MMA Fighting - The MMA Hour with Luke Thomas – Episode 452

Episode Date: October 8, 2018

On this episode of The MMA Hour, Luke Thomas speaks to Fedor Emelianenko about his upcoming fight with Chael Sonnen at Bellator 208 (45:25); Duke Roufus about his decision to stop Anthony Pettis' fight with Tony Ferguson in the co-main event of UFC 229 (1:22:20); Ryan Bader about his Bellator heavyweight Grand Prix fight with Matt Mitrione plus his opinion on all the chaos that went down at UFC 229 (1:06:00). Luke also shares his thoughts on the UFC 229 brawl between Numagomedov and McGregor's teams on our segment The Weigh-in, and he also breaks down Nurmagomedov's submission win over McGregor on the Monday Morning Analyst. Plus, we discuss all things UFC 229 and more on A Round of Tweets and Sound Off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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How are you doing out there? Today is Monday, I believe, the 8th of October 2018, and Caesar is home. How are you? This is the MMA hour right here on MMAFiting.com. I'm trying to get everything right. I've slept like two hours. We have a lot going on today. You guys all know what's about to happen.

UFC 229 weigh in, we'll do. I've got a UFC 229 focused. You can't say they've got another laptop here for the Monday, morning analyst and a bunch of guests are going to stop by. We'll see about Tony Ferguson. I don't know what's going to happen with that. Hopefully he comes by. I got to ask him about the ball, but I don't know. In studio, I do know this. Federal Millionenko is going to be here at about, I think, 1240. One o'clock Ryan Bader. He'll also be here.

Look forward to chatting with those gents. And then one of the best coaches in the game had an incredible moment, really, in letting a fight not continue. Duke Rufus will be here at, I think, 120. And of course, your tweets with a round of tweets, your calls with the sound off and a whole lot more. Got a bit of a late start, so let's just get into it now. I had a wonderful weekend in Las Vegas, and by that I mean I am so tired. I could cry. I can't sleep in hotels.

But here's what I will say. You know, MMA fans online, it's a bit prickly of a situation, but in person, y'all are tremendous, man. So many people coming up saying they watch the show and that they like it. No way to judge if they're being truthful, but I can tell you that they were being certainly very friendly, really, really, really. really friendly people out there, a lot of you. And if you saw me and took a picture or whatever and said hi, I really appreciate it. And anybody who took time to be kind, thank you guys so much.

It was really kind of overwhelming to a degree. So I just want to say a heartfelt, thank you. Okay. And I said, don't, you know, say hi and don't be weird. And that was really what happened. No one was really weird. All right, let's go to the arroz to my frioles, the arquepa to my pan, and the Champaya to Mahala. He is the producer of this wonderful show, the one and only, Danny Seguera. Let's pull him up. How come I can hear you and I can't see you? Yelp. There he is.

I'm here. I still can't see you on the big screen, though. Oh, all right, getting that up. How are you doing there, bud? I'm good, you? Tired, man. I'm so tired. I'm so tired as well.

It was a long weekend, but man, there you are. It's crazy, right? Yeah. You guys back here on the home front did a killer job all the way from the top down. Everyone was pulling their weight out there, either in Vegas or back home. So I want to make sure I want to tell you thank you. And I want to tell everyone on the MMA fighting staff, by the way, including Pete C. Carroll, all the way in Ireland.

Everybody did a bang-up job. I thought it was a showcase of what this site can do. So thanks, man. Yeah, for sure. And shout to everyone on the team, killer coverage all week. Head over to our YouTube channel. Tons of cool video content interviews with all the fighters. And shouts to Mark Romundi and Sonno Shoddy.

Boy, those boys burned the midnight. Owl. Oil. I can't talk today and I get paid to talk. That seems like a problem, doesn't it? Yeah, off to a great start. Just a bang-up job I'm going to do today. We are going to do the Monday morning analyst a little bit later, right?

Looking forward to that. Let me ask you real quickly before I get to my way in. What would you say is your biggest takeaway from UFC 229? Biggest overall thing. What is it? I think we're, and you've mentioned it before, this sport is getting closer to boxing each day. Watching that whole thing go down after UFC 229.

I mean, that to me looked like a boxing scene. I feel like we've seen that before in boxing arenas and just everything that comes with it. People kept calling at WWE, but that doesn't seem quite right. No. You see much more riotous affairs like that. Yeah. In boxing showcases. Yeah.

Wild, wild week. By the way, I forgot, real quickly. Yep. People can always send us tweets using the hashtag the MMA hour. We're going to get to those. I heard the calls were overwhelming today, right? Extremely overwhelming. The inbox was blowing up.

Calls from everywhere. Yeah. Great calls, by the way. The fans have been stepping up tremendously, and we'll see that later on in the show. Like, the type of questions that we're getting, they're really good questions. And, yeah, thanks to, thanks to everyone. We're probably not going to get to all the calls, unfortunately, because there were so many, but, you know, we'll do our best to showcase the best.

All right. And if there's any evergreen ones, we'll save those. I guess we're going to get to, we're not sure we're going to get to those. It might be a little earlier. It might be a little later. I guess we'll just play it by ear. How's that sound? I'll come back and check in with you.

And by the way, for folks who want to know, You can always call 844-866-24-68. That's the number to call whenever you want to leave us. And what's the email address one more time, Danny? TheMMA hour at Voxmedia.com. So if you're an international caller, well, and can't call, you can always send an MP3 to that email. The MMA hour at Voxmedia.com. All right, man.

We also got PFL tickets, right? Oh, that's right. How could I even forget? Yeah, Long Beach, California. We're going to give those out around what time? Why don't we give those out around? Well, don't give the time. Don't give the time?

No. Oh, you know what? We're going to give it somewhere during the show. So stay tuned. And at some point, we're going to open up the hotlines for you to call in and get some free VIP tickets. There you go. And in studio, we've got The Last Emperor. So it's a big show.

I'll check in with you in a bit. All right, it is time now, ladies and gents, for the way in. All right, time now for the way in right here on the MMA hour. Thank you guys so much for joining us here. Look, man, there's only one thing to talk about today, right? And everyone's kind of talked it to death, but we've now had a little bit of time to think about it all and process it and see what it means. We got to talk about that brawl.

There's just no other thing to talk about. And which is kind of funny because a truly historic fight happened and a historic moment happened. I'll get to some of that and the crucial details, I should say the more crucial details in the Monday morning analyst a little bit later in the show. But let's open it up here talking about this brawl. And here's the central question that I'm trying to ask and I'm trying to dig through. whose responsibility was that? Like, if we had to attribute blame, who was responsible for the post UFC 229 brawl? Right?

And I think a lot of you might say Habib is the one who's at fault, right? After all, he's the one who jumped out of the octagon and then tried to drop kick Dylan Danes. What has become, by the way, a truly iconic photo. If you guys have seen it, it's like from the position of Habib jumping in, neither here nor there. Sure, I could buy that argument. Habibis to blame. Okay, all right, fine. Some might say it was McGregor to blame, right?

Here was the guy going out there and stoking the flames of ethnic and regional tensions, being incredibly disparaging towards somebody's father, family, team, manager. I mean, it goes on and on, calling him backwards, by the way, which is getting into some really troubling territory as well. And then you could also say, well, he also punched a guy. in the octagon, even though he got attacked a little bit. You can see some of it here. So sure, he has some responsibility to bring to this situation as well. It's like, I believe he has a right to say whatever he wants, but you have to know your audience,

and you've got to know who you're playing with. Yo, Habib Numerig Mn Moumadov is about that life, ladies and gentlemen. Whether you like that or whether you hate that, that is a fact. That's just what it is. And if you're going to say those kinds of things, I'm not in any way saying you should allow for that kind of behavior to take place. What I'm saying to you is it's inevitable that it will. It is inevitable that it will. You play with people who don't want to be played with.

Don't be surprised when you succeed. Right? You want to get into his head. Congrats. You did. So he has some responsibility to bear here. You can say that the security staff did whatever they could, and I believe that.

Could there have been more of them? Could there have been better preparations? I suppose. I wouldn't attribute much blame to them. I think they did everything they possibly could. But certainly for next time, maybe some greater precautions should be there. Is the UFC responsible for helping to create a space to facilitate this kind of behavior? You could make an argument that they were.

You could make an argument, right? They never really ever sanctioned Connor. And in fact, neither did Connor's team, SBG. As I mentioned before, when Marcella Garcia got tired of Dylan Dennis just being weird on Instagram, chucked them out. Nothing ever happened to anyone over there as far as I know. Certainly nothing ever public. UFC didn't do anything. UFC stood by, not merely with this fight, but as well as with Joseo.

Now, they did put on a tremendous event with the green octagon and the steam coming over the top of the smoke or whatever that was. I mean, it was a phenomenal site, phenomenal booking, and it was a phenomenal success. I take my hat off to him in that respect. But if you allow room for these kinds of ideas to fester, you're going to end up in a bit of an uncomfortable spot. So there's that as well. But here's really what I want to focus on. You can blame all of those actors. The answer, really, though, is who is to blame?

It's not that it's one or the other. It's kind of everybody. But here's the truth. It's also us. Yeah. Yeah, it's us. It's us. I saw after the fight a lot of people saying, hey, look, it's no big deal.

And by the way, the rematch is going to make a million dollars. And that's using the proverbial a million. Like, it's going to make a gazillion. It's going to make incredible amounts of money. And here is my response to that. It's like, I believe that. I believe that. I believe that that is true.

It's also goolish that it's true. That's gross, man. Super gross. That that would be that way. It is that way, but it's, it just, look, the central insight here is, I don't think we should be clutching our pearls and, you know, fainting on couches. These kinds of things have happened in combat sports many times. As I told him, Danny, it's not really a WWE thing. It's a boxing thing more than anything else.

With these riotous scenes outside of the sporting venue or the arena, not the arena, but the area of contest. You've seen those sites all the time. But when we gleefully indulge in the financial upside of ethnic tension, you know, something's kind of wrong with us, man. Something's a little bit wrong with us. And maybe it's not so wrong with us that it needs some kind of major fixing. And to a degree, it gets to be of a slippery slope, how much of it can be personal? And then it gets to, well, this crosses the line. And well, if that doesn't cross the line, but then this crosses the line.

And there's this series of escalations. And everyone's got the sort of subjective interpretation of it all. I get that it's a little hard to balance. But, like, the reason why it will make a lot of money if they did a rematch or whatever, they keep these tensions alive, is because customers. customers love it, all of us, me included to a degree, and you out there to a degree. You know, I'm not so upset that it happened in as much as I am a little bit bothered that we're not taking any time to question why we're so happy about a financial upside for this kind of disparagement and debauchery. That seems a little often. You could say, well, look, what about the bus incident and chucking the dolly?

Everyone loved that. Well, some people love that. Some of us wondered if that was really the best idea or that, at a bare minimum, we should be so magnifying of it. Go back to that John Malkovich promo that they ran, not really one mention of the Dolly, not any kind of focus on it at all. I kept saying to people, it's not that the bus is not a good vehicle for selling fights. It's just a good vehicle for selling fights to donks.

Because the reality is this fight has historic implications, historic importance. It's truly one of those kinds of those kinds. of events. In any event, man, I don't know what's going to happen next. I don't know if they're going to book a rematch and if they do, I don't know when. I don't know when any of the stuff is going to happen. Here's what I know, though. If you're in a sport and the thing that's really driving you is, man, we can make so much money off of ethnic tension and international rivalry. The fight game is nakedly kind of who you are. Yeah? We all have a preference, somewhere for sameness, whether that's a national sameness, a religious sameness, a familial

sameness, a color sameness, an ideological sameness. We all have a preference for it all. And that's why when you have these Mexican versus Puerto Rican rivalries in boxing, people get up for it, it's supposed to boost pride, not make money off of the ugliness of conflict. And I feel like we're getting a little bit too far into one side. So who's responsible for it all? Yeah, man, Habib's responsible for it all. Con is responsible for it all. UFC, various other actors you could point to in these videos and whatnot.

The truth is we're responsible for it because we crave it. We pay for it. We demand it. Frankly, we reward it. And me and the media, we cover it, perhaps a little too uncritically. And that's my way in. All right. Let's do this, Danny.

Do we going to do a round of tweets now? You want to knock that out? I believe that's what we're going to do. Yes? We can do what you want to jump into the analyst and do that later? All right, let's do that then. How about this, ladies and gentlemen? It is time now for the Monday morning analyst.

All right, here I come. Yeah. All right, boys and girls. We're going to turn this up. All right, can you see me? Yes, you can. There it is. Look at that.

It's got my big ass nose. This nostril doesn't work. Isn't that fun? Yay. All right. So if you want, my screen is plugged in. you can go to it now, and here's what we're going to do. I'm still trying to slow roll this.

I had some people tell me in person in Vegas, they love the new stand-up portion of this, but the problem is it won't be so great for the audio podcasters. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to try and split the difference. Some of this you're going to have to see with me standing up. Some of it you're just going to have to. You won't necessarily have to. I'm going to give you what I can in broad strokes from an auditory standpoint,

and then there are going to be some visual components here as well. Do we have this up? What's the word? Working on it? When we unplug it and plug it back in? Let's try that. Let's give it the old college try. Huh?

That should work. No? That's a problem, isn't it? Tell you what? Well, they're figuring that out. Let me give you some of the broad strokes if we can. It worked earlier. All right.

