MMA Fighting - UFC Vegas 65 Post-Fight Show | Derrick Lewis' Late Withdrawal Adds To Weirdest Card Of 2022

Episode Date: November 20, 2022

Prior to the main card of the UFC's return to the APEX beginning, it was revealed that an illness to Derrick Lewis led to the cancellation of his scheduled main event with Serghei Spivac — which considering the weirdness of the lineup as a whole, it almost made sense in some ways. MMA Fighting's Mike Heck, Jed Meshew, and E. Casey Leydon react to Saturday's UFC Vegas 65 event, the news of Lewis' withdrawal and the light heavyweight bout between Kennedy Nzechukwu and Ion Cutelaba getting bumped up to the main event spot, Nzechukwu's second-round finish and post-fight interview, Jack Della Maddalena's sensational performance, Muslim Salikhov's nasty finish of Andre Fialho, Natalia Silva's spinning kick to the face of her opponent to kick off the card, James Krause's absence from the corner of Miles Johns, and much more. Follow Mike Heck: @MikeHeck_JR 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

Support for this show comes from the Audible Original, the downloaded two, ghosts in the machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Rosco Cudulian and the rest of the Phoenix colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever. Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprise his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the Audible Original Blockbuster. The Downloaded, it's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking, What are you willing to lose to save the ones you love?

The Downloaded 2, Ghosts in the Machine. Available now, only from Audible. Support for this show comes from the Audible original, The Downloaded 2. Ghosts in the Machine. The Earth only has a few days left. Rosco Cudulian and the rest of the Phoenix colony have to re-upload their minds into the quantum computer, but a new threat has arisen that could destroy their stored consciousness forever.

Listen to Oscar winner Brendan Fraser reprised his role as Rosco Cudulian in this follow-up to the audible original blockbuster, The Downloaded. It's a thought-provoking sci-fi journey where identity, memory, and morality collide. Robert J. Sawyer does it again with this much-anticipated sequel that leaves you asking, what are you willing to lose

to save the ones you love? The downloaded two, Ghosts in the Machine, available now, only from Audible. We're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network. Punches! There were punches tonight, guys. I'm wasting time while I type of a tweet.

Who would these gentlemen on the graphic? I have no idea who these gentlemen are. I don't know. They were not the people who did the punchies. This was a, this is, this was a card. It was a card heading into it. It ended up being some fights. But as you can see, the two faces that you see on the screen right now were not the last two men inside the octagon.

It was not Derek Lewis and Sergei Spivak. As a matter of fact, the last two men inside the octagon were the two men that were supposed to compete in a fight. that Alexander Kay Lee wouldn't even have called a co-made event between Iwan Kutjalaba and Kennedy and Juchuku in the end. Kennedy and Zichuku finishes Iwan Kutalaba in the second round, and he closes the show. Big spot gets himself a main event, and if you watch the card, you understand what happened.

If you didn't watch the card, you're probably thinking, what the hell happened? This is not a thing. I'm not used to this. apparently the rumor mill was flooding all card long i had heard some rumblings could not confirm but then brenn fitzgerald in the broadcast confirmed with just before the final prelim fight that the fight between derrick lewis and sergey spivak was off non-covid related non-weight cutting related derrick lewis essentially just got sick he tried to apparently he was hospitalized this

morning came back wanted a fight and in the end everybody just we're on the same page live to fight another day man no need to go in there and fight six so the fight was scratched we got into chuku versus kuchalaba we got 11 total fights this is a weird card and we're going to do something a little bit different on the post fight show and i'll let you know what that is in a matter of seconds but i am mike jett mishu we'll join us once again punche it turns out mike that the penultimate fight was actually the ultimate fight all along. Who knew? Honestly, it's the most fitting possible outcome.

It's the most fitting outcome for this crew of my card. Yes, and then the first fight on the main card ended up being Charles Johnson and Zalgus. And there was like 800 and 11. Zalgust Gulov and there was 937 fouls, not one point taken. and it went to a controversial split decision. And in classic Zalgazuma Gula fashion, he loses a split decision that he probably should have won. He is the Courtney Casey of the men's flyweight division,

just on the wrong end of all of these split decisions. Yeah, and then he retired. They retired. Because, you know, if you're going to leave the sport, you want to go out on a high note. and that fight was was a high no. Just. I felt like I aged,

I felt like I aged two years just watching that one fight. So I feel like I'm 51 years old after that. I feel like that fight took 25 minutes for a 15 minute fight because there was a stoppage every four seconds for a foul. What do you think? Yeah, if you actually measured the actual time between beginning and the end, was it longer than an average 25 minute? fight, the father fouls.

