MMA Fighting - BTL | UFC 321 Fallout, Tom Aspinall's Stock After Eye Poke, UFC Back At the APEX

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

While UFC 321 is in the rear-view mirror, the aftertaste has lasted a lot longer than most events we've seen this year following the eye poke from Ciryl Gane to Tom Aspinall that ended the main event in a no-contest, leaving the MMA community with more questions than answers, and a division amongst the fanbase, overall. Despite the unfortunate ending to the fight, has Aspinall's stock dropped overall, even though he was not the one who committed the foul? On an all-new edition of Between the Links, the panel discusses the fallout from the Aspinall vs. Gane fight, Dana White's comments at the post-fight press conference, Mackenzie Dern becoming the UFC strawweight champion, and much more from the most recent pay-per-view event. Additionally, topics may include Umar Nurmagomedov's victory over Mario Bautista and where he goes next, Dirty Boxing's event on Thursday night headlined by Gable Steveson vs. Billy Swanson, the UFC's return to the APEX this Saturday with Steve Garcia vs. David Onama in the headline spot, and whatever else is on your mind. Join MMA Fighting's Mike Heck and Jed Meshew as they answer, and debate your questions all show long. Follow Mike Heck: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@m_heckjr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jed Meshew: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@JedKMeshew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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

You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. The iconic voice of Esther Lynn welcomes you to a brand new edition of Between the Links. Happy Thursday to us all. It is the end of October. It is Halloween Eve. We are knocking on the door of November and daylight savings and the time changes and all that. If you're in the Northeast, you can certainly feel the weather cooling off. a little bit. I know here in South Carolina, it's like a nice brisk 57 degrees, which I'll take any day of

the week, but 57 degrees here feels way different to 57 degrees in Massachusetts. If you're from here, you know what I'm talking about. But we are here to talk some mixed martial arts. UFC 321 is in the books, and this one is lasting a little bit longer due to how the main event ended. So I'm sure we're going to get questions about that. And much more from UFC 321. The UFC is back at the world's most famous apex this weekend. Rejoice, ladies and gentlemen. We got DBX4 coming up later on tonight. So there are things to discuss and joining me to discuss all of those things and much more and answer your questions.

Is Mr. No Gray area, the hot take kid himself, the climber of all climbers. And boy, he climbed on Saturday. He could have climbed a little bit higher, but it wasn't a loss, nonetheless, for the one and only Jed Bishu from M.AFighting.com. Jed, how are you, sir? I'm terrific, Mike. You know, just here to shoot the stuff with everybody, trying to watch my language a little more. You know, I'm covering DBX tonight. This is how much I love you personally and everybody.

I'm technically not on right now. I'm off, but I'm doing this because, I don't, I mean, I honestly, I hope we aren't just going to talk about 321. I think we're probably just going to talk about 321. one because there's nothing else going on. So let's talk about eye pokes, I guess, Mike. Yeah, and we were talking a little bit off air that, you know, like we'd love to talk about other things and we'd love for this to stop sort of lingering over us and move on to other things.

But until there's something really interesting to talk about, especially from the UFC, like, this is kind of the thing to talk about right now. And an apex card, headlined by Steve Garcia and David O'Nama, two guys. who are very good fighters that we know that are on fire right now that are trying to make their move uh it's just not a card not a main event that's going to get the casual audience talking this is one of those cards jett i would assume that you would say look if you got Halloween parties to go to or apples to pick or pumpkins to patch this is this is the one to make sure you tend to all those activities and maybe DVR this one or fall amafiting.com it's great

website. 100%. I mean, you can see over my shoulder. I preemptively did this. I assume we're doing a preview show. My guess is I'm on it. But it wasn't 100%. Also, the glare is, is,

is hard to read. I can't, I can't solve that glare problem. That's a three. It's a three fights above replacement level. Because there are three ranked matchups on this card. And like, we can be honest about what

that means actually is sometimes you got to double check these things because women you might not think are ranked are ranked because of the oh man this is the first time i've like gone to the uc rankings page you love to see it mackenzie durn atop the women's strawweight rankings you'll love to see it um just making sure nobody here is ranked that i didn't know was ranked No, all the people I thought are ranked, A ranked. Look, it is what it is. This is absolutely an apple picking card.

This is, I mean, terrific season for the apple picking, the pumpkin patch card, if you will. Halloween party is great. Mike, I don't know, you're in the low country. I think the fam's up in, up in Bostonia at the moment. Are you doing anything for,

for the Halloween? And if not, what's, what's the kid going? and as? What is the outfit of choice this year? So the kid has a, he's wearing one of those inflatable things where like a dinosaur is like carrying him around. It's the greatest costume ever because if you can pull it off and make the movements like the dinosaurs actually carry you around. Those things are fun. It's incredible. Yeah. We got the batteries in there with the wife

FaceTime me and I got to see him sort of run around in and it was, it was unbelievable. It's, it's, I'm mad. I'm not going to be there to enjoy it. I'm trying to figure out. Boston, buddy. Come on. Fall in mass. I was there.

I was there earlier this month. It was terrific. Perfect weather. But yeah, I'm here right now. And they should be home next week, which will be nice. And then we're probably going to spend almost all of December up there, which I'm pretty excited about. Of course, we got the final watch party of 2025.

We're doing it backwards, Mike. We'll be there for that. You're supposed to move south for the last. winter, not the other way around. Yeah, you know, I'd rather just freeze my ass off and be with them than be here and be warm. But it is what it is. And so let's let's get into all of this, Jed, because we've seen various opinions from fighters. We've had some time to digest this, the whole Tom Aspinall situation. The Blue Jaser 1 went away from a World Series. We'll start here. DJ is already now Saturday's card is a strong contender for the worst card of the year, if not the last few years.

I say that as someone who gets easily annoyed by the quote unquote, worst card ever conversation, looking back at previous fight nights, even the Blanchefield versus Barbara fiasco had fights with intrigue. Congrats to the UFC for finding a new rock bottom. So you and I have kind of been on the same page with all this. Like the main event was the ending of that was unfortunate, especially if you dropped 80 bucks on this. It's not like you could say, oh, give me a refund for this because we didn't have a conclusion. It does not work that way. And so I understand the bad taste in people's mouths because of that.

And I actually, you and I, maybe it's because we're doing the watch party and there were so much happening that we just, I think we enjoyed it more than most just because of what was going on. It was a good, I enjoyed watching it outside of the main event, obviously. So, but even Patty Pimbled said like, this is the worst UFC. pay-per-view ever. And that's like a big take that's coming out right now. So if we are to, I guess, and it's hard to go back to all the apex cards. If we're to rank like the worst cards of the year, like overall, is this in your top three, top five? As you're reading this question, I thought to myself, Jed, you idiot, what you should have done before this is like really just gone back and looked at all the cards because we knew this question would come on.

Like there's no way not to for a card like this. And my like gut reaction is no, this is not the worst card of the year. Does not say it's a good card, but like it's it's objectively a bad card. But there's a lot of bad out there, right? Like there's just a lot of stinkers that happen. They're all in the apex. And like we had this conversation not that long ago. You know, like we kind of have it every other month.

I'm trying to think like what was the last last one where this was genuinely like what are we doing here moment but like I think at the time this is like a month or two ago whatever the card was the thing at the time was like I'm pretty sure

the Votori De Leeds A2 is the worst card maybe ever and I think that that is still worse than this certainly the worst of the year like even the one fight that mattered the main event you know like mattered in the terms of rank dudes. It was a rematch of a forgettable fight that no one cared that much about. So I think

that's still the worst of the year. Um, but what I promise you this, Mike is in, you know, theatrically check the watch in about seven days. We're going to be on this program. We're going to get a very similarly worded question because next week's card arguably isn't any better. I think it might, I'm a little more interested in next week's card. There are more prospecty kind of guys that I'm more interested in. But I think for a casual observer, next week card is arguably worse than this week's card, right? Like this does at least have six ranked fighters competing.

I believe next week card has five. Now, granted, you know, maybe there are a couple more guys there that you like. But we're in a similar tier of quality for next week's apex card. And so what I promise this to you, Mike, for next week's show, I'll do my homework. I will spend some amount of time between now and next Thursday taking a legitimate look at all of the events of the year. And I probably won't like do a full ranking best to worst because there are 40 some odd events or whatever. That's a lot. But like just a just sort of a broad brush what what's good, what's bad.

It's mediocre. Not in actuality. not how it turned out because that's not how we have these conversations, right? These are predictive. These are forecasting conversations about what matters. And there are some fights that matter this weekend for sure. And holistically, all fights matter, right? To the fighters, certainly.

But next week, come Sunday, we're not going to be at most there, like three matchups where something meaningful is going to occur that we'll need to address. and the rest of it was like, oh, good win for, you know, whoever is like, hey, man, you know, kind of fun. Way to go, Alain Nassiminto. So for next week's show, I'll do the homework. And when we get asked this question, I'll have a better answer. But my sort of reflexive answer is Gilead Zavit 2 is going to be bad.

