MMA Fighting - BTL | Breaking Down UFC 311 and Islam Makhachev and Merab Dvalishvili’s Big Wins

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

UFC 311 is in the books and both Islam Makhachev and Merab Dvalishvili remain UFC champions. It was a hectic fight week that saw top lightweight contender Arman Tsarukyan withdraw the day before the event, allowing Renato Moicano to step in on short notice. Unfortunately for Moicano, he was unable to capitalize on his opportunity as Makhachev dismantled him quickly, submitting Moicano in the very first round. The co-main event was less dominant but no less impressive as Dvalishvili out-worked Umar Nurmagomedov over five rounds, taking a clear decision in his first-ever title defense. Mike Heck is on vacation so on this week’s all-new edition of Between the Links, Jed Meshew takes over the hosting chair and is joined by MMA Fighting’s Alexander K. Lee to break down all the big takeaways from UFC 311 and answer fan questions. Follow Jed Meshew: @JedKMeshew Follow Alexander K. Lee: @AlexanderKLee Subscribe: http://goo.gl/dYpsgH Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/u8VvLi Visit our playlists: http://goo.gl/eFhsvM Like MMAF on Facebook: http://goo.gl/uhdg7Z Follow on Twitter: http://goo.gl/nOATUI Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Wi-Fi available to AeroPlan members on equip flights sponsored by Bell Conditions apply see Air Canada.com You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. MMA Fighting Studios, this is Between the Links. And now, your host, my... Hello there, everybody. This is not Mike Heck.

This is Otto. Hi, everybody. Otto says hello. I am Jed Mishu, as you can see my name right down there with the Twitter logo. And I write for MAAFighton.com. Mike Heck, the esteemed Mike Heck, is on VIII. vacation this week, a well-earned vacation following UFC 311 and all the wonderful watch party stuff that we did. So I'm taking over BTL this week. And as a result of that, no competition

this week. We've got plenty to talk about with UFC 311. I thought about having auto here compete against somebody, but that seemed deeply unfair to anybody else who would be involved. So instead, we're doing a good old-fashioned Q&A joining me for the Q&A. I think you guys could have guessed it by the title of this, but the esteemed, the king in the north, my favorite guy, and gosh darn it, he's not my best friend, Alexander K. Lee, A.K., how you doing? I'm just happy to be on Between the Links

and not have this count against my record. We are here, just have a good time. Okay, that's, this is an exhibition. This is like Tyson, oh no, Tyson versus Paul counted. I mean, that's a bad example. It did count. This is like Tyson and Roy Jones Jr., Tyson, you know, a much more enjoyable show.

We think it will be closer to that than Paul Tyson. So, yes, I look forward to questions, comments, more questions, because we've got a lot to talk about still from the weekend, I feel. And also, I mean, coming up, we got some business coming up this weekend. And also Saudi Arabia, UFC, next week. So bring it on, people. Bring it on. Oh, GFL draft.

GFL draft. Can't wait for that. Friday. Yeah, there's plenty to talk about. So you guys know how these Q&A sessions go. You pop your questions down. We'll get to them. And super chats get priority.

But while we let questions populate while we start doing that, AK, plenty to talk about it. I'm not talking about the GFL draft. Though we will have live coverage of that tomorrow as well. By we, I mean me. I'm very excited to see what that's all about. But no, the big thing that happened, AK, this past week, and probably the biggest thing that will happen for a while,

just sort of looking at our future slate, UFC 311 went down this past weekend in Inglewood, California. Shout out to California and all you are going through, but the UFC still came to town. And when it did, two title belts were on the line and two champions remained. Islamakchev successfully defended his belt, rolling just right through Hanato and Moikano, who stepped in on short notice after Amman Sarukian withdrew. And in the co-main event, Marab Valshvili, and his first title defense pulled off and made like a, not a major, but a fairly sizable upset, betting-wise at least, defeating Umar Nomagamatov by unanimous decision.

So, AK, while we, I'm sure we'll get lots of questions on these topics in general. I know you've already done onto the next one. I listened. I had some quibbles, but solid episode overall from the two of you. What is your big takeaway from UFC 311? What's the thing you're still thinking about four days removed at this point? If I could be like maximum prints of positivity, it's that, you know, I think we're, we're seeing we're in a really great wave of champions again, if that makes sense.

I know that remains to be seen. You can't really evaluate championship runs until they're over. But it does feel like we have hit this level where there's no like dubious title holders, if that makes sense, for the majority of the divisions. When you watch Islam Makachov fight, you're like, this guy is the best lightweight in the world, far and away and possibly the best pound for part in the world. You watched Morav's performance against someone who he was the underdog to, someone who was undefeated

up to that point, someone who looked really good at points in the fight, and Marab just outlasts him, outstruck him at moments. Marab, look, again, maybe like the second best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. And then you have Alex Palletta,

a great year last year, arguably fighter of the year, I'm a fighter of the year, and M. May fighting. Who am I forgetting? I'm forgetting who's else. Oh, Alexandria Pontosia. Alexandria, of course, of the flyweight,

the flyweight champion, just an unbelievable run. I was thinking, literally, just today about like the champions of yesterday year and how like most of us we can look back even though they defended their titles

like seven, eight, nine times talking about Anderson Silva, Mighty Mouse, talking about George St. Pierre. Most fans who were around during their period can name like at least, you know, 80% of the guys they fought. Like that's how memorable those runs were.

And I know we're not going to get those again, seven, eight, nine title fights in a row. But the champions feel really good. The champions feel really established. Like it would have been cool see one and new on Saturday, but it's also great to see champions to get their stuff and remind us how good they are.

So the UFC can, I think, be really happy with most of the names they have at the top right now. Yeah, there's no like A plus level mainstream superstar up there. But considering the company doesn't need that right now, just having these great, credible, well-rounded, entertaining, and just incredibly, like, it's a real honor to watch some of these guys work. And I think we're in a good cycle with the UFC champions.

Good time. Good time so far in 2025. Good time so far in 2025. Guys get questions in. We'll hop to those in a little bit after we sort of do some cursory. And I will do my cursory part of the 311 discussion by saying, it's the Macho's best fight in the world. And I don't honestly think it's even that close right now. I know that the circumstances are less than ideal, right? And Nauter Morcano stepping in on a day's notice.

That being said, if you look at what happened, if you think about, really what happened to him. Mokachev was given a new opponent on a day's notice, and we have seen fighters struggle because it is a bit of a roll of the dice win for both sides when a fight comes together on this quick of notice. And what we have seen with Isla Mokachev

when this has happened is the exact opposite. If a fighter has six months to prepare for Isla Mokachev and they can build a game plan and drill everything they need to, they can be more competitive than you might guess. think Alexander Volcanowski the first time around think Dustin Poriier in his most recent title defense prior to this weekend if you are coming in on short notice against Islam Makachev you're going to get rolled the F through because that is what has happened

Bobby green got annihilated Alexander Volcanovsky in their rematch got annihilated and Hinato Mikano who's on a terrific run one of the 10 best lightweights in the world got submitted almost with ease. This is a BGJ Black Belt who is known for his grappling. And he just got kind of insta tapped as soon as Islam decided, yeah, we're done here now. His ability to have success on short notice, on top of his ability to have this long run of success,

his ability to repeatedly defend his title, obviously set the lightweight title defense record. This dude is the best fighter in the world right now. And I hope he sticks around lightweight. And we can talk about that in just a second. He, I am now starting to really evaluate where he sits in the best lightweight ever conversation. I think he has moved to number two in my rankings. I believe that this past weekend, I'm now comfortable moving in past BJ Penn.

And just right behind Abe is number one. Though I'm starting to be a conversation, AK, I believe that we are now in a world where Islam Makachev is very close if he hasn't already established as being the greatest fighter of all time in the greatest weight class that exists in the sport. And that frankly moves you pretty high in the greatest pound for pound fighter of all time discussion. So, AK, is Makachev the lightweight goat right now? Does he still need to do a little bit of work?

Yeah, I'll still put him behind Habib. This is me probably overcompensating for recency bias. Like I'm trying to avoid recency bias. people could also point to, I think most people do when you see the discourse of like, well, look at who Khabib defended his title against, look at who Makachev has defended his title against, and they kind of downplay, really both Okunoski fights now?