I'm sure. It had to be. I had to feel that way. I got to say, I thought during this fight, I was like, here's a way we can make this a much dumber but more fun sport. What if we adopt, what if we adopt, you know, the World, the World Cups come up. What if we just adopt football's very stupid rules about injury time, right? I've gotten into this argument a million times with my friends and they all think that I'm

an asshole, but they've yet to be able to convey it to me properly. they don't stop the clock and then restart the clock because time is a construct in terms of football. They just have a second clock that's an injury clock or whatever. And like one shady individual keeps that, nobody knows what it is. We should do that for this. Instead of giving the fighter five minutes, we just keep the round rolling right on through. And then Herb Dean, whoever's in the middle, is keeping a second stoppage. So then we never know when the round is actually going to end.

and it would make things much more chaotic and stupid, which is the only way to improve this very, very bad fight card we just had. Yeah, and people say open scoring is the answer. No, a second clock with the referee holding a stopwatch. That's beautiful. I would like less transparency, because transparency doesn't make this sport better. Let's be very clear.

Yes. I just think it's interesting that this card, oh, sorry, that this card, like for the magnitude of this card, they still receive, and as well deserved, 50K bonuses. But then last week, we had a sold-out Madison Square Garden of a gate of like $6,000 billion, and they still get the same performance bonus. It's just a very weird concept, the UFC does with performance bonuses.

I just think that's odd. Yeah, it's all very dumb. Yeah. You know what this card could have used? Some finished bonuses to incentivize some of these people, to get their opponents out of the frigging cage. Jeez. Well, some of the fighters did that,

and maybe they will be compensated with some bonus money. I wonder who these bonuses winners are going to be. I think it's probably pretty obvious. I don't know if we're getting to fight in the night. I think we nailed it. I think we nailed it. Oh, yeah. We don't get the main event because of Derek Lewis,

but if you took that one off, my next one just would have been Kennedy and the same thing. I think we killed it. Yes, although Natalia Selva's probably getting a bonus for spinning to the face and throat. Illegal kicked her in the throat. That is a band. Can't you cannot make throat attacks? That is not a follow-up, the follow-up shot that just, yeah, I think, I think you're probably right.

So what we're going to do, we'll wait for the bonuses and we'll tell you what they are. But what we're going to do since there are no, literally no storylines coming out of this card, it's just dudes and gals fighting each other. I think the clearest, I mean, the biggest staked victory, and it wasn't even that big for the actual winner was Jennifer Maya, if we're being honest. But there were some good, there was some decent performance that Vanessa Demopoulos fought well. Natalia Silva's an absolute gangster. Jack Delamadalena, give him somebody closer to the top 15.

Muslim Salikoff just changes personality. these with one spinning kick and Waldo Cortez Acosta just continues to get these tough guys to 15 minute decisions and he remains undefeated. He's 9 and 0. So we are going to, it's like we did the people's pre-fight show. We're going to do the people's post-fight show. We're going to let you all determine what we're going to talk about for the next 20 to 30 minutes. That's what we're going to do.

Let the people control the means of production. Before we go to the questions, what did you guys think? of the two stopages from, well, actually, it's talked about the Andre Fialho stoppage. Was that a perfect stoppage or was that late or early? Nailed it. Spot on. I know it's part.

And I don't think most reps make that stoppage either, which it makes it like even better because I think most refs let that keep going. And are you talking to a man who very much did not want that fight to be stopped? perfect stoppage, like exactly the right time. Cool. That was what? That was Chris Tione, right? Yeah, Chris Tionni.

Yeah, yeah. Shockingly, Chris Ione nailed it, you know, so. No, no, no. What's shocking is that the no-nonsense Keith Peterson allowed a lot of nonsense to occur in Johnson's Umagulov because he's no nonsense. And kind of in the main event, too, because he probably let that go on. A few hairs too long, if we're being honest.

I'm actually pretty comfortable What did you think about the end Kuselaba stoppage? Was that a late stoppage? That was a little long. It's not the worst thing I've ever seen but I thought it could have been stopped soon. I don't know if you saw area of Hawaiian.

I'm on kind of the same boat the area Hawani is with the stoppage room last week. We both think it was early. I understand the debate, you know. But we were kind of wondering how does Kutzalaba get that much leeway in this type of main event? And then Izzy doesn't.

I know every stoppage is different, you know, it's different circumstances, but I just, it's just this weird thing in my MMA. I just never still quite understand when fights get stopped, you know. Because I did think the end, the Kulalaba stoppage was fine, but definitely on the late side, if you're going to choose. But, yeah, there's a range, like, right? Like, everything's a spectrum. There's a range of when a fight is like an okay stoppage being perfectly timed to, like,

maybe a hair, like a hair early but okay to a little bit late but fine. Like as long as you're not egregious either way, that's really all I care about. Yeah. If you're in the range of acceptable, that's fine. Yeah. I still contend that there's no such thing as an early stoppage from strikes in MMA. It's just not. It just, they're unicorns.

They just don't really exist. I can't think of one that's 95% agreed upon. Like, that was an early stoppage from strikes. So the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, The first kudelabum magabana Akhalaya fight is like the only one I can think of. And that was, and that was on purpose. He was trying to trick his opponent. Yeah.

