MMA Fighting - The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani - Episode 325

Episode Date: April 18, 2016

Ariel Helwani speaks to Georges St-Pierre, BJ Penn, Benson Henderson in studio, Eddie Alvarez, Derrick Lewis, and Chuck Mindenhall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Ariel Hawani. Inside our New York City studio back from beautiful Tampa. And I learned when I was in Tampa that people actually don't call it Tampa Bay. Me being the stupid sports fan that I am, I was referring to it as Tampa Bay all week long, but it's actually Tampa, Florida. Who knew? Then my question is, why do the Tampa Bay Lightning and Tampa Bay Rays, formerly known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays? Why do they refer to themselves as Tampa Bay if the actual city is Tampa? I didn't quite figure that one out. Nonetheless, it was a good trip and we got some good coverage. You know, it was somewhat of a cursed event, and we can go over that. I mean, another eventful week in the world of MMA comes to a close. We now begin a new one, and, and, Last week, no different than the previous few weeks. On Wednesday, we found out that just three days before he was supposed to fight Dan Henderson

at UFC on Fox 19 at the Amali Arena in Tampa, Florida. Liotr Machita was pulled from the card leaving Hendo with no opponent. Now we found out that he's going to be facing Hector Lombard at UFC 199 on June 4th. But in a pre-fight drug test, Machita told Usada that he was taking a substance, that he didn't know was banned. They informed him it was banned and pulled him from the card just three days before the event.

Machita posting a video on his Instagram and Facebook seemed rather distraught. The guy obviously who Gagha Musassi has accused of, you know, doing some illegal things, if you will. And now here we are. I've actually reached out to Machita. He said he can't speak just yet but would be willing to in the near future.

So that happened on Wednesday. And then Friday, right after the Wayans, it was announced that Islam Makachev was pulled from the event as well. He was supposed to fight Drew Dober. This now 24 hours, less than 24 hours before the event, that fight was canceled because that banned substance was found in Islam Makachev's system. So we went from 13 fights to 11, which actually made the event, in my opinion, a lot more enjoyable. It went by a lot quicker. And from top to bottom, once we got to Saturday night, it was a very enjoyable. card. No duds, some very impressive performances out of the likes of John Dodson,

Raquel Pennington with a big win, Michael Kieza. Not only did Michael Kesa submit Benile Darius with a somewhat modified rear-naked choke, he had, as he called it, like a level-9 emergency brewing in his belly. He was very much afraid that he was going to poop in his pants. Michael Kiesa was this close to actually soiling himself on national television. If you I haven't seen that post-fight interview, I do suggest checking it out. His recap of what he was battling, not only against Daryush, but in his colon, somewhat entertaining. And afterwards, that must have felt like the best trip to the bathroom of all time. So kudos to Michael Kesa, Rosenomu Yunus, picking up a big win.

Cups Swanson looking good as well after a year-long layoff. And how about Chabiby Nurma Maghamedov doing what we all expected him to do, dominating Darrell Horcher, winning via second. around TKO. And I said afterwards there is a championship aura surrounding Habib. It's something that some champions get after a couple of title defenses or that you start to sense before someone fights for the belt. Habib has whatever that thing is right now. Loved everything he said and did all week long in Tampa and of course said afterwards as well. And he says he wants a title shot. And I don't know if I disagree with the guy. So that was a very busy weekend in Tampa.

now we gear up for UFC 197, John Jones, OSP in Las Vegas this weekend, I will be there. But other things happened as well. How about the fact that I was in Tampa covering this Fox 19 event? And then a few blocks away from here in New York City at Madison Square Garden, all the luminaries were there, all the big wigs from the world of MMA and UFC in particular. And politicians, New York politicians, Governor Andrew Cuomo was there to officially sign the MMA. Remember on Monday I told you that this was going to go down and Rhonda Rousey was there and Chris Wyven was there and I couldn't be there. I was so sad. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be home. I was very homesick that day because I really wanted to be a part of all that. It was a nice event though. And now it's official 120 days before the first event could take place. The UFC also officially announced its first event at MSG. November 12, 1993 was the very first UFC, November 12, 2016 will be the very first event at MSG. They didn't plan it that way. But that's what we're the first. what's happening. November 12th, 2016, it will be the very first event at the world's most famous arena, Madison Square, Garned the mecca of combat sports and sports in general,

home to the greatest basketball team of all time, your New York Knickabockers. So that happened on Thursday. A bunch of other stuff happened last week as well. Eddie Alvarez, RDA, was officially announced for Fight Pass on July 7th. Ryzen had their second event, and Darren Cruikshank was victorious in his rise and debut. Fador Emilianenko is going to be fighting Fabio Maldonado. We found out about that. And late last night, we found out that Kimbo Slices is going to be fighting James Thompson, July 16th at the O2 Arena in London, England,

also Paul Daly versus Josh Kostech, too, as well. I should say right off the top that last week was not, you know, what wasn't a great week for our sport. And that's quite simply because of what happened out of Ireland on Tuesday, news came out that Portuguese fighter, Zhuao Carvalio, and I hope I am pronouncing that correctly, passed away following a fight that he had in Ireland recently, a tragic event, and one that, of course, has brought up a lot of discourse and talk about, you know, were the right things done, how can things be done better, in particular in parts of the world where there is no athletic

commission, and certainly we extend our deepest sympathies to, Carvalio's family, just a horrible time in our sport. And, you know, a lot of people ask me when that happened, you know, what does this mean for MMA in Ireland? What does this mean for the future, you know, UFC events in Ireland? That doesn't really matter, in my opinion, at least not right now. A person who was just trying to, you know, make a living, follow a dream, died as a result of his involvement in an MMA fight. And that's really all that matters. And in my opinion, should be talked about. So definitely a sad time. And again, we wish his family well and extend our condolences to his family as well. All right. So this week on the program, it's another big lineup.

A lot of heavy hitters on the program and a lot to discuss as we gear up for 197, as I mentioned at the top. So let's get right into it. At around 245, we're going to be joined in studio by the newest member of the Beltor MMA, Walterweight and Lightweight roster. Benson Henderson's going to be in studio. Menson, Smooth Henderson will be in studio. He's making his belter debut on Friday night at the Mohegan Sun against Andrei Koreshkov for the Walterweight title. So that is big, stopping by. How about at 230?

We're going to be joined by GSP. George, Rush, St. Pierre will be on the phone at 230. Don't miss it. 205 BJ Penn, who was also in the news last week. He will be fighting Dennis Siever officially at UFC 199 in Inglewood, up to no good. California on June 4th, BJ Penn stopping by at 205. 145, one of the rising stars in the UFC's heavyweight division, Derek Lewis, will be stopping by, so we look forward to talking to him.

At 145, 125, 125, Eddie Alvarez will stop by to talk about his fight against RDA on July 7th, the day before my birthday. That is the most important piece of information that you need to know about that whole crazy weekend in Las Vegas, July 8th, market on your calendar. But first, let us go to the Skype machine and welcome in the man in the hat, Chuck Min and Hall stops by repin the Colorado Rockies. How are they doing so far? Seven and five.

That's not bad. I didn't think we'd be this good this deep into April, so I'm happy about that. That's not bad. Do you have one of those black belts as well? I see the case in back of you. I do. Where's the black belt? What's in the box?

Same as yours, except for it has my name on it. Look at that. Wow. Well, why is it in the box? I don't know. Just didn't take it out. So, whenever, I think of a wild and wacky time in the world of MMA, I always think of you. So I'm happy to start. I'm happy to start the show with you, Chuck. You know, I ran through a lot of the notable things that happened last week, but I excluded one very notable thing that happened, Saturday night in Tampa. Glover DeSherra knocked out Rashad Evans in less than two minutes in the main event of UFC on Fox 19. And as things go in MMA, we're all getting crazy. Oh, what's next for Glover? Is he going to fight Anthony Johnson? How far away is he from a title shot and all that? I couldn't help but feel really.

really, really sad after that main event. Rashad Evans, former Ultimate Fighter winner, season two, former champion, to see it all happening in front of our eyes. And this is something that we have to go through with a lot of former champions and legends and pioneers and ambassadors and future Hall of Fame. It just feels like Chuck Ladell all over again and the list goes on and on. I just felt really sad. And to see him come to the press conference, watery eyes, talk about how embarrassed he was.

That to me was the big story on Saturday night. Do you agree? That was certainly a big story. It's kind of crazy because you mentioned Chuck Lidl, and who was it that sort of made him, known that it was his time was head past, was Rashad Evans. Now you see it the other way. He's always very, very good at communicating exactly what's on his mind and, you know, being empathetic to other fighters and just communicating in a way that you can empathize with him.

And I felt like he did that in that post-fight presser. It was pretty hard to watch him, you know, kind of describe being embarrassed and humiliated or whatever about that performance. but it's it's part of the game man and i i felt bad for him in one way because i know he was on your show i think a couple weeks ago and he'd basically been saying you know he's changing things up a little bit he's getting back to his wrestling uh i think he really thought he was going to turn a corner this would be his showcase night and uh it just seemed like it didn't occur to him it might go this way and i think that that was part of the part of the heartbreak that he was suffering in that fight but yeah um that was that was hard to watch on the plus side he has not looked very good

in his last couple of fights, but when you really look at his whole tap, just only the second time, remarkably, out of 25 fights that he's been knocked out. Yeah. The other time, Leo de Machita against, what was that, UFC 98. So it's been a while. I don't know if you could throw the book at him, say he's done at this point, but at the same time, he has not looked very good in his last couple of fights, maybe three fights. And you wonder if, you know, this is the spiral at the end of the career for Rashad Evans.

You know, he was originally supposed to fight Shogun Huah, and you can't help but wonder. I mean, that was a major story. step up in competition, going from Shogun, who's on his last legs as well, to Glover Tashara, who's streaking has a ton of power, even though he's older. He's, you know, he's still on the upswing. You can't help it wonder how things, or could things have gone differently for Rashad on Saturday if he fought Shogun, right? 100% because, you know, Shogun, Hua is already at that, at that spot of his career where you think a guy like Rashad Evans might be the perfect opponent for him to see where both guys

are at. Glover Tashire, in my mind, is still at a pretty high level. Obviously, we're talking about him possibly fighting Anthony Johnson or maybe getting into that title makes again. So two guys maybe at different levels at this point. So the Shogun Huahua fight, I have a feeling would have went a lot differently for Rashad Evans, all the things that he was trying to accomplish in this fight to kind of reestablish his bearings as a wrestler and fight. And you just have the same mindset that he had earlier on his career. I think Shogun Huo would have been the better matchup, obviously.

But, you know, man, it would be interesting to see what he does. and if he keeps, you know, that whole division has become a bunch of guys who are at this level. You know, there's a bunch of those old former icons in the Twilight that are sort of floating out there, not quite retired. So it would be interesting to see what they do with Rashad Evans if he decides to keep it going. He has a lot of talent outside the Octagon. So at least he's got recourse. He can, you know, he can be an analyst or whatever he wants to do. But it would be interesting to see if he's still got the want to get back in there again.

I'm still not ready to completely write him off. I still feel like there are fights for him. You know, someone brought this to my attention on Saturday night after his fight. His last great performance was against Chelle's sonnin at 167. And it does kind of feel like Chale didn't really show up to that one for whatever reason. But still, Evans looked great and he was dominant. And for that training camp, he linked up with Mark Henry, based in New Jersey, coached to the likes of Eddie Alvarez and Frankie Edgar, most notably.

And he just looked very good. And I wonder if he can link up with him again and maybe, you know, find whatever was worth. working well in that fight leading up to 167. I'm not ready to throw the book. But I will say, and I know this doesn't mean a lot to the fans, I know to media people it sticks out. For him to show up, again, at the press conference, after a loss like that, you knew he did not want to be there.

And it was so hard for him. And even Glover giving him props and saying, don't be embarrassed. That's the kind of stuff that you really appreciate as a media member. Let me ask you about this. You know, I said it was a cursed event. And on Monday of last week, I was actually sitting here saying, you know, this USADA thing.

Remember when Lorenzo Furtino, when they announced it, he said it's going to get worse before it gets better. And I was saying, you know, it's actually, it hasn't been that bad. Yes, there have been some bumps in the road. And then look what happens. Wednesday, Machita's out. I did it.

The Halwani curse lives on. It has very large tentacles. And then, of course, Friday, Islamakov has pulled. So this was a question that I wanted to ask Dana White at the press conference. Unfortunately, he left rather quickly. Was last week a good week for the UFC in terms of showing to the world that the system is working? Or, you know, should there be some kind of cutoff? Like, the guy weighs in.

Uber weighs in, he has to cut extra weight, and then they pull him from the card. Like, should there be some sort of deadline as to when this sort of thing can go into effect? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do know what you're saying. And obviously, these are the things that we did not know how they would play out. Right. You always want them if they are flagged for it to happen before the fight. I mean, if he gets flagged and they let him fight and we find that out afterwards, it's the other way, right?

So I feel like they went about the right way. Fortunately, that was a preliminary fight. It wasn't something that was going to destroy the card. But, of course, this card had went through many revisions as it was. Yeah. So I can't really say 100%. I guess I would look at it like it's the system working, but we said this before. For the UFC to bring in, you saw it to begin with, was basically taking a shot at their own foot, right?

Right. You're going to have to hurt yourself a little bit in the short run to make it better in the long run. And I guess that's what we're seeing. I think it was you who was mentioning that the fight card itself ended up being really good. I thought so too. I thought that the fight card was really fun and entertaining. But I feel like you're going to see this type of thing. These revisions on this card, these guys getting busted until people take it seriously and stop doing this to themselves.

It's funny, too, with Drew Dober, obviously, you're the one who took me up with that. But it was funny to talk to him and get his impression on it and why he wanted to fight getting the black eye and all that. He wanted a black guy at his wedding. Yeah. And he was going to do that. So you always look at the sort of domino effect of how it affects the other guys and everything else. So I feel like we're going to have to sort of buckle up for this year and see how it all plays out going forward. And then hopefully as we go on like the big picture, like Lorenz Petita said at the time, you know, you see less and less of it as it goes on.

Yeah, your story on Dober was great. He's marrying Nick Heinz's sister who he met after they fought in Germany at the post-fight party. I mean, and that guy's had some bad luck, but you do feel for him. I mean, he shows up, he cuts weight, he makes weight, gets his show money, yes, but doesn't actually get to fight. And where does it end? Like, could you imagine if Friday night John Jones gets pulled from the pay-per-view? You know, like, this could happen, I guess, at this point. I, you know, I really am curious how the UFC executives deal with this sort of thing,

because now it's like you're never safe until they actually walk into the octagon. And that's crazy to me. That really is. but the system is working and hopefully guys who are actually trying to cheat are getting caught because both Machita and Makachev have come out and given reasons as to why they had this stuff in their system. So let's see how it all plays out. We're all kind of learning and it's all evolving in front of our eyes. Let me quickly switch gears here because you were in New York at that media event that I was so jealous of. I was watching it.

I felt bad for you, man. I felt bad for you. I was literally sitting on a bench. staring at this body of water. It was beautiful in Tampa. And I was like, I do not want to be here. I want to be at MSG. I want to be at the Mecca. I wanted to see James Dolan with my own eyes, the owner of the Knicks and Rangers. Did you see James? Did you get a chance to talk to him? I didn't. I did not see James. Come on. What was it like though? I thought you were going to bring me on the show to talk about my semi-pro comment that I made. No, oh yeah, to set you up for that, to hang up on you. No, no, it's okay. They kind of deserve it. What was it like, though, to be a part of that whole thing?

It was pretty cool. A little surreal. You know, because it's been so long in the making, I guess there's a part of you that thinks, like, hey, you know, when you're sitting there and it's actually happening, and there's a finality to that that then rings home. You're like, oh, wow, this is the moment. We're in Madison Square Garden, and here's all these politicians with, you know, Ronda Rousey and Chris Wyman and a bunch of other New York fighters huddled around

and watching this thing and for Tita and everybody else. It just felt like a, it felt like a, big deal. And it felt like something long overdue talking to Mark Ratner and talking to Fertita. You know, it was just, you know, here we are. Finally, we've done it. But there was no, like, you know, there was, I guess, a mild celebration. I think it's just, it's simmered for so long. It's, it's been so long in the making that I think mostly it was just like, here, we finally arrived. Now we can get on with the business of booking these events in New York and putting on the show. But it was, it was a lot of fun to kind of see that group of people all come

together in Madison Square Garden. Yeah, they were in such a good mood. And even Mark Ratner, the UFC's VP of Regulatory Affairs, told me on Friday when I saw him at the Wayans in Tampa, he said that you were the one to inform him that November 12 was the 23-year anniversary. And he loved it. And he said Lorenzo loved it. And they had no idea. How do us stupid media guys, how do we think of this right on the spot? And they had no idea. That's crazy to me.

It was actually Thomas Trebizzi who was sitting right next to me who basically pointed that out. And I was like, wow, I wonder if they did that on purpose. So I was the one to go and ask them about, you know, if that was done, if there was any thought into that. But basically they were both, they both gave me the exact same thing. Like, what? Really? Is that really the case? So it was pretty funny. Okay. Now switching gears on Sunday night, your friend in mind, Todd Grisham of ESPN, who has become sort of the Walter Cronkite of Combat Sports. Every promoter comes to him to break news now. You're very kind to him.

Yeah. So Scott Coker shows up and announces that Kimbo Slices fighting James Thompson in a rematch of a fight that happened. happened in 2008. It's going to be taking place in London, daily cost check two also on the card. And this was met, as is usually the case with the Bellator announcement, with some mixed criticism, if you will. A lot of people surprised that Kimbo is fighting, you know, just a few weeks after getting popped for PDs in Texas. Come to find out that Texas only suspended him for 90 days, so that will be up in, I guess, May or so. What do you make of this next booking for Kimbo Slice? Well, from the promoter standpoint, if he's able to fight, why not book it?

I mean, obviously, he's one of their cash cows. He's a guy that they can bring into that market and do well. They can bring him anywhere. Just an incendiary figure, I guess, too, in a lot of ways. But from the Texas Commission standpoint, that's really I felt like where everything was being directed. It's just how do you give a guy 90-day suspension, you know, who popped for something like that? And you almost, I mean, just given the whole context of the situation where another guy was in that fight who, nearly died in the fight. I mean, it just had a very ominous feel to it, the fight that itself,

in the end coming out of it. And I think that sort of, that just goes into the entire situation. But it's really a Texas commission thing. And you, I mean, when we're going through, you know, Nevada basically coming up with a punishable timetable timetable saying like two years for first time offenders, things like that, and all the way to lifetime bans, and then somebody gets 90 days, it raises a red flag, and I feel like you have to see these things, these things almost have to play out in high-profile cases for the commission itself to, you know, to get the scrutiny it needs to maybe change it. But I think it's warranted, but I can't really blame Bellator.

This is what they've been doing. I can't really blame Bellator for wanting to book him into a fight. You know, the first fight with Thompson was pretty fun, you know, like going back to it. So I feel like that's the kind of opponent who's going to get. There's nothing wrong with it from that standpoint. But I just feel like the Texas Commission needs to kind of get it rolling better there. It actually is a step up an opponent for Kimbo from Dada 5,000, who made the media rounds last week. Didn't look to be in tremendous shape.

He seemed rather, I don't know, gone to. He's been through a lot, obviously. I mean, he claims to have died after the Kimbo-Sliced fight. But it is a fun rematch. I wonder if they're going to be able to show any of the footage from the first fight, which took place in May of 2008, Elite XC, and Newark. the first main event on CBS or on network television for mixed martial arts. So I wonder how they're going to be able to sell it.

But to me, what was most notable about that Coker interview with Todd Grisham was he's saying the same things that Dana White and the rest of the UFC executives used to say time and again when we used to ask them about drug testing. It's like the commissions, the government is that doesn't fly anymore. That stuff just doesn't fly. We know that the commissions and the government don't do enough. So for him to be saying this seems very tone-deaf, in my opinion. Well, of course, and I think that's the whole thing. We have been following this. We've seen the evolution of that whole side of it.

We've been there. There's been criticism about that sort of thing for years. And for it to come back, I guess that just adds to it too. It's too much of a passive shoulder shrug in a situation like this. You know, and you could take a higher route and say like, hey, guys, we're going to do our own punishment here. you know, like what maybe the UFC would have would do these days. I don't know. But yeah, I mean, they basically have that, that whole conduct thing in place these days. So I feel like that's part of it. You know, we've watched the evolution of the UFC and how they've handled their business and how they've

sort of, you know, grown to make it an even plan-field. And then to see Belator using the only excuse, it does, it does stand out of something a little bit wrong, you know. Yeah. Speaking of, I don't want to call it a freak show fight, but he does sort of play by same rules. Fador Mellinenko's next fight was announced over the weekend. He's fighting Fabio Maldonado. And this was an interesting one because Maldonado's manager had no idea that the fight was put together. So it seems like he went rogue on him, Alex Davis, who's one of the more reputable, respected managers in the game. That's kind of weird. Also weird that the promotion fight nights is part of fight pass. So could it be, this hasn't been confirmed, but could it be

that Fader is actually going to fight on Fypast, which is bizarre in its own right? What do you make of this booking for Fador? Do you like it? Man. Not really. I mean, but I've been sort of, I'm always disappointed, I guess, at this point with Fador's fights. I just, if he was going, I wanted him to have to see where he was at, because we had seen this resurgence of heavy weights kind of coming back. And there's always been the question with him about where he belongs in that canon. If he's at the top where he is, you'd like to have seen him against some guys that you'd want to see him. Rather than the guys he's booked against it, he's just thought, you know, he's going to beat.

And in my mind, Fabio Malin Al, it's a perfect opponent in some ways because he likes to stand and trade and he puts on that kind of fight. And he's just the kind of guy that Fador could knock out. You know, pretty, you know, he is a good chin. But he's just the kind of guy that Fadour will accommodate Fadour in the kind of fight that he wants. So in my mind, it's just another one of those bookings you think like, oh, that's kind of interesting. He's fighting a guy that we know. But at the same time, Fador, if he's anything like he was or, you know, even in his last fight, he should walk right through him. He definitely should walk right through.

I mean, I would think, though I will say, much like Kimbo, it's a step-up an opponent from Jai Deep Singh. So maybe this is... It would be hard to take a step down, though, from that. That is true. That is true. Jideyb actually fought this past weekend at Rise and lost. So also, Vangelis Silva competed in that tag grappling match, tag team grappling match thingy,

and that went to a draw. So that wasn't too exciting. Okay, one last thing before I let you go. 197 is this weekend, of course. John Jones returns against Ovincent Prue, and that's for the interim light heavyweight title. Demetrius Johnson is going up against Sohudo. Let's just pretend John Jones is the champion in this whole scenario.

Will either champion walk away beltless on Saturday night, or are you going shock? I don't think so. I think both guys will walk. I think Jones and Johnson will both walk away with the belts. The Henry Suhudo one's a little interesting. I feel like these guys who are very, they have. something they're very good at specialized, and they're extremely good at it. It's always a wild card because maybe Demetrius Johnson just hasn't faced that kind of

wrestler in the cage. You know what I mean? You just don't know. A haulie home coming up, we thought she might be too green with her boxing background. Even with her boxing background, we thought, well, she might be too green, though. She might get pummeled. In other ways, she's not ready for Rhonda Rouse. She'll get chewed up. And we saw how that played out. So there's a part of me that things like I wouldn't be surprised of Suhudo went in there and was able to whittle away it. Demetrius Johnson and enforce his game in the end. So I feel like that's the one you might see something.

But I feel like John Jones, it's just 15 months in the making. He's a, I feel like he's chomping at the bit to get in there and prove that he is that guy. You know what I mean? And kind of show the world again, he's been training hard. I believe him and a lot of the stuff he's been doing to change his life. If I'd say anything, it's sort of a strange thing when you think about it because he's sober, right? Like he's saying he's sober, but he's admitted that, you know, for years he's operated on substance, basically because it helped his artistry. It helped him become who he is.

I think it helped his mind and it helped his ability to be creative. And now if he's truly not doing any of that, it might have a reverse effect that he's not as creative. You just don't, you never know until you actually see the fight. Wow. How about that curveball? All right. Something to look out for on Saturday. Chuck, great stuff as always.

Great article today on Rose Numa Yunus, one of the big winners on Saturday. Big win over Tisha Torres, so do check that out if you haven't ready yet. We'll talk to you very soon. All right, guys. Take care. All right, there he is. The Man in the Hat, Chuck Minnall stopping by. Great stuff, as always, from the Man in the Hat.

Okay, let's move along now and welcome in our next guest. As I mentioned at the top of the show, it was announced on Friday that Eddie Alvarez will finally get a crack at the UFC lightweight belt. He'll be facing champion Hafeld Dosangios on July 7th on Fight Pass in Las Vegas. Now Eddie is joining us on the phone. Eddie, how are you? What is up, Ariel? Hello, my friend. Congratulations on getting the fight.

When did you find out you'd be fighting for the belt? Just late last week, I believe. There was rumors online that it would happen, but I really don't, I really don't take anything seriously until I get a battle agreement because things can change. Opponents can change. So until you get the battle agreement, you really can't take none serious. I try not to get too excited when I heard things, but it all came true.

Were you worried? Because you had made it known, you know, very publicly you wanted that title shot. Was there ever a point where you thought, you know, they might go RDA, Connor? Were you kind of worried you'd have to work again and have another fight in order to get what you wanted? Not worried. We're in a fight game. If I have to fight again, we'll fight again. We'll continue to fight until you get the title shot.

