MMA Fighting - #476 – Alistair Overeem, Garry Tonon, Jack Hermansson

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

On this episode of The MMA Hour, Luke Thomas speaks to Alistair Overeem about his UFC Saint Petersburg fight with Alexey Oleynik, the opponent change, his lengthy MMA career, change in gyms, more; Garry Tonon about his recent win at ONE A New Era, what’s next for his MMA career, his beef history with Dillon Danis, more; Jack Hermansson about his UFC Fort Lauderdale main event bout with ‘Jacare’ Souza, the title picture at middleweight, more. We also take your questions on the latest news in MMA on Sound Off and A Round of Tweets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and use promo code sports for 20% off. You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. It is Monday, April 8th, 2019, and this is the MMA hour right here on MMAFighting.com. Thank you guys so much for joining me. I greatly appreciate it. My name is Luke Thomas. I am the host of this program. Let's see.

What do we have in store for you guys today, a trio of guests? Let's see. We'll start with Jack Hermanson. He just beat David Branch. And he's going to turn right around and face Jaco Re Soze at UFC Ford Lauderdale. We'll catch up with him. him at one o'clock sitting right here in studio, fresh off of his victory at one new era. Gary Tonin will join us. And then at the end, about two o'clock, will be joined by Alistair

Overeem, who previews, he's in the main event against Alexi Olinick at UFC St. Petersburg. He was supposed to buy a bowl call, and then it all fell apart. All right, so those will be our guest, plus you'll be my guess, not one, but two different ways. We'll take your tweets during a round of tweets using the hashtag the MMA hour. Keep sending them. We always appreciate it when you do. at the end of the show, we'll do the sound off, where you can call in 844-866-2468. International callers may call the number, or you may email a voicemail clip,

the mime hour at voxmedia.com. All right. Hope everyone had a great weekend. I mostly did. The baby will be here any day now, so I'm kind of just getting all my baby stuff in a row. I know we've got to get situated. Sitiated.

Do we do a round of tweets? Let's do a round of tweets. Hit it. There we go. All right. Luke, do you think BKFC has something here? Or will the novelty wear off? If you are ESPN Plus dezone UFC FightPass, would you consider signing a deal to take the org off of pay-per-view?

I don't know that they're much of a threat on pay-per-view if I can be candid with you. I don't think that's all that accurate. But are they some kind of a threat? I don't know. To me, they're not a threat. But they would be really helpful to a burgeoning, streaming service to fill in the gaps of what they don't have.

I think the issue still is, do folks, if we could turn my headphones down just a little bit, that'd be great too. Is folks, do they trust it? Remember, it's only legal in a handful of states, if that. And I'll be honest, man, did you guys see the faces of night and Lobov after the contest? Dude, they had tons of cuts. Everyone's like, the knuckles make it safer. Maybe in terms of head trauma, although that remains to be seen.

but there might be other costs associated with, namely, but not limited to, facial lacerations. And that's not the end of the world, but it is a hard thing for people to accept if they've already got some trepidation about it. So we'll see if the novelty wears off. It will depend on if they can get legalized and if they can make any names. Next. If Max wins and vacates, will we see Aldo fighting for the title? And what would it mean for his legacy to hold the belt for a third time? It would still, I still think he's the best featherweight of all time

Just given what he accomplished there Well, let's see if he fights a UFC 237 But okay, assuming he ends up fighting for a third time Yeah, it would only solidify his reign It would only solidify his place as a all-time great featherweight. Next. And that's not a great answer. How will Artim and Knight's record be counted in BKB?

Will it count on their professional boxing record? Or is BKB its own sport with its own records, Artem 1 and O? Well, you can dirty box in that sport, so I don't think it's a professional boxing record. I think it's separate. It's got to be its own thing. I don't know that for a fact. I'll look into it, but like Eddie Bravo,

but I'm pretty certain that does not count on your boxing record. Next. While interim belts suck, it opens up some middleweight possibilities. What combo of Whitaker, Gastilum, Adasanya and assume he gets past Hermanson, Jacques-Rae gets you the most excited as a match-up. Gotta be, well, look, any of them are pretty great. If you can be, you want to just be honest about it.

But for me personally, Whitaker versus Adasanya is the one. It's got the regional bragging rights, which are kind of awesome. It's good to see that part of the world, produce some serious talent as they have. I mean, they already have, but, you know, even further escalation would be great. You guys know I'm a big believer in Adasanya. Everybody is a big believer in Whitaker at this point.

And they've got two different styles. two different experiences, two different ways of winning. Gastilum too. I don't want to not count them in, but you already seen Gasolum and Jacquet fight. I will say, Adasania and Jacaray makes it for an interesting test case because of the ground issues involved.

Adasania still has very much a defensive grappling game, and we'll need to see his take down defense at this point. But we know how Whitaker and Gastlam have handled it. Next. Hello, Luke. Would you ever consider attending a WrestleMania if it came to your city? I'd rather get Ebola legitimately. You should see all of the accounts and muted words I have in Twitter.

So I don't have to have that infestation raining upon me and polluting my life. So no, it's not. I watched WrestleMania last year. I was just a bit as a gag on my YouTube channel. And I couldn't believe how dumb it was. I mean, I know everybody loves it. It's fine. If you like it, keep on liking it.

Not for me. Next. Luke and Danny, please discuss the topic of oversaturation. What is too little, too much? and how much of it is best for the sport. Also, maybe in what ways the UFC might change if endeavor goes public. I love all the content.

Well, these are like enormous questions that don't have time to answer for the second part. But the first part, I'll answer. The oversaturation question is a function of, to what extent is their commercial appetite mixed with what are your long-term global ambitions mixed with how much star power do you have to power the amount of content that you have?

And so if there's a lot of demand for content, you still don't want to give into all of it. You want to leave a little bit out there so you can have it sustained over time. It's a function of how much star power you have. And it's also a function of what kind of global infrastructure you have. It's a complicated answer. There's never one set number,

although I think it's probably closer to shows in the 30 range than the 40 range. Next. Thoughts on Rail Madrid should go after the summer. Azard Icardi, signed up for Danny. Do you think Greetsman is leaving? Gretzman sucks ass. And Real Madrid with 550 million, what, Euro they have?

have, they're going to get, they're definitely going to get Azar. They might get Pagba, and if they get Mbop. I want everyone who watches this show in Europe to know something, or who's a soccer fan. If Real Madrid get Mbap, I am going to be even more insufferable about that team than I already am. I want everyone to know, and I want to be very clear about that. All right. All right.

Let's do this now. I believe we have him on Skype. This guy had a great win, a great win over David Branch, super quick. And then, speaking of super quick, turns right around and it's going to fight Jaceray at UFC Fort Lauderdale. Let's talk to the man now. It's Jack the Joker Hermanson. There he is. Hi, Jack.

Hi, how are you doing? Good. Now, where do you talk to us today from? Where are you? I'm in Oslo, Norway. Tell me about Oslo, Norway. I know nothing about it. What's it like?

It's a very beautiful city about the... 500,000 that lives here. And yeah, you know, I think we have everything that we got on a small surface. That's how else it is. What's the weather like there right now? Not too bad, actually. You know, maybe 10 degrees Celsius. So it's pretty warm.

That's pretty cold. That's pretty cold, man. Yeah, you know, here, In northern Norway, it's really, really cool. But here in southern Norway, it's a bit warmer. So we don't complain. Now, I'm assuming, this is the first time I've ever talked to you, so I really appreciate you coming on the show.

I'm assuming you got the Joker nickname because you have a nice big smile. Yeah, that's about it. That's why. Who gave it to you? It was a couple of friends at school. They started calling me the Joker. oh, it looks by, bye, by smile. It looks like the Joker from the Batman.

And then at a way in, some people shouted the Joker. So I would just, okay, let's go with the Joker then. Have you ever wanted to, like, come out to the Way-ins with, like, a Joker face paint or anything like that? Now, that's too much for me, you know. All right, by the way, did you see the new trailer for the movie with Joaquin Phoenix playing the Joker? No, I haven't. I haven't. I had to see that. Oh, it's pretty good.

You got to check it out. They should have cast you, but I guess we'll have to settle for Joaquin Phoenix. Yeah, you know, he will do. All right. First of all, help me understand something. So you're half Swedish, half Norwegian. Is that the idea?

The thing is that I'm on Swedish. I'm actually half German, but I'm born and raised in Sweden. And I lived in Sweden for 20 years, or 19 years. And then I moved to Norway. And I've been here for about 10 years now. So the thing is that, you know, I want to represent Sweden because it's my birth country. And I grew up there.

But I also want to represent Norway because this is where I developed my NMA career. How'd you end up in Norway? When I was finished with school, it was really hard to get a job. So there were a lot of Swedish immigrants to Norway. So I was just one of them going over here. and we're looking for a job. What is the dominant, like, what is it? How similar are Swedish and Norwegian as languages?

Pretty similar, pretty similar. Norwegian understands Swedish very well, but Swedish people don't understand Norwegian that well. So it's sort of like Spanish and Portuguese? Yeah, yeah, kind of. Something like that. Okay. All right.

So let's talk about your last win. Fighting David Branch. Now, that was a hell of a guillotine. We'll talk about how you did it in just a second. What was the game plan for him? You know, I wanted to go in there in a high pace and push forward and make a lot of things happening. You know, I have good conditioning. So I know that if I can push a high pace and make things happen, it's to my advantage.

And should I get an early finish, I'll take that. But I know that if I have a high pace, it's going to go to my advantage in the later round. So that was basically it. And they probably saw an opportunity. I was going to take it. Now, how in, okay, the guillotine, you were going for the back and then you switched your grips and you set it for a same side arm in guillotine. Was that like an instinct call or is that something you hit in practice a lot? No, especially lately.

I've been hitting it a lot, like all the time at practice. So that's one of my things now. that I do and I'm very confident in it and I knew that if I got my hands together I'll get it. So when I saw an opportunity, I didn't hesitate. Can you talk to me about the finish? I've got a little bit of training in background, but that particular choke I've never really done a whole lot with. When you have the arm on the same side, are you with a normal guillotine, if I'm choking

with my left, I want to be on my left hip. Is it the same thing? Do you want to have the same hip angled or how is the finish work? No. So in this one, I prefer to be a little bit more flat than I usually do with the other guillotine. And instead of cranking it down like a regular guillotine, I'm pulling towards the side. So I want to pull him towards my body where he chokes himself with his arm and my arm on the other side. So it's a really tight blood choke on both sides of his head.

So I'm pulling him towards me and I lay pretty flat over back. So it's almost like a reverse head and arm triangle? Yeah, that's about it. Something like that, yeah. And so the trickery comes because they think you're taking the back and then you get it. How did you, like when you went for it, any doubt in your mind that he was going to tap? No, no, no, no. I was 100% sure.

All right, very good. What did you do with the bonus money? Too deep. What did you do with the bonus money? You know, I just put him to the side. I'm going to try to save a little bit to get. somewhere good place to live, you know, save for a house. That's my plan.

So now I'm just renting a small apartment in Oslo, and I want to get a big house a little bit outside of Oslo. That's my dream. And that's what I'm saving for. Is Oslo expensive? Oh, it's the most expensive city in the world. You know, it's so expensive. Really?

Yeah, crazy. Jeez. All right. I got to go to Oslo. I've heard good things, but I didn't know it was that expensive. Yeah, you know, you better bring some money. How much, how much does a meal at McDonald's cost? Let's see.

I don't eat that too much, but I guess it's, I would guess about a full-sized meal probably would be about $15, $15 or I'm not sure. But McDonald's is like the cheapest thing you can get though. Yeah, Jesus, that's a lot. It's like three times the actual price. Okay, fair enough. All right, so let's transition now. They offered you this fight against Jacques-A-Rae.

How did it come down? Because you just beat Branch, but I guess you were healthy, right? You dispatched with him in short order. You were ready to rock, huh? Yeah, you know, I didn't hesitate when I got the opportunity. I was just like, let's do this. You know, I wanted to fight this, Jackerreux for a long time, you know, I want to be the best in the division.

So, you know, you've got to take opportunities like this. And my body is fine. So now it's just to refocus and get it done. Now, you're a guy who likes to operate on the ground. You're going, not to say you can't do other things, but your record does speak to that. You're going up against the guy who's got some of the best ground game in the middleweight division. So let's just ask plainly, do you intend to challenge him in that particular department? I'm not sure.

I'm not afraid to go. Yeah, you know, I'll take him down. And I'll do, you know, he has a really good ground game. But I have a really good medicine for that, you know, and that's the best ground upon in the world. And, you know, it doesn't matter who you are. If you're tasting a little bit of these fists, you're suddenly not that good on the ground anymore.