That was a roper dope. But he actually tricked the breath instead. Yeah, that was just like a very weird situation. But you're right. Like that's the only one I can think that's like that was way, way too early. Yeah. Like way too early. Someone mentioned, actually, I think it was Kaposer from Twitter.

I threw this question out earlier last week that the Vasquez-Karmouche title fight, which is why they're rematching it actually was an early. Stoppage. And I even saw a lot of people say, it was a fine stoppage. And I thought watching it live, it was a horrible stoppage too. But I remember thinking live it was better than I thought on replay,

but that it's still probably within the bounds of acceptable. Yeah, but that's what I mean is still in the balance. So that's why I mean there's no such thing as an early stoppage. All right. I just want to get that off my chest. To the questions. And as you're pulling up the questions, props to Kennedy and Chishuku,

who just wanted to get the hell out of town because he's going to take, he could have taken the little blow of time and he's just like nah dude i got this guy hurt let's just get after it well done kennedy agreed also just the nicest man too like that's not going to go anywhere as far as promotion but just thanking everybody all the way down to the janitors and the travel agents and then jesus and and then shouting out his mom just what a we're a great guy my favorite thing my favorite thing you said was Bisbee asked him what he wants next and he goes he said something to the effect of

whoever the UFC gives me I will take it and I will cherish it forever I was like I didn't watch this post by oh yeah oh yeah great I will take whatever opponent they give me and I will cherish it forever it's the best I love everybody everybody's great you know just happy to be here sorry that I'm a slow learner

was like one of the scenes like I knew it would take me like the UFC bet on me when I wasn't very good I knew it would take me a while to get good because I'm a slow learner and now we're here it's great thanks guys

just the nicest fella do you think he got the rub being the main event or no all right I'm trying to be positive you know just

did he make the most of the opportunity he did as best as he could I have you got a good finish and was some level of charming in his post-fight speech, but it's also a card that I doubt a ton of people are paying attention to the first place. No matter what he would have done, yeah. He now gets to say that he has made evented a UFC event, though. Like, that's not nothing.

Oh, and we talk about it. And Water Cortez-A-Costa co-main invented. Yeah, that happens a lot. They put Calabarello in the co-main event coming off contender series. Like, co-made a pit ultimate fight, sir. Oh, Baralia's first two fights in the UFC were co-main events. Yeah, but now he looks like he's fun. All right.

Kennedy and Sanchuku, we always talk about the importance of doing the thing. That was Kennedy and Chichuku's version of doing the thing. And I thought he nailed it. Yeah, well done. Very good. All right. There we go. Oops, wrong screen.

What do we got? Kennedy couldn't cut a. promo of his life depended on it. It's not his thing. It's not his vibe. I loved it. I loved it. It's not going to get him. Honestly, it was great. I Hot take. I

loved his substantially more than I gave any craps about everybody from last week Moikanos. I didn't give a shit about Morikanos. I know that I know I'm the only person who

was like I nothing makes me more upset than people asking for money in post fights. Like it it infuriates me. And not that they're wrong for doing it, but like that this is just a part of our lives because the UFC won't pay people money. Yeah, but he didn't do,

he didn't go right to check 50K. It was McConnell wants money. I think talking in the third person is the key for McConnell. It's like, as long as they're themselves. That usually doesn't endear me to people either, Casey. Yeah. But if he cut that on a fight night on like an ES,

if he cut that promo out, if he cut that promo on ESPN Plus or on pay-per-view, it doesn't have the same impact as it had being on ESPN news in cutting that exact same promo and then just having to bleep him out over and over and over again. To me it was just hilarious. It is much funnier when you can't hear what he's saying. That is truly.

Truly that part of it is amusing. All right. Is Vanessa Demopoulos going to be a problem at 115? She's 3 and 0 at 115. Do you use the word problem as a word to describe Vanessa Demopoulos as a fight? or Jedmishu. No. Good for her.

I didn't think she's going to win this fight. So strong work from her. But I don't, she's 34, which is really late to come into the game, like at this level or whatever. And her wins are Genufre and Marie Olivaire. And who else does she beat? Oh, Savonagos-Wares. Like, we're not talking about a string of hitters that she's defeated.

Her performance has been good. She's showing personality. She's going to, you know, carve out a little space of this experiment for her, and that's good. But that's it. Like, that's all it is. And that's all it need be. Everybody doesn't have to make a title run. Yeah.

She's overachieving. She's good for her. Yeah, she's getting better. She's, uh, props to, uh, I don't, these words don't come out of my mouth too often, but props to, uh, Henry Suhudo and team at fight ready. They have, uh, her game has, Henry's a good coach. Very good coach.

Have also entirely not really related to much of anything. Have you all ever looked at Vanessa Demopoulos' photo on tapology? No, should I? It's just not the same person. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. This does not appear to be the same human being. Yeah, she own worse.

