MMA Fighting - DAMN! They Were Good | Khabib Nurmagomedov And His Place In The MMA Pantheon

Episode Date: October 5, 2023

DAMN! They Were Good celebrates the careers of the most exciting and influential fighters in MMA history and on this episode it celebrates the career of Khabib Nurmagomedov, the lightweight GOAT and possibly the best fighter in history. Five years ago this month, Khabib Nurmagomedov won the single biggest fight in MMA history, dominating Conor McGregor at UFC 229 to defend his lightweight title and silence all doubt as to his place atop the best division in the sport. It's a performance that would go on to be the crown jewel of his singular career as just two title defenses later, the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world retired, following the death of his father, Abdulmanap. Walking away just as he was establishing himself as one of the best to ever compete, Khabib's legacy still casts a shadow over the lightweight division to this day, and so in honor of the five year anniversary of his greatest achievement (and the immediate aftermath of total chaos), host Jed Meshew is joined by MMA Fighting's Mike Heck and Alexander K. Lee to take a deep dive into what made Khabib so damn good and where he stands in the pantheon of MMA greats. Follow Jed Meshew: @JedKMeshew Follow Mike Heck: @MikeHeck_JR Follow Alexander K. Lee: @AlexanderKLee Subscribe to MMA Fighting Check out our full video catalog Like MMA Fighting on Facebook Follow on Twitter Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for this show comes from the Audible Original, the downloaded two. Ghosts in the Machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Rosco Cudulian and the rest of the Phoenix colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprised his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible original Blockbuster. The Downloaded, it's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking,

What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love? The Downloaded 2. Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. Support for this show comes from Volkswagen. As the U.S. gets ready to host soccer's biggest moment on a worldwide stage, Volkswagen is helping. people discover new turfs and new ways to play the beautiful game right here in the U.S. From deaf and power wheelchair soccer to beach and futsal, Volkswagen is actively supporting

all the communities and teams within the U.S. soccer ecosystem. They're supporting talent from across the U.S. soccer extended national teams and are focused on helping to give these less widely known forms of soccer a platform moving forward. From the pitch to the sand and everything in between, welcome to our turf. You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. It is I, Jed Meshu, back with another edition of Damn, they were good. We've got a lot to talk about this week. We've got news, we've got updates, and most importantly, we have Habib Nama Gamedov,

one of the greatest fighters of all time, one of my favorite fighters of all time. And honestly, in the prep work, this has been the most fun I've ever had doing the show. But before we get into any of that, let me introduce the panelists this week. they are my colleagues in Memefinding.com. They are the best in the business at what they do. It's Alexander K. Lee and Mike Heck. The best friends are here to talk about the best fighter, Habib, fellas. How are we doing?

I didn't realize how excited I'd be when I signed up for it. I kind of signed up as like, well, I feel like as a pretty good MMA historian, I should be part of this. I'm like, how much am I going to enjoy this? I just, it's been so long since I've seen Habib fought. Was he really as good as I remember? And then just going back through some of his big fights, it was just, I really miss this guy now. I miss seeing this guy compete.

It made me a little bit nostalgic for someone who's only been retired now for two or three years. It's not like it really hasn't been that long since we've seen it could be fought. But I don't know. I guess we've seen so many fights since and a lot has happened over the last few years and MMA moves so quickly that, man, I, I just hadn't. I feel like I hadn't appreciated it when it was happening. I know I did, but it feels like I didn't. Yeah, he's been retired. coming up on three years or less, depending on at what point you believed his retirement.

If you're Dana White, he has been retired maybe a year. He was holding out that hope for quite some time. But Mike, how the heck are you? I'm doing great. This is a fun one because this is one of those episodes where, damn, they were good, could have become damn, they were great. And the more you dive into Habib and where he left, It could have been, damn, they were the best ever.

Like, it could have happened. It didn't. It could have had he stuck around a little bit longer and actually saw his prime completely through. But we understand why he walked away. We understand why Dane and wanted to bring him back. We understand why AK still puts it out into the universe, that he may still come back. And I'm sure we're going to talk about that later on in this program.

So stay tuned for that. Before we get into the Habib stuff in our usual preamble, a bit of housekeeping just off the top for the damn listeners. We love you. We love you so damn much. Great news. We're up in the count, guys. When I originally conceived of this show, it was going to be a biweekly thing just because I wanted to build, you know, build a community, build the show, build momentum. And then I realized that it's actually an impossible amount of work to put these together and do all the prep for this.

And so we immediately paired it down to once a month. Then last month I was going through the list of damn fighters. I have a list of people. And that list is currently 54 fighters long. So if I do one of these a month, we will never be done with the show because more people keep starting careers, ending careers, never get done. And so after talking with the powers to be, we're back, baby. We're going up to twice a month. Every other week a damn is going to be in your ear holes.

I have the rest of the year mapped out. We'll get to that at the very end on who comes next. But trust me, it's an episode you're going to want to tune in for. And so this is the start of it. And I wanted to start here for a couple of reasons. The first one is, for the time this episode drops, it will be a very important day in mixed martial arts history. Some may say the most important day in mixed martial arts.

It'll be October 3rd, and that weekend, October 6th of that week, will be the five-year anniversary of Habib's victory over Connor McGregor, defending his UFC lightweight title, and by some estimations, you know, like finally, truly entrenching himself as the lightweight champion because of all the hollabaloo that went into that. So five years since the biggest fight in him made history, felt like a great place to start this new era of dam. And then really, the true reason is, he's one of my favorite fighters of all time.

Arguably my favorite fighter of all time. I will get into that in a bit. But last week, not last week, last episode, we did Korean zombie. And Korean zombie is, you know, one of the guys that Dam was built for. A beloved fighter who maybe was never going to get all of his flowers. And it was a great episode. I had a ton of fun.

But that episode was one that I felt a little odd. in because I think I was probably the least connected to the fighter of anyone on the show, which is pretty rare. This is the exact opposite. Like I said, Habib, I don't know if he's my favorite fighter of all time, but I think he is my last or second to last favorite fighter ever. And what I mean by that is we all have the guys who hooked us, right? You know, the guys that we came in and they made us fans of the sport.

For me, that was Fador and B.J. Like, those were the two guys who, as soon as I got into the guys, you know, the guys that the sport that they are my dudes. A couple years later, Josealdo, Carlos Condit, that WEC era comes in and those are the guys I ride with them forever. And then the sort of last crop is Habib and Gaichi. Gaechi's obviously still competing, so I still have that. But Habib's one of a very few number of fighters who, when he fought, I got nervous. Like I had that pit. And it's just, I was emotionally attached to him in a way that I don't know that I'll ever be with people again because you know, I'm much, much older in the sport. It means different things to me now than it once did.

And so one of my favorite fighters ever. And as I went through this, I think he might be my favorite fighter ever. He is certainly the fighter I have had the most fun going back through his entire career and rewatching and prep for this. And so I want to start the conversation here with you guys. And AK, you kind of touched on this. And so maybe Mike might want Mike to lead on here is what, when I put out the call, what made you want to sign up for Habib? Why did you say, hey, I want to be on that episode to talk about Habib? Because I think this is a guy that, and look, I think there's a lot of fans like myself

who got into the sport. We got into it for a few years. And then life kind of takes over. And you kind of leave the sport for a little while. you watch it more casually and then you find yourself again and then once you find yourself that second time you kind of never leave. Habib was to me came into the time where I wasn't really watching all that much but all my friends who were were telling me this guy is going to be the guy. This guy's going to be the lightweight champion. He may never lose a fight. Like he just runs over

everybody. And I was like, well, outside of not being able to pronounce his name correctly, um, and now I can spell it in my sleep. It was one of those names that I had to practice and learn how to spell and I can get it every single time. The Yoani and J-Chic. Yeah. Yeah. I know that one. Yeah, that one I still cannot get. But Habib, I knew I was going to have to learn to spell that one, uh, at a very consistent basis. And right when I came back, like really into it, he would have been out for so long. He'd been out for two years. And then he was supposed to fight Tony Ferguson, one of the 850,000 times that fight was made. And he fights Darrell Horcher and just, I knew more about Darrell Horcher at the time than Habib, because I, Habib hadn't fought since I came back as being

like a fan that watched everything. And he just runs Darryl Horcher. And I guess the first time I really watched him live outside of that in a big, important fight was the Michael Johnson fight. And I think I came in at like the perfect time because that's when he really started getting after it. That's what I really got to see the greatness and understood what everybody was talking about. And then this is a man who just lived up to the potential and then they create these ceilings and these brass rings and Habib just jumped off a trampoline through that ceiling and then jumped even higher. The dude just got so good.

And once he started finishing guys and once he started. putting the cherry on top of these dominant performances, we're just like, man, what is this guy going to look like in two years in this division? And then he left. And then he was done. And we all understood why. And people kept saying, oh, he's going to come back. And that he's not ever going to come back.

Sorry, AK. But he is the epitome of greatness, but he's also the epitone of what if. In so many different ways. He's, he was the mystery. box. He was always the mystery box. And then his personality, it could be anything. It could be a boat. He could have been a boat. He could have been a boat. He is the boat. Best of all time, baby.

He is the boat. And he's also one of the greatest will also end his, like his legacy as legacy goes on is the biggest what-ifs of the history of the sport. Because I still don't think we've seen even near as dominant and as good as he was going to be. This dude could have been the champion for another. five years if he wanted to be. And Jed, you said it best multiple times when talking about Habib in the post-retirement. He might very well be the Michael Jordan of MMA in a lot of respects, not because of, I mean, maybe the competitive style, but just the way that he left, how he left, and just, there's just, there's definite, definite comparisons there. So Habib was the mystery box

who lived up to his potential in some respects, but didn't even get near it in others, which is insane to think about from a guy who went 29 and freaking oh and retired as the champion of the world and the toughest division in the sport. What a career, man. It's just insane. Yeah, I never believed in the way AK did. And AK, obviously, we're going to talk about that, I'm sure. And I'll let you speak as much as you want. But I had this hope in my mind that he would be Michael Jordan and that his father passed away, understandably, wants to separate himself from the sport, step away,

but then he's still in the gym, he's still training, and decides one day, hey man, I still got this. I got the competitive fire. I have a little bit distance from that tragedy,

and now I'm going to come back and put together my second three-fight, three championship run, and then really he's just, the parallels are too much. And that, as of yet,

hasn't happened. And with his, you know, close personal friend and training partner, holding the title, it seems very unlikely to happen. For now. For now.

I mean, we're literally weeks away, guys, from the timeline correcting itself as much as it can at this point anyway. I'm getting another shot. You are getting a buyback. I almost like deleted that tweet. Do we put that clip out there of me calling saying, you know, way back. Oh, oh, Charles is going to beat Islam and then have you come out of retirement. I was almost, I'm glad I didn't delete it because I'm going to retweet it.

as soon as I can't, during fight week. And I don't know. We still have a chance. Everyone wants this. Why do you think they rebook this fight? Everyone wants. Even Habib wants. Even Habib, part of him is secretly hoping his boy loses, so he has an excuse to come back.

But if his boy loses, they're just going to do a trilogy. And then Charles beats him again. And then Habibu-be definitely has to come back. He has to come back then. It still seems unlikely, but that would be the best timeline. I hope that is the timeline. And the rest of the lightweight division, sits on his butt for the next 18 months.

Then poor Armand Surukians just sitting there forever as like, guys, what the hell? But you know, that's what Lightway has been for years now. And we'll get into that. A.K., I do want to ask you before we kind of dive into the categories here, sort of, you know, you touched on why you wanted to do this. But what was your relationship to Habib? When did you realize that he's the best lightweight in the world? And, you know, when did you hop on board the Habib train?

I don't know if I ever did. I have a vague recollection that you were a Ferguson guy for a while. Yeah, and not like a preference. Just like I was of that side that, man, I feel like Ferguson is the guy. I was in that camp. People look up any, any, like, tweet of, you know, randos on the internet saying, oh, this is why Ferguson can beat Habib. And I think he's the one that's both streaking.

I think, you know, Ferguson's going. got the style to take them out. I'm like all those people. I'm all those people. I'm all those goofs who saw something in Tony's fights. They couldn't specify. I think when I was asked, I could never quite pin down why I thought Tony Ferguson could beat him.

It was always like a lot of hemming and hawing and something, something, something, something, something, something, something. Wild Man, something. He's got that dog in him. But I never really had a firm answer. And I think, like, again, we're going to have a lot more to say. say about Habib and Tony during the show. But I think we kind of got our answer. So yeah, so for me and Habib,

I always knew he was great. I never felt that personal connection yet, I think that you felt, which is a bit strange because I've watched all of his UFC fights for sure. We've written dozens upon dozens upon dozens of dozens of articles about him, people talking about him, breaking down what makes him so great.

And it's weird. And even when he retired, I didn't feel that twinge in my heart that I normally feel when I see you know, great fighters retire. Maybe for the reason that Mike said is there was the other twinge that that was like, is there more, is I, do I want to see more? Is there more left?

So maybe that's why. But yeah, never felt that great personal connection, never fully got on the train. I don't know why you hate Habib and Russia and just all things. But good, glad we now have that on wax as evidence. I will say when he retired. I felt the pang, but I was really anticipating it. I did not think that he was coming back. I didn't honestly think he would fight Gagee.

I thought that fight would not ever happen, but we can get into that fight. And I'm going to be honest, I have so many answers for some of these categories that we can get into it right now. We can start our move into the award section quickly because some deep, deep stuff here as we dive into his career. before that, I will open the floor.

Is there anything you guys would like to get off any points or topics you have to discuss that are not include that you don't, you know, have set up for our categories or is it time to make the move? Let's go. I'm ready. Yeah, I think we have to get into it. There is a lot to talk about, but I think we can uncover every stone here. There's a lot to talk about. Before we do, as always, give you a very brief rundown of his career. and you keep it real, real tight this time.

He turned pro in 2008, ran up a 16-0 record, joined the UFC in 2012. He's 23 years old. 16-0-23 undefeated hot-ship prospect. Wins the lightweight title six years later in 2018 against Ally Quinta in a very odd scenario that we'll talk about in a bit.

Defends it three times and then retires after his went over Justin Gage at UC-254 following the passing of his father, woman op due to COVID complications. You retire with a perfect 29 and a record. Longest UFC lightweight title reign in days at 1,077. Tide for most lightweight title defenses at three. Three performance of the night bonuses,

which is, I would argue a testament to his greatness that he does not have this long list of great bonuses because he just beat the shit out of people. And so they didn't award him for anything for doing that. No fight of the nights. because nobody was competing with him. He is also the first Muslim UFC champion who was inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame in 2022 alongside his friend and longtime teammate Daniel Cormier.

And the only other thing to note here as far as accomplishments, two-time Combat Sambo World Champion. Don't remember the years, 2011, 2012, maybe. I actually didn't have that written down, which I'm sorry, 2009, 2010, at 74 and 82 kilograms, so 165 and 180. Talk a little bit more about his combat Sambo, but I wanted to get that on the record

because it's very quickly become apparent that Combat Sambo is actually just like the best base for MMA because everyone who's a Combat Sambo World Champion just comes and starts beating the hell out of everyone they fight in the UFC. And now the awards section, we start as always. Mount Rushmore. You got four fights, and I'm proud of myself, boys. I kept it to four in this one.

one. I managed to put other fights in other categories. I had one honorable mention that I then tucked away in another category and there are, I'll talk about any of these fights. I hope we don't all have the same, though I'm sure that there will be some overlap, certainly. I'll kick us off with my first one that I would extremely believe is on both of your lists. It's Connor McGregor. It's UFC 229. It's the biggest MMA fight of all time. Sold 2.4 million pay-per-views. Nothing else has really come close to that, like the third biggest pay-per-view of all time behind Manny Floyd and Floyd McGregor. Just an unbelievable thing. And I had said in the research, I went back and looked for my own tweets. I had called for two years, I think, that this would be the biggest

MMA fight ever. That was the only fight I won made, not for the in-cage part of it, because I was always very confident in how this fight would play out. But for all of the insulated, parts of it. You have these two diametrically opposed forces in just about every way possible, personality-wise, style-wise. The build was this enormous thing. And it, I mean, it just delivered. Every part of that fight delivered up to and including the end, which we're going to get to. So a lot of nodding. I assume both of you have this fight on your Mount Rushmore's. Am I correct? That's the lock. That's the lock. It's ridiculous that to have this on, on, have you used Mount Rushmore's. more yeah you can't you can't not have it it's the lock of all locks uh and i don't honestly

know i spent a lot of time trying to answer to myself what is the best performance of his career in part because we have a upcoming category where it was hard for me to answers it wasn't like one great highlight because of the way he fought and so i think that it's possible that this was the best performance of his career um am i crazy do i guess let me just let me just put that out there. It was this the best performance of his career. Oh, okay, I thought you were about to lead into what you thought was like definitely the best for. Okay. There's, it's hard

to argue against it. I mean, I will momentarily, but it's the biggest stage, it's the biggest stakes. I mean, he has to, if he loses to Conn. Regregor, if by some chance he loses to Conne McGregor, which none of us thought was going to happen anyway, but if by some chance

he did, it would have dropped him out of like the top 10 conference. Like, you know, we said maybe he's number one pound for pound all time. I think if he lost to Connor, it would have dropped out of the top ten. It would have cast a, it would have unfairly cast a pall

over like every other achievement he had. Like nothing else before that, in the minds of the casual, even semi-hardcore fans, nothing that happened before would have mattered. If you think the word exposed is overused in combat sports, you would never have seen it use more than her.

