My Mom's Basement - QUARANTINE MINI-POD: BRENDAN FITZGERALD

Episode Date: April 7, 2020

UFC Commentator Brendan Fitzgerald joins Robbie in the Basement today, less than 24 hours removed from one of the craziest days of MMA news in recent memory, to talk all about it - plus, how he got his start with the UFC, and what goes into a commentary tryout.You 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. Brendan Fitzgerald, what's going on man, how are you? Thanks for throwing that in, appreciate it Robbie, how are you doing? I'm good, I'm good, I'm hanging in there, we said right before we started recording, I mean it's weird, I feel like we're asking everyone, hey how you doing? We're all saying we're hanging in there but we're all probably going crazy well especially where you are i mean to be in the belly of the beast it is new york i mean what is that like these days it's weird man especially living in a tiny apartment like it's just four white walls i'm going crazy i think i'm gonna go back to jersey this week just to get a little little you know just to see trees every now and then i got dogs back there so nice man

yeah same thing. Sometimes I just have to drive around, drive a lap around Las Vegas. Yeah, you're living in Vegas, right? Live in Vegas, yeah. We did a lap up the strip last week just to make sure it's still there. And it's kind of eerie that it's all empty

as like Times Square and stuff. It's baffling to think Times Square is just empty all day, every day. But that's the world we live in right now. How long have you been living in Vegas? Are you living in Vegas because of the UFC, I assume? Yeah. I actually met my wife at the Bellagio back in 2004.

I was in college. I did a semester in Los Angeles. Instead of going abroad, I went to school in upstate New York. Instead of going abroad, like going to Europe or Australia for a semester, I went to Los Angeles, did an internship, came to Vegas for a weekend with my buddies, met my wife at a nightclub, stayed in touch. And she went to UNLV, she lived out here. So I moved out here before, moved all over the country, never thought I'd live back here. But then catching on with dana white's contender series back in 2017 i still lived in north carolina because i was living there at that moment for uh espn and then uh we moved out here because uh my work was with the ufc we said let's

go back we love it that's crazy that you live there and then you came all the way back so we're gonna talk all the way around we're gonna talk ufc 249 obviously people want to hear about that we'll talk about the fight island because that's you know something straight out of Mortal Kombat but I do want to ask you about how you get started with the UFC because I think that's interesting as a commentator we don't hear many people talk about that their journey into that so how did you get started were you always wanting to be a commentator or sports broadcaster yeah um as soon as i found out people got paid to go to the games and talk about them i was in um found out that when i was like under 10 because i was a huge sports fan growing up and uh i asked you should yeah but i know yeah sorry about that for

you robbie but like would watch the games and i thought the guys who were talking where it was like their hobby. I was like, how, how did those guys get to do that? Cause I want to do that. My dad was like, well, that's their job.

So I was sold from day one and it worked out well. Cause I sucked at math and those, you know, those kinds of subjects did not get me in the right place. So always want to be a sports broadcaster was always a traditional sports fan, sticking ball sports and all that coming from Boston I wasn't really into combat sports friends did karate and stuff like that my high school didn't even have a wrestling team

so I just wasn't in that world but climbed through the ranks as a sports broadcaster mostly on local news doing like scores and highlights started in Wyoming made it to rural Texas made it back to Boston made it to ESPN and then got laid off by ESPN back in 2017 a couple of months before the contender series was set to start for its first season so they were looking for broadcasters I was available I auditioned and how does something like that go like an audition do you yeah because you don't have people to fight in front of you to call do you call old fights so we call we didn't we called fights from burbank california we called fights from los angeles they had a studio set up this is how the ufc does it for for some of the international broadcasts like

the ufc is on in so many different countries but there's only like one or maybe two broadcast crews that sit at the octagon they do it kind of remotely so that's what they did with us so um my audition was when Max Holloway beat Jose Aldo in Brazil the first time yeah I did the middle four there were three crews that were auditioning that day uh i did like the middle four fights and they put on tape a bunch of us and they sat around had a meeting and uh dana and company chose some finalists and that sort of thing and then uh was eventually chosen but yeah they had people doing live fights because you can't do old fights because you know a partner in doing that is it i had a partner duo yeah that's really cool yeah they brought in a bunch of fighters to audition, like fighters that people know. My partner in the audition was Eve Edwards, who ended up calling the first season of Contender Series.

