team sports right now, you're missing out. Joe, you got I got to get you on. Watch the. I hear you, I hear you, Chandler is like a legitimate multiple time all pro, he is the fucking man.

He's a little bit of the latter stage of his career at this point. Obviously, they're all kind of aging a little bit. But Chandler of the three.

Well, I guess well, John had a great career, but of the two in the NFL, Arthur had had a good career, I think you could say.

But Chandler is I mean, Arthur trains quite a bit. Yes. He was a wrestler for the first time.

I wonder if he's thought about fighting in enemy now that he's not doing the NFL anymore. I mean, he's probably a better athlete. You know, he can he doesn't like you know, he's got the Paul Wintel syndrome a little bit where they don't look like it, you know, but I bet he can go in there.

Fuck Faida right. Better than anybody.

Arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time. And then the second I mean the other two besides step is Kane, who also didn't have the best body in the world, although Kane he looks menacing.

Oh it's face. Yeah. I mean he's got a big ass fucking head going to looks hard as fuck.

I watched Kane versus Junior three the other day.

God damn it. That's hard to watch. That's hard to watch. He changed Jarius. He changed them. He changed them. It's hard to watch. You ever seen this documentary?

I think it's called The Season, but if I'm getting it wrong, I know your listeners are going to fucking tell me if I get it wrong, forget the exact name. But they you know, Steve Manko, he's the wrestling coach, was I'm not sure because he was for a long time. Steve Morcos. Hilarious. I one time speaking to Jon Jones. Jon was fighting Glover in Baltimore. And Steve definitely did not want me to interview him, but he didn't say no.

I was like, Steve, can I get a couple seconds with you? Whatever. And I stuck a microphone in his face. And I'm like, So, you know, specifically, what kind of strategies around Glover have you trained here? He's like, you know, some particular strategies around Glover for John. Like he would just literally repeat the exact words back to me for questions. And I'm like, you don't want to do this. He's like, I don't want to do this.

It's like you said that are front.

Anyway, John has an issue with you.

You guys have a well, real quickly, I'll tell you, because it was a funny time. Yeah. Yeah. He fucking he sent me to hell on a press conference once. But quickly, when it comes to Steve Mocho, Steve was he wrestled in Oklahoma and then Iowa, I think Iowa first in Oklahoma. And they had I think it was ESPN had did a documentary and they had gone to, you know, Iowa wrestling is like, you know, if not Penn State is now the best program in the country and has been for some time because of kills Anderson and the recruiting and then the great work that they've done.

But in general, for a long time, Iowa was sort of one of these titans of college wrestling. And they ask Steve Mocho as a college student, why do you like wrestling?

Like, why do you want to compete so hard? He's like, because when I really win and I dominate, I change people.

They're not the same. After I get done with them. They realize they're not who they think they are. And I'm everything that they feared I would be.

Well, and it's like that he is and he's dead fucking serious about it. So anyway, that was the thing about Steve Marcus when I was put into microphone. His face is kind of funny, but about John.

So I don't know what the issue is. Candidly, I actually what was happening was.

He had a good at a very good relationship with him and his management for a long time, and I started this relationship with his management, but he had so to fight back with Cormie at 214, I think it was whatever the number was, the rematch.

He had a press conference.

He had shaved head and he was in a mood, you know, and I'd ask him some totally softball, innocuous question.

And to the public, he goes, you know, look, I don't like you, so I'm going to answer your question. Was that right? Yeah. And it was a shock to me because his coach, Bernie Gibson, I'm like very tight with, you know, and many other people, and they didn't know either. In fact, I talked to his manager, Malky, at the time. I met him at the host hotel and I go work.

What the fuck was that like? Was totally out of nowhere. He's like he's like, you know, you don't Malky right. You've talked to him.

He's like he's like, I don't know.

He's like, but you've got a big mouth. That's your problem. You got a big mouth. I was like, okay, but what specifically was the issue?

You didn't know and and I didn't get a chance to follow John obviously. And Brendan Gibson didn't know. Nobody, nobody fucking knew.

So here's my hunch. My hunch is that we were reasonably in good terms. Then he had all those fuck ups where, you know, he got into the car accident and everything else. And I probably said something he didn't like. And I just they don't tell you, you know, they don't call you up.

Be like, I'm really proud of you. They just wait to see what they're up to.

I had a discussion with John where he was. He was thinking like, why did I go bad on him? Like, what was I saying? And what? Because one of the things that I said that I speculated that maybe one of the reasons why he was behaving the way he was behaving was, was, was.

And I still kind of stand by that. I think one of the things that happens is and not that I think John should get out of the game not saying this at all, but I'm saying that there's an inevitable consequence of getting hit in the head where we've seen the video of John getting pulled over drunk driving. And he says, I forget a lot of things.

I got hit in the head for a living, that there's an inevitable, inevitable consequence of getting punched in the head where fighters experience some sort of negative effect of it and some of them become very impulsive. It's just one of the side effects of head trauma and even head trauma that's like acceptable. They get impulsive.

They do wild shit. I mean, they do more wild shit. They have a harder it's harder for them to control their impulses.

Well, the case of John, I don't as it relates to my interaction with him and I hold no ill will, believe it or not, because frankly, I almost prefer that, you know, because here's what ends up happening.

So too friendly, then you could not not even let it hold back a little bit. But that's less my issue. Like I always tell the fighters, like I'm not your friend, but I'm definitely not your enemy. You have to understand that. I mean, it's truly you cannot work in media. You cannot work in a moment.

It is not possible to do the job correctly, such as the job can't be done correctly, which I'm sure that's even true anymore.

But. If you don't understand that the fighter doesn't owe you anything and that the fighter is. Uniquely disadvantaged relative to the power structures inside M-m, you cannot do the job effectively, you cannot. So to the extent that he gets mad, he's OK.

Does he want to. He doesn't. He does not. He does not have to answer my question out of fucking preferred a different result, you know, right.

Then him saying at a press conference, I mean like Jesus. All right. Is a better way to.

But but at the end it's like, you know, I can't tell you how many fighters get mad at me and then won't talk. And like, I had intermediaries reach out and be like, hey, man, like, what's the issue?

And they won't even tell their friend intermediaries who are often coaches' fighters. But what do they're incredibly sensitive and which I understand. And they're incredibly you know, they they don't suffer shit gladly, which I also understand. But it's like I've got a job to do.

You think I can watch somebody do the shit that John was doing at the time in his life and just like constantly, reflexively defend all of it?

It's not possible. I have to if I have a job to do. So if he doesn't like that, that's OK. But you know what?

If that causes a division, then that causes a division or something I can do about that, you know?

Well, I think fighting is uniquely personal, right? It's not like calling like saying Bill Buckner's a loser because you let that ball go between his legs. It's a different thing. Like when a fighter loses, it's I almost feel like they put themselves out there more than any other athlete and they deserve more respect than any other athlete. This is my personal opinion. Obviously, I'm incredibly biased because that's the only sport that I've ever covered. Right. Right.

But I get why they feel the way they feel. I get it. And I try to be as respectful as possible while still being accurate. And that's a fine line to draw, you know, but I'm an employee of the UFC. You're not. You know, and one of the things that I would love to get into with you, you said that was the way you phrased it, that they're uniquely disadvantaged in the power structure of America.

There's no way to I don't I don't think you can like if your job is to cover the sport, but your job is different. Your job is to accommodate for UFC and then do your podcast.

And, you know, my position I come to a little bit differently. Right. So for me.

If you're looking at the world and your job is to the best approximation that you can tell the truth about it, how do you tell the truth about the world and say that the fighters don't have every power structure pushing against them because they basically do?

That doesn't mean they don't act petulantly at times. That doesn't mean they don't bring it on themselves at times or that everything they do is above reproach.

That's not what I'm here to say, but let's go through it here a little bit. But in the case of fighter pay, the debate is over.

It is settled. There is no argument anymore. We now have court documents to this effect. They get paid roughly 18 to 20 percent by the UFC year over year as a more or less fixed position now. Now, as the U.S. makes more money, 20 percent, what the percentage might stay fixed, but the amount of money can go up. So money is going up, but it's relative. It's all a function of this continued amount, 20 percent.

OK, that doesn't seem to be quite equitable. That's a personal opinion, but that's the way I look at it. Then you want to look at their management. There are no barriers to entry for management. I cannot tell you half of these guys listen, some of these guys interact with they're great. I disagree with them at times. I agree with them at times. I think they really have the fighters best interests at heart. But there's a lot of them there that are fucking snakes.

That's just the way that it goes.

And they are not always acting in their client's best interest. And I don't think the fighters are necessarily the best stewards of understanding what's in their rights and interests.

It's my personal opinion, but antidoping to me is to me, I wouldn't call it a fraud, but I think it's a tragic mistake in the way that we are doing it.

How so? Well, in the case of the fighters, they had no say it was forced upon them. Here's another thing where it's like to what extent do the fighter support it? There could be high support for it, but we don't know because it's a compulsory demand that they have to give in to it. That's the first thing.

There's many issues that I have with it. We can get into that. I have.

But let me let you go through your list and then we'll come back because there's a bunch of then it goes to the sponsors and then they take away all of them, which is the UFC. Right. By the way, it totally is their right. But it again, to me, I never understood it from a just a pragmatic standpoint because this was a way to offset complaints about fighter pay, you know, because you have now venom at the time or, you know, name any brand or whatever the fuck that response.

Right. You know, whatever brand has come and gone was a way to offset fighter pay. So they are restricted in. And by the way, the media, I think, doesn't treat them fairly in the sense that I'm a member of the media and I have been for almost fifteen years.

They you are you are expected to be either friend or foe with them. And I don't want to be either, you know, I want to be friendly. I want to be professional. I don't want to be like your buddy because it causes all kinds of problems down the road when shit starts to go south for you. And by the way, it will you know, every father who's young thinks that they're going to live, like, off these winds forever.

And like, I've been around long enough to see the downside. It's coming for you, you know, so you begin to add up all of these factors and you can say, well, what is the what is the moment we can create to fix all of this? That is the responsibility of the fighters. It used to be. The case is you can make an argument that MMN media was not covering enough of these issues with full throated inese.

That is no longer the case. They have aired out all of this. They have covered this multibillion dollar lawsuit that is happening.

They have covered what is which multibillion dollar law. So there's a there's a storm coming.

Joe Rogan. So there is a Nate Quarry, Kyle Kingsbury, Conly lawsuit and so many others as well.

They are basically suing the UFC for to put it in layman's terms, the the the bad effects of monopoly. And they believe they're entitled to compensation and other forms of change in the industry. As a consequence, we are going to get a result, I think, on the 19th of this month from the judge in the case that if he allows it to go forward, he will have to certify them as a class. And all indications are he's going to, which means that trial will proceed.

Now, it still has a long way to go, but that is a major institutional hurdle on behalf of the plaintiffs.

I'm not hearing anything about this because main media, right?

Yeah, right. Are you talking about. Oh, like a fucking parrot. Here goes John Fichus. Yeah. This is a guy launched in twenty fourteen.

Let me can I shout out a couple of people who are tremendous reporters in this regard. There's a guy by the name of John Nash. He goes by the name of you want to follow him on Twitter. It's at Hey, not the face.

I don't I don't understand it. He has done absolutely fantastic work and is a professor at Pepperdine. He's an economist who is a professional economist who is a he teaches economics there. He goes by the name of Atmeh Analytics, but his name is I'm Blanking Out because I've been drinking. But I've had on my show a million times these two guys and also my payout has done a good job of covering this. Josh Gross, to the extent I you know, Josh, Josh has done some good work for the athletic, although he's no longer with them.

But these are basically the only folks really talking about it. No one else is really doing it.

It's hard to focus on the lawsuit because if the judge denies them class certification or he gets thrown out at any moment and the whole thing goes away and it's a long term projection, like we're not anywhere close to any kind of. And on this for the next five years, what is the argument, which is basically that the UFC is not a monopoly as a monopsony, which instead of sort of one seller, it's one buyer, it's a different kind of monopoly.

And that has resulted in depressed wages, has resulted in unfair contracts. It's resulted in any number of harms related to the fighter and their ability to negotiate.

I mean, most of that is not arguable, right? You cannot argue that the UFC and the fighter go to contract negotiations with equal amounts of leverage. That is not true.

Now, what the solution to that is, is very debatable. How do you want to fix that? What kind of policy prescriptions do you want to pass? You want to pass the Ali Act and extend it to me? There are some problems with that as well.

Let's explain the Ali act to people. The Ali Act is an act that exists in boxing. It currently is a thing. It was passed, I think, by John McCain, I want to say around 2000 or so I might be getting the date wrong. But basically the idea behind the Ali Act is that it provides a series of protections for the boxer against the promoter and or the industry in the form of disclosure. So, for example, by virtue of the Ali Act, they have to disclose to the fighter, to the boxer, like Telefilm Lopez just won.

Right. Top rank has to disclose to him who's making what margins on the costs, sales on pay per view or it was on on TV. But, you know, to the extent that is relevant, so they have to disclose that kind of thing. The Ali Act prevents any promoter from having the title.

So it's a Strikeforce title. It's a Bellator title. It's a UFC title. You can have a problem with the alphabet soup. But that really is the crux of the issue is to the extent that the promoter holds the title, they hold everything.

That is a weird issue. Right. And it is with Bellator, with strike force. It is with one FC, with all these organizations.

It's like it's the it's a mix between the boxing and pro wrestling model. To an extent. Yeah. Anyway, I'm not I'm not suggesting that the Ali Act is the cure to everything, but yes.

Because the other thing is like promoters and then the sanctioning body, like then the fighters are paying the sanctioning body and they're paying the promoter in the sanctioning bodies or, you know, they're trying to get mandatories that nobody gives a fuck about. And if you don't, you know what I mean?

Even WBA like I've been I've been you know, I covered boxing for a long time. Then I stopped because of the nature of my job changed and I didn't have the opportunity to really I was just so engrossed in the world. I'd missed a lot of time.

And I remember I was catching up with my co-host for the show I do on Showtime, went to combat.

And my co-host was like I was like, OK, so this guy has the WBA regular title and then this one has the WBA franchise title and then this one has the WBA Latino title. Like, What's the difference?

He's like, do you see what Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Junior fighting for? Yeah, like the old man belt or some shit.

It's some crazy thing, but it has Black Lives Matter on the belt. Like they're just trying to capitalize on this moment. And I forget what it's called.

I forget. But it's some bizarre name for the belt. But both of those fighters are very upset that they're making them fight two minute rounds. But we're going to get off way to that.

Long story short is I don't I'm not presenting to you the idea that I'm a huge fan of it, but I think it's the cure all. Basically, my view on what would be more equitable. This is my personal view and economists will debate this.

My view is that they should be there should be a union and or trade association, depending on how you want to view it. There's some debate about that as well. And that that will negotiate on behalf of the fighters interests with some additional leverage by virtue of law. Do you at that point, is there an actual union? The UFC has a legal obligation to negotiate on their behalf.

And so I can, as media, stop fucking talking about how I think the Reebok deal is unfair or the rankings are unfair or pay is unfair, at that point, it becomes the union's responsibility. And then you can just go into that.

Does the NBA have a deal with like a particular sneaker brand or. Forgive me?

I don't believe so. I believe you're allowed to through the collective bargaining agreement, through the NBA certifies all of this. You are allowed to have your own endorsement. The teams might have some kind of individual sponsor, but if you're a LeBron, you can wear whatever the fuck you want.

But that's also if you kind of McGregor, you can negotiate in any way you want as well. Right.

There are some carve outs when there's superstars. But the key is this. It's like I don't people think that if there's a union, the fighters are going to get 50 percent of everything, which they would not. It's not true. There's enough the way that they get in boxing.

It's the boxing purses are on average through the range of things. And again, John Nash has looked at this through the regional circuit.

Basically, if you look at the two curves, there is a moment in time in the curve where boxing is less than the enemy fighters. It's that middle class. But before that and then after that, it's all boxing pays higher.

Well, for sure, when you get to guys like Floyd Mayweather, who's a boxer all the time. Yeah, but there's no one that's really commensurate other than Koner in May, like Floyd, and really not commensurate because Connors lost.

But let me give you a better example. Two guys who are roughly similar positions in their division, actually from the same area, we just probably just fought one. Harold is on Showtime. He was the number one guy. One hundred and forty. He's played number two now, right? Josh Hellespont, number one, you got Dustin Pedroia. He's number two ish or close in his division.

Just if you look at the Google Analytics. Just Emporia is eminently more popular than Rena's program, like it's not even close. He's four or five times to one in terms of how people are interested in what he is doing and looking at for him. This program makes, you know, seven or eight times what just a party makes. So you have two people that roughly come in seven or eight times.

I mean, I think he made I have to look at his last I don't know what he made for the Harrald, his fight before the fight where he was trying to fight Josh Taylor. It was orders of magnitude different. I think it was four hundred thousand versus a couple of million or more significantly different. So you can make an argument that there are sections of the boxing world that don't take care of the middle class as well as the UFC. And that is very, very true.

Again, I'm not here to make UFC as criminals. UFC is a business. They're going to run it like a business. And the only way to fix this is for the fighters to decide they want to do something about it. That is it. Media. There's no cavalry coming.

The fighters have to decide so hard for fighters because another fighter will come in and say, I'll take that fight. Right.

And then then you have no you know, hence the lawsuit being a bit of a game changer because it could again, this is very much speculating. It could change the procedure for how this goes forward. It could result. There's there's a couple of outcomes where it could result in a union or trade association and then that sort of fixes the problem.