That was the plane. but you know the ultimate plan was to just fight the best guys played all the guys that are in front of me hope to beat the guys in front of me and get to the champion and that was my goal and that's what I did so here we are what was the reaction to the news because I think a lot of people like myself when I found out that it was official

I couldn't help but think of your journey to this point you've been in the game for so long you know recently you went through a lot you were forced to be on the sidelines you have been through a lot lot throughout your career. And it was just nice to see a veteran and one of the good guys in the sport get that opportunity finally. Because you know how this game can go. You can be there and never get that opportunity for whatever crazy reason over time. So for you, did you have a chance? Like, did you reflect? Did you celebrate? Did you get emotional about it? Or does that only come after the fight? You know, in MMA period, I've been fighting since I was 19, like 13 years now.

I fall for a lot of world played all over the world. It's really hard to get emotional. about fighting anymore where I'm at in my life. Any kind of fight, any kind of opponent. But this is one that'll get me emotional. This is one that will get me to move. Wake up early, go to bed late. This is exciting, my friend. This is something that's unique that doesn't happen very often.

I'm training with a guy who's been the lightweight world champion already. And, you know, he's been waiting for his world. title shot for a couple years now. So just more than anything, I feel an over-sense of gratitude about getting the title shot and being able to have the opportunity to fight the best, what people call the best guy in the world right now. You're referring to Frankie Edgar, right? Yep.

Who called you, by the way, to tell you the news? Who called me about the title shot? Yeah. Glenn Robinson. Okay, that is great. And you'll be staying, you're doing what you did prior to the Pettus fight, right? You're staying in the Philly area. You're going to be training with Frankie and Mark Henry, those guys.

You're not switching it up now, right? Yes, sir. That's the home team. Ricardo Al-Meda, Mark Henry. You know, over there with Frankie and Edson and Marlon and that whole group of awesome dudes, Frankie Perez. The list goes on and on, but we have a small group of great guys to get prepared with. Now, what about the piece of information that also elicited a reaction from people that this fight

will be headlining the Fight Pass card on July 7th, so not the FS1 card on July 8th or the pay-per-view on July 9th. You're going to be kicking things off that week on Fight Pass. What did you make of that news? I don't give a shit where I don't care if they even got a ref in there. I thought where this thing is and and when it airs and where it airs that's that ain't got none to do with me I'm getting a world title shot I'm getting I'm getting the opportunity to do something that I've been fighting 13 years for I don't care where they view this or if they view it at all I can give two shit wow that that is refreshing to hear you just want that shot at the belt I just want that title shot I took look I told everyone that this would happen you know and a lot of people

I told people this happened a long time ago. And I thrive and I do well in situations where people tell me you can't do something. I love when people tell me I can't do something. It excites me. It gets me up. So this is that situation. A lot, a lot, a lot of fucking people told me I can't do this. And that's probably the only reason I'm going to do this because someone told me I can't.

So, I just, you know, I love this. I told you so. It's going to happen. It's going to happen on July 7th. People were telling you you couldn't even fight for the belt or that you couldn't win the UFC belt. No, you know, for years, people say, you know, years. They've seen me fight all over the world. They see me fight this place, that place, or be champion, this promotion, that promotion.

And then I come over here and, you know, I don't fight so well against Cowboy. And then, you know, you hear it even more. So, so it's going to be. a treat for everybody supported me and knew that this was going to happen and it's going to be and I told you so for everyone who didn't believe it.

How long have you been watching RDA for? Because if you've been watching him at least since the beginning of his UFC run, no one could have imagined that he turned into the fighter that he is today. No one could have imagined that he'd be a UFC champion. He's really evolved and become a much more dangerous and better fighter.

Did you see this coming? Do you remember watching the early RDA losing to know Jeremy Stevens and and not thinking much of him and now being left very very very impressed as to you know what kind of fighter he's become No, no. I know I don't I don't I don't I don't I to be honestly I was doing my own thing When he was making when he was trying to make his mark in UFC I was trying to make my mark as a fighter too somewhere else So wasn't until recently that I you know that RDA you started being you know his top name guys and become the fighters you come in And he's involved really good.

You know, he's a good fighter. So it wasn't until recently to actually see him and started to look at him and check out, you know, what he's capable of. So are you impressed with him? I mean, he's had two title fights at this point. He beat Pettus, who you also beat in January. And then he ran right through Soroni, who you mentioned he lost two in your debut in the UFC. Are you impressed with his body of work as of late? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, he's good, man. I'll be the first one. I have nothing. I have no bad things to say about Raphael Dosanios. He's a good fighter all around. He's done a great job. But, you know, what's going to happen on July 7th has zero to do with Raphael Dosanios and everything to do with me?

And my journey to get here and my journey to win the title. So it's not about him or what he can do or what he's. done. I'm not concerned with any of that. I'm going to win the world title. They're giving me an opportunity in a lifetime. I'm going to take advantage of it, and I'm going to execute, and I'm going to win. So he's coming off a pretty serious foot injury that forced him to withdraw from the Conner fight, and you've been healthy, relatively healthy, obviously, since the Pettus fight in January. Does that work to your advantage? The fact that he has to work just to get back to 100% and then prepare for you, and all indications are that he's not quite 100% just yet,

and you're going full throttle. Do you feel like that works to your advantage? Yeah, but there's an, you know, regardless of he's a little injured or he's good at this and I'm good at that, forget about all that. The intangible here is excitement. The one intangible that you can't take away from is excitement. And I'm excited. And I feel like when you're coming off an injury,

like he is, regardless of whether you're in your camp, you just feel like, oh, man, I was almost out, and now I'm back in the game. So he's going to be coming back into his training camp, overly excited because he hasn't been able to train. So I'm expecting the best of him come July. But, man, I don't know if there's going to be a single person or anything that's going to be able to get my way.

coming that date, not a chance. I will not fail. I'm going to win this world title. And I've, for a lot of people that's for a long time, I made a lot of promises. So, you know, he's good. I'm not taking a single thing away from the guy's good at what he does, but that night there's just not much anybody's going to be able to do from stopping me from winning that belt, not a single thing. The conviction in your voice is legitimately giving me goosebumps right now just to let you know. I don't know if you're experiencing the same thing, but it's great. I love it.

I love how confident you are and how focused you are on this task and what you've been through. You know, it's funny. We talked about this last time you were on the show when you were sitting down on the Fox desk after the Pettus win, and you weren't quite sure what to make of the win because you had the perfect game plan. It just wasn't a vintage, eddy, exciting fight. Do you feel like because of, you know, the fans are so fickle and they sometimes only remember your last fight that people have forgotten how dangerous you are in all facets of the game. Are you sensing that from people? Look, I hear it.

Everybody out there, you know, I was listening to saying, oh, you know, boring, this and that, blah, blah, blah. You know, I hear it. I don't, I want you guys to be happy. You know what I mean? I'm not going out there trying to fight a fight that fans aren't excited about. if you've been following me my whole career, I'm the king of excitement

I know I go out there and fight. I need a guy in front of me like Raphael Dosayneos who's going to fight me. When I take him down, he's not going to be able to not get back up. You know what I mean? I get blamed about Pettus.

The truth is I did what I wanted. I did what I wanted. He didn't get to do what he wanted. And now he's a sore loser about it saying that it wasn't a fight. I did what I wanted to do. He couldn't do what he wanted to do and that's a fight.

and I think this fight in particular Raphael's well-rounded. So if I go for takedowns and he defends off, we're going to get in a fight. It's going to be a battle. It's going to be adversity. And I hope he punches me. I hope he hits me clean and hits me hard.

This is where I thrive. This is when I get excited when people punch me upside to head or nearly knock me out. This is the kind of fight I want to be in. I think this is the right dance partner to do it with. And I'm hoping that he pulls that out of me. I hope the guy he pulls that out of me. So fans can be a little more excited about the fight.

What do you think right now is the biggest hole in his game? Hole in his game, I mean. Weakness. If you look at history, everybody who's beaten him, like history. I'm not saying recent. And I'm just saying throughout his career, he's been beaten by the better wrestler. You know, the Glacin Tebao, the Clegwita, the Shabee. So if I had to say if he has a weakness, it's his wrestling.

But he has good wrestling techniques. But I think we all have a certain spirit to fight. And whether it's a spirit to fight wrestling or a spirit to fight jihad or a spirit to fight. or a spirit to fight stand up, that spirit's different. So like a guy like Pettus don't have a strong spirit to wrestle. So you wrestle him and break his spirit at wrestling. And then you can't fight him. And then there's guys who can't stand up and you force them to stand up

because they have a strong, they have not a strong spirit to stand up. So if I had to say one weakness, I think his spirit to grapple and getting them grapple on exchanges and wrestle, I think that's where, you know, history has shown that, you know, that's his weakness. But, you know, we're going to, just when guys pinpoint me as a wrestler, I become a stand-up guy. When guys pinpoint me as a stand-up guy, I become a wrestler. So I'll do what I like, whatever I want to do that night. That's what I'll do.

It'll be what I want to do. By the way, do you know which venue this fight will take place in? I don't. I didn't even ask. I didn't. The only thing I needed to hear is that I was going to tell. shot. I didn't even ask. I don't, I don't care. Well, the reason I ask... People are making such a big fuss about fight pass. I don't really care.

The only reason I ask is because if it's in one of the smaller venues, like the cosmopolitan or whatever, it's probably a smaller cage. And I'm wondering if you feel like that's your advantage because you're a pressure fighter. Do you like the smaller cage as opposed to the big cage? Do you pay attention? Will you even ask about that beforehand? Some fighters are very, you know, it's bothersome to them when they don't know beforehand. So I'm wondering where you fall in line. I won't. We can make it on the walkway on the way out. Okay. We'll fight right there. Fair enough. Fair enough.

Fighting doesn't matter, man. We're going to get this thing done. And it's going to get it done violently in a high-paced violent fashion. That's it. It don't matter what venue it's on, what channel it's on, you know, if it's on at all. Where the cartel fight is happening. And Eddie Alvarez is about to be the next lightweight champion, whether you like it or not. Well, my colleague, Esther Lin, is telling me that it's taking place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. So that could be the big cage. It doesn't matter to clearly.

Did you, by the way, train with Barbosa? He's fighting Pettus this weekend. Did you help him at all? I sure did. How do you feel? He's going to beat him? Etting is 100% ready. I've been there every day.

We're getting ready. I gave him the best voice I could for Pettis. Edson is 100% ready to go. He'll be peddice. He'll take care of business on this weekend coming up. Did you watch Habib on Saturday? I dev-yard it. Okay.

I just watched a Khabi fight last night on Sunday when I snuck it back in the house in between hanging out and watch his fight. What did you think? Good. You look good. I don't know. I'm asking because he had some things to say about you and other people in the lightweight division. You guys have all lost. He was calling some of the fighters that lightweight and some of the bigger names, Bums. And so I was wondering if you heard of that stuff. And, you know, he wants a title shot next. He could very well be your next opponent, you know, if when you win the belt. So I was just curious what you thought of his performance.

I got one focus. That's those signers. I don't, I could care less about anyone else right now. As far as Khabibb, he fought a guy on 11 days notice. The guy says to fight, you know. Yeah. I personally don't, I would respect Khabi a lot more than say that to fight a guy like Kibib on 11 days notice. I think you need more preparation to fight a guy of his style just because he's so one-track-minded with the grappling that you need more than 11 days.

I think it's foolish to fight a guy like that on 11 days notice. but, you know, the performance said for itself, you know, he dominated the guy, a guy couldn't do much or nothing, and it's what everyone expected. So he did what was expected. Yeah. Should have done that. Last thing before I let you go, and again, thank you very much for the time. The last time you're on this show, you created a bit of stir when you were saying that

the blueprint is out as to how to beat Connor McGregor, and then a few days later, Connor McGregor lost. And I couldn't help but think of you that now. and think about what you were thinking. Did you think that Nate did it perfectly? Was that the way to beat Connor, or is there still other ways, in your opinion? No, that actually wasn't what I was referring to, saying that, oh, the secrets out there. That wasn't the secret I was talking about.

The secret I was talking about was just taking the guy down, dumping on his head, and then submitting him. Nate has a reach, and I think everybody was so up on Connor. And Nate just has this, you know, he has a weirdly long, long reach, and it's difficult to deal with. And unless you have guys in front of you who are six-foot, six-foot-two boxers throwing punches at you, it's hard to prepare in that way. He's sort of an awkward opponent to deal with, and you need the right guys in front of you to deal with that. Connor just couldn't adjust. And to be honest with you, Connor's a one or two.

two-round fighter. He's not a championship fighter. You know what I mean? He's a one or two-round guy. There'll be a lifer, I think, and three-rounders. If he ever decides to do five-rounders or go past the five, I think most of his fights are going to look just

like that. He's going to take a dunk. So you're expecting the same thing two days after your fight? What, when they beat him? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, Connor couldn't even win for two rounds. You know what I mean?

If he has to deal with any amount of adversity, how's he going to end up winning? He was beating the shit out of Nate. If you can't win for two rounds, how are you going to be in a fight with Nate Diaz? You know what I mean? He was winning. He was being the shit out of him. And he couldn't keep up with his own winning. That was odd to me.

All right. Well, for now, it's you versus R.D. I got to say, you're pumped up. I'm pumped up. People on Twitter are telling me they're pumped up. You have sold this fight in a 15-minute interview. So thank you very much for that, Eddie. I know that doesn't really mean.

You would take the fight if no one was watching, but worth noting, I think, for the general public. Really appreciate the time. Best of luck to and really looking forward to it. And congratulations on getting the fight. No one deserves it more than you, my friend. Thank you, Ariel. All right.

There he is. Eddie Alvarez, stopping by, number one contender in the lightweight division. If it was me, I know that, you know, Habib was supposed to fight Ferguson and that's a tremendous fight and I wouldn't be mad if they booked it again I also wouldn't be mad if Habib just fights the winner of that fight he has clearly stated that

he wants to respect and observe Ramadan and I know Ramadan is just a month but you have to also remember he's not exactly training during Ramadan you can't eat or drink when the sun is up so it's pretty impossible to me one of the craziest things is

Hakeem Olajuwon used to play during Ramadan and wouldn't drink water or anything. That's just unbelievable. The former NBA great center for the Houston Rockets. But anyhow, I wouldn't be mad if they had a lightweight title fight involving Chabeeb and the winner of RDA and Eddie in September, October, whatever. Ferguson, Kiesa, Kesa called them out.

We'll see what happens. I know Ferguson wants that fight. But lightweight's getting interesting again. And the title will be defended, hopefully, July 7th in Las Vegas. Speaking of the Houston Rockets, you know he was a big Houston Rocket fan? Our next guest. Joining us via the Magic of Skype, there he is. The Black Beast himself.

Derek Lewis is joining us right now as I alert the general public that he has made it on the show. Derek, how are you? I'm doing pretty good. How about yourself? I am doing great. It's great to have you on the program. What are we wearing on our head over there? What kind of hat?

Do you hear me, Derek? They're breaking up a little bit What you say? What kind of hat are you wearing? Oh, I'm getting ready to my red panties night Oh, I didn't realize you were actually Yeah, I got to represent my red panties Oh, I didn't realize that that was

That you are wearing red panties on your head Wow, I am so happy Well, yeah, yeah, I'm getting ready for it What, when's red panty night happening? I guess I have to ask. In a few months, you know, it's a fight that I've been won, and I believe I have it now. I believe it's going to happen.

Are you fighting Roy Nelson? I don't know. It's a fight that I want it, and I believe that they're going to give it to me. I don't know who it's going to be, but I just know it's going to make an exciting fight, you know, so we'll see. Well, now, I mean, now you're kind of, of sending mixed messages.

There's obviously a fight that you're excited about. You asked for Roy. He asked for you. I heard that it might even be on the same card as Eddie Alvarez versus RDA, perhaps even the co-main event. Is that possible? I really can't say too much about what's going on.

Fair enough. I don't know. Why do you want that fight so much if it is Roy Nelson that we're talking about? Oh, if I want Roy Nelson, because I believe it's just going to be exciting to fight. You know, it's going to be a fan favorite fight, and the fan's really going to be the winner. You know, it's not going to be a boring fight.

Someone's going to sleep for sure if that fight happens. I'm going to ask my guy in Yorkerick to call you on the phone because it's cutting out a little bit. We got the panties, so that's good that we snuck that in there. But I want to speak to you on the phone, okay? So he's going to call you on your cell phone right now, right? Okay. Okay, so let's connect with Derek. It's hard to hear what he said.

What is that? Call him on his cell. We can keep the Skype on, but I want to be able to hear you crystal clear. So they're going to call you right now. Don't go anywhere, Derek. He's showing off his blue belt. I mean, what a sight this is, the Black Beast reping the red panties on his noggin.

Of course, coming off that big win over Gabriel. Broganzaga and Zagreb, Croatia last weekend, not this past weekend the weekend before. And all signs seemed to be pointing towards him fighting Roy Nelson. They had a little showdown, if you will, in the stands. Not that long ago, I believe it was at 196 or maybe the event before that. And even Dana White was there and they shook hands. And it seemed like they had a deal. He stepped into fight Gonzaga and now hopefully he'll get that fight against Roy Nelson.

are you there? Yeah, I'm here. Okay, there, there. That sounds great. What was that around your neck? That's a blue belt? Yeah, it's a blue belt. Just a way, I know I'm the baddest bluebell in Texas.

Okay, good to know. You know, I have to say, Derek, you've been in the UFC for a little bit now, but I really feel like the personality has been coming out in full force as of late. Your Instagram, your Twitter is very entertaining, even doing stuff like you just did. Where is this coming from?

Have you always been this way, and now just getting a little more comfortable in front of us? Yeah, I'm just getting more comfortable. You know, there ain't no telling when it's going to be my last fight, you know, the way to be getting rid of guys for any little thing. You know, I'm just, you want to have fun with it. That's all. Because at first it seemed like you were a little bit shy in front of the cameras,

and now you're just letting loose. You are shy? Yeah, I had clothes on this time. I'm a little shy. But, I mean, you're tweeting pictures of yourself on the toilet and stuff now. I mean, the shyness seems to be gone. Yeah, I guess so. But I'm still a little shy, though.

Does that translate into being a better fighter? The more comfortable you are, fight week in front of the cameras, the media and all that stuff. Does that translate into better performances in your mind? I believe so, you know. At first, I was just timid to, like, make a mistake. And now I just go out there, I don't care anymore, and just don't care if I get knocked out or whatever. I'm just go out there and have fun, just let everything get loose, you know. How was Croatia?

Did you enjoy it? No, I didn't. Why? I didn't enjoy it because the food that they had there was like all healthy stuff, you know. Nothing greasy. Everything was like grass. And I couldn't deal with it. So you wanted, what were you looking for, like hamburgers and stuff? In hamburgers, something.

You know, something to fill me up. But it was nothing there that I could really eat and nothing there I could really drink. And the water, I guess, was not healthy enough to drink. So I don't know, it was just one of the worst weeks of my fighting career. Really? But it translated into one of your biggest wins. So maybe that's a good thing, to be uncomfortable. Yeah, it's because I don't want to fly way over there and wind up losing and then make my flight on the way home.

See me a bit longer. So I had to go out there and go and do work. And flight worked it. Sure. And no one directed you towards like a grocery store. You could buy some water, get some burgers or something. There was none of that around? Oh, no.

It was nothing. And, no, it was just like a bad experience. Oh, wow. I thought you had to- I stayed in my room. No, I really stayed in my room the whole time, really, and just tried to order room service. Yeah?

I don't know. I don't want to say too much back to Croatia. Okay. But I just don't want to know that anymore. Is it fair to say that you don't want to fight internationally, like you prefer to fight in the U.S.? Yes, I prefer to fight in the U.S. and whenever I accepted a fight,

I didn't know it was going to be in Croatia. I just seemed that Zanzaga opponent got hurt, and I said, yeah, I'll fight him. But my time I got ready to read the contract and everything, it was saying Croatia. I'm like, what the hell is Croatia? So I had to put in the map on it. Oh, man.

I guess I fight them. Still fight them, but 13, 14 hours away. That's too long to be on an airplane. I'm afraid of heights. Wow. Were you in coach? No, I had to upgrade the first class. Did you, you upgraded yourself?

Yeah, I upgraded myself. Why? I had to. You didn't want to... The chairs, the way it is in the coach, my knees all in and back in the feet. So it was just going to be an uncomfortable ride, and you probably wanted to fight on an airplane with somebody.

So I had to get enough room. How much was it to upgrade? Probably like $7,800 on the way there and like $12,000 on the way back. That's annoying. Yeah, it was working, though. Did you get good food on the plane? Yeah, pretty good food. I'm great.

It was America Airlines or something like that, United. What's life back home like now? Now that you're becoming this celebrity, you're fighting on national TV, are a lot more people recognizing you? coming out of the woodwork trying to latch onto you. Oh, yeah, everybody coming out to woodwork, you know. It's pretty embarrassing on their point because I already know who was there with me before everything happening. And now everyone's switching on old team Blackbeats and this and that.

I've been a fan of yours, man, keep up to good work this and that. I'm like, come on, man. Because I'm quiet. I mean I own peep stuff, you know. I watch everybody. I listen to everything. Read everyone in comments. You know, I know who's my real fans are.

So you just brush them off. Yeah, I brush them off a little lightly. I let him down lightly. So, okay, I appreciate you. Yeah, I know you've been there. But even on the back of my head and get your ass on. And then if you can win in July, if all things, you know, come together here, I mean, a win over Roy Nelson, that really puts you into that, you know, contender talk, right?

Is that what you're thinking? How far away do you think you are? Yeah, if I could get to my... run that's a fight. Yeah, that'd be real good, you know. If that's the fight that's going to happen, yeah. I believe it's probably like two more fights away. The way the heavyweight division is, guys always pulling fake injuries and stuff like that. So I never know. If I get past, whoever I get past my next fight, I might be fighting for the title, maybe in December or something like that, for sure next year. Why do you think guys are pulling out because of fake injuries? I don't know.

You see how soft these guys are. Yeah. Well, I got to tell you, Houston deserves a winner. Certainly not coming from the Rockets, right? Come on, man. What do you mean? I mean... Come on, man.

I know. I don't know. I believe it's just the coaches right now. It's just a what? You got a pretty good team. I believe it's just our coach. Oh, okay. Well, maybe...

Maybe Steph Curry is going to be injured, and that could be your saving grace. No, we'll see tonight, but he's going to be a good game. You know, at the Rocks, I believe you ain't going to just lay down like that. No. They're going to fight hard all the way through. They don't call them Clutch City for nothing. Yeah, for sure. What about, I mean, are you the kind of guy that dreamt of this sort of thing?

I mean, your backstory has been, you know, well-documented that, you know, you were in jail, and you've had, you know, a rough upbringing, and then you come out and you find MMA and then you become this sensation locally and eventually make it to the UFC. Did you dream about this sort of thing and it's all happening in front of your eyes now? Like is it kind of surreal

or is this all kind of happening out of nowhere for you in that sense? No, I dreamed about, you know, even whenever I was in prison, you know, I thought about man. It's just like whenever I get out and just set these goals for myself and I'm not going to let nothing. No one stop me in the saying that I couldn't do something.

certain things. I'm just going to go for it, you know. And with the Lord's help and everything is happening just how I had predicted it. Everything happened for a reason. I look at it. I didn't have a father to help me, steer me in the right path. And so about me going through the stuff that I went through, I believe it. It just taught me how to be a better man. Before you just... I don't look bad on it, back on it, and be like, man, man, She never did this. But I feel like everything happened for a reason.

Before you discovered MMA, what did you want to become? Derek, yeah, you there? Derek? Derek Lewis? Blackbeast? Derek? Maybe we have to call him back.

Did we lose them? Derek Lewis, are you there? 1-2-1-2? Okay, let's call him. Yeah, I mean, we don't have to go over it. It's been documented a lot, especially if you've watched him fight on FS1. He was, you know, he's had a,

he's had some ups and downs in his life, but really has obviously turned it around family man now. And ever since actually, interesting thing about him, that he was actually taught for some time by the great George Foreman and considered going into boxing. There he is.

Derek Lewis, are you there? Yeah, and it's bad. It's raining real hard over here. Oh. It's a bad storm. I asked you, before you discovered MMA, what did you want to become? What did you want to do with your life? Really, I wanted to be a boxer.

Either a boxer or being an all field or something like that. You know, everything wound up working perfectly, I believe, in the MMA aspect. You used to train with George Foreman, right? Do you still talk to him? No, I don't talk to him anymore But yeah, I used to train there I trained there probably like two months Two or three months

Okay And he was really getting me ready For my first MMA fight And they wanted me to To really stick to boxing They didn't want to me to do MMA anymore And so I just told them Let's see how my first MMA pro fight

You know, and I gave you an answer then so it went well I knocked the guy out second round so I was like I'm just stick with MMA but at the time they like brought me an apartment

and brought me a car and all that and just telling them trying to push me away from MMA and just wanted me to stick to boxing and even though I needed all that by coming out I just believed that MMA was just going to get me

farther than boxing at the time and I believe I made the right decision and just being patient so at that point that's when you left and did you leave on bad terms or is it just you didn't have you know it didn't make sense to train with them anymore no I didn't leave on bad terms

it was just they understood they took it the cars in an apartment bank but they still understood you know how it was foolish for me right um you mentioned after your fight in Zagreb

that you recently lost your coach, right? Just like a week before the fight? Yes. What happened? He had stomach cancer, and he had been bad for it. It was probably like five months when he found out that he had it,

so he didn't take any time taking him away. And, you know, he was supposed to be that with me in January or February whenever. my fight before Gonzaga, and he couldn't make it because he was too sick. You know, and he was doing chemo and everything was too weak, and he was in and out at the hospital the same week, and so he couldn't make it. And I just wanted to get you to my next fight.