There's the other one where like the fight fell out and suddenly we had a main event happen that evening, the same night. there were some bad cards this year though i don't think this is as bad as a few of them but it's bottom tier yeah i thought the like there's a couple that come to mind ufc 312 was real bad uh i did not enjoy that one the best moment of ufc 312 uh was talison to share uh getting like a quick knockout against a guy that we had never really heard of and then the main event was terrible because drick's duplicy just kind of thumped up sean strickland who was had no right being I thought that made it rock. Well, I mean, you're a DDP guy, so I understand that.

But like, nothing happened. It was just like, okay, we're getting the same fight, except DDP's just doing that fight better than he did the first time. If Waley beat the soul out of Tatiana, that car wasn't as bad as people think, I think. It was tough. I thought it was a pretty tough one. I mean, there was no other reasonable support for it.

But if you had two title fights, I've said the same thing about 321. People were down on it. Even in the aftermath, I understand being down on it. I think 321 was much better than 312, certainly on paper. If you give me two title fights, even if they're kind of poopy, I'm pretty happy, man. Because those matter. And that's enough for me.

Like, I thought 315 was pretty good. I think that sort of over-exceeded expectations. 316, we got the crowning of Kayla Harrison, Marab kind of beat the shit out of John Valley. That was wild. That was a good one. First time that's ever happened. Yeah, the barber, the Blanchefield card.

with the main event that never was, uh, was tough. That was a tough one. Uh, that's right. It was the, yeah,

what, what was that number? Or was that, was that in Jersey? No, that was, um, that was an apex card.

Dude, they all run together for me. It's really hard. Yeah, I fought Ludwig Klein and won. And then we're like, that was the, us that's co-main event to it because that was supposed to be the feature,

but everything got shifted and everything got shifted. So. Yeah. I mean, there have been so. Some tough looks, right? I mean, heck, you know, like, the Earth wasn't great either.

Shanghai, Shanghai was a bad card for being a roadshow card, right? Like, it had three fights that I liked and then some other things I cared for. But I try mostly to speak from my perspective of a casual fan, somebody who's flipping channels who maybe knows some UFC, but they're not here. They're not in the weeds or whatever. And they're just, this weekend, there aren't many, you know, ropes to grab on to. Yeah. Okay.

Joseph, UFC 32 is in a few weeks. You saw the main card at UFC 321. Bo Nichol is on the main card. Sandwich between two big fights at Welterweight. What are Mike and Jed's thoughts on that? Do you put that back up so I can keep reading it? Sorry? Oh, yes.

Please, please, please. Oh, there it is. Bo Nickel being on the main card for 322 when he had come out publicly and just be like dude throw me on the prelims like I just got finished by RER throw me on the prelims. MSG, cool, I'm fine with that

and they didn't do that here. So you surprised by this? I think this is a pretty healthy mistake by the UFC. I've been critical of Boe Nickel. I'll continue to be critical of Booneckle where I think it is appropriate. And I don't know if he like actually meant it

but it was good of him to say like, dude, I don't need to be in the main card. Like, I got work to do. Like, that was awesome. That is whether that's what's in his heart, I don't know. But like, that's the sort of thing you want to hear from a dude with an enormous amount of talent. Um, who kind of needs to get better at this. He can't be egotistical and sort of stuck in his ways, right?

Like not to name names. There's another middleweight dude who is much hyped. And when he lost was just like, like actually I shouldn't have lost and seven other things and F Mexico all these other things that aren't I didn't do anything wrong ever blah blah blah that's not how you want to hear a prospect react so credit to Bo Nickel for I think at least on paper you know having a good viewpoint for this and I think he I don't think necessarily is right in that like it doesn't they can put them on main cards there's no reason to be like

like actually let's throw him in the prelims but i think two pretty important things of this are true one he should be on the prelims in this instance because he's not the fifth best fight on this card i actually like the bo-nickle-hodolfo vier a fight i think it's a very good fight there it is inexcusable that bin wasandini and ben-il der you should not on the main card like that is that fight is is a banger that fight is meaningful uh that fight is probably going to be straight up more entertainment because it's got freaking binwasandini in it and benel der a eush is usually pretty damn fun as well and my guess is that's the thought is this is the this will bring people into the pay per view hopefully we know that that's sort of a traditionally a way they like to approach the you know prelim

main event as it were uh i think that's in general a silly concept and also you should just put gregory hadrigas to do that because robocop he ain't never going to let you down and so if i were in charge of this, Bo Nicol would be on the prelims just from a merit standpoint. And two, I think it would be better for him. All right. Let's play a quick game here. All right. These are all the prelim fights. Yay or nay, this fight should be on the main card over Bo Nickel. Benile Darius, Benoit Wausantini. Yay. Roman Copulop, Gregory Rodriguez. On principle, yay, I don't have an issue if that, if that was the difference, to me, that's six one, half dozen of the other. Aaron Blanchfield versus Tracy Cortez too.

Uh, no. Again, on principle, yes, these are ranked fighters, but I don't have any issue with that not being on the main card either. Malcolm Wellmaker versus Cody Haddon. Not at all. That fight rocks, but that fight should be a middle, like that fight is a middle prelimbanger. That's just where that lives. And then there's Doc as Beershard, Angela Hill, Fatima Klein.

Nope, nope. Uh, this card looks banging, by the way. Jimmy Suss. sick. Jimmy Suss versus Eric Maconico. He's going to kill Mekonko. Yep, sure it is. Which is why they booked that fight to begin with. But the point is like from a merit standpoint, it shouldn't be there.

I don't care enough about it. I think it's silly, but whatever. I think it would just be better for him, right? Like more people are watching ESPN. Like you're trying to get Bo Nicle over and a lot. Like more people are watching the ESPN PN plus prelims than they are pay-per-view because it's not paywall for that. And so, like, I don't think he, again, I think that it should be, dare you, Benoit Sandini, that that should open the main card.

Yeah. Because God love Carlos protests and he probably will make that fight fun. There's also a universal Leon Edwards just sort of does his thing and that fight blows. Ben Wasson, like, that's like, credit to Leon. Edward is like, he's Roy McDonald. every once in a while he can have something that's awesome. Like he can do something that's incredible and cool that is in him. The majority of his career is built around nullifying the opponent's opposition and winning professionally.

Like that's the same dude. And so like if he just tackles Carlos Prattest, that fight's not going to be fun. Bin Laden Sandini is just like he's never not fun. That should be your main card opener. Let Robocop and Roman Coppola beat the souls out of each other. your as your lead into the main card. Yep. And Bo Nickel can be chief support for that.

And I think that would do better for him, get him out more broadly, um, not put as much expectation on him that, you know, there always will be some. And there's not a huge difference, but like, I just think it would make more sense. And instead they've just sort of gone to the bone nickel MSG main card. We'll solve everything else afterwards. Yeah. So, yeah, imagine, I mean, if we had BSD. And Derrug opened.

Then we had Leon Carlos. Then we had Sean Brady Morales. Then the two title fights. It's pretty damn good right there. I don't think anyone's complaining about giving up 80 bucks for that card. This is the best MSG card in some time. Oh, in the last few years. Yeah, like several.

Because I distinctly remember last year the conversation would be like, what happened to MSG? Like this is theoretically, I know MMA doesn't have majors, but like the idea of majors in sports is smart. the UFC should frankly lean into that more than they do. Honest to God, like, I think it would be, this won't happen. I was thinking about this the other day, Mike, tell me your thoughts on this, actually. I was going to write about it, but then I didn't really know how to do it.

And so it's sort of, it sat in my book of ideas. The idea of majors in sports is great, right? We all love them. We love that there are four golf events to pay attention to and that there are four tennis events to pay attention to. And then there's the conversation about, What's the fifth major, you know, like, is it the, you know, whatever? And hardcore fans can watch the other stuff, and those are fun and compelling and interesting. But there are four events for fans to gravitate around in these sort of other individual sports.

Team sports are not like this. Team sports are team sports, but M.M.A is an individual sport. And this sort of makes it palatable, especially for a sport that spans six, eight months for sort of an athletic period. we don't do that in May because we have one major every month. The reality is these have been getting progressively worse. And there's no longer the incentive to do that, Mike. The move or the shift away from pay-per-view means we don't have to do pay-per-view cards every month.

