MMA Fighting - HOAM | What's Next For Khamzat Chimaev After Wild UFC 279 Fight Week? Tanner Boser Joins the Show

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

Khamzat Chimaev's talent and physical tools can't be called into question, but what transpired outside of the octagon during UFC 279 fight week can't be ignored. On an all-new edition of Heck of a Morning, MMA Fighting's Mike Heck gives his thoughts on the insanity from his perspective from this past Friday heading into UFC 279 and the event itself as a whole, and answers a lot of question in regards to Chimaev's future after badly missing weight for his scheduled main event bout with Nate Diaz, and his dominant submission win of new opponent Kevin Holland on Saturday. Additionally, listener questions include thoughts on a potential Chimaev vs. Colby Covington fight, Nate Diaz's future after defeating Tony Ferguson, Li Jingliang's rising stock despite a split decision loss to Daniel Rodriguez, Jake Paul vs. Anderson Silva, and more. Also, UFC heavyweight Tanner Boser (1:35:50) joins the show to preview his UFC Vegas 60 fight with Rodrigo Nascimento, talks Chimaev's weight miss, and clarifies something he said in a recent interview in regards to fighters that use mental coaches are weak. 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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You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. It is Tuesday, September 13th, 2020. and it is indeed a heck of a morning. Live on the M.A. Fighting Twitter Spaces show will be live shortly thereafter on the M.A. Fighting Podcasting Network. I am Mike Heck. Hello? I don't think that much happened in the M.A. world from the last time we had this show. I'm obviously kidding about that. A lot has happened.

I remember we signed off right around 10 a.m. maybe a little bit after. Eastern time on Friday before all the chaos of the way-ins. We were talking about the ruckus on Thursday with the press conference and everything that happened there. I said what I said at the top of the show. And then I said something that I didn't really think much of. Not saying that I willed this into existence, but a lot of people have tagged me in things since that show on Friday, whether they listen live or they listen on the

podcast network and they said that I called it and I said there's a part of me that kind of hopes that something crazy will happen at the way ends and that we can move on from all the press conference ruckus and sure enough an hour and a half later things started to change and we'll get into that in a moment before we dive into the chaos of UFC 279 and what a series of events that whole card was it's a card in a fight week that we're not going to forget anytime soon i would be remiss if i didn't mention just the horrible news that i woke up to super early monday morning i just woke up and went on to the restroom before going back to bed and i just open up my phone and i see a bunch of action going on in the slack channel

and I'm like, what is going on? And I realized that Elias Theodoro, former UFC middleweight, passed away from cancer, liver cancer, to be exact, at the age of 34. And I was just like, what? How is this possible? How?

Because nobody knew. This was just something like that, no matter what the cause, is stunning to begin with. And then to find out that it was liver cancer was just unbelievable. And obviously I didn't go back to sleep all that quickly because it was just so shocking. And I'm trying to look into it a little bit more. And you just stunned by all of it.

And what was even more stunning, I think, of all of this is that not only did nobody really know what was going on, but he just fought. He fought nine months ago and he won. And, I mean, it was just, all of it was just a shock. And I thought Ariel did a fantastic job with his show yesterday, opened up the show talking about Elias, talked about it throughout the program on the MA hour yesterday. And having Aaron Jeffrey on, close personal friend of Elias was a very cool moment to to kind of get that side of things, but I still can't believe it. I still can't believe it. I haven't had a ton of interaction with the lies.

I think of interviewed him three or four times, but just the nicest guy. A word that gets thrown out quite often when describing him is his sweetheart. And I mean, that doesn't do it justice. That doesn't do it justice. And this just horrible news. And to me, not only was Elias, just such a nice guy and a positive presence in the space. And to me, he was one of the most underrated fighters in the UFC. The guy just didn't get enough credit.

Sometimes people questioned his style. Sometimes, you know, people said certain things about him, didn't get a ton of finishes. The dude went out and tried to win fights. and sometimes it's pretty and sometimes it's not. And the guy won a hell of a lot more than he lost. 19 and 3, good dude, did that cool thing with Invicta where he was the ring card boy. And it's just awesome.

Just such an awesome guy. And it just sucks that we're even talking about this. But rest and peace, Elias Theodoro, just absolutely stunning news. and I know I think it's on AK's Twitter is here right now. There's more information about all the things going on with like procession, funeral and all of that. But there's also links to a go fund me. That might be on M.AFighting.com as well.

Elias basically told his family at the 11th hour, I want to be able to raise some funds to help. those who are in a position like mine to be able to afford this care or get some help when they need it. So if you guys, a dollar, $5, whatever, if you want to help that out in support in just in all things, Elias, just in dedication of him, I highly recommend you do that because it's all going to a great place. But rest of peace, Elias Theodore, 34 years.

young. What a freaking guy. What a freaking guy. But I didn't want to start the show without mentioning that because it's, it needs to be mentioned 100%. So just really sad news. And then now we have to sort of transition to all of the chaos from UFC 209 and I'll get to your calls in a moment. But we signed off this program about 10.15 a.m. Eastern on Friday morning for preparing for the Wayin Show. And right before we hit record, we were hearing rumblings that Hamzaa Chimayev was having some issues on the scale.

We were hearing that Kevin Holland was outside the UFC Apex, having a spirited conversation with somebody on the phone, and that Mick Maynard, the matchmaker, was outside with him. And we're trying to, no one really knew it was going on, but then the rumblings are coming out, he was having trouble of missing weight, and you could take that for what it's worth

because rumblings are rumblings, but then the official UFC weigh-in show also mentioned the same thing. And then we see the reports out. We're all hearing he's going to miss weight, not just by like a pound or two, he's going to miss weight by a lot, and it turns out he weighs in at 178 and a half.

And we're just like, oh my God, like, how? How could you... It reminded me of the movie Training Day when Denzel Washington is talking to the higher-up police officers in L.A. And Tom Berringer's character just looks at Denzel. He's like, how could you possibly screw this up so badly? Fumbles the bag and it would have been a pretty damn big bag.

And there's no way Nate's going to fight him then. There's no way Nate's going to fight him. But the UFC flips the script. They change everything around. We get the fight we should have freaking got in the first place between Nate Diaz and Tony Ferguson. That was the fight that should have been made 100%. Homs out remains on the card.

Gets no penalties, by the way. Gets Kevin Holland, five-round co-made events. And then poor Li Jing Liang stays on the card to fight Daniel Rodriguez in a quarter. unquote catch weight bout and he's fighting a guy who's like 10 pounds heavier than him. So we're just sitting there dealing with all of this. We have an idea of where things might go. But as we were going on with everything, it just was nothing was done.

Nothing was done. People are saying things were done. They weren't. And honestly, I found this out as well, which I didn't really share, but it was kind of talked about on Twitter, a lot of the fights were announced by Dana White, but they weren't done. Like, Kevin Hall and Hamzat Shemayev wasn't a done deal. Like official, we're good to go, ink dried until after ceremonial winds. So that's how crazy everything was.

It was sort of like verbally agreed, like, all right, we'll do it. But it wasn't like done done until after ceremonials. That's how chaotic Friday was. And then it got to the point where we're just digging through everything and everyone's just kind of sitting on their hands like, what do we do? And we do a quick little pop-up heck of an afternoon and like 7,000 of you joined and it was just absolute insanity.

And then we played Dana's live stream on Instagram and makes the announcements that we're getting the three new fights. They do the Ceremony Away-ins. We did the preview show. And then to me, I actually got a really good night's sleep. I got a really good night's sleep. because we're not getting Tony Ferguson versus Lee Jingleong. We're not getting Nate Diaz versus freaking Hamzaa Tchaimayev.

We're getting the fights we should have gotten in the first place. And I was happy about this. I was very happy about this. Some people weren't because they just like bad things, apparently. But to me, I was like, all right, this is pretty damn cool. And then Saturday rolls around. Card is what it was. It wasn't the greatest card of all time.

But it certainly wasn't bad. We got the Chris Barnett moment, who sort of woke everything up after the first part of the prelims. The Chris Pratt thing was just unbelievable. And then we just built and built to build. It got Jelton O'Meta doing the damn thing. Main card. We get Johnny Walker out here submitting dudes in the first round.

Errini Aldana with one of the craziest finishes I've ever seen. I've never seen anything like that. An upkick to the body off of her back. And she asked them just crumbled. And it was like going to a, it was like watching a New Japan pro wrestling show. No one knew what happened. There's just complete silence. It was like a, you can hear a pin drop in the T-Mobile arena.

And then we get to the three big fights. We watch Lee fight Danny Rodriguez, and it's a super close fight. And a lot of people felt Lee Jingleong won the fight. D.Rod gets the decision, and you just, you don't credit D-Raw. We just all feel bad for Lee. And that's okay. But as A.K. beautifully wrote yesterday, it was not a robbery. It was a close fight.

If you scored it for Lee, fine. If you scored it for D-Rod, fine. This wasn't an egregious judge's scorecard type of thing that we have seen in the past. But you felt bad for Lee because he stepped in, fighting a guy up 10 pounds. He's supposed to fight Tony Freaking Ferguson. He gets a much different opponent, a much bigger opponent, and it didn't go his way. But the good news for Lee, stock rises, even in defeat. Very cool.

then we go to the co-made events where typically in the main event spot is where all the tension comes in Hamzaa Shemaiah versus Kevin Holland Kevin out coming out loses a goose Hamzat freaking does a 4-240 to octagon side goes in seems like him and he wants to have a nice little moment with Kevin before the fight fight begins looks like Kevin's going for the glove touch Shamiya ducks under, takes him down, scramble, scramble, scramble, scramble, scramble, scramble, finally, Shamiyaf locks in the submission.

Holland is fighting his ass off to try to get out of it, gets the tap. Hamzot is an absolute animal. And at that point, it was just what New Yorkerick was talking about. While the stock may rise in terms of if fans are going to buy Hamzat merch or not, the stock of Hamzat as a competitor and as a fighter, and how dangerous this man is, went through the roof.

It went through the roof. And now the next time Hamzat is booked, it's going to be a very big deal, whether it's at 170 or 185. And his way in is going to be maybe the most watched way in we've ever had because we have to see if he makes sure, especially if he's fighting at 170, especially if he fights Colby Covington.

And then he goes and cuts the heel promo and on and on we go. And then the main event happens. And I'm just sitting back, and it was just like the tension was gone. And we watched Tony Ferguson come to the octagon in a big spot. And we're just like, this is so cool. And then Nate makes the walk. And it was awesome.

And they're in there. And you can tell how much those guys respected each other. And they just went out and fought each other. And I saw a lot of people complaining on Twitter. Oh, come on. This fight sucks. Both these guys aren't the same. This is not a main event.