Yeah. I just pulled her up to like remind myself of who she beat and I was like this is jarring and different okay she did she did have another day job before she went full time to being a fighter and she's talked about that so if you want to look into it do your research go for it but actually I thought Marie Oliver only being 25 I still think what is her record in the U.S. she has a better future than she's 13 and 6 now I think yeah I actually I still think I still see Marie Oliver actually having a longer career in the UFC. I like her body style. And she a lot.

I think a super strong third round look good for her. But yeah. Plus she's 25, so she's got plenty of time. Demopoulos lost to Luke and Godinez and Corey McKenna and stuff. Like she ain't going anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, she is a full-time fighter now.

She was not for those fights. So yeah, give it that. Yeah, give her that. With Amex Platinum, $400 in annual credits for travel and dining means you not only satisfy your travel bug, but your taste buds too. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply. It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats.

Well, almost, almost anything. So, no, you can't get a nice rank on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice, yes, we deliver those. Goaltenders, no, but chicken tenders, yes, because those are groceries, and we deliver those too, along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Let's talk about this gentleman. All we want to talk about is Jack Della in the silkiest hands at Walter Waits. Jack Della. Can I just say something? I know I'm not the only one that says this, and I don't want to, dump on Kennedy and Sachuuku and Iwan Kutalaba because good for them.

But Jack Della and Madalana should have got the bump to the main event spot, in my opinion. That's how this card should have ended with JDM going out there and doing the damn thing. He's the one we're all looking at anyways. Outside of just to see if Derek Lewis could get back on track, we were looking at this guy. We just wanted to see him go out in style and do his thing. This is picture perfect matchmaking for the UFC. You accomplished everything you wanted to here. and now you're going to throw this man onto a pay-per-view card in front of a capacity crowd

that's going to be all cheering for him in Perth against a top 20-25-ish guy, maybe even higher. You accomplished everything. The only thing you could have done better is when you lost Eric Lewis, you just threw him in that spot, and that's how the card ended. And I think, not that we don't have a great, an okay feeling with Kennedy finishing the fight the way that he did and cutting that promo, but Jack Della going out there and just whooping on. Danny Roberts who's tough he beat he beat the hell out of Danny Roberts that would have been a nice way to end this card and and just give him as much of a rough as possible but other than that

I got no complaints this guy is this guy's the real deal Jedmishu the silkiest hands at welterweight I like that I might be true I got I had no real issues with that statement uh dude's got mitts I don't know any part of the rest of his game because we have never seen it. He just does the same thing over and over, which is box everybody's ears in the first round. But that's good. We gave him enough of these fights. Let's give him somebody who's really going to test his medal a little bit, and let's see what we got cooking with this boy. There's a lot of good matchups for him available, I think, right now. I don't think it should have been the main event. I think from the get-go, this should have always

been the co-main event, though, Jack Della. But I guess what I guess the comment. Not the bump. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, I see what you're saying. I think this should have been the co-main event for the Kennedy and Chikulu fight. I think that that is the right main event because I actually think Kennedy has like a potential future here. It's probably not as high as Jack Della's is. I think it's less volatile because light heavyweight sucks.

So if I had to pick one of these two dudes that I like can feel the most confident is going to be a going player. and its weight class in four years, give me Kennedy because he's in a terrible weight division. Whereas Jack Della could still be really good and just like be a top 25 dude because Walter White's guy hitters. So I think that the main event's right, Jack Della should for sure have been the co-main event

once we shuffled the deck. Can I, let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. Who would you pick in a fight tomorrow, Jen? Kennedy and Sachuco or Dominic Reyes? Kennedy? You'd pick Kennedy to win? Would you do the same, Casey?

If he trains with Ryan Span, he knows how to do it now. Last week, maybe not Kennedy, but office performance, for sure, Kennedy. Yeah, now that we know what we've seen from Regis where he is at this time in his career. Yeah, that's a fight. That's a very good way to phrase it. I'm sorry? That's a really good way to phrase it. Because last week, I don't think I would have.

Like, I think Ryan Span was the bad, is a. a better version in some ways of Kennedy. And so like, but now that I've seen that fight, now I can feel confident. Whereas if I had not seen that, I'd be like, eh, you should probably be Kennedy, right? All right. This was a talking point of the card. Well, actually, they didn't talk about it, but Miles John did. So let's, um, just, what can we say about that?

Oh, no, wrong one. Wrong one. Sorry. Sorry. I want it. Oh. There we go. Do you think James Krause's suspension was a

about the minor controversy. If yes, what do you think they learned in the investigation? If not, what is your guess? If for sure was about the minors, I'll talk about it. If for sure was about the minor controversy, because why else would it exist? My guess is that they haven't actually learned shit. And this is more an optics thing than it is a real life concern. Because like why, I mean, if they have learned something, uh, well, that's going to be a real

big story, but I've maintained the whole time that James Krauss, I have a lot of issues with James Krauss and touts in general in that, and we don't need to dive into that. I do not believe James Krauss is stupid enough, too, as the head coach of a fighter who is compromised, unload a bag on his opponent because that's the, that's both, like, actually illegal, not just like breaking UFC rules. that is a thing that the government gets involved in and you go to jail over. It's called fight fixing. So I am extremely confident that he is not stupid enough to have actually done anything illegal or untoward here.