Yeah, there's it's interesting, right? There's fighters that get to a position where they are, you know, world class, where they're challenging from a for a title. And they're really they they never quite make enough money where you feel like it was worth it.

Right. There's like sometimes you read some of the statistics, you read the fighter payouts and you go, right, here's the thing.

It's like you always hear these stories and or by the way, you're asking what percentage they pay out. It's mid 40s, mid 40s to what's to there.

That's what they pay. Right.

Which you could say is like, you know, who pays more? You build less, but they make a lot less so. And you can keep your sponsors there.

I don't know how much that matters, but matters in some cases really matters. It's like Michael Venom page, really popular guys, right? Doug Salema. Douglas Leamon, right. Yeah. The really popular guys. I'm sure it's valid.

This is what I try to explain to people. It's like there used to be this debate because you hear these fighters come out and be like, you know, I got this bonus one time and it wasn't expected. It was huge. And it's like, listen, man, I've if you've ever been broke and someone came in with a lifeline, it is I mean, you can't get anything but teared up thinking about it, especially if you have kids and now you can have a Christmas with your kids.

I take, what, the gesture of money to a person who needs it? I take it very seriously. I mean I mean that absolutely sincerely. I really do. But the debate is over. It is not there is no more debate about fighter pay.

We have court documents year over year over year with express intent written in language by UFC to say we want to keep it at roughly 20 percent. And they include the fighter expense of USANA as fighter compensation. That's called fighter compensation.

So it's really a little bit closer to eighteen or nineteen. What you saw is fighter compensation.

I'm not I wish I was making that up. I'm not making that up. Oh, that's unfortunate. So here's my. But please, I've been rambling. I apologize that good. You you brought this.

It's OK. It's OK. Keep the last thing I would say is I appreciate the stories of locker room bonuses and helping people out of Christmas.

But the fundamental question is, do if you're a fighter, do you get half of the UFC money from ESPN? Do you get what kind of cut do you get from pay per view and how much leverage you have to negotiate that? That is all that matters anymore. And we know what the documents say.

The UFC is obviously a different kind of an organization than, say, boxing, where you just have a promoter and the promoter promotes the FISA promote and they don't have obligations to 500 fighters they have on roster. There's obviously much higher overhead for the UFC. The UFC runs multiple performance centers all over the world. The UFC has this promotion machine built into it. Right, which is very expensive. The UFC has a tremendous staff which they've kept employed even during the pandemic.

You never let anybody go, which to me is very admirable. I feel what you're saying. I have always been the person. I'm obviously I'm an employee. A long term started for the UFC in 1997 was a different organization. I'm Presevo right now.

But they they do they have something that doesn't exist anywhere else where you can go through the system, become a champion and be a multi multimillionaire.

Sure. That's not really available anywhere else. Here's the thing, I'm not advocating for a world where we make UFC suffer, the the the the UFC suffering is bad for all of us.

It's bad for I'd lose my livelihood. Why would I want that? That's bad for me.

You just want the fighters to get a bigger piece of the pie.

That's just when it's all over, man, you know, and you see him at the end there and they got shit to show for it. And part of that, by the way, to be clear, if not part of it, a huge portion of it is their own fault.

Agree? There's no doubt about it. Listen, it bothers me more than anything in the sport. Watching guys at the end, nothing.

It's like and you see what they lost it on. They got scammed or they bought a car and or some, you know, seven and a thousand dollars, Maybach or whatever, you know, like, holy fuck, how do we get here? How did we get here? But I'm just saying, on some level, it's like with you, which we've kind of got lost track on. Like what I get up and I think about before I hit, publish or whatever, what do I owe these people?

What do I owe the fighters? What do I owe UFC? What do I owe the public?

What do I owe? Right. And I owe it to the fighters to say there is a situation where you could be making more.

I do not think it would be 50 percent.

Because to get that far, what do you think the numbers was the right now? I think probably around thirty five. Thirty, forty five. Seems like the sweet spot because to get the 50 Joe, you have to have a situation where like you play for a Major League Baseball, you play for the Royals and they don't want you, but the Oakland Athletics might want you or blah, blah, blah. And so teams are competing.

That is what gets you to 50. Right. But if you have just one promoter and you have one union, that mechanism to drive pay doesn't exist. What might exist is enough at initial CBA negotiations. Just push it a little bit higher.

Do you factor in all that overhead? Do you factor in all the employees? Do you factor in the machines behind the UFC that doesn't exist in boxing? Right sort.

It's hard to it's hard to pass that because you have to ask yourself to what extent is that kind of vertical integration? Right. They want their own hotel, which they're building. They want their own apex facility, which they have. They want their own broadcast. They want their own.

They have UFC fight past it. If ESPN went away, you'll see just still puts on fights. They have their own. They're going to have their own hotel. They have their own facility. They have their own broadcast network with with flypast. But they have this total, not total, but they have near vertical integration across the industry. And so in many ways, that is a great way to keep fights going. But it's like you hear Eddie Hearn, who runs Matcham Boxing, he always sort of laments.

He's like, there's got to be a better model that, you know, the UFC model really has figured it out. But you don't get that. If the fighters have rights, you don't get that. You don't get a model where you can have all this extra stuff if the fighters get a significantly greater share.

So my answer to that would be.

I don't know how it will all shake out, and I don't know that I have the right answer, I would like a union to decide this. I would like a trade association to decide this, not me. This is not me deciding it. But I just, you know, getting to a place where it's like, oh, we can just keep fights going. You do that because you have the leverage to keep it going. When you don't, it's significantly harder.

Yeah.

Have you talked to someone who has passed out the numbers, has looked at the expenses like what it costs to run the UFC. Sure. And John, John Nash has done this extensively.

And what through all the court documents, he'd be better to talk about the overhead and how significant that impacts.

I'd be speaking a little bit out of turn, but this is a significant factor because it doesn't really exist in boxing, in relationship to promoters. They don't really have the staff or the promotion machine. They don't have the amount of overhead.

And you have to ask ask yourself a question like in defense of the UFC, they're going to have this, you know, again, imagine the pandemic doesn't exist for a moment.

They're going to either have or it's already opened the institute in China.

Right? Right. So they are they are forcing that market to begin to recruit and develop and recruit, develop.

And I don't know how to be successful, but no one in boxing has that kind of hand in the pot to begin to make things happen in the way that UFC could for the betterment of me. That's a real thing I give them absolute credit for. It's just you have to decide what you want to do. You want to institute in Shanghai or do you want Diego Sanchez to have been paid what he should have been paid?

Like this question you have to ask yourself there.

I want to get to Diego and I want to get to Anderson and I want to get to a bunch of other fighters as well.

The argument, if I was arguing on behalf of the UFC, which of course, I don't mean to put you on the spot, no need to be put on the spot.

I'm never anti UFC. I just I think about the fighters. What do I owe them?

This is the truth. I'm on your team when it comes to fighter pay. I don't I don't dictate it. I don't I'm not an accountant. I'm not the guy who gets to decide what the checks are, but. I think they should be paid as much as they can be paid. I mean, I think it's the fucking hardest job outside of being a cop or a soldier or a firefighter or a first responder or a fuckin surgeon in the emergency room.

It's one of the hardest goddamn jobs on the planet. Crazy. And I want to quantify whose job is tougher. But it's to me, I am obviously a massive fan, and it means everything to me that these guys make as much as they can. But it also the UFC has to be profitable in order to be sold to someone like me. It has to be valuable. In order for it to be valuable, it has to be profitable in order for it to be something that they can promote and get behind and make it as big as they've made it.

There has to be some sort of pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for these people. When you're dealing with business folks like, you know, like the WME, I mean, these are big time players in the entertainment business. For them to come along and fork out billions of dollars, literally billions for the UFC, it has to be a valuable thing. And from that, people have clearly profited from that. Stars have been born. And when it gets when you get to a guy who's a superstar, like a Greg or normal Madoff or the Israel Adesanya or John Jones, they're going to make a shitload of money that the argument is, do the guys below them, you know, do the.

You know, do the journeyman journey women, do they make enough for cow Pennington? Well, I would disagree a little bit if I if I may. So let's talk about John Jones first.

OK, so again, not my best friend, but I take his side on this one, which is do you remember when John was beefing with UFC about going to heavyweight boxing?

I'm retired. Yes. OK.

And he was like, you know, he was asking for Deontay Wilder money. Yeah. He should say angry, but there's no crowds.

The problem with the asking for Deontay Wilder money when there's not a stadium, obviously you realize that stadiums bring in a significant amount of revenue. It's a big deal, right?

I mean, it's millions and millions and millions of dollars for a fucking have your John Jones, you sell out the T-Mobile arena. That is a fuck load of money.

But John doesn't see a cut of that. He doesn't see a cut of that. But it makes sense that they pay him more because of that.

So here's what I would be sympathetic to the argument. If the problem was the song was the same pre pandemic as it was during the pandemic pre pandemic. It was the same thing. This money is outrageous. We don't possibly have it. We couldn't manufacture this if we wanted to post during the pandemic. It's the exact same argument. I'd be more sympathetic to it if the song had changed, but the song was the same. The other point about here is this.

If you want to talk about the numbers, Deontay Wilder has had, what, one or two to pay per views in his whole life? The first and second fury fights. First of all, about three hundred thousand or so. Second was about 850 K and some changed. And the second was a very good number. But it's like John has been outselling Deontay Wilder on pay per view. And this is not an exaggeration.

For a decade, for a full decade, he has been logging for five, six, seven hundred thousand pay per view buys.

Now, has he cost the UFC some money with his variety of, you know, indiscretions along the way?

Maybe. But you're asking who sells more between the two and who has sold more? It's not even a contest, especially cumulative.

Oh, my God, it's very easy. Here's the question, though.

When Deontay Wilder makes that money, everybody's tuning in just to see Deontae. While they're in Tyson fury, the undercard makes a fraction, a tiny, tiny fraction of that, whereas the undercard of a huge UFC event, you will have four big fights on the car. Then you will have overall 12 fights. You're usually 11 or 12. You have to pay all those fighters.

This is what I mean, though. I'm not asking for the guys to get fifty. I don't think fifty is realistic for the reasons you mentioned. There is a the UFC has done spectacularly well is create a fighter middle class where guys can make six figures a year. I don't know how many of them, but there's a there's a portion of that where they can make six figures.

They at least have some accident insurance. And there's ways to leverage that. And there's a whole lot of them relative to what there is in boxing.

That's the sweet spot there.

But when you talk about the argument about like who's most underpaid, the people point to the guy who's making ten and ten because the sob story. Right. But if you're asking who has generated the most versus what they were paid.

Yes.

For the reasons you articulated, John shouldn't be getting whatever he got for the Pentagon for the second fury fight. No, it would be a little bit less than that. But relative to what he got.

No, he is kind of MacGregor is underpaid relative to what he generates for the company. You think he got fifty percent of that? I don't think he got fifty percent of that.

I have zero idea. I've never looked into it even for a second. But when you get to a point where you're talking about like a world championship fighter, at least they have the leverage of people knowing that this is going to sell a shitload of people what leverage this contract.

Let me ask you. It's a good question. Yes. No, no, it's very large right now. I would say he doesn't have a lot of leverage, but post Jose, Aldo and then post Eddie Alvarez said a lot of.

So here's why Connors had a bit of a problem. One, you may not realize this, but the UFC over the years, they're smart businessmen here use this very spot.

I mean, a business is going to do what a business is going to do. You can get mad at him for it. I don't get mad at him for it. I understand they took advantage of the UFC, didn't break any laws, but they took advantage of what the laws were. They were smart businessmen. I completely understand it, but they're very good now about having contractual revenue.

Right. So it used to be, for example, the ESPN pay per view deal is a very good example of this, where you know you know as well as I do. Twenty, fourteen. John fights. Glover, uh, may sell OK, but not great. John fights. Cormier It's going to be much higher numbers. And that's still true to this day because star power sells. But what cut the UFC takes or how much money they can get is a function that's very volatile by virtue of the star power involved.

The ESPN deal cuts out a shitload of that one.

So a couple of reasons why I really am ignorant to the ESPN. So there's a couple of different factors. One is to the extent they meet their total quota. So I think it's a forty something shows a year. They get seven hundred and fifty million hits a shitload of money that's contracted. So you cross the finish line, money's yours and there they're going to meet that quite easily this year and good for them. I'm glad again the UFC staying in business and doing well.

Everybody wins when that's the case, including me. I recognize that. So that's the first one. The second part is what they did with ESPN was they took it away. Like if. You have a cable subscription through DirecTV or Comcast, you can't order U.S. paper views anymore if you go to ESPN. Plus, the way that works is that ESPN plus or ESPN rather gives them a flat check for every pay per view. My understanding is this is not confirmed and I hope your audience understands this.

So double check it. It's believed to be around what they would get for a hundred thousand pay per view by which is you getting that from.

Again, various reports that we've seen from Sports Business Journal. Weird, though, like that, just to come out with a number. OK, but various reports. Have you ever asked the UFC to substantiate?

I asked the guy who wrote the article. Yeah, we get a little bit off the record, but there's a reasonable reason to believe it again or double check it or don't.

I'm just going to give you what I know.

But that seems like a weird I mean, I'm with you on all this, but that's a weird one to if you don't have the fact if I have not seen the documents myself.

Well, here's what I can't say for certain. They get a stipend for each individual pay per view. And then on top of that, if it sells past a certain point, they get a cut of every year, they get a percentage of everyone passed a certain threshold that could be sold 500.

So it's I think domestically plus an additional amount. You know what? It's sold internationally. I think around 150, 200 extra, which is a I mean, that's a huge seven p.m. and.

Right. That's a shitload that's very, very good. Anyway. So the point being is what they have done intentionally, again, quite wisely, is they've removed volatility.

They're going to have a certain amount of it in through overseas deals with Kanbayashi in Brazil or European providers. They've got a series of contracted pieces of revenue that take out the volatility, provided they can meet the overall inventory of content that they have to meet. This is very, very small, but what it has done is have reduced the amount of leverage that any one individual fighter may have plus or pulls out and they go, OK, hey, you're on deck.

And George has just fucking exploded to a megastar and he's all too willing to play ball.

And so, you know, he had his own moment. But, you know, they have they have a ton of different resources to go to so that you fighters think, oh, I'll just retire, I'll just retire. And that'll that'll show them it's not going to show them shit.

Well, the John Jones thing, wasn't he contractually obligated to fight like he had a contract for X amount of money per fight and he wanted substantially more to fight at Heavyweight because he said the risk was higher and that was where the negotiation broke down.

But why is that? Why is that crazy? That's what would any other person in any other combative sport or certainly in boxing, what you would get you would get higher paydays for a move up and wait.

You would if there was a fight there that would generate substantial revenue. You know, I think, John, moving up to heavyweight, you could make what was how well did Steve pay versus DC do the second fight on third fight?

I don't know. You know, that that would be the argument.

Whether, Steve, a big enough challenge for John to to generate X amount of pay per view buys, which would which would justify the business. But this is my point, Joe. It's like I see your point, though. It makes sense. I'm just trying to say is I don't I don't know, 600000, 700000. Whereas where do you see it? 500000. Oh, I'm sorry.

500000 for take take these numbers with a little bit of Greenslopes from topology, which is a great site. But these are these are not double checked to some degree actually. You know what some of them might be. But the point being is this, Joe. It's like what is John Jones entitled to?

Here's what I would like it to be. I would like to be a case where I don't know the answer to that. I'd like to figure it out like you are. You all fucking figure this out and let it let it go.

I feel you on this union thing. I understand the position. And like I said, I'm I'm always for fighters getting paid more money, but it just I don't know if that would ever work.

It will work. You think it will work? Yeah, I think it's going to work, yes.

Really. So you think the future is a union?

How we get there? I don't know. Now, that is. I couldn't I'm with you. It's like their reluctance because I know for a long time, you know, privately, fighters would be like to me, they'd be like, you'll never talk about this shit. You'll never talk about it. And I was like, you know, it's a fair point. We never talk about it. And then we spent the last seven, eight years talking about it and it hasn't moved the needle.

And so it's like I don't think it's up to me. I don't think we can solve this problem.

You know what's really if you guys want it to be better, it's up to you, because, again, you is going to do what they are allowed to do and they're just going to keep doing it.

So, like, for example, we had this whole issue with Leon Edwards. He got removed from the rankings and everyone was like fire and brimstone, fire and brimstone.

I'm like, dude, what do you want to say, man? It's their rankings.

They're going to do what they're going to do, like either. Well, that's Leon Edwards.

One was weird because, like, is there any one that gets less respect for being that good than Leon Edwards? Like no one is calling out Leon Edwards. No one is asking to fight. Leon Edwards, like Leon Edwards is a top five guy. Right? Easy, easy. Top five. He's world fucking class. He's supposed to be fighting Hormoz Vardell right after that scrap that they had backstage where Masvidal sucker punched him three feet in the soda.

That's supposed to be a fight that gets made. Right. And everyone knows.

I mean, you look at how good he is, beats Donald Sironi, you know, beats half Los Angeles. I mean, he's a world class fighter.

And Gunner Nelson to practice. Yeah. Don't forget Gunner Nelson, one of the best jujitsu guys in the division. You don't hear his name being brought up. It's kind of crazy, like. For whatever reason, he's fallen into this kind of like weird spot where he's really good, but he doesn't get the attention.

