MMA Fighting - The MMA Hour with Luke Thomas – Episode 449

Episode Date: September 17, 2018

On this episode of The MMA Hour, Luke Thomas speaks to ADCC bronze medalist and TUF winner Ryan Hall about his upcoming bout with B.J. Penn at UFC 232 (21:30); Dan Hardy who joins us to recap UFC Moscow and look ahead to UFC 229 in our Monday Morning Analyst segment (44:50). Additionally Luke also shares his thoughts on Herb Dean's controversial UFC Moscow stoppage in The Weigh-in (6:35), and we answers your questions on the lattest news in MMA in A Round of Tweets (1:05:45) and Sound Off (1:21:10). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The meeting will begin when passenger Fisher is done celebrating. 19 plus Ontario only. Please play responsibly. Concerned by your gambling or that if someone close, you call 18665330 or visitcomex Ontario.ca. It's the mixed martial arts hour. It is Monday the 17th of September 2018, and Caesar is home. Welcome, everyone. My name is Luke Thomas, and this is the MMA hour right here on MMAFighting.com. Thank you so much for joining me.

I greatly appreciate it. Fun show for you guys, all of the usuals, the way in, a round of tweets, the soundoff where you become my guest, but also a few guests as well. He has not been in the Octagon for Tuesday. years despite being an 80-C bronze medalist and, of course, being the ultimate fighter winner, but he is here on today's show. Ryan Hall will be here at around 1220. At around 1240, he was the commentator for UFC Moscow, one of the best analysts, if not the best analyst in the game.

Dan Hardy will join us to talk about some things that we were going to have you and Jaycheck at one. We're going to push that back a little bit to about 120, but she will be here. There's still a lot to talk to her about from her comments over the weekend. her future. So a lot to get to. And as always, you can, of course, call the show, you know that, but tweet us as well using the hashtag the MMA Hour. And you see that number on the bottom of the screen, 844-866-2468. That is our hotline. You can also, as always, if you don't want to pay the rate to call for international callers, I believe it is the MMA Hour at Voxmedia.com. Just record a

sound clip of you asking the question, shoot it on over to us. If it's good enough, we'll play it on the air. I hope everyone had a great weekend. I know I did. I did some relaxing after my vacation, got back to the gym. Let's see what else. I saw The Predator. It's terrible.

It's really terrible. But it's fun in that kind of a way. So I am rested. I saw Canello Triple G. We'll also talk about that a little later in the show as well. So we got a lot to get to, not a moment to waste. Now, he is the arroz to my frioli. He is the arequipe to my pan.

He is the alla to my chambaya. He is the cumbly ayes to my felix. Happy birthday, my friend. Danny Seguro, of course. I appreciate it. How are you doing? Doing well, 26. 26.

Now, you know what that means? Man. You are closer to 30 than you are 20 now. That's right. Life is basically over for you. Pretty much, yeah. After 25, it's all downhill from here. It truly is.

Any big point? plans for 26, either today to celebrate or the year. Like, do you have a thing you want to do in mind at 26? I'd like to pick up boxing, actually. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I've been training less jujitsu, and I want to focus on that. What is it about boxing you would want to train?

Like, for the exercise, just to learn how to drive. Yeah, maybe for the exercise. My body is a bit run down from all the jiu-jitsu. So I kind of want to take a break from that. But other than that, just, you know, keep working hard. You know, keep doing this show. and it's about it. Well, whatever you can do to maintain your body over time, you should do.

Yeah. About four months ago, I was rolling with this guy. He was super bricked up, but he was a white belt. I was like, oh, I'm going to wipe the floor with this guy. You know, not that I'm trying to, but, you know, whatever, just looking at it. And he was, like, incredibly good. Come to find out, he was a Division I wrestler. So I was trying to hold him down.

Shocker, it was very difficult. In any case, I turned to pivot on the mat and my toe dislocated. And everyone was like, oh, six weeks, you'll be fine. Dude, it's been several months, and it literally feels like it's being set on fire every time I step down. Yeah, I mean, at the age of 60, it's hard to recover, right? Yeah. I mean. It certainly is.

It was a joke. No, it's not even a joke. It's my life. Yeah, I mean, the thing with Jiu-Zitsu is that it's fun. Sure, you're not getting punched in the face, but, man, you can get injured so easily and little things add up over time. So it's definitely hard on your body. Well, happy birthday. Thank you. If I had known it was your birthday, Facebook told me this morning, I would have brought you some cake, but I have some metaphorical cake in my mind I'm giving you. Surely this is the same.

Yeah, for sure. All right. Let's get the show started here. A couple of questions. Oh, no, no, no, don't go away just yet. Put them back. Put them back. Not yet. The calls. How are they? You know what? The tweets were actually better than the calls. Wow. That's unusual. Yep. I'm guessing, you know, MMA-wise it was a slow weekend, although U.S. Moscow was around. Yeah. Okay. We talked about it before the show. You still have not seen Triple G Canello, too. No, I've seen highlights, but I haven't seen the actual fight in its entire. I'll weigh in on that a little bit later, but you did watch UFC Moscow. Now, do you want to tell the story on air that you told me prior to the show? Yes. All right, because that will help me set up the way in. So set it up for folks. It's about Herb Dean. Yes. You have the floor. So since I have the greatest of luck, I was just watching UFC Moscow. And.

two of my roommates, you know, they just decided to join in and they're not, you know, frequent MMA watchers. They've seen MMA on TV here and there, like, you know, it pops up on the corner of their eye and they know what MMA is, but they've never actually sat down and watched a fight. How old are they? 25 and 28. All right, so millennials, yeah. And they sit down with me. and it was C.B. Dahloway versus, I can't pronounce that gentleman's name. But, man, that fight was bad. And they literally thought C.B. Dahloway died. So what were they saying?

They were just like, oh, my God, why is he still hitting him? You know, what's going on? I mean, the whole fight they were like a little, you know, just nervous just because, you know, it's a fight, right? But once, you know, the final, what, 30 seconds of that fight looked brutal, man. And C.B. Dalloway just looked like he didn't want. want to fight and when you see someone that just doesn't want to be there still taking a beating that that's literally one of the worst things like you know you can see an m ms so you basically have the belief that that was a bad or rather i wasn't even a stoppage really because it was sort of

between rounds and he couldn't get up and then he called it so let's call it a non-stoppage you're not a fan of it no not at all and i think it's terrible for the sport i think you know they immediately did not continue watching uh and i think for new fans like this is something that that that's funny and you'll weigh your way on it later on the show. But it's like, these are the type of things that, you know, push people away from MMA. You know what I'm saying? And it should be corrected.

It should be addressed. Sure. It absolutely should be. With that being said. Yeah. We'll check in with you a little bit later. Yeah. All right.

Now, with that being said, as he noted, let's get the way in started. It is time right here at the MMA hour for the way in. All right. Let me weigh in on this. So as he alluded to, it shocked some people and it shocked their conscience. the lack of a stoppage by Herb Dean at UFC Moscow. This was in the CB Dalloway fight, and the other gentleman's name is, forgive my pronunciation,

Mertaz Aliyev. He was an M1 champion. I didn't know a whole lot about him. He looked pretty good. And it was a nice performance by him, especially taking the fight on late notice and everything else involved. So he did his job, right?

They tell you, keep striking until the referee pulls you off. Now, we've had Herb on the show. I believe we had him a couple of weeks ago. Let me stay up front. like Herb Dean a lot. As a person, I do think generally speaking, he is a competent official. Remember, he doesn't just perform these functions. He also has his own training academy where he's training the next generation of referees and officiants to do their various jobs. So he's somewhat of a leader in that community. And I believe that whenever a situation like this happens in

MMA, it is always inevitable that people get right to character assassination. You go back to the Yamasaki lack of involvement in Valentina Shivchenko and Priscilla Kachwara, and everyone was out there saying, oh, my God, it was a terrible stoppage, which or non-stoppage, or whatever we want to call a super late one. But then it turned in, it metastasized into this thing about who Yamasaki is or isn't, how he's a man of ill repute. And none of those things were really very fair. If you want to criticize either his body of work or that particular call, I really had no problem with that. In fact, I agree with just about all of it. But what really kind of bothered me was when they went after him as a person. I got to tell you, as a guy in Washington, D.C., where he has developed all of his academies, or most of them anyway, what he and his brother have done for Jiu-Jitsu, for MMA, for people's lives, should not be understated.

This is not a guy who is involved in crimes and bad behavior. He's a married father. And so if you're going to really be serious about a character evaluation, it's really not an argument you can have. Neither here nor there. I'm not going to get into the character assassination of Herb Dina, though I've seen some of that out there. But one neat and do that to really call the stoppage. Now, why do I think that stoppage was bad? Pretty simply, CB Dalloway stopped competing.

It is true that, again, Merta Zaliev was landing a lot of shots on the blocked face and arms. Like his hands were up and the punches were like hitting the top of his hands or hitting on the forearm. Fair enough, some of them weren't getting through. But he was also, C.B. Dalloway just. laying there. He was looking to be saved. And I don't say that to impugn his character. I say that because his character, we know what kind of a competitor he is. We know what he's done in the octagon. That is a natural human response for somebody who's been put through that kind of stress, both in that particular contest and in a cumulative sense. Some guys just don't want it

anymore in a particular fight, and that's okay. And he didn't. And I got to say it really got bad for me when he was laying on his side. But there's a moment about 22 seconds left in the round where he then goes belly down and is just covering up. Folks, that is not intelligent defense. It's okay to cover up at first if you're hurting, but eventually you have to move. Eventually you have to do something. And if you're just covering up over this prolonged period,

I don't know how anybody on this planet could call that intelligent defense. And that was a problem for me because then the fight continued for 22 more seconds. Basically, CB had to take the fight into his own hands in between rounds and just either he couldn't get up or didn't want to get up, whatever it was.

It was the right thing to do. fight should not have gone on. And yes, you can make an argument about the, where was his corner. I agree. They didn't do him any favors, a whole lot either. There's a lot of people who are complicit here. But let me start, if I can, beyond this preamble, with a word. The word of the day. The word of the day here on the way in, on the MMA hour, on this 17th of September, 2018, is Omerta. Do you guys know what Omerta is? Yes, I think it's a song by a Lamb of God, but that's not what it is. By its technical definition,

Omerita is the code of silence that members of a crime family will use to basically not snitch on each other. Now, I don't mean to borrow the word in its literal terms. I'm taking a sanitized version of that. But in MMA, we have way too much Omerta. And here's what I mean by that.

If you would like to go through Herb's resume and find various shortcomings, it's not necessarily difficult. I have made a list. This is hardly exhaustive, but just a few to note. In the Hennemaral versus Uriah Faber fight, Uriah had a thumbs up, Herb later admitted he didn't see it, stopped the stop the fight. Yariah appeared to be fine. In the Sarah McMahon versus Ronda Rousey fight, McMahon got dropped. He called it, even though she appeared to be able to continue.

In Alvarez-Parier won, he called it a no contest, which a lot of people do. didn't agree with. He later explained himself, but at least it was controversial at the time, given all the various considerations. Seroni versus Mazvedal, he actually kind of intervened before the horn even went in the first round. In Cibed Dalloway versus Khalid, again, Mertazalev. We all know the story there. There's a couple other ones. How about Rockhold versus Weidman? Let that one go almost a minute too long in my judgment. And Rockhold took a lot of abuse as a, excuse me, Wydenman took a lot of abuse as a consequence. And you guys may not remember this one. Here's another one that really sticks out to me. Pete Spratt versus Ryan Ford.

Now, it was loud where he was. Herb Dean couldn't hear the bell. The round extended for another five seconds, and Pete Spratt took unanswered shots from Ryan Ford, and the fight went to the next round, and then he eventually lost. He was super upset about it. And the tape is not very exonerating. But here's the truth about Herb's resume. You don't know about all the good calls he's made because those don't make the headlines. I agree that all of these are not great, or at least some of them, are very much not great. But if you really wanted to, for the most part, you can play that game with anybody.

You can play that game with Big John McCarthy. You can find all the times he didn't have a great day or a great event. You can play that game with Dan Mergliata. You can play that game with Leon Roberts. You can play that game to a lesser extent. But if you really wanted to, you could play that game with Mark Goddard. You can play that game with Jason Herzog. You can play that game with a lot of people.

They're not perfect. Nobody is in any occupation anywhere. They're going to have bad calls. And documenting them is important, but having a little perspective is as well. Now, if it sounds like I'm exonerating, Herb, I'm not. Here's what I am saying, going back to the original word about Omerita. Have you noticed there has been no official response by anyone about this? Have you noticed that there are no other referees willing to speak on the record?

Have you noticed the UFC hasn't said anything? Now, maybe they've done something privately. Maybe the commission involved here. I don't know who it even would be, UFC or Russia's, whatever the case may be. Maybe they've said something, but we don't really know about it. My major objection is that you can ask a series of questions about this. Not so much the stoppage itself, which appears to be quite bad, but about somebody's record. Because I saw folks saying, well, is this lack of a stoppage disqualifying?