You still can and you actually can tell me more about this. I don't know the answer to this. The pay-per-view model is what wrestling, pro-wrestling, WW used to be. but to my understanding they're always like three or four big events there's WrestleMania um the world rumble summer slam and there's one other one survivor series yeah but they also they still do like other pay-per-view events don't they yeah they do one every month yeah so we know which are the big ones like that's why exactly we know the big ones and

they at least separate them so like mania's at a stadium summer slams at a stadium survivor series is usually in like a huge ass arena and then the other ones are and, you know, like good size buildings, but like NBA. And they're bigger events than the Friday night fight card or whatever, the Saturday, what Monday, Monday night roll. Yeah. You know, but like they're not thing. And the shift away from pay-per-view, now that's no longer part of the business

bottle, which is why you do a pay-per-view every month. You want that revenue every month. So you can, you know, look at your board of investors and say, all right, this quarter, we got three pay-per-views here are our benchmarks or whatever. That's gone. They could lean into. a major format for the UFC in the CBS Paramount era of all right MSG is a major bang international fight weeks a major bang uh you know whatever the feb card is major and you

tuck one in there maybe in april however you however you sort of figure it out be like these are the four big events that we're going to focus around right and then the others are good enough they're fine they're there. I think that would be kind of cool. This card feels more like that because this feels like a good MSG card, whereas the last few have felt like a perfunctory paper view at MSG. And like I'm already excited. I am already excited about 322. I want to get past these two apex cards. And I'm like, yeah, I'm pumped about 322. I have that to look forward to. And I think if we made that transition, if the UFC was like, this is sort of how we're going to focus. things. I think it would put a lot of energy into the product.

I want to get back to that in a second because you raise some interesting points. Here's the MSG cards in history. UFC 205, which is obviously like one of the most in the history of the company. Number two was UFC 217. That was the Bisbing GSP card. We're all the titles, Shane Chan, T.J. Dilloshaw, B. Cody Garbrandt, Rose, knocks out Yawani and Jacek. Then UFC 230, which was off. That was when they whipped together, like last minute. They needed a main event. Daniel Cormier ended up fighting Derek Lewis for the title.

We were supposed to get Dustin and Nate on that card. That fell off. And it was just kind of a bummer that we got what we got. Then we got UFC 244. That was the BMF title fight, Mazadal Diaz. That we had UFC 268. That was Usman Covington 2. Rosnami Eunice, Zhang Wei, fought for the Straway title.

And then it was 281. We had Pereer Izzy. Zhang Wei Lee, just thumping up Carla Sparza. That I remember being pretty good. I think they loaded that up pretty well. I know Chandler, I think Chandler fought at 268 against Gaichi. And then I think we got Chandler Poirier on one of those cards. Chandler-Poree was 281.

281's good. That's good. I'm looking at this card. That card was good at the time. And yeah, it was good. And then it was 295. It was supposed to be Jones versus Stepe. That fell off.

So they put together the, so Pereira Yuri ended up being the main event. We got Aspedal Pavlovich for the interim belt. And that card was. The main card was fun. Yeah. It was only okay on paper. Yeah. And then last year was 309, which was not good on paper.

Because no one cared about Jones Depot at that point. No one cared. Yeah. It was well past its expiration date. 100%. So with the major stuff. Because I even, because even Dana said, like I just want to be clear like this isn't the end of pay per view like it should be

but if something huge comes along and we want it to go on paper view like we'll just put it on pay per view so if they're going to do that should they pay per views yeah don't don't do them at $80 right like yeah it's uh okay you have your CBS plus I mean that would I think that would be shitty shit up um I think it would be silly and stupid you're making $1.1 billion a year, that's enough. At some point, it is enough. Like, greed does not have to be the only impulse in life. You can just say, we got enough.

Terrific. But if you're going to do, like, if the idea is we want to put stuff on pay-per-view, okay, then do four events and make them big. One per quarter of, hey, and there's a little extra, you know, it shouldn't be the $80 that we currently pay per month for a thing, you know, It's an additional $20 fee to get this main card, but like it's worth it. I think I just, I think it would make the sport better. I just feel like, because we are already in such a weird space of like,

nobody cares about Apex cards. It is not just us complaining about them. Nobody cares about them because we have been conditioned not to. The events don't matter. The U.C. doesn't promote. They don't care. They don't. U.S. He doesn't care. They don't promote them.

It is a it is a cookie cutter. All right. And the problem is that has seeped over to the other stuff because it's on to the next one, onto the next one, onto the next one, great podcast. It is, you know, we get done with 321 and it's, all right, now we're in the apex for Cardone cares about. And you can't, the moments that are supposed to feel big are softened. because there's no, there's no build,

there's no lead time into them or sort of saver time after them. It's just what's on to the next product. If we're not going to do three events a year, one apex, one roadshow, one pay-per-view, or one numbered event, which is the thing I've been arguing for for years, at least just do one big event per month. A casual fans can know, oh, dude, it's like,

oh, you're going to watch the Masters this week? you're going to watch the MSG UFC this week. And we can be like, okay, yeah, the rest of this stuff, it is, you know, it's the waste management open. These are events that matter to people and they might be interesting and have stuff. But like, you know, nobody's going to lose sleep if they miss that because that's already what it is. At least we could have four events per year where people like, hell yeah, I can't miss that. Yeah. It's not like the PGA is like, oh, here's the masters.

At least they bounce back with the heritage. They start promoting the. Masters in January. Yep. We are frankly, like, it might even be sooner. It's probably not that far before you're going to start seeing in April Masters commercials on ESPN or whatever. Like, if they just had four tent pole events,

they could promote those events better and just be like, yeah, we'll do the current perfunctory promotion we do for everything. But these, we're going to start building it up. Like, you know three months in advance, this is the main, these are, you know, here's the big stuff. And you can have teaser trailers and you can build to it. And it can, I honestly think it would just be massively helpful for the sport. You know, the UFC doesn't need help.

They're making a billion plus a year. But like, I think it would be way cooler. Yeah. At least like with WWE, I mean, they're becoming very TKOish as well with ticket prices and, you know, how they do events and stuff like that. It's all about, you know, filling the seats. That's why they're raising all the prices. and everything. But at least with like their big 10 poll events, like we know what when it's going to be

where it's going to be a year away. Like we knew like two weeks after last year's WrestleMania. This date is going to be the next WrestleMania and they're back in Vegas. Like we know. We know. You get your tickets to do all that. They're promoting that event a year in advance because it's that big of a deal. And they do that very, very well. So it wouldn't hurt the UFC to kind of do the same thing. When I got a great deal on a great gift at Winners, I started wondering, could I get fabulous gifts for everyone on my list? Like this designer fragrance for my daughter. At just $39.99, how could I resist?

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So we do have a couple of super chats. Nathan is Sal killed a Jed guy, lightweight, huge, athletic, exciting, and has a silly name. Seems like a Jed guy to me. He's growing on me. I didn't think, I thought that he was a good prospect. I think I underrated him coming off Continuous series because he is not hugely athletic. He is big, which is, I mean, that is, that's the hallmark. Of all the people I like, it's usually that they're big weirdos.

Um, he's a big dude, but I was just like, I don't, this is a tough weight class to be big and not very athletic in. Um, I frankly learned a bit of a lesson from Tom Nolan in that regard. Um, I, he's better than Tom Nolan. Uh, he has really impressed me, frankly. Um, and yeah, I mean, he's, I still have concerns, uh, a athleticism is such a cap in the sport for most weight classes, lightweight in particular. The fact that lightweight right now is in a little bit of a transitional period, there are a bunch of older dudes there and like longtime veterans who's like can't super punish his lack of athleticism probably gets him a little further. But he's also just super young.

If he keeps adding tools like, yeah, he's super fun. I'm excited to continue to watch him grow. Yeah, that was a filthy knockout. So yeah, his team's been. you know, pumping him up for so long. And it's just like, wait to you see it. Wait to you see it. And so far we're seeing it.

Soto, I have a gut. I'm less of a fan of him after diving into his socials. And that's all I'll say in that matter. Fair enough. Soto, I've got to. Never look behind the curtain with fighters, guys. Just you're never going to be happy about it. And that's how I feel in this one.

Soto has a gut feeling that Dan is about to strain the relationship of this third heavyweight champion in a row. Valid or no? I mean, yes, it's, he's, well, technically not in a row because technically John Jones is his heavyweight, was his heavyweight champion. And then Dana didn't really strain that relationship. That relationship had been strained for a lifetime. So I guess it's not really third. But yeah, like, this is really, really high likelihood that Tom Aspinall does not view the UFC very kindly.

Not without reason. Dana did not remotely have his back, which sucks because you would hope that that's the case. But, and this is pure speculation. I'm not in Dana White's head. I don't know if this is the thing. This is just as a fan of the sport for 20 years. Been around a lot. My guess is Tom Aspinall did not endear himself to Dana White last fight week.

And that's sort of how we got here. not saying what Tom Asperol or his team, well, in one instance, what they did was objectively wrong, but not saying that stuff that Dana did not take kindly to or that I think Dana did not take kindly to was bad from Tom Asper on his team. But I mean, we know the score of this game. We know how to get on Dana's bad side. And I would suggest that Tom may have done that. And Dana is not a man to forgive.

people lightly or at all. So yeah, I think there's certainly a possibility that this relationship gets strained in the coming months. Yeah. I saw the video that Tom's dad was a part of that was released on Asinals channel and this whole thing of, oh, there's, there's all these reporters out there that says that I said he should box and that made Tom perform badly. If anybody said that, it's just, it's just wrong. But anybody said that.

I didn't hear anybody say that. That's a ludicrous position. What what reporters were saying was you have, what you have done by put it, by that going out there was you put your fighter in a tough position where, you know, it doesn't, sometimes just you being attached to a fighter can piss Dana off.