Oh, this guy is just like, again, ground a humper he's just a lamb fray guy he finally met the goat connor grigger and lord knows what would this have done for connor's career if he had somehow taken out of hobib i don't even want to think about it okay you're absolutely correct and we know that you're absolutely correct because look at josie aldo and how people view josie aldo and i distinctly remember being absolutely confident that Habib was just going to Habib the hell out of him in this fight. And even in my bones believing that, I was nervous as hell in that fight because if he got

13 seconds, I would have quit MMA. I honestly would have just left with the sport, I think, because I would have heard it forever. And it breaks my heart today with Jose Aldo, one of my favorite fighters. And then Habib would have killed me. and Connor Connor would have never fought again and shouldn't have because I think that that's underrated part of this

as time goes by this was still peak Connor whatever that accounts for you know he hadn't had the losses to Porreier he had his last MMA fight was the best performance of his career of the win over Eddie Alvarez so when you factor in the opportunity cost of losing

and what that would have meant I would say this is definitely his best performance because thank God he didn't lose it And it has a lot of great moments in it. He knocks Connor down on the feet. I mean, that shut so many people up. He got the knockdown, the only knockdown of the fight. And then later we get the audio of him like pummeling him and kind of throwing his talk right back in his fit, seemingly getting Conard.

Not like bag, but kind of just being like, you know, it's just business. It's just business. So there's just a lot of great moments in this fight. Yeah, it has to make his Mount Rushmore. It's an amazing moment. my next one then fellas i'm i was very very conflicted about putting this fight frankly in any category because of how complicated a fight it was it is a justin gaethe retirement fight it's ufc 254 i ultimately decided to put it here um for a couple of reasons um the the biggest one being

compassionate habib is the funniest mhm a character of all time to me uh when it when it comes comes out afterwards that, you know, one, this is one of the most fun fights Habib's ever had, because he is just reckless in there with Gachi. And Gachi is one of those guys that had, there was this idea that he would be one of the best tests for him because of the wrestling pedigree, the ability to maybe keep things on the feet and the fact that he hits like a truck, the leg kicks can maybe wear Habeb down. And Habeb just runs at him. And he loses that first round on a couple of judges' scorecards, but not all of them, but two of them.

of them but i remember watching that real time and being like wow habib just arguably beat gaecchi on the feet by just being a lunatic at him and fighting so counter to really what i think people expected of him and then he comes and he he taps him with with the triangle the gentle merciful triangle because he didn't want to break just his arm in front of just his families family flew all the way out to abdabia and he didn't and it's just the nicest thing ever and so even though the end is such a really sad moment in a lot of ways. This one also made my Mount Rush more because of the fight itself and kind of the other

insular parts of it. So is this one on y'all's list? Yes. Okay. No. Yeah, I love dissension here. Mike, go ahead. Mike, Mike, why did this make your list in all this?

Is it the same stuff I said? Anything more to add? I mean, The dude lost the first round. Like, when have you never, ever, ever been able to say that in any of his other fights. He lost two rounds in his entire career. Yeah. He lost the first round to Justin Gachie.

Two judges scored it against him. And then he came back and just everything that he did. I mean, it's just ridiculous. Because if anybody else had said that, you'd be like, you're full of absolute shit that you show compassion. But when Habib said it, there was no doubt. We didn't doubt it. We were like, oh my God, what a guy. What, like, if Connor had said that, it would be like, you're full of shit.

Maybe if Dustin Porre said that, we would have been like, all right, maybe. But I would still question it a little bit with Habib. We're like, dude, what, heart of gold, absolutely. And just everything around it, like, he was able to get Gaichi down pretty much with ease. And just as soon as it got there. was dunzo because that was the whole thing like oh will will he be able to take him down yeah he he could and he made him pay if i didn't get out of the second ride loses the first and i love the recklessness he was like i'm just going to go out there and have fun i'm going to be fun habib

and six seven years prior to that like how many people said you know what that was a fun habib fight not a lot of people would say that now some people respected his what he did more back then but most fight fans back then as the sport was growing just it's kind of like the pandemic era where people just want to see dude just chuck them recklessly and no one ever thought we'd see Habebe in that kind of a fight.

And then obviously the retirement and retaining the belt and everything that night meant to him, I think it has to make the list. At least for me. A.Ks was the principal positivity, apparently he's not anymore, but I'm curious to see what else you have on there. He does hate Habib and Russia as we've all established.

And apparently just has Connor on his list. He didn't watch any more. It's honestly, my Rushmore is Connor, Connor, Connor, Connor, Nice. It's true. Dialan, die on, dialogue,

Mike, you said something that I'd never thought about until the exact moment and I just want to say it so I can remember it for a future episode that will certainly happen one day. And it's,

how good is Justin Gachee that he made Habib fun because I love Habib and I enjoyed watching all of his fights but not in the way that I enjoy watching fist fights. It's, it's really fun to watch this dude

just obliterate some human being. And Justin Gachie, I mean, feather in his cap in the argument for most exciting fighter ever, if he can turn Habib and Murgumetov into a traditionally thrilling fight to watch. So great point, Mike, great point.

We're going to come to my third then, which is Hafeiades dos angios, U.S. Fox 11, 2014. This is one of the less rewatchable fights, honestly. It's not a particularly interesting one. I mean, he just runs over RDA at this point. takes him down like 10 times or something has the fun hip toss uh in there which is like a great little highlight moment but it is just him being far too much for r d a and this one makes my list

because this was uh i i've isolated between this and pat healy um because at the time i don't think people were called pat healy was on a monster win streak um he had just uh it had just been ruled a no contest his fight against jim miller but he smoked weed so no one really gives that any credence. And other than that, he's coming off of Strike Force where he had won like six or seven in a row, comes in, beats Jim Miller top 10 lightweight. And you're like, oh, Pat Healy's like legit. And Habib just does Habib stuff, like just kind of wins that fight,

pillar to post. That was, it was between that and the RDA fight where I was like, oh, yeah, that's the best lightweight in the world. And certainly then, like, the RDA fight ages better because after, I mean, afterwards RDA then goes on his run where he becomes the lightweight champion after he had already lost to Habib so that that's really why it makes my list because this was the moment in time where I was very I was absolutely certain following RDA that this man was the best lightweight in the world and it was strictly a matter of time to get there so does this make y'all's list? Yeah and you say matter of time it took four four years freaking now two of those years he was

recovering from injury. So I'm not going to just, oh, say, oh, why didn't UFC give him a title shot? There was injuries. I think there was a, at least one of the Ferguson bookings. It was repeated knee injuries. Yeah. I think one of the Ferguson bookings, I feel like, was in that two years span. So it's actually two might have been. So they were clearly trying to get him to a title shot. It just, his body didn't cooperate. So, but I just say the amount of time. Dude, he talked about retirement. Yeah. And no one would have blamed him, right? if it was that serious. But, because Rogan right at the end of fight is like, yeah,

we're going to see this guy become champion. It takes four, almost exactly four years for that to happen. I do disagree about this being a, not being a fun fight to watch. But you're right, Jed, it's more fun in retrospect. It is more fun when you know what RDA becomes. Much more. Yeah, yeah, because that's the lens. I've rewatched that fight in CENTARITY, you know, for the show.

And through that lens, I'm just like, my mouth is open. I'm just shaking my head like, wow, wow. Whoa, how can't do it? Because you know how good RDA. And this is really RDA, like physically in his prime. You can say maybe he got, yeah, you can say maybe he got more skilled later, more season. That's fine. He's 29 years old.

Like, physically, this is as good as like RDA is going to get. So it's not just an athleticism thing, though that is on display. Because you mentioned the hip toss, but also in the first round, I think the first take down Kaviv gets. He just picks RDA up. Like RDA's got a hook. He's got a hook in. He's up against, we've seen this position a million times in MA.

Oh, it's okay. He's got a hook in. The guy's against the fantasy fire. We're just the guys. the fighters just going to grind each against each other for the next two minutes, trying to chalky for position, get underhooks. RDA isn't a pretty good defensive position against the fence. And Habeb's like, I'm just going to pick him up and throw him down to the mat.

Like, I am so strong. My technique is so good. My balance is so good. I can do this. If there's dozens of other guys, they tried that, they're probably just throwing their own back out or wasting energy and gassing out. Nope, that's just the first takedown of the fight for Khabib. And he completely dominates.

It is so fun to watch. But more so, yes, when you know how good, how revered RDA would become. That takedown ends up getting the Dana White seal of approval afterwards, where I think that's the after this fight is where Dana says, yeah, man, he reminds me of prime Matt Hughes, the way he just like picked a dude up and ran him across the cage, dumped him. So we're going to do big things with this young man. And it's like, yeah, and that's, it's the win that ages the best because RDA, I mean, RDA couldn't get himself a damn one of these days. probably in the not too distant future, but if you look at the run he was on prior to that,

I mean, a five-fight win streak, the one loss that it separated that from a couple more was a spitty against Gleason Tebow, who will talk on this episode about. And then after that, he rattles off another five and wins the belt.

You know, he's coming off the first Donald Soroni win, like RDA is that guy. And that's why watching this fight, I was like, oh yeah, Habib is the best. He just made RDA, who's one of the five best fighters

in the world in this weight class. look ineffectual. So for sure on this, Mike, you've nodded your head along. This one makes the list for you. No. It did not. It did not. Oh, I love, I love the dissension.

Okay. Then I have one more, and it may or may not make y'all's lists, and then we can get into y'all and figure out where we stand here. My last one, Michael Johnson, UFC 205. It's Habib's breakout performance, not maybe not for the hardcores, but certainly for the casuals. he comes back as a Darrell Horcher fight. We all know what that it fights about.

This is the fight. This is 205 undercard. Everything about it. As dominant as he ever is during a fist fight, even has the slight scare that gets a little bit overblown with the right hand or left hand from Johnson in the first round.

And then by the end of that round, he has Michael Johnson nearly getting stopped. He's talking to Johnson during the fight the whole time. brother, you got to let me fight for the title. Give up. You know, I deserve this. Talking to Dana White between rounds sitting on the stool, I'm going to smash your boy, then has that epic post-fight speech that got put on video packages forever and laid the

foundation for the McGregor fight. This one and McGregor were 100% for me, and the other two I had to figure out. So both of you gave me thumbs up. This is on both of your list, correct? This is number one. This is ahead of Connor. Okay. Like I understand that, look, no, I, look, I understand what, why Connor is the big, I mean, it's the biggest fight of all time.

I understand that. And Habib just ran Connor over and even took a round off in that fight. Like, that's the reason Connor won around. It wasn't because Connor just outskilled Habib. Habib is like, all right, I'm going to take this round off and then I'm going to finish him in the next round. This was the most, this was the most important moment of Habib Naramagavadav's career. career because if you remember back, Habib Narvaga Madov was basically the negotiation tool in order to get Connor in here.

So low-key, shitty that no one ever talks about. Habib was supposed to fight for the belt that night, but he was only used as a ploy to get Connor to agree to the fight. And Connor, of course, agrees to the fight. So Habib goes and fights Michael Johnson, who, by the way, had just knocked the shit out of Dustin Porrier the fight before. one of the most vicious knockouts you will ever see. And people were like, oh, you know,

that's an aged great for MJ too. Yeah. So many people thought like, wow, maybe like with this power, the way he just knocked out a guy like Dustin Porre with one shot, like maybe he's the dude. And then Habib went in there with this massive chip on his shoulder. 10-8, round one on two of the judges scorecards. 10-8, all three judges scorecards in round two.

It's incredible that he got a 10-8 in round one, considering Rogan acted like he was. gonna die. He's hard. His feet aren't under him. He's in trouble. He was like, he got 10-8. And then he 10-8s him.

Yeah. And he gets 10-8 round. The dude, he just, it was the most important performance of his career. And to me, it is the best performance of his career because of everything that transpired. Boring Habib and, you know, this guy with no personality. All he does is wrestle, yada, yada, yada. He annihilated Michael Johnson. and did it in style.

You mentioned talking to Dana, you mentioned talking to Michael Johnson, cutting the promo after. And after finally getting to a title shot to getting replaced by your biggest rival and putting on a performance like that, on the same night that Connor McGregor put on his best performance? Like, it was just meant to be.

And without this performance, exactly, we're not getting the Conner fight. This planted the seeds for the Conner fight. Without this performance, without that promo, obviously the Dolly was a part of it, but there is no Dolly without this fight. There's no, none of it. None of it happens without this fight on this night,

on this card in that building. Madison Square Garden, first event at MSG for the UFC, historic event. Habib almost kills a man and then cuts a promo and showed his personality. Without this fight, none of this other stuff happens. That's why I would put this twice if I could.

That's why I have it at number one because none of the other shit matters because without this fight, none of it happens. Is this the best post fight promo in history? I mean, there are a lot of good ones. It's not. It's not. It's top three to five. Nate Diaz, I'm not surprised MF. Okay, Nate Diaz, I'm not surprised actually probably is it.

That's got to be number one, right? But this is, I mean, this has got to be in the top list. This is one of the ones I think about the most, certainly is just like, I mean, that I have the whole quote written down. as part of one of many answers I have there, but I'm going to step on it because I've got to hear. I want to stay humble, but I have to talk because your guys talk too much. You know what's interesting? I understand crazy power of UFC PR machine. Your guy, beginning of year, he tap like chicken.

End of year fight for the title. Crazy. It's unbelievable. Not the forest and the Tasha accent. I want to fight your chicken. Because he has number one easy fight in lightweight division. It's the friggin' bet. It's so insane.

And then he threw out geographical statistics and then went back to the chicken at the end. Irish only six million, Russian 150 million is incredible. It's the best. Like it's just so all over the place, but so Habib. And it was incredible. Rogan's wearing the freaking hat. Dana White just sitting there like in shock. Put some pocket on him.

It's like, let's go. I mean, Homs. not Shemayev is not talking to Dana White when he lifts Liying Liang in the air without Habib doing it first. Like all like this set the table for all sorts of craziness. Habib sitting on the stool between grounds. And Josh Thompson's like trying to talk to him and be like, hey, what are we doing here? And he's not paying attention at all because he's just looking at Dana.

I'm going to smash your boy. It's, uh, I love this part of Habib so much. And like this is the fight. where it's the most evident, but I can, like, he's the only fighter in MMA history that I can really think of

who, like, has Larry Bird moments. You know, like those stories about Larry Bird being like, oh, they put a white guy on me and I got mad, so then I spent the rest of that day beating the shit out of him.

Or like, this dude talked trash, and so then I told him everything I was going to do before I did it. As it be, it's like, I don't have to focus on fighting Michael Johnson. I'm sending a message

to you, Dana. I have a thing, I have a bone to pick with you. And by the way, I'm beating the hell out of this man. So great fight. Rounds out my Mount Rushmore. Can we give you the Sean Ferris Award for that act? Yes. I didn't even think about casting you as for the Habibu.

I mean, because I didn't know you could pull off such a convincing vaguely Russian accent. You know, I can just do that one because like I said, I've listened to that speech like a hundred times by now. It's just one of the best things. I got to tell a little story about this too real quick. I love stories. So the first UFC pay-per-view I ever covered, and I used like the radio station I worked for to get credentials. And somehow the UFC was like, oh, cool. Yeah, let's bring this dude in from a random group and cluster of radio stations in Western Mass that like very few people

listened to because there was only very few people who lived out there. It was UFC 208, maybe the worst pay-per-view in the history of the UFC. It was so bad. It was Holly Holme v. Germain de Ranami in the main event. It was just awful. Thank God for Dusta Porier and Jim Miller just beating the shit out of each other because otherwise this was a tough hang all the way around. But that fight week, they brought Habib to Brooklyn.

And they had this event. I forget the name of the actual neighborhood. but it was in like a Russian neighborhood just outside of Brooklyn. And it was this event at a Russian restaurant. And it was like one of those areas where when I parked the car, I walked up and I was like, if I even look at Habib the wrong way, like, I'm probably going to get hurt. Like it was just one of those neighborhoods where like you can write a movie about it and it would all make sense. So we go into this restaurant. Habib's doing a Q&A.

and he's about to fight Tony, well, he's scheduled to fight Tony Ferguson, the UFC 209. And they bring Habib in there. And I have, outside of maybe watching a pro wrestling event that emanated from Japan, I have never seen a group of people in a building be so infatuated by a human being in my life. Hundreds and hundreds of people just listened to what this man said. And they just stood there in awe looking at Habib. And when this thing was over, Habib was like, and Ali was with him too. They were like, all right, we're going to, we'll set up a line.

You could take some pictures of the Habib. It was like the new kids on the block walked into a junior prom in 1989. I have a photo somewhere. And I actually printed it up because I knew I was going to need it at some point, but it's in a box after we moved. It is just all you could see is Habib's head and his upper forehead. surrounded by about a thousand Russian people in Brooklyn. They looked at this man as a hero after this Michael Johnson fight.