And Herb's been on the down swing since 2014. Do we really know that? It might actually be true, but do we really know that? Do commissions keep report cards? When something goes bad, do they actually say anything to them? Do the commissions talk to each other about the referees? We don't know any of these things. And every time I try to reach out to a commission member

or get another referee to speak about something, almost universally, it is silence. Silence. Every time. Every time. That doesn't mean that people aren't well-intentioned. That doesn't mean there isn't something happening behind the scenes. It just means we are totally left in the dark because of this code of silence.

And it doesn't just affect referees and it doesn't just affect commission members. It is a problem in MMA generally. MMA has an Omerita problem. Fact. Fact. Do you know how much news doesn't get reported because people don't want to talk on the record or even talk to you at all? When Donald Seroni came out with that accusation about the puppy mill and Jackson Wink, trust me, there was a bunch of journalists who knew about that a long time ago,

and it never got published. And every time I tried to look into it, silence. Omerta, one more time. How on earth can it be that we say refereeing is so important that these guys are out here looking after the safety of these fighters? They're that line of defense. You can't have a fight without someone being there. And then at the same time,

there's no accountability at all in the public sphere whatsoever. None. There's no transparency about any of this. You know, you talk about this with athletic commission members and sometimes off the record, what they'll tell you is, well, I don't want to throw the referee under the bus. Well, what is the fighter who got wronged entitled to here? And frankly, what is the public owed?

Maybe we're not owed everything. Maybe we're only owed a little bit. But I don't even know how much that is. Because it differs from commission to commission. It differs from person running the commission to person running the commission. It differs on what their philosophies might be. It differs on the offense. It differs on so many things.

And I get that refereeing is a volunteer army, man. It is who comes in that door. and that's not for a lot of money, and it sure is hell in for a lot of thanks, which is why I think some measure of being calm about this, at least Herb's particular act, in the larger measurement of his resume, is important. He's got a gazillion good calls, and he's got some bad ones. What does that mean? We should have some perspective about that.

But the fact that you can never call up anyone and get a freaking answer to anything is why, whether it's Herb Dean or Yamasaki or anybody else, this shit is going to continue. It is going to continue because the power structure in place will guarantee it. It will guarantee it. It's not going anywhere. You want to get rid of Herb Dean? Who are you going to put in that's going to do a better job?

Maybe there's somebody. My hunch is probably would make things worse. That's my hunch. Why do you think you see Mark Goddard at all these events and Dan Mergley out at all these events? and previously Big John, but of course now he's with Beltor or Herb Dean at all these events. Because when you take those guys away the level of refereeing, not totally, I think Jason Herzog's a very good referee. There's some other good ones as well.

But by and large, it just collapses. The quality collapses. So is that the answer? Is that why they get all the refereing assignments? Is that why there may not be any consequence for this? Is that why we'll probably see Herb, either in Brazil or some other event? I can only speculate because no one ever talks. on the record. And that's true for officiating. That's true for many, many fighters. That's true for

many, many managers, except when it comes to things like, oh, my client's got a fight coming up. That's why that's the most prominent form of news, because that's the only thing they'll share. We have a serious, serious, oh, merits a problem. I am not asking for people to drop dimes on other people, unless it's truly warranted. What I'm saying is we need to have more adult conversational. We have almost none of them inside MMA. They're almost not a thing. Because either trash talk is part of a fight, but then it's not really real, and that gets turned into like what criticism is.

So if you actually try to make adult criticism, it ends up being treated as slander or something. And so all you end up getting is nonsense praise or phony hype for a fight and nothing in between. And when you try to talk to commission members, silence. When you try to talk to various high-ranking officials inside promotions, silence. You try to talk to other referees to just get some perspective, silence. So I'm not here asking you to love Herb Dean stoppage.

And if you really believe that there's a marriage-cratic case for saying he's slipping or he should be replaced, then that's a conversation that I think probably should be had. That seems a little premature to me, but opinions will differ. But here's the point. it is impossible to hold these people accountable because nobody in power, for the most part, not totally, but for the most part, they don't want to do shit about it. They don't have to because they're not accountable to anybody. It's not about Herb or anybody else.

It's about that entire structure that's in place that enables this and will continue to enable this and has enabled this because there's no real way to check it. except for if a promoter just loses their mind or a fighter request, like Dan McCormier didn't want Herb Dean at UFC 197. They did it anyway, right? You get the idea. I'm just pointing, or maybe it was 214, whatever it was, because of what he did 197.

As we wrap up here, let me just say this. If you want change in MMA and you're watching this right now, you have to do something about it. to say something on the record. You have to get out there and talk candidly like an adult about the problems, even if it means there are consequences about that. That's true if you're an MMA media member, if you're another referee, if you're an officiant, if you are dismayed with the state of things, but then you recognize whenever someone asks you to speak on the record about it and you don't and you just hide behind the power structure because you can, well then

stop complaining because this is just how things are going to be. And I realize with the average fan, I may sound all a little bit confusing, but the reality is that there is plenty of change possible, but you got to have a little courage to make it happen first. All right, and that's my way in here. I believe we are supposed to have our friend Ryan Hall on. Do we have them on yet, Danny, in the back? Talking them on the phone.

I guess we're going to figure it out whether we're going to have them on Skype or whether we're going to have them on the phone. As you guys know, Ryan Hall has been off for, I think, December 2016 was his last fight, the Gray-Maynard one. And I think he might have had some injury woes in between, but he probably could have been back a lot sooner. Now, he's going to be back for UFC 232 against BJ Penn. Do we have him on Skype or we have him on phone? All right, let's go now, we have him on Skype. Let's go now to our friend on Skype, ADCC Bronze Medalist three-time ADCCVET, as well as Ultimate Fighter winner.

My friend in yours, the one and only, Ryan Hall. How are you? Hey, Luke, going great. How about yourself? I'm doing quite well. Ryan, first of all, congratulations on the new addition to your family. How are things? Are you sleeping at all?

Thank you very much. Things are going good, little guys good, and I'm sleeping some. Some. Okay. All right, man. Well, here's the obvious question for you. Your last fight, December 2016. Your next fight, December 2018.

Where have you been? Man, been here and there, but always. training, always doing some stuff. You know, I've been working hard to improve and doing my best and looking forward to, you know, a really great fight against one of, you know, an actual legend. And, you know, there's many legends, there's many, many champions, few legends. When you get the opportunity to compete against one, I think it's something that you

should jump at. And I look forward to Sean what I've learned. All right. So in this time off, have you been injured at all? No, nothing, not meaningfully. I've just been here and there, you know, doing some work with the military, doing some work at the gym doing a lot of training. But no, no injuries to speak up, no.

Were you helping other fighters with their camps? I know you have a various number of associations. I'm using that in the loosest sense of the term, that you, you know, like, for example, a Wonderboy, I know you worked with him in the past. Did you help out any of the fighters with their camps? You know, I've been working a great deal with my friend, Ton Lee, who's, he's signed to 1FC now,

but he fought on Dana-Wise Contender Series. He won the interim title for LFA, and has been doing really well. He's taught me a great deal in the last while striking, and he moved to D.C. after the show, after Ultimate Fighter, and we've been working together since, but I've been spending a pretty great deal of time

helping him out as best I can. Okay, but not traveling around so much. No, not a ton. Just been, yeah, kind of staying mostly in D.C., getting here and there, but out to L.A. always door for him whenever I can, and now I'll be going back up to TriStar as well. I'm looking forward to seeing all the guys up there and seeing for us.

Okay. So, all right. You've been training this whole time. You've been teaching at 50-50 as well? Mm-hmm. Always. Yeah, okay. I can never tell because it's a lot of times guys get into UFC

and they stop teaching. It's hard to know exactly how much that's a part of your life. But yeah, sorry, but I guess it comes and goes. But, you know, as you get closer to the fight, I think you put that on the back burner. But I always try to be a part of the gym. All right. So let me just say this.

It's very unusual, as you might well imagine, you're a bright guy. It's very unusual for a person to basically, be not injured and also not fighting. Now, you haven't been doing a ton of media either. So I'm going to guess that you either weren't getting fight offers or the fight offers were not to your liking. What is, how would you describe the primary reason for the layoff? Well, I'd say there was a series of things.

You know, I mean, you mentioned that there's the gym. There's other things going on in life. I'm trying to work on those as well. You know, after fighting gray, which I felt very fortunate for that opportunity that was good. And I felt, you know, it was unorthodox, but most definitely by any, you know, like metric and dominant performance, similar to the fight against Ardum, I was definitely looking forward to facing somebody tougher. But it's turned out to be is that a lot of the guys that are a little higher up the chain, and I'm not talking like way, way up there where, you know, I have no business even asking to compete with them. But we're very reticent to get into the ring. And that was a problem.

So I wasn't really, you know, and I expressed the interest, you know, to matchmaker for the UFC, who's never been anything but a gentleman to me, and that I wanted to face very difficult and challenging opposition. And he said, okay, I said, I'll let you know when that comes around. And a lot of those guys have turned down the fights. So, no, I've not been spending my time turning down fights, but not a ton of offers who come in with the ones that have, you know, accepted wholeheartedly. And, you know, finally we got a good one. And, you know, in BJ Penn, you have someone who's clearly not afraid of anyone. and this guy fought up to heavyweight, fought Leota Machita.

So I don't think bravery is an issue in his case. And I will try to match that myself. All right. So let me just ask you from a general perspective. I can't say how many fighters come on this show, Ryan. You're hardly alone. And being like, you know, I'm trying to climb that ladder, but the guys at the top of the ladder keep pulling it up so I can't.

What do you think is, why is this more prominent now in MMA? And is there anything that can be done about it? Not so much specific to your situation, but this general problem that I hear about, literally every week. Well, you know, I think that it's a tough situation because I can understand the risk and reward, you know, of, that may be out of whack fighting certain people. And I think it explains a lot about why certain guys are able to get, you know, a lot of opponents and a lot of, you know, bigger fights and other people might have a significant challenge. Say, for instance, Wonderboy, whether now we're on the way up, I can't imagine people are lining up to fight Stephen just because it's a tricky and challenging fight.

and there's only one Stephen Thompson running around. So it's not as if there's, you know, let's say you're fighting the best wrestleboxer, but you have many like him and you can practice for this guy. You can't just go down to the local karate school and find a black belt and say, oh, man, this guy's going to be a good stand in for Wonderboy. And as a result, you know, I think it was probably challenging him for him until he managed to get in there against Hendricks and Ellenberger. And then, you know, you force the issue because of the success you've had to get those fights.

You know, again, it's just the nature of the game, but, you know, your pay is not. not increased as you, as you accept more challenging fights. And, you know, you're on a fixed contract and that is what it is, but all things being equal, if someone said, Ryan, would you like to fight someone, you know, I'll always prefer to fight the tougher opponent just because I want to learn and I want to grow and I want to have the opportunity to compete against those people while I can. But someone said, hey, would you like to fight in your backyard or would you like to fight in New Zealand? I said, well, how much are you going to pay me to fight in New Zealand? Because it's a giant pain in the ass to fly over there. I don't have many Pachian money to put

everybody up and all my closest friends for, you know, four weeks and get everybody's a jet lag squirt away. They're like, well, it's going to be the same. Like, well, in that case, I'd definitely like to fight in my backyard. You know, in the second case, you're absorbing about one hundredth the hardship and the pain of the butt and everything else. You know, New Zealand would be a lovely place to visit, but, you know, to go and compete would be tough. So I think it's just the nature of people having a difficult time wanting to accept bigger challenges for really no greater benefit as far as they're concerned in most cases. Do you think there should, is there a case to be made that to the extent you have to travel, pay should be pro-rated accordingly?

That would be interesting. I think that would make it a little bit more attractive. You know, again, I think sometimes you find yourself in a situation where it's juice is worth a squeeze. You say, hey, do you want to travel such or such distance to fight? And excuse me, an opponent that you really like to compete against, you say, yeah, absolutely, it's all worth it. But if you're given three equal opponents and three equal paychecks and two of them do not involve flound. more than four or five hours or changing times on significantly, I would say, yeah, it would be difficult to take the longer, you know,

the more difficult, you know, extra, you know, baggage that comes along with it. If there was a way to mitigate that, I think that would be great. But, you know, again, I'm not the one doling out the paychecks, and I don't know how that would, how manageable that would be. Now, you mentioned that you've been, the UFC's been good to you. So even though you've had the layoff, fair to say that your relationship with the UFC has not been damaged? No, I hope not.

You know, I mean, everyone, I understand that they have a position and I have a position. And, you know, I do not go along to get along. It's never something that I've been just into for, you know, for its own sake. But at the same time, you know, the last thing I want to do is disrespect and they want to cause people, you know, extra trouble. And I understand that they have a position as a promoter. I understand that other fighters have positions that other athletes. I'm glad that they're able to turn down fights and that they're not compelled to do things that they don't want to do, that this is all at will. So, you know, at the same time, I understand the frustrating components of that, and I would, you know, I would love to have a linear progression for everyone.