I feel bad. I feel bad for him.

Oh, Leon Edwards, who comes out to my Chimayo, that's that's a big step up for Chimayo. That is a big step.

You know, what's funny is did you watch the card? Not the last one, maybe two cards ago. They had this dude from Kazakhstan. You know you know, people I don't care where you're from, Tennessee or Kazakhstan, if if you were dead animals on your head.

Shit, dude. You mean business, right? This dude beat Cowboy Oliveras. Remember that guy? Yes. Yes. Rachmaninov's think is his last name. Yes.

And and he guillotining it. Yeah. It's like that dude gittin Cowboy Olivero, who is better than anyone shammi of his fort.

And there's no fucking buzz about the guy. Part of it is for Leon Edwards is that and here's the other part. Like he beat good guys. He beat him on flypast events or like, you know, Kasa just didn't have a ton of buzz on him.

And he has good management. He's with Paradigm, which is a big company. But up until recently, he hasn't done a lot of, like, vocalisation about like he didn't like what was the last time we did, like, a big interview with the big I don't know, man, but I hate that that's a factor.

I hate the fighters have to talk. Shit, it drives me crazy. Not even that he just doesn't do a lot of talking.

Here he goes. Shafqat or Rachmaninoff. Look at this fucking animal.

He's very, very good. Very good. Yeah.

A cowboy Oliviera, you know. Is he the best fighter in the world?

No, but he's not a chump by any stretch to imagine that this guy has a fucking nasty guillotine to squeeze. Yeah.

And then he goes and puts on dead animals on his head roll. Look at him, you know, I mean, he's probably directly related.

Again, you can't look at him like that's getting genes. Here's what really got, Leon.

You know, everyone took an El with the pandemic one way or the other. He took a major L. Sure. Being in Europe, well, he can remember.

So the UFC had that show the I think it was a Sao Paulo show after every sport was like, we're done. They went out to Sao Paulo and then they were going to follow up in London. And that's when the world began closing airports and everything else. And here was the key man.

He was supposed to fight Tyron Woodley at that fight. That's going to be the main event for UFC, London and BT Sport shouts to BT Sport because they do an unbelievable job with promotional fighter packages.

They did one talking about Leon story being bullied. I think his parents could be getting it wrong. I believe they're from the Jamaican by heritage or his is is a family lineage. Whatever was there had the story about him growing up, you know, tough situation.

It was all illustrated like a cartoon and how he had arrived at this position. That was his big breakout moment.

And I think he definitely would have beaten Tiran, which is the current condition that Tyran is in as a fighter, and he lost all of it.

This is a look at this. I mean, the BT sport does such an incredible job. Look at this thing. Oh, wow. Yes, I was right.

He's from Jamaica. I mean, they show the story and you feel like all at once, I don't know who Leon Edwards is, but I want to know more. I understand his story. There's a lot of Jamaican immigrants certainly in the UK and, you know, growing up hardscrabble and getting fucked up and being in fights and shit and then finally arriving at this moment. Look at the ship, Joe. Isn't that incredible? That's a great piece.

And he lost he lost the momentum from all of this. Well, you know, the good news is he's still in his prime. And once all this shit blows over, there's still a lot of big fights to be had at 170. And there's also the opportunity that comes with guys inevitably getting injured and fights falling out. And the tromeo fight, if he can shut down the hype train, that will put him right in the driver's seat. Chermayeff.

I mean, it's really quick that this guy has all the hype on them and the Machard fight. Just fucking put a candle on that cake.

Didn't you ever watch the regional tape on this kid, Chimayo? Yeah. Oh, he's a monster. There was this dude.

I was like because we were like he's just like a but I'm like, let me see fucking how striking is a different level.

Exactly.

So there was this dude, he fought and he made most of his fights and brave, which is the promotion of Bahrain.

And he fought this dude who was a world champion in Zombo. No, no, no, no bitch at all. Like this guy is all dude. And Chermayeff couldn't take him down for a full round, could not take this guy down, and then said, you know what, fuck it, the strike and punched his fucking lights out like the more shot he has one punch.

Kalpowar Yeah.

That Muashar fight. And also at one eighty five.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the crazy thing. He's a 170 fighter. Yeah. I mean one seven. He's world class I think. I mean I'm really interested to find out. We'll see.

We'll see. With Leon Edwards. I spoke too soon. We're going to find out. It's a very, very intriguing find.

This is the guy I was telling you about. This guy he's knocking out is not a chump at all. He is very, very good fakes.

Low boom. Oh, man. Yeah, he's got legit power. Was this a 175 when the guys, this one seven one arm frozen up in the air or a leg?

Any time there's something frozen in the air, you know, it's a bad I might go to on.

This is. What we call it, testifying in church when they throw their hands up, when they come back and they have landslided testifying after the head banging off the ground is always scary. You see that movie TRF, who caught the head?

Yes. And then amazing what a humanitarian fuck Mother Teresa.

This guy, he's probably a fighter. That's probably why it's probably former.

But just the agility and wherewithal to, like, catch the head.

When you talk about guys that have been Kayode, who has been Kayode more than Alster Overeem, but shows less results, like less effects of it.

So thinking about that. Amazing. You mean like full on out?

Well, he's been flatlined multiple times. He's been Kayode in pride. He's been Kayode. And K K1 has been Kayode, like in multiple organizations.

You look but you look at him, he seems fine.

Yeah, I talked to him at UFC DC, which was in what, about a year ago. Seems lucid. Yeah.

I mean, how even Vandalise Silva is like starting to be the I thing in Portuguese.

But the people that I do that I'm friends with that do speak it say it's a show his the way he communicates in Portuguese is all fucked up now. Sorry to hear that. Listen, this is how it is. You know, we know multiple fighters that that slur their words and don't sound like they used to sound. Overeem in Bisping, Michael Bisping, I don't think he's been Kayode as many times, but certainly he's had a number of setbacks.

You got one armed guillotining against Luke Rockholt in the Dan Henderson knockouts pretty bad and whatever.

Like to me, Dan Henderson, Nocco was clearly the worst really, really bad.

But both those guys have an incredible resolve. In fact, you know, Michael Bisping, I this is like my sort of like a standard Michael Bisping point is that, you know, round three, he fought Anderson.

Oh, he got. Yes. Oh, yeah. And then if you look at the numbers, the best round Bisping had in any round in that fight was the next round.

Oh, he's a fucking animal. It's just first of all, he got killed because he was pointing that he lost his mouthpiece, was trying to get the judge to give him his fucking mouthpiece, and he let his guard down and Anderssen hit it with a flying knee. Right. Caught him right in the chin and looked like the fight was over. Anderson walked away like the fight was over and could have ended the fight, but thought the referee was going to step in and stop it.

Didn't I think it was Herb Dean? I believe I might be wrong.

I think that's right. Gold standard. Herb Dean. You know, now that John McCarthy is not refereeing, that's the gold standard. So Anderson walks away and Bisping, like, you got to put that motherfucker away. Like there's no quitting that dude, zero quitting that guy.

I don't think folks understand to get when you if you lose enough at something, enough that they've lost a tremendous amount of me. He's a hall of Famer and a champion. But I'm just saying at the elite level, when you lose like Herstein, there it is. It is a psychological barrier to overcome it.

You know, it's not people think it's always just get back up and but listen, we're not just a small potatoes. How about the fact that he fought most of the last half of his career with one eye?

It's just shock. That's what's insane. Completely shocking. I mean, he kind of faked his fucking eye tests. Yeah.

And other part is like, what would you say is like his ace in the hole as a skill? This is just tough. Just his mind to get good everything. Yeah.

But like he wasn't like Demian Maia or whatever. He just had a relentless fuck you in your face ability. He's tough as fuck. Does it get any tougher. I've said it up here.

Bulletproof, totally bulletproof. You've got to beat him. You know, he hasn't beat himself. I mean, the knockout of Luke Rocko's, God damn sensational.

I remember being there for that and seeing the joy on his face to finally achieved what seem a little surprise.

Oh, yeah, a little surprise on that right at first and a smile. I remember he looked around like this, like, holy fuck, I'm the champ.

Yeah, I did it. Yeah. And the fact that he Kayode Rockholt with that beautiful left over the top like that and that him and Jason Perlow saw that as a flaw in Rockwells defense. But I mean, I think I mean, that was an amazing performance, clearly the performance of his life, because it won him the title. But I say you go to the Conley fight, the Conley fight, he beat the fucking breaks out for Conley.

And that was when Conley was Connolly. And Connolly was like a scary guy. He had these wild taekwando kicks. It throws spinning back kicks and wheel kicks. And, you know, it was a dangerous style, hard to figure out. And Michael Bisping just beat the fuck out of him at the end of the fight.

In retrospect, I'm a little less surprised by that by virtue of the Scott Smith fights that he had in Strikeforce Conley. But to your point.

But Conley in that fight also didn't need to put test positive.

I mean, I think he was like because he looked so sorry he was fucking shredded.

Yeah, he had a beautiful six pack. And then Bisping was like, what the fuck is going on here?

And still, which, by the way, for Bisping is like Extra. Oh, yeah. Well, that was the Veter thing to me, you know. And Vitor stopped him. Vitor was on just who knows full well whatever the fuck he was on.

That was when there was a moment for the people who don't understand this. There was a moment of madness in May where you are allowed to take testosterone. Right. And all you had to do was show low testosterone. Well, guess what? If you've been doing steroids, you show low testosterone, you get off the steroids and then your endocrine system's all fucked up. So you go to a doctor, the doctor blood tests uses. Yep. You have low testosterone.

You need TRT. So testosterone replacement therapy is on the menu. And then all sudden you go from Vitor Belfort to get kicked in the face by Anderson Silva, who had if you go pull that up because it's one of Anderson's most spectacular knockouts.

And the first time ever I saw someone get killed by a front kick to the face because I remember I had a conversation with Eddie Bravo once in my gym where I had like one of those little rubber dummies that looks like a person.

And he could you throw a front kick to the face? I was like, yeah, you could, but you'd have to time it perfect. It's really not the best place for it. My place, meanwhile, you know, front. But look at Veter, the veto.

Then, you know, he just looked normal. This looked like an athlete, you know, it wasn't particularly shredded, particularly ripped. Now go to Vitor Belfort. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean what in the fuck. And holy shit you go to 2012 was the year he was like Super Sosi. Go to Vitor Belfort versus Michael Bisping, if you could find that, because there was a time where they let Vitor take whatever he wanted. And the problem with that is they did a test once and when they did a test on him, like, look at that picture with a. Boxing gloves? Yeah, right there. I mean, he is just fuckin jacked, Vitor Belfort is proof that no one's ever been like, you know what, your traps are too big.

Look at that picture. My God. And that's making weight, right? That's that's when you had to make weight. That wasn't the unofficial way in when you weighed in and rehydrated. And then you got to step on this. You know, I would say the official weight for Vito Belfour 185, but really he be 195 plus when he would stand or at least.

At least. Yeah, but look how shredded he was.

And that's when he was on testosterone replacement therapy. So Bisping fights him on natural and Veter when he was on.

Tejada is like the best guy. If you want to do an ad for trout you would have vetoed during those dominant years, you don't want you didn't have to take steroids to get TRT.

You could just have a bad night of sleep. Yeah, yeah. But not to sleep or eat.

By the way, you just ate like a bunch of shitty food and they'd be like, if you're on the low side of things and then you literally allowed to self administer.

And this is where it got crazy because Vettori tested one time one of the reasons why they stopped the testosterone replacement therapies. They tested him one time when he was in Vegas and he was just off the charts and they were like, what the fuck, man?

And then, you know, he was off the charts for the Jon Jones fight. That's true to the charts. And Jon was upset with that. Right, because, well, that was a fight at two or five, right? That was a fight that really tested Jon Jones mettle. And that's that's a fight where a lot of people forget Jon Jones and he fully hyperextended arm bar on him. I mean, his arm was fucked and most people would have tapped I mean, that arm was gonzo to the point where Jon decided to coach the ultimate fighter because he knew he was going to be trained for a long time because his arm was so fucked from the veto fight.

Right. Fettah in his guard, threw up in an arm bar and had it fully hyperextended.

And I think Vietnam might have let it go or something. I mean, I don't know what happened there either. Jon just gutted it out and Veter got tired, but his arm was fucked where if you watch it, you're cringing because you're waiting for that like Frank Meor or Tim Sylvia snap.

But that was actually low on the arm that was here on the forearm. Yeah, I remember that. Goddamn.

But like, I don't want to Tim's go fund me for that. Did you always get the medal pulled out of the arm filberts. I'll give him some money. Yeah. How crazy is that. Right. World champion. The why doesn't the UFC pay for that.

It seems like I'm not sure what the part of the article he tried and I think it's a I don't know is the answer.

I don't know. So, so what they have to do, they have to cut him open, take out there.

So apparently the screws were getting pushed out naturally and he was like, you could see he'd poor hydroxyl once.

What's that? What's the clue? Hydrogen peroxide, peroxide.

And you'd see all the bubbles and shit from the infection. Oh, boy. So he I think he, I think he got like fifteen grand off go fund me. So I think he more or less got the surgery that he needed but yeah.

Jesus Christ. I know. It's like why would you fight. What would you fight for. A living. It's so like well how about Frank Miller.

When Frank Miller got hit by a car when he was on his motorcycle in the 40s, he's got screws and plates in his fucking thigh.

His his femur was snapped in half, which is real touch and go like you could lose a leg there easily because the blood flow and like that that injury, super dangerous, like a femur break is really dangerous.

I know you don't you don't follow team sports. Did you follow the case at all, though, because this got a wider view of things. Alex Smith, quarterback for the formerly the Washington Redskins. Oh, OK. So Alex Smith, it was a recent quarterback.

It wasn't think a season or two ago he got tackled, but the way he got tackled was very different. He broke his shinbone.

OK, but it wasn't a snap like this, right?

It didn't break it like spaghetti they toe. So this is known as a spiral fracture.

They twisted it like a sponge. And not only that, you can see upper shield, upper left, right there. That's his leg. He had to get, I think, a dozen of that picture.

Oh, they hold it. They made a whole documentary on this guy. Joe, look at this.

Yeah. Jamie told me about him and that he's playing again now. Are you a football fan, Jamie? Jamie, go to that full, full picture. The upper top one. The one the other. You got up there on the right hand side now, the one you just had just before.

Just before. Yeah. Go to the go to make that large Jesus. So he had to get a look at that. That looks like a dog's chew toy.

OK, ready.

He I thought he wasn't going to walk again and he got infected and he almost lost his leg a couple of weeks ago. He made his return to the NFL.

That's the same. Can you believe that at that? Look at that calf.

Yes.

Seventeen or so surgeries, I think is what he had over the course of how long? A year and a half or two. Oh, look at that picture. Make that picture bigger. That is insane. You got to watch the documentary they made on him, Joe.

It is.

I mean, again, I love fighters, but there's there's more profiles in athletic courage than just what they do.

Oh, look, they had to take muscle and reattach it down low.

That's like an American. Earlier in London, when it starts to change, it's like, are you are you working? That's so crazy. He made his return. Oh, my God, that's a oh, my God. Look how bad that break is.

Yeah. Again, it was it in half. It was a rotating break. That's rough and that crazy.

Well, you know, there's only been two UFC leg breaks. Oh, my God.

Look at that show the drills. You can see if they got the video, you could see him do the drills. By the way, he made 18 million this year off, by the way. So, you know, nice for him.

Good for him. It's just this is video. And how did he do when he came back, he sucked. It wasn't very good, but every time you got tackled, you were like, oh, my God, imagine him. And he had his little kids there and his wife.

And they were like, yeah, but I was like, fuck that dude. I had a hard time watching. He's fine, but he's not very good right now.

Is he compromised? Like to the point will never be the same again.

To the full extent of that, I don't know. I mean, they put him on the roster and he started it because the initial quarterback, they say, is young and he's not very good at getting rid of him.

Then the backup got a concussion. So he was third string and they're like, you're active.

So I think we have to go back over all the different things that you were you were breaking down because I let you go on this long run. No, no, no, no. It was excellent. But there was a long run on the UFC and all the different things that you think are disadvantages for fighters.

You know, in general, I don't remember. And I want to make sure I don't blame just, you know, for all these problems.

There's there's the argument. There's the monopoly argument. Right? Well, obviously, there's other organizations right. There is the professional fighters league. They still call it that, I believe. So, which you win the tournament, you win a million dollars. And that's on NBC Sports, right.

ESPN two and ESPN plus now. Oh, OK. Yeah, I was on NBC. That's good. Good for them. That's excellent. That's where Justin gets you came from back when it was the. No, it wasn't a peaceful.

It was it was a World Series of fighting. That's right.

So you have one FC which pays a lot of money and they brought over Mighty Mouse Johnson and Eddie Alvarez and Brandon Veras over there.

I think he's still their heavyweight champion, cut down to light heavyweight and lost and really look drained that what's his face if you got the lay guy, Auld Lang Syne, I think I don't know.

I think that's the song you sing at New Year's. The guys are really good fighter.

He's very good. Get his I don't know how to say his name. We should find out his name. Find out what is the guy who just beat branded Vera for the light heavyweight crown. Brian Rivera, by the way. Heavyweight looks fucking phenomenal over there, buddy.

Yeah, they'll let them take all the Mexico. You know what? Good for him, you know, good for him.

Yeah, he's been around a long time. Yeah. And he's a fucking Jack. My father died over there at a heavyweight. He looked really good with soccer kicks and all that shit on the ground that Brandon was a threat.