Let me ask you, do you feel like ground and pound, not merely in the middleweight division, but in MMA generally? there are some people like you Jeremy Stevens I think has really good ground in pound too some people have really good ground to pound but I kind of feel like it's a bit of a lost art do you agree yeah it is and it's you know the thing is that the old old school ground pound doesn't work today and that's why it has been pushed to the side a little bit you know before back in the days before everybody was trying to get up people are usually using their jiu-su and their closed guard, you know.

And back then, people posted up, you know, and posted up and through heavy punches. But if you do that today, people are just boom, back on their feet in a moment. So what you need to be good at is to control the person on bottom, and keep him down and keep him from not standing up at the same time as you've got to create some distance and punch. And that's much harder.

So it's a really hard thing and you need to drill it and you need to be several steps in front of your opponent and know what he will do to be able to capitalize and find those punches. Who else is good at Ground and Pound? I think Habib is probably number two after me. And he's extremely good at the controlling, but he's so tight so he doesn't get a lot of leverage

and power, but he makes up for it in volume and pressure. You know, he really, like, wears on his opponents. But I think he's also really, really good at it. And I take some tricks from him as well when I practiced. When you started getting really good at MMA, did you set out to be really good at Ground and Pound? Or is it one of those things where it was like, one day, your coaches and your training partners were like,

yo, your ground of pounds really good. Yeah, you know, it's a thing that one of my coaches back in the days was Joe Kim Hansen and former Dream lightweight champion. Yeah, and he was

good, and we trained a lot of ground and pound with him. So that's where it started. And then I had just some really, really good grapplers at the gym. And I had a hard time I'm hanging with them in the Graphing department. But when I started to land punches,

I was a bit more successful. And I just grew in front of it and started to put my thoughts into it and research into it and find my own drills. And then it was just a mission to be really good at it. Do you find Jacques-Arey as talented as he is? Do you think his age is a factor in whether or not he will, you know,

he will compete at the highest level? He is still like amazingly good. But of course, he is probably past his physical prime. That's why I think. So I expect that he's going to be as good as ever. But, you know, is he going to be in his best physical shape ever? I'm not sure. All right.

Let's talk about the top of your division, right? So you've got a title on the line this weekend. Kelvin Gastelam taking on Israel out of Sanya. Tell me, Mr. Joker. Who do you think is going to win that one? You know, it's so easy to always underestimate Calvin Gastilum. He's so good at what he do. But it's so hard to see how he's going to get inside of that extreme range advantage that Alessani has.

He has such a good range and those long arms, long kicks, long legs. It's going to be hard for Gasselam to get in there. But I'm thinking that either Alessane is going to get it on points or Calvian is going to knock him out. No wrestling involved? You know, Kelvin has good wrestling, but will he use it? You know, he's such a good striker these days. So I think he will probably keep it there. And then let's say you're right.

Let's say Israel, Adasanya wins. What about Adasanya versus Whitaker? Oh, you know, Wittaker. He's the man. He is the best. I really believe that. So I think he will get it. Let's say I'm scab. I'm not saying I disagree, but let's play, as we say here in America, devil's advocate. Let's say I disagreed. Convinced me that Whitaker's better. Yeah. You know, his footwork and his way of closing distance and putting together combinations, I think he will be a little bit too quick for Alassan.

I think it's going to be hard for him to keep him at distance. I think Whitaker has good enough setups in his striking techniques and such good variation. So I think he will find it. And he's such an intelligent fighter as well, you know. And, you know, many people, I think they will, they get mesmerized and they look at that as something as a weird movement and so on. But Whitaker has a mind of steel, you know, it's so hard to get into his head. And you can see like in the Romero fight, how he always keeps focus

throughout the fight. I just believe in that guy. So I think he'll win. All right. It's pretty compelling case. Now, what's interesting is you're ranked 10th. You're now inside the top 10 of middleweights in the world. Jacques-Are is at three. So here's how it goes. Number one, oh, Whitaker is the champ, so he doesn't count

as a contender. One is Romero, who you're, that's the spot you're taking. And then for this fight. And then two is Rockhold, who's up a weight class. Three is Jacare, four is Gasolum, 5 is Adasanya. So wait a second now. If you win this fight, where do you think that puts you in this division? I think it puts me in top of the division, you know, and I really hope it do. And, you know, we will see. But, of course, Arsania and Gastonem is going to fight and then the winner

probably will fight with a car when he gets healthy. But then we will see if. if I can get the fight or if maybe they will put together Paulo Costa and Romero for a fight and then the winner will fight me and then the winner there will be fighting for the title. That will be possible. Yeah, but no matter what, not far away at all. No.

Very close. That's what's so great for this. Let me ask you, I read about something, do you watch a lot of, well, you probably don't watch a lot, but I'm sure you've watched at some point your life, some Norwegian television, right? Yeah, a little bit of it. Okay.

Is it true? I heard about this. Is it true that in Norway, you all watch something called slow TV, which is like just a camera over like a river as it, like a boat moves forward for like four or five hours? No, I've never heard of that. You never heard of slow TV? I haven't. A buddy of mine went to Norway and told me it's a real thing. Yeah.

I have to look into that because I've never heard of it. All right. Well, maybe these are fake news. I don't know. I had heard. I had heard it was true. By the way, you ever been to Florida? You must have been to Florida before, right?

Yeah, I have. I've been in Orlando once. I'm sorry to hear that. Florida is the worst representation of America, all right? I had a great time. It's no Norway. Trust me. It's not even Albania.

All right, man. Well, look, you got a great story. You got a great nickname, a great smile. And I look forward to seeing your fight. And UFC Fort Lauderdale, main event. Can't wait. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

What's awesome. There he goes. Catch up on that slow TV, too. Don't miss out on that. Yeah. All right. There he goes. Jack Herminson.

What a great guy. That was cool. All right, we go for one great guy to another one. This man just had a great win at the last one event, the big to do. And, you know, Dan o'erer, death squad, OG, Black Belt. Man, this guy's done it all. Gary Tonin's here. So why don't we just bring him on in?

And we'll get him a seat, and it'll be great. I can't see anything. There he is. Hey, how are you? Good to be here, man. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. We've talked many times.

I think it's the first time we've talked in person. Yeah, man. How are you? I'm doing well, man. I'm pretty excited. I'm fat and happy right now. Finally, back to the Gary Tone diet. This is relatively fat for me.

I got back up to about 185. Now I'm about 175. So I'm not that fat anymore. Wait, after your fight you got up to 185? Yeah, probably within the first three days. Jesus. You just coming down on those burgers? Just kept eating over and over and over again.

I mean, we had like a vacation thing in Pouquet afterwards, so it was just like eating. eating, eating constantly. Yeah. So, you know what, man, I'll tell you this. I took a seminar. You came to my, I can't train anymore because I'm too old and I'm getting the kid. You know it's true?

A lot of people train. Let me ask you this. After a training session, just a regular one, no fight, whatever. How do you feel? How do I feel? Yeah. Do you feel good after a training? It's interesting.

So when I first started, I would say for the first few years, I would just physically exhausted. But as I got better and better, I would say probably somewhere around like year five, year six, training sessions got like much more efficient. So I feel like I don't expend as much strength and energy, so I usually feel pretty good. Now, after a sparring session, because I suck and because you're getting hit, it's a little different. After a sparring session, almost every time I'm very physically exhausted. So it's probably a combination of being not very efficient because I'm not great at it yet.

And the fact that you're, I mean, even if you are good, more than likely, you're getting hit a little bit. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I can't train more because I just got injured all the time. And I always just felt bad after training. But I remember you did one of your, I didn't attend one of your seminars. It was the best seminar I've ever attended. Oh, thank you, man. It was on leg locks, which I stood.

Really, I used that as my reference point for just about everything I know, which is, again, not much. But it was really phenomenal. So I just wanted to tell you that face to face. It was really great. All right. So you had a big fight, man. Yeah. What about according to plan, huh?

Yeah. So this fight, I really didn't want to take any chances. I looked at this fight as a big threat because he had knocked people out before. I hadn't had any opponents that were a big knockout threat, maybe a TKO, but that didn't really see that before. So I was a little bit more comfortable in my previous fights. This fight, I just kind of felt like between the fact that I was fighting somebody more dangerous and the fact that it was such a huge card, their first card in Japan, they had Demetrius Johnson and Eddie Alvarez on there, Yots and Clyde, all these amazing guys. I just really wanted to make sure that I made a statement as best as I possibly could, you know, in front of all the eyes that were watching. because I knew that it's probably one of the biggest cards that one will probably ever put on.

So yeah, I mean, it went about as good as it could. I didn't get hit much. I hit the other guy a lot, did a lot of damage, walked away with my handraise, and I thought it was a relatively exciting fight. And I think as a professional mixed martial artist, you can't really hope for too much more than that. Yeah, that's about right. So a couple of controversies. The cell phone, the cell phone controversy.

For folks who don't know about this, there's like this sort of like fake joke going around, on the semi-joke. There was something in your drawers, for a lack of a better description. It looked like a cell phone. What was that? Yeah, so it definitely was a cell phone. You know, I had a girlfriend. She's now my ex at the time, and I got to Japan, and she was like, you know, Gary,

I feel like you're really distant. You're not giving me enough attention. So, you know, I wanted to make sure that she was the first person I called right after the fight was over. Good man. So I had it in my back, right in the drawstring. So I pull it out after the fight. I'm super excited. I wanted to tell her that I was going to win or that I won.

and then this guy answered the phone. He said his name was Dylan. And you know what? I just had to end it right there, obviously. So, you know, just take that as a lesson, you know, my fellow fighters and martial artists that, like, you know, if your girlfriend is messaging you leading up to a fight or something,

and she's being a distraction, she's not being supportive and constantly trying to take away from you, drawing attention to her, she could just be talking to some dude named Dylan, you know, behind the scenes when you're not there anyway. So don't take too much stock into it. So since you've run,

it up, I will go get into it. You know what's funny, man? I interviewed Dylan Dennis. Uh-huh. God, he must have still been a brown belt at Marcellos at the time. I was doing an article, before I had this show, I was doing an article for this site on how the guillotine had changed in MMA. Sure. I remember years and years and years ago, everyone had the same guillotine. Sure. They kind of faded and then it got good again. Yeah. And I was asking, like, you know, for his opinion on who was good at it. He actually had some really good insight. And then this whole Connor McGregor thing happened. And you guys used to have beef back in the day, too, right?

Yeah, a long time ago. I saw you guys, you know, But grappling tournaments kind of get each other's face a little bit. What would you say at the state of your rivalry with Dylan? Man, I mean, we're two completely separate organizations right now, two different weight classes. Same city, though. Yeah, we live relatively close. So, I mean, we'll definitely see each other at certain occasions. Like, he was at Kasai.

I was at Kasai. Although, to be fair, I was sleeping in the back for most of Kasai because I'm so jet-lagged right now from traveling. But, yeah, man, I mean, I don't really have much of a problem. I mean, it's pretty... Whatever that beef was, y'all used to have, it's over? No, it's... I mean, it's just, he's not really, like you said, like we live in proximity. We, you know, we train in proximity to one another.

But other than that, I mean, there's really no, I don't really harbor any, like, negative emotions. I mean, I'm just focused on fighting. I mean, at the end of the day, I've had four fights in a little over a year. I'm going to have five fights in a little over a year. I just signed another fight contract that's going to be happening relatively soon. Can't say when or who, et cetera. But I know I hate to tease, but that's just how it is. until they make the first post, I can't say anything.

But so I'm going to have five fights in under a year and a half, I think. And I'm just letting the fighting speak for itself. You know, people could argue who's the best grappler in MMA or who's, you know, this, who's that. But at the end of the day, I'm going to have five fights in a year and a half. At least I'll have something that people can talk about. All right. But what do you make about his whole schick?

Man, I mean, I think. Did you see that coming? Because honestly, when I interview, you know I'm better. When I interviewed him low of those many years ago, I would never have seen this coming. I don't know if I would have said I would have seen it coming. I didn't know him well enough to really say that for sure. But I will say like, you know, my only comment to it, it's not the way that I obviously decided to go in terms of like how I conduct myself.

It's hard to argue that it's not successful for him. He's been doing very well. And you could argue maybe it's because he's with Connor and this, that, and the other thing. But at the end of the day, huge social media following, very controversial figure. People talk about him. So, I mean, the strategy is not working all that bad. I mean, he's doing well for himself. I think I would say argue very well for himself

compared to most other, you know, grapplers that are involved in mixed martial arts. However, I would say that from a standpoint of if I was like the dude's best friend, like if I was Dylan's best friend, it would be hard. I'm not going to name names. I don't know, whoever his best friend is.