And when that comes out, Dana sees it as it is and it doesn't really dive into it. He's just got to react to it. And it was just a bad, it was a terrible PR week for Team Asmodal. It was horrible. horrible from the DC thing to that. It just, it was just bad all the way around. So I don't think this whole notion of like, well, these reporters are saying that it affected this performance in

the cage. No, but it definitely made Tom's fight week tougher, right? Like, there's no way that Daniel Cormier didn't call Aspinol. I mean, like, bro, what the frig are you doing? And there's no way a conversation, like a conversation didn't happen, not to mention all this other stuff. There's no way, like a UFC, a higher member of the UFC ranking staff saw that clip of his dad and they didn't like go to Tom be like Tom what the hell is this like there's no way that didn't happen so like it's not going to say it affects his performance but it definitely affected the outlook of the fight week and yeah it affected the relationship and Dana did what data does he says the thing without saying the thing and he says it's so slyly and under the radar that only people who have seen

dana had been around Dana and have heard a million Dana press conferences know what he's trying to say it wasn't yeah it sucks cyril poked him in the eye tom was hurt yeah we'll just run this one back, it'll be a bigger fight. It became, oh, no, Tom chose not to continue. And that became the narrative for the casual fan base. And it annoys me. So, again, I'm trying to be really conscientious with the words I'm using here. If you have watched this sport for a very long time and you have watched Dana White press conferences and just been around the sport, Dana is not an objective actor. he just has historically not been, right?

Like, not saying that he plays favorites in regard to matchmaking or things like that. There's a case, but that's not really here what I'm here to litigate. His reaction to things, when things go smoothly, Dana is normal. When everything happens, even if something is untoward, right? Like, okay, maybe that's not the outcome we were expected, but everything sort of followed a general consensus of thing like, okay, it's fine.

Dana will put over a new champion, you know, put over an existing champion. When, when things go wrong, when something like Saturday happens, Dana will essentially side with the person he likes in a lot of these instances,

right? Like, and that's a human reaction. I'm not necessarily burying him forward. I do think it's bad promotion a lot of ways. But like, I don't think that this is a conscious decision on Dana's part to be like, Tom, Tom should have kept fighting or whatever.

I think it's just sort of him in the heat of the moment and he's not the biggest fan of Tom. And when he is the biggest fan of somebody, in the same way we do all the time, you and your relationships at home, me and mine, however, like, you know, oh, I really like this girl that I'm dating. I can look past the red flag or the problem because the, the, are the like I'm I'm just not thinking in that regard like I constantly think back to Kane Velasquez junior DeS Santos one we're like Dana could have put JDS over as the new heavyweight

champion and instead he came to the post fight and was like I don't know what Kane was doing he didn't follow the game plan this is a man who has vested interests in outcomes in fights emotionally outside of the business acumen wise. And I just, I feel, I feel pretty strongly that he was frustrated with Tom Aspinall. And, you know, let that speak for him as opposed to, you know, doing the promoter bit to be like, yeah, man, sometimes these things happen. I don't know what Cyril Gahn was doing. Just sticking his eyes in people's faces.

That's pretty messed up. But I'm sorry. we'll do our, you know, we'll rebook it and it'll be okay. That's not the, you know, the course he chose. And now we're in this room. So we'll touch on this because obviously this, this sort of came out a little bit this morning. And I know some of it came out last night. John Nash posted a screenshot of the proposed joint scheduling order regarding

Dominance MMA's production in response to plaintiff subpoena. This has to do with the still ongoing antitrust lawsuit, the, Johnson versus Zufa side of things. And so what this means is, so for those who don't really understand what's going on, the MBE fighters, those who fought for the UFC for a certain period of time, they feel that the fighters were suppressed wages because the UFC had a monopsony or monopoly, however you want to call it. And through this one, dominance MMA, who you all know very well, run by Ali Abdel-Aidel-Azez,

They were subpoenaed for documents. According to this document right here, they have to send in all the stuff they need to send in by November 18th for agreeing on how to collect and produce, et cetera. So what Lazy's asking is, will this sort of expose the UFC controlling the fighters, the relationship between some in the UFC and some managers and their companies? And I guess my answer to this, Jed, and I don't know, you probably know more about this than I do, is I don't know. And I guess like when they settled the last lawsuit, one of the things that I kept saying was, I hope they don't settle. I hope they go all the way with this because this is the kind of information that we could have seen, we could have saw in the last one before they settled it. Like we were to saw everything on the table. We would have saw all the transgressions and conversations and text messages and emails.

We would have saw all this stuff. And you and I in particular kept saying, if this goes the distance, if this goes to trial, if this goes beyond a settlement, newer fans are going to understand the things we have been saying for the last few years about this company and this sport in general being a shade of dark that you just didn't see, that behind the scenes, it could be a pretty. awful place and it's kind of a shitty place at times too they settled now this one hasn't settled yet so we are going to get a lot of information about this once these documents come through and it'll be public information so we'll all see what it is so i guess my question for you is how intrigued

do you buy this and i guess like i think the the question i think needs to be proposed right now is will this will the ufc attempt to settle this before this deadline well not before the deadline i don't even think the fires would take it unless the ufc just paid them a huge amount of money should they just do that though should they just throw the kitchen sink at him and be like let's just be done with this because if this information comes out it's kind of be tough this is a complicated issue uh i i'll say no for a couple of reasons one uh i don't know how inclined this lawsuit is to settle it all.

From my understanding of it, the previous one was an outright, I mean, basically from the way that that previous law, the settled lawsuit was approached and, you know, sent, that was a, we're looking for recompense for lost wages, right? And there is some, as there always is, these sort of like, institutional change, injunctive relief, et cetera. the crux of that of the other lawsuit was primarily about getting paid. This one feels a lot more about, you know, attacking a potentially unjust system and getting some form of retribution in that regard.

I am less confident that the people in this one want to settle, so the price going to be higher to settle. I will also say, and this is this is where I've here, into pure speculation. There ain't nothing that I'm about to say that has any establishment or basis. In fact, this is my vibes. My guess is that should this go through and dominance proffer up the things that is required, this won't be a good look for the UFC.

I don't think it'll necessarily be a bad look for the UFC, right? Because my The contention that The UFC controls fighters through dominance in the MMA I don't think I buy it Right Or at least in regards to I doubt there is a smoking gun

Of Dana White emailing anybody at dominance being like Hey I need you to get this guy to sign for X amount of dollars because I can't like I I it just doesn't seem like that is what would happen. Really trying to not get myself for anybody in trouble here. Should this come to pass, which I am still uncertain will happen, frankly, you know, because there are, I don't know if you've looked around, a lot of things are happening in the wide world of the American political and justice system.

and when you have a phone call to a guy who can call the president of the United States, you can make a lot of problems go away. So I am not entirely sure this will end up happening. We'll see.

Like it wouldn't totally shock me of dominance. It's like, no, hold this in contempt of court. We'll run this up to a judiciary that we like. My guess, because I don't want to speculate too much on something of this manner. My general standpoint for anything like this is that if people don't want it out, there is reason. And that's for anything.

Like if I am vehemently against telling you something that is pertinent to you, my belief is that it's not just because I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it for some reason. And so I am deeply fascinated. I frankly hope that dominance will, you know, do what is told here or what is commanded of them. And we will get information because if there's nothing to hide, then great.

Like that's awesome, right? Like if they turn over everything, be like, oh, wow, that's pretty neat. Like, I mean, I'm sure there are other problems. But like, that is a thing that, could happen. That is in the realm of possibility. Everything's above board. Nothing is, you know, untoward. And we could all feel a little bit better about everything. But if it's not, I want to see it. I want to see the problem because I always want to see the problem. And then I would like, you know,

fighters to know what they are getting into, et cetera. So my hope is that this will come to pass and we'll, information is just always better than not having it yeah um i am still still unsure that it will though we shall see it's got to be something to keep an eye on so john nash just follow him um he is at hey not the face he's incredible at covering this so those are the guys that that you definitely want to and damon too damon does a great job with it when he gets on it so uh those are the guys to follow and there's some others as well. I will say, just from a purely legal standpoint,

and I want to be exceptionally clear about this. I haven't read any of the filings. So like this is not first. This is me from what I have read from the people who have worked on this, right? I am, I want to pull it up because I am, just from a purely legal standpoint,

I'm an enormous fan. This was from A Feldman, MMA, who did sort of the thing. I'm an enormous fan of the legal argument. Ah, we're a really small company. We can't do it. Apparently that was the argument of like, here's our 30 page objection is let off with, you want us to do this thing? We're a really small company.

We can't do it. Okay. The plaintiffs will pay to, you know, hire a consultant, in a third party vendor to come in and do this for you. And they're like, no. No. That is just like the funniest league like you get that sure of shit all the time and legal filings like this.

We're like because and one of the things they teach you in law school is you argue every point on all the basis all the time. Right. And so it's like, uh, because you never know which one to win. Right. So like you can basically you can argue any point. about anything ever always.

