MMA Fighting - The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani - Episode 317

Episode Date: February 22, 2016

Ariel Helwani speaks to Rampage Jackson, Julianna Peña, Will Brooks, Eric Winter, Jimmy Smith, and Luke Thomas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-4-3 at O-D-O-D-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-com. It's the Mixed Martial Arts Hour with a mixed martial arts hour back in your life. On this Monday, February 22nd, 2016. Hello again, everyone. I'm Ariel Hawani inside our New York City studio. Hope you had a great weekend. I did.

Great weekend with my family. Remember last week I told you was my son's birthday. Again, happy birthday to my beautiful, wonderful, amazing son, Walter. It was very nice. and I'm happy I had that kind of weekend because this was a wild and wacky weekend in the world of MMA. So much happened as we talked about last week

all three major promotions held events, Beltor 149 on Friday, World Series of Fighting on Saturday, UFC on Sunday, and I got to tell you, I'm a little bit shaky right now because I'm actually very upset. I'm a little bit fired up.

I think I'm a lot fired up. I've gotten a lot off my chest to New York Rick before we started today's show. But there is a heck of a lot that I need to share today. And some of it I'll just get off my chest right off the top. You know, on Thursday's MMA beat,

Jeff Wagenheim said that we sort of hold Bellator to a different set of standards and in doing so, that is a double standard. We don't hold them to the same standard as the UFC, and I actually agreed with him on the air. I said, I think that's fair. They haven't been around as long.

They don't have the same kind of roster. It's a different playing field that they're on. And prior to Friday, I was okay with that. I even said, really, I had no problem. I didn't kill them for the matchmaking, those two fights, Dada and Kimbo, Ken, and Hoyst three. I didn't really kill them for that because, again, I understand what they're doing.

Now, if you saw the MMA beat, I said that I had a major issue with the rest of the card. I thought they dropped the ball with the rest of the card by not putting your young studs like Will Brooks, like Michael Chandler, like the Pitbull Brothers, like Daniel Strauss, like MVP, by not putting the homegrown talent that, oh, by the way, the previous regime built and made,

now what are you really doing? Now you're just a circus show. But fine, guys were injured. They have other shows coming up. They probably put on too many to begin with and they have to spread things out. So I was okay. I wasn't one of these people

that was getting all high and mighty online and on my shows and saying that this was a disgrace. I feel very different 60 hours later. The show ended around 60 hours ago. And as you may have heard by now, data 5,000 after losing in the third round to Kimbo slice, the butt of many jokes,

went into cardiac arrest, according to multiple sources, multiple outlets reporting this, after the fact, had to be resuscitated. Do we understand what that means? The man's heart stopped. And now here we are 60 hours later, and I have tried multiple times, multiple times to reach out to people at Belator to ask them for an update on Data 5,000, Where is this man? Is he in the hospital?

Is he out of the hospital? Is he okay? Is he not okay? I can't get an answer. That to me is unfathomable. A man's heart stopped after an MMA fight. And to say now that we're holding them to a different standard is irresponsible on our part. That event on Friday night will have been seen when it's all said and done by maybe as many,

if not more people than any other cable TV or free UFC card this year. throw in pay-per-view as well. The number is going to be great. So it's not fair. There is a responsibility involved there. When you're putting on a fight in front of that many eyeballs, there is a responsibility involved. And I was told, well, we put out a statement.

You put out a statement on Saturday afternoon. It did not even address the heart. That was 48 hours ago. Where's the update? You have a responsibility to your organization, to your viewers at home, to the media, to tell us how this man is feeling. This isn't a broken leg.

This isn't a fractured orbital, which, by the way, it appears as though he suffered as well. This is a heart stopping. This is a tragedy. This is a major, major problem. This, for all intents and purposes, could be the end of your organization if something truly tragic happened. Do we understand what we're dealing with here? This is not something that you just gloss over and look ahead to the UFC in London this

Saturday. This is not something that we just forget about. A man was in serious, serious condition. following an MMA fight on live, network television, cable television in front of millions of people. That is a problem. You have a responsibility to put on the best kind of product possible. It's no longer the circus show. It's no longer the freak show. The fact that I keep having to ask people for an update on the guy, just give me an update. Tell me something off the record. I can't get it. And that to me is bothersome. That to me is worrisome. Where are we going with this?

Fine. You don't want to put young studs. Fine. Let that be your thing. But you got to, You can't just brush it off your shoulders and say, we put on a good show. We sold 9,000 tickets. We're moving on to the next one this Friday. It doesn't work like that. It doesn't work like that in other sports. And I'm not trying to preach here. I'm just, I am concerned about the guy's health and well-being.

Had no business being there, but I get it. There was a beef fine. Where are we at today Monday afternoon? I sure as hell don't have an update. If anyone could give me one, I would love one. And so basically that's where I'm at. Yeah, World Series of Fighting put a show on in a recreotech on Saturday. That was a bit embarrassing.

That kind of felt like the minor leagues of the minor leagues. Yeah, Mario Yamasaki has no idea what he's doing. He's jumping in there. He's jumping out there. He's waiting for 10 taps. What's going on there? How can you be a professional in your job for 10 years and still not know what you're doing? That's worrisome.

But above all, a man's heart stopped. And this has nothing to do with Beltoire. It has nothing to do with the UFC. It has nothing to do with World War. This is a fight. A guy was in there. and for all intensive purposes, by all accounts, he was left in a very, very dangerous and scary condition afterwards.

That is a problem. We need updates. Where are the updates? Where are they? What are we hiding from? What's going on? The fact that we're getting nothing is even more worrisome. Anyway, we'll be talking about this, as you can imagine, throughout the show.

I'm not trying to, I don't even know. Anyway, 305 will go into our y'all must have forgot segment. Classic interview of the week. We'll hear from you at 310. 245, Rampage Jackson, who's back in Belator. He'll join us. 225, Juliana Pena, her first interview since her arrest in December. She'll join us.

205, Eric Winter, SVP and GM of UFC Fight Pass. He'll join us. 145, Will Brooks will join us. Belator Lightweight Champion. Y'all must have forgot. 125, Jimmy Smith will join us. To look back at Belator. 149. But first, let's go to the Skype machine. Let's talk to a colleague who was actually in attendance

on Friday night and did a fantastic job of covering the event all week long. Our own Luke Thomas joins us now via the magic of Skype. Luke, how are you? I'm doing well, Ariel, how are you? I'm doing great. So let me put my comments aside here for a second. 60 hours or so removed. What do you think of what you witnessed on Friday? You've had some time to sort of separate yourself from me. You've gone home. You've, you know, you've relaxed. a bit. It was all kind of weird in the moment, but now that you look back at what you covered on Friday,

high-level MMA, so to speak, what do you make of it? I mean, you saw the, maybe you saw the post-fired show I did with Sean Al-Shoddy on Friday. And we were both kind of like scratching our heads. I'm not too far removed from that, to be honest. Partly because

the full story isn't written yet, to your point, we don't really know Dada 5,000's condition. Hopefully he's stable. and will improve and be okay, and that will be what that story is in terms of not getting worse. We don't know the ratings yet,

I think to some extent, people that you like it or not, that's going to affect the debate of this a little bit. I think my general view about it is, number one, Belator dodged a bit of a bullet with that co-made event happening the way it did. I mean, that could have gone, wow, that could have gone badly. I mean, it went badly in terms of public perception

for the quality of the fight, in terms of the health scare, that could have gone really bad. I think when people want to say, you want to do the fun freak show fights, okay, fine, but it should be nice and light. When you're there on the ground in Bellator and you go to these events, these tent pole events anyway, what you find is that there's a real contrast between the mood of the Bellator and Spike Staff and some of the anger online. The events are very light.

They're very breezy. It's very, you know, they know they're trying to put on bubble gum. They're not pretending it's anything that it's not, at least for those co-main events and main events like that. But then when it takes on an air of scariness, the whole conversation changes right away to, you know, I'm still willing to hold Belator to a different standard promotionally, but there's a minimum standard, right, for health and safety that I think we kind of got a little bit close to. That's the problem for me. So, look, let's see what the rest of the information is that comes in. Let's see how things go. But we'll break down parts of this, I'm sure, in the conversation ahead. But to me, you know, a real misfire for them. So as a journalist, as someone who's been covering the sport, do you share my frustration in the fact that 60 hours after this fight, we still don't know how this man is doing? We don't even know where he is? Like, don't you feel like to some degree the organization should be updating us every 24 hours, every 12 hours, and telling us, look, he's in the hospital, he's out of the hospital, renal failure. Tell us how he's doing today Monday afternoon. We have no clue. I've tried. I'm sure you've tried. We've all tried. Where is this man? What happened to him? Isn't that baffling?

A little bit, right? Because you would make the argument to say, well, if there's no change to his condition, why do you have to update the media? Well, for just that very purpose, to let us know there's been no change to his condition. If he's still stable and he's still basically okay and recovering slowly each day and I don't know, I'm just making up something. Let's say out of the hospital in a couple of days. You know, I'm not going to say all that ends well, but okay, nothing really tragic happened. But you still need to know over time. It's in the public's interest that this kind of information is divulged. Specific medical details, I suppose, where privacy comes into effect.

But certainly that the health and safety of this competitor has been protected as much as possible after the fact, and that there is some transparency about this in a good faith effort. I'm not sure why it's not being revealed, but if there's something to conceal, that's problematic. I'm not suggesting there is because I don't know. But even if it's something as basic as, well, we have nothing new to tell us, fine, then simply state that as much, that you have nothing new to tell us, the condition is unchanged, and we'll update you in 24 hours from today. Yeah, I keep being referred to that statement, but that was Saturday afternoon.

You know, we're approaching 48 hours since the, to me, that's very troublesome. Being there, like, it's one thing to be online and looking at the tweets and everything, when Kimbo fights, when Hoyst-Gracy fights, all that, what's it like in the arena? Like, how did Houston react to all of this? Because it's much different, as you know, live. look I'll just be honest you people seem to have a real good time you know it's funny you know

I mean you know understand when you're there in the event you don't know anything's happened to Dada 5,000 so let's say that's part of the conversation right we're only talking up until the main event ended and the main event was a bit of a dud but not like some cataclysmic thing or something it just it just didn't it just wasn't fireworks but I'll be honest man it's

I say this all the time if what you know about like Tito Ortiz or Kimbo slice is what you read from the media or, you know, the hardcore fan base online, I'm not saying they're wrong, but you get this impression that the world is coming to an end. Then you go to these events, and as I mentioned before, the staff takes everything quite lightly in terms of, you know, what they're presenting as a product. And then two, I hate to tell you, people still love Kimbo Slice. It's a bit of a mystery to me to some extent.

At Tito Ortiz, when you go to these events, people chant their names. When he came out, he had the biggest pop of anyone. They were roaring throughout that fight. Now, I'm not saying they didn't walk away being like, what the hell was that? I'm sure that they did. But I didn't get a sense that there was, you know, a lot of negativity about it. I didn't get the sense that there was a lot of people who were angry about it in the arena. That's not necessarily the case, for example, with a dynamite show. I don't think people hated that, but you could tell the crowd was quiet throughout a lot of

that show. It just never picked up. Not the case here, unfortunately, or, you know, however you want to view it. And, you know, it's interesting. I'm not trying to do a 180 here. I mean, I had a lot of people come up to me and they were looking at the press conference and the baby nuts, all that stuff. You know, there is some fun element to this. We don't have to always take it so seriously. And I wasn't ripping them for the booking going into the fact. What bothered me the most was the fact that they didn't put any other young stars. They didn't say, okay, come see the circus, but here are our real stars. Here are the guys that you're going to watch Bell Tour 150, 151. That's why you're going to tune in in the future. They didn't do that, but that's all well and good. Now that

this happened, now that the thing, whatever happened to Dada happened, and even to a degree the hoist can fight kind of ended. I mean, that's, I mean, that's, If Ken lost his temper, that could have been somewhat of a mess as well. Thankfully, he calmed down. Do you think Belator is going to re-look at things, or is it really, and we kind of expect there to be a good rating. I'd be shocked if there isn't. There wasn't much competition on Friday. Are you expecting more of this?

I am expecting more of this. I think to think it's going to go away altogether is just not realistic if for no other reason than business purposes or top-down pressure from Viacom. You know, I really thought that they, I thought Emmanuel Sanchez looked good. I thought it's worth noting that there was a prospect on the card who did look good. I don't want to disrespect him by not acknowledging what he contributed to that card. So let's be fair about that. But they really missed the ball. And it's in terms of putting on prospects on the card or names you want to show.

Because there's a real internal contradiction about their position in when they do things. They say, look, you know, we need these. I mean, they don't say this explicitly, but basically what they're doing is they need those big fights to put on the big ratings. But they know that's not sustainable. And they also say, look, if you look at the majority of the majority of it, of our product and they've got who, Dantus Galvow 2 next week. They've got Daryon Caldwell versus Joe Warren the week after that, two very legitimate fights, right?

They say if you look at the totality of our product, this doesn't represent it. Okay, it may not represent in terms of the percentage of what it is, but it's the flag bearer. I mean, most people who are casual fans, the audience that say they're trying to reach is that. And if you realize that that's not sustainable and it's not, I mean, how many fights could Kimball Slice possibly have, even if you had snuffed out, you know, one in 30 seconds or something like that. You know, he doesn't have a whole lot of time left. You absolutely have to make a real genuine effort to get those prospects on that card. And again, Emmanuel Sanchez, okay, fair enough,

he was there. I didn't really understand what the Litton Vassal-Emmanuel Newton fight accomplished. Melvin Galard versus Derek Compost. Big win for Derek Compos, but I'm not sure that's what the result that most people expected would happen. So I'm not sure how much of a build Campos got out of that. It didn't feel like a whole lot. You know, where was Darien Caldwell on this card? Where was Dauntus Galvow too? If that had been your co-main event and Slice Doddivers in your main event, and again, presuming that it hadn't gone that way in terms of the health risks, I think most people wouldn't have been okay with it.

The point of you're doing those big shows is to build the other fighters from the ground up while using the other guys to get big ratings. Okay, you only did half of that here. You got the big ratings. You used the other guys, and that's okay for what it is, but you got to make sure you put in a real genuine effort to build up the real talent that you have. that's really what your product is, then show us really what your product is.

And more to your point, they announced this card May 14th. King Moe versus Phil Davis as a main event is as good as any UFC light heavyweight fight not involving Daniel Cormier or John Jones in this day and age. It's also as good as any FS1 main event in my opinion. I mean, that is a legitimate, legitimate main event. Now, the Chandler-Thompson fight is fun. I still feel like Will Brooks is being forgotten to a degree, but still, this is what Bellator should be. you brought up Viacom, and I'm wondering, I want to get your take on this.

Okay, so this is, we keep talking about Coker, Coker, Coker. When you looked at Scott Coker's booking and what he put out there as far as when he was the president of Strike Force, it was a much different product. I know he's only been around for almost two years now. He had the Herschel fight here or there, but that wasn't the main event. That was, you know, Nick Diaz fought on that card as well as other. He didn't go this route in Strike Force. He had a lot of good young talent.

He was building guys. He was reviving, you know, old UFC star's career. Robbie Loll, he's giving them a second chance. This wasn't Scott Coker, or this isn't Scott Coker in Strikeforce. So who's to blame here? Is this a new Scott Coker? You talked to him a bunch. Is this Spike coming down?

They own the promotion. So who's doing, like, who's behind this, in your opinion? And who needs to really think and look at what they're putting out there and really have a, you know, come to Jesus moment with themselves? I think this is Scott Coker. You do. I don't say that in a negative way, to be perfectly honest. Like, look, you can make all the arguments you want to make about, you know,

Sean and I agree with this. The crime on Saturday, again, we're not talking about the way things went with health, which is its own separate. It's part of the debate, but it's also its own separate part of the debate, too. They had just done one of those fights and really made a strong effort to build it up with other, you know, again, a Darian Caldwar or something like that. I think people would have been basically okay with it. But the truth of the matter is this. If you look at that Bellator roster, they're in a real tough position because from the terms of ratings, it's very much feast or famine with them. They've got guys like Kimbo Slice, who they can blow it out and get Shaq to tweet about it,

and here's Booker T and Adrian Peterson and Paul Wall in attendance. And then they got guys like Patricie Fredi versus Ryan Couture or Paul Daley, and they can't even clear 600,000 views on Spike. Wow, that's a real problem because people saying, well, they should just abandon the freak show and go that route. That is the fastest way they're going to go out of business if they do that. So I don't really know what the solution is. It's some kind of marriage in between. It felt like what happened was they got the balance a little too far one way.

But I think people are just not realizing strike force was a really good operation. One of my real regrets in my journalism career is I covered them very negatively, and I very much regret that looking back on it. I think a lot of us did just because they were number two and they were just lesser. We kind of picked on them a little bit. At least I feel that way. With Bellator, they're working with what's out there. There's not a lot out there, man. We just kind of have to come to terms of that.

If you don't like, I don't tell you, I mean the proverbial you, If you guys out there don't like the Kimbo Slice fights, no one is making you watch for sure. I'm saying vote with your dollars. If you like it, watch. If you don't, you're under no obligation to. But if you're Bellator and you're thinking strategically about what to do, I'm not saying they didn't make mistakes.

They did with how they stacked that card. But the fact of the matter is, they need one to support the other at this point. They don't have enough to reach a middle ground to think it's just going to go away overnight because of one bad incident. And I admit it's bad. I just don't think it's realistic. I also think to some degree part of the,

The problem is that they're owned by a TV, you know, behemoth. And they're putting on too many shows. And so that stretches things. You can't have 20-something shows and expect to put, like, Strike Force back in the day when they were on HDNet prior to being on Showtime was only running six or so shows. And they were able to, you know, cater that Bay Area market and sell a lot of tickets. You can't take this circus on the road when you have a roster like that and expect to get good TV ratings as well.

I think that's a problem as well. Right. And here's the truth of the matter. And I don't know how much it's contributing to the problem you're identifying, which I completely agree with. But I know for a fact, they're still beholden to some of the contracts, Bjorn Rebney signed, for site visits at like Thackerville, Oklahoma, the Winstar Casino and other, and I think Pichanga as well, although they may have renewed that. But they're still beholden to that. Now, those events give you kind of what you need. They keep the divisions moving a little bit.

And they need, you know, for folks who say, well, why don't you just stack the prelim card? Well, they need the local shows to have their local guys fight so they can fill in for the tickets. Like I said, they're in a real tough position, man. I think one thing that you know about Viacom is this. And I've been a big proponent of following the news. We don't ever really talk about cord cutting in MMA, and I think we need to start. I'm not saying that danger is eminent for either these two properties, either UFC on Fox Sports One and whatever the case, and then Belator on spike. In fact, you know, whatever happens to those industries, I think U.S.C. and Belta are going to be the last to be affected because they're live sports.

But I also think there's a lot of pressure on both of those properties to have as much content as possible so they can buoy ratings. You know, Fox Sports One goes as long as they can with those fights to make sure more people watch, which I understand. And I also feel like Viacom is not losing any money, right? I mean, they're losing money, but they're still making billions quite literally month over month. But the fact that matters, if you're Viacom and you're watching some of your subscriber base decline, over a year, if you're Bellator, you can't just ignore these freak show fights and say, well, we're going to have, you know, the Will Brooks versus the Polish kid, who's the leg-locking guy, who his name is scathing out because I drink too much.

Yes, Martine Hill, because I drink too much diet soda. Those are as credible as they come. Will Brooks is as deserving as a champion as they come. But if I'm saying if you can put on X and you're putting on Y, we need you to reevaluate. It's just not going to work. So, again, I don't really know what the end. answer is this is a problem for Belator and for Spike and for Viacom to figure out. But, you know, this is very, very different than what Strikeforce had to go through. All that being said,

how do you feel about them now getting into the kickboxing business as well, adding more to their plate? Do you like this move? I'm neither here nor there on it. As you know, for a time for about a year or so, I worked for Glory. I got to see some of their product and what I think kickboxing can or can't do in the United States. Obviously, the Belator kickboxing product is going to be in parts of Europe and the rest of the world. People were asking, you know, why would Spike dump Glory only to get Bellator kickboxing? I think the answer is very, very simple. So Scott Coker can match the way he wants to. You know, Coker probably is going to have a better sense about what the American audience is going to want to watch. Obviously, he's partnering with people in Europe to get those shows that

thought out the way they want to look. I always felt like if you watch a Glory show, you should watch it in Europe. They just come to life there. Not to say the shows here where, you know, bad or anything. I don't think that's the case either. But man, when they put on shows in Europe, they're just, they're spectacles. They're phenomenal. I mean, they're, their must watch beginning to end. At least they feel that way. I think at heart, a lot of those guys come from Europe. They have a real European sensibility and, you know, connection to those individual markets and teams and fighters. So it just kind of always felt that way. I think Koker might make it a more Americanized. Whether or not that can turn into ratings results, you know, I'm very skeptical,

but I'll keep it open mind and see what they can do. Okay, let's end on a pause. note. There was a lot of MMA this weekend. As I said, WSOF in some sort of recrotech. Marlon Marais looked fantastic. What a win for him. A dominant win. Pittsburgh, last night, Soroni. Nice, beautiful finish. Derek Brunson looked fantastic. Cody Garbrand, although

Yamasaki was a little unsure of himself, still look good. Chris Komosi. Give me something that stood out in a positive light so we can end this on a good note. Well, again, I don't. None of us are talking about Emmanuel Sanchez, and I really think he's a top prospect. I think we need to make a note of that, and he performed very ably, especially in that third round. You should have seen Duke Rufus in his corner as the guy was surging ahead against Daniel Paneda. They were literally hugging and high-fiving in the corner. I think he's a kid coming of age, and he's worth paying

attention to. On the UFC side of things, I really have to commend the fact they tried as hard as they could and found a way to give Cody Garbrandt and Lauren Murphy fights. Lauren Murphy, a tough fight, and who was Fast Holtz, who had her debut. she put it on her as well. A fantastic debut for her. Lauren Murphy gets paid. She gets the win. I believe she got the win bonus as well,

Cordy Garbrandt, in addition against Tanquino. So I like the fact that they found a way to keep those fights alive, and then the people who were in those fights, to begin with, honor their commitment by putting on fantastic displays, both in a grinding fight and then a sensational KO. A lot to like there. All right. Fair enough.

Again, Luke, great job by you, Sean, Esther Casey. Fantastic stuff in Houston. appreciate the time and we'll talk to you very soon. Thanks, and just like you like that, had to be retired by the skins this year, let's retire baby nuts, shall we? Tired of talking about it. All right, I'm down with that as well.

Thank you, Luke, Luke, appreciate it. There he is, Luke Thomas of MMAfighting.com joining us. And, you know, again, I want to reiterate that I am coming from a good place here. I love this sport. Gosh, I started as a fan. I love this sport more than anything. I think about this sport almost more than anything, truly.

