MMA Fighting - HOAM | Can Jorge Masvidal Spoil Colby Covington's Title Shot? Plus, UFC Merger With WWE

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

Jorge Masvidal finds himself in a very interesting position this Saturday in a hometown fight with Gilbert Burns at UFC 287, despite being on a three-fight skid. Could an upset win be enough to spoil arch-rival Colby Covington's bid to fight Leon Edwards for the welterweight title? On an all-new edition of Heck of a Morning, MMA Fighting's Mike Heck discusses the stakes in the Masvidal vs. Burns co-main event of Saturday's pay-per-view card in Miami, and if the UFC could change course if Masvidal steals the headlines. Additionally, topics include the big news of the UFC and WWE merging together as one company under the Endeavor umbrella, what it could mean for the fighters, the advantages the deal could have, the UFC 287 bantamweight matchup between Rob Font and Adrian Yanez, Aljamain Sterling vs. Henry Cejudo, and more. You can listen live to Heck of a Morning Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays at 10 a.m. ET on the MMA Fighting Twitter Spaces. 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

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We are live on the NBA fighting Twitter spaces. You can hear the show in its entirety. Jeez, wait. Sure, they're after on the MMA Fighting Podcasting Network. I am Mike Hack. Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. Hope everyone's having a great start to their week. And what a week it is.

UFC 287 going down this Saturday. Promotion returns to Miami, Florida. for the first time in a long time. We got the rematch for the middleweight title. Alex Pereira defending against Israel Adasania. We got Gilbert Burns versus Jorge Mazadol, Adrianianz versus Rob Fon, and so much more.

This is a really good card. I am excited. Watch party going down this Saturday. Stay tuned for that. It's going to be fun. It's got to be festive. I already got my wardrobe. Ready for the proceedings.

The shirt is absolute fire. It is Miami to the nines. And wait till you see the cold open for the watch party. It is absolutely outrageous. Can't wait for Saturday. Very excited. So join us for the UFC 287 watch party, 9.45 p.m. Eastern. This Saturday night, MMA fighting YouTube channel.

So we have a lot to talk about, my friends. We can talk about UFC 287 for sure. when we take the calls. We had a very busy weekend in the world of combat sports. I know he didn't have a UFC events, but we had plenty of other events to keep our attention. We had Bellator 293 on Friday. It was actually a pretty good card.

Daniel James gets the knockout in round three against Marcel Goulman, the main event. Katzangano, Liam McCourt, did the damn thing. They went at it, fun fight. Sangano wins. John Salter dominates Aaron Jeffrey and then retires from the sport. Archie Colgan remains undefeated

against Justin Montalvo. Knocks him out in the first round. Luke Traynor, what a night it was for him. Submits Sullivan Colley, big upset, and then he goes out and, you know, proposes and gets the yes.

So pretty good moment for him. Rakeem Cleveland gets the 10-figure gilly on Christian Edward. Christian Edwards, man. This guy was touted as the next big thing at 205 and then at heavyweight. And he's just getting beat. Mike Hamill knocks out Nick Brown.

It was a good card. Tons of finishes. We had freaking scarf holds. Sarah Collins against Pam Sorensen. Lots of finishes. Fun card. PFL card, not so much. Tough hang from those I spoke with that were actually watching the events.

A lot of decisions. pacing issues continued to be a massive problem for the PFL. According to people I spoke, I did not watch the event. I was watching and covering GameBred Boxing 4. I had WrestleMania on the TV. WrestleMania was interesting and fun. Saturday was incredible. But Game Bread Boxing 4 went down on Saturday.

Fight Circus, too. Fight circus was just everything you could have possibly expected it to be after looking at the fight card. but Gamebred Boxing 4 was pretty interesting, kind of a weird card. I liked it. It just seemed like, I don't know, it's just one of those cards.

It seemed like it just took a really, really long time. So I think there's things that the GameBred boxing folks can improve upon. Fights are pretty interesting. I thought, obviously the main event was Anthony Pettis, defeating Roy Jones Jr., majority decision look i'm not a big huge boxing guy i mean i watch it when i can but i thought i mean maybe i'm crazy but i did the live blog for the last three fights i thought roy jones junior won that fight i thought it was pretty clear he won that fight i actually scored the last six rounds for him

i thought pettis won one and two because roy didn't really do anything but i thought roy won the next six rounds. If you want to give Pettus round seven, I ain't going to be mad at you. But I thought Roy won. At the same token, Roy didn't do a whole hell of a lot throughout the fight. And Anthony was at least moving forward and trying to throw punches. But if you go back and watch it, Roy had that guard up. And Pettis wasn't really landing anything. You know what I mean? It just wasn't really landing anything. Everything was just hitting the arms, hitting the mitts. And when Roy was hitting him, Roy was frigging him. So Roy's probably to blame for it for not being more active, but Pettus gets a big win and good for him.

Vitor Belfort beats Jacqueray, Josealdo, Jeremy Stevens fight to a draw. I thought Joseo won that fight. It was close. I thought he won four rounds to two, but if you want to score to draw and can be mad at you. The other MMA-related fights, Gina Mazzani and Pearl Gonzalez just beat the shit out of each other. That was fun as hell. Give them all the bonus money. really enjoyed that fight.

B-Win defeated Andy win via unanimous decision. Kind of an unfortunate ending to the Marcus Perez Joe Riggs fight. Joe had suffered an injury. It was probably winning the fight heading into that moment, but Marcus Perez gets the win. He calls out Jake Paul.

All in all, not bad. Not bad. There's worse things I could have done on a Saturday night than watch and cover that card. But it was fun. And I think we learned that doing massive arenas in Milwaukee on WrestleMania weekend and on Final Four weekend is probably not the way to go. It seems kind of empty.

I actually had somebody send me a video on Twitter. It was actually a little more full than it looked on television. It would be interesting to see how many pay-per-view buys this thing did on PPV.com and on linear pay-per-view and UFC FightPass. but I think 13 fights is way too much. I think having a, what, eight-fight main card is too much, honestly.

I think if we chopped those numbers down a little bit, make it like eight, nine fights, make the main card like five fights. I think he got something here. I think he got something here. Sean Wheelock, Sean Porter, I thought did a pretty good job. Not bad.

Not bad. Solid B-minus for, game bread boxing for it's just a long event and mania was just off and running and but i enjoyed it but that was kind of just the start of it all because sunday getting ready for russlemania night too and we get a report from cnbc that endeavor is about to make a big move in the entertainment space they are going to acquire the majority the majority stake of of the WWE and form this sort of super entertainment juggernaut combining the UFC and the WWE as one publicly traded company.

Now, normally when you see reports like that, you start scrambling, you start asking questions, but when you see that CNBC, who by the way, Universal is a major television partner of WWE, when you see that CNBC is reporting this, it's pretty much a done deal. There's no surprises. I don't think you're going to expect to wake up Monday morning and find out that it's bullshit. And then, of course, we wake up Monday morning and Endeavor confirms it. WWE confirms it. UFC confirms it.

