My Mom's Basement - QUARANTINE MINI-POD: JIMMY SMITH

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

Robbie is joined by MMA commentator/broadcaster/SiriusXM host Jimmy Smith this week to discuss his new show, 'Unlocking the Cage', his beginnings in mixed martial arts, and the news of the week.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. Jimmy, it's been a while since we've talked. How are you? It's been a long time, man, but one thing I gotta tell you, I really respect the Black Sabbath shirt. Oh, thank you, yes. Good choice, man. Good choice all the way around for me, man. Yeah, how have you been? How have you been in quarantine? It's been good, man. Um, just. Well, I'm right now in South Florida, which is probably the place you want to quarantine the most

and stay off the street as much as humanly possible. And that's what I've been doing. I've been tested four times because I do Titan FC out here in Fort Lauderdale. And they test me every single time I do a show. And I've done it four under quarantine. So, so far, everything's been good, man. I've been, I've been very pleased with the results so far. I've been good. How about you?

I've been all right. You know, with the Barstool stuff, with interviews like this, I'm sure, you know, with broadcasting as well and doing your serious XM show, we can continue doing it. We're lucky enough where we can keep doing our jobs and kind of keep having fun. And especially with MMA, God is fans of the sport. We've been the luckiest our sports continue pretty much so yeah i've been able to stay locked up and just watch fights and talk about fights it's like okay everything's from home but it's pretty much the

same exactly every time i look up there's a new title fight going on i don't know and i love it um the last time we spoke we were on sirius xm but you didn't have your own show now you actually have your own show you get to actually have your own show. You get to do whatever you want from 1 to 3 p.m. And you mentioned the Black Sabbath short right away. I know you're a big music guy. If I had my own show on Sirius XM, I think first order of business would be like, let me create a Spotify playlist, all my tunes, and that's going to be the break music. Are we seeing that from Jimmy Smith? What kind of first thing we did first thing we did man was i i put down my the songs i wanted the artists i like but then i like the dj uh ty one of my producers

man what i like is okay here's my stuff give me some of your stuff too like you know you know so it's like all right you know give me some new stuff give me stuff you like give me some good hip-hop because all my stuff's you know 20 years old stuff what are you into what like what's on you what's on your side of that playlist i'm from long beach california man so you know it's all about the snoop dogg it's all about west coast stuff i like ministry i like black sabbath i like alice in change old alice in chains old stuff from the 90s uh that's right and i'm a huge blues fan so oh yeah i'm just i'm just generally a music guy um great band that I like that that is kind of off the radar would be um somebody like the Brian Jonestown Massacre things like that so I love old stuff Black Sabbath everything so I hop around a lot okay so let's get into MMA we can we can

actually talk mixed martial arts I like to do this with all of my guests um how did you get into fighting in the first place let's take it all the way back to the beginning what is your origin story if you will when it comes to mma my origin story is i was a wrestler in high school and uh so i was wrestling in high school and i went to ucla for college and they don't have a wrestling team so we had a club up in this athletic room at what they the wooden center which kind of their workout area they they have this big matted room and the wrestling club would meet there a couple days a week and a bunch of guys who just wrestled in high school would just would wrestle you know

just for the hell of it you know so they didn't have a team or anything and one day a guy comes in remember i grew up with boxing i grew up with some some combat sports was you know boxing was king when i was a kid and so a guy comes in and he says, hey, man, you're looking at a good wrestler. You should come to my jiu-jitsu class tonight. I didn't even know what he was talking about. I was like, all right, sure, that sounds good. I'll try that out. And I had seen mixed martial arts before.

