MMA Fighting - On To the Next One | Matches To Make After UFC Vegas 68

Episode Date: February 5, 2023

Serghei Spivac made the most of his first UFC main event spot as he dispatched Derrick Lewis in less than three minutes to cap off UFC Vegas 68 and extend his win streak to three fights. After the quick submission win, how much of a step up should Spivac get? On an all-new edition of On To the Next One, MMA Fighting's Mike Heck and Alexander K. Lee recap UFC Vegas 68 from a matchmaking perspective and discuss what could be next for Spivak following his biggest career win, along with where Lewis could go. Additionally, future matchups are discussed for Devin Clark following his big win over Da Un Jung, Marcin Tybura after defeating Blagoy Ivanov, along with fellow winners Adam Fugitt, Tatsuro Taira, and more. Also, the hosts discuss Bellator's CBS debut with Bellator 290 this past Saturday, why it was a success, and how to improve upon it should they return to the network. Follow Mike Heck: @MikeHeck_JR Follow Alexander K. Lee: @AlexanderKLee 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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And for those who made it through the end of UFC Vegas 68, kudos to you. I was one of those people. I didn't think I would be one of those people. but the way the work night continued on, once it was all done, I was only left with the main event. So once you get that far, you gotta just go across the finish line.

But as always, we are back for some matchmaking following the UFC's latest apex events this past Saturday. I am Mike Hacken. Joining me, as always in this venture, the co-host, the co-matchmaker, he's the Prince of Positivity,

he's the best friend, and the man who is already declared and will continue to declare 23, the year of the raw dog, Alexander Kaylee. A.K., how are you? My best friend. Inaccurate, I did declare it. I won't continue to declare it.

We'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes. I will bring it up again whenever Mr. Royval fights. I don't know if I'll just be bringing it up unprompted. I reluctantly, you know, made that claim earlier. But we'll see. We'll see how it goes. We'll see how it goes.

Mike, uh, yesterday's, Saturday's cards, I'd say, could not be fresher in my mind, Bell Tour 290, a memorable card. And UFC Vegas 68, literally because I finished watching it, the rest of the main card that I had to catch up on like half an hour ago. So as of this recording. So, yes, everything's very fresh. I'm excited to talk about both cards. Of course, we're only really into matchmaking for UFC Vegas 68, as this is typically a UFC matchmaking show. But plenty to talk about on Saturday's fights, whichever show you happen to tune in.

for whether it was either or or both. Well, I mean, you mentioned Bellator. They made their debut on CBS. I thought a lot of things went very well for them. I gave it a solid B, which is a good score. This had potential to be, if we're doing the AK Lee gymnastics score, I felt like this could have hit like a 9.5 if everything went perfectly, if all the moments they needed came to fruition.

And right out the gate, we had Brennan Ward. Sabahamasi who delivered an absolute barn burner. Brennan Ward looked tremendous, gets the finish, gets John Claude Van Dam to come into the cage. And it was a very awkward but very funny moment between those two guys. And then we get to Johnny Eblen versus Anatoly Tokoff. And all week I kept saying, if anybody can become a star on this card,

it's Johnny Eblen. And I think the hardcore fans will appreciate him no matter what happens because I was pretty confident he would win. but if he just went, went out there and just dumb truck toke off and finish him in like the second or third round and then cut a good promo, boom. He's like off to the races. His stock just rises tremendously, not just amongst the hardcore fan base, but amongst some of the casual audience who were probably watching Bellator for the first time. In the end, his stock grew tremendously amongst the hardcore fan base. I don't know if the casual appeal really reign true, but still, this guy is incredible.

credible. He's just scratching the surface. And then, of course, we had the tough end. The end we kind of expected for Fador-Million-Anko gets finished by Ryan Bader, who retains the heavyweight title. So prelims were pretty fun too. Post-lims I did not watch, but apparently all those fights went to decisions. But your overall thoughts about Bellator 290, the CBS debut, the main card. Did it meet your expectations?

What do you give it a grade? I think your B-grade is right on point. you can maybe push it to a B plus, but I think that's generous. I think B is, and again, I think people are going to hear this and think we're being critical, but, like, no, B is really good for a three-fight card on CBS, on national television, given what you're playing with here, because, yeah, you wanted to start off with a banger that picked up Ward Hamasi. We all thought it was going to end to finish. Most people were saying first round, but definitely no more than, no more than two rounds.

It really depended who you picked, I think. I think if you thought Homasi was going to win, you're going like first round knockout. If that Ward is going to win, you're probably going second round, which is what we saw. He outlasted him and just finished in that super exciting Brendan Wardway. So that was fun. Eblen Tokov kind of split the difference with a lot of our opinions. A lot of us thought, yes, Eblen's performance was going to be, you know, could be really standout, given his level of opposition. I think Tokov is like a top 20, top 25 middleweight.

Again, depending how you view Bell Tour competition. So he was legitimately. And I was saying this all week, like the biggest threat to Eblen right now. I don't think there's anyone else in the middleweight division right now that is a threat to Eblen. I think he could knock off another couple of title defenses this year, maybe being fighter of the year discussion as long as he stays health, you know, health permitting. So once he got got past Tokov, I thought that was big. But yeah, it was if you hadn't watched martial arts in a while or had never watched martial arts and this was like your first like, you know, you're tuning into CBS. Oh, cool, like a title fight.

I want to see what a MMA title fight looks like. I thought this was a decent representation of it. Eblen is that new generation of fighter, who has a combat sports background in wrestling, sure, but it's just generally very, very well-rounded. This guy walked into a gym saying, I want to train MMA, not like, oh, I want to take my wrestling and just be a wrestler and go from there.

He's like, no, teach me MMA. He's 31 years old, but I think he's a young 31. He's a fresh 31. And I thought this was a good showing for him. So, yeah, right in between, not going to light your hair on foot. fire if you've never seen an MMA before, but if you're curious with MMA and want to see what high-level M-M-A looks like, you kind of saw this.

You're like, oh, interesting. This is what it looks like when a young man mixes the martial arts. So, yeah, and unfortunately for the post-fight promo, a lot of swearing, completely muted on CBS, understandably. So it may be a missed opportunity there for Johnny, but I thought he did decent in his, the post-fight, the post-fight press conference. I thought he did decent. Drop a little Adam Sandler, Billy Madison line in there to close it out.

Not bad. And Bader, Mellianenko 2, a lot of us figured this was going to end similar to the first fight, and it did Bader first round knockout. I'm like, how did you feel about whether they should have done the ceremony at the beginning or the end? I was leaning towards due at the beginning, and based on how the fight went, I guess we're somewhat justified in that. But it wasn't like, it wasn't horrible. I didn't think it went horribly with Fader getting finished and I'm still doing like a quick five, 10 minute. It wasn't even 10 minutes, like five minutes post-fight before, you know, before the credits rolled. It kind of turned out okay.

Yeah, I would have done it. I loved Ariel's idea of doing it at the top of the broadcast, but as Scott Coker said, when you plan out a show like this, it's already like formatted. You can't change things, especially when you're dealing with network television. So I totally got that.

What I would have done was I, like for Fador's entrance, I would have brought them out then. Like, introduce each individual one-on-one, like one-by-one. They come out on the stage, and then they kind of line the ramp up, like even on each side. And then you introduce Fador.

He walks in amongst the legends. He shakes all their hands. They shake his hand back. It's just a nice moment. They're like all cornering him in a way. They're all walking him to the cage. I would have loved that. But I'm with you.

The idea of them coming in after, especially the way we saw the fight or especially the way we thought the fight might play out, it was a little icky. I didn't want Fadar to just be like completely out to lunch and just being just in really bad shape. and then they still try to do the ceremony because I didn't want to see that. But this actually, like, Fador, you know, was defensively sound.

He was just getting battered. The referee just, it was a mercy stoppage more than anything. And Fador was, he was a little bloody and battered, but he was okay. He had his wits to him. I thought the moment could have been worse, but it actually turned out better than I thought it would. So, yeah, I was fine with it for sure.

And, yeah, it worked out, but it could have been a lot worse. Yeah, and listen, good for Ryan Bader. I think he handled the whole, week as well as he could. He knows this was this was fador fight week. I think on our site we probably wrote like 10 fador articles, Slat videos, podcasts, maybe one or two, I don't even maybe one quote from Ryan Bader. No disrespect to Ryan. Again, he's a great champion for Beltor. But he knows. He said post-fight like, yes, and it's about him. I know I was sort of wearing the black hat this week.

And, you know, he said he wasn't even stressed about that. And he was just more concerned about just being beating Fador again with the expectation that he's supposed to. Which he did, which it took a little longer than last time. Fador honestly still looks dangerous at that. When he just starts swinging hands, you do wonder like, man, what if Bader had gotten caught by one of those? Like, it easily could have dropped him. But Bader very defensively responsible, made sure that didn't happen.