Dana White confirmed it. Everybody confirmed it. A massive coup from Endeavor. They didn't straight out buy WWE, but they own 51% of WWE. And this is very interesting. and I have a ton of questions about it. I don't know what this all means. I saw a lot of people kind of reacting in different ways.

Saw a lot of fun memes, a lot of fun what ifs, a lot of fun, you know, kind of joking around ideas of what this could all mean. But this is just a massive deal. I mean, this is a massive deal that is going to be pretty damn good for everybody. Obviously, we got a little bit of a hiccup. apparently on Monday. I did watch Monday Night Raw last night. It was tough.

It was tough to watch. Usually the raw after WrestleMania is this huge event and everything goes great and there's surprises and all this stuff. And yeah, there were a couple of surprises, but I left feeling pretty empty about it. And then you see reports out that Vince McMahon was running the creative for the night. And morale is at an all-time low and all-time low. and all the momentum from

WrestleMania just kind of got sucked out of the locker room because Vince McMahon was controlling the creative and that's an issue that's an issue moving forward for for WWE has nothing to do with the UFC but that's kind of one of the big hiccups with all of this is you know the amount of control Vince McMahon

is going to be able to have now as far as the UFC goes this just puts them at another stratosphere. They are now going to be their own with WWB publicly traded company. So things are going to change on a business end in regards to what we know, what we don't know about finances and things of that nature. UFC is obviously part of the endeavor portfolio, but we only, that's only a piece of it. But now that it's going to be its own thing with WWE, maybe we'll get to learn more about the business structure of the UFC. And I got to say, and we'll get to

to calls in a minute. The first thing I thought of when this deal was coming through and I was watching all the interviews with Ari Emanuel and that mustache wearing Vince McMahon, can we talk about the mustache by the way? Golly, he looks like he's up to no good. He looks like he's about thwart some sort of cartoon dog and cats in the midst of an adventure. I'm just waiting for his pinky to go up to the corner of his lip because he has that mustache. He just needs to twirl that thing around. He just looks, it's hilarious, absolutely hilarious. But besides the point, the first thing I thought of was,

and we've talked about this in the show all the time, because we get questions about fighter pay and all that stuff. And a lot of people just want to shit on the UFC about fighter pay. And look, if you feel that way, that's fine. But I've always been up the stance that what do you expect the UFC to really do when they're not being challenged by the fighters? like if the fighters are happy and okay with everything, what's the sense of the UFC to be like,

oh, you know what? Let's just pay these people way more money because they don't care. So we'll care and we'll just pay them a bunch more money. And we've talked about the opportunities that the fighters have had to come together and make a move. And we talked about the sale of the company in 2016 for $4.02 billion.

We talked about the ESPN deal and how much money they, bat's going to make. We talked about all the different sponsorship deals and the fighters just haven't come together to make a move. Now you get another chance. Now you have another chance because this isn't a $4 billion company anymore. This thing was valued at over $12 billion and now combined with this new WWE deal. This company is worth this new publicly traded company is worth over $20 billion. $20 billion. If you're going to make a move, you got to do it now.

Or else nothing's going to change. I just, I don't think you're going to get another shot at it, at least not for a long time. Maybe when the TV rights deals come up in a couple of years, and they have a great relationship with the SBN. I'd be stunned if they went somewhere different, unless they want to just combine the entities as one. But WWE's deal is going to come up first for TV rights. UFC comes up, I think, a year or two later. So if you're going to make a play and try to make things better for yourselves,

now's the time to do it. You got something. It's massive news, publicly traded company, $21 billion. Now's the time. Now's the time. If you want to come together, you want to make some change, you want to seat at that table, now is the time to make that move. And if it doesn't happen, we can't keep complaining about fighter pay.

we can talk about it everybody deserves more we all understand that but this is an opportunity for the fighters to come together this is it you got another chance what are they going to do with it what are they going to do with it that was like the first thing i thought of was you have a company that when it sold in 2016 it was worth four plus billion dollars now it's worth five times that combined with wbwe what are we going to do with this? What are we going to do? I have many questions. I'm sorry, you have many questions.

This is still kind of like the preliminary stages of what this all means, and I'm sure as the weeks and months go by, we will learn more. But I know my best friend had some things he wanted to say about this, so let us welcome in. Oh, hello. My best friend, AK, good morning.

Hello, Mike. Am I on? AK, you are on. You're on, AK. You are on. Oh, my God. I can't hear you. Oh, damn. Okay, try again.

Try again. We'll get you in. I heard you loud and clear. Tristan, hello. Can you hear me? Yes. In regards to in Denver, WW and the UFC,

you said this is the opportunity for them to do something as far as, I guess, possibly unionizing. But it's going to have to come from the top. fighters, right? You think it's got to be Connor John Jones leading the charge of like

okay, we're going to make the sacrifice for everybody. We care about everybody. So we're going to leave this charge as unionizing. Because without them, I don't think they're going to be able to do it to come together even if they have this opportunity. So I guess it has to start with them. Second,

going to the UFC 287 car, I want to talk a little bit about this matchup with Michelle Waterson-Gomez versus Luana Panero. We just know what you're feeling on Waterson Gomez, where she's at. She just signed a new eight-fight deal,

and she's beaten, she's had some tough competition. I was just looking at her record, the people that she fought, and she's fought a murderous role of fighters here. The fight against Amanda Lamos, you know, I think that fight she just made a mistake and just got caught because I rewatch that fight and she was able to get Lemosch onto the ground, onto the mat, and was able to, you know, able to do some work. She did it so late in the round in that first round. I think Pernaro is kind of the same type of fighter.

Obviously, she's nowhere near Lamos, but she's an upcoming prospect. saw that fight against Sam Hughes. So what do you think about that fight where Waterson is? Do you like her in this fight? I think it's a good match for her. I think she could win it. But Panero is also good, too, especially with her judo throws.

So I think Watson's going to have to be careful here. But I think she could probably get the decision win. Just your thoughts on that. The other thing, too, there's opening pre-limbs cards. There's Jacqueline Amoriam coming from the LFA. She was the, I guess, the showy title. What you thought for her as being an upcoming prospect? I mean, this is, I mean, we're going to hold,

as far as I'm going to hold judgment on her as she fights Sam Hughes, who's really more experienced. But watching her fight in the LFA, I mean, she looked like she was Aaron Blanchold in there coming out of ATT. she's very strategic on what she has to do. She doesn't waste any time. It hasn't gone past the first round, which is concerning. So what's your thoughts on her making her UFC debut?

From the broadcast, when I was watching her fight on the LFA, she turned down the Dana-W-W-Cont contendent series because she felt being in the LFA would be better competition. So it's your thoughts on that, on those things I have to say. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, man. So as far as the endeavor thing, does it have to come from the top? sure.

You don't need everybody, though. You don't need everybody. You don't need Connor and John and Adasania and Mazadol. You just need like one or two of those fighters. Get one or two of those fighters and then like everybody from the mid tier down below. And then I think you can you could do something here. But we have to remember the UFC isn't putting on 15 cards a year. They're putting on like 44 cards a year.