So it's easier to say, just like to say, for instance, you win the quarterfinal, you go to the semi-final, you win the semifinal, you go to the final, no matter what, you know, I think that would make it a lot easier for everyone else if there were set structure more in place. But, you know, fight sports have never been like that for whatever reason. And it would definitely take quite a bit of doing to change. So as far as I'm concerned, now I understand that people have their position, but I have mine. And I feel very, very fortunate for the opponent that I have, and I'm glad that it took a while and it took a lot of waiting, but I've done my best to make good use at the time. So all things considered, I couldn't be happy. It's like the great fight. It took me a year of waiting for that.

And now granted, I had an opponent drop out and I had to lose that fight, you know, through, you know, not my own doing, but, you know, it was all worth it to fight someone of Gray's ability and stature. And I feel the same way about BJ. Yeah, last thing on this. It's amazing how the tournament structure kind of fell out of favor. And now I think fans are looking back and saying, well, maybe too many tournaments is a problem, but some tournaments might be great. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I guess you look at what Bellator is doing.

And, you know, Roy McDonald's got a heck of a challenge on his hands, being involved in the tournament and also fighting Musassi, you know, right back to back. But that's a solid order. I'm excited for him. But, yeah, absolutely. Having that linear progression, I think, does make it a little bit easier on everyone matchmakers included you know but at the same time you know then fighting's tough because you know you get one injury this guy drops out that guy drops out and it shuffles the entire thing

it's it's a little tough like tom brady hurts his knee that really sucks but the Patriots still play and uh you know the vast majority of the team goes on so yeah i wonder if it's at least a portion nature of the game but i'm curious to see how things change over time all right so the time off to two years of course you're always in the gym i've seen you around town a few times and every time it's either in a gym or at a tournament. So I know for a fact you've been in that gym for the most part. How do you feel like your progression has happened? And here's what I mean.

I'm sure you've gotten better because if you've been training, you get better for the most part. Relative to say, had you been active, how would you gauge your development these last two years? That's always an interesting question because I think, you know, there's an ideal, you know, I'll be honest. I don't think it's ideal to sit out on the shelf for extended periods of times. You know, I don't think that's the best.

But at the same time, if only I don't believe in Ringwry, and things like that. It's more of a, you stay in the groove of competing, and I guess if you want to call that ring rust, you could. But I think that what a lot of people call ring rust is you just forget what it's like to be in there, and that's not something that I feel is a personal issue. But, you know, when you're competing every so often, it keeps you pretty dialed in on just a process of everything. Now, again, personally, I don't cut in almost, you know, maybe five, six pounds to make 145. And this fight is at 155, so I am 150. So that won't be a struggle at all. It's not as if I need any practice on that. But I think that the ideal would be maybe two to three fights maximum a year,

but two to three fights a year. You go up to the Donald Seroni level of getting in there six times a year. That's amazing. It's cool to watch. As a fan, I love it. As an athlete, it's very, very difficult to continue developing, you know, when you're always in fight mode, just because I know the focus and also the strain that you're under

as you get close to being in a fist fight against a bunch of thousands of screaming people surrounding you and, you know, in a cage against some other dude that unless you stop from beating you up is definitely going to beat you up. It makes it a little bit more challenging to be more exploratory in your game. So I think that having those chunks of time, you know, where that you're not under the gun like that is positive. But I guess it's hard to say exactly how much the delta would be from what has been going on to what could have gone on. But all I can say is that I've been in the gym every single day as I have been for the last 14 years. And I'm doing my best to work and doing my best to become a complete martial artist.

And again, I look forward to testing that against the greatest challenge of my career so far. All right. So, BJ Penn, it's going to be in late December, UFC 232. So it sounds like it was his team's request or UFC's request to put it at 155? Yeah, I mean, again, I think it was theirs. It certainly wasn't mine because, again, 45 is a request. isn't an issue. But, you know, I think BJ and I are probably close to the same size. And at the same time, you know, he spent his entire career going up to 170, going up to, you know,

whatever size Leoto was at the time when they were both chubby looking. And I think it's about time that someone gave him the respect of letting him call the shots for once. I'll come up and fight him. And again, he's the MMA legend. I'm the new guy. And I have no problem fighting at 55. All right, so let's talk about BJ for a second. On the one hand, he is truly beloved. Our own Guillemé Cruz spoke to him in Brazil. He was down there training, put the Ghee back on. He was talking about learning the 50-50 and the Barambolo. I'm not sure if you'd seen the interview. But at the same time, you know, we have to make a sober assessment. Yes, he is a legend, but he hasn't won since 2010. And I'm sure you've seen his most recent performances.

To call it a decline, I think would be charitable. Do you think he really should be fighting, Ryan. I guess is the question I'm asking. I don't mean that in a disparaging way. I'm just trying to have a fair conversation about where he is. No, I follow you, Luke. I think it's, you know, it's hard to say. You know, as an athlete, I think that as any of us, you know, we think about doing what you love doing and what you're meant to do. And I know how I feel, you know, when I was called by the UFC and they said, hey, you know, BJ Penn would like to fight, I remember how I felt, you know, and what it was immediately, I was excited to face a challenge. You know, you're also there. that's tempered against the danger of what could happen if, you know, if you don't do your job.

But it's, you know you're doing one of, at least, I won't go so far to say what you're meant to do, but certainly something you love to do, maybe one of the things you're meant to do. And, you know, for a guy like BJ, you know, who is, you know, he is, we talk about the person, the people that have not faced, you know, this competition, that competition because of the risk reward. I think risk of reward is something that's only every now and then factored in for BJ. and I respect the heck out of him for that. I think it's the sort of thing that puts you at risk. You know, I mean, look at him fighting at 170 all those times.

You know, he had a mixed record at 170, but he always performed pretty well, sometimes amazingly well, and always fought only the best, and all of these guys are naturally massive compared to him. And, you know, so I guess it's one of the things that makes him special is one of the things that can, you know, can get you in trouble. And I think that's probably the truth for all of us. For any of us in anything, it's all of your strengths cut both ways. It's funny how that works.

But I would say, you know, at least as far as I'm concerned, BJ is still very, very dangerous. And I think a lot of the people, and I'm not pointing this in anyone, but a lot of the people that look at fighting is if it's like a Madden game where it's like, oh, I'm a 93 and you're a 96. I'll never outrun you. If you get in the open field, you're going to win. You know, the people that are not getting in the ring with him have the luxury of being a little bit dismissive. You know, speaking personally, that's that could. that can end poorly. So that's certainly not the case for me. But I guess I would say, you know, it's hard to tell anyone when to hang it up. And I think that when BJ Penn wants to

fight, I think you give the guy a fight. That's my opinion. And I know very well that this person is very dangerous. And, you know, maybe physically, of course, he's not the same guy he was when he's 23, but he's also tactically, you know, evolved. And as far as competing against me, he's got 30 MMA fights, vast majority of them at a very high level. I have 10, if you count the ultimate fighter. So it balances out interestingly, but I think that also he's being given some concessions. We're fighting at 55. 55 is not my weight class.

So I think a lot of the things that maybe would have been trouble in the past, like, hey, you want to fight at 170 against Roy McDonnell right now? I don't know that that's a great idea, but I don't think that's the case here. Yeah. So let's talk about this. I know that you came up in the era post-pen winning the world championship. Fair to say, he probably inspired you, inspired many people to get on the mats and do what they did. So, number one, if you could speak about that for just a second, but I think more importantly,

I'm not asking for, you know, rank the jiu-jitsu his or yours, but I do believe yours is probably a lot more modern. So I'm wondering how you think, not how your jiu-suitzis-up stacks up better or worse, but type versus type. I think BJ Penn has been personally extremely inspiring to me. I still think that maybe only one or two people have passed the guard like he has an MMA. And, you know, maybe him, Damien Maya. You know, obviously there's, you know, Kenny Forne did a very good job as well. Excuse me. But I think that, you know, it's funny.

You know, it was interesting. It's very interesting. I've never been in the situation like this quite before where I'm getting to compete against the people that I've looked up to, truly looked up to since, you know, the beginning of my even grappling career. and you know I just I think that we have a lot more in common than people realize it's just I've got some other things as well in the same way that I'm sure he has some things that we haven't seen I have a good deal of stuff that I haven't really had the opportunity or the or the need more in many cases sometimes a little A sometimes a little B

to show yet but I think that the jihitsu is actually a little bit more similar than people realize but it'll be interesting to find out on the night and I just say that I can absolutely say that I've drawn a great deal of inspiration and information from watching BJ compete over the years. Yeah, a bit of the King of the Closed Guard. He has a whole book about it, right? Although it's with the geese. I guess it's a little bit different. I've got some tricks up to sleep. Yeah, no, no kidding, quite literally. But I'm wondering, for folks who say, oh, well, you wouldn't want to test these jiu-jitsu. Now, again, the fight goes where the fight goes. But fair to say, you're probably confident enough of your skills to go to a mat in your

weight class or the, you know, the relevant weight classes. anyone in the UFC? Absolutely. I am not the least bit afraid of anyone on the ground. That doesn't mean that people aren't dangerous. And again, being better or worse doesn't win. You know, I've won plenty of times. One, I've not been the more technically proficient

and the more experienced person than I've lost sometimes when I have been. So ultimately, it'll come down to, you know, who was able to put it together on the night. But, no, there is not a single person. person on this planet in my weight range that I'm concerned about on the ground, you know, in a like, oh, no, I can't do this perspective. By the way, now I have you on the phone, or I should say Skype. You know, I noticed this.

There was a time, I think it was MetaMoros one or two. I can't quite remember. I went and visited you at your old academy and you were getting ready. I think you were going to take on Bill the Grill Cooper, if I'm not mistaken, right? And then Bill got injured or something. Or you remember you got injured, you got injured, right? I think it might have been both of us. I think he got hurt.

and then I got hurt. It wasn't the best. But here's the thing. Since then, I know you've been busy with the UFC, but you haven't taken any, as I understand it, any pro-jitsu matches. Can it be that you're not getting offers? Because I have a hard time believing that.

No, you know, periodically, you know, someone will come around and offer, you know, for a grappling match. You know, I mean, I love jihitsu very much, and that was where I started. But at the end of the, you know, I also started doing an era where it was, you know, BJ Penn won.

the world championships at Black Beltbelt, I think, a year before, or maybe a year and a half before I started jitza. The people that I was looking at were, that was, you know, in the time, you know, when, in fact, when Hors Gracie was fighting, you know, the year end show for pride every year and stuff like that. And it was just one of those things where jihitsu is more closely tied to MMA at that time than it is now. And, you know, obviously there's always a crossover, but it was, MMA was always the goal. And, you know, I like, I love Jizza very much, you know, and I would, there's a couple people that I would love to compete against, but at the same time, it's always been difficult because, you know,

with MMA not having seasons and things like that, you never know when you can get a call to do this or that. And I'm a big believer in taking whatever I'm doing as seriously as possible, you know, for its own end, for myself. And also because I don't want to disrespect my opponent by showing up unprepared. And, you know, if you get four months into doing something else, then someone calls you for an MMA fight, it's difficult to do that. or if you're deeply involved in MMA, I think I could go back over and grapple. I could definitely grapple much more effectively now than I ever could.

But it's more of at least personally, like a focus and an interest thing. So, you know, if someone just appeared at my gym and wanted to train or wanted to compete, I would love to do that. But as far as, hey, man, do you want to fly over here, do this, do that, get ready for a grappling match that in all likely that the other person is going to spend a great deal of time stalling. I'm not going to probably spend a ton of time on that. But that being said, I'm still a huge fan of jih Tijuana and grappling. And there are many people that I really, really, you know, enjoy watching it at the time. And, you know, right now, but I'd prefer to fight enemy. And let's say things go your way on late December, and you get the win,

you get your hand raised over BJ, looking to stay active again, I'm assuming in 2019. Like, I'm guessing you want to get right back on the horse and stay on it. God willing, yes. I would, you know, win-lose-a-draw. I absolutely look forward to competing. lot more frequently and you know I hope that you know that the performance that I put on will you know win lose a draw up you know create an opportunity and then and interest in in other people being willing to fight I guess you know time will tell but it's you know again right now I'm

100% focused on facing absolutely the greatest challenge that I've ever personally faced in martial arts and I will just look forward to that and then we'll see what happens after well as a fan of you and as a fan, of course, BJ was the first fighter I ever really idolized to be quite candid. I hope that some portion of this goes to the ground, just selfishly. It would be kind of fun to see, but wherever it goes, I wish you nothing but the best of luck. Ryan, thank you so much for your time. I know it's been a long two years, but I know a lot of people are excited to see you back in there and I'm one of them. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Luke. I really appreciate it. I will do my best. All right. See you out there. All right. There he goes. Ryan Hall.

