MMA Fighting - #460 – Max Holloway, Rener Gracie, Michael Chandler, Julianna Peña

Episode Date: December 3, 2018

Luke Thomas speaks to UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway about his title defense against Brian Ortega at UFC 231, his health, more (19:33); Rener Gracie about training Ortega, Ortega's title fight against Holloway, his effort to help Syrian refugee with bullying, more (1:21:29); Michael Chandler about his impending title fight against Brent Primus at Bellator 212, more (1:04:56); Julianna Peña about her future in MMA, Valentina Shevchenko vs. Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Combate America's Copa Combate, more (38:53). Luke also looks and breaks down some of the action from the weekend including the big boxing fight between Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury and some of the big MMA moments from Bellator and UFC this weekend on the Monday Morning Analyst (2:12:04). He also shares his thoughts on the scoring of Wilder-Fury on The Weigh-in (5:45). We also answer your questions on the latest in MMA on A Round of Tweets (14:28) and Sound Off (1:42:12). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Boarding for flight 246 to Toronto is delayed 50 minutes. Ugh, what? Sounds like Ojo time. Play Ojo? Great idea. Feel the fun with all the latest slots in live casino games and with no wagering requirements. What you win is yours to keep groovy. Hey, I won!

Feel the fun! The meeting will begin when passenger fisher is done celebrating. 19 plus Ontario only. Please play responsibly. Concerned by your gambling or that if someone close, you call 1866533 or visit Comexontera.ca. With Instacart, you get groceries that over-deliver, like when you get groceries that are the same prices in-store. With no markups that select retailers,

you get in-store products for in-store prices, and the only thing that isn't in-store is you. That means you could order in-store products at in-store prices while you're in sweatpants, in spin class, in stuffy work meeting, in anywhere but in-store. So download the app today and get $0-dollar delivery fees on your first three orders. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Service fees exclusions in terms apply.

You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. It's the Mixed Martial Arts Hour. It is Monday, December 3rd, 2018, and this is the Monday morning. No, it's not. It's not the Monday morning else at all. I just got done doing that. It's the mixed martial arts hour. Should have done that ahead of time, yes. What's everyone? My name is Luke Thomas. Welcome to the MMA hour right here on MMAFighting.com.

Thank you so much for joining me. Caesar is home. The whole bit. What a show we have planned for you guys today. All right. What do we have in store? UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway is going to be here. Let's see, Juliana Pena, who is a commentator for Combata Americas Plus, a UFC flyweight, bantamate.

We're going to see. She'll join us a little bit after that. Michael Chandler, who's going to get a chance to get that title back. We'll join us after that. And then Henner Gracie is going to be here, huh? That's pretty important. I'm looking forward to that as well. So should be a ton of fun plus.

Monday morning analyst. Sound off, weigh in, tweets, the whole nine. Thank you guys so much for joining me. I greatly appreciate it. As always, keep sending those tweets using the hashtag the MMA Hour. I always appreciate that when you do. Or just give us a call. 844-866-2468.

You can also just shoot us an email if you're international, the MMA hour, not MMA hour, but the MMA hour at Voxmedia.com. And by the way, a lot of people like will tag up the show on Twitter. They'll use like hashtag MMA hour. You got to put the V in there. The MMA hour. All right. Thank you so much for joining me.

I greatly appreciate it. Wow, man. What a weekend of combat sports. That was, huh? Woof. A lot going on. Hard to keep up with it all. Congrats to all the winners.

And congrats to everyone who got to enjoy all those great fights. Let's do this now. Let's join my man in the back. He is the adiquipe to my pan. He is the queso blancal to my chocolate. I had that yesterday, by the way. It's Danny Segura. Did you hate it?

You know what? Here's the deal. My mother-in-law got back from Columbia. She was over there for her father's 85th birthday. And so she got the chocolate from there. She got the cheese from there. Folks who don't know, they put cheese in their chocolate there, hot chocolate. Bogataz in the mountains.

It's like 9,000 feet in the air. It's like almost twice as high as Denver. So it's really cold. So here's what I noticed. It's fine. It's even good, maybe. I kind of like it. It's excellent.

But you have to have their ingredients. You can't reproduce it here. You can't use none of that hot chocolate powder or whatever that you find here at the supermarket. It's not the same. It's not the same. And, you know, it's the perfect mix of sweet and salty. That's right. It's just, you got to try.

And the cheese is like, it's basically, I'll wrap this up here, but the cheese is like, it's tasteless enough. So that it's nice with the chocolate, but then has a little bit of salt at the end of it. I know it sounds weird. aesthetically is weird, but trust me, it's good. I mean, Chito Eda was backing me up on Twitter. He was. Cito doesn't know anything. I'm teasing. I'm teasing. I love Cheetah. Hey, man, what a weekend of combat sports, huh?

Man, it was great. I watched my wife. Is like, are you seriously going to do this all weekend? I was like, yeah, yeah, I am. Do you have anything that stands out to you? I mean, we're going to get to the obvious stuff, but... I mean, it's got to be that shot from Wilder and Furious recovery. I know that's the biggest thing, but I mean, I'm still in charge. I'm still in shock. I'm still in shock. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. Fury's just made of something else. That shot would have killed the irregular man. He's just, you know, it was unbelievable. He has mental fortitude that is impossible to describe. And then he comes

back and he's fighting him, right? And he's trying to survive. And I think at one point, and it's like 30 seconds after he gets knocked down or something. He puts his hands down and he's still taunting him. He taunted him after he got dropped. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He gets up and just does his whole bit. A couple things I would like to note. Number one, One, I think it sucked for the Aussies and the Kiwis. They did not have a strong night in Adelaide. So that kind of sucked. But I think, I could be wrong about this,

but I think either all or all but one of the fighters who graduated from the contender series, they all won. Shabazzian, Roosevelt, Shevchenko. I'm sure I'm missing some others. Nice to see them. I'm telling you, the contender series, those fighters who come off of there are not to be trifled with. I really enjoyed that.

And by the way, Kamaro Usman, my lord, just, just, I mean, I have, you and I know this, Havot dos anjos is as credentialed as they come. Literally a former champion, granted a weight class down. And dude, Camaro just kind of did whatever he wanted, unstoppable. Yeah. And he still looked like he had easily another five rounds in him. Yeah. That guy's already built for a championship fight.

Like, he's ready to go. Yeah, let me do this before we go. I need to do my way in. I'll talk to, we got calls and tweets, right? They're all pretty good today. Yes, they're very good. Do we have any women callers? They've been beating me up on social media now.

And we got an angry one, too. Oh, do you? Yeah, dude, women listen to our show, you know? We just got... But if I hadn't said something, I poked the bear, all right, fine. I mean, they're just too busy to call you. Yeah, apparently... Yeah, it's like, you want me to take you seriously, and I do now, but you ladies were slacking before.

So let's just be real about that. All right? We'll come back to you a little bit later, right? Sounds good, my friend. Before we go to the way and very quickly, I just want to give a shout out to the boys in the back. I make them do things in the studio that they're, well, that sounds really weird, but I make them do things related to their job that the studio was not necessarily built for and they do a phenomenal job bringing it to you. So I just want to say salute to everyone back there who makes this show possible in the way that I ask them to. And I know that's not easy sometimes, but they do it. And I'm always very, very grateful for their services in that regard. All right, time now for the way in. Let's do the way in right here on the MMA hour on this third of December 2018. And this is a real simple one. I got this question, and I'm sure anyone else in media got this question too, man.

How many people got tweets or whatever or emails or just watching general discussion after that wilder fury fight? I know there's a lot of MMA, but I'm sorry. That was just the biggest contest over the weekend. How many people got hit up from fans asking legitimate question? Dude, like, is there any way to fix boxing as it relates to judging? and pardon me, is there anything we can really do about that? The answer is, no, nope, there's nothing you can do, basically nothing. There might be a couple of small things, but the answer is, no, I see this every time,

and there's a terrible judgment that happens, like, oh, my God, what are we going to do? Or a referee does some kind of cockamamie thing, oh, what are we going to do? And particularly as it relates to judging, the referee one, you can swap out personnel over time, which is true for judging too, but those problems sort of remain as consistent as time goes on. The answer is, here's what you can do. You can just learn to love boxing or MMA without having the need for appropriate judging validate your experience. right so i saw i tweeted a photo of the referee at the end holding both wilder and fury's hands up right and so they're both kind of there i mean fury had excuse me wilder had his belt and fury had his other hand up but the point being was they were trying to like you know it was like oh split draw bomb

picture and i tweeted i was like oh my god i'm like so amazed by these two combatants because they both put it out there and folks were like oh my god this was the worst i can't believe this is a terrible decision folks we'll get to this later in the monday morning analyst yeah it was it was not a decision was pretty bad, to be quite honest with you. But the reality is nothing is going to change. You need to find a way to enjoy combat sports without it being validated by getting the appropriate decision call every time. Otherwise, you are going to be consistently miserable. Understand the mechanics in play here. We gave the keys to the kingdom to the people that run the DMV. We gave the keys to the kingdom to the people that run the VA. Do you see what happened with the VA this past week?

They couldn't pay out GI Bill benefits because they had an IT system that was 50 years old. You could say, what does the VA have to do with athletic commissions? The answer is they're all part of this vast, complicated, government bureaucratic nightmare. They may not staff the same people or even have the same tasks, but they all are emblematic of this glacial inertia, essentially, that we're all kind of stuck with. We're just stuck with this. How on earth are you going to get judging to be different anytime soon? Particularly in the MMA side, because I saw a lot of people being like, oh, boxing,

effed it up again, boxing really screwed it up. Yo, you know that's the same commission that will do all the MMA fights in that. state. I had Andy Foster on my show last Monday to talk about Chuck Tito. The guy sounded worn out and he knew he had Wilder Fury still to come. It's the same people. Maybe not the exact same

judges or the exact same referees. It's the exact same sort of leadership group in place with the exact same motivations, the exact same tenureship, the exact same glacial pace to everything that affects all of it. It's all the same.

You can make this about boxing. It's not about boxing. It's about athletic commission sanctioning. You think this sounds like an attack on athletic commissions, and it's not. It's just understanding what we have working with us. The reality is we have enshrined in law and entrusted government entities to control how bouts are made, to control who fights, to control the rules, to control some of the medical procedures around this, to control the licensing, to control virtually every aspect of this other than the promotion itself. And sometimes that's a really good idea. Like, for example,

to avoid self-dealing, you do need someone to make sure the promoter is actually making competitive fights, to make sure that the promoters not skirt in the rules that the fighters weigh in in a way they're supposed to, to make sure that someone who fights deserves to have a license and has cleared some medical protocol to get there. They serve a valuable, important role in MMA and in boxing.

But on the other side, when it comes to punishment, why is the Habib Nirmagamadav, Dylan Danes, nonsense not resolved? Because you have a government agency, bureaucratic, as it may be, trying to lurch its way through it. That's why.

How are you going to change judging? You're going to have to find another system that's better somewhere else. And then you're going to have to slowly implement it. Who's going to pay for that? Who's going to experiment with that? Who's got the ideas for that? Nobody. If you're in mixed martial arts, what are you going to do?

You're going to go state by state now? Zufa has downsized. Remember all those people who got laid off when the new ownership group took over? Who's going to go state by state and do all of this? Nobody. Nobody is, there's no cavalry folks, none. The reality is, I'm not telling you to love bad decisions or to not call a bad decision, a bad decision. I'm not telling you to not like who you like or be upset that someone you like was not, was mistreated.

You had Tyson Fury saying, I think, today, to BT sport and other people, I was robbed of the greatest comeback in boxing history. I'm not sure he's wrong. That, that might be true. And it's terrible. How are you going to fix that? It is not possible. It is not possible. Margins a little bit here or there.

The UFC can do some self-regulation and experiment with some different attitudes overseas, as can other promoters. One championship, for example, has different rule sets. That's innovation. But MMA and boxing in all 50 states. And for boxing internationally, there's a lot of this. Japan doesn't regulate the MMA, but they have their own boxing commission.

It's why Tension Naskawa can't be both a boxer and a kickboxer at the same time. You're stuck. You're stuck. This is what it is. And if your boycotts were really serious, well, then they might change things. But the promoters basically all make enough money and are able to recruit enough talent and stage enough shows that they don't have any reason to lobby the state commission to make any kinds of changes.

So here is the reality. You got to be like Seneca. You got to be like Buddha. You got to just have a little stoicism about this in the face of disaster. You just have to say, in the words of our next guest, it is what it is, player.

It's just going to be what it's going to be. And I know that sucks. It's a terrible way to start the weekend. I feel terrible for Tyson Fury. I'm a Deonté Wilder fan. And I mean that. But Tyson Fury got the raw end of the deal here, no doubt about it. But in terms of change, there is no change.

In terms of offers, there is no offers. This is what it's going to be. Just find a way to enjoy it amidst the sadness. Yay, what a fun way to start Fight Week, huh? It's just true. You see me? I thought it was a bad decision. I didn't agree with it.

Happy to see a rematch, of course. But I realize, what am I going to do? What are they going to do? It's not about what empowerment I have sitting in this chair to change things. It's just the reality of the situation. You handed over rules and judging and adjudication of disputes to a state agency. Welcome to that reality. All right.

Let's do this. Time now for a round of tweets. Five minutes on the clock. The clock starts when the first tweet goes up. see it. Here we go. All right. People say that judging in MMA is much more difficult endeavor over boxing. That's true. After watching Canella versus Triple G1 and now Tyson versus Fury, you mean Wilder versus Fury and seeing the judging, I'm starting to wonder if it is boxing that is more difficult to judge thoughts. No, Big John McCarthy told me something really interesting

once. You can take someone trained in MMA and to get them trained up to the level where they can judge boxing. It's a very short learning curve. Conversely, getting someone who is a boxing judge to then be able to judge MMA fights can often be a much, much longer learning curve. It's just a different sensibility about things. There are more combative aspects that you have to weigh inside of MMA, and there's fewer rounds. In boxing, there's a little bit more variance

for different ideas and for error, actually. It's just in this one, they just made a lot of it. Next. With Fury and Wilder having a two-way rematch clause, but not for a draw as, Fury said in the interview afterwards, do you think this is something Champs and MMA will start getting put in contracts? And we'll see more rematch in what do you think of that happens?

There is no way, short of someone being Connor McGregor powerful, the UFC is going to allow one of these guys to introduce a rematch clause into their contracts. Not going to happen. Next. Overeem, Dos Santos, Hua, and to some extent in Ghanu, does it warm your heart that the, excuse me, that the seasoned fighters are the ones who won their respective bouts? Does it complicate things that no one?

and torches, excuse me, that no torches were passed in the shallow heavyweight division, awesome show. Thank you very much for that. You know, on the one hand, there was and there wasn't. Tui Vasa didn't beat JDS, but on the other hand, Willis did beat Hunt. So there was semi, I mean, I wanted to call that torch passing in the Willis Hunt bow, but generally speaking, I think it's better if you've got these institutional figures when they naturally get pushed out and they don't suppress the amount of newcomers who can

then re-energize the division. so generally I don't like what happened over the weekend, but to your point, how do you not be happy for Alistair Overeem? How do you not be happy for Junior DeSantos and particularly Shogun Huah? You have to be, right? So it's a little bit of both, I think. Next. Why are so many of the refs who have been around for years making critical mistakes constantly as of late?

What can be done, if anything? So this is another complicated one, right? It's like, I'm not sure who you're referring to in this particular. case. There needs to be constant re-education and to some extent there is, but the state apparatus isn't really the one doing it unless they partner with a particular referee. Like Big John McCarthy teaches courses. Herb Dean teaches courses. I think even other ones do like Jason Herzog and some other ones. It's not like the state teaches courses and that they go get the licensing from that. They are the ones not doing the licensing per se, but doing all of the best practices as it relates to that particular

industry. And so you're asking why they make mistakes. I think number one, that's just what highest level of refereeing looks like for the most part. And number two, I wonder how much professional development that actually happens in the course of their careers. I'm sure a lot. I just don't know what the full answer is. And so it's kind of hard to understand how they make progress over time. Next. Caldwell or Horaguchi? Who are you leaning towards? It's got to be Caldwell. Darian Caldwell. Horaguchi is a little bit bigger than I thought, but he's not nearly as big as Caldwell. He's a very, I'd say he's actually more well-rounded than Darian. but Darien's shut down wrestling

should make the difference. We're going to see, but that's going to be a super interesting one because it'll be in that squared ring and not that rounded cage that Bellator uses. Should be a lot of fun. Next.

How would you rate the overall growth of Tyson Pedro? He had a lot of hype coming into the UFC, but never been on a steady rise. Who's a suitable opponent for him in your opinion? I don't think about the opponent at this point. You know, he looked really good early. It wasn't like he looked like,

Even Tuivasa, Tuva and Pedro lost, but they look good early. Overall growth of Tyson Pedro. I don't know. It's like on the one hand, he does a lot of things right. To me, the issue only seemed to be started strong. Tuvasa, same thing for the most part. It was just making good decisions consistently over time seem to be a bit of an issue. So maybe it's just a maturation thing where, you know, over time they learn to just slowly implement their offense rather than just sort of improvising all the time.

they begin to understand when to improvise and when not to. It's a difficult question. You know, you have to also ask what's his ultimate upside. I guess we're going to have to find out. But he's still too green to say that this is all we're going to get from him. There's a lot of life left in him. Let's go to the next one. In an interview recently, Dana said the ultimate fighter will keep going.

