MMA Fighting - The MMA Beat: Episode 228 (Conor McGregor Speaks Out, Lobov-Malignaggi Trash Talk, UFC Rochester Recap)

Episode Date: May 23, 2019

On this episode of The MMA Beat, the panel discusses Conor McGregor speaking out about the Khabib Nurmagomedov brawl, BKFC’s style of promotion in the Artem Lobov vs. Paulie Malignaggi build up, UFC Rochester’s fallout, and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Healthnetics products are all natural, THC-free, made in the USA, and undergo third-party lab testing to ensure quality and purity. All CBD is not the same. Order today with a money-back guarantee at healthnetics.com and use promo code sports for 20% off. You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. It is Thursday, May 23rd, 2019, and this is the MMA Beat. Welcome, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas. I'm the host of this program.

You know me from SiriusXM as well as MMA fighting. And today, ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special panel. You know, I've been doing this show. It's gone through many different iterations, different studios, different hosts, different panelists. I've done more than any other person on the show is on MMABEP, episode one. Here we are, episode 78 billion. We've had Mike Jackson. on the show before, who was a fighter in the UFC, but he was also kind of media before that.

We have never to this day had a UFC fighter, straight up a UFC fighter as a panelists on the show because we weren't sure if it was going to be a good idea. Well, we're about to test that little theory, aren't we? To my left is Danny Sigurra. Past that is UFC Bansomweight. Boom is here. Ryan Keller. How are you, sir?

Good. Thank you for having me. And at the very end, you know him. He is the Iceman from M.A. fighting as well as the ringer Chuck Mindenhall, the man in the hat, man of many names. Yes. All right, boom. We're going to see how this goes.

Why don't you just talk for an hour? This is very, this is a trouble and this could be a huge success, could be a huge failure. It's everything blamed in. It's like a fight day from me later. I was going to say, man. It's probably never been in a pressure situation like this. Yeah, you don't know anything about this game. I woke up sweating this morning.

Welcome to the Terror Dome. All right, so let's get this going, Derry. We'll start with you as we customarily do. Let's start with BKFC. Did you go? No, you were doing the show with me on Monday. But I'm sure you saw what happened on my day. By the way, perfect that that was at a Davein Busters in Times Square.

I can think of nothing else to do but spit on one another in such kind of a venue. So here's the issue with this. You have Polly Malinagia going out there on the heels of Deonté Wilder, by the way, telling Dominique Brazil, Brazil. He wanted to kill him in the ring. You have, you have Pauly kind of saying similar things, at least to put Artem Lobov in a coma, spitting on him, threatening to essentially commit a war crime by doing bad things to his corpse. It's gotten to the point now where everyone's kind of laughing because it's a bit of a side show, but you have to go like, and it's also going to be in Florida.

It's like two Florida men. Tampa. Yeah. So you kind of have to just sort of wonder if this is all a big joke. On the other hand, man, it is so ugly now. I'm wondering if the people promoting, because I've seen how Paulie promotes in boxing, it didn't look like this, even against Adrian Broner. And that was ugly. What is happening here?

Is it going too far? How do you feel about this? Or is it all just a big circus? We should just laugh at it. Well, I think you do have to take it seriously in this sense. of like, you know, having security there to make sure nobody gets hurt and ticket seriously in that manner. But as far as, like, the promotion itself, I don't think it's gone too far.

I mean, just a few months ago, you know, we were talking about Conrad Gregor and Habib, that's too far. I think this is right on the borderline. I think it's obviously ugly. It isn't pretty, but it is the fight game. This is the hurt business. These guys are going to fight at the end of the day. So, you know, I don't think it's gone too far.

You know, they're attacking the character, the person, which I'm usually fine with that. there's been some things said that, you know, a little bit off, you know, Polly's saying he's going to pee on an artem and whatnot. But they're not talking about, you know, they're not talking about religion, you know, races, you know, a number of topics. Not yet.

Not yet. But I don't think that's the direction they're going to. Because if you look at their trash talk is really based about just each other, like I have a problem with you and you have a problem with me. Whereas the Habib and McGregor situation, it's spread out. And then it was more culturally rather than,

than just attacking the individual. So can it turn an ugly or sure, but at least at this point, I think it's fine. Right? What do you think? Yeah, no, I think the question is like, what is too far? You know, I think if you're spitting on somebody, that's a little too far to me. I mean, if you spit on me, we're essentially fighting. So, you know, Polly's doing things like that, kind of crossing the line.

But words are words, and fight promotion is fight promotion. I think all is fair. Whatever you want to say you're going to say, you know, in all honesty, they're going to get into a ring and scrap and do a bare knuckle and harm each other. So it's, you know, what you say can't be too much when you know at the end, that's what's going to happen. What about the idea, though,

that we've gotten a little comfortable? I remember when Frank Mears said he wanted Brock Lissner to be the first death in the Octagon. He lost his job at WC commentary for that. Now, that was 10 years ago. It was a different time. Everyone was looking for MMA to get accepted into the mainstream. So I get the difference.

I'm just wondering, and you're a competitor, someone wishing death on you, dude? What if something bad happens? Someone's going to trace that back and go, we did not take this seriously, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, that's another thing that, you know, this is escalating further and further as time goes on. It's like people are setting the bar higher and higher, like he said, with Connor and Khabib, it got so out of hand with racial comments and religion and stuff like that.

I feel like now that sets the bar for other people to think, oh, okay, like we can go this far with it. It's funny because it's almost like, Pauli feels like he's in a side show, like you mentioned. I feel like he believes he's in a strange cameo on the, gutter. He's going to some other place to kind of carry boxing and integrity and he's going to show all these MMA fans. He's going to show this guy from the MMA world kind of what's up, you know? And it's just, it's bizarre on that level because like you said, this isn't the polymolonnaudge we've seen in the past. So I feel like he's carrying a little bit more baggage into this, which is Attell, obviously. He's obviously psychologically involved more than maybe he normally would be.

And he's got something to prove, I guess. So it's all playing out in that sense. But man, I don't know that he doubled down, you know, he's like about the coma and all that, they kind of double down, you know, I don't want to wish your harm on anybody, but, you know, if it happens, at least show all you guys, you know, with this, this is real, you know, like, he was presenting it like it was a useful teaching moment. Right, exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's just, it's, it's, I guess we've kind of with the, with the backboard between him and McGregor, and then, you know, that you have that whole sideline going in. It doesn't feel over the top. It feels like maybe where you anticipated it might be, just given that kind of bad blood between the camps and everything.

But I feel like it's only going to get crazier from here on out, man, as we get closer to this thing. Brian, what's the worst anyone's ever tried to, like, get, promote a fight with you? Like, how far has somebody gone? I haven't had much happen to me, to be honest. I mean, I've gotten in people's faces before back and forth, but no one said anything, like, really malicious to me. Or, you know, I'm not, like, the type to talk trash, so I don't think I set it up where it's, like, it's going to come back at me like that. But, yeah, nothing really crazy with me.

You know, no one touched me. No one really said anything about my family. or any kind of religious things. So I haven't had struggles with that. But I think that with the Polly thing, it's like he's so fired up and it's interesting because he doesn't have a direct beef with Artem himself.

It all came from that sparring session with Connor. It's like he's still holding on to that bitterness of that video and those pictures. He's talking about that. He can't let that go. He's so heated up to like get back at that that I think this fight is like all about that moment. This fight is really, I think that's exactly correct, Danny.

This fight is like, We don't really know what happened in the sparring. We saw that little tiny thing. Was it a knockdown? Was it a knockdown? He says released the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. I don't think it's fair to call Connor a frontrunner,

but I think it is fair to say he's much tougher in the early parts of a fight than the later parts. This is Pauly trying to drown that memory in the bathtub and set a new one up. Not really just get a fight with Connor, but I want to show you I was right about the sparring. And ironically, for keeping it alive. I mean, essentially, he was set up because if you look at all the interviews and all the media he did, He went in there going, oh, I'm here to help McGregor. Me and McGregor, I remember, like, he was talking about McGregor, like, you know, they were partners, but McGregor was not in that partner business.