I met Ryan Hall years ago, years ago. I think he was a bluebell. at the time. And this was back when he was, you know, I think he left after being a purple or so, something like that. Maybe he was a brown belt with Lloyd Irvin, but this was back in the Lloyd Irvin days,

and I met him back out there in Camp Springs. And I just remember him, like, shooting through all the belts and just tearing people to pieces. It was kind of crazy. And, you know, the last two years have been a really unfortunate amount of time. Two years is a long time, you know?

But you hear from some of these guys, man, that just stay active, they don't worry about the ring rust. They think they'll be fine. I really hope that's the case because I still think Ryan Hall's got a lot left to give. It'll be good to see it. Now, we go from Ryan Hall to our next guest,

who is just a great, great analyst. He called the fights at UFC Moscow. He's, well, he's just wonderful. We got him back on the show. Now, our first repeating guest here during my tenure on the MMA hour, it's time for the Monday morning analyst with Dan Hardy.

We're going to have the graphics there. All right, let us go to Dan now. He joins us on Skype. I'm guessing back at home at this point. Let's see. Are you back home, Dan? Can you hear me? Can you hear me?

Yes, I can. Can you hear me, Dan? Yeah, I got back home last night. Oh, it must have been a very long trip. First of all, great job calling the fights. How was Moscow? It was wild. It was a beautiful city.

The weather was beautiful. the food was nice. It was really cool. It was really cool. I mean, the arena was amazing. There were the fans that were 14,000 in their seats for the first fight, which, you know, for me is amazing. Paul Felder said that they let feral cats into the building to control the rodent population. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I didn't see any feral cats around it. There was a funky smell about the place, but, you know, you. I was there for the fight, so you just get on with it. I didn't mind seeing much. The fans were amazing, and the atmosphere was great. All right, it looked pretty good on TV. It looked like a well-attended crowd. So let's get to some of the bigger parts here, right?

Let's start with the main event. Alexei Olinic getting the win over Mark Khan. I got to say, I'm surprised about only one thing that he was able to take the big punches and the big one punch that he did, but I'm not surprised he's got quite the strangle. So from your vantage point, what was so special about that Olinic win? well the fact that he was able to take mark hunts back immediately and work a choke i mean i had a couple of conversations with him earlier in the week about his his ability to submit mark hunt with chokes

i had him demonstrate the ezekiel on me and explain why that wouldn't work and he was talking about how you know mark's got big shoulders and he's got no neck so it would be difficult so i was actually expecting him to work ankle locks and leg locks because that's really probably the best the best thing to attack Mark Hunt with if you're looking for submission vulnerabilities. So, yeah, I mean, it was, to be honest, as soon as I saw his lead leg start to give out, I thought Mark Hunt was looking for the rear-upacut knockout because, I mean, he chopped into the lead leg probably three times, and you could see Olinick was starting to cut weight on the leg, and it was starting to give. And then Mark Hunt was throwing a lazy jab and stepping away,

like he was trying to draw Olinick in. And I was expecting him to. try and get Olinet to step heavy on the lead leg and then fall onto the upper cut. And I think a part of the reason why it did end up on the floor so quickly was because Olinick probably knew he only had one shot to get it to the floor. So as soon as he got the opportunity, he just clung to Mark Hunt as wherever he could.

He stayed on it on him. I mean, it was a pure striker grappler matchup really. We know Mark Hunter doesn't really work a great deal on the ground. He works his get-ups and take down defense a little bit, but he's a kickboxer. And I mean, I love Mark Hunt for the fact that he's he's willing to just be a kickboxer in MMA and seeing how far he can take it.

And I think that's what happened. I think we saw that limitation. I have to say, I talked to some of the trainers at ATT about Olinick, and they said it hurts to shake his hand, that he has just an absurd, absurd kind of grip. And you notice this, Dan, man, he got it under the throat. It wasn't even fully all the way on. And the look on Hunt's face was pure panic. Olinic must have an outrageous grip.

Yes, absolutely he does. As I said, I had him do the Ezekiel choke on me. I mean, the two things I noticed, one is how big his hands are. So then you've got to think his hand with the glove on top. And it's actually like a figure four position, like a renecked choke position from the front. But then he drives his fist into the neck. And, I mean, it's an incredibly compressive squeeze. His nickname's perfect.

And the other thing I noticed is the shape of his shoulders. So he's very rounded in his upper body, which means that he's able to get a lot of leverage to drive his, you know, the upper shoulders and deltoids into the choke as well to really make it very compressive. I've often felt that there are certain people that have got the right, you know,

the right physical makeup to do certain chokes. Like Ben Rothwell's front choke, his go-go choke, for example. Ben Rothwell's going to be able to do that much easier than someone like Stefan Struth, who's not got the body mask to kind of, you know, to fold the neck under the, I just think it may be a case of that with Olenik as well. I think he's got the right shape, shoulders and arms, and these big old plates of meat for hands that he can just

cram into your neck. And getting a win like that in his what, early to mid-40s, kind of incredible. Who do you think he should fight next? I don't know, to be honest. I mean, there are a lot of people. I would like to see him fight someone like, I mean, Overeem would be an interesting fight. O'Reem's going to be backing up, trying to counter him as he comes in. I think O'Brien's far more mobile than Mark Kohn when it comes to take down the fence as well. well. So I think that would be a good test for him. And to be honest, I like seeing these veteran guys fight each other. I think when it comes to the heavyweight division, there's a lot,

it comes a lot down to wisdom and knowledge and experience, which is why we see these guys that are in their early 40s with 50 fights on their career, and they're still doing well at the top, is because experience pays so much more dividends at the top because the margin for error is so narrow. That takes us to the co-made event. Jan Belhovic, just, I don't want to say making easy work of Nikita Krilov, but it didn't have a whole lot of problems controlling him pretty strongly in the first round, getting right back to work in the second. My God, his improvement, I'll be honest, I thought Krilov was going to have his way here, totally wrong. And Blahovic now four-fight win streak. What do you think's been the difference in these four fights? Honestly, I think it's just

confidence. I think that's all it is. I think he came into the UFC with. a lot of confidence because he was a big star in Poland. You know, he was a KSW champion coming over. So there were high hopes for Yan. And I think he was, I think he was, he was carried into the UFC on that momentum and his confidence was on the rise. And then obviously with the big stoppage of Latifian from the body kick, you know, it was a great start for him. But, you know, he ran into a little bit of turbulence. He didn't have a couple of fights his way. And I think he was a little bit discouraged. And I think it's taken a couple of good performances, you know, to really get him back to the mindset of, you know, of a championship

run. I think the Devin Clark fight was a big one because, you know, he got a good squeeze on that re-naked choke finish. He defended some takedowns. I think he's shown us as well that he's a well-rounded mixed martial artist. We've seen him work submissions off his back as well as have good boxing. So a friend of mine made a, made the connection of Steve Hermichich as well and how he didn't necessarily, you know, smash his way onto the scene and become, you know, an immediate prospect. He kind of crept on us a little bit. You know what I mean? I think it's a good, it's a good likeness. I think Yan's in that stage where he needed that one, you know, one or two tough lessons in the division before he was ready for a title shot. And I think he's on his path now.

Two other fighters to talk about on that main card very quickly, if we can, Andre Arlofs and Tiago Alves. Now, neither of them getting blown out at all. Tiago Alves, you know, it wasn't necessarily all that competitive, but he was moving a lot. He didn't take a ton of damage. I knew they did Andre Arlovsky. Where do you think those guys are in their career? Both guys, I think, we often talk about the heavyweights who reinvent themselves as they get older. I think Tiago Alves has actually done a little bit of that as well and doesn't get any credit for it.

Where do you think they are? Because they're not, when they're losing now, he lost the Taito Yvasa Arlovsky did. But that was very close. And this one kind of close-ish, I guess. What do you make of what happened? Yeah, again, you know, very similar to Jan Vyavich, I think in the opposite way. I think confidence is a big thing for both of those guys. I think, you know, both incredibly talented, both able to beat whoever in the division on a good day.

I think Tiago Alves was quite happy to accept the counterfighting game plan too much, and I think that allowed Kinchenko to push forward and look very dominant. I mean, I was watching the significant strikes. I don't always agree with the strike counter. Because, you know, the debate on what a significant strike is, is, you know, is, he's not, nowhere near finished. So I don't always take, you know, I don't always pay too much attention to it. But Tiago was ahead for a lot of the fight on the significant strikes. He was landing more.

But I don't think his strikes were as significant because he wasn't progressing forward a lot of the time. And I think Conchenko looked good. I think he showed a well-rounded set, a skill set. And I think his future is bright. You know, I don't think it was necessarily that Tiago, I always looked bad. I just think Fentchenko came in and looked strong and looked confident from the get-go. And with Andre Oloski, again, confidence, you know, it's a confidence thing. He just didn't seem to want to pull the trigger. I felt there were a couple of times where, you know, where he could

have really stepped up. I would say probably two minutes into the second round, there was a visible change in the posture of Abdera him of. I saw him kind of, he fatigued, his feet flattened a little bit, and I don't know his face just changed slightly, and I felt like that was the opportunity where Andreelofsky can push forward and he chose not to it. It was a choice and I'm sure he was very frustrated with himself afterwards. It goes to the what do you want to call this non-stoppage

and you guys on the call, you, Paul Felder, Mr. Gooden, all of you guys were kind of dismayed. We share your opinion at home. The Khalid I'll pronounce his name wrong every time I say it. Murda Zali, yeah, I've taken on CB Doleway. Here's the way I looked at it Dan was like if you didn't want to stop it when he

was on his side but he was covering up because some of the shots weren't going to get through. Even then I thought you could have made a case to stop it. But when he rolled belly down and he was just covering up, that's when I just cannot understand why that fight didn't get stopped. Now, thinking about it a couple of days later, what do you make of what went wrong there? Yeah, honestly, I don't know. I don't know. I find it difficult to criticize Herb Dean because he's refereed me before and he's been excellent. You know, he's had an excellent career as a referee so far. I mean, I don't honestly know what went wrong, to be honest. For me, I think

for everybody in the arena who started to boo. I think we all saw that the fight was over. You know, when you're not intelligent to defending yourself, I mean, Dolaway, I think it was, I watched the fight back today, actually. I think it was 26 seconds before the end of the round. I said something about Dolaway, you know, a fatigue had taken over. He had nothing left to give. He was trying to fight back.

He's a warrior. He's not going to give up. And just a personal comment, I always appreciate a guy that will take the beating until the referee stops it. But that's what the referee is for it is to save a fight. from themselves and from their own ego and pride. You know, and I felt like Herb did a limited service there. I would say you could have saved him from at least 10 seconds of punches.

You know, he was killed up on his side. Then he moved Betty down, which for me, as soon as you see someone belly down, that's it. They're done. That's not intelligent to defending yourself. I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm sure that there was a conversation with Herb Dean about it. And I'm sure he sees the error in the stoppage now.

But yeah, it was even confusing at the end. because, you know, the round ended, and with one army pushed Mercer-Liever-Way, and with the other army waved the fight off. But then the impression was given that the fight was continuing and Herb was seeing if CB Delaware wants to continue. It was, I don't know, there was a momentary lapse of concentration there for Herb Dean, and it was very, very dangerous for the dollar way.

Any other standouts on that card for you that were worth the mention? I thought there was some incredible performances. I thought the fight between Peter Yan and Jensu, was incredible. I'm really, really high on Peter, yeah. I think he's very, very impressive. I think he's going to go a long way in this division, and I think he's going to cause a lot of people problems.

But at the same time, you know, Jin Su-San, especially, you know, he took the fight on short notice. He did miss weight, but I did see the effort that he put into making weight. I mean, I enjoyed the fight. I enjoyed his heart, his spirit. I enjoyed the entertainment value of his character.

And I think, you know, matched right, I think we get some really interesting fights out of him. And the other one that stood out to me was Jordan Johnson, big swinging Jordan Johnson. I mean, for me, I've always respected and looked up to the Iowa Hawkeyes. You know, I was massively inspired by Dan Gable, and I used to watch Compest to Supreme at least once a week. So I had it drilled into me how dangerous and dominant the Hawkeyes were.

So when I saw he was on the card, I was very excited. And he delivered. I mean, he just, he looks incredibly impressive. He looks strong. He looked powerful. He looked patient. I had a great conversation with him afterwards. I think he's a real character, and I think that he's going to rise quickly to the top of this division.

I really do think that with that wrestling base that he has, that he's going to be able to build off that and give us some real fun fights to watch. Yeah, a good fight for him at Middleweight. I was glad to see him drop down that division because he's going to be a powerhouse. Speaking of Iowa and the wrestling program, have you ever seen the documentary the season? No, I haven't. Oh, buddy, you are missing it. Yeah, they spent an entire season with the Iowa Hawkeye wrestling team. Back when Steve Mocko, who briefly fought in MMA, has been a coach at ATT, was on the team.

