MMA Fighting - REACTION | Dana White Announces Jon Jones Retired, Tom Aspinall New Champ | UFC Baku

Episode Date: June 22, 2025

Dana White shockingly announced that Jon Jones is retired, and Tom Aspinall is the new undisputed UFC heavyweight champion of the world. Following the breaking news, MMA Fighting's Mike Heck and E. Casey Leydon react to the announcement, along with the fallout of UFC Baku. Follow Mike Heck: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@m_heckjr⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jed Meshew: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@JedKMeshew⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow E. Casey Leydon: @ekc ⁠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

You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the UFC's first trip to Baku, Azerbaijan is officially in the books. With it comes a dominant decision win for Khalil Roundtree in the main event of this card. Rafael Fiziv snaps a three-fight losing streak, pulls off the slight upset against Ignacio Baja Mondays. we had a fight of the year contender at the light in the lightweight division

between Nazim Satakoff and Nicholas Moda Mick Debeck Orlewai got a quick a nasty submission win a little controversy there with some weight cutting issues and a catch weight Curtis Blades gets a I mean if you ask Twitter a pretty controversial

split decision win and yeah UFC Baku had its highs had its lows had a couple of meetings but it is in the books. It's 6.46 p.m. Eastern Time and the UFC event is wrapped and packed, and we are here talking about it right now here on the M.A. Fighting YouTube channel, I am Mike Heck.

And joining me to recap this all, the one and only E Casey Liden. He is back. He's feeling better. It was a daytime fight card, the medicine you needed, Casey, to get you over the hump. It was. When I woke up this morning, I missed the first fight. I missed the banger. I missed the Usman Handy banger because I was still recovering from my illness. But then, you know, then the fistic up started happening, you know,

the beautiful city of Baku and its MMA frenzy fans, you know, you know, got me back to good health. And, you know, decisions, decisions, decisions. Yes. Wow. Let's do this. Bonuses are given. And shout out to Dana White in the UFC because I actually, I actually think they got this right, but there are some others that may feel a little slighted by this.

You want to take care to take a guess? Who got bonuses? Fight of the night. Fight of the night and performance of the night to Zytov Zadikov and Moda? Did he get 100K? Both of them got 100K. Oh, both of them got 100K. Motta got 100K?

Yep, 100K to both of them. That's the bonuses tonight. They got all the bonuses. We always tweet that out. We're like, oh, just give these guys all the bonuses. They gave them all the bonuses. So shout out. Fight of the night.

I mean, Satakoff, that knocko is incredible. The fight was incredible. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Jesus Christ. I mean, again, Oral Bay was a catch weight. So, yeah. Shout out.

They did treat Orby has a, even though technically it wasn't a missed weight, but they treated it like that. So he wasn't, it doesn't sound like he was, if that was a regular 55 pound fight, without a doubt, that would be like, that would have been just an incredible submission. But because of the weight miss and an incredible weight miss catch weight, I guess they just took away that 50K. But cool. That was an awesome fight. I love when that happens. Yeah. Dana is at the most like press.

You know what deserves another 50K? I forgot his name, but the referee for that fight. Yeah. Because he could have stopped that fight in that first round when he was just, Mota was just spamming shots to have covered up Zadikov up against the cage. But not too many were landing, and the ones that were landing were hitting the body.

And the referee did a great job on letting it go. And because of that, we saw a fight-of-the-year contender. So Lucas Bosaki was the referee who is a looks just like our old friend Connor Burks. So good on him. He also was the referee took two points away in a fight that should have been a disqualification. Sure. It should be disqualification. Jen Young Park's legend just continues to grow.

More on Nazim Sadikoff, Nicholas Motta. Later on in the show, I'm sure the peeps are going to have some things to say about it. but let's talk about the main event. We were waiting for this one. We were wondering what Khalil Roundtree would look like in his first fight since taking a admirable yet vicious beating from Alex Pereira in that fourth round. And Jamal Hill had been knocked up brutally in two straight fights,

one once by Alex Pereira, gets knocked up by Yuri Perashka and one of the most fun fights of the year so far in the third round. And I continued to say in the build to this fight, nobody on this card needed a win more than Jamal Hill. Nobody. And Khalil Roundtree started off real slow, real patient, and then he started landing leg kicks.

He was chipping away. He was putting the proverbial money in the bank. And then as round two came along, those leg kicks continued to come. He started mixing it up to the body. He was throwing strikes all over the place. And you could see Jamal Hill's right calf head balloon to two or three times the size of his left calf.

because of the damage that Cleo was putting on him. Round three, not a single judge gave it a 10-8 round. M.M.A. Fighting's official scorecard was a 10-8 third round. I'm sorry when it's two clean knockdowns in a lopsided round. That is a 10-8 round in my book. That's not even a Jedmishu 10-8. That is a legit 10-8 in my eyes, but I gave it to him. The two judges did not.

And then round three, one round four. I thought he won round five as well. one of the judges gave Hill a round. In the end, 50-45 times 2, 49-464-Kaliel Roundtree. And then we'll get to the post-fight stuff in a second. But just your assessment of the main event, what you saw from Khalil Roundtree, and what you saw from Jamal Hill in a fight that he desperately needed to win but did not. Well, I think if we said that if Jamal Hill makes this a strictly, you know,

mid-range kickboxing match, which seems like it was for pretty much the entire 25 minutes. Roundtree should win this fight puty handily, and I think that's what we saw. Yeah, I mean, to me, if he'll, because he wants to be macho and not wrestle on stuff, but this is not, this is mixed martial arts. You got to wrestle the Muay Thai fighter. You got to threaten his legs. He's got to threaten him takedown. You got to push him against a cage.

You got to do something. You can't let roundtree fight hill. fight and that essentially the entire 25 minutes roundtree was fighting at his pace and his range that's i don't he was just never going to win that fight maybe he might land one lucky one lucky overhand at some point but chances are he was going to want roundtree is going to win that fight every single time and i think that's what we saw that's all we saw a pretty dominant no 50 50 46 and sorry 50 44 50 45 decision no i i had every round for um roundtree including a 10-8, without a doubt, 10-8 for that third round.

So kind of a great showcase. It turned out to be a great showcase fight for Roundtree, and he'll just honestly just, is it bad loss? I mean, he didn't get knocked out, so that's good. There were many chances. I think, I think if I knew the second round, I was kind of waiting for a knockout. I kind of gave up on it by the time the fifth round came around. But he'll didn't get knocked out, so good.

But without getting knocked out, this is about as bad as the losses he could take, I feel, for him. I was actually going to say if he'll, especially after that third round, came out in round four and was just like, all right, man, I got to be aggressive and just throw caution to the wind. If he Korean zombieed this thing, just go out in your show. Like he did against Max Holloway and then got knocked out, I think this would have, this would have been a better taste in everybody's mouths as opposed to just. just getting outclassed for 25 minutes. Like Hill had like brief moments. And the only thing that made this fight somewhat closer than the score cars indicate is because Roundtree was just so patient the entire time.

He was just waiting. He didn't throw anything until Hill would throw. And the second Hill would throw something, he made Jamal pay with combinations. And Hill just couldn't string things together. And I understand that he was just hurting, man. And that, his legs were just battered. He was trying to put a poker face on.

He was trying to shake stuff off. But you could tell, especially in the fourth round, and there were different portions of this fight, too, that any time Jamal Hill put weight down on his right leg, he almost fell over. That's how battered he was in this fight. So I give him credit for going to the end, but he just couldn't get anything going.

And like the moments in this fight where he got really aggressive, he did okay. And then hold on a second. Hold on, hold on, hold on. I don't know. What's going on? Hold on. Might have some breaking news here.

Might have some breaking news here. Trying to figure it out. What do we got? What do we got? What do we got? Is this about the Royval thing or something else? No, no, no, no, no. We're doing a live show here, folks.

Oh, yeah, yeah. We're doing a live show. Oh, breaking news. Hit the breaking news. Do we have breaking news music? Ladies and gentlemen, Dana White just announced that John Jones called the UFC and he officially retired.

And Tom Aspinall is the undisputed UFC heavyweight champion of the world. Whoa. Wow. So ladies and gentlemen, I think we are changing this entire show. to a John Jones is no longer the UFC champion and Asmodal is reaction show. Wow. Wow. Casey, it's happened.

It happened. Your reaction to this. Finally? Finally? Yes, good. Congratulations, Tom Asmodal. You did it. You did it.

Hey, Tom Aspon is in my fantasy team. I feel like she gets some points now. I don't know why, but I deserve some points for Tom Asmodel. but I'm not being in my fantasy team. Yeah. Whoa, wild. Wild. God, I just wish I was in the, I wish, I wish we were on that phone call or in some of those meetings when John, John just said, yeah, I'm done.

I just want to know. This is, this is wild. Yeah. I think we are kind of waiting for this moment. I don't know. I got to. geez me i mean i mean i got i got bringing some comments up yeah what are we doing here uh i'm changing like the entire

yeah yeah we can we can we call jed right now i think jed is on it's on a lake boat right now like drinking white claws like on you know on some raft right now so we need a live feed of him from his phone right now oh my god I have to change like all of this. I'm changing all of the headlines to all of this. So yes. I'm surprised. I'm surprised.

AK just like juggly said in our chat. Dave Shaw could have broken this news because I saw Dana sitting cage side for a minute. And then we didn't see him. And we just sort of internally thought that, well, he's going to be in New York tomorrow for Fanatics Fest because they're doing the Canelo Cross. offered presser over there. And maybe that's, he just caught a flight and left, but he just made the big announcement. John Jones out.

He is retired. He is no longer the UFC heavyweight champion. And Tommy Aspinall, the man that I believe should have been the undisputed champion for well over a year now, is now the champion. The nightmare, at least for the time being, is over. And there you have it. So, yeah, didn't see this coming today. but here we are on a Saturday after UFC Baku.

I mean, we were all waiting for it, but I think now that it's here, I don't know. Like, these things you kind of talk about forever, but when you find, I feel like we're like a dog chasing a car or we finally caught the car. Like, what do we do now? Like, whoa, crap. It's done.

Yeah, so I'm trying to update all of this. We're going to need like new thumbnails and everything. Yeah. That is crazy. So, I mean, this is obviously the big news right now. So are we getting? Aspinall's interim champ streak is now over. Is it the longest interim heavyweight champ ever or something?

Wow. All right. Dana White's exact comments were as follows. Quote, John Jones called us last night, retired. John Jones is officially retired. Spanol is the heavyweight champion of the UFC. So, I mean, maybe there's more and we will react as we see stuff. But holy crap, massive news on this Saturday.

And this is pretty wild. So now, and apparently nobody in the media room asked a follow up question or has asked a follow up question. Like, I hate being that guy, but like, this is, this is every fucking question should be about this. Every single one. Like, it's cool. Like, you're in Baku, you are in the media room for this massive game-changing announcement.

One that we've been talking about for two years since Jones won the heavyweight title. Since Tom Aspinall won the interim heavyweight title. And no one's following up on this? Like, this is crazy. This is crazy. Wow. So who gets the shot? Like, that's the first follow-up question.

