My Mom's Basement - EPISODE 74 - UFC 252 RECAP

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

Robbie recaps UFC 252 and his time spent out in Las Vegas for Fight Week. 3Chi: Use code BASEMENT at checkout to receive 5% off at 3Chi.com My Mom's Basement Merch: https://store.barstoolsports.com/products/my-moms-basement-tie-dye-hoodieYou can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/mymomsbasement

Hey My Mom's Basement listeners, you can find our episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube, and Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. It's not going to be the longest episode, once again because I am by myself, I've got nobody to play off of, I've got nobody to talk to, except you guys, but it'll be a good one. I've written down kind of a loose guideline, at least what I remember of the week. I'm on very little sleep now, so forgive me if I forget anything. I'll go back to it in the future. But before I get into it, I just want to shout out all the listeners of My Mom's Basement. I got a lot of nice tweets this weekend from you guys,

thanking me for my coverage or saying that the coverage was great. And I want to thank you guys for that. That was really cool, especially after the fights, you know, when I went back to the hotel, started scrolling through my mentions. I was like, damn, I got a lot of love tonight. So I want to show that love back. Thank you guys. I appreciate it. Um, and I'll be doing a giveaway very soon for my mom's basement listeners. I got to figure out the details of it, but I think we're going to do some kind of merch giveaway where it's like, if you buy a t-shirt, you'll automatically be entered to win a hoodie and like whatever else is available in the, my's Basement catalog at that point. Let me know what you want to see, but I'll definitely do a giveaway soon. I am doing a

giveaway on Twitch right now. Once I get to a thousand followers on twitch.tv slash that Robbie Fox, T-H-A-T-R-O-B-B-I-E-F-O-X, I will be giving away a ton of Star Wars toys. So check that out as well. Make sure you follow along. And let's just get into Fight Week now. Let's waste no more time. So on Wednesday, we flew in to Las Vegas. I flew in from New York City. And my cameraman, John Kelly, flew in from Cleveland.

And it was interesting that, you know, the airport experience is different now in the coronavirus era. If you haven't flown yet, planes finally board the right way. That's my main takeaway from it. Planes finally board back to front. They call up like, all right, rows 30 through 25, rows 25 through 20, rows 20 through 15. It was incredibly easy, incredibly smart by the airlines to all transition that way. And the plane is

pretty empty. You know, they sell about one ticket per row, or I don't know how much they sell, but that's how much sold. And flight over was fine. I think I slept for a lot of the flight over, which I generally don't do. But we went in, got COVID tested pretty much immediately, made a stop at a dispensary, because that's what you do in Las Vegas, the land of legal marijuana. And the COVID test itself wasn't so bad. If you haven't gotten one yet, I was afraid they were going to do the nose swab and like poke my brain with the Q-tip and I was going to wake up and like forget I loved Star Wars. That wasn't the case. They did the throat swab for me. It took two seconds. It was very easy, very fine. That was all we did on Wednesday, though, because once you got the COVID test,

you know, the UFC recommended you go back to your hotel and quarantine, and I was very much going to abide by everything that they recommended because I didn't want to get coronavirus and then become one of the four media members credentialed to be out in the arena during this historic fight

and then ruin it for myself, you know? So I was pretty much, if I wasn't at a UFC fight this weekend or a UFC event this weekend, I was in my hotel room just hanging out, smoking weed, watching Joe Rogan. On Thursday, we had the press conference. That was all we had on Thursday as well. So Daniel Cormier and Stipe Miocic were able to face off for the first time there. They were able to talk for the first time face-to-face since this third fight became a reality. And it was really good. It was enjoyable. We got a ton of behind-the-scenes footage that we'll put in a big stool scenes style video coming soon. That'll be out this week. And we got a ton of behind-the-scenes footage all week from that too. So look out for that for sure. And then on Thursday, I think, did I go to, yeah, I went to Big Chicken,

which I don't know if anyone's ever had Big Chicken that listens to this podcast. It's a West Coast chain, I believe, and it's Shaq's chain. Shaq has like a fast food chicken chain. And it was fucking delicious. Just no free ads, obviously. But shout out to Shaq for Big Chicken. Because I went, I had a chicken sandwich, I had some fries, which were like these nice salted wedges.

Delicious stuff. Oh my God, I was very delighted by the experience. Speaking of ads, by the way. No free ads. A paid ad. 3Chi. Shout out to my guys and girls at 3Chi. I got home.

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It's made my life a lot better. So let's get back into fight week now. On Friday, we wake up at the crack ass of dawn to get COVID tested once again. Or no, I'm wrong. That was on Saturday. So on Friday, we wake up at the crack ass of dawn to go to weigh-ins. I'm sorry about that. And we sit there throughout the whole thing.