It was incredible. Ali was like freaking out. He was losing his mind, figuring out how to get Habib out of there. But then he realized like, these people are all here to like respect this man. And it was at that moment that I realized, this isn't just a great fighter. Like I didn't think this would be possible that Habib could be a fucking star, like a massive super. star, but on that day in snowy Brooklyn in that restaurant that I thought I might get God at, maybe killed. Habib was the man.

And it was unbelievable. It was the most memorable thing of that in Fight Week because the fight night was horrible. Like the pay for you sucked. But I came home that night, drove home on my birthday, avoiding a snowstorm super early in the morning and all I could think about was that night, was that afternoon in Brooklyn with Habib in a Russian restaurant just being idolized by hundreds of people, almost a thousand people mob scene. It was unreal. I was like, holy shit, Habib's going to be a star. Like, if he fights Connor, this, like, it was that moment I was with you, Jed, like, this might be the biggest

fight the UFC puts together. And people thought I was insane. I'm like, you were not in that building that day. And this is like three months. after he beat the fuck out of Michael Johnson and had that moment. Like that made him. Like, I didn't realize it at the time, but that night made him. Three months later, he's the star of Brooklyn. You obviously didn't listen to the man or else you'd have known his star potential because Russia, 150 million.

Irish only 6 million, Mike. 150 million. It's getting better. It's actually getting more authentic. I told that story. I told that story so Jed would go back to the accent because I knew he can improve it. You teed him up. You're teed him up.

Yeah, keep working on it. Just like, you know, that's your DJ experience right there, Mike. You just teeing up the next speech, you know, setting up people to succeed. I don't have much to add. I just want to, my notes where that's the the he got hurt fight, of course, the Joe Roman, he got hurt fight, which actually probably helped create intrigue for the rest of Habib's fights. When you look at Barbosa, I equinta, Connor, Dussimporia, Gagic. I swear ahead of every one of those fights,

you had at least one, like, you know, a few people, you know, going like, man, remember when Johnson, like, tagged him in that first round? Gosh, Barbosa could do it. It laid an idea that this could happen. I like Winta could do it. I like Winto's a great boxer. You could do it. Connor, oh, Connor.

If Michael Johnson can rock Kabib, then Connor is going to put a flat. Oh, my God. If Michael Johnson hadn't rock Habib, then I don't, Connor probably is even big, an even bigger underdog. But, you know, there's the story. the idea you can sell yourself. People, please go back and just watch that opening two minutes. He really does not hurt him that.

He's doing very well. Michael Johnson unquestionably is doing very well on the feet. He is soundly outstriking Habib, and he does have one part. We put him on his back foot. But Habib is just like it almost like just gets him off balance. It takes him a second to get his footwork back to get his range back. That's it. He was not, I don't think he was dazed.

I don't think he was stunned. I watched that sequence so many times. He never got hurt. I don't think he never got hurt. And like he his entire crew, even the Porre one, which we'll talk about, I'm sure. Yeah. He doesn't even get hurt there. Like he's just, he's not a great striker.

He's a bit of an awkward striker. Exactly. He can get caught in transition. Man had an unbelievable chin. Yes. Justin Geichi hit him with some of the biggest shots of Gaichi's entire career. This is a man who has ice-colded everybody he has really put midst to. And Habib just like walked through him.

Dude had an unreal chin. He wasn't hurt. This is the, uh, he's just awkward. The athleticism, you and I will probably talk about that more later. You and I are always talking about him. He wasletism. So yeah, my notes for that fight where it's the he got hurt fight and my second note, and then he just tears Johnson a new asshole for three rounds.

So that's really it. That's really all there is to say. By the end of the first round, he's like on top of Johnson fully postured up, not that kind of like, oh, I'm on top of the guy trying to control while like sneaking in ground and pound. He's fully postured up punching Michael Johnson in the head over and over and over again. Probably would have gotten a TKO stoppage if, like, if there was more time in that route he was just beating his ass uh it's an awesome fight you

has to make a list okay okay so uh you had mcgregor johnson yeah and r d a or gache uh no i have r d a michael johnson so what rounds out your rushmore i kind of went random i think with these shows i don't always want to do all ufc if possible and he does have a pretty extensive if not sterling i'm so excited to see which of these ones you picked well i i went with the easy choice. I just went his first fight. Just because it's out there, it's readily available on YouTube. If you look up Habib first fight, it doesn't even have the opponent's name. It's literally on YouTube as just Habib Narragomato first fight. It's just a week, this is back 2008, just a week shy of his 20th birthday. And it's like, it's just a pretty,

it's a methodical performance by him against a guy who went on to have like a four and six record, just some, you know, some other guy in his 19, 19, 20 years old, something like that. And, but I think what's great about watching it is, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's He's just very much the same guy later in his career just better. It's not like if you watch that first fight, it's not like, oh, wow, I can't believe that's Habib. Like, he looks similar. The build is similar.

He's probably a bit lighter, of course. He's just a teenager at the time. And, you know, he gets more explosive. He gets more technical. But you watch that fight. You're like, wow, he, by the time, it was great by the time you get some of his later fights, like, wow, he treated a lot of his future UFC opponents, top 10 guys, top five guys, the same way he treated this guy in his first fight.

he just finished this guy really quickly. So I think it's worth watching. I'm sure there's other options out there. Also a fan of this because of the way it ends up bookending, Habib's career. Triangle choke to start, triangle choke to finish, baby. Amazing. Symmetry, that's what it's all about.

I love that you went non-UFC because that was not going to be for me. Mike, did you go non-UFC? Are you about to break out some M1 on us? No, I'm not. Yeah, so I'm a Gregor, Gachy, Johnson, like I said, I would do Johnson twice because of how important that performance was, but it's Dustin Porre for me. I think the Dustin Porié performance. The fact is, and let me just pull this up real quick, because it's just a ridiculous statistic. And it's not even the most ridiculous statistic of Habib's career, which we'll get into later on. So I have many fun ridiculous statistics. So I love this. Dustin Porier, who is known as a prolific volume striker, if you will, only landed And I'm calling this unofficially after going back and rewatching.

12 strikes in that entire fight. Habib landed seven takedowns. He officially landed 12? 12. Jeez. 12 strikes. That is not a lot of strikes. Habib landed almost as many takedowns in that fight.

Like seven takedowns against 12 strikes landed. Against Dustin Porriere, dude. And this was in Abu Dhabi This was right after the Connor win Or was his next fight after the Connor win It was almost a year later But Habib the personality continued to come out He became an even bigger star that night

One because of the location of the fight But two, it's because Habib made it look so easy But three, the fact that he jumped out of the cage And like fooled Dana White Afterwards is just incredible That was awesome It's incredible And then he's just mobbed by the people

and like he has this moment with Dustin and like people realize because a lot of people thought like especially the McGregor fans that Habib was this like evil maniac with a no heart of gold. Just he's a piece of shit in a lot of respects. This dude jumps the cage and is attacking people in the crowd. Like this is not what I'm amazed about. And then him and Poria had this moment where they like trade gloves and they like donate to each other's charities. And it's like, you realize I'm like, all right, maybe it's, maybe it's not Habib. Maybe it's not us.

It's that Cotter dude. Maybe he's the bad one. He's the bad influence. So I actually think that fight in particular, especially the aftermath of it, kind of changed the perception of Habib a little bit. Because a lot of people, while they respected his abilities in the cage

and how good he was and predicted how long this man could be the champion, they also thought he was kind of an asshole after the Carter-Megger fight because he jumped out of the cage and started attacking people. And it left a bad stink. And it took almost a year. But after that performance and everything that happened and what a guy like Dustin had to say about him, Dustin putting him over and defeat, I think it changed perception of a lot of people when it came to Habib. So, yeah, I think it's a very important fight in his career and his overall legacy, honestly. That's a great choice.

I ended up sliding this into a future category for a lot of the reasons you said, frankly, you know. I mean, I didn't even go back and dive into the stats on it and be like, wow. he landed as many take downs as Dustin landed strikes functionally. The thing I love, the thing I will always remember about this fight for me is two times in either the first or maybe it was one in the first and one in the second. Porre is trying to hit a switch on him up against the fence and like he's deep in the switch and almost has it. And then instead Habib just continues transitioning through with it and moves into Mount twice. And it's like... Crazy, dude.

It's one of the most insane transitions in part because it really drove home for me a thing that I think is wildly underrated about Habib's game. And he gets a lot of credit for his athleticism and his ground to pounders grappling and all of that absolutely should. I think he is one of the most underrated tacticians in MMA. I mean, he was just incredibly well prepared for everybody that he is. ever fought. You never saw him go back to a corner. Like, like you saw Dustin in this fight go back and after the first round, the very first thing he says to Mike Thomas Brown, the coaches is

not a lot of space, not a lot of space out there. They aren't prepared for what they are facing in some way or another. It's more than they thought bargain for or whatever. Habib is never doing that. Habib's talking to Dana in the corners because it's never, hey, I wasn't, I wasn't expecting this thing to happen. They knew it was going to happen. They knew Dustin Porre would work on switches against the fence to try and create scrambles, create transitions, get out of that spot. And Habib was all the way dialed in on it from Jump Street. So I love this fight, and that's why it comes into a later category for me.

Any honorable mentions you want to throw out here, or have we effectively closed on Mount Rushmore, gentlemen? I mean, RDA is definitely an honorable mention, but there's one other one that I'm saving for another category. If you thought the statistics with the Poria fight is interesting, I got another one for you, and it's going to blow the doors off of that one. It's the stats,

the fun with stats category is going to be great. So fantastic. We'll move on to our next category. All right, our next category, the I'm not impressed by your performance award. Obviously, George St. Pierre, you hear the sound drop in there. We're going to go a different way with this, boys, because I think there are really two very obvious answers,

really only two answers that I could even come up with. And I'm going to argue against both of them. I don't think either of them are real. I think it's all wolf tickets, bad narratives. And so I'm going to let y'all lead this category. Let you say what you were not impressed about. And I'm going to tell you why you're wrong and why the inmate community at large is incorrect about these things.

So, AK, what is your, I'm not impressed by a person to them? You and Mike just beautifully laid out that, you know, we saw, when we saw the good guy, Habib, and why that moment was so important for sort of rehabilitating his image, because it may have taken a hit. I don't know what you're talking about. We have to mention this now because I think there's probably, I could hear, I know this is, you know, not live. This will be going in the future.

I can hear the future screams of people shouting. You know, you guys are talking a lot about that UFC 229 kind of regregor fight. Do you feel like maybe you're leaving something out? Are you something you guys didn't mention? Nope. A pretty important thing that happened after that fight. I mean, I'm not impressed by your performance. For me, it has to be him jumping, jumping, Dennis.

Now, this led to a great image. The image of him just airborne, looking like he's going to... The flight of the eagle. Super Mario Brothers Stomp, the Gumba that is Dylan Danes into Oblivion is amazing. It's hilarious. I'm glad that image exists. Let me for that. If I had to choose between this moment happening so that image could exist and this moment not happening,

I'm tilting comfortably in the direction of glad that it happened. But I was sad. Guys, I felt legitimately sad when this happened because it took away. I did take away from the moment. I'm glad we can look back in the fight now and almost like separate it and just talk about justified and how big that fight was. But man, in the moment, I was like, I was like, Habib, you. You did everything that you get to do in a feud, in a fighting feud. Horrible trash talk from Connor's side, probably a little bit of horrible trash talk from both sides, mostly Connor.

And the beauty of it is you get to fight him in the case. You get 25 minutes, and he got to use a lot of it to beat Connor up, so that was fun. You get to do it to prove your point, to prove might is right in this case, to literally shut this person up. and I feel like he's spoiled it by just doing that little extra thing at the end and but Dylan Dan is of all people who is such a pest I cannot stand Dylan Danis I cannot stand that this moment only made Dylan Danis more famous I think if this hadn't happened there's a small chance we're not having to deal with this guy anymore so that part of it is bad but yeah mostly the whole the thing that he of his own it's his own fault I understand

Connor's side says some terrible things. I'm sure Dan has said some terrible things. I understand. He is a fighter. He's a fighter not just professionally, but in life. And if he has the ability to, you know, I think we all wish at times that we had the ability to silence someone and possibly just teach them some respect in a physical way, as bad as that sounds, I wish Habib had been able to stop himself in this moment. I really do. I understand what happened. But to me, This was such a low point. And I think he's lucky he got off with a fat fine. And I think he got a year of suspension.

I know he fought, what, 13 months later? I think it was because of a year suspension or something like that. No, he functionally didn't get suspended. He was like, I'm not going to fight. His teammates did because they started following other people. But he was like, I'm just not going to fight if they don't. This suspension is garbage. I will not fight so long as they are suspended.

And suddenly those suspensions stop happening. But as well, yeah, and it's in a total. I just hated that moment so much. I still do. I can't look. As much as I cannot look back on this moment and laugh. I think it sucks. I think it is a mark in his career.

Not something that stops him from being considered, you know, top three, top five, however how you want to rank him. Doesn't hurt his pound for pound estimation in my eyes. But just like if we're talking about the Habib and Magamato story, this is one part of it that is so regrettable. So I am I am with you, AK. I'm picking this one for two reasons. One, it's, you know when Belaw Muhammad has a great performance, and then you're just like, don't do this and don't do that on the microphone,

and then he does exactly that, and you're like, oh, what the hell are you doing, man? Like, why would you do that? That's how I felt in this moment, because one of the things I kept saying throughout, even though this trash talk and promotion, all that stuff, Connor was crossing the line like crazy. He was doing things, and I know some people say like all fair, all is fair and love war and fight promotion. But I think there's certain lines you can't cross.

And I actually thought Habib, and I said this publicly many, many times, that Habib handled himself really well through all of it. Like he really did. And I was so impressed by that. Like Connor did everything he could to get under his skin. He was saying everything. He was bringing up old shit all the time and like stuff about his dad.

And we know about that relationship now especially. And just all these things. And I'm like, man, I was like, I could tell Habib just wants to, like, jump over the table and just kill this man. And he doesn't do it. And I'm just like, you know what? He deserves a round of applause for all of this. And then the fight ends and he throws the ball pieces of piss. And then I'm like, watching this all unfold.

I'm like, no, don't do it. Don't do it. Because you can tell he wants to. And then he does it. And I'm like, no. And it's just this whole thing. I'm like, oh, my God. And it's at a crazy moment, yes.

Did it get clicks for all the websites in the MMA community? did it maybe open up jobs for some people because of that night? Probably. Probably. However, it was just the following days after that where all of the people in my circle who I defended this sport for. And I said, listen, you've got to watch this. I'm like, it's not what you think it is.

Like, don't let all these people tell you it's trash that it's all of this. Like, I'm telling you, there's a beauty and an art to this sport. And like, it's like a Boston bar fight. in the 1990s and early 2000s where you have an issue, you throw some punches, you blow some punches, you bleed a little, and then you shake hands and hug

and you have a beer after. That's what the sport is all about. And then this happened. And the amount of people who hit me up and said, you are who we thought you were, was just, it just killed me, man.

It just killed me. It was just one of those things that I, it took forever. It took forever to get, to get people like back on board. Luckily, as bad as the pandemic was for the country, in a lot of respects and for local businesses and all of that, that was like a big moment for fight sports because people who I defended the sport towards and then were turned off by this whole moment suddenly started

watching, because there's nothing else to watch. And they're like, okay, I get it. So it took a long time for that bad taste to come out. But boy, it was a tough couple of weeks hearing from people saying, you're an asshole. I can't believe I just, I believed you. I believed you. I believe. in you. You made me believe in the sport. And then this dude jumps out of the cage and makes a mockery of everything. And they just didn't watch for another few years. So that's, that's why that it's that moment for me because of what it kind of did to me personally and having to defend, still have to defend the sport, even more so than I probably ever have in my life after that moment. So that's why it's that for me. I understand why other people are putting

it there. But this is a personal pick for me. look, those are great arguments. I'm going to tell you why you're both wrong, and there are a couple of reasons. First is, yes, not great. I'm not here to say it was great. The conversation at the time was all this bad stuff. Habib doesn't get, you know, his crowning moment. They don't even put the belt on his waist.

I think Dana said after he was afraid there would be an actual riot if they went and did it, walks him back. He has the belt in the post presser. Habib even acknowledges, yeah, maybe shouldn't have done that. My father's going to smash me, I believe, is his quotes. As his dad, when he did speak out, was extremely displeased with what occurred. But what you guys aren't factoring in, and I think it's the most important part of this whole thing. It's always okay to attack Dylan Dennis.

It's just never the wrong move to fly it. playing drop kick Dylan Danis. If you see him on the streets, absolutely okay, because it's Dylan Danis after all. I'm texting legal. I'm texting legal right now, by the way. I'm texting legal.

That's not legal advice. That's just, you know, throwing it at it's Dylan Danis. So I think that that brawl has actually aged shockingly well in some respects, both because Dylan Danis was sort of the piece to it. Because it's not like it became a, recurring thing in the space, I mean, it gets mentioned, but Connor wrote it off almost immediately,

which, you know, credit to Connor, I think that's probably a reasonable way to handle it. And, you know, there was that for about a year, that thing about the suspensions. And I think they held Habib's paycheck for a while, et cetera. But it feels like the correct end to me. And maybe that's just survivorship bias. It's the end we got. So it feels right. But I don't know. It would have been odd to put Habib on to do a speech after beating Connor. He's just going to run back to 205. Told you this man, chicken. He'd tap like chicken again.