I can't see any reason to keep it around. Why do you think the UFC is such a hard time letting tough go? I think they're going to be able to cut costs in the next season. because they're going to have their own, what you call it, they're going to have their own venue, and it does produce some decent stars over time, and they just seem to think that it's a good vehicle. I don't know why.

All right, he's on the line now, not a moment to waste. Let's get it going. He defends his title at UFC 231 this weekend. He is the reigning and defending UFC featherweight champion of the world via phone, I believe. Our friend Max Holloway joins the show. Max, welcome to the show, sir. How are you?

I'm good, little guy. It's phone interview, man. Sorry. I know you wanted to see my pretty face, but I wasn't able to get to Skype for a laptop. I apologize. So I wanted to see that beard of your yard. You know, that beer, your beer game be strong. It does.

It is certainly strong. Well, first of all, Max, a couple things I want to get to right off the break. Number one, I'm not going to see you tomorrow, so I'll say it now. Happy birthday. I know your birthday is tomorrow, correct? Ah, thank you, man. That's amazing. Thanks for remembering, yeah.

Yeah, okay. So, first of all, that should be a lot of fun. And second of all, I saw your interview with the gentleman from Complex. Did you get the PlayStation PGs that you said you were going to? Hey, I got him. I got them. Did you really? We picked that.

Yeah, I'm about that life. I was jogging when the raffle went on and I entered. I didn't get them. And then one of my friends, one of my friends is being smart ass to me. He, like, he showed me my cameraman actually. He, like, showed me, like, hey, what does this mean? Because he entered a raffle, too, on the sneakers app. He's like, hey, what does this mean?

And they had big words that said, got him. I was like, wow. I was like, thanks for rubbing in the face because I just told him I didn't get him. And then I had a couple of homies in Hawaii entered a raffle for me, too, and one of them got him for me. So he hit me up to your Instagram and told me, hey, look, I got him for you. So I'm so stoked. I'm excited.

I can't wait. All right, whenever you can put them on your feet, whenever you get your hands on them, can you Instagram or tweet a picture of them, please. Oh, yeah. It might be a video. I might, I don't know, last time I kicked a car window out. So maybe we'd kick something else out with a man. It'd be fun. That would be kind of fun. All right, man, let's get to it. You know, I don't, I don't know exactly what to ask you about some of this stuff, except just to say, are you already tired of all the questions about the difficulties you face this year? I know Media Week is about to start. I mean, how do you feel

about having to answer for this kind of stuff all the time? I just what it is. You know, people, some people are concerned. concerned, really concerned. Some people need to do a job. And it comes to my job. So, you know, I ain't concerned. I know about a bunch of questions. You know, I've been answering a bunch of times, you know, answer is not going to change in all of them. So, you know, if you guys want to hear old record played and, you know, keep asking the questions. Have you thought more about it? Because I know that, you know, it's not a concussion, or least you don't think it was. You don't think it was the water loading thing or the weight cutting thing. Could it have been some kind of illness that they just didn't diagnose or didn't. know about? Yeah, you know, we don't know. You know, we took the test that they thought that what it was, like I said before, you know, we took all the tests, we passed all the tests.

So, and all the tests is coming back looking great. So, you know, at the end of the day, we see, you know, I still got an ongoing private investigation, you know, with trying to figure out what's going on, you know, me and my team because we still trying to figure it out. But at the end of the day, it's not the big things that they thought. So, you know, right now I can't comment too much on it because we still got the investigation going on, but you know, that's it. How do you know you feel better?

Like, can you give us a sense of, like, how you know internally, okay, I feel the way I'm supposed to? Man, man, I wish I could let you guys into my camp, but ninjas move in silence. And that, like, this, this camp has been one of the greatest ones ever, man. I've been breaking numbers, doing a lot of amazing stuff, you know, making, surprising a lot of people.

So I can't wait, man. I just can't wait for December 8 and show you guys what I've been working hard for. You know, it's people keep sleeping. You know, it's time to wake, wake them up again. I don't know that bless air is the full effect. And, you know, I jump on the blessed train now. You know, the Bless Express. We're at the pit stop right now.

We're waiting for you guys all getting inside, you know. It's better to be sitting down inside than chasing us, you know, because it's a really fast train. So, you know, don't be one of those guys jogging behind it. You know, did you kind of feel like a lot of people forgot about, I mean, because coming off the second Aldo, when you were on top of the world, do you feel like some people forgot about what you were doing in the sport because of all of the difficulties? And perhaps Saturday is your chance to be like, okay, remember back then, it's still going on. Yeah, you know, like what I say, you know, I told you guys already, you know, everybody keeps saying it's going to be one of the hardest fights for me, you know, and I believe, you know, I believe every fight is hard.

You know, everybody keeps saying this guy's undefeating, this and that, fortunately. know, I'm on all every fight, you know, I'm undefeated. He's finding an undefeated fighter, too. You know, but at the end of day, my favorite thing to do is when people say, oh, this guy's going to do this to me, this guy can do this to me. I go out there and I show them what's really up, and then they're like, they're like, damn, okay, maybe not, you know, so I like making people question themselves. So Saturday night, just tune in, you know.

Like I said, I know if you're in Toronto, if in the area or whatever, I know the tickets is sold out, you know, and the event is sold out already because The fans here is crazy for it. And they know that Christmas is coming December 8th. It said December 25th this year. And, you know, but I tell you one thing that never sells those paperview. You know, so you guys got to start figuring it out, you know, be with your friends and your families and, you know, make big parties, make small parties. And if you're going to a party, buy a pay-per-view at your house because that's how great this car is going to be.

This is an MMA inside this card. You know, all the inside guys want to this card and it's here. Let's talk about your opponent, Brian Ortega, for a second. I went back yesterday in preparing for this interview, and I watched all of his UFC fights, right? Here's one thing I noticed. True or false, outside of Frankie Edgar, you're the only other opponent he's faced in the UFC

that consistently uses a jab. Is that true or false for you? You can true or false. You tell me. 100% true, in my judgment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. So what do you think that means? Do you think would you acknowledge up front that the jab is not only central to your fights in the way that it has been, but probably for this one too?

Look, everybody keeps talking about boxing fights and blah, blah, this and that. You know, I pride myself in being the best mixed martial artists. I mean, the best mixed martial arts, you must go to the other martial arts and train yourself in them, you know? And just what happened, boxing is one of my favorite ones, you know? And I love, like you said, that jab. So we're about to find out. Is it obvious to say, and maybe it is, that the biggest threat from him is his clamp by jumping on some kind of a head and an arm. You know, it's just setting up some kind of submission in the flash of an eye.

When you assess him as an opponent, his biggest threat is what? He's dangerous. The man is dangerous, you know. He's just a dangerous guy all around, you know. He showed that he can knock you out, you know, with a punch, with a kick, with a knee. He showed that if you give him something, he's going to try to take it home with him. And he also showed that he got a chin on him, you know, that Mexican blood in him, man. It's crazy, you know.

It's going to be a crazy fight, you know. Mexican and Hawaiian were born fighting. Crazy. It's amazing, and I just can't wait to. This is one of the guys, and this is a fight, you know. Everybody keeps talking about, man. I wish these guys could fight at this time, blah, blah, or here it is, you know, too young guys.

And for the fight that matters most for a belt, for a champion, for a world championship fight. So I can't wait to do it, man. I just can't wait to go out there. And, you know, this is the fight to excite because this is one of those guys that, you know, it's all saying done. They look at my career and they look at the list and they're like, damn, who did this guy not fight?

You know, and that's just why I want to be. I want to be the best ever. What do you make of the fact that he snatches submissions so late in fights sometimes. Hey, that's the jihitsu way. You know, you're never out, you know, you're never out the fight, you know, like, I got one of the greatest jihitsu practitioners in the world, too, you know, and Ronald Azores, and even, and his trainer was Pedro Sauer, and every time I talk to the Pedro, you know, it's like, that's the gracey way, you know, to the death, you know what I mean, like to someone that, you know, like, I'm going to take it or hurt you or I make you quit, you know?

So I think it's cool, you know, he's really living that, that gracious jihitsy lifestyle, that's dope. Is there any way to, like, give the fans a sense of what the last year has been like? Last time I saw you was actually that media day where Connor had that whole crazy thing. And that was when you were going to fight Nurembergameda before everything went awry. And I'm wondering if you look back on this year, 2018, how would you describe 2018 in your mind? You know, what doesn't kill you make you stronger, man. You know, I found out a lot about myself, found out a lot about about, about,

Just life in general. And, you know, it's just a learning experience. You know, you live, you learn, you know. So I'm just blessed, man. I found out that I'm blessed. I'm really blessed. It's bigger than a nickname. So all I can say about this year is I'm blessed.

You know, it's crazy. I went to a rough times, a bunch of rough times. But we hear, you know, it's not how you start the race, so you finish. And we're going to finish strong from December 8. Do you need to win? I mean, obviously, you want, look, I may ask this question very carefully. Dominic Cruz, when he beat T.J. Dillishaw, after that long layoff said,

He didn't need that win to validate who he was. He knew it. The winning was nice, but he had already had in a sense of what it meant to be who he was. Do you share that view? Is winning part of this process or is winning a bonus to the process? Yeah, winning the bonus, man. I know who I am. I know who I am.

No win, no loss. Nothing shake me. You know, you always, life is great, man. Life is great. You know, we go out there. I go out there, have fun. You know, people keep stressing. People keep thinking too far in the future.

People keep thinking too far in the past. They're living in the past. So at the end of the day, I feel great, man. I know who I am. I know what I can do and what I capable do. And it's one step at a time, you know. So I can't wait. And we see what happens.

You know, it's an exciting time to be alive, you know, and an even better time to be a blessed fan. So if you not, get flipped the switch, flip the switch and, you know, join the bless arrow. How come you and Canada click so well? Man, look, look, look, look, this is how it goes. The Hawaiian Islands got eight, the chain got eight islands on them, right? A bunch, we call Las Vegas the ninth island because a bunch of Hawaiian moved there. So it's like the ninth island.

Toronto is the 10th island. They're amazing. The people here, the fans here is great. You know, I got more than a dozen, like, people hitting me to my, to my webpage, telling them, hey, look, if you need a place to stay, we've got an extra room for you and your team. I got, I got, they offering us to cook dinners and stuff, you know, where, where else does this happen? It's crazy, you know, every other place we don't, we don't get that kind of love. So it's, it's amazing. I don't know what it is. You know, even on last week, Thursday, you know,

they used my, they used my gift and stuff after they didn't, they didn't beat, go and stay for, like, four years or something at home, and they finally did it. So it was amazing. After a big win like that, they should, they, they use my gift, you know, yelling, uh, where's my belt. So it's pretty cool. Max, are you mad at me that I'm more of a push-a-tee fan than a Drake fan? Not at all, you know, but you know, I just, you might get a surprise little, little rat bite in your, in your beard if I see you next time. And I thought I'm going to my hand, but that's about it. How is Drake?

Convince me, is he a good guy? Eh, Drake is a good guy, man. He's a nice guy, you know, we got to talk. I got to talk to some of his guys, some of his guys on a team. You know, I got to talk to the guy, the man who runs his OVO line for him. You know, him and his crew is a bunch of good guys. A bunch of good crews. I was talking a little story with them in the back.

And I got nothing but nice things to say about him. You know, it's kind of interesting. I haven't had a chance to pick your brain about this. I know you got just a couple minutes left. So let me do it before you go. What did you make of Conner's fight against Habee? Because I know that you guys used to go back and forth a lot. That's kind of died down.

When you saw that fight at UFC 229, what did you make of it? you know, everybody keeps saying, oh, Connor got smashed. I didn't see it, you know, like, yeah, a couple in a couple positions he did, but I thought he was doing great. I thought he was doing actually pretty good. You know, I thought they had a good game plan going into the fight. It looked, it looked great, looked good. It's just, Kabeeb was just capitalizing on that little, like real little mistakes Connor was doing. Kabee was just capitalizing it, you know, so I just think Kabe was just on his game, a little bit more that night than anything.

And it was a good fight, you know. I think a lot of people just saying that Connor didn't do that good I thought Conner did pretty good you know it is what it is he's in bad positions

he got out of bad positions too so you know my my assid of it was he did all right did that fight give you more confidence that had you faced him

at UFC what was it 223 that you would have won yeah you know at the end of you know we were saying we'll find out you know we got nothing but time too

you know I know they I know they figuring out They got to figure out their stuff going on. So we see what happens. I got Brian Otega first. You know, that's definitely, the two of them is definitely the guys that would be cool, you know, and everybody keep talking about. So we see what happened.

You know, I'm a fighter, you know, I fight whoever. And, you know, I'm a champion. I've been a champion. And, you know, I'm about to go out here and defend, defend and be a defending champion. And the next thing on my list is to be on the pound-for-pound list. So, you know, that number one pound-for-pound. And whatever fights it is that takes me there, I'll go there. You know, if it's going up a weight class, if it's staying here defending my belt 12 times,

if it's going up three-way class, if I got to go and see the daddest man on the planet, then so be it, you know. We won't get it because I want that number one pound for pound spot. Last question before you go, how long before your number one pound for pound in the sport? We see what happens, you know. We see what happens. You know, it's all about hard work. I just have to keep them putting the work, you know.

It's up to you guys. Whoever the guy is voting for it. You know, they got to figure out. I'll go ask them. I'm just going to keep doing my job and, you know, keep getting these wins. I know you got to go. Max, I really appreciate your time. You've done a ton of media.

I know you got a lot ahead of you. Thank you. Genuinely, I say that. Thank you for making some time for me on the show. And, dude, I cannot wait to see you and Ortega Lockhorns on Saturday. Thank you so much. Thank you, Luke, man. You always been one of the greatest supporters and stuff.

So you have a good one. Have you, buddy. There he goes. Max Holloway. Blessed era is what we're in. Hey, we're going to have Giuliana Pena in about five minutes or so. I didn't get a chance to get to it a whole lot here or in my way in. I thought about making it the way in, and I was like, eh, I don't know.

Can we say something about Shogun Hula for just a second? I know a lot of folks were just so amazed by him on Saturday at UFC Adelaide. Oh, my God, man. I was just like, I'll be honest. honest, I was so happy to see him win. Nothing against Tyson Pedro, of course. Dude, going into this week, I didn't even realize he was on the card until I had for my job to open up the page and see who was on there.

And I was like, oh, my God, Shogun, who was fighting this week? I didn't even know. And then I was like, oh, man, Tyson Pedro and he's a young gun. He's going to go out there and just give him hell. And then at first I was like, Jesus, this is terrible. That first round, Tyson Pedro was just tearing him up, you know? And you were thinking to yourself, oh, this is just going on too long. remember he was coming off the Anthony Smith loss where he got viciously

chaoed and it was a whole thing and you're just like oh you know how much should this guy be fighting and even in the win I'm still like I don't know this is for his health I don't know if this is like the best idea I've ever seen towards of preserving it you know he's got the LeBron hairline it's all moving back and all of us in our late 30s like that but um and he just you know he doesn't quite look the same as he used to and it's for many years he was joked on for his knee injuries and what they did to his vitality and his capability and everything else. And then he just showed like what was so amazing about that experience at UFC Adelaide. It was like it was, you couldn't call it vintage Shogun because it wasn't.

Vintage Shogun would be the 2005 middleweight tournament, right? In pride where he's just blowing through everybody. And that's not what this is. He is older, not as, you know, muscular and lean as he used to be and whatnot. But in terms of the resiliency, in terms of that fight like a dog until the moment you are either unconscious or they are or the ref is separating you, this absolute commitment, this warlike commitment that he had, that was all still in play and that he was able to dig out a win. That was at 37 years of age after suffering that terrible first round. in some ways maybe that was vintage Shogun spirit. Just incredible to watch, man.

Like we always talk in M.MA, like, what is the best tournament that's ever been? And maybe that 2005, excuse me, pride tournament was. But we never talk about, like, who's had the best tournament runs. Oh, he won the most prestigious tournament. But it was always about the tournament. What tournament had the most stars? What tournament had the most action? What tournament produced the best result?

You know, who had the best tournament? That's what I want to know. Who had the best run? And in MMA, there's a lot, you could, once you could different, you could argue, you could maybe say Mark Coleman 2000, you could say, I don't know, a lot of different ones. But I'm going to go with Shogun Huas, 2005 middleweight run.

It's just unlike anything else you've ever seen. It's just unlike anything else you could ever have imagined. and he's had a gazillion downs since then. But just to see a flash, a moment, a something that was there was really kind of incredible. So Tesson Pedro has time to get back on the winning track, and I'm sure he will. And I don't know how much life left in him as a fighter, to be honest, that Shogun has. But for two rounds, really, on Saturday night of the three, I suppose, he showed us just his incredible character. I'm in awe of it like I always am.

All right, let's go to our next guest. Is this phone or Skype, Danny? I can never remember. Phone. Okay. Let's go to our next guest. She joins us. She's a commentator for Combata Americas, a UFC bansomweight, a mother and so much more.