Come on now. And I'm just like, relax, dude. Relax. Like, it's okay. to do this once in a while. It's okay to just like sit back and watch a fight for what it is. There's no need to overthink this thing. Were we expecting

frigate Matoosh Gamrot versus Armand Sarukia on there? Of course not. But this is like just like a cool OG nostalgic thing. Where we get Nate getting the proper sendoff

against a guy who has also felt he's been screwed by the organization. And Tony Ferguson, both guys deserve that moment. It was a fun fight for what it was. It wasn't what, we're not going to be putting it in fight of the year conversations. We never thought we would. And they went out there and they had a

fight and they busted each other up a little bit. And then Nate, with the submission at the end, what a moment that was. And Nate goes out in a blaze of glory. He beats the UFC. Somehow everything fell upwards for Nate. I talked about the MA

gods on Friday. Ariel made a great speech about the MA gods yesterday. And that's what happened. And that's what happened. Nate goes out with the win. His stock is higher than ever. Post-fight press conference was hilarious. Mark Romandie still dealing with the trap house jokes. It was just, what a cool way to end it.

This is not going to be the card of the year. That was not going to be the fight of the year. But for once, it was nice to just sit back and watch a main event that didn't have a ton of stakes that just had two big stars who deserved that moment. And that's what we got. It was just a whole different feeling. watching that main event. Like you could have called that an exhibition fight

for as far as I was concerned. And if they went five rounds and it was just scored a draw, I would have been fine with that. I would have been fine with that. Mike Tyson, Roy Jones Jr. at an exhibition fight a couple of years ago,

and everybody went Gaga for that. Everybody went Gaga for it. And we got to see sort of the greatest hits from both of those guys. And that's what we saw here. I'm not saying that Nate and Ferguson are like 50-year-old guys or anything like that,

but it was like a similar feel to me. And that's why I enjoyed it so much. I just didn't take it too seriously. I didn't overthink it. I was just like, this is cool. This is like watching Stone Cold at WrestleMania. We know he's not the same dude. We know he's not going to go in there and jump off the top rope or anything. But it was just like, damn, it's freaking stone cold. That's awesome. And that's how I felt watching this made event. So super cool. Again, this is not going to be the card of the year, but we had some cool moments. Nate's going off. He's about to make a floppity

trillion dollars boxing Jake Paul or whatever this guy wants to do. And he's probably going to get the trilogy fight with Connor McGregor outside of the UFC where he's going to make, where Herman Connor are going to make all the money. And it's going to be super cool. Good for Nate. Good for Tony.

Obviously losing sucks. He's now that losing streak just continues to get bigger and bigger. And to me, you don't have to agree with me, but to was just after the Shemay of Holland fight to be able to just sit back and watch a main event

like that and just kind of enjoy it and take it all in and just have positive vibes the whole time. I loved it. I loved it. So on the UFC 280, my friends, which is a little over a month away and that card is absolutely stacked right now. And yeah, let's talk to you guys

about everything that happened. We'll start with Amherty. Average Avenue is 11. We're going to try to get to as many as we can here. Because I know you guys have a lot to say. So what's up, man? Good. So I've got no questions.

I just thought it would be fun to tell you the experience from this whole crazy last week from my perspective because I had an interesting experience if that's okay. Because I got sick literally after we had the heck of a morning like before the way in. So I felt I had like this stomach bar. I was vomiting. I was completely out of it. I fall asleep. I wake up. I see the clip from Ariel. The press conference is cancelled.

I'm sick. I'm loopy. I'm like, oh, okay. I fall back asleep. I wake up and this the next day. And I've got a hit in my DM saying, dude, get in this space. I'm like, dude, I can't. I'm sick. He's like, you're missing the craziness. I'm like, dude, sick. And he's like, okay, there's an emergency.

of an afternoon if you're okay and i'll say i'll see how i go i'll hop in for half a second and all i hear is we're seconds away from possibly getting daz versus tony i'm like you serious and then i fall back asleep i wake up and i see and i see the pictures i see the picture of of the three of them at at the way and facing off i'm like what the heck did i just miss and the fight and watching the fights was just as crazy. Like I was like falling asleep during the whole thing. Like I was like dozing off during the Lee fight thinking, yep, he's one miss. And hearing that D-Rond had won definitely woke me up. So I just thought I'd share that with you guys. I'm still not 100% but I thought I'd just give you guys a laugh. Have a heck of a morning. Cheers.

Thanks, man. Jeez. I mean, you you basically woke up and you missed all the craziness and you, yeah, I can understand you being like, what the hell just happened here? But feel better, my man. Feel better and hopefully you're good to go. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here. Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans,

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Not getting anything. Try again, my man. We'll get you in. Let's go to Beal. Beal are you there? Oh, we're not off to a good start here. Beale try again. Let's go to Kurt.

Do we have Kurt? Kurt, are you there? Oh, man. The MA gods are frown. There we go. Kurt, hello. Can you hear me? Yeah, I got you now.

Awesome, man. Yeah, I wanted to know what your thoughts are on, I have a hard time believing that this is a, that this wasn't planned. It just seems very fishy to me and very convenient. and I know, I don't think that it was a coincidence about the weight miss and I don't know, man. It's just, the whole thing just seems pretty odd. And did you give any thoughts to that, that this could all have been some big plan?

I know it's, I don't know. What are your thoughts, man? So for me, for me to say that that never crossed my mind even for like a split second, I'd be lying to you, but it was literally just a split second because it wasn't just like, our Fridays here at M.A. fighting were insane. We're doing all the shows. We're waiting just like all of you,

but we're not just waiting. We're talking to as many people as we can. Now, I can't talk to everybody. I don't have those connections with every single team and every single manager. But those who I was speaking to, this was not a conspiracy. This was not planned.

This was not a work. And honestly, even if I had like a half a percentage of doubt about that, seeing Dana White at the post-fight press conference just, I mean, it just, it was 100% confirmed that. this was not a work.

Not just because he said it, but his demeanor was not, was not a typical post-fight Dana White press conference. He seemed perturbed. He seemed bummed. He said a lot of the right things, especially in regards to Nate Diaz,

because what could he say? Nate did a fantastic job. Nate had an A-plus, Nate didn't just have an A-plus week. He had an A-plus-S-S-E. because he went in there and he fought, got the finish, got the good moment. And then when everybody thought Nate was just going to rip the UFC to shreds in the post-fight interview and the post-fight press conference, Nate puts the company over.

He says, I'm going to leave for a little while, and then I'm going to come back and become a world champion, the greatest title in combat sports. Thanked everybody in the UFC. It was perfect. Dana couldn't go into that press conference to say anything negative about it. Now, you could tell that he was pissed about all of this.

You could see it in his face. You could see it. He was not happy with how this all played out. And why would he? Why would he? All of the UFC's plans went to shit on Thursday, on Friday. We all know what the plans were.

Okay? Nate, The whole thing with Nate asking for the fight, he did. But it wasn't because I want to fight Hamzat Shemaya if I want to go out beating the scariest guy you have, was just like, no, I'll, if the only guy I can fight is freaking Hamzat, they give me freaking Hamzot. So I can leave. I've been wanting to leave for three years.

Just, I don't give a shit who you put up in front of me. Just fine, if it's Hamzut, I'll fight that guy. And to have everything kind of flip around. And the UFC was like, sure, we'll give you a Hamzot. But in their eyes, like, we're just going to have Hamzat roll this guy, and then we're going to send him to wherever he's going to go with his stock completely dropped, which I didn't agree with at all. Sure, coming off of a loss is, it sucks, but Nate is the ultimate spinster.

He can turn every negative into some kind of positive. If Shemai did the same thing to Nate that he did, Kevin Hallen, Nate would have showed up with the press conference. They're like, yeah, the dude just tried to grapple me. to death. He didn't actually want to fight. We fought on Thursday. I wanted to fight him Thursday. And I won that fight. So in the actual fighting spear, I beat Hamzat Shamaath. They're still saying we were three at O. We beat Humzat. We beat the UFC. And then we beat Tony Ferguson. We were three and we were three and O. They would have found a way to spit it. We all understood what this fight was all

about. We all understood that it was the weirdest booking ever because even if Hamzat went in there and just beat the shit out of Nate Diaz, nothing would have happened. Hamza's stock wouldn't arose at all. It just would have been, all right, we would just felt shitty about it all. But Hamza just would have went in and fought for the belt maybe next year,

or who knows? Like, it might have been a year for he fought for the belt. So literally the fight did nothing for him except put him in better graces with the UFC. And apparently the graces aren't bad to begin with because the guy missed weight by seven and a half pounds for a main event. fight to do the company a favor and then they reshuffle the whole card not for Nate Diaz

not for Tony Ferguson the MA gods helped make that happen but they did this for Hamzaa Shamaif this is all for him so he could fight and that's what happened it's why he didn't get fines it's why I didn't get any bit of his purse taken away he could have gotten a bonus on Saturday but that would have been really bad taste if he got a bonus so I think the UFC was smart not to give him that, because that would just have been bad PR for them, but he still got to go out there and fight. Now, he lost a buttload of money

because he didn't fight Nate in the main event, so he'd lose the pay-per-view points and all the other cool perks he would have gotten along the way. But let's be clear here. They did this for Hamzad. And this is not a conspiracy. This is not a work. This is a shoot.

This is a shoot. And you can see it in, Dana's face on Saturday after the event. It's one thing to say things. It's another thing to read the body language. And Dana wasn't Dana. And maybe it was just because of all of everything that happened along the way. It was a chaotic week for them too.

And they, whether you, no matter how you feel about it, M.A. God's whatever. They made it happen. And I know some of the fighters who got shuffled around, they got paid. Maybe not all of them, but some of them got paid. I know that for a fact. So I don't know, man. I understand why people would say,

oh, come on, this is a conspiracy theory to sell more tickets. I don't buy that. I don't buy it because I looked Friday morning, and I think I might have mentioned it on heck of a morning before all this happened. I was looking at the T-Mobile Arena's ticket sales. There were less than 1,000 tickets left.

So they were very close to selling out anyways. And even Dana said, like, As soon as we booked this, we had 250 tickets left and we sold it out. So they sold all this day was giving 250 extra tickets. Now, they offered refunds. It doesn't seem like anybody took that, took advantage of that and got the refund. At least this is what Dana said, but this is not a work. This is not a work.

Let's go to Mikey, who was probably in Vegas for all of this. Mikey, hello. Of course. I am in Vegas because I live here. Duh. Second, I'm going to get to it, but I attended 279. I was in the building, and I'm going to tell you all about it, but worst, first of all, let me get this off my chest. Once again, the MMA bubble, can you guys please stop? For a fan base that hates pro wrestling so much,

God, you guys sound so much like them, think about it. Why would the UFC torpedo their own event? For who? For what? For what? just freaking stop it, dude. It's annoying as hell. And all this whole, they hate Nate Diaz so much. That guy is literally Dana's favorite fighter. That guy won a tough.

