MMA Fighting - #463 – Daniel Cormier, Jon Anik, Ryan Hall, Megan Anderson, Conan Silveira

Episode Date: December 31, 2018

Luke Thomas speaks to Daniel Cormier about Jon Jones' win over Alexander Gustafsson at UFC 232, relinquishing the light heavyweight belt, his plans for 2019, more (45:15); UFC commentator Jon Anik about all the storylines from UFC 232 and the road ahead in broadcasting in the ESPN era.(1:04:10); Ryan Hall about his submission win over B.J. Penn, what's next for his career, and more (1:20:45); Amanda Nunes’s coach Conan Silveira about his fighter’s enormous win over Cris Cyborg on Saturday, what makes her so special and more (1:39:15); Megan Anderson about her win over Cat Zingano, Nunes’ win over Cyborg, the state of women's featherweight division, more (1:59:02). Luke also looks and breaks down some of the key factors that helped Jones defeat Gustafsson in the rematch at UFC 232 on the Monday Morning Analyst (01:55). We also answer your questions on the latest in MMA on A Round of Tweets (37:45) and Sound Off (2:11:15). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. It's the Mixed Martial Arts Hour. It is Monday, December 31st, 2018, and Caesar is home. Welcome, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas, and this is the MMA hour right here on MMAFighting.com, the very last one of the year. We saved the best for last. What a show we have on deck for you.

We're going to kick things off with the Monday morning analyst, but we have not one, not two, not three, not four, five, Daniel Cormier will be here. Megan Anderson will be here. Ryan Hall will be here. John Anick will be here. And Conan Silvero, the coach of Amanda Nunes, will be here. You will be here later on in the show when we do the soundoff.

Number to call, as always, 844-866-24-68. And as always, we've been taking your tweets, which we'll get to in a round of tweets. Using the hashtag the MMA Hour. Hope everyone's doing well. It is the last one of the year. It is also the 24. Well, what am I saying? 25th.

It is actually the six-month anniversary. The 25th of June, if you'll recall, is when I took over this program. So the 25th of December was Christmas, obviously, but also the six-month anniversary of me being here. It has been a long, strange, fun, incredibly challenging trip. But I have enjoyed some of it. No, much of it. I'm teasing. It's been quite a ride, and I'm lucky to be here, and I really thank you guys for joining me.

I know it's a bit of a wild day. Risen ended just like an hour ago. in somewhat ignoble fashion, depending on one's perspective, although there was some highlights to that. Obviously, U.S.C. 232 over the weekend, quite a crazy time in the sport. And then tonight is New Year's Eve. So everyone making time to watch, thank you so much. All the fighters and all of my guests today are making time.

Thank you so much. And, yeah. All right. Without further ado, let us start things off here on the very last show of 2018. It is time for the Monday Morning Analyst. Hi, everybody. Time now for the Monday morning analyst right here on the MMA hour. Now, as I mentioned before, two disclaimers are always important. One, if you're listening on the audio podcast, don't change you yet. I'm going to get to some things that you are probably going to be able to enjoy before we get to the nuts and bolts of the visual presentation. And number two, steady, consistent perennial disclaimer. I do not present my findings to you as the authoritative findings, as the best findings, as the only. findings, I present them to you as the best that I can do for whatever it's worth. I always encourage you to look at everybody else's findings and breakdowns and whatnot and draw your

own conclusions from that. However, I will say if you watched the Monday morning analyst that we put out on Christmas Eve, I believe that that probably is the best one I've ever done. And I thought that a lot of the things that we had pointed out in that fight, including both how changes were made by John and what to expect, were both correct. We'll get to that a little bit later. Let me start things off. You can go to the screen here. I'm not going to break this one down. I just wanted to show it here is a picture and again if you're listening on the audio portion don't change it just yet Here is a picture. It's the final moment right before Carlos Condit taps I want to show something here and again don't please don't change you listening to the audio side because we're gonna skip back to some stuff here But I just want to kick things off I'm gonna focus today on John Jones

But I want to look at this picture because why is this picture so terrifying? Think about your anatomy for a second your arms lay by your side, right? Where are they supposed to go? For the most part, they can go to the side, for the most part, they can go in front, right? If you retract your scapula properly, you can raise them up overhead. If you have good posture, you can raise it up overhead, but basically this is the plane of movement here, right? This spot here. Where are they not supposed to go? Well, they can go a little bit behind your body, right? But they kind of stop there. So in Jiu-Jitsu always think about where is a limb supposed to go and where is a limb not supposed to go.

Wherever it's not supposed to go, take it that direction. Yeah? This one is interesting for two reasons, this Kiesa one, well, three I suppose. One is that it's one-handed. But here's just one thing I noticed. There are two things he's doing with this Kimura that I thought were just grizzly. One is that the arm is being taken this direction, right? Your arm can only go, let me do them with this arm.

Your arm can go in front a lot. Behind you, it can't really move all that well. So he takes it and puts it all the way behind him as if, like, his back is now flat on the mat. I mean, that's in, I'd be surprised if Carlos Condon has no shoulder injury just from taking it on that level. But he does something else, which is kind of sinister. He takes it that way at the same time. Now, why is that important? because where is the shoulder supposed to go?

In front, a little bit behind, but in front and to the side. Your shoulder can go this way too. Your hand can go across your body, but not very far. Kind of stops here versus where it's supposed to go. You have tons of mobility. What's amazing about this Kumura is that it's the maximum wrench in two of the worst possible directions. Steady behind them, steady off to the side as well.

And moreover, as Kiesa brings that hand closer to his hip, he gets into an increasingly stronger position. The further he's out, the weaker he is, the more he brings it inside, the more he can begin to use. The sort of pretty noticeably large back of his that was not really as prominent a display when he was a lightweight. You can see his lats here, right? Look at that. You got some solid musculature at this weight class. So it was really just amazing to me is, yes, everyone's like, oh, it's one-handed. That's kind of impressive. But go back to the ally I went to Kevin Lee breakdown that I did.

What was one thing I noted is like Kevin Lee had the back a lot, but, you know, this thing where all these fighters are just constantly fishing for the rear naked choke rather than trying to attack the shoulder integrity. Now, I don't know how you set that up from the back, but this is sort of what I'm driving at here with the point. That's what I want to see. I want to see the shoulder integrity challenged if you can find a way to do it from the back. obviously doing it from Comorah, but it's just amazing. Maximum pull this way, maximum strain

that way. Nasty. Nasty stuff. Okay, forget all that. This slide should look familiar to you if you watched last week. Last week, I went back and I looked at three different fights. I looked at the first Cormier fight, the second Cormier fight, and then the first Gustafin fight. Why did I do that? because I wanted to see how John Jones changes within a fight and then how John Jones changes between fights. And what I noticed was he adapts, excuse me, two ways. He makes changes through the course of a contest and then between contest takes all of those lessons and then adds in degrees of dynamism behind them. Right?

So it was adaptability two ways. I don't know how you could have watched this and possibly, again, I'm going to get things wrong. a million times, but I think that was right on the money, if I do say so myself. Did you watch how he won the second one? We'll get to in just a second. This was absolutely on display. Single shot, but high variance. Did you notice how much that was a part?

He punches here, he kicks here, body shot here, changes stance here, then comes across, then clenches, then single shot here, then single shot here. Like, it's just always changing direction, rhythm, distance, the whole nine. Commonly on display. It plays with range and rhythm. A little bit less with range, although he does some of that too, which we'll look at, but a lot with the rhythm, you'll see. And maintains greater efficient offensive output.

What did I say was the key? Gustafson is the only fighter too numerically to the head into the body to have outstruck John Jones in any of their fights. That was in their first one. The second one, obviously not even close. But in the first one, that was the only one. In every other fight, he had maintained a positive differential. You had to get in there and do that.

So the thing is, John understands himself better than I do, of course, better than all of us do, I'm sure, and then takes those lessons and then builds on top of it. So let's build on top of it, shall we? Here is the way to understand this one. This is how you understand Saturday night. What did you notice about the first, excuse me, what did you know about the two Cormier fights? Cormier pursued John Retweet. retreated. In the first Gustafson fight, it was mostly the exact opposite.

It was John pushing into him and Gustafsson retreating. And how did Gustafsson win most of the rounds that he did in fact win? It's when John tried to set up his offense through a leg attack, he would either respond with his own or if he tried to throw a back leg teep, Gustafsson would blitz the pocket with his own boxing. That was really sort of the core of it. There's more than that, obviously, a lot more than that. But that was what he would do.

It's how he got that one takedown that was famous. He just blitzed the pocket, picked him up and put him down, blitz in the pocket. That's how he's able to land in boxing range. That's how he was able to do it. This time, I guess Gustafin thought he needed to change it up. So he did all the pursuing. Like last time, clockwise circler, Johnny Jones, for the most part, did some circling counterclockwise. But for the most part, no matter the stance, just went in the same direction to evade it.

But here's what he did. He absorbed the pressure. Gus of sin was constantly coming into him and what Jones did was never let him use that to any kind of maximal effect. If John Jones was standing in the South Paul position and Gus tried to take the angle and launch his own right hand, right, by coming and taking the lead outside foot position, Jones immediately took it away. If Gus did he tried to leap into position, John constantly circled out. If he was in the Orthodox position, he just found a way to always be at the end of either. his punch or his kicks, predominantly his kicks, he didn't use a whole lot of boxing. If Gustafin really collapsed the pocket, John would greet him with a punch off into the body,

or if he got really, really close, he either greeted him with an elbow or he would clinch with him, and on the clinch, he'd go and work to the body. It was absorbing the pressure by being on the receiving end and taking away Gus's boxing. Gus's boxing was what arguably, if you thought he won the first fight, or however you perceive it, certainly it's why he did well. he could never get it going. He could never get it going. Every time he tried to set the angle, he couldn't get the angle.

Every time he tried to blitz the space, he couldn't do it. Every time he tried to get combinations going, he was disrupting that constantly by either moving away or impacting Gus's rhythm. Gus could never really get out of first or second gear because John Jones was either away from position or forcing Gustafson to reset all the time. Secondly, boxing on his own terms. You're going to see this a little bit.

He does some boxing, but as I mentioned before, not really a combination striker. What does he do? Single shots with high variance, this time boxing on his terms. He still does so much work off of his kicks. He does so much work off of a variety of just any kind of striking. But you're going to see a few instances here where if he's going to box with Gustafsson, he's only going to do it when it's set up for him to be successful. Not even when it's neutral and certainly not when it favors his opponent.

Why is that important? I made this point once in a Monday morning analyst. What's one of the best ways to pass guard? One of the best ways to pass guard is by getting on your feet. You can pass guard on your knees, but it's much easier on your feet. A simple one is, if you're doing it with the ghee, you grab their ghee pants, you get your elbow inside, you stand. There's a way to stand, of course.

just do it the right way, otherwise you get your balance pulled. But once you stand, you have that elbow inside on the ghee pants, you press the knee, and then you can immediately just move to the knee cut. Because once you're up, you can just break what they have on you much more easily. There's space to push below you, right? Getting on your feet. If someone is beginning to stand and wants to break, if they break your guard, that's not the end of the world.

But if you're going to open your guard, you want to open your guard on your terms, not on theirs. It's the same principle. John Jones is willing to box with you on his terms, not on yours. So there is a little bit of boxing that he does in part what he absorbs the pressure, but only, only in scenarios where he is virtually guaranteed to win. Three, he keeps the variance, but more body work. Go to 1445 of last week's video. In it, I point out something.

I'll show you to you now. This is the first fight. Let me zoom in here a little bit here. This is the first fight between Jones and Gus. What did we notice here? I'll pull up it even more. Jones is on top, Gus on bottom, you know? Let's do this.

What did we notice before? Let's see here. For fuck's sake. This. And in particular, this. John went to the head 115 times. He went to the body 37. He went to the leg 65. At 1445 last week, I said, if you go back and you watch the first and second Cormier fights, he still favored certain things, but he had a more balanced attack. There was more balance between

the body and the leg. Well, lo and behold, what did we find out here? Look at this, ladies and gentlemen. clockwork. John Jones is on top here. How about that? 52 to the head, because he still favors that. 22 to the body, 28 to the leg. Almost a negligible difference, and then 15 and 18

in terms of how they landed. In the first fight, he went to the leg twice as often as he went to the body. This time, he does a much more balanced attack, and it's sneaky how he does it. He goes and does it a lot of different interesting ways. One of it, which is, if Gustavson

got too close, he would clinch with him, tie him up with that left overhook, sometimes try to wrench but he really couldn't get it. Maybe a wrist control on the other side or a collar tie, he would drive the knee and then push off, right? That's one way he got it. The other one was when he was absorbing the pressure, he would go to the body and then circle out. Go to the body and then circle out.

One last point about this. Remember how in the first fight with Gustafsson, what was one reason why he was successful? John would throw a teep kick or something. Gustafsson would blitz the pocket with his boxing. Watch what he does this time. He made this adaptation John did in the first fight. He would throw his kick and then immediately get his hands up to post on a shoulder, to post on a bicep, and circle out so that he could throw without being just constantly blitzed upon all the time,

like a quarterback moving inside the pocket before making the final read for the throw. In this fight, Gustafsson only one time blitzes the pocket with a Superman punch and connects. in every other scenario, basically, he can't get anything going because John throws and blocks, throws blocks and circles. He took every lesson from the first one and brought it to the second one.

He took every lesson from the first and second Cormier fights and brought it to the second one. Let's take a look at some of the slides here. Oh, one last point about this. If you go look at this real quickly, this is John Jones on top. These are his numbers in the fight.

Let's see here So you can see he threw 28 of 39 in the first round 26 of 42 in the second 29 of 42 and then 27 to 49. Remember what I said was he likes to maintain greater efficient greater offensive efficient output

In the first fight as you can see they were pretty comparable Not so much in the second round First round was a little bit weird too But for the most part They were pretty tight And again, Gustafson ultimately outstruck him in terms of heading to the body.

Look at the second fight here real quickly. Look at this. Don't forget the third round, but just look at these two for just a moment right here. 19 of 36, so John was a little bit hesitant, but he had more than the 13 that Gustafson did. And let's put this up. This is the big one to me.

This is ultimately why he won. Look at that. That 51 is a greater attempted output. He scored more in the first fight, one of the rounds? That's a greater attempted output at 51 than any round previously when she had fought Gustafson. But the real key in absorbing that pressure and getting his defensive shell up and circling out and only boxing on his terms, look at that, 48 attempts from Gustafson, eight, single digits. In the first fight, there isn't a round where he doesn't

have double digits 19, 15, 26, 26, and 24. He had a third of the offense in the second, let's see, in the first fight, he had 15 he scored. He had half that in this one. That's what I'm talking about. All the lessons from the first one, bring them back and then add a new layer. Yeah? All right. Let's take a look at what that means in practice. Okay, here we are early. Gustafson is going to try and set the angle. Here he is in the right-handed stance, Jones in the left-headed stance. You're going to see this over and over again.

Gustafson circling clockwise, Jones absorbing the pressure, following him clockwise, but there are some tricks that he pulls off. So watch. You're going to look at this and say, there's nothing here. There's everything here.

Gustafsson tries to set the angle. He's stepping out, tries to come inside. John gets a hand up right here. Blocks, immediately gets away, moves away. And by the way, this is fun, hits him with a kick, and then disrupts his rhythm here. See that? Steps away, half beat, bink catches him. Let's move to the next one. I think it's right behind it as a matter of fact. Let's see this one. What does he do here? I'm looking. Oh yeah. When Gustafin got too close, John times it. He looks at the Perry.

Gustafson comes over with the Perry here. You can see that here. He parries down and tries to come on top of it. John reads it as he gets in too close, misses with the elbow, but then clenches here. Put the thumbnail back up, please. So when he got too close, play with range, play with rhythm. If it's in tight, lock up with him until you're ready to break and then break clean.

Yeah? He does it again. Right here, you can put it back up. He does it again. Here, gets a little bit impeded, but comes over the top and then clenches. Boom. And that one doesn't hit, but this is the point. Eventually they do.

All right? Let's look here. Southpaw, yeah, yeah, it's sort of a square stance, but a Southpaw stance. Let's see what happens here. Gustafson tries to set the angle. John moves back. Changes angles to take it away, too. So Gustafsson trying to get that lead foot.

