MMA Fighting - #457 – Oscar De La Hoya, Miesha Tate, Chas Skelly, Izzy Martinez, Mauro Ranallo

Episode Date: November 12, 2018

Luke Thomas speaks to Oscar De La Hoya about the latest with his Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz 3 event, his feud with Floyd Mayweather, more (1:01:23); Yair Rodriguez’s coach Israel Martinez about everything that happened in the main event at UFC Denver (1:36:06); Miesha Tate about becoming a ONE Championship Vice President and what that means for her future in the sport (2:17:36); Chas Skelly about his fight at UFC Denver being prematurely stopped (1:21:03); and legendary combat sports commentator Mauro Ranallo about his documentary and the latest with him (41:23). Luke also looks and breaks down Yair Rodriguez's insane elbow KO win and Donald Cerrone's arm-bar victory at UFC Denver in the Monday Morning Analyst (23:33); and he gives his opinion on Skelly's premature stoppage loss and why that was a robbery on The Weigh-in. We also answer your questions on the latest in MMA on A Round of Tweets (18:08) and Sound Off (1:57:02). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas. This is the MMA hour right here on MMAfighting.com. Thank you so much for joining me. I greatly appreciate it. I mean, you want to talk about a jam-packed, enormous show. We've got it. So with a Monday morning analyst, we're going to look at Cowboys Arm Bar.

We're going to look at Yair's elbow. We'll do The Way In where we talk about Chas Skelly being robbed because by the way, he was robbed. We'll do a round of tweets. You'll be my guest for the soundoff, and we've got five guests. Misha Tate, the new VP of One is going to be here.

Oscar de La Jolla is going to be here to talk about his feud with Floyd, as well as his big anime show coming up. Let's see, the coach of Jari Rodriguez, Israel Martinez, is going to be here. Chas Skelly himself is going to be here, and legendary broadcaster, Mara Rinalo is going to be here.

to be here. I mean, what more could you possibly ask for? The answer is nothing. All right, thank you guys so much for joining me. As always, we'll be taking your tweets and your calls. Those tweets, use the hashtag the MMA Hour and keep those calls coming at 844-866-2468. And of course, you can always email the show as well with a question, but more particularly a voice recording for our international listeners, The MMA Hour at Vox Media. All right, not a moment to waste. Hope everyone had a great weekend. I did.

I took a three-day weekend because I almost collapsed from fatigue, but you don't care about that. In any event, it was a fun weekend, but I'm ready to get the show. And the week started because we go from one MMA event to another one, this time in Buenos Aires. All right, let's talk to my man in the back. He is the Arequipe to my pan,

the arroz to my frioles. he is the what do you want to call it he is the septima to my Bogota how about that huh my arroz to my leach all right what's up man yeah how's it going

it goes well yeah yeah I am tired beyond description same but look at you caffeine I should have gone to that place because I won't say this name of this place coffee is straight up basura did you enjoy the fights on Saturday

of course I got to say first of all shouts to the UFC for the graphics and the sound package They should just keep them, man. I know. I was, I was like, you didn't improve them since then. But outside of your main

and co-main, anything stand up to you about that card? Anybody sent out to you about it? Germain, Germain picked up a win. It was a very important win for her. Who else was out there? How about Macy Barber? Macy Barber, yeah, calling her shots as well. Pretty impressive.

Slashing people up on nasty. Yeah, with those elbows that were nasty. She's a fun addition to that. division, the strawweight division, which just keeps getting better and better. And, dude, that main event, I swear to God, MMA is just, it's just the most ridiculously impossible sport. How does anybody ever get good at MMA? There are so many ways.

And frankly, it's like, there's so many ways to win, so many ways to lose. This is one of those bouts. First of all, anytime you see both guys in hospital gurneys and in gowns, you know that that fight took some years off their life. I mean, we love those fights, but, yo, they left a piece of themselves in Denver that night for sure. But the other part is, like, how does anybody ever get good when you can, I thought I had Korean zombie winning, although I granted it was a little bit tight. Yeah. How do you ever get good when there's no, I'm not no margin for error, but, I mean, in the most unexpected ways, you can't ever really, you know, country, change is more than that.

MMA, you got to be both good and in some ways lucky, man. If you're unlucky, you're not going to get too far, you know. And the fight game, the fight game of luck is a very important factor. Mike Brown told me his years ago, and he's like, I think when he got knocked out by Stephen Siler, he's just like, hey, man, you fight so many times, you roll a dice so many times. Like, you know, you fight 40 times, there's something going to happen, you know, some weird abnormality or some sort of weird outcome. So this is just the way MMA works, man. And speaking of fighting for a long time, Cowboys Soroni, most UFC wins. Most UFC wins by stoppage.

I'm almost glad a non-champion holds that, by the way, that distinction. It's a nice record, yeah. It's a nice record. And it's the kind of thing where if you're very careful and manicuring who comes next and what that means and the risk and the reward, you shouldn't have the honor of having the most wins in the UFC unless you're just dumb talented, right? But I kind of want the guy who's like, yeah, I'll knuckle up with this guy and that one and that one and that one. I kind of like that that guy has the record.

Yeah, yeah, certainly nice. A big win for him as well. Calls good today? Tweet's how are they? Actually, I'm not even talked to you about it. We got tons of calls. We might not even feature all of them. Oh, so many.

Hopefully for next show we'll get to roll over some of them, but we got a lot of good calls. Do you ever know what the rhyme or reason is? Like, okay, if Connor fights, we get a lot of stuff. But that's true for everybody. Why is it that sometimes we just get like an assload of tweets? and then the next week will be like, eh, I got a few tweets

and we just have avalanche of calls. Right. I think obviously the new cycle is very important, but I think also the kind of MMA that we're watching, like a lot of the fight, we got some calls of like people calling right after the event, like, and you can tell they're all psyched out. Like, oh my God, yeah, you're, you know, KZ.

So I think that plays a big factor. All right. So we'll get back to you a little bit later in the show. We are going to do the sound off. We just got a ton of stuff to get to today. Yeah. All right. I'm got to stay on track.

Not a moment to lose. I'll come back to you in a little bit later. sir. All right, thank you. There he goes. Danny Sigura. All right, let's kick this show off the right way, shall we? It is time, ladies and gentlemen, for the way in. Time now for the way in right here on the MMA hour. There's nothing else to start this show with than the discussion about what happened with Chad Skelly in his bout on Saturday night with Mr. Moffitt, I believe. Caught in a dars choke, essentially, and they were doing the three stooges bit where one was trying to chase.

into the other one and the one was chasing himself out of it. And Tim Mills, the referee, kind of tests the arm, pulls it apart. Skelly, can't believe it. They go and review the tape. And then the referee sticks with his really bad decision. There was like, that was the most MMA moment I'd seen in quite some time. It's like the levels of fail that you have to peel away to get to the core issue is pretty amazing.

So let's peel back some of them because I think this exercise is worth doing. So definitively, let's answer the question. Was Chas Skelly wronged? The answer is incontestably. I do not care what referee Tim Mills tells you. I do not care what any other member of that Colorado Athletic Commission tries to say.

There is no good argument for having looked at the instant replay and decided that the initial call was good. It's not possible unless you're just wellfully committed to really bad standards or you have vision problems. It's either one of the two. It cannot be anything other than that. Here is basically what's so wrong about it. A couple of things.

Number one, think about just how crude that test is, is a guy's arm floppy. How floppy is it? By the way, I would encourage you to go back and watch. It's actually not that floppy. I had this shoulder surgically repaired in 2009. I'm currently in physical therapy three days a week for this one so that I can avoid surgery.

As you can see, I've got the shoulders of a grandmother. But the point being is this. I know what shoulder mobility looks like. I know what shoulder mobility looks like when someone's injured, when someone is sort of not consciously thinking about it, and when someone is totally out. It does not flop. It's loose.

doesn't really flop. So it doesn't even pass the eye test in that regard. Moreover, as I mentioned, it's like a measurement of like someone's cognition or frankly, I wouldn't say sentience exactly, but certainly someone's measurement of someone being awake consciousness. It's a crude measurement. It's not worthless. It can at times be helpful.

It's just very limited. Now, here's the first problem. The initial call is just bad. I don't think that's necessarily all that big a problem. Look at all of these other sports. And in America, I'll just go through them. American football, American even baseball now, American basketball. You've got VAR overseas.

Well, to limited degrees anyway. In soccer. Here's the point I'm trying to make. In all of those sports, it is built in with the importance. implicit understanding that a referee getting the call right the first time is not something you can rely upon. The reality is they're going to get it wrong. So you build in these other mechanisms so that they can self-correct. People were saying things like, oh, well, the referee who made the call is now viewing his own tape.

I don't really mind that so much. An extra set of eyeballs couldn't have hurt. But that's not really the issue. The issue is the lack of humility involved by referee Tim Mills in not. overturning it in looking what is incontestably a gentleman who was not done in whatsoever and then deciding yeah eff it let's just roll through with it you have to basically believe to go to the process that they went through that the referees at mMA either don't make mistakes or don't make mistakes big enough to correct so you've got this crude arm test which is valuable but limited

you've got now this use of replay. By the way, replay is used in MMA, but once they use it, they can't go back to anything. Best case scenario, it would have just been, I guess, a no contest because you can't start the fight over, which is another whole host of problems in and of itself. And folks who say, well, it puts the referee in a bit of a tough position. Yeah, that's the position they signed up for.

They signed up to be in the tough positions. That is what they asked. Now, I would be happy to have Tim Mills on the show. I'd be happy to have anyone from the Colorado Athletic Commission. And I'll come clean here. I asked neither of them because after 12 or so years in this business, I have learned that the athletic commissions of the United States do not believe that they are accountable to anybody.

They don't have to answer my email requests. They don't have to pick up my phone calls. They don't have to come and talk about it. Maybe even Tim Mills wants to. Sometimes referees want to. And the Athletic Commission will prevent them from doing that. That's another problem that you run into all the time. So I don't know what the truth is there.

Here's what I know. I guarantee you they won't. I guarantee you they won't. Standing invitation, they won't talk about it because they do not believe ultimately that they are accountable to the public in any kind of recognizable way. So you've got people who basically believe

that MMA referees don't make errors or don't make errors worth editing. You've got already a bad call to begin with. You now have a commission. All the commissions are like this, by the way, with a slight exception in California. California. I do think Andy Foster tries to at least have some discussion about this. And in this particular case, you have a commission that just does not believe that they owe anybody

an explanation, not merely now but ever. You have a referee who, by the way, and Tim Mills, who just last May on an LFA show had a royally poor performance. Here he is back out again. We have no real understanding of what he's talking about. He apparently tells Chas Skelly, it's an eye-fluttering issue, but there's really no mention of that. Then the commission goofs and calls it. a TKO when it's not a TKO, which is yet another problem. So you've got all of these sort of different ways in which they have totally failed here. Like an arm can be limp-ish for a lot of different reasons in those scenarios.

The choke was tight, but it wasn't complete. And the guy like Chaskelly, who's never been submitted, you have to give a bit of a benefit the doubt of. The arm test, by the way, Chas-Skelly doesn't even really fail the arm test. as bad as that test is, he doesn't even fail it, he still calls him apart, then doubles down on the error with use of technology, commission won't ever say anything about it because they don't have to, there's no law requiring them to. And all together, it ends up with one guy being screwed for no particular reason, pay cut in half, and here we go. And ultimately, did the commission

lose? No. Did the referee lose? I guarantee you he keeps getting assigned. and maybe he should, but we don't really have the ability to have that conversation because they won't have it with you. Here is the biggest core problem. It's less about a referee made an error because instant replay can, in theory, fix that. It's less about the limits of instant replay, although there are some of those as well. It's less about the arm test. It's less about the mechanics of the choke. It's something at the core that I see in MMA all the time, all the freaking time, which is everybody in a position of authority uses that authority as their sole argument to assert themselves. No one in MMA ever wants to have a debate because very few people

can actually defend their ideas here. It's just the reality of it. If someone really asked you, which ideas could you really defend that you believe? How many could you really argue for someone was being a very difficult interlocutor with you. It'd be kind of hard. No one in MMA wants to do that. What they all want to do is they want to say, aha, I'm the referee, I have final say. I'm the promoter.

I can do what I want. I'm the manager. I can say yes or no. Right? They just assert their status over something rather than grappling with the details of it. Rather than making an argument, Nobody in MMA ever wants to make an argument

because I think most of them can't. Nobody ever wants to do anything other than rest on the argument from authority. I have power, therefore, end of story. And we are left with collateral damage every which way. By the way, the media is guilty of this too. I'm the media, I know better. People do it all the time.

No one ever wants to make an argument about it. Here's the argument. The argument is pretty clearly that the armed test involved is a limited test. Even with that limited test, Chaskelly did not fail it. There are now competing narratives from that referee about why he stopped it altogether. The evidence is quite conclusive that that was a premature stoppage. The referee refused to recognize this quite obvious fact. I don't know about his full record because the commission won't make it really available.

they won't tell us if they grade internally, and if they did, what kind of grades it would get, and they won't really answer to any of these problems because no commission ever wants to because they don't have to. Basically, basically, with a couple exceptions here or there. I mentioned California before, I'll give New Jersey a pass as well because they've actually tried to work out some things with me in the past. That's about it.

That's about it, because this is a sport where people claim titles and they claim positions and then claim, I'm done. I don't ever have to make a case for something because my case is my title. And so we end up in positions like this. That was an absolutely egregious failure. That commission and that referee totally effed up. They absolutely unequivocally took that from Chas Gelley.

And maybe Moffat was on his way to winning, but he hadn't won yet. He looked very, very good as a fighter. I take nothing from him other than he may have. I've got right up to that finish line, but he didn't cross it. Right. Everything about that was a fail. Everything about that was a fail. And when given the option, they still decided to back it.

They still decided to double down and say, yeah, you know what? Who really is Chas Skelly? F them. We don't really owe anybody anything, do we? Right. It's the argument from authority everywhere you go in this sport. I don't ever want to have to argue for my ideas because at the end of the day,

I just believe what I want to because it's good for me, and I don't ever want to have to make a case publicly because under scrutiny, it probably will fail. So let me just retreat onto my power enclave and say, this is enough, I'm good here. Well, this is the problem with the sport. Learn to make arguments. Learn to actually stand on the value of your ideas.

If your guy made a call and it's good, justify it. Open invitation to any athletic commission Who wants to come on here and debate these ideas Now and forever. So long as I sit in this chair, commission members are going to be a welcome to come here. Watch how many come through. Ready for this?

It'll be zero. Because not one of them has the guts to do it, ever, at any point for any reason. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the way in. All right. Let's do this now. We're a little bit behind schedule already, but we'll make it work. Let's do this. How about a round of tweets?

All right, as soon as the clock starts working, then we will go. Here we go. All right, how much money will it take to see Luke watch Floyd Mayweather walking out to face the pain to fight to fight? Well, I got to tell you, if he fought tension in an MMA fight, you could play Face the Pain as the soundtrack to the fight. I would still watch it. Next. Would you rank Yair's K-O of the zombie in the UFC's top five of all-time KOs. Now, I have to think about that for a second. I don't know exactly. I've never put together an informal list of the list of KOs.

So I don't know, but I got to say that's one of the most interesting KOs ever. And if it's not in the top five, has to be in the top 10. Next. With the whole hugging and high-fiving thing in the main event be a topic today, had Yair not finished the fight. I doubt that Dana and the UFC would have given five the night without that finished. Great fight, though. I listen from Brazil every week.