So you got to fill those cards with something. somebody. And I know they could just be like, well, we'll just go outside and pick up fighters because people just will watch anything. And there's, there's some truth to that. But I don't know. Look, here's what I'm saying. I ain't starting a revolution here because it ain't going to happen. All right. What I'm saying, this opportunity, they're not going to do it. They're not going to do it. We're going to be in the same position. But they have a chance to do it now. They got an opportunity. If something's going to happen, now is the time. Otherwise, that door is going to close for a while. Maybe the TV rights deal. They'll get a floppy

a trillion dollars for it. Maybe that opens things up a little bit more. But, I mean, these are, these are the moments where if you want to incite some sort of change, these are the moments you could do it. As far as Waterston goes, look, it's a tough fight. Penaire's good. Penaura's the favorite. But Watterson is good. Like she's a good, solid gatekeeper for this division. She could beat a lot of girls.

She could beat a lot of women in this division. She's not going to be fighting for world titles. She's probably never going to be a top five fighter again. There's nothing wrong with that. But she is a professional. You know with Michelle Watterson, she is going to show up. She's going to promote the fight. She's going to talk about it.

She's going to get people to care. She's going to do fun. nice positive media about it to put the company over and then she's going to go in there and put on fun fights. Like you've got to have people like that on the roster. So win or lose, I don't think this fight does a lot for her in the aftermath, but it'll be a fun scrap. It'll be a fun scrap.

Jacqueline Amram is a monster. She is a little green. I did like her mentality not going on the contender series because she's right. She's going to get better competition and better spots fighting for LFA than she went on the contender series because she's very wise to what would happen on the contender series. Jacqueline's a very marketable fighter,

and they would give her somewhat of a squash match on the contender series, and she's not going to learn a lot from those. So she had tough fights in LFA. Sam's a good fighter. This is a good test for her right out the gate. Now, could Jacqueline just go in there and just run Sam over and win in the first round? Sure, it's possible.

But Sam's very tough to get out of there. So like you mentioned, testing her and trying to get her out of that first round and extending her a little bit, having to work. It's a good little witness test for her coming into the UFC. So, yeah, I like the match of a lot. Let's see if we can, we have AK all fixed up here. Here we go.

I can hear you now, my best friend. hear you. I'm great. I'm great. You know, Mike, as I'm sure you saw, we had a request on the Twitter from a loyal onto the next one listener asking that we talk about this merger. So I've honor bound, of course, call into today's show. Because by this Sunday, we do the show, one, we'll have a paper we'd be talking about.

And the news will be a little cold by then. I'm sure we can mention it and make some jokes about it, but it's not really, it's not really going to be a hot topic by, by the. this Sunday given how the, you know, news cycles work. So I did a podcast. I did this show with our best friend, David Martin. So people please check that out on the M.A. Fighting Podcast Network. But I do want to talk about it with Mike.

You've sort of touched upon it. Tristan's touched upon it. But like, you and I both know this union or whatever collective bargaining team, squad, whatever it is the fighters need to make. It's just not going to happen. I'm the Prince of Positivity. No. It's not.

Listen, maybe I'm going for reverse jinks here. I hope whoever's out there, I hope someone out there hears this and is offended and goes, oh, you know what? You, you idiot, you don't know anything. We're going to make this happen. And I hope they do. And I hope you and I look like the biggest, most wrong, like jackasses on the planet. And then we have this beautiful, like, fighter community.

Again, I don't even know necessarily want to say union. It doesn't have to be a union, but there has to be some sort of, again, They need some sort of representation as a group and they just don't have that. So putting that aside, Mike, let's put that pipe dream aside. What is the best case scenario for the fighters going forward after this merger, after whatever, in a couple of years when we figure out where these, where a smackdown and raw and these UFC fight nights are going to land? What's streaming service going to end up on? What can fighters really get out of this? aside from, again, of higher fighter pay, which I don't know,

whatever that is, but that's what we want? Outside of that, what's the best case scenario here? Let's have some positivity, Mike. I don't have an answer. Like, I don't know. I honestly don't know. Like, hopefully more money, more spotlight, gives them more eyeballs to look at.

Because you have to imagine that with a deal like this, WWE is going to put over UFC events. UFC is going to put over WWE events. they'll be sort of promoted on each other's shows and that's huge and that's why like I don't know if it was on this show or on BTL Wildback when Fadour was

talking about his final fight and like who he could match up against I interviewed Jake Hager who was an undefeated Bellator fighter is an AW, he was in WW for a long time and he said you know I want to be that guy and here's why Like he thinks he could beat him, which we all know that probably wouldn't happen.

But at least like Hager would go on AEW and like talk about it. It would get more eyeballs to the Bellator product. And that the WWE audience is gigantic. It's huge. Smackdown does like two and a half million people watching that show every Friday night. Rod does in the millions. Like that those are massive numbers. And those are eyeballs that some of them watch MMA, but not all of us.

of them. But what better way to get the pro wrestling audience invested in the UFC than promoting shows on the wrestling show? Now, I know you could counter with, well, they ran a bunch of Power Slap ads on AEW. This is different. Nobody gave a shit about Power Slap. Nobody continues to give a shit about Power Slap. This is different. UFC is a whole different beast. their storylines. Former WWB wrestlers have fought there, CM Punk, Brock Lesnar, and others.

And it's just going to give more eyeballs upon them. More opportunities. There are certain UFC fighters who could go over to WWE and do a little something, something, and make a couple extra bucks. WWE makes movies and does all this stuff. So that's more opportunities for fighters to maybe get cast in films that are going to go

probably straight to DVD. if we're being honest, but some of those movies actually do pretty well at the box office. So, I mean, it does give opportunities there. And,

but I don't know. Like, I don't know what this means for either. And I don't know if, like, they're going to be able to collab in any way. I hope they do. It'd be cool to have,

it'd be cool to make the International Fight Week experience and the WrestleMania week experience a little bit different. Like, can you imagine, like, international fight week, we just have like a cool, like do a smackdown in Vegas. It doesn't have to be at, doesn't have to be at T-Mobile, but do Smackdown in Vegas, like during

international flight week or, you know, do some like fun house show that's broadcast on peacock or something. Like, do something cool like that. And at WrestleMania week, you could have like a fight night kind of like a Thursday night or something. Like, that'd be pretty cool. Or if you just want to slap AEW across the face, do it on a Wednesday night. Like there's cool things we could do to kind of collab and make things better. You can bring WW wrestlers backstage to do scrums.