I don't know what that is. Whereas this, like, there was real animosity here. Like, this was a real thing. And so this, even though it was this awful moment, it kind of was fitting for the thing. So didn't, wasn't going to be my answer. The answer I went to, uh, was Gleason Teebao just because that is always the fight that gets brought up. Oh, I'm ready to talk about this.

We should at some point address the T-Bow fight, and this felt like the way to do it. It's U.S.C. 148. This is the argument people have raised saying that Habib Nal McAmedaub is not undefeated. He lost the Glees and T-Bow. Officially 30-27s across the board for Habib. Teabal did not win around on the judge's scorecards, though I think M.A. decisions had most media members scoring it for T-Bow. So I wanted to bring this up to you guys.

Did you go, did you all re-watch the T-Bow fight? What are your thoughts on T-Bow? It sounds, AK, like you have many of them. Hashtag, not a robbery. Not a robbery at all. I agree. Show your work. I can't, it's always a bad thing to say, I guarantee this, that people, blah, blah,

I'm close to saying that I guarantee the majority of people who bring up this fight, either never watched it or have not watched it. it in years. I watched it once and weren't watched. A thousand percent they haven't watched it in years if they watched it the first time through. I happen to do a retro robbery review for this fight a few years ago. So people, if you, if you Google robbery, Habib, Tebow, thank you, Google, my article is the first thing that comes up. So not hard to find. It's a great website. It's a great website. MIFIFining.com. Retro Robbery Review, Habibu and Emmergamedov, policing Tebowl, UFC, 148. Tebowl gets a ton of credit because he

didn't get taken down. The other thing people bring up is that, oh, for 13, he didn't get taken down. And I cannot remind people enough. Impressive as hell. By the way, impressive as hell, T-Bow rules. He wasn't too much. He was a building. He was a building with arms.

Couldn't have taken him down with a bulldozer and a wrecking ball. Tebowl rules. That's an awesome achievement. But you don't get points for defense. It's not like he was punishing Habib off these takedown times. Unless Joe Rogan is judging. Rogan was very convinced. And then, and Goldie, I think, as well.

And then the fight, like, it's not like you can make a case that Tebow was like letting him up on the feet. Neither fighter, I think there's one round. Sorry, Tebow won 10 to 8 the first round. Other than that, they didn't let, there was no double-digit strikes in either round. It's a fascinating fight to watch. Tebow landed two good knees in that fight, and that's really the only actually effective offense.

He gets a take down. That does nothing. He gets a take down. That goes no way. ends in seconds. He should have gotten two takedowns. They didn't credit him for both of them. But yeah. It's a very good performance by Tebow. But by no means was, was it a clear win for Tebowau? This is not a robbery. I actually don't have a problem. People score for Tebowel, by the way. I'm not calling it in the media. It's a fair score. But this is not a, well, we have to put an asterisk next to Narago Meadows's name because he ran away with one here.

It's like it's pretty easy to score the fight for Habib as well. So yeah, I'm so tired of here. I know this isn't going to stop anything. And I think as we go on some other categories, there's some other Habib criticisms that I've grown tired of. But this is probably number one. Interesting fight to watch, not a blemish. Yeah. And particularly like the scoring at the time, too.

I remember watching this and being somewhat confused by how confident the commentary was that he was losing this fight. Not that he couldn't have been, but just like, especially in, you know, 2014 or whatever, 2012, sorry, not in 2014. There was a lot of premise he placed on being the aggressor and the guy who is pushing the pace of the fight, particularly when not much is happening. And that was certainly Habib the whole way through. So when I went back and rewatched it again for this one, I think 3027 is even a fair score. maybe 29, 28 might be a little more appropriate, but I don't think this is a robbery at all. If you wanted to score it for Tebow, it's also fine. But also in context, this is the part I wanted to make clear.

Tebow had like 34 career fights coming into this. And this was very much not Habib at even close to his peak. He's still 23 years old, just made his UFC debut a few months earlier. And his first three fights, really, the Abel Trujillo fight, it really started. to show a little bit more discipline. His first few fights in the UFC was, he was just and very much a work in progress. So this is always the fight I wanted to talk about here

because I don't believe that I think we should be impressed by his performance, his ability to win an ugly fight against a super impressive veteran who, again, was a building, like, jest. I mean, when the first thing Rogan says is, Gleason Tebow is the heaviest a man can get and still weigh 155 pounds two days before or whatever. It's like, yeah, that's probably mathematically accurate, because I don't know, he might have weighed 205 in the cage.

It was insane. So that's all for, I'm not impressed by your performance, unless you guys had anything else to offer in this category. Those are the two big ones, I feel. There's two foils in life, Glacentine T. Bow and Dylan Dennis. I mean, aren't we all foiled by Dylan Dennis, So, okay. Habee may have created the Dylan Dennis we have now.

Mike. If he created it, then I'm willing to say I'm not impressed by your performance. But I think he just is the only one of us who has gotten to double-flying stomp Dylan Dennis. And so really, he's a winner by any measure under that. I'm Nilai Patel, editor-in-chief The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. We've talked a lot about generative AI on the show lately, which is a very big idea that is causing quite a few problems. And one thing we keep hearing about over and over again is that

generative AI is causing a lot of problems in schools. There are a lot of people out there, including many of the listeners of this show who email us, who are worried about the obvious problem, students using chat GPT to cheat on assignments. But when our team went and poked at the story, they found that the issues and education with AI go a lot deeper, to the very philosophy of education itself. If this technology becomes more ubiquitous, we'll have courses, created by AI, graded by AI, with submissions from students, absolutely generated

by AI. So it begs the question, what are we even doing here in higher ed? This episode is presented by Salesforce. Support for this show comes from the audible original, the downloaded two, ghosts in the machine. The earth

only has a few days left. Roscoe Cudulian and the rest of the Phoenix colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprised his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the audible original blockbuster, The Downloaded. It's a thought-provoking sci-by journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking, What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love?

of the downloaded two ghosts in the machine available now only from audible next category the who the fuck is that guy award obviously connor mcgregor the namesake of this award i think there's a lot of room here um for for for play because habib 16 and o pre as ufc fight all his ufc bouts you know maybe you can make a few i got a number of dudes written down for various things I want to mention. And they're all pretty deep cuts. So Mike, I want to start with you on this one.

Who is your who the fuck is that guy award going to? Boy, I never thought I'd say this quote into a live microphone. But let's go back to Sumada FC3, ladies and gentlemen. He fights a man who is also undefeated by the name of Saeed Ahmed. He's undefeated because it's his first pro fight

against Habib Nirmagam Adolf. And Habib just wrecked. his ass. First finish using strikes in his career just beats the fuck out of this poor guy for two minutes and five seconds. And I know the show is full of these

but Sayyad Akhbed is one of those guys where I'd love to have a beer with him because that was the only mixed martial arts fight he ever had in his life was going two minutes and five seconds getting absolutely hammered on with fists by Habib Narmagam Adolf. And then he was like, you know what?

I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to to go be an electrician or a plumber or some other line of work. So, Saeed Ahmed, we salute you. Your one MMA fight was against maybe the greatest lightweight of all time. So congratulations, sir. I love that. I love those guys, the guys who, it's not for me. It's just not going to be for me.

AK, what about you? So I was, you know, I just did a glance at his opponents who have Wikipedia entries before, before the UFC and we landed on some pretty recognizable names at least one of them. There are a couple of them that are decent. Ali Bagov, I think people, you know, if you're a hardcore, I may fan, you're aware of him. You see a Welterweight champion? Has never fought outside of Russia. He's had his whole career over there.

He was 19. Dude, he's still like 32 or something. Yeah, and he's still active. There's two, the both the guys. And good. Both the guys on the, on the, who have Wikipedia entries before the UFC that fought Habib, are both still active. So Bagov was 19, Habib was 21.

the other guy, Eldar El Dorav, this is before the Bagov fight, Eldorov was 18 and Khabib was 20. And both these guys are still fighting. So really, who won the war? Is my question. We talk about,

we talk about Habib's greatness. Listen, Ali Bagov is still here. Habib, step up for that rematch. He's waiting for you. All right, he's still here. I had Eldar Eldorov in because he's the brave CF champion.

He's good. And the only dude he's ever lost to is Habib. Like, he's actually like a talented fighter. You did sell Wikipedia a little, bit short, Shabalat Shamaayev, which is one of the best names I've ever heard in my entire life, Belator. By the way, had a decent run in Belator. And I wanted to highlight a couple of those guys just because I think one of the big narratives, particularly as you start talking about, like, where he fits in the history of the sport or whatever is like 29 and 0 is great, but he just

beat a bunch of bums for those first 16. It's like, actually, no. Like, yeah, there are some total squash matches, and they're not defending all the match. But that is sort of a thing that happens. fought some fucking bombs. Let us be, let's be get straight here. I'm glad. The Syed Akhmet's shoutout was good. He fought some fucking bumps. His, I think his second last

UFC, a opponent before the UFC was O and O.N. Now, we don't know the circumstances, by the way. There could be situations. No, we know. We know the circumstances. No, the circumstances are pretty clear. In 2011, he fought seven times. Yeah. Like, 2011 was very clearly, I'm going

to fight whoever, as many, I'm going to rattle these off. And if I put up seven, you know, stoppage wins, the UFC's going to come calling. And it's exactly what happened. And so a lot of those are bombs, though. Shout out to Ari Marcel Santos. Not who's like particularly notable other than the man has 90 professional fights at this point. And 44 and 42 is his overall career record. He just, as of this recording, he just fighting. He fought this past weekend. Yep. He fought. Sorry, this episode's not going to go to later. I'm sorry. So when I say it this past weekend, I mean, he just fought on September 23rd of this year.

Yep. Of this year. His, if you go, if you dive into his resume, it's great because it's exactly the resume of a 44 and 42 fighter. He wins one, he loses one. He wins four. He loses four. It's just can't build any kind of real momentum. And it's great.

I love him so much. I hope the best for this 40-year-old man who's still competing. But yeah, like he had some bums in there. But he also fought like legit competition for a development. prospect at that point. And guys like Eldorov, Bagov, Shammalaev, that's all very quality. So I wanted to shout those out.

Two more, I'm sorry, three more notes I have in this one. One, if you go back and watch any of his early fights, you can find most of the stuff on YouTube. His fights in Sumata and Pencration Atrium are hilarious because they're not in a ring or a cage. A lot was made that he had never fought in a cage until his UFC debut. They didn't fight in a ring either. He just fought on a wrestling mat.

These pancreation fights are just on a mat and then they stop getting to the edge and they get back in. It's incredible. I love it so very, very much. Also, shout out to this Motta one because that happened on my birthday, Mike. So I noted that.

Wow. Two fighters. Oh, go ahead. I said two fighters I have on this who aren't on his Wikipedia page or even his tapology page. He had to get in deep. And that's what I did.

I went deep. Abderakman Maev. This man lost. One of the only guys who can ever say, I have a win over Habib. He beat Habib in a full contact fighting match in 2007. So Habib is, I think, 17 at that point in time. Full contact fighting has the video up on YouTube.

You can watch. He loses a decision. It's, you know, it is where it is. It's kind of like Samba. Later that year, Maev then makes his MMA debut where he loses to Rousal Bayramov, who is the man Habib beats in his MMA debut

later that same evening. So that dude beats the guy who beat Habib in full contact fighting and then loses to Habib later that night. So shouts to that. And then the other one, this guy, if you were deep into the Reddit, subredits, stuff like that,

probably have heard of him and is magamad ibrahim ibrahimov is the only man to ever beat habib in combat sambo um he won a judge's decision in 2005 at the russian nationals when habib was 17 uh maybe he was 16 uh abrigamov went on to a medal at the olympics in freestyle 2016 the 97 kilograms that's 213 pounds bronze medalist in the 2016 olympic game games. And you can go watch the video. It's up there. Some of the comments are incredible because he, Magramed looks like if there was ever a dude who's going to beat Habib, Magamette is a guy who looks like a dude who would just murder everyone around him. So shouts to Megamad, Ibrahimov. Ibrahimov. One of the only dudes who can credibly say

they beat Habibna and Megamadov. Wow. I'll just add that. That's are deep cuts fantastic stuff. Very deep. Damn. Man, 17 year old, Habib kind of sucked,

eh? It sounds like he lost like a man. He didn't get good until like a couple years later. Not until he was like 19, you know? Kind of suck. Is that mean Raul Roses Jr.

is about to go on a run? It means he is better than Habib at the same level. I'm going to go out and say that. I'm going to go ahead and say that if, if you watch some of these dudes, I'm not sure Raul Roses Jr. is beating an Olympic bronze medal.

The one one thing as much as I just crap talked some of these pre-UFC fights. One thing I'll note is the other one other nitpick that people have about Habes career is like, oh, he was fighting in two round decisions or like he was booked in two-round fights. I don't know how many of these fights were two-rounders.

Not that it matters, because I think one of them was a one-day tournament. So understandably. The atrium stuff's a one-day. Understandably, it's okay, he doesn't finish those guys. It's three, two-round decision wins. That's fine. It's all in one day.

And then other than that, That's the fight with Ellie Bagov, which is a two-round decision win. But most of the other fights, he finished anyway in the first round. So whether they were three-rounders, two-rounders, it doesn't really matter. But I do see that get brought up a few times. Yeah, the seven-win 2011 is all mostly cans, and he's just smashing them. Because the idea is to make a resume that the UFC says, got to take him, got to take a shot. And it worked.

And it worked. It worked. It worked super well. They mentioned it and his fight against Kamala Rousse. I will say this. Real quick before we wrap this up. I saw one name on the resume and I was like, huh, they actually fought. Maga Man, Maga Madoff.

And I was like, oh, yeah. So I went and just looked this dude. I'm like, that's not. It's not the same one. In fact, I, I'm going to say something that might be true, but it might not be true. There might be more fighters in the history of MMA named Maga Med, Maga, Maddof than any other name ever. If you go on topology and you Google Magamad Magamatov, there's probably 95 fighters

who have that name that have competed in MMA and have actual topology pages. It's a, there's like 400 names that come up. And if you scroll down, there are so many Magamad Maga Mad Maga Madafts that like never got to pro losing records, some winning records. It might be the most names of one. like most one name of of a fighter in the history of the NMA so something if you're bored

very true I tried to confirm this and kid could not because you know not like got a great quality video from 2007 or whatever I think that this Magrama Magamatov is a dude that he also beat in a combat Sambo

match that I saw found video of I think they're the same but I'm not 100% sure because fairly common name it would appear particularly in that part of the world. Next category. The Randolplex Award.

This is for the best career highlight. This was an incredibly difficult category because Habib doesn't have a lot of like single moments that stand out like the Randolplex, like the H-bomb, things like that. They were just demolitions over time. So I'll be interested to see how y'all took this. But I just used this as an opportunity to talk about a fight that otherwise wouldn't really get to. talked about, I don't think. And it's the Tiago Tavares, his first TKO finish in the UFC, first round finish. Love this fight for a lot of reasons.

But the thing I wanted to note is going back and watching it. And it's, man, I don't know what Tiago Tavares did to Dan Merglietta, but I hope he apologized after because Tan Dan lets Habib just brain this dude. drops him with the shot and then he's following up with hammer fist Tiago like tries to roll up uh you know with an underhook and Habib just lays some of the meanest elbows directly into the side of his head repeatedly I'm like Dan you could stop it Dan you could stop it Dan stop it Dan stop it Dan please stop it and he finally jumps in the save so uh one of the meanest things I've ever seen in Habib's career and that's why I put it

in this particular spot But I'll be very interested to see what y'all found for this. I think, well, I'm just, I forgot about this. Tavares tested positive for, he did. He did. He did. And I think Dan Mergliata could sense that. I think like a drug-sniffing dog.

I think he could smell that there was something out with T. Your physique is too, too cut right now. He could just tell. And he's like, take that cheater. He's like, you know what? I know you can take it because you're on drugs. So take that. Except for this also.

was in Brazil, so maybe he also just really wanted the Brazilian crowd to be sad. Who could say? I did the same thing. I also just kind of went to a fight that we might not get to talk about. And maybe this would have fit better under the statistical category. But I'm going to applaud him taking a Belcherio down a record 21 times. Not an incredibly enjoyable fun to watch. It's not like there's a lot of authoritative takedowns in there. A lot of him just dragging a clearly demoralized. By the end, he's- It is fun to watch those.

He takes a bunch of dominant positions. Especially since Trujillo later ended up getting involved in some pretty heinous charges against him. So you can really celebrate it that way. It's very fun to watch him being beaten down. But yeah, by the end, he's kind of patting his stats. It's kind of like he's kind of tapping at offensive boards, you know what I mean, off the glass, off the rim and getting his stats that way because Trujillo's getting up and just very, and then very, very weakly getting taken down again. So I think he gets like six,

he got like six or seven take down. It's a lot of math returns. In the last like two minutes of the fight, he's just taking him down over and over again. But yes, enjoyable. And a record that is pretty hard to beat, probably, I mean, usually if you get someone down, you want to keep them down. So yeah, it's kind of a quirky thing to watch. And I highly recommend it because Bill Trujillo is a piece of crap. So there you go. I'm going to step over the stats category just briefly since we're already talking about it and I have more stats and different things that 21 takedowns most takedowns in a fight that's the same number of takedowns that olympic silver medalist yo-o romero landed his in his entire ufc career that is a mere three

takedowns behind henry sohudo olympic gold medalist has landed in his entire ufc career he did it in one fight i mean i'll add to that since that was going to be this fight was was very important. Habib almost landed as many takedowns as strikes landed in this fight, by the way. Man, he's doing that a lot these days, huh? And he almost doubled up Abel Trujillo strike numbers. Abil Trujillo...