What's up, Brazil? The high-fiving did get annoying, but it was still a pretty great fight independent of that. Someone actually introduced a theory to me. They were saying that at the end, Yairir raises his hands, like the very last 10 seconds, and it may have thrown off the Korean zombie, which is why he charged like that. I ultimately don't buy that argument because I'm going to show you that that's probably not true, but it's an interesting theory nonetheless. But in any case, it might have had the fight been boring.

Well, certainly they wouldn't be in contention for five of the night at that point. But Dana would have come down on them if the fight was boring. But even with it, the fight was pretty great. Next. Will El Pantetta get a title shot? Ooh. Frankie's still kind of out there. Maybe they do a rematch.

The beat fight still is holding people's attention with good reasons. So probably not. Probably not. but he's close. Whatever. What a comeback. Incredible. Next.

So who does Jermaine Durand Demi fight next? Good question. I'm not sure where she goes from here. Where do they have with the rankings? Because at Bansomweight, it's just sort of this weird moment, right? Like, what do you do with all these people? I would say, that pull up women's Bantamweight here. She's currently sitting at five.

If she just beat four, you've got Pena, Ketland, Vieira, and then Holly. So I guess Ketland, probably, unless Giuliana comes back, I don't know who else it could be because they're not going to give her cyborg, right? And she's not going to take Cyborg. So I don't know. I don't know. Probably those, maybe Katzenegano, something like that. We'll have to see.

Next. Did you watch Usik versus Belu? What are U6's chances against top heavyweights as Joshua Wilder and Fury? Well, he has a bit of a size discrepancy. obviously Yusick, yeah, I did watch on DeZone. It was incredible, right? Ustick just ran through. Well, actually, he had some trouble early,

but then when he took over, he just ran away with it. Guy cleaned out that division in two years. Two years it took him to clean out cruiser weight. So how would he do against the top heavy weights like Joshua Wilder and Fury? I don't really know. First of all, we need to see exactly. Joshua, I don't know, man. He's, part of me thinks the size discrepancy is too big.

Part of me also thinks that Yusick is a better boxer than all of them. But the Wilder and Fury one, since they got a fight coming up in December, I actually want to see where they're at against one another before I can make a clean call. Wilder's power is astronomical, but he's not nearly the boxer that Yusik is. And Fury, how is Fury after all he's been through? It'll be interesting to see. Next.

With a UFC show on literally every week for nine straight weeks from the Smith Uzdemeer to the, Lee Iaquit to fight. Do you think that the company is burning its fans out? Bro, they've been doing this for years. This year has seen a huge drop in viewership in buy rates, and I feel too many shows might be mainly to blame. The thing is, they've always promoted it as like,

well, if you didn't want to watch this fight, just skip it and watch the next one. But the problem with that is two things. Number one, there's actually continuity between events. Like, if you just pick up on the big ones, you miss a lot of stuff in between, that ultimately can create hurdles. to becoming re-engaged with the sport.

And secondly, I don't think it's meant to be consumed like that. The sport is much more about just peaking all the time, much like the athletes themselves, rather than just banquet food that you're shipping out constantly. It's not meant to be treated like a baseball regular season. Each one is supposed to have independent and extraordinary value. And when it doesn't follow that model, the results speak for themselves. Next. Last one.

It has to be Justin Gaichi that Serrani was talking about as an exciting opportunity and has moved back to 155. I'm 100% on that. Your thoughts. Man, if it ain't, there's a crime happening. Because that is absolutely the fight to make at this point. All right, not a moment to waste. Appreciate all the tweets and everything else. It is time now, ladies and gentlemen, for the Monday morning analyst.

All right. Look at that. And you see me? All these tweets up here. All right. time now for the Monday morning analyst right here on the MMA hour. I always ask folks on my Facebook page, cheap plug, Facebook.com slash Luke Thomas News. I always ask you guys, what is it you want to see on the MMA analyst?

Because it was up to me I might pick certain things that you don't like. And everyone said overwhelmingly they wanted to see Saroni's arm bar and they wanted to see how the elbow, essentially, from your ear, was set up. So that's what we will do today. Let me show you the Saroni arm bar real quickly. And then we'll get to the Yair stuff. I have a few more things I want to say about Yair that even the audio podcast listeners, I think, can appreciate independent of what the graphics or everything else might show. So let's go ahead and go to the screen now if we can.

Two weeks in a row, hey, we might have some success. We actually have no plug-in today. I've got a new iPad. Look at this, right? Hey, no plug-in. Nobody cares. All right, just me. All right.

I don't have a ton of footage to show because I don't want to. Besides, getting to two finishes can get a little dicey with the UFC. They get real protective over stuff like that. But it aired on TV and everyone saw this stuff. Anyway, so here is Cowboy Seroni underneath. Here is Mike Perry on top. How did this come from this position to an arm bar the other way? A couple things happened.

See the red tape right there? Why am I pointing when I have this? Oops. Let me clear that off. Wrong one. Here we go. All right. See that red glove right there?

That is Seroni. Seroni has the red glove, okay? So that means the blue gloves are going to be Mike Perry. Just follow along here. So you're going to see him do this. See the hand over here? The hand is behind the neck. He's going to move it in front to frame.

When he moves it in front to frame, Mike Perry decides, aha, Americana time. Or they call him key locks or paint brushes. essentially hand in line with the ear, the hand goes back, the elbow comes forward to the point where then they drive it, well, they kind of drive it on the same line as the ear, but they kind of drive it in and down. I can't even, because of my shoulder therapy,

I literally can't even put my back against the wall and have my elbows touch. So imagine if someone is manipulating it past even a natural point of discomfort, right? So that's what happens. He now tries to set up. You see him reaching here. Look right. Let me right there.

See that? that's the position for the key lock right there that he's trying to set up. And the problem is, as soon as he sets it up, Seroni decides, I'm going to bring, if someone has a key lock out here and you bring it to your body and then put your weight to the side on the same side, so now my, rather than have my back on the mat, my shoulders on the mat, it kills it, right? Because now you're mechanically in a place where they don't have a lot of leverage over you. So that's what he does. He kind of goes to his side, except this time he keeps going to his base. Already,

already Mike Perry's in trouble. Joe, why is Mike Perry in trouble? Do you know? You don't know, right? His hips are in the air. You see that? Look at that. All the way in the air to the point. His feet are off the ground. That's a major problem for him. If two places you don't want to be are someone completely on top of you or someone

lifting your weight off the ground either with a body lock or some kind of guard they're using, his weight is all up in the air. And here's the thing that Mike Perry is doing. He's still holding on to, if I go back here, look, he's still holding onto the camora, or excuse me, the paintbrush. He doesn't let it go. That's a major problem for one reason. Number one, his weight gets picked up.

Look at this. His weight is completely off the ground. That means he can get turned and pulled and maneuvered because you don't have any control of your body anymore. The other problem is when you're back here, if someone tries a camora on you, you can actually go around their arm, not a Camara, I'm sorry, a paintbrush. Someone tries a paintbrush or Americana or a keylock on you. You can actually go around keylock them and then actually turn that into a reversal. Soroni doesn't do that. But what he does do is he goes to his base.

By the way, if he did that Camorra, oh, sorry, if he did that keylock on Perry, it would look similar to this. It actually would go almost identically. He doesn't do that. What he does do is he gets to his base. Perry holds on to the key lock way too long. So watch what happens. He realizes, look at him. He realizes he's in trouble here, floating and he's going to lose control. Now look at also something. Look at that arm. It's deep on the inside of the body of Soroni. What does that mean? That means you can attach it to yourself and you can bring it across, which will open them up or attach it to your body.

Now you can control them, right? So you've got the weight off the ground and now the arm is being tucked in way underneath. Two recipes for disaster on a thing like this. I actually think that this is a... Seroni is doing that same keylock reversal from side control just in a different way. He goes from side control to his hips, and if they hold onto the key lock for too long, then he does what he's about to do. Kind of similar to a Von Fluchok.

What's a Von Fluchoke? It's when someone holds onto that position, like a guillotine, in the wrong position too long. If you hold onto something in the wrong position too long, there's all kinds of counters to it, which is exactly what you're going to see here. So now you see Saroni is even deeper. Look at how high the hips are off the ground. Perry. He's got no attachment to the ground whatsoever posting on that right hand. He's just going to pick him up. Look at the arm. Look at the arm of Perry. It's all the way across like a seatbelt.

Like you're doing the discount double check and your Aaron Rogers. It's all the way across there. And now all he's going to do is sit up and he's going to swim back around with his own left arm like there. Why is he doing that? Because when he puts this underhook, on the far side, now he has a method of control across his body when he comes up on top. That underhook, without it, he could just sit up again. He is claiming the inside space here on top. It's a very, very necessary condition. It's also good for passing.

It's a lot of different things, right? So he gets on top. Blah Blah, he has to go knee on belly. Now, Seroni eventually, excuse me, Perry, eventually gets to his feet. and you can see Serena tries to take the back. Oops, not a lot to say about that. I'm still learning how to use this new iPad. This is a terrible position.

I don't want to go into because we're short on time, but you can just, I mean, look, he's got sort of like an over-under here. A lot of times, by the way, guys in grappling, I don't know, I don't know if this is what Mike Perry thought. I don't know. A lot of times guys will think if they can sneak one arm behind the leg of their opponent, that they can then come out the back door.

You can't. I'm not saying that's what he's. He was thinking, I don't know, but I see this a lot sometimes. Well, guys are like, oh, this guy's getting too far up. Let me sink in. I'll put my arm around this leg and I'll use that to come out and around. And bad things happen to you. If you wanted to hold on to that to then come to your base to then go to a single,

that's a way you could do it, but just sneaking out the back. And again, I'm not saying Mike Perry was doing that. I'm just sort of making a point here. I see this kind of thing a lot. Anyway, he shakes off Donald Serroney, and now we go to Guard. Right? So here's Guard. Okay, real quickly.

Who had the blue gloves? Mike Perry. Who had the red gloves? Cowboy Soroni. So look at this. You've got a glove of Mike Perry extended all the way down by the head. Ooh, that's a no-no. Because you've got a guy like Donald Serroney who's got real...

I mean, look at that arm. Look at this arm from Mike Perry. Let me just... Look at this. Look at that. Arm bar. Arm bar city all the time. It's just all.

all the way. He's bent over, arm extended. I'm not saying that you can't bend over and then punch. Of course, Mike Perry knows that a lot better than I do. I'm just saying with a guy who's got real dynamic hips like Donald Seroni, it's just a risk you're running. You know what I mean? So he runs the risk. And look at Seroni. Soroni, watch his right hand. He's got it kind of trapped like this. He's going to whip his hip. So what happens is he actually drops his leg and then whips it around as he pushes the head away because you're creating a lane for the leg to come around like that. See that?

You just whip it around. And look at his hips in the air, yeah? Dalserone has always had a really good guard. And the reason why is, yes, he's long and lanky, but it's more than that. He's got dynamic hips. He moves them quickly. He identifies attacks very, very easily and just makes it work and rolls from there. Anyway, so here's the issue.

It looks to me like right there, he's grabbing behind the leg so he doesn't get slammed. But I think he felt like if I do that, I'm going to lose this arm. So it looks to me like he kind of lets go of it and then gets dumped on his head and then holds onto it like this. And then Mike Perry tries to helicopter around and kind of stops there. So I've talked about this before. If you wanted to really do this, quote unquote, the right way, which, by the way, is not necessarily always right. again, I'm not in any way critiquing. You would put the shin behind the head so that you can flip them.

I've talked about this a number of times. But, man, if you know you've gotten it, you're taking a risk by just going belly down like that. On the other hand, if you know you've gotten it, and he said he could feel it snappy before he even went belly down. If you go belly down, you can get tremendous torque. So it's all about weighing the risk and the reward. Getting a tap and getting the arm broken means that he did it the right way.

So, of course, you just watched this from Soroni. Oh, look at that. Oh, God damn it. That's me when I see the alarm in the morning. I have to come six states away to come up here. All right, so that's the arm bar. I can go in more detail, but you get the idea from there. That's basically how he set it up.

It was just a much better grappler. It's kind of simple as that. All right, so let's get into this Jaira Rodriguez stuff. Now, here's the deal with this. People ask me, was that elbow legit, throwing it behind himself like that? The answer is 100%. 100% legit, 100% technique.

I can go through all five rounds. And in all five rounds, I can find all of the ingredients that led up to that moment. Basically, here's what was happening. Chan Sung-jong was noticing from his orthodox position, you did see some stand switching from Yair. He was noticing that Yairir would just kind of pose off with him. With his hands low, he could either fire the right, excuse me, the left straight, excuse me, the right straight.

He could fire the right straight and it would land. or what he would do is he would get Yair to commit and then through the countering he blitz or jam him, kind of running him back. What would happen was he could get A on the inside of the reach of

Yai'ir, number one, and number two, Yairir often, though not always, go straight back. Now there are times where he circles out, there are times where he goes straight back and then circles. I don't want to tell you that he's always walking back straight. That's not true. It's true enough that you could see that pattern develop,

but it wasn't like completely true true. So with that in mind, I don't have time to go through this entire five-round fight. I just picked three excerpts from the second round. From the second round, here's what's happening. As I mentioned, you're going to get a guy who's going to either jab his way in, jab, get a reaction, and then jam the space, or a faint get a reaction, jam the space. And what would happen was he would get so far on top of Yair, that Yair would just have no space left, but to throw an elbow or to catch him, oops, hold on, or to catch him with an elbow

coming in. He would lose the ability to be back at jab distance. You would see some of the push kicks were working for Yair when he would throw them, but he kind of got away from them. He had good leg kicks early. He had some push kicks, I think through the first half of the bout, but really in the end, that was what he was trying to do, was trying to keep that distance because Korean zombie was trying to close that gap quickly, push him back, make him make mistakes, and then beat him with his boxing combinations in the process. So here's the second round. God damn it. All right, here's the second round. Again, he's jamming him. Look at the space that, yeah, here's walking. They're at the center of the cage. He just goes straight back. Now, you notice the Korean zombie doesn't throw anything here.

I'm using this as merely an illustrative example of what he was looking for. Through the jab, it got blocked, jams the space, feints with the right, noticing the reactions. But what happens? Now he's behind the two black lines. If you've been watching this podcast since I did it before, I was taking over this show, you know how important it is. All the offense, for the most part, happens here, folks. All of it happens behind these two black lines. That's the danger zone.

That's the warning track. That's the first encounter, right? And then he jabs his way back out. All right. Here's another one. Watch this at about the 14 second mark. He tries a, this would be Harai Goshi. Can't get it, right?

He blocks himself. Now watch. They trade hands. Here we go. He's going to come in and look at that, anticipating it when he comes in. And pay special attention to something. Watch the eyes of Yair. Kind of never takes them off.

He misses here a little bit because he misjudges it. This is my point. He's backing out straight. When the guy comes into him, he's waiting for all different kinds of elbow combinations. Here's another one he throws a little bit later. By the way, just getting him on the two black lines. Jabs, right, pushes him away. lunges with that straight ride I was talking about before

because his hands are kind of down. He's not expecting you to get some on the halfbeat. Now he's going to blitz, change his sides. Watch this. Boop, and it lands flush. This is what I mean. He's already on top of you. Look at, for me, the eyeballs of Yarra Rodriguez.

He's looking, even when he's doing this, when he's over here and looking. He's looking at all times, right? So, god damn it. So, God damn it. There. Oh, here. So he nails him here.