Yeah. And Felder, I didn't meet until the day before we did our first show together back in 2017. He fought Stevie Ray in Scotland, knocked him out, took a 10-hour flight to Las Vegas. Then I met him there the day before, and we did our first contender series the next Tuesday. Felder's crazy. I feel like he's got a ton of those stories where he

has a fight or something related to it, and you're like, wait, how are you making that work? Rogan told a story where he was weighing in at like 190, and he had a fight in two months. He was like at 155. This is when he's fighting at 100. He's like, how the fuck are you going to cut all that weight?

And he's like, I don't know. I'll make it work. Yeah, Felder, he puts in his road work, but he also enjoys a beer and some donuts as he definitely shows on his social media. So he's not one of those guys that can be like, oh, somebody fell out. Put me in that fight next week it's like nah can't get down there yet he's got a he's got a master plan every time he takes a fight so what's it been like getting into the UFC as someone that wasn't a traditional like coming up I always want to commentate the UFC yeah like what's it been like diving into that I had like

known I like fighting before I got into it like i would like to hit a heavy bag and stuff as a workout i was just like it's cool and like the rocky movies and like yeah right yeah you know like everyone gets that itch it's just a matter of if you walk far enough down that path to like let the hook sink in and be like okay I need to watch this I need to pay attention so I at first I felt bad about how little I knew about it but then I was like well I have to know about the sports that I'm covering like once you get to a certain level you have to be an expert in what you're covering to the point where like it would be irresponsible for me to know everything about this other sport just on a fan basis and then like let my work slip so like if I'm covering college football and basketball which I was doing at ESPN like there's like hundreds and hundreds of teams I mean there's like 350 basketball teams there's over 100 football teams

so like if I have to know the defensive coordinator at Tulsa and why he's the next head coaching job candidate whatever uh it just takes the brain space and the time and energy away from like following other stuff. But once I was preparing for my audition right away, I was like, this is awesome. Love the sport. Love the drama of what happens inside the Octagon. Love the drama of the, like yesterday.

But yesterday, like we have a new fight. We have a new fight card. We don't know where it's going to be. There's going to be an Island like MMA. That's the only sport that happens. You know, it's so crazy. Yesterday I was talking to a few people late at night, you know, it was 10 PM over here and none of them got texts back for an hour. Like some people in my family, some friends, some coworkers, they were like, Hey man, everything cool. You fall asleep or something? And I was like,

no, sorry, work just got crazy. And they were like, why? And I was like, well, Anthony Smith, this fighter, just got someone broken to his house, and he told the craziest story ever about this fight with an intruder. Dana White purchased an island to put fights on in, and we have a new card, including Justin Gaethje versus Tony Ferguson a ridiculous lightweight fight so let's let's talk a little bit about UFC 249 the card that has been a toss-up for Dana has been adamant this is going on I promise we will find a location we will find fighters that can compete and they've done it seemingly I mean we're still 12 11 days out something now but like I mentioned Justin Gaethje vs. Tony

Ferguson is the interim lightweight championship main event. We've got that Francis Nganou fight. We've got Rose Namajunas vs. Jessica Andrade too. The Calvin Cater vs. Jeremy Stephens fight is ridiculous. It's a really good card. Which fights of this card are sticking out to you? Are you looking forward

to it? I mean, obviously you're looking forward to it. Yeah, all of them. I think Nganou leading off a pay-per-view is like banana land that's like insane would never happen other than this but uh on the main card i think it's the third from the top or maybe it's the second fight on the pay-per-view but uh vicente luke against nico price they already fought before yeah i think that was that was nico's first loss he only lost like one since then but um those two guys are just crazy action fighters so creative uh luke case like needs to get one back nico price would just up kick you into oblivion uh that's like the under the radar fight obviously the big fights are the big fights and i the card is so stacked but that one i was like holy smokes

