MMA Fighting - UFC 275 Post-Fight Show | Reaction To Jiri Prochazka’s Stunning Late Submission, Shevchenko’s Struggles, Joanna’s Retirement

Episode Date: June 12, 2022

Jiri Prochazka is the new UFC light heavyweight champion after shockingly submitting Glover Teixeira in the final seconds of an all-time classic in the main event of UFC 275. MMA Fighting’s Mike Heck, Jose Youngs, Shaheen Al-Shatti, Jed Meshew, and Alexander K. Lee react to the incredible battle that Teixeira seemed like he was about to win, right up until he didn’t. In addition, the crew recaps Valentina Shevchenko’s scare from Taila Santos throughout her split decision win, Zhang Weili’s KO of the Year contender, which led to Joanna Jedrzejczyk announcing her retirement, Jake Matthews and Jack Della Maddalena having next-level performances in the welterweight division, and much more from Saturday’s memorable pay-per-view event in Singapore. Follow Mike Heck: @MikeHeck_JR Follow Shaun Al-Shatti @ShaunAlShatti Follow Jose Youngs: @JoseYoungs Follow Alexander K. Lee: @AlexanderKLee Follow Jed Meshew: @JedKMeshew Subscribe: http://goo.gl/dYpsgH Check out our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/u8VvLi Visit our playlists: http://goo.gl/eFhsvM Like MMAF on Facebook: http://goo.gl/uhdg7Z Follow on Twitter: http://goo.gl/nOATUI Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The Downloaded 2. Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. We're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. Well, that music only means one thing. It means it's time for the UFC 275 Post. fight show. And we don't have a lot to talk about. Just kidding. We have a lot to talk about because what an event this was in Singapore, unfreaking believable, capped up by an absolutely incredible main event between Glover Tashira and Yuri Prahashka. In the end, Yuri Pajasca

submits Glover Tashira in the fifth round with like 26 seconds left. What an amazing, incredible fight. Thank you for joining us. I am, We got Shaheen Alshadi here. We got Mr. Topknot himself. Jed Prakashka, Michoud, and the man in Singapore himself, who I just could not take my eyes off during the broadcast with that blue suit.

Jose. Was I on the broadcast? Was I on the broadcast? I could see you. Sorry. I could see it. The math gone. You were just,

everyone's wearing the polos and stuff. And you show up looking like a. professional, Jose, just the way we intended. I completely forgot that when we got here at 6 a.m. that I would be leaving at 3 when the humidity level is about 90% right now. So I'm not looking forward to leaving this building right now. Well, we only have you for a few moments before you do actually leave the building. So I wanted to get, there's a million things I could ask you, but I'm just going to, I'm going to go to this.

You are in the arena for this fight between Mary Perashka and Glover-Teshirea. Just talk about what it was like in the arena as it was going on. We could watch it on television and react and we're probably all pacing around, but you were there in the freaking building. What was it like to tell us? It was unique. I was about 10 feet away from most of the action because I don't know if you saw a lot of the grappling and exchanges and everything all seemed to be in like one half of the octagon.

And we've all heard like the stories of Asian fight fans watching fights where they're just like really quiet. And then they kind of because they respect the, the craft of martial arts. That was true to an extent, but there were a lot of Australians here because they were, obviously, they had come out here to watch Robert Whitaker. Robert Walker obviously didn't fight.

There were a decent amount of Australians that performed well, so good on them. But so it was an interesting mix of, it was really quiet for like huge chunks of the fight so you could hear these thudding kicks and punches and knees and ground and pound and everything. So the Glover was about five feet away from me, just beating the soul out of Yearie's head.

And then Yerie was, would respond by getting up and then slapping a baseball bat across the abdomen of glove or so. And then the crowd would go absolutely berserk. And it was strange because the media room is so close to the floor that at one point when Jake Matthews was back here, Yohan and Waley were fighting in the first round. And I couldn't hear Jake Matthews talk. And I was about maybe three, four feet away from him. That's how loud this venue got.

So all of this talk of why was this in Singapore, why blah, blah, blah, blah, this and that. This is silly that these two gentlemen are fighting not in Brazil or Europe. is y'all can go to hell with that this is great this atmosphere was absolutely fantastic and how did they react to the finish of the fight because glover rocks yury in the fifth round he's just crushing up with shots on the feet goes jumps a gilly which i was just like no being the guy that's been more confident glover than anybody else but that's besides the point and then yury freaking submits him gets him to tap out with less than 30 seconds left of the fight describe the reaction in the arena

just being inside there. What was that like after the fight was over? It was interesting because I couldn't even tell what was going on because I don't know if you remember but of course you guys all watched it live when it was happening but when Yuri was doing his media day at like two in the morning for you guys he said, I don't play Jiu-Jitsu.

I just get on the ground and try to ground and pound and finish you. So when he snatched up the choke and tapped Glover and they didn't see it. And I don't think a lot of people saw it because they weren't expecting it. They respected maybe year to stand up and try to finish the fight

or motion to stand up like he did. did a few times. So when it happened, I was like, is Glover tapping? And then when Yeri stood up, the crowd went bananas for that finish. So it was, it was unique and surreal experience. Again, I had no one really saw what had happened because I don't think they were looking for Yeri. It's like obviously when you get guys, like when Glover takes you to the ground, any position he gets, the crowd kind of goes, uh-huh, but like Yeri, you're not expecting that. So you don't really hype yourself up. So when it happened, it was kind of a shock moment and then a huge pop. Well, obviously, the three of us will talk about the co-made event in a minute, but last thing before we let you go, I know you're able to get the boot out of there.

Yanni and Jacek, we watched your final fight tonight against Zhang Wei Lee. It was an incredible finish from Zhang. She looked fantastic throughout the fight. The first round was bananas. Those two just kept on. They went right back to the well that they went back to, like over two years ago. It was round six was incredible. Zhang Wei lands a spinning back fist, gets the incredible knockout.

and then you want to announce to retirement. Your thoughts on the fight, the performance, and just Yawanna making that decision that, hey, you know, I went out there, I gave my all, had a great career, but this is it. It was interesting. I missed a lot of the first round because Jake Matthews was back here talking.

I was like, the PR was bringing back. I'm like, no, wait for this fight to me over. And then, like, obviously I missed a huge chunk of that. I saw Whaley, like, take her down, and then elbow her and punch her whole bunch. But then that wrapped, and then I looked over to the right, and all of a sudden, like, Within, it was odd.

Like the second I looked over, Whaley just connected with that spinning back fist. So thank you, Jake Matthews, for that really quick post-frey scrums. I go watch that and say knockout, but not surprised she retired, even though she said she wasn't thinking about it. I think I don't think anyone blames her. Like, she's 35, 34. She said she was old at the press conference. She wants to be a mom. She wants to be a business woman.

It seems like if you guys watch the presser right now, she really wants to become some sort of MMA manager or, like, in work. Probably, you know, continue to help out a lot of her fellow female, fighters as maybe a sparring partner training partner at ATT if they want her but i mean obviously the greatest strawweight fighter i think in mhm a history she holds all the records i think what what was it uh carla just tied her record for most wins in strawweight and this was joanna's first fight in 27 months so more than two years away and people are just catching up to her now so i think that just tells you uh how dominant she was for so long uh even valentina herself was like all praises after the fight way lee said that yawanna uh is such a role model for for for female fighters and really

pushed her to become the best she was because well i didn't even i kind of forgot about this but wayley was like when i joined the ufc yonna was champion and she was the one like you've heard like nick ds for years when he was in the ufc he was preparing for matt hughes even before he was a contender same as when he was preparing for george st pierre and so on and so forth so wayley fighting yawanna like that was kind of years of years of work and hard practice so um one of the fighters i think it's i'd say this for a lot of like Jose Aldos and gloved shares of the world where it's like your favorite fighters fighter and I think a lot of these female fighters are kind of listing Yawanna as the one that got them into MMA especially in the European market so yeah greatest strawaway

fighter of all time female fighter of all time yep as they should people are trying to catch up the Yana now just like all of us media members are trying to catch up to you Jose well done great job this week safe travels back home and we'll see when we see it Dan. Dibset. Round of applause for Jose Young's, well-deserved. But yeah, great job, Jose. Sean, you're here.

We just watched something spectacular. I mean, it's not just it happened a few hours ago. It seems like forever ago now, but Glover's just Sharon, Yuri Pyrashkin, did the damn thing. They did it better than we thought. We saw championship rounds. AK is now here. Wow, this is just, it's a party.

Oh, look at this. Describe. Wow. the POP in the building. Just tons of surprises. Speaking of surprises, Yuri Prakash and Glover Tash and Glor went to the fifth round

and almost went the entire 25 minutes. Glover Tashire is up on the scorecards on two of them and it was even heading into the fifth. He was on his way to winning a unanimous decision, Sean. A unanimous decision. Hurts Yuri badly in the fifth round. We already talked about this.

But then Yeri submits him. Strangles him. And just like Jose said, in the arena, he didn't see the test. We didn't really know what was going on either. Uri just gets up, walks away, and we're like, did he win? And he did win. He's the freaking champion of the world. Talk about this fight, Sean, because I feel like you could put it into words better than most.

Oh, my Lord, man. You said they did the damn thing. Yeah, they did, Mike. They really, really did do the damn thing. I'm still riding high off this, like, hours after the fact now. 28 seconds, man. 28 seconds. Like, we need to repeat that a couple more times because it bears repeating.