A couple of things here. What I have on video, if I get an opportunity to show here, is a couple of things. I'm going to get to that first takedown sequence that Habib went to in the first round. And you could go back and you could show the right hand he dropped Connor with where he fakes the shot and comes over the top, the blinding speed that he had. You could go to some of the third round stuff with Connor McGregor having the two-on-one on the fence and that doing a really good job of keeping Habib from advancing position.

And then the other part I had, though, is I just had that first round take-down and then the fourth round, which eventually led to the end, because to me that really was the whole story. But here are some of the broad strokes that I think are worth talking about. Number one, I've seen some debate about this. Folks are like, Connor fought well. Connor fought poorly. What's the truth? The answer here, and I've really struggled with how to explain this, but the best way to say

it is, Connor fought well in parts, but was basically overmatched, almost everywhere it appeared. And here's the bigger lesson for me is not only did he fight well in parts and was slightly overmatched, but when Frankie Edgar gets tired, let's say Frankie Edgar is fully fresh, here's his level of ability. When he gets tired, he's kind of down to here a little bit. When McGregor gets going, he's up here. When he gets tired, it's on the floor. He is a significantly different fighter when he gets tired. Habib was saying he was going to go in there and smash him He was going to go there and make him tired because he taps all the time. Now, I'm not going to sit here and say, hey, look at that.

I'm not going to sit here and say that Habib, excuse me, that McGregor is a frontrunner. I don't think that's true. I think he's shown Hart, but took in the second D.S. fight to come back out. He looked good early in the fourth. But as I mentioned, did he fight well in parts? Yeah, he fought well in parts, but he was basically overmatched. That was really the core issue here. So the point I want to kind of drive home about this, if I meant,

is in addition to the fact that he's a significantly compromised fighter when he's tired, this is going to be something that we're just going to have to confront as a real, true, unadulterated weakness at this point. Connor McGregor has much better wrestling than I think some folks give him credit. Connor McGregor has much better cardio. Well, I should say he has much better commitment to being tired than I think folks give him credit. But in the end, he, if you can use. get him tired, he's just not the same. He's not the same. So Habib comes out,

laterally moving side to side, right? And he comes in. I'm going to show you on this video if we can find a way to get it to work. Unfortunately, we're working through that now. I see all Joe down there. Look at sweating bullets down there, huh Joe? This is a live video, son. Point being is he was going laterally side to side, right? If you actually watched the first shot, he actually dives in on the left side. McGregor's standing, well, he's standing actually a little bit on what his left leg forward. McGregor sprawls, which forces a late switch on the part of Habib to go to the other leg. And then there to scramble ensues.

Man, McGregor did really well there. He did really, really well there. I'm going to show you that hopefully in just a second, he was out there showing tremendous stuff. But in the end, it just wasn't enough. Folks were saying, oh, he'd been training a year for Habib. A year is not enough. It's just totally not enough.

It can't be. He was able to do pretty well through the first series of takedown attempts in open space. But once the second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth level of it all begin to reveal itself, that's when all the problems, that's when all the chinks in the arm, so to speak, began to show up. What are we going to do here? What's the word, Joe? You got to try something? It's not working?

No? No, because I have to be able to see it. There's no dice on this? Boy, this is terrible, huh? All right, well, so there's no dice on this? Oh, y'all are killing me. This is, this is an, you know what you're going to do? You know what it is?

It's my life, that's what it is. Can we put it back on this one? Yes, thank you. Well, dagger, let me think here on my feet about what to do. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Hey! You know what you can do? You can try, hmm, to get my other laptop.

Will that work? no because I don't have the video on this one. Well, that's a nightmare. Okay. Yeah, you know what? This is a hopeless mess. Wow. What are we going to do? All right. Well, fuck it. Let me think here. How do I want to salvage this on my feet if there's any way to do that? Let's see. Let me think here out loud. Let me say this. Let me just go through this footage in my head for just a second if I can. I want to you, I want you to imagine the first take down sequence. I'm actually not going to give up on this. You know what I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to fucking push through is what I'm going to do. Hear me out for just a moment. Hear me out. Let me do this.

Hear me out for just a moment. Okay. What is so important about this? I have to get through this. I can't even though I don't have the visual aid, yeah? First take down sequence. Habib shoots far outside. He dives for the right side, can't get it, actually ends up on the left. This is where McGregor looked his best. And you're going to see McGregor do a couple of things. He's going to never get himself to a hip, because once he gets to a hip, he's in trouble. He's always got that inside hook to the far side of McGregor's leg. Excuse me, Habib's leg, McGregor does, because if he has that, he can't be taken down to a hip or turned over. And you're going to see him kind of block Habib's arms from the one arm from coming across

because then he could just double off. It's called a crackdown, what Habib was trying to do from a high crotch to a crackdown, where you're just driving and all's turning to your hip. Habib actually does not do a pretty good job of it. He went to the wrong leg. He had to switch at the last second. He tries to drive it down. He can't do it. And so what you end up seeing with him is there,

McGregor defends it really well the whole time and really well the whole time. But what Habib did have the hands locked. And when he has the hands locked, the strength in that position, when your arms are out here to drive it here, his is unparalleled, unparalleled, unparalleled amazement that he has, strength to pull. So he ends up standing, and he pulls McGregor's leg up with him. McGregor's still got the inside one, but he's now pulling up on it, pulling up on it.

Why? Because if I can widen your base and I can spread it, I can then affect your balance. Then they start turning in a circle, right? Turning in a circle, turning in a circle. How does it end? Do you remember how it ends? I'll tell you exactly how it ends. Habib goes for another crackdown, driving it.

Not a single leg running the pipe, a crackdown. They're different. He goes for the crackdown, and that's where McGregor makes his fatal mistake. Habib drives this way with this shoulder down, the right shoulder. At that point, McGregor still is able to stuff it, but what he needs to do with a crackdown is you actually have to end up sort of kind of taking the back a little bit. You have to get their shoulder past you and then you come around the back. He made the mistake of sticking his leg behind him.

Did you guys remember that? And at that point, that was over. That was over. Once he made that mistake of sticking his leg behind him, that's when he just decided he was going to not defend it anymore. And I think he probably thought he was still defending it, because you think if I can just split my base and I can balance on my back leg, I'm good. What you're actually doing is you're now creating a weak plane to be taken behind you.

At that point, Habib blocks with the right hand, lifts with the left, turns him over, and drives him to the mat. Why did he scoop the legs and pull them up behind it? And then why does he always turn this direction off the fence? Because he's trying to get the knees and the hips higher than the shoulders. and he's trying to drive McGregor's back to the mat. Go back and watch that. The question about McGregor's wrestling in that sequence is,

what's the best part of that? The best part of it is in open space, he was going, take down attempt, with a take down defense, take down the fence, take down the fence, and he knew what to do. You have to get behind the guy with your hands locked in sort of a C grip over the back through the crotch. You've got to stay on top.

You have to keep tight. You have to get your hips, your chest down. You have to be on top of it. You have to get behind him, block that tricep, that arm from coming across the body. He did all those things. But when they stood up and Habib was able to raise his leg again and then go back to the crackdown,

he couldn't keep up. He couldn't keep up. It's speed chess and you're keeping up and you're keeping up and you're keeping up and you're keeping up. And then finally the rook takes queen or something, right? Whatever analogy you want to use. So my response to that is, in looking at his wrestling, it's like, man, parts of that were really good, actually. and the quick awareness of what to do. But what I would say is,

you just don't have enough to keep up with the scrambling over time with Habib. He's a very, very dynamic, committed scrambler. And the other part is, go back and watch Habib's shot. Remember, he reaches this way and ends up on this leg.

What does that tell you? It tells you that McGregor recognizes the shot and sprawls, but he doesn't keep moving. He just sprawls and stays there. Right? You got to sprawl and move. Sprawl and angle.

Sprawl and angle. He never does. does it. He never does it. He just kind of sprawls. And then as a consequence, Habib's able to get the leftover body parts. And once Habib has this, and he even had it up to his like forearm, it slides out, man. Like you're not, you're just not going to beat that guy with that. It's just never going to happen for you. Now, very quickly, I realize without the visual aid here, it's going to be a little harder to do. So I'm going to try and talk very quickly about the submission. First of all, he gets the takedown again, right? Where he gets tight-waist, kicks the leg out, and then he,

He has, he does this bit where he's getting his hands in the gable grip. And you could see Habib driving his shoulder behind. The other shoulders are like rolling into it and then leaning into McGregor. Bacon McGregor put his hands on the mat when his hands are on the mat. You're carrying everybody else's weight. And then you can, from there, you can off balance them or advanced position with a variety of other attacks. You can then turn the direction and you can go up into. Go back and look what we're talking about with Habib.

Right. When Habib was in there, he goes to the right. He can't get it. Connor makes a mistake, right, and puts his leg behind him, and then what happens? He's able to go the other direction, so Habib is changing directionality the whole time. But eventually, you'll see he kicks it out. Connor goes to his hands, and he does the same thing. He reverses position, drives him backwards, and takes him down.

From there, he's able to drive to mount pretty quickly. Connor does a good hip escape there to buy himself some time. Oh, look at this. Hey! Look at that, Joe. MVP? Huh? M. V. Joe? All right, they got it working. Let's go back a little bit then.

Boys, you just saved my day, huh? And I can't show the video. Don't worry. Zufo, I'm not going to show video. I'm just going to show slides. I'm not going to play any video. This is where I was talking about before. See him hanging on his hands? Look at McGregor here on his hands like that. It's awful. It's awful to be there. And it's not just that he's holding him by the waist and driving into him and leaning down.

He's driving kind of behind the head into the shoulder socket a little bit. But if you drive right over the top of that head, I think I want to say Kelvin Gastilum got, this happened to him by Chris Weidman, you can actually turn somebody over. But of course, he doesn't really do that, does he? He goes a bit the other direction. Let me see if I can find where it is. He's going to just turn around. Right here you see McGregor's slump. And McGregor, by the way, doing a lot of fence grabbing with the toes, a lot of grabbing with the hands.

People ask, oh, is that dirty? Yeah, of course. But if you've got this guy on top of you and you can tell each situation, like there can be times in grappling exchanges. where you know it's just headed one direction. You know that this guy, you could put up a defense for a while, but they're going to find a way around it, and they're going to get, the water in the room is going to get higher and higher and higher. You can feel it.

You can feel it. And I think he felt that to be quite clear about it. So here, you can see he's got the, by the way, real quickly, he's got this elbow inside, which is right. That's the right thing to do. But you've got to get it all the way across the body, and he doesn't have it. So he gets taken over here.

Habib is able to just put his weight behind it. And again, Habib gets his hands together. It's over for you. I don't care who you are. And he's going to take him backwards, right? Look here and watch this transition. This is one of my favorite transition. Rolls him back.

He's got double unders, which is not necessarily the best grip to have, but he rolls them to the already strong side. He's already got a hook on this side. So he's going to roll them to the side with the hook. Then he's going to bring the free hook around. And McGregor tries to stuff it. which is the right thing to do, but it's not enough. Now, McGregor's going to want to get his hips down, like a baseball slide,

and he's going to want to turn, and the reason why he's going to want to turn is because if he had the Marcella Garcia over the top and then under the armpit, right? So the over the top comes, and then the one under the armpit holds it. That's always how it is, right? The one coming over the top is like stabbing the heart. The other one is the securing of the stab. He doesn't have that. He's got both underneath.

You can spin inside of that. McGregor knows that, Habib knows that. But in the fight, you've got to make some tough, tough choices, right? So what does he do here? He blocks the final hook for a, moment he gets pulled backwards here and you're going to see look at mcgregor try and step because he wants to avoid that hook coming over the top and then he's going to try and find a way to reverse like this you're going to see he's going to try and i think he's going to bring that bottom

knee through if i'm not mistaken let's see i'm a little too far over there we go let's see what he does here frame by frame again i'm not going to play the video one time now habib is trying to lock this up and you can see what mcgregor's going to do is actually a little bit different he posts his feet on the ground his hips are now in the air He's going to try and turn because there's nothing actually controlling his shoulders there, right? You're just on the rib cage, nothing controlling the shoulders. Let me show you when this scramble is over. I'll give you, I'll show you exactly when it's over.

Ready? Right? Well, first of all, he's lost his feet. So you could argue here, but I would not say that. Now the scramble's over. Why is that scramble over, Joe? Can you tell me? You can't tell me?

That. He's already got his hips up. He's already off. He's already got an arm around the side. He could probably move it up here to the side of the throat if you wanted to. But here's the real reason why he won. He got to his elbow first. If you get, put yourself on the ground.

Just lay there. And then you can sit up and try to stand without putting a hand or an elbow on the ground. Try to roll over to the side and try to like boost your hips over. Without that elbow, you can't do it. But with the, or not as well, but with the elbow, that elbow there, that is going to give him the posting mechanism. he needs to bring his hips on top. And when he does, he's going to move right into mount. Watch.

McGregor's going to try and sit up. He's going to try and put his feet on the ground, and it doesn't matter. Look whose hips are already higher. And look, where's he posting? Off of his toe, off of his elbow. You can't beat that. The scramble's over already. He's dead already.

He just doesn't know it. Yeah? Watch. He's going to come right up top. And you can see, Gregor just getting, look, I mean, look at that face. It's not a happy time, man. And then he comes up on top.

Now, he brings his base back a little bit, which allows the knees to come up inside. I'll advance past this because he kind of, they were talking about like, oh, he's got halfway towards a head and arm triangle. Not really. I mean, that wasn't really true. But I want to go back and point out here in all of these situations, who's dictating the position? Who's dictating where the position goes?