And so when the sport has an off week, has an off night, when something happens, I want to defend it. I want it to succeed. I want everyone to have a job. I want everyone to be happy. I want there to be great nights that we feel, you know, when we're buzzing, when we're on top of the world. That's what I want. That's all I want, honestly. And I hope that you all believe that I am sincere in saying this.

It's all coming from a good place. Let's move along. I said on Friday night, I don't give out the performance of the night awards, obviously, but I said my fictitious performance of the night award goes to Bellator color analyst, Jimmy Smith, who I believe is one of the very best in the game at what he does, and I thought he had a great night because he was honest, he was transparent, and he called it like he saw, which is the number one rule. So I wanted to have him on the program to talk about Friday night and more. Jimmy, how are you? Hey, good, man. How are you doing, bro? I'm doing great. Jimmy, again, congratulations.

Congratulations on a great night. I thought you were so on point and one of the, if I'm honest, one of the lone bright spots on Friday. I wasn't sure, though, to be honest, like, was this one, like, did you just have carte blanche to say and react, whichever way you want? Because as we know, one of the parts of being a broadcaster in this sport, you are working for the promotion. You don't work for Spike TV who owns it, but it's a little different in your sense. So did you just, because it didn't seem like you were very happy on Friday. Did I not read that correctly? Or is that accurate? No, man, that's accurate. And Bellator and Viacom, Spike, and everybody, they're great when it comes to my ability to call it the way I see it during a fight. I never get any kind of feedback about, hey, you know, don't say this or don't say that. They're amazing with that kind of thing. And they give me a lot of freedom.

And so they're great about that. Yeah, so I'm allowed to pretty much say what I want about how I feel about a fight, and that's what I do on credit. Did you feel the same way, like, were you apprehensive? You've been around almost since the beginning of Bel-Tor, so you've seen the complete evolution of this promotion from the Bjorn tournament days to what it is today. Did you feel this way going in,

or was it only when you were sitting there and watching what was unfolding that you reacted in that light? Yeah, it was, you know, I mean, if Dada and Kimbo had done what everyone expected them to do, basically, and they threw hard punches, and somebody went out in the first 30 seconds, you know, it would have been,

no one expected MMA glory on Friday when it came to those. those guys. It was a fun, fan-friendly kind of fight, and that's all anybody expected at best. I knew that if it went long, we were going to have a problem, and it went long and we had a problem. It was pretty much it. I went in with an open mind and thought, hey, maybe we'll have a fun fight tonight. That's what I was hoping for, and that's not what happened. So I made my mind up and called a fight as it unfolded. Now, as it progressed, I was suspect about how it could turn out, but it went the wrong way.

I don't want to put you on the spot here, but you're here, and I truly, truly appreciate you doing this interview. I really do love talking to you. But I went on a little mini rant at the top of the show that I have no idea how Dada 5,000 is doing. Like, I have tried multiple outlets. I keep asking, where is this man? Is he in the hospital? Is he out of the hospital?

I know it's not your job. You're not a spokesperson. But since you're here, do you have any idea what condition this man is in, where he is, how he's doing? I have no clue at all. I don't know any more than anybody else. I mean, I read the same things. I heard the same thing. but in an insider kind of way, I don't know anything about his condition.

I have no idea. Are you at all concerned? Because, I mean, when you hear cardiac arrest, someone who's invested so much in this sport, this is a tragedy. I mean, this could ruin our sport to a degree. And some people are asking me Friday night, like, did MMA take 10 steps back? Did we just go back to 2001? I don't believe that.

I think the train moves along and it's all well and good. But when you hear that, when you hear cardiac arrest, that's something that will alert the mainstream press, people that don't cover the sport, that don't really understand what's so beautiful and great about this sport, and then we're in a lot of trouble, and that's being selfish, let alone a man's condition. Do you share that sentiment? Yeah, in a sense I do in that it's never good when you have a medical emergency in a fight,

when you have somebody who has a life-threatening problem. I was talking to one of our cut men who's an EMT, and when the news came out, he said, well, he said, well, you know, cardiac arrest could mean a lot of things, and I said, yeah, none of them were good. You can meet a lot of things. None of them are good. And what I spoke to most about, my disappointment in the fight was the lack of physical preparation, which you guys didn't look prepared to fight.

And not only is that not good for the fans, it can be dangerous. So, I mean, anybody can have an off night. Anybody can get caught by a punch. You know, you and I, everybody has had bad nights doing what they do for a living. But we're all prepared. It was never because we weren't prepared for what we were doing. The tragedy is that not being prepared for what you're doing can have horrible, horrible consequences in a sport like MMA. And that's what we saw Friday.

Which Bellator do you prefer? Do you prefer the tournament Belator or this Belator? It's tough because outside of these fights that we had Friday, outside of the Shamrock fight outside of the Dada Kimball fight, Scott Cook has drawn some really great events when I think about dynamite, when I think about vengeance, where I think these really big fights, the British invasion, they're huge and they're great, and they're legitimate, and they're spectacular and all these things. And I think Scott's done an amazing job, and what everybody forgets, you know, I was there at the end of the tournament days.

It started wearing thin then. You remember when they wanted King Mo versus Rampage, suddenly we had a four-man tournament, when they wanted Roger Querta to take on Eddie Alvarez. Well, Pat Kern gets hurt. What do you know? They throw in Roger Quirta. So it was starting to wear thin at the end. They were looking for ways around it.

They were looking for ways to kind of make it easier to get the fights they wanted at the end because, let's face it, tournaments are unpredictable. So everyone who thinks, you know, Scott Coker was a turning point and they got rid of the tournament format, there were questions about the tournament format internally at the end of the Bjorn Rain as well. So it wasn't as though it was a sudden stop. They were looking for ways around it. I thought you brought up a very interesting point during the broadcast on Friday about hoist Gracie electing to not tape his hands?

Yeah. I mean, tape only his wrists. I mean, were you shocked? How did you even find out about that? It was a very astute point. And again, it was just great work on your part. How did you find out about that? And B, for the uninformed, can you explain why that is so dangerous?

Well, somebody who literally walked up our stage manager. There's a guy next to us that solved any problems you might have, and is based on our stage director, drops this note on our desk, and it says, hoist-wrapped-only wrists, not hands. And my broadcast, Barnet's young man, looks over me and I shrugs his shoulders, and that's when I made that statement. I said, it's better for your grip a little bit to not have wraps, but if you hit with any force, you're going to break something.

They don't, it doesn't protect you. And what I said on air was I was surprised, having fought in California, the two sanctions fights I fought in, it's not up to you how you have your hands wrapped. Commission comes in and they wrap your hands. As far as I know, and I fight in California, you don't get a choice. You can't say, I don't want to have wraps. They don't allow that. They wrap your hands.

So obviously we were in Texas, the commission I have never fought in. So I was surprised by that simply because having fought in California, you don't get to choose. They wrap your hands. So I thought that was weird. If it was a strange choice in a sense of, you know, if you can't take Ken down, you certainly can't, don't want to throw a punch that might hit his forehead if you don't have any wraps on. So it was an all or nothing kind of bet for Hoyt. I thought that was strange.

Based on what you saw Friday night, do you care to call another Kimbo Slice, Datta 5,000, Hoyce, Gracie, Ken Chamrock Fight? You could pick one, two, three, four out of that group. How do you feel about them? Obviously, I would say, you know, if Dada and Kimbo aren't going to be full, physically prepared, and there isn't some way to make sure they are physically prepared for what they're doing. Obviously, I would, I'd never want to call a fight to somebody who's not prepared and might be

physically hurt in there, and that's how Dodden and Kimball look. It's not a matter of aesthetic, a matter of, hey, look, we can't afford to have a physical problem in the cage. Hoist, you know, obviously didn't take any damage, looked okay. I mean, if they wanted hoist to fight again, I would understand that against the right guy. Ken just can't ever seem to catch a break. I mean, obviously, you know, we all saw what happened. There was a cup shot, and then after that, it needed a head,

and he responded after the knee to the head. That delay confused everybody. It confused our truck. It confused me. It confused everyone. And he goes down and, you know, everybody saw what happened. You know, it's just the number of matchups that work for guys like that are pretty low. and that's been the issue to me personally is

we want competitive fights and the idea of making a competitive fight for someone at that stage in their career there aren't a lot of names that pop up you want to feed them to a legit contender or anything like that so the number of matches that work out that work for the fans that work for everybody are pretty slim

there aren't a lot of them out there I said on Thursday that it's fair to hold Bellator to a different standard than the UFC because they haven't been around as long they're working with a thin their rosters. They're trying to build it up. They're trying to find out who they are in this day and age. I was okay with that and I was okay to be quite honest with these fights. After what happened to Dada and just what transpired on Friday, I've honestly changed my tune because there is a responsibility

I think by the promoter who is putting on an event in front of that many people, millions of people were watching that you have to be smart, you have to put on safe fights. And so I'm wondering from your end, do you feel like that's fair? Like is it, is it fair to put Belator in the same realm as the UFC, or should Belator be held to a different standard than the UFC right now? Well, you know, I mean, they're working with different tools or working with different rosters and different materials, but if you want to be a national or international promotion, the standard's pretty similar. You know what I mean? I mean, it's the idea of you wanting to be, like you said, a national, international player, which we're doing this year, we're doing some

international shows. Hey, you're on the same level. You have to be held to at least a similar standard, but what everyone keeps forgetting, and I say this over and over internal, I said anybody who will listen, when Kimbo fought Ken, 2.1 million people watch that fight. And when I see ratings like that, I got to tell you, at home, I kind of like smash my head into my desk a couple times when I read that when I first came out, because at the end of a fight like that, networks and promoters and that the people in charge don't change policy because of YouTube comments. They don't care what you say on the blogs.

They don't care what you tweet. They care what you watch. And when you see Vengeance, which was a card we had, Strauss v. Pitbull, they went to war. Michael Chandler, knocks out, uh, knocks out cavemen. We had amazing fights that night with real, legit, Will Brooks defeats marching. And held real, legit, young, hungry talent. And it got about 800,000 viewers. peaked at about a million, which wasn't bad, Kimbo Ken doubles that.

So when fans ask me, God, why do they put on these fights? Why do you think he put on these fights? Because you watched it. That's what you asked for. It's like a buffet. We lay out all this stuff. And what you eat the most of, that's what's for dinner. And all I ever tell fans is, look, we have six months of cards coming up.

You know, we got the May card with, you know, we have King Moe, versus Phil Davis. We have Michael Chandler versus Josh Thompson. We got a title fight this week. We have Korskov versus our, you know, our brand spanking new signing, by the way. And, you know, at 170 for the title shot, that's huge. That is huge. If you don't want to see Ben Henderson take on Korskov, April 22nd, if those don't get numbers, you're going to see more of the kind of fights that do get numbers. So that's what I try and tell fans is, man, help us out. Why? the fights that have legit guys, and if those numbers are high, that's what you will see again. And so in a sense, it kind of feeds on itself when you go, when that's what you watch,

that's what you're going to get, and then you turn around to complain that that's what you get. Well, come on, when we show the real legit guys, make those numbers high, and that's what you will get again. Scott is responding to what the fans are telling him. And like I said, you can scream, you can tweet, you can blog, you know, whatever you want, viewership drives what you see in Bellator. The fans are in charge of what they see. And if you support the Young Hungry Talent, you will see Young Hungry Talent. And that's what everybody forgets, man.

What was the mood like afterwards? Even before you found out about Dada, or maybe you did, and there wasn't any time between then, but you take off the headset, I'm sure you all reconvened at the hotel, you're talking to colleagues, everyone's trying to unwind. What was the mood like after that event? Well, on a personal note, Our producer, Rob Biner, died in between shows. And so we had a little memorial for him at this show.

He'd been in Beltaire from the beginning. So it was an emotional night for everybody. Anyway, the first show without him. So it was an emotional night for everybody anyway. So the mood afterward was on the production side, on the TV side, which I'm a part of, everything went well. You know, like you said, commentary was good. everything we could control as production was great.

We can't make the fighters fight. That came up a million times. It was, hey, great job, guys. You know, what can you do about fighters being unprepared? We can't control that. So in a production sense, it was a very mixed back because, you know, timing-wise and everything we didn't do on the production side was a great show. We can't get in there and make sure a fighter put in their road work.

We can't do that. So you kind of have to focus on what you can do. And what we could do was good. but everybody knew that what we couldn't do wasn't good. So it was a very mixed bag at the end of the fight. And more to that point, prior to the Kimbo fight, you are sitting there with one of the great icons in the history of combat sports, Mike Tyson,

who is just having the time of his life. And that interaction was just, I don't even know what to call it. It was entertaining, but I couldn't help but think, okay, here we have Sean Grandi, professional calls NBA Boston Celtics. Jimmy Smith has probably called at this point, I don't know, thousands of fights. What is going through these guys' mind right now

when Mike Tyson, of all people, an icon, a legend, is just doing what he's doing on the air. So tell me, please answer. What is going through your mind while you're sitting next to Mike, and he's just putting that out there? You ever played pinball? Yes. Ever played pinball machines?

Yes. You're doing everything you can with all the lights and the bouncing to get the ball kind of moving in one direction. That was me with Mike. Because you would just say the most random stuff, and you're trying to keep him kind of guided toward the fight and keep him pointed in the right direction and looking at the right thing. And it was like it was like being in the circus.

You know, it was like being in the circus for about, you know, however long it was, 10 minutes, I had to call with Mike. It was a ton of fun, but it was like, you know, solving the Rubik's tube while you're skydiving. Like I got to keep focused on my job. I've got to finish what I'm doing, but all this stuff is happening with Mike. And he goes a mile a minute and you never know. know which direction he's going to go in, but it was a blast, I got to say. So you obviously have a chance to briefly speak to him, you know, commercial break, they're setting

him up and all that. Did you have any idea that he was, you know, he was high on life, so to speak, or did you find out right as you guys were on the air and had to adjust? As soon as he came up to me, he goes, Jimmy, what's going on? I kind of pulls me, like kind of lifts me up, and he was just sitting, because, you know, he has a few seconds sitting down, get your headset on here, we're going to look in this direction, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he is talking mile a minute, and he's all over the place. Like, before we went on camera, so before the fans at home even saw him, I had some

idea of what I was getting myself into, you know, because we had been sitting there for half a minute as it was, and he was already just talking about all kinds of stuff. And when we go to commercial, he didn't necessarily know we were in commercial. He doesn't know what layout 5, 4, 3, 2,1 means. He doesn't necessarily, you know, it's not a broadcast, you don't know. Right. He was just talking through the commercial and talking about stuff, and then we'd kind of start again, and he just kept talking. So we were, I knew what I was in for from the beginning. I mean, when you're, when you're sitting there next to him, are you kind of trying to tell him, you know, you guys aren't on camera like, hey, man, can you, are you just letting him go? Are you just

letting this ride play? I just let him go. Okay. I'm not arguing with Mike Tyson about anything. First off, I'm going to throw that out there immediately. I'm not just arguing with Mike, but what can you do? The best you can do is kind of, we have a ton of laughs and just kind of roll with the punches and go with it. I think telling him, hey, Mike, straighten up on TV, be sure to talk about this, and he's not going to do anything anyway. So we might as well enjoy the ride and, you know, kind of grab onto the craziness and go with it, you know, and that's what we did. And, you know, I thought it was pretty fun. Fans kind of liked it. Sure. And when I found out that he was going to join the broadcast, at least for a portion of the night, I thought it was a no-brainer in,

in having him in the Kimbo fight, at least called the Kimbo fight. Do you have any idea why it was the Melvin Galard fight that he sat in on? Yeah. I did. Because initially they want, and I don't remember the logic, they wanted him later in the show so that we could tease him longer. So we go, hey, Mike Tyson coming up, Mike Tyson coming up. And so they didn't want him in a main event fight simply because Kimbo Dada, they thought, might be kind of short. You know, remember, the popular perception was that fight's going to go a minute. So we want to get a little more out of Mike than a minute. So Melvin Gillard, actually was Sean Graney and I sat down, Sean Graney more than me, who said, hey, you know, let's put him in the Galard-Compost fight.

they'll probably throw hands. He can talk a lot more about the boxing. It'll be a fast-paced fight, and we might get a round or two out of it. So it was long enough that we thought we'd get to hear Mike talk a bit, and we knew it would be striking-centric that he would have something to talk about. So that was, you know, Melmiglard has good punches, so did Derek Campos. So that was why that fight, because in a main event, we thought the two main event types would be a little too, number one, we thought, Royce Grays would have too much grappling that he wouldn't have anything to talk about,

and we thought Dada Kimbo would be too short. So Compos Galard had that perfect combination of we'll probably get rounds and it'll have some punches in it. And I thought it worked out perfectly. Okay, before I let you go, just a couple more things. What would you like to see different next? I mean, for a broadcaster to go on Twitter and say FML or tweet FML after, I mean, again, I give you a lot of props.

You were telling you like it is, and I think a lot of people appreciated that, including myself. Would you like to see any changes going forward? Do you think this was just sort of a freak thing? what are you thinking as far and I know the cards are different you got a great one coming up a great title fight as you mentioned but for the big dogs

the tempos as they're called what would you like to see done differently if anything I would like to see you know like I just said I'd like to see the fans react to the young hungry town I'd love to see King Mo

versus Phil Davis break records and they can go hey this is what the fans want to see let's give them more of that that's what I want to see if there's a fight with you know the quote unquote Legends Division

putting two on one card was a lot. I think that was a problem, too. If one of those fights had gone the way it had gone, yet everything leading up to it was a fantastic fight like we had leading up to the two main events, that would have been okay. One of them is good. I wouldn't put two on a card anymore. And like I said, I would like the fans to really respond to the up-and-coming count, the established guys. We have, so we see more of them. There's a legends fight. Yeah, maybe one as a main event would be kind of fun, but that's what I would like to see more of is the young, hungry guys, And if the fans want it, the fans respond to it.

That's what you're going to get. Fair enough. Again, Jimmy, fantastic work. Thank you very much. You did a great job on Friday. In my opinion, one of the few bright spots, if I'm being honest. But I really appreciated what you did as a broadcaster. So kudos to you.

And we'll be watching on Friday as Belator returns for Beltor 150. Thank you. Thanks a lot, man. Appreciate it, buddy. All right, there he is. Jimmy Smith, color analyst for Beltor MMA on Spike TV. Let's move along. Reference to him earlier.

our next guest is the lightweight champion in Bellator and right now we want to know what's up with him. We just found out that Michael Chandler is fighting Josh Thompson next. There he is. Will Brooks joining us via the magic of Skype. Will, how are you? I'm good, man. How are you? I'm doing great.

Always a pleasure to have you on. So thank you very much for the time. You're not a dad just yet, right? You still got a few more weeks to go? Yeah, I got a little over two weeks left, man. It's exciting times right now. man, I'm so excited. I can't wait until she's here. And so let's expand on that.

And by the way, early congratulations to both you and your wife. It is the greatest thing in the world. And I wish you guys the best. Your life is going to be a thousand times better in the next few weeks. So I'm really happy for you guys. Thank you, boss. Thank you very much, man. On Friday when they announced Chandler v. Thompson, a lot of the questions that I got was,

all right, what does this mean for Will Brooks? Where is Will Brooks? And you sort of touched on it a little bit on Twitter. But is this the answer? Is this the reason why you don't have a fight book because you're about to be a dad and you're a little booked up on the personal side of things? Yeah, I mean, once we found out that we were having a baby, it was kind of right when I was getting ready for Marcy and Held.

And I kind of figure, you know, it was just one of those opportunities to take that time out to learn and take that time to figure out, all right, how do you get ready to be a dad, you know, try to educate myself and get myself prepared for this. And being that it's so soon right now, you know, she's about to be able to be a dad. to come in a couple weeks. I just started figuring, you know what, I want to take my time and help my fiancee get ready, try to help her prepare for that just because she's got a busy schedule. So I just want to take my time out and, you know, start to become and get into that mindset of being a dad. So that's what I've been trying to do. And of course, you are one of the most

fascinating follows on Twitter because any given moment, I will log on there and see like a series of 10 tweets from Will Brooks on usually if I'm being honest, some things that are bothering you. And, you know, we had Michael Chandler on recently. And, you know, he said that essentially you were the epitome of a bad employee or disgruntled. You're not playing ball, essentially. Where are you at right now? But where is this all coming from? Because you are their champion, and yet it seems continuously like you're just not happy. Explain how you're feeling. I don't know, man. I just, I just, I I just feel like at this point, really, I've just put a lot of energy into negative things,

you know, putting a lot of energy into things that I can't control. And right now where I'm at, I'm in a very contempt place, you know, I'm very happy where my life is. I'm very involved in what's going on with my fiancé and her schedule and what she's doing with school, involved in what's going on with, you know, preparing to be a dad, my child on the way, trying to finish up organizing our wedding, things like that, you know. I think a lot of times when people were seeing me going on these different rents, that was just me, you know, allowing myself to be a little jaded, a little bitter about some of the politics of this sport, you know, and putting energy, again, into things that I can't control.

And, you know, no more of that, you know. I'm not going to do any more of that stuff. I'm trying to get back to who I originally was. I think we had a conversation one time where you had mentioned, you know, you were like, I would love to see the old Will Brooks come back, you know, and that's something I'm trying to work on. I think, again, I think I just got a little bit jaded by some of the politics, trying to get too involved in the things that I can't control. And, you know, it kind of made me a little bitter towards things.

But, you know, I'm just trying to, you know, regroup myself and refocus. Have you had a chance to talk to Scott and tell him how you feel? Is that where this is coming from? Like, have you had a chance to sit down and just share how you're feeling about everything? No, I haven't. No, heaven. It's just really, I feel like that doesn't even matter. I think that stuff is just that that's what has to do with the career portion.

You know, that just has to do with the job. But I'm talking about a personal goal, you know, just because I see that, you know, I'm about to be a father. I can't be a father and be trying to teach my daughter different goals, different morals and different, trying to teach her about integrity. If I'm out here acting a fool, you know, if I can't get back to a peaceful place and a happy, calm, positive place, how can I raise my child? You know, I can't put her into a negative environment like that. and that's where all my energy needs to be right now. So that's where I'm focused on. That's what I'm going to put myself in that mindset right now.

So correct me if I'm wrong. Is this Will Brooks saying that what Michael Chandler said on this show a couple weeks ago was actually true, that you were acting like a bad employee and that you need to shape up? Yeah, no, I mean, look, man, I've never pretended to be a perfect person. And I think that's one thing that the fans have always appreciated about me.

I've never pretended to be perfect. I know I make mistakes in regards to weight in regards to the way I relay things, but do I apologize for the way I think and the way I feel about things? No, I don't. Do I apologize for the way that I relay things? Yes, because the way I relay things is based off of emotion, based off of allowing different situations to force me to react when really that's me giving up control of things. That's me giving free rent space to these different negative things. Like Chandler, I live free in his mind. that's the same thing to that. So that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to get back to a point where I'm controlling my own destiny. I'm controlling things around me and not trying to control things that I can't control. So yeah, I don't like Chandler.