The first one is a weird one to downplay. I think we were all super high to it at that fight when it happened. I think we all acknowledged, yes, Makachep's size would be a difference maker. But like skill for skill, that was about as good an opponent as Makachev could get. So it was a guy in a different weight class, but I don't remember too many people at the time saying, like, oh, this, this isn't, like,

this doesn't going to matter if Makachov beats him. I think Bill thought it was a pretty credible, it would have been a pretty credible win. And then Volcanovsky almost beating him, or at least putting on it, I don't think almost beating him, but putting on a nice competitive-looking performance, really shifted the conversation around that fight. So that's a weird one now that people look back on and say, like, oh, twice against a featherweight, I don't mind people dismissing the second one, short note is fine, but that was an awesome head kick and then you know now one more short notice person and i see people downplaying playing

dustin too and i'm like dustin is one of the five probably one of the five or six best lightweights of all time yeah he's a little past his prime but he still was amazingly competitive against everyone like he's fought and and the timing was weird i know i know it came down more to that he was available and that he was a name that's why he got that title shot but i don't think that's a bad opponent also i hope people aren't downplaying machete's resume too much but i get it it's not it's not as clean as Habib when he won the belt and then, you know, three, three championship fights. It doesn't look as clean. The one, the one in Makachas record doesn't look as clean. The random, the random head kick loss. But these things happen. For me, for me, that loss,

if people are using that to compare to Habib, just like Habib never lost, Makachab lost once. Like, I honestly don't care. I don't care. GSP lost twice. GSP lost, and I don't care. Yes, he got to avenge those losses, but I don't need to see Makachev-ev avenge his one lone loss to know that, yeah, that. was a one-time thing. He's probably way better than who knocked him out, right? So it's close. I'm going with Habib, I think, but I don't think Machachev is far off. And I think Makachev has a very realistic path to pass him. But yeah, what a camp that they might say they have the two best parties of all time in the deepest division in all of MMA. It's unbelievable stuff.

It's pretty crazy. I think to me it feels like it's pretty obvious that it should be Habib at this point. time it is not Islam's fault but his title reign you can poke some holes in it it again not his fault he is only fighting the dudes who were available and made sense given the context but you know two two over a featherweight two one short notice one over a guy who was not in his prime anymore Dustin poix is a great fighter but i think he is obviously not like at the peak of his powers whereas Habib's title reign was all-time great divisional competitors at the peak of their powers plus Connor McGregor. So add in that he does get a little bump for having never lost. Like that helps the resume a little bit and just being the vanguard of that team of what they represent of Dagestan.

Like I think Khabib still has it. But one more title defense, it is a very real conversation. And if Islam sticks around and gets two more, I don't think it's a debate. doubles up the next closest lightweight in title offenses, that's game set and match boys. Like he is the lightweight goat. And if you're the lightweight goat, you're one of the 10 best fighters of all time full stop. Like that's just, that is how that has to work out. So, and again, he is 33. He is and still, he is in the prime of his career right now. And so it, to me, it is simply a question of, does he stick around? Does he try and pursue a welterweight title? Obviously,

the B'all situation makes that a little complicated, but based on his responses after UFC 311, AK, it does seem like he is willing to defend the belt. His post-fight speech was, I really like this. If you think you deserve it, come and get it. It's basically an open challenge to everybody else. And frankly, I don't see anybody in the weight class who can get past him in that. So we very well may be watching one of the, you know, the greatest lightweight and one of the five, six, seven best fighters ever, and we should be very happy to be part of that. Something else we should be happy and acknowledge to be part of. The Morab de Valishvili story.

It is he shut up all the doubters. You guys know me. I hate the nobody believed in me, silence to critics bullshit that every fighter propagates about themselves. There were real critics from Rob. I was one of those real critics from Rob. Like that was a very real piece of this is Marab's unhinged behavior beforehand, which I stand by. He was super weird how he handled all of it.

In the end, it doesn't matter. He comes in. He hangs 48, 47s on two judges scorecard 49, 46 on the other. Hands Omar de Magamato of his first loss. So before we go to the peeps, A, K, just give me your thoughts on the co-main event and sort of, what is your biggest takeaway about Marab other than, holy shit, that dude can go for? forever. I don't know if I have another takeover from that. I mean, that's what I know.

I'll tell you what's scary is I feel like he's still improving. I feel like he's still improving. He's not a young, like in a division where I think we're frequently breaking out stats where like, oh, no fighter at this age and up has ever successfully defended the title. He's not quite there yet. So he turned 34 actually in January. So he still has a year for his, like, you know, somewhat arbitrary 35 hump for like, oh, once you hit 35, it's just your aging in dog years.

point and you're going to start declining. And again, it is such a division based on athleticism, speed. In his case, cardio, he might be one of those guys where the cardio just never goes away, though. But he showed improvements. He showed legitimate improvements. The story, of course, is going to be he outlasted Umar. You know, he, quote unquote, broke Umar, which I don't know if I agree with that. Um, because that almost takes away from like the legit skill we saw on the feet. Like he should have been, based on what some of us were predicting, he should have been getting like murdered on the feet. And Umar was doing. great work on there. A lot of those body

kicks were, I mean, anyone else probably would have affected them more. But again, Marab is insane. Like, Umar had the right game plan. He was winning from range, but he couldn't stop Maraugh from getting in. And that's not just Maraub being a bulldozer. Like, you have to have techniques. You have to have footwork. You have to have defense as you're coming in. And

some of it is just him being tough. I mean, he just got hit. Maraub's got hit as he was coming in and it just fired away. But to have that kind of aggression and to effectively score. Like, you know, guys go back and watch that fight. He was landing like legitimate combinations inside, nice short punches inside. It was surprising to see. And I know for a guy who's a Bantuway champion, we shouldn't be like, it almost sounds condescending,

like, oh, wow, his striking's not that bad. But we've all seen Maraub's fights. They're not K-1 kickboxing showcases. They're a bit of striking and then a lot of grappling, a lot of pushing, a lot of holding. And it's fun in its own way. But I never thought that he would win similar strategy in exchange with Uyumar, or as many as he did, and certainly enough to win the fight. So this guy is still still improving. And when you add the physical gifts he has, which theoretically should diminish next year, but we don't know because we've never seen a guy like this in there, he could hold onto the settle for a long, long, long, long time.

But things change quickly in the M.A., but I think anyone who watched Saturdays Coleman event was like, is trying to figure out the blueprint as to like which fighter could put it together and beat him. Maybe it's Umar and a rematch down the road. But again, right now, I have no guesses as to who can dethrone Marab. I think Umar is still the best bet, but that fight won't happen. I said before in the buildup to that fight, it's a risky fight for Marab. I thought it was.

I thought Umar was going to win. I made no equivocations about that. But I was also very clear if he can do it. If he can, he's an elite fighter, if he can pull off this upset, he will be the Bannumweight goat. Not now. I think it would be premature to declare him Bantamweight Goat, given everything Dominic Cruz did accomplish even in his injury-laden truncated career. But he's looking at rematches

with Peoria and Sean O'Malley are probably his next two. Those were not particularly closer competitive fights the first time around. I see no reason to think they have changed. And so I think by the end of this year, if Marab is super active, has a good chance to be fighter of the year and has a really, really good chance within the next 18 months to cement himself as the greatest bantam weight of all time. And then maybe somebody comes along and knocks him off the pedestal. But for now, smooth sailing and credit to him. I think we have to talk about, Jed, speaking of the Goal conversation.

You know, so I've been soliciting some people's opinions on the Twitter and also in the morning report. There was some polls out there. Yesterday, you commented on one. First poll I did was, you know, if Prime Marab and Prime Dom Cruz fought, who would win? You said pretty comfortable. I assume you meant pretty comfortably Marab would win if you took their private.

And Twitter definitely agreed with you. Just short, I think of 80%, 79.7% Marab. And as you recommended, I did throw out Marab and Tjah today, who would win in their privacy to Dillashah. And Marab's still ahead pretty convincingly, 70%. I think both matches are like that. I actually think prime Dominic Cruz, I think actually gives Maraub a lot of problems. I just, I think, again, maybe I'm understanding.

underestimating Marab striking. But I feel like Dom can win three of five rounds. Not like Don would, you know, just murder him. But like I think three out of five rounds outpointing that wonky dominant crew style, which I used to love watching so much. I know it's hopefully still in there in the next many fights. I think he, I actually like that matchup a lot. But I agree the T.J. thing is intriguing.

Cardio matches him for sure for reasons that maybe beyond just, you know, regular training. But we know T. T.J. had the cardio at his prime. You had the cardio to go 20 rounds. You could go 20 round of a fight for Marab. The power, obviously, a bit more power than Dom, which I think we are saying a lot like you need to be able to finish Marab if you're going to have a chance to win the fight. I think that's the idea.

You can't go five rounds with him. So, yeah, I am curious. You definitely like Maraub against Dom. But TJ, you're not as sure? I think TJ is the best band of way I've ever seen. I think the people who are probably voting for Rob, a little bit of recency by. and just a little bit of people really want to dismiss T.J. Dillishaw because of the EPO. And like you guys at this point, if you're listening this, you probably know my stance and that I just could not care less about things of that nature.

