MMA Fighting - Donald Cerrone: Dissecting A Remarkable Career As 'Cowboy' Rides Off Into The Sunset | ‘DAMN! They Were Good’

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

Today we break down the remarkable career of Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone, who recently retired from the sport after 48 fights. Cerrone's name is littered across the UFC record book and his willingness to fight at the drop of a cowboy hat endeared him to fans the world over. Host Jed Meshew is joined by Alexander K. Lee and Mike Heck to break down the career of "Cowboy" as he rides off into the sunset. Follow Jed Meshew @JedKMeshew Follow Alexander K. Lee @AlexanderKLee Follow Mike Heck @MikeHeck_JR Subscribe: http://goo.gl/dYpsgH Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/u8VvLi Visit our playlists: http://goo.gl/eFhsvM Like MMAF on Facebook: http://goo.gl/uhdg7Z Follow on Twitter: http://goo.gl/nOATUI Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 reprise 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 the Audible original, The Downloaded 2. Ghosts in the Machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Rosco Cudullian 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 two, Ghosts in the Machine, available now, only from Audible. My name is Jed Meshaw. I am a writer for MMAfighting.com, the greatest website in the entire world.

We are back with another episode. Damn! They were good. With all the things going on, the world of MMA the past couple of weeks. We took a mini hiatus, but we're back. We've got a great episode planned. And in fact, it is one that touches on some of those recent events that have happened, because today we are talking about the one, the only, the recently retired Donald Cowboy Soroni.

That's right. Cowboy retired earlier this month after lost Jim Miller at UFC 276. And so we scrapped all the plans we had, had some other fighters lined up, said, no, we've got to put those aside because we need to talk about the career of one of the most unique fighters in the history of of m m m mary and certainly the ufc but before we get to that let me introduce to you the panel this week joining me my colleagues from m mhmatfiting.com the greatest website in the world the best friends alexander kaley and mike heck gentlemen how we doing okay please go first because you're my best friend yeah positive vibes today positive vibes today that's what we're here for my best friend, Mike Heck, my second best friend, Jed Mishu, just narrowly behind, there is a list. There is a tier.

You know, we had done, you know, we had done rankings talk earlier. And on my friend rankings list, Mike is number one. Jed did not be ashamed that you're number two. It's, you know. I'm not ashamed at all. I'm thrilled. I wouldn't have thought I was that high. So way up.

Way to go. Eat it the rest of the MMAfighting.com staff. I'm number two. Let's go. Now I just got to find a way to off Mike and take his place. at the top. Wait, wait, wait, wait. What if I could, I could off AK and then you can be my best friend.

So now I see where your allegiances lie. So, okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. You got a rock paper scissors. Why did we go to violence? Why? You could just become a more like, you could become a more likable person and that might also affect you.

That is, yeah. That's not possible for me. We went to violence because that's what this show is about, baby. This show is about those who bring us violence and did so throughout our career. And there's a case. I think there's a case to be. made, the Donald Seroni has given us more violence than arguably any other fighter ever. When you think of the sheer volume of fights and we're going to get into all of that about him,

but like, this is a dude who for the last, I don't know, 20 years has been absolutely electric television. And the one of not the most active people day in and day out, you saw them multiple times every year. And so that's where we're going to violence. A.K., because Donald Seroni would want us to choose violence. Yeah, no, I fully agree. I fully agree. It's crazy when you, when you mention, like, just the longevity, how long he's been doing it. I keep my own, like, personal record of, like, it's a very plain sheet of everyone who's fought in the UFC, and I just list their records

and who they fought, just straight up everyone that they fought. And Seroni is like his own page. He's like, he's like his own. It's, it's so crazy to look at, because it also includes some of WC stuff. If I included all the WEC stuff, it would be even longer. So he's one, I think RDA is reaching that, but even he, Jim Miller, of course, obviously. Jim Lerloffi, yeah, but when you look at these guys, Andro-Aloffi, like that's where we're at. Yeah, when you look at these guys in their resumes, yeah, here, I'm looking starting right now. Yeah, it literally takes up actually its own page and then spills over into the next, into the next page.

So it's amazing. And when you asked us to do the show, I was like, obviously a lot of moments immediately jumped to my head. then, you know, once you're digging and do some more research, you're remembering, you're remembering fights that you hadn't watched in like 10 years, hadn't even thought of in 10 years. It is. It's been an incredible run. And I genuinely felt something in my, in my little tiny heart, you know, when he actually

called it quits recently. Yeah, man, it is. This has been one of the hardest episodes for me to get prepared for, kind of doing all the look into. because there are just so much of it. Like picking one or two options out of some of these categories was like, and a lot of it all felt at the same level, right? Like he reached highs, but it's really hard to pinpoint like what are the most iconic moments of his career

because there are just so much of it. And it's easy to find the low points, I think, but like the highs and just kind of what are the standout performances, that sort of stuff was really difficult because they're just so much of it. of it. Yeah, he's just one of those guys. You know, when you say anywhere, anytime, he is the definition of that. So, yeah, a lot to really unpack with Donald Seroni. This is actually a pretty fun journey considering he just retired less than two weeks ago as we record this. So,

yeah, I mean, there's just so many fun fights and performances, even not recently, but even a lot of his early losses were, were a lot of fun to watch and go back and just, just. take a look at, yeah. And I'm sure we'll talk about a good chunk of those on this show. Yeah, I mean, a chunk, which is always a fun word to say. I almost feel like you have to like take his career in chunks. And I guess maybe we will. I don't know where you got, what angle you guys are coming at.

Some of these sections we're about to tackle here. But like there's just, like he's been funny for so long. There really are sections. There's a whole like weird little welterweight section where he became a ranked welterweight, like a top 10, legitimate top 10. There's, again, that span from from the end of WEC to sort of his first run through the UFC where he was like on this great streak headed towards a title shot. There's the very end, of course, that we could look at where he's fought, continued to get

all these huge name fights, did not, you know, come out on the winning end of all of them, but it was a big name guy till the very, very end until, you know, until we just saw him hanging up. And then there's all these other little mini chunks, little windstreaks here, windstreaks there, finishing streets here, finishing streaks there. Guys, he's fought two, three times. champions he's fought from other organizations. This is like this, you could do two episodes, really.

You could like, you really need to like, combine into all these little, all these little parts of his career because it's almost like, certain sections of his career are like, have as much drama and as much storyline and narrative as like other people's entire careers. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, his,

his character arc, it was like there are several peaks in valleys going through it. It's, and I mean, it just sort of speaks to him. that's why I wanted to do the episode when he retired. I immediately texted Sean Al Shadi, our editor, and was like, hey, I know we were going to do, I was going to do Anderson Silva, but then I was like, hey, you know, Anderson is kind of

evergreen and I want to do Donald just because it is so fresh. And I also think that there's a good argument to be made. I think everybody, even newer fans probably know enough to appreciate Cowboy just because the UFC kind of he is this big personality and the UFC did a really good job of of putting him front and center and kind of what he was as a person and a fighter making that known but i mean there's still because of the way his career ended you know i think there's still a probably some fans out there who maybe just didn't under don't fully understand like what cowboy meant as a fighter because he hasn't won a fight in three years or something like that so if you came into the sport relatively

recently, you're just looking at cowboy as, oh, this guy who has all these records and is cool, but it's not, it's not cowboy, you know, you're not attached to him. So it's like, I want to do this while it's fresh in the mind while people are here, so we can kind of talk about a really, really unique career. Because I think there's, there are not a lot of people who have had a career like this. And I believe this is the first, uh, damn a subject that has not, that has not won a major title interim. That is correct. Yeah, because what, Liddell, Bisspeng, conned, at least one interim interim, interim, Walterway title, right? Yeah, Andy was a WBC champion.

So yeah, this is, this is the first non-champion that is ever on Damn, they were good. And I think in a lot of ways, it's pretty fitting, given sort of the, his career arc, you know? Yeah, I agree, yeah. And, yeah, I don't know. I don't want to add any more addendums. I feel like, I don't know if we need to start sinking into this, you know, digging our teeth in here. There is a lot. Before we hop into it, I just want to throw it to Mike one more time and see.

Mike, before we hop into into the meat of this, what is your biggest kind of thoughts about? What are your broad thoughts about Donald Seroni kind of as a fighter? What did he mean to you as your fandom evolved? Because I think you came to the game a little bit later than AK. and I and so that's that's an interesting subject to me because certainly I knew serrani back in the wc days like that's that's where my fandom's at but i think you came in a little later so i want to know like where that sort of happened for you i mean i came versus actually did a great job introducing

me to don't seroni because i didn't watch a lot of versus shout out to versus shout out to versus wc i didn't watch like a lot of the car like i watched like some of the later stuff live as they happened on Verses in different events that they had. But early on, versus always had like old WEC fights or cards or collapse. They were really good about that. All the time. And there were two fighters I was introduced to that really stood out to me right off the back. Carlos Condit was one just because you looked at Carlos Condit.

The goat. And you were just like, this guy's not that good. And then you watched them fight and you're like, holy smokes, this guy's a psychopath. Like the nickname matches the brand altogether. Absolute monster of a human being. Just a monster. And then Saroni was another one who just came out with the cowboy had and like everything fit the nickname and the brand so well.

And he could just fight his ass off. And then as his career progressed, he became the ultimate, eh, that's not surprising type of fighter because whether it was a matchup or he was fighting this killer or he fought a month later or two weeks later or he signed on to a fight two days after his last fight, none of that was surprising. It was, it was just typical cowboy being cowboy. He was like, he was like the Manny Ramirez of MMA, where just no matter what he did, it wasn't surprising, whether good or bad. So yeah, that's who he was to me. I was introduced him in WBC. It was like, okay, this all makes sense. And then as this career went on, you saw him have the highest of highs,

and then as in kind of the lowest of lows. He'll just always be the guy who, if the lights weren't really bright, he was about as good as you can find. But when the lights are really bright, they were really bright. They blinded him in some cases. They did blind him. Yeah, he's that guy. That is for sure. And we will get into all of that in just a moment.

But before we do, every week, every episode when we're doing this, I like to give a rundown of a fighter's career to kind of contextualize. We're going to hop into that only this week. It's going to be slightly different because there is so much of Seronia's career. I was going to say, good luck with that. I was say it is hard to change. just hit bullet points here. And so I have stripped it down

to essentially all of the records that he has because everything else is a byproduct of that and the simplest way to talk about his career is by the numbers. So he made his MMA debut in 2006. He made it to the WEC one year

later. True to Donald's errone form 7 and 0 by the time he made it to the WEC. So the man got busy very quickly to start. He had 10 fights in the WEC, challenge for the lightweight title twice there and an interim belt there as well, then moved to the UFC in 2011 when they folded the WEC in. He fought 38 times in the UFC that is tied for second all time.

Of course, he also is tied for second all time at wins behind Jim Miller. As we know, they were fighting for the record of most wins in UFC history, and Donaldson I lost that one. He is tied second all time in finishes at 16 with Jim Miller as well. He is tied second, or no, he is individually second all time and significant strikes landed inside the

UFC. He does have the most knockdowns in UFC history at 20. He is tied for the most bonuses in UFC history at 18. That is a tie with Charles Olivera. However, there's a big caveat there because he has six fight of the nights and 12

performance bonuses, but that record does not include his five fight of the knights in the WEC so he should be the individual leader in bonuses and the individual leader in fight of the knights by a considerable margin because we all know the WEC was functionally a byproduct of the UC at that point so that is a total of just in case you guys aren't going to math 23

post-fight bonuses in his ZUFA career functionally also 5 5 of the Knights and WC is the most in that organization's history. And that means he had a fight of the night every other time out in the W.E.C. He only had 10 fights. His 2009 fight against Benson was the fight of the year. And his overall record was 3617 and 2-0 contests.