I don't like him. I don't like who he is as a person. I think he's a fake. But I do agree with him somewhere. I'll be honest about it. Why do you think he's a fake? Why don't you like him? Just because I think that guy goes out of his way.

He goes out of his way to put him. on this routine that I'm this God-fearing guy. I've never done this. I've never done this. I'm just a professional all the way through. But then when you hear him talk on these interviews, he's always talking trash about me. He was talking trash about what's his face?

Anthony Pettis and Eddie Alvarez. Dude, why are you talking trash about them? You're not even going to fight them. Why are you even worried about them? Why are you talking trash about me? Whenever you look at my Twitter, whenever you see any interview, You don't see me talking about Michael Chandler. I don't go out of my way to talk about Chandler,

but for some odd reason, he's constantly talking trash about me. He's constantly saying, I'm not going to talk trash about such and such. I'm not going to be that guy, but all he's been doing is talking trash about Ben, talking trash to Thompson, talking trash about guys that don't even fight in the organization.

You know, it's just, it's almost embarrassing. At least when the fans hear me talk, they'll hear me, like the real Will Brooks. They'll never hear me try to be anything other than who I am or try to be this perfect person. He's crazy, man. He drives him crazy. Chandler just signed a new deal.

He's fighting Thompson, Big Show, May 14th. Do you feel like you get the same kind of love that he does from Belator? Is Belator pushing you? Are you getting the commercial love? Do you feel like they are getting behind you as their champion? Yeah, I think, honestly, I think it's a two-way thing, you know. And again, this is a thing that I've recognized. I've had to sit back and, you know, how do I figure out how to evolve?

How do I figure out how to be a good dad to my child? And that's being honest with myself, you know. And I have to be honest with you. I don't feel like they have, but that's also part of some of the things that I've done. Again, with some of the things that I've put out on Twitter, the way I relayed, the way I feel about things, I put myself in this position. And the only way you can evolve or get better as a person is if you can admit to your own fault, you know. And that's something that I've done.

I probably put myself in some of these situations, and some of these situations may have just manifested on their own, you know, and I just reacted to them. But Bellator recently, they actually offered me a new contract, a new deal. It was really good money. Some things that, you know, I didn't really like in the contract, but we could have, you know, fine, you know, fine-tuned it and made different changes, and it would have fit what I wanted. But, you know, they offered me a good deal, offered me good money. but I decided to go, I decided to turn it down just because my own personal goals that I've set for myself. And, you know, hopefully I could just move forward and just get back to just being who I feel like I'm supposed to be, you know. So how many fights do you have left on your current contract?

I don't even know how this thing breaks down, man. I think on my actual contract, I had, I've got two fights, however many months, it left until July 15th. But, you know, by looking at how many months, I think it's like four or five months until July 15th, I'd probably only be able to fit in one fight. So I guess you could say one fight, so I don't know. So it's either get two fights in or July 15th that expires, whichever comes first, right? Yeah, whichever comes first, yeah. You're expecting to at least fight once before July 15th, right?

I would like to. I would like to, you know, but that's also, again, another thing that I can. control that comes down to what bellatory decides to do it comes down to what scotkover decides to do it comes down to if they have somebody to fight me you know it's uh it's a whole mix up mix up of uh contenders everybody's looking to fight somebody else all the guys that were uh screaming about title fights and wanted to fight me as all of a sudden decided they want to fight other guys you know and um you know hopefully somebody figures out exactly what they want to do and you know i'll be here okay we'll get to what's next in just a second but i i wanted

know. So you want to test free agency. You want to test that market. You want to go the route that we've seen other fighters do as of late. That's your goal here, right? Yeah, definitely. That is my goal. I mean, I set a goal. And look, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, to be honest with everybody. When I first got into the sport, I wanted to be a lightweight, UFC lightweight champion. That's what I wanted to be. And I cannot lie about that, you know. Earlier in my career, that opportunity did, it never presented itself, but an opportunity to fight for Bellator did. So I flipped my goals. I flipped my goals. I flipped the I said that I was in at that time and I said, listen, I'm going to be the best fighter that I can be for

Bellator. I'm going to be a Belator lightweight champion. I accomplished that goal. That was a goal that I said. I accomplished that goal. Now I want to move on to my next goal if that opportunity presents itself. This is just who I am. Setting goals and accomplishing goals is something that has saved my life during very, very dark times in my life. And I want to continue that that routine that I have. So that's where I'm at right now. this in a nutshell is and I've talked about this over the past week coincidentally why I love the sport so much your honesty here and I really appreciated people like you coming on and just telling it like it is so thank you

for that and I don't want to put you in a tough spot here but have you because I know you still have an employer but have you sent out feelers like do you think that the UFC is interested in you right now? I don't know man that that portion of it I leave to my management and I do the fact that I am on a contract with Bellator so I won't I will not be one of those that goes out of his way to disrespect the organization in that fashion and go and try to do things

behind their bags just because I recognize the fact that other guys may have tried to do that and things did not work in their benefit. Things did not work out well for them and I'm not going to be that guy. I've said it before. I signed with Bellator. This is an organization I fight

for and that's what I'll continue to do until that contract is up or whatever happens in the future. Do I agree with every decision and everything Seeing it Belatory is done? No, I haven't. Could I have relayed that in a better way in a more organized professional manner? Yeah, I could have.

Did I not do that? Heck yeah, I didn't do that, you know. But, you know, I'm a human being. I've learned from everything. I'll continue to get better, you know. So Chandler's fighting Thompson, May 14th. Benson signs, at least in our little bubble, it seemed like a lot of people were excited about Will Brooks versus Benson.

He's fighting at 170, so that's not next. Let's say you do get one more fight in before July 15th. Do you have any idea who this person will be, who your opponent will be? No, I have no idea. You know, I know there was a lightweight, I think his name is Brandon or Brennan Gritz. Yeah. He just tore his ACL, right? And then, you know, there was another guy.

Oh, shoot, I can't even think of his name. And I'm not even trying to be a jerk right now. I'm not trying to play them. I'm just not really good with names. I'm not. Fair not. I've never been in games. But yeah, I guess whoever's next in line,

whoever makes sense, you know, would I like to see Ben go out there and win his walk-to-way title and, you know, um, you know, make a decision to come to lightweight and fight me. That'd be great, you know,

that'd be fun. I would really like to fight that, have that fight. Um, but again, I have no idea. I'm just trying to get ready for my baby girl, man,

and just be the best person. I can possibly be and be the best day that I can be to her. Do you have a champions clause? Like as long as you're the champion, can you not go anywhere? No. Honestly, I don't think so. Okay. I mean, my manager has done a pretty good job with, you know, making sure that I'm educated

on everything and from the sounds of it, I don't have any clauses left. I think, again, it's just two fights, whatever, two fights, July 15th, whichever comes first. But, you know, I look at the time span and look at the months, and I think I'll probably only be able to fit in one fight until before July. So, you know, I don't know. What did you make of the whole scene? Thompson wins, says he wants to fight Chandler, not the champion.

Chandler gets the fight. I mean, it doesn't feel like a lot of attention is being put on the belt itself, and that should always be most important, in my opinion. It's fine not to put you in the main event if there's a, you know, a sexier fight there. but I feel like everyone should be gunning for the belt. Are you surprised with the way the fighters in the division are viewing the belt right now? No, I'm not. I mean, it is what it is.

Again, I can't control any of that, you know? I think it is one of those things where I have to be honest with you. And I said it before and I know everybody's going to turn it. Probably going to turn it into something where I'm critiquing Bellator. I'm doing this. I get it. But do I think it's one of those things where, they're like, well, shoot, what do we do?

We have a guy that's ready to go into free agency, you know? So what do we do with them? Do we, you know, put all our money, put all our time into a guy that could possibly leave, or do we put our energy into the guys that are here, the guys that are trying to prepare to have a long career here or the guys that are signing multi-year multiple fight contracts, you know? And I respect that. I get that. If I was running Belator, I would do the same thing.

If I had a guy that I knew that was probably not going to be with us or doesn't feel like he wants to be there anymore. I don't think I would spend the energy on that guy either, especially if I have other guys that I need to put that energy into. I need to build these other guys. So for them to make the Thompson-Channler fight, that makes sense. You know, Chandler is a guy that just signed a brand new contract, you know. Thompson just signed a contract, and he's planning on being there for the rest of his career,

and he's trying to help build that organization, and I respect all that. So it's just one of those things where I'm just kind of hanging out and see what happened. Did you watch the top two fights on Friday night? And if so, what did you think? What did you make of them? Yeah, I watched Kimbo and Dadah. I watched Kimbo because he's a teammate. He trains that American Top Team,

and he's always been a really good guy to me since I met him, and just wanted to tune in and show him that team support. You know, it was one of those things where I think the fans got what they kind of expected. It went in a different direction maybe. I don't know. My main concern was Dada, you know, especially with the whole – he had a cardiac arrest type of situation that went on. So it kind of took my mindset from the actual fights itself, you know, to thinking about that guy's safety. You never want to say – I have an issue like that.

But, you know, overall, I think, you know, Bellator got what they needed. They got what they wanted out of those fights. They got the ratings, I believe. they got the attention from Twitter, from all the fans on Twitter and social media. So as far as Bellator doing what they needed to do to get the ratings and get the attention, they did that.

I'm just glad that those guys made it out there, made it out of the cage in one piece. And Shamrock also, man. He might have to figure out something with his body, man. I don't think everything's hidden on the same systems, you know. He got hitting the nuts and then like five

seconds later, like maybe like five, ten seconds later, then his mind kind of was like, oh, we just got hit, I don't know. Like, there was a disconnect there, but I don't know, man. I'm just glad everybody made it out of one piece, you know? Hopefully. I'm hoping still don't really have an update, at least an up-to-date update on Data 5,000, but I echo your sentiments.

So let me ask you this. Okay, so we know that fight. Let's talk about another title fight. Coming up March 5th, Connor McGregor or Hafeld Dosangos, your weight class. Who's your pick? I'm going to go with Dosayos. I think he's a very impressive guy.

I think just me studying fights. I watched what McGregor was able to, what he wasn't able to do is defend wrestling against Mendez. And Mendez came in on a two-week notice, short notice, and was able to take him down repeatedly, beat him up on the ground. And when they were on the feet, I don't think a lot of people recognize how many times Mendez was able to hit him with big punches that landed flush. Now, if you're able to get a guy that's going through a full training camp, that can implement that same game plan, like those. Sanyos does, like he did against Pettis, who I think has a very similar style to McGregor as far as the karate, athletic, explosive movement, he shut all of it down with really dirty, hard-nosed wrestling and just big punches and big kicks. And I think that's something that McGregor might have a

hard time with. Will you be watching? Yeah, I'm definitely going to watch. I'm definitely going to watch. I watch everybody, man. I got my eye on everybody. You never know what the world does, man. You got to be ready for everything. I don't know where I'll be next in the next week. I don't know where I'll be next month. That's true. I watch everybody. I'm ready for everybody. By the way, how's that new ATT facility in Florida? I hear it's fantastic. You've been there. What's it like?

Yeah, man, it's incredible, man. Every day I've been there, we've been going, it's been open for a couple months now. Every day I go in there, man, I still look around. I'm like, I train here. We train in this facility. It's just it's an incredible opportunity.

They're still putting things together, but every day you come in and you see the idea of what they're trying to get to and you really get an idea of what they're trying to do. The team is getting stronger. There's a new energy, more positive energy, people are working together more. The team atmosphere and his new facility is just incredible. And I'm excited to see what the future holds for everybody. And by the way, I misspoke earlier. I said your wife is pregnant. You correcting me, fiancee. But I got to tell you, I've never had the pleasure of meeting her. She seems to be a keeper, my friend. I saw, I think it was on Instagram. You put up a picture of a thing she put up for you with

I Will made out of hearts or something. I mean, that is, wow, that is some thoughtful stuff. What was written on every one of those notes? It was different things that she loves about me and different things that, you know, me helping her and things like that. But, man, I'm such a blessed, man. And this is why I'm trying to refocus myself and regroup myself because these things are the things that, you know, I haven't had time to appreciate these small things that she does. for me. The fact that I'm about to be a dad, the fact that we're about to get married, my appreciation for these things have been very, it's been fleeting, been very short term, because I've been putting so much energy into things that I can't control in regards to the

politics of this sport, how I feel about some things that have happened outside of my, outside of things, you know, and I can't do that anymore. I have to be invested fully into this amazing woman that I have, the amazing life that I live. I'm trying to put myself back into where I need to be and appreciate everything that's going on around me to the fullest amount and not have it fleeting like it was and putting myself in multiple different places. But just being here right now and enjoying her and enjoying, you know, getting ready to be a father. Again, great stuff. Well, thank you very much for the time. Early congratulations on the baby coming up, the wedding.

Fantastic stuff. Appreciate it and best of luck to you in the future. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks, man. Take care. All right, there he is. Will Brooks stopping by. Great stuff from the Bellator Lightway Champion. Always appreciate having him on. I know he is a personal favorite of one New York Rick as well, and telling it like it is. You got to respect that honesty. I did this roundtable with Richard Deich of SI.com, and I also appeared last week on the Dan Patrick Show, which was such a thrill. Wow, what an amazing thrill that was.

and one of the things that I said is I love the sport so much because the athletes are just so damn honest. I mean, it's never mundane. It's never these sort of packaged dancers. It's never boring. It's never the run-of-the-mill stuff that you see in other sports. They truly tell it like it is, good or bad, and I really respect that. Always available. Always a text or phone call away.

And Will Brooks is no different. So I appreciate him coming on and sharing how he feels. And it's nice to know that he is, I think some people were maybe thinking that he was going to come on and, you know, said everything ablaze, not the case from Will. Good stuff out of him. Okay. In a minute, we are going to be joined by the senior vice president

and general manager of UFC Fight Pass. Eric Winter may not be a household name, but if you listen to this show, you will recognize the name, no doubt. we even talked about him a little bit last week. Ever since coming over to the UFC, he was working for Yahoo for quite some time, had the pleasure of running into him several times

because he was a big part of Yahoo sports's growth. This man has moved mountains, and he's only been there for just a few months hired in July of 2015, but look no further than this Saturday. In fact, let me take a step back. Look no further than this weekend. Friday, you have glory.

Lori, a non-mixed martial arts property, debuting on Fight Pass, UFC Fight Pass, Friday, Joe Schilling, headlining that card. And then you have Saturday. Look no further than that. Michael Bisping in front of a sold-out partisan crowd will be fighting Anderson Silva exclusively on UFC Fight Pass. That, in a nutshell, is just a taste of what Eric Winter

has been able to do since joining the team in July. Can't wait to talk to him. have so much to discuss with him, and very happy that he's joining us right now. Eric, how are you? I'm good. How you doing, Ariel? Thanks for having me on the show. I'm doing fantastic. Really appreciate the time, and early, you know, right off the top, kudos to you for what you've done since joining the team. I know you are one of many, but you've done a fantastic job. So let's get into it.

I want to start at the beginning, to be honest, because you had a great job at Yahoo. You were doing great things over there, in particular with Rivals.com. But when did you first hear about FightPass, and when did you first get interested in in maybe joining the team and taking this thing to the next level. So, you know, it's a longer story than my time at Yahoo. My careers I like to tell people is, you know, it's the story of three different, you know, experiences. One was at direct TV for almost nine years.

So that's where I got my digital or my television and my broadcast chops. So I was almost there for nine years, ultimately ran the pay-per-view events business. So we're going back, you know, all the way to 2001, 2002 here when I first got introduced to the UFC. So I've known about the business for quite some time. And then when I got to direct TV, ultimately, or pardon me, when I got to Yahoo, I was there for almost nine years. But the first phone call I made when I got to Yahoo was to Dana. And I said, you know, we need to do this big deal, ultimately which turned into Yahoo,

Yahoo having the global live streaming rights deal for all pay-per-views digitally. But, you know, when did I first, you know, know, know about FightPass? I've been a UFC.tv customer since day one, yeah, obviously through a partnership. And then when FightPass launch, I've obviously been around since day one. And I never really thought, you know, hey, what would it be like to, you know, wear the brand UFC on your chest? I was very content at DirecTV, and then I quickly realized I needed to learn a little bit about the digital world, and that's why I went to Yahoo. And, you know, I was on vacation in April of 2015 when I got the first phone call from the UFC,

and, you know, a few months later, here I am. When you joined the team, when you joined the UFC in July, were you thinking this big? Were you thinking, wouldn't it to be something if I could get names? It's like, you know, as you know, when this thing started and famously, I scored the fight past launch, which has always kind of bothered Aunt Evans, who works with you, who is a friend of mine, who I've been working with for a long time. I scored it a 10-7 because I thought that the launch was a little clumsy. And the initial events were not your biggest events. You know, the overseas shows kind of thin, maybe an interesting main event, but nothing really to go out of your way for. And now, again, as I say, Michael Bissing is fighting Anderson Silva.

but I would pay, you know, $60 gladly to watch that fight. Were you thinking that big, or did things evolve very quickly? I mean, what were your early visions as opposed to, you know, then to now? You know, listen, I was running a company that Yahoo acquired for $100 million. So I didn't leave that job to come over here to do small things. I've always been a big thinker. I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but I'm certainly no different than any of my 300 colleagues here at the U.S. see, we want the biggest, we want the best.

And that's certainly how I was pitched and recruited to come here. It wasn't like, oh, hey, come over here. We have a small little business. No, it was, we have big ideas, and we want you to be a part of the team to help us execute on these big ideas. And so Michael Bisspeng, Anderson-Silva, how did that end up on FightPass? Because as you know, you don't need me to tell you this,

Bisping was supposed to fight Gaggar Musassi. And then I think it was Christmas, or maybe Christmas Eve, This present comes out for, and what was fascinating about it was it was already sold out. So it's not like you needed to do this for the local audience to boost ticket sales. Already sold out. People were content. It's Bisping versus Musassi, fantastic. And then you put in Anderson and bump Musassie down.

How does that end up on Fight Pass? Is Eric Winter to be thanked here? Was that all you? How did you do it? Listen, we all work for Lorenzo and Dana. It is their company. And without them and without their support. on every initiative that is in market, it wouldn't happen.

And, you know, I'm going to go back to the April phone call that they gave me. They said we want to do big things here. We're not here just to have a nice digital streaming service. We want to be the Netflix of the fight community. We just feel that the time is right. The customers are ready. Our technology certainly can handle it. But I'm going to go back to when we first created Page Van Zandt versus Rose Namahunas.

That was a big deal for us to say, hey, this event is not on our calendar. It's 75 days until December 10th. And we're, you know what, we're ready to do it. We want to do the first ever U.S. event live on UFC Fight Pass. And I think the success of that event, green-lit everyone in this company, not green-lit everyone, but it sort of got everyone to understand that, whoa, this is a product that's moving, a live-event product and a technical product. And I'm going to say it again, Dana and Lorenzo have been as supportive as anyone in this company.

And we, you know, everyone is on vacation, you know, taking our 24 hours of vacation over Christmas. and next thing you know, a text message came through, and I'm not going to go into the guts of the text or who was on the thread, but it was, all right, this is what we're going to do ultimately because we had talked about it for about a week and a half, and the decision came down, and if you want to really know who deserves a lot of credit here, it's the UK team for the UFC,

because on Christmas Eve, you know, fine, you know, I'm sitting in mammoth, just got off the mountain snowboarding, And here they are at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night on conference calls with us trying to home in on the finalizing Silva versus Bispin. And, you know, that's how it all came about. I don't want to get too inside baseball here because there's a lot of big picture stuff that I still want to ask you. But I will say Sunday morning I tweeted out the news that Bisping Silva was going to air exclusively on Fight Pass for UK and Ireland viewers. and I was, to be honest, I was kind of blown away by the response. The response wasn't 100% positive.

A lot of fans were upset by this. Can you explain to those fans? Because believe it or not, we do have a lot of fans who watch this show live because of the time difference in the UK and Ireland. Why this is the case for Saturday? You know, it's interesting. It's an interesting question because when you talk about technology and you talk about building a killer product, you know, you don't want to change consumer behavior. And yeah, we are changing consumer behavior here because this event is an A-plus-level pay-per-view for us.

So we need to change the behavior and the consumer's mindset that this event would be 7 o'clock and 10 o'clock. You know, 7 o'clock West Coast, 10 o'clock East Coast, because in reality, the main event is going to kick off at 4 p.m. East Coast and 1 o'clock West Coast. So we are changing the behavior. I can understand, you know, customer confusion. I can understand people not understanding, but we're trying to build a business for three, five, ten years from now. But we also have to realize that, you know, Dana said this at the launch. Flight Pass is going to get better and better. And we felt, I'm going to go back to it, we felt based on the success of our December 10th event,

which was phenomenal. It was a great three days for our company that we were ready to do something big. and we certainly jump, you know, from Page and Thug Rose to Silva Bisping. And we're going to let our customers speak. Our customers are allowed to have an opinion, definitely in this social and digital age. But I've seen, I believe that I've seen on social a 180. In the first 24, 48 hours, people were angry, upset, confused, but it's a vocal 1%. I believe what I need and what we need to think about first,

is our existing base of bite-pass customers, which is a really big base. But we need to also think about the customers that are going to come in, and it's our responsibility to give them kick-ass product every single day, seven days a week.

And more to that point, I just have to bring it up because you were just talking about social. I don't mean to keep kissing your butt here, but I love what you do on Twitter. Sometimes I just like to go on your feed, and I notice even when people aren't writing to you specifically you will, I guess, search out, fight pass or whatever and respond to disgruntled customers,

someone who throws something out there that may not be accurate. You're very engaging. I know you do these sort of think tanks, send people stuff. I mean, that's a very important thing. And in fact, I would be honest, I was even talking to someone at a major MMA brand and said, go look at Eric Winter's Twitter feed and see how he deals with things. That's the way you guys need to deal with things. people respect the fact that a face, especially one in power, goes out and actually talks to the fans, to the grassroots community. So kudos to that as well. Okay, so here we are with the big show on Saturday. You also have Glory on Friday.

You announced recently Eddie Bravo's invitational is going to be on the platform as well. Are you guys going to continue to venture outside of MMA, like having jiu-jitsu, like having kickboxing, or are those the only two for the foreseeable future? No, we're going to keep going around. we have nine live content partners. You know, we've got the best in women's MMA. We've got some of the leading MMA organizations in the world. And as you've alluded to and stated, we've got the best in kickboxing and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

You know, we're going to, we need to settle in. We don't want to rush too fast. We don't want to overwhelm our customers with everything under the sun. We need to do glory right. We need to do Eddie Bravo correctly. And once we feel comfortable in what I've been calling, you know, the disciplines of MMA, we will certainly expand even deeper. But we want to get it right first, like any technical product, and move on from there. Right before the announcement a couple years ago, right before UFC 168, I believe, I remember interviewing Dana White and asking him if in five years he believed pay-per-view would be no more and that FightPass would be the future.

fans would buy their UFC pay-per-views exclusively online, and basically the UFC could be its own master there and not have to, you know, share the revenue with any pay-per-view provider. Do you believe now, here we are a couple years later, with the momentum that FightPass has? Do you believe that that is the future that in some time, you know, not too down the line, the only place that you can buy UFC pay-per-view, much like what the WWE did, is via UFC FightPass? So I'm going to disagree with that point. And I'm going to remind, you know, not remind you, but as you probably remember, I used to oversee and run the pay-per-view business for direct TV.

