MMA Fighting - UFC 249: Tony Ferguson vs. Justin Gaethje Main Event Reaction

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

With UFC lightweight champ Khabib Nurmagomedov out, Justin Gaethje has been tapped as a replacement to face Tony Ferguson in the headliner of the April 18 pay-per-view event, and the new fight will serve as an interim title fight. Our own Mike Heck, Alex K. Lee & Steven Marrocco give their immediate reaction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. Mike Heck here with MMAFighting.com reacting to the big news of the day. According to UFC President Dana White, UFC 249 has a new main event for April 18th. Tony Ferguson will now face Justin Gaichi for the UFC interim lightweight title. It's interesting to note, Dana White still will not reveal where this event will take place on April 18th. He just said it would happen, quote, somewhere on Earth. And this has been a roller coaster ride to say the least to put this event together as a global pandemic is going on right now. Last week, Habim Naragam Adolf seemed to say that he was out of the fight with Tony Ferguson.

Then a day or two later, he tells ESPN that, you know, if they send the location quick enough, he may not be completely out of the fight. But on Sunday night, Dana White replies to a Twitter account that was trolling ESPN's Ariel Hawani, putting out some false information about the fight card. and Whitewurst was perceived to have taken the bait, and he confirmed that Nirmaga Madoff was out of the fight, and that today, on this Monday, April 6, 2020, he would announce the entire card for UFC 249. So far, the main event is the only fight that has been made official for UFC 249 2.0. There's a lot of moving parts here,

but let's check in with my colleagues over at MMAFighting.com, Stephen Morocco, and Alex K. Lee, to get their reaction to the big news of the day. All right, as are being joined by my guys, colleagues here at MMAfighting.com. We have deputy editor, Stephen Morocco and Alex Keeley. Alex, I don't know how you felt, but when we found out it was almost completely unlikely that Habim Ramaga Madoff would not be fighting Tony Ferguson. I thought that was it. Like, this has to be the last straw on UFC 249. Turns out that was not the case. Now 12 days before this event is

scheduled to happen, Justin Gaichi is in to face Tony Ferguson. So your thoughts on this an event now that it's official. Well, before we jump down Dana White in the UFC's throat for their continued insistence on making all this happen, despite what you just said, the fact that losing that original main event, no one would have blamed Dana White or the UFC if they said, you know what, that's the last straw. Let's put this event off. We're not going to hold this as scheduled.

No one would have blamed them. But Dana White has dug his heels in so deeply that he had to find. I guess he feels he had to find a way to keep this together. He certainly found a way to do. so, like you said, we've got this new interim UFC lightweight championship bout between Tony Ferguson and Justin Gathechee, which if we somehow

ignore everything else that's going on in the world and all the relevant news that we've all been covering, it's an amazing fight on paper. I don't think anyone's going to argue that. If you told me, do I want to see Tony Ferguson fight Justin Gathe, of course, of course. Two of the most exciting fighters, two of the most skilled fighters, two top five contenders.

But I do hope people realize you are not getting, you know, the best version of these guys that you could get. You know, they're both so skilled and so tough. Of course, you could call them in on, if you threw them in, you know, in a sparring session, if you gave them two hours notice and said, go fight, you're going to get a great fight. But I hope people know that they could be getting so much better. So there's certainly a reason to celebrate this announcement, but there's also plenty of reason

to be skeptical and somewhat wary of the fact that, yes, this is still all going down on April 18th. Steve, we touched on this last week. I feel like we're doing this news updates a lot more frequently than I, I expected to do these, but we talked about how risky this fight could be for Tony Ferguson with everything going on about trying to book a potential matchup with Habib down the road. What about for Justin Gage? I mean, this is a guy who came into the UFC from World Series of fighting with a lot of hype. He beats Michael Johnson.