He brought him in, he flew him in to beat him up. That's what he did. Take pictures of him. And then he ruined his reputation by putting all this footage out there. We know the MMH rules, how, you know, insane they are. They just came after Polly, and I think that's something he wasn't expecting. And, I mean, if you just look at all the media, he did post that, I mean, it's just hours of him just going at it and ranting about this. So this is in a way, like a little out.

like a way to vent in a way to, you know, I guess release some of that anger that he has and kind of get back at that team. It's a very sweet wheelhouse for the bare-knuckle organization to find because they're basically taking a vendetta that's very alive in a fight community in Sandler. We're going to find some resolution by bringing these two guys together. What better way to do this? They have way more attention on this fight than they could have possibly had if they had 50 of the way they were going, you know, the fight cards that they're putting together with some names on them. But, you know, there's no real beef. This is the kind of thing they need to fight. like vendettas that can play out almost on a sideline.

You know what I mean? And this is Taylor made for bare knuckle FC because say like Bare knuckle FC wouldn't exist, bare knuckle boxing wouldn't exist and it would just be UFC in boxing. You know if you put Polymona Noggi and Artham Lobel in a boxing match, you probably know who's gonna win.

You know if you put them in the UFC in an MMA fight, that wouldn't be that intrigued because you know who's gonna win as well. But this is right in the middle. There's clenching, there's, forget about the storyline and the beef, just the fight itself. It's actually intriguing. It's actually, you got an active fighter, but, you know, that's not really a boxer.

And then you got, you know, the clinch aspect of it. So just from the fight perspective is actually a really intriguing about this is Taylor made for that organization. It's funny. I was thinking about it. What the most, the most selling pay-per-view in UFC history had the promotion that all of us were like, that got a little far, right? So it was obviously Habib versus McGregor, two and a half million pay-per-view buys. This fight, I think, I don't know what it's going to do because it's kind of... How much is it?

I don't know. Okay. I don't know. So that's, again, price point. What's it going to be? Florida's making them wear gloves that have no knuckles, but they have to to have gloves, which is like the most Florida dumbass thing I've ever heard in my life. So there's that.

But I was just thinking about this. I remember some bare knuckle. Yeah. Yeah, moderately bearish. Partially bare-wrist. Yeah, bare wrist. I was thinking about like 10 years ago. I remember when the UFC was promoting itself and promoting its fighters, they were like,

these guys have accounting degrees and their college graduates. And that was fine for like a respectability notion. But to promote a fight, this is the best that BKFC is probably ever. going to do. And the best the UFC ever did was super ugly. I'm not saying this is historically crazy. I think everything goes in cycles. But it is kind of alarming, Brian, right? But like, we knew ugliness sold. But I don't know that there's a breaking point. Like, oh, you think, oh, ugliness sells up to a point. I'm not sure about that. Ugliness seems to sell as long as you just keep up the ugliness. True or false. No, it's true. It seems like in this business, there's like

no laws, you know what I mean? Like, it's just like, do whatever you got to do to make this sell. And it's interesting that it's like that. But like... So then why don't you engage in more of that kind of stuff? If you know it works. I think it has to be somewhat in you, you know, it's kind of in your personality to let loose and say crazy things. And when you do stuff like that, you have to back it up. You know, I always admire someone who goes so far to say, you know, a lot of cocky things and and preach things that, you know, you got to go in there and now back that up and that's on your shoulders, you And I think for someone like me, I don't really want that on my shoulders, that extra pressure.

I don't want to put that out there and then be thinking, what if now? What if I don't do that? What if this doesn't happen? It looks worse on you, you know, in the end. So I just choose to stay out of that kind of thing. But it's crazy how things are going when you're spitting on people and hit them on the head with microphones. I mean, it's funny stuff and it makes us want to watch it. And you're not even, you guys aren't even mentioned in the Mayweather McGregor antics for four days where he's showing up like a pimp and doing all the stuff and making racist joke.

I mean, that sort of... You mean the tour. Yeah, the tour. There's a four-day tour. I mean, like, I thought that that went too far at the time. I was like, this is like gratuitous. Like, this just keeps going on and on, but some people loved it, man. And look at the sales figures.

And the sales figures for that one, too. It is the most uncomfortable reality that kind of thing works as well as it does. And obviously, the common theme in every scenario, we're talking about us, Connor McGregor, right? Because his specter will play over this as well. And I think that that's, it tells you what kind of business that guy's running. You know what I mean? Like when he can basically just be a figure that's...

out there in that realm and it still matters. Right, let me pitch this one back to you because Pauli said something that I thought actually was right. He said a lot of things that I didn't think made sense. So not everything. Let me be clear. I'm not saying everything Pauli said makes up. But there was one argument he made that he goes, these MMA fighters, and not all the

fighters necessarily, but Artham and then the community generally, they're like, oh, well, boxers, you know, and they fight with big pads and limited things you can do. And his point is like, yeah, it's not as multivariable as MMA. it's just punching above the waist, but look at the trail of bodies. Look at the trail of damage. It's much worse inside boxing than is an MMA, and he sort of attacked the MMA community for it.

I got to be honest, I don't think he's wrong. I've heard this for years from people. They're like, well, I'm not saying MMA, I don't know which one's harder, right? But I know that there's a bit of an attitude inside MMA towards boxing. I think people think there's a sneaky suspicion that's a little bit easier and a little bit less dangerous.

The facts don't really bear that. out. I think Polly's kind of right. Yeah, I would agree with him to some extent. I think, you know, MMA fighters think that the game of MMA is harder because of the different aspects that we have to train in and use in the fight. But with boxing, you're taking a lot more shots to the head because you can't clinch up necessarily and you can't take a guy down and hold them down or whatever. So I think with that said, yeah, we just don't know with CTE, the research, though, you know, like we haven't seen what it's done to MMA fighters. It hasn't really been shown. So, you know, with boxing, it's definitely dangerous to take a lot of head shots like that and not have any other

option. But, you know, the gloves or no gloves, I think, you know, I don't really even think Pauly has something against MMA. I think this is just him trying to speak on behalf of the fact that he's fighting an MMA fighter, you know? By the way, it's a candid question. Are you worried about CTE? Oh, yeah, 100%. I mean, I take my CBD oil every day. It hopes that it works. I don't know, you know. You know, I know a lot of people, you know, talk good things about it, but you just never know. you know, there's not enough research on CBD either. Like, is there side effects later down the road

you find from taking that every day? That's negative. I don't know, but I am worried about it. You know, I've been knocked out once in my career. Haven't taken much damage, you know, other than that fight. But after that, you start to rethink things, and it's hard to tune that out, you know, once you deal with that. Danny, what do you think?

Does Pauli have a point? He does. And I also think that the cultures are different because in M.A, you sort of, I feel like an M.A. MMA fighters and just MMA fans have a perspective that boxers are pampered, that boxers, you know, and in a way the culture is, it is a little bit different in that sense. Like, for example, I've, as media, I've covered, you know, open workouts for boxers. And, you know,

it's not a bunch of dudes in a mat grappling or anything. It's usually just one guy and that guy has like 20 dudes around them, you know, drying the sweat off, you know, lacing their gloves, one guy for the water. You know what I'm saying? Just really taking care of them, right? They almost feel like, you know, and I mean this with 100% of respect, like, like race horses, you know, like, completely treated like, you know, like this is the guy. Whereas MMA, everybody's in there. You're in there working hard. You're in there grinding.

You know what I'm saying? So there is that sort of misconception that gets lost. Oh, so this guy must not be tough. This guy has somebody drying his sweat with a towel. You know what I'm saying? But at the end of the day, boxers put in the work, man. They have to be tough to get there. Also, like, just look at Artem's record.