Like there's all sorts of cool things we can do to co-lab to get different eyeballs on the product. So like I said, I think this is going to be great for both companies. How? I don't really know. But, I mean, this is a win, win, win for everybody. Like, I know we talk about like the fighter pain. If fighters want to do something like now's the time, it's probably not. going to happen. But if you're a fan of both of these companies, that I think you're going to get a

lot out of this. I think you're going to get a lot out of this. And I do think there will be opportunities for fighters to make more money outside of fighting with this collab. With sponsorships and all this different stuff, I mean, WWE brings in so much sponsorship money. It's ridiculous. I think there is a number that they sold like 20 plus million dollars worth of sponsorships for WrestleMania. Like, that's insane. That is absolutely ridiculous. So, and I'm sure, and I'm sure the, the WWE machine can teach the UFC a few things about social media, about advertising, about certain other things. So I'm fascinated by this. This is going to be a really interesting story over the next several years. That's for sure. Let's go to CV.

they will go to Avzwalia, they will go to Mikey. CV, hello. Yo, Mike, heck of a morning. What's up? Yeah, I just want to jump straight into the main card for 287. It's looking really solid. So aside from the opening fight, not too familiar with Christian Rodriguez, to be honest,

like, yeah, the remaining four fights, I have a feeling that they could be potentially just back and forth stand-up battles. well maybe for like the next two Kevin Holland and Font versus Janus which I want to talk about yeah I think this fight's going to be amazing man I'm a Yanis fan

so it's kind of fitting we got mini Mazuradal and the actual Mazuradal on the main card and we all know Rob Font can throw hands too so I kind of want to talk about like what are the stakes for this fight like I think you guys previously mentioned that if Janus wins they're going to like, you know, strap him to the rocket ship and, you know, he might get like a top five guy next. But mainly for Rob Fonk because I know, like, he hasn't fought on a year.

And I feel like this is a big, big must-win fight for him because he's trying to stay with his rank on the rankings and, you know, kind of fend away all the killers coming up in Bansomwe. And I know you have like some insight from his team. So, yeah, I just want to get your thoughts on the time. fight. I love this fight. I love this fight. It's a great one.

Right now, I'm looking at the lines. Let's see what Draft King says about this fight. They have Adrian Yannes minus 180 to come back on Rafa on plus 1.55. I'm a little surprised by that. I understand

Yannis has a lot of buzz right now. I understand font's coming off a couple losses, but that just seems like a very wide line. I like Adrianianas a lot. I think they have something with him. He's an excellent fighter. I did talk to him.

So you'll get his thoughts on the fight sometime this week. But, I mean, we have to look at the level of competition that Adrianianas has fought. We have to be honest with ourselves. Victor Rodriguez, Gustavo Lopez, Randy Costa, all three of the, those guys, I believe, are out of the UFC. Davy Grant, that was a good test. And then Tony Kelly, who I believe is also no longer in the UFC. I could be wrong, but I don't think he, I don't know.

I don't remember. But then we look at Rob Fawn. Look at Rob Fon. Let's just go from 2016. May 2016. John Lineker, Matt Schnell, Douglas Silva Day Androj, Pedro Munoz, Thomas Almeida, Hafiela Sunsoe, Sergio Pettis, Ricky Simone, Marlon Marl Marlis, Cody Garbrandt, Josio, Marlon Vera. That is ridiculous.

I mean, the discrepancy between opponents is, I mean, it's night and day. It's not even close. So, has been competitive with pretty much all of those guys. Like, he was competitive with Aldo. He got knocked down. he was competitive with Vera, got knocked down. That's my biggest, my biggest concern is, we know Rob Fon can take a punch and keep on going,

but, I mean, just him getting dropped in these fights, like that's what's killing them. I wonder if Fawn's going to wrestle a little bit in this fight. I wonder if, like, I think they're going to stand there in scrap, for sure. But I wouldn't be shocked to see Rob Fon shoot a couple takedowns in this one. would not be surprised. But I love the fight. If I'm betting on this fight,

I think there's value on Rob Fawn at plus 155. I feel like Yonah, like I feel like Yonnas could probably be the favorite, but not, I don't think, I don't think this wide. I just think the level of competition, it's not like Fon's getting the doors blown off of him in these fights.

He's just, he's out-voluming guys and then he's getting caught with big shots. But, I mean, at this point, you have to learn from that. It's happened two fights in a row. You have to learn from that. You have to... Sorry, A.K., you got to mix the martial arts a little bit more.

And the cartel guys have a very meticulous game plan when it comes to certain things. So I expect a sort of a different showing from Rob. He's going to mix things up a little bit. Like I said, I would not be surprised if we see some wrestling from him. Not a ton. But I love that fight. Yonnas wins. He's getting a big one.

It's Peodor Yon or above. and if font wins I mean friggin' font versus Pieter Ghan would be fun as hell too but maybe they do Yana's Cheeto I don't know there's lots of things we could do with this

for either guy but that fight's incredible very much looking forward to that one as well yeah hello so I just got two things to discuss the first thing is regarding the Kevin Holland and Santiagoagra fight

how do you see that playing out and obviously with Kevin Holland is more upside for him would be possible a win over Santiago could guarantee him a rank opponent again like Vicente Lucay or Kiesa and my other thing I want to mention about is as we know triple C and Al Jambayne to have a quest to obtain the 145 belt do you reckon the UFC would really be interested in actually pairing either winner against Alexander Falkunoski in the future let me know your thoughts on that Well, I'll start with the Holland fight. I think Holland's going to win.

Ponsabio is just not the same guy. He can, but he's still good. He's still very serviceable 170, but I just think Holland is just so much of a better athlete than him. Way more tools of the trade, so to speak. Now, Ponsadabio can win. If Ponsadabio wants to take Kevin Holland down and just sit on him and win that kind of fight, that's a possibility. If he wants to be an offensive wrestler,

he has a chance to win this fight. I just don't think he's going to do that. So, yeah, I think Kevin's going to win. I think it's to be fun. I think Kevin probably, Kevin would probably get him out of there at some point, but it's going to be fun while it lasts. As far as the 45 stuff goes, I don't know, man.

Like I would say if Aljah beats a hoodo, maybe they'll do that. I don't know. It all depends on what goes down. Like if Max Holloway beats Arnold Allen, that yeah, you could do that. Like, you'd go right to that if you wanted to. I know Ily Tuporia's fighting Josh Emmett,

but Volk wants to be like super duper active this year. So it all kind of depends on how those fights play out. But I think they're going to, I think it's going to take a moment to get either of those guys up there because both those guys kind of dropped, both those guys kind of fumbled the bag when it came to the Sean O'Malley stuff. like Suhudo should have jumped on that train a lot more after

UFC 276 in July. They had a moment backstage. They were getting after it. O'Malley had some things to say about him and vice versa. And then it just stopped. So that had been a great fight for Suuido to come back to. Big opportunity for O'Malley. And then without Joe, I've talked about this a million times.

After UFC 280, he should have went all in on the Sean O'Malley train, get that bag, and then go up to 45. But now he's got to fight Sehudo, and if he wins, he'd be crazy to not fight Sean O'Malley. He'd be insane. So TBD, but Alger's going to win, whoever, whatever happens, whoever wins that fight, they're going to fight. They're going to fight Sean O'Malley, and if they win that, they're out of here. They're not fighting at 135 anymore. Henry Sehudo is not going to defend that title again.

He's going up to, he's going to sit out and say, I ain't fighting anybody else besides Alexander Volcanon. It's Triple C or I'm not fighting. We all know that's going to happen. And then Aljo at that point, if he beats O'Malley, like what else is there to do for him at 135? You beat the former longtime champion. You beat the former champion. You beat the biggest star in the division.