He's been won. The UFC has been trying to make that guy a star for the long, for literally 16 years. And through some of his own fault, because let's be honest, let's not forget how many times this guy had his chances to become an ascended superstar, but he lost the title fight.

He missed weight badly against, RDA and stuff like that. I love the guy, man. I'm a fan of him too as much as anybody. I've grown to really appreciate them. But just guys, freaking stop. It gets annoying. Oh, look, he stuck it to the UFC, right. And then he went on the mic and said, no, I want to come back. Just let me go make some money because fucking duh. Pardon my language. All right. As for the event itself, I was able to be in the building. I sat in the 103 section. Let me tell you something. This car may have not been promoted to be car of the year. It might not have been car the year. the lineup is whatever.

But let me tell you something, man. Pound for pound, just as an in-house experience, it's as good as probably an international fight week. Okay, maybe that's a bit of an embellion, but let me tell you something, man. Everybody that I sat next to could have given two craps about the losing streaks of the main event, what the shuffle was.

Everybody just had a damn good time when Chris Barnett won. Listen, it was kind of shocking because we talk about like, oh, man, people need to attend the prelims. There weren't a lot of people in those prelims during the prelims, but it was loud and when Macy lost first of all

I was invested in Macy because I'm friends with a friend and let me tell you something I blinked and she crumpled over and I was like what happened

it wasn't a pin drop it was more like everyone in that everyone in Reno just had that murmur and buzzed like the fuck just happened you know

so we had an all-time probably one of the greatest chaos of all time just from uniqueness the only real downer fight and I don't mean downer in terms of

like it was bad. It was just one of those things, right? Was the Jamie Pickett fight? Because it was like, wow, it followed Chris Barnett, you know? Bad luck for those guys. But the energy was really good from that, from Chris Barnett up on. Man, the main event, when Nate won, that place went freaking nuts. And just a surreal experience that.

I don't want to say it's like the best card I've ever been to. I've only been to a few. But, man, let me tell you something, man. I don't know how everyone felt on Twitter and all this. People can talk about, oh, this car was like semi-boring or whatever and all this other stuff. But, man, tell that to the people in-house because everyone had a damn, damn good time. And one last thing, I've been able to fortunately be able to meet Elias Teodor a couple times here in Vegas when he passed through. Always treat everybody that ran into him like a friend, always gracious with his time.

I apologize and my condolences to everyone who knew him. And he has a stunning loss for the end making me. I know some people don't like him and some people can have some personal beef with him. but from what I've seen, he was a really good kid, and 34 is way too damn young. All right. Be kind to each other. Happy birthday, A.K., well, up, Jedd, and everybody else. Have a good night.

Good morning. I mean, at this point, all the days and the times of days, they all just sort of blend together. So, yeah, I mean, look, I mean, you just basically reiterated what I just said, just accept this for what I was. And this is all good. This is all good. again this is not card of the year we're not going to be it's not going to be in our lists or anything like that but it was still fun and it was just nice to just sit back and watch your main events for what it was and it was just a cool moment to see nate go out like that and yeah i mean what

else can i say about that let's go to milo hello milo what's up mike hello can you hear me okay Yes. It's great. It's a heck of a morning to you. Yeah, I wanted to go over maybe start my breakdown from the main event, like with Nate D.S. and Tony Ferguson. In my opinion, you know, that was probably the worst fight of the year. I'm not going to say the worst fight of the decade, but I think it was probably one of the worst up there just because of the showing of the fighters. I mean, the shape that they were in with Tony constantly fighting, spending more time, fighting backwards, like turning around towards Nate and then giving high-fives and everything

and Nate taking a break during the rounds, which I thought was ridiculous. Overall, poor showing, I think, from the both fighters, like, if they were not, like, if they were on the last fight on the contract, like for Tony and for Nate, I don't think it would have mattered. I think both fighters should have been cut, you know, for the professional. performance like this. And the way Tony landed himself in that takedown in that submission, I think, was also indicative of a very poor form in the skill set. So that was very disturbing for me. Yeah, in terms of the Kamsat, I think Kamsat is next up for a title. He definitely deserves

the title shots. There are some conversation on Colby, him fighting Colby. I don't think these are the opportunities that Colby wants to pursue. He wants to have supermatches, you know, against his former teammates and whatnot. So I think comes out as a title contender. In terms of Daniel Rodriguez versus Lee Jing Lang, I think this fight should be made again at the proper weight class with the proper weight cut and the proper time for both fighters to prepare.

It was a very close affair, so it only makes sense that they fight each other again. Irene, I think with this performance against Macy Chesson, having fought through a tough round, and I think she deserved the title shot at this point. and there are now no apparent contenders at 135. Outside of Bahrain, I think she's the most pronounced ones here, and she deserved the title shot here, in my opinion.

Yeah, and Macy tapped in that first round. That was ridiculous, actually, that they allowed fight to continue. And maybe my final thought, I think we should preserve, you know, keep and support Chris Barnett at all costs and give him, like, all the matchups that he wants. and hopefully they bring back somebody like Jared Van dera to fight him. That would be great. But aside of that, maybe a match against Mo Usman, I think maybe it would be good as well.

So, yeah, that's all I have to say. Thanks again for having me and have a heck of a morning. Thanks, man. I mean, agree to disagree on a lot of that stuff. Listen, like I said before, was Nate Diaz versus Tony Ferguson, Sarukyan versus Gamrod. Of course not. Did we expect it to be?

Of course not. Was it just fun to watch two dudes fight? Yes. Yes. It was what we expected. It was two veterans of the sport who everybody loves just getting in there

and they played the greatest hits. It was just fun. And Nate went out and had that moment, overhead bicep pose, gets the gilee. I mean, it was just fun. Like, it was just fun. Not everything has to be so serious.

I mean, especially after everything that happened this week, like, I didn't care. I didn't care. None of that stuff bothered me. And if it bothered me, that's fine. Like, I'm not going to chastise you for it. But to me, there's like no pressure watching it. It was just like, oh, this is cool. This is pretty damn cool to watch right now.

And just Nate going off and doing his damn thing. Now, do I think Nate's going to come back to the UFC? It's going to take something really big for that to happen. Like I know he said the right things going out the door and saying, hey, I'm going to come back and win a world title. Look, I love Nate Diaz. The guy has done tremendous stuff for the fighters. He's done tremendous stuff for the sport. He became a star and he didn't need the promotion to get him there.

He did it all by himself. And that was pretty damn cool. But let's not kid ourselves. Nate's not winning a world title. he's just not he's just going to like he shouldn't come back he shouldn't not come back to the ufc there's nothing worth him coming back for just isn't that is as good a way as you can get out of the ufc is exactly what he did on saturday the ufc had a plan for him to get dusted the ms had a different idea. He goes out against Tony Ferguson at dog money, wins, gets a submission,

puts the company over, and leaves. This couldn't have been, this couldn't have gone any better for him. This is, this is the best way it could happen. And you can test the M.MA gods and the luck that they provide as much as you want, but most times you're going to lose that battle. So if I'm Nate, I ain't ever coming back because it's not going to be, it's just, It's never going to get better. Like, there's just no better way to leave than the way he did on Saturday. Go box Jake Paul. Make a bunch of money.

Go fight Connor. Go box Connor. Whatever. Like, there's plenty of fighting opportunities for Nate that aren't in the UFC that he can promote on his own and make all the money for, or at least a good chunk of it. Why would he come back? Why would he come back? He wasn't going to go out and, obviously,

he blazed the company, which is a good thing. It was very smart on his part. But there's no reason to come back. There's no reason to come back. Don't do it. As far as Shamiyae goes, I don't know what they're going to do. I don't know what they're going to do. I know some people feel like Colby won't take that fight.

And, you know, that's fine. But Colby's also a businessman. and understands, like, you could feel however you want about Colby, but he is smart when it comes to business. And he understands what being a prize fighter is all about. But he also understands that there's certain limits to the prize fighting, like fighting Tired Woodley and fighting Mazadol at the times he fought them, there's not many more of those you could have.

Like, you could fight Dustin and that's fine. Woodley at the time, after losing to Usman, Woodley was the biggest fight he could get. Mazadol was the biggest fight he could get after losing to Usman again. But now he tries to get the biggest fights he can get because he's not getting a title shot right now. He's just, he's not getting a title shot. He wants to fight for the belt.

It's not possible. Him fighting Dustin, I don't think that's even a possibility. Right now. But I think he would fight Hamza. It's the biggest fight he can get. It is the biggest fight he can get. The most eyeballs he can get realistically right now is fighting Hamza Tchamayev.

Would I favor Hamza Tchamai F to win that fight? Yes, because I would favor Hamza Tchamaiv to beat pretty much anybody he fights at this point because he's a friggin demon. But if Colby can somehow extend this fight he can win. He can.

That gas tank is, there is no gas tank on that man. It doesn't exist. It's just all gas, no brakes. But Hamzat's a friggin' demon. And if Hamzad,

there's a very good chance Hamzat would do exactly what he did to Kevin Holland to Colby Govington. But maybe he doesn't. I don't know. But I don't think Colby would just disregard this fight altogether.

If he wants to get a title shot, and he wants the biggest fight possible. Like Colby versus Hamzot could headline an ABC card. Colby versus Hamzot in a strange world could headline a pay-per-view. Because they're both, Hamzad is the most interesting guy in the sport right now.

And somehow, Colby would be a baby face in that fight. Colby would be the guy, like people would be cheering for Colby. This is, I mean, this would be the best case scenario for him. He might lose, and then he's kind of in the same. same spot he's in right now, but he could win, and then he gets a title fight no matter what, even if Usman wins the belt back. And he has two losses against Kamar. That's the quickest way back to a title shot. Now, personally, I don't think the UFC is going to give him a welterweight fight next. I think he's going to have to fight at 185. And you just do the freaking Paul Kosta fight.

That's right there. It's right there for you. Costas got one fight left on his deal. And if the negotiations with Paulo are not going well, then you could still use Hamzad as the demon to take Policost out of the UFC if you want to do that. But I don't know why the UFC would want to do that. Policost is over like we're over too. So Hamza is in a real interesting spot right now. And I mean, I actually bumped him up a spot in my welter rate rankings, even though he fought at 178 pounds.

And he's on my pound for pound list. He's kind of up there right now. So I honestly think I honestly think he's just that damn good. unprofessional yes but maybe maybe the best fighter in the planner right now who knows let's go to toke toke hello i'm a bit of a conspiracy conspiracy theorist myself but not regarding ufc 279 so i'm going to skip ahead a few months till december because you know the reports are that francis and gano is going to fight there and it seems like Like to me, he would kind of have no interest in that, given his situation.