The Inevitable Juliana Pena joins us right now on the MMA hour. Hi, Juliana. How are you? Hey, good morning. How are you doing? I'm doing quite well, Julianna. It's been a long time since we've spoken. I think the, I know you've been active in the MMA world through Combatee, but

in terms of your UFC side of things, we have missed you. Definitely, yes. I have been commentating for combating medicas and loving every second of it. All right. Let's, we'll get to that in just a second. Let's backtrack here a little bit. So you last fall, I believe what, January of 2017, yes? Did I get that number right?

I think so. Yeah. Sometimes you guys know the stats about myself more than I know. Fair enough. Real quickly about that. I've heard some rumbling. from social media, I believe, that you were sort of considering a comeback.

Where are we in the process of that? Soon, that's what I can say. So you have actively spoken to the UFC? I have not, no, but my people have, yeah. Okay. Have you been training on, I mean, you must have been active in the gym, obviously childbirth notwithstanding,

but as a general life practice, you've been in the gym, right? Yeah. So, like, how active? Like, if they called you today, how far away could you be physically from doing it? I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm kind of in the midst of figuring that out.

I'm here in my hometown getting evaluated. And, you know, I'll be leaving here on Wednesday. And hopefully by the end of that time, my coach will have an answer for me as to when I'll be ready to take a fight again and get back in fight camp. Oh, I see. Fair enough. Okay. So could be first quarter, maybe second quarter of 2019, something in that ballpark? ish? Yeah, 2019 for sure. Yeah. I got to tell you, the division's changed a lot since you've been

around. What do you make of the state of women's MMA these days, and particularly your division and what has happened since you were last around? You know, I think that it's awesome. I just know that the bantam weight women are killing it, and it's exciting to see. And it's always refreshing to see a 35 or 1-35 or on the cards. You don't see enough of them. They're far few in between. So I'm always really excited when I see a Bantamweight women's fight. So yeah, I'm happy

for them and I can't wait to get back in the division and join them. Yeah, I could well imagine. Let's talk about a few different things related to that, and I want to talk about this Copa combate in here in just a minute. Very quickly, though, this weekend, you have UFC 21, one of your previous opponents,

Valentina Shivchenko, dropping down a weight class, 125, where she takes on Yawani and Jacek. I wonder what you of this matchup? I think that Valentina is going to win. That's all I think. Okay, give me a reason why. Is the size?

Is it the size and the skill? Something else? Yeah, it's the size, for sure. I definitely think that she's got more size and strength on her, and I definitely think that she's the more experienced fighter when it comes to dealing with heavier opponents. You know, she's been fighting girls that walk around way heavier than her for a long time, So I think that her moving down to 125 is a smart move.

And I definitely think she's going to have the strength advantage. Physically, when you locked up with her, did she feel like other bantam? Because you also fought and defeated Katzangana, who was known for being physical in that weight class. Relative to her, how did she, like, physically feel? I definitely felt like I was stronger than her, and I think I just got a little overzealous and a little too excited. You know, they always say position before submission. I think I kind of punched myself into a submission. So I definitely felt that I was, though, physically stronger than her.

Fair enough. So 125, a better weight class for her then? Yeah, yeah. It's a smart move. What do you make about Yane Jacek jumping up? Like, it just seems a bridge too far for me, at least against Chivchenko. Yeah, I think, you know, she was talking about wanting to do it for such a long time. And I know that, you know, there were some people out there being like, yeah, that's never going to happen.

and she's never going to do that. And I think that they really were convinced of that for a long time. But I think that she also was serious about it, and she's proving that she was serious by moving up away class and fighting Shevchenko. So I think that that's very, very balzy of her, very gutsy. And, you know, I commend her, hats off to her, and, you know, may the best woman win.

But in my opinion, I think that Valentina will be the victor. Fair enough. By the way, in terms of, like, when you come back, I know you're not going to name an opponent because this is all still very, very new. I get it. But inside the top 10, in terms of ranking, inside the top five, what are you thinking?

I'm not thinking. I'm just thinking about when I'll be healthy and ready to compete and when I'll be ready to get in a fight camp and then the opponent will come later. All right, I can dig it. All right. By the way, how did you get this gig with Combata America? How did that come about?

You know, Campbell McLaren has been trying to hit me up for a long time and he was calling the wrong number, literally. And so when he finally came through with my agent, he's like, kid, I have been trying to get a hold of you for a long time. And then I was like, this is a cold-hearted woman. She will not return my phone calls. What do I got to do to get this girl a part of my team? And he's like, and then I found out I had the wrong number the whole time. And he's like, so I've been wanting you forever.

I think that you're great. I think that you got the great look. I want to make you a star. And I think that you have the right capability. for coming on board with my team. So he got in contact with my agent, and we just set it up and made it happen. And, you know, I couldn't be more grateful Campbell

is a genius. And he's a really great man to work for, and he's a really funny man, and I just enjoy every second working with him. That's the hardest part about commentating? The hardest part about commentating is jumping over people. You know, I get so excited in there.

I'm always, you know, I could talk to a rock about MMA, literally. I could talk to a wall. I could talk to anyone about MMA, anyone who will listen. I could talk about it forever and ever and ever. But the thing is, I get so excited. And I know these guys personally sometimes, too, that it's hard for me to hold my excitement in,

and somebody will be saying something, and I'll just be screaming, yes, yes, you got them, you know. And so it's really hard for me as a fan to try to rein it in and be a little bit more professional and quit jumping over people. And I think that's the most difficult part for me because sometimes, you know, I'm in a three-man booth and I'm sitting there being like, you guys can take this one off. I got this.

You know, I'm just sitting there thinking I could just do it all by myself if they'd let me. Was it the perfect job to come along while you had this motherhood break and this break from MMA to still be watching these young fighters coming up, being talking about them? It's this good proximity, but not necessarily an unhealthy toxic sense, the relationship to MMA during that time. It was a great thing, you know. It was something that I've always wanted to get into, you know. They always say, you know, fighting is great and all, but your fighting career is going to end at some point, so you have to have a backup plan.

And talking about fighting is something that makes me very happy. And I've always wanted to get my foot in other avenues and open up other doors in the MMA world. I've always wanted MMA to be a part of my life and to engulf my life for the rest of my life because it is what I am passionate about. So, MMA and talking and being a chatterbox is just something that comes naturally to me. And so to get this kind of gig, especially from transitioning into motherhood and transitioning back into fighting has been a blessing, you know. And it's just real nice to, you know, get that diaper money and not having to get punched in the face and do something that I enjoy doing. So it's all real fun. And I love the fights.

I got to tell you, these fights are so exciting. And they have such a high percentage of finishing in Kobate America's. And so these fights are so exciting. and I'm so excited in particular about this Copacombate eight-man one-night tournament that's coming up here. So let's talk about that more. December 7th at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, California. Correct me if I get any piece of this wrong, Juliana. This is the second annual tournament, right?

One-night, eight-man featherweight tournament, and here's how it goes. Quarterfinals are won five-minute round, semifinals, and finals will be three five-minute rounds. winner gets a hundred grand. Did I get that right? Right. And it's a pinnacle of a tournament kind of deal because it's country versus country. And there's eight countries. The winner gets $100,000 and a trophy that is the largest trophy in sports.

It's four and a half feet tall. It's a foot taller than the Stanley Cup. It weighs like 85 pounds or something crazy like that. It's the most beautiful trophy I've ever seen in my entire life. Like if it were me, I would just want to be fighting for that trophy. because that's like massive bragging rights. Like that trophy is so gorgeous. Literally, I'm just so excited to see whoever wins get that thing

and try to take that home on a plane because that thing is going to be interesting. But yeah, you can see the whole thing live on the zone. I'll be commentating alongside Max Brutas and Gilbert Melendez. And it is the first sanctioned one-night eight-man MMA tournament in the U.S. So I think they did win in Oklahoma, but that one wasn't sanctioned. I don't know if it was sanctioned or not, but anyways,

this is the first one, and it's huge. It's at 145 pounds, and it's the format that was, that Campbell used to originally start the UFC. So it's, it's such a fun thing, you know,

because literally you don't know who's going to win. You think, you know, you have your favorites and everything like that, but what if your favorite gets knocked out in the first round, gets a cut above his diet, it's so big that he can't continue, you know, and then he's knocked out.

So anything can happen. And as you know, in MMA, anything can happen. But in this particular instance, it's going to be crazy because, like I said, eight different countries, you know, one five-minute round to seal the deal so that you can move on. And you've got to fight three times in order to win this thing. So it's going to be bananas. How do you fight a one – okay, so the quarterfinals are one five-minute round. What is the plan there?

Because, yes, the plan can be, oh, go finish somebody, right? But it's not always that easy. How do you game plan around that? You know, what's so interesting about that is I think that that's so cool. You've got five minutes, literally. You have five minutes to go put it on someone. Like, literally, it's like the difference between life or death and the difference between, in my opinion, me and that trophy, you know? So I want that trophy.

I'm going to try to go kill you so that I can get that trophy. And then, of course, 100 grand and the bragging rights from being, you know, the winner of beating someone's three different men in one night. You know, that's massive bragging rights. and it's so old school style that it literally, it gets me excited just thinking about it. Because, I mean, so you have five minutes to go put it on someone. And if you don't, then you're out literally. And that's the difference. It's like, do you want this or not?

And again, this will be December 7th at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, California, live on DeZone. Winner gets 100 grand. By the way, do you plan to keep commentating as your fighting career resumes? You're going to do both? Yeah, yeah. I'm going to, I'm definitely going to do both and they know that, that I'm going to be fighting again. So, you know, there's some shows that I'm not going to be able to make it to you

because I'll be in training camp and it will be too close to the fight. But then there's also going to be times where I'm not going to be fighting and I'll be commentating. So it works out really well. You know, they work with my schedule. They're a great organization to be working for. I couldn't be more blessed and proud. What do you think this, like why is Combati America's surging?

If you had to explain it to somebody, how would you identify the cause of their ascension? Easy, easy. Latinos are on the rise. Latinos are coming up, and it's our time to shine, and Latinos are taken over, and these fighters fight their asses off. And we like to say this phrase, fight like a Mexican, you know? And, I mean, it might sound, you take it however you want, but Mexicans work their asses off and they're not going to stop and they're not going to quit, and you're literally going to have to kill them. order to get them to stop. So these fighters are literally putting it out all on the line. They're honored to be fighting at such a high profile and such a high platform. And they fight their asses off. And they know that their asses are on the line. If you don't fight your ass off, you're out. You know, so they're honored to be to be fighting on, you know, Telemundo, Univision on the zone. And they fight like it. And you could literally see that if you just watch,

you know, one show. You'll see that we have a high, high. finish rate in all of our fights. Do you, do you as you travel, because I know some of these shows take place, obviously, in Latin America. As you travel through, do you see enough technical development? So the thing you're identifying is their willingness to compete, which I think is beyond question at this point, certainly. But are you seeing enough gyms popping enough, enough technical development,

to what extent are best practices making their way south of the border, so to speak? You know, I think that that's a thing. And boxing was such a huge thing in Mexico for so long. And now it's getting to the point where it's kind of being a dead thing. Boxing's not as popular. In M.M.A., there's so many other ways to win. And so I think that what's interesting about these Latino fighters is that they're stand-up fighters. They don't necessarily have all of the ground technical skill, all of the wrestling.

But that's okay because we like to see them bang it out and stand on the feet and knock each other out. and that's exactly what they're doing. They're standing on the feet. They don't want to go to the ground. And if they do go to the ground, and if they're on the ground for too long, you know, they stall and then they get picked back up on the feet until a knockout happens again, you know?

So I think that's also something different. We like to say this thing in combatte much more action, which means a lot more action. There's always action, action, action going on. And once they go to the ground and they're just kind of, you know, laying on top of each other, we're like, nah, stand back up, and then they fight again, because that's the way that's the way that.

they fight. They fight on the feet, you know, and they really do bang it out. And I think that's what kind of segregates us from different organizations is that we're not letting them stay on the ground forever. We want these guys to slug it out on the feet. And they want to plug it out on the feet, too. So, I mean, it works out for everyone. I know Max Bretas from his work at ESPN. We actually spoke recently because he's trying to do some other things and he hit me up about it. What is it like working with him? He's an interesting character. I love Max. I feel like, you know, since I've been working with Combatte, I've had a lot of play-by-plays.

And Max is by far my favorite. He's such a professional. He's so good at what he does. And he makes it so much fun, you know. He makes my job easier. And like I said, he's such a professional. And I couldn't, I'm always telling him. I'm always telling him.

Please, you know, make sure that you're at the next show, you know, because I feel like I can't do it without him now. You know, last time we spoke, I don't know if you remember. remember this, probably not, in which case, don't worry. It doesn't hurt my feelings at all. We spoke very briefly about the situation of Venezuela, which was not great at the time, and has certainly been, well, it's gotten worse since then. I'm wondering, as you watch what's happening in your native country to a degree and where your family's from, what goes through your mind?

No, it's really, it's really taxing for me because, you know, you see your family members that are having trouble. And actually, I just received my cousin about a month ago, who's coming back to Chicago with me. He's been held up at gunpoint three times. And the third time he thought that he was going to literally be killed, his car was stolen. And like I said, imagine being held up at gunpoint three different occasions. It's terrifying. You know, their food is being rationed out.

He just had a friend actually that their house was being broken into. the man that he worked with, his co-worker, confronted these people that were breaking into their house, shattered the glass, and he lives with his parents, so he was trying to make sure that his parents were okay. They knocked him unconscious, and they shot him in the heart right then and there, and they robbed them, you know, and these things are occurring every single day. Your food portions are being rationed out to the point where you only get a kilo

of sugar per two months, you know, you're fighting over a roll of toll of paper. These people are literally being murdered. They're being starved to death. The water systems don't work. The lights and electricity are going out all the time. Their garbage is not being picked up off the street, and the garbage is just mounting and mounting and mounting. I mean, the problems are just so unimaginable.

I couldn't even imagine living like that, and it truly breaks my heart, honestly. And it makes me feel like I want to help them. I want to do what I can, but the thing is so corrupt over there. So you go to make boxes to deliver to your family and they get received at the border. And then the police or the government is going to rummage through all that and take everything out of there and give it to their families instead of giving it to the families that you're sending it to. So everything is just so corrupt over there.

And it's just, it's terrible. It's God awful. A lot of my family has moved to Chile and tried to move out to get away from the violence and to get away from the crime. But it is truly bad and it really needs more attention. and I wish that I could do more to put more attention on that. And I just feel like I haven't found enough help in that area as much as I would like to to shed more light on what is truly going on. But, I mean, if anybody's listening to this and has any sort of pointers for me to be able to help,

I would love to hear from you. Yeah, they could use all the help they can get. By the way, your cousin that's coming here, did he or she move permanently? Like, is a way to just get out of Venezuela? He is an engineer. He has an engineering degree, so he's on a work visa, so he will have to go back, but eventually he'll come back again. Man, there's some people I know in my town who tried to declare asylum, and I don't know if that's going to work or not, but I certainly hope. Well, I got to tell you, I don't want to end this on a sour note as important and serious as that issue may be. I got to say, Juliana, MMA has missed you. That's going to be good to have you back, and certainly folks can catch you in December 7th, talking about Kobe Cambate, Copacé for this.

one night featherweight tournament, but I got to say in terms of you competing, I think it's a good time to come back too, don't you? Yeah, I definitely do, but you know, it's also really nice to know that I've been missed. You guys want to see me fight, and that makes my heart happy. Fair enough. All right, I'll let you go. Juliana, I really appreciate it. Congratulations on the Copa, excuse me, the Combatae Americas gig,

and December 7th can't come soon enough. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, and all those people out in Fresno, come check out the show. It's going to be amazing. There it is. Fair enough. Thank you, Juliana. There she goes. We'll be back, but first, on New Year's Eve, the Professional Fighters League will be making history, finishing the $10 million season in New York City live on NBC Sports Network, six weight classes, six epic world finishes, million-dollar fights, six lives will be changed forever.

Plus, the biggest name in women's mixed martial arts, two-time U.S. Olympic gold medalist, Kayla Harrison will be in a special event bout. on one groundbreaking night, the Professional Fighters League Championship will be held on Monday, December 31st at the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden. Watch live coverage exclusively on the NBC Sports Network starting at 7 p.m. Eastern Time or get your tickets now at ticketmaster.com. All right. Yeah, there are various charities if you wanted to donate any money to the folks in Venezuela. I don't know what the best ones are. I'm going to imagine that the Red Cross is one of them.

I've given money to one that tries to, well, help a lot of different causes, but one of them is there's like starving animals in the streets, and these are ones to try to collect them and give them some kind of health care and food. So I've given some money to them, but obviously there's a gazillion people that could use your money as well. I've given some money to some of those charities too. It's a ridiculously awful situation right here in the Western Hemisphere, and I don't think it gets a lot of discussion, and it's going to destabilize that entire region. And it's going to impact a lot of different people.

So it's unfortunate, but they could use your help if you've got any help to give. We are going to transition here in just a moment, I believe. We got a first two guests on phone. I think our next two guests are going to be on Skype. Fingers crossed. Knock on wood. But I didn't even realize this again until I was sort of like looking into the details about it. It's two shows that Bellator is putting on in Hawaii.

The big one that's getting a little bit more attention, of course, is going to be Bellator 213. That's going to be at Blaisdale Arena on the 15th of this month. But then there's done one before that. December 14th, Bellator and USO present Premis versus Chandler 2. So it's two shows that freaking Bellator is bringing to Hawaii. How about that, man? They're not just coming for a one and done.