But if you do, like I get it, you want to have, he's a cheat or whatever, sure. That just means nothing to me watching two dudes fist fight. T.J. Dillishaw is the best Bannamweight I have ever seen fight. And so like my head says that T.J. should win. However, my head said Umar should win and I was stone wrong. Phil McKinsey tweeted out and I pulled up the tweet because it is honestly like the perfect summation of of this exact question. So good.

So good. So good. T. J is a better striker has better footwork. Hits harder has ironclad take down defense. Incredible cardio. Great scrambler. Really every possible advantage you could want.

So my personal pick would be Murab via making him tired. Like that's just it. Like, TJ is in every individual factor of the game beyond cardiovascular ability and V-O-2 max, like superior. And in some of them, by a wide margin. And it may just not matter because, like, Umar was better than Marab at most things on Saturday. Didn't matter. Just don't.

It didn't matter. Because he can make you work constantly. And I wrote about this this week. I will be transparent. I do not care for Marab's fight style. Like it is, it is just not that entertaining to me. You cannot deny how impressive it is for his ability to compete at that pace for that long.

And to never put his, take his foot off the gas to to be at the same level of output from, from second one to minute 25 is unbelievably impressive. And we have now seen him just break champion after. champion after champion after elite fighter with with pace. I think the phrase weaponized cardio is one of the stupidest things in MMA. It's not for MRAB. For MRAB,

I will allow it because he weaponizes it in a way that other people do not. And so, like I said, it's not my favorite thing in the world to watch, but it's undeniably impressive. And so, like, my head says T.J. should clear him. He probably just gets tired because that's just what Marab does.

So we'll never get to see it. That's a shame. Instead, we'll get a couple of rematches. It won't be that interesting. But let me run down the rest of the results for 3-11, and then we can just pop on to questions. But we needed to hit those two off the bat. Uri Perashka knocks out Jamal Hill in the third round

of a very, very fun fight. Jelton Al-Meda also finishes Sergei Spivak with strikes in the first round of their heavyweight contest. The main car was rounded out by Reiner de Ritter, aka Henne A. De Hitter, aka the Dutch Knight, defeating Kevin Holland by its first-round submission. Howany Barcello scores one of the biggest upsets in UFC history

with a wide unanimous decision win over Peyton Talbot. Asimate Bekoff beats Zachary Reese via knockout, Bogdan Gouscov, submits Billy Al-Akanah, Grant Dawson, picks up a UD over Carlos Diego Faheta. Eileen Perez defeats Carol Hosa gets herself ranked in the women's band and weight division. Mouin Gaffrov offers up a pretty big upset as well over Rindiannaqam. We're a unanimous decision. Fernando Sopai, UD over Ricky Terseos, and then Tagir Ullum Bekhov, UD over Clayton Carpenter to open the evening.

Casey, hop on in here, and we've done enough preamble, we've done enough chit-chat. Let's get to some questions. How are you doing, Casey? What are your thoughts on 311, I guess, before we get to questions? Oh, um, Islam is incredible of that submission. I know it wasn't flashy maybe to people, but I was just, just. floored by how great that submission was. Instantaneous.

Instantaneous. The second Hanato got to, got to knees. Short arm was on. Yeah. Like in the sense that I don't mean, people are kind of, I know, modified darts. I think it's his own submission. I think like the, the changes he's made to it with the elbow placement and the forearm grab and everything.

It's not even a darts anymore to me. It's just, it's, I don't call it whatever you want. But it was. Just short on dars. Yeah. Short on Bravo. But it's it's it's almost I guess so yeah it's it's it's just to me short on Bravo yeah it's almost his own thing like people calling at DARS but I just think it's just just incredible

and Marab I have no issue of calling him the 35 goat um I think and I guess the reason why I won't put Maraub I guess I think I have like maybe number five pound for pound I want to put him higher I think we have the same issues like he's like he's like he's He's just not a finisher. And that's fine because Marab, in a sense, has kind of game the system in 25-minute fights. And that's perfect for him. In 25-minute fights, he is the goat. In 15-minute fights, I would definitely pick T.J. Dillishal.

I'll pick Dominic Cruz. I'll pick Umar over Marab in a 15-minute fight. 25-minute fight. Marab is the goat at 35. and I have such a hard time seeing him get beat in a 25-minute fight. He may, until he just gets old and just his actual, his heart doesn't, can't pump as much blood as it needs to keep that motor going, he is going to be incredibly tough to beat.

And it's going to be someone that hits really hard that can basically get him out in that first round. Almost like, I think it was Marlon Marlon. What's the guy, Marlon Maris? Is that his name? Yeah. Yeah. Is it Maraubda? that he almost got in the first round?

Sounds right. I haven't seen the fight so long. They did fight, but I don't remember. Yeah, and Marlon did well. Also, that sounds very much like a Marlon Mara's fight

where he has a great first round. Yeah, yes. Basically, he tenated Marab the first round and why I'm using a fight. It was crazy. I remember this now.

Yeah. Very wild. And that was eventually the downfall of Marlin's career. But, yeah, Rob is incredible. And Islam's incredible. incredible and we were very lucky as fans.

We're going to look back on this pay-per-view, I think 10 years from now. I go, oh, my God, look at these one and two right there. And then an all-time great action fighter like Yuri on that card. And Johnson Almeida, Joltson Lameda, future UFC champion, heavyweight, and light heavyweight. And maybe future middleweight champion right before that. That's right, baby. Get on the Dutch night train. And can I say like how fresh the pay-per-view still feels in my mind.

Like it was a really good show. It was a really good show. And like I'm actually like normally by Thursday, of course, we're loading up for the next UFC card. It worked out really well, I think the way they scheduled. We said it before, UFC Vegas 101, great appetizer. It's 3-11, you know, other than the change of the main event, pretty much deliver in every way that it could with the ones with the finalized lineup. And now we have a bit of breathing room to actually like discuss and think about the storylines coming out of 3-11. I know it's not how the UFC planned it.

Like it's, you know, they just whatever dates they had and whatever time they scheduled their fights when they scheduled their fights. But there was a time, people, there was a time when there was less than 44 whatever UFC events where like you would have, you would have, it sounds crazy, like two weeks, three weeks to think about. I would have a month between you. Yes. And you would talk. That's how old my fandom is. You could think about like, oh, what happened and look really properly look ahead. But it's so fast now.

And it's just nice we have this weekend. No UFC. We do have MMA. no UFC, and we can really appreciate some of the great performances we saw, some of the, maybe some of the disappointments, everything. It still feels fun to discuss it. So, I don't know, it's nice. Like, when I thought about it, I'm like, man, do I really want to talk about UFC 311 more

by Thursday, like on between the links? I'm like, yeah, why not? Like, we used to do this. This was a time where we would talk for weeks after about an event. And, yeah, so, you know, and then we don't have to worry about Saudi Arabia for another, whatever, five days or whatever. That new cycle kicks in again from the next show. You may have heard of the sex cult nexium

and the famous actress who went to prison for her involvement, Alison Mack. But she's never told her side of the story until now. People assume that I'm like this pervert. My name is Natalie Robamed and in my new podcast I talked to Allison to try to understand how she went from TV actor to cult member. How do you feel about having been involved in bringing sexual trauma at other people? I don't even know how to answer that question. Alison after Nexium from CBC's Uncover is available now on spot.

Is there a reason? Yeah. Have any event this Saturday? Am I missing something? They just didn't. I mean, good on them. The best of my knowledge, no. Okay.

I thought maybe some thing going on like football. No. Is football done? Is football still a thing? College is not done yet. Yeah. College is done. The NFL, the NFL conference championships are this weekend. So there are two weekends of NFL left.

This, then there's a gap. Then there's a Super Bowl. Yeah. And they would see Kendrick at the halftime show. apparently is the football game around it. We'll find out. Anna Kendrick? Anna Kendrick?

Yeah, Anna Kendrick's. Maybe she shows up and does cups. That'd be true. I was going to say, that's what we have a lot of performances of cups to fill that halftime. But, I mean, people love that thing. All right. Oh, go on.

Sorry. I was just saying, to A.K.'s point, I like that we get this. I have always said that they should take the week after paper views off to let us digest the biggest storylines, except for 312, because that pay-per-view is garbage. So, but that, that comes later for us. Now let's go to the peeps. Casey, I've seen a bunch of questions file in. We'll go for 30, 45 minutes, however long the questions are good.

You see 312. My number, my number one fantasy pick will get all the points. Hey, you, you had a terrific fantasy day. So did I actually. AK did, too. No, AK did. It was okay. It was a lot.

Some points. Umar. Umar stole fight of the night points. so got more points than he probably deserved. But, you know, Mike had a really tough start to his fantasy season going 0-1, but functionally O and 2 with Armand withdrawing. So tough start. Do we, we guys surprised, it's a real quick performance bonuses.