I had a friend who had a tape and brought it to our house and showed it to us. But at the time, was ufc five i think it was dan severin won the tournament and at the time it was it was hoist gracie ken shamrock was the super fight where they have their draw or whatever yep and at the time it was like simple double leg and then you just beat the crap out of the guy i mean there was every fight went two or three minutes there wasn't a whole lot of technique to it so i just wasn't that impressed i was like okay they're wrestling getting on top and beat the crap out of each other and dan seven was a better wrestler so he kept winning so i i had been exposed to it but i wasn't really into it and then the hoist gracie ken shamrock

fight you know if it's a crappy fight it goes to it goes to a draw because ken shamrock was outlasted him his game plan was to go two hours with hoist right yeah and it was you know a 45 minute fight and all this stuff so it wasn't a great time limit the day before yeah it's the whole thing yeah yeah totally totally different so anyway so he goes hey come to my jiu-jitsu class tonight i went all right and i just beat everybody with wrestling moves i just cranked them until they hurt and i was like oh this is fun i like this i started doing it and um so all through college i started doing more and more jujitsu and and meeting up with guys who wanted

to fight and we would rent a racquetball court at ucla and we would fight in the racquetball court that was our yeah like a fight club thing and um anyways people know you were doing it was it like were you trying to keep it secret from the school or was it like no it's cool yeah if you paid for a racquetball court you can do whatever you want with a racquetball court, you can do the racquetball court. So all we do is run a racquetball court and we got, you know, we sparred in there and that was it. And, you know, and the people who ran into this racquetball court didn't care that we weren't playing racquetball. You got it for an hour.

So you can do what you want with it really. That sounds awesome. Yeah. So we sparred in the racquetball court. And so I started getting more and more exposed to it. And then I started seeing stuff from Japan. I started seeing stuff from Shuto stuff where I was like, wow, this is impressive. You know, it was much better than earlier UFC. These guys were way farther, farther ahead at that point.

So there was a video store in little Tokyo in LA where I bought a membership. It was all in Japanese. Couldn't read a thing. Went there and I just went to the guy in the front desk and I went, I'm looking for fight stuff. And he, and he, his English wasn't great. And he looked at me and he goes, what? And I go, and he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he took me to this section.

It was all in Japanese and it was shoot on pancreas and Coliseum and like Pride and all this all this Japanese of it I would literally go there everyone just get three watch him go back and get three and the guy just started knowing me he would just have him oh this one's good and we just you know and that's how I kind of got my introduction to the sport but I graduated and then I was I'm from Long Beach and I was driving through Huntington Beach was just south of Long Beach and I saw a big sign that said Jiu-Jitsu I said oh you know check it out see if I can start doing jujitsu you know regularly and it turned out to be um team punishment and I you know Tito Ortiz's little team and so the first time I get on the mat grappling coach guy named Fabiano Iha and I get on the mat with this guy and we shake hands and and he said I said hi I'm Jimmy and he

goes hi I'm a rampage it's nice to meet you and i went i thought he was i thought i misunderstood him you know i was like what i can't do his actual name and then that was the first guy i ever rolled with in an actual class just when he was getting started right yeah he didn't know anything. And so the way I progressed and got good quickly is people don't realize how many people filtered through that team. You know, everybody. Dan Henderson was there all the time. Randy Couture was there all the time. Chuck Cadero was there all the time.

Matt Lindman. All these guys who were big at the time would just kind of cycle through. And whenever you had somebody having a camp, they would just point to me and go, what are you doing after class? And I said, oh, nothing. They go, okay, we're getting Dan Henderson ready for Hansel Gracie. So, in pride. So, he's going to try and get Dan to the floor any way he can. So, you're our fourth guy in this room. There are five guys. He goes, you're our fourth guy. You're trying to get Dan to the ground any way you can. Pull guard, whatever it takes. You know, he's going to try and drag him to the ground. I said, okay. And each guy would go two minutes and I was guy number four or whatever and so I was just part of these camps to get guys ready and

so they would go okay you're gonna do this and give me one job and I do it and uh you got good quickly because you're on the mat with with really great guys you're standing up with really great guys you're trying to swim even though it's you're way out of your league and you just figure it out and that's how I started my fight career and what a amazing thing like I'm sure you're way out of your league and you just figure it out and that's how I started my fight career and what a amazing thing like I'm sure you didn't think of it then but now as a broadcaster now as someone that has to give analysis and kind of translate things for the casual fan to be like hey this is what you're looking at this is what you're watching or break things down like for me you're telling me that story I'm like you had so much inside info on