But it was always bad optics for him to be a tout and a head coach. And doing that, him being at a UFC event on the heels of this, that feels like this is an optics. play more than it is something substantive. Yeah, and that's probably the best way to describe it from what I've been told. It's just, hey, it's not a great, basically it's, it's not like a suspension suspension. It's just like, hey, you should probably sit this one out until we finish this investigation. But from what I understand, Krause is not like a suspect or anything like that. It's not like that.

But I mean, when this whole thing happens, he was the first. Yeah, no one is, I just, I like to live in a world where I believe that nobody is that dumb. There's no way he is that dumb. Yeah. I don't, I've never met that man. But there's no way. Here's no way he is that dumb because he is literally the first suspect. The only person who would be stupider is if Derek Minter himself did it.

And I cannot believe either of them actively did this. Right. What happened? But you're saying that, but you're also saying this is, these are also a coach and a fighter that went into a fight with one leg. You know? And which is not very smart either. There are different kinds of dumbs. I totally get what you're saying, but smart and dumb aren't like a linear thing, right?

It's there are different variations of dumb. And every fighter is stupid. Every single one of them. And then every professional athlete is stupid. Because to believe that you can be a professional athlete, you have to be a moron because it's not a real. It's not a real thing that you can be. You have to have an unbelievable amount of confidence to the point that it's insane. And fighters all believe they can win every fist fight despite everyone knowing what they don't.

So like that's a different kind of stupid that I can understand. There's no way they are dumb enough to not recognize. Oh, if we do this, they're going to. immediately figure out. Like, there's just no way. The simplest answer is the right one. The simplest answer is somebody found out beforehand and it like, it leaked. Somebody said something offhand to a buddy or whatever. It was like, I don't like Derek, like Derek's really dealing with this knee or whatever. And then that buddy told five friends who then all bet a bunch of money on it. Like that's the simplest answer. It's what happened, almost assuredly. I don't know enough about gambling, but like, say if I

found out but Derek Minter, you know, whatever. I put $50 on his opponent, whatever. That doesn't move the line. How much money must be thrown on? I don't know who Minter was even fighting. I can't even important right now. How much money must be thrown on his opponent to make that line move that much? Well, it depends a little bit.

You're talking like $1,000? Talking like $100,000, talking about like $500,000? I don't know enough about that kind of how lines move enough. It depends in general. Lines move based on exposure. So to some extent, it'll move based on how much exposure the book has to it. Also, I would guess, though I have no actual information on this, that they move the lines as the bets kept coming in,

that that became more of a, there's a suspicious betting pattern, we are going to move the lines even further away as a result of this. But like, we're not talking hundreds. it thousands of dollars at the minimum got got laid down here if not tens okay so that's enough to kind of raise suspicions around the 10 I've just I'm kind of I don't know very much about this part of the gambling world so I'm kind of interested honestly my my guess is that like they got like six or seven like five figure bets dropped on it within the span of an hour or something and we're like because it to some extent it's safe if you if like a hundred people

put a hundred bucks on it. That's not going to raise. That number is not going to raise any suspicion, but you get a few large-sized wagers. And particularly, it depends on, like, I have no idea what books were the prominent thing here, but if you're doing, like, an online sports book, and you get, like, they track all this. So if you get some guy who creates an account who, like, doesn't have a draft king's account or whatever, and then suddenly gets one, loads 10K up and fires it on one like fires the whole bank account on one thing. It's a wildly suspicious betting pattern. And that's sort of how this thing, in my mind,

this is probably how that all worked or played a role. And on top of that from what it seems to be out there, people were putting money on like not only Nernabekka winning, but Nernabekka winning in round one. Yeah, round one. He didn't have any UFC finished. No finishes the UFC. Yeah.

So like there were a lot of like prop bets being hit too. like under rounds, first round finishes, things like that. So a lot of flags, a lot of flags. Yeah. What's the chances we ever see Derek Minner fighting the UFC again? I would bet it's pretty low. Pretty low, yeah. Yeah.

Because again, I don't, I'm not making an accusation. And I would assume that he was not actively involved in this, frankly. Yeah, to assume that. But why keep him? Like, is Derek Minter selling out the apex? Nope You just cut ties And move on

From the potential problem All right Uh I think this isn't I don't know what What the problem There's a lot of problems So I'm not sure which problem

I'm assuming the main event problem Yeah Yeah So Yeah sorry go on No I mean They probably handle it as As best they could

because even before probably like right after we we ended the people's pre-fight show I started hearing rumblings that the main event might be off I didn't have enough to like go in slack but I had enough to at least start asking people and then I didn't get any answers from anybody and then like the more time went on as the prelims are going on the more it seems like the rumors are true but it wasn't enough for me to just go out there and be like, all right, it's off. Like, we, we had, it got to the point for us where we had already, we had already pre-wrote that the fight was canceled so that as soon as they made the

announcement, it's not like Damon's the fastest typer in the world. He's a super fast typer, but he couldn't write that whole article in 13 seconds. Because as soon as the announcement was done, we already had something ready to go. We just couldn't officially confirm it with multiple people. So, yeah. And I don't think the UFC truly knew as well because the story seems to be is that Lewis was hospitalized. He got released. He thought he could still fight.