So I have a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge in the trends of pay-per-view from a broadcast perspective. UFC, Pride. I was doing deals with Hideki and Yukino way back in the day for Pride. WWE, you name it. So I know the consumption and the patterns of consumers. And when I first came to UFC and I got up at my first executive meeting and I was expected to give a nice presentation and I put my fist down and I said, we're going to be a mobile first company because that's what I came from over at Yahoo. We wanted to be mobile first. But then I quickly recognized as I looked under the hood, we're not anything except everything.

We want to put our content where our customers are, whether it's on free TV, whether it's on paper, whether it's on a gaming device, whether it's on a television device. So I don't think we're going to be a 100% in three, five, ten years from now. I think we're going to be across all different devices and all different consumption needs based on where our customers are, which is inclusive of pay-per-view. And our pay-per-view continually grows traditional pay-per-view, cable and satellite here in the U.S., continually grows for our business. I'd say, to answer your question long-winded, FightPass is just one of the legs of our revenue model, and it's growing.

Okay, so now as we look to the future, and you try to figure out the landscape between, because I know you're starting to make these sort of, how should I put it, the headlining fights for Fight Pass, Sage Northcut has been your best salesman on that front. Are you sitting there and saying, like, we need to beef up, even if it's the bottom three fights as far as the card goes, and then you got the, let's say, FS1 prelims,

and then the pay-per-view, are you sitting there and saying, we need to beef these up, or is this just a sign of the times? How would you explain the way those fight-pass prelims have been looking as of late? Because there's definitely been a shift. So the best part of my job, and, you know, listen, you know, my wife, who, you know, would have never thought she would love the UFC or pride from back in the day. I've been married now almost 10 years, and she's been watching the UFC and private me.

So she can explain and explain everything about the business. And the point is that we've been fans, and I've been a fan for a really long time. So I tell people that the best part of my job is Tuesday, midday. And why is that? Because I get to sit in the matchmaker meeting. And, you know, the first couple matchmaker meetings for me, I was literally, my eyeballs were rolling in the back of my head. I finally got to figure out how everything worked. Why someone got to headline a pay-per-view?

Why did we, you know, use Fighter A versus Fighter B to kick off an FS1 prelim? And certainly, you know, there was less conversation about who was going to be matched up at what level and where for flight pass. And so as I got more comfortable and understanding of the business as a whole, I felt comfortable raising my hand without stepping on the toes of our broadcast partners. but I will tell you that I did raise my hand and put my foot down a lot stronger than I ever had when it came time for Duffy and Porier. I raised my hand and I felt like I was in class and I was called on and I stated my case. I believed and I read everything that was online, which was the opposite of what I'm about to say. I believe that we owed it to our fight past customers to put Duffy and Ports.

leading off the fight pass early prelims for 195. I actually advocated them kicking off fight pass, not being the main event or the featured bout of the fight pass prelims for 195. Frankly, it was ultimately the right decision because when you go back to it and thank you for saying all the kind things about how I act on social, but I learned a long time ago that this is a customer-first business we live in. I call call centers.

I'm a customer of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, PlayStation. So I want to be treated, I want to be spoken to and treated the way any customer is. So we need to think customer first in our business. And that's why the Duffy and Porrier fight was so important to our team because we felt we owed it to our customers. And they thanked us in spades. And you know who really didn't get to be thanked enough? is Joe Duffy and Dustin Poyer because the week of the event, they were out there pushing our brand so hard. And, you know, listen, they could have easily just, you know, kept their heads down,

but they pushed the brand and the business. And I spoke with both of them in the weeks leading into it, explaining our value proposition and why we were moving toward the featured bouts. And we do that now for every, we try to do it for every single event that's on our, calendar, even last night's event. But I'm getting a little excited here because I'm so pumped in AMP for the opportunity that we have. I only think, Ariel, there's only going to be three open weekends from now or from January through May where there aren't going to be live streaming events. But the featured bouts for us are of critical importance because our customers

deserve even better. That's my answer. Wow. Like I said, I like your Twitter feed. I like seeing how you interact. And I also noticed that you've been telling people as of late that there's a sort of relaunching, a rebranding, if you will. One of the complaints early on was the website, the search function, all that stuff. Is this accurate? Is UFC.tv or UFC FightPass.com, I should say, changing, and if so, when? So it is our USC app. It's our USC technical product. And we've earmarked the end of Q3, all right? As any technologists who are listening, or watching online, you know, they understand the technical speak here. Our intention has always been to relaunch.

So, UFC.com. So, UFC.com, fight pass is for our, you know, obviously our digital streaming service. And yes, we all recognize that we're living on, like, older technology. And what we've seen and what I've seen behind the scenes that this company has been working on for a really long time is tremendous. I'll be the first one to raise my hand, that the search function does not work. I can't even do my homework. I can't do my day-to-day responsibility based on our product.

But we are relaunching really soon. And it's going to be not 10 times better, but 100 times better than what you see now. Wow. It's just a kick-ass product. What about you weren't around? I think you may have just joined the team or it was right before. When they announced, you know, adding the likes of TKO, that promotion in Canada and some other promotions overseas, they said they were going to upload all the old footage.

I don't think that all that has been done, right? No, it has not been done. And what's the delay? So think about it this way. We have gone out and partnered with, you know, more than it does in a dozen or organizations from a live in a library perspective. So we're talking about 15,000 different video assets. And, you know, on one hand, it's easy to do a deal. I've been a deal guy my entire career. So what I like to tell people is, you know, deals are 10% creative and 90% on the

execution side. Well, we're now in the execution phase. And it was easy to do the deal. You know, you shake your hands. You do the deal. You sign it. You know, you send your hard, you know, hard paper away. But now we're in the actual throes of flying to Japan, flying to different countries, dusting off VHS tapes, doing the quality control on, is the tape legit? You know, was it taped properly? You know, from a broadcast perspective, there's a lot of organizations where some fights, frankly, just were never taped. It's an unfortunate circumstance, but it always comes down to money. So right now, we're in the, we're in the business aspect of working with our third-party partner after we acquire all the video assets and say,

yep, this is absolutely good enough for our system and our customers, then it's literally human capital. It's literally encoding, uploading, writing the metadata, making sure that the metadata works perfectly with our search engine. So by the end of the year, we will have 20,000 video assets in our repository. We are working on approximately our goal is 250 video assets per week

to have uploaded into the system. I love this stuff. I feel like I could talk to you for another 30 minutes, but we have unfortunately run out of time. I will end on this. Do you expect this weekend to be the biggest weekend in the history of Fight Pass? I know it's been a short history, but as far as eyeballs, considering what's going on on Friday and opening yourself up to a new audience, and then of course the big one on Saturday, O2, Rina, Bispings, Silva.

Unbelievable. Is that what you are expecting come this weekend? We are expecting a tsunami of customers. My worry isn't about the octagon and what's going to go down in there. It is to make sure that we deliver a phenomenal technical product and have everything in shape from a technical perspective for our existing customers and the overwhelming response that we're going to have from a new customer perspective. fantastic. Well done, Eric. Thank you very much for the time. Like I said, we could talk 30 more minutes. I'll save that for another time. We'd love to have you back on. Best of luck to you this weekend. Congratulations on all the success thus far. I will be in London.

Yes, I will be in London. I will see you there. I'm looking forward to it very much. Again, appreciate it and best of luck to you guys. Thanks, Ariel. All right, there he is. Eric Winter, the SVP and GM of UFC Fight Pass at first. The jury was out, but it seems like the direction in which they are going led by Eric, led by Ant and many other people who work there behind the scenes that don't get enough credit. What they are doing, the rise of Fight Pass has really been one of the more fascinating stories to cover over the last couple of years. Wish them the best and sincerely congratulate them on the success thus far because I don't think a lot of us thought two years later we'd be seeing Anderson Silva versus Michael Bisping

on Fight Pass. Okay, let's move along. Let's welcome in. one of my favorite interviews, one of the very best bantamweight fighters in the world, former tough winner. Juliana Pena joins us right now via the phone. Juliana, how are you? Good, how are you doing?

I'm doing great. It's so good to talk to you. I have been bothering you for quite some time, so I'm happy that you have been able to join us. And by the way, the picture that we're showing for your graphic is you sporting the shades. I'm just wondering, I know you're not on Skype, but are we rocking the shades this time, or are they off? They're off, they're off. You could have just lied.

No shades right now. Okay, fair enough. I appreciate that. Okay, so obviously, you know, jokes aside, it has been an interesting couple of months for you. Late December, you were arrested, charged with two counts of assault, got into a bit of a brew, ha ha, if you will, in Tacoma. And this is your first interview since. So can you, are you able to explain us your side of the story, what happened? I believe it was the night of December 20th.

Yeah, you know, I am actually still in a pending criminal case, so I can't talk about it. But what I will say is that when it all comes to a head, I'm confident that the matter will be resolved fairly easily. So, you know, in the meantime, I'm just trying to focus on my fighting career and getting to my next fight. And that's been my focus ever since, you know, you live and you learn. And people sometimes have to make some choices in life. And, you know, you've got to deal with that. So I'm dealing with that. And when I can talk about it, I'm actually excited when I'm going to be able to talk about it.

That way I can get everybody to see sort of my points of view on the whole situation. Has it been difficult? I can't go into too much detail. That is fair. And I respect that. So it's been like two months, given your stance, has it been difficult to remain quiet and not shout from the rooftops and tell people your side of the story? I know how the legal process works.

is probably in your best interest to not do so, but has that been hard for you to keep it all in? It has, you know, because I'm the type of person where I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I'm an open book. I don't have anything to hide. You know what I mean? So I just want to be shouting from the rooftops, but I have been advised to lay low and to kind of let this thing blow over and let my lawyers handle it and everything like that. So it has been difficult, but I'm trying to do as good as job as I can and try to remain living in that. normal life, you know, in the meantime. Usually people keep coming up to me and they just like hide their balls and stuff

like that. And I'm just like, that's not what happened. That's not what happened. It's been kind of an on-running joke the last couple of months. So it's kind of funny, but it's actually not funny at all. Fair enough. Obviously, the last time we saw you fight was in October. Has this delayed your return?

Is this why we haven't heard much from you? You haven't been booked in another fight? Yeah. I think that they're waiting for it all to blow away. and for the matter to get handled. And then after that, I'll be making a fight announcement. So hopefully I'll have something here soon on the horizons. That's what I'm hoping for,

and I'm confident that I'll be getting back in the octagon shortly. When do you expect this to be wrapped up? When do you expect to be free and clear? I don't know. See, they keep pushing my court date back. So I got my court date pushed back again, and I heard maybe sometime, in the end of May, maybe early June.

I'm not quite certain, but I just heard that, you know, once this all gets handled, then I'll have a fight fairly quickly. Okay. And right now you're at the gym, right? Yes, sir. You're in Chicago, correct? Yes, sir, yes. How about them Chicago Bulls?

How about them Chicago Bulls? Yeah. I'm super stoked. They're like my childhood, you know what I mean? And I've always wanted to see a game. So now that I'm in Chicago and got to see a game, it was awesome. It was a dream come true to tell you the truth. And we won.

Oh, we? Wait a second. Wait a second. Well, yeah, I'm like, I've become a real Chicago night ever since I've been here. I've been here for the whole month, actually. I'm training at LCCT in Schomburg, Illinois, with Luis Claudio and Tiago Vega. I got Master Greg Grodio is my striking coach right now. So everything is great, and I just love the atmosphere over here.

Okay, a lot to unpack there. I just have to say, I know you're from the Washington State area. The Supersonics are no more. The Bulls did beat them in the NBA Finals. You were a Bulls fan as a youngster. Is that what you're saying? Not a Sonics fan? Or have you moved on to the Bulls because the Sonics left?

Well, when I was a kid in the 90s, it was all about Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman and all those guys, you know. What about Sean Kemp? Gary Pitton. Well, no, I, of course, I'm always for the home team. Let me just throw that out there. Always for the home team. But you're right. The Supersonics, if they were still alive, I would still be rooting for them.

But they're gone, and so it goes back to my childhood and to the Chicago Bulls are where it's at. Okay, fair enough. So you mentioned Louise Claudio. They haven't been having, like, that great of a season. Sure, yeah, yeah. They fired Tom Tibido, a big mistake. Anyway. They beat the Lakers yesterday, didn't they?

Wow, what a huge accomplishment that was, one of the worst teams in the NBA. But a big win over the Raptors on Friday. Enough about the NBA. they always get mad at me when I talk about basketball on this show. So you mentioned Louise Claudio, whose name got a lot of attention last month because he, of course, is the jiu-jitsu coach, for one, Ben Rothwell. Ben Rothwell applying the go-go-choke on Josh Barnett, and Claudio himself actually applied it on me at 1%

and I felt like my Adam's apple was going to pop out of my throat. Has he showed you the go-go-choke yet? Yes. Okay. And that's all I'm going to say about that. Oh, wow. So we got a new weapon in our arsenal. I'm not at liberty to say, but what I will say is Luis Claudio is an amazing, amazing instructor, and he is such a blessing to have in my life. I'm so happy to be training with him and be near him.

I just feel like his great energy just rubs off on me and the family here, and it really just feels like a tight-knit family, and they've welcomed me with open arms, and so I'm just truly, truly blessed to be working with him. And he is a master of his craft with his Sikhs and gracy jujitsu, and it's just so awesome to be learning from someone like him. So does this mean that you have left Sikhitsu in Washington? No, no, I'll be back. I'm going to head back after the fights in Vegas.

But, yeah, no, I'm going back. I think I'll probably be going to Washington and Chicago and be bouncing in between the two states, and I'm going to have to kind of make a decision on where I want. my camp to be. But I know that I'm comfortable, you know, wherever I'm at either if it's in Spokane or over here in Chicago. So, you know, either place is going to be great for me. But I want to be near Luis right now. And so I'll be staying between Spokane and Schaumburg for the next, up until my fight, basically. So we'll see how it goes. How and why did you end up there,

of all places? You know, Rick Little introduced me to Luis Claudio. I came out here last year for Latino Heritage Month, and Rick told me, hey, I got this guy I want you to go see. So I jumped on a train from the heart of Chicago over here to Schaumburg. It took like 45 minutes. And they picked me up at the train station. And I came here.

And so we've been working together for over a year now. And so, well, I didn't work with him my last fight, but I worked with him in my fight in April and Fairfax, Virginia, against Milana-Dudeva. So I'm just trying to work with him as much as possible, you know, because Rick made that connection and it was the best move I could have made for sure. I remember talking to Rick, the coach over at Sikjitsu, of course, the head coach over there, about your condition after the fight in October. And he was saying that you were still kind of fighting at like 70%. You still weren't 100%. And that's why you need some time off between your fights because you're still not 100% from the vicious knee injury that you suffered a couple years ago.

Where do you think you're at now? Do you feel like you're closer to 100% or still recovering? You know, I feel like it's a constant battle. And it's funny to say stuff like this because fighters always have injuries that they're dealing with, you know, broken pinky toes and rib injuries and stuff like that. You know, I'm always constantly dealing with some sort of injury. that fight I didn't feel 110% I had pulled a hamstring the week before the fight

and other various injuries that I've been dealing with such as my knee and some other stuff that I don't really want to disclose too much but yeah you know you can't be like oh you know my rib hurts I can't fight you know because you put so much time and effort into making these camps what they are and you know of course you're you're waiting to go and show the world what you've been working on and so those are not the times to be like I got a sore throat.

I can't fight. So that's garbage, and that's not the type of fighter that I am. So I went through with it, even though I wasn't feeling that great. And so, you know, I know I'm capable of doing so much more, and I'm not impressed with myself at the way that I performed that night in October. So I'm just, you know, working hard right now, and it's just going to be a constant grind from here until fight time to just fix those mistakes that I made

and make sure that I'm healing in those holes that I didn't, appreciate myself last time. You know, fighters are extremely hard on themselves. And it's for a reason. It's because we know that we can do better. And so I know that I can do better. And I'm just so excited and so happy to be working with Luis again and being in a positive place where I feel great mentally and physically. And I'm just excited to show everybody what I've been working on. So it's actually the first time where I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Well, that is good to hear. I never say that. You know what I mean? I never say stuff like that. Right now, I'm like, I'm on cloud nine right now.

So I honestly have nothing but positive things and positive energy to say for sure. I love the positivity. So you mentioned Las Vegas, March 5th. Huge night for you because the belt that you're trying to get is on the line. Holly Home versus Misha Tate. Will you be in attendance, A, and B, who's your pick? Okay, so I don't know. It's a hard thing.

I talked to Dana. He says, you know, I would do anything for you, but these tickets are impossible. And I believe him. I believe him. You know what I mean? These tickets, like, this is, like, one of the biggest shows in Vegas this year. It's not, you know, for so far that I've seen anyways. And so I would love to be there.

He said he's going to try his best to get me there, and we'll see how that goes. So right now I'm saying, no, I'm not going to be in attendance, but I will be in Vegas for sure. And then I'm going to do everything in my power to slip through those doors and see that fight live because I don't want. want to miss it. And as far as my pick goes, I'm going with my girl Misha. And I hope that she wins and get that belt back because I know that she's capable of doing that. So, okay, I respect the fact that you're going with your friend, but does that make things

a little tricky for you if she's the champion? Does that preclude you from going after the title? No, you know, my and Misha's agreement the whole time has always been, if you have the belt or if I have the belt, that's the only way that we'll fight each other. You know, people, even the UFC, encouraging us to fight each other for a long time. And we've always said, you know, we're not going to fight each other unless her or I have the belt. So, you know, of course I want her to win. And of course, I want to be a champion. You know, I got in this sport to be the best and to show the world that I am the toughest, hardest,

broad out there. So if that comes to a head, then it comes to a head like that, you know. But, you know, especially with the division being as small as it is, you know, you're going to end up fighting all these girls anyways, no matter what. So I just hope the best for Misha. I truly don't want it to be about me and trying to take something away from her or anything like that. I am extremely genuine in the fact that I want Misha to win because I know that she can do it. And I have the utmost confidence in her.

Okay, so how about you? I know you said it's maybe in May or so. Who is next for you? And if you don't know exactly who is next, who do you want next? I have no idea. You know, this fight is going to be interesting. in itself. And then also you got, you know, Amanda Nunes fighting Valentina too. So it's going to be a great night of fights, especially for these girls that are up there in the top five. I'm sitting

at number five and I look at it like whoever they're going to throw at me. It doesn't matter. My whole issue for fights and for fighting has always been just give me the time that I feel that I need allotted in order to fight. And then you can throw in any random chick that you want. I really don't care just give me the time that I need to prepare. So like same thing here. I'm having the time right now to train for my fight and then whoever they decide, I'll find on the dotted line any day, you know. It doesn't matter to me.

I'm a fighter and I want to fight the best girls in the world, you know, and whoever they throw. So I think I'm at five. Amanda has a fight and Holly and Misha have a fight. I don't know what Rhonda's doing. I don't know what Katz doing. I don't know what McMahon's doing. But, you know, there are some girls.

to choose from. So I'm confident that Sean Shelby and Dana White are going to come up with the best matchup for me that they see. And whoever that is, you know, hopefully it'll be their blood on the mat and not mine. Is a part of you hoping that Rhonda takes an extended period of time off? I threw out on Fox Sports Live on Friday that I wouldn't be surprised if the winner of the fight on March 5th actually fights again before fighting Rhonda. Are you hoping for that so that maybe you get a title shot next? Is that even possible? for a title. I've been calling for a title shot since I got signed.

You know what I mean? I've been sitting here being like title shot, but they keep saying that I need one more fight. So, you know, I was told we'll cross that bridge when we get there. They told me they want me to fight one more time, but at the same time, I think that they don't really know what's going on either until both of those girls get in the fight and get walked in the cage and then the fight ends, you know.

So it should be very interesting for the women's bantamweight division coming up here on March 5th. have you paid attention to what Rhonda has been saying over the past week, sort of putting it out there, how she was feeling afterwards, and if so, what do you make of what she has been saying? I mean, it's just funny because she's, you know, I will just say that I respect her interviews and all that stuff. I respect her, and yeah, I've been paying attention.

And, you know, I feel like those are things that. every fighter deals with, not even in fighting just everyday life. You know what I mean? I've had suicidal thoughts my whole life growing up. You know what I mean? But every other day, you know, it depends on how the wind blows that day and how I'm feeling, you know? Well, that's not a good thing.

Well, no, I'm just saying that, you know, a lot of people feel that way, you know? And so it's good to see how hard that she feels on herself, you know? And I've definitely felt that way with my losses, too. So I feel for her, you know, when you get put up on that pedestal, it's a hard fall. the way down, you know. So it was a sucky situation, but I think that she'll come back and learn from that and be stronger and, you know, maybe eat a little bit of humble pie. And, and, and I think that she has and that now that he realizes that she won't retire undefeated, that things are going to maybe be a little bit more easier for her as her career goes on,

you know, that she doesn't have to have so much pressure on herself. Is that maybe the most ideal situation that maybe they say, you know what, it's not smart for Rhonda to go into a title fight. Let's have her fight a contender first and let's have her fight Juliana Pena. Would that be the ultimate or would you prefer a title shot? No, I prefer a title shot. I want that gold around my waist, you know? Okay, fair enough. But yeah, I've always wanted to fight Rhonda too, so I want to fight all these girls. Right, all right. I want to be able to be striking out a career in the UFC for years and years and years to come. You know what I mean? I don't want to be taken three fights in one year and something go bad and I do like, you're cut.

You know, I don't want that. I want to be, you know, being smart about the matchups that I take and trying to prolong my career in the UFC for as long as possible. So to recap, obviously you can't go into too much detail as far as what happened in December, but you feel confident everything will work out. You're in a good place. You're happy. And we'll be seeing you sooner rather than later.

Accurate? Yes, 100% accurate. All right. Well, Juliana, I appreciate it. Can I give a shout-out, Ariel, to the show that I want to thank. Hell yeah. Go nuts. All right.

I want to thank Dana White. Hashtag Dana Till I die. Sean Shelby, Joe Silva, Lorenzo Fertita. I want to thank Rick Little, my head coach. I want to thank Luis Claudio. I want to thank Tiago Vega. I want to thank Master Gregorio. I want to thank some of my sponsors on it, clinch gear, Roots of Fight.

and I would love to thank my agent Orrin Hodak with Kio Rep. And most of all, I want to thank the fans and the UFC. Without the fans and without the UFC, none of this would be possible. I would not be where I'm at right now if it wasn't for them and for the UFC.

