The Ariel Helwani Show - Can Netflix and MVP rival UFC? Importance of Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano, more | The Craic

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

Petesy Carroll, Chuck Mindenhall, and Ben Fowlkes are back with The Craic. This weekend’s highly anticipated matchup between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano is on everyone’s mind. The boys debate whether the Netflix card can compete with the UFC (02:31). They then break down the co-main event between Francis Ngannou and Phillipe Lins (40:52), followed by a preview of the guaranteed brawl between Nate Diaz and Mike Perry (46:13). The lads give their official picks for this weekend (56:50), break down this weekend UFC Apex card (01:03:02), then close up shop by answering your Super Chats (01:05:58).

The crack is back, ladies and gentlemen. It is Friday. Tomorrow is potentially the dawn of a new era as MVP and Netflix. Host their first MMA show. And, of course, it is Ronda Rousey and the great Gina Cranow at the top of that card. And they have weighed in. My great friend on Air Jordan, who has flown through the air from the West Coast to the East Coast to produce the greatest show in the history of MMA media.

That's right. The Cracked, ladies and gentlemen. He's flown all the way home to do it. It's all very exciting. I mean, the ramifications of this being a success are massive. Do people care, though? We'll be pondering all of these wonderful things. We'll be taking a look at the UFC card, which is happening this week.

A lot of people might think it's floating under the radar there, but it is happening. Dave Allen's voting in England. Patty Donovan's voting tonight. I only found out about that today. We probably won't touch on them too much, though. But it is here. We are but a day away from MVP. MMA and that rhymes and it didn't even

I didn't even like you know plan it that way that's how genius I am at this. Let's bring in the lads I'm already stuttering here. Please. Chook, Ben, get in here. Well, hell yeah. It wasn't one of my best intros I feel. No, I mean, it was just, it was all right. It was all right. I feel like you're a little bit put off that you're not in Los Angeles,

like that you're still in Ireland. There it is. Yeah. Somebody said it. Somebody said it. I've sent some vibes here. What's going on, man? surplus they could call me surplus Carol you know what I mean That's what it was they were like you know Let's get the whole team over here And I was like oh cool

Can I get the flight arrangement soon I'd say And then the next thing I know They're all just standing beside the Hollywood sign And I'm like I guess this wasn't for me But um the last I mean they're doing you a favor Pizzi They know if they fly you to Los Angeles 15 minutes after you get off the plane

You're sunburned You're horribly sunburned I'm so you know that somewhere now and it's just been cloudy here since January. It is a fair point. They did have a wonderful time though. Ariel was fantastic at the press conference yesterday. He will be involved,

the course at the event, lots of big names involved. It's finally here. And I feel like we've been counting down to this for a long, long time. Ben, I noticed in your mailbag this week, and I don't think you'd usually give this score most of the time when it comes to MMA.

But you have said, On the record, on a scale of 1 to 10, you are a 7.5 or 8. That's like a 14 on most people's scales. I mean, for Ben. I don't know if he gets excited. So I was excited to hear what you have to say about all this. I mean, I'm excited for the novelty of what seems like it's going to be a good time, perhaps a weird time. Even if it is a bad time, it will be an interestingly bad time.

It's something different that we can look forward to and be like, all right, here's something. Let's figure out what the hell this is. And that is exciting in a way. It's especially like it's it being on Netflix, it being so broadly available and with people who seem likely to bring in some people outside of the usual MMA bubble, it makes the whole thing feel like a broader conversation that people might all be joining it on. And that is exciting. That's something you're never going to get out of a UFC fight night event at the apex. And that's, especially, especially having that as the contrast, as the other big MMA thing that's happening on Saturday, I know exactly what I'm going to get from a UFC fight night event at the apex. You know, Alan and Costa, they're going to put on a good fight. You can almost guarantee that. Those guys, technically, they're going to put on a fight that's at a level that probably no one else at this MVP MMA event on Netflix is going to reach.

But it's also going to be another UFC fight night at the apex, man. it's going to feel like a pretty quiet, sleepy affair in like a half-empty warehouse kind of vibe where it's so quiet you can hear the guy's breathing. Like, you know what you're going to get out of that. You don't know what you're going to get out of this one on Netflix. And just having so many big names involved, having people who have a different approach to live event production other than the UFC's, let's get these guys out there and get this over with kind of mantra, you're like, all right, we might get a show.

We might get a very different kind of show. I'm excited about that. I will tune in to see what it is. It might be big, loud and dumb, but combat sports is often, as we've learned, most successful when it's big, loud and dumb. So that's not necessarily a drawback. The interest has almost nothing to do with the level of fighting I expect to see at this thing. I'll say that. Well, Chuck, I mean, if Ben is a 7.5 to 8th, where are you out on the scale of excitement? I mean, I'm a 7.5 or an 8 as well. But I mean, I'm, you know, I'm easy. I'm easy.

Like, even the apex one is a 7.5 or an eight. No, it's not. It's not. But it reminds me a little bit of the day. I know we talk about this affliction show because it was so weird. It was like kind of put together, had a lot of big names. Some of them, which we looked at were like, well, they're kind of from a bygone day, but they're being dusted off and put into this.

A lot of them were relevant, though, which this card also has. Some guys that you're like, well, that guy should be in the UFC or that person should be in the UFC. it offers enough where we might see we might be surprised with a couple of fights but most of them what Ben is saying is going to keep with what we've been watching with MVP and a lot of times it's just there's a novelty to it

and there's a one-sidedness to us and there's a vagus prohibitive Vegas odds element to where you're like okay this is just pointless to even look at that stuff because it would take a major upset to change anything but sometimes that's okay I do what Ben said about the production and just kind of how that's going to look you know if this was truly something you should be like okay is this their first show of

mini are we going to be seeing a lot of MMA shows you kind of want to see what this first one looks like and what we could expect in the future and and get a sense honestly of like will they do this more in the future so there's a lot of the unknowns which I can appreciate it's it's really like interesting the disparity in feeling to this and I know you've wrote a column about this so I will ask you about it shortly Chuck but I was speaking to someone really ingrained the industry just yesterday and I won't name it because I said that well I didn't tell them I was going to talk about it but they were like this is in their opinion for the industry the most important MMA event that's

happening in about 15 years now you go online you look at X and as we have been this week we're posting stuff about this fight about Rousey and a different opinion pieces we've all done, columns, etc. And the new fan base seem completely void above the bigger picture here. They're just focusing on the marquee. And that is what they're trying to do with the UFC, right? It's just every week, here's a new fight.

What do we think of this fight? Whereas I think, for me, I'm thinking about the ramifications, as you guys said, if this goes beyond one vent, do we have a true competitor here? I guess the troop might be somewhere in the middle, but Chuck, how important do you feel? this event is tomorrow. I mean, it's big in the sense like,

so Ronda Rousey shows back up on the scene and it's in a way, the familiar Ronda Rouse, it was like all of a sudden you're back into the day, you're back in 2013, she's saying audacious things and you're like, my God. But a lot of it, rather than being focused on maybe a single element of an opponent or, you know, kind of advancing women's MMA,

now she seems to be kind of going at the whole of MMA and saying like, Dana, I'm coming for you, I'm coming for you. I love you, Dana, but now that you're hostage to TKO, it's my turn to be the face of MMA. And that, that to me is like the kind of subplot of everything is Ronda versus the UFC. So if you look at it like that, and I mean, when she's constantly kind of mentioning fighters coming together and bigger pay structures and all of this stuff, of course you're going to

listen because this has been the struggle of MMA for a long time. The thing is, and I know all of us were there. We saw the first run through, and I think that the strangest thing is I see people, and this was kind of the impetus for writing that piece that I wrote last night was that don't really seem to have a grasp of what Rhonda was in the moment. I mean, I don't know if they were just too young. They didn't pay any attention to it, but she was so transcendent at the time that it's like you almost feel compelled to be like, you got to understand, man. She like changed everything when she came in here and the way that it went down. And you'll see them kind of shrug off. And the thing that got me was like, they were like,

there's nobody was comparing her to Mike Tyson. She's crazy. And I was like, you know, what? Everybody was comparing her to Mike Tyson. I mean, they were comparing her to, you could name the superstar and she probably had a comparison. We were talking about whether she could, we were talking about whether she could beat Floyd Mayweather and Kane Velasquez.