It was pretty boring. You we sit there throughout the whole thing. It was pretty boring. I love the UFC. I love going to UFC events, even if they're not fights, just press conferences or whatever. But the weigh-ins are the one that always just bore me to tears. You're waiting there, basically anticipating drama. You go there thinking, what if someone misses weight? We want to be here to cover it. But you don't actually want anyone to miss weight. That would be horrible. So you don't actually want anyone to miss weight. That would be horrible. So you're kind of just waiting on pins and needles.

Everyone pretty much made weight. I know Herbert Burns missed by a lot. I think someone else missed as well. I forget who though. And then after that, we went into a holding area for a little bit when we were waiting for Dana White's Apex Tour for us. And I went over, I said hi to Tim Welch, the coach of Sugar Sean O'Malley. Caught up with him briefly. Great guy. He's been on the

podcast before with Sugar Sean. You could go in the archives, check that out. Just a stand-up dude. Always so incredibly kind to me. So shout out Tim Welch. Shout out Sugar Sean. And then Dana White met up with us. So Dana White walked over with his bodyguard, his social media team, his director of communications, and we got right into the tour. He took us around the UFC Apex. You can check out pretty much the entire thing. You know, all that time I spent with Dana is available to watch right now. So go on YouTube, go on barstoolsports.com, type in, you know, Robbie Fox receives tour of UFC Apex or Barstool Sports UFC Apex tour.

You'll be able to find it. I think it's a worthy sequel to the office tour. I think it's a pretty fun video, you know, furthering the relationship of me and Uncle Dana. Surreal as always. And I want to thank the UFC

and Dana himself for allowing us the access that they did but that was really awesome and then we got even more of a tour from the UFC's head of production Craig Borasari and I just want to thank him for that as well that's going to be in the behind the scenes video and it was really cool like the the actual production side of things it was cool to see that and see the Star Wars looking spaceship looking rooms they have to run pay-per-views out of. So that was awesome. As soon as we went back to the hotel after that, it was one of those feelings where I could kind of just have a weight,

you know, taken off my chest. Every time I go on a company trip and get it approved, I stress out, guys. I stress out and think, I better make sure this is worth it. I better make sure I'm getting enough content. And until I got that tour, I was thinking, I don't know if I'm getting enough. I don't know if I'm getting enough. As soon as I got that, I was like, all right, this trip was definitely worth it. I could just relax, take a deep breath, and smoke some more weed, turtle. So that was it for Friday. And then on Saturday, we wake up at the crack ass of dawn once again to get COVID tested for the second time throughout the week. I saw Chell Pisanen, the American gangster, at the hotel while I was checking in to get COVID tested. I think he was getting a test done, I would imagine.

But I don't know if he was at the Apex. I didn't see him at the apex maybe he was doing a hit on espn beforehand i'm not really sure but i saw him there anyway i saw dan mergley out of there saw bruce buffer um and then we headed over to the ufc apex about 3 p.m once we were told we were covid negative and we were there for the remainder of the day throughout all the fights the card itself which we can get into. We walked in. The first thing we saw was Bruce Buffer warming up, doing his stretches, doing his vocal warm-ups.

It was just a UFC fan's dream. It's what you imagine in a dream sequence, literally. You walk into the arena, and Bruce Buffer would be there warming up. And the Octagon girls would be putting you know, putting their cards in order and the production team would be standing on the things and Dana White would be making his way out to the table. I mean, I saw Joe Rogan from across the way and I was just like mind blown.

If the corners got quiet enough, I could hear Joe Rogan. I was like, this is his voice going into my eardrums. Like for real, it was, I was just geeking out about the whole thing. For me, seriously, the fights themselves for UFC 252, I would say so-so. We had some really good fights. The main event obviously lived up to all of the hype and more. But other than that, there wasn't a ton of great ones. I guess the I guess the, the Rosenstreich Dos Anjos fight was interesting. We got a big heavyweight knockout there, but even still, I was just, I felt so honored to be there. And I was so in awe the whole time. I felt like a little kid. I felt like a

little kid in a candy shop the entire, uh, fight night event. So, uh, fights themselves, highlights, things that people, you know, were asking about, I would say the three main things. One was the Rosenstreich-Dosanios knockout. A lot of people said, is this guy Rosenstreich for real? Yes. My answer to that is yes, definitely. Even though he got knocked out by Francis Ngannou, I don't think that means he isn't for real. I think anyone in the world can get knocked out by Francis Ngannou.

So I look forward to seeing him progress definitely and continue to rise to heavyweight ranks. I like him as a fighter. I like him as a person, biggie boy. Him going and sitting down next to JDS afterwards was nice, showing his respect to a legend, a former heavyweight champ, who I really hope sits back and considers retirement after this one because he's eaten a few knockouts in a short period of time that you never like to see.

The co-main event, my guy, the Sugar Show, Sean O'Malley, took the first defeat of his career, unfortunately, against Marlon Chito Vera in a very weird fight. So they start this fight. It was the first fight of the night that really had that like, for real tension for me, like every other fight because of the weird UFC apex setup, kind of felt like a UFC version of a high school wrestling meet. It was so weird. Like I just you know, you hear the corners like screaming at their fighters, screaming instructions.