And the way that stomach cancer work, it's just, it's probably like, drain so kill people faster than any other cancer there is because you really can't eat and so you don't have the energy so you know talk to

he just talking like regular like he had enough energy and everything to talk and like few days later he was gone and how many days was that before the Gonzaga fight? Probably five or six days. Did you consider pulling out?

No, I didn't. I just, I went to the funeral and just told the family that I was going to dedicate this fight to him. And how big of a void is this now as you prepare? Like now you have training camps and stuff, what are you going to do to find someone that, I mean, I'm guessing you can't necessarily replace him? And by the way, can you say, what's his full name? Tony Orozco. Okay. So what are you going to do now going forward as far as training is concerned?

Same thing I've been doing, you know, just trying to stay focused. But it's another guy that's been there that started off with him and his name, Bob Perez. And I believe that he's going to help me get ready as well. Like Tony Rostco used to help me back in the days. And so now, you know, hopefully you get the fight that you want. Is this one that you've been thinking about for a while? It just seems like such a fun matchup. You and Roy, have you been dreaming about this particular fight for a long time?

Yeah, I've been thinking about the Royal matchup way before I even got into the UFC. Wow. You know, it's just the way he fights. I'm a fan of him, really, you know. I love Roy. I love to watch him fight. You know, no matter what, it's a pay-per-view, fight pass. what, I always tune in just to watch Ron Nelson fight.

You know, I'm a fan of him, no disrespect, nothing like that. But it just like the dream come true just to fight, a guy that I really basically grew up watching. You know, I used to watch him fight way back whenever he used to walk out with his Confederate flash shorts. And, you know, I was still a fan of him way back then, too. Wow. I don't remember him doing that. I just did a dream come true.

When did he do that? Back in the day, IFL? I believe it before I was. Before that? Damn. How do you feel about the big beard and all that, getting all up in your grill? Nah, I believe he's on the person of Joker. No, I'm joking.

Now, I don't have no problem with the beard getting in my face. Okay. I'm wondering, are you hope, when you celebrate the way you do, are you hoping to break the cage? Because I feel like at some point it's going to break. No, I don't think about that. You know, I just think about, That's the reason why I do it because Tony Orozco, that's what he used to do whenever he used to fight back in the late 90s.

Oh, wow. And it's represent my silverback gym. The gym I started out with. So it's basically like a gorilla hollering at the moon or something like that. Who gave you your nickname? Tony O'Roscoe did. Okay. It was just like a silverback, black.

like peace. It's great. Well, I love everything that you're doing, man. Your, uh, your, your, your Twitter and Instagram has been very entertaining as of lay your fights even more so. And, and I hope you get this fight, whether it's July 7th, 8th, 9th, whatever. Hopefully sooner rather than later, we can see you guys actually fight. Congratulations on the win in Croatia. I hope you have a better experience also if you fight, uh, you know, here in the United States. And, and thank you, thank you for coming on. I, I hope next time we can have more time with you. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, it's just the weather real bad.

Now, everyone's houses are really getting shorty right now, so it's flash flood warning everywhere. Oh, well. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. My pleasure. Hopefully everything goes okay over there, and good luck to your rockets this evening as well. Oh, yeah. They got this tonight. I believe they'll blow them out tonight.

The rocket's going to blow out the war of this tonight. You put money on it. Well, that's the craziest thing you've said all day. But I appreciate the confidence, Derek. Thank you very much for the time. All right, no problem. All right, there is the Black Beast. Derek Lewis. Maybe fighting Roy Nelson next.

Okay, let's move along. You know, I said at the top of the show, big news last week, UFC 199. It is official. The Prodigy is returning. You heard several weeks ago on this program, he came out of retirement. He's been in Albuquerque. He's been training with Team Jackson Wink. And now he knows that he'll be fighting June 4th against Dennis Seaver in Englewood, California.

BJ Penn, the prodigy himself is on the phone right now. BJ, how are you? I am so excited to be fighting on June 4th, and I'm so excited to be on Ariel Havanaughan show right now. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much, BJ. Hey, hold out, Caldario. Yes. Cowboy. What's up, Cowboy?

I'm just missing your shining face. Oh, I miss you, too. What happened with that fight last week? What did you know what happened with that fight? Did you sign the contract? Not signed the contract? It was very confusing. Of course, of course I signed the contract. Ariel, who are you talking to? So why didn't it happen? The UFC, call me down,

they don't want the fight to happen, that they want me on the automobile car, they don't want to have me signed to two contracts at one time. I could get hurt, I could get cut, I can get blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They said, no.

You can be, all crazy. Whatever, that's all I'm giving you. Here to be, Jeff. Of course, Cowboy signed a contract. What kind of question is that, man? What kind of question is that area? I had to take the opportunity.

It became two interviews in one here. How about that? Always keeping me on my toes. I suppose. Me and Cowboy writer Albuquerque versus anybody. I like it. I like it. So BJ, congratulations on getting the fight. What's that? Is he talking to me? He said something. He was running his mouth. Don't worry, Ariel. All right. Come on. Come on. Let it go. Let it go, like frozen.

Okay, so BJ. So you got the fight. Are you happy with this fight? You know what? I think it's a fight. Dana offered me the fight. We didn't know who we were fighting. We didn't know what was going on. I talked to Greg. I think Greg made a list of people who we were supposed to fight who he wanted us to fight first, being that we've been gone for two years. When Dana gave me the fight, I told Greg, because me and Dana just known each other so long,

we just kind of put the fight together ourselves and we're just kind of talking story and stuff. So I just said, Greg, you said, did they say anything? I said, you know, me and Dana were talking. He said a great fight would be Dennis Seaver and BJ Panda. That would be an action-packed fight for the fans and this and that and this and that. And I let Greg know and Greg's like perfect BJ. That's one of the guys we had on the list that we wanted you to fight on your first fight back. So, you know, I'm very excited.

You know, I've never really watched Dennis fight. I know we've been on the same card, but he's a tough guy, man. You know, he's out there. He's in great shape. He knows his craft. And I'm, I'm, she's. I'm up here, you know, preparing as hard as they can. So I'm not overly nervous, I guess, on fight night.

But I'm excited about all this. So you've been there for quite some time. You told me a while ago that you guaranteed you'd be fighting at 196 in March. Then we thought maybe April 23rd. And, you know, don't want to really go too much into it. I had a respect to you. But is there anything you want to say about this investigation, which delayed your return to the UFC?

there was a story that came out. The UFC addressed it publicly and just last week said that they had done an investigation and that you were cleared from their standpoint. Is there anything that you can say about it? Well, you know what? I'm just very glad that the UFC did their investigation with an outside company. And I'm just very glad it's done, man. That's as much as I can say.

I'm very glad it's done. I'm very disappointed in how everything. you know, how everything that happened between me and my former employee. But besides that, you know, I'm just, I'm very glad. I'm very glad that I get a chance to get back in the octagon. Were you hurt that it took so long that this would come out publicly? Like, did you feel like, you know, did it hurt your heart that this was happening as you're trying to make a return to the sport?

No, it put me on the back burner, you know. It put me on the back burner for a little while. you know definitely you know I've hurt my heart I mean I got kids you know I got two baby daughters and you know I mean of course

there's something like that's going to hurt your heart you know people people know I am and you know what you see is what you get with me I mean just a family man I got two kids and you know that's that's it I wish I could get into more but you know I'm

you know I'm sure my lawyers would appreciate that. Okay, fair enough. I'm just wondering if you, so you wanted to fight in March, and now you have to stay two extra months in... Fuck, I'm ready now. Exactly, Ariel. You know what?

Right. When I first got here, I'll be the first to tell you. I wasn't freaking doing hot. I was freaking getting taken down, left and right, grounded and pounded. I was getting beat up on my feet, kicked, punched. But you know what? Man, great Jackson. That guy's the real...

I mean, it's... I mean, look, I mean, look, you can see all the other great trains. that he had, but I mean, me and him, somehow we click, man. Me and this guy click. And then we always did. Greg always wanted me at his gym. I mean, just from back in the day, he always would say, even if we were getting along, even if we weren't getting along, we were rivals, as soon as my first time ever meeting

Greg Jackson, you know, it's always great. Hey, hi, nice. How you doing? Then it comes down to all the marbles, and it's you and that guy still again. So, you know, you harbor feelings, you know, because you just want to, you know, do your best for yourself and your family and everybody just wants to do their best and you know and just in the way the way everything worked out i mean i don't know what made me pick up that phone and just i called rich is why from bellator i called the matchmaker of bellator and i'm like rich what's great jackson's number

you know and freaking she just gave me the number i texted i texted him and he's all she texted me back right away and i think he knew already where i was man he knew i mean this is our honor This is our honor, Ariel. I want to come back. I want to, you know, I want to make a living. Of course, I want to make a living. But this is our honor. This is our fucking honor.

And I wouldn't want to, nobody else but Greg Jackson behind me. Nobody's going to out crazy me and fucking Greg Jackson. And that is amazing to hear. But is it difficult to be there for so long away from your family? Albuquerque is not, you know, Hilo, it's not Hawaii. And you weren't planning on being there for this. long. How are you coping with that? You know, it would help me a lot. It really helped me a lot if you came and stayed in the same

hotel room with me and you just did the MMA hour out of the room. Wow. And this would probably get me to the last two months, you know, because I have been here for ever. I have been here for a long. You know, misery enjoys company, you know. No, but Greg, great, great told me from the beginning when I got here, he told me, he said, DJ, because our game plan right now, me and Greg, we have it set. We're going to go, we're going to go and get that one hundred forty-five pound belt. And Greg told me he said,

BJ, this is the fun part. The first thing I got here, he goes, BJ, this is the fun part. You're excited, everything. This is in January. He told me this. And then he goes, doing pretty soon.

You know, he's like, he's like, if you're going to do something no one else has ever done, you've got to do something no one else has ever did. Sit there and watch the paint dry in the hotel room. Sit there and just look at the wall and just let thoughts replay over in your head. thousands and thousands of times about what's going on, about everything.

Wow. And, you know, so he's constantly preparing me for the next day. That's what I love about being here. And believe me, six months, you think I wanted, I never even, I never been to Albuquerque before. But you know what? I'm getting used to it. I'm definitely getting used to it.

But by the time this fight goes, I'll have six months with Great Jackson. I feel a lot more confident. I was rushing in there. I was just trying to get my feet wet. It's been a while. But you know what? Right now, I'm ready, you know? Let's do this.

Let's do this. Fight anyone. It's beautiful. It's beautiful to see how you've integrated so well within the team, seeing all the pictures, you and John Jones and Holly Holm. And everyone just seemed so happy to have you there. And you seem happy as well. Did you think it would go this well?

Because you've always kind of been a lone wolf. And now I see you out eating dinner. You know, the pictures say it all, did you think it would go like this? Man, well, you know what? I mean, well, champions like me, Holly, and then John, like, we all kind of see eye on and I have certain stuff, you know? And besides that, like, yeah, you know what? I just, these guys are inspiring me.

Like, John inspires me. I mean, John is like, he's not afraid of anything on the whole earth. And I just like kind of just like, that's how I was when I was in my. 20s or you know what I mean and it's just like it's just it's just awesome and freaking holly i'll tell you right now that she don't care who you are she'll just knock you out in the gym she don't give her shit i just see holly just freaking wiping people out freaking amazing it's just it's just awesome to be here man awesome to be here but yeah i'm definitely alone i'm definitely alone wolf you know but but when i started i was always in the big in the big gyms you know with no

Vouniao in the big jams with AKA But then I definitely did kind of just go do my own thing And I don't know such was life I guess at that time You know but you know another thing that I'm just reminding remembering the thinking of right now is my kids and just like you were talking about You've been up there for four months or about your kids You know so I got to fly them up I've flew them up three times already Okay But I'm gonna I'm gonna have to

Fly them up for another week when I get a slow week and then next few weeks I'm gonna be pushing hard and then maybe take a slow week and then push hard through the last end of the month. So we'll see. Maybe you can get them up here. But that is really, you know, the only thing that is more important to me than fighting is watching my kids grow up. And that is the one thing, you know. And you have two beautiful children and, you know, exactly what I'm talking about.

Thank you. Yes. 100%. You know, I was quickly looking at your record. And I believe this will be the first fight. It said I hadn't won a fight since 2010. Is that fucking true? I better, I'm going to, man, I got to get on the fucking horse, you know.

I swear I've been winning a lot of fights in the gym and maybe even some kind of self-defense. But you know what? You know what? You know what? I got to get a professional victory. I can't believe that because, I mean, I'm training in the gym, I feel fine. I mean, I wish you could put Greg Jackson on the phone, you know what I mean, to blow my own horn and say, hey, this motherfucker, he's on it. You know, he's doing some good stuff.

but we'll all have to let it play out, you know? Well, the question I was going to ask you was, I think this is the first fight in 17, or this would be the first in 18 fights, that you're not fighting either someone who's fought for the belt or been a champion himself. That is Dennis Siever. Do you even, did that even occur to you?

And is this really, I'm wondering if this isn't even about Dennis Seaver. He's just a guy. This is about you coming back and doing all that stuff that you and Greg have been talking about. you know what? Yeah, he's just a guy and a tough guy at that. You know what I mean? That's all Dennis.

That's what Dennis represents for us right now. Definitely a great person to compete against. And then on the other side, you know, she's, my kid, this is what it is, Ariel. My whole life, every time I always just say this, I'm putting everything else in Greg Jackson's hands. My whole life, this is me. Okay, let's go get the belt.

Okay, you guys ready? And let's go kick every tough guy ass along the way. Let's go mess them all up. So by the time we get the belt, there's not even anybody left, you know. But we know how managers do things, you know. And in no way is this an easy fight. In no ways, you know, this is, man, Dennis Siever. He's a tough guy.

And, you know, they feel that this is a fight. They want me to fight coming back first. You know, I feel comfortable with their decision. He hasn't steered me wrong, and I've been saying it, man. She got Greg Jackson got my back. He never let me slip because if I slip, then I'm slipping. Right? Yes.

We got this. It's great to see that connection. Does a part of you wish you linked up with him earlier that the streak of not winning since 2010 would never have been a thing had you linked up with him earlier? You know what? I think about that. I think why wasn't I here before, this and that?

And I try to make some kind of sense out of my life, my career, certain times. And I just, I guess it's when the student is ready, the master will appear, you know, because he wasn't my master then, he was my enemy. And now is the perfect time. that was the perfect time man I don't mean the guy we click I mean we start talking about moves and it's just you know people think I'm a genius like that's all I mean I can tell them I can tell him the earth's flat I this and that he don't give a shit

all he cares about is talking about MMA really you know a lot of a lot of people have been asking me you know is this good is it good that BJ's coming back you know as you said hasn't wants in 2010 and I feel like there are just some people that need like you need to be in a training camp It's the healthiest thing for you. Do you feel that way? Do you feel like just being a part of a team and a training camp

and having a purpose and a date? This is, this is, BJ Penn was born to live like this. And this is the best, you're the best human being that you can be when you're in a camp and part of a team and training for a fight.

Do you feel that way? You know what? You just hit the nail on the head. You know what? As I'm just walking, and you could ask you. Like, what the hell? BJ been in Albuquerque four months

and now it's going to be five months by the time you guys, I mean, six months by the time you go and fight and this and that and it's just like, no man, this is the life I was supposed to live. This is the life I was supposed to live. And, you know, that's why, you know, I'm really glad that the mother of my children is holding everything down, strong at home, and, you know, with the kids and everything and letting me live my life.

I mean, this is the life I'm supposed to live right here, you know, and kick some ass. This is it. This is all I know, Ariel. a good way though. Don't ever freaking feel bad for me. I love this shit. I love this. Sometimes people like to joke about the motivated BJ Pan, but honestly, when was the last time you felt like

this before a fight? Well, you know, I always say like, yeah, definitely, like, I remember like when I really, one time when I really, really wanted to fight, like, F this, nobody in the whole world is going to beat me. It was the first time I ever beat Matt Hughes. You know what I mean? That long ago.

And maybe something died after that, but that's impossible because this is all we love to do. But, but, um, I, you know, like the motivation, like, I'm never motivated to get my ass kick. You know what I mean? I'm only motivated to beat somebody up. And, uh, it's just, I don't know if it's just the motivation. Maybe it's prepared. Maybe the word they should use instead of motivated pen is prepared pen.

Okay. When was the last time you were this prepared? Um, well, at least. But I'm believing it. Now I think it's that I'm believing. I'm prepared. You know, so she's, I don't know. It's just all I know is when I got to the gym, there's all these young kids, and they're

all so good, and you don't know who you're even sparring with, and they're throwing me, and you block one move, and then they throw these spinning, freaking, 20 different moves you've never seen in your life. And, like, you had to, like, wake up and kind of realize, like, oh, shit, the fucking shit did change and this and this, but still the foundation work. of me and Greg always talk about, but the foundation always works, DJ, he always, you know,

wants to remind me the structure. The structure of what's going on will always be the same. They'll always put new paint on it, whatever, but everything will always be the same. But, man, I don't know what they say, Ariel. You know, I'll say this. It's good. I'll say this.

I remember vividly sitting in the press room after UFC 107, your win over Diego Sanchez in Memphis, sitting there thinking, I don't care what anyone says about Anderson Silva, Fador, Milanenko. BJ Penn is the best fighter in the world pound for pound right now, this moment tonight. It was December, I think, of 2009. That's when I felt that it all came together for you. After that performance, you were at your best there.

And I think a lot of your fans, you have an ability. But even now, I feel like I'm eating out of your hand. There's something about the way you speak that gets people so fired up. Do you know that? And why do you think that is? There's just something intoxicating. I'll tell you this, Ray Don't. Yeah.

They admire me for my success, and they relate to me because of my pain. And that's it. They look at Pim, and of course there's always going to be those people that, you know, that they don't want. You know, they don't want, there's a lot of people. I'll tell you what there is. There's a lot of people that don't want me to come back because if I come back with Greg Jackson and I come back and get the belt, and that's the worst thing that they ever wanted to happen. They're just praying, please, fucking stay retired.

please when you come back please look like shit please bj i just cannot it doesn't fit with my world view of you coming back and being the champ right now you know what i mean but you go and look at all these other guys i mean they're fighting every day and they're still getting knocked out in the first round you know who never no one ever knows that's going to happen in a fight but you ever see me fucking some of these guys get wiped out like fucking some of these guys get wiped out and they're and they're even saying that bj shouldn't come back

and i'm like you shouldn't even have started you shouldn't have started buddy you know what i mean it's like you're never going to going to get anywhere. Why'd you even start if you're going to sit there and tell me to not come back? You know, I want to just be, I want to be so blunt they can smoke the truth the same way they want to do that to me. I love that. That is great. And I'm sure you're loving this era, right? I mean, you've been at the forefront of calling for PEDs and all this stuff for drug testing. You've got to love this, right, that USADA's involved? Yes, yes. I'm very excited with Usada in. They got no IV. I think this is my chance, man.

This is it. This is my fucking chance. Right here. It's my best chance right now. We're going to make a comeback. Without an era, no IV, never used an IV, never use PEDs. You know, now's the time. How's the freaking time?

How far away do you think you are from fighting for that belt in your mind? You know what? I, you know, I mean, you know, I don't want to speak too soon. Okay. You know, Dana really, me and Dana, we always get along with me. The guys, he has given me, you know, some title shots over the years. I think, I think we're going to, I think I'm going to let Greg decide, actually.

Okay. I mean, the public and the public opinion and everybody, they're going to, they might want to, you know, we might wipe out two guys and they might be like, come on, man, fight the best guy. But I think I'm just going to sit back and I'm going to say, Greg, what do you think? When is the time? You know, I mean, everybody, I mean, realize, as time goes on now, I mean, the gym, and I look in on all these young kids and all these strong kids, and I'm like, yeah, it's true. And then the same for the people in the UFC.

You got more firepower than me. You got a bigger military than BJPen now, but I'm going to control the engagement. I'm going to control every time we clash, and that's going to make the difference. That's going to make the fucking difference. That's amazing. Okay, two last quick things. Is this going to be on pay-per-view or the FS1 portion of the card, do you know? She's that I have no idea.

You know, that would be good. That would be a good thing to find out. You know what? I'm going to go. I'm going to go find out. Okay. Actually, I was wondering. I was wondering, am I going to be before Cruz in favor then?

Or you know what? You might have a good idea, too. He might try to do something on that angle. Okay. So you don't know. Okay, so you find out and you let me know, okay? You got it. You got it, sir.

I love the way you sound, BJ. I love how live you sound right now. It's an amazing thing. It's inspiring. call me a fool for falling for it. It's great. And I know a lot of people are behind you. Hey, this is going to be fun.

One thing, no matter what area, we're going to have a lot of fun and a lot of laugh, okay? Okay. That's for sure, man. BJ, you are a man of your word. Thank you for coming on the show. I am very happy for you. Congrats on getting the fight and good luck, June 4th, BJ. Thank you, sir.

Talk soon. Hit me up. Let me know what's going on. Easy, brother. Easy. Brat out of my. Take care. Mahalo to BJ Penn.

It is always a pleasure to be joined by Vijay Penn. There is no one like him. And a lot of people I saw complaining about this fight. What? What does this mean? What does it mean if you beat Dennis Siever at this stage? What does that all mean? It doesn't matter.

The fact that BJ and his team are realistic about the fact that he has not fought in a couple of years, that he has not won since 2010, the fact that this is the real. reality that they're not trying to fight for the belt or to fight a number one contender or even a former champion, that to me is healthy. That to me shows that we're actually taking this seriously, that this isn't just, you know, a shortcut to another chance at glory. Eventually, that's obviously what they want. That's why anyone's in this game.

But the fact that they've gone with Dennis Siever, to me, was the best part of all of this. And I couldn't believe that so many people were, we're criticizing. that portion of the announcement. That's the part that makes the most sense. Finally, someone's coming back and not fighting for the belt or not fighting, you know, a number one contender. This is, there's nothing wrong with building yourself up, reinventing yourself, especially with a new team, new surroundings, second time on 145. It's all very new.

You can't just jump in there. These people are human beings. So I love the fact that it's Dennis Siever. I had heard that the 196 fight, if he would have fought on that card, was going to be on the FS1 prelims. I do not know now what they're going to do with 199, which has quickly become a much more intriguing fight card than it was. You know, for a while, I kind of felt like, okay, excluding the top two fights there,

you know, the Chris Widman, Rockhold title fight and the Faber Cruz title fight, I kind of felt like the May 29th card the week before, headlined by Almeida and Garbrandt, was top to bottom better. But now it's starting to get a lot more interesting with the Hendo Lombard fight being added to that card. And of course, BJ Penn versus Dennis Siever. So I love it.

There's just something about BJ Penn, the way he speaks. He just has that tone. There's a certain Genesequois. And I know people, like to joke about motivated BJ Penn, and that's become a thing, sort of like sea level cane. Let's throw the cynicism aside and, you know, enjoy this journey. Wish them well, and we'll see what happens on June 4th.

Okay. Let us move along now. So very excited. How about this going from a legend like BJ Penn to, you know, the legend of all legends, the former UFC Walterway champion, the one and only George Rush St. Pierre is on the phone right now. What a pleasure this is. George, how are you? I'm on the car driving

And you don't only have me You have also Ferras the habit He's with me right now in the car Wow This is exciting 2-4-1 today Ariel You got a good deal 2-4-1

Wow, this is very exciting Salu Firas I appreciate the time Very much Wow, this is great Okay Well let's let's not beat around the bush My friends

I feel because you know George Faraz comes on my show Very often And he has been saying for the past two and a half years that George is coming back, that George is going to fight again. And the fact that you have, Farras, in the car with you right now,

makes me feel like you have an announcement to make. So the floor is yours, my friend. I'm not going to make any, I'm sorry, I'm not going to give you any scoop to me because I can't do that right now. Why not? I don't know. I don't know 100%.

But with training and doing some testing and some tuning up and stuff like that. And yeah, we're talking with UFC and we'll see what's going to happen. So you are negotiating with the UFC right now, right? That's what you said last week. Is that correct? I do not negotiate myself. It's not my fight.

It's my agent fight. I'm not really qualified to negotiate. I mean, it's not my area of expertise. I have people that give me the best advice and have the option. I'm the one to take the final decision, but we've been talking and we've been not going to happen. And of course you're referring to Rodolf Bolliou, one of the very best in the business,

so I know he is taking care of you, you're in good hands, but it's fair to say that there is discussions. You said that last week to LDS in Quebec, and I'm wondering how close do you think you are to finding out if a deal can be made here? To consider, Ariel, weeks at that that was bugging me. My shoulder, like a rotator cuff, had a little injury that I couldn't do my,

I was supposed to do a training camp to see how I feel and if I want to go, to see if I want to keep competing after that. I was not able to do it because I got a little injury that was bothering me. It took a long time because I was trading on it. I didn't rest enough. But now this thing is out of the way to see if I feel good. And if I feel good, I'll give the thumbs up. to my manager and now they're going to talk more, I would say, more seriously to see what can happen, you know?

Oh wow. And there's other issues too because one of the main issues, so when I was on contract back in a day, the re-rebug deal was not in place. Yeah. So now because of the rebuked, it changed a lot of things in my contract. We need to renegotiate, maybe I do contract because I'm not allowed to wear my sponsors anymore and I lose money. Then how it's going to go down with USC and, you know, it's all contract. what's going to happen. But it feels to me

like you're closer than ever to coming back at this point. Like this is a very close thing. Is that fair to say? Well, I'm 34 years old. I'm going to be 35 soon. I'm in the best ship of my life. Now, Jess now we're just finished training. I mean, I'm training very hard. We talk about it too. I'm feeling good.