And that's Donald Soroni by the numbers. So let's get into Donald Seroni by our award section. On the first award, we always start with the one that's going to lead our conversation where most of it. it's the Mount Rushmore. This is, everyone knows what Mount Rushmore is, what are the four fights that you choose as the best, the brightest, the most important or significant of his career,

or alternatively, if you are just trying to show somebody who doesn't know anything about Donald Seroni, what are the four fights you should watch? Here they are. I've got a big list, as you can imagine, but I've narrowed it down to my four, and then we'll go to you guys and maybe throw out a couple of honorable mentions, but the first one, I think to me it was incredibly important.

I think this was the only easy choice I had in this entire list was the aforementioned fight with Benson Henderson at WEC 43. That was the 2009 fight of the year. Arguably the best fight in WEC history, I think probably is, frankly. And it showcased every, he lost that fight. He did not defeat Benson Anderson that night. a recurring theme. He continually fell short for his title bids,

but mixing the martial arts, constant back and forth action, one of the best fights you'll ever watch. And so that was the only easy choice for me. I'm assuming that is on both of your lists as well. Definitely mine. Yeah, Soroni Henderson won for sure. Yeah, it's exactly what you said.

It was like, it's funny, it was the first meeting between the two, but also, From that fight, as their careers branched off from there, every fight that, like, you could see kind of where, you see so many traces of what they would eventually become and where their careers would go in that fight. Henderson, Bendo, classic Bendo form. If you're wondering why he's called Bendo, I don't know if he's gotten a lot of Bendo stuff in the last, you know, whatever, three or four years. I can't remember. His fights are all blur now.

But definitely back then, there was a reason he was called Bendo. I mean, it was cool to say. Cannot submit that man. Could not submit that man. I swear Soroni was going to rip his arm off his body, especially in the last, like, 30 seconds of this fight. I mean, he just went after it. Frank Mir was on commentary, I think,

and he's like, he thought that he was just dislocated shoulder, just pop his arm right out. Dude, it was so deep. Like, it was so deep. I still don't understand how it didn't happen. Any three of us were even come close to the situation. Oh, that arm is gone. I'm tapping so quickly.

That's an amputation for any of us. That's like, the bone's going to pop out, infection done. I'm a one-armed man from now on. Yeah, it's just incredible. But also, yeah, like, Soroni's, like, resilience and, like, being able to battle, because, you know, Henderson was doing some really good work in the ground, doing some good ground and pound, really frustrating him early on.

And it's kind of this fight where, like, why I get so frustrated when people, especially one particular, you know, very famous sports pundit, like, question Soroni's hard or say that they could tell, like, before a certain fight, oh, he was quick. And don't be wrong, I understand. Seroni has said these things himself. He said these things before his fights that he cikes himself out. He's spoken about things in retrospect saying, yes, before big fights, like the Conner-Megger fight. I just didn't feel like I was into it.

So it's not a criticism without merit, but I just hate the overall idea that, you know, and I hope people, because he kind of ended on this big losing streak, that people don't have this impression of him that he was like a quitter or mentally weak in any way, which I don't think he is, at least when it comes to fighting. And this fight should be an example. Yes, it was a long time ago. He was a different person then, sure, whatever you want to call it. But anyone who thinks like, man, this guy can't gut through adversity, like watch this fight. And the crowd did not like the verdict. They did not think that Benson Henderson won the fight. Yeah, I went back to watch it again before this.

And, you know, I went in with the idea of watching it sort of to score. And then I just sort of immediately forgot it. Because we're just like, oh, this just rules. It's just awesome. I don't really care who's winning right now. Like, I know Bindo wins it, but this is just, this is just incredible. incredibly fun. And so like that, like I said, that was the only one that was a, the easy, easy one for me,

even though it's a loss. There's a tremendous fight. I just want to kind of add to that. Because I know how highly, especially you, Jed, revere the 155 pound division and how it has been. Best division in the world, baby. Yeah. It's been sort of the gold standard division. this fight is a top 10 lightweight fight of all time in my opinion this is one of the 10 greatest

155 pound fights probably top five ever yeah ever in the history of the division and i'm not and that's all of mma this fight was fantastic and it actually a lot of these fights when you go back and watch them sometimes they live up to to what you remember them and then other times they're actually better and then they they actually withstand time this one does that this is a must-wark watch. This is actually one of the, because we always talk about fights, like you go and show new fans about some of these guys. And this is one of those fights that you just show MMA fans of general. Like, this is why I love the sport. You go and show them this fight. It is phenomenal. And yeah, it stands the test time. And Seroni just his ability to the arm bar. People always talk about

Tony Ferguson against Charles Oliver, like, oh, my God. And then you compare it to that one. And it's like, man, these two guys are ridiculous. So, yeah, tremendous. tremendous fight, one of the greatest lightweight fights ever in the history of MNA. Yeah, I'm totally with you on that. And yeah, it is proof of why I always say that lightweight has been and will remain the best division. It's just like, because at the time is the other thing to remember this. This was WEC.

So at the time there was this certainly in retrospect, ridiculous stigma that these fighters were lesser because they weren't the UFC lightweights because they were still over here. And then obviously they come over to the UFC And that lightweight crop of Benson Henderson, Anthony Pettus, Donald Seroni These guys end up dominating to some extent

that division for years to come And this whole, that whole fight was insane and awesome My next one, I'm taking Eddie Alvarez at UFC 178. This one was probably the closest to getting kicked off just because I think there, that whole run was so I was trying to find a win there

because that run up to his UFC lightweight title shot was really important and definitive in his career. And I think the Eddie one is the fight I chose, largely because Eddie Alvarez coming into the UFC off a ton of hype, Bellator champion, the Underground King, a dude many people thought was like could be the best lightweight in the world once he got his chance to come over. And if I remember correctly, this fight was a change of opponent for, cowboy on relatively short notice and he just came out and the thing that I remember most from this is just the savage savage kicks and that being that like Eddie Alvarez just buck having his knees buckled by leg kicks there's Donald Soroni just going after him and so I'm this one is the one that I'd be the most willing to get rid of but it felt important and then to round my list out

Alex Olivaira incredibly important because he won the Battle of the Cowboys. We just had the Battle of the Hoffaels. Donald Serroney won the Battle of the Cowboys. So first round submission over Alex Olivera

at a Fight Night event in 2016. And so if you win the Battle of your namesake, I'm putting you in for that specific reason. And then I'm rounding it out with the Anthony Hernandez when that was a UFC on ESPN plus one

UFC's first event. Alexander Hernandez. Yep. Alexander, what did I say? Anthony. Which wouldn't surprise me if they fought

because that's cowboy jumping up a couple of divisions. You would fight Anthony Hernandez. Totally correct. Wouldn't shock me at all, but Alexander Hernandez, UFC on ESPN plus one. This was Soroni coming back to lightweight.

Hernandez talked a mess of garbage at that pre-fight press conference just about how Serroney was old. He's the new blood. He's coming in. And Soroni took it to him. Performing it to the night, fight of the night. Shut up this young whippersnapper and made a triumphant return to lightweight.

And for a moment, we got excited about like, oh, he's back at lightweight. Maybe he can put together one last run. Obviously, that didn't happen. But those are, that's my four that I'm picking. Mike, you agree with me on the one. Where are you? What are your other three rounding out your rush more? I actually didn't have any of your other three.

But that's the thing about Soroni. You can have so many of them. Like mine are by no means definitive. I actually, Benson Henderson's clearly number one. The Rob McCauley fight I put as number two because that was such an important fight. Those two just beat the brakes off of each other

and that just showed like who Cowboy was. Like the Benson Henderson fight showed he could battle through adversity. But if you just want to go in there and just chuck hands and just chuck feet and just have a brawl, the Rob McCullough fight was the one that kind of put Soroni on the map. and set him up for that. Now, I know it wasn't his first WEC fight. He had another one that was like less than a minute,

and then it got overturned because of a diuretic that he took. But then he had the Castillo fight, got a quick submission. But then this is the fight where like, all right, this guy could get tested. We'd get him out of the second round. Let's just see what this dude has. And Razor Rob is just one of those guys. He's an underrated figure in WEC.

And Cowboys kind of synonymous with the promotion. And I think Razor Rob is one of those guys that just doesn't get enough credit for what he did for the promotion. that fight was great. The Melvin Galard, yeah. On that note, should just be mentioned when Seroni retired, Razorab fight was the one he cited as his personal favorite fight that he ever had. So, you know, if the man himself is choosing it, you can't go wrong picking it.

That's a good one for sure. The other two are UFC fights. People forget UFC 150. Melvin Galard almost bolted him in like 30 seconds. hurt him bad. I cannot believe that Donald Soroni survived that early onslaught. And then he just gets up. And as Soroni has done many times in the past,

we kind of saw it in the Benson-Henderson fight, where it looked like he was in trouble and this is just going to be one-way traffic. He just gets up and flips the switch and says, F it. And then he goes out and knocks out Melvin Gellard like a minute later after getting almost bolted by Melvin, which is kind of the story of Melvin's career in all promotions and all different of the martial arts.

That is the story of Melvin Gullard. All the talent is the best 30 second fighter, probably in MMA history, but after those 30 seconds, it's just not good for Melvin and that one. But the one that really stands out, if I'm going to show somebody like a highlight real finish, it's the Rick Story finish.

What a beautiful combination ending with the head kick at UFC 202, just a crazy card. And with everything that happened at 202, it's one of those ones that is forgotten about because we think about how that card ended and all of that and the story and the build and pun intended with story. But just the way that finish happened, it was so beautiful. It's one of the most sensational combination finishes you'll ever see in the

sport. And that was cowboy, man. Just finishes like that. When you feel like Rick's, maybe Rick Story's a little too much for this version of Donald. Then he comes out and just lays that combination, that kick up. side that head of Rick story. It's just a beautiful thing. So yeah, you could have gotten a number of different ways with these, but those are the four I landed on. Look, I don't have any issues with those whatsoever. I mean, uh, the story one was, it was my number five. It was the one that just outside of it that I ultimately replaced Eddie Alvarez just because of all the narrative implications going into that. But yeah, I mean, as clean and classic of a combo as you're ever going to get a,

Okay, what about you? Mike, this is why we're best friends. Our lists are almost exactly the same. So if you want to break it load a little friends forever, you can. Is that a saved by the bell reference? It is a save by the bell reference. It is a feature. We have not had the chance to implement much on onto the next one, but hopefully in the future we will have more picks the same.

But this time, our picks almost exactly the same. As Jed said, all of us, of course, the Benson-Henderson fight, have to have it on there. I had Gallard and a story. I'll mention my fourth pick in a second. I do want to talk about Galardon's story more because Mike's, I'll talk about story first. Yeah, you mentioned one of the best combinations you'll ever see. The people who did like the sort of the Dragon Ball Z anime edit out there that is classic.