Here, on the outside of this lead foot, what's one way John gets out of the way? He circles, and then he also just changes stance on him, so now that whole angle is gone. It looks like nothing, but it's everything if you just can't get going. He's a rhythm boxer. He likes to be in there. He likes to be active. He likes to set things up. Boom, boom, boom.

Sticking and moving. If he can't get that first burst going, there's going to be no second. There's going to be no third. John's constantly finding ways to take it away from him, right? Put the thing up, please, if you don't mind. Yep, here we are. Da-da-da-da-da. Let's see this one.

Let's see you, dunk. Okay, here's a great one. Okay, go ahead. From the Southpaw stance, he goes back to his old traditional weapons, kicks him to the leg, immediately puts the hand on the shoulder to frame, so he can't blitz the space anymore. You take that for granted.

He wasn't doing that in the first fight, and Gustafin was charging in every time. The block is there every time. Sets up again, goes back. Again, always touching him to see where he's at. Always up here and in different rhythms too, keeping his feet lighten under him. Gustafsson tries to push in,

boxing on his terms to the body, gets his hands up to block and is out of the way. Jesus Christ. And then Gustafsson comes back in. Bink changes up. So before he's throwing to the body, now he's throwing to the outside. By the way, he was set.

South Paul before, changes stances as Gus comes in, bink, and then gets out of the way, nothing hits him. That's how you chip out of a guy away. Now, what you've seen in the last two stance switches is John's been like, you know, kind of like posturing on the outside. Here's one thing he does in this fight actually very well. These last two examples were not great examples of that. But one thing he does really well is he doesn't often change stances until he's disguised it. Joseph Valtolini has an amazing YouTube channel. I keep talking about it because it's so good. Shouts to Bazooka Joe, and he's got a video about this where if you're just posing off

with a guy and then you're switching, it's not not valuable, but you're really limiting its value. It's more better is to switch stance by shifting or through combination or going neutral for a time as you move and then settling out. So what John will do is often if he is standing in South Paul, his left leg will be the one that does the teep kick. And when it does and it lands, he just comes into that position right there. He just uses that to settle into that new stance rather than being like this and then being like this. It's really cool. Let's see. Where are we? Still first round. Let's watch what happens here.

Now Gustafsson gets in boxing rage. John slips and he immediately just decides to clinch. So where does John find himself? He finds himself in the dangerous. zone, doesn't he? One of the most important things is to recognize the space you're occupying. What options does this leave me? And if you're going to circle on the outside, you have to know how much distance you have behind you, how much distance you have to the side and in front of you. And when he sees that Gustafsson gets pretty close because you just can't, unless you run from a person, it's hard to just maintain proper position away, and you're close to the fence. And he tries to come in, just slip and then clinch up. And then from there, from there,

fire the underhook boom shot to the body. Watch him break it. He's going to go through here. Gustafin gets away, but he pushes him off too. And this is my point. Let's see where he started. What stance did he start in? Started in the orthodox stance.

Where does he finish? Let's see. Finishes in South Paul. See what I'm talking about? He disguises it through position. Right? This is what I mean when folks are like, I made a point about this.

Like some people are just going to think he's a sheet forever. And I'm not here to talk you into it. I'm not here to talk you out of it because it's just hard to parse exactly how much benefits somebody could be getting from something or if they once took it but they no longer are. How much benefit do they retain? It's just really hard to know where that begins and ends if you really believe that's a component of it. But that right there, we're talking still the first round three minutes in and you're doing things like that, sophisticated stand switching. It looks simple, but it's not. Most guys don't do it this way. He does it in a way where he is just moving from position to position without telegraphing it.

For the most part, there were a couple of ones where he telegraphed it, but where he does it like that, where you have an engagement. And then when you break the engagement, and you're still trying to think about everything else, he has naturally gone to a different position that you have to pick up on fast. He just disguises and camouflages all of these changes and transitions. Put the thumbnail up, please. Bada-bott-a-bom-bant. Thumbail, please. Porfa. There we are.

Move that away. Okay, let's see here. And then what do we have here? Okay, remember this before? Go ahead. John knows he's in a bit of a compromised position here in terms of his spot. Let me do this like this.

Spot along the cage, right? Two black lines. Just like that. He's in the bad spot. He kind of knows that, but he has a lot of lateral space depending on how he wants to use it. So what does he do? He strikes on the half beat, Gustafsson. Look at that.

Foot comes up. Look at that. Bink catches him. It's a little slow, but catches it. Now watch what he does. This is in the first fight where Gustafsson would have blitzed the pocket. Now watch. Whoops his hands up and gets away and circles out.

And there's nothing to get him now. Taking all the lessons. Keep going. This is the top of the, I don't know, second round. I'm not sure what it is. Here comes Guston. So we'll see John's in Orthodox. Gustafin's circling like he always does counterclockwise, right? He gets hit with a kick. John pushes away. Changes to Southpaw. This is what I'm talking about. Look. Kicks Southpaw. See that? Let me zoom in a little bit here.

Look here Orthodox Kick Southpaw Disguising it Camouflaging it Thumbnail please Oops

Let's see here So I mentioned boxing on his terms You can put it up When does he want a box? He wants to box It favors him and not anybody else Perry's as you see Gustafin coming in He parries the top, throws a shot to the top, and immediately doesn't just dive into position. He kind of, he kind of, Superman punches almost in place and then stays at the end of his range.

Thumbnail back up. I've got to go through these here pretty quickly because I'm running out of time. And then one more time real quickly. Sorry about that guys in the back. I know it's annoying. Watch this. Kick to the body. This looks exactly like the first fight.

Gustafsson will blitz. Not this time, Satan. Bink. and by the way, it doesn't always stand switch from the back. Keeps it. Okay, thumbnail. Let's see, let's see. Which one is this?

So another thing he did was mixing up takedowns, and a lot of him, I thought Gustafin did a really good job. You can put it now. Did a really good job of taking that away from him, but it was at least setting things up. So here in the second round, you see Gustafin coming in. Look at him trying to set the angle and he gets kind of close. So, John, I'm only going to box you on my terms.

I'm not boxing you on your terms. So then he just goes for the takedown. Now, Gustafin does a good job of breaking it. You can put the thumbnail back up. I just want to point this out. Whenever he got in too tight, clench every time. I'm going to kick you at my range. I'm going to box you at my range, and that is it.

There will be no other offense except if we get in tight. Any of these other ranges between us, I'm just not going to fight you on. He gets out of it, and then those. a shot oh here real quickly how do he get in more body work put it up please very quickly sneaky sneaky stuff like that and then pushing him away don't know one more time I promise I promise to do do and do do let's see clenches again so you get the idea there's more clenching more clenching more clenching

and then last one last thing I'll show you on John Jones and we'll look real quickly at Ryan Hall let's zoom in here a little bit right so you can see it here uh this is the beginning of the third round gustafson landed one punch in this round remember when i said he likes to he'll box you he'll box you on his terms so he's on the outside he is circling as he always does clockwise gus pushing in clockwise john waits for him throws a shot gustson tries to come over the top john slips it and now what he thinks going to happen if you're going to think about boxing you're going to think this is going to come over the top like that, right?

So he fakes it like it's coming up, but Gustafsson reads it so he pulls back. Then, let me watch this so you can see the timing. He just waits, waits, waits, waits, and as Gustafsson steps, spink catches him on the halfbeat, spink just like that. This is what I'm talking about. I'll box you as I'm moving away and tricking you and coming around the You had blocked the shot that you thought the combo was coming from, so I'm going to pull back, make you think I don't want any more. Look how far back he looks out of range, right?

Beltron, the referee is covering him. And instead, he just goes and catches him on the halfbeat again, knowing he can reach him because he's measured distance and he can just time it. But what does he do? He moves away. And then eventually, put the thumbnail back up. Eventually, you saw what happened. He gets the takedown and from there. He was able to just control him and get on top.

We'll go back to the last slide here in just a minute, but that is how to the last slide here in just a minute, but that is how much. a minute, but that is how you get it done. You take all the things that the guy did to you in the first one, and you just take them all away. What do you see the very best fighters in MMA doing? Your John Joneses, your Max Holloways, you pick it. For the most part, what they have is a modular game. They have things that they're good at. They have things that they're not so good at. But for the most part, what they're able to do is just rearrange the pieces of their game and the strategy to take away everything you're good at and keep everything that they're good at. That's what they do. Very quickly, very quickly. Put it back up, please. Let's go watch

this Ryan Hall thing very, very fast because I know we're running short on time. Ryan Hall fades left, right? Then he's, I like this. He's going to kick the outside. He's going to bring it back to a shooting position and then immediately, whoop, he goes in. On an eminari roll, you want to be behind, he goes behind the knee. Some people go behind the ankle, but whatever. I'm not going to tell Ryan Hall what to do. Trust me. He knows this is about a billion times I ever could. And then the head needs to go on the inside, which it does, right, between the legs. From there, you're going to watch him get the clamp over the back. Look at his left leg. He brings his hips in the air. He is inverting hips in the air and then our shoulders on the mat,

clamps the leg. Here's what I love. Pay attention to this. Pay attention to this. That. He's going to use that to trip BJ. BJ tries to get away and Ryan just hold. the leg, pushes up into him. Look, Ryan's collapsed like an accordion. He extends, watch, whoop, extends, and then blocks BJ's other leg, and look at the foot behind the head. He's bringing everything out and forward and down

while blocking the balancing leg, so BJ goes naturally to his hands. You can see that Ryan still has control of the other leg here, right? Pretty nice stuff. So then I gotta get through this pretty fast. This is a 50-50, I had a nice discussion with somebody on Twitter who thought they had a different perspective on this.

At first, I thought BJ went the wrong way in trying to get out of this because you'll see here, Ryan, let's go of it, and BJ knows he's in trouble. It tries to roll, and by that time, it's too late. I mean, look at that pain, right? What's one thing you need to notice about a heel hook? People think a heel hook is taking an ankle and wrenching it across your body. It is not. It is getting their toes tucked in nice to your ribs, elbow to that,

and it's taking their toes towards their body. It's not this. some wrenching motion will happen. It's more a dig in. You're driving everything back and you want as much as possible for this leg to be bent because if it's straight, you can actually just roll out of it. So you want that bent as much as possible, which is what you see here. Anyway, so he bends it and that's it. So what was Bija trying to do if he was not trying to roll this way and he was actually trying to roll that way? What's the difference here? The difference is that if you roll the way this way, you can actually drive the trapped ankle to the floor.

And if you drop the trapped ankle to the floor, then you can begin to put weight on it and stand and sit up on his waist to escape. But as it just so happens, I thought he was going to roll because, look, his hips are already facing the mat. You might as well just roll this way, as opposed to trying to come back this way.

It's too late in my judgment, but, you know, we're talking about two guys who are the best, some of the best to ever do the sport. So there you go. You put the thumbnail back up. I know it went a little bit long. Again, I'm not asking you to like John Jones. I'm not asking you to think that he never did anything wrong in his career.

I'm not asking you to think anything like that. Here's what I'm trying to tell you. You just see the level of strategy and the level of execution. You look at the efficiency of it and the smarts of it. You just have to come away with the conclusion that that's one of the smarter fighters with some of the highest fight IQ that's in the game today. You don't have to like that fact. You don't have to even, you can detest that fact, but whatever you want to think about it,

it's a fact. There's your Monday morning analyst. All right. I know we're late. You know what, we can do the tweets. Jesus Christ, could you put my seat lower? What are you all doing to me here? Let's see here.

All right, we'll do tweets a little bit later. Is he here? Do you have Cormia here or not? All right. So let's get Cormia now. We'll do the tweets a little bit later. I went a little bit long with the analyst. Sorry about that.

I always try to put too much in there, and I never get to half of it. But in any event, so there is that. Now, Daniel Cormier had some interesting tweets over the weekend. And obviously, he lost, well, actually, he relinquished his belt, which I thought was kind of interesting. And then ultimately decided that what he was going to do was give up his belt. and he had some strong words for John based on his victory on Saturday night. And I thought it's the end of the year. He is the fighter of the year, the consensus fight of the year, Daniel Cormier,

but at the same time, I thought it might have been important to get his perspective on what he saw on what might be next because, I mean, I don't know what's going to happen with the Brock fight, but there's not nearly as much attention being paid to it as there once was. Sorry, I'm going to unsip my jacket here as I sit. There's not nearly as much attention being paid to it as there once was. And so I don't really know what to make of all of that to be quite candid with you. And I would like to see with the man who ostensibly is going to still retire at 40 is going to say about it because he had that one tweet where they were talking about some wrestling meet with kids. And he was like, don't worry, our time will come.

So don't come to that. That was kind of interesting. Can you make sure you close the screen too? A little button on top? Thank you, sir. Thanks, Joe. So that should be a fun little conversation here. I'm never supposed to drink coffee on air.

By the way, one note, we've got to, this sounds kind of weird what I'm going to say. How about this? We got a delivery that we're going to open on air. Let me show you here like that. See that? We got a delivery on air. We're going to open it at the end of today's show. And Danny and I are going to ring in 2019 together here and say goodbye to 2018, live on the air.

So what's the mystery delivery? I was going to say package, but then someone's going to chop that up. Like Bohaschina Depot is going to chop that up and make me look. real bad. If you guys ever seen Bojaschina Depot, the Twitter account, he'll make you look bad. So, all right, so let's do this. We're still waiting on Cormier. In the meantime, let's do a round of tweets. All right, five minutes on the clock. Clock starts when the first tweet goes up. Let's do it. What's your go-to breakfast? Leftovers. Next. Why are people assuming D.C. will have a better chance against John at

heavyweight. What advantages does he gain there that John doesn't? And surely John's tactical abilities would still be the determining factor. Well, it just seemed that DC had more to give offensively at heavyweight. Punching power, yes, but maybe more energy. He wouldn't have to conserve himself. There's just a lot of reasons why you would think a different fight. It depends what you mean by different, but certainly a more capable DC. I mean, that cut to 205 is hard on him. And I'm sure it's not easy necessarily on John either, but it's really hard on DC. So, yeah, I think it would be very difficult for him to do it at 205 without a lot being different. It's just at least a change of scenery.

And there isn't reason to think that DC might be more capable. Next. Ever seen a skill disparity between the elite of a division and the rest of the contenders as we have at Light Heavyweight recently? Jones and DC are in the league of their own. Then Gus and Rumble haven't lost to anybody else in Light Heavyweight in years except those mentioned as elite. I won't say it's exactly the same as it used to be, right? Because you had the Tito's, Chucks, Randis, Vitors, Vandolets, Rampages, Aronas. But that was a lot more names.

So it's a similar situation where you have this elite group at the top and then everybody else, except it's just a much smaller elite. But you're talking about a generational talent in John, a generational talent to a degree, certainly in D.C. And then Gus, just a very, very, very good light, heavyweight and rumble, same thing. So to an extent we've seen it just not narrowly in that same space. Next. Who had the biggest upset victory at USC 232?

I'm torn between Volcanovsky and Nunes. I don't know what the odds maker said, but it feels like Nunes had the biggest one. Now, maybe the odds say it was different. I don't, again, you have to take that into consideration. But it just felt like Nunes, it's not that folks didn't think she could win. it's just that who saw her absolutely bulldozing cyborg in less than a round. I don't know that anybody saw that.

Next. Does this win by Nunes now make a third fight with Schifchenko much more compelling than it may have been just a few days ago? Yes and no, but I mean it's hard to say, right? Because Chifchenko's down at 125. And if you look at their first two fights, they were competitive. Certainly, frankly, I thought Schifchenko won the second one. But they weren't like barn burners. So yes is the answer, but I think be a little bit careful on how you position that.

Next. There's been a lot of chat about the lack of promotion about Amanda Nunes. With her only fighting three times in two years, is this criticism fair or just revisionist history after Saturday's win? This is probably something we'll get into a little bit later when I talk about Darren Ravel. But for now, I'd say this. Is there something to be said with the idea that she is, she is, naturally magnetizing or even polarizing as somebody like Connor McGregor. Well, no, pretty obviously not.

Not everybody is. Not everybody can be. So no, do I think she's some naturally perfect candidate for promotion? Probably not. However, the idea that she is stuck in the position that she's in and can't be more popular is also wrong. There is a much higher level of, I think, fame and stardom she could reach if she can enjoy the right circumstances.

Next. Who are your top three fighters in terms of cage IQ? And how would you define it? I typically define it as a pre-fight strategy and then in-fight decision making to more so the latter than the former. I would say for sure, Max Holloway, John Jones, who would be third fight IQ?