Who's Tom going to fight in his first title defense? Is it going to be Cyril gone? Is it going to be Jailton Almeida? Even though Alex Pereira told our own Jose Youngs yesterday, a fanatics fest that his focus is on light heavyweight, do they give him a bag and say, no, man, everybody wants to watch you fight Maga Men and Goliath. Go fight Tom Aspinall. What are they going to do? Like, if you had the pencil, Casey, if they flew you out to the war room for the Tuesday meeting, what are you picking? Who is Tom Aspinall fighting?

Well, if I'm one of the UFC, if I'm a UFC brass, I wear the suit and my job is to make money for the UFC, I throw a big pile of cash at Alex Pere's feet and go. 100%. I go bulk up, boy, eat up. Don't you dare die it. Let's do it. Asperada prayer. That is the fight. That's the fight.

It's not the fight that makes sense, but it's the fight that we want to see, which is. So then. Yeah, I, I, I'm, this is stunning news. This threw me off a little bit. Uh, I'm trying to update the masses on what exactly we're doing here because this is supposed to be just like a Baku post fight show and it has turned into the John Jones, his retired, Aspedal is the champion, uh, reaction show. So yeah, I love the Alex Pereira idea.

Again, like you just said, like it's not the meritocratic choice. Although Cyril gone throwing him in a title fight after that. that recent fight is kind of rough and isn't great. Almeida would be interesting. But, like, I think you just need to throw Tom a bone. Because he's the guy who has had to suffer through all of this. He's only fought one time since November of, since he won the belt, November of 2023, won the belt.

He beat the hell out of Curtis Blades in a minute. And then he's just sat and waited because he knew if he took another fight, he might lose out on John. So, like, he's the one who's had to sit out and hope and pray that this John fight would happen. And now just throw him a bone. Give him Pereira. Jeremy Perez, very interesting comment right here. Jones's greatest victory is taking two years off of Tom's career, which technically is not wrong.

And that's what John has been saying the whole time. How do you beat Tom Asmodal? He even said it on Twitter by not giving him the opportunity. And sure, in a weird twist. way, that is what John Jones did. So now Tom Aspinall is the heavyweight champion. We can move on. And hopefully Tom is in there like sooner rather than later.

I don't know when you do it. Is this? Because right now we have everything sort of filled up right now. We got international fight week loaded. We have Pori and Hallway in July. We got DDP and Shemayef in August. No pay-per-view in September. So they're going to do two in October.

Do it in October? Sounds like October's the time. Yeah. I mean, do we do Aspedal somebody in Abu Dhabi? Is that in Vegas or Salt Lake or wherever that first October people, you save it for MSG? Like, what do we do? I don't know anything.

I honestly, I don't care. I just want to see it. Yeah. I don't care. Anywhere with apex, be honest, anywhere with the apex. But that has to be the apex. We'll do it the apex. I just want to see Tommy fight.

I just want to see the man fight. That's all. Yeah, he should be fighting all the time. And honestly, like, people are going to think this is a dumb take, but I don't care because Alex Pereira should be the guy. If Alex is like, look, I'm a competitor. I really want to get this bad taste of the Anklea fight out of my mouth. I want to try to avenge that loss.

I don't want to do heavyweight. If Derek Lewis knocks out Talos from DeShera, just give it to Derek Lewis. I don't care. Like, I truly do. not care who it is. I don't care because Tom is going to rinse everybody. He's going to run over every single one of these guys. At least Derek would be like, wow, what a story if Derek Lewis is the dude and people love him. So just give him bodies at this point. Just get him out there and fighting as often as possible is what we got to do here. Make heavyweight great again,

for the love of God. So I guess my, my, my, my, the question I merely start thinking now, is this a true retirement? Or is this just a, is this a Sohuda retirement? I don't even like, I don't even like suggesting that. But is this, is this a, basically I can come back any time to get to fight for the title. Do you believe that? Or is this John really hanging it up? I think.

Like John's not going to be out of the news. He's going to, he's going to be, every day he's going to be still in the storyline until somehow we can, like officially like like like would this be almost like a habib situation where dana's kind of continually trying to pull him back and suggesting and yes i think it's going to take something like i think it's going to take something massive for john to come back like if tom goes on a like just a legendary run maybe john is like okay i'll come back for one more but john's been like pretty clear about like what he's been trying to do right like and again sorry i'm trying to yeah thumbnails and do all sorts of crazy stuff um i did message jed i think i was available for a quick

hot take but he has replied yeah i don't jeds jeds uh although jett would be terrifically funny right now. Maybe too funny. I don't know if he's going to be in terrific shape to do such a thing. So if he does come on, that that's fantastic. But I don't know if that's going to happen. So pretty crazy stuff going on here. So while we get all this stuff together, Casey,

let's bring up some comments from the peeps. And let's see what they're saying about all this. because this is obviously some very big news here. All right. Some super chats about it. Chickens can't be goats, John Ducked, not retired. So that's, I mean, seriously, that's going to be a very, very interesting conversation in all this is, like, does this whole thing, him not fighting Tom? Just confirmed.

Is this going to affect the legacy? Like, are we, does this affect it in any real? like crazy kind of way. And I think it's a pretty fair question to be asked here. Your thoughts on like kind of how this affects the John Jones legacy moving forward. I mean, everyone has their, I guess everyone's got their different opinion on John Jones, which I kind of guess that's what makes them so fun to talk about. Yeah, it affects it.

It's just, it's just steep. I remind me of the history. When John fought gone, what was the heavyweight situation at that time? Francis vacated the belt to go sign with PFL. And Dana spun it in such a way where it was, well, Francis ran to do easier fights. And that's why he's not the champion anymore. Where was Aspenol that situation? Was Aspenna just not high enough in the rankings at that time?

Or did or did you see just? I think because this is when Aspinall, if memory serves it correctly, this is when Aspinall was hurt, was he not? Oh, okay, this is the time. When he got after is in between the injury from the Blades fight when his knee went out. Okay. So the timing wasn't there. And I think he was just coming back to fight.

Did he just come back to fight Tybora? He fought Tyborah, he was Tyborra, right? He came back and fought in England. and then they were going to do Jones and Steepa at MSG and then Jones gets hurt and they booked Asphidal versus Pavlovich for the interim belt on like pretty quick notice and Asphanol was like pretty beat up too.

So yeah. I guess what's just a wild situation. I guess it's what's going to just annoy me about the John talk if I hear that John is the heavyweight goat too if I start hearing that conversation. I don't know if we're going to hear that. conversation. Are we not hearing that?

Or like, that John's a heavyweight goat? Well, we know, I can see light heavyweight. I can see light heavyweight despite the, you know, his infractions.

So, but, you know, just because who's out there. But I guess, not the heavyweight goat, but does the heavyweight run, does it kind of cement his greatest ever goat of all goats legacy?

Or is it just kind of, a thing, like, kind of like Anderson when he went up and wait. Because he didn't fight the two best guys available because of reasons,

Francis and Aspinall, during that his heavyweight run. When he could have, some, I guess he could have, but. Yeah, I mean, John is notably to kind of blame for both of these not happening. But,

I mean, it depends on Hugh, right? Because again, the Jones and Gano thing was weird because it's funny because Jones kept asking for Deonté Wilder money. And Dana White kept going to press conferences being like saying things of, well, if I'm John Jones, I'm going to middleweight instead of going to heavyweight after Francis knocked out Steepay. And then it turned into John said he wants Deontay Wilder money, wants $30 million to fight Francis. And we were all like, pay him. What are we doing here? Like, pay these guys.

Let's make this fight happen. And then Francis, like, continued on. He was having his contract. He was having all of his stuff going on with the UFC behind the scenes that became very, very public. He beat Cyril gone while injured and basically wrist it for the biscuit, wins that fight on one leg. And then is a free agent the rest of the way. And ultimately, even though the UFC gave him from all indications like a pretty fair offer, Francis wanted to be able to look himself in the mirror and say, hey, I'm happy with everything that I'm doing.

I love my job. I love where I'm at. And I have the freedom to do essentially whatever I want. Francis wanted to go box. The UFC was never going to let him do that. PFL certainly did. He's the face of PFL Africa. It's all sorts of stuff.

And now it became this thing of like, well, maybe for instance, come back to the UFC because Eric said a thing in an interview and all the aggregate sites, all the aggregate social media pages. just turn it into something that it totally wasn't and then made that thing happen. And then again, but the UFC is to blame mostly for all of this. Like John obviously shares a lion's share and to some degree, especially this Aspinol situation. But again, I'm not really like fully defending John. John has said since literally the steep fight, like, I don't even know if I'm coming back yet. Maybe I'll give you the fight we want. But I don't have to fight anymore.

And from all indications, like moving forward, it was just, just I told the UFC what I'm going to do, so I don't understand why this continuously comes up. They know my plans. Ask them, I'm not going to say anything because they already know what I've told them. And then poor Tom is just kind of sitting around waiting as well. So, yeah, I mean, the heavyweight thing is just so silly the way they spun it.

And then, of course, when John won the bell, he's like, he's the baddest man on the planet. Francis would have gotten clobbered by that, John Jones. And then the steep fight happens. Like, they book it for the MSG. and 23, eight months after John wins the belts. And at that point, it's like, all right, fine.

Like, you want to do it, cool. Like, Tom wasn't at that point just yet. So, all right, fine. Let's do John versus Stepe. It was a big deal in the build, even though it was kind of a silly fight. And then John gets hurt, and we had to wait an entire year for John to come back,

and they went right back to the Stepe fight, which is so ridiculous. It was just so dumb. And I really wish they never came back to the fight. And the biggest thing for me is if you go back and like listen to reaction shows or even preview shows building up to that event where Tom Aspinall fought Sergey Pavlovich, we all said into live microphones that putting an interim title on the line in this fight is going to be a disaster. It's going to cause so many problems. And they went ahead and did it and it caused so many problems for a long ass time. But now it appears the nightmare is over.

And Tom Askenal is being declared the heavyweight champion of the world. So wild times. Is that your headline? The nightmare is over. I think so. I think so. Dana White finally like understood the assignment because and I understand this too. Like people say like, oh, you're just shit on Dana all the time.

As a bald, stubborn Boston guy, I get it. When you say something with so much vigor and passion and you're wrong, it's so hard to say, I'm wrong. I'm still right. Like you want to find a way to make this right. And Dana went from, because I was in the room. I was in the room in Tampa after Joaquin Buckley finished Kobe Covington. And Dana went up there and said, I 100% guarantee that John Jones will fight Tom Asmodal.

And we're like, it's not happening. It's just not going to happen. That's when we all confirmed, oh, it ain't happened. When he goes 100%, oh, it ain't happening. We all said it. We're like, this, dude, this fight's not happening. Stop asking about it. It's not happening.