Those were the types of insane conversations we were having. Yeah. Clay Travis was like, they've got to make this fight with Floyd Mayweather. And he's leaning towards taking. I mean, it's just one of those things you're just like, man, we were drunk with the idea of what was going on in that moment. And so to see the casual response to these people who discounted, it's a little, it's cheapening. And I'm like, you can't do that, though.

You can't do that because she means something. It means something more. So there's a level of appreciation that's in play in the balance of this that's very hard to get a grasp of. The guys who are there, you know, and watched her career understand the magnitude of what she stood for. there's also this very complicated feeling the way she left the sport, the way she saw MMA fans and all that. So there's that there's that complication

and do we welcome her back? You know, those type of hard feelings. But then you have the newer fan who probably came in sometime during the pandemic who I don't think gets it, you know? So there's all of those things that are in play. It makes her a fascinating event for me, man. The thing that people need to understand,

for one thing is that she was a genuinely huge star at the time. that all her fights were like appointment viewing. When she fought Holly Holie Holm, that pay-per-view sold over a million buys. Right. Which any time, a million buys was the mark that Dana White once set saying he would jump, he would base jump off the Mandalay Bay if they could get to a million. And never forget, never forget.

And one point five, though. He said one point five. But then you roll out here with Ronda Rousey, like a thing where a few years. years earlier, Dana White would have out there saying, never, we'll never have women fight in the UFC. Other organizations had adopted it. He was just saying, nope, I don't see it. I don't think there's a market for it. And then Rhonda Rousey shows up and next thing you know, she's selling a million pay-per-views for you. So that was genuinely huge. The other thing that I wish- And Bech-Hol-Hia, by the way, like the fight before it, she got a million buys, which is insane,

bitch-cola. The thing that I wish people would really understand if they weren't around for those days, is that there, between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carrano, there are women in the UFC right now, women at a high level of MMA right now, who you know, who are professionals and who are doing this, who probably would have never gotten into it if it hadn't have been for one or both of those two people.

You know, especially you think like Gina Carano's career stopped in like 2009, Ronda's was like 2016, so we're 10 years away from that. There are people who saw that, when they were, you know, a 14-year-old girl or something and went, I could do that. Like, that somebody is showing you that this is possible. Let me get in. Let me train.

Let me chase that. And if Ronda Rousey hadn't come along and kicked open that door for women's MMA, I think it still probably would have happened eventually in the UFC, especially just as they got into the, let's do a fight card every weekend somewhere on the planet mode. You just need more fighters somehow. But her going and doing. that showing these people, here's what the path looks like.

This is a viable option for you. You can do this. There are people who ended up in the UFC who were fighting now who probably would not have if it hadn't been for that. Like that's what I wish they would understand about the blazing the trail for the generation that came after. And that's what is a real hook for this fight is to take these two people who were huge transformative figures at two different eras of women's MMA and bring them back around now. Now I will say, having seen some open workout footage at this point, one hesitates to read too

much into open workout footage ever. Moin game. Moin game. But when you see some of it. I think this is legit what he's about to say here. When you see some of it, what you're reminded of is that this is not a fight to determine who's the baddest woman on the planet. That's not what we're doing here.

That, you know, the game has kind of passed them both by. they both had their deficiencies somewhat as fighters, even when they were at the top of their game. They're clearly not at the top of their game anymore. So that's not what we're doing here. What we're doing here basically is having a fight between two celebrities of women's MMA and celebrities of like who have gone on. It's like a curtain call, right?

Like to come out and they're just like, hey, guys, thank you very much, you know. Yes. And like, so I think that if we go into it with that expectation, then we can still have a good time with it. I think that we don't need to lie to ourselves and be like, this one is for all the marbles. It is not. It is really not.

Right. Can we talk about the importance of a competitor emerging? Because PFL are not that. One championship is not that. And everyone else, you know, they're basically controlling territories rather than playing this global game. Knockout World? Knockout World.

They haven't changed the name, Chook, because if they had, we'd be talking about a true competitor immediately. That was my suggestion for a PFL rebrand. However, um, in this day and age, we're fighters talking about, you know, the UFC earned so much money. We are not seeing that money. They have raised the bonuses. We were told, of course the money is going to go up. We have not heard anything about the, the, the money coming up just yet. There are fighters, massive fighters, who are at the top of their game, who have really nowhere else to go in terms of negotiation. I feel like right. I understand in terms of a fan looking at this card

and saying, I don't give a shit about Ronda Rousey fighting Gina Cranos. I get it completely. But to not understand why this is important to see a wallet like this come into this sport, to see names like Diaz, Perry and Ganoo, people who the UFC couldn't get over the line now signing for this promotion, it is very, very important, I feel.

If it goes well, it could change the sport as we know it in terms of negotiation. Am I hamming this up too much, Ben, or do you think this is very important in that regard, a true competitor emerging for the UFC? I have a hard time believing it's a true competitor for what the UFC does right now. I think the UFC is kind of insulated, at least for the short term right now. I don't think that there's any realistic way for somebody to challenge the UFC at the UFC's own game because you just can't get enough good fighters. They're just not available enough to be signed right now to have regular shows of this magnitude.

You could do maybe three or four of them a year. I think you might end up losing your ass on them because you're going to pay a whole lot of money and I don't know if you're making that money back. Like you'd have to be willing to lose that money for a little while. And as we've seen, not a whole lot of people have the same. stomach to do that for too long. But I think that the big downsides that the UFC has just built this machine that trudges along every single week is sitting on a huge war chest because of this paramount

money that they're getting. The weakness is also the strength, though, right? Because it's like because they're insulated, they don't seem to feel too motivated to give you something special anymore. Like what we hear from the UFC and from the parent company TKO is that we, we, are maximizing the hell out of shareholder value. We are making so much money. We are giving it to executives and to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks.

We are keeping fighter pay low. And it's going great financially. And so like there's not really, even when like that guy brought it up on the call with Mark Shapiro like, hey, there's been criticisms about UFC card quality, not even willing to consider the premise of that question. We're just rejecting it being like, no, couldn't be going better. We're doing amazing. So that is like the weakness.

That is the door you're leaving open for somebody else to come in here and be like, the UFC is pretty complacent. They're so successful that they've gotten complacent. That gives us an opportunity to go in there and give a show that's more fun. Like put on just a little bit more of like a visual spectacle that plays to fans rather than just playing to like, we got this TV schedule. We want to get our ads in. And we want to move on to the next one, pack it up, go on to the next city.

And so you have an opportunity to do some of that stuff, but how many shows would it reasonably take for you to become something where the UFC goes, oh, shit, we got to be. Because you need to have enough offerings for these fighters and the contracts need to be big enough that guys who are in the UFC right now start going, maybe I don't sign a new contract when mine comes up. Maybe I test a free agency. And that's going to take a while.

That takes a long lead time because it has to, first of all, people are going to be waiting and seeing on. this one. They're going to see, does it look like it's working? Does everybody come away happy with it? Are they planning for the next one? And say you got two or three fights left on your contract now, and you see this one, you go, okay, maybe this is something to think about. If they're still around by the time I get these two or three fights done on my contract, maybe I think about testing the free agency and see an MVP, MMMA will make me an offer. But there's a whole lot of stuff that kind of has to go right before you even like get to that point where you have the opportunity

to sign some of these people. And we saw how that worked for other organizations where it's expensive to start trying to siphon off UFC fighters one at a time as they become available and then plug them into your roster. Like that that has not proven to be a winning strategy for everybody else. That's proven to be a strategy for overpaying for people and not making that money back. Yeah, it seems like almost what MVP is trying to do, at least out of the gate. is to change things up in the ways that the UFC is not willing right now. But one of those things would just be like to add soul back to the game, right? Like they're putting some soul back into this.

They've got fighters, not all of them. Like these aren't just rejects and pariahs. A lot of these people, at least some of the big names, you know, the UFC wanted. They tried to sign them. They just didn't get it done. But they're putting together an event. Like one of the chief complaints right now with TKO is just the soullessness of what's happening.