I think I think I'm doing well. And in the other gun, you know, you can be in the gym, but in the octagon, it's a different thing. So I need to make sure that if I do this, push myself, see if my body and I really want to do this again to go through that training camp, because it's hard when you're, you know, when you're wealthy, you got everything, you out back into pain. And it's just, I can do it, but I just, I need to be testing it. I don't want to do it. And in the middle of my real training camp, be like,

oh, I don't feel comfortable doing this, and then I messed up everything. And I come back, I make a fool of myself. I want to make sure if I go back, I'm at my mind. my best. Right. You know what I mean? I had heard, George, that they offered you a fight against Robbie Lawler at UFC 200 for the belt. Is that true?

That was the side of the question of respect. Okay. It's the place, it's going to be on their term. They're the one that was the side out to announce it, and it's not going to be up to me, try to get about myself. I'm coming back now. It's going to be the UFC. They're going to make it to promote the fight for the both of us, for the me and my opponent.

And me and my opponent. But if I can rebut here, when Michael Jordan, and many people would say you are the Michael Jordan of MMA, when Michael Jordan came out of retirement, it wasn't the Chicago Bulls or the NBA that made the announcement. It was Michael Jordan himself who told the world that he was back. So I think that it is up to you to tell the world when you want to come back, not your employer. What do you think of that? Michael Jordan's situation, but Michael Jordan, maybe he already had his contract in place. I don't have my contract in place yet.

Okay. I can't say I'm coming back if the contract is not signed and if it's going to be on, it's going to be an agreement. If there is something that happened, it's going to be on agreement between my party and the UFC party and we're going to agree how we're going to make things right. You know, I'm that kind of guy. I don't, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a, that business wise it's the way they want to do it.

I'm not going to go out of my way and try to do it only by myself. It's a, the UFC is a business and I'm part of the UFC and if they want to do anything, we me, I'm on our side, and I think, you know. I respect that, 100%. I have to. NBA is a different sport. Sure. You talk about something different now.

I think it's something totally different. You cannot compare. Faraz, let me ask you, you're always a straight shooter. You tell it like it is. Not to say George doesn't, but you've been saying for a long time he's coming back, do you still feel the same way? You're sitting right there next to your man. Your partner in crime, the guy you built into the UFC king.

Is he going to come back in 2016? What do you say? Ariel. Ariel, you're very. You're trying to put the word in his mouth. He never said I was coming back for sure. No, no, no, no. You're trying to make the scoop for your shoe.

I know you, ma'am. No, no, no. He said he believed. Ariel, pay your take to get this. I always said that I don't know if George is coming back, but I believe he has a lot of fight left to him. Yes, yes. He has the will to fight if he chooses to do it.

That's what I said. So I don't know if George is going to come back or not. I know people ask him every day. That's why me I never ask him. I let him have his breathing room. I let him live his life. I let him take the break. in. And when he wants to fight, or if he doesn't want to fight, I support him either way.

Well, for me, it doesn't matter to me. He's not everything he needs to do. He's true to everything. He's for pleasure. For whatever reason, I'm going to support. So for me, if you ask me, does he stop the killer instinct? I believe he's a killer instinct. And you think he could still be the same George, St. Pierre, as, as the last one that we said. Like, he hasn't lost his step. I think he's the best wealth of weight in the world. Wow. If he got still training, George, I will be honest with you, I didn't think you were coming back until I saw you in Las Vegas for UFC 196. And I know that you will say to a degree

you were there to see your teammate, Nordin Teleb, you wanted to see history. But when you were sitting there cage side, did you feel the butterflies? Did you feel like the itch was coming back? Like, wow, I want to be back in Las Vegas fighting in front of these people. Why, because it makes me, give me some goose bomb.

You know what I mean? Yeah. So you missed it. I mean, it's fun when you fight at your best, when you fight, when you're good. Fighting is not a pleasure at your best and you're tired and you're burned out. But would you say that you're more the former now, that you're enjoying it again, that you go to the gym, you have fun, you feel good?

Is that a fair thing to say? A lot more fun, though. Oh, wow. Do you start to think about people you'd like to fight? You know, your friend Farras, your coach, was tweeting to Nate Diaz. He was trying to say that would be a fun fight. Do you think about the same thing? Don't hide, Farras.

We all saw you do it. I know what? I did it because Nate Diaz asked for the GSP fight, and I really was inspired by his win over Connor. And I thought, hey, let me talk to George. Let me talk to Rodolf and see what they say, you know, because I think his name was so big and so hot, maybe that would be an interesting match-up.

But, again, it didn't work out. What do you think, George? Do you start to think about opponents? Would you have liked to fight Nate as well? When I do something, when I do something, I want to do it big. I want to be the best. The guys who...

Oh, do we lose? I want to want to... Do you care about being champion again? Do you want to have the belt? Please. The belt is the title. Maybe I shouldn't say that. Maybe my manager will be angry.

Yes, the belt is mean a lot. When you have the belt, it's something you have the title. You're the supposedly king. Five for me. The belt is a material thing. It's good. I won it a few times. For me, it's to be the best.

I want to fight the best. You know, if I ever come back, you know, I'm talking like I will. I'm not 100% sure if I will. Okay. What about Madison Square Garden? Is that something that interests you now that it's legal in New York? I know you've trained here a lot. New York is like my second home.

Yeah. Very fun for me, you know, because I've been doing that, I've been going in New York since I'm like, I'm like 17 years old. So you'd like to fight on that card potentially. If you come back, that interests you, right? That's something that you would like. You talk to Ariel, but you're pretty, you're funny. You're funny. You're having the piece of the puzzle together, and it kind of makes me laugh, you know?

But now, of course, it would be something that interests me, you know. The bigger it is, the more excited it is for me. George, I'm sweating right now. I'm getting so excited. Yeah, go ahead. I make a joke to my friend. Okay. And I tell them, I tell my friend there's three things in life.

that excite me. Okay. There's a woman, of course, dinosaurs and the violence of the octagon. That's the three things that excite me in my life. Okay, well, then let me ask you this, because the violence is probably coming back, let's be honest. You have a show about dinosaurs, right? Don't you have a show about dinosaurs now?

Yeah, it's a passion for me. It's paleontology. Since I'm a kid, you know, I've been interested to this, and I'm studying this. It's been a long time. It's a passion. People who know me know that, but people who doesn't know me, it doesn't really know that. It's something that is very personal to me. I really enjoy Paliotel issue, yeah.

Where can people watch this show? What channel and what time? It is three channel. It passed. It was on Thursday at 9. The Boneyard. It's called the Boneyard. The Boneyard.

And this Thursday as well? Fast. I don't know when it's going to play again. I'm sure if you look at the schedule, they'll show up, yeah. Okay. So you got the show. And I'm assuming the love life is okay. The last thing you need is the fighting, the three things to be happy, right?

Fantastic. You got it right. It is a beautiful thing. Wow. Okay. So I'll give you one last chance. You want to say anything to your people? Everyone's listening to this very closely.

Is there anything you want to say about a timetable when you hope to decide if you're in, if you're out? What can you leave us with, George? Anything. Give myself any design, any timetables. Things can change so fast. You talk to me about fighting robin. I don't even know.

If it's going to be Robbie Luller, we're going to have the title when I come back. And if I'm going to fight for the title, I don't even know that. Things change so fast in the UFC is so unpredictable. I don't know if I will be back for sure. I haven't done my training yet. I'm doing it. Plus all the possibility with UFC, maybe they're going to say, you know, you know how these business is.

Sometimes you think one guy, this guy is going to win, then the other guy is shot. You never know what's going to happen. You never know what's going to happen. so I keep my option all open and see what's going to happen. You know, it depends what's going to excite me and going to give me more thrill, you know? Okay, so final question.

Last time you were on this show, you talked about some things that happened after your last fight that you weren't happy about. Would you say that your relationship now with the UFC is good, that you're comfortable, you know, fighting for the UFC being in business with them? No, no thing. That's what you talk about.

That and how it was handled afterwards and the stuff with the press conference that you talked about, you seemed upset with, you know, everything that happened leading up to 167 and after the fight as well. Are you more comfortable with things now? Yeah, I've been there. I was very upset and, you know, I had a lot of pressure, very upset. I was on the spotlight and everything,

and, you know, I carry this for, I carry this thing for a long time. But it's far from being perfect thing that can ever be perfect. Affordable now. No one thing would you have. See, I'm not in bad turn with nobody. I understand it's a business, because it's by his interest, and it's normal I said that satisfy my own interest, and everybody tries to do the best for themselves.

It's nothing personal. I don't think it personally. Okay. All right. We will leave it at that. George, thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming on, and when you want to make the announcement that you are coming back,

give me a call. You could come right back here on the show, and we'll talk about it. How about that? Thanks to all my fans. Thank you very much. My sponsor and everybody, they stuck to me, and I really appreciate that. There you have it. Thank you, George. Thank you for us. We appreciate the time very much. And who knows, maybe we'll see you at MSG in November. Thank you so much, guys. There he is. George Rush, St. Pierre. How about that? My heart is beating. I'm sweating right now. There's nothing like that. What do you think? Are we close? Finally? I don't care what I said in the past. I want to see it. I'm a sucker for these things. That's right, I said it.

Wow, that was fun. Okay. And now we'll even want up that. In a minute, we're going to be joined in studio by Benson Henderson. Benson Henderson is making his Bellator MMA debut on Friday on Spike TV against Andrei Koreshkov. He's getting an immediate title shot. He will be fighting for the welterweight title, the Bellator 170-pound division. That is this Friday live on Spike TV.

And in a matter of seconds, he is going to be. to be joining me right here in studio. How about that? I think he's in the building. First, let's rejigger things. Let's reconfigure the studio. Let's go back to an interview that I conducted with Benson Henderson himself, November of 2011 prior to his fight against Clay Gwita. This was in California. And remember, this was prior to UFC on Fox 1. Y'all must have forgot UFC on Fox 1. We just had UFC on Fox 19. And he was in the co-main event fighting in a number one contender fight on Facebook. on Facebook. I kid you not. Co-main event on Facebook.

He won that fight, got a title shot against Frankie Edgar, and became the UFC lightweight champion. That's what we're going to do right now. We're going to look at that interview. Y'all must have forgotten me and Benson Henderson, November of 2011, and then we will come right back here and be joined by Mr. Smooth himself in studio. Don't go anywhere.

Ariel Hawani and Rosemead, California, alongside Benson, don't call me Ben Henderson, who faces Clay Guida this Saturday night at UFC on Foxen. Anaheim, and I say that, Benson, because I received a special memo that you don't want people to call you Ben anymore. It's Benson. Is that correct? I was not aware of that. That's the first of my hearing about that. Someone sent it on your behalf? I got a lot of people who do things on my behalf, so I guess maybe someone got wind of that or something like that.

But it wasn't for me personally. I didn't write you and say, hey, don't call me Ben. But whatever, it is what it is. For the record, I do like Benson. It's a little more unique. More unique. Yeah, you know, kind of rhymes with Henderson, son, son, you know. I was watching you train over there, and I know we've talked about the toothpick thing in the past,

but you were actually, like, hitting the mitts and all that with the toothpick. I mean, I'm actually legitimately concerned for your well-being here. I feel like you're going to, like, pierce your tongue or something. Why do you do that? It's just a bad habit of mine, something I've done for a while now. Just a bad habit. Something I probably shouldn't do. Probably not the wisest decision for me, but, you know, whatever.

Do you roll with it? I've been known to once or twice before, yeah. Now that's just disrespectful for your opponent then. You're going to poke them in the eye. If worse comes to worse, sometimes I've been known to take it out in time. Look it out of them. Wow, look at you. All right, how many times have you been asked this week

about the whole Fox thing and whether you're upset and all that? Has that become annoying throughout this whole process? It has been a common question. Yes, very common. So are you trying to say that I shouldn't ask you that question? No, I'm just saying every other reporter, You know, not saying that you are every other reporter. I think you're a class above every other reporter.

But every other normal reporter has asked that question. It's all I'm saying. Now I really can't ask it. Well, let me ask you this. Yesterday, I saw your name played at the press conference, and then they took it off. What happened there? I don't know. They drove us out to the press conference.

We got there. We stood around for like five, ten minutes, and they told us to just take off. They didn't need us or whatever. So we just left. I think Clay stuck around. But, yeah, you had the pictures of Clay. Yeah, but they told us take off, they need this again, so they'll like, okay, I'll just go back to the hotel. They asked if I want to go to the hotel room and I said, sure, so just went back to the hotel.

Did you feel disrespected? No. I didn't even think about that. Should I? I don't know. You came all the way out there and you're not, you know, it's not often. MMA is very different than boxing where usually there's just two fighters promoted, and this is a very important fight. The fact that you couldn't even be up there, I thought was a little strange.

I don't know, guys. Ariel's asking me if I should feel disrespected. The fact that he's asking me that question makes me feel as if I should be disrespected. The way the question's worded. I'm not saying I do feel the perspective, but you're asking me as if I should be disrespected. I don't know. I didn't feel away earlier. Okay.

Now you're starting to think about it, though. Now you're actually upset. Ariel Hwani planted that seed inside my head. I'm just saying. So just in case you get in trouble with the UFC, blame it on me. I was setting it up, yeah. I'm going to do that. Let me ask you this, though.

When this fight was first proposed and you signed the contract, was there a chance that it could have aired on Fox? I actually have no idea. I'm not in the loop. I'm the last thing. I wanted to know anything. All I heard was this show is going to be on Fox. I was going to be on Fox.

But as far as any details of how many fights were going to be on Fox, I had no idea. Does the party you wish it was a pay-per-view fight because then more people would have seen it? No, not necessarily. I think that I just want to do well. I don't perform well. Wherever it is, the back of a 7-Eleven, you know, in front of 55,000 people, while they were in front of 2,000 people at the Pearl. at the palms or whatever. I just want to perform well, do good, you know, do what I've been training

to do. It doesn't really matter how many people there who's watching, blah, blah, blah. Eventually, it's going to get out there. They're going to have a tape of it. They're going to replay it thousands of times. It's going to get out there, you know. Is it your understanding that the winner of this fight is fighting for the title? No, I have not heard that myself personally from Dana White or Joe Silva. I don't like to, you know, listen to too many of the rumors and anything like that, unless I hear them personally say it, unless I see the interview that you did with Dana White and what Donald White says this is for a number one contendership. I don't listen to any of the rumors, so I have not heard that. Do you think that the winner of this fight should be the number one contender?

That's a good question. I wouldn't say it necessarily should be, but you can make a strong argument for that. If they said the winner gets a title shot, I wouldn't say, you know, oh, no, someone else should get the title shot. I'd definitely take it. Clay has reinvented himself. He's gone back to his wrestling roots. He looked very good against Anthony Pettis. You obviously fought Pettis. Clay wasn't even all that interested in fighting you originally. He said he beat the guy who beat the guy. So now he is obviously fighting you. And I'm wondering if you're impressed with what Clay has done as of late, this role that he's been on. Yeah. Anytime you can get Ws in the UFC, you guys have no idea how hard it is just to win in the UFC. It's not easy. It's not an easy feat. You know how many guys

have come to the UFC, gone 0 and 1, gone 1, gone 1, 2, did not look impressive and were cut. A lot of guys, you know, just to get a W period in the UFC, it's pretty hard to do. For Clay to do, like, what, four or five in a wrestle with that, it's pretty impressive. It's very impressive. I'm looking to get my own little street going. How do you be Claywood? Turn up the intensity. Turn up the intensity.

He's used to being the bully and dance around and being more intense than his other opponents, pushing the pace, relying on his cardio. I'm going to push the pace in this fight. I'm going to see how good your cardio really is. Let's find out. I talked to Donald Sarnie about this a couple weeks ago. He said he has so much more confidence

now than he does that he did back in WEC. And I'm wondering if you have same type of feeling. From the guy who was fighting in WC., fighting Anthony Pettus a year ago, do you feel like you're a different person and fighter? Not necessarily a different person or a different fighter. I wouldn't say either more confident because we're fighting in the UFC. It's just more confidence with time.

Like any time you tell me, your first time as a reporter, your first time interviewing somebody, how confident were you? You know, you were trying to ask this question, trying to ask this question. Same thing for fighters. You know, it takes a while to truly get comfortable inside the octagon. And you can feel comfortable for your fourth or fifth or fifth. fight and you're like, oh, mine, I'm good, I'm fine. I'm feeling, feeling better.

But guess what? By your 10th and 11 fight, you're going to be that much more comfortable inside the Octagon. You know, Sony kind of experience it. I'm experiencing it. Just getting more comfortable, letting go with more stuff, different techniques. I was, you know, too nervous, too scared to throw, you know, earlier in the Octagon, earlier in my career. It is kind of funny.

All right, back on the MMA hour and we're being joined now live and in living color by the newest member of the Bellator MMMA roster. How about this? Benson, Smooth Henderson. Finally, you join us in studio. This is so exciting. Yeah, finally. You guys have me on, so heck, I'm here. Yes, finally. You always have a home here. You're over there. Picture of you there. Picture of you there. Barbarina over here. It's like MMA Lab Day here in this studio. I like it. I can dig it. Well, thank you. You know, it's interesting. We were just looking at that clip. Do you remember that interview? Do you remember that whole week? Yes, I've done a lot of interviews. So obviously it doesn't, you know, come off the top of your head. But what a what a difference. a few years make you were fighting on Facebook. Crazy, right?

Number one contender fight on Facebook, UFC on Fox 1. I always have a thing with the big guys, with the heavy weights, because they get all the love, they make the most money, and yada, yada, yada, y. No matter how skilled the little guys are, us little guys, smaller guys, that sort of stuff. It's always the big guys to get all the attention, get all the love and that sort of stuff. So being a co-de-man event to those big guys, now I get a kick out of it being the main event. And then anytime there's heavy weights as co-main events, I'm like, yes, take, let's fight. Yeah, yeah.

Think that, you heavyweights. And it was funny because that was the much better fight. Remember, the main event lasted like 60 seconds. Yeah. Your fight killed it. That's the one that got you the title shot. And we ended on you talking about just being comfortable in the octagon. And somewhat fitting as you go on this new journey now with Bellator.

Do you think it will take some time to get comfortable? Not only in the actual cage and it's not an octagon anymore, it's a circle essentially, but you know, you're working with new people, different operations. Do you feel like a rookie again? I want to say a rookie, but definitely. a whole new learning curve, getting used to, like you said, people don't realize, I guess, how much of the behind-the-scenes personnel you deal with. And, you know, I said about all the UFC behind-the-scenes guys, they were great and awesome.

And I got to know them. I, you know, like, have great relationship with all those guys outside of UFC, outside of working. You know, pretty good relationship with all those guys. So now working with a new company, a whole new slate of people to get to know and learn about and deal with and work with. So that behind the scenes dealing with them. Right now I'm going through a whole new learning phase,

getting new PR people, new social media people, knew this guy, knew that guy. So for me, it's definitely a learning curve. Being in the UFC was old hat, but now going through this new experience, do you feel a little more nervous? Like, you feel like I have to prove to Belatorre that I was worth the investment, that I was worth their time, their money?

Do you think about that sort of thing? I wouldn't say I have to prove the belt or that I'm worth it. But definitely for most fighters, for myself, when you reach a certain point, when you get the UFC belt, no matter what you do, whether it's a pickup game of basketball, whether it's going to go train at a gym here in downtown New York City, no matter what I do, no matter where I go, everyone's going to bring their best. Yeah. If we can play Tate Tate Tateau, everyone knows how competitive I am. They're going to beat me in Tateau. Oh, hey, I beat, I beat Vincent and Tatecto. So for me, that's what it's more about.

No matter where I go, no matter what I do, everyone is going to bring their best. And I know that. It makes me do that much more. It makes me have to be that much better. Against Andre, man, tough kid. Right now, he's running sprints right now. He's getting ready. He's working his butt off harder than he's ever worked his entire life.

He's going to bring his A game. He's having the best training camp of his entire life. So for me, that's what I think about, not about making it worth Bellator to bring me over and how yada yada that sort of stuff i think about you know whoever i face off against they're bringing their best they're they're making darn sure their training camp their coaches are doing every little thing they can to give that guy an upper hand give him the advantage to make him leave that octagon with his hand raised and it's my job to make sure i work my butt off that much more than him than them so that i leave the octagon with my hand raised you know but you still call it the octagon

I did. I had a boo-boo there. That's trademarked. Yeah, the cage. So are you kind of like annoyed that you have to even do this stuff? Would you rather be doing sprint somewhere? I want to say annoyed. You get used to it. You know, I've been doing it for a long time.

So doing PR stuff, I'm kind of used to it. I'm not as flamboyant or as some individuals. I may not, you know, be as brash or as cocky or as arrogant. But I've been doing it for a while. I know how to sell fights. I know how to sell some tickets. I'm not going to sell my soul to get extra buy. I'm not going to do this and talk like this so that other people tune in.

I'm not going to do that. That's not me. I'm not going to be fake. I'm not going to be the same person on camera, off camera. I don't need extra buys, extra likes, extra views that badly. I'm not going to sell my soul for that price. But I've been doing this for a while now, so I'm used to doing the PR stuff and selling the fights and letting guys know when and where it's going to be.

Make sure you tune in, all that sort of stuff. So the last time you're on this show, it's when you announced to the world that you had signed with Beltor. Although you kind of out-scooped us on your own website, but I won't hold you. That was my guy. Is he here? You came with like 40 guys.

He's not here. Jesus. That was one of my other guys. Totally out-scoop us. I emailed him to him. I told him, hey, release this after a said time, and he released it when the first thing he did in the morning when he got it. I mean, really?

Does he not read his email? Yeah. He didn't read all the way through. He read the beginning. Hey, put this up. Yeah. But he didn't read the end of it where I said, make sure you do it after the Ariel Hwani show. I can break the news.

Totally killed me. Anyway, and then no one gave us the credit, but that's not what I'm about. What I'm wondering is, when you were on the show, you didn't talk about your next fight. You didn't know about it. You kept that close to your vest. Why 170? And why Koreshkov? Because initially when this news came out, everyone was talking Will Brooks.

Everyone wanted to see that fight, but you went in a different direction. Why? I told Bellator, after we signed, and it was official, okay, you're done. We signed the actual paperwork. When do you want to fight? Who do you want to fight? I said, I want to fight tomorrow. I want to fight as soon as possible.

Let's get me inside the cage and let me do what I do best. You guys bring the fans, bring the cameras, make sure you're there. But I just want to hurry up. I want to get this show on the road, you know. And they said, okay, cool. Well, you can have the 70-pound title in April or you can have the 55-pound title and it'll be a little bit later on in fall. I said, hey, soon as possible.

I want to fight right away as soon as possible. So they said, okay, well, it'll be April at 170. I said, sure, no problem. Honestly, did you know who Andre Korshkov was? Be honest. Be honest. I was not exactly aware of who Andre Korshkov was. I did know there was a Russian guy who had the belt that had beat Douglasema.

But I didn't know who he was or anything else particular about him. But I know a whole lot more about him now. You know him now. Yep. After watching him, studying his game and all that, where do you put, you know, considering the people you fought as of late, you know, the Mazvedals of the world. the fatches of the world, the Saronis of the world.

Where do you put him? Is he below these guys? Is he above them? What do you think? That's tough to say, because so much of what we do is based off comparison. So you see this guy against an opponent you faced off before. This guy faced this guy who faced this guy, that sort of like MMA math type of thing, you know. But because he doesn't have a whole wealth of, well, he has an 18-to-1, so he has a lot of fights, you know.

But I don't have anything to really thick. compare him to, so we'll find out. I'm not sure. I don't know how I would rank him compare to other guys because I haven't seen him face off against common opponents. So, to be honest, I couldn't say. The fact that you're going from an eight-sided cage to a circle, does that play into your preparation at all? No. You don't use the cage, the angles and all that to your advantage?

I definitely try to use the angles of the octagon to my advantage, you know? You don't have that liberty now. You don't have that luxury, I should say. Yeah, now not having that, I imagine it won't be. too much problem. Like, it'll be more of a circling if the guys are elusive. I want to dance away, but Andre's going to walk forward. I'm going to walk forward. We want to see who the better man is. So I don't imagine there'll be too much of an angle game in this fight. Has it, you know, there's been a couple of cases recently where people have fallen out of UFC fights on, you know, like with a few days notice. And I keep getting tweets like, oh, you know who would have stepped up here?

Benson ended. Have you been getting those as well? I've been getting quite a few of them, yes. Do you smile when that happens? It's nothing I can do now. But yeah, just. smile and laugh and nod and pretty much agree, you're right. That would have been interesting fight. Yes, I probably would have taken it. Yes, I probably would have got my hand raised, but what are you going to do? You know, what's said is said, what's done is done. But I feel like you started to really ramp up as far as that mindset is concerned.

Once you started to, you saw the light at the end of the tunnel and you wanted to expedite your contract, right? So you weren't always really that way. No, I think I was always that way. But when you're on the path to a title and then when you're defending your title, you can't take shirt notice fight. Sure. When you are going to get the belt and you have, you're facing the number three guy and then, you know, you beat that guy, then you're, you're two fights away or one fight away from a title shot out of what, yada, yada, yada, you can't necessarily, oh, well, take me out of that fight and I'll fight this guy. You need, you need me to fight this guy right away. It doesn't quite work out that way. And then when you're defending the belt,

you don't only have the choice. You fight whoever, you know, they present in front of you and you can say yes and that's pretty much it, you know. But I think I was that way pretty much for my, most of my whole career is like hey i want to fight i want to stay busy yet luckily thankfully in most of my career after my fights i'm not too injured i'm not too beat up i'm not too sore so why were i not want to fight as much as possible you know um and you know uh after uh not having the belt um they needed my services i said yeah sure i'm your guy hit me up anytime you guys need somebody i'm i'm ready to go five rounds let's go do it no problem main event elevation no problem sure, let's do it.