because uh nico price i called two of his fights he won both of them stacked but that one I was like holy smokes because uh Nico Price I called two of his fights he won both of them by knockout while he was on his back won an up kick and one when he like hammer fisted Randy Brown so that guy's crazy and uh love watching him fight every time that up kick knockout is ridiculous so are you calling this fight do you know if you're calling this fight do you know where this fight is are you trying to call this fight I don't I'm working as scheduled so they're they're still in the process but it's a pay-per-view john annick i think will be uh out there as long as he can be and make that happen but uh i don't know if as dana says like right i mean he's like he said he's like i'm willing to drive to the ends

of the earth to make this happen that guy's devoted to the company just like we all are so uh i'm just going to work as scheduled. Dana says the train's going to keep on moving as of 4-18, and obviously there were fight nights scheduled after that, so we'll just have to see how it goes, but I'm ready to get back at it. I mean, are you, like, chomping at the bit to get out to that island? Yeah, I mean, I wonder if it will it will be fire island no it probably won't be no no it won't be fire fest yeah they'll figure it out like uncle dana will hook it up i just think

it's it sounds insane but if it happens like yeah i want to go to the island i want to tell like my my grandkids like yeah well one time there was this pandemic and we all went out to a tropical island and we put on mma fights on espn it was pretty crazy yeah so uh yeah man like these are unprecedented times and i'm just kind of taking it in stride like wow like we're gonna be we're gonna be remembering this for for a long time for a lot of different reasons in a lot of different walks of life but certainly uh mma is providing no shortage of drama right now i mean it's literally and i'm not the first person to bring this up the plot of mortal combat the movie like dana is putting this together yeah exactly no i mean it's it's mythical it's absolutely mythical uh let's all hop on a plane let's go somewhere like opponents maybe sitting 10 feet from each other

on the plane which yeah you know kind of happens anyways on you know sometimes when they're in the back and stuff but uh man it's uh it's wild it's outrageous i know there's a lot of controversy around the card around here we keep things late i mean i'm thankful for the entertainment i wrote the blog i pretty much said if i were in dana's position i don't know if i would have went on with this event after khabib dropped out because you risk that Tony Khabib fight, right? You've waited five years for it. If in the case that Justin Gaethje goes on and beats Tony Ferguson here, hey, maybe we never see that Khabib-Tony fight. But in the short term, if we want entertainment right now, this is a ridiculous

fight. Who's not going to watch this fight? Under different circumstances, I feel like we'd be talking about this fight as one of the best fights on paper we've ever seen absolutely I mean it's one of those things where Justin Gaethje at some point is going to have to get the recognition from mainstream sports fans that he deserves not saying that Tony Ferguson shouldn't Habib and all that they've all become big draws but like I saw in SportsCenter and they're just like all right tell me about this Justin Gaethje because you know know, he's the fighter that steps in. It's like, if you don't know about him, like you should. And this is an incredible platform for really the entire UFC to sports fans, not like MMA fans. It's like sports is silent. UFC has an ESPN platform now, but now they have

nothing else around it to distract other people and if you want live sports and and something different it's like this is going to create enough buzz where a lot of people are going to flip through that who knows if they plan to buy the pay-per-view and they eventually do so after watching it but uh man the stage is set for the UFC to have some growth here yeah I think that's key what you said in this being a big show for Gaethje. I mean, I'm a McGregor fan, obviously. Putting that feud aside right now, he should sort of have a cowboy-esque aura, to me, among casual fans. Where casual fans, I know this being a Barstool writer. That's basically who I'm dealing with. I'm usually writing about the guys that casual fans don't know about.

I'm trying to tell them about these people. Gaethje's always one who I bring up and people go who even after all these knockouts and i feel like he should have that cowboy persona where it's like this is a guy that's going to show up he's going to put on an insanely violent show he's going to do a backflip off the cage he's going to cut a good promo afterwards like he's got all of the tools i just don't know why he hasn't caught on yeah i think um in the span i and i don't i mean no knock on Gaethje because I love Gaethje. No, me neither. Yeah, I've interviewed him as well. He doesn't fight as much as Cowboy does, right? Simple fact.