Were you surprised that the UFC gave it to the co-main and not Yeri and a... Jed, I know Jed was on the Postby show unequivocally said that... I think it's insane. I think it's insane and a terrible choice. I love the Marabu. I was actually happy because they never go those type of fights and I thought it was oh wow, okay.

But usually go for more entertaining fights. Robynumar is like a good fight. No one will ever go back and watch it. I'll go back and watch the hell out of Uri Hill. It was the more fun fight. I think that's your whole point is it's what fight which would your average fan fun way? Two strangers.

What's the better? fight. 200 strangers, they'd always be like, yeah, it's clearly this one. Jamal Hill and Erie landed like similar amount of strikes in literally half the time. And there were two knockdowns and a finish. But that just tells me both guys suck. And, you know, so I mean, it might have been the worst fight of the night, if we're being honest.

Both guys just scared. No, I was. Yeah. But I don't think you can get it wrong. I just love the co-mead event so much. But I was just locked in. Maybe the fantasy implications. had me extra locked in.

I was just mesmerized for 25 minutes. And again, like I said, really blown away by Marab. And even Umar, I don't want, I shouldn't say this, but there was the one exchange where he was stuffed to take down and immediately took Maraub's back. And I think in our Slack chat, I said, that exchange was pure sex. And I, like, that was, I was just,

I was like, this is so high level. This is so unbelievable high level. Jamal and Yuri was too in a different way. Obviously, I had a very high level fight. Like the top of the lower level. I'm not here to argue as high level. But still, as far as light heavyweight goes, that's like about like as high level is and yet, that's light heavy weight.

I mean, I don't know what you want for people. But I just like, yeah, the technical aspect and the drama of the co. Well, I mean, not that there wasn't drama in Jamal Deerry, but yeah, I'm fine with the co-main, but I understand why people were like, what the hell, like a little eyebrows were raised. So that was the other thing for me. I didn't think there was any drama in the co-main. I thought I had it 4-1 for Marab.

Like I was out of 4-1. I had a 4-1 too. I thought Mara. was I thought it was closer to being 5-0 Marab than it was being like 3-2 Marab like it was that fight was not competitive to me so it just wasn't it was super impressive and high level and I think Umar did better than broadly speaking people believe but there was just no drama to me almost out of the gate it was like oh this is just going really badly for for umar immediately you know I know you feel that you feel that way I totally get that like but I thought that way coming out of

out of Islam versus Volkanoski won. Where, like, I was like, I had a 4-1. I was like, by the fifth round, I was like, well, unless Volk gets a knockout, you know, it's over. So I was kind of, I was a bit surprised when all this fight of the year stuff kind came out and everything afterward. I was like, oh, I thought it was kind of, you know, give me a good fight, but I thought Islam kind of one-handedly.

And you kind of saw this fight between Marab and Omar in the same way, I think. And why some people were like, oh, that's like fight of the year. you were like, whoa, it was pretty decided. I mean, it was, you know, so it's just, just really interesting how you kind of see the fights, you know. And that, well, it was definitely a more high level fight. I think in most situations, that winning Friday night would be totally fine. To me, it was insane because Yeree Hill was so fun. Like, it was just so fun.

It's like, yeah. Like, oh, no, watch for us. Like, that's the front runner for fight of the year right there. And then it didn't win fight of the night. And I was like, what's going on? What is happening? Yeah. And historically, the UFC always goes to the slob knockers for a fight of the night.

So that's why I was kind of surprised. Do you think there was any behind the scenes politics? Was there any behind the scenes politics? Because we assumed UFC doesn't like Marab, but then they gave him an extra 50k when they didn't have to. My actual, my honest to God of belief is that they really wanted to give Yuri performance for the finish. And then they're like, why give him double? it's no need if we give him

he had the clearest yeah like he had the clearest because like the other finishes of the thing like who was the other jailton jailton got the other performance bonus

but like the other ones were just like Bogdan goose gauze is kind of weird you don't really need to Ronald Ritter's felt anticlimactic That's funny The homeboy knocked out Reese

The homeboy knocked at Reese That was vicious Oh Beckwith Yeah Beckwood could have could have gotten it. Just wasn't a storyline behind it. I think they were just like,

we're going to give Yerry performance and thus then we can celebrate this. You know, you can get two for the price of one sort of thing, which is fine. Like I'm happy for those dudes to get the extra 50K. I just thought Jamal Hill got screwed out of 50K, 50K,

frankly. Oh, yeah. I'm sure he was taken care of. I'm sure he was, I don't know if he got a full 50K bonus, but I'm sure. Why do you think that? Why do we think that?

I don't know. Because I'm positive. No doubt to you. see, they apparently did take care of Benile Daryush and gave him his show and win money per Binaldairdh. See? That's what he said. They're a very magnanimous company.

They're very magnanimous. This isn't the villainous PFL, Casey, that is holding its fighters hostage, okay? This is the UFC, which takes care of all those fighters and make sure that they live happy lives and live in mansions. Okay. Let's go to questions. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Okay. I'm 30 minutes into the singing of yet to answer questions. Sorry. Great host. We got derailed because I'm a terrible host. All right, I said our super chats. Thank you much, everyone. First one from Chase.

Chase, if John were to fight Tom, parentheses, he won't, and beat him, would that be enough to have him back atop the pound for pound? Also, Jed was objectively wrong about Umar. I was wrong about Umar. Like, I have not at one point in the post 311 been like, I was right. I was like, nope. Umar didn't do the things I thought he was. be able to do and worse yet he sucked real hard in his post fight speech and then uh shout out to you guys a k and mike i thought mike was way over the top on his onto the next one um rant

about umar just because like i i agree that's bad he seemed like personally affronted by it in a way that was like whatever it's it was in the middle of the fight uh aka i believe you offered that maybe umar will go on and he will post a retraction and say ah Nope, double down. I mean, what on social's like, I still think I won the fight. It's like,

my brother, you did not with that fight remotely. So I was wrong about who. Yeah, it was still harmless. And I was surprised. So I was, I'm a freak and a narcissist.

So I went and I read the comments about, you know, Mike and I had a little debate on onto the next one. And I was surprised how many were supported because people on the internet hate me. And I was surprised that people were like, thought that Mike was just was overreacting. Mark was overreacting.

And I was the level. headed one. I don't know. Maybe there's just a lot of Umar fans out there. Maybe I, I, why if you were mad at Omar? What happened?

I don't even know what happened. You know, Mike, after the fight, Umar blamed the loss on the broken hand. He didn't win the loss of brain. He just said he broke his hand.

And then he said, I thought I won the fight. And there's like, literally seconds after. And I'm like, that's normal. I have no issue of that. If you're,

if you're a fighting in 25-minute fight and you don't get knocked out or you don't get like in a deep submission, the fights feel, everything feels close. Yeah. Like unless you're like, yeah, every round was competitive. And that's Marab's MO.

Like he doesn't tenate you unless, you know, he just holds you against the cage. But he doesn't tenate you from like damage or anything. He'll donate you from my control. And but from that sense, umar, I get it. If you're in that fight, like, I'm fine. I broke my hand in the second round. I can go out to eat right now. I understand that.

I don't know. I have no issue of Umar saying that. And he didn't say Maraub sucks. There's no like point where he's like, oh, I clearly, I clearly beat Marab. I was like, no, he's just like, I thought I won. And the post was the same energy. It was like, I feel like I won the battle. I'm like, yeah, he just.

I don't have any issues with him saying, I feel like I won for everything you said, Casey. You, you're in the fight. You don't really know. Yeah. I do have an issue with him after it's very obvious that he didn't win. Pull in the, actually, Sean O'Malley, I won this fight in his post. I don't like the, I never liked, oh, I broke my hand in the first round, and so I couldn't really punch with it anymore.

like that's fight things happen in fights just you got to take the L and I I am of the opinion that he should have taken the L a lot more than he did there as opposed to sort of writing it off on any number of other things but I was not nearly as up in arms about it as Mike got on onto the next one his dander was up on that as for the John Jones thing yeah what do you guys think if he fights Tom and beats Tom to me I still won't put him a bite him a bite him of Islam, but I would, I don't have John currently ranked in our pound for pound rankings. You are, you are the reason he's like ninth in our rankings because of. And I'll be clear.

Stand by every single piece of that. Give me a little credit too. I think I have a match at the top 10 too. Jay can't get all the credit. I'm not. You also, yes, you also deserve credit for being a hater. Yes, Casey. Okay.

You're a, it's not a hater. He doesn't deserve it. You're hating is acknowledged. He does not deserve it. On the coat is a. does not deserve it. This is not the greatest of all time. Yeah, it's not the goat ranking.