And so when you are, you know, submitting some sort of defending motion, you fight on all the battlefields. You don't stipulate to, okay, what they say is true, but here's why not. You say what they say is true is a lie because of this, this and this. But if it isn't a lie, still no, because of this, this, you fight every battlefield all the time because any one of them could win. And so this happens all, but it's still never not funny when it's like, no, I can't do it. We're too small.

Okay, we've solved that problem. Still can't do it. This is a funniest thing to me. It's got to be fun. By November 3rd, the party shall agree upon the process for the collection hosting a potentially relevant responsive information, including the vendor for collection, the search terms to be used to identify potentially responsive documents and the use of hit reports to guide search term negotiations.

There's a lot going on there. Paul Gift is another one that has the document up there, so you could check that out. Stirlapod. The dominant in M.A's attorney is pretty good. Yeah. Straight up, like, there are oftentimes watching or like in the stuff. I've been like, I don't, I don't really think the U.C.'s attorneys are good. They're not bad.

And there's certainly high power, which is a whole separate thing about, but I'm just like, dude, a lot of the arguments you make are like Prima Fasci Garbo. I was just like sort of looking at him like, man, they threw out about 12 different reasons they couldn't comply. And they're not all winners, but they are all funny. Yes. No, you should get them from the UFC or from the fighters. From anyone that's not me, leave me out of it. Did Ariel take a shot of you guys on his show yesterday?

Rick mentioned Casey coming on the show today. And Ariel said, are we getting the dirt on his departure? No. I'll just clean this up. This is the only reason I pull this up. I don't think so. I certainly hope. I have no idea.

If Casey goes on that show today and starts like ripping us, it would be one of the most shocking things that I've ever seen. Like I'm not even a incredible. It would be an incredible heel move. It would be an incredible heel move. Yeah. Oh, Ariel. Easy.

No, you're watching. There is, there is literally no drama at all. We love Casey. It'd be so funny, Casey. Do it. Just rip us to shreds. Do it. Text me so I know that you don't mean it in your heart.

But do it. It's just, yeah, group Texas be like, all right, I'm doing it now. And then we'll,

we'll clap emoji him and then just be like, nah, all good. It would be, it would be hilarious if he did that. But I would true, if he just goes on there and just,

just like ripped us, I would be stunned. Like I would, it'd be one of the most shocking things that I, I can imagine happening. It would be really funny. Um, yeah, there's just,

truly, I can't. Unless he just has. had beef with me this whole time and never said it, which in which case, like if he did, I honestly wouldn't even be like upset. I would,

I would genuinely be concerned and curious and be like Casey. I did not realize you hated me. Can we talk about what I've done to you? Because I never once got the idea that this was a thing. Yeah. I got no. Again, I talked to she and this week.

I got none of love for the people over there. Hell yeah. I assume they'll feel the same way, but I don't know. I love Casey. Casey's one of my favorite people on this planet. He's the man. So that's my stance. If he feels differently, that'll be news to me.

But yeah, if you want to cut that heel promo, it would be hilarious. So go ahead and do that. A couple of super chas. It would honestly be really funny. Oh, boy. I'm excited. I don't know what's coming. I love you, Mike, but I got to do it.

Mike check. The Walter Walker call. it was bad on Saturday. Why call out an unranked guy when you have a number next to your name in a heinous division? Time out. Yeah.

We're teamed up. I think you need to do for our socials a mic check segment. Okay. Just after every event, you know, you just put out like a 30 second clip

on our TikTok, just being like rating the callouts, who was the best, who was the worst. I think I'm going to call. I think I'm sorry. Called the mic check. way to go whoever

Nathaniel I think that was Nathan Time back in But I was just like that's a great idea for a bit All right, that's it. Thank you. Good idea for a bit. So I think that's what you were intending there. But Mike check from Mike Heck is a fucking great bit.

I like this. This was a bit on onto the next one for quite some time. Like if I either reacted to somebody's matchmaking or I made a matchup, people would hit up AK and they would Mike check me and I would have to explain myself for my my my that's the thing no we got to brand it we got like you I'm telling you this is this is you guys are seeing the creative process of work right here it's a tic-tok you know 30 seconds 60 second video uh you just come in camera on right when the fighter is the microphone and he gets asked the question you will see my like live reaction

to it and then I'll I'll do that's you got to do hey here's a cold open then there's a graphic that's uh mic check with Mike heck then you comment and you're like, all right, let's talk about the best and worst callouts from UFC 321. Boom. Okay. It's a great bit. It's an incredible bit.

I love this. I can't believe we didn't think of this sooner. All right. So I want to let me, I want to pull up our, I want to pull up our UFC 321 report real quick. So I could defend myself here. So I can defend myself. One of the questions was, who was the biggest, who stole the show at UFC 321? I said, Vol.

Walter Walker. And here's what I wrote. Look, it was a pretty safe bet that Walker would get a quick submission win over newcomer Louis Sutherland. But to get his fourth consecutive heel hook stoppage is absolutely incredible. Plus, for the most part, he did the job in the microphone and got people talking, although I thought he could have shot a bit higher with the callout. The handy callout was perfectly timed, especially if you watched the post-fight scrum as he reacted to Walker's call in real time. However, Walker versus Derek Lewis has the potential to be at the peak of silly goose fights in the division and I'm super here for it. And I set it out on the watch party and said it on the post fight show.

He should have called out Derek Lewis. But I like I liked the Hamdi call out just because of the timing of it. Like Hamdi is sitting there doing his post fight scrum after that eye opening win over poor Chris Barnett. So like he got to literally like hear the call out and then just be like, yeah, I'll fight him. Like that's good content right there. So I like it for that sense. And I thought it was just like a funny bit all around. But no, would that have been the name I would have chosen?

Hell no. I would have gone for Derek Lewis because I think he could get that fight. And it would be awesome. So I have a couple points here. Please. First, I thought the call it was hilarious. I don't know that the call it like works in general, but it, the timing worked so well because of the stuff you mentioned.

also just like calling out the other dude that won on the card, great. Apparently didn't work. It seems that they've let Hamdi go, though I don't know if we've confirmed that or not. I think calling out Derek Lewis would have been a huge mistake. Why? Because Mike, I don't know if you're aware of this.

Derek Lewis doesn't believe in Jiu-Jitsu, and if you don't believe in Jiu-Jitsu, it doesn't work. And just as Jailton Al-Meda. He won with wrestling. He didn't win with Jiu Jitsu because Jiu Jitsu isn't real if you believe it's not hard enough. So he can't, he hook Derek Lewis. Derek Lewis will just look him in the face and be like, no.

And then there won't work. That's still a fine result. Oh, I mean, it's a fine result for the UFC. It's not a fine result for Walter Falker. I don't think that he, I mean,

he has a number and like, sure, it's heavyweight, so you don't need that many wins to get to the belt. We talked about a little bit. bit on the post show. I think fighters are too concerned with getting to the title. I think some fighters should just have gimmicks, right?

Like, not every wrestler is a main event wrestler. Some of them are just, you know, they're just fun pro wrestling guys who do silly things. Who's the guy with the sock on his arm that's a snake? Oh, Santina Morella. Yeah. I don't know if that guy ever won a belt. I see him on TikTok sometimes. He won the silly belts.

Yeah. Like I see that dude on TikTok sometimes and I'm like, I think I would have loved this guy if I like pro wrestling because he's a ridiculous person. And his finisher is a sock on his hand that looks like a snake and he stings with it. It's just like funny. I think Volta Valker should totally lead into this gimmick

and like exclusively fight people that he can heal hook. Once he stops doing it, right? Like once he tries and he fails and he has to win some other way, then we can get off the heel hook train. But for the time being, we should just ride this pony as long as its legs will carry us. So Hamdi was actually a good call-up.

I think it's, well, except for the fact that the fight was atrocious. And I said at the time, I said at the time, I was like, I think they might cut him. I don't think they cut him. I think he just followed his contract. I don't think they're going to re-sign him.

Again, we're not confirmed on any of this. But like anybody's fine. Fight any random heavyweight who you can heal hook because that'll be funny. What's, uh, we get, yeah. Can you just fight Chris Barnett again? Or maybe do Chris Barnett. That'll be sad.

Chris Barnett made me sad on Saturday, though. Yeah. I didn't see any alert that he got let go. Kind of. There's just not a chance he's not. Somebody. Or that's like, when Ty two of Assa comes back, like throw Chris Barnett and they were

tied to Ivasa. Someone that's not going to tackle him. Like he'll just stand there and shuck with him. Like, just do that. That'd be okay. I think it was either Luke Thomas or was Jack Slack. I don't remember which one of them.

So sorry, I'm not properly crediting you. Credit you both. You're both fantastic people in the space. I love your work. Listen, follow them, etc.

pointed out something I had not considered and no one will care. And this, we don't have to talk about it. But it's like, Chris Barnett used to be fun because he used to be athletic. And then he got knee surgery and he's like not athletic anymore. so his whole game doesn't work anymore. And it's just like, oh, I hadn't, I was just like, why does he suck now?