I remember him. I saw him at Lord Irvin's gym 2005.

Say that name.

Yeah, on LA.

I don't know. I don't fucking la he's barmy. So, you know, he's he's tough as shit. He's really good. He's and he is a very hooved student. Right. Oh is he really. I believe so. I believe he trains with the the artist formerly known as the black civilians. What do they call themselves now.

So now they're Sanford May is they got a health care sponsor. Oh. So it was hard. Knocks 365 and now it's Sanford Amami. Yeah.

That's an interesting camp. Right, because you get Gilbert Burns and who's a fucking monster? And then you got Kamara Ousman, who's now with Trevor Whitmont, and he realizes that him and Gilbert Burns are going to have to go after it.

Right. And that's that's going to be really interesting. Your long time trading partners.

I can't wait for that one. Burns is complete.

You know what's amazing to you over the quintet that UFC did? I think it was like early in the the grappling tournament.

Yeah. So it's like a five on five. And it was like it was like Sean O'Malley, Anthony Smith, we're all good grapplers.

And then it was like a bunch of I forget who they were going against.

But every once in a while you'll see like an MMO guy and he's got to make guys usually pretty good at this point, like not like world class, but like they're very, very good.

And then Gilbert gets down there. Oh yeah. And you're like, oh right. He's one of them.

He's one of the elite. He's a world champion, of course.

But I mean, like he hasn't like I'm sure he's just it has fallen off a little bit relative to what it was when he was just jujitsu.

But you can tell some of these guys, you know, he's not like one of these MÃ brothers who is, you know, a gripping, heavy kind of leg entanglement strategic kind of guy.

Gilbert's athletic shit. He can pass, he can go underneath. He's got a good guard. He can wrestle, he can do the whole nine yards.

When I stand next to him, I have a hard time believing you ever made one fifty five. It's shocking that he was really compromised.

He's one of those guys that was really compromised, 155, because he's so thick, like he's walking around well over 200 pounds and he's thick as fuck. Right.

And you know, and has zero problem competing with guys like Tyron Woodley at seventy. And once he's a fucking monster man, his striking is nasty, too.

That's what's interesting about Gilbert, is that he is an elite Brazilian jujitsu blackbelt, but his striking is fucking world class.

That wordly fight was an oh my God, dude, his strike is terrifying.

It's really, really good.

Right. And I mean, here's the thing about it's like, you know, I mean, can you imagine? It's like, what's your ace in the hole? What's you think you can go to if you need it, oh, you're a world champion black belt, that's the thing you have if you need it, because everything else is good enough to win a UFC title.

Yeah, that is fucking frightening if you don't want to stand with them.

He's terrified of standing by all I mean because he could barrel down on Tiran because it's like I mean, maybe he'll fight the takedown if it's there, but probably not because on the ground, you know, I mean, his ability to sweep or just create space more threaten you or more plots or whatever.

Yeah. Good luck fighting that fucking guy on the ground. You know, probably a welterweight at welterweight.

Let's think about this. You have Colby, Komoro, Masvidal, by the way, very underrated ground game for Masvidal. Oh, yeah. I'm sure. You know, I'm just saying, for the audience's sake, very underrated wrestling.

Everything, everything, everything.

But all those guys in the top five, Gilberte is your biggest submission threat by a country.

Oh, a country mile. I would have really loved to have seen Hormoz Masvidal, Kumara Usmanov Harad, a camp because he did not have a camp for that fight and still presented some real big problems for Komoro.

Don't you find the ascension of Hauge kind of funny? I love it. I want to do you more. When he fought, I like once I won fifty five, I do. So I was at that fight.

It was in Fairfax, Virginia, and I'll never forget Fight Week. Was that one of these UFC gyms in somewhere in the suburbs of DC? I don't remember where I live in city property. I'd like you to go out to the suburbs and it was decently attended.

It was not a super well attended open workout because, you know, there's enough people there and Al got a huge, you know, whatever. And I think it was Frankie. No, it was Chad Mendez and Ricardo Lomis in the main event. And Chad was a big alpha male guy at the time. And, you know, he got a big applause.

George came out and maybe ten people knew who he was, media, the the Latin media that was there. He wanted to talk to him. But like most of the media, you know, was kind of like give or take on it.

And I remember saying to myself, like, do y'all not know how fucking good this guy is? By the way, I thought you won that fight, too.

And then years later, I did as well, remember?

Yeah. And it was like you're going to about me. Were a fucking bully. Got to love owls, the owls. Hilarious.

But, you know, to see later, it's like it's amazing. It's like you're nothing or nothing or nothing all of a sudden something.

Well, you know, the resurrection, you know, he talks about it, how he went on that stupid reality show. They made him live in the jungle for a couple of weeks.

ALTUN Yeah. Whatever it was. And he was like, what the fuck am I doing with my life? And then he had a chance to think about all those fights where he just fell short. And why did he fall short? You know, what did he do? Was he playing it safe and decided he's going to start baptizing people, as he puts it? And man, you talk about a guy who turned a corner and changed. I mean, the Ben Asprin fight, though.

That was it. That was the cherry on top.

And then, of course, the marking of Nadiya's I mean, he beat the fuck out of Nate Diaz. I mean, that was a crazy fight.

And they were talking about running that back. I was like, for what? Yeah, I was confused.

I was like, don't forget Darren till put his lights up to. Yes.

With a beautiful step forward left hook combination. I mean, he's a monster. He's a monster.

He's hard for anybody to deal with in the fact that he stopped Darren till when Darren tells us terrified striker that he just beat down Donald Sironi. You know, Darren Tim was a scary guy. And to see him put him away that way and, you know, obviously was after Tyron had beaten him.

But it was still such a stunning, stunning Chayo. And he's just a fun guy, like everything's fun about him.

Tarlac Like, I had him on the podcast and I said, the real question is whether or not Ben Affleck can get a hold.

Usually he can get a hold of these nuts and that's that's him, you know. I mean, that's him. He's just a real fun dude. He's a fun dude to watch fight. He's a fun dude to listen to him talk.

He's been he can do he sort of cut you off. But like Dan Levitan is a big national sports radio guy based out of Miami. So a couple of Miami guys, couple of Cuban-Americans, and they're on opposite sides politically.

Very much so. Oh, he's all Trump, right? Yes. And Dan, lumberyards, very left. But like I, I they have this camaraderie through heritage and identity and sort of shared experiences you just can't fake. You know, he's awesome. I'm a big fan, but I'm a big fan of him skillfully.

I think he's a really exceptional fighter. He's very clever. He also has a very unusual stance. Like he stands straight up, like he stands like a morti fighter. And it's one of the reasons why his takedown defense is so good. He's confident that he could stand straight up like that. And he's striking is very crisp, very clean. And he's clever. Like he sets traps. He, you know, catches you like that fucking Ben Asprin thing was goddamn genius.

And when you see him prep for it, when you watch the training footage that he did that over and not only that prep for the angle right leaning against the cage.

So he like presented this and then turned a corner, went to the right, and then charged Adam so that Ben asked him, like, I'm just going to grab this guy.

Like, literally he he set two different traps, the running at him and then the turning the.

And then running at him and Ben ask her, like, instincts just drove in and he couldn't help himself. I call it the George Masvidal test, go through any of his fights pre to win or lose doesn't matter. And watch how many times when you know, they're getting the mouthpiece put in and the Vaseline put on at the beginning. Watch how many times the commentator says folks don't understand how good he is. Folks don't know how smart he is.

This is one of the most well rounded fighters in all the UFC, and they do it in this kind of way to like almost plead with the audience to understand the fighter as they do.

That would be me and stands done in a million.

Tell me the thing is, if you and Bryanston are doing and you're not coordinating it, something is happening here.

Well, I remember when he knocked out Eve Edwards with a head kick and when Eve Edwards is one of the best 155 pounds in the world after even Edwards had beaten Josh Thompson, who's another guy who doesn't get nearly the respect that he deserves, the first guy to ever knock out Nadiya's right. I mean, Josh Thompson at one point in time was the fucking man, right? And so he knocks out Eve Edwards in Bodrog.

Remember, both dogs have all the DVDs at home and molholm at home. Dogs for people.

Don't remember Calvin Ayers, who's like this big gambling guy who there.

I think what they were trying to do here it is, was, oh, God, that was beautiful.

And total finish. And then look at that. Look at that. Look at this.

Poses like he's a male model. Yeah. But they put down a bunch of fights like good fights.

That was where came Alaska has made his debut. That's where Matt Lindland fought. Phaedo remember that like. But I think their idea was online gambling.

They're going to do it and they were going to be compensated through online gambling. But then that was right when online gambling got shut down.

The United States was really weird because, like, why are you shutting online gambling down?

We can be in person and gambling. Like what? Why you decide where people can gamble. What is this? And the company went under and I think Calvin was like I think he's like a fugitive. I think he has to live in other countries. I don't know. I'm not sure.

So you might be right, because Dana and him were going back and forth and.

Yeah, because Cavnar, when he had the Bo dog thing, had a big billboard for Bo dog fight, but it was him like Calvin Igher, like in Vegas, like looking slick with a nice, tailored, expensive suit.

And he was talking shit about Dana White. And Dana was like, you can't even get in this country like you're a fucking fugitive for the love that come to this country.

They'll arrest you. Like, I don't remember what it was, but I think it was one of those things where he was doing this online gambling thing and they were like, this is illegal. And he's like, fuck you, I'll do it in Belize or some shit in Costa Rica. I think something like that. I think he lives there now.

He has to I don't think he's I don't think he can step foot in America. I might be talking about a please don't sue me.

Yeah, but see see if you can find that.

But he's a big he's a big gambling guy. I mean, he's a big online gambling guy. And I think there was some weird shit that went down which look, I'm a big fan of personal freedom and I'm a big fan of people being able to gamble whatever the fuck they want. I'm not a big fan of people regulating things like unless you could prove that someone's getting robbed, unless you can prove they're stealing money from people, I think they should be able to gamble.

Sure.

I think that was that was one of the things that happened with that Bodrog organization. But they threw around a lot of money put together. What is it?

I thought what happen he got also involved in and cryptocurrency afterwards. It sounds about right now.

That case initially, I think, has been settled, though, the cryptocurrency, you know, not the initial the dog. Oh, so he's allowed to come to America. I don't know about that. Sorry, Calvin. That again, though, to me. Yeah, well, he put together got to say, he put together some great fucking fights, Chilson and there.

That's right. Jake Ellenberger Foxfire. Yeah, tons of good guys for Dog.

Yeah. And they did on the beach with hot chicks.

Who was her name. You know who fought. There was the brother and sister combo. Carina and Hawtrey go damn. Oh that's right.

They did the capoeira shit you know, they would be in the middle and they would do this shit during the middle of a fight. Yeah, it was fuck people up to.

Well, you know, the interesting thing is, like, I don't know what would happen with that organization, but they put together a small number of fights.

I think it was maybe three or four fights, three or four cards.

But if you go back and look at those three or four cars, like they fucking hold up, they hold up like any affliction event, you know, which is another organization that threw a lot of money into big fights.

You ever heard of you ever talk to Jeff Ausborn? Sure. Jeff Osborne. I did commentary on the very first UFC. I'm a big fan of, you know what I mean? Like recently.

No, I haven't. So out of nowhere, I'm no longer with Sirius XM. I moved on, but I had a show once and they were like, Jeff Osborn's on line one. I like the Jeff Osborne.

So Jeff has a memorabilia shop of like all shit in his hometown.

And he called in and we talked about a bunch of dude who could shoot him, but also with do you realize this? The Kane fight that they had was in a ice rink in the middle of an ice rink, and they actually built a studio like stage presence for it in the middle of an ice rink and like whatever the fuck it was, St. Petersburg and then a ring to make it look like they were like somewhere else. Meanwhile, they're in the middle of a fucking ice rink.

Really? Yeah.

All his storage fight was this Chanes fight there, I thought fought on the beach. Oh, no, no. Huta can't fight.

I couldn't tell you who the fuck knows, but I could really.

I mean, this is Bodrog Bulldog. So was this the same card where Finland fought Fettah? I don't think so, but again, I can't be sure, but you've got to reconnect with him some time because this motherfucker I love to do his dog stories are like out of control.

See this? This is this is in the middle of an ice rink.

Jeremiah Constant. You know, he's about you got you got fat tattooed guy versus Cain came by to work.

You like to know Cain was a force of nature.

He's the best heavyweight I've ever seen. I'm not saying he's the best heavyweight ever, but in terms of the eye test and what he could do, nobody was better than him.

You know, the thing is, it's like, how long can you be at that level? That's the real question.

It's it's not sometimes you want to look at a guy like you look at Andersen, right. And you look at the Jared cannoneers fight or you look at the second Chris Weidman fight.

It's really interesting. You look at Anderson's career and actually went over it last night. I knew I was going to talk to you today. And I was thinking, you know, there's one point in time where I was convinced that Anderson was a goat. And I think he was at his time. I think in his in his in his prime. He was the goat at the time. And you go from the Chris Weidman fight where he's the baddest motherfucker on earth, Chris Brown, and kills him.

And then he loses every fight afterwards, except Derek Brunson, except Derek Brunson.

He beats Derek Brunson by decision, but he loses every other fight. It's crazy.

I mean, you look at him, you go from Chris Leverne Starch and Chris Lieben. You look at his fights.

I mean, there was a few that people forget. There's a few that were boring. Right? There was a there was, you know, the tell us like to tell Slaters the coach, I wasn't that good either.

Pachakutik was very cautious because Patrick Coté knew that so was counterfeiter and Patrick had a powerful fucking right hand. And Patrias like, I'll let you come to me, bitch.

And then Patrick was the weird thing.

Like you hopped on his knee to throw a kick and his knee just blew out and he fell and held his knee. And that was a really.

But the Damien Meyer fight, people forget that that was in Abu Dhabi and he came fucking like hell on wheels in the first couple of rounds trying to take Damian Meyer out. And Damian Maya survived.

And then he just coasted for the last few rounds and everybody was terribly upset. It was really Anderson Silva, like I remember Dana White was like, if he does that again, I'll cut him. And everybody's was like, whoa, this is crazy.

Like, everyone was so furious because this was the big fight in Abu Dhabi, BJ Penford, Franki Edcon, Frankie Edgar upset.

And everyone's like, this is crazy, BJP and lost. And then Anderson Silva comes out like a demon. And he was like screaming, Adamian, my my mind is probably the nicest, most respectful person. I don't know what their beef was about. I still to this day don't understand what it was. But for whatever it was Anderson had in his head, he was angry at Damian Meyer and fought very emotionally and tried to take him out and didn't.

I also think in the fourth maybe was a fifth round, Damian hurt them. Yeah, there's a big punch that lands and you watch the body language and the sort of tactical approach begin to change almost instantly after he gets drilled with one.

Now, maybe I'm not saying he's the best record. I'm just saying in that moment it was hot out to the guy.

The way you were outside. Yeah, we were outside. It was fucking hot.

And I think and there also bugs flying around like the size of birds.

It was weird.

Like, what is that thing like? It's like weird because we're outside and Damian survived. He survived the initial onslaught and then, you know, but just could never be fast enough to take innocent, you know, to get a hold of it.

It was just never down. You never felt like he was meaningfully moving the needle. Right.

He just wasn't at that level. Like, striking was just he but he did threaten them. He did hit him. And then Anderson decided to coast.

But Damian and Dana was so mad and Fox understand who this was.

I think two things were happening at the time. One, that was when they had made the sale to flash entertainment and they had sold ten percent of the company.

I believe that's why they had gone to Abu Dhabi was partly of those reasons. That was sort of an internal thing. That was an external thing. But folks don't realize this.

This was in the UFC was fucking red hot, red hot. I mean, they could not miss every time they come out, maybe the pay per view wasn't great, but it wouldn't sell poorly. You know, this was at a time where I think it was too far removed from remember when I was in New Orleans once with now my wife, my then girlfriend, and we watched I remember this card got super fucked up.

I don't even know what the initial one was supposed to be ended up as Rashad versus Tiago Silva.

No, that was three rounds. And it yeah, that thing still did almost 400000 buys.

I mean, they could not miss and they had Anderson Silva, they had all these sort of important guests there. This was this coronation moment for this new opportunity and it kind of shit the bed a little bit.

And Dana was fucking heated. Whoo!

After that, I got to say no to I can understand it, too. Yeah, it was it was not a good fight.

But Anderson, when he was in his prime, there was moments like the Forest Griffin fight where you walked away and you go, who's better than that fucking guy?

You know? But I. Basically, it was a tailor made kind of style for Anderson, it was like a blood and guts come forward, you know, it doesn't hide anything, just really charges. And Anderson would just like see everything.

He was so relaxed he would find openings and the famous step back away from those punches and then just hit him with a right hand, a fade away right hand and knock them out.

What had hit him with? Do you see that fight over the weekend, which might also, Uriah? Yes, exactly.

Yeah, it was like it was slightly different, but I saw it and I was like, dude, this is a game where you stay around long enough and the elderly get eaten.

Well, it was also like when you're watching Anderson move, he's doing things that he would have never done when he was younger. It's almost like he's trying to, like, get the sparks flying, like crank the engine over.

But it doesn't want to you know, he's moving forward in a way that, like you like like you would never see the Anderson Silva that fucked up Rich Franklin twice. You would never see him fight like that. The intensity of that stop Chris Lieben, he would never fight like that. You know, that Anderson was a clever tactician then.

