MMA Fighting - UFC Edmonton Post-Fight Show: Reacting to Brandon Moreno’s Vintage Performance Against Amir Albazi

Episode Date: November 3, 2024

Brandon Moreno finally got back in the win column and he did it in style. On Saturday night the UFC returned to Canada and in the main event, Moreno stopped a two-fight losing streak with a dominant unanimous decision victory over Amir Albazi in the main event of UFC Edmonton. Plus, earlier in the evening, Erin Blanchfield got back in the win column with a hard-fought decision over former two-time strawweight champion Rose Namajunas. Following Saturday’s event, MMA Fighting’s Jed Meshew and Alexander K. Lee react to the big outcomes that took place at UFC Edmonton and where Moreno and Blanchfield go from here. Plus, the crew discusses the rest of 13-fight card that very nearly broke the record for longest UFC event of all-time, and more. Follow Jed Meshew: @JedKMeshew Follow Alexander K. Lee: @AlexanderKLee Subscribe to MMA Fighting Check out our full video catalog Like MMA Fighting on Facebook Follow on Twitter Read More: http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's right. Yeah, guys, sorry. It is the UFC Edmonton post-fight show. And we're here to talk about everything that happened in the flyweight double header of Bray. Brandon Moreno's victory over a Miaabazi and Eric Blanchield squeaking one out over Rosnamu Unis. I am Jed Mishu. Howdy, howdy.

Joining me, the king of the North himself, the prodigal son of the nation through which this card was hosted, put on, put four. I'm talking, of course, of Alexander Kaylee, AK, how are we feeling about the latest UFC trip to the Great White North? You're muted. I'm muted, my image is blurry, it's rough, it's rough out here. I am so tired. You know what, this video quality is reflective of how I feel inside after, I think we just saw what, like 27 straight UFC fights. That was a card, man.

Nice made event, nice made events. I had some good fights on there too, but I don't know if anyone else like me, man. And I love Edmonton. Shout out to Edmonton, a great look like a great host to the UFC as always. But I don't blame that crowd. They were a little gassed out at certain. points because for those of us watching at home in the comfort of our own homes with all kinds of like options to distract ourselves to not have to just zone in on the in cage action man i was still

spent i don't know guys maybe that should be the poll should ask the poll how like burnt out to people were by the end of the night no i'm not going to do that do you don't because i'm going to ask you a question uh related to that in just a moment but before we do that also joining us of course you knew he's going to be here bad is stash in the game mr three three 30, 24 himself. No sleeves, no mercy. Casey Lydden. Hi, Canada. He does have sleeves and mercy tonight, though.

Yeah. And real fact here, AK is actually blurry and pixelated in real life. It's even scarier. Yeah. Shout out Mitch Edberg. Yeah. What if Bigfoot, what if the problem is Bigfoot is blurry? A.K. To your point, this event felt very long.

Per the great Mike Bonn over at an MMA junkie, three hours, six minutes and 38 seconds of total fight time. UFC Edmonton is officially the third longest fight card in UFC history, which probably contributes to why it felt very long. We were talking about this on Slack internally. I felt bad because, you know, full disclosure, I had a wedding last night, and my morning and most of my afternoon was a bit rough today as I was recovering from that. And so I thought maybe this was just a me thing.

It felt like this was dragging on. And then I came to understand that everyone sort of felt this way. And so, okay, before we get into the particulars of the big fights, you know, we're going to talk about it, just we didn't get in at least i don't think we got a gymnastic score from you beforehand but kind of just give us a broad sentiment on like how how was this fight card overall uh with the benefit of hindsight now i thought we agreed i might just retire the uh gymnastics score just because there's so many cards and you know when you're when you're doing a gymnastics routine or like the way the system was going to be based it was supposed to be like you know judging all

judging on like the best of the best you know that's that's how you judge olympic or international like gymnastics you're looking at supposedly the best offerings you have and you're right from there like that's not what we get and and this card in fairness in fairness was slightly above like you know ufc a pex drudgery let's be honest they they did what they could they put uh former uc champion at the top you got a former ufc champion oh sorry say two-time uc champion in the top two time ufc champion in the co-main event. You stacked it with Canadian town, which we always say, if you're going to go on the road, please try

and put local fighters, I mean, I don't say local, not a lot of these fires from Alberta. But at least, you know, obviously you're going to Canada. You don't go there that often, put Canadian fighters on. And right, same thing. If you go to Brazil, put Brazilian fighters on it, go to England, get some British fires on there. Not necessarily everyone from the city, but at least from the country. It seems like a small

thing to ask. So they did that. So, yeah, I don't want to have to break out the gymnastics score that often these days. For this one, though, on paper, I wasn't as enthused as some were about like the prelims and the undercard so I probably would have gone like 7.5, 7.6.

It wouldn't have wouldn't even gone over eight as much as I liked. I like the how the top two fights looked on paper. Just thought there'd be a lot of decisions and not like super great decisions which I think it's how it turned out. But I mean, this is easy for me to say in retrospect. Well, hey, you got six out of nine Canadian fighters

with Victoria, I believe. How's yeah. much better than our last trip up up north. So you got that to look forward to. No Canadians in the main or co-main, and we're going to spend the bulk of our time on that. And your main event, let's just get to it. Brandon Moreno returns to the win column, AK.

I've been on a two-fight losing skid coming into this, a big narrative. A lot of the promo material was talking about Moreno saying, felt a little burnt out, decided I needed to take some time off after the Mexico City card took that time off. I'm feeling refreshed rejuvenated. And frankly, I think he looked very much like that coming in. Pitched nearly a shutout.

One judge did give Albazi a round. It was 50-45s on the other two scorecards. And pretty close to a flawless performance from the Assassin Baby. So, AK, let's just start right there. And kind of what are your thoughts on Moreno, how he looked, and what we just witnessed. I think he looked as good as some of us expected him to look. I know there was some, like, I don't think there was much concern.

I was just going based on how other media members were perceiving how he might look here. I think a lot of us picked Moreno. I don't have a comprehensive record of the media picks, but I'm pretty sure a lot of people picked Marino, just based on his track record. And the fact that his two-fight losing streak is very deceptive. That's such a, like if you were, if you were, running with any sort of narrative of like, oh my gosh, is Moreno? Like, has he lost his step?

Has he fallen out of his prime? I think the only way you would think that is like if you weren't really paying attention to the last two fights because the Pentosia fight was awesome. I scored it for Moreno. Even if you scored it for Pentosia, I think we can all agree Moreno looked fantastic in that fight. Royval fight a little bit muckier, but also a fight that I scored for Moreno. So you're coming off two splity city calls and that's really not the worst thing. And again, if you look at Albaazi, you're like, okay, well, this guy's also coming off a split call was a close one. He's clearly a good fighter. I think a guy who's going to be in the top 10 to 15 for some time, is he anywhere near the level of Moreno is really the question

you had to ask yourself if this fight had been booked like a year ago, what would you, what would the odds have been? And Moreno would have been probably a huge favorite. So the fact that the line was so close going in was a little, I guess not surprising because it's still a losing streak. But putting all that aside, ignoring all those narratives, if you just watched this fight, you would tell yourself, Marino is still. one of the three best flyweight in the world. I mean, the boxing, the striking was there. The takedown defense, I think Albazi's best chance was probably to win with his grappling.