You know, we tease around about him being the goat and, you know, being a 50-50 fighter. Whereas boxers, you know, throughout their career until the very end, they get usually set up with good matchups, right? So I think there's cultural differences in that. But I don't think it speaks to, you know, boxers being less tough than an M.A. Did you find that feeling as a – I don't know how pervasive it is. It's not a scientific thing.

But I've heard it for years. Oh, well, boxing is a little bit dead. Polly's right to push back against that. Yeah. I mean, in the standing eight count, right? Like, you always think about that when a guy – like, there's no time to recover. The fight is over in an M.A.

When a guy is basically knocked down and it is rendered – defenseless. At that point, the fight is usually over. We see cases where they let it go on too long, but that's usually the case. In boxing, you could get, you know, just completely clobbered and you're senseless for a few seconds, but then you wake up and you can stand up and actually continue the fight. That to me is always the biggest divide, to be honest. That's when you, because you see guys- But also on quitting, like, folks don't realize this, Melanacianchi fought with a broken jaw before. Yeah. And he wanted to quit. He just didn't because he didn't want the scarlet letter on him. Whereas in M.A, like, if somebody quit, you'd be like,

smart call. That was the right call. That's true. That's true. And that's, yeah, that's what he was saying about like tapping out. You know, he keeps tapping it and showing like an MMA at any point. You can just lay down and tap, you know, if you're feeling like things aren't going your way, it's kind of true. I mean, if you're-Jibir, tap strikes against Matt Sarah. Yeah, exactly. The best fighter ever. Yeah. If your mind's not in it and you're having a tough time and you start thinking negative in there and, you know, you're on the ground in a bad position, like you do have the ability to make it look like, you know, put your arm around my neck and I'm out of You know, and in boxing, that is something that really is frowned upon, you know, to quit, like you said,

if you stay on your stool and you don't come up to try to fight and keep going. So, yeah, that's a point, too. Yeah, 100%. Amir Khan, you know, being like, oh, my balls hurt. I'm out. Like, you know? Yeah, there's definitely, it's easier to find a way to quit in MMA than it is in boxing. By the way, that's, I agree, just very quickly.

I think that's a good thing about MMA. Like, like, boxing's lack of humanity is a positive for it. And that's where people get hurt, you know, when, you know, you know, you won out, but, heck, I don't want to look like an idiot. So I'm going to, you know, stay in there, you know, extra minute and get, you know, that extra damage. And to your point, you know, when you get rocked in MMA, you get hit, sometimes we see fights stopped prematurely. And right, we talk about it and fans complain about it. But in boxing, like, you know, if you get, if you go down, you have the ability to go back up. And the will that you have to summon to go back in there and get back in the fight, it's ridiculous.

So I think both fighters are tough is just different cultures. Superdevil. That's the only thing about that last fight. Yeah, exactly. That's the most ridiculous thing ever. He looks like he's completely out and he's like, hmm, back up.

I mean, it's just, you see that stuff in boxing, but that fight is over in MMA, you know what I mean? Even Brazil, he was getting back up too. It was too late, but he was like trying, you know? Yeah, after taking a bomb, having it exploded on his face. All right, so then let's move on to the other part of the story, which is not connected to the BKFC part, but as you alluded to,

McGregor going on Tony Robbins' podcast. Funny, then news breaks yesterday that multiple women have accused Tony Robbins of sexual misconduct. Good timing. I was like, perfect. In any event, forget that part. Here's the thing I was thinking about. Listen to what he had said. A lot of different things. I'm not really asking any of you to weigh in on the truth value of it, but I found it to be an incredibly deft move by Connor McGregor, which they often are. Number one, he acknowledges sort of like other sports luminaries like LeBron and how they've changed his perspective. on taking care of himself, number one. That was fourth one. Second of all, going on Tony Robbins' podcast, where Tony Robbins was just fanboying it up. He didn't go on a sports podcast. You know, he wanted like a self-help guru

where you can just sort of tell your side of the story. You know, it's a very Oprah-ish in that regard. So that was interesting. And then he, to me, like, is this the first time he's talked about the brawl at length? I think so. And he talked about it with levity and how he was, he won in the end.

But the thing that was really thinking about was, the key insight for me, Chuck, I want to go to you first on this one. what I took away from it was he realized that Habib's next fight can't be him. Hebeb's got to do something else. But Conner's next fight, if he plays his cards right, might actually just be Habib. He has to sit out of rotation. But if he can start to bring levity to an ugly situation and tell his side of the story and say these guys are running,

and God only knows is going to happen with Tony Ferguson and Cowboy, right? there is a way to weasel his way. I've used the word weasel, but you know, find a way back in in the queue. How effective do you think, and this is the beginning, it seems to me. How effective do you think this push can be? I think highly effective. Well, I'm glad to hear you say that because I honestly thought that same thing. I was like, I wasn't sure what he thought of this brawl.

You know, the whole thing, it seemed like he handled at the time kind of like counterintuitively to what some people might have. They might have made a big stink about it and tried to, you know, milk the situation for all his worth. He seemed immediately, even that night, to just be like, no big deal, no big deal. And so we finally hear him, and he does use levity, and he does mention all that stuff. He kind of starts planting seeds, which he always, you know, he's very good at doing. I thought it was very Connor McGregor, let's put it that way, to come in and play it that way. And I agree with you 100%. We've talked about it before.

It's like, does anybody really within a fight bubble want to see that fight? And why? We've talked about it getting so dark that it's one of those things. You're like, I don't even sure. I want to see that kind of energy collide again. But at the same time, what is he doing then? He's going back and he's reworking the, you know, the wires behind it and saying like, well, you know, it was all in good fun type thing. You know what I'm saying?

And I think that he's, that's the right approach. I think you've got to get, you have to somehow make it so it doesn't seem like it's a, like a war. Like you're going back into some dark place where everybody's going to be kind of like, who, the mood of this one is very dark. Get past that. That would be the first part. And then start working on the competitive side of it because he was already planting those seeds as well. I was just saying like, you know, it was my training. We were doing defensive.

I'm an attacker. Let me try it my way. That sort of thing. He's planting all the right seeds. That's the way I saw it. Yeah, it was interesting, too. Like, one thing I took away from that was he mentioned his foot was hurt in training. He came up with a lot of different excuses, you know, from training the weight cut and stuff.

And I think it's funny because RDA hurt his foot, had to pull out of their fight, but then he hurt his foot. And he's mentioning it after taking a loss. You know, it's kind of like one of those things you don't do, you know, you make front of one guy for pulling out for an injury, but then you say, I lost and this is why. Like, I had the same injury. But yeah, I think he's, Connor's really smart. He's playing his cards right. He's throwing jabs out back at Khabib and Ali. He knows Ali's going to hear this. And that's, you know, Ali has a lot of power and he's going to be stubborn. He doesn't want to give Connor a rematch. He wants to let him sit out and, you know, try to work his way back,

back up the top. And, you know, this is what Connor has to say to try to find his way back in there somehow. But hey, if Porre beats Khab, that kind of sets Connor up too, you know, another rematch fight. So he's going to find his way in there somehow. I just think the injury thing real quickly going back to you on this one, a lot of times we're like, oh, you know, my hand was messed up or whatever. And 99% of the time people are like, oh, and you saw a little bit of that here. But if he can turn that into, but okay, here's a way to think differently about it next time. Not like, he doesn't want you to dwell on the loss. He wants you to reimagine the future, which a lot of fighters don't do. They don't.

pivot as a way to get it back. It might work. It might work, right? Yeah, it could for sure. I mean, he's saying all the right things. You know, with injuries, it's like some fight with Connor McGregor, like he's going to go in there and make a crazy amount of money to fight. Some guys are making the base pay and they're fighting for their life, essentially.