And this is almost trans, like a sport. If you go into boxing and even into the spectacle of pro wrestling, we're hearing about it from every level that maybe it's getting too corporate. It's getting too cold, you know, too clinical. And so, like, you get this type of thing. There's a, there is a fun element. There's some soul back into it. I'm not sure right now they care about, like MVP, I'm not sure they care about

competing on the level of playing the UFC's game. But what they can do, because they're tied to a Titan with. Netflix is just beat them in the numbers game on the events that they do have. I mean, once you kind of have something in your back pocket, you know, and you can do this with any regularity and you're going to be able to pay maybe three, four times what some of the middle card people are making, right? Like if they said the minimum is 40 grand, like something like that, like that, even if you don't fight frequently, if you end up on an MVP card, you might make more in two

fights than you would in five with the UFC, you know, it's things like that. So I feel like there's going to be an esoteric kind of approach to it. But right now, the big things are like fun, the soul. You know, there's no real future in terms of like you're not going to set up divisions. They're not going to set up these divisions. We're not going to be looking at dangling carrots behind this. You're going to be more like what will they do next in terms as a whole, not fighter specific. You know, like what will this thing do next?

That's kind of, it's just different. And I think right now they're going about the right way. As Ben said, though, now you sit and wait how the first one comes off to get a better. sense of what comes next. There's also, I think, the question, though, of, like, when you look at who you have leading the charge on this one, they're not fights that leave you an obvious next place to go from there. Like Ronda Rousey and Gina Carrano, you're probably going to get one.

You're going to get this one, and then they take their money and go home. It doesn't seem like either one of them really wants to make this a regular thing. But it's not the best negotiation position to take this? Sure, sure. I'd always, if you could, you'd always want to be, like, make a good. me an offer good enough to get me to get out of the rocking chair. And that's the ideal place to be. But don't you kind of believe it with them that neither one of them, you know, like there's nothing. I don't think either one of them really wants to stick around and fight relevant current

fighters right now. That's not. I think that they're a little bit more realistic than that. Gina Carano had to get in shape to get in shape for this one. Yeah. So and, and, you know, Nate Diaz and Mike Perry, like, yeah, you could do some fun stuff with Mike Perry with the right audience. I feel I've I am concerned about what Nate Diaz might have left in the tank and that he might be in that situation where legit concern of yours. You brought this up in your mailbag too. He's he's, he's, he's, yes, yeah. I mean, Nate Diaz is the, the classic example of somebody where he's so tough that he is going to take a beating. His, his ego cannot let him, you know, admit if he's, if he's losing.

And yet Mike Perry has been in this doing, I mean, he's not. been doing MMA. He's been doing the bare knuckle stuff, but he's been fighting pretty regularly. He's found a lot of success. And it's not as if Nate is going to be like, all right, let me take this guy down and use my excellent jujitsu game. No, the Diaz brothers hate that they know jujitsu even. They are excellent job if he tried to outpoint Perry after all this buildup about being the badest man. Their age wrestling, their whole time in MMA, they both been excellent at Jiu-Jitsu and they seem to hate it. They don't want you to even.

It's like a shameful secret for them that they are so good at Jiu-Jitsu. They'd rather you not find out. Only if you take them down, do you find out that they're a little bit of Jiu-Jitsu? Yes, or maybe they knock you down and then they go in there and finish you. But I'm a little bit concerned for what's going to happen to Natea's in this one because I think that the skills have kind of slowed and yet the heart is still there. And that's when you do see these guys take a bad beating is because they just won't go away. and yet they don't have enough to fire back with to keep the other guy off of them.

I will say this, that I think Nate has had just about enough of the press conferences, man. You watch him during that press conference last night. It was just like, he just didn't want to be there. He didn't want to be partaking in that thing. It was just funny to watch the chair. And he's going to show up to his open workout and just smoke and chill, man. He doesn't need to do all this. I think that's the big issue.

He has been so high throughout all the media obligations here. I think people are looking at this and correlating it to, oh, you know, I don't think Nate's all there now. No, no. He's just hires a kite, guys. He's higher the giraffe's ass. And, you know, he said he's going to stop smoking five hours before to fight. So I'm expecting the different Dias.

That should be enough. Yeah. Usually two hours, two and a half hours you can do anything. So a friend told me that. But, right, right, I understand Ben what you're saying in terms of they're not going to do the week to week. I don't expect them to go after like a roster. I don't think they want a roster, like Chuck has said,

like they're not going to have rankings for divisions or whatever. But I do think if it goes well, and we can discuss later if it, like, you know, do we expect it to be more than one event? But if it does go well, you've got fighters like Aspinall and Ilya talking about, like, how much money they're getting paid. Like they're talking about these things.

Like, you know, we wouldn't mind a few more quid. I don't know what those lads contracts look like, right? They have one or two fights left. if you're Eddie Heron and you're looking after Tom Asplow right now, you're going, we're going to fucking go all the way to the end of this bad boy and we're going to listen to what these bad boys are going to say. They should have filmed like Eddie Hearn going through the contract. Like what the fuck?

You know, like just as like responses to seeing the ways that Tom has tied in. That would be funny. I expect that will happen when, when, uh, like I expect if Aspinall gets into a contract negotiation, no negotiation. We're going to have the first like the first real time. And we have a manager coming out this time, Eddie Heron being like, well, this is what they're trying to do. This is what I think he will, because of his obviously interest in fucking over Dana and the UFC, he's going to come over and just try and lay everything bare. But I do think that it becomes a viable option for those top of the food chain guys is basically what I'm saying here.

Or is that way, like, are we, when you're, when you're near 40, you're speaking MVP's language, right? Because all those guys in the big spots are like 40 or 57 like Mike Tyson, but they're, they're definitely older. The problem has always been for another organization wanting to come on and siphon off some top UFC talent is you can maybe go and sign one guy like PFL did with signing Francis and Ghanu. Then who does he fight? You can't do it yourself in this sport. You know, you need a dance partner. And they don't necessarily need to be like, hey, we got, we signed the number one and the number two guy in this division and now let's go. You can do it with we signed the number one guy and this interesting weirdo over here.

here who can help sell a fight against that guy for one reason or another. Like, you can do it that way. Yeah. But like look at at this one, for example, you got Francis Ngano on this one. You got the lineal MMA heavyweight champ and he is fighting Felipe Linz. So you're telling us like, come see Kong and we're going to show up because we want to see Kong. But at the same time, you don't exactly have an empire state building for him to climb.

And so that leaves you in a tough spot, you know? Like, I think that you still, you could still do some stuff with that. And I think that I don't want to get ahead of the list because I know that it's down there about how important. Fuck with it for one week then, okay? Can you just show me that you care? Respect the list. Respect the order. What I'm saying is I do think the supporting cast members are important for something like this.

Okay. Okay. All right. That's enough on that. Chukchiavain. anything to add there before I move on. I was just going to say like it's, there was a time when we used to look at the UFC and we'd praise them for having the

structure that they do where you'd be like, this is how it should be run, like a league, you know, where there's, there's rankings and all this stuff. But there, there's now a time where the grab bag feel of like,

let's just take available elements, put them together for a night and then everything goes away. And then we'll do it again later. Like that, with the way social media and our attention is like constantly being, um, vied for this way and that it actually doesn't it doesn't have to be so structured i think that that's another thing that could be in play here is just you know make it like a you know a grab bag

sensation where it's like you just don't know from from event to event what you're going to get right yeah that could be fun too um i guess one of the the more like we mentioned out the top joke i think it was you we mentioned out the top the interesting thing here is i mean before this happened i don't think any of us could have foreseen rousey showing up up like this being such a draw, I guess, in this day and age. And some will argue that she isn't. I've seen plenty of people on X. But she has commanded the dais every time she's on it.