They're doing both. All right, he joins us now on our Skype machine, former Bellator lightweight champion, maybe soon to be again. There he is, the Mizoo Tiger himself. Michael Chandler. Hi Michael. Eating that food. Can he hear me or no? Hi, Michael.

Look at diesel. There he is. What's up, man? What's up? Luke, how are you? Doing well. Look at you. All diesel. I can. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. He's like eight minutes. How are you? Good, good. All right. Let's get this going. Here we are. Living the dream, man. Living the dream.

I'm excited to get out there. Go. All right. So are you, by the way, in Tennessee? Are you in Nashville? That's the name. That's the name. He's like eight minutes behind me. Are you in Nashville? Yeah, let's call him back. Let's call him back. Why don't we put the screen in the beginning? Because he's like 50. I'm in Florida, and it does look like you're a few seconds behind. So, yeah. Time out. Time out. Time out. We're going to, we're going to call him. Call him back.

He's a little bit behind for that to work. If it doesn't work, we'll just put him on phone. It's fine, too. it's okay. See old Michael Chandler, just sitting there eating, drinking protein shakes. Looking swole, son. Out there in the wait room, putting in work.

All right, they're going to restart the Skype machine and then get him back on. As I mentioned, by the way, so there's the two cards, two cards. You know the big one, Bellator 213,

McFarland versus Letterno. That's going to be the Neil S. Blaze Del Arena. That's all, let's see, that's McFarland versus Letterno, Machita versus Carvalio, even Gracie,

Ruth, part of the Walterweight tournament. Then you have Mo LaWall taken on Liam McGee. And then it opens with Kona Olavera taken on Nyanoana. Wait, Naya Noah Dung. That's the name. I don't know how to pronounce the name. Then the night before that,

Primis Chandler, Mere versus Javi Ayala, Alejandro Lara taken on Julianna Vasquez, and then Derek Campos taken on Sam Cecilia. By the way, I think Chris Avila fights on that card as well on the prelims. So two cards back-to-back night. Belator seems to like doing this. They did it last week. They've done it before, Belator 210, Belator 211.

And they're going to do it again with Belator 212, Belator 213. So a bunch of Belator coming your way. And Michael Chandler, of course, has been on a bit of a mission since the last premise fight, which was, of course, the Beltor NYC. I was there for that. He beat Goichi Yamauichi, Beltor 192 back in January, and then beat Brandon Gertz, Gertz, April of 2013, excuse me, April of 2018,

in his last fight. So this is the bit of the return since then. As for one premise, I believe he hasn't fought since then, age 33. Yes, he hasn't fought since June of 2014. 17, excuse me. So it's been a bit of a while for him. This is going to be kind of interesting to get this back.

And I have to say, I said this before, I'm so happy to see big promotions back in Hawaii. Like, what's the big deal about having a big promotion in Hawaii? It's actually pretty simple. This is a place that used to be home to some of the biggest fights that mixed martial arts had to offer. Big fights happened there. And then when the UFC consolidated, and there was a general contraction in the market in terms of the outside UFC promotions, but when the UFC consolidated, they were just deprived, essentially, of promoters who were able to put on shows of significance.

But it used to be a place where you had icon sport, rumble in the rock, Super brawl, the whole bit. And, I mean, more than that, you had Elite C that was out there as well. And so it was just a place where a ton of MMA history at a significant level was happened or had happened. And then it all kind of went away. It all kind of went away. But now that the UFC seems to be loosening the reins a little bit on some other talent. And you're seeing that disperse to some of these other organizations. Now some of these other organizations are able to be in a position where they can stage shows and fights of significance.

And I think that's what you're seeing here. So I'm pretty excited for that. It's nice to see Hawaii back in action. Let's give him one more try here if we can. Let's go to our friend Michael Chandler back on the Skype. There he is. Michael, can you hear me? Yes.

Yes. There we are. How are you, sir? Man, I am living the journey, man. It's always awesome. These fight camps are so crazy because they start off. You have this long road ahead of you. Then all of a sudden you get within these last two weeks.

You're chomping at the bit. I'm ready to fight tomorrow. Ready to make weight tomorrow. So I'm just on cloud nine, man. Everything's firing on all cylinders and I'm ready to go. Are you ever not jacked and happy? Yeah, well, a couple of years ago when I went three losses in a row, 688 days without a win, I had a nice little rough patch back then.

But since then, recalibrated, reconditioned, and ready to go. So no, man, life is extremely good. I'm just extremely blessed. So I'm extremely blessed to be able to do what I do. So thank you for these kinds of opportunities, man. This is awesome. All right, so let's talk about this. I always want to do this whenever I reconnect to you because I can never keep it straight.

I know you were building a gym in Nashville, but you tell me you're in Florida. So what's the training situation you're currently in? What's the arrangement? So I'm currently in someone else's home down in Florida, sleeping in someone else's bed down here in a VRBO vacation rental. I was just in Nashville this past weekend, mainly to see my wife and son because going to too long without seeing them is just not good for my heart, you know. So it's one of those things where I've got such a great opportunity and such a short window of opportunity and such a great training, training scenario down here with Henry Hoop and Greg Jones and Kami Barzini and these coaches. And then the training partners from guys in the top of the UFC, guys at the top of Bellator that I'm kind of back and forth, you know.

But I do have training camp in my gym in Nashville, which is thriving and doing awesome with our MMA programs. then our group fitness. I actually just went back this past weekend and ran one of our our our iron pile classes. So I love connecting with them. We got an awesome group there. And I got an awesome kind of Florida family down here and Tennessee family up there, fitness community. So life is good. I'm kind of between both places. But when it comes down to training for this fight, I'm down here most of the time. All right. That makes sense. Is the goal to someday just have everything in Nashville? You know, I always go back and forth.

The goal is the goal is to build, I mean, we have, we have 3,500 square foot of mat space, 20 bags. We have, we have a world-class mixed martial arts training facility as well as a world-class group fitness facility. So, I mean, we have, we have everything we need to build, build an awesome, phenomenal team in Nashville. We just opened seven months ago, so obviously these things are going to take time. But as I continue to grow the, as I continue to grow the MMA program, as I continue to hire great, coaches recruit great training partners. The goal is to be able to have a full-time, stable training environment there. And then, I mean, Henry, Henry Hoofton, these guys, Cami and Greg, these guys are, these guys are my, the coach is going to be my coaches, I think, for the rest

of my career. So I will never get away from them, so I will always be with them and training with them for these fights. So it'll be, it'll be interesting. You hopped around early in your career earlier, I should say, and now you seem kind of steady. What changed? You know, I think one thing, and I was talking to, you know, I don't forget who I was talking about the other day, when you talk about loyalty or you talk about, you know, team or camarader or this or that, I mean, at the end of the day, this is a individual sport. I am smart enough to realize that I have a short window of opportunity. And if I sacrifice that short window of opportunity because of quote unquote loyalty or quote unquote this or quote unquote that, I'm really doing a disqualness. service to myself, my wife, and who was my future child at the time, but that was my son.

And to sacrifice that, I just wasn't going to do it. So hopping around for me was what's the best training situation, the best training scenario for me, for the individual. And if I'm firing all cylinders, if I'm where I need to be happy, healthy, and hard to kill, that's going to elevate whatever team I'm with. That's going to put my family in a financially stable situation. And at the the day this is an individual sport. I will be the first to admit that I am selfish, but I will also be the first guy to give my shirt off my back, off my back, and be the guy who comes in early with you or stays late with you and gives myself to the team and whatever team that I'm with.

So this sport and being a, looking at the sport like a business and a professional athlete or professional fighter, you have to find that fine line between juggling your individual goals and needs with the individual or the goals of the team that you're with as a whole. And I've tried to do that. And I've been a favorite and a fun guy and a leader in every single gym that I've been in. And it's working well for me. And I don't plan on stopping now. You ever faced any blowback for jumping around? What's blowback, man? It's 2018, man. We're getting blowback right now for the shirt I'm wearing and the fact that my walls are white and the fact that you've got a black shirt on. I mean,

everyone has an opinion. Everyone wants to say something. But at the end of the day, this sport's about me, you know, and I'm not afraid to admit that. And I think anybody who, who has been in the sport long enough realizes that I'm the talent, I'm the fighter, I step in the cage. I can't do it without my coaches, my training partners, my support system. But I have to make the best decision. So the blowback doesn't mean a thing. Everybody's getting blowback, whether you're at the top, the bottom, or somewhere in the middle.

So you get in this sport long enough, you get thick enough skin to realize that what people are saying doesn't really matter. And things are working well for me, and you can hate me from afar and blowback as long as you want. So that's a yes? That's a yes. No, I mean, kind of. I mean, kind of, but that's kind of the thing. Everyone loves to insert their opinions.

So, I mean, it's kind of one of those things where I'm enjoying the ride and enjoying anything anybody says about me. All right, so let's talk about something that's kind of interesting that's happened. I was bringing it up noting that you're going to be fighting in Hawaii against Brent Primis. I want to talk about that in just a second. But you're an interesting case. And here's what I mean.

So the UFC appears to be letting the, their clutch on the reins of all the talent in MMA glow a little bit. Belvoir's made some key acquisitions you know about all of them. Sage Northca just signed with one. Eddie Alvarez, your former opponent signed with one, Demetrius Johnson, and some others. But they're still a little bit different, right? Because Sage is kind of pre-prime, and I met this before,

it's not a slight, but I don't think Alvarez and Demetri's Johnson, while still very, very good fighters, I don't think they're at their absolute peak. But you did spend your prime, and currently in your prime, outside of the UFC. But it seems to have worked out for you. Like when you look around in MMA now, do you look back on your experience

and staying with Belator? I'm going to guess you have no regrets about it, but I'm wondering if you could speak about it. Yeah, I wouldn't say that I have any regrets. I'd be lying to say that my head doesn't hit the pillow and I don't think about these matchups that could possibly await me in my future or could have, I could have taken the opportunity

to take, the reins of had I tested free agency and looked at other other possibilities. But that mainly comes from the fans. That mainly comes from everybody constantly reaching out to me and tweeting and saying, dream match up this, dream match up that. Now we're talking about trades. Oh, God, I want to see Khabib and Chandler. And I want to see this and this guy in Chandler, blah, blah, blah. So of course, it plants that what if in your head. But man, when you talk about making a business, business decisions, when you talk about slowly but surely brick by boring brick, building a brand that's going to last and building a brand that is going to be extremely

lucrative for the short window of opportunity. And I keep bringing up a short window of opportunity because you're a downright fool if you think that this is a long career and that it can't be all snatched away from you at a moment's notice. So you have to make the best decision you can with the information that you're given. And I've done that time and time again. Myself, my manager, we've protected ourselves. We put ourselves in good scenarios. I've made myself somewhat of an indispensable asset by being the greatest employee Bellinthor has ever had and probably will ever have when you talk about talent, excitement, and composure outside of the cage and being a good brand ambassador outside of the cage.

And it's just, it's simple. It's simple A plus B equals C. You do the right thing. You work extremely hard. You put on exciting fights. You make yourself an indispensable asset. and, you know, when people come knocking at the door, you figure out what's next and you see what's next. And by the way, I'm by no means a spring chicken, a young spring chicken, but I'm by no means even close to pass my prime.

I think I'm still getting faster, still getting stronger, still getting more athletic. I'm eating my chicken and broccoli. I'm drinking my supplements. I'm taking care of my body. This body will last until I'm 37, 38, 40 years old if I wanted to. I think my best days of fighting are still years ahead of me. So if you think that this last contract that I signed was the last contract that I'm going to sign, you're sort of mistaken.

I have a lot of gas left in the tank, a lot of big matchups in my future, and I'm excited to see how everything unfolds. Daryon Caldwell, the Bantanway champion of Bellator, is going to be heading over to Japan taking on Kioji Hortoguchi. You must have seen that, because I know you, Michael, you must have seen that and thought, ooh, I need to call Scott, I need to put that on his radar. That might be something I'm interested in doing. right?

Immediately, man. I mean, I, you know, I got the opportunity, the blessing of fighting Akehiro Gono and retiring him. Like, I was that young guy coming up. And he was a guy who was a little bit, you know, kind of, I think maybe past his prime. And his last fight was against me. And I finished him the first round. And with that, and the couple of the Japanese fans that I've spoken to are the Japanese

managers that I've spoken to, they're like, man, you got a huge following over in Japan. You know, people love you because of that Gono fight. But, blah, blah, blah. I would love to headline a show with the Saitam, what's it called Saitama? Saitama Super Arena, yeah. Saitama Super Arena in a ring, maybe wearing wrestling shoes, if that's still allowed, you know, like something like, I mean, these days, I mean, it's about the big fights, the big opportunities, the eyeballs. It's about, it's about what gets you, what gets me excited, you know, fighting Patricki Pitbull for the third time doesn't get me excited. Fighting David Ripples for the third time doesn't get me excited, you know, like there's a couple fights.

There's definitely fights in the lightweight division that get me excited. Some of these young guys coming up, Patricio down at 45, some of the guys up to 70. I mean, there's some definite things that get me excited. And Bellator has continued to sign, like as you alluded to earlier, signed top tier talent. And not just guys that are over the hill, but Ryan Vader, who was ranked top five in the world whenever he came over. Same thing with Phil Davis and Benson, Henderson, Rory McDonald, and this welterweight tournament. Belator, and I knew this last contract I signed and then this contract I signed,

Bellator has continued to evolve and continue to grow and continue to put the right pieces in place. And just because Belator wasn't where it was at when people wanted it to be where it was at, it continued to grow and continue to build. And we got some legitimate mixed martial arts promotions out there. It's not just the UFC anymore. So it's exciting to see the growth of everything. and yes, I want cross-promotions. I want trades.

I want all kinds of different things happening. I want this MMA landscape to turn into kind of the wild, into the wild wild west and let's have some fun, man. Last question about this before we get to your premise fight. We're running short on time here a little bit. Did Rory McDonald in his fight against Musasi dissuade you a little bit about moving up? I wouldn't say that fight.

I mean, I wouldn't say that fight in general. I mean, if you're talking about a smaller opponent, going up and fighting a bigger opponent. I mean, yeah, of course, that's always the, that's always the, that's always the, you know, the, the, the scary part about coming up, Rory's, you know, six, two, and 199 pounds, probably. But, you know, I just want big fights. I want exciting fights. It's exciting to see, you know, I'm excited to watch this welterweight tournament,

see what the, see what the fallout looks like, see what, see who ends up shining at the end. And either way, I'm excited to go out there and get that lightweight strap. And then there's hopefully some big matchups after that. And I have continued to talk to Scott and Rich and these guys about signing big talent at 155. So we'll see. All right. So let's talk about this. Brent Premis, he'll be facing him December 14th at the Blaisdell Arena in Hawaii.

You have fought twice since then. You've won both. He has not fought since you guys faced each other. Why? What do you make of that? Well, I think the proof is in the pudding. We both have been fighting the same amount of time. Actually, I think he's been fighting one year longer than I have because he started an amateur

career. has eight fights and I have 22. He averages 0.4.5 fights per year, basically. So he doesn't even fight. He doesn't even average one fight per year. It's a little bit sad, to be honest with you, but good for him. You know, he's put himself in a great situation. I gave him the opportunity to fight at Madison Square Garden, the most iconic arena in the entire world. And he went out there and was able to get a win, a win over me in the biggest stage of both of our lives. And now he gets the, he gets the opportunity to have a free, a free Hawaiian vacation. He just has to get beat up to earner.

So it's, everything's working out well for him. He's doing his thing. I'm on my way to the top, and I'm not really focused on. You know, talking about him is a little tough for me because, first of all, he can't defend himself because I just, I don't, there's nothing really positive that he can say. There's nothing, there's nothing of substance that he can say that doesn't sound like complete BS because he is a part-time fighter. He doesn't fight a lot, and he doesn't deserve to step in the cage with me.

So I've gotten, over this last training camp, I've decided there's really not a ton of things to say about him, besides the fact that I'm going to go out there, and I've never actually wanted to inflict as much bodily harm on another individual as I do for this fight. I've always wanted to win. I've always wanted to be dominant. I've always wanted to score points. I've always wanted to be dominant, but I've never actually wanted to beat someone within an inch of their life and watch them gasped for error and questioned their whole entire life. this is that fight. This is the fight that this is the fight that it's going to happen.

So what is it? Is it the sense that there's a rivalry there that you haven't had the chance to get your title back? That it's, you thought that the wind was the fluke. Like what is the source exactly of the animosity? Because maybe he was talking at first, but I haven't heard from him in a little bit of a while. So what is the source of the hostility? I think, yeah, I mean, there is no rivalry. There is no, there is no, oh, this is going to be a good fight.

let's be let's call a spade a spade this is a world-class mixed martial artist going out there and fighting fighting a guy who who can't even hold his opponent's jockstrap you know that that's what this is um and i'm going to go out there and finish him in the first round and that's going to be that but i think it's i think it's just a culmination of everything the fact that i've had to wait for so long i mean most of the time most of the time when you have that kind of scenario happen an injury um is the reason or a win is by the result of the result of an injury. Most of the time it's an immediate rematch, right? And we begged

for the fight. I begged for the fight. And we just couldn't make it happen. So I thought the highest touted prospect in the lightweight division in Goyti Amuichi, beat him within an inch of his life, and then went out there and finished Brandon Gertz since then, as

all the while begging to get this fight back. And the fact that he's been sitting up in Oregon sitting on this belt teaching kids to Jiu-Jitsu is just, it's a travesty. It's holding up the division. He needs to just step into that cage, take his beating like the man, like a man he is. And I just think that's what needs to happen.