I believe that. 11 strikes. Habib landed 21 takedowns. That's awesome. Habib landed 23 strikes. So he had 21 takedowns and 23 strikes landed in that Trujillo win. And he had 21 takedowns. Abel Trujillo landed 11.

11 strikes. And oddly enough, Trujillo actually landed a takedown in that fight as well. They did. He landed the first takedown. Yep. And also,

because you brought that up, Mike, this is a great time. This is one of the various notes I have that I don't have anywhere to put. Shouts to Habib's bottom game. Never gets the credit he deserves for it, but because it never happened.

But like every time someone ever found success there, he was immediately being like, actually, I'm really freaking good at this as well. So you just, just don't grapple with me. Just simply don't do it. It's terrible because he immediately, like, is threatening and nearly gets a triangle at the end of that round. Like, he, there's a great performance. So don't mind you sticking it here in the Randolphex, okay.

Mike, what about you? This was the, this is, honestly, this might have been the easiest pick of all. It's him knocking Connor down. Like, that is the only answer to this question. It's a great argument. I just didn't want to double up. But yeah, it's a great argument. That is the highlight.

When people think about Habib, the first thing they think about is him punching Connor McGregor to the floor. I do also think the hip toss on RDA because that was. That's a good one too. Breath taking. Yeah, the all-time highlight, the Baba O'Reilly moment is Habib knocking Connor down. So it's got to be that. I like it.

What's great also about that highlight, and I noticed that this time around of my watch show in his career, is you see him throw that same right hand against other people. It's that same sort of like shifting dip where it kind of looks like he's ducking for a faint, and then the hand kind of just wings over out of nowhere. That is the thing I point to the most when people, when I say things like, yeah, actually, Habib's one of the best athletes who probably ever competed in MMA and nobody really recognized it or gives him credit for that. It's like, yeah, do you see how fast that came? Like, that's, that people can't do that.

And that's, that's who he is. So, yeah, I love that. It's great highlight choice. Great Randall Plex. Next category, the right leg hospital, left leg cemetery ward. This is my favorite category this week, because it's the best quote by or about the fighter. And I have never had so many for a single fighter than this. I have roughly a billion.

and we've already mentioned one of the big ones, which is Irish only 6 million, Russia 150 million. I want to fight with your chicken. Number one easy fight in lightweight division. It's a great quote. We don't have to rehash that,

but I'm having fun with it. So there we go. I want to know where you guys settled on this, and then I'll just fire through a bunch of these. We've touched on a few of them. But Mike, let's go to you. What do you have as the best quote of or by? Habibh,

I mean, there's a million. I mean, send location is a good one. Send me location. Great one. I love, I just love this one because this is,

I mean, this is quintessential pro wrestling at its best. Because Habib, taking a shot at somebody else, but not being like completely disrespectful, but then using this one sentence to put over somebody else in a big way. and is where is Connor? He wants to fight with the bus.

I want to fight with the real gangster. Ia Quinta, thank you so much. Like that is Habib, he just buries Connor, but is not a dick about it, and then props up Iaquinta in such a nice way. And I'm just going with that. Like, where is Connor? He wants to fight with the bus.

I want to fight a real gangster. Iaquita, thank you so much. Like, it's just everything that just encapsulates Habib, the personality all in the one quote. Love it. A.K., what about you? I mean, said location, well, I mean, just inventing smash is probably, which has now been, you know, jacked by Kamza Shemayev and, you know, any other fighters.

Look, if you're going to steal, steal from the best. You know? The best. It's great. It's great. So I went with a quote about him, because you're right. There was so many by Habib to choose. And I don't know if I'm picking this like just for the laughs and also just to make a point.

but the the tiramisu you know the tony ferguson tiramisu thing if you want an example i didn't have this that's incredible if you want an example of people just clinging on to the smallest thing not even something of substance it was it was we saw we saw we saw we saw hobib eating a tiramisu on an episode of embedded tony ferguson picks up on i don't think he's the only i think fans also picked up on it as well so it's not like tony ferguson like had to just like force this i think fans i think it did organically go out there. People going like, whoa, like he missed weight, but this episode showed it.

Or sorry, I had trouble making weight. This was like one of the fights fell out because Habib had weight cut problems, right? Is this not a thing? Am I making this? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't remember which one, but yeah.

And then it became inextricably tied with this tiramisu clip with this quote. Tony brought up in the M.A. hour and other interviews constantly brought up. And for the longest time, you just could not mention Habibu. without, you know, someone putting just tweet Tirmusu in the replies, Tirmusu in the comments. It's not, you're right, it's not even good.

It's not clever. It's drawing a direct line between that and the weight miss. Frankly, it's pretty tenuous. Like, there's a lot of reasons fighters miss weight. I think people would be surprised. Probably not that Tirmisu. I think they'll be surprised how little it has to do with what they were eating like a week before. Diet is important, for sure, for sure.

There's fighters who we can always joke about like, well, I mean, oh, look what they're eating on their Instagram all the time. It happens. But for Habib, missing weight is bad. I don't think it had to do with Tirmusu. And yet it haunted him for years. Haunted conversations about Khabi for years. I think. Tony's still playing that hit too, baby.

He'll still bring it up. It's not even, it's not fun to say. There's nothing interesting about it. But boy, did it linger? And like you said, I think it's mostly, even though Tony brings it up, the fans have mostly forgotten it with the way Khabib's career went, again, now being maybe the greatest fighter of all time. But it had a long shelf life.

That's a great one. I didn't even have that listed. So fantastic. I'm going to run you down a bunch of my honorable mentions. And then I had a pretty one that was my top. I already did the 205 stuff. But I'm going to smash your boy. I love that from him to Dana.

Send me location iconic. You mentioned it earlier, AK, but during the Conner fight while just beating the bejesus out of him. Let's talk now. Now we talk. And then Connor's like, man, it's only business. Like, you could chill out is sensational. The Michael Johnson, I need to fight for the title.

You know, I deserve this. I love the poise. I mentioned what he said in the first round. There's no space. In the second round, he comes back to his corner, and the vibe has changed. And he says, I can't get him the fuck off of me. And his coaches are like, hey, now they shift from doing the tactical stuff after round one to, hey, you got to fight real hard

and trying to gin up his spirits because they know where we're at. A very small one that I loved. There's a clip of him out there training, grappling with Luke Rockhold, and he's got Rockhold pinned to the mat, and Luke cannot get out of it. And they are deeply in a training session, sweating.

And Luke's sitting there telling him, hey, don't get too comfortable while he's trying to work. And Habib, while grappling Luke Rockhold middleweight, just goes, I just miss you. I hug you, brother. And it's just the funniest thing in the world to me as he is stonewalling Luke Rockhold, the sensational grappler in his own right. But one from Robert Whitaker that always stuck with me.

This was at the time when Whitaker was talking about Israel Dissania before Izzy, before he fought Izzy. And he sort of goes off on a tangent and then is like, yeah, if Izzy keeps fighting, he's going to lose. Everybody loses his MMA, except Tabib. That dude's incredible. It's just like hearing other people talk about him. There are a bunch of great articles out there with quotes about Habib are the wonderful Sheen al-Shadi when he was at a much less good website. The Athletic had a few of them up.

Go read those if you want to go to a not great website. But the number one quote, it's the one, I use it in my daily life, so it had to be it. This is number one bullshit. It's just an unbelievable line that he drops. And then like sort of goes back to it's like he's mad about the whole Connor thing. This is number one bullshit. And I use it. I use it weekly at some point that I'm just upset about that's number one bullshit.

And people who aren't in the MMA game and hear me like my friends now know this. I'm like, oh yeah, sorry. That's my MMA life creeping into my real life because it's just an unbelievably great line. So had to be my number one quote because anything else would be number one bullshit. Are Habib, Connor, and the Diaz brothers the most influential, as far as quotes go, quotes memes, the most influential, you can't put anyone above them, right? It has to be, because, I mean, the Diaz brothers have, don't be scared, homie, we throwing spinning shit now, you've taken everything I've worked for. Yeah, the Diaz brothers collectively are number one, I would say, and then Connor is probably number two. Habib is right there.

He was right. You could maybe put him, I mean, put him in that, like, easily. The send location, the smash, the number one bullshit. Like, people tweet this tweet, like other fighters tweet and use these as replies and response. Still use it all the time. All the time. It has to be those three. I'm trying to, those three, yeah, at four, four people.

Because I can't, I can't think. I mean, Shale had several lines. But not that it repeated, not that, like, so many repeated by other fighters. He doesn't have catchphrases in that sort of iconic way. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. Mims, catchphrases. I don't think anyone has more catchphrases than Habib really.

because and that's part of the broken English and sort of thing. Yeah. I mean, that's why I loved this category so much for him. And I didn't realize it was just like, man, there's so many good quotes. I left a bunch of quotes about him that other,

because hearing the way his training partners talk about him is all just, just unbelievable stuff. So it's great. I love this category so much. I also love, I also love, Habee was just like, and he was like dead serious too.

He was asked like, You know, how much time would you need for a fight like that? And he goes, give me 30 minutes rest, little drink of water. Yeah, be fine. Maybe 30 minutes and I'll fight anybody. And you like genuinely believed him. Yeah, which is insane. If you, if you haven't read it, uh, go read Chehine's article on Habib, the street fighter.

I don't remember what it's called. Uh, I might have it pulled up right now. Uh, it's legit inside Habib Namburgumato of Street Fighting Past. It's on the athletic, not a great website. where Habib just talks to or Shaheen goes and speaks with the guys at AKA, speaks to Javier Mendez, Habib, Islam, the whole crew about his sort of origins in Dagestan and where this all comes from. And this came after the Tony Ferguson press conference where Tony Ferguson, I don't remember

which event this was to maybe this was 23, I guess, that presser. And Tony's like, Habib's never been in a real. street fight. I'm a real gangster and Habib gets very upset about it. And then that prompted she to do this. It's like, yeah. So he's been street fighting to do seven years old. He just does it. The whole bunch has been doing it. It's like it's really interesting look. And so yeah, of course he just needs 30 minutes. Yeah, just take a breather. I got to go fight this other dude in the street because I've been doing this since I was seven. I love this man so much. I'm so happy we're doing this damn on him.

next category the i don't have a name for this yet and that's that's disappointing i'm sorry i dropped the ball we're rebranding a previous award i wanted to get it a little more narrowed down because it it sprawled a bit too much uh the essence of this ward whenever i figure out a name for it is going to be if you could change one thing about the fighter what would it be you're nitpicking whatever the one thing that you could make a change what would it be for me, I think there's an obvious answer and I said, I don't care about that obvious answer I don't want it.

Because I got an answer that speaks to my heart, boys. And it's this. It's the walkout music. Because I don't have any issues with his fighting style, blowing weight. None of that. This walkout song is Dagestan by Sabina,

and I get it. It's like it means something to him. But if there is a flaw in Habib's game, it's that he doesn't have an iconic walkout. There's not a thing that says, Habib is fighting. I'm here to get. get amped. I needed it. And I tried really hard to think what it would be. I was going to say,

what would you, like, can you imagine coming out to like, this is how we do it by Montel Jordan or something like that? Can you know? Absolutely. Can you imagine? So, AK, I, uh, I didn't go there, but I'm interested to see how you think because I spent an insane amount of time trying to figure out find the perfect one. And this is a little bit hokey. It's a little bit hokey. It's a lot. little bit hokey, but as I thought more about it, it feels like it would be perfect for me. I can't speak for anybody else, and I bet Habib wouldn't enjoy it. It's Steve Miller band. It's fly like an eagle.

Look, it's hokey because of the eagle thing, but you can just hear that music drop and it sort of contrasts his brutal smashing style with the sort of dulcet tones. I mean, you could do, if you don't want to do Steve Miller ban, you could do the seal version of it from Space Jam. And I feel like if he had just done that like three times, I'd have been in. I would have been so sold. Nobody else is doing it. It's tangentially attached to him.

That's the walkout I wanted for Habib. It's the only thing I would change about his entire career. That's amazing. DJ, Mike, do you have a suggestion, like off the top of your dome? Oh, God. I mean, we could do this forever now. Like, once you put out, this is how he do it, like watching the club beep come out, this is how we do it. That would be incredible.

It would be the best. It would really be the best. I mean, I would love that. I just don't. I think you could sell him on Steve Miller band, but I'm not sure you could sell him on top. Habib walking out to anything by two live crew would just be the fun of the whole world. I mean, there's just so much.

God, this is a fun. This is a great draft. The Habib Walkout music. Put a pin in it. It's the best of beep walkout songs. Ted, put a pin in it. This is it.

We got another podcast. Spin off podcast. Got it. Yeah. Spen up. Making a note. Making a note. Mike, what do you have for this category?

This unnamed category. So if we're, I mean, nitpicky, I mean, we could talk about the finishes and all that stuff, or the lack of finishes early in his career, especially in the UFC as he was building his way up. I'm going to blame him almost exclusively for UFC 209 being a stinky pay-per-view. Because had he made weight. and got the Tony Ferguson fight, we wouldn't have ended the night with just a bad,

bad, bad, bad, bad title fight between Tyrone Woodley and Stephen Thompson, which people, this is like the lingering thing when it comes to that fight, even though their first fight was great, the second fight sucked. The co-main event for UFC 209.

Their second fight is so bad that people forget that their first fight, one fight of the night. Yeah, it was one of the fights of the year. People do not. the year. People do not remember that their first fight was just like really captivating back and forth battle.

They just think of the rematch and how awful it was. Do you remember what the co-main event was for UFC 209? This is definitely a Jose question. No, I don't have any idea. Because this fight didn't happen. Was this Overeem? No. That was the first fight in the main card.

It was David Tamer versus Landovin. Nata. That was the co-main event for UFC 209. That's not even a main card fight on a pay-per-view. That is a... And I'm like David Tamer. I was just looking up right now, like, or not before we started in the show, like, what happened to David Tamer? Because he hasn't fought since like 2019. Now I'm a little...

Now I guess I should look it up. The universe is telling me to find David and his brother and Daniel Tamer figure out we're there. The main card also featured Daniel Kelly versus Rashad Evans. And this is... Going down the drain, Rashad Evans. And then we got Cynthia Calvio versus Amanda Bobby Cooper. Main card. Paper.

Okay, this is. 209's main card. That's the paper. And this is after 208. This is after 208. Habib heard us with that one. That's a great. That's a great call.

I mean, I still want the walkout song over this, but you make a compelling argument, Mike, for sure. A.K., what about you? I'll be the stick in the mud. This is the category where A.K. gets super woke, puts on his SJW cap. Oh, you're getting woke. I love this. I thought it was just going to be making freaking weight.

No, I don't want to dig into this. But, you know, he's got a pretty strong association with the Chechen dictator slash work criminal Ramzan Kadirov. But guess what? So does the entire UFC. Because Dana White and the company has invited Kadirov to sit ring-sided events. Again, I don't want to do Dr. D people. Google his name.

Google Kadearov, war crimes, atrocities, terrible human being. Yes, I understand. There's going to people out there who are going to say every major nation is committed war crime. And you're right. It's horrible. But he- More crimes are bad. More crimes are bad.

We can state this officially the damn podcast. Yeah. Not pro-war crime. Anti-war crime podcast. All you anarchists out there, I am with you. I'm with you. Kadeirov is not the only, you know, bad guy out there in power. They're everywhere.

They're everywhere. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. I understand. But just because Khabi is really tied to him, been a lot of PR images. And I understand the circumstances. You, you know, you live in a certain region.

You're around certain people. These things happen that doesn't excuse them. At the same time, it also doesn't fully condemn you. But it's just something, again, this is why it's a nitpick. I'm not saying this is something that makes me change my entire opinion of Habib as a person, as a fighter. And I think at least in, I want to say the last couple of years, we haven't seen him with Kadirov. So double thumbs up. being buddies. Good job, Khabib, there now, no longer being friends with this guy. But yeah,

again, I brought this up on other shows with other fighters about outside of the cage stuff. So it's only fair. It's only fair I bring up with Khabi. But really, I do mean nitpick. If we're just talking about his career, then I really don't have a lot to say other than wishing he'd come out to Montel Jordan. I'm proud of you for that one. I knew you would do it. I will say in his very slight defense before we move off this, I remember speaking with Kareem Zadon, a friend of mine. one of the best reporters in the industry asking him this question. There's no one who knows this topic better.

And him, you know, saying something similar, not giving Habib a pass, but also acknowledging that there aren't really a ton of options for Habib. Habib maybe was really the first fighter who his own personal fame ascended to such a level that he could speak out against Kadirov at various points and probably wouldn't, you know, face any sort of backlash. but we're talking about a brutal regime that really limits your ability to disassociate with it in that way. And Habib was largely disassociated from it. You know, even at the peak, he wasn't a guy like Hamza Tchamayev who actively pursues this sort of relationship.