They're trying to find a way for it to happen. And he just wasn't clear to do so. And then they had to make the decision. And there's just a matter of, all right, when do we announce this? How do we announce this? And then how do we move forward? And they move forward by just bumping the Coleman events of the main and you carry on. What else can you do?

Yeah. Yeah, I think the UFC did mean, they did what they could do for as far as the main event situation. But back to Kraus real quick. Actually, my big issue is on this is that we would have never known, right, unless Miles John mentioned it in this post-fight interview. Like this one, because apparently it happened, like he knew that he was going to be in his corner like a couple of days out, right? This wasn't like right as he was walking out. So.

No, he thought he said it happened last night. So they're even in the last night That's when they found out. That's when they found out. So I'm going to say why like if he didn't I have no faith that the UFC like Bisman or Fitzgerald wouldn't go. Okay by the way James Krause will not be in his corner tonight.

They didn't mention that during the fight right at all. Did they? Yeah. They mentioned he wasn't in the corner. And they even showed, they went to his corner a couple times and he couldn't and Krauss wasn't there. Did they mention it? Like why it wasn't there?

They didn't say, why he wasn't there. They just said he wasn't there. They said he wasn't, not in this corner. To me, that's actually the worst part of this, because again,

I don't think Krause did shit, right? This is whatever. It's not cool, is the way I'll phrase it, for the UFC to disallow a corner 24 hours in advance, for something that they knew. Like,

yeah, they could have easily called him a week ago and just been like, hey, James, this is happening. We're going to not, we would prefer you not do this. Please have your fighter make other arrangements or whatever to have a corner.

Instead of, because I have no idea what went on in that when it's like, hey, your head coach and chief corner is not allowed. So now you got to find somebody in 24 hours. Like that through no fault of his own. Because like that's not his, this has nothing to do with him and his fault. And like, worked out. and that's good, but that could have super been shitty for him. And like, if he loses that and it's a close fight,

there's a world where that is a direct result of the UFC just kind of dicking about here. And that's just, just trash, man. To be, to be fair, to be fair, and this is kind of what I was alluding to earlier. Kevin Ioli, Yahoo Sports wrote an article a little while ago. wasn't Miles was kind of misinformed. It wasn't the UFC who pulled them

according to Kevin, it was the commission who pulled him. Okay. The commission. Yeah. That's a little better than. Yeah. The Nevada Athletic Commission would not allow veteran and may coach James Krause to work the corner of Miles Johnson Saturday on the preliminary card of UFC

Vegas 65 against Vince Morales. I had reached out to the commission. Honestly, that makes a lot more. I declined to comment for me as well. Yeah. It wasn't a UFC decision. It seems that's a. Yeah.

That makes a ton more sense because part of the thing that I was thinking but didn't say because it just went against my argument. And I was like, why bring up the thing that goes against my argument? When does the UFC ever been responsible about optics? Never. They suck at optics. They are terrible at that. And so it makes total sense that is the, yeah, for sure the commission will do that will be like, yeah, that looks bad. We won't do that.

It makes way more sense. Yeah. All right. I'm sure this is not the last one we'll hear of this story. Probably. No, even Miles said in his post-fight interview back in the back that you guys will probably hear more about this in a little bit. But it doesn't seem like, it's like Jed said from all accounts, from people I talk to, it's an optics thing more than anything. It's not like, hey, you're in trouble.

You're suspended, pal. No, it's like, no one's getting in trouble for this. Yeah. You should probably sit out for a couple of weeks. The independent investigation is just going to quietly peter. off and nothing's going to happen unless someone does something really stupid and all they have to do is print up a couple of bank accounts and Yeah, I mean there's a world that would at least be funny, but no, it's just gonna be like yeah, we can't we can't pin this on anybody So there it goes we're not getting a Calvin Ridley situation here. It's just not gonna happen

Back to tonight back to the fights this afternoon. Let's talk about whoops How about the head kick that's still landing in the first? That was nasty, man. That was nasty. And I picked against Silva, not because I don't think she's a fun fighter, but because she was taking on a giant in that division. And I've kind of leaned on the picking side of, I'm going to take the giant over most people.