Never once have we wavered. I think AK at one point was like, yeah, I'm the Prince of positivity. Let's do it. We've been telling you for a year this fight's not going to happen. And Dana just kept saying, like, look, John Jones isn't afraid of anybody, all that. And then you could see, like, he started to tiptoe back a touch as the month's went by. John Jones no longer the number one heavyweight in the world or the number one pound for pound fighter in his eyes. He finally admits that Islam Makachev is the number one pound for pound

fighter. All right. You guys are right. I was wrong. Islam's the dude. And then it became like, if we can make the fight happen, you know we'll try to make it happen. And then going on Jim Rome, we knew that this was, this is it. This was the final candle being blown out of the John Jones versus Tom Aspinall cake. In two weeks, we'll have a decision, one way or the other, we're going to move quick. And that point, we were just like, why just move now? We know where this is going. So John is saying, I'm not fighting.

I have no interest in fighting. So finally, it's over. At least for now. Do we believe that? Do we believe John has no interest in fighting or he has no interest in fighting Tom Aspinall. I think... Because those are two different things.

I think it's both. I think it's both. If the UFC... If the UFC offered him, like... Because even at the UFC at this point, they knew. Like, if they somehow were like, you know what?

You're right, John? Tom's not like the biggest name. We'll give you Alex Pereira. Like, you'll defend the belt against Alex Pereira. I think John would have taken that fight. I think you would have. But I think the UFC was just like, no, it makes no sense. And they would have been crucified if they made that fight.

And Tom is still the interim friggin champion. Like at that point, when Tom is the longest running and reigning interim champion in UFC history and we're benching this guy. With an active champion. Yes. An active champion. Yes. Like, at that point, it's just like, come on, man. Like, let's just move this along.

And I really wish this happened, I really wish this happened in December instead of, 100% guaranteeing it and give fans false hope. Like the newer fans that they are promoting towards, they don't know any better. They take Dana's word as gospel at this point. And those of us who have been around, like, we get it. We see holes in his arguments. And it's just kind of weird.

By the way, let's read this real quick. Tom Aspinall via Instagram says, quote, for you fans, it's time to get this heavyweight division going. an active undisputed champion. This is from one Tom Aspinall, the new UFC, undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. So he's ready to get this division moving.

And that's that. I want to hear what the peeps are saying. Let's go. Yeah. Oh, there's so much. So much from the peeps. Yeah. A couple comments.

Let's go. Let's hear for the peep. Yeah. All right. We're not. I'm sorry. very little will be talked about from UFC Baku here we gave we gave you a couple little snippets

we gave me the bonuses which is kind of cool we talked about the main event okay and I will talk more about this tomorrow on onto the next one that's where you'll get more of a reaction to UFC Baku but you're just not going to get it here that is so far in the backburn right now

compared to what we're talking about right now so let's go to the peeps and keep this conversation going we can talk forever if we want I don't give shit I missed this line, but maybe you remember it. It's almost poetic that Bisbing made the hilarious duck call on the night Jones decides retire.

Okay, very interesting. So I'm trying to remember what exact fight this was. I don't know if this is the Moe Usman fight. But I guess one of the, because I think it was the Usman fight, Usman Hamdi fight, because I was doing like a watchalong on the people's pre-fight show. We watched that entire fight together. We're sticking around for the people's main event. We want to see everybody's heavyweight overs hit no matter how you got it.

And everybody's did because it went to the cards. And at one point, I don't know if Brendan Fitzgerald said something, but I saw this kind of on Twitter floating around that one of the coaches was yelling John Jones as like a signal. They're like, John Jones, John Jones. And they're like, oh, one of the coaches is saying, John Jones, what does that mean? In Bisbon goes, it means duck. which was very funny.

And I have to go back and watch the entire clip, but that's kind of what I gather. And if I'm dead wrong, please call me out for being dead wrong. But that's kind of funny. Okay. But thank you, Luke. Thank you.

Oh, no way. I'm working on it. Is it happening? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Yes. All right.

Don't go anywhere, people. I'm telling you. Yeah. I'm working on it. All right. You bring it up the... R.S.40. John Jones beat the UFC easily in all of this mess.

Yeah. I mean, you didn't, like, did he beat him? I mean, he didn't make any more money. You just, you fought the Stipei fight. Unless there was a promise, huh? He probably made a lot of money to fight Cyril and then probably made a lot of money to fight Stipe. Do you think there was there like a...

You think there was like a kind of an agreement with the UFC that, okay, we'll give you the steep a fight, but after you beat steep A, you fight Tom and you think, when in terms of that he beat the UFC, like, in sense that he didn't have to fight Tom, is that what we're saying? I think part of it is that. Plus he got the steepe fight.

Like that is. Oh, I mean, that's a giant win. Yeah. For him. Like, we, our interest levels, like, we understood the steepa booking the first time around. But we all kind of knew how that fight was going to go. Pretty much exactly what we saw.

And then to wait a year and steepe is like a year older with zero interest in fighting. And now another extra year out of the octagon. And Tom doing what Tom did, winning the intrabelt, and then defending it and then having to sit cage side and weigh in as the backup to watch John Jones fight Stepe, Like nobody wanted that fight Outside of I don't even think like deep down steep

Wanted that fight but he was just like I can't turn down this bag I'm getting a big bag of mine and fight John Jones like I have to do this if I'm gonna fight one more time So yeah It's just so crazy man so yeah I think and you can certainly make the case that John Jones beat the UFC in this All right, get some few more comments Yeah let's go let's just keep firing them out there It's 723. It's not 3 a.m.

So I am fresh. I'm fresh to death right now. There's some curse words in here, but I'm just warning you. This next one. As an almost 20-year John Jones rider, he loses all goat status by avoiding Aspenol, heavyweight,

greatest 205 or yes, but goat no. Okay. That's fair. That's fair. I guess that's what I was talking about earlier. Yeah, like how do you, like, yeah, how do we,

Like how does this, does this heavyweight run run by Jones? Is this, how do we compare it to say GSP, you know, coming out of retirement and facing BISBing? Is this kind of the same thing, kind of different? I mean, obviously, it's kind of different, but is it affected legacy or is it just a great payday? I kind of think of them as the same a bit, but if I, the GSP thing obviously didn't have as much public drama. Yeah, I mean. situation too, you know, and the whole middleweight thing. Yeah, and GSP basically said like, yeah, I'll fight him.

Like, I'll fight him and then didn't. But he also, GSP had like very public health issues by fighting at 185. I think like if you go back to past MMA fighting articles, you can read exactly what happened. But like, bulking up and fighting at middleweight instead of like competing at welterweight, which he was so used to, like, it really messed with his system in a lot of ways where he realized that like, I can't do this anymore. never going to be able to fight a middleweight.

And I kind of just don't want to fight anymore at all. I accomplished everything and just was done with it. So they made Whitaker the champion. But it's like GSB held out and all this stuff. And it just seemed like the UFC was kind of ready to move on too. Interesting quote from Dana White in regards to Tom Aspinall that I will read, courtesy of MAFighting.com. Quote, I obviously feel bad for Tom that he lost all that time and obviously money,

but we'll make it up to him. Tom Aspinall is a good guy. He's been incredible through this whole process that we've gone through. He's been willing to do anything. fight him anywhere at any time and do this. And now he's like, I'll fight anybody. You tell me who and I'll fight them. Aspinall has been great.

He's going to be a great heavyweight champion for us. I'm excited to work with him. That is Dana White on Tom Ascon, which I think is great. I was very mature. It's got to be music to your ears right now if you're Tom Aspinall. Like people thought he was risking it. And sure, he did lose some time.

But it seems like, because you know how the U.S. can be, you know how Dana can be specifically. Like, if you show them that you are loyal to them and you do what they say and you're, you're willing to be a company guy, if you can get to a finish line in a situation like this, the UFC will reward you. So maybe, maybe they're going to give us Tommy A versus Alex P. That'd be big. That'd be a big one.

Who gets, who gets screwed over in that situation? Amadea? Between who? If they book prayer. No. Alameda got finished by Curtis Blades like a year ago, a year and a half ago. Like bad. I mean, it's coming off a win.

I can't remember. He's coming off a win. I don't know. I forget these things. Was Sergei Spivak? He's coming off two wins. Yeah, he got beat up by Curtis Blades and stopped. Then he beat Alexander Romanov, who's not the UFC anymore.

and he beat Sergei Spieback. Like those are fine win. Like honestly, if the, if the UFC called me and said, Mike, you choose, it's not going to be Pereira. It's Almeida or Cyril Gahn.

I would pick Almeida. I would pick Almeida. But I think they will go with God. I'll go of Almeida too because gone is just, yeah, I think, yeah, whatever.

Either it's not, it's not, that Tom williterates both of them. That's what sucks for Aspinol. Like the, just like the heavyweight, I don't know what's wrong of the heavyweight right now

as far as the contenders just doesn't seem to it's just not lined up right or something. I don't know. They need some young, exciting bodies in there like real quick.

And that's why it's been such a shame having Tom on the back burner because he's like a young, hungry, about to enter his physical prime guy. And like in a real, like if you look at the history of UFC in the heavyweight division,

like Tom Aspinel might have like eight good years ahead of him at this point. And like the best is coming up. Yeah. Oh, man. If you're just joining us, you see UFC Baku post show up there. We're not talking about UFC Baku.

If you're just joining us, you see the headline, Dana White at the UFC Baku post-fight press conference announced that John Jones called the UFC and officially notified them that he is retiring, that he's no longer the heavyweight champion. They have officially, per Dana White, promoted Tom Aspinall to, to, you know, to, you know, he's not to the undisputed heavyweight champion title holder and all as well in the world, at least for right now. So the nightmare is over.

The nightmare is over. That's going to be. What we put. Yeah. We changed everything. We changed everything. I whipped up like this makeshift thumbnail in like two seconds as we were doing this.

So everything is very John Jonesy right now. Hold on. Hold on. No. Give me, give me, give me, give me, give me a moment. Talk amongst yourselves. Hold on. Pull up a comment or something.

Hold on. Is he here? Is he here? Here we go. Oops. Talk to Mr. Boza for a moment. Oh, we're really talking about Chris. Right now.

Hold on. Okay, what happens? Let's go from here with the wind. Is he here? Oh, no. Let's talk about this real quick. All right. Curtis, I don't know.

We're going to see what it's happening. He looks like, he said he tore something in his knee early in the fight, so he might not be fighting for the rest of the year. So what number was Jones looking for? 10 million, 20 million? I don't know. I bet it's higher than that.

And if you listen to some of the reporting, especially from very respected media members, Guys like Ariel Hwani, it seems like whatever John asked for, the UFC was willing to meet him at that number. And then Tom was just like, John was just like, oh, I'm still just don't want to fight. And that's okay. That's fine. More breaking news? Breaking news, we have live feed from a lake house or on a beach or somewhere in a vacation spot, the wonderful Jedmishu.

Hey guys, it's happening. Did something happen tonight? I don't, was there, what's going on right now? How are the fights? Curtis played. Curtis played is a split decision against Rizvan Kunev. That's what we're talking about right now. Where's that next?

But maybe Curtis Blades gets inserted in this conversation. Jebushu, the nightmare is over. The nightmare is officially over. Dana White went to the UFC Baku press conference, notified the media, notified the world, that John Jones notified them last night that he is retiring, he is done, and Tom Aspedal is now the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, Jedmishu. I am shocked.