Who's dictating the control? It's that guy. All right? Let's fast forward a little bit here. As I mentioned, this is what I'm talking about. He's got the arm in like here. So there's no, there's no choke there. And to get it out and to weave it back in

would just be a little hard, so there's no choke there. I don't really care about that. You can see he's in three-quarter mount because the foot is still there. Gregor did a pretty good job of at least not totally giving up position. Here you can see him pass. Now, you're going to see McGregor used this elbow right here. He's going to put it against the hips and he's going to try to get his hips past, right?

Which he does right there. Now he's got like a knee shield, right, where the shin is across the hip. He's kind of got that a little bit there. Again, I don't have time to go into all of this. But here Habib is setting up for the beginning of the end, right? Sort of forcing him to pick his poison, which direction he wants to go. He's banging on him, right? By the way, just look at the body language, right?

This is a terrible scene. You know, it's better to be on your hip than you're back, so that's fine. But just look at the, and it's not that he's quit, it's not that. It's that he recognizes this is a terrible position with not a lot of easy ways to get to something good. Like you can read it in his body language. Habib is just all over him to the point where any choice he makes, he doesn't, like, literally, if you see someone on the ground, and they're kind of not doing a whole lot except, like, defending the real obvious stuff, it's because they don't really know what to do

because if they make a choice, they don't want there to be a catastrophic counter. I think it's a little bit what you have here, plus fatigue. Okay, so then he moves, he tries to buck and roll here, right? And then he moves to mount a little bit here, or all the way up to mount. Now, McGregor tries to roll to his base. Yeah? You all see that?

Let's go back just a little bit here. How does this choke get set up? All right, here we are. McGregor goes to his base. Look at McGregor's hands with the blue gloves. Yeah, it looks like Habib's hand, but it's not. Look at the blue hands, right? No defense whatsoever.

None. He is using all energy available to merely post his weight, okay? You know, it's, it's, I understand that need, but if you do that against a guy like this, I don't have to say much after that. Now watch, he's going to come up, right? And he puts the forearm across the throat here. Not quite there. You can see the red gloves are going to, excuse me, the blue gloves are going to be the ones that you want to pay attention to because those are the ones that are going to be doing all the hand fighting. All right, Habib kind of rolls them off here a little bit to the side.

And you can see here it is. He tries to drive that hand through and it looks like he has, yeah, he wants to get a, so it actually would be this way. And he wants to get a gable grip, right? That's what he's looking for. All right. Puts his head on top of the head. Why? Because even if it's an illegal shot, somebody can headbut you. A lot of times people do rear naked chokes wrong all the time. Joe, you want to be on camera?

You want to be choked? No? All right. A lot of people do rear naked chokes wrong all the time. They do the bicep grip, and then they kind of push their hand here. But if you put the hand where the palm is facing out, it's not nearly that strong of a position. People think you can push the head forward, but you really can't. And you can get the knuckles smacked in your face, so it's kind of hurt.

So you actually want to make a fist, have the knuckles in the open palm face you, and then the head to the side. So it's this nice, tight, controlled space. That's actually the way to do it. Now, that's an ideal scenario. If you're in a fight, a gable grip might be enough. But here we go. So you can see him.

He's not really hand-fighting here, right? He's going to push up to his hands, and you're going to see Habib drop his lats and then kind of pull and twist a little bit here. Even though the choke is on the left side of the body, the choke is here, but he's kind of pulling here a little bit that way. You're going to see that. He's pulling up too and driving his hips in.

McGregor puts one hand up and doesn't even really hand fight because I think he kind of knew that this was not going to go his way. Here's the other thing about this. And I'll explain in just a second. You know, let's jump here a little bit if we can to the very end. So I can get a good look at the, here, this is what I wanted to look at. Now, he didn't do a lot of hand fighting, McGregor, which folks might dock him for.

You could if you wanted to. Look at this submission. folks are going to say, well, this is not a choke, and it's not, although it can become one. It's just a pain submission. But the reality is this is no more, no less of a pain submission than an arm bar. What's happening here? He is squeezing the TMJ, the part of your jaw, and even down here, depending how it goes, where it fits into the groove. This submission, it's a new thing because so many people were ducking their chin.

You could say, well, if it is such a good submission, why even bother for the neck? Well, because the neck, if you get it right, you don't need to tap. They're gone, right? It's just a, you can just put them out. With this one, you have to apply some serious pressure. And here's the interesting part about that. You notice he didn't tap right away. The reason why he didn't tap right away is when you first get this locked on, it hurts, but it's not that bad.

But when you keep squeezing and you keep squeezing and you keep squeezing, at first you're like, I can live with this, I can live with this, I can live with this. And then you get to a point where you're like, I cannot live with this anymore. And by the way, you can get your jaw broken this way. It's very possible. You can break it down here. You can even break it right where it fits. into the socket. It's a very, very, very painful, very painful, or submission anyway. But it's just not painful. It's not peak painful at first.

Like an arm bar kind of goes zero to 60 a little bit. This one takes a second to set in, which is why you see he like doesn't, he pulls his hand up here, right? And you can see Habib kind of leaning over and pulling up a little bit. And then he just wants to tap. And look at that face. Look where he's getting pulled. He's getting pulled at the edge. It's getting gable grip and then pulled like a like a razor, the top of a cutting board or something, right? And there it is. There's the tap. I wish I could have done more. We ran out of time.

But I just want to point out here, this was a masterclass. I actually think he took the third round off. I know there's some debate about that on Twitter. I don't really think there should be. He came out and looked fresh as a daisy in the fourth round. I think you wanted to kind of see where things were in the third, dropping him in the second and, of course, taking him down in the first. Real quickly, if I have just a minute.

Yeah, I have just a minute. I want to show one thing. here is that final sequence I was talking about. McGregor does so well here to defend, but this is where everything goes poorly for him, right? Look at this. He's got the leg across. That's going to stop him.

He's got tucking behind the tail to check him the oil there to keep his posture in the right position so he doesn't go too far down. He gets taken with a crackdown, sort of, to his right. Watch this. I'm almost done. I'm almost done. I said, I know we've got to get to Fador.

This part is all right, kind of stuff in the head. Needs to have his shoulders. You want to make sure that that arm doesn't get across. He needs to kind of be on top. So the grip here is not great. But really the key mistake for me is not that. It's this one. He gets up to the side and then now that's it.

Struggle over. Struggle over. Watch, Habib recognizes it, uses this hand to block this side, drives his weight underneath, turns him, and he's going to pick him up. Look at the left foot right here. Watch that come up. He's going to pick him up, drive, and look at the triangle.

There's nothing protecting him here. here, right? He puts the hand down, but there's nothing protecting him here. And he goes over. All right. And that's it. Look, picks them up and then takes him over. Look, there's nothing protecting him here. You can stop the first, you can stop the second, you can stop the third, you can stop all of those kinds of things. But in the end, if you just can't match this person over time, it's going to be a real bad day for you. That choke at the end, it wasn't in all the way as a choke, but as a pain submission, it was, it takes time to settle in. That's exactly what you saw. People talking about a rematch, he's going to need a long time in between the first and second

fights if he wants to make up ground like this. This to me was not complete domination, but pretty damn close. Habib Nibh Nibh Ngo-Madeov is the best 155-pounder in the world. Argument over. All right, let's go to our next guest. I believe we've got the last emperor in here. Let me go back to my seat. Yes? All right. Bring him in, yeah? Let's do it, boys, girls, ladies, donks. All right, let me go to my seat while we wait. Here we are. All right, all right, all right, all right. All right. All right.

You know what, Joe? I take my hat off to you, buddy. That was not easy, was it? You're out there sweating bullets. And by the way, by the way, we checked all that stuff ahead of time. So I'd be like, why, you didn't do tech stuff? Also, I'll just say I'm kind of known as the guy who has terrible, who has terrible tech all the time.

I'm the one who, you know, even my, live chats I did for all those years. There were disasters. Auditory disasters and everything else in between. All right, man. I know we're just basking in the glory of UFC 229, but of course, Beltor is going to be this weekend, and Fidro Emilianenko is going to be in the,

was it, the semifinals now against Chil Sondin. We have him here in studio. We're just waiting for that to take place, and we'll bring him in. I want to ask him, of course, about that fight, but about Habib as well. That should be kind of interesting. So let me know we're ready to do that, yes?

While I'm still good looking, boys, because those days are fading fast. I think they're coming here. All right. Well, I don't know what those? Yeah, yes, I guess. All right, we're still waiting. Let's do a round of tweets. Let's do it.

I can't see the clock. All right, here we go. Put the five minutes on the board. Is it up? All right, hit it. As soon as it goes, there we go. All right, Luke, will it come as a surprise to you? If a beep gets a slap on the wrist by the Athletic Commission,

the UFC ignores the post-5 buffoonery, and an immediate rematch is booked. Not even a little bit. In fact, that's the likeliest outcome. There might be some greater penalties by the minimum standard. Like, they may not do the exact bare minimum. But I don't think, I mean, if the UFC didn't anything about the Dolly, wow on earth would they do anything about this?

It's not in their interest to. And, yeah, the commission, they want to make money. They'll probably make a little bit of a show of it. But, you know, look, they're like, oh, Canelo tested positive for two different kinds of prohibited substances. Your fight can take place here just a little delayed. All right, next one. What if they do a Ultimate Fighter, AKA versus SBG season?

I won't watch it. Next. How much credit should Javier Mendez and AKA take for this win? Not just this performance, but for turning everything around, as they were known as an injury team and for pulling up and now hold three belts. in the UFC. Not only that, they have champions, they had two different heavyweight champions in Kane and DC. They had another champion in DC at light heavyweight. They had Luke Rockhold at middleweight, and now they've got Habid and Nirgaemadov at lightweight. And of course, every

fighter's success is a little bit dependent on their own circumstances. Habib, of course, has a separate team he trains with independently of A.K.A. And A.K.A. did some recruiting as well, right? They didn't just open up. I mean, they were a family gym for a long time. So a lot of their success is quite frankly remarkable, but they also did some recruiting. But the point being is for a camp to have that many, to have that many champions, modern UFC champions, not like old school ones. I mean, that's basically unheard of, right? I mean, that's just totally, utterly remarkable. All right, next. Hi, Luke. Unblock me, please. Danny, make sure you save this tweet so I can unblock this gentleman later.

Okay? All right. Next. Wouldn't knowing we have a five-round Diaz-Pourier fight for the 165 belt next, next month anyway, be so much more exciting? Yes, it would, Vanessa. And I can't believe there's a female viewer here of this show or any show in an MMA. Yes, it would make a difference. But in the end, we have what we have.

I don't know what to say about it. we have what we have. All right. Go. Number one, is this trash talk culture getting out of hand? Yes. Two, what role does UFC as an institution play when it comes to deciding what is right or wrong? How far is too far while promoting a fight? Man, that's a much more complicated question than we can use, frankly, in this segment. It's a very, very good one. Here's what I would say, though, I wouldn't expect much. Dana White has been pretty clear. You can kind of say whatever you want for the most part. I think someone's going to run up against that limit. I mean, can you really, like, if you wanted to, could you call someone the N-word? I don't think you could.

So there must be some kind of limit on it. But for the most part, there's no real limit on it. And remember, they had a code of conduct. You know, when Matt Mitrione said those things about Fallon Fox, they began to hammer punishments down. And Nate Diaz got fined by the code of conduct. Those days are over. They still have a code of conduct, but I don't think they really enforce it very much. And I don't think they want to run into problems related to independent contractor versus employee

by making them wear certain clothing. And then now you have this code of conduct for your behavior at all times, whether you're on the job or not. So I would not expect much in the way of leadership. Next. Let's see. Why didn't Herb Dean disqualify Habib? I've seen regional fights where the winning fighter got decued for unsportsman-like behavior

right after they finished their opponent. It was a bit surprised when Bruce Buffer announced Habib to winner. It's a great question. I have no idea. That's a great question. You're right. I've seen that too. I didn't even think about that.

Huh. Good one. You know what? We'll try to ask him. How about that? Next. Did you guys know that Derek Lewis's Instagram followers doubled since his fight? And Rogan mentioning his IG on the broadcast at UFC 229.

He's approaching 1 million followers at the moment. Before UFC 229, he had between 4 and 500K followers, if I'm not mistaken. I did not know that. But if there's a better person who deserves more attention, I don't know who that is. That would 100% go. I mean, what a great guy he is. What a great guy he is. So good for him.

Next. up or under $5 million pay-per-view buys in Connor versus Habib, too. I'm not sure what that means, $5 million. You mean, would they make $5 million? They make $5 million easy. You mean $5 million pay-per-view buys? No, it still wouldn't do $5 million, because you would have to do a big-ass tour for that. And by the way, Connor played it right in his way.

You know, he tries to affect everybody. Habib played it right in his way, too. All right, last one, let's do it. In spite of anyone's personal opinion of the out-of-competition brawl-fest, How much do you think Habib's actions diminished his in-caged performance and perhaps mitigated a lot of the hit Conner's Q rating might have taken? I think it actually did make a difference. Yeah, if you really go back and look at the footage, there are some things, as I mentioned,

where, very good. McGregor looks pretty good, but most of the time it was one-way traffic, and there's not a lot of discussion about it. All right, let's bring him in now. He is the last emperor, perhaps the greatest heavyweight to do it. He'll be fighting, I think, this weekend, if I'm not mistaken, in the semifinals of the Bellator Heavyweight Grand Prix. Always an honor to have the last emperor in here.

Let's bring him in now. There he is. Hey, look at that. All right. How you doing, sir? Nice to see you. Thank you. Hi there.