those camps on what goes down in those camps now it's like you can put that all to use on serious on commentary like whatever and like i said i'm sure you didn't think of it back then but when did the broadcasting come into play then well i did a show for discovery channel called fight quest and yeah people are are either have no idea what that show is or they're they're total fanatics about it as a fight fan yeah like it's one of the only the only fight shows on tv yeah yeah and so that came about kind of randomly i got a i got a a call from one of my teammates who has since passed away um that that they were having this audition for this show call this producer in new york and see and i called this producer and and spoke over the and I called this producer and spoke over the

phone she really liked me and said okay we're doing an audition show up and see what you can do and I got it in about you know like two minutes and um yeah I was I was very very lucky and so anyway I got this gig and then we shot from November 2006 to like spring 2008 well in 2007 I want to say I got a call I got an email out of the blue on whatever social media was at the time myspace or something yeah something some early social media thing and it was a guy named jerry millen who was a vp over at pride and he said i'm working for m1 we need a commentator can you do a show in amsterdam next wednesday it was like thursday and i said yeah sure i can do it i had a passport and he goes okay fly out and do it and i flew out met sean wheelock and my training was

okay this is our headset if you need to cough hit this button right here all right five four and we started and i went and did you like know if you were doing color or play by but you didn't even know i was doing color i knew that but that was all I knew. I, I, I got no instruction. I had no training at all. I sat down, did the fight. And it was, uh, first we did a bunch of Muay Thai fights and fortunately I trained with some of those guys. So I, so I had a little insight there. And then we did, uh, an M one show, Gagarin Musashi fought that night and that was it. And I worked for M one. I did a show every like two and a half, three weeks for them for a couple of years. And then a few of those people went from M1 to Bellator. They, and production people, whatever, went over. And so M1 was kind of phasing out their American presence. And I got a call from Bjorn Rebney at Bellator. And he said, yeah, man, a lot of people tell me you're a good commentator i need one and i got the audition or i i got the gig because i knew everybody in the tournament already

where he said well you're well to a tournament and i said well yeah you know you got dan hornbuckle you know i'll hear a go no knockout and i had grappled against uh jacob mcclintock i had called judo jim walhead's fights like i had experienced all those guys so i just rattled off his whole the whole bracket yeah it's not like you were a random broadcast yeah yeah he was like yeah you're good and so i i ended up you know working with them and then the ufc and now having my own show it's i've been able to stay in the mix and stay in the broadcast world for a dozen years now it's been yeah i think your voice for mma fans is pretty like unrecognizable everyone knows your voice that's kind of a cool thing to have so let me ask you

this when you're commentating it's more of an objective you're calling the fights thing but now when you're on serious you're expected to sort of give opinions or predictions or talk about fights how do you find that balance when talking about fighters? Because I know as well as any, it's not like different sports where you're saying this guy's going to lose this matchup. It's like, this guy's going to get knocked out. And sometimes fighters are like, Hey man,

what the fuck? Like, don't say that. So like, how do you find that balance as a guy that's so informed and you know what you're talking about me? I'm like some, you know,

like, Oh, this guy's going to knock his head off. Here's the deal is i you know you never say anything that you wouldn't say to a fighter's face when they're in front of you because you're gonna see him and i i will like you know i've wouldn't when i was calling belt or they used to we used to do a um a scorecard where i would say you know i give that round so 10-9 and i think so-and-so won it and you have the occasional fighter who you know thought they

won the fight you scored it incorrectly. And you go, yeah, but, you know, that's what I thought because of this, this, and this. And they don't like it, but I've never had – they all respect me at the end of the day. You know, I've never had anybody – you know, I remember Jay Haran got really mad. He fought, I think, Brent Weidman in the finals of his tournament,

and I thought he lost that fight. And I scored it 29-28 Weidman, I think, Brent Weidman in the finals of his tournament, and I thought he lost that fight. And I scored it 29-28 Weidman, I think. Well, he was mad, but then I thought he beat Ben Askren when he fought for the title. So then he loved me again because I was like, no, I thought – I think I gave him all the odd rounds. So I thought he won it by one round. So, oh, after that he loved me.