He wasn't able to gain anything going. I think there was one moment. It was the second or third round where he got a takedown, was going to do that thing when you crawl in the guy's legs and just, you know, hold on. And Moreno literally just brushed him off. Never let him quite get his grip. Never let him get settled and just brushed him off and immediately stood up. And that I think if you were watching, you were like,

oh shit albazi's in trouble sure enough Moreno pieced him up and it was a pleasure to watch and again this is not an indictment of Albazi I think he's still got a lot of work to do could be a contender in the future he just happened to run again into a guy who if one

scorecard had gone his way would still be the UFC champion yeah so Albazi was officially credited with a takedown but that lasted all of three seconds frankly got dinged up in this fight Moreno, everything he was trying was working, a little bit of a slow start, but kind of built and built and built.

And at the end, in that final round, we saw him rock Al-Bazi kind of really start to try and put a stamp on this fight. Credits Al-Bazi, super tough dude, I mean, took a beating in stages of this. It was hurt several times and kind of showed a great poker face, battled through. Even did the Max Holloway point at the ground with 30 seconds left? It didn't kind of play out the same way, but, you know, credit to him coming in off a major layoff. And for Moreno, I do think, and he talked about in his post-fight speech, hey, man, I needed some time off to just kind of reset. I've been competing high rate. I want some time with the family.

And I thought he looked great out here. So, AK, with this win, Flyweight's a really interesting place right now, particularly the men's side of Flyweight. We do have it a UFC 310 coming up Alejandra Pantoja is fighting Kaia Sakura who is making his UFC debut I think we all agreed that if Albazi won he was probably going to get next in line

now things are a little interesting here for what's happening at Flyweight right now just because Brano Reval just picked up that big win over Tzua Tirov but he just lost to Pantosia and that was not a competitive fight whereas Moreno, many people thought Moreno actually deserved to beat Pantosia in their second slash third fight, depending on how you view tough. So the question here, A.K., Moreno was not specific as to what he wanted after this. Seems open to a lot of things.

He wants to take some time off. But where are we going with Brandon Moreno? I know you have a show about this tomorrow, but I want to talk about this now because I don't know what to do with Brandon Marano right now. Yeah, I don't know how much time he's going to take off. After the Royval loss, he said he was going to take time off, and he sort of did longer than usual, but barely. I remember I had to look back and see, like, his schedule when he was champion and he was coming up, it was kind of fighting once every six or seven months.

And the gap between Roy Val and this fight was, I guess, relative to him, like, in eternal eight months. He took one extra month off to compete, which really isn't much at all when you think about it. And he said he just, you know, the opportunity came along. And he just couldn't say, no, it was itching. He wanted to fight. So technically that one extra month, I guess, was really hard for him to take. So do I see him taking more than eight months off?

Again, I doubt it. I think we'll see him back in the summer of the latest summer of 2025, which I guess would be around eight months. And that's about it. But longer than that, I don't think so. I think we'll see him June, July. I would love to see him fight Pantosia again. I don't think it's totally out of the realm of possibility

if Pantosia beats Asakura, just because that, that, last fight was so close and so good. Moreno is a popular fighter, at least relative to fly weights. And we can, I don't, I'm the last person who would say ignore results in the ultimate fighter. But if you want to, if you're the UFC and you want to say it was only 0 and 2 Moreno to Pentosia, you could, you could fight it and say, well, ultimate fighter fights are just

efficient, it's not official. So officially, he's only down 02 in the series. So it's entirely possible. Things really got mucked up by like that caught Mokai of fight too with Mokai up getting released. We thought that that was going to provide some clarity. And then Roy Val holding off Tzuro Tira, that Tira was going to step into that title picture. So I still think the winner of this fight, of tonight's fight, Marino, sorry, could get the winner of the Asakura and Pantosha. Definitely if Asocura wins, I hope they don't go immediate rematch as much as I love Pantosha.

And I'd love to see a fresh matchup with the Assassin Baby and Osakura. It could happen. I genuinely have no idea. I'm fascinated to see how this plays out because if Ossacora does win, wouldn't shock me if they went to an immediate, but also Brandon Royval probably would deserve the crack at Ossikora should Kai kind of pull off that small upset

and become champion. It's a first E.C. fight. I'm just getting this out now. For your, no, please take this into consideration. I believe Brandon Moreno will fight Osuamabaya of next because he's fought everybody else. and that dude is winning and has a one hat and Brandon Moreno will not say no to anybody so is that's where we'll go with that is Moreno about to become like the flyweight max holloway

yes unless unless we do finally just pull the trigger on the so hoodo matchup which now would be a terrific time for it frankly but there doesn't seem to be a ton of momentum to make that fight happen for whatever reason so uh just and marano marano keeps saying like he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't he like he wants to eat more. You know, he keeps, I know he's joking about it. That was like the first thing he said. I want to eat. I want to eat.

It's like, hey, eat. You know what? Next fight. Don't get 10 pounds more on your off your weight cut, buddy. Go fight. Go fight to do. Enjoy that. Enjoy your tiramisu.

It's terrific. On the other side of this, though, AK, Amir al-Bazi is off almost like, it was like 18 months or something since he had fought before here. Commentary made a big deal of it. And I think to some extent, was I agreed with. He looked a little rusty to start and then never got going.

What were your thoughts on Albazi's performance? Does this make you reevaluate where you think his ceiling is? Is he a guy who's never going to fight for a title but be good? Or was this just a one-time setback against one of the very best fighters in the world? Yeah, I won't rule him out.

I think even if he hadn't been coming off a 500-day layoff, even if we got sort of the... People really hated that Kai Kar-Franz performance. I didn't think it was that bad. People could see my robbery review. I didn't even think it was that much of a robbery. Like, I would have scored it for Kai probably, but I didn't think it was that bad.

That is like universally regarded as a robbery. Every one time people will talk about it now. And I'm like, I'd go back and watch it. It wasn't like, I didn't think it was that bad. It wasn't a great fight for Albaazi. Don't get me wrong. But, you know, I don't think he was that bad. I think even if before the layoff,

if he had fought Moreno, you had had a similar result. He was dealing with a lot, though. I don't know if everyone knows exactly what happened. He had a neck injury. that pulled him out of his last flight. And then that had like lingering effects. But I think before he dealt with that, he had a heart condition it sounded like.