He took a lot of damage in that fight. And then he gets finished by Eddie Alvarez and Dustin Porier. And now he's on this big surge. He's rattled off three big finishes, finished James Vic, finished Edson Barbosa, and then he finished Donald Soroni. This guy was linked to a fight. with Cona McGregor later on the summer. So how do you look at this from the Justin Gachey side of things

being in the position that he's put himself in over the last 18 months, two years or so? I think it allows him to be the hero, to come in and be the hero once again. I think that we, Justin Gagie has established himself as a guy where wins and losses don't necessarily count as much as they do for other fighters. He's entertaining at all times.

He's basically dynamite in a camp. So if Justin Gagey, goes out and loses to Tony Ferguson, I don't think that necessarily precludes him from getting another title shot in the future. This just allows him to go in, look like the hero, do the UFC a solid, and that pays off in the long run. Alex, in terms of how the rest of this fight card will come together, what in your mind will sort of be, you know, the formula you used to put it all together? Like, do you see it being, you know, UFC 249 being a full fight card? How do you see the deck sort of being shuffled up here?

Man, I would be shocked if they're able to keep it as it is. I think, you know, we've heard rumblings that the various fights could be moved to some of the later events they have on, assuming that they find venues for that. But again, a lot of that is still in the air. Again, we have this mystery location that apparently Dana White has found, Dana White and the UFC has found, which presumably could be used to host some of these other events. But we'll have to see how that goes. But yeah, you know, I mean, we've heard talks, you know, in Ghanu and Rosenstruck. I think they've both said they'd be happy to jump on the 249 card. So that could happen.

We have guys who are now looking for new opponents. We have like Alexander Hernandez was supposed to fight Islam Makachev, and that got changed. And then Bala Muhammad was supposed to fight Lyman Good. Lime and Good is now out. So there's a lot of moving pieces. A lot of fighters who probably still want to fight. And if they can get new opponents on late notice, I'm sure they'd be happy to sign on the dotted line. Again, whether that's wise or not, I don't know.

But, you like, yes, we'll see some of it on the 18th. And then there's events on the 25th, I think May 2nd. So there's other events coming up, and some of these guys who were supposed to fight on the 18th are still going to fight soon, assuming that this mystery location holds up, again, which we don't know the details for yet. And to add that, it's important to note that the only fight that was officially canceled in terms of the UFC, it was the main event between Tony Ferguson and Habibn Mughamagamagamato. Obviously, that's been fixed. There have been reports coming out. We reported that liming good has been scratched, but the UFC hasn't actually come out and said that. Stephen, in terms of this fight card in general, everyone has given Dana White a lot of grief.

Like some people are on board, but most of the times you're just being on Twitter, you see a lot of negative energy from fans, certain media members, et cetera. If Dana White and the UFC puts this event on, they do it safely, no one gets infected, it goes off without a hitch a little over a month after that Brasilia card. What will this mean for the UFC for Dana White? Heck, for the entire sports world. Like, this will be massive. The thing is you can't necessarily guarantee that you can do it safely.

It's possible that it might happen and there might not be any infections as a result of the car, but it's also possible that that might not be true, that there might be people that, you know, pass it to somebody else. It's not necessarily about what happens to these fighters. It's about what happens to the people that are around these fighters. That's the main concern. And to my knowledge, there's no way to 100% guarantee the safety of everybody. And that's, you know, you could say that about the comments forward.

in the sports industry in general, you know, there's always a possibility that a death or serious injury could happen even though one hasn't happened yet. There are steps that they can take that I believe are a minimum to make this as safe as possible, which is getting tests for people, making sure everybody's tested beforehand, everybody's temperature is taken. But really, there is no way to completely guarantee it. And so if this passes and nothing happens, it will allow, it'll certainly allow them to rewrite the narrative a little bit and do future events. But at a time when everybody is basically hitting pause, it also makes them look like not the corporate steward, like the best corporate steward of the sporting world.

And obviously, I don't think they're necessarily concerned about that. I think Dana White has made that pretty clear. There's also a way of painting this as a way to keep people, to make people have some me to look forward to in these times when everybody's basically shuttered in their homes for all this time. It's just an interesting time right now. And I've said this multiple times. And fighters have said this as well.