See that? Boom. Catches him. And look at the eyeballs. He sees it. He looks before he lands at all times. So you're going to say, look, what's that I got to do with the finish? I'll wrap up here. And then he grabs him on and underhooks and blah, blah, blah.

Here's the finish. What do we talk about before? He's going to leave with a jab off of some kind of offense, or he's going to lunge right in. He's going to push Yair back in a straight line, which is what you see here. Look at him. By the way, changing stances almost. Look at that. Changes stances, fires the punch and then eats the elbow, right?

These changing stances through, God damn it, combination. Yeah? But did you notice the path? Look at how linear this path is. Look at that. Super linear, right? He was waiting for it. And then he just jams you on top of you to the point where you've got nowhere left to go.

So that's where these elbow attacks come in at the last minute. And then he cracks him with that one. Let's take a look at it from a different angle. Yeah? And he backs away. What a ridiculous wind that is, huh? Amazing. Look at him here.

Changing stances, he ducks. This is what I was telling you before. Whenever he throws an elbow, he's not closing his eyes and then throwing. He's looking the whole time. Look at this little nugget of a detail. Can't quite see it here. It looks to me like when he throws this elbow, he actually looks up behind himself and lands it here. So he's got Korean zombie coming over the top of him like this, and he looks and lands just like that.

Let's look at one more angle if we can. All right, and then he collapses. It's ridiculous. Look at this. Watch the eyes of Yairair very little. There. It looks like he's looking straight down, but if you look really closely here, it looks to me like he's recoiling back so he can get just a piece. out of the corner of his eye right there to land.

So this is all about the forward pressure of Korean zombie. And yes, maybe Yair could be better about, you know, working his jab and his footwork and circling out better. But he developed this system to deal with guys who put a lot of pressure on him, collapse the space, and when they get on top of him, he's got these last-minute elbow attacks from funky angles, timed very weirdly, and he's able to land him just like that. And I think he gets just a peek out of the corner of his eyes.

I don't think he's looking straight down at the mat. Amazing, amazing win by Air Rodriguez. Certainly one of the best knockouts I've ever seen. One of the best knockouts in UFC history. And another reason why MMA is basically impossible. That's the Monday morning analyst. All right, let's do this. Okay.

We go now to the phones. Do we have our esteemed guest? Okay. Is he on phone or is he on Skype? I don't even remember. All right. Let's go to him. Now, this guy is in my job.

He is the best combat sports broadcaster in the world. I've been dying to get a hold of him when we have a new show in and we finally have a chance. Mara Rinaloa joins the show. Hi, Maro. How are you? Hey, Luke, congratulations. And glad to be talking with you, my friend. And glad that you are beginning to get more and more of the exposure that you deserve.

I remember when I was doing a podcast or these Combat Sports radio shows before they became in vogue or superture as it is nowadays. and I was always, first of all, impressed at not only your knowledge, but the passion and the gravitas that you bring to MMA media. So I appreciate what you are doing, sir, and it's a pleasure to be joining you on the MMA hour. Well, thank you for making time for us, Mara. I really appreciate it. Hey, I wanted to tell you, I had seen the documentary, the bipolar rock and roller a little while ago. I took the time over the weekend to watch the interview you did with Tyson Fury.

What a, man, that was a, it's more than just heavy. It's important. It's different. Here's my question to you, Morrow. You're open about these issues, and you've talked about them a lot. How did you get him? Like, was he willing before the cameras even rolled to just talk about all these things? Because he appeared to leave no stone unturned.

Yeah, he is very committed. And thank you, by the way, for mentioning the doc, because as I begin to, to end my 40s and begin my 50s sooner than I would like. I am becoming more and more of a mental health advocates. I've been to New York the last three weeks to participate in panels and to be acknowledged for my mental health advocacy. But when it comes to Tyson Fury, he not only was very open, he wanted to do the interview. And it's something that I have christened the most important interview of my career because of the fact that Since the release of the documentary on Showtime back in May, I have been overwhelmed, inundated.

I know I'm known for my hyperbole when it comes to selling the combat sports product, but I can't understate, Luke, the feedback and the impact that this little documentary has made. And I've heard from so many people who I will not reach their trust if they want to come forward, they will. but I'm talking Titans in not only combat sports, but other sports in other industry, the entertainment industry, the business industry. And so to have someone like Titan Fury, who is the lineal heavyweight champion, a man who stands six foot nine and doesn't, I guess, fit the stereotype of, you know, someone who has mental health issues, it is just illuminating to me that more and more

we are having a discussion that should have been taking place long ago. The stigma surrounding mental health and the countless numbers of people we are losing to suicide born out of that stigma is what propelled me to tell my story. And I'm very gracious that people like Tyson Fury wanted to share their stories. And so many others, Luke, you giving me this platform shows that you want to smash the stigma. the countless celebrities and musicians and athletes who are now coming forward and talking about their own issues with mental health. And let's face it, combat sports. We always talk about what's become a cliche, you know, 80 to 90 percent mental.

Well, it is. And when it comes to that aspect, we always celebrate the winners and we go on in a media to say, what's next? What about the losers? What's next for them? And how are they internalizing and dealing with these setbacks that can be soul-crushing? So I think mental health, you know, there is no help without mental health. And I'm just very grateful that Tyson Fury came forward and so many others. Brian Dockett's at the NFL Hall of Fame ceremony.

I mean, you know, there's toxic masculinity in this world, Luke. And I'm not trying to, quote, unquote, pocify our society. I'm just trying to let people know that we are all going through something. And the more we internalize it, the more that we do not deal with it by simply starting to talk about it, the more losses we are going to incur. And the World Health Organization has deemed the mental health crisis, the biggest humanitarian crisis of our time. So I'm glad we're finally starting to wake up, and I know I'm going to continue to bang my drum until my final breath has been released from my body. Well, Mara, I don't know if you know this. I don't have a problem talking about it. It's painful for me, but it's important that we not hide from these facts.

I lost my mother tragically to suicide in 2003. So you raising these kinds of issues and then hearing Tyson Fury talk about himself being on the verge of death, both because of the panic attack he was in and mentally where he was, I think is incredibly important. So on that note, Morrow, the most interesting insight, the biggest, the tidbit that you walked away from that Tyson Fury interview, what stood out to you the most? A great question. And simply, he actually taught me something that I have been juggling or fighting with for so long. For whatever reason, I suffer from imposter syndrome as well as being mixed states bipolar. And I know what I need to do to take care of myself and there are days where I simply can't or days that I think I simply choose not to as an act of self-sabotage because I sometimes wonder, how did I. get to be so successful when so many other people I feel are more talented, I feel are better

suited to perhaps be in the position that I'm in, find themselves, you know, scratching and clawing and just finding it very difficult just to pay the bills. So in listening to the Tyson Fury interview, the one thing that struck me the most and something that has inspired me is simply setting goals, Luke, small goals every day. When he told us. He wanted to lose the nearly 150 pounds that he has. And by the way, before the bell even rings December 1st, I think Tyson Fury has already authored one of the most amazing comebacks, not just in combat sports, but in sports period. And for me, the biggest takeaway was the fact he said he wanted to run one day when he was nearly 400 pounds, but he could only walk 200 feet

before he was short of breath. And he said, you know what, I'm going to continue. Maybe I'll just do this much today and then this much tomorrow. And I've got to. to say that since that interview, I downloaded a steps app, Luke. And every day I'm no, I don't care where I am. I don't care what I'm doing. I'm getting those 10,000 steps in. I have a target weight that I would like to reach. I have a certain goal when it comes to my own social interactions that must be met in order for me to continue staying above water, because I don't want to turn this into a woes me or, or, or, uh, an excuse of any kind. But, uh, Luke, it, is, it, is, It's, I'm treading water on a daily basis, and I know all I come across doing my work and

how intense and how exhilarating being on live television is, and especially at the level of when you're calling combat sports. But for me, my work is therapy. It's, it's, it's in a way, catharsis, but I always have to pay for it. And I never used to give myself a safety net. So it's, it's really simply being told, make a goal every day and reach that goal, has small areas, big as it can be. And I got to say, the Tyson Fury interview, and especially that, I think, is maybe not saved my life, but extended it, Luke. So I really impressed that it was something so simple. And yet for those of us suffering through whatever it is, we deal with on a daily basis, it can seem insurmountable. It was interesting is we had Kevin Love in the NBA come out and

talk about some of the issues he was having, not quite as severe as Tyson Furies, but they don't necessarily have to be to still have a profound effect on your life. Everyone goes through different struggles. But the thing that's interesting to me is, and I wonder how you feel about this, having a view of the combat sports space. Is it just something about Tyson Fury who's leading this charge in boxing? Or is there something about MMA in the culture that prevents us from talking about this, yourself notwithstanding?

I can, look, you know, one reason why you're one of the best. And I do choose to talk to people like you. I don't try to do as many interviews anymore only because I sometimes maybe think that, you know, I don't want to continue to just talk about fights and, you know, the X's and O's and who had a bad day or a good day, because so many people like yourself do that very well. In terms of what we are experiencing, again, I wish I could tell you the names, and I'm talking from professional wrestling, which has the alpha male syndrome, box, all the combat sports. we're talking about men and women who do something only a tiny percentage of the population can do,

who for the rest of us, you almost think is there something wrong with them in order for them to step into a ring or a cage. I have heard from so many people in so many different departments, whether it's from coaching to actual fighters, about how the documentary impacted them, but inspired them to talk more about what they are dealing with. So I think Tyson Fury may be the the talisman, the totem right now. But this is only going to become a more of a thing in combat sports because I believe it can help the sports itself in terms of how we approach what we do and just treat ourselves because we know, and yes, MMA, you look at the rap sheet.

And it sometimes disappoints being discourages me because I know in all walks of life, you're going to have bad eggs, as it were. but there are so many times I hear heartbreaking stories in MMA, which I know are a byproduct of someone's mental health. And I've dealt with them going back to my pride days, certain athletes that I was talking to, I go, oh, my goodness, this person, you know, really is in need of help. But no, we're told to suck it up, or no, we're told to get back in there. Or no, you know, you're a fighter. You're, you're, you know, toxic masculinity, as it were. And I think that is simply killing too many people.

And so I'm going to consistently talk about mental health because we are so far behind in terms of resources and awareness. And this is not a competition by any means because I've lost way too many people to cancer. And I've known people who have perished because of HIV and AIDS. But you remember, Luke, where we were when those first came to prominence and how uncomfortable and how much stigma surrounded those subjects. And yet now we not only embrace and show empathy and compassion, but we're spending millions upon millions to find tears. We need the same thing for mental health disorders because it is crippling our population and it is robbing some of the most gifted human beings to ever walk the earth from really making their contribution to society. And that goes for these incredible athletes that we cover on a regular basis inside the ring. cage. One more question about this, and I want to transition to some other things while I still

have the chance to have you on the phone here. Talking through these things has, I think, been for you professionally helpful, potentially even rewarding, and certainly cathartic in some kind of existential sense, but does it actually help you with the underlying conditions you've been grappling with low these many years? I, like everyone else, I wanted to believe that I wasn't alone because when I was first diagnosed in 19 and through the first many years, like I say, the last decade of my 20s where somehow I still managed to have a semblance of a career, but probably should have been maybe a lot further in terms of the work and the level of expertise, I guess I was showing at the

time. I deal with my issues like everyone else deals with their issues on a daily basis. Unfortunately, mine, I'm still stunned, Luke, that I have been able to accomplish what I have in coming off, especially 2017, where, you know, and this is not the humble brag, but I'm trying to really starkly portray a picture of someone who, not supposed to exist, you know, from calling the WW match of the year Royal Rumble with John Cena and AJ Styles to Anthony Joshua, Vladimir, Plitchco, 90,000, Wemble. Stadium, Floyd Mayweather and Connor McGregor, the double knockdown and the knock of Mademitrior or Fadour and Million Ankle. These, the days leading up, the day of, I'm a wreck, Luke, Thomas. I am trying my best to try to put myself in a place where I'm not going to let my, my superiors down, the sport down, and the fans down. And I don't know how better else to explain it, except I don't think I'd be alive if I'm not

allowed to do what I do for a living. And that's why it terrifies me. Between shows after every show, is this my last gig? Because someday someone's going to say, you know what, it may be too risky. He's too volatile. He's too vulnerable. And yet, after I do the show, all I hear is, oh, my goodness, man, how you're the best. I have these young announcers inundating me with, like, you know, you're my inspiration. You're my motivation. And I want to help people. I want to inspire people. But I want to let people know that regardless of the documentary, and I wanted to make sure that the doc didn't end, you know, with a firm conclusion because my battle goes on 24-7. And I need all the help I can get. And even doing this interview, Luke, I felt anxious and a little insecure because I don't even know sometimes where I fit anymore.

You know, here I am at the top of my profession. I'm about to call Tyson Fury, Deonté Wilde on Showtime Paperview. I'm calling NXT takeover another huge special this Saturday, going to Hawaii with Belator. I should be on Cloud 9. I should be at the top of the world celebrating my success and everything that I represent. And yet every single day, sir, I wake up in a panic attack,

wondering if this is the day, I'm going to take my life. So it's a huge contradiction. And I just hope people can, regardless of you're a fan of my work or not, I just hope you appreciate what it takes for me to do. what I do on a daily basis because it's all for the sport and the fans because I'm I don't exist without my work. I truly believe that. Well, Marrow, you're much more than just your work. I hope you understand that. I appreciate your candor coming on here. I know how difficult it is. I've said this before, Maro, and I think you know this. I've said this, but just for people who may be

new to this, I think you're the greatest combat sports announcer walking the planet. You know, I don't watch pro wrestling, but you're doing it at the highest level. You're doing MMA at the highest level. You're doing MMA at the highest level. You called pride. You've done kickboxing at the highest level and now boxing at the highest level. Maro, nobody can do what you do. Literally, nobody can do what you do. You are peerless in our time. And I hope you understand that. If not today, maybe someday in the future. I really appreciate that, Luke, and I sincerely do. And I have so much respect for those that are doing it now and that, but I have to also say this, Luke, and I'm being very, see, this is why when I get on with people I feel comfortable with and trust, and maybe this is why I don't do as many interviews

anymore because I am just as naked as can be in my thoughts. I watch every show or try to watch whatever I can more and more difficult with the amount of product. And yet I walk away going, my God, and I have respect for Sean Anick and Jim Lampley and all of the many people I've worked with. Every time I hear another announcer doing my support, I'm like, wow, that guy's way better than I am. And I become insecure and I become where it ruins the rest of my day. So I sometimes wonder why you, of all people, think that about me because I'm having big difficulty thinking that about myself. And it's something that you would think after 32 years and after everything that I've

accomplished that I could at least sit back and say, you know what, more, you've done good. Instead, it's like, oh, my, is this the day, you know, as Frank Shamrock was my manager and one of my best friends and someone who has literally saved my life and boss ruined and so many others. I know I have an incredibly strong support network, but I just hope that I can continue to work at the highest level, can continue to tell stories, and then that people will allow me to continue to do something. I feel I was born to do in something that I love doing. And I know this almost sounds like a plea of help for that. I'm like in some unstable surroundings because my career has never been better.

And yet, I'm just trying to tell you with what I deal with on a daily basis. I could come up on the show and say, hey, everything's great. You know, wow, I'm living in Santa Monica. I'm making great money. It's what it is, Luke. And I want to be honest with you, my man. Well, I appreciate your candor. It's always one foot in front of the other, right?