We were at 28 seconds. away from Glover to Chera, probably doing the thing that you've been calling for for months, like the thing that I think very few of us expected him to do it for age 42 going out here and beating this hyper athletic, hyper creative, just monster of a challenger, 28 seconds, man, 28 seconds, like there are some 25-minute fights where you could more or less sum them up in, you know, a few sentences or a few lines or whatever. like it would actually take you 25 minutes to sum up this fight the the swings and momentum um i i am struggling right now i know we try not to be so reactive on these post-fight shows where things

just happen you haven't had time to put them in context but i am trying really hard to think of other fights that have had or at least the 205 pounds for championship fights that have had this many wild swings and momentum just over the span of five rounds because it felt like each guy had at least different opportunities in this fight where he was seemingly dead to rights. And then all of a sudden he was right, right back in the fight with one explosive movement, whether it was an escape or a transition, a sweep, whatever. It was just unbelievable, unbelievable theater to me. And this is sort of going back to what I've been saying about 205 now for a while.

I love 205 pounds now. I think more than I have loved 205 pounds since the days of Chuck and Quentin Rampage, Jackson and just all those guys. Because it's really fun to have, you know, John Jones or Daniel Kormier up there ruling the ruse. But it's just not nearly as interesting to me when you have dominant figures like that where instead of rather this whole group of just incredibly flawed contenders that we have who are seemingly going to be passing around this belt like a violent game of hot potato right now. Because it is just delivering some of the best theater, the Glover to share a storyline from our last title fight.

It was so fun and so cool to see. and then just this, the way this fight played out, everything to do with this. It was just unbelievable. Like, you know me. I'm a big Tony Ferguson guy. Youer Phraska seemingly is the spiritual successor to Tony Ferguson in a way that I never could have imagined. Like, I'm so here for this.

And the fact that he was seemingly the only one who was disappointed by his performance tonight. Like, it was one of the greatest light heavyweight fights I've ever seen. I think it's probably the best light heavyweight title fight since Jones Gustafson won and probably the second best light heavyweight title fight of all time. in UFC history. I'm not quite sure on that. I'll probably need to go through to see,

but it's at least top three. And it was just something I'll never forget. And to me, it is the fight of the year front runner right now, and it might actually be the submission of the year front runner too. I'm not sure on that. But just, oh my God, man, so much out of this. Jed, I mean, listen, I got to go to you. Look at that hair.

Unbelievable. But you changed course. Your official pick was Yuri Perashka. You got it done with the fifth round submission. Do your best to try to top what Sean just did to describe this fight. Dude, I can't. I don't agree with honestly a lot of what Sean said at the end there. But I'm emotionally spent from this fight card.

Like, I don't know the last time I felt like this watching a night of fights because, like, Yohan is one of my favorite fighters ever. Her retirement, like, hit me in the fields, the Valentina thing. I have a lot both financially and personally tied up into her success. And that fight was very, very damaging to my emotional well-being for a lot of it. And then the main event is I disagree with Sean. I don't think that this is one of the best. Like this is, I think this is at worst the fifth best fight that's ever happened in the sport.

And I think that there is a good argument that it's the second best fight. I know we talked about it in the preview show. For me, Lawler Condon is always going to have that. And I know that a lot of people think Lawler Rory too. And I'm willing to put this behind Lola Rory too. I would want to watch that one again, even though I've seen it like 50 times and watch this one again.

But like straight up, Sean, to your question, there has never been a fight in the sport that has had that many swings. I can't mathematically prove that. But every single round, there was a like big swing. And many of the rounds had multiple of them. So I was doing the live blog. And the fifth round, I am typing, oh, my God, Glover's going to kill him. He's out on his feet.

Oh, he jumped to Gilly like a moron. Oh, it doesn't matter. He's on top. All he has to do is hold this for two minutes. Oh, never mind. He's got mount now. He's just going to finish him. Oh, year he swaps, but he doesn't have enough.

Oh my God, he's tapping. Like, that was like eight swings in the span of three minutes in the fifth round of this fight. Like, it's, I'm not here to tell you it is the most technical battle that's ever happened, though I think there is a lot of technique at play here. It just is a little bit weirder. So it's not like, ooh, crisp jabs and stuff. But like, there is no fight, honestly, ever that has maybe offered that much drama, that much of a roller coaster of emotions.

And it's like, for me, right. now I will put it as the second best fight ever pending a rewatch of Loller of Loller um Rory 2 and rewatching this to see but like I think this is clearly going to win fight of the year I have absolutely my frontrunner for submission of the year and like this whole thing is just that whole fight is unbelievable and I Sean the the only time I have felt like this in last few years we were at whatever it was UFC I don't remember and it was Atlanta, the Izzy Gasselam fight, which is also like on my short list of best fights ever. And I distinctly remember after that fight, just kind of walking around the back of the arena in a daze because I couldn't process like what I was feeling.

And I got that feeling watching this through a television screen. Like I wasn't three feet away Caged side and hearing it. So I think if I was Caged side, this would be my favorite fight of all time. Like if I was Jose Young's, this would be the best fight I've ever seen, I'm pretty sure. and it's so it is for me unquestionably a top five it is a substantially better fight than jones gustafin for watchability if you want to say you know skills sure fine but i think that's that was unbelievable i i'm still at lost words a k as a man who does not appreciate the mixing of the martial arts

i don't know if you love this fighter hated it but go ahead First of all, Jed, where's the kimono? I don't own one. But you will soon. Yeah, when he came out, I was like, crap, do I have like a bathrobe I could even? No. I seriously was trying to think if I had something I could do here. I was like, the best I could do would be a bed sheet and that feels forced.

He is magnificent, your Barashka. Yeah, Mike, you're right. Listen, hashtag keep the martial arts part, obviously. But, I mean, not tonight. Not tonight. that was the greatest fight I've ever seen. I say that completely with a reasoncy bias. And also it's one of those things where,

it's not wrong. It's not wrong. I don't know how. We're getting a little too crazy with some of these takes. No, but the thing is like, no, the thing is like, like at some point you're going to, so you're going to stack it up against like, Condit, Condit Lawler, you know, whatever other fight.

But it's really just like, it's not like you can, I don't know if you can subjectively say, oh, well, this fight's clearly better than this one. There's just all these amazing fights. We're spoiled. We're spoiled with some of the, just the high quality of championship fights that we get sometimes. I just, yeah, Gaston was an amazing fight. I mean, we don't even put that amongst, like, I guess we don't, at Zhang Wei Li and Yonah One was an amazing champion.

But this is all these amazing fights. I mean, again, if someone tells me this is their favorite fight and a week from now, they say, yeah, they still say this is their favorite fight. Whatever. It was so much fun. I mean, I can't remember the last time I had so much fun watching a five-round fight. We got an ending, which is always nice. we could have been headed towards if by some chance

I think one of the judges had gone 10-8 we could have had a yearie win but even if year he just took the last round 10-9 it would have been a split draw so that wouldn't have been as fun I guess but we got an definitive winner

we got to finish that was so exciting so I mean yeah look I have for me the answer but the default answer will always be a Condent Loller that is personally my favorite fight ever but man I don't know if someone said this was how could they be wrong it was so much fun

and yeah we saw a lot of lot of the mixing the martial arts, but in the best possible way, in the best possible way. I don't know if you guys already mentioned, sort of the running chat we had in our Slack, just kind of going like, oh, why is he doing that? Why is it happening? Why is he going in this time? Why is he using this technique? So the mixing of the martial arts was completely haywire. But man, you don't get a classic fight like this without a little bit of chaos. And without, I mean, you know, Yir was very hard on himself after. And his perception, the fight was horrible. But it is a spectator sport. And boy, for the spectators, that's like as good as it's

going to get in a five-round main event fight. I don't know how much more you can ask for. So people think it's the best fight ever? Sure. If you think it is, I won't disagree. It's not my, I wouldn't say it's the best I've ever seen yet. But I'm hard. Is it one I'd put on at any time to have a great time? Yeah. And isn't that all the criteria you need to have like a fight that's, you know, consider a fight to be amazing, one of the greatest of all time? I think so. you said it was the best fight you've ever seen I think it was the greatest 25 minutes in the history of sports

I'm skin I'm trying I'm trying to elevate where you guys started Sean yes Sean started one place Jed jumped up you jumped up so I figured that's not wrong find another 25 minutes of sports I was I mean Steph Curry lighting up the Celtics for 20 people I mean you take any 25 minutes stretch from that game on Friday it was fantastic obviously but I don't want to go there I don't want to go I wouldn't go there I wouldn't go there I wouldn't go there. I wouldn't go there. Why would I do that? So obviously, I agree with Mike. This was the best

25 minutes in, forget sports in life. Any of us is experienced in life. Number one. There's a reason why your name is not in the description of this video on YouTube right now, and it's going to stay that way for that self-ex comment, AK. It's going to stay that way. So, AK, we'll talk about matchmaking after this, but Sean, now we have options here, right? Yuri, maybe you could do the Anbojovich fight. A lot of people screaming, let's just run this thing back. I'm kind of on the ladder here because this isn't one of those fights where we could just put it in our back pocket and just pull it out whenever we want. Glover's time's pretty limited in this sport.