And then later had issues with the neck that were so serious. He said he couldn't feel, he lost a feeling in one of his arms. So a lot happened to this guy over the part of days. And I think it was a lot to ask him to come back. And again, face a guy who we now remember is one of the three best in the world in his division. And even though Moreno is not ranked in our pound for pound top 20 at the time right now, he might be like pound for pound one of the 20 best fighters in the world

maybe not based in recent results but if you're talking about skill level it's probably up there he's probably up there so that that's what al-Bazi lost to today how old is Al-Bazi he's like what 30? That sounds right but hold on 31 31 31 he just turned 31 he just turned 31

he just turned 31 Flyway's not a young man's division but I do think there's a path for him at some point to may fight for the title But I think most people would agree They wouldn't bet on it right now They wouldn't have been it right now And there's nothing wrong with that He's maybe just a notch below

Again, if you thought he lost the Kai Karat-Fans fight If you thought he'd obviously lost tonight Maybe he's just a notch below the top six, top seven And that's okay Like I said, I think he's gonna hang around This division for a bit So at this point Yes, I would be surprised

If he someday fights for a UFC title I think that's not going to happen Yeah, I think I didn't realize it coming in But this does feel a little like This was your opportunity opportunity and it's going to be tough tough road to ho to get get yourself back into the position you were but again i want to shout him out man tough as hell several points i thought that he could

have just given up the goat there and hung in dug in and uh produced a fun fight not a great fight not an amazing fight but fun enough uh and i suspect he will now be on tatsu or tire duty because that just makes a ton of sense but a k we got other things to talk about namely the co-main event Aaron Blanchfield ekes out a unanimous decision, 4847s across the board over former two-time strawweight champion, Rose Nam and Unis. And let's start right here, AK, this is less controversial than I thought it was going to be because I scored this fight for Rose Namunis and I was not alone in that. Nobody seems up in arms about this decision. I'm not seeing robberies, but how did you score the co-main event? Yeah, I would have leaned, I think, 48, 47 Blanchefield.

I think I was fine. I would have just gone with, I would have, I'm trying to find the result here on MMA decisions. I didn't see it up last time I was looking. It was a very clear scoring for the judges. They all gave Rose the first two in Blanchefield, the back three. No, I was trying to get a collection of the media results because I wasn't a lot on social media tonight, so I didn't see the general consensus. But I would have leaned towards Blanchfield. didn't have any problem with the scoring.

Definitely a close fourth round. Excuse me. That seemed to be the split one. And really, you can go other way. I think I was leaning towards Blanchfield just because, weirdly, weirdly, this is like a Dominicruz way of scoring. Like what I saw on the third,

I felt like the fight was starting to tilt in her direction. So my mind was probably like, oh, this is close, but probably a Blanchfield round. But I don't think 48, 47, Noam June, is this crazy at all. I don't mean to, I don't want to air out our dirty laundry. Do we want to talk to people about your live takes on the fight during?

You know what? They probably read your live blog. So I don't think it's- I don't have dirty laundry. I'm happy. I will discuss all things in public. So air away. I don't think it's any secret that you were not thrilled with young Aaron Blanchfield,

young 25 Aaron Blanchfield's game plan today. It was dumb as hell. You tweeted that. Okay, you tweeted round one, maybe the dumbest round of the year. I believe is what you'd say. Yes, and I'd stand by that. What did you say in the Slack? Various messages in the Slack essentially saying you had given up on Blancheville.

You had given up, she's not going to be a champion. Those first 10 minutes were the worst, like, truly, I cannot think of a worse way to have approached that fight. And I was, I was baffled by what was happening because she didn't do anything, She won the last three rounds. And again, I thought I gave round four to Rose not fine to give it to Aaron. I'm going to go rewatch and see if maybe I was getting caught into a narrative or something like that. But like the first two rounds, she did nothing. And it was not that Rose was doing a lot of cool stuff and she didn't have answers.

She just didn't do anything. She just stood there and was willingly engaging in this long range single shot kickboxing matchup. that she is uniquely bad at, at in general, and very uniquely bad. Like, that is the exact fight Rose once. And Aaron was like, yes, please, let us have the exact fight. You are very good at, and I am excruciatingly bad at. It was mind-boggling that she just seemed a brain fart. Like, I don't know what the hell was going on.

And coincidentally, when she stopped doing that, she then won the fight. So it was a real roller-grubilant. coaster as I was watching this because I have a lot of take stock in Aaron Blanchfield at this point in time. And I was quite upset that I was going to look like an idiot on the internet, which I never do. I always look like a genius, AK. So yeah, I was going through it until she got the memo and started fighting like Aaron Blanchfield. I see a young fighter working through some things. It is frustrating to watch because this is a young fighter.

given some very big opportunities and who I think a lot of us in the media had embraced. We had embraced the story of this 23-year-old, 24-year-old, 25-year-old, you know, whatever she was as we were sort of watching her come up, come up the ranks. And we were very excited about the possibility of this blue chip prospect that was going to win a title, again, by 25 or younger, and then just rule over the division for like three or four years. So it was great. I think in a way we fooled ourselves and may have heightened our own expectations because it's not like, it's not like Aaron was,

she was dominating most of her years to competition. It's not like she was getting these super highlight real finishes. We were kind of like, well, those will come with time, but just the fact that she's winning these very convincing 3027s. We kind of, and then she started getting some finishes, right? So it seemed like everything was going to plan, but then

big step up in competition with some of these opponents. And I think somewhere there there was a desync. Like I think maybe either the competition was, they pushed too fast, not that they had much of a choice because again, she was working away in rankings. It was time to fight the Madanahals. It was time to fight the Rose Navajunas.

But again, we have to tell ourselves this is, I think, nowhere near a finished product. So I'm always somewhat encouraged by fighters who, yes, don't look their best, may seem to be trending in a bad direction, but still find a way to win. She probably could have made her night a lot easier for herself, but this feels like, you know, a little bit easier said than done, right? I think Rose came out with the right idea of keeping her distance. Her hips were back a lot. She was circling a lot. That's no excuse for Aaron not to get in there and muck it up and take her down. But, you know, I think Navajoia's game plan was geared towards a stop of the takedowns.

It didn't work in the last few rounds because Aaron Flanchfield is a really good fighter who, yes, did not put together a complete 25-minute performance. That's fine. But I don't think we've seen the best of her. I'm sure we haven't. But my issue is exactly what you said. she didn't muck it up like outside of the not shooting any takedowns for 10 minutes which is like malpractice frankly uh she like her whole she is a bad striker like there is no two way around she can be effective she is bad like she is very bad at it it is ugly it is inefficient sometimes

it works because she is very tough and previously it's worked because she did what she did in the final rounds of this fight she is willing to engage She is, honestly, it is not that dissimilar. She is like a slightly better version of McKinsey Dern in this fashion in that she is tough. And so she can take the shots and she will just get in there and sling them. And that, frankly, that got to Rose Down the stretch. And it's how she has always fought, except for the first 10 minutes of this when she thought she was going to be a kickboxer. And she's very, very bad at that.

I was encouraged by the ability to recognize this is not going well and to, turn it on and just get it done. Again, did not have a lot of room to play with that she can't do that against Alexa Grasso. That's not going to work. And that takes me to our next point here. After this win, you know, you've called it a learning experience that we think she's going to get better. And I do largely agree with that. She is still right here in the mix of the upper tier of this competition. She is, she called Lexa Grosso out. That frankly seems like a fight that will likely happen makes a ton of sense given the division. And so how do you feel about that callout, AK,

and how do you feel about Mitchell's chances based on what we just saw and what we have seen Grasso do through her trilogy of Bouts with Valentina Shubchenko? I really like the call out. And if we're going by just the third fight that Grasso had to Valentina Shepchenko, I actually really like Planchfield's chances. She does have to focus on her strength. I've seen a lot in the comments. saw law on social media, we were talking about it,

it does feel like someone who's mixing, and I'm being serious this time, mixing the martial arts too much. You're mixing the martial arts too much. You know what your strength is. And listen, she's had some good moments on the feet, you know, in the past. Like, she had a great highlight, Real Knockout,

and Invicta, the head kick. So, like, I understand there's a part of her and her team that are like, man, like, for her to be a world champion, she has to shore up this striking. We know she can grapple. And I think, again, this is the part where they're retooling, and we're seeing a lot of growing pains, right?