That's the best we can do. We're a bit short on time more else. Let me just end with this one. I saw a tweet that you put out, say, hey, combat sports promoters. I think it was MMA promoters. And you were looking to do more commentary. And I'm thinking to myself, well, wait a second. This guy is doing Wilder Fury.

He's with Showtime. He's doing stuff with the WWE. You mentioned just now, Bellator, I guess, with the Hawaii show. We missed you for the last... December 15th. Yeah. December 15th. Like, A, did you get a response from that?

And B, are we going to see you somewhere else? No, well, okay, great question. And again, in tweeting certain times is not always smart, as they say. And I was frustrated that day by a lot of things going on internally. and externally. Yes, I will say that I will continue to do MMA, and I hope it will be with Bellator. MMA, we're negotiating.

I love what Scott Coker has done. He's always been there for me. I never forget, of course, some of the greatest memories of my career were with Strike Force. And so I hope it's with Belator MMA. Like I say, I was in an insecure feeling story for me pattern, and with everything going on in the business,

and we see it all around us, the proliferation and the growth with all the, you know, the different channels now that have combat sports. I guess I just wanted to send it out there for my own sake to prove to me that, you know, what, I still can do this at the highest level and I want to do it on a more regular basis. I'm a workaholic. I have too much free time, and my free time leads me to self-sabotage. So I guess it was my way of saying, you know, don't forget about me. I still can do this, believe me.

Well, Maro, no one's forgotten about you, but we certainly understand what some of the struggles you go through. Can't wait for Wilder Fury. Well, I'll tweet out from my account, the interview you did with him, and I look forward to Bellator as well and everything else you're up to. One foot in front of the other, Maro. Thank you. Hey, Luke, you're the best, dude, and I'm really happy for all your success.

Thank you for your service. And, of course, you know that you'll always hit me in my thoughts with what happened your mom and for you to survive and thrive. You're also an inspiration. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Mara. We'll talk soon. All right.

There he goes. Really appreciate his time. All right, we go from one esteemed guest to another. Not a moment's waste. I believe he is now on the hotline. This is the head of Golden Boy promotions, a man who was one of the best boxers of our generation, and I was promoting an MMA show coming up here with Chuck Liddell and Tito Ortiz.

Oscar Delahoya joins us on the hotline. Mr. De La Jolla, how are you? My man. How are you? I'm great. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, well, thank you for making time for us. We really appreciate it. Oscar, I've got to get it. I got to ask you this off the break because it's the thing that's been on my mind more so than the fight, at least for just today, is this back and forth feud you're having with Floyd on Instagram. Man, this has gone on for a while now, huh? Yeah, right, it has.

But, I mean, look, it's your typical Floyd when, whenever he, he misses the limelight or, or, or he wants attention, he obviously picks on somebody who, who, who, who he can, you know, so he can get some PR. That's, that's typical Floyd for you. But look, if he wants to play like that, I can, I can bring out some dirty laundry. Let me ask you about this. Is he mad? And by the way, congratulations on the Canelo de Zone deal. It's incredible. Is that what he's mad about?

Well, no. I mean, what it is with Floyd, it's like he can't, he cannot let anybody else have the limelight. Look, it's Conello's moment. I guaranteed him a contract of close to half a billion dollars in his next 10 to 11 fights. And with the zone. And what does he do? He has to wreck the party. I mean, that's your typical Floyd for you.

It's like let Canelo have his, his, you know, his time. Your time has passed. Let everybody else, every other young fighter go out there and, you know, and make history and right off into the sunset. But, you know, your typical Floyd is one who needs that limelight on him all the time. By the way, what did you make of his very quickly? His whatever the hell that was in Japan, where he's fighting tension Nascawa, and then he's not, and then he's tweeting pictures of MMA glove.

Do you think he's ever going to fight in anything like that ever? No, no, no. I highly doubt it. I mean, again, it's just to get PR. That's all it is. I think any boxer, who even thinks about going into the octagon is crazy. I mean, MMA fighters are just on a whole,

on a whole different level inside the octagon, because, I mean, it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's two different sports. I mean, you know, the strikes that you can use, the kicks, I mean, my hat's off to any MMA fighter who steps inside the octagon. It's, it's, it's, I mean, I've been watching. MMA now for, like religiously, for a while now. And it's crazy. It's, I mean, my respects.

It's, it's amazing. The sport is just incredible. And, and, and, and, and, and so any boxer who even tries to step inside the oxygen is, is, is delusional. So, well, we'll get to your car here in just a second. Last question about Floyd. We're going to move on. I want to talk about your event coming up here November 24th at the forum.

So no truth between you and Floyd, like this will just go on as long as it goes on. Yeah, no, in my side, I already stopped. That's it. I'm over it. You know, I'm on to what he's doing. But, yeah, there will be no second fight whatsoever. I'm sure he's trying to lure me into a second fight because that's the biggest fight he can make for his career to make a lot of money. I mean, he had his chance.

When I fought him back in 2007, and he took the decision. in a very, very close fight, which could have gone either way. I actually had a rematch clause, okay? I actually had a rematch clause in the contract for one whole year. So he had to fight me within that year. And what did he do? Your typical Floyd, he retired for a year and one day and then came back and announced that he was coming back.

Oh, wow. Yeah, that sounds about my mind. Exactly. All right, so let's talk about this card here you have. It's going to be November 24th at the forum in Englewood. Chuck versus Tito 3. A few questions I want to unpack about this. How did you end up at the forum?

Why there? Both guys are here from Southern California, from California. You know, having Tito Ortiz be a staple of California was a no-brainer. you know, we're, tickets are going extremely, extremely well. We're very satisfied with, with the, with the, with the, with the,

with the response of the fans. And, uh, let me tell you one thing. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm actually super excited because every time, every time, uh, we do some kind of PR or go on TV, uh, these guys, they can't, they, they,

they literally can't stand each other. It's incredible. I've never seen anything like it. I mean, these guys, do not like each other and obviously you're going to see it uh november 24th inside the octagon so thanksgiving uh day weekend because it's obviously not thanksgiving day it's that saturday how'd you end up on that weekend well for for for boxing i've been promoting boxing for a long time now and um that that weekend Thanksgiving weekend has always been a great weekend uh you know people are home uh with their families and uh you know on a saturday night uh may you're sitting

around if you're not doing anything, tune in to Chuck by Don't down Tito Ortiz. It's a perfect day to celebrate amongst family during the holidays and watch some great fights. All right, so let's talk about this card more generally if we can. It's got Chuck and Tito at the top. Now, there are some names that folks might recognize Gleason T-Bowell's on it, Ephraina Escadero's on it. But it's, how did you build this card from your mind? It's not, it's, it's, it's built like an M.A card in the sense you've got like what, one, two, three, four, five, six fights on the main card.

But I'll be honest, it feels a little bit more like a boxing card with a big main event and then not necessarily the same level through the ranks. Yeah, no, these are, these are, look, I, I'm obviously just getting into the, into the MMA. This is my very first MMA events. Actually, my second one, I actually promoted, um, uh, uh, I, I'm obviously, uh, with affliction and with Donald Trump, I promoted Fador, back in the day, Fador with, it was Fador versus somebody,

but we promoted that event, and it was a salad, it was a great event. I had a great time doing it, but, Arlowski, who was a boxer himself at one point as well, trained by Freddie Roach.

But this card from, top to bottom is going to be action-packed. There's no doubt about it. I mean, every NMA card that I've ever seen is action-packed. I mean, these guys come to fight like there's no tomorrow. But Pete Ortiz's managers and handlers, along with Chuck Lydell's handlers, put this car together, along with my matchmakers. They put this car together, and they promised me, hey, this is going to be an action-packed card.

that you don't want to miss. Interestingly. So their respective managers played something of a matchmaking role in what names got picked and then where they were put on the card? That's interesting. Exactly.

Exactly. It's very interesting. Okay. How has it been promoting MMA versus boxing? And here's what I mean. How are the audiences different from your promoters' perspective? I think it is.

I think the audience is different, but there's so, much there's so much opportunity and synergies. I mean, look, it's no different promoting a boxing card. I mean, look, we do have more fights on this card here. I believe there's 16 fights. In boxing, we have, we do a maximum of maybe eight. But it's relatively the same.

I strongly feel that, look, anything within the combative world is, is promoted the same. And, you know, I strongly feel that, I mean, MMA is only growing. The fighters are getting better and then, and they're faster. They're training smarter. You know, and it's, it really is,

it really is, it really is a lot of fun promoting, promoting this card with, with, with, with the likes of Tito and Chuck, because they know how to sell it. I mean, they know how to promote. They, they, they genuinely,

don't like each other. And it's, it's been relatively a smooth ride, a fun ride. And I can't wait for the 24th. By the way, real quickly, what was it like working with Donald Trump? I mean, whatever one's impressions of him today on that project, what was that like? No, it was actually fun working with him. I mean, he's a character. That's exactly what he is. He knows how to sell his name. And so I remember back, I think it was like maybe 10 years ago when we promoted this card with, with affliction. And it was actually a lot of fun. Obviously, he knows what he's doing. He's a very, you know, he's brilliant, savvy. He's a businessman. So he knows how to sell. And so it was, it was actually a pleasure to work with him. Interesting. Okay. The price point, $49.99. How did you come to that one? Yeah, we figured, look, we figured, I mean, whoever, whoever, I mean, we've been, we've been, we've been, we've been staging fights at a price point of around lately, at around $80, $75, 69.

And we say, look, let's, let's, let's give the fans a break here. Let's, let's give the fans a break and not charge those crazy numbers. So we came up with that price point, which I think is perfect. You're going to be able to watch some great, great fights with the headliner being a terrific trilogy, which I strongly feel that, I mean, this fight, this fight can obviously go either way. I mean, Pete Ortiz looks in phenomenal shape. And Chuck Lydell, I mean, he's like, I call him Chuckie because he just keeps on coming, man. And this guy is just an incredible, incredible shake.

So I think that price point is perfect. I think people are responding very well. The indications are that it's going to do some great, great numbers. But most importantly, you know, the message I want to send here is that Chuck Lydell and T. Ortiz, this trilogy with this fight taking place, they're going to make the most money they've ever made in their entire career. It's incredible. I'm actually mind-blown by that because, I would have thought that Tito Ortiz and Chuck Lidal with two names like that,

they would have made a lot more money in their careers. But this time around, look, I was a fighter myself. I'm a promoter now. I'm just trying to help out these fighters. So let's talk about that real quickly. Tito, and I don't know if this was just fight promotion, but he told some media outlet it might have been MMA junkie that overwhelming, if not an exclusive amount of his purse,

is going to be from pay-per-view sales. Is that true? Absolutely. Absolutely. Look, I'm a promoter that loves to share all revenues, and whatever revenues coming in, we're going to share it. It's not about the promoter. It's about the fighters. And that's exactly why, for instance, Golden Boy Promotions has been very successful is because we treat our fighters the way they should be treated. I mean, the fighters are the ones who make these events happen. And so, um, You know, it's, it's, this is, this is a great indication that, uh, look, I mean, the fact that we're, we're letting Tito Ortiz and Chuck Lydell participate in the pay-per-view revenues from top to bottom, I mean, they're going to be able to make tons, tons of money, the best person they've ever made in their careers. Um, Chuck Lidale, interestingly, has a bit of a note here, Oscar. I think you already know this. He's older than you.

Now, this fight is interesting because it's taking place in California, which, in terms of athletic commissions has the most rigorous standards. So in that sense, you know, you're not commission shopping. You're not going to Texas or something like that. But let me just ask, man, is there, you're 47? You, I believe you're 47. You know, 45. Even more so.

But still pretty young for a guy. And you were a high, high level athlete. There's no small part of you that wonders if, like, this is a good idea for Chuck. No, it actually doesn't. Look, I strongly feel like, for instance, with me, I mean, right now, if I train a couple months, three months, I can go 10 rounds. I can go in there with the best. That would be no problem, but I would have to be disciplined and dedicated and just focus on, you know, a thousand percent, and it would be no problem. I think, look, why limit yourself, you know, to age?

I think that if an athlete takes care of himself, if an athlete is disciplined, enough to where he's going to take care of himself 24-7, just like Bernard Hopkins, okay? I believe it's the oldest champion in the history of the sport at 51 years old. Just like George Foreman. Look at Floyd Mayweather himself. Doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, is always training. If you do the right things in this sport, I think you can last until you're 50.

of you want. It's just a matter of taking care of your body and your mind. Let me ask you about this Canelo and DeZone deal because it's incredibly interesting. You know what's amazing, Oscar, is when I first started covering MMA well over a decade ago, MMA and boxing were very separate, and now their fates are much more

intertwined. Now, Canello's deal is very different than what's happening for a lot of other people. He's got a really a nice thing going. Are you not so much about Canelo? Are you at all worried about the way in which combat sports is moving to streaming.

And here's the way I'm framing the question. As a consumer of it, both boxing and MMA, I love it, ESPN Plus, the zone, whatever it may be. At the same time, though, I just wonder, is a lot of this content, Canello notwithstanding, just going to get buried under everything else? What is your feeling about combat sports as it moves into the age of streaming? Well, yeah, I mean, as it moves into the age of streaming, it can be very, very different. dangerous. For a fighter who's not known, for the fighter who the fan doesn't recognize, yeah, you can

get buried amongst all these different platforms. And, you know, I strongly feel that we still need linear TV in order to identify these young fighters in order to build these young fighters and build them into household names. You still need that linear TV, but these deals are incredible. What's taking place with ESPN Plus, with the zone, I mean, somebody like Conello, who is probably the biggest star globally in boxing is going to be okay on the zone's platform, you know, because Conello moves the needle. You know, the zone, the zone forked over tons of money because they know that Conello can bring in thousands and hundreds of thousands of subscribers for them, which means big business for the zone. So, but, but I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I think, we still need linear TV, but, but, but, uh, we are moving towards, uh, towards the digital platform. And I think that's where it's heading. And I think, uh, especially with the younger generation,

not wanting to be told what to watch, where to watch, when to watch it. You know, they want to watch it on their cell phones. They want to watch it on their tablets. But I think that Canelo Alvarez is a guy who can fight anywhere he wants to and people will watch. I'm an MMA fan, but I'm a boxing fan too. Just having Conello Anthony Joshua together on DeZone pays for it as far as I'm concerned.

The fact you get everything else is amazing. Last question for you, Oscar, and I really appreciate your time. Do you think an MMA fighter will ever go independent and get some kind of deal on DeZone? I'm not saying at the level that Canello did, but maybe something like that. Well, you never know.

You never know. I mean, that's the beauty of being free agents. You know, I mean, when you have, if you have somebody behind you who is looking out for your best interest individually, Absolutely. Why not? I mean, look, there's guys out there who are phenomenal, phenomenal fighters that can have those types of deals. You know, I mean, look, you take a look at, you take a look at, you take a look at Connor McGregor, or you know, you take a look at these fighters who are, who are big household names.

I mean, imagine if Connor McGregor was a independent contractor, but he can. easily get a deal like that on the zone or in the SPN plus. But obviously, they're with UFC and then UFC just works differently. All right. Well, I look forward to seeing it November 24th at the forum in Englewood, California. It's going to be Chuck Liddell versus Tito Ortiz 3, and it's going to be a Golden Boy promotion. Oscar, thank you so much for your time. Looking forward to the 24th.