He's 42 years of age. Certainly didn't fight like he was 42 years of age tonight, going nearly 25 minutes with an absolute murderous madman. And I just feel like if you're going to pull the trigger on this, you've got to do it now because how much time do we really? have with these two guys. They're both going to be out for a while, I would guess. But do we just pull the trigger and just run this thing back and do it again? Because who's going to complain about that? Well, I do like that you mentioned how much time do we have with both of these guys? Because I think you're right, right? Like the Yuri-Prohasker era for however long it's going to last, like I am so ridiculously excited for whatever this era is going to be because it's just going to be

crazy. Like this, this dude, Justin Gajee will always be in his own, you know, sort of territory, but like, Gary Peraska might be the most exciting UFC champion that we've had in the last like 10 years, like just in general of like, consistency of like excitement per minute. Like, there are- Respected Charles Oliverer right now.

Nah, I mean, I mean, dude, like I'm all for Charles Oliverer, but Yuri Paraska is just like a different level of crazy. Like a level that really shouldn't actually work, except he's just such a psycho and such a lunatic and he has such immense athleticism and creativity that somehow it is able to work. If you put all the ingredients together, we shouldn't be seeing him do this.

But either way, like, I'm super here for however long this can sort of be a thing. When this fight ended, my initial response was, oh, man, like the Jan Blahovas fight, it would be a real European delight. Like, you booked that in some sort of European stadium. him like that could be really fun. Both those guys are real characters,

and that would seem to be just a very, very crazy fight in and of itself stylistically. And I wasn't really thinking about the rematch, but then Glover did send out that tweet, and it gets your mind working a little bit, and you can kind of see the justification for it, right? Because as you said, Mike, Glover is 42, like whatever window this is,

kind of, it's got to happen now for this guy. These two obviously play into each other in terms of their strengths and weaknesses is in such a fantastic level that it feels as if they could fight 10 times and we're just going to get madness guaranteed for all 10 of them. And also just like, I don't know, man, again, 28 seconds. Like Glover to Cher was really 28 seconds away from winning that fight. I kind of am siding with the immediate rematch right now.

I might change my mind tomorrow and switch back to Jan, but at least right now in this moment at, you know, 1 a.m. on Sunday, I kind of really want to see this again. And I don't know how quickly they can do this. wouldn't mind if you give both these guys, you know, a lot of time off. They certainly probably need it. But man, the idea of just seeing this one one more time, it's probably not a deserved rematch.

Glover didn't have a title defense to his name, but it's just so fun. And then we don't have anybody right now at 205 who's so clearly, obviously, the next up. You know, like, yon's that guy, but also you have the Anthony Smith, you know, matchup out there, winner of that, Magabat and Kalaya, all of that. Like, there's options out there at 205. there's not a clear-cut guy. So I actually don't mind the rematch from being honest.

Yeah, he was 28 seconds away from winning a unanimous decision and winning 4946 on two of the judge's scorecards. So, I mean, obviously it's not indicative of how close this fight actually was, but it would have been he was up 3-1 on two scorecards, and he was up, there was 2-2 on the other. He was up 3-1 on 2 scorecards, but one of those scorecards also had a 10-8 for Yeri. So depending on how they saw,

scored that he still keeps his belt, but it's a draw, like that last round, which probably goes to Glover, but... Yeah, he had Yuri hurt real bad. I mean, it's really, it's really tough to say that a round that he literally taps out in goes to him or is about to go to him. Like, I'm not confident in saying the judges were going to give that to Glover. Had he, because also had Yerie not tried to tap him, maybe just beats the shit out of him for another 30 seconds and that, like, I'm, I'm not willing to.

speculate on what would have happened had that fight not not not happened how it happened so but i mean you should do the glover rematch and i hate immediate rematches but like we all just we're all just acting as if yon deserves a rematch and like it's it's fine if he gets one but he beat alexander rockage because rockage blew out his knee stepping backwards like it wasn't like a dominant win that reasserts him as the top due to the thing like it's fine to just run this back with glover my only with it aside from the fact that I kind of just as a rule hate auto rematch is is we talked about this in the preview on the pre-fight show Mike like I think Glover's done and obviously that's a weird thing to say after that incredible

performance but like Carlos Condon and Robbie Lawler ended each other's careers and Lawler may still be fighting and Condit fought for several years after but we talked about it their careers were done after that fight Glover shares 42 and just had that that kind of a fight in there. Like I, if they rematch, I will strongly think Yeri. And I mean, maybe Yeri gets done too. He took a lot of shots, took a lot of damage. But I'm going to favor the fact that he's 29.

And I sort of feel like that will just be the time where he just puts Glover out to pasture. And so it makes me feel a little weird inside. But at the same time, I want to see that fight again because it's one of the three best fights of all time. and if we don't do it now, we will literally never get it. So run that shit back and let's see what happens. Also, I mean, just quickly, like,

if we're being honest, and I like to think that we are honest with our audience here, right? Like, Jed, you probably agree with me on this. Eventually, Mago Meda and Kaliyev is going to be champion in this division. It kind of feels like we've been trending towards that way for a long time.

And again, if we're being honest, Mago Man and Kaliav is probably not going to be the most exciting champion. He's not going to be, he's going to be awful. It's going to be a lot of technical decisions probably. Or like technical just ground him out and beat him down slowly. It's not going to be this going. He's going to slowly not strangle Erie, but he's just going to like hold him tightly and just suck all the fun out of, which is an incredible thing to suck the fun out of Yir Abashka.

And I'm driving the uncle I of train because I think that dude's getting the belt. but we should enjoy Yiri while he has the belt. Exactly. And that was going to be my point, which is if this is the inevitability we are heading towards, I don't mind delaying it for a little bit. So we can enjoy this beautiful, beautiful man and the beautiful violence that he gives us

because this is ridiculous what we just saw. Man, again, it's like hours later and I'm still floating on this high from this. Let's get as many of these as we can out before we get to the next, you know, grind him out, decision heavy champion. There was one interesting point in the fight that a lot of people when Twitter were talking

about, we were talking about it internally in our Slack channel, there's a point where we're it seems like one interesting point. No, I meant no. People thought Yuri tapped out, but Mark Goddard actually went to Twitter like 15 minutes ago and said, Yuri was actually congratulating and encouraging his opponent. He did it a couple of times and I told him that's a risky game, but it's very clear what he was doing and intending. Let's celebrate the incredible feat from both gentlemen.

So there was no tap. It was Yuri telling Glover, hey, good job. That was a good move. Like, this is really nice of you. Like, you're a great fighter as he's getting almost strangled to death. So this is, I mean, Yuri is just such a wild man. And what an exciting champion he's going to be. But I agree.

I'm just going to play spoiler. We're just going to run this thing right back because you got to do it. And if you don't do it now, you're never going to get the chance. and it's going to be one of those things we're going to be talking about, like one of the what ifs, oh, man, what if the UFC just pulled the trigger and just did the immediate rematch? I feel he just got to do it now. And if Ankelyde beat you to this bit, just do Anka Lye versus Janbovich.

Who cares? Another fight night main event. Everybody wins. Everybody wins. A.K., any final thoughts? Any final thoughts about the mixing and the martial arts at just such a high level? Listen, I see a few people saying, like, man, couldn't Glover hold on.

And like, I'm, I think most of us are amazed. He even made it as far as he did. I mean, this guy is 42 years, right? 42 years young. And I think, again, listen, I've never been, I've never been a fight. But I can't even imagine being a fight that's this high level taking that much punishment. At that point in the fight, for one thing, Glover doesn't know how much time is left. Maybe his coroner is yelling it, but he doesn't know there's 30 seconds left.

He doesn't know there's a minute left. He just knows there's a guy on his back. who's been punching him repeatedly in the head for, you know, almost 25 straight minutes. And he just can't breathe. And not just from the choke. I mean, the choke probably did not feel good. But the cardio at that point is like, really, he's past E on the gas tank. You know what I mean?

So that's, by the way, did we decide, sorry, did we know that he tapped or if he was a verbal? Did we, did we eventually get an angle where we saw what he, how he submitted? I don't recall. I don't think on the replay. On the replay. There is a tap. I thought it was verbal. Okay, I assumed it was verbal.

I assumed, like, because the reference in there real close, and I could have imagined Glover, just either verbally tapping or making some sort of noise. Because if you will know, if you make a certain noise, like a loud noise during a submission attempt, that's also considered that you're tapping out. So I thought it was just some sort of verbal recognition, but referee was in there, saw the tap. Yeah, man, I mean, the fact that he lasted long as he did is amazing. Okay, he doesn't know those 30 seconds left. I'm sure he's going to look, he's just looking back and now and just laugh, not laughing at it.

Though knowing Glover, he has a pretty, like, like a good strong way of like taking things in perspective. So he probably is going to look at that footage and be like, wow, 30 seconds, really? Like I didn't know if I had somehow known the exact, you know, point in the fight I was that he probably would have hung on. But I don't think that's the footage he's going to look back and be sad about. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that. I didn't even say sad.

Jumping that gilly. I mean, yeah. Jumping that gilly is. Sure. Who. I mean, listen, both guys made some questionable tactical decisions. mostly yeary and then as you pointed out the Glover

K-O-T-L-Tine you're absolutely I mean you can't I'm comfortable saying that that is the worst decision I've ever seen in a fist fight other than maybe Chale Sun and spinning back fist on Anderson No I you have to push back on that a little bit

at that point those dudes are just fighting on soul instinct like I can't even imagine to begin to put myself physically in whatever emotional and physical space they were at that point like 23 minutes into that fight Like that is a completely different level of just being that like none of the four of us will ever actually understand. Like you can criticize it all you want, but like it's called it the worst ever. Like I can't even begin to imagine being able to think straight in that type of moment. Like for him, he was just going on instinct.