And it's going to be violent. Well, you have certainly sold me. It's December 14th, Bellator and USO present Primus v. Chandler 2. It's the main event. It'll air on Paramount Network and DeZone. Michael Chandler, stay tan and jacked. Good, sir. Hey, always. If you ain't tan and Jack, you ain't doing it right.

There he goes. All right. Thank you so much to him. And we go to our last, but certainly not our least guest. I am so excited about this, man. We're talking about one of the most positive guys in martial arts. Makes a big difference in everybody's life. Does so much good work in the community and is a trainer to one of the top stars in the sport. We're joined now on Skype by the inimitable Hennar Gracie. There he is. Look at that. How you doing, Hennar? What's up, Luke? Where are you? Are you at the Gracie Academy? I'm here at Gracie University headquarters, yeah, Southern California. Boy, you want to talk about a rock solid Skype connection.

Look at that HD. Amazing. Thank you so much for that. All right, man. Let's get to us. First of all, are you going to be cornering, Brian? I'm assuming on Saturday, right? That's correct, yes.

When do you head out there? We head out Tuesday. Standard procedure. Show up Tuesday. Workouts Wednesday. cut the weight, maybe press conference Thursday, weigh in Friday, fight Saturday, fly home Sunday, and celebrate. Certainly.

All right, let's talk about this moment for Brian. You as his trainer, seems like his friend and mentor, before I ask what it means for Brian, what does it actually mean for you to see one of your students ascend to heights like this? Well, it's not just, right, one of your students. And, you know, everyone's asking me, you know, how excited we are for the belt

and what a big deal this is this weekend. And I smile and I nod and I go, yeah, yeah, it's exciting, you know. But the reality is, and this is true for anyone who's known Brian since he, you know, since he was a kid. And for me, it was when he was 12, 13 years old when he first came in for class after having gotten beaten up in a street fight and then signed up just to learn how to defend himself. Anyone who knows Brian from that era knows that Brian already won the title have made it out of the challenges that he faced. and the difficult circumstances for him and his family that he faced early on, and really the life that he lived, which was not by any means a positive one, you know, by conventional standards,

for Brian to have made it out of what he was involved with and to now be competing as a professional athlete on the level that he's competing at, he already won. So for me, I look at this and I go, oh, man, this is like, this is all extra because there were many times throughout his earlier years where we didn't know if Brian was going to make it out, you know, there were times where I wouldn't see him for three months at a time because of challenges and, you know, drug, I'm not drugs,

but gangs and other things that he was involved with, no drugs, to be clear, but gangs and other things that he was involved with back then, and it was just such a negative lifestyle that I wouldn't hear about him for three months and he would show up and he would say, man, I lost one of my best friends, who just got shot. And I'm like thinking all I can think is, man, it's your best friend right now. At some point, it could be you.

and it was a very, you know, interesting balance of being there for him as a teacher and as someone who could listen to him and can, he can help him reflect and try to make the right choices. So for me, you know, listen, we're already celebrating. This is already, the being here is already a big tree itself. And yes, winning the UFC featherweight championship would be, would be phenomenal. Really for Brian, right? I'm just so excited for him knowing what he came from that this would be something so meaningful for him and his family. given the background and given his sterling ability to just blow through the division in the way that he did.

It had some tough moments, but certainly he came out on top, right? How unique of a student is Brian Ortega? Well, so, listen, Brian, what made him most unique, it was never his athleticism. It was never his power or his speed. It was Brian's ability to absorb information and then implement, you know, at a faster rate than really anyone else. And this started very early on, and we noticed it from the very beginning. Even as a kid, he was doing adult classes, but he was only 13 years old, training with grown men. And we would show him a technique, and he would nail it, nail, nail, nail it.

And within his first year, Brian was the kid that if you showed up, let's just say to Gracie, the Academy back then, and you want to try a class. And you're a big guy, and you show up and say, yeah, I'm not sure if this stuff works. I'll be like, okay, go roll with a little blue-eyed skinny kid over there. And Brian would choke you out in, you know, just a few minutes, and then you would sign up. So he was like our undercover enforcer back then. And that's where I gave him the big name, triangle or T-City. Triangle City was the original name, and then it got too long to say, too much of a mouthful. And I just started calling him T-City because he would just triangle choke everyone.

They would grab them. They would manhandle them until they were tapping out. And that just became the case. And it started with triangles. And now it's evolved to so many other skill sets that we developed over the years. And he's utilized so effectively there in the UFC. But it really, it's an implementation speed that is unique. and I've seen it with other top talent that I've worked with,

but Brian really does stand alone in his ability to learn something and then apply it in the chaos, right? And that's why, you know, for so many other fighters, when they get deep into that, you know, second, third, and now fourth and fifth round, the championship rounds, Brian hasn't been tested there too much, but when they get deeper into the fight, things start to get, you know, more predictably sluggish and ineffective,

whereas Brian, he's just as dangerous in the third round as he is in the first round, and we know based on his, you know, unique records of consecutive third round finishes that he holds. There's no surprise to me that that's a record that he holds because of the fact that he thrives in the chaos, he thrives in the less than favorable circumstances. How would you describe his jiu jihisbee to somebody

who just didn't have a, just didn't know exactly what they were looking at? You know, it's amazing. I was saying this to, we had Max on earlier in the show. I went back and I watched all of Brian's fights in the UFC. I tried to explain to people, usually a submission, you have to, sometimes you can snatch it, but you usually have to, like,

build towards it. You have to take steps to get there. And it's not that he doesn't, but when he finds a head or he finds an arm, he just locks into the groove immediately. It's very rare. You can find someone like that. As his predominant trainer in this regard, how would you describe, it's a broad question, how would you describe his jiu-jitsu? man it's tough but um one way to think about it is if you were if you put you know two jihutsu practitioners inside of like a large barrel and you close it at the top of the hill and then you rolled that barrel down the hill by the time the barrel got to the bottom of the hill brian would have the other person in a chokehold so brian has a unique ability where jiu jih Tzu is even though jutsu is seemingly to the spectator

a very unpredictable sport where they're just wrestling and flying all over the place it actually is very systematic and what brian has done was well is he's taken a non-systematic approach to the systematic art of jiu-jitsu. And in that sense, he's setting techniques up and he's catching submissions and creating opportunities out of less conventional positions holds grips. And that creativity, that freedom to express, that's very artistic in a way, is what's unique about Brian is that he doesn't set up a triangle choke in the way that everyone else set up a triangle choke.

And he's not setting up a d'arse or a guillotine choke in the way that everyone else is setting it up. And many of these unique setups, we talk about, right, in the gym here, and we go over them, we practice them, and we kind of, you know, prepare for them. But many of them we don't talk about. Many of them, he wasn't taught these. And many of them, he didn't do it for the first time until the actual fight happens. And that's what's unique is Brian is not limited by any form or structure.

He's the most fluid person when it comes to applying these techniques in a dynamic, ever-changing fight against the opponent. So that's what I would say is creativity with setups. He's not following the conventional patterns. And that's what makes him so hard to train for. You know what I also like about Brian is he's got swag, you know? He's a young guy, good looking kid. He's got confidence about him.

But in an age, and you know this, Hennar, even in the jiu-jitsu world, it's like, oh, my God, it's just everyone's trolling everybody else. And there's these ridiculous things that happen on social media. He sort of stays above the fray, doesn't he? So he's the cool guy, but without having to resort to. He doesn't get too far away from being a martial artist while being a fighter. And I think in a day and age like this, that's rare. And it's a, it's a welcome refresher.

Yeah. And I think it's, I think you just nailed it on the head there at the end. MMA has created something very interesting, right, where the elements that make up MMA are martial arts. But now, after 25 years, MMA, the acronym is a sport of its own, is an entity of its own. So it's also a spectator sport of its own. And there are many people today who are coming up in MMA without the values, the integrity, the respect, and the discipline that martial arts provides. And no one's perfect, right?

Even the most martial artists of martial arts in MMA are not perfect people. But you can tell when there is a, when there is a thread and there is an element to their training and their upbringing in the arts that is actually the martial arts, right? the traditions and the values of martial arts that were so common before mixed martial arts when everyone practiced their individual karate, taekwondo, jujitsu, kung fu, and they were all segmented. But now that it's been 25 years of a kind of a combined entity, there are people who are only a product of that entity and are just learning from their 25-year-old kids today who were not even born when the UFC started, let's you say, and now they're a product of that mentality

where it's about money, it's about fighting, it's about violence, it's about entertainment, where martial artist, it's not about any of that. It's about self-defense, discipline, and ultimately, you know, even empathy to a certain extent, right? Like, one of the greatest elements of Jiu-Jitsu is the ability to neutralize violence without violence. So we teach that to our students, and Brian learn that his whole life.

So what you're seeing now is someone who has the spotlight, but still has those martial arts values before MMA, the sport, even though he's applying it in the context of the sport, which is beautiful to see. And you see it with many others, and one that immediately jumps out as a guy like Liotto, Mucita, who is the most consummate martial artist and most respectful person in the cage, yet he's competing in a sport of MMA.

And the question is why is that? Because he, like the Gracie family, is a multi-generational family of martial artists with those traditions and values. And I think that's, you know, today, unfortunately, it's kind of like the minority, if you would, right? It's kind of these martial artists have become the minority in a sport of MMA, which, for better or worse, has somewhat, you know, stripped some of those values away. And it's understandable, although it's unfortunate.

And the other unintended and concerning byproduct of that is now you have civilians who are not professional competitors, who are learning the sport of MMA, but aren't getting those values. And they're basically being taught these weapons of mass destruction, right, chokes and arm bars and, you know, striking techniques and all the elements of MMA. But they're not being taught the values of martial arts. And as a result, they become liabilities to society. You see what I'm saying? Someone who learns martial arts and the respect that comes with it is not going to use it for the wrong reasons. But someone who learns the elements of MMA and does not have the respect or the integrity could very well use it for the wrong reasons. And we can contemplate what many of those reasons would be.

We don't even need to. They can commit crimes with these very skills as I've seen happen. And now with the very video recording society, we've seen videos of it, right? So that's a big concern, but that's topic for a different day, I suppose. Let's get back to Brian here for just a second. Max is a tough fight for anybody, and you guys know that better than I do. You made a point about Brian having this ability to apply critical thinking skills in these really terrible, very difficult moments. What makes to me in my mind this fight so interesting is who's going to make the fight their kind of fight?

Because as you know, Henner, Max is very, when he wants to be, because sometimes he'll just throw down, right? But when he wants to be, he can really sit behind the jab and move very carefully and mine the distance and shut down the takedown. That seems to be the biggest threat, right? if your guy thrives in chaos, the other guy can create a system where there is no chaos. Yeah. So, you know, this is everyone's question, right? And listen, we have nothing but respect, you know, back to the martial values in this situation, the highest level of respect for Max and what he's accomplished and his talents as a fighter.

I know Max's coach, Ryland Lazarus and Gracie Technics there in Hawaii, really good friend, amazing juditsu practitioner under Pedro Sauer there. So it's very much like all in the family for this one. And Max, you know, is an incredible striker. And yes, when he wants to be very loose and very hard to get a hold of. But I told Brian, I said, Brian, listen, what has happened is you have, you know, you've essentially done something very unique where initially he was simply a threat of submission, 100% submission concern and a threat there for, initially it was very much of a submission threat

to the division. But what has happened is he came in, he knocked out, he knocked out Frankie Edgar, right? And when he did that, all of a sudden, the whole division is on notice now. And the question is, what do you watch out for? Right? And I said, Brian, this is very, this is beautiful because it shows what, you know, amazing development you've had in your striking game with Coach James there and the rest of his team. So he's done something very beautiful where, you know, someone who's never been finished

gets knocked out on their feet in the first round, and you have, you know, arguably the tightest jujitsu submission in MMA right now. So it creates a situation where he's threatening in both categories, and it really boils down to, yeah, what kind of fight they want to make it? What's my favorite part about the whole fight? Because there's so much to not be predictable about this is that we have five rounds, you know? And I think that that's very interesting. And in my opinion, knowing what I know about Brian, five rounds is an advantage.

Because, you know, like I said, we've seen it in, his three-round fights for so many years, whereas the fight went on, he became more dangerous towards the end. And I suspect the same will be true as we creep into those championship rounds. You know, it's amazing to me is if he gets, I mean, I have the highest level of respect for Max Holloway. If Brian beats him, where do you think Brian would rank pound for pound? Because I honestly believe if you finish Frankie Edgar and you defeat or finish Max Holloway, holy crap, man, you are doing something very, very different than the rest of your contemporaries. Where would that put him?

Listen, it put them towards the top. But, you know, it's a lot of people outside like to speculate about that, but Brian's not speculating about that, nor are we as his closest, you know, coaches and friends. It really is one fight at a time. And we have such a major feat here in Max Holloway. And, you know, I'm as excited as everyone else to just see that these two artists go in there and do what they do best. But I know that if he steals this deal, it, I think it'll skyrocket him, you know, toward near the top of that list.

Now, before we say goodbye and we really appreciate your time, I want to make sure we have to get this in. You have launched, you and I believe hereon together, if I'm not mistaken, have launched a GoFundMe. It's called Justice for Jamal. I'm going to tweet it out from my account. Hopefully we can get M.MA Fyant to retweet it. So let me see if I can understand this. There's a Syrian refugee who lives in the UK who was bullied. Why are you raising money for him?

Yeah. So we've done this in the past. We're kids who are really horrifically bullied in wherever they live. And we become aware of it because oftentimes it's caught on video. You know, people let us know. We find out about it. And then we sponsor them to come to California

to basically be bullyproofed, right? Because that's what we do as a business every single day is we empower people to take a stand and defend themselves. And we've done this successfully for other kids in the past. And this kid's in the UK. And every time I've done it for other kids

in the past, you know, after we do it, and we should put a video on the internet of the transformation and before and after it. Remarkable. Literally one week of training here at Gracie University

and everything changes for this child and their ability to assert themselves. And in many cases, they're never bullied again. In a recent case, Austin McDaniel, five years later, he became a Marine

after graduating high school after getting beat up on this video. We followed him in, we changed it, went to the Marines. And now he's just a monster, strong guy, he's a handsome, athletic,

and just everything changed. because something changed. And we see this kid, Jamal, who got really, really badly bullied, him and his sister in the UK at their school. There are Syrian refugees living there. And we thought, wow, so many times people have asked us, how can they help us make these transformations more possible more frequently? And we saw this one and said, man, we can absolutely help him. And he's dropped out of school. So everything is going down for this family right now.

So we launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise the funds that would allow Jamal, his sister, and his family to come to California, spend at least one week with us training here to really get him off to the right start and bully proof him, build that confidence, give him the tools to defend himself on the highest level, and then send him back and then sponsor his continued training in the UK. So the reality is anyone who does Jiu-Jitsu knows

that's all this kid needs is, you know, some attention, some good instruction, and some motivation, and really the belief that he's worth defending. And we can provide that, you know, with the week here in California. So we're going to make it happen. and if you could put out the link and people can donate there and any surplus funds,

we're not charging for our time at all. We're going to fly them out. We're going to teach them for free. And these are alter-a-couple travel expenses and training when they return back to the UK so they can keep this skill alive. And it is a perishable skills. We want to keep them going once we get them back to where they live. Yeah, I just tweeted it out.

We'll definitely make sure we get the word out about that. By the way, as a former Marine myself, I have to say thank you very much for doing that. You could change lives with martial arts. Before you go, Henner, let me just ask you about this. There's a point I'll make and then I'll ask a question about it. I have to tell you, I'm not worried about the future of MMA, but I am worried that the kinds of really elite black belts that used to make their way over, like a Brian Ortega,

but certainly I'm thinking more of like a Deming and Maya, you know, Fabicio Verdum, these kinds of guys. A lot of them are just going to stay in Jiu-Jitsu now. They can make money that way, which is a good thing, right? You kind of want that to a degree. but I do wonder like what's going to happen to Jiu-Jitsu and MMA without them. However, I have to tell you, the UFC signing, Cron Gracie, wow, you want to talk about good news. For folks who are not familiar with him, I know they just know him as Hicks and son.

Even in MMA, his jiu-jitsu is almost without parallel. Can you just tell the audience what they're in store for with this kid, please? Yeah. So my cousin, Crone, just got signed to the UFC. Very exciting. People who don't know, just get ready for every touch, every contact that is made to be a deadly one for his opponent. That's how dangerous it is. And I think that, you know, I think people see some of that with Brian, right?

They feel that if he gets a hold of you, the fight's over, as Joe Rogan has said so enthusiastically. And that will continue to be the case when Crone makes his way over to the UFC. He's incredibly talented. He's been working a lot on his distance and his standing game. So, you know, he's done incredibly well in Japan against some really tough opponents. So it's the perfect time to bring him over. I'm excited to see as much as anybody else. But yeah, in terms of there is a difference.