So if you're not 100% and you got to go in there and fight for that base pay or let's say it's your last fight and your deal, it's not the same situation as a guy like Connor or someone fighting for, you know, a championship where they're going to go in there with some injuries and make that big pay to it. Denny? I think this was... You find it effective what he's doing? Oh, 100%.

And I think this is also not very telling about him, but also the audience. Like, the big fights happen, casuals make the big fights happen. Connor McGregor versus Floyd made what happened because the mainstream media hopped on that and the casuals were like, oh, we want to watch this, you know? But if you spoke to the hardcores, the hardcore boxers and the hardcore MA fans, people weren't too... They weren't about that fight.

So same goes with this one. The feeling leaving Habib McGregor was, one, this is ugly, two, Connor McGregor got washed. And now you see Connor McGregor spinning and embellishing the storyline, which he's a master at doing so. One is stating out there, and this is all targeted towards the casuals. That's why he's on Tony Robbins. 100%. Not the hardcore MMA fans.

By painting to the casuals that, look, Habib was wrestling me. I was in the attack mode of the whole time. He's the one not looking to fight me. He was just looking to hug my legs. He was injured. Exactly. I was injured. And then, you know, a casual goes, yeah, why don't they stand and strike?

Why don't they actually fight? Why is Habibu, you know, hugging his leg? And then, you know, he's embellishing everything and saying how he got the last laugh, you know, by punching his, Habib's brother and whatnot. And yeah, it's just very interesting. And it's also very telling about the casuals. Because if you listen to that podcast, I think it was, there was an audience there because you were here clapping.

Yeah, yeah. We came up here after that and we're, you know, talking about. about this, how ugly this is, this is a black eye for the sport. And then you got McGregor saying, you know, his cousin tried to sucker punch me and I dodged the punch and I saw, you know, I hit him. A left hand right down to point. And like I went on top of the cage and sucker punched the other guy and everybody's like, yeah, Connor McGregor Tony Robbins is cracking up. I feel like people are so detached from that because we actually get, you know, the nitty gritty, like the tweets and we see like every single detail. The casuals are not really paying attention to that. So for them,

this is just a circus. They don't know that people use the- Exactly. Like, I broke my foot. You know, they don't know that we've heard that in the bubble a million times. They don't know that. Well, he has a broken foot? Oh, dude, we got him on the back, you know. So I think he's pulling off a steeped card in the sense that he knows he can wait it out. He knows if he gets the casuals on board.

This fight will happen. He's the master of, like, going, like, way too far, like making fun of Habib's wife. And then short time later, he's out there with the boys and girls of America, painting fences. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, he's just, he's got this ability. It's like a balance, you know? Like, he knows how to, like, I could do two bad things and one good thing and even it out. Yeah, and how to measure, like, how many of the two bad things equal to one good thing or vice versa.

Like, he's got a real sharp knack for that. So I think it's still too early to tell, like, what's going to happen. But him planting the seeds like this and the way that he is, again, he's not going to get Habib next. But he might be after that. We don't know for sure, though. We also don't know for sure. That's always the way with the fight game. Right.

Yeah. So he's still waiting, right? Like, what's going on? Yeah. I mean, Ali was in one day right here in this very studio, and he said nothing was signed. Nothing was signed. Although he also said that Habib was like, I'm not fighting. I'm not fighting Connor.

Right. But how much is that like, you know, negotiation, leverage to get more money? I was curious, too. What do you guys think about like with Nate Diaz coming back to fight Pettis? Do you think that that's somewhat of a lure for Connor, like to kind of get him attracted? Like, oh, Nate's playing ball? Like he's coming back? Like maybe I should, you know what I mean?

Like just in general. I wonder if that's part of that. I don't know, but I know from Nate's side of things, we're talking to people around him. Like, his expectation is that he's going to win, obviously, meet Pettis. And then, bro, it's either going to be Connor or title fights, and the rest of y'all can take a hike. You know what I mean?

So he's at least putting himself in the Connor sweepstakes. Is Connor doing the same thing? It's a good question. It's hard to say. All right, well, that out of the way, let me go back to you, Brian, on this one, because I found this story super interesting. Sage Northcutt makes his debut in one.

We had your eye on the show on Monday. He was saying, Sage had never fought in a ring. Man, going back and I'm like, there's no transparency in Wayne's Weight Cutting program, which I've been saying for six months, the first time I said it, I put it on one of my personal YouTube videos. It got super downvoted.

I was right then, and I'm right now. It could be a good program. Just nobody knows, which is the exact point that I made. So you had Cosmo Al-Achandri looking pretty big. Also, multiple-time world champion in Thai boxing. Sage had never fought in a ring. He'd been off for quite some time.

He goes in there and gets bulldozed in 30 seconds. Now, you're a professional fighter. When you looked at that, what lesson did you draw from it? I mean, it's multiple lessons. I know Yerai Fabor was saying that he was advised maybe not to go in there and fight that fight. Who knows what happened in training camp and stuff like that. Also, on one-fc's side, you know, matchmaking, looking at a young guy like Sage and seeing his potential for growth and then matching him against a guy like that who's got a lot of kickboxing fights.

and, you know, a dangerous fighter that's going to be a better striker than him. You know, the fight didn't get to play out. Maybe they thought Sage could do some, you know, take him down and get something off on the ground. But, yeah, I just think matchmaking-wise, that wasn't the right decision. You got a lot of potential for Sage. And who knows how much money he's making him one FC. He's probably just ready to go. You know, it's not on him.

He's a fighter. Fighter's fight, and that's just how it is. He's not looking like, oh, this guy was a kickboxer, I don't know. Do you have a manager? Yeah, it's up to the manager. Has your manager ever been like, I don't like this fight for you? Honestly, no, it's never happened. It's been like, here's the option, and it's yes.

If you're ready to go, it's yes. Otherwise, you know, the UFC's not happy with someone just turning down a fight because we don't like that matchup. We're afraid to fight this style. Because that's not what a fighter is. You know, a fighter should be ready to fight any style and anybody at any time. So you can't really blame Sage himself, but the people around him. He's had a tough time, man.

I feel bad for him in a lot of ways because he came in a nine-hour surgery. 100% and he came in the UFC under a kind of ridiculous microscope, right? I think people were kind of touting this guy before he'd really ever seen him work in the hot sky. He ends up in situations where he's fighting, you know, guys on short notice and things like that. Was it the Mickey Gall? Yeah. And guys like, oh, right, that one, that's the one I was thinking of. But he ends up in these situations.

They're just not advantageous for him, but he keeps his appointment. He goes in there and then he loses these fights. I really thought going over to one championship that basically they would try to put him with a couple guys he could beat and get him rolling. Really surprised that they put him with. I wasn't sure about like this potential matchup. I wasn't sure, but it seemed always to me.

I was like, that's a pretty dangerous matchup for a first fight. And then you watch the results of that and you see him get clobbered like that. And it just strikes you. It just strikes you as like, man, this guy keeps finding himself in the weirdest situations that a lot of fighters just wouldn't have to do under unfair kind of maybe us putting too much pressure on or too much, you know, too many eyes on him originally. And so he becomes that appeal. Like even what was a deadspin and a TMZ and those

types of places. They still, yeah, they still are covering him. And it's just, it's a weird thing, man. His star is well past where he is as a fighter. And for some reason, we keep getting reminded of that. That kind of sucks for him. Jenny, what's still takeaway there from that fight? I mean, I thought the matchmaking was very suspect. If you look at, you know, the fight itself, Yes, Sage is an MMA fighter, but historically, if you just look at his fights, he doesn't really go for takedowns, doesn't really use his wrestling. I mean, he did against in his UFC debut, I think it was. He also did against Zach Otto a little bit.