He's got really good fight IQ. And Cage IQ, because Mayweilers got really good to fight IQ too. Top three, man, that's tough. got good fight IQ as well. I have to think about the third one. I'm not sure about that. It's a good question.

I'll ask Danny about this later. Next. Maybe Tony Ferguson, well, he makes some better. That's a tough one, that's a different one, actually. In 2019, what's a better value for fight fans? DeZone or Fight Pass? Depends what your fight preferences are. I'd probably say UFC Fight Pass,

but if you are into Canelo, How could I possibly argue otherwise, for example? Next. When watching an inconsequential fight with little action, i.e. Arlovski and Harris. Do you ever zone out and stop paying attention, or are you forced to stay zoned in because it's your job? No, I zone out all the time. Not just the fights like that, but other ones as well.

One more. One more. One more. Happy New Year, and thanks for all the content this year. When can Colby and Usman, both of wrestling heavy games, due to dictate a fight against Woodley, whether that be in striking range against the fence, any chance of an unblock. Yes, I'll unblock. happily. It's a new year. I'm turning over a new leaf. Uh, in terms of what they can do is

your guess is as good as mine. You're going to be able to close the distance. He does back up. So maybe you can get fine time against the fence, but can you do anything with it? Hard to say. All right. What's the story in the back, Mr. Mr. Uh, sir? All right. Well, we're having trouble getting a hold of one, Mr. Cormier. We'll see what happens with that. after that it's supposed to be John Anick, Ryan Hall, Conan Silvera, and Megan Anderson. So we'll see about this.

I guarantee you it's a time zone thing. Yeah, well, so there was this tweet over the weekend as we're waiting to figure out what happens next. There was this tweet over the weekend from Darren Ravelle. Do you guys know who Darren Ravelle is? He was the longtime business reporter for ESPN. I think he's now at like this, it's called, I think, Action Network.

Could be wrong about that. Please don't hold me to that. I think it's a gambling site or a gambling sports media property where he's doing work for them. Apparently they got hold of Kormeus. We'll have him here in moments. So I'll hold off my Darren Ravel thing. But the long story short is we'll circle back to this. The long story short is he, Darren Ravel, tweeted that right after Amanda Nunes wins,

like what a disaster it was for UFC. And Dana White positively torched him, which gets all of my votes. Trust me, I enjoyed it. But he put out an article saying, well, you know, here's some facts about how marketable she is. And as I mentioned before, there is some truth to the idea that, you know, she is naturally marketable as a Page Van Zant or something, which he raises in the article. Well, no, that's not the point. We're number one. Dude, how poor form is it for one of the great moments in sporting history for him to do something like that?

For Darren Ravell to do something like that. All right, let's just go to our guest now. No time to wait. He is the UFC heavyweight champion. He's had a hell of a year, and it turns out a probably be a hell of a 2019 as well. We're joined by the one and only DC, Daniel Cormier. Mr. Cormier, happy New Year.

Happy New Year, Luke. How you doing, buddy? Good. How are you feeling? I'm good, man. Just kind of, I'm at my rest. You know, anytime I'm in the restroom, I'm happy. I'm at a, I'm at a Gilroy High School right now,

doing a private lesson with one of my kids that's returning from injury to try to get him up to in these moments, I'm always happy, but. Yeah, could you live without coaching? I don't think you could. No, I love it, man. I love trying to give back all that, all that wrestlers given to me, and just being around kids and seeing, and I call kids, you know,

like from my five-year-olds all the way to my high school seniors, you know? So just giving back and being around the sport, that's what matters to me. I love doing it. Now, you're the fighter of the year by anybody who's got half of a brain, It's been an unbelievable campaign for you. 2019 feels like it might be different for a lot of folks involved. Let's start with Saturday night. The main event, John Jones, wins the title that you relinquished.

I want to ask you about that in just a second. But first and foremost, Dana White said that you had texted him, saying you thought he looked slow. Your assessment of Mr. Jones' performance and how he got it done. Well, I mean, anytime you can go through a guy like Alexander Gusterson in the fashion that he did is very impressive. You know, I have never shied away from the fact that the guy's a phenomenal mixed martial artist. And I thought he fought well.

I mean, you know, yeah, I thought he fought well, fought exactly as he intended to and was able to completely shut down Alex, you know, so yeah, he did a good job. Do you think he looks slow? And here's why I asked that. I didn't see that. But you and two other people inside MMA have. have, if you do believe that, certainly two other people I know whose opinion I respect, they told me the same thing. Do you think John looks slower?

I just think that he was never a guy that really walled you with his speed, right? Some guys just have like blazing hand speed. You know, Jones is always a bit of a, a tactician, a guy that just kind of breaks you down over the course of the fight. And so I didn't anticipate him being Anthony Johnson, or a friend. American, you know, if you all Romero or any of those guys that are just super crazy, explosive and fast. But I thought just in terms of the movement, you know, I felt like it was more measured. And maybe that was the game plan.

You know, he made it seem as though he did exactly what he wanted. So maybe the measured pace was what they intended to do when they got into the Docicon. So, but, you know, I think he's always kind of been a guy that isn't the fastest. And on Saturday, he didn't look, he didn't look like really fast. Yeah, I suppose in the end he didn't need to be, but that's a separate question. Yeah, exactly. You know, here's a question I keep getting asked, and I know you must be getting asked it,

which is if you believe, and I'm sure that you do, but if you believe that he has taken something either recently or at some point in his career and you're trying to understand what benefit that confers upon him. Where does his talent end and that begin in your mind? Oh, I'm so, I'm so, I'm so uneducated to that part of athletics

that it's hard for me to determine that. Do I, if you're asking me if I feel John Jones, would have won a UFC title without any of these things, I do 100% believe he would have won a UFC title. I think that he's a very talented guy. He comes from a sport and wrestling, so he has that baseline for dictating where fights take place. With that being said, those things are done for a reason, right? You don't have all these issues with the testing unless you have either doubts, or something in your preparation or through over the course of your athletic career didn't truly add up.

That's the only way you would get these types of things tied to your career. That's how I feel. But do I feel the guy would have been successful without it? Yes, I do. I think he would definitely have been a U.S. champion. And even without all this stuff that's tied to the fights, I think he could have won those fights to me anyways. I mean, I think he's a very talented guy, and I still believe I can beat the guy, you know, even though I've lost a couple times. But, again, I think that's what makes me, that's what makes me different is that regardless of every time I walked on that mad against Kail Sanderson losing every time, I still felt that every time I went out there, I felt this is the one I'm going to win.

I never didn't give myself a chance. And that's how I feel with Jones. Tactically, did you see anything? I mean, it's a very different fight with Gustafson than it is with you. But tactically, did you see anything? You know what I mean? Like, did you see, oh, you know what? There's things I can pick up on.

You know, when we fight, we just kind of start fighting right away, right? The pace is, like, crazy high and the activities through the roof for both of us. And it just didn't seem that way with Gustafson. It seemed like, you know, he backed up, and he was kind of throwing things, but they were kind of like one in one. thing at a time, you know, whereas just the last fight, the first 20 seconds of the fight,

dude came out into us, I mean, to like a front kick, a high kick, too like an elbow, and I threw an uppercut, and we're like in the crunch, punch, and the mouth piece slides up, that's all within the first 30 seconds of the fight, and we both that's on probably 10 strikes. You know what I'm saying? Whereas I don't think him

and Guserson hit that point till two and a half minutes into the round, and I don't think I think maybe it's the range, you know, because Alex is so tall, or it may have been respect you know that he had for Alexander going into a fight. I don't know. But tactically, yeah, it's a little different.

It's a little bit slower pace. The activity level wasn't as high as the fights have been whenever him and I have fought. I saw the tweet you put out I think it was an Instagram post as well where you certainly made your feelings known about some of the various figures in anti-doping.

I have had what can be commonly understood to as unorthodox views on anti-doping, but it seems like a lot of people, not merely you, have lost a little bit of faith in the mission. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but now a week removed from the initial announcement or so where the event was moved to accommodate this testing abnormality.

How do you feel about anti-doping in MMA? I think any time, I think any time you are trying to clean the sport up, It's a really good thing. And I swear, I know I may sound like a bitter betty when it comes to Usada. It's because I've been in the Usada testing program for so long. And I hold this organization in such high regard that I just can't understand how things have changed in the way that it has. That's it.

Like, for me, it's not even that I think drug test. and it's crazy and you have seen all the other stuff. Yeah, for practice. Yes. What? I'm sorry. I'm in the middle. They can't run.

I'm sorry. I'm in the middle of the interview. It's okay. The principal will just walk. The principal will just walk into practice and like, we're going to go run. I'm like, oh, Doc, are you kidding me? Hold on. Yeah, so I just, I've been in this program for so long.

And I've never had an issue. I've never had an issue with anti-with-Dusada, and I just don't understand how it can become so prevalent in mixed martial arts. I know there were people doing dirty things in the Olympics. I swear I do. But it just seems like it's so much more consistent in MMA. Maybe it's more money, I guess. Yeah, you know, I asked you about it at UFC 230, how, like, you know, you see some people who sit on the side. for big portions of their career because the promotion and them can't get along,

but you have always gotten along, at least I don't know behind the scenes, but certainly in public. You and the UFC work pretty well hand in glove. And you had mentioned that, and the last time this went down, you tweeted about it and that you got an angry phone call. Did you get an angry phone call for that tweet? No, no. I mean, you know, people try to reach out to me and try to call me down, but once I'm kind of going down a path, if I'm going down a hill, you're not going to really stop me.

You know, like, that's what makes me me mean, right? Like, I, uh, once I get going, there's no, there's no stopping me. Nobody's going to make me stop saying things about Usada or, you know, Jones or the Viscay or any of these other guys. Like, once I'm going, I'm going, and it's just going to go until I calm down. It's just the way it is. I think they've done that. It kind of let me space.

Like, like Dana said, Saturday, you know, guys on the rampage. Now, there was this tweet you guys had back and forth. John was talking about some wrestling tournament, and you had implored him to not come, not because of any other reason other than to protect the kids. Just for my own edification's sake, what tournament is he referring to?

He's talking to. He's talking about a tournament that we're hosting at Gilroy High School. It's called the Garlic City Rumble. But we've never hosted anything like this. So we've got the number two team in the entire country, Wyoming Seminary, coming from Pennsylvania to wrestle against Montini Catholic, who's Izzy Martinez's team. They're number six in the country. And then the Buchanan High School out of Fresno is number eight in the country. And then my high school, Gilmore High School, is number 10 in the country.

So we all got together, put our heads together, and we tried to start this format where we're taking some of the best teams of the country, bringing in the Gilroy, and we're russing dual matches. And so I guess John was like, can I go watch Izzy's team? You know, and I think that that was asked not in the most sincere of ways. It may have seemed polite, but it was to try to get a rise out of me. Right, because if it was just coming anonymously, that would be one thing. Who just showed up. Yeah, but to declare it like, I'll see you at high noon as something.

different, right? It's much different. And I think that for me personally, look like we've worked so hard. And not only just me, and it's me and Izzy and Troy Tirupelli and and Scott Kimmelikadee

from the University of the United States. He's an unbelievable coach. Scott, Scott Green from Wyoming Seminary, we worked so hard to put this together to try to build wrestling in this area. that I don't want this to turn into a whole bunch of people wait to see what's going to happen between me and John Jones. There's going to be 56 high school kids at some point stepping on the wrestling map,

and they should be the center and the focus of what's going on on that night. And I don't want that to be interrupted by whatever happens between Jones and I. Or even Jones and I are cordial and we stay away from each other. Nobody knows if Rosendo Sanchez is going to do. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm going to? You know what nobody knows what he's going to do? Nobody knows what, because again, you're coming into Gilroy, San Jose,

where I live and all my friends and coaches are from. I don't know what nobody's going to do. And then it just takes away from what we're trying to do with these kids on the rest of that. Because I kind of feel, honestly, Luke, sometimes that for as bad as the blood is between Jones and I, the people surrounding me, they sometimes seek a harder stance than even I do. I can certainly understand it. I know you're busy. Just a couple more questions for it. I let you get back to your duties there. So 2019 is weird, right? I mean, I don't know what the answer is. Someone asked Dana White about this. Maybe you know something different, Daniel.

It feels to me like, yes, Brock is still in the USADA testing pool, but there's just no talk about him competing at all. And then here you are with John going back and forth saying, our time will come. What's going to happen in 2019 if you really had to think about it now? Man, I don't know. You know, I want to get, you know, like I said, you know, I have long intended to be done with this thing by time I turned 40 years old. And I've had some things injury-wise that is really kind of holding me back right now. I would prefer to be getting ready to train right now and fight, you know, but there are a couple things that have happened that I can't really get going like I want to.

So it kind of off them up in the air. You know, I mean, you know, Dana's hopeful. He can fight three more times. You're a man right now. And honestly, I could fight. I mean, I can still fight. It doesn't seem like I'm slowing down too much, you know. So, I mean, hell, I became a heavy league champion.

Yeah. You know, it's like not like I'm slowing down. So we'll see what it is. I really do still intend to be done. on with this thing really soon. It's just a personal decision that I made with my family, and we'll see what happens. But as right now, you know, with the Lesnar thing,

that's kind of still up in the air. You know, I've gotten a lot of you're willing to fight Jones, but you talk trash about Jones, but you're willing to fight Lesnar. Nobody knows what's in place in terms of drug testing between Brock Lesnar and I. these are all just general assumptions as to what is Brock Lesnar truly going through right now to try to be eligible to compete. We could be doing so many different things that people are unaware of. And if Brock Lesnar is clean on the day that we fight because of these things, then why can't I fight him? Or if he doesn't fight, then I'll fight Steve Amiochitz.

Like I talked to the boss the other day, and he's talking to me about. fight and Brock Lesnar and John Jones and everybody. And I said, if Lesnar doesn't go, I go steepe has to be first. He deserves it. And I said it from the beginning. If it ain't Brock, I want to fight

Steepen Miotich and give him what's rightfully his, a rematch for his title. He's going to get beat again, but at least he'll get a chance to fight for that belt again. Well, I don't know what's going to happen in 2019.

not sure you or Dana really know either. And I don't mean that disparagingly. I mean, it's just so crazy. How could anybody pin it all down? Here's what I do know, Daniel. You had... Here's a real deal with Luke. Here's another thing.

You know, we have to understand that history has shown that the guy that won that belt last weekend, there could be some issues arise because they always have. Right? I mean, seriously. And I've been asking this, Luke, I've been asking this. This is a true question. And maybe you guys got an answer to this. when you talk to Jeff.

So because he has this, this trace amount of whatever this is, and you tell me the best of your understanding, going forward, will he be allowed to just always have this? That's my question. Because if you was able to fight last weekend, and why wouldn't he be able to fight in six months

if it's the same stuff in the system? You know what I'm saying? Like, is he going to be just allowed to always have this? I don't understand. understand. Like, that's one of my biggest wonders is, and if it's okay for him to always kind of have this trace amount of stuff in his body, what other people have, whatever that is, that turn the ball stuff, turn the ball stuff, and it just stays.

So can we go back now and, say, Frank, Mayor, now you're allowed to just always have turn the ball? Like, I don't understand. I don't understand it because I'm very uneducated about illegal substances. But I just don't. So is he? To the best of your knowledge, is he just allowed to always have this now? To the best of my knowledge, yes.

Because the way the testing would work is, every time he takes one of those tests, it wouldn't merely test for the long-term metabolite. It would test for that as well as all the other ones. And if only the long-term metabolite comes up, last week they said that's an irregularity. It's not a positive test. He didn't do anything wrong.

so if that's the case, why would that change? Right? It's crazy. Well, seems kind of messed up that he can have something as the rest of us get out. I just don't think that, here's what I think, I don't think that they really understand this drug very well. They admit that there's not been clinical trials on it, and now they want to make a bunch of rules for something that they have a fairly weak grasp on.

And here we are, man. It's a mess. It's a mess. You know, it's not a mess. Daniel, I know that we were living in a mess. crazy time. And I don't need to tell you this, but it's always, it's an honor whenever I get a chance to talk to you. And you had one of the best years of any fighter ever on record. I take my hat off to you. Congratulations. Get back to those kids who need your coaching. And thank you so much and happy New Year again. Happy New Year, Luke. Thank you so much for having me and I appreciate it.