And we'll see what's next for Ryan B. I sound like Scott Coker there. You know, we're going to go to the meeting and see what's next to right. That was very cockerish. That was very coquerish. But yeah, I think we agree. And I hope to see Bellator on CBS again. And again, they have to have the right card for it.

You can't just throw it on once every four months. It's just not going to work out that way. With respect to Marcel O'Golm and Daniel James, that coming up, that's not going to headline a CVS card. But I hope they have another opportunity. I don't know if they have concrete plans. It could be another year, honestly, till we see it happen again. But this felt right.

This felt really good. And shout-outs again to the broadcast in general for the most part. I did like some of the things they did. I mentioned our Slack. did a nice little feature on, here's all the cool stuff that's happened in Belta recently. I'm like, that's great. You just had, you just had the Ward Homasi fight. People are probably

still tuning in and they need a little break after that violence. And then you show him like, oh, cool, this is here, this is Sergio Pettis. If you ever heard of Sergio Pettis, this is this cool knockout he did. And Patricia Plitful, this one of our cool guys, you know, watch out for him. You had Agent McKee on the desk. And I think Amanda Garra, I want to shout her out is one of the best desk people in the MA right now. I think she does such an awesome job.

quarterbacking those segments. So it was just a strong night overall. And I hope we do see MMA on CBS again soon. I mean, I'll disagree with you on one thing. I don't think she's one of the best. I think she is the best. Oh, She is the best.

She's the best. She's the best, I think she's the best desk host in the sport right now. Like I know Megan, like when Megan O'Levy does, she does great. Fantastic. Megan's better as like the Roman reporter. She's fantastic. I still don't know how Megan does.

too. We'll talk about lower for sure more in a second, but I still don't know how Megan times the standing when the fighter's walking out. I'd be so nervous that I miss time it and like someone bumps into me.

Maybe I'm making it sound harder than it is, but she does it so consistently well that the pre-fight walkout promo. I don't know. Maybe there's a technique to it. I don't know that makes it easier. It looks incredibly hard and she just nails it every time.

So yeah, shout us to Megan as well, of course. That's so good. Yeah, and I'm going to do it. I mean, like I said, AK, it's a new year. It's a new me. trying to mend fences. I don't like when I have bad relationships with people.

No. But I'm going to say this. I'm going to say this. Not only even Amanda Garry do a great job last night. Josh Thompson did a great job last night. Really? I was, yeah, I thought they both did a great job when those, when, look, where some of the desk hits during the prelims not spectacular for both of them?

Sure. But when the bright lights came on and they were on CBS and that main card was going, those two were fantastic. They were great. I loved, and I agree with you. I love what they did. Here's our guy here. Here's this guy.

We have these fighters. This is what's happening. Here's Yaroslav, Amasov. His story's incredible. Like, all that stuff was great. I didn't think they went to it. At first, I'm like, I just hope they don't go to the desk like too too much. And I felt they did it just right.

And I thought Josh did a great job. Amanda just is such a great conductor. She's so good. And you can tell Josh is so much looser and just more relaxed when he's with her. And I like, I see that stuff from a broadcasting standpoint immediately. Because there, I mean, anyone can, not I'm saying anyone, but those who are all do good job. But you could tell when the people that they work with, when their demeanor changes and they just feel like they're not even nervous because they know that the conductor of the train is going to send them in the right direction. And I thought they killed it.

I thought Josh did a great job. And I'll say that. And you know what? Clip that off for the podcast because it's not all bad stuff. And it hasn't been all bad stuff on Josh. But this is great. I thought it was a home run. I am going to ding them a little bit, though.

I am going to ding them a little bit. The Paramount Plus thing was a disaster. Oh boy. Yeah. What was up with that? Because I have no idea. So I was going to watch it on Paramount Plus. That's what I was going to watch it on.

I have it right here in Command Center 4.0 on the TV. I also have, like, we have cable in the house, but I have to run it through an app, and sometimes it's a little crappy, and sometimes it's delayed a bit. So for me, as I was watching on Paramount Plus, it's right there. It's going to be easy, peasy. And turn on Paramount Plus, there's the poster and the thumbnail, click on it, it's just nothing. And I'm like, okay. And then I see Jed Michoud is having the same issue, and I see on social media, and people are DM me like crazy. like I can't watch it on Paramount Plus what's going on.

Then we find out it's a tier thing. If you have the premium subscription, then you can watch it on Paramount Plus. If not, you can watch it through the app as long as you go through your cable service. So I was like, you know what? That was kind of a miss. I mean, the way it was presented was if you have this almost like, because to me, I have the Paramount Plus showtime combo app where Showtime is like embedded in Paramount Plus. And Showtime, if the Bellas card is on Showtime, I could just go through Paramount Plus and watch it

through that. So I thought it was going to be the exact same thing. Turns that it was not the exact same thing. And that caused some people some problems. So maybe we should have been a little more clear about that. I know Bellator PR, great PR team. Love those guys. I had reached out to somebody, told me kind of about the tier thing.

And then they tweeted it out to let people know. But that was kind of a whiff. That was kind of a whiff. As far as the fights went, all was good. Here's a little knit, another nitpicky thing. And someone DM me this morning and they said, don't mention my name. and I'm not going to. Loves the shows, loves the breakdowns and all this stuff,

but they felt like I was a little hard on Joddy Eppelin. And I just don't agree with him because I've said nothing but great things about Johnny Ebblin. I think Joddy Ebelin, in my rankings, I think I'm at six now. He's going to be a top five guy. He might be a top three guy. I haven't decided yet.

But he'll probably land right behind Robert Whitaker at number four, which is a pretty damn good place to be because I am that high on that guy. And as I've said many times before, I do think he can be a star because he's a great fighter. He does have an exceptional personality. He's funny as hell. The dude gets it.

He's dropping, like you said, dropping Sandler quotes of the Post-Fair press coverage. This guy can be a star. We have to position him to do so. And I don't blame Bellator for this. I don't even really blame Johnny Eppelin for this. Johnny kicked that crap out of Antitoli Toakoff. That was an impressive performance.

But CBS, you're trying to get a new audience. I don't know if that quite did it. But what would have done it, AK. What had done it and gotten this. guy some headlines. And some people don't agree with me, but I feel like this is the absolute thing he should have done. He should have called out Luke Rockhold after that win. I should have called out Luke Rockhold because, look, is he going to run over Luke Rockhold more than likely? Yeah, but Luke is by far the biggest name he would have ever, like, Gagar Musassi, I love Gagar Musassi,

but Luke Rockhold is a bigger name than Gagar Musassi. Luke Rockhold realistically right this second is the biggest fight he can get. It's the biggest. name he can get, the biggest star he can possibly fight right the second, because we can compare him to Alex Pereira and Izzy and Ritker and all those people, but he can't, he's not going to fight those guys. He can't fight any of them.

The biggest fight he can get realistically right now that I think Bellator could get done right now is fighting Luke Rockhold. I think he missed there. And then he had a chance to the post-by press conference. Nobody asked him about it, which I just couldn't believe nobody asked him about it. I can't believe nobody asked him about it. Luke was supposedly going to be

in the building for this. I thought it was a perfect way to call it out. He didn't do it. I'm not dinging him too much. But I want this guy to be a star. Like, I think he can be. And I call it like that. Our site would just be like Johnny Ebblin calls out Luke Rockhold for a fight. I'll kick his ass or all respect. I'm going to put the boots to you. Like all good stuff. He'd be taking over the headlines right now. But alas, I'm not dinging him. I just think it would have been because I want good things for this guy. I want good things for the human cheat code in future nicknames to be determined later. But that would have been a great spot for him to make an impact.

That's just my opinion. Yeah. Like you said, we're picking Nits here. You know, we're picking Nits here. Oh, yeah. He's the man. The fact that we're talking so much about this card and it's kind of sending our minds in so many different directions.

It kind of tells you how compelling, you know, this event was and what a great job they did of putting it together. And again, we talk about degree of difficulty and gymnastics skill and all that. Again, the degree of difficulty of doing a quality MMA show on a mainstream network like CBS on network television is very, very, very high. And for the most part, they did an excellent job. The fighters did an excellent job of representing themselves. Yeah, if we just, Luke Rockhold, you know, a familiar name to maybe some of these CBS

viewers who had not watched MMA or not, you know, kept up with it too much since the Strike Force days, you know, a familiar name. It would have certainly piqued some interest. And it moves the needle a lot more than a Musassi rematch for sure. Or Fabian Edwards, which I think is compelling, but is not. But, again, that's a hard, compelling for us, hardcores, is not going to move the needle with a casual viewer, unfortunately. So, yeah, I like that. But I do want to say, hopefully they can follow this up, speaking of Belator.