It looks so cool. Going into it, it's like, you know, Rick's story is like a grinder. And in the first round, it kind of looked like he might be able to do that. You know, he's a great wrestler, super strong guy, great athlete. And after the first round, we're kind of like, okay, this could go, you know, this could be. And this was a Soronyate Waite, right? So this was like, you know, we knew he'd be dealing with one, wrestlers and guys who may be a little bit bigger than him, though he's never, he's not like a tiny welterweight, but, you know, certainly against some of the bigger, stronger guys might be at a deficit. And it looked like that was going to happen.

Instead, yes, one of the greatest finishing combos was ever seen. I transcribed it. Jab, right to the body. That doesn't do it justice. Sorry, right to the body. Should be like all caps, exclamation points. Just kills him. And as story reacts to that, a short left, right on the money.

A head, and then that causes story to kind of duck away from him right into a head kick. A bunch of more short, accurate punches follow. Huge need of the head. Herb Dean, not, probably amazed at this point, mesmerized, not stepping in because story was done. After that, that neat, story was done. And because he's Herb Dean. And because he's Herb Dean. And this is a...

Hokey Herb. This was like almost six years ago, guys. And we tell you people like, all the Herb Dean criticism is not recent. This has been going on for a long time. Anyway, not stepping in. Infinite. So Seroni has to do a lot more punches and get the finish. But it's one of those combinations where like it's something you imagine they practice in, in, you know, training, right?

It's like, if you put this, like, I'm going to put the pads here, here, here and here just hit, hit those spots. It's not something you would ever recreate in like an actual fight. And most of the persons, like the head went exactly where you knew it was going to go. You're never going to get that whole combination out. You get like half of it and then something adjusts. Yeah, yeah. Or the guy falls or whatever. His head just doesn't go in the right direction.

Like watch. again, I'll talk about it. Again, watch after he hits the short left, right to the body, short left. Watch how, he's throwing the kick as stories kind of tilting away. He doesn't, he's not waiting for it. He's throwing it right.

He like knows that that's how stories, where his head is going to be. And just lands it perfectly. It's so, it's so amazing. So you have to have that one on there. Melvin Galard is just hilarious because, like, like us, like us, Melvin Galard and Sorority are friends.

Like training partners, friends. Like, and, I mean, people knew that they were. going to like, they weren't going to take it easy on each other, you know, because they train with other teams too. So it's not like they're like best friends and like, oh, we're training partners are never going to fight each other. But it's like, it's like, these guys are friends. And this is how you treat your friends. This both goes to Melvin and Serroney. Like, I don't want to know you because they really, yeah, you're right. Like, Galar just like really went into him. And yet still, this is kind of like, it's one of the faster starts we've seen for Calvo,

even though like he started and like walked right into a left hook. But maybe it was a familiarity. Maybe it's because they had trained together before that he didn't need a feeling out process. I don't know. But yeah, he rocks him with the head kick, stuns him. And then he throws this running right-hand bomb. I should tell you, by the way, the story and Galard finishes are on YouTube uploaded by the UFC. So don't worry.

It's not going to go anywhere. I just look up Donald Sorney's best. All of it's on Fight Pass, too. All of it's on Fight Pass, too. But I think a lot, you know, for anyone who doesn't have that stuff. If you're just using free YouTube on the UFC, their YouTube page, just look up, you know, best, or just look up Donald Sorney finishes. I'm sure the USC clip shows it first.

And there's a bunch, Galard story, both in there. But yeah, you ought to watch this punch if people have never seen it before. He literally just, it is not a martial arts punch. This is a punch, again, just talking about practice. This is something you would never practice. You would never practice throwing a punch like this. You would never be in a legitimate martial arts contest.

You would not throw a punch like this. And he lands it 100%. Glends it so clean. This is how one of us would throw a punch in like a random like street fight. This is how this is, I wrote this down because I had to phrase it this way. Pardon my language.

This is how an asshole throws a punch. Okay, this is not how a high level it is. I want people. That's how you throw a punch in a dream, like in your dream. In a dream, yeah. And you only land it in a dream. In no real situation would you be able to land a punch. He just all, all form, all technique out the window, runs forward and just whips a bomb.

I've never, and just, and I mean, it lands and Colar just goes down immediately. He just goes as, and then it's so, it's so, it's so very. vicious. And again, I just want to remind people, these guys are friends. They are friends. That's an amazing finish. It's just, it's so good. Sometimes you got to hate your friends, you know. And very quickly, and I'll just say this one's on YouTube too. Him and Anthony Injuquani, this was one of his last fights before WC. Ring of Fire 28 Evolution in a glamorous Broomfield, Colorado, February 2007. It's a catchweight bout. Again, guys, it's on YouTube. You can check it out yourself.

It's got a, actually, it's actually a nice to produce little kind of video package. done by versus, I think, and someone uploaded it. All the cowboy stuff is there. It's a slow start. He's kind of getting tuned up. Inge Kwanis is like a bigger, stronger guy. He's actually kind of bullying him, throwing him around a little bit. But cowboy hangs in there, finds away.

It comes back, gets a submission win. It's, again, this is like one of the first fights of his career, and you can trace it all the way to, like, he's kind of the same guy, just like a more evolved, older version by the end of it. But it's all there. You watch this fight. It's all there. It's kind of crazy.

And by the way, Andrew Kowani... From his beginning fights, or he's all... He's the same dude. He's just more refined. Yeah, yeah, now. By the way,

Andrew Kowani could get his own... I was going to say, damn, they were good, but his queer isn't quite as distinct. A darn they weren't bad. I feel like he could get his own, darn they weren't bad. Darn they weren't bad.

A 10 minute, darn they weren't bad for Anthony Anjo Kowani someday. When we are on episode 200 and start needing, needing people, Anthony and Joe Kwani had some fun fights. He's on the list.

Say the man didn't. He's... Everyone's on the list, you know. Some are higher, some are lower. He's a little lower down. Do you guys have any alternates or honorable mentions to throw in? Any specific ones? Because, again, with Soroni, throw a dart, you know?

I mean, both Jamie Barner fights were close to being on my list. Those are just battles. Those are just freaking awesome fights. I like the Eddie Alvarez one because it was just a classic cowboy scenario. He's scheduled with Habib. Habib tears his meniscus, and then in comes Bobby Green, and then Bobby Green has to exit the fight, and then Eddie Alvarez jumps in on, like, super short notice.

And companies like, all right, all right, I'll fight these guys. I'll fight them all. Just whatever doesn't matter, man. Yeah, those are all good. Matt Brown, the Matt Brown head kick knockout was a good one. I mean, there's so, Mike Perry was a good one. I mean, there's so many good ones. Mike Perry, I was going to say, because we're talking about a bigger guy,

heavier puncher. A fast start, generally a pretty fast starter. So it seems like kind of a nightmare matchup. But then, uh, Saroni, hey, he said, I'm going to mix some martial arts. Breaks out that breaks out an arm bar, puts them away. So that was definitely fun to watch. Classic, classic jiu jitsu from the man just immediately. And the last submission win of his career.

So, you know, it was. Because the man used to just tap people all the time. The Varner ones, uh, I mean, both of those were battles. both of them might both of them were Fire of the Knights and the WEC the only reason I didn't include them is because if I included them then I'm included then I'm just

going to do a WEC list which is kind of a case or earlier point of like we could just blocked multiple episodes out because his his WEC career I could spend two hours talking about all those fights because they all were incredible so I just picked the best one to be the representative

on the Rushmore but yeah if you have you got some time to kill You want to go kill an hour of time. Go watch Donald Seroni fight Jamie Varner for 40 minutes or whatever it is. You know what might be the most end of career, like when you say like, oh, that's classic cowboy. The Tony Ferguson fight. Because he went in there and him and Ferguson beat the shit out of each other. And then he lost it because he did something like literally his coach like, don't blow your nose.

Don't do it. Everyone's like, don't play your nose. And he's like, I didn't listen to you. I'm blowing my nose. and then his whole face swelled up and the fight was stopped. And like, his stock went up after that. There's like, oh, this dude just doesn't take authority well at all. But then he lost and nobody cared.

Like, it was just classic Seroni. But you're right. Look at us next two fights. Gae McGregor, Anthony Pettus rematch. So he didn't lose anything from doing that. It's like, yeah, you're right. I mean, he's still held in such high esteem. How crazy is it?

Like, Jamie Varner, you mentioned, like, that the Soroni, the first Soroni-Henerson fight was like for the right to fight Jamie Vart. Like, they were chasing him, which is crazy because he's like a footnote now. But he was the guy they were going after. Yeah. Yeah. Do you use the champ for a hot minute there?

The one other fight I want to mention. Miles Jury was the ass kicking, the literal ass kicking, right? Oh, that one? Yeah, that's a good. And Miles Jury was never the same after that. Like that, he was undefeated going in. I thought was going to beat Donald'sner. I was a big believer in Miles Jury was never the same.

He lost that fight. I honestly think his confidence, just like, I mean, you fight Charles Oliver and X flying, whatever, you lose that. And then kind of just uneven until, and then uneven results since. So that really, I honestly think like when someone does that to you, when a grown man does that to you in a fight, like you can't, there's no going back. I mean, it's tough. It is a very tough thing to overcome.

The other other one I would like to mention, Adriana Martines. Yeah. Just because I think, I think of all fun fact, I don't know if you guys know this, Donald Saroni has as many head kick COs as Mirka Krokop. which is a wild stat to think about given like how we think of crow cop but I think his the actual cleanest one of them

you know the Rick story that head kick is in the middle of that combination it's beautiful but like the cleanest pure he kicks this dude and he drops Adrian Martinez he does the thing where he like lands on the chin and neck and the foot wraps all the way around and it's just as crisp as can be and Martine just drops faceplants down

So, like, I had that one on because I think it might be his, his most aesthetically pleasing highlight, even if it maybe isn't one that matters the most in the context of things. That's definitely that UFC clip. I want to say, though, I need one of the, like, you mentioned all the stats. We need something like how many people have five, five or more head kick chaos and 15 or more, like, submissions. It's probably only him. I imagine he's like, it's a list of one. Of that, that's got to be one. Yeah, that's a list of one.

Because head kick chaos the five, like crow cop, him, maybe Holly Holieholm. Like I'm trying to think off the top of my head people have that many. And Holly home haven't been tapping people. So like, yeah, that's the John McDessie one of one. The John McDessie one is brutal. That was a no-moss one, like a no-moss moment, right? He broke his whole face. That was the wave off.

Like, I'm good. Like, McDessie, like, I'm good. I'm out, right? Yeah. No more. Yeah. It's just, I don't want to do this anymore. Horrible.

Yeah. It is. There are so, so many of them. I had one last one, but I actually made an entirely separate category that you guys don't know about, but you're not expected to answer it. But we're going to get to that one slightly later because it just didn't quite fit here. And we've spent a lot of time on the Mount Rushmore already. And we have other categories talk about. I've got other awards to hand out.

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Benson-Henderson one. and that's okay. I'm okay with that. Our next category, the I am not impressed by your performance award. This named after the famous George St. Pierre quote, where he told Matt Hughes, I'm not impressed by your performance.

And it is, we just spent 30 minutes talking about how great cowboy was. Let's do the opposite. Let's talk about when he, as you put it, Mike, when the light shined brightly and he got blinded by them. So, Mike, let's start with you because I know, I think I know one of the things A.K. is going to talk about and I want to table that for later. So, Mike, what is kind of the career low lights for Cowboy for you?