There's nothing left for him at 135. But we'll see what 45 looks like because Tepore is coming. If Lov's coming. And then by then, if Nate Landwer beats Danny Gay and has a great performance there, that's another guy who's coming. The UFC seems to be behind him. It's tough to answer because things change so rapidly and so quickly in this sport.

But I don't know. It's tough to answer right now because I do think that either of those guys are going to fight O'Malley next because they should. Mikey, hello. Hey, heck of a morning to you, Mikey. How's everybody doing?

For the UFC merger thing, I just want to say, get this off the back. that if they're going to try the collectively bargaining, they need to collectively bargain with the WWB stars too, because they're independent contractors too, and they don't have a union. So that will be an interesting thing. Two, it took five minutes for me to get super annoyed

by everybody's takes about this merger because there's so many projections that people are just, it's one of those things we're just like, really, guys? No. Everyone's like, oh, no, this is mean UFC's going to be storyline-driven, like, WWB now? are there going to be like cross over fights? I'm like, first of all, most, if there's ever any crossover fights,

it will mostly be, as you mentioned, with the MMA fighters are already in WWE. Like, John Jones, Brock Lesnar would be fun. But that would actually be completely independent of either or, you know, like the only thing that WWB would have anything to do with that is promoting a potential fight on their air and giving Brock Lesnar or Matt Riddle, whoever permission to fight the UFC.

That would really be it. that pretending that Vince McMahon's not going to tell Dana what to do is ridiculous, even though he's boss because they're a conglomerate that sells on Wall Street. Primarily, the merger on the surface right now is just a Wall Street thing where he's just like, okay, everyone can publicly trade and, you know, invest in the company called TK or whatever it's going to be called. And yeah, I think that will mostly be it. Everyone, you know, trying to do MMA Twitter going doom and glue and thinking, oh, does that mean everything's going to be fixed?

I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ, please stop. so obviously we'll be talking about this further along um just want to touch right quick on last on this past bellator card um cats and gone the leo of a court should have been the main event i don't care how well the there was a finish in the heavyweight fight that that was supposed to be for a title shot and you gave it three rounds stupid um and uh yeah a shout out to charles energy johnson i just saw him pop into the space so um that'll be all for me today guys be kind of another Happy birthday, AK. Well, here's what's interesting.

People talk about this all the time. People at this point, like, I know there's newer fans that missed kind of the early stages of the UFC. But at the same token, the UFC's playbook is exactly the same as WWEs. And I'm not saying it's because they have to, they, look, they do craft storylines in their own ways. They just do it differently. Look at what, look at the main event on Saturday. Look at the main event on Saturday. That is a long, drawn-out storyline that the UFC put together.

It's not fake. It's not a work. It's still a shoot, but it's a storyline. It's a storyline that the UFC built upon. And they built up Alex Pereira in a strategic way to pay this off. And they did. And now guess what? They're going to pay it off again this Saturday.

And if Adasanya wins, guess what they're going to do? they're going to do it again. The roots of the UFC and how they build fights and how they promote fights and how they put their packages together, the video packages together in order to sell those,

it's right out of the WWE playbook. It's been that way forever. It's been that way forever. And it's not saying that the UFC is a work. It's certainly not. But the storylines, things that are driven, how they promote things is very similar.

It's almost exactly, the same in that way. So there are storylines. It's just different. It's just different. One of the things I was thinking about this merger is getting talent. And I'm not just saying like for and look, we're not going to have like a UFC Royal Rumble. Although that would be fun as hell to watch. We're not going to get that. What I'm saying is maybe let's just say, look, if you are into the pro wrestling world, you are well aware of what is going to be. going on over an AEW land, where it is just a sloppy mess of management and you have a bunch of unhappy talents. And the biggest star in your promotion is not wrestling for your company right now

because he got into a fight with the executive vice president slash wrestlers of the company. His name is CM Punk. And eventually, this whole thing is going to be paid off. One of two things is going to happen. CM Punk is going to come back to AEW and they're going to do this incredible thing with the young bucks and all that. And it's going to be awesome. And it's going to be awesome. and it's going to be one of the greatest works ever. I don't think that's going to happen. At some point, Tony is just going to have to cut bait. He's going to have to pay CM Punk a bunch of money,

and CM Punk's going to be a free agent. Now, we totally understand what CM Punk's relationship is like currently with the WWE, with Vince McMahon, with Triple H in a lot of respects. But you know who he does have a good relationship with? Dana White. You know what he does have a good relationship with? The matchmakers. Hunter Campbell, guys like that.

Maybe because they are now a unionized or a conglomerate, maybe they get everybody in a room together. They know why it could be the intermediary. Maybe they could squash this and CM Punk finds his way back into a WWE ring. There are ways around this. It's not just, you know, let's do a Royal Rumble.

Let's have, you know, let's have Charles Energy Johnson. fight O'Day Osborne, hell in a cell. Like, we're not going to do that. But still, we have things we can do with relationship building to have one hand wash the other. And you scratch your back and I'll scratch, you know, that whole cliche. There's other things we could do here in terms of getting talent over from one to the other. So I'm just so fascinated about this entire thing. I really am.

I really am. And the whole collective bargaining thing, look, like I said, it's probably not going to happen. But now you have fighters now work for a company that is going to be serving on Wall Street with a $21 billion value because of this acquisition and this merger with WWE. Something to think about. Something to think about. Let's go to Joe. Two questions for you. Did you catch the opener of the Bellator prelimbs?

I was rooting for Maria Henderson, especially after what happened with her husband. But McKenzie Stiller looked amazing. Just blew right through her. I don't know if she's like a known prospect, but I was really impressed by her. And then with the endeavor deal, I think the most important question,

what everyone's talking about on Twitter, and what I want to know from you, is who do you think out of the current roster of UFC fighters would do best with the crossover into WWE. I know a lot of people were talking about Connor McGregor, but my personal opinion

or personal vote is for the pleasure man, Anton Trical. I think if anyone remembers, he basically cut a promo before his last fight, and I was like, oh, this guy, if things don't pan out, if he, like, bats 500

on his UFC contract, he should make the jump. And now is the time. But thanks, Mike. Have a good one. I mean, you just answered your own question. It is the pleasure man. Let's go. Yeah, but I mean, look, there is a real world where Connor McGregor shows up at WrestleMania. Like, there's a very real world that happens.

So. But the pleasure man. Holy moly. I think you have the right. I think that might be the correct answer. Four quarter sports. Hey, Mike. You know.

Yeah. So I was thinking with the new merger that they're having with one another, do you see there's a possibility of UFC fighters actually eventually going towards WWE? Because, I mean, you see a lot of wrestlers. They're fighting into their, I would say maybe like, what, early in the mid-40s. And let's say if they get cut by the UFC, you think that could be like an option we can have in their contract now that they both merge into the same.

you know, umbrella. And I was, like, listening to a couple different podcasts. And I heard that Apple could possibly be maybe a player down the line when both these contracts do run final, like when they run up out of their contracts, you think what's the call, like, one of these big packages can sway, like, Amazon, Apple, and whatnot. And lastly, what, what is your opinion on? on the Ravel Roses Jr. fight, do you think it makes it to the final bell?