And someone who's that big and has that much of a reach advantage in a division like 125, I felt okay. and especially when you look at the first five minutes you should have great yeah she kept taking her down she was able to hold her down the second round things got a little hairy she started to get

tired she couldn't get the takedowns silver started piecing her up and you kind of you kind of felt like that was coming a finish was on the horizon but did I see a spinning back kick to the face no I didn't see that that was beautiful stuff

yeah you and her opponent did not see it. No. And the follow-up. This is awesome. The follow-up is very good. This is a very stupid nitpick of mine, but it kind of like

this isn't a head kick. Is it a kick that landed on the head? Those are different. She did not throw this with the intention of landing a spinning kick to the head. Blato literally ducked her head in like that thing was hit high. She was shooting in, right?

Right, right. She threw the spin kick, yeah. But that spin kick was not a counter to the shot. The kick was, thrown Bleda shot into the kick because it's that was not a wheel kick to win head height that thing went to the hip Blada's face was just by her hip and so she got blasted from it so it's very very minute detail but I always I want to clarify that was that was that spin kick was that very similar to Uriahaw versus Musassi one I remember Musassi it kind of lowered changed levels and

right when you ride did a spin so he just happened to hit him right in the face. Yeah. A little bit. I was like, I've seen this. It was also the high point of this card. The best thing in this card happened, the first fight. Yeah. Yeah.

And I enjoyed Salakoff Fialho, too. But that was still the coolest thing that happened in this fight card. Let's talk about that. No bonuses yet. No bonuses yet, by the way. They're just, he's just not, like, whatever. Andre Fialio has taken so much damage getting rocked this past year. I think he needs a year off or risks losing his chin.

It looks like He is a one-trick pony What do you think? No one-trip- Oh, there we go. We got bonuses. Breaking news. Oh, oh, wait, break, break,

I wasn't ready. We got bonuses. We got bonuses. The fight of the night for UFC Vegas 65. None of them. Ooh. Wow, Casey, you were right

with the four-performance bonus call. I got it. It's Alia Silva, Kennedy and Sachukwu. The four people who got finishes. Muslim Salaf. There you go. There's your bonuses.

No fight of the night. Literally the four finishes. We just paid out, just do that every time. Pay out finish bonuses. You have seen so much easier. So much better. So much better.

Yeah. Unless you get Chandler, unless you get Chandler, Porier, it should be all performance bonuses. No, no, no,

it's dope. Because then Porier gets one and Chandler doesn't. And they're dope. Big fan. What do you make of Seattle Rines take care about one-trick pony, take a year off, risk losing the chin? I think you should take time off in general because we talked about the pre-show. Yeah, he had four in 2021.

This man has fought nine times in two years. That is a shitload. And you just shouldn't do it. I think fighting frequently is probably the best way to become a star, frankly, because the UFC doesn't invest in building stars. And if you're not naturally, like, wildly charismatic, you can just do the, like, Homsat's not charismatic, but he fought a bunch in a very short period of time

and delivered great performances. And so he's a star all of a sudden. Like, that's our work. Fiala tried that, and he didn't, he lost three of them this year. And it's just, I don't think the human body is built for this level of activity. And especially if you are a guy with, out a ton of defensive responsibility like fialho i think taking some time off would help him i will also

like his issue wasn't his chin today man the chin was not the problem like that is not why he got beat he ate nobody talked about it but the reason he threw like two punches in the second round he had a spinning kick to the body in the second round that you could just tell he was done like his whole his hands never left here after he ate it like very early in and when the comrade's like he's not throwing along. It's like, yeah, his guts are falling out of him right now. He is just trying not to show it. And it was the bodywork that did it. Sure, the finish was cool, but Salikov just kept hitting him to the body. And he didn't want any part of that because that takes your will to live away. And I'm not even sure. Did Fialo even get truly dropped? Or did he just eat everything? I felt like, maybe got dropped to ones.

He got dropped. No, he got dropped in the second. He sort of sat down in the second. Oh, yeah. He was against the fade and he ate one to the body, maybe it was the third. And he just like squat sat and then stood right back up. And I was like, dude, you are doing your friggin best to hide this. Hey, and when the rest stopped it, he still gave one of those like, what the fuck. You know, so. He at least had the decency to not stick to that for very long.

Yeah. He was like, no, I'm here. Yeah. You're right. I didn't really want to do this anymore. Man, but talk about like a guy, you know, lived by the soror. die-by-the-store two knockout bonuses and then two other end of the knockout bonus two two of his opponents got knockout bonuses so that's the perfect guy to employ in your fight organization yeah yeah

yeah so uh yeah he also mind-boggling to think that he fought michel pehara and that fight wasn't like the most fun cool thing that anyone's ever watched yeah it was just a fight somehow of all his u-s-sie fights that's the worst one of them doesn't make any sense cool Um, that fight went exactly the way I thought it was going to go, by the way. Just throwing that out there. If y'all was going to have a great first round and then he was going to slow down and get, I had him getting knocked down the second. I was very, very close.

Um, I thought it. But I went to the third. Oh, no, but I feel horrible for Zuma Gulov. Yeah, man, he's, uh, blame him. Do better. King of Kung Fu for a reason. Those body kicks, man, those spin kicks to the body are just ferocious. He's got to like, denis.