But that version of Grasso, that fought Chorchenko in the third fight, I don't know, what was going on with her that night. She did not look great. I mean, she looked worse than Blancher. If we're criticizing Blanchel's performance, Grasso looked terrible against Valentina Nishchenko. And Chichenko is one of the greatest women's fighters of all time, but still, like we said,

based on what we saw on the other two fights, it shouldn't have been that bad. So if Blancho comes in with the same grappling-heavy game plan, I actually like her chance of beating Grasel a lot. So I'm excited to see that fight. At the same time, like I said, maybe that was just an off-knife for Grasso and the one that fought Shevchenko to controversial draw and beat Shefchenko in the first fight. Maybe that's the one comes in and teaches Blanchfield a lesson. So I don't know if that's where the UFC is going to go with it.

It seems doubtful, if I'm being honest, I think they'd want to keep them away for now. There are other options of flyweight. There's actually a lot of probably interesting names for both. But if that fight does happen down the road, I actually would. I actually do like Blanchville's chances. The issue, AK, is she, she's not mixing the martial arts. It's frustrating. She's doing, she's doing the martial arts separately together.

Like, she's not blending them. There was no striking into a takedown. It was striking, oh, now we are close to each other and I will grab you. Like, it was, there's a lot of room for her to get better, which could be very positive. But she, she seems to have certainly plateaued in some of her. development at this point. So I am genuinely very interested in a Grasso fight, but no real wrong way to do this. Macy Barber is kind of hanging around there on a big wind street, kind of in that same

tier of conversation. Natty Ice, you know, nothing, a lot of options. So you are right on that. On the other side of this, though, Rosamie used now her second loss at this up at this weight class, we didn't hear from her in her, post-fight speech. Again, I thought she was very competitive. I personally scored it for her. Where do we go with Rose? What is, where is Rose's purpose? Because I maintain that she should still be a straw weight. She obviously has two wins over the current strawweight champ. I think that is her natural

weight class. And now that she's suffered two losses here, do we think it may be time for her to say, okay, this isn't going to happen, I'm going to go back to my home? Or is this just a close enough fight, she's going to hang around and try and keep making it work at 125. Oh, she's definitely going to hang around. She's definitely going to hang around. I mean, I'm with you, though. Should she? No, she's pretty damn strong, I will say.

I thought strength would be more of an issue at 125. And I think tonight, I guess it kind of was much Plansfield turned it on. But there was moments early when she kind of reversed that take down on Blanchfield. Yes, it has a lot to do with her technique. Rose has always had great technique. But she's strong. She's probably strong enough for the division. but it does feel like at the worst moments that size differential is going to get to her.

And again, it may lead to moments like this where it looks like she's doing great for a couple of rounds. And then, you know, the bottom falls out and she's just not able to stop takes down. She's not able to stop some of the fighters from walking her down. So it just doesn't make a lot of sense. I know she's chasing the Valentina fight. She said many times she loves Valentina. I think they've trained together like their friends. But it's just like it would be a really cool fight.

I think in her mind she has this idea that if she fought Valentina, you know, it's just something she needs to cross off her list. It's like, oh, I don't know. You know, like John Jones, Deep Mayo, Jed, you love that fight, you know. So you can understand why Rose would be motivated to fight someone she sees as a great peer, maybe idolizes. But it's a long way to get into that fight now. It feels like it's something that would happen when maybe Valentina loses the title down the road. So I don't know what the path is for Rose to get that within the next, like, year.

Seems unlikely, seems unlikely. but I think she's kind of enjoying not cutting weight. I think like you said, she could look at the scoring and say, oh, well, you know, maybe I just dropped that one round or I felt I did enough. The judges got it wrong. Why should I change divisions?

Let me stick around in 125 and see what happens. So it would really surprise me for next fight was at 115. But it is always awkward when like, man, she has two wins over the 115 champion. I know she feels like maybe she doesn't need to do anything else down there. She's done it all in her former division. but I really think she can still be contented down there she's only one again I'm TEP to keep bringing up ages but she's what 32

32 she doesn't turn 33 until next year so I would like to see her at 115 sometime but it won't be next I genuinely think the fastest path to a fight with chavchenko is back at 115 get the belt and try and make a champ champ fight happen she already talks of wily doing that if you know jeanjarova deserves a title fight if Tatiana Suarez ever fights again is obviously sort of in that mix. But if Rosejobs back down, you can convince me they would immediately throw her into a title shot. And that seems better because frankly, I think 125 is a failed experiment and she should give up on it. It is not that she cannot compete.

She obviously can. She was very competitive tonight. She's very competitive in the lost of Manalfuro. The issue to me is that she does not have power at this weight class pretty definitively. Blanchefield's tough, but she, her power has not carried up. She did not have, like, monstrous power at Strawweight, but she had enough, and it could be dangerous at times. And I think she got hurt a couple of times tonight by Blanchfield. I think the power coming back at her is also a little more than she is really built to withstand at this point of her career.

So, yeah, I think she'd go back to Strawweight, but we'll see. And if she sticks around, she can stick around and still just be in fights. She's very marketable. People love her. They loved her tonight out in Edmonton. So, you know, kind of do what we're going to do. A couple of other notes here. First, A.K.

Can I try me? We do have. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Actually, I want to. Sorry. When I was watching this fight, I had flashbacks to Rose versus Carla. First 10 minutes, I thought it was the same fight.

But even, even has to fight. as fight went on. I mean, this fight was, that fight was horrible to watch. This fight was not as horrible watch, but still wasn't a great fight to watch. How much, a lot of the talk coming into this, at least with some of the commenters were like, oh, which rose will show up, which rose will show up, you know? Like sometimes Rose just doesn't show up. Was any of that there tonight or did Rose just lose? I think, I think some of that is there. Yeah. Yeah, I think some of that's there because I that that rose is rose does not want to grapple with people because it does not work out for her when she is not in charge of the grappling to me like if you go i've rewatched the carlify a lot

even though it's bad because they're just trying to make sense of it and it is entirely that rose i rose has become there are and this is not just these but it's the most pronounced when she is facing people who really want to grapple her in that she is super defensive about wanting to lose the fight. I don't want to lose the fight. And if I get taken down, and we saw two takedowns were landed in this fight. And she held them functionally for the end of the round as soon as she got them. Like when the takedown was achieved, that was it.

Rose was done for the rest of that round. I thought a lot of the Carla fight was, I just don't want to engage with her at all because as long as I'm standing, I will win. Thought there was a lot of that tonight. And just in general, when she is counted, counted entirely she feels more free to engage in offense and kind of be her best self and when it is a competitive fight or a reasonable fight the to me super armchair psychology could totally be wrong it feels like she is so afraid of losing that she doesn't try to win does that make sense

absolutely and i felt i know i want to hear your opinion we talked a little about this on slack i think it was the second round she got a good a hip throw or something i can can't remember, but she ended up... She had a step across from the thing and... But Rose ended up in a solid side control position on top of Aaron, and she immediately got up and just continued as, all right, no, let's do this standing up. That to me, given up that position told me like, oh, Rose is fighting not to lose. And that is just not a way, I don't know, she lost to fight because of that.