She has said such interesting things, at least to us, every time she's been up there. Ben, you wrote this week about the goodbye that we had, the first parting of ways that Ronda Rousey had with UFC, with MMA fans. And it was not a good one. And we often cite the LAX picture after the Holly, home defeat where she covered her face. She spoke to Ariel about the neurological issues she has faced and maybe that's something that wasn't talked about enough at the time. Of course, she came back about a year later and lost to Amanda Nunes and she ducked all the kind of

media obligations, everything like that. And it really did rub the sport up the wrong way. Ten years later, Ben, do you feel like we're a bit heavy-handed in our criticism of Rhonda? This is what you wrote about for Uncrown. Yeah, I think that you can definitely make the case that we were unfair to her at the end. And some of it, she kind of brought on herself. That is the downside of being the person who is standing on top of the mountain yelling down at all the peasants about how they'll never be as good as you are, is that as soon as you tumble off that mountain, there's a whole lot of people that were waiting to see it. And they're ready to stand there and point and do the Nelson laugh, you know, and that that's kind of what

happened to her there. And she did not do herself any favors with the way that she handled it, because it made her look very much like, yeah, you were, it was great when you were winning, and then as soon as you weren't, you couldn't handle it anymore. And like, I do think one of the things,

Ariel brought this up in his interview with her, that one of the things that I think really makes us connect with a fighter and that fighters often don't maybe totally understand, they think so much is dependent on just winning every single fight. We like to see a fighter go through something difficult, pick themselves up and come back and try again. And we respect that. We, I think also like there's a part of us as fans that can empathize with that way more than we can empathize with the relentless unending success of an undefeated record.

All of us have been beaten at something. All of us have tried and failed. Not all of us have been tremendously successful. And so when we see you try, fail, come back and proved better, willing to learn from those mistakes, we gain a lot of respect for you. and we also feel like a emotional connection to you that we didn't necessarily feel. And she kind of denied herself that opportunity just with the way she handled those losses. Now, when her saying this stuff about the neurological issues, and I'm sure with stuff like this is always going to be people who are like, well, you're just making that up.

I mean, you kind of have two choices, right? It's to think that either she's just completely making it up, which would be crazy. I don't think that you would do that. Or, you know, maybe you think that she's exaggerating it or something. or she's like attributing these losses to this thing. I think probably no matter what conditions she's in, she probably loses to Holly Holm and Amanda Nunes, definitely to Amanda Nunes,

but I, I do believe, I mean, you know, no fighter has ever legitimately lost a fight to hear them tell it. So like, there's some of that that she's saying, this is what happened and then that's why.

But I also believe like, okay, you might have been dealing with this stuff. You didn't fully understand what it was. It didn't make things any easier on you. And you look back now and think like, oh, if only I'd known, if only I'd been able to figure that out. I think that both those things can be true.

But I also think that we have to recognize. Like, you remember what it was like, Chuck, right? When she lost like to Amanda Nunes, especially the memes. This was prime meme time. Yeah. You went on what was then Twitter still the next morning and there were just all these memes of her getting knocked out, making a punch face after getting tagged by Amanda Nunes, all this kind of stuff. And it was just like there was a, a.

a mean-spirited gleefulness in seeing her finally lose. And because she just sort of took her ball and went home after that, she didn't have the opportunity that a lot of other people get to come back and be like, okay, you're going to see me again. You're going to see what I've learned from it. You're going to have an opportunity to see me climb back in. And that, I think, contributed to, and especially that as the years went by, when she would go on some talk shows or whatever and talk about her experience,

than may. It seemed like she was still mad and bitter at everybody and blamed everybody but herself and seemed at times like she did, she was committed to learning nothing from those losses. So like that didn't help. But I do think that we didn't necessarily have the, the context at the time to be like, okay, you hit this point. The game passed you by. Happens to a whole lot of people. Everything happened in the life cycle, the career life cycle of Ronda Rousey faster than it happened for other people. But this is not anything we've never seen before. We still appreciate what you did and the level you helped bring, especially the women's side, but also the sport in general, too, because of like your fame and success. There was, I think, in part because so many people had

vicariously lived kind of through her, just including like the people, you know, in the sport, but certainly the fans and like we were mentioning little girls. I even mentioned that piece at UFC 175 when she came out and girls were crying and things like that. You're like, boy, this is nuts. It's like the Beatles, I pointed this out a million times. I think when you attach yourself emotionally to somebody and you see how they handle adversity and it's something more like petulance than you thought, you know, than a champion's mindset or something, especially with like examples of Ali and even foreman and guys like that who come back years later recapture, you know, the title, and you've seen this type of

attitude that you've got to have this resiliency. That didn't help either. But I always thought that honestly it was it was the way that she handled it, but it was also just the, that year in between the two fights of the two losses because it was just and like you mentioned like going on Charlemagne and just saying like there was no level of asking forgiveness or saying maybe I was wrong it was more like

yeah, MMA fans, once you suck, you're exposed forever and blah blah blah. It just felt like she never saw her side in it. So like saw how why she should be kind of ostracized from the sport, right? Like she never saw that end of it. That's what makes her coming back like she's

the pre-lost Rondrauss see in this whole situation stand out. You're like, wow, it's like she just etch-a-sketched that whole thing. And now she's back being the old Rhonda that we used to know. It's been a strange thing. And the last thing I was going to say, man, we pointed this out at the time. But, you know, the closest example we had, a transcendent star was Connor McGregor. And he lost not that long after to Nate Diaz. And it amplified how he lost. Because remember, he handled it like it was a thing that happens in the sport. You got to just move on and he was going to learn. Remember, this and it was like we were like now that's how you handle loss it made her thing look even

worse through that whole process well you know the other thing i made her thing look worse was that by ufc 200 when misha tate who had been you know ronda's main rival for a long time there when she lost the title to amana nunes and she showed up at the press conference afterwards with her nose still broken and bleeding like she had an ice pack on her face and you could see the blood still trickling down out of her nose and she sat there and talked about the fight and answered questions and everybody went, whoa, okay. So like that, there's a difference there. You know, and there are a lot of that stuff that did not help her,

and she did not really do herself any favors. And that's one of the things she brought up in that interview with Ariel that I thought was revealing where she was like, the part of the pain that I was feeling there was not just a pain of having lost a fight, but it was feeling like I wasn't able to give my best performance. And the thing that I think stopped me was a thing that feels like it could be a career render. so I'll never have the chance to get back in there and show these people that that wasn't me.

And so she kind of felt like the only option was to run and hide, which I think is somewhat understandable, but I also think maybe that's an explanation you wanted to offer before now. So many things flashing true more as I'm listening to you guys talking. One being, remember the Tad Verdean video would always be out the next day everywhere of whatever advice he gave her before or in between rounds,

as it were, was in the Holly Home, that would go everywhere. The McGregor thing after Diaz, I honestly don't think he, I don't think he would have, I think he would have faced the media, but I don't think he would have come off as gracious if he had not seen the reaction to Ronda.

Like he was so super aware of the media, how it worked, that he was all over social media, still is to this day. Like, reads everything is very, very much trying all the time to get the frequency of the fan base and speak to.

it. So I think that is interesting. But one thing you guys seem to agree on early on here when Ben brought up was this is a one and done. Hurra and Carrano don't seem interested in fighting beyond this fight. And I guess people would point to Holly Holme being signed to MVP. Will there be an attempt at redemption there? But there was also a suggestion at the press conference that Rhonda would become the face of MMA. Now, maybe I've read this the wrong way, but I felt she was suggesting at that stage that I will be the mouthpiece, I will be the face of this new entity,

which is MVP, she's kicking in the door for them this weekend. Do you see that, Ben? Do you see Ron DeRousey and the way we've seen her since this has kicked off? Do you think she would be a compelling front person for this organization? And do you think she's capable of it

on top of the plans she already has with our family and things like that? Yeah, it does seem like when I was talking with my CME co-host Chad Dundas this week and he was saying that it seems like Ronda has been interviewing for the job she wants and not the job she has. Like she's been out here trying, like using this opportunity as a headliner on this card to put herself forward as somebody who could be sort of a promoter type role for them.

It is a fair question whether she would really want that. Like what would the demands of that job look like? You know, what would be the day to day? How often would you be out there doing that stuff? Because the thing is, you know, like Chuck has talked about, it is amazing the extent to which she could just show back up. Yes. And be the lightning rod again and capture the attention, capture the headlines.

You know, we know from our side of things, when you have a fighter where you're like, let me try to get this person's name in as many headlines as possible, whether they are the sole focus of this story or not, If I can find an opportunity to where it says Ronda Rousey, early on in the headline, I'm going to improve my chances of this story getting read. And so there's not a whole lot of those people right now in MMA. And the fact that she is still won, after all this time away, she can just drop back in and be one immediately again. That says something like that's, that's a star power that could be transferred into like some kind of a promotional role if she wants that. Yeah.