Like how do I, how do I end this? You know, how do I end this? And if it, you know, if you had done it in round one when they were less exhausted and less slick, maybe it would have worked. But yeah, it's in the moment. Yeah, sure, sure, a very questionable decision. But again, so was, you know, a Uri kind of throwing a couple of knees that got him taken down. Uri's arm triangle attempt. Yeah, but what's the fun in picking these tactics apart, right?

Whatever it was, these guys just came again. That's what made the fight fun, that they both were insane. It was awesome. M.M.A is fun. Listen, I'm always complaining about mixing the martial arts, but M.A. is fun, man. And its purest form, gosh, that was a fun fight. It was.

And Glover wants more. He wants to do it again. He comes right out and says, let's go. Again, how could you not love this amazing stuff? Speaking of immediate rematches, it seems like the masses want to see an NBA rematch in the co-main event as well, because Talosanto's broader A game and Valentina Shvchenko, I'm going to say this and, you know, maybe people feel like I'm making excuses for her. I feel like Jed, you're going to agree with me, so I'll start with you here.

I feel like Valentina was just super off tonight. she was making uncharacteristic errors throughout the night. Like normally she adjusts pretty well on the fly almost like her and Volcanovsky do such a good job at adjusting in the fight, not just from fight to fight, but like in the moments of the fight. Like if I make a mistake, all right, I ain't doing that again. And it just felt like Valentin just kept going to the same well over and over again. And it just wasn't working for her. In the end, she's still the champion.

Split decision could have gone either way. Close fight. Definitely not a robbery. I scored it for Svchenko. I know a lot of people who scored it for Santos. 49-46 seemed to have people scratching their heads for Valentina. But Jed, what stands out more to you? Santos' performance or Valentina's performance and why?

I don't know. I think it's both. I think it is column A and column B here because I think for sure this did not look like the best version we've ever gotten to Valentina Shibchenko. Now, some of that is certainly a credit to Santos. I think, honestly, I think I underestimated how much Santos's physicality would come into play. And I know she's a plus athlete and pretty physical. But, I mean, Shevchenko held her own, maybe gave slight edges to amen to Noons. And Tyler Santos is not Amanda Nunes.

And so I thought that she would still have a clear and decided advantage in that area. She really didn't. And that was honestly, that was the thing that got her into the biggest amount of trouble. She kept going to the well with the safety valve She's developed lately of being like All right, well, when we do get in these clinch exchanges, she has not never been like a super technical Takedown artist from the clinch.

She'll get double unders and maybe have a trip. But she's mostly just hossing girls down because she is a monster at that weight class. And so in the first round, she tried to do a bad toss and got punished for it. And she didn't adjust because she kind of, I think she knew the endpoint was right. Right. And the end point was, if she got on top, Santos had nothing off her back. And we saw that in round five. And you could say Santos was tired. But Santos is top position grappler. And she is pretty good in the scrambles, but she doesn't have a lot to offer if you get her down. And shevchenko's so strong. And she wanted to get in those positions. But she kept going about it in the worst ways possible with head and arm throws and stuff like that. And so to some extent, that's Shevchenko, just not doing the things that we expect of her. To the other extent, that's

just Santos being really physical and really well prepared. And we say it all the time and I'll say it until I die because I think Mighty Mouse's accomplishments are substantially more impressive than people winning two belts. Defending your title over and over again is the hardest thing to do in the sport. Doing it for years on end when like I forget who we were talking about earlier, Wiley Zhang or somebody Jose was saying she came in and Yowana was a champion. and she had spent all this time preparing to fight Yowana. For the last five years, every woman who was going to compete around 125 has been preparing to fight Valentina Shvchenko.

And Chivchenko is just preparing to fight everybody. And it's a very different thing to do. And you can't have an off night. You have to be your best every time because you're getting the sole focus of an entire human being's life. All of the work Tilos Santos has done for 28 years went into tonight. and that is an impossible thing to do to defend against year over year over year. And occasionally you're going to get some fights like this. So I thought I scored it for Shevchenko, the official MMAFighting.com, great website.

Scorecard was for Shevchenko. If you scored it for Santos, I don't have an issue with that. I think that that's a fair scorecard. But these two will fight again, but they fight next because that's going to be Misha Tate. But we can talk about that later. Maybe. Maybe. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. How did you score this fight, Sean? So initially in the moment, I scored it for Santos, although I was actually, I was distracted during rounds two and three, which ended up being some of the swing rounds. So I kind of went back and rewatch portions of it during the night.

And I switched my scorecard to Shevchenko. Ultimately, I'm going to rewatch it tomorrow and get a better sense all the way through. But to me, Shevchenko, seemed like the right call. But ultimately, I agree. a lot with how Jed sort of finished his answer. And that's what stood out to me ultimately when I look at this fight. Because nights like Saturday night are why those legendary runs by guys like an Anderson Silva or George St. Pierre or Demetre's Johnson are so special and are so rare. Because as Jed said, when you stick around the mountain long enough, eventually there are going to be bad nights. There are going to be surprises.

They're going to be challengers who come in there, maybe make you feel like you're stuck in the mud or you're unable to get out of first gear. And how champions handle those nights, that's what separates just the basic champions from the all-time grades. The legends who can really power out of those nights and muster out enough to win. And that's exactly what Valentina did on Saturday.

It was really the first taste that she's gotten of of that sort of phenomenon of, hey, man, like this is not my best stuff tonight. I'm just going to have to figure this out. And she made it work. And, I mean, she said after the fact that she has a foot injury that was really bothering her all throughout fight week and it was why she didn't do her normal dance.

Sometimes you hear that sort of thing and you sort of disregard it. Valentina doesn't feel like the type who uses those type of excuses who has really ever said anything like that post-fight. So I take her for her word at that. I mean, it did look like she was flat from the beginning. But also you have to put a lot of that on Tyler Santos. Like she came out there with an incredible game plan. And the physicality that she was bringing to Valentino was a type of challenge that Valentina has not dealt with yet at this point in her career, at least at this point in our flyway career.

And frankly, if we don't get that, you know, timely accidental clash of heads when we do, we might be looking at Tyler Santos as the champion right now. And this might be the one that got away from Valentina Schifchango. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. And Schiphchenko was both on Saturday. She was lucky and she was good. Because if that timely accidental clash of heads doesn't happen,

maybe, you know, this whole thing is sort of being looked at a little differently. But ultimately, I mean, it was a championship performance from Shetanko and I think it'll be interesting now to see where we move forward from this because obviously for a lot for the past several years every Shepchenko fight it feels like we finish it and it's just like all right well she smashed through that person who's who could possibly be next who's going to be interesting and it's it's been really difficult to find interesting matchups and now it feels like we have a couple sort of landed on our laps right where

the Santos rematch suddenly feels like it could be pretty viable uh also we have you know Valentina could move up to Bantamweight. This is something we've talked about all week. Dana White's talked about all week. Valentina even talked about it in her post-fight press conference still wanting to do that, whether it be the winner of, whether it be Peña or Noons, whoever wins that fight. And also we have the Lauren Murphy Misha Tate fight out there too, which, which Jedges mentioned. I mean, Misha Tate needs to get past Lauren Murphy, which that's definitely not a given.

But if she does, that's a high-profile fight for both women. So there are a lot of good options right now for Valentina, and I think however you sort of shake it, maybe the Tate fight wouldn't be looked at this, but whether it's Santos or the Bantamweight title fight, either of those would be the most interesting Shifchenko fight to me that we have gotten in quite some time. Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the accidental head clash, because that was clearly the momentum shift in the entire fight.

It seemed like Santos was getting better. She was getting stronger. She's getting the better at Valentina in a lot of ways, and that head clash led to everything. Valentina wins round four, round five. those are the two clearest rounds for her. Santos had a clear third round. She had a ton of momentum coming out of that third round.

And then the head clash happens. And then as fun as this night was, we got to see the medical profession in Singapore absolutely shine. Because there's Tyler Santos. Her eye swollen shut, just looking gnarly. And we're asking, where's the doctor? The doctor's not going to look at the eye? And then right as we say it,

Here comes the doctor. And he's getting ready to examine her. Three and a half seconds later, this fight begins again. Because the doctor's just like, okay, you have an eye. We're good. Continue on. I mean, in the end, it's good for Valencia. That's fine.

Michael Bisping won the middleweight belt with one eyeball. That is a fine choice. Great work, doctor. I support you. If the fight had been called in the middle of the third round, would Santos have, have, A middle of four, excuse me. Was Santos have won a technical decision? No, because Valentina would have gotten the, yeah, Valentina would have, they would have still scored what they could in the fourth round.

Well, actually, I don't know. I haven't looked at the cards. Yeah, I mean, it still would have been a draw, but Valentina won 49-46 on some morons card. So she would have won, she would have won one round. It would have been a majority draw. After two rounds, Santos was up. 29, 28 on one card, 30, 27 on another card. After three rounds, excuse me.