And not because of that moment, but maybe the overall mindset. And I think in the moment, I think maybe you thought that. That was good strategically, but I don't know, psychologically, is that kind of what you're kind of saying, like when Rose fighting not to lose by giving up that very, because Rose is an excellent grappler. She's in a dominant position over probably a better grappler, but still, I don't know, I just felt, I just felt that was odd. I didn't think of it that way.

I do think strategically that that is just a better plan. She was clearly winning the exchanges on the feet. So just bail and get back to where you are doing the best. But I do think you're probably right that there is some of that is speaking to an overall mentality that's negative. But, A.K., do you have any thoughts? Like, are we crazy? Are we barking up the wrong tree? Or is Rose fighting too passively for whatever reason?

I think some of the criticisms we had of Blanchefield, you know, about like changing your game plan, sort of growing pains and then that. I think we're seeing a little bit of that with Rose starting from the Carla Asparza fight. That's really when things started to go wrong. There was elements of this kind of rose, this tactical rose in the second Zhang fight. Maybe the second JJ fight, but I think people would agree she was a lot more. She just was generally seemed a lot more aggressive, a lot more effective at 115. So maybe that's not fair to say. But whatever adjustments she's had to make, again, to deal with maybe larger opponents,

maybe with giving up reach, I think it's, I don't think you guys are over. overreacting all. Like, these are very real tangible things. And, and that's not to say she can't go back to that. I think, Jed, that's one reason you and I keep pushing the 115 thing is like we feel like she goes down to straw weight, just out of necessity out of habit, out of, you know, the way those matchups are down to that way class, we'll see a little bit more of the vintage form, the fan-friendly form that people seem to like from her. But I think in her mind, I think for her team, they see this as a mature way of fighting, not always hunting for the finish. you know, making their opponents sort of come to them, making their, sort of trying to find weird ways to break their opponent's rhythm. And it's not always fun to watch. It's sometimes quite miserable to watch, unfortunately, even when she's winning. But it's hard to go back. It's hard to go back.

I think these are, like, big tactical changes that they've made. And I think they're comfortable with them because they don't feel like they've been, like, blown out in any of these fights, right? And that is not a bad point. They have not. Her losses have been competitive in all the ways. I will just counterpoint and say The last time she was fun was the first Wiley

Fight. The second Wiley Fight is a decent Like it's a fine fight But the last time Rose was like Thug Rose, the people that The person that people gravitated to That's almost four years ago at this point It was a long time. So I will be interested to see where she goes

But we got other things to get to for us We got breaking news, Jed Breaking news I mean to get people excited Performance bonus is No, no, no, don't, don't, don't. Performance bonuses and gate information. I don't know if you guys saw this.

Oh, I did see the gate information. I saw the performance bonus. Oh, you did see the bonus. So we don't need to guess. Okay, but let's just talk about the, well, to get that in a second, guys, but according to UFC, this official on their website, gate 2.6 million attendance, 16,439. Asterisk, the highest grossing UFC flight night in history in North America.

Now, guys, if this sounds familiar, I think this has also been said about the last two times they've gone on the road, right? Wasn't that they went to like Nashville? Where'd they go, guys? St. Louis. In the U.S. St. Louis and, what am I for here? Denver.

They went back to Denver. Oh, that was a while ago. It's Salt Lake City. Oh, that's for pay-per-view. That was pay-per-view. Yeah, that's pay-per-view. Louisville. Louisville.

Last I went to Louisville. They'd also broken the record that time, blah, blah. And this is, guys, this is how invincible, like, I'm not, I'm not questioning the numbers. This is how invincible the UFC product is. I think they did, like I said, I think they did a good job getting name value on here with Namadunis and Miranda Moreno, putting on Canadian fighters. That's really all, I think, look, fans who, if you haven't been to the city in a while, asked for, right? Because it had been, what, like five years since they've been to Edmonton or something. So people are starved.

This is not adjusting for inflation, by the way. So I don't know. You guys, you math quizzes out there tell me how much this 2.6 gate, like, how good it is compared to actually whatever the number was last time. You guys are lost smarter than me. But again, it wouldn't surprise me if it's still a high, high number, one of the two, three, four highest gates because again, they've raised the ticket prices just keep going up. But the demand is still there. People keep paying it. And it just shows you, man.

It doesn't matter what they put in these fight-night cars. People will come out. It is a powerful, powerful, powerful brand. Printing money is what they're doing. And as a result, Dave Shaw, who did the post presser, has been thrown out several times. but kind of reiterated, they anticipate going to the apex fewer or less in 2025, doing more road shows as well,

not abandoning the apex, but maybe mixing, getting to a happier number, certainly for fans who want the O.C. to come to them. And for us at home, who would like a real crowd for fights because crowd was very lively tonight, AK. We do need to give out the bonuses

because we did not mention those. So no fight of the night this, evening for performance bonuses and it's extremely easy to guess who got him. Yasmin Yassadavish, Dustin Stolfitz, Charles Jordane and Yusuf Zalal all getting performance bonuses. A.K., let me run down the other results on this card. Then I'm going to ask you for your unsung hero of the night, the other person who deserves some shine and we'll keep on moving.

But other than the main and co-main, Brinson Hibero defeats Kyle Machado split decision in in a fight that no one will ever talk about ever again. Yasmin Yasadavish gets a Bravo choke finish over Ariana De Silva in the third round. Got her a bonus. Dustin Stolfeits, arguably the performance of the night. Brutal knockout of Marc Andre Bechiel. Mike Malott back in the win column, doing it big for Canada. Defeits a game, Trevin Giles, unanimous decision.

Amon's a hobby beats Pedro Munoz and makes me look stupid. Charles Jordane, shout out, EKC, sorry. Sorry for your boy, Victor Henry. Charles Jordan choked him out and got 50K for his trouble. Yusuf Salal, also a tremendous performance arm triangle choke over Jack Shore. Alexander Romano of Rodrigo Nassiminto was exactly what we all thought it would be. Romanov wins a decision. Sergei City takes a controversial split decision over Garrett Armfield that he himself

doesn't believe he deserved Cody Gibson defeats Chad on Heller and Jamie Lynn Horth takes a spitty over Ivana Petrovich so AK 13 fights one of the longest cards in UFC history. We talked about the Maine, talked

about the Co-Maine. Who did the heavy lifting outside of the top two? Who is the person who deserves for us to be talking about them right now and in this coming week? Well, Jed, I put up a poll. who was the biggest winner at UFC Edmonton,

Brandon Moreno, Aaron Blanchfield, Jasmine Yosadavish, and my fourth option, who was also fourth in the poll right now, and who I keep spelled with an extra S in his name, gosh darn it, you know, because that's how good he was today, because he won by submission.

The Suss is by submission. It's for submission. Yusuf Zalalal, like it needs to be talked about. This guy was very promising when he was in the UFC four years ago, won his first couple of fights, first three fights, excuse me. And then he runs into Ilya to Poria in his fourth UFC fight and doesn't get knocked out.