And there's a famous quote in the first episode where Mocko looks at the camera. He goes, you want to know why I like wrestling? Because when you dominate someone enough and you beat them enough, you can change them as a person. It is chilling to watch. If you've not seen that, I'll send it to you. I'll email it to you. You've got to see this. It's incredible.

All right. the time we have remaining, let's move to next week, well, two weeks from now, I suppose, the UFC 229. You got to be amped for this. I know you're going to have a bunch of good stuff coming out on the UFC's YouTube channel. It should be a, well, it's going to be fun for all the parties involved, but here's what I want to know. Someone keeps saying to me on either side, the Connor side, oh, he's going to starch him early. Now, he might, of course, you never know. And on the other side, the Habib fans, oh, Habib's going to rag doll them. And my theory has been, I don't really know who's going to win. It's very hard to figure out. But I think

both guys like Triple G Canello, they're going to get, both of them are going to get marked up by the time someone gets their hand raised. Yeah, absolutely. I think everybody's right. And I think, you know, you can't argue like you know for sure because nobody knows for sure. We could get, you know, we could get kind of switch him off in 13 seconds with a sweet left hand because we know he can do that. And we know that Khabi's going to come forward because that's what we've seen for 26 fights now. you know that's what we expect from him 26 27 I'm losing track when you get that many wins it doesn't really matter does it anymore and and the other alternative is that we do see kababee just maulim for however long it takes which maybe five rounds maybe not honestly I played this fight out probably 300 times a day in my head and the more than not I get to the same conclusion which is Conner loses the first two rounds it gets taken down it gets beaten up he gets bloodied Khabib shows dominance, he's talking to him,

I think it's going to be a very entertaining couple of rounds with Connor being down on the scorecards, 10-9, maybe even 10-8. The third round comes about, and the same Khabibah's, sorry, in the first and second round, starts marching forward, and Connor's able to use his superior footwork and walking onto a left hand. I think unless we see a development in Khabib's footwork,

Connor's got five opportunities to knock him out with a clean shot. and given the fact that I mean you go back I'm a massive fan of both of these guys please don't I don't always think I'm picking on one side over the other I'm just going based on evidence so if you go back and watch Khabibib's

fight against Michael Johnson we saw him get hit and hurt I would say that Kahnah hits harder than Michael Johnson just purely based on what we've seen in doing the UFC so that would be my argument in that case the other argument is that if we watch

Khabib fights Ayah Quinta he walks in a circle you know the outside of the octagon is endless if you just follow your opponent in a circle you can follow them all day every day whereas if you if you get to the if you get the understanding you can kind of download that information where you actually can make the octagon smaller by painting them into a corner and then force them to deal with your attack whatever that is you can make the oxen feel like a phone box but i've not seen that development in kabib's game because because what he does work so well so he just continually

he rinses and repeats, he walked people down. I mean, I was, I'm going off on a tangent now, but there's some Barbosa fight. You would think, with Barbosa being such an excellent strife, he would be able to do the same. But Barbossa's game is predominantly kicking, and you need so much more space and so much, you know,

perfect timing to land a kick that would stop somebody, whereas Connor can find a window for that left hand very easily. I just don't think he's going to have it all his way. One last question, two parts. We know that Connor has better striking than Habib. We know that Habib has probably better grappling than Connor. I think it's probably fair to say in either direction. So let me ask it in a different way for both guys.

How good is Connor McGregor's take-down defense? How good is Habib striking? I think Habib striking is developing. I will say that. It's very elementary in the way it goes about it. I mean, these fundamentals are fairly good. His lead punch is very unorthodox. I covered it in an inside-the-ups in a while back.

Because it's like a, it's in a left-hook position, but he lifts it up under the chin. He knocks out of Tiago Harrah's with that punch. It's okay. I got dogs, too, man. They're just going to have their way with you, whether you like it or not. That's hilarious.

There. Who's the dog? This is Ea. Oh, what a cute. Okay. Where was it? Yeah, so he's got very, very elementary striking, I would say. It's good for what he does, but it's ultimately to serve the purpose of getting him inside so we can get his hands on someone. We may see a development in his striking in this fight. He may have been working on things specifically for a South Pole that we've not really seen. I don't know. I mean, I will give him the credit to say that he is developing between fights. I just don't know whether he's to be able to make that leap to the level where Conne McGregor's striking is. I think Hunter McGregor's take down the fence is okay. I think his gas tank struggles when he's under a lot of pressure. And I'm not seen anything that would prove me otherwise.

But what I will say is that I do think we do underestimate his ground game. If you go back to the Max Holloway fight, you look very smooth in his transitions on the ground. I would say he looked the same against Dennis Seaver as well, you know, passing over to Mount. You know, his understanding of the ground is very good. I just don't think we've seen a great deal of it. But I think we will be forced to. But I do think he can work with elbows. I do think he's going to take some shots and get bloody.

It might look a lot like the Mendez fight. I think that's about right. Yeah, I'm not sure which way it's going to go, but I think it's going to be a bloody, ugly, and beautiful affair all the same. Dan, great work as always. Thank you for your insight. And thank you to the little one here as well. They always make their presence known, don't they?

Always, always. She's such a shock. She is from Vegas, though, so that's probably well. I get it. All right. Thank you, Dan. Get some rest. Appreciate all your insight. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Speak, again. Likewise. Yes, yes. We will. We will definitely do that. All right. Wonderful. Wonderful perro there. Good dog. All right. I believe we're going to have Missy and J-check in about 15 minutes. So, that, means we should do it now. I believe it is time for a round of tweets. Yes? Let's do that. Where is my, there's the thing. A little timer. All right, timer starts when the first tweet goes up. Let's do it. Here we go. Which is, I think they weren't meant to write, more detrimental to their sport. Late stoppages in MMA or poor biased judges in boxing. The answer is, poor biased judges, certainly, creates for an atmosphere of cynicism, but in terms of what's actually worse, the late stoppages,

because the late stoppages or the non-calls, whether it's MMA or whether it's boxing, that's really how somebody gets hurt or somebody gets killed or somebody gets maimed. So cynicism is not great, but that's not nearly as bad as either turning people off like Danny's roommates, getting somebody killed, getting somebody really badly hurt and affected, definitely going to be the late stoppages or the non-stoppages that happen in either of the combat. sports. Next. Does Olinick have the most impressive submission resume in MMA history? I've never seen such an assortment of different submissions.

He certainly has one of the most unique ones. He's got one of the most complete to a degree. He's got one of the most diverse. It's really, really interesting. Now, anytime you have a great submission streak like he does at heavyweight, you have to temper that with the depth of competition. Not to say he has fought tough guys. He just fought a tough guy.

That's a great, great win. generally speaking, you need to have some measure of managed expectations and managed assessment there. But I will say he's probably got the most impressively unique submission history with the Ezekiel chokes. But you know what? There's some reality to it too. Like his grip is, everyone knows it with the Ezekiel choke and how like an Orthodox that is. But you look at his grip and how powerful it is. And that is something that can translate to a broad array of different submissions. So to me, it's like, you know, Who are you subbing and how are you subbing them?

You know, Alster Overim has a phenomenal guillotine choke. But a lot of those are also complimenting against guys. He was able to get it standing. But it doesn't mean he doesn't have a good one. It's just that's not the best representation of it. So to me, impressive as hell, amazing what he's doing. I definitely would say, if not the best one, certainly the most unique one, for sure. What's next?

How shitty does that new predator movie look? And when is Danny Sigura going to bring back the mustache, Bigote? Uh, well, look, you got to ask the birthday boy, the Cumblienero himself, but the new Predator movie is terrible. In fact, when I went to go see it, I was walking into the theater. There were two people in my theater, me and some other dude who probably thought he was wandering into a porno theater and just happened to end up in Predator. Or maybe he thought Predator was the name of the porn movie he wanted to go see. Either way, it was just me and this other weirdo in there. And as I'm walking into the theater, the dude who took my ticket goes, uh,

This movie's only good if you treat it like a comedy. But it's not a comedy. He's like, right. I was like, hmm, okay. I mean, it's got some fun scenes. Olivia Munn has a terrible character. The blonde dude is terrible. The guy from Key and Peel is really good.

It's really bad. I will say two best Predator movies, the original, and not Predator 2 or any of the Alien versus Predator, Predators with Adrian Brody. Yes, indeed. All right, what's next? Is the UFC relying too much on the media and fans to promote its fights and fighters? Seeing as they haven't been promoting too much this year, what a great question.

The answer is yes. They are basically farming out, not the entire responsibility, because that's not true. They are buying assets that go on billboards, on video assets, and they're taking out commercial time. They're doing all of those things. And then they are setting up media tours, but then it's the media's job to get the word out. So, like, in the end, the media ends up, and to an extent this has always been the case, always will be the case. They end up being like a de facto promotional arm.

But it's like if Tyrone Woodley's not doing his champ camp, what is he doing? If Tyrone Woodley's not or, you know, if I think he had a new video come out, Dallet Dudo, with El Cucui, Tony Ferguson. If he's not making that, who's making that? So the answer is like the fighters are doing things themselves and the media has taken the brunt of the responsibility. And then there are all these purchased assets that are out there, which are important. But it's not exactly like it used to be.

Next. Who wins in an MMA fight between Lil Pump and Danny DeVito? I don't know who Lil Pump is because I'm almost 40. Next. What do you guys think about a potential Diego Sanchez versus Demi and Maya matchup? No, I don't like it. Personally, I think it makes a lot of sense for both fighters at this stage of their careers. No, I think Demian's probably a little bit too big.

I know Diego's fought at that size before, but I don't like it for him. I don't think it's appropriate. And Demi and Maya, I think, certainly has taken a lot of damage in his career, but probably not the best matchup for him. for him, Diego, that is. Next. What do you think of Mayweather versus many rematch at the end of the year? I am so glad you asked that question, because here's what we'll do. I usually will end all of my answers inside of this narrow window that we do called a round of tweets,

but I'll carry that forward if I will, but we wait for Missy and J-Chic to be here in about 10 minutes. There you go. There's our buzzer. Our buzzer sounds suspiciously like our intro. I don't know what that means. In any event, so you asked about what I think about Mayweather, Manny Rematch. Did you guys see, by the way, Bob Aram, who is the head of top rank after 17 years, is now out of the Manny Pacchio business? Yes, he is.

They have parted ways. Some of this was telegraphed earlier this year on social media, but it became official. So I have so many questions about this. First of all, is it official or is it not official? because you see in, was it, Tokyo, Manny and Floyd are at a rave, and Floyd's like, I'll do it again. It's like, first of all, why are you both in Tokyo and why are you at a rave? Aren't you guys like my age? Aren't you guys like 40?

What are you all doing here? Number one. Okay. Number two, did you see the way that Mayweather introduced it? I mean, Mayweather out here, just, he's amazing, he's amazing. He's amazing. His caption, and I'm paraphrasing here, was, oh, you know, I'm going to fight Manny Paco, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's going to be another nine-figure payday for me. It's like he knows he's going to get paid, even if the value of this fight is incredibly dubious. Now, I realize that Mni Pacchio had a nice win over Lucas Matisseau, ESPN Plus earlier this year, but to say that he's back would not, well, that would just be way too strong of a statement. And more to the point,

does anybody think the second one would actually be competitive in an interesting way? maybe in the sense that both are diminished versions. And so in their diminishment, there is greater parity, something like that. I don't know. For me, Mayweather has always been, especially late stage Mayweather, so I won't say always, but certainly late stage Mayweather, has always been exceedingly calculating and very much likes to hit at the table when, metaphorically speaking, when it's in odds are very much in his favor, you know, taking a pre-prime Canelo, taking a post-prime

Koto or just other challenges where he kind of knew he had the edge. No, not totally, but late stage career, he definitely did a lot of that. I think he just likes his chances against Amanda. He thinks he'll win again. He'll thinks he'll get paid. Folks just asked what kind of number would it do. Let's say it does half the original. Half.

That's still $2 million plus, right? It's still it astronomically, but it would still make it one of the biggest paper views ever. And based on the response, I saw a lot of people being like, yes, our own Brian Campbell from CBS Sports, who's over the MMA beat. He was like, I'm all in on old guys fighting. Well, I think our friend Brian, I love him to death, been eating too many gas station hot dogs

because, you know, it's going to sell because Logan Paul, if Logan Paul, we live in a world where Logan Paul versus KSI sells, how on earth wouldn't Mayweather Packia out too? Despite it being utterly unnecessary and utterly irrelevant, of course it will. Of course it will.

But, you know, asking about personal interest, none. And the fact that Mayweather is nakedly bragging he's going to take everyone else's money sort of tells you what really this is about 50, 50 cent, I believe on, was it on Instagram? Or it was it? I don't remember saying that he thinks Floyd's running out of money, which you would be asking, how was that possible? I don't know. But it is because, or maybe it is, because why else would you be fighting Mani Pakia

after getting over $300 million about a year ago fighting one Connor McGregor? But if you can make another cool, you know, cool 100, 200 mil, why not do it, right? Okay, so that was that piece of news from the tweet there. What about the other big boxing fight this weekend? I had two takeaways from Canelo Triple G if I can. First of all, it was great to see the fight. What a phenomenal fight, right? Just sensational action.