Nice to meet you. How are you? All right. Nice to meet you. No Mike Hogan this time, Fadour? No. Where's Mike? Tateana with me.

Okay, all right. How are you doing, sir? Good. You excited about Saturday? How do you feel physically? Very good. Thank you. Yeah? Thanks God. Yeah.

Do you all... Are you... Where is all your training? Is it still all in Russia? Trenuities all still in Russia? The camp actually was still in Russia. The second one was in Holland. Holland. Do you like Holland?

Do you like Holland? Yeah, I like Russia. You like Russia? Wait, wait, wait, Holzhliss. What's wrong with... I love Holland. What's wrong with Holland? I'm, I'm not like to train around here.

I like to train in Holland, there's a lot of good people around me there. But my life in Holland, say, in Holland, like, sports hall, don't, dooms, sport. But my life in Holland, that mostly gym, home, home, gym. Fair enough. Okay. I have to ask you about the brawl that happened over the weekend.

What did you make of that craziness? The brawl we saw at USC 229. I'd ask, of these weekends happened, this situation, this ishering, U.S. 229. I didn't see. Unfortunately, I didn't watch it. I can not say anything about that.

Did you hear about it? I've heard, at least. Yes, I did hear about that. Do you think it's, I mean, what are people saying in Russia? Is it a, do they care? Is it a bad look? Does it matter?

What's in Russia? What they're going? It's something like to look good or or it's actually? Well, actually, I arrived to the United States on Thursday. Oh, okay. All right. You just got here, yes.

Or something like that. Not only came here already. But let me just ask this as a general question, as an abstract question. Is it, will a riot at a UFC fight with a Russian

fighter, will that have any implication for what happens in Russia and Russian MMA? Like, are the two events related at all? Does that make sense? Two events, you mean UFC event? Will that riot have any impact for the sport in Russia? Well, these, these, like to, are they kind of, they're not going to, in Russia? Which events? Habeabab jumping out of the cage and an attack in Connors team.

That Habib was out of the cletkaed and that he attacked people. Well, I can't say anything about that. Well, I can not say anything about that, and I don't know actually what was the reaction, because I was not in Russia at that very time. Alright, be curious to know and find out. By the way, have you spoken a couple times with Vladimir Putin, right?

You've talked about, you, were you, you, a couple of times? Yeah, a couple of times. He calls you after you went? When you win, he's He called? No. No?

Oh, really? Yeah. When does he call you? I change my telephone number, so often. I don't know. It's not very easy, actually, to catch me on the phone. Why do you change your number so often? Why do you change your number so often?

Because of correspondents, and not just the number, because of media, because of media, because of media correspondence, they find out the numbers very fast. On the chain, yeah. Right, and some people were actually not desirable. How many phone numbers have you had in the last five years? How's how about five years?

About five maybe. Okay, one a year. That's not so bad. That's not so bad. All right, let's talk about your fight coming up. You're taking on Shail Sonan here. You know, again, I'm sure you saw, at least you've heard of Connor, he plays all these mind games against the B, but it didn't.

really work it actually backfired a be was fired up ready to go chale has said some things about you do you ignore it are you aware of it what what relationship do you have to the trash talk about you from him uh well what we've seen what we did what we've been with what we're going to be between habibu mej about conneram how they had to get over there perpallel of slavest and how it's how it's I've got it, and how it it's how it affected and how much it was

about what you're going to be. What's your relationship? What's the thing about what's about what he says about you. I'm not

to this wrong. Well, I have very smooth attitude so that's... Smooth attitude? That doesn't bother? That's not? No, it doesn't.

Has it ever? Like, at any point in his career, any opponent, like Nooya O'Gawa refusing to shake hands, right? I remember that pretty clearly. A kind of, it was, it's, it's it's nothered on your no, it never actually influence, never, you know, affected

my camp, my preparation. No, because I mean, you just don't need, you don't have to, you don't need to pay attention at that. Um, what is this fight about, for you. What is this for you? That gives me the possibility to get to the finals. What I'm asking?

I'm asking, I, I'm going to, first of all, I perform and I represent my country. And perform for my country. And I glorify my faith as well in my country. I see, so that's what the fights are about. Because, you know, when you get, when someone like you comes around, and they're a legend in the game. Every time they fight, there's this big, I don't know how you say it, literary narrative about him.

Oh, what does this mean? What are the implications? What does this fight mean for him? It sounds like what he's saying is it means an athletic competition, no more, no less, and then his personal values being on display, right? But when they're going to, like, all of the questions, what for him it means, how it's important. But for you, for you, what, for you're doing, it's more, it's more,

like more than what I'm going to be it's very important for me because I'm the representative of my country and I'm the only one of my country and I'm the only one representative of my country in this very grand prix so it's about okay it's about representing who you are very well to put it.

So it's more for you to that is to what you are I think people know who I am. Well, I think people do know who I am. Sure, of course. What do you make about the other side of the bracket? You've got Matt Mitrione and Ryan Bader.

We'll talk to Ryan Bader a little bit later. Do you have any thoughts about who might win that one? You've done about Bayder and Maitreone? Do you do for you, for or did for some of, what there was with this boy? No, no, I think, much very much more than it will be

just not only after my own. I didn't think about that. I haven't thought about that yet, because everything will be clear after my fight. Not even not hopeful for a Mitriotan rematch? No, not or not any of you any put any of the rematches? If God does, you will be happy. If it's good to win, I will be happy.

If it's, well, it will be, too. If it gods will, it will be able to be, too. If it gods will be, you will, it will. God's will for him to win and for me to win. So we'll be happy to have a match. How is Russian MMA today? Is it healthy? How today is today? How do you? Yeah, all of God, all right. Everything is great.

A lot of people who are doings, who are still who are who up people who are going to go to people, and who are people who are going to passional and also several of good of their league

who are who are re-relizut also the people go to go back, they're

back, they're very there are a lot of kids, there are a lot of boys, you know, who are eager

to go to MMA, so there are a lot of them in amateur sport, in professional sport, there are a lot of amateurs

who go to professional sports, There are a lot of good different leagues and where they have really very good fighters and also the leagues, the representative of this league, they perform abroad as well. So it's developing. What's the biggest change in Russian MMA since you fought in Pride? What was the most big change in the life of MMA in Russia as the time you've been in Russia? In Russia. In Russia, yeah. In Russia, yeah. Certainly it's grown. So,

it's grown. Well, obviously, it's not very it. But it happened

that when Pride became from their events, the more

started on TV. Even the same the same the same popularity.

Well, certainly the popularity of M.M.A. Grows a lot and after the end of Pride

somehow it happened so that they started showing more fights even from pride on TV and the popularity you know getting bigger what's your weight today? What's your weight today? I think about 108 kilograms yeah well I think something about 108 kilos how do

you in your mind what's your best weight for performance by your opinion what for your the most for the best way for your best for the way. I'm the most of the best, what I feel when I'm, I'm not really, I'm not really, I'm not really, I'm notherst,

I'm trying to be in the physical, maximally, to work with the with the sportsmen, and athletes, and the way, that's, like it is,

put, on the best weight for me, this is the weight when I feel myself really comfortable. 100,000 kilos? 100.000. 108 or less?

I'm not I don't... I feel self 10 years ago I felt really very good when I was 105 kilos for me good weight means the weights

when I feel comfortable when I can breathe good that's why when I exercise when I work out I work a lot with weights you know I just have sparrings with heavy weights as well

you know so when I'm not like really concentrated. I'm not trying to hold some certain weight. Does he do a, like, does he, okay, you do kettlebells, right? You know kettlebells? You know what talking about? Yeah. Okay, do you do any kinds of primary lifts, bench, deadlift, squat, anything like that? Do you know these terms? No? Oh, dagger. I'll try to see if, okay, I don't know how you translate it. The deadlift. Does he deadlift? That's the name of the term.

Do you know a belkin? The power lifter? Do you do any of those things? I'm not known. You're not known. You're not going to be able to do it. No, I'm not a lifter. I'm not a lifter.

Yeah, I take less weights. Okay, all right, fair enough. What do you expect you from... Not to be really tired and exhausted. Yeah, I understand. Plus, if you're taking a consideration, I'm 42 already. You know what? But you're a healthy 42. You're a healthy as a horse.

You're very strong, 42. It's not just the appearance, the outside of the picture. All right, fair enough. But in fact, certainly, I mean, to tell the truth, I work a lot with heavy weights as well. If you want to, if you want to be at a level, then, of course, because if you want to keep and to fight on the certain level, certainly you have to be on the same level as you know young sportsmen are. Maybe one day we can meet in Holland and we can deadlift together.

How would that be? Maybe in Holland, we'll be trainurums and the the two of them. Do you all? Yeah, look at that. Sweet. All right, before you go, very quickly, Chelsun, as a fighter, as a fighter.

Chelson, as a fighter. What are you expecting from him on Saturday? Saturday. What do you expect from him on Subbott? Well, he will be

be able to be able to be able to come out and to fight on the good, very good level.

Anything in particular? What anything in particular? Only only would look to see in the

fight during the fight. What gets you the most excited? Like what, what, What, anything, what gets you to, like, stand and cheer? What's the most of the first thing? Or, it's the most of the excitement or, it's just to start and ballad for it.

It's the most emotional. When I'm not going to be my boys. When I get really very excited when the fighters from my team fight. When I'm the corner man. for my team. All right, I believe that. Let's try this. Favorite movie.

What's Fador's favorite movie? I'll like what? There's Russian movies, you don't know. Give me a name, I can watch it. I can find it. I can watch it. I'm not just so I'm often that I watch movies.

There is very good Russian movies. There is very good Russian movies. the island okay I'm gonna watch that I'm gonna watch that I'm gonna watch that I'm gonna watch that but if if you put that in the search just put that in Russian the way you hear it it is Ostrove okay which is the island I'll do that I'll do that favorite book some of the new these are also Russian books we gotta get you some books from around the world man

Well, some of the world-of-unquote. Nothing wrong with Russian books. Nothing wrong. Sorry, Russian authors, that's a world-scale. It's top of the world's world's. Russian authors, that's a world's scale. Sure. No doubt.

No doubt. I don't deny it. I don't deny it. I don't deny. Favorite, um, uh, musical act or musician or something related to music. Favorite, favorite kind of music, maybe. Love music or music.

Something Russian, I'm guessing. Well, I'm guessing. Well, I'm guessing. Well, I'm guessing. I'm not going to be a I usually listen to spiritual Russian music Okay, all right

Okay, all right. Okay, how it's, how it's, like it, as well, to say, I'm, like, said, the Serbian singer, Dina, Divna Ljavayevich. Perfect. How many more times do you think you'll fight in America?

Any way to say? How many other you think you will be you're going to be able to say? How many times

as God will give to me? Is there any How about this? Years more? Potentially. Well, potentially.

Well, you know, you know? How many? How many? Come on. I'm just from here. I'm going to go

go ahead. They'll just would want to be to be upset. Very soon it seems like I will be leaving this very place with cranchers and you still want me to fight. Yes, yes, I'm unfair. I'm so sorry. Last thing about this, and I mean this sincerely, it is a weird time for Russian-American relations, unfortunately. Do you feel any of that? I'm hoping you don't, of course. It would be terrible if you were.

But there's this weird tension happening between our countries, which is really unfortunate. But are you a victim of that in any way? Now, now, it's a very strange time in the relationship in the relationship between

Russia and it's not on you, but it's not it's not really, but you kind of you feel you?

You know, maybe, you maybe, you know, maybe, that you, you're, you know, what's a

sort of, what's the not, I'm, no, I'm not a lot of it's not not sure, I'm sure,

I'm perjew. I'm for our the people and what's going to be in the that's not very not very well the relationship right now in between Russia and America that doesn't

affect me but certainly to tell the truth I really feel very sorry for that relationship and I do feel sorry for very tense relationship in between our two nations you know because this is what's going on right now this is not good well you know it is

good. It'll be in the cage on Saturday. You know what will be in the main event. Taking on an American so you might just ratchet up the tensions Fador, thanks a lot. I'm teasing. I'm teasing. But it's good to see you back. Thank you so much for stopping by. I wish you nothing

but the best of luck on Saturday. And I, I, of course. Thank you very much. All right. By the way, where's the sweater? No sweater? Where's the sweater? Zwer. It's a lot. Yeah, it was taken. It was taken.

It was taken. It was taken. It's not what it was not like taken. You just lost it. But for me, it's not a big difference. It doesn't matter if it exists or not. But what... But what...

What will happen to the sweater, Bellator will sell it on charity auction. Ah, okay. And the money will go for charity. So anybody would like to participate. You're welcome. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir.

All right. We'll see you. I'll see you on Saturday. All right. All right. There is. Fador. Greatest heavyweight all time right there. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. I'm sorry about asking about the deadlift, but it is a real thing. No problem. I will check on that. Okay. I really appreciate that.

All right. And we go from one Bellator heavyweight to another. We have Ryan Bader here, who of course is going to be taken on Mat Matreone. I believe the day before. So this should be kind of interesting. Let's get Mr. Bader up on in here. And we'll do that now. He's coming? I was told he was miced up. Let's do this.

Darth is here. Does he still go by that name? We'll find out. There he is. Sorry, I couldn't even see anything. Look at that. How are you there? Yeah, you can see it?

Likewise. Can you believe he didn't know what the deadlift was? I was terribly disappointed by that. I see you got the eight man strong on. I do? Those are the powerlifting guys, right? They're big time in the MAAs too? Yeah, so they got into the MAA.