Yes, sir. There he goes. One of the best to ever do it at the heavyweight division and light heavyweight division as well. The once two-time champ, but now the heavyweight champ of the world. appreciate his time. Is John Anick on Skype or is he on phone? Let's go to the Skype presence if we can. This man is your play-by-play commentator for all the big events, degenerate gambler, tattoo addict, and many more things. There he is the one and only John Anick making time for us here. I know you got a big podcast to do, but John, how are you, sir? I am doing well. Happy New Year, my man. It's always good to be with you. Let's talk about UFC 232 results. I went back listen to your call of the

win by Amanda Nunes. I've heard you pretty animated before. That bite me your most animated. Did I mishear that or would you share that opinion? No, for sure. I think that I might pay for that down the line, totally threw the voice out. I mean, you talk about a play-by-play guy not using his diaphragm properly.

Go listen to whatever that was. But yeah, man, you put so much into the preparation for these whole events, but those fights, right? A fight like that. And then you talk about, you know, not getting to any of it. of it, right? 51 seconds in, a result like that, just incredible. And that's why, you know, to your tweet earlier,

high-level MMA, when it's at its finest, nothing really touches it. The main event, what did you make of John Jones's performance? Pretty flawless in retrospect, huh? I think so. I mean, I think you can nitpick, and even he did a little bit in his post-fight interview with Joe Rogan, maybe, was

a little bit slow a foot or flat-footed at times. But this is a very disciplined fighter and a very disciplined training camp that prepares very specifically for rematches. And as he said with Joe Rogan, they wanted to attack in a versatile way on the feet with elbows and knees. They weren't going to box Alexander Gustafsson for 25 minutes. And I'm just not sure what you're looking for.

You know, the guy got hit on 18% of the shots that Alexander Gustafsson was able to throw. He's a menace man. And I know Gus maybe, you know, I think he said in the back, maybe he hurt his groin. But John's the guy who's inflicting all of this weird damage from all of the these weird angles and, you know, John hurt the other man and essentially he couldn't continue. What do you make of all

of what happened last week? Here's one thing no one's talking about amidst all of that firestorm of controversy. Deserve it or not, and again, everyone's going to have a different opinion. John still looked that cool, calm, and collected after all of that. It's like, if that doesn't rattle a guy, what does?

Yeah, Luke, there are some of these guys that love fight night, right? George St. Pierre is on the other side. Hates Fight Night, you know, and even Daniel Cormier really has to get himself going back there. You know, let's go, D.C. You know, he's not loving his job necessarily the way guys like John Jones are smiling on their way out to the octagon. I think Connor McGregor, maybe to a lesser extent, is cut from that cloth.

But that's always been a big takeaway for me. When you watch every John Jones walk out, dudes grinning ear to ear. And most of these guys, when they're about to go get in a fist fight like that, you know, fun isn't the first thing at the front of their mind. But for John, in a lot of respects, it is. Maybe this is a bit of a dated question, but it's one I've wanted to ask you. I feel like you are firmly acknowledged now, even by the hardcores, as the guy who deserves to be the sports top organizations play-by-play guy.

And think about it for any team, whether Sean Grande at the Celtics or John Walton for the Capitals, to be the voice of that team or that org. That's a big deal. And maybe you've already hit that several years ago. But as we transition out of the Foxy, I thought it was a good time to have the conversation. Do you feel like the entirety of the UFC community has finally said, that is our guy? You know, I guess I don't give it a lot of thought. I know when there's support out there from people like you and from fans, it certainly means a lot to me.

You know, it's been two years since I've sort of been unofficially promoted to being the lead guy on pay-per-view. But, you know, I take it very seriously. And I think people think it's a throwaway line when I try to treat every show like it could be my last. but I kind of have to treat the preparation in that way. You know, it's like I'm not Jones into give another guy an opportunity. You know, I want to hold down this seat. I want to do the big shows with Joe Rogan. And, you know, it's been a challenge, right?

I mean, coming into a broadcast team situation that had been a staple for a long time and replacing a guy who had been an institution. And a big part of my focus, man, was, you know, I want Joe to enjoy this job more or as much as his fight companion, right, so that he sticks around. You know what I mean? And so it's been a lot of different navigations, right, different broadcast teams. A three-man booth in MMA, as you can speak to a little bit, is a totally different broadcasting environment than a two-man booth and MMA. Those are two different jobs as far as I'm concerned.

So it's been great. I appreciate any acknowledgement that's out there, but I got to earn a man. If you don't think Dana White would, you know, get rid of me after several bad shows in a row, you know what I mean? I mean, I got to earn that number one seat. And thankfully, as we transition to ESPN, I have a long history with. them. But we got to earn it in January. You know, we got to make ESPN embrace this thing the way Fox did. And that challenge is already underway, you know. Now, your contracts with UFC, or are you going back to the mothership? How does that work?

So I am a full-time UFC employee, which is somewhat unique, I think, in broadcasting. That's the situation right now. That doesn't mean that I couldn't do things for ESPN and expand my role a little bit. But our focus right now, honestly, Luke, is making sure that these live events don't miss a beat. And I know January and February are going to be tough months in terms of I think just graphically, there's just a lot of different things that are changing and there are a lot of different jobs that are impacted pretty profoundly by this change. I think my channel of command is going to stay very similar. And if our TV formats stay very similar, I might not feel the reverberations as much as some other guys. But we got to get off on the right foot, you know, and this is something

we all take seriously and we're ready to attack at January 19th for sure. The ESPN thing, you were there when it was a different guy at the helm when I think MMA was, they were intrigued by it, but ultimately a little bit repulsed as well. But Jimmy Patero, the new guy, right, he seems full steam ahead, quite obviously. How do you think ESPN has changed in terms of their posture towards MMA since you were an ESPN employee? Well, there have always been some high-powered people in Bristol and in those buildings that loved the UFC and recognized where it was going. in what it could be. And they have pushed that envelope. That's why when we launched MMA Live in April 2008 on ESPN.com, that thing got to ESPN2, in some part because we made the show good enough, I think, as humbly as I can say that, but also because we had Glenn Jacobs, who is still

running this mixed martial arts operation now 10 years later, you know, pushing for us, right, because he felt like the sport had value. And even though we were on at 2.30 in the morning, you know, God damn it, we were on ESPN too. So things have changed a lot. I think the sport has really benefited domestically from the Fox relationship. I do feel like globally, obviously we've always felt huge when we go on the road, but we go to San Antonio, Texas. Sometimes I wonder why people don't

necessarily give a shit. And now I feel like if we were to go to San Antonio, maybe we'd do better than we did seven years ago. So I think the sport's in a good place. It's also a short term commitment from ESPN. That's why when I say, oh, we've got to earn it, right? Like, it's five years. That is a short amount of time in TV. So they've dipped their

toe in the water. I think you're going to see a lot of content and a similar embrace to the way even FS1 did it. Not that type of hour allotment on a channel, but you're going to see a lot of mixed martial arts content, and I think it's going to help us get to the next level, at least in the U.S. I'm actually really excited about streaming for viewers. As a guy who is a subscriber to many streaming services,

to me, this is interesting. I wonder as a broadcaster, and as a fan as well, how you view not merely UFC going to ESPN Plus, but we will know about DeZone and everything else. Are you excited about sports, moving into the streaming age? Yeah, I think so. You know, I haven't cut the cord, so to speak, right?

I have three children, but they essentially have cut the cord, right? And I can tell it's going in that direction. You know, I'm old school. I was born in the 1970s, Luke. I like to sit down. You know, I'm not, dude, I don't even know how to do an Instagram story, right? So for me to sit down with a remote control, that's sort of my wheelhouse. But yes, I think it's exciting.

I think it's very interesting that you're going to have this great set of prelims on linear ESPN. and then all of a sudden people are going to realize that you got to, if you want to see Dilashon Sehudo, you know, you got to either go on some device or if you got one of those fancy TVs. I think it's going to be a transition for a lot of people. So I can't say I'm as bullish as it on you. But I'm a big picture. I'm excited, you know, when Francis and Gano and Kane Velazquez fight on ESPN, Luke, right?

I mean, with respect to Kane JDS1 on Fox and the launching of FS1 in 2013 and you know how much respect I have for those people. But a UFC fight night in prime time on ESPN, that's been the goal since we started MMA Live in 2008. So, you know, even if I wasn't around for that, for a lot of us who were sort of grinding our gears at ESPN and getting nowhere in a mixed martial arts setting back then, it's like mission accomplished. We got a UFC fight night on ESPN. It's what we've always been working for. Yeah. I mean, I hear your concerns about the streaming in terms of its visibility. At the same time, though, I would say no one really knows what the future of television is going to be like.

I feel like the networks for the big sports properties probably have one more really big check in them longer than five years, but in 10 years, what is TV going to look like? Do we have any idea? I don't think that we do. Now, let's go back and talk about TV when it was that kind of thing. You know, you obviously grew up as a broadcaster, I think it's fair to say.

I remember you called it was it one Washington State football game for FS1, if I'm not mistaken, right? I did get to fit in one guess. I thought you sounded great for what it's worth. That's just my very biased but humble opinion. Nevertheless, what do you think is one thing about the Fox deal that was really great for MMA that maybe some people don't either realize or fully appreciate? Well, I think so many television people at Fox got the bug like we do.

You know, this sport kind of grabs you by the stones and it has a very addictive nature to it, right? I will order every UFC pay-per-view as long as I live, even if I'm not working for the company, right? And I think a lot of people crossed that line at Fox. So their commitment to this sport, right, to make it great and to make the content really good. I think really resonated with a lot of American sports fans. It's hard, I think, to quantify FS1 solely from a rating standpoint and how many people are really accessing that channel. And sometimes hotel rooms didn't have FS1 when we'd be on the road doing an FS1 UFC fight night. But I think that while not necessarily quantifiable the last seven years are going to have a resumed.

residual effect when we move to ESPN. And I think growing this domestic fan base is always going to be a big challenge for us. I mean, even UFC 232 is going head to head in some part with the college football playoffs, right? And that's always something that we're going to be up against in the United States of America. You know, and for me, too, I'm a sticking ball guy. You know that, you know. I mean, I've taken eight or ten jujitsu classes, but I'd rather go play basketball, right? So for me, football is always going to be king.

But the UFC's close and fast, you know, closing faster than people think. The other big thing I think it's interesting about the move to ESPN is not merely the streaming or being on ESPN, as you noted, but the news embracing of it, right? Watching on SportsCenter, there's constantly news on the crawl now or sports center segments. Look, sports center's not necessarily what it used to be, and that's something that even ESPN will acknowledge. But nevertheless, when they grab a hold of a story in sports, it is different than virtually any other actor in the space. I wonder what you make of how that will transform MMA, either for better or for worse, perhaps. Yeah, it's a great question and a very salient point in all of this because, as you know, the MMA news cycle is just bananas, right? I mean, even just if you think about it from a broadcasting standpoint, the elements and the variables you're dealing with before our live events compared to the NFL.

You know, Tom Brady all of a sudden might wake up and be sick on game day and it changes the dynamic of a football game. But for the most part, you know, a lot of rinse and repeat going on for us. It's just constant variables and things changing when it comes to MMA. And so for ESPN, right, they're always looking for interesting things to talk about. Well, there's always, I mean, you know it for better or for worse. As a mixed martial arts journalist, whether it's on holidays, you know, bat phone rings. You get a text, man, you know, these holidays flip on a dime. So I think that will help ESPN from a content standpoint because there's always interesting shit to talk about an MMA.

So I think they're going to get a big push there, obviously. And it's just very exciting. You can already see it, right? I mean, we haven't even started. You can already see some of the transitions. And obviously I wish maybe, hopefully we can talk three or four months down the line when a lot of things that are in my head and things that I know are coming. I could share a lot of details with you on. But, dude, it's going to be amazing.

It really is. I couldn't sort of curb my enthusiasm. I'm very excited. All right. Your favorite call from any Fox broadcast you did. Now, what I mean by that is not necessarily merely as a fan, but when you, when you are called up, because look, your job is a calling. You are called upon to be the voice of that action, of that moment, of that fight. So when you think about, and I'm asking for a lack of humility from your part, I suppose,

but some kind of moment from those Fox broadcast that you think just it all came together for you. You know, it's tough, right? Because obviously a lot of the big fights on those Fox shows ended up landing on pay-per-view. You know, one memory I just have to share is when it was Mark Hunt and Bigfoot Silva, the consensus greatest heavyweight fight in UFC history, December of 2000. 2013 in Brisbane, Australia. Those Australia shows happen in the morning. You know, I'm on a treadmill at 3 a.m.

First fights at like seven. And here Mark Hunt and Bigfoot Silva are engaging in this just epic fight. And I've never seen anything like it live and in color like that. And it's, you know, one o'clock in the afternoon. I'm just praying the people back in the States, you know, during football season and are flipping the channel in a Griffin-Boner-like way to try to ingest what I think has to be the best sporting event that anyone has seen in six or eight weeks. So there were so many moments like that, you know, I think being able to, you know, lend my voice to some of these bigger moments, you know, I really learned the bottom half

of this roster so intimately over a large amount of years, right? So when I did get elevated and had the opportunity to be a part of these big shows, it really was exciting because I felt like I had spent so much time devoting myself to fighters that needed to become household names. And then all of a sudden you're calling the fights with the big names. you know, you just try to let the skills take over, man. I never think about a call before it happens. And, you know, just try to get out of the way and do the best job I can, man.

But it's the greatest job in the world. And I'm thankful to have it at least here as we go to 2019. Last question before I let you go. How has MMA broadcasting changed since you began involved in? Let's go back to you, let's say 2008, which is also broadcasting, but from behind the news desk. But in terms of the calling of the fights, how has it changed? Well, I think it's changed insofar as that the UFC has embraced a lot of people with a sports television background, you know, and our group of producers, you know, Craig Borsar, sorry, leads this group now of Zach Candido and Michael LaPlante and Mike Ritchie and these guys just do an outstanding job, particularly with these analysts, right? I mean, I think when you look at the top eight guys we have, our color guys are the best and can compete with any sport in the world.

And there's a lot of good coaching going on. You know, I do think that there's been an embrace of. the sports TV thing, right? Like you look at other MMA broadcast, Luke, and they don't look or sound necessarily like ours, right? We've embraced a lot of things. I think we've sort of turned that page, and I don't want to say it's people are taking us seriously now, but, you know, hey, when I showed up,

there was no pronunciation guide. Now we have every fighter saying their name to tape, right? Like, there's a lot of, we lean on our strengths and our television backgrounds and bring those skills to the UFC, and I think coupling that with what they already had going on has been a pretty powerful package and one that obviously we've got to keep going.

Well, I know you had to move some things around to accommodate my request today, so I don't want to keep you any longer, but I really appreciate your time. You're one of the best in the business, truly one of the good guys, except for your gambling, which is a little bit concerning. But nevertheless, truly one of my favorites. Congratulations on a wonderful 2018, and I can't wait to see what you guys have in store for us in 2019. And give Ken Flo my best, please. I will, buddy, and thank you. And I got to say, man, you know, I'm a huge fan of yours. I listen to you on the radio all the time.

And mixed martial arts is lucky to have Luke Thomas, folks. So this guy can be doing anything he wants. So I appreciate being on. And happy to move the show back a few minutes for you, my man. I'll talk to you. Thank you so much. There he is. John Attic.

Really appreciate his time. And Felice Agneuivo. Okay. Do we have Mr. Hall on Skype or phone? I can never keep track. What do we have? Back to the Skype machine. He is Falls Church's finest.

Heel hook extraordinaire black belt with big ass nostrils. My friend and yours, the one and only, Ryan Hall. How are you? Hey, Luke, I'm doing good. It's a low border clear, but we try to do it. Are you still on the West Coast? Where are you?

Yeah, it's pretty early here. I'm just waking up the crack of dawn. So, yeah, I mean, L.A. still. All right. How are you feeling after Saturday? That has to be one of the more thrilling victories of your general combative career, no? Yeah, it was really, I feel there was really neat

to get to compete against BJ. I feel very happy to have had the opportunity. Folks have asked me this, and I guess the answer is I'm not, but I want to know what you make of it. The speed with which he tapped, I think some folks say in their mind, BJ Penn, you know,

First American to win the World Championships, if he was going to tap, it would take some long pronounced battle, and it didn't. And I know you have a simple answer for that, I'm sure, but to that question, how would you answer it? you know i i'd say you can never be sure quite what to expect i didn't i wasn't under the impression that bj was likely to tap but it just we ended up getting caught pretty quickly and uh you know

the the heel hook was on pretty tight so you know ultimately people have to make a choice there but that it was absolutely a deep submission and i guess uh i wasn't expecting him to tap but anybody could now can you walk me through how you did it you faked a kick as you brought it back, you got into a shooting position. It looked like you were shooting. Then you did an Iminari roll. From there, can you walk me through how you finished it? Because you looked like you trapped the far side leg, so he kind of fell over and landed on his hands.