But, you know, I wasn't able to really do that until after I, you know, didn't have the belt anymore. So the belt was almost holding you back. From fighting more often? Yeah, absolutely. As you know, you've become sort of the poster boy of free agency in our sport. And it's interesting because this has become, this is the biggest story in MMA. It's going to get bigger.

More fighters are talking about it. I think it's fascinating just as a sports fan. And I don't think, I think sometimes, and let's be honest, the UFC in particular, they view this as a negative. But you're a football fan. You like sports. I use this example often. Like Carmel Anthony is one of my favorite players on the Knicks. When he tested the free agency waters, I didn't take it as an insult.

The Knicks didn't take it as an insult. They played the game. They got them back. All's well and good. Let's move on. But in our sport, it's different and new. And it's like personal. Like you're not, if you're not with us, you're against us, that sort of thing.

But what's funny is when people are talking about it, they go through the list. They talk about Phil Davis. They talk about Josh Thompson. That's not true. That's inaccurate. You're the first guy to really do it. Those guys were coming off losses. They weren't extended contracts.

You were. You tested the waters. You're coming off wins. You're really the first guy. Are you comfortable with this idea that you are kind of a pioneer, that you led the charge, that you ignited this flame? Yeah, I think definitely for sure. Bringing up Phil and Josh and them not having a contract extension offered to them is definitely a good point. Yeah.

Yeah. That's the way it is. But me being on a two-fight win streak, you know, two bigger wins, you know, more notable, sort of school or whatever, moving up, way class. Main events. Main events, you know, for sure, I think it has helped me, helped the transition into free agency. And like how you mentioned free agents, not just within one organization. So this is one organization.

UFC is just an organization. The sport is MMA. But comparing to basketball or NBA or NFL even is not exactly a fair. A fair comparison. But when you compare it to, like, say, international football stars, soccer stars, moving from one organization to another organization. The English Premier League is one of the biggest best leagues in the world, you know.

But when you have one guy moved from the English Premier League to Major League Soccer, that's two different organizations, the sports, the same soccer, international football, but they're moving to different organizations. That I think is a little more of a fair comparison between, you know. Yeah. I think for me moving from the UFC organization. organization, definitely for sure. You can't argue the biggest MMA organization on the planet.

Moving to a rival company, Bellatoro, who is the number two, you know, MMA organization on the planet. It was a big deal. It's a very big wave, you know. Do you read a lot about this stuff like when Beckham came over and stuff? And I don't want to overstate this, but is this fascinate you? You know, even going back to Kurt Flood and baseball and, you know, free agency. Like, have you now become more interested in this subject because it affected you?

I think definitely because of my personal involvement in the correlations. the parallels that I see between the two, I did my research into the international soccer stars and how big their deals were, how much it helped them, how much it hurt other organizations was better for some organizations, even talking about,

oh, now I'm going to forget, but I believe it was Steve Young, moving over from the National Football League to the U.S.FL. Yeah, USFL to the NFL. Yeah, yeah, of course. That sort of a move. And it's also another big deal. Two different organizations,

but the same sport, the sport of football, but two different organizations. So I think when I saw those parallels in my personal involvement, I definitely read a lot more into it, for sure. And you're getting a lot of fighters call you up secretly saying, yo, what was this process like? Yeah, for sure. I've had a couple of a couple of using title holders.

Current belt holders hit me up. There's not that many of them. Let's go through the list. Let's go through the list. But, you know, a ton of fighters, guys who are still in the youth. C roster. But I mean, but people act as if it's bad to have a conversation.

It's not bad to talk. It's not bad at talk. It's not, if someone's going to hit me up and call me up and say, hey, you know, what was the process like and what all did it involve? Was Dana Mad?

It was Lorenzo mad? And then you got to explain to him, no, like it's, it's a business. If there's one thing, Lorenzo Fertita understands, is business. He's a billionaire with a B.

Yeah. Billion. He's a smart dude. He's made a ton of money. He understands business. He understands you making business decisions what's best for you and your family based off what's best for you and your family.

He understands those sort of decisions, you know? It is also important to know to be as fair as possible here. Some people have decided to stay with the UFC. Some have gone from Bellator to the UFC. So it's not an exodus, if you will. That's the healthiest. That's what we want in this sport, right? Where guys can just fight out their contract

and just be the sort of decider where they fight next. That's really what this is all about, right? And that's what you want. You want to have options. You want to say, oh, hey, well, this company's going to give you this much money. They're going to promote you this sort of way. They're going to do this for you and do that for you. This company is going to take care of you in this way.

They're going to give you this so much, much money. This company is going to give you money on the front end. This company is going to come and give you money in the back end, yada, yada, yada. But you want options. You want to see what's your name, what your brand, how much it brings to the table. For fighters, our time span for how long we can fight and make decent money, I can't fight for as long as you can do. your job here. Sure, sure. So I have to take advantage of the limited number of years I have. Speaking of which, how old are you? Are you 33 yet? 32. 32. When are you 2033?

Coming up, couple months. A couple months. Oh, November. November. So in seven months. You're going to have to retire in seven months because you are a man of your word. I am. But remember, I said I was 33 in however many months. So I could be 33 in 11 months. I don't believe it. Why even say that? So that people like me can now bust your chops over it? What? Why? The real reason, to be frank with you, was I will end up joining the military branch. I have always hoped that pretty strong civic duty. Us as Americans, we need to a better job, period. We are not very strong in that sort of patriotic sense.

You're going to leave everything and go join the Army? Reserve. Reserve. Yeah. Whatever military branch is most convenient with what I can. bring to the table and what I can involve. Luke Air Force Base is in Phoenix local, so it might be the Air Force Reserves I join or whatever. Can you do both, though?

Like, you know, Tim Kennedy does both. Yeah. So will you, but will you want to do just one? Like, when you do that, will you leave MMA? I was planning on originally, I thought I would have to leave MMA, but I've talked to a few recruiters, and they're the ones who let me know, oh, no, no, there's age limitations on joining up. But the age limitations, there's a special.

discomstations or whatever that's pronounced, whatever that's called, for joining any military branch. So like, oh, you don't have to be 33 because the cutoff age for certain branches. Oh, so that's why you said 33. It had to be like 34 or before I turned 34 to a two and this. So yeah, it had to be 33 before I could join on.

So how long have you felt this way that you needed to do this? For the longest time. Like kids always say all the time, like, oh, I was going to join the Marines. I was going to join the Army. I was going to do this. I was going to do that. Like every 22 year old says that I was going to join the military

I was going to join the Navy I was going to do whatever blah blah you know Yeah They go through whatever steps to do It's something that I've always felt When I'm older when I'm 50 I want to tell my kids I want to tell my grandkids hey

You have a duty to your country You have a civic duty to your country To serve to give back to the country What have you done for your country besides Yeah You know Eat the food and use electricity What have you done

And what have you brought to your country? So that's something I felt pretty strongly about. And, you know, I'm finding out there's other ways to go about doing it. But you can, you know, I can do it while still having a, while still having an M.M.A. career. So it's like that famous John F. Kennedy line. Ask not what your country could do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Absolutely.

You should be the poster boy. You should be like the guy that they. I'm not quite sure how I feel. Again, I talked to a few of the higher up recruiters for a couple different branches. And I'm not quite sure how I would feel being used as a face for whatever. You just want to do your thing. I just want to do my duty. If my duty is fixing trucks for eight hours a day, no problem.

So you don't want to necessarily go to combat overseas, things like that? I'd be open to it. I talked to my wife about it. Yeah. So you have a kid now. Yes. Yeah. If that's a possibility, if that's, you know, if that's a duty that the branch of the military

feels I'm best fit for, sure, no problem. Is it something that you want to do? Sure. I'm not 21. I'm not 18. I don't want to go to war and go do that. this like no i'm old man i don't i don't need to like prove myself and go to war and all that sort of stuff you know but if that's if that's what is called if that's what it takes you know when 9-11

happened this city was hit you know incredibly hard did you feel that like because you you heard this from a lot of americans back then that they wanted to sign up they were never seen did did that did that affect you like that um it did probably not as much as some people make it out to sound you know but for sure it affected me for sure it's still in the back of my head um you know, the 9-11 thing, you know, terrible, not good, bad. But I wouldn't say that was like a strong pusher of me making. Were you feeling that way before? I thought it would be even younger, yeah.

So why did you ever explain the 33? Like you would say, I want to retire on number 33, but you never actually explain why. Again, just more of a private person. I don't really, I didn't want to like, hey, I'm going to go do this. And what if I never did it? Everyone was like, oh, you said you're going to go do this and you never did that, blah, blah. Fair enough. Fair enough.

So, again, a little bit more of a private person. But having talked to a few more of the recruiters, the different branches of the military, knowing now that I have a couple more options and how to get it done and they're a little bit more leeway with it. You know, I feel that we can, I can do it and I'm not nervous about. And if it doesn't happen, if I try to join a military ranch and it end up being too old or to this or I need to go over here and I can't do that or whatever reason, you know, no big deal also. I tried. What if they tell you to cut your hair? They're going to tell you that, right?

Yes. The thing with the hair is this is a secret, again, but more of a private person, but whatever. But after I retire from fighting, when I'm done fighting, I'm cutting the hair off. Really? And I'm rock hats all the time, so no one recognizes me. You're tired of all this. It is cool, but I'm not a public

person. I'm not like a super outgoing personality. I walk in a room. I need everyone. and no, I'm in the room. I'm not one of those guys. You know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not that person. I'm not going to sell my soul to be that person, so I get a few more likes and I get a couple of Instagram followers and this and that. I'm not that person.

Some people are, some guys are that way. Sure, go ahead, be you, do you, no problem. That's okay. I'm just not that way. I don't want to be that way either. But it's interesting to hear you say that you're going to cut the hair after you fight because a lot of people would say that the hair hurts you when you fight. Some people could say that, but those people,

how many of them have actually stepped inside of the, a cage and fought themselves. Some fighters, though, have said, like, I remember K.J. Nune said it was a big mistake when he fought Nick Diaz. The hair was in his face. Oh, was it? But that was, you know, whatever. Everyone's different.

I remember when you fought Anthony the second time, you braided the hair and something just felt off. And never again, right? We're never braiding the hair. You had the beard. You came out with the black belt and you braided the hair. The whole universe was going in a different direction. Yeah.

That day, that night was just not a good night in general. So probably, probably not braided the hair again. When's last time you got a haircut? 2006. You're kidding. Yeah, 2006. What? My senior year right before getting ready for wrestling season to officially get started.

So probably November or 2006 around there. No one has not even like a trim, nothing. No, nothing. I wrestle every day. We practice so much. I have huge clumps of my hair. The gym calls them, everybody at the gym calls them Benson bunnies.

I have huge clumps of my hair throughout the gym. Wow. Oh, yeah. You can see I was rolling around earlier today. right over in that corner because my huge chunk of my hair is right over there so yeah but why did you even let it grow uh i always cut it when i was younger i always shaved it i do i'd wait like a month or two uh you know three weeks four weeks whatever i'd yeah and i would shave it because i don't like dealing with my hair i don't like gel or doing this or doing that i'm not like a pretty boy

from her down i don't need to sit there and in front of a camera for or front of a mirror for 30 minutes doing your hair uh so i'd always just shave it and eventually um it was always shave for most of my whole life because of wrestling and I would just shave it shave it wait a while shave it and then um and then I wanted to grow it out but the same thing applies like I don't want to deal with it I hop out the shower I shake my head a few times and I'm out the door I say I don't put any product in it I don't mess around with it I don't do this but I just wanted to change things up I guess when you got into wrestling was it all to become an MMA fighter like was this the plan all along for you no when I when I when I when I started wrestling was just purely for

the love and enjoyment of um competition I love the completely Pete. Wrestling was awesome. I was too small. I played basketball in seventh grade and eighth grade. You don't have basketball skills. Let's play. Listen to this guy.

We're going to find out. I'm going to film it too. I asked my guy New York to bring in a net and we could have a free throw competition, but they didn't help me out. I wanted to do. It's going to be live on pay-per-view one day. Maybe Viacom. Maybe Spike can air it.

We'll set something up. I'm going to talk to Belator. We're going to set something up. Fair enough. But I was too short. seventh and eighth grade going into high school didn't make the team

and I was bummed out and sad Shocker didn't make the team I was like four foot seven at the time Really? Wow Didn't hit my gross part until after my freshman year in college. Okay

But anyways Yeah I was like not playing basketball anymore Wond around And then my freshman year The wrestling coach Say hey what are you doing I was like no nothing I'm just kind of hanging out

basketball season basketball started and I didn't make the team says oh cool grab your workout stuff and come in the wrestling room I was like all right and I got my stuff went to the rest of room and I went wrestling you knew nothing about wrestling no yeah nothing started my freshman year yeah you didn't even watch it didn't watch it didn't practice didn't do anything else like like I could start when they're like you know five years old or six year I started my freshman year um joined the wrestling team I liked it it was right away yeah you just you said this is cool yeah it's totally different than basketball this is like a one-man on one thing.

No, I liked it a lot. I dug it a lot. The practices were hard. They were tough. I got beat up, but I beat up some other guys also at the same time. It was fun. I liked it. I dug it right away.

I was pretty good at it, you know, right away also. So I'm sure that helped quite a bit. When do you start thinking about fighting? That was way later. Like, after I graduated college, like, Matt Hughes had the bell at the time. So a lot of college wrestlers were, you know, thinking about MMA. There's no NFL for college wrestlers. You know, you wrestle in college.

After that, you become a high school coach. Right. But there's no, you know, organization for, for wrestlers, college wrestlers to go into. There's no major league baseball. There's no National Basketball Association. So for wrestlers, when MMA came about as a viable way to make good money of the professional athlete, a lot of wrestlers, you know, took right to it. And then that's when I started, you know, thinking about, maybe I'll give it a shot. I don't know.

Fighting. Yeah. I'll give it. I'll give a shot. Why not? No problem. When's the first time you remember thinking this is something I'm going to go for? I think after I had to fight on a whim, I dare, a bunch of dudes sitting around after a hard red flag practice.

I was coaching. It was the year after I graduated at Dana. I was coaching. We had a red flag practice, which means like a really hard, tough practice. Okay. Got all the guys sitting around who was like, oh, Ariel, oh, Ariel would do great in the cage. He'd beat somebody up. He'd do good.

Oh, Yadi would do great. He'd murder somebody in the cage. He's mean. Oh, I got on to me. Henderson, they're like, uh, wow. We don't know, Henderson. I'm not the toughest of individuals. Yeah, yeah.

I'm not a Billy badass, not like that. I was like, screw you guys. I could go in there. I could beat somebody up. Come on. Like, come on. That's jacked up, guys. And then everyone called you out on it.

And I had to back it up. I had to prove it. So then like three, four hours later, I was in downtown Omaha, Sokol South. And I was inside of a cage. And some dude was, get out of here. Three, four hours later. Yeah. Yeah.

It was back in the day when, you know, you could, go somewhere and you could get fight they would call it guys from the crowd who wants to fight tonight what yeah you had no experience no no not experience no did you win corey cori klein bill was the guy's name cori wow you won yeah i i i i i i was this on your pro record uh i think it's no amateur okay yeah amateur no i took the guy down um thankfully he like was trying to knock my head off by i end up taking him down i just like did this a couple times closed my eyes referee pulled me off and the crowd went crazy. First round TKL.

Yeah. Oh, I just took him down and like I did this and then he just turtled up, you know. Less than a minute? I think maybe a little over a minute probably. Wow. But so there was no way in, no nothing? You just, you just showed up to a place. What was it like a bar or something?

Sokol sounds like an auditorium type thing. Okay. Yeah. Wow. That is amazing. And so you win that fight and then you say. Yeah, I won the fight. I was like, I'll give a shot.

I'll try it. We'll see. You know. But if they don't dare you four hours prior, this doesn't happen? No, I'm not going to go into a cage and some guys are trying to beat you up, no way. Was that fighting a cage or ring? That one was in a cage. That is wild.

Old school cage, too. No plastic coating around the cage. It was just like the actual cage. So your back tested, you're like, oh, yeah. I want to get up against that. Actually, I wouldn't know how that feels. I'm like, yeah, of course. So do you ever wonder if they didn't dare you what you'd be doing now?

At the time, I had just got hired to the Omaha Police Department and the Denver Police department. And I was deciding between the two, which one I wanted to go to, you know, seeing how much each one paid, the cost of living for each city, where I would live at and, you know, deciding between the two. So if I was not fighting, I was going to be a police officer in Omaha or Denver, and then, you know, they had a good life. So that first fight happens, how long, what do you do do you do you say, okay, I'm going to become an MMA fighter now and drop everything? After that first fight, it was like a, not a joke of a fight, but that first fight where I was woefully unprepared and had zero training. Did you even have a mouthguard, a mouthpiece?

I did have a mouthpiece. You did, okay. Did you have a cup? Probably not. I don't think you had a cup. What were you wearing? Just like random shorts? Wrestling shorts.

Wrestling shorts. Wrestling shorts. Okay. Our team's wrestling shorts. That is amazing. Okay. So then what do you do? What do they do then?

I think I hit up one of my friends, Leicester Bowling, the head coach of Colorado. Yep. And he wrestled with me. We wrestled together at Dana College. He graduated the year before. Okay. But I knew he was big into MMA. He was like the tough guy.

He was like the guy who everyone would say, oh yeah, at least he would do great. He'd murder everybody, blah, blah, blah. But I hit him up, told him I was thinking about trying and fighting and giving a shot and that sort of stuff. Like, oh, well, I know a guy here in Denver, Colorado, Alvin Robinson, his coach is John Crouch. If you're thinking about it, if you want to take it seriously, once you come on down and see how you like it, try it. And then I end up moving down to Denver. This whole thing, I feel like you're glossing over something here because it goes from a dare to you changing your life and calling someone. How does that happen?

Did your buddies on the wrestling mat say, like, what kind of monster did we just create here? Like, all this because they tested your manhood. Maybe I should rethink my basketball there here. Pretty much. No, I think it was just, I was young still, like 22, I just graduated, you know, and I still had a strong desire to compete. I still wanted to, you know, do something. I spent, you know, how long wrestling and getting ready and getting beat up.

So I wanted to use those wrestling skills I developed. And, you know, your chance to be a professional athlete. How many times do you get a chance to pursue something as a professional athlete? You know, guys, you know, live the whole lives trying to be a professional athlete. So I was like, yeah, I'll give a shot. Let's do it, you know, no problem. When do you go to Arizona? I did a year in Denver with John Cowell,

John, Kid Robinson, those guys. Got beat up a whole lot. This was how bad it was with Alvin. We had only the four-ounce, small, skinny, MMA gloves. We didn't wear shin pads. We didn't wear headgear. And we did our sparring sessions

inside of a boxing ring and no shin pads. I got the tar beat out of me about Alvin. I'll beat me up pretty bad. And he was one of those freak guys who doesn't get tired at all. So he would want to do like seven, eight rounds. Oh, my. And I was his only training partner at the time. Like, he beat up some of the Jitsu students, you know.

Like they would put their gloves on and they'd go in there and try to help out as much as possible get better. But then I was only his own one of his only other, like real training partners who would, you know, be there for him whenever he wanted. So I would do like six, seven rounds with him. And he would just beat the tar out of me with the little small, anime gloves, no shin pads, getting beat up, not know what's going on. I was like, oh, this is, this is fun. This is fun. But you kept coming back. But kept coming back.

And after a year in Denver doing that with Alvin, there was a guy who knew John Crouch, who lived in Phoenix. He had just opened up a brand new, say, the art gym. He wanted an MMA gym, a gym focused on MMA, and he wanted the professional fight team. He knew that John had Alvin Kid Robinson, who was going to be a big star in the UFC, a couple other younger guys.

So he flew out those. guys to Phoenix. And then I tagged along. I was like, hey, you guys all leaving the Phoenix? Like, what's going on? Like, I heard someone say, you guys are moving to Phoenix. Can I go? I want to come too.

And so I tagged along. Wow. We went with them out to Phoenix. And I cleaned the mats, mop the mats, you know, mop the mats, clean the walls, took the garbage out, cleaned the toilets for almost two years. I did that in Phoenix at the lab. Wow. Yeah.

And are you fighting during this period? During the time I was training full-time at the lab. I'd take morning class. I do have another private with one of my boxing coaches or my kickboxing coach. During the lunch break, a couple hours of lunch break, I would clean the lab, take out the garbage, all that sort of stuff. Come back for team practice three to five. And then I would stay at night and take the night classes, juice and music classes with John Crouch. And are you taking fights as well?

Or are you just training at this point? No, I had a few fights early on. I had a few fights, yeah. One of my favorite, I mean, the relationship that you have with John is like one of those all-time great relationships. It reminds me of like the one that DJ has with his coach, right? I mean, there's just certain relationships, Connor and his coach, John Kavana, that you just feel like regardless, these two are going to be together forever, right? And forever is a big word, I know. But there's no better, like, there's some great clips online.

There's no better clip than the one where he comes up to you. It's either at the beginning of practice or end of practice. Is at the end of a sparring session, and Alvin had just beaten me up with like two, three rounds, and then I did another round with somebody else, and I did another round with somebody else, and that's when he came up to us. For those that don't know, this is the clip. Here it is. There it is.

January 5th, 2008, you heard it here first. This is from John Crouch's YouTube channel. You look awesome today. You are going to be a superstar in this sport. Remember, I was the first one that said that. Hey, I mean it. I think you're going to be phenomenal. You're going to be a household name if you want to be.

You know, if you keep going doing the things you're doing, you're going to beat everybody else. Stay with you guys. Everybody. It's you, though, man. I mean, you got a big heart. You're a great guy, and you're a great fighter. I'm enjoying every step of this way.

Man, that legitimately gives me goosebumps. You too? Yeah, absolutely. That's a good one. I'm going. Tugs the heartstrings for me. It's amazing. That was more than eight years ago. Do you remember that vividly, that moment? Not vividly, but, you know, I've seen it.

How many times? When's the last time you saw that clip? Oh, a couple years at least, I'd say. To have your coach and someone with his background say that to you and then come back and say it again and have that belief in you, that day must have, you felt like you were on Cloud 9, right? To have someone, you know, have your back like that? Yeah, no, no, for sure. You know, I'm a big believer in John Crouch. He's a proven winner. He coached like state champions and band And like interpretive dance band type stuff But he's a great guy, great eye for details

So I'm a big believer in John Crouchon For him, the place that kind of faith in me For him to say that, go out of his way You know, definitely absolutely meant Did you believe it that day? What he was saying That you were going to be a superstar in a household name? It was just another day, a hard work

Kind of one of those pending the bank days I got beat up a little bit I did some beating up with some other guys you know But not specifically that day, at that point in your life, did you believe you'd be a household name and make a living and be able to provide for a family by fighting and all that? Household name, no. Did I think I had enough?

I didn't think I had enough, but I knew I would work my butt off enough to be in the UFC. At that time, I think 2008, I knew that I would be in the UFC and that I could work my butt off enough to get to the UFC for sure. I remember when you got to WEC and it was amazing. You could hardly see in your fights, right? Yeah, I was, you saw those glasses, right? Yeah. I was blind as the bat.

I could barely see it. How did you pass the commission test? How were you able to pass? Like, don't you, don't you have eye exams before these fights? I might have fibbed once or twice. Oh, my gosh. And see the letters real quick before I took my glasses off and then did the test and just kind of spot off some letters. And luckily, I got.

I remember talking to you about it. This is like back in the versus days, you were saying that you would see double, triple of your opponent. No, mostly. I want to see double-chip-old. They would just be very blurry. Blurdy. Nere-sided, far-sided, so I couldn't see far away. So my guys would be super blurry.

I couldn't see any, read any tattoos on them or anything like that. Right. It would be really blurry. But thankfully, for most of my fights early on in my career, the gloves were either bright red or blight blue. So that would help me a lot to distinguish, like, where a punch was coming. I would just see a red blur coming out of me and try and get out of the way. Wow. So that helped me the most, having the bright gloves, actually.

So if you were fighting in the UFC with the black gloves, that would have been tough. It might have been pretty tough for me. I might have got hit a little bit more. Why didn't you think to change this, to fix this? Like, you're fighting against a man who's trying to knock your head off, and he's blurry. That didn't freak you out? I just think I was just used to it because of wrestling, you know? Like I wrestled almost my whole life when it was like that.

It was fine, no problem. I learned to adjust and make it like, oh, well, I lost that match. I couldn't see him from far away. So when he did a super duck on me, I couldn't see it. I didn't make excuses. I need to get better. I need to have a better reaction. I need to react quicker than that or whatever the case was.

You know, so I didn't make a big deal about it. It's just, that's the way it is. If that's the way it is, that's the way it is. No problem. Get better, learn. But now you're good. Now I'm good, yeah. Now I'm better.

When did you fix it? 2008, 2009. I had PRK surgery. Wow. Now I have better than 2020 vision. Was it that first fight, do you remember who was against where you were perfect? And you were like, wow. I had good eye vision in the first fight.

What was I missing? I don't remember who that was against. I'm not sure. It wasn't WC though, right? Because I remember this all happening. It had to be WC, yeah. Yeah. Did you remember thinking to yourself,

this is so much better? I can actually see the opponent. Was it that big of a difference? I remember the first sparring session after the surgery. Yeah. Because I had the eye surgery. Then I went on vacation because I needed the time off. I timed it to make sure I had the surgery.