And I am so, so grateful and happy that I'm out here being able to live my dream every single day. It truly is a blessing. And, you know, I do not take it for granted at all. And I just want to be able to do my best, perform my best, happy. Great stuff.

I make myself happy. Absolutely. That's what's all about. When I do well, then I'm happy. Juliana, great to hear from you. Thank you, Ariel. Thank you so much for having me. My pleasure and great to hear that you're in good spirits. I wish you the best. I hope everything works out and looking forward to, as always, seeing you back in there.

All right. Thank you so much, Ariel. I appreciate it. I'll talk to you soon. All right, there she is. The Venezuelan Vixen herself, Juliana Pena. Great to get that update from her. her two postscripts to the stuff that we have been talking about before we get into our next guest. I did get a text from Scott Coker at 148 p.m. Eastern. So I appreciate that. He said, or texted, I should say, just wanted to let you know that data's fine and recovering well. So that is good to hear. And I appreciate that from Scott. So thank you very much to him for

reaching out. Also, wanted to mention this after, and we'll go into that, obviously, on the back end of the show. But UFC Fight Pass, we were talking about that. They are allowing viewers who aren't or subscribers, or I should just say fans who aren't subscribers, the ability to watch all of Kevin Randleman's fight for free over the next 24 hours, a nice gesture on their part. Moving along, let's bring in our next guest. Always a pleasure to talk to this man. He had some big news last Tuesday. He is back in Bellator. Everything has been settled between both parties. Quinton Rampage Jackson, my man, on the line. Rampage.

How are you? What's up, Eric? What's up, man? How are you doing, man? I'm doing all right. Thank you. It's great to hear from you. Mazel Tov on the big news, the big signing. Thank you. Thank you, Bartman.

Are you happy that everything has been squared away and that you can move along with your career? Yeah, that's, you know, that was a long, hard process. and I'm looking forward to getting back into the cage to entertain my fans and do what I love. I'm here to talk about business side of things. I reached an amical settlement agreement with Bellator. I'm excited to get back in the cage and give it my all. The 205 division is very stacked with fighters such as Phil Davis, Queen Mel, Peter Orbit. and Liam McGraney.

Okay. I'm just here to talk about fighting? Fair enough. I understand. Well, thank you for that, that sincere answer. Very sincere. Yes. But in all honesty, was this one of the more, I don't know,

frustrating periods of your career, like the in, you're out? You were even on the show, the last time you were on this program, you weren't in the best of moods. You were even talking about retirement. Has this been tough? It's been really tough. I don't wish it's on any fighter. Like the weird thing about the sport is that we have to have managers and, you know, there's promoters.

There's more to fighting than just fighting. And, you know, I don't read the contracts. I don't, that's not my part of this. So, you know, I really didn't know a whole lot what was going on and stuff like that. I just like to fight, you know, that's how to feed my kids, right? So I was thinking, you know what, I was just, you know, I've done a lot in this sport. I've been fighting for 15, 16 years. I was like, man, might as well just retire, you know.

You know, I felt like, I just felt like, you know, I always wanted to do was entertain the fans. It's all I ever wanted to do. Sometimes when you're an entertainer and you can't entertain people the way you like, it's kind of like, what should I do next? So I didn't really know what to do next. Luckily for me that, you know, I get through upper movie roles here and there and stuff right there. And, you know, and I started doing a little of artwork striven for fat women. Oh.

What? What is that? What are you doing? I was, shoot, my bad. I thought you already know. You know everything else. I was thinking since you know everything, I thought you should probably start the show called area knows. Yeah.

Oh, damn, my bad. I thought you already knew about that. I didn't know this one. I'm not going to talk. I'm not going to give him to that no more then. My man, I thought you already knew about it. Come on, man. My bad, area.

I'm serious. You know everything. I thought you know everything else. You know, area knows. That's what my man is it, man, is it, man. Area knows. How one of that. Look at that nose.

Did you say... I know. No, we don't call you Ariel. We call you Ariel. Did you say stripping for women? Fat women. Fat women need love, too. And they, listen, man, they pay with their way, homie.

They pay what they way. Dude, you know, most strippers, they only get, like, you know, dollars shove down their pants, man. Dude, I get, I get, like, $5 bill, $10. One chick, you know, she's put chicken wings down my thongs and everything, man. It's good. It's a good living, man. I can eat strip at the same time.

So if I'm throwing a bachelorette party in the Southern California, Orange County area, I can hire Rampage Jackson. Is that what you're saying? Oh, yeah, man. I come dressed up like King Moe with my nipple rings, telling them with a little crown. I come over there. But it got to be fat women, though. I only have, like, you know, I'm my only comfortable doing it with fat women because, you know, I'm not in my fight shape right now. So they got to be overweight, so I don't feel like.

all that's secure and everything. Back to the fighting stuff, and I appreciate that update. That is good to know. It's always good to know what you're doing, behind the scenes, outside of the cage, the ring, whatever. How close were you to just saying, all right, I'm done.

I've had a nice career. It's been great, champion, all that stuff. How close were you to actually walking away? You know what? I was very close. I didn't know how USC was going to react to all this stuff that I was going to and stuff like that. I didn't know if I was going to have problems with them.

And so honestly, I was, I was, I was very, very close because, like I said, it's unfortunate that, you know, it's unfortunate that sometimes fighters and promotions, you know, don't see eye to eye. And, you know, at the end of the day, it was me that was taking the biggest hit with the time off and everything. So it was, it was a pretty close decision. would you say that you're on good terms with the UFC? Like they didn't stand in your way. They said, you know, it could have got a little messy. Were you happy with the way things settled with them, at least for now? Yeah, I can say that the UFC has been cool throughout all this.

And I really, you know, I'm really fortunate that they've been cool. And they understand, like I said, they understand that, you know, I didn't mean anything. I've never been a shady person in business my whole life. so they understand that I didn't mean to do anything wrong. It just, you know, it wasn't my job to read the contracts and understand the contracts and everything. Have you had a chance? I know things kind of got off on the wrong foot with you and Scott Coker,

the new regime. Have you had a chance to talk to them? And in particular, Scott, and sort of air out what your issues were and hope to move in a positive fashion. Do you feel comfortable with where things are at now between you and him? Well, I'm happy with everything right now. Okay.

All right. When do you expect to fight again? Do you know? Maybe you know already. No. You don't know? No. No, I have no idea.

I thought you know. You know everything else. Well, I know some stuff. Okay, let me ask you this. When do you want to fight again? Whenever. You know, like I said, I've been out for a while, and I'm gradually getting back into training.

So I'm training with TK. Gawson and stuff down in HP and stuff like that. You know, because, you know, my... team is in the UK, stuff like that. So I just been training them. So I'm just casually getting back, you know, getting my rest out and everything. So, you know, whenever they line up, me a fight, then I go in there and busts my ass like I always do.

Did you watch Bellator this past weekend? No, I didn't get a chance to. I saw some stuff on Facebook, though. Yeah, what do you think from what you saw Kimbo? And in particular, Kimbo and Data 5,000, what do you think? I didn't. I knew Kimbo was a street. fight I knew he was but I didn't know he knew the oh you what is that oh I get what

you're saying yeah man he he threw like he took like a oh you okay and we couldn't see it but it hit da-da and and dad-da just went down you know I heard that he uh he had a heart problem so I hope the best for him that was that's that part of fighting unfortunate but like I said I was surprised that Kim that Kimbo I guess he was he's been training with Keenan and Ryu or somebody because he didn't would, oh, you, okay. I said on Thursday that one of the biggest, if not the biggest fight that Belter

can put on is you versus Kimbo. Such popular figures, I think it would be, you know, fun. I don't know how I feel about it now after the fight and seeing the condition that he was in, but what do you think of that? Are you not, like, would you not even entertain that? Is that too crazy for them

to put on or any commission to sanction, or does that actually interest you? Well, to be honest, when I did the ultimate fighter with Kimbo, he kind of mentioned something that he always wanted to fight me and stuff like that. And, you know, even though Kimbo's a heavyweight, I'm a big, I'm a big light heavyweight.

And, you know, I think what I'm thinking, if I know fighters, you know, we've seen Kimbo get in shape and do what I don't think that he took Dada Sears. And I don't think that he's trained hard for him. I've been guilty of that before. So I'm thinking that if I had to fight Kimbo, I think that he would most definitely train hard for me and probably be,

he probably would be getting, probably getting shaped, especially with that embarrassment. Because a lot of people have become embarrassed about that performance from what I've read. So does that mean you're interested in that? Man, I'm a fighter. That's what I do.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? like, you know, I fight on me. Like, it's been a couple of opponents that I didn't want to fight that, I didn't think it would be a good matchup that I fought. You know, I'm interested in, you know, finishing my career and entertaining my fans. If the fans want to see Kimball get slammed and not out, then, you know, the moment you're all the both. From what I understand, this is a two-fight deal.

So do you think that this is if you're, like, you're going to do these two fights and that's it, or do you think now that you've, you know, you've added some life to your career and you'll be fighting for the foreseeable future? I can't really come in on it right now because I don't know, homie. You know what the future beholds. I don't know. You know, like I said, it's been a, this is probably been the worst thing that ever happened to me in my MMA career. besides, you know, getting injured and had, you know, do surgery and stuff like that. That's, you know, that's something that you always expect.

You know, you don't expect, when you sign up to be a fighter, you don't expect where you have to go to court and out of court and stuff like that and get attorneys to, you know, get all in your business and stuff like that. So this has been a very difficult part of my life. So I don't know what's going to happen after these two fights. Okay, so then let me ask you this And then I won't ask you anything more about your fighting stuff As you know

Well, I don't need to tell you Japan Huge part of your career It's clear that you love fighting there You love the people there And Sakakibara is back The old pride guy Pride boss Yeah, do you have interest

There's a relationship there Is that possible that you'll be fighting on one of those cards Is that something that you want? Well, I'm going to tell you something Man, I really like and respect Sakakibara's son He's a, you know, I'm saying he's a great promoter. You know, he's a great guy.

You know, I really do miss the Japanese fans because that's why I got my big breakhead. And those guys, they are, in my opinion, some of the best fans on the planet. And, you know, me, I would love to fight in Japan, you know, my last fight in Japan with Ryan Vader, hell, I should have pulled out, but I didn't think I would ever give a chance

to fight in Japan again. You know, I went and even fought there in a way because I thought I was going to fight there. You know, I would love that. That would be great, but, you know, I'm not with Risen. So I don't see how that is possible Blocke. Belator and Rizzen has like some type of alliance, what you call it, a lion? Yes. I think they do have a lion.

Yeah, they've shared talent, including King Moe, won a tournament there in December. Did he? Yeah. Yeah, he won a one-night, a two-night tournament. He actually looked better than he's looked in a very long time, I thought. Who was he fighting fans at the crowd? He was fighting lesser-known talent, but equally, I mean, very tough, up-and-coming European talent.

He looked good, man. Yeah, he would look good against up-and-coming. This, you know, this is emo. Fair enough. of Japan, let me ask you this. March of 2003, Pride 25, you fought the great Kevin Randleman. Obviously, he passed away not that long ago, horrible news. Nice to see the UFC honor him last night, by the way. I was just wondering, you know, do you have any memories, any stories of Kevin Randleman from those crazy Wild West Pride days? What was your relationship like with him?

Me and Kevin Randman was really cool because I actually met Kevin Randman at UFC 20 before I became a fighter. I remember him before the fight, I remember him talking to me and a couple of guys, you know, outside the arena a couple days before the fight, and he was talking to us and tell us stories. And that's part of the reason why I decided to become a fight. I was like, man, you know, MMA fighters were cool and everything. And I saw his fight with boss route. And I thought, you know, I thought, you know, I was a wrestlering too back then. That's all I was, was a wrestler.

I was new at it. I had really started doing judicious. And, you know, I always looked up to him. And then when I became a fighter, he remembered me. He remembered talking to me at then. And, you know, that left a great impression on me that he was, you know, he was a very sincere person. Like, you know, I didn't ask him, like, do you remember? He came up to him and say, hey, man, I remember you.

I met you blah, blah, blah, that time. I'm like, wow, this guy actually remembered. Because I didn't think he was a, you know, he was such a, you know, a huge name in a sport. And he probably met a lot of guys, stuff like that. Kevin Ryan, and we stayed cool throughout the whole time. And then we had to fight each other because that's the way it goes over in Japan. Like, it's business. You know, you got to fight, we got to fight.

And so I fought them. And, you know, I trained my hardest. At that point in my life, that's the hardest I ever trained because I knew this guy was a great wrestler. And then right after the fight, Van der Leicibu jumps in the ring and wants to, you know, start a fight with me, pushing me around and stuff. And Kevin Rennamay ran all the way back to the ring to have my back because I don't know if you guys know, but sometimes, you know,

you know, shoebox, they rose deep and, you know, I was on with a couple other people. And he was making sure I didn't get jumped by shoebox, backstage and everything, and made him stay close friends ever since. And I was streaming when I heard the news, and somebody came and typed in my chat on Twitch, and they said, oh, did you hear about Kevin Randam?

And he passed away. And at first, I thought they was trolling. But people do that sometimes. And he hit me, And I was streaming when I found out. And I had to end my stream when I confirmed it and found out it was true because I was just seeing some posts about him a couple days before. And people were posting, they seen him and everything.

And Jeff from Sherdog said he had just saw him a week early. And he looked fine. And I don't know where I'm, you know, it was, it hit me hard. You know what I said? It hit me hard. Even though like me and Kimmer Island wasn't like everyday buddies, where we talked stuff all the time. You know, whenever we saw each other, you know, saying we, you know,

said we paid respect and hung out and laughed and joked around and it said to see when our comrades you know said and leave so soon well said speaking of twitch i know you're a bit you actually got me right after you were on my show uh you called me up and you asked me well actually can we talk about this for a second what happened here you called me you were on my show i think it was the next day if i'm not mistaken you're on my show 300th episode we bury the hatchet the beef has been squash we're all good in the hood and i wait i get a i look at my phone at six a m and i see quentin jackson on the caller id and like no that can't be it's three a m pacific time in l.a um so i just put it down and then i see you left me a voicemail and you were not very

happy you thought i i i kind of declined your call and then you call me right back and it just so happened that my kids were in my bed sleeping as well sometimes they like to you know travel into the bed, as I'm sure you know. I didn't want to wake them up. Oh, you're making me feel bad, huh? Well, you know, you're putting a little, is that the little guilt trip like that? That's bad. Us Jews like to do that sort of thing. Anyway, I then pick up the second time you call, going to another room, and you're twitching away, as the kids say. You're just streaming, talking to the world. We had a nice conversation, but I did, I did correctly predict on the spot at 6.30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning that Connor McGregor would be Josiah. Do you

remember that? Yeah, I do remember that. I don't know how you predicted that. How about that? A lot of people, a lot of people didn't see that coming, you know what I'm saying? You saw, that's what I tell her about on my stream. Erlon knows. But you know what?

Those people, they love me. I mean, they love you. They beg me to call you. They, it was them. You know, so I'm really close to the guys in my stream. And I get a lot of girls in too. So I'm really close to the people in my stream that, you know, most of my, like, really hardcore MMA fan.

and they love you. I know what I'm saying? They beg me, they begged me to call you. They were so happy they had made you squash the beat. They knew everything. It was great. They called them up and come and they wanted to hear from you. And I get asked to call you at least like a couple times a weekend.

I'm like, no, I can't keep calling this guy. You can call me anytime. I figured that you will block my number because these people I always want to hear from. Unlike you, when you block me on Twitter, I would never do that to you. Well, you want to bring up a fast. I was really mad at you, bro. I was really mad at you. I forgave you, but, you know what I'm saying?

You're not all the way there yet. Come on. Really? So don't, so don't be surprised if I could hit you with a few hot shots here and there. That's all I'm saying. You know me. You know me. I'm, you know, you're there, you're cool, but you're not all the way there yet.

You're not all the way there. I got some work to do. But then you went on this streak, and I know you weren't the one recording in and uploading it, but the conversation with Rashad, the dragon, and the nuts and all that, I mean, I legitimately was laughing there for like 10 minutes. And then I thought this could be a real thing, like Rampage Jackson calling people up in the middle of the night, old friends, chale and stuff. Are you still doing this and are people not up?

What's going on? Because this is the show that I get behind, not that Fugazi other show. This is the show. Yeah. The other show was kind of crap. I'm not going to get it. Finally, he admits it. The show was, crap, I'm not going to get into it.

I'm not going to get into it. I don't know what I can say. But it could have been better if I would have been producing it. Oh, fair enough. Okay, I didn't have any power in the department. But, you know, I prank called people sometimes. I prank called Turner, Woodley, recently. And it was pretty fun.

I pretend like he was at a dude. You know, I'm Tyrone, and I'm here to, I don't know if I can say it on your show. I don't know if I can say any words, but you know. Huh? Say whatever you want. Oh, you know, the guy, I'm Tyrone. I'm here to fuck your wife, Long Big Style. I'm not familiar.

No, I'm not familiar with that one. What have you been living? Ariel Luan, it's like, it's like an internet thing. Do you ever watch videos on Instagram, on, on, on, you know, YouTube, anything, brother? on Facebook, he's everywhere. Like a couple months ago, he would walk up to dudes, and he'd be like, I'm Tyrone, and I'm here to fuck your wife, long big child. You don't know what I'm talking about? No.

He's a big, black guy. Anyway, he's fighting his other guy, and his heart going crazy. Okay, whatever. So I prank called Tarron Willie, and I mistake him for the Tarone guy, and I had him thinking that he fucked my wife and everything. What? The chat was rolling. It was funny. I didn't save that one.

You probably will look on my old broadcasts, but I don't know. I don't know how to do it. People would get them and they put them up themselves because, you know, I just started to mess around the PC when I started streaming on Twitch, so I don't know how to upload this stuff. But that one right there was fun. But I like Frank calling people, but the problem is I'm running out of people to prank call.

I don't have that many phone numbers, and I think people are getting wind of it. But I like Frank calling people. I've always been that type of guy. I've prank called a few people. Don't tell Vichot Belford, but I prank calling him one time from Africa when I was bored. Oh, come on. He gave me his number, and then after that, he blocked me, and I can never call him again. What?

But don't tell Vitor's Belfth. He didn't know it was me, but I prank called him. This is incredible. I prank called people, man. I pray and call some famous people, bro. I do it. I don't know why. I get bored, and I just prank call people, man.

So I need more phone numbers. Maybe we can do a little, we could do a little. we can maybe we can do something if you can get me phone numbers. Someone needs to, I know someone has it, someone needs to put up

that Vitor Belford thing. That sounds incredible. How many, honestly? I didn't do it on the show, though. I didn't do it on the show, so is that? Oh, man. That was a long time to say.

I've been prank calling people a long time, but telling me, was my last prank call. Well, you need to keep at it. How many, by the way, how many hours a day are you on that thing?

You know, it depends on my, on the, yeah, I set time aside. to play video games with my fans. But I do play quite a bit. Like I said, when I was going through all this course stuff, I was very stressed and everything. But that was the only thing that kept my mind off all the other stuff.

So I could sit and play video games with 14, 15 hours straight. What? I used to be in, yeah. I have no problem. I got this DX racer chair, homie. It's a chair for video gamer. You know, it looks like a racing chair. It's the most comfortable thing ever.

And I can sit here and play video games. day. Like, soon as I get up to farm with you, I'm going to put in a couple hours before I go to the chip. Wow. And what about Mighty Mouse? I feel like he's kind of stepping on your toes. He's into the Twitch now.

I see him tweeting. He's always talking about it. Have you ever, I don't know if you can play each other. Can you play each other? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mighty Mouse and I, we played against each other in my favorite game.

It's called Rainbow 6. Mighty Mouse won the first one. What? And then I won the last two. Yeah, we played against each other. It's very addictive. Like, it's growing. Like, a lot of people starting to stream video games now.

You got Scott Jurgis in their streams as well. It's like three or four MMA of fighters that stream. I play with my subs. I don't know what, I don't know what Mike and Scott Jurgerson does. But what I do is people who subscribe to my Twitch, I play with them. And so when the UFC 2 comes out, I got my subs lined up, getting ready to get the ass kicked by being my own character in UFC 2. Are you in that?

as long as I'm not sure I thought it was. Damn. Well, we can find out. But when you play Mighty Mouse, can I, can, like, will you guys talk smack to each other? Can people hear that? Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Yeah, it's like a multi-twitch. So if they type in, if they click on the link, they can see him and me on the same screen. Oh, that is great. And then, and every time I kill Mighty Mouse, I would give him a nice tea bag all in his face. It's just all in. It's overly done, like, teabag.

It was pretty funny. I like playing video games where you can dish out the teabag. I don't know why. I think I need to go to TBA. T-Bags Anonymous. But I don't know what I... Who's laughing? Video games is...

That's my girl. Oh. I didn't know you were spoken for her. Well, man, what you think? I'm in Annapha. You think I ain't going to have no... You don't think I'm going to have no chicks, man? I don't know.

I don't know. I feel like you've been really paying a lot of attention to the video games lately, just kind of being one with yourself. I'm only one with myself when there's no girls around. So you found love. Are we breaking news here? Has Rampage Jackson found love? Are you off the market officially for life? No, no, no, no. I didn't see. Don't see. Well, are you jumping a gun right in front of my girl? Look, you got to look at me. Like, what? Are you in love, man? Ariel, Erdogan, what the hell are you starting here, man? No, this is, hey, I want to fall in love one day.

Unfortunately, I don't, I haven't yet. I want to, but my girl, she's cool. She's, like, such a real cool girl. She don't mind that I play video games. Oh. Most girls, too. So, no, she doesn't, she does her own thing, and she takes care of me. She, sometimes, even if I'm streaming and I can't go away, she can feed me while I'm

going to be a game. She's good. That is true. Yeah, man, she's very supportive because she knows I'm having fun, I'm joking around You know, I like making people laugh and stuff like that So, you know, I'm here playing with my stream You know, we all laughing, joking around, she'll take care of me

How long have you been together? We've been together about three years Whoa, wow, that's amazing So surely you've said I love you Oh yeah, I love everybody I love everybody That's what God made me I love everybody, but she knows I love her

I love her in a special way and I show her in certain ways. All right. That's good to hear. But by giving her my mighty flat sword. Okay. Before you go, just give me an update on your son. How is he doing?

You gave us some exciting info on him last time. Is he progressing? How's he doing? The wrestler. Yeah, my 50-old son, he wants to be an MMA fighter. So he's taking up wrestling right now. He's doing pretty good. You know, he's taking a wrestling pretty serious.

he fell in love with it just like I did. The kid is a natural... I kind of knew at a young age that he was going to be more like me than my other kids. He's because how strong, naturally strong he is. And, you know, I watch him wrestling and stuff like that, and he's picking up kids and slamming him. Wow.