If I was his best friend, I would have trouble like being asked questions about him. Like you're asking me right now. Like, hey, like, you know, what's the deal with Dylan? I'd be like, ugh. You know? Like even Gordon says like crazy stuff. And he's my student.

teammate, you know, my best friend. And even sometimes with Gordon, I'm like, yeah, Gordon. Gordon, we had Gordon in studio. Gordon talks a lot of shit, but like, hey, I know he's injured now. Sure, sure. But we had him in studio because he was promoting at the time. Remember, he was going to face for Doom. You know, look, I don't know what's going to happen in Dylan's MMA future,

but Gordon, when he's talking shit, is beating everybody. Like, it's almost like Connor when he had that run through featherweight. Sure. Talk your shit, man. You're the one out here just slugging Aldo to the mat and third. 13 seconds. You know what I mean? So it's a little bit different for me. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's the same reason that you don't hear me like saying a lot of things yet in mixed martial arts because I've only been in the sport for such a short period of time. I've only had four

fights. Yeah, I talk about that like a lot in a short period of time, but I don't like, I don't know. I'm the kind of person that gets confidence from actually doing things. So if I'm going to come out and tell you guys that I'm the best in the world, I have to like feel like I've done something to show it or at least to prove it to myself. And I don't necessarily think that I'm quite there yet, you know, to be starting to say things like that. You know, once I do feel that way, sure, maybe I'll come out and talk to you guys like that. But like you said, it'll come from a point of a standpoint of reality, not necessarily from, you know, I don't know, whatever I've built up in my head. Let me ask you, how'd you end up with one of all places?

So they just built a really good relationship with me early on. They had me out for a seminar, then they put on a grappling show. And I got to know a lot of their staff. I got to know Chatri, one of their founders. And they just seemed like really good people, really. trustworthy. They seemed like they were looking out for the athletes. I like the direction their organization was going. Their organization was growing. It turned out that after I already signed, they grew even more so with all these new names that they're signing. And man, I just think that

I think that more so than anything else, it was just the real world connection that I got from the people in the organization. Anybody else that had reached out to me, it was, I don't know, hearsay, mostly just via social media or like messaging and stuff. It wasn't anything personal, no real personal connection that I could attach myself to and say, hey, you know, I get a general feeling about these people and how they're going to treat me and how they're going to treat my future. And I felt like one was going to take me in a positive direction, and I think so far it was a great decision.

And I think it'll continue to be. Like I said, it's only gotten better than I would have even imagined it would be when I first signed with them. You know, it's interesting for a jihitsu guy, it's like these guys, the really good ones, right? They, relative to an NFL player, they sort of toil in obscurity a little bit. and now you're with a big organization,

but it's all the way across the other side of the world. Yeah. Is there a part of you that's like, when am I going to get some hometown fame? Yes and no. I know you're not in it for the fame, but... No, I understand. But the money comes with it, so it's part of all the package deal, you know?

Sure, sure, sure. Well, I mean, it's like you said. Like, you know, if somebody mentions, if somebody mentions my name, for sure, it's going to be less relevant in the U.S. than it perhaps would be in Asia. And I live in the U.S., so, yeah, I get what you're saying, for sure.

I think that they're moving in a direction where they could perhaps have events in the U. US. Like I don't really know, I can't say for sure. I can't predict the future, but based off of what I'm seeing, the fact that they got a deal with TNT, the fact that they signed DJ and Eddie, all these things start to kind of suggest to me that they're heading in the direction of potentially expanding their map to not just Asia, but also the US, Europe, all of those things in the future. They're hiring a lot of Dutch kickboxers and things too. I could, Georgia-Pertruzian, I could see them going into a lot of different places other than Asia in the future. I just think that's where

they have their base and they're doing a good job of expanding in Asia first and then, you know, we'll see where they go after that. So I'm pretty confident that even with one, that I'll see that one day. So you're almost a year and a half in. Sure. Has it gone according to, I mean, yes, you're undefeated. That's not exactly what I'm asking. Sure. Has it gone according to plan? Yeah, overall. I mean, the biggest things that I wanted from whatever organization I would work with, and like we said, you know, I decided on one championship, the biggest things that I wanted were people that I felt were going to look after my future well, that I wasn't just going to get like, you know,

tossed around and not cared about, not taking care of. And people that were going to give me fights. I needed experience, you know, like I needed to have fights in a relatively short order. Because I'm 27 years old, not to say that I'm like old or anything like that, but as far as mixed martial arts is concerned, let's say I, you know,

hadn't had any fights until 30 years old. I mean, now we're talking about like maybe the peak of a mixed martial artist career is somewhere around mid-30s, right? So now I wouldn't even have my early experience until I'm in my mid-30s. So I'd end up peaking in terms of experience somewhere around late 30s, possibly 40. And I don't even know if I really want to be in this game that long. I don't know if I really want to fight telling 40. I really just genuinely don't know if I want that.

I think I'd probably prefer to be done by 35, to be honest. I mean, as far as brain trauma and stuff is concerned, I just don't know how healthy it is to fight for that long of a career. But that's kind of what I was looking for and that's what I got. So as far as I'm concerned, I got the experience. I'm being treated well. And I'm winning. So yeah, I'd say things are going going according to plan. You're one of the last of the Mohicans, because it's still going to happen. It's always going to happen. You're going to get these people from jiu-jitsu that matriculate over to MMA. But a lot of that has stopped. I always use Keenan Cornelius and even Bouchetia, I suppose. As an example, these were two guys you would have thought,

prime. I mean, I know Keenan's a big guy, but even then he's good, no-gee, right? No, he's not bad. He's all right. Bouchase is obviously pretty good there as well, and they just decided not to, when you look back, I'm sure you have no regrets, but I wonder what you make of that, like, what's that going to do to both Jiu-Jitsu as a business, and what's it going to do

to MMA? Well, that's a good question. I think that what you're going to do, I think that what you're going to see, actually, is as guys from Jiu-Jitsu have success, like myself, I think that will inspire. other people from jujitsu to start moving forward in that direction as well. I think that there's been a lull in guys transferring from jujitsu to m-ma successfully for quite a while. So when people

see other people do it, I think there'll be more, oh, you know what, Gary Tonin did it. So I know it sounds weird, but Gary Tonin did it, I can do it. You know what I mean? I see that happening a lot in the near future. So I actually think that there will probably be more people coming over from from jujitsu to MMA because people are going to be doing successful or going to be successful from a jujitsu background. But as far as like what I think about what's been going on prior to that,

man, I mean, I think it's a shame but at the same time, I think it speaks volumes about where jujitsu is now compared to where it was 10 years ago or five years ago. Because I think another reason why it's not happening as often is because jujitsu is far more lucrative as it used to be five to ten years ago. Five to ten years ago,

you couldn't really make a living competing. Maybe if you were at the top, top level, you're making a living, like teaching a lot of seminars and stuff. But for the most part, the only hope of having a career was opening a gym, right? And that was the only way you were going to make money. Now these guys, a lot of them, they can start websites to teach, seminars,

they can compete for money. There's a lot more career opportunities available there. I think in the early stages, not only was jiu-jitsu more successful in MMA, so people gravitated towards it, but that was where people could make a living. They're like, you know what, I've developed all these skills in jiu-jitsu

for a decade or for five years or whatever the case may be. What am I going to do with this other than teach? How else can I leverage these skills to make money in the future? And I think that's what pulled a lot of people out of that jiu-jitsu world into the MMA world.

And then it's a scary world. You're getting punched in the face. Some succeeded, some didn't. Some adapted and some did not. But I think that played into it as well. Yeah, you don't see the same amount of wrestling matriculation either. You're still seeing a couple of all Americans come through every year, but not nearly as much on that side. Back to Jiu-Jitsu for a second, you mentioned,

like, I'm not asking for figures, but how lucrative is the seminar circuit? You know, it seems to me a hard way to make a living when you're, you know, you're going, I'm going to Austin, I'm off to Portland, and, you know, it's like 100 bucks ahead. It seems like okay money, but then I look at the seminars, and even if you have a bunch of people, it's not a rock concert, man. What is it like? True. I still think, I still think, like I was saying before, there's only a certain tier of athlete that's going to be able to make a real serious living off of that.

But I do think it's relatively lucrative. I mean, look at it like from a stand-up comics standpoint. There's a lot of stand-up comics out there. They do a very similar thing. They have to travel to a lot of different places to do their stand-up gigs. And a lot of times, not for a crazy amount of money. I would argue it's probably more lucrative than that,

in terms of the amount of people that are going to be able to make money doing it and traveling and things like that. I could be wrong about that. I don't know enough about the stand-up comedy circuit. But I'm just kind of saying that there's other career fields that are very similar in what you're saying. And I think, yeah, is it a little bit of a hustle? Like, do you have to work a little bit? Do you have to travel a little bit? Are your relationships going to be strained in things? Yeah, absolutely. But I think just the possibilities there. You know, but five, ten years ago again, I don't know. I don't know if that was

so much the case. One last question about this. Someone who transitioned to M.A. for a little bit. How hard is Jiu-Jitsu in the body? Let me ask it this way. Again, my own personal experiences, I just couldn't take it any more. But then, okay, I'm just a average idiot. No one cares about me.

But then I look at people like the Miao brothers. There's this famous picture of their fingers. Now, they're obviously a bit of an outlier. Sure. I'm not suggesting that MMA is the same because the brain trauma certainly is different, but the higher checks kind of like, well, let me see what, you know, it makes you.

Could be more worth. But, like, I mean, 30 years of Jiu-Zitsu, is that really good for a person? It depends. I can definitely say it's actually related to striking, like you just said. If you take a look at most Western boxers compared to Asian kickboxers, for instance, Asian kickboxers tend to have like two to 300 fights by the time they end their career. And most of them don't have a lot of serious brain trauma.

You don't see nearly as many cases as Western boxers where P guys are like slurring their words and they can't like function with their body properly. There's a couple reasons for that. One, I think because the fights and things are so frequent, their sparring is a little different. They don't do like crazy hard sparring the same way that Western boxing does and the same way that honestly mixed martial arts in the West as well usually trains. They train very hard sparring. At least that's what I'm familiar with with most camps that I've seen. And then the other thing is the damage distribution over the body. Like, you know, they're kicking legs and things like that. not always focusing on the head.

Where in Western boxing, it's mainly the head. Of course, there's some body shots and stuff like that. So bringing it back to your other question, which was, is 30 years of Jiu-Jitsu good on the body? Similar idea. I think it really depends on the way that you train. The Meow Brothers, when they train and when they compete, take a lot of breaks.

I don't know if it's a prideful thing or whatever, a competitive thing. I'm not really sure. But yeah, I mean, if you take a lot of breaks in training and in competition, it's probably going to be pretty hard on your body and you may not function very well in the later years of your career or in life.

You don't mean weight. You mean like physical breaks? No, I mean like they like they'll let things break like whether it's the ankle or knee or whatever. I've had matches with the meow brothers and heard pops and things like that and there's no tap. And it's fine. They just let it rise. There's plenty of guys that do that a lot.

And I'm not saying I've never toughed out of submission before. I don't know if I've ever let something just like completely snap, you know? But there's some guys that do that, man. you know, I've had matches where I knee barred people and their knee completely caved in. And they didn't tap. And it's, you know, so that's kind of like a personal choice, I think, sometimes as to how much you're going to let jujitsu impact your body negatively. The same way that in striking, I think you can make that choice.

Like, am I going to do hard sparring four times a week or three times a week and just make every sparring a fight or am I going to do like relatively light sparring more often? And those kind of decisions are going to play into your, you know, your longevity as far as an athlete or as far as injuries or whatever the case may be. I think there's a way to train jiu-jitsu, especially if you're going to be a recreational player where you're not taking quite as many of those injuries long-term. But I'll say it definitely took a toll on my body.

You know, for sure I have a lot of long-term injuries that I do. Do you have, like, arthritis? Not quite. I mean, not in my hands anyway. In my feet. Give it 10 years. My big toes, like very separate from my other toes. Why?

So I don't know. I was just born that way. I got fat feet. So they get, fought in the mat a lot. So they're kind of just in a constant state of like swelling and pain. So yeah, I mean, I definitely have arthritis in my toes, but not really in my hands. You don't tape them? My toes? Yeah. I hate it. It feels awkward. Yeah. It feels awkward for me. It's like a sensory thing for me. I got a, I got a messed up big toes. Totally different.