They went on vacation. And when I came back, going in sparring rounds, I was like, man, this is awesome. This is great. I can freaking see the guy from across the cage. Yeah. This is wonderful.

What a luxury. Was that a really special time for you that W.C. time because I felt like all of you guys, in particular, that division, which for a while was the only division that was being shared by the UFC. Everyone slept on you guys. Everyone thought that you were a lesser tier talent. Did you feel like, yeah, you wanted to fight Seroni and Pedus, but you kind of were like a fraternity in a weird way, right?

Yeah, for sure. Like, being the younger brother, sort of speak. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. We definitely felt a, uh, we all had a chip in our shoulders. Yeah. We all, we all shared that same chip. It was the same chip.

It was on my shoulders, was on Donald's shoulders, was on Anthony's shoulders, was on, um, Danny Castillo's shoulders, was on everyone's shoulders, Anthony and your quantities. Like, we all had that same chip. We all shared that load. Oh, how do you think you do against UFC fighters? Like, who do you think we train you with every day? Yeah. We train with the UFC fighters.

I do pretty well against most of UFC fighters. I think I would do pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty. well. So getting that questions over and over and over. It definitely left a chip on our shoulders. Even like Josh Thompson, I remember, called you out. It was like, who's Benson Henderson? You remember that? Yes. Remember that at a press conference? Now you're in the same company. Yeah, that was, I mean, of course, you fought him. But that was like, that it always felt like you guys weren't getting the respect that you deserved. And, and, and of course, they merged. Do you remember when, when you found out that, like, this was going to be your

opportunity finally? Do you remember how you reacted to that? I do. I do. I do. That part. I I actually remember exactly where I was. Wow. I was, just got off morning practice, was at home, had lunch, took a nap, and I woke up to, like, three or four missed calls for my manager at the time. Like a text message, give me a call right away, and a couple of minutes calls from a few other guys. And I called them back, and that's when they announced it, merged over, big news, yada, yada, you're in the UFC. So that's how I found out.

Now, this was right before you were going to fight Anthony in the final show. Yep. Like this all happened within a span of a few months. And not only that, it was in your adopted home state now of Arizona. There was a lot of pressure on you that night. I guess so. You feel it? I guess you could say that a lot of pressure.

But there's a lot of pressure on me for every fight. And I place the most pressure on myself, more than anybody else, more than any other, you know, oh, stipulation this and oh, this is on the line, first time this, first time that last event, this ever, last time, that ever, blah, blah. I placed the most pressure on myself to get my hand raised. There's no one else on this plan. planet who puts as much pressure on themselves than I do on myself to be successful, to get my hand race, to do the right things. I walk by home at my house, I walk by and there's a piece of garbage on the ground.

And I just walk by it, leave it there. Oh, no big deal. And I'm like, oh, I should be a better person. My wife, Maria deserves better than that to me just walk around and leave garbage on the the ground. And I turn around and pick it up and I throw that away. I place that pressure to be a better person, to be a good person. to do the right things, not just in the cage, but outside the cage, on myself more than anybody

else could ever come close to putting that kind of pressure on me. Sometimes is it too much? Do you feel like you put too much pressure on yourself? I think pressure is something that weak men, weak women cannot take. So is there ever too much? No, there's not ever too much, but it can hesitate. It can be, it can get suffocating, right? Yeah, it can get overwhelming after a while. After having, you know, three, four years of the top of your game, the best in the world,

just that over time, it never goes away and there's more pressure. And then there's more pressure. The next year there's more pressure and more pressure. It can definitely be a little bit overwhelming. But that's when you have to really center yourself and then rely on who or what you're going to rely on. For me, I have, you know, our Lord God to rely on. and I draw on him for strength. For me personally, some people want to rely on other medications or drugs or this or that.

And go ahead, no problem. But definitely after it gets to a point where it's so overwhelming. You need something else to rely on to help you through those hard moments. You must have felt this was the moment to come into the UFC as champion. Right? Yeah. You wanted that. For sure.

You wanted to have that belt. I wanted to go in and I wanted to show everybody. Oh, yeah, we're not good enough. And we're not the same caliber as these other guys. Let me show you. Yeah. Let me show you. And you were going to get the unification fight.

Yeah. As a result, that was all announced. Does that still eat at you? I would say ease at me. I think I've done a good job, a better job as I've gotten older in my career. And older as a person to mature and be a better, a good enough person, be a better person to where I can let things go. I can let it. I'm still not happy about it.

I'm not happy about the result. Any of my five losses. I'm not happy about any of those five losses. But can I let them go? Can I grow from it? Can I be a better person? Can I make the better decision so that result does not ever happen again? Can I do that?

I've come to the point where I can do that. But yeah, it's still not exactly happy about coming over to the UFC, not having the Deputy Belt of Arm in my ways. Yeah, man, I'll never forget being at that post-fight press conference, and you showed up, and I was talking about this earlier with Rashad Evans. You know, I have so much respect for the fighters who lose in the main event and show up to that press conference and face the music, because you know deep down we're the last people you want to go.

talk to you hate us and you're like shut the F up with these stupid questions and you started to get emotional in front of all of us that must have been you remember that I do I do remember that that was uh that was a hard time that was a hard time but I think in those hard times is when you have to show the kind of man you really are those that that exact hard time I've had five of those hard times that's when you have to show the kind of character you are the kind of person you are and it's not fun it doesn't feel good it's sad it's sucky yeah there's there's there's there's There's how many people on the planet who know what it feels like to lose a world title. It doesn't feel good.

Yeah. But those hard times is what leads to hopefully glory, more glory later on, you know. Rashad said a very, I don't know if you saw his fight or any of his comments afterwards on Saturday. He lost on Saturday. He said he's embarrassed. And it's a very tough thing to hear that from a fighter who's like a superhero, a former champion. That's something that like a little kid would say, you know, that he's so vulnerable. in that moment, my heart went out to him.

I really felt bad for the guy. And when he started to say that, like, I just can't, it's not working for me like it used to. It's not as easy. Do you fear that? I don't fear it. I think there comes a time with everybody, with any professional athlete, there comes a time when, you know, you get to that point where it doesn't work for you the way it used

to. It's sad, but it's true. I think you as a man, you as a woman, you, as a person and how you deal with that because it is going to happen it's a matter it's a it's a matter of fact we are all going to die on this planet how are you going to deal with that how are you going to react to that above and beyond more than like winning they're losing you're going to die we're all going to die how are you going to act in the meantime between them are you going to be a good person you're going to be a not good person are you make the right decisions are you make bad decisions

you know oh well you know people always say the silly uh analogy oh what if what if you knew you're going to die 24 hours from now, what would you do? Well, you do know you're going to die. You know for a fact, it might be 70 years, it might be 50 years, but how are you going to act in that meantime? What are you going to do? What kind of person you're going to be? So for professional athletes nearing the end of their career, it happens.

It sucks. It's sad. It is heartbreaking. But it happens to all professional athletes, not just fighters. It happens to tennis players. It happens to golfers. It happens to professional figure skaters. Yeah.

It sucks. And hopefully you are a good enough person to have stuff set up segue into something else and have success doing whatever the next thing is. But you can't be a professional athlete. Being a professional athlete is a limited number of years. Fighters is perhaps the smallest limited number of years. Being a professional golfer, you can do it for maybe 25 years, something like that, you know. But at the end of the 25 years, you need to have something else you can segue into. Where's the toothpick right now?

You have one? Not right now. Why not? Why would you not have it in an interview and have it in a fight? Can we stop with the toothpick thing? It makes me anxious. Actually, you know what? To be honest, now that I had my son and someone said to me, oh, your son's going to see your toothpick and he's always going to have a toothpick. I was like, that's like, that's going to be like five years old, seven years old and he's going to run around the house with the fucking toothpick in his mouth. That's insane. So are we done with it? Yes. I'm like, son, no, no toothpicks. It makes me so uncomfortable. No toothpicks. So you're done? Hopefully, hopefully. Hopefully, I need to be a better person and set a good example for my son. And so I've actually around the house, because normally I sleep up with them in, I take naps. I do everything to do that again, my wife hates it. And I was joked around like, oh, it's no big deal, whatever.

It's okay. I'm fine, sweetie. It's a big deal. Yeah. And now with my son, like, I have toothpicks around the house a lot less now because of that. And I'm like, yeah, that's silly because Keng is going to see this. And he's going to have early childhood memories. Some of his first memories are going to be me having a toothpick in, and then he's going to be five, four, run around the toothpick in his mouth and run around the house. And that's dangerous. Very dangerous.

Yeah. So, yes, I'm a lot more aware of it. So can you say in this fight on Friday, you will not have a toothpick in your mouth? I cannot. Why? No, I honestly forget. What do you mean you forget? I forget. I forget. I have a toothache in. It's tucked away on the side. How can you talk? I'll just forget about it. It's just tucked like, though, I keep tuck it in your cheek. But it's pointy. I it's you when you put in your mouth guard when you put in your oh you have a groove really well yeah it just tucks away it fits in my in my

have you ever swallowed it once once yeah it was actually pretty funny I was home early from from high school I was in high school at the time but I was home early from school

and I was you know you're scaring my mom I was scared your mom you sneak up on her she doesn't know your home yet and I had a toothpick in she was coming down in the stairs I waited for her to turn the corner

she turned the corner and I scared her like boo ha ha ha and she like oh she started you know she was startled frightened you know and I started laughing it was funny like ah ha ha ha and then I swallowed the tube thing I was laughing yeah exactly yeah and then my mom got seriously scared then like oh to like like super scared frightened and that that made me laugh even more and then the tooth thick went down and um did you choke you just swallowed it no I I choked for like maybe like 20 seconds or so, end up just swollen it down and that was it? Never grappling, fighting, nothing bad has ever happened?

The first time, not the first time, but one of the time they rolled around John Crouch, he caught me in a rear naked, but I had my chin tuck, so it wasn't like fully in on the rear naked. It was more of a neck crank. We call it this, you know, a yoke neck crank. Okay. We stole it from him. Okay. And he got me right here

and the toothpick got stuck in my chin. So I ended up tapping to John. And he's like, oh. He's a toothpick. Yeah. And he was like, oh, dude, that was the Shinjaoki neck crank.

Did you feel on your neck? It wasn't the jaw, right? It wasn't the pressure of the jaw. It was the pressure from the neck crank. And I was like, oh, no, it was tight. It was a good neck crank. But I didn't tap to that. I tapped because I took it out and it was all bloodied.

And he was like, oh, it's going to tap because of the toothpick. And then he got a pretty good laugh out of that. He loves that story. Throw up. Yeah. So it's still up in the air. You might still rock. I don't intend to.

I don't ever intend to, especially now having Kyeong. I don't want him seeing me in a fight with a toothpick in. Then he goes and plays football. He goes to a wrestling match and has a toothpick in. God, I would make my heart drop. Yes. Is he going to be at the fight on Friday? He's not, no.

Okay. He's back home? Yeah. Mom's staying home. Mom's staying home. Mom is staying home this time. Mom staying home. Her twin sister is graduating from college.

Kind of a big deal. Kind of a big deal. I mean, it's not her bell tour debut, but it's something. It's a big deal. What about your mom? I love when your mom's in the front row. Is she going to be there? My mom will be there as always.

My mom will be there as always. That's a familiar face. I love that. All right. Well, you have to go. So I will let you go, my friend. This was a lot of fun. I had to get him.

Yeah. This is pretty cool. You actually say that a bit surprised. Like you weren't expecting a good time. No, I was expecting a good time. Did they bring you here kicking and screaming? No. Okay.

But sometimes, you know, you do the interviews and they're good. They're all fine. They're mundane. Yeah. I mean, how many times can we talk about the contract? Yeah, you're a pioneer. You got paid a lot. Let's move on.

Exactly. I like it. Although I did address some of that. I will be honest at the top. I had to address it. But this is exciting. Your Belator debut, it's this Friday on Spike TV. It's Benson Henderson, the former UFC lightweight champion going up against Andre Koreshkov, who he just found out about. He didn't even know his name this morning. Just kidding. He'll be fighting for the Walterweight title. And then we're going to go for the lightweight title next, right? Probably. That's the plan? Probably. I think he'll be the first guy to have Beltor and UFC title. Is that a fact? NWC, wow. History will be made on Friday night. Yeah, absolutely will be. That's exciting.

Good luck, my man. I'm happy for you. Congratulations on the deal. And check out Benson Henderson again Friday on Spike TV. Okay, we're going to say goodbye to Benson. We're going to reconfigure the studio. Going to answer some questions and comments and all that good stuff and more. But first, I just spoke to GSP before Benson,

and I thought it would be fun to look back at my very first video interview with the great George St. Pierre. I know you're a fan, right? You always wanted to fight him. I'm a pretty big fan. That's what you said on the mic. You said, are you impressed? You were talking about GSP. Absolutely.

I'm a big fan of GSP. There he is. So this is my interview with him from back in 2008. Me GSP. We'll look at that. Say goodbye to Benson and be back right here on the MMA hour.

Don't go anywhere. Hey, this is Ariel Hawani for MMA rated.com being joined by the UFC's Welterweight King, George, St. Pierre. George, so va vae.

All right, well, that's the only French I'll be dropping in this interview because, you know, It's a little weak nowadays. But George, we are in Montreal. We're at the famous TriStar Gym here in Montreal. And just a few months ago, UFC 83, 20,000-plus screaming fans.

You redeem yourself and defeat Matt Sera. Was that the greatest moment of your career thus far? Yeah, the greatest moment of my life so far. It was amazing. A dream come true. But I have to keep my head straight. And I'm aware of the danger. I now right now I am where I was a year ago to my first title defense and I want to be able to accomplish what I what I felt last year.

Yeah, after the loss to Matt Serra, which I'm sure is what you're talking about, you've talked openly about going to a sports psychiatrist and dealing with those issues after winning the belt. Are you still dealing with that stuff or is that kind of the mental part of the game, you know, have you sort of conquered it at this point? Oh, well, I conquer it, but you know what? A lot of stuff happened. I'm a different guy than I was a year ago. I'm young, but I'm very mature right now. I had a lot of experience, a lot of bad experience. It made me grow up a lot. And I'm the kind of person who never make this a mistake twice.

So I look forward to my next fight. You mentioned that in Las Vegas, people know who you are better than in Montreal. I'm sure after that fight, things have changed a little for you, right? Yeah, yeah, it has changed. But it's surprising because all the tickets, sell, they've been sold mostly outside of Quebec. So because the UFC fan club bought a lot of ticket and most of the people who bought it, they were Canadian but from outside of Quebec. So I'm sure if they come back, they're going to fill the, they could fill the, you know,

the Olympic stadium. I'm pretty sure. Have they ever talked, because Dana White has sort of mentioned that the next time maybe they should book a bigger arena. Have they talked to you about that, about coming back and maybe running the Olympic Stadium? They haven't talked to. me about it, but I'm sure it would be great. I think it's Roberto Durant and Shigory Liner filled up the Olympic Stadium last time. So it would be an honor for me to try to do it again, and I'm sure we will be successful. Well, I'm sure that would be the second biggest moment of your career if that happens. Let's talk about the business at hand, UFC 87 coming up in August 9th, you against John Fitch, and John is on a role right now, 15 victories in a row.

If he wins one more, he breaks the record. But obviously, this is a guy who's a true mixed martial artist, great at all different facets of the game. What are you expecting from him come August 9? Well, he's good everywhere. Yeah, it's very well-rounded. It's the best guy that I've fought so far. I've been training really hard.

I go through the best training cap of my career. I fight guys, like fresh guy all the time, with very high-level guys like Dennis Kang, David Luzzo, Nathan Mark Ward, Rashadvin. I have the best training partner in the game. Murphy and so many Patrick Cote. So training with those guys and then after, it's like I'm fighting a John Fitch every round, you know what I mean?

So, and I train myself to fight an army, not to fight a single guy because I'm fighting fresh guy all the time. So I'm ready. One guy won't break me, never. You say that he's the toughest opponent. You think even tougher than Matt Hughes, BJ Penn, those guys that you fought in the past? It's a different, he brings on the table a different problem than those guys. He's got different tools, different style.

But I truly believe that I will be able to solve the problem. What do you think that problem is, if you can sort of share it with us? He's very well-rounded. He's got a great wrestler, Black Belt, Resentee to Black Belt, and also a great standing up as well. He's very good, everywhere. So I'm going to have to be smart and fight my fight. I do have a strategy coming into that fight,

but it's like when you play a card, you don't want to show your hand. But you can be sure that I have a game. plan and I will execute it. Are you doing anything differently this time for your, you know, second time going around for a title defense? Obviously the title defense against Matt Serra didn't really go as planned. Anything that you have to do differently now that you're the champion and it's always a little tougher to defend that title again for the first time. Oh well you know what? I've been doing a lot of stuff differently. Just my preparation. I really train really hard and I focus more on training than doing PR stuff. I'm a

I'm nominated for the SPY Award and I don't even go. It would be a great moment in my career, but I have to keep the main thing, the main thing, and the main thing is to stay champion August 9, so I'm not going to go there. I'm going to send a video if I win. Thank you very much. But I'm not going to go because it's my career first,

and then after it's all the stuff on the side, but I have to keep the most important thing in my career. That's pretty impressive. Were you? I was, but for me to be nominated and also, not only to be nominated in DSPI, to be also nominated as a mixed martial artist for the sport. And I think it's great to see that

MMA now it's known as a legitimate sport as much as football, soccer, boxing, so it's great. All right, well let me quickly ask you, your last three fights part of this one. You had Josh Koschek, then you had Matt Hughes, then you had Matt Sarah. Those fights, there was a lot of trash talk, a lot of beef between you guys. But John Fitch is a very calm fellow, he's not talking trash, very respectful of you. Is it harder to get up for a fight like that as opposed to one where there's a lot of trash talking, going on from both sides?

Not at all. I don't mind if he's nice or not. My job, August 9 will be to destroy my opponent, and I will be there to destroy my opponent. and I will be there to destroy John Fitch. So it's not a question of being nice or not. It's a job. We're too professional. And after the fight, we'll shake each other's hand.

But he's not going to be my friend when I'm going to fight him. We've heard recently from Beach. All right, there you have it. Me and George St. Pierre, talking about his ESPY Award back in 2008. I was in Montreal. I contacted someone, who is it? someone affiliated with TriStar, maybe it was even for us. And I was so nervous prior to that interview because, you know, boy in Montreal, boy from Montreal, interviewing George St. Pierre is a big deal.

And it's still a big deal. That was a lot of fun. That was my first sit-down interview with him. I actually interviewed him for jerrypark.com, the website that I used to maybe hopefully get noticed as a MMA media member, 2007 to 2008. I got him one time. He was doing something at night. I remember I started off with a question about the Canadians. I think they were having some sort of goaly controversy.

And I asked him about that. And he completely no sold it. And it wasn't the best interview of all time. I could probably find it if I looked hard enough. But that was fun before UFC 87, getting a chance to interview George, as it was equally fun today. And super fun to have Benson-Henerson Studio. Those in-studio guests,

it just it just those interviews are just so much so much more different and you could just expand a little bit and talk about different things as opposed to just you know what's next and the upcoming fight and what's going on right now it's always fun to look back and find out a little more about these guys and and women as well so I really appreciate Benson for stopping by thank you to beltor and spike for bringing him here and best of luck to him on Friday as he makes his bell tour debut okay show to go. Time to answer some questions, comments. Mr. New York, Rick, are you there?

I'm here. Oh, there he is. Why are you so surprised to hear from me? Well, it feels like it's been a while. What's going on with the hair? There's something very specific going on with the hair. It's hard to see because the top is dark. We've got...

For those of you at home, we've got... The Josh Donaldson. Well, not quite. We've got a remix. We've got the French braid. There's a French braid. There's a French raid going here. Oh, really? It's hard to see. Bend down. It's a little better. But it's a French raid bun. It's the remix. Because his was hanging down. It didn't look fresh. I have to keep the bun style going. One thing it did look was fresh for the record. Oh, there he is. Josh Donaldson? Bringer of rain. Bringer of rain. But shout out to Hayden Nareen. Yeah.

Because he's going to be donating $100 to November, Canada, because of this little experience. We got going here. So is his hair longer than yours? Is that why it goes all the way? No, this is bunded up. Mine goes all the way down to the back. Oh, I see, I see. But also, he's got the hair in the back that he didn't shave.

Mine is shaved tire. Josh Donaldson's, man. What about me? You're not the man. What? This guy? This guy? This is the MVP of the Frickin American League number 20 for Toronto Blue Jays who just beat the Boston Red Sox.

Oh, get out of here. Baseball. Who cares, man? No, but he is very cool. Well, actually, there's a picture of him interviewing Roy McDonald last week at the Rogers Center. Did you see that? Oh, I did see that. I didn't know that this was the guy.

This is not just a guy. You know what? You know what? He's pretty cool. He's pretty cool. He is pretty cool. He is pretty cool. He is pretty cool.

Maybe you should start following him. We can have something in common for once. We can both root for the same team. He plays baseball, though. You're not a baseball fan? Well, first of all, you're bandwagoning. You're bandwagoning onto the Toronto. BS.

What are you talking about bandwagoning? I'm from Canada. They're Canada's team. Oh, well, okay. Well, choose your allegiance is here, my friend. The Expos don't exist. Okay, but then if you're from Canada, then you're a Raptors fan, yes? No, no, no, no.

No, no, no. Choose your allegiances here. Wait a second. If you want me to jump on that bandwagon, I will. Though they continuously do a great job of choking the Raptors. I feel like you're also jumping on that bandwagon. No, look, I'm going to root for the Great White North. But New York Knicks till I die, you see the number six over there.

Or until they're eliminated from the playoffs. No, well, I have to root for someone, for God's sakes. Last year I gave the Warriors a lot of good luck. You saw what happened there. This year I tried to give the Raptors some luck. So what happens after the Raptors get swept in this first round? Then is it back to the Warriors again? You think?

They're not. You think they're going to lose to the Pacers? Paul George is the best player on the court. Wow. You hear that, Kyle Lowry? You hear that? You know who I'm calling out? Not Kyle Lowry, Mike Bone.

Oh, Bonn, I think. Bonn, I think is. Bon. You. What would he calling him out for? All that Toronto Raptors coverage? Ugh. It is annoying.

I mean, really, Mike. Do we follow you for third quarter updates? I mean, come on. Cavaliers, baby. Oh, or that. There is no bandwagon here. And speaking of which, I'm starting to get really annoyed at the people who are claiming that I'm a Lester City bandwagoner, all right? You saw Paul Daly at the press conference today in London even quote my line.

Oh, it was your line now? Chat shit get banged. He's telling Josh Kostech, keep talking. You're going to get banged, bro. And yesterday he got sent off, my boy, Jamie Vardy. And that was BS. I got to tell you. I think if anything is clear at this point, it's that Ariel Hawani has many, many teams, none of them particularly loyal, and he's a bandwagoner.

It's not true. If there's one thing I'm not in life as a bandwagoner, that's why I got into this sport to begin with, because no one was covering it, no one was talking about it. So let me tell you something. A lot of people have been asking me a couple questions before we get into the... Just to wrap this up real quick. Yes. Hayden, you're a good dude.

Hopefully you do follow through and send that. This is from April 8th, by the way, this tweet that he sent you. Yeah, well, he tried to get it done last week. I didn't have the side shaved. I didn't have it properly done. We had to get this right. We had to get the haircut. Who shaved the sides?

My boy Roman over in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Come on. So why didn't you have him do the braid? No, this took like five minutes. I know, but if you're going to go to a barber, you might as well have him finished the job. No, no, I had this done for the show. This is coming straight out as soon as this show is done.

Look at Josh Townson. Looks like a G. Look at this guy. If I made millions of dollars, then yeah, I wouldn't worry about what my hair look like either. But I'm going to take this all out and bun it back up. Okay, so he's going to give. And Movember is still a thing in... Well, it's just to raise awareness about men's health issues.

It's not only doing the... The beard thing is a great way to raise awareness. The stashes and growing the facial hair is a great way to raise awareness every November. But that is not exclusively the only time that they operate. It's just to raise awareness for. for men's health. So that's a good thing. And I'm happy to do it. All right. What if we, what if we match it? Who's weight? Me and you. Throw on a hundy. Put your money where your mouth is. Are you doing it? I'm doing it. If you do it, I'll do it. Let's do it. We just got

$300 for, bang. For Movember, Canada. So shout out, shout out to Hayden. Shout out to Josh. Shout out to Movember. Can you tell me how to do it? How to donate? Yeah, yeah. We'll figure that after the show. Okay. Great cause. Good to be a part of it. Now, I just got back from Tampa. A lot of people were asking me,

oh, what was the like covering your first UFC event since, you know, the whole departure from Fox and all that? I got a lot of people. What? I'm trying to answer the questions that the people have on their minds. No, I'm with you. And I'm here to say that it was great. It was great. Everyone couldn't have been nicer and there are no problems.

So stop worrying about me. Well, that's the thing. That's why I was surprised. Like, you've been doing this for how long now. now is, you know, having not covered it in two weeks. Sometimes, sometimes when there's been, you know, some drama, I will admit, I've gone the cold shoulder. And it's felt weird.

There have been some games played. Let's just put it that way. This time, not only were there not any games, it almost felt like they were going out of their way to be nice. So, good. Nothing bad to say here. And yes, I was at the press conference. And yes, my mic was cut out.