They have a decent card coming up on the 25th. I don't know what the plans are as far as it's in Dublin, so I don't know what the plan. These overseas shows always confuse me with the tape delay. Parts of it are taped, parts of it are aren't, some of it are lies, some of they show. later. I'm assuming this is all going to be live. It is on Showtime and YouTube in Canada. I assume it's all going to be live, so we'll keep you up there on that. But Amosov coming back, Amos coming back to fight Logan Storyly. Amos, one of the guys that, like I said, they did a great job mentioning his story on the broadcast. So already kind of looking ahead to the next card.

Carvalio, Jeremy Kennedy's a good one. Janette Kavanaugh is fighting. She's always a bit of an exciting watch. Peter Quilly, you know, they love him fighting in Dublin. So there you go. I think they set the stage nicely. And again, we don't. don't do on the next ones regularly for Bell Tour. So on this occasion, we will do a little look ahead there. Yes. Wow, we gave them like almost 20 minutes. Good.

They deserve it. I agree. I agree. And I applaud them for the effort. I thought they did a very good job. They did, nothing went wrong. Like, nothing went wrong outside of the Paramount Plus thing. And the TV listings thing was pretty bad too.

I had, I had, I had, I had, oh, why did they end the prelims that like, like 825 when they could have fit in the Neiman Gracie, you know, the Neiman Gracie fight or whoever. At one of the prelims, they didn't manage to get on there. And then I was reminded, I think Coposa and other people tweeted like, listen, this is MMA. Someone could have gotten injured. There could have been three groin kicks in a fight.

It could have been a three-round fight could have lost 45 minutes. It's certainly gone horribly wrong. And I'm like, this is true. MMA be MMA and Bellator anticipated that. So good for them. That is one thing. They're like, let's just, let's not take any chances. Let's just start hyping up the main card, the CBS.

broadcast now and not not not play with the out play with the fates so well done yeah well done there i'm not i'm not even talking about that i'm talking about because even i saw it when i because i had watch it on my cable because i couldn't watch it on paramount plus it was listed in the guide as bell at two 90 prelims same up here yeah and it didn't and it didn't list phaedor or anything it said renz larkin and berkimov and it and all these other names i was like what are we doing here And it was like that for everybody in the U.S. That's kind of bad. Hopefully.

I don't know whose mistake that is. Hopefully people, you know, again, in my mind, when you have something on CBS, it's you're catching people browsing. I don't know if people will even browse normally anymore. You're right. We use guides now. You flip through the guide. You don't really like go channel by channel anymore.

But hopefully it didn't deter people. And if they're just like, you know, they're regular CBS viewer. I don't know. That's like, what's on CBS? Or again, they were watching NCIS and just flowed through from there. Last thing, will this card do a million people? Will the ratings be over a million? I would love to know what the regular NCS rating is,

that that would help me a lot to know. But, I mean, off the top of my head, I'm thinking, yeah, I'm thinking a million is reasonable. 9 o'clock, Saturday night. Yeah, again, a decent lead-in. I think a million is reasonable. And I hope people see that number. They don't go like, only a million.

I'm like, a million is be fantastic. I'm really considering compared to the regular showtime numbers, as we know, the move to Showtime did kind of hurt the Bell Tour viewership a bit. So a million would be just fantastic. A million would be a win. Anything over a million is a success. Anything less than a million, I think is kind of bad. Unless like if it's 9.95, like you can give them a bit of a pass.

But I am rooting for this rating to be like 1.2, 1.3, one point. If they can hit like 1.5, that's just sick. And that I will applaud them. but I would love to see them over a million. I think anything less than a million is kind of tough. But we will see. Congratulations, Bellator, well done. And my advice is that the next time you go to CBS,

hopefully it's like April or May or June or something, that's a perfect time for A.J. McKee, Patricky Pitbull. That's a perfect time for Rafian Stotz versus Patchy Mix, put them on the same card, back-to-back title fights. great personalities, and then just throw Brennan Ward versus, I don't know, Dalton Rasa, apparently those two guys want to fight each other, throw that in there. And Brennan Ward against whoever in the opener. So that'd be awesome.

That'd be a great follow-up for CBS. So congratulations to Bellator. I thought it was a very good night for them. Learning curves for sure, but I think these are things they can fix and good to go. So let's go. More Bellator on CBS. I just want to shout up Brian Head, who said CBS stands for combat. Belator Sports.

Rolls right up the tongue. That's a catchy. That's a catchy slogan. If it had combat Bellator Sports. Let's go. Yes. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here.

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Start gifting. Winners find fabulous for less. Well, let's go to UFC Vegas 68. And here's the one, here's like the first thing I thought of besides the health and well-being of all my loved ones. Sergei Spivak needs to fight at 3 a.m. Eastern all the time. Because he absolutely wrecked Derek Lewis last night. He just ragged all them all over the octagon.

and then he locked in a nasty arm triangle, Black Beast taps. I mean, Sergey Spivak, he has a new nickname. It's Mr. 3 a.m. That should be, Sergey, Mr. 3 a.m. Spivok. That's it.

That was the best he's ever looked. You could say what you want about Derek Lewis being washed or being done. I don't care. Not, I haven't seen anybody do that to Derek Lewis. Derek Lewis can usually weather that storm and get back up. He's slim, trim, buff, jack, chiseled, and ripped 265 pounds. And Derek Lewis just every time he tried to get back up, You did everything right.

It seemed defensively. He was trying to get the arm in to try to separate that body lock. And even when he got his arms in there, Speedwax's like, all right, dumps them back on the ground. So by the way, let me just say this. We should still do Derek Lewis versus Jarzini Rosenstrike. I don't care where they're at in their careers. That's the fight we need to make.

We need to do it now. But AK, Sergei Spivak, it's a massive victory. What now? Can I just say, I didn't love 3 a.m. Derek Lewis. 3 a.m. Sergey Spivak. World Peter. I mean, you put him in there with John Jones or Cyril Gone.

We're talking. Stere Clues is 37. Let me tell people. I recently turned 38 years old. I don't operate at 3 in the morning like I used to. When I was 28, when I was 28, like Sergey Speedback, I could be up to 3 in the morning. I mean, I can do certain things.

Like, I can write articles. I may fighting at that time in the morning or do a pot, as we often do. We are often doing post-fight stuff around that time. But we're still winding down. I'm not stepping into a cage to fight another dangerous human. Three in the morning. Derek Lewis said during media day this week,

yeah, I tried to sort of adjust my sleep, but there's only so much you can do. I'm making all the excuse in the world for Derek Lewis. I have not seen a post-fight statement from him yet. I don't know if it's something he'll bring up himself. I don't know if it's something he'll bring up ahead of his next fight. I'm sure it'll come up. Did the time affect you?

Whether he does or not, I'm speaking up for him. him. It definitely affected him. Not just that. Credit to Sergei Speedback, listen, they're at different stages of their career. Sergei Speedback's up and coming. Derek Lewis, I think the durability maybe isn't what it used to be. He's complaining

about the stoppages in Tuivasa and the Pavlovich fight. He was badly hurt in those fights. Even if they were stopped early, even if he think they were stopped early. Taito Vasa really not much of an argument. Sergei, I see the controversy. But if either of those, he was hurt really badly. And that is not what happened.

not the Derek Lewis story for. He's not like, he's not like the Fador, you know, while we're still have Fador in the mind, where like, oh, Fader's whole deal was he would get hurt and he would come back and win. No, I mean, Derek Loovue would get taken down a lot and lose like four out of five rounds and then win. That's fine from being like controlled and his offense being completely neutralized. But he wasn't getting like stung this badly in a lot of those early fights and then coming back to win. So this Tuvasa Pavlovich and now Spivak, this trend is very disturbing. So it's, it is possible he is washed as the kids like to say. I'm going to keep giving him chances, just like Dana White is.

Dana White said, no, I love Derek Lewis, not going nowhere. I don't think we saw the best of what is left of Derek Lewis on Saturday. I think coming out 3 am, really, really affected him. I still want to see. I like the Rosenstrike matchup, though I will say, I kind of went with that for Spitback instead. I don't know if you hate that. And I will say, I just want to go, more disclosure.

I know what your pick is. there was a bit of slack discussion last night. So I guess maybe I just wanted to go differently. But go ahead, Mike. You can tell people where you went with this. Yeah, I'm not going to mince words here. Me, from a matchmaking perspective, and I am not going to be very interesting at all here.

And I'm going to cross that line that I don't typically cross where it's quote unquote lazy booking to matchmake two winners from the same card. But in this case, it kind of makes too much sense. I say we do Spivak versus Marching Tibera and we just sort of go from there because as great as he looked and as much as people adore Derek Lewis I mean

this win didn't I mean he did what he needed to do this is what he needed to do but this win to me if we're looking at it from a merit level climbing the ranks level this one didn't do a whole lot for Siguris Spivak if we're being honest

Now, this win happened two years ago. We're talking something different. But as you mentioned, he's coming up back-to-back, brutal knockout losses, lost three out of his last four. Now he's last three straight. A lot of people are like, he needs to be cut from the UFC. Dana White, I don't think that either. Dana White said he's not going to cut him.