And that seems more like, for me, it seems like a press ball from the UFC to say, hey, we want you to file this date right before your contract ends. And because it doesn't really match up with what we've been told that he's going to be ready in 2023 at the earliest and all that stuff. So I was just wondering if you think this is a tactic or, you know, yeah, something to pressure Francis Nganowith from the side of the UFC. No. No, because he's not going to be able to physically fight in December anyways. You can't, it wouldn't count as like a fight offer if you cannot physically fight. The guy just had, the guy literally just had like, like, really just had like,

really serious knee surgery in March. It's only September. And I know Francis came on his YouTube channel saying like, hey, if the world was a better flight, if the world was right, I would come back in December. He ain't coming back in December, which is not possible. It's not possible. That's just, that's freakish. Only Tony Ferguson has that sort of healing ability to come back after that kind of an injury

and that kind of a surgery that quickly. it's not happening. February, March is what Eric Nixick told me. That seems somewhat realistic, but after Paris, Francis was scheduled to go back to Vegas and get the knee checked out and maybe they'd get a little more on how the rehab is looking. But it's not only just the injury, it's Francis hasn't really done anything since March because he can't. The dude's got one leg. So you can only do so much.

I know he wants to go in there and start hitting the bag and doing all that stuff, but he hasn't been able to do really anything. So December's out of the question. I don't know where those reports are coming from. I would be stunned if that happens. But I don't think there's any kind of conspiracy there. I just don't think it's possible. And Francis isn't going to let the UFC push him around like that anyway.

So, yeah, that's what I think. All right, let's go back and see if we can get Viking in here. and we'll go to Beale and then we're going to get after and then we'll go to a hit she's been waiting Viking are you there hello sir this is my new account good how are you ham the gym I've lost lost me my 11 years old account so that's on them absolutely I just want to talk about the rematches and Kobe is not going to fight this year would have won that fight then again World versus Holloway.

Then Julia and Pena and Amanda and Eunice took literally seven months. Now Jiria and Lord fighting again and Magumetankalav is making burgers at his house till they fight. Now Leon and Ustman again taking time and is going to sit and watch Arisania, loses

to Paira and again rematch. Man, I'm really against this automatic rematch scenario. In that automatic rematch process, the deserving contender just has to sit up and watch. That's not justice to the fire test number one spot right. And no matter how great you are, if you lose, just get in the freaking. line. You had your time to prepare and you had your full camp, you have all the support and help to prepare the fight and you could not defend your title, that's your fault. Just get in line and let the deserving contender fight for the next. I mean, where should

Hamza go from now? Middlewitz? Well, to it, where? I mean, he's the deserving contender. and for the and just tell me I'm just I think we just missed that on on to the next one that I just want to know

who should Guram Kutla Gurdang Kutla will fight next time do you think Arman and Demer with Nagulah would be the

perfect matchup thank you Mike yeah man I mean I like that matchup I like that one a lot I just I just don't think they're going to give Shemiah a title fight

like I just think it's a bad it's just a bad precedent to set and I understand like the rematch thing I totally get that I know Jed Mishu has said publicly many times he hates immediate rematches in any situation whatsoever

literally any of them I think there's we're just seeing Domino's fall like all together. Amanda Nunes losing to Julieta Pena, like nobody saw that coming. You kind of had to give Amanda the rematch because you had nobody else.

You could have done Caitlin Vieira, but I mean, you got to think about it from a business perspective as well. Kamar Usman, Leon Edwards, is like probably the biggest fight Kamar's ever had, honestly. The amount of, that's going to do really well.

It's going to sell out a freaking stadium in London or somewhere in the UK. It's going to be a very, very big deal. And Hamzat had an opportunity to potentially go in there and maybe steal that. I don't think he would have. I think the UFC said on that, but had he made weight and just went in there and did the damn thing, like, who knows? But he missed weight by seven and a half pounds.

This wasn't a half a pound. This wasn't a pound and a half. This is seven and a half pounds. This is seven and a half pounds. He's going to have to fight somebody else. And I know Dana put him over at the post-fight press conference, but he also cost that company a lot of money throughout the week. He did with all the promotional tools, everything they had,

Ron Perlman, everything that they spent money on, everything had to be redone. Everything. And it's on him. And it's on him. I'm not saying that Hamzad shouldn't get a big fight and a big spot because it's going to. The UFC understands how valuable that is right now. do him versus Costa, do him versus Covington.

I loved the Whitaker idea, but it seems like both guys just want to fight crime together now, which is, I mean, I'm, listen, if you, if you give me a world where Hamzaa Chamaif is hanging around Robert Whitaker for a while and picking that man's brain about the fight game and how to carry yourself, sign me the hell up for that. I would rather see that than have them fight each other right now. because maybe Robert could talk some sense into this man and get him where he needs to be. Because the skills are there, 100%. It's between the ears that is the only issue for this man. And somehow, some way, if this guy could figure that part of it out, oh my gosh. This guy is, I mean, the heights this man can reach if he could figure that part of it out is going to be unbelievable. but we'll see what happens

who knows whoever he fights whoever he's matched up against people are going to watch Beale what's up man Not much uh what a crazy freaking weekend huh I was just scrolling Twitter relentlessly looking for updates and then I see this emergency heck of a morning with 2,000 frigging people Has you ever had that many people in a Twitter space

No we had like over 7,000 total It was just not And I was just like a boy I remember talking to Sean Elshadie on Slack. I'm like, I have to do something. Should we just do an emergency heck of it have to do? Which, by the way, credit to a Hid, he put that on the radar and we made it happen. And he was just like, yeah, go for it.

And we were just like, holy shit. There's a lot of people here. Yeah, that was awesome. Yeah, I'll make this quick because I do want to hear what a Hid has to say. I think A Hid needs his own network, his own podcast, maybe his own show on the MMA fighting spaces. But all I really my biggest takeaway was the leech like everybody just singing his praises and his suit that didn't get to be revealed and everything. I just want to know what you think we should do with him because I think he needs to get some treatment special treatment of sorts. Like put him in a main event against Robbie Lawler or something, you know, something like that.

But yeah, have a heck of a morning, guys. And thanks for everything, Mike. Thanks, buddy. Main event, February 2023, Lejeing Leong versus Vicente Lucke. Five rounds. There you go. Problem solved.

That's a great fight. That's a great fight. Lucke's, yeah, Lucke's coming off, a couple losses. Got beat by Jeff Neal, but Lucke's still a fun guy. People enjoy watching him fight. They enjoy seeing his name and face on a poster. And you throw him in there at the Leach. everyone's going to be like, oh, damn, this has the potential for fun, fun violence.

And that's what that fight would bring. And that's the one I would make. I think everyone should kind of get a bump for everything that happened. That's what I think. You should get that. I think Holland should get the Wonderboy fight. D-Rod. I forget what I picked for D-Rod, but listen, you should get something good too.

But yeah, I like Leach, Lucke. And you could definitely do a man about with that. Boarding for flight 246 to Toronto is delayed 50 minutes. Ugh, what? Sounds like Ojo time. Play Ojo? Great idea. Feel the fun with all the latest slots in live casino games and with no wagering requirements. What you win is yours to keep groovy.

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All right, ahead. Let's go. Yes, I can. Okay. Firstly, thanks for the kind words, Mike, as well as Bill. But I'm just going to have to, I'm going to play the villain here. Like, and thankfully, Milo said some common sense. Like the mate, like here's the thing, right?

Before the like on the craziness on Friday, like I was excited for this main event. But after watching it, I actually wish we did the old format with Nate and Humza and Tony and Lee. And I'll tell you why. Because like firstly, the main event, it was like two middle age guys and then Nate was just kind of playing games and it was a bit strange. But more than that, it's because I've got personal preference for Tony. And I just have to look at it and think, what was he doing? and I'm not talking about a skill point. I'm talking about like an attitude point.

Like it felt like, oh, he wanted to be Nate's buddy. You know, it's like he was happy to be the puzzle, the final piece of the puzzle in Nate's story, which is horrible. Like, as in it's like he wanted to satisfy people. And then it was like he was beating Nate up bad. And he held, I feel like he held back a little bit. When Nate was playing those games, he should have, and he wouldn't have held back.

Be honest, would he have held back against Li Jing Liang, the way he held back against Nate? Did he stop? Would he have done it? No. And then with regards to Nate, like Nate playing those games, we saw Hamza with a little glove touch, no glove touch. People are too whiny about that. But the thing is, would have Hamza let Nate do that?

No. So those were the fights that should have just like made. But that leads me on to my next point. Obviously, Humzaa missed weight and I'm so angry at him. I'm so annoyed at these like fans of Hamzaa, Kabin. and stuff making all these excuses because we all saw the interview with Andreas Michael

where he admitted that forget medical issue remember Mike on Friday all those excuses were coming out it was Hamza's fault Humza caved in heavy so anything that happens during Fight Week it's his fault

and the doctor Hamza made it seem like the doctor called it off the doctor said no and Andreas had to tell Hamza we're not doing this anymore you know so Hamza is full of rubbish like as in it was in must have been bad. Otherwise, Andreas wouldn't have pulled the plug. So it's just ridiculous. And Hamza, everyone's saying Humza and Colby, Colby scared. Humza couldn't even make weight.

And 267, it's been, it was dodgy against Gilbert Burns. It was dodgy. But now you're saying Colby scared. On Friday, all of us hated Humza. Now your team Humza, Colby's like scared and terrified. It's ridiculous. Obviously, the fight that needs to be made is Humza, Paulo Costa, January, 2023, and Paolo can bring the hat that he rubbed on his private parts. I don't know if you saw that clip, Mike. That was bad.

But, yeah, the pre-fight antics. And yeah, I think that's about it. Drop the mic, Mike. Thank you ahead. Yeah, a lot to sort of unpacked there. I know Brett Okamoto had tweeted that Andreas had said it was his decision to stop the weight cut and not the doctors.

but I think Brett actually made a correction to that because Andreas went on Ariel's show and said something to the contrary that the doctor stopped it and it was just kind of went from there and then Andreas was just like, dude, stop. Just had to reiterate, you need to stop this shit, stop cutting because you could really hurt yourself.

And that's what happened. And I think Brett kind of posted a correction on that just to make sure. I want to pull that up just in case because I know I did see that and then I was watching Andreas on

Ariel show and it was a little bit different. So here's the tweets from ESPN. Spoke to Hamza Tchamayev's coach this morning, told me his guess

as their next fight as a middleweight, also described everything that happened during the wake, said it was his decision to stop the cut, not the physicians.

But then he came out a few hours later and said he wanted to make this distinction. It was his decision under the advice of doctors. Bottom line was cut

and knee. needed to be stopped. He described Hobzot vomiting and cramping, which he talked about in the MIR as well, still needing to get into a hot bat to finish the cut. So, yeah, it was the doctor's advisor stopped the bullshit. And then Andreas was like, no, you're not cutting anymore. And he described what happened after that Hamzat was just worried he wouldn't be able to fight and offered Nate his full purse.