You got it. Thanks, buddy. And happy Memorial Day, man. Thank you. Thank you. Veterans Day, not quite Memorial Day. Veterans Day, sorry. Yeah. Sorry, but.

No, that's okay. The sentiment is appreciated just the same. All right. Thank you. Thank you. There he goes. Big thanks to Oscar Diel Lawyer for stopping by. I have an allergy attack on the air if you can't hear it. I am S.T. Ruggolin up in here.

I believe we're waiting on Chaz Skelly, if that is correct, in my math. He's on Skype. Can I ask you a favor in the back? When we go to Skype with him, can someone bring me a tissue? because I'm suffocating on the air. That'd be nice. All right. Let's go to him right now.

I made my point at the top of the show. I felt he got robbed. I'm not going to mince words about it, but he had a very good attitude about it. Let's go to Chas Skelly now on Skype. There he is. Hey, Chaz. How are you, buddy?

I'm not doing too bad. How are you doing? Good. How are you feeling 48 hours after that terrible, terrible referee intervention. I feel good, man. I mean, it is what it is. Everybody's human.

You know, a guy made a mistake. He had an opportunity to fix his mistake, and he didn't go back and fix it, which is upsetting. But it is what it is. You know, I'm healthy, and, you know, I'm not hurt. Bobby's not hurt. We both got through the fight healthy,

and that's, you know, what more can you ask for? So I've got a bunch of questions about this. Number one, what did Bobby say to you when you guys were in the Octagon together? You know, I can't really remember. I think he just kind of said, you know, sorry, you know, ended that way. I can't really remember exactly what he said.

All right. Yeah, you were talking to his corner, too, were you trying to explain how you were feeling in that moment or something? Yeah, you know, I mean, I was just trying to, I guess I was just trying to give an explanation to anybody who would listen at that point. But, yeah, you know, I was just letting him know that, you know, I wasn't out at all. And I felt like I was past the hardest part of the show.

You know, I felt like I was relaxing. I was at the point where I could relax. And it was just a matter of time before I was getting out of there. But I think that, you know, when you talk to somebody like Ben Henderson, you know, that he's been in that a million times before. And he already knows, you know, I mean, he knows how to defend that choke. He knows what was going on. I've literally watched him, you know, just weighed out chokes before.

I mean, that's kind of what he does. He's really hard to choke, too. So, you know, there was, I don't think there was too much explaining that I needed to do to them, but I think I just kind of, yeah, I was just giving them an explanation of what I was feeling. All right, let me go through this. Number one, I went back and I watched this tape about a gazillion times. Your arm was loose, but I don't think it was limp. So for me, the initial arm test, he didn't get that right to begin with. Do you, it was relaxed, but your arm wasn't flopping side to side like a dead fish. There was still some life pumping through it. Do you

agree or no? Oh, yeah. Well, he didn't do a test at all. When he grabbed my arm, he came in to stop the fight. I mean, he wasn't checking to see if I was conscious or unconscious. He was stopping the fight. I was relaxed there at that point. And when you're watching it, and you watch it, it's like super slow-mo. I mean, of course, I'm relaxed. You know, I'm not tensed up, so he grabs my arm and he shakes it. My arm's going to shake. I mean, what do you want for me? I don't know. I just was relaxed. Okay.

I went back and I watched as well. He said your eyes were fluttering. I don't know how that's possible because your eyes were kind of clenched shut, not shut, but clenched shut. Like the musculature in your face was like grimacing. So how can your eyes be fluttering? Yeah, I don't know. You know, I think I'm going to be honest.

Like I said, the guy's human and he made a mistake, but I think he was just kind of looking for any excuse to like, you know, like, oh, God, I'm sorry. I thought you were out. I thought I saw your eyes fluttering and then go back and look at the things. But look, I thought, you know, your arm looks like it's limp. Well, he didn't think that when it was live, he never said anything about my arm being limber anything like that until he went back and watch the replay and super slow-mo when he didn't even do an arm check. he was just coming in to stop the fight.

But, you know, whatever. I don't know, as far as the eyes are fluttering, I saw an angle where it looked like you could see me blink. So, I mean, I guess maybe that could be what he's talking about. Yeah, but blinking's not like the eyes rolling back in the head. I mean, you can tell the difference, you know. Now, be honest, that choke did look tight. How tight was it?

When he first sat with it and my arm was across my body, it was tight. Once I rolled and I walked away from his feet, it got looser. When I extended my arm, it got loose enough to where I could breathe just fine. And I was relaxing. You know, at that point, the only way he would have been able to finish that choke at that point would have been to lace my leg. But I wasn't going to let that happen. I was going to keep walking away. I mean, that's a choke that I hit every single day.

That's my favorite choke. The choke that he hit right there, that's my favorite choke. and I've been there a million times. I've been on where he was at a million times. I've been where I was at a million times. And, you know, you can finish that choke without getting the lake sometimes, but it wasn't going to happen there.

I was already too far out. It was already, I already got my arm back across my body, extended my arm, created space, and he had already actually relaxed a little bit on the choke too. You know, it's interesting. I always tell people this. You just mentioned it. Like, you can get the choke from the position.

that he had it, it is possible. But usually when you see two fighters or two grapplers and they're doing the three stooges bit where one can't really catch the other and they're kind of just rotating in a circle, they usually tells you that something is missing from the position in order to make it sealed shut. Yeah, and you know, he wasn't even bridging his hips up

to get that leverage right there. He was just squeezing with all arms. I think that's the most upsetting part about it for me is because I feel like once he let go with that, I was going to be in a really good position with over two minutes left in the round to work, and he was going to have gas out of arms. You know, and when I got top position in the first round,

I stayed there on his back the entire time. So it would have been, I think it was going to be another long round for him once I got out of that position, you know. Now, did UFC talk to you about what happened? No, not really. I had a little text back and forth. with Dana and Sean and Dana White and Sean Shelby. And they, you know, they both, they're both on my side.

You know, they say it was a bad call by the ref. So hopefully we'll get to run it back. I haven't asked them anything about a rematch or anything like that. I figure, I really want to figure out, I did ask about the pay because I don't want to, I don't care to get it turned to a no contest if they're going to take his win bonus. I mean, I'm not taking money out of anybody's pocket. But just to change a W or an L on my record, I mean, that doesn't matter to me.

But if they do let him keep his money and it gives me a better chance of getting a rematch, if the commission says that it should be a no contest, then I would like to appeal that. Let me ask a question. Yeah, let me ask a question. It's a bit of a side question. And I mean this sincerely.

A lot of fighters I've talked to would be irate, and you certainly are bothered by what happened, but you seem quite calm and reasonable, and to be honest, friendly about Bobby Moffitt and the money that is coming his way. How was that possible? It's not his fault. I mean, he just got out there doing his job.

I was out there doing my job. There was one person in the cage who wasn't doing a good job at their job, and it ended up costing me, but that's not his fault. I don't have anything hold against him this is just a job to me. I don't,

I don't dislike the guy I actually think he's probably a really nice guy. I like his camp out there. Ben Henderson's always been a super nice guy to me. Yeah, I mean, what am I?

I'm not going to cry about it. I'm just going to move forward. I mean, I put in a lot of work. This was an emotional fight for me considering I had the injury. I came back. It was a hard camp for me,

very hard. It was a hard weight cut for me. And I'm actually just, I'm happy to be healthy and to be able to jump right back in the gym and stay in shape and build it off what I have right now, you know. What was so hard about the camp in the wake-out? Was that there was time off? Yeah, I just, my body didn't respond well to the camp initially. I was having a hard time staying in the gym. I got sick probably.

I got a real bad chest cold, followed by a staff infection, followed by a sinus infection, and just like, I felt like eight weeks of this camp. I was just sick the entire time. I mean, I was still putting in work. I was still in the gym all the time and working as hard as I possibly could. But it just wasn't, you know, luckily my coaches were really patient with me and my training partners were pushing me hard because, you know, this one would have been a hard one to do on my own, you know, without a bunch of great support.

So it sounds like what you're not going to do is appeal to the commission. I'm going to appeal to the commission as long as I know that he's not going to get his money taken away if it turns into a no contest. But if he gets to keep his win bonus and everything's good, all the money's in his account and it stays there, then, yeah, I mean, I'll appeal at the Red Jeep. Yeah, yeah, I'll appeal.

Because I want the rematch, you know, I want the no contest. I think I'd have a better chance of getting a rematch like that. What is the UFC telling about that? If they just tell me, if they just tell me they'll give me a rematch without the no contest, and I don't really even care. Like, to be honest, what's it, what's it, what's it mean to me? It's a W or an L on a piece of paper. I mean, I'll give a shit about that.

Right. The damage has already been done. What I care about is getting paid. Fair enough. I'm not going to get paid. I'm not going to get paid so it doesn't matter. Right. Well, your win bonus anyway.

When do you think you're supposed to hear? Like, what's the next step here? Where are you? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm getting out of an Uber right now. I'm still in, can you see me? Yeah, yeah, you're good. You can see me?

Yeah, yeah. I just got out of an Uber. I'm in Denver. I'm picking up my rental car. We went out last night and had fun, so I'm picking up my rental car, and we're going to get some food. I don't know. I won't keep you too much longer.

What did you do last night? That was so fun. You get a hammer? Oh, yeah, of course. We went to I don't know We went to a couple bars We ended up going to a karaoke bar

And singing our hearts out You know He's got to He's got to leave it all out there Got to grab the mic And leave it all out there sometimes You know What is the Chaz Skeli go to

At the karaoke bar? Like what's your song? Oh Fucker gently by Tanish's D D I rock I rocked the house every time it gets the people going.

You know what I mean? I can only imagine. And the drink of choice is what? What's a Chas Skelly go to? Well, to be honest with you, I'm a beer drinker. Okay. But if you're talking about just a, I like to try all different beers. And Denver's a great place for that.

I mean, there's all kinds of microbreweries and stuff. But if you're talking about just a regular light beer, I drink Coors light. But I happen to, I like all beers, though, to be honest. You know what? That's the right answer. I like all beers. All right, man. We'll let you go here because I know you're busy with the fam. But you're not bitter, it sounds like, but you are looking for a rematch. How soon could you get back in there? Let's say they could give you one without affecting us pay. I would jump back in there in December or, you know, whenever they wanted.

I mean, I'm in shape. I'm, you know, I feel good. I had no injuries from the fight. I mean, I could literally go next weekend if they wanted me to. All right. All right, man. Well, look, we appreciate your time, Chas. I'm sorry it went that way. I think you got wronged, but you got a great attitude.

And it sounds like some tenacious D helped heal the soul. That's right. All right. Well, thanks a lot, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, Chas. Take care, buddy. There you go.

That's hilarious. That's hilarious. Yeah. Oh, man. I don't think I've heard that song in a while. Effer gently. What is your go-to at the karaoke bar? I will tell you mine.

I used to have these for... I think I told this story once on the MMA beat. We're waiting on Izzy Martinez, by the way. I think I told the story once on the MMA beat. I had these two fraternity brothers. Can you believe one of them... Both of them ended up being attorneys? One of them at, like, a very prestigious law firm in D.C.,

which I can't believe. He actually made partner. It's like, how was that possible? You're a loser and a gober. Him and this other dude, they used to go to this karaoke bar in the city of Adams Morgan, which is like this party area of the town. And they would play any song.

Like, it didn't matter. Pick anyone. Like, I don't know, George Michael or whatever. Like, whatever you're going to play at a karaoke bar. And they would just sing the lyrics to We Built This City, except they wouldn't sing the lyrics to We Built This City. They would just sing, we built this city over and over and over again. to the point where someone had to grab the mic and throw them out.

They would purposely go to bars to get physically chucked out of them. And it worked. It worked. I witnessed one of these once. And they were like, dude, we're going to go. And I'm like, you should join us on stage. I'm like, no, no, I'm not going to do that. And I watched them do it.

And sure enough, they got the old heave-ho at the front door, man. Ridiculous. My go-to, believe it or not, is at a karaoke bar. I like to shake things up a little bit. This is just me talking here personally. I don't know if it's my go-to, but I had the greatest success at a karaoke bar with Never Scared by Bone Crusher.

Yes, I did. I had a lot of success with that one, including the, well, two parts. Bone Crusher can't wrap, but Killer Mike has a nice verse on there. I got a hot full fever. That part is good, and then the part where T.I.

talks about the guy shivering and shaking on the pavement. Man, the people were on their feet, and I know what you're going to say. You guys say, Luke, that's not possible. You're a lame and a loser. Those things might be true, but they are independently. All right, I want to do. I'm just rambling here.

Let's get to this gentleman now. I mean, you want to talk about hype. Wow. This dude was so excited. He pulled to like a reverse. verse Habib, but for celebratory reasons, because his guy pulled off truly one of the most spectacular knockouts in UFC history on Saturday.

Yair Rodriguez beating the Korean zombie, and his coach of Yairair joins us now, Israel Martinez. Israel, look at you, man. How are you? Wow, what an experience. You know, I was fortunate enough to be in Holly Holmes Corner when she knocked out Ronda Rousey, and that was something special, being in John's Corner,

winning fights, that was special. Petis, you know, choking out. Olivera was special, but wow, this one was, this one was awesome. I'm surprised you have your voice. You do a, you, you were like screaming and fist pumping. Be honest, man. I don't, I've seen you, I remember when you celebrated for Holly, you were beyond excited, but I'd never seen you jump over the cage like this. Something just overtook you, didn't it? You know, me and you, you, We've been through a lot. You know, I met him six years ago at Jackson Wink, you know, maybe five, six years ago down there training. We built a strong relationship.

Yai Rodeh Rodriguez ended up moving to Chicago. He was actually living in my basement for over a year. You know, things ended up, we ended up splitting ways for a little bit. But we're back. And you know what? Yai'er's like a little brother of mine. And a lot of emotions, you know, watching him literally a couple weeks. ago was concerned about even fighting and what he's going to do next.

And before you know, we're the main event. And he does something special like that. It was unbelievable. It was truly special. Let's get a bit of an update. I saw all the pictures from him in the hospital gout and the gurney. How is he doing physically today? I'm assuming a little bit better.

You know what? I spoke to him last night before bed. I think he's doing great. You know, his mind is strong, you know, and his body's strong also. But, you know, when your year feels good mentally, unbelievable things happen, He thought he broke his foot, you know, so in the first round, he's tapping on his leg to me that, you know, maybe his foot's broke. We kind of pushed through it. And then his nose in the back, they said he had, you know, his nose was broken and, you know, his hand.

And, you know, he's got three swollen, three, four swollen parts of his body that are pretty swollen. But they said there's no broken bones. And he's ready. He's feeling awesome. You know, when you win a fight like that, you tend to feel a little bit better than when you lose one. So let's talk about the good and the bad of that. of all, where would you rank that on the good side in terms of knockouts in the UFC? Just in terms of strangeness, it's got to be the top of the list.

But in terms of greatness as well, man, someone asked me, is that a top five UFC knockout? It probably is. You know what? The UFC's been around for a long time now, 25 years. You know, I haven't seen all the fights. I don't know if I've seen all the knockouts. And, you know, we have that short memory, that short window memory of, you know, the last couple years, but, you know, maybe 10 years. I don't know. In my eyes, I've never seen a

cooler knockout in my life. He's not even in a video game. I mean, it was just an awesome situation. And, you know, I probably watched it a hundred times. And it was awesome. Now, he throws a lot of spinning elbows, especially when guys get inside of his jab range. He does that to counteract them. I don't, I'm guessing he has done this before in training. But for the folks who say, oh, that elbow was totally accidental, you say what? Well, I say, you know what, that everybody has an opinion, but we all know, Yai'ar that's close to him. He does the craziest stuff. He's got elbows from his back.