Derek Lewis is kind of in fun fight territory. But my first thought, AK, immediately was maybe just because it was so late, let's just chuck him in there with Jailton Almeda. And then I was like, nah, I think. feel like there's, I feel like that's unfair because I, but I also want to see Jailton fight Taitou Ivasa because I still have questions about, you know, if he's the nail and not the hammer early on fighting a guy like that. So I'm not going to change my mind on that. So I'm taking two guys off the board. Spivak, marching Taibora is going to be an ugly ass fight. It won't be all that

fun to watch probably. But I'll tell you what, if Sergei Spivak goes out then does that to Marching Tybora, I will, I will be looking at him a whole lot differently. Mike, let me, first of all, let me make an excuse for you because you were up you were up live watching these fights you were up what what time i like i said i passed out what time did the three a m they came out around for the main event yeah it was like it was like 305 a m yeah i just put the last belleter two uh post fight interview on youtube like right when the devon clark fight ended so i was like well i can't go to sleep now like you're about to do the main event your pot committed oh yeah definitely uh this would be a two uh spivak to borr would be a two they fought they did fight in

February. Yeah, that's fine. Oh, okay. You did not mention that. That's fine. You know how our listeners are. They're very astute. They'd be like, oh, Mike didn't say two.

That's a doo-do pick. And just, I'm sure you knew. But yes, you didn't admit. It would be a rematch. And he did lose DeBora. One thing with Spivak is he has not shown he can dominate another grappler outside of Alexiolinic, but also Alexiolanic is considerably old. I'm just saying, and I'm not saying old makes you bad.

But there's an age gap there. And I think the age and athleticism gap heavily. heavily in spitback's favorite. Outside of that, Derek Lewis, good defensive grappler for the most part, but we saw last night did not save him there. Augusta Sakai, not a grappler. Greg Hardy, obviously not a grappler. Tom Aspenall is a grappler, and Tom

Nassel beat Spivak. Then it was Alenik. Vandera, okay, grappler, not a great grappler. Spitt back beat him. Carls-Filippe, not a great grappler either in Spilback beat him, and then before that, Tobora. So he actually has not shown, like, that's another reason to run it back with Tobor is. I do want to see if he's only a guy who

can sort of dominate other sorry, dominate non-grapplers because that's kind of what he's done. Taito Vasa before that. He beat Taito Vasa,

a guy we would not consider a grappler. It's worth running back. It's worth running back. And that was three years ago now. So, yeah. You know what? Not a bad pick, Mike. Yeah.

I think that's the way to go. And, you know, even if, oh, God, I can't believe I'm going to say this is. Even if you want to make that a main event, it's, it's not fun to say into a microphone, but,

I mean, it could happen. 3 a.m. The apex is pretty free around 3 in the morning on Saturday, night, Sunday morning. So it's, this spot is there. Joe Martinez saying,

make some noise. If you are ready at 3 a.m. It's just, it's a whole different buzz. He's a whole different vibe. He's a pro. He's a pro. He's the best.

Bellator needs to pay him like thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars, like a week. That'd be great. Devin Clark, AK, shut a lot of people up. Uh-huh. He shut a lot of people up.

people up. He earns a decision win over Don Jung in the penultimate fight. Huge win for him. And again, this is not going to be all that interesting because there's just not a ton of options here. But I landed on Devin Clark versus the winner of the upcoming Tyson-Pedro

versus Modestis Bukascus fight at UFC 284 going down this Saturday. What say you? Yeah, sure. It's fine. I like it. I also, I think, went with Oh no, someone who doesn't have a fight. I landed on Maxim Grishin, and I'll tell you why, Mike. I'll tell you, this took a lot of thinking.

Devin Clark has kind of screwed up the MNAMATs so badly because the cluster of people, so he's in this cluster of guys with, who are many of the guys who he's fought. Ed Herman, he doesn't fight Ed Herman, but, and then Grishin. And then behind that, guys who fought Daun Jung and Juchukwu and Yuan Kutalaba. So I don't know how to rank these guys because Clark, lost to Kuchelaba, he's beaten, he just beat Daun Jung, but Daenjong beat and Zuchwu. So just talking about now, it's making my head hurt. And mostly a lot of these fights happened within a pretty recent period of time.

So totally screwed up my rankings. It wasn't just easy as me to go like, oh, who's near him? I'll plug them in or where to put him. Because I didn't even know where to put him in first. I eventually settled on letting him jump over Kuchelaba because I guess that fight was long going up. Anyway, the bottom half of light, the bottom like third of light heavyweight is totally screwed up. Maxim Grishen is a crystal ball pick. I think all these are crystal ball picks and not necessarily fights that I'm like super excited to see.

But Clark, I'll say one of his best performances I think I've seen in the UFC against Jung and good for him. And hopefully he does get a little, maybe he gets a bump up the rankings, but I don't think he gets a top 20 light heavyweight next. Yeah, it's going to be tough. But yeah, I think I think both makes sense for Devin Clark. and hopefully you can fight sooner rather than later because Mr. Clark, the dad in the corner, is just so much fun. He gets to turn up the volume

because I was listening to the post-fight stuff from Bellator, but I wish I could have heard it at the apex a little bit louder. But unfortunately, AK, we have, oh, no, oh, no, you got to pick for Marching Taibora. I have to pick for him. Oh, yes, yes, yeah, yes, you did the back. You know, I went with Ty to Vossip for him. I think I'd called for this fight last year after Ty,

oh, lost the Cidil gone. but some i think i call for it so i'm still interested in it something happened oh i tied to a vass fight in between he fought uh he lost uh he lost to um like who did tie to avasa lose to help me here he lost to uh zero gone and then he fought again after he lost to oh sirgoy pavlovich thank you my gosh my brain is gone so i'm still interested i'm still interested in see him fight another sergey uh yeah just a good test another chance for for for uh to burra to i don't know i i've been joking that he could he could have gotten a teloshot a couple years he had one year he went like what four and oh or five and oh in a year and i'm like man just give to burrow a tellow shot so i don't know

if that ever happens but him and tabura sorry him and tuibasa stay in the mix tie versus tie again this is more of a crystal ball thing i could just sort of see the cars flying this way it's not like i'm dying to see it but um mike you mentioned devon clark's dad and and pain like not getting the not really getting the chance to crank the volume i said we're going to talk about laur sanko's commentary i do want to we didn't we glossed over it i thought she did a great job. I thought there was some, I think I saw some people saying she maybe was doing a little too much play-by-play at times. And I'm like, yeah, I could see that. I could agree with that. Because she has worn many hats in the commentary booth. And it's a three-person desk, which is

always tricky. I know she's worked good in Bissming, 4. This wasn't the first time. Certainly not her first rodeo doing, again, commentating on UFC level fights. She did the road to U.C. She's done Contender Series for a long time. So, yeah, I thought she was good. She brought a polished attitude to the broadcast, good analysis, and just a fine, solid debut. I think better than a lot of, I don't want to name names, but some people's first times calling a UFC card. And again, that comes with having experience. If you guys want to see the difference between just throwing, say,

any former fighter in there for a UFC card and throwing in, again, someone who has fought before in Lorosenko and has actually put in that work and put in the hours in the broadcast booth on the desk, there's a big difference. There's a big difference between how, you know, just knowing what you're talking about and knowing how to talk about it on a on on on tv and i think you saw that with lor sanko so great long overdue hopefully we see her on a paper view sometime soon or at least a more reasonably timed uh fight night guard yeah i thought she did a great job

and nobody's perfect i've been not perfect many times on the show already and we're 36 minutes into it so great job lor sanko hopefully we see more of her and by the way i hope we see more of john goon because he's tremendous. He's great. He is great. That's a great trio. That's a really solid trio. Now, I feel like this is an important episode of On to the next one for a number of reasons

because we talked about the sort of imaginary lazy booking line. That's kind of an unwritten rule. But this is a written rule. It is in the constitution of On To the Next One. And we haven't dealt with this in a while. So there may be a lot of new listeners that are like, what are you going to do when you have a draw. And when a main card fight is scored a draw, it just

comes off the table. So no matchmaking for either do Ho Choi or Kyle Nelson. I will say this. It was a bit of a weird one because of that point deduction, pretty divisive one. Some people are okay with the point deduction. Other people are like Kyle Nelson kind of pulled his head down and

shouldn't have lost the point. But regardless of how it happened, AK, we cannot break the Constitution. It did in fact happen. So we have to move on. If you want to talk about this point deduction, how this was scored to draw, the floor is yours. Yes, this is the father of the boy who doesn't win rule. Okay, it's, it's, it's, I'm sorry to say it.

It was great to see Dujo Choi back his first fight in almost 1,150 days. He's just been out for so long for various reasons. Some, some military service, some is just injuries. Kyle Nelson, listen, I counted him out. I thought he was going to get smoked. Canada's zone. I apologize to the pride of Huntsville, Ontario. Good for him.