And then from there was basically all she wrote. Yeah, you know, you're always trying to stop people from being able to mount the defense that they'd like to. And obviously, a guy like BJ has phenomenal defense in general, and particularly when he gets on top is incredibly dangerous. So I was just doing my best to mitigate, you know, those things. and, of course, the punching issue is a big deal in mixed martial arts. It's a huge difference from the way that things are often done in jit-suit, so keeping him facing any direction where he's not necessarily able to crack me upside the mouth, even if it goes wrong, was pretty important.

But it just happened to work out, and I was glad to get the outcome. The way he rolled, was he supposed to roll with the bite or against it? Here's what my ask on this is. I know you can do either, right? You can roll with the bite, or you can try and get your foot to the ground, and then try to stand, right? But by the time he landed, he had his hands planted, and his heel was already in the air.

I guess I'm asking you to put yourself in his position. Was it better to roll, or was it better to come back face forward, albeit it didn't really matter in the end? You know, I'd say it kind of depends on the situation. I think that if you look in Slamo, you'll see he tried to kick my grip. He didn't really try to roll. It was he turned, he kind of sort of tried to roll, but mostly he was facing back to kick at my grip,

and his foot slipped off and wasn't able to make contact that he was looking for. And I thought that was a good defense that he was trying to mount. And ultimately, when things get locked in tight, in any submission, you're always a little bit up against it as the defensive person. But it's not as if I've seen some of the narratives that he made some sort of colossal error and doesn't have to defend a footlock, and I don't think that's fair to be, J. And I don't think that's fair to be, Jain. I don't believe that to be accurate. Yeah, I don't think it's accurate either.

It was just a little surprising, I think, in the end. You just, we had never seen BJ tap, and not only did he tap, it was lightning quick. It just, it's shocking. And I think a lot of people are trying to process that, coming to different conclusions as a consequence as all. Right, right. You know, you said something after the fight that I, you never told me, which I thought was kind of interesting. You left Jiu-Jitsu before you thought you had really had a moment to peak, right, before you really thought you had your best to offer. Is that, is that right?

Oh, that's absolutely true. I left well before I was good enough to do the things that I wanted to do, but I knew that I'd only have the opportunity really to be at my best in one of the two sports. And, you know, I elected to try to go to mixed martial arts because I wanted to learn how to fight for real. I wanted to be able to see if my skills would be able to translate into a more real arena. And particularly as Jiu-Zitsu has gotten further and further away from what mixed martial arts is and what I believe martial arts to be truly at its core, I feel very, very happy to have made the decision that I did. How old were you when you made the more or less full-time commitment to MMA?

I was 27 years old, and I was competed in ADCC the year prior, and I knew that ultimately I was behind the eight ball when it came to learning striking, learning other things. I could already wrestle okay, no one near as well as now. But the bad jih Tjitza standards, I could wrestle all right, but it wasn't going to be enough. And, you know, certainly not to the level where you see like the Cobrene is now where he's put in so much work and whatnot.

It's nice to see some people doing that in the jihitsu world, particularly people like, you know, Cabrini, who I look up to a great deal. But, yeah, I was 27, and I knew that I couldn't spend my time fiddling around. If you start MMA at 30, it doesn't usually work out great. So both I wouldn't have the years for skill development or the years for the experience gathering. And, you know, even though it's been a winding road, and a lot of years have been taken off out of the ring, unfortunately. I think I've had four, you know, dropped years almost of non-competition

as a result of people not being willing to get into the ring. I've always been training every day and always been working on striking and I'm glad that I want that route. What do you make of this? I'm going to ask this question a couple of ways. A lot of people always ask it about, I hear your little one there. I hope everything's okay. No, it's going to great, yeah, sorry.

No, no, no, don't worry about it. It's quite a, she sounds very cute. The point I want to make was as follows. A lot of people make a, if you can pull the camera up just a little bit, because we can't, all we can do is see your mouth. There, a little more. There it is. Yeah, we got you.

No, you're good, you're good. people make this argument I've got a face for radio Fair enough But here's the point I hear a lot of people make the argument You hear it from Hoise Gracie all the time It's like oh modern Jiu-Jitsu sucks

And look, it is what it is People are going to respond to incentives and rule sets And that's going to be the thing I think what's kind of different though for me Is the professionalization of Jiu-Jitsu Where you have all of these tournaments Outside of the IBJJF circuit That you know Keene Cornelius for example

He has said openly Yeah I just really don't need to go into MMA and I wonder, is that a good thing for Jiu-Jitsu? Because it allows it to just be itself rather than being some kind of technical applicant to MMA. Does that make sense? Absolutely. I'm glad to see that there's a venue for people that want to grapple at a very high and professional level to carry on doing that and making money. That wasn't really there when I was there.

But honestly, I'm much happier fighting, but I know that some people don't, some people just don't like fighting, and they prefer to grapple, and they prefer a jih Tzu, and I think that's phenomenal. I think it's fine. You know, I'd say the jih Tzu has definitely gotten more professional. A lot of things have also just gotten, like, they've got brighter lights and more, you know, flashy shit around, and it gives the impression of higher level in professionalism, which I would take some issue with.

But ultimately, it is nice to see guys like Keenan feeling that if he wants to stay in jih Tijuana, that he can make a good living doing so, you know, and I think that that's great, and it pushes the jih Tijitsu world forward, and it keeps people there. Um, that being said is it, you know, like it's, I feel very fortunate to have come up in a time in jih Tzu where mixed martial arts was, was the end goal, was the thing that you look to. I remember being on teams where you look around and there were some of us that were jih Tzu guys and some of us that were, uh, M.A, um, oriented. and there was never any disrespect towards the jihitsu side, and that's something that I really enjoyed. I really still love jih Tjitsu very much.

But there was always an understanding of, hey, don't get it twisted, there's fighting, and then there's this other thing, there's grappling. And, you know, and I, again, there was never that misconception in my mind that they were one and the same. And as the rule sets, like you said, people respond to the incentives that are there, competitors are going to do that, and as well they should. You know, intelligent competitors will always try to find their way through the holes. that being said, you know, I'd like to see a little bit more cross-pollination because

just even culturally, jih Tzu, I find obnoxious at this point. Yeah, well, it's weird. We go to like a U.S. grappling tournament and people are mean mugging each other. It's like, Steve, you're an accountant. It's the latest thing I've ever seen. Exactly. But the toughest accountant on the row, you know what I mean? It's like, what the fuck are you doing, guy?

Dude, it's embarrassing. It's pretty embarrassing watching a bunch of, Grapple nerds act hard. It's very strange. Let me just ask you this. To the extent you're able to watch competitive jiu-jitsu anymore, who are the guys out there

whose styles you really like, or ladies too, whichever. Oh, let's see. I mean, Kenan's someone who I think is fantastic, obviously. You know, Gordon Ryan is undoubtedly doing very, very well. He's fun to watch.

Let's see. Tankino, I like, I enjoy watching as well. Augusta Mendez. He always comes back and forth between grappling and MMA, and it's very, very cool the way he's able to do that at a very high level. And, you know, I enjoy the style and the approach. Cobrina has always been one of my absolute favorites.

Lucas Leprey, Roger Gracie, but at the current, probably, Colerina and Lucas Leprey, I would say, are probably my favorite guys to watch. But there's always a bunch of people who are interesting. It's just a little bit of the over-emphasis on footlocks has gotten a little bit silly because people are missing surrounding skills. And I know I was one of those dudes, but then again I was competing in ADCC four years into training.

So I kind of had no, I had to go with something. But, you know, looking at any technique as if it's sort of like a panacea that can, you know, solve all your problems, a little bit much. But, oh, yeah, someone else I never want to forget is Morillo Santana, obviously one of my favorite people I've ever trained with, unbelievable technician, unbelievable competitor, and always one of my favorites to watch as well. And has just a gnarly beard.

That beard is just unkempt. And he had it before. it was cool. It's not one of those like hipster beards where I can't tell if you're going to buy me a latte or if you're a special forces operator or something like that. It's like he had this thing when, you know, that's just been there. I think he's probably like six.

Yeah, it just grew. He shaves it. It comes back in 30 seconds. He can't do anything about it. No, you just don't fight fate, man. You know, you just got to carry on. In terms of M.MA, same question. Guys who are like jiu-jitsu-e or have good submissions inside M.A. Who do you like? Oh, man. Let's see.

There's a couple guys that I really, Joe watching. I like Al Jermaine Sterling a lot. I think the way he fights is very cool. Very interesting. Obviously, I'm excited to see Kron Gracie. Come to the UFC, one of the best jih Tzu guys in the world. Fantastic. I'll be very interested. I'll watch that with a, you know, a lot of anticipation.

You know, in M.MA, you know, on the way up, it was BJ Penn and Kenny Florian, people that I love to watch Minutero. But yeah, I mean, the UFC's got some other great jih Tutsu guys as well right now. Davy Hamos, his ADCC champions up there is as tough as anybody. So it's interesting. Brian Ortega has been doing

very, very well, you know, and again, being influenced by the kind of Gracie Tollent style is very cool as well. It's nice to see that making a comeback. There's a lot to be excited about, I feel like, from a grappling perspective, you know, in both the grappling world and the MMA world, and it's a neat time to be around. Did you wrap your hands for that fight? I wrap my hands in about the loosest sense of the term. Now, why do you do that? I don't know. It seemed like the thing to do. It makes me feel cool. but other than that, you know, I'm not spending, I remember my first MMA fight.

I felt like my hands were wrapped so well that I could, I felt like I could punch a brick wall, which was great, only that wasn't really part of the plan. And I remember grabbing and snatching up a toll and granted, that was a garbage grappler at that time. It was like 2006 and I found myself in a pro-MMA fight without realizing I was going to be in a pro-M-A fight until earlier that afternoon. Thanks, coach. But let's see, and I actually couldn't flex my wrists, you know, to apply any pressure. but that was an interesting experience but yeah as I've gotten a little bit more

time in the ring starting to understand kind of what I like and what I'm shooting for at least from a grappler's perspective I think I'd rather have a little bit more dexterity in my limbs than the ability to punch the floor that I hope to not punch anyway. You have a very interesting style Ryan for MMA which

is that a lot of people just sort of take a strategy of I have to bite the bullet to make things happen and to be clear there are conditions you have to establish in order to get to certain spaces. But I guess what I'm saying is you don't spend a lot of time trading on the feet. You'll trade under certain contexts, but it seems like you put a high, and I'm just,

understand, you know I'm not asking this from a disparaging context, more from just a metagame analysis. You don't spend hardly, my feelings. Yeah, you don't spend hardly any time worrying about I need to be in a position where I got to bite down the mouthpiece and get into range. You, it seems to me have made a game where it has built into the idea of minimal damage, possible maximum submission threat.

Something like that. Yeah, I think that that's accurate and I feel like that's what I'd say most of us are shooting for. Someone I really enjoy watching, a couple guys that really enjoy watching the UFC are Stephen Thompson, of course,

is unbelievable and has taught me a great deal. There's a lot of Sonia as well, who obviously everyone is gaining, you know, he's gaining a ton of attention and rightly. So if I could strike like them, I would do it. Because they get in there and they don't let you don't hit them. They hit you.

And I'm shooting for the same thing. It's just one of those things where I'm a couple years into my striking development. They're 15 to 30 years into their striking development. And, you know, I think any of us try to play with the tools that we have and we go where we're, where we feel that we're the strongest. But I think that there's a lot of, maybe I wouldn't say misconceptions, but ideas out there in MMA about how things have to be done. Maybe this is how life works, I guess. And I'm not saying that I've got the magic trick to figuring all this out. But people take for granted that you have to fight a certain way, that you have to bite down to your mouthpiece.

Obviously, there's certain circumstances wherein that is the only option, and that's the right thing to do. But going in there and doing the full-on charge thing, right from the jump seems to me to be a little bit short-sighted, if that's not required at the time, to say nothing of the fact that there's going to be a significant physical toll for you. But something else to consider, I think, is that some guys and some girls are just incredibly, incredibly durable. And I think that that's something that they make work for them. That's amazing. I'm a huge fan of, like, you know, fighters like Justin Gagey, Tony Ferguson, who I think are phenomenal. It's amazing to watch.

I love what they do. And they make their strongest assets, their skills, their durability, their toughness, their grit, they make all of that count for them. And I think that's fantastic. I think, though, that, you know, I came up in a different way and with a different set of skills and a different approach. And any of us, and that's the cool thing about MMA, are allowed to make things work for us. Because under the rule set that exists, it's so open. It's like war. What's the goal?

When? How? I don't know. Just do it. You can stay in it lightweight or no? Absolutely not. I'll be going back to featherweight. But if there's anybody really interesting at lightweight, I would always be happy to fight.

But I wait in without cutting any weight below the lightweight limit. So I think that featherweight will be more prudent. Yeah. And then, I suppose, in thinking about this, you had a two-year layoff, and we talked at various intervals about what was happening. But you got a nice win. You got a nice bonus, which means that the UFC liked what you put in. You beat a legend name. If you look at the numbers for what you have done on various videos, they're higher than a lot of your contemporaries from Saturday night.

Do you feel like that chapter of maybe being kind of ignored by some of your potential opponents is behind you? Like, did this raise the profile enough that you become an attractive? target for another hungry fighter? I'm not really sure. I'm honest. If I'm honest, I'm not really sure. I have no idea what the future holds. I'll do my best regardless, and I hope to fight the best people available, but

I will stick to my guns the same way I have. I don't fight bombs. I don't waste my time. I'm looking for very, very difficult challenges. I know that they are out there, and I hope that they will be willing to turn up the way BJ did. And I've gotten through my first UFC fights more or less unscratched, but

I know that that's not a trend that can continue for and I'm willing to, you know, Facebook comes and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. But ultimately, it's just one of those things, just like in jih Tjitsu. I said it in an interview the other day. Even when I was in the jitzy world, I wasn't anywhere near where I'm at now, experience or skill-wise, but I was still good enough to beat anybody on the right day. And it was a frustrating thing because I felt like I didn't get a fair shake in a lot of situations, and certain things were actually full-and-taken out of my hands.

And that doesn't mean I couldn't have done anything better because I certainly could have. but again, you play with the tools and the skills that you have at the time. And what I had at the time wasn't adequate for the circumstance. And anyway, it's the same thing here. There's a lot. All I can control is how I train, how I approach the game, and how I compete when I'm given the opportunity to do so. And when I'm given the opportunity to do so, if that happens again, I look forward

to bringing my best. Well, I know you keep the mean streets of Falls Church, Virginia, nice and safe from all the other middle class folks. Someone has to do it. Oh, yeah. exact. There's this lady, you know, she's probably in her 50s, but I'll tell you what, you know, she's a problem. And, you know,

someone has to keep it all in check. Well, I leave that, I leave that difficult job to you and your lovely wife, please give her my best as well. Congrats on the win. Congrats on being back. Congrats on the bonus. It's great to see, Ryan. And I can't wait to see what you got in store for us for 2019. Happy

New Year, sir. Thanks so much, Luke. Happy near you. Thank you, I mean to the show. Yeah, thank you, buddy. There he is. Ryan Hall, one of the best to ever do it. And We go from that to a consideration about Amanda Nunes. She is, in my judgment, the best female fighter of all time. You go through her resume. She beat Chris Cyborg, Valentina Shevchenko twice, Ronda Rousey,

Misha Tate, Julia Budd. It just goes on and on and on. And one of her coaches and right-hand men joins us now on the hotline. He is one of the top guys in American top team in terms of the coaching. Former fighter himself, Conan Silvera is here. Hi, Conan. How are you? Hi, how are you? Hi, how you doing, guys?

Oh, good. very happy. I could be more happy than, you know, with this big and incredible fight Saturday. Let's talk about the win. It couldn't have gone much better, but did you think it was going to go like that, Conan? Be extremely humble. I knew that we were leaving that night with the belt. You know, we have the strategy. we have, she was really well trained and being prepared for any situation, then the fire goes. But what happened was, you know, I meant this very extremely dangerous when she sees her open.