He used to not totally suck. And it's like, oh, yeah, he blew his knee. And he's a 300 pound 5-9 dude with a bum knee. Like, you're not recovering from that. He's not, this is not an NFL player who blew out his knee and is the peak of athleticism. He's just cooked. And that sucks because Chris Barnett was fun. Yeah.

And his game super does not work without athleticism. Alex, funny for Patty to call this the worst pay-per-view ever. when he was the co-main on a car that saw Ank and Yan fight to a draw and he got a sketchy splitie versus Jared Gordon brought to you by Doug Crosby. Dude, to the previous point about Dana just like being in his feels at times.

The Yon-onk fight that went to a draw was not a bad fight. And it was a really good performance from Magna Goliath. It was very intriguing. Yeah, it was a great performance from Michael I who was losing early and just showed championship medal

to come back. and, you know, pull out the draw or whatever. But Dana went there and was like, this is the worst fight I've ever seen. And then, like, he immediately booked another heavy, like, light heavyweight title fight for the next month because he was so mad because, you know, there was a negative outcome. Sometimes he's just that way. That fight wasn't that bad. I don't remember the rest of that card, but I remember being like, I had fun on that fight.

Yep. I remember doing a watch party. I think New York was watching. with G.C. and I were like, oh, this is interesting. Like, Uncle Iiff is on one leg through two. And he's losing the first two. And he lost the first two rounds. And it's bad.

I can't lose. So. But as we know from Saturday, Mike, if you lose the first round of a fight, the fight's over. You can't come. There's nobody's ever come back from losing the first round of a fight. And that's why Tom Aspinall is a coward and a vagrant. Because he, he lost the fight and he took the coward's way out. according to a number of former fighters, which is wild.

The comment section is great. A lot of fans of the mic check idea. Yeah, because that's genius. I knew that as I like, this is literally why I was like time out. It all crystallized in my head. Yeah, we got to do this one. Joseph,

during the post show on Saturday, McKenzie during called out Tatiana Swares for her first offense. What are the thoughts on it? I think you guys know my thoughts on this by now. You cannot give Tatiana Suarez a title fight. You can't. You cannot after that fight against Amanda Lummo. It was weighing, again, weighing everything involved, it was the worst fight of 2025 in the UFC.

It was the worst fight. It wasn't two contender series people. It was a former title, two former title challengers fighting in a pivotal matchup that was buried on the prelims. And we knew 45 seconds into that fight, why it was buried on the prelims. That win, the UFC gave her a win. They handed it to her. Like, go finish this woman. And pride rules, you can make a strong argument.

A man Olemish won that fight. Because she actually did stuff in the third round and Swarres to do anything that entire fight. So, no, you do Tadiana Suarez versus Lupi Godinez. If Tateana wins and does it impressively, give her the shot. If Lupi wins, we run it back. Like, I know that fight happened like a couple of years ago, but who cares? Like, there's just nobody else for her to fight right now. So you can't do if you cannot give Tatiana a title shot.

You can't. She's got to get another win and it's got to be good. I firmly agree with Mike on the giving Tatiana title shot. I mean, he is Mike Check with Mike Heck. So he's an expert on these things. But I think it's a good call out from Dern. It's always a little weird to call out people as a champion, right? Like sometimes it's necessary.

And the thing that I criticized Volcanowski for a lot in his title reign was he should have called about people. Because the saying, I'll fight whoever is like, fine. But that's, it's better to pick your opponents to, to, you are elevating somebody up to you so you can fight them because you are at the top. And so bring some, give somebody a leg up to the top of the mountains. You can knock them back off. That is the work of the champion.

And sometimes you don't have to. The, the challenger is so evident. And you just say, yeah, I will fight, you know, Alexander Volkov or whatever. But in an instance like this, she kind of could pick anybody, right? Except for Dern really can't pick anybody because I have really come around to, I think you pitched this either and on to the next one of the post show. The Robertson Lucinda winner, just booking that. Like I kind of think that's just sort of the most fun way to do this.

Sure, would it be like the number seven person getting it? Yeah, I don't really give a shit, you know? Like that's a fun thing. The winner will, you know, we can have some momentum off that. But as the new league crowned champion, you can't call out the seven versus 10 winner. That's just a bad look. So she really had, if she's going to call anybody out, which I do think is better than just being like, I'll fight whoever. The options are Jan Jan Janan or Tatiana Suarez.

Jan already has a win over. So I would have probably, if I were her, I probably would have gone for that. And I'm like, look, Jan Jan Janon, she won the top fighters in his weight class. She's got a win over me. I'd love to get that back with the belt on the line, five rounds, etc. I also see why maybe you don't want to do that. She did just lose DeVerna. So that's not like the most palatable thing.

Tatiana won. Tatiana is the number one ranked contender. I think if you're going to call somebody else, Dern, I think that makes a ton of sense, especially knowing that that may not happen. She didn't do that in the cage, right? Like it's different to do that on the cage on the mic. She did it backstage. We could throw that away, and the UFC doesn't have to do it.

But I think that's not a bad answer to that question when it's posed to you. So, so from, from an actual, like, call out perspective, without her actually calling out, John, it's also a winnable fight. Exactly. Exactly. I would pick her in to win that fight. I would pick her. I don't know if I, I mean, I don't know if I would pick her, but it is definitely winnable. I mean, I'll pick her because I ride with my people's.

But it's definitely winnable. It's a winnable fight. And after seeing... But all fights are winnable when you're McKinj Dern, baby. She can win them all, Mike. Yeah. We've seen Dern, like, Dern, I think is hazy enough to, like, avoid being, like, submitted in the first two rounds.

Because after that, it's Dern's fight. Like, Suarez does, it's not a five-round fighter. It, we, she was, she was gassed after the Lemosch fight. And that was a... Do you think Tatiana Swarres is going to succeed with takedowns, though? She will. She will. certainly succeed with takedowns.

I was thinking about this. I believe pretty strongly. The McKinsey Dern is the worst wrestler to ever win a title. And that includes like UFC 10, you know, like the Garbo people. She is horrendous as a, both offensively and defensively. the worst i think she might be like the worst wrestler i've ever seen and it has it has certainly impacted her career and impeded it at points but she won a belt anyway also i think a lot of its tactics i realized as well like i think she actually could be a decent

defensive wrestler but she has idiot brain sometimes and like she doesn't defend takedowns like she defends the initial takedown effort and then the moment that it the position becomes like questionable right like because that's what happens you should take down it's like oh who's going to win this part of it she's just like okay i tip over because i would rather compose guard and get into a defensive stance as opposed to like just try to fight off this takedown in the way that you see other fighters do uh it's incredible she's the worst wrestler i've ever seen and she's a ufc champion uh speaking of not the worst wrestler you've ever seen gable steveson faces a man on a three fight losing streak tonight in dirty boxing uh less

than 14 days before his return to LFA. Is he fighting it in 14 days at LFA? I have no idea. Does beating two cans and two weeks earn him any credit? Yes. Sure. I mean, he's new to this. I actually think this is...

These aren't cans. These are relevant opposition based on his experience level. Braden Peterson had like nine fights in 2025 before that one. And he was like getting nuke in, he was nuking dudes in like 15 seconds. So like that's the type. of opposition he should have. Like, you can't do the Aaron Pico thing when you throw him in there with like Zach Freeman on his first fight, like a dude who has fought for LFA like eight times.

Like those are the fights you don't make. You got to give him the opportunity to like maybe face some adversity and shine. Uh, and Billy Swanson, like, look, he hasn't won in, in three fights, but I mean, he's fought for Bellator. He's fought for LFA. He's been, or not LFA, uh, PFL. It's been in there with like, fought for BKFC. have a fairly extensive AMI background too.

Yeah. So I mean, and this is, I'm curious to see it because I mean, we saw it in the Braden Peterson fight. Like, Gable got leg kicked a few times and his first instinct was just to do the fastest takedown I've ever seen in heavyweight MMA. This is not an option. He can't even clinch and just like hold a dude or he's going to lose points tonight. So like, he's got to go in there and like, and box a dude tonight.

So I'm kind of curious to watch it and see how it plays out. I had no idea he was fighting at LFA, but it wouldn't. I don't see anything that confirms that. So I don't know that that's true. It could be. I'm not saying it's not. I think there's a card like coming up in New York that like it seems like they might do something there. But like I don't know for sure because who knows?

Like what if he goes out and has like a war with Billy Swanson tonight? Like he ain't can come back at two weeks and fight an M. May fight. You just never know. It's a little too. risky. So I think we're going to see him before the end of the year, certainly. We should. This isn't a squash match. I mean, it probably is, but like, I, this is the example I use every time.

I encourage everybody who hasn't done this. Go back and watch Daniel Corle me his first, like, eight MMA fights. He sucked at fighting. He kept winning and winning, like, impressively. He didn't know how to fight. He's incredibly, like, one of the best talents to ever step into the sport. he was already in an advanced stage at the time, but still like, I mean, he went on to do great things.