Both guys absolutely brought it. I have two real feelings about the fight now that it's over. And the first is that I saw a lot of people being like, boxing is corrupt. I mean, it is to an extent, right? Boxing is, these judges are corrupt. These judges, you know, scorts yellow mustard. These judges, they're out here just there, just taking bribes. And I'm like, I have good news and I have bad news for you, right?

The good news is they didn't take any bribes. You know, you never really know, but my hunch is that that's not really true. Here is the bad news. You live in a world. where you can have a sport where three different responses, all of them different from the other, one as Canello unanimous decision, one as draw,

one as Triple G unanimous decision. All three are basically justifiable in the end. Now, I had Triple G winning. I take my hat off to Canelo for marching forward. He got a little tired there late, but wow, what a ballsy way to fight against a heavy-handed fighter like that. Amazing, right?

Totally amazing. So I have a little bit of trouble understanding exactly how Canella won. But he did. I can't really cry about it. It's not a robbery at all. When a fight is that close, that's just what you get. But I just saw some of the responses. You're like, this is a bribery because boxing's corrupt.

Well, boxing's corrupt, but not so much. I mean, yes, historically there have been people who've taken and given bribes, I understand. But that's really not the problem. The problem is here you have a scoring criteria where one person winning and then their opponent winning and then neither winning, all of them are justifiable outcomes. I mean, can you imagine something so absurd in any other sport where there's a definitive score and that's just what it is? Like, you're what, you're going to interpret

that the Redskins beat the cults over the weekend? I mean, this just says it's laughable on its face. But this is just what you get with the 10-point must system. This is what we have inside MMA. And it's frankly, however bad you think the 10-point must system is, it's designed around boxing. And even boxing can't get, to a situation where they don't have a situation like this.

You can say whatever you want about, oh, we adapted a system from another sport, and that's why it gives us problems. It gives them problems, too. And you saw it there on Saturday night. So however you scored it, the answer is it's probably fair, given how we judge fights,

but how we judge fights, I still believe, whether it's boxing or it's MMA, is in desperate need of complete revision. Now, the other takeaway I had was that, well, yes, it was a fun fight, and everyone was out there, about it. But it was more than just a fun fight, right? Like, here's the reality. I like MMA more than

boxing. Your mileage may vary, depending on what you're watching is. My guess is if you're watching a show called The MMA Hour, you probably like MMA more, but let's just say that you're not that way. Like, you like boxing more. Okay. There's nothing quite like a main event like that in boxing. Now, you get some good ones in MMA. You get some epic ones in MMA. Don't misunderstand me. And generally, I think MMA action is better. but there is something special about a 12-round boxing fight where there's all these swings in momentum and then these new narratives that develop

and then fade and then new narratives develop and then there's this overarching narrative and then there's these two stories of everybody clashing and coming together. It creates for a, I think, a much richer level of drama, frankly, than which you can often get in MMA. Not entirely, don't get a misunderstanding. You see like a rock and sock-um like Loller versus Condit,

And that is just true beauty in its most violent form. But I would just say that kind of process comes a lot easier. And that kind of outcome comes a lot easier to a really epic boxing main event. And that was a great example of that on Saturday night where Cotto comes out. And you can see Triple G was trying to react to it. And his jab was working. And then his jab was working hard, late. He was much more accurate with the several punch combos.

And he was getting out of the way. And Cinello got tired, but he kept marching forward. and he never got up against the fence. Or the, not the fence, I'm sorry, the ring. And just all these different back and force. I mean, it was incredible to watch. And you had Dave Chappelle in attendance and LeBron James and Charles Barkley.

There's just something magic about it, man. There's something magic about it. And you can get it in MMA. Don't misunderstand me. And a lot of folks are, oh, my God, you like boxing better? I do not like boxing better. But you just can't deny how much drama, narrative, action,

and everything on the like, how much you can pack in to a 36-minute-plus 12-round main event in boxing. In that sense, it is so utterly perilous. Last note about this, I saw some writers from Europe after the fight being like, how come the boxing fans don't seem to care about PEDs in their sport as much as in cycling? Yeah, I've got news for you, because you fans and media in cycling are anti-doping zealots who have, have taken your joyless Fs who have tried to suck out all the fun imaginable from your sport.

And that hasn't quite been done in combat sports yet. Also, when you have these structures in place in a sport like cycling, like the Tour de France and the races in Spain and everything else, yes, star power still matters, but the architecture is still basically in place. In a sport like MMA and boxing, where they are utterly reliant, on what you call it, on stars. Well, then what are you going to do? All right.

Let's go to Danny Seguora for just a second, shall we? Let's do that. Danny, why don't you come up on the screen here? All right, what's the word on Misty and J-Chic? I just called her. She is unavailable. She's unavailable. So why don't we do this?

Let's do the, let's do the sound off. And if there's time at the end of the show, we'll see if we can put her back on. How about that? Okay. Sounds good. All right, so that, ladies and gentlemen, means it is time right here on the Luke Thomas show. Well, no, I'm something I'm talking about.

Right here on the MMA hour, I'm so confused already for the sound off. Hit it. All right, Dany. All right. So we talk about Olenic, right? Yes. Let's talk about Hunt. Let's talk about Hunt.

Play it. Hey, my name is Aaron. I'm calling from Montreal. Just wondering, what do you guys think is that's from Mark Hunt? after the submission lost to Olanis. He seems to still be in great shape, fighting great at 44. He seems that he could still hang and bang with the best in the world. Got caught in a submission by Olanek.

What's next from him? Should he wait for Engano to see what happens there? What do you guys think? Thanks. Yeah, good call. You know what I think, Danny? He's still ranked around 8. Now, he might drop, so he might be somewhere around the top 10,

depending on how the rankings go. And again, everyone's going to dispute, oh, the rankings, he belongs X and not Y position. I'm only using 10 as like, let's say, a rough placeholder. Maybe it's nine, maybe it's 11 or 12. Let's just see. But my point would be,

what about a fight against Tai Tui Vasa? Right? The pride of New Zealand versus the pride of Australia. Something like that. Or no, you guys, you know, sort of two guys guys are the same background, basically. Aren't they, aren't they related?

if I'm not mistaken? It might be. I think they are. Or is that with Tyson Pedro? You know, I can't even remember anymore. I can't keep it straight. He's been a sparty partner with him forever, so they probably wouldn't.

But I'm just saying that to me. I always love those kinds of stories where there's like a familial or camp relation and whether or not they'll do it. So let's say you could exclude that. You could still do, I guess you could do Orlovsky. You could do Tibora, something like that.

Maybe you could, well, Verdum's going to be out for two years so you couldn't do that. But somewhere in that, space, a struve rematch, I guess if you wanted to. It really all depends. There's nothing quite obvious, but here's what I will say, Danny. Whoever the opponent is, is, I'm not saying irrelevant, but look, he's going to finish out his UFC career, right?

So what's going to happen? He's probably going to still hold positions like this, maintaining a spot as either a main or a co-main on cards overseas. Probably that's where you're going to see him. That's my hunch. What about you? Yeah. And I was just looking at the rankings.

I mean, he's fought almost everybody in there. So, I mean, a lot of these fights would be rematches, and a lot of these guys are also booked. I guess the Androlovsky one makes sense. And, yeah, I guess for the Oceania market, you know, he's still a very important asset. And a very big name. And frankly, like, I know he's older and, you know, he's, you know, a bit on a downhill. But I don't get the sense of, this guy needs to retire as, like, some other guys. Like, he still looks game.

You know, he can still get a few wins for sure. Look, he landed a huge punch on the Linnick, right? Right? That would have dropped a lot of guys. Olinic is a tough, tough guy, so he didn't. But yeah, you're right. I still think he's competitive, for sure. Yeah. All right, should we go on next?

Yes, let's please do that, Danny. Talking about older fighters. Let's keep that conversation going. What's going on, Mr. Luke Thomas? Love the show, my man. My name is Charles Jalen. I'm calling from Atlanta, Georgia. My question is regarding to BJP.

What do you feel is the reason he is still fighting? you think it's mental or is he searching for past glory. I feel the last person to beat a prime BJ, in my opinion, was Frankie Edgar. Nowadays, he's just been losing nothing right. And do you feel that a prime BJ can hang with the 155s and the 145s of today? Thanks, man. Great question. By the way, Danny, piece of trivia, did you know that I went to high school in the Atlanta area?

No, I did not. Yes, I did. We learned something new about you every show. Shouts to everyone at Marietta High School. Terrible school. I learned next to nothing. No, I'm teasing. But, yes, I went to high school outside the Atlanta area, which is Cobb County,

which is right outside Fulton County. Fulton County is Atlanta. Yes, in fact, I did. You know, I asked Ryan Hall about it. If you're Ryan Hall, I understand why you want to take the fight, right? Because, A, you've just been off for two years, right? You've got to get back in there. That's number one.

Number two, BJ Pencil has a big name. People care about BJ. He is a legend. He's a freaking Hall of Famer officially, right? And then three, look, I don't see how you can possibly argue he's not diminished. I just don't know how you can. He hasn't won since 2010. No, he didn't have a draw in that time, but he hasn't won since 2010.

It's a long time, man. It's a long time. BJ was the first and probably the only fighter, Danny. I don't know how he feel about this. It's hard for me to watch him because I used to idolize the guy, and I still do about what he was able to accomplish. He could wrestle. He had a jab. Obviously, his jiu-jitsu was just out of this.

world. He was hard to hurt. He had a chin. I mean, he was everything. He was the perfect fighting machine for a time. Yeah. You know, I don't think he should be continuing to fight. I'm not a regulatory efficient. I have no say over this. I don't say it out of hate. I don't say it out of a need to just bring down others. I say it out of total concern. Let me make one point, Danny, if I may. A lot of people say you can never tell another person went to retire, and that's true. I can't. I can't. I'm not someone's mother. I literally cannot make anybody stop. But if you sit in a chair like this or a chair like yours, Danny, or you have a microphone or there's a camera on your face, you also have a responsibility to say what you're seeing. And if someone is going too long, there's going to be a

time where you have to say something. Now, you have to exercise some discretion and you have to be very, very understanding of your own limitations in terms of what you might see. But this notion that you just have to keep your mouth shut while somebody keeps going, at some point it becomes unethical to do that. So that's not true. We just have to be careful about it. So what I'm saying is out of an abundance of care and appreciation for the career of BJ Penn, I don't think he can hang with the modern 155ers.

And I would really like to see who move on to competitive grappling or get some kind of role inside the UFC as an ambassadorship. Because here's what I do know, Danny. He is still beloved. Yeah, 100%. I mean, if you look at like the interview numbers that we did like with the Guillermo Cruz interview, like, clearly people still care about BJ Penn, right? I mean, we're talking about him right now.

But I agree with you. And look, when we get on in front of a camera, I'm not going to sit here and lie to people and give you things and say things that I don't believe in. I think BJ Penn should retire. But look, at the end of the day, we can also be completely wrong about this. What if he goes in there and smokes Ryan Hall? That's definitely a possibility, right? But, I mean, taking a good look at his previous performances, you know, it doesn't

point like that's going to happen. but, you know, stranger things have happened. But, you know, I'm not comfortable with BJ stepping back in the octagon, but if he is, if you absolutely must do it, at least is at 155, so you know he's not going to be putting his body through a drastic way cut. Agreed. And two is against Ryan Hall. Look, Ryan Hall is a great fighter against Gray Maynard. He displayed a very good striking, but this is not a guy that's going to go in there and just knock you out and cost a lot of damage in that sense. You know what I mean?

So in that sense, he got the perfect match. So I am somewhat not content, but look, if he's going to fight at least he got the best possible scenario for a return. I think I agree with all that. I would say this. I think people are sleeping on Ryan's jiu-jitsu and then his round and pound because you haven't seen a whole lot of it. But I have felt his control personally. He doesn't look like some physical powerhouse, but I got to tell you, when you lock up with him, he's very strong, very strong. He's got that, you know what kind of strength he has?

he's got that American Ninja Warrior Strength Yeah, you're talking about You get these baristas Yeah, you get these dudes who look like they're in a trench coat mafia But then they can just go across the monkey bars real fast Yeah

He's got that kind of man He grabs your wrist and it's hard to break it And he's like half my size So yeah, he's strong Oh, I bet But BJ is strong too So yeah we'll see I mean

At this point it's already You know The ship's the fight's gonna happen Exactly So here we go At this point let's just enjoy it Now let's switch topics and let's talk about Oscar Delahoya and his involvement in M.M.A.