Pretty good guy. Pretty good. Then loses. And then goes winless for four straight fights. So, and Wu Choi decision loss, Sean Woodson, decision loss, and Desmond Blakshar, a draw. So then he goes back to the regional scene. He does it the right way and wins three straight fights, all by finish. First round just runs through regional competition, gets that callback.

And now Billy Q, Jarnar, Aaron's, Jack Shore wins, fantastic stuff. He really, I thought his post-fight, Mike work was great. He really seems like the blueprint for things don't go your way, your first time around in the UFC, book some smart fights that help you get your confidence back while also still keeping your skills developing. And then, you know, when the time right comes back to take that call, take that call. Because when you get that UFC fighter tag next to your name, you can probably get a few extra bucks going to other. You can probably go to Bellator. you could probably go to pfl you could probably go to one you can probably go like it it does add a lot

to your resume right um i think about like sage north cut like when he got cut from the ufc he immediately went to a very big organization at one and as we know things didn't go great there um what if sage had gone to i'm looking at where youssef went sparta combat league in colorado and just fought some guys who frankly were probably built up as an hand like their enhancement talent they were made to make him look good what if he had done that because i think that's what usuf's Zalal did and I think there's also been great six straight wins now overall and he looks like a sleeper contender at 145 very deep division probably still not like the top 25 but again that's just says how good the

division is not how and not any criticism of his skills so for me he's the guy to talk about because I feel like his next appearance would be on a main card against a top 20 25ish guy and we'll get a really good idea of what Zalalal has to offer and it's a great shout out Zalal is almost a lock to make the all-violence team. When I do that at the end of the year, Tupouria will be the all-violence featherweight. But second team or third team or for Zalal,

it's been an unbelievable 2024 for him. And a fight that I did not think would go as easy for him. Jack Schro was competitive early, but Zalal knocked him out and submitted him, you know, the old club and sub maneuver. Great performance. I will shout out, not because this was a great fight, not because this is as good or as interesting a performance as some of these others,

but because I will begrudgingly give the man his flowers. Amon's a hobby beating Pedro Munoz. It's a big win. I did not think he would do that. I also do not think Pedro Munoz fought a particularly smart fight either, but neither here nor there, Amon's hobby is on a big win streak at this moment, called for a top 15 opponent last time.

He gets Pedro, who's been top 15, of in the fringes and summarily beats him no controversy here just a clean win for a guy who i still don't understand what he is good at um and like can't really think of like the amends a hobby highlight reel but appears to have really found himself uh in a good spot and should get a ranked opponent and so you got to shout him out because pedro munoz is really tough guy if you beat him credit to you man like not only only very good fighters have beaten pedro so Uh, shouts to that. Shouts to the rest of the people, uh, particularly those who got finishes to try and make this extremely long event, uh, a little less long.

And Casey, hop on in here. Do you have anything else that you would like to shout out? I intentionally did not get out to the villain Charles Dordane because we hate him. But, uh, any, anything else before we go to the peeps. Um, actually, I want to give, I want to give Charles Jordane his flowers. Um, I know. Victor Henry was really prepared for this. In camp, we, him put lots of emphasis on guillotine defense, but yet still got him. First time in Victor Henry's long career, I think 32 professional fights that he's,

first time he's been finished by guillotine. So it was, he did it. And Jordane looks really good at 35. I don't know what a selling is, but he looked healthy. he fought well and Charles Jordane at under 35 pounds could be a player so I will give him his flowers and that's that's very honorable of you yeah making the drop to 135 I'll need to see more but certainly a good start over a guy who's incredibly durable in Victor Henry so credit to him and also credit to you AK because I don't know if you've paid attention

I think tonight you may have locked up our fantasy season. It's not set in stone, but with Shaheen Al-Shoddy only getting 100 points for Aaron Blanchfield. 125, 125. It was 125, correct. He got the 125, but that is, he is now considerably behind you with only Shavcott left to play. You have John Jones, Anne Osamot, Morsiakhanov,

And unfortunately for our dear Mike Heck, while Mike Malat got him 100, he need a little more. He only has a few people left. One of those is Wiley Zhang, who does not appear to be fighting this year. Alessandro Costa, unclear if he's going to fight. So I think tonight it's not official, but you may well have locked up the inaugural fantasy season by doing nothing. But you know what I did? I drafted great fighters and fights with real stakes, unlike the coward, Jehina O'Srii, who drafted, and I used this respectfully to the fighters,

is really more an insult to Sean than the fighters. Random assholes, okay? That was his draft strategy. Let's literally throw some names out here. Rebellus to Spain, Umar C, Ramazon Tamirov. These are deep fighters. I guarantee almost that Sheen could not pick out of a lineup. And yet he brazenly drafted these fighters thinking,

oh, they're in these big mismatches. They're all going to get like knockouts or subs and post-fight bonuses. And on several of these occasions fell very, very flat. So I'm very happy. I know it's not quite wrapped up yet, but I'm feeling pretty good. There is a mathematical. There's a mathematical out for Shane to catch you. And there's a mathematical while for Mike to catch you, even with a couple of people not competing.

But that is also presuming John does not win. If John wins, it's over. And I have to tell you. John Jones. I think you're going to do okay. I'm pretty confident. Congratulations. And you did that even with drafting Peyton Talbot, who's not going to compete this year.

That should count. The fight is booked. It's booked this year. That should kid. It's a fight for January. That's to count. draft them in the next season which we'll do in January. Okay, just wanted to give that update because while we were waiting around, I pulled the numbers.

And it's a terrific season for you, okay, well done. But Casey, one of the peeps have to say, because this is your show now. We won't go that long. We don't need to. It's already kind of late on the East Coast. And nobody's like that pumped about USC Edmonton, unless you guys are. And if you are, you know the deal. Fire in your chats.

Super chats get priority. We'll hang around to answer some cues and then get on out of here. All right. So super chats first. First super chat from our great friend, Stephen. Stephen. Boys, Jed, wide pants number two flyweight. Sohudo Joe B.

I don't think this needs that much explanation. Sohudo, his flyweight run was. solid, but he won the belt and immediately left. So like, okay. And then Joe B, obviously a great fighter. He did not win the belt and never won the belt. And that docks you fairly major points in my book. Like, if you were never the best guy,

you need to have an overwhelming case to be the number two guy. And while I would like to believe that Joseph Benavides would have had a long rain if Demetius Johnson didn't exist. He didn't. And Pantosia, like I said, on the ranking show, Pantosia has nine wins over ranked fighters. No other U.S.C. champion is approaching that right now. It is a very good run, even if it's a little more low key.

And so he's the number two flyweight. I think that's, I don't think that should be that up for debate. Unless I'm wrong, do you guys think I'm wrong? Is he not? Yeah, I'm a huge, I'm a huge Joby fan. I'm not such a huge Suhudo fan. I'd rather make a case for, like, Joe B, than Suhudo, but I get it. Suhudo has the Mighty Mouse win.

Very close fight, by the way, the Mighty Mouse win. Joby has a win over Henry Zahudo. Also a very close fight. You can go back and look at that one. Pretty close fight. There was a point deduction in there. So, I mean, if you don't want to count that too much to Jobi's credit, I understand. But again, if we're just talking official results, Suhudo has Mouti Mouse, but Benavides has Sehudo.