Or do you think Raul Grosz Jr. gets Roderick is out inside the distance? All right, thanks. It's a good fight. Christian's tough, man. He's a tough fighter. I think Raul just puts on such a pace and puts on so much pressure.

He's so much stronger than he looks. And it just confuses people. They just see, like, an 18-year-old kid. And they just underestimate how strong, and how technical he is. He is a tornado of destruction. There's no doubt about that. And he just keeps moving and keeps moving.

But Christian's tough. Christian's tough. I think he'll give him a nice test. I do think roses will win. But again, I mean, at this level, I just have, I still have questions about him. Like, I am extremely high on him. But I don't know.

It's just a fun ride that I'm in, intrigued about. As far as the TV deal goes, I don't know. I don't know what they're going to do. Like I said, WWE's up first, UFC, their TV deal is up second. I don't know if they're going to be, if WW is going to be able to sign like a short-term agreement to be like, hey, we'll just stay where we are for the next two years and then we're going to reshop. I don't know if they could do that. So they might just have to kind of pull the trigger and make a move first. before the UFC deal goes up. But look, the UFC is very happy with ESPN.

They're very happy. And ESPN is very happy with the UFC. It's been a very profitable relationship for the UFC. And a very good business move, a very good one. So I don't know if they, I don't know if much is going to change. I don't know if they're going to be able to package them together. They might be able to at some point. I just don't know if they're going to be able to do it this quickly.

I'm sure they're going to try. But I just don't know. I don't know. I don't know if the UFC leaves ESPN. I just don't know if that's like a good business move, moving them to Apple and stuff like that. And I kind of feel the same with WWE at this point. I kind of feel the same with WWE.

I don't know. I don't know what they're going to do. And then your other question about, well, if they get cut, can they just go to WWE? I mean, it's not that simple. They have a certain eye for talent and what they want And maybe WWE will be interested

And maybe they won't It's not going to be like that for everybody But they're not just going to pull every UFC fighter and be like Look kid you gave it a shot here Once you come to the Performance Center and try out I don't think it's going to be quite like that But they also have an eye for things For personality, for athleticism

For people who can fall right into it Like that Riddle fell right. into it perfectly. And he's a, he's a well-known commodity in WWE, but had many fights in the UFC. And I don't think we're going to see Matt Riddle fight again. Like him and Dana White just do not like each other at all. So, well, maybe.

Maybe cooler heads will prevail. I don't know. But again, there's just so many questions about this whole thing. And not a lot of answers. But fascinating times, my friends, fascinating times. Marshall's buyers travel far and wide, hustling, for great deals on amazing gifts. So you don't have to.

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B4C or MacGG The Octagon Obscest Hello Hey Mike, can you hear me? Yes, sir.

Okay, great. This first time I spoke on Twitter or spaces. So thank you. Also, thanks for what you do. I really enjoy this show. So I have a few questions for you. Are you going to watch the BKFC press conference today? Anything with Mike Perry is always exciting.

And what's your interest in that card at the end of this month? Also, who do you think wins Dustin Porrier, versus Justin Gaichi. Sounds like that match is going to happen. You know, correct me if I'm wrong. And then since it's not going to be a title fight, do you think it's possible the UFC puts that on a fight night to make it a five-round fight?

And then last, if Israel Adisanya loses this weekend, what happens for him next? Thanks, Mike. Yeah, the easy one we talked about on last week's show. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You put out some tweets that people have interpreted as something.

I don't know. Maybe he goes to 205, maybe takes some time off and bulks up. Tries to go to 205. I don't know. But eventually Pereira is going to lose. Like, he's going to lose to somebody. Whether it's Homzad or, like, Whitaker is an interesting stylistic match for him. I mean, he could just kind of hang out.

And if, like, they book Whitaker Pereer, which I think they would do. If Pereira wins on Saturday, they'll probably go back to that well. And if Whitaker wins, he's got a path back to the belt. So that's a possibility. So it's not like dire if he loses. Because if you look at things from stylistic perspectives, Whitaker is a problem for pretty much everybody at 185 outside of Adasania.

So that's there. There are a lot of questions. there were a lot of questions with that one. And I don't remember them all. God, darn it. Gosh, darn it. I know you said nice things, and I appreciate that. Oh, Pori Gaiti.

I don't know if it's going to happen. It all depends on what happens at 288. I mean, you've heard, if you listen to the show all the time, you know how I feel about the lightweight division right now. If Benny Darius beats Charles Olivaire. Benny's going to go fight his al-Machachev. If Charles Olavera beats Benny Darius, we are living in a world, my friends,

where it is very possible that Dustin Porre fights for the belt. So kind of up in the air. I think that fight is going to determine it a lot. But if Benny Darius wins and the world is in the place it should have been a long time ago and Benny goes and fights for the belt, then we do Borese versus Gachi. could it headline of course it would headline a fight night it's a great co-made event or featured both for a massive pay-per-view and look if the ufc wants to do five rounds for that fight even on a

pay-per-view they can just do it i mean we watched uh rdaa and hanato moikano fight for five rounds they can just do it if they want to it's possible so but i want to see that fight i think both guys are interested in it but wants to get to that belt and the clock is ticking and after that chandler fight he's in a position where he could possibly get it and if olivera beats der euse i don't think they're going to give oliver that fight again not just yet and who else are going to put up there or he would be an interesting name probably his last chance at a title shot and he's a draw people like dustin he's over like rover the connor wins put him in a star position so i think he's a

a lot will be determined on May 6th when Darius fights Alvara. Viking, hello. Good. I just want to ask about the Israel Addison. He just stated that it is the last chance to beat Perjara. But I just want to know if he loses, where will he go after the loss? and what are his chances to fight for the title again if he loses? Thanks a lot.

I mean, I just talked about this, but I mean, like I said, it would suck and it would be a tough loss and be a, he'd be in a pretty rough spot. But again, Pereira is very good. I think Izzy's the better fighter. I mean, we've seen it. If you watched all the kickboxing matches and you watch the MMA fight, Izzy's the better fighter.

He's the better MMA fighter. But when you fight a guy like Alex Pereira, you cannot let him hang around. You can't. You cannot let him hang around too much, too long. Pereira is a monster man. Like, you cannot have a range kickboxing match of this guy for 25 minutes.

Or you're going to get knocked out. You're going to get hit. You're going to get hurt. And you're going to get knocked out. but I'm very curious to see what Adasani's game plan is going to be because I was what he did in the first eight minutes of that fight at 281 if he does that he's got a very good chance to win this fight he's aggressive and he's the hammer and he gets in Pereira's face

I'm not saying like be reckless and go all Cody Garbrand on him but you got to be more aggressive you cannot have a range kickboxing match in this guy for 25 minutes and when he got aggressive and he became came in the hammer, he hurt Pereira, almost got him out of there. And then he just kind of took his foot off the gas from there. So, yeah, will he fight Pereira again for the title? Not any time soon. Will he be out of the title hunt altogether?

No, because of Pereira fights Whitaker and Whitaker wins. And Otisain's got two wins over Whitaker already. They'll just run that one back a third time. And Anasani, he will get his shot. Jay Stad, hello. You too. I have him winning inside of three rounds. I think he's going to get it done much quicker with it.