He's enjoying it. He's just a natural edit. I don't know if he'll be, like, the best wrestler in California. I'm not sure it depends on how much he devotes his time to it, but he already pretty good is standing up and striking and jit-to. So I'm thinking that if he keeps going the way he's going, that he'd probably be a better fighter than I ever was because he's starting younger than me as well. So despite the issues of the last year and all that,

you're still okay with him fighting. I'm sure you'll give him a lot of knowledge, help him go down the right path, but you're still on board with him pursuing a career in all of this. Yeah, because that's what he wants to do. ask him, I didn't ask him to do it. He said that he wanted, I didn't ask any of my boys to be a fighter, you know. Most of my other kids, all my other kids play basketball, actually, that's what they like to do. And my ex-wife, she's a basketball player and stuff like that. And so all of them, they followed, they followed her and play basketball with this one,

or Roger. He didn't, he didn't want to play basketball. He wanted to, you know, be a fighter. And, you know, I know, I've made enough mistakes in this game to kind of guide him from making mistakes and stuff like that. So I welcome to get him a great manager. You will be his manager, maybe. I would manage a lot of stuff, but, you know, I make sure I get like a good attorney to read the contract. Yes, maybe that is the lesson.

Those contracts are crazy, man. They put words in there just to choke you up, words that don't make sense. How do you ever read a contract area of Hawaiian? Yes, sure, of course. I have my own contracts. You have your own contracts? Did you go to law school? No, I did not.

I have a lawyer. Did you write your contract? No, no. But then you read it. I read it. I sent it to someone who's smarter than me. Fixed it up a little bit. But you know, speak...

What? Go ahead. Oh, no, I was just wondering because the A-Team was such a great film. When are we going to see you in one of those again? Like one of those big blockbuster Hollywood movies? Anything in the works? What's going on? I don't know if I'd be in any big blockbuster Hollywood movies. Why? I don't know.

I've been auditioning for some, but I honestly, I'm being honest with you, like I always. I suck at auditions. I suck at auditions. Why? Because it's not real. It's because it's not real. It's not real. It's not the moment.

It's not real. Just like I suck in training for some reason. If you ever come watch me train, you'd be like, how in the hell did this guy ever make it to to be champion and win the fights that you want. Because I suck at trading. I suck at auditions. Anything that's not real, you know, so I'm not my best at it. But, you know, luckily for me, you know, I studied real hard for the 18 audition.

I studied really hard, and I knew exactly what they was looking for because I was attached to that a long time ago. But I've only gotten two movies that I auditioned for, and I've auditioned for a lot of other movies that, you know, I didn't get it, because my auditions suck. So most of the movies that I get, I don't have the auditions for. And I've been in, like,

some stuff that's coming out soon, like the Delary Diaries that's coming out soon. I did a movie in Mexico called Cops and Robbers. That's going to be coming out soon. But it was nowhere as big as the 18. So I've done a few movies and stuff like that, but you know how I am.

I'm not the type of person that brag and boston, so I don't be putting it all out there is what I be doing. I just enjoy doing movies. I think it's fun because I'm a big kid at the end of the day. And I love, like, shooting people and beating people up and stuff like that. In movies and video games. And teetagging people.

I mean, in video games. Well, I thought you were great in that, and I'd like to see. I heard that you just had a movie premiere recently, right? Didn't you just... Yeah. What was it? That was a Vigilary Diaries. That was a movie about mercenaries.

Wow. And this in theaters? It's pretty fun. You said what? Is this in theaters? I'm not sure if it's in theaters. But it wasn't... It's not a way to straight to DVD.

It probably goes straight to DVD. A lot of movies go straight to DVD because they make more money. When I do, when I get offered to do a movie, I don't really ask. Is it going to the theaters or anything? I read the street and see if it's fun. If it's fun, if it's fun and the money's good, that's what I base in my house. this decision on if I'm going to do it. I'm serious. I'm not like all these other people these glory hoars and you know I'm not out here to be the most famous person and stuff like that.

I just I just go through life and like look I want to I want to make money to you know to live but I want to have fun you can't take life too serious because you're never going to get out alive in a way I just want to have fun. Okay. Okay final thing for you rampage and I really appreciate the time A lot of fun to talk to you as always. And by the way, I'm still waiting for my invitation to Memphis for our tete-a-tete, as they say. Perfect scenario for Quentin Jackson. When and against two. Give me something.

What scenario? What type of scenario? For your next fight. Perfect. Perfect world. Okay. The perfect world, I'm not going to lie. I really, really want to fight Tidis from Ultimate Friday because I've been thinking about that almost, we almost got in the fight there,

and he really thought that he can beat me. And I kind of asked the UFC to put me against him, but nobody thinks that, I mean, they didn't think that there would be a fair fight, but then ain't about that. It's about, you know, me and him, we got into it. I wanted to beat him up on the show, but I didn't know if I would go to jail

or get kicked off the show, because, you know, you're not supposed to fight on the ultimate fighter. You're talking about Darrell Schoonover. No, titties. Wasn't that titties? Titties, yeah. Tities. Okay.

Yes. Keep going, sorry. I just wanted to make it clear. Yeah. Tities. Okay. That's who you want to fight next. Tities.

Wow. I wasn't expecting that one. Is he even in Beltor? I know he fought in October of last year, so he's still active. Have you been following his career? He is coming off a loss, though. No, I don't know. See, I know you knows everything.

See, look, they should make a show called Errolowani Nose. Yeah, that's a good one. How you know this guy, or how you know this guy fought when he fought and how he's done, just off top of your head. How do you know this stuff? I'm a smart guy. This is my job.

This is like you talking about those video games. I had no idea, the chair and all that. All that, that's nonsense to me. But the real stuff, the important stuff in life, like Darrell Schoonover's last fight, that's top of the head stuff for me. I could think of that. Boom, it's right there.

Can't tell you about anything else. I just want to let you know that. I just want to you know that video games are the biggest industry in the world. Way bigger to MMA. Bigger than porn, even. Just so you know that. MMA, not that big on the ripper scale. I heard.

We were actually talking about this on my show about the e-gaming, the amount of people that watch that craziness and they go to MSG and stuff. I couldn't believe it. We were talking about it, and then people took that clip all over those sites and we're saying, oh, look at this guy talking about e-gaming. I was blown away. I had no idea. Now they're going to start airing it on TNT.

what has this world come to? Yeah, video games, because it's like the new, it's like the technology in there. They let us know the top people on, the top streamers on Twitch, they probably make more money than some of the top MMAT fighters. That is sad.

That is sad. Yeah, the NBA fighters putting their health on the line, and video gamers, 12-year-old kids are making more money. That's nuts. Yeah, but some of these pro-gamerers, they're grown-ups. So anyway, Darrell Schoonover is what you want. It is.

Yes. That would be the perfect. Listen, I know that I'm going to be retired soon. I'm 38. I know that. You know, there's no way around it. You know, I would love to beat up everybody that beat me and stuff like that. But, you know, there's a lot of people.

I lost 11 times, I guess. It would be a lot of people that beat me. But I want to beat up some people that piss me off along the way. So if I see him, like, in the MMA awards or whatever, I'm at, I'll just jump on them right there and go to jail. Give me titties. Not literally. I don't want pitties, but I want to fight tities.

And why don't you like him, by the way, so much? He was a punk on the show, and he kind of, like, came at me like he wanted to fight. Like, he was going to, like, like, like, he really thought that he could beat me up. He was trying to, like, scaring me. Like, the guy was just a stupid shit, like, look at his tattoos rampage. You know he's crazy. tattoos like, man, what the fuck is that? I don't care. In the back of him, I'm sitting in a chair

and get a tattoo. They don't mean they're tough. I know girls got their whole backs tell her the white go try to intimidate me with a damn tattoo. Like, oh, he's crazy. He's some sniper dude from the military. I'm like, I don't care. You want to snipe me in the, he'll bring his gun to the cage.

And he was just, they were just, you know, he was just pulling him out my last nerve on the show. I guess he didn't like that, uh, I gave him the nickname Titties. At first he liked it, but then I think the moment he didn't like it is when Tiki made the damn portrait of him with their bra on. He had like some nice jokes. I don't think they had from that moment on.

He didn't like that name, and he had it in for me. It was just there. All right. Well, I wasn't expecting that. I was thinking some of the other guys in the Belatorial Light Heavyweight Division, but there you have it. I asked you what you wanted. You were honest, and that's why I appreciate you. That's why I love you.

Yeah, I'm honest. I just had a vision of me. You know how people be doing the speed bag? to be trained on the speed bag, like, do-do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d. I just, I don't know, for some reason. You know, I'm really saying. I just ahead of, this to me, you know, speed-bagging his titties before I knock him out. Like, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Then, you know, just doing that little couple of cuts and knock him out, embarrass him for life. Then he'll, you know, uh, no not to fuck with me and probably apologize. He ever, he fucking with me right there. I'm sorry, Rand Page. I didn't know he was going to embarrass me by speedbagging my tities. You know, that's, you asked me what was the perfect, perfect, scenario, that's what I want. And I want people to make a meme out of it, put it all over the internet,

and then he feels bad about fuck with me because now, and in time he say something like this tweet, a meme of me, speedbagging his titties right before I knocked them out. Okay, there you are. You've never seen anything like that. Well, no. A world exclusive right here on the M.MA hour, Rampage Jackson, has called out his next opponent.

From your lips to Scott Coker's ears. Again, Rampage, congratulations on getting everything settled. You are a free man. You can now resume your sure-fire Hall of Fame career. It's been a long process, but I'm happy for you and your team that it's now over, and you can get back to doing what you do best. I think, as I said last week, I'm sure you heard on my other show the M.A. beat of all the free agent signings over the last couple of weeks,

and you know this has been a hot topic in our sport, yours is arguably the biggest of them all. I know you weren't technically a free agent, but getting you back for them is a huge deal. You're on a winning streak. I think this is big news, massive news. And I appreciate you coming on the show to talk about it. It means a lot.

Great to catch up, as always. Say hello to your nice lady, and we'll talk to you soon. All right, take care of the one and those. Much love. Rampage Jackson, there he is. The one and only, Quinton Jackson, stopping by. Always a pleasure when he joins us on the show or in person. Congratulations to him.

All right. Y'all must have forgot time a little later, but still plenty of show left. Much to discuss. This week, we go back to October of 2010, just prior to UFC 120. That was the last time I was in London, England, covering a mixed martial arts competition. UFC 120, headlined by Michael Bisping, who also headlines the card on Saturday, versus Yoshihiro, Sexiyama, Akiyama. that was one of my just personally selfishly one of my favorite events to cover the experience was great I love going to Europe I love the fans I love the passion they're so knowledgeable they're so excited that there's high level MMA there and and the O2 arena was a great facility a very memorable night and a very memorable week I even interviewed Dana White at Oxford University before he gave a little speech that was super memorable I got to the great story about

Gareth A. Davies, he gave me a lift to Oxford. I think it was on a Wednesday. And all throughout, and he's going to hate me for telling the story, but I love Gareth. With all my heart, he was telling me all throughout the drive. He was telling me that he is the biggest deal in England. He's huge. Sorry, everyone talks to him, all this stuff. Goes up to him on the street.

And we stopped for a quick bite on our way to Oxford. It was like an hour and a half away, I think, from London. We go to this sort of gas station, but it's a nicer one. It's kind of like a pit stop with a restaurant and all that. And we're there for no less than three minutes. And this is 2010, so six years ago, five and a half years ago, the guys working in the back, two guys working behind the counter say, are you Ariel Hawani?

Wow, huge fans, had no idea who Gareth was. I couldn't have scripted it better. It was amazing. And I still remind him of that every single day. So I hope to see Gareth over there. And the rest of the great European journalists, also my favorite team, Amaya. Over there, the staff over there for the UFC almost feels like a different kind of UFC event when you're over there overseas, especially in Europe. So I'm looking forward to it.

Anyway, y'all must have forgot. I wanted to look back at our last time in England. We did a little fan preview, if you will, at the UFC Expo. They had an Expo there. And I was talking to the fans. This was also where there's only one area of Hawani chant originated, which was made famous in Dublin two summers ago. But this is where it originated. So it's fun to look back at that, see the predictions, see how excited the fans were. So with us, just a couple days away from going to London, I thought that would be an apropos. You almost a forgot segment. So here it is, October 2010, the UFC Fan Expo. We talked to some of the fans over there about their thoughts going into UFC 120. Well, we made it to the

UFC Fan Expo here in London, England. And since UFC 120 is just 24 hours away, I thought I talk to some of the die-hard fans here and ask them what they expect to see tomorrow night at the O2 arena check it out all right Philip big fights Saturday night O2 arena let's go with the main event first Michael Bisping your Shihiro sexy yama Akiyama who you got I think Michael Bispin's gonna keep it standing and I think he's gonna try and out strike him I got Akiyama really yeah I think the cardio is gonna be there this time I like Akiyama yeah he's he's just great on his hands man

To be honest, I reckon is going to smash Bisping. I think sexy armor is going to be like a worthwhile opponent for Bisping. I think Bisping will have him second round beat him. Ah, say Bisbing. Do people in England dislike Michael Bisping as much as they do in the United States? Nah, they love him over here. I think he's going to lose. Who? Akiyama? Why?

Because I don't know. Bisbing. Michael Bisping decision. I have Akiyama decision. decision. Akiamma. Really? Yeah, definitely.

I have to say Bisbing. Here's the big question. Dan Hardy, Carlos Condit. Who are you guys picking? Dan Hardy for sure. Really? Yeah, I'm English. Got Dan Hardy in this one.

Yeah, I think the strike is going to be... I think it's going to be similar to the Swick fight. Um, Dan Hardy knockout on the first round. First round. How about you? Same. First round? Wow, you guys don't respect Carlos Condit.

You know he's a former W.C champion? I don't respect him. I'd respect Dan Hardy. I think Condit's going to smash. I'm going to stand hard. Really? Shadow of a day, he's going to beat him, yeah. Where are you from?

I'm from England. How can you go against your country mate? Because I just like the fighters all I like. I'm not interested where they're from. You like him? You like the Mohawk? No. He doesn't lose that.

What about Michael Bisping? You like him? No, no, no. Why don't you like him? Because he's a big, you know. You actually agree with some of the Americans that he's a little too close? Afraid so. Afraid so.

Yeah. Why do the fans in America dislike him so much? so much. Do you have any idea? I don't know really, just because he probably says stuff that gets on their tits, but he says what he says what he says. You just say? He says stuff that what? He gets on their nerves, gets on their tits sort of thing. Here we have my new friend Rob, who is a big fan of mixed martial arts and the UFC. Rob, why don't you show the people where you just showed me on your iPod? That is on his iPod right there.

It's me. An iPod form. Very excited to run into Lorraine Shin at the beach. BJpen.com booth, also known as BJ Penn's mother. Lorraine, great to see you. A lot of people call me Mama Penn, you know. Mama Penn. All the time. And then I think I'm probably the most famous mixed martial arts mom. Go to PJ Pen.com now. Michael Bisping, Yushahira Akiyama.

Which fighter is sexier? Know what to do with that? Come on, don't be shy. Which fighter is sexier? Bisping or Akiyama? I've got to kiss Bisping, if anyone. Yeah. Do you find him to be perhaps sexier than?

than the average human being? I'm not gay, but... I think he's quite sexy. I mean, they don't call him Sexyama for nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Who is sexier? Akiyama, definitely. He's a good-looking guy. Let's call a spade of spade, right?

Yeah, Bishman's ugly. Which fighter is sexier? Sexiama. Of course. Which fighter is sexier? Michael Bisbing. Really, despite the fact that Akiyama's nickname is Sexyama. No, Michael Bisbing still. This being, still.

This being Akiyama. What, who do I think sexier? Yes. Akiyama. All right, so there you have it. Everyone clearly excited for UFC 120. Kind of a split crowd in terms of who they expect to win, but it's going to be a great night of fights at the O2 Arena. Here's the best thing that I learned all day.

They have a song devoted to me here. Hit it, everyone. There's only one. It's a very catchy tune. So there you have it. That was a fun look back. Totally forgot. that one of the guys that we interviewed there said that used the term the tits.

And coming off of the rampage interview, that cracked me up. I love the jargon over there, so I'm looking forward to that as well. A fun look back, and you see a lot of the fans were incorrect in their predictions. Remember Carlos Conda and Dan Hardy, the O2 was stunned. It was almost like a double knockout. Condit got the best of them. That was an amazing finish. and that card in hindsight was actually way better

I mean the way we look back at it and some of the people that came out of it it was you know remember it was a free card it was on spike it was via tape delay I believe there were no journalists on press row for the Fabio Maldonado James McSweeney fight because the the bus was late it got lost I think it was the the bus from the hotel with all the journalists to the arena. So no one was in there. And I recall I got in there for the Spencer Fisher, Kurt Warburden fight.

That was the second fight of the night. I don't think anyone was maybe one or two people, but it was pretty empty on Press Roper. So no one saw Maldonado, James Xweeney. And this was prior to the prelims on any kind of streaming device or TV days. The preliminary card wasn't aired anywhere. Paul Sass with a triangle choke, remember that, Sassingle, a guy by the name of Alexander Gustafson

with a rear naked choke on the prelims, went over a surreal Diabate, Czech Congo, and Travis Brown fought to a draw. That was a bizarre one. Mike Pyle, completely derailing the John Hathaway hype train, Carlos Condit knocking out, Dan Hardy, and of course Michael Bisping, defeating Yoshihara Akiyama in a three-round main event.

All right. Mr. New York, Rick, are you there? How are you, sir? Was it his finest? He felt a little subdued. Not to say that I didn't like it, but, you know, it was just kind of a chilled out rampage, which was nice. The last thing he was on, it was a little contentious at times, so I appreciated it. Yeah, I thought that was a lot of fun. He was teaching you about Tyrone. Tyrone, yes, you sent me the Vine. So this is a thing. It's definitely a thing. I guess I missed it I'm not a huge fan of all the memes and the vines and the Instagram videos It's just a lot Someone was telling a friend of mine was telling me about Snapchat this weekend

I mean I don't have time for all this Also my sister was showing me that if you If you press on a person's face on Snapchat Then you can do these things And my kids now love it Like you can You know like their face become And you open your mouth and your eyes

That's kind of fun I just don't understand the concept It's like okay we're going to put out a video And then it's never going to be seen again What's the point? Why not just put the video on Instagram so that it can be seen forever? What's the point? I don't get it. That's the appeal, though, the fleeting nature of it. Is that really the appeal?

You know, initially when Twitter first came out, the 140 characters, the limit of that was the appeal. Now that's less so, I'd say, you know, now... Aren't they going to update that or expand it? I certainly hope they do not. You don't like that. You don't like that idea. No, I don't like that idea. Can I just say that I wish that you can edit tweets? You're... I think you're not alone.

I think that's probably the number one thing that's being listed by people on Twitter. Just maybe like a 30 second grace period where you could edit any typos and then let it live. Yeah, that is annoying. Well, there's a lot to get to. Sure. I know you have some stuff you want to talk about, but let's get to the questions first. Okay. And, well, let me ask you.

I kind of went, you know, all in on the data stuff. And again, important to reiterate that Scott Coker texted me. in the middle of the show and said that, well, let me just repeat what I said in case anyone missed it. Just wanted to let you know that data is fine and recovering well. Also, Brett Akamoto, and I appreciate him doing that.

Also, finally, Brett Akamoto, where is it? Where is it? Brett Akamoto. Oh my, I lost his tweet. He tweeted out something. He apparently spoke to, Brett Akamoto, VSPN, spoke to Data 5,000's, the Fear Harris's manager, and he said, quote,

he's walking around and asking to be released, awaiting lab reports should be out by end of the week. Interesting how all this is now coming out now. You know what I'm saying? Sure. Anyway, some people are telling me that your voice sounds very low. So I don't know if you want to talk closer to the mic, if you need to boost your audio,

but you got to boost that shiz. Yeah, let's boost my mic. All right. Okay. Do you share my sentiments here on the way this has been handled from an outset? You're not, often claim you're not a journalist, so you look at things a little differently. You share my sentiments in the sense that, A, they should be held to the same standards.

You're on Spike TV. You're in front of millions of people. You know, it's enough is enough with the circus act. And B, you should be, and I understand, I saw some people say, well, they put out a statement on Saturday. What's the big deal? No, the big deal is that was 48 hours ago. How's he doing now? Where is he?

What's going on? I don't want to, like, a blow-by-blow account. I understand he has a right to privacy. But at least respond, right? Tell us something. How do you feel about all this? I feel that I can't say I'm 100% with you in terms of the standard. No, I'm just talking.

Go ahead. In terms of the standard, I mean, you know, if the network and the organization are both happy with the result, are both happy with the ratings that they, you know, are perceived. to hopefully get, then that's just the cost of doing business is putting on these types of fights. And I don't think they have to be held to any standard other than their own on that regard. There's no responsibility going into the fight and there's no responsibility after the fight. Again, remember, I'm not so upset about the fight going into it, but just the way it was

dealt afterwards. Well, okay. Safety and name value. are two separate things. So the actual making of this fight, I have no problem with it. The safety precautions that may or not have been taken or, you know, putting on a fight that the health of both competitors is of the utmost importance, that may be an area where things need to be addressed. But I don't think that, you know, using, look, using fighters with name value is a tried and true strategy. don't have a problem with that part of it. The aftermath, now that's a different story and something to definitely consider.

But I don't think that the blame falls with any one person, one organization, one anything. It's an entire thing. Like the commission is involved here. The organization is involved. There's lots of moving pieces. And I don't think it's as easy as pointing the finger at anybody. I don't know if I was pointing the finger at one particular person. But you work in the PR business, too.

I know that sometimes you can't come out and say everything right off the bat. I do think it's important when something of this nature transpires that you at least engage in communication. Sure. With people who are asking for an update. Like this is not, I'm not asking who's next for Kimbo. I just want to know if the guy is, you know, A in the hospital, B, out, is he okay? What is going on? Just something.

I don't think people really understand. I was getting nothing. I was getting like, oh, well, you know, I was getting, one thing that I got was, you know, we never said it was going to be high-level MMA. That doesn't, that doesn't excuse anything. This was a sanctioned fight on live television in a cage. What the hell was it? You know, it was an MMA fight. So I expect everything to be on the up and up, and then I expect an update when something of this nature happens.

That's all I'm saying. Anyway, that's a fair expectation. I'm assuming people have questions about it. can get into it here. Yeah. So the first question, did MMA dodge, these are not going to appear

on the screen today. I'm just reading them. So. What happened to our screen? Not, not functioning for now. Okay. I think it's time to get a new screen.

So take, well, I remember when we had the sponsorship one? That was a sweet one. What was that? Samsung? Samsung. Samson.