Got it. I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't mentally function without them. Yeah, without it. Because I've dislocated. Maybe if it got serious enough, I would, you know. Interesting. All right. So let's talk about the MMA equation here just a little bit. This is going to sound like a silly question. But in today's MMA, I feel like it's actually quite pertinent. What are your competitive and professional ambitions? So the biggest thing is the main goal, you know, the long-term goal, is to become one of the greatest mixed martial artists of all time. That's just, I think that going into a sport like this, if that's not kind of where your head is at and you just want to do this like super short term and like, I don't know if this is really the right sport, to me, it'd be crazy to go into a, to fighting

where like people are trying to knock my head off and not try to get some kind of grand result out of it. And just like, yeah, I just wanted to play around a little bit, have a couple fights. Like, that's terrifying to me. Like, fighting is terrifying to me. I don't know how much I can communicate that to people. Like, it's very scary. And the idea and possibility of getting, like, you know, a lot of head trauma or getting caoed in front of friends and family and things like that, it scares the shit out of me.

So I'm taking on that risk, but for some greater result. Like, I really, you know, hope that I'm one of the greatest mixed martial artists one day. That would be the long-term goal. Shorter-term goal, we win a championship, right? And then after winning a championship, focus on, and this is what you see a lot of mixed martial artists in the UFC doing right now. I'm sure many of them, sometimes they have the championship or sometimes they do not. After that's the case, they either go after multiple championships or they look in the direction of, all right, who is going to be the most exciting fight, whether it's out of my division or in my division, who's going to be the most exciting fight that I can put myself in so that the public goes, oh, wow, I'd really like to see that. And you're seeing people cross all different kinds of divisions, sometimes jumping to divisions now to make those.

super fights happen where, you know, people would just be really excited, whether it's stylistically, whether it's because of some sort of beef or whatever the case may be, people are going out of their way now to make those fights happen. So that will be another goal of mine is to try to make those big-name fights happen, those exciting fights, whether it's in my weight class or not. So how much consideration you must give some because the upside in MMA is so much higher than in Jiu-Jitsu financial. I mean, I know that's not the key aspect of your life at this moment. Sure. You're at the nascent stage.

Sure. But at some point, you're going to turn that corner where the big checks are going to be a real possibility and inevitability. Yeah, of course. Have you given thought to what you want your career earnings to look like? Man, I don't have like a number. I don't have a number. You know, I think by chasing trying to be the best mixed martial artist of all time,

that that is what comes with it, right? It's like I said, you know, there's going to be some net gain from that, whether it's, you know, pride and that sort of thing on or whatever it is. but obviously like you said, additionally, you know, the money is going to come with that. So as opposed to chasing money, okay? For sure, like I do my best to promote myself on social media. I recognize the fact that I'm a professional athlete,

not an amateur athlete. I'm not just out there to win. I'm also out there to entertain people. So there's a lot that comes with that, whether it be social media, whether it be presentation, me dressing up like Wolverine or something before a fight, whatever it is. I love it, by the way.

Thank you. Whatever it is that gets the ball rolling, you know, for fans. You know, that's a big part of being a professional athlete and making money, et cetera. I understand that that kind of stuff comes with it. But at the end of the day, like, I don't know if I've ever seen somebody become one of the greatest of all time and not also make money, right? So that's what I'll focus my sights on that and then let the money come.

And I think that way it'll be a little less stressful to have to worry about both at the same time. You never got nervous before a jiu-jitsu match? I did, but it's totally not the same as fight. Didn't she go up against Paul Horace? Yeah, Paul Horace was the scariest. I mean, that was about as close to an MMA fight as a person could have in a grappling match. Because Paul Horace will swing at your head. He'll poke your eyes out.

Like, he'll slam you, which he tried to do to me. You know, he'll do a lot of dangerous things in the car. He'll try to, even if he gets a submission, there's a good chance he's not going to let go if you tap. Right. So there's real, unlike most of the time when you compete in jiu-tzu, where you usually have a choice. Going back to your previous question, you have a choice as to whether or not you're going to get injured. In a match with Paul Horace, you don't necessarily. You don't necessarily have the same choice.

You know, usually it's a slow-controlled break or something, and I can tap. It's not so much the case. So that particular match in Jiu-Jitsu probably was the most terrifying match that I've ever had. Weight advantage considered, like size and strength, just the damaging effects of the opponent. There was so much going into that fight that made it, or a sort of match, that made it nerve-wracking for me. But much more so than any, that was the close. to fighting an MMA that I got, but it still wasn't anything near

the feeling of fighting for the first time or even the fourth time. Yeah, so even this past one, you had a certain degree of intensity. What is your coping mechanism? So just going back to that, so I remembered, I didn't really, of course, like I said, I was anxious and I had a lot of nerves and things, but I didn't really feel it until I got onto the bus to go to the event this time.

The first fight, I felt it when they were wrapping my hands because I never had my hand wrapped before. like by a, you know, with the tape and everything like that and gauze. So when they're wrapping my hands, I'm like, oh, God, I have to get in a cage and fight a guy. Like, that's going to happen. This is sealing the deal right here, you know. So for whatever reason, that's when the nerve set in. And I was just like having a little mini panic attack.

This fight, it was when I got on the bus to go to the event. For whatever reason, as I get on the bus to go to the event, I start to feel a little nervous. And I'm like, you know what? Let me try to take my mind off things. I'm going to watch some tape. This is what I usually do before my sparring sessions. I'll watch a little Mike Tyson. Every time I watch Mike Tyson throw a punch,

I'm like imagining my opponent hitting me with that punch. I'm like, all right, we gotta switch it up. I'm like, let's watch a highlight of Danny Bill, kickboxer. I'm watching Danny. And every time he throws a head kick at somebody and it hits him in the head, I'm like, that's gonna be me. And I'm just, it's getting worse and worse. And I just feel my heart, just pounding in my chest.

And I'm like, okay, I have to shut the tape off now. I just put this down. And it wasn't until I got off the bus that I was like talking to my teammates and stuff and I started to calm down a little bit. But that kind of having people out there that I'm very comfortable with helps me a lot. I like to like keep things very light and like joke around with my teammates and stuff. And having John out there, Tom, my training partner, Drew, it was very, also my manager was there, Jeff. And just communicating with all those guys and kind of joking around helps kind of calm the nerves and set me more, grounds me more back. What's the fight starts?

walk me through your nerves. So, bell rings. So, oh, yeah. So it's funny that you mention that because it almost erases everything. Like, sure, there's a little bit of, before the first couple punches are thrown,

there's a little bit of, like, tension because you haven't actually got hit with that four-ons glove yet. But for me, like, when that bell rings and I got the guy in front of me, I have ADHD, you have trouble paying attention to things. But there's a very real fear of this dude knocking you out.

So I have to have, like, laser focus, right? So everything fades away. I'm not thinking about anything. I don't hear the crowd. I barely hear my coach. I just see that dude in front of me. So honestly,

a lot of the nerves kind of fade out and everything goes to whatever I did for training. So he threw a low kick at the beginning of the fight and I immediately went for a takedown. That was not a decision I made. I actually didn't plan on taking him down that early. Like in my head, I was walking myself through it. I was thinking about some different combinations

I wanted to throw, this, that, and the other thing. And then that low kick happened. body just folded and went in for a takedown. And that was just pure instinct. Like that's what I've been doing in training constantly. So my body said, there's the opportunity to take him down. He's up on one leg, go for the takedown. Once I got a hold of him, I was like, well, he kind of got up for a second.

I'm like, no, no, no, stay on top of this guy. You know, again, there weren't really decisions that I was making. It was just kind of training, setting in. So once it gets the actual fight, there's so much going on that I don't, I don't know how much I'm actively able to think and be, anxious about the situation. Did you do that in Jiu-Jitsu too? Did you ever, I mean, I know you weren't nervous,

but did you ever have moments where, because it just seems these days of like guard pulling, everything is so concerted with the game plan. Did you ever have moments where you went on semi-autopilot like that? Yes, but Jiu-Suitz-Svary because in Jiu-Jitsu, there's a lot more time to think. Like in J-Jitsu, there's a lot of periods of time where there is no action, okay?

Maybe not in my fights, but in many fights. And you have the ability as an athlete in J-Jitsu many times to either do. do things actively or do things statically to stop your opponent from really, for instance, like if you really want to just not let somebody pass your guard or attack you, you can just continue to pomm on your legs on the inside. And that kind of stalls the action. And you can give yourself a couple of seconds to think. If you're just not mentally with it yet, you can take that time, right? So in jiu-jitsu, I definitely felt some more anxiety because

of the, I didn't always need to do something. I could, I could just keep my opponent at bay and there was no danger for certain periods of time. In MMA, there's always danger. The only time that there's not danger in MMA is perhaps when you're in a perfectly dominant position where they can't hit you or if you're completely away from the opponent and there's so much distance, they can't strike you.

Those two things happen for very short periods of time in the sport. So it's rare that I get to get inside my own head. But in Jiu-Jitsu, you could get inside your own head sometimes and I'd be like, I like listening to my own heartbeat like while I'm holding on to somebody like, all right, you really need to go to try to submit. at this guy now, you know, and I'd freak out a little bit. I've had matches like that in the past, but in MMA, it's a little different. It's harder for me to do that. I'm not going to ask you how long

you're going to be with one because everything's going well, so let's just leave it at that. Here's what I will say. Sure. You know what rematch I want to see in MMA? What's that? I want to see you versus Crone. Yeah, man, I was dying for that. Before I even signed with one, the first thing that I said was, I wanted the match so bad. For years, I was asking for it in Jiu-Soo, and then I kind of laid off because it was like, all right, it's not going to happen. And then I saw him fighting in MMA, and I'm like, well, I want to get into MMA too. I was like, let me see what I can do to drum up some, you know, attention and see if I can, you know, maybe get that fight, like, as one of my first fights.

And I was reaching out to some organizations. By the time I had already reached out, I think he had already faded out of whatever. I think he was in Risen or something. I think he was already out of Risen. I didn't know that. So I was talking with them a little bit, but it didn't really seem like that was going to happen. And now he's in the UFC. So obviously, you know, again, it's a lot of distance in terms of time as to whether or not we'd be able to fight.

I think the very real possibility would be more so the grappling rematch. Would I like to fight him in MMA? Sure. But fans have to recognize when they see these cross-promotional things like, you know, one fighter in one and one fighter in UFC to realistically see a fight like that happened. Even if all parties wanted it to happen just because of contracts, you're talking years down the line. Like, you really are. Very rare for that red tape to just get cut, like, for any reason. It's almost impossible to do.

So I prefer to just talk about things that could really happen. Could a grappling match between me and him, a rematch happen at any moment? Absolutely. There's nothing, as long as the UFC says it's okay. You know, I know one allows me to do other matches outside of one, and they would even do the match in one. I don't know if the UFC would let that happen, but that is something that could happen.

We could have a grappling match. Right now, couldn't happen. But, again, I would absolutely love that rematch in either grappling or MMA. It's just hard for me to talk about an MMA because I just know it's not going to happen for a lot. I know. I was merely wish listing, you know, that kind of thing. Sure. I will say this.

Did you watch his fight against Kasseras? Yeah, yeah, it was great. I think it was in an airport at the time. I forget where I was going. I mean, here's my thing about it. It's like, obviously, his ground game and yours. Mm-hmm. You know, I mean, it doesn't get a whole lot better than that, really.

He does seem to me, though, so, some of these gracy guys, you know, they're sort of like so into the gracey way. Sure. I didn't know that I saw a whole lot that gave me some confidence about his long-term stand-up. I could be wrong about this. I'm not making any bold declaration. Whereas you, there was a joke, do you know BJJ Scout on YouTube? He jokes about it because there's people when you fight in the comment section, being like, this Tonin guy, you know, maybe he has to work on his ground game, but his striking's coming along real nice.

It's like, oh, my God. But you have certainly invested. I don't know that he, again, if he takes it to the floor with anybody, it's going to be a hard day. Sure. You know, when he was doing that lot of Gracie stomp to cover distance, I was like, you know, I don't know sure. Did you see the same thing? So, so I agree with you in most respects. I think even Hicksons came out and said, I don't know if Crone has ever said this, but I think Hicksons come out and said like, you know, everybody that does Jiu-Jitsu and they're doing an MMA is going about doing things the wrong way.