I also think Suhudo just did more at 125. But, yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't put either of them over Pantoja. Because, again, even if Pantosia is just not counting the title fight, he has massive, he beat Moreno before they fought for the title. He has a massive wins on his resume. So, yeah, very comfortable with pants number two. Sohudo just the way, gosh, just the whole, his whole career once he finally won a U.C. title, it's just gives you a frigging headache. So no, no, no, no number two for me. Yeah, if Sohudo had stuck around, but he didn't.

He moved up. And to me, that's always a thing in these arguments where it's like, I think this is a lot about Dustin Poirier. Because Dustin Poirier's career is total is amazing. And his lightweight run is very, very good. But there's also a big chunk of his career that is at featherweight. And like that if he had been a lightweight the whole time, maybe he'd have an even better run. It's just when you do the bouncing in weight classes, you get some other. benefits to that you get to be champ champ,

champ, et cetera, et cetera. But your divisional status by definition takes it. Real quick, for pants. I agree. Pants, I kind of reluctantly given the number two spot, just because I want to give him to Joe B, but he just came at the wrong time. I mean, basically.

But does the, is he kind of locked his number two? Or if he loses the Kai? Is he like, do we kind of, I don't know, change this history, like how we look at it or? I don't know. It's a good question. Yeah. I don't know. It's a good question.

I would say it's probably his for now, though you could make arguments for Davis and Figurato, you know, like there are arguments for other people. And it will depend on the next few years play out. The gap between pants and number three is very, very small, whereas the gap between number two and Demetrius is a giant chasm. Like, we're not being two to Demetrius is, it's great, but he is a long way away from that. Yeah, like if Demetrius is the UFC, pants is PFL. Nice.

Nice. Well, plus. Well, well done. Like, Pants is not Israel addition to as a middleweight. Like, Izzy's clearly the second best middle weight ever. Pants ain't that. It's just, I think he's number two. Yeah, for now he's done the most.

All right. Are we going to say anything else? A.K. You good? I have nothing, I have nothing more to add. Appreciate it. I'm still trying to find media scores for the two top two fights. Everyone fell asleep.

Yeah, people. made decisions. They just, we're done. They just, I don't blame them. I don't blame them. Nah, man.

Just take the night off. That was just taking it long. I don't blame them. Yeah, we'll see it by Monday. I've never seen him and made decisions. They do half the card.

Like, you know what? We're out. We're out. How long is this card? The biggest two fights? No, thanks. Okay.

Not interested. All right. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you, Stephen. Okay. Killet Jr. Killis Jr. Moreno.

Oh, fire emoji, fire emoji, fire emoji, fire emoji, BingRips and your country is cool, A.K. This is very positive message from Akillas. Thank you, Akillas. I'm sorry. I wish New York Rick was still around to hear these positive messages because I know you're his favorite, you were his favorite MMAFighting.com member, but who's that?

You know, he's also a journalist. He's in the industry. New York, I never heard. He's a guy from New York. Sounds like he sucks. Yeah. Well, he's okay. to know my country is cool but your country is great yeah cool I'd rather meet

Canada Rick he sounds cooler yeah Edmonton Rick rolls right off the tongue thank you Keita Jr super chat coming in from Stephen Stephen Parker Porter, Justin Horns, you see. This is the man what he wants. Yeah. Thank you much, Stephen. I mean, why is Parker Porter cut when Alexander Romanov and Ruggia and Nassiminto are still? And honestly, they may not, apparently in his post-fight scrum, Romanov said that that was the last fight in his contract.

Would not stun me if the promotion opted not to resign him. I'll be still up. Who's been, Romanov? Yeah, he's his for his contract. Come on. He's not smite of his contract. I want to.

I love Alexander Romanov. I take great joy in him, but, uh, I would not be up in arms as they're like, we're just not offering you a contract. Go fight Francis. Yeah. Francis, come on versus Romanov. Let's go. It's the top 15 heavyweight.

Romanoff is still my, he's like my, uh, my Jake Matt. Like, you know, yeah, you're Jake Matthews. He's my Jake Matthews. Like, I still believe Romanoff was my Jake Matthews for a while. Oh, you was, okay. I love Romano. I was like he can wrestle. What other heavyweight can wrestle?

I don't know. Actually, he can fight for six minutes and then he can't. I do have a ton of respect for him. I said this in our slack. I love that he got like, he was jacked Ramanov for one fight. He realized that it made no difference and that lifestyle is much harder. And he is, he was. the flabbiest he's ever been tonight,

so much so that the commentary team noted it during the like announcements. Man, he used to be like kind of built. And now he is, yeah. Yeah. Yes. He was coming in to trim 240. That's not the case this evening.

Way to go, Romanov. Choose half-guyen. You know what? He won. He won. He won. 327 on one card. So, I mean, he was.

man. Thirteen of all cards. Excuse me. Swept him. Shut out. Shut out. He does look like a, to me, like a middleweight with about extra 100 pounds around him.

I love that, man. Did you see what, did you see Moikano? Did you see Moikano's tweet? No. He was like, I'm convinced all heavyweights are just like guys we don't want to cut down to 205. Like prove me wrong. And I'm like, I know.

Or middleweight, maybe sometimes. Like a lot of, I mean, Jared Cannonier, seriously was that. Mm-hmm. So he's not wrong. Brian Battle. I mean, do you guys ever see the Brian Battle transformation? Oh, yeah.

Oh, did he used to be a big boy, too? Oh, did you not know that? Oh, yeah. He said he, before he got into fighting, he was over like 200 pounds. And then he actually fought it heavyweight. He fought a heavyweight like a long, long, long time. It doesn't even look the same. Like, if you look at the pictures, like you feel like it's not the same guy.

Wow. I didn't know that he's a Walter right now, right? Right. Now he's a 170. Yeah, very, very nice looking 170. That's awesome. All right. Thank you.

Fine. Learning so much today. BJ Penn thought it had to wait because he's the king. BJ forever. Charles. Why can't Pat Berry in the corner ever? STFU for us. I didn't notice it.

Was he loud? He like normally is, but I didn't. They did do corner cam. I think it's all about. I think during the corner camp, he was talking the entire time. He was talking in Cesson. I don't know if that was during the entire fight, but that's what.

people on TV saw. So it did come off as like, oh, wow, he's just constantly talking. And the crowd wasn't like loud. So you could basically hear it's, there were moments during the co-main event. It definitely felt like the apex, even though there were 17,000 people there. You know, so you could hear, you could hear all the corners. So, um, I don't know, we'll ask Pat Perry why. That's his job.

Yeah. You don't want your corner. Yeah, you don't want your corner being quiet as kept, right? I mean, you know, so I don't want to talking all the time, but he's doing his job. All right. Thank you, Charles. Andrew, gosh. Why hasn't Kai Kar-France been in the title talk at Flyway?