Yeah, they got into the M&A. Yeah, they got, they wanted to. get you know into that space they didn't want to be just in that you know howlicking the other left angry thing yeah um okay you're going to be facing matt mitrione bellator 206 correct correct uh this will be this weekend uh 207 excuse me 207 is when you're going to be taken i got the wrong number there um how are you feeling about it man it was a bit it's been a bit of a layoff between your last fight no no not really i was the last fight in the first round so i've i've fought most recently you know So I've just been training the whole time, knowing it's a tournament-style format.

I've just been keeping on it, going from May. I went right into June and started training in July, you know, August, and here we are. I just feel great, feel the best I've ever been. I don't think there's a point in my career where I knew who and basically when I was fighting beforehand. It's usually like, all right, you fight, do whatever you want for a little while, and then you get a name and a date. So I knew that beforehand, so it's easier. You know, you're in a weird position, right? Right? Because let's think about it for a second.

You just had Roy McDonald, a supreme talent. He jumped up a weight class. It did not go very well for him. But the truth is, I look at this tournament and I'm like, I think Ryan's the prohibitive favorite. How difficult is it to navigate weight and to know when, when is a task you can handle? And when is you're biting off more than you can chew? You know, in this tournament, Matt's one of the bigger guys, right? but at the end of the day he's going to be 10, 15 pounds heavier than me.

If he comes in at low 240s like he was talking about on social media. And so for me, you know, I got up to 238, 239 this camp. I'm sitting around 230, 235. Damn. You know, so for me, I think it's, you know, between light heavyweights and heavy weights, a lot of us can be considered a heavyweight regardless. You know, we'll cut down. I'll cut down from 230 to 205.

You know, so for me, it's not really a big jump. You know, I have certain attributes that I feel I bring to this heavyweight tournament that some of the heavyways don't have, you know, that cardio, the quickness. And one thing that Matt's used to have it over other people is that speed and that athletic ability, you know, which I have also. Plus, I have some of the best cardio in the light heavyweight divisions, let alone the heavyweight division. No, it really is true. What did you make of that fight, by the way?

I thought Masasi would win. I was just like, let's say they're equally skilled, one guy's bigger. it's just going to be for him. I didn't know how it was going to go. I did not expect that. That was all one-way traffic. Yeah, you know, Roy said he just wasn't in it. And that happened some fights.

You know, you go in and... Yeah, it happened to you before? Yeah, it happened to me. Just game planning, and you train so long to do a certain thing, and then everything goes out the window. You know, for me, it was like Anthony Johnson fight. I went in there and shot a terrible shot, you know, right away. So, you know, it's one of those things.

where you don't show up and then you know musasi's fought like heavyweight middleweight you know he's a big boy still yeah so um i was surprised how it went um but at the same time you know some people have off days also a combination of both um but they're both they're both studs you know and uh um cool fight to see it really was in in terms of that like is there any way to calibrate that for you on or any other athlete on fight day i mean it sounds like sometimes you just show up you're like oh shit i don't know what i'm doing here there's no way to head that off there's it's it's it's it's routine. It's, you know, having the same routine every time knowing, all right, you know, for me, it's like, all right, I have a certain, it's kind of dumb stuff, but I have to have my, you know,

sweet potatoes that I take and I eat at a certain time because I know I'm going to be hungry and my stomach's going to feel weird right before a fight. So it's just trial and error. And I've had 30 plus fights where I've got to, I've got to figure out what works the best for me. But at the end of the, you know, at the end of the day, I know, you know, you. Usually, 98% of the time, when the bell rings, we touch gloves when we start fighting, that I show up. You know, and so I fall back on that every time. But some days you don't feel the best. You know, you get up and you're kind of sluggish.

You're trying to get that going. It's just kind of pushing through it. How do you feel with Deltor? I mean, your fight with King Moe went about as well as possible. Here you are in this heavyweight tournament. They're taking you all to do all the rounds, all the shows. You get into wear your own sponsors. Sounds like you don't have any regrets, huh?

No, I'm loving it. I'm having fun. I came over to still fight the best guys in the world. I came over beat Phil Davis, who's arguably top three across any of the promotions. In New York City. Yeah.

In Madison Square Garden, you know, huge, huge card. And then for me, it's just being able to do things like this. I get asked, hey, you want to jump in this heavyweight tournament for the heavyweight belt, and you get to keep your light heavyweight belt. We'll see what happens after that. I was like, hell yeah, let's do that. So that's what I love about

being over here. I can do things like this. You know, I'm fighting Matt Mitrione, you know, here coming up on Friday, and we're in a Grand Prix, you know, and we got Fador and Chelsen on the other side. You know, it does, it's huge, you know, I get to go try to be a two-division champion. What did you make of that brawl on Saturday? It was crazy. That was wild, right?

Yeah. These Daghistanis, they don't play around, man. Yeah, I mean, you know, I don't think it was great for the sport, but I don't think it was necessarily the end of the world either. You know, you've got a potential rematch in the making, which is even bigger than that fight. But, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of stuff done for the lead-up to that fight with Connor and the bus incident. And then, you know, that's part of the whole show and the promos and all that. They add that into the storyline.

And then, you know, when that, you know, when Khabib jumps over and there's a fight and ball between the teams, you know, that, why wasn't that expected? Have you ever been involved in, even on the regional scene, anything like it? even close to that? No, not, no, not close to that. You know, there's times when you're cornering people and there's like words or something like that, but never has it gone into a full-on brawl. I've been, you know, a couple buddies have been at a fight

where they fought, you know, in a rough crowd and, you know, at one of those small regional bar shows and melee, you know, started happening and guns got pulled out and stuff. Oh, Jesus, really? That's where I can go, you know, at one of those shows. So I try to stay away from that. Tournament, you don't have to worry about this trash talk, right?

I mean, on some level, it's like, look, it's just bracketed. You all already know what's going to happen. It's already set up. The future's already, I mean, you have to make your own future, but in terms of the path, it's kind of all does it for you. Yeah, you don't have to vibe for a fight. You don't have to sit there and get on the mic and say, hey, I want to fight, Fador, I want to fight chill or this and that. You know, it's a bracket. It's what I'm used to.

I grew up in a bracket sport, you know, in wrestling. You win? Right. That doesn't talk, and you move on. Right, right. You know, and so that's what I like about, you know, about this whole tournament for the heavyweight championship. Because if there wasn't, it's, you know, nowadays, it's who gets a, who gets the title shot? You know, who's going to bring the most eyeballs?

Who's going to talk the most shit? You know, who's going to do that? Are you glad you're, like, you're not part of that? Yeah, you know, I just want to represent, you know, the MMA community, you know, professionally and have some integrity in it. You know, and I get, you know, stuff's going to happen. And I get the shit talking, you know, and I enjoy it. I like listening to it. You've done some of it.

I've done some of it. Yeah, I'm not saying. I don't. But a lot of it, it's just shit talking. Just do it because that's an MO. And even though there's respect, it's like, all right, what are we going to stir up? But at the same time, it's fun and it sells fights. But at the end of the day, we want the sport to be a mainstream professional.

There's still people out there look at the sport and see what happened on Saturday night and say, see, I told you, these guys are, you know. My thing is it's like you didn't get enough of your lust for violence with with fist fighting like in a four rounds right it's like it's like that wasn't that didn't quench your appetite i don't know what i don't know really what would at some point um a couple more things about this uh if i may the cornea fight i know you and him had words back in the day yeah any not regret exactly but any part of you still wishes that was a possibility oh yeah for sure you know um you know he's a competitor he's a great champion great competitor he always has been

his whole life um and for me you know he's the same way i'm the same way i want to test myself against the best. And, you know, for, you know, he's a double champ right now, heavyweight and heavyweight over the UFC. And yeah, I wish I would have got that fight. You know, I was trying for that fight, you know, for a long time. And, uh, were you surprised he beat Stepe? Um, you know, I trained with Steepa a little bit, a couple days before that fight. And, uh, um, it was a little bit of a surprise, but at the same time, both those guys are studs, or they're champions in their own right, you know, and so for it to go either way, you know, Stepe might have had a little size on him, but then when he came in heavier than him and whatnot,

and, you know, he has that wrestling he can go to at any point, you know, and so that's how he set it up. You know, he was setting it up with, you know, pummeling, how the underhook came over, boom. You know, so I wasn't too surprised if any of them won. Where do you think you would be if you had stayed in UFC? Like right here, you're in Belatorre. As I mentioned, you beat Mola Wall. I mean, what was that, 15 seconds? Something like that?

Yeah. Something crazy quick, and you beat Phil Davis. This was a tough fight, but you got it done. You won the belt. if you were, like, because for example, there's this talk about Musassi, it's like, he's in Belator, but that might be the best middleweight in the world. Yeah. Where do you think you rank all time, not all time, but among active competitors?

Sitting there right now? I think I'd be, you know, it depends what Guffson was doing where they'd want to put him, but I think I'd be one of the number one contenders, you know? For sure. I beat the guy that's ranked number three, you know, and OSPs in there, you know, a couple of the guys, but it's like, yeah, you know, I was always right there. But I think I'd be, you know, right under Cornby. You know, Goffsen being out, having fought so long.

You know, they always like to put him above me because of the bigger fights that he had. But I'd be right there. Let's think about this. John Jones is probably going to come back at some point. You fought him back in the day. Do you think there'll be a drop-off or no? With John? I don't know.

He came out and looked great. His last fight was Corneux. You know? Getting older doesn't necessarily mean you're dropping off either. I feel the best I've ever felt in 55 years old. mentally and physically. The time off, though, I assume he's training, but you never know. So a third fight with Cormié and John Jones,

Cormiere was looking good in that fight until, you know, John set him up with that kick. You know, so it's one of those things. I don't think he's going to fall off too much, and then I feel the 205-pound division is pretty weak over there. And so you're going to have, you know, when Cormié retires, you're going to have John Jones, Guffson, you know, then there's a few others in there that are that are super tough but it's a very shallow division let's

talk about your fight you got mat mat mat matreone coming up he is a big guy man i've seen i talked to him a couple times not a not a small person um so neither are you of course that's the interesting part about it when you size him up quite literally what do you what do you envision as these are my responsibilities these are my tasks to win what are those you know for me um if you're i think any m m mma fan especially looking at his last fight or whatnot if you look at his record He's never fought a wrestler. I mean, you can call Roy Nelson a wrestler, but he's never fought a dynamic explosive wrestler. Not only that, I have power in both my hands.

I can knock you out. I can take you down. I can grind you out. I can finish you on the ground. You know, and I kind of look at it as a Linton Vassel fight a couple of fights ago when I defended the belt against him. He's a big boy. He's a 250 now. He is a big guy.

He's a big boy. You know, and controlling him. And, you know, I feel he has better jiu-too than that. ended up getting my position and finishing him on the ground. You know, but that being said, Matt is very, very talented. He's a great fighter. I think his biggest attribute is his mind. You know, he thinks he's going to win.

He goes out there and believes in himself. You know, he's very quick on his feet. He moves around well. He's got a good right hand. You know, I think he's not really a natural south ball, but, you know, it's one of those things that are you've got to be ready. You know, he has a lot of first round finishes. Right.

But for me, I'm willing to go to that place. Not a lot of people like to go. That's what I'm saying. I have some of the best conditioning at the light heavyweight division, let alone the headway. I'm willing to go there. I'm willing to, if need be, grind it out on the feet, on the mat, wherever on the ground. So for me, it's just putting those things together. Who wins, Fido, or Chale?

I usually pick a fighter when I get asked that, but I have no idea on this fight. It's a tough call. It's a tough call, yeah. You know, Chal's a wrestler, and I always kind of lean towards wrestlers, but Fador is, you know, he's one of those unknowns where he can come in and just, you know, knock your block off right away. I thought Frank was going to win. I thought the size and everything. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. It's just, and what Fador has, too, is you get in there and you're cross the cage from him. You're like, fighting Fadoor right now, you know, and I think Chale might have a little bit. So I think it's just one of those fights where, for me, it's 50-50, whoever implements their game plan. If Chale can go out and get three takedowns, one around, I think he wins. If Fador stuffs two of his shots right at the beginning, I think it's Fader's fight. What about Fador's guard? He's got dynamic hips for a big guy underneath.

Absolutely. I just don't know if we've seen it recently, right? So I think that's the biggest factor. Ken Chale, take him down and hold him down, basically. That's how he's going to win. or if he gets taken down, Fader pops back up and keeps doing that, it's Fado's fight all night. Did you think Habib was going to beat Connor like that?

I did, yeah. His wrestling is just, it's another level. Yeah, it's crazy. I was just, you know, if he, him going in there and thinking he can strike, you know, with Connor, and he dropped him, though. But then getting confidence from that and then staying in the pocket like he kind of was, you know, you've got to be careful with Connor. But then he fought a perfect fight and kind of just kind of drug him down, drug him down, empty that gas sink a little bit, less pop on Connor's punches, almost knocked him out, and then ended up finishing the fight.

Yeah, that's pretty crazy. Before you go, are you still doing work with veterans? I know you have for a long time. Yeah, we usually do something all the time, and I think this time we'll take some veterans out for a little pheasant hunt and show them a good time. I just like to get involved in that. I've been to a tough. of different events where I've heard the stories, I've meant to people, and it's the least I can do in my position, you know, so I try to give back whenever I can. Is there any particular, if folks want more information about how to get involved in the lives of veterans and help them, what do you think is a good way that they could do that? I mean, I always liked Brian Stans, hire heroes.