Current pound for pound. This is the greatest of all time. He is at, if not one. Like he is right there. Current pound for pound, he does not deserve to be ranked. He beat Tom Aspinol. He is absolutely in the top five,

probably at that point. Maybe not quite five. Because honestly, the top of the pound for pound list right now is really, really good. But he would absolutely get ranked, certainly in the top 10 and maybe in the top five. that would not be enough to supplant Islam for me with what Islam has shown.

That's tricky. I agree. I've been one of the advocates that, like, you know, we cannot ride John Jones's previous accomplishments, like, for so long that there has to be a cutoff point, right? Where we're just looking at what he's done. Because otherwise, how far is a cutoff point, right? Because heavyweight stuff, great so far, right? I mean, destroyed a well over the hill steep. Bay, let's be honest.

To go Tudel gone, which again, a win, which we call it kind of look back on as being obvious. And most of us picked John to win, I know. But Sudo was like a credible heavyweight, right? A top three heavyweight when John... That is. That is the best one he has by far this decade. And then you go back to Dominic Reyes.

So before that, 2020, not the most convincing win to put it lightly. I have gone as far as to call it a robbery. And if you guys know me, I rarely call fights robberies. I'll maybe like, if you look at like all the controversial fights I reviewed for robbery review, maybe one out of, I think, seven or eight.

My rate is probably one of eight or something for when I call a fight of robbery. And that was one of them. That was one of them. You don't think it was a robbery. I don't think anyone saw that fight. And I was like, oh, John Jones is like undisputed the best of the best, right? Like that was a tough look. Tiago Santos' fight wasn't great either.

So we're going back to 2019 here. So we're going back six years now. It's too long. We can just be focused on this decade. It's a long time. accomplishments this decade. Ah, gosh. He has one meaningful win this decade.

I know, but that's, that's just the truth. Like it's true. Again, all time, his undeniable. Like he is one of the three best, if not, he is in the pantheon of six or whatever.

And however you want to mix that. He has one meaningful win in the past five years. Like it's just not worth it. If he gets at Tom Aspinall, then that matters. If he beat some Aspinon, I'll move him up, I'll move him up in my heavyweight rankings. How about that? I would move him up in my heavyweight rankings and I would move him up.

He would get ranked in my pound for pound and be in the top 10 somewhere. Do you have the pound for pound list in front of you, okay? I'm looking at the consensus list. I'm looking at our list now. Where do I have Aspinall? You have Aspinall ahead of Jones. So you have Aspinal 11th. You have Jones 12th.

Okay. Okay, so who moves in 10? People should know. People should know you do favor lighter classes. So people are wondering like, oh my gosh. Yeah, that's what pound for pound is. Yeah, you're a lighter class guy. You have to go on a real run, I think, for a lot to convince Casey to put you like top five at those divisions.

Because those divisions suck. I have him four. Damon has him four. Guy has him nine. Jed, as you said, unlisted. Unlisted. The phone is not picking up that call. And Mike has him seven.

So we're all over the place. with John. I would guess if John, and Damon's a big, I'll speak for Damon, Damon's a big sort of, you know, John Jones is still the goat guy, but even he had to drop him down, like you said, Jed for the lack of actual fights. I think Jayden would put a number one. Damon would almost certainly put him number one.

Yeah. I would be willing to bet. Gosh, I probably would, but I know why. I agree with everything you say, though. I agree with everything you say about why he shouldn't agree. So I'll probably would be number one. If he beat Tom Aspiral, I would not think It's ridiculous to put him at number one.

I don't think I would do it. I think that would be credible. You have Aspinall eight. You have Aspinall eight by the way. Aspinall and Inganu eight and seven. So those are your heavy weights on your life. They both got knocked down because Marab jumped them. Of course.

And he which John would honestly. I had to think about a long time. Yeah. Um, because Inganu is sort of grandfathered in and Ganu probably will take a pretty serious drop in my, uh, pound for pound ranking soon. But he just returned and I want to give him some credit for what he has accomplished.

Tom, it was hard for me to put Mara over Tom, but I ultimately did it because I think that's right. But it was tough. I got no issue with that. I got my issue is probably like they're both beating top dudes in their way of classes. One of them is going 25 minutes every time and one of them is killing them in 60 seconds. And heavyweight's worse. Certainly the Bannonweight is.

but he's killing him in 60 seconds, man. Like, that's, that's impressive. So, but it's where we're at. But yeah, if you, if John does fight Tom and beats him and you want to rank him number one, that won't be ridiculous. But, and I'm certain Dana White would, would move him back to number one. But even Dana has come to see the light that John is not the top pound fighter in the world right now. All that tells me, there's, there's no contract negotiations going on right now.

that is the cynical view of it and i tend to think that that's not the case and that it was dana just got dana gets caught up in the moment and this is this is him being beaten down over months and his lightweight champion just ran through a dude on 24 hours notice to do them a favor so he finally acquiesces but that's a cynical and funny view of things certainly Thank you, Chase. Thank you, Chase. The last stand, oh, one, MMF fighting GFL draft party watch along.

We legitimately talked about that. I would be down, but it's not really a thing that's viable for us to do. Instead, tomorrow we will have a live blog. I will be doing a live blog updating the GFL while watching along to karate combat, and then going to do an old-school draft grades like you get for the NFL draft thing for Saturday morning,

which GFL franchise is best set up to succeed if they ever host an event, which I am deeply suspicious about. But just because I don't think this promotion is going to get off the ground and actually do anything, doesn't mean I can't have fun with it while it at least pretends to exist. So I would love to do, if they, I'll make you this promise right now, last hand. If GFL somehow survives the year and they do another draft,

next year, 100% we're doing a live watch along. Lock it in. I'm still confused. So all these names they announce as being part of the roster. Some of them won't get drafted. Okay. But some of the, it sounds like some of them won't get drafted.

And if you don't get drafted, you're essentially just not part of the GFL roster. You're a walk on. I don't know. You're nothing. Or just like, we'll call you like and sign you like a normal person if we need you or something. But I guess also like there's various reporting that people said,

that are draft eligible aren't signed with GFL or have competing contracts with other promotions that aren't open to sharing. So like I have no idea what the hell is going on with this thing. It's going to be a time. Follow the live blog people. We have a great time. We'll have a great time. We'll be figuring it all out together apparently.

I appreciate GFL's ambition, but I don't like it. I don't like it. but I appreciate it but I hate it that's my thoughts on Mara I appreciate it don't like it I'm not interested

good luck my fellow Canadian good luck good luck thank you last stand oh thanks last Dan there we go Tance Leverett

DJ gets accepted into the Hall of Fame in his for the UFC when they visit Washington true or false So I assuming you're talking about when the Seattle card and is that February or March on which of those? March.

I will go false. I think that obviously Demetrius Johnson deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. And I don't think that he has necessarily precluded from it in the way that Frank Shamrock kind of feels blackballed at this point. But I just don't know that the UFC cares that much about doing it. And especially with DJ's kind of comments in the past year about the promotion and how happy it was to leave, et cetera, they may just take a little more, a little time to build that bridge back up as opposed to just shoehorning it in. But that's just me. A.K., what do you think?

Yeah, first of all, I lied. It is February 22nd, not March 22. There is an event at March 22nd. That's UFC London. February 22nd is UFC Seattle. So I'm a liar. I just like a live people. It's funny.

No, I'm going to go true. I'm going to go true. I think, I think, yeah, he said some stuff about the employer, but I think that they need people. I think they need people over this year's Hall of Fame. Not that there's any shortage of, like, former champions and people that still, and stars that still need to be inducted. But right now, it's just Pelagian, right?

It's just Craig Pelagian. I think they just announced. Well, we have only had two events this year. So, yes, Polygian in the first year. Again, a brilliant man and maybe the most deserving Hall of Famer in the U.S. of C due to his invention of the Ultimate Fighter. So I'm not down playing that, but I think maybe to some people,

it wasn't exactly the splashiest first inductee. So I think they would want to, they still need to make an impact and get people talking about international fight week. You do a lot worse than DJ. Could do a lot worse than DJ. So I hope this is true. Terrence, I think that's a really good suggestion.

I'm not like guaranteeing it, but if I have to pick one, I'll lean towards true just because I want it. I want to see him get inducted sooner or rather than later. The tough. The tough. Oh, go on. No, go, Katie.

I was going to have the Hall of Fame. The tough thing is interesting to me because when I grew up in Texas, I was into like no regular, no, the traditional team sports. And I had never heard a tough. None of my friends ever heard of tough. And it never crossed my radar until I literally started working in the industry. But I get it. I mean, I get it.

People say it made them fans so cool. but that's why tough just it just wasn't a thing to me I just hear stories about how you know oh it you know it was on freak TV it was on Spike no you know we were calling our friends watch this Stephen Bonner fight you know

I believe it but it's just for me personally I never came across my radar we did a whole season of tough hanging together and now you say these things I said this before you just ignore it you'll forget Yeah, you'll forget this. You'll forget about this. You'll block it out.