I'm paraphrasing. I'm not 100% sure about this. I think he has been quoted before as saying like, oh, man, they should really just focus on Jiu-Jitsu. That's what made the fighters of the past great. That's what they just focused on jujitsu and they didn't really worry as much about the punching and kicking and stuff. Whether or not he's taking that strategy,

I think it's pretty clear in most of his fights that that's the general idea is to use jujitsu and not really focus on the striking aspect. We haven't gotten a real chance to see, I don't know, necessarily. That's fair point. Yep. What it would look like? I think he's been handling his fights

similar to the way that I handled my last fight where it was like, all right, let's just get the job done. But I will say, I wish him success in the future because anybody that comes from a jihitsu background that does MMA, I want to see them succeed because for me it's like a win for Jiu Jitsu. It's like, yeah, you know, Jiu Jitsu does work in MMA because there's always that argument

that people throw out now. Because like you said, less Jiu Jitsu guys are transferring to MMA, whatever. Oh yeah, Jiu Jitsu doesn't work in MMA anymore, right? So it's awesome to see a guy like him, you know, just use Jiu Jitsu and win a fight. So I hope he succeeds. I hope that, just like you said, long term that those striking skills do develop so that he doesn't run into a guy like Khabib,

for instance, and really struggle to put him away with just Jiu-Jitsu because it's a tough guy to take down or get control of or whatever the case may be. So, yeah, I would like to see that if it isn't already there. In your judgment, is there a kryptonite for Habib on the ground? I interviewed Brian Ortega. This is before the Holloway fight. Sure. He seemed to think that he had the answer.

Again, it's a different weight class too. but sure is a good, when I say good guard, I mean like a world-class guard. Is that a, is that a kryptonite for Habib in your mind? Could be, could be. Depends on the guard, I suppose. Yeah, it really depends. I don't know if guard in particular. I think we've seen Khabibh submit people before.

Do I think he's capable of getting submitted by somebody who's a high-level submission artist? Absolutely. I don't know if I'd necessarily call it a kryptonite. Like it's like this major hole and he has no idea what he's doing. I don't know if I'd take things that far. But I definitely would say that it's a way that a person could approach winning a fight with Khabi, I think. I think if I was saying to myself, all right, what's the best way is to tackle this fight? Submission would be high on the list, you know, as far as.

Because you can't fight off the takedown, right? I wouldn't say can't. I just say that's a tough thing to do. He fought 20, 28, Bamas, all 28 or whatever it is, 27. There was one guy that fought off his takedowns. Gleason T-Bowl. But even then. Tough dude.

But he did it. He did. He was also a weight class. above and then it got pot later on for Roy. So it's like there's some diciness around that. Sure, sure, sure. I had his coach on last week, we asked him how big you have to be to fight off his takedowns because he got to be Luke Rock old size.

Yeah. The gym legends, I don't really know. Sure, sure. But it would seem to me like why waste energy trying to confront something on his terms in that way when you can do it on yours with the guard? Sure, sure. And the other thing to remember is that while you're fighting off the takedown, there's submission opportunities. It's not to say like, oh, let's just get taken down and work for my guard like you're

stating, well, maybe as he's taking me down, we go for a guillotine. Maybe as he's taking me down, I go for a Kimura. Maybe as he's trying to take me down, I'm able to go after the legs, for instance, right? There's a lot of opportunities that I would refer to as submission wrestling that would be there as someone's trying to take you down, not necessarily along the thought process of, all right, well, I'm definitely getting taken down. What are we going to do from the guard, right? So I think there's more opportunities associated with submissions available for a guy like that than just, you know, working off your back. Any fighters you really admire?

I, as a fan, just like when you watch him, like, God damn, this guy is just, or a lady. Absolutely. So amazing. I definitely love Kabeb's style. I think you saw in my last fight. I've used a couple of the techniques that you've seen Kabeb using as far as like single wrist trapping and things like that. So big fan of his grapple box.

I've been a big fan of Damien Maya and his work on the cage, his work on, you know, getting to the back from all positions. A huge fan of, obviously, this is a little biased because he's on our team, but George St. As far as his shoe boxing is concerned, it's pretty close to unparalleled in the sport as far as the way that he sets up takedowns. So those are the kind of guys in mixed martial arts that I model myself after. You know, Damien for that kind of control and that cage work. Same sort of thing with Khabib. And then George for the actual, let's get it to the ground sort of style.

And then there's as far as like striking and things are concerned, integrated striking. Guys like Max Holloway, I find to be pretty intriguing. I was got some really interesting things. Israel, Adasana. It's pretty amazing as well. So, I mean, there's a lot of guys. I do a lot of studying. There's definitely some names who you just shoot out at me.

And I'd be like, who's that? And I have to look at them. I'm not great with names. But I'm getting better as I'm studying more and more tape. Because most of the time when I'm watching these fights now, I'm not watching as a fan like I used to. I'm watching as a student. So when I'm watching these fights,

I'm not even necessarily paying attention to who's who or whatever the case. I'm just like, all right, what technique is? is this guy using to defeat this guy. So a lot of times that kind of slips through the cracks as to who it necessarily is. But some of those guys are so iconic and so good at what they do,

it sticks with me in the back of the head, the ones that I mentioned. Do you feel like a favorite jujitsu guy of all-time practitioner? Four MMA or four jiu-jitsu. Pure jiu-jitsu. Are you a Hajar guy? Yeah, Hodger was definitely somebody I looked at

a lot coming through the ranks. But what I started to realize is that I'm not saying that Hajer doesn't have things that everybody could do, but Hader has a very specific body type. So I believe everybody could learn from the things that Hodger did for sure. But I gravitated away from him as I got better because I was kind of like,

this isn't exactly my body type. I don't really know if this is exactly what's going to work for me. Back when I was coming up, I watched, originally Andre Galvall was in my weight class. I was a middle weight at the time. And then I finally stopped eating so crappy, at least prior to tournaments. And then I started cutting down. I was lighter and I started watching more of the Mendez brother. So I was big fans of them.

And Crohn, actually, too. You know, I thought Crohn's amazing. Marcelo Garcia. Just, you know, when I was studying for ADCC, Marcelo is probably one of the people that I watched the most. Marcelo and the Mendez brothers as far as, you know, technique was concerned. Marcelo watching him a lot with guillotine work and some sweeps and off balance. It's just really good all around the game.

So, yeah, I have a lot. It's hard for it. I hate favorites. Like, I don't really like to choose. favorites, even with anything, music, nothing. I just, there's, I'm very much like the kind of guy that goes to a restaurant and like chooses the different, different things every single time. I'm always trying to do new things. So everybody's, I hate just as far as like when you, when you look at martial arts or anything like that, I hate just looking at one person and trying to model

myself off that person, even in life. I think that everybody usually gets very good at certain things and then a lot of the other things suffer or they're not very good at them, right? I mean, everybody can't be great at everything. They can't be perfect. So I think it's much better to look at this guy for this. Look at that guy for this. Look at this guy. As opposed to just like,

I'm going to model my entire game off of this guy because now I'm just going to be a slightly crappier version of that guy more than likely. Because that guy spent his whole life developing those skills. What are the chances that I'm going to somehow get better than that person was at that particular skill set?

I'd rather try to take a little bit of what he's good at and then a little bit of what the other guy's good at, you know? Fair enough. more questions for you and what you're running. Appreciate your time. Are you in and out or five guys? Oh, five guys. Like 100%. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. first of all, who even puts Thousand Island dressing on salad, let alone French fries? Clowns. It's just not even a desirable dressing to begin with. Now we're going to put it on French fries. And the French fries are like paper thin. It's like eating that flag that's on your desk.

Like, I'm not even a big fry guy, but that's a whole different story. I don't know, man. I think it's good. It's fine. It's fine. I just don't think it's like some remarkable amazing thing that the Californians would like you to believe it is. And do I necessarily think that about Five Guys. I think five guys is pretty good too. Yeah, it's not the best thing ever. But again, I don't, I don't like, like the way people rave about in and out, I'm just like, you guys talk about this, like this is God's gift to burgers and it's just not that good. Like, calm down. It's like a notch above McDonald's maybe. Yeah, yes. Thank you. God, I was so happy you said that. I have this fight all the time with these clowns. I'm going to get so much crap. Both of us are for this. Oh, I'm going to get hate mail. You know what? It'll be hate mail from idiots. They're going to burn down the office, for sure. You know what? Got to break a few eggs to make an omelet. Before you go. Before you go. Can you talk to me about the weight cutting process or the way-in thing that one does? I want to do like a whole video on this because it's pretty complicated.

Let me give you my position on this. I'm not in any way suggesting that one is not telling the truth. But you have to remember my position in this scenario. I'm a media guy. Yeah. The media doesn't cover the way-ins and they don't release the numbers. And so immediately red flag goes up. Yeah.

Not saying it's not true, but I'm following the outside looking in and there's no organizational transparency. Sure. I'm going to have questions. I've never asked them why they do that. They didn't used to. I probably should ask them why they do that. Because I agree with you from the outside looking in. It's hard to say like, it would be hard to say like, oh, they're being transparent if, like you said, they're not releasing numbers or they're not allowing media in or whatever the case may be.

I'm sure they have their reasons. I wish I could say what those reasons are, but I actually have never specifically asked. I know many other people like yourself have raised questions about that. Who knows, maybe they'll answer it in a further interview or something like that. I don't know if anybody's publicly asked it and they deflected or if they actually tried to. answer it, I'd have to research it to find out. But I will say this. This is, to my knowledge, this is the way that things work. We have two weigh-ins and two hydration tests. Okay. So, you weigh in two days before your fight, you weigh in one day before your fight. Along with each of

those weigh-ins, at the same time, or moments after you weigh in or before, whatever, you have to take your hydration test, okay? And if your urine is shown to be dehydrated, the only people that would understand what I'm talking about right now is collegiate wrestlers or like scholastic wrestlers because they often have to do this at the beginning of the season to gauge how much weight they're allowed to lose during the season. That's right. Which weight class they're able to fight in. But in one, you have to do it for every fight. Whatever you're weighted is, it has to be a hydrated weight. So if I'm 170, it has to be a hydrated 170. I can't dehydrate 20 pounds and then show up and then when I pee, my urine will show up dehydrated. They literally watch you do it. So for sure,

there's no cheat in it, you know. But what I will say is, you don't necessarily, when I first came to them, I fought 170, right? When I had my second fight against Rahul Raju, I realized that was not my weight class. That dude was huge compared to me. So he was a giant. And I realized, like, there has to be some amount of weight

that you can cut and still pass this hydration. Because walking around, like, if I'm eating healthy, I'm really more like 165-ish, if I'm really eating healthy. So I was like, I'm scratching my head. I'm like, ah, I'm like, I think I can probably find a way to get to 55. So what you have to do is you kind of have to, you have to really drink a lot of water, and then you can do your weight cut, and you can lose some water.

I don't think you can lose even, I think even 10 pounds of water would be too, that would red flag their, their hydration test. I think somewhere between like five to seven pounds is probably the max that you can, you can go from a particular body weight and cut down from, right? I don't think you can do much more than that and actually pass their hydration. So all I'm saying is that based on the way that they order things, you wouldn't be able to have a dude like Khabib who walks around

that over like 200 pounds and fight 155. I think that's impossible in their organization. So in some ways, it's great because now I know that I'm not going to fight the dude. As long as you know how their weight cutting system works anyway, because it took me two fights to figure that out. I'm not going to fight a guy that's 30 pounds heavier than me. Even Rahul Raju being bigger than me at 170, he wasn't 30 pounds bigger than me.

It's like 15 pounds bigger than me, maybe, right? So having said all that, in that way, it's good. You know, guys aren't losing this crazy amount of weight, but in the sense that you have to do it twice. So I've got to make weight two times. That's kind of rough. You know, it's just tough to do that two times in a row. And it's a little bit of a shortened weight cut.

I can't weight cut for 12 hours because I'm going to be dehydrated, right? So you can only do it in a certain short period of time. So if you're running or whatever it is, you've got to do it in a very short period of time. Overall, though, is it safer for the athlete? Probably. Because you're not losing nearly as much weight.

Certainly seems that way. Last thing, do you see your opponent weigh in? Do I see my... No, I think we go in one at a time. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Again, all I'm saying is,

if it's as good as they say it is, and everyone I've ever talked to individually, raves about it. Yeah. I'd like a little more transparency. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. supposedly, so if you miss either one the first day or the second day, hydration or weight, you have to weigh in the day of the fight. So they give you like three opportunities to make this work. Interesting. Okay. And I definitely didn't want to weigh in the day of the fight. So I try to make sure I try to make sure I nail those first two weigh-ins.