And in later years, we did see them sort of separate as Kadirov got a little upset with Habib. I think there are other, like, points of that to cause an issue to take issue with. Habib's, you know, maybe doesn't have the best stance on a few topics politically that I would be very much against him. But he was very, very cautious about kind of sharing too much of that side of himself. I think wisely for his stardom prospect. Yeah, I don't want to know. Fighters, fighters and athletes.

I don't know. Say less. I am happy to bury my head in the sand. You have no idea when it comes to do. Say less. Yes. We'll all be happier for it. Don't want to know.

Don't want to know. Okay, next category. We're in the fun. We're in the fun zone now. All fun categories to close her out. And one of my personal favorites. One of the best ideas I've ever had. The fade or sweater of absolute victory for the piece of memorabilia you would want from this fighter.

And I got to say, there's one obvious one. I'm just going to put it out there because we're all going to have it on a list somewhere in there. It's the papaca. It's the hat. The wig, as Joe Rogan once famously called it. I'm going to be honest, not what I chose. I made a note of it because it was necessary, not the piece of memorabilia I want from Abib. I have two that I've decided on, but do either of you have something you're particularly inspired by?

Did you just go with the papaca? What are we feeling here? I mean, this was, this was actually the second easiest one. It's the M.A. Fighting T-shirt. It's the M.A. Fighting T-shirt. Great ones. That's great website. It's a great website.

Great shirt. Great website. It's a no-brainer. It's the, I believe he has probably about a hundred of them, but there's one he wears very proudly in some of his best moments. It's the MMA fighting t-shirt. Done. That's a Mike, that's fantastic.

Do you have an MMA fighting t-shirt? No, because a B has a ball. I say you're one of the people who doesn't have one. My kid, my wife and my kid both have M-A-fighting t-shirt. t-shirts. I don't. I don't because Habib has all the large. I was going to say, that's why you pick this. You don't even care that it's Habib, you just want one. Just want a shirt. Yeah. I just want it. It's both. It's both. But I want, I just, Habib, I just want one. Just give me one. I also have a shirt on my list. And so I'll use this as an opportunity to go into it. It is,

it's actually a shirt that I own, not this specific one, but I own a copy of it. It is the, if Sambo is easy, it would be called Jiu-Jitsu shirt that he wore against, uh, against, uh, at the ceremonial wayans for his fight against Tiago Tavares in Brazil. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the moment I knew I loved this man when he went to Brazil. Because, you know, it was only his like third fight or whatever in the organization. He hadn't shown a ton of personality. But he's got the hat. He's got the battle message across his chest.

The Brazilian crowd is very upset. And then he just ethers, Tiago Tavares. That was when I was like, this man, this man has some. something for me. So if you can give me that specific shirt, that's probably my answer. And I have one more answer. But, AK, what about you? I'm sticking with the papaca. It's, it's classic. It's classic. It's distinct. Yeah. Other, you know, fighters have worn something similar. I don't want to say they're all papacas. I'm not a papacist expert. But I mean, he led the charge. He led the charge. There's no Shavkat Rakhanov and the Wolfhead hat without, you know, that just doesn't happen. There's a great picture with him and

and Joe Rogan, that young fan, a mini-habib. You know, she had a whole gimmick built around it. Yeah, that endeared him to the fans as well. I think seeing a young fan kind of, kind of, you know, take on that mantle. So that was a just as an aside, I feel so bad for that girl, if only because Hasbullah came along. And now when you Google mini-habib, Hasbla's name actually comes up at the top. Yeah.

Or is an infringement. She's in there. It's like her Instagram is right at the top. But then above that is like, it's like, this is like, were you looking for Hasbullah? This is Hasbullah. And I'm like, wow, that's not. I didn't know. He doesn't even look like Habib.

He's not Mini Habib. That doesn't make any sense. Like, I think, I think articles just started referring to him as mini Habib. And so now she kind of lost that. I think she's moved on with her life, which is good. You know, it's a fun. Which is good. It's probably a fun thing to do to be a fan.

She's probably in, you know, university now, live in her life. Hopefully not watching MMA anymore, but who knows. But yeah, that's just one. One funny thing. Hopefully not watching. He blessed her. He blessed her with the Papaka and it gave her a fun run for a while. And then Howseville came along and just spoiled the whole thing.

What a moment in time. Okay, my last one. This is the one that I actually probably want the most, but is the least possible to get. And I put this here. I almost saved this for the Mount Rushmore. But I decided this was the place to talk about it because it needs to be mentioned in the career of Habib, No. of.

I want the bear. I want the bear that he, what is that bear doing these days? The bear he wrestled as a child in Russia. Bears live a real long time. It's probably still out there. And if it's not, give me a bear skin rug of that wonderful creature. I don't think we talk enough about how absolutely insane that part of Habib's, like, legacy is that he was just, hey, here's this YouTube video of this kid wrestling a bear and then like five years later or whatever it's like actually this dude's a really good

fighter and then five years after that actually he's the ufc lightweight champion of the world what an insane thing to have happened it's like horay moshfadol in the boatyard fights of kimbo becoming the ufc store hooray moshfadol it's nuts do you do would you still want it if the bear was dead do you want a nice little rug for your yeah fireplace yeah i could use i could use a fireplace rug but I don't want us to kill the bear if he's not dead. I'm just, I think there's a, he was a,

so he was a, he was a kid in that video, right? And the bear was, he was apparently seven or eight. Okay, the bear was also a baby. It was also a young bear. I'm just reading,

I googled quickly. Is the bear 30 years old? That is like, that is like the maximum lifespan they say for a bear. Like 30 would be considered extreme. I think I, but he's living on that, he's living in Dagestan.

He's got that good air, that good, the clean diet. You hear them all talk about it. He's probably a, Okay, the bears are... I don't want to be a downer. I would guess the bear's dead.

I think the bear's around and he's living a great life. And look, I, you know, bears nothing but a big dog. I would love to have the bear. It would be great. At the bear bar, that bear has never paid for a beer. They all buy him beers.

He's telling the story about wrestling Habib and that wrestling match aged quite well. I mean, he... Look, Habib comported himself well, but he wasn't winning. I would say he did not. not win. The bear 1-0 on Habib Narmig Mettov. Only other dude who can say that we already discussed in this show. So, boom. By the way, my best friend, that was an amazing tongue twister.

How many, how many bears, how many beers does the Khabib bear get at the beer at the bear? At the bear beer bar. The bear beer bar. You didn't even stutter. I couldn't even do it. And I was like thinking about it. You just rift it and no no stutter at all. That was impressed. The Boston accent, man. Oh, don't add that in. Sometimes it plays out. That was amazing. Fantastic. Boarding for flight 246 to Toronto is delayed 50 minutes. Ugh, what?

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Because this category is called the Habib Tony Award for the fight that didn't happen. that you wanted to see. The answer is Tony Ferguson. This is like, I think, the second time I've ever had a category that was named be like, hey, here's the fighter we're talking about, and they already have a category. Yeah, Fator. Yeah, but the Fader was the first one. I think the other ones were retroactively named after a fighter or whatever.

It's got to be Tony Ferguson. There are other honorable mentions to throw out there, and AK, I know you've got a few you want to mention, but Tony Ferguson, this is the fight in the history of M.A. that didn't happen that needed to have happened. If you, if you ever want an example of the chaos and beauty of M.A. guys, we never got Tony versus Kovieb. But you know where we are getting, Tony Ferguson versus Patty Pimblatt. I mean, what, in what world, and even as someone who's an advocate, a strong advocate for this fight, in what world is this fair? In what world is this right? I don't remember, if you did earlier on the show yet because I'm not going to but did you break down all the

near misses we had with it was we did not it was booked uh four times uh-huh what went what were there was like illness illness of course the infamous cable so both of them ended up pulling out twice uh so there there's the cable the infamous infamous cable injury uh Habib could not he made weight or whatever or like I think I don't remember if he made weight or if they pulled him before he weighed in, but it was a failed weight cut from Habib in that instance. Teramisu. Yeah, Tiermusu. Coronavirus was the last one.

So that was the big one. The COVID at 249 they were booked. And then a few months later, he ended up fighting Gece. But the COVID thing happened. COVID was when I gave up when that was the third, the fourth time it was booked. And it's like, well, the universe doesn't want this to happen because, A global pandemic occurred to intervene. And one more, Ferguson got injured a second time, I think, on one of them.

So actually, I think he was four five times. What was that, Mike? The Darryl Horcher fight? That was one of them, right? Yeah, the Darryl Orchor fight was Ferguson. No, yeah, that's the other one. Habib blew weight. Habib, like, hurt himself.

Ferguson hurt himself. Ferguson hurt himself. and then the pandemic was booked five times and, you know, six time was just not necessary. We ultimately decided. Horcher would have been the closest one because that was where the argument was Tony needed like an extra week or whatever. And Habib was like, no, I haven't fought in two years. I want to fight. And Tony was like, give me a month.

He's like, no, I want to fight. And then that was that whole thing. So five times booked, five times failed. I still can't believe they never tried. they booked them against different opponents on the same card and then switch it up on fight next. I mean, it would have been perfect. I think they could have fooled the, I think there's a blind spot in the NBA gods, you know, whatever radar.

And I think they could have slipped through, but. Yeah, the classic UFC 279 maneuver. You intentionally missbook the card so then when shenanigans happen, you can shuffle the deck and we get what we all wanted. Yeah. So easy answer. I do think there needs to be an honorable mention here for George St. Pierre just because that was the big talk after the retirement.

Well, you know, GSP really wants it. The whole plan had initially been he's going to fight Tony Ferguson. He's going to defend the belt a couple of times. He's going to get to 30 and O with a win over GSP and then retire. And that's where we ended up. And then there were a number of dudes that he got booked against that didn't happen. Or at least was T's. Nate Diaz famously refused to fight one time.

Gilbert Melendez, I think, got booked, Donald Seroni, Max Holloway, the infamous Max Holloway at USC 223, when Max was supposed to step in for Tony, and then Max, they didn't let Max cut the weight or whatever, so we got the ally Quintafite. And then the other big one on my list, Mike mentioned it previously. Habib was the leverage tool to get Connor to,

fight Eddie Alvarez. That fight, he was signed a contract to fight Eddie Alvarez, and then Connor was like, I guess I'll take it. So a lot of, honestly, a lot of fights that would have been, I don't know, fun. I think Habib would have run over everybody here, including Max, even though maybe Max would have been at least somewhat competitive for stages of it, but just a lot of fights that could have been with Habib. Can I ask you guys? And I know, Mike, this wasn't number one in your Mount Rushmore, but if you had to sacrifice Habib Connor for Habib Tony, would you do it? Boy, that's tough, man.

That's a really good question. It depends on what lends you look at it, right? Because Habib Tony would have been big, but nowhere near as big as this fight. Like this would have tripled up at minimum what Habib Tony would have done. So no, I'll say no. I think I think I'll say yes.

but that's with the major caveat being that at the time I definitely wouldn't have said yes at the time I would have absolutely said no because I had been such a stickler for I think Habib Conner is the biggest fight in the history of the sport and I want to see something of that like station but I think Habib Tony at the peak of their powers and they're both on the 12-0 wind streak even though I feel and I felt at the time still still do I think Habib just murders him. I think that fight would have aged in a way that is more important than Habib Connor.

Habib Conner is going to be the biggest fight probably forever. It, you know, maybe someone will catch it eventually. But for many, many years, that will be the biggest fight of all time. I think Habib Tony won't hit to those heights monetarily or, you know, in notoriety. But that fight will age or would have aged like Fador Crocop, you know, like one of the those here are the two absolute best dudes in the world guys who impossibly put together 12 fight winning streaks at lightweight the best division in the sport just something like that can never happen again so even though i think i know what would have happened i think that that's enough for me

to say with with the benefit of hindsight i'd take the trade oh wow okay uh and also this is something that you know you've you've talked about a lot jed that you felt that if this fight ever happened hubbib would absolutely annihilate tony kill him and You know, I was willing to listen to that argument for a hot minute. And then because of this show and going back and watching Habib fights, I have to say, you're absolutely right. He would have. Oh, yeah.

It was never of close. I mean, that fight would not have been even competitive, I don't think. Would Tony have done fun things and at least gotten out of there and been, you know, somewhat over because he tried to do fun, chaotic things and it just didn't work? but that was a horrific stylistic matcher for him. And yeah, we got the benefit of high side with the losing streak. And obviously, Justin Gaichi took a big part of him. But like, I almost thought about this for the sliding doors moment after watching all this tape.

Is that like, what if that fight did happen and Habib did just wreck him? Like, where would Tony's career have gone if they actually fought? Because I don't think we'd be looking at him in the same way. We wouldn't be looking at this Patty Pimlet thought. in the same light because we saw Tony get mauled by Habib in the primes of their career. It just would have been the totally different path of his career had that fight happened when it was supposed to happen. So it's a very interesting conversation.

Like I think just because we needed to see it and it was put in front of us so many times, it's very important missed opportunity. But I don't think Tony's careers looked at in the same way if this fight happens in 2016. So that's a great point I hadn't thought of When you started talking I was like honestly I mean we all think of

Habib's career as this really really Really incredible thing But if he goes out there And because there were a lot of people who disagreed Who thought Tony Ferguson was the dude A lot of Tony Ferguson supporters And I get it But you know

If he goes out in Benile Daryusha's Tony Which I think is the Far more likely outcome Is that that fight just looks like Benny Derry Ushuttony And it's just really bad for Tony the whole way. The conversation is maybe even more glowing because instead of him having not faced the one guy, then it's well, that was supposed to be the dude and Habib, Habib dunked on him.

Like it wasn't, it wasn't like a competitive back and forth. He just dunked on him. And so then maybe that, maybe the conversation is even more so like, holy shit, we've really just never seen a guy like this, which I think is what Habib deserves and maybe doesn't totally get. So, uh, yeah, great point. I'm good. glad you've come around to the Tony Ferguson never had anything to offer, Habib, other than his own blood. Next, uh, next Shaheen Al Shadi. I don't know if he's ever come around, uh, Jed, you might need to.

I think most people came around, uh, after watching Chuckie Olives and Binnie Dary used take Tony down at will. Probably. And Tony couldn't do shit off his back. So it's like, uh, okay. Let me, let me throw out the performing move on, the honorable mention of Gregor Gillespie. Uh, Jed, you and I were having a little mid-segment powwow, in between, say, mid-second. in between segment powwow.

We're like, oh, yeah, the Gregor, Gregor Gillespie for his Kabib. Like, that was briefly a thing. What a time. What a time. We had two, Gregor Gillespie four-time, you said four-time national champion?

No, one-time Natty champion, four-time All-American. All-American. And that was evident in his fighting style. He's not one of those all-American guys who was like, oh, he kind of uses wrestling sometimes. Like, oh, wow, you saw him in MMA. You're like, yeah, that's a guy who was a world champion wrestler,

putting it to work and beaten people's asses with it. For reference, Justin Gachie got all the smoke of being like, he's the guy, he's a one-time, well, a one-time All-American. Gary Gillespie is like a definitively better collegiate wrestling than Justin Gagee was. After USC 242, Habib beat Dustin Porre. We had some editorials after some brilliant writing from M.A.flying.com. Jed, you wanted to match up Gregor with Islamakajep at the time. Oh, this is back in 2019 for anyone listening. So it's a long time ago.

And you wrote, Gillespie is the dark horse candidate to give Habibati. Let's say he does against a mini-habib, not the young girl and not Hasbullah, we're referring to Islam in this case. And let's also see Makachev start making his way up the division. Well, he certainly did. And Damon wrote, obviously challenges to al-a-head for Megamadov. And then he mentions Gillespie, someone who might actually have the best weapons to counter the Russian's dominant grappling game. This was a thing. It wasn't just us.

This was a real discussion. The only reason Gregor Gillespie was fighting and not competing in wrestling is there's a man by the name of Jordan Burroughs in his weight range. Jordan Burroughs is probably, I'm not, you know, Damon would be able to say this more definitively. To my understanding and my following of wrestling, he is the best American wrestler of the last 50 years. So that's just a tough hang. It's like Bo Neckle. Bo Neckle could almost certainly make an Olympic team and probably even medal if he stuck with it.

But he happens to compete in the weight range where some of the very best thrusts, was in the world are American and so he's just kind of screwed is it it's Greg Gillespie and then his career has been weird but there was very much a time Greg Gillespie famously beat Michael Chandler in the NCAAs like

and womped him too I think he teched him like it's it's a very good fighter he could have been something and now I don't know what happened after you wrote that article he got absolutely got killed dead by Kevin Lee we were talking about that off air yeah I have a

knack for writing things like that. We all want to see it. We all thought, and I still think at that point in time, I'm not saying he beats Kobe, but I do think it's an intriguing style matchup. It's certainly at least fun because like, you know, the one fight, and we already mentioned this, the Gleason T. Bowel fight, when you could stop him from wrestling, if you could do it, it really made him a limited fighter. And so could Gregor have done it?

I don't know. We'll never know now. We'll never know. A.K., that can't be your own honorable mention. No, what else you got? Okay. So there's one name that you didn't say, but is it because you're holding out hope that it could still happen? Yeah, I really thought for sure that you were going to have that.