But I do think it was a technical problem. I don't think it was anything done on purpose. So I know a lot of people got all worked up about that. Technical problem. No conspiracies. Maybe I'm naive. But it felt like it was a technical mic issue. So yeah, everything was great.

Tampa was really nice. I went to a devil race. Actually, they're not called the devil raise anymore. They're just called the raise. I went to a raise game on Friday. By the way, I was at another team now? No, no. Is this another team we're going to ride for?

There was a netting in, back of the catcher and it goes around, it goes around in case there's like a foul ball and there was a little hole on the bottom right and bottom left. This hole could not have been bigger than five inches. This is a tiny hole. And at one point, it was like the eighth inning. Someone hit the ball back, foul ball, and it hit a woman in the face. And this was big news. Hit a woman in the face. She had to be stretched out. The game was delayed. The player came into the stands to check on I've been meaning to look it up. Maybe I'll do it after the show

or someone can look it up for me and send me the link. It was very scary. The lady was nailed in the face. They need to clear that up at the Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. There's a little hole ball went through.

It was very scary. But I enjoyed my time and the card was great and the countdown video that people have been bringing up to me. I want to address that as well. Did you see it? You didn't see it,

but a lot of people have been bringing it to my attention. The first 90 seconds of the UFC C-197 Countdown show is all about this show. When we were interviewing John Jones and Ovincent Prue a couple weeks ago, unbeknownst to me, there were cameras on John Jones and Ovin's St. Prue. And they put together this intro where we kind of start up,

now they didn't mention MMA hour or even my name, but that's fine. They put in M.A fighting. And to answer some other questions, they did ask us for permission. They're not just going to rip this stuff off. The people who do the countdown shows are very nice. nice and talented. They ask us for permission 100%. No one's ripping this stuff off. And I do suggest you check it out. Now, the clip is gone from the YouTube page. And I don't know why that is. I was told there was some minor issue, but I still don't see it, some technical issue, but I still don't see it up

several hours later. But as of last night, it was up. It also aired on FS1. The first 90 seconds is John and OSP going back and forth. It's fascinating. As a fan of this show and someone who was doing the interview, if you're a fan, it was just really cool. So I thought that's something if you haven't seen and hopefully they don't take that part out. I don't know why they would. Do check it out. If you were especially watching that episode with OSP and John just a couple weeks ago, they had cameras on them during the interview and they put it together. It was very cool, very cool. So I got, I will admit, a smile on my face with everything going on that our show was used to sort of usher in the countdown show and set the scene for 197. You know, we're team

players here. We're all about selling them pay-per-views. You know what I mean? that's all that's what we're about a rising tide lifts all boats you know what i'm saying i feel you did you go to msg last week for what when they signed the thing no no no no why i'm working james dolin was there governor quomo was there i wasn't there oh i know all right let's answer some questions oh wait i wanted to ask you a question sure gs p what'd you think is he coming back first of all I'm 100% serious about this when I tell you. I have zero tattoos. None.

Not one. Uh-oh. Just remember the last time someone talked about tattoos. I am getting. I am now getting. Yes? Women? Dinosaurs.

Violence. Tattooed. I want those three. Somewhere. And maybe, what is it? Like a nice serif. I'm getting that done immediately. Wait, wait.

Let's just be on. honest here. If he comes back, will you get that tattoo? I'm thinking about getting it if he comes back or not. No, no, no. Now it feels like you're hedging like the whole the whole MMA fit. What was it? UFC fit, all that. This is not a situation where I'm staking my reputation. Kudos to John Anick. He made, he made a bold prediction and got the tattoo. You're stealing his gimmick now. No, I'm not stealing his gimmick because I'm not, it's not hinging on anything. I'm considering this, whether it comes back, doesn't come back. I really, that motto speaks to me. That life philosophy. It speaks to me.

Women? Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs. That speaks to you. Yeah, because dinosaurs are cool. That's why GSP likes them because he's awesome like that. I like how we keep saying that we don't know that he's into paleontology, but yet he tells us this all the time.

Like if you don't know that GSP's into palingtology and you're an MMA fan, then what have you been listening to? What have you been watching, right? Yeah. And also alien life forms as well. The aliens and the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs. Got to love it.

Okay, I look forward to that tattoo. I'm really considering it because it's incredible. Let's answer some questions. Wait, wait, but you didn't answer the damn question. What's the question? Is he coming back? Do you believe he's coming back? Oh, do I believe he's coming back?

Yeah, of course he's coming back. They're going to throw enough money out of him and he's going to come back. Of course he's coming back. Seems like MSG is the one that he wants. Do you have any doubt? Is there any reason not to believe he's coming back at this point? They're even, he's even forward in saying that he's negotiating with them. Yeah.

I mean, what would be the thing to prevent it at this point? If he's willing and they're willing. I think the Reebok thing is a real thing. He brings that, he brought that up the last time he was on this show. A lot has changed, new contract. I think it's a real thing that can be overcome pretty easily. I don't know about that. There's a lot of money on the line there.

I mean, you can't just like brush that aside. There's a lot of money on the line the other way as well. If you get GSP back on pay-per-view, that's worth its way. and gold. Does the UFC need GSP? Yes. Okay, who would you put him up against first? Connor McGregor.

What? It's the last guy I'm putting him up against at this point. I would put him up against Connor McGregor and sell more pay-per-views than ever before. You don't need him against Connor McGregor. If you want to sell, if you want to break every record, you do. Really? You really think he has that power? Two and a half, it will be three years later?

I think their combined power is. is the most paper views ever. Really? Yep. He needs a little more momentum. I think if, now, this is pending McGregor beating Diaz. If McGregor can go up to 170 in this case and beat Diaz,

I feel like putting them on the same card. You get the same out of putting them on the same card as you do putting them against each other. I don't think you do, actually. I don't think the world is longing for that fight at this point. If you do, let's say you do MSG, let's say you do Connor versus Frankie, and let's say you do Anderson versus GSP. Let's say you do Robbie versus GSP. You get the same out of,

that's not a fight that I think people are sitting around in barbershops talking about who's going to win. I think GSP's too big for Connor. If they announce it, no, I disagree because I think, well, you mean physically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think GSP's stuff. Now, people know and want to see GSP fight

at the same time, his style is one that people are very familiar with. So putting him in a regular matchup isn't going to move in the way that it would if he was put in there against a guy like Connor McGregor. Gregor. I think that that's the way to really just make it explode. Would they do well putting them both on the same card? Sure. Would they do all time well? I don't think so. I think that they need to face each other for it to be the biggest ever. No, I don't think it's necessary. We'll see what happens. I don't think GSP versus anybody else matters. Who cares? He's going to go in there and wrestle them. Who cares? You don't want to see GSP versus Robbie Lawler who's shown great takedown defense. Sure. He's going to wrestle him for five rounds. Great. Wait, and so you want to see GSP wrestle Connor? Yeah, because the buildup to that fight is going to be incredible regardless. Is it really going to be incredible?

They're going to talk shit about him. Connor McGregor is certainly going to. No, GSP's not going to. Yeah, Connor McGregor certainly will. That'll be great. Let GSP not, and Connor McGregor will sell that fight. Anderson, you don't want to see the Anderson fight? Now, that's a different story.

GSP and Anderson on the same card with Connor McGregor might be something. But I don't think GSP is, I don't think GSP is. versus any other welterweight does it for me it's really it really doesn't like it's great i'd love to see him back i'll or actually to be frank i'd rather not see him back i think his legacy is perfectly fine i don't think he needs to come back um but i don't think gsp versus any other welterweight really matters that much i think sure he can go out there and have a great fight with robbie it'll be fine gs p damien maya no no interest no interest zero just like that huh look gs peter um look gs peter um look gs peter um look gs p Uzi-we-Is. He's not going to come back a tick boxer. GSP, Tiren Woodley.

You don't think that's interesting? I'm calling Tiron right now. I'm calling Tiron right now. What's his number? 607. Are you about Tiron-Woodley's number on there? I don't even know what 607 is. All right, let's answer some questions. Okay. First question. Yeah. Although Tampa, not Tampa Bay, card was cursed. Thanks for telling me, guys. The fights delivered in this person's opinion, and Josh Gentry's opinion.

What did you think about the night? I know you mentioned to Chuck that you thought it was a good card. How did you feel about it overall? I don't know if it was because I was sitting in the back and it was just a different kind of night for me work-wise. I really enjoyed it. I got to say, if you have not seen some of the guys, you know, some of those, let me choose my words wisely here. Sometimes those scrums are tough to, from an interviewer standpoint, from a media guy standpoint, it's just tough to listen to because you got a question or two here and then we go in a different direction there. And it's all about like, who do you want next? And to be back there and get to, because for a while when I was in the back doing the Fox stuff, I couldn't, I didn't talk to the entire undercard, right? So I wasn't getting to know a lot of the fighters like I was back in the day. So for example, if you have not seen the Michael Graves scrum, have you seen it?

You personally? Yes, I have. Did you hear what he was talking about with looking for a fight? Timmy the Tooth? He was fantastic. I didn't know Michael Graves was like that, to be honest with you. He was amazing. Raquel Pennington's scrum talking about, you know, overcoming stage fright.

She was great. I wouldn't have known that Siza Farhadda had left the Black Zillions if I was back there. John Dodson, I know everyone was talking about the Demetrius stuff, but to me, the most interesting stuff was saying, you know, I'm tired of T.J. Dillshaw saying that my win over him was a fluke and I want that fight. I mean, there was a lot of good stuff from an interview standpoint. And then the fights, I thought all the fights, there wasn't a single dud. I thought the fights went by pretty quickly and I think 11 fights as opposed to 13 on a card is a big difference. I think the fight the fight card goes by a lot faster. Also, you know, just being honest, 8 p.m., main card start ends at 10.

You kind of feel like a normal media person. Like these are when regular sports end. 10 o'clock. We left there by midnight after the press conference. It all felt very manageable. And you're there from, you know, 3 o'clock. So yeah, there was something about it. Nice arena, good fans, very beautiful on the water. I mean, it was just, it was a great trip overall. And also, I know the curse stuff, you know, it sucked. I felt horrible for Dober and Makachev and obviously Hendo for not getting a fight, especially at this stage. But, you know, as a media guy, again, just being honest, where there's chaos, there's opportunity. And, and, and obviously, And it makes covering the event a little... I'll be honest with you, Machita Hendo wasn't exactly a fight that I was longing to see the rematch, right? The first fight wasn't that great. Second fight, that was just a fight on the card. I was talking about last week how I felt like Rose and Tisha

should have been pushed more. And then this thing happens with Machita. Henderson was so cool. We found him on the beach, and he's just chilling there with his wife, and we interviewed him on the beach. I mean, that stuff is very exciting for me as a media person to try to tell those stories and, you know, to advance the thing.

So overall, I thought it was a very good trip. It was a fun event to cover. What about the actual fights? Yeah, I said the fights were great. There were no duds. All great performances. Super impressed with Glover. I was a little bummed with what happened to Rashad

just to see someone of his stature and with his resume fall like that and his post-fight comments were a little bit heart-wrenching. Rose is a star. Rose is going to be an even bigger star. And she's in a really interesting spot, in my opinion, because it's clear to me if you exclude Carla Sparza, who everyone's forgotten, who is returning this weekend, she's the best fighter in that division outside of Claudia and Joanna.

Let's see how Carla responds from the shoulder surgery. But she's also just 23, and Joanna and Claudia are fighting July 8th. And I don't know if I love the idea of her waiting three months for that fight to happen, and then another three months for a fight camp, if that. But I don't know if you've been listening to her interviews and even her post-fight comments were even more telling at the press conference. She was saying how there was a lot going on in her life and she thought about maybe walking away and stuff like that.

And that's a lot to handle and a lot for a 23-year-old to say. Like, I don't know, maybe, and as she alluded to, some time off would be good for her. So I'm really curious to see what they do with her because she's a very big star in the making. She's very popular. She's a fun fighting style. She's marked by all that stuff.

So I was impressed with her. Habib coming back, like I said, he has that aura. He did what he had to do. He won the way he had to win. Very dominant. Cubs coming back. Dotson coming back was very impressive. Kiyasa's performance was super impressive as well.

So all in all, I thought it was a very good night after some trying circumstances leading up to that point. Let's get into them a little bit more specifically after Glover's win and his respectful callout. You have to make Glover versus Rumble, right? Yeah, I guess so. I think Rumble gets kind of screwed here because it was clear to me that he was the number one contender after his win over Ryan Bader. And the timing would have worked out perfectly for him had he just waited for this fight this weekend between John Jones and Daniel Cormier. And then he would fight the winner.

I mean, it couldn't have worked out better. Unfortunately for him, Cormier gets hurt, delays things. And now if Jones wins on Saturday, they're going to do Jones versus Cormier. And that means he's going to be on the sidelines. I have an interview with Anthony Johnson that will be going up tomorrow that we conducted on Saturday. It will be up on M.AFunding.com where we talk about these scenarios

playing out. Now, this was done before the Glover win that may change things. And his tweet and his facial expression after the fight leads me to believe that he would be interested in it. Dana White was certainly interested in it afterwards. So yeah, I like the fight. Typically, I don't like these kind of fights because Glover

has fought the champion and lost and Anthony hasn't. So if you have Glover winning, you're kind of left was a situation where it's like a rematch that no one's really longing for but cornea could win he hasn't fought you know glover either he's being anthony i i really feel like that's the fight to make especially if you try to do it on the same card as anthony versus dc excuse me jones versus dc if jones wins this weekend so yeah i mean that's just a fun fight between two really really really really really heavy hitters on rashad's next move he previously talked about moving to 185 but never attempted

it? What do you think? Does he do that next? Does he hang him up and stick to the commentary roll? I don't think he hangs him up. I don't think he goes to 185. I don't think cutting more weight is the answer here, especially in this new USADA era. I don't, I think maybe some time off. And maybe, like I said earlier, linking up with Mark Henry, that, again, that's not to say anything bad about the team that he has at the Black Sillians, but sometimes switching things up. He had a great connection with Mark. He's come to the New York, New Jersey area to work with him. His last win was with him, I think that could be something to reignite him. So I foresee him taking some time, fighting opponents in the top 15, top 20. And again, there's nothing wrong with that,

building yourself back up, getting that confidence back. He went from Shogun to Glover here, and that's a major step up. They are nowhere near each other right now. So I think he needs to go back to fighting that kind of opponent. Habib's his rising star. Is it me? This is from our friend Lenary. Is it me or as all this time off really made Habib Narmagamadov a bigger star? I've never seen this much hype around him and he wasn't even facing anyone of note. He had a big reaction from the crowd and his English is getting better and better. Judging by his style of fighting, I never thought he'd be embraced like this by the fans. Can he actually be a superstar? That's a good point that they make about his style of fighting because he's not known as this, you know, super exciting

guy. He's a bit of a grinder. Is he a superstar in the making? You've been saying all weekend that You know you're seeing it for him. I feel it. I just feel it. He has a very loyal following based out of Russia. His fans, I mean, yes. Is it possible that the time off made people forget, you know, how he fights and miss him more? Because, you know, when he was out there, you know, wrestling guys to decisions fight after fight, there wasn't this much support for him.

There was hype because it's clear that he's a stud. and I've been calling him the uncrown lightweight champion forever. But not his style. People are not going to like somebody who goes out there and wrestles every single time. And in this case, he was able to get a finish, but he's not much of a finisher. So is it possible that this is something temporary and kind of fleeting? Or is this permanent, is he laying something down that's going to help him later? Well, distance always makes the heart grow fonder.

And I think people like, like GSP. Remember, when GSP left, he wasn't the hottest fighter in the world. He had this sort of stick. Now, you know, some of us are going Gaga over the possibility of his return. So distance always makes the heart grow fonder. It's great to see a fighter back, especially someone like him who was 22 and O before this fight, who, you know, in his last fight had defeated the guy who is now the champion. And another interesting thing about Habib Nurma Gamedov, consider this.

And this is something that I believe Casey, our cameraman, brought to my attention. So this is his UFC run. Kamal Shalurus on a UFC on FX. card that was, you know, very much low on the card. Glyson Tebowo, UFC 148, Tiago Tavares on a UFC on FX card in Brazil. Abel Trujillo, UFC 160, that was a main card. Pat Healy, UFC 155, that was not main card. And then Hafelde de Sanjos, UFC on Fox two years ago, that was a main card as well. This was the first time that he was a part of, like, the open workouts and getting that kind of treatment as well. His English has gotten a lot better. People missed him. And another good thing about

fighting someone like the Darryl Hortcher, he was able to get a finish, he was able to show his dominance and get his feet wet again, get back on track. So it all really worked out very well. Coming back from a two-year layoff and fighting someone like Tony Ferguson in a five-round main event fight is a pretty tough task. And for him, I think there was a silver lining in all of this. And now, you know, maybe he gets the title shot next. I think a lot of people would be behind him. Like I said, he has a very, very loyal following. His videos, You know, and that's a nice gauge of how interested the public is in a fighter. They did very well on our YouTube channel.

So, yeah, maybe the time off did do him some good. Like a Demetrius Johnson, to a degree, him being so active hurts him sometimes because, A, it doesn't allow for the division to evolve and for a queue of contenders to build up. Kind of like what happened at 135 to a degree. And also, it doesn't get people to miss you, you know, and that's very important. And that's something why I've said, like in the past where less shows, less MMA shows, UFC shows in particular would be a good thing because if people, think about how NFL fans are. By the time July rolls around and they haven't seen major NFL, you know, important, meaningful games,

they're going nuts. They're foaming at the mouth, just thinking about it. And that's an important thing that we don't have a lot in our sport. So, yeah, I think it did in a weird way do him some good. But my question is, is it long term? Because if he goes out there and starts, you know, wrestling guys to decisions again, is that going to undo some of it? Because I think that's the most likely scenario that we're looking at.

That said, it's hard to predict the future. I think he'll be the champion as he's wrestling these guys, you know, to decision. So that always comes with something. We had a previous Walter Way champion who used to wrestle guys to decisions and was pretty popular. There you go. I think, I'm just. I just think that this seems more like a one-time thing than any swell of momentum, because I think we're going to be right back to something similar.

Yeah. Well, I don't know if I agree with that, but I could say, I mean... Or at least boosted this one time, and we're going to look at something a little less next time. It's hard to predict. It's hard to predict what's going to happen, but I do think that people are excited about his return. He's damn good. Habib and Ferguson, with Habib insisting on taking a break and waiting for a title shot at MSG, what should the USC do about Tony Ferguson

and does Habib have enough credit, enough clout rather I'm sorry to call that shot about getting the title shot and not fighting Ferguson? Well, I don't know about the title shot it's going to be very hard to get him to fight I mean he's pretty steadfast he doesn't want to fight because of Ramadan

and you have to respect that and I even respect look he says look I'm a professional athlete you can't ask me to turn around and fight May 29th that's just not the way you know I want to you know work here It's not the way I want to, you know, it's not what I want to do to my body. I thought the response that he gave me to that question after the fight, that interview is up as well on our YouTube channel, was perfectly fine and very respectable.

So it's going to be interesting to see what they do with Tony Ferguson, you know, man, you feel for him because that was a big fight and he got injured and you know he didn't want that. What happens here? You know, is it possible that he fights the winner of, you know, if Anthony Pettis wins this weekend, would you hate seeing that fight? I mean, technically, believe it or not, Anthony Pettis still ranked above him. The wanky in the wanky, the wacky UFC rankings. I love Michael Kesa who has apparently vaulted up five spots in the rankings. I love him calling out Ferguson. I wouldn't hate that fight as well.

I give him a lot of credit for doing that. So let's see what happens. but I have no problem with Habib sitting on the sidelines and respecting the holiday. You know, that's very much his prerogative. Speaking of Mike, we were talking about Mike Yasser just a moment ago. After overcoming B'Neil Daryush and his own bowels on Saturday, where do you think Michael Keisa fits in the lightweight division? Do you think he will get that fight with Tony Ferguson?

I can see it happening. If not, what would make sense for him? I could definitely see it happening. And he claims that the UFC has promised him, a main event. And he alluded to that at the press conference. So I could definitely see it happening and I wouldn't hate it. You know, he's getting better.

That was a very impressive finish to submit someone like Benile Darius like that, applying that pressure on his jaw, not the conventional rear naked choke and not exactly a neck crank. Super impressive. I give him a lot of credit. So, yeah, I would see it. I would watch it for sure. Tell us the story behind the fan giving Betchko Hea flowers. You tweeted that, but there wasn't much explanation.

Well, I was sitting at the Wayans. It was at the Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida, and I'm sitting there, and a fan comes up to me and says, Ariel. And it was actually fun. I don't get to often sit amongst the people at the Wayans. So people coming up, very fun. I love talking to them. A fan said, Ariel, I'm going to... I love Bechko Hea.

She's my favorite. I'm going to deliver her 12 roses at the hotel after the Wands. And do you think that she will accept them? And I don't remember if he actually said that he wanted to propose to her, but he was very much in love with Bechko Hea. And I said, yeah, go for her. He says, do you think she'll accept them? And I said, I don't see why not.

Now, I don't know if this man knows this, but at least up until the Ronda Rousey fight, Betchko Hea's boyfriend was her coach. I haven't checked if they're still together. I don't keep up on these things, believe it or not. But I was hoping that maybe he'd offer her the flowers while the coach slash boyfriend was in her presence and it would make for a fun scene. But later on, and I retweeted this on Friday,

he actually did deliver the roses and it appeared via the picture that she accepted. Bechko Hea is such a funny character. I get such a kick out of her. I wish she would fight more often. her walkouts, I don't know if it appeared on television, if they televises. The way she moves around in the cage, even at the way-ins, she stops to wave to people while her shorts were like half off. Like she's getting on the scale, but in the middle, like usually people take off the clothes, get on the scale, wave, or take off the clothes, wave, then get on the scale.

She did it in the midst. It's just like the whole thing is just very, it's very different with her. And I love it. I think she's so much fun. And she said, you know, remember, you remember that famous or, I don't know, famous is the right word, but that GIF, that, or GIF, was a GIF or GIF? I always ask this question. It's GIF. GIF.

With John McCarthy, and she's dancing, he's holding up her arm, and she's dancing, and then he slaps her on the bum. Sure. You haven't seen that one? No, I've seen it. It's great. I love it. There's a lot of good gifts with Bechkoheya. There's the one with the dance.

There's the one with the putting the fingers down. She's an internet sensation. She's the best. We're putting the foot down. Oh, she does like the JDS thing? No, putting the fingers. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes, she's the best.

She does throw the gauntlet as well. I forgot about that. Yeah. Okay, we talked about this. Any additional thoughts on the countdown Sands mention of the MMA hour? I thought it was great. They put together.

I actually feel bad because I was sitting there at the Wayans watching Road to the Octagon. There's a lot of different UFC bark shows. These shows to plug the upcoming event. There's countdown, there's road to the octagon, there's embedded, there's on the fly, there's that one that they did for Bisping Silva battle lines. They're all different, have different styles. And I've often felt a countdown was the staleist of the bunch. The stale is the word? The most stale. Most stale. Anyway, and I was watching Road to the Octagon. Before the way-ins, they'll usually play this Barker show.

in front of the audience and wrote to the octagon was great. In particular, the segments about Rashad, the Rose one was really good as well. So it just felt a lot more honest. Countdown has felt very formulaic. So here I am. I tweeted something to this effect that I thought Road to the Octagon was better than Countdown. And then Countdown does a whole 90-second intro, you know, highlighting this show, even though they didn't mention the show, but whatever, I'll let that slide.

It was very cool. I'm honored that they would do that. Look, I have no, anyone, people are coming to me like, well, I have no beef with anyone. I've said this time and again. If they want to use these interviews to sell the pay-per-views, as long as the people come on the show, you can do whatever you want with them. Have at it. More power to you. So, yeah, I thought it was cool.

I was honored. Part of history. Speaking of the Light Heavyweight Division, what are your thoughts on Daniel Cormiere doing guest commentary for Jones OSP? So I love it, except for one thing. I think they jumbled it. They bungled it. Daniel Cormier is doing the fight past prelims, and then he's doing the main event.

I think it's a mistake to have him on the fight past prelims. You've got to save this for the pay-per-view. You've got to get people, wow, what's it going to sound like when Cormier is in the quote-unquote booth for the first time? What's he going to say when John Jones is winning? What's John going to say to him? Don't waste it on the prelims. The prelims are the prelims.

Build to it, set it up. Maybe do a quick interview with him. You're going to be joining us. You're going to be making your debut. but he's not making his debut anymore if he does it on the fight past prelims. So I love it. I think it's great.

It reminds me of the old days they used to do this a lot. And I probably shouldn't be saying these things, but a lot of people bring, a lot of people mention, there's been a lot of changes to the broadcasts. You notice this, right? Like the graphics have changed

and the intro has changed a little bit. They try different things. Like, remember, 189, they had the graphics on the mat. On the canvas. They do a lot of it. They do some different stats. They have Mark Ratner come in, different camera angles this past weekend.

You saw Rogan and Goldie sitting down is a lot more of a casual sort of boxing feel. There's a guy who works there in production at Zufa. His name is Zach Candido. I know some people won't like me singling someone out, but he is really the guy who has been ushering all these changes. Young Mind, very brilliant, a super talented producer. and he's really the guy who's done a lot of this stuff. So I think that, you know, can't take credit for everything, of course, there's a team, but I think he's really been the one leading the way.

And I think something like this is definitely, you know, part of his doing. So I love this sort of thing. Gives it a new layer. It's interesting. It's unique. It gives you another reason to buy the pay-per-view 100%. It's smart. I think it'll be fine, even if you get some reps early on,

because people care about him on John Jones. You know, he's not going to save his best John Jones stuff for the fight past prelims. So give him a few reps, and then once he hops on the mic, I'm sure he'll have a lot to say about John Jones. I'm nitpicking, of course. It's a great idea. No doubt about it. It doesn't ruin it. But I get it.