The one thing I would say, though, is for her to, like, if you're going to compare yourself to Dana, right? And you're going to start looking at it through that lens. You're like, this is not a part-time gig. And if you're saying, like, I don't mean, I'll fight again because I want to have more babies, you're definitely not going to have time to become Dana White because you need to be on 15 podcast the week, apparently. I know. What if it's just three or four a year, that's, think about three or four a year.

That's not just that. It's like the way that he kind of built. I mean, it was fairly tireless what he used to do. I mean, like these days, obviously it's a lot different. but in his better promotion days when he was really making the thing, what it became, he was tireless. It took so much. That was his life on every level.

And you can't take that lightly. So for her to just be like casually like, you know what, maybe I'm going to be the next day in a way. This can't be a part-time thing when you're also going to put out, you know, genre thrilling, you know, movies on Netflix later on with Gina Carano or whatever else she was talking about. I don't know if you can do all of that. I think that she would have to really, really dedicate herself to being a promoter if that's the case. Let's get to the section that Ben tried to skip ahead to earlier. I'm still brimming under here. I'm trying to remain.

You're a little offended. I'm sick of it, Chuck. You know, I know I've talked to you on the side about this. You know, we had a couple of zion calls during the week. You're just like, Ptty, just smash through it when Ben does it. He's going to try and get to you. He's nonlinear, I kept saying. Oh, he's just, yeah, on free fucking jazz folks over there.

It's flipping a goblin. What is that? Gopold? What is that? What the fuck? That's McCaffee mug. There's a, there's an old ship on there. Oh, yeah.

As you can see. And then the, the handle, I guess that's exactly what I expected. Like the rope you might find on an old ship. It's one of my favorite mugs. There you go. I want the new mug every week. It's a new segment on the show. Band Talks is true as mug of the week.

Please. It's fucking great. The Honor of Jordan just garnished me with some information, lads. Francis Ngano and Felipe Linz have weighed in I want you two guys without usual the internet to guess

to guess how much of a weight difference is there between Mr. Engano and Mr. Linz and I'm going to flip this ATM card to see who goes first calling in the air, Teds or Tails? Heads.

Ben, you got it. Go ahead, mate. I'm predicting Francis and Gano 264 pounds Felipe Linz 228 Do we have the exact Do we have the exact numbers

Do we have the exact numbers please Jordan I only have a difference I'm just going to say that there's a 45 pound 45 pounds separate the two men That's what I'm going to guess That's not bad 264 228

Okay That's a few divisions That is a few divisions basically I mean the speed factor of lens though you've got to factor this in like that's uh that's what i say you want to stay light and agile against francis and gotta get to grease lightning he'd be like uh remember dan henderson fought fador at heavyweight and i remember standing there watching him before the way ends and he's like guzzling a gallon of water to put on the weight you know just so he'd make the whatever he

needed to above it's like this is unusual you know the this is one of those fights where the The fact that we all expect one outcome is the only reason to think that there might be a different outcome. Petrazzelli. They're like, show it out. Always dangerous to make a fight where it's clear you're hoping for one result. And this is the kind of fight where you're just sort of like, there's no reason to think Felipe Lin should beat Francis and Ganu,

except for the fact that the MMA gods have a sense of humor. Right. And they love to mess with the best laid plans. And so, well, I still wouldn't go out here and pick Felipe Linz, especially with that weight disparity. There's something about it that feels a little scary for that reason. You ever see that? I'm sure you've seen that meme where there's like four soldiers and then there's like a clown.

Not like getting ready to, but like, now I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to, but it's every time they do these promo things and they've got all six of the big fight, you know, all the fighters, it's all these big names and Felipe Lins who fought four of his last six fights at the apex and once at an empty Jacksonville during the pandemic the guy has barely even fought in front of people

over the last six, seven years so this is for him to be in this role is just like the most bizarre thing ever Yeah I mean I'm not shocked by the disparity It is it's a massive The disparity in the odds line is massive It reflects how people feel about it What is the line do you know?

It's something insane. I was looking at it earlier. I think it was like seven or eight to one for Ingano when I checked it before. And, you know, still, it's the kind of thing where you want to start to talk yourself into it, be like, well, hey. It's like a fan duel has Francis Engano as minus 2,000 Felipe Linz at plus 830. And you're still, you could talk yourself into it being like, all right, 10 bucks on Felipe Lins, who knows? And then I stopped and ask myself, how do you see?

him win in. What would you do against Francis and Gano here if you're flupe-ped linens? Because normally we think, well, the big weakness in Francis' game is wrestling, right? Like he, you know, he's vulnerable there. But if you're given up like 40 pounds and weight and, you know, you go and think like, all right, I'm going to take the dude down and then you're on top. Can you keep him there? Like, do you have to just be like, all right, what we're going to do here is hear the bell ring for round one, Iminari roll into a heel hook and hope for the best. Like, I don't know.

It's tough for me to picture how you go out there and beat him unless, you know, hey, I didn't see Seth Petrazzelli knocking out Kimbo either though, Chuck. So who knows? Yeah. The version of events you've given there, like the Eminari roll and all is like when you're asking a drunk dude, what do you do if two people attacked him right now and a fucking fool? You know what I mean? It's just like, yeah, roll through, fucking knee barrens, break the other one's larynx.

But it's, uh, we also have Diaz and Perry on the car, which is, you know, it's two fine favorites. It's guaranteed bloodbath, to be, to be quite honest. Like, I mean, I don't think there's any other way that at least one of these guys is leaking a lot when it's in there. I think it's five rounds as well, which is absolutely insane. But I was asking, yeah. I didn't realize that. I'm actually, let me make sure I'm correct on that. Yeah, it is five rounds.

I doubt it will go five rounds. Even if the two lads are standing. Yeah, that's idea was that. Even if the last are standing. So a doctor's waving that shit off before I hits a 25 minute mark. leave. But these are very important, right? Like, if this was just Rousey v. Carrano, we'd have all the press conferences, but this, their involvement has changed things a lot from H.uk. Yeah, I mean, what was

the, so the Serrano-Taylor II fight, right? It was on, I mean, it's kind of like the, the playbook for MVP right now, I think, is to have like some legitimate. And not that, not that Carano versus Rousey isn't a legitimate MMA fight. It's just that, obviously, they're coming back with after 26 or 27. years of inactivity between them. That is a huge red flag in that says. But I think it's good to have players that feel like they're vital. Like Mike Perry to me could easily still be fighting in the UFC. And I mean, he could be making money just about anywhere. Nate Dia's same thing. You know,

it's like he, I think that that's a good one. Like you got Francis Sangano who they pointed out many times is still the lineal champion, heavyweight champion. Yeah. So it's like, I mean, you you have these you know, unassailable things going on underneath that big fight, which then makes it very legitimate, right? Or it gives it enough legitimacy where, you know that you're seeing some good stuff, especially with like Parnas, like, you've been talking about that guy forever. Like, he's on the card. It was going to be, Muhammad Mikai was going to be on that card and didn't end up getting on there. But there are a lot of names kind of sprinkled in below that raise the legitimacy bar up. Yeah. And they make it seem more like this is an entire.

evening of sports entertainment presentation that you want to watch. You're not just sitting around being like somebody let me know when the main event is making the walk and I can tune in. You're going like, all right, this is a whole thing.

Here's though, I wanted to add this to put some stuff in perspective here. One, I saw somebody point this out. I wish I could remember who, but somebody pointed this out on X over there that you know, Gina Carano last fight was in 2009. Max Holloway has

had his entire career in the time that Gina Crono has been gone from MMA. And it's like a career of like 40 fights. You know, it's not like a short career. It's he's had titles and won them. That's so nice. We've watched him like kind of grow old before our eyes. He is gone from being a fresh-faced kid to being a middle-aged vet, a gentleman of a certain age.

That's incredible. All just since the last time Gina Crono fought. The other crazy thing is when you look at the best. setting odds, right? And you look at the line on this one where to me, this is Ronda Rousey's fight to win however she wants. It's only a question of, does she go out there and toss Jean on her head right away? Or does she try to carry her a little bit and give people a show? But even with all that in mind, Ronda Rousey, a minus 600 favorite, according to Caesar's, plus 430 for Gina Carrano. Then you go and you look at the White House card.