And I think there was a big mistake from cyboros trying to exchange with her. You know, she's very precise. She has an extremely heavy hands, and that's the way, you know, the fight finish, you know, Amanda knocking her out. Can you give us a sense for folks who've never been in there with her, who don't even know her, but you do, you know her very well. How hard does she hit? Yes, she hits hard, but is there any way to help illustrate that point?

Okay, I'll answer the question. You explained you guys then. Number one, Amanda never trained. She doesn't have a girl's training partner. She has only main training partners. Secondly, I know every single fighter they train with her. Some of the guys don't like to train with her because she hates hard. So I think that that was pretty much

a good explanation. You know, she hates like a man. And the way in which she put down Ronda Rousey and Cyborg is certainly proof of that. But it's more than just her power, right? She has good accuracy, good finishing instincts. When you think about her as a striker, what are all the things in your mind that she really excels at. Let me put it this way. And I think that the best way for people to understand, you'd be, you got to compare a complete MMA fighter as a best actor.

You know, when you're acting and you try to just be, just do one type of a character, he's like, just be the good guy. Being a good guy in an anime movie, you do, he's not going to get to your Oscar. she's a actor or actress, then she can place anything. Doesn't matter. So you see as acting and you see as a fight, she plays a different character for every fight. So for every movie, she'll be a different person.

So Amanda has out the tools, and she doesn't know a little bit about just the ground, just the strike. She speaks fluent everywhere. So like I say, you know, whatever situation happens, she knows how to answer the question. Conan, when did you guys, you and her, when did you guys start working together? Was right probably a few months after she got your American top team. You know, we became very close right before she fought, I believe was before Valentina in Vegas, I think there was the wrestler. I forgot her name.

Katzangano? No, no, no. She is a wrestler. Oh, Sarah McMahon. Sarah, right. That was the first fight that we got together. And what is it about you two that makes it, I mean, you guys seem like a great pair. Why do you work so well together?

I mean, yes, you're both Brazilian, but there's lots of people who are of the same nationality that don't like each other. So what is it about you two that that is a winning combination? I will say it in our friendship, you know, probably I even, I should call friendship, you know, a relationship, I love between me and her. It's pretty much like a father and a daughter. You know, we don't have to talk too much to each other. You know, we almost by talking by, you know, I mean, we don't have to just look at each other.

We know what we've got to do. you know, I understand exactly the way she feels, you know, it's just the chemistry is just, you know, like I say, it's not that way to explain besides being, you know, a father and a daughter. But what was the process by which you guys started working together? Because you said she was at ATT for a few months and then you got together. How did that connection, how was it built? I knew her from before, you know, she was she was trained before in the gym, you know, down. South Florida before she came to us. Actually, she came with Nina.

And I knew who she was. And, of course, I watched her fights. And I always saw some potential. I saw, like, man, I know that she came. She has, you know, when you know when somebody has to become the best of the best. And of course, you know, I'm going to say, oh, I knew then she was going to be the champ, champ. back them, no, but I knew she had the tools, and I think that was, that was the most important. I mean, when I came with the time, you know, I mean, we flew the, you know, so, you know, so, you know, we, and by more, more time goes by more, we know about each other.

I mean, nothing I can say more than good things about her, you know, she's just incredible. She certainly is. What's one thing about Amanda, that? that maybe the public doesn't know but should in terms of, I don't know, better understanding her. She comes from a very hard life. You know, Amanda, you know, as much as you know all this glamour and all this, you know, celebrity status, the champion of the champions, the best, the queen, whatever you call. She keeps her feet down. She knows what she came from, you know.

She's very, very human being. She's very, you know, humble. I mean, she's just, you know, she doesn't change because all this happened. Of course, it is changing the way that, you know, she'd probably be able to give her family a, you know, a better life. But as a person, as who she is, not one inch of a change, nothing. things. She's had a few difficulties, not merely in her life where she grew up, but even in her career as she was ascending to the top, you were probably with her for the Rousey fight, and you saw that promotion. It was really one-sided. It was all about Ronda. Did that bother her?

To be honest, you know, I don't think, I think Ronda was the absence. Rhonda was the most incredible unfair, you know, a situation than she has been to. But I believe Then when she was offered to fight Misha, like always nobody believed that she could, you know, she could make it. Always was something about her endurance. It was about her, oh, she's going to break it. She's going to do this. She's going to do that. And she always been fighting not only against the punters, but against the odds.

So, you know, being fighting Saturday against cyborg was fun. It was like, you know what? It is my position. You know what I mean? People want me to prove. I'm not going to prove to you. but I'm going to shock you. I'm going to shock the planet.

And that was the intention. It must have been an incredibly hard time. What was it? UFC 213 when she had to pull out because of the sinus issues. What was from a coaching perspective, that whole scene? What was that like? Definitely, you know, because I know her so well, you know, if I see then she's not 100%, you know, ready to do it.

I mean, I'll be the first one to say, you know what I don't care what anybody is going to say. You're not going to fight. You're the champion. You know, why are you going to put this, you know, just to prove what? If you are not 100%, and that would be my advice to any fighter, don't try to make it. You are, if you are 100%, just go. But if you're not, just stay where you are because you don't want to go back five steps. And usually that's what happens.

When you try to push yourself or try to prove yourself, in the wrong time, that's exactly what's going to happen. You're going to lose what you have. So, you know what? So being in the same spot and not moving forward, at least you don't lose what you have. And, you know, I was the first one to say, I don't think then you should fight, you know what me? I don't, if you're not feeling good, you know, and it was a combination of, was a combination

of the situations. It was her sinus. She had her period. I mean, everything came together, you know, exactly at the same time. So, you know, it was no real. reason why we should, you know, try to do something then we knew that no one won't be a good result. Was she bothered by the attacks on her character?

Of course, yes. You know, she's like, man, it seems to me that it's never enough, you know. It doesn't matter what I do. And I say, yeah, you know, why, he's going to get worse. When you get wrong, he's going to get, you know, I mean, it's always going to be worse, you know, next, like the next day, she just won the second belt. I mean, on that different division in people saying that. Oh, that was too fast.

She was lucky, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, she doesn't get bothered anymore by that. But, you know, she's like, you know, I mean, what do you got to do? What do you have to do to prove that you are the best of the best? Yeah, I don't know. Now, speaking of that cyborg win, so she wins. They raise her hand. They give her the belt.

And I believe you and her embraced. And I'm wondering, I mean, I don't know. I know this is a private question, but I'm wondering if you can tell us whatever she had said to you at some point in that ring or afterwards. I'm not going to say. I'm not going to say. I don't want to say that I don't want to tell you guys. I think he's just such a passion and a love and a moment they just belongs to me to her. You know, we were talking about our journey together.

And, you know, that was our moment. I mean, the team moment, Amanda Nunes, American Top Team, that was us. You know, as much, you know, it's nothing, like, you know, nothing that I have to hide from you guys. Just, I want to be a little bit selfish. I understand that. But I guess what I would ask is a follow-up then is, can you tell me as a coach and as somebody involved in fighting in your life what it's meant to you to have Amanda Nunes in your life? You see

Definitely You know Like anybody sees I mean part of that I'm part of her journey That's about her But my My

My My My My My way I feel proud of her You know It's just like When you see your daughter

You see your blood You see a person Then you love Then she's like Is making And making her dreams Become reality It's just like

it's almost like hard to explain but you know it's just more like you can see it's just more than a coach and a fighter you know she really she really

worked hard for that very extremely hard so when you see somebody get what they want it because that work the desire that determination it's just you know how I don't know I think happy

is not exactly the word I want to use well I don't know if you saw it when she finally finished her with that one punch and Cyborg goes face first. The UFC had a camera on you and her corner, and you had your hands up in the air. I'm wondering, was that your proudest moment for her? Yes, I think that he's probably won the moments, you know. I believe the most important moment is when we are alone and we talk about it. When you look back and you can see it how much we have to go for for every situation

and what do we have to hear from people not believing us. I mean, it was just a matter of feeling the pleasure of showing that you was such a right. I knew it was coming. I knew it was going to happen. It was just a matter of time. And then in terms of a rematch, because you know they're going to make one for no other reason, Conan, than money, right? I mean, it's coming. I'm wondering, like, okay, Cyborg, obviously, if she doesn't brawl with Amanda, you know, could probably do better.

But I know what you're going to say, you're going to say, well, she's not going to beat her no matter what. Give me the case. Why is it not possible for Cyborg to beat Amanda? I will never put it in the way DeNis not possible. I just think then, like I said, and my explanation about how Amanda, as she is as a fighter, I believe then for you to get close to her, you have to understand fighting more than she does. And I think then right now I don't see anybody. Of course, I'm not in any way to respect in cyborg or any other fighter, but I don't see that.

I think Amanda is definitely in the different level, you know, of the MMA. And the reason why I say that, and I don't believe it's going to happen in a rematch, because I think then the rematch is should happen if it was a split decision or was, even if you're not his decision. You know, you probably never know what the fight is going to go, each side is going to go. But when you knock somebody out, don't come to me and say, was lucky. Oh, it was a lucky shot. No, that was very visible and clear that Amanda knew what she was doing and everybody saw the Cyborg could not handle it. So I believe then, you know,

I don't see why having a rematch. I'll say this, Conan, and we'll end on this. It seems to me a lot of people who maybe were down on her before or were skeptical, boy, you knock out Cyborg like that. You look at the rest of her resume. and what all she's done. People, I'm one of them, think she's the best female fighter. Certainly she has the best female fighter's resume of all time. Do you think she'll finally get the respect she deserves now? I believe so.

I mean, I don't even think people should call her the best fighter. You know, I think people should call her the queen. She is the queen of M.M.A. He's being proved. I mean, like you say, look who she fought. How are you not going to bound to her? You're not because, you know, in a way of her. or any, or being

inferior or superior, just because she did so much. She showed you know in every fight. I mean, how are you not going to recognize that? What else you got to do? I mean, she got to fight men's now. Probably jump on the

135 or 145 division, main division in five men's. I mean, of course I'm kidding, but you know, what else you want? I mean, who she won? Against who? She put 48 seconds and run the Rossi, 51 seconds in Cyborg. What else people want?

Man, I don't know. I do not know. But here's what I do know. That is one of the most unbelievable performances I think I'd ever seen. And that embrace that you guys had, as private as it was, it was cool to watch, Conan. So I take my hat off to her and I take my hat off to you. Good luck tonight at the PFL. I know you're there cornering some folks as well.

and I just want to say, congrats. What a great, great accomplishment for you both. Thank you, I appreciate. I mean, I want to just make sure that people don't see me, like, I'm coming the wrong way, you know, be arrogant or anything like that. No way. I just, you know, if you work hard and you go forth for the things you believe it,

there's no way you should be sorry about anything. There it is. Conan, best of luck tonight at PFL. I'll be watching, and thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Appreciate. There he is. Conan Silvera, top coach and Amanda Nunes's mentor and a whole lot more. The last thing on this Darren Rovell bit, and this is why I was so bitter, he said there were two things that were fundamentally objectionable about it.

It's like, number one, he was like, oh, a rematch with Cyborg would have been better if Cyborg had won. This is just foundationally wrong. That's not true. The big money is if the upset happens and then you can make it, that's just sort of fight business 101. But the other part to me that really just kind of bothered me about it is like, again, I made the point before, you want to argue, has Amanda been naturally resonating with fans since day one? Well, of course not. No. But number one, some people in life just don't get picked as the one that should be promoted or liked more or understood. And Amanda's kind of always been poorly understood. I think more and more people are coming around to her now because what she's doing is so undeniable. But a lot of people have to just overcome these weird perceptions about them, even if they shouldn't necessarily have to.

That's the first thing I'd say. The second thing I'd say to Darren Ravel is, do you know what of a fucking dick you gotta be on a night where a woman ascends to uh m a mount rushmore history and say this is a disaster for the ufc it's like if you want to make a sober analysis about what kind of business implications there might be first of all understand the fight business and don't say a cyborg rematch would have been better if cyborg had one number one number two it's it's just such an asshole thing to say man it's just so uh It's so over the top, you know, no Vaseline, just to match in a little bit of gasoline. And it seems just you're unnecessarily combative, frankly, a little bit wrong.

Because also, if you win a big fight, that could be the moment that turns you. Anderson Silva was reviled until he just wasn't. And maybe Amanda Nunes is on a path like that. I don't know what the future holds. But coming out of the gate with this fiery, hot take, Skip Bayless tweet that is partly, wrong and also just incredibly you know, just shit-hattery. I don't know. It would put me in a bad space.

Now, someone else who had a great win on Saturday. A bit of a strange one, but nevertheless, she looked good in every way that she was supposed to. And she is going to have, I'm sure, a lot to say about her future as well as that 145 pound division. It is the one and only. Some of the best tattoos in the game, no less. Megan Anderson joins us on the hotline now.

Megan, how are you? Hi, I'm good. tell you. I'm doing quite well, Megan. I want to ask you about your tattoos later, but for the moment, let's get to that win. That was a strange one, huh? You've had a chance to process it now. Turns out Katzenegana will be okay in the end. But you ever seen anything like that? No, I've never seen anything like that. And I definitely was strange. But, you know, Mark Goddard is one of the best in the business. And, you know, when it all happened, I look to him to see what he was going to do because the way that cat kind of looked away, I knew something wasn't right.

I knew she was hurt. I didn't know what had happened. And I kind of turned to him and he was telling her the fight still going. You got to fight back, got to fight back. And I was like, okay, well, I'm just, I'm going to do my job. Like, I can't exactly just stop if he's telling me to keep going. So, you know, it's unfortunate circumstances. I really feel like I wanted to showcase a lot more of what I'm capable of, but, you know, a winner's a win, and we're happy to finally get that win in the UFC.

And I'm glad that cat's going to be okay. Yeah, of course. I can't imagine you got any blowback for it, but social media can be weird. Did you get any weird responses? Yeah, so many. Really? There was a significant amount of hate. I got a lot of, oh, you're a piece of shit, like all this kind of stuff.

I got stuff about, oh, you need to cut your toenails or your nasty-ass nails and shit like this. I was like, well, anyone who in the business knows that, like, they check you like two times before you even go out, and then they check you at the cage. So I feel like if something was wrong, they would have told me the three freaking times that they've, that they've, that they're, that they're. checked me. They were just like, oh, you're all good. You're fine. I got a, oh, that's not a win. You shouldn't be proud of that. I'm like, well, that's not my decision. I threw a legal blow that happened to land in a weird spot. And, you know, I got the win from that. Like, a win is a win. And if Cat wants to run it back, I'm happy to give it to her. It's not a problem. But, you know, you know, it's, at the end of the day, I'm, you know, I have that win on my record and, you know,

I put in a lot of hard work and a lot of time into that. And no matter what, you know, people on the internet say, like I'm, I'm going to be proud of that performance because if you've watched any of my fights, that combination that I threw is very common. And I have landed that a lot of times, and I've finished fights with that combination. So, you know, if Kat didn't have a hands-up, then she didn't really have a, I guess, she didn't really do her homework very well, because that's a very common combination for me to throw. I was just about to say, if you're at all familiar with your Invicta record

and Invicta tape, this is a common thing. In fact, on the highlight reel, they used to show the fight, I think you land two of those. Yes, I've used it against. I made a bell. I used it against Live Rock, and I used it to finish

Chalmay tweet as well. He did the exact same thing. She turned away, faced away from the cage. From me was, you know, had a face in the cage and the rest stopped it.

You know, I've had that happen to me. I've had that move, like executed, you know, three times now, like just finishing fights. So,

you know, obviously wasn't aiming for her eyeball. So, like, I was getting a lot of shit for that. You're a dirty cheater and stuff like that. I'm pretty sure anyone who is in the sport knows that, like, when you kick someone, you aim for someone's face, like the last thing you're thinking about is trying to poke them in the friggin' eyeball. And, you know, the rules is what it is.

But if they want a rematch, we're more than happy to give it to them if that's what they want. Fair enough. Let's move on from that particular contest for just a little. So you know what? One more about that. What was the game plan for her, if I can ask? I think for us it was more of like just getting in there and just reacting. We put a lot of time and effort into, you know, working on my wrestling and stuff like that.