You're right. There is a difference in the Shih Tzu. There are lots of black belts. And then there are, you know, there is the next tier above that. And Krohn, absolutely, you know, it falls under that category. So the world can be very excited to see someone who goes in there with us, very specific, plan, known to him, known to his opponents, but still unstoppable. And those are sometimes the most beautiful ones to watch.

Don't forget to donate to Justice for Jamal. They're almost there. They just need a little bit more of a donation, and they will reach their goal. It's for a phenomenal cause. Henner, it's a real thrill for me to get to talk to you. I could talk to you about Jitsu theory and all this kind of stuff that's happening for a million years, but I know you're a busy man with a lot to do. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for making time for me.

Everyone go donate to Justice for Jamal, and best of luck. not wait to see you corner. I cannot wait to see Brian Ortega in action. Thank you very much. Everyone out there, follow me, Hennar Gracie on Instagram, Twitter, and gracie university.com. For anyone out there who's kind of couch surfing, but not really getting down with Jiu-Jitsu, we got you covered. There you go. One of the best. Hennar Gracie. Thank you so much, Henner. There we goes. All right, man. What a thrill for me that is. Cannot wait for Saturday. I cannot wait for Saturday. It is going to be a ridiculous night of fights. All right. It is time now, ladies and gentlemen, for the sound off.

Okay, there we go to my friend in the back. Yep. He is the, I don't know, what are you? Yeah, at this point, I don't even know. I'm trying to think of some stupid-ass comparison. But here you are, Danny Sigora. Time for the sound off. This is where we take your calls.

Number to call, as always, 844-866-2468. Or if you're international, you can email the MMA hour at boxmedia. That's right. All right, man. T us up here. By the way, can you make sure? that we retweet from MMA fighting

the header thing they're this close to getting across the finish line I saw just a few hundred right yeah they were asking for 25 grand

and they're at 24 640 something like that so they're almost there just in a little bit more all right what do we got on store take it away

my show I know this is an MMA show but the biggest fight over the weekend was obviously you know Tyson Fury versus

Deonté Wilder so let's talk about that we have a few few questions about that, but we do have a many questions, so don't worry, we'll get to those in a second. All right. All right, so let's get started. Hey, Luke Thomas, this is David calling from Toronto, Canada,

home of the 2019 NBA champion Raptors. My question is about the Deonté Wilder and the Tyson Fury fight. In the 12th round, when Deontay Wilder got that knocked down, do you think that saved them from losing

the fight and giving the decision of a draw, or Do you think the decision of a draw was inevitable anyways because of the nature of boxing judging, just the way that we know the sport is corrupt and the American guy was going to get the favorable call in the United States? Thank you very much and keep up the good work. So this is the great question. I don't know why people keep calling it like boxing judging. It's like, dude, it's the same commission.

Yeah. The exact same commission. Different judges. By the way, one of the judges was Mexican. I think one was Japanese. none of them was Canadian. None of them were from the United States, none of them. And none from the UK either, as I understand it. So just keep that in mind.

But the answer is one of the scorecards was 113 and 113. So even if they had given that to Deonté Wilder, it would have been 10-9, which would not have been enough to sway it. Fury would have won. So I guess technically, if you believe that he was going to win no matter what, then there's nothing I can say to you. But if you believe that they're just bad judges, then yes, it would have made a bit of a difference. How did you score the fight by then? Seven rounds to five. Well, I mean, that's not quite right because they're 10-8s.

But essentially seven rounds to five for, I thought it was a comfortable win for Tyson-Fury. What about you? Yeah. I didn't keep track of every single rounds, but I think he won. I gave Wilder, I think, the second, and then the other two rounds where he dropped. I think it's about right, yeah. Where he dropped Fury. I cannot get over him getting up.

I still can't. Yeah, I can't believe. When people took the call of, by the way, Paulie Malaghi, I know people don't like him. Phenomenal job. Phenomenal job calling out the judging. Al Bernstein did a great job. Shouts to Mara Rinalo, who killed it. But the people who took that clip, and then

when Fury gets up, they put the Undertaker music on top of it, was actually kind of awesome, I have to admit. I mean, as soon as I heard Mamma Mia from Mara, I'm like, all right, this fight's done, it's a wrap. I'm like, wow. And then he gets up, it was straight up, like, you know, have you ever seen any zombie movie?

The first infected, they always have a good emphasis on them where it's like, You know, they're dead. And then all of a sudden, boom, you're going back to life. That was literally what I saw. I'm like, are you kidding me? He's insane. When his head bounced, that's what I was like, it's over.

Him getting up is, I don't know how you medically explain something like that. I've never seen anything like that. I believe that's called magic. The magic of boxing. There you go. Amazing. All right. Let's move on and let's keep talking about the scoring here.

Of that fight. I mean, this is Luke from Dallas. And I guess I just wanted to know which boxing sin you think was more egregious. Giving Tyson Fury and Deonti Wilder a tie or giving Ganadi Gilevkin and Canel Averaz in their first fight a tie. Thank you guys. Love what you do. Have a great day. I would say the first one. Sorry, what am I said? Fury versus Wilder, I think it's easier to call. Yeah, yeah. That one was harder to call, in my judgment. Yeah.

Uh, this one was not a difficult call. Um, but if you ever watch my live chat, I've talked about this before, this idea that like, um, how do I explain it? You have subjective criteria. You know, you knock them down. You don't have to go 108, but the tradition is you go 108. Right. Yeah. Um, but more than that, especially in MMA where people don't understand this.

If you've never sat ringside or caged side on a fight, it does look different than if you're watching back or even on TV. It doesn't feel the same. You may sell out of the action, especially. It's 100%. And so it's hard to explain. It's like you have this experiential difference. You have your own criteria about what matters to you, what doesn't. You have the judges don't sit together.

They sit at different positions. So if a fight is taking place far away from you at the other end, it can be hard to see versus if it's right on top of you and a big shot lands, it can really have an impact. All of those things, plus incompetence, plus a bad scoring system that just lets you have latitude. I've said this before, people like, you could have a fight where X. There's a case for X to win and a case for Y to win. It's like, let me get this straight. You can have a judging system where either guy can win

and you're wondering why you're upset with the results. Why wouldn't you be if you live in a world where it's possible and plausible that either person could put together a winning effort? It's a super bankrupt way to adjudicate athletic contests. But it's the one we have. And as I mentioned in the way in, it's the one we're stuck with, baby. Yeah. I would say this one was probably more of a, for me this was a lot easier to judge than the Triple G Conello. I have a much easier time judging MMA fights than I do boxing.

And the Triple G Conello, although I thought Triple G in the first one, he did a lot better. I still thought it was pretty competitive. Like, you know, it was back and forth, you know. With this one, it was clear that sure Wilder had the power and, you know, he's probably the biggest power puncher right now. But it was clear to me that Fury was the better boxer. And, you know, just the way he was tagging him up with a jab and moving. For me, over that course of 12 rounds, I saw who the better fighter is. With Triple G, Canello, it was still kind of up in the air, even until the very end.

King Moe was a big believer that Canello won the first one, but take that for what it's worth. All right, well, let's keep the boxing theme, boxing-esque, because this is not exactly pertain to the fight, but, you know, somebody from our team. Hey, Mr. Thomas, Mr. Zagura. This is Lou from Dallas. Same caller, by the way. My question is, you know, after every big fight, it seems like every weekend, people want to bring up who's the new goat, who's the goat, you know? And I guess after the wilder fury fight, I want to ask you guys, is Esther Lynn the goat's photography?

Because somebody's pictures, see who's getting, we're crazy. Thank you guys so much. Watch a show every week. Love you guys. Stay safe. Have a great day. We love you too. Esther Lynn, my God.

Did you see her photos from... Last five weeks. Yeah, Mark Muramundi tweeted it out. Insane. You know, here's a really easy way to understand it. Who is the most talented person at MMA fighting? It's Esther, right? She is the most pound for pound for what...

In terms of their individual... I mean, she's obviously a better photographer than us. I don't mean that. What I mean is at doing what she does, she is better than the rest of us at doing what we do. She is far and away the most talented person at MMA fighting. And, dude, it's like, how do you replace that? I mean, dude, they could fire me now and replace me.

I'm not that indispensable. You can't replace her. What are they going to hire you? You'd be up there to Snapchat with your iPhone and shit, you know? She's, dude, she's one of a kind. Yeah, she's got a very unique guy in. Let me say this. So, let me say this. I also think that he doesn't get enough credit.

I think he's also very exceptional. Is Ryan Loco? He does stuff for PFL and some other businesses. Ryan Loco is a very good photographer as well. And not enough people recognize that. So I'd like to take a moment to do that. All right. So we got boxing out of the way.

All right, finally. Talk about M.A. All right. Hey, this is the Jank calling from Gainesville. Just wondering, where does RDA go from here? He's kind of stuck in that in between welterweight and lightweight. just too big to make those cuts to 55, it would seem. And then now it's coming back to haunt him because these other guys coming down from, you know,

200 pounds or so the size and the strength seems to be an issue as much as the technical ability. So where does he go now? Also, how do I pay the $20 to get unblocked? Tell me where to send it. It's at Shady Swisha. And sorry, I back talk to you. Thanks, guys. I'm about to make some money.

I don't tolerate that sass. RDA. So I made this point when he fought Usman. First of all, Usman, people were like, oh, Usman's just better. I am perfectly willing to believe that Usman is just better. But Usman was clearly also physically bigger and stronger. It's just a reality, okay? So both can be true.

It's not one or the other. And I want to take anything away from Kumar Usman. Yes, he's the better fighter, hands up, I admit it. But he was also bigger. And so I made this point, everybody when I did I not say this when M.M.A. beat on Thursday? if somebody was like down a weight class and they jump up and they have immediate success

everyone goes there it is there it is cutting weight overrated and then invariably they begin to lose fights because that's overrated in terms of what value provides not cutting weight it's good for your health I don't know how competitively good it is and then I'm like this is the point it's like dude why do you think he was cutting to 55

for that reason it's because you got Kamaru Usman's up there that are just too talented and too big to deal with. That's why he was cutting out. So the answer is 165 is the answer. Yeah, it's, it's tough, man, because if you look at the guys he fought at Walterweight that weren't wrestlers, you know, he beat Robbie Lawler, who was a former champion, Neil Magny, who's very game, and Terrick Saffidding, who obviously strike first champ, former strike first champ. But then once you run into

the wrestlers, that's the real test. Because in the striking, you can be a little undersized and, you know, have success, you know, be successful just fine. It's mostly, you know, manipulating your body, you know, around your, your opponents. Here, you're actually, you know, you got to, you got to, you know, engage in the grappling, which, you know, size always plays a big difference there. So for me, to finally see, like, somebody be successful going up a weight class, I want to see him against the wrestler, you know, a striker. It tells you something, but not, you know, not the whole picture.

My guess next for RDA, man, if that 165 division doesn't come up next, fine, stay, Stick around Waltaway, but be a little smarter with, you know, with the type of matchups you get. You know, back to back, Colby Covington and Camaro Usman, you know, probably outside of Tyron Woodley, the two best wrestlers in that division. Obviously, you know, Ben Asker now in there, but, you know, he hasn't officially made his debut. Man, just get some strikers, you know. These wrestlers are done. These guys want the title, man, and you got to go through absolute murderers to do it. Very true.

All right. All right. Let's talk about Joe Schilling and something that happened during his fight. Oh, yeah. Hi, Luke and Danny. This is Jason calling from White Plains, New York. Just one of your thoughts on a fight from the prelimbs in the Bellator show. Not sure if you saw it this weekend since there was a lot of MMA,

but it was a fight that we Schilling and Will Morris. Will Morris's corner through in the towel after a tough first round, but it's debatable. Maybe you could have came back out and done something in that fight. Do you think it was a good decision on Will Morris's corner to throw and tell for his fight against Joe Schilling? Thanks again. Have a going. So, by the way, I'm going to talk about that fight on the Monday morning analyst coming up next.

So we get right to it. As I understand it, I believe what it happened was, first of all, Will Morris took, I'm not here to be demeaning, but he took a serious beating. Okay. Joe Schilling was all over him, like White on Rice, and took virtually no damage. and I also think that the right arm or hand or something of Morris was broken because he had trouble. It was dangling a little bit. He had trouble moving it. I think it was part of the equation. If they had just stopped it because of the ass whipping, I would not have, I wouldn't have mind it at all. But I think they stopped it because it's like, dude, you're getting beat up and you have real no way to defend yourself.

By the way, that break could get worse. It could get into the skin or God only knows whether complication medically could happen. And so big shouts to the corner of Will Morris for having the willingness. And he, did you see his, do him protest? He was bitter, Will Morris. Yeah. What are you doing? This is ridiculous. I can keep going.

And his corner was like, no, you definitely cannot. That's what the sport needs. And these people who protect these guys from themselves. I said this before. Everyone's like, you ask the fighter, what about your thing about your corner and not stopping it? Good. I'm glad they didn't stop it. Why are you asking the fighter?

the whole idea is that the corner is supposed to have decision-making skills over them, not in concordance or in accordance with them. Anyway, there you go. Yeah, it was nice seeing that because it wasn't like he was getting only smoked in the stand-up department, and we know that he's, you know, Joe Schilling is an excellent striker, so you're like, all right, maybe if you take the fight to the ground, you know, he also took a bit of a baiting on the ground, and Joe Schilling's ground game was looking good.

So, yeah, I mean, there was, you know, with a broken hand, very little chance for a comeback. We need to see more of that. And, you know, take a page out of guys like Mark Hunt, you know, what, 13 and 13 and, you know, still a top star in MMA and, you know, at the top of his weight class. Look, in boxing, maybe, you know, it becomes a little harder because losses mean a lot, but not an MMA. So take advantage of that, you know? Fight for another day. Fair enough.

Yeah. All right. Here we're going to touch. All right, we'll see. This is a price question. All right, we'll see. Think West. Hey, Luke, it's Bryce calling from Coast MMA again.

I had a fun question for you. If you had a chance to pick any rapper to fight in the UFC or any other MMA promotion, who would it be? To be past or present. My pick would be Sean Price, the late and great. Ran to that guy in the airport one time, and man, he was huge. Put six months of training on him and he's a beast. Love the show. Cheers.

Who's your prospect? Ooh, it's got to be Wiz Khalifa, right? Nah, get out of. You know he trains? Yeah, so? Okay, well, I'm not saying he's Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm just saying... Have you seen his training?

It's better than most. It's better than CM Punk? Whiz Khalifa could beat CM Punk. Want to bet me? Bet you. Bet you. I don't know. That's a tough one.

He has been training. He's also younger. Now, I don't know how his rap lifestyle fits into... Right, right, right, right. What about Snoop Dog? Did you see him, you know, sparring? Was Daniel Seraphime? 60 pounds, wet and wearing boots?

He's got that jab, that reach. EZE was right about him. Your boy Takashi 6-9? Bro, he's got problems. he's got problems. He does have a problem. Who would be a good one? I guess 50 was kind of jacked, right?

I mean, he still is. At one point, 50 has sort of become a meme now with, you know, in 2018. But at one point, I mean, 50's a big dude. He was a scary guy. And I think he did some boxing training. I know he's close to Mayweather or so. All these guys, you know, it would be Sean Price because if you'd know anything about his rap, he would always make fun of gangster rappers for talking about guns and not throwing hands.

That was a constant theme in his. Maybe he can walk out to one of his songs. In fact, in from the song Onionhead, Gangsta Rappers Can't Fight so they rap about guns. It's actually the line. So yeah, maybe it would be Sean Price. Rest in peace. There you go. I don't know if you know this rapper, but Chief Keefe?

I do know Chief. Didn't Chief Keefe, wasn't he, didn't Takashi 69 put out a hit on him? Not what's alleged? It's the other way around. But, yeah, Takashi was talking smack about Chief Keev. Chief Keeves legit. I mean, there's videos, tons of videos of him scrapping on YouTube that you can look up And he's actually a pretty good thing.

Did you ever see Sean Price slap a fan on stage in Chile? No. A fan ran up on stage. So Sean Price slapped him. Like hard. Like, bow, like knocked him sideways.

How big is Sean Price? He's big. I mean, he's dead. He's dead now. But he was big boy. Yeah. He was smoked a lot. He was a lot.

He's, Yeah, I would agree. Drake would probably be at the bottom of my list. All right. Let's talk about the start time of all these, you know, I have a May events. All right. It was a long weekend.

They're awful. But go ahead. Yeah, it was bad. Luke, Danny, love the show. But what's up with the UFC have in six fights on a main card? I mean, I was falling asleep by the hunt. Willisike, be honest. I did see the co-made of Maine, though, which were really great.

it's over at like 1 a.m. Eastern time. It's really not ideal. Sometimes I think, just in life in general, and that definitely applies here in the U.S.C. Sometimes less is more. And I think the big Fox shows are perfect the way they are set up. Let me know your thoughts.

So he is correct. The big Fox shows are perfect. They start at like what? Some 8 p.m., some 9 p.m. Yeah, 8. And then they go to 10, 10 and some change, depending on how the main event goes. It's four fights.

Four fights, it's perfect. That is exactly how it should go. It's been a disaster. I want to say that the Fox deals been a disaster because the Fox deals is complicated, multifaceted arrangement, and then each aspect of that deserves to be weighted accordingly.