But you knew at that point there's no chance Nate was going to take that fight and he shouldn't have taken that fight. and we would have felt a certain way about all this because he would have killed Nate Diaz like he would have picked Nate Diaz up and thrown him into the third row and I don't like I understand that people were saying that well you never know like you see Nate grab that gilly

on Tony Ferguson like he was preparing for this the whole time you can't prepare like you can try to prepare for this guy but like you just don't understand like you just it's a whole different ball game and I think Hamzat would have beat Nate anywhere in that fight the only chance Nate had was to survive, which is kind of the chance anybody has right now. You have to survive the first couple of rounds,

and then you have a chance. Like Gilbert, and even Jed said this, and I think a lot of people agreed, I think a lot of people's respect levels went up for Gilbert Burns after watching this Kevin Holland fight. And as far as the other weight cuts that he had mentioned, the one last year with the leach was bad. That was a bad one.

looked like there was some towel tomfoolery at certain points but the Jacksonville one he had no issues in Jacksonville none I think he was the first one to the scale or he's one of the first two or three fighters up there because I was there for that and he made 170 on the nose he didn't look destroyed he looked like he's still at energy looked like he was good to go so I don't know what has happened from then till now but yeah and I know Andrea said in the MA hour too that it was a lot of the you know he had that really hard boat with COVID. He thought he was going to stop fighting altogether. And ever since then, it's been

a little more tricky for him. So I don't know, maybe go see Robert Whitaker. Maybe Robbie can help him out in some of those aspects. But yeah, and I thought Hamz out at the post by press conference was pretty interesting as well. I actually kind of understood where he was coming from in some ways, like, because a lot of people were pissed on the reaction to the scale. You got up to the scale. He's smiling, flipping people off. then he was posting like funny memes and shit on social media and some people have rubbed people the wrong way and post my press conference yeah he got a little dark at times but for the most part he kind of took the facade off he took the heel mask off if you will and he said look what am i supposed to do like i knew i wasn't going to make weight i was told to stop cutting what am i supposed to do cry about it i have to prepare to actually get into occasion fistfight somebody i have to move on i have to move on to the next thing and like maybe I wouldn't have posted the meme with him and Darren Till and done some of the things he would have done,

but he has to prepare for a fistfight. And if that's what he needs to do to put this thing behind him where he just cost the UFC a bunch of money, cost himself a bunch of money, and was worried that he wouldn't be able to fight, he didn't take it for granted, and that's what he needed.

I mean, I don't agree with it all together. I don't agree with how he handled all of it, but I thought that was an interesting thing that he said, honestly. Let's go to Velafi and then we'll go to Zeke. Hello. How are you?

Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Yeah, it's the one from South Africa. So I just want to comment on the weight issue. I think it's unfair how a council is being treated, considering he's not the first main event to miss weight.

Look at what happened to Charles Oliver. He missed weight. We might create it anyhow, but He did miss weight, but he doesn't get the same backlash. The same backlash comes out is getting. So I think it's a bit unfair to put it on him like that. It's a learning curve for him. I think going forward is going to learn from this.

Going forward, I think he should face current and is the next step. The notion that you must go to 185 because he missed weight, I think it's a bit unfair, considering that look what happened to Holocaust. The second fight is still furthered at middleweight instead of and it's not the first one. Besides, even Nate D.S. once missed Wade. It was the Donaldson, he missed weight. But they didn't get the same bag last that comes at court.

So that's what I just wanted to share. Yeah, but, I mean, these are two totally different situations. This is a headliner of a pay-per-view that was a pretty weak card to begin with, if we're being honest. But they had to add Tony Ferguson against Lee Jing Liang and then a short-notice fight between Kevin Holland and D-Rod to actually sell any tickets. Like it was doing very terribly in ticket sales. They booked this fight for a reason.

This wasn't just a, oh, this is just a random main event we're going to put together. The UFC booked this main event to send A Diaz out on a loss. They gave him a bag. They gave him the bag. Take out one of the biggest stars

in the history of the sport in a fight you should easily win and then you will fight for a world title. And then he misses weight by seven and a half. pounds. This isn't him dying on the scale, weighing 171 and a half. This was him

seemingly not giving a shit that he missed weight. And he ruined the whole card. Like, it turned out fine. Like, it's it was more easily digestible. We'd be talking about something

totally different today, had things played out the way that it did. But he still screwed up and he deserves the backlash for this. The UFC handed him a bag. Here's his bag. A ticket. A ticket to wherever you want to go. We're giving it to you. We're handing it to you on a silver platter. And he didn't do it. Of course he gets backlash for this. Anybody ask my best friend AK is here. We get backlash to everybody who misses weight. Everybody. The one guy I didn't give any backlash to was Chris Barnett because of everything that freaking guy has gone through.

dude loses his wife has a crazy fight misses weight by a pound and a half I am willing to forgive that one time one time if hums up missed by a half a pound he's not getting the backlash he's getting right now if hums up missed by a pound we're giving him crap we're not giving them this much crap but seven and a half pounds

how can you excuse that how how can you excuse that even his own team thought it was unprofessional You have to give him a ration of shit for that. You have to. How can you do? You can't compare this to really anybody else. Maybe Olivera, but he missed by a half pound.

Everyone thought it was kind of lame. He didn't miss by seven pounds. If Oliver missed by seven pounds, we'd be calling for his head. He wouldn't be fighting his on Machachev for a vacant title right now. Even the UFC understood. That's why they're giving him a title fight in his next fight. this is totally different.

This is totally different. He cost the UFC millions of dollars. He cost himself millions of dollars. He had a ticket to go wherever he wanted. Yes, he went in there and he won, and he looked incredible doing it. And his stock rises because of that. So personally, it didn't kill him that much

for his future because his next fight's going to be ginormous. Everyone's going to care. The interest levels will be at an all-time. him high, not just for the fight, but for the weigh-in, even if it's at 185. This guy is humongous. He could fight at 205, and it wouldn't shock me. He's that big. It's stunning to me that he's made 170 at all. But he can do it. We've seen him do it. He weighed 170 on the nose for the Gillib Burns fight. He looked fine. He looked fine. To me, I just thought he didn't take date seriously at all. He just felt he's going to go in there, kill him, and then be fine. And he

didn't take it seriously. Not saying like he didn't train, because of course he trained. He wasn't going to go in there and lose an eight, but I just think he, he just felt like he was going to go in there and destroy him. Lesson learned. And we'll see how he bounces back. I mean, we said before, fool me once, shame on whatever the saying is, but fool me once, whatever.

But you fool me a second time. That's it. So we'll see how he bounces back. He is lucked into a rising stock because of how he fought on Saturday. And because of him just turning heel perfectly for using the pro wrestling terms. But yeah, man, to say he doesn't deserve the ration of negativity coming his way, it's just not true. Sorry.

Let's go to Zeke. Good morning, Mike. How are we? we're good all right let's be a little longer than usual you just shoot me off when you need to shoot me off

first things first to that last caller I mean yeah the situations couldn't have been any more different like hums out was kind of coming in

off a honeymoon getting ready for a championship and Charles Olivero was getting ready for what a second title defense or third title defense you know what I mean obviously only missed weight

by a half a pound the other one was an eight pound weight miss but either way the situations couldn't correlate it any less. Anyway, in my opinion, I, you see, I do like Humsat, okay?

And I love Kobe. So when you go to look at this middleweight debacle, I guess you could say, Walterweight debacle that we're going to have to throw Humsat into, what do you do next? He kind of shut down the Robert Whitaker thing at the press conference. However, Robert kind of kept the door open. He's like, you know, I like his attitude,

but he hasn't been tested yet, which is quite interesting to me because now I'm thinking, Oh, is Gilbert Burns not a test, but it is a test. You know what I mean? That's just Robert Whitaker trying to be Robert Whitaker. So in my opinion, it's Robert Whitaker or it's Kobe Covington, but what do I know, right? Could it be Israel-Arazana or Alex Pereira after that? Because can you fight this guy at 170 again?

I really don't think you can. I think you're going to have to send this guy up to 185, even if it's not for a title shot. Like, I guess to kind of round this whole little spiel up, do you think that James James James gets a title shot after this debacle? my answer is no i think it's either going to be robert whittaker or coby covington if he's like super lucky it'll be the loser of perera adizania but i don't know i think his best bet would be colby his worst bet would be whittaker uh perera i guess because i think izy has a great style chance uh in that matchup however lastly before i chop this down romanov versus almeda i heard it you said it you put it into

mind Sunday and it has the one left it won't left until the two are locked in the cage and my eyes brain and my heart get to feel it and i know it's weird two heavyweights from i know they're younger but no they're not they're the future they're the future of the heavyweight division and i need to see which one is is really it which one is him do i think romanoff has a weird chance yes however we saw what Alameda does. He does it to anybody. He gets rocked in the cage. He takes you down.

He wears you like a backpack and he beats your face in flat. How do you deal with that? I don't know. But yeah, what is, what's the next one comes on after this big debacle of a weight miss? Like, Mike, this guy is a freak. This guy is a generational talent. I think you know it.

You kind of mentioned the fact that obviously he has his issues outside of the cage. But in the cage, when it comes to UFC and then. and what he's paid to do, this guy is one of one. This guy can hang with anyone. What do you think is next for him? And two, I need that. I need Al-Madov. Let's have a week, Mike. Thank you. Thanks, man. Yeah, I agree. That's, that was my pick. Let's just do it. Let's just do it. I was kind of hoping Ramanoff would win. And then I would have given Romanoff somebody a little bit higher if he beat martin tibora but he just died basically after that first round the 10-8 round and just had nothing left and you can't do that against a guy like martin tibora so you want

to get him back into the favor you got to fight this dude and if you beat him there you go but normally i don't match two up-and-comers together on on the next one but that in this case i feel like we have to do it For Hamzad, I mean, I do like the Colby idea. I just, I think it makes perfect sense. It's just a matter of, do you have enough trust in Hamzad that he can actually make the weight this time? I don't know. That's the question.

I think Colby would take the fight. I thought, and I think you would have taken it, I think he would have taken it for that ABC card that Dana talked about as well. He's told me he would fight Hamzaa Chamaif. I think he would do it. It's the biggest fight. can get. The guy is a prize fighter. He wants the biggest fights he can get with the highest stakes possible. And at the time, he's played the prize fighter rule very well, getting Woodley.

A little late, but he got Woodley on probably the most viewed fight night card of all time. Then he gets Mozd all. Biggest fight he could get after losing to Kamar Usman. And a fight that a lot of, there are people who still thought Colby beat Usman the second time. Not me. I am not one of those people, but there are people who felt Colby won that fight. And I think Colby's kind of in the Robert Whitaker position in a lot of ways where in a world without Usman, he's the guy. He's the champion right now. So we probably have to fight Hamzaa anyways. But if Colby wants the belts, if he wants the chance to get up there, especially now that there's a new champion, he's got to get a win. And he's got to get one against a guy like Shamiath. That makes perfect sense. Whitaker fight,

I don't think happens. Stylistically, it makes sense, but you don't need to do that. I loved it from just a, this is before the weight missed and everything, but I loved it as he fights Nate, beats Nate, you got to wait for something to fall here.