Yeah. I mean, as many options as we had for the Mount Rushmore, I feel like we don't have as as many options, but I feel like the lows, there's still a lot. The lows sort of equal the highs in a lot of ways, even though they were less frequent. but I mean I was torn between two but I have to go with the Connor McGregor fight I have to go with UFC 246 I know it was later on in this career and a lot of people thought he was already on the the wash side or maybe even beyond that but just everything that went into it he just when I when I look at when I looked at Jared Cananir during fight week for Israel out of Sanya one of the things that stood out to me like when I'm trying to compare attitude like expression, all of that, I thought of Donald Seroni heading into UFC 246.

Like, just try to, let's try to keep it on the fight. He's trying to stay positive, but you can tell he's just kind of frustrated and doesn't want to really be there. And I felt that way the whole week with Donald Tarani, even though him and him and, and I think McGregor knew that too, which is why McGregor was like, hey, let's go have beers and let's be best friends and let's have our arms around each other at the press conference. It's like super friendly with the guy who was about to fight. Yeah.

Because McGregor knew. McGregor knew it was about to happen. He knew just looking in his eyes, like, oh, boy. Like, I'm going to go out there and this is exactly what I could have hoped for in a comeback fight. And just everything about that was just the bad, was just the blinding part of the bright lights for Donald Soroni. Didn't want to be there. Terrible start. Just looked rattled on the walkout.

Like, everything about Soroni, that whole fight, we just screamed, like, everything that frustrated us about Donald Seroni throughout his career. Like, right when we thought this is when he's going to get over the pee. It just doesn't happen. And then it just, not only does it not happen, it just ends in the worst possible ways. And this is that. And we have Stephen A. Smith talking about it and just everything that happened in the build, the aftermath, everything. It was basically like, no one wanted to believe that it was the end of Donald Serroney. We all believe that there was one last run left in him.

And that fight, that fight week, everything that came from it, subsequent interviews after the fact, that was when we realized this is it. This is the end of Donald Soroni as a title contender. He still could be a fun fight kind of guy, throw him in there with some wily vets or up-and-coming guys who probably won't fight for titles but are at least fun. This is where we've taken Soroni and put him in that mix of guys or it's just like, at best, we're just going to get fun fights out of him. This is the end of the cowboy, the guy chasing the gold, Soroni that we always revered and hoped would happen someday. This is when we all realized it's just not going to happen, everybody. And we just have to accept that tremendous career, but there won't be a champion. There won't be that crowning moment where Dana White puts that title around his waist.

It's just not going to happen. So I'd go at that. There's other options. This is probably the easiest one, but this one I just couldn't shake. Even after being in Vegas last week and a half ago for 276, and I looked at Jared Kennedy throughout the week and how frustrated he was getting with everything and how he just didn't feel like he wanted to be there at all. All I thought about was Seroni at 246. fight week. Yeah, I mean, if you go to MMAfighting.com, best website in the whole

entire world, I wrote Donald Seroni's kind of retirement stuff, and he, he notes the McGregor fight was when he knew he was done. He kept fighting kind of after that. He even said it, going into the McGregor fight that he just kind of, he was done, but he kept doing it for the wrong reasons. You know, his, his wife kept telling him, you know, hey, you, uh, once you walk away, you can't get that back. So make sure you're done, done. And he kept just kind of trying to rekindle the spark, but it wasn't there anymore. I think that that is an obvious and an okay answer. My primary issue is I'm going to make the argument here that that's not as low light, because he did his job in that fight, because his job was to elevate Connor McGregor back, back to the win column in spectacular fashion.

And so for him personally, he didn't excel, but he definitely did his, he did the thing that was wanted of him the most. And so for me, I chose, I opted for almost specifically that reason, I opted not to pick that one and instead chose his rematch. with Hafeuio de Sanjos, a UFC on Fox 17, for the UFC lightweight title. And because it's everything that we've mentioned before. Seroni was on such a tear at that moment in time. I think it was eight, eight wins in a row, knocking people out left, right and center. He had the Eddie Alvarez win. He had the mild jury ass kicking.

He finally defeated Benson, even though that decision was questionable. But officially, he got a UD over Benson and their trilogy fight. coming off that violent beatdown of John McDessie. This was like Saroni was peeking and the whole story about him was, Sroni's finally put it all together, everything we've seen. And it comes in and RDA blows him up in just over a minute. Like that as one-sided a beat down as you have ever seen. And it was the nightmare scenario.

It was every bad thing about Saroni historically all coalesced into one moment. And that moment happened to be on five. So on big broadcast TV for the lightweight strap at the biggest moment of his career against the guy he had already gone to a decision against. And Saroni was the underdog, but it was still supposed to be at least a fun competitive fight. And it was just an absolute mauling for a minute and six seconds. So other contenders out there, but for me that was the number one. And now I want to go to you AK, because I think you're. going to mention the other thing that I had here.

Yeah, I'm going even further back. This kind of played out nicely. So Mike had the most recent. You went back. I'm going to even further back. I was scared you were going to take this one. UFC 141. Him and Nathan Diaz.

It's the other fight I had on the list. Boy, I was all in on. This is probably during some, no, I was already well into my fandom at this point. But definitely there's probably still not out of my hips, MMA hipster phase yet, you know, where you're like telling your friends like, you guys don't know about the WC? Like, these guys are serious, man. Like, these guys are going to come over. Blue Cage, baby. Yeah. You don't know what the Blue Cage? Come on, man. This guy off tough who didn't even win tough? Didn't Nate lose tough? Yeah. Huh? He won because

of an injury, I think. Wasn't it? Manning and Burian, right? Maybe. Yeah, yeah. He won. He did win. He did win. Yeah. This tough guy's going to beat Blue Cage? No chance. Yeah. And what is what I was trying to think? What was Nate Diaz doing? up into that fight. Oh, he'd beaten Taconari Gome. Oh, he kind of recently come back down from Welter Wade, which was such a senseless move at the time, beat Taconorikomi and then got the Soroni fight. But at the time, I was like, Soroni had won his last two with the WC, 4 and O'No to start

his UFC career. Dennis Sievers in there, Charles Olivera, actually, kind of want to talk about that a little bit more later. A nice run, a nice run to start his UFC career. And Nate Diaz, look, a good fighter, likable guy, popular. But I'm like, I'm like, on paper, I'm like, I think Sorony is just better everywhere. I'm like, I like him better. I like his grappling better.

I like his, I think he's a better striker. I just, I think he's a, he's a more potent fight finisher. I'm like, sir, only all the way. This is it. This is going to be. And I'm pretty sure if he'd gotten this fifth straight UFC win, he would have gotten a title shot. Benson, the next title shot was, the title, excuse me, at 155 was Benson Henderson and

Frankie Edgar. I feel like he would have gotten this shot instead of Benson. I have to remember how Benson got there, but I don't remember if Benson just got it because he was the W.C. champion coming. Oh, no, he wasn't the WC champion coming over. I think he had as well. Anyway.

My recollection, and I do not know that I won't say this absolutely, but my recollection was that Sironi was probably getting a title fight with the win there. And it, again, this was, was this a co-main event. This is on pay-per-view. Maybe it wasn't a co-main. It was a co-main. Oh, under a Brock Lesner. Under Brock Lesner.

Yeah, it was big. A lot of people watched this. Big, big moment. And he got, like, housed. Like it was a good, like one funny. It was an exciting fight, but Diaz just beat his act. I couldn't believe it just because I guess I was so, maybe I didn't, I wasn't. Arguably the best Diaz performance ever outside of the first Conner.

That's what Rogan was screaming after. Rogan is just screaming after. That's the greatest. The greatest I've ever seen you, Nate. That's amazing. And I guess that's how it's gone down a lot of those minds too. And it's not wrong. Like you say, it's not wrong.

It is so complete. It is such a drubbing. I mean, Seroni's not like going away and everything. But at no point, I think after the first round, you're like, he's not, Saroni is not coming back. You're just like he's not, he's completely getting outstruck. It was so, it was shocking.

No ball was already downhill. Yeah, it was shocking at the time how easily Nate handled them. Even to this day, because like, I still think if you run that one back, Soroni could do better.

I don't see it as this fight like, oh, well, Nate Diaz clearly showed who he was and Soroni showed who he was. Like, I think Soroni, that's a winnable fight for him still. But if you just saw that one time they fought, you would not believe that. You would not believe that.

You would not believe has any chance because Nate Diaz. So that was really, yeah. I mean, that was really shocking to me. Because Soroni was like a sizable favorite in that fight. Was he? I don't remember. I didn't remember.

Yeah. I just pulled it up because I remembered him being it. He was like he closed around minus 300. Okay. He was a. Wow. Because at the time like he, this was Soroni really in peak form and it was supposed to be.

Because this is always the fight. Whenever we do a damn they were good on Nate Diaz, this will be a Mount Rushmore fight for him. This is always the fight I think of as his coming out party. Because I distinctly remember thinking, and Donald's running can kick Nate in the legs. Nate doesn't really like that. And he's competent enough at boxing that Nate can't really do the Nate thing and just kick him a bunch.

And, you know, the grappling should be close to even. And it was just, Nate just put it on him. Just absolutely put it on him. I don't want to throw anyone under the bus here. But I'm not even a name of the website. People can find the article themselves they want to. This is written before. This is a pre-fight thing written after they weighed in.

The headline is, Nate Diaz is tauntary. will come back to haunt him. Okay, that's the headline. It's kind of a recap of the way ends, but also kind of like this opinion thing. And it ends with the writer saying, it may have been wise of Diaz to keep the taunting to a minimum. Saroni will be holding nothing back during tonight's fight.

Don't expect this one to go the distance and don't expect Diaz to be left standing. So I don't know how to say this person to represent. That's about as wrong as wrong can be. I'm not naming names. I'm not naming sites. People can find it themselves easily. But yeah, like I said, I was kind of the same way.

I don't know if I was using the words that strongly. I definitely thought Seroni was going to win, though. Yeah. The thinking Seroni is going to win. That is not that you can be forgiven for that wrong. But that is a firm statement for something that did not happen. Okay. The last thing I have for this category because figured this is the place to

put it in AK and Mike, we can, we don't have to spend too much time on it, but contextualizing careers means talking about the good and the bad. And while it's pretty easy to talk about the bad of somebody fighting, because I don't, that's just never a big deal to me when they lose because losses happen, like those are, those are explicable. Soernie has had a number of issues, accusations leveled his way. Many of them pretty bad. And some of them, not even accusations. The thing in this regard that I'm wanted to speak about is Donald Serenia has a troubling history with homophobia. And this is not a history that is long gone. It did start back in the WBC days where he used a homophobic slur to essentially talk and threatened to or didn't threaten.

I think his words were, I can't wait to kill that. Jamie Varner, something to that effect, which he was reprimanded for. He has repeatedly used that same slur. He used it to talk about UFC 200 and Daniel Cormier versus Anderson Silva. He called Jason Ellis, that same thing. He has made statements about trans people. And this isn't stuff that happened like in 06 and went away. This is stuff that happened then and sort of continued to happen.

periodically. And it just needs to be mentioned because he has apologized, you know, but those apologies have, at least to me, always seem to have been forced by the powers that be saying, hey, you got to come out and do this, especially because the fact that this repeats. And so that is, I don't know if you guys want to comment on this at all, but it is, I think it needs to be noted that as fun as this dude is in the cage, he has had some troubling things outside of the cage as well, and specifically stuff that has recurred and kept going. Yeah, I mean, the Jamie Varner thing, and I remember that whole situation, just kind of going back

and doing research and the apology that he came out was basically about just the threat and to kill him. But he never mentioned the actual slur, which was kind of troubling. But yeah, there's just been a lot of that. and then, you know, with the COVID stuff on top of it. I mean, he's not the only one. But yeah, it's all I'll say, because, I mean, you laid it out as well as you could. I mean, if you're going to talk about the great moments of his career and some of the crazy fights he had and some of the, it's cowboy being cowboy stuff. You have to mention this stuff as well.