And I definitely wanted to showcase that because Kat obviously is known more as a wrestler than, you know, a striker. but I think people don't really realize when they get in with me that my range is not the normal range. My range is like six inches longer than what my arms are. Like I make it awkwardly long, and my movement is different. And people don't realize that until they're in there with me. And I don't think she really understood that, and she didn't really know how to bridge the gap to get out of the clinch.

All right, so that takes us now to the other women's featherweight fight on that card. I'll just throw it to you in this particular way. Amanda Nunes is now the champion in that weight class. What did you make of what happened? That was an amazing fight. Holy shit. We're all in the green room fucking yelling and just like, that was, that was Amanda. That's what Amanda needed to do.

Like, you know, that was her case of victory. she had to make Chris with her power. I did that. Were you surprised that was that short? No. Chris comes out very aggressively. She always does. And when you come out aggressively,

you kind of leave yourself open to it. If you come up against someone with power, it's that whole kind of like, you hit a, like if you're driving a car and you hit another moving car. Like both those two moving forces are coming together and it's going to make the explosion a lot bigger. And that's kind of what happens with someone like Chris who crashes ridiculously hard.

What's interesting is this puts you in a, well, with the controversy of the fight, so to speak, the one you had, and with the quickness of that one, number one, do you think you should get a chance to fight Amanda next? Number two, do you think you will? That I do get the chance to fight Amanda next? Do I think I will? Probably not. you know, I have no idea what's in store for me next. I would love to fight Amanda. I love that fight.

I would love to fight Chris as well. And if people feel like I need to fight Cat again and prove myself, then I'll fight her as well. Like, I have no idea what's going to happen next. And I think it makes for an interesting 2019. It certainly does. I don't know if you saw this. Well, actually, let me ask you a bit of a different way. Is Amanda winning at 145, good for 145 or bad for 145?

Actually, I think it's good. I think, I think Chris's, she was on like a, what, 21 fight win streak or something like that. Yeah. And I think her invincibility is what made it hard for people to want to stay in this division because she was so dominant. And I have believed for a while that if Chris was to lose or if she was to not fight anymore, I feel like the division would flourish because I honestly think people are scared to fight her and that's why they don't stay in this division.

And I think with Amanda showing that, that there are, you know, people out there that have, you know, potential and that they can, you know, that not everyone is invincible. it kind of, I hope, shows people that they can stay in this division and start building it. Did UFC say anything to you about what they want for you in this next year? Nope. I have not heard anything. Yeah, well, that's not uncommon necessarily. Here's the one thing that was weird, and I'll give credit to where I saw it first. I believe Zane Simon, who is a writer for Bloody Elbow, pointed this out.

If you go to the rankings page for the UFC, megan, UFC.com slash rankings. They have removed altogether the Cyborg and the women's featherweight division. Now, I don't know what that means. It could be nothing. The site has been retooled recently, but do you make anything of that? You know what? If they dissolve the division, they dissolve the division. and, you know, they haven't really made it very obvious that they're wanting to build it,

considering their tough season, they're not signing anyone, and the ones that they are, they're signing into 135. So, you know, if they're going to dissolve it, then just tell us. Yeah, I suppose. Last question on Amanda, like, what's the key to beating her? We just had her coach on here, and obviously your coach is going to believe in the highest level of what their athlete can do. but his point was, you know, she can play all the levels in terms of striking, backing up, going forward, that kind of a thing. When you assess what Amanda's good at, what do you have to take away from her to win?

I think with Amanda is that she does tend to get a little bit wild with her strikes. She does tend to loop a little bit, so I think those long range punches down the middle. And I think a kicking game, like a high-volume kicking game, would work very well against her. Interesting. Before we go, and I appreciate your time, Megan, here. I noted on Twitter that MMA is full of... Look, I think most tattoos are bad. You know, just generally, most people are not very good at doing them,

and most people pay poor money for them. You might be the one of the very few exceptions for that. Here's the question that matters the most to me. How much money have you paid for those tattoos? I have no idea. A lot of my, a lot of my, like my sleeves and some of the stuff on my leg, I got done by one of my friends back home in Australia. So he obviously didn't charge before price. So that was, I was nice.

But it is a lot of money. Every fighter I talk to like you or T.J. Dillishaw who has good tattoos, they all have a guy who does it for either free or reduced price. How do I get a guy? have one. I guess it's just finding that connection. Yeah, well. Like someone that kind of like knows you and knows your style. Like with my guy, Zach, he, like I kind of just gave him like an outline of what I wanted.

And I was just like, okay, just kind of like go with it, do whatever. And he'd come out with it. And I'm happy with it. Yeah, it's quality work. Before he go, what is the plan? First quarter back, like I would imagine after a short fight. like that, you don't really have any injuries, right? Yeah, I do not have any injuries.

And I definitely would like to fight in the first quarter of next year. And, you know, well, I just really hope that I've proven to the UFC that, you know, and I hope that I can use my platform to show them that there are stars being built in this division, that there are people that are marketable, that is, you know, that they can. and use and build with and fight and put on performances, albeit controversially. But I really hope that they, you know, start signing some featherweights and that they do really start to invest in this division. There you go.

Couldn't say it better myself. Megan, congrats on the win. Whatever else people say about it. It was legitimate. And can't wait to see what happens in 2019. Happy New Year. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much.

guys, happy New Year. There she goes. All right. Let's do this then. If we can, it is time for me to join my buddy, Danny Segura. It is time for the sound off. All right, there he is. The aripe to my pan, the aros to my frihole,

the ahi to my empanada. The one and only, Danny Segura. Who brought? I like that one. Yeah, you brought aji and empanadas to the studio today. Yeah, huge hit. It was my wife came, and my mother-in-law came, and they loved them, and they are authorities on this.

Yeah, see, the problem is that most people think they've had Colombian empanaz, just in general empanaz. But most people have either the Dominican ones or the Argentinian ones which are baked. The Colombian ones are fried. And they're hard to come across. They certainly are. All right. How were the calls this past weekend? They were really good.

Yeah? They were really good. Yeah. Despite the holidays, people still called, you know, obviously huge event, lots to talk about. So they're pretty good. All right, here's what we're going to do. We're going to do the sound off with you for about the next 20, 25 minutes. and then we're going to open this thing

you're going to come in here and we're going to ring out the new year. How's that sound? Cool. Sounds good. We're going to bring out the older year anyway. All right, let's do it. All right. So first up, nice and simple.

Hey, Luke, first time, caller. Just wondering, what do you think is next to get on Jones? What do you think is going to be next for Gusason? All right, man, take care. Gustafsson. Boom. Short question. Yeah, Gusbson, I don't know, but if you saw,

I keep forgetting her name. Who is the lady that he dissed at the press conference, the Swedish journalist? Jones. I think it was escaping. Her last name is Kostich. Kostich. Ms. Kostich.

I forget her for Isabella. Is it Isabella Kostage? Yeah, yeah. She had said that there was talk in Sweden of Gustafson retiring, so I don't know what's going to happen with him. Let's hold off on that. It looks to me like they're probably going to squeeze in

a John Jones-Anthony Smith fight somewhere. You heard Daniel on the show today saying he still got some injuries, so God only knows what's going to happen with that. So I think Smith versus Jones is next. Yeah. I would agree, and they had a little back and forth, right? A little, not confrontation, but they had their little thing on the Fox broadcast, right?

Yeah. And, yeah, at this point is like everybody looks always like, oh, I feel like in this UFC era we're looking at like, oh, what's next and what super fight can we, you know, pull up next? Can we just start drawing the number one contenders and just getting these title defenses rolling? Like, every single title fight doesn't have to be the biggest, you know, huge pay-per-view. Just line them up, get them going. So if Anthony Smith is next, then, you know, that's who it is. As far as Gus, tough spot, man. Who knows? Who knows with that? That's a tough spot.

Yeah. Because even if he wants to move up to heavyweight, he lost to D.C. who's holding that title. So very rough situation. I guess we'll find out pretty soon. Now, let's talk about Amanda Nunes in some sort of way she feels like she was the biggest winner this weekend. I think so. Hey, Luke, it's Bryce calling from Coast MMA. So this week was pretty crazy, as you know. And Amanda Nunes was fully overshadowed by the John Jones drama. We weren't hearing really anything about this.

And I mean, this is kind of the story for Amanda Nunes' last couple of fights. No one's really talking about it, you know, the absolute underdog. But it seemed like most people were celebrating Nunes' victory after UFC 232. That was the positive takeaway from the night. It was really nice to see. And I hope the MMA fans are coming around on Nunes. Have a happy New Year, Luke. And cheers, Danny.

So is Amanda Nunez becoming a star here? I feel like that was a big topic here. And I mean, you touched on it a little bit with this guy's tweet, which was very insensitive, by the way, the timing of it as well. What do you think? I think that, look, again, is she Connor McGregor in terms of her personal magnetism? No, it's not who she is, okay? So the upside of how popular she could be is somewhat limited in that regard.

But the other part about it is, dude, you start racking up wins, like the one she racked up on Saturday night, people sit up and take notice, man. With a resume like she's got, it's a ridiculous resume. It's a ridiculous level of accomplishment. And to just body cyborg like that. Dude, nobody body cyborg. Not even Eurena Barr's bodied her like that.

And she did. And so for me, it's, there was, I could just tell, even among her haters, there was begrudging respect. Does that mean she'll be a star tomorrow? You know, I don't know. But did she turn some kind of a corner on Saturday? Yeah, I think she did.

I think she did. I don't know, man. To me, there's very few times that I felt the way I did watching Amanda Nunez. You told me you were out of breath. Yeah. I mean, I was freaking out. And, you know, Jones and Gus was up next. And I'm like, you know, I'm not emotionally ready for this.

I need a breather. I need a break. This was just, I mean, very few moments. It was maybe just a level below Holly Home knocking out Ronda Rossi, which was huge, right? Everybody was in shock. Or, like, you know, Nate Diaz submitting. Connor McGregor, it felt like that where I was just like a complete shock and it

kind of took me out of the media journalist mentality and I was just reacting as a fan. And it felt big. I don't know how is it going to translate as far as her star power, but man, you can imagine a fight with Holly Holme for example, like who's already we've known she can draw some good numbers.

I mean, at this point I feel like Amanda Nunes is a draw. Might not be like a huge draw but she could definitely put some pretty decent numbers behind it. She wasn't against Raquel Pennington, but every time someone gets a victory like this, you have to ask, is there a bit of a different ceiling and floor? I think there might be a raise. How much of one?

I don't know. We need to see. But that felt big. Yeah. I mean, it was on Twitter. It was everywhere, man. And the numbers online, if you look at the videos with her,

they're huge, huge numbers. So we'll see. Yeah, we'll find out. Let's talk about now if there will be, you know, maybe any immediate rematch there. Hey, Luke, Pico Graham here. I don't really have a location. I just kind of pop in from time to time. Quick question, do you think after Nunesbisbee, Cyborgs,

if they will go ahead and try rematch and then dissolve the 145 division, considering Seabor's contract will then be up. And second, Steve Doyle for a royalty fee. he used your term promotional malpractice in the MMA fighting post-fight show. Thanks.

Love the show. Do you get any royalties for that? Man, I don't get shit. Here's what I would say about that. You heard Conan. He says that if it was a split decision you would do a rematch.

That's ordinarily true. But if you have somebody who has been as celebrated and a dominant figure as Cyborg and she just gets roasted in, you know, less than a minute, they're going to run it back, man.

And plus there's money to be made. There's money to be made and finally turn Amanda into a hotly anticipated fight again. You'd be stupid to not make that fight. And I know what Conan's point is. I get it, but I also get the fact. I get it for sure. But Yon J. Chick, first round knockout, got an immediate rematch. Cody Garbrand, right?

The second round knockout, I believe, immediate rematch. Anderson Silva, Chris Wyatman. We know that, you know, putting a knockout doesn't end things. you know, if there's money to be made again, the fight will happen. And at this point, you look at Bantamweight, what, you're going to make a fight with Caitlin Vieira. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd love to see that, but it's not really a big money fight there. And at 1.45, there are no fighters. And Megan might have to run it back with Katzangano. We don't even know what's going to happen

with that. That's true. Another part of this question was about sort of the future of the woman's featherweight division. I have, I don't know, this morning I was thinking, because like Cyborg, the only reason why there's a belt in the first place, a women's featherway belt, is because of Cyborg, right? I don't, and then Amanda being the champion on 135, I don't know if the UFC has a lot of reasons to keep that belt much longer, especially if Cyborg decides to go somewhere else, because we know, you know, her contract is coming to an end, or, you know, I don't know. How do you feel about that?

Hard to say. If that had been Megan who had done that to her, to Cyborg, the UFC, we would. would be, you know, toasting champagne glasses, not merely because it'd be New Year's Eve. They'd be thrilled with that, right? But it wasn't. It was the other champ in the lower division, and that's still a good thing.

You can still make that into something. But to your point, it's hard to know. If Cyborg does end up going with Scott Coker, do they want to build behind Megan? They might, I don't know. It's just, it's a lot of, I would say this, there's a, there's a, it's a palpable degree of uncertainty

around that division's future. Yeah, Cyborg was that sort of big, like paper, way, yeah, just holding that down. With her, you know, out of the picture, at least for now, you know, things get a little murky. So, yeah, who knows? What's next?

All right, real quick. Amanda Nunes, I mean, Katzangano and Megan Anderson, see what thoughts you have on that? Hey, Luke, hey, Danny. This is Dustin calling from Mission Bayo, California. Call in the second intermission for the risen 14.

Can't believe everyone in the northern hemisphere is up in the middle of the night, wait on Floyd. It ain't everyone. I know everyone's going to ask about Amanda Nunes and John Jones, but I figured what about that Megan Anderson-Catsungano finish? Would you like to see them run that back? Also, what do you think? Should that be treated as an eyebook?

Anyways, keep up the great work, guys. Bye. So definitely not an eye book. Yeah, if it was a kick thrown. Right, if you kick at a lateral angle and then the point of the lateral kick ends up in the eye, it's clearly not a poke. If you were in Mount or something

and you held them down with your hand like on their throat, what they used to call the rape choke, which I know is a terrible name, I don't know what else to call it. And then you dug your other toe yoga style into their eye, okay, that would be an eye poke. But if you're laterally swinging

and then the tip just happens to clip at right angle, it's not an eye poke. It's unfortunate, and I'm so glad cats okay, they could run it back, they can not run it back. I don't have a strong feeling one way or the other. What about you? I'd like to see it.

I feel like, I feel bad for Kat. I feel like she just has a lot of bad luck. She does. We just never really get to see her full potential. Like when she fought Ronda Rossi, like, were you satisfied with the outcome? Like, part of me was like, dude, cat can do so much better than that.

Like, you know, even if she would have gone and lost a fight, sure. But like, just the fact that we only see her for like these very short stints, like, you know, it almost feels like, you know, I don't know. There are, there are people, this is what they mean when people say

they're a good competitor. Like Daniel Cormier is a phenomenal competitor because he does it a lot. And then when competition time comes, he knows how to dial himself in to more often than not get the very best out of himself. And I feel like that's something that's been missing. And I mean,

I could be wrong and I could be misdiagnosing it, but it just feels like you look on tape of what Katzangano can do. And the tape doesn't lie, strong, talented wrestler. I mean, I could go on and on. But it just sometimes feels like when she gets going early, she's a little bit hasn't quite found herself

and that could be some competition prep issues I don't know I don't really know what it is but I don't think we saw the best of Cadzangano pretty clearly on Saturday and you know what maybe they could run it back I don't know I guess let's see what they do with Amanda and Cyborg I guess I wouldn't be opposed to Megan versus Nunes, me too. No, it'd be a good fight

Yeah, all right moving on this question's actually about you Oh Hey what's going on guys I was jumping the screaming last night I think I lost my boyfriend voice, but this is about the media, the double standard in the media. A young lady asked a question to John Jones. He brushed her off.

Sent her to hell. Same thing happened to Luke. Nobody made a fuss about it. So I'm wondering if it's because she's young and pretty, that everybody made a fuss about it because when Luke obviously got shut down by Jones a few times, nobody gave a shit. This is John from Jersey. Thanks, guys. Yeah.