I can't, guys, I can't do basic edition right now. 2928 on one card 30 27 on the other card and then the other card had 29 28 valetian so Santos couldn't have been up 30 27 after it would have been a split draw if it would have ended after he had it David left if he had it 30 27 seconds yeah it would have been split draw okay it would have been a split draw had it ended after the fourth round yep so valentina still would have retained to some degree because it would have been uh what would have happened one of them would have had for santos one piece and a split yeah one of them had for valet yes fair because because yeah and Clemens Werner had it

would have had at 30, yeah, would have had it for interesting. Okay, so that would not have been to her advantage if the fight had been paused there. But yeah, a horrible bit of luck there for, for Talas Santos because she could not see out of that eye. She could not, I'm not a doctor. I'm not a doctor, and maybe the person who examined

her isn't either because she could not see out of her. Right? And again, I don't want to take away from Valentina gutting it out and getting in the way. Maybe she wins those last two rounds anyway. You know, she's a great champion as he said. she's the better striker or she was able to keep it on the feet fulls last year rounds, it would have turned out the same way no matter what. But I just don't see how having one eye pretty much shut did not have a deleterious effect

on Talasanto's performance. And by the way, I still think Valentina is great. I totally agree with what Shaheen said. Like, I wish when we were judging champions, we wouldn't always judge how they performed at their best. Like it wasn't just based on that. And we looked at, yeah, some of their tougher performances, how did they gut it out? How did they find a way to win?

because every champion looks if you look at their highlight reel nobody misses in highlights we always say that right about any sport nobody misses in highlights so when you put up together their champ's highlight reel that's great what doesn't show up in the highlight real is fights like this where you see like okay well when they weren't at their best or the opposite even if she was their best and they were facing an opponent who was also with their best which i think talus Santos was really really good tonight and put and put the champion in just in positions that wasn't comfortable to them so yeah i i view fights of this as a positive for a fighter's legacy i don't want to hear exposed I don't want to hear a robbery. I think it's a, I think that's all a bit silly. If I could, if I could sort of dive into the, people love numbers, guys,

people love stats. If we could kind of dive on numbers here, Jed, you said the 49, 46 score was ludicrous. I tend to agree. It's not ludicrous, but it's pretty rose-colored glasses.

It's based on. And I had an unreasonable amount of money on Valentina Shivchenko. Sure. And that, that's a very generous reading of that fight. Yeah. It's not.

unreal, but it's tough scene, I think. That's giving her Valentina round one for a lot of the kind of the over-to-the-shoulder punches she was throwing. But so if you look at it, if you look at the stats,

again, stats aren't everything and stats aren't accurate all the time. But so Valentina was credited with 35 total strikes in round one. Only 10 significant and zero significant ground strikes. So the stats themselves did not count any of those

those punches as significant. And the judges aren't always in lockstep with the stats, but again, they're sort of trained to recognize what is a significant strike and what is it. And I think the two judges that scored it for Tyler kind of disregarded those strikes, which I would have as well. Some would argue any damage is better than no damage, but I do think we have to make a distinction there. So I would have gone first round Santos as well. The rules explicitly state that like threatening with a submission constitutes a successful path to victory in the realm. Yes, but only only that would be secondary to damage. That would be second to dear.

If you consider those punches damaged, then they would take priority. But I don't consider it. It's a bit of a tricky one. Yeah. I don't know if it's a gray area. I'm sure there's people who could make a stronger distinction than I can. But I do think those kind of, you know, not comfortable, not enjoyable to be getting pitter-pattered in the face by Valentina Shevchenko, I'm sure. But I would have to, I would strongly weigh the, you know, what Tyler Santos was doing in that round more than those punches.

But maybe I'm wrong. That's where Clemens Werner was probably coming from. The other two judges did score for Santos. But I thought round two for Chefchenko, rounds four and five. obviously, Shropchenko. So not like, it is a controversial fight, as in people are talking about it, by definition, controversial. But I'll be doing a robbery review.

Spoiler alert, I don't think it'll be a robbery. I do have to watch that round two closely again. But, yeah, if we're looking at damage, who did the most impact, you just wish Tala had done a little bit more damage. It sucks because she was going to finish the fight. She was really in there with some submission attempts. So to say she wasn't attempting to finish the fight is really unfair to her. but by the way their criteria is the damage of Valentina did in round two I think will matter more but I will watch that round again but yeah I don't I don't think it's a robbery at all but having a beef with 49 46 score

pretty understandable I also just want to say this because I don't think we've said it and it bears being said everything we said is true Tyler Santos is the second best flyway in the world like I feel really comfortable with that I thought that she had a claim to that that. And she maybe hadn't proved it the way Caitlin Chukagian had. But she came into this fight 19 and 1. Her first loss, as we'd mentioned on the pre-fight show, very explicable is her UFC debut. And a lot of people lose that kind of fight.

Since then, she has looked excellent and has been really good and is still getting better. Like, I feel comfortable that she would beat Caitlin Chukagian if they fought and that she is the second best flyweight in the world. And so at the baseline of this, I don't think Valenzuela. Valentina Shavchenko had her best night, and she still managed to beat the second best woman in her weight class with her off-speed pitches. She didn't have her fastball, but she got the change-up work and managed to squeak out a very competitive win. It's not going to be one we talk about in like great, you know, we write poems about, but again, defending your belt is freaking impossible in this sport. So props to you, Valentina and Shevchenko. And can I say, I do, hold on, I do want to caution us.

I just, I do want to caution us to not to at least keep some level of perspective. And because, I mean, if you would have talked about Dominic Reyes on the night where he fought John Jones, you would have said, well, he's clearly the number two light heavyweight in the world right now, too. And we came to find out that that is very much not true. So we have not seen enough of Tyler Santos for me to feel comfortable. Aointing her is the number two. I think Caitlin Chakarge and Jessica Androj, whether she is still in that division or not. We don't know yet.

She's not. She's a flat for sure way. She's kind of going. back and forth between both. I mean, either way, I think there's still some room to business to be done before we can very cleanly say that Tyler Santos is the number two flyweight in the world. But, I mean, she's certainly... I prefaced it.

I prefaced it by saying, I, Truggan deserves it for what she's accomplished. But if they fought, I'm picking Santos. And to quibble with you, I did not say Dominic Graz was the second best light heavyweight in the world after John Jones. I said he was the first best light heavyweight in the world after he beat John. So get that right, John. I was wrong, but I believed it. I feel like I wasn't taken seriously, though, when I was telling people that Talas Santos would be like

was a legitimate challenge for Valentin de Chupchenko. I feel like I got, maybe not from you guys. Maybe I've just been reading too much Twitter. I feel like there was way too people cutting around. This is what I wrote before the fight in the predictions, my always accurate predictions, of course. First, I opened by saying, I'm not crazy thinking Talas Santos has a chance here, right?

You know, because I did feel like there's a lot of just people saying, oh, she's a mandatory challenger. So here's what I wrote, I said, In regards to how highly you rate her chances, she's definitely more than a mandatory challenger. She's shown few holes in her game. She's beaten a lot of her UFC opponents, strength for strength. We knew that she had legit Muay Thai before she came to the UFC, but she also has a strong workman-like top game.

I think this played out very accurately in the fight as well. Also, maybe workman-like back control, if you want to take it further. And I said her sizable underdog status says more about the aura of invincibility surrounding the champion than any shortcomings on Santos' part. I stand by that as well. And then at the end, I said, that says Santos is going to give her a fight, possibly the toughest fight that Valentina's faced since winning the title. However, when the scorecards are read, it will be lucky number seven for the pound-for-pound queen.

And some people might emphasize the word lucky. I don't know. I wouldn't, but I kind of said that without intending to mean that she'd have some luck on the scorecards. But maybe she did tonight. But no, I thought it was a pretty good way. Yeah, I mean, if only I, and I was smart enough not to go all the way with it and pick Santos. though, again, she did win on one of the Georgia scorecards, so maybe I should have.

But yeah, great fight. Great fight and would happy to see it run back, if only because I don't know if they don't want to flyweight. I'm dying to see get a tell shot right now. Misha Tates it. I don't think she gets past Lauren Murphy. I know. I've been on that.

I've been saying that for the longest time. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. We're a couple weeks away. A couple weeks. A couple weeks. We'll see it happen.

And then we can discuss it and talk all about. about it, but a very, uh, Greg Maddox-S fight again. I think you can run this right back because of the fight, but just have something. Like, I think Santos would be anybody else in the division, basically, other than Jessica Androge. I'm with you, Sean. But I think of her as a straw weight, but like, she's going to be people. Just let her get a win and then you run it right to hell back because that fight was really good.

And it's a worthwhile, wild challenger. Yeah. I mean, if nothing else, we come out of this Saturday night for the first time in a very long time with a lot of interesting options for Valentina. Like, maybe not a lot, but there are at least two interesting options for Valentina. That's a lot given her career. Yeah, that's much more than we've been able to say for quite a while. So can't hate on it. Yeah, and maybe she goes to 115.

You have three options. Four. Maybe she goes to 115, you know. She's talking about it at the post fight. Somebody asked to that. Yeah, I found that very interesting that she only weighed 1.30 on fight morning. I was pretty surprised by that. Yeah, me too.

So that was that fight. Before that, Jean-Wei Lee may have just, like I said earlier during the press conference feed, I can't wait for the ranking show. I'm so excited for it. Between 205 and 115, just the conversations of these two divisions are going to be fantastic. But John Wei Lee might just be the number one straw weight in the world come the next MMA fighting global rankings despite not being the champion. Despite being one and two in her last three fights, she might be the number one straw weight in the world. She knocks out and officially retires Yawani on Jacek with a spinning back fist.