Dennis Siever quickness with it. Like it really, those pop up very, very fast. And then after you, after he landed a feud of the body, he's like, that one he landed that was like the second of last shot in the fight that he'd, he'd hit Fial like right in the ear. You saw Fial's life change in an instant. He just goes, it was just he was in a different planet. It was, I was like, please stop this fight.

Please. And then Chris Ione eventually stopped it. Yeah. He, I just love that he's the only fighter I've ever seen throw spinning body kicks to set up spinning wheel kicks. Like, I go to the body with these spinning kicks, and the next time I spin, you'll be like, block low, and then whop! Pam, I go high. Suck, yeah. He is going next level, MMA striking.

All right, I think this would be our last question, but I think this needs to be, might as well talk about this lady. What do you do with Mai at this point? just a gatekeeper to see you have a title push left. Where do we have Maya ranked right now? Let's pull up our rankings. Top 10? She has to be, right? I have Maya at number 13.

We officially have Jennifer Maya at number 11. She dropped a spot with Blanchefield's win at 280, who Blancheville moved into the top 10, taking a spot for Maya, who bounced down to 11. But we also have Liz Karmouche, and Julianna Velazquez. So if you're just looking at the UFC, she's firmly in the UFC's top 10.

Yeah, she's just gatekeeper to good people, man. That's it. Like, I don't, she's not ever really going to get back to a title fight probably because she's lost a Chukagian twice, right? Is it twice? Yes. Okay.

Yeah, because I know she lost recently, but I think she lost her a lot. I think that was a rematch, if I'm not mistaken. And so I got, Chikagian's the gate game. keeper to the stars and Maya can't beat the gatekeeper to the stars so she's now the gatekeeper to the top 10. Like that's if you beat her, you're a top 10 fighter. If you don't, you're not.

And that's, that's fine. She got, she got her day in court, which is more than most people do. She got the chance to do it. But yeah. Yeah, she's at top five gatekeeper. Maya's that top 10 gatekeeper. And, and problem, problem with Jennifer May is, and I have watched, I've probably seen at least 10 Jennifer Maya fights.

and I have a hard time remembering any of them, to be honest. They'll look a lot like that one, frankly. Yeah. And there's something against you. She's a quality fighter, but she, yeah, you just find out how good, we know who she is. It's basically to find out how good the other opponent is. She's going to fight.

Who's the gatekeeper to 15, though? If she's the top 10 gatekeeper, who's the 15? Tisha Torres, Tisha Torres by a mile. Tisha Torres is straw weight. Straw weight. You said 115? No, to the 15, not to 115. Oh, oh, I thought my 15.

We've got a five and a 10. But yeah, Tisha Torres is... Tisha Torres and Jennifer Mara are the same fighter, just 10 pounds different. Probably Joanne, maybe Andrew Lee, Joan Wood. I think those are both in the neighborhood of right. That feels right, yeah. I think Roxy probably was. Roxy definitely was for she bounced, yeah.

So there's an opening for a new top 15er. Which frankly, honestly, that actually, that might be Maya. Yeah, oh, yeah. Maya might end up dropping to 15. Lauren Murphy can hold that tenor spot or maybe Murphy moves up to five and and Chukagian drops down to 10 as she's, you know, picking up more tread. Amaya is going to fight either Macy Barber or Tracy Cortez if she beats a Amanda He boss.

She might be Macy Barber. Um, she might be maybe Tacey O'Neill. I don't know. Probably it's going to be one of those, one of those scales. God love Macy Barber. If she resigns,

she is not re-signed as a bet. She's going to be the youngest champion. Okay. Hey, she shot her shot. Yeah. I give her that. I,

I respect it. She came out there fire and bullets. None of them were close to hidden. Boy, gentlemen, we've gone 45. minute so wow way longer that I thought we're gonna go I'm at the music so there we go we're done I don't even know how we're gonna headline this it's gonna take me longer to figure out how to headline this show is this the worst part of the year no I don't it's

probably I but like not for the headline it is the worst card of the year right UFC yeah I can't I can't think of a worst UFC card this year if Think of it this way. If this event was like started at five, how miserable would we all be right now? Oh, God. If it's 9 p.m. and they come on to the broadcast and like, so Derek Lewis is out.

We've got a new main event. I am just in tears. The grotto, Araujo card. That was pretty bad? It's a tough, hang. The saving grace for this card was the time. Yeah, the time made it.

The time made it all of the game. It might have been the dirt. I think it was the Dern versus John card. Hey, before we get out of here, because we don't need to riff forever. Keep it locked to mefighton.com. Great website. We've got bad boxing coming your way tonight.

And check it out tomorrow. I have a piece that's coming out that I'm really, really happy with. Comes out at 9 a.m. tomorrow. Get your on to the next one picks in as well. Good night, everybody. Love you guys. You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.