So, you know, they can get mad, but then you predict them to win the next one and they're thrilled about it they so it's really a matter of what you hear a lot is who is this guy you know who is he to tell me this this and that well they know who i am you know they they know how long i've been in this they know what i can do and what i can't do and so um that's, that's part of it. And also like, you just can't also, you can't think that way. You can't, I got a job to do. And if that upsets somebody or, or, you know, they don't like it, I, what do you want from me? I have to do my job regardless of how you feel about it. You can't allow, cause I know some broadcasters who are always caught in that. Wow. I don't want to upset so-and-so. Well, then you're never going to do your job well.

You're just never going to be able to be honest. I find myself caught in it sometimes. I got to shave my head, get some muscles, maybe a black belt. I'll be more fearless next time when I ask. No, but one of the worst things, and I want you to really know this. I really do believe this. Nothing's worse to me than the non-fighter trying to kind of put them – you don't have to be a fighter to be able to give your honest opinion

about certain things. You should be knowledgeable about the sport. I see managers and hangers on, you know, jacked up and doing PEDs. And you're like, dude, you don't fight. You don't have to do that. Like, I'm not impressed. Nobody in the fight world is impressed. Everybody knows if you hit the ground with me i'm gonna smoke you we don't you don't need to go there you don't need to be that guy and there's one thing about mma is it breeds this

self-consciousness where people around it or like you don't see assistant coaches with clipboards in the nfl you know squatting with these linemen and they're not, that's not their job. I'm a coach now. I don't have to do that stuff. You know, you don't see these coaches all jacked up and you know, they're not, they're NFL coaches. That doesn't have to, I don't be a player anymore. The MMA doesn't work that way. People feel the need to kind of, you know, getting fights with their guys and you're like dude just relax and breathe and do your damn job you don't have to jump into the competition aspect of it people

do yeah i think i think that needed to be said i think people don't talk about that enough but like oh god it's the worst if you're an mma fan you immediately like know who he's talking about um let's talk about some mma headlines before we get you out of here. In the past weekend, some news coming up. Alistair Overeem, awesome win this weekend, and one that once again proved that this guy's ageless. He's just going to fight until he's 112 years old, and he's going to look the same.

He's going to look like an action figure every time. What did you think of the main event? Good strategy switch by him. You saw the speed advantage of Sakai. He was really accurate. His hands looked very, very fast. But I thought the difference in that fight that not enough people were talking about, instantly, and I was a fan of Sakai

because I called his fights in Bellator. I've called his fights in UFC. He's a very, very nice guy. I really like him. Immediately, I went, God, he doesn't have the power to hurt Overeem. Every time he would land, pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa, and Overeem would kind of shell up and go backward and go right back to it. And I was like, he's not hurting him.

He's not giving him a reason to back off. He's not – you're hitting him. You're not scaring him. And so Overeem was kind of like, oh, okay, I got this. And once he started taking him down, it was just – the script completely flipped the other way. And I was like, this is 100% over. Once you give a guy with Overe versatility, a way in, like say you, you, you suddenly can't stop a leg kick or

you suddenly can't stop a take them. You suddenly can't stop one thing. All right. That's, he's just going to go to that well over and over. And as soon as he did that, it was finished. The problem we see now is most of the guys ahead of money, but maybe Alexander Volkov is ranked ahead of him. Everybody ranked ahead of him was beating him. I know. So that hopscotch, how does he get to the title, probably has to rematch Rosenstreich. I think that's probably going to happen.

Rosenstreich, of course, everybody's talking about him versus Derek Lewis. He's got to find a way to kind of get back to the title shot. Getting past some guys who beat him decisively. Curtis Blades and Gunnar, those guys beat him decisively. Rosenstreich, he was at least beating until he got caught. But he's got to find a way back to the title or else he's going to hang out in that 5-6 range, beating up incomers until he wears down. The issue is at his weight class, he can still make a lot.