Shocked, I say. I never saw this coming. What an unbelievable. So as you can see, I am not. Let's just be real clear about the state I'm in right now. Probably not going to be in my best work, guys. out on the boat, partying, don't have a clue what happened in the fights,

pulled them up just now as we're going to do this. But I left my phone because, you know, let's detach, right? Like, the Baku fights, I'll come back, I'll watch them tomorrow if I, you know, however it goes. But like, let's just fully unplug. Let's be in the moment. Let's enjoy it. It's a beautiful day out on the boat,

tubing, doing the thing. Great. Come back to, like, no bullshit. 30 messages across various platforms of people, being like, you did it. You were right. Oh, my God. We need to hear you on this.

And to Casey being like, hey, man, you want to pop on? And I was like, what are you even talking about? But then as I was looking through them, like, this was before I got the official news. I was just able to be like, oh, this must have happened. And so I went to MMAFighton.com. It's a great website. And I was like, oh, oh, that thing I've been saying for almost two full years. Oh, that finally happened.

That's terrific. I am so pleased that we finally get. got here, you know, like we can spend, we don't have to dive into it right now to talk about like the end of John Jones's career and sort of how that affects his legacy. His legacy is certainly set in stone in a lot of these ways, right? But like his heavyweight legacy suss, let's just call it what it is. And most importantly, Tom Aspinall is your true heavyweight champion. He's been the heavyweight champion. He's the dude actually fighting the top heavy weights in the world time in time again. And I am, this is justice for him.

I'm very happy that he is at least getting his belt. Obviously, it would have just been dope to get the fight. And maybe we will. Maybe John will. This may be, guys, like the Henry Suhudo situation, where Henry retired thinking people would miss him. And then immediately Henry was like, ah, shit, they moved on quickly. This may be a John sees like, oh shit, Tom's a champ.

Everybody's cool with it. And maybe John gets that itch again. But I don't think so because I never once thought he was fighting this man. And I'm super glad we're here. It took us long enough, but we finally got to. to the good outcome. Do you feel like the nightmare is officially over? Or is this just a brief detour?

Is this John Jones being done done? I know you said like maybe he comes back, it gets that itch? Or is this the Henry Suhudo situation where every time a heavyweight fight happens, even if it's six months from now, he's chiming in saying, I would have beat that guy like Henry Suhudo did

before eventually coming back? Oh, he's done, done. But he's definitely going to still beat John Twitterfingers Jones at points in time, right? Like if Tom loses his next fight, which could happen. Like that always is a possibility. Then I, you know, John's going to be tweeting like C told you. And if Tom just kind of keeps putting a run together, he'll probably still say like, well, you know, I could beat him if I wanted to.

And he'll keep his name out there because we live in an attention, you know, society. There is a currency to being in the news, to be making headlines. And John understands that implicitly. And so he'll keep throwing it out there and doing that. But it has been, like I thought from Jump Street, right, he was never going to do this. It's been evident via the words he has said, not even like reading between the lines of, well, he wants to fight Alex, but he doesn't want to fight Tom. This is like, he's just outright been like, I don't want to fight that dude for like a full year almost.

So it's just never going to happen. But he'll keep bringing it up, but he's never going to actually fight him. Because now the problem with the retirement, right, the only way John comes back is if Tom loses. if Tom loses, and let's say Alex Pereira does move up, right? Let's say Alex gets the first crack at newly undisputed heavyweight champion Tom Aspinall. And Alex wins. Boy, John is coming out of retirement. He's going to GSP the shit out of that.

But if I think most of us assume I certainly do that, Tom is going to put together a real sustained run here, then John will just stay retired because he doesn't want to fight John, like Tom. And that's what I've been saying from the beginning. And it is not because he is afraid of Tom. It's because he recognizes the risk in fighting Tom and the UFC was not willing to compensate him enough to overcome his sort of cost-benefit analysis because he can lose. He could have won, but he could definitely lose. And because he already won the belt, even if that belt's pretty papery, like in the history of UFC belts, that's one of the weaker ones he holds. It's that old Brian Scalabrini quote about beat on the Celtics and winning a chip, right?

Like, sure, I suck today. I didn't play any minutes in the final. But in five years, I'm going to tell my kid that I started. You know, I started. And in 10 years, I'm going to tell my kid that I was MVP. And 12 years, we'll be like, I was the best in the league. That's going to work here for John. In 10 years, people are just going to see that he's a two division champion.

They're not going to recognize the context of how things went down that he never beat the guy to be the guy. And so he gets all the benefits without taking the very real risk of fighting Tom Aspinol. And so this is why we were always going to end up here. I don't know why it took us this long. I am, and let me just say this. I'm not going to give him a ton of credit because he doesn't deserve it for how this whole thing unfolded. Credit to John for finally sacking up and ending it.

Because John has been saying for months now, like, I told the you have seen my plans, blah, blah, blah. Like, you know, it's not my job to tell people, okay, but like you could. You could end all the speculation. You could have gotten rid of months of headlines by saying, I intend to fight this man at some point in time or saying, I'm not fighting him. And you did it. And there are reasons for that. But he finally just nutted up.

He was like, all right, you see, I'm done. I'm living my best life. And God bless him. I hope he lives a great one. No, has no more issues. He is one of the all time, if not the greatest fight he's ever lived. But it was past time to be done with this nonsense. And I'm glad we finally are.

I got off the boat to come talk about this. That's how glad I am. So what are we doing here? I know that you've been very high on the idea of Alex Pereira being the Tom Aspinall opponent. And I think a lot of us are with you. I'm with you on that. I think mostly not because it's like, you know, it's not the most like deserving thing, but let's throw Tom Aspinola a bone and give him like the biggest fight he could possibly have if it's not going to be John Jones.

Because Cyril Gahn, I think it's kind of debatable that he should be the guy, even though he is coming off a win. Jelts and Almeida has two wins, but they're against. Alexander Romanov and Sergey Spivak, which are fine wins. You go out there and do what you got to do, and that's cool. But Pereira is obviously a way bigger fight. Pereira spoke to our own Jose Youngs about 24 hours ago and said, I'm not interested in heavyweight.

Let those dudes all kill each other. And I'm focused on Magamette and Goliath. But perhaps he did not know that John Jones was about to notify the UFC of his retirement and perhaps get himself into an undisputed heavyweight championship fight with Tom Aspinall, and Dana White said when talking about Tom Aspinall, we're going to take care of him. We're going to make this worth his while, essentially. So if you had to guess how the UFC is viewing this, is it Pereira? Is it gone?

Is it Almeida? If you had to put odds on it, who's the favorite to fight Tom Aspinall in his first official undisputed heavyweight title defense? You have to do, Alex. I think that now there's just no question. Sometimes the UFC screws up, so maybe they will just be like, all right, whoever's available. But there is a real part, too. This was, there are going to be a bunch of people. People probably are already on this corner.

But like, there are going to be a bunch of people who, to some extent, will rightfully point out. The two biggest fights of this year coming into 2025 were Ilya Taboria versus Zemakachev and John Jones versus Tom Asperol. And we are not getting either. Neither of those is happening. Now, I never thought we were getting one of them. and I was pretty specious about us getting the other one too, but those are the fights the fans were gravitating towards,

and they're not happening. And you can't go, you can't deliver nothing, right? Like you can't be like, well, this is the best we got. I know that we say this all the time. The UFC can do whatever they want, but this is one of those situations where I think they're just going to look around and be like, dude, if we try to put Tom Aspinall versus Cyril gone out there, fans are going to revolt.

They're just not going to care about this. because the delta from Aspinall Jones to Aspinall gone is so massive. You got to do something with some panache, with something exciting. I think you just have to be like, Alex, we don't care. We just genuinely don't care if you fight McOman. It's not important to us. Magamai can fight Yerie, and that's fine for us. You should go do this.

We can market this. You can have an opportunity to do something nobody has ever done. And Tom can get not the most deserving contenders, certainly, but a guy who will add juice to a fight that will. otherwise be 100% held in comparison to the fight we aren't getting. No question. You got to do Pereira. I think they'll ultimately figure that out.

I think that's unequivocally the fight they make. Just because it's huge. And you're throwing Tom Aspinall a bone for sitting through all this. And Dana did a nice job, at least putting Tom over as he was willing to do whatever we asked. He would fight John on any date in any place. He was willing to do it. And here we are.

So anything else you want to say, Jed? We don't want to take up too much of your time. This is obviously news we love that you're reacting to, but. It's the best. I'm really just like, congratulations to John Jones. He had a phenomenal career. He has, there's a lot of issues with his career, but he's undeniably one of the very best fighters who's ever lived.

I think his heavyweight run is pretty much a stone cold force, and we should all treat it like such. Like we don't, nobody looks at GSP. legacy and was like the middleweight belt that was great and real like he did it and the cyro gone fight that's a real win right like that is a real good win it is very similar to the gsp one over over bisping honestly um but the steep a win was nonsense and this whole prolonged thing is nonsense this doesn't ruin his legacy doesn't ruin his career his legacy will stand the test of time is great but i think we can and we should just be honest about what

happened, right? Like, he was a prize fighter in his heavyweight run. He was not here. He did not look to be the best heavyweight on earth. He looked to acquire the shiny trinket and as much money as he could with his minimal risk as possible. And then did everything to gaslight us that Tom doesn't deserve it. And all of that's nonsense. Tom very clearly deserved it. I wish he had fought him. If John beats Tom Aspinall, I always thought that the argument that beating Tom did nothing form was ludicrous because beating in my mind he's just not the real heavyweight champion like his heavyweight title is legitimate whereas beating tom that would have that would have legitimized him as the heavyweight champion so shame will never get that but sometimes things aren't meant to be

and john absolutely has the right to be like man i've done enough he's done more than almost anybody ever uh so happy trails i'm glad that we don't have to spend our time on this anymore i'm glad for Tom Aspinall, and I'm glad that I didn't totally embarrass myself despite my current situation. Well, we appreciate you jumping on, Jed. Enjoy the rest of your day. Looks like you got some sun. Got a lot of sun. I'm going to go get some more.

You go get him. Thank you, sir. You got to take the button down, guys. You got a Miami vice it for the boat, you know, take it down. And we're out there. Oh, no. You can't do that. All right.

I'm cutting them off. I'm cut them off. Yeah, get them out of here. You're hearing people's feelings. So I just put a poll up in our comment section and as you could probably guess, over, well, right now, 51% of the fans think Alex Pereira should get the first shot. And 25% oh, sorry, 28% have it for gone. And then I have Almeida at 8% and I put other there.

with 13% I'm not sure I just want to put another option I'm not sure who the other would be but is there another other am I missing? Derculus.

Oh yeah, Terculus. Well, we're waiting. TBA. Martin Taibora. Tyborah. What about Mo Oosman? What about Mo Oosman after this big wait today?

You know? I mean, the sky's the limit in this wonderful heavyweight division which hasn't had a finish in over three months at this point which is crazy.

Waldo Cortez Acosta has the last finish and let me just pull this up because we looked this up earlier because it's pretty wild salsa boy got his finish of Ryan Span on March 15th

at a UFC Apex Guard headline by Martin Vittori and Roman DeLeeds A March 15th the last time a heavyweight fight did not go to a decision Casey Liden. Isn't that crazy? Over six months,

over, not six months, over three months since we have had a finish in a heavyweight fight. That's wild. That's wild. Yeah.