For the sake of our friendship, yes, I'm going to ignore this. I'm trying to, I'm looking at the current Kral, like, Hall of Fame list. And I mean, DJ stands out as obviously a dude who deserves to be in there and is not in recent retired. Amanda Nunes is the other one who is jumping out at me as like a retired fighter who very obviously will get in. Trying to think who else could. get the nod this year on an individual standpoint. Obviously, there are a billion fights that deserve

to get in there, but Amanda Nina's DJ would make total sense. I'm trying to think. It'd be great if they announced Amanda at the same time, they announced that she's coming back to fight. Yeah. You see what you would do something like that. You're in the Hall of Fame. Here's your fight, you know.

International Fight Week. You get inducted the night before, and then you fight Pena, the trilogy about on the next night. Because the Hall of Fame is not a real thing. It's not a real thing. I mean, they get a jacket and a band of trophy. That's weird. Put your plaque in the stairwell or the PI. Yes.

Tell me, put it in the comments if you guys think who else might be other than DJ or Amanda. Those are the two that are really jumping out at me. And then I'm trying to like go back a little older and see who might get, get a nod in there. As a somebody we just left out. But thank you, Terrence. Oh, um, good question. Well, because if no, no, it's not retirement. I was thinking Holly Home, but she didn't retire.

She just got, she's, I mean, Holly Home deserves it. I think that that won't happen yet. That'll come a year or two later because she just left. Yeah. But she had retired different, different story. You see literally puts active fighters in the Hall of Fame for their actual individual performances. So wasn't Faber in the Hall of Fame and then fought? Yeah, a couple of fighters.

Yeah. BJ, BJ, BJ. Yeah. Not as a fight, as individuals. They were in it as individuals. Randy and Mark Coleman had a Hall of Fame versus Hall of Fame or fight. That's right. That's right.

Yeah. There's literally no rules for the Hall of Fame. It's just like, oh, whatever. Dave said. To retire, but in general. Dave Sandin's just saying we should have our own Hall of Fame, which is, I mean, well, we have, damn, they were good. So we have the Hall of Fame that matters. But that would be a good idea to have our own.

Carlos Condit. He's not in the Hall of Fame, right? Carlos Kahn is not in the Hall of Fame. How about that? He's been gone two years. He's like a second batterer, Hall of Fame. He'll get in for the fight with Robbie, is what he'll have.

No, no, no, those don't count. That has a fight doesn't count. How dare you? Charles Sonan is a hollow-up. Superboy is a Hall of Hamer. I mean, we like Superboy. He's all of him, but they do count. As an individual, as an individual,

as an individual, Carlos Condit, I think she'd go in. I would like Carlos Condit. I could see, honestly, Dom, Dom, Dom Cruz getting inducted, especially if... Robbie definitely will. Robbie absolutely well. Robbie actually is a really good choice. I could see Dom getting inducted this year if he does retire after UFC Seattle.

I could see them pull in the trigger on that. But yeah, plenty of options. All right. Thank you, Terrence. Thank you, Terrence. All right. Slito. Thoughts on what Balal had to say about, come on.

So I am I'm going to guess that this is because I did not listen to all of the Bilal interview, but specifically regarding Kamaru being like it's BS that Islam and Bilal won't fight each other. Like if I'm Islam, I can go up and fight him. And then Balal was like, that's ridiculous. You didn't go up and fight Izzy when he was a middleweight champion. And y'all didn't even train together. you were just like boys. There was also Balal saying he has a better resume than Kamaro. So I'm not sure if this is referring, which one is referring to.

So I don't agree with the better resume part, though I think that that is a conversation that is to be had. I don't agree with it. I firmly agree with the other part. I don't really know what Kamaro's point of saying that was when like he actively did not try to pursue a fight at middleweight with. with Israel and they weren't training partners. They were just friends.

Like, you should never knock on somebody not wanting to fight a training partner or friend. That's very, very silly to me. That's how they get down. There's no harm in that. That's podcast talk. I mean, I did listen to that podcast. I was like, it's just, you know, he's in that world now. And him and Suhudo, Sehudo's been in that world before he retired of just like saying things just to say things and create clips and get people like us to aggregate it.

So it was just podcast talk. I don't know if he firmly believes that Balal and Islam should fight. Or maybe he's not aware of how close. I think their relationship is closer than most people think. It's true. He's not like they are day in, day out with them, but he does have a good relationship. He does train with them and appears to have a good relationship with them outside of the gym. So I think that matters as much, too, just because they're not in there every day.

They're not everyday training parties. It doesn't mean they're not close. They sound very, very close. If the price was right, they might do it. But Habib himself said, like, I wouldn't want to train Islam for Belal. fight. Like that just doesn't appeal to me. I, uh, you know, speaking, I think, to the

closest of their team with, with, Bollal. So yeah, I don't agree with that. And resume wise, yeah, it's a weird one because I keep forgetting Camaro's title defenses were Colby twice, Jorge twice, and Gilbert Burns, who was like, you know, very, very, very well-deserving challenger at the time.

Um, but it looks funny, right? It looks funny. Jorge just rode that like that one hot year so far and, and, and, and, and that just kind of lined up with Camaro's title run. So the second Jorge fight is bad. It is a bad title defense. The rest of them are good.

Or the second Colby is not great, but it's explicable. Yeah. Gilbert and the first or a first Colby, those are all totally, those are good title defenses. This is like Kane when Kane had what two JDSs, no, or just the one JDS, two JDSs. Two JDSs. Kane has two JDSs. And like a Bigfoot rematch in there. Correct.

I believe it was JDS, Bigfoot, JDS. And it's weird because we know how good Kane is. And we know Kane was like far and away the best heavy way at the time. And whatever. I don't remember there being like another great option at the time. Like those, I think they all made sense when they happened. But it's just so weird to look at stuff. Again, I said right at the beginning of the show, right, comparing it to some of our champions of yesteryear.

I'm an old man. I'm an old man. I remember when they had like multiple different opponents. But that's just, no, real quick. I kind of noticing a pattern here of modern. UFC matchmaking. And in a sense of all these modern champions, we're going,

you can really start picking apart their resume has champions because it seems like all the championship matches are now simply based on weird story or easy to sell storylines. Like folk Eilea, they're going to do that again. But if Eile wins again, we're going to look back and like, well, does it really count?

You know, you just knocked out a guy who just got knocked out and you knocked them out again after losing two straight knockouts. But the UFC's doing these type of matchups all the time now at the championship level. And I feel like we don't put enough stock into the rise to get to the championship. Yes. That seems to be the much tougher route. You know, and those are the toughest fights to get to the championship. Because we have like, like, we're going to look at back at Islam's rain.

It's like, it's all we want to, you know, look, it's all featherweights, you know. which you know look at belal like so balla okay he has no title defenses but he beat gilbert burns he beat sean brady lukeh stephen thomas and damian maya those were his five wins dominant those were five wins before leon so like it's just you know he never got his the title fight opportunity those were title defenses would we look at his run differently of course marab is the number one case of this

like he should have gotten his shot of the title years ago but his best friend had the belt and maraub would have sorry sorry because it was like maraub would have title defenses against Henry Sehudo, Jose Aldo, and suddenly, like, him being number two pound for pound wouldn't seem so crazy, right? Like, title defenses now are more, I don't want to say Fulgazi, but more, like, it's more of a prop than ever.

Like, it's, because some of the people have championship level resumes, you look at who they fought, but he just didn't have the belt. So it's, it is, it's not crazy for Ballal to say, like, oh, my resume is comparable to a guy who had whatever four tele defenses, four or five tele defenses, when you look at who the opponents were, right? So, I don't know.

I mean, John Jones, like, John Jones, he faced. He faced Stepe because it sold money. It made money, not because he was the number one guy. And that's got, and that hurts John Jones's legacy. Does not hurt his pocket. Does not hurt his bank account, but it hurts that kind of legacy to me, in my opinion. I don't really agree with most of what was said.

I think that there is a little bit of an increase of the steepe fights, right? Of the here is, here's what sells. I think that that the other things like Camaro's. mostly made sense at the time because nobody else like ascended. And then a couple of them were, eh, here are these, but you can just sort of pick apart everybody's title defense in the history of the sport,

unless you are one of the five dudes who reigns for multiple years. And then you just fought everybody because you were the champ for five years. So like if you are, if you are any champion and you're only going to, you hold the belt for two or three years, maybe you have rematches. Maybe it doesn't. But if you're GSP,

okay, there's one rematch in the GSP championship era or whatever because he held the belt for eight years. So he just fought everyone that was remotely near him. Pantosia is doing the same. He's just fighting anybody because he's already gotten there. So I think that this is less a structural thing and more just sort of how the cookie's crumbling. But there is like definitely a little piece of it where business is superseding merit. And so in some of these and with Camaro the Jorge rematch, like the steep A for John, that part's true. I don't think it's that grand, though.