I'd assign you being the aggressor. I could be wrong, but I think he's going to surprise us by getting Izzy out of there even earlier. So that's my thoughts. It's possible. It is possible. When you have Pereira in there, all he needs is one. It's possible.

Again, I'm not suggesting that I just going to go in there like he's, the Simpsons and just start walking towards him, throwing windmills at him. Now, it's got to be a little more aggressive. And do what you did early in that first fight and have to kind of continue that. It's almost like a rocky three strategy. In and out, moving power shots

and just unload the clip on him and try to get him out of there. But in a smart way. But he's got to be the aggressor. He's got to be the hammer. Let's go to William. Hey, what's up, man? Question.

I don't know if you spoke about this before, earlier, but what do you think about the Gilbert Burns and Jorge Masvila? Do you see any of them too deserving the title shot after each other's win, or do you think Kobe Covington still deserves that? I mean, deserves this is such a strange word, because there's only one guy in this division that technically deserves it, and it's Bilal Mohammed, if we're working from a meritocratic place. But this isn't a meritocratic organization,

and this is and because of that this is the reason why they have merged with WWE and are now valued at $12 billion because they put on fights with names that people are going to be like, hmm, do I want to spend $80 to watch this guy fight?

Sure, I'll spend $80 to watch this guy fight. So they have done a great job with that and put himself in this position. Colby's there right now. I didn't, again, I know, I'm not surprised by any of this and neither should you be. But the whole, the issue I had with him naming Colby as the number one contender at the moment that he did was because of this fight.

Was because of this fight between Burns and Mazadol. This fight's happening. And it's when it was booked, we all knew what it was. Leon's the champion. If Leon retains and Mazadol wins, we're going to pay off this three piece in the Soda storyline. You see? storylines. UFC has been doing this for a long time.

This is where we're at right now. They have had a storyline built up for years with Mazadol and Leon, three piece in a soda, in London, all of that. Now you have an opportunity to pay that off if Mazadol can somehow be Gilbert Burns. And based on the betting odds,

not a lot of people are giving them much of a chance. I, however, am giving Mazdol much more of a chance than the betting odds are suggesting. I'm not, I am not on here right now saying that Mazadol is going to be Gilbert Burns. I don't have that kind of confidence in myself. But if you're giving me Jorge Mazadol in this fight at plus 380 against Gilbert Burns, there's value up the wazoo with that number. Gilbert Burns is tremendous on the ground.

I mean, there's no doubt about it. He's, he's a G down then. But Gilbert Burns is not Colby. he's not Colby. He's not going to sit there and just shoot 20 takedowns at least I don't think he's going to. That's just not what Gilbert does.

He's not a chain wrestler. And Mazdaal has, as you saw in the Colby fight, struggles with guys who just shoot singles and doubles and tries to wrestle him. When it comes to actual defensive grappling on the ground

and against the fence, Mazel's pretty good. He's pretty good there. Kind of criminally underrated if we're being honest. Go watch Mazadol. Go watch the Damia Maya fight. Go watch a Damien Maya fight.

I know Damien wasn't in his athletic peak in prime at that time, but Mazel did a pretty damn good job of keeping Maya off him and sustaining really tough spots. His defensive jujitsu grappling is really good and doesn't get enough credit. We can't confuse jujitsu grappling with wrestling grappling. There are two different things. There are similarities, but Gilbert's not a chain, take-down kind of a guy.

Burns gets you down in different ways. He uses his striking, trips, gets inside, does different things. He might find a single and a double and get you down, but he's not going to sit there and just go, well, if the single doesn't work, I'll shoot a double. And if that doesn't work, go back to single. He's not Bryce Mitchell. He's not going to fight like that.

That's not his style. And if Mazdal gets to the mat, he's pretty good at defending that stuff down there. It's pretty good. better than people give him credit for. And Mazdahl can keep this standing. He's got a really good chance to win this fight because he's a better striker. Burns is good.

His striking's gotten a lot better. But he ain't Mazdaal. He's not. So I think this is going to be a competitive fight. I think Burns will win, but I don't think this is, I don't think Burns is just going to dump truck Mazal. Like a lot of people think he's going to.

I just don't think that's going to happen. I think this is a closer fight. Mazdaal at home, I mean, everything's on the line here. I mean, this is, this is it. This is do or die for Mazadol. I know he's a big star and there's still fights for him. He's actually teasing retirement and things like that if he loses. That's kind of scary to think about, honestly.

But he seems in a good place in a lot of ways. And like, what's the point of this fight if there's no stakes to it? I don't know. of Mazzo goes out there and he knocks out Gilbert Burns and he goes on the mic and just fires off a promo and a half I think the UFC has a chance

to reconsider this. And what's the and how, why is that a bad thing? Because now you got heat on Bilal and Colby. Like nobody cared about that fight all a year ago. But after the whole media tour and Colby saying

what he had to say about John Anick and the way that Bilal had to say about John Anik and the way that Ballal has picked up the ball and kind of run with it. Like there is, there is interest in Bilal versus Colby right now. So if Mazdal just blows the doors off Gilbert Burns,

cuts a promo, he's going to look like a million dollars in that moment because he's going to be in Miami. People are going to go bananas for him. And he cuts a great promo. You do Mazadal, Leon, Colby and Bilal on the same card. Like that is, I mean, that's a win-win.

But just to slam the door on that idea before that fight even happens, like you took, you're taking the luster off the fight. You're taking the luster off the fight. Or you're just saying like, Mazdaal ain't going to win. So,

and we're not giving Gilbert a title shot. So it's Colby. Look, if Gilbert wins, he ain't getting a title shot. If Gilbert goes out there and finishes Mazadol in 90 seconds, he's not getting a title shot. Colby's getting it.

But if Mazadol wins and then he looks like a star afterwards, that's interesting. That's interesting. Maybe the UFC thinks the bigger storyline is Mazdaal and Colby. Maybe they think Colby's just going to beat Leon and that we could do Colby and Mazdahl for the title with everything that this happened. I don't know. It's not the announcement that made, like I didn't, like I said on the show, prior to 286, don't be surprised if Leon wins if Colby's in the discussion.

If Colby gets the shot, I just didn't think it would happen this quickly. Before this fight. I don't know But Does either deserve I mean Depends on your definition of deserves Let's go to Zeke

And then I got to get out of here Zeke, hello Zeke My man Mike, how are we? I thought I had the spinning wheel of death But now we're back All right, I kind of want to add on To what we just talked about

And maybe, you know, get an opinion from the man Mike himself About I think it's the co-co-main I guess we can say the runner-up on the card. But first things first, I'm in the boat. I'm so sorry to do this to you. I'm sure you have heard this multiple times this week of. I think Gilbert Burns is just going to run them over

because what has Jorge been doing? Has Jorge really been training, taking training seriously? Cardio in the gym. You know what I mean? I've been promoting fights a lot. He hasn't, I don't know. I feel like half in, half out Jorge Mazvedal is not a good Jorge Mazurzvigal. And secondly,

Is this Bannonweight fight Saturday is going to be, how do I explain it? I feel like the winner is going to be like a glorified gatekeeper almost, unless Adrian Yannes just blows the doors off of Rob Fon and makes it look like, made it look like Cheeto Verrett did. I guess, yeah, what are your opinions on that Bannamweight brawl Saturday? Love the fight. It's just going to be a great fight. I do agree with you.

