1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Smith and Lovett Breaking Down Fights: September 3rd, 12:25pm

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Smith and Lovett Breaking Down FightsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

You're listening to One-on-One with DP. Brought to by Canopy Street Market on 93-7 The Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. It needs to happen at Nebraska wrestling next year. Somebody paints their face like Yilton Orr. And that's how they take the mask. Like, paint the face. We need the castles on the biceps, right? They can take them off before they wrestle.

I mean, I'll do it. I just can't wrestle. You know what we'll be that. Now, what we need to do is talk to Manning and have Anthony Lee drawl out. Like the ultimate word. Yeah. Yeah. My biceps aren't that big, but I'll tie some stuff around.

I've seen you on the walkout. Yeah, it's different, though. It's different. It's a little different. You have to go through a fight camp. Get ready for the walkout. I know it. It's their national champion,

Love it. Anthony, Lionheart Smith, U.S.C. ESPN, all around good dude, super dead, Superman, all those things in play. And we were talking, Ridge, we were, Anthony and I were talking prior to you walking, you were talking about a movie that's being made, about Mark Kerr, smashing machine.

And in order to talk about it properly, one, you have to acknowledge that maybe Mark Kerr wasn't the ideal choice, but there's a reason why he was the choice for this doc, this movie to be made. I wouldn't call it a bio. I would simply say it's based on the life of Mark Kerr, some of the events of Mark Kerr's life. But as the Division I national wrestling champion,

and the irony isn't lost it, he's winning, he wins the national title against Randy Qutour. And then they become a part of the pioneer. I mean, when they open the pioneer wing of the U.S. Hall of Fame, this is where they belong. But some of the stories, the things that have to go on, you talked about going to pride, there will be wrestlers in the Nebraska program

who have to make that decision on whether UFC MMA is a part of their future. Ridge, I'll ask you in front of Anthony. Oh, man. In the decision making process, you and I have had that conversation. But why would you, why would you or why would you not? choose to go professional and in the end of it.

I would because it looks like a good time. Apart from getting smashed occasionally, getting kicked in the head. Everything else, it seems like a good time. It seems like something I could probably kind of figure out and be pretty good at. But I'm not trying to get punched in the face.

For real, I want to get punched in the face. What do you say to a national champion wrestler who says that? Well, I mean, obviously he's got the skill set and the base to, the biggest part of fighting is being able to determine where the fight takes place if you want to be on the ground then if you're a national champion wrestler that's pretty easy you're probably going to take down most people i'd imagine it's not as it's not as cookie cutter like that though like i spent a lot of time with david taylor and he's like david taylor's a significantly better wrestler than bo nickle in a fight and i i hope david never hears this he'd be really mad at me i i would favor bo nico because they're just different types of of they're different types of wrestlers like David I've never been around or like moved around with a like with a smoother tactician he's just really smooth like really clean the whole way

like just really tactical and sometimes Bo will run into situations where maybe he's not ahead and he'll just he'll just mean his way through it that makes sense yeah like Bose even if you look at their wrestling styles when they were both at Penn State like David is the cleaner guy but bow's kind of a brute and he's nasty and he like wants to hurt people or at least seemingly wants to i don't know if he actually feels like that but he wrestles like he does um that translate different that translates differently to m ms so david when he was getting ready uh to go to the olympics he was going to wrestle his plan was to like win the olympics and then start fighting so he was like doing this m mma training in between and like cross training with us in Denver

and i like i could see it then like when we're having those conversations like he's going to have to find, he's going to have to find some meanness because everything in fighting isn't always just super technical. Like you have to have a killer instinct a little bit. And he does in wrestling. But it's a different type of killer instinct that Bo Nicol has that David Taylor doesn't. So it's not as simple as that. But generally, you can dictate where a fight takes place. The striking part of things is easier to learn than wrestling in jiu jiu-jitsu in the grappling side. If you're already a high-level wrestler, you just have to tweak some things and there's some concepts and you've got to change a little bit that figure out how to keep them safe yeah like you don't really have to have a

high level jihitsu game if you have a high level wrestling game if you can be defensively sound and dictate where the fight happens so and ridge is always active during u.ccarts so no matter where like i'm there i'm sending him videos from from the octagon side right right and literally he's going through so you're watching uh you're watching former wrestlers in the game and you get excited and then we go uh-oh it's transition right it's no longer a grappling match it is now the throwing of hands and what do you do and that's the difference so like when i was training with david i got takedowns like crazy it's because he's worried about being punched in the face it's not something that's super comfortable for him so he he struggled