Come back to us. Yeah, please. Come back. Come back. Did MMA just dodge a bullet with Dada 5,000's close call? Well, I hate to put it in those terms.

because, okay, the first thing I'll say is I got a ton of questions and comments on Friday night saying the sport has just been set back 10 years. And I don't subscribe to this notion because I think that there's so much MMA going on and MMA has reached a certain point to where, I mean, the sport isn't going back. You know, the UFC won't ultimately be affected by some, you know, freak showy fights. Now, if something tragic happens, that's a different story. But if it's just a really, really bad fight and both guys gassed and it wasn't quote unquote high level MMA. This will be forgotten in a week, I can assure you of that. Beltaur has a solid card with a title fight in the main event. This Friday, it will be forgotten. It will be forgotten

to fall as well and good. So I don't believe, you know, people make a big deal of these things. Oh, it's an embarrassment. Yeah, I mean, look, that wasn't my point again. Again, it was about the information and the way it was handled after the fact. Now, I do change my tune, as I said earlier, in the sense that I do believe that Beltaur should be held to the same standards. Now, they want to play with the big boys. Let's be treated like the big boys. And if you're going to be in front of that many eyeballs on a platform like Spike, then you should be held to the same standards.

Now, of course, I don't go into these fights thinking that I'm going to see, you know, the Connor McGregors of the world, that kind of talent every single time out. But there's a responsibility there. There should be some accountability. And so that's kind of how I feel. Now, now if something truly tragic happens in the after, math here because you ask me if they dodged a bullet, I don't think this story has been, you know, closed. I don't think this chapter is closed. I don't think they've done, they're done writing the

Data 5,000 versus Kimbo Sly's story until he's out. He speaks to us. He says something. It gives us an update in a positive light. I don't think it's done. So I don't like using the term dodging the bullet for many reasons, but the most obvious one is I don't think that they are out of the woods yet on this one, regardless of what is being said, until we see him here. hear from him, I think then we can talk like that. So look, there's a lot of people who don't like MMA and there's a lot of people who don't even talk about MMA or don't even pay attention to it and they're in the sports media,

let alone the national media. If something tragic happened like this in North America in front of millions of people, they will all come out of the woodwork and rightfully so. I'm not saying it's, I mean, rightfully so, and this sport will be in trouble. And a lot of people who aren't even responsible for it, we'll have to answer to it. And that's unfair. But this affects the UFC because they are

the brand name. So that's why I think that there's a responsibility and an accountability and no one wants to see that happening. It's not worth it. Stop talking to me about the ratings and all that. It's just not worth it. How much of this, the next question, how much of this falls on the commission? This person indicates they're not going to blame the fighters who want to make a living, want to get some money. They're not going to blame the organization who puts on the fight. How much much of this falls on the commission for allowing these participants to fight? I think a lot of it falls on the commission. Look, Texas doesn't have the greatest reputation out there.

So did they do their due diligence? Based on reports, it seems like they, you know, they did their background and all that. But, you know, I think that the way we look at this sport today, as opposed to the way we'll look at this sport in 50 years, is going to be completely different. in 1930s baseball. The sport is going to evolve. We're going to look back at this era and say, wow, I can't believe this stuff went on.

And a lot of that falls under the commission. I mean, just look at yesterday in Pittsburgh. Some wacky stuff going on. Scorecard, they couldn't even add it upright. They gave the first round. I would hope to the wrong person. How was that not a mistake? I'm talking about the Marion Reno,

Ashley Evan Smith fight. Yamasaki jumping in, jumping out. There's still a lot of issues. issues in this sport. And that's why one of the things that I said in my responses to Richard Deich of SI was, I wish that the commissioners, the referees, the judges were made available to the press in some way, shape, or form. I think we talked about this on this show a couple weeks ago. In the NBA, when something controversial happens, the referees don't do press conferences, but they at least put out their own Q&A of what happens so that you can get some insight into

their line of thinking. That doesn't occur in MMA. They just, they just fly into the night. And that's not fair. Again, accountability, responsibility. You have to answer for your actions. Why did you tally up the scores wrong? Why did you score that first round for the wrong person, at least in our opinion? Why did you jump in there and then jump out and then stop the fight? Why did you clear data 5,000? How is data 5,000 do it? All these questions and more need to be answered. And they're not. And they never are. And that's a problem. Do we have an idea of what the ratings will look like? And do you think that the main and co-main and the ratings will have an impact on future shows?

Hell yeah. I mean, I would like to think that they learned something from this. And Kimbo Slice versus Dada 5,000 isn't the kind of fights that Beltaire should be putting on. Great ratings are not. There needs to be a line. And clearly that was crossed. And this is Monday morning quarterback. I admit that on my part because I wasn't one of those.

I don't like to do all that stuff and say it's embarrassing and sending the sport back. It's just I'm able to see it for what it is. Now, I was pretty adamant about the fact that they didn't build the card the right way. They needed to use it to build other stars. They didn't do that fine. But I hope that, you know, they have enough players in the division right now, heavyweight, light heavyweight, where they could put, like, I don't know, Justin Wren was talking about Kimbo. That's a fine fight. That's okay.

Kimbo has fought enough now to where he should be able to hang in there with guys like him. Rampage Kimbo would do well. At this point, I don't know if I want to see it based on what we saw on Friday. But you know what I'm saying? He shouldn't be fighting a guy who hasn't fought in years who has no real competition under his belt training. It's just, that's not what Belator should be. Speaking of Bellator, their production, what did you think of the production? Let's keep the fight separate.

Belator had big show production. What are your thoughts on what we saw on Friday night from them? I think the Tempoles shows are a lot of fun to watch. I think they're fresh, they're fun, they're different, they look different. They're unique. I like the production. I like, you know, it's different. That's fine.

It's good to be different. And in this day and age, it's important to be different, and they don't have as many outlets to be different as they did five years ago when Strike Force was around. And what I mean by that is back when Strike Force was around, there were less UFC events, less fighters on the UFC roster, so they had a bigger talent pool to choose from. And most importantly, they had a women's division. So they had Chris Cyborg. They had Gina Carrano.

They had Misha Tate. They had Shana Beasler. They had Marlos Kuhn. This was radically different. than anything the UFC was putting out. And that was a big chip on their side of things. And yeah, they had the Herschel Walkers of the world, but again, Herschel wasn't main eventing shows.

He was fighting, you know, journeyman fighters. They had Bobby Lashley against a Chad Griggs, but it wasn't what we saw on Saturday. It was completely different, excuse me, Friday than what we saw on Friday, because they still had Daniel Cormier and Luke Rockhold and Nick Diaz and Paul Daly and the list goes on and on, Robbie Lawler. And yeah, they did. did some squash matches. There's no doubt about that. But it felt different. But now, until they are

able to build up a roster like that again, that's just not a reality of the modern MMA space, not yet at least. There's plenty of opportunity. The Benson Henderson thing will be a really nice start to that, and they will be able to build up a roster of that caliber, I'm sure, at some point. But until that, this is one of the ways that they can draw eyeballs. Is it, is it not a not a viable method if that's if that's the way that they can kind of even the playing field yes to a degree i understand what the end goal is here and i think one thing that's been overlooked um which i brought up to luke thomas is belator unlike strike force is owned by a tv network and so what viacom is looking to get here and it's the reason why they bought the company to begin

with A, they lost the UFC, and B, Belator's model was, you know, 13 straight weeks, season, and then a break, and then another 13. So it's easy to program that. And so they want, they still want that many events. It's just that the Belator model has changed. And oh, by the way, the roster is thinner. So you can't just fall on, okay, this is the quarterfinals of this tournament and the same finals of that. So they don't, I think they're putting on too much. It's too thin. If they scale back, the roster's not that bad. And with a couple of signings here or there, now you're in the money. And oh, by the way, they're not dealing, like the UFC is dealing in the sense that the UFC is putting on, you know, a 13-fight fight card with guys on their roster. A lot of the guys on the Bellator, you know, undercard are sometimes local guys. They're working with other promoters. They had McMainert up there from Legacy. That's the Coker model. And it works for them because they sell a lot of tickets locally. When Strike Force is around and in particular running at the HP Pavilion, the owners were the San Oz sharks. They own that arena. And so it was in their best interest to sell a lot of tickets.

Those events were blazing. I mean, they had packed houses for fights that we couldn't care about on national level. And so it's a lot different now the way that they're running it and what they have to, what they have to cater to and who they have to answer to. When you're run by a TV network, it's a totally different ballgame. And so they just want slots filled on a Friday night or a Saturday night. And when you're putting on that many shows a year, you don't have as many chips to play with. That's a problem. They need to put on less shows. It's a real problem because then you're forced to do things like this. And that's why, could you imagine if they would have combined, like if they put Dantas and Marcus Galvall on that card on Friday, or Darren Caldwell,

who's fighting in two weeks against Joe Warren? Okay, now you got some chip. You know, you know what I'm saying? Sure. But now you spread them out three weeks, and you've got a much thinner card. And it just looks like it's top heavy and you're just you're just doing a card that has you know two 50 year old guys and you know a guy who shouldn't be in there against another guy who hasn't been very active as of late. Ken Shamrock he says his fight with hoist gracey should have been a no contest and he's lodged a complaint with the Texas commission what is your thought what are your thoughts on that so what are your thoughts on that fight and then what are your thoughts on shamrock's complaint well uh you know the fight actually I mean who would have thought it would have ended like that

in the sense of, you know, hoist wins, essentially via strikes. He doesn't wrap his hands, which I thought was weird. And again, huge props to Jimmy Smith on that call and throughout the night as well. He switches to Southpaw, which I think confused Ken to a degree. I didn't see it. It looked like a delayed reaction. Maybe that's why I didn't see it. It did seem, I mean, who knows, you get hit in that general region and it can affect you.

And maybe it can be a delayed reaction. never been in a fight like that and been need like that. It did seem like he got nailed in sort of the sternum, and then he went down and finished via strike. I was happy that it didn't turn into, like, at first I was thinking, oh, God, we're going to see some sort of like brawl here, and this is just going to be worse, and I'm happy that Ken cool down.

Just based off history, I don't foresee the Texas Commission saying, we made a mistake. I mean, when does that happen? You know what I mean? They're not going to reverse this. And I guess the most unfortunate, part of all of it is that now this thing is going to, you know, linger. It left the door open for more. I mean, these guys are going to be 80 years old and still talking about this. They were arguing about the shoes.

And again, did you see when Sean Grandy was playing it up, the shoes and all that? And Jimmy Smith was like, oh, my God, the shoes. When are we going to stop hearing about this? Like, he was just so on point that night. Real credit to him. I hope we don't have to hear about this forever now. Like start analyzing the knee and the first one, where it landed and all that. I mean, look, credit to Hoyce came out, seemed to be an okay shape for his age, and that's that. But I don't really, you know, he's had a great career, great legacy, 50-year-old men should not be fighting in the main event of shows like that. Melvin Glevard, what's next for him after unsuccessful run in Bellator now, so far? Yeah. Missed Wade as well. Well, no, he made weight.

Oh, that's right. Missed Wade initially and then came back. Yeah. I don't know if it was anyone there when he made weight the second time. I saw it tweeted out. I mean... Yeah, I saw it tweeted out, but... I don't know if any...

You know, I think it came from the promotion, so I don't know if anybody was on site to verify that, but... Sure. Do I care to see him? Is that the question? What's next for him? What do you think? How many...

It hasn't been... You know, I think it was Mike Chiappetta who tweeted this on Friday. He's burnt some bridges along the way. Yeah. World Series of Fighting did not end well. And then, you know, UFC cut him. And I don't know if that was a burnt bridge, so to speak. I thought he handled it okay after the first.

after the fact. He's taking a lot of punishment, you know? And he's been, how many fights has Melvin Galard been in? Holy moly. A ton. Let me quickly look that up. I think his Emmy record is also, like, very lengthy as well. Melvin, the young assassin Galard, has been in, he's 32 and 16, two no contests and two draws. So that would be 50 fights, right?

Yep. No, 52 fights. because 32 plus 16 is 48 plus 2 is 50 come on man where's that queen's math oh is that what queens is known for I thought so so anyway 52 fights three losses in a row two split decisions one KL I don't know

I wouldn't be surprised if they give him another shot I don't I don't see him going around he's 32 it's a big problem you know I was talking to someone after the show last week all the random and stuff coming out and of course we don't I'm not going to tie that to this. But as more and more information comes out about brain injury and I give props to the UFC for what they're doing with the Cleveland Clinic in Las Vegas, these guys who are continuing to fight,

you really get worried and you really wish that there was something for them. There was some sort of system in place for them just to ease out. I'm not saying to be paid for life, but just to ease out of the fight world and get, into the real world, you know, just something. And, you know, I know that's kind of pie in the sky, wishful thinking stuff. But again, I go back to that previous statement about 1930s baseball. You hope in 50 years people look back and be like, you guys had nothing?

Nothing? Nothing to help you? Because maybe that would help make the transition a little easier. Donald Seroni, would you like to see him continue at Welterweight? Well, I'll say this. And I know this was brought up as well. I love the fact in hindsight that he was fighting someone, you know, this felt like a tune-up fight for him. And I know it wasn't his original opponent.

But how cool was it to see Donald Seroni get his mojo back, say that he felt happy for once, that there was no pressure? You know, Olivera gave it the old college try, took a fight on short notice, deserves a ton of credit for doing that. Also moved up and wait. But Cowboy Soroni, instead of fighting, I don't know, you know, an Eddie Alvarez type of opponent, I know that's not going to happen. He fought him not that long ago. but instead of fighting like a top three guy, all right, now here he is back on track. So I'd like to see him remain at 170, at least for now.

He lost to RDA. He lost twice to him now. Connor presents a whole new set of circumstances, obviously, and who knows if Connor wins, maybe that will change things for him. But the fact that he doesn't have to cut as much weight, he's not allowed to use the IV. He tends to cut a lot of weight,

and he needs the IV to rehydrate in large part because he had that motocross accident a few years ago. He's got a massive source. scar on his stomach. Part of his intestine is gone. He actually needs it for medical reasons. He was walking around, I believe I was told he was walking around at 179 on Tuesday, and that's obviously eight pounds. Seems to be, you know, very healthy looking on Saturday at the Wands, on Sunday at the fight. So yeah, build on this. You know, once he gets into like the Tyron Woodley's of the world, those guys might be a little too big for him. But I don't hate seeing him

stick around on 170 at least for now. I know he was fighting a lightweight as well technically, but I don't hate it. What about you? Yeah. For Seroni, he's like Benson in the sense that I feel like he's one of these guys who take a fight with anybody anytime, anywhere. So, and Seroni especially doesn't seem to care that much about the title shot aspect of it. I think at this point we kind of just have to take him at his word for that. So I'm all for seeing Donald Seroni take interesting fights at 155, at 170. just kind of go wherever the winds blow. Just take whoever's the most interesting fight.

The biggest fight he can get, no matter whatever weight class it is. Good on him for taking a fight. Some guys, they asked me about this last week also on FS Live. Some guys need some time to lick their wounds and figure things out, and he's not the kind of guy to throw the baby out with the bathwater, change his coaches and his manager and stuff. He just needs to get back on that horse.

Pardon to the pump? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was good for Donald Turner And oh, by the way, can I just say The 9 o'clock start for the main card Made all the difference in the world for me Like this card ending at 12 Was a big, big change from ending at 1

And what do you think about the Sunday? I don't mind the Sunday card if I'm home I don't like it if I'm at the event Because that means I have to miss the show on Monday But I kind of like the Sunday card As opposed to the Saturday card. Sunday at 9 I'll take that over Saturday at 10 What do you think?

Change of pace, yes. every week thing, no. I think Saturday's the night. But for a change of pace every once in a while, it's fine. All right. By the way, a quick side note, I failed to mention this earlier. Our man Nick in the back there brought this to my attention. I think it's important to note when talking about all the stuff with Data 5,000 and the evolution of the sport and, you know, serious, serious stuff that can go on. Did you know that way back of the day Teddy Roosevelt helped save professional football? Did you know this? No, I can't say I did. And I wonder if we will ever get to this point. Here's just a quick, quick snippet.

You can Google Teddy Roosevelt helmet and an article from the Washington Post in May of 2014 will come up. Here's just a quick snippet. Again, this is from the Washington Post. Katie Zezima wrote it. President Obama is holding a White House summit on sports concussions today, reflecting a growing concern over head injuries sustained by athletes, especially young ones. Much of the focus has been on concussions suffered by football players, but this is not the first time that football injuries have been a subject of worry in the White House.

In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt, an avowed football fan, summoned coaches and athletic advisors from Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University to the White House to discuss how to improve the game of football, quote, especially by reducing the element of brutality in play. The Washington Post wrote in an October 10th 1905 article. The changes inspired in part by Roosevelt were the first steps in a long line of reforms to make football safer. And it goes on to say that in 1905, 18 people died and more than 150 were injured playing football. According to the Washington Post, at least 45 football players died from 1900 to October of 1905. Many from internal injuries, broken necks, concussions, or

broken backs. Isn't that insane? talked about instituting helmets and things of that nature. That is nuts. So when do we get to that point? And there's so much that's been left undone, the Ali Act and all this stuff that MMA is not subjected to. But, you know, data 5,000 of all people, is he the one to trigger this kind of change? Hopefully not.

Hopefully he's all okay and he can go on his merry way and all that. But you know what I'm saying? Will we get to that point? Is that what needs to happen with the extreme weight cut? you know it almost you go back to the dodging the bullet stuff it almost feels like you know we're just waiting for that sometimes you know and I don't want to see that happen I think it is going to take something like that unfortunately oh I just don't think people outside you know care enough um to to to kind of and that and you know what part of the reason why they don't care is because

they the the the unfortunately the stuff that gets a lot of the attention are fights like that And that's what, let's be honest, a lot of people think MMA is, right? Did you have a lot of people come up to you and say, Kimbo Slice, Dada 5? Did you get that? Because I sure did. I mean, I can't say I got that more than anything else. I got it. I got away more than Donald Seroni and Cowboy O'Vera.

I got it more on Twitter. A lot of people were much more interested in talking about that. You didn't have any people come up to you and talk. I had people, I went to a kid's birthday party on Saturday, people talking to me about it. No joke. People see this stuff. Because the mainstream sports, deadspins of the world, they cover it. They're not covering the day-to-day high-level MMA that we all love.

They're covering that stuff. And I think to a lot of people, they still think MMA is that, unfortunately. Donald Seroni, I believe he said on Twitter he was wearing the patch inside his shorts. Did he say that? No, he said he was wearing it, and I think somebody else said that. Well, I asked him that. Remember I asked him that? And he said, well, that's not the same.

I said, why don't you just do that? I'm proud. I believe he's reported to have done that, and he said he was wearing it. But I don't know if we have confirmation on that yet. That's what this question was about. Mario Yamasaki's stoppage in the Cowboy v. Cowboy fight, what did you think of that? And Dana reacting the way he did? I didn't dislike that one as much as I dislike the Cody Garbrandt Augusto Mendez fight, or finish, I should say.

I mean, that whole thing happened rather quickly. And how about the BJJ experts online? Holy crap. I mean, there I am, you know, just waiting so I can, you know, go to bed. I got a big show today and all that stuff. And I said, great triangle choke, which it was by Cowboy Soroni, great transition. He has always been great off his back. Oh, it wasn't a triangle choke.

Ah, he wasn't off his back, you dummy. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, my God. Is there a more annoying bunch than the so-called BJJ experts online? There's probably a more annoying bunch now that I think of it. but they were pretty annoying in that moment. I kind of get that, though. What are you talking about?

It was a triangle choke, A, and he was off his back when it happened. I know he set it up in Mount, but he had to finish it off his back. He didn't submit him in Mount. Am I wrong? He didn't do the work on his back, though. But he had to finish it off his back. To me, okay, now we want to get technical. Sure.

And oh, by the way, he always has been great off his back, so that statement is actually accurate, too. Are you kidding me? Stop it with this. Let's say you're watching basketball and somebody says like, oh, he made a nice layup shot. You're going to be like, what the hell was that? You're going to... What are you talking about?

Are you talking about the terminology? It's the terminology. Dunk shot? Yeah, exactly. I don't think that's the same thing. They feel like they're inside this exclusive club. You're not a part of it. You're trying to jump in that club.

Why? They're like, wait a minute. Get out of here. Where's your pass for this club? Oh, that's... that's what they're wondering where's the pass they don't know what I do in my spare time

what do they know about my life all I'm saying I'm sorry I don't rub it in all your faces but here's the thing at the end of the day he is great off his back it was a beautiful transition and he finished it off his back he finished it off his back is that an incorrect

statement he may have set it up in Malice so what the hell you know maybe the most annoying tweeterer out there is Vinnie Magalash. I mean, is there a more annoying person on Twitter than Vinnie Magaliyesh? Wow. I mean, the guy, and you talk about a guy, and here I am going on this

ran and giving him the attention that he wants, but this is a guy who is talking about, he comes on this show, never forget it, saying that he's going to sell the M1 Global Belt on eBay, never goes through with it, says he's going to retire, doesn't go through with it, and then all he does is bother me on Twitter. I'm tempted sometimes to block him

just because he's a little, you know, like, is this. But he calls me out, and I'm like, come on, man. It's not true. What you're saying, you're trying to make me out to be some sort of, you know, this dunce when it comes to be. All I said was great finish. Oh, and oh, by the way.

And then I got everyone saying, oh, it was an arm bar. And then I see the replay. I'm like, okay, fine. I guess it was an arm bar. I see the arm trap. But then they come back and they say, no, it was a triangle choke. I mean, can we just let it stand for what it is? Can we just say it was a great finish?

That's it. How would you ignore these people? Let them be. I need to let them be. Overeem versus Arlofsky. Yes. Just laughing about it. How heated you got.

Okay. Overeem versus Arlofsky. They're in the same camp, obviously. Yes. What's going to happen there? Oh, this is fascinating. So first reported by Jeremy Bauder, it's going to be May 8th in Rotterdam. It's going to be Alastair Overeign versus Andrae-Alofsky.

And you know, when I was at Jackson's in Jackson Winklejohns in, or I should say, correctly Jackson Wink Academy in Albuquerque, New Mexico in November post-Hawley home win. I actually asked Alastair Overeem about this, about the possibility of fighting Andrei Arlowski. Now, of course, he was preparing for JDS. Arlowski was preparing for Steve Miochich, Overeem won, Arlowski lost. And he was saying, look, we have to get through our next fights, but I'm okay with it. Like, where I come from, this is not that big of a deal. I was kind of surprised about that. They were both in the gym at the same time. So this is what I've been told. Greg Jackson is going to corner Andrea Arlowski. And what he told me was they'll both be

training, they'll both be at the gym, they'll just be there at different times. And it's up to every other coach on the team to decide who they want a corner in this fight. If anyone, remember most famously back in 2012, UFC 154, Greg said, I'm stepping away from GSP versus Condit. And he also did the same when John Jones fought Rashad Evans. Though at the end of the day, did he end up cornering John Jones? Because Rashad had left the team? I think he ended up with John Jones, yeah. This is where it gets interesting.