One time. One time, guy. People were acting like it's happened like 10 times You get flashbacks when that happened? No, I don't give a fuck. People care about it more than I do. Here's the difference. The difference is that the last time I had seen John before that I asked that question

was like a day or two before the OSP fight, and we were on good terms at the time. I hadn't seen them since then. And then I asked that question not knowing that we were not on good terms. And then, you know, he did what he did. She came in totally different. Remember, if you go back and watch my question, Dude, my question to John was a softball question.

I was like, well, how was your fucking 20s? You know? Yeah. Her whole posture, and by the way, so he was like, I'm really don't like you, so I'm not going to answer it. And I was shocked. So I had no. And when I went up to the microphone, that was the only question I had because I didn't, I just didn't care about asking anything else. There was a lot of media there, too.

Yeah, I was just, I thought I'd give him a thing, and he would give it back, and that would be it. She did two things differently. Number one, she went in with a combative posture right away. And that changes your dynamic. And then two, she had a follow-up question. To me, I was like, so stunned. I sat there being like, am I in the twilight zone? What happened here?

So double standard, I don't know. Also, you know, I like I piss a lot of people off so people don't try to rush to my defense. I understand that as well. But which, fine. That's the way. That's the business. You really piss people off.

You have to be, you have to understand when they don't want someone to be, you know, white night for you. But no, the difference to me, the real difference if I can be candid is in her defense. She came in combative. which is fine. When I say combative, I don't mean unprofessional. That's two different things. Yeah, you can have a combative. Absolutely. And then she had follow-ups ready.

That change. Going forward, if I ever ask a question in a press conference, especially if it's somebody, I don't know if they like me or not, my new rule is, and here's a lesson for all the journalists out there, ready? Always have a second question. Because then you can just pivot to the next thing, and it doesn't sit there in the ether like a fart in the room, and you're all just like, oh, my God, what happens? So, no, I don't know. no double standard as far as I can see. Yeah, also, it was different, the scenario in the sense of, like, yours was like,

because I remember watching that live on the stream. Yeah, it was just kind of like a one-and-th, it was a one-thing, you know, one-deal thing, and it was quick, and then sort of things moved on. Yeah, hers rolled. Hers, like, the fans were booing her, and then even John Jones kept back, it wasn't like he said one thing, and that was it. He kept back and saying stuff, and then the fans were booing her. It just looked like an ugly scene, man.

But have people caught on to the fact that I won't name name, there's a bunch of people John won't talk to. Just he wouldn't talk to Chal Sondon on Saturday night? Yeah. There's some other ones to- A lot of people have a lot of opinions on him, so. Yeah, well, look, and look, and I've said this before, what does he owe me? Nothing. He owes me absolutely nothing.

Yeah, he can do, he's a free man, he can do... It's totally fine, and people are like, oh, Luke's trying to get on his good side. Trust me, I don't care at this point. It's what's done is done. I'm just pointing out if you're, my number one recommendation is, if you're gonna do that kind of thing where you're gonna ask somebody questions, know what you're up against and have a backup plan. Don't just waltz in there like Michigan J. Frog. Hello, my honey.

Hello, my name. Hey, John, how are you? Fuck you, guy. And I'm just standing there like an idiot. All right. We got one to do one more or want me to go in there. We can do one or two more. Let's see how long.

Let's do one more. Hey, I'm Donnie Jordan and I'm calling up from Missouri. You know, on the undercard of 232 with fighters, like, you know, Peter Young. Montel Jackson, Nathaniel Wood, 135 is really good, a lot of new contenders in that weight division, where it's kind of in sale for a second. I just wanted to know if you saw any of these promises,

some of these new contenders that we saw, or if there's any other ones that you guys might see. Thanks, guys. I really like the show. Well, it's a great question. Here's what I would say generally, man, and it broke my heart a little bit. You know, Orlovsky certainly, I think he's not getting blown out.

That's not the scenario, but he's having some difficulty putting wins together. I think that's a fair way to put it. Carlos Condit, man, that one-arm Camorra would have put on anybody, but the fact that it's like, what, four or five losses in a row at this point, Penn's hit six or seven. That just feels like as that Fox era is ending, some of those old institutions, as beloved as they may be, they're having a hard time hanging on,

and these new guys, as he mentioned, and it's Bantamway, it's different division, but Peter Jan or Peortor Yon, how have you pronounced it, and many of the other ones, Nathaniel Wood, and look at 145, look at Volcanovsky, just announcing his arrival. There's just so much, and Volcanovsky's a little bit older, but the point being is all this new blood. New blood, all this new blood coming in and forcing everything out.

It's just the way the fight game goes. So I'm excited, yes, about Bantamweight, about featherweight. Light heavyweight's got some work to do. We'll see what happens with middleweight, but those WEC divisions, Danny, man, dude, there's a ton of exciting up-and-comers. Yeah, yeah. One guy that really impressed me was Curtis Milinder.

Yes. And it wasn't in the sense of like, oh, he just, because he had issues, right? There was clear holes that he had in that fight. We saw them. For sure. I'm not going to be, you know, to turn a blind on that. But, you know, what he was showing me was enough for me to be like, okay, this guy may be something, right? I'm going to keep an eye on him.

And, you know, he has a very distinct style. And if you look at the world-class fighters, they all have distinct styles. Like, they all have things that they do in their own unique way and they move. They're not generic. That's what I'm trying to say. And with Curtis, not generic at all.

Like, I could see what he's doing and I could see, you know, his own style and technique behind it, which was pretty impressive. And, you know, he's got tons of potential. He loves sitting in that pocket, boy. Dangerous, but he's good at it, too. He's a sniper. Very, very good at it.

Hey, one more, one more, one more claw. All right. Trust me. One more. Okay, okay. I'll make it fast. You're going to like this one. Okay.

Hey, Luke Danny and all the guys in the back. This is Ben from Rich in Virginia, proud home of Amir Sadala and Joe Silva. Setting aside the difficulty of actual practical regulation and more theoretically, is there a morally relevant argument to make in favor of our athletes using performance enhancing drugs? This was first kind of anecdotally in my mind when Bigfoot Silva came off PRT. It was quickly getting knocked out much easier than he had been before. And it made me wonder, wouldn't we want to use every method possible to protect the health of these athletes who are putting their bodies on the line? When I go in for a surgery, they're putting me on steroids to hayden my recovery.

Wouldn't we wish to be able to provide that same benefit to our athletes? Thanks, and I'll take my answer off air. I can't. Why did you ask the best and most complicated question when I have the least amount of time to answer that? The long story short is there are a lot of people think I'm just making. this up. There I can list the professors. I actually, I posted a debate. There's a famous debate. I think it's called IQ squared. I couldn't find it again. It had on one side people who were for antideoping and then outside people who are against it. And one of the guys who was against

it was merely because he found regulation ineffective, but the rest were actually pro use of steroids in sports. And their basic arguments were we tend to compartmentalize what we think are advantages. Or we say, although it's such an advantage with steroids and the arguments from these guys, this is from academics, would be from philosophically, you can't really separate one set of advantages that someone could be conferred upon from another. That's what they would make. This takes time to explain.

I can't do it all right here. The other argument that goes into is the one that he raised, which is more the medicinal one, in a sport with 100% injury rate, but these guys have this amount of time to make money and they have to sit on the shelf for that long to heal to heal them, let's say, HGH to heal a shoulder like Crow Cop did, you are severely impacting them, and there might be some performance-sensing benefit, but on balance, this is better for the game. Here's the thing I would say that folks just really need to fundamentally accept

in all these leagues that are like, how come there's no steroid scandal in the NBA? And there was an article last week about that in the NHL and in FIFA, Sergio Ramos, you know, he got caught up in the... It's because those... My boy. By the way, no red cards for the first time in a year. since 2015. Isn't that great?

Point being is this. If you take the posture as a league or an entity, whether it's the Olympic Committee or whatever, that anti-doping really matters to you and you really force it out there as a thing, the fans will care about it. But if you don't, there is overwhelming evidence that they will not rise up

and neglect your sport because you don't. Sorry, the facts are what they are on this. If you don't tell them you care, They just won't care. It's a weird thing. It's called the reservoir theory in politics. Strong man, for example, and I know it's a little bit circusy, strong man. They don't even bother testing.

Why would you? What is the effing point? Because they don't find it necessary. Does anybody who watches that sport care? And by the way, I know Eddie Alvarez was out there saying things like, there should be zero in your body. Look, I have so much respect for Eddie Alvarez, but that is not realistic. It is not.

That is totally not realistic to say you should have zero in your body. And moreover, he's like, well, this is. not like hitting a ball or, and he doesn't make this argument, everybody makes this argument. It's not like hitting a ball or throwing a basketball. What about football, American football, when these guys are fucking turning their brains into tapioca. I guess because the mechanics actually look more violent in the sense of, you know, it's a fight. Yes. Well, here's the thing.

You want to treat fist fighting in a cage like a sport? Then you have to think of it like a sport. And what do other sports leagues do? They look the other way. Why? Because the fans don't care and it's good for business. You can like that fact or you can hate that fact. It's a fact.

Belator doesn't have Usada and I don't see anyone going, I'm not going to watch Belator. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. And it is an interesting point and something that I've been thinking of recently with the whole John Jones thing is how much of it is actually necessary for this sport to run and continue, you know? Oh, it's unnatural to put steroids in your body. You know what's unnatural? To fight another man for 25 minutes and to end up in the hospital. Or three, four times a year.

Or 10 times, 15 times in your career. That's fucking insane, man. It's completely insane. So my only point is, should they allow steroids in sports? Here's what I think. I think we have to have a conversation about it. But just this idea like, this is crazy. All the damage that's going to be done.

We're already doing it in all these other sports where people get severe brain trauma. They just look the other way and nobody seems to care. And by the way, kids die in high school football every year, nearly a dozen. Like, and we don't even care about that. Well, that was just a heat-related event. And the moral relativism about it all drives me crazy. All right, come on inside.

Let's figure this out. It's the last show of the year. And we got sent this package. It always sounds weird when you say that. So I don't mean it quite in that way. Let's, I'll wait until you get in here. Danny Segula is late like all Colombians. There he is.

Cheeky Tico Danny. Is your mic on? I don't know if I can hear him. Can I hear him? Talk again. Yeah, can't. There it is, yes. There you go.

Why don't you do us a favor, sir? Why don't you pour us a couple of shots of Guaro? Guaro? You know what I'm saying. I got to say it all Gringito style. This is a Guadriente. All right? Yep.

We opened this bottle on the very first show. Did you think about it on Christmas as being our six-month anniversary? No, man. I've been, to be honest, I've just been heading the water and I've just been trucking through the months. It was our six months. Because remember the first show was June 25th.

Yeah. This show has taken 10 years off of my life. Can I just put to do that fairly? I would say about five for me, maybe. Five, yeah. You got five more to give than I do, though. Like a cat who's only giving away one or two lives. I'm on the seventh or eighth.

Yeah. All right, so let's do this before we drink that. I can get a healthier shot than that. Jesus. All right, all right. Somebody sent us this, and I think I know what it is, but I want to open it on the air just the same. They told me to be fragile with it.

Fraggile, it's Italian. Do you get that reference, David? No, from what I don't get a lot of references. It's a Christmas story, the movie. You'll shoot your eye out. And then the dad has the lamp that's a leg. You never seen that? No.

And he goes, it came in a box, then the box said fragile. And he's just when he's idiot, suburban dads, he's like, look, fragile. It's Italian. That's an old joke. All right, let's see here. Do you know what this is? I think I have an idea. We are we are Still waiting for an ad asagna piece right? Yeah, it could be this one. This might be another one though

Let's see it could be How was your Christmas by the way? It was good. I spent it in Miami visiting my parents How hot was it in Miami? It wasn't too hot. It was you know it was in the 70s for the most part So you know 60s some days. So sweater weather T-shirt. Not great for the beach, but you know, you can still do it. It's very windy, too. How cold is the water? A bit cold, but it's not too bad. We can go in, but it's not, it's not comfortable. It's not, you know. I mean, could this person put more layers on this thing? I mean, it is fragilious, so. That's Italian. Yeah.

You got big plans for New Year's? Me and my roommate are just going to have a dinner, you know, at the apartment. We're inviting some friends, and, you know, that's about it. What about you? No, I've done the... How old are you? 26? Yeah. When I was 26, I was getting thrown out of clubs and bars and hotels. As a matter of fact...

Wait, how old was I then? 25 or 26. I got thrown out of three bars and a hotel in one night. Okay. I run with a crowd that's a little ruckus. How do you get... I got thrown out of the... Shouts to the folks at the Mayflower Hotel. Do you remember Elliot Spitz, the governor of New York,

who had the sex scandal? Yeah. I remember that. I got thrown out of that hotel. Okay. Pretty cool, huh? Different reasons, I suppose. Yeah, well, being a dork and a loser Is typically why I get tossed out of places. Yeah. Oh my god MFer? This bit is not working out as expected We're almost there. Oh Jesus Lord Here you need help Fucking Jesus trying to person here. Here we go now we're getting there. I'm trying to cut across my awkward ass body. Yeah, I got it. I got it. I got it

Oh, okay. How many idiots does it take to open up a box? Here we go. Go. Oh, I need that. So what are you doing for New Year's? Oh, nothing. I'm so tired I can cry.

But, uh... Hang on, I got a bit of an announcement. All right. Here we go. All right. We're good. Good Lord, man. No, it is not the Adasanya poster.

What's that thing? Oh, son! Yes! Cut there right here. Get that right here. Here we are. You cut the bow, right? Yes, I know what this is.

Paul, you're gonna love this. What time is it? I got a few minutes left. This is... I like those colors, so... Yes, you do! A reader asked me, or a viewer asked me, they wanted me to make one, and I said,

fuck yeah, I do. Uh, so... There we go. Son. Freaking. Hamas Rodriguez, bitches. He posted a picture today with it, B'E. Did he really?

Yeah, yeah. Total bien. Look at that, huh? Hamas Rodriguez. And he's got the, yeah, he's got the Columbia jersey on. Yeah. This is from the button collar. This was from...

2014? Oh, no. The one after that. This was Copa Medica, 2016. Yeah, look at that. Thomas Rodriguez. You guys miss him. You guys need them, too.

Certainly, deal. I can't even hate you. Look at that. Thank you to the gentleman who sent this to us. We really appreciate it. I'll give him a shout out formally. It's signed down here.

It was made. So we've got to find a place for this. Because, by the way, we were told an Adasania one is coming too. But here we go. Hamas Rodriguez. How about that? Yeah, sweet.

Very cool. All right. All right. Well, no better segue than that, right? Where do we put this? Here. How about this right here? Right now.

Look at that. All right, man, it has been one hell of a six months. Has it not? Yeah, it's been wild. Nearly died a couple of times trying to get up here. Normally, I don't have to run out of here because I have to go upstairs or uptown to do my other show. But that's off today. Yeah.

I'm not, let me make a bit of an announcement, a small one here, if I can. Go for it, yeah. So obviously this year's been kind of crazy. And I expect next year to be even wilder because around, April or so I'm going to be a dad How about that? Congrats.

My wife is pregnant. I'm going to be a dad come April. It is going to be a baby girl. And that should be fun. So it's going to change things on the show here for a little bit around that time. But 2019 is going to be...

However sleep deprived you thought I was last year, buddy, I'm going to show you. No, this has just been a test. Like Daniel Cormier says, there's levels to this, there's levels to this. All right, here we are.

All right look it's been a crazy six months to a wild and wonderful 2019. Yeah, all right sounds good But no no no no no Byraira by oh by the center by the entro Why do we keep doing that? It's not bad It ain't good Yeah, any any final comments? You know I just want to say thank you to you know all the all the listeners Everyone that's been tuning in you know sending positive messages. I think that's that's one of the things that like motivates me and you know keeps me going a lot like all this positive feedback, you know, on social media, especially when we first started the show,

because it's not easy. So getting a nice thank you, getting a good job is, you know, goes a long way and it, you know, definitely makes you happy. So super happy about that. Super happy that people are enjoying the show. And, you know, we're not done. You know, there's a lot left to be done. We're still trying to figure out the best format for the show.

Yeah, yeah. It's still a work in progress and it's just going to get better next year for sure. And today went well. When Daniel was late, I was like, God damn it. But no, he came through. He came through and everyone was here and we got everything we wanted done. So great job the last six months. Thank you. Likewise.

Here's to another six that are going to be pretty awesome. Thank you to everybody out there. Don't forget, 844-866-2468. That is your number two call. And keep those tweets coming at the MMA hour. I say this in the lamest, dorkiest way possible. See you next year.