Yeah. What a day. I mean, what a day? You know? All right. People come. What are the peeps there?

It's party with peeps for a while. Yeah, let's party with peeps. I'm sure there's super chats. So many super chats. So many super chats. Sorry, I'm going to catch up the super chats now.

Um, that was a card. Ten decisions. I don't know who was worse, Bisbing or that translator. Bobby, I could shout out to the translator. We're a full tuxedo. What was the hate on the translator? Come on. What did you wrong?

It was fine. Don't hate the game. We're a classic. I mean, just a classic black tucks with the bow tie, just knocking it out of the park. He did the best he could. He did the best he could. He said, oh, crap, I overdressed. Yeah

Nobody Nobody called me I thought I thought this is a big thing guys Yeah he was He was dressed to Be like the father of the bride And not the translator of the fighter

But Hey man His being What's a tough tight Yeah yeah Of course Yeah But what a big day

Like Jones retiring We saw a man in a tuxedo in the cage It's been a while since we've seen that It's a big day Yeah All right Yeah that was Look I mean

Tough scenes out there It was it was not the most thrilling card We did get one of the best fights of the year So we can't complain about everything I liked Fizzie Bob Mondays Um Main event was interesting

In its own way Uh yeah Yeah Um We kind of talked about main event Yeah back to the main event I was bummed How Jamal Hill was kind of

I felt content with losing a decision. And when I kind of, like you said, I believe, like would have been better for Jamal Hill just to go effing his arms, no, swinging his arms, no going all itchy and scratchy and just, we're just going to throw, I'm just going to go out there. And, you know, whatever happens happens. And he would have got knocked out. But maybe we have had more, I don't know, respects wrong word, but, you know, we would look forward to what's up next for Hill if he kind of just went. went out there and that last round just went for it rather than just, oh, well, my legs are going to take a decision. But that would have been another knockout loss.

So I don't know. So, yeah. But yeah, a lot of decisions. You're right. Very, a lot of them. Censor. But shout out to the pacifist parlay that hit that I put together on the People's Preflight show.

Over one and a half for Hamdi and Usman, over one and a half. uh for god i don't even have it too much going on uh faze baha mondays the curtis blades fight and the flyway fight which is actually really good too to gear him back off and uh and azat azat azat maxim yeah that was good fight uh so yeah i hit that that was good and then i hit the faziv dog ticket so it was great uh spencer mike you and jed broke down the main event perfectly j h needed to get on the inside and fight dirtier i love fazzee's performance just saying him versus bSD would be fire. Yeah, it'd be good fight. Be a good fight. Yeah, Jamal Hill, yeah. Zee versus Tafique Mosaif is going to rock when that fight happens because that's going to happen at

some point. It's just not going to happen right now. Not right now. I think Viziv's a tough out for a lot of these guys. Sorry. Thoughts on certain media members pushing for should be convicted rapist Gable Stephenson to join MMA in the UFC. I mean, I do not know enough about that. to speak on it competently. But I do, just because I haven't looked into the whole Gable-Stevenson thing very much. But I knew there were some allegations and accusations.

So that's all I can really say because I just... He was on... Arrested on suspicion of criminal sexual conduct, June 2019, along with the teammate. However, no criminal charges were filed due to a lack of adequate evidence. So that's... Yeah.

I mean, the charges were dropped. So, I mean, that's all we could say. But yeah. Thank you, J. Rob. I mean, I get why people would feel a certain way about this. I'll say that. Yeah, I'm not discussing anything. It is the, yeah, I'm not either.

I'm not either. But that's not going to stop the UFC from signing him. Greg Hardy was not only Greg Hardy signed to the UFC. He was pushed heavily. in the UFC pushed heavily said Riki Dumas is about to fight

on an international fight week pay per view next week after everything he's done and continues to go through that was a weird so

that's a weird yeah I mean it's this is not going to stop the UFC from signing him at all right he's with WWE

under the TKO umbrella so yeah yeah they will sign him in five seconds Yeah, we are living in that world, J. Rob. So, Ben. Turtle should have gotten a bonus was Herb the ref.

Herb was not the ref. It was the GC lookalike who was the ref. But Herb was like the outside ref. Remember they were talking through the cage? Herb was like the consulting ref. So I have to like go back and rewatch it because I don't know exactly how it went down. But like some people took it as, well, the referee didn't. know what to do. So he talked to Herb Dean. He was like, yo, Herb, what should I do? And others are

saying he went to her and be like, yeah, I'm going to take some points away. And Herb was just like, yeah, cool, I understand why you would take points away. And then he did. He took two points. So it was just a weird situation. I'm stunned. That fight didn't end with the DQ loss. It was weird when they asked the doctor to the doctor, tell me if he can still fight when it's really the fighter who says that. I remember that was a weird situation. The ref. the doctor, can he continue? I think it's actually the fighter's call. The doctor can stop the fight, but I don't think the doctor can say,

nah, he's good. He's a big boy. But the ref could also use his discretion and be like, yeah, man, that's tough. We're stopping this thing. And it's a DQ loss. Now, it makes Turtle look better because he gamed it out and still won. So that's kind of cool for him. But.

And that was the first moment John Jones was mentioned on the fight card. Because the two-point deduction, which is a great call by the ref. Actually, I think it was the second time because of the duck comment. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah, so. I forgot that was two points. Two points.

Yeah, it was so egregious. So, yeah, that should have been a DQ. Iron Turtle was kind of stupid for continuing to fight, especially of that big cut because if that cut would have opened up later in the fight, the fight, he would have lost because that cut. Because once you kind of agree to fight, then you're agreed to fight. So, but luckily you won and, you know, Iron Turtle, I intertled it. So it was a risky move, but it just, it just strengthens the legend of the Iron Turtle.

Yeah, the refereeing as a whole was pretty, pretty shitty tonight. But that's nothing new. Yeah. The two points is cool and they were like certain things, but like, again, egregious fence grabbing. We had two illegal blows in one of the women's fights. Oh, yeah. We got to start just a couple of stern warnings. Like there's like a fence grab at like every single fight and there was like nothing.

It was so frustrating. Yeah. But it is the way of life. Referees don't want to be responsible. I still think they should be. Okay. We're not going to talk about that. Okay.

Jeremy Newton. Jerome Newton. Sorry. Oops. Ding Dong the witch is dead. There you go. For now. Let's see.

The nightmare is over. Amon report, Asmel just lost on a big payday. Gone is next. How do you know that? How do you know that? I don't think Aspinall misses on a big payday. I think the UFC is going to take pretty damn good care of him now. When Dana says glowing things like that, he's going to take care of Tom.

Is he going to pay Tom $30 million fight? Probably not. But they will try to make the Alex Pereira fight, which would be huge. It's the biggest fight he can have right now with John out. That would be great. But who gives a shit? At this point, like, I just want to see Aspinall in there fighting people. It doesn't matter who he fights.

It truly doesn't. Yeah, it's been so long. How long has it been now? Like, there's November or a year coming up? It'll be a year in July. Oh, year in July. Okay, almost where I go, we're 11 months now. So almost 12 months, almost full year.

Yeah, geez. Jeez. Yeah, he's missed out on paydays already. So don't worry. Yeah. He's, he has already missed out paydays because of this. He won the title November 2023. He's fought once since November 2020.

Is this a city question? Uh-oh. Would it be possible for John to go to PFL, PS bring back heck of a morning? Maybe on the latter, no on the former. Just don't, you think they'll let him retire and just go to PFL? Like, no way. Zero chance that happens. He's still.

He's under contract. He's still under contract. He's still under contract. He's still under contract. contract, like, as a fighter to the UFC. Like, if he's going to fight, he has to fight for them. So, yeah, he can't just be like, yeah, I'm retired and never fighting again. And then, like, six weeks later, Don Davis comes on a town hall and says,

John Jones, Francis and Gano happening, PFL, let's go. Doesn't work that way. Yes, yes. All right. Chris, what number was Joe? We did this one, do we? Did we? No.

But what? 10 million, 20 million? I think it was higher, but whatever. I don't know. for sure, but my guess is it was higher. And again, based on reporting we had heard from very respected media members who typically don't get things wrong, the UFC met his number and still didn't happen. And for the fans out there, if the UFC would have paid Jones $20 million, the UFC was

going to make $50 million. They were going to make more than enough to cover that. Yeah. Yeah, don't get, don't. They can afford it. and still make their profit margins, whatever they have. They're going to sign a billion dollar

television rights deal per year, a billion dollar per year deal for streaming rights and television rights. That's why I'm including all those all those little ads you can buy on the octagon too. Yep. They ain't crying,

they ain't crying poor, I can tell you that right now. All right, uh, I'm a fanatic. How bad does the UFC look now after not delivering on consecutive heavy eight superfights. Again, they don't care. Like, they do not care. The, the beat goes on.

Dana's going to be a fanatics fest tomorrow, promoting Crawford Canello, doing, being at the press conference, he's probably just some other media hits about this. And then it's going to be International Flight Week. And, yeah, we'll certainly talk about it. And Dana will probably talk about it when he speaks with media during International Flight Week.

But, yeah, it's just, they'll be fine. Like, it's not going to change anything. This fight was never going to happen. So, like, literally it changes nothing, except now that Dana is officially waving the white flag

and saying that it's over. John's done and we're not fighting. It doesn't hurt the UFC's business, but what it does hurt is whenever UFC says, the UFC makes the fights the fans want. We can now say, well, you know. We've been saying that for a long time. But, yeah, we've, they've done this plenty of times.

Like, this is, this is the Fador-Rand-C-Ture thing again, I guess. Fador-Brock, this is- Oh, yeah, Brock, you know, it's like giant fights that are right there, and they just couldn't make it happen. And then, but in a couple months, Dana's going to be yelling about boxing, going, look, boxing can't make the fights that the UFC can. So, you know, whatever. Promoter talk. Again, they will be fine.

They will get past this pretty quickly, and that's it. Ooh, this is interesting. Super chat from Luke. Luke, think Dana White starts pooping on John to reel him back. No, I don't think so. I don't think so. You did the pooping? He did the pooping already.

John ain't get to fall for it. But real pooping. I think they both have poop on each other. So I don't think, I think they both can be nice. Yeah, I mean, John's been pretty respectful. Like, John's been pretty respectful. like through all of this about Dana like anytime he's asked about Dana he puts Dana over Dana usually puts John over and that's it like I don't think Dana at least from the quotes that

I read I don't think you said anything disrespectful at all so yeah I think he'll put John over as one of the all-time greats and yeah John wants to come back he will make it happen it doesn't really benefit either one's pocket bank accounts for them to poop on each other publicly. No. And look, the, the only thing this, the only way this hurts the UFC in any way is that, again, as I brought up earlier, the newer fan base that they seem to want to bring in, which are the people who are not fight fans, really, they are the people who think they can beat up all the fighters because I see red.