with the transition of blending the striking with the with his wrestling yeah when we were just grappling i can't think of someone that was harder to deal with on top like i just off the top of my head i can't think of anyone. But like just raw. Like he wasn't like a super clean jiu-jitsu guy yet because he just wasn't he hadn't done it enough yet, but it just raw ability. There's not too many people I can think of that were tougher to deal with on top. But when we were actually striking and working the wrestling into it, it kind of negated a lot of his wrestling game. We were watching the last UFC and it was a wrestling clinic. And I could, even in your text, I could read your excitement over what you were seeing. What did you see well in the last fight it was all wrestling right chimaev just malled him and you

saw the same stuff with kabib too it was like nobody could stop their takedowns no but then with pico the match before that it's like you know one mistake one mistake fights over see that's a lot of mistakes yeah well pico made a lot of mistakes one one real bad one well he's been making those same mistakes for years what what was the mistake what was the biggest mistake what was the biggest mistake again, I'm the guy that I guess it just has to be honest. You're the analyst. You're the pro. You're the best analyst on the planet.

So Aaron Pico has an unrealistic belief in himself to absorb damage. It makes no sense with as many times as he's been knocked out absolutely cold. For him to rush in, throwing caution to the wind, throwing crazy bombs, I don't know where you get the confidence to do that. Maybe it's because he's not been knocked out so bad. He doesn't remember it. But like... And that's just me being honest.

I don't know why he fights the way that he fights. He has really technical boxing. He's really clean when he wants to be. Like he has golden glove experience. He's got crazy high level wrestling. I don't know why he doesn't sit back. Pick your shots. Be defensively sound.

Wait for the opportunity. Like you throw hard, wait until they counter and then shoot one of your nasty doubles. And then just get the takedown. Like I don't know why he makes it more difficult than it has to be. Hamza is the exact representation of that. Chamey doesn't take a whole lot of chance. is on his feet because he doesn't have to.

He's, like, his entries aren't even really that great. They're from a mile away, but it's the second and the third and the fourth, you know, like effort as he can, if he can just get his hands together around something, he's going to continue to climb and people just aren't adjusting to it because I think he shoots from so far away. I think he shocks people. I'm like, oh, okay, well, I'm, you know, like the first defense that DDP had was fine. But Hamzat's already going to the second and the third.

He's already, he's already three steps ahead. I don't know why Aaron Pico chooses to, some guys want to entertain and some guys want to win. Aaron Pico wants to try to do both, and you can't always do both. Sometimes you just have to figure out how to win. So you just have to go in, get a win, find yourself in a favorable position

where maybe you get a matchup or the guy doesn't crack the way that some of these guys do. And you can flex on them a little bit, but your paycheck's half fighting like that. So I don't, like, Kamsat went in to get a win and didn't care what people thought about it. Isn't that a part of the emotional maturity that we talk about? Right?

To decide, I'm going to do what I have to do to win. That's fear, though. Is it? That's fear. Like, we can pretend that, like, Pico has got this bulletproof mindset and he just wants to push forward and break people. But that's not always how it works. In wrestling, that's how it works.

You just, you put crazy pressure on people and you break them. But the way he fights on his feet is he gets uncomfortable. And so his ideas, I'm just going to throw. I'm just going to go hard. It doesn't work like that. Like you've got to be able to, like, be patient and keep your emotions in check, no matter how you actually feel. Ridge, you talked about the emotional management, right?

Even in match, championship match. You're in a predicament. And your thought process is still the most amazing thing you ever said on radio, was you were going through it. I need to finish. I need to get through this. Walk us through that. And I want it done in front of Anthony because you talk about the final moment.

and you're looking at the clock, you're listening to the coaches, the conversation you have with yourself. Yeah, well, we talk about, like, Trevelle was just talking about it again

in practice this week. He was like, everybody, anybody can be a practice room champ. Like, oh, I don't have to go hard this go because last go I put him on his back.

He's like, just focus on three seconds at a time. Did you win this three seconds? Did you win this three seconds? Did you win this one, this one, this one? And if you can continually,

continually stack three second blocks together, right, 20 seconds left for the match, seven, I just got a seven, three second blocks, right? If I just think, oh, I can hold on for 10, right, ref's going to call Stale, may get taken down at the end.

But no, it was hold on. Not letting go and not giving up anything. Right, win a whole match. It seems like aliens speak, because most people don't go through their process in three second interval.