It just gave off like a strange vibe. But once Suga and Marlon got made it to the octagon, it was like, all right, no, this is for real. This is, you know, your heart's beating a little harder. And very quickly, it looked like Shawn rolled his ankle and got injured and then kind of fell back onto it. Cheeto was able to finish him very quickly. And it was like, oh, what a shame. He got injured again. Now looking back it

appears this probably came from a calf kick which makes it a pretty pretty fair legal injury and Chito appeared to do what Brent Primus did to Michael Chandler at Bellator Madison Square Garden a few years ago where he killed the nerve in his left leg with a calf kick I can't even imagine the pain that O'Malley was feeling because he was writhing in the octagon afterwards but man credit to him for trying to fight through that as long as he did credit to Chido for proving everybody wrong too you know you got to give him props as well nobody expected him to win that fight and I think the odds makers weren't giving him enough respect in that fight as well so best of luck to Sean O'Malley in recovery.

And I know he'll be back soon. I don't think this is the end of the Sugar Show hype train. I don't think he was exposed in any way. I think this was, you know, I don't want to call it a freak accident because it's what Marlon Shito Vera intended to do with those attacks. But you just hate to see a fighter lose a fight like that. So I would like to see them run that back when Sugar Show eventually comes back and maybe gets another win under his belt. For now, Cheeto will probably continue on the path he's on and Sugar will go recover.

The main event itself then lived up to all of the hype, like I said before. I mean, it was just incredible. I think it was probably the best fight of all three. And it, being there live for this one was just insane. This was the big fight feel. This was the fight club feel, the blood sport feel. I looked up during DC's entrance and I saw Halle Berry in the rafters, which was just like another one of those, where am I? What is this? Is this a dream? Am I going to wake up and be like, why was Halle Berry there? No, she was actually there. She was cheering on DC. I was staying impartial throughout the

whole thing. DC and Stipe, two guys that have been on the podcast before, two guys that have been so nice to me and so cordial to me in the past. It was one of those fights where you didn't want to see anybody lose really, you know? The first round was great. I thought it went to DC. He secured a good takedown. He was able to lay on top of Stipe for a little bit. He landed some huge shots. And then in the second round, he had some more success, more success. You know, he keeps going. And then he gets clipped at the end of it. Stipe almost finishes him at the end of the second round. So immediately, it's like, holy shit, we got a fight, you know, just had the same feel as the first two fights that were going back and

forth. So that was awesome. Stipe comes back. I thought he stole the second. I thought he won the third. I thought he also won the fourth, although I could see how you could give the fourth to DC. And then in the fifth round, it was very... And then the fifth round was another one that was tough to score, but I gave that one to DC. I gave DC rounds one and five, and then I gave Stipe two, three, four. The eye poke was a big talking point. Stipe poked DC in the eye, and his eye looked real fucked up the whole time. He had a torn cornea, which just sounds horrible.

Any eye injury always. I always think back to I put my contact in my eye once, which I used to wear contacts for a very brief period of time for like a summer. And I put my contact in my eye after putting it in cleaner and not solution or whatever. And it just burned the fucking, my eyes could water, like just thinking about it, burn the shit out of them. And I would imagine a torn cornea hurts a lot more than that, so best of luck to DC in recovering, too, I hope he's not, you know, looking all wonky-eyed the rest of his life, but I don't know how much it affected him in the fight, he said he couldn't see, I definitely think Stipe was still winning throughout, so I don't think it was, like like the reason he won the fight. It was tremendous

though. It was just a tremendous fight, a tremendous weekend. We have a behind the scenes video coming out soon, as I mentioned. So look out for that. And, uh, oh, one more thing. This was funny. So we get a video of Bruce Buffer warming up, right? So funny. He's warming up. He's doing whatever he quote tweets. It says like, oh, this is so funny. You caught's warming up he's doing whatever he quote tweets it says like oh this is so funny you caught me warming up love it and then afterwards he comes up to us after the fights bruce buffer comes up to us and he says you guys barstool and we said yeah and he said oh that was so funny that tweet or whatever we said oh yeah glad you enjoyed it glad you know you weren't like hey what the fuck you were filming he was super cool about it no not at all guys thanks for you know put it up thanks for getting it.

And then before he leaves, he looks at us, and he kind of gets my attention as I turned away. He said, hey, Robbie. I turned around. I said, yeah? And I swear to God, he just looks at me and goes, have fun with it. As if we were in a fucking commercial.

As if it was like an athlete throwing me a towel. Robbie, have fun with it. It was like the end of The Breakfast Club. Hey, don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. Take a second and look around every once in a while. It was hysterical. I just thought that was another funny thing to add.

I'm sorry if this was a scatterbrained podcast. I know it was on the shorter side, like I mentioned it would be. But like I said, I'm on very little sleep. It was a crazy week. And I hope that I provided you a little insight as to what it was like. I'll be back next week with some fun stuff.