I was with them for one fight, and I walked out with a shirt, and it was cool experience as Brian got a call from a veteran that had a job in two years. Saw it on my shirt, called signed up, got a job in the next, like, three weeks from there, and has been working at the job ever since. So hearing that, you know, that's what it's all about, you know. So Higher Heroes is always a good one to go to. All right, man. Well, you know what?

It's great to see you. I look forward to the fight. You know, you're an OG in the game now. I know, crazy, right? Isn't that wild? I feel like I'm a young guy in the sport because my body feels great. My mind feels great. You're looking for good.

Thank you. But it's been, I mean, I'm 20. fights in UFC, you know, three over here. I'm 30 fights plus. Definitely a veteran. You are definitely a veteran, but you're a very capable one. Yeah, there you go. Appreciate it. It's going to be the Mohican Sun. You and Matt Matreon. It'll be the main event for the semifinals of the Belator Heavyweight Grand Prix. That'll be on Friday. You can catch that on Paramount. And I think it's on DeZone as well, but I'll double check, but for sure it'll be on Paramount. Thank you so much, Ryan Bair. Always a pleasure. Yes, sir. Best of luck to you on Saturday.

Thank you. Friday, excuse me. All right. And now we have to go to our last and final guest, Do we have them up there, Dan's? Danny? Let me know somebody. All right. All right. Let's go to him now. He is a respected coach, a former fighter himself.

And he made, I thought, a call that was so important, not merely for his fighter, but the sport. The sport needed to see that. And we'll talk about that in just a second with our next guest, the one and only Duke Rufus. Duke, how are you, sir? Oh, there he is. I'm doing, here we go. I'm doing three. Yeah.

Where are you at, Duke? I'm at home today. I'm just getting ready to go to practice. All right. Well, we appreciate your time. Sorry, it took me a little bit longer. The schedule got all bumped around. We appreciate you.

Can I just say thank you for doing that for the sport? And I mean this. We've had this debate a lot of times on the show about when's the right time. And I know coaches and corners care about their fighter. But we've got a weird culture, man, where people don't want to pull the trigger on something. And everybody knows Anthony is tough. Everybody knows he's capable. Everybody knows he's a good fighter.

He doesn't need to take unnecessary punishment. Tell me why you made that call and if you agree with my general assessment. No, I do. You know, it's the kid's tough as nails. You know, we went through that no dos Andros fight, fighting for the title. You know, the older I'm getting, you know, we grow up in a rocky movie culture, Rudy. It ain't over till it's over. you know, we have a great positive mental attitude not to quit, not to give up, etc.

But sometimes it's too a fault. And stylistically, this isn't a guy that you can jab and grab and coast on like saying a boxing or a Muay Thai fight with your hand damage. You know, here's the thing. Tony Ferguson is a very mean elbow expert. Now, if you know anything about Muay Thai, the only thing that keeps an air, elbow expert off you is hard punching and good clenching. With Anthony's hand damaged, he couldn't keep him off of him getting elbowed. Secondly, he can't clinch him or even submit him at his hand this jack. So sometimes you can risk injuries in a fight against a guy like Tony Ferguson, who likes

to hit people with those elbows. I just thought it was the right decision. Tony's a of a fighter, his numbers speak for themselves, and he showed in his performance. I mean, Anthony was, you know, just so close to taking him out, and he's a very resilient warrior. And, you know, it's just sometimes you've got to know one to fold him. And I just thought it's the right decision. He's got a fracture behind his knuckle. And tomorrow he sees a specialist in Las Vegas to see if he's going to need surgery. So I, if you look at my hand, you can see a lot of fun things. I'm trying to get that in the camera. I'm missing knuckles.

You can see how bad my hand is. I'm living proof of sometimes you need someone to help you. I love my family. My wife has been with me since we're 26 years old. I was. And she lived through my whole crazy fight career. And I'm not going to lie. My life isn't glamorous.

I wake up every day in pain. Thank God to the Turp House who's got me on, you know, CBD oil to help with my inflammation. The medical care that was given in my day to fighters was garbage. So I have so many bad injuries that I'm living with. And I want to help the guys I train women not live a life that I live because, you know, I live in pain daily. And maybe if I would have had some fights where I didn't fight, going to a fight injured, or I didn't. didn't fight, continue to fight long after, because I started doing the math on when a fighter fights injured or continues to fight, the winning percentage from my experience is quite low.

And I just started to think about that more. Actually, Anthony, three weeks before the Dustin Porrier fight, he got stitches in his head real bad. He was sparring another guy, and they accidentally head budded, and he was cut bad. So in the corner that whole night, it's just a horrific experience, knowing what I knew coming into the fight, that those stitches aren't going to hold up. The cut isn't going to hold up. And watching them bleed like that, I just can't be a party to that anymore. It's just tough. So I'm really looking for honesty and transparency from my fighters because sometimes they hide injuries from me.

And we can't have that. We're in the hurt business, you know, especially in the moment. You know, boxing, kickboxing, moitai, you could jab and grab and tie up, and the referee will break you, and you can stall when you clinch. MMA, the action doesn't stop. So when you're a wounded animal in there, it's easy to get taken out. So that being said, MN is so dangerous, I just thought it was the right decision. I mean, on a really positive note, Anthony told Tony in the octagon right after the fight, bro, that was the most. fun I've ever had in the octagon.

Even though he didn't win, his spirit is high, he's high. He's very focused, hungry again, texting me all day about what we're going to do to improve and etc. So, you know, his spirit isn't broken. We didn't get the win, but I think he was a silver whining on a really tough night for the UFC and MMA. Him and Tony, of course, Tony too. Tony, much respecting him.

No trash talking. Just a little machismo, a lot of heart, a lot of will, and just they embraced afterwards, and they're cool. All right, so a few things to follow up here. I can't tell you how many times, Duke, and I know you've heard this probably more than me. I've heard so many times a fighter say, well, I've told my corner that if they throw the towel when I'm in trouble, that I'll never have them corner me again. They essentially blackmail emotionally their corner. Have you ever had a fighter tell you that, or have you heard of something like that? because that to me seems incredibly toxic.

They don't mean to, you know, here's a cool thing. I was a high-level fighter, so I understand that. And then I understand coaching now. And that's the one thing I have for these guys' empathy. I understand their mentality. You know, a lot of these guys risk a lot to fight. And I'm not talking health, you know. They time away from their families, careers they could have pursued.

other opportunities go on the backburner. So they get a very extreme mindset, you know. I have a hashtag. I like using a lot about that life. They become different people. When you're a prize fighter, you're a different man or woman, especially the great ones, you know. So I don't see it as toxic.

It's just it's overcommitted. And it's hard to scold someone for being overcommitted. So instead of taking that away from them, if you fire me because I stopped your fight, I can live with that. No problem. I'm going to live with that. And you're going to see me doing that more because, you know, the neat thing that what I love about MMA is a loss doesn't define your career. Anthony did exactly what he said he was going to do. He came to perform.

And that's what we love about fighting when fighters fight great. great fights. You know, it was two rounds of back and forth entertainment and a lot of great techniques from both guys, and it was a fun fight to watch. So that's one thing I learned when I was fighting in Japan for K-1. Yeah, he won to win the fight, but K-1 was an entertainment-based for Japanese MMA was, and I've always kind of coached from that perspective. And if you see my guys who do perform well, they're very popular, you know, Anthony Fettis, Paul Felder. He is very popular. Even my newer middle weight, he's four and one

in the UFC with four finishes, and he has two bonuses. Gerald Mearshart, very popular guy. John McDess, he just got his first bonus under me. Tireen Woodley has three bonuses in his last five fights. Take that for boring folks. You know, so...

It's a fair point. Let me interject if I may. There's an argument I hear all the time, and I don't think it's a very good one, but it's a hard one for me to make, talking to somebody like you. Now, again, we're on the same wavelength here, but I'd be curious to get your position on it.

I hear this all the time, like in the case of the Raquel Pennington nonstoppage. I'm not asking you to weigh in on that. However, I made a point because people afterwards were saying, well, no one knows a fighter like their corner. And I believe that to be true. I would not challenge that. But it also occurs to me, Duke, that a fighter can have a corner that loves them and cares about them

and believes in them so much that they can overestimate how ready they are for another round. and then send them back out there. It's like knowing a fighter is important, but knowing when they've had enough seems like a different skill. 100%. There's no handbooked and coaching fighters just so,

you know, it's not as, this isn't at advance and as organized as say football, international football, soccer, baseball, basketball. Those sports are over a century old with a lot of data and techniques. You know, relatively, I call the UFC. They say it's a 25-year anniversary of it.

It is technically, but UFC changed a lot, MMA when ZUFA took it over 18 years ago. To me, that's how old the sport really is when we went into the commission era, et cetera. So I think, you know, me, I expect my fighters to grow from every experience. Well, I have to grow from every experience. And I'm always trying to get better as a coach, a fighter, a mentor, or excuse me, not a fighter, but a teacher, a mentor, you know, it's important for me to grow. It's 2018, 1998.

And again, the elements in the MMA, just a factor, the MMA glove, that's one thing. Getting hit with these bones like you do, that's the stuff that hurts my knees, elbows, kicks to the head. There's a lot of brutal fights the other night. And, you know, maybe I'm getting soft in my old age. I'd rather be soft and have peace of mind, you know, Anthony and Sergio. I'm going to be friends with him for the rest of my life. They're my good friends. Annette, his mother, sent me a very, well, you know, written message that made me feel like I did the right decision.

One of their brother, Ray, too, like these people, I've got to be there for him. could he have won, but if I go back and I look at the research of fighters who have gone into fights hurt, the numbers, there's no asterisk next to when you go into a fight and you lose because you're injured or coming into it. I think that's the biggest thing that's hurting our sport. To me, fighters fight when they're hurt and weight coding. Those two things are what's going to hurt our sport in the long run. How do we fix it, Duke? I mean, I think part of it is obviously what you're doing, making the right call, coming in and talking about it, explaining your reasoning, setting the example, that helps.

But you're just one guy, powerful guy, but you are just one guy. How do we get better as a community about this? I don't know, man. I'm not on the soapbox. I'm just here to do my thing. You know, it's like I just want this hopefully to be, you know, it's all right. I mean, you know, I remember Paul was depressed after his fight and, you know, Dana White sent him a really thoughtful message. You know, a lot of the guys that get so defeatist, and I get it.

I've been there. When you lose, it feels like your wife's over. It's very gut-wrenching. You know, no one wants to lose in front of God and everybody, especially on a big event like this weekend. But, you know, the UFC does tell you if you, that's not about winning and losing. Yes, it is and it isn't. But the fighters I work with that perform on the regular, the UFC loves Bellator too. You know, I mean, we have a lot of great fighters in our sport that are winning.

Our big problem, we need stars. You know, we need stars that perform. And, you know, at the end of the day, the public wants performing. I mean, so if you have a fighter that performs well, but they can't continue to perform, protect them. You know, the other thing is everyone complains about money in our sport. Don't tie your whole sport into one fight, making money. Save yourself so you can fight often. That's something I learned in Thailand.

You know, when they see a fighter's hurt, the referee stops the fight. If they see it's, you know, someone's got an injury. The referee's closest to it, they'll pull the plug, even though maybe a fighter could keep going. The culture in Thailand is they fight for a living, so they fight often. They might fight 10 times a year, eight times on the minimum at the high level. So they need to protect their body. And it's just, that's what, you know, you can be tough, but tough only lasts so long. You got to realize, especially again, Tony, the only way you're keeping that big beast off is what Anthony was trying to do, box him off.

You know, he's nasty with those elbows, a great fighter. And unrelenting with him. Two more questions for you, Duke. and I really appreciate your time. I certainly don't want to dredge up the past, but I have to just ask one question about it, namely the incident a few years ago, the kid in the amateur show that was related to your camp.

Obviously, there was a lot of complicating factors, including a botched weight cut and a whole lot of commission failures there. But with what happened to him, has that partly informed, I don't know if this is a change for you, but partly informed what you're doing now about being proactive with the health of these fighters when they get into these weird predicaments? No, that doesn't have much to do with it.

It was a sad incident, but there's other factors that I can't get into that go on with that. That being said, you know, MMA is a completely different animal than kickboxing, moiety in boxing. Like I said, I've fought many times with my handbroken, but, you know, if you're fighting the right type of fighter, you can get away with it at the end of the fight. if I'm winning, I can tip you, I can trip you, I can grab you. But the thing is, the fight keeps going in MMA. The other thing, you're going to need your hand to grapple. So, no, it's different. They're apples and oranges there.

You know, it's, and the other thing, too, is I live in a world where we get from the outside as coaches, we get so much perceived control over situations. I don't have control over any of the guys I train with. I'm sorry. All my fighters on the regular don't take my advice regularly. Everyone, amateur to professional. So how I've learned to navigate that is I don't give orders. I don't ask anything.

I suggest. That's my new terminology that keeps me sleeping happy at night. I suggest something because all my fighters ignore everything I say. from weight cutting to conditioning to they do. Ask any one of them if they will agree. I mean, so instead of budding heads with them, I kind of take the way Angela Dundee trained Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali did his own thing.

Most of the time he didn't listen to his coaches. You know, I get, this isn't the NFL or the Premier League in England. I'm not the control of the fighters. I'm an employee of the fighter. That's what people forget. I don't, yeah, I have a gym now, I'll train that. But at the end of the day, these guys make decisions that I don't always agree with. I don't agree.