And if that happens, there isn't a soul, Alex Perre, or anybody that I can't beat up, those people, the social media influencer group, so to speak, that are brought in by them. They are now seeing for the first time that Dana said something and did not deliver. And... Yeah, that's true. Dana can still, in some way, say this is John's fault, but like in a respectful manner, to take the pressure off of him for the promises that he made and couldn't really keep here. But again, the fan base, it's like an escalator.

You go up and down, some go up and then they're like, oh, I'm done. And then they come down and they don't go back up again. Like there's a very small window for the average MMA fan. I think it used to be like five years. I think it's probably close to two or three now. and then guess what? They'll leave and then the next crop will come in and they will hear Dana for the first time

and they'll think they will gravitate towards everything he says. It's just a it's a cycle that continues on. And that's that. It's all good. Yeah. But again, this, the fans are going to be pissed about this. But again, from a business perspective, this does not hurt the UFC one bit.

Not one bit. They will still sell it every place they go to they will do record breaking gates. They will charge $700 for the worst seat in the house and people will pay it. And then again, they're going to sign a billion dollar a year television rights deal. They are not going to be hurting by any of this. Foreign governments will pay you millions of dollars to bring your circus to their country. Correct.

We get daytime MMA for it. So what are you going to do? Yeah. They're going to make more. They're going to make more money after this. Yeah. Super chat from Chase. I did not forget about you, Chase.

I saw your comment. Does John's legacy look less as bad if Tom lays an egg in his next fight? As a Jones glazed from the age of 11, seeing him duck a man is so crazy to be. So that's interesting. Like if they book Tom versus Pereira and Pereira boops Tom, knocks him out in the first round, wins the heavyweight title, becomes a three division champion. Does this help John?

Does this make his leg a better? He comes out of retirement. Oh, well, that is very good. true okay what if it's but i know i know what you're saying what if jelton up what if jailsen um because jones already beat gone so it doesn't really help that could help john in some way but what if it's at like if aspinall fights almeda and almeda like tackles them and taps him and around does that help john's overall legacy at all or does that do nothing it's gonna make it look silly that john ducked aspinall then so i think actually i don't think it does anything

I think it just makes like, oh, we did it. We had all that drama for that. John, you could have beat that guy. You know? That's interesting. You let Almeda beat him and that could have been you, you know? That's about it. That's interesting, yeah.

But I think they can spend, anyone can spin it any way they won't, you know, until those guys fight each other. But it's not going to happen now. Every day Tommy's getting better. John's getting older. So it's just not going to happen. Of course, Jailton, I made a. makes the call out, which you should. Congrats champ, you deserve that.

Now let's make the only fight that makes sense. Aspinall v. Almeida for an undisputed heavyweight title of the world. Gone ducks you and me before. I already fought for the belt and lost two times. And his last one was a robbery. Jailton, trying to get his... He's trying. That's cute.

He's trying. He's a trier. Hey, close mouths don't get fed. You got to try. You got to try. You got to try. He did better than Curtis Blades did. Oh, geez, curse blades.

Oh, just hobbling with his, it was torn MCO. I was just like, oh. Yeah, I'll fight Cyril God. Let's go. And I'm just like, no, you're not fighting zero. Go. Super Chapman, Luke. We got this a little bit ago, but.

Yeah, looking like an extra dead poet's society. That's good. That was very good. Well done. What a hero move by Jedi. They come out from the boat and freshen up. I was hoping you'd be on the boat. Like just floating in the middle of the lake.

I was like, I was mentioning you. He was like, just, just hold your phone up, man. He's just like, we'll get a decent connection. We'll make it work. That's so funny. He's like, give me some time. I'm going, let me clean up. He's just floating in a tube in the middle of the lake, like reacting to John.

That would be very funny. All right. Another super chat from Luke. Do you guys want merit or big fights? everyone always complains about unwarrant to title shots but Pereira just keeps getting thrown into this. There is no merit in heavyweight though. That's the problem. Is there like who is the who is the clear cut number one contender for the UFC heavyweight title? Because it ain't Cyril gone.

Like God is not like you can't just say serogon is undeniable. Jailton Almeid is undeniable. There is nobody that is undeniable right now. Tom is the only one and he has the interim belt to prove it. There is no undeniable. guy right now. Are we talking, the problem with this question, you always have to, you always have to kind of preface it by, are we talking sport, are we talking prize fighting? Two different things. Sometimes they're the same. A lot of times they're different. We're talking about prayer. That's price fighting.

That's big fights. If I out of doubt, it's prayer's fight. Most of the time, we're talking about price fighting. And that's why it's going to go prayer. We're talking merit. Yeah, I get it. It's a little up for debate. It shouldn't go to prayer. If we're doing merit, then Tom doesn't fight. for a while. Sierra gone fights Jelts and Almeida. The winner of that fight fights Tom. Like if we're living in a true meritocratic world, Tom has to wait for a number one contender fight to happen

because we don't have one right now. So do we want Tom to wait for the meritocratic thing to go down and crown an actual number one contender? Or do we get Tom in there in a big fight against a big name and get the man paid? this one I'm okay with this one I'm okay with like Yayae Rodriguez

getting a title fight against Volcanovsky if they did that card in Mexico because it would be big for the Guadalajara crowd that I'm not I'm not okay with like that is a big fight for that market sure because it's Jaya

and a main event like that's huge for them but that's silly no one was interested in that everyone's like well Mbazar should get the shot or like literally anybody else because we just saw Volk perfect game. Yeah, I year. So there's no interest in that fight. It just kind of, I guess it kind of just depends on the situation.

But at heavyweight, there is no guy right now. So why not just Chuck Breyer in there? It was funny. You were talking about that. And I was like, I was like, let me look at my rankings. Merit-wise, if you go by rankings, obviously it should be Francis, but that he's out of the running. But merit-wise, on my rankings, it should be Volkov because I had Volkov.

I just realized. Imagine they booked that. Aspernel's first title of defense against Volkov coming off that split decision loss. Because I had Volkov winning that fight. I think Dana had, is that the same fight? Dana was like, oh, you won that fight? Am I thinking of the same fight? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I forgot the gone win. I forgot it was off that horrible decision too. Yeah, that's what made everything even muddier. Yeah. I mean, honestly, like if we're looking at, And our rankings are like, Phil DeFries should probably be ranked higher

in all of our rankings. The dudes had like 12 consecutive title defenses or something ridiculous like that. Like, Phil DeFries is probably like the most deserving of a UFC title fight, even though he's not in the UFC. There's just nobody there right now.

Pavlatch is one and two in his last three. Blades just barely beat an unranked dude. Do it. Do you like it. when they, when they sign chaos occur. Yeah, just bring him in a straight title shot. Sure. Go to freeze.

What's your Belize to Spain doing? Bring him back. Bring him back. I mean, who cares? Like, again, it dot, like, who cares? Who cares? Whoever he fought, like, I don't even, I said, I'll keep saying it.

Derek Lewis, Doxotis and Talas of the Cher in two weeks. I can throw him in there. Who cares? Who cares? What a while? Oh, man. So many wilds. stories.

Super chat from Chris. Ooh. Is it too early to say Jamal Hill is a gatekeeper? It's an interesting question. You've got to be Jamal Hill if you want to contend for a title. Is he going to be that guy? Yeah, what did we talk about?

What's next for Jamal Hill? Where is it? Like you said, you said he needed to win more than anyone else. Now he didn't get the win. What's the fallout now for Jamal Hill? Jamal Hill is never fighting for UFC belt again. Okay. Like that's just,

that's just, that's just, he just, he just, he's just one of those guys. He's never fighting for a title again. Unless like something insane happens, uh,

where he just, a fighter falls out the day before and Jamal just happens to be the backup fighter and, like he's not. Discounting weird Joe Soto type title shots. I can actually, no, I mean,

I have, I, I agree. I have a, hard time seeing Jamal Hill work his way back up to a legitimate title shot. I think you give him. I want I want Ulberg to fight Dominic Reyes. That's what I want to see.

I want to give Dominic Reyes his chance to like fight for the belt one more time. Like let's just give it to him and see. Especially if they're going to bump Pereira up. Like have Reyes fight Ulberg, winner fights for the belt. Like I know it's kind of weird, but that's just where we're at. Yuri is just kind of chilling, I guess. He wants to get some sort of degree or some sort of educational thing done. He's taking some time off, right?

He's doing some, like, some education or taking some classes or something. He wants to finish that before he fights again, which total respect, cool with that. Yeah, yeah, take some time off. Jamal Hill might be fighting Osamaat Mirzikhanov next. Like, that might be the kind of fight he takes next. Okay. Or Minyang Zhang, if he beats, uh, I mean, the UFC has still not announced that Johnny Walker fight.

So I assume that's happening, but I don't know. Who's Zhang fighting? Johnny Walker. At least that's like the reports and stuff on that Shanghai card. But the UFC has not announced this fight yet and we're two months away. But if they haven't booked that, I would have no issue of throwing Min Yang Zhang in there with Jamal Hill right now. like next fight so who gets the next title shot

first ankyla if prayer is going up and yuri's out because he's doing his you know his thing I would book olberg versus reyes in the winner of that fights ancholiath but you gotta book it pretty you gotta book it pretty quick Yuri would be the guy

like if you're if if yury's ready to fight like he gets the first right of refusal I would say but it doesn't look like Yuri is in a hurry to fight right now. So maybe like they say, Anka Life wait till November, December, Uri will be ready, then we can do that.

But yeah, light heavy weights, you could throw a roundtree in there if you wanted to. I'm kind of, I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a little crazy and say, one's six out of seven. Yeah, I'm gonna be kind of crazy to say, I don't mind Ray is just getting a straight title shot.

I don't mind it either. I mean, it's got a storyline. Basically, it's got the storyline. He's on a good win. It's easy to sell. I don't know. And then have... If he wins, it would be like one of the most feel-good stories ever.

Yeah. I mean, that's why I kind of don't want to do the Oldberg-Reyas fight because there's so few contenders. I hate... I hate for one and then kind of knock each other out. But I, yeah. But I mean, the fight does make sense. But I'm kind of okay of Rays just getting a title shot. That'd be pretty...

That'd be so sick. And I don't want to really complain. He should get one more win, but whatever. Whatever. You imagine the hero Dominic Reyes would be in the MMA community if he went in there and won the belt? That would be insane. That would be wild. I mean, dude, I would find joy of us going back, me going back into our old archives of all our shows going, Dominic Reyes, he's washed, he's washed, he's washed, he's washed, and all of a sudden, boom, you know.

Yeah. That would be probably one the most insane, well, I don't know, I don't want to jump ahead yet. insane career comebacks in the history of mixed martial arts to be if he can get a title but we're not there yet we're like begging him to retire we're just like yeah yeah yeah you don't want you to die like yeah i thought yerry i thought yerry permanently hurt him with that knockout and then he got done up by span in his next fight which is like just as bad yeah but look at him now look at him now super chat oh here we go does bahamundas need a bulk up to 170

he looked like death in the cage in my opinion i don't think he needs to now but i think that that's coming at some point at some point he might want to try it just to see what it's like to fight at a high level at 170 um like the difference tonight when he popped his eve is like yeah he obviously has great length and he can hit you from very far away.