You're also correct. I see what you're saying too, because if you do give them new opponents all the time, then you get the GSP situation where like, well, he beat Dan Hardy. You know, what would be, you know. Yeah. He's like, oh, he'd be, you know, Tehro. It's like, yeah, like, because he beat everybody else. Yeah. I know.

It's so stupid that you can't do it. You can't do the same thing. Oh, yeah, Chris Gargoy, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's no way to win. You can, you can attack it from either angle.

There's no way to win. You are, you are correct. You are correct, sir. Unless you were Volkinovsky and you just beat Max over and over and over. Because he just keeps being the number one dude. Uh, thank you so much. Let's get, thank you so much. Let's get to a few non, uh, super chats.

Okay. Unless we have more super chats that we have to get to? Let me see. Hold on. Let's get to a few non and then close up shop here. Ooh, super semi-newb. If Israel loses, should he consider move to light heavyweight again? Or is his focus better spent rebuilding a middleweight?

If he wins, how many more does he need for another title shot at middleweight? Yes. That's a really interesting question. Yes, I like that. I will say normally I don't like saying, well, just because someone loses they should move out of was clearly their ideal weight class. And he is a 185er. Like, let's be real.

Yeah. But again, but light heavyweight sucks. Light heavyweight sucks. He could go up there and there's a lot of light heavy weights in the top 10 who I would, I don't either favor him or like be, you know, maybe he'd be a slight underdog too. And as long as against blonde, yeah, too. He was. He was.

He was. He was. He was very. And as long as Pareda is there, he always has that storyline. We're like, hey, last time we fought, I knocked his ass out. let's run it back. So I'm a little surprised that he hasn't even considered that move back up to 205 sooner because Imov is a tough opponent who if he beats him,

it's not like he'll get credit. He'll get some credit for it. You know, winning is always good. We all want to see Izzy win again, right, or if you're in his team. But it's not a big name. It's not like he beats Imov and people like like, yeah, give me to the next title shot. I'd be very surprised that happened unless he straight up like just annihilates him in the first round, which is, again, very tough to do with Imavov.

So I'm surprised he didn't he's not already considering a move But again fighting at another weight is also just sometimes uncomfortable Like there's a reason you fight at a certain weight It's where you're most comfortable It's where you like to take Changing weights and just jumping up is not that easy to people Like it's it's not that I'm sure he didn't love fighting a 205 He just wanted to do it because he was had a chance of fight for the title right away

If he had to work his way to a 205 title shot That'd be a bit harder so If he loses I think he does bump up to light heavy weight for all the reasons AK said And honestly, I just like it. I think there are some fun matchups for him up there that he could do well in. I think he didn't move up because he correctly understands that he's, and this goes to the second part of this question, he's actually not far away from a title fight.

He's far away from a title fight against DDP, right? He just lost the DDP to have to win probably three in a row to get back there. But DDP and Sean Strickland was extremely close to first time around. Many people thought Strickham won. Yes, he does have a loss to Strickland. but I think there's far more appetite for a Strickland-Adisanya rematch than there is for Izzy DDP running things back. And so if he beats Imov, who's a top five guy in the U.S.C. rankings right now,

obviously Hamzat is at least theoretically up next for the winner of the 312 main event. And if Hamzaat wins the belt, then Izzy just gets a title fight. They would absolutely do Izzy versus Hamzot for Hamzot's first title defense. And if not, and Izzy wins the belt. he gets one more win and somehow Sean Strickland is the champion at the end of things. I think Izzy has a chance. So I think he is just correctly identified. If I stay at middleweight, one win and wait and see what happened.

See where the lay of the land is in a few months because I might have a title shot of waiting me. Yeah, because I think that's where we're at. All right. Thank you much. Thank you, super sim, I nube. One more super chat real quick. And then we'll get to some other questions before we get out of here. lazy bed with the WWE now cross-promoting with formal rival TNA

how far are we from TKO encouraging UFC to follow suit and start working with other promotions? Incredibly far. Just absurdly far away. There's no, there's no correlation here. There's no correlation here. W.E has already in the past been like, they had, what was the, Casey, what was they evolved?

Do you remember that for indie promotion, Evolve? is that the one I'm thinking of, where they had sort of an independence, talent exchange thing going, and they would send some of their guys to let some of the resters work there. Booker T's promotion in Texas, they would lend talent there. So it's not new for them.

This sort of like official announcement that like TNA is a partner is kind of new, but over the last decade, I think WB has been pretty good about like leaving the door open for some collaborations. So I can't see TKO caring at all. about making the OCD do this. The business models are different. The attitudes towards cross-motion are different.

So I would say very far. It'd be cool. It'd be cool. I'm glad the question is being asked. And this works for pro wrestling because I love pro wrestling, but you control the script. So, WW can live a big name, come over to TNA, but also win. So that is the giant difference.

Right. giant difference. Y'all are far more into pro wrestling than I am the one thing to say, Casey, was, yeah, if the UFC could guarantee that their dudes won, they'd probably be, like, if the UFC could guarantee that John Jones beat Francis Inganu, that fight might happen. Yeah. Nope. Can't guarantee that.

Super not going to let that run the wrist. So, yeah. It'd be cool, though. I would love to see this, but it's just not the world we live in. Yeah, it was a little before my time, but from everything I've been told. told when basically the Chuck Liddell did the crossman with the Pride and he was supposed to win in Pride and then why I'm losing his first match or whatever in the tournament or second or second match sorry then that basically was the end of anything like that I would like to see like because pride was then supposed to send Vandale over and did not reciprocate. Okay yeah. Yeah, actually I don't know the whole history and I kind of forgot it.

But yeah, I like this. I like to know a little more about that actually. But I would like to see like more like maybe mid-level guys like a. I don't know guys in the top 20 maybe they fight in KSW one fight and I don't know cage warriors or one fight in Risen maybe maybe not maybe not like the top don't you don't have to send though malays but no just a person I don't know just me but I like to see that but we're not going to see any big UFC versus PFL you know we're not going to see that yeah never going to happen best we can hope is that PFL will continue what Bellator did with Risen which I always enjoyed the Belator versus rising cards I thought they were fun and good I I hope they do something like that, but never going to happen with the UFC. All right. Thanks, lazy bed. Thanks a couple more questions.

I like these. House of Hennessy. Is Strickland scared of DDP's grappling to the point of trying to masculine him into a stand-up fight? Or is it just fitting his macho man gimmick, A.K., I'm sure you saw your favorite fighter, Sean Strickman, coming out and say, be a man and don't try and wrestle me to DDP and, DDP responded with the Brad Pitt line from Troy. Lions don't concern themselves with the opinions of she or there are no packs between lions and men. Do you think that this is all part of a game, a high level chess match from

Sean Strickland to try and bait DDP into striking with him? Or is this Sean Strickland being Sean Strickland? Unfortunately, it was to bait us. I think he's writing about it because I believe this was an advertisement for a merch drop. It was through full violence. No, I mean, I mean, it was through full violence. I mean, I think they're promoting a new shirt, a new Sean Strickland shirt or something. I know I've promoted it by mentioning it on the show.

So you're welcome, Sean Strickland. But, yeah, I mean, it's just a branding thing. It's a branding thing. I don't think he believes that DDP was, this is going to affect DDP at all. I don't think he cares that much of DDP grapples with him because Sean Strickland says all the time that he's like a pretty good, like he's very comfortable with his ground skills. So, yeah, he should be really happy if DDP is. And again, and again, we saw. the first fight.

Like there was some wrestling by DDP, I think especially later in the fight, there was some wrestling. But for the most part, it was contested on the feet. And it wasn't that exciting until the fourth and fifth rounds when they really started getting going,

getting the crowd into it. And then it became super exciting. Like the last half of the third round and then four and five, super exciting stuff, great battle of wills. But up to that point, I mean, it wasn't like,

Sean Strickland was like, oh, come stand and bang with me, bro. We've all seen Sean Strickland fight. Like, this is ridiculous. But credit to him and his team for like somehow cultivating this image that he is like a falls to the wall warrior when he gets in there and then once that case they're closed it is literally the opposite

and somehow his fans cannot like tell the difference either can't tell the difference or it just doesn't register like the boring parts of his fights just don't they just don't remember them or something it's just weird that's hey that's great marketing it's unbelievable branding i'm coming for war it's gonna be blood and guts and what it actually is is jabs and teeps. Very good technical striking. An endless supply of jabs and teet.