But historically, he's known for his karate style, right? That's why Tyron Woodley brought him in to help him against, you know, Steer Wonder Boy Thompson, etc. So, you know, when you're putting against someone who's has so much experience in the stand-up department, man, that's, you know, that's interesting. Like when he had talked out back and then with that, I was like, this is a questionable decision. And now he's such a young guy, what, 25. Yeah.

You know, so much star power, but like you said, his fighting career is not playing up to that. And why would you want to take that? Like, he's a model type of guy. He's going to get roles and movies and then. Why would you want to take that kind of damage to your face? And also, like, if you got your face literally crushed, that's what happens. His face pulverized. Wouldn't you be scared in the future about taking shots on that side?

That's the point that I was getting to. He's so young and his career now is hindered because of such a traumatic injury early on. psychologically to get over, that's not easy. You know, the next time he goes into fight, which we don't know when that would be or how long, he's going to now lose years in his prime. He's going to go in there having to be okay psychologically to deal with punching and not think, oh, this might happen again.

You know, you can't go in there gun shy. And also, like, I don't know if you guys remember, remember when Josh Koshik fought GSP and he had his orbital bone broken, he was never really the same after that. And I remember seeing him in fights getting hit and grabbing his eye, you know. I don't know if he would get injured, but just, yeah, I think a confidence factor like, wait, is my eye okay, you know?

But that happened in a title fight. That happened in the peak of his career, you know? So it's, I'm not saying it's okay. Obviously, I wouldn't wish that upon anybody. But if something like that's supposed to happen, it should happen at that point in your career, not when you're coming up, you know what I'm saying? So super tough injury for him.

There's a couple of considerations in addition to this. Number one, it's like, as you mentioned, like, we don't know exactly how catastrophic that was. Like, oh, a rebound is inevitable. Okay, I hope that it is. It probably is, but like, I don't know that it is. In terms of, like, healing from injury and being able to continue to do this. I think the second thing is, and I made this point, it's like, it's not just that to what you're talking about where he gets these uncomfortable situations. Like, if you don't groom a fighter correctly, they don't develop correctly. And I don't know what his ultimate potential is or could have been. But he's got 14 pro-MMA fights. He's 23. In two years, let's say he fights three times a year. He'll have 20 fights and be 25 years old.

you're going to basically know what you got at that point, right? So I don't know how good he's going to be, but we're not far from finding out to be taking shots like this. And by the way, if the people were like, Sage has no chin, bitch, that shot would have dropped a camel. Are you kidding me? Alessandri has ridiculous power and accuracy and like speed. It was flushed.

I mean, that thing was ridiculous shots I'd ever seen. But like the way this can hinder what's supposed to be the growth period he's just, it's not being managed. Well, less thing on this, too, isn't the footwork in a ring completely different than in a cage? Yeah, I think there's more space in a cage to circle out. You know, in a ring you can get cornered a little bit. And Alexander did a very good job at that.

He kind of cut him off at an angle. Yeah. And he, you know, saved him in the direction and just bang them out. And then forced him in the other way, made him kind of come into it. But, yeah, it's a lot different. I feel like in the cage there's so much space to kind of run away. You know, like if you want, you can play that game in a cage. cage where you can move a lot and avoid things. And in the ring, I think it's much more difficult.

I mean, an octagon resembles a circle a lot more, you know, and that's where you get the ultimate freedom, right? Fighting in a circle. Back to Pauli's point, that's why you see boxers having really excellent footwork. Because in right angles, there's just hard to hide, right? Especially if someone's really good at cutting you off. So then the other part of one over the week, this was happened yesterday. Georgia Petrosian was in a kickboxing bout, which is part of a tournament. He faced a guy who's a tie fighter who is tremendous. I cannot pronounce his name. I will not try. But the other. guy won. Joe Joe Petrosian has a bigger name. I think to most casual audiences are certainly

one of the, maybe a bigger star in the world of kickboxing, but he loses. Now, I thought he won, because I went back and I watched it, but he didn't. It was relatively close, but I thought Petrosian won. Then Chancho Sittgatong, the promoter of one gets out there and says the, I think it we called it, the competition committee, decided that the referee didn't enforce the rules relative to clenching. It wasn't a fair fight, therefore we're going to overturn it. I was like, what is this? Now, here's the thing. I agree Petrosian probably won. But Danny, is it not super weird that we don't know who's on this committee, what rules they operate by, by which standards do they apply to overturn a fight or not overturn a fight? Do you not get the hebi-g-bees based on this thing? Like I did?

100%. I mean, let's call it how it is. You know, and sometimes media are afraid of speaking about this because, you know, access is involved, but let's call it how it is. It's not weird. It's sketchy it's that's what it is it's sketchy when you're not revealing you know you know fighters weights uh you know and not even the opponent in itself gets to know how much you know their other opponent weighs in at um you know when you're overruling you know a judge's decision basically and what you're doing is no this wasn't a win this was a no contest like it gets into a weird territory and look i i went and saw the fight right i didn't see the fight live i saw the fight after after the announcement and yeah there was clinches where they got broken up several times by

the Thai fighter. Probably legal. I don't know, you know, I'm not that well-versed in kickboxing as I am in MMA. But nonetheless, that was the referee's call. You know, how many times do we see Dana White talking smack about referees or judges? You know what I'm saying? And he goes, all the time, you know, he goes, that's their job. I didn't agree with it, but that's their job. And they sometimes they ask Dana, who do you think won in this fight? He goes, it doesn't matter what I think. That's what the judges. That's what they're there for. And I mean, they've self-regulated in Singapore before. I mean, it's like, if that's an availability, that turns everything to something else. Like, nobody would ever really do that. That's what makes this crazy, right? Like, you're,

you're way overstepping your bounds when you have a third-party arbiter for a reason. And there's a big reason because there's gambling. Like, there's outside gambling. There's everything. If you can just take, why not just say, well, you know, Sage Northcott was actually winning the fight before that landed. So there's really no difference. I mean, you're still, you're changing a, you're changing something that you saw that basically goes against what the, officials ruled. It just can't be done. It's sketchy and it's like...

It's crazy to me. You know, it's like that doesn't make sense. They actually overturned it? No contest. And they're doing a rematch. They're doing a rematch. And honestly, I didn't see the fight, but it's crazy because a lot of fights actually have legitimacy in being overturned, but it doesn't, it never happens.

You know, people try to get, you know, fights overturned when illegal things happen in fights and it just never happens. but then you have a situation like this, it just seems real sketchy. And also, here's the part about it. Like, am I against, in theory, the idea of a promotion overturning a fight based on a referee botching a job?

Let's just imagine theory. Not necessarily. I can imagine a scenario where if everything is above board, we know under what considerations you would do it, who's on the committee that makes the decision, they would have to write up a report. You could read why they did it,

what the rules would be about it. Like, if I understood what the process was and who was involved in the process, maybe I wouldn't agree, but I'd feel a lot better. But you've got a way-in system where it literally is not public. I asked Gary Toner on the MMA hour, have you ever seen your opponent's way in?

Nope. What? What? And when I called this out, people like, oh, but there's anecdotal evidence. I'm not saying it's not a good program. I don't know what kind of program it is. Here's what I can say definitively. You don't get to take credit for a damn thing

until it's transparent. The commission system in the United States is not great. Brian probably knows that better than we do. But the reality is this. At least their way-ins, the media are invited. You can take photographs, you can videotape, you can talk, you can look at the scale. That's not a perfect system. That's a lot better than I have no idea what my opponent weighed in at.

I didn't even get a chance to look at it. The results aren't revealed. You're going to have water-style drug testing, which literally is not even a thing. It doesn't exist. You've got your own agency you're pushing fighters into, which is super sketch. And now you're overturning bouts and you're not telling us why or who did it or under what circumstances.

Sorry, red flagged city. Other than that, man, the promotion's been humming along pretty nice. But wait a lot. 18 billion people watch this. Hold on. Okay, I'm raising concerns. But at the same time, this is what frustrates me. Like, Asian needs a one.