Because he's lost to the people that are in front of him is my general answer. Do you guys? I mean, like, he did just brutally knock out Steve Ersig. But before that, Brandon Marino dusted him up. And while many people do not agree with the decision, he did lose to Amir al-Bazi. so yeah he also like is pretty regularly mentioned in title he fought he fought for the interim flyway title already and then there's the obazi split call and that's about it he hasn't fought that much yeah just frankly in the last like two years he hasn't fought that much so i don't know how close

to the type like to the title pitch you want to be but he does get mentioned pretty frequently as like oh if he gets a big win here gets a big win if he if he had beaten albazi he would have been right in the thick of it so um yeah he only five two fights ago he fought for for interim. Is he booked for anything right now? Am I forgetting? Okay. He's just like not in the news cycle because once he gets to me, he's,

he's one big victory away from. Yeah. That's all. So he's how to talk. I'm going to guess that Andrew is more talking that specifically we were talking about kind of the title picture and his name was pointedly left out right now. And let's say because he does need another win. But there was like after he knocked out Ersag and it was.

was like, who the hell is fighting pants next? Because there was no obvious choice. It was like, I don't know, could you throw him in there? Like, he's kind of around, but he needs a big performance, a big win over somebody. And I just don't know who that's going to be because he's already fought the dudes above him fairly recently. I'm looking at the, sorry, I'm looking at the 306. So that was just the main card, right? The main card 306.38 at the time.

Oh, yeah, I think that's correct. Holy shit. No, I think that's the actual fight time. Fight time. Oh, I'm sorry. That was the fight. That is the fight time. Yeah.

Of the 13 fights collective. Right. I'm sorry. And that's that. You said that before. You said that before. Yeah. And if Derek Lewis went and that card one went, when it went to decision, it would have

broken the record. Would have broken the record. That would have been hilarious. That would have really funny. I'm sure. Sure. That's comedy. That's what comedy is.

That is what I was thinking. I was thinking how. funny that would be. Highest grossing UFC event in sorry UFC fight night in North America guys. Have some respect.

Look, you got your money's worth. You got your money's worth. You got a lot of fight per you got a lot of fight per dollar if you attended and we're there

from the very beginning to the very end. Yeah. Thank you, fighters. Don't, don't, yeah. All right. And our last super chat. Stephen Dawson

Can we talk about the judging tonight? Armfield should have won 3-0 Brinson Hibero with the stunning robbery two despite being outstruck in every round round. You can't get me to talk about the Hibero-Machado fight as a robbery. You're just not going to do it.

You're not going to do it. I looked at that fight. I'm sorry, the numbers do not tell the story. I watched that fight with my own eyes. Neither guy looked like they deserve to win Jack nor shit. It was bad, man. I like Kyle Chado, God bless him representing Canada.

Like, that was rough. And maybe his last shot, Owen, 2 at heavyweight. I thought he looked, like, physically look great down at 205. I'm like, oh, this is it. Like, he's just not a heavyweight. Like, he's not a heavyweight. This is where he's supposed to be. And he kind of fought like a really shitty heavyweight.

And I don't mean that anywhere near... That's what he is. Yeah, apparently. And Brinson, a guy with, like, you know, pretty good knockout power. didn't, I don't think he landed some good shots. Let me say. Machado has a good shit. I don't want to say Havarra landed nothing. He landed some good shots. I don't want to take it away. But did he come close to like a pilot rail knocking or anything? No. No, I don't think so I'm not calling that a robbery. Armfield City, much stronger case. City himself said after that he thought he lost. So you guys, you guys making that what you will. I frankly just did not watch Armfield City. I was building some stuff. for us. So I have no things until Citi said it. And then you kind of look at the numbers like, oh, it seems bad.

The feature fight, that's, I want to, and this is a little bit irrational, and I recognize that, we should really only use the term robbery when it's an outcome that somebody cares about because no one can possibly care about this. I, like you, AK, I watched that fight. I stared at it for 15 minutes with my eyeballs. And I can't tell you anything that happened in it. And I was focused doing my job watching it because it was just nothing. They're just, they fought, nobody did anything memorable.

Who cares? I am sure the fighters care. It is significant to them. We should not care about things like that because there's too much other stuff to care about. than the Brinson Hibaro, Kyle Machado, judging. That's just not going to be me.

That was too short. It was way too high on the card. It was just way too high in the card. Well, I still do not understand why that was the feature fight baffling, but.

I will, let me tell you, I am going to promise this right now. I will promise this right now. If someone out there via some sort of free website, I don't know, how do people blog for free,

you can blog for free somewhere, right? I don't want some to spend money. WordPress. us find word use wordpress or something if you if you write a robbery review of hibero and machado if you write a robbery review tag me on twitter at al-alander kili i will retweet it i'll retweet i will read it yes i'll for sure read it i will retweet it i will comment i would like out of reply to anything to boost it if you take the time to do this and sincerely sincerely like it can't just be like a blurb like oh do that do like put a little bit of effort into it look at one of my

rubber reviews and like don't do exactly that but do something similar i will retweet you so aspiring m-ma writers and masochists go watch this fight again write it up give me give me 75 to a thousand words on it i will retweet you i i mean what a what an absolute hero oh you are okay am i or am i like am i like Am I like jigsaw from the saw movies at this point? Am I like, am I just screwing with people? I mean, it's pretty cruel. I was trying to see if I still have. Can I be sued for this?

Casey, can I be sued? Can you ask me? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, this is torture. This is by putting out the Machado-Hibero challenge. Like did I hashtag Cabrero challenge? Yeah, I'm sure it's bringing some sort.

This is some sort of international war crime. I got to check. Yeah, I got to check the Geneva Convention. Yeah, whatever. You know. Damn, that was bad. I feel like that was one of those fights where like, yeah, I'm like, you like, I watched it. But it's also like, it's like when you're driving home and you get home, you go like, I don't remember how I got home.

But clearly I didn't get in a wreck. So I must have done something correct. I did a complicated thing. And that's how those fights were. Like, there were a couple of fights. Like, wait, I was here. But then it was gone. So.

Yeah. But guys, we've gone a hundred and a hundred. Geez. We've got an hour and eight minutes. I think we can sign off soon. One last thing. Just real quick. I just want, because we didn't mention it.

That's great. Gotta love seeing a rolling thunder again, the Preetagram special. Brandon Moreno wrapping up with a rolling thunder and a fight he was winning is pretty sick. Also, because we didn't mention it at all for reasons, shout out Mike Malott. Got a win. It was genial and effervescent on the microphone. will he ever be the champion? No, but doing it big for Canada, our friends in the North.

I'm probably still a no-beth-biz bard, Joe, because you had me on this week. But he probably lost a lot of people, a lot of money, though, who put inside the distance or a lot by K-O or flight to end before two and a half rounds. He cost me a lot of money. And so did, at least I hope anyone who listens to No-Bet's Bard, you didn't lose money. if you, if you listen to me, tell you, don't bet on Mark Andre Bonito. Don't bet. Nice guy.

Nice guy. Talented fighter for whatever reason. Guys cannot put it together in the cage. And I told people he should not be a two to one favorite or still to us. I told people that's all I'm saying. Most importantly, the climb continues, AK. Yes. We're on stage four, 26 to go.

30 bets in a row. Let's knock them down. But that's for next week where we, there's some. Oh, it's Apex 100, sorry. It's a big card, the biggest card. We got you locked for all that this week. On to the next one tomorrow morning. That's Alexander K. Lee.

That's E. Casey Lydden. I think I pointed in the wrong directions, but you get the point. Thank you all for sticking with us late into the evening for this underwhelming card. We couldn't be here without you, and we love you. So gosh darn much. We love Canada. We love fighting. We love everything.

Good night, everybody. You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast. podcast network.