But because of, you know, that size, he does lack maybe some power. And the power just wasn't there to really change Fizib's game. Fiziv could just take all those shots because Viziv's just, you know, bulky whole cup of a dude. Like they looked like two different weight classes in there. But Fiziv didn't matter. He was still getting inside and still hurting.

He's still hurting a bomb. Dude's really good. Like he is very good. He's a very good lightweight. Pazeev? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, we're talking about it, though, but internally,

and I think Fiziv is like, he might be one of those kind of that category of fighter, like best ever fighter never actually fight for a title. I think he's that good. He just, I mean, like, his two losses, high, high level losses were two freaking Gachie. I'm not going to count the Gameron loss. That's something different. But he lost Gachie in two very competitive fights that. I kind of thought he won the first one.

Clearly the second one, he lost coming in short notice, but it was up for grabs and coming into that third round. And, you know, so, Fiziv, he's still right there. You mean, if you told me Fiziv is going to have a belt around his waist, you know, in a year and a half, I'd be like, that's wild, but very believable, too. Yeah, I'm curious to see how they book him next. I mean, there's so many fun options. So.

We do the Gamrot fight. I'd be okay with that. Kind of unless you get Gamrot BSD. But we could do Fizibb, BSD. Yeah, all right. No wrong way. It's the best of the business store. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's still jazz-again-against anybody. Yeah. It is, yeah. It's no wrong way to eat these Reese's. But there is like, there's no wrong way to book Lightway right now. Yeah, those guys, yeah, yeah. Why can't everyweight class be like that? It's the best.

A heavy weight, we're like, we're like grasping for straws. Like, oh, maybe, I guess. Yeah, but it's lightweight. Like you can't, you can't F up lightweight. Just like, I don't know. Have those guys like, cool. That's awesome. It's all good.

All them work. Super chat from Morty. No to Alex, fix the division, grab a random heavy. Would you like to give us a name? I, again, I'm with you to some degree. The grab a random heavy is fine. Just get him in there. But I think the UFC owes him for riding.

this out as long as he did. Let's give him a fat bag of money. I'm having to fight Pereira. And get the, get all the payvery points, be the A side, get the champions money, all that stuff,

main event spot. Like, do that. Give it to him. He deserves it. Yeah. Yeah, just do it.

You're not going to fix this division. Just yet. Like, we got years. Like, there's some good ones coming up. Like, Josh Hokic, Josh Hokit's going to be a guy

that they're going to do very well in the UFC. but he's still got to get there. He's fighting on Contender Series this summer. He is going to annihilate whoever he fights, I'm sure, because he is, dude is real, real good. So, yeah, they're caught. Like, they'll have some guys coming, but.

Just take slow time. It's going to take, yeah, it's going to take several years for this division to come back. Luna. Just want to say, I miss you guys. Jones caused a personal boycott of M.A. due to what he was doing to M.A. Can't wait to die.

back in Luna, welcome back. The nightmare is over. The nightmare is over. This is a glorious day. Nightmare is over. It's a glorious day. Can you, Matt, go back in time. John Jones just beat Shogunhuah.

And then, you know what? 15 years later, we'll be like, the nightmare's over, John's finally left a sport. You know, like, just like the story of John Jones to like him winning that belt to like now, like, oh, God, he would. tired, thank God. No, it's not, but see, that's, I, I, I, I certainly see how people would,

would spin it in this way. The nightmare is over for me is Dana White saying into a live microphone, we're not making John Jones versus Tom Aspinall. Yeah, it's just the Jones story. Yeah, I know you mean, but yeah, just. Like, the UFC and Dana moving on is the whole thing. John could have literally tweeted out three months ago, I'm never fighting again. I'm retired.

And this would not have come out of his mouth. It wouldn't have. John has tweeted so many times, the UFC knows my plans. I have no interest in fighting for months. And it was like, we'll get it done, 100%. And now today,

today of all days, in Baku, Azerbaijan, no better place. Not a fanatics fest tomorrow, which would have been huge blockbuster news. They dropped it in a good old Baku. So, yeah. I really wish it was Dave Shaw that said news.

Can you imagine that? I really would. I honestly, I'm kind of disappointed in Dana. I'm kind of disappointed to be honest like it wasn't Dave Shaw. Or Dave Shaw? Who sat Cade's side too? So I was like, oh, God, we're definitely going to get a Dave Shaw press conference. That's funny.

All right. Anything else? Welcome back, Luna. Oh, we got a few more, yeah. Oh, yeah, let's keep going. More prestige. better fight. Tom versus Unk. Tom versus Alex. Oh, Prestige? Oh, Alex. Alex, certainly.

Aink might be the better fight. Inc actually probably the better fight as far as using all the martial arts. I think Tom just ravages both those dudes. I don't think it matters really. Alex at least has that like booping chance, I guess. I don't know. Ank's a low-key boop or two, but yeah, I get Alex. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, he's just. But Ang, Peraera wants, Pereira wants to go in there and boop. Like, he just wants to go in there and boop you out of there. Ank just wants to win. And there's nothing wrong with that. Like, and this is a sport after all and you would like to win. But, whoa.

Oh, hey. I mean, I guess, I guess, like, if we're looking at it from a sporting perspective, Tom versus Ank would give us, like, more to break down and more to talk about. More so than Tom versus Alex, because Tom versus Alex is kind of an easy breakdown. If Alex isn't boop him, Tom's going to finish him.

Like, that's just kind of how this plays out. So Tom versus Ank could get slow and sloggy at times, and I don't know. So I guess Hank by a nose in the better fight department, but Herrera, by three global rotations in the more prestige department. And this just shows you how much, how little we give a crap about the whole two belt thing.

The fact that Hank will be going for two belts at the same time, you know, like whatever, it's been done. Like we don't, like that's not even like, that's not even something that's even consideration as far as like the coolness factor of the fight.

Yeah, I have no interest in seeing. I'd rather see Hank like, like with John out now, like I would be curious to like how many times Hank can defend this belt. May not be pretty. May not be the most thrilling fights you've ever seen.

But make no mistake about it. This guy is very good. And there is a real world looking at the current crop of light heavy weights. Ankelaive could win like eight straight title defenses. But it's easy. They could not say easy, but it's very possible. You, like with the people he has available to fight now, you see a path to victory on like, with like eight different guys.

Pretty much all of them, yeah. Yeah. Pretty much all of them. I would pick him to be Pereira if they fought again. Like, and that to me is probably, yeah. Yeah, that'd probably be the toughest fight, honestly. Uh, Perry Rancher, what my year? The year fight, of course, would be fun, because that's always going to be fun.

Um, I'd pick Hank to win, but he's always fun. But yeah, you just never know. Um, yeah. More super jets. See, the real go, look at Amanda Nunesh. Comes out of retirement to fight the up and comer. that is trying to take her crown. Real goat, not a duck.

Yeah. But let's. Yeah. Well, Amanda. Until I see, until I hear an announcement that that fight is happening, then I will like,

I'm not saying it won't happen. But it's one of those situations where it's like, okay, Amanda's not back at the testing pool. Like, Kayla, I don't know how many times she can cut to 135. Like,

there's so, I still have a million questions about how that fight can happen. like is the UFC willing to loosen the straps a little bit in order to make that happen do it at 1.45 maybe do a women's BMF fight

or bring back the women's featherway belt in order for that to go down? I don't know. Nuna's saying maybe the end of the year, perhaps, I don't know. But I do like it. Like the fact that Nune is going to come back and fight Kayla, like that's huge.

That's huge. Nuna's left at the right time because there's like literally nobody left for her to fight. She had to fight a Rini L. Donna in her last fight. Like, I don't, I think when she kind of looks back on, you know, at that point, she was so far ahead in the women's goat conversation that it was just like, all right, I'm bored.

I'll just be the best ever. And then since she retired, like, that gaps closed a little bit with Zhang and Valentina. So, yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll have the man in Nunes goat conversation later. But, yeah, I love the fact that she's coming back. It makes sense. Um, does it have to be at 35 for the belt?

Can it just be, can she fight Kayla just for fun? Not for fun, you know, but for like at a 45 belt at a 40 or something. Hey, would you care? No, I wouldn't care at all. She's kind of curious. Like this is the boat. The UFC should just do, like me and Jed, me especially, I've been saying this since like heck of warning.

It was a thing. Just get rid of like ban. Just get rid of the band and weight division as a whole and just make anything above 127, like women's heavyweight. Like just do 135 to one... Like, ban on weight, two featherweight can all be one division. And just call it like Bamther weight

or whatever you want to call it. Just combine them. Who gives a shit? One belt, one weight class, but it's just a bigger disparity. No one's going to care. All right. More super chats.

Ah, from Luke. This is an interesting one. Luke. So many coffees from Luke, I appreciate it. What can the UFC do to grow the heavyweight division? Pay more money? I mean, that's literally the answer. Yeah.

I don't know if you heard before. There's lots they can do, but it all comes down to that. Because any athletic, big, huge athlete is not going to choose fighting as a professional sport first. They're going to choose literally anything else that pays millions and millions and millions of dollars. They will play baseball. they'll play football, they will play basketball, and they will try to accomplish that dream well before they establish themselves as an MMA fighter.

I talked to Josh Hokit. He's 24, great college football players, a terrific college wrestler, got drafted by the 49ers, was signed to multiple NFL teams, and then COVID hit, and once COVID hit, he got released from like two different teams. And then he was just like,

all right, like this pro football dream is over and I can't be a professional wrestler. I mean, so I have to try this. M.A. thing. He had been training for a while. He's like, I'm going to give this a go. And it turned out he's really damn good at it. So it's just one of those situations where these big, huge heavyweight athletes are going to try other sports where they're paid much more. And that's really what it comes down to.

and yeah money also also the UFC needs to be a sport where they are not just like an organization they are like a professional sports team that have like scouting departments and all this stuff like Sean Shelby and Mick Maynard are good at their jobs they match me very well but at the same time like it is impossible for just those two guys to go out there and scout talent. Like they have, it's, it's impossible. It truly is impossible. Like, they need to get like MMA scouts in like every part of the country and in the world. Really scouting these guys, finding the best of the best to get in there and fight.

I mean, this is what we're trying to do here. If you kind of look at how contender series has gone, because like if you, I'm not going to beat the contender series drum again. But the first two series seasons of the Contender Series, legitimately they took it super seriously. They found, they went out and found literally the best fighters not in the UFC and had them all fight each other. Regional champions from every major promotion were all fighting each other in main events. Like we're getting like dream fights if you were like a hardcore MMA fan, the Caposos of the world. We're like seeing Matt Bissette and Kurt Hollabo headlined the first Contender series card, I was like, holy shit, dude. Like the Titan FC champ versus the CES champ.

Like this is sick. This is what we're looking for. And now it's just like, hmm, who's this fighter managed by? Oh, he'll take a small 10 and 10 contract if he gets in. Let's bring them on. And then it just turned into how can we conduct business in the right way? Let's just give everybody contracts. We can cut some of the fighters who lose who make 75 and 75.

And we'll just give the roster an influx of 12 and 12 fighters. And it was funny seeing some of these fighters just say, no, I'm not fighting for that. Peace out. I'll go fight Rico Verhoeven in freaking glory. And that's that. Like, I'm not going to accept that. So, yeah, it's, there's a lot that needs to change. But yeah, money is the biggest thing.