Doesn't it? Like, you need a promotion that's out there doing what they're doing. And there's been a lot of them who've tried to do the Asian market and, like, do basically what one is doing and it failed. So it's good to see them actually. And I like the fact that they don't have the fact that they don't have the 10 point must system. I actually think that's better and they are putting on interesting fights. I want them to like do the right thing. What I don't want is the MMA community to give them

credit for something they do not deserve. You want to take credit for something? Prove it. Yeah, there's definitely needs to be transparency. As you said, like I'm still not in favor of a promotion being able to have that power to overrule something. But if you're at least going to do it, tell us how you came to that decision. Tell us who came to that, who who was the people involved that came to that decision. But you know, just throwing out Facebook post and being like, Like, y'all, this is. And just undermining the officials that basically are in there for you. It's just, it's, I just don't get it.

It doesn't translate. You can't do that. I mean, they did it, but you can't. It's like something that just literally shouldn't be done. All right. Let's go to the next one, which is some of the UFC Rochester leftovers. Brian, I'll go to you on this one. How hard is it for you to make 135?

Not too hard at all. About 155, like when I'm far away from my fight, leading up to my fight two weeks out, I'll be like 148 and 12 pounds of water. It's not too hard for me. When you show up on Tuesday, what are you at typically? About 148. That's a lot. Jesus Christ, man.

Yeah, I don't get really big. I stay in shape all year around pretty much, and I don't fall off where I gain like a ton of weight and get in the 60s. I usually stay 155 or under throughout like my whole camp. All right. So you had Kevin Lee in the main event against Hafeld de Sanjos. By the way, Hafele de Sanjo is criminally underrated.

We'll talk about that in just a second. But I kind of want to start with Kevin Lee. on this one with you. He changes weight classes. We knew the 155 cut was hard for him. We'd seen it in person because they have public weigh-ins on the ultimate fighting championship. And you could see, yeah, no, seriously, you could watch, look at this guy. He'd looked terrible, right? So he jumps up a weight class and he makes the weight. He looks so much better, at least on the scales. And then he goes out there and has the exact same kind of cardio problems. Guys, full of talent. What went wrong?

You know, I think that it was the way that he came out the gate hot like that. He started that fight way too fast and he kept that up the whole way. And it was kind of interesting because when he, at the end, when he missed that last takedown, he just kind of collapsed. Like he just hit like a wall. Like his pace couldn't be kept up any longer. And, you know, you could say weight cut or different weight class, but Raphael Dosano says fought at 155. That was a very fair fight size wise for him. And he's had better performances at 55, I feel, even though the weight cut's so hard, he's done really well. He'd, you know, walked through Barbosa with wrestling. So I just think that he was so diligent with the wrestling trying to take Dosanos down. And I really give him the credit for his defense.

He used the Camorra a lot to try to, you know, distract him from getting takedowns. And I think Kevin Lee just got so tired after a while that he just collapsed at the end and kind of gave in. But yeah, I thought he looked healthy at 170. I think he should probably stay there. And you never know it could be a coaching thing, something in his camp, the way he's training. You could be training completely different for the type of style that you're going to put out there. So who's to know? But he looked all right. He looked healthy to me.

To me, I agree with everything you just said. It also seems like he needs to strengthen his plan B a little bit. Like I feel like he doesn't have a plan B. It's like he's going to do. Yeah, it's like he goes in there with a certain game plan and he's stubbornly going to die with it if he can't get it done. And we've seen him power through guys and make it work. And then we've seen ones like this for guys like Haffaio Osangis who can weather that, early storm and then basically take the fight from him. It's been rinse and repeat with a couple of

his fights. So you would have liked to have seen, I would like to see him develop a plan B a little more where he can see him make some infight adaptations where he's basically, you know, you see something different from him coming out in the second round or third round. I think it's just he kind of fixates a little bit on what he wants to do. And it costs him because his cardio, unfortunately, that's what keeps happening to him. Do you what the same thing? I think there's a lot of things to consider, you know, and I've got to be very careful with what I'm saying here because this is a regular dude telling something to a professional elite fighter. You know, I think, you know, technique-wise and, you know, I've been grappling, you know, I wrestled for two years, I've been doing jiu-jitsu for

almost eight. I think, you know, through a lot of techniques, especially in the takedowns, he tries to power through a lot of things and when we see that. And, you know, sometimes it's effective and you can get through, you can power through certain moves. But nonetheless, it will. It will, you will, cost you, you know, to your gas tank at some point you have to use frames. There's certain things that you, technique-wise, that you implement that, that'll, you know, alleviate that as far as, like, the

gas tank goes. I also think, you know, some fighters are just cardio machines. Like, if you look at King Velascus, that's just the way you're born. Some guys are better built for three rounds. Some guys are better for five, you know? I think Kevin Lee's probably a little better built for three than five. And also, you know,

and I don't want to critique him too much. Dude, he fought the number three guy, you know, A former world champion, he didn't get any easy fight, you know what I'm saying? I'm sure if that would have been any other world to wait, he probably would have gotten the W. So I still think, you know, Kevin Lee is an elite fighter. He's young. There's a lot of room for growth. I'd like to see him again at 170, just how he looks.

I think, you know, I wouldn't want to see him back down at 155. I think let's take another look. Look, you've fought a really tough guy. A lot of people have come up short against RDA. Let's see what you look again at 170. So I had a few reads on this one. I think the plan B one was the one I read. Like when he was against Barbosa,

one of the things that makes Kevin Lee so dangerous in my mind is he's got the wrestling, but he actively guard passes and he actively takes mount. I think is a lost art in MMA. People aren't very good at it because they just don't practice it, but he does. So when he can lord his technical superiority over an opponent, he's a nightmare.

He's a nightmare. But if there is a, if it's close or if the person is even, there's no other gear. And like I was, on the Monday morning analyst, I was looking at the numbers. If you look at like the takedown numbers per round for Habib fight, it's like one or two at most.

Because once he gets you there, bro, you're there. Whereas Kevin Lee was getting a takedown and then he'd get, and D'Saulde D'Saulde get a takedown, get up. Get a takedown, get up. So he had like four takedowns and a round. It's just not, either you have to have super good cardio, ridiculous wrestling,

or the ability to do punishment in the in-between. And if any piece of that, any leg of that stool is missing, the whole thing collapses. But Brian, I saw an internet commentary, and I want to be very careful about how I asked this question. Kevin Lee is a polarizing figure. Now, I think he's championship material,

but he's got some things to figure out. But one of the things they said was, Kevin Lee is better about assessing his opponent's weaknesses than he is about realizing his own. So let me ask you. One, do you think that's true? And two, how hard is it to assess your own shortcomings? And I don't mean to bring this up,

but it is relevant. You are coming off of two losses. Surely you must have done some reflection about that. Yeah, I mean, you have to look at yourself and see where you're doing things right, doing things wrong. You know, that's also the coach's job, too. Do you have, like, meetings with coaches? Not necessarily meetings, like, for strictly that,

but when you're with your coach, you'll touch on that stuff. You know, you'll talk about that during training or whatnot and see, you know, when last fight, this happened, or this fight, this is going to happen. We've got to work on this. But a lot of fighters don't want to focus on their opponents that much. They want to focus more on themselves and just forget who they're fighting and what they're good at and whatnot

and just get better at every single area so that you're prepared for any situation. And with Kevin Lee, I feel like his expenditure of energy is a big thing, and that's something you can't teach. And that's why he's using so much strength, like he was saying, with everything, he's straining. You know, he's trying to get you down so much. He doesn't go to the Plan B like you were saying before,

like off of the takedown. He's just holding, waiting, trying to get you down, straining it, straining it. But he doesn't go off to a single, switch back to a double. He doesn't do a lot of switching like that. And, you know, I don't know if he has a game plan issue or if it's, you know, hit the way he's training. But, you know, who knows?