If Yanna's wins, I think they are going to push him. I mean, they obviously like him to give him this fight on a paper every main card. And look, it's a great freaking fight. It's a great freaking fight. We looked at the betting lines earlier. It just seemed kind of wide to me. Yeah, Yana's minus 180 font plus 155. It should be a little closer than that, in my opinion.

Fonts fought everybody. I mean, this dude has fought fucking everybody. And Yannes hasn't. And Yannes is really good. They got something with him. There's no doubt about it. But we already compared resumes. And it ain't even close.

Like, it ain't even close. Rob Fon, Linneker, Schnell, Douglas Silva Di Andrade, Pedro Munoz, Thomas Elmada, Hafeuilola, Sunsau, Sergio Pettis, Ricky Simone, Marlon Marlon Marlon Morae, Cody Garbrandt, Jose Aldo, Marlon Vera. that's his last five years it's insane it's insane run Adrian yannes in the UFC Victor Rodriguez

Gustavo Lopez Randy Costa none of those guys are in the UFC davy grant good test that was a close fight and he beat Tony Kelly I'm not sure if Tony's in the UFC or not anymore

I mean the resumes you have to put experience in play here and yannes is good I mean, look, this kid is incredible. And he could go out there and beat Rob Fon and then he's off to the races. But I think this fight's really close.

I think it's a really, I think it's a 50-50 fight. I do. I think it's a 50-50 fight. Fon hasn't been in there in a minute. Almost a year. His team very smart. They're very calculated when it comes to that stuff. You go out there and you take a beating, Tyson's chartier and crew,

you ain't rushing back. You were going to take your time. You were going to get tested. You're going to get your brain looked at. You're going to make sure your head is straight before you're even close to coming back. They did it with Calvin Cater. After the Max Holloway fight, he was out for almost a year before the giga fight. Fon out almost a year heading into this fight.

That's how they do it. Will font wrestle? That's the big question I have. I'm not saying he's going to go out there and spam takedons, but will he wrestle? Will he shoot takedowns on Adrian Yannes? Will he mix the martial arts? I think Fon can win a boxing match with Adrian. I think he can.

I think Adrian can be fond to box match. She spends on who guy shows up. I'm just curious if Yannas lands that clean right hand or lands a big shot, can Fon handle it? Can that chin handle it? I don't think Yannas will get him out of there, but those are the things. the moments that have cost Rob in these last two fights.

Again, if you want to, if you want an idea of like what MMA judging is in 2022, 2022, 2003, the Aldo fight and the Cheeto fight are like the two best examples. It's like the two best examples you can look at. Go to UFC stats. It's always so fascinating to look at UFC stats with Rob Font fights. It's incredible, especially those last two, especially those last two fights. Josealdo. Rob Fott outlanded Joseo

36 to 26 in round 1, 48, 23 in round 2, 37 to 12 in round 3, was even around 4 because of the takedowns, and fought outlanded him 18 to 15 in round 5. But Aldo got the knockdowns when they counted. The Cheeto fight is even more insane. Rob Fon outlands Marlon Verre,

4726 significant strikes in round 1, 51, 27, 27, 7, 7, in round two, 71 to 37 in round three, 42, 36 in round four, 50 to 33 in round five. Rob Fon, ouch, landed more significant strikes in every single round

against Cheevera. Doubled them up twice and still lost because he got knocked down a bunch. Like those are the quintessential fights to watch if you want to learn how to judge. at least today.

Because Fonches, I mean, volume his ass up. Avera had three knockdowns, and that's why he won the fight. It's crazy. I cannot wait to see that fight. Super interested, super fascinating. I think it's a 50-50 fight. I think there's value on Rob.

Not picking him, but I think there's value there for sure. Edward, hello. Hey, Mike. I hope you're having a great day. To continue the conversation on Rob Font, do you think that, like, those were wars against all those. and Marlon Vera,

do you think that his chin will be a little bit less, not as strong? I don't know. I mean, it's not like he's been in a million wars. You know what I mean? Like, he didn't take a lot of damage

in the Garbrandt fight. He didn't take a lot of damage in the Simone fight. Pettus, not really. Sunso, not really. I mean, the John Lennoxor fight was pretty wild. But it's not like,

like, he's had two tough fights back to back, but it's not like he's had a dozen of them. You know what I mean? And plus Aldo and Ferrer just hit, they hit really, really hard. So I don't know. I'm not concerned about the chin. I just think he fought two guys who hit really, really hard. And now Yannis is another guy who hits really, really hard.

So I don't know. I guess I do have some questions like with can font stay upright? I don't think Yannis is going to like knock font out unconscious or it's going to be like a Gary K.O. or anything like that, but similar to those fights. Like, Rob, you know, Yannas knocked Rob down. I mean, and I'm curiously if Yonnas can match

Fons volume, too. Like, it's just, there's so many questions. And if, I wonder, Fon's actually going to shoot takedowns in this fight. I really am wondering if he's going to shoot takedowns in this fight. But I love it. And I love this community. And I love the fact that we've got so many questions about that fight.

Obviously, we have a big main event, co-main event. that's very interesting. The stakes could be very high in that one. But the vast majority of people are asking about Rob Font versus the Adriannianianez. And that's why I love hosting the show. And now I'm going to get out of here. It has been, it's, I've been teasing, working on a project.

I kind of let you know what it was already. The first draft is in on all of it. So basically, I'm doing a deep dive into the, just horrible Fury FC submission, where the referee, watch an unconscious fighter, stay unconscious, and then wake up in an arm bar and tap.

So I've been working on that for a while. The podcast, it's pretty much done. There's like some fine tuning I got to do from my legal perspective. The write-up's, first draft is done. So the plan is, if all goes well,

we're going to drop all that on Thursday. But I got to talk to both fighters involved, talk to the promoter, talk to Alex Marono, who did commentary, even talked to Big John McCarthy about it, which was super fast. I might just release the Big John interview by itself

at some point, just so you could hear it. It was really interesting to hear from Big John and get his perspective on everything. because it's the OG of refs and he's trained a bunch of these guys and you know just hearing his perspective on things and

yeah it's a pretty wild story and there's a million different ways I could have gone with this but I think I found like the right layout and how we want to do it so plan is on Thursday we knock this shit out and you guys get to hear it and read it and it's just

it's tough man it's a it's a tough thing to sport. But that's for Thursday. And we'll be back on this show Thursday as well. 10 a.m. Eastern, we'll do it again. Friday, kind of up in the air because we have the way-ins and Casey's on vacation through the weekend. So I might have to produce the way-in show and possibly co-hosted, all that stuff. So we'll let you know about Friday, but we'll certainly do something on Thursday. Thank you very much. Back at it then. Have a great rest of the day. And as always, have a heck of a morning, everybody.

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