All right. This ought to be fun. What's up, Luke Thomas? This is Steve from Central Indiana. Just sitting here watching some fight previews with my little baby daughter, trying to get you some more female fans for the future, so we're bringing her up, right? But I wanted to ask the question of you guys today. I just got done watching the Ortiz-Ladell press conference for their third fight, and I was kind of surprised at Delahoya's demeanor throughout the press conference. He said he was trying to be an empowerment entity for the fighters instead of a competitor to the UFC.

And with all the profit sharing that they are going to be having with this fight, do you think that Oscar is actually starting something positive for the sport of MMA as opposed to just answering back to Dana White and the UFC for their Mayweather-McGregor fight with an Ortiz-Ladell 3-bout? Have a great day, guys. Bye-bye. That's a good question. Very good question. Yeah. So he was on, I had him on my radio show.

We tried to get him on this one. The timing didn't work. So I had him on my radio show. And I asked him that very question. I was like, how much of this, because, you know, he's a vicious competitor against top rank. Or he tries to be anyway. And, you know, so in the boxing space, you see the kind of thing all the time. Plus, remember those outbursts that he had prior to May, whether McGregor,

this is the worst thing ever, this I can't believe. This is not real boxing, blah, blah, blah. And in the end, I actually think that that fight helped boost the profile. of the first Triple G Kinella fight. But this idea that this is all philanthropy is to become, let's be serious. This is clearly not true. Like, what's, let me be, look, the UFC gets into trouble a little bit because they are worth four and seven billion and there's a question of profit sharing, right?

Or when Dana White tries to bring in, you know, I think he, the Las Vegas Review Journal reported that he had brought in, or maybe he even tweeted it on social media, you know, he brought in a snow in his house on his driveway so I think kids could play with it during Christmas. So something like that. Some sort of like true display of a financial wealth. He brought Kendrick Lamar to his son's birthday party. Here's the truth about that. On its face, there's absolutely nothing wrong with any of that.

Look, you're allowed to make profit in this country. In fact, when you make profit or I make profit, usually that means people around us might be able to make profit as well. That's making money. I don't mean to sound like Gordon Gecko, but I'm sorry. There is a value to being able to earn. earn money, particularly a lot of it. The question is how it gets distributed. And that's a separate conversation for a separate time. But I'm not mad at UFC for making money. I'm not mad at Dana White

for being rich. And if Oscar de La Jolla wants to make money in MMA, good. Not enough people make money inside MMA, whether it's media or fighters or whoever. So I don't know why he can't just be honest. Like I get the pitch, right? The pitch is, are you and, hey, everybody, my name's Oscar de Aloha. You might not know me from my work inside. I do. the work that I do inside MMA, but here's what I'm going to do. Do you feel like you're underpaid? Because if you do, then I'm the guy for you. That's really what this is about.

It's like a, it's a bit of a dog whistle to all the fighters out there who are unhappy with their pay. It's not, it's not a philanthropy. He's not out there. I just don't care about anything else other than making sure those guys are paid. Yes, he wants to get them paid because he wants enough money to come in that they get paid and he get paid. And frankly, there's nothing wrong with that. I don't understand. I get the sales pitch, but it just seems a little silly to be like,

well, what really matters to me is taking care of these fighters. No, everyone wants to get rich. Go get rich. It's fine. That's where I come down. So he asked, you know, is this fight, are his MMA efforts good for MMA, right? So we just talked about, or you just talked about the profit section. What about the fact of putting Ortiz and Lidel in a fight?

I mean, is that good for M. You know, I didn't think so, but here's the reality. Like, Mayweather and Pachia are going to fight, and they've, you know, Pachio is certainly taking a ton of damage. I mean, when I saw him get flatlined by Marquez, I thought for sure that. I was like, did he, I mean, I'm not even trying to joke. I thought he died for a second. That was a vicious K.O.

And he's been fighting since then, big tough guys, too. Like, so in any case, he's taking a ton of damage and God only knows what kind of tax bills he has to answer for. You know, we hear the tens of millions. But look, they think. put the fight in California. We talked about this in the MMA beat. And both those guys passed all their tests.

So the central tension in here is, are we cynical and not realizing that these guys are much healthier than we think are certainly capable of fighting? Or are these tests worthless? And I don't have enough medical information to know whether these tests are worthless. So they went to the state

with one of the tougher regulatory schemes in place. What can I really say, dude? I think if he's successful and other fighters can get paid in the way in which he envisions, that ultimately is good. But if this is some exploitative affair where guys don't get paid the way they're supposed to, where there are health risks associated with what they're doing,

then in the end it'll be a very different report card. That's true. I agree with that. By the way, real quickly, did you see what Tito said this weekend? Yes. Can I read a... Go ahead, read it. I have a thought about that. All right, all right.

Here's what he said. Someone asked him, like, I forget the exact same. what the question was. It was, they asked him that, you know, Chuck Liddell was basically saying, like, oh, Tito just wants this fight

because he's jealous of my career. Like, I was the star, you know, in that era. He was, and he was second to me. He's jealous, and that's why he's taking this fight. Okay, here's what he says. Jealous of him. This guy can't even put an effing sentence together, man.

Are you kidding me right now? He's reaching for those grapes. He's trying to make his wine, and the wine's already sounded like a violin. With that cheese and wine, we'll see on November 24th. Perfect sense. You know what? Yeah.

Well, to give a little bit of context, the interviewer did say, like, oh, this is sour grapes for me. So that's why that got brought up. But I have a few things to say about that. I know Tedor T's. Defend him. Look, I'm not defending him. Look, everyone, I'm partially defending. Everyone clowns Tito.

Yes. Whenever I go to, I've said it a thousand times, people clown Tito on social media. And then when you go to a Tito fight, the crowd is chanting his name. It's just a fact. I believe it. It's just a fact. Yeah. And it's interesting because, like, everybody gives him, you know, hate for all his little quotes and all the little clips that come out from his interviews.

Because he does say some things that are off like this, right? Like, doesn't make much sense. This is totally. But look, the truth is that speaking on camera is extremely difficult. I mean, I'll just say this. We get a bunch of voicemails of people calling and we get three, four back-to-back calls from the same person. And they just go on and they're like, hi, this is, and then they get all nervous and they hang up. And then they do it a second time, a third of time.

So it's, it's, I'm not defending Tito, but I feel like people think being interviewed and being on camera is is a lot easier than what it actually is. And sometimes you say dumb things. Look, I've said dumb things. Everybody has said dumb things. Yeah, I don't think I've said anything like that, though. Right. No way. You haven't said anything about graves and violin.

To your point, you're absolutely right. Talking on camera is hard. I've said a number of very stupid things. I did some commentary gigs early on in my MMA career. I go back and listen to them, and they're all cringe-worthy, terrible. People often, like, when I've criticized other commentators, people have often asked me what you could do better. No, no, I cannot.

But I at least make an assessment about what isn't going right. But you're right. But here's also the point. If you have that kind of liability, limiting that liability exposure or limiting the exposure to that liability is kind of important. Yeah. But you know what? Here's what I know.

I think this fight's going to do well. I don't know how many paper views it's going to sell, but people are going to be in that arena to see Tito and Chuck. So laugh it up now, but they're going to have the last one. I'm very confident of that. I think it'll do well. All right, next. All right.

All right. All right. Hey, Luke. This is Carlos from Austin, Texas, and basically just wanted to ask you your thoughts on based off this weekend off the big boxing showdown. Where if Connor beats Kadip? Does Connor call out Canelo?

Is that even worth a Another circus slash money fight? I want to see what your thoughts on that was. Thank you. I know it's a bit of a silly question at first, but think about it. Is it possible that McGregor goes back to the boxing world? Boy, that would be a real bad idea to go box Canelo.

A horrible idea. But, I mean, tell me that wouldn't sell. It would sell. I actually feel like if he's fighting Pachial again, why wouldn't he fight McGregor again? Or why wouldn't even this seems less likely? Why wouldn't Mayweather fight? I don't think you won't because this would be a bad idea. But if you're talking about something that would be a revenue generator,

Mayweather Canelo 2 would be a revenue generator, right? Anyway, I would say, Canelo, no chance. That is just I mean, you could say I mean, it was the argument was Well, Maywe was one of the best of his generation But he's long past it And his legs looked like there weren't there

In that fight against McGregor, right? Relative to who he used to be in the way You know, Canelo is 28, bro Canello's 28 Dude, you know what's amazing about Canello? He's a hard hitter at which we already knew Dude, his chin, he has a fire hydrant Yeah

You just look at what Triple G was doing his whole career marching guys down and then sending them to the canvas, like, get down and just did it with pain commands. He may have barely stumbled Canelo once or twice over 24 rounds. That is shocking, dude. Trust me, if you wanted to make money, that's a great way for McGregor to make money. That seems like a terrible idea for your health. Yeah.

What about any other match of Polymala Managia? The Malinagia one is the right one to make if you want to make money and have to make. it be reasonably competitive because you have the sparring session footage, you have all them going back and forward. And it's the kind of, I think it's the, like, I think it's the kind of fight that McGregor wouldn't mind being in, which is to say he likes the matchup itself, plus the media circus, because he just dominates the media circus. Yeah.

And then to sick his fans on Malinaji, either in person or on social media, and not like to attack, but I mean, verbally attack, uh, dude, he, he just controls the entire thing. So maybe that's a way to go. Maybe. All right. Now we've got a request from an international fan. A request from an international fan. Is it okay, let's see.

Good afternoon, Luke. How are you doing? Well, this is Miguel, one of your biggest fans from Spain. We. And I wanted to ask you something real quick is, man, can you please stop insulting my favorite football team? Because I like listening to you and watching your podcasts, but I do it for the MMA. If you speak about football, please be respectful with the other things because you have very,

very big fans, Barcelona fans listening to you and we don't like getting like chip shots in every single podcast or program you or show you're participating. Thank you very much. will you stop taking cheap shots at Barcelona? Okay, it's a good question, Danny. Now, let me pitch this one back to you. Here's why. Now, we hate each other on game day because we both cheer for rival teams

from the same city. That is correct. But here is the one thing we have in common. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. We also both hate Barcelona. So what would you do? Well, I don't really take... I respect Barcelona.

I respect Barcelona. I respect and hate somebody at the same time. But, you know, is that my hatred for Real Madrid is so big? You hit Real more than Barcelona? Yeah. Hell yeah. Wow. Interesting.

Yeah. So. That's a tough cross to bear. Well, Super Copa champion. I'm still holding on to it. Three-season win you love to talk about. We haven't been doing too well in the season, so I can't probably talk much. Yeah.

Hashtag Saltevigo. Don't think I didn't see that game. Anyway, what should I do? What's the right call here? because I don't want to piss off people who like the show and like me because there's about five people who like me in the world, which I understand and I'm okay with, but if I don't have to make enemies unnecessarily, what do I do?

Do I just stop talking about Barcelona on the show at all? Barcelona? No, look, I think maybe this caller, because a lot of people think when you hate on someone, you automatically do not respect them. No, no, I respect Barcelona. I think it's fine to hate on any other team that's not yours, but, you know,

put it out there. You know, you respect Barcelona. Dude, every time there's O'Classico, your boy is sweating bullets. Every time. Every time. Every time. Dangerous team and they're looking good, man.

They always look good. You know how much it made me sick to my stomach when I was in Barcelona on my vacation, having to go around. And we took out, you ever do those, you ever do those hop on, hop off bus tours? Yes, I did that in,

I didn't do that in Barcelona. I did that in Italy. So here's what I always recommend. If you ever travel to Europe, they're cheap, like $30 a ticket or less, and you can get them also until like two days. I always get the hop-on, hop-off, bus tour. Any city I go to, it's the first thing I do, because it's just an easy way to see the city.

And they stopped by the Camp New on the tour. Oh, my God. I had automatically, you know what's amazing? Out of nowhere, I just laid eyes on Camp New, and then I had explosive diarrhea right away. Oh, man. I don't know how that happened. I don't know if there's a correlation between the two.

I don't know, but it seemed like the events were related. But, dude, everywhere. You want to talk about people who rep their team in a city. I've never been, you can be going to go, like, the only equivalent would be here in New York, all the people who wear Yankees caps. You know, Yankees caps, like the universal cap or something. Yeah. It's about like that. You go to Barcelona, bro, and they rep hard.

It's more than a team. Meskei un club. Yep. All right. All right. So now let's talk about Habib and Connor. And this was an interesting question. Also, lastly, how sorry, lastly.

Yeah. Palo Madrid. Okay, go ahead. Sorry. Opa, letty. Go ahead. Hey, it's master of New York. I want to know what's more likely.

Connor, submitting Khabib or Khabib knocking out. Connor. Thank you very much. And not ground up on the feet, right? I think that's what this call is. So you have to be very careful with these kinds of things. So remember when McDansig fought Mark Bochek. Do you remember that?

long time ago. If you don't know their resumes, Mac Danzig was always a very good fighter, very well-rounded, very good on the ground. But Mark Bochek was maybe one of the premier Canadian talents in sport jujitsu, much less inside the UFC. Like, as good as McDansick was, Mark Bochek, pure jujitsu, way better.