So we have a fight of the year, a submission of the year, perhaps, and another contender. We're not even, we're barely at the halfway point of the year. We have another contender for knockout of the year. Sean, Zhang Wei Lee, she showed up and she showed out. And Ioanni and Jacek got knocked out. What a performance from Zhang Wei. This,

we go from one of the greatest fights of all time to just a, as fun as that first round was, it was clear as Zhang round. And then she just went out and put the lock on the door in the second. Just talk about John's performance and what she did today. It was impressive. Yeah. It was very impressive.

I mean, you mentioned that sixth round, really, which is what that was. Because, I mean, they went out there and they picked up business like it had never left from a couple years ago. I mean, that was, that fight started out fast. And then just, I mean, it's hard because it is so brutal the way it finished, right? And you don't want to see someone like Yueni and J. Who is so beloved and who is so respected of this industry go out like that. It's certainly not a ceremonious end for her career. But, I mean, Zhang Wei Li was someone.

someone who, I don't know that she was getting written off. I think, believe she was actually the favorite coming in this fight, but it wasn't a lot of conversation around her and really where she could be in this division. It felt like the storylines we were all talking about and just everyone else in the industry was talking about was, oh, this is set up for Yohanna to actually do this in a way that we didn't really expect. And now, Zhang Wei coming in here, I think it'd be crazy if she's the number one strawweight in the world come next ranking cycle because obviously she lost twice to Rosnamayunus and

Carlos bars is 2-0 against Rose Dame Units. At a certain point, you have to give Carla some level of respect, even though I think we all just sort of assume that Jean-Wea Lee is the champion now. Like, I suspect it's not going to be long before that belts around her waist. We're already, like, kind of giving her early congrats for the second title run she's about to have. I also do wonder, like, if she might end up being the biggest favorite as a challenger

in UFC champion history or championship history, or at least biggest favorite since Valentina was supposed to fight Nico Montaio. I think I would be I would not be surprised if that ends up being the case I forgot that was a fight well it didn't end up being a fight I know I forgot that was a plan fight though but ultimately man I mean this strawweight division is so fun right now and it would have been more fun had you honest had still been in it it sucks to see her go but right now with the the parody we have between Zhang Rose Carla and Jessica at the top. Like it is a real rock paper scissors type of situation where one woman has wins over the other

and the other has wins over the other. And it's just, it's really fun. And I mean, man, I don't know that this was, this doesn't eclipse my knockout of the year. I still think Chandler Ferguson takes it for me. But in terms of strength of competition, this one was better than Molly McCannes for me. Like, this is right up there. This is number two for me. Do you remember what the odds were for Chichenko Montanio? I think it was like 12 to 1, right? minus 600 at the minimum. Minus 13. It's from topology.

Minus 1,300 favorite Valentine's Shepchenko and Nico plus 700 underdog. Plenty of value on Shepchenko at that price. It's not lying. But yeah. And as far as like I think this is like not a terrible candidate for knockout of the, I mean, I don't know. Look, we're going to go. We're going to go in the Chandler and Ferguson.

but I've imagined when the time comes. But the fact that she did it to, you want to Jachicic. And we've seen her rocked before. She definitely got rocked in the, you know, the first Rose fight and T-K-O'd. So it's not like we haven't seen her hurt. But man, to just see her, it was a super clean back fist.

It landed, the way she fell was like a, that was a Humpty Dumpty Fall the Week, Jed, if we ever did those videos. To the ground. It was super. No follow-up shots were necessary. It was essentially a walk-off. The referee didn't, like, step in right away.

So, you know, Waitley didn't get to do like a cool walk-off, but she easily could have. I mean, it's just, so just considering who it was, it does, it does definitely elevate into the conversation. I'm sure people will, like, if someone said it was the, you know, knock out of the air, I wouldn't be mad. But it's going to be hard to beat the, just this pure visual of the Chandler, Ferguson K.O. And the fact that, man, it's like history-making, you know. One, it was a rematch. she put a definitive caper on their on their feud i mean she won the first fight by decision anyway but if there's any doubt like who the better fighter is and my goodness that's that's that's uh that's how you

that's how you make your statement and then that it is a a retirement knockout you know she she literally ended the career of one of the greatest fighters of all time um there's a narrative around it so uh yeah visually i don't know if it's as strong as the mccann or chandler chaos but in terms of the who she did it to it's up there it's really up there A great night for Zhang Wei Li, Jen Michoud. A night of reflection on the career of Yoni on Jacek. Tough night for Jessica Andraj, though, when it comes to you, because she lost the submission of the year to this point to Yuri Prahashka in your eyes, because she was the front runner

with the standing arm triangle. Did she, she's definitely lost her title shot that a lot of people felt she deserved after the Amanda Lamehosh win, because now Zhang Wei gets that. is Jean-Wei-Leed taking over the number one spot as the top straw weight in the world now with this win? Does she take over Jessica Andraj's spot that you have for her there? Did she do that as well? I will say that it is not a certainty that

Zhang Wai-Lie-Lie fights with the belt next because I know that you, you know, you're in mixed martial arts, but maybe you haven't heard that occasionally Dana White says stuff that isn't true. And we're a long way away from that fight happening. And just throwing it out there, if I was Carlis-Bars up, I would get hurt and not defend my belt for some time because I don't want those problems that are coming from Wiley-Jong.

So I think there's still a window where maybe John Wiley-Wiley something happens. there's a window for her to get in there even though clearly jang has has pole position at this point but yeah really bad night for jessica and jrude probably put him uh jang as my number one in in the world because that was a again it's hard to judge just because joanna was off so long and i think that it's probably fair to say you know hindsight being 2020 that probably wasn't like she's probably diminished i think she had been a little bit diminished in some of her You know, in her other fights before that. And then she took two years off and just didn't quite have a fastball anymore because she's almost 35.

And that's very difficult to fight for 20 years and still be there. But man, that was a corkscrewing. She worked her over in a way we've never seen anyone work, Yvani and J. Chick over. And look, she just looked unbelievable. And I'm mad because when I first looked at this fight, I was like, that's probably what's going to happen. And then I kept rewatching their old fight. And everybody in the media, I think Sean was alluding to this,

everybody in the media felt maybe we all got caught up in the narrative of Yawanna doing it or whatever it was. But it felt like everybody was on the Yawanna's going to do this. She probably won the first fight. She's going to come back. It's going to be this great story. Yeah. And it was like, no, actually, the younger, substantially stronger, faster fighter had three rounds. and she came out like a batta to hell to win that fight

and put a stamp on it. So it's hard for me not to put her at. If you put Carla, sure, I'm not going to fight you. Carla has done the things and should be rewarded for it. But I cannot. I just can't do it. In the same way that I'm the happiest man alive because Corey Anderson is not the best fight heavyweight in the world right now,

I just can't. can't put all it my number one. They're like five women in the division who I think would roll over. So it's probably going to be John for me. Fair enough. And then before we go to the peeps, and we'll talk about obviously some other things along the way as we compile the questions. But, Sean, that was the last Yawani on Jacek fight.

That's it. She's done. I believe her. This is not a typical in May retirement. We see her come back and do it again. I think she went in here with the plan. if it doesn't go well, I'm just going to get out of here. I'm going to manage and have a family and travel and still be a part of the sport,

but I'm just not going to be competing in it anymore. Your reaction to Yawani and Jacek, one of the greatest women's fighters of all time, former champion, calling it a career. Yeah, man, it was sad, right? I think it was really sad. It's sad to see her up there almost like apologizing because Yonni and Jacek certainly has nothing. to apologize for.

I mean, this is the original boogey woman of the strawweight division. This is really the person who built the strawweight division on her back. Like, Yone and Jacek is a champion. She's going to be a first ballot Hall of Famer probably by the end of 2024.

If I know the UFC as well as I do, they're pretty quick with people they like, and I'm sure they're going to be pretty quick with her. She's a true legend when it comes to the women's ranks, and she's also just an all-violence first-teamer. Like, if you just put together the list of the all-violence first team for the women.

Yoni and J. Shake is one of the quickest entries in there. But also, like, I think new fans kind of have only seen this second half of Yona's career where she lost more fights since she's winning. And I think maybe they don't have a good sense of just how important she was. Because she leaves with so many accolades, really. Like, even despite all these late struggles, she still has the best run of championship defenses in the history of this division. And again, she really helped establish 115 as, in my mind, at least,

the marquee division of the women's ranks. And she did it with just the ferocity that she was approaching this game, right? Like she came up during the time of Rhonda Rousey. Her and Rhonda headlined, you know, a show over there in Australia, if I'm not mistaken. And like, she really was sort of the rousey of 115. And she did it all the way through. Like, if you look at the outpouring of love that she received tonight, once she made that announcement, just within the community, the fighters, the fans, media, everybody, few people in this game.

are so just universally beloved. And it's almost like you look at that and it's almost easier to understand the impact that she had, right? Because like Carlos Barza was the first championist division. But Joanna Champion was the first star. Like she had the swagger. She had the sense of style. She was again ferocious in there.