I didn't agree with Anthony fighting at 145, but I supported him because he's my friend. And instead of fighting on it, I'm trying to help him make the best of a situation, you know. And that's just who I am. And I get, though, I'm not going to argue with these guys. They're alpha male, female people. That's who they are. You know, if I go home every day and get buttered about them not listening to, I might as well quit coaching.

You know, I have many people from amateur to hobbyists that, you know, that they don't listen to me. It's just, it's a nature of coaching. Once you figure that out, you'll learn to be a lot happier. All right. Last question about this. And again, I really appreciate your time and your perspective. You know, one of the things that occurs to me is you made a great choice, an important choice, the right choice.

I couldn't compliment you more on the courage it took to make it. But what also occurs to me, though, is you made it in the course of this, in this context of this long-standing relationship you had with the Pettus brothers. And in this case, Anthony, you've known these guys for a long time. They've known you for a long time. So the question is as follows. It's two parts. One, what did he say to you in the locker room about it afterwards?

Because as you noted, he doesn't seem upset about it at all, which was great to see. And second of all, if you could talk to other coaches, who might be listening, what is the key to having a relationship with a fighter so that you can make a call like that? And afterwards, everyone goes home, not happy that they lost necessarily, but happy that they live to fight another day. You know, just you've got to create transparency in the relationship. You know, one of our biggest things we focus on is communication. We have an advantage at Rufusport. We don't have a big gym.

I don't have a crazy amount of fighters I work with. I'm real close with all the people that I travel and go to fights with. That's my biggest thing. And understanding everyone has the same goals, meaning, yeah, you want to win, want to be successful, want to be a champion. But, you know, what's our ethos? How are we going to become a champion? What are we going to do? What are our team's core values?

I want to say team, the team of the fighter and the coach. you know, what, you know, is it when at all cost or is it win because we did everything right? Or are we just hoping and showing up and rolling the dice, you know? You know, it hurts it. I told Anthony three, four times, I'm sorry I stopped the fight, but it's just I felt it was the right thing to do. I mean, like I said, you know, and you're going to see me, I'm getting on my guys too about not fighting interest. it anymore. I was just talking with Coach Skip Kelp

Skipper Kelp backstage Friday about one of my K-1 fights. I lost the fight because I fought with my ribs hurt. You know, I've done that so many times and I'm not going to let my guys lose. Quit rolling the dice, man. The house always wins, right, and gambling.

So, you know, you're injured for a reason. You're going to lose, you're fighting elite guys, especially if you look at the murderous row of guys that are fighting Anthony Pettus. You know, he's not fighting you know, entry level UFC guys, they're all guys who are at their peak right now.

That being said, I want to make one point. I know the UFC doesn't want to do this. They need more weight classes. A 15-pound spread and a 20-pound spread is too much weight. That's why guys are going to start getting hurt too,

because they're either going to be too weak when they fight or they're just to have too big of a size advantage for a guy who can't make that lower weight class. I think We need $165, 175, 175, et cetera. I think it would help the sport big time. You know, Sergio Pettis, he didn't have the performance he wanted, but he's also contemplating under my advice to go to 135.

Sergio was 3 and 1 at 135 in the UFC when he came in. The only guy he lost to is Bruce Leroy, who he was handling him until Sir Chuffer of 8 o'clock. Bruce Bruce Leeroy reversed the situation and took Sergio's back. So it wasn't like he was getting beat up because of size. He was winning that fight

up to that point at the end of the third round. So I think that Sergio is so much stronger. Sergio debuted at 1.45. And I'm seeing so many guys depleting their strength, their hunger. You know, I mean, I think the weight cuts harder for some of these kids than the fights are.

And that's why you see, you know, kind of flat performances from them. I just, I come from a scoop of mindset. We need to be a lion. You've got to feed your lion so he can be the king of the jungle. You know, I don't want a house kitten who is neutered and has no bite. You know what I mean? Yeah, fair enough.

You know what? We got to get moving, Duke, but I could talk about this all day. Let me just say, I think I speak on behalf of a lot of people. I know certainly inside media. Thank you for making that call. Anthony can hold his head up high. and you guys can get back at it when he's healthy and ready to go. And I know that the sport will be ready to welcome Anthony back as soon as that happens.

Thank you so much, Duke. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Have a great day. All right, there he is. Duke Rufus, ladies and gentlemen. All right. We have, with the time we have remaining, I am going to declare an audible here. It is time for the sound off right here on the MAA hour.

All right. Let's do it, Danny. You and I, we don't have a moment to waste. So let's get to it now. You said the calls were huge involvement. volume voluminous I suppose yes and all good not a moment to waste my friend all right let's get it obviously USC 29 stuff the whole Habib and and Kahn McGregor stuff so let's get right into it all right

Hey this is Wilson from New York and I just wanted to talk about what happened you know inside of the cage yes I know Kibah started shit outside of the cage what happened inside the cage and how all started was Connor McGregor sucking punching could be his cousin. And no one's talking about that. They're just talking about how Connor got jumped, having him the victim. And I feel like we should all shine a light on everything

what happened outside and inside. Okay, okay. I get it. Yeah, I mean, here's the deal with that call. People keep saying the media is not talking about this. The media is all talking about it. Why do people imagine that no one's talking about it? The video is out there for everyone to see.

With the first reaction videos all came out before anyone had a chance to really pour over stuff. Now that it's clear, everyone's talking about it. This is a nonsense talking point. It's not real. It's total fake news. Okay. Now, let's adjudicate this a little bit, Danny.

Here's the thing. Did Connor attack a guy unprovoked inside the cage? Yes, he did. So, you know, I felt bad that he was getting punched. But at the same time, again, you poke the rattlesnick, rattlesnake with a stick, you're going to get. This is what you get into a degree. Here's what I'll say.

I don't understand the distinction, though. It's like I'm not looking at Habib any more or worse than Connor. To me, once you leave the octagon and you flying jump kick someone's teammate, if that other dude punches another dude, that is just an inevitable consequence of it. They're all in the wrong as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, I mean, there's not much to say about that. Clearly, Habib was the first one to jump out, and as soon as that happened, you knew anything was going to go from then on.

I mean, it was going to spark chaos, right? What are folks expecting? He jumps out of the cage and Congress is going to sit there? Yeah. He shouldn't do anything, but whether he should or he shouldn't is not a question about whether he will or he won't. Easy, easy, easy way to evaluate this. Next. Yeah.

All right, and now let's talk about what this means for the UFC. Okay. Hi, Danny. I look. I'm Ben calling from France. While watching the road up on Saturday night, all I could think of was that this event just delayed the legalization of MMA in France by your first. few years. I think opponent of MMA here will jump on it and talk about all the lack of respect and sportsmanship. My question is, do you think there is a way this ball could actually be a good

thing or was it just a disaster? Thanks for your time and I'm loving the new MMA hour. Keep on going. So first of all, awesome question. Nice and short, right? Yeah, and good microphone. Yes, very good. That was an email for an international call. The MMA hour at Voxbubu.com. So is this ultimately good for the UFC, good promotion? I mean, This whole fight, the promotion was built off an assault case, right? In Brooklyn. But it's not, though. It's not. Here's the thing about this.

And I said this before. I had this debate with some people on Twitter. I'm not arguing that the bus was quite literally a valuable vehicle to sell the fight. Yes, it was. But again, I go back to the John Malkovich thing. Could you tell the story of this fight and never make reference to the bus and still have outlandish sales? Yes, of course you can. You're talking about the biggest star in the sport versus the toughest motherfucker in that division.

What are people talking about that you need a bus? Oh, we got to have that bus in there. No, no, you don't. No, you don't. No, you don't. It's part of the story because it didn't happen. But, like, this adherence to it, like, this is really the focus. No, this is a distraction for the dogs.

It drives me crazy. It drives me crazy. So. Sorry. I haven't slept well, and I'm just full of all these kinds of emotions. All good. But so is, you know, to answer this question, ultimately, is this going to be good for the UFC or is this a disaster? Is this a setback for them?

In France, certainly this is not going to help any kind of efforts with getting that mainstreamed. I trust that the French caller knows France better than us, and we know that they've had some problems there. Remember, judo is also strong in France, and they have, they're just, they're natural lobbyists against MMA, so that doesn't help. inside the United States, I think it probably in the end will be either a wash or a benefit to the UFC if I can be just be candid about it. I'm not saying that's a good thing. I'm just saying that's the thing.

Yeah, I think everyone's initial reaction, especially on Twitter, was like, oh my God, this is awful, black idol's sport, this and that. It was an ugly scene. It was very ugly. In fact, it was very ugly at the moment. But I think us as working in media, we kind of

lose a little bit of the fan in us, right? Because we got to look at things with a different perspective, right? And, you know, fan, you know, by nature of the name, fanatic, right? Like, people don't really analyze this, like, oh, you know, this fight should never happen, that bus incident, you know, this is horrible that he went out of the cage and fought. Most people are going, oh, this is so sick, what, world star, you know, taking out all their phones and filming this.

I mean, let's be real. At the end of the day, I think this only makes this rivalry even bigger, right? I think that's true, but let me just, I think that's true. I think that's true. Let me say one final note about this, if I may, Danny. Look, if the worst that happens is that Habib jumps out of the cage and goes after Dylan Dennis, then we'll all sleep fine at night. Here's what I worry about is escalating to the point where something serious happens. Someone actually gets really hurt or, God forbid, killed in some kind of way.

Because everyone is out here playing like it's a big game. You know, these Dagestanis, they're not playing games with you. It's not a game to them. So, you know, look, again, this is all that happens? Okay, it's fine. but I worry about escalating tensions. Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. And everybody's mentioning and speaking of a rematch right now.

And I even tweeted and a lot of, I caught a lot of hate from this on Twitter, obviously. Uh-uh. Yeah, believe it or not. I even tweeted, dude, is even a rematch safe to run? I mean, there's so much tension right now. And forget about Habib and McGregor. Look at what happened between the fans.

There was clearly, I mean, the videos were literally Irish fans, going against, you know, Habib's people, Dagestani, he's Russian, people that were backing up Habib, and it was an ugly scene, man. It really was. It was an ugly scene. I agree. Yeah. All right. Let's keep moving and discuss some other things about this whole incident. Hi, guys.

Briggs-ie here from London. Enjoy the show. Thanks very much. Just a quick question. Is there any precedence in a title fight scenario where the non-title holding loser

gets a rematch when there was a non-controversial win for the title holder. Cheers, guys. Boy, that is a good question. So we've seen already the UFC make all kinds of rematches that don't make any sense, right? The Rose Yon J. Chick, right? It was pretty clear that Rose defeated Yon J. Chick in the first round. Same thing with Cordy Garber and T.J. Dillishaw.

But they have the belt. They were champions. What's going to happen here? Rematch or now? Boy, that is, I think it would be a very, very, very. bad idea for Connor McGregor to rematch right away. And you can say, well, didn't he rematch Nate Diaz right away? And he did. But there were some circumstances he can go back to. First of all, he was piecing Nate Diaz up early in that fight. It was at a different

weight class. There were some reasons you could think for optimism. I don't know what your reasons for optimism would be here. He can't wrestle with Habib, not right now. And a year ain't going to fix that. He showed, I thought, some skill. I've said this before. Like, whose wrestling was better or worse? His or Edson Barbosa? You could argue that Habib showed better anti-wrestling than Edson Barbosa, and I'd be perfectly content with saying as much. But it's still not even close to enough. Like, the guy just has so much of an advantage over everyone.

If I'm McGregor, I absolutely put it in a little more work in the gym before I ask for that one back. Yeah, and as I said, I mean, the tensions are high. I think you've got to let this one cool down for a bit. You cannot rebook an immediate rematch. I mean, things are getting ugly and they can get out of hand. I mean, for the specific reason, the UFC knows. they're aware of this. I mean, the first press conference, there was no fans because of this, you know?

So I think, you know, see what happens with Diaz and Poria. If Diaz win or lose, I really don't think he wants to crack at the lightweight title. I mean, we don't even know what's going to happen with that, but I think probably the next move next for Conner is that trilogy with Diaz. Would you agree? I hope, actually. Win or lose for Nate, by the way. And it's crazy how that's like the more civil fight, but even then. I know. I know. It's wild. Jesus. M.A. is insane. It certainly is. All right. Well, let's talk about what's. going to happen with the USC lightweight title? Hey Luke, it's Brian from Orlando.

I was just wondering if Khabib gets stripped or, you know, gets sentenced by the commission and gets stripped as a result, who do you have a fight for the lightweight title? I think it may be Tony Ferguson versus either the winner of Nate and Dustin or maybe even Tony Ferguson versus McGregor. I'd just like to hear your thoughts. Right. So let's be clear about this. The commission doesn't strip titles, the promotion does.

Yep. I would, I would, I would, I'll eat my hat if they strip his title. There's no way they're doing. You mean Chuck Mendenhull's, Chuck Mendenhull's hat. It's an expression. Yeah, it's teasing. Yeah, I understand. There's no way they're going to strip him.

Now, what they might do and some other kind of public show of force, I don't know. I don't know how you do anything when you did nothing at all about McGregor. Yeah. So good luck with that one. Yeah, so you don't think he gets stripped. No, not at all. Not even a little bit. Look, the UFC needs guys who can sell on pay-per-view. I mean, Habib, you can say if he's a villain, he's a villain. But he ratcheted it up. Boy, people are saying, nobody knows who Habib is heading into this Connor McGregor fight.