Nobody. Nobody knows how to fight until they start fighting. And this is a truism for life in general. Like, right? Like, everybody who thinks they're good in a fist fight has never been in a fist fight. Like, if you at home think I can fight, I promise you you can't. Everybody sucks at fighting until you just start fighting. and like Gable Steveson, the way you get good at fighting is to fight.

You fist fight people. And as much as you can train and things can, you can do your best to get there. Live bullets, live ammo is just a different beast. And you never know. No prospect should be what they, they butcher Boehickle. Don't do that. You don't do what you do to Aaron Pico. You let that dude beat the soul out of people who, you know,

at the, at first, or even opposition, because they both have never fought before. And even, even after you think, like, oh, we can give this guy a step up,

you should still take one or two extra to just make sure. People love to shit on Habib's record as like, crush a bunch of cans. No, it's, I've done it. I promise you it's better than you think.

But there is like, yeah, he fought a lot of dudes early you weren't very good because that's what you're supposed to do because you aren't very good. It's not like we dropped 2018 Habib into the caucus mountains. This is how you learn to get there. You got to fight the dudes to get there. Gable Steven, the UFC should sign him right now.

I'll probably right now. And he should never fight in the UFC and he can make his UFC debut at the UFC White House. If before the White House card, he has eight fights against random dudes, not total nobody's, but we don't need to give him former UFC vet. No, let him learn to fight people because he does not know how to do that. Yeah. What you do is, look, do I think he's like, and I don't know this for sure, but I'm sure he's like already somewhat signed to them. I'm sure they have him on like the old school developmental contract. So he should be fighting. Yeah, he should get like five fights for LFA, four or five,

and his last one should be like winning the heavyweight title for LFA. And then he'd go to the. More. Straight up more. More than five fight. Like whatever he's, whatever he can actively do. I mean,

he's young so he could bounce back fairly quickly and he's obviously wrestled a whole bunch so he knows how to bounce back and fight like multiple times. The first time he has trouble, then you can't book him again. But you could book him every other month as long as he is. Yeah, you know, putting people to the sword. You just, boom, boom. The year.

Seven months away. So five seems the year, like the year before Habib got signed to the UFC, he fought eight fights that year. I'm like, I'm kind of pulling that number out of my ass, but I'm pretty sure in the span of like 2011, he fought one, two, three, four, five, six. He fought seven times in 2011. And then he, 2012, January, 2012, he was in the UFC. that like that's that is this is the way this is the path he goes every just boom boom put him back

in there let it learn by doing train learn by doing um because as i think as the question or you noted it like oh he took a leg kick and he just immediately went to his thing that's okay that's a good thing to like okay i'm going to go your first fight you should just be like all right i'm going with the A game. I know I can win. And even your second fight. But by your third fight, it should be like,

okay, maybe I don't immediately go to this. Maybe I work on some things. And that's how you develop. Like, this is you, Gable Steven, he has Brock Lesner.

And so, like, and heavy weight is garbage. So, like, you could probably, you could toss him in there against, like, Walter Valker.

And he probably, like, actually would be Valtavaker. But don't do. that we don't there's no this guy he's a young man whereas brock lezner was not nearly as young develop him properly and he can be your heavyweight champion forever given the tommy gan treatment tom he gets 17 fights uh both amy and pro from may 20 23 yeah through the contender series this dude was fighting like multiple times a month it is honestly a lost art to like there you none of y'all know this because

none of you guys have been fans since the freaking early 2000s. There was a whole culture of dudes who just fought every other weekend at like smokers in the Midwest. And like they would fight a bunch of dudes. They were just like, yeah. And then they get to the UFC and they'd have 25 fights. But they've been professional for two years or whatever. Like do that. Just let him learn to fist fight.

And I promise. And he's probably going to be really, really good. Yeah. So we'll see. That's tonight. free on the dirty boxing YouTube channel by the way free is a very good price is my good friend

Alexander Kay Lee once told me there are 12 fights which is like better than 15 but two more than it should be the fact that this event starts at 8 has me unhappy yes 8 p.m. Eastern

Maria Agapova is fighting on the car she's in early prelims for Francisco Trinaldo fighting Jaliel Willis is fighting on this card. Brian Battle is in the co-main of it against Nate Diaz, protégé, Nick Koring, if you see Nate with the screw, you know Nick very well. You see him everywhere.

Nick actually has like a good background and has like a good MMA record and he's got like kind of weirdo fight experience. And he's pretty decent. So I'm actually looking forward to that one. Jed, what sport has the best refs because it's not MMA? I mean, I don't know. Here's the thing. Refs suck in all sports.

They might not suck, but people hate them in all sports. I think, honestly, the answer is probably like tennis. Nobody really ever has issues with tennis referees for judges. I guess they're not called the judges,

not referees, but like, it's probably like the golf officials. Like, they're not essentially referees, but I mean, there is no cheating. There is no cheating.

Like, if you break a rule of, is it. is a deeply self-policed sport. So maybe. But also like tennis judges, it's all tech. It's all just done by robots. You're really not doing much anyway as a tennis official.

It's not MMA. I mean, the actual answer is probably just look at whichever referees get paid the most and they're going to be the best because follow the money and it usually leads you to the outcome. MMA officials are mostly bad. It's not entirely their fault. This is the answer, I think. That's actually a great shout. I don't watch enough hockey to have any idea how good or bad.

That seems like that would be a really hard sport to be a good referee in, but good if that's the case. I mean, there are so many issues with MMA referring. I was listening to John McCarthy on Anthony Smith's podcast yesterday, and I hated just about everything he said. I have a lot of respect. John McCarthy literally is the man who invented MMA rules. Pretty much.

And so like I have a lot of respect in general, but like his, I don't know whether his views are outdated, but I don't think a lot of his views on like how things should be adjudicated is reasonable. He was just like, there was a point where he was just like, yeah, I see all these people out there saying take a point every time. That's stupid.

We can't do that. People would hate it. I was like, well, no, you don't know that. That's purely speculation. And while I'm speculating, I guess, to say that people wouldn't hate it, my baseline is enforcing the rules on the books where literally like the thing he's arguing about is like, so there are rules on the books. And then we kind of play in this middle ground to make things fair. Like, you know what's fair? It's actually not fair to play in the middle ground because that leaves interpretation that fighters can't interpret.

right what's fair is to just for everything to be consistent and well i think m mary refereeing i like that they are calling fowse more that is good in general it does create a a new and secondary problem that is is legitimate and real and it is that in any sport you ever talk to any of the athletes in they want the rules to be enforced in general. More than that, they want it to just be equitable. Not fair necessarily, but equitable.

If you are going to not call fouls, don't call them on both teams, right? But if you call fouls on one team and not the other, that's when people get really, really mad. For most of them in my history, we just didn't call fouls. And so at least,

even though it was stupid, it was equitable. Now, like, some refs are starting to, actually enforce the rules while others are not. And it is creating this super weird dynamic of like, nobody has a clue how anything's going to get adjudicated. Like at any given time,

it's like, I don't know, maybe it'll take a point. Maybe it won't. There's no consistency. And it is hard to have consistency when, as Big John was stating, like,

oh, we kind of leave it up to them and they try and make what's fair. No, flatten this shit out. If it's on the books, make the rule. And, you know, a panel of the ABC is going to meet, I think, later this week or next week or very soon to sort of have a newer more nuanced discussion about this. And I'm open to the idea that maybe not everything is a point.

I think that that would be the easiest way. I'm the same way. I'm the same way. But what I'm not open to, what I am the most tired of is this pervasive belief that the MMA rulebook needs. needs to be three pages and that's it. Because look at the fucking NFL rulebook. That thing is a tome. It is a legal handbook, pages and pages of shit.

Because they, to the minute degree, break down every facet of everything and how it goes and why. And if your foot is on this line incorrectly. And the MMA rule book is like, me and three buddies were just like, no guy gouging. They don't do that. Like when in any reasonable thing, it would be like, hey, no eye gouging. Now, subset. What is an eye gouge? Here is the reaction, X, Y, and Z.

I volunteer to do it. ABC, if you're watching. Give me 20 bucks. Pay for my meals. And I will write you a comprehensive rulebook clearly outlining how everything works. And not just like, okay, when you use a word like intent, clarify what that means, don't just say intent, which is a word that's open to interpretation. Like, it is ridiculous that the MMA rulebook is 12 pages.

There's just no need for it. Like, there's not a shortage of trees that we can't print this shit on. Do your jobs. Take the time, write everything out and get rid of this like, ah, vibes and feel. And we're trying to make it feel fair. No, what's fair is doing is clearly outlining what's allowed, what's not allowed. out to an exhausting degree. So there's no interpretation.

There's no possible way to have conflicting ideas about it. And then enforcing as the rules are written. Yeah. I think I poke should be a point automatically. I mean, it just should be. Yes. Or a DQ. Like last week should have been a DQ in any other sport.