Yeah, we just look at why isn't UFC heavyweight division grow? One of the guys just left because of the money. But do Rico Verhoeven? I didn't even think it was because of the money. Oh, yeah, that guy. Yeah, Armin. Arden. Ardham, yeah.

Ardum, yeah. He was like, nah, I'm good. Yeah, I got way better to do over here. Thanks, though. I don't think Arden. And I don't know for sure, but Ardum probably didn't ask for like six figures a fight. But he probably asked for like, yeah, a little more than like the 12 and 12 he would have gotten if he signed. And they were just like, no.

And he was like, all right, peace out. I'll go fight Rico and make way more money. Yeah. Like way more money. Training is a lot less. crazy. Yeah, no one's going to tackle me. Like, it's all good.

Okay, a couple more Super Chat before we get out of this hour and 45 minute post-U.C. Baku Golly. That's worth it. I mean, Jesus Christ. Wait, hold on. Can we...

Okay, that's just... Is there anything else on the card we need to talk about? An actual card. Let me see. Before I go to the last... Okay, we can't believe. Curtis Blaine.

DeGarlon Beckoff is good. Maxim is also good. How about this? Knieif, you kind of contend Blades looked bad. I contend that Keneiv looked actually pretty good. Where are we at? I'm still 80-20 on Blades. And I was, I'm not going to say, I was vindicated.

But I definitely felt better about Blade saying, like, I got really hurt in this fight, like early on Tor and Meniscus. he looked he looked bad especially in the last two rounds like blades looked bad having said that i know people are really up in arms about blades getting that decision uh and i will say just kind of digging deep i do too i thought blades won the third round so i thought he won the fight i didn't have money on cunyiv i bet like if you were holding a cunyov ticket and you lost that decision you're probably a little pissed i get it but i thought Blades won that round.

Like he landed the best, the best strikes of the round. He did kind of like hold Cuniav against the fence for like two and half minutes, but he did deliver some damage before that. And then Cuniav's best moment happened in like the last five seconds of the fight. And I don't think that was enough to win it. But certainly wasn't a robbery. But the bigger takeaway for me was,

yeah, Blaze doesn't look that great in these last 10 minutes. And I think we have kind of no why because he was hurt. Or at least he says he was hurt. And Cooney have was a little bit better than I thought he was going to be, but like Cooneyov's not going to fight for a belt or anything. I think he's not saying that, but I thought Cooney have looked decent. I thought Cooney have I got like my rankings, but I'm, I'm, I'm, this is a good chance I might rank him in top 15, you know, based on the loss and how competitive the loss was. But, um, or, or where I move Blades back in the rankings on the win.

Well, he might actually, shit. Well, Blades is getting bumped for me. He's like, whatever you have. now he's going back his spot despite winning. So I had Blades at seven heading into this fight. I'm jumping Phil DeFries to seven and everybody else is dropping back a spot. Like we have to give Phil DeFries. We got to give this man his respect.

This dude just doesn't lose and hasn't lost him forever. Just continuously defends his belt all the time, keeps winning. Like, let's give him his respect. I agreed. I can't like rank Almeida above him because Blades finished him not. long ago. So, but now John Jones is out.

So, Waldo Cortez Acosta is going to get ranked after his last win. He has to. He beats Sergey's not. He just, this is where we are. It's weird. I don't know.

Maybe Cooney have sneaks in there? I don't know. Maybe he sneaks into the 15 by like default. Like this is like women's ban and weighty type of situation where it's just like, damn, we need to find somebody to put in there. But.

it probably will not be him. But he made a better showing of himself than I thought he would. But I mostly attribute that to Blades not being at his best. Fair enough. Any other fights? Oh, I thought the Korean kid, Co. Ka, Co. Yeah.

I'm sure he's against Oban Elliott. I thought he looked awesome. I just didn't know who he was at all. And maybe the fact that he's called the Korean Tyson and the opposite of a sudden he's like this amazing top control grappler who just just worked Elliot and um it made a very impressive unanimous decision i don't know how good um co is how do you say co is it co i can't remember but i don't remember i don't know how good he he's going to me but it was a very impressive win and um i'm actually excited the same fight again so yeah he he looked great um

i didn't expect him to win but as we kept kind of telling you on all our shows O'Bahn Elliott and minus 500 is just ridiculous. And it's no disrespect to him. Just Obon is, he's incredibly untested. His wins are like, his wins are Val Woodburn, Preston Parsons, and Basil Hefez. And the Hefez fight of memory seriously correctly was like a, he looked good in that fight. And then the third round, he like really took over and got him out of there. But like.

And if Elliot won to win tonight, we would have said the same thing. still untested because we didn't know who this guy was other than good record. So it was kind of a no-win situation for Elliott in a sense. You know, if he could be good tonight. Yeah. Yeah, he's gotten the rub from Chale and he got it from Ariel and, you know, he used that. Yeah, I want to go and props to Elliot for like for a guy who doesn't, I don't expect to be a top 10. He might break the top 15.

No, if he does it, that's awesome. But the way he kind of just presented went out there, did a lot of media, let us know his personality, his story. It got us invested. And I think people kind of. Yeah, people cared about him. And I think as a fighter, you know, you are your own self, you know, your own business. He did a great job that people, the fact that we even know who he is and are talking about him for a guy who really, you know, isn't the biggest prospect. But he seems to be, he gets himself out there in a good way.

It doesn't kind of force, he doesn't kind of force himself. His personality is just kind of natural. So that's all. I think just seems like a good dude. Took a loss tonight and we'll see. What happens? That's all. And I like him a lot.

I don't think he's like a top 15-ish kind of fighter, but that's okay. Weltaway is a very good division as we've seen. But here's what I really like about him most. After the loss, he goes on Instagram. It's got the big bandage over his eye where he got cut up and doesn't make a single excuse. He says, I was just prepared as ready as I could ever be for a fight. and I got my ass kicked tonight. That's what he said.

Verbatim. Wasn't I dared to be great? You know, I had a toe injury coming in. I had jet lag from the travel. It was none of that. It was I did everything I could possibly do to get ready for this fight. I was so pumped, ready to go, A plus training camp, no injuries, and dude kicked my ass. Love that.

Absolutely loved that. I took it on the chin. He even said, like, I'm going to be. I'm going to take it like a man and I'm going to go back and be better and I'll be back. Like that's how you take a loss. So shout out to Oban Elliott for that. Yeah. I think, I guess that's, I guess that's my, that's my point of him.

Like, just because he's not going to be, he's not going to be a champion doesn't mean like, you can't be a fan or whatever. Like, it wouldn't put aside. Exactly. And that's what's good about Oban Elliott. The fact that I know his name. I don't say I know his, I don't have to look him up. I was like, and for a guy there's no, not going to be a top-grin guy. I know his name.

about having to do anything stupid. Just be himself. And I want more of that. Nate Landware's never winning a UFC title. Like he's never going to win a UFC title. But no one cares. We love him. He says cool shit on the mic.

Got an incredible personality. You just sort of gravitate towards him. And then when he fights, like, it's just fun. He's a fun fighter. Yeah, he's not going to be a top 10 guy. He's not going to fight for belts. But anytime he's booked to fight, We're like, fuck yeah.

Nate Landwer is fighting. I'm watching. Dude rocks. You can make a damn good living. Being a known guy who fights top 30 dudes. Like, you can make a good career for yourself doing that. It's fine. Yeah, that's fine.

Absolutely. One more super chat before we get out of here. Well, we don't want to go like 12 hours here? I'm just kidding. Finally, it's over. Glad you have seen John Jones wasted hours and Tom's time for a year for literally no reason. Is this the most famous ducking in combat sports history? Oh, what are the famous

Ducks? Shit. I'll do a ranking show. I'm sure the chat will like be all over this more than I am like at this very moment. Famous like high level goat level ducks. Like. Oh, Jermaine Duranmi and Chris Seaborg. Yeah, that is like that is like the duck of ducks right there.

She literally won the featherweight belt. And then like Chris is sitting cage side. And then she's like, yeah, I don't think so. And then she's just like, yeah, they just strip her in the belt. And do you remember like when we're talking about the John Jones situation when they didn't strip him like a year ago? And we just read the wording about why they stripped your main der enemy. Oh, yeah. We expect you to fight the next like the best person in the division.

And it was Chris Seaborg and she wins. So we've stripped her the belt. Like, golly, man. Yeah, that was That is probably the number one duck Of all time Like even more than this Like John at least like

And the UFC had no issue of bearing Baring Germain either No No issue of it at all First of all A lot of people thought she lost that fight Second of all she hit Holly after the bell Like two different times

And didn't get a point taken away from her I had Hollywood That card Yeah, that card stunk. That was a very bad fight guard. Outside of Dustin Pory and Jim Miller, who beat the shit out of each other, those two guys are incredible, buried on a card that was awful. I remember that was like the first pay-per-view I had ever covered,

like live and in person. And I was like, man, this is tough scenes. Tough scenes. And then like, Chris is literally right there trying to set this fight up. She's like, nah. Maybe I'll fight somebody else. I don't know. And then she's just like, I'm not fighting her.

she took steroids. I don't want to fight anybody who took steroids or whatever and accused her of all that shit and they were just like, all right, let's get out of here. Let's move on with this whole situation. So, yeah, it was crazy.

So wild. Okay, we got a lot of, yeah, a lot of people, Floyd and Pacquiao, Floyd Duck. Floyd Duck. Yeah, I mean, I was thinking more of M.A. But yeah. Yeah.

But in terms of MMA, yeah. Hey, I think we're good. We're good? All right. Yeah, I feel like I've aged 10 years in the last hour and 55 minutes. Thinking I'm coming on talking about Baku. We're going to be in and out in 50 minutes. I'd be hanging out in my family, maybe having some dinner.

You see what it says right there? You see what it says right above me? Uh-uh. Right there. You have to see Baku in Lights slash Jones retirement reaction. Hit the music. Let's get out of here. Now, look, I know there are some of you out there that's like,

who gives this shit about John Jones and Tom Aspital? I want to talk about UFC Baku. And I think we gave you what we could considering what was going on. But tomorrow, AK and I will record a brand new edition of On to the next one. We will talk, I'm sure we'll talk about the John Jones Tom Asimal situation to get AK's reaction to it. But we're going to talk mostly about UFC Baku, the matchmaking in regards to where Khalil Roundtree goes from here, where Rafael Fiziv goes. On and on we go.

We'll put over Zim Sadikov and Nicholas Motta. a little bit more, the loan bonus winners tonight. And we'll wrap and pack UFC Baku for all of you. And then we get to move to International Fight Week. UFC 317 coming up. Ilya versus Charles Oliveira. So a lot going on in the MMA space, a wild year for 2025. And we're going to be here with you all the time, baby.

So for Casey, I am Mike Eck. Shout out to Jed, who joined us from the lake. Shout out to Dana White. for giving us this news. It all happened. For Casey, I am Mike Heck. That is it. You and scratchy as well.

Have a good night, everybody. Bye-bye. You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.