She was just dripping with confidence. She had the demon stare downs that we all loved when she was first coming up. I remember being in Dallas from the first moment she showed up in Dallas as the challenger to Carlos Belt. And at that point, it was so clear and obvious. Like, nobody really knew who Yohanna was, but it was so obvious that it was a potential star that the UFC had on its hands here.

And she held up her end of the bargain. Like her reign of terror in this division was technical, bloody, violent, and it mean, and it just felt special. Like, even, you know, from every single title fight that she had, it just generally felt like big and it felt special. And even once the title picture, chewed her up and spit her out,

she was still that sort of special attraction, right? like in her pre-unultimate fight, we get one of the greatest fights of all time that she actually probably should have won and been a two-time champion at that point. Like anybody who watched UFC 248, I think that was, or whatever card that was with that first Waley fight live, like they will never forget the feeling that was coursing through their body as Yonna and Jacek willed herself to almost near victory with an alien sprouting out of her forehead. Like, Yona and Jacek means a lot to this sport. She means the world to 115. it's going to be really sad to not have her around. But also it's not surprising because, I mean, she has talked about motherhood for quite some time now. I mean, she sort of was laying the seeds

and the bread crumbs for this last couple of years. Even sort of at the end of her title run, too, she was sort of talking about how tired she was of some of this. So, you know, it's sad, but ultimately it's maybe not the best ending for her to go out on, but I'd much rather her go out now rather than losing a bunch in a row in this type of fashion. again, she'll be a Hall of Famer by the end of the next couple of years.

And I'm sure when that happens, there's not going to be a dry eye in the house for her speech. Okay, we'll save your reaction for on to the next one. We'll wax poetically and actually do one of the segments we've been promising people, but always forget to do when people retire. Oh, yeah. We'll just do it tomorrow for you, but Jed, I feel like we have a future episode of, damn, they were good. Do we not?

Oh, hell yeah. Oh, for sure. Like, that was like the first thing I thought. The honor rules. She's, John Anick does this weird thing where he's wrong about the history of fighters a lot, which is really annoying. And then also says stuff that's like,

in some people's estimation, the most accomplished strawweight champion. It's actually just math when you're phrasing like that. She clearly has more accomplishments than any other fighter in that division because the accomplishments are titles and she has more of them. So it's not, it's just not up for debate. She's the best draw weight.

She's, I think, a top five female fighter of all time, though maybe she is six, depending on how much you like Magumi Fajute. I can't speak because it's 5 a.m. How much you like Megamogoo that will debate whether she's a top five or not. But, yeah, she rules. I'm sad to see her go. And the UFC is really, really dumb if they let her go be a manager. This is one of the most charismatic fighters you've had in your organization in 10 years. I don't know what you do with her because she doesn't feel like she's just an analyst in a booth,

you know, like doing that thing. But there's something to do with her because she is great at talking to people and has such a legacy and such charisma and just such a importance to this sport and her weight class. Like don't let her go manage fighters and show up occasionally at, you know, events. like get her get her on the payroll and find something to do with her because that's what should happen here it won't because they're boring but yeah that's that's like the biggest thing i want for her moving forward is for her to have a role that is frequently in our lives and not just i'm managing x y or z like it's just not as fun yep happy trails joanna more and more on her tomorrow on On to the next one last note.

Yeah, one last note. UFC 185, still one of the greatest performances from a challenger in a title fight ever. Just thorough performances. Oh, yeah. Unbelievable. Just as she lacking in that fight. Jean-Wea Lee, not only did she get probably a top five spot for Nagano the year when the year is said and done. She also got $50,000, as did Jake Matthews, as did Jack Della Madelena.

as did freaking Mahashata. Holy cow, what a knock about that was. Yeah, isn't that nuts? And then Sylvania Gomez-Horez also got herself a bonus because they gave bonuses to everybody who finished, except for Yuri. Yuri got fighting at the night. He should have got himself an extra PG's. Come on, dude.

He got a sweet $20,000 crypto.com fan bonus, all right? I strongly were, I strongly responsible. fact that Shevchenko got the most crypto money. It's the most like what is stupid, stupid award? Well, hold on. That's nothing compared to Rose getting it. I know. It's just so dumb.

Every time they give it out, it's always to the worst person to get it. It's wild. Speaking of wild, there's still a whole bunch of you watching right now and you are wild. So let's see what you have to say. You guys are amazing. We'll take a few. We'll take a few.

Can we talk? about Austin Matthews because holy shit who's Austin Matthews Austin Matthews Austin not okay sorry it's really really late Jake Matthews Jake Matthews

Oh it's late for you in Arizona I was like I was like what did Austin Matthews do I'm like wait like dude they've been out of the playoffs for like a month I'm sorry he's like an Arizona guy so like he's an Arizona boy so I thought like okay you want to go ahead dude Jake Matthews like became somebody tonight

in a really interesting way that like this might be like one of those fights that we look back on two years from now, like, hey, this is when it happened for Jake Matthews. Can I talk about how my prediction for that fight was so wrong and yet so right? So my prediction was based on, was based on Jake Matthews to me is the quintessential mixed martial artists. He's like a guy he grew up. He idolizes GSP. He grew up. He's not a guy, you know, he's not a guy who grew up like, oh, I was a kickboxer first. Then I was, I was a wrestler base. He's a guy who grew up saying, I want to mix the martial arts. I want to be a combat sports athlete who mixes the martial arts.

I want to be well-rounded, not someone who matriculates in from another sport. And he's really good at. And he did this from a young age. Remember, he was what, when he came to the OSC, like 22, 23? This is a guy who his whole life is, I want to make a mixed martial martial arts champion. He was serious. No, he wasn't 19. He was 19 when he debuted.

Yeah. He's like, he wanted, like eight years ago. Yeah. And he's like, I want, he's like, I want to be a combat sports mixed martial arts champion. And my whole whole prediction was, but there's a distinction between that and being a fighter. I mean, everyone who steps in the cage is a fighter. by definition. But like, when I think fighter, I think of like an Andre Fialio, a guy who was in there to

inflict pain, who is a skilled, talented, well-rounded martial artist, but he is in there to put the other person away. He's not here to win a sport. He wants to hurt someone. He wants to get a paycheck. And to me, that was the difference because I picked Fialio to win. I'm like, I was like, I want to see that from Jake Matthews. I want to see that killer.

I want to see that dog, you know, that proverbial dog, we're always talking about. And holy hell, he showed that dog tonight. I mean, he was not playing around. This is not point fighting. This was not mixed martial arts saying. This was, I'm going to knock this dude's face off of his face. And he did multiple times until there was a face. No more on Andre Friallio.

So I was super wrong. I wanted to see. This is what I wanted to see from Jake Matthews. And he showed that and more. So Jake Matthews, I will never question the dog in you again. That was awesome. And, yes, he is, he's up these, he's going up the rankings, that's for sure. It's looking good.

Knock that face off that face. That was amazing That was amazing I would say this by Jake Matthews though I think I've seen all of his UFC fights When he was 19 When he was in that fight I had to remind myself

That was Jake Matthews Because it was a different It was totally different Okay good It wasn't just me It was like I was a different person But it was Jake Matthews

It just It clicks for some fighters later And it clearly did for him And this is like something that we were talking about in the last ranking show where like we were talking about the featherweight prospects and like hey some you don't ever know who like just levels up overnight and all of a sudden they come out in their next

fight and they're just T.J. Dillishaw against Henna Burrow just like totally different fighter that you've never seen before. Kind of felt like it happened for Jake Matthews a little bit tonight where it's just he can't we've how long have we had history with this guy? How many fights have we seen of Jake Matthews? He never looked like this.

Like this is a full grown man beating the hell out of somebody. This is not a 19 year old kid anymore. This is a full-girl man with two kids and he just had, his wife just had a kid, I think, only a few weeks ago. I think a 12-week-old child. So that means he did this whole camp with his wife, eight and a half, nine months pregnant, had a baby, did all this, and then still fought the best fight he's ever fought. By like an infinite amount. By an infinite amount.

So it's just that's what I mean like just like, I know we were talking earlier. We're talking about Tyler Santos in the previous shows. he said, oh, well, she lost to, um, whatever her name was, my, uh, Mara Reraella. And I think is that you just, you got to remember, these are just bad nights sometimes. It doesn't, that you can't, you can't, you just, they're humans. They just, it's a weird, it's a weird, it's a weird sport and just people, people change, you know, and they get better, they get worse. It's just, it is wild.

To the questions. It does feel like this could be, like obviously the level of competition is different, but it could be like the type of thing. that we look back of RDA, hey, beaten, Benson, and all of a sudden, like, we have to pay attention to RDA now. Like, that type of thing. We're just like, oh, man, like, Jake Matthews. We just might have to start paying attention to Jake Matthews. He's hitting my rankings this month, like, for sure. Remember, that fight was buried on the prelims, too, and it's only because of the Bonterrain, you know, kind of dropout.

It's just, so it's even more special because that fight got, it got featured more. You know, that kind of would have been buried at least. But, right, too, dude. Yeah. Jake's been clanging. banging for sure he's been hitting those weights because he looked like a light heavyweight in there compared to fiala it was crazy like when you picked him to win did you think it would look like that be honest no no i think i i think that was my most that was one of the more confident picks i had

on the entire card was jake matthews winning i just didn't think that i just thought you just take him down a lot not beat the hell out on the feet yeah when that first round ended i was like all right Jake's going to win a decision. Like, cool. He's just going to win a decision. He survived the early onslaught. He's going to win the fight. He's going to win 15 minutes.