I mean, you remember what Arlofsky getting paid? Last time he got paid, like, dude, it's crazy what he's getting. You can hang out in that mid-5, 6 range of the heavyweight, make a ton of money, and sail off into the sunset. So we'll see which way he goes. I remember someone put out the sheet from that Arlovsky card, whatever it was, and everyone's like, is that a typo? No way, no way.

Yeah. Dude's getting paid crazy money. And Overeem's got a name, too. He's like, you know, you put the ream on a poster, and people are going to watch. So another headline we had this weekend, which I thought was crazy, is that maybe Nick Diaz is going to possibly return. We hear this every now and then.

We heard it. I remember before UFC 235, there was a potential Jorge Masvidal matchup going around. Wonder Boy, Till, they threw their names out there. I think Robbie Lawler was a fan favorite that people were throwing up. Let's do the Robbie Lawler-Nick Diaz rematch 17 years on or something like that. Conor and Jorge, obviously, too, that fans were saying he could go back and get revenge for his brother.

If Nick Diaz makes his return to the Octagon in 2021, who would you like to see him return against? The big – well, if Masvidal gets past nate that which i imagine he should he was beating the crap out of him the first time yeah that's the big money fan friendly put it on your calendar everybody has to watch that fight that would be crazy that would be it the problem with nick is he's always had a trouble with standout wrestlers that's been his issue you take him out and you can beat him. The top, the elite at 170 pounds is full of those guys.

You have the Colby Covington. You have Tyrone Woodley, of course, the champ, Kamaru Usman. You have guys who aren't aesthetically good matchups for him. If you stay away from those, you have a bunch of strikers. You have Leon Edwards, of course. You have Masvidal. Wonder Boy's tricky. I don't know if that'd be a great aesthetic fight.

It'd be fun. Vicente Luque. They're a bunch of bangers. Even Pettis. Pettis, yeah. Any of those guys. I think the problem is that if you see Nate as a smaller Nick, which essentially he is, it's hard to get past,

look, Nate beat him up. Nick's going to destroy that. There's always that disparity of like, well, if Nate could beat him, and Nick's just a bigger Nate, right? So if you can keep him away from those wrestlers who take him down take him down ad nauseum you can have some really fun fights really aesthetically pleasing one thing that two things i don't want to see is number one him fight somebody that it doesn't make an entertaining fight right if nate's going to come back i want i want an entertaining fight and number two i don't want to see him cut the line with a really really relevant guy who's on a super streak and headed for a title shot and nate just cuts the head of the line and

and fights him i'd like that mid-level masvidal leon edwards is great leon edwards cannot get a remarkable fight to save his life of course i know boy thompson so that would be a fun fight there's so many good fights that i think are in that range and i don't when i had joe rogan on my inaugural episode of my show i talked about i don't believe gym stories i just don't people have all in the gym this guy okay great wonderful he's in the gym i you know certain guys whoop ass in the gym can't do it in the octagon you never know one thing i do pay attention to is nate looked good in that you know that that little video he showed he's lean he doesn't look he's partying anymore he's down to 165 170 real real tight uh that i pay attention to he looks like he's put the partying aside and he's really training

seriously that being said i'd keep him away from middleweight because of that he looked like a lean 65 70 i know darren till's in the mix i mean it's a big boy at 185 i i don't think if if if nate's cutting the amount of weight he's cutting right now where he's leaning down that much i don't think 185 is good for him yeah i would probably agree with you there i don't know as much about the weight cutting aspect as you but if you can make 65 you shouldn't be fighting a middleweight right yeah if you're yeah if you're lean 65 you can put on if you can you can put on 10 15 pounds of muscle and then cut down to 70 you know what i mean you can put it on you need to get up to like 200 210 of muscle to make 185 and i i don't

i don't see him doing that and also he's never been a power guy he's never been the most physically dominant guy even at 170 so 185 and those guys are a little too big for him yeah all right one more matchup i'd like to ask you about, kind of a who would you like to see this guy face is John Jones. He's possibly moving to heavyweight. You know, he's saying that at least. Who would you have him make his heavyweight debut against? Would you have him hot shot to the title? Are you saying, hey, nobody else really makes sense for Stipe right now. I don't want to see the Ngannou rematch. Would you have him face someone like Brock Lesnar? Would you have him face someone else? Who would you have John Jones make his heavyweight debut against? I'm generally not a huge fan of line cutting.