First of all, he had a much greater public profile, which you can measure through in many ways, at least of which was Google searches prior to the first Nate Diaz fight and this fight, significantly greater impact years ago than Nate Diaz was before the Conner-Megger fight. And I know people challenge that. I am a thousand percent right. about that and the other part is even if you don't agree with that people were saying no one knows who Habib is boy they know now they know now oh yeah but okay so maybe not stripped but suspended is that possible not really no you don't think so I don't think they're going to do anything no well which if someone someone had been really injured yeah that would change the

debate but he attacked one of connor's teammates who you know a lot of people seem to dislike so yeah all right so we've been talking about about what happened after. Let's talk about what happened inside of the cage. Okay. Hi, Luke. My name is Shirley, and I'm calling from Brooklyn. My boyfriend, Kenny, and I disagree about who to blame for Conner's cheating during the fight. I'll let him go first. Hey, Luke, so we saw grabbing to be gloves and shorts and throwing illegal during the fight.

And personally, I don't really blame for this. They're dominated in desperation mode. so, you know, like they say, if you're not cheating, you're not trying. Personally, I think the fault lies entirely with Herb Dean for failing to enforce the rules and being scared to, quote, unquote, influence the fight by taking a point. Okay. I see what you're saying, but I still think Connor is to blame for this. He behaved in a unsportsmanlike manner, and even though if Dean didn't do anything,

it's still a dirty thing for Connor to do. Other fighters don't cheat that much when they're down, so why does he get a pass? Let us know what you think. That might be the greatest question we've ever gotten. I know, and it was a couple, our first couple callers. Wow, they had two people talk and they still kept it parsimonious. Well done.

And they got it in a minute, and that's two people talking. Most people that call, they leave like two-minute voicemails. Yeah, amazing. How about you go first? What do you think? So, first of all, that's something I noticed a lot. He was grabbing the shorts. He was grabbing the glove.

Even when Habib, before the finishing sequence where Habib was dragging him back, He even grabbed the fence for a second. I don't know if you noticed with his hands. Yeah, I went over it a little bit on the Monday morning else. I didn't have a whole lot of time, but yes. So there was a lot of cheating involved. And Habib, it was so obvious that Habib was talking to Herb Dean as it was happening. He was telling him, look, he keeps doing it.

He keeps doing it. Man, how many times are we going to mention it? The refs got to go in there and start influencing the fight. I mean, that's their job. This whole idea that, no, we got to keep it a pure fight. Well, if the man's doing something illegal, he's not getting punished for it. I mean, it just so happened to be that it didn't. influence the outcome, but given any other fighter, given all the things that happened, maybe it could have

if it wasn't Habib in that cage, right? You know, it's kind of funny is you watched some of the reaction to what Habib did outside the cage. And here's, I don't condone it in any capacity, but I was looking at, like, people were defending it. So I was trying to, like, read their logic about why they were defending it. And their answer was, you know, Connor didn't just talk a bunch of stuff, but he got away with a bunch of stuff.

There's the sense that it was up to Habib to stick it to him, to give him something that nobody else would. Now, I don't think Herb Dean is trying to give Connor any favoritism. Yes. And to answer the question, I would say, yeah, of course, you know, if you're cheating, then you deserve some share of the blame. But really, I'm with you. I think Herb Dean, like, fighters are going to cheat. Yeah. Either intentionally or unintentionally. They're going to do it. Somebody has to do something about it. That's the job of the referee. Are you trying to drag you down and squeeze your jaw? Of course,

you're going to do anything possible to stop that. Yeah, look, some of that might have been natural, some of that might have been intentionally cheating, whatever it is. I don't know what it is. Here's what I know. One guy in that octagon can do something about it other than Habib, and that is her, or in this case it was her, but the referees, ultimately, that is where you can't rely on self-policing, right? Oh, it's up to the fighters to self-police. Yeah, it is, but they're not going to. So that's why the referee is there. Yeah, I agree with you on that. Now, let's talk about Connor. This call up an interesting point

is something I noticed as well. Hey, Luke, this is Carlos from Sunrise, Florida. I just wanted to talk about Conner real quick. I thought Saturday night he looked a bit slow. He didn't look like the old Connor that we know. A lot of his punches were missing that pop that he used to have. He looked like he was thinking too much about his shots. I'm not taking anything from Habib at all.

He looked spectacular, but I don't know. Maybe Kuhlini didn't take it so serious. I don't know. But I don't, it definitely didn't know. I'm going to cut it right there. A lot of ums and off. Good question. Yeah, good question.

And look, I made this, I noticed this and not even in the fight when Kahn McGregor got in the octagon and he was like, I mean, he did some of the vintage stuff like the, what is it? The millionaire strud and a few things. And he goes up to the camera, billionaire, right? But he just looked off. He didn't look with the same edge. He didn't have the same intensity. And am I wrong? Did you notice that as well?

I don't try to read too much into body language expertise. I think a lot of it is just, you know, on the same level of eugenics. I don't think I think a lot of it. Some of it's real. Some of it's not. So did he look a little different to answer your question? Yes. But to me, it's like, let's watch what happened in the cage.

Dude, Habib had a perfect fight. I mean, not a perfect fight, but pretty close to one. Yeah. Right? Went out there. People are like he didn't do any damage in the first round. He doesn't need to. He's fighting a guy with a very low work capacity.

All you got to do is make him work. And once you do, people are saying he didn't have the same zip and pop. Right. Because he had to wrestle for four and a half minutes. He's not, he can't strike as well as he normally does with those kinds of conditions put on him. To me, it's like, I get that a second time, if Connor comes back, maybe there was some ring rust. If he comes back in, like I'd say, you know, less than six months, they'll look better. I can totally believe that.

But you've got to give credit where it's due. Habib went in there and dude, Habib did exactly what he said he was going to do every time. You don't show up with the press conference on time. I'm leaving. I'm going to be the first one to make wait. By the way, I'm going to make him tired because when you do, he quits. Yeah. Everything he said he was going to do, he did.

What do you want to do about that? I agree with you. Obviously, a Habib's performance was almost flawless. But I would say that Connor did look a bit slow. I don't know if it's a two-year layoff. I don't know what it is. He also has like, he was trying to push that proper whiskey as well. You know, he's got a business venture.

He's pushing that hard, man, and that takes time. It's a little distracted, maybe. I think maybe he was a little bit out of force. I think he was focused so much on Habib's wrestling and having to wrestle himself, and it's not natural for him to wrestle so that he just couldn't really get. Look at the first instance when Habib shoots on the wrong leg, and Connor doesn't keep, he just sprawls and then stops. He doesn't keep moving.

And so now he's all ten. tangled up and he's having to think about it. That's not where he shines. He shines when he's just in a flow and there's rhythm going. And 98% of that for me is Habi. But maybe, maybe you're right. Maybe there's something to that. Yeah.

All right. So, you know, obviously that was the biggest fight of the card, but tons of good things happened on that card as well. So let's talk about the co-mean. What's going on? Luke and Danny? This is Dylan from New Jersey. I just wanted to get your guys thought on,

aside from the shit show that was host, Habit McGregor, one of the most dominant victories of the night. it was Tony Ferguson's win over Anthony Pettis. I want you to talk about coming five, six months removed from a brutal, brutal knee injury. I'm looking like that. I really think that he's next in line for a shot. But though we don't really know what could be status is going to be suspension-wise.

Due to the time concerns, I'm going to cut it right here. But you get the question. Sure, yeah. I mean, I've been talking to Tony. He was supposed to be in the show today. I don't know what happened. I was going to ask him about this, this little gift I got at the, at the, can we show a picture of this real quickly?

you see that the the open workout anyway right there it's this uh he gave he called me out at the open workouts I was like come here come here come here and then he gave it to me and I was going to ask him about it but what's that it's like some kind of forearm thing I don't really know that's the thing I was going to ask him like I don't

really understand what it is oh okay anyway it's a workout tool it's a workout tool neither here nor there I mean look man what do you want to say about Tony he looks phenomenal you know and he those tears at the end I don't know exactly what he was thinking prior to the fight, it seems to me, judging from afar, that he looked like a guy who felt like the world forgot about him. Yeah. And I don't know if they did, or he just feels that way, or he's got some good arguments for it.

I don't know. But that to me was like, when the world forgets about you, you begin to think about maybe I'm worth being forgotten. And to go back and win that way, it looked to me like a guy who thought, no, no, no, no. the son has not said on this career, not yet. I am still the guy. And, you know, it made me a little emotional watching it, to be quite honest. I was really happy for him.

And for me, it wasn't only like the world forgot about him, but it's also where he was before. Like, people have to remember at one point when Habib had, you know, his health issues and couldn't make the fight, at one point, all we could talk about was Connor McGregor versus Tony Ferguson. Those were the two guys, right? And, you know, maybe throw Nate Diaz in there. But Habib for second was out of the picture. and you know he was the champion he was making the big bucks and you know even the promotion like there was nothing for him in the comming event it was really all surrounded around the main

so definitely forgotten and you know he made sure to let the world know you know that he's back I mean five months from a gruesome injury even Dominic Cruz was saying like yo I don't even know by the way the thing I find the craziest is that he didn't get PT with a registered physically yeah I know he did it all on his own it's just I've said this before Tony Ferguson is the only guy in the world who can make gold out of alchemy. He's the only one. Yeah, he's insane. So let's talk about the other side of that

common event, Anthony Pettis. Hey, this is Brandon Gwantana from Roseby to California. How was your morning so far, Luke? Terrible. Cool. Anyway, my question is about Pettin. I believe Pettus's stocks in Rhodes last night despite a lot.

I also believe that the fight played out the best that it possibly could. Tony looked great and continue to streak. Pettis lost for no fault of his own and picked it for your left off in the kiesel fight in terms of his creativity and the qualities of his performance. However, even with the performance that he put on last night, could you see him stepping in there with the likes of someone like Kevin Lee or Justin Gitchie?

I feel like Pettis might need a few more food matchups with maybe some strikers in the division. What do you think? Yeah, it's a good one. So let me answer this and then you give it to you so we can move along because I've got to get going. I have another three hours of radio to do. Yay. Okay, here's what I would say about that.

I thought Tony, excuse me, Anthony Pettis also looked phenomenal. By the way, he nearly stopped Tony Ferguson. I mean, he got, I'm not sure exactly how close he got, but it got a little dicey there. Actually, very dicey for a while. He had a great, dude, Tony, excuse me, I keep getting into the two confused. Anthony Pettis had one of the best attitudes all fight week. He looked completely dialed in. You know, he took him a little while to made weight, but he made weight.

Dude, he's, I think you're right. Give him some, give him a little bit of a building block back up. People still care. He still brings it. He's still a good fighter. I think for a while, I thought, you know, we had sort of the old Anthony Pettis was gone, right? And I think a lot of that was mental. I think, you know, we saw a fighter, like, you know, him coming up, you know, he's Showtime

pettis he was flashy he was having fun in there being creative and for a while I feel like he got two series and got too technical to you know and I feel like after the poor year fight and we saw that he was just having fun in there and he's been having fun and we saw it in this fight you know sticking out his tongue to the camera and whatnot so I think at this point you know he should get some some fights to build them up because you can tell he's he's got a lot of fight in him I mean he almost finished Ferguson had him doing all kinds of flips yeah we got time for one more then I got to get uptown okay cool Just talk about the fight we never saw.

What's up, man? It's Michael from New York. After all, the Kavit Khanor, the Backel and the cage where we want to call it, I have a question for you. How many pay-per-byes do you think of Tony Ferguson-Kabee in her Magamato fight does now? I actually think the fight does over a million paper-bys now. I think Kabeep's start on the styrocketed. You know, with Tony Ferguson winning 12 fights in a row,

I think that fight is a super fight now, not super fight. And the upper action, I compare to Joe Jones' GST, I think. Khabib's in that number now. And Tony Ferguson has that backstory as well with him. For your thoughts on that. Yeah, it's a good question. No one really knows exactly how popular Habib is. There'll be some independent metrics.

Here's what I know. After Nate Diaz fought and beat Connor, he blew up, but that had very different circumstances. And, you know, Diaz did have a bit of a brand recognition as a Diaz prior to that. So that kind of helped things afterwards. Here's what I do know for sure. Habib is a much bigger star today than he was on Friday. For sure. Major, major improvement.

Is it worth enough to sell a million pay-per-view buys? I'm a little skeptical of that, but I don't know that to be wrong. It could be right. What do you think? I would say no as far as a million just because the pay-per-view landscape is so rough right now. But I think it could do very well. Be your high selling like 600,000. Yep, yep.

I think that's pretty fair. I think that's pretty fair. And also, like, I just want to say, like, Habib Nurmama Gmetta versus Tony Ferguson, let's take away all the fame, all the promotion, all the bad blood. That's such a much better matchup than the Connor one. Would you agree? I think it's a much better fight. The two interesting matchups there.

And I think it's a, you know, look, those two guys, they've tried to make it four times and they can't. But the reality is they're too good to be kept apart. They keep finding a road to the other. I know it's painful. I know we're beaten dogs left out in the rain when it comes to Ferguson versus Nirmigamadov. But it has to happen. And I think, frankly, it will.

I feel so nostalgic watching the morning wanes because they wait in like just minutes apart from each other. I know. I know. I was just like, man, if we could just watch that fight. And they both look good on Saturday night too. You know, that would have been an epic fight. Man, I wish we had more time, but two hours is tuned enough. We had great calls, but, you know.

Save them, and we can recycle them some more next week, so we'll see how things go. Good job today, my man. I really appreciate it, okay? Thank you, guys. As always, you can use the hashtag the MMA hour, and you can call 844-866-24-6-8. We appreciate everyone for tuning in. Until next time, stay frosty.