And it's fair to do so. And like you said, this is not something we're going to spend an hour talking about. but if we go this whole show without mentioning it, we're not doing it right. So it does deserve to mention. Yeah. And I hate that this is part of his persona. I hate that it cannot be separated from his persona.

I hope people know when we do shows like this, you know, we understand that MMA and listen, pro sports in general is filled with character people that are, you know, they're glorified for their athletic achievement, not necessarily because of their personalities. This is in baseball, football, basketball, You name the sport. Unfortunately, there's people who, like, are great, you know, have achieved a lot

athletically and are just dirtbags. It's just, it's just, I wish there, it doesn't, it shouldn't have to be that way. I don't think there's a connection between athletic excellence and being a piece of crap. It's just that there are people like that. And unfortunately, they, you know, these people who are able to achieve that success, you know, just feel like they don't have to change because whatever, they're praised for one thing, take me as I am, what have you.

So I hope people know when we record a show like this, we are, and we like sort of speak romantically about this guy's career. We are strictly speaking, you know, about his career. There is, this guy does his achievements in the sport, uh, means something to, to MMA. They mean something to us as fans, to us as people in the media, you know, so in that sense, we're always talking about Donald's Torney of the fighter. Um, and again, Donald's throwing the fighter should not, you know, she cannot be completely separated from Donald's story to the man.

And so if anyone out there, it's like, well, I just don't give a crap what he's done. I hate this guy. Um, you know, he doesn't deserve any sort of praise. I understand that. Not that anyone who feels that way needs my validation, but I'm just saying, just from where we're coming from, we are very much separating the man from his career. And is, I mean, is that always the best thing to do with any athlete? Probably not. But that is, you know, going forward kind of, you know, what we do when we're doing a show like this.

But yeah, his comments, again, we ought to reiterate, homophobia, transphobia, some accusations of racism. The homophobia and transphobia is very easily documented. I mean, there's public comments he's made. There's some racism accusations, so I don't know about that. But homophobia, transphobia, it's out there, completely unacceptable. I don't care who you are. And again, I don't know if the man is ever going to change. You always hope that that's the case.

But if he doesn't, then it's just it is something that is part of his career forever. Yeah, it just is. And I didn't mention the racism accusations largely because there are a couple of them. And they're not, they, you know, they do seem to be in earnest. But it is the homophobia and transphobia, that's, that's on video. Like, that's, you can, you can find that. Like, yeah, you can just go see that very easily. And yeah, so he had some troubling stuff going on personally, not as troubling as others,

but still needed to be mentioned. And Keir seemed like the best place to put that. Mm-hmm. Definitely. Now on to happier things. my personal favorite award, the Ivan Minjavar Award. This award is for the weirdest, most surprising opponent that Donald Serney ever faced,

or you can just extend it out to the weirdest career moment. It's named after, as I say every episode, Ivan Minjavar, who, my favorite factoid in all of MMA is at George St. Pierre, welterweight, goat, MMA goat, George St. Pierre's first fight came against Ivan Minjavar. Career Bantamweight remains hilarious to me. And thus the genesis of this award. And I got to be honest, guys, this award has been, to my mind, the all-star of previous episodes.

Because some deep diving, some strong work from Sean Al-Shadi had tipped to myself, pulling some really great choices here. This was the hardest I ever had. And I frankly couldn't come up with anybody that I'm excited about. I dove deep. I tried to get into the background of his kickboxing days because he has a few kickboxing fights. He's got one pro boxing fight. You know, I tried. I tried to find something that was super weird and super unique and I couldn't.

And so the best answer I have here, I pulled two so we can have options. But the leader for me is it's super weird that he knocked out Charles Olivera, given where Charles Oliver is at this very moment in his. career but that's like that's it the only other one I have is James Kraus for similar reasons just because I sometimes forget James Kraus was like a pretty good fighter mostly because he's turned into such a such a great coach and I distinctly always remember the olivera fight just because of what that was but I've totally forgot that Soroni and Kraus fought until I went back and was looking at it was like oh that that's weird like if you had asked me before

I said, no, they've never fought. And so those are the only two I've had. But I hope one of you has come with something, something brilliant because I couldn't find anything for, for, for, for cowboy. I'll go, AK, if you don't mind. Go ahead. Because I haven't seen answers yet. I'm renaming.

I'm, I'm renaming this award. I thought you did. I'm renaming the Ivan Menjavar award to the Paging Shaheen Al-Shadi Award, because I have to know. I have to know the, the, the, the, the, the beginnings of this. I have to know where this. man went. I went through a lot of different fights and a lot of different things and I landed on Seroni's third pro fight, Ring of Fire, Colorado, June of 2006. He fought a guy named Craig Tennant.

And what is interesting about this is that Craig Tennant didn't fight before or after this fight. So Craig Tenant, if you meet a guy named Craig Tenant who says he used to be an MMA fighter, just know that the only man that Craig Tenant had fought in a mixed martial arts boat in his entire life, at least that is known by the pages of the internet, is Donald Seroni. And he got submitted in like a minute and a half. So he didn't get his face kicked in. He didn't suffer the same effects that John McDessie suffered or any of future opponents had. But he went in there and got submitted by Donald Seroni. And he did not fight before that or after that. So paging Shaheen Al Shadi, get in touch with Craig Tenant. I'd love to know where this man went, what he is doing with his life, and what has happened since

then? Because 16 years is a long time. So that's the one I landed on. The Krause one stuck out. There's another one that I kind of like, Jesse Brock was an interesting one, just knowing who Jesse Brock fought like later on in his career, fighting Jimmy Rivera and Bellator of all places. He fought Lauren Murphy's husband and got beat at RFA. He fought a guy named Tiago Alves, not the Tiago Alva. that we all know and love. And he fought Demetrius Johnson in 2010. He fought Tyson NAM in 2011. A lot of different guys.

But to me, it's got to be Craig Tennant, a man who can say that, hey, I did MMA once. And I fought Donald Seroni and then I didn't fight again. And I didn't fight before that. It's, I got really excited because, true story, I was trying to find. I was Googling Craig Tenant. And I got really, really excited because there's like, a a midwestern artist American artist named Craig Tenant who paints landscapes and you're like maybe this is told this is totally a thing that could happen in Colorado because he's painting a bunch of

landscapes and mountains and stuff was like oh my goodness please tell me that this dude is this dude and that Craigtonant's like 80 so it's not that dude but hold on he got 80 now he would have been like 60 something okay so it's possible is what you're saying it's possible. Possible. It seems, it seems unlikely. So I just opted on that not being the case.

But yeah, I, like I said, I got really stoked when I was Googling around and trying to find it. Because the rest of them are, the only other things that I can find about some of these opponents are like, oh,

Saroni fought like, Cruz Chacon in his second fight had like 20 fights or something. Like some unreal number of fights when Saroni fought him. Like, he, just but that's it so this was really tough category but uh that's that's sort of where we landed unless a kd you have anything else or were you on top of the fight's not on youtube by the way i just looked it up serrani it's not it is not no one filmed this it's an arm it's an arm bar submission it was less than 90 seconds uh according to the records and this is the glory days when

events had like subtitles so this was ring of fire 24 integrity And before that, Sororle's part debut was at Ring of Fire 21. Full blast. And there was relentless and evolution after shock. I mean, these are the days where, I mean, M.A was really fun. We need to bring those back. That was, that was the most fun. One championship bring them.

I can't believe one championship dropped the names. I am so, I just, because I just did, wrote something. It was like, one championship, 159. I'm like, oh, that's not fun to say. I feel like that should be a preview show staple for the rest of time. Is that we all have to come up with our own subtitle. I'm in. I support it.

All right, we're doing it. Can we do it for every show or just pay-per-views? Just pay-per-views? We should probably do it for... Yeah, we'll do just pay-per-views. We can solve this later, a K. Are you just with me on Chuck Eauze?

Do you have anything else? It's such a bizarre. It's a completely different world when this fight happened. It's not even... Like, we shouldn't even consider it. This is 2011. This is a lifetime ago. Charles Olivaire was, he was a few months shy.

It was 22nd birthday. He's a baby. Like, how do we even... This fight's not. real? This isn't a real fight? It's not. And it still, it's super weird to think that like, oh, yeah, Saroni Cajonioed that dude, who's now

uncaoable, who's fought all the biggest hitters in the world and can't knock out. He was kind of in a weird stretch already. He took his first loss already. It wasn't, Serony was not his first loss. He lost Jim Miller. Then had the first fight of the Epic Nick Lens trilogy, which was a no contest, illegal knees, quote unquote, legally. It should have been a win for Oliver. And, uh, and And then Sironi.

So he went to this three-fight winless streak. And then dropped down to featherweight, which is a whole other adventure. So this Saroni loss, like, this is like a big loss. It sent him like in a weird direction. He was already kind of going that direction. It just kind of confirmed it. I'm trying to see what else. Oh, this happened on a UFC on versus card.

I just want to mention UFC on versus again. I feel like we didn't mention enough on this show. And, yeah, and it's just a great finish. He just left, left hand to the body. Just shreds them. Just shreds them. There's just no coming back from it. And again, you'd be hard pressed, I think, to convince anyone after that fight

that this guy will one day, not just be a U.S.C. champion, but like a dominant force at 155 pounds. And this was, I mean, Oliver had a ton of hype behind him. Five pound for pound fighter. Right? And Oliver had a, don't get wrong, had a ton of hype behind him coming to the UFC. And he looked great in his first couple of fights. But after like those loss of Jim Miller and Soroni, I mean, we should have realized at the time, but that's really just two grown men fighting like a guy who is still a prospect.

But at the moment, I mean, it would have been like, well, looks like another talented guy who just, you know, isn't going to make it to the top. and it took him a hell of a long time to get there, but he made it. And yeah, again, I say again, it looks like a fight from another planet. If you just put that clip on now, it's such a strange thing to watch.

Yep. Very, very weird. All right, next category, easiest category of the entire bunch for me. This was simplest thing I've ever had. The easiest time I've ever had in doing all this show. The Fedor Sweater of Absolute Victory Award. It's award named after,

the iconic Fador sweater of absolute victory. It is what one piece of memorabilia, if you could have one from Donald Turner's entire career, what would it be? I think there's only one choice here. I think this is the most obvious and it's the hat.

It's the cowboy hat. But, you know, if you guys want to make a statement or a case or something else, I'm willing to hear it. I mean, it has to be the hat, but I'll go, I actually went different with this one

because I knew the hat was so obvious. So this is kind of an obvious one too, but I would just go with the gloves that he dropped in the center of the octagon. Like these are the last gloves Donald Cowboy Sorone is going to wear as a fighter. So yeah, I'll go with those. See, if I want gloves, I want WBC gloves. Give me any of the WEC gloves because I love the WEC gloves. Those are good too. Something gloves, but either the last WEC fight that he had or the last UFC fight they had, maybe both.