And then Mark Bochek, over time, had shown a propensity for adapting his jujitsu for a mrs. for MMA purposes. So I remember in the outset when that weekend, predictions for the fight, Luke, and I'm like, I don't know who's going to win, or I forget who I picked. But I was like, there's no way on planet Earth

that Mark Bochek is going to get submitted by MacDanzig. And sure enough, he did. And the reason why was not because necessarily it was Jiu-Jitsu for Jiu-Jitsu, and he just beat him. It was because he beat him up to the point where he was able to use what jiu-jitsu he had, which again was very, very good.

And I think he took his back, pounded him out, and then maybe choked him out, something like that. And that was just one of those lessons. So here's the point. If Habib can knock, Habib, yes, can knock Connor out on the feet. And yes, Connor can absolutely sub-habib. These things are absolutely possible,

given a variety of other circumstances that have to take place. So I would say his question was, Danny, if I recall correctly, which one is more likely? Yep, correct. Which one is more likely? I would say it's more likely, it's more likely that Habib knocks out Connor on the feet, which is to say, not likely at all. But I can see a case where Connor's getting thrashed, makes it to the end of a round, gets up.

And remember how tired he looked in that Mayweather fight? He was just like stumbling around, almost looked drunk, because he had no energy. if that's the case where he's not much of a striking threat, I can see Habib going after him on the feet. I can see, I don't think it's likely. That's not how I see the fight going. But for Connor to submit Habib, again, it could be possible. But for that to happen, they have to be on the ground, right?

If they're on the ground, dude, Conner's got devastating ground and pound. He doesn't have like this avalanche of attack, but what he does have is super precise, hard shots, dude that turns guys belly down. It makes them cover up. It makes them go to sleep. So to me, if they're on the ground, Habib's going to get ground impound,

if it's going for Connor. And on the feet, I just see, again, terribly unlikely. But I can at least imagine that happening before Habib getting submitted. Yeah, 100%. I have to agree with that. And even if, like, let's say Connor, for some reason, you know, wobbles Habib and, and it has the opportunity to sink in a submission on the ground.

Like a lot of submissions, you know, they, they put you in a certain position where you may be giving up a position, right, if you don't get it. And I don't think Connor's willing to take that gamble. Connor is a really, really smart fighter. I don't think he's going to drop for a guillotine, just even if Habib is super hurt, just because, like, there is a chance that he might get out and, well, he's now on bottom. And that, that is hell. So I would, I would agree with your statement. I think Habib knockout is probably the most likely one. Well, given the two scenarios.

Right. Which is to say also, not very likely either. Yeah. All right, let's keep the Connor Habib train rolling. All right, let's do it. And this is another important point that another fan brings up that we didn't, at least me personally, didn't really think about. What's up, Luke? Andy from Connecticut, wondering, I hear a lot of scenarios going around if Connor wins, we can match up with.

if Connor loses, who we can match up with. Haven't heard anyone talked about the immediate rematch. Any chance Connor loses and plants his feet and gets a second title shot against Kibibu. Okay. Interesting question. I hadn't thought much about it. I'll say this. Huh.

That's a good one. I would say if the end is, if there's a split decision, 100%. if there is some kind of referee error or the referee gets involved in a way where folks feel like the result isn't as legitimate as it should be, 100%. If the fight is competitive tooth and nail and folks think the wrong guy won, even if again, so for example, people think Triple G won, I did, but he didn't. But you can make a case for either guy, that scenario. But if somebody gets wiped, I mean, they've done these before, like the guest, I don't know if we're going to get, you want any J-check at this point. I don't know what the hell is happening, but remember she lost to Rosenomenus and then back to back. She fought Rosenomenus.

But she was the champion. She was the champion, so it would change things. I'm just pointing out, they'll do that two times in a row. So, but let's say Habib gets smashed. Do they do it again? Maybe. Maybe because, let's say he goes into the fight injured. Oh, I had a busted rib.

I had a broken ankle or something in those scenarios. But if it's like a normal fight, like, like, for example, if it, let's say it looks like the Alvarez fight. If it looks like the Connor versus Alvarez fight, hard to know what the purpose or value or, frankly, the upside would be of doing it back to back at that point. It would seem gratuitous and necessary, especially Danny, where if Connor's back and he looks that good or something was right, then you got Tony Ferguson waiting out there.

You got a lot of different possibilities. You got Nate Diaz waiting out there. You would need a very compelling reason to supersede those things. Yeah, I would say the Diaz, I believe, is a big factor in this because if Connor Luce is bad, he can still have that third of Dias fight and make a lot of money, right? Like he doesn't need, Habib, he doesn't even, frankly, need the title, to be honest. And I don't think Nate Diaz wants a shot at the title either. So he would rather take Connor coming off a loss than take a shot at the title, right?

So, yeah, I think if that's the case, we'll not see a rematch. But if there's any little doubt, any type of controversy, whether it's a referee or a decision, or even if this decision's correct. And it was just a competitive fight, you know, like it wasn't a wipeout. I can for sure see Connor. Look, I can do better than this. You know, this was in me that night, rematch. And you could absolutely sell that rematch, even if it's a fair decision.

All right. What do we want to do about you on? You want to give her another try? Sure. Yeah, let me give her a call. If not, we still have a few questions we can tackle. All right. We'll see what the word is there.

I'll wait for you. Let me know my ears, please. Okay, for sure. So hopefully we can get her on. And then we'll do that. I guess we'll see. As always, by the way, you can submit your calls using our email address. I think a bunch of them must have come that way.

The MMA Hour at Voxmedia.com, not MMA hour at voxmedia.com. The MMA hour at Voxmedia.com. And, of course, you can also call the hotline at any time 844-866-2468. Two great ways to get in touch with us. And, of course, you already know about the tweets using the hashtag the MMA hour. So three ways, really two and a half, but three ways you can. get in touch with us and be a part here of the sound of. I always love doing the calls. At some point, I like to do them live. We'll figure that out down the road. Taking calls is one of my favorite

things to do. It's one of the most important things I think to do. Really, if you think about it, like taking calls or even live calls or even voice messages, it's like the original social media, right? You say something, people react, you go back and forth to that. And this is sort of like real, meaningful interaction at times. I like that. That's one of my favorite things to do. A little bit hard to do given some limitations, right? A lot of people get nervous calling or, you know, not every topic is call worthy, but certainly one of my favorite things to do. Hopefully we can get Misty and Jaycheck here.

If not, we'll finish up with some calls, and that'll be that. So, shall see her interaction with the reporter over the weekend? That was a little odd, right? That was a little weird. but it was hard to tell if that reporter was like fishing fishing for her to say something negative on purpose in which case you shouldn't be doing that but at the same time I don't feel like it's off limits to ask those questions

so it was in that middle space where it was a little bit hard to tell what was up what was down but hopefully we can get a chance to ask her here and we'll see how that goes. Let me see. What else? Anything I'm forgetting from the weekend? Of course, Eric Anders. Shouts to Eric Anders for doing a phenomenal job, winning his last fight, getting right back on the horse, going right back to Brazil. I feel bad for Jimmy Manoa. I don't know what happened there, but taking on Tiago Santos. Man, Eric Anders is a beast. We were talking about the M.MA beat, excuse me, yes, the MMA beat, how he had this great momentum going into the Liotta Machita fight, doesn't win, and it got real quiet. Well, then he got that last win that was great, and then he can go down to Brazil and get a number. another one back to back like that. Well, he can resume the kind of trajectory, I think, that he was on before,

which would be phenomenal. Let's see. All right. Do we have any resolution, Danny, or what? Yes, no? Oh, look, it's $155. I mean, you know, we're out of time. We got to move on.

You know, what are we going to do? Let's just move on, all right? We can't, you know, I got things to do. I don't know what happened. I apologize. Sometimes we have guests, and then sometimes things happen. What are you going to do? Let's do some more questions, and then we'll call it a day.

It's kind of weird that we have these guests, and then at the last minute, they keep falling through. It's a little hard to understand why this keeps happening, but... Yeah, it's always hard to schedule and manage live things, right? Yeah, yeah, it certainly is. Difficult. Yeah, certainly been interesting here. Yeah. Okay.

Any more calls, please? Um, okay, so, you want to talk about bantamweight division or about champions overall? We got two different questions. Oh, you know what? It's your birthday. You can pick birthday, boy. Okay, sure. I'm going to go with the more interesting one.

So, uh, here we go. Why did you just say that from the get-go? Well, it depends what might be interesting to me. Might not be interesting to you. Yeah, we usually a couple of said I can that regard. All right, go ahead. Hey, Danny. Hey, Luke.

Welcome back. This is Angel calling us from South Arda. So my question is, with my question is, with my, Montaio being stripped and stating that it was partly for her not being a draw. Should Woodley and other champions who are not a draw being in fear of also being stripped of their belts? Great question. What is a fantastic question. Phenomenal.

Do the questions the last two weeks on the phone, do they've been rock solid? They've been fuego. Rock solid. You know what? I have made this point and people have dismissed it. They have laughed at it. They have said there's no way. But when you create all these interim titles and then you take them away, and then there's this creep into the space of the champion.

Now, again, I'm not saying there's no good case for stripping Nico Montanio. The champion shows up and doesn't even weigh in. That's a problem in some regard to her responsibility needs to be paid. At the same time, you can't think about the broader, you can't ignore rather the broader context here, which is that there's just uneven application of justice. There's really no rules. a lot of this was done probably to facilitate getting the belt towards Valentina Shepchenko anyway there's just a lot of things that are that are not considerations about the about the infraction in question and I think as you begin to devalue titles generally and as you begin to find reasons to take titles

first interim now full-on flyweight do I think Tyrone Woodley is in jeopardy of losing his title no I do not I still think that there is a lot of value to that and a lot of protection that comes to that title. But if these guys think they're immune, they are very much mistaken. Yeah, I feel like the Nico one was a very specific and special situation. I don't think we'll get a lot of those cases in the future, if any.

But it does bring up a flag. Like, if you're a champion and let's say you're not a huge draw, and little things happen where you get injured or you're unable to fight for whatever reason, like there could be a chance, right? It's not far-fetched to just think, hey, they might just strip me. So it is kind of worrisome, right?

If you're a champion and you're not a top draw. Anything else? One more. We'll call it a day. One more. All right, let's go to the other one. Let's do it. Hey, what's going on, Danny and Luke? This is Craig calling from Chicago, Illinois. Let's get a question.

With the pastoralist division being held up, I want to know what you guys' thoughts were on Aljo versus Dominic Cruz. You know, he called them out after the fight. I'd like to see that more than him versus Jimmy Rivera. And Aljo looks great. I mean, worst case scenario, Aljo beats Dominic, and he's right in the shot for his title.

And if Dominic beats him, then it's the warm-up fight he needs to get a shout-up title. So I'd love to hear what you guys think. Thanks. What do you think of his call-out in that matchup? First of all, to be done. First of all, shouts to Algeman Sterling, who, you know, you talk about guys getting better and better, and then I think a lot of times analysts overstate things.

I don't think you can overstate that with Aljo. The last fight, he's had two wins since the bad lost in Marais. He had the Brett Johns win and then this most recent one. And I thought to myself, you know what, man, his striking to me for the, it's always been decent to good. This time, I thought it was great. And more importantly, it was just fluid and instinctual and it just went. I really, really like what he had to show. to me it's a smart call out

Dom does not appear to be all that interested I don't want to put words in his mouth but just based on the reaction it doesn't seem like that's the one he wants I don't know what they're doing because you have Henry Sehudo out there over the weekend kind of hinting that the fight with T.J. Dillashaw is going to happen like some flyweight, bansomweight meeting of the minds

if that's the way they go I guess that's the way they go. I would have liked to see Marlon Marais or even Asen Sao get a title shot. Yeah that would be nice. But if they're going to do Sehudo versus Dillashah that frees up Marais to fight Cruz if that's what they wanted to do. It just seems like Cruz doesn't want to do that.

But if you're asking me, do I like the fight? I love the fight, and I really have a strong appreciation for the growth that Algeman Sterling has been able to show. Yeah, and a lot of fighters would have a hard time coming back from that knockout. That was a bad knockout, man. And he's been able to look sharp and not only that, but keep improving. And not gun shy at all. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So I'm all for him getting a step of in competition, if that means Dominic Cruz, but I doubt that fight happens, to be honest. But do you think Dominic Cruz fights when it's all said and done? I feel like Dominic Cruz is at a space right now that if he really wants and he doesn't get the shot next, he can really sit out and he'll eventually get it. I mean, he is one of the bigger names in a division.

You know, he's still very skilled. So I honestly don't see him fighting anybody, but for the title. All right. As an interim or something. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, I think that does it for us. I apologize for, I don't know what happened with our third guest. I guess we'll figure it out after the show.

But Danny, happy birthday to you. Feliz, cum laude, years. And, you know, have some cake for me, all right? I will. We'll talk soon. Appreciate you guys tuning in. We're back next week. And until next time, stay frosty.