Fine, technical striking, which there's nothing wrong with that. It's just not exactly what's being advertised. Is there an equivalent to this and regular stick in ball sports where two teams were going, you know,

are you going to man up or are you going to run the ball? We're just going to go to hell, Mary. The answer would be, quit throwing the ball like girls and run the rock like men. No football team says that. No football team says that. I was like, look at these wimps punting.

Come on, go for it. I don't know. I'm just trying to think of an equivalent. I don't get it. It's the weirdest, dumbest thing. And I like that. I like that. I like.

Well, my energy while being dumb as hell. It's incredible. Well, I like that you said that is this Strickland playing high level chess? I was like, that was nice. I was, I was, yeah. I was. Yeah. also he like I said he should actually want DDP to shoot on him because he's very good

of defending takedowns and I would just tire DDP out just although it happened so uh it's very silly and DDP treated it as with as much disdain he deserved all right um and one I guess yeah one more question before we get out of here just talk about this weekend okay and Jett do you see dark Saturday who wins the weekend PFLB KFC karate combat So the GFL draft is Friday. There's also one tomorrow morning. There's primarily Moytown kickboxing because it's all that's like basically what one is now. There is karate combat is tomorrow evening, rebellus to Spain and somebody else is competing on that that we care about.

Oh, Pereira's sister is competing at karate combat tomorrow. And then Saturday there is the PFL Road to Dubai series that is headlined. by Pughes versus Nirmugamatov, the lightweight Bellator title fight. The rest of the card has a couple of things about it, but really it's almost a one-fight card. And then BKFC Knucklemania 5 goes down Saturday evening as well. So a big combat sports weekend with the UFC out of action, aka who wins it? If we're talking like broad fan interest or at least page views from what we can gauge, it's going to be PFL.

Oh, sorry, excuse me. I was supposed to say. It's going to be PFL, but no, I'm so sorry. It's going to be BKFC by a mile. Very strong grand, very consistently their events just do really well for us. And they've carved out their own niche, the most important thing, right? People, it's not compared to UFC, for example. It's its own thing.

People get excited for it. You've got UFC, like, names at the top, recognizable names, Eddie Alvarez and Jeremy Stevens. Ben Rathel is also up there in the Colmain. but it's clearly its own thing. And they've done a really, really, really good job of carving that out. So good for them. So BKFC will win from a interest standpoint. But I'll be probably talking with the GFL draft come Monday.

I'm excited just because we'll have some answers. What the hell? We'll have some answers. We'll have some answers, Casey. Well, that those answers will be true or not. We will have them. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

We have like one answer and like 50 more questions. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. That's fine. BGFC is going to win the weekend by a massive, uncountable amount of dominance. karate combat probably comes in second, honestly, as far as, like, broader interest, just because they're building something. People have some interest.

I am the most interested in the GFL draft because it's very silly. And the PFL will bring up the rear. Though, like I said, I think their main fight is a very good fight. As a bit of programming note, we will do a preview show. for the BKFC slash PFL-ish tomorrow afternoon. This same panel just going to hop on. Won't be super long, but wanted to give BKFC a little bit of shine and PFL some as well.

And like I already mentioned, what we're doing for GFL. I'll tell you what, we won't do a live video for GFL, but I've seen enough comments. If enough people hit me up on social media, I like, hey, I really want you to do a live show. I'll try and go live on TikTok or something like that. Instagram just to we can hang around and chat while the GFL nonsense is going on because it would be kind of fun to have a community as whatever the hell that is unfold. So Casey, anything else or can we get out of here?

You know what? Real quick. One more. One more. I think this is a quick one. But Mr. Boza wants us to know our opinions on this. Yosef. Yosef Boza.

California released Friday or Fight Night Waits year. was 208.2 after making 205 for way ends. Could he give middleweight a go if you wanted to? Yes, one of the great things about competing in California, you get fight night weight releases. You can see who gained a whole ton who didn't. Mostly it is what you expected. A few people gained more than, you know, maybe you would have thought.

But I think this was kind of the one that jumped out the most. Is Yuri fought close to walking around weight. Yeah, that's wild. Okay, he has mentioned cutting to middle weight before I never thought that that was viable. I'm still suspicious that he could because 208 is a far cry from 185, but I'm now a little more open to that idea than I was before. Do you think it's possible?

It's possible. He can make it. We've seen people come down to weights not in the most healthy way and not looking great. So he could do it. Should he? I don't want to see that. We've been wrong before. I think it was what, Edson and Barbosa, far as the best example.

I remember when he dropped down to 145, I was like, oh, wow, really. And then Aldo, although when we all thought when he went down to 135 the first time, we were all like, man, is this a, like he hated cutting into 145. We always talked about how miserable he looked at 145. But, hey, he went down. 20 pounds. Yeah, this is a big difference. This is more than 10, like 20 pounds.

Who's been successful? It's Canoneer as far as lightweight to 85. Yeah, yeah. But you also look at how they, like, you look at how Cantonier looked at obviously at heavyweight. 205 you could see you could eyeball like oh yeah this guy could probably stand to drop like a little more weight yri is not like a bulky 205 or he's looks he's pretty tall and fit he looks he looks really fit at um at 311 like he looks an unbelievable shape at 311 yeah he looks fantastic i'm kind of shocked his to a like he looks way bigger basically i don't understand yeah i almost i almost

don't believe this number i almost don't believe it like there was a mistake maybe he's going to drop some muscle, I don't know. Or he could be one of those guys who like just his walk around, like he's just always in shape. It could be that he's just near fight weight all the time. He just doesn't like he just doesn't get that big, right? He just doesn't get that big. So I don't love it. It's possible.

Of course it's possible. But I would, he would look rough on the scale. He cuts weight. I think he should not do it. Yeah. Less fluid in the brain. He gets, he's a, he's a fighter that gets hit a lot. And he'll get, yeah.

And I think just less, less fluid in the brain. I just think it's a bad idea. I think he's doing great at 205. It's a better paying weight class, I think. The higher you go. It's a worst weight class. 85 is better. Better.

Yeah. There's no reason. All of the reasons to stay. He is the number at worst, the number three light heavyweight in the world. Stay at light heavyweight. If Maguene Goliath beats Pereira, you got a title fight. You're golden. And apparently, Alex is even open to them fighting a third time.

So like, you win one more. don't cut to 185. I thought it was silly before. I now think it's more possible. I still just don't think you should do it. But also shout out. More fighters should fight at their walk around wait. I think we saw one super chat in there, Casey, that's sneaking.

Did one fire in? One more sneak in. All right. This is a quick answer to you. This is a quick answer to you. Toughest Snowflake. Is it me or does the Izzy versus Emov card look better than UFC 312? It is not you.

UFC 312 has two terrific. fights and nothing else. I mean, not a thing else on that card, whereas UC Saudi is actually a pretty good top to bottom card. I would say the highs are not nearly as high as 312. Those two title fights are great. The middle and the bottom are much better than the middle and the bottom of 312. Yeah, just look at the main card of the Saudi Arabia card.

Shara MVP is just lovely matchmaking. A lot of people called for that after on to the next one, and they were spot on. Sergei, Sergei, Sergei Pavlovich, Gerasino, heavyweights, come on. As long as this isn't one of those heavyweight overfights, which it shouldn't be, it's going to be a good time.

Sayy Nermegov, and Lop Dog, Fire. I'm on Jermenis, I love, and Naimov awfully. I don't know if the, I don't know if the main card is finalized, but that could be a phone one. You got Terrence McKinney on there,

Farras Ziam, Mike Davis, women's, I was going to say women. More importantly, 312 is just terrible. It's bad. If God forbid something happens to one of the top two fights pre, you know, in the next couple of weeks and it falls off, knock on wood, as a real good chance to be the worst pay-per-view of all time. Like it is, this is a really, this is a bad card. This wouldn't be a good like apex card outside of the main and co-main event is bad.

I'm assuming this is one of those fights that the Australia Tourism Board paid for, right? one of those very likely and it's basically entirely Aussies composing the card but there aren't that many good Australian fighters

not you want to pay money for yeah yeah so it's a bad card two great fights though so I don't care but it is a bad card that's it let's get out of here we've been going for an hour and 15 actually a little longer probably that's enough

and we will be back tomorrow ladies and gentlemen a, won't be a long preview show, but a preview show for Knucklemania 5 going down Saturday night and PFL Road to Dubai series, whatever number it is going down Saturday morning. We will have you updated on my fighting

with all of that information as well. Like I said, we'll have a live draft, a live blog of the GFL draft Friday night, karate combat, all the things. And then, boys and girls, it is the road to UFC Saudi Arabia too. That's A.K. Lee. That's in case.

I'm Joe Meshud. Thank you for tuning in. Love y'all. This has been Between the Links, an MMAT fighting production on the Vox Media Network.