How about we get a pair of both? And then everyone else can have cowboy hats. Yeah, I'm glad. A.K. I should have gone with the obvious, but I never, I didn't know to do this category with the condit one. So I'm like, I just wrote down, give me a used like tin that like, you know, they spit the, you spit the dip. You spit it. It's like a thing.

You chew and spit it out. You do. You don't usually spit it into tins. What do you do? It's, okay. Well, give me a bottle. The tobacco comes in the tin and you put it in. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And then then it, because it's in your mouth, it's generating spit. and then you spit it out. Give me something that Donald Sorney has spit dip into. That has not been cleaned. I'm just saying, I thought we had to go away from hat or gloves or something. I'm like, oh, it has to be obscure. You could do whatever you want. I would give it to.

And if you want Donald's Rone's spit, then that's okay. I would give it to a bloody elbow, my tag team partner, my Between Length tag team partner, Kristen King, bloody elbows, Christian King. she hates anything to do with like excessive like blood or vomit i think uh and i would i would i would wrap that up and said her as a gift nobody likes dip spit well maybe this guy nobody i don't know apparently uh man the only other thing that anyone should have taken is just the bmf ranch because that place seems awesome but oh yeah you know the whole ranch the whole ranch the whole ranch the whole ranch the whole ranch the up keeps a little tough but you know give me the whole ranch is the only other thing

But the cowboy hat, it's the obvious one. I'm declaring that one the winner because it just very clearly is the thing that you want. Be it the, didn't he used to have an old like monster one that he rocked? Or the I love the one he was wearing for his last rodeo, you know, the exit hat with the big, big feather in it. Any of those hats is great. You know what I just forgot? What was the shorts he wanted to get the special patch on? Do you remember that?

And they wouldn't let him get it. They wouldn't let him get it at first. Was it a package? Like, dedicated to his grandfather or something. That's starting to sound a little more like something I remember. It was for, I just had to look at this up real quick. Yeah, it was a personal patch. Originally, I think they weren't going to let him wear it.

I believe he finally. Because they don't do patches or whatever. Oh, I should know this because I was there. I forgot. I was in Ottawa. That's why that's why this sounds so familiar. Gosh, but what did it mean? It was a dedication to his grandmother.

Yes. And it was taken from an older parent. of shorts that he had worn. So he kind of cut it out of another pair of shorts and put out. So that would be an amazing. I have, I have a feeling they auctioned this off. That's a really good one.

Yeah, they probably auctioned it off. That's a really good one though. Yeah. Or he just kept it. I mean someone out there does own it. Didn't he put a patch on his shorts before he fought RDA too? I think so. It's just like a representation of like moitai or something and he got a whole bunch of trouble

for that one too. Maybe. Yes, he did. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Why? It's so crazy.

because I actually I was there and and I wrote the story about this so it's good thing that I remembered otherwise it'd be very bizarre yeah he was fined it was the same pair of shorts I believe or at least the same patch and he was fined ahead of the RDA fight a big one apparently you know worth it yeah worth it though next category the international player hager's ball named after the iconic Chappelle show's sketch about the international player hager's ball this is you know we we try and keep it We go high, we go low. We ride the waves of the career, and now we're nitpicking the career. What are the knocks on him?

We talked about his worst performances, but what are the big problems with him? We have mentioned it several times already. My number one, the only thing I have written down here is that he never won the big one. That when the big moment came, he seemed to shrink every single time. Dude fought for a lightweight title, fought for three WEC titles, lost them all. And that to me is the big knock on his career overall outside of any individual performance. Yeah, the one Henderson fight we didn't talk about was the second one, which was super disappointing because there was so much expectations going into it. Oh, yeah.

Soroni had never been submitted up until that point. And Benson just caught him in a really, and again, it's a really, I mean, anybody would have tapped to this guillotine. People see it like he, this was a pop your head off guillotine. But I mean, the fact that, you know, he was able, that he fell into it is so shocking. And you're right. I mean, first round, you know. That was the first of many, like we said, Nate Diaz, complete domination, Hafelde Sanyos, quick finish in that title fight, Conne McGregor, 40 seconds.

Yeah, there's a pattern. You know, I don't like Colin Piel, chokers or whatever, but, or again, as we kept saying, the lights just being too bright, but there is a pattern. And that was the, like, that was the first of many, many, many times that it was a huge, huge, huge fight. And, boy, I mean, the results could have been, it could certainly have been better for him. Yeah, I mean, I think we're all kind of. kind of on the same page.

When the lights are bright, he just freezes. I mean, eventually, and people started to realize it, too. It's fighting and you can play the anything can happen game, but you always realize that if you can get Seroni rattled a little bit before a fight and get his mind in a different place, it takes him a minute to get cooking. And if you can capitalize on that early, you can beat him and you could do some damage to the man.

So, yeah, just, I would say, just the lights being really bright. and then just the confidence issues that he would have when he would get rattled, which would led to that. And then, you know, he's a consummate slow starter. Now, there are examples where he was a fast starter. But the slow starter was a big one, unless you really pissed him off, a.k. Alexander Hernandez really pissed him off. And it was almost like he came out and it was like the third round.

So, yeah, for the most part, just the slow starter stuff. But I think it all ties together. When the lights are bright, he has bad, he has serious confidence issues for a guy who, when he has a microphone in front of him, he seems very confident in himself. But man, there are certain fights where it just couldn't get going at all. And just it was like the anti-cowboy in a lot of ways. But yeah.

Is there any questioning the lifestyle? Like we all, he's famous. You know, he was very, he was very famous for living from fight to fight, to check. He said he would say openly, yeah, man, whatever money I got off my lap,

before he finally built the, you know, invested in the BMF ranch. There was that long stretch. He was like, yeah, man. You know, I get my, I get my bonus. I get whatever. I get the salary bonus, win bonus, whatever. And then I'm blowing that on some whatever extreme sports adventure thing.

And it's cool. Like, I mean, I certainly wouldn't criticize it. I think, like, that's how, you know, if you want to live your life that way, that's great. And he stayed busy enough and healthy enough that he could live that lifestyle. But I do wonder, what if it was, like, one less fight a year and, like, and more time in training, more time in, you know, rounding out his game. Because as we said, because as we said, if you go from like any of his early fights against the earliest one I could find was the Nchikawani one to now he's certainly more refined and better,

but he's pretty much the same guy in his 55th pro fight that he was in his seventh pro fight, a six pro fight, excuse me. And that sounds so bizarre to say, and again, maybe there's nothing that we've done about it. Maybe there are so many changes he made that I'm just not, you know, I can't perceive it. I'm not a, not a, my attention to detail when it comes to fighting, maybe isn't enough that I can see how much he's evolved since that fight. But part of me does wonder. What if one less fight a year, a lot more time taking, you know, just being getting healthy,

working on, you know, keeping himself, you know, working on his mental game. Well, maybe things are going to be different. Maybe they wouldn't have been. Maybe it would have been the same. It's funny you mention that because the very next category is called the alternate universe. And it's about what the biggest what if of a fighter's career is. And so that happens to also be the big what if for me is, is what if his lifestyle was more that of a professional fighter than that of a cowboy's

And because I think it's a really fascinating question. And you touched on a lot of the topics. There was a big narrative, especially in the lead-up in the aftermath of the RDA fight, that he fought too frequently. His willingness to step up that you can't deliver time in and time out that much, you need to be taking time to be specifically prepared for fights, et cetera. That was the thing that followed him. And honestly, more directly, the stories this dude has,

about almost dying are legendary. I encourage you, if you haven't read any of them, go Google it or whatever. There are, he almost died in a scuba accident one time while he just almost drowned. He rolled his truck a bunch of times. He, I think it was a hunting accident where it looked like he almost shot his eye off.

And the biggest one, at least for me and the one that I think has the most evidence of tangibly affecting his career in 2000. 2006, he got in an ATV accident where he was at one point pronounced dead before he was revived and made a full recovery. But there's a story on ESPN kind of categorizing some of Saroni's injuries. And they talk about this incident there. And there's a quote where he says he, after the accident, he like kind of remembers waking up and holding his innards because apparently he suffered a huge laceration or whatever. the end result was he lost like 12 inches of intestine and died before being brought back to life essentially

and I am not a medical doctor but losing 12 inches of intestine seems bad for anybody doing any athletic activity certainly a fist fighting one and especially considering for a lot of his career one of the knocks on seroni was he was weak to the body and I know again, not a medical professional. I don't know if that makes you weak to the body or not. Dame sure ain't helping. And he's sure every time he got hit real hard in the breadbasket, he folded up like he had diverticulitis.

And that's just, those may be unrelated, but it certainly feels like they were. And that all goes back to your point of the lifestyle he lived, of living fast and loose and doing all that, was this man has so many of those. And fortunately, he's here today because there are plenty of stories about times he could have easily died had

things broke a little bit different or he'd been a little less lucky. But I think it's fair to wonder if that adversely affected his career. That's a good one. A.K., I want you to go first. I mean, that's it. I mean, like, I'm just going to, like, I kind of segueed into this accidentally. I mean, the other, so I do really, really wonder how, how those changes, again, if they would have made his career better, would have it turned out the same? It's such a part of who he is, you know. As far as we know, maybe that's what helped him, like, you know, living that way is what helped him. Yeah.

Find that balance, right, to be the best fighter that he could be. Maybe this is the best. We are living in a universe where we got the best version of Don Sorriene. I don't know. Maybe the Soroni, again, who doesn't do this stuff, who doesn't live his life that way is just like mediocre. You know, he doesn't have, he doesn't have the peaks that this guy's capable of. I don't know. I don't know.

But it is certainly fun to think about lifestyle changes. It's definitely a good road to go down. I'm going with, I wonder if Donald Serrani became a dad sooner. Like he became a dad in like 2015. Oh, that's a really good one. I didn't even think of that. That's a great one, Mike. Because he seems like, I mean, obviously the COVID stuff that he says and listen,

whatever, it is what it is. But maybe a lot of the things that we talked about earlier don't become a thing. Like maybe the racial things don't become a thing. Maybe the things he said about DC don't become a thing. The homophobic and transphobic stuff doesn't become a thing because he's got kids and he's got to be a role model and things like that. And I'm not saying that like it would 100% do that, but maybe he thinks about what he says a little bit more. Maybe he's a little bit. Yeah, and maybe he's more up for a Connor McGregor fight because he didn't have kids still after the McGregor fight.

I remember he searched it correctly. Oh, no, maybe I'm wrong about that. No, no, no, he had, he had, he had, he had, he had, he had, he had, he had one kid. He had one kid, he didn't have the second kid. Yeah, he didn't have the second kid. But, but still, I mean, this is after Ferguson, this is after Gaichi, like, and he was a dad. But I wonder, like, I wonder if it happens sooner. Like, I wonder if, like, 2015, 2015, 2016, he has, like, in the middle of his run, like, or does he take as many fights? Or, you know what I mean? Like, does, does, does, does 2013, 2014, 2015, does it happen that way? Or does he take, like, four less fights? And maybe. And maybe. And, he's more prepared or, you know, less vulnerable in those types of situations when the when the lights are brighter. So it gives him more time to prepare for the some of the opportunities that he was presented. So that's kind of like the what if question I have. Like maybe. Yeah, maybe it's a more overall positive conversation outside of maybe the Jamie Varner stuff. And maybe we're talking about more success down the line. Maybe with two kids in

2016 maybe he is a world champion who knows we've seen how that can change fighters and their perspectives on different things so yeah i guess that's the what-if question that i had oh that's that's a really really good one i hadn't even considered so well done mike golf clap for you sir thank you we've still got a few more categories so let's try and get to them so we don't spend all of our lives talking about this man who we can talk about for hours and hours we know you love the thought of a vacation to europe but this time why not look a little further to Dubai, a city that everyone talks about and has absolutely everything you could want from a vacation destination. From world-class hotels, record-breaking skyscrapers, and epic desert

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Allison after Nexium from CBC's Uncover is available now on Spotify. The next one, the Habib Tony Award, pretty should be self-explanatory. This is for the fight that never happened. The opponent, you never got to see him fight that you would have liked to. A little bit tricky for Donald because Cowboy fought everybody. Fought the entire world, fought many of them twice, three times. Really tough. I have, I will note that he was twice booked to fight Habib, though this is a fight I don't care about having missed because we all know how that would have gone.