So go fight Rob, and if you win, you're the number one contender in two different divisions. Doesn't seem to want to fight Rob. Rob doesn't really want to fight him, because Robb Rob did an interview with Sirius XM with Dean Thomas and RJ Clifford.

And he said, I heard what Hamzat said. If he wants to train together, I would love to train together. And we could take out all the bad guys together. We would have some fun. We would run amok. And I think that's a good thing. Like honestly, like after this whole week and how everything played out, you want to send him over to Robert Whitaker to tap into that brain?

Do it. I'm all for it. Because I want to see what this guy can do. I want him to maximize his potential. We have never seen anything like this guy. We have never seen anything like this guy. We've seen John Jones come up through the ranks. We saw Conner's rise.

We saw guys have impressive showings. But Hamzaa is just annihilating people. And then in like his 10th pro fight, he fights a guy who almost won the title. Was seconds away from beating Kamar Usman. Had him rattled in the first round. and he got to face some adversity. He didn't even fight well in that fight.

He just went in there and was like, all right, I'll just do this instead. He just decided to throw hands for 15 minutes instead of fighting the way he normally fights. This guy's a problem, but he's got to get his shit together. And he knows it, and his team knows it. But he's so talented. So if it takes him hanging out with Robert Whitaker for a couple months

to get his mind right, I'm all for that. And in the meantime, if you're going to fight 85, you got to do the cost to fight. You have to. What else is there? Coss is a name. It's the biggest fight. It's the biggest fight can get at 185 that's not out of Sanya.

Like Whitaker's cool. If they match it with Whitaker, we're like, oh, wow, that's interesting. But if he fights Costa, we're like, okay, there's some heat on this one. It's going to get the casual viewers. It's good for business. All right. We'll take whoever is on the line right now, and then we're going to get out of here. James, you're up.

Hey, Mike, heck, good morning to you. What's up? Hey, firstly, I gotta say that in the lead up to 279, I exhausted all of the MMA fighting podcast content, so I had to move on to other outlets, and it really shines through how well you do at hosting, your great at setting everybody up. And it's not like I didn't know it before,

but it shines through even more when you listen to these other people, not mentioning any names, that really don't have the grasp on it. But what I also, I have an idea for Lee Giann Leone, have him stand in the middle of the fighters at UFC 280 in that emaculate blue suit instead of Dana White during face-offs.

We all need to see it. Secondly, I like where your head's at on Robert Whitaker and Hamzat. picking his brain. My question is, do you think he needs to do something with the nutrition as well? I know you said he didn't struggle as much in Jacksonville, but you could tell he was miserable. Do you think that's something to do with the way he's cutting the weight, or do you think it's never going to be something that he can do well simply because he's so big? Do you think the nutrition aspect plays into it? Thanks, Mike.

Uh, okay, I got it. Um, yeah, 100%. It's like almost all of it. And it's not only that, it's the discipline. I mean, I'm sure we saw the posts from what mini Habib or whatever posted some stuff about seeing Shemaya kind of eating all around and just eating a lot down there. So that's just a lack of discipline right there. Here's what I would do. And I am not a, fighter or a coach or a trainer. But if someone was like, Mike, I need you. What do we do? First of all, I'm be like, why are you calling me? Because there's five trillion other people in the world you should be calling. But I'll play ball here. You're not staying at the fighter hotel.

That's for damn sure. You're not staying anywhere near Vegas that you can get too easily. We are getting a house or an Airbnb or something. off the strip, nowhere near anything else. And then we're going to bring in somebody to cook all of your meals and serve you when it is time to eat, giving you what you're supposed to have. We're not going to let you be in a position

where you could just walk out of your room, go down to the lobby, and have a thousand food options. No, you're going to sit in this house, you're going to train, you're going to cut weight, and you're going to eat when we tell you to eat, and we'll cook it for you. and you're just going to eat it. And that's it.

Like you're going to do whatever we tell you to do. But that's the first thing. If you're going to fight in Vegas, you do not stay at the fighter hotel. You get out of there. And you find a spot off the radar. Some place you can't run to or walk to near any restaurants. You just go off the radar. Make sure you're out of everything on time.

Work it out with the UFC. But you ain't staying at a hotel in Las Vegas. You're not doing it. that would be my advice 100%. The other thing, I appreciate the kind words about the hosting. It's very easy to do this when you have the team behind you that you have. Because I don't do shit. All I do is just talk and I set up my colleagues to do what they do best.

And they are the best in the world at it. So it's easy. It's easy. They're the stars. I just put it on the T for him. I just happen to be a guy who puts the ball on the T quickly and efficiently, and then they hit the ball over the fence.

And it's a beautiful thing. So I appreciate that. It's why it's for me to host because these guys are the best. We got Vinny. We'll go to Latino and then we'll go to Richard and then we're getting out of here. Vinny, hello.

Hey, Mike. How you doing? Take a good morning to you. Good, how are you? Doing good, man. Good morning. Hey, just quick, wanted to see if he needs. know anything about Johnny Walker or you're

anything about Johnny Walker. What happened to him after the fight? Did you hear about that? I did. I did. What was that all about? Oh, sorry. I'll explain. So I saw the picture and I saw

John Kavanaugh's tweet and I saw other tweets about that. I did reach out to like other managers and stuff just to be like, what the hell is this? And essentially what I was told was was pretty much what Dana said at the post-fight press conference. They don't let fighters stay.

Since COVID and since the guidelines and the restrictions and stuff, the UFC has laid out guidelines and they've laid out certain ways they want their fight weeks to go. And nothing has really changed outside of not having to get COVID tested every single time. Because if you got vaccinated, you just show that. the media days have not gone back to the usual media days which i think sucks personally but and then the other thing is when your fight's done you go you speak with the media and then you get the hell out no one stays in the back no one sticks around to watch the fights you don't go into the crowd that's how it's been for two years so this is not a this is not a this is not a

get Johnny Walker's ass out of here. Yes, it was very strange to see a large human being in the middle of Las Vegas with no shoes on and his fight gloves on. But this is what I was told, because I asked some people in the managers specifically about this. And they were like, it's been like this for two years, dude. That's how it is. You go in, you fight, go to a locker room, they bring you to your media scrum, and then you leave. that's it

so i don't know about this instance specifically i don't know if like johnny was like no i want to stay and they're like turned into a thing but that's how it's been for two years you go in you fight you do your media and you leave and you go back to the hotel and then you can spend the night however you want the only fighters who stay after their fights are the ones who are taking part in like the post-fight press conference like the final thing three fights. Other than that,

you fight, you do your scrot and you go back. That's it. This is a weird one, but everybody I talked to, they said, this isn't shocking, this is what we've been doing for two years.

Vin, you have anything to add to that? Yeah, it just, it just, it just seems a little weird. You know, you get thrown out with no shoes,

no clothes, right after the fight, because it happened right after he won. And then the coach even got thrown out. That's what I was a little bit concerned about that. I mean, I don't think they got, like, chucked out of there, though. I don't think they're like, we hate you, Johnny Walker, leave. Let me just make sure real quick.

Let me go to the M.M.A. fighting archives on YouTube. Make sure he had a... Says, to be perfectly honest with you, I was doing multiple things on Saturday. Yeah, Johnny Walker spoke with the media. So it's not like he fought and they kicked him out of the building. He had his media scrum. He spoke with reporters.

And that's it. And like I said, I think I talked to three different managers on Saturday about this. And they were like, dude, it's been like this for two years. It's the protocol because of COVID. And they haven't changed it. You go in, you fight, you speak with the media, and then you leave. That's it. Maybe he wanted to stay.

He was trying to convince the powers that be to let him stay. And they were saying, no, I don't know what happened. I don't know what the conversations were like. But I don't believe the UFC was just like, leave. I don't know exactly what happened there. But that's how it is for everybody. That's how it is for everybody. Juliana Rosa didn't stay and watch the fights.

Jailts and Al-Maid and didn't stay in the back and watch the fights. They all did the same thing. Every single one of them. They went, they spoke with the reporter. They fought, spoke with reporters, and left. and that's how it is for everybody and that's how it's been for years let's go with latino heat hello i just want to say big fan of the show and uh ufc 279 rate overall card nade ds tony fergus was the fight to make 100% his chamaid did not deserve that because

they're trying to build his hype off nate dyes but who do you think is going to have a tougher fight Jake Paul versus Anderson Silva or Hercine Rockmont versus Vitor Belfort. Vitor Belfort saying that he is a greater boxer than Anderson Silva. Oh boy. You're opening it up a can of worms right now. Jake Paul Anderson's fun. I mean, honestly, that's, that's,

this is the one fight that I feel like Jake Paul Anderson's, could lose. Like even the Woodley fights, I didn't think Woodley would win. I certainly didn't think Bad Asking would win. I would have picked Jake against Fury. Rockman would have been interesting, but I probably still would have picked Jake. Anderson's difference.

I don't know. I think Jake has a... I think Jake has a hard time with Anderson than Rockman does with Belfort. Look, look, I was... It was literally a year ago. I was on Facebook yesterday and going through my Facebook memories, and I was in Florida for Vitor Belfort versus Evander Holyfield, of all things,

because they shifted the entire freaking card from California to Florida because Oscar Delahoya, who was supposed to fight Vitor Belfort, got COVID, and the California Athletic Commission would not approve Avander Holyfield to fight in California, obviously. So they thought to themselves, what state is dumb enough to allow Avander Holyfield to box anybody? Oh, I know, we'll go to Florida

because Florida doesn't give a shit about anything. And that's what they did. And Vitor goes out there against 57-year-old Evander Holyfield, who by the way, physically looked tremendous, but mentally, man, and I remember I'm sitting down,

I remember that fight week so vividly, because I show up, this is the last second thing. I just literally moved to South Carolina. Moving truck, went back, loaded up my car, drove my family to our new house in South Carolina. And then like four days after we were moved in, boss hits me up. Hey, want to go to Florida? For what? Holyfield Bellford. Okay. And I get there Tuesday. Wednesday, they have the media work. workouts. And I sit down, walk in, PR is great, have a good, great relationship with the guy I ran the PR for the event. And he goes, hey, you want to talk to a Vanderholyfield? Said, sure.

Of course I would. It's a Vander Freaking Holyfield. And I sit down next to him and we have a conversation. And as I'm speaking with this man, I'm horrified. I'm horrified. He's not thinking clearly. He's not speaking clearly. He's all over the place. So I asked him, people are concerned that you're actually fighting. What do you say to those people? And his answer was just like, it's kind of weird, kind of out of left field. And that interview, that clip just went bananas.