He's got elbows from the side. He's got elbows from the clinch. This is another one of those unique ideas and flows that, yeah, years put together. We've seen them, you know, I've seen him hold back elbows in the gym for years, you know, without clobbering guys. And, you know, we were anticipating, believe it or not, that flying knee by the Korean zombie. He throws that flying knee a lot. And I think, you know, when he, for the first part of the fight, when we were going down, we were anticipating kind of taking him down from that flying knee.

And then, Yayir got creative. And last second, you know, he hit that elbow. But, yeah, I mean, that's Yaya. If you know Yaya, personally, and you've seen him train, that's who he is. He can do a lot of things that not many people can. Yeah, my sense is that it was. improvisational, but not accidental. Like he was just feeling and flowing and through it, but he knew what he was doing

when he threw it. Does that make sense? That makes 100% sense. You know, they actually said it better than I did. You know, he didn't, you know, I don't think he really meant to do it, you know, throughout the fight and going into the fight. This is how I'm going to catch the zombie. But, you know, it's a skill that he's had.

And, you know, I think he threw it. Now, you and I spoke years ago about when John Jones, before he fought the OSP fight, and I'm thinking of him today because he said something after the Gustafin fight, which was, man, I needed a fight like that. I grew up in the octagon that night. Did Yairaira grow up in the octagon in Denver? I'll tell you what. He grew, his coaches grew, his fans grew, everything about Yajir Rodriguez grew.

It was an unbelievable night. We talked about it. We talked about yesterday. We talked about, you know, how deep he went mentally. And that's part of our goal with, yeah, year is never give up. You know, never give up, never feel that you're out of these game. Never feel like, you know, you want to quit. And when you do, you flip that mindset.

And, you know, there's always times in fights where I don't care how tough you are. These fighters are thinking about, man, you know, I'm coming from behind. This fight's over. I'm exhausted. I'm tired. You know, and Yaiir got a chance to push through all of that. And, you know, I told him, you dug deep, yeah, year and he told me, I don't know where I dug, but I'll tell you what, it hurt.

And I feel a lot better now that it's over. So, you know, when guys say that and fighters say that, you know, they push that wall back three, four feet. And, yeah, here's going to be able to go even harder next time. When you jumped over the fence and he was laying on the ground, completely exhausted, what did you say to him? What did he say to you? Okay, so, okay, so it was crazy.

You know, we're going crazy. You know, I'm a very emotional guy. And the fighters that are so close to me know that. You know, my high school wrestlers know that. I love my athletes and I love, you know, coaching them, watching them go through these trials and tribulations. So, Yai'er comes running up. We're jumping.

I'm jumping on the cage. Victor's jumping on the cage. It was epic, you know. And Yaiers says, coach, you know, we did it. He goes, I said, how you doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He goes, I'm going to pass out, you know. So he thought he was literally going to pay him.

out. He was so tired. So as he was falling back, I just kind of hung on to him. And then by the time I tried to get back, because you can hear the commission, get down, get down. You know, then you can hear the crowd. It's just for people that it's hard to explain, but I kind of got pulled over the cage. When Yai'ir

was falling back, I got pulled over and then Victor jumped on us. It was just a wild scenario. When I hit the floor, Yajir went down. Commission came to kind of look at Yai Yai Yir. I picked Yai Yir up. Oh, man, wild, you know. But, you know, when I was screaming and I was going nuts,

it's hard to explain, like I was saying earlier, when you're in that cage and Bruce Buffers, two feet away from you, and he's saying, winner by knockout, yeah, and you can feel it in your blood. You can feel it. The crowd's going crazy. And you don't care how you look. You don't care what people think about you at that point.

You're happy for your athlete. You're happy for everything he's gone through. and it was a very proud moment. What was the game plan? Now that the fight's over, what were you guys trying to do? You know what? We were trying to stay basic.

That was the whole thing we've been working out with the year for years. Basics were the key. Stay fundamentally strong. Watch out for his uppercut. Be aware of his pressure. He had a great body lock.

We know that he's had a great body lock. We know he's, you know, the key things that he's very good at, we had to make sure we were aware of it. We didn't want to get stuck on our back down there and waste a bunch of energy because of the altitude. That was one thing. We know, Yeah, year, it's very good on his back.

But we, like I said, we just didn't want to waste a bunch of energy. And we wanted literally, you know, we have the X factor. We're from, we're from Albuquerque. We trained in Albuquerque. Yeah, you grew up there, you know, in his fight career. You know, Cowboy Soroni's ranch is in altitude. So like I told you, here, anything can happen after the second round. I don't care how badass anybody is that altitude.

There's a reason there's no heavyweights on that card because they can't find an altitude. And we knew that. And I told you, you got the heart of a champion, the mind of a champion. You know, let's just, let's stay basic. Let's continue to do what you do. And let it fly. Don't be scared.

Don't be scared to get tired. But let's play smart because we felt that zombie was going to, you know, we felt that the altitude was going to affect them. Now, let's be honest about this too, man. And that five-round fight was brutal. And your guy came out on top by showing unbelievable skill and unbelievable heart. But wow, man, I always watched that when two guys are in a hospital together and they're, you know, you feel great because it's like, wow, what warrior spirit? At the same time, you're like, man, you shouldn't be fighting too many of those.

You ever get concerned that that was just a lot of damage? You know what? It's, you know, we believe every fighter needs one of those. It's one of those things like, you know, you tell a young athlete, you tell a young fighter, the older guys, you need to get your ass kicked to kind of be woken up a little bit. And you need to go through some dirty fights, some trenches, but you don't need to do that every day. You don't need to get punched in that every day. And that's one of those fights that we're going to have in our bag. And we're always going to be able to pull out all the things we've

learned from that. But there's no way we want that type of fight again. Those things are deadly. Yeah, you're beat up. And, you know, that that's going to be stuck in his head good and bad for the rest of his life. So we want to make sure that we take the positive. over the negative and move forward. But yeah, definitely, Luke, you know that. You don't want to be getting hitting ahead. You don't want to get beat up every day. And those long five-pound fights are good for the fans,

but they're not good for us. You know, we want to try to do that early. Now, how did you have it scored heading into the fifth? Two of the judges apparently had it 3-1. One of the judges had it two-two. I think in real time in my brain anyway, I didn't really score it, score it, but just thinking, I was like, I feel like it's anybody's fight heading into the fifth.

How did you feel? Well, okay, so while we were in the fight, I thought it was, you know, I thought that he was close. I thought maybe we were down, run, round. I thought that the third round or the fourth round, you know, I'm not sure how the fighters were judging it. But I knew this. And what I told you, you're going into the fourth and fifth round is we got to finish this guy, because that's what these fighters need to hear when the fight is that close. You know, if they think they just need to win the round and then a lot of times they lose, you know,

it's because they didn't push hard enough. So to me, it didn't matter where we were. I knew that Yaiyar, the message to Yair was, we got to finish this guy, and we got to find a way. But now that I've watched the fight, I thought it was two to two going into the fifth round, and, you know, but the judges, other judges, and you know what, I respect them also. So I respect their opinion.

Now, can we talk about Yair's life the last year? What an up and down, right? He gets cut from the UFC, which was crazy. He comes back. I know he's floated around, but he found his. way back to you again. From your vantage point, what kind of year has it been for him since, let's say, the Frankie Edgar loss or a year and a half, really? Okay, so anybody that knows your year knows that he's a different breed, you know, he's all about

his family. He's all about feeling good. He's all about vibe. And, you know, when he, when things weren't feeling good, he wanted to get a new look and a new vibe. And, you know, it sure it's disappointing. And, you know what, but you love him and you stick by him. And, and you never close the door on him. And, you know, before Zabit, I was, I'm trying to think where I was, but I got a text message from Yair, and he says, coach, I want to come back. I want to get to work. And, you know, I want to get ready for Zabit.

And I said, let's do it, you know. And, you know, then the more and more you talk to him, he kind of tells you what happened in his life these last years. You know, not many people know, his first ever coach passed away. His Taekwondo coach passed away. You know, he split with his ex-striking coach. You know, he left gym, bounce to Vegas. Vegas wasn't the right thing to do.

You know, he didn't feel Vegas was there. You know, he was in Mexico building some townhouses for his family. You know, Yair is a very good person. And when things are getting a little crazy, he goes home and regroups. And his family's very, very tight with him. So, you know, there's been a lot of ups and downs. And not many men can, you know, overcome what he did, especially not a 22, 23-year-old boy, you know, or young man, let's say.

You know, there's been a lot of, hey, you got fired. We were joking after the fight. You went from fired to hired to now the baddest man at 145 pounds, you know, and literally overnight. And that's, it's the UFC. It's the fight game. So I think, yeah, you're embracing it all. When you guys got back together, was it like picking up where you left off or were

there so ironing out that needed to happen? we had to have a couple serious talks, you know, just like anything else, you know. I am a very, I'm a very aggressive guy when it comes to the fighters and my expectations of what I want from fighters and how I expect them to be. In Chicago, I have a wrestling school. And in my wrestling school, I have boys from the ages of 15 through 18. And what Yaira does on and off the map matters. And it matters to me and it matters to the future of our program. these young athletes. So, you know, sometimes these fighters are on their own time schedule.

Sometimes these fighters do things that are dead. For a pro athlete, you know what? They can live their lives like that. But you know what? When Yair came back, we discussed those things. We discussed some things that he didn't like on my end. And we make adjustments. And that's what good coaches do for fighters. You make adjustments. You sit down, you hash it out, you talk it out, you get it, you overcome whatever's in between us. And we move forward. And, you know, I'm blessed. I'm blessed to have a great relationship with you here.

Yeah, you guys seem to be clicking. And certainly he's firing on all cylinders. So who's he training with now? I didn't get a chance to interview him for Denver. With you, obviously, I noticed that the gentleman who does the Spanish language broadcasts is in his corner for the UFC, right? Yeah, so Victor, yeah, your trust, you know, it's easier for, you to trust some of these Spanish-speaking guys and these Mexican guys that, that, that are.

are validated throughout the Mexican MMA community. So, you know, he, Victor reached out to Hammer. He reached out to Victor, Kevin Gasselham, and he stayed with those guys at King's MMA. So he was calling me, talking to me about all the guys he's working out with. You know, he's so pumped, he's going to start going to 10th planet with Eddie Bravo. You know, he's got his manager Tiki. So then he'll be going into Huntington Beach with Juan Arceletta and a bunch of those guys. Yeah, he doesn't like the snow.

He doesn't like the freezing weather. So, yeah, you're predominantly going to be out in California training at King's MMA and Huntington Beach with those guys and, you know, doing his mental training and his wrestling here in Chicago with us. You know, I believe that, yes, great athletes can overcome bad circumstances to get great wins. But I also believe that when they're dialed in, they're at their best. And it just seemed to me, I don't know that, look, I'm not saying his life is perfect or that there's nothing weighing on his shoulders. I guess what I am saying, though, is it does feel like whatever Storm Cloud was over his life. I don't think he turns in a performance against the Korean zombie unless much of that passes. Yeah, you know, I think that, I mean, you've got a great sense of exactly what happens with these fighters.

If they can overcome it and they can have the performance of their lifetime, that's when it gets mega. You know, a lot of these fighters, they can overcome it and get to the fight and then not get the results they want. so you kind of still fighting through that, you know. But, yeah, you're felt great this camp. You know, there was no problems in his training camp. You know, he had a great post-post way in dinner. I mean, we had 35 people at Ophilias in downtown Denver on the stage. You know, it was just an unbelievable experience.

And you're right. Yeah, he's free. He feels free. He feels he doesn't owe anybody anything. He feels he's in the right frame of mind. But he also feels he's around the right people and that's huge. Now, what's next? Do you think this Zabit fight is a do or die?

You saw Zabit calling him out on Twitter. Selfishly, I'd love to see it. I just don't know what, what is, what are you thinking? What do you think he's thinking? You know what? I can tell you what, you're enjoying his family right now, and he doesn't give a crap about Zabit. You know, we got a lot of respect for those guys.

A lot of those Russian-Dagostanian fighters weren't in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for years. So as I was down there coaching those guys, I became friends with a lot of those guys. And I know they have a lot of respect for Ye'Ir. And I know Yeir has a lot of respect for him. It's part of the job. Call these guys out.

They want fights. This is a big mega fight. I think Year's ready for anybody at this point. Like you said earlier, he's feeling good. I mean, he's vibing. He's flowing. I'd like to see this a beat fight. I'd like to see him running back with Frankie Edgar.

No disrespect to Frankie Edgar. But he's a different animal now. You know, and I really believe that. He's in a great frame of mind. But you know what? I'm also not about pushing these fighters to positions where, you know, they're not ready. And I think that, you know, if you can stay around somebody in the top 10, you know, high top tens, you know, 10 to 15, anybody will work. But, you know, if it's up to you at here, he wants them all.

Before I let you go, Coach, I really appreciate your time. You're still working with John Jones, right? Yes, sir. I head down to Albuquerque tomorrow. So tomorrow we get to work. I usually step in about six weeks out, kind of get John ready to go. He's been taking the last four weeks,

getting his cardio right, you know, getting a bunch of things right with Jiu-Jitsu instructor, Professor Tusa, Roberto Alancar, Six Gun Gibson is down there. So we got those two guys on him heavily. Two, three-day workouts. I talked to Brandon Gibson last night. He got a great workout in at 8.30 at night.

John's ready to go and that's all I pretty much got to say about John. You know, he's ready to go. It's going to be exciting and I'll get down there tomorrow. Then I'll ask you this and then we'll let you ride. What are you expecting from this next and maybe I won't say the last chapter in a sense

that it's coming to a close but let's say the last big competitive chapter of John's career. What are you expecting from here? What do you think is possible? Well, you know, it's like, yeah, you're overcome a lot and he feels great. John's overcome a lot and he feels great also. You get that vibe from him. You get those, you get that energy. He called me the other day as we're talking to Yair, before the fight, wishing

yeah year, good luck. And I noticed his head was shaved. And when John Jones shaves his head, that means he's all business. So it was good to see him with his head shaved. It was good to see him with high spirits wishing Macy Barber, wishing Yai Rattriguez, good luck as I cornered those guys. So he's ready. His spirits are high and it's dangerous when these guys can overcome. some stuff and move forward because John's going to put on a show. Well, I can't wait to see it. Mr. Martinez, you are a credit to the sport. You know what?

Do you know what your problem is, Izzy? Just not enough caffeine. That's your issue. You need more caffeine. Yeah, you know what? I love what I do and I love all the people around me. So I'll fight tooth and nail for every one of them. And if it happens to jump over the cage and fall, I'll do what I got to do.

We look forward to seeing the next one of those. Thank you, coach. your time. Take care. There he is. Man, that guy, you know he reminds me of? He reminds me of my drill instructors at boot camp. They were just super hardcore moto charged at all times, man. And it's, I'll tell you, the guys like that raise your performance. So I appreciate him making some time for us. All right, we don't have a moment to waste. It is time now for the sound off. All right, Let's go to my main man with the plan. In the back there, there he is.

Yo, it's good. All right. How are we doing back there? Being good, man. That easy energy is rubbing. I know. I need him to have an alarm for me just screaming to me to get up in the morning because I can go conquer the world with that. Man, that energy as a coach must be amazing to walk into a room and just be like, yo, you're working out today.