Well, I got to tell you, you're a class act man. And I'm really happy for your career growth. I know you came all this way with no news to share, which I'm incredibly bitter about. However, I will say this. Very soon. When do you think you might be able to give us some information about your next fight? Um, it's hard to say with them. I never know for sure. Oh, yeah. Well, let's see. Yeah, within the month, they should have information, I would hope. I hope.

I think it only helps them to release it within the month so that I could start promoting this thing. But absolutely, I'll be fighting very soon, quick turnaround time, tough guy, Southpaw this time. And we're going to be fighting in a ring instead of a cage. It's a little tricky. All right. So I'm going to have to learn how to do that, which would be interesting. So I'm a little worried about that because I haven't really done any training

inside of a ring. Most of the, I do all my training, in fact, in a cage just to simulate what I'm going to do out there. So interesting to see. If anyone's up for the challenge, it's you. Thank you so much for coming in, man. I really appreciate my man Joe's going to take you out. Best of luck.

Thanks. And I really appreciate you making the effort to come in a side. All right, there is. Gary Tonin, one of the best. Smart man, too, because he understands what burgers are about. and it's not Thousand Island dressing, you peasants.

All right. Let's do it now. It's time for the sound off. Let's do that. Let's do that bit. All right, Mr. Seguera. I went a little long. I apologize for going a little long,

but it was a good convo. I was enjoying it, so there you go. It was fun. Where are you at there? Where are you at this, hon? There he is. There we go. He is the queso blanco to my hot chocolate.

There he is. He was making it on Instagram. Instagram yesterday. Yeah, yeah. Had a little breakfast. Had arippa, chocolate. Wow. With cheese.

I mean, that's about as coming as a gift. Right there. I'm out here, man. Bro, bring a tear to my wife's eye, son. All right, we don't have time to waste because I went a little overboard with him. But let's do it. Let's get to these calls. What do we got?

All right. Let's do it. Well, it wasn't a busy weekend in M.A., but, like, man, we got a lot of questions. And a lot of them surrounding bare knuckle boxing. So let's go straight into it. Let's jump into it. Hey Luke and Danny. This is Sean calling from Fresno, California, unfortunately.

Luke, I checked out Big Mouse Strikes again. A really good song, by the way. My question is, what did you think of the Artem Lobo of Jason Knight Fight if you saw it? And does it raise your interest at all in bare-knuckle fighting? Thanks. So I did see it. I was at once entertained. I was at once concerned and also a little bit horrified.

there has been a lot made that bare knuckle is better for you than with the gloves. I'm not sure I believe that. Yep. I'm not sure I believe that. Now, here's what I'm saying. I'm also not saying it's not true, Danny,

but their faces were badly cut up in ways that you don't typically see. Look, I've seen every injury with MMA, but there's a certain rhythm to what the injuries look like. This seem to be like if these guys go for five rounds, they don't knock each other out, their faces are going to look later they got attacked by a dog,

which they do. Yeah, yeah. How much forgot? Which fighter tweeted out a photo of Jason Knight and right next to it a photo of Chuckie. Yeah, dude, they got... And you couldn't tell it. It was torn apart. So that was weird.

And then, you know, how much brain damage did they take? No one really knows. It's like, dude, they're going through all that. I mean, you know, apparently BKFC is paying people more than normal. But God, man, that's a hard way to make a living. That's a really hard way to make a living. Plus, you know, these are essentially the money makers, right? Like, if you have hand problems, man, that can really hinder your career.

and, you know, gloves definitely protect that and give your hands a little bit of longevity, whereas in Bear Nuckle, man, some of those hands are swollen up and you look at the way their hands were looking, they were looking pretty battered. So, you know, it's not only the face, but also these, you know, the hands. What did you think? Did you like it?

You know what? It was entertaining. I mean, Bear Nucle has been around for a little bit. Like, I remember watching Joy Beltran versus Tony Lopez, right? Yep. And, man, that was exciting. And Casey and Esther went to that event and covered it. And I'm like, yo, this is great.

But then as more events have rolled out, to be honest, like it's kind of losing a little bit of interest, at least on my end, because with MMA, you get so many different looks, right? The wrestling guy, the jiu-suitous, guy, sambo, judo, you know, all kinds of striking. Whereas this, I kind of feel like it's a lot more, it's a lot of brawling, man. And don't get me wrong. I love brawls. I love, you know, those type of wars, like the Jason Knight and Artem Lobov. But, I mean, at some point, it's kind of like, I'm not saying it gets old, but. it's kind of repetitive.

I don't know if you feel the same way. It just seems like, I don't know. There's just a, what keeps MMA going is the creativity. Yes. And this seems a little bit more one note. Let's have some violence. And so again, it's like a cupcake with just the frosting. I love frosting, but what makes a cupcake work is the marriage of both frosting and the spongy cake.

Yeah. So will I watch it? Yes. But I'm still more of a fan of MMA, even though it could be, you know, more boring and whatnot or have less action. So, you know, to sum this question up, I saw it, I liked it, but, I mean, I don't know, it's not really my thing. Yeah, also concerned about their health. Yeah, for sure.

But, I mean, I do got to say, I think, I think, actually, I'll just save my thoughts and we'll tackle this question and I can. Let's burn through these if we can. Yeah. All right, here's the next. I'll cut this one short. Hey, Lou, Simper Fidelis, brother. This is Verland, Colin from Seattle, Washington. Hey, man, just wanted to hear your take on.

the, with the, you know, the bare-knuckle fighting coming out and, you know, the recent fight with the Russian hammer and, I mean, great fight. I just want to know your take on, what does this do for MMA? Do you think it kind of sets us back and raise some light on the violence? Are people going to be shocked by that and just kind of lump them all into one group? Or do you think it's good? It gives fighters another revenue stream somewhere to go. I just want to hear your honest take on it. All right, thanks.

Yeah, so I mean, the general idea here is that, yes, it does give fighters another place to go. It gives a certain kind of fighter. Matt Brown was out there suggesting that these guys were B-class fighters. That's not an insult. That's a fair classification. So, yes, it gives them. It definitely caters a type of fighter. I mean, we've seen Chris Lieben.

We've seen Joy Bellatrans. He was retired and coming out of it. Right. It's guys who either wash out of the UFC or have been retired but still have a name. But even then, like, it's the type of fighter. It's like the brawler. Yeah, obviously Demi and Maya is not well situated to do well in BKFC, to your point. Yes. So look, it caters to a certain kind of fighter, both in the position they're in their career and the way in which they fight.

But again, we need to make sure that these guys get paid. We need to make sure that there's proper health screenings. And we need to monitor exactly what this does to a person because a lot of this is uncharted territory. I mean, people have said, oh, you know, Bear Knuckle used to exist back in the day and it did, but it hasn't really for a long time. And to do it for five rounds, again, two minute or whatever it is, two minute rounds, that's still a lot of brawling bare knuckle man. So their hands were messed up. Their faces were just really bad. Let's just see. Let's see how it goes. Yeah. But as far as what it does to him, I'm glad that it gives an outlet to, you know,

fighters, you know, and Pauli Molanagri, we had him in studio last week and he was saying he was getting paid a lot of money, right? So, you know, it does give retired guys an option to come back. it also can produce other storylines. So, you know, I'm off for... The question is, should retire guys be coming back. That's also true. Yeah. I mean, we'll see. It's all, as you said, on charted territory.

So... It's so new, it's hard to make firm conclusions. Yeah. All right. Now let's talk about the big fight coming up this weekend. Yes. Hey, Luke, Josh, from Sydney, Australia. At this point in time,

which of the main event fighters on U.S. U.C. 326, would you consider posing a bigger threat to Khabib's title? And on the same lines, which of the co-made event fighters is a worst stylistic matchup for Robert Whitaker. Thanks for all your hard work. All right, so we got two interim belts on the line, right?

Gasolum going at it with Adasania and then Holloway going at it with Porier. Which two of those guys, which, which, what, which guy could give their respective champion the biggest challenge? So, you know, I think people know my preferences on this one. I made this point back when Max decided he wanted to fight Habib, UFC 223 and everything fell apart.

Max's take-down defense is some of the best in MMA, period. Maybe Habib takes him down. He takes down everybody, right? But the reality is the dude, Max Holloway, has incredible takedown defense. And if that fight stays on the feet at all, Max Holloway sets him on fire. Meanwhile, Dustin Parry has good takedown defense as well. Don't misunderstand me. And a good ground game.

But that's not where he's going to be best able to hurt Habib. So I'm going to say, we'll see how things go this weekend. But my hunch is Max Holloway. Yeah. You too? I think with that one is a bit of a toss-up, I'm not really sure. I think both guys are elite, obviously very skilled fighters. But I'm leaning more towards Holloway, given the style.

But, yeah, it's a tough one. Then on the middle-weight side, I'm a little bit biased. I think I keep sleeping on Kelvin Gastilom. And I think I always have. I'm not the best to give an opinion on Kelvin because I certainly respect him, but I keep misidentifying how good he is. But you guys also know how I feel about Israel-A-Sania. I think, look, the key insight to Israel-A-Sania that nobody picks up on

talks about enough is the fainting. Those guys at city boxing basically believe that fainting is the key to everything. And if somebody faints and the other guy doesn't, or one person is better at fainting than the other one, the fainter should always win. Israel, Assign is one of the best fainters in the game. He really is.

So to me, the issue here is that. I think as long as it's going to be a stand-up battle, he's going to be the better fainter than anyone in that division. So I'm going to pick him. But Whitaker is amazing. And I've been wrong about getting. Gastilin so many goddamn times.

Yeah, for sure. I think I'm going to go with Adasania the same, because I feel like Robert Whitaker has already gotten that look in his career. He's fought, you know, I mean, Joe Romero twice, a guy that, you know, can hold his own on the striking, but really good wrestler, you know, a Jack Carick. Again, not exactly the same as Gaston, but similar looks, whether you go to Adasana,

is someone completely different, you with a different style. And Whitaker's not really the guy that will take you down. so he'll be fighting at Asana where he feels most comfortable, you know, which is on the feet. So I'm leaning towards that as Sanya. But, man, Whitaker, Whitaker's amazing and so is gasoline. So it's a tough pick. Certainly is. All right.

This is not really a question, more of a suggestion. So let's hear it. All right. And a comment there. Hey, Danny, Luke. Tanner here from New Orleans. First off, love the show. Your recent appearance on below the belt with Brandon Shob was absolutely amazing. Love how Frank you are.

And I love how pragmatically you view the... world. On that note, I'd love to hear a similar type of interview with you and Josh Barnett on the MMA hour. Just chatting about life, metal, and philosophy. I don't know for like an hour or so. That's all I got guys. Cheers. Have fun. Yeah. Now that he's at Bellator, Belator's got to hook us up with an interview. I've invited Josh on it. He thinks I don't like him, which is not true at all. I actually like Josh a lot. I feel like you guys that would have a lot in color. Yeah, I like Josh a lot. I once made a point about how Cyborg was mistreated by MMA by the MMA community, and I use Josh as an example to make that point.

And I think he thinks that I don't like him. Not true at all. I have total respect for Josh. And as I made quite clear during his feud with Usada, I made clear to note, he was totally railroaded and done wrong, which is unfortunate. But I am quite happy to see that he is back on his feet. He apparently had a grand weekend in, what do you call it? He did the thing called Bloodsport here in the city?

Yes. And then he signed with Bellator. So he had a big weekend and a big week. So, yeah, he's got an open invite on the show at any time. I have great respect for Josh Barnett. And glad to see he's got another, the war master has another chapter. Yes. And at Belter, which will be fun.

There's a lot of good names there for him. It's a good organization for him. Yes. It's a good organization if you're heavy with a name, man. Yeah. It is. And he's still got, we don't actually know how talented he is. I mean, we know he is, but I'm saying what's left.

But he hasn't had a lot of wear and tear in the last couple of years, quite obviously. This break might have even been helpful. Exactly. So, yeah, I would love to, I can't wait to see how he does. All right. Let's talk about your favorite topic. So let's tackle that. Also, by the way,

congrats on that interview with Brandon Shad. That was great stuff. You know what, man? You don't get a lot of... Thanks for a shot at, but... Yeah, of course. It was him too, but...

Him mostly, I should say. But... I was really good. You know what I noticed? You know what I took from that interview or the response to it? Yeah. I don't think people...

I've been on camera for years. I kind of took... I thought people understood me. And it turns out a lot of people just didn't realize who I was or didn't feel like they got to know me very well. And,

I guess that video went a long way towards showing based on the reception I'm getting, Danny. Yeah, yeah. People seem to know who I am better now. So I'm very grateful for that. You don't get a lot of opportunities like that, and that was one of them.