He was probably, I thought, just getting thrown in there to take an L and probably be released after. But listen, he managed to get squeak out a draw. Yes, the point deduction is probably the main reason. If you're just going, if you ignore that, I think that was a decision win for Du Ho Choi. But, hey, Kyle Nelson hung in there. Did not get smoked in the first round, as I think a lot of, as I had predicted, I think a lot of people were predicting. And he saves his job. But, but Kyle Nelson, nor Du Ho-Joh.

Choi, nor do they get their first for both men. It would have been their first Otno pick, Mike, because we, you know, we weren't doing, we weren't, we weren't even, uh, officially best friends when Doho Choi last fought and, uh, and Kyle Nelson has never won on a main card. So unfortunately, yes, we have to move on. Uh, better luck for both men. Again, just hopefully they get good, they both get good matchups next. I don't think there's any need to run it back.

That's for sure. Uh, but for now, no Otno picks for either. There you go. I love that the Constitution rule is gone and is now the father of the boy He doesn't win I'm sorry

Just to wear their wife's Sunday dress Adam Fugit AK What a performance for that guy I'm a fan He is fun as hell in there I'm such a fan Yeah he got a quick finish

Over a touted prospect Massive underdog He looked real good AK And I know you are very high on this kid I'll let you kick this one on You know, that line was disrespectful. I'm looking at topology and I'm seeing minus 340, Canohta. Yeah, he was a big dog.

Based on what? I'm not saying Kenoshta's bad. Like, I get it. He's fought for good promotions before. He's fought guys with a lot of fights. You know, if you just look at his record, you're like, oh, cool. There's like a guy who doesn't have a lot of fights himself, but he's at least fought veterans. and finish them, that's fine.

But, man, to come in on your debut against a guy who's tough? And Adam, like, Adam Fuget is almost like a, he's kind of like a welterweight Julian erosa. He's kind of funky. He's got this weird hybrid Muay Thai style, but he can grapple too. I see a lot of good things for him. And I don't know. I picked him to win.

I don't know if I picked a finish. I did pick Fuggett to win. I was just surprised when I saw that line. I'm like, man, I like Kanishita, but he's not. I think that's such a big line. So anyway, yeah, Fugat did get the win. I'm going, I didn't know what to do. This is kind of, I guess, another crystal ball pick.

And I was a little disturbed to see that they had matched up Mike Malat and Johann Linus for February 25th. Canadian on Canadian battle. I don't know why they would do this. But whoever wins that, let's throw them in there with Fuget just for another exciting fight. Again, I don't know what we have with Fugent. I don't know if he's a guy who can be like a top 30 welterway. It's a very historic. historically deep division.

But I know I really want to see him fight. And hopefully he's one of those guys who, whatever win or lose, they keep them around and just let him keep bringing that funky style into the octagon because I'm digging it. Yeah, super fun fight. Definitely dug it. I didn't know how to do this.

So I was just looking kind of, I was just looking at my rankings. And I don't even like, for a lot of my rankings, I don't have a lot of guys past like the top 45. So you have to dig a little deeper And I like the Mike Malat pick I also loved as soon as I saw this day

I was like oh my God This fight's gonna be super fun Is a fugit or fugit? I don't know Because I've heard both I don't know I've heard both I'll stick with what I know

Until somebody tells the otherwise But uh Josh Quinlan Adam Fujit Josh Quinlan Those two are just gotta throw hammers at each other Until somebody falls down So I will go with Josh Boyne.

That's fun. My best friend. It's coming off a knockout win. Let's go. My best friend, very close in my rankings. I got at 58 and Quinlan at 52. Look at that. Look at that.

Best friends. I figure we're going to sing the Friends. I figure we're going to sing the Friends Forever song. Probably at all this episode. Maybe not for that one. But that's pretty close. So that means we're at the Wild Card Round, okay? We're already at the Wild Card round.

We've spent more time talking about the Bellator card than we talked about matchmaking this UFC card. But we are going to select one fighter we have not matched for yet. We will do so now. Now this is a weird one because we have, we had a bunch of road to UFC fights. So those are kind of tough to matchmake for.

We have losers from the main card. And I think there were two prelim fights that were not road to UFC fights. Yeah. Maybe three. No, two. It was supposed to be three. We lost the Kim, a boleum fight.

That's right. Unfortunately. So I feel like we're going with the same dude? I hope so. I could be wrong. So it all comes down to who the matchup is. So I assume you're going with just one of the best prospects in the sport right now and one Tetsuro Tyrol. I certainly am. So who who are you matching them up with? Because this could be, I don't know, we could be in sync here. I don't know. Let me do a quick road to UFC recap here. Anshil Jubilee, the first Indian-born fighter to win in the UFC. Congrats to him. Shout out.

He's fine. Yeah, shout us to my Indian people's. He also used to be a math tutor, so that was, that's pretty cool. But, yeah, Indian born, so I say for Indian born. Because, of course, we had, we had one champion. Where's my, my brain is fried this morning. Oh, my gosh, what is his name? One's heavyweight champion.

I have to look this up because now I'm like. Oh, Arjun Boehler. Yes, of course, a proud Indian man. Also proud Canadians. So, but yes, as far as, so, you know, he's certainly made history for Indian people. as well. But Anshil Jubilee, the first Indian-born, good for him. Beating Jekhasaergi, who I now know, who I loved and I had picked, but I guess beating

competition won pride, M.M.A., the very litigious, one pride, M.A. does not necessarily guarantee you UFC success. Lee, Jung-Yung-Lie looked good against Yijah. So that was a tough, tough, very gritty win for Yijah become the latest, like, I don't understand, I held the other eye down. Why didn't I win? Well, welcome to North American scoring. So I had no

That was a scrap I had no problem with that scoring by the way I went with the yes Jean Yang Li did more damage so sorry sorry Yija he gets the win Rinyanakamura 32 second knockout enjoyed that 50 G's

and Hian Sung Park kicking off things really nicely and technically becoming now a trivia question the first road to UFC winner so yeah Tutsuro Taira boy I mean again

listen he didn't make our top five of the uh, 2020, MMA fighting rookie of the year list. I feel really bad. I left him off. But I, it was a strong year, strong year for rookies last year.

So I know he made it on a couple of ballots. Just didn't make the top five. It's hard to go where to go with him. My rule, you know, Mike, is usually, I see you fight three times in your seat, then you're definitely ready for a step up. But flyweight is not,

uh, they don't have a lot of people on the roster. So if you step up, you're usually stepping up in a big way. Like the, the bottom half, there's a huge difference between the top half of flyway and the bottom half. I don't know if I'm ready to throw tie right into that top half.

There's just a lot of people there with more experience. So I'm going to kind of keep him in the same range, and I want to see how he does against Cody Durdon. Really tough guy, very gritty wrestler, hard to put away. If he can take a convincing decision from Cody Durdon, then you could sell me on, okay, let's take a look at that top 15. But I'm not ready yet. I don't know, Mike, if you were a little more adventurous than I was. I'll get to that in a moment. I was waiting for it.

I thought maybe we would get the historic wildcard friends. forever, but it's still not happened yet. I have a feeling it'll happen at some point. Ridney Nakamura, by the way, is a freaking monster. That dude is, I'm keep, that's the dude you gotta keep your eye on. And what weight class is he in AK?

Nakamura? What way class is that? All caps. Bantam weight. Bantam weight, baby. Banimate just got himself another just super fun fighter. The G. Young Lee fight, like, didn't the judge,

like, opposed it, didn't the opposing judge 30 27 yee yeah 30 27 what the fuck was that that was an awful scorecard that's uh that's a that's a that's a did he get the fighters mixed up score card like the i come on like what especially after that second round are you like how could you possibly not score that second round for jung yang lee that was insane uh hion zung park is fun jjun yong park is fun but it was fun those fun those fights are great those fights are great yeah if doesn't it they had that asian audience tuning in uh as the time zone would suggest then I think that they were very

I can't again I can't speak for it got no gauge of how the audience is out there but if you were watching out there in Asia and tuned into this you had a great time you were super happy and and if you'd follow this tournament along the way I'm sure you're even more satisfied so with Tatsu or Tyra when I saw this matchup my first

thought was like Tyra's just going to kill him he's just going to run him over like these betting lines are exactly where they need to be obviously I knew who Aguilar was from Kabachi Global I saw his contender series fight. I thought he was really good, but I just thought Tyra's on another level.