And I just had a bad feeling about it all. And then Vitor just goes in there and just bolts of Ander Holyfield. And he acts like he just won the UFC title. it was just, the whole thing was just weird. The whole thing was just weird. And I was like, what, what's going on here? He's up on the ropes. Like, he's Rocky beating Drago at Rocky 4.

I'm like, you just beat a Vanderholyfield who shouldn't be fighting anybody. And what puzzled me about that whole week was that after that interview with Holyfield, Holyfield does his media workout. And it was awful, like really, really awful. some people were like oh maybe he's just playing around nope wasn't playing around

and then Vitor Bellford has his media workout and he's just crushing pads and I'm just thinking to myself he might kill this guy I was hoping for the best all the shows appearances is trying to be positive

and I remember this was fresh off of Jake Paul beating tired Willie the first time and I basically asked him why this was so different and Vitor got mad at me. It was like, don't you dare ever compare me to either of those guys.

We're not even on the same, we're not even on the same planet. It was like a slap in the face that I even asked him that question. And what does he do after he knocks out a Vander Holyfield? He calls out Jake Paul. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. And this is the one time at a press conference after, card that I couldn't wait to get my hands in a microphone because I wanted to ask Vitor about

it so bad. And I've been trying to interview Vitor Belford since then, and I haven't been able to do it. And I don't know why we haven't been able to set it up. But to say what you said about Jake Paul, don't even put me in the same planet as him. And then you call him out after you beat a 57-year-old Evander Holyfield who shouldn't be fighting in a boxing match was just and create was just insane to me so i don't know i think rockman's going to beat him and i think paul anderson is going to be much more competitive i went off on a tangent but here we are all right richard hello you've been waiting patiently appreciate it let's see if we can get you in the wheel is spinning are you there richard last chance unmute do we have you all right we have to move on i see i

I'm sorry. Kirkland, take us home because we've got to go. Kirkland, are you there? I'm here, Mike, and I got to say, I think I know what the real money fight for Nate Diaz is. Are you ready for this? What's that? Ready.

April 20th, the Staples Center, Nate Diaz versus Mike Tyson in a catchway bout. Who gives a shit the weight? But they have to take a total throughout the entire match of 40. two bong rips and fight each other in a boxing match called bong boxing and it can be in the legends league or whatever uh i just think that that's the money fight i think the whole world would tune in for that uh even if it's a one-time thing and i think this is the show that's got to be the spark to get that ignited anyways have a heck of a morning thanks man and i feel like the show has sparked some things.

I mean, not like literally, but at least in the putting the good juju out in the air variety, I just don't know if I have enough good juju in me to make anything like that a reality, but hey, listen, if it happens, I'll watch, it'll be super

fun. All right, Richard's trying again. Richard, can we get you in? Otherwise, we've got to go. Richard, are you there? Richard, do we have you? Yes. Richard, I had you.

Where'd you go? Richard! Oh, well. We tried, Richard. Tried multiple times. All right, we got to go. I'm going to get out of here. Busy day.

If you're listening on the podcast, interview coming up next with a man who's fighting on Saturday. His name is Tanner Bozer, the bulldozer, who has been in the news a little bit. not just because he's fighting, but he did an interview with the All-Star sports that, in my opinion,

got taken out of context, said some things. Basically, here's what he said. He said that fighters who use mental coaches are weak. That was the line. And it turned into Tanner Bozer thinks that anyone with a mental health issue is weak, which is not what he said, because I listened to the interview.

It did not come off like that. I was hoping it would be followed up more. It wasn't in the original interview, so his team reached out to me, said I might be the guy to give him the chance to clarify, and that's what he does. So you'll hear that coming up. also looking forward to coming up a little bit later on i will be speaking to

mr john annick about the chaos and what ufc 279 fight week was like for him so i will speak to him hopefully we can get that turned around quick and up on the m a fighting youtube channel but annick went through some chaos like everybody else did so i'm curious to get his side of things and i will do so later on but we will be back here on Thursday, 10 a.m. Thursday, TBD for the time, because we have

like a Zoom meeting with my kids' teacher. All good. All good stuff. About just kind of ironing out his year, but that's at 10 a.m. Eastern, so we're either going to go at 9 or 11. I will let you know. But until that, everybody, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Have a great rest of the day.

And as always, have a heck of a morning. All right, let us say hello once again to Tanner Bozer, who after 15 months away from the UFC's Octagon, he's returning to action this Saturday. And I believe this is UFC Vegas. 60. All these events are starting to come together as one at this point. But going down in Las Vegas, fighting Rodrigo Nassimento. Tanner, good to see you, man.

How are you? Hey, I'm doing all right, man. How are you? I'm doing great. Thank you for doing this, especially on Fight Week. A lot to talk to you about. First, you are typically a very active guy, Tanner. Usually fight two, three, four times a year, sometimes even more.

and this will be your first fight over a year. And you've had some bad luck along the way. So I'm curious, what of the last 15 or so months been like? I know you haven't been sitting around doing nothing, but not being able to get in there, hone your craft. What has that been like? It sucks. I was supposed to fight in December.

Some COVID-related restrictions canceled that boat. And then I was supposed to fight in April, and I got injured. So I had to pull out of a fight for the first time ever. and that's all it took. Two little strokes of bad luck, and now I've been out for, like you said, 15 months. So it's definitely going to be good to be able to get back in there. But yeah.

When did you back with April? Because I know the Rodrigo fight was supposed to happen then, and then Romanov's was going to step in, and then everything happened. You announce you're out of the card, like you just said, first fight, first time we had to pull out of a fight. You don't obviously have to disclose what happened specifically, but what was the road to that decision like?

Was it something that you felt like you were going to be able to get through as the injury sort of started or did it just become too much? Like what happened there as much as you're willing to share? I guess, yeah, at the start of the injury, it looked like I'd be okay and then something exacerbated it. And after that, I was just simply no longer physically able to. It's impossible. I couldn't have done it.

I couldn't, yeah. All good now, though? Yeah, I'm good now. I'm back to normal now. I feel good and I'm ready to get a fight in. That's for damn sure. Yeah, a lot of fighters who have been active and then ended up having some time away like you've had for whatever reason they feel like it's sort of recharge the batteries in some way, led to some reflection about some certain things. Absin makes the absence makes the heart grow fonder kind of thing. Has there been any

benefit for you for the time away from actual competition or has this just been straight, horrible for you? No, I'm happy for those guys. Yeah, that's not the case for me. No, It's just been shitty. So I've missed over a year of getting paid. There's no silver lining. There's nothing good about it. I was ready to fight from basically from September until that December. And then that December fight didn't happen.

But UFC just didn't have one for me until December. And they're obligated to give me three fights a year and they'd already given me two. So they tried to give me one in December. And then powers, forces beyond our control, canceled that fight. So that sucks. And then April, again, a few months even after that, I get hurt. No, it sucks. That's it.

You're obviously active on Twitter during some of the fight cards to see your tweets on the broadcast from time to time. Is it tough for you to watch the fights knowing that you're kind of dealing with how sucky this whole situation is for yourself? No, because I like watching fights. I love watching fights before I was even a fighter. So, no, I enjoy watching fight cards. It doesn't have any bearing on it. I obviously it doesn't, I hold no ill will to the fighters that are getting to fight. Oh, yeah, for sure.

It's just sometimes people have to separate themselves from it, but it seems like you're able to separate fan Tanner Bozer from fighter Tanner Bozer. Yeah, I mean, it's both. Like if I'm watching a heavyweight fight, I watch it from like not a fan perspective. I'm not a fan of any active heavyweights in the UFC. because they're all rivals to me. But watching guys that aren't in my division, yeah, I can be just enjoy it and be a fan, sure.

But yeah, it doesn't bother me watching fights. I know I'm going to fight again. It's just unfortunately it's been over a year, but it is what it is. Like, things happen and things aren't, you know, you got to just drink your water when it rains sometimes. And here we go, man, it's about the poor. There you go.

you're typically a guy you don't care who you fight, you just get the call and you say yes and you get in there and you fight. And you've said yes to this fight now a couple of times. How do you like this matchup with Rodrigo? Do you feel like I said, it doesn't matter who the opponent is, but do you feel like this matchup in particular suit your style very well? Yeah, I mean, I'll accept any fight and I have. I've never turned down an opponent. He's tough. Like he's good at everything.

He's well-rounded. And obviously he excels in the jujitsu and he's got good ground and pound. But he can strike. Like he's not weak anywhere. He's a solid fighter. That said, I'm faster. And I think I'm better than him in certain areas. And I'm hoping I'm right about that.

And I can show everybody that. So how do we get this done on Saturday? When you think about it, it's a fight. You have to call audibles all the time. But what's the consistent flow? in your brain when you think about this fight? Well, obviously, I got to get it done by knockout. So I can't trust the Vegas judges to get anything right ever.

So I got to knock them out. Let's be honest, the likelihood of me getting a submission. I don't know what the odds are on that, but that's got to be a real long shot. So, yeah, and whereas that's, he is probably his most likely route to victory will be to get on top of me on the ground. Not that he's not good at striking, he is. But I think my best shot for sure is to, I touch people now and they go down.

So I just got to hit him, man. There's a few other things I wanted to talk to you about. So to kind of paint the picture, if you will, for anybody watching or listening to this right now, I was approached about doing this interview, which I would have done anyways. But by the way, mostly because I enjoy talking to you and you keep us all on our toes,

is there's no Bull Durham movie approach coming from you. You say what's on your mind. You don't take any crap. And I respect the hell out of that. But you did an interview a little while ago with the All-Star and you were asked about some of the aspects of the fight game that are most important. And you talked about the importance of discipline and heart and other things. But you also dove in a little bit to the mental side of the fight game. And when the idea of fighters having mental coaches came up, you said that fighters who do that are weak.

If you need a mental coach, your week was the quote. Now, Tanner, as you know in this space, you have been around MMA and you've been in the UFC a little while now. Sometimes when you say something, it is important for everybody to understand the context of what you say. And we in the media space, we deal with that as well. We drop a tidbit of something. We try to preface it in certain ways. And then all of a sudden it becomes this big, breaking news story, even though it wasn't intended to look that way. Fighters, in some cases, you say stuff.

It becomes a game of telephone. and what you said in the context of how you meant it becomes something totally different. It doesn't become Tanner Bozer says fighters who have mental coaches are weak. It becomes a whole different thing. You know, people who see therapists are weak, people with mental health issues are weak, even though the context of what you said had nothing to do with that. So I wanted to clear this up. I wanted to give you the chance to clear it up because I feel like you didn't really get

the chance to do that in the interview. So would you like to sort of clear the air and clarify that thing? Sure, yeah. So I wasn't talking about people who need therapists or have things going on that are terrible in their life that need to talk to a therapist or anything. I was talking about sports specific like a sports psychologist specific to combat sports, which exists and are kind of popular right now. It's a pretty end thing. That was, yeah, what I was referring to by a mental coach is, these guys that people pay or whatever employ somehow

who are outside their immediate circle in the gym. Like I have coaches. I obviously have my MMA coach, Jeff Montemiro, I have my striking coach, Kedro Noda, my wrestling coach, Roger Alvese, Jiu-Jitsu coach Mitch Clark.