Yeah, that was good stuff. All right. Let's talk about some wrestling. I'd rather die. What's up, Luke? This is Donk, Donkerson from Schittsville, USA. I was just calling to get your opinion on WrestleMania. Have a great day.

I'm guessing you watched. I watched all of none of it. Yeah, I don't care. I mean, if people like it, great. What do you want me to say? I mean, it's, you know, all I'm going to do by answering this question is make everybody who had nice things to say after being on Brendan Schaub's podcast bitter at me. If you all like professional wrestling, keep watching it.

I have tried. I have tried. It is insufferably awful. I do got to say, I think this is worth of note. Brock Lesnar lost, if I'm not mistaken, which could potentially sell. set up a comeback for him in MMA. Be still my heart. So we'll see.

Great. Also, I did go to a pro wrestling show on Thursday, I think. Our own Mark Romandy dragged me out there, and it was fun. It was, I got to say, the indie one is a lot better than what you see on TV and WWE and all that. Because it's less shitty acting and all that. It's actually like- How could it be worse? That's true.

I mean, legitimately, how could it be worse? It's actually pretty good. It's a show. It's acrobatics. The guys are super athletic. and they're actually doing things that require a lot of skill. And a lot of the acting, which is horrible, it's all, you know, taken off. Yeah, my understanding is that the, again, I know nothing,

but my understanding is the indie scene right now is having something of a renaissance where really the best professional wrestling doesn't really exist in the WWE. Again, if it's something people like, man, I encourage you to keep watching. Yeah. All right. This is a fun question. Pretty creative from this caller. So let's have a listen.

All right. Morning Luke and Danny. This is Alex calling from Orlando, Florida. Orlando. I just want to give you thoughts on WrestleMania last night. Just going to. My question is, what is your favorite comic book superhero movie? And if you could replace the main character from that movie with a current UFC fighter, who would it be?

Thanks. Jesus. Man, I'll go first because I had some time to think about this. All right, go first. So I'm not big into. into comic books. And I don't, to be honest, I'm going to catch some hate on this probably,

but I'm not big into superhero movies anyways. But one that I really like and respect, it's the whole Dark Night series. So my favorite is Batman. I just thought, you know, it was, you know, greatly shot. The cast was great. Everything about it was great.

Shearing for the billionaire, huh? So, and if I had to pick an NBA fighter to replace Christian Bale, it would be Carlos Condit. I feel like he would fit in. He's got that grit, you know, I don't know. Yeah. Boy.

National One killer. That's a good one. Let me think. Let me think. Favorite one. Well, the Dark Night was good, obviously. Favorite of all time. Good Lord, there are a bunch of them.

I'm not sure how to answer that. I mean, I really enjoyed Avengers Infinity War, which I know is the latest of the big ones. The best one I saw recently was the animated one. which was into the Spider-verse. Did you see it? No. Oh, it's phenomenal. I heard it was good.

It's phenomenal. Look at the Rotten Tomatoes ratings for audiences and critics. I would say the, you know which one I really liked as a kid? The animated Batman series. It's dark and brooding and there's not a lot of dialogue. It's really, really good. It was the best, it was the best comic book series ever brought to life. So, which was also Batman, obviously.

So, yeah, I guess, I don't know. Who had I read? replace him with. You know what? Just to have a little fun, Mike Perry. Let's make Mike Perry the new Batman. You imagine how great that would be? Yeah, that would be fun. So there you go. Different kind of that Batman for sure.

All right, you have time for one more? Yeah, let's do one. We can do maybe a couple more. All right, cool. This is a bit of an old question, but I feel like with what's happened with UFC and the ESPN paper video, it has changed the conversation a bit. So. Okay. Let's hear it. Hey, man. This is Christian from St. Louis. Called a little earlier, but I don't think I, especially,

specified enough. So my question is, why are we not talking about the fact there's way too much weight jumping between champs? Holloway-poje is fine. I get that. And I said that when I dropped a call earlier. But Henry Sehudo should be defending his own belt against 25ers. Why is he moving up to 35 to defend it or to fight for the belt when T.

It's no longer in it. It made sense when T.J. was around. TJ's not around anymore. That beef doesn't make sense anymore. So why does that fight make sense? Marlon Moriah should be fighting somebody else. I'll cut it right there, but you get it, right? Yeah, I don't understand either other than that's what they probably think is best for sales and or.

Okay, yeah, but yeah, it's best for sales, but with the UFC ESPN paper review deal, which guarantees them an upfront, right? Yeah. Which it's supposed to be a pretty fat sum of money. I mean, does it even matter the ratings all that much anymore, right? Like, yeah, it does a little bit. I mean, look, on some level. Exactly, a little bit.

But like, you don't have to worry about putting on a paper view that's going to do 170 or something like that because... Well, I don't support this decision. But on the other hand, we need to be careful about what we're arguing here. You do not want the matchmakers and the UFC so immune to market pressures that they no longer feel beholden to them. And they can go purely in a sporting context. Because here's the reality. Using the matchmaker model to... Hold on.

I'm going to finish. Using the matchmaker model to subvert pure sporting criteria, not all the time, but some sometimes is going to end you up in a better place. Yeah. I don't agree with the call here. I do think that Sohudo should be fighting 125ers. But I guess my point is, Danny, you do want them to feel market pressure. So if they're responding in a way where they are, I don't agree with this call, but I like

that general instinct. Okay. So if you had to do like a line of, you know, I guess like market pressure and then I guess from the sporting standpoint, don't you think perhaps, at least on my view, I feel like we're a little more leaning towards market pressure than we are on the sporting side. Sure, we absolutely are. They're getting this one wrong. So wouldn't the ESPN deal being exclusive to paper?

Wouldn't that help that and at least bring it back and balance it a little more? Sure. I just don't want folks to say, what does it matter anymore? It matters a lot. Right. Yeah, of course. Because it's not about maximizing sales as such. It's about what the mentality is about maximizing sales,

which is making sure MMA is big enough that it stays irrelevant enough in people's consciousness. Yeah. That's the point I'm making. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I don't know. I still would, I know we've talked about this at length, but like, I would still love to see Henry Sehudo defend the belt at 125.

Even if you're going to close that division, all right, fine. You know, keep releasing the guys that you're releasing. But have the guy defend the belt a couple times, you know. Absolutely agree. All right. One more. One more. One more.

Okay. Do you want to talk about the chances home and Santos have? Or you saw it out and the lifetime ban? You saw it in the lifetime ban. All right. I knew it. Let's do it. I'm going to cut this one short.

Hey, Luke and Danny, it's Mike from Philadelphia. Actually, we went to a USC Philadelphia. Had a great time. The stadium was a lot fewer people than I expected. It was maybe a hassle. My question is about USADA. If you get a lifetime ban from USADA, does that immediately nullify your UFC contract?

And there's no way they can keep it in a contract, right? Is this a back door somehow to getting out of USC contract? if you were willing to go that far. Also, do we know if USADA can give you, say, a five-year ban or a 10-year ban? Just wondering about how long people can be locked up and not fighting. All right. Thanks. Bye.

So, okay, two answers to that. Let's start with the first one. The UFC has to give you fights. If they can't because you're banned by USADA, I believe that they are contractually obligated to release you. You will see Ruslin Megamadov, if he can continue. continues to fight. You'll see him in some overseas promotion, whether it's Japan or... What's the threshold of time? Like, because like, say T.J. Dillishaw gets here, I mean,

he's got at least a one-year ban, right? I mean, they can't give him fights, obviously. Yeah, I haven't seen the language, but the idea there is that it's only temporary. They would presumably be able to do it at some future date. So I think... I mean, if it's lifetime, you're out. I think what happens is it freezes the contract. But if you're, if there's no point in which you can be unfrozen, then they're not able to fulfill the terms of it, in which case the thing becomes null and void. So look, he is going to be fighting.

If he continues to fight in some, you know, he'll fight for, he fought for Ahmad MMA, I believe. So he'll fight for, you know, Ramzan Kedirav or Risen or somebody, you know. So he's not going to fight again. He'll fight again. First. Second of all, by the way, he could end up fighting for Belator.

Because he might serve a suspension according to the commissions, but once that's over, they're not going to lifetime ban him. So you can't, and they don't have to respect you sought. They certainly do not. So there's that. So as for the second. part, could they ban you five or ten years? Well, here's where it comes from. You see these things like two and four and eight years. This comes from the Olympic cycle. This is where it comes from.

The idea is that you have the Olympics every four years, you get the world championships, typically every year. And this didn't get instituted until 2014 or 2015, or maybe 2013, 2014. These are all still relatively new because Danny, as I keep trying to tell people, everything they keep trying keeps failing. So they keep ratching it up. And the next level is to criminalize it, of course. They're going to throw people in jail over this, which you're literally trying to do. In any event, so the idea there is it would get you to miss certain cycles. Yeah. This Olympic cycle, two Olympic cycles. Presumably, you could get an arbitration panel to then reduce or up a four-year suspension to five or reduce eight to five

or up eight to ten. But typically it goes in those two to four to eight-year increments and maybe an arbitration panel could fudge it. Yeah. And why are we using these cycles? If This is just a year-round sport. Right. It's a professional sport with a narrow-ass window, and we've barred it from an Olympic cycle, which has nothing to do with the way in which our sports operate. Our sports operate on a month-to-month basis.

Basically, anything, any suspension five years or above, is pretty much a death sentence. And I may, like, you're done. Unless you're 20 or something, or 25. I suppose, yeah. But even then, it would be horribly destructive. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, you're not getting a lot of people sympathizing. But the question is not about going easy on them. The question is, what kind of policies can you reasonably enact to either minimize the harms that these things cause. That's the answer. And the answer is just the get tough policy. It didn't work for any other drug in the war on drugs. I don't know why people are confused

and think it's going to work for this one. But okay. People have decided they would like to see this fail before they come around to my position. So I will wait. That's it. That's it. Hi, Danny. Good job. Thank you.

All right. I have another job I have to go do. But first, we're not done here. We have to go to my interview with one Mr. Alster Overim. I spoke to him yesterday about many things. He's headlining UFC St. Petersburg about Volkov, about all bunch of stuff. I have to leave, so I want to thank all my guests, including Mr. Overeign, for making time for me yesterday. Of course, you can keep sending tweets using the hashtag the MMA Hour.

You can keep calling 844-866-2468. But for now, here's my interview with Alster Overeign. And I'm joined now by UFC heavyweight Alistair Overeem. All right, Alistair, let's get right into it. You know what? I was actually want to start this in a bit of a different way. I know you're going to, we'll talk about your fight with Alexia Linnet coming up here in the 20th of April. But you know what's funny is you've been around a really long time in MMA.

You've seen a lot. What do you make of this move to streaming that all the promoters are doing? Do you like it or not? I don't have any opinion of that. Actually, not over talking about, okay, streaming is the next level, right? You as a promoter, you want your content to be available to everybody. Everybody has a handle. So I guess it's just the next step.

evolution. You don't put too much mind into it. Because you're a guy who's like you're not in inconsequential places. You're either on big cards or main eventing, but I suppose it's not something you really terribly pay a lot of mind to. No, I'm not too bitter.

I'm really just going to focus on training camp and stuff that matters for me. And yeah, if it's streamed on the device and all that's like small details to me. Fair enough. All right, how's Colorado? I know you're out there with Elevation Fight Team. How's it going this time around. Actually, liking it a lot, liking the state, liking the people, and lots to do, a lot of restaurants. The team has been absolutely amazing team elevation. So I'm very happy

that I joined developing every day into a better, yeah, mixed martial artists, better fighter. And yeah, just very anxious to showcase my new skills, right? And the fight is coming up. It's 13 days away. You know, it's interesting, Alistair. You have, you're a guy, I mentioned before, you've been around, you've seen a lot. You've tried. You've tried. trained in a lot of places too. You've gotten so many looks. You've seen really the best that MMA has had to offer in terms of a training and coaching environment. Could you have imagined yourself had you stayed in like one or two places? If I stayed in one or two places, they're probably retired by now. Why is that? Well, as a fighter, you can get compromised. It's not for everybody,

but I have been compromised a couple times in my career. And to me, it was due or die time. I had to make changes. Sometimes I didn't want to make changes, but I still had to make change if I wanted to continue my career. Let's, for instance, go back to my last loss to Curtis Blaise. Actually, there was two in a row

because I had lost to France and I lost to Curtis. And I was trailing out of Jackson's, the chemistry there. We had a good chemistry, but it was just finished. And to me, I still want to fight. So you're going to keep doing something that doesn't work for you, or you're going to make changes and figure it out again. And to me, I had to do that.