Ilya Tuporia is minus 900 over Justin Gaci, who is plus 550. If I'm in the gym with Justin Gagey and he's getting tired, you know, he doesn't know if he has another round in him. I'm leaning down in his ear and I'm saying, they think Gina Carrano has a better chance of coming back after 17 years away and beating Ronda Rousey than you do a beaten Ilya Teporia at the White House. And then I watch an explosion behind his eyes and he comes out like the incredible Hulk and he goes one more round. That's the way you do it. They should just call him plus 900 for the rest of the camp, you know. That would work too. They think there's a better chance of Gina Carrano coming out of retirement and beating Ronda Rousey than they do you, the interim lightweight champion beating the actual lightweight champion.

It's rough. It's rough. If we do a show exactly a year after that, I don't think, no. if that's possible. But if we do a show one year from now and we're trying to figure out, you know, try and cast, sorry, I've done this Arsways. Try and cast your minds a year from now is what I should have said,

lads. MVP MMA, is it that shot in the dark novelty event or do you still think we're dealing with it in 2020, 2027? And is it a mainstream thing? Is it suddenly a thing in this

space? Either of you guys, jump in whenever he's want there, all. Well, first of all, when I picture a year from now, I imagine us sitting here being like, we still miss Pizzi after that day. He drank 27 guineas and fell down an open manhole in the streets of Dublin. I hope that's how I go out. I hope that's how I go out.

That would be a beautiful death for me. The rumors are that he's still down there. On a cold night in Dublin, you could hear his cackling laugh coming up out of the streets. I'm inclined to say no. I'm inclined to say we see a few of these sporadically. This is your OIFL has destroyed you. Well, and everything.

It's like all evidence points to anything like this not working, right? Yeah, I went to the affliction shows, man. I was there. Same. And so, I mean, I think that like you get a couple more out of these at least. But I don't think we're sitting here next year being like, all right, it's time for our monthly MVP, MNMM. MMA show, like we're very excited about that.

Like, I think it ends up looking a lot like the Netflix boxing stuff looks where like, you know, six months might go by without one, without even really any plans for one. Nobody is really sitting around being like, when are you guys going to put on another one? And then you could announce one and we'll go, all right, maybe I'll give this one another shot. Like, I think that's about what we're looking at a year from now. I do hope it. I do root for it being around next year when we're talking about. I want it to happen, right? because when you're here,

Nikisa talking about the 50% or over 50% revenue share and you're like, okay, this is more aligned with other sports. The problem is, Dana always seems to be kind of proven right with his stingy model in the end, right? Like, it just seems like these people overspend,

they can't make enough money to sustain. And I mean, we'll see, we'll see if they've got their heads on right in terms of how to sustain through this process. But I haven't heard any more, updates, but there, for a long time, they were saying there were plenty of tickets still left, which is its own strange thing, right? Like, you think that that would be able to sell out pretty easily.

A lot of these Netflix events actually quite like that. I think it's happening in boxing, definitely in the Saudi events. But I think it was like that for a UK event as well, where these things exist more online than they do as a sporting event. You know, like people aren't going, oh, we better get tickets this. Why, it's on fucking Netflix. We just sit here. We have the best seat in the house.

I think there is, there's an element of that to it. But, guys, honestly, there's one thing that you mentioned, though, you said, will we, we do the fans care? Yeah. That's like everything with Netflix, though, almost like you go on there sometimes, you're like, whatever the, let's throw this on. You don't really care sometimes what you're watching. It's such a, it's such a, it's such a, like, it's basically like broadcast TV at this point. Everybody has, so you're just flipping through. Oh, what's this?

You know. Well, he also, it's weird, too. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of like you stay at an Airbnb where they have like a Netflix account. that you can access and you you pull up their their Netflix homepage and you're like oh you guys get a different Netflix than I do like I didn't even know this shit was on here you guys are just like the things that they're suggesting to you are just completely different things than they're suggesting to me I would have to go hunt for this stuff so like I wonder to what extent like you need Netflix to kind of be putting it front and center like where everybody opens the app and

it's like the first thing you see is we're doing this event tonight but I mean I agree that We want it to be an ongoing thing. MMA is always better when there's competitors pushing each other. The UFC certainly needs a gadfly to come along and bite the horse on its ass and get it to run again because they're just so comfortable. They don't think they have to. I mean, I do think it's interesting. I heard Dana White making these comments where he was just like, oh, yeah, you guys all know so much. Why don't you go tell us to these competitors who haven't been able to figure it out if you guys know what the secret to the business is.

And it's like, my man, you are being sued still again for anti-competitive business. practices is one of the reasons why it's so difficult for any of these people to come along and compete, even if they are just taking your business model and trying to repeat it, is that you guys have built this sport around such a way that makes it so that it's really hard for anybody else to really get off the ground and get going. And that's what we're, I think, is we're going to see with MVP is that they're going to have a hard time. They're going to run into that same problem that everybody else has, which is where do you get

the fighters? Where do you get enough bodies to just continue this thing? and you don't even get to enter into the bidding for some of these guys. It's actually, I think that would be, like, if it doesn't work, right, and as you both of you lads have just said, then you're completely accurate, most of these things don't. But I guess if it's something of the magnitude of Netflix with the amount of money they have at their disposal,

MVP who are prominent in combat sports, obviously this is their first time in my event, but if they fucking can't do it, who is ever going to be able to challenge this monopause? who is going to be ever able to challenge this, who was going to be able to stimulate this sport outside of the UFC. Because that's the issue we have here.

That is why these car cases are happening. I think if these guys can't do it, who the fuck else would even try to challenge, to directly challenge the UFC at that stage? If Netflix can't do it, who the fuck else will, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, the one thing I will say is, like, I really do think that, TKO, like this new version of the UFC feels a little soulless and I just, the reason this feels compelling is because it feels like it has something more again. It kind of throws back to an older day. We'll see if that

translates anything, but maybe maybe they have something just in that. Well, we may as well have a look at the pics. Someone's leading it and I didn't really want to get any shine here. Oh, here we go. Who's that up at the top there? Boom!

That's what I'm talking about. What a resurgence. I mean, this guy. Get this part out, man. This sucks. Unbelievable. Chuck, I'm on your ass, homie.

I am one off you and we have one different. I'm one off Ben. I think. Oh. I can't see that, but. Oh, the chickens are coming home to roost this weekend. That MVP MMA won. Okay.

So as we can see here, everybody is on Rousey. That is not shocking. Everybody is on Perry. I mean, I expected. Some people to go for Diaz, I guess. No, no, everybody is on Perry. Mysterious Frank can get himself to pick Gina Carano, but not Nate Diaz. Oh my God.

I didn't even see Mysterious Frank with Carrano. What is he? My, he is mysterious. He is mysterious. He's thinking you got to make some moves to get up the ladder. What's her path to victory? Think about that one. I mean, maybe it's that Ronda Rousey is like, I owe these people a show.

Let me come out here and stand. and box a little bit and it goes wrong for it. I'm going to lose properly this time. That's what you. I just want to do the press conference where I lose and do it well. That's such as she needs. Siffra to have to happen with Rosie. Everyone's on Perry.

I have not missed seeing things there. Everybody's on Angano. Everyone is on the great Saladin Parnas. Here's where things get interesting. Okay. What are we got? Right down there at Junior de Santas v. Rebellis despan.

It is, well, it's me, mysterious Frank, and Shaheen Al-Shadi. who have gone for De Santos. Despain is not, that's not a great MMA fighter in case you haven't seen him. What a big fucking mistake. You two guys have made.

Please discuss that there. JDS is, I believe, I'm going to have to look this up, but I think he's 64 years old. So that's also something to consider. Have you seen his nose lately? Have you seen what has become of that man's nose? That gives me confidence when I see a nose like that.

Same as when I see JDM's nose. I'm like, this man, he can take a dig. You want him with you in the bar. It's not a, It's not a nose of a man who has been avoiding a lot of punches. Have you seen Despain's ground game? Because we know Junior Sigano loves an old double leg every now and again. We don't.

That's not true. He just mocks. Okay. You've talked me out of it already. I feel. Well, we'll live and die by it. I think it's more that Mysterious Frank has picked DeSandoz, even though Mysterious Frank is ahead of me in the pecking order. The fact of these pick Carrano here, you know, it's making me feel.