But it does bear noting. I have two choices here. I have a very, very recent one, Joe Lozahn, which that fight fell apart several times, a la Abee, Tony, and now ultimately won't happen because he stepped in to rematch Jim Miller at 276. But the fight I went with Bobby Green. These two had a little bit of heat between them at one point in time. Green had accused Soroni of making some racist comments.

He had also accused him of sexually harassing some of his fans. there was real friction here and they were booked to fight but as we mentioned earlier that was when Eddie Alvarez ended up coming to the UFC that fight got switched around and instead I don't remember who Bobby Green fought but that's when Soroni fought Eddie Alvarez and that fight ended up never happening kind of weird when you think about how long and everybody who both those dudes have fought that they never ended up fighting especially when there was friction like this so that That's my choice. But Mike, let's, do you have anybody that I didn't mention or one of those jump out at you particularly?

It was the Joe Lozahn one because that was the only one that really made sense down the stretch that he hasn't fought yet. So I really liked that one. Bobby Green went on to fight Edson Barbosa like two months later and got beat up. He didn't get finished, but he got beat up in that fight. But I think it's a Loz on one. Like I really want to see it. Not just for Donald, but I wanted to see it for Joe too because I feel. like, and this is okay.

And Joe's, Joe would be perfectly fine riding off into the sunset, coming off the win over Jonathan Pierce. But I feel like the only fight that would get Joe in there one more time is the Soroni fight. Maybe Jim Miller, like if that fight is a possibility, he might come back for that one. But I just don't know if there's like outside of the UFC going back to Boston. I just don't know if Joe fights again. So, and he was ready to go.

And the fact that the second fight got stopped, like the second fight didn't happen because Joe Lozahn injured himself putting socks on is just such a weird way for that fight to never happen. So I think that's the one that I'll go with because Seroni has pretty much fought everybody and the only other name that stuck out to me was Habib and in 2014

2015-2015-2016 that'd probably be the correct answer but knowing what we know now that can't even be in the top 5,000 at this point. I don't even care about seeing that fight. Also I will note the Lozahn choice really fits the spirit of Habib, Tony what with the sock pull-out?

The Saroni's infamous pipe trip or whatever really fits the name of this category. It packed all that randomness into what, like the three months span somehow like. Yeah, Saroni ate a bunch of bad tacos like before their other fight or whatever. He said, Mike, you can't say that. Tacos and he absolved. No, he absolved the fish tacos of guilt. Hold on now. This is slander to the fish taco industry or the fish taco.

He said, I do not blame the fish tacos. he took a stand and defended that fish taco truck he ate from. So please, guys, don't get us sued. Serroney said he is nothing but love for that truck. But Joe Rogan said that. We have to believe Joe Rogan, MD. Yeah, that's right. I forgot.

Joe Rogan MD. I'm just kidding. A.K., what about you? I'll just add on to that. Another recent misfight, Diego Sanchez. I'm very curious to how that would have gone because I think that's a very winnable fight for him. It's also super weird that they never fought. Right?

It's not because of the Jackson, connection, but like when you just think about who they are as fighters, like you kind of feel like they would have fought. Yeah. And it was only booked the one time, fell through the one time. He ended up fighting Alex Marano instead, which was a horrible matchup at the time. He got smoked it within a round. I mean, that was just the worst person.

I think he would have beaten Diego. I would have picked him to beat Diego, win a decision probably. Totally reasonable. Yeah. And if he wins that fight, I don't know how much that changes things. Maybe he still only takes one more fight after. and retires. But I do wonder if that one win that would at least kind of broken up this,

this winless streak that ended on, would have pushed him towards that sort of magic number of 50 combined WC and UFC wins that he was talking about for the longest time. It wasn't like promising he would do it. But every time he was asked like, oh, when are you retiring? When he retired, he'd say like, oh, 50, you know, 50 sounds like a good number, WC, UFC. So it didn't go that way.

And I do wonder if one more win would have kind of, kind of gotten them there. But we'll never know. Totally good. Jeff. Just, you know, he, he mentioned trying to fight to fall in love with it again. And maybe a W. Maybe W. gets him back on board. And, hey, we've done this. We're doing this show. There's also, we should acknowledge, total possibility that in a year or two, Soroney's just like, man, I want to fight and comes back.

That's absolutely a thing that could happen. I think he's assuming he sticks it out. I think he will come back and fight again. Well, we'll do an addendum episode to this show. that happened and it married it. Next category, the Sean Ferris Award for the actor who should play them in a movie. This is named after Sean Ferris, the actor who played Jake Tyler in the cinematic masterpiece, the greatest MMA film of all time, never backed down.

I still haven't found a better name for this, so for the time being, and maybe forever, this will just stay this award. I have a great, I have, I think the best I've ever felt about this, my choice. for this. So I want to go last. So, okay, this is where you thrive. You're a movie guy. Oh, I'm sorry. Who should play Donald Cowboy Soroni in a film. Can he not just play himself at this point? He's an actor. That was the first answer I had. Yeah. I went. I'm not going to lie. Because he's going to be, he's going to be an actor.

So that's the first one I had. I get it. I got a better one. Yeah. And I get it. If you're doing a biopacac, you want someone to play a younger Seroni. Sure. But listen, they got the CG, you know, youth, youth making technology now. They could get all those wrinkles out. He could play himself. I mean, let's, I'm just, I think we, I feel like we've talked about his IMDV page on another podcast we did recently. And like, this, this guy's got some sheriff, I'm just looking at roles he's played, that are

either movies that are coming out or have come out. Sheriff John McKinney. Sheriff Cole Pickering. Greg Rourke. Crackshot Bob. Jeb. Just Jeb. Oh, no, that's his role in the recent cinematic masterpiece terror on the prayer.

is Jeb. Is it really? Oh. He did a show. So Jeb is my least favorite name in the entire world. I can understand why. I suspect you can figure out why, but I hate that name more than anything. There's a short film called Ashburn where he played Pebble.

So I'm very curious what that means. And of course, Spencer Confidential, which actually came out on Netflix, he was credited as Big Boy and listed as Cowboy Soroni in the credits. So that's kind of fun. So I guess he would just play himself. I'm sorry. I didn't have, I didn't put as much time to this as I could have. That was the first one I came up with, but I decided not to go with it, mainly because

I don't think he's a very good actor. And then I thought of another one that I think is much, much better. Mike, did you also go with Cowboy Place himself? That was my first choice. I ended up going in a different direction. I will say this is kind of a boring answer because as we talked about earlier, this was a lot of work. This is like a lot of time to dive into different things. And you could get, you could get into cowboy rabbit holes for hours, like a very long time. And then to me,

I was like, oh, shit. I like, I forgot to pick one of these. But I dove in and I feel like Jake Jillenhall can do a good job here. I feel like if you shave his head and, you know, give him the different looks and put a cowboy hat on him, it's not out of the realm of possibility that he looks like cowboy. You might have to do a little makeup, you know, some, some cinematic stuff behind the scenes. But I feel like Jake can do it justice. So I'll go with that. I can't wait to hear your answer, Jed,

because I know you put a little bit more time into this than I did. I spent a lot trying to find this one. I feel like Jake can do it. I feel like Jake size-wise can do it. I feel like he looks a little bit like Soroni. And I feel like he could get the cowboy, the juxtaposition, if you will, of one cowboy and really dive deep into the man. Look, I'm never going to say that Jake Jellon Hall can't do it

because that man is a genius. He can do anything. But neither of you have the correct answer. The correct answer is Mr. Ben Foster. If you don't know who Ben Foster is just off the top of your head, I will tell you exactly how I view this. He is the crazy brother in hell or high water. And that is, that's how he plays Donald's Roney, just maybe slightly less murderous. but Tanner and Heller High Water

that's the Ben Froster right here It is when it came to me I was like oh that's the dude That's it If you're making a Cowboy Soroni biopic That's the man I want taking the role What's that movie he's in where he's just like He's just a savage

A Alpha Dog I was a savage in a lot of movies Like lone Survivor He also does Three Tenda Yuma He also does some martial arts in Al I think it's him I assume he's doing his own martial arts

And there's one bizarre scene in Alpha Dog where I think it's the first scene he's in where he like karate kicks a guy and I'm like first of all Alpha Dog is a terrible movie Awful. Ben Foster's great. Some of the actors are actually really good in it. But Ben Foster's one of them and yeah the very first scene is in he's doing like some martial arts in it so now you got is that Jed

did you remember that? No I didn't remember that at all but I think he could do some of his own like fighting because he just showed them. All of the things I think of from him are him just being like an absolute monster of a person and I think when I think of Donald Seroni and just like all of the stuff about him it's like he's like a marginally well-adjusted crazy person because this is like all the things he wants to do are this and it really was the hell or high water uh role where i was like oh that tanner howard is just like he's donald saroni if if a lot of bad things happen like break for donald saroni that's just where we get so uh because like i can envision don't serroney doing the comanche speech like a hundred percent i could see him having told somebody that in real life so

I thought about... I thought about... I thought about Jonathan Tucker, too, because he was in Kingdom. That's a good one. Oh, yeah. I feel like he's... I don't know. That's a good one.

Both good choices. Both are Boston dudes, born and raised, so... And both are a little crazy. Jonathan Tucker is a good one, too. Jonathan Tucker put a beard on him. Be fine. Oh, yeah. A couple categories left just two before we close the show down.

The Cole Conrad career change. award named after Cole Conrad, Bellator Heavyweight Champion, who retired to go sell milk, great career choice. And the award is what would Donald's Roney do if he weren't a fighter? Another really easy category for me. Cowboy, you'd be a cowboy because his whole life has been him trying to functionally be a cowboy, so he would just be a cowboy. Does anyone have anything else?

Nope. CPA, certified public accountant. There's another world where this man goes a different direction, gets a different direction, gets an entirely different education. This is a very far-off world, huh? Listen, I think he might have missed his calling. I think there is a, you know, he's talked about all the time how terrified he is before fights. He's not the only fighter to say this, but he's the one who said it the most often and been so forthcoming with it.

Talked about, you know, vomiting. Vomits before fights all the time. I guess GSP said he did that too. So maybe it wasn't, maybe he wasn't meant to go down this road, guys. Maybe he'd just gone to a nice business school. Get certified. And he may be really great at it. So I promise I won't use this answer again on another show.

I know I could use this for every fighter. You know, I get it. You just want every fighter to be an accountant. They could have been a CPA. I swear, I will only use it for Dom's right. Unless there's a very good reason, I think like another fighter specifically would become a CPA. So I'm breaking that out for a cowboy. Mike.