We're doing this. We're doing that. That's the kind of guy who just doesn't, you know, you hate him in a sense that you, if you dare to have an excuse. They have zero bandwidth for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is ultimately what you want. It's what you want. Exactly.

That's why you get mad at them. That's why I hated my drill instructors. And then I left and I was like, oh, wait, I actually did a lot of things under their tutelage. Yeah. All right. What do we got here, folks for the calls today? All right, we got a bunch of calls. By the way, we still have another interview left.

Yes, we do. We should take it. We'll join a little bit later. Yep. So let's take, you know, today's actually the UFC's birthday, right? 25. Yeah, it is. So let's discuss the event and how they celebrate.

if they celebrated the right way on Saturday. All right. Hey, guys, this is Josh from Windsor, Ontario. Just a quick question about the 25th anniversary show. There was a lot of criticism about Bellator 200 taking place overseas and not in America. Do you feel like it was the wrong move to have the 25th anniversary show as a Fox event as opposed to a pay-per-view and not on the night of the actual 25th anniversary? and also didn't seem like Dana White was present either. Do you feel like any of this will come to light

and that maybe it took away from the importance of the event? Thanks, guys. Love the show. Love how you flipped it. You made it your own and it's awesome. Take care. Bye. By the way, in terms of making the show our own,

we haven't even gotten close to doing that yet. We've made some progress, but... This is a beta. This is... This is... This is... This is... I don't know how you feel about this one.

Let's go through it. Graphics package, we loved. Yes. Denver check. Denver check. The fact that you couldn't do it on the day itself to me is irrelevant. Yeah, I mean, you can't possibly compete with the show. So, you know, it was a good idea that they had on that.

I'm pretty sure Dana White was there. I believe I saw him speak to Megan. No, sorry, Loris Senko. Well, I believe was there. But he wasn't there in the sense of, I don't think he had a, like, a press conference. Yeah, yeah. So in all those things, I give him high marks. In terms of promoting it, they just didn't put in a lot of effort.

I don't really know. My buddy lives in Denver. He's a UFC fan. He didn't go because he's like, he didn't even know until I told him, which tells me they didn't really dig too much into that Denver market, nationally didn't promote it. So like, it's like, what do you want me to say?

They're at the end of this Fox deal. I think they're just kind of punting a little bit. I appreciated the effort that they put in. It would have been nice of it had been a little bit more, but it just wasn't. I don't know. Yeah. I do think, and this caller brings up something interesting,

it should have been a pay-per-view, right? I mean, they should have, I don't know, know, maybe had the fight night before and then had UFC 230 be this weekend or something this past weekend. It should have felt more important, right? 25 years. That's a nice, solid, you know, number. Yeah, well, the thing is, are we going to do this every five years, though? It's like, oh, why not? Are we? Are we? 30. Come on, man, it feels like, you know, oh, here's the 20th celebration. Here's the 25th. It's like, are we going to have to have? You only turn 25 ones. I understand, but like, are we going to have these reflections about how far

we've come from the SEG era every five years. Like on some point, I kind of get that it's like, yeah, all right, it's cool, you know. All right, I guess you're right. Look, I would have preferred a pay-per-view, but I don't think it's that big a deal. Yeah, it is not that big of a deal, but they did, they did sort of undersell it. I agree. Yeah. All right.

Now we got a lady caller. We haven't had a lady calling in a while. That's because ladies don't watch the show. Hey, this is Alexandria Patton from Gainesville, Florida. Shout out Shady Shish. So my question for you, Luke and Danny, is who do you think? Cowboys next opponent's going to be. I heard it's going down to 155,

and they already have an appointment lined up. So, who's it going to be? Thanks, guys. So I don't know who she shouted out there. Was that some millennial lit A-F thing that I don't understand? I don't know. The connection was a little... Shady Swisha?

I have no idea. Hey, but shout out to Gainesville. I've been there before. I had a lot of friends that went to UF. It's a nice town. Gainesville? Yeah, Gainesville floor. I would rather die than live in Gainesville.

Underrated, man. You should take a trip. I won't. You can get drinks for 75 cents. I have cheap drinks in my living room. For 75 cents? Well, I don't know about that. But how good can they be for 75 cents?

Well, not so great. But if you're a college student and a budget, man, that's heaven. Yeah. All right, who's next for Cowboy? Well, you talked about Justin Gachey. I mean, I don't know how you go anywhere other place than Justin Gachey, right? Like, I guess you could say maybe, where is he ranked currently, Seroni at lightweight? Well, he's not ranked because he was at Welterweight.

He was considered a welterweight. And so there he's 12. So if you go over to lightweight, here's 10 and below. Michael Kiesa, James Vic, Alexander Hernandez, Francisco Trinaldo, Dan Hooker, and Paul Felder. Boy, a Dan Hooker fight. Wouldn't that be something? Yeah, but like, I'm kind of tired of.

Oh, you're hating on the Dan Hooker thing? Look, look, no, no, no. I think it's a fantastic fight. The wonderful thing about Cowboys that you can literally pit him against anybody and I'd be like, yeah, great fight. Sign me up. Hernandez is taking a fight on short notice.

Felder and Vic are back together. There's Massa Renduba, but that doesn't do anything for me. Hooker I could go with. Diaz, obviously, but they've already done that. I equinez is going to be facing Lee, Pettis, and then Gaci, so Gaci's from him. So the thing with hookers,

I'm kind of tired of seeing Cowboy just go up against these young, and I know he doesn't have an issue with it, against these young, up-and-coming guys. Let's face him with someone in his era. I feel like there's still a lot of guys that are his age that are fantastic fights. We almost saw Jose Aldo versus Cowboy Soroni

at UFC Sao Paulo earlier this year. They almost booked that fight. Why not? Osado's been talking about 155, you know, a good WEC throwback. You can put that in the main event of an ESPN card. All right. I'd be okay with that. I'd be okay, but I get your point.

It's like they keep feeding this guy to the wolves. Yeah. But that's sort of what he likes. And if that's what he likes, I could easily get on board with the Dan Hooker fight. But if they want to go higher, just engage, he's fine too. Yeah, just engage you would be also a really fun fight. But there's not a lot of wrong answers. There's just guys who are booked.

and Kiesa, by the way, has jumped over to Welterweight, so he doesn't even count. Yeah, that's true. All right, next. All right, let's talk about the main event. This is Bobby from Providence, Rhode Island. Hey, guys, how's it going? Terrible.

Oh, that's great. Hey, I was wondering, who do you think was winning that Korean zombie Yari fight? I've seen some reports online that were saying that they thought the Korean zombie was winning. Did they actually show the score cards? and if not, who do you think was winning? Thank you.

Well, we know who was winning. So what happens is... All right. Yeah, let's... You know the UFC will mail you, email you, rather. After every fight, they email you quotes from the winner, sometimes quotes from the loser, and then they'll send you the official scorecards, even up to the point where how far they were. Now, if it gets finished inside of a round, then there's no score cards.

But if it goes at least one or more, then they send you all of that and send an email. So you'll get, on a fight night, you'll get like 12 emails from the UFC with all these, you know, however many fights there are. And then they put all that in there. So he was up, Korean zombie was up on two and he was tied with another. When I watched it the first time, I thought maybe 2-2, maybe Lean, uh, lean Korean zombie. I watched it today.

I didn't feel as strongly about it. I was kind of on the 2-2 mark. I could have seen 3-1 for Korean zombie. Wouldn't have had an issue with it. But I did not see it 3-1, Yair. I would have definitely said best case scenario for Yai. It was 2-2, and I would have scored the third round, by the way, for Korean zombie. He was on his way to losing in my judgment.

Okay. Yeah, I had first-round Korean zombie. And, you know, keep in mind, I'm also working as I'm watching the fight. So, you know, I'm tuning in and out. So, you know, keep that in mind. It's a big deal. Folks don't realize that. It is a huge deal, yeah.

You solely want to be focused on the fight, and that's it. But anyway, so I had the first round to Korean zombie, second and third to Yair and fourth. I had it to Korean zombie. Okay. So I had it tied up. Okay, you did. Going into, yeah. I can't remember how round by round I scored it.

But it was close fight, man. It was super close. It was close. It just felt like to me that as the time went on, the boxing, the jab in particular of Korean zombie began to take over. Yeah, for sure. Sorry that I'm having an allergy attack. I can barely breathe.

Hey, all good, man. You got, you're reping there, the flu season starter pack. Jesus Christ, man. I am getting torn up here. Sorry. Just needs some day quo. Well, someone's going to hear this on the audio podcast. Yeah, and they're going to get all bitter.

and all the YouTube commenters are going to tear me to pieces. But what can I do? I mean, I'm supposed to take an Allegra on the air. All right. So let's discuss, you know, a little, a few stats that got thrown out there about the main event.

Okay. Hey, what's going on, guys? This is John. I'm calling from Elizabeth, New Jersey. Now, look, I don't want to sound crazy because I was saying it all night. But does the Korean zombie and Yaya Rodriguez, don't they look like they're the same height?

Why is there such a, big discrepancy on the fact, though. It says that Korean zombies is 5-7 and Yair is 5-11. I'm watching these guys waiting and watching them face-off. That can't be fact. Man, those guys look about the same height. Their level, a 4-inch discrepancy is a 4-inch discrepancy, ain't it? It's like John Jones versus D.C.

Like, is, like, height different? Like, do they, the numbers are different in Korea or something? That dude is not 5-7. You know what I mean? Either that or Guy is not 5-11, and I'm pretty sure he's 5-11. I don't know. Call me crazy, but they look the same height. Thanks, guys.

I don't know. Can you look into that? All right. So, fun little question here. Yeah. Yeah, so actually on the UFC page, and if you look in Wikipedia, Chen Song-Young, Korean zombie is 5-7, Yeh-Yer-Rodriguez, 5-11, but they're pretty much the same height.

Yeah, the UFC often watches that. Yes. I once, when I was coming up and doing videos on my own, I did a breakdown with Marcus Brimidge, a former UFC fighter, about John Jones versus Alexander Goves. And they had Alexander Govsvstens reach somewhere along the 70s. It was like 76 or 77. So I just went based off those stats.

And John Jones was like 80-something. I'm like, yeah, and reach, you know, they might be the same height, but, you know, reach is completely different. Yeah, don't really trust those stats. Sometimes they get them wrong. Well, I certainly think that John Jones's reach is beyond anybody else is. But the thing folks have to realize is it's not merely your reach. It's how you use it.

How good your timing is also affects how you. you maximize your reach. And I would say that Chan Song, who is, according to my, what I'm reading here, has a slightly greater reach than Yair. He used that slightly greater reach very, very, very, very effectively.

He was first to the jab a lot. He was first with the crosses a lot. He was jamming into the space so that the fight was constantly taking place at his boxing range. So, by the way, fightnomics has shown that there's not much of a correlation between high

differential in terms of having the advantage there and success. Of course, there is with a reach. So take that for what it's worth. Cool. Let's move on now to the heavyweight division. And someone's got a little bit of a, I guess, a proposition for you. Oh, God. A million dollars to bang your wife.

This is Rob from Toronto. It's not that. I was just wondering your thoughts. Let's just say that D.C. does what he's supposed to do. March, he beats Brock. Are we just back to where we were with the heavyweight division? It's just going to be steep A on top, a bunch of older guys. You know, he's fighting them off.

Do you really buy into John Jones going up there eventually? Yeah, just let me know your thoughts. And also, if Brock beats D.C., will you do a shot of yellow mustard on air? Thanks. Will you? Why would I do a shot of yellow mustard on air? I mean, what do you think, D.C.? It's like if Brock beats D.C., you're going to go.

eat a pile of feces, why would I do that? I'm not making a bet or something. Uh-huh. That's true. Yeah. So I guess the answer is no. I mean, how confident are you that D.C. will beat Corman? I mean, that D.C. will be Brock. If Brock beats D.C., are you going to stick your genitalia in a bear trap?

No. No. Why would I do that? That makes no sense at all. No. I'm not confident that Brock is going to beat D.C. I think D.C. is going to handle him. No problem. And so I asked the question goes, where are you, like, where does that put you at such a position?

There's a bit of a, well, we're back when we started to a degree. But Stepe, folks forget, it's 35. I think it's going to be 36 here pretty soon. That's still not necessarily over the hill for a heavyweight, but it's not spring chicken territory either. I do think that guys, heavyweight's having this revolution where a lot of the guys are getting pushed out. So who's going to be the guy to do all the major pushing? Is it Tuivasa? I don't know.

Is it Blades? I don't know. Can Nguanu have a bit of a rebound? I do think he can. So it doesn't exactly put you where you were before, but it's not dramatically different. The only X factor for me is Kane Velasquez coming back, even DC tweeting about it,

say the divisions wait for you, your belt's waiting for you. So that could be kind of interesting, but is it a massive, you know, does a division go right back to what it was? Not exactly. Is it a major alteration? It's not that either.

Yeah, I agree. There's some young guys in there to cause enough interest as well as Kane Velasca's return that I've been dying to see. I don't think it'll go back to exactly where it was. Hey, Danny, if Brock wins, are you going to get a four-hour prostate exam? No, I'm too young for that shit. I'll pass.

All right. Let's talk about D.C. now. All right. Hello, this is Ryan from Cincinnati, Ohio. My question is, with Daniel Cormey's retirement coming up, aren't you disappointed a little as a fan, simply because he's just too good to retire right now? Thanks.

Goodbye. No. You wouldn't be upset at all? Not even a little bit. No, no. I do not derive pleasure in watching the winning beaten out of a champion. I don't. I'm not talking about someone in a top of their forum losing to someone better.

I am talking about someone this good. We're talking about wherever you want to rank him as an all-time great. Do I want to see him stick around to the point where his, the thing that makes him special is beaten out of him? I absolutely do not. Leave something in the tank and walk away. So I agree with you in that part, but what part of me believes

that D.C. still has a lot left in him in the tank. I mean, I feel like right now he's like peaking. I feel like he's at his best right now, especially with his move up to heavyway, which is a much healthier choice for him. You know, he just displayed amazing chaos power against Dipe, just completely manhandled Derek Lewis. I wouldn't...

He's on fire. I wouldn't argue with you. But here's what I would say. I don't... I think he's going to... got way more than just March. You might be right. Like I said, I'm not going to argue with you.

The only thing I'm going to say here, Danny, is that I believe, look, this was his second athletic career and the guy fought till 40. If you wanted to watch Daniel Cormier compete, you got a solid 20 years of it. I'm good. I'm good. He does have a pretty solid career. All right. How much time do we have for questions?

Keep going to have some time. One or two more. Yeah, and I'm going to have to run up town like a freaking maniac. All right. I'll let you pick Ascran or Tega or Habib. Ooh, let's do Habib. Okay. Hello, hello, M.A. Hauer.

Luke Thomas, JD, from the Almighty Ontario, Canada. I'm sorry, this is my third call here, but once you start leaving questions, it just blows like... Just get to the question, J.D. I was thinking about this the other day. Am I crazy thinking that Habib has yet to really meet a full-out crazy-level, like, wrestler? I was going through my head the other day. I know he's met a couple of jiu-jitsu guys, but primarily striking people, if I'm not mistaken,

is it possible that maybe he's not too prime to fight an insane level wrestler, like a Kevin Lee, for example? I don't know if I lose my mind on this. Probably am, but yeah, that is all. Be well. All right, here's the question. Has he fought a wrestler the caliber of Kevin Lee? No. Kevin Lee might be the best lightweight in that division.