What I would say is that the deal put itself over fan interest in a number of different ways. Number one, with the volume of shows that I'm not sure that the fans really asked for, and number two, or really are even serviced by, and two, the start and run time, starting at 10, having six-fight main cards, and then allotting 30 minutes essentially for each fight, so you would run up until one or past it. These were aspects of the deal that were made to benefit the deal and not fans, and I am desperately hoping and have been told that there might be some reasons for optimism as we transition over to ESPN, because holy shit, that is unbearable. And it has been a real drag trying to, I'll be clear about this.

I only do on my personal YouTube channel, I'll do a post-fight show. I would do them for the fight night shows, but there's too many of them, and they go too late. The paper views end earlier for crying out loud. So they'd get more, I mean, this is a small consolation, but they'd get more for me if they did anything to service the fan who cares, but they don't. So there you go. Yeah, start time, I mean, 10 p.m. wouldn't be that bad if it were a four-fight main card, but six fights, Jesus. You know, they do drag on. Or just do six fights, but do fight past pacing.

Oh, yeah. But they can't because they have added. All the commercials, yeah. One of the best things, and I love watching live sports, but if you're ever, you know, unable to catch the fights and you go back and watch them the next day and you have it recorded on your DVR and you can just run through them, that's the best.

No commercial. Fair enough. All right. Now, let's talk about women's M.A. Hey, this is Marissa from Lincoln, Nebraska. I hear like every week on all these different M&A podcast that women don't listen. Well, I do every single week religiously. I appreciate that.

Thank you for guys. Thank you guys for doing what you do. I enjoy listening to you guys every single day. I don't necessarily have a question, more of a comment. If I did have a question, I think I would just ask any fancy bites you would like to see. What would they be? women and female, any weight class, as long as they're active. I want to hear active fighter, fantasy.

Fikes. Thank you. All right. Women's MMA, fantasy matchup. Go. Well, first of all, I've looked at my YouTube stats. My viewers are 96.3% male. It's like a Jordan Peterson lecture up in my audiences.

So it's dudes, okay? As for the question, ooh, fantasy, but it has to be active. that's a tough one I would say Pena versus Rousey but Rousey's not active so neither is just Juliana

Man that's a tough one Do you have one in mind? I mean Mine is already booked Nunes Cyborg Yeah I think

It's a great one I think the biggest threat to Cyborg has to be Amanda Nunes In my opinion I don't see anyone else being any other women out there you know, posting as big as a threat as Nunes posts is.

Another fight that I would like to watch, and I think it could happen, and I think it likely will. Holly Holm versus Amanda Nunes. That'd be fun. Sure. That's another great one. I'm trying to think, I mean, Gina Carano's not active, but there's some part of me that wishes she would still compete or, you know, had not stopped as early as she had.

You know, it's interesting. A lot of the women's fights that we had kind of wanted as, like, these fantasy fights are being made. For example, with this weekend, Shevchenko versus Double J. So there's that. That would be what I would have naturally picked, but that one's already being made. No, I don't have any at the top of my head. I guess I have a lame non-answer for you, but my wishes have been met.

There you go. Sorry, Danny. I suck. All good. Next. All right. So about now the big fight coming up. Jesse Morgan from Ontario, Canada calling. If all this talk on whether or not Max Holloway will be medically fit to fight.

this Saturday. Do you think this is hurting for build up to the fight? Or will it end up making the fight even bigger if God willing the fight is made official on Friday? Thank you for taking my call. There is zero chance that is impacting. If anything, people are not giving it enough attention. Now, I'm sure Max feels differently because every interview, including this one, dude, I feel bad. I mean, I didn't want to ask Max about it, but I wouldn't be doing my job if I wasn't. But the poor guy had to hear it from me. He's going to hear it all freaking week. You know what reminds me of it was Darren Till and the weight cut. It sort of reminds me of that, you know, you have one bad incident. Dude, they don't let you forget it until you just go through multiple

times. So if he goes through and he makes the weight and he wins the fight, it'll be, you know, a thing of the past by a large. Yeah. But I don't think it's dampening enthusiasm at all. The ticket sales in Toronto are phenomenal. Dude, I cannot wait for Saturday. What a ridiculously good fight card, Maine and co-main, but that main event is about freaking perfect. Two guys in their prime. The only issue is what is their star power, but that has nothing to do with the question that guy asked. So no, I am ready to rock. Yeah, same. Yeah, I don't think it's impacting at all. And also, you know, Max's doing all this media. He looks and, you know, he sounds in good spirits. And, you know, for last fight week when he was supposed to fight, Brian Ritega, he was already looking a little

off in the media. So, you know, we see, we see he's completely fine. He's out there chilling with Drake. He's, you know, on Instagram. Check out. Um, should be good to go. Let me give them a bit of acknowledgement. Check out his interview he did with Complex. He actually went in studio with them. He was actually in New York last week. Um, and he went around and did the tour and you can see him sitting on the couch. He has vigor and, uh, energy and, uh, his face has color and he looks fine. He looks far. Any conspiracy theorist about why he didn't want to come on Skype, but. Plus, I feel like, you know, most of that talk is, is around the hardcore. I feel like the ones that are casually into it. I think, you know, they kind of forgot about the incident.

and, you know, especially, you know, and now with everything that's been moving on. It almost feels like it happened a while ago, even though it was this year. It was. Yeah. Tough year for him ago. Yep.

Let's roll on. All right, you got time for one more? We got a couple more. Hey, Luke, Danny. It's Jordan calling from Gainesville. Don't you think it's a huge oversight that fight pass and UFC don't have a PS4 app to watch fights on PS4?

I mean, I don't have a laptop, and our cable's not hooked up. So I'm literally, I'm sitting here watching Bellator on PS4, but no UFC. And I just think that it's a huge oversight. What do you guys think? That's a question for me. Get an Xbox. Wait a second.

I thought PlayStation had something called V-U-V-U-E, or you could watch everything on there. Do you own any gaming system? No, I read books. Oh, yeah, right. Smart. I mean, you can do both. You know that, right? I just like trolling all the donks.

No, I had an Xbox, and then my home got robbed, and they actually took my Xbox. Can you believe it? I'd had it a week. A week! My wife got me an Xbox and they effing stole it. Xbox 1? The latest? Yeah, it was right. It had just come out just came out, but it'd been out relatively recently. I had played Mortal Kombat for a week. Well, it's good to know you're an Xbox guy, at least.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, my wife got it for that reason, because she was like, I'm not, I am a, well, I wouldn't call myself a gamer, but Xbox, as I understand, it has gaming plus all the other stuff. Yeah. Whereas PlayStation is sort of just a little more gaming-centric. Yeah. The caller's point. Yeah, it's a little bit surprising. But I don't know. I'm one of these guys that's like, I mean, I'm not sure what to say. Like, if you have a PlayStation, that means you have a television.

If you have a television, that means you can get a Roku box for, like, you can get a Roku thumb drive or whatever it is for, what, 20 bucks or something. Like, there are ways or just get a fight pass subscription and then Chromecast it. Like, there are, there's, there's solvable problems here, you know. Yeah. Also. Or just steal. Just steal. There's other ways to do.

just don't steal i'm teasing i'll get fired just dump the uh ps4 and get an xbox yeah just it's a superior give me the keys to your place and i'll steal your stuff and then you can have my stolen xbox oh yeah full circle right this is right re-gifting things i steal yeah yeah all right give me one more then we got to go is our last one hey guys it's justin i'm calling you from the immortalized shit hole that is mobile alabama oh yeah so under the question at hand You see with RDA, Jake Matthews, and the fellow that beat him this weekend, all these 55ers that have moved up to 170. And my question is, what type of meta would a fighter need to employ in order to make a successful move 15 pounds up? That's the question?

That is the question. So you're moving up a weight class. He's talking about the meta game. What are the sort of overall strategic adjustments and approaches to the game that one would need? Well, God, it would depend entirely on the game and who you're fighting. I'm not sure how to answer that exactly. I mean, if you're like an RDA, it would really... So one of the things that really cost him was he was in that tiny cage.

So that really hurt him because he had a problem just constantly getting backed up and then he had nowhere to go. It would seem like in a case like that, evasion and footwork would be really kind of critical. Clinch breaking separation along the fence. take down defense. Those would be things you would do anyway, but it would really become a premium skill in those particular circumstances. But it would be hard to say.

If the issue is you're trying to countenance the addition of 15 extra pounds implying that that weight advantage is something that your opponents will have, then it would be something like that, I would imagine. Yes. Yeah. Are you a big fan of, you know,

bulking up if you're going up a weight class? Because I feel like a lot of fighters don't do that. if they do go up, they do go up because they feel like they were obviously too big of the one before, so they think they'll be just fine. What do you thoughts about that? I think that appropriate bulking in that particular circumstance is probably fine. So the answer is some addition of muscle mass, not merely beneficial, but maybe even required for that kind of categorical leap. The answer is probably yes, but there's going to be a point where you're going to get real diminishing returns to outright negativity anchoring you down.

Right. Find a pro, a specialist who can find a – exact sweet spot for you and stick to that. I don't remember out of the top of my head, but has anybody, any fighter successfully gone up and, you know, bulk looked, you know, bigger and have, you know, has, uh, adjusted to the weight class as far as, like, size and strength at the top of my head, I don't know. Connor McGregor. I feel like he's still a small 55, though.

Oh, he's big. Yeah? Yeah. He's not, uh, he wins or loses. It's not because he's, uh, well, he's not undersized. Are you ever seen him in person? I've seen him but from far He's big. He's big. He's big. He's a big. He's a big boy. He's not like...

Saw the back of his head when I was at the hearing. He's not huge. He's like, there's bigger lightweight. It's don't misunderstand me. Yeah. But they're not so big that they can lord that over him. He's not outsized in that way at all. And we're going to see what happens by because he's not looking for that. All right, let's do this. Appreciate you stopping by. Good job this week. All right. We're not done though. We have one more segment. It is time now, ladies and gentlemen for the Monday morning analyst. All right, time now for the Monday morning analyst right here on the MMA hour. Thank you guys so much for joining me. So I said this, I think last week or the week before, whenever I do these, I ask you guys on my Facebook page, sometimes on

Twitter as well, like what are the fights that you want to see broken down on this segment? Or I should say in this segment. And almost without exception, the answer was Wilder v. Fury, which is a boxing match. Now, normally I am very loath to do anything like that. This is an MMA show. It should be about MMA and there was a ton of MMA over the weekend. We are going to show some MMA in here, both from the Australia card as well as from the Bellator card, 210 anyway. But there was so much demand for Wilder Fury. It was the biggest event by far.

I thought we have to just acknowledge it. So let's just jump right into it if we can. Let me say something at the outset about Wilder Fury that will, I think, help you understand my analysis a little bit. Number one, I'm not an MMA expert, but I'm certainly not a boxing expert. I want to make that very, very clear. You should always ask the experts about their opinions and their breakdowns in addition to mine. They may agree, they may disagree, they may have a lot more interesting things to say.

As a general disclaimer, please go do that. I will also say, I'm a Deonté Wilder fan. I met Deontay at Mayweather Pacquiao. He was affable, friendly. He's good with the media. He's obviously a hell of a competitor. But saying that, I must also acknowledge, Tyson Fury won that fight. no idea how they could possibly think otherwise. I recognize that the two knockdowns,

particularly that last one, were beyond incredible, but at the same time, the facts are what they are. He was outboxed. Skills, win fights, and that should matter. And it didn't. Here's the interesting part about this. Everyone was on the Mexican judge, Alejandro, I forget his last name, as having the worst scorecard. And he did. He only had five rounds for Fury out of 12. And so you just do the math there. He had, I think, for the first four for Wilder, then the two knockdowns. and then you got, I think there's one more in there. I'm not sure exactly how it was scored, but you get the idea. But the truth is, two of the three judges gave the first round to Deonté Wilder,

which I found very, very crazy. I don't know how they could do that. So I wanted to show you some stats here, if I may, for just a second. Let me blow this up here a little bit. Here is round one. So pay attention to just this number. Let me see if I can put a right there. So Wilder scores four of 35 strikes, Fury 6 of 29.

We, oops, let me clear this. Go it again so that we don't have a, hold on. Then we're going to do this. This is Jabbs thrown. I want to show you this. Jabs, Wilder, one jab, Fury three, power punches, they were equal. So with the CompuBox stats, you never want to take them as gospel. They're only a bit of a guidepost.

But on power punches, they were ostensibly equal. On jabs, they were not equal. And on overall strikes, they were not equal. Boxing is obviously more than just the summation of a point total, how many times you made contact. It's the damaging punches that really kind of matter. So here's what we're going to do. We're actually going to roll through and look at parts of round one if we can here. Oops, don't want to lose that.

Here we are. Here we are. Here's round one. What I want you to pay attention to when we look at this here a little bit with Deontay and Tyson is why does Tyson Fury, in my judgment, win this fight? Well, number one, I think he landed more, right? It's the sort of same criteria who did the most kind of damage. But beyond that, what he really was able to do, if you look at the numbers, is he really

limited Klitschko when they fought, and he really limited to Deonté Wilder. He had taken Deonté Wilder's normal rate of offense and took two-thirds of that numerically away. He really kind of limited him. How did he do it? Lots of faints, lots of fakes, lots of jabs, lots of L-stepping. You're going to watch him do something called L-stepping, rather than sort of these just generic movements side to side, front to back. These are all kind of important, and they can be the most critical thing you can do

depending on the circumstance. You see, Brian Ortega does a lot of L-stepping too. An L-stepping is when your lead foot comes back in line with your rear foot, and then your rear foot goes out to the side, and then the lead foot comes back in the front. So you literally make an L with your feet. And why would you L step? You L step to reset the angle. It can have defensive purposes.

It can have offensive purposes. So resetting the angle, not only do you take away your opponent's angle, but you also set up your own. It's a good way to quickly get in and out of a position. We're not talking massive jumps, but it's better than an incremental step. A big nice L step, particularly when you're 6'9 in your fleet of foot like he is, it's a nice way to constantly put the other person on the defensive. And so, Deonté Wilder, who I love, I think he's such a great champion. I really respect him.

And, of course, that 12th round will look at here in just a second. But what he really gets confused by is he bites on the fakes and the faints. He draws back that right hand to really throw it. Tyson Fury sees it coming all the time. He's pumping the jab as consistently as he can, for the most part, staying out of trouble. L-stepping to constantly reset angles, clenching when he's. he needs to, turning when he needs to. Skills win fights.

In this fight, the more skilled guy was Tyson Fury. He wasn't the harder puncher. He wasn't the guy that knocked down the other guy, but he was the guy who won more rounds and showed overall better boxing ability. I have a hard time understanding how that's not true. And I say that as a dyed in the wool, Deontay Wilder fan. All right, so look at some of this. Look at his footwork here.

We'll look at him. Look at the hands here, first of all, from Tyson Fury. side to side, motioning, motioning, motioning. Look at this. You can't really get a read on him. This is just a standard step. There's no L step there. Let me pull back a little bit so you can see his feet, right? I just look at all of the fakes and the faints, hands moving this way, this way. He's just got so much going on. He's real mindful of distance.

Like that, yep. Hands down, lunging in, trying to get you to bite, trying to get you to do something. There's your first L step there. That's an L step. resets the angle. So now you have a guy. Yes, Deonti Wilder's taking the center, but he has to follow everything that Tyson Fury is doing. Nice jab to the body, but it follows with the Perry. Guy is fleet of foot Tyson Fury is. Again, charging in, but not really. Yes, he's moving in. It looks like a charge, but it's all fanks and faints and setups, flicks the jab out there to see what kind of reaction he gets.

By the way, if you look at slow motion, a lot of times when Fury jabs, the front of the glove is really loose. he's just flicking it like he's trying to get a bugger off of his hand. I know that's an indelicate way of describing it, but it's really true. He's just letting it go. And I think it does that because it allows him to gauge distance. It gets them to cover up because they don't know if it's a punch or it's that big, long piston of a left coming down at him. And so he's able to then score. And as a consequence, he keeps it nice and loose.

He's just flicking it, just like that. You see my chin come up? I'd get tagged for doing that. L steps again, resets the angle, parries, goes back out. Look at this. Look at his movement. Look at Deontes. He's just knowing when the punches are coming.

He can see it. Boom. Look at him put a hand on the left shoulder. Right here. Oh, hold on. There we are. Right there. I'm trying to get it to work.

All right. Forget all that. God damn it. You see it. You get the idea. Posting on that left hand, it's going to jam the right hand of Deonté as he tries to throw. Plus is going to enable him to get away at the same.

time, right? There he is. Slowly doing it. Look at him. He sees all the punches coming. Whoops. Puts a hanger up to stay out of it. Note, you can see the left coming a million miles away. Gets his hands up, but gets two hands up just in case, decides to wrap like this. Here we go. A little bit later in the round. This is still the first round. Look at Tyson Fury. Same thing. Hands moving. Always in motion, side to side. Good lateral movement. The L-stepping is a big part of that. You can see him here, kind of dropping his hands to see what Tyson's, or excuse me, what Deontes is going to do. Waits and waits. Now he knows he's up against it.

He knows if he's up against these ropes, that big right hand is coming. He waits for it, bates it, kind of steps out to the side, expecting it. These two jabs from Wilder are too far away. He knows it. He can just see it coming. He kind of hangs on the ropes there to dig into him. This is a way of him gauging distance, being able to pull himself back in if he needs to, let's it go. gets out of the way of the left, and he can see the right coming the whole time.