It just should have been. The fence scrap thing like, look, and I'm with you. I've been saying it for a while. Like, you don't have to take point. for the fence grabs. Fence grabs are easy. Give position. It's super easy.

You award a takedown or position. So you get them off to the side. You stop the action. Guy went for the takedown that would have got it is on top. If it happens the second time, same thing, but you move to the center of the cage. So it just makes the position much more advantageous. If it happens the third time, you take a point. And if it happens after that, it's a disqualification.

Correct. There should be. Yeah. That's the easiest thing in the world to implement. That's easy. that there should be a pent. There should be some sort of repercussion to every single foul. And it doesn't have to be a point.

I pox, 100% should be a point every time. That should be a disqual, a decuable offense, in my opinion. I believe I pox and groin shot should both be points. Sure. I'm with the kick to the ding ding too. Because at a fundamental level, I thought about this a lot when I was driving back from Savannah. at a fundamental level, I'm going to try not to get super, like, esoteric here,

like the purpose of laws and punishments, like there are two competing schools of theory here, of like you, for crimes, you punish crimes as a deterrent, as retribution, right? Like, there are different reasons to do so.

Think of it in those contexts, right? Like, in general, we should punish files as a deterrent to prevent future people from reckless fouling. That is a thing that makes sense. The other purpose of fouls is to make the non-offending party whole. Like that is what like theoretically you could you could punish all robberies by just returning the stolen item to the guy who got it stolen from. And that person is made whole,

but you add a retributive element to disincentivize other people doing it, right? And to cover the broad spectrum of like, well, we can't make him whole for emotional damages, et cetera, et cetera. The same thing holds true in MMA, right? Like you got to, if you're grabbing the fence, we can make that hole, as you said, Mike, give a position. You get to choose top position, whatever. But if you keep doing it, then you got to take a point. You can't make a fighter who got kicked low or poked in the eyes hole.

Giving people five minutes is a good start, but I don't know. I assume that 98.9% of our chat are men. I apologize if that number is incorrect. You've all probably caught one low. Sometimes five minutes is good. Sometimes it's not, you know? And so like you have just,

you have been compromised in a way that one, you're both getting a rest. You are getting five minutes. That's great. Your opponent is also getting five minutes to recover from whatever. And so you're not even. You have not gotten back to. to a stasis point.

You have still been negatively impacted. Take the point. Same thing for eye pokes. If after five minutes you feel good enough to see and compete, great. You're still not even. Take the point. I think take a point on those two fence grab, short grabs. That can be handled with a positional thing.

And repeated offenses are penalized with a point. This is not hard. It's incredibly easy. It gets rid of all ambiguity. Makes the sport so much better. And I do not understand how this is a hard thing to make happen. Yeah, buddy. Completely agree.

It's, it's, it's very easy. It's very simple. Just sit down, take some time and, and put out the rules. Like I, I want, like, I want to live in a world where, like, my kid is not in the other room. And, like, my message to fighters and professionals in the field is, hey, cheat. Make sure you cheat, because that's your best chance of winning because nothing's going to change. Like, you think I don't want to live in a world. I'd be like, everyone should cheat.

cheat your ass off. Like, I don't want to be that guy. I want to be the, hey, I want to shout out the referee. Like, I want to shout out the referee for taking a point or doing this or doing that or implementing the rules like the correct way. Like, Rich Mitchell was like a hero because he actually took a fucking point away the other day. Like, she did his job for God's sake. I want to live in a world where you should cheat, but you should be good at cheating. Like, because like that's how it is in other sports.

It's like cheating happens in other sports. But like you can be like, ah, cagey veteran move. Look at that cornerback. Like grab a little bit too much of a hold. Their refs didn't see it. It's like,

okay, like you were crafty and you're cheating. Not like you just hoof the dude in the nards. Like that's not, like that's just any idiot can do that. Yeah. Take it a chart. Like some guys like cheat take it a charge.

Like it's not a full on charge, but they act so well. Yeah. Last thing I'll say on this, I know people don't love to spend too much time on this. I wrote about this today. I don't know if it's up yet or not as in the mailback. Because this came out a lot.

I think it was Demetrius Johnson talked about it. And it, a lot of respect for DJ, really grinds my gears. I don't know if you guys know this. I'm going to break some news here, Mike, because I don't, there's a big portion of the NBA fan base.

I don't think is aware of this. Mike get back on here do you know what professional fighters are is an important question Mike do you know what a professional fighter is uh yes it is a fighter who fights professionally that's correct they're a professional

this is the only sport where people are like cage grabs a natural reaction you can't police that the body wants to do it Body wants to do all sorts of shit. Professional athletes are professionals. If you or me, Mike, are getting into a fist fight. You know, it's pretty understandable that we might reach out and grab a cage if we're getting tackled into it.

Or like spazz out and poke somebody in the eye with our fingers because they're attacking us. Because we're not professionals. It is not just okay. We should hold professionals to a higher standard of activity. Like there are plenty. of professionals who don't poke people in the eyes or kick people low or grab the fence. It is a ludicrous statement to me to be like, pretty natural a post off somebody's head and stab him in the eye. Okay, well, like, there's a lot of stuff that's natural that you are actively taught not to do in fist fighting.

It's natural to run away when some dude is trying to punch you in the head. You don't do that because you learn not to because you're a professional. These men and women are professionals. We can hold them to a professional standard. Yeah. Well said. All right. We'll do one more and then we'll get out of here.

I didn't realize we're going for 90 minutes, but this is Jed's not supposed to be working right now. And I'm not supposed to be working at all today outside of the show. So lazy bed asked, Halloween obviously is tomorrow. Do the heck and Michoud households pass out candy for trick or treat? What is the candy of choice for the hungry ghouls and goblins? Are you a stop on the Atlanta trick-or-treating route, so to speak?

So you've been to my place. It's not really foot. Foot traffic doesn't come through here, so no. I have previously been in a much more high foot traffic area where I did it. I think tomorrow I am going to go to some friends' house for gathering and, you know, hang out, pass out candy. I used to do it, and tomorrow I have already acquired such accoutrement as necessary. I don't remember who wrote it, so I apologize.

Somebody for Defector, if you don't know what Defector, it's a good website. It's not a great website like we are, but it's a good one. I support them. I love them. They're great people. I know a lot of them. He wrote an article many years ago that I sort of implicitly felt, but he just put it in, I think it was Albert Bernanco, but I might be wrong about that.

he put a thing out there that it crystallized something in me in a way that I'll never forget and I adhere to forever now. It is a little bit more expensive to do it, certainly, and not everybody can afford things. I understand that. If it is at all possible, buy full-size candy bars and give them out. Because the difference that makes to a child is remarkable. It is to give, like to just buy like a, you know, like a store box of Reese's or Snickers or baby, whatever. The joy in their eyes when they're not getting the fun size, you know, here's like, but like a full blown friggin chocolate bar is hard to quantify. But it is, it could not be a bigger supporter.

If you have at all the means to do it, strongly, strongly encourage it. I like that. I think I'll probably be available. Like I think I'll probably like pass out candy. The problem is like like in my neighborhood down at the pool, they do like a trunk or treat. So like people will drive their cars out there and like some of the people on the board will like decorate their cars.

And everyone knows like, well, if you get a trick or treat like just go there. You have all the cars. You can go line up and get everybody stuff. Because like we obviously with stuff like that. Yeah. So we walked around and like knocked on.

like knocked on doors and like no one answered their doors. So like I think kind of like the 60 doors we knocked on after the the trunk or treat thing by the pool area, like three people answered their doors. So like and even for us like we bought too bad, we bought candy. We had like two people come to our house. So like is it worth it? But I also don't want to be the guy that like, oh, they're knocking on the door. You just have candy if they don't show up. And then I just.

Exactly. And you just have a lot of candy. But with the full size ones like I'll just be sitting on. on like a dozen full size peanut butter cup things. That's one of them good problems. It's a good problem, but I can't be just housing a dozen like 24 peanut butter cups. Treat yourself, Michael.

All right. Fair enough. So I will probably do something. I probably just run to Publix and just grab like a bag. But maybe I'll go full slice. It's I couldn't recommend enough. It is. I,

it, they are so happy. And I remember. how happy I was when you would occasionally get it and just like, man, that's awesome. It is, like, I want to be that guy. I want to be the guy that adds joy to the world. And you're adding joy in general if you're handing out candy, don't be the person who hands out, you know, floss or whatever, like, don't be a weirdo. Rulers and raisins.

Yeah. Don't be the raisins. Don't be the raisin person. But like, you know, you can add more joy at the cost of some money for sure. I'm not saying it is the most economical thing to do, but it's worth it to me. Oh, I forgot that this is my time to shine now. So I'm still getting used to the new thing. You can hear music.

And so you know that that means we're, we went for way longer than we should have, frankly. The production team has hit the music. They're telling us we're going to get out of here. Yeah. At this point in the show, the music is roaringly loud. and they are yelling at us to leave the story. All right, we're getting out of here. Back next week, enjoy UFC Vegas 110.

We got you. We'll see you then. Love y'all. You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.