I had to figure it out again. I still felt I could do that. Back then, I was 37 and 38 years old now. But, yeah, I felt like I can still do it. I need to do it. Is there any chat? there must be a challenge between going team to team. Like the good side must be all the great training partners,

all the great looks, all the great coaches, right? All the best practices that you get to learn. On the other hand, it must be hard to like learn how to meet all these new people all the time. Like what are some of the challenges of that? Well,

okay, so let's not forget. I've been training for 26 years, right? Yeah, long time. My first fight was, my first fight was 1997. So it's, It's, it's, it's, to me, that's obvious you're going to have at least a couple of different camps.

Okay, well, back in the day, it was, um, there was another issue. You would go for kickbox to this, Jim. You would go for grappling to that gym. You'd go for wrestling to these gyms. So it would be different gyms anyway. Now, uh, it's more all in one house. But still, you know, at Jackson's app, everything, you have grappling, have, or striking to have, uh, but still, and you just mentioned, okay, when you go to a new team,

you're going to have to say goodbye to your old team. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if that's always a bad thing. Sometimes when the chemistry is done and when there's no clear direction, but there is a direction that you want to fight, but there's no clear direction. There's not really good communication.

There's a good thing that you change. In my 26 years, change has actually always been a great thing. Actually, the only place that was not a good change was when I went to the Black Sea. That was truly terrible. And that showed, and I made changes out of there. And it went better to Jackson to May. So that chemistry was finished.

Because it's like every relationship. In relationships, chemistry can go down, right? It's not always a perfect marriage forever, unfortunately. Because in the past I've also had to say goodbye to coach that was perfectly okay with. But I had to do it because, yeah, I want to fight. I want to make the most of my career.

And I basically always lived by that phrase. want to make the most of my career. Sometimes you're going to have to say goodbye to people, to groups, to teams, for that goal. Yeah, that's, uh, that sounds, that sounds right. Just sort of piggybacking on that, you know, you're a guy as you all know, who's seen the world, seen all the best MMA gyms. It's less of an issue now, but you know, like from a Brazilian culture in the jiu-jitsu world, if you change teams, they would call you a crionch or like a traitor. And some of that bled into MMA. But that seems like geographical.

right? Because you guys out of Europe, it doesn't seem like as much of a big deal. Maybe that's more of a South American kind of thing, where people change teams and it's the end of the world. Yeah, but even in Brazil, you go there and you look at what happened to a Brazilian top team and a shoebox, right? You had Van Lachsevah leaving shoebox, shogun leaving shoebox, coming to the States, also Brazilian top team, a big knock. Why did those fighters leave? Why were the traders? There's news out there. that the teams were stealing and there was just unfair practices. So, of course, as an athlete, it happened to me with Golden Glory. Of course, you're going to leave.

You're not going to stand a situation when somebody's going to take advantage of you. So, yeah, for every case a little bit different. It is what it is. It's development is life. You know, you learn through everything that happens as well, right? And in the end, you're going to get exactly what you deserve, I believe. Now, what's interesting, as you mentioned, an elevation fight team, a great team. you had just fought Curtis Blades

and you rebounded since then, but I'm wondering what your relationship is like with Curtis and how that has been since you began training with him. Yeah, so we were actually talking a little bit before we fought, actually. I just stepped up to him after his Mark Hunt fight and I reached out, hey, shall we go training together one time? Because that was actually in the lack of sparring partners at Jackson's. And he responded as positive.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's read out. We exchanged numbers. So we start texting. but then our fight got announced and we stopped texting. Then the fight happened. I lost. I just reached out to him and said, hey,

I'm going to be in Denver in two weeks. Shall I come by? He's really very positive, very open. Yeah, come to the gym. He texts me at all the time. And, yeah, it's, it's, I mean, he's a great fight. He's a great athlete. He's a great guy as well.

I really actually like him. I've trained in my 26 years. We have a lot of professionals, a lot of champions, a lot of, strong fighters. And Curtis is one of my favorites. No ego whatsoever. We don't discuss our fight. We

lift each up to the battle level. And yes, it's great to be part of the team. Great to help him on his journey to greatness. Let's talk about your upcoming fight. You were supposed to take on Alexander Volkov. He gets yanked. And now you're going to face Alexei

Olenik. Any thoughts about the opponent change? Well, so Alexia and I have a little bit of history where we're actually okay together we're friends I like him a lot we I helped him on his Crook fight so we used to go 2013 and then he helped me on the Frank Mayer fight and then he's yeah then he's turned with UFC so I kind of yeah knew somehow somewhere that we might end up fighting together to me it's not a problem because we're not Yeah, we're not teammates.

And, yeah, it's been years ago that we helped each other. So it's fine. I kind of know what you'd expect. He's a tough veteran fighter. He's got sneaky submission game. Yeah, it's fine. He's ranked number 10, I think, with 11 or 9. Let me verify that.

He is ranked 9. He is ranked 9. He's ranked number 9. But I'm a question. What happened to vocal? Do you know what happens? I don't. And there's always a lot of rumors that are being spread.

And I don't want to... Look, anytime someone, you know, is in a main event and then gets out of a main event or in a UFC fight and gets out of a UFC fight, obviously everybody and their brother is going to say it's due to a USADA violation. But I'm not sure that that has been confirmed by USADA at this point. Okay. Oh, actually, you know what? Actually, I might be wrong about that. Here is the official UFC statement, if I can pull it up here.

The official UFC statement is as follows. I'll pull this up. Due to health issues, Alexander Volkov has been forced to withdraw from his bout against Alstair Overeem. So they put it up to health issues. And I think there have been other unconfirmed reports from a Russian sites that have said it was due to an anti-doping violation. So it's a little bit murky at this juncture. Okay. Okay, let's let that beat out.

Yeah, fair enough. Olinic's game. You know, he's got this Ezekiel choke, which is kind of funny, although he did beat Mark Hunt without it, with a different kind of win. At this point, you've seen so many looks, right? Like, you don't want to take a guy lightly, but I can't imagine you feel, I don't know, overly threatened by it.

Well, okay, so the only thing is that a Volcope is an entirely different opponent than Alexo, I think. So that's the only thing. But you know what? I had this when when they threw me in the K-1 fight I was actually training for rematch with Crocrop and then Crocob

something happened with him. He withdrew or something withdrew and then they came with the butter hour if I listened on a three weeks now just yeah we Crocum's not fight's not happening but you can fight butter in the K-1 and I'm at this phase right now I'm in a great

shape I'm I feel ready I want to fight I want to kick ass and it is with this I'm ready so there doesn't really matter. What is the win? Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. I didn't mean to cut you off, Alster.

Go ahead, finish your thought. No, I'm just ready to kick out. So it doesn't matter who and what, when, where we're going to get it on. Aside from being ready, though, from your judgment, is there a way to assess what the win gets you? Your previous opponent was ranked six. This one's ninth.

Then again, you put together wins in the heavyweight division. You never know what could happen. From your vantage point, what do you see as the ultimate benefit of a win here? Well, the win is a win is a win. And then after we'll have to figure out what's next. You just need to keep stacking those wins and then that'll get you to a title. I'm not really, I don't really look at the rankings. I'm just focused on the guy ahead.

So he's ranked 9s. That's, it is what it is. Whatever. What is my rank? I'm 6, 6 and 9. So that's kind of okay. Yeah, I think you're sitting at 7 at the moment. 7.

Yeah. still good position to be in yeah so seven and nine it's just the same month yeah so you're gonna be 39 in may 2019 is a big year for you if you put this one together you'll have back to back wins what do you what do you hope to get out of this calendar year if I spoke to you on January 1 2020

where do you where do you want to be at that position so I would like to fight another actually twice this year against September and the end of the year and then win on my fights obviously, right? Right.

So when you speak to me in January 2020, we're going to be very happy because we're winning all our fights and we're back in the winning column and in title contention. Is that what you need? You need what? Let's see, one, two, three more wins.

Is that the idea? I don't know. But I'm just fighting away. That's my goal. What do you make at the top of the division? It's a weird moment right now, right? Because you got the champ who's out. You thought Kane would come back and make some noise.

Then he loses to Francis. Stipe is kind of sitting out. And it's just not clear what's happening at the top. What do you make of it? I don't make a lot of it because, again, rankings are rankings. You got to see what happens. Brock is he coming back. It's also a weird situation.

Coming back, fight for a title after what happened there. King, yeah. Is Kane even still fighting? I heard something he's going to do WW. thing? He did a Mexican professional wrestling league pretty recently. His coach says he's still going to come back, but, you know, against who and against when.

I don't know. He didn't look good in his last right. We've all due respect. Didn't look good. Didn't look on the diet. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. What is his ranking? Kaine, right now? Yeah. His ranking right now, as we speak, is eight. He is one below you.

Okay. So yeah, we'll see. We'll see what happens. What do you make of... I'm just focused on me on my training on making sure that everything around me is good. No doubt about it.

Of Brock, because you're a guy who fought him, you beat him. It was good for your career. And he's still kind of floating out there in the ether. I'll say as a media guy, I'll say, as a media guy, I'm kind of torn. On the one hand, I get it, especially Daniel looking for a big payday. Okay. But it's like, I'm just looking for

the top of these divisions to move and you've got something going on it lightweight too where you just can't get the top guys in motion I don't know, create some problems, you know? Yeah, I don't really haven't been about the whole broxing. I mean, it's obvious that he yeah,

is special, right? Because it's, Brock, Brock, Bruce, Brock, Dad, Brock, this, like that. But to me, to me, it's nothing special. To me, it's a big guy, who's a huge fan, but that's it. That's a speciality about it. Of course, I'll be watching Kormier and Brock when they fight, but am I overly enthusiastic about it?

Absolutely not. I wouldn't buy a ticket for that fight. But then again, I would watch it. I mean, it is going to be... You know what? You never know. You never know what's going to happen in that fight. Certainly don't.

He is huge, as you mentioned. You know, at 39 years old, you have had amazing career longevity, Alastern. As I mentioned, you've seen it all, really, MMA through its most important evolutions. And I suspect the answer to this question is going to be, as long as you're feeling good, the answer is you'll just keep competing. But have you thought about, I mean, look, I think it is fair to say. You're probably closer to the end of your career than the beginning.

You've been fighting for 20 plus years. Have you thought about what the next chapter is? Luke, I plan to fight another plane. Is that right? That's a lot of fighting, Alster. I'm halfway in. Actually, less fighting because back in the day, It was like six fights year, right?

Every two months. I even have some crazy periods, 2009, and 2010. I did six fights in three months time span. So now it's like two, three fights a year, or the rest of your kind of thing. I'll see getting better. Yeah. I don't know.

It is the last part of my career. It's probably going to be another two years, three years max. What is that? Five, six, seven fights. Four, five, six, seven fights. And then I'm going to nice and retire, I guess. But you're feeling pretty good, though, right? I'm 100% healthy.

But I have to say that I'm doing a lot, I'm doing a lot to be healthy, to stay healthy. So it's a lot of, a lot of nutrition, a lot of massage. My orphan and therapist from Holland, especially keeps me going. So I do a lot of dry needleing, which is also an amazing, amazing method, new method, since years of doing that. So I'm doing a lot on recovery. And if I compare that to my early 20s, I didn't really have to do a lot of recovery back then. But now I do.

And as long as you do recover, I'm great. I can make my 10, 15 hours a week training like I'm early 20s. So that is kind of like the thing, right? If you're doing a recovery, if you're putting in the work, yeah, they'll keep going. And then I guess we'll end on this. and I appreciate your time, Alistair. One of the thing that I've noticed, you know, you had JDS have this big resurgence

this past year, this last few fights. I have noticed that a lot of guys in heavyweight will have moments in their career where they surge and then they fall, but then they surge again, and then they'll fall again and then they surge again. So you tell me, what is it about heavyweight where guys can have these like second or third acts

where people will write them off and then they come surging right back? Well, JDS is. he's been fighting for a long time now and in your career of course you're going to have certain circumstances working against you at some point in your

life and you go through it and then you figure it out and you come back you get back on the winning column but he had that battles man his battles with Kane were amazing right he came back from that so he's been coming back a couple

times I think when a fighter keeps coming back that that tells something about their character. I guess he's stubborn, just like me. We love to fight damn, and we're stubborn. We don't want to give up. Fair enough. All right, well, we can't wait for it.

UFC on ESPN Plus 7. This will be April 20th in St. Petersburg, Russia, when you take on Alexiolinik in the main event. Alster, thank you so much for your time. Looking forward to your next fight. And you've got to look and have to go. Thank you so much. Yep, show.