You know? Yes. Right. And for our wild cards, you've gone for Goyen, Ben. Myself and Chuck have gone for Aline Pereira. Oh, yeah. Look, there's opportunities to fuck you up here, Ben.

There's opportunities for me to be right up there with you at the end of this. If Goyen loses and Despain loses, you're looking at a new champ. That's all I'm saying. Kind of. We'll be joined, though, you know. You know, words like if I don't get too concerned about them, you know. I was waiting to see what we're looking like. on Sunday morning.

You've got a nosebleedger up so high. You and Al Shadi, who was down the bottom last year, huh? Last year. Huh? I don't, I don't recall what happened last year. It was, uh, last year. Yeah. Ancient history.

Yes. Yeah. My, this is the hilarious banter section, by the way. Did I tell you guys last week about the dog feigning injury and then we went to the vet and he started jumping up and down. Well, this, right, so this is where I want to walk last week, the dog feigns injury. He does this thing where he just stands there like this. right and I go what's wrong with you buddy and he's again I've said this before he can't speak

English so I had to kind of address his buddy at that point and be like okay what's going on he he gets very aggressive when I touched the paw I'm like right we got to bring him to the vet it's a big ordeal Elaine we're all gone we're all in the car we're like holding them as if like he's on life support get there bounds through the door starts licking everyone oh what's story everyone and they're like which paw is it and I was like it's the one he's holding up he can't put any pressure on it and she was like no both paws are firm on the ground here. He's bounding around here. And we've had a look at bow paws. Nothing is wrong with him. So I'm like, oh, well, I feel like

a dickhead, 100 quid, give us some anti-inflammatories. He doesn't even fucking butter having them refuses to eat food with anti-inflammatory anywhere near it. Anyway, turns out he's fine. Today, this is what's great before the show. Oh, man. And he's just going, why are we going to do it? You know, this is not the first instance of this that I've heard of. I have a friend where her dog, every time she would get out a suitcase and start packing it, you know, and the dog would be like, oh, you're going somewhere and the dog would start limping around. And she took it seriously at first. And then she saw once, as she was getting her stuff ready, and she saw it in a mirror, she could see the dog jump up on the couch and, like, curl itself up and lay down like normal. And she was just like, you bastard, you know, you're manipulative.

Yeah. The thing to try to figure out is, like, what is your dog trying to get? it you to do or how is it trying to how is it trying to change your behavior with this it's it's very upset and he makes a prick of me you know what I mean everyone's going to laugh at me me in the neighborhood look there's the guy his dog isn't fucking wrapped but like look it's where we're at in life I don't know what to take you I mean no post-fight show this weekend I think the guys are going to be starting it out in L.A you know what I mean they don't need it like I mean do you know fucking replaceable I felt this week and then just to top it all off Jordan's like

no no no no need for a post show mate they're over there Jordan, I'm not getting fired. Be honest with me. This, uh, fired. You're being made redundant. There's a difference. This episode of the crack isn't even being broadcast anywhere. We're just sitting here, just going through the motions.

Just a Zoom call for us. I was like, hey, checking in, you know. In the interest of tribalism, um, which I do think will be rampant this weekend. Oh, you have a feeling, right? Netflix event is on, but there's going to be those people on X saying, why the fuck would you watch this? We're watching the apex event here. Chaos Williams about to get down. Why, uh, why, why, why,

would be watching the Netflix event. And it is, look, there's a few good fights on this card. And there's a lot of fights on the card. Sean Aban, shout out Mama B, representing Patty Hoolin's gym is kicking off the action against Nicole Calieri. I know a lot of people might not be interested in that one. But at the top of the card, a bangerable fight, which Ben folks brought up earlier, Arnold Allen and Costa there, Duhu Choy versus Daniel Santos in another great fight.

Malcolm Wellmaker, who has lost his first fight, one of the big prospects, Modestus Buchalcus, as well, a teammate of Tom Aspenols, a teammate of Tom Aspenols, a state. taking on Christian Edwards. It is, it is a decent car, but I feel like, maybe it's just me and the, because we've been working on this card mostly with editorial and on the show this week,

I feel like, I feel bad for Arnold Lennel. Like this is a fucking massive fight and you're like, this is going to be a really good fight, but unfortunately. And Malky, I mean, you know,

both guys. You're just like, we're going to bury you guys into this situation here. Does it feel buried to you guys? Yeah. I don't hear anybody really talking about it at all this week. It's all. all MVP stuff. And I mean, it doesn't help that like for me when I'm thinking about how I want to portion my time out on Saturday. I'm like the Netflix show is probably going to have like weird stuff that goes on when you have like a 25 person broadcast team. And you know, last time you saw Mike Tyson's whole ass. So you don't know what you might see on Netflix this time. And it's the thing is. You do know what you're going to see with the UFC. And so you're just like, all right, I could just. A lot of filler. And so you're just like, all right, I could just.

avoid the spoilers or whatever and circle back after the event is over, skip through all the commercials and everything and get straight to the fights. Especially with these UFC fight nights, that is my preferred way to watch it because they make you sit through a lot of non-fighting stuff. That is one of the benefits of Paramount Plus is just the like fight selector when you go back afterwards. It's just like, hey, boom, right on there. No preliminary. It's just right into the fight.

It's great. So you're going to watch one independently and not double screen. This is that what you're saying about Ben? I'm not double screen this. No. What the fuck? Listen, I don't have. I don't have that kind of attention span.

You know, I'm trained in the double, triple, it's quadruple screens. I've done that. Double screen, piece of piss, mate. That's fucking, you know what I mean? I'm born and raised on double screens. I mean, I guess, I guess I believe that about you. Your fractured attention span makes me think that that could entirely be the case.

That's right. Chugue, you double screen in there or just single screen in here? I hadn't really thought about it, boys, but I'm probably going to do the Benfolks method. here because I can put our attention. I want to be able to pay attention to everything, you know, the proper way. Proper 12. Do we have any supersets, Jordan?

I hope Jordan's still here. We have one this week. Great show. Hello from Canada. I believe that's Canada, where Ariel Wani is from. Can you do a show on the state of women's UFC? Why are there no fights on any cards of late? Sean O'Bannon.

This is a great question. All right. Protest. I have to say, Carla V. Rose to crushed my fun. Dude. I do the,

I write the, um, pound for pound rankings. Yo. Every month. And with the women, it's always like, there's nothing, no movement whatsoever.

And the whole 10 that appear on there, you're like, you're just trying to give some kind of update as to where things are. And a lot of times there's no update. And even though it's been six months since their last fight, it is very bizarre how slow things move in the women's ranks. It is. Yeah.

Like, it just doesn't seem like there's a ton of excitement or like what's you know other than the possibility of amana nunes and kela harrison there's just not a whole lot there that we're even looking forward to on the horizon it's like you have manon furor and um blanchfield and some of these names that should be emerging but they're just kind of stuck in this purgatory below the the contender spot it's just weird but they months and months and months go by before they get booked into anything yeah of not what's that with the rancans joke like sometimes i've said to you look i'm not going crazy here none of these people

of far, right? And you'd be like, no, no, that's correct. That is, yeah, you guys. Nothing is happening. Send me in the exact same list. I'm like, thanks, guys. Now I just have to think of 500 words on all of these people. Right. I was saying, uh, when we last saw it? It is tough, though. It is like, because there's nothing happened, especially Dakota to Chiva and people like that, you're like, I know she had an injury, but you're like, man, 2024, you couldn't stop writing about all the things going on with her. And then since then, it's just completely shut it down. There's almost no movement. That's why I'd probably take Dakota coming to the UFC or something like that to awaken the beast.

I don't know. It just feels like they need something. They need stars and they aren't exactly the great star making business they once were, which is probably why Rhonda Rousey has garnered so much attention since you came back. They're doing pretty well. Huh? Yeah. Carrano and Rousey?

Let's inject them back into the U.C. Don't. I'm joking. That was a joke. Anyway, thank you all. Oh, sorry. Geez, more than one.