And Cowboy too – Cowboy has come up in the game, WEC, like as MMA got more famous, Cowboy was riding that wave. Like he was on that wave. And Gaethje came into the ufc like when i was coming into the ufc his ufc debut was michael johnson yeah summer 2017 and like fight of the year i that's when i was still kind of like wrapping my head around it and watching it week to week and then like well this guy's different yeah this guy's different man like he could take a punch he can give a punch uh he does exactly what he said he was gonna do he's like i'm gonna get knocked out or i'm gonna knock him out if he goes to the ground i'm gonna make him stand back up and knock him down and how do you not love a fighter like that

as a fan yeah then he flips off the cage and he does it several times since he had wars even when he lost like to poori and alvarez incredible fights. He's come back with three first round knockouts. Like he'll get his due, but he just, you know, he, it takes time, which Cerrone has like more than 10 years of that. Yeah. And Gaethje has had a handful of fights and over a handful of years, you know, just a few years in the UFC. So hopefully that'll change with this one. Cause the guy is a, he's a machine.

Totally. That Gaethje fight. I remember specifically, that that's one of those like you remember where you were when you watched it yeah i was actually on a train watching it on my phone and just like trying not to like make too much noise in the quiet car you know um but before we cap this thing off just overall on that main event justin gaethje versus tony ferguson I'm not asking you for a prediction as a commentator, but what can we expect? From someone that doesn't know Gaethje, you already touched on that, but on the Tony Ferguson side, maybe.

So Ferguson, it's just like impossible to nail him down. Like, how do you describe Tony Ferguson? How do you tell somebody who doesn't know Tony Ferguson? How do you, or just like, this is how he fights. You almost have to show him videos, right? You just have to show him videos right you just have to show him videos be like well he might be in trouble but he'll do a somersault he'll throw a spinning elbow the other guy will be like his face is a bunch of razor cuts yeah and uh and then Ferguson will find a way I don't even know man like Gaethje is not afraid of the ground game he's a wrestler uh college wrestling background but that's not what he wants to do i just think ferguson's had a full camp i think i saw that ferguson opened as

like a sizable favorite i haven't seen the numbers yet but it's like ferguson's getting ready for the fight of his life against abib now all of a sudden gaethje is just like okay i'll take the fight so a couple weeks to train but how is the training camp going that's a question really for any fighter that's getting ready to step in there i think in the next month or so is what's the training like what's your camp in like how prepared are you how close to your best do you feel gaethje's fighting style though is like the guy's gonna slug it out i think gaethje's gonna try to just sit in front of him and make it a boxing match and say whose chin is stronger so we'll see ferguson there's a lot to gain for each of these guys like a lot of people are like ferguson has nothing to gain and everything to

lose it's like people are going to remember this main event they're going to remember these two fighters that are taking this opportunity they're going to remember what ferguson put on the line if he wins he gets habib uh if gaethje wins he gets habib connor's sitting there for perhaps the loser of this one which is a huge money fight. So it's like, I don't know. I don't know what to expect from Ferguson. I don't know what to expect from this whole thing other than I can't wait that it's going to happen.

Yeah, I think Ferguson more than anything, and I do agree that Ferguson probably has more to lose than he does to win, but I think he's trying to prove, hey, I am who I say I am. I'm showing up to fight no matter what, under a pandemic, I will show up under these circumstances. Like, his legend still grows. Both of these guys' stock goes up no matter what happens.

And as Conor put it, he said it was a game of chicken. Unfortunately, it was. And Khabib lost that game. It's not his fault. But he was the one that had to take that fall and pull out while Tony Ferguson can still fight. So in the eyes of a lot of fans, I think they're going to respect that. And they're going to respect the UFC putting this event on when it's all said and done, when we're sitting there on April 18th with nothing to watch that night.

And we put on ESPN+, it's going to be a hell of a night. I know. After two more weeks of staying inside, as if it hasn't been long enough. Yes. Thank you for joining the show. I appreciate it. You can check out Brendan's podcast. I would recommend starting with the Joseph Benavidez episode. That enough, I'll refer. Yes. Thank you for joining the show. I appreciate it. You can check out Brendan's podcast. I would recommend starting with the Joseph Benavidez episode. That's where I jumped in. Yep, that's where I jumped in. He's my guy.

I love Joe. Also, Joe and Meg met at the Bellagio as well. There's a little fun fact for you there. Yeah, there you go. You can check out Fitz and the Fighter. Like I said, April 18th, we got UFC 249.