No, this one is happening. So it can't be a missed opportunity. So we go ahead. Mike, please do us. Do everyone a favor. I mean, obviously Charles Olivera, but I thought you were going to go crazy on that one. So I have two more. One, you mentioned Max Holloway.

I kind of wanted to see that fight. And I thought there's a world we could get it. The other one, and I fucking blame you, Jed, for this. This is all you. It's Israel Adasania. Wouldn't that be awesome? I'll take the blame on that. You put it in my brain.

Like, what if Habib fought Israel out of Sanya? Like, who would win? And this is when Habib was still fighting. I'm like, my God, I'm like, I think Habib would probably win that fight. Like, I think you would be in Izzy. It was so crazy to think about, too. I always thought he had a good shot against Usman. I still think about that.

I still think about that. Like, what if Habib would be just crazy enough to be like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to be two division champion. I'm not going to 170. I'm going, like, he was going to do what Oosman wanted to do before Ousman. The thing, he was friends with Usman or whatever. Like, he didn't really, like, want to do the Ousman thing.

Yeah. And I thought he could have beat Newsman. Like, obviously that would have been a sensational. I would have loved to see it. But I thought that he had a real shot of beating Usman, but then I was like, well, if he doesn't want to fight Usman, he walks around on like 200. Like, Izzy used to come in weighing like 183 to title fights or whatever. It's not like, I mean, the optics would look weird, but weight-wise, they're probably not that dissimilar on fight night. And I always thought he could do it.

I genuinely just thought he could do it. That would have been an incredible one. because it would have been great even if he couldn't do it it just would have been awesome so I would have love that fight God great pull Mike great pull next category

Mike you hinted at it is the TJ Grant alternate universe award this is the sliding doors moment of fighter career I'll let us off and I went low hanging fruit here I didn't even put in any

any other ones it is the the knee injuries and the Connor gap so that basically 2014 onward so if you look at Habeb's resume. I mean, after he beat Pat Healy and RDA

two top 10 guys at the time or whatever, it's like, okay, he was potentially next in line to be the guy to fight Anthony Pettis, I think was the lightweight champion at that point, believe he was a lightweight champion at that point. And it would have made all the sense in the world to book it,

and then the repeated knee injuries, and then Connor's whole thing meant he didn't get the fight for the title until 2018, but if you play out the rope, I think every one of us here would say that Habib in 2014 confidently smashes Anthony Pettis. I would have had more questions about it at the time, I think in hindsight, yeah.

But then you're talking about like, here's sort of the list of title challengers during that stretch of time. Anthony Pettis fought definitive against Gilbert Melendez, then there's the Hafeel Dos Anjos fight. Habib obviously already beat RDA. RDA defends against Suros. and then fights Eddie, and then we get into the Eddie Connor thing.

So if you're just looking at that and kind of surmising out, feel really good about Habib's chances to beat all of those dudes and really have, barring the knee injuries, could really have stacked up a fairly insurmountable lightweight title reign and really be knocking on the door of, he's the greatest fighter ever, and there's a John Jones argument against him, and that's it. So that to me is the alternate universe that that that that I'm on.

Yeah, it has to be the time off. I mean, I'm just looking here. I still think, so I don't think he wins in 2014 because I do think the Gilbert Pettus fight still happens. They were really all in on Melendez. I should say, I'd be clear, Gilbert Melendos. Gibler. Gibler.

They were very high in Melendez of the time. And they were smart because he was caught off that strike force run. He deserved to be in these big fights. He had a lot of mileage on him. So I'm glad they didn't play around. There was not like, well, let's let, you know, Gilbert Melendez work his way up to a title fight. Because I think there was a pretty steep drop off in the years after the Pettus fight.

He's facing good competition, but it was also just the result, I think, of wear and tear. So I think the Pettus' Melendos fight still happens. This was in December. I think I think Habe would have had to wait until January, sorry, the next March or April. And then, yeah, definitely beats Pettis. Maybe he defends against Dosayanos. Oh, he wouldn't fight Dosanos. They wouldn't give him a rematch.

He'd fight someone else. and there'd be Saroni. He'd definitely beats Eddie Alvarez. Like, Conn McGregor doesn't win a second title. So here's the other side of this. I don't even know if Connor fights him. If Connor's the featherweight, if Connor's the featherweight champion and Habib's there,

there's obviously an appeal to Connor to try and be the dude to, you know, beat Habib. But I don't know if he looks around and is like, I'm just going to hang here. Give me Frankie Edgar, please. Yeah, let me keep making these cuts. He's got to 1.45. Yeah.

He does not become two division champion. He definitely, 205 never happens. And then the whole sport is wildly different as a result of that. This is crazy. So yeah, it's a big sliding doors moment, man. If Habib had a functional knee for like any of that time, we could be in a very different world. We probably get the Tony fight. We probably get the Tony fight somewhere in there.

So it would have been great. Like Habib and Tony would have fought for the belt. It would have been great. Mike, what about what about you? Any other, any different ideas for the alternate universe award? So obviously that's the no-brainer here. The other kind of no-brainer is like what if he just like what if we're not even doing the show right now? Because he's still fighting.

How many more title defensively have? That's a really great answer. What if COVID didn't happen? Again, if COVID doesn't happen, we get Habib Tony. It's the fifth time is the charm. And everything's great. We live in a perfect world. Abdulmanab, probably still with us, kicking it, still kicking it.

That was low-key being the best coach in MMA. Tony versus Habib for 249, I remember outside of John Jones getting arrested, that was the first reaction video I had ever done for M.A. fighting was the announcement of that fight. And then guess what? Like a week and a half later, we did another one for the Justin Gatji fight. So that the event was canceled and moved and it wasn't taking place in California anymore on the weird reservation and Disney had stepped in and all that crap. The other one, and this is something I've been saying forever, like after all these fell through, even before the 249 debacle.

What if the UFC just didn't announce Habib, Tony, and just did it at the apex? Like, just showed up Wednesday morning, they just go on social media and they say, hey, 1499, go ahead and drop the money and you're going to watch Tony versus Habib. They both weighed in. They're good to go. Here's the video of the way-ins. And you just have them fight. Like, there's no build.

There's no nothing. Like, let's just do it. Empty Apex, who gives a fuck? Just do it. And then that's it. Then we're all done with it. They would have done two million pay-per-view guys at $14.99 a pop on a surprise drop-in fight. And it would have been one of the most brilliant and fun things the UFC could have ever done.

And that was something I always pitched. I'm like, don't even announce it. Just do it. Just do it one time. One fight ever, just this one. And of course, the unfun championship didn't do that. And now we'll never see it. I love, like, this is why this is the Habib Tony Awards, why it got the name.

Can you think of another fight in the history of this sport where you're like, don't even tell people. Just as long as it happens, I don't care. As long as someone videotapes it and I can see it at some point, it does not matter. I can't think of any other fight that it. has that lineage in the sport. Maybe Connor and Chandler at this point. Well, we're getting up there. We're getting close.

Even though I think it's much funnier that that fight doesn't happen. Next category, the Dan Henderson H-bomb Award. If you could take, you know, what's the best part of their game? What's the one skill or thing that they have? This was a very difficult category for me. I'm going to speak to AK in particular because we always talk about it. I think I'm going to settle on the athleticism because I don't think he gets the credit he deserves for being the best athlete at lightweight. I just don't think anyone really ever recognized that that was the part of his game that made it all work the best because I think about his chain wrestling and all that's great.

The variety of attacks that he had once he got the clinch on you, totally get it. But just give me the athleticism because even if he sucked at chain wrestling, he was such an unbelievable athlete, he could have made it work. I saw that hand that he put Sack Connor on his ass with. Like he could have made it all work. So I'm going, I'm pivoting here. I'm taking the athleticism. My runner up is his mentality, his approach to the game. But that's where I'm at, AK Mike, what do you want from Habib's game?

Go ahead, Mike. Yeah, I picked, yeah, I went athleticism plus quiet confidence. Because just something about Habib, like either he didn't say anything or when he said, things, he spoke softly and carried a big stick and you believed every fucking word he said. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm just going to go in and I'm going to smash this guy. And it wasn't just a thing. Like he literally, you could see it in his face that I'm just going to go in there and smash the sky. There's just something scary about that and that you just believed it all.

And from a mental warfare perspective, that's really tough to beat. Like Connor has, Connor has beaten Eddie Alvarez and Jose Aldo before the fight even started. Like he was able to do it in a different way. Habib could say 7 million less words and do exactly the same thing. And it's a brilliant thing that I don't think he gets enough credit for

outside the athleticism as well, but he could just beat you with a look at the press conference. It's just amazing. There's a world of difference between saying you're the best and believing you're the best and just like knowing in your body.

that they can't they can't fuck with you. And that is absolutely what a B-pad, probably from his 500 street fights growing up, you know? He hardens you a little bit in that regard. Hey, Kay, what about you? It's hard to ignore the athleticism. I mean, I was, I emphasized the wrestling ability. I would say, like, if I give anyone his wrestling ability,

but that is very much tied in with the athleticism. Not to say that he doesn't have, like, full-a-less technique, but that combined with that is just such an advantage. I think you're right, Chad. We don't talk about the athleticism or others don't talk about the athleticism enough because I guess he's not like a hulking physical. Like he's in great shape, but he's not like a hulking muscular physical specimen. I guess GSP would be the real comparison when people think like athletic wrestler. They think, oh, GSP doing blast doubles.

He doesn't do a lot of explosive maneuvers. Yeah, he doesn't have that. But you look at how hard it is for him to, not hard, how easy he makes it look, but how hard it actually is to get some of the digdowns he got. because he was, if you watch some of those, a lot of those fights, like people would just, people would fully sprawl. Like he wouldn't have to set some of those up. They would sprawl. They'd nail the sprawl.

Doesn't matter. He got in just deep enough. Once he is connected, it's over. You're done. Yeah, you're done. You cannot let him connect, which is impossible ask. And that's so difficult. We've seen so many guys who, if they get a couple of takedown stuff, it drains them.

It drains their energy. He could get stuff, but then he's powering through. He's adjusting his grip. So, yeah, it is tied into it. But I did specify the wrestling because I think, I'll say, I think his wrestling, his MMA wrestling anyway, again, people can talk about, you know, amateur titles, international titles, NCAA, All-American accolades, championships, all that. I mean, just as terms of M.A. Grappling, M.A. wrestling. I think his, his M.A. wrestling, he's better at that than anyone else is at anything else in M.A history. I'm really happy to go that far and say that. I'm really happy you said that. I'm really happy you said that because. I tried to pull it up and I couldn't find it.

Zane Simon, a bloodyelbo.com. A very solid website. I won't say great because it's not anything to find it.com. He and I had this discussion years back. And I can't remember the exact quote, but we basically settled on, I don't know if Habib's the best fighter ever,

but I'm pretty sure that the gap between him and everybody else at one particular thing is bigger than it has ever been for anyone in the history. of this sport. Like he is just, I am very happy to call him the best M&A grappler I have ever seen. And that it's not terribly close, you know. So I think that's a great point.

Next category. We've talked about this category son today already. So Brad Ims Fun with Stats Award named after Brad Ibs, the hillbilly heartthroat, heavyweight who famously, famously for me, maybe not for other people, famously. As a heavyweight, one back-to-back fights via Gogaplata. What an accomplishment. This man needs all the flowers. He gets fun with stats.

I put this as an optional category for you guys. I don't want you to have to do all the work I had to do to find some of these. I mentioned at the top of previous category, 21 takedowns is more than Yol Romero in his entire UFC career. I got a few guy, two more for you that I want to put out here. The first, 53 consecutive rounds one in his career. He did not lose a round until round three of Connemer Greger. 53 consecutive rounds. That is three times the number of rounds Rhonda Rousey had in her entire MMA career.

UFC Hall of Fame at Rhonda Rousey three times the number of rounds she had total. That's just remarkable. And then the other one, this one was a, I'm pretty proud of myself for this one. Five. count them one, two, three, four, five. Triangle choke finishes in his career. That is one more than Brian T. City Ortega, a man known for his triangle chokes. Habibn-R-Mergamatov, you don't think of him as a triangle guy.

And yet, more triangle chokes in his career than T-City. Love the fun with stats category. What do you guys have? That was my only stat thing was that, and we mentioned it before when we were talking about the Gathech fight, the beginning with the triangle, ending with a triangle. just awesome. It's just so cool. It's so cool. And you guys talk about like there's just something about, I don't know if he does it on purpose. I don't think you can plan that sort of thing. But when you live your life a certain way, these things just tend to find you. So there's a, that wasn't fun, quirky stat. But that's all I had. Yeah, I mentioned mine, but I just thought this is kind of interesting. If I were to ask you, this seems like a very obvious question, but I just want to make sure we're all on the same page here. If we look at percentages when it comes to striking. accuracy and take down accuracy. Which number do you think is higher?

I mean, based on the way you ask this, I think I know where you're going. I would say that his take down accuracy should be higher, but I don't think that's right now the way you framed this. Well, if you said, if you said take down accuracy as the higher number, you'd be wrong. If you said striking accuracy, you'd be wrong. They're exactly the same. 48%. Oh, curve.

48% curveball. Classic, a classic Mike Heck journey. Just swerved us right there. Somebody call him nice shaman. The only thing would have been better is if I sent you to commercial before I revealed. Ryan Seagrest style. What a fantastic. 48%?

48% striking accuracy, 408% take down accuracy. That's amazing. Illustrious career in the UFC. If you get rid of that Gleason T-Bow fight and I wonder what those numbers are. get rid of Tebow and Trujillo. If you just get rid of both ends of the takedown spectrum, and see where he settles in. Probably like 77%.

It's probably actually, yeah. Dude, Justin Gachie, the guy who's famously great wrestler, he's going to stop it. He hit two of three takedown attempts on him. Took him down at will. Next category, the Sean Ferris Award for the actor who should play them in a movie. My favorite category is named after Sean Ferris, the actor who played Jake Tyler in the cinematic masterpiece that is

never back down. This was incredibly difficult, incredibly difficult. We talked about it in the green room pre-show me and AK. I don't think you were on the call at that point. I'm like, if you try and Google like young Russian actors, they're all pretty people. It's all like St. Petersburg Russians, you know. It's not a Caucasus Mountain Russian guy. And that's not working.

So you go down, it is tough. I found one that I'm comfortable with. I don't think it's great, but I'm going a young Jake Gyllenhaal. Think Jake Jillen Hall, you know, he has a little bit of that physicality. We've seen him play a boxer before. He's obviously got the acting range.

He's not pretty. He's handsome. He's not pretty. But I really struggled in this one. AK, I'm hoping you can save us because this is a category you have known been known to do well in. Oh, I had to throw darts on this one, man.

This was tough. My first one would have been. I'm very sad. Anton Yeltschen died. Yeah, so I thought that at some point. He's also slight. He is, but you shave his head. You bulk him up.

You know, this is how you win Oscars, man. You changed the body type. He's like, oh, I did nothing but eat, you know. I drank raw eggs every morning for, you know, three months to get prepared for this role. He did a fairly, I don't want to say. believable. I'm sure, I'm sure if there's actual Russians out there who thought his accent and Star Trek was pretty over the top. But whatever. I think there's, there's nuance to it. He could do some sort of accent. I mean, he is Russian. He is, but he's, he was raised in the U.S.

though. He does not have a Russian accent. So, I mean, he, that's what I'm saying. He can, get away with it. In the Soviet Union. I feel like, feel like he's fine. He can get away with it, but it was put on. He does not have a natural Russian accent. That's not a thing. But R.P. Anton Yelchen, that's not going to happen. So I had to dig deep. I just started looking through like recent Russian cinema. I landed on a young actor. His age is the right range. He's 33 years old.

His name is Victor Korynyak. You guys could Google this right now. K-H-O-R-I-N-Y-A-K, Google if you're playing at home. Young actor, and he just recently did a movie called Mr. Knockout, where he plays a boxer. Yes, a biography of the boxer. 1964 boxing gold medalist for Russia, Valerie Popenchenko, or probably the Soviet. reunion at the time, I should say. Okay.

So we know there's some, there's some, he can do combat sports role. And again, I don't know if he speaks English. That might be of an issue. Probably there's a good chance he maybe doesn't. But I want to go Russian because when you see Russians in a lot of shows, a lot of them are played by British people. British, Australian, Irish. Yeah.

A bunch of UK people be. That's where I went first. I'm like, oh, Chernobyl, that was a good show. There must be a Russian actor. And I'm like, oh, they're all British people. They're all not even pretending to be Russian. They're all talking like British people. And good.

I'm glad. I would say, you know, that's like that movie, Enemy at the Gates. You guys ever seen that? Everyone's just using their natural accent. And I'm like, yeah, it's better this way. Sometimes you just own it. Yeah, it's fine. Don't.

If you can't do a German accent. Use your imagination. So in this case, I'm trying to find authentic Russian, but I'm sure there's other good options people who do Russian actors. But yeah. So young Victor, this could be your breakout role in America. I love it. Mike, did you have anything here?