But you... Yeah, you have to. Right. You guys have mastered that. If it's longer than that, it feels unattainable in the moment. 20 seconds feels like five minutes. It's a lifetime. Like when I fought, you remember when I fought Ryan Span and Singapore? Yeah, second time.

Yep. So the first time I smoke him. It was like the easiest fight I ever had my whole life. Well, the second fight, it wasn't so easy. So I'm kind of cruising and he catches me with an uppercut, closes my eye and puts me down. And now he's on top of me about to finish. Like I'm kind of lost, but I have to do the same thing.

Like, I have to win this position. So then I, it's, I don't ever, I've never thought about the three second thing. I really like that. But I just think about winning. the position that I'm in. So, like, he's on top. So I have to make sure that I'm safe. So I got to cover. And then I got to try to get a hold of a wrist. Okay, I'm winning that for a second. And then there is a point sometimes where you have to, you have to make a deal with yourself

sometimes in fighting. Like, maybe, maybe probably less than wrestling, but like, I remember making the deal with myself, well, I'm not going to lay here and just get finished. So if you're going to beat me, you're going to have to knock me all the way out. And you're going to have to do it from our feet like a man. So, like, my plan was I'm going to get back to my feet. And then I'm just going to work my way and he's probably going to knock me out but that's fine because i can't see him coming from one way but if you're going to do it you're going to do it from my feet like a man so that was my deal when i'm going to go out i'm going to do it like a man for my feet and then i just slowly worked my way back into it like i need to win this next exchange i'm like okay i won the next one and then i

just keep pressure in a little bit so i keep backing him up like okay now he's taking a backward step like now i won that battle now i won the battle a distance and then you just like he said like you just start to stack those up and before you know like damn i'm i'm i'm in this again. We back. We're back in this. And that's a part of your calling card as a fighter. That your ability to do that. And Ridge, in your makeup,

I watch you in this tournament. Not only the Big Ten tournament, but the national tournament. And those discussions that you have with yourself, you talk to yourself more loudly in your head than any athlete I've ever known. And it's beautiful.

Because you can see yourself, processing, processing, processing, process. it. And I said, that's when I kind of identified. That kid's going to win the title because he's going to figure out of what. And it's pretty cool to watch. So and kudos, you talk about Trevelle, talk about Snyder, but Coach Manning,

your mantra of never making a thing bigger than it really is. I think it gets lost. What does it mean to you, though? Yeah, it takes a lot of the pressure off, right? Just go, and Brock Hardy with it too. Wrestling is fun, right?

That gets lost sometimes. People get focused on the cutting weight. They get focused on the this, that, whatever. This match is going to be on ESPN. Nationals is on ESPN. There's so many people watching. The arena's huge, but it's just another wrestling match. I've wrestled in thousands of wrestling matches my whole life. Granted, this one's on TV. This is something that I've been chasing for a while, but at the end of the day, it's the same match. There's kids, I've wrestled kids in almost every single weight except for heavy weight. I had wrestled kids that are competing at nationals in every single way. It's like some of them I've wrestled 10, 15 times.

It's like it's the same kids I've been wrestling my whole life at the big tournaments, just this one's on TV, so I'm going to treat it different. No, nothing changes. Everything stays the same and it just allows you to compete freely. And if you can compete free, like I was saying it after big tens, like trying to compete the way you do in practice. Right. Like when I'm in there, I'm wrestling James Green, Antrell, Taylor, Brock Hardy, Brian

Snyder every single day. And I was talking about with Caleb yesterday. I'm like, this kid's not, he's not going to beat Trelli. He can't beat Brock. He can't beat James. He's not going to beat Snyder. And I wrestle them every day. So, like, why am I worried about what he's got?

Do I need you get Anthony in there? I train with killers every day. I need to see, Bach, the video of Anthony at Nebraska wrestling, I can't even. That would be so much fun. we need to make that happen. You're both football fans. We're going to go to break. We come back.

I'm going to ask you both. Ridge gave a hint to what he thinks this season is going to look like. Right? For the Huskers. I'm going to ask Anthony what he thinks this season based on one week, what you both think. What you think happens Saturday against Akron? And then what you think happens in this Husker football season.

We'll get those nuggets of wisdom from Ridge love it. Anthony Lionheart Smith. We'll be right back. Watch live on Facebook, YouTube, or Twitch. You're listening to One-on-One with DP on 937 The Tickets and The Ticketfm.com.