And nope, he went banana and got it done and looked sensational. So excited to see what the next for him. Stuff like that is what is really some of the most fun stuff in this sport. Yeah. The randoms that come out and just surprise you, it's so good sometimes. This card was so insane. You know what? Yeah.

We haven't even mentioned that Jack Tell him, Adelamadelaina, might be like a legitimately great prospect. That was great. Like might be a legitimately great prospect. He had somehow the second best well-to-weight performance. Makes no sense. But real quick, let's just talk about

the card as a whole. Best card of the year. Yeah. 10. Easy. Not even close. Like, okay, what did you, what would you gymnastics?

The year. Oh, gosh. Paper view of the year. I, like, the undercard wasn't, I don't know that the undercard was super. spectacular. I knew I was pretty good too. I mean,

dude, that war is like a vintage chocolate. Like Ladele war as name wise. Name wise. Yeah, but you turn it to any regional card

and like you're going to see lots of violence and lots of finishes. That was kind of with this. Yeah. Okay, but you know, the fights people paid for best pay per view in years.

Mm-hmm. The fights people paid for. How about that? Look, Sean, I don't need you to give me a fancy salad with my steak. If it's just a solid salad, and then you deliver a bomb-ass blue Pittsburgh steak,

that's a 10-star meal. And that's what we got today. And I'm okay with it. It's a great example. One of the greatest pay-per-views we've seen, and then Dana White just doesn't even bother jumping on his PJ to come to the fights. That's insane.

It's just how weird is everything. It's how weird. It's great. Fantastic. Over-delivered. How about that? Which is hilarious because we were talking about how it's a three-fight card coming in. And that's not wrong.

It's just sometimes-shrows. It wasn't a three-fight card, but those other two extra fights, if we can deliver it, you know. This is, this was, I'm sorry to anybody this affects, I don't want to, I don't want to bring up bad feelings. But this was very 199-ish because right before International Fight Week, right before the big card, the one that we might not drop the money on, because we have International Fight Week in three weeks, and then we get a second pay-per-view. Like, maybe we should skip this one. Like, there's things we like,

but maybe I'm not going to plop the $75 down. But I guarantee you that anybody on Twitter that didn't buy this card that didn't watch it is pissed that they missed it. Well, $1.99 only costs $60, Mike. You got to remember, we're adding five to $10 a year to pay per views despite them having the most successful run of all time. Right.

I have a bad memory, but this will probably be the worst selling pay-per-view of the year. I think they're all going to be, I mean, maybe. It's all in a 200 and 500 range. Yeah. Yeah. It'll do like three, 300,000. I think Volcanowski and Zombie probably is up there. Although that did have, that did have Shemyev versus Burns.

Yeah. It's in Vegas. I probably did pretty well. They had a real press conference. You know, Dana was really pushing it. And this one, it was just, you know. It wasn't even at the press conference. There was no press conference.

They didn't even do it. They didn't, they ran like the fight. Yeah, but he wasn't at the 273 presser either. Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, right. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Do you well where they were like intentionally shitting on Inganu? I'm not confident that did well. Like, I don't know. Yuan is still Yowana. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Colby, Colby Mazadol probably was the best.

It was definitely was the best. Malcolm versus Brennan Allen's good fight. What were their thoughts on the judges giving it to Brendan? To me, it felt like Jacob did more. He landed 7 of 14 for takedowns. I told you, yeah, I gave it to Alan. I thought Alan won the first round and I thought he won the third round. Now, if I had money on Malcolm and gave it to Allen.

Yeah. Now, in Singapore, in Singapore, I thought there could have been a chance that Malcolm won the fight, at least get a splitie out of there somewhere. Didn't happen. All three judges started exactly the same. I didn't think it was a robbery. And I thought Brendan won. A.K., no robbery, right?

I didn't see the fight. Didn't see the fight. I only watched, I was. Excellent. I know. This is why you bring me in for. No, I had some other obligations. So I missed the, I missed a preliminary card.

I've made decisions. Media completely split. Completely split down the middle. I believe it's eight for Allen and, oh, actually, no. I believe it's eight for Allen, nine for Mel Coon. So I'd have to watch the fight myself. I thought it was pretty clearly an Allen fight. I know.

I don't know if I saw. And I was looking at, you know, I look at Twitter reactions. I don't think I saw too many people complaining about it. Though, again, maybe I wasn't looking at some of the media comments. Nobody who scored that fight for Malcun can be mad that Alan won it is how that goes. I don't think you should score the fight for Malcun. But you cannot be mad if that Malcun lost that. fight if you scored it for him.

He did not to... You know, it's crazy about... You know, it's crazy about... You know, it's crazy about the fight? Jacob Malkoon stock rose more than Brennan's even in a loss. Because now, Jacob, I think this fight kind of showed. And I think we were seeing glimpses of it. Balcun, because of the Phil Hodge fight and everything, he was just Whitaker's teammate

for a while. Oh, he's just the dude that trains with Robert Whitaker. But now I feel like fighting a guy like Brennan Allen and give it, put him... He just gassed out. He just lost gas at the very end of the fight. He looks pretty damn good against Brennan Allen as a very sizable underdog. Not a lot of people are giving him a chance to win this fight. Some were.

Some saw it. He got to done. I think he graduated tonight. I think this is a graduation performance where it's like, all right, this dude is, he's a legit. Maybe Robert Whitaker's Jacob Alcun's teammate now. I don't think we're going that far, but you know what I mean? He's graduated. What's the ceiling?

for a JDM, Sean. I mean, after a night like this, it feels pretty high, right? You don't want to, I mean, it's one performance, you don't want to get, get lost on it, but I mean, Ramzan Amir is pretty legit. He trucked through him like it was nothing. Like, he trucked through that, he trucked through that man in like two minutes. That to me says a lot.

That's not somebody who gets finished in two minutes. His ceiling feels pretty high right now. We haven't seen a lot, so it's hard to, yeah, I'm not going to proclaim him a future champion, but he seems like someone who's going to be a, figure that matters at 170, certainly. Yeah. If he's in the top 10 in

2023, would not be surprised. Yeah. What do you think, Jed? I mean, listen, it's a long way to go. It wasn't just a gotten, like, not a lot of people go out there and finish Ramadan on me even two minutes. Nobody in the UFC has finished a span.

It's the first time he's been finished the U.S. So what do you think his deal is? I think he's off. I feel really confident saying he'll be a top 10 fighter. I don't think he'll be a top 10 fighter next year just because Walter Waite is a really difficult division to break into. Not that he couldn't compete with some of those guys by next year, but just Jorge Mastodal doesn't fight good guys but holds,

but maintains like that ranking. So it just kind of, it's really tough to make hay there. But yeah, maybe challenges for a title. I want to, he'll need more development, but I mean,

it's got a lot of great traits, Big Paul's in the puppy. It's doing great. Kids going to be a guy to watch. I love anyone who has like an easily discernible A plus skill and his boxing is just so good. And it's like, again, one A plus skill. Again, I'm against the mixing of the martial arts. You guys know that.

So seeing someone who has one A plus skill to fall back on, that can take you a long way. And some decent cropping defense. He's got a judo background, which is always kind of funky. It gives you a little bit of a kind of something to play around with, you know, defensively. So I like that. But I mean, when you have a guy who, Right now in any fight, it looks like he has a chance to keep things sort of in boxing range. Boy, that's, that's exciting.

That's really fun to watch. I love dude to rip rib roasters. Yeah. That's the thing. That's the skill that gets me all hot and bothers. Like, ooh, that's what's up. And he's got some heart too. He's got heart too.

He was in deep trouble. That fish was on tight. Yep. And he just overpowered and just ripped the arm right off and got up. And that was it. Plus, you can't break his nose because it's already clearly been shattered. He's got that Andre Arlowski squashed nose. So he's never going to worry about breaking it mid-fight and then having the deal with that.

He's golden. You got ahead of the current. If you ever, ever run into somebody whose profile as a side profile is just flat, don't start shit with that person. Stay away. It's like cauliflower. It's like cauliflower years. Yeah, it's like cauliflower.

It's like, cool. I'm going to go the other way. Yeah. I will say he's 25, so he has time, but he is stuck in this division where it's like the hardest possible division to make headway because people just squat on their spot so hard.

So it might be a while before he gets a ranking, but he probably is deserving of one much sooner than he'll get one. Sean Brady's like never going to go anywhere. And Sean Brady, not that long ago, kick the shit out of the dude. We were just like, this guy's awesome.

Jake Matthews rules. Sean Brady's like one of the five best fighters in that way class he's not going to get to fight for a title for three years. All right, gentlemen, it is. We've got an hour and 24 minutes. So I'm going to hit the music. It's almost 5 a hit in East Coast time. Oh my gosh.

I still got a right. Yeah. Hey, while you guys get some sleep, just remember, just remember AK, my best friend, I'll see you in about six hours, my man. Live right here on this here channel. We're putting the matchmaking hats back.

on I can't wait for it. Thanks to Jose, joined us from Singapore. Tremendous job, safe travels home. We're done for Casey on the ones and twos. For AK, for Jed, for the great Chehina al-Shadi. I am Mike Heck. Good night, everybody. Good morning.

Happy birthday, I like you. And I love you from Kof-Kong. It is my birthday. I'm AK. You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.