And I'm not, let me understand, be clear with what I'm saying here. I'm not declaring him to be. You said might. It might. In order for him to be that, he's got some winning to do. And the next step is ally Quinta, and that's no easy task. And then beyond that, he would have some steps to go on to. So has he fought a wrestler that good?

No. However, has he fought good wrestlers or guys who have good wrestling ability? Yes, he has. And he's done quite well. The one exception, of course, being the Gleason Tebow fight. But Tebow was the size of a goddamn mact. truck and certainly had his own USADA issues later on. Anyway, point being is, let me be clear about this. Habib's the best wrestler in that division and maybe the one up, right? That's what we're talking

about here. So I understand, I want to see him against the Tony Ferguson, who I think has both porous but also very good, take down defense when he's deliberate about it. I want to see him against the Kevin Lee. I want to see all these fights. But I just want to be clear, we do this a lot with our champions or good fighters, Danny. Well, what about this? And what about that? We nitpicking it. We say, well, what is he really done? You know, Habib has done the incredible. That's what Yeah, yeah. And I would also like to add, you don't need to go up against high-level wrestlers to just see where your wrestling is at. Like, just by the simple techniques and the things that he's pulling off, you can already tell Habib is a very, very good wrestler. Like, you don't have to match him up against, you know, Ben Ascgren or Kevin Lee, although interesting matchups, to tell that he's a really skilled wrestler and that he can, you know, take any, just to buy anybody down.

Yeah. All right, let's do one more, and then I have to go running out of here, like my heels are on fire. Much like the rest of the espination employees do on Friday at 3 p.m. All right. I'm just teasing. Can I tease? Can we tease on this show? Everyone's so uptight. All right.

Let's do Ortega. Hey, Luke, this is Graham from Rhode Island. Max Holloway has pulled out of his last three fights. He didn't make 155. I don't think he can make 145. So my question is, who should Brian Ortega fight when Max Holloway pulls out? I'm going to remain positive. Wow.

I say that he's going to make it. First of all, that is a lot of hate. Jesus. Knock on wood. Holloway makes it. And I think he will. But let's say worse comes to worse, he does not. Who should fight for, who should fight or takeout for the belt?

And a couple clarifications. He could have kept cutting to 155, a fight he took on extremely short notice. It was a commission who stopped that. And he probably would have cut the weight for the other one too, but he, my man was, you know, going through a rough time. Now, in the event that something terrible happens, who should he face? I don't know. Can they really do an Edgar fight again? No.

Jesus, who would even there be at featherweight for crying out way? I mean, it depends if I think Aldo would stick around to 45 if he gets an immediate shot. So I think you could do Hanato Moikano. Yeah. That was 214 when Ortega fought Moikano. Yeah. And Moikano was winning that fight. Using him up, yeah.

Until the very last end, then Brian Ortega did Brian Ortega things. I suppose you could do that. Chad Mendez is kind of an interesting test. Yeah. But, yeah, the options are nearly as good. But I'm like with you, I think very highly of Max Holloway's ability. I know he had a rough run. But, okay, I think, I'm hoping that he's centered things out.

And when he is centered, he's a tough customer and he makes the weight. But that was a lot of hate. It was a very sour way to end the show here. Actually, we're not done. We're not done. We still have one more interview. But that was a very sour way to end the sound off, Danny. Good job with that.

Yeah, of course. You know me. I got to make things horrible, right? All right, we got one more, right? Sure. All right, let's do it. I spoke earlier yesterday with one Misha Tate. She's now the vice president of one championship.

Why did she do it? What were the reasons behind it? Why now, of all places? How long are she going to be overseas? And what does it all mean? Here's our conversation now. We are joined now by the new vice president of one championship all the way from Singapore. It's Misha Tate.

Misha, how are you? I'm doing wonderful. Enjoying the weather over here. It's getting to be summertime. So it's hot and sticky. I think it's hot and sticky all year round here in Singapore, though. So quite the contrast to Las Vegas. First time there? No, actually, I think it's my third time here.

What were the other two occasions that you visited? So I went the first time with the UFC to do some promotion, as the UFC was hoping to expand into Asia. so I was here doing promotion. And then the second time that I came back was to do a seminar with Evolve. And that's how I met Chatri, you know, through those two instances. And we developed a relationship. And I reached out and said, hey, what do you think about me coming over to join one?

And, you know, and possibly evolve. And he was really happy at the request. And mind this is before Eddie or Demi. Beatrice Johnson were coming over to the UFC before any of the UFC talent had begun to make the transition. Let's unpack this whole deal if we can for a second. What was it about one that interested you? And I want to talk like initially initially. I think, I think honestly it's the conversations that I had had had with Chachari and the fact that when I was in Singapore,

I even said way back then that I envisioned myself moving here for a certain amount of time. So now it looks like I'll be taking up that expat role and moving here for a couple years. But it's just, I like what they stand for. I like who Chhatri is. I like that he's a, you know, he's a purist in a sense. And I feel like I am too when it comes to martial arts. And the way that he represents his company with one is just, you know, it's exactly how I think I would do it if I were trying to promote a fight organization myself.

What are a couple of your core values in terms of that? Like when you look at one, what is it that they do that you sort of see your values in? I think that as a fighter, as an athlete, as a role model, that we have not only a duty, but an opportunity to influence a younger generation and potentially change people's lives. And I think with that, that we should do good. I think that we should be the best role models that we can be and I think that we should teach humility

and I think that we should teach integrity and that that's important to being a martial artist because it is a violent sport but I think that people need to understand along with violence is that we're training to be athletes to be weaponized athletes

and I think it's just important and to have those core values. And, you know, Chhatri is exactly on the same page. And it's just how he promotes the organization. He promotes the fighters. You know, there's no, it's not really promoted to have trash talking or anything like that. It's really giving opportunity to change people's lives for the better. Now, I certainly don't want to put words in your mouth.

But so if this is incorrect, by all means, please correct me. But are you, what's the word I'm looking for? Are you disillusioned with the state of MMA in the western part of the world? I wouldn't, I mean, you know, it's different. I think the promotion has gone so far one way that I don't really identify with it anymore. You know, I love martial arts and I always will, but I prefer it to be promoted in a more true fashion, you know, that it's more about the fighting than it is about the trash talking that you do outside of the of you know the the cage the ring the octagon i really think it's important to hold those values and i feel like in the

western uh you know promotion of it all it's become much more of a circus it's really uh become watered down in a sense and i feel like the core fan base that used to be there you know more early on in my career or even midway through my career was more about the fights. And I feel like that has, that's gotten pushed away. You know, we've gotten to a fan base that's a lot more about what people can do and say outside of the octagon, you know, people flying outside of the cage and, you know, tacky people or, you know, the trash talking about Connor McGregor or, you know, even, even Ronda, you know, like I just feel like it's different than the way that I would choose to approach

or, you know, be a part of the sport. So I hope I'm making sense with that, but it's definitely, it's definitely changed. You know, it's a new genre. And I don't know if it's for the better or if it's even for consistency, to be honest, because I think that people are losing the value of the sport. So they don't care so much about fighting. They want to see the entertainment aspect, but for the worse, you know. And if it's not there, then I feel like the sport itself is not drawing anymore.

You see these, you know, freeze fox cards that are incredible fights. you know and and nobody's watching them that the numbers are down because they want to see more than just fighting and i feel like the value is is being lost now is there a way to get that back in the western side and do you think perhaps um if one is as successful as they aim to be perhaps that that all these things go in cycles right is there a way to cycle back to what used to be there and is asian mMA at the forefront of that that makes sense i do believe that there is a way because I think that a lot of the

the more tried and true fans have actually been turned off by the way that MMA has been promoted because for lack of a better terms is kind of a shit show and it's crazy and it's like people you know I wouldn't have wanted to be you know in the audience if you know

could be flew over and you know I'm not trying to blame that you know I'm not trying to blame that on the UFC I'm just saying that it's escalated to that point, you know, that people are talking such trash that it's getting under people's skin, you know, it's getting under Habeb's skin to the point where he's not even really being, you know, himself, I feel like. So it's, it's not, it's kind of scary. But I do think that there's a way to come back to it. I think if you, you start to have an organization that appeals to the fans that have been lost because of the way that MMA has begun to be promoted as a majority, I do think

that there's a way to recall the fans that have been turned off by that kind of other part. Fair enough. Now, let's talk about one and what you expect out of it. This is, you know, look, you're changing parts of the world, upending your life in certain ways, obviously for the better, otherwise you wouldn't do it. But let's talk about one for a second. Where do you think they're headed in the next five years?

In five years, what will we be saying about one? Well, I think globally they're going to have a huge impact. And I think we're going to be sitting back and looking at, yeah, just the impact that they've made. You know, I think one of my favorite things about one is that, you know, Chachry Sitanyang has made it a mission to end global, extreme global poverty. Excuse me, can't speak this morning. Jet lag, extreme global poverty. And with that being said, you know, he's, again, trying to. to do good. And I think it comes a lot from his background. You know,

Jotri has a story. He was born a very poor boy in Thailand and grew up 18 years in Thailand and happened to be one of those people that just wouldn't give up on his goals and dreams. And he, you know, he ended up on Wall Street and was making, you know, tons and tons of money. You know, he graduated college over there and he became a huge success. And, you know, now today he's, you know, probably one of the wealthiest men in the world. you wouldn't know it. He's very humble. He's very down to earth. And he sees the opportunity that he's been blessed with to change lives like his. You know, that like there's the poor children that can have idols to look up to to be good people, you know. So I like what he's

promoting over here. As an MMA organization, I'm sure they've discussed some of those aims. And I'm, I gather that some of that that is not for public dissemination, but to the extent that there is some, like what are they looking to do? Are they looking to compete with the UFC? Are they looking to just become a global brand in that part of the world? What is their ultimate ambition? I think the ultimate ambition is to, is to, you know, again, like, I think it's to change people's lives for the better. I don't think it's just about fighting. It's about teaching fighters to be heroes for the young up-and-comers. I think that's their mission. And I don't, I don't think that they intend to necessarily compete with the UFC, but I think that they plan to

expand and, you know, do what's right for one, for one championship. All right. So when they announced the press release, this part was a little bit confusing to me. They said that you were the VP, which of course is an interesting role, but it didn't only say the VP of what. So as I understand it, you're going to be doing, are you doing all of the color commentary? Because they do a ton of shows. What is going to be your role there?

So not all of it. I'm going to do two shows a month. and I know that there are plans to really expand how many shows there are a month and it's just not possible for the same color commentary team to do all of them. So there's going to be a lot of expansion done and I will be a part of that two times a month

will be color commentating. Interesting. Okay. And the other part, as I understand it, was to be brand ambassador. Now, I think I know what that means, but what does that mean to you? Basically, it means to me that I will promote the brand way and any opportunity that I have to do so. And that's what I'm doing. I want to

show the world what true martial arts is about. And I'm very excited to be a part of this team. And I think it'll expand beyond that as well. I had lunch the other day with Chachari. And he said, when you get over here, take that couple months, get adjusted. And then we have so many projects going on. I'll send you an email list and you tell me which ones you want to be a part of. And I think immediately I'm gravitating towards the charity work. I think that would be really awesome for me to be able to be hands-on in that aspect, just having an opportunity to give back. So I think really the decision beyond the color commentating and beyond just being a brand ambassador

and raising awareness whenever possible, that I'll be able to kind of choose which way that I want to be involved with one championship. Now, to what extent are you aware of or do you anticipate anyway additional, let's say, talent acquisition? Because it looks to me like it's happening on two sides here, right? You're getting the Nikki Holtzkins, the Eddie Alvarez, the Demetrius Johnson's, but that's on the fighting side. On the other side, I know that they were at least courting some of the efforts of Robin Black. They signed you. Are we to expect more of these things coming down the pike? I'm sure. Yeah, I mean, that they're expanding.

very rapidly. You know, we're talking about they just broke 25 million live viewers per show. I think it was like last month or a couple months ago.

You know, every show having 20, over 25 million live viewers. And they're anticipating to grow that largely, globally. So I think it's going to,

you know, just require more people, more work, more everything. So I don't see it slowing down. I think it'll continue the pace that it's going and probably pick up in the near future. Now, what is the biggest challenge about relocating to Singapore? Like, do they have somebody helping you with all the official documents you have to put together?

Like, I can imagine that moving to another country, not the easiest process in the world. Definitely not. But, you know, Shatri has a huge team and a great team behind him, and they're incredibly helpful in every single way. You know, we brought Amaya to the event, and they had a private room. for us with a, you know, a babysitter and a crib and everything back there so that we could go out, go to and from, a baby monitor. I mean, just you just think of everything. They're just very good people here.

And so, again, they're making this transition very easy for us. Someone's taking care of all the paperwork that we just get the questions and answer those. And they're taking care of everything. Now, I mean, this is the process for you is just getting started. But I'm wondering, like, when you think about your life, do you think about ultimately returning to the states at some point, or is this one of those moves that could just end up being permanent? Well, I do plan on coming back to the states. It's a loose two-year plan is kind of what I'm looking at it. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Oh, okay, perfect. Yeah, so it's a loose

two-year plan is kind of what I'm looking at this as. So I don't know exactly, but that's what I have my site set on for the moment. And someone asked me this. I actually didn't know the answer, which is why this conversation is helpful. Are you going to be working at all? And to what extent did Matt Hume play any role in putting these relationships together? It sounded like it came more just from what you were doing. But did he play any role and will you work alongside him in any capacity? He didn't have anything to do with my role coming to one.

But I'm sure he did as far as DJ goes. And I'm not sure about the other UFC talent. But mine was a decision that my, that, you know, that I made with my family. I talked with Johnny and said, hey, would you consider moving to Singapore? And he's like, yeah, you know, and, you know, Johnny is a great, a great man and a great fighter himself. And he's got a contract also with one. So he'll be fighting and training as part of evolves. So it's working out really well for all of us.

And, you know, that was something that Chautry offered straight up himself. You know, we didn't ask for that, but, you know, he's seen Johnny Faii's familiar and said it. We'd love to have both of you be a part of the team in the ways that fit. And then I guess as we wrap this conversation, let me just sort of ask you this, is like, look, you know how MMA goes. A lot of people make big promises, and one certainly did get an enormous round of funding recently. I believe it was $166 million, and they've raised more than that. But nevertheless, MMA is a hard business to make money in. It's a challenge for any promoter.

It sounds like you believe in their long-term stability and ability to generate revenue to be around for a while. I believe in their sustainability more than I've ever believed in any MMA organization. I think the difference over here when I come here and I visit culturally, I realize that the Asian culture is about longevity. It's not about the here and the now. It's about the long-term future. And I think Chachry has a great vision for that. And I think it's also very sustainable because it's about the martial artist and about the martial artist's story. And particularly about sharing the story about struggle that people can identify with.

And I think over the long term, it will pay off dividends. I think it'll definitely be a better long-term approach for one. All right. Well, Misha, it's a hell of an achievement. You've been kicking ass since you'll, well, since you were in the UFC, and now even out of it, you're doing just the same. We appreciate your time and best of luck with everything involved with the move. Thank you so much.

Yes, thank you, Luke. Big thanks to all the guests today for stopping by. Again, keep sending those tweets using the hashtag the MMA hour. Always call that number 844-866-24-68. We appreciate it. Until next time, stay frosty.