And then Jed was like, nah, I don't think this guy's like as much of a pushover as you think. So I went back and like watch some of his old fights back. And I was like, yeah, he's actually like a lot better than I thought he was. Like, I thought he was really good, but he's actually like, he's pretty scrappy and he's kind of a sneaky, sneaky, smooth fighter. And then Tetsu, Tetsu, Tire just got caught in a gilly. And I knew right then and there, I'm like, yep, this fight's not going to last very long

because Tyra's going to get out of this gilly. and then he's just going to finish this fight whenever he wants. And that's what he did. Tyrus is that good. And this is not bad booking. This Aguilar is a good fighter. And he just went out there and beat him and beat him pretty convincingly and finished him in the first round.

So I am ready to give him a little bit more of a step up. I'm not going to go crazy with this. But I feel like, I feel like if we don't do it now, like we, I just have to see it. I have to see it against. a guy who is going to test him in so many different ways. I want to see where his... I love the Candelario booking.

I thought that was a perfect debut fight for him. So I want to take a guy who is a more developed Candelario, who is not going to let Tetsura, Tira, get away with anything, who is going to fight back. He's going to be very tough to finish. He's going to be very tough to finish on the ground. And it's just the potential scrambles and exchange. changes between these two guys is just going to be the best.

And I feel like we have to do it now. So my rule is, especially at Flyweight, that if you get three UFC wins, you get a step up and you have to take on a guy who has two first names. So welcome Tim Elliott's to the equation for Tatsuro. Whoa. Wow. You took me on a journey. People can't see.

I was melting out different names as you like to myself. I was looking at the rankings. And I was like, going through a progression, I'm like, this guy, like this guy, this guy, this guy. Wow, okay, so Tim Elliott is 13 years older than Tetsoro Tira. That is great. Tetsorotira, let me see, if Tatsurotara was born in, thank you, topology. He just had his birthday. January 27, 2000.

What was Tim Elliott doing in 2000? He surely had, okay, he had not quite debuted yet. But when he made his debut, his pro debut, Tetsurotara was nine years old. it's a good stylistically obvious it's a really good matchup just you're getting a super fun like grappling fight no matter who wins damn my best friend

you really you really went there right you went you broke with the team of yeah I mean look I wanted to give Elliot Muhammad Mahayev like after Muhammad's first wedding and the UFC is just completely slow rolling Muhammad right now

they just wanted them on that London card and like he's got If McIyaf goes out there and finishes this is a next opponent, which I expect he will do in London, I'm going to give him a giant step up. Okay.

I'm going to give him a big name. Okay. But I feel like right now, like, I just don't know. Like, I like the Darden one. If they do the Darden one, that's fine. But I honestly think, like, Tyrus is going to do to Durdon,

what, I mean, he might not land a flying knee like Muhammad Mekyev did, but I feel like Tyrus is going to tap him in the first seven minutes of the fight. So it'd be a good test, but I think he's, I think he's ready for Tim Melle. I want to say, and if he loses to Tim Elliott, who gives a shit?

It's okay. You go back to the drawing board, get a couple of wins, climb back up, he's young. Let's see how good he is. Let's see how good he is. I'm not saying chuck him in there with Brandon Royval right now or chuck him in there with Figgie Smalls. Like, get him in there with Tim Elliott, a crafty, crafty veteran who is going to test him in different ways that some of these guys that the UFC would normally match him up with just aren't going to test him. And I would favor Tetsu or retire to win that fight. So let's go.

I like that one. you're right, I think we could be seeing a trend over the next couple of years because this is sort of where the UFC and MMA is out right now. We had a lot of notable retirements over the last couple of years. Again, we just saw Fader or Glover, a bunch of other people I'm sure, I'm sure, and Jose Aldo, and the new generation coming up, but there's still some of those guys hang on, and then you have the UFC signing younger and younger and younger people. Aaron Blanchfield is getting Tila Santos in her next fight. It is interesting, and I'm not saying Tyler Santos is like some old veteran. I'm just saying there's an experience and age gap there.

I think we will see a lot of these matchups. You're right, Mike, where, like, oh, man, I can't believe this 25-year-old is fighting this 36-year-old. I can't be this 22-year-old is fighting a 30-year-old. Like, it's just how, it's just the direction the industry is moving in. And again, is what happens when the big promotions like the UFC and Belator keep picking up younger and younger talents at some point, you know, as they string together wins. And they stay, a lot of these younger fighters stay so busy that they move up the rankings really fast.

And at some point, you're going to get a veteran. Maybe Tim, that is that guy who ends up fighting the Makai. I ends up fighting the Tutsurotaras, and that's just the way to then. And you know, and you know he's totally down for it. So, yeah, well, we'll see, Mike. Let's put a pin in this. This could be, you could be onto something here. Yes.

Do we have any extracurriculars? Kind of, Mike. And I'm going to save my real rant. I do hope to call into, uh, are you doing a heck of a morning Monday, Tuesday? Tuesday. Okay, good, good. That gives me more time to gather my thoughts. I do want to talk about Conn McGregor, Michael Chandler, of course, getting booked for

the Ultimate Fighter. I didn't think it was going to happen when I thought when McGregor said, oh, I'd been offered. I thought he was just whatever talking random stuff. Or it was just a conversation he's had with, you know, with officials like, oh, would you like to do Ultimate Fighter? Just like them throwing it out there. I didn't think it would lead to anything official. Here we are, though, McGregor Chandler.

We don't have a date for their fight. We do know they're going to coach Tough 31. Hopefully we'll fight this year. So I'm kind of giving a shared point to everyone. McGregor Chandler has been brought up many, many times. I did have a couple people poke me like, oh, do I get a point for this? And I just told them like, yeah, probably shared, probably shared. We've all mentioned it.

It makes a lot. It's made a lot of sense since Chandler has come into the UFC. It makes just as much sense now. I'm a little skeptical. This point is maybe rescinded. I reserved the right to rescind this point. If only because it doesn't have a date. And too, I've said this many times.

People would be shocked at how often these ultimate fighter fights just don't happen. I think, again, we all look back on some of the glory days where we did, you know, Tough did an amazing job. of sort of building up these fights. It doesn't really do that anymore. And also, again, a lot of times these fights just fall through. Sometimes we still get them. I won't say it never happens.

I think we've had some good ones recently. They might be actually on a good streak of the coaches' fights actually staying together. But there was a long middle stretch there where the coaches' fights just fell apart. I hope that doesn't happen with McGregor and Chandler. I'm not complaining about them being forced to be on the show for however many weeks of filming because we know McGregor has some time, maybe needs some time to get into K. I'm trying to say this gently to get into suitable, in cage, allowable shape if people catch my drift. So I'm fine with them taking as much time as they need.

And we see this maybe second half of a 2023. But yeah, if people out there, anyone who's wanted to see this fight, take this tentative, no point. A share of this tentative of no point. With the amount of people who pick this fight, it's like Chris Jericho's list of 1,000,000,000 holds. It's like we take that whole pile of paper and we chuck it in the shredder and then we throw the shredder into a giant fan and it's blowing all these little pieces of paper. That's the equivalent of the Otno point you're going to get for picking that one. But enjoy it. Everybody picked that one.

Yeah, enjoy it. Still valuable. Very valuable. Very valuable. Let me clear here. Unwrap holiday magic at Holt Renfrew with gifts that say I know you from festive and cozy fashion to Lux Beauty and Fragrance sets. Our special selection has something for every style and price point. Visit our Holt's holiday shop and store or online at Holtrenfrew.com.

It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get a nice rank on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Goaltenders, no, but chicken tenders, yes. Because those are groceries, and we deliver those too, along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday assignments.

Essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Do you want to wait, I only, I didn't get a ton of of listening suggestions. There is, I do have a check the tapes as part of the suggestion. So I'll get to that when I read this person's quick. But please disclaim.

I might have some too again. I have not really looked at these. So thanks to everyone who sent in. But yeah, guys, if you're somehow the only person to make a pick, that's a solo at no point, haven't given out one of those in a while. you may have just made a mistake people with your picks please pay attention to weight classes people have fought already notable injuries like we just know someone's not fighting for a while fighter who could already be booked check m-mafighting dot com check typology check sure

check sure dog please just there's ways to find out if someone's already booked and people might be teammates so try to avoid those and of course most importantly your pick just might be do-do and we don't want to read it yes i also want to show out one more thing uh very happy that Katie Taylor, Amanda Serrano, the rematch is going to happen in May. It's going to happen in Dublin. Hopefully it happens at that big-ass stadium. Apparently, Connor McGregor might be helping out Eddie Hearn

with that extra tax or whatever, and that's just the best. And I can't wait to watch that. That's one of my most anticipated fights of the year already. And kudos to those two ladies for just being such a difference maker for women's boxing and Amanda Serrano with their big win, earned the shot, and Katie Taylor,

I mean, golly, man. first fight ruled. This one's going to be being in Dublin, that's going to be so insane. So I was very happy to see that that was made official and hopefully we could do this right and do it in front of 40, 50,000 people. That'd just be absolutely the best. So let's get

to this. Robbie Ryan. How's it going, you fellas? Otno Fantasy Bellator edition. Bader versus Stepe, Eblin versus Costa McKee versus Olivera. And then he went with, if Derrickliss wins, the only fight to make his Rosenstrike. If he loses and wants to keep fighting, give him some

like Walt Harris or Tanner Bozer, I guess. And then he ends with, I don't care what Sergei Spivak does next. Okay. Oh, okay. Fine. Harsh. All right. Perhaps Robbie Ryan had a couple bevies last night. Or money

on the fight like I did. Don't gamble on M.A. by the way. Oh, AK. I did not know that. Never gamble. Hashtag. John Ray. Taira versus Sumedherjee. That's fun. Jun Young Park versus Bruno Silva. Doho Choi.

versus Sungwu Choi. Hashtag Choy versus Choy. Tibera versus Rosenstrike, Clark versus Grishin, feed Derek Lewis to Jailton Almada. Unless you want to be nice, then do Lewis versus Andrea Lovsky. And then in parentheses, AK, he says, I understand I will not get any points because that's two picks. What a professional.