I'm not sure. I guess what I'm asking you is after a win or a loss, do you ever go back and have a hard time figuring out like why it went the way it did? Or when something goes right or wrong, you're able to be like, okay, this is why this worked. This is why this didn't. It's not that cut and dry to me. I feel like sometimes you lose a fight and it's just you got caught or that guy was better that night. It could be simple things like that, but you have to just get better everywhere. You know, if you got taken down a bunch of times and held down, okay.

He got taken down four times in that fight. Yeah, now it's like we need to work our takedown defense and our get-ups. You know what I mean? Like something specific. If it's so obvious in the fight, like you got broken down here. You know, like you didn't move. You were in a Camorra and you just stayed there type of thing. Like then you can look at specifics.

But other than that, I feel like it's just get better overall everywhere. Yeah, I agree. All right. So then it takes us to I'm not the same fighter, you are, that's one. Yeah, UFC heavyweight champion, Chuck Minn and all. So then there's Megan Anderson. Now, this is another one where it's like,

I'm not sure what to say about this one because, yo, Felicia Spencer was a black-botton jiu-jitsu. She's just really good. She just knew how to progress an attack. Is Megan Anderson, Danny, a bit of another sage situation where I don't mean to say they're identical, but these people get pushed so far and then there's these ridiculous, unfair expectations

that they can't possibly live up to. What happened there? I think, yeah, I think just there's a few issues there. Like, for one, matchmaking is key. And matchmaking is very important for fighters' development, but when you have literally no division, then all of a sudden, matchmaking becomes really hard, right? I think from the Hollyholm fight,

we saw that Megan Anderson clearly had a hole in the wrestling and grappling department. When you have Holly Holme, a very decorated, you know, boxer and kick. boxer, someone that's historically only, you know, in her MMA fights, you know, striking. And then, you know, she recently added the wrestling component. By no means she's an elite wrestler. Yet she was, you know, and also a weight class below, she was, you know, throwing around Megan Anderson. And then they pair her up with Katzangano, which, you know, that fight, we know how it went down.

And then Felicia Spencer, you know, former Invicta champion, super legit black belt. So I think the matchmaking was quite poor in this specific situation. And I think, you know, MeeKee, Megan Anderson is very talented, but this is why you need, you know, grooming. This is why you need certain fights that, you know, proper matchmaking, you know, would allow that. But with no division, you know, you're just bound to bring, you know, the best of the best to fight, you know. How old is Megan Anderson?

She's 29. I feel like with matchmaking, it's kind of, it's interesting because it's up to the business, the UFC to say, like, we want to focus on good matchmaking for this fighter. I feel like it doesn't go across the board. They're not focused on like, we want a good matchup style for this fighter. They're just like, well, this is the next person. Yeah, but for Sage, they did that. Yeah, for certain people I'm saying, but not across the board, not for everyone.

Like Megan Anderson, not a big star. I know the weight class is, you know, not strong, but they're willing to, you know, risk her losing to bring in a new star potentially because the weight class isn't deep. Maybe I don't know. But I mean, they have her doing a lot of media. She's sort of, it feels like the UFC believes in. her and want to invest in her. It's just the matchmaking portion hasn't aligned. But also, like, I talked to Laura Sanko, who does a podcast with her, they know each other.

And Laura was telling me, she was like, let me just, you know, she's like, you don't have to believe me if you don't want to, but she's like, I train with Laura, or excuse me, with me again, I know her very well. She knows the answers to all the positions she was in. Just on fight and something didn't go wrong. And by the way, she walks around mid-170s, man. Part of me wonders, like, dude, I think that cut might be a lot harder than folks realize. Yeah. She's tall, man. Maybe 155 is her way class. I bet you it is.

But what is she supposed to do? You know what I mean? If they fell, one million, Kayla Harrison. That's the way. It could be seriously one of those situations where she just doesn't, somehow the spotlight, when she gets in there, it's a very isolated thing. She didn't do it in a idiot before the fight. That's what I'm saying.

You know, there's some people, that's a toughest thing is when it becomes time to execute, you just lose some of it or you're slow to react or whatever the kid thing is. It could literally be something like that for her. But we've certainly seen her look a lot better. So I'm not sure, but it seems to me like there could be somewhat of a psychological issue going on there too. Yeah, I reached out to her people to do an interview and they're like, yeah, she's not doing an interview. So I was like, okay. Her coaches were saying like in the gym, she's knocking out dudes and stuff.

You know, she's doing really well, but under the lights could be a whole thing. And it's crazy because they really increased the spotlight on her because she was being kind of groomed in this weird way to fight cyborg. And that was kind of out of the gate. And there's a lot of people with their first familiarity with her were basically like, oh, this could be a person to come on and challenge. That's a hell of a place to start. You know what I mean? And to get, you know, like, that's your lineage. Yeah.

And then, but you're not ready because you're still developing your game. Yeah. It's like it's a terrible spot to be in. Now Felicia Spencer's there. She's number two now. Just like that. And then also, I mean, and in fairness to Felicia, like, dude, Felicia's very skilled.

Yeah, very skilled. Yeah. So it's like, how is Megan gonna make up that distance in the in-between? You got a lot of work. I don't really know what the answer there is. We skipped over. Let me do it very, very quickly. I just want to say a word of praise to Hafeldeos.

Because after the fight was over, everyone was like, oh, Kevin Lee fell short, which is not fair to Kevin, and it's not fair to Hafelde Sanjo's. Poor RDA. He always has that. It always has that. He's always the guy that when he beats somebody, everyone's like, hey, that guy's a fucking loser.

It's like, maybe RDA is real good. I don't know what you have. He's 29 and 11, Brian. And the reason why I wanted to bring this up is, at 2911, he's, as he pointed out, number three in the world still in the Walterweight class, which if not the best one, second best one.

You might have an issue with that bantam weight. You might say that's a little better. But still, you know what I'm saying. It's one of the premier weight classes in the sport. And what's happening is, if you are 29 and 11 with the kind of losses he had as a boxer, you'd be washed. You'd be nobody. You would not be anything. But he is like the exemplar of what it means to be an MMA elite fighter because, yes, he has fallen short.

You know why he's falling short? Because he took risks. And he fought tough dudes. And more often than not, he beat him. But he was speaking about the different cultures between MMA and boxing. RDA is pure MNM. Is he?

Yeah, you have to praise that. He's fought the Hsu, 155, 170, and became a champion. Yeah, became a champion. And he's taken devastating losses. And after taking a devastating loss and coming back and still performing the way he does, you have to give high praise to that guy.

And that was a great performance. A lot of people are saying, like, oh, Kevin Lee this, Kevin Lee, that. He tried his best to implement his game plan, the whole fight, you know, and then RDA shut it down, essentially, but all people see is that he failed at doing what he was doing.

But RDA is, he's doing amazing at 170 right now, and you know, he's been knocked out bad a bunch of times and he shows no signs of fear in there still, so high praise to him. To have those kinds of battles, Chuck, and not be shopworn? No, I agree. I agree 100%.

And I wasn't one, because he was coming up a couple losses, right? Yeah. So coming to this fight. To Camaroo, which was, by the way, a record beating literally statistically. Yeah, exactly. And then to Colby. Right. And it's like, so you're not 100% sure because sometimes you do get a guy in like that third fight where it's a desperation kind of fight and they will look different. But, you know, that guy always brings it like you said. And it's crazy.

You were mentioning how unsung he is ultimately. Like when he went through Pettus back in the day, a lot of it was like, what's up with Pettus? What happened with Pettus? And then he beats Cowboy. The whole narrative when he's fighting Cowboy on that fight was about Cowboy. It wasn't about RDA. And then he goes right through him. And I felt like we never gave him his praise for that either.