Rosie v. Carrano, the best booked retirement. fight. Let me think here. I mean, it does avoid doing the thing that we usually do in the sport, which is like get an older fighter with, like has a name, but not a whole lot of ability left. Match them against somebody younger who you're hoping to vault up the rankings and let

a terrible beating ensue. Like that's the UFC's way because the UFC is usually thinking like, all right, if we're getting this person for only one more fight, what good are they to us? They're good if they can lend some of their star power on their way out the door to somebody we have a future in promoting. MVP is kind of freed of that decision making to some extent because we don't even know for sure if there will be another show. So they can kind of book this one. But also they can book it because it kind of came pre-packaged to them, right? Like this is a fight that Rhonda and Gina Corona tried to sell to the UFC and the UFC didn't want to pay for it.

And so they turn right around and be like, we have this thing for you. It's a complete package already wrapped up. do you want it and they could just say yes to it. So maybe the lesson there is if you want to book your, uh, good retirement fight for yourself, go ahead and you do all the legwork of booking it. Don't tell the UFC,

I'm retiring at this next one and let them choose an opponent for you. What was the promotion that put on Chuck and Tito three? That was the saddest. That was golden boy. Oh, golden boy. That's right. That's right. I mean, that was bad.

That one jumps to your mind, but it was so bad. You're like, oh my God. That one, I really remember watching Chuck walk out and being like, that's an unc walk. He's got the unk walk.

Just walking down of the cage. I can't put any pressure his hips. And then when he gets in the cage and he starts like shadow boxing, just him like throwing a few punches shadow boxing. I went, oh no.

Oh no. He can't hurt anybody with that right now. You anticipate John Jones playing a factor this weekend. He's going to be there as part of the, as part of those 27 personalities that you mentioned work in the broadcast. You guys mentioned

carrots being dangled earlier. Like I can't imagine. that we leave this broadcast without a tease of something. And even though it's impossible, right, for Jones to, I can imagine them being like, oh, it looks really good in there, wouldn't mind some of this or something like that way he's on the for sure he's going to do something like that. Yeah. I also predict that as the evening goes on, he'll just unbutton more and more buttons.

Yeah. All right, this is a good. That's a good. Oh, we had, we had the morning combat there for a minute, Brian Campbell back in the day, you know, it's like going into a rebald area of the commentary. But anyways, what were you saying? I was saying you sent me these weird odds. Oh, right.

Some of them jump out. What the hell is going over on over there at betonlearn. I don't know. Here's some of the special lines on Rousey v. Carano. All right, this is very, what will happen for a scissor kick or north south position? Cisor kick plus 100, north south position 140. I think we'd all probably go for the norths out there. Here's the second line.

Which fighter will have the first nip slip? that's not me saying this yeah okay what do we what the fuck is going on there I like when we offend Ben this is this is just

favorite segment this is this feels like a holdover from a different era of women's MMA when people just hadn't learned how to be cool about it yet and they were doing shit like this I thought I thought we kind of left

that stuff in the past yeah well look that's what Bellaunloin.orgi they're stuck in the past by the way my money's on Carano just kidding I'm saying

Here's the Diaz, the Diaz specials, right? You ready? I mean, this is the license to print money. Chuk already has advised me on what I should do here. Will Ney Diaz flip middle finger during fight? Yes, plus 150, no, minus 200.

Put the mortgage on yes. Yeah, 100% he will. That's like, especially at this point, that's like 40% of his game is middle finger. He'll try to, he'll slap him and then flash the middle finger. Yeah. And then, uh, all right.

You ready? Uh, will Nate Diaz use the stockton slap again, I feel Ben's last answer applies here. Yes, minus 300. I don't think he has another way. Does he? Slap and middle finger. That's pretty much the fight. Um, will Diaz turn back on Perry first to bleed?

But yeah, that was pretty much a nip slip on the, the stockton slap and the other ones are the ones that sick. Good props. Yep. But that's all we've got for you this week. Thank you. Uh-huh. Sorry, Jesus.

I mean, sorry, guys. I mean, you know, usually Jordan's just, you know, who cares, you know? Who look great in L.A. gear? You looked great in L.A. gate. Go, Dodgers. Thank you, cruising baby, 6483. I did that.

You put on the L.A. Dodgers gear? Yeah, I think I had it. Oh, man. Come on, Pizzi. I don't know anything about this stuff, okay? Who's your favorite L. L.A. Dodger? O'Tani.

Oh, there you go. Steve Gurney. I just, Ariel was given out, and they just played a video of him, like, abusing all these Dodgers fans. So I said,

the funniest way for me to show up on this show is with a Dodgers hat on. And it was. I think it upset him a lot. He actually commented on immediately, similar to how you did. Fuck you, Petezie. Yeah,

put that in the trash. I don't know, Ben, are you, you're from L.A. area. Yeah, I,

I went, actually, one of my favorite baseball memories is I went to game two, of the 1988 world series in my dad where the Dodgers the Dodgers beat the A's. The thing that I really remember was that Game one was where Kurt Gibson

hit that home run and I think that my dad my dad's work had these like World Series tickets and he got to choose between game one and game two. But like game one, I think that like I had a soccer game or something. You know, I was like nine years old. It was something like I had some kind of like youth sports obligation and so

He was like, well, we can't go to that one, but we'll go game two. And then it's like, we're sitting there. I remember being in the living room watching game one, watching Kurt Gibson hit that home run, and being like, we could have been at this. But no, my nine-year-old soccer game was too important for it. You know, we couldn't possibly miss that. Well, at least they don't keep playing that, you know, highlight forever. Nobody remembers game two.

I remember it. The Dodgers won. But, yeah, that is my main. connection to the LA Dodgers and now they got good again and got Otani so it's easy to root for him. How about this, B.T. Here's a trivia question. What's the name of the stadium when the Dodgers play? Dodgers Stadium. There you go. Yeah. It's not Chavez Rabin. That's what I was give me a winchuk. How liquor do you get in a baseball game? Like, will they stop you? All the way. Come up swaying. You know what? One of the interesting things was that for a while they had the rule,

like we'll stop selling after the seventh inning or whatever it was. But then when they instituted the pitch clock, the games started to move faster and the teams weren't able to sell as much beer and they kind of just applied for leniency on that like, hey, let us just keep turning it out, man. These games go by too fat. And then they said, all right, forget our concerns about drunk driving. Go ahead, sell them beers. Especially in LA where everybody drives. There's nobody like car sharing out there. I wonder if the beers have topped the $20 per, um, per poor at this point. Like the last time I was there was a long time ago it was already like 15 so it's got to be ridiculous there you go so closing in and what what type of beer are we talking here jordan it's a good beer

it's just a beer that's just the only way you need to think of it is it's like in a movie where they walk up to the bar and be like give me a beer like that's basically what you're doing at that point Troy do not in Ireland they will not give you a beer they'll say what what are you talking about sorry tell me exactly what the fuck you want they just don't pour a Guinness They don't call it up here. I mean, I don't know. I roll up in there and just ask for the pizza special, you know, and then they know what to do.

You see them like, chalking something up with a credit card. We just throw you out the door immediately. They just throw you out the door immediately. They pour you a Guinness and a go cup and call you a cab. That's what they do. I was in a bar last week when we friend Hingo and we had a lot of drinks. And we just started telling people, boy the bar to go to a different bar. they were like, oh, what are you looking for?

And I was like, oh, you should go over there, you should go over there. And the barman was like, you know, you've just been standing there telling like random people to go to any other bar and I didn't mean it that way. Sure, they were after. Can you leave, sir? No problem.

I'll see you later. But anyway, guys, big weekend, double screen it. Don't be like these guys. Amherst yourself. Screen here, screen there. Maybe you get some boxing or something on one up here. And get an iPad as well and just fucking look at that. Put on a highlight.

Focus. He needs focus. You know what I mean? Just keep, maybe have a little game going on your phone. Anyway, enjoy the fights. I really want to be there. You'll see them all over.

We'll be back on Monday to talk all about it. No post show because, you know, I've been replaced. I don't know what's going on. But listen, I still love you, crackheads. And I still love Ben. I still have Chuck. Still of Jordan. I still love Oscar Losef.

The rest of them, then go to hell. Love you. Have a great weekend. Just go to hell very offensive in America. That's pretty mild. Okay. But listen, Jordan, you don't. care about anything anymore okay you've gone you've