Anderson was a was a technical fighter, whereas, like, he fought really aggressive in the first round. But if you don't go back to Vitor being on TRT, you give Anderson TRT, you'll see a different fighter. But if you want to make him fight on the match, you're you're 45, man. This is 45 is 45.

It's like unless you're Bernard Hopkins, unless you're a guy that's so fucking good at boxing where you're clever and you don't waste any energy and you're so disciplined and so technical and so defensive oriented that you can take these like world championship caliber young guys and drag them into seven, eight, nine rounds and then set traps for him and eventually capitalize on them. There's very few guys that get to the point.

Bernard got into his 50s when he changed his nickname to the alien. Yeah, I didn't think it was a better nickname, but it was maybe a more appropriate one.

You know, when he fought Joe Smith and he got knocked out through the ropes and fell and landed on his head. Right. I was like, oh, Jesus Christ.

But the difference is you, Hyla, I think it's really important between Hopkins and in Silva, which is that it would not be accurate to say that Silva lived on his chin.

That is not true. But it would be accurate to say there was a couple of times he let it slide.

You'd see times in fights where he would kind of just take one and then like his head would whip, but he'd still be right there about the horse reverify, right.

Remember the cage rage fight? He let him punch him in the face. Right. This is that was the more it was a little more demonstrative.

But I mean, it's crazy, OK, but there's there was all these moments where he would kind of let it go and he just at 45, you just do not have the capacity for that at all. You don't. Yeah.

And also, again, we're talking about a natural 45, a guy who can't you know you know, you have very low testosterone levels. So my back hurts. I'm forty one.

My back hurts like got a fucking bed. I know. You know, I'm not exactly, but I'm just saying like training camp.

But even if you watch them train, it's it's not what you want to see. You know, I've watched training footage of Anderson.

It's it's hard to say unless you're in the gym with them day in, day out, like what kind of output he's he's really doing. But when I'm watching him hit the mitts and hit the pads and it's just not it's not what I used to see.

He is he is one of, I think three there, maybe more. But if I had to ask how many fighters currently competing the ultimate fighting championship have pro-am wins that predate 9/11. Robbie Lawler, him and Overing were the ones that come to mind. That's about it.

There might be a couple Diego, but Diego goes out of the mix now, right?

I'm sure he has a win that predates 9/11. He might, but. But the point is not in the UFC. You're right, because his debut was two or five. Oh, no. You'll see. I mean, just does he have one that predates 9/11, really, Diego? I don't know.

He's 2005. He was his debut in the UFC when he won Ultimate Fighter Season one. OK, right. That's 2005.

Correct. There's a certain there's a certain beauty to it, which is I know you appreciate this.

You know, I was thinking about it like there's a lot of Stryker's and like a lot of great fighters, folks don't remember. And Silberling fought them.

But like, you know, Marquita, folks have to work with dude Silvas maybe best fight. And this is debatable because of the Chilson and come back. But you asked me like my favorite innocense over fight.

He fought lightning lemert demarai hatred in cage rage in London, when, by the way, everyone knows Lee Murray as like, oh, the guy who robbed the bank, because it's such an incredible story and I recognize that.

But put that aside for just a minute. Lightning Lee Murray was a bad motherfucker, bad mouth.

He could fight his ass off. He was very good.

Vicious power and athletic and quick and like a yes. Super fucking just elegantly evil.

OK, and Anderson Silva beat the fucking brakes off of the breaks in London in front of Lee Murray's hometown crowd and did it and did it with a certain gusto.

And no one knows that shit. Yeah.

Because all you can imagine if you just joined listen, you come to everyday when you come to me, you can't you can't be when his fans, like, beats up on newer fans because they didn't. I got lucky, someone introduced me. Yeah, but can you imagine understanding Anderson Silva as a function of like Conor McGregor popularity, like you came to UFC because of him? And that's all you know. Oh, my fucking God, you missed the whole show.

Yeah.

You missed the evolution because there was times where, like, if you go back, do you remember Alex debulking the Brazilian killer.

They didn't like that nickname too much, did. Anderson caught him with a high kick and busted open his eyebrow and stopped him. But I believe someone correct me if I'm wrong, Jamie, look at pulled up Anderson Silver's record. I think Rio Konan beat him after Lee Murray.

Yes, he did. And the Liow Rio Chona man, that was a crazy fight. So did his fists flying scissors hold?

Yeah, that was his last fight. And he went from that, I think, to where we had the Otsuka fight. I have to go look it up. But he went from that to the Lieben fight I believe so something, something like that.

I think he might have fought one more time in cage rage. Limor, you have watching Curtis. That's right. Curtis Stout, another good striker that folks don't remember. Kentridge Forty.

So that's what's interesting. Right. So he loses to real tone and then beats the fuck out. Jorge Rivera.

But that was after the Lee Murray fight, right? So he went from Lee Murray, which was arguably, I agree with you, one of his most impressive decisions, one of the most impressive victories, rather. And then Rochon and beat some people forgot about Rio Shonen.

And then the usual Commy win is a disqualification. He just kicked them on his knees. That was veejays promotion. And then the Tony Freckling crazy upward layback. Remember that? And then he went and fought Chris Lee.

But after that, everyone leaving said he was going to send him back to Japan. Yeah, hi. I'll never forget I was that.

So I had a job in Washington, DC in this job. I had I used to work in a little bit in politics and I hated this fucking job. And I'll never forget it was the night of Silvo versus Lieben.

And everyone was like, hey, we got a bunch of work to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was like, I had to make up some excuse. I'm like, I think I have AIDS, I'm sick, I don't know what is wrong.

And I was like, I had to go home and I sprinted home.

And then I was like, I want to watch this alone.

And I went to a bar that was near where I was live at the time.

And I watched it and it was one of the most I never like drinking alone. Stories usually don't end with, like a smile and glee, but I know what none of my friends like him and me. I'm just the only one.

And so I don't have anybody to call. So I was like, fuck, I was going to go to the bar and I watched it.

And it was one of the truly, like, great sports memories of my life, you know.

Yeah, I remember I had friends come to that. And that was back when you could bet. I mean, you still can bet. But I used to bet on fights. I used to bet on fights before. I didn't nobody told me not to.

But I decided at a certain point I probably should stop and I don't think I'd bet on that. I think that was like the last one I didn't bet on because, like, this is stealing money, because whatever the line was, it wasn't big enough. I was like, listen to me. And I was talking to my friends like, oh, that motherfucker can't lose, can I go?

This guy's an assassin and I make a request to Jimmy, can you go to best fight odds? Dotcom, I'm not paid. It's just a repository for good information. Sure, you can look up someone's eyes throughout their career. Oh, OK. How it opened. How close.

Let's go. Best, best odds. Dotcom that's the best fight odds.

Let's fight odds dotcom and try to find the innocence of life just as punch in someone's name like Wikipedia and we'll show you all their odds.

But I remember telling my friend this is stealing money. I'm like, this motherfucker's an assassin. I'm like, he's so good. He's so good.

I thought it might be competitive in the sense that Silva was better. Here we go. So do they have it? Oh, fuck. I don't think they have.

It goes all the way back to Nate Marquart. How is those twins? How is it that close? Jesus.

Yeah, that's crazy. Well, Nate was really fucking good. That's why I mean, Anderson was only a two to one favor back then. But you got to remember, that's Nate Marquart when he was in his prime. And he Marquart Pankratz, bro, when I talked to Brendon job and Brendon Sean was training with Nate Marquart, he goes, Dude, let me tell you, something goes, I never saw that motherfucker lose around in sparring name.

Marquart is a guy who at one point in time was one of the elite of the elite. Remember, he knocked out Damian Ryan with one punch in the air?

Yeah, he was a fucking killer man, but he knocked out Tyron Woodley with one of the most nasty foul balls video game combinations you've ever seen. It was like read out a Mortal Kombat.

He hit. What's his face? Well, who's the strongest Christian Allen is that is the striking coach over there for him. Whose district includes the elevation now, I think he's a Caucasian Hagans guy because I think it's Christian Allen who I've never talked to him, but everyone tells me he's a fucking genius. He hit Wilson Gouveia. Remember this? He hit him with the he hit him with the punch punch high kick spin breakfast.

Oh, yeah. He hit him with that. Kind of forgot about that guy to Wilson Gouveia, another good guy. There's so many fighters that just like you, like you forget about Travis Luder like.

Oh yeah, yeah. But he's training the next gen of guys is Kevin Hart. Kevin Hollins out of Travis Lutetium.

Is he really Kevin Loansharking. Yeah, man. He's like Travis Luter's one of those guys where I remember you know, I remember when he fought Sylve, I was like, this one might be worth watching and then he to play this dude.

I've never seen anybody closer to death than I did.

I was there on his way to making the wait when he missed the wait. And then he was going to scale and I saw him shuffling because he couldn't walk, could pick his legs up. He was shuffling like he was snow skiing. Right. And then his whose lips were cracked, like you could see, like the red in between the cracks, like it's like he had no water in his body and he was trying to make weight and he couldn't make weight.

That's how Hoby was. I interviewed him. We had a media day before the Ferguson fight at 209, which obviously did not happen. We did Media Day and it was my turn to talk to Cleveland. I stuck a microphone in his face and he had the worst I've seen. I've seen, you know, in fifteen years in the business. And I've covered, you know, collegiate and Olympic wrestling a little bit. I've seen Cottonmouth.

I've seen a lot of it. That is the worst cottonmouth I have ever seen in my life. I mean, he could barely separate the tongue from the inside of his mouth.

Crazy to make guys talk like that, you know, and it's also crazy that we allow that. You know, I applaud one FC for their weight cutting measures. I think what they've done, their whole hydration thing, I think it's the most important thing in them. I think we need to do that across the board. But I think there needs to be more options for fighters. I think they should be more weight classes are really, really, really I'd be a little bit skeptical of them.

Yeah, here's what I'm saying. The weight hydration system, as we understand it through collegiate wrestling, appears to be a godsend. Right. So what we understand of it works. Now, I am going to be very clear about what I'm about to tell you. I am not declaring to you that what they are telling us about their weight cutting system is wrong, because like you, I've talked to Ben Aspirin.

I've talked to Gary Tonin and they really enjoyed it. What I'm telling you is I'm a little bit skeptical of the veracity of the claims that aren't independently verified.

They have only recently begun to stream their way in.

And even then, you can't see what's on the scale. You have no idea about if someone is missing weight. And there could be any number of factors related to whether or not they actually made it. I'm just telling you, I personally, as a guy in media, I do not take promotors word for it. And so this is not me declaring to you that their Wayans are Fugazi. This is me declaring to you until we get independent verification of them.

I would pause a little bit on some of their claims.

Do you know if Gazy really means, you know, I know the band and I know it's supposed to mean likes because I'm from DC. Fugazi is actually happening. The Stubbornness Sea Fugazi, but it means sort of counterfeit.

It was a company that was writing bad checks. I'm pretty sure it was a limo company and they were writing songs. That sounds perfect.

They're writing bad checks and so it became like synonymous. I Fugazi Check. I found my friend Mike Starr was in The Godfather or Goodfellas. Been a bunch of movies. He was in Dumb and Dumber. He told me about also what the fuck is for Gazy.

Yeah, I'm from DC so we know waiting room. There's a there's a bit of I have a bit of skepticism about their drug policy because.

Yeah. Quite a bit. Quite a bit. And now, now the Vytas over there and they got a few guys over there, they look pretty juicy. Yeah. Good. I don't care. It doesn't bother me.

I don't care if it's known. You know, the thing is, it's it's like I wish there was a policy, like there's an argument that could be made when it comes to things like Tour de France that you could argue that it's safer to do it with the steroids than it is without. Right.

With the blood. It kills the human body. Yeah, it's destructive.

And like there's an argument that, like doing that with it is actually healthier. The problem is in this country, we have this idea that you're cheating and it's un-American. We have it from baseball. Mark McGuire, all the stupid ideas. Joe Rogan.

Yes, there's a lot of weirdness when it comes to that.

So the last few years, I remember I used to talk to Travis Tygart, who runs USA pretty regularly back in twenty fifteen or so.

And I found to be very earnest guy, very nice. I think he's very committed to his mission. This is not I have nothing bad to say about him personally other other than now. I couldn't find more disagreement with him if my life depended on it. Basically set me down a rabbit hole and let me know what happened in the last five years of my life. No one will tell you this. I don't know why.

But there is this entire movement and I don't mean of weirdos and people of ill repute and people who haven't done their homework.

I'm talking academic scholars with research who have done the homework in the most complex of ways. Right. There is this entire body of work around antidoping.

And if you follow the rabbit hole that I went down, this is not some YouTube rabbit hole.

In fact, if you look, you can't you can't find it. This is its dense reading, quite candidly. The history of antidoping, where it come from, where it comes from, how it developed and what the status is today. You can only come away with a couple of conclusions. One, antidoping globally is a dramatic failure. It has not worked. And number two, the major problem that I have is I'm not expecting everyone to agree with what I say about antidoping.

Many of my views are outside of the Overton Window, but the debate around antidoping is so incomplete and so dishonest that it's hard to get in a word edgewise.

It's hard to get people to understand that, like you're just repeating 1980s drug war nonsense without even really realizing that's what you're doing.

If you actually examine the facts of the case again, maybe you'll come to the conclusion that I come to. Maybe you won't.

What is the conclusion you've come to? That here is basically what we should do with drugs in sport.

They are not going away. There's nothing we can do about it. They are not going away.

And to the extent they go away, genetic manipulation will happen with the CRISPR technology or some other version of it. Or there's these things called financial doping, which big clubs get involved in. In Europe. It's been a big problem over there as well. What does that mean? Financial doping is a basically a way to cook. It's a they call it doping because it's a way to make things sound bad. In fact, the word doping comes from the early 20th century when they were trying to figure out a name for giving horses drugs.

They called it doping. And then they used that.

They ported it over to human athletics to sort of make it. By the way, in fairness, it was the Mafia doing a lot of that. So they took the sort of like organized crime, human on animal crime, and then they brought it over to a human sport. But basically this idea of like, oh, we have certain limits. You can't pay more in salary than this. We'll find ways to sort of manipulate the books to make sure that you get paid more and I get paid more.

It won't show up on the ledger in the way that it normally would when you actually calculate the total. We're not meeting the demands of keeping the payload restricted so that we can remain competitive across the league. It's called financial doping. But there's a couple of scholars, Verner Mueller out of I think he's out of Denmark and then Paul Daimio out of Scotland.

They have written a couple of books on the history of anti-doping, on the state of anti-doping, on the ethics of doping and anti-doping. These are not guys who think that steroids should just be legal. People think that, like, this is one of the major problems with being the position that I'm in.

People like, oh, you think everyone should take steroids? No, that's not what I think. I think if you were an athlete and you say, listen, man, I'm really good and I don't want to take drugs to compete, I think that's perfectly reasonable.

I don't think is anything wrong with that. But when you begin to drill down how you solve that problem, no one really wants to get to what the heart of the issue is.

First, the issue is this everyone.

You cannot understand drugs in America without understanding media hysteria and how it has changed things. And no one should appreciate this more than you think of any drug we've ever had.

To what extent have false media narratives, exaggerated claims, totally ridiculous things have had to been year over year pulled back by virtue of evidence that has weighed in or, you know, whatever the case, Reefer Madness is sort of the common example.

Steroids is exactly that way.

The claims of harms related to them are totally overstated. It does not mean there are no harms. It means relative to what people have claimed. It is simply not true. In fact, the Australian government did a study over like what would be the most sort of harmful drugs in a human experience.

And it was behind tobacco. It was behind numerous other drugs well in advance that are perfectly legal and have deeper societal exception or accepted.

Excuse me.

That's for harm, though, for harm in terms of sexual performance. I'll get to that. The argument about steroids, especially as relates to come out of sports, if you wanted to make the claim that if you and I were fighting and we're, let's say, reasonably equal and I took it and you didn't, it tilts the competitive balance and that makes it unfair.

I would agree. I think that is actually true. I don't think there's much argument about that. The. That is not really fully what they claim, what they claim as it relates to May is that or any other combative sport, is that it makes me safer. There is literally not a shred of evidence they have ever presented, not one time that makes that true. Joe, you've been watching me a long time. Looks safer to you.

Look, you saw it and imagine it makes it safer. I wouldn't wish that was a key selling ingredient when you saw it was sold to the public about why it was necessary. I think the argument is that if someone is on it and the other person is an outlaw, Vitor versus Michael Bisbal, that Michael Bisping winds up blind in one eye from a high kick by veto.

So let's let's remove that example for one second, because it's such a it's such a powerful example. And legally, it's like the Ben Johnson of examples. Show me the way Carl Lewis is on some shit.

Of course. Of course. Of course he was. He was on some shit.

Show me the evidence that since the introduction of you allegedly. Don't sue me, Carl. Don't Carl. Be friendly. Carl, get together with Calvin. Show me the evidence.

Show me the evidence that mommy has become safer as a virtue because everyone had said at the time was this is not like hitting a baseball.

This is not like dunking a basketball. We need to protect the health and safety of athletes. Right. The the Vitor Belfour incident doesn't even come close to the cyborg versus MVP incident where he cracked a skull, which was ostensibly totally done naturally.

Yes. I guess the idea that was crazy, it was super fucking crazy.

The fighting is like smoking. You can smoke marble reds, you can smoke menthols, you can smoke lights.