This is my preview. But in this case, a guy who has been mopping him up at 205 his entire career gets a historic fight against Stipe Miocic, who's the greatest UFC heavyweight of all time. Him and Fedor, it's your opinion who's number one, but those are the two top dogs, period. The Ngannou fight, yes, Ngannou has earned the fight against Stipe. He's earned the rematch. The problem is Stipe pretty much dominated him for 25 minutes.

How does Stipe get any better? He'd have to knock him out in the first round. That's a stupid strategy. I think we'd see the same fight over again. It would take a miracle for Stipe to look any better because of how good he looked the first time. What does it do for Stipe? Not very much.

And that first round, the risk of the first round we had last time where Stipe had to eat those bombs, like, oh, my God. Huge. It was crazy. Jon Jones is right where he says look this is high risk low reward for stipe it's a guy who's already beaten who can knock him out how often do we get this historic collision of two guys uh in the mma sphere unquestioned number one at 205 in in mma history unquestioned number one heavyweight in UFC history. They get a chance to climb and let's face it,

the chance for John Jones to get that belt, turn to the camera and go, ha ha DC, which that gets John Jones up in the morning. You know, it does. He's always seen it that way. Yeah. Who's your daddy. I got the belt. You couldn't get, he wouldn't love nothing more than that. So with all those things combined i would like to see john jones fight steve i think we get a historic fight and we don't often get a chance for those and you know what's so crazy about the john jones move to heavyweight something

about me i hate john jones he's my least favorite ufc fighter of all time just a huge hater of him he's like a guy that i almost he's my boston red sox so easy i now love to hate him so easy to hate he makes it easy, dude. He makes it really easy. But if he moves to heavyweight, let's say he gets the heavyweight championship. I'm now down for Jon Jones versus Alistair Overeem at heavyweight. I don't need Alistair Overeem to get any more wins. I'm just like, I want that matchup. I'm now down for Brock Lesnar to skip the line. And I want to see that matchup. I just want to see these big heavyweight matchups. I want Ngannou versus Jon Jones. Like, imagine that. That would be fireworks. And I want to see that matchup. I just want to see these big heavyweight matchups. I want Ngannou versus Jon Jones. Like, imagine that.

That would be fireworks. So I'm kind of down for all of that. I think Jon Jones to heavyweight is an awesome move for MMA. It's a great move for MMA. Also, a great expression that was told to Muhammad Ali one time is, mountains don't grow any higher. You know, he was talking about a comeback. And somebody told him, look, mountains don't grow any higher.

What if Jon Jones beats Dominic Reyes and he beats jan blahavich okay i'm not saying he can't it's gonna get harder and harder to do and so what he's already wiped out everybody there is to wipe out staying at 205 would just be you know wash rinse repeat until he you know father time catches up with him there wasn't anything left to do with 205, right? I'm not saying that after the second Gus fight, it was just like, all right. Yeah. He,

yeah, he did it. We get it. He, he, he climbed them out. You beat the game. You beat the game.

The only thing left to prove is I did believe Ray has been the first time. And if he beats rise, maybe he puts that one to bed. Okay. Is that really worth once again, risk versus reward. It's high risk, low reward,

heavyweight. As you said, so many options, so many pay-per-views to sell. I mean, if he beats Stipe, like, I don't know how you even make another GOAT argument. If he gets undefeated at 205, beats Stipe, midget, should greet his heavyweight in UFC history, God, he kind of stands alone on his own island of greatness. And I know as a Jon Jones hater, that just burns like acid in your heart, but it's true.

It's just like, God, he just stands alone. I'm going to go take my acid reflux medicine right after this interview. Yeah, right. Just take a little bit. You'll be all right. All right. This has been a pleasure. Again, you can listen to Unlocking the Cage on Sirius XM Fight Nation channel, 156 from 1 to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Jimmy, we'll have to have you back on soon. Thank you for coming on today. Sold my soul to rock and roll, brother. Later. Hell yeah.