Yeah, this is one of those ones where I was like, oh, this is so frustrating that I can't find anybody. It was really tough. And then I eventually was like, oh, yeah, this is actually, there's only one person to really do it. Actually, there's two. One, but I didn't want to do it for the second straight show that I was on. I was just like, Habib could just play himself and he might just be himself and just be like,

no, no one else is allowed to play me. I'm playing myself. I actually found a Reddit form because. Oh, fantastic. I found, no, and I didn't even go with it because I was so, like, right when my frustrations were ending, I went to this Reddit forum. And because Jared Leto had said something about like doing a movie or whatever. And Connor McGregor was like, yeah, man, like, let's work together. And like, you could play me in the movie.

And the Reddit was titled, like, who plays Habib? And there's one dude who kept answering all the questions with Danny DeVito with everyone. Who's going to play Dana White? Danny DeVito. I was like, this is a troll job. So I landed with just a perfect choice. Look, you're going to have to send him to a couple of acting classes. Surely this guy happens to be a UFC fighter right now.

It's Nerulo Aliev. This dude looks just like Habib. He's got the accent. He's 23. He looks like a 23 old Habib. He looks freaking like him. And he's got the spunk. He's got the personality.

Just send him an acting class for like six months. And he will knock this shit out of the park. He can play Habib from like, wow. I don't hate this. To now. I don't hate this. This is a good find. This is a Ray Allen and he got game type thing here, right?

Like just go for an unproven. Like maybe his acting's not great, but he can do the fighting. Like he is a fighter. He can play a fighter, right? All you have to tell us guy to do is just say, hey, don't smile. If you don't smile, you nail this. And he's good. I will say that made it hard when you're like looking through images.

is every actor is smiling in photos like this is useless i guess the first thing i thought a k for your dude uh google was like he's happy this doesn't work i need him to have a beard and be mad which is i almost went colin farrell different part of this as well but uh settled on jake jillan all right i think i think you've done the best no rule alia the tajic eagle probably named i assume named that i don't have any idea um to what extent tojikistan um um i think i'm and how that works with Dagestan. Sure. I don't know if they're like friends or not.

Right. So maybe there's some pushback there. But Mike, I think you're going to win the category. I'm going to say you win this category. I like that. Thank you. Two categories left before we get the wrap up. The Cole Conrad Career Change Award, this is for if they weren't a fighter, what would they do?

This is an impossible one for Habib because it doesn't make sense to me, except for I have the best answer ever. And you guys, if you don't have this answer, you're going to immediately agree. What Habib should, I mean, he should still do this now, frankly. It's a buddy cop show with Daniel Cormier. He and D.C. being buddy cops and like a Brooklyn 9-9, that's all I want is more of their interactions together. I went in such a rabbit hole during this of like just going back to the Habib, D.C. stuff of their various videos. It's always amazing. It's the best.

Seeing them talk shit to each other is just, it's my favorite thing. So buddy cop show with Daniel Corby, that's the answer for me, folks. Mike? Motivational speaker. Oh. I watched, it was funny. I was watching me and my son and my wife were watching Yes Man the other day. Great film.

Which is after, by the way, like to peel down the curtain here, we're recording this in two parts. This is after we recorded the first part. I was struggling with this question. And I watched the dude just like motivate Jim Carrey's character to say yes to everything. I'm like, Habib can do that. And if people ask this like kind of nonchalant guy, why I don't believe you would say yes to everything. All you have to do is just show the video of him wrestling a bear when he's eight.

And he's like, fuck you. I said yes. And it worked out. It's fine. Yeah. I just said yes. So I like, who is going to say like, Habib doesn't have the credentials? And the beauty of this is, Habib could charge thousands of dollars for these seminars,

and they're going to last like 13 minutes. And it's going to be great. So, yeah, I'll go with that. The other is just he could be an actor in like an FX show as part of like a Russian gang, who just doesn't say a word, just stands there looking intimidating. Maybe, maybe not holding some sort of automatic weapon to show intimidation in these scenes. But Habib could get a whole bunch of IMDB credits and never see. a word and completely believable.

Okay, what do you got? Bear Wrangler. That's a job. Ah, yes. Is that not a job? That's a great answer. Like, there has to be, like, specifically. Like, I'm sure I know there's people who work in zoos and generally work with animals who

probably have some capability, but there's like specialists, right? Doesn't there's specialists who do this? I don't know if there's a job title bear wrangler, but I had, I want it to be if it's not. I had a thought. I had a thought. That's a great answer. the grizzly man remember grizzly man yes uh one of the most unintentionally funny movies of all time or maybe intentionally funny that's a horrible that's a horrible thing to say considering how grimly

it ended but um yeah but if you watch that warner herzog like intentionally leaves the camera on these people oh and then edits and just leaves it there and it's like i think he thinks it's a comedy but it's a comedy for him it was certainly a comedy for me movies well the funniest things have ever seen. Grizzly man might still be alive if Habib had gone this route. That's what I'm saying. I don't think that's true because I think he would have told him don't go out there the same way everybody told him that.

He was like, I got this. But maybe Habib could have stopped him. In that case, yes. Maybe Habib could have saved him from the bears. Maybe he could have stopped him. Can't save people from themselves, okay. Hey, he could have been, you know what?

He could have also been a soccer player. Habib can kick that ball around a little bit. Oh, you should have gone with basketball player. because Dagestani basketball is also one of the funniest things we've ever seen. Habib, Habib, Habib would, like,

do you, I don't know if you guys are old enough to remember Bill Lambears, combat basketball. Of course. Or Nintendo. Habib could just create that league himself. Oh, yeah.

It's just basketball. You're allowed to say that just sounds like Dagestani basketball. Oh, yeah. There you go. Habib runs his own Dagestani basketball league. There's no dribbling. You just run up the court and tackle people and maybe get shot off.

It's the best. Oh, man. Our final category, the look at me now, Leon Edwards Award for the best moment of their career. And I told you guys at the top, I left one fight off the Mount Rushmore because I moved it down to here. And I'm not even going to get in too much into it because, Mike, I think you pretty much clearly assessed all of it. I went to Dustin Porier win, Habib's title defense against Dustin Poir at UC-242 for all the aforementioned reasons. This didn't have the tainted, you know, Connor McGregor post-fight scuffle,

Dustin Porreier, beloved. And this was, ultimately ended up being the final fight of Habib's career with his father. His father was in attendance for this one. That was a big thing because Abdulmanov did not get to be in attendance for every one of Habib's fights. So they got to enact father's plan with father Cage side. I think that this is just sort of the best moment of his career

because the Gateswain, obviously great, but that has the pall of retirement and the death of his father. And so that that doesn't feel like the peak. Give me Dustin Porey, that terrific performance from him, that that's the look at me now for me. I went with Gagie. I went with Gitchie. You're right, you're right. It's not, it has a, it has a cloud over it. It was more of a somber. And, but he went out on top, man. I mean, he went out on top. He went out with everyone saying this guy's the best. He left us wanting more. Like, like George Cassidy. stanza at a meeting at the end of the i'm out i'm out he left us wanting more i we don't get to say that

often enough uh we've had some very nice retirements this year thankfully but more often than not we don't get to see people go out in their prime we don't get to see them going out thinking man if this guy sticks around i don't see anyone who beat him or like down the road i i want to see them you know i still think this guy is an intriguing like champion for this this challenge is coming up this challenge we had so many questions and i think in a in a in a a good way. So great title defense, 29 and 0, I mean, undeniable. That's the peak. I don't, I, he, and he probably could have gone even higher. Probably could have got even higher. That's why I think it's weird to call the peak because I think his career was still going up. So yeah, it's just a strange

situations. Nobody like him. I understand it. And that, you know, certainly that retirement, even though it came for sad reasons, ended up being among, among the best in the sport because of all of that. So, Mike, where did you land for our final category? I won't the gauge you fight as well. Excuse the landscapers out front. They're just getting after it. Classic Habib style, guys. Classic Habib style. Just pure chaos, ladies and gentlemen. So here's one thing I kind of learned watching Habib's fights is that I don't know if he actually liked MMA. Like, I don't know if he actually loved fighting.

I don't know if he actually... We hear you. We hear you. I don't even know if he actually liked the sport. Like, I think he just did it. But I don't know if he ever liked it. And I feel like after the Gachy win, kind of showing who he is,

just the fact that I believe every word he says when he was like, I could have broken his arm, but I wanted to do it in front of his family. So I transitioned to a nasty triangle. I felt like 5,000 pounds was lifted off of his shoulders that night.

Like, this dude was content. And that's why I never thought he would come back. It was just the way he looked. And I'm not an armchair psychologist. I play one on damn they were good, but I'm not. It just seemed like this is it. Like, this is the happiest he ever was. And I know it was for sad reasons.

And I know it wasn't Robbie Lawler's retirement, where it was celebrated. We got the video packages and all this. This was Habib just putting the perfect exclamation point on a career doing it for his family knowing his dad was watching down on him with pride and just a sense of relief that came over him that not only did I win the fight not only did I pay tribute to my dad not only am I going to pay off a promise to my mom but now it's done like I've done everything I need to do I can move on to a different part of my life and he just

looks so at ease he looked at so peaceful in that moment it was the happiest I've ever seen him in such a sad moment. He just looked, he looked a hundred pounds lighter. And to me, that's kind of a thing I'll never forget. It's just, look at me now, I beat Justin Gaichi, took him down twice, showed mercy, and now I don't have to fight anymore. And I have no other questions to answer. And now my watch has ended.

And now my watch has ended. All right, that brings us to the close of the show, ladies and gentlemen. just so you know, I'm not going to do mine. I'm going to throw to y'all, and then I got to bounce to this, but let's get y'all's on and I can record mine later. And now that brings us to the close of the show, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to talk about put a bow on it. What does it be legacy?

What does he mean to us? So, uh, AK, why don't we start with you? Strong case for the best fighter ever, man. I mean, not, not, you know, not the top of my list. I'm, I'm a GSP guy through and through. I probably put Joan Jones above there as well. And then you'd fit in, uh, Aldo. DJ and Fador in some order.

But Habib belongs in there. Again, I don't know if it's a lock. I know there's a lot of people who would say you're insane and they have in the top five. This isn't an indictment of his legacy. It just says a lot about the names. I mentioned how amazing they are. We've done a damn for Fador.

Someday we'll cover some of these other greats. We did a damn for Jose Aldo. But again, just being part of that discussion is incredible. And it really made me see him as a potential number one going over his career again and its entirety. he's just so damn good. You know, you look at the stat, I think at some point, I just saw the, I started looking at the numbers. I was like, oh, you know, 24-no, 25-no, no, 26, no.

And I almost forgot what actually went into those fights. So this was such an important show to do. I hope people also take the time to go back and watch over his career, watch his fights, because it's very easy to envision, if we're talking pound for pound rankings, again, very nebulous to find sometimes. But if you're going by the, you know, if this fighter was at a different weight and brought his skill set brought his stuff. I don't know if anyone, skill for skill,

athleticism-wise, was better than Khabib. So pound for pound number one, easy case to make. I'm just still in awe. I'm in awe once again, having had the privilege of reviewing this man's career. I mean, could have been the middleweight champion, as we discussed. Mike, what do you got? So there's an old, like, 14th century quote that you don't get to say that often,

but I think everybody knows what it is. Habib Naraga-Madoff is the definition of patience as a virtue. This dude just picked his spots. He could have rushed it. And at certain points in his career, we talk about the Michael Johnson fight, the opportunity to become the lightweight champion was dangled in front of his face.

He was about to headline Madison Square Garden and fight for the lightweight championship of the world. He was about to headline at MSG in the first big show in New York, only to be used as a ploy as a tool, so to speak, to get Connor McGregor into that fight. And that night made Habib who he was.

He just, he took that moment instead of really complaining about it, he just turned it into gold and just end up being the guy. And it took him a long time. Like I said, at the beginning of the show, during that space of when I was a fan and then I took some time off

and was a more casual viewer and watcher of the sport to when I really got back into it, everyone was telling me about Habib. Like once this guy starts getting finishes, he's going to be the best light weight in the world. It's going to happen. And it took another like four or five years for him to get there. But Jesus, man.

Once that guy got there, no one's going to beat him. No one's going to beat him. Habib, if he stuck around, we talk about how difficult it is going to be for the next generation of fighters to defend the title over and over again. I truly believe that if Habib stuck around another three years and fought nine more times, he would have defended the title nine more times with barely breaking a swing. wet in any of them. He would have been up there with Anderson Silva. He would have been up there with Demetri Johnson in terms of double digit title defenses. And at the same time, his career was almost perfect. It ended at the perfect time in the way he wanted it. And very few fighters can say that I exited the sport on my own terms, did it on top. And by the way,

did it with a 29 and 0 record and the pound for pound best fighter in the world by the time he stepped away. I don't know if we'll ever see this again. Yeah. I don't know if it will ever, I mean, if John Jones beats Stepe and walks away, maybe,

but I don't believe he walks away forever. Matt Hamill or Racer. Yeah. Damn, he was great. Damn he was great. And so that brings it to me and put a bow on the whole show. And as I,

as I got into this, I knew that the Habib episode would be one of my favorites because, as I mentioned before, he's one of my favorite fighters of all time. But what this one really struck something home to me about this process as a whole. And it's one of my favorite things about this show is, is how it makes me reevaluate my ideas around the sport, around certain fighters, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And for some fighters, I go back and I gain a deeper appreciation for their careers. TKZ certainly was among those, the previous episode.

And with others, I go back and maybe I remember more of their shortcomings than I thought, Shogun Hula, et cetera. You realize that there were more bad things than maybe the rose-colored glasses of your nostalgia could allow. With a bee, I always had this huge appreciation for him, being one of my favorite fighters. But on this deep dive, it really crystallized for me in a way that other dams haven't. And I didn't want to talk about this at the top because this is obviously a very fraught conversation, But straight up, this is the best fighter I've ever seen. Like, full stop, Habib is the best fighter I've ever seen.

I'm not talking about greatness. That's a, you know, the goat conversation is impossible. And given how his career was truncated, so his resume, you know, is missing maybe some of those pieces that I think many people think he could have put together. You know, I'm not here to say he's the greatest fighter. But what I'm saying to you is I've never seen a more dominant. force into the cage, including Pete Ronda Rousey, John Jones. What other fighter has so thoroughly beaten top opposition that in the process of it, he's not even focused on the fighting.

He's talking to Dana White Cage side. He's talking trash to his fighters during fights, saying, man, just give up. I got places to go and you're in my way. What other fighter has chosen mercy as a, an option. He could have broken Justin Gates. He's arm was like, no, his mom is cage side. That is, that's the kind of stuff that like black belts do to blue belts in the gym, not something that a top level fighter does to the very best professional fist fighters on the planet. And the most impressive part of all of this, the part that I think gets lost the most in this conversation,

is that Habib did all of this and these things, and every single person that he fought knew what was coming. There was no element of surprise to this. There was no, man, I didn't see that. We weren't prepared. The idea is always, Habib is going to try and take me down, and he is going to grapple the hell out of me. And I got to stop him taking me down.

And if he does, I got to defend and I got to get up. And nobody could do it. I alluded to this earlier, but kind of one of my, notes for this section is think about those stories you hear about Larry Bird and Michael Jordan and I took that personally and the you know they this guy talked trash to me so the next game I came to him and every possession I told him what I was going to do and then I did it. I was like yeah I'm going to hit a drop step fade pull up jumper in your face. I'm going to get to this spot turn pump go like that's the stories you hear about the best basketball players who've ever lived

Babee's the only dude I know who's doing that stuff in a cage fight. And that's his entire career, not just a game when he got mad. Every single time out, he is doing something impossible. Everyone knows it's coming and nobody can do shit about it. That is, that's one of one stuff, man. Like that nobody else has that in the bag. I quoted him a couple of times before. Robert Whitaker had one of the best quotes.

that I intentionally left out so I could use it here. It's about Habib. And it's a quote about Habib after beating up Porier, which is why partly my top moment. It's so simple, but I really sums him up. And he made one of the best dudes in the world look like not one of the best dudes in the world. And that's it. Like that's the entire thing.

He made world class all-time Hall of Fame fighters at the peak of his career just look like they didn't belong in there with him. And so until I see otherwise, that's the best fighter I've ever seen. So with that, I say to you, Habib, I am going to miss you immensely, miss watching your career and think about what could have been often. But damn, you were the best. And that's it, ladies and gentlemen, another episode of Damn, they were good in the books. And I got to say, I'm excited because I told you at the very top of this episode, we got

more to come. More things are happening. And those things are happening sooner rather than later every two weeks. And so for the next one, a long awaited episode, the episode I've gotten the most messages about probably it's Anderson's over. We're doing the spider boys and girls. Buckle up. It's going to be fun. Until then, though, I say, thank you, Mike. Thank you, A.K. Lee for joining me on journey. And thank you to you, the listener, because we're two hours in plus some change. So if you're still here, I love you for that. We will see you next time. Love y'all.

Coming to the Vox Media Podcast Network. Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first, there, the last one. Enjoy a Coca-Cola for a pause that refreshes. Hi, I'm Sophia Loper Carroll, host of the Before the Chorus podcast. We dive into the life experiences behind the music we love. Artists of all genres are welcome.

And I've been joined by some pretty amazing folks, like glass animals. I guess that was the idea was to try something personal and see what happened. And Japanese breakfast. I thought that the most surprising thing I could offer was an album about joy. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, and remember, so much happens before the chorus.