At the end of the day, you're putting yourself at risk at a pretty significant degree. It does not matter what kind of filter you put on the cigarette.

And you can make the argument that if you are taking EPO and if you are taking testosterone, you have more energy to get away from shots as much as you would have energy to land them.

I think the argument about could be say, here's the issue. I think the argument what taking what is complex and I think ultimately the athletes should decide. Right. So who should decide who takes what in the UFC? I think the athletes should work with the UFC to make a broader decision. And by the way, they might decide that you saw is what they want.

I cannot preclude that as a possibility. But to me, it's like, let's take the Pepsi Challenge, let's bring in vodka and let's see how many to a man decide this is something that they won. I bet you you get the numbers drop off fairly significant.

Do you think there's a way to skirt the system right now, even once you sign it? I think there's some some therapeutic some shit that people aren't to think so.

Of course, I would imagine. But I'm not. Let me let me speak to it.

So I'm just guessing let's let's say something outright, OK? This will get me in trouble with the with the Pistons, but I think it deserves to be.

Summerell, please. When I watch athletes who I think or know are on something, the sport tends to be better. OK, when I watch Mark McGwire hit balls into fucking Mars, I love it. I think it's great.

Well, especially baseball, because that's the only good thing about that stupid fucking it's not my favorite sport n meatheads. It's a ball and the dimension. Right.

But when I watch it, when I watch any other sport where I know it's drug addled, it does not reduce my enjoyment of it. And that's you're supposed to have this moralistic, puritanical idea about drugs. I do not, because I understand this is complex.

But the basic idea is this.

All the claims the folks want to make about MMR as it relates to safety, there is no indication that if you say you saw it as working as any safer, you're asking about how it's being used. Now, it's a little hard to say because, again, you sort of claims a lot of victories without providing any evidence about them. Right?

I mean, I've never I've never in my life can you imagine you're somebody you hired to do some kind of service for you, claiming all the victories they claim. And then when you asked to see the receipts, they don't have any. I mean, it's really weird.

I know. I know Jeff Novitzky came on your show and I'm sure he means well, but saying that the testosterone has been lowered, I actually asked Paul Damu about it. It means nothing.

It doesn't in any way. There's no way to draw any conclusion about usage. There's a guy, by the way, his YouTube channel, more plates, more dates. He's been a long time steroid user. And the user, he has gone through several UFC fighters. He has shown in his recent study that was done.

You can still take all kinds of testosterone misogynous and come way under the limit for what you saw is looking for. More to the point, what we know from academic research is that they do target carbon isotope test.

You can see it's easy to be all of this stuff. Really? Yeah. Here here is the key. What we know from academic research is that is there a reason to believe that relative to what commissions were doing, that the introduction of USA has overall depressed usage? There is some reason to believe that this physique changes.

Yes, but again, here goes again. Everyone doesn't respond to physique. Changes normally are equally. In other words, you could have genetics that make major pronouncements and change, relate to physique change.

And I could do the exact same thing you're taking and not have the same result.

But the point the point is, is this is that as it relates to these considerations, what ends up happening is you might depress overall usage, but what you do is you end up empowering the folks at the higher end.

I mean, since 1960, the growth in pharmaceuticals, which the antidoping world basically just plays catch up on all the time. I mean, they didn't catch Marion Jones. Right. The way they got her was somebody mailed some shit anonymously. Then they developed a test for it. And all of a sudden, eureka. But the amount of independent. If they can find to catch everyone, they have to wait until someone basically tells them about it.

What you end up doing is you end up codifying a system where the rich are able to avoid detection and entrench their relative advantages over those who don't have those economic resources.

So you might have prevented overall amounts of use. That's one plausible explanation. But by doing that, you have only made those who had more money to begin with solidify their position.

But what is the alternative? The alternative is let people get juicy as they want. Now, do you have limitations? So here's my view on things.

Number one, look at American football. And this is what kills me and my fans. Try to defend you sorta. It's like this. This ain't the hill to die on.

Folks in American football, we have multiple deaths and fatalities every year.

I'm sorry, deaths or paralysis every year. Not just that. We have multiple deaths at the high school level annually, annually. These kids die.

If you look at the health outcomes from American football relative to a fighting, it is much worse across the board in American football. And that is a sport where you can get caught taking something and they'll suspend you for four fucking games you are watching in the NFL.

And I don't want to name names because I don't want to be sued.

But you see a lot of guys in their 40s or late 30s continuing to do shit that they are not supposed to be able to do or they look like fucking human. It's because it is very easy to take something in the NFL and avoid detection. And the fans simply do not care. The idea that they're really concerned about the health and safety, given the outcomes and given the nature of the sport, is simply does not match the reality at all.

So what do I think is best? A couple of things. One, if you have a system where the athletes have a say and they work with the organization and they carve out a system where it may not be as rigorous as possible, because, by the way, there's a study at the University of Adelaide, testing is basically low.

Information is basically theatre for low information fans.

It does something, but not really all that much. The real big fucking fish that you sort of gets or any other anti-doping agency is a function of investigations through snitching, which MMO fans don't like them like folks.

That's how the sausage is made. Don't know what to tell you. So if you are to do testing, you'd have to do it literally at the University of Adelaide has a study that came out said would have to be basically every day, but that would require privacy invasions. Right. So you have this enormous amount of privacy invasions where they have no life. They would constantly be under rigorous control.

Be different, though, with testing every day versus testing randomly. How would you catch someone?

Like, what are they obviously there's if they're taking something and you just wake them up at six o'clock in the morning.

Hey, Frankie Edgar, I got to check your piss like you're going to catch them if they're taking something on a daily basis.

Right. Yeah. You mean the random or through random? Random is the idea is that it would happen frequently enough, that there would be no method of these very few methods of avoiding detection.

The idea, though, is that there are sufficient things you can take to gain real clear advantages that even randomized testing simply could not account for. Again, it would be some kind of proprietary drug that a rich person could make that would be no test for is a clear example.

So but if you did, OK, so something that doesn't have a test for it currently, something like the clear, something like with BALCO came up again, something like that.

But there's a couple of them. So here's what I'm saying to you. One is like what's what's a suitable model? Well, NBA, MLB to a lesser extent, but MLB and then NFL, we already exist in a world where basically a pretty significant chunk of those guys are taking something and nobody seems to care.

And it works out well for everyone. What people claim they don't like is the sort of the scandal ization of it all.

What is the Billy Corben documentary on Alex Rodriguez? Oh, I've seen it. Screwball. It's fucking amazing. It's fucking great. Is it a little kids?

Little kids are acting the part of Billy Corben or excuse me, Alex Rodriguez and the other players and all these like low level Mafioso types, you know, but what a genius idea to do it that way.

Yeah, well, let me just get us out. I'm sorry. I'm no, Nancy, but the last thing is this is there's a couple of different methods you can pick. You can just decide that the existing professional sports leagues, in my judgment, have totally figured it out, which is that you get a union to organize basic protections. You put kind of a lid on the lobster and you just let it cook there without sort of really being super inside the details about it, which means you will allow for some, but you basically get to a point where there's not too many violations.

You're not giving too much of an advantage and you just let it rock because the general for profit sports world tends to prefer that.

Yeah, but then we're just we're agreeing to deception. We're agreeing on deception. We already agreed to deception. Right. But why do that? If you thought it is, you said it is not the cure to this. Listen, I'm not a I'm not a fan of some of the practices. The big one is things like Josh Barnett. Right. Josh Barnett gets hit for a tainted supplement. He disputes it. He's out for I believe it was more than nine months.

Yeah. They say all the money we fucked up. It's a mistake. You're free to fight. But what what happens to all that time and money that is missing? Nothing. No one compensates him. It gets worse than they don't exonerate him.

How about Tom lawyer Tom Lawler? I mean, they took his career from him. It needs to. He said out loud, you sorta tested Tom Lawler and they said you tested positive for it was an Austrian at the time and you tested at such a level, we're going to ban you for two years.

Two years later, they come up with a test that makes them give it more refined results. And they come back and they say if you had tested at this level, you'd have been totally exonerated. They took that fucking guy's career from him and they never apologized and they never acknowledged that basically they had too much belief in their scientific instrumentation to ever say, sorry, dude, that is fucking evil, that's evil, that is evil.

You cannot do that to a person.

So this is my point. Here is what I think that there's one system is which is basically let the union decide and work the way the union decides with the sports organization. The other one is basically what the but the strength the fitness world has done, which is that you have some competitions where you just don't test and you have some where you do. And that's not a perfect solution either. Right. Because you can still take it and try to take the one that's sort of.

Yeah, but again, we're agreeing to deception. This is what I'm what is the most of the way? There is no alternative.

What isn't the alternative? Let them do whatever they want and not test.

Sort of I mean, at that point, because I just don't I don't imagine a world where we're going to agree that you're allowed to lie.

That doesn't make any sense to me because that's the world we live in.

I understand. But but to to legislate to mandate this, what you're saying like is some kind of harm to it.

It's if you have an organization like the UFC that's this multibillion dollar organization, they're never going to come up with rules or say, hey, guys, we know you're going to lie. So we're going to allow you to lie. And we're going to talk to your unions and we're going to set it up so you can lie.

They're not going to do that. No, no.

But what they will agree to is certain amounts of protections for the rights of athletes. And through those protections, they can lie.

They could lie. Just seems so ridiculous. That's the world we live in.

But is it every little every lawyer in the world has used electric?

Let's let's assume let's let's go from where we are now to the future, where I agree with you. We will have things like CRISPR and genetic manipulation and some other methods that we probably haven't even invented yet. And they're going to invent them and they're going to have perfect physical specimens. What do we do then? Then it's going to be ridiculous to say that you can't do certain things because it's going to be undetectable, it's going to be unstoppable. You're going to have people in China that are there making designer babies that are seven feet tall and they're built like Imman.

We're going to get to that point eventually.

Right. So here's the deal. You have to have stratified. Sports is the answer. And people don't want that balkanized world stratified. How so?

In the sense that basically what happens now is that like let's say you want to compete in elite weightlifting. That's what you want to do. You don't really have much of a choice to do it other than through the Olympics. But if you want to do it through the Olympics, then it involves a series of procedures that relate to antidoping, a bla bla bla.

OK, but what if you want to do like strong man, for example? People kind of clownish it because they do it in a circusy way. But to me it's a perfectly legitimate sport by any other sports measurement.

I agree.

And you can't compete at world's strongest man unless you are just to the motherfucking guild or girls.

It's phenomenal to watch. But what Strongman has figured out is the average person, men or women, by the way, they may want to train strong men. They want to compete in their local tournament. They want to compete nationally. They have a series of all different kinds of competitions for those who do want to do drugs and for those who don't for whatever weight classes, for age, for gender and everything else in between. Now, you don't get the satisfaction of saying that you won Tour de France.

The only competition as relates to that is no.

I mean, there's other ones to, you know, the races, but there's only one Tour de France. But you have to live in a world where you just understand some of these are going to everyone wants to make it like, oh, I'm the athlete who doesn't want to take drugs. What about me? Right. Well, what about the two athletes who both don't mind taking drugs?

Right. Well, it was supposed to do for them was a you can't take drugs.

Why imagine a world where they never did put any restrictions on testosterone replacement use in Vitor Belfort still around.

OK, so I'm actually against TRT. Yeah, for a couple of reasons. What the fuck are you and what have you done with Luc? For a couple of reasons. One is that the easiness of it was a little too much for me. There should be some hurdles to taking some kind of drug.

You should be able to lie like Cleverley. You should put some effort into your life. There should be a little bit of herbal and just be able to go to a doctor, know that that's the problem.

If it's that easy and it's that ubiquitous, it's that easy to hide.

You've not created enough stumbling blocks and obstacles along the way to deter some usage. The whole point is to deter the low hanging fruit. That's what you really want to sort of.

But that doesn't that set it up so that the rich guys and the guys that are the big camps that are funded by major sponsors, they're the ones who are going to have the best athletes.

It's the opposite now. We have that now is what you have, because the other ones are super restricted.

They don't really have much of an opportunity to fight back against any kind of other form of testing. They're really sort of subject to it. They can afford a lawyer.

You were of the opinion and we don't need to name camps, but the top camps employ scientists or. Doctors are someone who knows how to get around the system. I know a top Kamps. I don't know how it would work that way because we like top top athletes. More plates, more dates, guys. I know that guy looked at Yoel Romero and Paulo Costa. Yeah. And a bunch of a bunch of stuff, you know, and again, is everything he says gospel.

I don't think so, but it's worth sort of his take on Yulo Romero was that he's a genetic freak, right? He got fucked by USA, too. Yes, he did. Right. Well, so did Tim means. Right. Another guy who doesn't look like he's on steroids at all. Right. There's a bunch of guys, a bunch of female fighters, too, right? Haven't they been popped. Sure. For tainted supplements.

It's a they have no one protecting them. Yeah. But it's also like you're not supposed to take that stuff, OK?

I mean, listen, I've dealt with fighters for a long time. They're not the most organized people in the world. I love them.

God bless them. They're the most inspiring people I know preaching to the choir. But I can say how many times I'm like, OK, 1:00 p.m. East Coast time, we have an interview and they just they just they're like, oh, I was napping.

Like, you think they're going to take they're going to look on the fucking bottleful. I mean, come on.

No, and let's be honest. Also, there's a lot of guys who say they took a tainted supplement when really they were probably micro dosing and they got busted. Right. There's also that as well. Yeah, there's there's that as well.

So I think you have to look at two situations.

One, do you want a professional sports world like we have where people claim they care very much about health outcomes, but they really don't, where people are obviously using in the NFL, which, by the way, I mean, how do you get through an NFL season without growth hormone?

I would love to know. Probably very difficult to do that. It's OK. But my point is something is a brutal, vicious, vicious game.

And then on the other side, or you can just you can balkanize it a little bit. You can have divisions for older people. You can have divisions for people who don't want to take drugs and for the ones who do again.

Does this solve all the problems, Joe? It does not solve all the problems, but it's a much more honest and a policial world.

When I talked to Roy Jones and talked about the Mike Tyson fight, he told me that they're testing they're doing a lot of testing.

And I was like, oh, like Roy's fifty one and Mike is 54. And my boy, I would swore that's not the case.

If you looked at Mike's physique, he looks ripped, he looks so shredded, but he might be one of those outliers, one of those rare Herschel Walker type dudes that can be 54 years old and be shredded.

I mean, there are guys like that out there that have just unbelievable genetics and maintain their physique deep into their well is what?

Forty five, something three. He looks ridiculous.

I mean, he's saying he's a he's a he's the epitome of specimen.

He's a specimen. Do you know what happened with him once when I hear the story I told it before. Forgive me if you've heard it folks.

He got a fracture. I think it was in Australia. He had an orbital fracture. And the after the fight doctor, I think it was the Whiteaker fight, doctors examined him and the doctor calls up the UFC and goes, where did you get this guy?

And he goes, Yeah, he's one of the UFC fighters.

He's like he's like, this guy's a specimen.

He goes, Yeah, yeah, he's amazing. Right? Top fighter goes, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Like, I've never seen a person like this. He's like I've been doing I've been a doctor for decades.

He goes his tendons in his eyes are three times larger than normal persons.

And he goes in that fractures already healing. Wow. Yeah. And so Dana was telling me about this.

He was saying that, you know, Cubans had this crazy athletic program and they were doing all kinds of experiments with people.

And he thinks that they did some experiments with athletes to create super athletes like you remember Carolyn.

You know, Carolyn was they called him the experiment. That was his that was his nickname because his parents were both like five five, five seven.

And he's a fucking child, a refrigerator who moves like a panther, you know, literally a 300 pound man who moves like a panther.

And, you know, obviously, Cuba had a deep relationship with Russia. And if you've seen the movie Icarus, you've seen that movie.

Right, which is an amazing movie.

Doping like Russians don't fuck around when it comes to doping.

I mean, they had a very specific program, no corner cutting with them, no corner cutting. It was like super scientific. And everyone's on board. Like, you're not going to compete on the natch. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're here to win, bitch.

And, you know, I don't know what they did to make Youghal Romeril, but that's not a normal human.

And everybody who fights him says the same thing. Luke Rockholt said it feels like he's made out of metal. It's like you fight the guy. It's like he's made us steel.

Yeah. Here's the funny. The guy I saw, I tore my labrum lifting weights maybe ten years ago or something.

And the guy who ended up doing my surgery with him, he loved talking to me whenever I would go see him, was the previous orthopedic surgeon years ago for at the time, the Washington Redskins since 2008.

But NFL football team. And I was like, what are they like?

Like cutting these dudes open? He's like, this is. Exactly what he told me, he goes there, not built like you and me, you know, he was like saying you cut him open and you can't believe that the muscle fibers look the way they look or that the tendons are attached with the same kind of tensile strength, whatever the proper terminology is.

He's like it was just like everything you're saying about the human anatomy, you know it from a sort of averaged position.

And then you see these Herculean monsters and you're like, oh, so that's what Mothra looks like when you cut them open or some shit.

Well, that's what I'm thinking is going to happen eventually. And Emma may have the money does get higher. You're going to see more of these next level Yoel Romero type athletes because they exist more and NFL and NBA like imagine, you know, a guy like LeBron James fighting an MMO who's like just a perfect specimen.

Imagine these Michael Jordan's imagine these next level athletes, which unfortunately, a lot of those guys wind up going to sports like basketball or baseball, because there's more money, there's more money in those sports and you don't get kicked in the face, you know, and then the football guys like there's more money in football.