Dominic Cruz has said this to me as well. You know, it's not like the UFC hasn't done their due diligence here. Like it's not like they're like, you know what, forget all these people, forget the negativity. We're just going to go on no matter what. We're going to put these events on no matter what. It's not like that, I don't think. I think Dana's been on the phone and the UFC's been on the phone with health professionals and things, at least to try to, they don't want egg on their face.

So they're trying to do everything they can to make this happen. Whether that's the right decision still remains to be seen at this point. Well, that's what he tells us. That's what he tells us. We don't know. I mean, he's basically gone on record saying the less the media knows, the better. So we have to take his word for it. We have to take his word for it that they're doing the right thing.

They've certainly done the right thing in the past. They do as much as they possibly can when it comes to protecting the health and safety of the fighters. But ultimately, that falls on the commission. It's the commission's duty to protect the athletes' health and safety. And that's why they are regulated. That's why Dana says we're regulated by the government. That's why all the big decisions fall on the commissions. And when you decide to do a show on your own in reservation land or a barge off the coast of L.A.,

you are taking the liability. You are taking the responsibility and the liability for ensuring these people's safety. And again, getting back to the previous point, to my knowledge, people can correct me if I'm wrong, there's no way to 100% definitively guarantee people's safety if they do this event. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, okay? I'm not being dramatic. I'm saying this for people who are, you know, on the full-on, the Dana White should push

ahead with the event bandwagon. Look, let's say you believe, best case scenario, all these things like, oh, Dana White is doing this for the fighters, he's doing this for the fans, you know, this is a, this is something, a beacon of hope in these dark times, you know, to have this event on. Even if you believe, again, the UFC staff, we've met a lot of the U.C staff. It's such a great hardworking group of people, never take anything away from them. If you believe they're taking all the precautions, the fighters, everyone who signs on knows the risks. They're all taking the precautions as they can.

Even if you believe all that, it's still a very high risk scenario. I think you ought to understand this. No one is saying that the UFC and the fighters and the officials aren't trying and doing everything in their power to make this as safe an event as possible. The question is, what does that mean? It's like how safe is as safe as you can get, given the information we have, given how the circumstances around the pandemic keep changing. So again, I want to try and look at things as glass-half-full as possible and to give credit to all the people who are working hard on this. We're putting all the sleepless nights and making this happen. I want to give them credit.

But I do want them, and of course, in the fans, to know, like, it's high risk no matter what. And if you accept that, then that's okay. And that's how you want to go forward and watch this event. should it go down as it looks like it's going to, then, you know, do so. But just be informed of what you're watching and kind of everything around it. That's all. Alex, how full is that glass right now? Like, I know you said half full, but do you feel any better now?

Like, I know probably heading in, you felt one way now that, you know, we're 12 days away from this event. Do you feel any better about it? I can't. I can't in good conscience. I really can't. Again, we've all talked to fighters. And we've heard, you know, some different viewpoints on it.

Some initially didn't take it very seriously. Some even now aren't. Others were ahead of the game. Others right now are doing everything they can and staying on top of all the protocols they come up. But no, I really can't. It's our job in the media. Of course, we're going to issue things happen. We're going to watch it.

We're going to cover it. But there's definitely a little bit of, I don't know, I want to say guilt. I think guilt is too strong a word. But there's going to be a concern. There's not going to be that same level of, you know, there's always trepidation overcovering cage fighting just once you get into the business. And now there's this extra layer of danger of something that's so unsanitary and so scary. It's really going to be awkward. So we had a little bit of that with Brasilia. And now if 249 goes down on the 18th, it's really going to,

it's really going to be interesting to see how us and the rest of the media kind of approaches this coverage. 2020 has been an interesting year to say the least. And we're only in April. We just started April. So we still have eight more months to go after this. It'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. But as of right now, per Dana White on his Instagram, Justin Gagee versus Tote Ferguson is going to headline UFC 249 somewhere on planet Earth on April 18th for the interim lightweight title. That's what we know right now.

There's other reports circulating at this point, but make sure you stay locked in with mhmatfighting.com for the latest on UFC 249 and beyond. For Alex, Stephen, I am Mike Heck. So long. Thank you.