I'm going with a multiple time reality show competitive champion. Oh, that's a great. He would compete on most extreme elimination challenge, which is on Spike TV. Then he'd go on to wipe out. He would go on to many shows of that nature. To the amazing race. The challenge. He's got to be on the challenge.

He's got to be the challenge. He's got to be a reality show superstar. And he would win lots of money. That's true. Is there still time? Just the cowboy? He could probably go. Dude, there's like 800 challenge shows.

He would definitely be on the challenge. And he would probably. get washed pretty quickly. The Bachelor? Just dominate the Bachelor. God, no. We're not going that far. But yeah, I think, I think he would have made a pretty good living just going on these reality shows and winning a bunch of, bunch of coin. So yeah, I'll go with that. I love that answer. That's a great choice, Mike. Second and the last award, the Phil Barone. I'm the best ever. This is for the career peak where they were at their apex where all of the things were at the best that they would ever be. I had a really tough time with this one. So I would love to hear you guys' thoughts

because I have answers, but I'm not married to them. I'm willing to be swayed off of, off of my number one and or number two choice. So AK, Mike, I don't know if either of you have a strong feeling here, but if one of you do, Mike, lead the charge. It's November 2013 to May 2015. That run for Donald Seroni is the peak. This is Evan Dunham. We mentioned a lot of these, the Adro Martinez, Edsa Barbosa, Jim Miller, Eddie Alvarez, Miles Jury, and then 15 days later, Benson Henderson, then he breaks the face of John McDessie and finally gets himself into that fight with RDA, which unfortunately didn't go that well. But November 2013 to May 2015, that is a year and a half, and that is eight fights, eight wins, and five finishes. All those finishes, none of them got to the third round.

and then decision wins over Alvarez jury, I mean, he just starched Miles jury. Benson-Henderson fight wasn't all that thrilling, but it was a win. I was there for that fight. It wasn't the most thrilling fight. The fans were not all that into it, but when Cowboy was announced the winner, they were very into it. So Cowboy was over like Rover. The guy could do no wrong in this time. And everybody was rooting for this guy to get to the belt.

Get to the belt. Get to the belt. Get to the belt. And he was just fighting all the time. So I feel like this was as over as Cowboy ever was to the giant fan base. There was outside of maybe Alexander Hernandez winning the press conference and him just folding Hernandez. I don't think Soroni was way over at that point. But I think during this stretch of time, this year and a half stretch, I think Cowboy was, I mean, Cowboy was so over and everybody was behind him. Okay, what about you? Friends Forever.

Yeah. I'm on the same page again. Listen, I don't care how. I don't care how it ended. There was a remote possibility that Tom started. He was there. He was in the cage. There was a chance that he was going to become the UFC lightweight champion,

the number one, probably the number one ranked lightweight in the world. He was not a favorite to beat RDA. I get it. You know, RDA had already beaten him. RDA was getting a lot of respect at the time. I don't know. People did not expect the first round knockout, that's for sure. but they didn't expect Sorony to win.

But it doesn't matter. As Mike just outlined, he fought his way there, and the wins there were memorable. Like all these wins are great finishes. Again, yes, the Henderson win, not a super memorable fight, but to finally get over that hump, to finally get that win in that three-fight series, the John McDezsche, the No Mas, the Miles jury, the ass kicking. Eddie Alvarez, I mean, essentially making Soroni the lineal-Belot champion. If you want to talk about him, never winning a title, Eddie Alvarez was the Belator champion

when he came over, and Soroni beat him. So, you know, and just to add on to that, look at all the guys, like, all the champions he beat, just not when they were champions. We just said Benson Harrison. We just said Eddie Alvarez. KJ. Noon's like an elite XC champion. Who am I forgetting here? He beat Jamie Varner eventually, again, after Varner had lost the belt. So a guy he'd been chasing and trying to win the title from forever.

He got the fight. It just wasn't for the title. You know, the title wasn't part of the picture anymore. He beat world champions. Like, he has wins over world champions, just not when they had belts. So, and that was the peak of it, right? That was the peak of him so close to getting his own and not just any title, close to getting the, you know, what is the biggest title in MMA, the UFC, UFC gold. And it ended poorly, but boy, just that, that window, you know, that window where we thought it would be possible.

I mean, that's it. That's really as high as he got. He's had some, you know, he had moments after that, but nothing quite, quite as fantastical. So you guys ended up where I settled, which was, I specifically chose the trilogy fight with Ben, Vincent Henderson, mainly because that was, he took that fight like a two days or some stupid number after the Miles Jury fight, which he wasn't happy with. But, I mean, he fought Benson two weeks after he had already fought somebody else as a dude he lost you twice. He overcomes it. And even though I distinctly remember thinking Bendo probably won that fight even the third time, that still was such, that was the moment where he was like, oh, okay, he is, he's cleared the hurdle.

this dude's going to challenge for the lightweight belt. And it's like you said, A.K., maybe he can finally do it. I almost went with the McDessie TKO, or just because it was such a, such a stomping and such a good performance, that that was the moment where everyone was like, oh, he's going to get to a title fight. Oh, he really does have a shot here. But I think the stupendo one mattered more for him and for his career. So, yeah, we're all kind of a line there in where we think it is.

So that's good. We close on a very happy note because that's it, boys. We have one. We're at the last category. The coup de grace, the finale, it is the legacy award. I still never came up with a fun name for this. This is just what Donald Seroni meant as a fighter, what he meant to the sport, what he means to you. Where does he fit in the pantheon of MMA or what are the moments, the signatures that stand out the most about his career?

And Mike, I will let you lead us off. Donald Cerrone is the Buffalo Bills of mixed martial arts. He's gotten to the dance many times. Phenomenal start, by the way. A plus. Got into the dance many times. And when the lights were the brightest, he just couldn't get over that hump. And there's nothing wrong with that.

The Buffalo Bills have been a historic franchise. They've had some Hall of Fame players. They've had some great moments as a franchise. Donald Seroni had great moments as a fighter, some great, wins, some signature wins. We've talked about a lot of them. He's the guy. He's the guy that never says no. He'll fight anybody any time, no matter how many days. No, it doesn't matter. All those great things. But when the moment mattered, when the spotlight was on, he just couldn't get over that hump, whether it was in the cage or sometimes when he had a microphone in his face and he said

things that he probably regrets. So yeah, he's, he's the Buffalo Bills. He's the Buffalo Bills of MMA. And that's not to, that's not an insult. That is just who he is. Buffalo Bills went to a lot of Super Bowls, and they've had some great moments in their franchise, but just never won the big one. And Donald might be the most revered and most fascinating fighter to never win the big one. So, yeah, he's the Buffalo Bills of MMA. I love it. AK.

I don't cover live events very often. One of the last ones I was was UFC Ottawa. It'll probably be a long time before the UFC comes to Canada again because we have very strict vaccination requirements. So I was in Ottawa for the fight with Al Ayahuinta, and I hadn't been expecting to see Cowboy after the fight because I had picked Ia Quinta to win. So I thought Iiquita is the one we're going to get backstage and get to, you know, get the chat with Iaquinta.

But Soroni won. It was great performance. And he was back there. He was with Danger. His son, we didn't mention his son. His son's name is Danger for anyone who doesn't. I'm sure everyone knows. No, more importantly.

Actually, more importantly, his son is named Daxon. Danger is. his middle name. All right, all right. Anyway, I was going to call him danger. No, they do call him danger, but I wanted it to be clear that danger is literally his son's middle name. Don't keep saying it. That's why he did it. And he just wants us to have to say that every time. And I'm obliged to say it. But yeah, he did that, you know, this was peak dad's seroni era. You know, I think he was bringing him to all the events. He was old enough that he was bringing to all the events and really just talking about what inspiration his son was for him. And it's such a

humanizing moment. And again, listen, we talked. And we talked earlier about the more unsavory elements of Donald Sorney's character. And those should not be discounted. That is part of the man, too. That is part of the man. It's very regrettable. I hate that that side of him exists. Like Mike said, hopefully he's a dad now and maybe he's learning some things.

We don't know. But that's just us being optimistic and positive, right? But I will say in this moment, it's, I don't want to say everyone was crying. That's not true. But it almost felt like there was a, everyone got a little misty. Because he definitely started crying. He started crying. about having a son there and his son be on to watch a fight and all that. And it was

really an amazing moment. And one of those things where it just reminds you like just the incredible stories, you know, and he's told so many of them, right? He's told so many of them. This is probably isn't even in the top 10. But for me, this was my sort of in person experience with feeling the presence of the cowboy persona, as it were. And with again, a little more of a human side of it because he had a little, little dats in danger there. So yeah, that will always stick out to me just kind of being being in that situation and it this was not again a very big card it was a very kind of a small intimate setting where the scrum was happening and uh a larger than life figure for sure in in mMA but uh yeah at that moment just uh just another guy just what

he always kind of wanted to present himself as right just another guy getting into that cage fighting for money and being a dad and uh just trying to figure it out like the rest of us you know yeah man for me there's not a moment there's nothing because it's that's not who don't Donald is. It's not who Cowboy is. For me, the thing that I think about the kind of way I wanted to sum up his career is Donald Cowboy Soroni is MMA. Like he is, he is what we love about this sport. He is what draws people in. He, he embodied the fight anybody anywhere, anytime, any weight class. This man never pulled out of fights. He pulled out of two fights in his entire career. and one of them was the Luzon fight

like a month ago or whatever. The other one, he had, I think, like, blood poisoning or something against Robbie Lawler? This man signed the dotted line, did it all the time, fought on a week's notice, on three days notice, didn't care. He just loved to scrap, and he came and he delivered performances. And he didn't always deliver wins,

and sometimes he fought, he didn't deliver good performances for himself. but man was never almost never in a fight that you would consider boring and for as much credit and he deserves the credit that an ATS gets for inventing the BMF title Donald Soroni was that like he he invented that before it got caught a fighter and name was put on it he was just the dude who did did the things that you think of when you think of a BMF or you think of a fan favorite guy like that's that's just it for his entire career he was the embodiment of most of the best things about mama and that's there aren't a lot of fighters who can say that uh and that's why there aren't a lot

of fighters who have you know 48 fights between the ufc and wbc and 20 some odd bonuses and all that he he just did it and it was a joy and a pleasure to watch and if if he does come back hopefully it won't be sad because they do have a tendency to do that but for the time being you can look back at his enormous career because has the most fights of anyone we've done on the show as you might imagine

and just say damn he was good so that is it ladies and gentlemen that is Donald Seroni's career wrapped up in one tight hour and 45 minute bow I hope you enjoyed it all I hope this is going to take new fans to go back and watch some of the fights, maybe check out some of the highlights we mentioned. And we will be back in two weeks.

I don't know who we're doing now. Maybe we'll go back to the Anderson Silver one we had planned, but some other things that might look a little more appetizing from a time standpoint. But I appreciate you all being here. And I really appreciate AK and Mike for joining me because when I ask people to come on this show, it is not a light ask. Because there's a lot that goes into this. We've got to talk for a lot. You've got to do research. It's a big endeavor.

It's one that I think is really important and that I love doing. And so thank both of you, gentlemen. Thank you to m.mapfinding.com, the greatest website in the world. And thank you. If you've stuck along with us this whole time, thank you for listening. I love you guys.