He's one of those guys, you know. He fights guys like Robbie Lawler, and you think, like, oh, this would be the one who's going to, you know, go right in, and he wins that fight. You're just like, the guy is just, he's not, he's like, it's perseverance, but it's there's something else. There's something else that we haven't identified with him. He's a quarterback who throws the interception

and then takes his team on the next possession and marches him right down the field in sports. He's amazing. And I've always said to this. I think Raphael de Sanchez is pound for pound the most well-rounded fighter in the game. He's also, he started. getting not, his first fight, he got viciously caowed. Oh, by Jeremy Stevens. And look at him now.

Yeah, and I think he broke his jaw in that. No, Clay Guido broke his jaw. Yeah, that's right? You know what I mean? Surprisingly, right? Of all the guys he's fought. It was come to back, it was one of those like a gable grip chucks. It just kind of crushed it. Just kind of crushed it a little bit. But maybe it's probably strong as hell. Yeah, so just

no one gave him any praise and I couldn't believe it, but okay, we took time to do it. All right, time now for the last segment of this portion of the show. It's called Under the Radar. It's where we look at just maybe one story that we didn't get to on the rundown today. That's worth a mention. We start over there, work this way forward. Chuck, what is under the radar?

I'm going to shout out to Juan Adams, who the heavyweight who's been basically calling for a shot against him for the most punchable guy probably in the UFC right now. The one that people want to see get beat up and it's Greg Hardy and it was able to, it sounds like that fight's happening. And I got to say, sometimes like you see that, a guy who wants something, they actually put it out there. It's just one of those weird lessons. You're like, dude, shoot your shot, go for the stars and that sort of thing.

So good job by him. Brian, what's on the Redero? Shout out to the California kid who's not a kid anymore, but he's trying to make a comeback. You know, he's hinting at possible opponents that are being thrown at him and just had a kid. I'm sure that's inspiring him,

but I just find it interesting in this game. You know, Yariah Faber is a guy who's smart with business. He has multiple businesses, and he obviously probably doesn't need money. He doesn't need to fight for money. But it just goes to show the addiction of competition. We always want to get that feeling back. You know, there's nothing like,

winning a fight out there. So, you know, without being a compare to that at his age, I'm kind of surprised he wants to come back. He's done enough in the sport. He has nothing to prove. But, you know, we'll see who they match him up with. That's got a bit no-brainer too, right, for Sacramento? That car?

Yeah, Sacramento coming up. So that makes a lot of sense for him. But I wonder where they'll go with matchmaking with him if they'll give him, like, an up-and-comer or like a big name still. I wonder where they'll go. Yeah, and by the way, to your point about the competition facing Nikki Ryan over in Polaris in a jiu-s match this weekend. Understand, I'm at his point when he had him on the show.

show, he brought Gordon Ryan over for quintet. So he knows who the Ryan brothers are. And then he decides to go and match up with Nikki Ryan. And every time I ask somebody who's trained or rolled with Nicky Ryan, I'm like, what's the like to go? Oh, God. Like, it's a nightmare to go with that guy. So he went up and signed up for it. To your point, the guy loves it, man. Yeah, he's staying sharp. He said he loves training jiu-jitsu. So, you know, obviously his desire for competition to go against the guy like that, it's crazy, man. Danny, what's under the radar? So Aurora Cannabis Company. A company out of Canada. Look at that mustache.

That's Waggonha. People are like just flying. What was he saying Wagenheim in a Spanish? Wagon. No, I don't. So anyways, they signed a multi-year, multi-billion, a million dollar partnership with the UFC. And they're going to be at the UFCPI,

I guess doing some tests on CBD. I guess, you know, with athlete, you know, injury prevention, recovery, all that. You know, CBD, you know, and I like this. is because we want experimentation. We want to find out what works and what doesn't. Maybe it doesn't lead to anything. Maybe it does.

We don't know. So they're going to do that as well. And, you know, I'm also happy because we know the stigma. We know that marijuana is a, you know, banned substance, at least in competition. And we know obviously how silly that is. And maybe, you know, I know CBD is a little bit different. But maybe that can start breaking some of the stigmas around the plant. Yeah.

Well, as I indicated many times, if you're listening to my radio show, no one knows about CBD. People have anecdotal evidence that it works, and if it works, and you think it works, by all means, keep using it. But as I speak today, there's not a whole lot of evidence that it does. It's totally unknown. Plus, there's like a lot of inconsistency. You might know a good company, and I might not know a good company, and so therefore we're getting totally different kinds of products. So that's a bit of the Wild West. The free me under the radar was, Usada decided to sort of bless NSF sanctioning or NSF screening for supplements.

These are supplements where you can sort of trust that they have undergone a sufficient degree of quality control. You never know if they're contaminated, but it simply reduces the risk, which I don't have any issue with for the most part. But I did find funny, and no one really noticed this, was have you been to the Performance Institute before? Once, yeah. Was it cool? Yeah, for good things. Yeah, it was good. The UFC signed a deal with something called Thorne, T-H-O-R-N-E supplements, and I looked them up.

They do have high ratings, but it's not exactly. what you would think. It's less GNC and more like Walgreens, where like you can get creatine at Walgreens, but I don't know that's what you would go to Walgreens to get. It's not actually. Yeah, it's more like lifestyle, you know, I explain it. It's more things your grandmother might take than a fighter. So I encourage you to look it up. Again, they do have high ratings, which needs to be acknowledged. They are NSF certified. The only thing I found kind of interesting was on the front page of their website, they have detox products, which is Red Flag City because there's no such thing. You know all those girls on Instagram who sell

you fit teas? They're not real. You ever seen those detox? I want to do a juice cleanse. It doesn't exist. You have your kidneys, your liver, your sweat glands, and your skin. That is your body's natural detox. There is no such thing as detoxing with toxins. So for them to have that on the front page of their website, and they're the ones in the PI worth looking into. That's all I'm saying. All right? All right. Well, you just put it over the radar, brother.

I'll put it over the radar, stop. You're on notice. They do have high ratings. Keep that in mind. Hey, Brian, you did all right. You did all right. Still feel my heart ticking, but I'm good. If folks want more from you, like, what's next?

How can they get in touch with you if they want to troll you? What do they do? You can troll me at Brian Boom, 135, on two. Twitter, Instagram. Now, you were supposed to fight in May. You had an injury. What happened? And when are we going to see you again?

Yeah, I had a neck injury, unfortunately. I would have liked to push through it and fight, but I was advised by management coaches. You know, last fight on my deal, don't risk it. You know, let's get in there 100%, which now looking back, I agree with. But in the moment, I'm like, I want to get in there. You know, I put the work in, but I feel like I could do it. Who are you supposed to fight? I forgot.

I was supposed to fight Mitch Gagnon. That's right. Yeah. That was a good fight for you. Yeah, good matchup for me, good style. That made it hurt a little bit more, not fighting, and having watched a fight, I think I could have done well still. And, you know, hopefully get back in there early July.

Nothing set, nothing official. But, yeah, you could check out my YouTube channel. I try to do the boom breakdowns, you know, for the fight cards. And music, too. I've been working on music. I got it out on Spotify. You could just search Boom and some new songs coming out. I see the mic tattoos.

Yeah, I got the microphone here. I got, like, the music stuff. Always had music in my family. Renaissance man, Brian Boone. Where's your band playing out here, as you know. I have the band. Well, great job. It was an honor to have you.

I really appreciate. Look forward to having you back in the cage. That's where you really belong. No, this was another dream of mine. This is awesome. I really appreciate it. All right, very good. Well, we are done here.

Keep sending those questions, those comments using the hashtag, the MMA beat for the Iceman Chuck Mindenhall. Brian Boomkeleher, Danny, the mustache. Seaglor. How does that say mustache in Spanish? Bigote. Bigote. O'e, Biggonte. I'm Luke Tobis. Hands up, chin down, let him fly. This is the anime beat.