Like, you can make a fucking insane amount of money in football.

Like I was just reading about some guy whose contract was like 400 million dollars, like some crazy shit like football.

Yeah, that's I'm not sure that would be who's the who's the who's got the most money in football. Patrick Mahomes maybe was baseball. This is how little I pay attention to sports.

You're missing out. Amazing article yesterday about a guy who is getting his full contract in baseball. There's a lot of money, so that's a lot of money.

Yeah, maybe. Have you seen Dick Metcalf?

No hole. Who's that guy, motherfucker? Yeah. You think Yoel Romeros, a specimen. Can you pull up retape. Yeah. Can we talked about this before. Hello. Pull up Dick Metcalf at the combine.

Oh my God. Here's the thing, I disagree with you halfway, which is to say, to the extent you get this kind of athlete, you're probably going to get, on average, better results.

The one caveat, look at this motherfucker, bro. He's a good guy. He's a Joe Joe. He's a pass catcher. How much is he waits for to twenty nine.

What was his what was his to twenty nine. Do what were his. What were his combined numbers.

This is benching is his run.

He is a six three to the one percent. The one percent body fat is not real but he did run a four three three.

He gets to twenty five, twenty seven times a forty inch vertical.

Look at that motherfucker. He can't be one percent body fat. No that part's stop. It's not real. Holy shit. Is he shredded. Look at that.

I mean try, try tackling this fucking wall. The thing about fighting though that separates the men from the boys is the mind. Right.

And the difference between being able to perform in a sport and being able to fight another man is trying to separate you from consciousness is a very different thing.

It's like some guys just can't rise to the occasion in a fight than he did last week.

Why he went viral.

He is right here. Watch it. The top of the screen. Watch it again. Watch it at the top of the screen right here, top of the screen.

Here he comes. Middle. Look at him. Run this fucking guy down.

Oh, my God. Look at him, dude. He's two hundred and forty pounds and he runs the guy down.

Oh, that's very fast. Also, he's not.

Yeah. By the guy. He's running down his microphone. Yes. It like a wide receiver. Super fast. That's amazing.

That's amazing. It's just amazing how many times these guys get tackled and it doesn't just rip their fucking sorry.

It was an interception. So it would be a cornerback who got this I believe. Watch DK Metcalf. He goes for misses and then comes back around and chases this fucking guy down. That's it's unheard of for a guy this big. There he is.

There's DKA right here running. Look at him fucking joking. Go do Dick Metcalf is so impressive. You ever watch the combine when the comedy comes on? Dude, I'll I'll turn off everything. My wife is like, you're watching a bunch of dudes run. I'm like, not dudes, heroes, superheroes.

But to your to your point about the fighting. Mark Ellis, you remember Mark Ellis? Yeah. He was a division one national champion wrestler.

He had, I think, had one fight in pro athlete. And he was like, no, man.

This is the one caveat I don't know about Dick Mackoff or anybody else, but you see these guys and they just in terms of athletic ability, they're they're beyond comparison.

Yeah, but there is something about two things. One, people I was like, oh, with with fighting. It's like get learn how to be punched in the face. Yes, that's half of it. The other half is.

And I think people overlook this. You have to have something constitutionally, well, you're willing to hurt another person and not everyone has that. Not to the same amount, that is not an automatic response. It might be in the case of a.

You have to solve a puzzle. You have to solve a puzzle and reason through it. Yeah, there's a lot going on, this creativity that's involved in fighting that may not be involved in a lot of the sports that are just pure strength and speed and athleticism and and a knowledge of moves and understanding of positions. But there's a different thing that's going on where you're trying to create an opening, when you aren't trying to create an opening fighting. You know, there's there's just there's things that people can do and fighting that.

Also, you have to commit to that at a very young age. If you want to be elite, like you can be a guy like Greg Hardy, who has a reasonably successful career as a heavyweight just because he's a tough motherfucker who hits really hard and he's a very good athlete.

But are you ever going to be Francis Anguiano? You know, are you ever going to be a steep imaoka or are you ever going to be it's like there's there's a there's a level that you reach where you only reach that level if you've been training it most of your life, and particularly for striking for some reason, there's exceptions to that rule where some people can figure it out, but not in boxing and boxing. It's very rare that someone even picks it up after their teenage years and reaches elite world championship level.

Right. There's something about the timing and the understanding of it's like to someone who's looking out on the outside, it's a guy trying to punch another guy.

The guy's trying to punch you. You're trying to punch him. But there's a there's so much more to it.

That's why a guy like Floyd Mayweather always wins, like he's got a vocabulary that's just fuckin volumes and volumes of books.

And you got a little pamphlet, you got a little pamphlet of ideas, you know, and he's standing in front of you with his shoulders like this.

And you think, oh, I see, I can hit this guy.

You don't have a fucking chance in hell. He's so many steps ahead of you. That's what you saw in the McGregor fight.

He just slowly lures Conor into his web and so relaxed and composed and eventually starts piecing them up and taking him out.

But there's there's levels that I think you only achieve if you start while your body's developing. There's something that happens where your body's maturing and growing was striking when you that's where the real speed and timing and power comes from. And again, there's there's exceptions. Just there's some people that are just sensational athletes that just like I don't think Gilbert Byrne started out as a striker. I don't think he started out doing any strike. I think he learned how to do that shit as a world champion jujitsu player who got into me.

But he's a rare freak, you know, but it's also. He's already a champion martial artist, also already knows how to smash men, right? There's a thing about that. That's the thing about knowing how to solve a puzzle, knowing how to figure a man out, getting a hold of a man's neck and putting them to sleep. He knows how to do that already. So to figure out that, I just need to know how to put knuckles to Chin.

And he's already a fast guy. He's already explosive guy.

And the dedication that allows someone to get to a world championship level in jujitsu, it's the same thing in striking. If he just puts the time in and has the focus, the intensity and figures out how to put in with the right coaching, which is also huge. The wrong coaching can set a guy back for I mean, it could ruin you.

The wrong coaching can ruin you. Someone with bad ideas and piss poor strategy and execution. You could fucking or you can get you can run into a guy like Duke Rufous and he can create a world champion out of you. I mean, there's so many factors at play into it.

But if you can get a guy who has that mentality, has a fighter's mentality, a person who wants to risk it all, you know, and not have the protection of other players, not have the you know, the caveat. Well, you know that the team we didn't put together defensively and we'll be back next Sunday, but there's no next Sunday when you get head kings.

Right. You know, you're not fighting again for a long time. You get you're suspended for 90 days. You're not even supposed to be sparring, you know, and then when you come back, you're probably still going to be a little bit fucked up from that fight. There's a thing about fighting that separates us from all the other sports. I hate to say it again, but I call it high level. Problem solving with dire physical consequences is different than anything else, because it's it's there's so much going on.

It's just two people and there's so much going on in that in that those exchanges. And it's so hard to read unless you know it and understand it. It's like the ground game. Like one of the things that meant so much to me when I first started doing commentary was expressing what I know about the ground game so that a person who's never trained at all can understand it.

So when people are going through positions and like a guy gets to a position and I know they're close to a finish or I know they've reached a pivotal point where I would get excited and explain it, it was so I wanted to explain it. So descriptively, like now he's got to get the arm and once he gets that arm past his leg, now he's fucked and and being able to do that to people so they could piece it together and watch it at home, like, oh, when Kabab mounted him and sat on top of them and put his leg around.

Oh, that's how he's setting up the triangle.

And then he finishes Justin with it. Oh I wanted to be able to show people what I feel when I see a guy do a mounted triangle in a fucking world championship and may fight and then find out the guy had a fucking broken foot when he did it. Madness, just madness. Not every baseball player can do that.

Not every soccer player can do that. Not every football player can do that.

It takes a man with a gladiator's mind like Abebe number of men off to do something like that.

That's an unusual human. It's the one percent of the one percent.

Well, I would say for me, I often view the combative arts like a language, which is why learning them five, six, seven, that's actually teach someone a second language, right? Yes. If you teach about two, they don't actually pick it up. You have to wait a few years and then they begin to get it and then they learn to speak. You can't force it on them when they're young.

Yeah, I've tried with my daughter. It's not you know, she she prefers Apple to Manzano. We're we're working on it.

But the point being is, you know, you wait till you're five, six, seven, and they begin to begin to get absorbing. And then once it becomes a language and the fluency and everything begins by the time they're fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, twenty, twenty one. My God, the fluency is sort of incredible at that point. So that's part of it. Wrestling is the same as boxing in that way.

It's start very, very young to actually want to compete later on.

But the other part is like the problem solving. I would say that someone who's a quarterback do that is high level.

Oh, for sure. You know, it's not the same kind of situation where and this is why, again, everyone's going to focus on a different aspect of fighting that really appeals to them. The problem solving is interesting, and that's why I like the you're faking and fainting because he keeps them in a distance so he can watch everything.

I hate to have favorite fighters, but right now he's my favorite guy to watch how it could be because there's some about style bender man, especially that Adesanya the to fight. God damn that he shut down the hype. He changed the way I broke down, fights everything else.

And I guess I haven't because of the person I'm talking to you. But I was just thinking about this today.

He did something in the Silva fight where I was watching and I was like, I don't know what the fuck he is doing here. I can't make it like you just watch it even in slow motion. I can't make heads or tails of it. I don't understand what the point of it is. So because of because of him now when I break down fights, I actually start I go round by round and I make notes every time any kind of strike lands or misses.

And then I begin to go back and I piece together a narrative based on what if there is a narrative? Sometimes there's not, but more often than not, there is about what is happening.

And I had to do it from this stance and then that stance because I was switching stances close distance for distance, inside distance.

He is so. Meticulous and so thoughtful, but so effortless that I had to peel everything apart before I could even begin to comprehend it.

People go and look at that finally go, oh, well, he only won twenty nine. Twenty eight.

That's not the story there. The story there is that, yes, it was a little bit on the defensive side. That is true.

But he is so smart and so is the smartest fighter we have right now. I think I agree he is so smart that he can watch what is happening, set things up and do things in terms of manipulation, distance, timing and everything else.

It's a trap setting to the nth degree that there's he doesn't have a peer in that particular.

I really enjoyed your breakdown in the Paul Costa fight. Thanks. Yeah.

Particularly that one where you you you broke down how he pointed to fake like he faked pointed out that Paul fell for it and then kicked his leg right afterwards. You bet on it.

Dude, he fucked that guy's mind up afterwards like you signed a contract, signed the guys like contract. Contract, do you just not watch what happens? Right. You got torn apart for two rounds. Were you landed two body kicks and one leg kick for two rounds, and you got dismantled and dropped the left hook and then beaten down and dry humped. That was the and you're talking about a guy in Polo Costa that everyone's terrified of, the guy who walked down, Joao Romero, the guy who was smashing everybody they put in front of him.

He's a destroyer. I mean, polocrosse is a fucking terrifying force. Super terrifying.

Harrison, you just had all the answers and he knew he had all the answers coming in.

Well, do you think about Adesina Jones or you? I love it. Yeah. Yeah, everyone loves it. What how competitive do you think it is?

Well, he's got to get past Yanukovich. First of all, that that motherfucker hits hard. Does he get scared when he put out Dominic Raila's? I was like, holy shit. When he entered with a weird punch to a weird left hand over the top that fucked him up. He's a beast man, and he's another guy that was killing himself, making 185, goes up to 2.5 and starts nuking motherfuckers. He's a dangerous, dangerous guy. You can't make any mistakes with that guy.

Gustavsen out wrestled him for three rounds at a time. I remember was like, oh, he had to wrestle me and that good. I'm like, in retrospect, that's a great win by Gustavsen. Great win.

A great win. Yeah. Look, you know that that guy moving up to two or five is going to be some growing pains. But now he's the champion and he knows that he can nuke a guy like Dominic RAYOS, who went five hard rounds with John Jones and in your eyes, won the fight.

The only time I've ever scored against Jones fucking tight. It was tight. It was arguable for sure. I'd have to go over and watch it again if I wanted to score. But I remember thinking, God damn, this guy is ahead, deep going. And then John came on strong in the fourth and fifth, but he nuked that guy.

He nuked Rayas. And it's not like grass wasn't in the fight.

But when he started hitting that left, kicked the body and left that gigantic you realize like this dude hit so hard and his game is all power.

He's just a big power striker and just durable and tough. Just a bad motherfucker.

He's he's impressive. He's a force. I had dominant raiders on my show after the the loss to John Jones.

And we talked about his game plan and his game plan was pretty smart, if you think about it, which is you're not going to barrel down on John.

It's really not going to happen, John. I think his offense is not the same as it used to be, but his defense, if you look at the numbers and just what the tape shows you, John's defense is excellent.

Why why do you think his offense, not what it used to be. What do you think? His defense.

So do yourself a favor. You have free pass. If I pass, I just I can't say enough good things about if I pass. I think they need to update their interface.

But in terms of like the service it does for someone like me, like you think you see a fight in your head one way, then you go back and you watch it like, oh my God, I totally forgot half the shit, you know?

So it's a great way to remind yourself. But if you go back and you look at a certain kind of wrestling dominance from the Shogun to the Rashaad, really even up through most portions of his career that has begun to wane is his takedown ability has gone from about the mid 50s, a little higher in the 60s to about the 30s.

It's dropped off a cliff. What do you think's happened? The game has just gotten better. I mean, if you think about it, Dominic Reyes didn't make his pro debut until 2014.

Now, John Jones was the fucking man already by then, maybe long since been the man by twenty fourteen. So how could it be that a guy can be trading that long, at least make it that competitive on paper?

It's because best practices have gotten much, much better. So what what Dominic Raila's wanted to do was create motion. The idea was to get John moving because if he's stationary or he's barreling down on you, he's much harder to hit. But to the extent you can get the guy moving, he's open to the body and to the legs. Now, that's a hard way to win because really the head contest is what wins and loses fights more often than not.

Whether or not that's fair, that's just it's hard to win a fight on body shots unless you drop them.

But I thought he did win it. So he tried the same kind of thing against John Malkovich. He was trying to bait motion. He's trying to bait activity. Hovick no, sold it completely. He was just standing there.

Go. Nope, not not playing any of this bullshit whatsoever. Yeah. Come close. Get nuked. Yeah, that's his game.

And so Raila's couldn't get hit and I don't think he was expecting that.

I think hit hard time adjusting well also when he smashed raise his nose is in deep trouble. He had shattered his nose before that big overhand. He's just a piece of a man. I think that's an interesting fight to watch Dalbandin to fight him. And apparently that's the next fight for style. Bender is going to be at light heavyweight. I don't know if it's going to be for the title, does it?

Oh, yeah, it is going to be for the title is confirmed. No, no, it hasn't. It is confirmed, James.

So so Dana White announced it. We've not had a full on confirmation, but, you know, style Bender did an interview with Simitian Radio.

Those are a couple of guys out of Australia and he was talking like it was a done deal.

So, I mean, you know, they haven't formally announced it, but I would expect it.

I am very interested to see that because Berkovich has that power style and style. Bender is, in my opinion, the most sophisticated strike of the sports ever seen. And he's so clever. And you look no further than the polo cause to fight. I mean, Paulo Costa is a fucking gorilla. He just attacking someone.

Asking dude, and he had nothing for him, he had nothing for him, and then afterwards to see Paulo Costa, I was injured. I was this I was that signed the contract. It's like, bro, stop talking. Take away his iPhone. Stop, stop talking. What is happening here?

The song opens as heavy favorite over UFC light heavyweight champion Yanukovich. Oh, my goodness.

You know what, though? But, Bill, how much has been slept on for him? Nothing. There's nothing new there. And I've been wrong about him a million times, too, you know.

Yeah, well, it's very, very interesting.

Could you pull up his record, though, real quickly, last thing on this. Can you pull up Leibovitz's record? Because he here's a guy who I think lost the majority of his first six UFC fights.

I think he lost like three or four of them or some shit. He had a really not a great run at first.

But, you know, it's amazing. These guys like Michael Bisping or whatever, it's one thing to persevere in the moment. It's another one to have just like long term. Relentlessness, so, look, go scroll down here, if you can, for just a second, so he starts he starts there, he wins against illegal TV, which is a nice win, and then he loses to Manawa and Anderson. He beats Igor Kyak, then he loses to Gustavson and Cumins.

So he's losing four of his first six games. But then he's like, you know what, fuck all you hohs.

And then he just started it. Loss of Tiago Santo's. I believe that was the last fight at 85 and he was a beast. OK, no harm, no foul.

And then he kills Rockfield and then the shot was not great.

But the Corie interesting is a perfect example. Corie innocent bodied him in the first fight. You know, the fact that he kayode him with one punch like that, that is crazy. Yeah, that was that was a really interesting thing because Corey can take a shot, too, and Corey was coming off of that big win off Johnny Walker. You know, it's there's a lot of great you know, I'm really interested in Alex Pereira.

Alex Pereira, who is the glory? I believe he's a two division champion time. Yeah, he's. What is he fighting for? LFE? I think that's right. Yeah, he's fucking terrifying. And he's the last guy to Chayo Adesanya. He's on my radar.

I'm really into the champ champ over glory to win. It was terrifying.

Yeah, fucking terrifying. That guy is almost like you want to grab his arm and feel what it feels like.

Like what do you made out of that motherfucker? Just puts people into orbit. He he chaos everybody.

I mean, when he knocked out Jason Williams watch flying Niko unwellness, by the way.