So I was like, all right, Greg Jackson, the godfather, he's saying, he said Andre is a special case. He's been with him for a while. He promised him, and he wants to be there for him, and he's just going to treat this like a sporting event. I have the utmost respect for Greg Jackson. You know that by now. Then I checked him with Mike Winklejohn. Mike Winklejohn will be cornering Andre Arlofsky as well. So now you got the two dudes over there, and there's tons of great coaches,

Brandon Gibson and many others, Izzy Martinez is there. Wink, Greg, are cornering Arlofsky. I found that to be very interesting, right? And just the fact that they'll both be at the gym coming at different times. Woodley said he would do this if he fights Robbie Lawler as well. But I found that to be fascinating. This has never happened as far as a high-level UFC fight where, you know, Jackson guys had to fight, and Greg and Wurley.

wink were on one side of the fence. I appreciate their honesty there, but really, really interesting. I thought that was very interesting. I'm very curious. I hope he doesn't get offended if I ask him this question like he typically does, but I'm very curious to see who corners Arlofski. Excuse me, Overeem. Overeem has a lot, you know, he still does some training. Like Arloffsky does predominantly all of his training in Albuquerque, but Overeem still does some stuff in the Netherlands and whatnot. so I'm curious to see who he has in his corner. Sure. If Silva wins, what's next for him?

You said on last week's show that Bisbing, if he won, he'd be the number one contender. What do you think about if Silva wins? What's his move in the rankings? If Luke Rockhold remains champion, so if Luke Rockhold defeats Chris Wyman in June, I have a hard time seeing them not booking the winner of this fight against Luke Rockhold. Does that make sense? It does. Absolutely.

It's a fresh matchup for Silva. It's a fresh match. I mean, okay, so it's not a fresh matchup for Bisping, but different stakes champion. The belt is on the line. He'll talk about the headbut. He's great at selling fights. And above all, he finally gets a shot at the belt. I sort of feel like, you know, this is the number one contender fight.

I know Jacques-Rae's fighting, Belfort. We still don't. I checked in about Romero this morning. Still no update there. I kind of feel like this is the fight. Am I crazy? No, you're not crazy. And I think they're the biggest names in the,

most sellable. By the way, Dave Meltzer tweeting that Belator, quote, Belator destroyed all previous

records on Friday. We'll have stories soon. Jeremy Botter tweeting, Beltor 149 averages 2 million

viewers for broadcasts. There you go. For the broadcast. So what does that say? So does that mean all as well and good?

Depends on who you ask. You know, there's a lot of stuff that you could put out there that would draw a big rating. It's all I'll say. And what does it lead to? will will

Belator 1 okay so if they average 2 million and congratulations will Belator 150 which is this weekend headline by Galvao versus Dantas

will that get half of that do you think do you think it will average a million what's the trickle down effect what's the end game

yeah I mean that's the question that's the one question that remains is can this be utilized to to springboard and to showcase the other. Yeah.

The last time Kimbo fought against Shamrock, I thought the undercard on the prelims, excuse me, on the main card, was stronger, and it didn't really, you know, I think Kimbo was the name, and obviously those guys are named, but the whole point of this is to get the rub, and so I'm curious, let's see.

Did you hear the audio from John Jones' traffic stop? What were your thoughts? I did hear that. Were you surprised, anything, any reaction to it? Yeah. Why do you seem so sad over there? You seem a little subdued today. No, I'm good.

Okay. I'm feeling good. Why? Maybe the TV's not working. You got your new haircut over there, the man bun looking fresh. I don't know. I just feel like... Oh, that's a reason to celebrate.

I feel like you're at a three. I'm needing you right now at like an eight. All right, let's get me to an eight. Here we go. Here we go. Although this question is on exactly. John Jones's traffic stop. I did hear.

Did you hear it? I did, yeah. Okay, I'll go first. Driving 75 and a 35 is a little worrisome, right? Sure. Driving 75 and a 35 without a license, without insurance, without registration is also worrisome, I think. And when you add to that, that he's had his issues before, and then he's gotten to the second lease on life, him talking about his passport and not having a license and all that stuff, that did not paint the whole picture in a great light.

And also makes you wonder, like, what is going on here? Can we just get this man of driver, you know, can we just keep him out of trouble and explain to him that? that, you know, a major bullet was dodged back in April and driving fast, that fast, 40 miles over the speed limit. Without all that, I mean, how do you not have the registration? I mean, come on. It just, that was not. He's lucky again that nothing happened there. And I think John Jones deep down is a great person.

And he's done a lot of good for me. He's giving me, you know, that interview. I don't want to put him down here. But it's just you have so much at stake. You have so much to lose. just be smart man it's not worth it why you drive and then like not having that just keep that in your car don't give the authorities any reason to ruin your career to put to put you in jail to get you in trouble why are you doing this yourself it's very avoidable if i was in that position i would be

stopping for five seconds at every stop sign i would be driving 30 and 35 just to be safe that's just me yeah i mean that was my takeaway too let's just take it out of john jones's hands like get get a driver, figure it out, and obey the laws. He got lucky that the guy who pulled him over, you know, was able to eventually check and see that everything was on the up and up. But why risk it? Exactly. Did you see Connor McGregor's interview with severe MMA? He had interesting tidbits on fighting in Vegas, wanting to fight closer to home.

do you think we'll ever see Connor in Ireland again? Did you say inside MMA or severe MMA? Severe M. Okay, yeah, severe. So that was a great interview. Good job by Andrew McGahan. I hope I'm saying that correctly. Andrew McGahan getting that interview.

As he mentioned, he has been covering him for a while and it's become somewhat of a tradition for them to get Connor before he goes. And wow, those guys, they really hitched their wagon to the right horse there. not Connor, but just Irish MMA. I mean, they've been a big part. I've talked glowingly about the work that they do. I like those guys very much. Graham, Sean, Andrew, Pizzi, all the boys. They have a good crack over there at severe MMA. Anyway, that was a fascinating interview because of his body language, right? I mean, wow, the intensity coming out. You can just feel it off the screen. His comments about the UFC were very interesting. His comments about moving up to 170. It's always interesting. Anytime Connor talks, Connor McGregor freaking burps, it's interesting. He posts anything on Twitter. It's interesting.

The man is just a walking, interesting soundbite. So it was interesting to say that he wants to fight closer to home, that he's getting tired of Vegas and the travel. I don't blame him. He's done a lot. This is going to happen. 10,000 people at what is formerly known as the O2. I think it's the 3E, something like that arena.

The point. All very interesting. I mean, I don't even know what to say. All I'll say is, again, don't be surprised if he wins this fight. if he wins this fight, if he says, you know what, let's see how Robbie Lawler feels at UFC 200. I believe that it's come down to this. It's come down to either Connor McGregor, Tyron Woodley, or Carlos Condit for that title shot. That's my stance right now. You can look into that whichever way you want. That's what I think is going down. And if Connor wins at 196,

I think he's the frontrunner. And I reported last week, Condit wants a shot. If he doesn't win, it's down to Condit and Woodley. So it's going to be interesting. But I don't expect anything to happen before 196. And he also revealed he started talking about fighting at UFC 200. Yeah, that's what I was saying. A lot of interesting stuff out of Conner there.

Yeah. These are our final. Oh, by the way, sorry. Go ahead. He looks jacked. He's a big boy. I mean, how's this guy actually going to go down to 145? Why would he ever want to go down to 145 at this point?

I think that's it. Crazy. he looks to be in tremendous shape, physical specimen. Can't wait for that. Should the refs be penalized for doing their jobs poorly? Now, they're saying the stoppage in the cowboy versus cowboy fight was horrendous. Yeah. I didn't have that.

I mean, that one I didn't have much of a problem with. Wasn't that bad. It wasn't as bad as the Cody Garbrand fight, which was the same referee. Yeah. Now, that's a problem. We need, I mean, I don't know how much we can talk about this, but there needs to be some accountability. How do we get toward that? Of course.

how do we do that? Well, again, I would like to see them address. Why? Why did you jump in that? I think that would help instead of just disappearing into the night. And do you think the hesitation to do that is so that referees' calls aren't questioned? Like, what's the reason not? I don't really know. I just think that this is the Wild West.

I think that, you know, it's a different sport. You go to these different jurisdictions, different commissions, have different things. I mean, just look yesterday. They're taking off the gloves. It spoke to one person in the UFC. They said they had no idea why this was happening, that it was very unusual, that they would look into it. I mean, what is going on? Yeah.

Very strange. Brian Stan, tweeting all kinds of stuff about the Pittsburgh, excuse me, the Pennsylvania commission. That's right. It's different,

it's a different ball game, every single place that they go. And that's why I've talked, and I know it's not the complete best answer, but maybe a national commission, at least there's some uniformity. You know what I mean? Sure.

But it can't just be a different ballgame every time they go to a new place. And even that, I don't think, is going to change some of the level of incompetence, and because we're going to see the same refs and judges trotted out, and I think that a lot of that's going to be the same. We're at least pointing us in the right direction of having, you know, a unified body to

kind of regulate it and address it. Yep. Some people were saying, like, I was like, how is Big John not reffing the Gracie Shamrock fight? And I know that's a little like hokey nostalgia, but people are like, well, he should be, you know, he's doing the Kimbo fight and he's the big guy and he should be in there in case that whole thing turns into a brawl. And I was like, okay, fine, I get it.

But oh, by the way, why can't he just revoke? have both. Like, why does he need to take a breather? I don't think there is any thing that would say that he can't. You do freaking five in a row for all I care. I mean, just get the best man out there. And oh, by the way, he was needed in that fight because apparently there was a shot below the belt. And of course they're human and I know things happen and it's going to happen forever and ever until the sport. That's just part of the charm of the sport, if you will. That's, that's what, you know, makes it what it is. It's subjective at times. But put the best man in there. McCarthy should have been refting that main event.

What's the latest on Vanderlea Silva? Yes. Will he likely fight in Risen due to the three-year ban he's suffering here in Nevada? Well, did you see Nobuyuki Sakakibara tweeted, I retweeted it earlier, a picture of someone who looks like. Certainly the tattoos of Vanderlai Silva. Yeah, the head tattoo. Look, I don't think at the end of the day that he's going to do that because if he goes to Japan and fights while he is still suspended, it will ruin any chance of him fighting here in the United States.

So right now he is suspended until May of 2017. I did speak to his lawyer, Ross Goodman, in Las Vegas, and they're going to continue to fight this. They still maintain that Van der Leis Silva does not need or does not deserve any kind of suspension here. They got to reduce, obviously, from a lifetime ban, which was complete ludicrous, completely ludicrous, lunacy, to what it is now. Three-year ban, no, fine. But when you look at what happened to Chale, who was his opponent, he got two years.

His is about to be up. Now, you say to yourself, okay, well, this guy ran away, but technically he still never failed the test. And oh, by the way, it clearly states in the Nevada Athletic Commission statute that they have jurisdiction over licensed fighters. And at the time, even though it was announced, even though there was a press conference, he had yet to become a licensed fighter in Nevada. that it expires every year. You have to renew your license. So he technically didn't have a license.

And so that's their defense. That's why he didn't take the test. Now, at the time, is that really the reason why? Who the heck knows? But that's a pretty strong defense in my opinion. So why is he getting a one year longer suspension than the guy who failed two tests? A little strange. But to answer the question, I don't think he fights in Risen. That's just my personal guess before the suspension is up because that will affect his standing here in America. All the commissions like to follow their own, you know, their punishments. Couldn't agree with you more. I mean, if he's not a licensed fighter,

then you can't test him like a licensed fighter. That's just end of story. Or at least you have to follow the letter of the law in that case. Like, you can't just go around making up willy-nilly punishments for this. I agree. That's it for the questions. Okay, that is it for the questions. Now, a big day for the good folks over at Roots of Fight.

Absolutely. Someone earlier, Juliana Pena gave him a shout out. She did. She gave a shout out to Roots of Fight, apropos. Tell us what's going on. Our friends over there, the Canadian Fellows Roots of Fight, Jesse Katz. Jesse Katz and the team over at Roots of Fight, they're actually releasing their first MMA capsule collection.

Now, you know, a lot of people are going to be like, well, no, they've released an MMA capsule collection before. Not true. Oh. They've released certain MMA pieces, but they've never done a full capsule collection for MMA. which is surprising just in the sense that the MMA community is so strong. You see it at every event, everybody who's in the MMA world is wearing Roots of Fight.

A big part of the, you know, the genesis, the kind of start of the brand was Dana White and Ronda Rousey, Joe Rogan, and all these people tangentially related to MMA wearing Roots of Fight stuff, but this is the first official MMA capsule collection. And we've got, I'm wearing one right now. I'm wearing the Chuck Ladell hoodie. Stand up there. There we go. Chuck Liddle hoodie, there it is.

Very nice. Anything on the back? Oh, yeah. Hawaiian Kempo. Much respect to the great John Hackleman. Yeah, so that's, I mean, that's what the pieces are and kind of the start of roots of fight is the specific discipline. So that one's Chuck Ladell and the Kempo.

You got more? Oh, yeah. We got Dan Henderson and the Olympic wrestling. Oh, that is sweet. Lift it up a little bit. Lift it up. Oh, yeah. Look at that.

Is this all for my set? Well, we'll see about that. All right. We got Boss Rutan. Bassito. This one's interesting because it's kind of MMA is the discipline. Oh, interesting. For boss because he's kind of that first guy.

Wow. Is that a long-sleeve shirt? No, no, no. Okay, sorry. He's kind of that first guy to put together the grappling and the striking. A pioneer. pioneer. Hoist is behind you. Hoise is behind me, yes.

Big winner on Saturday night. Yes. The great Hoise Gracie. Representing kickboxing, obviously. With his knees from the clinch, taught by Joe Schilling. Yes, yes, yes. No, him and Hensow, we don't have Hensow on set. Obviously representing BJJ and then another Chuclidale shirt. I will say that the quality of these t-shirts, top-notch, they continue to do great

things. Can I ask you about the other stuff or is that not public yet? No, no, no. Okay, sorry, sorry. Well, that's exciting. In the works. I do see Hensel Gracie has just been tweeting out a whole bunch of pictures today sporting this attire. Where can people get it? My brother. Yes. Boja. Visit roots of fight.com. They are good people. I remember seeing Jesse Katz UFC-143 Media Day

and he was kind of this wide-eyed fellow from Canada and saying like, well, what do I do? I got these big plans. I'm like, who is this guy? And now... I love that that's... What do? I was like, go talk to John Beer.

He's just a way roll. Over at Jack Taylor PR. And now... Look at them. Every single fighter, every time I see any kind of training footage, they're wearing Mike Tyson, they're wearing Roy Jones,

and now they could wear MMA. Who knew that they didn't have an MMA capsule collection? Yep. Now we've got it. Check it out. Wow. All right. Actually, one more question.

What's next for our buddy Al Jemaine Sterling? He made a big announcement. Now what? What happens to Aljo? Well, I think the Carraway fight makes sense, right? I would love to see it, but it doesn't seem like... He's not getting... Linneker. He's not getting...

Because they said Linneker v. Garbrand. So let's see that one. That's the one. That's what I want to see. I know he wants that one badly. Okay. Hey, we didn't talk a lot about it, but this is important stuff. Anderson Silva Michael Bisping is happening.

finally after all these years O2 Arena this Saturday MMAFinding.com is going to be there. I'm going to London tomorrow. How about that? London calling. Give me some picks. Here we go. You ready? You give me the odds. Come on.

I haven't looked at it. Okay, I'm giving it to you. Let's go. Chhabilov against Park. Oof. Oh, boy. It's actually not that bad of a card. It's actually a little more difficult than I would think.

I'm going to say, Park because Hobby Love's been off for a little bit. Park is the underdog. Plus 234. Mine is 276. I could see a reason for that. I just don't know how good Hobby Love is going to look. Yeah, I could see it.

Arnold Allen versus Yautzy Mesa. Arnold Allen, big prospect. Yeah, Allen. Minus 314 against plus 261. Davy Grant, remember him, Ultimate Fighter. Oh, yeah. It's Marlon Vieira. I'm going to say Vieira.

I should call him Vera. Varna. Vara. Minus 176 plus 154. The favorite is Davy Grant. How about this one? This is an interesting one. Mike Wiggelson versus the newest member of Team Straight Blast Jim Ireland, Makwan Amir Kani, friend of the show.

Makwan. Mr. Handsome? No, Mr. Finland. Mr. Finland. Also known as Mr. Personality, minus 190 plus 164. Is that a six? Yes. Francisco Rivera versus Bad Brad Pickett.

One punch. I like that one. Yeah. I like that fight. Yeah, this card. This card's not bad. It's not bad. I'm going to go with Rivera, but it could be a pick-em.

It could be a toss-up. It's not a toss-up. It's minus 214. Actually, I should say the best one is minus 211 plus 186. Rivera. I think Pickett's a little closer than that. I think he's a live dog there. Nakamura, Keta Nakamura against Tom Breeze.

Breeze, big prospect. Huge favorite. Mine is 700. Nakamura plus 760. Nakamura's won a whole bunch in a row. He's a greater underdog than Breeze is a favorite. That's a rare one. You don't often see that.

That's interesting. I'm not sure if there's any really. relationship to the great Shinske Nakamura. Not familiar. Typical. How many has he won this guy, Nakamura in a row? 31 and 6. He is won.

Give it to me. Give it to me. One, two, three, four, five. One in the UFC. Tom Breeze is the real deal. Tom Breeze is the real deal. Okay, two more. Tallis, ladies, and I'm going to get to hear three little birds in person.

This is not the first time, is it? I think since it became a big deal in school. Scotland, they were singing it in unison, so I'm hoping that they do the same in London. You really miss the best walkout in the awards that we did. Yeah, I totally missed that. Totally botched that. Who did I pick? I forget.

Anyway, Musassi. I think you pick the, I think you pick Connor in Vegas. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's the easiest, most cliche. Toslis latest, Giger Musassi. Musassi. Big favorite, minus 300 plus 274. And finally, Anderson, Sylva.

Michael Bisping. Now, I want you to give me who you think is the favorite. It's the game we play, but then give me the actual pick because I'm fascinated by this. Anderson Silva is going to be a favorite. Okay. And I'm thinking that Anderson Silva is going to get it done. I just think that the skill set that Michael Bisping has has remained sharp and has remained the same over the years, which is a credit to him. but I think that the skill set that Anderson Silva has

is one that could frustrate Bisping pretty quickly. And I think that his power, you know, let's assume his power is not gone. His power is going to be the difference here. He's going to get Bisping at some point, and I think he's going to finish it. The accuracy. I think it's Anderson Silva.

That said, I mean, you know, the Nick Diaz performance wasn't... Wait a second. Don't sit on the fence. Give me the official damn prediction. I'm going with Anderson Silva. I think he'll have enough, but I can't say that I was thrilled with his performance against. Okay, well, what's the official prediction? I want the finish. Anderson Silva via third round finish.

So he's going to finish him, five-round main event. What are the pressing scene that will be in London, right? Anyway, you were right with half of your prediction. Anderson is the favorite, minus 290 plus 263 for Bissping. We're taking a flyer. Is he a live dog? Yes, I would say he is, actually. Especially at those odds, I'm not sure. You know, we've yet to see Anderson Silva come back and look like Anderson Silva since the Weidman losses. So I might personally be laying some money down on the count.

What about it, right? I mean, it would be huge if he could pull this off. He would instantly, and how many times have I talked about this specifically, the idea that we bury Michael Bisping, he's never going to get a title shot, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's one fight away, as he always is. He's one fight away from the title shot. I think he's very live. He's a live dog. Okay.

What about you? What are you? What a scene that will be when song two is it's song two? Blur? Woo-hoo. Is that called song two? Don't know. Come on.

Blur. I don't know. Song number two. Isn't that his song? Yes, that song, but I don't know what it's called. I don't listen to music. I listen to podcast only. I think it's song number two by blur.

Song two by blur. Anyway, when that will play, I hope to be in the arena. going to be a huge, huge react. I mean, wow, what a scene that's going to be. And then if he can win, pull it off in front of his people, his family's going to be there. Finally, after all these years, Michael Bispeng, there's some bad blood there brewing. You notice the back and forth Bisping hit his training partner, I know his coach, Jason Perillo, and then Anderson put out a video making fun of him and Bisping obviously getting under skin. The faceoffs, it's going to be great. I can't wait to get there. I'm very excited. So yeah, that's that. I'll save my predictions for later.

Anyway, let's end on this note. Now TMZ also reporting. Funny how all this is coming out now. Interesting. Uh-oh. Where were all the reports before? They say that Dada 5,000 is doing much better after a frightening health scare

following his fight with Kimbo Slice per his rep, Mike Vasquez. He says that Dada is in the hospital following the fight. He tells us, quote, Dada is recovering well on his feet and moving around back to his usual self. Quote, he should be out of the hospital

by the end of the week and can personally address all of this. Dada's family issued a statement following the fight explaining that he had accumulated extremely high levels of potassium in his blood which led to severe dehydration, fatigue, and renal failure, end quote. That's all I wanted. I just wanted an update. I legitimately wanted to know if this man was alive,

and I couldn't get that answer. Well, I'm glad that we figured that out. Boom. Thank you, my friend. Nice haircut. See you next week. Thank you. There we go.

You can hit my music. A little over time. time. Not as bad as last week. I appreciate your patience. Seems like two weeks in a row, right? No real issues. Sure, New York Rick's mic was a little low, but between us, I did that on purpose. It's all good in the hood. Well, it certainly was a wacky weekend in MMA, and I hope that's what it remains. Glad to hear. That is all good. Sorry for getting all up in your grills earlier, but I was fired up. It felt like my heart was pumping out of my chest. Again, congratulations to Marlon Marais, big win. Didn't have a lot of time to talk about that,

but that was a solid wind chopping down that leg, defeating Joseph Brahas. One fight left on that WSWF contract. That is a very interesting story to follow as well. For now, though, we say goodbye. Thank you very much to Luke Thomas for stopping by. Great stuff from him all week in Houston. Now I head off to London. for more coverage. How about this? M.A Fighting had someone at the Houston event, the California event,

Dave Doyle World Series, and my man, Hunter, in Pittsburgh. Three events, we had someone there. Very exciting. We'll be in London as well. So great stuff by Luke. Appreciate his time. Great stuff by Jimmy Smith.

Appreciate his candor and time as well. Great stuff by Will Brooks. Really good stuff out of him. I appreciate him coming on as well. Eric Winter, fantastic. As always, love talking to Eric. On and off the record. Great stuff by,

Julianna Pena. Good luck to her. And of course, thank you very much to my good friend, Quentin, Rampage Jackson for stopping by once again. Always love talking to him. Back next week, same time and place until they say, Pace. So I'm out of here. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking

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