Yes, well done. Otno pick. All done. And then he likes the Spivak versus the winner of Volkov. versus Alexander Romanov, which is also a good pick. Tino Alvarez, Tetsura, Tyra versus Matt Schnell. I thought about that, yeah, I thought about that. That's fun.

Jun Young Park versus Armand Petrosian. Jung-sung Park versus Jimmy Flick. I like that. I like that one. Nakamura versus Annelinger. Jung-Young Lee versus Eric Silva. Anshel Jubilee versus Nicholas Motta. Adam Fugier versus Brian Battle.

And Du Ho-Choi versus Steve Garcia. Do-Doo? I'm pushing the doo-doo button. I'm pushing it. It's on topology. Steve Garcia is booked fighting a UFC 287 against Shilin, Nernibbika. Okay. That's due, yep. Which, by the way, it was first reported by M.AFinding.com, so I might give you two.

Two scoops. Devin Clark versus Nick. Two scoops. Two scoops of poop. The rare two scoops of poop. Oh, man. Devin Clark versus Nikolai Negamariano. Sergey Spivak versus the loser of Curtis Blades versus

Sergei Pavlovich. But he also says, again, another professional answer. I know this fight has not been made yet, but I'm hoping that it is. So a little crystal ball booking. I mean, I'm telling you, 2023 is the year of the odd. These listeners are so sharp. It's crazy. Even though you had some doo-doo, I'm taking the doo-doo back because of how you ended it.

So we're evening it all out. Wait, it's not still one piece of doo-do? I'm taking both scoops back. Taking both scoos back. Back in the bag. I'm taking the bag and I'm thrown in the garbage. Not holding on to it. Jarden, Sergei Smevac,

another Volkov-Romadov winner. I like that one. Derek Lewis, major step-down versus Marcos, Hojirio Delina. Sure. I like it. Yeah. That's crazy.

Listen, I'm always an advocate for if the UFC likes someone and they clearly want them to stick around, then dial them back. What's Cody Garbrand? Cody Garbrand now. Oh, is fighting Trevin Jones. A talented fighter, but name-wise, a step back. Good, yeah.

And again, Cody Garbant, another company favorite. You don't, if you like a fighter, you don't need to keep throwing them against top 10 competition. Let them rebuild whatever, what's still rebuildable. And maybe they work their way back up to that spot, or maybe they don't. But at least give them the chance to not go in there with a killer every time. So I like that. Derek Lewis versus Zep versus Pazow.

I like that. Which, by the way, like, I thought that was really interesting matchmaking. The Arsay fight was kind of interesting, too. but Traffin Jones can crack. It's a concern. It's a concern. I mean, Julio Arce was kind of a concern, too. I thought the Ronnie I-Fa fight was like perfect.

Yes, we all wanted that. We'll see what happens. Yeah, that's an interesting fight. He also likes Devin Clark versus Kennedy and Chichukwu. And by the way, with Derek Lewis, Derek Lewis should just be in fun fights the rest of the way. Just throwing hands. No wrestlers, no grapplers, no with even the threat of that.

Those are the guys he should be fighting moving forward. Marchine Tybor versus Jailton Almeida. Du Ho Choi, Daniel Argetta, Jubilee versus Costa, Jung-Yung Lee versus the Shane Young-Blake-Bilder winner, Jung-sung Park versus Shannon Ross, Clayton Rodriguez winner. Nakamura versus Mendonka, Jun-Young Park versus Bruno Ferreira. Oh, that's fun. Man, people bring in the Road to UFC picks.

Damn, that is a... That's a great pick. That's a great pick. But I'm just blown away in general by like these people doing Road to UFC picks, because I certainly couldn't... I mean, off the top of my head could not come up with these. so well done people yeah that was that was wild because genuine park looked like a friggin

murder yeah last night holy kid that's a great fight that made my favorite pick of all toby spivak versus almeda lewis versus rosent strike clark versus colio roundtree jung versus grishin tibora versus two ivasa ivana ferlovsky superboy gavin tucker fugit miguel bieza that is super fun we haven't seen byez in a while Kino Shida versus Orion Kose, Jubilee Manuel Torres, Lee, Eric Silva, Rina, Kinyanez, Park, Alessandro Costa, Iron Turtle, Roman Coppiloff. I actually like that fight too.

Aguilar, Jimmy Flick, Tyra versus Durdon. Hey, we end with Marcus. Who was this? Who was this? That was Toby. Friends forever, Toby. Our guy, Toby. Marcus closes out. His check the tapes, and I'm going to,

he had two. He crossed one out because it's no longer happening. So I'm going to leave this up to you. But the first one, he picked Priscilla Cacchewara versus Corrine, Sylvia. And I'm going to believe you're probably the only person on planet Earth who submitted that pick. So I'm going to believe you.

The other one was Ramiz Brahimage versus Carlson Harris, which is no longer happening because Brahimaj is injured. So does he get a check of tapes? Does he get a point for that? Hold on. Corinna, I got to rewind here. Creeny Silva and

Briscilla Cachuaura. Oh my good. Okay. You definitely get it. Listen, they definitely get it. Let's just bundle them together for one point because, yeah, those are pretty wild. Yeah, it's unfortunately the Carlston Harris fight. Felt that is not happening. But yeah, I mean, there's at least one full on, no point for their efforts.

Wow. I mean, I think Marcus plays this game very smart. Oh, this is the spreadsheet. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. That's right. I got that too. Okay. He plays the game very smart. Let's see if we have anything new here. as far as his picks go. Doho Choi versus Luis Sal Danya. Tira versus Alonnasimento.

That's pretty fun. Nakamura versus Mandanka. We got that one. How about this, A.K., Adam Fuget versus a former top 10 welterweight in the NBA fighting global rankings panelists of Jeddushu, Jake Matthews. Are we willing to chuck him up that high? That's a bit of a jump up in competition. And I don't think we need to pull Jake Matthews back that much.

That's a great fight in the future, but I don't see it being next for both men. All right. Fair enough. On to you, my friend. All right. Like I said, so I have not looked at these. Let's see what we got here. Sorry, one's a second.

Okay, let's go to Twitter first. What do we got here? Our pal, four corner sports, NY, regular, heck of a morning caller. Sergei Spivak, friends forever with you, Mike. Sergei Spivak, Tabura. Derek Lewis, Felipe, if he comes back from his suspension, Felipe is out until Felipe got cut, I think, after getting suspended, if I'm not mistaken.

I'm pretty sure they cut him, but Runeo. Wasn't that, yeah, I think it was a weird one. Yes, something was open there. Devin Clark, Carlos Alberg. I actually did think about that. That's actually not a bad matchup. Dan Jung, and I thought about it.

And I'm like, big difference in the UFC experience, but it's kind of the right test. Doho, Charles Rosa, Jun Young Park, versus Marquez-Andre-Briot winner, Mark Andre Barrio, excuse me. Tetsoro Tira versus Odie Osborne Denise Bondar loser

Okay man feels great thought of these I like it Thomas Collins We got anything new here Also likes Louis Pizau I love it Tabura versus Taito Vasa

Thank you Thomas Ty Thai Toy Duho Choi versus David Onama That'd be sick But I don't know I don't know

This current version of Choi Is ready for that smoke yet Yeah that's that's tough Markis McGahey The Choi 2927 edition Okay. Spivak versus Roizen Strike. Devin Clark versus OSP Lens winner February 18th. Sure, I dig it.

Tabura versus Almeda. He's already, Marcus says he's called for this before. Sure. I mean, I feel like that's logical. And I think Almeida just called him out. Am I crazy? Did you not see that, Mike? Almeda calling him out. Carl out of him? Marshall, Tabara.