I get it. But I think, I mean, you know, ultimately, Cormier commentating on that fight is incredible. Is there a chance that John Jones put on too much size and will stretch? struggle to cut the weight. I don't think so. I think he's actually pretty lean. He looks to be in phenomenal shape. Don't be fooled by some of those pictures. There's some talented people out there. That's all I'm going to say. So I don't think that's going to be a problem. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got. Jenny van the black. That's what I'm going to say about Benson, all right?

Not Benson. I was looking at the picture. Beltor just tweeted a picture of Benson and I. We look like a long-time BFFs. Vincent's great. Wait a minute. Actually, how have we not talked about this yet? Did you discuss what's going on with this basketball game or what? I mean, the fact that, you know, there's no terms and nothing was settled at this point. I'm feeling a little...

What? I don't know what the word is. I mean, maybe lie to? I don't know. Lied to by who? I'm the one who laid down the gauntlet. He's the one who keeps running. You guys were here together in each other's presence.

Wait a second. I'm the one who asked you to... To bring a basketball net here. I have the text proof. Did I not ask you this? I said, bring a mini hoop. We'll have a free throw competition. I'll beat him at that.

And you're like, you're like, oh, either you go big or you go home or some nonsense like that. Did you not say that? I said, that's not basketball. Come on. Mini hoop? Mini hoop. It's a taste. It's an appetizer.

It's a sign of things to come. It's a little bit. It's a junisiqua. It's not even a crumb. Well, I can't, you know, I guess we could do a full-core. I mean, there's no, we have a gym across the street. You and Benson were here together. Look, could you imagine if I'm playing Benson,

inevitably break his ankles, and then his Belator debut is ruined? How good with that story? No, he would thank you from the high heavens when now he books Ariel Hawani versus Benson Henderson at Belator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, what about Andre Koreshkov? Poor Andre. No opponent.

He loses his shot. He loses his shot. Ariel Hawwani versus Benson. The only stipulation... Because that's the only commission that will regulate. The only stipulation I have ever put out there was it has to be outside of fight camp because I don't want to be responsible for him breaking his ankles.

Sky is... Oh my. So it can't happen now. Where was this fire? Where was this trash talk when he was here? Well, listen, it's not about breaking his ankles. It's not about me. It was about the interview.

You know, I'm just, I mean, I'm not trying to lay the blame only at your feet, but both of you, you have some responsibility here in this game not happening yet. Fair enough. What about these two fights? There were some recently announced fights. RDA versus Eddie Alvarez and Fador versus Fabio Maldonado. Give us your thoughts on both of those fights quickly.

RDA versus Alvarez. I love it. Long time coming for Alvarez gets RDA back in there. Eric Winter, fight pass, doing the damn thing once again, putting it on fight pass. It's all very brilliant. It's all very exciting. and Eddie Alvarez, I mean, he was saying he'd fight anywhere, so that drops all that talk.

So I love it. I mean, I think, yeah, his last fight wasn't the most exciting, but hey, body of work, he's done enough. I like it. So that's out of the way. You know, I got to say, Fader Fabio Maldonado, I don't hate it. I really don't hate it. Is that what we've come to?

Yeah, it is. I mean, we've gone from Jai DiB Singh to Fabio Maldonado. do not hate it. Now, do I expect him to win? Yeah. But this, this actually, there, there seems to be an arc here. It's actually going up. So if we get by Fabio, then who's next? That's who I want to see. Then Hungman Choi. No, no, no, no. See, that's a step back. Is it? I mean, this is all the same. This is all the same. This is, this is actually, if you look at, you know, recent history, and maybe it's because it's not happening in Japan, I don't know. He's not even a heavyweight. Whatever. really a heavyweight either he's more of a heavyweight than fabio maldonado i don't hate it trust me my

expectations are so low when it comes to these fights um i love it and and by the way i love the awkwardness i don't even know if you want to call it that of it potentially being on fight pass that's gonna be fun as well so i i don't hate it why you hate it i don't hate it but i just mean that's to me that's a sign of a success when it comes to a fade or fight you don't hate it the fact that i don't hate it The other one was ridiculous. This one, it's a fight. Was it that ridiculous? It was ridiculous.

He was a professional kickboxer. He had not fought in like three years, professional kickboxer. One M.MA fight, you shouldn't be fighting Federer and Milneco. I don't care. The fact that he hadn't fought in three years was enough to make you. No. What? So you're telling me that if Fabio Maldonado went in there with Jai D.P., he'd blow him out of the water too?

I don't think so. That's M. That's M. No, it's not. I'm saying them back up. The question is, what do I think? And I don't hate it. The other question is, which gets more viewers?

That's an interesting one. And I'm going to go with Eddie versus RDA because that's the UFC fight that's going to be promoted more. Now, I'm assuming that James, my man is talking about fight pass. Now, I don't know what's going on in Russia. If this is going to be on, you know, this is probably going to be on broadcast national television. That probably in the end gets more viewers. But as far as United States fight pass is concerned, RDA Alvarez will get promoted a heck of a lot more than Fabio Maldonado versus...

I'm going to go Fador and Fabio, the Fabio factor. Yeah, right. We're bumping up those viewers. All right. Alvarez, you've talked about this. Final answer. Is he deserving? Two unimpressive split decisions,

this person's opinion. Whoa. Earned Alvarez a title shot. What do you think about that? I'm cool with it. Do style points matter when earning a title shot? No. Style points don't matter.

At the end of the day, I hope this is, you know, this is a sport. It's not like figure skating where you get, you know, points because you did pirouettes. Alvarez, I'm totally cool with it. And also, the timing is right. You know, they needed a fight for RDA. And sometimes lesser fighters have received title shots. The timing works out for him.

Good for him. This guy has had some bad luck in his career. Let him enjoy it. And it's a fun fight. It's an interesting fight. I want to see it. Forget about the past. You know who Eddie Alvarez is.

You know what he's done. Forget about the last two fights, whatever. Last fight. You don't want to see that fight? You don't think that fight's a good fight? It's a good fight. Stop complaining. You won't hear any from me.

There's no better option. Who else is there? I guess running it back with Pettis, if he wins. He's got a fight. They needed to start promoting the whole international fight week, blah, blah, blah. I'm cool with it. I think people's probably. problem are, you know, his last two performances weren't, you know, bar burners.

But Eddie Alvarez is not a guy who's known for that. I mean, he's certainly a guy he's willing to scrap. So I think it'll be a fine fight. Delusional BJ Penn. I guess the question here is, is VJ. Penn delusional that Greg Jackson can make him a contender again? And not only Greg Jackson, but the team at Jackson Wickle John, is he delusional? Is BJ delusional for coming back? Forget what I have to say.

Are you down with this fight? Aye, aye, aye. That's a very interesting question. I don't know, man. I'm down. That last performance, I mean, I guess if I'm down for him to fight at all, it might as well be Dennisiever, but after that last beating from Frankie Edgar, man, I don't know. I don't know if I even want to see this anymore. I'm down.

If anybody can do it, it's Jackson and the team over there. But I don't know if anybody can do it. I mean, that was soul-crushing the last time out. it's a different time, it's a different team, it's a different opponent, you know, he's older. I just, he's older, that's... Yeah, but sometimes that's a good thing. And you know what? The Edgar thing was so whack.

I mean, like, that fight should have never been made. You know what I mean? It should have never happened. And there was a big layoff, you know, sometimes, and I know this happened here, but sometimes, like, BJ needs to be active. He can't be sitting on a fight and film a reality show and do all this stuff. he was also cutting to 145 for the first time and clearly there was some drama behind the scenes with Dolce

I mean I just feel like I don't know maybe I'm crazy I got a good feeling I feel like you're you know look hey I'll I'm drinking the Kool-Aid You're drinking the Kool-Aid but I guess I'm drinking it too so I'm cautious but you know

just crap I guess UFC New York That was the least believable just crap I'm very cautious right now yeah that's fine uh uc new york why is the uc trying to force ronda roussy on to u sc 205 instead of featuring talent from new york i don't think that's an either or what do you think about that i think there's a way to keep ronda on a new york card and i mean why even highlight all the

this is what i'm talking about i told you before the show sometimes the comments suck look sometimes why even ask this question sometimes there's not questions on any topic involving any other people and there has to be a way to get them on there ronda was there she's not a new yorker it was funny when called Cuomo. I don't know if you saw the press conference thingy that it was. She called him our governor. But he's not necessarily our governor, especially someone who lives in California. He's just New York's governor.

Oh, he is our governor. Okay. We speak for the world. Did you see the way he was cracking jokes up there? Like, he was some kind of comedian. No, he's great. He's loose. I love it. He speaks like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Anyway, I think that they want her on the card. Obviously, it meshes with her timetable.

And that's one in probably 13 or so fights, there's going to be a lot of New Yorkers on the card. It's going to be stacked, it's going to be great, but there are going to be New Yorkers, of course. Wydman and especially if he wins, everyone loves Wydeman. Wow, they all talk about Wyatman. You know what's interesting?

I was talking to Rashad Evans about this. He never gets any credit for being a New Yorker. Maybe it's because he doesn't train out of there. Yeah, it's because, you know, he's been with, in Florida for so long, you know, people and Albuquerque before that. You all must have forgot about Rashad Evans. Niagara Falls,

finest. And John Jones, obviously. John Jones, Al Jermaine. All Jame. All these guys. Iaquinta, Chris Wade, Valante. Put them all on the card. That's what I say. New York versus the world.

You can just be Sarah Longo versus everybody. Mark LaMonnaica came up with this idea. I love it. New York versus the world. Now, there's no female, there's no great female fighter from New York. That's a problem. That's the only one that doesn't work. But otherwise, it's all good.

UFC 200 How would you feel if UFC tried to replicate the WrestleMania phenomenon By creating their own annual event Which is promoted and expected by people Even before a single fight was put on the card This is basically what they did with 200 It seems to be great How you kept the

The response to it Because that is exactly what I was going to say Again, a question that shouldn't have been asked They do do that They just don't call it UFC 200 Because there's only one UFC 200 I mean really But do you do you like the idea

Do you have that International Fight Week with multiple cards and really blowing it out of the water? 100%. It feels like an event. Is it too much, though, at a certain point? The three is a little much. I'm not going to lie. It does feel a little. You're exhausted by the end.

But for a fan, I mean, could you imagine if you're a fan and you're like, all right, I'm going to get my three best buds and we're going to go to Vegas in July and we're going to go to three amazing cards back to back? That's pretty damn awesome. For hardcore is for sure. I think the casuals are not going to be sitting there for three cards, but they don't need to. They have lots of options to choose from. By the way, 194 did incredible on pay-per-view. The other two were sold out as was 194. If December was any indication, this is a home run.

And these cards cumulatively are way better than those as a one-two-three punch. You know what I mean? So this is a no-brainer. I can't do it every six. months, I think they'll keep it to July. But yeah, if there's a place to do it, it's Vegas. It's around that time. It's for a Conner fight, culminating with a Conner fight because his fans travel.

I don't see a lot of bad things about it. You were big-uping Candido and the rest of the production team earlier. Yes. Are they on the phone? Oh, okay. Yeah, they have a message to you all. You're fired. That's actually exactly what it was.

UFC 200 production. Have you heard anything about what kind of production they're planning for that event? Are they going to blow it out? Is there something special? Can we expect the canvas graphics back? What have you heard? I have not heard much about that. I'm not sure if you heard, but I'm a bit on the...

No, I'm just joking. I just haven't asked. I can pass along this note while we speak about production type of stuff. UFC 198. Is it 198? Yeah, 198, May 14th, Cotechiba, Brazil, the color commentator that night for the entire card, including the pay-per-view, will be Brian Stan. So you'll have Mike Goldberg and Brian Stan calling that one, so that's a bit of news for you. I know it has nothing to do with this question, but you've got to give me some time.

No, that's a good segue. I'm working my way into it, so there you go. But you got nothing for 200. I got nothing for 200. Do you think they're up to something? Yes, 100%. It's 200. What I would do is bring every single member of the Hall of Fame.

I know there's some issues with others. I wonder what they're going to do with the Hall of Fame. I need to look into that as well. They should do something big for that. I would bring back legends. You know, do it up. Do it like baseball does it before the World Series or football before the Super Bowl. Give some props to the legends of yesterday year, the ones that...

I feel like they did a good job of that last year. Did they? The Fight Pass, I mean the Fight Pass. The Hall of Fame ceremony last year. Yeah, that was just the people who were inducted. I want to see everyone get some names. I want to see... I want to see.

Well, you know what? They did a good job for 167 because that was the 20th anniversary. They brought Mark Coleman and Don Fry and Hoyst Gracie was there. Remember, he was at the open workouts. So I want something more. I want because I don't know. Maybe 167 is bigger than 200 because that was the 20 anniversary. 200 isn't really the 200th event.

It's not even the 200th pay-per-view. But still people get excited about these things. It's kind of funny when you think of it that way. It's not even the 200th pay-per-view because some pay-views back in the day. Some numbered events were on spike. Like UFC 105 was on spike. UFC 120 was on spike. UFC 115 was on spike.

Yes, but if you're going to go that deep into it, no number actually matters. Like what does the significance of the 200th pay-per-view mean versus the significance of the 200th numbered event? Does that, is that really any more of an indicator of anything? I don't get the question. I'm saying the idea of self-referencing. The idea of celebrating these numbers is insignificant regardless,

whether it's the 200th pay-per-view, whether it's the 200th numbered event overall. I mean, 200 is a nice number. It's just I'm just letting it be known in case you didn't know. It's not even the 200th pay-per-view. It's not even the 200th event. But if it was the 200th pay-per-view. Yeah, it's nice.

Is that significant? Who gives a... Why? It's fun. It's fun to celebrate. It's all the same. It's all the same. No, it's like... 200, sure, correct?

People like... That's like saying, so what, you don't celebrate your birthday? People just like to celebrate numbers. That's a whole other can of worms. I think birthdays are kind of stupid, to be honest. Okay, fair enough. But people celebrate them.

People like to be celebratory. I'll have you know, the U.S. I'm sorry, the MMA hour's 300th show. That was a big deal. Was not the 300th show, my friend. We've had multiple shows. Is that true? Yeah.

We've had Best of shows that were numbered, and now this year they weren't numbered. And by the way, that's your fault. I always said, that I didn't want that. You're like, oh, I like the numbers. Now they're not numbered anymore. They're not numbered anymore.

That's fair. But the point of this is, you're saying, who cares about the numbers? I'm saying, I understand. I understand. I like a reason to celebrate. If you want to celebrate the fifth, the six, whatever. When it's my kid's birthday, I go nuts. I just want it to tell you to be factually correct.

It's not really 200. That's all I'm saying. That's great. That's great. Chill out. UFC title fights. Yes. Virtually every UFC chance.

Champion now has a booked title defense, in your opinion. What would you say are the most likely to potentially lose their belt? So who's likely to get upset? Johnson, Cehudo, Verduniochich, Rockhold, Widman, Cruz, Faber, Dosangios, Alvarez, Yemjicch, Gedelia, Tate Nunes, and then potentially Lola Woodley, which was announced. Well, we can add Jones to the... Jones Corny. No, Jones OSP to the top column.

That's a book's fight. Oh, sure, sure, sure, sure. I don't know. What do you pick? Most likely? I'm going to go with, I guess, Rockhold Weidman, if I had to pick, because I feel like that's likely the closest fight,

and it seemed like Wyman was getting his doors blown off before that ill-advised kick. That said, Rockhold definitely put a herd on him in the rest of that fight. I could see it. I think Wyden-Roccold probably. Yeah, if I'm picking one that's most likely, it's going to be that. Although potentially, I mean, you know, Dominic Cruz looked great coming back, all the credit in the world possible to him.

But, you know, we don't know exactly how good, you know, it's been one fight back, is what I'm saying. He looked damn good in that one fight, but it's been one fight back. Faber could, you know, potentially pull that off there. If I'm a betting man, I'm not betting on favor, I'm thinking Cruz will get it done. but as I said, not much of a, you know, it's not like he's been back beating the doors off contenders. So there's probably an opportunity ever for favor.

Yeah, I mean, remember what I told you when you assume what happens? What are you talking about? These are all assumptions. I don't have time for this. What do you mean they're all assumptions? What does that even mean? Are we done? No, we're not done.

How many more do we have for God's sake? Okay, okay, okay. Let's get to the good stuff. No, I don't want to talk about this. What? What is it? Okay, fine, fine, fine. You don't want to talk about that? I see how you do.

In Russia, looking for, this is from a Russian fan. Yes. They're talking about... I like how he bolded certain words. They're talking about Koreshkov's career. Yes. And they're talking about beating Benson Henderson is not just a big name in a former U.S. Next question.

Oh, wow. Next question. Let it be known. Ariel Halani. Before the show, all your questions suck. I hate this. Don't want to do questions anymore. Not true.

Coming to first. That's a fabrication. We need more questions from the fans. Now we see what really happened. That is actually, that is libel. Okay, here we go. That is slander. Kimbo versus James Thompson.

Yes. This is what I want to talk about. I love this. This is what gets you excited. Kimbo versus James Thompson. Is this one of the most anticipated rivalries or rematches that you can think of. No, it is not. Scott Coker is a promoter. He's going to promote.

Promoter, going to promote. Your Twitter would say differently. What do you mean? People are into it? No, your Twitter. It seemed like you were billing this is the greatest rematch of all time. Get the hell out of here. What are you talking about? When did I say that? You're tweeting out these vague tweets about the rematch that everybody's

been waiting for and all of a sudden it's Thompson versus Kimbo. I was just trying to beat them to the punch, that's all. I was trying to wodge bomb them. No, I mean, look, it's again, it's a step up from old Data 5,000, that's for sure. And I'm curious to see how they're going to promote it. What kind of footage are they going to have, you know?

So that's going to be interesting because, as you know, the UFC has the Elite XC library now. So I'm curious about that. And I think the main issue that I had with the interview on ESPN was Coker just saying that, oh, the government regulates us and all that. And I'm like, come on. That didn't fly three years ago, but they got away with it. It certainly doesn't fly anymore. You can't say that anymore. That's tone deaf.

What would you? What's the alternative? I think Texas deserves some blame here for just giving him a 90-day suspension. What's the alternative? Look, Belator is going to, you know, if he's free, free, I don't expect them to police themselves. You know, the UFC hired someone else to police them. So I don't expect Belter to be like, you know what, we're going to put our biggest ratings draw on the bench for nine months just because all of you people on the internet are saying so. No, I don't expect that. But don't give me the government stuff.

You know, that's just, that's hogwash at this point. As far as the options for Kimbo, that makes sense, it makes sense. There's a history. And oh, by the way, it's happening in London at the 02, where Bissing Silva was. So it's going to sell a lot of tickets. No doubt about it with Paul Daly on the card as well. So, I mean, as a fight, it's fine. It's the kind of fight that Kimbo should be in right now. Yeah, I don't have so much of a problem is what he said either. though. I mean, look, that's the reality. It's not... It is the reality, but don't...

You may get away with it on mainstream television. You can't come out and say, wow, we really dodged a bullet there. We're happy he was only suspended 90 days. Rolling on right along. No, no, no. What I would say is... What I would say is, you know, look, that fight took place in Texas.

We respect that commission. And we do feel like there is no place in our organization or in our sport for any kind of performance enhancing drug. And as we continue to grow, let's not forget we're a very young company. The UFC has been around for 23 years. Let's not forget that.

But as we do continue to grow, our number one priority is to put on a safe and healthy product, the product that fans can be proud of, our fighters can be proud of, we want a level playing field. And we continue to look into ways to cleaning up the sport. That's not what was said.

So you think that that's less disingenuous than what he actually said, because I disagree, because that would be, you wouldn't put on Kimbo Data 5,000, and if that was actually something that you planned on doing. I think that that's hogwash. No, because that's what he should be saying,

because that should be the truth. Oh, wow. I mean, that's a different story. You disagree with that statement? No, I disagree with that that could possibly be genuine. He has to be genuine when saying it. I'm not condoning him lying. All I'm saying is if he thinks that anyone is like, oh, okay, that makes sense.

Yeah, that's cool. The government is regulating us. It doesn't work anymore. It's a backward statement. It's an outdated statement. It's a tone-deaf statement. That's my point. The government doesn't do its job, and especially when they're handing out these minor penalties for big infractions, they're especially not doing their job.

Yeah, I agree. But I think that that's the react. Like, that's just what we have to deal with. But that's saying the same thing that he's saying. And it doesn't work anymore. No, it doesn't work anymore. They don't get a pass. They should not get a pass anymore.

Look, Belator gets a pass on a lot of things. PEDs should not get a pass. This is real life stuff. Someone died last week, and that had nothing to do with PEDs. And someone could have died in the freaking fight that Kimbo was in against Dada. He was this close to dying according to him. Can you imagine? He said he died multiple times.

He said he died twice. Being done like final. There's no way. There's no way. I credit Todd Grisham for asking those questions in a very limited time frame. more should be done. I know they can't go with you side. They don't have that money.

Whatever. They are owned by Vycon, by the way, who has a heck of a lot of money. Fine. They're younger. But this idea that the commissions are enough is not enough anymore, and that's all I'm saying. That's fair. Thank you.

Ultimate Fighter 23. Yes. They made an erroneous claim here off the top. But the main question, is the rivalry between Yowana and Claudia? enough to get you to watch. Probably going to watch the first two episodes like always, and then it just kind of trickles off.

The problem is, as I've said before, when the Ultimate Fighter was hot, there was one UFC every two, three months. That's not the case anymore. There's a UFC every week, so you get your fix. You don't need more, especially when it involves lesser talent. So I love the dynamic to Nguana and Claudia,

big fans, can't wait for that fight, but I can't guarantee that I'm going to watch each and every week. How about this one, not lesser talent? Tough 24. Yes. They canceled the tryouts. That wasn't going to be lesser talent. That was going to be title contenders.

What do you make of that? Well, still kind of lesser because if they're in the – look, no one can tell me that those people are better than Moraga, Benavides, Dodson, you know, Sehudo. They're not. They're just not because then they would be in the UFC. Probably not. But, I mean, you know, at certain times it just may not have been the right time. Somebody comes back.

But they haven't addressed why they canceled it. So let's wait before we speculate. I hope that they go the route. that I suggested and get current UFC fighters and put them in the house and then that's the number one contender. But let's see. They haven't addressed why. They just said that they canceled it. So let's see what happens.

Last question. Finally. Yeah, and he really does not like you guys. Don't ask any more questions. No, that's not true. I'm just tired. We know that you appreciate everyone who asks you or I'm sorry, who agrees to do an interview with you. You're always gracious with your, you know, with doling out the praise for them.

Well, thank you. But who are your most? enjoyable MMA interviews. Who do you always have a pleasure speaking to? I actually don't like this question because I feel like I'm going to leave someone out. I will say this, and this is the biggest, this will sound like a cop out. Oh, God. I always get a little emotional on my way home. Like this walk right now where I think about the show, where I think about people taking some time out of their day, committing, showing up on time, giving me 15, 20 minutes. I actually get emotional that it continues to happen week after week. It's a big deal. It's a big charitable thing that they do.

for us with no real gain. I'm not paying them. There's nothing that they're going to gain from it today or tomorrow, but I genuinely appreciate it. So anyone who comes on this show is my favorite interview. It's true. They come out of their way, whether it's in studio, on the phone, on Skype. That's that's big. And I bother them a lot to make sure they're on time. I always get a little more. I'm like, wow, George St. Pierre took some time out of his day to speak to me today. BJ Penn took some time out of his day to speak to me today. Derek Lewis, Eddie Alvarez, the great Chuck Mindenhall, Benson Henderson took some time out of his day to visit me on Fight Week. That means a lot.

So those are my favorite. I do get emotional. Cop out. It's true. Say what you want. You're trying to slander me and call me not a people's person. That is the truth. Cop out.

New York Rick's abandoning us for two weeks coming up. Not going to show up. He's going on his fifth honeymoon. That's the real cop out. You can hit my music. I'm done. Oh, no. I'm done.

All right, a fun show, but the time has come. I was going to do picks with Mr. New York. Wow, believe it or not, there's only like five fights on best fight odds. Andre Fili, Yaira Rodriguez, what a great fight that is. Hapha Natal versus Robert Whitaker. Anthony Pettis versus Edson Barbosa getting no attention whatsoever. That's a great fight. Can you imagine that fight a year ago?

And then, of course, Demetrius Johnson versus. Henry Sehudo and Johnny Bones Jones returning for the first time in what 14, 15 months against Ovin Seypoo. Yes, it is not Daniel Cormier, but Jones, like Habib, just showing up, just fighting after the long layoff is a spectacle in itself. I will be there as of Wednesday, Lord willing, and you can look forward to our coverage from that point forward over at mMAfighting.com. We say goodbye today on this April 18th. Thank you very much to Chuck Mindenhall. for kicking us off. Appreciate his time as always.

Thank you very much to Eddie Alvarez for his time. Best of luck against Hafeldo Sanchez. Thank you very much to the great Derek Lewis, who showed up wearing a red panty on his head. Good luck to him against Roy Nelson later on this year. Thank you very much and welcome back officially to the prodigy, BJ Penn.

George St. Pierre got me all hot inside. Thank you very much to him. Good luck as he tries to ease his way back in there. hopefully some news to come and of course thank you very much to Benson Henderson for stopping by best of luck to him on Friday as he makes his bell to our debut back next week

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