All these guys are my coaches. And especially Jeff and Kedro, who I've been with for a long, long time, as well as Roger, too, I learn from them in more than just a skill-wise way. I look up to these guys and I try to emulate them in a lot of different ways. So I guess in some ways, if you want to look at it that way, I guess they're my mental coach.

But what I'm talking about is I don't understand or, and I can't get behind. and I do think a fighter's week, if they have to bring in someone who doesn't know them, who doesn't, they don't train with them, they don't even know the sport. Most of these guys are outside the realm that you live within. So I wouldn't listen to some person who knows nothing about fighting

or what goes on in your head during a fight and the lead up to a fighter in your training camp. They don't know that stuff. They can't. Even if they think they do, they haven't done it, they don't know. I wouldn't listen to that guy. Tell me how to train or tell me how to fight. So why would I listen to him?

Tell me how to think about fighting. That's the way I look at it. And if you need to listen to that guy to convince yourself that you're ready for a fight or you're going to win this fight or whatever your problem may be, a guy who doesn't know whether you've got this or not, truly, he's not a fighter. He doesn't, he's never, not seen you train. Then, yeah, if you need some Tony Robbins bullshit to get you into the octagon, then yeah, I think you are definitely at a deficit in comparison to someone who doesn't require that.

Yes. Did you get a lot of backlash for this that you saw? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because like I said, yeah, yeah, things get taken out of context where people, like saying specific things to you where you were just like, I'd never said that. So yeah,

well, for sure. So when I woke up, uh, one morning and I, I had like all these notifications. I checked and I'm like, oh shit.

So yeah, I did read a few, uh, comments and I got the gist of what people were mad about and then I haven't kept up to speed on all of the, uh, all the chatter about it. But yes,

most of it. Some of it was for sure taken out of context, uh, from what I saw. and most of it was not thrilled with what I said. But hey, man, that's what I said. And I don't take it back within the context of the way I meant it. What was like the most specific criticism, if you don't mind me asking?

Again, I didn't stay up to date on everything. But a lot of it was that, you know, people have, this is why men's health is bad because of, you it's like toxic masculinity stuff. Things to that effect, I think. Some people saying how certain, like, more successful fighters, like I guess GSP had a mental coach. I heard that. I saw that comment.

I didn't know that. I mean, hey, it worked for him. Like, good for him. I have nothing. Look, what am I going to say about GSP? You know? Like, hey. But, yeah, I said what I said.

And there's acceptance. and everybody's got their own stuff going on, man. That's the way I view it. And if that's not the way other people view it, I don't care. You can think what you want to think. But I'm also going to think what I want to think. Yeah. So just to clarify, this is nothing to do with outside of fighters getting these types of coaches.

This is nothing to do with the general mental health of the population. This is totally two different things. You're focusing on just the fighting aspects and nothing more. just so we can clarify. Yes, I was talking about and asked about fighters having mental coaches, which, like, I've got messages from these guys before, guys coming out of your Instagram DMs telling you, like, hey, I'm a mental coach, I've worked with so and so and so, you know, I see you have the skills, but you, whatever.

And I guarantee if you work with me, you're going to be fighting for a UFC belt. Shut the fuck up, man. Like, how the hell? Where the fuck do you get off? You know what I mean? Like, you're not helping me train. You're not out here helping me work or overseeing any of that. You don't know the first thing about me.

You've seen a few of my fights and you're confident that with your help, who I'm just going to talk to via message that I'm going to propel myself to the top of the sport. That's an absurd statement. And look, if some people can talk to those guys and placebo themselves into a greater, career then credit to them i like i'm not mad about it do your thing man but i'm going to do my thing and i i believe that as a fighter which is you have to be built a certain way i believe that if you need a sports specific uh mental coach which is like a sports psychologist in order to make you believe in yourself enough to step in a cage and try and fight someone

who's in the top echelon of guys in the world who are trying to kill you within a certain rule set that you are behind that guy if he doesn't require that. Fair enough. Yeah, I've talked to fighters who had mental coaches in the past and they've basically said that the big benefit for it for them is to slow their brains down. Like when they come to the fight, their minds in a million places and they're trying to just basically slow them down a little bit. Like picture the empty arena, picture the walkout, picture this, picture that. Like, don't just let your mind go into a million different places, like just slow it down a little bit. They don't really talk about like the skills to fight.

It's just a matter of you're getting a little crazy with the brain and the overthinking of things. This is a way to just kind of slow it down. So, I mean, that's what they said. But again, you can have, everybody could have their own opinion about whatever. But that's more or less what the fighters who have had benefits from it have told me, but it's not to like make them a better fighter in the cage. They're not like teaching them how to throw a punch or anything. No, no, I understand. I understand that.

I don't prescribe to that, but maybe I'm lucky and my brain works through these things on its own. I have nothing against the fighters that use a mental coach, but I believe if you can be in control of yourself mentally in this regard, more so than your opponent, you're going to have an edge and you're going to be stronger than them in a certain aspect, making them by proxy weaker than you in that regard. Well said. I appreciate, I appreciate you clarifying that and giving your opinion on that.

A couple more things, just because it's a hot topic right now, and I did watch that interview this morning. You talked about the importance of discipline and how discipline can feed into some of the other important aspects of the fight game, like skill set. You mentioned that heart comes into play. discipline feeds into some of those other aspects that could help you get your hand raised. And as you probably saw, you also mentioned Patty Pimbled, who has, you said he had quote unquote insane discipline for being able to balloon back up and then get back down for fight night. Hamzat Shemayev massively missed weight for UFC 279 and the fight with Nate Diaz and they end up shuffling the top of the entire card around.

And Hamzat goes out and fights Kevin Holland and he has this incredible performance. And his stock didn't really seem to drop. like people might not cheer for him anymore, but he went out there, got a win. And it's almost like, yeah, he might misway, but he's a killer in there. So what did you think about all of that as it was going down? Especially with you talking about the importance of discipline. I wanted to ask you about that. So Kamzat Shamiyev is one of the best in the world, no doubt about it.

The guy is an absolute animal. But it pisses me off when he's, he beats the leech. That's insane win. And the way he beat Holland, like he doesn't absorb any strikes, it's incredible. The guy's incredible. But you can't buy into it when this guy's carrying the leech over the octagon, slamming him down and yelling at Dana White to, give me anybody, I smash everybody. Give me Brock Lesner.

Dude, shut the fuck up about Brock Lesner. You're trying to cut to 170 to fight Nadez and you're missing weight about it. You're missing weight because you're trying to cut into such a small weight class where maybe you should be one up. Quit fucking talking that you're going to smash everybody in. I can smash the heavy weights. Well, then fucking do it, bro. Fucking do it.

Shut the fuck up. You're down here trying to fight 170 and missing weight. Prove you're the baddest motherfucker then and quit trying to do that. That's what I think. One of the best in the world. But keep the heavy weights, the light heavy weights out of your fucking mouth. Because all you do is yap. And then you try and cut weight in a weight class you're not making to fight a guy who,

through the bulk of his career, fought it an even lower weight class. shut the fuck up. In a weird way, it was like, because the MA gods could be assholes of times, but I feel like in this scenario, it actually made things a little bit better for the viewer because Hamzaa versus Nate, especially after the big weight miss,

would have been awful to watch, I think, but we ended up getting Nate and Tony Ferguson. It was just kind of cool to sit back and watch a main event as a fan and be like, there's no real stakes here. We just get to sit back and watch two guys who've been doing the damn thing for so long, just have an old-school fight.

and that's exactly what they did. And Nate goes out, has the moment, overhead, and bicep pose. And it was just really cool to watch. And as a guy who watches a lot of fights, what was that like for you watching it? Because you haven't been doing it that long. And to see these two guys finally get that shine

and headline a pay-per-view like that. Was that really cool for you to watch? Oh, it was definitely cool to see both of them in the main event, but to see Nate Diaz win and leave on his terms like that and get a matchup that. quite frankly, made more sense for him. That was awesome. That was great for sure.

Definitely feel good there. Good. Last thing, as we record, I woke up this morning, as a view to some horrible news. Elias Theodoro passed away from liver cancer at the age of 34. And it wasn't just the news that was so stunning. It was the fact that he had cancer

and nobody seemed to know about it. And obviously he's a fellow Canadian fighter, one of the not just good guys. He's one of the great guys in the sport. Always very nice, positive. He was a very good fighter, underrated in my eyes, and I always thought he was. But it was just crazy, man, because like nobody saw this coming. And I know you spoke a little bit about Elias on social media. How did you react to the news? What did he mean to you to the sport, most notably, in Canada? Yeah, I didn't know him personally. We're from the same country, but I didn't know him. He was out of the UFC before I got in, I think, or right around the same time. But I watched, you know,

all this fights in UFC. I watched him on the ultimate fighter nations. My coach Luke Harris was on that season. So I, my old jiu-jitsu coach. So I watched that at the time. It's really sad, man, like a healthy guy who, yeah, by all means, everybody who knew him said he was just a guy, just a ray of sunshine. He's very positive. And he's extremely healthy. Always in incredible shape, right? Like he was known for it. And he dies at 34 from cancer. Man, like, how am I going to fucking whine about not fighting for over a year when life's not fair like that? It's really sad. It, I don't know the guy, but it genuinely made me really sad. And yeah, like, what a, what an actual warrior. He, he fought under a year ago and won. He fought three times outside of

UFC. And the last one was like nine months ago, 10 months ago or something. And he won. And he kept his cancer, quiet, like I'm sure only his, like, close family and friends and stuff knew about it. He didn't want me. He didn't want, I assume, I mean, I don't know him, but I assume he didn't want pity. He didn't want that. He didn't want people out there preemptively sad for him or something. It's that, you know, the guys out there screaming that they'll kill him. everybody and give me anybody and stuff like that. And Elias, that is a real gangster move right

there. Well said. I appreciate you sharing that with us. And I appreciate you jumping on just a few days before this fight, man. I'm glad. I'm excited to see you back in there. The last time you fought was that crazy fight with OSP that we had to talk about, which I know wasn't all that fun to talk about, but you got the win. And now you get to do it again 15 months later after this crazy road of of bad luck was thrown your way. So safe travels to Vegas, my man, excited for Saturday, and all the best to you in the fight against Rodrigo Nassimento. And thank you for clearing up that other thing as well. Oh, thank you. And thank you for giving me the platform to do it, man. I appreciate it. You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.