A beast, by the way, beat out Azania, I believe. And it was a close. Should enough OK to Adesanya get it out of line as well. But it was close enough. But if you look at that, I mean, but this is this is Perreira body, but he does this to everybody.

Is this something about this guy? It's like you see him hit guys and it looks like normal punches and they just go unconscious like that shit.

I mean, these are world class kick boxers, and this motherfucker just puts them into another dimension.

He just put out an instructional with B.J. Fanatic's. Have you seen it?

No, but he has been training a lot with Glover Chikara. He's in Connecticut training with Glover. And I think is one of the reasons why Glover has made this resurgence, like Glover has looked sensational as a leaf blower to share.

I love Clover.

And I think one of the reasons why Glover, at forty plus years old, has made this resurgence is he's training with Perreira. I think that I mean, look, iron sharpens iron. We all know that. And there's something about exchanging ideas with one of the best kick boxers on planet Earth, not just the best kickboxer, but a weirdly powerful one. He's a freak man. There's something about Perreira. He he's astonishing. And I think him moving into the LFA and if he gets through a few fights there and, you know, I have zero idea what his ground game is, zero idea.

What is wrestling zero idea what is takedown defense is.

But he nukes motherfuckers. I mean, in a weird way, I mean, when he knocked out style bender, it was like Jesus, one left hook.

He does it to everybody, you know, with the big gloves. He's got a lot of different ways to do it. It's like it was just this.

He does it with everything, just kicks, punches all over all of it. Yeah.

And now he can throw elbows. He couldn't even throw elbows in glory. Now he can throw elbows and he can grab you and throw everyone is going to try and take this fucker down.

Oh they have to. You fucking better.

You better. You're standing up with that guy. That's death. That's death. I'm just like it's like I don't want to get excited.

He beat he beat his tormentor twice in kickboxing. But I'm just decisioning back. I'm just dying to see.

I understand the rest of it looks because of those. Well how old is he.

How old is Alex. I don't know. He might be like thirty four ish. Thirty five.

I was there at the last man standing tournament when he was right before he peaked.

He was he was pre peak at that point and he was still a formidable thirty three years.

I've still got some time and it literally completely depends on how much time he has spent on the ground, how much time he spent drilling takedown defense, how much time because it's relatively late to enter the game and may you know, he's had a couple of Maye fights, but as a kick, it's just a fucking shame that he can't get the love in the money as a kickboxer because as a kickboxer you're just watching executions.

Like when does he land. I know.

And Glory. It was a shame because did you watch the still exists. I know but they had, they had some issues with due to the pandemic.

But did you watch the battery and recover. Who has crazy fuck.

That was so fun that they did such a great job. How weird was the stoppage like fall.

He throws a wheel kick and then did he get injured in the process ankle.

Yeah but I mean just a fucking feel of it. You better Loveland's I'm sure right now.

I have never. Never. You don't know what you're missing. Really.

I remember I would just funny I told this to the Dutch and they're like, you're totally overselling it.

So I'm sure that I am. But I went there with my wife and, you know, she comes to a different place.

My wife was an immigrant, so she came from a different background. And I have a different background. And we went there and we both looked at each other. We go, this is how society should be organized.

Really? Yeah, it's a homogenous society to a large degree, obviously, part of the reason why they have some problems is because to the extent it's not homogenous, they have some issues. But just the way you see the municipal planning and how life looks like in the in the cities there, it's peaceful and it's happy.

It's like how did a place that is so tranquil and so lovable and so nice produce you savage motherfuckers?

I mean, it's just shocking.

I know the story because of the Dutch went down to Thailand and brought it back and blah, blah, blah, blah. Dude, it is I it's a I if I, if someone's I get to leave America because I got set on fire. Where are you going to go. Canada. A little too cold.

I'm going to the fucking Netherlands. Really. Yeah. Wow.

That's where I'm headed. Well they certainly have an insane history of kickboxing. Right. Rob Kaiman or Nesto who's you know, I mean it's just Solis's endless.

Yeah. So many decades and decades is like one of the all time greats. And he may be even more impressive because he was small, he was the size of the ties, and he would go up there and light them on fire.

He was like that too much did.

He fought so hard he shattered his ankle and had to have it fused. So like and he still fought and still kicked. They were like, you can't kick with this ankle. You'll have to have your foot amputated is like, fuck, you kept kicking with it.

He was an animal. He was literally the gold standard for European Western guys who went over and fought the times.

What's the word for wrong farang words, what they call survivor. But it's amazing to like, you know, one thing about the Dutch is kind of funny. Or if you've picked up on this, the Dutch will fight their teammates without a whole lot of consternation, especially in kickboxing will be like you wait.

You're from Mike's gym and you're from Mike's gym.

How come you're fighting like business? You know, you're not personal.

I'm like, yeah, in America, that's like the most force don't seem to have a hard time getting knocked out and getting back in there again, you know, brings you back to Alster Overeem, who's a Dutchman who's just got this crazy record.

I mean, you want to talk about a guy who's had what hasn't seen record. Right. K1 Grand Prix champion, dream heavyweight champion, Strikeforce heavyweight champion at the same time.

Yeah. And he's just gotten so close to UFC gold, you know, hurt steep, dropped him, had him hurt and just eventually wound up losing the fight.

But he's a guy when he was Jussie, you couldn't stop him, but he beat out or when he beat Brock Lesnar. Yeah, that's as juicy as the world gets.

You remember when he was fighting him like Dream and Kate one at that time, what Michael Sheehan said about his back, not what he said.

He said you could screen a movie on it. That's perfect.

Do when he fought Todd Duffey, I'm like, oh, my God. But when he fought Brock Lesnar, that's probably the most impressive because he he muscled Brock Lesnar around like Brock Lesnar was the guy. And obviously Brock Lesnar coming off a diverticulitis. He had this giant section of his small small intestine, something like the digestive organs.

Yeah. Some serious stomach surgery.

Right. So he's got gut surgery and not that many months removed from that. Less than a year.

He's getting kicked by Alistar Overeem. I remember Alster hit him with this chinned. The body seemed like grab his body and go down and get beaten up. But it was the way he beat him up before that. It was just everything about it. He muscled them, he moved him around.

He's like and he was just that was the Rheem when he was like full zuberi when he was two hundred sixty five pounds shredded Billig a tank looked like a comic book superhero.

God damn. If you want to make an argument for steroids, that's the argument.

Well, again, he should be doing it against other people who know what they're in for. I'm totally OK with that, but. Well, don't you think Brock knows what he's in? Yeah. I mean, do you think I have sympathy for Brock Lesnar in this case? Now you're talking juicy.

But here's my point about Overeem is I remember when when Rhonda got knocked out by Holly and Max Kellerman was on Twitter at the time, love Max and Max had said, you know, I don't think Ron is ever going to recover from this mentally. And at the time I was thinking, like, Max, you don't know shit.

Now, he ended up being right. But the reason why I felt that way was because I had seen guys like Overeem get viciously Kayode or Michael Bisping or Michael being come right back.

Some people can come.

They are special, special guys, man. Yeah. Some people come back and some people are never the same. Before we wrap this up, there was a few other things you were saying about the UFC. I know that we this has been so much fun. We've been going on these different rants, but there was a few things specifically that I think we'd be doing a disservice if we didn't cover one of them. You think as you Sarda, which I can agree with you, I just don't.

Can I make one final point about that wrap up on this?

The one thing I want folks to understand is if you look at the history of anti-doping and again, the scholarship on this is quite clear pre you thought of UFC, I mean, long into the twentieth century and then really beginning around 1968, the the way in which antidoping has moved itself forward is through.

There have been reports in the media that drive further forms of hysteria and then that forces the institutions to act. And so you have to understand, you can't talk about a antidoping without media hysteria around drugs. And B, a lot of times when you see these. Developments in antidoping protocol, its institutions protecting themselves, like when the UFC really went to USANA, was it on behalf of the athletes? If you want to believe that you can, I cannot say it is wrong.

But what the scholarship is pretty clear about anti-doping is that institutions do it for their own protection, which I understand there's nothing wrong with UFC being like, you know what, if we have a scandal here, we're going to get fucked if we don't do more.

I totally get it. But that's a part of the argument that deserves to be noted and should not be forgotten.

I don't know what the argument was that forced him to institute team.

TRT caused all the problems. It was over. TRT was a problem.

Question is how you solve it. Right. And we went overboard, in my judgment.

That's the problem I think we had. Now, that's debatable. But that is that is the cause of every.

Do you think that a certain level of TRT would be acceptable like a doctor administered in a TR?

I tend to think that like that. It's such an ID.

Oh, listen, if you're going to have a system where folks are going to use, then the way to screen that is through health outcomes. Right.

So you're looking at forms of screening, not so much for what they're taking, but how, you know, their blood enzymes look and just of organs and what kind of damage are taking, blah, blah, blah.

To me, TRT is one of these things where it's like we're going to make it super easy and we're going to.

Like I said, the readiness of it is too easy for me is is part of the issue that testing is random and that testing is, you know, you might get tested four times a year. You might get tested ten times a year. No one knows. No one can tell.

What if there was a way where every fighter had, like something like almost like an app and it's somehow or another you put it on you and it screens you like. There's something that you could do where it can't be faked.

You check in, maybe you check in on a new computer like a FaceTime thing, and it does something like if there was a way obviously I don't know what I'm talking about, but if there's some sort of technology that allowed them to see every day, twice a day, check you in the morning, check you at night, OK, look, it looks like you're good.

You're like you're you're in the range. Everything's fine.

So a couple of things. It's like every employee that I know who's not an athlete gets to have time off except an athlete. We ask certain things of athletes that we don't ask of anyone else in the world and the reason why it's supposed to be to combat these harms.

But if you can't prove to me that these harms are existing or that you're meaningfully doing anything about it, then why are we engaging in these privacy invasions?

What about wasting time with Conor McGregor when he is in on a fucking yacht somewhere? They show up in a buggy like, hey, man, give you a pistoles is saying, I'm fucking retired.

Right? All right. So there's a lot of problems there. It's like if you can't prove what you're doing or stopping, why are we engaging in these privacy invasions? But it gets to a larger point. Remember when Tim Kennedy got back from practice and he didn't want to get ringworm, so he showered and he sort of folks like, we got to test you once we're here, we can't give you time.

So they watch the fucking guy showered, which is deranged to the nth degree.

Yeah, but the point being is here's what antidoping folks don't want to tell you. There is a natural tension between what privacy exists and what solutions there are. And there's a lot of good solutions or not good solutions. There's a lot of better solutions. If you just decide that people don't have any right to privacy, you decide that you have some options at that point, if you at all care about athletes and what they are entitled to as human beings and what, by the way, problems might be like where you have to look at a guy's dick to make sure it's not rubber.

Oh, yeah. Did you got he showered with the curtain open at the even when, you know, Tim Kenny was like, oh, balls and everything.

Yeah. He's like, watch my back, come watch my back.

But when you, when you pee, do they have to look at your dick. I think they did look at everything because you could have the whizzinator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And guys didn't Kevin random men do that and they said is non-human urine. Yeah.

It's like you look a dead man's piss. How did you do that.

Yeah, I just it is weird whenever someone's allowed to look at your dick because they think you're going to cheat.

How about you see if they're cheating first and then you go, hey, I got to see your dick next time. Right.

It just seems it seems like a first step to just look at your dick while your pee is if you moralise doping, which they have done, if you moralise it, which is not a moral issue, it's a strategic issue. If you moralise it, you've decided that it's a evil worth combating to the point now.

Well, this is Rochefoucauld Act is being floated through Congress. Yeah. I mean, do I think I'm right about doping? I think I have some great ideas. But here's the future of doping. They're going to start putting more and more people in jail. This is the way it's all headed, because every time I've tried to make an argument, everything has escalated. I've just noticed it's falling totally on deaf ears. And I suspect it will be the same here.

Even though I've tried to make an earnest argument, they're gonna start putting people in jail and they already have in Europe to a degree. Now, what they've done is they've carved out you're an athlete, you won't get put in jail. But if you're anyone who's aided in that process, you're going to go. But they're going to have to realize what they've always realized, which is that the punishment, the sociological research on this is pretty clear solely about the punishment that concerns them.

It's the it's there.

To what extent will they'll be caught? They think they'll be caught. But if you're a rich and you can avoid it or you're willing to take risks because that's inherently in the job that you're in, you don't think about these kinds of things. And by the way, you might have good methods of evasion. So they're going to put people in jail.

And I think, honestly, we're going to put a lot of people in jail. I think almost like we need a separate podcast just about this. And I feel like it almost should be a roundtable discussion with like someone like you is a proponent of someone like me. I kind of see your point.

I agree with you and maybe some doctors and maybe someone from your side of that would argue against it.

I think that would be an interesting discussion. Right. I guess my my arguments against you sort of are the Josh Barnett arguments. You know, the the Tom Lolla arguments, the arguments where you're ruining guys careers and there's no repercussion and they're ruined financially. They lose so much money, they don't get any of it back. You've made mistakes. It doesn't matter. And I get what you're doing. I get you're trying to make the sport safer. You're doing your job.

You were hired to do it. But is it the most effective use of time and resources?

And can also can you prove what you're doing? Show me show me the results of what you have done and they will be like, oh, but, you know, probabilistically, we should rely on us.

I have never seen an institution in my life more than antidoping institutions who just are begging you and frankly, demanding of you to take their word for it.

Motherfucker, show your work. I have to show my work. Show your work.

When you say show you work, like what do you want to see? Prove to me that what you are doing is having an effect. And don't give me all this bullshit about what we can't really do this and we can't really do that. You are demanding money. You are demanding that athletes give in to privacy invasions. You are ruining people's careers, which we've already shown.

So it better be fucking worth it. This juice better be worth the squeeze. Show me the squeeze.

What could possibly what could they possibly show that would make it?

That is that is their concern. That is not mine. I the burden of proof is not on me.

The only thing you could say is you've caught people and you stop people and you could look at physique changes and saying, yeah, means nothing to me.

It means a lot, that means a little bit of that. But I'm just saying you have anecdotal evidence. Yeah. And what other world can you say I've got anecdotal evidence for my broad based claims could tell you go fuck yourself.

There's no other world where you can do that except there. I'm saying to you, if what you were saying is working and what you really believe in is true, show your work.

If there was a lawsuit and if someone won a substantial financial reward for some of these fuckups, I think we'd see a big change.

I think that that would make if someone like Tom Lawler won in court and got really paid because of this.

Well, they don't have money for that. Tom doesn't have money for it.

It's unfortunate because that he's I think he's you know. But John. Is that John. John Jones is the future. Right. So the scholarship on this is clear. If you want after this is over, I'll give you a couple of things you can read. It's a little bit dense, but it is tend to read it.

I'll keep it on your bookshelf, because even if it's a reference tool, maybe you may find some value in it again. Did you read the shit you're like. I had no idea. I had no idea. I had no idea. It just keeps going, you know.

But what they found through scholarship is that so they've upped the punishments from a year to two years to four years. So first of all, someone explain to me why you have the athletes are on Olympic cycles, number one. Number two, that's number one.

So the second one is beyond that in in putting together the sort of portfolio of of of. Punishments beyond the sort of Olympic cycle, I think I said it's already like they there's no evidence that indicates that the severity of it forces the behavior change.

It's only the sort of surveillance of it all as a function of sort of fear.

But you can only do that if you abridge the rights of athletes. The point is this. You'll hear them talk a lot about we have to protect the rights of clean athletes.

Clean athletes deserve to have their rights protected. Joe, let me ask you a question. How do you protect the rights of clean athletes by overrunning the rights of athletes generally? That seems like a contradiction in terms, doesn't it, the UFC fighters did not sign up for it. Right. And you have a situation where Jon Jones, for example, he got the whole terminable thing. We don't have to get into it. But there's another athlete in the Olympics elected from the Ukraine, Alexi Toora.

Kitty had the exact same problem, tested the B sample.

It was totally negligible amounts, and they took that fucking guy's gold medal from him. So wait a second. Why do we have one standard for the Olympics? We've got one standard for a private client, for an underfunded organization, which is about 20 million is their budget for USA. And it results in this sort of different world. Punishments, John, is the future because the research shows that the more severe punishment you get, the more that you have to take precautions to not fuck someone over.

Right.

Because you're going to ban a guy for eight years. You're going to ban a guy for life. Man, you better be damn sure you're doing it. But that has opened the door to fighters like John who have money and a legal team. And of course, there may be the science on his side as well, but it shows that you can take that opportunity and you can say, aha, you were trying to ban me for four years, man, what is your evidence?

And they can poke holes through all of it when you're a punishment is a year didn't really matter what mitigating circumstance you can show.

Well, his case is so weird too, because it showed positive in the negative, in the negative and positive, but in such trace amounts, there's no way he could have tested it and then had it go out of his system in time.

So the argument is that he has a long term metabolite, but not the short and medium term. So it's showing this weird, pulsating effect where it comes and goes, particularly during weight cuts. Right.

Which is apparently what Aleksi Tauro he had and he got fucked.

All right, Luke, this is a lot of fun, man. I'm glad we did this. I think I talked too much. No, you were awesome. That was great. I really appreciate it. And I appreciate you. I appreciate your show. I really enjoy your breakdowns. I enjoy your show. I think you have a very unique perspective. And thanks for coming, Matt. Thanks for the invite. And let's do it again. The whiskey was great to have you to come on anytime.

It was fun. Thank you. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Thank you very much, my friends, for tuning into the show. And thank you very much to for stigmatic in there.

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