Look at this, the left hand's up again, right? Boom, just goes over the top of the head. How many times did you see this play out over the course of the fight? A million times, a million times Wilder would throw with this. A lot of times that left hand of Fury was on that shoulder. A lot of times he was just gauging the distance, so either way, either he knew he was in close proximity and could block, or he wasn't far enough and he could just time it and get down. very, very, very crisp, nice, clean fundamentals here.

And then he clenches up and they go about their business, right? Here's another indication. Fury is on the outside. Wilder is on the inside. And I think that played a big role in the judge's mind, even though it shouldn't. Fury does kind of like to take the center sometimes, especially in the beginning of the bell. He likes to charge out into the center. But who is doing the more of the damage here?

Here's another situation. Look, fading to his left, I believe, throws a jab. Let's see this jab. What does he do here? Kind of just sort of parries it a little bit. Stuck against the ropes. What does that mean? It means there's probably a big power punch coming, which he knows.

Look at this. Gets the right hand up to block because he knows it's coming. Fakes. And look at Deontay, drops his level. Fury sees it, whoo, guides it. He's got this left hand up as a hanger to block the punch and then to get himself off the way. We talked about the hangar with Chuck and Tito.

I know a bunch of y'all downboated it like a bunch of donks, but I was totally right. One of the things that he was able to do is get that hanger up in the air. Here's another version of that. It's not really a punch. Look at the left arm of Fury. He's not throwing a punch.

He's just kind of getting it up. So when the punch comes and it's nice and wide, it's going to impact on the shoulder and back. Meanwhile, he knows exactly where his opponent is. He can keep this one gloved up, whatever he needs to do to not get attacked from that other side. And he can then just clinch up if he needs to like, that. Right? And then he gets to turn him away from the corner and then bang him out there. I didn't

get to see that with enough closeness to really understand exactly what was happening here. And I love this too. Touch, touch, boom, boom. Now he gets the left hook for his efforts. Duke Rufus always talks about this. A lot of these Dutch guys are really good at it. They're not bang, bang, bang, bang. I went back and I watched the Moikano versus Ortega fight. Man, those two, every shot they threw was whack, whack. Nikki Holskins really good at this. Touch, touch. touch, and then with one punch, bang them out. So they get used to either one side and then you change. They get used to a certain feel and then you change.

They get used to a certain frequency and then you change. And then you could follow it up with the other side as well. So that's what you see here. Touch, touch, bang, bang. Now he eats a left hook for his efforts. Okay, nice shot by Deonté Wilder. That left hook was really important as we see a little bit later in the fight. But I just want to point that out.

And here's the last bit of this. This is, I think, the end of the round, I believe, if not quite pretty close. I love how effective the jab was in the first round and throughout the entire fight for Tyson Fury here a little bit. Watch him jab his way across the body of Deonté Wilder. That's one way to score. That's one way to reset the position. That's one way to throw your opponent off. It's a lot of things you can do.

Watch as he just jabs across, boom. And now he's reset the position here a little bit and gets to get in a little bit tighter, and then he gets to fight a little bit more on his terms out here, right? didn't like where he was at before, perhaps. Kind of a little bit close to the corner. Boom, comes back around. Sorry about that. And then fades across.

I love that from Tyson Fury. George St. Pierre was really good about that, just tripling up on the jab as you wave across. You can get your new position. You can score. You can throw them off. You can neutralize them. There's a lot you can do about that.

And of course Tyson Fury did it. And there's that. Watch his feet. L-Step. There's your L-Step, folks. Right here. Watch the feet here. Let's see.

Let's use yellow. Watch the feet here. See that? L step. And he gets to reset the angle just like that. Now there's a new angle. These angles don't look like much if you're used to just watching MMA fights. In boxing, that's a major angle change.

We think of angle change as like in front to the side. An angle change can be that. An angle change can be that. Just the slightest of margins. All right. Love that. Watch this. I think this is towards the end.

Look at this from Tyson Fury. gets just out of the way of the left hook, almost like a filly shell, almost like a shoulder roll Mayweather style. Watch this. Kind of squares up. It eats a little bit of the jab, but not too much, and then knows the right hand is coming and just kind of rolls with it the whole way, not doing hardly any damage to him at all in this particular context. And then he just jabs his way out of the corner, just like that, backs them up. I think this is right at the end here. He eats a nice jab to the body from Deonté Wilder. This is pretty good. He jabs his way in. Look at this sort of left side hanger here. How are you going to throw a right hand over the top

of this? How do you throw a right over the top of that? How do you do that? You can't. You can't. You could try, but you really can't. So he just kind of gets under it. He knows it's coming. He can post it on the shoulder. He can do whatever he needs. And he gets up. under it. No harm, no foul. throws a nice left hook. Knows exactly where he is. And by the way, this left hook here, it's almost from, he's Southpaw here. Look at that. And then switches back. Bang. Look at this. He's left South Paul, Orthodox, sort of, right? No, I actually call this South Paul and then switches here. Bangs him out. Nice shot and wobbles him here.

Look at the time on the round. Five seconds left. He had the best damage at the end of that round. If you can see that. He had the best damage at the end of that round. And two of the three judges gave this to Deonté Wilder. Now, I know this is selective. Jab, jab. Look at this. Touch, touch. Bang. Bang.

And they both kind of exchanged here a little bit. but Tyson got the better of it. So what did Tyson do? Stuck behind the jab. Good footwork, L-stepping, clinching when you need to, throwing the hanger up to block the right, getting the distance right

so he could then shoulder roll and tuck getting out of the corner, waiting for Deonté to attack and then counter-attacking, switching stances out of the corner when he needed to. So much, much more complete boxing performance from Tyson Fury, and then he jabs out in the round ends. And then the shot heard around.

the world, ladies and gentlemen, then that rain down upon us, like fire in Brimstone. Let me just say this. I've never, I've seen comebacks in combat sports you have, too, I'm sure. I've never seen a shot put a guy out like that, and then that guy get up. In terms of that notion of recovery, the immediacy of it, like I've seen people mount comebacks over a minute or around or two or three. I've never seen that. I've never seen someone take a death blow. Folks, whatever you want to make of Deonté Wilder, boxing ability relative to furies. There is one thing that is not in doubt. His power is probably the best in the world right now in terms of boxers. Who is the hardest hitting boxer on earth right now?

It's probably Deontay Wilder. If not, he is very much on that short list, right? An absolute ferocious animal when it comes to power. Look at this shot, man. Look at this shot. Let me zoom in here a little bit. Zoom out rather. Let's get this going here a little bit. Is this all the footwork he does to avoid him? What is this part here? Let's see here. What am I looking at? Oh, here we go.

So what are we looking at here? Deontay is sort of marching into him. Tyson's looking. He's got that low. Let's see, he's got his right hand up, his left hand down. Looks like he wants to like parry this and slip this a little bit. You kind of like, see that? He wants to kind of like down parry or side parry it and then lean at the same time.

Like that, see that? The little movement is just trying to do that. But the problem is he doesn't get enough out of the way. And as they noted on the broadcast, a lot of times Wilder was coming like this. This time he came straight down the pipe. It was a nice shot. Cracked him right here, right? And then as he's falling, hit him with the left hook of death.

Look at this from another angle. I've never seen a human being recover from that in my life. Unbelievable what he did here, right? So then he just gets up. He just got up. Nobody gets up. He got up. Crazy, right? Crazy. Okay? We go through this. Look at this. This is ridiculous, right? Oh, my God. Deonté Wilder didn't know what he was up against, bro. Okay, and then they slug it out, blah, blah, blah. Look at this. Jab, boom. Nice shot here across. Look at this. And he just leapt into it, too. Watch, watch the feet. Dante Wilder leaves his feet. Look right. Let me change the color of this. Look here. Watch him leave.

his feet. Bang. I think that's why the distance kind of surprised him because before Wilder may have stepped hard, but he didn't leave his feet. This time he, watch here. Look at that. That little hop bang, right? Crushes him and look at this left hook because he steps forward. He throws it, boom, steps forward, and then from the South Paul position lands the boom left hook, son. Oh, God. Look at that shot. You've never seen a comeback like that in your life, man. Never, never.

I've just, who was the shot? Who was the guy that put out Ruiz with the one shot right against the ropes? It was like that. Look at him. He does the old bit. Nope. Sorry, Deontay. Not this bloke.

Is that not ridiculous? And look at him. Do you ever seen guys like this? Here I thought he was doing that concussed thing where guys get injured. and then just brought back to life. Look at that. Collected himself and stood up. His mental fortitude is like nothing we've ever seen before.

Maybe in all of combat sports. That is the most insane thing in terms of a recovery I think I've ever seen. I did not go into this fight as much of a Tyson Fury fan, respected him, of course. I came out of this one a massive fan. Now that's just a boxing for the weekend. Enough of that. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You guys see it there.

Great. Boom, done. He gets dropped. Enough. Let's talk about this real quickly. This is Tony Martin versus Jake Matthews from the weekend. I want to get into this very quickly if we can. People are kind of saying, what do we make about this name change?

Is that really a thing we're going to just have to acknowledge now? Like, what is that? Dude, Tony Martin has been a very good fighter for a very long time. Had some ups, had some downs. Consider this. He has on a three-fight win streak, all of those in 2018. He won three fights this year. I think most of them, if not all of them, by stoppage.

The last two, certainly by stoppage. One by K.O. headkick on Ryan LaFlair. And now this against Jake Matthews. So he went up a weight class to do it. He got his black belt. I think when he started in the UFC, he was just a purple. You can see his ground game get a lot better. And I loved this and a conda choke.

And I will tell you why. So he kind of been calf kicking him. Matthews his whole time. Matthews kind of goes to the ground. He eats a punch for his efforts. And here we go. Marcella Garcia, seepaw. I've told you guys this before.

One on top of the shoulder, one on top of the armpit. The hand that's coming over, does the stabbing. The other one secures. You see that right here. Remember Chale Sahnen trying to. to flip Fador over and digging the shoulder into the back of the head to get him to rotate. You can do that without actually asking them to rotate. Watch what Tony Martin does here.

He gets this position. Watch what he does. He's going to sag his weight forward. Now look at, oh, hang on. Now look, hang on. Now look at this. Watch all the weight of Jake Matthews. Look at this.

Look at the shoulder here. He's blow it up a little bit. He's driving that weight into it. Nice and down, right? Pretty crazy. Here's what I love. Look at this for just a second. Look at the hand here. You see the hand right here? That's the hand of Jake Matthews. He's going to bring it inside. When he does, look at Tony Martin. He's going to drive that knee inside. I don't know how much of this was intentional. Tony Martin, or Rocco Martin, excuse me, if you're watching this, please tell me, because I have been very, not surprised, but very pleasantly happy to see his progress. I don't know how much of this was intentional in terms of what I'm about to show you. But if someone sees this, tell him about it because I would love to know. Watch this. So he digs his weight forward.

So now all of the weight of Jake Matthews is down and forward. He cannot sit up. He's got all this space behind him because he's still on his knees. If you don't cover with your elbows and he's not covering with his elbows, look, they're flared out like that. You're going to have all kinds of space. Here's what I think he does. He actually sags his weight so far back. Look at this.

Ready? Look, this, this is the leg of Jake Matthews. This is the leg of Tony Martin. He's sagging so far forward and so far off to the side that he's using Matthews' own leg as a hook so that, like a rubber band, if you stretch it and let go, it pops, right? So that he could ricochet the other way. That's what I think is happening here. I don't know that to be a fact because it's such an interesting dynamic here. I've never quite seen this before, but he's leaning on one side so that he doesn't fall too.

If you didn't have this hook here, he'd just fall off, right? There would be nothing holding him there. But that holds him in place. And then when that first knee is sunk and that first hook is sunk, then he could just pop over to the other side like that. Then what do you see here? Jake Matthew's hand is trapped. I don't know the sequence here about how he was, because initially he just drove in a knee.

How he got the knee to turn into a hook on top of the hand, I don't know exactly what the setup is there. I'd have to see. Because obviously Matthews is kind of like reaching across or underneath. I need to kind of see how he did that. But I know for sure he was sagging so that he could leapfrog back the other way. And I mentioned this before.

You see in the NBA all the time. A lot of people want to put the far side hook in first. No. near side hook in first, then the far. Rocco Martin did it correctly. Very nice. And that's why that back mount is ridiculous, right? So then he's still got this nice, tight control.

Look at him driving all that weight down, right? Love that. And then he's going to get sag to the side. Now he's posting off his shoulder, elbow, and head. Okay? He drops. He's got this hook. This is why I think there's a degree of intentionality to it.

Because I think he meant to do that once he put that first hook in. How he did it, I don't know. I'd love to know the specifics of that, but I thought that was pretty interesting. Then he just switches grips, right? Before he's over here, now he switches, comes around, and then just sits, just like this. Whoops, drives his hand through and locks it up. This is my favorite part, right? Everyone talked about how he, look at the bottom leg of Tony Martin.

Excuse me, Rocco Martin. Slides it through, sinks on top. this leg is going to come up here and then slide down. I think to make sure it's secure like that. And then he rolls over. Everyone's like, oh, he hooked the leg so that you couldn't do that three stooges bit like Brian Ortega and Cub Swanson, where he had the same choke. But he didn't have the legs locked up, so they kind of just follow each other. He's preventing that here.

But it's more than that. Remember that initial arm I talked about? Look here. What do you notice? It's not just that the leg is trapped. It's not just that the leg is trapped. is trapped. The arm is trapped two. I got two rings there. So let me clear that off. The arm is trapped. God damn it. There we go. The arm is trapped too. Just like this. Look at that.

So you get both the leg and the arm and he set that up off the initial hook, sunk his weight to one side. He could ricochet to the other, switch the grip, drop to a hip, slid it through, locked it up, sunk the like a baseball slide, his left leg through, crushed it on top, sealed it with the right leg, and then rolled, choke to the sky like you see here. And that's all she wrote, bro. Real quickly, real quickly. I want to show you something. Joe Schilling fought a guy by the name of Will Morris on the prelim card of Bellator 210. Joe Schilling's record heading into this fight was two and five. He's had a lot of ups in his career and some downs, right? Some noteworthy downs. He has been training. I think he's a blue belt now, maybe even under Chrome Gracie.

I'm not sure under who. Shouts to the folks to high rollers, BJJ. He's been competing. Granted, it's a BJJ tournament where you get high, but he's been competing in the ghee and training in the ghee. There's footage of it. Not just when he's high, of course, when he's sober as well, but there's video of that.

Shouts to Joe Schilling. Joe Schilling's wrestling has improved dramatically. His striking has obviously been always great. His ground and pound is nasty. Look at this. This guy tried to take him down. Joe reversed him. Now watch this.

I'm going to show this to you in real time. Watch this. This is real time footage. Watch how fast the right hand comes. Hold on. He's going to sink the whizzer over the top. He's going to use that to elbow and flat. And then watch how fast the right hand comes.

Watch this. Watch these. Look at that ground and pound. Bleeding him up immediately. Whoa, dude, Joe Schilling. If he can get the right position on top, It turns out that not only was he a great striker standing, but if he can balance himself, he's got blazing hand speed, good power, nice accuracy.

Certainly he's a vicious, vicious competitor. I love seeing a bunch of this stuff, and you see him just absolutely all over this guy, right? Here's another scenario. He bombs on this guy with an elbow. He drops. Schilling stays on top. Now here he makes a little bit of an error in terms of the scramble. I won't go into the details enough to just say.

The thing was he kept his, he kept his, there's a couple things you could have done better. He's off balance here. If this guy with his right arm turned to face him, he would have run him over. But Joe re-centers his hips like that and gets back on top. That was a nice adjustment by him.

Let's just sort of go through this very quickly. And you can see him here. He's doing that bit from the Ben Wynn, Luis Smoka fight. Ben Winn, maybe the better wrestler than Louis Smoker. Or Lewis Smoker. But Lewis Smoka has a nice. guillotine series and with the guillotine series would attempt it and then force win back to his back.

You see Schilling do that here with a stand-up guillotine all the time. And then he gets him back down. Dude, look at this ground and pound. Look at this. Hard elbows. This guy is in trouble underneath. Look at the masterpiece that this violent painter is painting. Look, look at this.

Turns out Joe Schilling. Look at the hand speed, bro. Turns out Joe Schilling has phenomenal. Look, he's still growing as a martial arts, but phenomenal ground and pound. Ladies and gentlemen, look at that. Look at that. It's like my underwear after Chipotle.

All right. I'm probably going to get fired for that. All right. Again, what did I show you? Guillotine, can't finish it, so he just runs him over. A couple things here you could have done differently. He's still growing.

No one's got a perfect fight. But here's the very ending. Look at this. all over him from the stand-up. Watch this in real time. Bang, bang. On top. Look at this.

Goes to leg drag. Here he is in leg drag. There's a lot of things you could have done differently from leg drag to get to a better position, but just banging on this guy. Unbelievable. Shouts to Joe Schilling. What a phenomenal job. All right.

Thank you guys so much for watching. Give the video a like. Subscribe to the YouTube channel here at MMA Fighting. Tons of 231 coverage coming your way. Appreciate it. And we're out of here. Until next time. Stay frosty.