Sorry. On the Twitter? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So that's in, that's out there. That's out there in the universe. Tyra versus Victor Altamirano Just some good stuff

Okay, let me just keep going on here Chris at Dragon Slayer 2 Always just sends in one pick Once Devin Clark versus Nico Nagamarianu Sure Barry O'Reilly No, another Tyra Schnell pick Okay

Jun Yonge Park versus Joaquin Buckley Not bad except I believe Buckley is finally going to make that drop down to Welterweight so I don't think we see that Nakamura versus Ricky Tersios Mike, I don't even feel for that.

Bricky's fun, but I don't know, yeah, I think you're right. That might be the weirdest. That could be the weirdest fight. That might be the most M.MA fight of this year, so maybe we do that. Anshil Jubilee versus Vachislav Borset, boy, that's a tough one. Oh, Friends Forever, Mike. Adam Fuget and Josh Quinlan.

How about that? Barry O'Reilly and Mike, Friends Forever. You guys are all on the same page. Sergei on Sergei. Devin Clark versus Paul Craig. Craig has had two bad defeat. should take a bit of a step back. Clark poses stress on the feet on the ground.

If he takes Craig down, Craig can do damage for his back. Interesting fight, and we'll see if Clark is someone who can make the rankings. Yeah, I mean, listen, he's never been ranked before. I don't think in the UFC,

certainly not in the NBA fighting rankings. If he beats Craig, he's getting some top 15 votes. And Hayes with third, can't believe I missed out in sending questions. Got to remember, yeah, man, you miss out a lot of fun.

Send in those, anytime we do, uh, uh, a UA, ought, no, definitely send stuff in. Some we've seen before.

Tibura. Aspinall, you return by mid-late summer. I like that. I thought about that, too. I think, like, or, yeah, I thought about that one, because it would be like a good, a good comeback fight to see where he's at, but, yeah, I don't mind that.

Fugit Anj Lusa. Okay, I like that. Let's see what else we got here. Iron Turtle at Jun-Yong Park. Oh, it's not Jung Park. Excuse me. He's the Iron Turtle, right? Who's the Iron Turtle?

Which one's the Iron Turtle? The Jenman Park, right? Who's the Iron Turtle? Wait a minute. Did the iron... Yeah, he's the Iron Turtle. Jen Young Park is the Iron Turtle. He's the Iron Turtle.

Oh, I'm sorry. It was Daun Jung who fought. I'm sorry. This was... Wait a minute. I think Hayes... No, Juniang Park fought too. Oh, yes.

I'm sorry. John Young Park fought fought Dennis Toulin. That's the one fight we didn't mention, and he looks very good. So sorry, thank you, Hayes. Hayes wants Edmund Shabazian for him. Oh, and he's kind of set this up before.

He said he said he wants the Edmund fight the winner of this fight. So, yeah, seems logical. And also another Tyra Summadaerji pick. Okay, so I'm going to keep chugging along here. Marcus was sent to me. Matt, this is Matt Bradbury? Is Matt Bradbury? Matt Bradbury going with Tyra Alan Nassimento,

Jun Young Park, Bruno Fernandez. Sure, we've got some of these. Martin Debrar, Chris Dawkus. Chris Dawkins is fighting. Oh, no, no, I'm sorry. No, he's not. Chris Dawkins just lost. Devin Clark versus Crute Meadowfield loser.

I don't mind it, except Devin Clark already beat Alonzo Menafield. That's one of the reasons I didn't go there, but I would like to see Devin Clark and Cruz. so that's not bad what else we got here Fador sweater enjoy retirement Fadour sweater

Anshul Jubilee versus Maheshate It's the fight the world needs to see Okay Last one here from the email Our pal Tristan Gordette

Tatsurotara versus Cody Durden Tristan my man Rinyan Nakamura versus Ariichi Ling Adam Fugit versus Anjulus A popular pick And Devin Clark

versus Kennedy Enzuchuku again, part of that cluster of guys who I was talking about before that Devin has not fought, but it's kind of closely ranked too. So there you go. So thanks guys. Thanks for sending in. We definitely need them this week.

Hopefully we don't have a card that is anywhere near this time zone, ET, ever again. Mike, I was going to say this year, but I'm going to say ever again. Though, now that I think about it, go ahead, Mike. Go ahead. Now, go ahead. I guess we are going to have some screwy times with the next fight, aren't we? next in the next UFC event, aren't we? I mean, like, the fight week stuff will be screwy times,

but the fight night itself is the normal time. Oh, is it? Okay, okay. I was worried. Okay, so just with... Yeah, 10 p.m. Eastern Main Card. Oh, we're fine. Okay, okay. Okay, for some reason, I thought they shifted it because for Australia time. Okay. Yeah, the only, which by the way, I wouldn't hate

because it would be what, it'd be 10 a.m. Sunday morning. I would freaking love that. Interesting. I mean, that's great. And then we do it like a live Ottoe that evening or something. Yeah, we do like 18 live streams in a row. That would be fun. So I think, yeah, it's that one.

And then we got 285, which is the normal time. I think 286 is a different time. I think it's earlier. I think they're going like kind of like the 2 p.m. start time isish around there. Okay. I believe that's what's happening. I could be crazy. But that's what I thought we were doing.

But let me just check. Yeah, I'm looking right now. I hope that's case. 1 p.m. for prelims. Yeah, 1 p.m. prelimbs at 5 o'clock. 5 p.m. Main Park. That's nice. That's awesome.

I love that. Absolutely love that. But next week, because it is a pay-per-view, we will be live. That's right. I will be in some hotel lobby in New York trying to find some internet that actually works. And we will do a live edition

of this here program following UFC 284. And it's I was going to say it's a good one, but I don't know if, I mean, the main event's great. There's three really good fights on this card, that is for sure. It's going down this Saturday, February 11th in Perth, Western Australia. Of course, the main event, we all know what it is. Dana White only apparently knows one half of the main event if you listen to the post-fight press conference on Saturday.

Alexander Volcanowski versus that other dude that he forgot. Islam Makachaf, yes. He's challenging Islam Makach for the lightweight title. Yaya Rodriguez, Josh Emmett for the interim featherweight title. That is your co-made event. Featured bout is a freaking banger. Randy Brown versus the surging Jack Della Madalena. Justin Taffa versus Paco Porter.

Jimmy Crute versus Alonzo Menafield. That is your main card. Prelims, Tyson Pedro versus the returning Modestis Poccus. I spoke with Modestis last week. You'll get some just really good stuff. The road this man traveled to get back to the UFC. is pretty incredible. Josh Kulibow versus Melsig Bagdasarian,

Clayton Rodriguez-Shannon Ross, Jamie Malarkey, Francisco Prado, Jack Jenkins versus Don Chanis. A lot of a lot of dropping the Oz on this card with Don Channis and Paca Pora. Loma Lekbunmi versus Elise Reed, Blake Bielder versus Shane Young and Zubaira, Tukagoff versus Elvis Brenner.

That is your card. That is 13 fights. And remember, this one was supposed to have Robert Whitaker versus Paulo Costa. This is supposed to have Kai Kar France versus Alex Perez. And that's just not the case anymore. But main event friggin rules.

And yeah, I'm pretty excited for those. Yeah, yeah. The magnitude of the main event will carry this card. Certainly not one will say, listen, this is one of those cards. If you miss a few of the prelims, you'll be fine catching up with them later. I don't think you'll, I don't think you're going to cry.

If you miss some of these live, I mean, definitely you're going to want to see, you know, Alamuluk Bunei, at least Reed, fights like that, and Jamie Malarkey, Francisco Prado could be really fun. But again, if you don't catch flights like that live, I think you'll be okay. You don't need to dedicate your whole day to this card is what we're saying. But that main event, boy, you could be talking. I have a feeling will be, the ripples of this main event will be felt for a while regardless of who wins.

That is that I feel confident about. Yes. And the beauty of that is you can watch it with us because I will be back in New York. The UFC 284 watch party. There's going to be a lot of traveling to New York apparently. over the next month or so because we got this card. We got 285 and then 286 is two weeks after that. So a lot of time in the studio with GC in special guests.

So it should be a lot of fun. You can watch the historic Makachov versus Volkanowski main event with us. And it's just going to be the best. So don't forget that. It's going to be a busy week. Jose Young's as we speak is on his way to Perth, Western Australia, to cover this event, our boots on the ground. And like AK mentioned earlier, start times for a lot of the stuff.

They're going to be sort of all over the place. So just go to YouTube, set up the little notification thing. So if it's at a wacky time and you're sleeping, you wake up, notification. Oh, Alexander Volcanovki said, what? Islam Makachov said what? Hakaporta gets 275,000 views. And I will be a happy camper. Thank you very much.

It's on the UFC 284, baby. I appreciate you. AK, appreciate you for my best friend, AK, I am Mike Heck. Always remember the golden rule. Don't take the stuff too seriously. the endmate's supposed to be fun and we'll have more fun live right here next week following UFC 284 and on to the next one, the podcast. You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Okay, only 10 more presents to wrap. You're almost at the finish line. But first, there, the last one. Enjoy a Coca-Cola for a pause that refreshes.